Long term financials of an indie "failure"

[@bitemegames]

Here we are again with some things I realized when editing that were missing: Since the launch until mid October, we've €3.244,97 net (Steam has withholds a part for refunds, and takes 2 months to pay out, we have another €600 ish net from November coming) From our 2 Gameforce Weekends, we made €1.794,78 net, which was just above break-even (€1750 for the booths) The graph is a bit skewed because it didn't include our launch day, which was our best performing day at $500 gross, the first day of our weeklong sale was our #2 day at $320 gross. Some other things we did that increased our sales apart from updates, is reworking our (bad) regional pricing, we now have a pretty good blend of purchases from all over the world. Also, since the launch of our previous sales video, we've gained 10.6K subscribers, and €1,124.85 in AdSense, a big chunk of this (~20%) can be attributed to that launch video. I think that's all, if you have any other comments/questions, feel free to let me know here or in our Discord: discord.gg/WSus22f8aM -M

[@lokosstratos7192]

Love how you guys are always transparent about your journey.

[@OscarRobbing]

Sucks that the game isn't doing better but appreciate just how extremely honest and upfront you guys are being - it's hard enough to discuss failure/lack of success alone but it can be even more difficult to acknowledge it with others. Kudos.

[@Zok]

Hello from Greece! Your level of transparency and honesty is always refreshing, and since starting this channel you seem more comfortable with the camera so you can be more straightforward! Great stuff all around! For the video trailer, I would would be happy to offer my assistance, if you haven't got the time or funds! Least I can do as I m making a game too and your experience has helped me a bunch!

[@ZeroTraceOperative]

Sale price is the new base price. Thats why there's never a need for an indie dev to put their game on sale for any more than the 20% email trigger.

[@gamedevgaming]

Not true, players can actually look for "all time low" and if they see you've had lower or the same sale in the past they won't buy. Steam trained them to except gradual discounts over time

[@cheesymcnuggets]

Above all else, you guys actually created a full game and released it, that's more than so many of us indie devs have achieved, what's even better is that you stuck with it and kept improving the game despite the sales being grim and managed to turn them around. This seems like a good learning experience, your next game will be all the more impressive. Thanks for sharing all this, not many people do so these kinds of videos are very insightful.

[@BLMBRG]

Great Video! I also noticed that you guys aren't actively using the Option to answer some of the Reviews on Steam. For me personally, it's always a good sign if Devs are reacting to Feedback and I'm therefore more willing to buy. It's a free way to show off that you're listening.

[@Antantic_]

Great content, guys! I started watching you even before the release of THAT video, and you are, in general, an example for me of how to run a channel and talk about your games. Respect for the work done, and best of luck to you in the future!

[@gameworkerty]

Speaking as as a game artist, I think you could make your game look dramatically better with a stronger color palette and some mild postprocessing and lighting changes without actually changing any assets. Similarly, your next game has pretty abysmal color theory and its worth spending a few weeks on Adobe Color and studying color just a bit.

[@Viper1Zero]

Congrats on the successes, gents. Truly hoping you guys blast off and become a huge player in the game dev realm!

[@hamzahgamedev]

WOW! Grabbed some popcorn and watching it right now. This is going to be really informative and inspiring! Thanks!

[@B4NTO]

Thanks for all of the insights as always. Enjoy the videos. My feedback for the visuals of the game is that i don't really like the colors, especially of the grass and such things its like too green. I don't know exactly how to describe it but that kind of green I have seen many times for grass and it looks a bit odd. So I would recommend adjusting the colors of the game for an easier visual overhaul, perhaps look into some post-processing etc :) best of luck with this project and upcoming 😊

[@Ferenc-Racz]

Guys.. I think you are the perfect example for the case-study why it good to create devlogs (and other indiegamedev videos). With this videos and honest you managed to build a community who really likes you, and regardless of the start/launch on our way we also tried to help you guys. (as you showed on the graphs) some of us bought the game to support you, some of others just dropped a review or played the demo by the reason of feedback / testing bugs / suggest improvements. SO who cares you are nor a regular indiegame dev team? Who told you need to be? ;) That is the wonder of the indeie teams. :You need to be creative (and you are) and make games for players you likes you AND/OR your games. respect for all of the team. You learnt alot from the first lunch, and we waiting for your next game which will be even better and hopefully a bigger playerbase will find your games from games to games.. :)

[@studioprimitive]

Awesome insight. Have you ever combined a weekly discount with a visibility round?

[@Voyageonyt]

Thanks for sharing all the data! Interesting to see how it all works on the back end. Looking forward to what games you come up next!

[@IdealIdleIncremental]

Thank you for sharing. For me, it's always interesting to watch this kind of videos with detailed breakdown of games financial preformance. Looking forward for more videos like this.

[@Surkk2960]

As someone who wants to get into game dev more, coding alone I struggle with, but marketing and sales are definitely a field that is extremely hard for me to comprehend. Thanks for showing some info about the marketing and postmortem of your game.

