So as of today, I'm shutting down Manifesto Games.
We started in September 05 because we thought that a combination of trends made it feasible to create a market for independently developed games outside conventional retail. The spread of broadband makes digital distribution even of quite large games feasible; growing disenchantment on the part of developers with the conditions of the mainstream industry mean many are looking for any possible alternative path to market; and the casual game market had already shown that substantial businesses could be built around selling games online -- games with characteristics quite different from those offered by the traditional industry.
Clearly, we haven't succeeded in realizing that vision. There are a host of possible reasons why; perhaps we launched with an excess of naïve optimism, through of course a surfeit of optimism is an entrepreneurial necessity. We did not achieve the critical mass of support by independent developers that we had initially envisioned (some of whom, bizarrely, viewed us as a competitor), though we appreciate the strong and enduring support we received from some. We always knew that the essential problem we were trying to solve was a marketing one, but we never figured out how to crack the marketing nut, at least with the minimal financial resources we had available. We failed to raise substantial venture money, despite engaging with many VCs over time. And of course, the recession doesn't help.
In the years since we started the company, there have been hopeful changes in the independent games market; Steam has become a profitable and viable channel for some developers, XBLA and WiiWare for others, and the iPhone for still others. In addition, the casual game market has started to experiment with a small handful of titles that break the inordinately restrictive genre mold of that form. Attention paid to independent games by the games media has grown (though why is it that the Independent Film Channel covers the AIAS awards, and not the IGF awards?)
These are all positive signs, but they are dangerous ones, too; Apple, Microsoft, and Nintendo have complete, monopolistic control over distribution through their proprietary channels, and while they may, today, generously grant a high revenue share to developers who sell through them, developers are in the final analysis utterly at their mercy. There's no question in my mind that ultimately the channel owners will someday use their total control to demand an increasingly onerous share of revenues -- a pattern we've already seen in the casual game market, and through channels like IPlay/Oberon. The same is true, perhaps to a somewhat lesser degree, of Steam.
In short, if a viable business ecosystem for independent games is to be established, it needs to be established on the basis of open systems and open markets, not proprietary channels. And that, I think, is inevitable; the whole history of the Internet shows that open systems and open channels rule.
Perhaps we didn't figure out the right way to crack this nut; and perhaps we were simply too early. "Being too early" is, in fact, much of the story of my career; I designed the single most successful online game for its time -- in 1989; and founded one of the first North American mobile game companies -- in 2000. In both cases, four years later would have made a world of difference.
I suspect (and hope) that this will be true of independent games as well -- that within four years, it will be a large, fast-growing, and highly successful segment of the game industry. In other words, Manifesto may be dead, but in many ways this is an excellent time to be an independent game developer, and the potential we saw when we founded the company remains.
I am grateful to all of the many people who helped us over the tumultuous years of our existence, but in particular to the people who worked directly with me -- Bill Folsom, Nathan Solomon, Eleanor Lang, and Johnny Wilson, each of whom contributed literally thousands of hours, almost all of then unpaid, to the venture. And also to Eric Goldberg and Kathy Schoback, both of whom were generous in sharing contacts and advice; and to our lawyer, Don Karl at Perkins Coie, who took us on knowing we were an unfunded and highly chancy venture and stood by us stalwartly.
To those who cheered for us and shared our vision of a thriving game market that rewards creative vision instead of licensed drivel and repetitive 'franchise' remakes, a place for exploratory design to uncover the true capabilities of the ars ludorum, a commercial channel where imaginative game creators can make a reasonable living on a far smaller scale than the conventional market, a future for more than the handful of genres the major publishers deem worth funding -- don't give up the faith. It will happen. One company's loss won't change that. The creative heritage of games will endure.
N.B.: Play This Thing! will continue; and at least for now, the Manifesto site will remain up. Payment functionality has been turned off, however, and all demo download and buy now links lead to the developers or other places the games on the site can be found.
Gratitude & good hunting
The indie space has always been something I admired but never dug into, but I was also always impressed that Manifesto could be attempted and expressed. The MMO space, on the "small" scale of MMO (all the way back to MUDs) has always had the upper hand on independent financial viability... but individual indie games are much more discrete works of art in the deep game sense. I think you all have made a sizable impact on the field, even for being invention-stage; perhaps, as you say, a half-decade or so ahead of your time. Hope you enjoyed the ride, and I and many others appreciate what you gave to the craft with it. And hope there are exciting things to move onto.
Bummed! | Thanks
I can't tell you how disappointed I was to see this post. Thanks for the acknowledgment, but the advice wasn't worth so much in the end run, was it? :(
One thing I didn't foresee - and that also points to your "open systems open markets" observation - is that the internet can disintermediate not only publishers of physical game product but also publishers/aggregators of digital product. When each game creator has the capability of building individual relationships with each player and also each prospective player, and you can find them by Googling, what value does a publisher or aggregator add except up-front funding? (And of course that value-add has also vanished!)
