Iron Tower Studio Business Diary

[Goral]

In unexpected news, our efforts were noticed and we've received our first publishing offer from a well-known company

WTF? Bethesda does it again.

As for the sequel I wish you all the best and a sequel of a sequel where we would play Terrans (from Earth) sent to conquer colony which had been conquered by those other Terrans.

P.S.

Vault Dweller
I don't see your Hungarian deal here. How does it fit in into your revenues?

Since it involves another party, I can't disclose the details but will add the revenues to our 2018 numbers.

So the number of units sold in 2018 must have been really bad (because it includes units sold with the magazine).

 

[SausageInYourFace]

Any suggestions within this framework are welcome.

I love it when tactical games have objective based battles rather than 'kill all enemies' battles (Templar Battleforce, for instance). Not sure how hard that is to implement. But I think it would hand itself to the strategic structure as you have laid out, since it could involve, say, a battle in which your rewards will be higher if you survive a given number of turns or can advance your troops to certain positions in a certan number of turns, but the risks will also be higher (resource depletion, people getting killed, etc.). It could also involve situatons in which you lose battles but can continue the game and have to live with the consequences.

 

[Vault Dweller]

So the number of units sold in 2018 must have been really bad (because it includes units sold with the magazine).

Actually, I forgot to add them as I mainly care about what we sell via digital non-bundle stores.

 

[Goral]

So the number of units sold in 2018 must have been really bad (because it includes units sold with the magazine).

Actually, I forgot to add them as I mainly care about what we sell via digital non-bundle stores.

"Forgot" means you have those numbers but don't want to share them or what? Either way you imply here that it's a small number (at least income wise), otherwise it would have been hard to forget.

 

[Vault Dweller]

So the number of units sold in 2018 must have been really bad (because it includes units sold with the magazine).

Actually, I forgot to add them as I mainly care about what we sell via digital non-bundle stores.

"Forgot" means you have those numbers but don't want to share them or what? Either way you imply here that it's a small number (at least income wise), otherwise it would have been hard to forget.

Forgot means forgot, otherwise I would have added them to the total for the year. Obviously, it's not the deal of a lifetime and the only true indicators of how well we're doing are Steam and GOG. I don't know which part of the deal is confidential and which isn't, so I'll err on the side of caution and say nothing. I think it's clear though that the covermount deal is tied to the magazine's monthly circulation but I couldn't find this info online so I won't comment on that either.

 

[Rahdulan]

This is the good stuff because there's practically never such clear cut breakdown of sales and profits from devs out there.

46,107 units overall, $224k in sales. So far we spent $74k on Colony Ship (payments to contractors), so at very least Dungeon Rats is doing a fine job paying these bills as we're far from done here.

Did Dungeon Rats perform within expectations?

 

[Vault Dweller]

This is the good stuff because there's practically never such clear cut breakdown of sales and profits from devs out there.

46,107 units overall, $224k in sales. So far we spent $74k on Colony Ship (payments to contractors), so at very least Dungeon Rats is doing a fine job paying these bills as we're far from done here.

Did Dungeon Rats perform within expectations?

It's hard to have expectations when it's the first project of this type. The main goal was to generate extra money for Colony Ship's budget, which we did. Plus we gained more experience especially in regard to party-based gameplay, CHA-driven party size, balancing XP split between party members, etc, which was very valuable and helped us save months of work. Dungeon Rats certainly did well compared to other small-scale tactical RPGs, but that doesn't mean much because the potential of such games is very limited (as the number show, even if you compare the first 6 weeks of the year: AoD 7,110 – $24,316, DR 1,562 – $4,800, even though AoD was released a year earlier.

One of the problems is that we can't do better in 10 months and if we switch to a 2-3 years schedule to add more depth and complexity, might as well do a proper sequel and not a small -scale tactical spin-off. At least that's the idea.

 

[Rev]

WTF? Bethesda does it again.

It's not Bethesda, it's probably something like THQ Nordic, which has shown interest in growing their portfolio and acquiring indie studios. They even bought the Expedition IP from Logic Artists, which is a very small RPG studio just like Iron Tower and I think sales of Expedition games are similar to those of AoD.

 

[Rahdulan]

Kinda unrelated to your posts, but did have you had any buyout offers? If it's not a business secret, I mean. It seems everyone wants to snatch RPG studios these days.

 

[Elex]

WTF? Bethesda does it again.

It's not Bethesda, it's probably something like THQ Nordic, which has shown interest in growing their portfolio and acquiring indie studios. They even bought the Expedition IP from Logic Artists, which is a very small RPG studio just like Iron Tower and I think sales of Expedition games are similar to those of AoD.

in 5 years THQ will own any ip.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Kinda unrelated to your posts, but did have you had any buyout offers? If it's not a business secret, I mean. It seems everyone wants to snatch RPG studios these days.

No.

 

[Cazzeris]

Considering what happened wth Outer Worlds and Gollop's game, I bet the publishing offer came from Epic Games

 

[AbounI]

Considering what happened wth Outer Worlds and Gollop's game, I bet the publishing offer came from Epic Games

But how can Epic never heard of Iron Tower while they choose to use their powerful Engine (Unreal Engine 4), that doesn't make sense to me.

In unexpected news, our efforts were noticed and we've received our first publishing offer from a well-known company (in fact, I was very surprised to learn that not only they're aware we exist but that they also read our updates occasionally

How can you be surprised that a publisher is aware of you if you use his Engine?