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    Home Unlabelled Over 16k Wishlists, we were listed in popular upcoming... how could the release go this bad?

    Over 16k Wishlists, we were listed in popular upcoming... how could the release go this bad?

    May 01, 2020

    Over 16k Wishlists, we were listed in popular upcoming... how could the release go this bad?

    Over 16k Wishlists, we were listed in popular upcoming... how could the release go this bad?

    Posted: 01 May 2020 04:33 AM PDT

    Hi!

    My team and I just released our very first indie game, WarriOrb on Steam this Tuesday.

    I will describe in details how it went (with numbers - spoiler: they are not nice). Hopefully it can help you in some way, and maybe you can help us answer our big question: what the hell just happened?

    It's not that people don't like our game... it's just that they were interested, but... did not end up buying it?

    Before release we had:

    - A free prologue released on Steam, which was "bought" by 80k people and had a very positive review (90% positive, over 200 reviews).

    - Over 16k Wishlists, we were listed in Popular Upcoming

    - Our game was translated to Chinese, Russian, Spanish, and French (and also to Hungarian and Romanian, as we are from those countries)

    We tried to estimate our first week sales based on the numbers provided by Jake Birkett (link).

    It is our first game as a team and it became clear that the marketing/pr agency we worked with did not manage to get any significant coverage. I assumed that our first week sales would end up around 20% of the launch WL, instead of the optimal 50%. My imagined worst case scenario was 10%. Seems like I was hopelessly optimistic : )

    What happened?

    So in ideal case 20% of our sales would come from the wishlists, and the other 80% would come from other places – either from people who hear about our game outside of steam or from people who find us on the platform.

    We did not manage to get significant traffic to our steam page at launch, and our WL conversion rate was a disaster – we failed to get into the New&Trending list, which had a huge impact on the organic traffic we could have.

    The optimal WL conversion should be around 10% for the first week - it seems to be around 1.1% for us. We sold 357 copies so far, and 178 of that came from the wishlists. It is day three, but it seems obvious that even if the sales would stay the same (they won't) our sales per wishlist would be around 0.05 after week one. This means that we managed to undershoot the "0.06 sales. A poor result but also pretty unlikely!" mentioned in the article linked above.

    So what the hell was wrong with our wishlists?

    I have different ideas, I guess some or all of these could contribute to our tragic 1.1%:

    1) Our price was too high and the discount percentage was too low

    Maybe all those people Wishlisting the game assumed a smaller price. We went for 17.99$ and a 17% discount to be under 15$ at launch. I still think it is a fair price (the playtime of the game is between 16-20 hours for the first walk-through, with almost no repetition regarding gameplay), but I think maybe this was our biggest issue, so I would go bellow 10$ if I could launch this game again.

    People reasoning for higher game prices often say that you can always lower the price later, but can't change it the other way around – this might be true, but we will never get into the new&trending, no matter how low we go with the price.

    2) Significant part of the people wishlisting our game does not pay for games at all

    Our free prologue generated at least 33% of our wishlists. It was in the front page of the free to play hub, but not on the front page of steam. Maybe a majority of people who are looking for games in the free to play hub only plays free titles?I assumed that the fact that a huge amount of WL comes from people who played the free prologue would have a positive effect on the WL conversion, not a negative one. Maybe I was wrong?

    3) Significant difference between wishlist and wishlist?

    Our game is not that appealing, we are aware of that. It is slow paced for a platformer and uses a unique bounce mechanic, which feels great once you figured out how it works, but it looks really slow. So maybe most of the 16k people who ended up wishlisting us were not that confident about the game – maybe they were waiting for the game to prove in some way. Or we just fell into the "I'll buy this when there is a 90% discount on it" category – for almost everyone.

    4) Wrong day to release?

    Ok, this is a very unlikely one, but maybe worth considering. The majority of indie games seems to release on Thursday or on Friday – we went for Tuesday, because it was less crowded. Maybe it was less crowded for a reason? Maybe if you get the email about the release of the game you wishlisted, you are more likely to buy it closer to the weekend?

    What do you think? Which of the 4 could have the most influence? Any other reason you can think of behind the 1.1% conversion rate?

    submitted by /u/El4th
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    Valve drops support for SteamVR on macOS to focus on Linux & Windows

    Posted: 01 May 2020 10:19 AM PDT

    My first pass on an inventory like RE2 Remake

    Posted: 01 May 2020 05:53 AM PDT

    Hobbyists, how has quarantine affected your productivity?

    Posted: 01 May 2020 02:12 PM PDT

    Presumably some of you have some more free time, yet now have to struggle with additional anxiety and isolation. Just curious how you're holding up and if you've seen a positive or negative affect on your dev time?

    submitted by /u/vtgorilla
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    FNA 20.05 (Microsoft XNA4 framework reimplementation) is out with a brand new 3D graphics library 'FNA3D'

    Posted: 01 May 2020 10:46 AM PDT

    NeoAxis Engine 2020.2 Released

    Posted: 01 May 2020 03:49 AM PDT

    Drawing ballistic trajectory

    Posted: 01 May 2020 05:54 AM PDT

    Post Processing in Unreal Engine 4

    Posted: 01 May 2020 09:06 AM PDT

    Overhang over river in procedural terrain using marching cubes and perlin noise combinations

    Posted: 01 May 2020 04:23 PM PDT

    For our first series, we decided to recreate the character controller from Hollow Knight, one of our favorite 2D game! Let's see our to recreate it in Blueprints!

    Posted: 01 May 2020 07:32 AM PDT

    The devs of Astroneer are streaming the 3d modeling process of one of their new suits right now!

    Posted: 01 May 2020 04:11 PM PDT

    Any suggestions on an easy Stream API setup?

    Posted: 01 May 2020 03:54 PM PDT

    I'm creating a 2D rogue-like multiplayer and I want to simply send the coordinates of each player and get the consolidated coordinates of all players back in a real-time stream. Using PhaserJS for the client.

    So any services out there that meet my needs easily?

    submitted by /u/alxw
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    How do you scale your game ?

    Posted: 01 May 2020 03:51 PM PDT

    Hello ! I have just started developing video games and I am starting a new project. If I am planning on making a level how do I scale the assets accordingly ? Do I scale them 1:1 ? And if not 1:1 what type of info I need to keep in mind while scaling down my world ? Will the textures be affected ? How do I work everything out ? Thank you !

    submitted by /u/C4_Omer
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    Thoughts on this monetization system?

    Posted: 01 May 2020 03:28 PM PDT

    So, I recently thought up a potential monetization system that would encourage both legit reviews of the game, filter them from the bogus ones, and encourage more gameplay. Would like thoughts on it, or info on if it has been done before, etc.

    So, similar to Halo Reach, you have a game that has a series of specific achievements and challenges. When these achievements are obtained, say completing level one, or more thorough ones like finding all the secret easter eggs or hidden objects, you get a token worth a certain amount of redeemable points. You then go on the site, (possibly watch a short gamer related ad and/or take a survey for your opinion on certain aspects of the game) then redeem your points, and after you accumulate enough you can cash them in for actual substantive things, like gift cards, discounts on other games, etc.

    You then can apply the same thing to multiplayer, too.

    This way, you can tell if people reviewing the game are either trolls or legit players, get more in depth opinions on the game design, gameplay, etc, and more players doing more playtime.

    submitted by /u/TheBooshNooshian
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    Phaser Integration with Angular and Electron

    Posted: 01 May 2020 03:12 PM PDT

    Hello, I'm new to this sub. I'm starting to do some work with Phaser, as I am pretty familiar with typescript, html, and css. I started a project and got some work done before figuring I should strip back the assets and some implementation to provide a clean little template. I have a repo for it and thought I might share:

    ​

    https://github.com/TBosak/game-template

    ​

    Enjoy! It's doing what I need it to for now, but I am hoping some interested parties might fork and improve on it. ;)

    submitted by /u/tbosk
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    Corona SDK goes open source, and rebrands to Solar2D

    Posted: 30 Apr 2020 09:28 PM PDT

    From their email newsletter:

    • Corona Labs is now officially shut down
    • Vlad, the main developer, will continue to maintain the engine with crowdfunded resources (Patreon and GitHub Sponsors)
    • All new releases will exist on their GitHub, including updated plugins
    • Appodeal have agreed to fund "lights on" upkeep of the engine, and update plugins
    • They began to think about rebranding Corona before the pandemic as they thought it was tied to a closing company, and COVID pushed it over the line. The engine is now called Solar2D. Everything "Corona SDK related you come across will still work with Solar2D.

    Other notes:

    • They updated their forums
    • Most crowdfunding resources will fund contractors
    • You dont need do migrate projects (i.e. should work out of the box with Solar2D)
    • Most plugins are already open source so they'll be available
    • Third party plugins will work with a new third party feature or by manually adding the plugin to your game
    • You don't need to move to Native if you dont want to
    • They will be open with their funding data if you contribute more than $50 a month
    • Vlad will make the engine fail safe and unreliant on him

    The future roadmap involves:

    • Decoupling everything from Corona Labs
    • Supporting AndroidX
    • Moving from OpenGL to Metal
    • Generic maintenance and updates

    With adequate funding, these "wants" will be worked on:

    • Improvements to HTML5 Support
    • Nintendo Switch support

    https://solar2d.com

    submitted by /u/_temp_variable
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    What language should a lone programmer be using besides pygame?

