Hi there!

I think this post may get slightly depressing, so, reader discretion is advised.

I'm writing this to summarize what I did during my first game development process and hopefully someone will find it helpful.

So, in 2016 I tried to make a futuristic racing game in Unity. It was just for fun and learning purpouses but I knew I want to try to put it on sale on Steam. I asked some of my friends if they would want to join me in the adventure. And this is probably the first thing not to do because if you ask anybody if they want to help you with creating and selling a game, they will say "sure, absolutely!" and then when you start to assign duties they never text you back again. And that's demotivating.

Couple of months went by, and the game was more or less complete so I decided to put it on the thing that doesn't exist anymore, which is Steam Greenlight. I was extremely excited to see other people comment about my game (seriously it was super cool). My greenlight page wasn't the most popular one, but it was doing pretty good. Eventually the game passed, and was ready to be put in the store. This was truly amazing because it wasn't easy to pass the Greenlight voting.

The game was kind of shitty as I look at it right now, but it was the best I could do back in 2016. It looked kind of like a 4/10 mobile game. Nevertheless people were interested in it since it was unique and there wasn't (and isn't) any games simmilar to it. I posted about it on some gaming forums and some Facebook groups, just to see what people would think about it. And every comment was always positive which made me super excited and happy. Eventually, my game went on sale.

At the beginning my game was selling ok to me, but when I read other people's stories, I understood that my number of sales was below miserable.

Back then Steam had something called 5 "Product Update Visibility Rounds" which means that when you update your game, you can use the "Visibility Round" and your game will somehow be very visible in the store. Essencially you get 500,000 views for one day. This used to dramatically (to me) increase sales, so I used 4 of them in like a week, which is exactly what you're not supposed to do. I left one round for later, because I knew that my game is not the best and I may want to remake it in the future, so the last round may be helpful to get some sales. After about 1,5 month the game was dead and it wasn't selling anymore. I was kind of disappointed but I was waiting to get my revenue.

This is when I got my first big disappointment. On the Steam developer page, my revenue was about $1000 and when I got the payment, it turned out that half the people who bought my game had it refunded. So my total revenue (1,5 month) was around $600. So my game was completely dead. I abandoned it and moved on.

About half a year later there was a Steam Summer Sale which I forgot I applied for and the game made $100. This was the point when I decided to refresh my game. I spent 6 months remaking it and when I was happy with the result, I uploaded it on Steam. I made a sweet trailer and everything and used the final "Visibility Round", expecting to revive my game and start the real indie dev life.

Huge f*ing disappointment #2: As it turned out, Steam changed the "Visibility Round" and now it doesn't do anything because I didn't get 500,000 views in one day... I got 1,276 views in 29 days. 

I started searching for a PR company. I messaged about 8 different companies and one contacted me back. I explained that my game is out already, but I recently updated it. The PR company was cool, very friendly and professional. Unfortunately a revenue share wasn't an option and they weren't cheap (for me). They understood that and not long after that, we made a deal. I won't get into the details, but everything went cool and my game was supposed to get some attention (press announcement). I even got a chance to put my game on the Windows Store, which again, was super exciting. Microsoft guys were extremely nice to work with so if any of you are planning to put your game on sale I strongly recommend considering Windows Store.

For 4 months the PR company was instructing me on how to improve my game. It really was helpful, but come on, 4 months flew by. Although they were professional, suddenly we had a big misunderstanding. Somehow they didn't understand that my game is out already. Anyways, we were getting ready for the announcement and I had to make my website, which cost me some money. Also I had to buy a subscription for a multiplayer service for my game. (It uses Photon Network, I had to buy a subscription so more people could play online at the same time.)(Photon Network is great, strongly recommend it.)

Disappointment #3: I bought a page promotion on Facebook. Estimated: 310,000 people interested, 40,000 clicks to my page. Reality: 0 people interested, 20 clicks to my page.

The announcement happened.

And nothing more. 80 Steam keys for my game went out for the press, 41 were used, 24 websites wrote about my game, 6 hateful comments, 2 positive, 17 more visits on my Steam page, 2 copies sold which doesn't matter because it's to little for Steam to send the payment.

Estimated views of the press coverage: 694,000. Reality: probably less than 300.

I don't give a f*ck at this point about my game which I have worked on for 10 months. I don't care about all the money I spent either. I don't blame anyone. I'm just not sure what not to do in the future. I guess the main lesson here is don't try to revive a game, just move on and computers suck at estimating things.

Now I'm working on another game and I'm planning on making it free to play. I really enjoy making games, but it would be nice to have some feedback from the players.

If any of you want to know something specific about my game or anything, feel free to ask.

I expect nobody to see this post, so I'm probably going to paste it on some other forums.

Cya.

(sorry for the title being slightly clickbaiting)

Sure, here it is.

What resonated with me: If you ask people to help they will say "yeah sure" and then fall through.  It is better to let them ask you, and better still if they offer to do something and really do it before your bring them in.  Game development is so difficult and risky that you have to assume most people will not really be helpful.  

Your game looks really cool. Don't let the low sale numbers discourage you, what matters is that you learned something from the experience. I think you should be proud of having successfully finished and shipped a game, besides you could always showcase this game in your portfolio.

Is that the game?

How long do you usually play your own game? What part of the core gameplay do you consider is most fun about it? What is the reward loop while racing? If you had the choice to play a game when you're done with work, would this be the racing game of your choice for $10? And why?

24 minutes ago, ProfL said:

Is that the game?

How long do you usually play your own game? What part of the core gameplay do you consider is most fun about it? What is the reward loop while racing? If you had the choice to play a game when you're done with work, would this be the racing game of your choice for $10? And why?

 

 

 

 

Yes, that's my game. During the testing I played it countless times, usually for about an 30-60 minutes. I think the most fun part of the gameplay is when you fluently avoid the obstacles. After completing a race you get points to upgrade your bike. If it wasn't my game, I think I would play it after work, especially with friends, in multiplayer mode. I really enjoyed blasting trough those pipe tracks.