Three Things I Learned from Launching My Fist Game On Steam
(Last edit: May 29, 12:04PM)
Launching a game is amazing. It's an uplifting, almost euphoric experience that I can't describe other than twenty Christmas holidays as an 8-year old kid put together. Even though my game under-performed and even though I didn't make millions (or even thousands), it was still amazing.
But it was also really, really hard.
I haven't done an official post-mortem yet on my game Attack of the Karens (I kind of did one with Rik Oclon when he interviewed me last month on his podcast Indie Game Dev Report. Listen here), so I thought I'd revive this blog with three big lessons I learned from my very first indie game launch.
If you’re just here for numbers, you can scroll to the bottom. If you want three awesome lessons I learned, keep reading!
1 - Just Make Something
Before I started on the project I spend some time learning how to make games. I started in October of 2020 by going to Unity Learn and taking the "Create with Code" course. It was awesome and totally made me hungry for more.
So I started making things. I made Kamikaze Squirrel in two weeks, then did two game jams for Finding Grandpa and Brobit in Virusland. Brobit actually won second place which was cool! I was making stuff that people were playing and it felt awesome. Even though it was only a few people, my ideas were out there and people were experiencing them.
These games ultimately build the confidence I needed to start on a major project. I got some ideas together and came up with the concept of a Gameboy-syled shoot 'em up where you defeat giant robotic Karens. That eventually turned into the game that launched last year.
If I hadn't started on those small projects, I would have been completely overwhelmed with a large project. My coding developed during those small games as did my skills for making UI, pixel art, sound, music, and debugging.
Trying to start your first game on a commercial project is a huge recipe for failure, because you're going to slam into wall after wall while you develop. The friction - or resistance to getting where you want to go - will be so high that you'll most likely give up in the first few months once you realize how big the mountain is. And it is BIG.
Think of it like a hike. There's several in my area (I live in a gorgeous part of Northern Utah where outdoor life is king), but I'm not going to go try and hike to the top of Mt. Timpanogos on my first outing. I'm going to do something easier, like Donut Falls. Eventually I'll build up to the more challenging hikes as my endurance grows and I condition my muscles, but I'm not going to be there for months (or maybe years).
It's the same with making games. For coding, you won't know what a switch case is or when to use it on your first game. You won't know UI design or proper object pooling. You won't have experience with events, delegates, or even know what a private variable is vs. a public one. These things all really come through trial and error, so get out there and try and error. It's the only way to grow!
And last point on this topic, DON'T get stuck watching tutorials. They are good to get started, but you need to stretch yourself. Too many new developers just get stuck watching and never making. Don't be that dev. Make! Don't watch!
2 - Build Relationships
When I started making Attack of the Karens, I didn't know anyone in the industry. I had about 200 followers on Twitter (I think..) which I thought was awesome, but nothing else. I didn't really know what to do or who to talk to to expand my network so I just started making stuff and putting it online.
Eventually people started to notice. I would try so hard to polish the gifs I put on Twitter. I got super stoked when I got 35 likes and some retweets. I would dig into who was liking my stuff, then I would follow and comment on their stuff. I met some pretty friendly and incredible people this way. I also found out about some awesome organizations and events. I met other awesome developers. I met awesome content creators who actually took an interest in what I was doing. Some of these people had actually made games before and were valuable sources of feedback during development.
The point is, people took an interest in what I was doing because I was sharing it online, and that led to a valuable network of people I trust to try my game, give feedback, and talk about my game. Without that network of support I wouldn't have seen the game through.
You can't develop in a vacuum, hiding away your precious from everyone until it's polished to perfection. There are a few reasons for this, but mostly it's because you don't have any idea if your game is fun or not as it's developer. You might think it's awesome because you're able to create an amazing particle effect or you did some really cool programming for your inventory system, but the end user won't care. Your baby isn't as cute to everyone else as it is to you - you need to get it out there, get feedback and get comfortable with people playing what you've created!
3 - Genre is Everything
This is such a huge lesson for me, hence why I saved it for last. If you make games and take away only one thing from reading this blog post, please let it be this!
Genre. Is. Everything.
Okay, I'm being a little dramatic but you get it! It matters a whole lot. And the thing is, I could write a months of blog posts on examples of why this is true and why indies hate to think about it. For the purposes of this post-mortem, however, I'll keep it brief.
I chose a pixel art side-scrolling shoot 'em up roguelike as my genre, with a cyborg Karen theme. A little out there, don't you think? There's nothing wrong with pushing genre boundaries a bit but come on! I really only have myself to blame here. I didn't know anything about what genre to focus on when I started the project, and by the time I had figured it out I was already two years in to development that thinking about stopping made my heart ache.
