I don’t think this was a case of timing though. The problem indie games have at the moment is being lost in the deluge of games that come out every day. That’s really not what happened here; the amount of coverage this game got was staggering. I heard long discussions about it on multiple podcasts. They got 32 metacritic reviews.
At that point the problem really has to be with the product. I think the appropriate comparison would be something like Gone Home, Her Story, or Event[0]. A indie game that’s light on mechanics but heavy on story. Those games had strong story hooks that make it really easy to explain why the game is interesting. They were also short enough to play through in one sitting. They never wear out their welcome, and every player can get to the story payoff.
Where the Water Tastes Like Wine? Apparently the hook was that you’d find stories, tell them to people, and then later hear the same stories back in a mutated form. That doesn’t sound like enough to carry a 10 hour game (which is what I’d thought this was based on the podcasts; but apparently it could be 20 hours!). It’s like it’s playing to the weaknesses of the genre, not the strengths.
The main bit of gameplay sounded pretty frustrating too. To get information from person X you need to tell them a scary story, person Y wants a love story, etc. But the mappings for exactly which label a story would have was apparently pretty inconsistent and bordering on nonsensical.
WTWTLW looked interesting, but I also understood it to be basically interactive fiction with a nice graphical front-end. That turns out to be not entirely true, but I still couldn’t quite justify the $20 price tag when I’ve already got a dozen free IF games that I want to play but haven’t gotten to.
I’m sure I’ll buy it at some point when it’s on sale. It does sound pretty cool.
I think the name killed it. Where the Water Tastes Like Wine sounds like the most twee pretentious stuff ever without knowing anything else about it. Add the elevator pitch and it’s DOA to many folks.
Good article (did he really make $0 or did he delete his sales numbers there?). I will say that three of his “what went right” are not wins by any stretch and if that’s what was focused on then I question the judgement during the dev process. I mean, honestly if in your post mortem you think that “Supporting SAG actors” , “the music” are your primary wins then you are in trouble.
I also suggest that stating “Art” was a big win, when it looks like this (his choice of art to showcase for the “art worked” bullet point, not mine)… is pretty far off the mark.
Finally, look its a game about the great depression and bleak folk tales. And it looks like that. What sales was anyone expecting? I mean, he could have asked anyone here and we would have said “maybe a couple of thousand?” Which within a margin of error would have been right. When I made a game about Hellenistic era religion I was fairly confident it wasn’t going to be a “break out hit” and my confidence in its low public appeal was well founded :) Some themes just cannot sustain big numbers until they have a breakout hit that makes the market for you. A depressing game about the depression made with (to my eye) ugly artwork was always unlikely to sell.
This is crazy. The name is evocative as hell and way more compelling than 96% of other game titles. (Which is a low bar, but still.) I mean, given the average gamer you could still be right that it’s a turn-off for them but, gosh that’s wrong-headed.
He, personally, has made $0 from it. The game has definitely sold (I bought it, for one), but it sounds like most of the people who contributed to it were paid lump sums, so the net revenue appears to be negative at the moment. He doesn’t say what the gross has been though.
This is also crazy. The art is incredible. Now, the 3D environments, not so much…
In my opinion he had a very successful game then, given his choice of theme, mechanics and art. I would have projected far fewer sales. His mistake was hiring expensive contractors,
I don’t know for sure how things work, but since he had a publisher I assume that maybe most of the money made with sales so far has gone to the publisher. Since he says one of the good things is they did a bunch of PR and marketing that the publisher might get first dibs on sales until a certain amount is reached.
Lesson learned, anyway. Spending $140k on expensive outside contractors for your one-man indie interactive fiction project is a bold strategy. Didn’t really pay off this time, it seems.
Yeah, no kidding. Looking at that game’s screens doesn’t scream $140K, at least to my humble eyes. Spending more than several thousand on any game of this type with its limited market is a gamble these days, IMO.
