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[hmm]

Hi all, I'm bad at making money from my games.

I released a game recently on Steam, the App Store and Google Play, and money made so far (after several months) stands at probably less than $200. Around $150 came from Steam alone, where the game is being sold for a bit more.

On mobile, my biggest dilemma was free vs paid. In the end I released free, ad supported versions as well as paid versions. Despite the paid versions not doing all that well (30ish sales), they still made more than the ad supported versions.

I'm now starting to look ahead to games I'll be working on in the future, and I had a few thoughts and questions for you:

• As a solo developer, mobile games are more appropriate in terms of scope. On Steam you are releasing a small game and competing for sales/reviews/marketing with AAA titles. Thoughts?
• For an indie dev, premium or a single "pay to unlock full game" in-app-purchase seems like the way to go. Making money from ads is hard, and developing a more complex economy of IAPs is also hard. Thoughts? (this is the decision I'm struggling with the most)
• You have to care less about building hype on mobile, since most players find new games directly in the app stores. On PC, players are more likely to be reading up on new games on various games websites, so you have to put a lot of effort into spreading the word early and often. Thoughts?

Finally, if anyone has some top tips, please share. This is one of those topics where I just keep on going around in circles. Thanks!

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

i'll just point out a big mistake you did with the steam release for your case (new dev, no marketing):

-no steam cards.
-no achievements.

That's a market you can aim in steam. Achievement hunters, and steam card farmers.(booster card eligibility)


also your game doesn't look like a game that would generate any excitement... it's amazing you earnt 150$ from it.

[Grhyll]

My 2 cents:

- Mobile may seem easier on the technical aspect, but it really goes down to the scope you want to give to your project. There are "very simple" PC games too that meet success (even if they often get adapted to mobile as well, when it's not the opposite). Maybe on PC you compete with AAA, but on mobile you compete with a number of releases that is just completely crazy.
- Ads probably won't get you rich if you don't have either an astonishing luck (your game goes viral) or a big budget for users acquisition. You also need to spend a lot of time thinking precisely about your monetization if you go that way, big companies have people paid only to think about that (or iap). The "paid one to unlock all" solution seems simpler, but once again there's not really a perfect answer.
- I fully disagree. There are just too many games released each and every day on mobile, people will never find your app in the app store (literally never, if you're not featured).

Making games has never been easier than today, I think; but selling them has never been harder...

[Werneck]

1. I agree that you should go for mobile unless you have a very very large amount of time to invest in developing your game AND doing proper marketing/PR/hype buildup, mostly because the scope is a lot smaller.

2. Don't know much about the mobile market. Have you looked into Amazon Underground?

3. Nope nope nope. Do not expect your game to market itself, it won't.

Your game looks cool! I think you could put in more effort marketing-wise though, i.e adding sound effects and background music to your trailer, creating a website and a presskit and contacting people who write about mobile games or do let's plays. Good luck on your dev journey!

[NicMagnier]

The thing is, there is no secret formula. There is trends on how to monetize you can follow but don't think you need to stick with it.

The simplest way to monetize is to be paid. Plain and simple. Ads doesn't seem to paid very well. Micro transaction is a very good way but this is very difficult to do well and the project need to be build around it. It cannot be an afterthought.

Price perception depend of the platform. 3$ for a mobile game will seem very expensive for a normal user. 3$ on Steam seems to be a bargain compared to the rest of the games. So yeah you compete with AAA on steam but your edge is the price. On mobile the AAA are free.

I think you are right that hype is less important on mobile but it's because they get user through advertising and user acquisition which is massive and costly.

Find an audience that will resonate with what you've build. A game like yours have visuals with high contrast and require only two buttons. This is characteristic that players with disabilities can sometimes look for.

[hmm]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

@ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ - I think you may be right. I had not realised that Card / Achievement hunters were a thing. Definitely something to consider for the first update.

@Grhyll & Werneck - I'll admit, I was being a little grouchy in my original post (and maybe kind of optimistic?) about the effectiveness of marketing in the mobile space, and I'm sure there is value in promoting your game. However, compared to the PC and console markets, I would maintain that building pre-launch hype is less important. Being featured seems to be the key to success on mobile.

Werneck - I actually did put Kapsul Infinite on Amazon Underground and it was featured in the UK along with a few other indie games. As a result, there were over one thousand downloads, and it has been played for a total of 25342 minutes - which generated around 31 GBP in revenue. It was an interesting experiment, and has made more money than the other mobile versions combined, but is still significantly less than I have made on Steam from a fraction of the number of units. It is cool, though, that so many people can play your game for free and that you are guaranteed money if they keep on playing.

