作者：David Galindo

在花了2年半时间后，我最终完成了游戏的发行工作。

1年前我曾描写了《Cook，Serve，Delicious!》在Steam和手机平台上的发行以及自己的事业是如何走上正轨。这就像是一场漫长又艰难的战斗，但我最终还是成为了全职的开发者。在那之后又发生了许多事，我又花了一年时间去支持自己的游戏，并学到了许多东西。我将在此分解自己的财政状况并明确哪些方法是可行的而哪些是不可行的，同时我也将描述面向一个全新平台以及进行一次全新免费扩展的游戏发行过程，并分享自从2013年10月首次发行以来游戏的销售总量。

从2014年1月开始

在之前的文章中，我提到了将《CSD》移植到iPhone上。我同样也提到自己尝试着将《CSD》带到主机上但却不幸遭遇失败，并且我也谈及将在3月份发行新游戏，而那时候《CSD》所获得的最终数值是：在所有可行平台上共卖出52000多份，并且在Steam上发行的前三个月便赚取了13万美元的收益。

《CSD》的iPhone版本到底表现如何呢？

手机市场

其实我并不是非常期待《CSD》的iPhone版本。这是只适用于iPhone 5的Android版本的移植内容（虽然它也能够运行于iPhone 4S，但是在iPhone 4上却不行）。因为这样我不得不将游戏设置为“免费”，并添加了应用内部交易，从而让玩家能够在真正购买前先尝试游戏。

结果并不算太糟糕。从2014年1月发行到2015年1月以来游戏共卖出1810份，并在扣除给予苹果的分红后赚到了3760美元的收益。这是一款适合随身携带的小型且有趣的游戏版本，并且一开始我们就未花太多预算于这款游戏移植中（一些UI元素在较小的iPhone屏幕上显得过大，一些手势输入也比iPad版本更宽大）。

相比较之下iPad版本表现更好，即从2014年1月到2015年1月共创造了14900美元（扣除分红），即共卖出了4460份游戏。尽管与前年相比销量下降了将近30%，但是我也为了更加专注于台式机版本的开发而停止了手机版本的开发。

而在Android平台上，在2014年，扣除与谷歌的分红后的销售额是9605美元，即卖出了3297份游戏，这一成绩大大超过了我们的预期。

当发行iPhone版本后，我便在想这是否会是《CSD》所发行的最后一个平台。但不久之后我又发现了一个有趣的机遇。

下一代

2014年2月，我收到了来自YoYo Games（即支持《CSD》Game Maker Studio引擎的总公司）的一封邮件。对于我来说这是让YoYo Games将游戏移植到Playstation 4上并在3月的GDC公布这一消息的好机会。GM Studio似乎在加速对于主机的支持。这是非常让人兴奋的，因为我曾经遭遇过让第三方移植游戏的可怕经历，但是独立面向主机发行对于我来说又太过困难。

这里只存在一个小问题：《CSD》并未拥有控制器支持。它也从未计划拥有任何控制器支持。尽管在向第三方推广游戏的时候我曾经研究过一些选择，但我却不清楚Photoshop是否可行，我之前也从未为游戏控制器编写过代码。

因为不知道如何将基于键盘/平板电脑的游戏带到游戏控制器上，我需要一周的时间去搞清楚它们并落实行动。我是不可能错过这一机会的。同时，我并不确定自己是否能在有限时间内传达这样的内容。但如果我什么都不尝试的话便更加难以获得成功。

谢天谢地我勉强赶上了截止期限，并且完成了《CSD》的控制器创建（但是因为我没有时间为整款游戏执行控制器支持，所以菜单中的很多地方还是存在问题）。游戏将提供少量食物供玩家选择，并且会在为下一个玩家重置前让玩家先玩一天。这真的很有趣呢。

随着GDC的进行，我把握住机会成为了PlayStation和Xbox的一名开发者。但是我却仍然搞不清楚这是否真的是我想要为这款游戏所追求的。我需要看清控制器支持是否适合整款游戏。所以我便为基于Steam架构的《CSD》移植了控制器支持，并使用New Game +，Extreme Difficulty模式等等新功能创造了一个全新架构。

《CSD》的重新发行，第一部分

创造控制器支持并寻找扩展游戏的方式是重新发行游戏的有效试水方式—-从根本上来看这能在游戏面向Steam发行六个月后保持它的新鲜感。我同样也希望在夏季/冬季促销以外安排其它促销，即在4月14日开始的那一周给游戏打三折。

我始终认为开发者都应该看重自己游戏的价值—-不要给予太低的折扣，除非你参与了某种推广活动，不要太频繁地进行捆绑销售，真正去尊重你的游戏应有的价值。我便曾遭到Steam用户的指责，即对我给予太低折扣表示愤怒。

然而这一切是完全值得的。从4月14日到21日，《CSD》共卖出了超过2000份，并获得14400美元的销售总额。我真的非常开心，并迫不及待地迎接夏季促销的到来，希望那时候《CSD》能够像冬季促销那样再次发威。

