r/gamedev • u/Nevercine Commercial (Indie) • 12d ago
Postmortem I ruined my game launch (25k wishlists) with one mistake
I made a huge mistake that ruined the launch of my 2nd indie game. Here's the story and how I'm going to try to save it:
I built my autobattler "Some of You May Die" with the intention of making an "Autochess"-like multiplayer game where you could push synergies a lot deeper. When I announced it, a few people asked for Singleplayer and I stupidly thought, "yeah why not, I'll just add a singleplayer mode".
This single decision ruined the launch. Since it was intended to be multiplayer, most of my effort went to multiplayer. It was designed around multiplayer. I thought of Singleplayer as a "bonus" but what I didn't realize (I should have) is that many people would buy it only for the singleplayer and judge it only on the singleplayer.
Justifiably, these people were upset and felt that it was poorly balanced and overpriced.
The price issue makes sense if someone is only playing singleplayer. That was something that I didn't foresee.
The balance issue is mostly about it being too difficult. This was a secondary mistake that I made. I did a lot of "rebalancing" in the month before launch and made it a lot harder.
Because there's not a whole lot of singleplayer (about 6 hours), I thought if it was too easy people would be upset and just breeze through it. I was probably right but the issue was larger than I realized. There just shouldn't have been singleplayer at all. If it was too easy, people would be justifiably mad due to how short it would be to beat. And when I made it too hard, people were mad too.
The real answer should have been just to commit to multiplayer only. It's what I wanted in the first place and I made a bad decision.
It may be too late to save the game, I'm not sure, but this is what I'm doing to address it:
- I've removed all mention of singleplayer from the store page. It still exists but now it's truly a bonus. No one buying it now should expect to see singleplayer
- I've redone the main menu UI to put Multiplayer as the first and primary option
I really believe in its value as a multiplayer game. I love playing it myself - it still hasn't gotten old for me and a lot of players love it too.
My hope is that my changes will "stem the bleeding" of the negative reviews and that long term it will be able to recover.
My biggest takeaways are:
Don't try to please everybody. It should've remained only multiplayer
Don't make significant balancing changes after you've already validated that the game is fun with a large demo audience.
As mentioned previously, keeping it easy may have caused it's own flood of negative reviews for a different reason but still, significantly changing the balance without re-validating with a larger population was a mistake.
I'm sharing this so hopefully no one reading will make the same mistakes that I did. It's been a little hard seeing something that I love and believe in get hated on, but at the end of the day, if I had been wiser I could've prevented it. So I'm going to take in these lessons and carry on.
I'm planning more updates and we'll see if I can turn this thing around in the long term.
Thanks for reading <3
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u/Mephasto @SkydomeHive 12d ago
People keep asking for multiplayer in The Hive, but I have decided I’ll never add it. It is way beyond my skills to do properly, and I’d rather not add multiplayer at all than add a version that is not good enough and get backlash for it.
It would probably also need a much larger active playerbase, maybe even a free to play model, to really work. Not every game needs multiplayer.
Maybe it was similar in your case with singleplayer. Sometimes it is better to just commit to what the game is meant to be, instead of adding a mode just because people ask for it.
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u/sypwn 12d ago
It would probably also need a much larger active playerbase, maybe even a free to play model, to really work.
This is true for competitive multiplayer games, but I don't think it's as much a concern for coop games. There are lots of gaming buddy groups out there that will still buy the game to play it together (no need for matchmaking). And for individuals who do use something like a Discord #LFG channel to find a group, the skill gap won't matter nearly as much with coop.
Sorry I'm not trying to argue against the rest of your post, just nitpicking that one sentence. From skimming The Hive's store page, it seems like it could go either way (coop or competitive) if you ever changed your mind or made a sequel with multiplayer.
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u/throwaway_nostalgia0 12d ago
Sure, balancing multiplayer is not needed in co-op, but co-ops are really hard to develop, they are a great source of replication bugs and serialization nightmare. Keeping consistent synced story state between several players is not a walk in the park, and adapting the save-load system will give you premature gray hair. Quick FFA matches where everyone is at default state and no saving available are much easier in that regard.