[Werneck]

You also get a cut on what people make off your cards, so that could get you some extra revenue, too.

Oh, and sorry to hijack the post, but I'm curious - did you take any extra steps for it to be featured? Or was it all organic after you put it on Underground? Thanks in advance!

[gamedev123]

After looking at the game trailer, I'd suggest some highly subjective things.  Quite different from the relaxing gameplay you've got here.

This is just my screed, but based upon what I've seen sell/monetize/twitch/etc, and the general tenor of stuff I read on the web, the following might work:

1. a reskin of the game.  Budget several hundred dollars and have an artist bang out some graphics that are more literal and move away from abstract imagery (various size asteroids, robotic landing platforms with a few frames of animation, several types of enemies (no animation, just blinky lights on them).  Literal is likely easier to sell to the average consumer in a static screenshot.

2. add more enemies (alien ships. various tumbling rocks)  No need for real logic, just some path and/or oscillating enemies to create more dynamic obstructions.

3. make the landing platforms more interesting.  Is there a fanfare that plays when you land?  How about adding a shield to the landing platform and have it bounce around the level (remaining horizontal) with asteroids.

4. add a character portrait to the UI.  your pilot.  changing expressions depending upon how well he's doing (fuel, speed, nearness of landing platform, proximity of asteroids/enemies).

5. change the trailer.  make the music pump more.  lets see zoomed in pixelated closeups.  jump cuts.  explosions.  15 seconds would even be long enough.

6. modify the name to "Krash Kapsul Infinity."  More literal.  Verby.


Here is revised copy based on the above comments:


"Krash forever...

Pilot the Krash Kapsul through endless challenges. Master the infinitely changing physics-based action - easy to learn, but impossible to master. 

Simple two-button controls. 

Play.

Krash.

Play.

Krash.

Forever..."



So these suggestions would obviously throw you into the sack with all the other hyper-jeebus games out there.



The other end of the spectrum is to add classical-style music and really take a look at your level design and make it more visually elegant somehow (but still playable).  More curves(?).  Even more abstract?  More striking so that a static screen is somehow worthy of being on a poster.  Like trying to do something like Hue, but completely in monochrome:  http://store.steampowered.com/app/383270/

Have the player fly through giant, bold letters/words?  (maybe use public domain poetry)

Or use numbers?  Equations and numbers packed together to create odd spaces.  Add some type of meaningful and visually striking pickup you can gather along the way to the landing pad.  And the pickup is the 'signature' of the game (a yellow infinity symbol)


...I don't normally post this kind of screed, but felt compelled this time.  :-)

[hmm]

@Werneck - I think there was some Indie Showcase thing that I submitted the game to on Undeground. Luckily it was chosen as one of around 20 games to be featured.

gamedev123 - Thanks for the screed! There's a lot of good, practical advice in there. I think making the game a bit more literal in its appearance would definitely make it a bit more accessible to the average consumer. It reminds me of a talk I saw by Zach Gage who added bird characters to his abstract game, SpellTower, just to see what would happen. The feedback that he got from friends was that the game was much better, much more fun, even though nothing about the game had changed except for the birds. Personally though, I dig the minimalist aesthetic in Kapsul and feel that its important to the feel of the game - I guess this inflexibility may be standing at odds with the monetisation.

[gamedev123]

Yup, based upon your other games I figured minimalism was critical.

;-)

[Orymus]

Hi all, I'm bad at making money from my games.

I released a game recently on Steam, the App Store and Google Play, and money made so far (after several months) stands at probably less than $200. Around $150 came from Steam alone, where the game is being sold for a bit more.

On mobile, my biggest dilemma was free vs paid. In the end I released free, ad supported versions as well as paid versions. Despite the paid versions not doing all that well (30ish sales), they still made more than the ad supported versions.

I'm now starting to look ahead to games I'll be working on in the future, and I had a few thoughts and questions for you:

• As a solo developer, mobile games are more appropriate in terms of scope. On Steam you are releasing a small game and competing for sales/reviews/marketing with AAA titles. Thoughts?
• For an indie dev, premium or a single "pay to unlock full game" in-app-purchase seems like the way to go. Making money from ads is hard, and developing a more complex economy of IAPs is also hard. Thoughts? (this is the decision I'm struggling with the most)
• You have to care less about building hype on mobile, since most players find new games directly in the app stores. On PC, players are more likely to be reading up on new games on various games websites, so you have to put a lot of effort into spreading the word early and often. Thoughts?

