Postmortem: Gunmetal Arcadia Dallas Society of Play J. Kyle Pittman @PirateHearts minorkeygames.com

Postmortem: Gunmetal Arcadia Dallas Society of Play J. Kyle Pittman @PirateHearts minorkeygames.com

What is Gunmetal Arcadia? Two games Latest in retro series Combined 28 month dev time

What is Gunmetal Arcadia? Devlog (gunmetalarcadia.com) Not covering that stuff here Production stuff

What is Gunmetal Arcadia? Inspiration Each game as a reaction to the last Going back to YHtWtG and beyond “Z2+BoI”+… Find a unique space among roguelike platformers Reduce the frustration of permadeath

Looking back… You Have to Win the Game (2012) Hard platforming (“rage game”) Sparse, mysterious environment/tone

Looking back… Super Win the Game (2014) Less difficult, less mysterious Disjoint avenues of iteration

Looking back… Another retro game? (2016-7?) Address concerns from Super Win: Tonal consistency Consistent art direction Expectations of combat Pros: Existing tools and tech Pays off a longstanding goal Cons: Likely to be ignored by press Need a different way to build awareness

First five months “Moment-to-moment” prototype Progress! Tools! Excitement! Game feel first, Link sprite Adding bits and pieces to round out the moment-to-moment prototype

Moving from prototype to…??? What is a single session? What is the lifetime of this game? Figuring out milestones Figuring out launch window But in this timeline…

Summer 2015 Game dev + contract work + Super Win DLC + demos/events + dev logs + video logs + Patreon + house hunting + any kind of a personal family life? Don’t want to cut blogging schedule Don’t want to cut scope Introduced Zero

Fall 2015 Slowed/stopped progress Lost two months Humble intro

Winter 2016 Lost two more months Crunch! Clearly scheduled tasks GDC talk

Zero ships! Subdued launch Still got paid tho ($0.32 per key, or just over 5% of retail)

Pre-post-launch depression Port work, uncertainty “Didn’t I already ship this game?”

Fall 2016 End of the tunnel Tasks scheduled by month Room to be flexible, improvise Accounting for “last-minute panic” Starting to see RLGA emerge Shipping GAZ wide Notes on Greenlight later

2017 Ship! Yes I did that thing That I said (Shipped) ((This game)) (((Gunmetal Arcadia))) ((((Not Zero)))) (((((This is as deep as PowerPoint will let me nest bullet points)))))

Results Personal goals? Sort of met. Commercial goals? Long way to go. Let’s talk about sales figures Also bundled keys Also break-even point Also Greenlight, etc. Also itch.io PWYW thing And whatever else

Keys 185,000 Zero keys given away Humble Monthly and Yogscast Jingle Jam 52,970 activated as of April 6

Sales 1,329 units sold as of April 6 Revenue: $8,267 Zero: 981 GA: 348 Revenue: $8,267 Zero: $5,164 GA: $3,103 Break-even is roughly $185,000 across both games 4.5% of the way there Profitable at ~23,000 full-price units 31,000 Zero 18,500 GA 23,000 50/50

Visibility What does the new long tail look like? No day-one visibility, straight to the long tail Discovery 2.0 is better…ish?

Greenlight

Greenlight and tangential thoughts Bad look for Valve? Inconsistent behavior across publishers? Steam Direct? Curators Explorers Whatever The “other” long tail There won’t be fewer games

itch.io PWYW This was a thing

One Cool Twitter trick Use threads! First tweet: Subsequent tweets: Clear announcement Iconic image Call to action Subsequent tweets: More room for descriptive text, additional links, etc.

Looking forward… NextGame (2018-9?) Move away from retro pixel art platformers “How did I get here?” Make something for me and my portfolio Marketing can’t consume all my time, has to hit hard or not at all

Q? A: