waru

Thanks for replying. So income that is not revenue. That makes sense.

Some backers chose to receive nothing, though, so for them its not even a transaction, just a donation, I guess. It's more complicated than just selling items, even though it looks like that on the surface.

This is not exactly what you're looking for, but 99designs.com is a neat site.

I used to enjoy conceptart.org, too, but haven't checked it much lately.

To clarify, I don't think marketing or a business model are optional, and I don't expect to have a hit or a small successful business without them. I would like to try something unconventional, so we'll see.

Well, I didn't necessarily mean being a rock star or the next Angry Birds, but there is a general sweet spot of "cool, desirable product" that I want to hit.

You mean that with a good marketing strategy and a self-sustaining business model, we don't need to have "the next big thing" in order to support ourselves and do this full-time, right?

Do you know any small indie games that succeeded because of an amazing marketing strategy and NOT because of word-of-mouth/social media and the fact that their game is really, really fun?

Contacting webcomics was a good idea; thanks. I have already been thinking about cross-promotion through webcomics, too.

It is kind of an all-or-nothing proposition. We just have to hit that sweet spot of a really cool product/game/characters.

And I agree that being a "cool start-up" has some advantage over corporations, too.

Well, games can't be priced less than 50 cents. What you're suggesting seems to be strictly prohibited by Apple, so that developers can't get around it. They always get 30%, it seems.

I don't expect our first game to necessarily be a hit, but we'll be working towards what I explained above. It'll probably take time to build up to your 1, 2, and 3 (unless we get lucky and they all resolve in our favor).

Still working on that, but making a really fun game seems more important than anything else, since popular iPhone games spread quickly by word of mouth and social networks.

I don't expect to jump straight to the level of Japanese corporate networks, but it's an area that deserves further exploration. I think that the "cross-platform mega-success" and "merchandise of awesome characters" model can be used at lower levels, too.

Exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!

That looks awesome. Is there a resource online to find all the start-up/tech incubators in Europe, or the world? I'll be traveling in Europe soon and would love to visit more places like this. Thank you!