SUCCESS: I made a game in 2 years. Sold 4 copies!

[Quarky]

1. Published as Early Access just last week.
2. Sold 4 copies.
3. 1 refunded.
4. 2000 free downloads.
5. Average scoring 3.4/5.0 (undisclosed scores).
6. Gold gum-ball?!
7. Seedling to a gigantic money tree.
8. Improvising for full launch.
9. Raising fund in order to compete with mega-studios.
10. Raising fund in order to have money to register patents.
11. It's a sports game.
12. Self-taught through library books, and online documentation on how to make games.
13. Recruited 3 co-founders now.
14. Will I become a millionaire young?

 

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[Digamma]

 

[Quarky]

wat

 

[Kingsta]

You sold 4 copies of a game? lol

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Congrats on taking action and putting something out there.

No matter the outcome, it will serve you well.

1. Sold 4 copies.
2. 1 refunded.

This strikes me a bit concerning, a 25% refund rate might mean something isn't work to your customer's expectations.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Also...

2000 free downloads.

4 sales from 2000 dowloads is a pretty poor conversion rate, even for a freemium model. Are you overselling but under-delivering? Why aren't more people buying?

 

[RazorCut]

Kudos for sticking with it for 2 years and producing a product.

So what is the next step? What do you think the low conversion rate is being caused by? Are you running ads on the free version? How many downloads a day are you getting and how can you monetize it successfully?

 

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[MAB1138]

Also...

This strikes me a bit concerning, a 25% refund rate might mean something isn't work to your customer's expectations.

4 sales from 2000 dowloads is a pretty poor conversion rate, even for a freemium model. Are you overselling but under-delivering? Why aren't more people buying?

Personally, the 25% refund rate wouldn't bother so much. 4 copies sold is such a small sample rate that the refund metric might not be too telling.

Much more concerning is the conversion rate. 2000 downloads is good sample set - "why aren't more people buying " should be your daily question from the time you wake up to the time you pass out from exhaustion trying to find the answer.

Maybe contact those who have the game installed and ask some pointed questions about game play, price/value, what they like, what they don't like... etc.

If you can't find out what your users are missing from your game, you won't be able to turn them into customers and should probably move on..

 

[Quarky]

Thanks guys and most importantly MJ for reading and replying to this post!

I literally embarked on this journey after digesting MJ's the MLF book. It made so much sense to me, and it confirms my original thought that a job is a waste of time (even after I have spent 5 years of education on it) if my ultimate goal is freedom and vibrance.

The game isn't a freemium game. The 2000 free downloads come from a sale week where I let people download the game for free during early access (it is still on early access, but not free anymore) so that I could solicit their feedbacks and improve the search rank of the game on the Google Play store.

I originally thought I would have zero downloads even if I put it up for free for a week. That was the case for many of my fellow game developers I have met.

The 4 copy sales is the turning point for me because it was at that point in time that I realise people will actually buy a product that I made (upfront, as a unit price), despite not being a professional studio operating in a very tech-heavy sports game field, and despite the game being incomplete.

The game certainly needs a lot of improvements. About 30% of the people find the controls too hard. At the beginning I wasn't too concerned about that because I deliberately made the game hard to punish those who aren't already good at it. But it backfired through some ranting reviews on this beta (early access) release.

And I realise 30% of these people will be my buyers anyways, so my way forward is just to add an easier controls for them, which wouldn't be too hard to make compared to the simulation controls I made earlier.

Looking at this project, I feel like there will be long journey ahead of me. To catch up with the technology that we lack in graphics rendering, multiplayer server management, character animations, player retention reward systems and etc. But seeing how Rocket League took 10 years to polish a game before it sells, I can see myself eventually making it if I grind it through.

 

[Quarky]

You sold 4 copies of a game? lol

Yes. I sold 4 copies of a game.

 

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[Jeff Noel]

Thanks guys and most importantly MJ for reading and replying to this post!

I literally embarked on this journey after digesting MJ's the MLF book. It made so much sense to me, and it confirms my original thought that a job is a waste of time (even after I have spent 5 years of education on it) if my ultimate goal is freedom and vibrance.

The game isn't a freemium game. The 2000 free downloads come from a sale week where I let people download the game for free during early access (it is still on early access, but not free anymore) so that I could solicit their feedbacks and improve the search rank of the game on the Google Play store.

