We’re finally at the point where new games are coming out, and it’s great to start highlighting the best of them again. This week we only had one high scoring game, but this has also been a great week for releases so next Friday’s Best Of post should be pretty beefy I’m thinking. Hopefully.
Drop Wizard, $2.99 [Review] – I absolutely love Neutronized’s pixel art stylings. They added a lot of flair to their previous games Roar Rampage ($0.99) and Lost Yeti ($2.99), though both were darn good games in their own rights. Now they’ve returned with another pixelly game, and one that pays homage to single-screen arcade classics like Bubble Bobble with Drop Wizard ($2.99). It’s definitely a game that’s paying homage to the classics, and feels like it’d be a great fit in an arcade cabinet from 25 years ago or so. But Neutronized don’t just rest on their laurels with the retro homage, they actually make a game that’s remarkably clever in and of itself.
Additionally, we reviewed a few other games this week. As always, you can dig into all of our reviews by clicking here. Alternatively, you can hit up specific scores by using these links:
See? We can have nice things.
Well played Sir.
True, its not free but they made 5,8 millions with the game. Tell me why they can't afford a free dlc ?
R u serious because we pay for quality like clothes and cars
I guess I was being too generous in my comment above when I guessed that a lot of the complainers probably just didn't realize how expensive this kind of content is to produce.
I actually didn't realize the dev costs were that high for a game like this. Glad I bought a copy to support them
The cost of game development in general is much higher than most people realize.
Yes youre the lord of the universe, now try to walk in their shoes...
Its just a question why you dislike my comment, you know what I love the game and i don't care if its free or not I want to be clear and have answer to my question thank you :)
No problem, I will try to explain:
Simply you it seems to me that you catch a number 5.x money and you cant realize what it takes to go everyday to work, get best of yourself and to not know if it is all worth it. You could just take the "easy" way, work for the big company F2P bullshit game and dont care. In stead of you take risk and make efforts to do your best no matter of outcome. So - I am really happy that ustwo had profit therefore they have inspiration and drive to not give up and they will be confident and positive to make another great game. :) And even if not, to be honest I truly can not understand people who are complaining about few bucks - jesus, I spend triple at least at friday evening in bar, and it is sure its wasted money anyway LOL
Well, I can't speak for Jaro, but I think it's pretty obvious. The article speaks for itself: It. Costs. Money. To. Produce. Free. Content. And at $500K+ in dev costs, why should the devs throw that money into the pit of despair? Because you and I are nice people? This is still a business, devs still need to pay for overhead costs. How else will they pay for starting on their next kick-ass game? It was probably hard enough doing it the first time. Not every dev wants to beg for money via Kickstarter each time they get anew idea... So the idea that people who bought a game on iOS are automatically entitled to free new content (not updates to fix game issues) is patently ludicrous. Xbox and Playstation DLC usually isn't free. And those are $60 games!
Because they're greedy, horrible people.
It took them 55 weeks and nearly $900k to create before they even saw it released and knew they might have a chance of making a return. That means racking up loans or selling off equity or living off earnings until you see a return. So the first couple of million of that profit is gone before you even see it.
Now, if they want to do a similar game, they've got to spend the rest of the money and hope it does just as well, which given the randomness of the App Store, might not be the case.
That's the pure financial reason why they didn't do free dlc.
The other reason is simple. It took them 29 weeks with 8 people and half a million dollars to write the DLC content. Why on earth would you expect them to do that for free?
I see thanks :)
I think you've forgotten the rules of the Internet. Never back down, claim the intellectual and moral victory at all times and if necessary compare someone to Hitler.
(Playing Devil's advocate here)
Yes it is a bit entitled to expect the update for free, but I do wonder if the increased goodwill and resulting sales might have brought in more profit than charging for the expansion would have done.
Certainly I'd easily be put off buying a game knowing it only had an hour or less of gameplay and finding out that that playtime had been doubled would make a huge difference to my chances of buying the game.
There's always that to consider (and they probably did) but they had an award winning game so you can probably say they had all the goodwill they needed (the big spike in purchases when it went on sale for a short while proves that)
Expecting devs to release 6 months of work for free though is very much akin to expecting musicians, artists, journalists etc to work for 'exposure'. It doesn't pay their food and rent and doesn't usually benefit them in the long run.
The goodwill side of it is akin to "exposure" but the other side of it is making the original product a better value therefore more appealing deal. I think most people would be happier to pay $x for 2 hours of content than for 1 hour.
