Not Safe For Work (18+): "Genital Jousting" launched on Early Access

edited in Projects
Genital Jousting just launched on Steam Early Access, a year and a half since it was first jammed in Berlin (between myself, Martin Kvale and Daniel Schüler), 3 years after it was first conceptualized in a diagram pasted on the Tasty Poison office wall (somewhat to the chagrin of the Tasty Poison team). (Some time after Richard built the game Wang Commander)

I'm posting the trailer here, again this is not safe for work, and won't be to everyone's taste.



It's a 4 to 8 player party game. It's still in development, but it is now for sale.

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http://store.steampowered.com/app/469820

This has been in development for a few months, but I haven't posted this here until now, because it seemed that parts of this community would not approve of the sexual themes. But the game is out now, and it was made by South African's, so I think it bares posting for that reason.

We're going to be adding more features over the next couple months. So far the reception has been mostly positive, though at the same time the game has turned up in the feeds of a lot of people who probably didn't want to discover it.

If you're curious, we've been documenting a bit of the development process (among other things), the most recent vlog can be found here:



It's been a weird journey, and in some ways that journey is just beginning. We announced the launch of the game today the same day we launched it. We've been working in the dark far more than we have in the past - the reason for this is because we felt it was a game we could actually spoil (as in the curiosity for the game we felt was a valuable currency and we wanted to spend that all at launch). We'll see how that plays out, but barely knowing how people perceive the game definitely made launching the game a lot more nerve-wracking (unlike Broforce which was playable for free most of the development period before we launched it on Steam).

The game has come a long way from the original prototype, and the slightly evolved prototype that won the Audience Award at Amaze Berlin 2016. Here's a video of the state of the game at the start of this year:



This video went viral on Reddit in March this year, earning just over 1 million views, which was a large part of what motivated us to develop this game seriously.

Obviously this was a team effort. The team is as follows:

Programming: Evan Greenwood, Richard Pieterse, Robbie Fraser
Sound: Martin Kvale
Art and Effects: Marcelle Marais
Online-networking: Richard Pieterse
Script: Jon Keevy
Producer: Shaz Greenwood

Previous Contributors:

Art (during the jam): Daniel Schüler
Art (post jam): Jarred Lunt, Jonathan Hau-Yoon

For us here at Free Lives (and our friends/collaborators who were involved) we're busy refreshing our twitter feeds and checking our google catch-words and seeing how this all plays out. It's likely going to be a long next couple days, but so far so good :)

Comments

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    Yay Early Access!

    When I've played online, the force that attracts you to the butts seems a lot stronger than I remember it. It seems to shorten games quite a bit as a result, with some rounds becoming ouroboroses in just a couple of seconds.
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    @Elyaradine Glad you played it!

    A lot of what you describe is because if someone penetrates on their computer they get coupled with you on your computer, and because on your computer they are lagging a little while behind this means suddenly pulling towards you. I think Richard is looking into alternatives though.
  • Ah! I understand. Hmm...
  • Congrats! :D

    Also, well punned :p
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  • I have seen some weird shit on these forums......
    Thanked by 2critic Squidcor
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    Man this is going to attract some lets players. It'll be cool to say I saw this early before it went viral :P

    Edit: I see you've already gotten Jim Sterling's attention.
  • It's been a pretty rad launch! Didn't know what to expect going in, but after one weekend of being on Steam we've had 16,000 sales. (And, after Steam and Devolver's cut, we've covered about 50% of our development costs)

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    Of course the sales are going to trail off quite significantly now, but the sales have exceeded most of our expectations already, so it looks like Genital Jousting is going to be a success (at least commercially).
  • Congrats Evan / FreeLives!
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    I think when I say "it's been a rad launch", I'm sort of saying that the launch has been less stressful than launches I've experienced in the past. The reception has been a bit less positive than that of Broforce (which was to be expected), but the development went a lot more smoothly with a lot less panic (which isn't to say no stress, just I think, in the parlance of Lovecraft, we all made it through with a lot of sanity left in reserve).

    I think the latter effect has a lot of to do with the cool hand of Richard and Robbie, and I tentatively think that maybe we're getting a bit better at game development... but it's too soon to tell :)

    Just to expand on what I wrote earlier. We estimate that we spent about R715,000 on Genital Jousting, though it was a bit of a thumb-suck as the development was quite broken up and disruptive (and in some ways the real cost to Free Lives was a little more because of these inefficiencies, but at the same time I think it could have been done cheaper if we'd all been in the same place and not been changing team-members as much).