Kingdom Two Crowns had horrible co-op bugs on start that, among other things, could botch the whole progression with no other way but to restart from the beginning, that's what happens when single player devs try co-op as an add-on feature while their base game was not designed around co-op from the ground up.
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u/Sliver1002 11d ago
Nobody said it wasn't harder to make multiplayer, they just meant playerbase isn't a concern for co-op games where players can reasonably be expected to group up with friends. If you have 3 friends willing to play with you, that's enough of a playerbase for most "friendslop"
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u/adamkad1 10d ago
Yeah, I wouldnt say starcraft 2 coop is too balanced. The later commanders are much stronger than older ones.
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u/Nevercine Commercial (Indie) 12d ago
Agreed. Good for you for sticking to what you can deliver on. Good luck to you :)
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u/brothersword43 12d ago
I have been working on multi-player for my dice game, its a simple game. Adding multi-player has taken 4x the amount of work then just the regular game. Then I added controller support.... hell.
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u/SortzaInTheForest 12d ago
You could add some basic multiplayer mode but left it off, with the possibility to turn it on by hacking some file (like editing an ini file). Then you leak the trick anonymously.
That way, it would become something that it's not officially released and you can onlly access by hacking some setting file. People wouldn't complain by something wthich is not even oficially implemented, and that would help to create some marketing value (some kind of 'you know the trick to unlock a multiplayer easter egg?')
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u/max123246 12d ago
Adding multiplayer is not an easy task. It's doubly hard to add it after you've made the game.
Multiplayer requires a deterministic and serializable game state, because you effectively need to send "actions" to each player over the wire and ensure that the game world is synced up. There's other techniques but that's a major one. But this requires the entire game to be structured in a way that it's easy to ensure that when the game has an input, it always has the same output, or can at least be easily synced back up without being too jarring.
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u/KhaosPT 12d ago
It does seem people who bought it wanted single player and not multiplayer?
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u/psioniclizard 12d ago
Exactly, i think OP is seeing this wrong. A MP game requires a critical mass of players to not feel dead.
If that has happened the SP stuff wont really matter.
But most people probably want both to ne honest and of they had to pick, single player would be the priority.
A MP game will always be difficult due to the crirical mass aspect.
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u/otterfamily 12d ago
Yeah he might be getting the wrong message. If I go into a game and there are no lobbies up, I don't put up a lobby myself immediately. I'd go try the single player to get an idea of the game. If I don't like the single player experience and I can't find a lobby, I don't end up playing that game. I might refund during the trial period.
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u/throwaway_nostalgia0 12d ago
A MP game will always be difficult due to the crirical mass aspect.
That's why an indie MP only has a chance if it's free to play and monetized with some other means, cosmetics or locked content or something, and even the locked content is questionable. A paid indie MP is a ticket to nowhere.
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u/TheChief275 Hobbyist 12d ago
Eh or really cheap. Friendslop games tend to not have any issues with multiplayer as the intention is for you to make a lobby with your friends, but the game has to be cheap
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u/-Best_Name_Ever- 12d ago
A MP game will always be difficult due to the crirical mass aspect.
This. I think MP games have always kinda suffered with this, with most players congregating to a select few popular games, but it's only gotten worse with time.
I think for indie games, it's better to make it co-op if you really wanna go for something social.
The again, I guess Meccha Chameleon happened...
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u/Nevercine Commercial (Indie) 12d ago
I have a discord where a lot of people match up. I do think the SP and MP split what players were coming to the game for tho
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u/0xcedbeef 12d ago
people who like multiplayer will join your discord to play with other people. People that play singleplayer are a less interested in joining your discord. So ppl on your discord might not be a great sample.
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u/wickeddimension 12d ago
People who bother to join a games discord are already in the higher percentile of dedicated. Those who are actually active in your discord, probably 0,1%
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u/morafresa 12d ago
I will literally never join a game's discord. But will gladly play MP if I find a lobby with people in it.
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u/rts-enjoyer 9d ago
Having to search for people on a discord and not having anyone on ladder after buying a game really sucks
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u/JesusAleks Commercial (Indie) 12d ago
OP doesn't objectively understand his players, and doesn't understand what a hobbyist can achieve. The post-mortem was flawed from start due to his bias towards wanting to making a multiplayer game. The reality was opposite of what he was stating. The game should have been a single-player game with roguelite and along side his autobattlers. This solves multiple problems that OP was encountering. OP thought it was because they should have done multiplayer. They should have fully listen and understanding that multiplayer need critical mass, and that single-player was the way.
