The Journey to Creating Spinnortality: A Game Developer's Story
Reflecting on a 5-year journey of determination, learning, and growth in the game development industry. From humble beginnings to a successful Kickstarter campaign, the developer shares challenges faced, lessons learned, and valuable tips for others aspiring to enter the world of indie game development.
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Spinnortality: the whole journey My adventures in being 1) lucky 2) driven and passionate 3) supported by great people 4) lucky
5 years ago, I: Wanted to make games very, very, very, very much Had made a few free hobby projects but no serious experience Moved to Vienna Got a part time job Decided to start working on projects seriously. Aim: to become independent game dev
What happened? Year 1: learned Unity, my projects were rubbish. Year 2: made The Gods are Hungry (free flash game) and Masques and Murder! (small PWYW project). Didn t balance job and game dev well.
Started work on Spinnortality, November 2015
Then: Years 3-4: worked on Spin part time. Balanced job and gamedev. After 2 years I wanted to do something else, so reached out to press. Alpha Beta Gamer required me to put up a free alpha in exchange for coverage. Alexis Kennedy, creator of Fallen London and Sunless Sea, played it and took an interest. He (gently) suggested a Kickstarter.
Kickstarter was intense but eye-opening Had to plan campaign, build press list, send press emails, contact podcasters, send builds to streamers All things I would have had to do when the game launched anyway Dry run for launch?
Kickstarter tips: Helpful to have people who are already interested. (Newsletter subscribers ) Contact everyone: press, streamers, podcasts Reward tiers should be spread out. Rewards shouldn t be too stressful to fulfil. Good to have a demo/alpha to show backers. Having lots of social media reach or friends who do is very helpful. Plan stretch goals (and some updates) ahead of time.
It worked! 791 backers, 12,104.73 (after dropped pledges and fees) ~8 months of runway, plus money for freelancers.
Anthony Kroytor https://citynightstracks.bandcamp.com/ citynightstracks@gmail.com
Development! \o/ Working full time as a game dev!!!!!!!!!!! Wrote a development plan. No crunch! Worked 9-5 every weekday, no more. Plan helped with this. Released builds and updates regularly Beta backers very useful as volunteer testers. Slowly started to build up social media presence (1 tweet/day) I was living my dream! But
Dream Reality
Unexpected business stuff Pension and health insurance are not optional! Financial projections off; my girlfriend had to buy all our food for a few months. Georg Hobmeier suggested I apply for some grants: the government might give me money
Funding! Applied to the Wirtschaftsagentur creative pioneer program, Vienna s MA7 program, and the AWS impulse XS program. Applying took about one month. I was accepted by the AWS! This gave me enough money to: Work on the game for another 6 months Pay localizer to do German version Pay for PR and trailer editing freelancers Still have savings left over for ~6 months development BUY FOOD. Had to delay release until Jan 2019. I was upfront with my backers, and everyone was happy.
Nearing release: Had ~2000 Steam wishlists Set price: $9.99, 9.99, 9.99 Hired trailer editor (expensive but good!) Opened beta up to all backers they found some more bugs. UI overhaul. Asked artist/graphic design friends to help: thank you Brini and Ren! Finalized German localization Contacted PR firm (Future Friends Games). Planned release schedule. Expanded press list: more streamers, more youtubers.
To see how Vanessa Williams, my trailer editor, made a game thats visually static and 90% interface look interesting and cool, you can see the trailer she made here.
Crowded release calendar
Launch date: February 1st. Not ideal: Sunless Skies launching 1 day before. 2nd cyberpunk release that week (Re-Legion, cyberpunk RTS/tactics game, launched earlier that week) A Friday goes against conventional launch wisdom. We decided on it because: Following week much worse (several political/critical games eg. Riot ), following month FAR worse (EVERY AAA RELEASE EVER) Sunless Skies and Re-Legion not really target demographic Launching on Friday is ok if you send the emails early enough??
Press and Streamers FFG and I reached out to press and streamers. They handled press, I did streamers. (This was a special one-off offer from them, because they like me be nice to people!) Interest increased when we added Alexis Kennedy loves this game to the emails. Almost zero buzz before launch: our launch date announcement emails were so soon before the release they had an embargo. Fingers crossed!
Launch day! I crunched on this day, and for a few hours in the week before release. That was it. Crunch is bad. Sent out all the updates / posts / tweets / emails Lit candles and did spell asking for good sales numbers Launched Streamed with Steam s in-built streaming service
Coverage Total visitors/month for all gaming sites combined: 122.8m ( Cork in a bottle effect.) Splattercatgaming (500k subs) and many youtubers and Twitch streamers played it. >115k potential eyeballs (but hard to say with Twitch) Interview on FM4 and Der Standard
Sales expectations: Word on the street is that sales for an indie game released in 2018 were usually 1000 10,000 copies in first year. Most small Steam games don t do well. Median number of users for an indie game released on Steam in 2017 was 1500. [1] In February 2018, 40 games released/day. 82% didn t make the US minimum wage. I was hoping for 7000 sales by the end of the year. That would give me ~18 months runway. [1] https://galyonk.in/steam-in-2017-129c0e6be260 [2] https://www.pcgamer.com/gdcs-realistic-talk-about-game-sales-on-steam-paints-a-grim-picture/
Sales reality: Spinnortality sold 7000 copies in the first week. WHAT In first month, it s sold about 9000 copies. Now I have about 2 years to make another game. Maybe more if it has a long tail. Not bazillions but I m happy. The game now has ~25k wishlists.
How did that happen? Luck Good press coverage: PR team great, journalists opened their emails, Alexis name probably helped Good trailer = decent conversion, I guess? Retweets from Alexis helped a lot Backers spread the word, wrote +ve Steam reviews Featured on Steam front page in UK, and stayed at #2 New and Trending for ~3 days. Slipped to #3 during Lunar New Year Sale then finally disappeared after about a week. Positive feedback loop.
Takeaways? Make a good game. (Easy, right?) Don t ignore PR. Pay people who are better at critical things (PR, trailer) Plan for failure, just in case, but be prepared to embrace success Be nice to people If someone gives you help when you need it, be sure to pay it forward: help someone when you re in a position to help. If you keep working hard, and don t give up, something good will probably eventually happen. You can t predict what it will be, but it probably will.
