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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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!
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
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.
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
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!!
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!
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!
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
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!
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.
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!
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 UA-cam. 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!
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! :)
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.
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!!!!
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.
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!
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
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
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 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!
I watch a lot of devlogs and have seen a pattern of their games not converting wishlists. You mentioned this UA-cam 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'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.
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 !
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.
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
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. 😁✌️
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. :)
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 UA-cam 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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Thanks for great input here! Very informative. Bought your game to support you guys. I wanted to start developing my own game, but I have 0 support on this and an ADHD, so chances are pretty low, but I'll continue to fight.
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).
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.
Congrats on the first launch and thank you for the transparency and interesting video. One thing that you can't measure in dollars is the reputation for releasing. You're more likely to get sales on the next game, even if it isn't as fun as the current one, just for the fact that you have built some credibility. Keep at it.
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.
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.
We've got a NEW VERSION with more stats and insights here: ua-cam.com/video/LMNkWDx4vy8/v-deo.html One more question we forgot to cover in the video: "But why didn't you do Early Access" So answering here to get ahead of all your comments. At first we never wanted to do EA because this conflicts with our own personal morals. Nobody on the team here really likes Early Access games, as they often get abandoned by the dev (I know, I know, there are plenty of good EA games as well). Instead we had set out to deliver a full experience the moment the game launched. As we all started this game when having another job, we could also prioritize our personal morals here instead of purely financial gain. Early access games are also very polarizing, with a lot of people out there who would also only want to buy the game once it's fully released, and it bring a whole extra load of community and update management along with it. There are also definitely advantages of EA, such as more user feedback, you can get funding earlier in the development process, and building a very close, supportive community. Doing EA well also usually requires a very long time of pushing extra updates, features,... Games like Captain of Industry and Satisfactory both have been in development for >7 years. As said in the video as well, we were already kind of burnt out on Forge Industry, after just 1.5 years, and didn't want to spend our whole time as gamedevs on only our first game, which wasn't even supposed to be more than a simple technical learning experience. Instead we'd rather deliver a good experience (but maybe not great) as our first game, learn from it, and make sure our next games are even better. That doesn't mean that EA is all bad, and it can fit certain games. It could most certainly fit ours, but we simply wouldn't have been able to deliver a good EA experience, so we didn't. This was a very hard video to make (or at least, to publish), but I hope that you all can draw some valuable lessons from it. - M
Good points and great response! I was about to ask about Early Access and I totally agree that it's fine approach when somebody wants a 'dream game', but is worse in case of smaller releases. I'd personally also stay away from doing an Early Access.
I beleive this was a hard video to create, but great also. You show it you guys really like this profession and learnt a lot from it. Lot offl game dev don't so brave as you and most of the time the world only see the big succes / shines, but you guys shows the process also. As you said on maybe it is not looking a big succes yet (althought as you said you plan to.make improvements so I veleive it can still change), but you learnt a lot in the game publishing processes, ant this is alread a big thing because most of us even dont released a game and dis not earn even a penny. So huge congrat! Keep going yout work on this game or on an other as you wish. I Will follow your works.
Early Access is definitely a hard thing to do right. Even though the genre isn't my cup of tea, I must say the graphics design looks nice & consistent.
There are free or low cost marketing actions you can do to increase your success MASSIVELY. From your chart I saw that you released in the middle of the month which is a big mistake. Simply releasing on the 31st or 1st will increase your sales because people will just have gotten paid. Other things to do is free SEO and search engine submissions for your website, then posting to reddit and other social media sites when you launch. These are things that would take ZERO $ and maybe 10-20 hours of work but will make a 10x impact in your sales which can help bring you over the threshold to going viral. Put in the marketing effort, it is CRUCIAL to your success. Your game looks great and I hope these tips will help you
"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." -Shigeru Miyamoto The first impression is the greatest feat, especially for games. Some devs think they can slap the EA sticker on their game and that the "Community" will carry them through it, but it's not that simple. If players first impression of the game is bad then like Miyamoto said, that game for a lot of those people will be forever bad. Personally I wouldn't put my game into EA if it wasn't basically complete. I think of EA as a glorified beta test. Or as a glorified polishing period. Not a kickstarter.
Interesting, thanks for sharing! I haven't looked at your game, but judging based on your mindset here alone, I think you two are doing so much right that I would be very confident you'll see good success in the future.
Thank you for sharing you experience launching your first game! It's very insightful for me as I've started working on my first game. I prefer these type of videos as they provide a more realistic view on what to expect. Subscribed for sure 👍🏽
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.
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).
Thanks so much for sharing - you're truly giving back to the gamedev community with this and it's much appreciated. Welcome to the crazy indie world and I'm positive your next release will be more successful.
Loved this! Thank you for being able to talk about this with a bit of humor and positivity but not filling it with over positivity either. Great work I'm a follower now!
