Should FreshWomen: Season 2 be a Standalone Game or a DLC?

Hello, my dear Freshmen!

Today I’d like to ask your opinion about something very important, and special for us.

Ever since we started working on Season 2, our plan was to release it as a DLC on Steam. Looking at the market at that time, it made sense. We were working with limited data (as DLCs have less market data than Standalone Games), but it was what other studios were doing at the time, so it seemed like a good path for us too.

In these 2 and a half years since we started working on Season 2, we learned a lot, though. We studied a lot about DLC sales, marketing, we’ve gathered more data, and, today, we’re not so sure that a DLC is the right path for us.

Specifically, there are a few things that worry us:

• Standalone games have way more space than DLCs on Steam pages and Marketing. This is a big one. If you open Steam right now, and scroll down until you see a DLC, you’ll see that you have to scroll quite a lot. DLCs also typically don’t appear on the Featured & Recommended, and not being there would be very disappointing. This means that releasing Season 2 as a DLC would make it less visible, and virtually invisible to new players.
  

• In our marketing and sales studies, we saw a clear pattern of DLCs selling less copies than Standalone games. This is obvious, as you need to have the base game in order to play the DLC. What we didn’t expect was by how much DLCs were underperforming compared to the base game. Originally, we thought DLCs would sell about 60% - 70% of the number of copies of the base game. We found out that those numbers are, in most cases, closer to 10% - 30%. And it tends to sell less as more Seasons are added.
  

• A DLC naturally alienates new players, as they would have to play Season 1 in order to play Season 2. Although our story is continuous, there are players who want to jump straight into the action, without playing previous episodes. Another thing to consider is that we evolved a lot graphically since the release of Season 1. Although Season 1 is very pretty, Season 2 is on a whole other level, and this could be something of a shock to new players.

Based on these points, we’re inclined to release Season 2 as a Standalone game, instead of a DLC.

A Standalone release would be the same price as the DLC, the same that we discussed with you last year, and would have a save loader, to import Season 1 choices and relationships.

There are, of course, a few downsides to this, and it’s important to talk about them too.

The first, and simpler one, is that we’ll have to create a recap of Season 1 for players that start their FreshWomen journey on Season 2. Something like a “Previously, on FreshWomen” segment. This isn’t an issue, as we have a dedicated video editor, and we’ll be able to include this quickly in the game.

The second downside is bigger, and trickier: We’ll lose all wishlists. FreshWomen Season 2 DLC has 100.000+ wishlists right now. This is a HUGE number, and wishlists are VERY important on release week. We’ve contacted Steam to ask if they could change the game from a DLC to a Standalone game, and they said it’s impossible. If we decide to release Season 2 as a Standalone game, we’ll have to create a brand-new page, and collect those wishlists again. I believe that, if we decide to release Season 2 as a Standalone game, we’ll be able to get a reasonable number of wishlists until the release date, but, this is a big blow.

Having said that, we’re still inclined to release Season 2 as a Standalone game. It’ll be better from a marketing perspective, bringing new players to the franchise and, possibly, selling more copies, which will enable us to tell more stories.

Obviously, this is a HUGE decision for us, and we want to hear your thoughts on it before we make a final decision on this matter. Our vision is that we’re creating FreshWomen together, our team and our community, side by side, creating amazing games together. Our community is our most important pillar, and we don’t want to make a huge decision such as this without talking to you about it first. 

So, please, let us know what you think about this in the comments below!

As always, thank you so much for your love and support. Thank you for believing in us, and for loving our games as much as we do! Together, we’re creating great things!

See you soon,

f1r3