My Story Of Success And The Emotional Roller Coaster That Came With It

It's been a long time since I have been on these forums, but I wanted to share my experiences over the past years in game development. I've been developing in Unity full time for near 5 years now, and up until only recently I had never really tried to go completely independent. After 4 years of doing contract work and selling assets on the Asset Store, I decided to take advantage of the relatively empty market for VR, specifically the HTC Vive.

Events Leading Up
It was around April of this year that I decided to bite the bullet and go completely independent in the VR market. Now the funny thing is, I had never actually tried VR before, but I decided to go ahead and order an HTC Vive. It wasn't until June that received it, due to finishing contract work as well as the massive amount of time it took to be shipped to me, but I finally had the unit. I immediately fell in love with the unit and saw the massive potential. I started doing a few experiments with ideas and eventually came up with a concept and title. The Last Sniper VR.

The Last Sniper VR is a WW2 based shooter with a highlight on playing the role of a sniper. I developed most of the basic mechanics and one map and decided it was ready for Steam greenlight. To my surprise it did very well on greenlight and rose up the ranks to #43 before it was greenlite. I was confident at that point the game would pay off, but I still had no idea what the future of this game lay in store.

The Release
A month after greenlight, I decided it was ready for release. I released the game with 4 levels in the campaign plus an extra game mode called Rush. The moment I hit the release button I hit the shower. When i got out of the shower after about 20-30 minutes I hit the refresh button on my sales page. I couldn't believe my eyes, 60 units sold. This may not sound like much, but putting it into perspective, 60 units at $10.00 USD is $600.00. $600.00 in a half hour of sales! I had never experienced this sort of feeling before, but it was very exciting. Over the next 24 hours those 60 sales grew to 1000! 10,000 dollars in a day. I actually thought I was dreaming, but I most certainly wasn't.


The Emotional Roller Coaster
In the months that followed, success with the game has continued. Going into this, I knew that a WW2 game could potentially dangerous and that there would be haters no matter what, especially that you play both allied and axis.. For the first week, the hate messages and bad reviews didn't even seem to phase me because the excitement I was feeling wrote them off. With time though, it did take it's toll. During the 2 months this game has been released, you wouldn't believe some of the things people have said to me. I've been called a 'fraud' a 'nazi' a 'fag', everything you can imagine. People have stalked my social media and harassed me on every site they can find me on. All because they were upset about a feature or their expectations were not met. It's pretty mind blowing to know that people can spend so much time and effort trying to harass a developer on a personal level over a game. I cannot imagine how the creators of No Mans Sky must feel.

The Good In All This
Overall this has been an amazing experience. One of the most beautiful things is, with the hate, there is overwhelming support. Today I watched a negative review get 200 dislikes in 8 hours, and hundreds of people coming to my defense. It's truly a beautiful and surreal thing to experience. Even though the hate and harassment sometimes get to me, I simply remind myself how fortunate I am to experience this kind of success and to have such overwhelming support from the fan base and community. Anyway, I thought I would share this experience with you guys, I hope it can help to inspire those trying to go independent, but let you know what to expect.

Robert.

Steam store link: http://store.steampowered.com/app/502710

 

Awesome and keep up the great work! What were some of your biggest challenges in moving to VR development?

 

@hassank I would say, finding out what works and what doesn't. It's a completely new playground, which makes it ideal for my style. I love innovating and trying things that have never been done. My advice, do something original. I am seeing so many copy cat games already which is mind boggling to me. It's not difficult to be original in such a fresh market.

 

Thanks for the refreshing perspective and I 100% agree. It's crucial to look for new mechanics and bend the medium. If you ever get a chance, check out AR development. I made some Hololens prototypes and it was a stellar experience. The AR space is a playground also in need of pioneers and new ideas.

Again, best of luck with the future work!

 

This was a great find/read! Yes I am behind on the times... I just picked up UEBS last month and that is what led me here. I spiraled into trying to create custom characters and importing into the game using your modding tool. As I am browsing through just looking for better understanding of how it all works, it was nice to read a bit of your personal journey as a developer! Keep up the good work!