this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2024
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Well part of the problem might be that I have never heard of this game in my life.
And it released 11 days ago...
Not even. This article was published 7 days after release.
These guys are seriously crying no fair and calling it quits after one week? Oof
Or they understand free marketing tactics.
This game very well could go viral now, given their "claim" of being ignored...
I'm kinda torn because of this. I like for good games to get recognition and be successful. Part of me wants to buy the game and give it a shot because it's been well received and I'm happy to support an indie dev... But I really do not want to help establish a trend of indies sleeping on advertising/spreading word, then crying "woe is me" after a single week when barely anybody was aware of it, as a way of guerilla marketing their game. I also need to watch a bit more gameplay to see if it's even in my wheelhouse before I decide to spend $20 on it.
There are trends that game releases tend to follow, and while it might have a nice long tail, you're usually making most of your money right at release.
That applies to games people know about. If nobody knows about your game then it doesn't count. For example Vampire survivors barely made any money on the first few weeks of its early access release. In fact it didn't really start making money until youtubers/streamers essentially advertised it for free.
But that's an anomaly compared to most game releases. It would be foolish to assume that this game has a Vampire Survivors or Among Us esque curve ahead of it.
It's an anomaly in terms of success. It's not an anomaly in terms of how a good game becomes a success. There's no successful game that people haven't heard of. Nobody knew about vampire survivors when it came out so it didn't get sales. It got sales when people started to hear about it. Same with among us. In fact letting people know a game exists and making it appealing is probably more important than having a good game. The day before is a great example of that.
It doesn't matter how good reviews the genre gets if nobody knows it exists it's not going to sell. I guarantee 99% of the people reading that article had no idea this game even existed and if this article made waves on reddit this game would definitely see a spike in sales. So far it hasn't really made waves so most people are still unaware of this game. In light of that it shouldn't come as any surprise that the game is not selling.
Also sidenote, holy fuck this game has an unmemorable name. I had to open the article again so I could find the steam player numbers. That name is definitely not helping the sales.
Exactly, also making good games consistently gets you fans. I’ve been a fan of the company that made Hades since I got their first game in a humble bundle. A lot of people got into their second game. Their third was fine. But if they hadn’t had a reputation for making great games (and I don’t think Bastion or Transistor was the most marketable game) I don’t think Hades would’ve blown up like it did.
So yeah the dev needs to learn to better market, keep marketing, and keep making games that build loyal customer bases.
It's an anomaly for a game's prospects to get better after the first week than how it does right when it launches. If you want to say it's a failure of marketing, sure, but the time to correct that marketing problem, in more than 99% of cases, was before it launched. There's another comment here that says that looking at it after reading the article, they still don't want to buy it. And for some reason I can't put my finger on, I'm right there with them.
They should have advertised the game before it was released, plain amd simple. Personally I don't like how they're whining about it, that turns me off of the game.
Man I remember dropping shittyflash games on new ground and going FUCKING WILD when one person had played it.
Likewise. Downloading demo now.
But also, like, I'm at least 100 hours into pixel dungeon. Idk what to tell indie game developers. Like, its not guaranteed to be a hit.
Well yeah, the question is, why didn't you hear of it. It might certainly be that the game or type of game has something to do with it, not only the marketing. It's kinda hard to know from the outside.