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Slings and Successes of Trinidadian Parodice Games Developer: Raul Bermudez
This is his story as he told it to SiliconCaribe.
In his own words: Started with the love of Cricket
After decades of trying to make it happen my way, I finally decided to do it anyway. Other than a change of name and the addition of an optional rule that will make it a game of strategy, in a manner of speaking, the cricket board game has not changed much, or at all, since December of 1992. Yes, I am determined to prove that persistence pays off.
I wrote the computer version of the game myself in Microsoft’s QuickBasic for Macintosh in 1996. Microsoft discontinued the software and Apple changed its operating system so I was left with a game that only works on old colour Macs. With a World Cup just around the corner, I had the game translated into Java™ by a Computer Science student at University of the West Indies (UWI) in 2006 and put it online as a FREE download on the 6th of November that year. The 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup came and went and not much happened. By then I had spent a ton of money and had very little to show for it. Needless to say, it was also becoming increasingly difficult to persuade the wife into pouring more money into the project.
I do my own web work so I continued doing the things that did not cost money. The only problem was that people kept downloading copies of the game and it became increasingly difficult to ignore that.
As of this week we have downloaded just over a hundred thousand copies of the game.
In Internet terms that is not much -It works out to only one hundred copies a day in the last nine hundred days, although this year we have been averaging around one hundred and fifty downloads per day.
What is of note is that we have not spent anything on advertising, really, and that fifty odd percent of the games were downloaded from within India, and sixty odd percent of them went to the Indian Subcontinent.
I then asked him a few questions.
1. PG Cricket has been downloaded over 100,000 times, what has the feedback been during this time? Have you made any changes, upgrades because of the feedback?
Raul: We have had more feedback on the board game through the website and the few magazine advertisements we have placed, than on the computer version of the board game itself. These, however, have been more in line with dealer enquiries for the product and individuals wanting to know where they could buy one.
I could spend three days telling you what is wrong with the computer version of the game, and the wonderful plans we have to improve on it. For starters, it is very ‘nineties’ in that it is no more that a wire frame with squares, circles and some text moving around on the screen. That is the way in which computer games were written when you did not have CD’s to store them on, and gigabytes of memory to play them in. What you are able to download today is nothing more than a translation into Java™ of something I wrote myself more than twelve years ago.
I have seen the many cricket offerings available on the Internet today. Most of them are FREE, and I think that they are fairly priced. As soon as we produce the board game in India in the coming months, we will dedicate some time and a lot of money to the further development of the computer version of the game. The first option we will offer is the ability to import a ‘skin’ of the board game itself to use as an overlay to what exist now. This will allow us to unfold the game as the marketing tool that it is. The advertising banners on the field will be linked to the websites of their owners.
Yes, the bells and whistles will come, and it is our intention to always offer the computer version of the game for free. There can be no better way to market the board game than to give people the opportunity to experience the game without actually buying one. Some will not buy the board game because they simply did not like it or because it is not readily available in their area toy stores and they are not in the habit or have the capacity to order online. These people can still influence sales by sharing the computer version with their friends.
No.2 What are the top countries that are downloading this game online?
Raul: Current Country Totals | From 14 May 2009 to 14 Jun 2009
India (IN) 2,806
United States (US) 700
Pakistan (PK) 397
Trinidad and Tobago (TT) 216
United Kingdom (GB) 193
Venezuela (VE) 128
United Arab Emirates (AE) 106
Bangladesh (BD) 79
Sri Lanka (LK) 63
Saudi Arabia (SA) 51
Qatar (QA) 49
Canada (CA) 43
South Africa (ZA) 40
Jamaica (JM) 38
Australia (AU) 31
3. You went from a board game to an electronic game…what are you next plans for Parodice Games? Ever thought of licensing, partnering, an iPhone app, and a business model of even a US$1 per download when you make upgrades?
Raul: Most people do not realise that it cost more or nearly as much as a US dollar to sell something for a US dollar. The danger of having people stop to consider if they would spend even as little as a US dollar, is that they would think that the risk of using their credit card with absolute strangers was not worth it. I want to think that the exposure we have gained is worth much more than the money we could have earned. We will only know for sure when we have something to sell.
We have tried many of the things you have suggested, we even went as far as setting up and Open Source project around it. Anyone that would tell you that Open Source is free has no idea what they are talking about.
Getting the game to a phone near you is a natural progression. We have spoken to a few people that claim to be able to do it, but we are yet to be convinced. Having poured good money after bad for so long has thought me to ask the right questions. It is becoming easy to find them out.
4. You’ve been at it for a while, spent thousands of dollars of your own money…what keeps you going?
Raul: Perhaps it is the belief that, in the end, persistence will pay off. The only thing the prevented Parodice Games from happening way back then was not having the right amount of money with which to do it, and an unwillingness to cut corners or take the kind of short cuts that have landed so many other people in trouble.