Rodeo Games started life in 2010, explained studio co-founder Laurent Maguire at the TIGA Mobile and Tablet Games Event taking place in London today.
The team of four had previously worked for the likes of Lionhead, Criterion and Codemasters, and now they were setting up shop in a cheap office in Guildford.
The ambition was to create a turn-based strategy title for core gamers, and the fruits of that labour were Hunters 1 and Hunters 2, which have together accumulated a total of more than 1 million downloads since launch.
The five-step plan
Introductions out of the way, Maguire explained that there are five things that are needed to create a good indie game.
The right platform is first, then you require the beginnings of a good game design and a team that can make it.
Cheap office space is the rather practical fourth item on Maguire's list. The final bullet-point is self-funding.
In 2010, Maguire was courting investors and publishers, and he spent a lot of time saying "we've almost got a deal."
Finalising those deals are the tricky part, he explained, and advised attending developers to treat self-funding as plan A. Investment and publisher support should be relegated to plan B, he argued.
Getting the word out
Once you've made a game, you have to market it, and Maguire had guidance on this topic too.
He suggested a lazy press release as a low-cost means of driving limited press coverage, and advised regular sales events as a means of boosting discoverability.
With Hunters, Rodeo Games regularly cut the game's price from $4.99 to 99c in order to maintain a presence in the App Store charts.
"If you drop down past 100, you're not going to get any people casually stumbling across your game," Maguire explained.
Of course, this tactic only works with paid games. When quizzed on the studio's continued use of the premium pricing, Maguire answered: "We're aiming for core gamers, and [freemium] still doesn't sit well with a lot of core gamers."
But regardless of target audience, the overriding message from Rodeo Games was a positive one. "It's very doable," Maguire said. "If you make a good game, you can survive."
News
Related Articles
Week that was
Feb 15th, 2014
PocketGamer.biz Week That Was: Farewell Flappy Bird, Supercell's $892 million sales, and Molyneux says F2P is a sledgehammer
Top Stories
News
Apr 22nd, 2024
Games Go Green: Major studios join PlanetPlay’s Make Green Tuesday Moves initiative to fight climate change
Feature
Apr 22nd, 2024
Tjodolf Sommestad talks AI, tips for indie devs, and a day in the life of King's president
Feature
Apr 22nd, 2024
Behind the scenes: How to achieve a 30% revenue increase three years after launch
Feature
Apr 22nd, 2024
Hot Five: Earth Day, birthdays, game closures, layoffs and more. Here's what's hot right now…
Events
App Promotion Summit London | Europe | Apr 25th |
Esports Future Summit | Middle East | Apr 27th |
Dubai GameExpo Summit 2024 | Middle East | May 1st |
The MENA Games Industry Awards 2024 | Middle East | May 2nd |
GameDev Atlantic 2024 | May 4th | |
Mobidictum Meetup Berlin May 2024 | Europe | May 7th |
Mobidictum Meetup Tallinn May 2024 | Europe | May 21st |
Israel Mobile Summit 2024 | Middle East | Jun 6th |