    We're also going to have to recoup some money for the marketing and the testing that we did. I'm honestly not sure how much has been spent on that, but it's a significant cost. I suppose I should ask our publisher what that amounts to.

    So I'm guessing we've earned about 50% of our costs back, but given the strong start we should definitely do okay with this game (and we intend working on it another couple months and there's a chance the finished version of the game is a lot better and more popular, though there's definitely a question-mark hanging over that).
  • Awesome guys. I love that you are making new IP and doing it with such a high level of polish.

    Thanked by 1EvanGreenwood
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    Another piece of information I guess is that Genital Jousting took about 6 months of development time with generally about 4 people working on it (two programmers, a writer and an artist).

    We also did quite a lot of audio work, and the team from Sound Foundry have helped us record a ton of audio that has yet to make it into the game. (THIS IS PROBABLY THE THING THAT I'M MOST EXCITED ABOUT RIGHT NOW ABOUT THE PROJECT)
  • Really nice of you to be so transparent with this, thanks for the financial info...

  • We also did quite a lot of audio work, and the team from Sound Foundry have helped us record a ton of audio that has yet to make it into the game. (THIS IS PROBABLY THE THING THAT I'M MOST EXCITED ABOUT RIGHT NOW ABOUT THE PROJECT)
    Oh to be a fly on the wall while they made those SFX...
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    Oh to be a fly on the wall while they made those SFX...
    There's lots of sounds made with pudding in there :)

    Though just to be clear, almost all the sounds in the game at the moment were produced by Martin Kvale (with Jason Sutherland filling in some extra sounds when we needed something urgently), it's the voice recordings (that mostly aren't in the game yet) that Sound Foundry recorded.

  • Thanks for sharing Evan! Its awesome to see you guys continue to thrust from one success to the next :D
    Thanked by 1francoisvn
  • Thanks for the insight Evan, you guys are inspiring!
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    Just an update on the costs involved. For Genital Jousting we spent about R70,000 on marketing, R35,000 of that on the trailer. Which are additional costs we need to pay off, but relatively minor compared to the other development costs.

    (We spent that in dollars though, and the exchange rate is a bit weak now at over R14 per dollar)
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    Hey Evan. You mentioned that you have been outsourced testing. Can you elaborate on this process and the cost involved. We are self testing our games and having close friends do plays but I am interested in a third party solution.

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    @Bischonator We did the testing with LionBridge (who are a pretty big company and offer a lot of different game services). They played the game over the course of a few days, and sent back incredibly detailed bug reports (with videos attached and all linked into a big spreadsheet/tasklist).

    It came to a cost of $3K. I asked Devolver and they don't think Devolver gets any special rate (and LionBridge deal with clients much much bigger than Devolver).

    I honestly don't know how expensive/affordable that is. Like I said, we were very happy with their service, it felt like we had an army of people playing the game, they were incredibly thorough and picked up on loads of problems we would never have thought to test for, and their reports were near perfectly compiled.

    I know there are a couple companies in South Africa who offer testing services. I'd definitely want to work with some testers again in the future, and if it weren't for working with an American publisher I'd definitely have chosen to work with a local testing company. 24Bit games in particular is a company I'd trust with this sort of thing (assuming they still offer this service), but I don't think 24Bit is the only South African company doing this.

    All of this isn't to say that Genital Jousting became a flawless gem of game development as a result, but we did manage to remove a lot of glaring flaws and I think the process made the bug-hunting/fixing process a lot more satisfying than it otherwise would have been.
  • Amazing. Remember seeing this on Reddit back in the day. Good job team, thanks for all the inside knowledge.
  • A good testing team banging on your game is worth its weight in gold, yeah.
  • @EvanGreenwood Thanks! :) I met with lionbridge a year back for their localization services but they were incredibly expensive, def AAA rates. I appreciate the info!
  • 24Bit games in particular is a company I'd trust with this sort of thing (assuming they still offer this service)
    Thanks for the kind words @EvanGreenwood :)

    Yes, we still do offer outsourced QA testing services handled by our internal QA team. We provide everything from general bug / stress testing, to gameplay feedback, to mobile hardware and performance testing. Our standard rate is $15/h, but for local companies we generally offer a discounted rate. That rate is also further reduced for the first project that we work on together in order to provide additional incentive for local companies to make use of QA services, so that they can understand how it really is a necessary step in releasing a high quality game to market.

