Unhealthy interest in sales figures

[xuerebx]

Thanks for the detailed response. From the sound of things I think my estimate was probably a bit high then.

I have access to a company's financial statements of someone I know who has a game on steam which has sold reasonably well. There are no sales units, but there's a gross profit margin of 67% (on €1.8m revenue) over a 3 year period, which is a pretty good margin. I can't see the details of what the cost of sales is made up of, since it's not mandated to be disclosed under local GAAP rules/IFRS (accounting conventions), but it doesn't include salaries or director fees (just 3 directors who are also the same 3 developers) so I think it's reasonable to conclude it is steam fees/ license fees etc.

Anyway, €1.2m of gross profit over 3 years split between 3 people is pretty good (around €130k per year income).

 

[Binky]

Humbly requesting a sales update. Are you happy with the sales so far? How does it compare with AoD EA so far?

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Oh and sign me up for an updated Age of Decadence!

I'll take 3.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Humbly requesting a sales update. Are you happy with the sales so far? How does it compare with AoD EA so far?

No idea. I stopped checking months ago as we're focused only on the next step, nothing matters but the next update and the task at hand. This tunnel vision helps keeping sanity when the amount of work is overwhelming.

When we're over the hump (when the Habitat is done), I'll start wondering how I feel about the sales, but right now it's irrelevant.

 

[The Wall]

Those are words of True Artist.TM

Chris Avellone, Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky used to live by those words. All of them could have been successful indies, selling 200k-500k-1M copies, making 120-150k $ a year and creating their dream RPGs. Nothing, literally nothing stopped them from doing exactly that. But they wanted something else. They wanted 0 effort, 0 stress, 0 risk, cushy jobs that pay well at big publisher and to be peers to human filth that lives in Hollywood. Rare are devs and game studios like IronTower.

Styg and AtomBoy are only ones as based as Vault Dweller

 

[The Wall]

Fuck Obsidian, is all I'm trying to say

 

[Tyranicon]

making 120-150k $ a year and creating their dream RPGs.

A reminder that

The average Ubisoft salary ranges from approximately $129,258 per year for an Artist to $240,248 per year for a Director.

According to glassdoor.

 

[HoboForEternity]

so now it;s done how's the figure ?

 

[xuerebx]

Reviews surpassed the 1k figure, I'm sure it was 800 something earlier this week. Really really hope it's going well for them!

 

[Bastardchops]

Reviews surpassed the 1k figure, I'm sure it was 800 something earlier this week. Really really hope it's going well for them!

Does anyone know what or whether there is a reliable sales multiplier for calculating approx sales from number of reviews? I've heard it's ~75x.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

It's between 1x and 5000x depending on which narrative you pick.

 

[xuerebx]

It's between 1x and 5000x depending on which narrative you pick.

I was going to make a quick exercise using 1 game studio I have access to the public data (the one I mentioned a few posts up in 2021). However, if I get the steam reviews x the price it amounts to around €450k. Then I checked the revenues and from inception to 2021 and it's €4.1m! It's only on Steam, and there's DLCs. If you assume that all reviewers bought the DLCs, total revenue would be around €1m.

So to answer the original question...only around 25% of the gamers left a review in this case.

I'm also so happy for this team, they've made good money.

 

[Goral]

I wonder how many copies have been sold on GOG (I've bought 5 copies there and 1 on Steam since on Steam you can only gift the key and can't hoard it yourself).

Anyway, I've planned to not play it yet and wait for some patches but I wasn't patient enough and now I can't stop playing. Good job guys.

 

[Trash Player]

My amateur napkin math:

Googled research suggests different ratio for units sold. It was ~55 in 2022 for 50k-100k units sold.
So roughly 60k copies sold from all platforms, matching earlier statements that it sold more than AoD did in EA already months ago.
Majority are sold for less than the current full prices though. Adding in regional pricing, take $25 for the average price.
60K * 25 = 1.5M. Platform takes 30%, so ~1M gross profit. 1.5 with more optimistic estimates.

With a lengthy dev cycle and additional outsourced works, it is just making the end meets for the core team, at most a tiny profit.

Don't see the next game happening atm. CS2 is the cheapest option but sequel sells less as a norm.
A reckless option is drastically downgrading the assets. Not sure how much customers will be lost this way.
I would buy 2D CYOA with a combat system from ITS myself.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

Reviews surpassed the 1k figure, I'm sure it was 800 something earlier this week. Really really hope it's going well for them!

Does anyone know what or whether there is a reliable sales multiplier for calculating approx sales from number of reviews? I've heard it's ~75x.

Of course there is no reliable factor however I think 40 sounds right.
Source https://www.gamedeveloper.com/blogs...deep-dive-into-the-steam-s-sales-review-ratio

So 40 x 1000 x 30 = 1.2m gross.

Reviews and sales seem to have cooled off a lot in the past few hours so its probably not going to go much higher than 2m would be my guess.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Does anyone know what or whether there is a reliable sales multiplier for calculating approx sales from number of reviews? I've heard it's ~75x.

No, the ratio is different for all 3 games. If anything, the # of reviews for CS indicates higher enthusiasm.

So roughly 60k copies sold from all platforms, matching earlier statements that it sold more than AoD did in EA already months ago.

Less.

