Happy 18!

The first public release of King of Dragon Pass was 18 years ago — 29 October 1999. Back then, it was a boxed CD.

Since then, we updated and expanded the game for iPhone and iPad, and licensed it for Android and Mac and Windows (on Steam). And GOG made the original version available for download. To celebrate its birthday, the game is 50% off on the iOS App Store for a limited time!

In 18 years, we haven’t seen anything like KoDP, so we decided to make another: Six Ages. It’s currently feature complete and being tested, for release in 2018. Making another game of this scope is a risk for an indie studio, and not many games last 18 years. But we hope we can approach KoDP’s sales (over 175000 on all platforms).

17 And Counting

The first public release of King of Dragon Pass was 17 years ago today — 29 October 1999.

Since then, we updated and expanded the game for iPhone and iPad, and licensed it for Android and Mac and Windows (on Steam). And GOG made the original version available for download. To celebrate its birthday, the game is 50% off on all platforms for a limited time!

We’d like to thank our fans for keeping the game going over the years. Selling more than 150,000 copies (on all platforms) seems pretty good for an indie game, and your continued support encourages us as we continue to work on its spiritual successor, Six Ages.

We just posted a progress update to the Six Ages development blog, and here’s a sneak preview of some of the art.

Sales Outlets

Not long ago, someone asked (on Facebook) how sales of the game on the Android platform compared to iOS. I recently got some quarterly updates, so figured it was a good time to share.

The majority of copies sold are on mobile, and the bulk of those for iOS.

The second largest outlet has been GOG.com, which sells the original version.

Comparing any of these is difficult, since the game has been on iOS longer than it has been available for Android, and Steam is even more recent. GOG sometimes runs sales of bundles, so not all of those copies might have ever been launched.

Plus, some of the numbers aren’t exact, due to how we get reports. (For example, I have  no idea how many units were sold on Windows Phone, but I know it has to be insignificant.) Even the number of boxed CDs is an estimate.

But to answer the question: iOS is indeed selling better than Android (by about 2:1 over the last month).

Sweet 16

King of Dragon Pass was first released on 29 October 1999 — sixteen years ago today.

Since then, we updated the game and adapted it for iPhone and iPad, and licensed it for Android and Steam (both Mac and Windows). And GOG made the original version available for download. To celebrate its birthday, the game is 50% off on all platforms for a limited time!

Over the years, it has been a well-regarded indie. For example Metacritic gives it a score of 90. Rock Paper Shotgun says it’s one of the top 5 strategy games of all time. And players give it 5 stars.

It’s also sold pretty well for an indie game, over 120,000 copies on all platforms. (The exact number is a little hard to determine, since our early records seem to have vanished, and we don’t get specific numbers for channels like Humble Bundle.) But we sold the most copies on iOS. And the original has been downloaded almost as often (probably because GOG periodically runs sales that make it ridiculously cheap).

To a large degree, these numbers reflect apples and oranges. The Steam version came out only 3 months ago, and this is the first Steam sale. And there is no way of knowing how many people have bought the game for both mobile and desktop (or even more often than that). So they aren’t really a way to compare platforms or predict anything.

Still, they give us hope that an indie game can find some success in today’s market, and and helped us decide to go ahead and start working on Six Ages, the spiritual successor. Thank you to everyone who has supported King of Dragon Pass so we could do that!

Happy Birthday!

Fifteen years ago, the first copies of King of Dragon Pass shipped from a warehouse in Seattle.

Since then, the game has been improved and adapted for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 8, and the Windows version can now be downloaded.

We’ve sold over 100,000 copies of King of Dragon Pass. Not too bad for an indie game (even if it did take almost fifteen years). Thanks to all of you (especially the people who have bought it three or four times for different devices)!

To celebrate, King of Dragon Pass is now on sale for 50% off! Get it from the iOS App Store, Google Play, Amazon, or the Windows Phone store. The sale lasts five days.

One more thing.

For fifteen years, people have been asking about a sequel. We’re really excited to be working on a new game, tentatively called Six Ages. It’s an equally ambitious game, and won’t be out until 2016. You can read a little more on its development blog, or follow @SixAges on Twitter for updates.

