Hey there, so, im a game dev my self, i've released 3 games so far, i would say you look at it from the wrong perspective Before i begin let me tell you that i enjoy your chanell and i really look forward to your next steps! The Refunds, " Not Fun " I Agree that you have a demo, but tbh most people dont have the time or the patience to first try the demo and then buy the game, the demo is mostly there as a teaser before the game comes out and not as a "play test" build Then, take into account your audience, these types of games are not bought by children, its mostly adults with jobs/university that dont have much time to test a demo, they are just tired from their job and they want to play that new game that came out 20% on your first game is "fine" considering 10%-15% as an average, you said yourself the UI is clanky, in a game like that it is very important since almost every decision you make is made with the UI, its not a fps where you open the ui only to check the menu, the ui is a big part of your game and if it feels clunky it destroys the flow of your game so, 10%-15% normal Refund rate + 5% Refunds cause of the Clunky UI, seems okay to me The Sales, I Know it took you time and effort + money to create the game, trust me i know! But this is a heavy price tag for a game that is not super polished, that has no marketing, and the dev is completely unknown. Yes the launch discount plays a role in your numbers, but not as big as you think probably liek a +10% boost, but you would lose the revenue cause of the discount, in return those sales could generate Reviews! So yeah, missed oportunity Release Date, Doesnt matter what time of the year it is, if there are steam sales or what ever, from my analysis and from a partners that hsa released over 15 games in the last 4 years, i have to tell you that as long as you release between the 5th-10th of the month its okay! Take away, i think your price tag, no launch discount and that UI little "problem"/ Lack of Visual beauty/polishness harmed your sales My tip is, try to polish your UI as much as possible, as fast a possible, make the update, write an update announcement, schedule a discount for the second week of september, (At least 20%) This will send an email out to all of your 3k wishlists, they are gonna check your page, see that you are actively improving the game, see a good discount and BUY the game, and then you get your feedbacks that will help further development AND impact your sales! Im planing to start uploading game dev content as well so a sub back would be amazing :)
I have to agree with your comment. I don't know how good the pricing is on other regions, but the game is very expensive for my country especially for an indie. So yeah, the pricing I will say that is too high and probably the biggest reason for the low wishlist conversion. Hope this doesn't demotivates you guys. The game is not over and I hope you continue doing games.
I am not a fan of Indie games rushing to the bottom on price but the price is just too high with a lack of a launch discount lowering the initial sales and review potential. In regards to the UI stuff you should look at it as a perfect opportunity to build a key skill for the next game (and the one after that) and its a key thing being displayed in every image and every video.
The goal with the first game is indeed primarily learning (financial success is just a bonus) so the fact that you completed and released you first game is a huge success, congrats! I absolutely agree with your decision to just publish this game quickly instead of continuing to work on it for many more months, what you learned from this quick release will really help you on the next one. I also agree with not going with EA, nowadays EA is brutal and you shouldn't go for it unless you have a very clear plan and lots of hype. When it comes to Steam, you really need to jump the first massive barrier to get any visibility whatsoever, anything under 5000 wishlists pretty much rounds down to 0. And on top of that if you get under 10 reviews then you literally get 0 visibility so it's really important to get those first 10 reviews as quickly as possible. I encourage everyone watching this video who picked up the game to post a review, they really genuinely do help a ton, you get a huge boost in visibility (relative to 0) as soon as you have 10 reviews, and another tiny boost at 50. (assuming they are >70% positive) On the demo, yup you are correct, license means someone added it to their account, unique users means they actually played it. Also the general consensus is you should keep the demo up after the festival, but then remove it on release. Those wishlist conversion stats are usually based on total wishlists vs total sales, not specifically the wishlist conversion you see on Steam, that number is always going to be smaller. And those numbers are really only accurate with a decent sample size, with just 2000 wishlists and 100 sales it's hard to get any meaningfully accurate stats, you didn't do anything wrong here. Definitely always set a launch sale, even just 10% is enough. For a high indie pricepoint (anything above $10) visuals are extremely important. Your Steam capsule is excellent, however the game itself, for a players eyes does not look like a $17 game. The world looks great at night but during the daytime everything is very flat. For a somewhat similar comparison check out the game Timberborn, also very voxel based and it looks excellent. The relative high pricepoint coupled with basic visuals coupled with
Thanks for the elaborate and kind comment! While our game (Forge Industry, I'm one of the devs) wasn't successful commercially, it is as you seem to indicate, a successful game personally. We learned a lot of things on what to do (and even more on what NOT to do), and it was a thrill to bring a game to a full release for the first time. Reading your comment made me reaffirm that my decision to go full time BiteMe Games was the right choice. Smart? Maybe not, but definitely the correct one, no matter where we may end up.
Dafuq? Such a big comment? You're really a Chad monkey😎👍 Wanted to write the part with the flat graphics too, glad you already did it. And for you devs, I made just 5% of your income with my first game, so you had a solid start 🥲
this guy should have a channel or something - but dev's, that's a key point too - probably better to make games fast and release more of them, not so much work on them - you quickly prolly reach a point as you did here where you feel obligated to have set at such a high price based on how much time you put into this. Diminishing returns. Honestly, lookin' at this, not to say it's chintz - but how fast could a game like this honestly be done? two guys? cheers and thanks for the vids - yeah, I'd say your trips to Japan resonated. How the hell the 9k licences? But not installed? Some magazine or something? bought the games and sent out?
