Video Game Self-Publishing

Publishing is always a challenge for indie videogame developers. Ultimately, the problem here is how to get the game that we worked so hard to make into the hands and screens of players out there.

On our first game, the solution was known from the beginning. We published "Alpha Chimp" (here) on Xbox360's indie marketplace. However, even though we knew this was the publishing avenue, there were still challenges that posed a barrier to entry. (Just one of these barriers was that we had to be approved by the community group of developers, that is, our competitors.) I won't get into too any more of the problems that marketplace publishing option posed, but there were many, and we knew this would not be an avenue to pursue with The Elf Who Killed Christmas.

There were a diverse group of choices that we could have pursued in publishing. One is that we could try to find other marketplaces similar to the Xbox marketplace. Well, that would just bring the same sort of barriers as before.

Another option might be to self-publish. The problem with this solution is that we would then have to develop the infrastructure to make our game available on our own website. Such necessary infrastructure would be securing internet bandwidth, as well as developing an e-commerce site. Another significant challenge with this is how we would might get random internet traffic to our site.

As a college professor, I often tell students that whenever they are offered a choice between two alternatives, then best solution is probably a combination of both alternatives. And so this was the avenue we pursued in publishing our game because it offered the best of both worlds.

AMAZON.COM just began offering a service such that independent developers could utilize their infrastructure and marketplace to sell their products. After exploring other self-publishing marketplaces (that fell through for various reasons), the AMAZON.COM solution was the one that best suited our needs.

We were able to make a FREE DEMO VERSION (here) of  "The Elf Who Killed Christmas" available in January. Now that the game is complete, the FULL VERSION (here) of the game is also available on Amazon for less than a buck!

Visit the game's website, and download the demo!
http://elfwhokilledchristmas.com/
http://giveupgames.com/