Thoughts on Releasing Corner Streamer
So I finally released Corner Streamer on steam! This is my first official full game launch on Steam. I wasn't expecting too much in terms of success. The main goal was to gain experience in the release and publication of a game, and to re-ignite that spark for professional game development. It launched at around 200 wishlists and sold 16 units over 5 days, which might not be a lot in the grand scheme of things, but the fact that there is 16 real people out there somewhere in the world that saw Corner Streamer and thought it was worth checking out is just so incredible to me, and I'm so happy I made this game!!
Post Mortem
It was really educational to gain more experience in the process behind publishing the game for steam and what the workflow for that looks like. Also I got a lot more experience in marketing, which has never been my favourite aspect of game development. Any future funding towards games will definitely be focused in the marketing department, as it is easily the most important in terms of your games visibility and is some of the most time consuming and tedious work during the whole process. At least for me, I really do not like marketing. There's so many layers to creating an engaging reel that I truly don't feel like I've even breached the surface of how to properly market a game. Keeping up with a regular post schedule to keep up with the algorithm is incredibly difficult. In future, I would prefer to finish the game and then solely do marketing by itself, rather than do marketing at the same time as development. Its simply too time-consuming and stressful to balance both, even if in theory doing both sounds more efficient. Or maybe downgrading how much content to make, or the effort behind it during development, and having a big marketing push once game is complete would be a better method to go about it.
In hindsight, making an idle game as the studio's first ever official PC title might not have been the brightest idea. I am very proud of the game, and I think the concept is genuinely interesting, but its definitely not the most attractive or popular game genre with the biggest audience. And while that is never what the process of making a game is about, i.e. the popularity, its also not the most fiscally responsible decision.
I believe that I have created a genuinely strong game development cycle/workflow in reliably producing games from start to finish. In future, I would like to improve my skills outside of production, such as marketing, networking, publishing. Which are all really difficult things to practice!! How do you practice releasing a game when the act of releasing a game is such a hard point to get too!!!
In the end, while this wasn't the craziest launch ever, and by all metrics was unprofitable and/or unsuccessful, I am still extremely happy with the skills I've developed. There's also the added bonus that the studio has built a small following, which will translate into the next game, and the next game after that.
There's lots of exciting things to come for Sword Slash Studio in the future, and I hope you look out for the next game!
Thank you <3