Spiderweb celebrates sadness with October sale

Spiderweb Software announces an October Sadness Sale to commemorate the misery and financial down-turn of 2009. Sure, why not? For the entire month of October, Spiderweb Software’s Sadness Sale will see everything it sells get a 10 percent discount. Its line-up fine Indie fantasy role-playing games, for both Windows and Macintosh will get a price cut including the Avernum series and the just-released Geneforge saga, all on one disc.

And, of course, you can play the demos of each game prior to buying. Visit www.spiderwebsoftware.com for more details.

Avernum 6 Announced

Avernum 6, the final game in Jeff Vogel’s and Spiderweb Software’s popular and long-running Avernum series, has been announced, though no release date was revealed at the time of this writing. Obviously, the game will be released well after Avernum 5, which will be out for Macintosh in late 2009 and Windows in early 2010.

the final game in the series is set in the caves far below the surface of the world of Avernum. Players will travel into the strange subterranean land full of dungeons, labyrinths, and constant warfare. Avernum is a nation of people living in an enormous warren of tunnels and caverns, far below the surface of the world that once served as a prison colony for rebels and thugs; now this underworld is a wild frontier, full of adventurous souls looking for wealth, fame, and magical power.

But all that adventure was put to rest with the coming of “the Blight.” Overnight, the mushrooms Avernum needed to feed itself withered and died, the savage beasts of the low tunnels, reptilian Slithzerikai, emerged, sensing weakness. They struck destroying many of the weakened citizens and created waves of hungry, desperate refugees.

In Avernum 6 this final set of disasters threatens to destroy your homeland in a wave of famine and warfare. Only you can help your people to get to safety before everything falls apart and everyone is lost forever.

More information about this latest RPG from Jeff Vogel can be found at www.spiderwebsoftware.com.

Jeff Vogel Talks Shop

Jeff Vogel, founder of Spiderweb Software, and the creator of the popular Geneforge and Avernum series of role-playing games, today offered some sample sales data for one of his games. Vogel released the information to give other independent developers and the general public a sense of what it might cost to make a serious indie game and how much money he’s made. The sample data is based on sales to date for Geneforge 4: Rebellion.

Geneforge 4 was released for the Macintosh in November 2006 and PC Windows in February 2007. The reason Vogel chose this particular game is because it was one of the very few titles Spiderweb has sold exclusively through its web site.

The game took about a year to develop for the Mac, with time include for a Windows version, but used a lot of old assets from previous games. Vogel worked on the game full time, and other employees handled various aspects of development - though Vogel did not mention how big of a team he had or what each individual developer was paid in that time period. The total cost to develop the game and create a hintbook was roughly $120,000 USD. The game was sold for $28 while the hint book was available for right around $7. As of this month, Geneforge 4 has sold 3979 units, while 807 hint books were sold. Total sales for both the game and hintbook? $117,061 USD.

While this might seem like an unworthy endeavor on Vogel’s part there are a few things to consider: First, the game has been cracked and has been pirated heavily, according to Vogel. He also points out that his demo usually offer more game content than they should, which probably keeps some players from making a purchase of the full game. One last thing to consider: The game is still selling, two and a half years later. In the long-term Geneforge 2 will turn a healthy profit in Vogel’s estimation.

Vogel will release some more inside information on this particular game next week including a break-down by platform, along with some friendly advice for indies. We’re looking forward to seeing the big picture, though i’m more curious as to how the latest game is doing.