让人遗憾的是，《CSD》并未被列入夏季促销名单中，而是在整个活动期间（游戏邦注：从6月19日到30日）都将保持六折的折扣，并因此卖出4000份游戏，获得了17000美元的销售总额。

在Steam的夏季促销活动后我们并没有时间休息，7月份的Humble Bundle马上开始了，这是我们需要抓住的一个新机会。

Humble Bundle

我和Humble Bundle进行了漫长的对话（从去年延伸到整个夏天），即讨论怎样的捆绑适合《CSD》。虽然在Humble中有一些员工“拥护”着我的游戏，但这却不足以推动它成为“主要”捆绑对象。我并不想将《CSD》与一些较低阶层的Humble Bundle，如手机包捆绑在一起，因为我一开始并不认为《CSD》会变成一款手机游戏：这只是一款适合手机平台的PC游戏。所以我便拒绝了所有其它捆绑网站的邀请。我知道自己所下的这一赌注会成功的。你只有一次机会出现在捆绑销售中，所以我希望它能是与众不同的。

最终我看到Humble Bundle的一个新机会—-成为Simulation 2捆绑包的一部分，从收益共享和曝光度看来这是一个较大的捆绑销售（游戏邦注：因为那时候大多数Humble Bundle拥有将近12款游戏，而这个捆绑包只有6个）。这便是我在等待的机会。最新的Humble Bundle Weekly是从7月18日开始，这整个捆绑包在下一周到来前便卖出了超过87000份，并获得427386.45美元的销售总额。

如果着眼于Humble Bundle每日的销售情况的话你一定会大吃一惊—-在捆绑销售结束后它们甚至还继续提升。Steam上朋友向别人推荐游戏的功能继续发挥着主要的推动力，特别是在捆绑销售结束后推动着玩家数量的增加。

Steam的管理，评论和标签

2014年Valve继续完善Steam的功能集，并在2月份引进了标签系统以及9月份呈现了全新的管理列表。开发者都表现出了他们对于这些系统的看法，对于我个人来说，我认为每日的收益提高便是新系统所带来的结果。有些开发者认为它只是将一些大游戏变得更大并导致一些小游戏更难得到关注，即使这并非这些系统的本意，但是它们也未能带给那些获得糟糕评论的游戏帮助。不过对于我来说，我始终都欢迎新方式去呈现《CSD》。我一直打算通过Steam去突显《CSD》的优惠券，但在2014年却一直未找到合适的机会，所以Steam的新功能或许能让我在2015年做到这点。

我最引以为傲的还是Steam的用户评论，《CSD》共获得超过1500条评论，其中包括1521条积极评论和66条消极评论。我不得不重视Steam用户的看法对于游戏销售的推动力量，特别是当这些评论被置于游戏Steam页面的前列（即当你浏览完游戏描述后就会看到它们）。

随着秋季假日的临近，我在思考着该如何做才能在冬季促销的到来以及大量新游戏出现前保持《CSD》的新鲜度。我知道《CSD》将会被无数新游戏所淹没，但我却在想着是否能够再一次重新发行《CSD》？当我着眼于Twitch和Youtube上《CSD》的数据流时发现，人们希望游戏能够拥有本地多人游戏支持内容，如此我便可以创造一个全新的游戏部分去专注于本地多人游戏和排行榜挑战。当着眼于代码时我发现自己可以无需花费太多时间去完成这一设置。在9月24日，我使用了更多细节去整理《CSD》的全新发行内容。

《Cook, Serve, Delicious: Battle Kitchen Edition》

我想要创造游戏到目前为止最大的扩展内容。与主游戏不同的是，《Battle Kitchen》扩展拥有所有全新功能。这里将出现每周挑战，攻击模式，多人游戏团队比赛，持久模式，电子竞技模式，排名赛，以及拥有超过50个角色的名单，并且其中有一半的角色是来自一些主要的独立游戏。在发行前我们完成了大多数的功能创造与优化。而在10月23日发表公告时，有些功能还停留在Photoshop中。然而我对此非常自信，我相信自己一定能够完成所有承诺的内容。

使用来自《Hotline Miami》，《Nuclear Throne》，《Rogue Legacy》等等游戏中的角色作为客串真的很有趣。这三款游戏是我所联系的前几个开发者的游戏。当他们说出“yes”的时候，我便有信心获得更多开发者的肯定回答了。我真的很高兴能够看到自己这么一款小游戏中出现如此庞大的客串角色名单，我甚至不敢相信这一事实。

当我拉拢了一些独立开发者后，我知道我将放弃创造付费DLC游戏的任何机会。这会是一次免费扩展，否则开发者们便会认为我使用他们的角色去推动全新DLC的销量而未给予他们任何收益分红。其实我并不介意创造免费的DLC；多人游戏扩展的理念是关于获得更多玩家，而创造一个强大的社区并赢得竞争的关键在于降低游戏的准入门槛。

