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My Steam Game Revenue Stats

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Re: My Steam Game Revenue Stats

#71

Post by AussieWog93 »

adenozine wrote: post #50
AussieWog93 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sarcasm?

Can't speak for parent commenter, but there is a nugget of supreme wisdom in the remark nonetheless. Gamedev is notoriously punishing and mentally grueling. Pushing through these roadblock moments CAN lead to huge runaway successes if the market timing is right. I'm in a field in no way orthogonal to gaming, but I can attest myself that pushing though the moments I -wanted- to quit the most, were the moments that yie…

I've heard this before, mainly from "hustle culture" folks, but have never witnessed it in real life. I've followed quite a few people, both online and IRL, who have persevered through repeated failure, motivated by "passion" and convinced that success was around the corner.

Almost none of them achieved success. Instead, they ended up burned, jaded and in a few cases even genuinely suicidal.

As someone else mentioned in the thread, the kid is clearly talented. He has released 10 games on five different platforms at age 22 with no assistance whatsoever. That is genuinely exceptional, and he is without doubt in the top 10% of game dev grads.

I'm not arguing that you should quit after one attempt either (even successful designers fail maybe 50% of the time) but it seems irresponsible to suggest 10 failures in a row are a sign of success to come and he just needs to eat shit for the next 5 years.

Far more likely than not, the repeated failures suggest that his talents would be better applied elsewhere.

Re: My Steam Game Revenue Stats

#72

Post by bavell »

jonshariat wrote: post #6
Tarsul wrote: post #3

As far as I know we users cannot see how many sales a game has from steam, so I very much appreciate the creator telling us. I often try to judge from the number of reviews if a game has made at least a few thousand bucks. This game here has 19 reviews with 420 sales, which means that 4,5% of all people have reviewed the game, which is more than I expected (I expected a ratio of about 1%). But this means that probabl…

When I wrote my book, they did an early access thing at it was terrible. I was still understanding where to take my book and iterate and I was getting people telling me it sucked. Uh ya, its not finished at all yet, just v1! Not a fan. I mean I get Betas and access to things say a month or so before launch. But not during active development.

Why did you agree to try early access with a book? It only really makes sense for games... and sometimes not even then...

Re: My Steam Game Revenue Stats

#73

Post by username90 »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #71
adenozine wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't speak for parent commenter, but there is a nugget of supreme wisdom in the remark nonetheless. Gamedev is notoriously punishing and mentally grueling. Pushing through these roadblock moments CAN lead to huge runaway successes if the market timing is right. I'm in a field in no way orthogonal to gaming, but I can attest myself that pushing though the moments I -wanted- to quit the most, were the moments that yie…

I've heard this before, mainly from "hustle culture" folks, but have never witnessed it in real life. I've followed quite a few people, both online and IRL, who have persevered through repeated failure, motivated by "passion" and convinced that success was around the corner. Almost none of them achieved success. Instead, they ended up burned, jaded and in a few cases even genuinely suicidal. As someone else mentioned…

The biggest problem with "hustle culture" is that they praise each others effort rather than results. Like in this case, 10 failed games is a lot of effort but aren't good results. And if you look at the reviews and where he got traffic on this game they mostly come from other gamedev communities, meaning he sold to other developer hustlers interested in his journey rather than to real users.

At this stage what he needs to do is take a step back, stop seeking praise from other developers and instead focus on making a quality game he thinks users actually would want to play. Releasing games you know will fail doesn't teach you much, especially if it is your tenth one. Or he can pivot to becoming a gamedev influencer selling tutorials or monetizing views, if that is what he wants he is on the right track.

Re: My Steam Game Revenue Stats

#74

Post by Godel_unicode »

Hammershaft wrote: post #15
jonshariat wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I wrote my book, they did an early access thing at it was terrible. I was still understanding where to take my book and iterate and I was getting people telling me it sucked. Uh ya, its not finished at all yet, just v1! Not a fan. I mean I get Betas and access to things say a month or so before launch. But not during active development.

I mean, a book is a predefined narrative that you experience once sequentially! Much less suited to open iterative development than a game.

There are other kinds of book than fiction.

Re: My Steam Game Revenue Stats

#75

Post by judge2020 »

Karsteski wrote: post #69
georgeecollins wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. And actually shipping a game that anyone will pay for puts you in very rare territory. The world is full of game designer wannabes.

Why are they wannabes? I don't understand why you would insult people who are trying to put out a product but failing.

There's a lot of low-quality Unity games on Steam, largely because they automated the new game system so that all it takes to publish a game is paying $100. There are some legitimate game designers putting in effort, but some 'publishers' have hundreds of these games and are often just copies of each other but with different assets.

Re: My Steam Game Revenue Stats

#76

Post by deepfriedbits »

z3t4 wrote: post #49

In this day and age having over 400 actually paying customers is a lot! Even having 400 free users would be a lot. Now the question is - do they play the game ? Any number above 1% is good, so if there are 4 players spending a lot of time - it's a good sign. If possible ask them what they think is good about it, then update the marketing material to showcase what is good about the game.

I appreciate your positive reply. We could all honestly use more of that.

Re: My Steam Game Revenue Stats

#77

Post by pjmlp »

pengaru wrote: post #14

The market is far too crowded to rely entirely on the steam store for your exposure. I'd like to know what the numbers are like for indie devs with their own twitch channel who constantly stream the development process, establishing a fan base throughout the year(s) of development before releasing on steam.

The market has always been too crowded, unless we are talking about the early Atari 2600 days.

Being a game dev is akin to music, acting, whatever arts related.

It will cost blood, sweets and tears, full of ups and downs, and only an handful will manage to keep going at it their whole life.

Just like other arts, it doesn't mean people just give up, rather be aware it isn't just because they like playing on their games console every single day, that they will make it on the industry.

Re: My Steam Game Revenue Stats

#78

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #58
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in some countries are accustomed to using a very weird mm/dd date format, probably that's the case here?

yyyy/mm/dd is the true format because its alphabetically sortable. dd/mm/yyyy is another sensible format because the units grow in size. mm/dd/yyyy is the insane one. Idk why the US persists with it tbh.

The true format is, of course, YYYY-MM-DD, not YYYY/MM/DD.

Re: My Steam Game Revenue Stats

#79

Post by speedgoose »

MattRix wrote: post #68
Quarrelsome wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yyyy/mm/dd is the true format because its alphabetically sortable. dd/mm/yyyy is another sensible format because the units grow in size. mm/dd/yyyy is the insane one. Idk why the US persists with it tbh.

It has flaws but it’s not “insane” or entirely illogical, it’s very clearly based on the way dates are spoken and written in English, ex. “Today is July 23rd, 2021”.

It's not insane, but it's not very logical. As a non native speaker, I prefer to say "Today is the 23rd of July in 2021" which is perhaps not valid English.

Re: My Steam Game Revenue Stats

#80

Post by cenophor »

Karsteski wrote: post #69
georgeecollins wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. And actually shipping a game that anyone will pay for puts you in very rare territory. The world is full of game designer wannabes.

Why are they wannabes? I don't understand why you would insult people who are trying to put out a product but failing.

They are wannabes because it makes the author of the parent comment feels better.

Anyone who isn't objectively the best at something is probably automatically a wannabe. So at the end of the day it's just a wannabe calling everyone else wannabe. Don't waste time on understanding people like that.

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