The complexities of marketing, publishing, and distributing

When you're a game developer, life is easy. Make customers happy. That's pretty much the only thing you have control over.  Few (very few) developers are also their own publishers. And publishers have a very different set of criteria -- making sure the retailers are happy too which may involve contradictory approaches.

Stardock has one thing going for it that most publishers don't -- a mature and popular digital distribution network (TotalGaming.net on the game side). This has helped us keep some leverage. After all, who the heck is Stardock anyway? But because we sell millions of dollars a year in software via our own digital distribution network, we have alternatives.  That is why, for instance, WindowBlinds hasn't been at retail.  For years, various distributors have tried to make us do deals that would be bad for our customers and bad for us but very good for them.  Historically, distributors had all the clout along with the retailers so the developer/publisher pretty much had to accept whatever was offered.  But digital distribution gives us more options.  WindowBlinds, for example, sells more copies -- even today -- than Galactic Civilizations II.  And GalCiv II has sold very well. Well into the six figure range by the end of last June.  So you can imagine how well WindowBlinds sells and that's direct from Stardock.

This brings us to some of the things we want to do.

We want to lower the price of GalCiv II during the Christmas season. That probably sounds insane. But here's the thing, we want new players to feel like they're part of the rest of the community and hence be able to get Dark Avatar when it's available. And we don't want those users to be spending $70 at once.  As a gamer, I can deal with $40 to $50 at once and then $25 to $30 half a year or more later.  But expecting to put up $70 or more at once is too much for me. 

I know of a lot of cool games I've heard about via word of mouth over the years that I didn't end up buying because I wasn't willing to just get the base game when there was an expansion pack out.  Yes, I know I could just live with the regular game and get the expansion later. But I suspect I'm not the only one who feels this way -- if I'm going to get a game, I'm going to get the whole thing.

So now we talk about where the retailers come in.  Retail shelf space is tight.  So one idea was to expand Dark Avatar even further. Put in MORE features than we have listed there. Make it not quite a sequel but far more than a typical expansion pack...

..and then, thanks to digital distribution release the upgrade as the expansion pack digitally so people who bought the original game could get the full new version of GalCiv II at a discount and make the retail version a compilation that includes it all in a single box.  This would make retailers happy and new users happy but it would mean dealying the expansion pack until after Christmas (we'd do an open beta this Fall so people who wanted to start playing it before Christmas could play, it would be "Beta" only in name really, no buggier than a 1.x beta has been which means, some bugs but nothing huge typically).

But doing so brings the question of what to call the new stand alone version? GalCiv II: Gold? GalCiv II: Dark Avatar? There is likely to be some confusion either way.  One of the benefits is that having an expansion pack and compilation version out at the same time would help sales at retail since that's when all the editiorial coverage and advertising would be taking place.  But again, the question returns - what to call the stand alone compilation vs. what to call the expansion pack.

So what got us thinking down this track in the first place? The CivFanatics.com contest. No single entry per se but reading through there just inspired us to want to come up wtih more features to put in. But at a certain point, the features become so long that they're almost a quasi-sequel being made with the same underlying game engine.

We'd love to hear your thoughts...