Majority are sold less than the current full prices though. Adding in regional pricing, take $25 for the average price.
60K * 25 = 1.5M. Platform takes 30%, so ~1M gross profit. 1.5 with more optimistic estimates.

A lot less

Don't see the next game happening atm. CS2 is the cheapest option but sequel sells less as a norm.

There's still a chance. I doubt CS will sell enough to pay for a brand new game, so it's either a sequel or nothing.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Does anyone know what or whether there is a reliable sales multiplier for calculating approx sales from number of reviews? I've heard it's ~75x.

No, the ratio is different for all 3 games. If anything, the # of reviews for CS indicates higher enthusiasm.

So roughly 60k copies sold from all platforms, matching earlier statements that it sold more than AoD did in EA already months ago.

Less.

Majority are sold less than the current full prices though. Adding in regional pricing, take $25 for the average price.
60K * 25 = 1.5M. Platform takes 30%, so ~1M gross profit. 1.5 with more optimistic estimates.

A lot less

Don't see the next game happening atm. CS2 is the cheapest option but sequel sells less as a norm.

There's still a chance. I doubt CS will sell enough to pay for a brand new game, so it's either a sequel or nothing.

are you expecting it to sell less than AOD? i mean AoD funded CS. i dont see why CS cannot fund anoher new IP. plus these games has pretty long tail.

has cost changed that much in these 5 years ?

 

[JarlFrank]

There's still a chance. I doubt CS will sell enough to pay for a brand new game, so it's either a sequel or nothing.

What about a Dungeon Rats style dungeon crawler spinoff? What was the dev cost of DR compared to AoD, and what the profit margin (since it also sold less, being a more niche product)?

I read that the intended sequel would be set on the planet after the colony ship's arrival. How many current assets could be re-used for that setting?
I assume that any sequel, even in a visually different setting, would take less time to develop as you've already become familiar with the engine and can re-use things like interface, systems, etc.

How much work, roughly estimated, is going to be saved by the sequel compared to Colony Ship just from the fact that CS had to be made on a new engine, but now you've got a workflow established?

 

[Vault Dweller]

are you expecting it to sell less than AOD? i mean AoD funded CS. i dont see why CS cannot fund anoher new IP. plus these games has pretty long tail.

It's hard to answer this question without going into details to provide some much needed context, but I'm too tired to do it now. Maybe one day I'll do another article and go over the business aspects a bit.

Overall, the word 'funded' is a bit vague, courtesy of Kickstarter. "We got 100k!!! Our dream game is finally funded!". No, we expect to sell more than AoD and I'm pretty sure we will but it's been a rough journey and there were some very lean years (our contractors got paid, the core team didn't) we worked very long hours on pure enthusiasm. We lost a second programmer and we lost some really good contractors because we couldn't pay the market rates. We need to expand the team to ease up the pressure.

 

[Infinitron]

What about a Dungeon Rats style dungeon crawler spinoff? What was the dev cost of DR compared to AoD, and what the profit margin (since it also sold less, being a more niche product)?

God no. There's a glut of games like these now. What, realistically, does a Colony Ship combat spinoff have to offer that a dozen other tactical RPGs released since 2017 don't already do well enough? Is it just about getting another game from your favorite developer? It's not worth it. Go full scale or go home.

 

[Vault Dweller]

What about a Dungeon Rats style dungeon crawler spinoff? What was the dev cost of DR compared to AoD, and what the profit margin (since it also sold less, being a more niche product)?

Another hard to answer question. The core team doesn't get paid monthly and doesn't get fixed salaries, which makes it hard to estimate the real cost. For us, Dungeon Rats was about playing with a Charisma-driven party setup in a focused environment and boosting Colony Ship's development budget, not making profit.

I read that the intended sequel would be set on the planet after the colony ship's arrival. How many current assets could be re-used for that setting?

We can reuse 80% of everything related to humans (we'll still need new weapons and armor sets, especially for PSI protection), but since it will be set on an alien planet, we'll require a lot of concept art work and 3D modeling. Probably 3x as much as we did for Colony Ship.

I assume that any sequel, even in a visually different setting, would take less time to develop as you've already become familiar with the engine and can re-use things like interface, systems, etc. How much work, roughly estimated, is going to be saved by the sequel compared to Colony Ship just from the fact that CS had to be made on a new engine, but now you've got a workflow established?

At least a year less, maybe two (meaning five years instead of seven).

 

[Vault Dweller]

Go full scale or go home.

Pretty much.

 

[JarlFrank]

What about a Dungeon Rats style dungeon crawler spinoff? What was the dev cost of DR compared to AoD, and what the profit margin (since it also sold less, being a more niche product)?

God no. There's a glut of games like these now. What, realistically, does a Colony Ship combat spinoff have to offer that a dozen other tactical RPGs released since 2017 don't already do well enough? Is it just about getting another game from your favorite developer? It's not worth it. Go full scale or go home.

It's a good combat system and I like tactical dungeon crawlers.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Well, i hope for the best for you guys then.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

Don't see the next game happening atm. CS2 is the cheapest option but sequel sells less as a norm.
A reckless option is drastically downgrading the assets. Not sure how much customers will be lost this way.
I would buy 2D CYOA with a combat system from ITS myself.

For me 3D graphics are bit off putting. Especially fancy ones.
Plus, I dare graphics and artists are the largest cost centre.