    We should really start a thread that details these services better, eh? :P

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    @AngryMoose Yeah, a list of testing services on MGSA that can be outsourced from South Africa seems like a good idea (or even just a post informing people about that service at 24Bit if there isn't already a post like that).

    Jack SepticEye just played Genital Jousting! (I was worried that big Youtubers wouldn't pick up the game as its probably going to be flagged for monetization... It's a pretty cool video, and he plays with Pewdiepie (who hasn't been playing games for a while, and while I'm not exactly sure what Pewdiepie is doing with himself now, he says in the video that Genital Jousting was the first game he had played in three weeks).

    Although Jim Sterling's Let's Play has got to be my favourite (as he reads the work as a lot more sex positive):

    Thanked by 1AngryMoose
  • How did you find it going with a publisher? Any reason you didn't just piggyback off the marketing resources of Broforce? I guess what I'm asking is, is there a particular reason that you feel that's necessary at this stage of Free Live's success?
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    Working with Devolver is less stressful that doing it all ourselves... Even if we were losing a bit of money I'd be happier having a competent publisher in our corner than having to face every development challenge on our own.

    Of course, that is only true of a publisher who works hard at publishing the game and is a pleasure to work with. This isn't necessarily typical of all developer/publisher relations.

    With regards to Genital Jousting in particular. I think Adult Swim might have been an okay fit for the game as well, and I think we could have decided to self-publish. But Devolver are a really good fit for this sort of game, and I do believe that they can add a lot of value to this game.

    I don't think we'll have a publisher for every game we release, it really comes down to the value that the publisher can add. Devolver have a great brand for Genital Jousting and indeed Broforce, and they have a lot of experience releasing these sorts of games.

    Also, I don't believe that the average Broforce player wants to play Genital Jousting, so if we chose to associate Genital Jousting with Broforce we could end up ruining both brands. I'd still like to be trusted by fans of Broforce after Genital Jousting, so it doesn't make sense to hound Broforce players to play Genital Jousting (even if that worked, it's a scorched earth strategy). Devolver as a publisher cast a much wider net and spend a lot more resources building their fanbase, so their relationship to their fans is both sturdier and more flexible.

    Another way of stating this is: working with a publisher allows us to make weird side projects without risking harming our money-making projects.

    Though I will point out that I think a lot of other developers would rather do the work themselves and receive a larger share of the sales. I think as we get more experience making games that might be an approach that becomes more appealing, but for now just making games feels like a large enough challenge.
  • Working with Devolver is less stressful that doing it all ourselves... Even if we were losing a bit of money I'd be happier having a competent publisher in our corner than having to face every development challenge on our own.

    Of course, that is only true of a publisher who works hard at publishing the game and is a pleasure to work with. This isn't necessarily typical of all developer/publisher relations.

    With regards to Genital Jousting in particular. I think Adult Swim might have been an okay fit for the game as well, and I think we could have decided to self-publish. But Devolver are a really good fit for this sort of game, and I do believe that they can add a lot of value to this game.

    I don't think we'll have a publisher for every game we release, it really comes down to the value that the publisher can add. Devolver have a great brand for Genital Jousting and indeed Broforce, and they have a lot of experience releasing these sorts of games.

    Also, I don't believe that the average Broforce player wants to play Genital Jousting, so if we chose to associate Genital Jousting with Broforce we could end up ruining both brands. I'd still like to be trusted by fans of Broforce after Genital Jousting, so it doesn't make sense to hound Broforce players to play Genital Jousting (even if that worked, it's a scorched earth strategy). Devolver as a publisher cast a much wider net and spend a lot more resources building their fanbase, so their relationship to their fans is both sturdier and more flexible.

    Another way of stating this is: working with a publisher allows us to make weird side projects without risking harming our money-making projects.

    Though I will point out that I think a lot of other developers would rather do the work themselves and receive a larger share of the sales. I think as we get more experience making games that might be an approach that becomes more appealing, but for now just making games feels like a large enough challenge.
    Thanks for the feedback. Also considering a publisher for SRD.

    And yes, this game is definitely in a different... "marketing bracket" compared to Broforce!
  • @Evangreenwood: well done guys. Who would have known that such a crass game about cocks and anuses would gain such traction :p Love it!
    Thanked by 1critic
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    @farsicon Glad to have surprised you :) (Though to answer your rhetorical question, we were the ones who thought this game would be successful, and we convinced Devolver of the same thing)

    @jackshiels I think the biggest arguments for not going with a publisher are:

    1. Building your own brand. Devolver is better than most at advertising who develops their games, but even so their brand is always going to overshadow the brand of their developers. If we'd self-published Broforce we'd have a far stronger brand to leverage for our next game (assuming we'd want to self-publish that).

