Classic 2D quest or how our two years of development went. Part of the final
The final part of the story of creating the game “Swordbreaker The Game”, in this part is about promotion after release, and the results to which we came.
So, Misha has already written about the beginning of our journey and Steam Greenlight, so I will tell you about how we promoted our project after the release and what we earned from it.
Promotion
')
In general, I began to promote the project from the very beginning. As soon as we had an idea and 4 first art for the game - I started writing about the game on the forums on gamedev. I will not list them - you all know them. It was about 5-6 main forums. So the first feedback appeared ... Members of the forum were interested in art and non-linearity, which we discussed with them, occasionally snacking with local trolls. In the descriptions of the project, I always left links to our group in the VC, which was also immediately created. In this way, the group was initially filled with content and people.
Approximately before the release of the first demo for Android, I began to look for more places to light up the project. As a result, I found a lot of foreign sites as a simple game developer, and specifically for text quests and adventures. I wrote everywhere. On many major sites on games, my themes on the game were deleted, and without any explanation (although I didn’t even post any links there).
When the demo came out, it became a bit easier - it was quickly dragged along all the torrents and other sites, and the search began to make the game much better.
To make it easier for you, I will post here my list of sites and forums where you can write on the game. There are almost all the resources where there was a mention of the game. Torrents do not look there - it's not me who laid out, it's all pirates)) Here .
Thus, we already had a certain base of future interested players by the release of the game in Greenlight. It was they who helped us to quickly overcome Greenlight. In just 7 days.
Further, after the release of the game on November 6, 2015, I began to think about how you can still stir up interest in the game and reach those who still don't know about them. And here I noticed one feature (analyzing the statistics of our game in Stim), that sales jump sharply when a new gameplay video comes out or a game is being played on YouTube! I was very surprised. Honestly, I myself have never been interested in viewing the games' lectures and did not even think that this affects the audience in this way. But the meaning is simple - people started watching videos on the game and, if they liked the game, they would stop watching (so as not to spoil the plot) and go to Steam to buy the game! This greatly stimulated sales.
I didn’t stop at that and decided not to wait for the weather by the sea, but I myself began to write to the YouTube proposals to play our game. He wrote both small channels and rather large ones. Since the game is not very popular nowadays genre, then it was interested in a few ... But still the game was covered on several major Russian and foreign YouTube channels. All this you can see yourself typing in YouTube the name of the game.
Most importantly, it was all completely free! Of course, there were YouTubeers who asked for money for reviews, especially serious channels with several million subscribers, but we refused. One of these channels requested $ 3000 for a review (there is a foreign channel for 6 million subscribers). I wrote to them, saying that we are indie. Where did we get that kind of money, etc. Maybe make a discount? To which the answer came to me: well, we will give you a review for $ 1000! Eh ... The course is now atrocious and 1k dollars is pretty much. I had to refuse.
In addition to YouTube and forums, there were social networks. We had groups in facebook, twitter and VK. In Facebook, I collected an audience of up to 400 people and periodically posted there news in my group and in other groups on Android and indie games. It was sadder on Twitter, you can’t write a lot on these tweets, it's hard to post anything adequate at all.
In the VC, of course, everything was easier. In addition to our group, I distributed news periodically to groups of indie games, gamedev groups and Androids groups, as well as in groups on quests and novels (although I don’t take our game to the story, but from there too many people became interested in the game). A couple of times did paid posts in the group of Igromania. I was also contacted by some reviewers who wrote articles on the game or recorded review videos. That, too, at least not much, but increased the audience of players.
Communication with players
When the game was launched, the community of the game immediately began to contain topics about errors, flaws, missing scenes in the game, questions about the game, etc.
We tried to communicate as closely as possible with the players and answer all their questions. Someone could not find the last scene to get achivki, someone admired the beautiful Zhenina Artah, someone already asked about the continuation ...
I must say that in the first 2-3 days we released a couple of game fixes, because Immediately there were errors with some achievements and something else. In general, the players wrote - we fixed. It was not possible to fix everything, but most of the jambs.
Why did I focus my attention on communicating with the players? But because it was our communication that many players appreciated in their responses to the game, they were pleased that the developers did not just throw their game in Steam (like coming here, bring me the money), but they care about the comfort and convenience of the players, talk to them . This was celebrated by both our and foreign players.
Finance
So, the game is ready and released, let's disassemble what it brought to us.
In total, we spent a little more than 200,000 rubles on our game. The bulk of the money (75 percent) was spent on art, we have more than 300 + a bunch of auxiliary art (maps, interfaces, etc.). The second item on costs was the translation, as Misha wrote, he took away about $ 1k from us (at the old rate before the increase). The translation was only in English. We did not pull more languages, because The text in the game was about 110.000 characters (something about 30.000 words). The remaining expenses were related to the purchase of developer accounts in Steam, PlayMarket and in the AppStore + some paid music. Like that.
