PhotoBricks went on sale two weeks ago. Sales were within projections: low but commensurate with the marketing budget (of £0) and social media activity (none).
What I hadn’t expected was a substantial increase in wishlists. I think to convert those I probably need to get enough reviews for a Steam summary of ‘overwhelmingly positive’ or even ‘mostly positive’. No negative reviews at all but not enough to get that Steam summary.
So financially it’s on track to cover costs, but not make me rich. That’s fine, I didn’t even assume it would cover costs. What it’s done is let me take a game through the full lifecycle, including commercial release on Steam. Tremendous learning curve, and will feed into how I approach the next games.
No bugs found, no ‘oh, I expected this but it is missing’ type reviews so I think the game is complete and stable. The missing elements are the publicity, the community building, the awareness and inviting attention. That’s where I need to step up, shift focus and take on tasks I personally hate.
The next game started development last week. Expect updates on here soon! 🙂 I’m still playing PhotoBricks though and will continue to support it – there are paying customers, it’s important to me that although the game is already feature complete they continue to get any needed bug fixes and other tweaks that might be needed in the future to keep the game playable.
The new game needs puffins!