Hey Codemonkey, I'm also an indie dev and a fan of yours. Just wanted to say thank you, I appreciate that you take the time to comment on videos like this. It's nice to get insight from a developer with your experience.
You guys are amazing for this transparency and honesty. A lot of games don't make money. People have survivorship bias on what to expect but the truth is... most indie games are not successful. The stories on success dominate such that people never hear the millions more stories of times things didn't work out. So you guys are amazing for helping people see the truth. I respect you guys so much.
you released the game. in this regard you made it further than 90% of indi developers out there. that is a big accomplishment in its own. pretty proud of you guys. keep going.
Im so glad to hear "our next game". A lot of people will stop doing this after a first commercial failure, and you understand that this is so nornal! Real glad to see you keeping passion guys
@@trashtronics1700 There was this dev named nik you may know who I am talking about he scammed people with his game greed of man. His patreon when the game was released was making 3000$/month. When the game released It was something completely different. I remember a video of him saying he was polishing his game and he was running the matrix city demo
the problem is the brand has been damaged so the next game will have to be twice as good for the original backers to want to try again. good news is that with so few players on the first game, you can just get away with deleting it and pretending like it never happened and nobody will notice.
Your transparency is admirable. I like that you never mentioned shuttering the doors. I hope your team has enough runway to release another game & take all you’ve learned into the next title.
as someone who just quit his fulltime job to make his own indie game I think your videos are really important and helpful. its not always clear that indie game dev is a hard thing. game dev in general is in my opinion the hardest software field. thanks for your honest experience. hope you in the future and we who can see your mistakes and correct choices make better games in the future :)
you can have a glimp on how difficult it is just by creating a mod; with a mod you're just focusing in one item/aspect of the game and could take tens of hours to just make it correctly .. now add up that to a complete game.
It takes courage and clear eyes to make a video like this. I think your chance of success in the long run is much higher since you were willing and able to take a hard look at yourselves and make that public.
the guys aren't stupid and even a few months ago, they kinda alluded in one video - maybe the viral one? that they knew kinda more or less that their passion project, while important to them personally, well they knew they weren't gonna hit flappy bird numbers
This has to be one of the best videos on this topic. I feel like many young game developers have very high hopes for their first launch. Showing the raw numbers from your launch and hearing about your expectations and thinking behind it with such honesty is a very valuable resource for devs like me. Your attitude despite the disappointing launch is inspiring and I'm sure you'll find more success as long as you keep it at it!
You stated exactly why you got the results you did! You said that you didn't know what others would think, if they would like it or not. If you want a game to do well, then you have to make a game that YOU are crazy about wanting to play! If you love playing it, others will too!
Same thing I thought, just didn’t want to say it. “People don’t play the game for the UI” is half true, they’re playing for the experience, if the UI sucks that UX sucks which more often than not leads to friction/frustration. Which can lead to people stop playing the game. “Why not play the demo before you bought it”. Maybe people didn’t want spoilers? There’s a million reasons as of why this could’ve happened, not everyone’s customer journey is the same. You can have a single customer journey planned but 90%+ won’t follow step by step. I got the impression that they think the problem is the players 🫣hope I’m mistaken…
Had no idea that early keys make those players ineligible for Steam reviews and you need 10 to exist!! You just saved us so much with that piece of advice. I have shared with the team as I have never come across something this authentic and transparent. Liked and subscribed!!
Hey, I know you're being as transparent and open as possible, and I really appreciate that (as someone who is currently working on their own game). I do however think you're not giving yourselves enough credit. You imagined, planned, created, and launched AN ENTIRE GAME. That's a huge deal! Congratulations on launching your first game, on all the invaluable experience you've gained, and on the continuation of serving your game in effort to increase its profitability! I look forward to your future videos and future games :) Cheers from Spain
After visiting the seam page for the game I will say that the first thing I reacted to was that the gameplay screenshots doesn't match the quality of the Promo/Titel image. I know graphics isn't everything but in this case I think the difference was too big. Best of luck with your future projects and thanks for a great and honest video!
When you mentioned 10% off on launch, I think this is how Above Snakes went about it. I've played the demo and added the game to my wishlist. When the game released, it was around $14 or so and offered a 10% discount. I got pop-ups everywhere including my smartphone. Not that I actually bought it, but the biggest stopper for me was that I had other games on my wishlist that are cheaper or are more familiar to me. So, I'd probably buy Above Snakes, but it wouldn't be the first game I buy.
Haven't played it but based on your experience and the looks of the game, I wouldn't really want to risk or spend $24 (CAD) on buying it. There is a demo though so I'll give that a go and give you guys some feedback! Still though that price seems high for an indie game like this. Also my first glance at a plain green island with repeating path textures looks very very homemade and could maybe do with some iteration (add some more texture variance, different env objects etc.).