Consider this: according to the info graphic, 575,608 players upgraded to Forgotten Shores. The expansion is priced at $1.99. That is a revenue of $1,151,216. That's 19.6% of their total revenue from the game, which the info graphic states was $5,858,625. That's a large chunk of revenue that would be severely reduced or lost if the expansion was released for free. The base game is priced at $3.99, so in order for a free expansion to generate the same revenue as a paid expansion, about 288,526 people would have to buy the game after the expansion is released, keyword: BUY the game. From a previous article, 40% of the installs of the game on iOS were paid for, while 5% were paid for on Android platforms. So, if those statistics were to remain constant, the devs would need 14,426,300 new (keyword: NEW) installs across BOTH iOS AND Android in order to match the same financial performance as the paid expansion. In short, paid expansion vastly outperforms free expansion. Not only that, their highest-performing day brought in $145,530 which at a unit price of $3.99 brought in about 36,474 unit sales. If we also assume the 40% iOS 5% Android buy-to-install ratio, then that's a theoretical 1,823,685 installs on their most profitable day. They would need eight days of this peak install rate in order for a free expansion to match the revenue of a paid expansion. Since this is extremely unlikely due to the fact that their most productive days are fickle and hard to predict outside from certain milestones like launch day, it is far more likely that these installs will occur over the next year, trickling in over the months, with the aforementioned semi-random spikes. So yeah, paid expansion once again outperforms free expansion.
I think I see these arguments a lot when it comes to justifying sales (or freebies) in that the extra volume would make up for the lowered prices. But in general, this simply is rarely true.
Consider this:
They sold 2.4 million copies of the game and 575,000 copies of DLC and made $5.4 million. By my best estimate, that means they sold 150,000 copies @ $3.99 and 2.25 million copies @ $1.99 when it was on sale (admittedly my algebra is bad and my math could be way off). Add in the supposed 4.6 million people who pirated it and we're looking at the overwhelming majority of people having purchased this game well before the DLC was created. The fact is even with the game featuring prominently in Apple's holiday features, they likely didn't sell a ton of copies at their current $3.99 price since DLC was released.
So now that 7 million people have played it already, how many more NEW people would likely want to pay $3.99 to buy it?
Obviously just to cover the cost of producing the DLC, they'd need to sell another 150,000 copies of the game - literally all the $3.99 copies they've sold to date... except now with significantly less buzz and free Apple advertising. To make up for their actual revenue from DLC, you'd have to sell like 320,000 copies. That's super unlikely.
You're probably right that they would generate some additional sales but would it essentially suddenly double their sales? It's highly unlikely that there's a huge contingent of people who would consider a $3.99 1 hour game too short that consider a $3.99 2 hour game a fair deal.
By all signs, 2+ million were enticed to pay $1.99 for an hour already so the additional $1.99 for another hour would be a pretty good bet. And in fact, they did convert almost a quarter of their users to pay for another hour.
Negitoro, your math IS way off. They sold over 2.4 million copies at $3.99 and 575,000 copies of the expansion pack at 1.99.
For the sake of argument lets round these to $4 and $2 respectively.
2.4 million x $4 = $9.6 million
575,000 x $2 = $1.15 million
Total gross revenue IF all downloaded copies were paid = $10.75 million.
Since gross revenue was reported at $5.8 million, we can deduce that 5.8 out of 10.75 = 54% of downloaded copied were paid for. Meaning the other 46% were downloaded to secondary iDevices, which was confirmed in a prior article.
Also we can roughly estimate that about one out of four people paid for the expansion pack.
You misunderstood the math I was doing. I was breaking down the proportion of people who bought game at $3.99 vs those who bought it at $1.99 - this is not the game vs the expansion. The game briefly went on sale at $1.99 for WWDC's Apple Design Awards.
I'm fairly sure the numbers reported by ustwo as 'sold' are those obtained by legitimate means. The number in the article was 40% paid, 60% pirated.
Overall, my point was to show, as successful as Monument Valley is, how reluctant in general consumers are to pay $3.99 for a game and the amount of sales at that price needed to cover the cost of DLC.
I also commented that approximately 1/4 people who bought the game bought the expansion?
So if tomorrow, your boss said you already made thousands this last year, you should come in this next two weeks free of charge, you'd be OK with that?
What's wrong with paying someone for work if it's good work?
Can you afford to work for free?
Yes
Srsly, tho.
I bought the game, loved the game, bought the dlc, loved the dlc.