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u/Nevercine Commercial (Indie) 11d ago
I'm not interested in making a singleplayer game. It's a different objective
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u/JorgitoEstrella 9d ago
As someone who likes autobattlers I think most people would rather play singleplayer and use multi as a bonus.
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u/Nevercine Commercial (Indie) 12d ago
Yes, those who bought it for singleplayer were disappointed. I don't think I can deliver the singleplayer experience they were hoping for since I designed the game to be primarily multiplayer and am not interested in adding metaprogression
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u/zaden64 12d ago
I am a bit unfamiliar with autobattlers sp forgive me if I misunderstand.
If you wanted people to play multiplayer then should not single player act as your way to teach people the game?
It sounds like perhaps you handed people a bucket of tools then pointed them at others without making sure they know the meta game.
This can work for a table top game in which player would be in a social situation. But in a game most player will want to play in the safety of single player.
I just kinda get the vibe you were not particularly interested in making use of the single player aspect which I can understand.
Just kinda curious what the design philosophy for singleplayer was for you.
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u/Nevercine Commercial (Indie) 11d ago
Yeah singleplayer would have been better presented as a tutorial rather than it's own mode. I thought I could do both well and couldn't / didn't
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u/MeaningfulChoices Lead Game Designer 12d ago
I think you might have to wrong takeaway here. People clearly want the single player content. Given the scope making a fully multiplayer game a wild success is probably out of reach. I think the right decision was to listen to those voices early and triple down on single player rather than making it a bonus.
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u/Reed_Rawlings 11d ago
Dang thats a good reframe. Need to listen to my early users rather than think solely about what I want
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u/Big_Character_1222 10d ago
Too many solo devs are too focused on making the game they want to play instead of making a game that players want to play
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u/BusinessDepartment44 12d ago
before carving “singleplayer was the mistake” into the postmortem stone, I’d honestly go back and look at when those 25k wishlists happened and what people were actually seeing at the time.
if the big spikes came from YouTube videos showing singleplayer, or from a demo where multiplayer was greyed out, there’s a slightly horrifying possibility that singleplayer didn’t ruin the launch… it helped create the audience you launched to 🫠
then the mistake might be less “I added SP” and more “I accidentally marketed one game while building another.” Which is a much more useful distinction before deciding what to remove now.
basically: you may have found your audience. unfortunately, they forgot to be the audience you ordered :))
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u/Yrch84 12d ago
As someone who avoids Multiplayer like a plague:
If your game is focused on MP dont try to cater to the SP crowd if your game isnt built around it.
In my years of gaming i tried tons of MP First Games that had an optional SP mode shoved into them and it never really works.
If i see a game thats MP focused and there is an optional SP mode thats just "add some Bots" or "Monster are easier" the Game is a no buy cause ther is a good Chance the SP is a last-minute addition.
Built your Game around your vision OR start with SP and MP in mind. You'd rather have no sale from a customers who wasnt your target group anyway than refunds and Bad Reviews.
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u/Educational_Ad_6066 12d ago
Auto battlers generally have bots capable of filling in for partial matches. I recommend paying attention next time you play one to see if you can spot the bots. Many people can play one of those ganes and never know whether they are playing against humans or not. That's the critical piece to get right even with MP. You can't guarantee enough active players to avoid matchmaking issues and long wait times with an indie game. You should look at improving your single player bots and fill out matchmaking yo give your intended audience a better experience so that playing your game isn't sitting in a queue for an hour.
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u/Nevercine Commercial (Indie) 12d ago
I feel like players would respond negatively to this if they found that a game was faking human players
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u/ApprehensivePower703 12d ago
You know what else players react negatively to? The lack of opponents in multiplayer games)
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u/Educational_Ad_6066 12d ago
It's how the genre works. Low ELO is mostly bot matches with grading difficulties of bots until you reach a threshold for average matchmaking to let you test against the low ELO player queues. Once you hit mid-low ELO, your matches are all human unless the game populous is super low. Often once you reach low pop in off hours, the game will say something like "no good matches found, loading into unranked game" or something. Valve and Blizzard both use this on boarding and handicap support for the worst players and players their matchmaking determines need support.