    Posted: 01 May 2020 01:51 PM PDT

    I have a certificate in python, and been teaching myself pygame using a free textbook my professor was thinking of using for a class he was building though I probably won't be able to take. I've found the language limiting for a number of reasons. Can't compile, no way to have more than one window (more of a hindrance than I initially thought, and yes I know about tkinter but I don't know if I can open more than one window with that either, I've only ever made a program in it that translated a URL link into a bbcode link), apparently runs graphics purely with the cpu rather than your graphics card, no sound files playing at the same time, you get the idea. And I've never actually developed a full game besides a snake clone yet, so there may be more that I don't know about.

    I've been thinking that pygame may not be what I should seriously be using. I was mainly looking to make games for my own amusement, and perhaps share them online for free, so obviously I'm not willing to invest in expensive programs to do so. I would be happy if I could build up enough skill to make a digital card game, though I acknowledge that may always be beyond me. I looked into SDL, but that's apparently for teams of programmers, not lone individuals who aren't seriously expecting an income out of what they're making. I also was thinking of Java, but that's also an interpreted language so there will come a day where I won't be able to run my own programs anymore, like what's happened with Flash recently. And for the record, I know Java and Javascript are separate languages, but I only have a certificate in the first and I don't know which is used for making games, or both. I showed my professor a video I found of some guy making a snake clone in Java, but he informed me he was actually using Javascript. And no, I never liked c++; it just requires too much typing.

    So, does anyone have any suggestions for alternatives? I really don't know what else I could be looking at. Flash is dead, c++ doesn't appeal to me, the only other programming languages I have a certificate in are java and python (all my other certificates are for web design and networks), and I really don't know what all is out there to choose from. I'm a beginner to this and I need help.

    submitted by /u/IXBlackHeartXI36
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    Babylon.js Weekly Video: Introducing Playground Templates

    Posted: 01 May 2020 01:24 PM PDT

    HOW TO PIXEL ART - COMPLETE Tutorial For BEGINNERS

    Posted: 01 May 2020 12:28 PM PDT

    I wrote an article about how to become a Community Manager in the games industry

    Posted: 01 May 2020 12:21 PM PDT

    Business side of development

    Posted: 01 May 2020 08:29 AM PDT

    Hello i'm a 17 year old about to apply for college in a few months and i'm planning to go into accounting and possibly get a MBA. I would like to know how is the finance side of a game development studio? do they have the same office environment as the game developers? Do the executives of of big gaming companies like ubisoft and bethesda come from the finance side or the game development side ? I always wanted to be a computer engineer until i took physics, im good at math (algebra, geometry, stats) but physics i suck out. I always wanted a job that mixed business and video gaming or computers.

    submitted by /u/kevify11
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    A bunch of layered energy shaders in Godot

    Posted: 01 May 2020 01:29 AM PDT

    Kalorian Jam - 72hr Game Jam kicking off on May 8, 2020!

    Posted: 01 May 2020 11:47 AM PDT

    Kalorian Jam - 72hr Game Jam kicking off on May 8, 2020!

    My team at CONTACT Systems is hosting a Game Jam to celebrate the launch of our Kalorian Marketplace! It's a digital event and open to all, so please feel free to join us or share with anyone you think might be interested.

    Event Details:

    • Over $5K in total cash prizes
    • Use any game engine or tools you'd like, it just needs to be playable in HTML5
    • No team size limits
    • Submissions will be handled directly via itchio
    • The Secret Theme will be announced on May 7th via email and our social channels

    Learn more about the Jam and how to register on itch.io!

    ​

    https://preview.redd.it/6brkdmcl87w41.jpg?width=2160&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e7631d128890886c4ff50402dc677094ebde66ef

    submitted by /u/geekblz
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    We're Hosting a Gamedev Challenge!

    Posted: 01 May 2020 11:31 AM PDT

    Hello, everyone ! Every month my friend Nat and I create a challenge for gamedevs to have some fun in.

    We call it the Unofficial Pixeland Challenge because it replaces the now cancelled Pixeland Community Challenge (owned by the asset maker Kenney)

    The Unofficial Pixeland Challenge for this month: Create a game using a maximum of 3 colours displayed at any one time.

    For prizes, we've got three awesome premium asset packs! Choose from a huge tileset, 3D hex tiles, or RPG assets!

    Entries will be judged on graphical quality, uniqueness, gameplay, and technical quality.

    The challenge will last until the 1st June - 12pm GMT. Hopefully you have as much fun with this challenge as we had coming up with it! You can find all the information on the itch.io page, here: https://itch.io/jam/unofficial-pixeland-challenge-2

    Good luck,

    - Nat and Jhonxay!

    submitted by /u/Jonzhay
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