Pax East 2020
VoxPop is a profit-sharing game distribution model. When people help a sale happen, whether through seeding or recommendations, they get a percentage of that game’s price tag as credit (which can then be cashed out). This percentage is set by the developer, and specific percentages can even be assigned to specific users.
The core idea is that indie devs don’t have the money up-front to pay for advertising. So instead, they can use this revenue-split system to drive word-of-mouth marketing. Meanwhile influencers like YouTubers and Streamers will be able to plug games the way they would a Ko-Fi or Patreon and get the share they deserve.
How did VoxPop Games Start?
I had always wanted to be an independent game designer. I had this image in my head of indie devs as auteurs with full creative control of their projects. Throughout High School and College I was putting games on Newgrounds, then the App Store, then Itch. I didn’t really sell much, but at the time, I’d never thought too much of it. I’d assumed that as soon as I had my degree I’d have a better idea how to make a living as an indie dev. Then, in my senior year as part of a lecture one of my professors told us that in the 5 years leading up to his professorship, he’d only made $15,000 as an independent developer. This didn’t bode well for my dreams.
I decided to pivot to starting a business, and I got a job at a VC Firm to help me better understand the fundraising process for entrepreneurs. The firm I was at happened to specialize in Blockchain investment, and for the first time I was seeing all these new Blockchain projects use user incentives to drive everything from processing to marketing. Working there gave me the idea to use the same tech to rescue the independent market.
This was over a year ago, and we’ve pivoted a lot since. Most importantly, we’ve totally dropped Blockchains from any and all aspects of the platform. But the broader idea of using profit-sharing to connect developers and influencers together remained. I believe this is the best way to stabilize the indie market. Naturally, we can’t promise everybody’s going to be rich, nor that every single game will be a success. But we DO want to give every developer out there the best chance possible to actually be able to make a living making games.
What kind of indie games does VoxPop Games have?
All kinds! We don’t believe it's our job to gate-keep what is and isn’t an “indie game.”
That being said, the smaller and min-budget the team, the more they stand to benefit from the profit-share model over traditional advertising. On our platform, the revenue-split always offers a path to discoverability, and the more developers are able to leverage the profit sharing to approach influencers, the more they will ultimately stand to benefit from us. Therefore, our unofficial target demographic are what we call “garage devs,” teams that are typically less than 4 people, and who don’t have much in the way of marketing budget.
What is something VoxPop Games is looking to do in 2021 After our official launch on 1/21/21, and after we’ve finished patching the inevitable flood of bug reports that always comes with it, we plan to tackle crowdfunding and internal development. We have all sorts of ideas about how our profit-sharing, P2P model can tie into these verticals, but would prefer not to explain too in-depth in what’s supposed to be an overview.
www.voxpopgames.net
About VoxPop Games, Inc.
VoxPop Games, Inc. is an American based profit sharing, peer-to-peer, game distribution, and development platform. It has roots in its early inceptions in December of 2018 and was formally incorporated in March of 2020 as a new client gaming platform for small-scale independent game developers.
VoxPop Games was founded by Charles Yu and Marc Anthony Rodriguez and operates out of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY.
The company's peer-to-peer distribution platform is designed to help independent developers to drive additional indie game sales by sharing a percentage of initial sales to those who recommended the games, namely, VoxPop Platform users, Streamers, Let’s Players and video content creators.
The client platform went ONLINE on May 5th, 2020, in Closed Beta form, and Open Beta on July 31st, 2020, and is now posed to host an amazing new roster of Exclusive and "Made For" VoxPop titles, in the Full Client 2.0 - January 21st, 2021
The client is also a hybrid crowdfunding platform designed to allow gamers to invest in upcoming games, via the Platform’s Micro-Investment Engine. A percentage of profit is shared based on the percentage owned by the upcoming game.
VoxPop is the first worldwide games distribution and development platform founded in Brooklyn, New York, and currently boasts a Library roster of over 125 Independent Games, 3 Platform Exclusive titles (that cannot be found on any other Game Distribution Platform), 10 “Made for VoxPop” titles, that are sku variants with exclusive content found only on VoxPop, and several games from prominent publishers, such as Rogue Games and Kwalee.
VoxPop Founders & Core Team
Charles Fang Yu is the founder and CEO. He completed his bachelor's in Computer Science and Game Design from Tisch School of the Arts in New York City, New York.
Marc Anthony Rodriguez is the co-founder and COO. He received a Bachelor’s of Arts (Philosophy) from Stony Brook University.
In 2020, the company on-boarded two additional key foundational team members, Elisee Augustin, Platform Software Engineer and Holly Welch, Social Media Manager & Content Creator.
VoxPop also has help from Social Media interns as well as other community Mods and Streamer affiliates.
Key Title Listings
Game | Company | Platform Status |
Pixel’s Hallow Eve | Salt & Pixel | Exclusive Game |
Ultimate Reality | LinkUp Games | Exclusive Game |
Miasma Caves | Windy Games | Partner |
Guardians of Lodino Forest | Adrien Dittrick | "Made For" Partner |
Arcanium: Rise of Akhan | SuperCombo | Publisher Partner |
UNDER - Depths of Fear | Rogue Games | Publisher Partner |
