Developer Blog

In between work, developing my games, being a dutiful husband/father and a million other things I also attempt to play wargames (solo).

Currently on my table, handily next to my computer where I do most of my development, is Ted Raicer’s “When Eagles Fight” from GMT games.

I brought this in the GMT sale and set it up during the Christmas break. I have managed to reach turn six and am really enjoying it (I might reach out to Ted/GMT to see if they are interested in turning this into a computer game). Coincidently if you are interested in WW1 eastern front then I can fully recommend Prit Buttar’s 4 book series – Eastern Front in World War I.

I am sure I am not the only one that leaves a game setup for while and returns to it periodically. However have you noticed how said such game seems to attract a disproportionate amount of dust compared to anything else in the nearby region?

Now since I don’t have a gaming room everything is set up in our main living room. So now I have a game that:

• Does not match the rooms carefully planned decor (by wife)
• Is a dust magnet
• Cannot have a vacuum cleaner within 10 feet of it for fear of that one crucial piece being sucked into oblivion. (On this point have you noticed how if a piece goes missing its always the most important)

Luckily my wife’s birthday is soon and so I can temporarily delay the “Isn’t it time you cleared that up” conversation that is surely coming with a suitably big bribe gift.

If you have any solutions to the dust problem do let me know!

There has a been growing trend in the software world to move to a subscription-based or In-app purchase (also known as microtransactions)  model. Take as examples Microsoft Office365 or Adobe Photoshop where you pay a monthly subscription fee and in return get all the latest features and updates. We are also seeing this trend in the gaming world with games such as World of Warcraft that charge a monthly fee or Epic Games’ Fortnite that has in-app purchases for such things as outfits, gliders, pickaxes and dance moves.  This model is also being replicated in the wargaming world with premium accounts for World of Tanks or in the form of extra downloadable content (DLC) such as in Slitherine’s’ Order of Battle. 

Typically, the base game is free to download and can either be played for free with a limited amount of content or enhanced by in-app purchases. The advantage to this model is that the game player continues to get new content and a game, if successful, that is supported for years beyond its original release. For the software company, they get loyal customers, regular cash flow and the ability to forecast future income. For this type of model to be financially successful, you will need a fairly large pool of players willing to constantly spend money on the game.

As an example of a wargame utilizing an as a service model imagine buying an American Civil War game that has one battle depicted on its first release – say the first battle of Bull Run. As a fan of the game, you could then buy extra scenarios or battles and then these would appear as playable options in the game. You might even be able to buy extras such as customized counters or flags or additional music to play in the game.

However, this business model has had major implications for how mobile games are produced. As prices to sell games dropped developers moved to in-app purchases to generate revenue and now it’s extremely hard to sell a premium game for anything more than a few dollars. In-app purchases don’t tend to work well with a typical wargame – $1 for that extra panzer division and there goes the historical accuracy. It is no longer financially viable for most developers (I admire John Nuutinen and his continual output of games supporting Android) to develop a wargame aimed solely at iOS or Android. Users expect to pay next to nothing, or indeed nothing, and get a AAA quality game. Most hardcore wargamers will, I am sure, have noticed the lack of support for wargames on these platforms compared to the PC.

On the PC, premium pay (one-time purchase) games continue to sell well although the downward pressure on prices continues and will increase as more games adopt the model of software as a service going forward. I don’t, however, believe we will see the race to the bottom that happened with mobile games.

For a developer, there are huge risks in developing a game that you will release for free and then hope that fans of the game will either buy in-app items or DLC. Now multiply that risk by developing for a niche market such as historical wargames that are further sub-divided into particular interests such as ACW, WW2 etc. Oh, and add in the fact 100’s of games, of all types, are being released every week and getting visibility for your game is a mammoth effort in of itself. This means we are likely to see only established wargame studios/publishers successfully adopt this model. So, what does this mean for the future of computer-based wargames?

1. An increase in wargames as a service – particularly where there is a lot of possible subject matter/conject such as the WW2 period
2. Fewer commercially produced premium pay wargames but with better quality and content
3. Few, if any, wargames covering more obscure subjects
4. Even fewer commercially produced wargames on Android/iOS
5. A growth in hobbyist wargame developers looking to fill the gaps created in 2, 3 & 4 above

Could we see publishers like Slitherine move to fully adopting wargames as a service model? I am sure they would prefer it due to the benefit of regular income and the ability it gives to forward plan compared to the famine and the then hopeful feast of releasing premium games. However, us wargamers are a very traditional bunch and like the French Guards at Waterloo will resist to the last.

Two years ago I setup Yobowargames and work in my spare time as a solo Indie developer. Since I also have a full-time day job I would classify myself as a hobbyist indie developer but, where possible, adhering to business principles. In that time I have released two games with another about to launch and currently working on my fourth game.

My games are targeted at a niche strategy wargame market that I know well as a consumer and now as a software developer. I use Libgdx and develop using Android Studio. By using Libgdx I can produce games in Java that run on PC, Android, and iOS with very little additional work needed between the three of them.

I set myself a three-year goal with the following objectives.