I have no qualms about paying for such a great game, and I don’t mind if they made 5 or 20 or 100 million off it.
You can get it free, just ask mommy for her credit card. If she says no just wait till your 13th birthday and ask for $10 in itunes giftcard.
I think your last point is a very important one. No, not the point about drowning totems. :) I think a lot of people who aren't software developers have no idea of how labor intensive and expensive it is to create a game like Monument Valley. I bet a lot of the people who complained that the DLC wasn't free aren't actually bad people, and wouldn't have complained if they'd realized it cost over half a million dollars to create. Maybe more developers should release this kind of info.
Edit: After reading falco's comment, maybe I'm being too generous...
yes, you are, but it is ok :)
Most people don't care.
Think about how many people pirate a movie to save paying $10 to see a movie that cost $200 million to make. Let's face it, the cost of production for anything is a meaningless for most consumers. Releasing info and educating the masses matters very little.
The issue is in getting that message to the masses in question. More often than not, info about production costs is only given a headline in specialty magazines, newspapers, and websites, which are frequented by people already familiar with the topic and would be more open to discussion about that topic. In general media, most of that info is buried under news relevant to as wide a user base as possible. If the production costs of movies became something more important than global conflicts, world politics or the local economy, then the masses would be better educated on the matter, rather than being limited to a hobbyist audience. So education can work; it's the delivery where the sticking point gets made.
While I like the sentiment of a more educated public being more appreciative of the efforts, I still believe this matters very little in our world. It's simply not how economics works.
The value of a good to a person (i.e. how much we're willing to spend on a good) is almost entirely how much it fits our needs and how much value or enjoyment we perceive it will give us. To a consumer, the cost of production is simply not a factor unless we feel the cost directly influences the amount of value we feel like we're getting out of it.
Let's use an example very close to our hearts - games. Core Gamers are a very well educated hobbyist group - we read and discuss gaming news and information openly and are generally knowledgeable about the industry to a certain point (more than the typical hobbyist in many other fields). However, as the cost of production of games (particularly AAA) has increased over the last 10-15 years, we refuse to pay more than $60 for a game. Worse, we demand games get bigger and better for the same $60 we were paying a decade ago. If we're not getting 60+ hours of cutting edge gameplay from it, it's a no-buy. Meanwhile, we are told about the costs involved, about the challenges, about the developers going under... and honestly, no one cares... at least not enough to vote with their wallets.
This is nothing new.
Even consider something as mainstream as say, airline tickets. We have to know the cost of flying is increasing - we use gas in our cars every day and we know how expensive fuel is. But none of us will accept a proportionate increase in ticket prices. Instead, we choose the lowest fares even at the expense of service. We complain about baggage fees and paying for meals, even though it's cheaper to fly now than pretty much anytime ever, fees included.
The cost of production is not our concern as consumers. It's kind of why voting with your wallet is rare despite whatever outrage we hear.
Let's face it, when we choose to watch a movie, we rarely choose one that's got a higher budget for the sake of the higher budget - it's what that higher budget gives us (more effects, more spectacle, better explosions, etc) that leads us to watch it.
Having an appreciation for the costs of game development is pretty much that. You appreciate how much money they spend. But it's not going to translate into a willingness to spend.
How these days a indie game cost that much to produce whats the point?
They have hundreds of employes working on this?
Good devs are paid anywhere from $70k to $100k+ per year. So just 8 devs and artists working on it for a year would account for much of the cost. Then figure in computers and office rent and utilities, and it's not hard to reach $852,000.
Ouch
Yeah, people often forget that ustwo isn't just a bunch of guys working in a basement. They're a real design firm with real employees making real salaries. Those costs add up FAST.
second that eli :)
I would not say that working in a basement isn't real but it's true that from the moment you rent an office and switch to a stable salary system (instead of royalties across your team), you're condemned to financial success otherwise the wall comes at you rather fast. We'd had vanished a long time ago on this setting.
At least there are not a global multi million pound company *cough *cough ( EA)
A multi million dollar company would likely be able to complete this game for less money. More projects to share common resources between.
Having worked for large video game companies, that's patently false. Also, bigger companies have more mouths to feed, meaning higher burn before you even start working. I once had a CFO tell me that he "doesn't get out of bed for less than $10 million," meaning Monument Valley would be considered a failure at that company-- a critical darling but otherwise a financial flop. That's how high the stakes are at huge publishers, and helps explain (but not condone) why broken games are pushed out the door to meet quarterly revenue goals.
I don't disagree with what you said if this project was the only project they're actively pursuing at that time.
