Let’s talk numbers!
In making Another Star, I didn’t plan for it to make enough income to live off. I’m not that niave. There are a lot of indie games out there to compete with for attention—not to mention games and entertainment in general—and going into the game’s development, I hadn’t released a game in over ten years. The game was primarily meant to pad my portfolio and generate some freelance work so I could get back on track, both financially and in regards to my career.
To that end, I was hoping for about 1,000 sales in the first three months. I didn’t necessarily expect to get that much, but it was a goal to shoot for. 1,000 sales would earn Vision Riders a little under $9,000 after fees, which I felt would be enough to proceed straight into another six month project.
However, the minimum number of sales I decided I would need was a mere 100 total in the first three months. That would give me enough to pay for a critically-needed upgrade to my aging computer, and maybe even have a little left over on the side for spending money. To reach that, I’d only need about one sale a day for three months straight. That should be easy enough, I thought.
Another Star first went on sale on 20 March, 2014. As of 30 April, it has sold only 24 copies across all retailers, and brought in approximately $217.92 (after initial fees). Here’s the raw numbers:
The gaps, of course, mean that I’m not meeting my one-a-day minimum sales. In order to reach the meager 100 sales, the game really needs to be at about twice the sales numbers that it is right now. As it stands, the game has not yet reached the payout level for any of the three retailers it’s on, which means the company doesn’t even get that money yet.
It’s certainly not the end of the world, but it is more than a little disappointing. It’s also going to make it difficult to go on, unless I start getting some really well-paying freelance stuff in the near future. But that’s another discussion for another day.
Meanwhile, here’s how the game is faring on Steam Greenlight as I write this:
As you can see, it’s not doing too bad for only being on the service for a couple weeks now. However, it’s still lagging significantly behind where the current top 100 were at this point in their lives. The percentage of “no” votes is also a bit discouraging. As you can see, I get a lot of no votes, which I suppose comes with the territory of the game’s art style.
There’s still plenty of time for improvement, though. I’ve been putting money into marketing where I can afford to, and friends are helping me push it through Greenlight as much as they can. Hopefully next month I’ll have better news to report!
Yikes, those sales are really low. Maybe you should go into a bunch of gaming communities and tell people about your game? Doesn’t hurt to try and even if selling fails you might be lucky enough to get “why I didn’t buy the game” reply (which doesn’t give you money but can be important knowledge).
I told the RPGamer community about your game, but I’m not sure if anyone there actually bought it (http://board.rpgamer.com/forum/showthread.php?20689-Another-Star).
Also I remember hearing about your game on IndieRPGs, but there was never a post about how your game is now released. Maybe you should ask Craig? If you got covered before, the chances are good to be covered again now that your game is released.
Along with ads, I have done some of that, and some of my friends have posted about it in communities they’re part of. I’m not sure how many sales it translated to, though.
So far Greenlight has seemed to have the biggest impact (notice the burst of sales near the end of the chart; I was having one sale a day for almost a week). It’s also where I’ve had the most comments. On Greenlight at least, a lot of the game’s dislike seems to stem from the simplicity of its graphics, and the fact it’s a retro RPG at all.
If I’d better capitalized on the initial burst of interest and traffic from last year (especially after the IndieGames.com article), I might be in a better position right now.
I noticed that. Thanks a lot!
IndieRPGs was one of the places I emailed with a game code back when it was released, and I mentioned that they’d covered me before. Never heard anything back, and the code was never redeemed.
When version 2 is out on all retailers (only IndieGameStand has it up thus far), I’ll send out another round of emails now that the game is also playable in Linux. Craig Stern does has a twitter, so I might tweet him about it too. I always hate badgering people, which is probably why I’m not that great at marketing.
Yeah, I’m not sure what’s up with Craig, he also ignores most of my e-mails but he doesn’t seem to ignore everything because sometimes he comments on my comments in his blog. Maybe he just gets too many mails?
Most game news sites, even those with a small following, tend to get bombarded with email. Part of the struggle of getting noticed is just getting them to click on what you sent them, amid all the noise.
A recent tweet he made even pointed out the fact he gets a lot of email from people wanting him to post about their non-RPG games. That certainly doesn’t help with the volume.
Barely the best game ever, or i mean don’t get afraid for a little thing to correct here and there.
Too bad I don’t run a “thousand followers” group, I mean you know where there are.
A proud owner of version 1 eager to know what’s a Watcher’s eye, I just beated the two soldiers that kept Soel prisonner on the ferry.
I had it browsing Desura while Coldplay (viva la vida) was playing on the radio, you should try it for yourself
The Watcher’s Eye will reveal enemy weaknesses when used in battle. You can find it for sale in a few towns throughout the game.
Version 2 should be available on Desura now, so I’d grab it when you can.