4 ms·

I created itch.io, I posted it on hacker news back in march. You can find the homepage here: http://itch.io http://itch.io Here's the traffic I've received (t

by leafo 13y ago

I created itch.io, I posted it on hacker news back in march. You can find the homepage here: http://itch.io http://itch.io Here's the traffic I've received (the initial spike is hacker news launch): http://leafo.net/shotsnb/2013-12-25_11-16-16.png http://leafo.net/shotsnb/2013-12-25_11-16-16.png A few milestones, I've paid out 12k so far to developers. I use pay what you want pricing, the average purchase is 1.79 above the minimum price of the game. 35% of all the money paid to developers on itch.io is "extra" money paid above the minimum price of the game. Since launch I've primarily focused on adding features, hoping for organic growth to come along. (hence the huge flat line for months in the graph above) I've been starting to network more, mostly over twitter, which is really helping to bring the traffic up. I'm very open about the process, feel free to ask me anything. If you want to follow my development adventures you can follow me on twitter: https://twitter.com/moonscript https://twitter.com/moonscript

neur0mancer 13y ago
Great work leafo! I just "reposted" this here, because i didn't know this cool website.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
untilHellbanned 13y ago
May I ask what you think the most important thing(s) you did between March and August to start building your real traffic? Great site! Thanks for sharing, keep it up!
nunodonato 13y ago
Just wanted to say thanks! I published my game(Missilium) last night on Itch.io. It was really easy and pleasant, compared to Desura or IndieDB. Great work on the site, it's a big help to the indie community
fit2rule 13y ago
I joined last March when you first announced it .. and I have hung in there hoping that things would get 'better' than my first impression, which can be summed up thus: "hope you get better games". So .. my question is .. what do you think you might do in order to increase the quality of the games you are offering? A lot of the games don't .. well .. appeal .. on initial inspection. But I hope that changes.
- leafo 13y ago
  I really don't have an answer. I just need to convince some of the more well known developers to upload their games. I need to try hard sell them on uploading, tell them it costs nothing and will take very little time. More well known developers are uploading their games over time though, I think more people are starting to discover the utility of the site. Recently got two games from Vlambeer: http://vlambeer.itch.io/gun-godz http://vlambeer.itch.io/gun-godz http://vlambeer.itch.io/wasteland-kings http://vlambeer.itch.io/wasteland-kings So I guess the real answer is time. I need to prove the platform isn't going anywhere and that it has the features that are truly indie friendly.
  - fit2rule 13y ago
    Thanks for the honest answer - I look forward to watching you over the next few months and seeing how things take off. I guess you're working towards the critical mass required to make this viable, so it'll be quite intriguing to observe your progress! Are you going to pimp/promote/campaign/whatever a bit more with the Ludum Dare and 24-hour game jams that go on around the scene? I'm guessing you already know of these avenues for promoting your site .. well I for one will be encouraging my fellow game-makers to consider itch.io as an option for distributing their indie work .. Thanks again, and keep it up! You've got a fan here!
  - krsunny 13y ago
    Do any of your devs offer source for their games and do you or will you provide a way to directly download it?
rplnt 13y ago
From user's view, some sort of rating/feedback and/or sales figures (perhaps just ranges as in google play) would have been great. Especially for the non-free games.
- leafo 13y ago
  I've deliberated on this a bit. I don't think I'm trying to build a traditional storefront. If a developer is building a homepage for their game they aren't going to stick reviews and sales data on the page unless they are exceptional. So at that point they are just handpicking whatever data that happens to market the game well. I want itch.io to be the place where people make the homepages for their games. Not another storefront page filled with links elsewhere. For that reason I purposefully don't force anything on the game pages. Discovery of games is a separate issue. Up until now 99% of game discovery comes from external source (mainly twitter). The itch.io homepage and browse pages are potentially good places to discover games but the library isn't good enough where people see it as a place to go to find games (yet). If I do start aggregating reviews then you might see it on those pages, but never on the game pages.
  - nunodonato 13y ago
    Discovery of games is not easy. One suggestion, although not very significant to boost game discovery, could offer some interesting pieces of info and regular readers: have a weekly(bi-weekly/monthly) blog article with a kind of template interview with one indie dev that has games published on your site. interesting to other indies, might be interesting to players, and gives some promotion
  - rplnt 13y ago
    > I want itch.io to be the place where people make the homepages for their games. I see, that makes sense then. > If I do start aggregating reviews then you might see it on those pages, but never on the game pages. That is enough for what I was asking about. Perhaps a best-selling titles, etc..
  - xerophtye 13y ago
    >I want itch.io to be the place where people make the homepages for their games. I like your intention, but from the looks of it, these indie game devs are no web designers. These homepages they have come up with... well... aren't exactly a thing of art. Stores on the other hand, kind of have a better visual page for each page. So perhaps you can provide you devs a set of themes to choose from when making the homepage? I know they can just Google those themselves, but they don't seem to be doing that.
lowglow 13y ago
Here is an interview with the founder we did a couple of weeks ago: http://www.techendo.co/posts/indie-gaming-interview-with-itch-io-founder http://www.techendo.co/posts/indie-gaming-interview-with-itc...