But for example, at large game companies, you have central teams for things like HR, Legal, Marketing, IT and whatever else. They have teams that create internal tools, code and art assets rather than create everything from scratch. These shared resources benefit from being centralized and less dedicated resources need to go to a small project like Monument Valley. Heck, I'm sure they get bulk discounts on chairs for the new guys.
I disagree that Monument Valley would be considered a failure but they likely would never greenlight a project with such low market aspirations in the first place.
My point is basically if EA or Activision wanted to clone Monument Valley tomorrow, they could form a tiny little team in one of their studios and their total cost, even after accounting for a proportionate share of the common administrative costs, would be lower than a $900,000.
In the case of MV, I don't think the shared resources would've reduced the costs by very much.
For example: The engine: it runs on Unity and is not an internal tool, however Unity is popular and fairly inexpensive compared to developing an engine in house.
Art assets: all new, and not likely to be shared with any other game. If you meant that artists from another studio can be plucked to work on MV, then that may save on costs, but they are then unavailable for the other studio.
Legal,HR,etc: I believe that Ustwo already has support staff as part of the company, while MV was made as a studio under the parent company. So their costs aren't counted against the game budget.
So if EA tried to make MV from scratch (aasuming they didn't have MV to copy from) I really don't think they'd be saving very much.
I think this is generally what happens for all companies - most people simply have no idea how much running a company, hiring employees or keeping the lights running costs - game development or not.
Just the people alone is crazy : Programmers, artists, game designers, QA testers, sound engineers, HR, Marketing, Legal, producers, Accounting, IT, office managers, even the receptionists, janitors and whoever else we take for granted in our own offices... You don't need hundreds - but it's not just a couple of programmers sitting in a garage.
Even outside the basics of rent, electricity, internet, water there's a million other costs most people forget. The cost of licensing software, for example. The cost of buying and maintaining the office equipment and computers. The cost of buying dozens of iPads, iPhones and whatever devices to test and develop. The cost of providing benefits to the employees. The cost of updating and maintaining the website, Facebook, etc. Heck, even small things like keeping the coffee machines full of coffee or making business cards or buying Lightning cables that everyone keeps misplacing... all add up.
Always makes me laugh seeing people with $1000 mini computers in there pockets crying over a few bucks. I'm glad they have turned a profit hopefully they invest in another brilliant title to produce.
Well said good sir :3
second that.
Throwback to when a certain forum member said these devs were ignorant for not putting this game on Vita or 3DS and its their fault for not making money. Ahahah, good times.
Id give this news 5 of 5 stars
That piracy rate is pretty sad though. Glad Ustwo pulled ahead despite that.
Sorry for all these comments below, so I guess its good news for mobiles games right!
absolutely! :)
Still not as good as Anna Giving Birth.
81% of the profits came from iOS. I love you guys so much. On another note, I wonder why the DLC cost more than half as much as the main game, which is much longer and required the development of the game engine. Odd...
Because the cost is less important than the price that their customers are willing to pay.
SPOILERS
I wish I could pay them more for more content. Instead, I'll just enjoy it again and look forward to the hand-crafted totem I bought my wife to arrive. Look for it on Etsy.
How many totems were um, you know. In Forgotten Shores? If they ever make another game I wonder what they'll do to the poor guy.
The very best news I've read in a long time.
Couldn't be happier for the UsTwo.
Thankfully the genius of the game and the fabulous experience it gives has been rewarded.
Well done UsTwo.
How 'bout more levels for Tiny Thief??
And yet, as chronicled by Touch Arcade, Ustwo still had the gall to take to Twitter to whine about being ripped off by all us evil gamers.
Can you post a pointer to this article? I must have missed it. I do remember a little while back ustwo posted some factual information about what percentage of users had paid for the game. I don't remember their post including any whining though, just some interesting facts. Remember, they didn't have to post this positive financial info either, so the fact that they did confirms for me that they're not out to portray themselves as victims, they're just letting people in on some interesting facts about their business, positive and negative.
Good for them! I never finished the original, so my daughter finished it for me. I am beyond happy that we got a full - albeit short - game of such high quality for a reasonable price. Hopefully the devs can come up with something else that is just as good.... But different.
I have no desire to see a sequel.
That's very good news! I am really glad that they are making money off of a "traditional" business model of "pay for what you get". I think it just makes sense. There is nothing wrong with game developers also being a profitable business corporation if it means more quality games for the rest of us.
Thank god because true art should be successful.