Janko in a Jar

Judging by downloads of Kubi demo we are sailing straight towards sunny days, aint that right Captain? ….. “Well… let me see, boy.”
Downloads of Kubi for Windows per month

This week few things finaly clicked in my brain… I was noticing some strange number at logs for kubi download (win) hits… but I thougth it was mistake and didn’t bother much. Kubi for Windows was finally getting some buy-page views (as I saw on plimus monitor) too, but in 95% the currency was PLN and CNY. I didn’t think of it much but my brain concluded by itself… ok, game is getting popular in Polland and Canada. Referrers showed me allmost the same number of hits from some pirate pages as I got downloads…..

Then one day I was looking at Plimus monitor… thinking something like ( I just will citate my thougths) … “What the hell is wrong with you canadians.. I get 50 buy-now pageviews a day and noone buys it in whole week!?!…… And what is that Y doing in that CNY…. don’t they have canadian dollars or something…………………Jackie Chan is cool…. uh, I have to stop thinking about him……….Jackie Chan……. China Yen…… Uh……….this is China?!”

So I realized 95% of my buy-now (for windows) version are from Polland and China. And coincidence coincidence… those pirate websites that I get tons of referers from are Polland and China too. And Kubi was downloaded 10 times more this month than the last - and I didn’t get even 1 sale more.

I wanted to name this post “Life is nice if you are modest” because “worth” is very relative term and some successful gamedev will laugh at my standard for worthy….but anyway…

Work: I made little game Winter Break & Catch around 18. December. It was simple breakout with some changes. I made in 5 working days. I used demo version of Xara Xtreme to draw everything, PTK for game, irrXML for loading levels and that was it. Game had no real menu or other options you would expect from real game. I also bought 1 copy of OSAKit, so game could be played in IE browsers.

Promo: I made simple web-page and page for playing it in a browser. I made PAD file and my wife took some time and manually added game to shareware/freeware portals that took PADs (I am too cashless to buy Promosoft ATTM). I put a link on Otroski.net and mentioned game on few forums.

Results: Unique visitor number at bravekidgames almost doubled and still hasn’t fallen down (in a month) which is big deal, because it then improves everything else we do there. AdSense revenue on BKG doubled also and is now 0.95 per day on average (it was 0.4 before). And last week I was able to sell rights to publish this game on CD of Slovenian magazine for kids (BIM-BAM) for $80. I know, it’s small money but I wanted it to get published so I gave them the offer I knew they will accept. So all in all I am happy I made WB&C. Oh and I got really great feedback (that feed my ego for a month) and great ideas for serious version on some Slo. gaming forum.

Uh, and just for info 960 people played it online in a browser in this time.

Ok, I have to do something to keep you on this website, so I will post some stats. People (at least judging by myself) are allways hungry for some raw numbers, so they can compare.

Brave Kid Games is website where i try to collect, show off and sell indie games for kids. It is online for 7 months now. It is not very actively worked on, because I have so much other projects and websites besides that, but it hasn’t been left alone either, and is constantly growing or improving. So numbers…
- google PR 4 (PR predictor showed that we will have PR5 on next update)
- 24 games, 3 screensavers, 3 online activities, 1 set of printables

- visits are growing like this :

* KUBI was released in september
* Winter Break & Catch was released in december

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((You have to imagine Dick from “3rd stone from the sun” when reading the title))
Who am I? Janko Metelko from Slovenia. I am freelance programmer (hardly, but stil) surviving by programming for 4 years now. I started a company this year and employed myself.

What did I do until now? Some desktop biz apps (MSAccess, Python, C#), a lot and more webapps (php, python), and few games (GM, C++) and even PLCs for some industrial washing machine and embroidery machine.
… enougth for now, some personal flashes will follow every now and then

uhm… what’s this? Yet another “I have interesting things to tell” person got his blog? Yes…

I will try to be concrete and post some helpfull infos besides just playing the smart-ass. You might find something interesting in this blog if you try really really hard….no… if you are interested into indie game development, fun games, web development, owning websites, handling small company…