Indie Game Launch FAILS Badly ( My Response / Analysis )

Comments · 1.8K

• MU

  @Muaahaa · 4 years ago

  I'd definitely expect a game like this to be under $10. There is a lot of risk buying a game from an unknown dev, an early access game, and a multiplayer-only game. The more risk, the less I am willing to pay.

  1.1K

• GR

  @gradle-ladle · 4 years ago

  Also, a super niche multiplayer games means that people who wanted to play online with randoms may have returned it due to the empty lobbies….

  360

• DA

  @dash4800 · 4 years ago

  The devs are definitely delusional. They looked at the quality of their game and thought they could charge 42.00 for it. Thats insane. And it's not even finished? Have they ever even looked at what other games are out there? You can buy huge games with lots of polish for 10 to 20 bucks. AAA games go on sale all the time for cheaper than this and they have the advantage of having way more consumer confidence than an unknown indie developer. I really don't know what there is to be confused about. It's pretty straightforward.

  987

• LL

  @llareia · 4 years ago

  Advertising is NOT marketing. The marketing is bad. Bad price point especially for niche multiplayer, TERRIBLE timing to launch an indie, failing to understand the difference between early access and full launch, unclear screenshots, bad selection of clips, wall-of-text in the description, the list goes on and on.<br><br>But kudos for making a game (especially a multiplayer game). They clearly did put in lots of work.

  1.6K

• LE

  @leovingi · 4 years ago

  The moment I go to a Steam page, see a typo and the &quot;Early Access&quot; tag, I immediately think - low quality game someone rushed out in a month using store-bought assets. Coupled with no single-player it screams &quot;empty lobby in 2 weeks&quot;.<br>But usually, if the screenshots are enticing enough, I would at least try and search for it on YouTube to find some gameplay videos. And yet, when I search for it, all I can find are 2 gameplay trailers! Where are the recorded streams from testing the game? Where can I see what the actual gameplay looks like or whether or not I need 4 friends or is it an open lobby type of deal? There&apos;s nothing, so the Steam tab gets closed and I move on.

  33

• TH

  @themore-you-know · 4 years ago

  As a consumer, I threat my Wishlist as a separation between &quot;Trash vs Something I&apos;ll Buy Heavily Discounted&quot;<br>My wishlist has 600 titles.

  57

• AS

  @Ashtarte3D · 4 years ago

  Wishlists are often used as reminders of games coming out that you MIGHT want and wish to keep an eye on. Never take them as a reliable metric for sales.

  888

• Z-

  @z-beeblebrox · 4 years ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lytuRLkfhus&amp;t=810">13:30</a> Yep, that pretty much answers it. Phasmophobia is $14 and that&apos;s your biggest competition right now in this subgenre. You need to stay in that range. Ghost Hunters Corp, which is extremely similar to Ph but in a fully designed town is $20. So there&apos;s your range scale-wise if you think you&apos;re more developed than Ph, I wouldn&apos;t dare price it higher than that.

  223

• JA

  @jameswright1788 · 4 years ago (edited)

  If you read through the dev&apos;s full early access notes they make it clear that there is only one playable area, and that the current price is discounted for early access... they planned to charge even more for the full game. Personally even though I enjoy this type of game there is no way I would drop that kind of money on an early access with only one playable area.<br><br>An important video - thanks for making it!

  455

• AD

  @adan5368 · 4 years ago

  Well, I&apos;m a videogame developer myself, working for a AAA company. Main points:<br><br>- The final quality is quite decent but after 4 years of development the game should have been released much more polished (animations, UI, fonts, trailers...). The only excuse I can think about is that they just started developing games and they had too many problems re-doing things so they could not focus on details.<br><br>- If you are an indie team with no background or reputation dont try to develop a multiplayer game... You dont have any playerbase or community to support you. Start by making a solid single player horror game, and then, if it goes well, develop the multiplayer.<br><br>- Uninformed and delusional devs. A hundred members on Discord and two hundred whishlists is nothing, it is like friends and family, if you think you had a good community to launch the game you don&apos;t know about the current indie market status. I&apos;ve been in indie games discord servers with 5k members and seen only 10% conversion rate.. Also, marketing is not buying ads, nowadays your marketing must be Twitter and Twitch, trying to engage with any streamer you can get.<br><br>I&apos;m sorry for them but the main critique could be: <br>&quot;A mediocre game that does not innovate in any way. The graphics have good quality and the controls respond correctly but there is no incentive to invest more hours in it. There is no community to support the multiplayer mode and it is still on early access&quot; - 5/10.

  98

• ER

  @erebnyx · 4 years ago

  The main issue is that they spent 4 years on a project without practicing first by going through smaller production cycles. And the reddit OP sounds like he has a case of Dunning-Kruger. The game has no hint of quality, from the presentation to the content. In a world with AAA/indie darlings/Netflix/Youtube/taking a nap, if you&apos;re in the wrong portion of the 80/20 quality split, you&apos;re done for.<br><br>Still, investing 4 years to fail is brutal. I hope they take it for what it is, a learning experience.

  176

• VO

  @voidboi0 · 4 years ago

  That price point was a SHOCK. I would likely never spend that much on an early access game from unknown devs. The nail in the coffin that truly sealed this games fate was also no single player. &nbsp;So if I&apos;m not even gonna fork up that cash, how am I gonna convince the 3 other friends that I don&apos;t have to also do that. All things considered, these decision are crazy.

  36