{"id":4581,"date":"2017-05-16T11:10:04","date_gmt":"2017-05-16T10:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/?p=4581"},"modified":"2017-05-16T11:10:04","modified_gmt":"2017-05-16T10:10:04","slug":"48-hours-until-early-access-the-state-of-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/2017\/05\/16\/48-hours-until-early-access-the-state-of-play\/","title":{"rendered":"48 hours until early access. The state of play"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been around a long time, and released a lot of games, so this is hardly a new experience for me to be releasing something new. Plus its already out there in alpha pre-orders anyway, and this is just the appearance on Steam and GoG, plus I am not in dire financial straights or debt needing this next weeks sales to buy food, so taking all things into account, this weeks release of Production Line on Early Access<\/a> should be no big deal.<\/p>\n

Holy fuck its stressful.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m kind of prone to ‘fear of the future’ anyway. Nothing to do with games. As a kid, we did not have much money and I was aware of the constant fear of future financial problems. I also grew up during the height of the cold war<\/a>, where we actually assumed we would all die in a nuclear war. We had TV programs like this<\/a>, for crying out loud. I also remember watching a TV show (for kids, believe it or not) where armed police broke into a kids house, arrested his parents and seized their stockpile of food, because they were hoarding some. (70s TV for kids was pretty fucking bleak).<\/p>\n

I am a political junkie, and an avid watcher of predictions about the future. I go from worrying as a kid about money and nuclear death, to worrying about the politics of my country, the environment, my own finances and pretty much anything I can worry about. I worry about how this blog post will be received. maybe thats why I used to have lots of hair.<\/p>\n

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..and now have less.<\/p>\n

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Anyway, I find solace in numbers, facts, statistics, and so on. Nothing reassures you that you don’t need to worry about X better than a chart showing you that X is fine. So lets go to the data!<\/p>\n

Production Line went on sale to pre-order alpha buyers from my website on 22nd January. Since then it has sold about 9,900<\/strong> copies. The price has risen steadily from $10 to $13<\/strong>. On Thursday it leaps to $15.99<\/strong>. You can do some rough maths and work out how much the game has earned so far, and indeed, it is in profit, if you assume all that code I wrote was free. if not, it works out as $23.84 per hour<\/strong> of my work. Thats not *bad*.<\/p>\n

If we assume that the game sells another 10,000 copies at full price during its time in early access, plus another 20,000 at an average 50% price during its full release, that would bring in a total of roughly $425,000 revenue<\/strong>. Deduct development and marketing costs, and distribute that over the current dev time plus another six months… and my hourly income would be $93.22<\/strong>. Holy fuck. I can live with that. That sounds good.<\/p>\n

Of course that assumes a long term tripling of sales. How likely is that? The market is tough…hmmmm.<\/p>\n

Right now Production Line has a total of 2,313 wishlists<\/strong> on steam. There really has not been very much press about it at all. Press just seem impossible these days, and I can see why. they are swamped with whats new on steam<\/a>. How to cut through? The occasional promoted post and facebook ad is ticking along for me, but I admit I am aiming for a lot of word-of-mouth here. I’m paying close attention to what players of the game think, and hoping if they really like it, they will play for a long time and encourage their friends to get copies. I’m also hoping people who played ‘Big Pharma’ will find the game interesting.<\/p>\n

My YMLP mailing list has about 8,000 people<\/strong> on it. I have about 9,000 twitter followers<\/a> and the PL Facebook page<\/a> currently has 2,616 likes<\/strong>. I think all these numbers are ‘ok’, but does that put me in the top 5% of indie games? Hardly anyone above the real beginner tier of devs shares this information, so who knows?<\/p>\n

I have bought a bottle of prosecco<\/a> to drink Thursday night regardless, so I need to deduct that in my spreadsheet too… hmm….<\/p>\n

So I have to ask myself what I am assuming here, and allows me to predict future trends. If I’m thinking 10,000 copies during say 6 months in Early Access, then I reckon 25% (2,500) in month 1, probably 1,200 in week one, so I’m thinking 300 sales on release day is a sign that I am on track.<\/p>\n

I’ll let you know how it goes. I’ll aggregate GoG, Steam and mine direct, because you cant legally reveal exact store numbers. Even as I type this I find myself thinking ‘fuck, 300 sales in a day is *not* going to happen. ARGGGHHH. Quick! Add it to your wishlist :D<\/p>\n