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)
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.
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.
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 :)
Lower your expectations and you will be less disappointed. Very few people hit a home run on the first attempt at anything. Keep working on making games people love to play and you will succeed. Good luck
I am happy for you guys. You produced a game and published it. That's great ...however I think this genre you choose is not fun without the multiplayer having friends playing each other is GOLD guys
Love the insights and honesty of your analysis of how your first game release went. The journey is more important than crossing the finish line. Sure you can celebrate the achievement and enjoy the moment. But how you got there is what you should remember. As for debugging the game crashes. That’s kind of related to your experience as a developer. You have to invest into writing the tools for debugging field issues. But I get it if you have limited resources it’s sometimes hard to set your priorities
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.
They are really interesting !
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 is a Top Tier comment. Bravo!
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 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.
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
You need passion for game dev addiction is why most people quit after the first fail
@@mate1_devBest comment
Well sadly people write off devs if they don't deliver 100 percent perfect content every time
@@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.
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.
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.
amazing insight!
tbh i'll take your advices myself
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.
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.
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…
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!
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
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 :)
Good luck
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.
I found this channel yesterday and I think I've watched 80% of your videos already 😂
Update: just bought the game
Thanks for the support!
-T
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
My favourite saying is "You can't be learning and excelling at the same time" onwards and upwards guys 👍
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!!
Keep up your good works, hope this encourage cheers
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!
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!
Thank you so much for being this honest and upfront!
Hope your next project will fare better on launch!
I just stumbled on this video. Never seen you guys, or play your games. But I like you guys. Keep making games. I'll definitely check out your games.
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
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!
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.
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!
thank you for being so transparent about this experience, and for sharing your findings and theories. I found the video very informative!
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 UA-cam. 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!
Same happened to me with my first android app but i applied what i learned in my second app and it was a totally success
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! :)
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.
thanks for sharing and best of luck. keep working on it and learning from the experience 🙂
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!!!!
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.
yo, thanks for sharing your story, I'm definitely gonna watch your second game devlogs and best of luck!
As a solo indie dev myself, this was really interesting to hear!
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!
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
Really interesting video guys! Thanks for being so transparent, its been super insightful for someone looking to release their own game as well!
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
First time here. Thanks for sharing such valuable data and keep making more games!
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
Thank you for that. I love watching your video and the fact that you share your actual results makes you more of an authority in my eyes 👏👏👏
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!
I watch a lot of devlogs and have seen a pattern of their games not converting wishlists. You mentioned this UA-cam 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'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.
As I'm building my first solo dev game, I've been following your videos a lot. Thanks for the content!
Thank you so much for the honesty! It helps us feel like we're not alone...
Thank you for showing actual numbers and sharing your experience!
Love this transparency and reflection! Keep it 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 !
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.
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
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. 😁✌️
Listening to you guys talk about your experiences and learnings, I have little doubt you guys will succeed in the future. Keep on keeping on!
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. :)
Thanks for sharing all those details!
As a data enthusiast, I found all of this fascinating
Keep up the great content
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 UA-cam 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.
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.
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.
Thank You very much ... im workin on my own game and this videos really help me ;) and will more ... so thank u ;)
As someone trying to get into game development I really appreciate this and the insights. We all improve together with this type of transparency.
For someone who is taking first steps this is invaluable and honest feedback. Thx for sharing your insights.
Keep going at it guys! I’m so excited to see your next project from start to finish!
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.
Just want to say thank you and I wish you guys great success.
Thank you for this video, and respect for your complete honesty. Subscribed!
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!
Thanks for great input here! Very informative. Bought your game to support you guys.
I wanted to start developing my own game, but I have 0 support on this and an ADHD, so chances are pretty low, but I'll continue to fight.
Sad to hear your game didn't go well. Subscribed to stay updated to your progress in the future.
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).
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.
Great video! You have my sub. Even tho the game is not selling as good as you had hoped, your ahead of many indy devs by having a published game.
I love how this shows off the real journey in this industry! Thank you :)
Congrats on the first launch and thank you for the transparency and interesting video. One thing that you can't measure in dollars is the reputation for releasing. You're more likely to get sales on the next game, even if it isn't as fun as the current one, just for the fact that you have built some credibility. Keep at it.
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'm so impressed with you guys' positive attitude and transparency! Best of luck moving forward
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.
We've got a NEW VERSION with more stats and insights here: ua-cam.com/video/LMNkWDx4vy8/v-deo.html
One more question we forgot to cover in the video:
"But why didn't you do Early Access"
So answering here to get ahead of all your comments.
At first we never wanted to do EA because this conflicts with our own personal morals. Nobody on the team here really likes Early Access games, as they often get abandoned by the dev (I know, I know, there are plenty of good EA games as well). Instead we had set out to deliver a full experience the moment the game launched. As we all started this game when having another job, we could also prioritize our personal morals here instead of purely financial gain.
