// intro
Two weeks ago, I took my XNA dungeon crawler/tower defense hybrid to Newgrounds. The port was entirely the work of Kevin Gadd who stuck around during the first week to push no fewer than 8 patches. This was my first launch on a web portal, and this article is about what went right and wrong.
The main thing I did right was research what the Newgrounds community (and web game community in general) would be receptive to. I already have a web demo of Escape Goat, which is designed to feed sales of the digital download from my site. I learned early on that this type of demo/upsell wouldn’t go over well there, so I made the decision to offer the full game. (Thanks to Hyptosis for this bit of advice.)
Bottom line: If your computer is relatively fast and you use a modern browser, you’ll have an identical experience to the PC game I sell for $2.99. I also made sure to clearly label this as an Experimental Beta, given how unpredictable HTML5 support is with some browsers. This paid off, and some players even said they cut me some slack with the technical issues because it was marked as a beta. (Also big thanks to Lars Doucet for his wisdom after launching Defender’s Quest on Kongregate.)
It’s been two weeks… Let’s see the numbers
My ideal outcome would have been for players to follow the link to my website, discover that there is a Soulcaster II available (bundled with Soulcaster) for $4.99, and that some of them would pick it up. The first part of my dream came true: web traffic exploded. Sales, however, didn’t go up very much. Part of it might be the layout of my site and the lack of a really powerful dedicated “BUY” page for the games. It could also be that players didn’t want to spend money on a bundle that includes a game they just played for free, regardless of how much they would like to play Soulcaster II. I wish I had more data to know what’s holding back the purchases! I’m open to suggestions if anyone has any ideas…
Lack of direct revenue aside, the exposure was magnificent, as was traffic fed to my site:
This traffic spike led to the only direct sales of Soulcaster I & II all month. With my 11 copies sold, this gives me roughly a 0.16% attach rate. I didn’t go to marketing school, but that’s awesome, right?
OK, so maybe my site’s salesmanship needs to be taken up a notch if I’m going to capitalize on traffic bursts like this.
Data from Newgrounds:
Views: 98,350
User rating: 3.99, with 2091 reviews
Ranking for month of November: #4 (by score), #8 (by views)
comments posted: 100+
One of the coolest things about the comments on Newgrounds is how much constructive feedback I got on my game. Players had all kinds of suggestions about things I could change for future games, which has given me a bunch of ideas for stuff I’ll be prototyping when I get around to working on Soulcaster III. Playtesting feedback! Really cool side benefit. Also, a near-4-star rating is pretty respectable, especially considering the number of 0-star reviews I got from people who, because of browser issues, only got a black screen.
Conclusion: Reminds me of Greenlight!
Soulcaster on Newgrounds has been similar to my experience putting Escape Goat on Steam Greenlight. Both have been amazing for publicity, but haven’t translated into immediate revenue. I guess I can call this playing the long game, or at least I would if I could claim burgeoning ranks of dedicated fans. I suppose I have gained a few Twitter followers in the last two weeks, and I did get some really nice fan mail (you guys rock!). I’m frequently reminded that building a fan base is its own full time job in itself, and I’ve got to set aside time during the week for it. For example, here it is 4pm on Thursday afternoon, and I’m writing this post when I could be out partying, or refactoring the Escape Goat code base.
Moving forward, I’m definitely going to keep Soulcaster fully free on Newgrounds. I haven’t decided what to do with Soulcaster II yet, but for the time being I’m not willing to sacrifice my second of three games for another burst of web hits. Maybe when my next game hits and I have something to really ensare customers with…
XNA Developers! If you have a game you want to see on the web, be sure to drop me or Kevin a line, and feel free to hit me up for any questions you have.
Verdict: highly recommended.