My first week on Steam - my experience

So my Unity game Wild Animal Racing* was released on Steam last week so I thought I'd share my experience which might be useful for some people.

Highs

• Good YouTube reviews with 160,000 views
• People actually buying your game!!
• Its finished at last.

Lows

• Bad YouTube reviews with 100,000 views
• Discovering a potential bug and rushing to patch it before the weekend rush.

My tips are...

• Get your game as polished as possible. First impressions matter.
• Never argue with bad comments or try to get them taken down. People are entitled to their opinion. And within their comment maybe useful information to improve your game.
• Don't expect everyone to like your game. Find your niche.
• Stay positive about your game.
• Be active in the community sections.
• If your game uses networking test it also with screen casting software running in the background as this is how reviewers may play your game! (And it would be embarrassing if the game was lagging while being live streamed! )
• Fix any issues or improvements as quickly as possible. Even with all the testing in the world when it goes live there will still be things that you have missed.
• The audience who review your game on Greenlight and the audience who buy your game are completely different.
• Your jobs not finished. Now what about the DLCs? Just because the game is live doesn't mean it still can't be improved. Can you improve the trailer? The screenshots? You have plenty of time now the game is finished.

Tools used (if I remember)

• Unity 4.7
• Blender
• GIMP
• Inkscape
• Audacity
• FRAPS (for gameplay capture)
• Windows Movie Maker (for trailer - functional but not recommended!)
• Dropbox
• HP Laptop and MacBook Air (both with Intel 5000 integrated graphics card)
• Google Docs
• Google Sheets (for localisation)
• Blogspot

Thanks. Thats my feedback. Just my thoughts - I'm definitely no expert! Its scary releasing your game to the world especially on Steam. But it is definitely worth it! Anyone else want to share their experience?

*(I gave in)

 

Congratz

 

It's good to have experience like that. All the way through to release and then afterwards. Thanks for sharing your tips and experience with it. I hope to have a game released on Steam one day -- 'tis only a dream for now.

 

No. I refuse to accept this. You must include a link to your steam page!!!

I may accept a PM with the information if nothing else!

 

Good tips, link your game!

 

Thanks a lot for sharing!

I think I found the game on steam. Reminds me a bit of a classic that I played as a kid. I think I'd have gone with sprites instead of 3D models to better tap into the nostalgia. Anyway, good job on getting your game on steam! I'd be interested to hear a ballpark number of sales after a month or so, or alternatively I'd be interested to hear if steamspy is accurate once it starts displaying stats for your game.

 

I didn't know about Steamspy. That's useful to know. I can see how other games are doing!

 

Think I found it too. I played the handheld version of that classic game about a decade ago. While the 3D models are okay, I think it would have enhanced the look with some decent colorful textures on the characters. Anyway, congrats on finishing it, and the game definitely taps on nostalgia, and on top of that, getting networked multiplayer to work and supported is quite the challenge, so much props for that one.

When will you reveal the game to the Unity community so that, you know, you can tap into more potential sales?

 

You guys are epic steam ninjas. No clue how you're finding this.

 

I don't know how they're finding it either! Maybe they can sense which one it is by comparing it to my fish art. That's assuming they got it right.

I did have a bit of trouble with the Networking. I was sending the clients' input as an RPC function in the Update() function. So it was doing that every frame which is v v bad if the frame rate is high. So I changed it to only send input data fewer times a second. Bit of a schoolboy error. But you live and learn.

 

Well all I can say is you have pretty crappy marketing. I still don't know what it is or where it is. Guessing it's Wild Animal Racing. Which looks quite fun to me tbh Don't underestimate the power of internet stalking.

 

I was always trying very hard to keep different online identities of mine separate. Then one day I'm on a gaming forum with my gaming nickname and a different mail address, and an admin writes me a private message with my real name and references to work I've done, because he wanted to recruit me for their website in some fashion (as a writer or something, I can't remember). He found me because I once in my life mentioned my gaming nick with my real account on another forum. He found that one slipup I had in my paranoia and connected the dots. I went back and edited that forum post to avoid this happening again. It was a good lesson about internet anonymity.