When we started this whole epic with the game of the ancient genre - the text quest, we didn’t hope that we could make serious money on it. The first thoughts were "At least discourage what they spent"
I will not pull the tires and I will say that the game completely discarded the money invested + we also remained in profit. From the moment of release to the current day, the game brought us more than $ 18,000 (this is still without deducting the 30% Steam commission (and taxes, yeah ... approx. Misha). What I think is a very good result for this simple game. Moreover, it’s and still generates income, even though it is already small.
As for income, according to the results of the first two months in Steam, we got about 2.5 kilograms of dead raccoons (we successfully dropped it on the Christmas sale). Further, it was more modest. However, when youtubera removed the vidos on the game, sales growth sharply went up for 2-3 days.
Android lessons
A little later, we released the full version in the Google Play Market. We have long decided what to do with it: to make it free with advertising or just paid. We stopped at a paid. And I think it was our mistake. We earned not so much money from it, but still - something about $ 1.5k, there were not many purchases. In the developer’s console, there used to be such an option, where you could see how many people bought the game, and how many played it using their account and it turned out that they bought about 1,400 people. And played from their accounts about 7000! Those. 5600 people also twisted it. I drew a conclusion much later - it was necessary to do it all the same with advertising and then there would be many more downloads, because Free mobile phones are very attractive players.
IOS failure
Well, we are not discouraged and released on iOS. I thought that well, since Andryusha had already brought something, then iOS should have broken all the templates altogether. But no ... There we repeated our mistake and released a paid application. However, the owners of apple products had even less money (or a toad more) than Android fans! Very rotten sales, we can say that there are almost none. Obviously, it was necessary to use the tactics of the free application.
Bandla
Typical bundle sale
Another tool for the promotion of a withering game can be considered bundles. When the sales of the game began to bring very little in a month, we decided to try to get into the bundle, or rather the bundle itself found us and offered. At that time, almost a year had passed since the release, and this was quite relevant for our game.
The first bandle for us was Indiegala - the Italian bandle. Went very good circulation and brought us about $ 1200.
The second bundle was BundleStars - also showed good results and brought about $ 1,300.
The third was GoGoBundle, but it was a failure. No, a lot of people bought it, only he did not always sell one set at a time, and there you could buy 20 or 50 sets at once, and for ridiculous money. As a result, it turned out that a lot of keys were sold, but little money. Now you will laugh, but it turned out there about $ 211 !!! Although the keys sold quite a lot.
We went into these bundles not directly from one to another, but with normal time intervals, so that sales in Steam did not fall much either.
By the way, we also tried in the HumbleBundle, but they refused.
Add. Misha: Yes, there was one moment when we first got a letter inviting you to the bundle, but decided to wait with it, and missed a pretty cool chance. And it turned out like this: a bundle on the subject of Anime-Games was going to, for which for some reason they decided to invite us, so after the release there turned out to be some pretty good anime stories from the stim (anime girls, fanfiction, well, krch you understand ... ), and so ... This bandl earned then, I would tell record $ 90k. It was our most epic fail, guys ...
Results
As a result, at the moment the game has spread an order of 32,000 copies of which more than 9,000 are sold in Steam.
In general, I consider the project quite successful for the first time. Although, if it were not for our annoying mistakes, there could have been more finances.
From the minuses on the development and promotion of our game I can single out the following:
What made useful of development:
Well, in conclusion, I will say something that has always motivated me to stubbornly continue working on Mechel (despite all the difficulties, trolls, etc.), if I took up something, always go to the end! Hammer on everyone who says that something is wrong with the project. Of course, we must soberly weigh all the pros and cons, because people can give good advice. But always base yourself on what kind of game YOU want to see, and not someone else. Although we should not forget about the player, he should be comfortable and clear everything in your game. Simply put - you need to look for a fine line of balance between what you want exactly and what the player would like to see.
Add. Misha: yes, here I agree 100% with Sanya - only the author will determine the genre and everything that will be in the final project, so I think the creator’s idea is primary in any good game, and from that everything else is done, it makes the game unique. Yes, you can analyze sales, trends, genres, but this does not make much sense, because the game by and large is a work of art, the starting and ending point in which the author sets it.
So, Misha has already written about the beginning of our journey and Steam Greenlight, so I will tell you about how we promoted our project after the release and what we earned from it.
