In November 2017 I created a small indie game called Final Storm and I published it on Steam and Itch.io. I was under no illusions that the game would be the next Flappy Bird or Minecraft. I did not think it would make a ton of money, but I did want to push through the entire lifecycle of creating, marketing and publishing to see if I could make enough to recoup the time I put into it.
A few facts about the game:
- It took me 6 weeks to make. Let’s call it 240 hours.
- My initial estimation was 2 weeks.
- Core gameplay was written in a week, the rest was art, tuning, testing, debugging, more testing, Steam integration, and other various elements that required polishing.
- I used all FOSS software - Godot Engine, GIMP, Audacity, gcc (well, I guess Visual Studio and XCode weren’t FOSS, but I couldn’t do much about them).
- I coded primarily on Linux, but also Windows and Mac throughout the development process to make sure it ran well on all platforms.
- I had 6 beta testers.
I intentionally kept the game simple in scope. I’ve been a software engineer long enough to know that even the simplest scopes become complex very quickly, so my goal for this project was to keep it stupid simple and price it accordingly. I wanted to create an arcade style game that you can sit down with for 5 to 10 minutes and have fun. Pretty much what an arcade style game should be. Not some epic slog with 100 hours of gameplay. There’s no way I could finish something like that as a solo developer. I think in general I did pretty good at keeping that scope.
So my rules were pretty simple:
- single player 2D arcade game
- polished content over quantity of content
- simple gameplay where difficulty was a function of level
- a single arena
- save local high scores
I ended up adding achievements as one of my few bits of scope creep because it added a new measure of accomplishment to the game (and some people are very strongly driven by achievements).
Given the scope and scale of the game I figured I could sell it for about the cost of an energy drink, or less than a drink at Starbucks :)
So how did the game do?
So far, the game has sold less than 200 units between Steam and Itch.io. My goal was 5,000 which means I’ve missed the mark quite a bit so far. Right now I’m averaging less than $1.00 per hour and that doesn’t count the $100 Steam listing fee, or any of the advertising costs I’ve incurred. So at this point I’ve probably broken even on those expenses and made $0.01 per hour :) Despite the low earnings, the game continues to make sales here and there so each one is a small step towards hitting that goal. I chose to look at this as a gigantic learning experience.
It's not Failure, It's a Learning Experience!
I read it time and time again, but didn’t quite get it until I fell prey to it. You have to market your game long before it comes out. You have to build a community. This is something that quite frankly, I suck at. And I ignored that advice. I’m not sure if it’s because I have this slightly introverted engineering mindset (probably), or if I'm just missing some secret formula to success. Somehow in my head I thought “I’ll just tweet about it with the right tags and people will see it”.. Well, hehe - that’s not quite how it works. So you either have a pre-established community that you sell to who in turn, give some word of mouth advertising, or you have to funnel the world to your storefront. I found myself having to do the latter.
When you’re not trying to sell something, you see the bombardment of advertising on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and you just tune it out. When you’re trying to sell something, you’re immediately on the opposite side of that equation and trying to figure out how to get someone to pay the slightest bit of attention to your post (much less engage with it).
Lesson learned - build the community first.
I did do a few things right. I reached out to a number of Youtubers. I emailed a ton of them and offered keys to them. A few decided to review my game and that was great feedback and definitely contributed to customers. The best and most influential review I got was from Welsknight Gaming who released his review just before the release of the game. That definitely helped:
Speaking of Advertising
When it comes to paid advertising, my best results have been using Facebook Ads. Not only were their prices better than the other platforms, their tools allow you to fine-tune your audience. If my game were priced higher, I could justify using FB Ads, but my return is just below break-even with my current margins so pumping money into ads for this game is hard to justify.
The World is Playing
I was very surprised to see analytics begin to come back from the two stores. To date, the U.S. accounts for only about 15% of my sales. Russia holds the most with almost 20% followed closely by Western Europe and then Asia combined was another large chunk! This blew me away! I guess I was expecting that since my game wasn’t internationalized that I would only get a few sales outside of the U.S. but I was VERY VERY wrong in that assumption. This also means that I will give strong consideration to internationalizing my next game.
Analytics from one of the stores.
Linux Lives Matter
I LOVE developing in Linux. It just feels “right”. And so I did most of my game development in Linux because sometimes you just need to get stuff done :) As a Linux fanboy I’ve always been disappointed at the games available for it. Don’t get me wrong, more and more people are putting games out on Linux, but it still falls behind the curve a little. So I submitted to gamingonlinux.com and the game was reviewed there. On the day the review released, I got a pretty good spike in Linux orders on both store fronts. I also tagged a few tweets with #Linux and would see bumps in sales based on those.
People only buy when it’s on sale.
It’s pretty crazy. When the product is on sale, I get a small continuous stream of sales. As soon as the product is full price, the sales curve flatlines! I find it a little funny since the game is less than $2.00 anyway. But somehow, discounting it a few cents makes a difference in the perception of value.
Steam or Itch.io
If you’re making a game and asking this question - here’s my response. If you want to make money - put your product on Steam. You can’t argue with the numbers. Steam has an obscenely large community! Anyone who is a gamer knows what Steam is, but many gamers still don’t know Itch.io so that’s it.. Now, with that said I LOVE ITCH.IO.. Their interface is tremendously easier to work with than Steam, and I like the business model much better in general. But Steam is where your customers are, so if you’re trying to sell a game, sell it where the customers are.
I can also say that Itch.io accounts for approximately 10% of my total sales. I don't know if that's typical between Itch.io and Steam or not? It seems logical to me based on user base between the two stores.
Would I do it again?
Absolutely! It was an awesome experience to bring something to life and carry it through the full product lifecycle by myself. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed in the sales, but I’m learning and having fun. That’s what matters :)