So how's it selling?

It's hard to say because it's all relative numbers but it doesn't seem like more than maybe 20,000 or so. But I don't know what they need in order to consider this a success either. It also may be the sort of game that sells a little bit for a long period of time, and sales and bundles will up the numbers as well. It's going to be a long time before we can really say if it sold "enough" or not.

Frogacuda wrote:It's hard to say because it's all relative numbers but it doesn't seem like more than maybe 20,000 or so. But I don't know what they need in order to consider this a success either. It also may be the sort of game that sells a little bit for a long period of time, and sales and bundles will up the numbers as well. It's going to be a long time before we can really say if it sold "enough" or not.

If it's ONLY sold 20,000 units then that's nearly $400,000. The budget for the game was $450,000. I'm sure over the year when there are specials on selected titles, especially around holiday season, the sales will spike and hopefully somewhere in 2015 a green light will be lit for another game. Keeping in mind that there would have been a lot of setup costs too (purchase of UNITY licence, filming studio, equipment etc...). A lot of that is covered so if your estimate on 20,000 units is accurate, then this game should do well over the next 12 months.

steam was not giving a accurate figure in the top selling games, even when the backers redeemed their code it shows as a sale so nobody really knows how things are really going.

Remember also that, unless I'm wrong, there has been little to no marketing for this game. Have you seen ads? I haven't. So whatever sales there have been came from word of mouth, I reckon.

Say, remember when a bunch of us spent $$$ on ads for the Kickstarter campaign?
http://www.unofficialtexmurphy.com/mess ... &sk=t&sd=a

I kept a report of what I did, but I guess we'll never know what the return on investment for those ads was.

joliet_jane wrote:Remember also that, unless I'm wrong, there has been little to no marketing for this game. Have you seen ads? I haven't. So whatever sales there have been came from word of mouth, I reckon.

And reviews. There's still a decent number of these being uploaded, some as recent as 10 hours ago according to Google.

I really have to think what atlus actually did for the game, released a trailer that was the wrong trailer & then sent out press releases to various sites. Some of the reviewer who approached atlus stated they were not responding when they asked for review codes & took for ever. One reviewer stated he asked for save files so they could post a review & atlus were really taking their time. So I ask again what were the benefits of atlus any way.

I think you know my stance.

Bjyman wrote:I think you know my stance.

Actually I don't. Please tell me what your stance is. That's what I created this thread for.

Oh, that was in reply to plumgas. I don't know how its selling, but I would take the sales as a reading of priorities than the the franchise as a whole.

Joel wrote:

Frogacuda wrote:The budget for the game was $450,000.

The budget for the game was close to a million dollars. Some of that was from Atlus, some of it was out of Chris/BFG's pockets. It wasn't JUST Kickstarter money. So they have to at least pay back the half of the budget that WASN'T Kickstarter before they can even think about doing another KS.

plumgas wrote:I really have to think what atlus actually did for the game, released a trailer that was the wrong trailer & then sent out press releases to various sites. Some of the reviewer who approached atlus stated they were not responding when they asked for review codes & took for ever. One reviewer stated he asked for save files so they could post a review & atlus were really taking their time. So I ask again what were the benefits of atlus any way.

There are always exceptions, but I've found Atlus' PR to be very good, very fan-site friendly, and generally helpful. I think it's VERY difficult to get good coverage for a game like this and you can't make people do it, but without Atlus this probably would have gone completely ignored by sites like IGN and Polygon.

Of course one can debate the amount of good that reviews from non-fans do for a game like this, but at this point I think getting the word out is the most important thing.

Add to that the countless hours people have put in for free.

We definitely want this to have lots of publicity and good publicity at that, followed by lots of sales and lots of profit for BFG

I'm certainly doing everything I can. I've got a documentary on Tesla Effect going public on Leviathyn.com hopefully by the end of the week, and CJ agreed to appear on our podcast next week, and those could each translate to more sales.

Nobody really knows how it is selling except those at the switch.

Atlus, as it appears to me, is doing what all publishers do - take it on and then spend little to no time or money promoting it. I am used to that with my husband's work and have seen it many many times.

Also, the game as you see it cost $1 million with several people working for free, not least Cub and Bjorn, who both basically were wishing that the Brew & Stew could feed them non-virtual food or that they had virtual stomachs. But it isn't just Cub and Bjorn who did it for as good as nothing, there are others too. It is a miracle the game is the way it is. If everyone had been paid going rates and taken the time it would over normal working hours, then the game would have cost a minimum of $2,5 million and been out somewhere around late 2015.

I doubt that it will be possible to do this again the way that Tesla Effect got made. We are looking at the need of downloads in the hundreds of thousands (and I don't mean money, I mean actual downloads) in order to make another franchise possible as far as I am concerned.

We are all doing what we can - I am paying for Twitter advertising and also trying to get some London billboard advertising organised, asking my husband's literary agent to send tweets to her thousands of followers and all this is going to help. But honestly, I do believe that unless Atlus really puts some elbow grease behind it, the necessary response may well not take place.

That said, let's try and tell as many people as poss about it and keep the positive vibe going, let's go the extra mile. I plan to attack a really well known celebrity with millions of twitter followers when I get to see him in September or October and a tweet from him would be an excellent shot in the arm.

Chins up, Texy people, we can totally make a difference. Now more than ever before.

Atlus is pretty niche as a distributor. I have a number of their releases mostly because I'm a JRPG fan. Another niche publisher I like is Nippon Ichi. You've likely never heard of any of their games unless you're a fan of the genres they cater to. I mostly learn about new games from them via word of mouth or checking whats new on their company website.

But being a familiar name in the industry did give the release weight and of course they helped get the game on Steam. Without Atlus it likely would have had to do the whole Steam Greenlight thing which from what I've heard from gamers is declining in reputation/popularity, some feel the voting system is flawed and that a game managed to be Greenlit doesn't say enough about its quality anymore. With the help of Atlus, Tesla Effect bypassed all that controversy and went straight to Steam's shelves as a respected title from the getgo.

I think getting video ads on Youtube and Twitch TV would be good, Atlus likely know who to contact to be advertised there. There is a distinct lack of decent game-related TV shows (I miss GamesMaster) so most gamers are turning to the internet for entertainment. As a result there's a lot of gamers that have become online personalities through a growing audience.

A few channels on Twitch and Youtube with a big audience have played Tesla Effect already to thousands of viewers. If they got video advertising there, then they'd get thousands of viewers from other peoples channels.