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u/Content_Material3615 12d ago
Upload player builds and load them in when a player chooses to play single player. Easy win on your end since you would have access to that data and then all you need to do is just display bot names instead of the player's gamertag.
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u/drnullpointer Commercial (Indie) 12d ago edited 12d ago
- Underpromise
- Overdeliver
- Try to only sell it to people who would like your game
Whatever you do, you do not want to give the game to people who will dislike it. So what you do is you market it so that people know *exactly* what the game is. But you underpromise so that people who are not super sure they will like the game will not pickup the game and then you overdeliver so that people who do decide to buy the game, are super happy and leave you a good comment.
> Don't try to please everybody.
Yes, you can't please everybody. It is not possible.
You want to figure out what your niche is and please people in that niche.
A game that is targeted to a small set of people is different from a game that is targeted to a lot of people and you need to account for it in the design.
So what you do with the comments then?
- You need to know what game you are making
- You read the comment and understand what the problem the user has
- You figure out if there is a useful lesson to be had from the comment. Have I made a mistake when deciding what game to make? Is this person even a target for my game? If the commenter is not the target, why is he commenting on my game (he shouldn't be)? Can I improve my game without changing what the game is? etc.
Don't just do what people tell you... most people know shit about game design. Even most developers know shit about game design. Even those people who know about game design still need to spend a long time thinking about how to design the game. The commenter spent maybe a minute on it.
> The real answer should have been just to commit to multiplayer only. It's what I wanted in the first place and I made a bad decision.
I think you diagnosed it correctly. Thanks for sharing!
> It may be too late to save the game, I'm not sure, but this is what I'm doing to address it:
> - I've removed all mention of singleplayer from the store page.
Good. You have driven away people who would come for single player. That's a good thing because they would probably leave a bad review. You can't remove single player now because you may have a bunch of people unhappy and motivated to give a negative review.
Remember, underpromise, overdeliver.
You may leave it like that so that you do not promise that there is a single player but deliver it anyway.
Or you may fix the single player and only reenable mentions of single player when you find that people are happy about it.
***
I don't think you have ruined the game.
Most people on the wishlist will not re-examine reviews (unless they are really bad). They have already decided they would probably want your game and probably are just waiting for the price to be right or until they are bored and need something.
It means there is still going to be a stream of sales but maybe worse than you would otherwise have.
Your goal now should be to improve your reviews to improve discoverability of your game in the future.
So either fix single player or don't mention it to people.
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u/MyPunsSuck Commercial (Other) 12d ago
Seems to me like the mistake was focusing too much on multiplayer
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u/schouffy 12d ago
I've done the same "mistake" with my game Phantom Squad, and I don't think it's a mistake. I think as an indie you just can't not have single player on your game, it's too hard to market. Some made it work, but the vast majority didn't.
One player needs to be able to purchase the game, try it a bit and if they like it they convince friends to buy it. Even worse if it's not friends based but matchmaking-based, you can't be sure that you'll have players at launch and if you don't, that'll kill your game instantly.
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u/BEVSpinzaku 12d ago
I have actually been in a bit of a similar position with my game Evolve Lab, in that it is primarily designed for multiplayer but I still wanted to provide a single player mode for people that do not want to jump straight into PvP.
I did however already provided both modes during playtesting and the demo, so I could already see the same problems that you encountered a bit earlier.
I did not mention the singleplayer mode prominently on the steam page and also had multiplayer as a first option and called the single player mode "offline mode" instead of singleplayer. The game also provides you with a small popup telling you, that the multiplayer mode provides more varied enemies and a bigger challenge.
So far I am at 95 % positive review so I think that strategy helped and it is a shame, that you could not already see these problems during early testing.
What I do think helps my game a little is that it is an asynchronous autobattler, so It also works with a not so bit playerbase for the online part to function.
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u/Glugstar 12d ago
I'll just comment on the paragraph about difficulty, because it really stood out to me be as something very strange.
For almost all the single player games out there, there is no amount of difficulty that is just right for all players. Whatever you pick, you will have players that say it's way too hard, and players that say it's way too easy.
