Thank you very much, everybody!
We've had an incredible string of luck with this release, to be honest. As has been pointed out, the Easter weekend was an enormous win for us, and not something you can pay for. Goodness. That was huge.
Other aspects had a bit more to do with the game or the marketing materials. Certainly Total Biscuit and the other press saying such awesome things was a combination of luck (that they liked it, and that they took the time to find out, and that they took the time when we needed them to take the time) and the game being something worthwhile.
We also got a suuuuper extended marketing run (that is still going) with Steam purely because our clickthrough rate for the little icons for The Last Federation were basically double the global average on Steam. I can't say anything about specific numbers as that is under NDA, but basically Steam now has algorithms that look and see how well people are responding to seeing your little button thingy on the main page, in terms of the ratio of people who click them to those who see them. Ours was abnormally high, so we wound up getting extra promotion out of that because of that. The only three things that can mean is:
1. There may have been some prior awareness among players from the press, which led to click-throughs.
2. The name "The Last Federation" was exceedingly effective at making people click in.
3. The little blue planet background plus logo was high-contrast, drew the eye, and got people to click in.
Because that tiny image, the name, and the price and discount, were literally all that the click-throughs were based on. Bionic Dues, for instance, fared horribly partly because of the name, I think (well, Tom Chick certainly has expressed that he feels that way in no uncertain terms, and I think he's probably right). Now that we have the big rotator banner, that gives us more room to work with, and the press quotes (there are now two) help with clickthroughs.
Apparently the combination of trailers and marketing text also really did a good job, as well. Thanks to you guys for first tearing apart my marketing copy and then eviscerating the first trailer. Those things really make an impact in terms of conversions of people who are just learning about the game. And all of that has nothing to do with the game, sigh.
Then of course we also have the various other reviews, and player reviews, and by and large those have been exceedingly positive. Not without some thorns and thumbs-downs, but one can never please everyone. Still, we're working to please more people with each release, in particular trying to hit the largest complaints as fast as possible this week. I think that that activity probably also has something to do with the conversions to sales with people who visit the game page, because for the first time that sort of activity is now visible right on the actual storefront page for us, which is a huge win; previously that was always invisible unless you happened to come to our site, which most potential customers do not.
So this has been kind of a mixture of all sorts of luck, preparedness, more luck, a good game, more luck, excellent new features on the Steam platform, more luck, and good guesses on our part.
Some fun stats:
1.
Today we've earned more than we did with any of the other Steam promotions earlier in this year for AI War for 75% off for a week, or Valley, or whatever else. I don't mean release through today, I mean just today itself. And actually it's like double what a lot of those other promotions earned. People are really responding to this game.
2. This game has already outsold Bionic Dues something like 3x, and is approaching 1.5x the combined Skyward and Nihon package. Compared to Tidalis and Shattered Haven it's obviously no contest. In four days the game is also about halfway to the total earnings of Valley 1 plus 2, and is also now halfway to the break-even point where we actually start making money on this title (it was expensive to make, but seems to have been worth it).
3. Doing expansions at this point, plus the planned free content, is a no-brainer at this point. And I'm just elated, because I'm still overflowing with ideas for the game. There's not any one area that I particularly want to expand the game: there are dozens. Expect the first expansion to launch in June, and then another very late this year.
4. We are not going to forget about AI War or the SHMUP title. I don't expect to make much money on the SHMUP title, but it will be cheap for us to make and we can probably break even on it within a reasonable timeframe. And it will be a fun game, it's something I want to play. Where exactly we fit the next AI War expansion in this year is still a question mark in light of the breakout success of TLF, because we're now having to kind of juggle. But there definitely
will be an expansion this year, most likely in the middle of the year.
I really hope that this keeps up a bit so that I can stop worrying about money so incessantly. Arcen owes me so much money at this point in back-pay, heh.
I basically worked 2012 for free, and thus far for 2014 I've put in more money as investment into the company than I've earned back out of it. Doing that sort of thing has really drained my ability to have financial safety nets, which has been a big source of stress for a long time. Keeping a smaller staff and thus smaller expenses helps a lot, but we also have to actually turn a profit on games aside from just AI War. So this has been like the heavens just opening up for me in a lot of ways, and saying "yes, actually, you can keep doing this." Some days I was starting to wonder.
My intent with the money beyond obvious compensating staff is to build up a reserve so that we're not constantly running up against insane deadlines all the time just because we're running out of money again and again. That's been the constant story of Arcen for as long as the company has existed, and it's time for that to stop. I was always pursuing a growth strategy before, but now it's time to pursue a stability strategy instead.
Anyway, sorry for the wall of text. Thanks for the well-wishes folks, and I'm really relieved and still kind of in disbelief at this point. I keep waiting for the other thing on your foot to drop.
