Arowx.com - Indie Game Dev

Link: /CanheSaveTheSillyEarthlings

Our intrepid hero is going to take on the twin challenges of climate chaos and fossil fuel depletion, can he do it?

Watch the movie of the game to find out...

Save The Silly Earthlings is still in development but you can check out it's progress on it's facebook page via it's website SaveTheSillyEarthlings.com

Let me know what you think...

Link: /Hahanowwerelaying...

Ok, update on the marketing another indie game developer over at Indiegamer Forums apparently putting the word Mac into your adverts is a trademark infringement, so what happens if you use Apple (TM)!

Some good advice with adwords, if it lets you set up 'fruity' adverts, you can see a more detailed breakdown of where your advertising dollars went, it's under the Network tab, I found that a lot of my advertising revenue was going out via a couple of mobile games sites!

Which is a problem as none of my games are available on mobile platforms, yet!

So I was able to exclude these sites from my advertising, at least until I get a mobile version of my games out.

L.E.D is now up and running, Layout Editor 'Deluxe', a couple of hours work and I should now have a tool that will allow me to whip up amazing game screens in no time, what you don't believe me well watch this...

How fast was that, OK you got me it was about 2 hours of work but it used to take quite a bit longer and was very fiddley to hand adjust each element!

Still need to get it to build the code for me and let me just draw screens but I can leave that for version 0.2!

Link: /Arrgggg!

Well not all is going well, you know you get some days when everything seems to work and others when everything that can does go wrong...

Well my marketing campaign on Google Ads and Facebook, seems to have become an expensive way to get one or two clicks a day, for instance on Google it was taking tens of thousands of 'impressions' to get a single click, which is an expensive click and even with that click through to my games pages, will the potential customer download my game or even buy it!

On facebook it would appear that my adverts are hardly making any impressions at all probably due to the Easter break advertisement bonanza.

Now to add insult to injury someone has blocked my adverts on google due to Trademark infringements, spot the trademark in ...

Arowx Games
Fun games for the pc and mac
Free to download and play
ArowxGames.com

The ArowxGames.com is my website, now Google does not provide any information on who has placed the Trademark infringement complaint or support it with any documenation!

What can I say some lessons in life are more expensive than others.

So as an independent games developer just starting out am I disheartened, a little but I'm sure if I persivere, launch more games and improve existing ones eventually I will be able to say 'I did it...' or I can die trying!

On a brighter note Brainagon's interface is coming along nicely, it is slow going but I have a cunning plan, I'm going to write a simple (KISS based) wysiwig layout editor that should allow me to speed up the fiddly bit of positioning the interface components!

Link: /BrainagonMenu0.1

Well Brainagon is underway and so far I'm rather pleased with the look of the interface, here is a mockup of the main menu (details may change)...

Well I have to make that nice mockup work as an interface so best get back to it, then there are a few more screens and the game itself!

Link: /MarketingOnAshoestring

Well I have just started a new adventure into marketing my games!

I know I should have started this so much earlier but I must admit like most programmers advertising and marketing, seemed to be expensive and require shiny people or things in beatiful settings.

Anyway it has been something I was always thinking of doing "just after the next game I'm working on", and as I've ended up with at least three games in the works let's face it wasn't going to happen soon.

But being lost in development helped as it made me realise that I really should be getting the most out of the games I already have out there.

Facebook allows you to advertise your pages and this is what I first started out trying, after creating pages for each of my games and a page for each of my games in development, I set up an advertising campaign.

I have also setup a campaign on google adwords.

With both services you setup a campaign buget.

Facebook let's you setup a daily budget and will bill you monthly.
Adwords let's you setup a budget for each ad group and pre-pay or post-pay.

Both let you setup adverst via CPC(cost per click) or CPM (cost per 1000 impressions). Both services use a auction style system where you put in your max bid for your advert to appear, the top paying advert wins and is shown.

On average they both recommend settings in the 20-40p or cents range.

Facebook allows you to taret users based on their interests, e.g. bejeweled blitz as well as country, age, sex, gender preference, marital status.

The adpage also shows you an estimated number of users that fit your criteria!

Adwords uses keywords used in search terms on google and gives you an estimate of search hits.

I have already had issues with my adverts not being accepted by facebook, it has a No eXeceSs cApItalisation policy, Adwords has it's own policies and I can say that both can Decline to show your advert and not really give you a clear and simple feedback on what the problem was!

Considering that the adverts only contain a URL a couple of lines of text and some keyword terms, I think both could certainly improve.

Facebook locks the advert so you can't edit it once it's has been blocked, so I would recommend cloning then changing existing adverts.

It's early days yet but my aim is to see if I can raise the profile of my site and games, make some sales and do it on a shoesting!

I'm on facebook here...

Allan Rowntree

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