![]() ![]() ![]() Space games are a niche and don't sell… Or do they? Our debut title earned 93% positive reviews until ratings took a beating due to technical issues from later VR and HOTAS implementation in combination with a special-hardware audience being hard to please, plus extreme expectations from hardcore space sim fans wanting a different game than the one we were making. The 1-Day wishlist conversion rate was 10.7%, and 7-Day was 15.1%, with 18,000 notifications sent. We sold 19,000 copies during launch week with a lead price of $29.99. Thanks to a strong Steam Greenlight campaign with 95% positive votes – those were the days – and a massive Kickstarter with close to 11,000 backers, the first Everspace launched with solid momentum into Steam Early Access in September 2016. Everspace 2 lifetime wishlists as of April 20, 2023 ![]() Throughout it all, we focused on running space-laser-focused and KPI-driven campaigns on social media and exclusively worked with content creators who were genuinely interested in checking out the game without getting paid. Now, while both titles had different starting conditions since many things have changed on Steam, we've done a lot similarly – most importantly, we demonstrated a compelling prototype to the public, proved our case to the community but also to ourselves on Kickstarter, and worked together with our community during Early Access with several major content update before hitting version 1.0. Three iconic classics with huge potential as a unique genre mix, but we, too, had ambitious plans and wanted to conquer our own niche within an arguably niche genre. The team's internal pitch for Everspace 2 was Freelancer meets Diablo with Descent vibes. Thanks to the game's commercial success with roguelike fans, we were able to base the sequel on a much bigger and, to many space game enthusiasts, more appealing vision. Thanks to a massive fanbase following us when we started our new studio, Rockfish Games, we had a wildly successful Kickstarter for the first Everspace, which then became a Steam Early Access Platinum Graduate of 2017 and has sold close to three million units (including DLC) on PC and console. In fact, Rockfish's influence might go back even further as our team was also behind space combat games Galaxy on Fire 1 & 2. Space games are a niche and don't sell… Or do they? From the recent single-dev surprise Spacebourne 2, No Man's Sky, Elite Dangerous, Eve Online, Stellaris, the X series, Homeworld 3, Star Citizen, to the much-anticipated AAA space-RPG blockbuster Starfield, it looks like there's been a real renaissance of space games within the last decade, and we think our space combat series Everspace plays an important role here, too. ![]() Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inboxįinding ways to accurately measure success is an ever-moving and sometimes difficult task in itself for studio leaders – but today, I'm able to present a look into two data sets that show changes in Steam feature performance over time and how wishlist value (while still desired) very much depends on Early Access versus 1.0 launch.Ĭoming in hot off our studio's best launch to date, I wanted to share thoughts and comparisons on our two similar and successful announce-to-launch campaigns for Rockfish Games' flagship titles, Everspace and Everspace 2. ![]()
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