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Indie Dev Marketing Research, June 2020 - Part 1

5 years ago - Edited 5 years ago8,027 words

I'm doing research into how to make money from indie games! Here's a loooong look (a big chunk of which is quotes) at a couple of postmortems which help shed light on where money can come from, and how similar indie devs' stories often are.

I'm set on developing Divine Dreams in some form, but I'm still in the process of deciding what exactly that form should be. Three episodically-released 'Seasons'? All 18 episodes in one big RPG for which people pay only once? Maybe I compress the story to be more manageable for a single RPG? I very much could streamline some bits. Or do I just release the main game then two separate 'sequels'? And do I release a small 'prologue' episode cheaply, which I could finish by the end of the year quite easily, or would that be a worse option than just making the first chapter of Episode 1 a free demo? There are lots of options and I'm still not sure.

I've given myself a couple of weeks 'off' actual development (I still ended up doing a bunch of concept stuff these past few days anyway though) so then I can focus on researching how other indie devs make their money. I know we've been here a bunch of times before, but I do seem to be making some progress with each return to this. I certainly know a ton more now than when I released Sindrel Song, that's for sure!

Like I said in a previous post, it helps to 'verbally process' information by writing it out in a blog post. Plus I'll have it here for reference in future if I need it, and those of you who are interested in reading about this will hopefully better understand how making money from indie games works too.

There are a few subreddits where indie devs post about their marketing woes, yays, and ways, so I'll mostly be looking through those and posting about what I find. I've already found a handful of things over the past few days that I'll write about here!

I checked r/gamedev first since that seems to have the highest number of subscribers.



I've been dragging my feet about posting about MARDEK on Reddit for a bunch of reasons. I'm afraid of breaking some rule, or getting ignored completely, which would be deflating, and entirely unsurprising based on the attention I see other posts getting. I'm also worried about having my ideas torn to shreds by an audience far less supportive than the one I have here.

Here's a relatively popular (for this subreddit) post I saw, for example: ∞ Pitched 30+ game publishers, none of them wants the game. What's wrong with my game? ∞

Many of the comments on that are supportive and encouraging, but many are also absolutely brutal. They talk about this being a 'shovelware'-looking clone of an outdated game, which makes me wonder if they'd dismiss MARDEK or Divine Dreams as being similarly an outdated genre. I'd say that (J)RPGs continue to be appealing at a more fanatical level than those more throwaway mobile-game-like things ever were, but I also wonder whether that's just wishful thinking. I mean, obviously this developer was passionate and confident enough about his idea to make and then push it, but it didn't mean that thinking was accurate.

I'd been wondering whether to seek out a publisher, whether that'd help immensely with earnings, but this person talked about being rejected by so many, which I don't know if I could psychologically cope with myself! Several people also said that it's not even worth getting a publisher, though I wonder if that's more of an "in this case" here or a more universal truth about indie games publishing.



It seems that 'postmortems' are common enough on this subreddit for me to have encountered a couple in as many days. Here's an extremely long one that I (mostly) read: ∞ Starcom: Nexus, An Indie Dev Story ∞

I'll go through it again, picking out the bits I feel were most interesting to me and/or relevant to my situation:



Interesting.



He was apparently a Flash dev too, though I haven't heard of any of his games. They don't really seem to be my sort of genre, though.

He talks about his primary inspiration for his 'dream game' that he'd like to create being games from before even the console era; impersonal space exploration things. I suppose we're all motivated to create things we grew up with, which can clash with the wants of the world we've grown up into. Someone aged 30 is likely to want to make games they enjoyed when they were 15, but the 15-year-olds of the time want something else. Hmm.



I've never heard of that either. Have you? I wonder what kind of stats it got. His press page mentions making three 'popular' Flash games with a collective total of 6 million plays. Maybe it was around MARDEK's level of 'fame'? Or more?



A common story which should be familiar to you if you've been following me for a while.



Again, this game is unknown to me, but they have fairly generic-sounding titles so I might have seen it before and forgotten. And again, a translation of childlike wonder that's not necessarily relevant anymore.



That's one of the most important bits. Familiar, right? (BUY SINDREL SONG)



Perhaps my experiences of being tracked down by strangers asking for more isn't anything special. Over the years I've thought that represented a kind of 'fame' I once had, but now - especially considering MARDEK's total sales on Steam - I'm wondering if it's less impressive and unusual than I believed.



This is why I never bothered to market either Sindrel Song or the MARDEK Steam port. Publishing in Flash meant the audience came to you; you never had to put any effort in. Things are different now, though, obviously.