Year 1 – Produce and publish my first game.

Year 2 – Produce more games and build a small following

Year 3 – Produce a larger more advanced game that makes money

The purpose of this article is to provide some updated statistics and things I have learned in the first two years.

Facts and Figures

My first game Kursk – Battle at Prochorovkawas greenlighted by Steam in Feb 2017, moved into alpha and then officially launched in July 2017. As it was my first game I was very nervous about doing any marketing in case the game was not well received. So apart from my blogs I did zero marketing and did not send it for any reviews. My wife was so worried about it failing that she was secretly planning to purchase the game so I had at least one sale.

My second game, Battle for Korsun, was launched at the end of October 2018. This time I did send the game out to a couple of reviewers and one of them did a favorable review. In addition, the game was picked up by a few other bloggers or YouTubers who I had not contacted.

My third game, Invaders from Dimension X, will launch in January 2019 with the support of the original board game producer, Tiny Battle Publishing.

Below Are my main sources of revenue in 2017 and 2018. The biggest difference between 2017 & 2018 is that itch.io has proven to be a fairly valuable source of crowdfunding for a new game I am working on – Valor & Victory.

Below are unit sales for Kursk – Battle at Prochorovka since launch. The peaks are Steam sales. This covers almost 2 years of sales. I only discount 25% during sales and did no discounts in the first year. I might sell more if I did a heavier discount and will try that in the summer sale. Launching my second game led to more sales for this, my first, game. My games have a long tail with this game earning 40% of total gross income in year 2.

This next chart shows sales by region for Kursk – Battle at Prochorovka. This game is only available in English.

This next one shows sales by region for my second game, Battle for Korsun, which I did localize into French, Russian, Chinese, Spanish and German. This has led to a slight increase in sales in China but seemed to have little to no effect elsewhere.

Financially I have recouped the costs of making the first two games and financed the cost of the next 2 games. However, do note I do not charge for my time spent on these games and could not seriously think about making this a full-time vocation.

Things I have learned

1. Engagement and investing time with your target audience will be rewarded. I regularly search Google to see if anyone has written about my games. This can be on forums, blogs or YouTubers. Where I can I will respond to forums and thank bloggers or YouTubers – regardless of whether they liked my games. I reply to every email I receive and respond, where appropriate to Steam discussions and reviews. I now have a small following/community that is looking forward to my next game. Their feedback has helped me focus on areas that are important to them.
2. Having a plan and applying business principles, even as a hobbyist, provides focus and a framework. With planning, I am able to avoid scope creep and a least have a rough idea of what to work on and for how long. By running on business principles I keep a tight budget on expenses. The only business principle I don’t follow is charging for my time. At the moment my time is an investment that I hope will be repaid with bigger success down the line.
3. Paying for experts is better than trying to do it (badly) yourself. I am not an artist so 90% of my artwork is done by contract graphic artists. I have been lucky so far that I have found people who will work at a rate I can afford and produce good work that has resonated with the market I am focused on.
4. Quality is important. I focus a lot on the quality of my games. I was lucky that I found someone who loves testing and together with my own testing very few bugs are found in my games. With each release, I have improved more as I get feedback and learn more while developing.
5. Know your market. I did a lot of research and continue to do research on my market. I joined all the relevant Facebook groups, followed relevant twitters and monitor the forums of other similar games companies to see what people like and dislike. I dissect other similar games and look to see how they implemented features I struggle with and to gain ideas and follow best practices.
6. PC remains the number one market for my type of games. iOS remains a secondary viable sales vehicle for a premium game such as mine. Android is a non-starter for a premium game – at least in my experience.
7. Steam has proven to be a great marketplace for someone like me that is very focused on a niche market. Itch.io has proven to be a great place for me to provide developer builds of my next game and act as a small source of crowdfunding income.
8. Maintaining a website and writing blogs on things I am working on has been very influential in being taken seriously when approaching others for help or when looking for contractors. It has also led to some unexpected contacts that have proven useful in discovering others doing the same as me or wanting to share information.
9. I suck at marketing. However, I cannot afford to pay someone to do it for me. This year I will hopefully be using publishers for my games. While they will take a cut from my games I hope to learn a lot from them on how to market a game.

Summary

I have learned a lot in the last two years and consider it time well spent. This year will be the real test as I never expected to make any money in the first two years. Covering all development costs has been a bonus.

Thank you for your support, comments, and encouragement in 2018.

Looking forward to even bigger things in 2019!

Lance

Time for a new Logo.

I enlisted the help of my youngest daughter and I am very pleased with the result.

So after far too long a time I have finally released Battle for Korsun. You can see it (and hopefully buy it!) on Steam .

The last couple of weeks have been pretty stressful in preparing for the launch of the game. I know I am not going to get huge sales or anything but I don’t want to disappoint buyers of the game with poor quality or not meeting their (or is it my?) expectations.

After 48 hours I can relax a little. No one has reported major issues with the game and some useful feedback has been received which I can use to improve the game and my future games.

Next up is preparing for the release of Invaders From Dimension X! The game is 99% ready to go. However with the need to support Battle for Korsun and the rash of Steam sales that will be coming up before year end I am going to hold off until the New Year to release.

