Colif
Moderator
They worked out a lot of the secrets already. One took the work of 50 people to figure out solution. I won't link the video. Its what made me react. Its a metroid game with lots of hidden things.
ZedClampet
Community Contributor
I wonder if it was a successful first outing? I find these sorts of things interesting, but don't know enough about it to really know if it worked out. The best guessers say it sold 150k games in its first month, which after Steam's share leaves a little over $2 million made. If the publisher takes 50 percent (who knows. contracts vary widely), then I guess that's probably enough to pay off whatever the development costs were for a solo developer, but how much did they spend on marketing? Marketing costs always shock me.
Kaamos_Llama
Moderator
For a debut solo dev to sell 150k in the first week is pretty successful, I would think anyway. 8K concurrent at peak on Steam and its only an 8-10 hour game I heard, probably keeps selling steadily for a while as well as it got good buzz. Thats also on Steam, its on Switch and PS5 where I would think a fair amount of Dunkey fans and fans of this style of game are playing instead.
Dunkey talked about it when he announced he was starting up a publishing company, hes not one of the crazy big Youtubers but he has 7.5 million subs and hes done videos on it obviously, I would assume for free. That alone is enough to get other streamers seeing it and people talking about it. Helps that apparently critics and pundits think its pretty fun too obviously.
In this case I would like to think the publishers cut wouldnt be too obscene. Dunkeys someone who seems to be passionate about games and the spiel when it was all announced was that the games hes going with are only the ideas that he found interesting as kind of passion projects. He seems genuine, but of course when you dont know someone personally you can never be 100% sure. Everyone likes getting paid.
No idea whether these smaller devs pay to get reviews on the big sites or get coverage on podcasts or other media, but otherwise where are you going to pay a lot of money to market a game like this? Not like its going on TV during the game or anything. I suppose theres conventions and so on to show it at that costs something, no idea if it had stuff at anything like that or not. Not something I have experience with, would be interesting to find out.
ZedClampet
Community Contributor
Never heard of Dunkey. I searched for it on Steam lol.
No way to tell if there are more players on PS or Switch. My impression, which is based mostly on prejudice rather than knowledge, is that most indie games do better on PC. But that's only little indie games. If this is backed by a big YouTuber then maybe it did very well elsewhere. My assumption was that it was relatively unknown, which is kind of in Steam's wheelhouse.
All the console owners I know IRL are casual players of things like CoD and Madden, so my perspective is likely skewed. I don't know any console players who would ever play anything like this or would ever even know it exists. I have to remind myself that the people I know are not the only people
As for advertising, I would assume you would spend most of your money on Youtube, Twitch and Tik Tok, but that's probably not correct. It's where the younglings are, though. Get a good streamer to play your game, and it can sell tons of copies.
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ZedClampet
Community Contributor
The Steam key I was given for the beta test with the NDA was invalid. So much for what I was going to do this afternoon and evening.
Someone else just randomly added a beta test game to my Steam library. Maybe I'll do that.
Edit: Never mind. I'm not testing that janky crap. I tested an earlier version of this over a year ago, and it's almost like the developers have never used any type of software before.
Someone else just randomly added a beta test game to my Steam library. Maybe I'll do that.
Edit: Never mind. I'm not testing that janky crap. I tested an earlier version of this over a year ago, and it's almost like the developers have never used any type of software before.
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Kaamos_Llama
Moderator
He's pretty well known. There were articles on PCG and in other places about BigMode when he announced it, so it was news. Some were pretty sceptical, but this game seems to have done alright so a good start.Never heard of Dunkey. I searched for it on Steam lol.
No way to tell if there are more players on PS or Switch. My impression, which is based mostly on prejudice rather than knowledge, is that most indie games do better on PC. But that's only little indie games. If this is backed by a big YouTuber then maybe it did very well elsewhere. My assumption was that it was relatively unknown, which is kind of in Steam's wheelhouse.
All the console owners I know IRL are casual players of things like CoD and Madden, so my perspective is likely skewed. I don't know any console players who would ever play anything like this or would ever even know it exists. I have to remind myself that the people I know are not the only people
As for advertising, I would assume you would spend most of your money on Youtube, Twitch and Tik Tok, but that's probably not correct. It's where the younglings are, though. Get a good streamer to play your game, and it can sell tons of copies.
