Getting your (Unity) game on Steam: will get you over 100,000 impressions quickly but it's not enoug

One thing I quickly realized on Steam(their website is not working now...I mean seriously...):

In 5 hours my game got over 100,000 impressions and 3900 page views - in 24 hours 200 had it in their wishlist but as the NDA prevents me from discussing actual sales, let me tell you just: they suck. In fact it seems that one million + positive reviews won't be enough to quit your job.

Your best best is 10 million impressions + cult following game + friends buying + investors. Basically all the things that will make your sales success everywhere. But the conclusion from my experience that far is tha Steam isn't good place for organic traffic. Can't really compete with Google, Amazon and the likes.

 

Dude, impressions and pageviews only matter when you have a good product to sell.

Your game is a beginner's project with many issues.

You won't quit your day job selling something like this.

 

Someone out there is crazy enough...

 

You may have put alot effort into it, noone except you knows and I wouldn't doubt that at any time, but alot of personal work may not be enough to compete with all the other games that are usually developed by teams over months and years.

From the trailer that I've seen in one of your other threads, I wouldn't consider it to be ready for the market. It may look graphically promising (depends on one's personal expectations) but at least the trailer doesn't really tell much about the whole thing. Running around, looking at some graphical highlights which are often out of the box and shipped with the engine and doing a little bit of shooting is simply not enough. As hard as this might sound. Some have succeeded with that, but those exceptions often had at least one rare or innovative element which got them through.

A real professional could create such a project in a few days and might even top yours. The market is already flooded with lots of products which should have never been released in regards to all the bugs and not-yet-ready-to-release contents. It's not a simple business (unless your idea is so weird and strange that the crowd goes wild for some reason and hypes your game).

 

People look at car crashes too, doesn't mean they want them.

 

Didnt you already make a rant thread about this? There is no need to stir up more attention to how poorly your game (i use that work loosely) has done.

 

justbrosingthanks, while i, like the rest of them, think that your game is an abomination, i'd like to honestly thank you for sharing your experiences.

I have a question and a tip.

My question is, do you play computer games, to have a frame of reference, or rather not?

The advice is, get a whackier name for your game. Have a look at "Shower with your Dad Simulator". It sold tons of copies and while it is a better game than yours, the gameplay itself still cant carry it or explain its success.

For example, "Shooting blanks with your dingdong" - now THATS a title that can sell a few thousand copies.

 

Yes just having a game on Steam won't make you rich.
You better build a fanbase around your game (as yourself noted).
Another big success factor these days seems Youtube. If you have a interesting enough game that attracts a lot of youtubers (preferably the famous ones) your game will do well. Look at Slime Rancher for example.

Having a game in a niche, that won't be touched by triple A studios certainly helps too.

 

I really appreciate you sharing your data with us. 100k "Impressions", does that mean 100k times the logo of the game appeared in some list or search query? And that converted into 3900 clicks leading toward your store page? I have to say I find the smallest logo, that is shown in the autocompletion of the top right search bar, a lot more appealing than the artwork in the top right corner of the actual store page.
I find it interesting that your game has 100% positive reviews. Even if the people say "it's so bad that it's good" I interpret their thumbs up review as not being actually angry. To me it seems like you didn't oversell your product and people knew what they were getting into. It might have hurt sales at the moment, but it led to 100% positive reviews so far. If the product you are providing was more in line with what the market demands, you might have had a solid base for long term success there.
But of course I'm talking out of my arse here, since I never released a product.

Roughly what percentage of people has refunded the game?

 

Martin:

Yes, it means roughly 3.9% of people click on the game once they see the impression on Steam.

Again, can't discuss sales but...well could be better. I genuinely can't find data on refunds, I am not saying this as a way to "cheat" the NDA - but I can't. Basically as I can't it will seem probably no one 0_0.

One more thing:

Search accounts for over 80% of the traffic. Some people actually use the search lol!

The other 19% are the impression clicks and just 1% from elsewhere. Literally no clicks from youtube or anywhere....

Again, that's just the very first day, I am waiting for data since yesterday and today to see hopefully more clicks from other pages...

 

Why is there even an NDA in place? Last I checked you were the sole publisher and owner.

 

Does the data tell you what the people searched for? If they searched "the rebel", it is most likely they actually did come from youtube. I never click links on there, I always search for the name of the game on steam. If they searched for "FPS" or "action", then I'd see them as "real" search querys.