It sounds mean but real talk: game ain't worth that. 25 bucks is the sale I wait for on a AAA game. I have never paid more than 10 dollars for any indie game
agree with you. I downloaded the demo, I would not buy the whole game. I think the mentality that UI is not what players play for is the wrong idea. UI is the first layer of interaction between the player and the mechanics and if that layer is not intuitive and fun to use, the game is not going to be very accessible or fun to play. The UI and not understanding mechanics is really what turned me away while playing the demo.
@@_theHUMUNGUS not having paid more than 10 usd for any indie game isnt surprising, but theres many indie games that are *worth* over 20$, let alone 10
thanks for sharing, and here's some blunt thoughts; 1. 200% need an artist. It's just too much of a hurdle to sell a game that doesn't visually appear polished, and especially not at that price point. 2. The price is steep. It's likely that many more wishlists would have converted at a lower price, and net revenue would have been greater overall. 3. Honestly, it's not worth further supporting this game. Without a major visual overhaul it's too tough of a sell and the return on that time investment will not remotely be worth it 4. The genre is not the issue, anyone who sees the store page and decides to buy it is already interested in the genre. 5. UI being clunky absolutely does matter. Arguably it's the most important thing to get right, especially in that menu-heavy genre. If the UI is a pain in the ass that's an extremely fast turn off.
The issue I had with the game is a lacking tutorial. I was very confused.(I did not connect the workers house to the road system) Also the game is not balanced well or there is nothing forcing me to do anything more than the basic setup. I only set market and sawmill and 5-6 wide road in a straight line to the market and hired all people to just sell planks. Nothing really made me want to place forge or other things.(there doesn't seem to be a goal, maybe a lot of the gameplay is hidden behind tutorial, I am not sure) Also instead of a market I would rather have a resource harvesting buildings(Mine, woodcutting) etc. Another thing was the collapsed building(the one that unlocks research if you give it resources) it feels weird having made a connection to it and instantly losing that connect when its finished. Perhaps a global warehouse where you store items could be used to repair those instead. Connections between places should not be something you change/remove often.(Maybe add/remove workers) I would probably remove "gold/money" and make it into resource management game, otherwise I can just sell planks forever(if I figure out how to auto buy wood) and I can go afk for 10 hours and make millions.(people dont eat food, so there is no reason to do anything else)
"you don't play a game for the UI you play the game for the mechanics in it" is an interesting quote. If you have friction, especially noticeable friction, within your UI/UX you will always start to lose players as they become weary of having to actively parse your user interface. UI/UX is so hard to get right, but it's really the lens in which the player experiences your mechanics whether they are good or bad. It's like having foggy glasses; no matter how gorgeous the morning clouds are rolling off the hilltops into a beautiful valley below, if the player can't see or experience that without fog or scratches they are going to give up.
To be honest, I completely expected this. Like you said, it seems to be the norm for most indies. I know that when I put out my first commercial game, I'm definitely going to be setting my expectations low. And probably still be disappointed lol That said, your transparency is commendable. Thank you for sharing all this as I think it does a lot for the game dev community. Also, a thought I had on wishlists, but another reason why some of those wishlists didn't convert to sales may have been because of RU-vid. I think many devs wishlist other devs games as a way to support them and maybe give them that little bump in the Steam algorithm. But, ultimately, have no intention of buying the game in the end. Or at least not right away. Anyway, congratulations all the same! Not many can say they finished a game and put it out there on Steam. Looking forward to see what you guys come up with next!
First of all, congratulations. Publishing a game on Steam is no easy feat. I haven't played the game (I'm simply not your game's audience), but I've watched all your videos and looked at your Steam page, and I wanted to give my two cents: - The game genre you chose is _really_ hard for a first game. I believe you even said so in a video. Developing this kind of game is hard, and on top of that strategy/automation players are quite... "sophisticated", let's say. I feel it is a demographic hard to please. - Don't underestimate the UI. A bad UI can kill a game. With attention spans being shorter each day, if your player feels lost or the UI is unintuitive they will just quit. A lot of players judge games by the UI, I believe I heard Chris Zukowski say that having UI screenshots is key to gathering wishlists, because it matters to the players. - Steam players are the definition of 'judging a book by its cover'. Sadly the game being fun is not the thing they care about the most. As a dev, I don't get it either. Your game's graphics are okay and coherent, but not spectacular or eye-catching. Games with less content/worse gameplay but more polished graphics tend to sell better. - The price tag is a bit high imo, and literally *no one buys a game if it's not on sale*. Once again, I think I heard that from Zukowski. Probably 15€ with a 20% off would have sold better. - I'm not so sure about how good having a demo is, I understand that it may generate wishlists but I've heard from other devs that it also can be detrimental to the sales (some players may play the demo and think they had enough). Of course, take all this with a grain of salt. Just sharing some thoughts. Keep it up and seriously, be proud of yourself regardless of sales. You made it further than most people already. Just keep it up.