    2. Not finding a publisher who has access to people who want to play your game. I don't think a all publishers are the same, and if the publisher can't communicate the strengths of your game to the right people, then there's no point in handing over revenue (you'll probably just end up frustrated, and I think if you're going to struggle then it's better to struggle on your own terms rather than end up in a toxic relationship).

    3. Your game can't use a publisher effectively. For instance in VR at the moment there is quite a low upper ceiling of sales (very few VR games have made more than 40,000 sales, and I don't think any VR games have made 100,000 sales). Or a situation where you are going to receive a fixed amount of money for some reason (like Sony is paying to put their game on their platform for free). What I'm saying is that there are situations where improving your marketing has very little effect on sales.

    Lots of games do well without publishers. I think we would have made less money on Broforce without Devolver's help, Devolver were pretty close to the perfect publisher for a game like Broforce, but I think the game would have done quite okay without Devolver's help, and I think without them we'd have been more stressed and have had to have done more tasks we don't enjoy doing.

    I hope I'm not missing out some obvious arguments against seeking a publisher?
    Thanked by 1jackshiels
  • Sales update!

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    Looks like Steamspy is tracking it fairly accurately (but about a day behind) http://steamspy.com/app/469820

    Although the sales are looking good, that current players number is low for a multiplayer only game (for online in particular). It means that finding players to play with is going to be a bit unreliable, and the problem is only going to get worse unless we either sell more, or improve the amount of time the average player spends in the game.
  • Pewdiepie just played it and released a video. Sales should go up now?
  • I have heard that Steamspy does a fair job of tracking game data, but it is good to have confirmation!

    And congrats on the continued success of the game! I see that the reviews are coming out quite positive so far :D
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    @Wolfbeard We saw very little boost in sales when PewDiePie played Broforce, so I'm not expecting much of a bump. Jack Septic Eye posted a video a day ago and I don't think that made much of a bump (and Pewdiepie is about 2 times bigger than Jack Septiceye). From what I gather from other developers, videos by Pewdiepie can have pretty much zero effect on sales (though of course some games do benefit, like for instance Flappy Bird).

    I think the thing with Pewdiepie and Jack Septiceye are that their audience is there for them, and these Youtubers play a ton of weird little indie games and I don't think their audience see them as recommending games but rather being entertainers.

    A Youtuber like Jim Sterling is more likely to have fans who are using his videos to make purchasing choices. With Broforce, Jesse Cox's Greenlight video series caused a large bump (at that time). And the first Cyprien Squeezie video of Broforce established France as our largest consumer base for a while.

    All of that said, Broforce was a much better known game by the time Pewdiepie played it, so likely a lot more of his viewers are hearing about Genital Jousting for the first time (where his viewers likely knew of Broforce already when Pewdiepie played Broforce), so this video might have a bigger effect.

    And in any case, the nice thing about Early Access development (or for that matter updating games in general) is that we have more opportunities in the future to reintroduce our game, and if a couple million people have now heard about Genital Jousting that makes it slightly easier to convince them to buy it in the future (because people are significantly more likely to buy things that they've heard mentioned a few times already, even when they've literally just heard the name mentioned several times).
  • @farsicon Glad to have surprised you :) (Though to answer your rhetorical question, we were the ones who thought this game would be successful, and we convinced Devolver of the same thing)

    @jackshiels I think the biggest arguments for not going with a publisher are:

    1. Building your own brand. Devolver is better than most at advertising who develops their games, but even so their brand is always going to overshadow the brand of their developers. If we'd self-published Broforce we'd have a far stronger brand to leverage for our next game (assuming we'd want to self-publish that).

    2. Not finding a publisher who has access to people who want to play your game. I don't think a all publishers are the same, and if the publisher can't communicate the strengths of your game to the right people, then there's no point in handing over revenue (you'll probably just end up frustrated, and I think if you're going to struggle then it's better to struggle on your own terms rather than end up in a toxic relationship).

    3. Your game can't use a publisher effectively. For instance in VR at the moment there is quite a low upper ceiling of sales (very few VR games have made more than 40,000 sales, and I don't think any VR games have made 100,000 sales). Or a situation where you are going to receive a fixed amount of money for some reason (like Sony is paying to put their game on their platform for free). What I'm saying is that there are situations where improving your marketing has very little effect on sales.

