A lot happened for Alexis Kennedy, Lottie Bevan, and their two-person studio, Weather Factory, in 2019. Recently, the creators took a look at what they’d accomplished, what they’d learned, and where they still had to go, and their retrospective provided valuable advice for indie developers, gamers, and curious onlookers alike.
They began by looking at what they thought was going to happen in the year to come. They outlined their plans to develop three projects, codenamed Ophir, Procopius, and That Damned Library Game, as well as to launch a more polished, higher-budget game and to grow their team from two to as many as four whilst aiming to deliver something even more ambitious in 2020.
However, before Alexis and Lottie could get to whether they’d held to those goals, they needed to rewind a bit. They started by discussing the fact that Cultist Simulator, which had occupied much of their 2018, was in dire need of downloadable content (DLC) to fulfill long-promised obligations to early purchasers and Kickstarter backers, as well as to generate a bit of additional revenue.
There had been several editions of Cultist Simulator made available, including Perpetual Edition (whose buyers received all DLC for free forever) and Anthology Edition (a bundle including all DLC and the soundtrack, discounted), and Anthology was set to release in May to coincide with the DLC release.
Why Anthology Edition? It’s simple: Perpetual Edition had a significant and positive effect on launch week sales, though some players complained about the fact that they missed out on the opportunity to purchase it. Anthology Edition offered the same package, though at a higher price, and a year after the release of Perpetual Edition, satisfying both early buyers of the game and newcomers who were complaining about having missed out on the sales opportunity.
As for the DLC itself, Alexis had quite a bit to say. Dancer, the first DLC release, was a project that he got carried away and spent too long working on, and contains much more content than its follow-ups, The Ghoul and The Priest, though they were all released at the same price point.
He also got into the logistics and challenges of releasing a soundtrack on Steam. Weather Factory collaborates with Mickymar Productions and splits revenue 50/50 with them, and released the soundtrack to the game on Bandcamp, Spotify, and a number of other places. However, Steam used to place soundtracks in DLC, creating some confusion in the marketplace and irritating Perpetual Edition players who felt entitled to a game soundtrack because of this technicality.
Ultimately, as of January 2020, Cultist Simulator sold over 100,000 units, 22% of which were Perpetual Edition purchases. This means that there are 34,000 players who will always receive DLC for free, but Alexis sees the upside in this as that by charting at #1 on launch week, they achieved significantly more sales than they would have had they needed to recover from a poor launch. Furthermore, fans of Cultist Simulator who purchased the Perpetual Edition are considerably more likely to purchase future games, meaning that Weather Factory has enlarged their core audience to significant effect.
This also reaffirms another important fact: Cultist Simulator has reached about 100,000 users – a drop in the ocean when you think about the fact that there are 90 million Steam users and over 1 billion PC gamers worldwide. Though these are mostly people playing much more mainstream games, they are living proof that it’s all but impossible to truly reach your entire potential audience – and that money, resources, and press are probably standing in your way.
Alexis and Lottie are also fairly certain that launching two DLC sets upon the game’s anniversary helped their sales, though they’ve discovered that low-price DLC attracts very few user reviews and far more mixed ratings, with Ghoul having 12 reviews at 100% positive feedback compared to Priest’s 11 reviews and 41% positive rating. However, the soundtrack sold surprisingly well on Steam.
From these lessons, Alexis and Lottie discovered a lot about how to effectively position, market, and sell downloadable content for future projects. The duo found a winning price point, dug deep into the strengths and weaknesses of the format, found the ideal time to release updates in order to rebuild momentum for a title, and determined exactly what players do (and don’t) want from DLC releases while stumbling upon a number of surprising challenges, including technicalities and customers who live to complain. All of this equipped them with a number of tools to succeed as they work on new titles in the future, and it’s all but certain to shape their plans to come.
Click here to learn more about Weather Factory, Alexis Kennedy, Cultist Simulator, and other games from this innovative, groundbreaking studio.
Leave a Reply
Be the First to Comment!
You must be logged in to post a comment.
You must be logged in to post a comment.