5 Likes
It’s just so random and crazy the things that trigger these people, huh?
4 Likes
That’s kind of sad on so many levels. I mean what were you thinking of not anticipating that people were going to hack your game and cause it to malfunction?! You should be able to guess how they’ll break it and preemptively fix it. What a bad game designer you are! 
2 Likes
@hustlertwo So uh… now that this has been out for a while I’ve been wondering again about that thing you mentioned like, one time once when I gave feedback about one particular NPC and you mentioned that it related to an idea you had for another game called “Hoard” I think it was… Can you talk about that at all yet?
1 Like
I remember what you mean. How one of the other TURDs would not be a party member because of similarities to one planned for The Hoard.
I tell you what. I’m a ruthless mercenary, and my beloved (if flawed) game had three good reviews wiped off from Google and then picked up a one star to drop it down to 3.9 overall. If y’all can get it back to 4.0 I can tell you about that character. She was more planned out than most, as she has been a part of this property far longer than 128, Latasha or Elgin.
So I am now officially a paid author! Which is very cool, even if I’m not exactly ready to retire just yet.
Because I’m the sort who loves stats and percentages, I wanted to let y’all see the breakdown from NPT’s first week (it was released on October 25th, so the first royalty statement basically just covers from the 25th-31st). Definitely some surprises here.
Google- 37%
iOS- 36%
Steam- 22%
Website- 3%
Amazon- LOL whut (aka 2%)
This was part of why I wept such bitter tears at the ending of individual app releases. NPT was never destined to be a best-seller, but I believe without the constraints of an omnibus app that is difficult to explain to non-serious gamers (or serious ones, for that matter) without a lot of skepticism to combat, a solo iOS release would have helped it quite a bit more. You tell them they have to download a free app to get it and their eyes glaze over or they recoil in horrror, expecting some microtransactional monster out to steal their data. Still, no way around it.
Steam was the big surprise. Far higher than it seems like most others have had. A couple of guesses as to why:
-Achievements. NPT has a pile of them, so perhaps that appealed to the more videogamey Steam crowd?
-Genre. Sci-fi might be more at home on a platform like that than a casual-studded one like mobile.
-??? Everything is random and unpredictable.
6 Likes
I think you’re probably over estimating what a solo release on Apple would have done for you. For ages, android has been way outselling apple for my games (a trend I’ve heard echoed by a few other authors on here.) but since the omnibus, sales have become more even. Android is still outselling apple, but no longer by the same margin, and I see yours looks similar which makes me think for my game at least, it has increased potential sales since it was added to the omnibus (even though overall sales have fallen this month, but I’d say that’s because they’re old games and there’s been heaps of new releases this year.)
Its a little complicated with mine as they are selling individually, and through the omnibus, but the fact that your sales are fairly even between android and apple makes me wonder if it has helped, rather than harmed yours. You’d have to ask other authors to weigh in on that as it’s only my experience and I don’t know what effect steam sales have on that ratio, if anything, but it is interesting that your sales are almost equal. Amazon is only a small % of mine too .
Anyway congrats on becoming a paid author! 
(BTW this was just to let you know something that I hope will make you feel better about not having the individual release on Apple as I don’t think it’s had the negative impact we initially thought it might have on HGs, actually the opposite .)
4 Likes
I’d have to agree with Jacic on the Omnibus issue. For all four of my games, the Omnibus app seems to have improved my sales. I think the dedicated fanbase of thousands of people that CoG has will go and buy stuff on their platform no matter if it’s in an omnibus app or not.
If they’ve been buying CSGs for years, something like that certainly won’t stop them. A few people that you tell individually about how to get your app on Apple might be deterred, but self-marketing has never been where we’ve got our sales anyways.
3 Likes
With respect, both of y’all have several stories out. The omnibus is always going to be beneficial to older games because of increased visibility for them. And in turn more buys for old games push people to new ones.
Eventually I’ll be glad NPT is on it for the same reason, because it will lengthen its tail. But absent hard data to the contrary, I’ll never believe it is better than a stand-alone is at launch for a first-timer. Not being on the App Store costs you untold thousands of eyeballs seeing your game, and even if only a tiny amount would actually buy, there’s still no replacement for them. Most of the people who see it at launch on the omnibus were already aware of it from the mailing list. The only reason the omnibus works out in the long run is that you never fall off of it, whereas your visible time on the App Store is over after a week or two. You can link directly to it, which helps a ton for promotion, but randos won’t find it much anymore.
Still, it’s not a world-altering difference.
4 Likes
I get that for sure. But I can speak from experience that after like the 1st week of release, stand alone apps become invisible, anyways. Even the best-selling CSGs would just get decent exposure on the charts every now and then. I’d wager that most of our sales come from the very solid and steadily growing CoG fanbase, not outside users who stumble upon our games on the market.