Also he says 'hundreds of thousands' and not millions; maybe that's important to gauge the scale of his games' popularity.

Perhaps if I'm going to go with some kind of trilogy release for Divine Dreams, I should include something in-game which asks people to sign up for news of later installments being released? Hmm.



I'm quoting more of this than I intended to because so much of it is an echo of my own situation. Hopefully that means my future might be similar to the one he goes on to describe...

He speaks of switching to Unity, and even having a task tracker, same as me.



Rejection is a powerful demotivator. I've no intention of trying to showcase my games at any games festivals!



So he worked on it for a very long time.



It's hard not to fear failure when you don't exactly have (financial) successes behind you.

I like what I'm doing with Divine Dreams. But I'm also scared of putting it out there and finding out that the world doesn't share my enthusiasm for it - I don't even know how bad I am at it - as was the case with Sindrel Song.



This is a common sentiment I've been noticing among the indie dev communities in the snooping I've done so far. I feel I'm getting less reluctant about it myself too; now looking at Steam stats and graphs is almost enjoyable rather than absolutely dreadful. Forging 'plans of attack' feels like an interesting challenge rather than an anxiety-inducing mountain to climb. Or rather, I'm beginning to lean in that direction, but it's a process, and it's hard to go from completely avoiding something to completely embracing it!



I was so shaken a few days ago because I'd been hoping for something like this with Divine Dreams: while the first might not be very profitable (though I'd hope it would be!), ideally it'd help build reputation and good will among players who'd help invest in a more profitable sequel (or sequels, in my case).



Something I really need to look into - and I'll definitely try over this week and the next - is essentially this: I need to see what other indie devs are or have been up to, and how much those who've finished games - RPGs in particular - have got. The success of things like Undertale give me hope, but obviously that's a huge exception, and I wonder whether there are a ton of Steam RPGs which flop completely. That one I linked to the store page of the other day - something like Crystal Story? - is a good example.



I've only heard a few stories like this myself, but they're enough for me to have serious fears about it.



That's an important thing too, as these are essentially the kinds of things that I need to commit to with Divine Dreams. I've been aiming for the demo for a while, though now I'm unsure of what exactly that demo should be. Or maybe I should just see it as a beta for a select number of people/patrons?

Point three is what I'm currently looking into.

This article then talks a lot about the specifics of his game, which isn't relevant (or interesting, really) to me so I'll skip that.



A dozen sounds like a lot to me! I'd choose people I trusted rather than truly random ones as he did - seems like too much risk to me - but I wonder how many of them actually got involved anyway.



I want to do this myself! If I forget, remind me!! He also kept it anonymous, so I should do the same as it might encourage honesty.



This is more... impersonal, but perhaps more professional than what I had in mind. My 'builds' would be each new chapter added to the currently-testing episode, and I was planning on keeping the same testers throughout or giving patrons of a certain tier beta access. Perhaps having fresh faces along the way would be immensely valuable though.



The type of personality traits that incline us towards spending days upon days privately creating, and the ones that motivate marketers to get in people's faces and boast about what they have to sell, are really as different as any traits can be!



THIS IS PERHAPS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING HERE! Promoting the game long before it's done is absolutely crucial to making money from it! Crucial!!

What this means is that as soon as I figure out what I'm doing with Divine Dreams, I should make a Steam page about it. Not when it's done, a couple of weeks from release! ASAP!

I'd do it now, but I'm not sure enough yet about what I'm doing. I'm getting more sure, and I am confident about the big picture ("an RPG starring Dayvha, Nytsky, etc"), but how I'll be structuring and releasing it is a decision yet to be firmly made.



I'll need to do the same, and reading things like this - and something else I'll be talking about later - is helping me to know what path I should be taking. I already do the Twitter thing (when I have something to show, anyway) and I'm working towards the Reddit one. I feel that'll be smoother once I'm on the intended path, though; the next milestone will be having an updated video of the new characters and mechanics.



By contrast, I feel that Divine Dreams might have an advantage by being "An RPG", or even "a solo-made JRPG of contrasts: deeply dark and comically lighthearted, with the options to fight or befriend your foes". Something like that.



This is very much worth paying attention to!

He decided to take the Early Access approach:



What I'm learning from all I read is that the launch week is absolutely everything. It's why I'm not even going to bother advertising MARDEK at this point, as that launch week has already passed.

The success he describes with his own EA is intriguing, but I don't think it'd work for a narrative game like Divine Dreams at all, unfortunately.