    Lots of games do well without publishers. I think we would have made less money on Broforce without Devolver's help, Devolver were pretty close to the perfect publisher for a game like Broforce, but I think the game would have done quite okay without Devolver's help, and I think without them we'd have been more stressed and have had to have done more tasks we don't enjoy doing.

    I hope I'm not missing out some obvious arguments against seeking a publisher?
    Well, of course there's the loss of revenue. However, this can be mitigated (or grown upon massively) if they do their job properly. Which leads back into the second statement - finding a publisher that will actually accomplish what they set out to do.

    I'm definitely going to shop around and see what's on offer in that regard. My marketing experience isn't exactly that refined. I think that getting your game "out there" is arguably far more challenging than actually building the thing.
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    @jackshiels Doh! Yeah, loss of revenue is a pretty obvious omission. I guess I don't think of the cut publishers take as the most important feature. I mean, marketing your own game, and not doing a very good job is also a loss of revenue (and on top of that also a loss of your own time).

    I have definitely met developers who are bitter about the revenue they lost to a publisher in the cases where the publisher did a bad job. Even legitimate publishers have fucked up, like Adult Swim, who by all accounts are a pretty great publisher in 2016 published a few games pretty poorly around 2013, and they were taking a 40% cut, which is very painful. It's worth restating that developers currently working with Adult Swim seem very happy, but Adult Swim had quite a rocky start in PC gaming (after publishing browser games for a few years). Even Devolver (who I really love working with) have had a few flops and at least one case that ended in a bit of a mess.

    I do think there is value in getting good at marketing, and that's something that requires practice. Doing it yourself is of course the best practice. Though there's an argument for working with a publisher to see what they do and being able to access their knowledge. But also, being good at marketing is one more thing to work at, and I don't think that's the first thing any developer should be focusing on (unless that understanding helps to build games that are inherently marketable, which is a skill that I think is worth learning early on).

    Good luck shopping around! The obvious first choice for an indie RTS is Paradox, they have a very loyal following of fans of strategy games, and some very clever business practices, though these business practices aren't always in the developer's best interests (so if they're interested in working with you, try get some advice on what their contract says before signing anything).
    Thanked by 1Elyaradine
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    After nearly two weeks Genital Jousting is at nearly 30,000 sales and it looks like it's covered it's entire development costs (development costs to date, and of course we won't receive any money until the end of next month).

    You can see the sales graph at the bottom. JackSeptic Eye and Pewdiepie released their videos on 24 November and 25 November respectively, and they accumulated more than 5 million views between them. While there's a bump over the weekend, that bump doesn't look higher than one would expect over the weekend in any case. The game has continued to sell though, and it's hard to say how much that has to do with these two videos, but there doesn't seem to be a major spike in sales, more like a minor boost (I guess after next weekend it'll be easier to compare weekends and see how much of a role these two videos played).

    What is really exciting is that despite a very low average playtime (of around 30 minutes), and presumably being quite divisive, the game still has 93% positive rating on Steam! (Desktop Dungeons has 91% and Viscera Cleanup Detail has 93%, so so far we're in good company... although our rating is going to go down as soon as we discount the game, so if we want to keep the same solid rating the experience has got to improve).
  • try get some advice on what their contract says before signing anything
    If you're not talking to @LexAquillia in this regard, you're doing it wrong!

  • @
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    Desktop Dungeons has 91% and Viscera Cleanup Detail has 93%, so so far we're in good company... although our rating is going to go down as soon as we discount the game, so if we want to keep the same solid rating the experience has got to improve).
    Wow thanks a lot for sharing! This is very insightful.
    I am curious, why do you say thet the rating will go down after putting it on sale?
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    karl182 said:
    @[quote="EvanGreenwood;45803"]
    I am curious, why do you say thet the rating will go down after putting it on sale?
    Reviews from Steam purchases count towards your score (only direct purchases from Steam). This means that anybody who gets the key elsewhere and reviews the game will not have their review counted towards the game rating. Once your game is on sale you will attract people who purchase your game on a whim, because it's on sale or they have a passing interest in it. These folks are more likely to provide a less positive review as they are less likely to express a cost input bias.

    Once the game hits bundle rates then you will see people who get the game and have no interest in it and thus review it as such.

