13 votes

Indie GameDev provides an interesting insight of how their seemingly popular game performed poorly on launch

3 comments

  1. [2]
    nothis
    (edited )
    Link
    The game looks great. But it's a bit exhausting to always talk about these indie game sales post mortems while awkwardly avoiding the question of whether the game is... good enough. Again, it...

    The game looks great. But it's a bit exhausting to always talk about these indie game sales post mortems while awkwardly avoiding the question of whether the game is... good enough. Again, it looks great, but on a scale to Hollow Knight it looks about 15% there. And there's plenty of 80% Hollow Knights competing in that space (which is a crowded space).

    I honestly don't think there's any voodoo magic to the date released, wishlist conversion or youtuber reach. It's just... a great game... among somewhat similar amazing games. I honestly think that's the full story.

    From a player's POV, the great thing about indies is that quality actually still matters. I'd unironically consider Celeste a "perfect" game, for example. That's just the level we've reached. Perfect games exist and they sell, they're the bar to raise to. Other than that you need either a super original idea (Baba Is You) or memetic appeal (Untitled Goose Game). Ideally, you do all of this at once. That's just super hard and no advertising pro-tips can multiply your success enough make up for it. All of those tips suffer from a horrible case of survivorship bias.

    8 votes
    1. kfwyre
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      "Exhausting" is a good word for these types of discussions, and I think it goes beyond just discussions of quality. I've seen a good handful of these post-mortems, and the comment sections are...

      "Exhausting" is a good word for these types of discussions, and I think it goes beyond just discussions of quality. I've seen a good handful of these post-mortems, and the comment sections are often filled with a sort of hyper-intense scrutiny backed by extreme confidence that I think only occurs because the people armchair-quarterbacking already know the final score. Because the game didn't do well, everyone will point out to the devs all the "obvious reasons" why, despite the fact that none of these were known quantities in advance.

      Plus, there seems to be a large inconsistency in the discourse that's produced about games in aggregate and games in particular. People will constantly talk about what they'd prefer from developers. Demos, for example, have been a huge talking point for years, with plenty of gamers saying that demos are a very consumer-friendly tactic that will result in increased sales. This game, along with many others, are proof that even that isn't enough. And if it's not demos, it's any other focus area: passion, design, framerate, cross-platform releases, etc. Whether intended or not, the thrust of a lot of these comments, especially in aggregate, seems to reinforce the idea that game sales are this purely meritocratic venture rather than a messy sort of chaos.

      They especially come out when there are complaints about larger industry practices, so I think a lot of indie devs take them to heart, thinking that they're in a unique place to not replicate the issues of larger studios, but then, when they implement these suggestions and don't get returns, they get excoriated for their hubris or critiqued for their failure to follow the simple advice they should have obviously known about. Gamers infamously hate marketing hype, until an indie game fails to sell, in which case they'll be told that it obviously occurred due to a lack of marketing! Gamers infamously hate the cookie-cutter risk-averse works of AAA games, until an indie game fails to sell, in which case they'll be told their novel little game doesn't have mass appeal.

      I think a lot of it is sort of the "just-world hypothesis" played out in our little area of interest. We like to think that everything has a rational explanation, but we're also only able to point to those from the certainty of hindsight. I think the reality of game sales (and everything else) is a lot less straightforward.

      For example: consider the story of consider the story of Electronic Super Joy. It was a minor indie hit -- not an absolute legend by any means, but a relative standout, especially for a game of its scope and genre. It's got over 2000 reviews on Steam (with 90% of them positive), which we can use as an imprecise but good enough indicator of relative success. The main developer, Michael Todd, later released a sequel -- and, in a surprising move, made it free! The game has an optional DLC that you can choose to buy if you want to support the game (primarily the composers of the music, which was one of the defining features of the original game -- and rightly so, because its soundtrack, as the kids say, slaps). This unique release strategy got him some press coverage and significant community goodwill. In fact, in discussions of the game and his decisions, Todd was remarkably forthcoming about his own finances, showing that he's not holding a silver spoon in his mouth or living high in an ivory tower:

      So, during 2 years of development, I've made: 67,600 CAD, which is 33800 per year.
      That's a little above minimum wage here (29,120 CAD a year).

      So, we have here the almost ideal indie game situation:

      We've got the humble, down-to-earth, mostly-solo indie dev working on their passion project. The game is a sequel to a title that was widely played and widely liked. It was released as free, going well beyond the recommended "demo", and players had the ability to pay for the game should they choose to, which they obviously would, because we put our money where our mouth is, right?

      So, how did it do?

      Well, using our same Steam review metric, the base game has 542 reviews at 88% positive. This game had everything going for it including no monetary barrier to entry and it is sitting at a quarter of the reviews of the original. It might reach higher with time and a long tail, but despite the wind at its back it still didn't make it as far as could be expected.

      Now, the optional paid DLC that you can buy to support the game? 10 reviews. TEN.

      Again, these are very imprecise numbers to work with, but if we use the review numbers as even a loose proxy for engagement and use them only relative to one another, we see that even for a successful game developer there was a significant falloff in interest from one game to the next, and then again a significant falloff in those who chose to pay for the game rather than enjoy it for free. If this is the reality for a "best case scenario", then it's clear that entering the scene as a brand new developer is likely to be far more difficult.

      I didn't choose Electronic Super Joy at random. I chose it because I'm the corresponding part of the "best case scenario", but from the player side. Just as required in tango, it takes two to sell a game. We need one to make it and one to buy it, and I'm someone who thoroughly enjoyed my part of that dance the first go around. I'm someone who genuinely liked the first game (after I turned off its obnoxious sound-effects), spent dozens of hours listening to the soundtrack (which, yes, still slaps), and was aware of the sequel in advance of its release. I have a fondness for the first game that goes beyond many other games that I've played, liked, and mostly forgotten about. Despite all of this, I still have not played the second one. Does it have anything to do with the quality of the game, the time it released, the marketing, or anything else like that? Nope. It's simply because there are hundreds of other games to play, and through the vagaries of personal taste and decision-making, I haven't gotten around to it yet. This is a dismal outcome for a "best case scenario" from the player's side. I'm the ideal candidate to play and pay for the sequel, and yet I haven't paid it any mind. My tango partner was left out on the dance floor, alone.

      I realize I'm but one person with one experience, and I don't want to generalize and finger-point too much lest I become guilty of perpetuating what makes many of these discussions "exhausting". Instead, I'll make them exhausting in my own way, through comment length! If there's one thing I can say, though, it's that even when the stars are seemingly aligned for both the dev and the players, it still doesn't guarantee any sort of success. Even developers who once held lightning in a bottle can find that light dim to absent the next time around. I don't mean this in an accusatory way ("Look at these entitled devs thinking they deserve success!") but more in a sympathetic way ("It's hard out here for a dev.").

      2 votes