UPDATE #2: http://www.gamerbytes.com/2010/01/indepth_xbox_live_indie_games.php

UPDATE: So it looks these numbers for Rumble Massage and RC-AirSim aren't right, based on this. That means the "Best Selling" list under the IG section isn't sorted by units sold. Which is kind of dumb, I think. Oh well. I'll keep this here anyway.

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Today I reveal how much money the best selling Xbox Live Indie Games have made. As far as I know, I'm the first to put two and two together and make this public (surprisingly), so this is sort of a big deal. Let's get to it:

I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMB1ES!!!1

ZOMB1ES was released August 16. Sometime before Sept. 14th it had 122,000 downloads. On Sept. 17th James Silva said it had 150,000 downloads, and then on Sept. 26th he said it has a 44.75% conversion rate (see here). Based on this we pretty much know the bare minimum it sold, but we can get closer if we predict how many downloads it had between the 17th and the 26th. Since it gained 28,000 downloads between [a date just before the 14th] and the 17th, then surely it had at least 20,000 between the 17th and 26th, though it's probably much higher than that, considering the game has stayed at #1 on the Most Purchased list this whole time. But let's play minimalist and stick with 20k, which brings us to 170,000 downloads, with a conversion rate of 45%; that's 76,500 copies sold at $1 each. Microsoft takes 30% of that (which is actually a great bargain), so James Silva has made at least $53,000 from I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMB1ES. In only 40 days. That's more than I make in 4 years!

Now it gets more interesting once you realize this: you can view the all-time best selling games on your Xbox by going to the Indie Games tab, then Browse, All, and move over to Best Selling. Surely this is sorted by number of copies sold, rather than total money earned. The top 3 games are RC-Airsim, Rumble Massage, and James' ZOMB1E game. So we now know that all of these games have sold more than 76,500 copies. Continue »

"You guys are kind of like the "bad boys" of indie game developers, does that image bother you or do you thrive on it?"

Read the interview!

EDIT: That site is no more. The interview is reposted here: Continue »

So Dream-Build-Play is over. Dust: An Elysian Tail took home the $40k grand prize, as expected. We've played it...and it is awesome. Looks so much better on a TV than on youtube. Probably the best 2D graphics I've ever seen. Yeah. Max Blastronaut looks really fun too. It got 2nd place. Sadly our game didn't make a finalist spot. I'd like to take Nathan Fout's route and blame it on the "grenzespasse." It was just too much fun for the judges to handle! Naww, really we weren't expecting anything. The build we submitted was so unfinished, missing sound effects, levels were a mess, bunch of stuff. But I dunno if our game has the production value or innovation to compete even if it was finished. Oh well, still gonna be AWESOME.

Anyway, our lives our back to normal now. I was pretty much living at Jonny's (our parents) house during the month of July, working full-time for that contest. But he's back to school now, and I'm back to delivering pizza, so development has slowed way down. We really need to pick it up though if we want to get this thing done before 2010.

And oh yeah, we're working on another game...
A very simple one. Only on Xbox. It'll be released before JForce: UNSTOPPABLE. It should be out in less then a month, hopefully. It's a remake of a mini-game that was in a classic SNES title...BUT WITH AVATARS...and online play. If anybody in the comments can guess which game it is, I'll give you a download code so you can get it for free.

Response was generally pretty positive. People like the weapons, blood, think it looks fun, etc. It's especially encouraging when several people say they're going to buy the game. Nice to hear. And we got a little bit of press. Get to clickin:

http://www.unscripted360.com/2009/08/12/indie-games-exist-unstoppable/

http://www.xnplay.co.uk/2009/08/07/jforceunstoppable-trailer/

http://xboxhornet.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/jforce-unstoppable-gameplay/

http://www.indiegameblog.net/2009/08/11/dbp-09-jforce-unstoppable/

http://www.game-pad.net/news/gaming-news/309-jforce-unstoppable-trailer

http://games.emuboards.com/2009/08/11/indie-game-releases-11th-august/

Whew! Submitted just in time. It's still not close to being finished though, it's actually kind of a mess right now. I don't think we'll win anything. I'm hoping we can make a finalist spot. Anyway, we need a break. And you need to watch this trailer. Head over to the games page for all the details!

And dont forget this is just a gameplay trailer for the Dream-Build-Play contest. Our next trailer might be the funniest, most epic video game trailer of all time. No seriously, it's gonna put us on the map. Get hyped. RIGHT NOW.

PS: just created a new Facebook page, be a fan!

Here's the youtube comments.

Now working full-time on the game. Woot! And it is now called JForce: UNSTOPPABLE. Expect the first trailer in early August.

Here's the youtube comments.

On Friday we went to the Screw Attack Gaming Convention. And we have t-shirts! Wait, let's call them J-shirts. There's also a small clip of gameplay footage in this video. We've added a lot of stuff. We're excited. The game is looking good. Expect to see it soon!

Here's the youtube comments.

Check out my zombies! After finishing these my confidence as a sprite artist has been increased dramatically, cuz, I think these look pretty sweet. And we have different combinations too, see:


So each zombie in the game will have a random combination of head, shirt color, and blood splatters. We can't have all our zombies identical, you know.

I also tried doing this zombie attack for when they're up close and personal, but it didn't turn out very well. It sort of looks like he's rapping...really really fast. Continue »

Behold, my wonderful animating skills:


And here's one from the Jesse footage: Continue »

In this episode we go over my spriting process. Reference images are everything. My main sources are captured Halo 3 screenshots, a topdown Gears of War mod, and Jesse, which you can see at 3:26 of this video (the funny part).

And I should've mentioned this in the video, but I definitely will not draw every single frame on paper and then scan them in and color 'em. I will probably only do that for some of the key frames...maybe. I'm starting to get the hang of my wacom tablet, so I'm sort of just tracing the reference images, and then modifying them to get the look of our character (which is basically just adding lots of muscles to the arms).

Here's the youtube comments.