New Year New Problems & updates
Added 2023-01-02 11:16:12 +0000 UTCThis mess is part of an ongoing thing. The quick version is this:
My previous job was really awful to the point where I wasn't technically an employee, meaning I wasn't even paid close to a minimum wage. I had money in the bank, but every month at that job eroded through my savings more and more. The theory was as the company grew, my position would become real and I'd get a decent wage for the work I did.
This did not happen, and those savings were getting low, so I quit. I couldn't stay there another day due to a toxic owner. That was in May.
Since then I started learning Unreal for game development and have been trying to expand that into a product that will at the very least provide some income, alongside Patreon. The last few months has been a push to get it to the end of that first Phase and hopefully get interest and improve the financial situation.
Income
To date, the game has been downloaded 6696 time. Only 425 of those are Phase 1, and most days it struggles to hit double digit downloads which is significantly worse than before Phase 1 went live.
The game was released on itch.io with a suggested pricetag of £5, but no payment requirement was set, so it is completely free to download. So, the question is how well has it actually been selling? We know it's been downloaded almost 7k times, so what proportion of that has translated to sales?
7 times. A few at the £5 pricepoint, a £10 sale and the rest a few pounds here and there.
Overall though, it's averaging 1 sale per 1000 downloads.
Add that to Patreon every month, and it's incredibly appreciated, but the cold hard fact is that the attempt to make game development and animation sustainable has failed with each month mitigating the problems, but just slowing the inevitable decline.
That is until yesterday.
For months now, every time I go shopping for food or have to put fuel in the van, I've been expecting the declined message, so I've taken to carrying a £20 note just in case, and yesterday morning it finally happened, which means 2023 managed to not go to shit for roughly 10 hours.
Whats the plan?
There isn't one. I have no idea what to do now. I know I have bills impending and no way to pay them. I know that going to buy food is not going to happen. The last few months, I've barely had heating on to cut down on costs, I'm down to one meal a day.
The only bright spot is that the months of job applications have resulted in one possible job that I'm still waiting to hear back about with a real company, but honestly I'm just waiting for that one bit of hope to be snuffed out as well.
The future?
Fuck knows. At one point my entire plan was to try to get all this stuff profitable, and if I failed to just kill myself when the money ran out. In retrospect, that's a stupid plan, because lack of heating and food will probably do it without the need to do it directly. The last few months has just been struggling to hang on. Doing everything I can to get through Phase 1 in the hopes it would at least stabilise the situation, but that's proving to have been a probable waste of time.
The one thing I can see as a possibility is to get a few more essential features into the game, and keep it on itch as a demo, but add the game to Steam and provide gamekeys to everyone who has bought the game or joined on Patreon. The issues with that though are that Steam requires a $100 outlay, which I don't have, plus getting it on Steam is pointless if nobody ever sees it which seems to be a major problem with stuff I do. I'm shit at social media, and as a result, it doesn't matter how good a game is if you can't get the word about it out.
Finally
I don't know what I'm going to do. It's all looking bleak right now. Sorry.
Anyway, Happy New Year and all that.
Comments
Losing savings while having a job? Jesus. Most people at least break even, but losing it while living as frugally as you do means that was an _illegally_ low amount to pay you. I have to doubt whether there was ever a plan to get you fairer compensation. Unfortunately that level of conversion from view to paid customer is relatively par for optional paid content on the Internet (like 'membership' on some Youtube channels, or ads-to-sales ratio) from what I vaguely remember. Over 35% conversion-to-download is good though, probably helped by the free download. The fact that the downloads -significantly- dropped after Phase 1 is very odd. Lowered interest is unavoidable as a product ages, but that suggests some kind of change in perception or presentation from the itch side of things. That's where social media could help fill the gap, but like you say, that's a hard game to get into, let alone play well. However, even something as simple as posting on Twitter when you update the itch page could help drive traffic. I wish we could know the metrics if you'd set something like a $2 minimum price initially; obviously less downloads, but potentially similar profit. Were all the jobs you applied for in programming fields? While you shouldn't give up on the possible job (some companies are just slow as hell), you might have to do something less-skilled to cover the gaps. It can be brutal, but it would at least allow for more time for the game or Patreon to develop, though I don't know if the game is going to be viable in the long term. If you're already looking for those I apologize, I know the UK's in a real shit position these days. Here's hoping the job comes through. In the meantime, can help a bit through itch.io. No idea if Patreon is okay with subbing at a higher price to charge it, then lowering it again. There's a thing silver lining that at least you haven't had to deal with the toxic owner since, heh.
Dargon
2023-01-02 18:50:32 +0000 UTC
