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[lordchibi]

Hello!

I'm working on a monetization plan for our upcoming PC release, Interplanetary. [DevLogs] For this I have been trying to find some relevant statistics about DLC in indie games:

-What's the average ratio of DLC downloads vs. game downloads?
-What would be the best time to release the first DLC?
-What would be the optimal price point?
-Etc.

So far I have managed to find this blog post by Christopher M. Park which provided a lot of interesting information, and this excellent listing by Pixel Prospector, but I'm still on the lookout for more. Do you have any personal experiences you'd like to share, some suggestions for other sources, or perhaps relevant thoughts or ideas?

Thank you very much.

[Paul Eres]

i'm not familiar with very many indie games that even have DLC. the only one i can think of is cliffski's gratuitious space battles. are there even any others besides that one? EDIT: spacechem also had one. so that's two. and the binding of isaac had one, so that's three.

because it's so uncommon to have DLC for indie games, the chance of getting sales stats for DLC for indie games is pretty low. you're better off relying on stats for DLC's for AAA games really

and from what i know about those AAA game stats, typically 25% of people who buy a game also buy the game's DLC's, although this can vary quite a bit, especially if they're offered in a bundle / game of the year edition, which many are

personally i wouldn't really consider making a DLC for my games unless the original game sells hundreds of thousands of copies and there's a large demand for it; it really wouldn't be worth the time otherwise, i'd rather be working on a new game instead

[eyeliner]

If you want to include dlc in your games big, bulky, hairy men will wait you in your bedroom at night to make sweet love to you relentlessly poking around until they enter your secret place.

Yes, you are mean.

But, if your dlc is an expansion with decent content in it, by all means. If you plan on charging friggin' colorful hats and suits, I'll call eva to talk to you with severe grammatical errors and all.

[Klaim]

You might find some data by reading cliffski's blog as he made two games with DLC's.

[lordchibi]

i'm not familiar with very many indie games that even have DLC. the only one i can think of is cliffski's gratuitious space battles. are there even any others besides that one? EDIT: spacechem also had one. so that's two. and the binding of isaac had one, so that's three.

because it's so uncommon to have DLC for indie games, the chance of getting sales stats for DLC for indie games is pretty low. you're better off relying on stats for DLC's for AAA games really

and from what i know about those AAA game stats, typically 25% of people who buy a game also buy the game's DLC's, although this can vary quite a bit, especially if they're offered in a bundle / game of the year edition, which many are

personally i wouldn't really consider making a DLC for my games unless the original game sells hundreds of thousands of copies and there's a large demand for it; it really wouldn't be worth the time otherwise, i'd rather be working on a new game instead

In addition to those you mentioned there's AI War, though I'm not sure if its DLCs should rather be called expansions. I have also been looking for data on AAA DLC as you suggested, but most publishers like to be secretive about it. There are some statistics available for consoles, but PC stats are much harder to come by.

I know there will (sadly) be good ideas for features that we need to leave out of the initial release because of a tight development schedule. As long as there's food on the table we would be happy to make some of those features available as updates and DLC.

If you want to include dlc in your games big, bulky, hairy men will wait you in your bedroom at night to make sweet love to you relentlessly poking around until they enter your secret place.

Yes, you are mean.

But, if your dlc is an expansion with decent content in it, by all means. If you plan on charging friggin' colorful hats and suits, I'll call eva to talk to you with severe grammatical errors and all.

Let's hope that's not gonna happen. We are planning on additional game modes, new units (or in this case buildings) and tech tree expansions, all of which should allow for even more variation in strategies and tactics. Price point will probably be 3-5$/DLC.


Also thanks to both of you who mentioned Cliffski's, I came across this interesting post about DLC pricing while checking the blog.