Finding your game is a whole lot easier. And when someone says "which shall remain nameless as I like to have an air of mystery about me on these forums" that's like challenging me to find it. I think I got your real name too by the way. I respect privacy in that I don't post such things here, but if you really want to stay anonymous you need to go to greater lengths .

 

Doh. Oh well. Still as you can see it's not an AAA quality game but has its little niche I think. So, for anyone not on Steam yet, I would just say "don't give up!"

 

The forums can always do with some more concrete examples. Without knowing what your game is, it could be a polished masterpiece or a frankenstein, so your stats posted aren't particularly useful to me. Thanks for sharing though anyway.

Another thing is, in this business you need a presence. You need people to know about you, as well as your game. You need to be the face and front of your products so people can relate to you, so you can be compelling at a personal level.

I wouldn't worry too much about these forums, what's the worst that can happen, people rip into your stuff? Who cares as long as you're selling well on Steam! I'd get rid of this 'mysterious air' stuff. You're only doing yourself harm.

 

OK I've given in.

Here are my sales figures too.
1st week sales: 167 copies. (I think that takes into account refunds)
Mainly on the first two days. Picking up a bit on Saturday and Sunday with about 20 sales each day.

Not too bad. And hopefully there will be a boost if/when it goes in a Steam sale as its probably too expensive for most people at the moment.

 

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/help-with-this-game-mechanic-conundrum.390875/
This gives a lot of information: 6 players, racing, multiplayer... Plus you've said:

There's only like 20-30 games there and only 1 of them are racing, 2 more are racing DLCs. You can guess which one of them it is, right?

 

I've found it also - even before I read hippo's post.
Not the internet sleuth others are (no darknet for me) however if your wondering how to minimize info gathering - I checked info available on your AI project, when searched for reveals the game on steam.

Hey - you should enter the Unity Community Art Challenge!
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-community-art-challenge-march-2016-awesome-kart.388750/

 

It wasn't hard. @yoonitee's blog site from his profile has enough identity info to punch into Steam's search field. First time I found his full name somewhere, though not through the contact email. Second time I tried via company name.

 

I'd make a very bad spy.

 

Maybe his profile page->Home page->Blog? Full name is clearly written there... I don't know how you found company name though, there's a lot of people with that combination. But it's clearly same name under developer in steam game. Full name is enough to get only one search result in steam.

 

Right. Full name as a blog author on a post, and company name on More Unity Assets page.

 

Seems like I was not enough spy to look at that page too.

 

LOVE this. Very common sense.

 

Well you did better then us

 

User reviews... lol

 

Hell yeah man!

This thread taught me to never ever tell people on the internet that you want to keep your identity a secret. You guys must have brought facebook stalking to new levels, wow!

 

I watched a couple youtubes, dude - people are really having fun with your game! And they're getting tens of thousands of views!

I think that for a first release, this is a tremendous success. Congrats!

 

How did you market your game? Did you have a website, a blog, an indieDB page or anything like that? That would be kind of interesting to know. And how long did it take you to get greenlit?

Congrats on releasing your game and having people play it!

 

Hi, I haven't really marketed it as such. Well, my marketing is relying on exposure on Greenlight, the Steam store and reviews and word-of-mouth. It took one year (almost) to get Greenlit - most of the votes coming in the first weeks and then down to a trickle.

My reasoning is (and it may be flawed) is that if you use Steam you will see it in the store and if you don't use Steam you probably won't buy Steam games anyway. Any amount of exposure I try and give it outside Steam is probably minimal by comparison.

I am thinking of making a merchandise store with Zazzle or Redbubble though. Just for fun.

 

Great info! This affirms other developers' experiences with Steam that you read about, so it's great. The major difference I see here is that it took about a year to get Greenlit. It kind of gives hope that even if your vote counts trickle down, you can eventually get there. Probably not always the case, but it's great to hear that your efforts finally paid off.