Afaik it's part of the standard steam contracts. But I've never heard of them actually enforcing that, and plenty of devs have shared numbers.

 

I am pretty sure if you had 1 million positive reviews you could quit your job, because only like 1 out of 100 people bother reviewing anything.

 

justbrosingthanks:
Is this the game you are talking about?
http://store.steampowered.com/app/452650/

Is this an accurate video of the game's current state?

Based on that video, I would not expect very many users to buy the game regardless of how many impressions it received. The frame rate in the video is extremely low. It looks unplayable. I would suggest shooting a video with a much higher/smoother frame rate.

 

I know the answer, but I'm under a really cool NDA so I can't answer it. Sorry guys.

 

Even without the framerate issues, the game is still pants and the trailer is still pants and really it's just pants all around.

 

A very public act of self-immolation in which a person refuses to disclose the motives for said act of public self-immolation does not constitute an achievement worthy of significant monetary compensation; nor should it be surprising that in spite of said act attracting the attention of a large quantity of people, none of those people were positively impressed nor do they wish to see any more.

 

No the data doesn't tell you about the exact search term. In my opinion they've searched for fps, first person shooteer etc.

Highly unlikely they've searched the title of my game. I mean as the links from youtube are zero, then it should be logical the exposure is little...

 

Yeah you would have turn those page views into sales (and honestly your looking at 1..3% of those people turning into customers) and get listed on the popular new releases category, I think in order to have any hope of gaining any traction on steam youd have to great product that you can sell at a high price point because steam is based on revenue.

 

Sadly my experience that far tells different. On the tens of products i have on google and amazon - it's constant about 30-70 of the people who use the product write a review - something negative, sometimes positive. Here...well it's different. Everyone and their brother is devoting huge amount of time to my game - I guy had just wasted 30 minutes to write like 5,000 words in the forum there to criticize the game. I don't get it...are those people getting paid to do this? Are they just 12 years old with all the time in the universe? I'd never waste so much time to whine about anything even if i can't stand it with my guts. There's definitely something weird here or just...the gaming community is childish hehe .

 

Having no links to your store page from YouTube means they had to have searched to find your game. You will only have links from YouTube if there are actual links in the video summary or the comments and at a glance I don't see any given.

I'd imagine Jim is working on the assumption his fans are at least smart enough to know how to search the web.

 

^ sorry, i meant hours....not 30 minutes.

 

I'd challenge them if they're smart enough on how to use a Thor search engine!

 

Have you ever actually used a Tor engine?

 

yes, they suck though...lots of broken links....

 

...I have been thinking, and you have managed to create quite a stir for your game! Honestly, this is a pretty successful PR campaign. You're getting to be infamous... if you can manage to release a decent game, you'd have lots of people's attention upon release. Good show.

I mean, you're basically pulling a Kardashian on everyone...

It's obvious that you're not super talented, but you're making yourself highly visible while ignoring all criticism and baffling us by being so terribly aloof. This is quite clever! Because you have managed to attract all of this negative attention while maintaining a generally cheerful countenance, you can label your critics as "haters" or "bad guys" and play the sympathy card. Because you seem like a generally relatable person, very "salt of the earth" and "just a normal guy", intellectual criticism of your work really just seems like unwarranted negativity.

I have to hand it to you... you're onto something, here, at least as far as public image and getting eyes on yourself. If you had made an honest, workman quality FPS I doubt we would be having this conversation.

 

The part from "ThatNickGuy's" long post that I've read sounded like genuinely well meant advice to help you become a more successful developer. It was well written, thoughtful and as far as I can tell based on facts (the Five Nights at Freddy's story for example). I had read the second half or so. I just wanted to go back to it, and I saw you've already deleted it. Let's just say I'm having a hard time understanding some of your decisions.

 

There are moments though when I feel like this is all accidental.

 

I can't believe that this is an elaborate marketing scheme, but at the same time there are clear indications that op is being a truly top quality troll.

The fact that he clearly idolizes the Slaughtering Ground guys, and has said that he hopes to emulate them. While he also calls anyone who says his product is bad a troll or deletes their thread, etc.

The thread delete thing is kind of interesting, if you do some research on controversial shovelware developers, most coverage will also include some discussion about how they also delete threads and the like. It's part of 'being controversial'.

