January 9, 2023

2022 Year in Review (by numbers)

Contains money stuff, if you're into/opposed to seeing that. It's at the bottom and highlighted, you can ignore it if you want.

Hi there! I was inspired by someone else doing the same to make a year-in-review post. (I actually meant to do one in August to do my year in review from my dev anniversary but the literal year is probably an easier landmark.

The Non-Money Stuff

I’m currently only active on itch, so that’s what I’ll be using.

Views and Downloads

So unfortunately this kind of stuff is pretty spotty if you’re not doing “since creation”. I can’t sort out how to do this for views/downloads on itch for just one year, just money. So I’ll just do lifetime total since Aug 13, 2021. (It’s not hugely inflated from that, is the thing, unsurprisingly my first few months weren’t huge.) I’m going to note when something was PWYW vs. paid too.

• 36th Way (PWYW): 855 views, 461 downloads

• ANOINTED: 785 views, 146 downloads

• APOCALYPSE FRAME: 51,487 views, 26,447 downloads (!)

  • The Infected World: 2,436 views, 817 downloads

  • Ballad of Industrial Gods: 1,412 views, 313 downloads

• Liminal Void Quickstart (PWYW): 135 views, 85 downloads

• NOVA: BURNOUT: 1,206 views, 273 downloads

• The Binary Atlas: 742 views, 85 downloads

• Total//Effect SRD (PWYW): 199 views, 49 downloads

• Trespasser: 1,009 views, 216 downloads

Total: 61,256 views, 29,029 downloads.

Those views/downloads for APOCALYPSE FRAME are extremely high! We’ll get into that in…

Bundles (Charity and non-Charity)

So I was in a bunch of bundles this year! Some of these I made money from, some of these were for charity, because this year was a total disaster. (Skip that section if you don’t want a greatest hits of awful things this year.)

First, the non-charity ones:

• Creator’s Day Co-op Bundle (APOCALYPSE FRAME)

• Get in the Robot Bundle (APOCALYPSE FRAME)

• Halloween in September (Trespasser)

• Videogame Hacks TTRPG Bundle (APOCALYPSE FRAME)

• Ind of the Year 2022 (Trespasser)

And then the charity ones (cw: 2022 sucked):

• TTRPGs for Trans Rights in Texas (APOCALYPSE FRAME)

• Bundle for Ukraine (APOCALYPSE FRAME)

• Bundle for Reproductive Rights (ANOINTED)

• Indie Bundle for Abortion Funds (APOCALYPSE FRAME)

• TTRPGs for Abortion Access and Reproductive Rights (APOCALYPSE FRAME)

(If you’re wondering why the view counts were so high for APOCALYPSE FRAME it’s 100% because of bundles.)

The Money Stuff

Alright, let’s talk cash.

I’m gonna put the numbers out there and talk results based on them. I’m breaking out number of payments as well for a future point. (Numbers are for direct purchases, bundles are their own entry at the bottom.)

• 36th Way (PWYW): $22.33, 5 payments

• APOCALYPSE FRAME: $1245.30, 88 payments

  • The Infected World: $795.55, 75 payments

  • Ballad of Industrial Gods: $123.50, 25 payments

  • (Total AF + supplements): $2164.35

• ANOINTED: $110.00, 10 payments

• Liminal Void Quickstart (PWYW): $7.00, 1 payment (shout out to that guy, you’re a real one and I appreciate you)

• NOVA: BURNOUT: $191.00, 17 payments

• The Binary Atlas: $263.00, 27 payments

• Total//Effect SRD (PWYW): $25.00, 2 payments (thank you so much!)

• Trespasser: $66.00, 13 payments

• All Bundles: $520.10

Total for 2022: $3368.78

So here are some talking points:

• Supporting your games works. The Infected World cracked #1 on Popular and New/Popular and #3 on sales. I posted about it on Twitter and such but about half of that income came from emailing everyone on itch who had APOCALYPSE FRAME and letting them know that a season pass was out. But even with Ballad of Industrial Gods, which lagged, I got a bump in sales of the original. If you create something that looks like it’s got legs, people are more willing to look at the original thing.

• Supporting other people’s games works. NOVA: BURNOUT and The Binary Atlas are solid sellers and both cost me next to nothing to make.

• Other people with platforms talking about your games works REALLY WELL. I’m shit at marketing so getting someone else to do it for me always helps. A ton of APOCALYPSE FRAME sales, especially for The Infected World, came from dragonkid11. Thanks so much! Every time I got even an offhand mention in Dicebreaker/similar I’ve gotten a huge bump in views, downloads, and sales. I hadn’t done the whole press kit thing for any 2022 release but I’m going to be doing it going forward because having even one big thing shout you out matters a LOT.

• Be cheap frugal. Most of the projects up there cost like $10, usually because I wanted a high-quality image for a cover. The Binary Atlas cost me $0, every image used is public domain. While it’s great to throw down for great art, editing, etc. it’s not always strictly necessary for smaller releases.

• Cool people will throw down a bit for in-development games. As an alternative to explicit crowdfunds, consider just putting an early access out for money. I guess this is kind of what itchfunding is, but also people try to doll it like it’s a Kickstarter. I’m saying don’t even do that. Just put an early build out and put a price tag on it and see what happens.

• Bundles are great. Some of those bundles got me no money (in the case of charity ones) or almost no money. But all of them came with an attendant downloads jump and sales jump for my other stuff. When someone has something of yours and they like it, they’ll look at your other stuff too! For projects that are mostly in the “long tail” stage of things, it’s also a great way to add a little bit of cash. Trespasser made about 3x in bundles (~$180 between Ind of the Year and Halloween in September) what it made in direct sales.

• PUT AN APPROPRIATE PRICE ON YOUR WORK, or, I WANT SHORTER GAMES THAT TAKE LONGER TO MAKE AND COST MORE AND I AM NOT KIDDING. I decided to make Trespasser $5 because it’s shorter than most of my games, and I wanted to see how much burn it’d get in comparison. It got about the same amount of sales as ANOINTED, but made about half as much money (ignoring bundles). And ANOINTED is only that low because it’s an extremely in-progress version - it’s going up to $15 when feature complete and $20 when complete, like APOCALYPSE FRAME.
  
  The point is, Don’t be afraid to bump your prices up! People will pay it! You can always also add community copies and add your games to bundles for people looking to get them on a budget. (I’ve given away 300 community copies of APOCALYPSE FRAME to date, for instance. Also if someone just emails you and asks you for a key, give ‘em one. Don’t be a jerk about it. But also, don’t feel ashamed to wait a little bit to make community copies widely available though. Launch window is a thing.)

So there it is! I hope this was helpful for you.