Comments on: Sales in the Brave New Steam World

By: jmcmorris

jmcmorris — Sat, 12 Jul 2014 00:21:33 +0000

Yeah, actually I’ve talked to a local indie dev who does kids workshops just like you described and he’s interested in using Crea in the future. It still has a ways to go before I’d say it is a good teaching tool – lots of complexity that could be ironed out and tutorials/documentation to be written.

By: Cody B

Cody B — Wed, 09 Jul 2014 20:59:45 +0000

That’s cool dude. I have been thinking about it and how kids love to play minecraft, etc. I’ve always felt python is an excellent language to teach programming, so your game could probably be used for a kids workshop teaching the basics by making some mods. That’s a really valuable niche it appears to fill quite beautifully (I didn’t buy it yet, but that’s my impression).

By: jmcmorris

jmcmorris — Fri, 04 Jul 2014 03:47:11 +0000

Glad you enjoyed the post. I know I always find these types of posts really interesting too which is why I wrote it. I’m not sure how good of a 2D prototyping platform Crea will be but it’ll at least be a fun way to play around with game development stuff in Python. There is a great deal of things we’d change if we could start over. Choosing another art style like what you suggest may have been one of them. But alas we can only move forward and redoing all of the artwork for the game would be completely unreasonable.

By: jmcmorris

jmcmorris — Fri, 04 Jul 2014 03:44:20 +0000

This blog post is not going to do anything for the sales. Maybe a few extra but nothing much. That’s ok though because that’s not the purpose of this post. It is true that one of our biggest challenges is distinguishing ourselves from the existing giants. Anyone who has played Crea can attest to it being very different from the other 2D sandbox games. We just need to figure out how to convey that in our media. Once we manage that we’ll hopefully be able to spread the word about Crea. The large majority of indie dev people still have no idea Crea exists.

By: jmcmorris

jmcmorris — Fri, 04 Jul 2014 03:33:29 +0000

Yeah, I completely understand that many people will not buy Early Access games. It is good that these people don’t because I think Early Access is for players who want to be involved in the development with bugs and all. For people who just want to play the game I’d much prefer they wait to buy and play until release. Crea is and will continue to be my fulltime job until it is released so we’ll make it to 1.0. It is just a matter of time.

By: Cody Burrow

Cody Burrow — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 22:41:50 +0000

That stuff said, I love reading posts like this, and love Python, so I wonder if your game will prove a flexible 2D game prototyping platform. I’m a bit sad you chose to go with a pixel art style rather than smooth, painted sprites like Bastion or Braid, given Kelley McMorris’ brilliant painting style.

By: Cody Burrow

Cody Burrow — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 22:34:51 +0000

And how much will this blog post boost sales? I feel like $15 is just too high for me – but especially in the face of continued Terraria expansions and Starbound on the way, I feel like the timing of your game is just a little tragic. It’s hard to tell from first glance what sets it apart from those titles.

What chronicdiscord says about early access is right, though. I’m surprised you get as many sales as you do. Myself and many others have purchased an early access title in the past and received shit, a total waste of $20, for a dead or dying, misadvertised project the developers had no intention of improving or completing, and have been incredibly leery of purchasing early access games going forward.

For what it’s worth I didn’t even know your game existed until a retweet (gambrinous by gausswerks).

By: chronicdiscord

chronicdiscord — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 10:57:09 +0000

The big problem is that many users are like me, they will never, ever, e-friggin-ver buy an early access title. All too often that stuff ends up buggy, half formed, and abandoned. So, good luck with 1.0.