10月到了，但是我们却发现游戏中的某些部分比其它部分更难进行编程。如此在10月份重新发行游戏的计划便落空了。我将在任何开发者都不会选择的时期重新发行游戏—-即在可能涌现大量AAA级游戏的假期。我在想如果推迟到1月份会不会更好。

在我做出决定前Valve联系了我并问我是否对Daily Deal的新扩展感兴趣。如此我的最初发行日期将变成11月。因为还有很多事情要做，所以我很担心能否赶上截止期限。我再一次想到2月份时所面临的类似的情景。即当YoYo Games向我索要游戏的PS4架构时。我觉得自己能够战胜这一挑战，更别说来自Valve的支持能够给游戏带来多大的帮助。所以我欣然接受了。

最终定下11月9日是游戏的扩展版本以及Steam Store首页折扣内容发布的日期。

因为有着之前的经历所带来的信心，我每天都只工作到晚上8点，并且未感到太多压力，而现在回想起来觉得那时候的自己还是要带着一些压力比较好。我知道如果情况变糟糕的话我应该熬夜把事情做好。所以我便买了一些含有高剂量咖啡因的药丸以及星巴克的浓咖啡以防万一。周三的时候我知道为了之后发行我不得不删除一些功能。周五的时候我不敢保证到底有多少功能能够成功完成。隔天我便进入了应急模式。离Steam Daily Deal还有24个小时。在半夜的时候我吃了药丸并喝了咖啡，以保证自己能够继续工作。

接下来便出现了我所遇到过的最可怕的游戏制作经历。凌晨3点的时候我已经非常疲惫了，这时候的我已经连续编程20多个小时。但是我却不能停下来；为了执行《Battle Kitchen》我拆分了整款游戏，而现在我不得不将其重新组装起来。虽然咖啡因让我能够保持清醒，但是我的脑子却不能再有效运转了。这是一种非常奇怪的体验；我感觉自己就像行尸走肉一样。那时候我又吃了药丸并喝了咖啡；5点的时候我的工作速度几乎接近停滞状态了。在某一时刻我甚至不能进行简单的调用将文本置于屏幕上，因为我忘记如何操作了。虽然坐在屏幕前，但是我却不能敲打键盘，时间一分一秒地过去了，截止期限步步逼近，我简直就要奔溃了。那时候的我决定捂着枕头大叫一声并去冲个冷水澡以恢复精神。

周日中午12点到了。《CSD:Battle Kitchen 》以五折的价格出现在了Steam Store的首页。而游戏仍然处于准备状态。

我仍然想为所有玩家完成补丁修复。但是随着发行时间的临近，我意识到自己没有足够的时间去测试大量的模式。2点的时候我上传了游戏并瘫倒在床上，虽然是在截止期限后几个小时发行（并且也不完整），但我还是成功完成任务了。

20分钟后，我的手机响起。我快速瞥了一眼Steam上《CSD》的论坛。游戏完全崩塌了。问题一个接一个跳出来。模式不能运行，角色也打不开。Endurance Challenge在完成后就坏掉了，这并不是一个简单的漏洞，特别是对于所有只是想要玩游戏的玩家来说。排行榜也出现了颠倒以至于最低分数出现在了第一名的位置。更糟糕的是，问题接二连三地涌现在标准的单人玩家模式中，这也是我在一开始想要避免的情况（如不能在主菜单屏幕上阅读邮件）。

这种情况下我根本不可能去睡觉，于是我又回到了电脑前，尝试着找出问题的根源。在花了一个小时寻找漏洞后，我意识到本来可以避免这种情况的。因为脑子一片空白我甚至未尝试着去分析代码。沮丧过后，我在论坛上解释了自己将近30个小时没睡觉，并表示会在隔天修复问题。幸亏收到了许多支持的信息也让我因此镇静下来；我也非常庆幸自己在那天未发行完整的游戏。

在周日过去之前有人在YouTube上传了他们玩《Battle Kitchen》的经历。尽管他们感受到了游戏乐趣，但也遇到了一些漏洞，并且在玩了Endurance模式后游戏如预期那样崩塌了。评论者对此非常惊讶并说道：“嘿，这是一个测试版本，所以出现这些问题也是不可避免的。”

那时候我从他所说的话中得到了很大的安慰。扩展版本只是游戏的一部分，很多人在考虑到其测试属性后并未感到过多困扰。这样的支持给了我很大的帮助。在晚上10点的时候我终于能够睡觉了，这是在花了40多个小时编写代码之后。

当我在隔天下午1点醒来时，我觉得自己又恢复体力了。我坐到了电脑前并开始分析代码，并惊讶地发现情况有多糟糕。这就像是一个醉汉所编写的代码，满满的都是愚蠢的错误和漏洞。在花了4天的时间我终于使游戏恢复到了稳定的状态，并且又花了4天时间将真正的扩展版本呈现在了所有人面前。