Hey! Love your content. I'm a part of a small club of people who have released some games as indies on steam, and when you told me it's been weeks and you still only have two reviews, my jaw hit the floor. Have you no friends or family you can ask to buy it and buy them a case of beer or an amazon giftcard in exchange? No one who wants to see your success?! Hitting that 10 review threshold seems so important, i'd do ANYTHING to make it happen. All the best, hope it works out for you guys!
It's great to see transparent videos like these about the realities of indie game dev. I'm one of those people with the game sitting on my wish list. The current hurdle for me buying is price. I can't speak to the international market, but the local Australian pricing has the game at $26. That puts you in direct competition with other base builders like Dyson Sphere Program ($29) and Autonaunts ($30). Other games around this price point include Valheim ($29) and V Rising ($29). Based on art and UI alone, that's a hard sell for your game. You might be better placed to compete with Factory Town (currently on sale for $12) and Space Haven (also currently on sale at $18). Although these games also have a full price of $29 and $35 respectively, I notice they have very frequent discounts over 50% and I'm pretty conditioned by steam to wait for those discounts. All the games mentioned I own on steam, and I'll likely buy Forge Industry if it drops below $15 as I really enjoy this genre of game. Good luck.
I was just thinking their numbers looked extremely low even for what it was and I think had made an assumption about the price and that I must have misheard them in the video but I think THIS along with the lack of launch discount was a major contributor. I agree the current race to the bottom for Indie titles is bad and having a higher base price which allows you to do large discounts (which they didn't) is a good idea but you still have to price for the market somewhat.
One big thing I've learned post launch is the horrors called pricing for different regions. Steam's suggested prices are horrible on their own. Since everything is also based on USD, and USD goes up and down like a rollercoaster, we've had some problems there with the value changing by 10% in just a week. The Steamworks UI is also a mess, so only once the prices were live on SteamDB, did I really see how horrible it is. But Steam also hates it if you actually change the price of your game soon after release. So for now it's just waiting for a discount, as we said in the video as well, we have a lot of wishlists, the launch price just most likely wasn't right for a lot of people. -M
This video randomly pop up on my recommendation and I appreciate the transparency. The game certainly looks interesting but with so many backlog, maybe I'll get it by the time the next sale comes around. Keep up the great job!
Fascinating insight into the realities of game Deving. I really hope the success of this video translated into some more sales for you guys. Please give us a 2-3 month update!!!!
Honestly you guys are really good at retrospectives and are really young, overtime you'll get so much better. Might take a few games to make it though but I'm sure each one will get better
Hello, thanks guys for sharing all this learning and experience you got on your first release. Also congratulations, we all know the grind that is to actually complete a project and send out to the world (even though most of us never even released a game on steam). I believe you guys are in the right path and I really hope in the next game you guys get closer to the expected result you want. Now a bit of my understanding of those statistics: - Regarding the bump of wishlists on the release day: We can think on the players perspective, when whishlisting a game, we as players subscribe to receive notifications when that game get into a sale, so I think what people felt is that the game was a bit pricy when they got into the game's page, and then they added it to the wishlist in order to get it in another time, maybe during a sale. That is the reason I see for them adding to wishlist during launch day instead of buying it. Wish you all the best and really, congratulations for your first release!
I know it's your new baby and it just release and you want to make it a success but don't over do it. Sometimes it's better to let it die and just start something new. I hope you guys are working on a new project and it going great. You have to choose your fights. Thanks a lot for sharing!
Many games have less than stellar release day results. If you want this to survive over time, you will put whatever it takes into the mix to make it work. The only miracles are those you craft. Now I'll head over to Steam and check out your demo just because you've raised my curiosity. :D
To explain some things you were ranting about. Wishlist - most people wait for a sale using these. "Why didn't you play the demo" - Demos are useless today once the game is out when you can Demo every game for 2 hours and then return it. A lot of people look at it that way, including me. "We have no idea what we have to change." - you mentioned you gave out early keys. Try asking your community to be brutally honest with you in the community posts. What they like and don't like. Even offer some in game rewards for reviews if needed. "I purchased this by accident" - You have to select an option on steam. Most people pick this one when thez just don't want to deal with other reasons. In other words, ignore this one. Anyway, good luck with the game. It looks awesome
Respect to you and the team for bringing your game to launch and then being both brave and insightful in sharing your learnings in this video. From what I heard you are giving yourselves every opportunity to find success. One cautionary suggestion, be thoughtful about the continued resources put against the game. Even with some marketing effort, the numbers fall below the level needed to support a comeback. Of course, getting it to a place that feels right for the team is a whole other thing and that too is to be applauded.
Oh don't worry, we dropped it after 3 months of QoL support. We are now fully working on our next game. Pretty much all bugs the game had have been solved at this point, so we are happy with the end result. -M
Thanks for being so open about your experience! I think as gamedevs we are all really passionate about we do which often leads to us making business decisions with emotion as well and making mistakes. You learn a lot from mistakes, but I think with videos like these we can learn from eachother and learn faster without having to make some of these mistakes for ourselves. I will remember from this video that, even though you don't need to discount to get an email to all your wishlisters, doing a discount is still nice to give thanks and to get people extra motivated to make a purchase, since those early purchases are so important for the trajectory of your game afterwards.