Finally, if anyone has some top tips, please share. This is one of those topics where I just keep on going around in circles. Thanks!

Interesting I should stumble on that post.
I've actually just completed a Steam vs Mobile analysis for the 'common folk' (that is, excluding major success stories on either side).

The bottom line I've identified is, though the average dev budget on steam is twice the budget from mobile, the likelihood of people seeing/getting to your game is actually 33 times higher at the VERY LEAST, and despite the fact Steam is only rouhgly 185M users to mobile's close to 1B userbase.
Steam is actually much friendlier than mobile storefronts to indies.

More surprisingly, if you pick apart the Top 100 games of either store, you'll see how this translates.
Of the Top 100 games on Steam by the time I ran my analysis, 36 were from non-established organizations, 26 from 'nobodies' and 13 from startups. On the Appstore's top 100, roughly 17 were from 'nobodies', and 0 were from a startup (though, at times, this reaches 1 or 2 to be fair).

Things actually get much worse when you try to break revenues made by developers in rough tiers of quality. At any given point in the last 2 years, the top 50 games on the Appstore were generating most of the revenue for the entire platform, whereas Steam's variance is much higher, giving you a chance at making a moderate hit, breaking even and then some.

I'll obviously not list all of my report here, as it served a client and most of the info was from proprietary sources or had proprietary usage, but when I hear from an indie that going mobile makes more sense, I can't help but think of these numbers. It could be that there's a niche, a genre or a way to articulate a business plan around the mobile platform in 2016, but I'd say things have changed significantly in the past 4 years to the point where I feel XBONE and PS4 are much more accessible to the average Joe than mobile is. The 'no barrier' to entry is misleading.

I'd also advise to go F2P on mobile, but not on Steam. Similarly, I feel that ad-generated revenues on mobile makes a lot of sense. It isn't much, but to be fair, for a lot of non-success stories, it can be the bulk of what you'll be grossing.

And as for the odds of being seen in the store to begin with, if not previously made abundantly clear, I'd hesitant to consider this statement as pure sarcasm. In case it wasn't, unless you're one of the big 15 top companies, people will never hear of your game from the store unless you magically hit top 100 for one day or something...

[hmm]

Hey, thanks for the thoughtful post. Lots of interesting info.

This does kind of shift my focus back to Steam a bit. It may have been wishful thinking on my part to think premium mobile games are the way to go, mostly because I love the idea that so many people have access to your game on mobile, and that mobile really suits small, focused games. Looking at my existing sales, however, Steam has been the most profitable market place (by far) despite the low number of sales.

[NicMagnier]

Let's see if some exposure will help:
https://twitter.com/ADAMATOMIC/status/779685286036983813

I'm curious if his good words will boost some sales...

[hmm]

Cool! Yes, I reached out to him with my game as there were similarities between some of the games he's worked on an my own (proc gen, minimalism, using a name like Capsule/Kapsul).

In terms of the effect that one tweet had - 5 sales on iOS on the same day! Since it was getting 0 per day I attribute all of these to the tweet. Very grateful.

[Orymus]

Hey, thanks for the thoughtful post. Lots of interesting info.

This does kind of shift my focus back to Steam a bit. It may have been wishful thinking on my part to think premium mobile games are the way to go, mostly because I love the idea that so many people have access to your game on mobile, and that mobile really suits small, focused games. Looking at my existing sales, however, Steam has been the most profitable market place (by far) despite the low number of sales.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that assessment if perhaps that it is just a few years too late and that market changes much faster than our appreciation of them. It seems only yesterday that all of these indie hits scored to high on the appstore, and yet, it's been roughly 2 years since hardly any indie hit struck the mobile platform meaningfully.
We need to shift gears and adapt.
I'll admit I'm a bit partial, I've always been a PC gamer at heart and I never really got the mobile (and much less the Facebook) bubble at all, so I feel we're finally catering to 'my needs as a player'. But evidence would suggest that the assessment is correct.

Now moving over to Steam is a bit daunting, especially because of Greenlight, but I think Greenlight gives you an idea of where you are along the queue of indifference, whereas mobile allows you onto the store, but lets you disappear below top 1000 never to be heard from again... At least, on Greenlight, when you do make it to the top, there's the chance to be one in 11-12k games, as opposed to one of 1-2M...

[jamilWinkelbaum]

What have you been doing to promote your mobile game?  Anyone else care to share their thoughts on how to effectively promote a mobile game?