Daily Deal和Steam冬季促销

48小时的五折Daily Deal带来了超过4400份游戏销量并创造了21000美元的销售总额。从销售时间来看这是一次巨大的成功，11月份的促销即将到来，在接下来几天将会出现许多新游戏。我不知道在Daily Deal中怎样的成绩才算突出，但在回首之前的一些数据时，我知道这样的表现已经很不错了。

11月的Steam促销以及冬季促销并未选中《CSD》，可能是因为离Daily Deal日期太紧或者他们觉得还有其它游戏更适合这一活动。不管怎样在这两次促销中我的游戏共卖出了1万份并赚到了将近5万美元的收益。我认为《Battle Kitchen》的扩展版本发挥了很大的功效，即确保游戏对于玩家来说具有新鲜感和乐趣，如此他们便会愿意向别人推荐游戏。

《Battle Kitchen》，第二部分

我还需要发行一些额外的内容以完成《Battle Kitchen》扩展，这一扩展将在本周五带着全新的Mystery Box模式进行测试。我认为从很大程度看来《Battle Kitchen》是成功的。Weekly挑战是有趣的，并且每周能够吸引大概800名玩家进行尝试。从游戏玩法角度来看Endurance模式也取得了巨大的成功，并且它也推动着全新的eSports Endurance模式在2014年12月出现在游戏上。此外，角色选择页面也如我期待的那样完美。

而未能有效运行的竟然是本地多人游戏理念。组合赛也不如我所希望的那样有趣。这一模式的前提是由2至4名玩家参与挑战。每隔15秒控制便会从玩家手中脱离，而下一名玩家便会有5秒钟时间去观察自己身处哪里。也就是玩家1可以出现在意面点单中间段，而在他的时间结束后玩家2将完成点单。这虽然看起来很有趣，但是真正去玩的话却不是这样。对于一个之前从未玩过《CSD》并且突然进入联合赛的玩家来说，他们一定会感到莫名其妙的。这是将玩家带进游戏的一种糟糕方式，这也是我所犯的一大错误。

有趣的是，《Battle Kitchen》的单人玩家内容获得了许多关注，而多人游戏模式却恰恰相反。说实话，我并不认为玩家对于《Battle Kitchen》中的比赛具有巨大的需求，我也不认为VS模式能够创造出巨大的轰动，这也是我为何会添加全新模式的原因。不管怎样，《CSD》的开发都结束了，我的注意力将转向其它两款还未公布的游戏，其中一款会在今年问世。

《CSD》的未来

基于《CSD》的编码方式，人们难免会猜想我将如何完成主机移植。其实我更想彻底分解代码而重新编写，但那时候，我认为自己不能再重造游戏了，我应该创造一些新内容。我总是觉得喜欢《CSD》的玩家便是喜欢游戏本身；我可以为其添加一些新鲜内容，并且光是想象续集就会让人很兴奋。虽然话是这么说，但是现在关于主机支持或续集，我并没有可公开的内容，而在今年年底，人们的关注焦点应该会转向我所创造的下一款游戏了。

本文并不是我的这系列文章的终结，更恰当地说应该是关于《CSD》的收益或者在一些新平台和新功能的试验内容的终结。当然了，我关于将一些全新内容带到游戏中去保持游戏的新鲜感的计划也结束了。从现在开始我需要专注于自己的新游戏并为了尽早与玩家见面而努力去优化它们；也许4月我们就能再见面了，不过就像之前那样，最终发行日期都是不好保证的。

总值

就是在2年半以前，我在《Cook，Serve，Delicious!》发行后的第一周曾经质疑过自己创造这款游戏的决定。而今天，《CSD》在手机，Steam，Distro网站以及Humble Bundle等平台上共卖出10万份游戏并获得了超过61万美元的销售总额。其中Steam的收益便占据了其中的78%。

这是一个让人惊讶的数字。我简直不敢相信。这一收入完全可以支持我之后的两款游戏，并帮助我继续追求成为顶级独立开发者的梦想。凭借《CSD》我们着实往前迈了一大步，但我觉得这还不是最顶峰，相信我之后的两款游戏能够进一步延续这样的成绩。我要感谢你们所有人的支持，感谢所有YouTube和Twitch上喜欢游戏的人，感谢所有给予积极评论的社区成员，感谢那些购买了游戏并喜欢游戏的玩家。当然了，我还要感谢Ryan Davis，他是推动这一成果的大功臣之一。我永远都不会忘记这一切。

我不知道这是否只是一个开始，或者这已经是成功的高峰。我不知道自己之后的两款游戏会怎样，因为从风格上看来它们与《CSD》截然不同。我不知道主机开发会如何发展。我不知道《CSD》还能为我带来多长时间的收入。我唯一知道的是，我们将一起寻找这些问题的答案。

未来是不确定的，但是我却因此更加兴奋。

原文发布于2015年1月29日，所涉事件和数据均以当时为准。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转发，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

How much do indie PC devs make, anyways? (Part 6)

by David Galindo on 01/29/15

Two and a half years later, I’ve finally finished launching my game.