I really want to underline this. It's a harder job than you might think, and the uncertainty of it all is incredibly stressful. It's not just me being mentally ill (though maybe actually attempting this path through life is mental illness in itself).



I don't know how he was pricing the game, but a pessimistic estimate of 30k in total for 400 initial sales seems like a big jump to me? If it was $10, so $4000 from those 40 sales, and it sold 3 times that in its lifetime, that's still only $12000... Or maybe the lifetime is considered to be several years, based on something he's read but hasn't mentioned. Hmm.

It's valuable though to know that MARDEK will continue to be on sale from now on, so whatever it's made is only a fraction of what it'll continue to make over the next few years, maybe, even if the extra sales come in a trickle over a long period. Maybe the aim should be to build up many trickles from things like this, Patreon, etc.



So much of this seems carefully, sensibly estimated, whereas when I put MARDEK on Steam I thought "sure, I'll just slap it on there, whatever! It'll probably earn $10k or something, I don't know! Oh? It didn't! I AM NOW DEVASTATED". Yes, uh, I wasn't really seeing it as I probably should have been.



Numbers! Better than MARDEK! But obviously he'd also put in a ton more effort, and he wasn't releasing a port of a 10-year-old game.



Enlightening. Steam displays two values: MARDEK is currently at 894 sales, and has a "Lifetime Steam revenue (gross)" of $7,178 and a "Lifetime Steam revenue (net)" of $6,382. I'd been assuming that the latter was what I got after any deductions, but perhaps there are additional deductions like Steam's cut which mean I actually get a lot less? Hmm.

It does say "(gross revenue, includes VAT, DLC and any bundles)" next to the gross and "(gross revenues less returns, chargebacks, and taxes)" next to the net, but doesn't mention Steam taking their cut. It'd be useful to have that information, Valve!



I suppose one of the values of this Early Access approach is that active beta testers can write reviews on the Steam page... That's a decent amount of reviews!



There are Steam discussion forums?

I meant to do Discord stuff on the weekend. WHOOPS. I didn't forget, I was procrastinating. I'm not exactly in the middle of a beta test though. I need to get better at this stuff for when that time comes. The last sentence there is something to take to heart.

Regarding his graduation from Early Access to full release:



I appreciate these comments about his psychological states, as they do seem to be common for people on this path and not entirely a result of my mental illnesses in my case.



I'd be really happy with something like that! But it seems it's absolutely not the norm. Game dev certainly isn't a path to easy millions, as I once naively thought.



This is what I'd hope for from a trilogy of games: each one would do better than the last due to all I'd learned and acquired along the way.

He talks about the specifics of graduating from Early Access which I don't feel will be relevant to my situation: essentially, other games he monitored were variable in whether this 'second release' apparently increased sales or not, and he was worried he'd not see a spike himself. But then was pleasantly surprised when he got a huge spike of 2000 sales in the first couple of days following official release.



This bit of info here is why I've quoted so much of this here! It really gave me a whole lot of hope, seeing that.

And his final note:



Takes a few tries to get it right!

So... yes, that was long! I didn't mean to quote so much of it and feel bad that I did, but I really feel that I need to read and really absorb more things like this to form the right plan of action and get into the right mental state.

∞ Here is that game on Steam ∞. It currently has 859 reviews, Very Positive overall.

I think a few things are worth noting when comparing it to my (still largely potential) project:

* He was older than I am now when he started with Flash, so maybe he was in his late 30's or even early 40's when he made this? The professional and life experience he had would give him an edge over me, and definitely over a rookie just starting out.

* His games were somewhat popular in Flash, though I wonder if they were less popular than MARDEK. He mentioned 'hundreds of thousands' of plays, but also mentions 6 million plays between them somewhere. I wonder to what extent this helped though.

* His game seems to me like a very impersonal and perhaps outdated genre; he even said he wasn't sure what genre it was, exactly. Definitely a different kind of appeal to what I'm making. It also sounds like the game is one you can get lost in for dozens of hours, unlike the narrative experiences that Divine Dreams will be. Maybe that's a barrier to entry or a source of greater value.

* Early Access works well for that kind of game but wouldn't for Divine Dreams.

I don't know whether I'll be able to achieve that kind of success myself, but it's interesting seeing the actual figures. It doesn't take that many copies sold to generate some serious money (it's still more than 25x what MARDEK sold, but that's a ridiculous comparison since that was a port and I didn't market it).