Promotion
')
In general, I began to promote the project from the very beginning. As soon as we had an idea and 4 first art for the game - I started writing about the game on the forums on gamedev. I will not list them - you all know them. It was about 5-6 main forums. So the first feedback appeared ... Members of the forum were interested in art and non-linearity, which we discussed with them, occasionally snacking with local trolls. In the descriptions of the project, I always left links to our group in the VC, which was also immediately created. In this way, the group was initially filled with content and people.
Approximately before the release of the first demo for Android, I began to look for more places to light up the project. As a result, I found a lot of foreign sites as a simple game developer, and specifically for text quests and adventures. I wrote everywhere. On many major sites on games, my themes on the game were deleted, and without any explanation (although I didn’t even post any links there).
When the demo came out, it became a bit easier - it was quickly dragged along all the torrents and other sites, and the search began to make the game much better.
To make it easier for you, I will post here my list of sites and forums where you can write on the game. There are almost all the resources where there was a mention of the game. Torrents do not look there - it's not me who laid out, it's all pirates)) Here .
Thus, we already had a certain base of future interested players by the release of the game in Greenlight. It was they who helped us to quickly overcome Greenlight. In just 7 days.
Further, after the release of the game on November 6, 2015, I began to think about how you can still stir up interest in the game and reach those who still don't know about them. And here I noticed one feature (analyzing the statistics of our game in Stim), that sales jump sharply when a new gameplay video comes out or a game is being played on YouTube! I was very surprised. Honestly, I myself have never been interested in viewing the games' lectures and did not even think that this affects the audience in this way. But the meaning is simple - people started watching videos on the game and, if they liked the game, they would stop watching (so as not to spoil the plot) and go to Steam to buy the game! This greatly stimulated sales.
I didn’t stop at that and decided not to wait for the weather by the sea, but I myself began to write to the YouTube proposals to play our game. He wrote both small channels and rather large ones. Since the game is not very popular nowadays genre, then it was interested in a few ... But still the game was covered on several major Russian and foreign YouTube channels. All this you can see yourself typing in YouTube the name of the game.
Most importantly, it was all completely free! Of course, there were YouTubeers who asked for money for reviews, especially serious channels with several million subscribers, but we refused. One of these channels requested $ 3000 for a review (there is a foreign channel for 6 million subscribers). I wrote to them, saying that we are indie. Where did we get that kind of money, etc. Maybe make a discount? To which the answer came to me: well, we will give you a review for $ 1000! Eh ... The course is now atrocious and 1k dollars is pretty much. I had to refuse.
In addition to YouTube and forums, there were social networks. We had groups in facebook, twitter and VK. In Facebook, I collected an audience of up to 400 people and periodically posted there news in my group and in other groups on Android and indie games. It was sadder on Twitter, you can’t write a lot on these tweets, it's hard to post anything adequate at all.
In the VC, of course, everything was easier. In addition to our group, I distributed news periodically to groups of indie games, gamedev groups and Androids groups, as well as in groups on quests and novels (although I don’t take our game to the story, but from there too many people became interested in the game). A couple of times did paid posts in the group of Igromania. I was also contacted by some reviewers who wrote articles on the game or recorded review videos. That, too, at least not much, but increased the audience of players.
Communication with players
When the game was launched, the community of the game immediately began to contain topics about errors, flaws, missing scenes in the game, questions about the game, etc.
We tried to communicate as closely as possible with the players and answer all their questions. Someone could not find the last scene to get achivki, someone admired the beautiful Zhenina Artah, someone already asked about the continuation ...
I must say that in the first 2-3 days we released a couple of game fixes, because Immediately there were errors with some achievements and something else. In general, the players wrote - we fixed. It was not possible to fix everything, but most of the jambs.
Why did I focus my attention on communicating with the players? But because it was our communication that many players appreciated in their responses to the game, they were pleased that the developers did not just throw their game in Steam (like coming here, bring me the money), but they care about the comfort and convenience of the players, talk to them . This was celebrated by both our and foreign players.
Finance
So, the game is ready and released, let's disassemble what it brought to us.
In total, we spent a little more than 200,000 rubles on our game. The bulk of the money (75 percent) was spent on art, we have more than 300 + a bunch of auxiliary art (maps, interfaces, etc.). The second item on costs was the translation, as Misha wrote, he took away about $ 1k from us (at the old rate before the increase). The translation was only in English. We did not pull more languages, because The text in the game was about 110.000 characters (something about 30.000 words). The remaining expenses were related to the purchase of developer accounts in Steam, PlayMarket and in the AppStore + some paid music. Like that.