    It isn't always the case but it is a factor that may apply to some games in some cases...
  • @jackshiels Doh! Yeah, loss of revenue is a pretty obvious omission. I guess I don't think of the cut publishers take as the most important feature. I mean, marketing your own game, and not doing a very good job is also a loss of revenue (and on top of that also a loss of your own time).

    I have definitely met developers who are bitter about the revenue they lost to a publisher in the cases where the publisher did a bad job. Even legitimate publishers have fucked up, like Adult Swim, who by all accounts are a pretty great publisher in 2016 published a few games pretty poorly around 2013, and they were taking a 40% cut, which is very painful. It's worth restating that developers currently working with Adult Swim seem very happy, but Adult Swim had quite a rocky start in PC gaming (after publishing browser games for a few years). Even Devolver (who I really love working with) have had a few flops and at least one case that ended in a bit of a mess.

    I do think there is value in getting good at marketing, and that's something that requires practice. Doing it yourself is of course the best practice. Though there's an argument for working with a publisher to see what they do and being able to access their knowledge. But also, being good at marketing is one more thing to work at, and I don't think that's the first thing any developer should be focusing on (unless that understanding helps to build games that are inherently marketable, which is a skill that I think is worth learning early on).

    Good luck shopping around! The obvious first choice for an indie RTS is Paradox, they have a very loyal following of fans of strategy games, and some very clever business practices, though these business practices aren't always in the developer's best interests (so if they're interested in working with you, try get some advice on what their contract says before signing anything).
    I will check them out. I guess 50k sales with a publisher is far better than 10k sales by yourself... and the exposure puts your company out there, which is invaluable, too.
  • @karl182 Exactly what @bischonator said. For this reason I'd be very hesitant to bundle a well rated Steam game (as in the long run the money from the bundle might be less than lost sales due to the game's declining rating).
  • @bischonator and @EvanGreenwood awesome! Thank you very much for explaining. It makes a lot of sense now. I never even thought about all these aspects and how they can affect the rating and sales in the long run.
    Thanks again, this is valuable info! :D

    Karl
  • I do think there is value in getting good at marketing, and that's something that requires practice. Doing it yourself is of course the best practice. Though there's an argument for working with a publisher to see what they do and being able to access their knowledge. But also, being good at marketing is one more thing to work at, and I don't think that's the first thing any developer should be focusing on (unless that understanding helps to build games that are inherently marketable, which is a skill that I think is worth learning early on).

    @EvanGreenwood so in a sense a game that markets itself, creates its own discussion, distinct iconography and what not or is there another angle i'm missing to this?
    Thanked by 1Elyaradine
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    I do think there is value in getting good at marketing, and that's something that requires practice.
    I think that marketing your game and yourself is now a given when 38% of all games on Steam were released this year!
    Building an audience is now as, or even more important than building the game itself :(

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    https://twitter.com/Steam_Spy/status/804072335997358084
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    @EvanGreenwood so in a sense a game that markets itself, creates its own discussion, distinct iconography and what not or is there another angle i'm missing to this?
    @Sigh_Leeeee This is a pretty complex question, but a good one! I'll try to cover it without going too much off the rails.

    As I understand it, you're referring to the sentence I wrote to the effect that learning to market games is especially beneficial if it assists learning to design games that are inherently marketable.

    Although it doesn't address your question, the first point I'd like to say is that some games are much easier to market than others. A tweet about a game like Genital Jousting might be shared because the wiggly penises are interesting to watch, or because it excites some people to see the reactions to of their peers when confronted with anal sex (and enabling these opportunities can be part of designing games).

    So I think that practicing some marketing and seeing the results (I mean actually trying to market games) would give a designer a lot of insight into what aspects of games are easy to market, which tweets do well, which Facebook posts are liked and shared etc. (And this information can help designers shape their games to be more appealing/marketable).

    BUT! I'd like to add that to discuss how a game could be "inherently marketable" in a broader sense (and from a design perspective), there'd be another concept that must be discussed.

    Besides some games enabling effective marketing materials to be made by the publisher/advertiser/developer, games are often shared by the players of the game (e.g. there have been quite a few Let's Plays now of Genital Jousting), so after there is a player-base for the game the game itself can act as an engine that continues generating marketing material.

    (It might be more accurate to term this "self-marketing games", but whether the developer is the one doing the marketing or whether the player is doing the marketing, all of the same rules apply, apart from the mechanisms that incentivise player-generated marketing obviously.)

    So when I'm saying a game is inherently marketable, I mean that the game, just by its nature, amplifies the effect of the bespoke marketing materials and/or is able to generate its own marketing materials (in concert with its players).

