Spinnortality the whole journey My adventures in being

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 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.

♪♫ Musical interlude ♪♫

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 MA 7 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 that’s visually static and 90% interface look interesting and cool, you can see the trailer she made here.

Crowded release calendar

Launch date: February 1 st. Not ideal: • Sunless Skies launching 1 day before. • 2 nd 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. 8 m (“Cork in a bottle” effect. ) • Splattercatgaming (500 k subs) and many youtubers and Twitch streamers played it. >115 k potential eyeballs (but hard to say with Twitch) • Interview on FM 4 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 -129 c 0 e 6 be 260 [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 ~25 k 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.