How many copies this game sold......

[HristosKo34]

Can somebody please tell me (in numbers) how many copies "Resonance", "The cat lady", "Gemini Rue" and other late AGS games, sold?
I am asking this becasue I am extremely curious to find out how many people are still messing around with 2D point'n'click graphic adventure games.

[miguel]

Hristosko34, I don't think you should be asking this kind of things. I'm sure you mean well but you do realize that the people who made those games are forum members?
Try to contact them personally, they're the ones who know those figures and the ones to decide if that is meant to become public.

Snarky, sorry if I crossed any borders here.

[Andail]

No borders crossed, Miguel, but also, it's not a crime to ask. I think many people would be interested in knowing how many copies these games actually sell.

[CaptainD]

Most indie publishers are very reluctant to give exact sales figures (also, because of reports coming through at different times from different sources - Steam, Desura, IndiVania etc) it's often very difficult for them to even have a particularly clear idea of how many copies a game has actually sold.

Dave Gil has publicly released some information about the level of sales of different WEG games over time, but this was a comparative study without reference figures, so you can only see how games sold in relation to other games.

The only thing we can say with confidence is that adventure games sell enough copies for a small (but growing?) number of people to actually make a living from it.

[Snarky]

Dave does reveal some numbers in his AdventureX talk:

[embed=480,360] <iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/QIaifvx0e9Q" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> [/embed]

Along with the sales curves he's shown on his blog, you should be able to estimate WEG sales from these numbers. (Though without more information, it's hard to say how many people have got the games through Steam or in bundles. Or of course how many have pirated them. On the other hand, not all those who purchase the game play it, at least not to the end.)

[EchosofNezhyt]

I honestly think people should be more open about sales figures specially smaller indie but thats just me.

[Anian]

I honestly think people should be more open about sales figures specially smaller indie but thats just me.

It's not always that simple, unfortunately.

[CaptainD]

Dave does reveal some numbers in his AdventureX talk:

I don't suppose you could give a time index to look at?  I don't really have time to listen to the whole thing right now!

[Fitz]

The question *might* seem rude -- but I don't think it's ill-natured. I guess most of us, while having a regular jobs and making games only in our spare time, harbor (or have at some point harbored) a dream of making our hobbies our primary source of income, our job. So it's only natural that you'd like to know what the potential of the market is rather than dive right in and get burnt. That said, doing your initial research before going in doesn't guarantee you won't get burnt, either. It's never as simple as getting a product out there and selling a number of copies. That speech by Dave is invaluable -- a bunch of great tips, but a bit of a cold shower, too. But then I read about that married couple who made Incredipede -- and whose one little logic game that sold so well they could quit their jobs and go travel around the world (and continue to make games, at their own pace). So yeah, anything's possible.

[Anian]

I don't suppose you could give a time index to look at?  I don't really have time to listen to the whole thing right now!

Sorry to say, but it's mentioned a few times during the talk, basically after each game is mentioned, so no specific part.

[CaptainD]

I don't suppose you could give a time index to look at?  I don't really have time to listen to the whole thing right now!

Sorry to say, but it's mentioned a few times during the talk, basically after each game is mentioned, so no specific part.

Ah okay, I guess I'll have to find an hour somewhere to listen to it then - thanks for letting me know.

[Snarky]

Oh, I mean, you can scan around, most of the numbers are on the slides, and half the time is questions and answers. Some key figures:

-In the first month Blackwell Legacy and Blackwell Unbound was on BigFishGames, they made him royalties of $25,000 (the bundle was the #5 bestseller on the site, members of their game club paid $6.99 per game). He says that "for two years [up to that point] I was struggling to make, like, half of this." (Not sure exactly how to interpret that. He must have made more than $6,000/year, surely? I mean, I don't see how you could survive on that kind of income in NYC.)
-For Blackwell Convergence, though, he only got $5,000 from BFG in the first month (it only went to #99), and it dropped sharply after that.
-In response, he focused more on promotion, and soon direct sales (number of games sold, I assume) from WEG exceeded sales through portals, which had seemed impossible a year before.
-Blackwell Deception sold much better than any of the previous Wadjet Eye games. (Not clear whether that also includes Gemini Rue.)
-On the day the games launched on Steam, more people were playing them than in the five years they'd been in business. (This might be hyperbole, though.)
-He takes a restrictive policy on bundles, only putting the older games on there. This means that they're earning money from The Shivah again.
-He doesn't think piracy has an effect on their bottom line.
-Thinks are going well and getting better for Wadjet Eye Games.

