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« on: March 02, 2010, 09:31:01 PM »
Rather than having users pay for the games (how much are you earning from TPA2?), you think you should get some people to advertise on the games. In order to do this, you need to make people more aware of the existence of Sinister Design. A good example is casualcollective.com (the DTD and FETD people). They restrict aspects of their games to the public, and inform the public of their website. This increases traffic, which makes ads more lucrative.
Although they do not do ads so much anymore, I think that’s more of trying to promote their image of a friendly site and reducing lag on their multiplayer games than anything else, along with the fact they have a seed fund, which, to my knowledge, you do not have.
As the buying method is unstreamlined, costs money (duh), the full versions of TPA2 and TsoG seem unlikely to spread beyond a dedicated fanbase and game reviewers.
Instead of selling the games, release them to the public and advertise SinisterDesign on more popular sites. Go for a seed fund, expand your games to different platforms, and get advertisers interested.
A fun idea would be to have ‘integrated ads’ in the game; for example, a poster in HQ advertising a company. Because every player of the game would see it, this could potentially be a very lucrative idea.
A good indicator of how well known SinisterDesign is its forum, activity in which is anemic. I have seen little notification of the expanded versions of games on the home site, and I believe informing the general populace of this will greatly increase traffic, and then how much money you can earn from ads.
I cannot see either of the current Telepath games earning more than a few thousand USD through sale, which is something of an insult to the effort you put into it. By gaining the attention of more potential users, however, you set yourself up to make yourself better positioned to begin commercially and gain a seed fund to make game-making a full-time job.