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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
I honestly think people should be more open about sales figures specially smaller indie but thats just me. :P
Quote from: Frito Master on Fri 22/02/2013 01:35:11
I honestly think people should be more open about sales figures specially smaller indie but thats just me. :P
It's not always that simple, unfortunately.
Quote from: Snarky on Thu 21/02/2013 12:07:58
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!
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.
Quote from: CaptainD on Fri 22/02/2013 12:05:35
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.
Quote from: Anian on Fri 22/02/2013 12:59:49
Quote from: CaptainD on Fri 22/02/2013 12:05:35
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.
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.)
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! :P But would I do it again? Yes. And I will.
Wasn't the TS question about number of copies, rather than money earned? ;)
Yes, but if you know the price (or royalty percentage), you can estimate one from the other. :P
Quote from: Vince Twelve on Fri 22/02/2013 16:07:04
would I do it again? Yes. And I will.
(http://i.imgur.com/CJKI4Tl.gif)
I actually already knew this (saw your MS Paint puzzle doodles), but that doesn't make me any less excited.
Quote from: Vince Twelve on Fri 22/02/2013 16:07:04would 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.
Quote from: Stupot+ on Fri 22/02/2013 16:41:07
Quote from: Vince Twelve on Fri 22/02/2013 16:07:04would 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 :undecided:.
/In case anyone is wondering why we derail this thread - it's DIRECTLY related to sales figures! :tongue:
Quote from: Vince Twelve on Fri 22/02/2013 16:07:04
But would I do it again? Yes. And I will.
But very slowly.
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 :-D
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:
(http://i47.tinypic.com/14bucp.jpg)
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.
True, there is a clear lack of AGS games that require you to wait 15 minutes through line by line loading of the title graphic ;)
There you go Fsi, a new game for you: AGS Load Screen :P
It's always great to see that people can make money of their AGS titles. I've always supported commercial AGS titles and usually purchase them on launch day. It's also nice to see that the low resolution restrictions on AGS doesn't impend on sales either.
I liked how Dave pointed out in his talk how profitability and graphical quality were somewhat inversely related. Really kinda makes you think....
Quote from: Baron on Tue 26/02/2013 02:18:24
I liked how Dave pointed out in his talk how profitability and graphical quality were somewhat inversely related. Really kinda makes you think....
I don't think this is universally applicable, though. In his case, hiring expensive artists didn't prove profitable. In other cases, impressive graphics can be a huge selling point, but obviously it's not everything. You could just as well take any other aspect, say music, and argue that just spending lots of money on producing an awesome score won't magically salvage an otherwise lacking game, but it's still important.
Dave's formula for success has been to release a large amount of short and low-budgety games that are easy to play and appeal to casual gamers. I guess.
Yeah, I would be careful trying to apply that correlation across the board for all games. Obviously with something like Machinarium, which is in the same genre, its stunning graphics were a huge part of the appeal. What it's about is understanding the appeal of your game to your target audience. Like Andail said, it seems that Dave's audience don't care too much about graphical fidelity - so it didn't appeal to a notably higher number of people due to the increase in visual quality, but it did cost a lot more to make.
To weigh in on the original discussion, we released our first commercial game last week and so far sales are in the several hundreds of units. Not allowed to give away specific figures, sadly, but hopefully that helps.
Quote from: Lewis on Tue 26/02/2013 14:03:38
To weigh in on the original discussion, we released our first commercial game last week and so far sales are in the several hundreds of units. Not allowed to give away specific figures, sadly, but hopefully that helps.
That's encouraging enough for me, though :)
* Heads back to work station
Quote from: Baron on Tue 26/02/2013 02:18:24
I liked how Dave pointed out in his talk how profitability and graphical quality were somewhat inversely related. Really kinda makes you think....
There's hope for me yet then! ;-D
Quote from: Lewis on Tue 26/02/2013 14:03:38
Yeah, I would be careful trying to apply that correlation across the board for all games. Obviously with something like Machinarium, which is in the same genre, its stunning graphics were a huge part of the appeal. What it's about is understanding the appeal of your game to your target audience. Like Andail said, it seems that Dave's audience don't care too much about graphical fidelity - so it didn't appeal to a notably higher number of people due to the increase in visual quality, but it did cost a lot more to make.
