This has been discussed a few times. They could make money on Gleam Club, sovereigns and cubits along with adding say some other things into the shop. Clothing (pants, yea I said it), maybe they can find some others things to throw in there.
I don’t think it’s the $40 price tag for a game, it’s the $40 price tag to try a game they are not sure if they even want to try and given some of the Steam reviews combined with that price tag was one of the reasons I never picked it up. I mean the game sells decently during the times it went on sale for $5.
i would go with some crazy idea advertising it as mind soothing game for stress patients brain stimulating for the eldery
advertising in old people homes and hospital with like pc setups to sample the game
thats quit the market there and you can even sell it to institution bringing it to the people without the need for the users to buy it
like 10k for a old people institution fun yearpack 40 users including a private mini universe for the institution expandable for 5K a year lolz add some digital zora bots npc in the mix
This is very true I also think two hours for some games isn’t a long enough time to try. I quit Boundless for 2 weeks after I first tried it due to frustration after about a week playing it.
I gave up on Valheim because the controls were clunky. Made the game almost unplayable. Gathering resources was over complicated at times. Targeting sucked.
Two hours can be plenty of time.
For some games. I rather enjoyed Valheim and I too hated it quite a bit initially. After I played with a few friends and got into progressing a bit and killed a boss it became much better.
857 steam players added from Jan 2019 to Feb 2019
796 Steam Players Lost from Feb 2019 to March 2019.
Based on these number 61 players remained, 7.11%?
I am not a dev nor do I have access to the official New player purchase vs player retention data. But the steamcharts is the information I am going by.
The question that I would have on the free weekend would be, that I truly have no clue of the answer to: when other games do those, what IS the average retention rate of the free players? I’d have to think that there are a lot of people out there who just jump in to try out new stuff for the heck of it.
If it is at least somewhat in line with Boundless’, though absolutely I believe the NPE needs work (and if way out of line then sort of proves there is a huge problem), then I suspect blame for the subsequent trend in the numbers falls more on the promotional front. Might be a niche game, but any niche can be big enough if you get the attention of enough people overall. Though it seems in retrospect the game wouldn’t have been able to handle it, being put out too soon out seems to me to be the other big marketing blunder here. And how many usually jump in free weekends for games coming from comparable-sized studios? I suspect the only difference between the fate of Boundless and NMS was the hype on the latter… gave them enough cash at the outset to continue development; frankly, as much as I love NMS I still personally consider Boundless more enjoyable as a game. They took a lot of risks here and hit on some incredible things, blazed some innovative new trails… but I think for it to really be a big retail success (leaving aside the extreme outset hype/improvements later path of NMS) would have required a lot more testing followed by polishing/balancing then serious marketing efforts. Of course, that’s always hard too because people don’t want to wait in early access too long…
Well according to the Free Weekend mentioned to me the Free Weekend on Steam showed a 35-player increase. As stated to me by many people on the forums Steam is concurrent players.
So, going by what I have been told we have around 100 concurrent players on Steam currently which is “concurrent” so the actual number of players (as I have been told) is more around 1200 players.
Using that math, if we retained 35 “concurrent” players we must have retained around 400 players or so.
I’ll add, part of the reason I’m eyeing the marketing side of it more, and am wondering if our free weekend retention % lines up with other games - it is such a tough market right now in general, seems you either have to be AAA or get some serious influencer/streamer clout to have a decent chance, and also, what I’ve seen with a game that has very similar numbers (Boundless may have more if you count PS players), somewhat similar in type of game, and actually IS F2P: Creativerse. You can enjoy that game in it’s free form fine, NPE is almost as easy as MC, they added in some very cool features like programmable NPCs… but it just never got the numbers. And I see the same thing with Boundless: you just don’t see that game out there much, and it is hard trying to crack into established games’ niches even if you are being innovative in a lot of ways and not copying the whole formula.
Everybody always points to stuff like Stardew Valley, where one person or a small team create a huge hit. But that is the BIG exception. And a lot of the small, organic big success stories are not from recent years. Look at how many new games are dropping on Steam constantly. The market is saturated, gamers are jaded, and there is only so much $ to go around. My overall impression is that success now often comes as the result of being a big, recognized game or connected to one, or being able, whether through the potential merits of your game, luck, or money to manage get a lot of press/coverage/sharing out there (Stray comes to mind here recently, got tons of coverage, because hey, who doesn’t love s? While liking and aww’ing at the game myself, I actually don’t see much other than being a cat that is particularly innovative or technically impressive there so far). There are tons of great games out or in the works that I see that just are not getting attention, follows from people, ect… very sad to me as I WANT indie passion projects to succeed and to have tons of wonderful games out there!
@bucfanpaka You are pretty spot on. There is one other thing that can really change a game’s success and that is the ability of it to generate good content for a Streamer.
I say this as I watch a few Streamers that have an audience of 20K+ per stream on Twitch. I have watched one in particular get into gaming ruts and their 20k+ viewers will watch as the streamer browses Steam for a game and then this person will look at the “currently playing” number and based on the Players Online, the trailer and some quick reviews they would choose to try the game out.
I mention this because this streamer kind of jumps between some games they always play. Rust, DayZ, and a number of others. I mention this because… when this streamer plays them there is direct correlation with a Steam sales increase and this streamer playing the game again and also another correlation with the Steam stats for the game the streamer plays.
Streamers (large streamers) are an underused marketing tool and it would take one large streamer to really push a game and make it popular. The downside of course is always player retention, but I have watched the streamer leave and go back to games over and over and the sales and playerbase jump up every time and the average player base even after the streamer leaves stays at a higher level than it was previously.
Pretty crazy how one large Streamer can make or break a game.
EDIT: Figured I’d add we always argue that all the stats we know of are “concurrent”, but concurrent or not that number is used by TONS of people to decide if they want to buy/try a game out.
I’m only responding since you have mentioned it a few times.
The only time, IMO, that this difference matters is when someone is talking about total number of players playing. Max concurrent is a valuable way to compare vs other games’ max concurrent, or to determine approximate percentage change in population. It just isn’t good at telling you the actual number of people who play the game in general.
My wife and I just came back to Boundless. We got a sovereign and I set up a market selling animal parts. It’s off the beaten path from our main settlement. I can’t keep it stocked with certain things. Bones, meat, etc., are all priced fairly but not below the general market. We aren’t “big boys”. It’s quite possible to be part of the economy on a small scale.
I haven’t seen anyone address the most obvious negative effect of F2P in Boundless, even after grazing around it with the free weekend references…
Dead beacons. Everywhere. If you get 50k players to download the game for free and only 10k play for more than a month, that’s FORTY THOUSAND dead beacons in the live servers. Every city, every hub, every everything, will be blocked from expansion. Only sovereigns are safe.
Would never work. I think $15-20 is the money zone to attract players that will hopefully spend more in game.
s? While liking and aww’ing at the game myself, I actually don’t see much other than being a cat that is particularly innovative or technically impressive there so far). There are tons of great games out or in the works that I see that just are not getting attention, follows from people, ect… very sad to me as I WANT indie passion projects to succeed and to have tons of wonderful games out there!