saffgee wrote: ↑Sun Apr 26, 2020 8:49 pm
I suspect David means that Steam simply take too much money from what is a fairly small profit margin anyway....
We have first hand data from sales of our own games on Steam as well as some shared data from our strategic partners' games on Steam. Since I do not have the permission from the management to disclose any confidential data, all I can say is that our approach of publishing and distributing Capitalism Lab has been financially proven to be more successful than it would have otherwise if it had been distributed on Steam, based on our observations of shared data from our strategic partners' games on Steam, which are decent modern games, as opposite to Enlight's back catalog of titles on Steam.
On the other hand, for mass appeal games, I do think that they will do better thanks to Steam's vast user base.
If I understand correctly, these two articles made the point that developers still have to do most of the marketing for their Steam games. It may not be entirely out of place to compare this with a CapLab scenario where your company invests heavily into developing our own products and do all the advertising at its own expenses and yet you set up no retail outlets and instead let an AI company with extensive retail network and e-commerce presence to sell your products exclusively with a lucrative profit margin that dwarfs yours. It is up to each player to decide whether this is a good strategy though. I am just saying that this may not be a unreasonable comparison.
Interesting you guys definitely got to do what makes the most sense to you.
How do you guys think about international sales? I know steam adjusts prices based on regions so that in countries where there is a lower median income they make the effective US dollar price of the game less in those countries. I am part of a Discord for this game and there are several people from emerging economies have said that they have a hard time deciding to buy the game or not because of the effect of currency fluctuations and the cost relative to their incomes and assets.
I think you may potentially be losing out on international sales in emerging economies with less stable currencies and lower incomes. You may want to look into that if you have not already.
For Example one of the guys is from Turkey and said "i feel you man, living in emerging economies is tough. paying 40 dollars really put a hole in my wallet, after currency crisis"
standardplayer wrote: ↑Sun Apr 26, 2020 6:27 pm
I think that you may want to think about marketing Capitalism Lab and any future games you create on Youtube by getting in contact with youtubers in the business/tycoon game niche then gift them game key with all DLC's and possibly a small fee to review it and pitch it to their audiences for X number of videos. Youtube and Twitch is why some of the most successful games mass market games became popular Minecraft, PUBG, Fortnite as well as some of the more successful niche games. That seems like one of the best places to market games these days in the influencer economy. I often look games up on youtube before I buy them or discover they exist through the platform search engine.
Personally, I have played these:
* Software Inc.
* Supreme Power 2
* Transport Fever
* Production Line
* Startup Company
* Prison Architect
As for you developing a separate game it would really depend on how well it was executed and marketed. I would be interested in such a game but, I have seen very little out there in the market and the ones that were did not seem to be executed that well.
Good to know that you would be interested in such a game. In addition to the two games you have mentioned, there is another game with the same subject matter called Turmoil.
FYI, if the company ends up deciding to embark on such a new project, a new dev team will be set up for it so that there will be no reduction to CapLab's development resources and commitment.
Do you actively search for and reach out to youtubers in the niche or just post it on the forum?
standardplayer wrote: ↑Tue Apr 28, 2020 12:06 am
How do you guys think about international sales?
While I am not allowed to disclose the details, I could say that Capitalism Lab's international sales, both in quantities and sale amounts, are notably larger than those from our other games on Steam, in terms of the percentage of international sales out of the total sales. There is a possibility that our titles on Steam are back catalog ones and their appeal to international audiences may be less, so the comparison may not be entirely accurate. But what I can say is that we are happy with Capitalism Lab's international sales.
standardplayer wrote: ↑Tue Apr 28, 2020 12:14 am
Do you actively search for and reach out to youtubers in the niche or just post it on the forum?
A quote from one of my favorite bloggers:
"So…. In the complete and utter absence of any interest from curators, youtubers, the traditional press, or platform/store people to promote games these days… how is a struggling indie able to get any eyeballs on what they make? I guess its back to the wonderful world of adverts…"
This is a difficulty that the vast majority of game developers commonly face. With so many indie games chasing a small number of popular Youtubers, the supply and demand situation is dire for indie game developers.
