Cogmind recently ended its second full year of early-sale sales before releasing it on Steam, so I want, like last year , to share data and beautiful graphs.

This is an interesting milestone because it more or less coincides with the completion of the initial Cogmind content, presented in the beta release last month. This means that it took two years to move from Alpha 1 to Beta 1. And it is still surprising that the support provided is enough for further full-time development - the income from Cogmind for the entire period of its life exceeded $ 100 thousand in April . Therefore, I am grateful to everyone who allowed me to reach this stage!


@ celebrate beta

A more general outcome of the development of late alpha can be studied in my report for 2016 , so in this article I will mainly consider revenues and pricing. In the first year of sales, the data was good simply because it seems like the first time in this genre someone provided so much open data. The second year is much more interesting due to changes in the price category and the cost of the game.

Income

Right to the point: Cogmind earned $ 40,325 for the second year. If you look only at the numbers, then this is only two-thirds of what she earned a year earlier, but it is important to note that 25 thousand dollars from the income of the first year were received in the first month of alpha. This was the result of increased interest due to two years of open source development of pre-alpha. Given this, technically the second year in terms of income was slightly better : an increase of 8%, from 37 to 40 thousand.


Cogmind’s daily gross income for the second year with comments (first year chart is here ) .

The second year began with a slight reduction in price: from $ 30 to $ 24.99 (a new low price option was added without any benefits, while maintaining the old version). Naturally, this led to a short-term jump in sales, which gradually subsided over time. The growth in the number of players returned to normal after the game was purchased by all customers who were waiting for this discount. At this stage, the price change did not seem to have a lasting effect, but we will move on to the data about it later.

The next notable upturn coincides with the Roguelike Celebration , a terrific event that I gave a talk at , and after which news of Cogmind began to spread. The effect of this event lasted a good two weeks.

Then an obvious peak followed. Rock, Paper, Shotgun (RPS) followed Cogmind back with pre-alpha, and I did not expect them to post anything else after alpha. Therefore, the suddenly appeared article was a pleasant surprise for me.

From mid-November, buyers from the European Union were finally able to get Cogmind without VAT (VAT), which, in essence, meant losses to me, despite the fact that in the gaming industry VAT is usually included in the price. I realized that I was still losing money in the development process, but it took me a year and a half to mature to refuse 20% of the income in this region. After such changes, from November 15 to June 6, I received $ 5,085 from the EU countries, and $ 1,271 was spent on additional taxes (lower estimate). I could get all this money for development if Cogmind were released before 2015, when the EU introduced VAT on online purchases!

For the New Year, I made a GIF with fireworks from ASCII (the first version of what is shown at the very beginning of the post) and this attracted attention , which almost always leads to an increase in sales. I did n’t do the animationfor this, it was just a fun side project, checking the capabilities of the engine, but it's nice that such an additional effect arose.

In February, Valve tentatively announced the completion of the Greenlight program. Since 1) I was not sure if I would like to replace it, 2) I knew that a small campaign in Greenlight itself would attract some attention, and 3) on my website there were already all the necessary resources anyway, I decided put Cogmind to the vote. Only two days passed between making this decision and clicking on “Publish”. The game was approved almost immediately, but that was not the goal - notice a small peak on the chart. It’s nice to get some free promotion on Steam: people who were impatient could already buy the game on my site! Cogmind's withdrawal in Greenlight instantly earned me about $ 750.

In April, I again reduced the price to the current and final level. At this price, I always planned to sell Cogmind after the completion of the main game. In this sense, the price change happened a littleearlier than planned, because beta would have been released no earlier than the beginning of next month, and over the past six weeks, sales have begun to decline. But the income should not have fallen too low, because I needed it to output a more complete game on Steam. (Other reasons: in addition, it was a good excuse / opportunity to advertise a little game that did not overlap with the beta release. Also, I needed a larger buffer between the price change and Cogmind’s close debut on Steam.) In fact, I secretly lowered the price a week before the discount announcement, just to see how it will affect casual visitors. The impression was good, despite the fact that one week was too short, and there were many other factors, so there was no way to draw any conclusions. (Below I will describe the data in more detail,

The most recent small spike was the release of beta , a fairly large milestone. She let me announce that Cogmind, in essence, is ready in many ways. Many people were waiting for this, besides, last month I lowered the price. All these factors caused decent income in May.

Another factor that I found while studying daily income graphs was “zero days” (they are not so easy to notice). Every day during which there were no sales is a “zero day”, and too many of them, especially in a row, can demotivate. On the other hand, a constant series of days with at least a small number of sales is quite motivating, even if it is only one or two sales. I always track the number of sales (it’s easy to keep track of them because I get letters about each of the sales: I don’t read them, but I follow how the counter increases), and when I start to see zeros, I understand that I’m not talking enough about development, for example, in social networks. With long series of days with sales, I always work harder,especially when I wake up in the morning and see how many people read me in the night! Over the past two years, this has already become my morning ritual ...


The most important thing is the order counter.