It seems the biggest pain game creators have to solve right now is "cracking that marketing nut" - finding people who are likely to love that game and convincing them to buy it. Our years of developer\marketing divide (even acrimony) are now doing us worlds of damage, as the skills we scorned or ignored are now essential to our survival. (And don't get me wrong - the marketers specializing in mass-market consumer-goods tactics are also struggling!)
Looking forward to seeing you on the flipside, Greg.
Kathy Schoback
Non-Disintermediation
I don't think Oberon/Iplay, Yahoo Games, or BigFish feel in any danger of being disintermediated. You're right that a Google search on the title of an indie game will bring you to the developer, and perhaps you'll be more inclined to buy it there; but you have to know of the indie game in the first place to search on it. Sites that attract substantial traffic in the first instance have a role to play in terms of exposing otherwise ignorant people to new games. Indeed, in the casual game market, such sites figure they provide so much of the consumer value that they want 80% of the revenues.
So no, I think aggregators still have a role to play -- but they have to attract some critical volume of traffic, or alternatively sign exclusive deals with developers and amortize the cost over many distribution channels. Neither of which we ultimately did, of course.
Thank you
While I'm sorry that this new business hasn't prospered, I imagine many others would agree with me that Manifesto has contributed to many positive outcomes for developers and gamers. Obviously, the site did spread awareness of a several excellent games. It has been and will continue to be a reference point for independent developers (aspiring in some cases) who want to understand how to achieve their own projects.
I appreciate Greg's detailed analysis, but I feel the global downturn hasn't helped Manifesto either. Anyway, a business can fail for many reasons that aren't related to the soundness of its premise. I wish everyone good luck as they move on to new enterprises.
Why no success with manifesto?
I only ever bought one game from Manifesto (Bullet Candy) and I wanted to think about why that was - I mean, I liked Bullet Candy, so why didn't I buy more?
I think that you spent so much time trying to make Manifesto good for the developers, that the users got a little lost in the shuffle.
I think that part of my not buying is that I was never sure what I was really buying. When I got my access code for Bullet Candy, the e-mail said (I've copied from the original 1/29/07 e-mail):
"When you start the game, you will be asked for this activation key. Enter it in the spaces provided (probably easiest to cut and paste from here). You are only required to do this one time, and will not be prompted for the information again. If the activation window includes our logo at left, you may install your game on up to three machines; just use the same activation code for each. (If our logo does not appear, then the activation system is provided by the developer, and we don't know what rules they have set for the number of installations you may make)."
What? You mean to tell me that the system that sends me my activation code (i.e. the part where I get something in exchange for my money) doesn't have a clue what I've just spent my money on? Odd.
In the case of Bullet Candy, one activation was plenty - it's the sort of thing that I got tired of after I'd gotten my $10 or more worth of fun, and I've not had the desire to re-install. If I did, I could easily see coughing up the $3.95 it currently goes for to get another license.
But still - am I allowed to re-install and activate it? I just looked at that e-mail and I honestly don't know. And there's no way for me to have found out before the purchase.
Again, in this case it didn't matter that I had a limited number of activations. But in retrospect I think it didn't sit right with me that I had no clue what I was buying until after I'd bought it. Even with a good return policy, that doesn't feel right.
The second thing that might have kept me from buying (because I did look every so often and I downloaded more than one demo) is that somehow you didn't manage to attract a following of users posting lots of reviews or comments.
For instance, I see that Bullet Candy has only 2 items attached to it: a review (9 out of 10) and a comment from someone who can't make the download work. With no comments or reviews or any way (other than the demos) to see if the game is any good, I could never manage to push myself over the edge into buying.
I'm not in the least bit sure how the heck you can build such a community. But you didn't, and I think that hurt you.
Thanks for your time, and thanks for giving Manifesto a go. We do need more indie game outlets.
Since "Bummer" was taken . . .
Dang!
Better to have entreprenuered and failed than never to have tried. As you note, this market won't stay proprietary forever. Then you'll look like a pioneer.
Best wishes for what comes next!
I am sad.
I'm sad to see Manifesto closing it's doors. I am glad, however, that you are keeping Playthisthing up and running.
Best of luck to you.
sorry to see it go; the idea
sorry to see it go; the idea that this is something that could have succeeded in 5-10 years rather than right now was my thought as well: there just aren't enough fans of non-casual indie games for this to work yet, it has to be built up over time
Its telling that the best we
Its telling that the best we could come up with in regards to marketing was writing about games we thought were important in the most interesting manner we could. The nature of this market is a flight to meaning and a premium toward novelty, in casual games the premium is in familiarity and polish, so more impersonal marketing constructs worked for that market. Right now the indie "market" is so adverse to marketing by its nature that the best we can do is ad-hoc wails of text.
Maybe I´m wrong, I´ve been biased by my involvement in the community largely going on by proxy of writing.
Woe to losing options
I really do hate to see this happen, even if I wasn't an active customer outside of the one game.
