11mo ago

Dev of slept-on tactical RPG says it "sold badly" despite glowing reviews: "My next project will be more focused on 'Does this sell'"

www.gamesradar.com

Games @sh.itjust.works

nanoUFO @sh.itjust.works

11mo ago

Dev of slept-on tactical RPG says it "sold badly" despite glowing reviews: "My next project will be more focused on 'Does this sell'"

www.gamesradar.com /games/strategy/dev-of-slept-on-tactical-rpg-says-it-sold-badly-despite-glowing-reviews-my-next-project-will-be-more-focused-on-does-this-sell/

26 comments

Game is Arco.
I haven't ever heard of it; maybe they should focus more on 'How do we market this'...
- Not to diminish the dev, but I did see this promoted in a Steam sale, and with 200+ reviews, that's not exactly chump change. Also it was released only a week ago. From watching the trailer, that's more or less the numbers I expect that kind of game to be pulling.
- Its definitely a hard thing for most indie devs to do on their own. Its a totally separate skillset that most of us don't have but can definitely be learned.
  
  That's what a publisher is for, and in this case they failed them completely.
  
  I’m convinced it’s unnecessary if your game is good. Word of mouth is so strong with gamers
Splattercat covered this game. For those who want to see what the game is about and how it plays.
Edit: The game is called Arco.
To go with what a lot of people in here are saying about marketing being a very important aspect, and also point out for Indies it's continual marketing that's important. Indies don't always sell well right away you kind of got to keep pushing at it. Heck the game came out what a week and a half ago? They're already thrown in the towel?
Although, after watching the trailer I'm not sure how unique this game really was. Certainly looks like a couple dozen other games I've seen come out in the last few years.
- If memory serves, it took hollow knights a few weeks too
You'd think that Panic as a publisher would help them with marketing
I had actually heard about this game but didn’t pay much attention to it. It’s the first game ever published by Panic. This is a company previously known for exclusively publishing Mac software (mainly general utilities such as text editors, FTP clients, etc). I’m not surprised that the game is selling poorly given their lack of experience with game publishing.
The game looks very pretty but tactical RPGs are a niche genre. To market this game they need to get out there and get it in front of people who like these sorts of games. That means getting on forums and talking to people as well as sponsoring Twitch streamers who normally play these sorts of games.
Ever so, it’s a tough gig. I’ve seen streamers and YouTubers cover a lot of these sponsored games and many of them still flop because they just don’t interest the audience very much.
I'll be honest here, the theme/vibe put me off enough that I never bothered to download the demo. I'll give it a shot to see if it is as good as the steam reviews are making it out to be, but the devs need to consider than a couple hundred very positive reviews on a platform with many tens of millions of players doesn't necessarily mean you'll get financial success. It could be that the unconventional theme/graphics and novel/unfamiliar gameplay can be a tough sell.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned here already, is that the game is only on Steam. Which limits the customer base to Steam, yes it's a massive audience but they're missing out on free sales by not listing it on places like GOG, Itch.io, Gamejolt, etc
- The reality is those other platforms won't make much difference on sales at all, and with a limited indie dev team they've made a wise decision to focus on the largest PC storefront.
  It's the same reason a lot of indies don't target Linux, the effort vs reward simply doesn't make sense for small teams. Anyone who says "But Unity and Unreal Engine support Linux! It's literally two clicks!" has no idea what they're talking about and hasn't actually been through the process of releasing a game for multiple platforms.
  
  There's a pretty big difference between "Selling the exact same binaries on different stores" and "Supporting a whole different OS with it's own alien ecosystem" =P
  In the case of store fronts, we're talking about more sales (even if it's extremely low) that literally take 0 effort to do.
- Probably close-to-zero direct sales on any platform but Steam. It would at least get there name out there more, which it absolutely not nothing.
- The article stated that the game is also on Nintendo Switch.
  
  Well, this is the PC Gaming lemmy community, so I'm just talking about PC

26 comments