Carpe Fulgur and the Purple Cow: Capitalism Ho! Part I

So today I'd like to talk about something a little bit different. I don't want any of you to freak out or think that the lessons here don't apply just because it's a slightly different form of publishing than you're used to. That is, I'd like to talk about Carpe Fulgur, a brand new, start up publisher of video games that sold over 100,000 copies of its very first project between September and December alone. To put this in perspective the average book sells less than 10,000 over the entire course of it's "initial sales period" of a year. So how did they do it? And can you, if you want to, do something similar?

1: Finding the product.
Carpe Fulgur started with just two guys and eventually became a three person operation. They're not rolling in money, have no corporate sponsors and didn't even live on the same side of the country when they started out. Since they didn't have the resources to develop a game (or write it, if you will) they chose instead to translate one. To this effect they found a company in Japan called Easy Game Station. While larger publishers and developers would either laugh them out of town or demand more money than a startup without corporate backing could pay, EGS had never had a game released outside Japan before and was willing to deal, and for a reasonable amount of money. And after that first success, you better believe Carpe Fulgur will get a better deal next time around. You might be surprised at how easy it might be to do something like that. I dunno. Maybe you're literate in Russian. What's to stop you from striking up deals with Russian publishers or agents or even the authors directly to translate their books? The answer is nothing. Translation is just one example of under-served markets- because small companies see a lot of work and big companies see mediocre sales. But who knows? Maybe you love Magical realism. That's an exclusively Latin American genre. You're fluent in Spanish and familiar with multiple national dialects. Why not approach the publishers and say "I'll give you a cut and you'll finally have a release in [insert territories you can reach]

2: Nicheness to the rescue. The game Carpe Fulgur released is an RPG. I know many of you don't know or actively dislike video games, so let me give you the short definition. RPGs tend to be:
A) text heavy
B) have battle systems that focus largely or exclusively on preperation and strategy rather than on the manual dexterity of pushing the proper buttons at the right time
C) Fantasy and Sci-fi settings, and often associated with cutesy graphics.

Consequently, although they're very popular in places like Japan and Korea, most Americans find them to be indescribably boring. And all three of the hallmarks are present in Recettear, a game about a little girl (Recette) and a fairy (Tear) who open an item shop in a generic high-fantasy world in order to pay back her MIA adventurer father's debts (Her catch phrase, naturally, is "Capitalism ho!") What you probably can't see from just this explanation is the fact that RPG players are extremely well connected with one another. While video games on the whole have become mainstream, the RPG has not. It's sort of the last bastion of the ultra nerdy, and they cling together for the safety that numbers provides. They also eagerly support any company willing to take the risk of lackluster business associated with serving such a small portion of the market. Carpe Fulgur gets double points because they're not only producing what that community wanted, but they get to honestly say "we're just a couple of guys like you." Yes, one of their names is Robin. No, it isn't me. Yes, it'd be cool if it was. The point is, even my beloved Atlus well known for its niche focus, endless promotions, pre-order bonuses, customer appeal and it's easy availibility to reviewers and journalists is, despite being an awesome company who set standards far above average (and yes, I'm proud to say I was a fanboy long before they became popular even amongst their niche audience) is still a big, essentially faceless company. Hell, they even poke fun of that by having many of their newsletters attributed to an evil super computer (marketing?). Carpe Fulgur is legitimately tiny. They know it. Their customers know it. Their customers want them to survive. And a tight, symbiotic relationship is formed.

Well, since this is getting long (and yesterday's was insanely long) I'll save the rest of this (namely, promotional efforts and distribution methods) for tommorow. Look forward to it.