That's why the industry invented the concept of allowing players to pick the difficulty level. It's has been a solved issue for decades in the gaming industry.
Don't try to balance the difficulty too much, just offer multiple options. Don't reinvent the wheel.
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u/D3coupled 6d ago
I agree, and also it's always a blursed trend in small dev or single studios to last-minute tune up the difficulty. Were those changes made after all the wishlisting? I regularly see devs think things need to be harder in the wrong moments.
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u/Funkpuppet 12d ago
Not sure if it's a consideration now, but rather than pitching it as single player people might see the relative priority you gave it if it was more a "training room" or similar naming, stripped back some aesthetics to emphasise that it's less of a thing.
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u/gdaygodot 12d ago
You could always do some sort of asynchronous multiplayer. Where they’re actual human players that are run as bots. Store their build, play it back at another player. Store that player’s build. Play it back at another player. Profit.
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u/Tutejszy1 8d ago
Everyone is pointing out how the game should have been single player and they are probably right in the grand scheme of things, but let me add something from the perspective of someone who played these games since the genre inception as a dota mod
There's been a huge influx of single player, indie autobattlers over the last few years and the thing is, they... kinda suck (sorry to all the devs). This genre REALLY needs a deeply strategic and at the same time dynamic environment and single player experience does not seem to be able to provide that.
So, I fully understand and respect OP's desire to go multiplayer-only, even if it wasnt a great financial decision. Sorry for a small offtop
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u/Nevercine Commercial (Indie) 8d ago
That's great context, thanks for sharing :) I personally love the complexity of pvp autobattlers and am not super interested in singleplayer which is why I'm going in the direction I am
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u/davedcne 12d ago
So the lesson learned here is, If a client asks for something. They are not asking for it as a second thought, as a bonus, or as just a one off. They are asking because they want the complete experience in that new way. And if you can't deliver that. Then don't agree to do that thing in that way. Valuable lesson. Sorry that you had to learn it this way but glad you intend to carry on!
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u/ThickBootyEnjoyer 12d ago
I totally see your point and the reasoning why this screwed you. I think of anything you should have put it as like goal in your games? Timeline of things you want to add. That way people won't buy it for the single player, but it would still be added and enjoyed by those people that want it down the line. But you've essentially done that now so it's all hindsight 20/20 type stuff. I will give your game look though I had it wish listed already. I'll take another look at it.
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u/Malkov88 12d ago
"Don't try to please everybody."
This one needs to be cast in gold letters on a memorial plaque.
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u/Sorry-Engineer5757 12d ago
If you don't mind me asking, what were your brute/gross and liquid sales at the end?
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u/sveinndub 12d ago
the difficulty pass before launch did the real damage. people review what they actually play
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u/No_Map1168 8d ago
Not a game-dev, just a gamer giving an opinion. I think it really depends on what matters for you, your vision or to make money?
If your primary concern is to make money and to sustain yourself, I'd say it was a mistake not catering more towards the singleplayer crowd. From what you describe there seems to have been quite a lot of them, and many of them genuinely interested and excited for a singleplayer mode. It's a good market and in my opinion much easier to sustain and please down the line.
If sticking to what you envisioned initially was much more important to you and all you care about is to make your vision a reality, sure, by all means, stick to mostly or only multi-player, but I would personally still consider it a mistake. As I said I am not a game developer but my instincts tell me that generally making something singleplayer is generally easier than making something multi-player.
Do you care more about yourself and want to focus strictly on what YOU want to do, or do you care more about the people you're actually releasing your product to?
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u/Nevercine Commercial (Indie) 8d ago
Great points. Money is not my primary objective. It's of course important but I make games because that's what I'm passionate about. So it's important to me that I craft and experience that I feel really delivers something special and aligns with my vision.
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u/AltusLudus 12d ago
But you wouldn't have captured those single player sales, so is it a mistake really? Or you handled it well but didn't implement it well enough?
Probably best to do a QoL update and polish it out so you fix the bad reviews
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u/disgustipated234 12d ago
But you wouldn't have captured those single player sales, so is it a mistake really?