Loss in Translation

For almost as long as King of Dragon Pass has been for sale, people have wanted to know if it could be translated. For example, in 2000 we were approached at the Independent Games Festival by a European publisher, who lost interest when they heard how large the game actually was.

As we’ve expanded the game for iOS, the economics have gotten worse than they were in 2000. An approximate word count puts the game at over 640,000 words. Doing some quick research, it would probably cost around $0.10/word to translate into a European language (such as French, Italian, German, or Spanish). That’s $64,000 just for the translation, and doesn’t take into account any development costs.

It also doesn’t take into account the difficulties of the translation in the first place. King of Dragon Pass tries to be flexible, so that in this fragment,

text: <ourHero> fled as fast as <his/her> feet could move <him/her>.

ourHero can be male or female. But the FIGS languages all have word gender, so “his” would have to be translated differently depending on the gender of the following word (and also whether or not it’s plural). So we’d need to add code support for this.

Worse would be something like

saga: <He/She> killed <theirGuy> with one blow, avenging <his/her> <r>.

since the gender of the following word isn’t known (it might be “brother” or “sister”).

This sort of thing could probably be dealt with, but it would almost certainly be a significant development effort, and also raise the cost of translation.

Is English the Tradetalk of the Internet?

Back to that cost: at the current price, with Apple’s 30% cut, we’d need to sell over 9100 copies of the game just to break even on the cost of translating into a single language.

Is that possible? Let’s take Italian. There are native speakers of Italian outside Italy, but for simplicity let’s just look at the 61 million people in Italy. The USA has about 314 million people, so we could assume sales of about 1/5 that of the USA. Based on our previous sales, half are in the USA. So we’d get 1/10 of our total sales in Italy. This would be great, and it would leapfrog Italy to our #3 market. However, King of Dragon Pass is not Angry Birds. Although it’s a successful indie title, sales are somewhat over 35000 units. 1/10 of that is 3500 copies, which would not pay for the translation.

On top of that, we’d need to devote resources (both programming and quality assurance) to a significant development effort, which would take away from projects such as creating new scenes.

There are some other linguistic issues with how the game generates text, but really it’s not worth belaboring.

We’ve translated our software before (Jigami is available in French, and Opal in Japanese). But not something that is ten times as big as the average book. Some of the strengths of the game (immense replayability and flexibility) make it a money-losing proposition to translate.

34567 and Counting

We’ve put King of Dragon Pass on sale before to celebrate arbitrary numeric sales milestones. Since we just passed 34567

copies sold in the App Store, it seems like a great time to hold a sale. Starting Monday 15 July, the unique storytelling game is half price for 34.567 hours. (Or since the actual sales figure is 34568, we’ll run the sale for 34.568 hours.)

30K Sale(s)

text: We’re very pleased to let you know that our <d3:unique/distinctive/indie> game King of Dragon Pass has sold over 30000 copies in the App Store! To celebrate, we’re putting the game on sale for 30% off, for three days.

music: "WeDidIt"
price = price * 0.7 # 30% off
trigger code_SaleOver 3  # Sale ends in 3 days

Response 1: Buy Now!
.fun += 1000
.goods -= 7
text: Clan members were heard saying things such as “<d3:This is undoubtedly the best rpg game on iOS./This game is simply brilliant./I must have put in 30 hours by now.>”

Response 2: Wait 3 days for the regular price, to support the developers.
.fun += 1000
.goods -= 10
text: Clan members could be heard saying such things as: “d3:A game with more depth and heart than you can shake a stick at./Thank you dev team for such a great game that I will be playing for years to come!/Congrats to the developers on making something so different and downright fun.>”

Response 3: Send messengers to nearby clans to let them know.
foreach c in NearbyClans
c.fun += 1000
aSharp.obligations += 1
SceneContinues

Response 4: Get the Windows version on GOG.com.
text: Clan members were sad that we had no iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. But they praised the ring for finding another way.
.fun += 999

Response 5: Ignore the opportunity.
text: Clan members shook their heads and muttered darkly about the foolish decisions their leaders were making.
.mood -= 25

Advice:
[Storytelling] Get this game. It’s tribal politics and role playing at its best. Play it as if you are in the shoes of your clan leader or as you wish yourself; whatever brings you into the world, live it. You will not regret a thing. [1234]

25000 Sales

Yesterday, King of Dragon Pass sold the 25000th copy in the iOS App Store. When we released it a little over a year ago, we really didn’t know what to expect in terms of sales, but this is definitely better than our expectations. Thanks to everyone who bought the game!