 

The "classic" must be Wacky Wheels for sure
http://www.mobygames.com/game/wacky-wheels/screenshots

 

How do you get steam green lit? Is it easy?

 

Well, its probably getting easier as they are putting more games at a time through. Just make a good trailer. That's all there is too it really.

 

Its pretty easy, I've also read they accept the top 33% so you really only need maybe 1500 votes. And the video is most certainly key, the first ~45 seconds of your video is what people will use to decide how they will vote.

 

Cool. Congrats!

 

@yoonitee Thanks for sharing your experience and your initial sales figures! Do you have a rough idea of how much time you spent creating the game?

 

@yoonitee Or if you have the time, you already have an audience for a full post mortem.

 

Interesting. You hear stories about how difficult it is to get greenlit, but I guess that was so 2 years ago. But I guess it's one thing to get Greenlit, and another to make sustainable income from the product.

 

Your 1st week sales numbers look great. Congratulations!! Most people rather keep their numbers to themselves, your info is valuable for us. Thank you!!

Without giving exact numbers or anything... can you then tell us how do sales behave after some time? I reckon sales drop after some time... but, is it like a drastic drop to absolute zero? Or is it more like sales slowly dropping and then settling?

 

I have a question: After going through Greenlight once do you have to do it again for your next games or can you publish directly to Steam afterwards?

 

I personally love the disco dancing screenshot haha.

@Aiursrage, That's good info! So sales tend to drop to zero? Damn, I was hoping maybe sales tend to settle at some point. Nothing close to first week sales obviously, but something you could "add up" over time, with following games. So eventually the sum of various games would start to add up to a... mildly "reliable" base income every month.

167 copies first week is a very nice starting point, though. Plus I'm sure with some updates the number will increase. But yoonitee's past the indie's negligible income fear, everyone talks about. From now on it should only get better.

 

Well I guess its really depend on how well your game does. But even the big hitters like dust force eventually drop down (it gets to 10 sales per day eventually). Eventually the visits per page drops down to less then 1000 visits per day and it will depend on how good your CR is (is it 1%, 3%, 0.1%).

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/TerenceLee/20130417/190637/Dustforce_sales_figures.php

 

It's hard to say how long since I was working on it off-and-on. I started it about 2 years ago! Worked on it for a few months. Then set it aside while it was on Greenlight and not getting anywhere. Then when it got Greenlit, a few more months to get it ready and do all that Steam integration. Put a lot of effort into things like unlockable animations, easter eggs, and trading cards that most users will probably not evens see! (Although they add to the trailer so not all a waste of time!).

A good tip is maybe concentrate most of your effort on the core game and gameplay, and worry less about paripherals like trophies and unlockables etc.

Sales are holding steady at the moment about 13 per day. It will be interesting to see how long this lasts...

I'm sure I would have got much more sales had I started at a lower price. But who knows...

So, yeah, quite good! Not enough to buy a yacht and sail round the world, but should be enough to fund the next game or whatever the next project may be...

Also, the Mac sales account for about 7% so its not a lot but worth having a Mac version too!

 

@yoonitee Thanks again for the update! Glad to hear you're still making sales.

This seems like a no-brainer, but it's shocking how many titles still don't have Mac/Linux versions. If you're using Unity/Unreal, they do almost all of the hard work for you!

 

What is your daily traffic like?

 

Congrats, your experience seems close to mine (I got less youtube exposure but manage to get a bit better sales numbers) and I think your conclussions are on point.

What I suggest is that you try to time a good patch with a weeklong sale so you can use at least one visibility round, that boosted sales a lot for me during this week.

Stay strong! haters leave eventually and there's plenty of supportive people on Steam too.

 

Endorsing this as well. I spent a good 3-5 days on achievements on my game. This is how the thought process goes:

Lesson goes, even if it's incredibly easy to implement, consider your audience. They will want the core gameplay to be on point. You can always add achievements some time after release.

 

I actually had people ask for achievements and steam trading cards which I thought were pretty worthless myself but you might as well add them

 

Well, you had validation. That makes sense.