Game Design
stories, tips, follies,
...and making some $$$ along the way!

First Sale and Price Adjustment

Posted by: Sam Horton on Apr 1, 2008 at 6:51 PM

Today I just sold the first copy of Mobile B-Out, and I have to say, it feels great!

I was using this handy little tool to calculate how much I would need to charge in order to make a dollar after paypal took their cut. It looks like I missed the mark by a few cents, so I've adjusted the price to $1.35. It's too bad really, because it seemed like luck was on my side when I came up with the $1.11 price tag! Paypal takes a flat fee of $.30 per transaction, Plus up to 2.9% of the total. International orders can get hit for 2.5% on top of that.



In other news, I'm working on making a nice installer for various phone models, starting with the Symbian OS. I almost have something working, but it's about 10 times harder to make the installer than the game itself. The process involves:
  • Downloading gigs of symbian sdk's

  • Creating cool icons

  • Generating encrypted keys and certificates

  • Searching through a library of congress worth of documentation

  • Hacking through file headers

  • Fighting with tools that claim to do all this in a single click



It will be worth it in the long run, and I'm sure it's valuable info to have under your belt! I really would love to see an Adobe solution that streamlines this whole process though!

I would also like to get this game listed in the Nokia Marketplace, but it looks like there are pretty strict guidelines in place, and a $200 per year fee to get a proper Symbian certificate. Since B-Out doesn't need any of the advanced features that require strict certification, it might wind up being much easier, and hopefully cheaper.

For now, it's easy enough to just manually choose the game from the Flash player on your phone and enjoy it!



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  1. Anonymous Anonymous | April 5, 2008 at 3:05 AM |  

    Felicitation for your 1st sale...

    I am curious... why do you sell your game $1.35 and not €1... it will looks like cheaper and in fact, you will get much money... no ?

  2. Blogger Sam Horton | April 5, 2008 at 2:33 PM |  

    Hi Chris,

    While I could sell the game for $1, and still make a few cents (.67 to be exact). Adjusting the price so that I will earn $1 per sale was more a matter of principle than anything else.

    I'll consider adjusting the price until sales start to pick up. If changing it to $1 convinces more people to purchase, then I don't really have any problems with it!