OT: Indie games

[Tim Brooks]

...here's one for the shrapnel staff: Why not advertise shrapnel as a whole?

Hi Guys.

Interesting article, and actually I read this a while back. It is hard being an independent publisher, when all the mainstream forms of advertising are geared towards major release titles. When running a banner ad on Gamespot cost $8,000 and a full page ad in the major computer games magazines is now over $20,000 it makes it impossible for niche games to be advertised in this way.

We have chosen the path less traveled for the most part. Let's face it, our demos are on all the major sites, as well as press releases, and reviews on most plus reviews in the magazines. So spending that kind of money to reach a small portion of these sites and mags audience (the niche strategy and wargaming fans) is just not worth it. We have run the numbers, and we have very good numbers, and each additional sale would come out to cost over $150.00. That is for each sale of products that are in the $40 - $50 dollar range.

We spend a good portion of our income on advertising each month, but we choose to do it in a way that brings new folks to Shrapnel Games. For instance, we run ads in History mags for our wargame titles, and we have similar types of advertising for our strategy titles. It is cost effective and lets those that haven't heard of Shrapnel know who we are. So far, it has worked quite well for us.

That is why you almost never see our ads. You visit the places where we feel we already have a presence. Yeah, it would be nice to do some advertising on these sites, but it just doesn't make sense.