[@GlidingStarGames]

Thanks for being so transparent about your Story

[@keldzh]

I guess there is a difference between games for PC and for consoles. I remember in the book Press Reset was example of an kind of indie studio and then I saw recording of Gwen Frey talk at Konsoll 2018 about the same situation. After their AAA experience they thought most of the sales would be during the launch. But it turns out that most of the sales were much later. The reasoning was because of less or almost not existent marketing people don't know about indie games at launch :) I guess so many people interested in first day sales because developing is a long process and people really need result right after the launch. PS I've got an email that Forge Industry in on sale while I was watching this video :D I hope one day I'll buy the game.

[@DustinDustin00]

I bought your game a while ago and finally started playing it today. I'm just looking for casual fun, so I'm thrilled I can bounce it over to Snow world on Easy. Thank you for a delightful winter holiday season vacation game!

[@sealsharp]

Appreciate the openness.

[@Definesleepalt]

i love u guys , the take you have on indie dev is super important for new people coming in the space , failure is expected but some of us are scared to fail initially

[@Mudtek]

You guys are doing great! I know how much work it is to make a game and then do KZbin at the same time - you both are are just going to get better and better. Look forward to your content.

[@corrindon245]

I'm no expert, but the next time you do a video like this where you expect a lot of traffic, you could use your next game as a comparative. For example: "Here we did that for X, but for Y, we plan to do this instead." That way, you seed interest for it. You briefly mentioned your new game at the end of the video, but I think it would have been coherent to see it mentioned way earlier. Maybe frame it like: here is how it turned out in the long run for Forge, and here is everything we're gonna do differently for Songs. Anyway, love your content👏. Keep it up, I'm really interested in how your studio is going to perform in the next few years🙌.

[@bruceburnett5372]

Missed the trial game but I wish-listed you.Happy to support you guys. ATB

[@SuperDutchrutter]

Glad to see that the steam sales gave you such a nice little bump. Thanks for sharing these insights.

[@Ironroc]

Hey this is awesome! Love these kind of videos. It's super cool to see how things changed for you game due to the youtube community helping set off those review thresholds.

[@Draekdude]

I bought the game to help out but haven’t made time to check it out yet. I will, I promise!

[@fancyline6734]

Your video topic made me laugh, cheers and gl on your next project🤙

[@kipparok]

Game dev can be very rocky sometimes and you have to fight through it. Concrats for the sale bumbs.

[@CyborgPrime]

Thanks for sharing!

[@PokingWaterGames]

As a developer for 8 years I can relate to those refund stats! My first two games were at 10-15% refund rate. Then I decided to take a break from publishing games but kept experimenting with prototypes. 5 years later I released a third game and the refund rate hovers at 6-7%. A lower refund rate naturally comes with experience from making mistakes in your first few games!

[@haruruben]

Great work, I would bet your next game will build on this momentum.

[@GonziHere]

IMHO, you have it wrong with the updates. You've clearly shown to us, and to yourself, that the launch state isn't everything. To me, it feels like it can go from 2 buys a day to 3, 4...10... just by making it better. Also, from a business perspective, anyone can make a "crappy game in a month" kind of thing. So the more time you spend on it, the better and more exclusive the game actually gets. Now I didn't play it, IDK where it's potential is, etc., I'm just reacting to how you've laid the argument. Anyways, I'd try at least one "big" update before abandonment, if only to see how impactful it is or isn't. Something simple, yet game changing (think Factorio and solar power - basically two items and it fully changed how energy can work while also changing the pollution levels)

[@That_Guy_You_Know]

How much do you estimate that pirating impacted sales?

[@bitemegames]

Not at all really, because the audience who pirates, 95% of them would never buy your game to begin with, so it's not really "lost sales" -M

[@That_Guy_You_Know]

@@bitemegames Got it. Well that's good.

[@grindalfgames]

After releasing a game on steam and doing some sales I now feel that you should sell your game a little higher than what you want, then when the game goes on sale it will come down closer to the price you actually wanted. My game pretty much only sells when its on sale

[@ConnorDeMeyer]

Would it be possible to make a playthrough of the game by one of the developers? It would be fun to see someone who has a lot of knowledge about the game, create the perfect town and delve into mechanics that a lot of people haven't seen or explored themselves.

[@KaitheArtGuy]

Got a lot of value from this video, thanks for the long term tips!

[@LukasOsouch]

Looking forward to Waifu Industries!

[@Ouvii]

Yeah, conventional marketing wisdom is that it's all about how it's all about the customer, but some customers want to be the cool game developer or KZbinr or whatever and so making it about yourself feeds their fantasy of "what would it be like" Kinda interesting.

