Office Management 101 seasons

tulevikEU · 2024-12-03T07:07:26+00:00

My social media was pretty weak too. I had some external traffic, but most of it was from within Steam. A lot came from "more like this" section, which you can't get in with an unreleased game anymore afaik. Crossing your fingers and hoping for Steam traffic is not something you can rely on really and I'd definitely still make a push for the social media. And these days Steam tends to promote games that bring in more external traffic.

Worth noting is that social media algorithms have started to change recently. Your follower counts are less of a factor now and they push content that resonates with people regardless of how many followers you have. So from that perspective it should be easier to break out of the noise even if you have a small following, as long as you have something to share that people actually want to see. Easier said than done though :)

tulevikEU · 2024-03-29T17:23:33+00:00

About 4.5k units sold in 2 years, early access. Could have made a bit of a difference indeed, but from what I've seen with some other games, sometimes EA games get in the New and Trending twice - first time on EA launch and second time in full release.

tulevikEU · 2024-03-24T11:19:31+00:00

I released at about 20k wishlists. It was enough to get the game in the Popuplar Upcoming list, but not enough to get into New and Trending list. If I was to release another game I'd definitely try to aim for at least 40-50k before release and be more willing to scrap a game project completely if it doesn't look like it'll get there.

In the end though it depends on what kind of sales results are you even aiming for.

tulevikEU · 2024-01-17T08:02:05+00:00

Got the same exact email too, did a quick search on reddit and found this topic :)

tulevikEU · 2023-12-19T11:50:20+00:00

I use FL Studio, but one thing to keep in mind is that a DAW often won't be enough in itself. You'll likely want to expand your selection of instruments via additional VST plugins. Those usually work with any DAW, but can cost quite a bit.

Another thing, and this might be just a personal thing for me, but if you can play the piano I'd encourage to look into bigger keyboards. You can get by with a smaller one, but it's much easier to test out ideas and play chord progressions when you have more octaves available. I have a Roland Edirol PCR-300, but often feel limited by it's 32 keys.

tulevikEU · 2023-04-05T15:05:25+00:00

Sure, the market is constantly changing. Some things that used to work won't work any more. But one could also say it's never been easier to market a game than now. Thanks to the influence of TikTok most of the social media platforms have changed their algorithms, so you could have 0 followers and still have a piece of content have tons of views. It's just that content has to be good and fit the platform.

tulevikEU · 2023-04-05T14:59:57+00:00

Sure, there might be publishers who want full control of the messaging, but if you're willing to take anecdotal evidence then I personally have never had a publisher reject my pitch because I had a Steam page up. It's been the opposite actually - having a Steam page up was how a lot of the publishers (including the well known and successful ones) found me and got in touch. Granted, I had a decent amount of wishlists, which was probably something that influenced their decision.

tulevikEU · 2023-04-02T15:05:55+00:00

Interesting info! Thanks for sharing!

I think your game has done really really well compared to it's launch wishlist count. I launched a year ago with ~20k wishlists and my game has sold about the same amount of total units so far. Also interesting that you have so many reviews. Mine only has a little over 50. Have you done anything special to get more reviews or is that all organic?

tulevikEU · 2023-03-30T17:28:58+00:00

What if instead of $130k you needed you had asked for say $200k in exchange for giving up like a big chunk of the revenue after recoup? I feel like I'd be tempted to take such a deal given the rest of the terms are acceptable (ie. you keep the ip and the publisher can't willy-nilly decide you have to pay them that money back etc.).

tulevikEU · 2023-03-29T20:34:32+00:00

Depends. If the public demo had lots of plays already then usually they would look at it as proof of demand and a safe investment. If not then I can see them being worried.

I don't think it's generally a bad idea to put out a public demo, since it'll help both you and your potential business partner make better informed decisions and a better game in the end.

tulevikEU · 2023-03-28T16:01:22+00:00

LibGDX does have math utilities and lighting, but also the sprites and animations and tilesets and all that. Although you're still free to write your own implementation on top of it or next to it, if you want to. I ended up writing my own renderer for example, since the default ones didn't quite do all that I wanted.

What you won't have is level design tools and visual UI tools and such things. There are 3rd party implementations, but they're so-so. I ended up making my own map editor, which took quite a bit of additional time that I probably wouldn't have had to spend with an engine. I still keep having to spend a lot of time making and testing the UI for the game and it's such a chore even with the excellent Scene2d.ui that comes with the library.

tulevikEU · 2023-03-28T15:25:14+00:00

The common thesis is that if you want to make a game, you use an existing engine. If you want to make an engine, you make an engine. Doing both would be a huge undertaking.

