"No GOG release?"
People often ask me, and the answer is no, it was impossible. You need to know that GOG has quite an unusual policy regarding the choice of games they publish. They mainly want to keep control on their new releases and increase the marketing for these titles. So it means they accept less games than (let's say) Steam, but in return they provide more private support to the developers. I totally understand this and it's positive, so I am not particularly disapointed that ASA never released on GOG.
When I contacted GOG for the very first time, they looked interested in my game and I even added the GOG logo in a trailer. At that time, I had the feeling to be in touch with the guys of "Good Old Games". You know: the store where you find a lot of old games, very pixelated, and also a lot of point&click games (including Myst). I thought there would be some place for ASA on that kind of store and they didn't deny it. Despite having a low resolution (like many other GOG games), the Original Edition of ASA had quite a rich content and was even rated 4/5 on Adventure Gamers and 15/20 on JeuxVideo.com, so there was a lot of hope. But I was totally wrong regarding the policy of GOG. Among several reasons that would make a cooperation difficult (they were not fond of the puzzles and GUI in ASA), they mainly didn't like the low resolution, which was their first observation:
"Our tester was disappointed in the low resolution of the game and really felt like this should be improved, he really liked the artwork but thought it was too small (1024) and didn’t scale well."
I knew (and accepted) that ASA was far from perfect, but I was chocked that GOG had a problem with the graphics of the game in particular. I might have been a little frustrated by their message and I respectfully replied that their tester was probably not fond of the Myst series: it could have explained his feelings, because Myst-like games had always featured a low resolution (exactly because they are pre-rendered).
"Our tester was actually in fact a very big fan of 1st-person adventure games, especially the Myst series and even made a comment about how you both shared a love for Riven. It’s great that other players have been enjoying the game but unfortunately our tester did not completely share their opinion. He enjoyed some parts of the game but generally he didn’t feel engaged by the puzzles and this in conjunction with some technical issues meant that we aren’t confident that the game will be strongly received on GOG."
I accepted and understood their position (I am open-minded and didn't want to complain. And why would I do such a thing?). And after all, there was still place for hope: if they didn't accept ASA Original Edition, maybe they would accept my new game Catyph someday? A few years later, with the release of ASA Remastered Edition, I contacted GOG again and proposed the HD remake. Unfortunately they refused one more time. They knew that ASA didn’t perform well on Steam (it's true), and as a result they believed that it would not perform well on GOG. They added that they were trying to limit the number of releases on GOG, in order to provide visibility to every game, and as a result they needed to be selective and focus on the best titles only.
So you know for sure that ASA will never release there, and I am sorry for the people who were interested in buying it on their favorite store.
"How many copies have you sold now?"
It is difficult to know exactly in the case of the Original Edition. If you include bundles (mainly Indie Royale Debut 4 Bundle), it’s probably around 2000 copies sold, but as you know bundles sell games for a very low price (often less than 1 euro/game) and it distorts reality a little bit. The regular sales (at the normal price) must have reached a total of 400 or 500 copies, I would say, during the past few years. This is without the Remastered.
The Remastered Edition has found around 2000 owners until today (November 2015), which is quite good in fact for a re-release, even if Steam games should do much better! However you need to remove 1000 of these Steam copies, that were given to people who already owned the game (I decided to give it for free to the owners of ASA Original who asked it - including Bundle owners - which is fair in my opinion).
You could say that the sales of ASA in totality are low compared to other games, and this is mainly due to (1) my lack of experience in marketing, and (2) ASA being a slideshow and challenging game, at the time of Unity, casual/shorter games, and incredible realtime graphics.
Or on the contrary you could think that these sales are high for a one-man game who worked with no funds, but in the end it is not true because Steam (and the others) keep 30%, there are taxes, and I bought expensive softwares.
High or low, it doesn’t matter: I am satisfied with these results. It was my first game after all! My main concern now is to be able to live from game development furthermore, because up to this day I spend more money than I earn, despite having a very simple life. I would like to continue on my own and in a very indie way as long as possible, but I really don’t know what will happen with Catyph next year. I am not very optimistic because there aren’t a lot of magazines that talked of the game until today, despite a lot of efforts with sharing screenshots, trailers and playable versions. I am having a lot of troubles with PR, so we’ll see.
Making ASA required a lot of sacrifices. I understand the devs who choose to go through Kickstarter, or work with a publisher. It’s probably much more comfortable, but also very difficult in a different way… It needs experience in business and management, and I don’t feel ready for that now. If I met the right people someday? For the moment, I prefer to keep a total independency at work.
I'm sorta kinda afraid it isn't doing particularly well, which is a real shame -- I guess being a "Myst-like" turns people off, coupled with the lack of marketing.
(but is in fact some sort of gunblade).