Love your openness and the insight into releasing your first indie game. Very interesting perspective! I wish you all the best for your future developments! :)
2 years in my solo project Lorne. Really close to a demo finally. I'm at a point where the world is just waiting to be built, because the systems are mostly finished at this point. I will probably spend an additional 2 years on this game and that is 100% fine to me. I'm not doing this for a massive commercial success, I'm doing this for learning. I bet you learned so much from this. :)
You learn the most by taking something from start to finish. You could have made 2 games for 2 years each in the time you want to spend on that one game. Also, it's much easier to give up on a 4 year project and start over than a 2 year one. Huge commitments are sometimes just excuses not to try at all, because you bury yourself in too much work. Also it won't be just 2 years to complete, if you're saying that now it means it's 3 minimum. Projects always go that way.
@@BusinessWolf1 nah :) it will be on time. All systems are done. Its just 2 years of content creation. I will have some time to spare even. What you miss when doing shorter and easier projects is that you dont have to learn to improve on your workflows and processes because you can work inefficiently due to "underscoping" your game. This will come back to bite you once you start scaling up, as it is very different to work on extremely large games with for the manhours you have. Work on what you want to work on in the end, but dont listen to generic advice just to "succeed", if you dont have fun you wont make it anyway. 😁✌️
"You don't play a game for the UI, usually" truly shocked me. Some friendly advice from someone who also doesn't have the best instincts for making smooth feeling UI; outside of very minimalistic games, UI is a huge part of how a player interacts with a game. UI is a huge part of user experience, and UX is what games are *all about*. You can make a good game despite bad UI, but a lot of people are going to be put off before they get to the good stuff. I would also emphasize playtesting. It doesn't sound like you've done much of that (tho this is the first of your videos that I've watched so this is just an assumption). Even when you do get specific feedback, you can't really trust it to be very accurate. Most players are not game designers, and it can be difficult to analyze what is the actual cause of something not working well. It is so important to watch people who have never tried your game before play it. Iterate on the points that caused issues and repeat. I know it can be challenging to keep finding new people, but it really makes all the difference.
I watch a lot of devlogs and have seen a pattern of their games not converting wishlists. You mentioned this RU-vid channel was a large part of your marketing efforts, I think the problem with marketing through devlogs is that you're not actually targeting your target audience. If you ask viewers to wishlist you're inflating them, which can be good for visibility on Steam but can be deceiving in terms of conversion. Hope you're more content with your next game and thanks for the transparency!
I personally think that the 16€ price is a bit too steep for a game like this, for an example Stardew Valley only costs 14€, Kingdoms Reborn is 19€, Kingdoms and Castles is 12,5€ etc. etc. A lot of game in the same price range looks better (yeah looks are not the only thing that matters, but people get turned off by "programmer art", I personally like the low-poly stuff, but even if you use low-poly models there are post-processing effects that can make the game look better without a big performance hit ), have more content etc. The price and the look of the game is the main reasons for the low wishlist conversion rate, I believe people expected the garphics to get better and/or the game to be cheaper. The UI is also very important in a game like this and automatic crash reporting would help with people saying "it crashed, what do?". I believe having an artist join you for the next project would really help with making a better game.
Your continued drive for transparency is what I admire the most about your videos, which continue to be enlightening and entertaining - really love the time you spend on them - as you suggested, keep the forge's fire lit, there still might be some conversion in it, best of luck to you all
Visually you go boost the game a lot with some simple tricks: volumetric fog, higher contrast (plains more sunny) but less saturation, more ambient greeble, like small bushes, stones, twigs, flowers. Using thin bevels in the low poly models (a modifier in blender), this makes blocky low poly assets have a more realistic look. Use liniar colorspace and ACES tonemapping. Moving cloud-shadows (can be done with some tricks using transparent shadow casters).
Thanks for the feedback and transparency. I understand that your are feeling a bit down because of the results. I appreciate that you make the best of it and do a video about it helping other game devs. I think it is good that you set yourself a goal to deliver the game and learn from it and move on with new experience. "new is always better". Regarding the wishlist issue: I'm a Steam user with too many games in my library and over 10 years of service. My wishlist contains about 300-400 entries. I mostly miss the emails from the steam that a game is now released because I think they are e-mails about "a game is on sale". I scan through the wish list now and then when I'm bored but the notification system fails for me. If there are other people out there with the same wishlist size they have probably the same issue. So I think that there is no general conversion rate from Wishlist to Sale, but more an indicator that there will be sales. All in all: I wish you good luck for the next project :)
I still admire you guys for going at it even though it didn't turn out how you expectd. I've basically binged all your videos and you guys seem like hard working, talented devs. Success will happen for yall.
Thank you for all the transparency. It is great to see fellow gamedevs sharing data like this. As to the refund/feedback dilemma: You have to keep in mind that your game competes against all other games (and other activities) for the players time. If they do not like the game, why should they invest even more time into it by writing a review? It is not their job to provide feedback. It is, in fact, your job to gather feedback via structured playtests - which I am not saying you didn't do. But don't get mad at the players for not doing your job for you. All they want is have a bit of fun in their spare time.