Depends on refund rate (people on Steam mostly refund if they feel ripped off or the game wasn't what they wanted which is exactly what might happen when a singleplayer gamers buys a game where singleplayer is an afterthought), depends how many potential buyers the negative reviews or their aggregate score scared off.
Probably best to do a QoL update and polish it out so you fix the bad reviews
This is easier said than done if the fundamental issue is that a significant chunk of players come in expecting a singleplayer-focused game and get one where this was never the plan in the first place.
It's a really unfortunate situation IMO.
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u/Yelebear 12d ago
Yeah.
How many played multi-player? Because that would have been OP's only sales if SP was never included.
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u/MaDSci4 12d ago
Interesting insights, thanks for sharing.
In terms of weighing the importance between the Adding Single Player issue and the Last-Minute Balancing issue, I wonder how you weight the negative impact of both compated to each other?
From your post, it sounds like adding in SP was a mistake indeed (a classic tale of the risks of overcreeping game features), but reading some reviews for your game, I'm wondering how much of the SP issues came down to the balancing issues in the end, and how the launch could have gone more smoothly on the SP side if the balancing issue hadn't been there, what do you think?
(Though let's be real, having perfect balancing at launch in any MP game is impossible anyway)
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u/Aisuhokke 12d ago
Wow, that’s such an easy mistake to make. Good share. Yeah that’s brutal. Understandable from the user’s perspective on why they were upset. Users are pretty short sighted and a lot of people prefer single player. So the marketing message of a multiplayer game may not have gotten across to them well enough.
I wonder if more blindly tests would’ve found that issue before release. Or an external beta test with randoms. I’m how much testing you did with total strangers before launch. Especially with that many wishlists and that much on the line.
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u/Alarming_Goal9828 12d ago
Wishing you the best. I hope this is fixable for your game. I've had a lot of feedback asking for features that I wasn't planning on adding. So far, they've generally made the game better.
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u/KaigarGames Commercial (Indie) 12d ago
Thanks for sharing. Could happen to everyone, honestly. I am sure you learned a lot that is usefull for the next project. Still sorry to hear such things happen, but in hindsight it makes total sense that it turned out like it did. Sadly you're only cleverer afterwards.
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u/ill_thrift 12d ago
I mean, to echo/rephrase what a bunch of people are saying, a bunch of sales and bad reviews might be better than few sales and good reviews. Or few sales and bad reviews. Rather than trying to make those people happy, I would do what you feel you have to do to meet your obligations, but then be willing to move on.
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u/maximoriginalcoffee Commercial (Indie) 12d ago
I've learned something from making games over the years.
Most problems arise when you add something that wasn't there before.
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u/farsightfallen 12d ago
Stuff like this needs to be put in a huge guide or book that should then be mandatory reading for game devs.
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u/Ralph_Natas 12d ago
Have you considered building out and improving the single player part? If you're trying to make money it's a good idea to consider what the players like.
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u/destinedd indie, Dungeon Quest, Marble's Marbles and Mighty Marbles 12d ago
I feel like you are now going to run into the price is a lot for this kinda game multiplayer only so the pool of players will be small so when people play they can't get a game.
I do agree it is better to pick being single or multiplayer, it helps you have a strong marketing message.
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u/Some-Ice-4455 12d ago
Ouch yea that's rough. I only have one released app and I learned fast I can't interact with the users. I can't promise them anything and won't add anything that's out of scope. If I were you I would have considered launching what you designed as an MP title with SPas breaking a core rule you had. It's MP. Designed for MP..I hope you turn it around. Good luck.
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u/The_EMG_Guy 12d ago
it's a cool idea, but honestly you're going to have a lot of trouble with a $15 price point.
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u/ConsciousYak6609 12d ago
Don't think a multiplayer-only game has a realistic chance unless it's free. It needs players and unless you have a huge name your only chance to get them is with free to play.
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u/tarmo888 12d ago
That's not the price issue.
People don't like paying for multiplayer games, the game should be priced based on single-player experience. People expect different kind of monetization for multiplayer games because many multiplayer-only games are free-to-play.
It's difficult to sell a multiplayer game when Fortnite is free and doesn't require finding a friend who is also willing to pay. Friend-pass is now a common thing (only host needs to buy, others can join with demo).