I don't think it's about graphical fidelity. Because by what standard are the presented screenshots from Blackwell convergence "horrible" (actual customer opinion)? In what sense does it look "like it was made 20 years ago"? I think it's the lo-res -- which to us here on AGS is a beloved genre standard, but not so much for the casual player. Case in point: a friend of mine, huge fan of Angry birds, after seeing Gray: "Yeah, it's nice... But... uhh... Why are those pixels SO BIG?" I've seen some reviewers whine about the 640x480 resolution in Primordia, even listing it on top of the CONS list. Also, we don't know if it was the same people that complained about the graphics in Convergence that bought subsequent Blackwell games later. Because Epiphany still doesn't look much more 21st century ;)
Basically, it seems casuals don't need a highly polished product -- and most wouldn't even be able to appreciate one. This highly professional and insightful review (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSXofLK5hFQ) is a sad proof of that.
To be fair, Soulja Boy's Braid review is pretty spot-on. It is a lot of fun fucking about with the time mechanics... ;-)
I hated Braid...
Good review though!;)
Quote from: Lewis on Wed 27/02/2013 16:39:19
To be fair, Soulja Boy's Braid review is pretty spot-on. It is a lot of fun fucking about with the time mechanics... ;-)
Until you die constantly, then it gets annoying as hell. I'm just sad because I came a bit farther than those drunk idiots before I stopped playing.
I thought Braid was wonderful, for the record. Not that it has anything to do with this discussion.
Braid is a really amazing and pretty easy game how could you guys do this... :(
I'm sorry, I love a lot of indie games- Path, Dear Esther and many more. But I just needed to get it out of the system;) Anyway, sorry for interrupting the topic. What were we talking about?
Quote from: Grim on Wed 27/02/2013 22:11:08
What were we talking about?
How many sales commercial AGS games garner. Some vague figures have been bandied about, and others are freely available with some polite requests via PM. What I'm interested in, though, is how many sales commercial AGS games
ought to make.
Supposition: It is possible for the next Angry Birds ( > 1 billion downloads) to be an adventure game. Based on the porting work of various AGSers (including Joseph DiPerla, JJS and possibly something going on behind the scenes (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=47577.0) at Wadjet Eye vis à  vis iOS, among others), this could feasibly even be an
AGS adventure game.
Query: What is it that AGS games have to do to really break out into the main stream? And don't give me that first-person 3D environment crap, 'cause the genre has already been there. What does an enterprising AGSer have to do to bring a 2.5D graphical adventure to the masses?
It's actually very interesting finding out these little nuggets of information about how much indie game makers are roughly earning. I've been working on Calm Waters for what seems like forever, and being a commercial project, this makes for very interesting reading.
Quote from: Baron on Thu 28/02/2013 02:13:48
Quote from: Grim on Wed 27/02/2013 22:11:08
What were we talking about?
How many sales commercial AGS games garner. Some vague figures have been bandied about, and others are freely available with some polite requests via PM. What I'm interested in, though, is how many sales commercial AGS games ought to make.
Supposition: It is possible for the next Angry Birds ( > 1 billion downloads) to be an adventure game. Based on the porting work of various AGSers (including Joseph DiPerla, JJS and possibly something going on behind the scenes (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=47577.0) at Wadjet Eye vis à  vis iOS, among others), this could feasibly even be an AGS adventure game.
Query: What is it that AGS games have to do to really break out into the main stream? And don't give me that first-person 3D environment crap, 'cause the genre has already been there. What does an enterprising AGSer have to do to bring a 2.5D graphical adventure to the masses?
This is an interesting question. The big things that made Angry Birds a success seemed to be an instantly recognizable and cute art style, a game loop that roughly approximates "user input with no time limit" -> "see the results" and a constant stream of new content for fans that auto-updates painlessly through iTunes. AGS games could do all of those things (it has the second one in the bag already) however the "constant new content" advantage has been significantly diminished. Back in the day, doing an update to your game would put you back on the "new games" list. This is something Rovio took major advantage of by releasing packs of levels quite often (their Angry Birds Seasons did so monthly).
The next big cultural icon game will likely come up through different means, but more or less this is how Angry Birds got to where it is. I suppose if someone had a fairly large and talented writing staff and could continuously 45-60 minutes of gameplay to a single title every month (basically episodic content on steroids) or so you might be able to replicate the success with word-of-mouth sales. However, I think there would still be an inordinate amount of luck involved in that.