I'm watching this a second time... and re-writing my comment. The Free licenses are how many people "purchased" your demo. It doesn't necessarily mean they didn't play the game, it means Steam isn't aware of whether or not they downloaded the game, only that they pressed the button to accept the demo and now have the demo in their library. So you had 9 thousand people add the demo to their library, and around 1600 of them played it which would be 17%. That's what the Unique users means. Having only sold 104 copies of the game though, is almost exactly 10% of the people who played the demo. That's where your conversion data comes from.
Went and bought the game to see what was up. I left a thread on the community discussions, hopefully something said there is of use. Hope to see what you'll do with the game going forward.
This was exactly what I was looking for the last few years! It's nice to finally see some transparency with the numbers instead of clickbaits. Hopefully we get to see more people doing this, so we can learn more by comparing data and experiences. Good luck with the journey!
Thank you for sharing your experience, it is invaluable. Congratulations for your work. I believe one of the factors that have diminished your success is the price being too high, seeing the graphics of the game I think many expected the cost to be $9 or less.
Here another opinion which might help you guys: I just stumbled upon this video. I think I would be a target for a game like this given that I mainly play strategy, city builder, survival builder games. I personally wouldn't consider the game due to the art style. I'm spoiled with games like: frostpunk, timberborn, surviving mars and ixion regarding art style. Games like prison architect, rim world and the wandering village, rogue tower, banished look better but are also not the best regarding initial eye candy and needed to convince me with very solid game play to purchase them (I love a few of these games btw). I have limited time to play a game and there are many options. Given that a lot of games with amazing game play have better art style I wouldn't look too much into this game. The looks doesn't have to be the best. I think that having some very simple but well executed simple art style can work. But to me it looked a bit too uncanny (just not right) to like it. So maybe you guys can look into this to compete better with other other alternatives. Wish you guys a ton of succes with your next games!
Not sure if you have already tried this, but giving a polished demo to publishers is a great way I’ve heard you can get real feedback. The other thing that comes to mind is simply observing play throughs, and not focusing so much on comments alone. I’ve actually built a replay system for my game in order to be able to analyze what play testers are doing (in addition to just needing a replay feature).
Thank you for your vid. BTW: The small additions as trees, bushes, rocks, grasses, improved a lot on the MAP looking! :) It looks much better than before. :)
Okay, that was interesting and informative. My first impression of the things I saw of your game in the video is that it looks like an Early Access title or maybe like an prototype. I do like these kinds of games, like factory/production/city-sim, so it is up my ally of something I could possibly buy. I am now going to try your demo and see if it is wroth a buy or not. Maybe you will hear from me on the community forum. Cheers.
I've noticed from personal research that conversions of a "passive observer" into a "active buyer" are more like...1 in 1000. For example, if you had a video talking about a game and 1 million people watched the video, only about 1000 would buy the game. That's for passive observer to active buyer. But for committed observer to active buyer, the conversion is higher, that's for games like...where the devs have had a long repour with the people they advertise too. Where they've cultivated the sale for months in advance. Those conversions can be more like 2 in 100, or so. But that depends. The thing is, people wishlist games often to just...remember they exist. I have like 1000+ games in my wishlist, many I never plan to play at this point, but may...one day, look up again out of interest. It's more of like...leaving a tab open on my browser so I can find that page again, instead of actually desire for the game. So that's why it's not reliable at all as a metric, different people use it for different things.
First, it's important to acknowledge that you got it released -- not many developers can say that. Second, I think the discrepancy between what we've been told and what you're seeing is just a matter of sample size. For instance, we don't know if the 8% refund rate scales up proportionally to the number of sales if they were larger. Therefore, it's hard to jump to too many conclusions and solutions based on what you know at this point. Don't beat yourself over it. I agree with your stance on early access. This isn't a passion project nor does it need to be, it was a product produced within means and a set scope and budget and got done. I'd rather you all have the opportunity to move onto your next game, taking what you learned from this one, and continue growing and improving rather than spending the rest of your life on Forge Industry. While I don't agree with what everyone says ad nauseam -- "Just release a game, it doesn't need to be good, it just needs to be your first," I appreciate that you all took the risk in making a meaningful game for the community and yourselves and not just shovelware on Steam. A lot of great points, I appreciate your wisdom, transparency, and honesty. As a marketer by trade, I think it was seriously good advice on pivoting to a Japanese audience -- makes me think that localization might be more important than we think, as yes, historically, English speaking countries are always more difficult to compete for (especially in paid media, high CPC and low conversion rates, usually). Keep working on making the games you feel are best, keep growing your audience and channel, and you'll surely find your hit somewhere down the line through perseverance. Y'all are still young, don't burn out! I've seen too many "gamedevs" pivot to just making snackable, meaningless content for the algorithm but not actually making any progress in their game. The reason why I keep watching you all is because you're the opposite. Keep it up.