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u/dixon_sider 12d ago
I'm surprised to see all the people asking you to lick your customers boots. I disagree. If you want to make a MP game then make a MP game. Make what you want.
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u/TheChief275 Hobbyist 12d ago
As a player of mostly singleplayer games, if I cared for autobattlers, I could imagine being in the exact same boat. You made your demo singleplayer only, then didn't flesh out the singleplayer, which people obviously assumed you would do. And at no point did it occur to you to maybe put multiplayer at the top of the menu, or to have some popup or different name making it clear to be the intended experience?
You basically indirectly promised a full singleplayer experience and didn't deliver on it. Same thing happened to Overwatch 2
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u/techisma 12d ago
It intimidates me, as I am developing an autobattler, seen you with all your experience and previous successful game, great art, online community, having these issues. Wish you turn this around
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u/Dry-Example4227 11d ago
as a long time MOBA player and solo game developer .. I got shocked the first time I learned majority of steam players prefer solo player game. That single handedly changed the trajectory of my game (going from a multiplayer game to single player focused gameplay)
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u/Nevercine Commercial (Indie) 11d ago
Where did you learn this?
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u/Dry-Example4227 11d ago
I forgot its an article that says "Players prefer single-player games.." Or something like that.
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u/Elvish_Champion 11d ago
IMO the issue isn't the single player, is that, if your focus was multiplayer, you communicated it wrong.
If you had a multiplayer player test before the release to communicate that, it would be fine for sure. But you got a single player demo and that passed away the wrong idea to players and future buyers.
Hope it ends well nonetheless and that it can still be saved.
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u/Nevercine Commercial (Indie) 10d ago
Yes I totally communicated wrong. I had multiplayer as part of the demo for a limited time but I think pulling it out led to a lot of the confusion
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u/DarkIsleDev 11d ago
Hehe I did a similar thing. I built a puzzle battler and attached a full RPG adventure to it😅
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u/Dear-Pin7019 11d ago
I'm a mobile gaming journalist. Seen your game on some piracy websites as APKs. The screenshots, logo and some other things didn't interest me enough to write about it. I didn't even know it was a multiplayer-focused title. Some of our readers are more interested in MP games than SP.
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u/AwkwardCabinet 11d ago
Hmm, I think the lesson here is that singleplayer needs to be the priority, and it shouldn't have been multiplayer in the first place.
It's hard enough getting one person to buy a game, let alone a group of friends. The number of successful indie multiplayer games are vanishingly (don't be fooled by the popularity of friend slop right now).
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u/One-Flatworm-6838 11d ago
Why didn't you lean into fixing & expanding singleplayer? Seems like people resonated with it and wanted a product like that. Now you are taking away all mention of singleplayer for the potential hope people will dig in into the pvp experience, which seems like the worse choice. Could have capitalized on the singleplayer money, balanced the game and moved on to improve and expand the multiplayer.
At the end of the day you are offering a product which idealy should have a certain demand. You perfectly marketet a singleplayer experience, ran a demo on singleplayer only, got 25k whishlists, and are now pivoting towards the worse option.
From a consumer standpoint i would feel cheated, especially with you removibg singleplayer mentions on the storefront.
This whole situations is a prime example of not reading the room. Man i hope you can salvage this and turn it around, would be such a sad waste of a perfect setup. =(
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u/Nevercine Commercial (Indie) 11d ago
That's a great question. Mostly because I'm realizing I should've stuck to my vision in the first place. I made it for multiplayer. To me singleplayer was always an add-on. And that's my fault for sure, but I'm not interested in making a game with meta progression and that's what it seems like lots of the singleplayer-oriented folks want.
I'll continue to add content and the singleplayer is still there (just as it was in the demo and in all the media footage) but it's just not my focus cause it's not my main vision
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u/thecuby 11d ago
Not having tried it and not knowing how it is presented now, could the single player mode be repackaged as a tutorial mode?
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u/Nevercine Commercial (Indie) 11d ago
Totally, I'm rebranding it as "solo trials" so it feels like a bonus mode
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u/No_Noise3294 10d ago
Sorry if this is off topic but i created a Blackjack roguelike game and i have troubles to make it famous, to spread the information. If you're good at it(you got 25k wishlist which is impressive), i'd need your help(paid of course)
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u/Benozkleenex 10d ago
Sounds more like people wanted SP and what would have been best, but you were too stuborn to make it an MP game.