Basically Steam likes a certain kind of game. I didn't make that kind of game, so when I participated in digital festivals (yeah I got into a few!) and Next Fest, the impact on my wish lists wasn't that great. I wondered why. Was it art? Was it the theme? Key art? Nothing I did seemed to have any effect. That's when I stepped back and took a look at the bigger picture.
Steam didn't like my game.
You can't make a pancake out of an apple, and if you're hungry for pancakes, guess what? You're not going to eat the apple. I had just made a big, fat, juicy red delicious apple ripe for the picking! Steam turned it's nose up at it, even though I thought it was something special. This, by far, was the hardest lesson to learn for me. Two and a half years of work went into this game, and to output only a meager thousand dollars plus in sales meant that I barely turned a profit. It was really hard, I'm not going to lie. I tried to focus on the positives and not get disappointed, but it was still there.
The lesson here is do some pre-dev marketing research. Get yourself a subscription to vginsights and do some real work here. There's actually quite a lot you can do to look at what will work on Steam and get a good direction - and guess what? Indies rarely do this. Do it and you'll be ahead of the game before you even write your first line of code.
I'll get into marketing and my thoughts a lot more on future blogs, but let's leave this thought here for now. Genre matters.
After Launch
I may have given the impression that my game launch wasn't that great. That's not entirely true! I accomplished so many awesome things during development of Attack of the Karens that I'm super proud of. Here's a few of the high points.
People loved the art. This was so exciting to me! Almost every video that was made about the game commented on it and confirmed that I've got chops as an artist.
The music was amazing. People bought the soundtrack to the game, which having made music since I was 14, was a big deal for me! There was even a comment made saying "the music should not be this good".
The production value was praised for the game, and many were even surprised it was done by one person in two and a half years. They praised things like the sound design, menus, and voice acting. That speaks volumes to me!
And of course, the game got a publisher to move it onto Nintendo Switch! What a huge thing that was for me to have my game on Switch! That alone is enough to make the launch worth it.
Sales and Wishlist Figures
Now for the data.
My goal for releasing the game was $1,000 in Steam sales in the first six months. I passed that on month three, which was really cool. As of today, the game has sold about $1,720 in Steam sales. I can't speak to specific Nintendo sales figures (NDA) but they are comparable to Steam.
I launched with roughly 1,400 wishlists, and am now up to 2,650. The wishlist rate of the game was very low, I would get anywhere from about 2-10 wishlists per week most weeks. Most wishlists came from events and Next Fest. This is a shot of my steam wishlists since the Steam page launched in September 2021:
As you can see, relatively flat all the way through aside from some spikes (those were digital events, i.e. Dreamhack Beyond and Next Fest). That huge spike in September 2023 is launch (yes, your game will get a lot of visibility in launch!).
I got almost nothing from curators, etc. and won't be using them again. In fact, I'm sure most of them just were in it for a free key. I got a few good reviews from them, but they don’t count towards review score.
Festivals are 100% worth the time. They are the lowest-effort marketing activity you can do for your game that give the highest visibility.
I didn't put in nearly as much time as I should have with gathering streamers to play my game and sending them keys. I maybe sent out 30 keys to people via e-mail and twitter DMs. Most people didn't play the game even when they said they would or flat out ignored me. To my surprise, some of the biggest views videos the game got were from people I hadn't even reached out to that came across the demo and made content for it.
(I need to make an edit here. I do need to add in a bit of clarification since were talking creators and curators. Curators are accounts on steam that provide no-credit reviews of a game to their followers. They get offered keys via “Curator Connect” a feature on steam. Creators are people I reached out to personally to make content for the game, be it podcasts, blog posts, videos, streams, etc. Curators, I think, are not really worth a developers time as I mentioned above. Creators, however, are the path to victory for game developers, especially small ones like me. Many creators championed the game and thought it was awesome and pushed it with their audiences. They had smaller followings, but they were passionate and are genuinely good people who want to help indies grow. I made some really great relationships by talking with these people and getting to know them. I have them to thank for getting the game the attention it got! I will definitely be reaching out to those creators again.)
I reached out to the now defunct IGC, and although I really love the founder of the group it just didn't do much for my game. I was really hoping that would be my ace in the back pocket and spring out a bunch of content near launch, but I only got maybe 5-6 streamers out of it. Still worth the time to send them some keys though.
Final Thoughts
Making a game is really hard, so you need to be passionate about it. There are few things in this world, however, that are as satisfying as making a game.
Don't do it for money, because you likely won't get any for a long, long time. Do it to make something great and build a business. I have to hope that eventually money will come, and that this is just like building any other business, taking years of hard work for payoff.
I'm not gone, not by a longshot. I have so many good new ideas I'm working on that I can barely keep myself from talking about them.
Stay tuned here for more info to come!
-Joel