During the second year I was more eager to have something to show at least once a week, and I believe that this affected a relatively small number of zero days: in the first year there were 9.8% (36) zero days, and in the second year 4.9% (18). In fact, from a technical point of view, the result is even better: note that a third of the zero days of the second year happened almost simultaneously, approximately in the summer of 2016, during my monthly vacation . No work - no pay.


Cogmind zero-income days in the second year.

If you look at the monthly income, then over the past year there was a clear positive trend. (Thanks to the beta release, earnings for May exceeded 3 thousand, but this is not shown on the graph because technically these data were transferred to the third year.)


Cogmind monthly gross income with comments.

I noted some of the most important effects described earlier, but I could not find a reasonable explanation for March. The graph shows the first year for comparison, but I did not comment on these months - all the information is in the data for the first year .


Cogmind monthly income for the second year by country.

There are not many surprises in the data on incomes in different countries. Compared to the first year income schedulethe only noticeable difference was that Germany overtook Australia, which is quite interesting: it was assumed that the exclusively English-language game Cogmind would mainly be sold in English-speaking countries. Of course, in Germany there are many English-speaking users, and the population is three times as many as in Australia, and (perhaps the secret to this) several German let’s players played Cogmind last year. (Plus the aforementioned change with VAT in November!)

This chart would be much more interesting if there were localization, but at least it gives an idea of ​​what an exclusively English-language game with a large volume of text can achieve on the international market. Localization is great thought for any game whose authors can afford it, but, unfortunately, it is simply impossible to implement it in Cogmind.

Pricing

But we still have some interesting data for analysis of the second year of Cogmind sales - now we have several categories and prices!

At the beginning of the year, I wrote a lot about the first price change for Cogmind in 2016, including considering some common and not quite familiar variables that influenced pricing decisions. Here I will add to my reasoning the final results of such changes and the most recent third phase.

Let me remind you that the base price of Cogmind was $ 30 for the first 12 months, $ 24.99 for the next 11 months, and then $ 19.88 for the last month of the second year (and until now). Above, in the context of daily income, I have already talked about some instant effects of such price changes, but there are other details in the detailed picture. One of them: I finally had enough data to research the conversion rate of Cogmind.


The lifetime conversion indicator of Cogmind (May 2015 ~ May 2017), based on buy.html visitors data.

I would not attach much importance to this graph, because there are many factors that influence how much that this data is not as significant as it seems. But the schedule is interesting, so I’ll tell you about it anyway.

First, note that this is exactly the purchase page ! Unlike many other indie developers, I did not post a link to the purchase page directly on the Cogmind homepage. In fact, I did not even place it at the top or in the center of the purchase page itself! I prefer 1) not to push to impulse purchases and 2) to manage the expectations of a potential user. Therefore, I intentionally push visitors to wander around the site to find a link to purchase the game. Yes, this is counterproductive in terms of marketing, but it doesn’t bother me. I make a good game and create a healthy community, and not try to cut money from random people from the Internet.

Therefore, these initial data definitely shift the conversion rate up, because everyone on this page is already more interested in buying than an ordinary buyer. (Note that industry standard figures are high.) For comparison, I did the same with /cogmind/index.html .


Cogmind Lifetime Conversion Rate (May 2015 ~ May 2017) based on visitors data index.html.

Part of the problem with the original statistics of clicks from the main page is that they are filled with referral spam, which cannot always be separated from real visits (visitors, like the ubiquitous referral spam, can leave without visiting other pages). That is why the purchase page gives better metrics, because it does not receive referral spam. We just need to take into account all the additional factors affecting the statistics of buy.html.

By the way, about these factors: information about Cogmind was mainly distributed through roguelike-related channels, so new visitors coming to the purchase page should already be roguelike lovers, which means that the likelihood of buying increases.

In addition, I prefer to rely on the data from the purchase page because many people, who have been following the development for a long time (sometimes for years), once make a purchase decision at a time convenient for them. The reason may be a price reduction, the right time, or another combination of personality factors. I believe that there is a fairly stable stream of people falling into this category. They just go to the purchase page and ... buy. Often this happens after receiving information about the game through one of the channels that I use, for example, Twitter , r / Cogmind , forums , development blog , TIGS , Bay 12 , Facebook , etc ...

Regarding the trend of increasing conversion rates: it is logical if we associate it with a fall in prices during this period. I think this trend is much less significant when breaking down the average number of daily visitors. I wonder where such numbers come from. For example, in the first year of release, the Cogmind game was demonstrated on many large sites, so visitors from these sites will most likely not be the target audience. The highest average was 71.8 visitors per day. In the second period, when there was less advertising on common channels, the number of visits decreased significantly: to 47.5 visitors per day. And in the last period with the lowest price, only 43.5 visitors per day were registered, but the conversion rate was the highest.

Of course, knowing this information does not refute the fact that the Cogmind website and my frequent and my frequent moments of communication with the community are quite effective in selling the game to interested users. On the other hand, they supported the likelihood of increasing conversion rates, in each subsequent period Cogmind was getting closer and closer to completion, and the history of constant releases was getting longer. This helped to convince everyone who found the game that this was an important and promising project.