Just one year ago I had discussed launching my game, “Cook, Serve, Delicious!” onto Steam and mobile platforms, and how my career was finally starting to take shape. It had been a long, hard battle, but I was finally able to support myself in being a dev full time. Since then so many things have happened that I found myself once again devoting a whole year into supporting my game, learning all kinds of things along the way. Continuing my previous articles (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5, man how the time flies by!) I’ll break down my finances and see what worked, what didn’t work, and the process of launching not only on a new platform but a brand new free expansion, as well as the grand total amount of sales since first launching in October 2013.

Picking Up from January 2014

In my previous article I wrapped up things by mentioning my new CSD port to iPhone, which was launching that day. I also spoke of my somewhat depressing venture into trying to get CSD ported to consoles with no luck, and talked about announcing my next game in March and the final numbers of CSD up to that point: over 52,000 copies sold across all available platforms, and over $130,000 on Steam alone for the first three months.

While the March reveal didn’t happen for my next game (and has yet to happen as of this article), I’d like to bring the numbers up to speed. How did the iPhone version of CSD do?

The ol’ Mobile Market

I didn’t have a whole lot of expectations of the iPhone version of CSD. It was a port of the Android version made to work only on iPhone 5 (and while it would work on iPhone 4S it would completely crash on iPhone 4). Because of this I had to make the game “free” and have it unlocked via an in-app transaction so that everyone could try the game before buying.

The results aren’t too shabby. Around 1,810 copies were sold from launch in January 2014 thru January 2015, bringing a total of ~$3,760 after revenue share with Apple. It’s a fun little version of the game that’s cool to have in your pocket, and there wasn’t much overhead spent on the port to begin with (the main things being some UI elements made larger to read on the small iPhone screen and some gesture inputs made more “forgiving” than the iPad version.)

The iPad version did considerably better, with January 2014 thru January 2015 bringing in an additional ~$14,900 in profit after revenue share, which adds another ~4,460 units sold. While down from the previous year by nearly 30%, I’ve more or less halted major development on the mobile versions in order to focus more on the desktop version which was far and away the clear leader in sales.

Android managed to do fairly well with $9,605 in sales for 2014 after revenue share with Google (3,297 copies sold), way more than expected.

Once the iPhone version was released, I wondered if that would be the last platform CSD would debut on. It wasn’t too much longer that I found myself with an intriguing opportunity.

Cooking in the Next Generation

I received an email from YoYo Games, head of the Game Maker Studio engine that CSD is powered by, in Feb. 2014. It was an opportunity to have YoYo games port my game over to the Playstation 4 as part of their huge reveal at GDC in March. It looked like GM Studio was gearing up for console support across the board. It was hugely exciting, given that I already had a dire experience trying to get third parties to port the game and the idea that sometime soon I’d be able to self-publish on consoles was absolutely massive for me.

There was just one small problem: CSD didn’t have controller support. It was never planned to have any kind of controller support at all. While I had explored some options when shopping the game around to third parties it was mainly Photoshop mockups that I had no idea whether or not would work, nor had I ever coded for gamepads before.

So, with no clue on how to translate a keyboard/tablet centric game onto a gamepad, and exactly one week to figure it out and implement it into the game, I accepted. There was no way I could pass up that opportunity. At the same time, I had no idea if I could even deliver something like that within the time frame that I had. But dang if I wasn’t going to at least try (you can read some of the more technical details on how I mapped the game onto controllers here).

Thankfully I had barely made the deadline, with a fully controllable build of CSD via gamepad (but many areas of the menu locked off as I just didn’t have time to implement controller support for the whole game). There were a small selection of foods to choose from and the game would allow the player to play for a day before resetting buzz for the next player. It was quite a bit of fun to make.

Team YoYo Games at GDC

With GDC in full swing I took the opportunity to register as a developer for both Playstation and Xbox. Still, I didn’t know whether or not that was something I wanted to pursue with this game. I needed to see how controller support would work for the entire game. So I got busy porting controller support for the Steam build of CSD, and organizing a brand new build with all kinds of new features such as New Game +, Extreme Difficulty mode, and lots more.

The CSD Relaunch, Part 1

Building controller support and looking into ways of expanding the game was a very exciting way to test the waters on a relaunch of sorts- basically keeping CSD fresh and relevant six months after the release on Steam. I also wanted to do my first sale outside of major summer/winter sales, opting for a 30% discount for the week of April 14th.

I’ve always championed devs to value their game- don’t do heavy discounts unless you’re in a major promotional sale, don’t bundle heavily, and respect what your game should be worth. I did get some criticism from a few Steam users angry at the low discount (in fact only CSD and 8 other games out of 42 had discounts smaller than 50% off that week).

Still, it was completely worth it. For the week of April 14th thru the 21st CSD sold over 2,000 copies, netting $14,400 in gross sales. I was blown away, and couldn’t wait for the upcoming Summer Sale to begin, where I hoped that CSD would be once again featured as some kind of daily deal just like the Winter Sale.