I think basically, OP wanted to drop a turd game, and is trying to execute the plan - but I think the trick is that he secretly deep down wanted the game to be fun, he wanted people to really like playing it. He wanted the controversy, but he also wanted people to actually like his work, not just laugh at it.

Half a master class in trolling, but half a guy who sincerely wanted people to like his work. People are complicated and they can be contradictions.

Op is stuck at sort of a crossroads, he wants to make money - but he doesn't want his game to be a laughingstock. For instance, he says he wants to fix up some bugs and problems. This is obviously not something that would actually help his game, since his games success is based on it being terrible.

 

When the frog stops hopping and starts croaking sense, you know that it's either the end of days or the beginning of a golden age. Or both.

 

Unfortunately he didn't price his game appropriately for the market. Anything above $0.99 is likely too much for the niche.

 

Are you serious? That's a huge pile of disrespect.
There are many talented, passionate, ambitious and thankful developers (or artists in general, also employees, basically people in general) who'd LOVE to get honest and detailed feedback instead of getting the usual and short 'well made' or 'not good' kind of feedback. That's cool and nice, but that doesn't help much when you're trying to get better.

Why don't you respect that and use the feedback to improve your abilities?

 

I'm getting the feeling that you guys are overthinking it.

I can't be the only one who thinks that OP is simply a teenager 15..16 years old (maybe even 14), can I?
That would explain a lot.

Just watch how it goes and see what happens. This kind of opportunity doesn't happen every day.

 

That's one of the possibilities that occurred to me.

 

He doesn't want to move on from this game
He wants it to make money
He hasn't moved on from the fact that a game actually has to be, you know, good, in order to make money
I think it's great that the OP has actually released something thats (sorta) finished, thats great
Its a learning experience
But if he wants to make money he needs to know you dont do that from your experiments, they help you make something good which makes the money

 

He mentioned the slaughtering grounds guys a bunch of times and reached out to them. He clearly intended to basically emulate them. They're famous in gamer circles for releasing piles of trash and creating controversy.

There are a lot of common factors between many of the more infamous Steam developers, a lot of common patterns in their activity. Teen or not, he's clearly following the script very closely.

 

Edit: Thinking about it, shouldnt drag his other website into this. So i removed the post.

 

Am I the only one amused by the fact that he has the game on his non-gaming business website?

 

Someone hook me up for his server security? Does he deal with identical twins though?

 

Next step, doing an interview with Jim Sterling?

 

If it happens someone pm me the link

 

Maybe get some fake reviews first, see if that stimulates some sales that turn into a cult following.

 

He doesn't "need" to do anything. His life, his choices, his consequences. Just watch how it goes.

As hippo said, people enjoy watching car crashes.

Registered under girl's name and at address of tesla motors service center. Well, what else could I possibly expect.

 

Reminds me of Uwe Boll who deliberately creates bad movies with game licenses that even though they flop make him money because of a German tax loophole. But he's still proud enough to stand up to critics - in the boxing ring!:

 

Do you want it to recognize one or to create one?

 

This makes sense to me. An insane security sales website and the like.

The thing that doesn't make sense to me is that he really did replace a lot of the asset store stuff. He did spend the time to at least attempt to cobble together something that appeared at leas semi original.

He loved the buildings, those skyscrapers, I wonder if he actually hand modeled those? He may have also hand made the little weird sphere monster that you fight early on. This would explain why he features that stuff so prominently in the videos and screenshots. The dinosaurs clearly look better and cooler, but he gives the skyscrapers way more screen time.

It's a scam and stuff, for sure, but the thing is - I think deep down he really wanted it to be fun. When the best review was "so bad it was good" - I believe he was sincerely disappointed.

 

Course he doesn't need to do anything. Just if he expects to make money from it he might want to

 

Lol, this thread keeps getting and better. Feels cool watching the trolls. Too bad I have other work now...and have to leave the possibility to honour some people with attention, when they don't deserve it off course.

By the way, I don't mean you - the video...well looks funny from the snapshot .

 

You know, I imagined Jim Sterling in a boxing ring. That could be interesting.

 

Sadly, this will get me banned from the Uk for a while . I have some things to say about Sterling and his island lol....

Anywayz, too lazy now to explain or care.