next »

[TeeGee]

I wrote a blog post with my initial thoughts after Cinders release. How much it sold so far, how easy/hard it was to promote, things like that. You may find it interesting:

http://moacube.com/blog/initial-thoughts-after-cinders-release/

Additional data for those who haven't heard about the game:

• Cinders is our first full-time indie release.
• We have around 7 years of experience working with games professionally, though.
• Cinders is a serious take on a fairytale done as a visual novel.
• We tried to make it have significantly higher production values than most VNs.
• We come from Poland, so our living costs are lower than in US etc.
• Average gross salary in Poland: around $1200 a month.

[Moczan]

What you guys failed to utilize (or I missed it) is e-mailing people who bought your previous game. I got Magi a week or two before Cinders release and I don't remember you spamming me anything about it. I know that typical Magi player will be far from VN fan, but it could net you few more sales effortlessly.

[TeeGee]

Yeah, I think we need to start using some newsletter service. I don't like spamming people who didn't specifically said they want to be spammed.

[moi]

If I was a reviewer and had a lot of games to test and had to be picky, I'd probably not review a VN because it's a bit long and not very fun if you're not a fan (more like work than fun).
So yeah, if you're develloping a VN be ready to be mostly ignored by the non-niche web.

I'm sure your sales stats will go throught the roof when(if) you release magi 2

Have you tried other digital stores than Steam? I heard it can be worth the effort. Also: bundles

[RudyTheDev]

With most VNs being of Japanese origin and art style being very manga, I would definitely expect this (amazing) artwork getting media attention. Also, thanks for sharing numbers.

[Moczan]

I'm sure your sales stats will go throught the roof when(if) you release magi 2

Too bad they treat it like a hobby game, it will seriously be the best thing ever if they took Magi and made it with the same care and polish they put into Cinders.

[ANtY]

I'm sure your sales stats will go throught the roof when(if) you release magi 2

Too bad they treat it like a hobby game, it will seriously be the best thing ever if they took Magi and made it with the same care and polish they put into Cinders.

Unfortunately the artist behind ArcMagi doesn't want to work on it full time so it'll probably get released like never  

[moi]

Does [artist name redacted] ever finish projects?

[TeeGee]

I worked with him on one of the casual games I did at my last company. He was fine and finished everything on time, with maybe a few hiccups. He's simply unable to go full or even half time indie, making ArcMagi not a viable commercial project. And yeah, it's a shame, as I think it could do quite well.

[raitasrain]

Thanks for sharing! Kudos!

[Petethegoat]

That's a really interesting read. As others have said, you should definitely look at other stores and bundles and such.

[TheGreatBundini]

Good read, thanks for sharing. Bold of you to post your sales numbers, but I think, like you said, given the niche nature of this genre, you guys appear to be off to a good start!

[Hima]

Comments in here make it sounds like this is not a good number! First week for $6,000 is already promising for a niche target game with a price higher than $20, in my opinion.

Thank you for being open about all this. I've been following the development of Cinders because it's a niche-in-a-niche type of game. Most VNs fan are used to Japanese ones with anime style involving teenagers or young adult characters. Cinders is nothing like those, so it's interesting to see how the game will do once it's released.

I've also seen from twitter than some fans already made a Cinders wiki. Congratulations!

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i'd be happy with that for a week, sure, however, i'd have expected more than 300 sales considering it got a kotaku post. i'd have thought kotaku post would lead to 1000 sales minimum, considering it's by far the largest blog about games

also i'm surprised there have only been two reviews for a game that looks as pretty as this in the first week, and disappointed by the post mocking it on RPS (i thought RPS was supposed to be indie-friendly?). and i say this knowing that my own review of this game is late (i'm working on it)

indie games live and die based on reviews. back in 2007 when i released immortal defense i had to work very hard for it to get reviewed anywhere at all, since nobody reviewed indie game back then at all. but even i had more than 2 reviews in the first week back then. and gradually game news sites have become more and more indie-friendly, my thought was that it's much easier to get an indie game reviewed in 2012 than it was in 2007. unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the case; i guess unless your indie game is an xbla game, you should expect almost no coverage from the gaming press; this is a bit disappointing

i still think these results are a bit early to draw many conclusions from, but i don't like the initial looks of it. the game is really very good, the art is the best art i've ever seen in a GM game, and to think that only 300 people actually bought the game in the first week despite all the marketing efforts i know he put into it and despite the niche popularity of the visual novel genre feels like a shame. by comparison, i believe visual novels released in japan which look much worse than this game and have no choices at all regularly sell tens of thousands of copies. but i guess the market isn't as developed in the west, or, if it is, perhaps the market here is too used to piracy (since they can't buy japanese visual novels legally in most cases, at least not without spending enormous amounts on shipping, my impression is that most visual novel fans in the west pirate everything)

6000$ for one month isn't anything to sneeze at, and it's a lot better than the ~$2000 immortal defense got in its first month (i actually don't remember the number anymore but i remember that it was about 100 copies at 23$), but for the amount of work and the quality it still feels like it could have been a lot better

what i would suggest would be to gradually build up an audience and make a series of these. now that you have the team ready and the engine, you could make these based on other fairy tales perhaps, and they'd go much quicker, and the audience from this game would already be there

[Liosan]

also i'm surprised there have only been two reviews for a game that looks as pretty as this in the first week, and disappointed by the post mocking it on RPS (i thought RPS was supposed to be indie-friendly?). and i say this knowing that my own review of this game is late (i'm working on it)

http://moacube.com/news/what-the-press-says-about-cinders/

Liosan

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

it's good that it's getting more reviews after the first week, but they still seem to be only a trickle. that's about what i'd expected to happen (same thing happened with my game). seven reviews in about a month, most of them from blogs specifically about reviewing indie games / casual games, doesn't give me hope in the gaming press's ability to cover indie games

[brog]

i'd be happy with that for a week, sure, however, i'd have expected more than 300 sales considering it got a kotaku post. i'd have thought kotaku post would lead to 1000 sales minimum, considering it's by far the largest blog about games

yeah, i don't think kotaku means anything in terms of sales; i had a $2 ithing game show up on kotaku and it still only sold 300 copies in 6 months so yeah.

thanks for sharing numbers guys, this kind of post is always interesting to see.