To celebrate this milestone, the game is on sale for 25% off* for 25 hours. Let your friends know! Or buy it as a gift to go along with the iPad mini they’re getting for Christmas.

* Actually, due to the App Store pricing tiers, it’s 30% off in the US. We round in your favor.

KoDP 20K

Some more good news about the game: we have now sold over 20000 copies on the iOS App Store. When we released the game almost a year ago, we really didn’t know what to expect in terms of sales. King of Dragon Pass is a unique title from an indie developer, which are usually two strikes against it. But I think this counts as success. Most copies were sold when the game was fairly new, but it has continued to sell.

Worldwide Sales

Along with yesterday’s release of the original Windows version by GOG.com, the game has now reached a much larger audience than it found when it came out in 1999.

To celebrate this achievement, as well as the game’s upcoming anniversary (the iPhone version came out on 7 September 2011), the game is on sale in the App Store for $2 off, for two days only.

Regional Variation

It’s interesting to look at some of the sales figures. Denmark just became our number 9 market (with 1.61% of revenue), edging out Norway. This appears to be largely due to a single review (I don’t know if this is an online review or also appeared in print).

This is a bit like the original version of King of Dragon Pass, where a review in the print magazine Pelit made the game a top 10 hit in Finland.

But it’s unlike Norway, where we got 50 sales in one day thanks to a single review (I suspect this was online only).

We can see the difference in these graphs. The bottom graph shows worldwide revenue by date. You can see the birthday sale, and the Sacred Time sale (and the overall effect of the holiday, which is to raise sales to a somewhat higher level — apparently there are a lot of new devices). The top graph shows Finland (orange), Norway (light purple), and Denmark (dark purple). All three Scandinavian countries have about the same population, so they’re interesting to compare. Sales in Finland more or less track worldwide sales, except for a bump when we got reviewed by the print magazines Pelit and Pelaaja. The effects of the Norwegian review are very obvious — but there is almost no long term change in the level of sales. Maybe nobody in Norway let their friends know about the game. But Denmark has a sales spike from the review, but then sales continue at a significantly higher level than before.

I don’t really have an explanation as to why these countries have such different responses to the game. But I think this does show that reviews are still an important way for people to learn about games.

Regional Variation

As I’ve mentioned before, King of Dragon Pass is big in Finland (right now in the App Store it’s the top selling Role Playing game and top grossing Strategy game). Finland has remained our number three market (after the far more populous USA and UK).

One change since last month is that Germany is now #6 and Singapore is now #10. The number are all close, but since this is total sales, this may be statistically significant.

The map makes it real obvious that we have very few sales in Africa or Mongolia (not surprising), but also none in Brazil (which does seem odd to me, since there is an App Store).

One item of interest is that sales in different regions don’t move in lockstep. The chart below shows currencies, not countries, so that data is easier to read. In most regions, you can see revenue jump at launch and when we had a birthday sale. But Norway instead had one huge day around 18 September, almost certainly due to a review. And in the second week of October, sales declined in the US (and countries where Apple doesn’t offer local currency sales), while they increased in Europe (at least the Euro-using countries). And the sales spike in late November (which I believe was related to the news about our Universal build) didn’t affect our big markets outside the US.

Finland

Finland was always a big market for King of Dragon Pass, thanks in part to a glowing review in the January 2000 issue of Pelit, which was then the premier game magazine. The review was 2 2/3 pages, and gave the game a rating of 94/100. We were then picked up by the game store Fantasiapelit, which kept the game in stock for years (they got our last boxed copies).

