So my Unity game Wild Animal Racing* was released on Steam last week so I thought I’d share my experience which might be useful for some people.
Highs
Good YouTube reviews with 160,000 views
People actually buying your game!!
Its finished at last.
Lows
Bad YouTube reviews with 100,000 views
Discovering a potential bug and rushing to patch it before the weekend rush.
My tips are…
Get your game as polished as possible. First impressions matter.
Never argue with bad comments or try to get them taken down. People are entitled to their opinion. And within their comment maybe useful information to improve your game.
Don’t expect everyone to like your game. Find your niche.
Stay positive about your game.
Be active in the community sections.
If your game uses networking test it also with screen casting software running in the background as this is how reviewers may play your game! (And it would be embarrassing if the game was lagging while being live streamed! )
Fix any issues or improvements as quickly as possible. Even with all the testing in the world when it goes live there will still be things that you have missed.
The audience who review your game on Greenlight and the audience who buy your game are completely different.
Your jobs not finished. Now what about the DLCs? Just because the game is live doesn’t mean it still can’t be improved. Can you improve the trailer? The screenshots? You have plenty of time now the game is finished.
Tools used (if I remember)
Unity 4.7
Blender
GIMP
Inkscape
Audacity
FRAPS (for gameplay capture)
Windows Movie Maker (for trailer - functional but not recommended!)
Dropbox
HP Laptop and MacBook Air (both with Intel 5000 integrated graphics card)
Google Docs
Google Sheets (for localisation)
Blogspot
Thanks. Thats my feedback. Just my thoughts - I’m definitely no expert! Its scary releasing your game to the world especially on Steam. But it is definitely worth it! Anyone else want to share their experience?
It’s good to have experience like that. All the way through to release and then afterwards. Thanks for sharing your tips and experience with it. I hope to have a game released on Steam one day – 'tis only a dream for now.
I think I found the game on steam. Reminds me a bit of a classic that I played as a kid. I think I’d have gone with sprites instead of 3D models to better tap into the nostalgia. Anyway, good job on getting your game on steam! I’d be interested to hear a ballpark number of sales after a month or so, or alternatively I’d be interested to hear if steamspy is accurate once it starts displaying stats for your game.
Think I found it too. I played the handheld version of that classic game about a decade ago. While the 3D models are okay, I think it would have enhanced the look with some decent colorful textures on the characters. Anyway, congrats on finishing it, and the game definitely taps on nostalgia, and on top of that, getting networked multiplayer to work and supported is quite the challenge, so much props for that one.
When will you reveal the game to the Unity community so that, you know, you can tap into more potential sales?
I don’t know how they’re finding it either! Maybe they can sense which one it is by comparing it to my fish art. That’s assuming they got it right.
I did have a bit of trouble with the Networking. I was sending the clients’ input as an RPC function in the Update() function. So it was doing that every frame which is v v bad if the frame rate is high. So I changed it to only send input data fewer times a second. Bit of a schoolboy error. But you live and learn.
Well all I can say is you have pretty crappy marketing. I still don’t know what it is or where it is. Guessing it’s Wild Animal Racing. Which looks quite fun to me tbh Don’t underestimate the power of internet stalking.
I was always trying very hard to keep different online identities of mine separate. Then one day I’m on a gaming forum with my gaming nickname and a different mail address, and an admin writes me a private message with my real name and references to work I’ve done, because he wanted to recruit me for their website in some fashion (as a writer or something, I can’t remember). He found me because I once in my life mentioned my gaming nick with my real account on another forum. He found that one slipup I had in my paranoia and connected the dots. I went back and edited that forum post to avoid this happening again. It was a good lesson about internet anonymity.
Finding your game is a whole lot easier. And when someone says “which shall remain nameless as I like to have an air of mystery about me on these forums” that’s like challenging me to find it. I think I got your real name too by the way. I respect privacy in that I don’t post such things here, but if you really want to stay anonymous you need to go to greater lengths .
Doh. Oh well. Still as you can see it’s not an AAA quality game but has its little niche I think. So, for anyone not on Steam yet, I would just say “don’t give up!”
The forums can always do with some more concrete examples. Without knowing what your game is, it could be a polished masterpiece or a frankenstein, so your stats posted aren’t particularly useful to me. Thanks for sharing though anyway.
Another thing is, in this business you need a presence. You need people to know about you, as well as your game. You need to be the face and front of your products so people can relate to you, so you can be compelling at a personal level.
I wouldn’t worry too much about these forums, what’s the worst that can happen, people rip into your stuff? Who cares as long as you’re selling well on Steam! I’d get rid of this ‘mysterious air’ stuff. You’re only doing yourself harm.
Here are my sales figures too.
1st week sales: 167 copies. (I think that takes into account refunds)
Mainly on the first two days. Picking up a bit on Saturday and Sunday with about 20 sales each day.
Not too bad. And hopefully there will be a boost if/when it goes in a Steam sale as its probably too expensive for most people at the moment.
I’ve found it also - even before I read hippo’s post.
Not the internet sleuth others are (no darknet for me) however if your wondering how to minimize info gathering - I checked info available on your AI project, when searched for reveals the game on steam.
It wasn’t hard. @yoonitee 's blog site from his profile has enough identity info to punch into Steam’s search field. First time I found his full name somewhere, though not through the contact email. Second time I tried via company name.
Maybe his profile page->Home page->Blog? Full name is clearly written there… I don’t know how you found company name though, there’s a lot of people with that combination. But it’s clearly same name under developer in steam game. Full name is enough to get only one search result in steam.
)
I didn’t know about Steamspy. That’s useful to know. I can see how other games are doing!
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Still as you can see it’s not an AAA quality game but has its little niche I think. So, for anyone not on Steam yet, I would just say “don’t give up!”