I’ll give some more updates on how Korsun has gone and some lessons learned once it has been out for a few weeks.

This weekend I set myself the task of getting some of my games running on my iPad.  A couple of weeks ago I purchased a new MacBook Pro and had set up all the necessary development tools.

To be honest I was expecting it to be a fight (no pun intended) and it took a few attempts to get the first one working after much re-reading of instructions and troubleshooting issues as they came up.

I know some of you have been asking about my games on the iPad so here are some screenshots to show you its real!

Probably one of the most asked questions I get is “Is your game going to be available on the iPad?”.

Before I answer that question I want to take you back in history to 2014. The iPad is seen as the future and savior for many software companies with the supposed impending doom of the PC. Slitherine (who also own Matrix Games) is one of the biggest players in the digital wargaming world and JD McNeil, CEO of Matrix/Slitherine, was quoted in 2014 as saying ” Without a shadow of a doubt the growth in the tablet market has been phenomenal for us.“. And so it seemed with many companies looking to bring their latest games to this new mobile market.

However, within 12 months things had changed. Game prices started to fall on mobile devices until by 2017 many were free. The new way to make money was to offer in-game add-ons such as additional resources or better skills. This does not go well with the traditional wargame. Companies like Slitherine tried to continue to support iOS but the financials no longer made sense. Look at games like Wars and Battles and companies like Shenandoah  Studios who failed or collapsed while trying to support iOS. Remember wargames are a niche market, with niches in the niche, so the customer base is not huge.  Then came the final killer…

“When it comes to Slitherine titles, iOS 11 truly is an App-ocalypse”

Apple wanted to only support 64-bit applications meaning many older iOS games would no longer run on iOS devices. For companies like Slitherine this was a no-win situation with either trying to upgrade old games when the developers were no longer around, source code not maintained or rewrite their applications from scratch. Neither made financial sense and so these games disappeared overnight. Wargamers were used to their games running for years on their PC’s. People would find ways to keep these games running no matter what Microsoft did when they upgraded their OS to a newer version. Try hard enough and you can still run games designed for dos from the 1980/90s. So customers, expecting the same, complained bitterly to companies like Slitherine and littered through their forums even today are angry threads.

Here we are in 2018. The PC is still here and the game market for it is as healthy, if not healthier than 2014. You can sell a premium PC game for upwards of $60 on a PC. On iOS? Maybe $14.99 but don’t expect any sales that will recoup the costs of making the game. And who knows if the next version of iOS will support that game? Of course, we now have development tools like Unity that allow you to write once (supposedly) and then deploy to different operating systems. But let’s be honest to stay afloat, make money and be able to invest in future games you have to focus on the PC or one of the big consoles like the XBOX or PS4. Sell one game of  Warhammer 40,000: Gladius – Relics of War for $39.99 or try and sell 4 copies for $9.99 on iOS. Do not forget Apple will take 30% of that whereas you can sell your PC game on your own website, if you are a big brand name, and get 100%.

“Yes that’s all very well,” you say, “but is your game going to be available on the iPad?”.

Yes, my games will be available on the iPad.

For smaller developers like myself it makes sense to try and support iOS. I don’t have fixed costs to cover and I don’t rely on my games to live (not yet anyway). 25% of my net sales for Kursk come from Apple. Also with the bigger wargame development companies pretty much out of the market, there is space for smaller developers like myself to get noticed.

Here’s the rub through. If I could charge the same price as a PC version then that figure would rise to close to 40%. Here’s a thought for anyone reading this – If you paid the same price for an iOS wargame as its equivalent PC version then companies like Slitherine could look again to aggressively support the platform. GMT recently announced their (renewed )partnership with Playdek and that their first game Labyrinth would come to the mobile platform in 2019 (after the PC version).

Pay for it and more will come.

This week has been a little frustrating on the development front. I have been working on the AI for Korsun and wanted Jonathan, my goto QA man, to test it out to see how it plays. However, he was seeing crashes that I had not seen when developing and testing.

All week I have been trying to fix crashes that I do not see when testing. As a developer, this is very frustrating as you have to analyze your code and try and guess what might be causing the issue. Every night I would triumphantly declare I had fixed the issues only to have Jonathan respond back minutes later he still sees them.

I managed to fix one by the end of the week but still have one more to go.

So I took a break over the weekend from the above and did some more work on Valor & Victory.

First up was implementing a basic framework for scenarios selection. I am not entirely sure I like it but its a start.

I also started work on displaying more information in combat phases. During the Fire Phase if you hover over enemy units and they are in your LOS then a small popup displays showing the modifiers those units get.

This Friday I also received the last of the Maps for proofing. They look really really great and when put together as one large map truly fantastic. Jenna has done an outstanding job.

I will be giving an exclusive preview of these maps to the $20 subscribers to my beta on itch.io (hint hint).

And Finally…

I took the plunge and purchased a new MacBook Pro last weekend. I managed to convince the boss I needed it and my games successes would pay for it.

I don’t think she was fooled though…