Sadly CSD wasn’t chosen for the Summer Sale, instead staying at a 60% discount thru the entire event (June 19th thru the 30th) and netting nearly 4,000 copies sold at a ~$17,000 gross revenue income.

For lots more details on both of these sales, check out my Tumblr blog post from that July breaking down the figures a bit more and comparing the two.

After the Steam Summer Sale there wasn’t much time to rest…the Humble Bundle in July was fast approaching and a new opportunity was about to unfold.

Humble Bundled

Humble Bundle and I have had a long stretch of conversations as to which bundle CSD was right for, stemming from the previous year through the summer. There were a few employees “championing” the game at Humble but it couldn’t get enough force behind it to propel the game into the “major” bundles. I wasn’t that keen on bundling CSD into a smaller tier Humble Bundle like the Mobile bundle as I never found CSD to be a mobile game first: it was a PC game that was well suited for mobile. So I declined, as well as turning down all other bundle sites in the process. I knew that there had to be some time when my gamble would pay off. You only get one chance to debut in a bundle, and I wanted it to be special. As the months went by, I wondered if that would ever actually happen.

Finally, a new chance at a Humble Bundle was offered- it would be part of the Simulation 2 bundle, not a major Humble Bundle tier but a big one in terms of better revenue share and exposure (as most Humble Bundles have nearly a dozen games by the time it’s finished, whereas this bundle would only have six). It was the one chance I was waiting for. And so, the newest Humble Bundle Weekly went up on July 18th, and by the next week had sold over 87,000 copies with $427,386.45 in gross revenue for the entire bundle. For more info check out my blog post on Tumblr during the week of Humblin’ Bundlin’ here.

It was surprising to see the effect of the Humble Bundle on daily sales…they increased quite a bit after the bundle was over, and continued to be healthy afterwards. The Steam effect of friends recommending the game to others continued to be a major drive, especially with the large increase in players after the bundle.

Steam Curation, Reviews, and Tags

Valve’s additions to Steam’s featureset continued in 2014, with the Tag system introduced in Feb. and the new Curation lists debuting in September. Devs have posted their pros and cons with the systems, and for me personally I always saw increases in daily revenue as a result of the new systems. Some devs argued it only made the larger games bigger and the smaller games increasingly harder to find despite the opposite effects intended with these systems, nor do they help games that may not have performed well on the critical reviews front by critics and users alike, but for me I always welcomed CSD to be found in a new unique way. I always had intended to feature CSD discount coupons via Steam but never really found the right time to do so in 2014, so there’s still unique Steam opportunities to try out in 2015, not to mention whatever else Valve comes up with in managing the ever growing catalog of games on the platform.

What I was most proud of were the Steam user reviews, which number over 1,500 and brought the game’s rating to “Overwhelmingly Positive” with 1,521 good reviews and only 66 bad reviews. I’d have to imagine that the critical reception by Steam users drives sales significantly, especially with the new up front placement of the game’s reception on the Steam page (literally the second thing you read about the game after its description).

As the fall holiday drew near I wondered if there was anything else I could do to keep CSD relevant and fresh as the winter sales and major games started to line up. I knew CSD would be buried with all the new games coming out, but I wondered…how could I re-launch CSD once again? As I was watching a few CSD streams on Twitch and Youtube people wishing the game had some sort of local multiplayer support it was pretty clear…create an entirely new segment of the game focusing squarely on local multiplayer and leaderboard challenges. A quick glance of the code proved that something like this could be done in a short amount of time. And so on September 24th, I teased a new release of CSD with more details to come.

Cook, Serve, Delicious: Battle Kitchen Edition

I wanted to create the biggest expansion the game had received yet. Separated from the main campaign game, the Battle Kitchen expansion was announced as having all kinds of new features. There would be weekly challenges, strike modes, multiplayer tag teams matches, endurance modes, e-Sports modes, tournaments, and a roster of over 50 characters, half of which were characters from major indie games. Most of these features were coded and getting polished for release. Others existed in Photoshop only when announced on October 23rd. Still, I felt confident I would be able to meet all the additions that I had announced. In fact I had no doubts whatsoever.

(larger image)

It was such a joy to bring in cameo characters from games like Hotline Miami, Nuclear Throne, Rogue Legacy and tons more. Those three games were among the first devs I asked when putting together a “guest roster” for the character select screen (with the new characters used to differentiate players for both tag team matches and the leaderboards). Once they said yes, I was able to get a ton more devs on board. I was thrilled seeing such a huge guest roster in my small game…I just couldn’t believe it.

When I brought the indie devs on board, I knew I was forgoing any chance I had in making this premium DLC. This had to be a free expansion, otherwise devs could argue (and they’d have a legitimate argument) that I was using their characters to push sales of the new DLC without cutting them into any kind of revenue share. I didn’t really mind making it free DLC; the idea of a multiplayer expansion already depends on getting as many players in as possible, and lowering that bar to entry at all costs was vital in creating a healthy community of competition for the leaderboards.