Early access games are also very polarizing, with a lot of people out there who would also only want to buy the game once it's fully released, and it bring a whole extra load of community and update management along with it.
There are also definitely advantages of EA, such as more user feedback, you can get funding earlier in the development process, and building a very close, supportive community.
Doing EA well also usually requires a very long time of pushing extra updates, features,... Games like Captain of Industry and Satisfactory both have been in development for >7 years.
As said in the video as well, we were already kind of burnt out on Forge Industry, after just 1.5 years, and didn't want to spend our whole time as gamedevs on only our first game, which wasn't even supposed to be more than a simple technical learning experience.
Instead we'd rather deliver a good experience (but maybe not great) as our first game, learn from it, and make sure our next games are even better.
That doesn't mean that EA is all bad, and it can fit certain games. It could most certainly fit ours, but we simply wouldn't have been able to deliver a good EA experience, so we didn't.
This was a very hard video to make (or at least, to publish), but I hope that you all can draw some valuable lessons from it.
- M
Good points and great response! I was about to ask about Early Access and I totally agree that it's fine approach when somebody wants a 'dream game', but is worse in case of smaller releases. I'd personally also stay away from doing an Early Access.
I beleive this was a hard video to create, but great also. You show it you guys really like this profession and learnt a lot from it. Lot offl game dev don't so brave as you and most of the time the world only see the big succes / shines, but you guys shows the process also. As you said on maybe it is not looking a big succes yet (althought as you said you plan to.make improvements so I veleive it can still change), but you learnt a lot in the game publishing processes, ant this is alread a big thing because most of us even dont released a game and dis not earn even a penny. So huge congrat! Keep going yout work on this game or on an other as you wish. I Will follow your works.
Early Access is definitely a hard thing to do right.
Even though the genre isn't my cup of tea, I must say the graphics design looks nice & consistent.
There are free or low cost marketing actions you can do to increase your success MASSIVELY. From your chart I saw that you released in the middle of the month which is a big mistake. Simply releasing on the 31st or 1st will increase your sales because people will just have gotten paid. Other things to do is free SEO and search engine submissions for your website, then posting to reddit and other social media sites when you launch. These are things that would take ZERO $ and maybe 10-20 hours of work but will make a 10x impact in your sales which can help bring you over the threshold to going viral.
Put in the marketing effort, it is CRUCIAL to your success. Your game looks great and I hope these tips will help you
"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." -Shigeru Miyamoto
The first impression is the greatest feat, especially for games.
Some devs think they can slap the EA sticker on their game and that the "Community" will carry them through it, but it's not that simple. If players first impression of the game is bad then like Miyamoto said, that game for a lot of those people will be forever bad.
Personally I wouldn't put my game into EA if it wasn't basically complete. I think of EA as a glorified beta test. Or as a glorified polishing period. Not a kickstarter.
Interesting, thanks for sharing! I haven't looked at your game, but judging based on your mindset here alone, I think you two are doing so much right that I would be very confident you'll see good success in the future.
Thank you for sharing you experience launching your first game! It's very insightful for me as I've started working on my first game. I prefer these type of videos as they provide a more realistic view on what to expect.
Subscribed for sure 👍🏽
seems like a good learning process, good luck with your 2nd!
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.
Good luck guys, its the same with the music industry, very hard for solo artists like myself to sell new albums also.
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).
Thanks so much for sharing - you're truly giving back to the gamedev community with this and it's much appreciated. Welcome to the crazy indie world and I'm positive your next release will be more successful.
Loved this! Thank you for being able to talk about this with a bit of humor and positivity but not filling it with over positivity either. Great work I'm a follower now!
Thank you so much for sharing this vital information! Best of luck with your next project :)
Very enlightening. Thank you for the video.
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)
Thanks for making this video and being so transparent. Also, big congrats on the launch!
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.
Thanks for sharing, I am very interested in the finance of video games lately.
Amazing journey! Loved your candour. Wishing you a lot of success for future games :)
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.
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 :)
Lower your expectations and you will be less disappointed. Very few people hit a home run on the first attempt at anything. Keep working on making games people love to play and you will succeed. Good luck
I am happy for you guys. You produced a game and published it. That's great ...however I think this genre you choose is not fun without the multiplayer having friends playing each other is GOLD guys
Thank you for the transparency
Love the insights and honesty of your analysis of how your first game release went.
The journey is more important than crossing the finish line. Sure you can celebrate the achievement and enjoy the moment. But how you got there is what you should remember.
As for debugging the game crashes. That’s kind of related to your experience as a developer. You have to invest into writing the tools for debugging field issues. But I get it if you have limited resources it’s sometimes hard to set your priorities