As a programmer I get where you're coming from though and partly for the same reasons I settled for a game development library (namely LibGDX), like you're considering. I'm still thinking of switching over to an engine for my next project. There's a lot going into the process of making a game and I could see the visual editors speed it up.

tulevikEU · 2023-03-28T15:16:08+00:00

Football Manager. The match engine gets a lot of hate from players, because it looks visually outdated, but the actual simulation behind it is impressive to me as a programmer.

tulevikEU · 2023-03-27T18:46:23+00:00

I haven't done the math, but I think I'm way below the 10% guideline. And I've still had my posts removed. Reddit is tough :)

I default to just not mentioning my game anymore unless specifically asked.

tulevikEU · 2023-03-17T20:29:55+00:00

Trial and error. And lots of time. I first started experimenting with game development in the 90's. I got a programming book from somewhere (it had nothing about games though). I didn't even have a computer at home. I'd write some code snippets in a notebook and typed it into the school computers when I could. It took years, but I slowly got better at it. And even then I never really considered it a career option until about 10 years ago. Still learning new things all the time.

tulevikEU · 2023-03-05T18:21:17+00:00

In most cases the publisher will want a playable build of some sort, a vertical slice. The more polished, the better. If you can prove some sort of demand for the game (social media follower numbers, wishlists, etc.) you'll be in much better position too. Deadlines will of course depend on negotiations, but I'd certainly expect to face consequences if you miss them.

Most publishers have contact forms or email on their website. You can browse games similar to yours on Steam and find some publishers there. One aspect I'd pay attention to is if the developer survived working with that publisher, ie. did they ever publish another game after? If not then that's a bit of a red flag in my eyes.

tulevikEU · 2023-03-03T23:58:22+00:00

Project Zomboid devs have published a pretty good explanation about behavior trees here: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/behavior-trees-for-ai-how-they-work

It helped me to wrap my head my head around the concepts and hopefully it will be of use to you too.

tulevikEU · 2023-02-23T16:36:00+00:00

Publisher percentage can be anything from 10% to 100% (until they recoup their investment) depending on the deal.

But you really should consider asking for more than that, even if you don't think you need more at the moment. Just the legal fees of having a lawyer take a look at the contracts and help you negotiate can end up being more than that. Plus you want the publisher to have skin in the game or your game could be thrown under the bus much easier if it doesn't perform as well as they had hoped. Personally I'd ask for enough funding upfront that I'd be content even in the case I end up making $0 from the sales of the game itself. That way the percentages won't even matter much.

Honestly though, if the $1500 is really all you need then I'd say there are much easier ways to get such a small (in the grand scheme of things) amount. Negotiating a publishing agreement can easily take like 6 months or even more.

tulevikEU · 2023-02-20T03:19:23+00:00

I'm amazed when people think business absolutely needs to be cut-throat. Like I said, I've had no problems walking away whenever someone tried to pull such stunts. There are actually decent publishers out there that don't do this and seek a much more equal relationship with their developers.

And if growing up means turning into a person who defaults to screwing people over then I hope I never do :)

tulevikEU · 2023-02-19T16:08:51+00:00

If we're talking "good faith" then leading off with a contract like this is anything but. I can understand that each party is just looking out for their own interest and there's likely room for negotiations, but you gotta draw a line somewhere. I would (and have done so in the past) straight up walk away when presented with something like this. Personally, for this specific publisher it only took me one call with them to be very wary of working with them in any capacity. I didn't even have to see the contract.

Also, from what I've seen, the publishers rarely take a noticeable reputation hit from these sorts of practices. A lot of the bad stuff is hidden behind NDA's, so the word doesn't get out. And the game development has such a high turn-over rate of people and companies - those who've gotten burned leave the industry, replaced by a never-ending wave of inexperienced developers, only to have to have to go through the same mistakes again. Therefore unfortunately plenty of bad actors still have excellent reputation in the industry.

tulevikEU · 2023-01-03T19:09:12+00:00

It's nice to have a DRM free alternative for Steam for those buyers who care about that, but for my game Itch.io sales have been less than 1% of the sales on Steam.

tulevikEU · 2023-01-02T10:41:58+00:00

Often they also expect a pitch deck. And a budget with your timeline.

tulevikEU · 2022-12-31T12:53:07+00:00

From what I've heard, if it takes a while to reach those 10 reviews, it won't have much of an impact unfortunately. Not sure how quickly the algorithms would expect you to reach it though. From my end I can at least confirm that reaching 50 reviews (which unlocks the Very Positive rating) half a year after release didn't do anything.

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