My initial October date came and went as certain parts of the game proved harder to code than others. The hope that re-launching the game during October before the extremely dense November month of releases was gone. I was going to re-launch during a time that I felt was suicide for any indie dev trying to get their game noticed…the holiday season where nothing escapes the vortex of huge AAA releases. I wondered if a delay to the more barren January would be a better move.

Before I could make a decision, Valve contacted me and asked if I’d be interested in a Daily Deal position featuring the new expansion. It would move my initial release date in November a week up. There were still so many things to do, I was worried I wouldn’t make the deadline. Then again I recalled the similar situation in Feb. when YoYo Games asked me for a PS4 build of the game. I felt up to the challenge, not to mention that any help from Valve in getting exposure for November was worth going for. I readily accepted.

November 9th was the target date for both the release of the expansion and the discount with front page Steam Store exposure.

Oh No.

Confident from my last deadline I met back in Feb, I worked each day until about 8pm, not really feeling the huge amount of pressure that, looking back, I should have definitely felt by then. I knew that if worse came to worse I could pull an all nighter and stay up as long as I had to in making the game before the release on Sunday. I bought some high dosage caffeine pills and some Starbucks pure espresso shots just in case. By Weds. I knew I was going to have to cut some of the features out for a later release. By Friday, I wasn’t sure where I’d be in terms of how many features would make it. The next day, I was in pure panic mode. I had 24 hours to get it done before the Steam Daily Deal. By midnight I had taken the pills, chugged an espresso drink and got to work.

What followed was one of the most miserable experiences of game making I have ever, ever faced. By 3am I was completely spent, having coded for nearly 20 straight hours. There was absolutely no way I could stop; the entire game was taken apart to implement Battle Kitchen and, at the bare minimum, I had to put it back together for the game to even run. The extreme dose of caffeine kept me completely awake but my mind was pretty much shut down. It was the strangest experience I’ve ever felt; I was quite literally a zombie. I took additional pills and drinks at that time; by 5am my work had slowed to a crawl. At one point I couldn’t even do simple calls to place text on a screen, as I couldn’t remember how. I sat there in front of the screen, unable to type, the minutes ticking away, the deadline looming over me, and I nearly broke down. I had to scream in my pillow and take a cold shower just to squeeze any small amount of juice I had left.

The 12pm Sunday deadline hit. CSD: Battle Kitchen appeared on the Steam Store front page with the 50% off discount. The game was still hours from being ready.

I still had every intention of making this a patch for all players. But as I neared release, realizing I didn’t have any time to even test a majority of modes implemented aside from a quick run through, I made the last minute call to release the expansion as a beta program for those wanting to opt into the branch. I uploaded the build and collapsed into bed at 2pm, a few hours past deadline and not as a full release, but still, I had made it.

Twenty minutes later, my phone was buzzing off the hook. A quick glance showed a horrifying glimpse into the Steam CSD forums. The game was completely broken. There were glitches everywhere. Modes didn’t work. Characters didn’t unlock. One mode, the Endurance Challenge, would crash upon finishing…not as a simple bug under certain circumstances, but for all players simply trying to play it. Leaderboards were reversed so that the lowest scores were at the #1 position. Even worse, problems had seeped into the standard single player mode, which was exactly what I was trying to avoid in the first place (such as not even being able to read emails on the main menu screen).

There was no way I could sleep, and so I was back on my computer, trying to figure out the complete mess that had happened. An hour into bug-hunting, I knew this just wasn’t going to happen. I was in no shape to even try to analyze code, as my head was pounding and I couldn’t even think straight. Severely depressed, I posted on the forums that I had gone without sleep for nearly 30 hours now and couldn’t get to the patch until the next day. The messages of support were extremely beneficial in calming me down; I was in pieces and was so damn thankful that I didn’t attempt to release the game as a full patch that day.

By the end of Sunday someone had uploaded a YouTube vid of their Battle Kitchen experiences (BaerTaffy). While they had fun they encountered several bugs which had me wincing the entire time, and closed with the expected crash to desktop after playing Endurance mode. The commentator was surprised, then said something along the lines of, “well hey, it’s a beta so these things are to be expected.”

I found such deep comfort in what he said at that time. While the expansion was game breaking in many ways, a lot of people didn’t find it to be extremely troubling given the beta nature. The support given to me by others greatly helped as well. By 10pm I was able to sleep soundly, after a 40+ hour marathon of coding with no sleep, and didn’t wake up till 1pm the next day.

When I woke up, I felt rejuvenated. It was almost like I had a debilitating sickness the previous day, only to feel 100% awesome the next. I pulled up my chair and started analyzing code, and it shocked me to how much in poor shape it was. It was almost like a drunk person was coding for me the previous night, with so many stupid mistakes and missteps that I wanted to punch myself in the face. Four days later I was able to patch the game up to stable condition, and another four days after that had the expansion release out of beta for everyone, dubbed “part 1” of the two part expansion plan (which I initially didn’t plan to split apart to begin with, but more on that in a sec.)

