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

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

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

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

5. 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

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

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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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…

11. 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

12. Fall 2015
Slowed/stopped progress
Lost two months
Humble intro

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

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

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

16. 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

17. 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)))))

18. 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

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

20. 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

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

22. Greenlight

23. 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

24. itch.io PWYW
This was a thing

25. 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.

26. 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

27. Q? A: