But I was really confident about how good the game was. Running out of money and borrowing money from your mom when you're forty-seven and have a child is (laughs) maybe not the best place to be emotionally. Even if the game sells zero copies on Steam I'm super proud of how it's coming out.Ĭlearly, it's a huge investment both creatively and financially for me, and so I was super nervous. I invested a ton, and I'm very proud of the game. On the run-up to Steam, I had a ton of anxiety over whether the game was going to sell. They allowed you to go, for me for example, it definitely helped. But I think if you were intelligent and understanding of how the business works, those numbers only helped. If you just take the number and multiply it by the sale price, that's not what the people were making, because there's sales and such. There's certainly some negative things about it. I think things like SteamSpy were a net positive. I have to find out from Steam what I can share, as there are certain NDAs stuff involved, but I plan on sharing as much as I possibly can, just because I think it helps people make decisions. I have some developer friends who are not as in favor. People are also trying to figure out exactly what the multiplier for reviews to sales is, and trying to bound that kind of thing. Wawro: On the front page of Gamasutra is a very good blog about how important Steam wishlists are.
#Spyparty steam people playing now movie#
"The only thing that makes it possible to know is that people are sharing numbers.the movie industry shares all their numbers, and I think that's great." We have a post on Gamasutra, on Steam wishlists. As an indie developer, what have been your thoughts about sharing this kind of information, and how do you think, looking at when you started, how other developers can take advantage of this kind of information when they can get access to it? Because it's one thing when one can get something like SteamSpy or the other numbers gurus out there. We recently chatted with Hecker on the Gamasutra Twitch channel, and we did our best to try and understand what he's learned about game marketing and game design while releasing SpyParty to the public.īelow, we've excerpted two key parts of our discussion for you to read, one focusing on the sales plans Hecker made before pushing the big 'launch' button on Steam, and the other analyzing the different advanced playstyles of SpyParty, to help you think about how your players might interact with your multiplayer game.Ĭhris Hecker, Indie developer of SpyParty Let's talk sales numbers for an indie in 2018įrancis: Your development process is pretty cool, but it's also interesting because you have a background in AAA at large companies, which are notoriously fickle about what numbers they release to the public and to other developers. Luckily, you don't have to work on a game for 10 years or be making a 1v1 multiplayer game to pick up what Hecker is putting down. The current main gameplay mode is 1v1 Spy versus Sniper online multiplayer, although there is limited single-player Sniper play right now, and a single player Spy and Sniper practice mode for trying out missions and whatnot.Booting up the game will give developers plenty of opportunities to study its underlying game design, tutorialization, and matchmaking, but what other lessons can developers learn from the success of developer Chris Hecker's carefully crafted passion project? Finally you can be like the suave and confident spies you find in films or books, risking it all by doing the final mission right in front of the sniper as the clock runs out! There are plenty of games that explore being a super-powered commando with an infinite supply of ammunition and no brains SpyParty is a new and quite different game about the more interesting, deeper, and more subtle aspects of being a spy. While most spy games have you machine-gunning stuff, blowing things up, and driving fast, SpyParty has you hide in plain sight, blend into a high-society cocktail party, deceive your opponent, and detect subtle behavioral tells to achieve your objectives and not get shot. SpyParty is a competitive espionage game about human behavior, performance, perception, and deception.