[@Azzavhar]

Thank you 👍🎉

[@mattc9598]

Looking back now, would you have considered paying streamers that focused on RTS resource games to showcase Forge Industry? Something as simple as that can do a lot. Just look at Among Us. Streamers (whether they were paid or not to play the game) took Among Us from being a 2 year old unheard-of game, into an award-winning franchise with multiple games and even a tv show on the way. I don't know any streamers who exclusively play strategy/resource games, but surely some exist. It's not too late to consider

[@AramoniumGames]

Except views on a video don't always translate to game sales. One Gamedev says he got 200 sales as a result of a video with over a million views, imagine if he had paid for that. At some point you have to calculate how much you 'discounted' the game by giving part of the sales income to the streamer. Entirely possible to get 100% or worse loose money this way, so would have been better to just give that copies away ?

[@mattc9598]

Videos are different, but if a streamer consistently plays games live for an audience that enjoys that genre of games, it stands to reason that having them play your game will lead to more exposure. As for sales from that exposure... well, that depends on how fun the game is. Streamers have definitely been paid to showcase poor games that didn't do well sales-wise (see Battlefield 2042)@@AramoniumGames

[@bitemegames]

No, I think streamers are one of the worst ROI things to do, especially for games you play alone like this. Among us was so great because streamers could farm content with it, as it was heavily based on emotions, which is what also brings in the views. I would have taken that money that goes to streamers, and probably invested it into reddit ads or some other kind of ad service, as they generally have a better ROI (around $1/wishlist). A small streamer already often asks for $500-2000 for a single stream, so getting that ROI is much harder there. -M

[@mattc9598]

makes sense, especially for a genre that isn't exactly popular in streaming. I'm not surprised reddit ads are the first pick either, but i'd love to hear what you think about ads on X, Facebook, and/or KZbin in comparison.@@bitemegames

[@ReadingOcelotl]

In a previous video you mentioned that early access is not that good idea for like a short period of < 6 months. However everyone seems to like the the post launch updates and it made a better game with these early playtesters. Next game EA?

[@bitemegames]

Probably not the next game, as EA is really a good fit for more mechanically heavy games, or games with a long (1+ year) dev cycle. We want to have shorter dev cycles (6-9 months) for our next games, and have scoped them like that. If we ever go back to larger scope games, we will probably consider EA though. -M

[@LouisDoesGames]

"Sales will make you a lot of money" kind had to chuckle here :')

[@bitemegames]

65% of our total revenue for Forge Industry has come from people buying the game at 25-40% discount -M

[@Mightydoggo]

Damn, 7k? Seems like that ain´t a really worthwhile business to get into for the amount of work you have to put in.

[@bitemegames]

I should just do OnlyFans at this point... -M

[@RedTaurus11]

"engagement" 💌

[@Mel-mu8ox]

Yer, sales vids are not as common... Just gotta see that data :D

[@peaceling9826]

❤

[@Ferenc-Racz]

Oh, and one more suggestion: ... As I see on Martin, He should sleep more. :D

[@Lynqoid]

Congrats, nice to hear you got the support from everyone, but it was because you created content and a community rallied around the content! :)

[@richardbloemenkamp8532]

I never do tutorials. I just go on YT an watch someone play. Why don't gamedevs just stick a little video to their game? It seem easier and less work.

[@DoktorUde]

guys, don’t stupidly believe these gamedev gurus. Why are they taking money for their advice? Because they make money on selling their advice and not their games. Authority is not everything. Only because someone charges you a lot of money for a one hour call does not mean you will actually gain any valuable insights from them.

[@pdrozdowski]

Well, and this the moment you become a corpo, as suddenly you infere form the chart the decisions. You say you have just 2 sales so no worth investing in a game so switchingo to new one... but what the hell? For last 18mths of development you had 0 sales and you were investing into it and now suddenly you abadon it because of the chart. That doesn't make sense. I think the market is much bigger and broader than you can imagine and your game just sits uder a rock, if it was made good and polished enough you could laverage your you tube chanel potential to go viral and captialize on a good game... but you decide to leve the ship after 2 yrs to sink, and build the next one. And by looking on the start of it, it lacks good selling points, so maybe in a year of 0 sells of it you will make some cool vid about what you've learned. For the Forge i tried demo but is sooo much clunky is scares people off and go uninstall. Have you just fixed the game and forgot on patching the demo?

[@georgebratu]

working 18 months and 4 people on that game I am wondering what were you doing in that period because the game looks bad, poor quality in all areas. I guess that most of sales/wishlist come from people from youtube channel that are game developers as well, so no real fans actually.

[@bitemegames]

We were working at our main jobs :) We did not go into this fulltime, and we still aren't all fulltime gamedevs. This is the result of 4 programmer friends starting indie development as a hobby project, and turning it into a commercial game. We had no KZbin audience when we launched our game, that only grew after we had originally released our game. -M

[@georgebratu]

@@bitemegames A, ok then, it makes more sense now :) I thought you all 4 were working full time on it. And also being the first project, it is understandable that was not polished.