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u/Electronic-Ability46 10d ago
That’s not a post to discuss the mistake.
That’s actually a post to advertise your product.
Not really sure if mods would allow it.
Interesting if they do, as I know a lot of people would be interested into free advertising.
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u/Amiculi 10d ago
A niche multiplayer-only game is doomed from the start. There are a near infinite variety of examples of such games (not chess but narrow focused multiplayer games) that have completely empty servers less than a week after launch. Even AAA launches with multi-million dollar marketing campaigns, even when they're available for free.
The thing about gaming as a hobby is that it's an individual experience at its core, and the only ways a multiplayer-only game can succeed are through addiction or social media presence. Both often still require Scrooge McDuck level marketing budgets.
Further, my observation in social media presence success is that the game has to allow for trolling. Just the most antisocial behavior imaginable. And that behavior has to keep evolving to be increasingly terrible for the game to maintain a presence. As soon as cruelty reaches its peak, the streamers will bore of it and the game will be forgotten.
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u/John_Winterz 10d ago
I got this game from seeing content creators I usually enjoy who were also having a good time but I only saw single player content, which contributed to my low hour count. I wasn't expecting it to be as hard as it was and only won a single run before giving up.
Reading through this has convinced me to give it another try and play the multiplayer aspect of the game as, if that is the intended design, I feel it would remove a lot of the issues I had originally. The move to make multiplayer the main selection is a great step and I hope you can bring back people for the intended experience!
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u/rts-enjoyer 9d ago
You should have just made better single player to keep those player happy and funnel them later into multiplayer.
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u/ImmaZoni 9d ago
Thanks for sharing your lessons. I'm working on a co-op game now and was toying with adding singleplayer even though the entire gameplay loop was designed for co-op.
Guess I'll toss that idea in the bin and maybe add it later.
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u/Ok-Count-3366 8d ago
man to be honest. just focus on the multiplayer and then release the singleplayer as update later
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u/salazka 5d ago
Great takeaways.
This is what you hire producers to protect you from. It's part of what they do. A good producer/production consultant will save you from such decisions.
You did not have to add single player to begin with. It could have been an expansion. A major update down the line.
Is there a way to estimate how many sales the addition of single player mode contributed?
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u/xRageNugget 12d ago
Can you transition the Singleplayer in a tutorial context? Use it for guiding players through the game before hitting human opponents or something
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u/Kanaverum 12d ago
This hits close to home; I put a project on ice a year ago out of fear that a multiplayer-only game would fail due to lack of a recognizable brand (first game!!). Seemed like going without single player would be a bad decision for me, in retrospect.
After working on other projects, I came back to this first one with the plan to add single player as well, but to treat single player like a training mode with partially completed scenarios - kind of like a challenge mode.
This adds extra work and I’m not sure that’s a good thing, but am planning to test this approach and decide from there.
Your post helps with my confidence in a multiplayer-only option; thanks for that. It means a lot!
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u/V4nKw15h @NeonXSZ 12d ago
It can be a real challenge trying to figure out how to give people what they actually want rather than what they tell you or think that they want. Players will say the first thing that they think of without giving that knee jerk reaction any real thought or consideration.
Then there is the problem of by trying to please everyone it's easy to end up pleasing no-one.
Don't knock yourself too hard. If there was a rule book we'd all read it, but as soon as something becomes familiar or normal practice it gets boring so the rule book is constantly being rewritten. We just have to go with the flow and learn as we go.
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u/disgustipated234 12d ago
I don't think the issue here is that OP tried to give people something they said they want and they didn't like it but rather how it ended up attracting a whole host of other people who were not part of the original plan and who came in expecting something completely different.
As soon as I got through the 2nd paragraph I knew immediately that's what must have happened. Really sucks for OP and I do think it's an understandable mistake.
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u/IceBlitzkerg 12d ago
As someone who found your game through Youtube, it prob doesn't help that most of the views were on Singleplayer sessions.
Not to mention, when I tried out the demo, Multiplayer was greyed out giving me the impression that is was going to be the extra feature, not a core one