One of the most interesting indicators for me was the percentage estimate of those who prefer to pay more than the minimum price, and watching how this percentage changes with the price changing.


Percentage of Cogmind buyers who prefer to pay more. (This data considers the two lowest price options for the selected period, because the higher options are more complex and are aimed at group purchases. The Prime tier price variant and each corresponding variant without advantages are more convenient to compare.)

After the first year, when the lowest price was 30 dollars (“Prime Tier”), I added a new Alpha Tier for $ 24.99, without any benefits. Over the next 11 months, buyers could choose whether they just want to buy the game or invest a little more so that their name appears in the credits. Surprisingly, 13.8% of individual buyers still chose Prime tier!

Part of the reason for this was the relatively small percentage difference in prices. Just 20% more for added value and to help your favorite project? Why not? Compare with the indicators when the price dropped to $ 19.88, that is, you had to pay 50% (!) More for Prime: the percentage of customers choosing this option was almost halved. Many of the longtime fans who want to pay more to support the project have already done so anyway. (It’s worth noting, however, that the data for the last period was collected only about a month, because I refused Prime tier when the beta was released. I don’t think that the difference would have become larger if I continued to sell this option. I got rid of it mainly because that development was moving into a new phase,

As a result, I am very pleased with my management of purchase options and prices, because otherwise Cogmind would not get this far in the development process before being published on Steam! If I reduced the price to $ 19.88 earlier, it would be a bad move (judging by what I see): in the long run, there is no significant increase in the total number of customers. For many people, everything in the range of 19-30 dollars is classified as too expensive. In addition, the game is not sold on Steam, where the convenience of buying could stimulate someone to exceed their price limit, or where a discount could be introduced as an additional incentive. (I’m still not trying to reach more consumers to the detriment of player income and still use the good old social networks, but that’s why I chose April-May for this,

However, I will not argue that if the price was 24.99, I would continue to receive a proportionately higher income. Probably, if not for the price reduction, conversion rates would have fallen. With every price drop during these two years, I saw how sales began to drop, and would continue this trend if I hadn’t taken anything. And even though this might not have happened, I also knew that there was already a hidden interest in lowering the price, so it was time to lower the threshold a bit to attract more new players.

Investments

So where did this money go? Well, I'm a lone developer with relatively low resource costs, so most of the money was naturally spent on my modest “paycheck” for creating and selling Cogmind.

As always, I laid out detailed data on the development time. They showed that, compared to 3,065 hours of pre-alpha development and 2,177 hours of the first year of alpha, the second year continued with a stable of 2,119 hours of work. These numbers are not very pleasant, because they show that for such an income is a large amount of work. In economic terms, it is definitely not worth it, but so far the stability of income has been quite fine with me.

Cogmind development time, July 2013 - April 2017 (excluding work for 7DRL jam in 2012).

There is always a code to write, as well as new features, so the trend of increasing the number of hours has certainly continued, and the promotion work in the community has finally begun to catch up with the rest of the work. The closer to completing the basics of the game, the more time I could spend on promotion. Over the past year, the amount of work on creating content has significantly increased, the time for which code writing used to eat.

Comparing only the main development categories of the first and second years, you can notice an obvious transition from code to content, while other areas remained more or less constant.


Cogmind Alpha breakdown by major categories of development time.

Beginning developers often ask themselves: “what percentage of the time should be devoted to project promotion?”, So let's look at a breakdown of development time into main categories.


Percentage of Cogmind development time by major areas, July 2013 - April 2017 (excluding work for 7DRL 2012).

That is, a total of 66.7% was spent on the game itself and 33.3% on community / marketing. This is really the bare minimum, but it suits me, because the community of fans of traditional roguelike is quite tightly connected and you can chat with players on just a few sites, which simplifies my work. Other experienced developers say literally: half or moretime and effort needs to be spent on making your game somehow noticeable (or, which, in my opinion, just as important, on communicating with an already formed base of players).

After completing the development of Cogmind, I can share even more detailed internal development statistics and accurate analysis. Here I just wanted to open the income context a little. (There is also a monthly breakdown of development

time in the latest annual review .) In addition to development time, there were many other expenses, but they make up less than 6% of the total budget (which does not have enough funds for anything else). I'm still thinking about the need for musicbut I don’t know yet how much money I can allocate for this part, which may turn out to be completely unnecessary. In addition, there are many options for solving this issue with different levels of costs.

Cogmind still does not cover the costs, but I hope it will be corrected after the release on Steam.

The next step

It was an interesting two-year marathon of alpha releases (see history ), and the possibility of extending development in early access until publication on Steam was very convenient for filling the initial vision with specifics. Some parts that I added, even whole maps, were not planned at all from the very beginning! And as a result of significant support, despite the high prices at the beginning, the player base was saved from growth and “scatter” (as mentioned in my pricing article ). At the same time, I received constant reviews about new features and mechanics.

Now that beta is released, and further development is almost entirely about optional development for the sake of interest, it's time to look for additional promotion channels and release Cogmind on Steam. Here indicators will be very important for the future of Grid Sage Games ... therefore, I hope they will give good results.