    Finally, to get to your question, I agree with your points, though I wouldn't phrase it in those terms, and I think I'd add a few points.

    Off the top of my head, here's some ways I think a game could be more inherently marketable.

    Novel visuals and/or novel concept to the game: Basically what you said, that the game is shared by people because there is something about it that they want to show others. That people who encounter your marketing feel that it will interest their peers and so they tell their peers. I'm not going to write more about this (as I think this is the point you understood already), but being interesting through novelty (or for that matter, fulfilling some desire players have, like until recently there was quite a long drought in management games) will make content about your game more shareable (and so more marketable).

    Compressability: The degree to which the concept of the game can be transferred through small amounts of information. In social media people don't tend to write huge amounts of text nor show lengthy videos, they tend to share bite-sized amounts of information, so being able to convey some of the appeal of the game in a 5 second gif, or a single sentence (for instance) becomes important. If its hard to figure out what is happening in the game from a screenshot or a 5 second gif, it makes spreading the game through those channels much more difficult (for example, Text-based games are particularly poor at spreading through gifs and screenshots). It's then important that the signifiers in the imagery of the game clearly convey what is going on, for instance zombies are bad and shooting them is good, whereas a game like Dwarf Fortress that uses ascii to represent entities conveys little meaning from a screenshot or from a gif (and certainly doesn't convey the nature of the game through imagery). Games with dense narrative content (i.e. a lot of distinct events can happen in a few seconds) can have an advantage over games where little happens every 5-10 seconds. In short: Games where the concept is well conveyed by the visuals, in a short animation or a single screenshot, or through short pieces of text, can then be said to have good "compressability" (and this is a big advantage over social media).

    Looking appealing in gameplay trailers and Let's Plays: It's obvious, but worth mentioning, but one of the avenues that games spread through are trailers and Let's PLays. I wouldn't normally clump these two together, but just in terms of visual entertainment they share some of the same qualities when it comes to marketability. Looking appealing in screenshots is important, but a lot of consumers are going to make a decision on whether to purchase your game or not based on watching its gameplay.

    User Generated Content and Divergent Experiences: The main point here, is that games can be designed in a way that players of your game will want to share their experience with others. So a game like Besiege that allows players to create their own death-machines and then share how their designs play out (in excellently compressable gifs). Or a game where every playthrough is unique in some important way and that cause players want to share their experiences (like how Walking Dead highlights for players how their choices diverged from other players, giving players subtle encouragement to talk to others about their choices). Or a game where every playthrough tells a significantly different story (like RiftWorld [Edit: Rimworld]) which means that Let's Plays are much more effective (because they don't spoil the experience for new potential players) as well as Let's Plays being much more likely (because players will know their experience is distinct and be more inclined to share it). Or a game like Happy Wheels where building tracks to watch your favourite Youtuber die on them is particularly engaging, and once a player has created content for a game they also have incentive to advocate for that game (as it makes it more likely their content will be seen). The point is that there are ways to make each player's experience of playing have more perceived value and therefore players are more likely to engage in marketing your game for you.

    That your game enables entertaining performance: I mean specifically regarding Let's Plays and Streaming (though being able to write interesting things provoked by the game is also a performance of course). Some games are more entertaining to watch people play than others, besides the points mentioned above, games that allow for strong reactions (like jumpscares in horror games), or games that are funny (to some extent like Genital Jousting and Broforce) work particularly well, though of course what works varies between audiences and performers. Particularly terrible for performance are games that require constant intense concentration (as if performers have to focus on the game then they have no spare attention to talk and say interesting things). For this reason a game like Dota is generally a bit better to stream than a game like Starcraft, because while both at times require intense concentration, there are more gaps in Dota where the player can make observations. While games that are very abstract generally don't offer much that is interesting to talk about or react to. And games that require four people sitting next to each other on a couch don't work well with most steamer's setups. (etc)

    There's other strange affects that cause players to be more likely to share information about your game. Like people who play games online with their friends are much more likely to recommend online multiplayer games that they already own than single player games (and that I guess is a form of a game being more inherently marketable). Also there used to be a big thing in Facebook with incentivizing bringing friends into the game (though thankfully this happens less now).

    It's also worth mentioning that things like achievement hunting or games that have very high difficulties can also encourage players to seek reward in competition with others and share videos demonstrating their prowess. This generally only happens in already popular games (as being the best player in an obscure game doesn't have much meaning), but having a competitive player base can help market your game for you (if your game is already popular).

    And winning awards and accolades can make your marketing more effective as well, though that's generally something you don't have much control over (and only works on certain kinds of consumers, the kind that play award-winning games).

    And there are definitely other ideas I have left out.

    (Sorry about the wall of text :) I appreciate it if you've read this far.)

    Ultimately, I think this is particularly important for indies, because we cannot compete on having the most expensive graphics or the most staggering amount of content, or pay for posters to be placed at every subway station or trailers played at the Superbowl, so we need to find less obvious ways (and more affordable ways) to make information about our games reach potential players.





  • (Sorry about the wall of text :) I appreciate it if you've read this far.)
    Oh i did. Thank you for elaborating as well as expanding on these ideas. Its interesting to see everyone's thought process and all the variables they consider while also providing references, so i think a wall of text is forgivable... maybe encouraged? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ whose to say. Thanks again Evan.
  • I do think there is value in getting good at marketing, and that's something that requires practice.
    I think that marketing your game and yourself is now a given when 38% of all games on Steam were released this year!
    Building an audience is now as, or even more important than building the game itself :(
    Im sure you're not quite literally brooding over this, but im sure marketing your game also doesnt have to be a deftly painful experience either. Granted we're not all charismatic, want to spend time doing this, but if it has to be done might as well try to make the most of it, no? If you ask me the most terrifying experience that can come of this is the idea that no one cares if you make your game (maybe not being able to feed yourself is a close 2nd...maybe), and most will not even bother to play it... Further still, how the hell do you start building a fan base if no one is paying attention?

    Im not too knowledgeable in this area, but from what i have noticed community should be in the forefront of doing this, but on multiple occasions i have noticed when you become a part of a community (i am a musician some of the time as well) that is trying to produce their own content you get this grey area where people are completely invested in what they are doing and nothing else, not even the other people...essentially voiding a crucial aspect of a community. Then you might turn to social mediums, where you have to make it a point to put your ego at risk by suggesting something you invested time in is worth checking out to other people. There's also the traditional approach of printing out ad's, but money yo...

    On the upside however there are those experimental ways of advertising @EvanGreenwood mentioned where the player fan base becomes a driving factor behind your games exposure. Rami Ismail does this efficient advertising kinda thing all the time as well. With Ridiculous Fishing I believe Rami would go on to the local train service and hand people a tablet with their game on it and ask them to play. What was most interesting about this to me is that he didn't care if people liked the game or not but rather how much interest the person sitting next to them would show. From this he concluded the one thing he could have done better about releasing his game is put the games logo and title in large font on the loading screen (cause you know... people would rather be polite and not disturb other people on a train in some cases). In respects to some local devs i follow @Bensonace and @SUGBOERIE with their Semblance project on twitter cause their development updates on minor things like potential idea's or terrain fixes looks cool and is inspiring to see. Also cool things like a dev showing up every so often in a twitch streamers chat group (I know Rami did this for Nuclear Throne). I dont think the intention is to advertise but dev logs and things like Game Jam Island are also pretty neat, and fun to do with your friends, or by yourself.

    In reality i just thought I'd offer some idle 3am thoughts in light of all this marketing talk and the picture by @Bischonator. Thank you by the way.
    Thanked by 1EvanGreenwood
  • edited
    I do think there is value in getting good at marketing, and that's something that requires practice.
    I think that marketing your game and yourself is now a given when 38% of all games on Steam were released this year!
    Building an audience is now as, or even more important than building the game itself :(
    Im sure you're not quite literally brooding over this, but im sure marketing your game also doesnt have to be a deftly painful experience either.
    Those are some hefty 3am thoughts! :)

    As the marketing guy for our games I actually really enjoy the process. I come from a gorilla marketing background so doing this on a budget has always made sense. One of the benefits of us running a Kickstarter was that we were able to generate a very large fan base, very quickly. That being said, Chris already had a large following which he brought to the Kickstarter.
    I am excited to see if we can leverage the awesome KS community, along with the other folks we have picked up since our game came out.

    We are also producing a free game http://www.playcayne.com with some interesting marketing funnels built into it (more on that closer to the date) to direct traffic to our next game, http://www.desolationgame.com

    PS
    EvanGreenwood - it's Rimworld :)
  • While these tentacles aren't feeling nearly heavy enough, I'm pretty happy with today's work.

    image
  • Oh my gosh, that looks amazing! :D

    The giant schlongs remind me of the terrifying sand worms in Dune.
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