When we started this whole epic with the game of the ancient genre - the text quest, we didn’t hope that we could make serious money on it. The first thoughts were "At least discourage what they spent"
I will not pull the tires and I will say that the game completely discarded the money invested + we also remained in profit. From the moment of release to the current day, the game brought us more than $ 18,000 (this is still without deducting the 30% Steam commission (and taxes, yeah ... approx. Misha). What I think is a very good result for this simple game. Moreover, it’s and still generates income, even though it is already small.
As for income, according to the results of the first two months in Steam, we got about 2.5 kilograms of dead raccoons (we successfully dropped it on the Christmas sale). Further, it was more modest. However, when youtubera removed the vidos on the game, sales growth sharply went up for 2-3 days.
Android lessons
A little later, we released the full version in the Google Play Market. We have long decided what to do with it: to make it free with advertising or just paid. We stopped at a paid. And I think it was our mistake. We earned not so much money from it, but still - something about $ 1.5k, there were not many purchases. In the developer’s console, there used to be such an option, where you could see how many people bought the game, and how many played it using their account and it turned out that they bought about 1,400 people. And played from their accounts about 7000! Those. 5600 people also twisted it. I drew a conclusion much later - it was necessary to do it all the same with advertising and then there would be many more downloads, because Free mobile phones are very attractive players.
IOS failure
Well, we are not discouraged and released on iOS. I thought that well, since Andryusha had already brought something, then iOS should have broken all the templates altogether. But no ... There we repeated our mistake and released a paid application. However, the owners of apple products had even less money (or a toad more) than Android fans! Very rotten sales, we can say that there are almost none. Obviously, it was necessary to use the tactics of the free application.
Bandla
Typical bundle sale
Another tool for the promotion of a withering game can be considered bundles. When the sales of the game began to bring very little in a month, we decided to try to get into the bundle, or rather the bundle itself found us and offered. At that time, almost a year had passed since the release, and this was quite relevant for our game.
The first bandle for us was Indiegala - the Italian bandle. Went very good circulation and brought us about $ 1200.
The second bundle was BundleStars - also showed good results and brought about $ 1,300.
The third was GoGoBundle, but it was a failure. No, a lot of people bought it, only he did not always sell one set at a time, and there you could buy 20 or 50 sets at once, and for ridiculous money. As a result, it turned out that a lot of keys were sold, but little money. Now you will laugh, but it turned out there about $ 211 !!! Although the keys sold quite a lot.
We went into these bundles not directly from one to another, but with normal time intervals, so that sales in Steam did not fall much either.
By the way, we also tried in the HumbleBundle, but they refused.
Add. Misha: Yes, there was one moment when we first got a letter inviting you to the bundle, but decided to wait with it, and missed a pretty cool chance. And it turned out like this: a bundle on the subject of Anime-Games was going to, for which for some reason they decided to invite us, so after the release there turned out to be some pretty good anime stories from the stim (anime girls, fanfiction, well, krch you understand ... ), and so ... This bandl earned then, I would tell record $ 90k. It was our most epic fail, guys ...
Results
As a result, at the moment the game has spread an order of 32,000 copies of which more than 9,000 are sold in Steam.
In general, I consider the project quite successful for the first time. Although, if it were not for our annoying mistakes, there could have been more finances.
From the minuses on the development and promotion of our game I can single out the following:
- Short plot. If you do not replay to go through the game in different ways, then an hour is enough. If you replay, then somewhere from 4 to 7 hours.
- The release of the game took place around the same time as Fallout 4, which also had a negative impact on sales.
- The best option for mobile phones is a free game with ads and in-app purchases.
- Choosing a genre, of course, we must immediately take into account how popular and in demand it is. Text quests are now far from the most popular, we immediately knew it, but took a chance.
What made useful of development:
- We learned how to talk about the project and attract the audience.
- Got a lot of experience working with Steam and mobile stores.
- We learned how to work even a small, but still a team.
- Received funds for the development of a new project.
Well, in conclusion, I will say something that has always motivated me to stubbornly continue working on Mechel (despite all the difficulties, trolls, etc.), if I took up something, always go to the end! Hammer on everyone who says that something is wrong with the project. Of course, we must soberly weigh all the pros and cons, because people can give good advice. But always base yourself on what kind of game YOU want to see, and not someone else. Although we should not forget about the player, he should be comfortable and clear everything in your game. Simply put - you need to look for a fine line of balance between what you want exactly and what the player would like to see.
Add. Misha: yes, here I agree 100% with Sanya - only the author will determine the genre and everything that will be in the final project, so I think the creator’s idea is primary in any good game, and from that everything else is done, it makes the game unique. Yes, you can analyze sales, trends, genres, but this does not make much sense, because the game by and large is a work of art, the starting and ending point in which the author sets it.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/339534/
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