Naked Ninja said:
First off, thank you DU. Sincerely. That graph you found is going to make things so much easier. Good work guy.
I'm glad you like the graph.
Naked Ninja said:
You're not really trying to tell me that that single fix in '05 fixed all their piracy problems, are you?
Like I said, you gain more from putting a lock on a previously unlocked door than adding more locks. There was some arguments that it isn't the same, but they were silly and I ignored them. Of course the initial DRM fix was the most meaningful. Hey, you should be happy. It means it's not worth going overboard about, a little goes a long way.
The "door was already locked" as they had existing DRM technology in place. I don't see why you'd view that as being "unlocked". If we assume that eventually, the door gets unlocked over time (IE: games eventually get cracked), then why wouldn't continued fixes to the DRM have any effect on sales? Particularly considering there's a year between fix 1 and 2 and another year between fixes 2 and 3, which should be ample time for crackers to break their improved security. Only fix 4, made 6 months after fix 3, shows another increase which is where they made keygens "game-specific".
Now it might be that fixes 2 and 3 didn't really do much in terms of preventing cracks. It might be that more emphasis needs to be put on the type of fixes they're doing. In other words, they have to be real and tangible by closing exploits (fix 1) or changing things significantly (per game keygens) in order to have any significant effect.
Naked Ninja said:
First off, you should be aware of what your average sales graph for an indie title looks like. The long tail graph :
http://forums.indiegamer.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=482&d=1172523939
NOTE: Reflexive's graph includes more than just a single title and in fact, appears to be compounding ongoing revenue. I think it's fair to say they're one of the more well-known indie's too. That said, I understand the point that game sales for any one title typically peak and then fall fairly flat.
Naked Ninja said:
Right, so : Sales lead to initial large spike, setting to a base level. Did reflexive see this? Yes. In all but one case. (Note, in some cases they released a game every 2 months, which is going to push back the usual drop towards the long tail and cause spikes to overlap. But only partially. Also, who can keep that kind of effort up?)
Reflexive could. Have you seen their games? "Ricochet" is just the old "bricks" game with a different name. "Lost Worlds" is Ricochet with new levels. They're not exactly making high-cost entertainment here.
In fact,
they have almost 1,000 games listed on their website. I'm not sure how many of them are included in the graph, so I assume it's only the titles they've indicated but a "new game" every 2 months doesn't look like it would be so far out of the question.
Funnily enough they release a "new game every 2 months" right after the DRM.
Naked Ninja said:
http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l300/nakedninja_2006/sales_spikes.jpg
Now DU, that line of yours is cool and all but it is too general. The only trend it shows is Reflexives trend towards increasing sales over time. Doesn't show why, doesn't say anything about the factors or how those factors effected sales in the long term. It isn't very useful as an analysis tool.
It's a trend. What it does is quite clearly show that even without their DRM, Reflexive "are doing something right". While their games are typically dropping off after that initial peak, they're also able to maintain a relatively high level of continued sales, particularly through the release of new titles. As Section8 said, they appear to be expanding their audience with each subsequent release and feeding new games into that audience.
Naked Ninja said:
Examine it at a greater granularity and you see there are 3 main sales levels. Yes, there are spikes and noise in the data, but you average it out and you see 3 plataeus of stability :
http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l300/ ... levels.jpg
You see the sustained 70% sales increase there? Pretty clear.
The 70% increase you've marked on that includes BKW's release. My point, is that it's similar to their previous peaks. "Xtreme" sales were dropping until the release of Lost Worlds. Lost Worlds began to drop until we see Wik. Wik's peak was interrupted by Recharged, then steadied by BKR. Wik then wins an IGF which pushes sales up further. That then begins to steadily decline until BKW is released (or it magically goes up without explanation, I'll assume the BKW intersection line is a little off).
The point you seem to miss though, is their peak here almost mirrors precisely the peak they achieved with Xtreme's initial release. You can see they didn't achieve a "sharp peak " (like you've pointed to in your first chart) on that until 2003/8. You can see there's a slight change on 2003/5 where the sharp rise gets "less sharp", begins to steady but then climbs a bit further to peak and then drops off almost 6 months later. That's only on one game too. They have three in BKW, Mosaic and BKR2 over a similar 6 month period, all of which get mixed up with the DRM.
Naked Ninja said:
As for the DRM and the reissue triggering growth, I'm not seeing it. There's a dip after the resissue release, and a flattening of a much steeper increase with the DRM.
A short term spike isn't really that amazing unless it is astronomical. Sustained growth trumps.
Of course it does but they had sustained growth through the continued release of titles up until that point and then, after the DRM, continue to release titles which appears to be sustaining that growth again. The fact that the final point of the growth indicates things are heading downward again (quite sharply) for me, puts more weight on that then the DRM (which happened in the middle of a release of a new game, something which historically has increased their sales up until that point).
Naked Ninja said:
You also believe the DRM arrests the growth after BKW? Are you sure it hadn't just reached the highest level it was going to, that it would have begun heading back down if DRM hadn't came along and prevented pirates from destroying all interest in purchasing?
No, I'm not sure and that's part of the problem. If all they'd done is release new DRM, that lead to an increase and that was it, I could accept that. The fact it seems to come in the midst of a new title release and then is followed by even more releases of new titles though, leads me to putting less weight on the results. New titles, even in Reflexive's own graph, are clearly shown to increase revenue. Also considering again, the fact they altered the DRM 4 times and received a purported 70% the first time (after releasing a new title), nothing the second, nothing the third and then only a one fifth (13%) of the 70% increase on the fourth, seems to put more weight on the new titles releases.
Naked Ninja said:
The green line is the prediction for the big spike (like section said), the red line is the prediction if it was about to turn. Blue shaded area is the amount gained from DRM in the first case, blue + red shaded area is the amount in the second.
... and we came up with these predictions how?
Naked Ninja said:
How do my numbers look DU?
I don't see how you can clearly, irrefutably say that the DRM is responsible for the increased sales. My position is that there's simply not enough there to clearly say "better DRM resulted in continued, sustained growth beyond what they would otherwise have expected to achieve through the release of new titles". In fact they appear to have achieved longer, more sustained growth out of Wik winning the IGF award then they have out of anything else.