2 Likes
I actually used to have that stance (and personally prefer downloading individual games myself), but I think (although I can’t say for sure) that it might to be having a beneficial effect on new games as well. Even when Wizardry was first released, I had greater sales on android cf apple, but since the omnibus, that has evened out to become more equal. Yours is also showing roughly equal sales between the platforms which unless things have changed recently, they probably should be lower if they’re the same as other authors I’ve talked to about their game sales.
I don’t have an apple, so am not 100% sure how it all works with the HG omnibus, but for casual users of these games that have signed up for the omnibus at some stage but wouldn’t normally check the store for each new game release email, I think it is possibly prompting them to look at new ones coming in anyway when they may not have otherwise done because of on the phone notifications. I have the delight games omnibus, and I know it tells me when a new game has been added without having to be signed up for emails or checking the store. It almost seems as if apple users benefit from that little push since your sales have been almost equal between the two platforms when they probably shouldn’t be looking at historical data if you’re the same as many games on here.
The only big downside to not having an individual game would be if you planned to spend a good deal of time or money doing self promotion in which case you’re absolutely right, I’d find it harder to convince people to download a combined app rather than a single game and there’s a greater chance of people becoming distracted by all the other games there instead of remaining focused on the one you’re promoting. Otherwise I also suspect that random viewers picking up the game are only a small proportion of sales compared to the CSG fanbase, due to them disappearing under the pile of apps so quickly. Even when they’re rating high, people have to be searching for a specific genre they are rating in to find them, otherwise large freemium things like candy crush and angry birds are going to smother them in the general game lists.
Anyway, I don’t have the overall figures for if the omnibus has helped or harmed new releases of most games so I can’t be sure, but either way try not to let it get you down, if nothing else in longer term it seems to be a beneficial change
2 Likes
So NPT is on sale again, it looks like. $1.97 on Steam until the 11th. If anyone was holding out because of the price, now’s your chance. If it was because of the various other valid reasons not to buy it, well, what are you doing in this thread to begin with? We gots no time for looky-loos!
If you do buy, a positive review would help a ton. Steam has thus far been a large chunk of my sales, to the tune of like 46% of all of them for December (my most recent statement), and that’s with no review except my own semi-spurious one. A few more would be tremendous.
For Nuclear Powered Toaster? No. It sold pretty poorly so if I ever do a sequel it would likely be in book-only form. I am working on a second story, but it’s very different: Quite App-Parent: The Parenting Simulator. Thanks for asking, though.
1 Like
Seriously? I enjoyed it a lott man. Hell you really knew how to bring humour there. I am not going to call people stupid they have there choices. But they are. That line about peeing on sign board. Pure gold. I imagined it few times before myself. Replay ability was not so much but i played it for the humour.
Yea i have seen your wip too. Though i never dared to start a game on parenting. Thinking makes my head ache
1 Like
Hey, if you don’t mind, I’d love you to write a review on whatever platform you got it to that effect. Every little bit helps. But yeah, sci-fi is a tough genre to hit it big in, and I just made a lot of rookie mistakes. It sucks, but it was a story I wrote primarily to prove that I could. That I could be a writer instead of a wannabe like I had been for the last decade and a half. And in that sense it was a smashing success.
Just not, you know, in the critical or commercial senses.
4 Likes
Sorry about that. I just realised i almost never did that for these games. I will definitely do it when i go home
1 Like
No apologies necessary at all. I’m grateful that you bought it in the first place, a review is just icing on an already moist and delicious cake.
1 Like
Hey buddy, you’re game is much better than you give it credit for. I bought it as well on the first week, it’s very much comedic. It made me laugh and I think that if something can make your mood better after a stressful day is a blessing. It’s not that every COG will be a goldmine, and first try is always the hardest. You will do beautifully in future stories. P.S, you are a very nice author and best of luck for future games. 
Edit: I just checked and it has a 4 star review rating on Google playstore isn’t your game rated high on other platforms?
4 Likes
Much appreciated, mate. Means a lot. And 4.0 on Google Play is pretty decent, although it occasionally drops back to 3.9 as reviews fall off or get added which is not as ideal, there’s a lot of difference in how the public perceives those two numbers. 4.0 is not as good as some games, better than others, and certainly a lot higher than it was near release when the set protagonist reviews were coming in fast and the score dipped below 3.5 for a bit.
On the HG iOS app it has 4.4 on 30 reviews, which is probably average or so based on what I’ve seen. It has only one Steam review, which I wrote because I was tired of seeing it there with none. None on Amazon yet, which isn’t a shock since I think lifetime Amazon sales are like twenty copies or less. It’s funny how some authors seem to do about the same on Amazon and Steam but for me they were just worlds apart. Steam is over 25% of my lifetime sales and Amazon is all of…two. Two percent. Even website buys are higher at 3%.
This leaves Google at 37% and iOS at 33% for anyone interested in keeping track, FYI. That’s through January, so my guess is the numbers will skew further Steam’s way a bit when the February statement comes out since it went on sale again that month for a few days. It wasn’t a huge jump but hopefully it at least sold more copies than it did in January on Steam after that.
1 Like