As with all small development companies it’s a major struggle to maintain funds. However there are solutions.
One of the main and key solutions is pre-order income.
Let me explain :
Another smallish company decide to release a game however to raise funds issued a pre-order incentive.
Pre-order and pay less now but also get access to Alpha/beta releases. It went down well and a lot of people bought the game and a lot of suggestions were made.
So think of this on hypothetical stance 100 of you loyal followers pay up £20 now to get access to the beta and final game come release.
Thats in theory £2000 towards either paying other programmers/artists to help the project or advertising.
(obviously you have Tax/Vat ect to pay)
Advertising.
Have you considered approaching some well known youtube game reviewers ?
This wouldn’t be an expensive option an could get you a large volume of customers if done correctly ect.
Some online retailer are beginning digital distribution, would be worth asking if they would like to stock your game.
Steam is a major player in the games industry now and are allways looking to add new games so shoot an email to them.
Offer skype interviews with online review companies.
Ok I think thats enough food for thought.
Good Luck
Steven
Same sort of model Natural Selection 2 is using.
We lay our cards on the table about this, to get this done as quickly as we’d like and you guys would like, we need to take on full time devlopment if we can.
Yes the final release is a while off, but by preordering you’ll A: save $10 from the final price B: get access to more demo content as we make it and C: support better and faster devlopment. The down side is yes, people who preorder will have to wait a while, but that’s a decision for the buyer to make
It’s a proven model used by other indies (Minecraft, NS2), but in the end it’s down to the buyer to decide if preordering is for them. Regardless of the success of preorders, the game will get done no matter what, but the better we can cover our costs the quicker and better we can do it.
I will ask around at work, see if I can get some game review contacts, press contacts for you guys.
Generally the Risk is outweighted by the saving. Admittedly Pre-order isn’t for everyone and isn’t a viable option for every game,
However pre-orders are a great indication of final game sales (more so for a company who has been running for a few years).
And are a great income for a new company.
If I may make one suggestion, over estimate your release date. Seriously nothing worse than adding time onto a project after handing out a date. But releasing a game early and you can do no wrong lol
Also you need a release date for pre-orders.
P.s
Am not trying to tell you how to release your game or advertise. Am only offering advice from how my company would go about it in you position.
Release date wise, I know what you mean there, and for now we can’t nail down an exact release date.
What we’re going to be doing is pretty much exactly how the Natural Selection 2 guys have done it (see naturalselection2.com/buy), they started preorders about a year ago now, and those who preorder get to play beta/development releases, as well as getting the finished game when its done, same thing as Minecraft also.
That’s along the lines I was referring to with the risk. Asking public to preorder when a release date as “Unknown” is a lot like saying “give me money and I’ll give it to you sometime.” The public view on this, as new people are coming to the game all the time as work of it gets out, could result in a negative. Having even a high unexact estimante, examples of this being 4Q 2012, Late 2012, 2012, etc. would give a better public image even if far off. It can then be refined as things close on completion, and with a high estimant if it ends up being sooner you’ll be praised for even if the initial date was far off. If you tell an army they must march 10 miles, they will celebrate you when you make camp after 8.
So let me get this right for an amount of money less than the actual game your going to release beta software to the public and then the full game on completion
Heh, it’s a good deal indeed makes those angry nerds that cannot wait silent too… let’s hope we don’t scare them off with too many bugs in the beta that’s a general problem: people expect flawless stuff in a beta sometimes a bit risky but I guess it’s worth taking that risk.
Another way of doing things would be to release few milestones along the way, where each one of them has undergone real beta testing prior to its release. In that way people that have preordered can take a look already, at a rather polished part of the product they will get once it’s completed.
I understand why you would do that, you will scare off some people with a buggy game and have them saying the game is no good potentially scaring off other potential buyers even though they have been playing a beta and it’s written in bold for everyone to see “THIS IS A BETA RELEASE THERE WILL BE BUGS PLEASE REPORT BUGS SO WE CAN FIX THEM”, people are stupid and a stupid will find it’s way into pre-order…
Giving the pre-orders a polished portion of the games is a very good idea
Why? Thats what minecraft did and it worked out alright for them, heck I payed for minecraft back when it was still in alpha, because everyone else as school was. You get that out like that and get it going with some seed people (for free maybe) at some engineering schools (like mine maybe) and it’ll take off like wild wire at 10 USD a pop.
Yup, worked for Minecraft, and as above, I payed for it in alpha and am quite happy.
However, you do need to got to the point where there’s a specific set of goals and timescales for the finished release I suppose.
The idea is more that we’ll make part of the game, give it to the beta testers to test, once we know it all works how it should and doesn’t crash or anything, we then release it to the pre-order guys.
Whilst we may release some stuff that still needs a bit of adjustment to the preorder guys, we want to use the beta testers to make sure its not actually broken before we let them have it.
that’s a general problem: people expect flawless stuff in a beta sometimes 
a bit risky but I guess it’s worth taking that risk.