I think it would always be a struggle for an adventure game to have as immediate impact as something like Angry Birds. The genre just doesn't lend itself to the immediate gameplay. replay value (trying to get better scores for each level, etc), the "pick up and play for a couple of minutes" element, and the (as KBlaney mentioned) easy addition of new content. So whilst I would love to think an AGS game (or adventure game of any type) could be the next big thing... I honestly don't think it could.
And it's fine that it won't be. :)
I think is better that the adventure games not get to be "the next big thing". If if gets bigger companies will take notice, and little indie will not be able,to compete with them. For companies that already got name for themselves (Wadjeteye) it will not be a problem, but a one man army that did his game on AGS, will be have trouble in the commercial world. Its like drugs and prostitutes, the shadier they are, better the benefits. I may be wrong, I never make a game, so, that just old be rambling about what I not even know.
Quote from: Baron on Tue 26/02/2013 02:18:24
I liked how Dave pointed out in his talk how profitability and graphical quality were somewhat inversely related. Really kinda makes you think....
Kinda. Players definitely care about the graphics - they wouldn't have complained about Deception as loudly as they did otherwise! - but they care MORE about the gameplay, story and puzzles and things. As with anything, you need to balance your time and money to where its most effective. By spending so much time and money on the graphics for Convergence, I spent LESS on the game design and it definitely suffered for it. That's the main reason why it didn't sell as well as it could have. That and I sucked at PR back than. :)
I wholeheartedly agree that graphics are important, but there's SEVERAL different groups of players that each have a different opinion of graphics. I mean Mega Man 9 on the XBLA system sold VERY well because it was a pure adaptation of the first 4 original NES games and didn't have the clutter of the later entries in the series, just as, in an opposite but related fashion, [new shooter x] will be a AAA title because while it doesn't update the core mechanics from [new shooter w] it does look much, much prettier.
Angry Birds may not look like much on the surface, but it does stand lightyears apart from most of the flash games you'd find on Newgrounds with physics engines in them. An adventure game kind of fits that mold too. The story is important, but you'd need the perfect balance of retro looking but HD quality graphics, the right amount of playtime (can't be too long or too short, which is why an episodic format would probably work best), and a unique puzzle system to even have a shot at tapping a wide market rather than a niche market.
Also you always have to look at your surroundings in pop culture. The Walking Dead adventure game that TellTale made last year sold like hotcakces but that was probably 20% because it was a unique and entertaining adventure game and 80% because The Walking Dead is a multi record breaking television show with a 10 year established fanbase.
I don't think an adventure game will ever be the next angry birds and I honestly don't think, even with the resurgence of the classic adventure game creators on Kickstarter and the resurgence of the nostalgia for those games, that they will ever have more than a small but deeply devoted fanbase. Having said that, with the advent of things like kickstarter and the moves people here are making toward making tools like AGS more portable, it's getting easier to reach that fanbase and I wouldn't be surprised if some dev teams/companies on this very board didn't get the opportunity in the next couple of years to really establish themselves in those markets as a full time game dev studio.
I just spotted this survey (not sure if it's linked before here) with 270 respondents, which lends some non financial weight towards this subject:
http://www.chronerion.com/ (scroll down)
QuoteI think is better that the adventure games not get to be "the next big thing". If if gets bigger companies will take notice, and little indie will not be able,to compete with them.
As long as you guys talk, share insights, listen to one another and have these lengthy discussion about game and puzzle design, plot writing and interface intuitiveness, you guys have a head start. It is easy to ape someone else's work, it is harder to understand what makes a game or setting good, what ticks with the players, understand why some game design are clearly better than others, figure out the pitfalls a design can fall into when one apes rather than creates.
Which is why I am always skeptical when I see newcomers appears out of the blue with a commercial project or a fangame when they have no apparent prior experience other than "I liked game X and wanted to make something similar."
Quote from: blueskirt on Sun 03/03/2013 02:42:58
Which is why I am always skeptical when I see newcomers appears out of the blue with a commercial project or a fangame when they have no apparent prior experience other than "I liked game X and wanted to make something similar."
Oh, I don't know. The first adventure game released by Daedalic was crudely drawn in MS-Paint and advertised with the slogan "By the people who loved Monkey Island". Not that I particularly liked Edna & Harvey personally, but it was successful, kickstarted a proper company, and the titles that followed were much more impressive.
Crudely drawn!? Edna and Harvey!?
How dare you! :=