The Daily Deal and Steam Winter Sale

The 48 hour 50% off Daily Deal brought in over 4,400+ copies sold, making $21,000 in gross sales. It was a huge success given the window of time to sell, the upcoming November Sale coming up, and the massive releases coming in just the next few days. I didn’t know what to expect given the huge amount of sales that some titles can pull off during Daily Deals, but looking back at the number in retrospect, it worked out quite well I think.

The November Steam Sale and the Winter sale didn’t feature CSD in any promotional deals, perhaps due to the close proximity of the Daily Deal, or perhaps because they felt there were other titles more suited for those spots. In any event, combined revenue of both sales ended up with over 10,000 copies sold and nearly $50,000 in gross revenue. I think the Battle Kitchen expansion helped play a large part in that role, keeping things new and interesting for players that can help both curate or even just recommend the game to others.

Battle Kitchen, Part 2

There’s still additional content I need to release to complete the “Battle Kitchen” expansion, which goes into beta this Friday with an all new “Mystery Box Mode.” I think that a large part of Battle Kitchen was a success. Weekly challenges are fun to make and have an average of about 800 players per week trying it (is that a good number? Honestly, I don’t know, but it’s good enough for me.) The Endurance mode is a huge success from a gameplay standpoint, inspiring a new “eSports Endurance” mode being added in December 2014. The character select screen is as epic as I was hoping for.

What didn’t work was surprisingly the biggest addition to the expansion: the idea of local multiplayer. The tag team events aren’t nearly as fun and chaotic as I had hoped. The premise of that mode was that two to four players would take on a challenge. Every 15 seconds, controls are severed from the player and the next player in line is given 5 seconds to see where they are before controls are handed off to them. So player 1 could be in the middle of a pasta order, then their time is up and it’s up to player 2 to finish the order. It’s (theoretically) fun to watch but not a whole lot of fun to play. As one person said during a livestream who had never played CSD before and was thrown into a tag-team co-op match, “this…sucks!” It was the absolute worst way to get introduced to the game, and that’s absolutely my fault.

It was interesting to see the amount of attention the single player content of Battle Kitchen got but not a whole lot of videos for multiplayer. I honestly don’t think there’s a huge demand for tournaments with the kind of content that’s available in Battle Kitchen anyways, nor did I think the VS. mode that I needed to implement would have created a whole lot of splash, which is why I opted to do an all new mode instead. After that, development on CSD will finally be over (aside from Weekly Challenges, which I will continue to update every Monday, with my goal being a full year of support), and my full attention will be towards my two unannounced games, one of which is coming this year.

The Future of CSD

With the code the way it is in CSD (after two years of new content, an iPad port, new Steam features, controller support, and then a new expansion, it gets pretty messy), it casts doubts as to how I’d be able to pull off a console port. I’d much rather tear down the code completely and rebuild it, but at that point, I don’t think I’d want to redo the game, I’d want to create something new. I’ve always felt that the players who love CSD love it in spite of itself; there’s so much I can do with a fresh slate and it’s just exciting to imagine what a sequel would bring. That said, I don’t have anything to announce right now in terms of console support or a sequel, but I think later this year something will come into focus as to what I’m making next.

This isn’t the end of my series of articles, but I feel this may be near the end of what CSD can bring in terms of huge revenue or experimentation of new platforms and features. Certainly it is near the end of my plans in bringing new and exciting content to the game to keep it as relevant as possible. I need to focus on my new games and get those polished for a reveal as soon as possible; April looks promising, but then again, every article I’ve managed to do closes with the hopes of a reveal of a new project, only for that date to pass by without an announcement. Things are totally different this time around, but hey, enough promises and more deliverin’, right?

The Grand Total

Just two and a half years ago, I questioned my decision to even make Cook, Serve, Delicious after that awful first weekend of release. Today, Cook, Serve, Delicious has grossed over $610,000 in sales across mobile, Steam, distro websites and my cut from the Humble Bundle, with over 100,000 copies sold. Steam accounts for 78% of that financial figure.

What an insane number. I just can’t believe it. That income allows me to fund my next two games outright and continue pursuing my dream of being a top tier indie dev. We made a lot of progress with Cook, Serve, Delicious, but I feel the biggest has yet to come considering the scope of my next two games. Thank you to everyone for the support, thank you to all the Youtube and Twitch streamers out there enjoying the game, thanks to the community for all the great reviews and thanks to anyone who bought the game and enjoyed it. And of course a huge thanks to Ryan Davis, who was the one to open up the door to this staggering amount of success. I will never, ever forget that.

I don’t know if this is just the beginning, or if this is the pinnacle of my success. I don’t know how my next two games, which are stylistically different from Cook, Serve, Delicious, will be received critically or commercially. I don’t know how console development will go. I don’t know how much longer Cook, Serve, Delicious will provide me with healthy daily income (as of right now it’s still selling great). What I do know is that we’ll find out all these answers together.

The future is completely uncertain, yet I couldn’t be more excited.(source:gamasutra)