Maybe the answer is something like a Guild? As opposed to competing personal sites for projects, there could just be a site where various groups fill up the real estate and a visit seeking one nigh automatically becomes a visit running into the lot of them. Or perhaps some manner of not-for-profit Foundation the likes of which exist for other human endeavors, like the arts in general...
As an aspiring, yet far from the starting line, game developer this is just an outright downer to see transpire. I hope to see all persons involved successful in whatever lies ahead from here.
Regrets
George Bernard Shaw, as so often, succinctly anticipated an excellent reason for your Manifesto adventure: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
Very much hope that you have few regrets about undertaking Manifesto: though it didn't achieve the commercial success for which we all hoped, it was -- for a brief shining year or two -- a fulcrum for your advocacy of indie games, and was a platform for enlisting a number of staunch advocates to the cause you've championed for many years.
There's a certain cosmic irony in your announcement of the decision to shutter Manifesto on the same day that id, often described as the "crown jewel" among independent developers, sold itself to a games publishing conglomerate.
Best of luck with your next professional adventure.
How about one more week?
I've been thinking for a while that I should sit down and order a couple of games from your site. How about you give us 1 week to make a flurry of orders? You might earn enough to give yourself a nice wrapping up party.
Very sorry to see you close your doors, I've tried to encourage my friends to support you.
Warm regards, Rick.
I never really understood
I never really understood what Manifesto was supposed to offer that either the existing aggregators and/or the direct route didn't. Traffic? Editorial? Funding of development?
Shuttering Manifesto
I'm sorry about the software company.
I just found this website today, but it still is very, very sad.
I found it by doing a search on your name, as I found several of your articles on SSRN incredibly enlightening.
Good luck on the continuation of the blog, and don't give up on the chance to try again in some other iteration.
PTT vs. Manifesto
I tend to think PTT can be more useful to indie games and devs than Manifesto was.
What was Manifesto, from a practical point of view? It was about investing considerable time, energy and work in exchange for some more sales and publicity for some indie devs.
By contrast, in PTT you play good games and give them more publicity via your reviews. At least I got the impression you don't review stuff that sucks. That is what the game press does.
I contacted freshly launched Manifesto as an indie dev asking for some form of assistance for my half-complete game, and got a polite reply from Mr Folsom or Mr Wilson with Best Wishes.
Soon I will contact PTT to get one of my games reviewed, here I stand a better chance that my e-mail will not be in vain. Prepare your Commodore64 emulators...
Cheers,
Istvan Belanszky
well crap
Greg,
I'm so sorry to see this happen. I remember your blog post that kicked off Manifesto.
The vision of building a community that served game players and gamer makers instead of publishers and marketers is still compelling.
The architectural decisions of Plone and S3 to get a lot of community function out of the box and put the storage in the cloud look even more solid and forward thinking now than they did then.
As you say, excellent indy games are more publicized and easier to find and play today than ever before, but new and different monopolistic masters isn't really significant progress. I do take heart in the degree to which independent and reviews and serious game criticism has sprung up all over the internet in the last few years.
Best wishes for your future endeavors.
Saludos desde Chile, Latinoamerica
I'm so sad this happened... I remember back then in 2006 I was studying Computer Science in my first year when strong desire to become a game designer came upon me. Investigating on wikipedia lead me to articles like "I have no words and I must design" and the website of Tom Slopper. And I started to realize the hardships of becoming a game designer... and then was when I came across Manifesto Games and read that first words that inspired the site, against a stagnating traditional game industry. Then I realize that the person who writed that was the same designer of some of ours (me an my friends) favorite roleplaying games (Paranoia and Star Wars). I said, "damn! if this guy has achieved to make people play his games in the other side of the world surely he has chances to make an oportunity for indie games!" (sorry for my english)
Now i'm studying sociology (didn't like programming) and I still have hopes some day I would get some job at a game company and work my ass off to get that game designer position, and with time maybe start some independent initiative (Or destroy the system from the insides!) Surely today future looks bleak for videogames as an autonomous art, independent from the tides of the market. But as Che Guevara said "Revolution, in history, is like the doctor assisting at the birth of a new life, who will not use forceps unless necessary, but who will use them unhesitatingly every time labor requires them. It is a labor bringing the hope of a better life to the enslaved and exploited masses." Maybe Manifesto Games wasn't the forceps we required for changing the things as they're now, but it surely brought hope of a different world of gaming to a lot of us. The battle maybe has been lost but the war is still on, as they're still people who see how boring and lame next-gen games have become and wishes to see the day when 21th century art is finally born.
A Shame
Sorry to hear the news. It was a worthy try, but the odds were never in your favor. I hope you feel like it was worthwhile all the same.
Manifesto is dead, long live PlayThisThing
Seems to me that anyone who can make a game can easily sell it these days, if anyone wants it. All they need is the eyeballs (that "marketing nut"), and PTT is in at least as good a position to provide them as Manifesto ever was.
Keep up the good fight!
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