This time around, I got help from Olli Sinerma and Jani Lintunen. (I contacted Olli to see if GameHouse would publish the game, but they decided not to. Olli believed in the game, and put me in contact with Jani.) As it happened, Olli writes for Pelit, and was playing board games with the editor-in-chief of a new magazine, Pelaaja. So it was easy to make sure the magazines were aware of the game. And, we once again got good press coverage.

Pelit didn’t give us quite as many pages, but again we got a 94/100 rating. You can see what it looks like above.

Pelaaja picked up on the Finnish connection, and interviewed me, as well as Olli and Jani. They had never reviewed an iOS game before, but ended devoting 4 pages to King of Dragon Pass. (I will be posting the raw interview text later.)

Once again, the Finns seemed to love the game. As I write this, it’s still the number one selling game in both the Role Playing and Strategy genres. It’s still the number 4 grossing game, and was at one point the top-grossing app (not just game). Despite being a country of around 6 million, Finland has been our third largest market. Thank you!

Sales Breakdown

I thought it might be interesting to share where and when sales of King of Dragon Pass happened. Since the game is only available in English, you’d expect sales to be best in the USA and the UK. And that’s what Apple’s reports show. Almost 48% of revenue is from the US, and 15% from the UK. But more surprising (at least to someone who doesn’t know the game’s history): over 10% of sales are from Finland (a nation of under 6 million people). We can thank the magazines Pelit and Pelaaja for letting the Finns know that the game was out. And of course the players who have kept it in the charts (currently it is #1 in both Strategy and Role Playing categories, both in units and revenue).

A bit more surprising to me is that the game is so popular in France (about 2.3% of revenue). Or that Singapore is the biggest market in Asia.

Games are a hit-driven market, so you would expect to see an early sales spike as the release and our PR hit. We were hoping that the tail of the chart wouldn’t get too low, and while it’s a bit too early to be sure, that looks possible.

The orange graph shows what happens when we release an update.

Although there are some drawbacks to selling in the App Store (Apple doesn’t allow time-limited trials, which would probably be the best form of marketing), in general it’s proven a good way for a small developer to reach customers. In the first six weeks, we sold more copies for iOS than boxed copies of the Windows/Mac version. That’s lifetime sales. We’ll probably hit double by the end of next month. Some of the sales are to people who enjoyed the original game, but obviously many are playing for the first time.

Thanks!

We released King of Dragon Pass for iOS on 8 September, and it’s gotten a very warm welcome. Of 136 star ratings in the App Store, 128 are 5-star ratings. And some really great App Store reviews. Here’s what might be my favorite (from the UK store):

It's impossible to describe the emotional tug you feel when an old and trusted advisor, who you've watched grow from a young upstart, dies of old age.
Or when an exploration team disappears into the wilds, never to be heard from again.
Or when a cursed clansman, shunned by his peers, sacrifices himself to stop a raid.
This game will never leave my iPhone. That's the only accolade possible.

It’s also hard to describe how all this makes us feel — but it’s definitely a positive emotion!

While we don’t release specific figures, I do want to talk about sales as well. I have to say I’m astonished by the shape of our unit sales graph. The left half is what I expected — a launch splash, followed by a gradual decline as other games push ours out of the limelight. But then sales began to climb again! For several days in a row, so it’s not just a fluke.

While we did get a number of favorable reviews on a number of web sites (which we’re slowly collecting on our Reviews page), their timing really didn’t seem to correlate to sales. So my conclusion is that it’s due to word of mouth — after you play the game long enough to give it a recommendation, you do just that. Thank you!

As an independent developer with no marketing budget, word of mouth is critically important to the success of the game. We’ve tried to make that easy (with Twitter and Facebook buttons in the app), but ultimately it’s your credibility on the line when you recommend us. We really appreciate that.

And, I have to ask you to do it again. We just released an update (2.0.1). The way the App Store works, each version has its own ratings. So King of Dragon Pass will drop to zero 5-star ratings. If you can, please go back to the App Store and rate it again. If you already wrote a review, I don’t think it makes sense to do that again. But if not, those help too!

Thanks again for buying the game, and for letting people know about it.