In the bigger English speaking gaming forums by membership and activity theres a console majority I'd say. I know that doesnt really represent the majority of console owners as a whole who probably are mostly playing the big sports games and AAA's, but there are lot of console only people playing more niche games and indies as well.
Guess they had Youtube and Twitch mostly covered, so maybe marketing wasnt as much as it could have been, couldnt say for sure.
ZedClampet
Community Contributor
The dev got me a working key. The game, which I I'm not allowed to name, is great, but the world and music are pretty ugly/bad, and those are two things I can't help fix. I have a feeling the world could be a lot better looking with some minor changes by a professional artist or level designer. The 3D models themselves seem to be okay. It's the scale and how they've been arranged that is off in some way. A few extra environmental models would help as well. The music, meanwhile, made me feel like I was in a carnival-themed insane asylum.
Edit: An even bigger problem is that it is an always online single-player game. People will freak out over that.
Edit: An even bigger problem is that it is an always online single-player game. People will freak out over that.
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So as i blitz through my indie games, i'm completing them faster then i can decide what i want to play next. Which is a bit silly, not going to play anything too big or AAA atm as Assassins creed odyssey hogged nearly 4 months of my time and i need to catch up with my list of games and the fastest way of doing this is blasting through indie games. i might take a more relaxing game that has a creative element to it.
Colif
Moderator
With EA wanting to put adverts in BF and COD being pushed onto game pass, are we seeing the death throws of these two franchise they been releasing now for last 25+ years? Have we run out of wars? Can you only fight WW2 so many times?
Company greed will kill them.
Company greed will kill them.
The thing about this is: they've done this already, 20 years ago. They had ads in. Burnout, Need for Speed, fifa, Swat 4, Splinter Cell, hell EVERQUEST had them in the form of ordering a pizza directly from Pizza Hut with the /pizza command.
Yeah, it sucks, it's annoying, but why get bent out of shape about it, especially when it's been happening for 25+ years already. Also consider that the AAA landscape is largely barren and uninteresting anyway, so why trouble yourself with such games? Even if you really want to play the latest CoD installment, but will skip it due to ads, you have countless other games to play, will you even miss it?
I'm not being an apologist here, I aggressively ad block between UBlock Origin on my phone and every PC in my house, as well as blocking ads at a DNS level in my entire home, so I don't even see ads on my phone, even if an app is riddled with them (which often comes as a shock to my wife and I when we leave the safety of our network). I just don't understand why we're relitigating this when it's been a thing for decades already and hasn't stopped the AAA space from being ever more brazen, disingenuous and shameless in trying to extract more money from the consumer.
It's time we all move on from their predatory practices and play something else. We're awash with excellent games these days, often costing less than a meal out, so why trouble ourselves and waggle our fingers at AAA publishers when they will never change course anyway?
Colif
Moderator
I don't play either of them. I just commenting on what is happening. I know they have had ads in games before, it depends on how blatant they are. Advertising in NFS can make sense as it was a racing game, but putting them into BF seems out of place.
I don't see ads either. I pay to have Youtube Premium to not get ads on it. Ublock Origin on Firefox, on PC and phone... Its so long since I have seen them on PC I forget why every website seems to have so much blank space on it.
I don't see ads either. I pay to have Youtube Premium to not get ads on it. Ublock Origin on Firefox, on PC and phone... Its so long since I have seen them on PC I forget why every website seems to have so much blank space on it.
ZedClampet
Community Contributor
There's nothing I'm less concerned about than EA and Activision. If it weren't for casual gamers who only play one or two of the biggest name games all year, they'd go out of business, or at least contract quite a bit.
You should hear the way the people around here are talking about EA and the college football game. Many of them are buying Playstations just to play this game, and they are gushing over it being made by EA--"So you know it's going to be fantastic!"
None of these people will care if there are ads in the game because all they ever play otherwise are mobile games.
You should hear the way the people around here are talking about EA and the college football game. Many of them are buying Playstations just to play this game, and they are gushing over it being made by EA--"So you know it's going to be fantastic!"
None of these people will care if there are ads in the game because all they ever play otherwise are mobile games.
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