[TeeGee]

From our perspective:

- It's worth to mention that the numbers don't include pre-orders (around 200).

- 300 sales in a week is actually very high for a VN. It's on the level of Christine Love's direct sales (and she sells her game cheaper).  Surprisingly good for a new face in the genre.

- It's pretty much how we hoped it would be. We thought that 1000 total direct sales would be enough for the first project. 2000 would be awesome. It's a lot of money here in Poland, and this game is seen by us mostly as an investment. Building a brand, finiding some audience, etc.

- However, development took thrice as long as planned, so profitability went out the window. Right now, the goal is just to get enough to be able to release our next project. After two more games, we should be fine even from the passive income alone.

- There's still a chance the game will land on Steam and become actually profitable. Christine actually recommended us when Valve asked her for more VN devs to include on the service, though I don't know if it matters at all to them.

- I think reviews are fine. There weren't that many in the first week, but in general it got to most of the high-profile indie sites eventually.

- The post linked above doesn't include all reviews. Just those on larger websites.

- Traffic from Kotaku wasn't really that larger from what I got through the TIGS mention of the game. And it's less targeted, so I didn't expect much.

- However, a review on TheMarySue (website for female geeks) brought a lot of sales, despite not driving that much traffic. Conversion rate was crazy. Like 5-10% of visitors bought the game. Traffic quality outweighs quantity by a lot.

- In general: female reviewers and audience took the game and its messages seriously, male reviewers and commenters didn't. Kotaku post is an awesome example. Read the feature and then look at the top-rated comment.

- Overal, we find it all to be pretty promising. The game made some splash in the VN circles, got good reviews, sells relatively well, and builds us a fanbase for the future releases. We wish it would be more profitable, but we have a realistic outlook on the market and realize that becoming a successful full-time indie doesn't happen overnight.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

a lot of that sounds like rationalization to me, but it's your game so you probably have a bias towards seeing the launch as overall good rather than mixed

but a few particular points

- to me christine love's games aren't all that good; they're written okay but the art is amatuer and the production values are bad. she uses engines specifically made to write VN's, she doesn't even program anything, whereas you coded your own engine. so yes it seems strange to me to say it's good that a game with a custom engine and fantastic art sells the same as a game with average art made in an engine made to make VN games; so you had a team of, what, five, to split the money between? it's a different type of thing

- and even bearing all that in mind, i *still* think that even her games are selling less than they should (compared to some abyssal japanese VN's which sell like 10x more than your game and her games all put together). just because you do as well as the best in the genre in the west doesn't mean that it's great. i think it'd have been better to burst through gamer apathy and fear and get people who never played a VN before playing them, to make the VN genre mainstream in the west

- and reviews keep coming in, sure, but how long until your game gets a metascore? how many of those reviews are coming from sites metacritic recognizes? not that it's all that important but it is a measure of how the mainstream gaming press is closed off from indies (unless your game is for xbla), and from what i see here i don't think the gaming press has improved much since 2007 when it comes to covering indie games

[TeeGee]

a lot of that sounds like rationalization to me, but it's your game so you probably have a bias towards seeing the launch as overall good rather than mixed

I think I was clear I see it as mixed. We expected the game to sell around 1000 copies, it sold around 1000 copies -- that's good. We expected the development to take half a year, it took year and a half -- that's very bad. We are still in business, got some popularity, and have a shot at Steam and making more games -- that's promising.

- to me christine love's games aren't all that good; they're written okay but the art is amatuer and the production values are bad. she uses engines specifically made to write VN's, she doesn't even program anything, whereas you coded your own engine. so yes it seems strange to me to say it's good that a game with a custom engine and fantastic art sells the same as a game with average art made in an engine made to make VN games; so you had a team of, what, five, to split the money between? it's a different type of thing

Christine is the most high-profile and well known western VN maker, though. We're a new face. We also outsold most VNs by other prominent indies in this niche, so I think the higher quality did help. An average game would probably sell nil. The money is split between two people. 20% also goes to the writers who joined later.

- and even bearing all that in mind, i *still* think that even her games are selling less than they should (compared to some abyssal japanese VN's which sell like 10x more than your game and her games all put together). just because you do as well as the best in the genre in the west doesn't mean that it's great. i think it'd have been better to burst through gamer apathy and fear and get people who never played a VN before playing them, to make the VN genre mainstream in the west

Yeah, agreed. I think VNs could sell much better in the west. Actually, knowing estimates of Christine's Steam sales, I know they can. And we did have this small hope that maybe this game could break from the niche nature of the genre and get some mainstream attention. Outside of a few exceptions, it didn't. As I wrote in the blog, it was hard to get the more mainstream websites to take the game seriously, unless they have female reviewers. There's a serious genre stigma involved.

- and reviews keep coming in, sure, but how long until your game gets a metascore? how many of those reviews are coming from sites metacritic recognizes? not that it's all that important but it is a measure of how the mainstream gaming press is closed off from indies (unless your game is for xbla), and from what i see here i don't think the gaming press has improved much since 2007 when it comes to covering indie games

Yeah, in that sense, yeah. Would be interesting to see if getting on Steam changes anything.