Selling NEO Scavenger via Bundle
NEO Scavenger was included in it's first bundle last week. The bundle is called Be Mine 5 (BM5), and is put together by Groupees.
The general idea is that customers can buy the following 3 games for any price they want, with a minimum of $1:
- NEO Scavenger
- King's Bounty: The Legend
- X-Blades
Spending at least $5 rewards the buyer with the following:
- Tropico 3
- Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD
- The Sixth Gun Vol 1 (pdf graphic novel)
- Sharknife: Stage First (pdf graphic novel)
- Wasteland Vol. 1: Cities in Dust (pdf graphic novel)
Every few days, they announce new goals, such as mp3 albums at 6500, or additional games at 8500 units sold.
Revenue is split among the developers/writers/musicians, and a 20% cut goes to a charity. In this case, it's MercyCorps.
Wait, Isn't NEO Scavenger Still in Beta?
Yes, it is. I told myself I'd wait on participating in bundles until later in the dev cycle. Perhaps once it was gold and sales had died down. In fact, I gently turned down the first invite from Groupees (as I did with other bundle providers).
Looking over their previous Be Mine and other bundles, they regularly net about 5k units sold. 10 on more successful runs. Some even quote dollar amounts, which was helpful. I estimated that an average run for them was about 5k units sold, at about $5 per unit.
Given the number of titles per bundle (~5 games, plus 3-8 books and albums), and that 20% goes to charity, I expected the revenue share to be pretty low. And running the numbers, it was probably on the order of a few thousand dollars.
Just to be clear, a few thousand dollars is nothing to shake a stick at. That pays rent, utilities, and groceries for a month or two. But I was afraid of what revenue I'd be giving up selling at pennies on the dollar. What if this saturates my market? Would I be selling myself out of future revenue for a short burst now?
On the other hand, that's potentially 5000 new people playing the game. Potentially 5000 new people talking about it. In exchange for the majority of revenue per copy, I get more copies sold, and more publicity. And as many indies have already figured out, raising awareness is at least half the battle.
"What the hell," I decided. I was pretty sure there were more than 5000 people out there who'd buy NEO Scavenger. In fact, I'd bet there could even be 50,000, judging by some voodoo napkin math when looking at Playtomic play stats, Steam Greenlight votes, sales, page hits, etc.
When Groupees got back to me, I decided to ask for more info. Their offer was about what I expected, though their sales expectations were much higher. (They originally had some lofty titles in negotiation, which probably skewed those estimates.) A few emails later, I decided to sign the contract.
So? Was It Worth It?
As is always the case with data at Game Dev Gone Rogue, things are still developing :)
The BM5 bundle launched last Thursday (Oct. 4th) at midnight. The offer runs for 2 weeks, so we're coming up on the end of week 1. As of this post, the bundle is selling better than my expectations, and more in-line with their other Be Mine bundles:
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| Figure 1: Not bad! |
Of course, units can sell for as little as $1. However, the highest donation so far was $425, and with a bonus offered at $5, I expect we'll see an average price of $4-5 per bundle.
Web traffic also increased. The BM5 promotion roughly doubled visitors over the past few days:
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| Figure 2: Also not bad! |
Given that the BM5 site doesn't directly link to bluebottlegames.com, that's pretty cool. It means a lot of people are bothering to learn more about NEO Scavenger than usual.
"Wait, BM5 doesn't link to your product page? What gives?"
True, this might seem a bit counter-intuitive. Though readers who have run promotions before won't be too surprised. The point is to sell bundles, and raise money for charity, first and foremost. So it doesn't make sense for them to lead viewers to another purchase option directly.
However, they were good enough to direct-link to my Greenlight page. And the effects were pretty staggering:
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| Fligure 3: Blowing the average out of the water. |
This is what game authors see on their Greenlight dashboard. It's a graph showing voting trends over the past week, compared to what an average top 100 game in Greenlight gets. The tiny green slivers on Wednesday and Thursday are what I'm used to seeing.
Following the BM5 launch, though, NEO Scavenger skyrocketed to four times the top 100 average, and is still holding at several multiples above what it used to be. What's more, NEO Scavenger ascended ranks from #71 to #62 in a matter of days. As a Greenlight promotion tool, BM5 was an unequivocal success.
So What About Sales?
What about the thing that scared me? Did the bundle cannibalize sales?
So far, that's a definite "no." In fact, I'm still watching the data to see if it might actually be the reverse. Sales at Desura appear almost unchanged so far. They're the usual spike-and-trough I've been seeing in days previous to BM5.
Sales through bluebottlegames.com, however, have either not changed or increased (depending on the weekend effect). These direct sales fluctuate a lot, even before BM5, so it's hard to pinpoint cause and effect. What I can say is that the days following BM5 have been better than average, but not-quite-media-event big.
Conclusion
Am I glad I did it? I am, actually. I won't know for some time whether there were any cannibalizing effects, and what the final tallies are in terms of sales and publicity. But it has definitely helped in the past few days, and might be just the kind of surge needed to level-up NEO Scavenger's success.
Plus, I was treated to some really entertaining mini-reviews of NEO Scavenger in unsuspecting players' hands:
MagSlug
It's like a Choose Your Own Adventure book combined with the early "explore the world" phase from a Civilization game combined with that one scene from They Live where Keith David and Rowdy Roddy Piper beat each other up in an alley.
or this pair:
Robert Miller
Who cares? As an indie bundle addict with hundreds of steam games I've never touched, I can say that Neo Scavenger is by far my favourite game in this bundle. It's tons of fun, even if it is still in Alpha and incredibly difficult.
nickelpat
Robert: I feel the same way. I bought it for Stranger's Wrath, but thought "Ah, what the hell, might as well check out this non-Steam piece of crap game." Yeah... still playing it.
Encouragement doesn't pay the bills, but it definitely feeds the soul :)
Every indie game and studio needs different things, so this isn't a one-size-fits-all case. But it's yet another valuable tool to consider when growing a brand. There's no doubt that bundles are a fast way to ratchet up awareness of your game. And it gets you a small boost in income.
Every indie game and studio needs different things, so this isn't a one-size-fits-all case. But it's yet another valuable tool to consider when growing a brand. There's no doubt that bundles are a fast way to ratchet up awareness of your game. And it gets you a small boost in income.
On the flip side, it's sales at a fraction of the revenue you're probably used to. Especially if you sell your game in the double-digit dollar range.
I'll probably shy away from doing more bundles in the near future, at least until NEO Scavenger gets further along. I have a feeling that even in successful cases like this one, I would see diminishing returns from overusing the bundle approach. I'd like to try out some other tools before coming back to bundles.
However, I'll definitely be looking into bundles for later in the NEO Scavenger sales cycle, as well as for future titles.