That was really long, but there's one more thing I want to go over before I call it a day. This video (which, annoyingly, isn't on YouTube): ∞ How much MONEY my first game earned on Steam ∞

Like another video I linked to a few days ago, right off the bat he gives the figure: $7563

This is about the same amount as that other video (from a guy who spent four years on his game), and it's not too different to what I got from MARDEK with essentially no marketing (though I don't know if this is gross or net or what).

I'll watch the video again, making comments here about bits I feel are relevant.

He mentions that he contacted Valve to ask if it was okay to share his sales data. Made me panic a bit at first because it didn't even occur to me that I might not be able to! But thankfully it's not an issue.

Ah, the $7k is the net; the gross is actually a bit higher than MARDEK at $9k vs $7k gross.

Some numbers that stand out to me: It's on 4276 wishlists; MARDEK's on fewer than half that (1816). However, his returns are much higher, at 8.6% of sales (101/1173) vs MARDEK's 3% of sales (27/894).

So Steam takes its share of 30% from the displayed net, meaning MARDEK's actual earnings are US$4467 currently. I'm not quite ready to buy a mansion just yet!

He got about $5000 from his game in 10 days, and Google says the average annual income in Russia (where he's from) is ~US$6500. So not too bad!

I also notice that his game had a demo; maybe that's the norm?

39 keys he sent out to other people were activated. MARDEK's stats show just 2 activated keys from a couple of testers (hello!). I actually did reply to some of the dodgy stock emails I got asking for free keys, with something like "what about my English language RPG would fit in with your Russian-language YouTube account that mostly features Minecraft videos?", which of course most didn't reply to. One did, though, and his supposed channel had something like 300,000 subscribers, so I asked him further what genre my game was. He sent an "I saw no need to mention the specifics of your own game to you" stock email, to which I replied that it was some impressive evasion and asked him what my game's main character's name was. He actually replied with Mardek's full first, middle, and last names, obviously from just googling it, which impressed me enough to at least give him three keys as an experiment. The next day, I got a message from someone on Twitter saying they'd seen MARDEK keys for resale, so I deactivated them. Oh well, at least I know now.

This guy in the video mentions that youtubers, streamers, and his patrons were the ones who got the keys. I wonder how many patrons he has!

He mentions in the video that his game got overwhelmingly positive reviews, but there are only 28 total and the word says "Positive" rather than "Very Positive" (MARDEK currently has 67 and is Very Positive; many are also quite long and heartfelt).

Ah, he mentions that the short length of the game might be largely responsible for the high percentage of refunds. Would this be the case if I made a prelude chapter which wasn't long enough?

He mentions paying US$235 for an advert on Russian social media. Interestingly, someone who works at Facebook (a behind-the-scenes employee who grew up with MARDEK, not some grinning marketing type) reached out to me and offered to set up an advert for MARDEK on my behalf. What a wonderful gesture, and of course I said yes! We both agreed that it might not amount to much though; it seems indie devs typically don't even bother with Facebook promotion because of the low return, which is a shame. This guy does mention getting 1000 subscribers to his Russian social media group from his advert though.

He also mentions running a Google ad - paid too? He doesn't say - but that it didn't produce any meaningful results.

There's apparently a site called Indieboost, which you pay $100 to to have them send out your game to a bunch of youtubers and twitch streamers. Shockingly, though, it doesn't amount to much, and he said that only 4 youtubers and 5 streamers picked up his keys, and none of them actually made content of his game with them.

Importantly, he mentions - and shows - a long spreadsheet of 90 youtubers he's personally found who cover content similar to what he's made. He mentions spending a month on this, and it's something I probably need to do myself. At some point there was a website set up like this, with a list of youtubers indie devs could contact, but everything changes so fast that it was obsolete quickly. Besides, I'd likely learn a lot by tracking them down myself. It's something I'm scared about in case I encounter a bunch of intimidating, demotivating stuff, but perhaps I'll get used to it over time...

I hate the thought of sending out mass emails to 90 people like that... but I suppose it's better at least to try, and some might bite even if most won't?

All this guy's efforts led to just over 2000 wishlists before release. By contrast, MARDEK had something like 400, I think? Marketing matters!

He mentions that some large and small youtubers played the demo of his game.

Huh, interesting; I'm actually aware of (and don't exactly like) Greystillplays, who actually played this game. I can see how it's in line with the sort of content he creates. His videos get millions of views, so it's interesting seeing how that translates to sales for the game (not much).

Divine Dreams, being a narrative experience, might be tougher for any youtubers to play, though, or if they did it might just spoil the whole thing for players?

He shows his sales graph, which is of course L-shaped, though more jagged than MARDEK's after the initial peak. MARDEK's peak was just above 60, while his was just below 60, but he's got a lot of days with 10-20 sales whereas MARDEK tends to have fewer.