-The budget for Blackwell Unbound was only $800 (the company having financial difficulties at the time) - clearly that's not counting his time working on it. (He says the team was just Erin and a composer, but what about the voice actors?)
-He likes to keep his game budgets under $10,000, and if I understand correctly Legacy and Deception cost around that much (though Convergence apparently blew past that), including voice acting, marketing and his own time. (I don't know how he charges his own or Janet's hours.)

[Vince Twelve]

I'd be quite likely to share *some* numbers with someone who asked me politely in a private message, but shy away from doing so in public.

My slice of the Resonance pie is pretty small, but in the seven months it's been on sale, I've made about 90% of what I made in the same period at my day job as a software developer.  Of course, that's five years of work versus... well... seven months of work.  What I'm saying is I'm not quitting my day job!   But would I do it again?  Yes.  And I will.

[Crimson Wizard]

Wasn't the TS question about number of copies, rather than money earned?

[Snarky]

Yes, but if you know the price (or royalty percentage), you can estimate one from the other. 

would I do it again?  Yes.  And I will.

I actually already knew this (saw your MS Paint puzzle doodles), but that doesn't make me any less excited.

[Stupot]

would I do it again?  Yes.  And I will.

Best News all day.  Well, that and Resonance picking up both Best Indie Adventure and Best Traditional Adventure in the Aggies just now.

[Tramponline]

would I do it again?  Yes.  And I will.

Best News all day.  Well, that and Resonance picking up both Best Indie Adventure and Best Traditional Adventure in the Aggies just now.

...not to forget being runner-up in both categories for Best Adventure of 2012!
Darn, so close! Pah, The Walking Dead...pfffffhhhh .
/In case anyone is wondering why we derail this thread - it's DIRECTLY related to sales figures!

[Vince Twelve]

But would I do it again?  Yes.  And I will.

But very slowly.

[m0ds]

It's great that Dave went into some detail on those issues and it's probably best to wait until you can look at those sort of things in proper retrospect. It's too early to talk about TCL. It wasn't released nationwide in Game nor broke gaming worlwide figures in it's opening weekend... But it's reaching people.

Summerbatch sold 1170 copies in 3 months and raised £2500.18. Granted that's not really a reflection of a single game release, and split between 6 people it doesn't amount to much, but any single developer who was able to hit those figures and earn that much for themselves in the same kind of time period should be laughing, and I think it's entirely possible. I'd rather wait to see how things play out with some of the other distributors before talking about TCL's numbers, but yeah to say we want to keep doing this and that it's worth it - would be an understatement

The player base is constantly growing, there's no shortage of that - also people like to own and own again and AGS games are really showing their potential of worth within the market these days. More people are opening up to self employment too which is steering things in a good direction (maybe!) as more people push the boundaries of their 'ags hobby'! Point + click genre is strong, adventure genre as a whole even stronger and bound to get stronger still.

But it's not all silver lining, there is still a very big issue to overcome (which some are beginning to) if things are going to get stronger for AGS game sales and copies reaching players etc:

[CaptainD]

Although to be fair mark, the vast majority of those platforms are not commercially viable options these days.  (Although there are actually people who still develop and release new titles for the C64, which constantly amazes me!)

But yeah, tapping the iOS and Android markets in particular is going to be hugely important going forwards.  Not so sure about quite how important the Linux port is going to be (not that it shouldn't be done or isn't a worthwhile project), as from what I've heard most AGS games seem to work fine under WINE.