I originally thought I would have zero downloads even if I put it up for free for a week. That was the case for many of my fellow game developers I have met.

The 4 copy sales is the turning point for me because it was at that point in time that I realise people will actually buy a product that I made (upfront, as a unit price), despite not being a professional studio operating in a very tech-heavy sports game field, and despite the game being incomplete.

The game certainly needs a lot of improvements. About 30% of the people find the controls too hard. At the beginning I wasn't too concerned about that because I deliberately made the game hard to punish those who aren't already good at it. But it backfired through some ranting reviews on this beta (early access) release.

And I realise 30% of these people will be my buyers anyways, so my way forward is just to add an easier controls for them, which wouldn't be too hard to make compared to the simulation controls I made earlier.

Looking at this project, I feel like there will be long journey ahead of me. To catch up with the technology that we lack in graphics rendering, multiplayer server management, character animations, player retention reward systems and etc. But seeing how Rocket League took 10 years to polish a game before it sells, I can see myself eventually making it if I grind it through.

View attachment 27626

Rocket League hasn't released in 2019, and has been making millions for a few years already (at least since 2015).

 

[Entre Eyes]

The one game I got hooked on and had to unhook from was high tech incredible details zombie focused. It was free....but if you want the cool weapons etc you upgrade and pay. You need to find a way to go free and still get paid my friend.

 

[Quarky]

Rocket League hasn't released in 2019, and has been making millions for a few years already (at least since 2015).

So for how many years have their game not been selling?

 

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[Quarky]

The one game I got hooked on and had to unhook from was high tech incredible details zombie focused. It was free....but if you want the cool weapons etc you upgrade and pay. You need to find a way to go free and still get paid my friend.

Who hasn't played games here? Thanks for your helpful comment.

 

[Jeff Noel]

So for how many years have their game not been selling?

I get the point you're trying to make, I just wanted to correct the facts your wrote earlier about Rocket League, because it's clearly a terrible example.

Psyonix began the development of Rocket League February 19th, 2014. It was released July 7th, 2015.
In September 2015, Psyonix's VP announced that over 1 million active players were on RL. In october 2015, the game had been downloaded over 6 million times.

It has been an instant hit. There was no grind from the development team, except to rewrite the code of the original game into "Rocket League" so it would be playable on anything.

Even the original game, "Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars", had been downloaded 2 million times before Rocket League came out. The game playerbase was almost dead in 2015, when Rocket League came out.

When Rocket League launched on PS3 (for free), it had a peak of 183,000 players in the first week, without marketing.

It's something else, but it's certainly not a 10 year grind from the bottom. The bottom was far behind already for Psyonix.

I'm not saying it's never happened elsewhere, I'm just saying Rocket League is a bad example.

 

[Quarky]

It's something else, but it's certainly not a 10 year grind from the bottom. The bottom was far behind already for Psyonix.

I'm not saying it's never happened elsewhere, I'm just saying Rocket League is a bad example.

Dig deeper. See how they survived no income for the years before the hit. I am sorry I busted your dream of becoming a game tycoon in 2 years. By the way, why is someone who is on this forum still having these delusions of events over process?

 

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[Jeff Noel]

Dig deeper. See how they survived no income for the years before the hit. I am sorry I busted your dream of becoming a game tycoon in 2 years. By the way, why is someone who is on this forum still having these delusions of events over process?

I never intended to develop a game, nor did I even mention it anywhere. I never mentioned anything about prioritizing the process over the event.

I'm simply stating facts because I wanted to correct your statement and we're just going off-topic at this point. Perhaps you're digging a little bit too deep in my replies.

I could go on and keep arguing, but it seems we cannot communicate clearly, then you go personal on me (yet you don't know me) ? No thank you.

I'm out of this thread, good luck with your game.

 

[Quarky]

I never intended to develop a game, nor did I even mention it anywhere.

You never intended to develop a game, and you're simply commenting out of the first youtube documentary video re RL you watched for 5 minutes made for the mass to believe a rags-to-riches story overnight...?

 

[Kid]

@Quarky @Jeff Noel - Guys it seems like a nice topic to read. Don't throw stones on each other for whatever reason (as in "over/under research").

We can learn from both of you

 

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[foodiepersecond]

Yo whats the game? I can always play and stream it.