by leafo 13y ago

neur0mancer 13y ago

Great work leafo! I just "reposted" this here, because i didn't know this cool website.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

untilHellbanned 13y ago

May I ask what you think the most important thing(s) you did between March and August to start building your real traffic? Great site! Thanks for sharing, keep it up!

nunodonato 13y ago

Just wanted to say thanks! I published my game(Missilium) last night on Itch.io. It was really easy and pleasant, compared to Desura or IndieDB. Great work on the site, it's a big help to the indie community

fit2rule 13y ago

I joined last March when you first announced it .. and I have hung in there hoping that things would get 'better' than my first impression, which can be summed up thus: "hope you get better games". So .. my question is .. what do you think you might do in order to increase the quality of the games you are offering? A lot of the games don't .. well .. appeal .. on initial inspection. But I hope that changes.

leafo 13y ago
I really don't have an answer. I just need to convince some of the more well known developers to upload their games. I need to try hard sell them on uploading, tell them it costs nothing and will take very little time. More well known developers are uploading their games over time though, I think more people are starting to discover the utility of the site. Recently got two games from Vlambeer: http://vlambeer.itch.io/gun-godz http://vlambeer.itch.io/gun-godz http://vlambeer.itch.io/wasteland-kings http://vlambeer.itch.io/wasteland-kings So I guess the real answer is time. I need to prove the platform isn't going anywhere and that it has the features that are truly indie friendly.
- fit2rule 13y ago
  Thanks for the honest answer - I look forward to watching you over the next few months and seeing how things take off. I guess you're working towards the critical mass required to make this viable, so it'll be quite intriguing to observe your progress! Are you going to pimp/promote/campaign/whatever a bit more with the Ludum Dare and 24-hour game jams that go on around the scene? I'm guessing you already know of these avenues for promoting your site .. well I for one will be encouraging my fellow game-makers to consider itch.io as an option for distributing their indie work .. Thanks again, and keep it up! You've got a fan here!
- krsunny 13y ago
  Do any of your devs offer source for their games and do you or will you provide a way to directly download it?

rplnt 13y ago

From user's view, some sort of rating/feedback and/or sales figures (perhaps just ranges as in google play) would have been great. Especially for the non-free games.

leafo 13y ago
I've deliberated on this a bit. I don't think I'm trying to build a traditional storefront. If a developer is building a homepage for their game they aren't going to stick reviews and sales data on the page unless they are exceptional. So at that point they are just handpicking whatever data that happens to market the game well. I want itch.io to be the place where people make the homepages for their games. Not another storefront page filled with links elsewhere. For that reason I purposefully don't force anything on the game pages. Discovery of games is a separate issue. Up until now 99% of game discovery comes from external source (mainly twitter). The itch.io homepage and browse pages are potentially good places to discover games but the library isn't good enough where people see it as a place to go to find games (yet). If I do start aggregating reviews then you might see it on those pages, but never on the game pages.
- nunodonato 13y ago
  Discovery of games is not easy. One suggestion, although not very significant to boost game discovery, could offer some interesting pieces of info and regular readers: have a weekly(bi-weekly/monthly) blog article with a kind of template interview with one indie dev that has games published on your site. interesting to other indies, might be interesting to players, and gives some promotion
- rplnt 13y ago
  > I want itch.io to be the place where people make the homepages for their games. I see, that makes sense then. > If I do start aggregating reviews then you might see it on those pages, but never on the game pages. That is enough for what I was asking about. Perhaps a best-selling titles, etc..
- xerophtye 13y ago
  >I want itch.io to be the place where people make the homepages for their games. I like your intention, but from the looks of it, these indie game devs are no web designers. These homepages they have come up with... well... aren't exactly a thing of art. Stores on the other hand, kind of have a better visual page for each page. So perhaps you can provide you devs a set of themes to choose from when making the homepage? I know they can just Google those themselves, but they don't seem to be doing that.

lowglow 13y ago

Here is an interview with the founder we did a couple of weeks ago: http://www.techendo.co/posts/indie-gaming-interview-with-itch-io-founder http://www.techendo.co/posts/indie-gaming-interview-with-itc...