The algorithm gods decided I should see this video 😂 this game isnt a genre i would normally play, but i'll definitely check out the demo and see. Congrats on launch, so many indie devs never make it this far or crash and burn when it doesnt make what they had built up in their heads. You guys seem to be mentally together, that will help with long term stickage. From o e programmer to another, making a game(or any software really) is hard. Having a finished product puts you way ahead od the curve.
the license's would also include demo downloads iirc, and many people see the "add to library" button and click it just because its a free game. I may be wrong about this but itd explain the 8k surplus.
I hadn't heard of your channel or game - just happened across this video. For me, I've wish listed some very interesting games on steam and when it finally launched I thought to myself "well I'm not paying that much for that game". So perhaps carefully researching price point is important and what you said about a sale at launch would get more sales. Best of luck to you.
I laughed hard when I heard döner shop 😂 Kebab restaurant would be a great mini game 😂 Thank you for sharing honest opinions, frustrations, expectations.. I wish success for Forge Industry👍
I did not watch the full video yet, but I wanted to post my view on this before watching the whole video and see what you guys think you did wrong. My first impression on why there was not enough sales is that the game is too blend, there is no eye candy. I sometimes buy games that I will never play just because I liked the art, and I am sure I am not alone on this. The game market is so competitive that you have to launch something very polished, fun, and beautiful if you are an indie developer. I believe that a texture rework would increase the sales of the game.
Thanks for the honesty and transparency! From what I heard in this video, I think you guys saying "We didnt have the budget for marketing." may have been an oversight you shouldn't have overlooked. Marketing is often even more important than the game itself. Market your game, and start planning how to market it during development. Even letting the marketing decisions influence your game's design. It really will make a difference.
I'm super glad I subscribed to this channel. Can't wait to see what becomes of BiteMe games. Thank you for the transparency. This is actually a really great way to get the RU-vid audience on your side, you know? Everybody loves an underdog. Good luck on your future projects, and yes, do keep updating Forge Industry. I think I might roll on over to Steam and check out the demo.
I often put games on my wishlist so that I get a notification when it goes on sale. Maybe "following" the game would be a better option for me to do since devs might read too much into "wishlist" numbers. At any rate, many games eventually go on sale, so you might get a bump in sales if you discount the price. Your RU-vid videos are likely to help you with marketing, so keep adding content and your fan base will grow. (This opinion is not from personal experience, but from something I hear on game dev videos and podcasts.)
16:00 - you should introduce crash dumps + logs that are sent to a central server. If you can rely on one thing, its people not caring enough to put effort in, so having data you defined yourself in your run-/startup time is a crazy boost in data. There are Services specializing in this with cheap options for small operations. i'd highly recommend doing that, because no matter how hard you try as a small studio you just cant cover all the system setups and configurations. crash dump helps immensely though.
We've started doing this about a month ago, Unity actually has some neat tools that make it really easy to send logs with a bunch of metadata as well. It has helped greatly so far in making the game more stable, although most of the errors that occur now seem to be related to the OS and drivers, which are a pain to actually solve. -M
bros u only gotta focus on one thing pretty much. make the game that you yourself want to play. don't cut any corners. polish the heck out of it. if you do this, all good things will follow behind.
I usually come to know of new game releases from watching a few indie gamers to who I'm subscribed. I don't have time to browse new releases or even play the demo. They generally play a beta version provided by the dev a few of weeks before the launch. Don't remember any of them playing this game. Also, I have a habit of using the wishlist as a reminder list for games to check out when I do have time. Sometimes, I will install a demo of a new game but not play it right away hoping to get to it soon. Sometimes, if budget doesn't allow it or it's not my preferred genre of game but I would still like to play it, I'll leave it on the wishlist to be alerted if the game goes on sale. That's because I'm in no rush to get that game as it's not the genre I generally play. So again, fast forward watching someone play is usually how I come to know of a new game and if it is right for me. I have picked up a lot of indie games which I've never played because of time constraints and it was just to support the developer. Usually, these games are developed by really small game studios releasing their first game.
Thanks for the game launch post-mortem, very interesting and helpful to hear how it went. Hitting that 10 steam review threshold is hard! I have a game that is still in EA, and has been torpid at 8/10 reviews for months. Best of luck with the next steps of your game dev journey!
Looks like the algorithm might be blessing this video rn. Got it recommended at below 1k views from a channel I haven't watched before. That rarely happens to me.
Thanks so much for sharing so much detail on how your game release went. I'd watched a few of your videos previously where you mentioned it, so I was interested to see how it went. I'm sorry it hasn't gone as well as you'd hoped, but your attitude of wanting to continue to improve it, combined with your plans to continue with game dev are inspiring! I honestly wish you the best of success. Hopefully one day I will reach the point you guys are at, releasing a game. Even if it isn't very successful, I would be pleased to get to that stage, so I hope you guys are proud of your work because it's still very significant to even make it to where you are. So many would just give up long before. All the best!
7:00 that "Lifetime free license" seems like people added the demo to their library, but didn't install and run it. I did this on multiple occasions when I wanted to add a free game to my library, but not necessarily install and play it immediately. Could also potentially be used by bots that track Steam stuff somehow? So that's why the big difference in numbers.