Noteworthy!

He's looking at graphs on Steam that I haven't even seen before. I wonder if I can find them...

Hmm, yes, they're in a stupid place disconnected from the other stats, but I do see some fairly interesting stats which suggest that most of the impressions/sales came from people seeing MARDEK directly on Steam? Not what I would have expected! I think it ended up featured for a while, though I didn't even see that and wasn't told by Steam (just by someone on this site or Twitter).

This guy talks about his game getting on that list too - presumably the equivalent of Kongregate's Front Page - which must have been the one MARDEK was on? He mentions his stayed on for about 10 hours; I've no idea how long MARDEK was on there for (if it ever was).

He says he closely monitored Google Analytics following the release. I was so panicked that I just went and 'rested' for like three days! WHOOPS. Not that it would have changed anything though!

He mentions that even though there were points where he got more traffic to his game page, that didn't necessarily amount to more sales, because it just clearly wasn't interesting enough to people. I wonder, considering that a lot of sales for MARDEK might have come from people finding it on Steam, whether Divine Dreams would be no more obviously appealing? HMM.

Tags seem to help a lot. I feel that these were crucial back on Kongregate, too, and MARDEK did as well as it did because it was so high in the RPG category for a looooong time. It seems a ton of games on Steam use the RPG tag though; both this person's game and the other... Star-something one (Starcom?) had it even though neither of them are RPGs in the sense that Divine Dreams is. Maybe I'd have to use JRPG too, though I wonder if people actually look for that.

He mentions a site called Steam Likes, which provides some useful info? Apparently his game is similar to Medieval Shopkeeper Simulator, Hairy Little Buggers, and Hentai Babes - Servants. I see. Do I even want to know what it says about MARDEK?

He mentions regional differences in sales, though I imagine that's more interesting to him as a Russian - learning the Russians contributed so little to his sales - than to me as someone in the UK who's pretty much expecting that the US will be the primary source of sales and income. Notable that his posting on Russian social media - which cost him money - likely didn't amount to much, and the total sales from Russia only totalled $500 (and that's probably gross).

That's it for the details of that video, but here are a couple of impressions I had of it overall:

His game looks quite amateurish, like one of the typical indie games that clutter up the Steam store and which I'd never personally have any interest in. I do remember seeing something called... Reigns, was it? A game where you were a king and you made decisions by swiping left or right on cards. I played that myself a while back, and saw something about how it was a huge hit? Surely a big inspiration for this guy, though his work comes across as a clone to me. Perhaps Divine Dreams could be called a clone though, of other JRPGs? Hmm. At least being very similar to something well-loved would create pleasant, accessible familiarity in a way that, say, Sindrel Song wouldn't?

Also, I've been wondering for a while whether to make youtube videos myself, either instead of or in addition to these long blog posts. I've noticed some devs have their 'devlogs' on youtube in this format, and at least some of them have hundreds of thousands or even millions of views. Surely that'd be a huge help, and it'd allow me more easily to show stuff off. And I quite like the idea of at least experimenting with it.

However, I've been too insecure about my speaking skills, and my looks in particular. I'm extremely resistant to the idea of actually filming myself, but I see enough other people only providing audio that that might be an option? At least to experiment with. Hmm.

I mention this here because this guy, uh... His Charisma stat isn't exactly stunningly high. I don't mean this to denigrate him at all, as I greatly appreciate what he's made here and that he had the confidence to post it; it's extremely useful! I'd love to help in a similar way. It's actually inspiring seeing that he did, as it feels like it's more of an option for me too.

I'd probably come across as insane or I'd overshare too much or something though... This guy is fairly monotone, but I might be all over the place in a way that might be off-putting. I don't know! I'm insecure!!

I first thought about the youtube thing a few years ago, and actually tried filming myself a handful of times privately as practice, but the results were... well, I don't know, because I couldn't watch them back. Would have been far too uncomfortable! It's hardly unique to me; I remember one of my Psychology lecturers setting up the camera in the lecture theatre once and hiding her face from the camera while setting up so then she didn't have to look at herself. I wonder how youtubers get used to watching themselves on video so much. Bleh.

Anyway, I wonder whether doing a video devlog might help build interest more than loooong blogs restricted to this site might. I'm thinking about it. Maybe I'll do a practice one for myself and see how much it makes me cringe.



This is a ridiculously long post!! A lot of the words are quoted though. I learned a lot from looking through these things in depth, so hopefully if you were mad enough to read all this too, you got something out of it!!