Sell More Games

Three weeks after the launch I can say a little bit more about Runes of Avalon 2 performance, as well as Stoneloops! of Jurassica performance on the Big Fish Games top 100 chart. Both games for most of the time have been climbing up, but few days ago started to fall on the chart. That’s too bad when you prove one of your not optimistic theories with one of your games. We didn’t get into top 10, so it looks like our games will fade away. It’s just a question of time.

It may take a little bit longer for Stoneloops! because it still holds position #2 on marble poppers list, while ROA 2 moved from #2 on match-3 list to #10.

Interesting observations?

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Making the game is difficult, getting it on portals is even more difficult. Just look at two replies that my friends and I received from two different portals that we don’t want to name publicly.

While there is nothing technically wrong with the game (it is quite beautiful in fact), the core rotational mechanic makes the gameplay a bit unforgiving and stressful so we will be passing on distribution at this time.

The rotational piece mechanic to make matches is simple enough but as pieces are improperly placed the difficulty ramps up quickly and the game becomes much more difficult by orders of magnitude. This means that players can easily become frustrated though they are simply looking for a game that gives them a bit of relaxation during their normal work day.

That’s about Runes of Avalon 2. I always admire people that are able to say our audience is too stupid too play this game is such a nice way. I don’t blame them for it, but it makes me laugh.

The next one is even better, but sooo scarring

In fact we haven’t played your game at all and we know it could be of high quality. We just looked at how it performed on BigFish and decided that launching it is not worth the effort – especially if we can have plenty of better performing hidden object games to launch.

It’s about Stoneloops! of Jurassica. I read about it on Maciej’s blog.

You better contact all portals at once otherwise you’re risking getting same reply. You see, both games are great and would easily make it into top 10… but not today, when match-3 and marble-popper genres are not so popular anymore.

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This was very interesting week for me. I could watch closely release of two games that I cared about: Runes of Avalon 2 (my own game) and Stoneloops! of Jurassica (game made by friends from Codeminion). Both games are of similar high quality, as you probably already know. Well, the week has passed. We haven’t broken into the top10…

At first, I thought we will struggle to hold in the top 100 chart, but it wasn’t so bad. Actually, beside one day both games have been climbing up in the top 100 chart. Runes of Avalon 2 reached position #45 today, and Stoneloops! made it to #56. RoA 2 made it to the position #4 in match-3 games, Stoneloops is #2 marble-popper.

What was interesting to see is the #3 position that Stoneloops have held for almost a week and a correlation with the top 100 chart. So while for all this time it was #3 marble popper, it was ranked between #117 and #63 position in the top 100 chart. No change in it’s own category, but a shift of 54 spots in the top 100.

Here’s the snapshot of match-3 top games. I hope that Runes 2 will continue to move up on this rank.

Runes of Avalon 2 also launched at Reflexive (same day) . So far it have made it to position #36 for PC Games and #14 for Mac games (browse by top sellers).

May the sales be with us, little developers :)

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On April 15th 2008, Big Fish Games released Runes of Avalon 2 (RoA 2). This event led me to watch the top 100 chart even more closely than I did before and brought me to a few interesting conclusions. Now I am sure that whether you “get in the top 10 or die” is even less correlated with how high the production values of your game are or how polished it is. It is strongly correlated with… game genre.

Stoneloops! of Jurassica launched one day before Runes of Avalon 2. This game was developed by my friends at Codeminion so I watched both releases very closely.

Both Stoneloops! and RoA 2 have very high production values and are very polished. RoA 2 was put in the match-3 category, Stoneloops! in the marble poppers category.

The top 100 chart is updated daily. Stoneloops! debuted on 81st place. The next day RoA 2 debuted on 73rd place, but Stoneloops! fell out of the top 100 chart. After another day RoA dropped 8 spots to 81st place, but Stoneloops! made it back into the top 100 chart with a climb of 27 places (ranked at #90). One day later RoA 2 made it back to position #73 and Stoneloops! peaked to #81.

While I was happy that we stayed in top 100, I was wondering how high both games are ranked in assigned genres. To my surprise… they ranked quite highly. Stoneloops! is the #3 game amongst marble poppers. RoA 2 was #7 amongst match-3 games, then #10, and then #6. That was quite a shock to me. Games ranked at #3 in the marble poppers category can sell worse than games ranked at #7 or even #10 in the match-3 game category.

The top 3 marble games are (as of April 16):

The top 10 match-3 games (as of April 16):

While the #1 marble popper and #1 match-3 games are ranked on very similar positions, the #2 marble popper sells a lot worse than the second and third highest ranked match-3 games. Its potential is close to the fourth place match-3 game. The #3 marble popper sales are even worse… its sales potential is about equal to the #13 match-3 game. To make things look even worse, Stoneloops was the #3 marble popper on April 15, but was not even in the top 100 chart.

So lets check some other genres. The #1 brain-teaser game (IQ: Identity Quest) is ranked at just #51 on the top 100 (peak at #35), the second (JigSaw365) is at #65 (peak at #6), and #3 is… not on the top 100 chart.

Are you working on the best platformer game right now? I’ve got bad news for you. The #1 platformer game – Supercow – is not on the top 100 chart. #2 (Super Granny 4, which I have heard was a successful game) is not on this list either…

Hottest genres?
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