One advantage of buying the game instead of playing the demo is that you might be able to progress further or have a longer play session as some demos are time and progress limited.
After watching this, I downloaded your demo. Ill be giving it a try. I think you are right that the users are 9k because people havent actually launched it yet. I have downloaded games I bought through bundles and they have yet to be played.
The 10 reviews mark is really important. I barely got any sales in 6 months (200$ net) until I got 10 reviews. After that, I made the same amount but in a month and it is still going. slowly but it adds up.
Thanks a lot for making a realistic video, not only successes need to be shared, it's important to know what to expect from a videogame project and this is a really valuable feedback material !
The biggest thing I've recognized, is having a small enough footprint so you can stick around for a long time to build up a fanbase. People like Jeff Vogel at Spiderweb doesn't have any hit games. But has a good following built up over years. Same for Cliff Harris. So make sure you can stick around for years and keep building up games in a specific genre. That's my plan to do :)
Congratulations for releasing the game (see I didn't wrote a name here? More on that later...). Never heard about your studio or your game before YT recommendation today. Downloaded the demo and would like to share some quick thoughts about both. Video comments (before playing the demo): - Not sure if it makes sense to have both refunds and demo. I am the old school guy so I downloaded your demo. Don't like refunds, but I can understand why it exists in today's world. And since you have both, why would anybody (except us dinosaurs) want to try restricted demo when they can "buy" and download full game and then refund it? - I am backend software developer so I partially understand that you want to deliver mainly functions and logic and the GUI doesn't matter, but again. This kind of thinking doesn't exactly fits in today's world and should not be your defense. There are exceptions (as always), but rather not count on that. - I wanted to download and play at least the demo. Why do you have some white wall behind you and not a poster of the game? Or why the name is not in the title or anywhere actually? Should I really have to find it myself? Another missed opportunity IMHO. It will not cost you more than you already spent. Demo comments: - Returning to my first comment to the video about demos and refunds. Not sure how big is the final game, but the demo is 1.7 GB? Oh my. Where are those days when I had ten or even more demos on one CD. If I have to download that much, why not to actually make that buy/refund the whole game? - I saw some very early "problems" right in the main menu. Why is it not smooth? It is somewhat laggy - probably because of the live background, but it is definitely not the greatest first impression. I had far better experience in games with "better" graphics. - OK, I went to settings and made some changes there. Did you tried to hover over quicksave and autosave? The same tooltip appears for both. Definitely more C bug, than A, but the impression is not great. - So new game it is. There is a tutorial. I quickly found out, that when I made settings change in the main menu for time format not to be 12 hours, but 24 hours, it didn't change it in the game even though I started a new game after I made that change. - Not sure, but I think I was not able to differ between morning and afternoon in the 12 hours setting. No in game day/night cycle, no AM/PM next to hours. Nothing. - I am in the tutorial, but how can I end the game? Maybe go back to main menu, change settings or even close the game entirely? No button for that. The only way is to press the Esc on my keyboard? If the pause button should do that, than It doesn't at least in the tutorial. - Rotating the camera? I was not able to rotate it to the "Alt+A" position. Maybe problem with my keyboard? Not sure. - Building/selecting buildings and so on. I made a road and then wanted to click on a building, but it wants to build a road in the place of the building. Later in the game I had to find myself that I can open the building by right click on it and then press the arrows or right click on empty space which deselect my current tool (like road building). There is a tutorial for moving with camera (I would say the most unified thing in the games), but not for this functionality? - Where is some info about economy? How much money I am able to make (and how) and how much I have to spent each day? Not been able to find anything. In the tutorial in the demo anyway. - It doesn't feel right if you have to wait so long on 4x speed when you want to repair your first research building. Maybe put some more steps into tutorial to fill the time for production? - So I build that Architects building for researching. How should I make iron sheets? I found it eventually. After clicking on everything and "searching" in the in game wiki. - Why are the scrollbars in the wiki so slow? The one in the settings works fine, but this is a joke. - Why there is no search bar on the Items list in the wiki? - Why not all things are shown in the Items list in the wiki? At least my wanted iron sheets were not there... - There were no indications that the research tree is not whole and you can actually zoom it and scroll through it. - By the time I completed all automation for the building research, I ran out of money and the game ended. I wrote this to help you with your future projects. I always wanted to create some games, but didn't have enough time and ideas to come up with something that I will be able to finish. Just done some game testing in the past, so I am really happy that you were able to publish it. Please don't underestimate UX & UI. Many points above are there because of that. I am not a hardcore player or reviewer, so maybe you could feel that my review is not fair, but because of all those things I was just not as motivated to try the game again and if I purchased it, I would probably want those 16 € back as well. It just didn't feel complete or refined enough to me.
Some degree of customization or mod boosts interest. Need flag in init file to activate your debug logging code so when a customer has a crash and interact with you, you can locate the section of code where the crash occurred. If you can get the state of the code at crash you can begin to locate the bad variable and trace back where the variable got improperly changed.
Some sort of marketing might have helped, i just discovered your game through THIS video and I'm downloading it now. Looks like the kind of game I've been looking for.
