Post-mortem Warbits games

Risky Lab, authors of the strategyWarbits, the “ideological heir” of Advance Wars, told how the game was created. We have translated the text and are sharing it with you.

Stupid idea

Although everything worked out with Warbits, but the idea was stupid from the very beginning. Not that it’s not worth embodying at all. It would just be nice to debut in game dev in a more elegant way. After all, it is very risky to spend four years of development and several thousand personal funds on a niche strategy for platform 1. Yes, there was an undeveloped market space for our game. And yet, we swung so badly for the first time. We were very lucky: the game got into the “Editors’ Choice” and received two weeks of features in the App Store, for which we will be forever grateful. But there were no guarantees. Fortunately, Warbits turned out to be successful – thanks to hard work and an endless amount of friendly support.

Don’t talk to strangers!

Risky Lab is the most ordinary indie studio of two people. With one small feature: for 4 years of development, we have never seen each other in person.

Joe Borghetti from Boston had a programming part. And I, Reilly Stroope from Dallas, was responsible for all the art. We met at a small forum for techies and artists. We were connected by the desire to work on a mobile game, and in 2012 we started doing our first project in our free time. A little later (ha!), in April 2016, we finished and launched Warbits.

How did the idea of Warbits come about?

In general, we got involved in the development because we were incredibly naive. Warbits gave rise to the desire to embody the magic of Advance Wars in mobile. We’ll make a cute toy quickly. Nothing complicated. According to our estimates, it should have taken 6 months. Very quickly it became clear what exactly made the Advance Wars series so deep with its apparent external simplicity. The toy was not so simple.

Well, how did you do it?

Making a high-quality project with only two enthusiasts with zero experience in development is a ridiculous idea. But we honestly tried. We made up for the lack of experience with perseverance. And the time spent. We both worked full-time in parallel, which determined the fate of Warbits. This slowed down the development process significantly, but allowed us to spend the first two years trying to figure out how these games of yours are made in general. And since we treated it more as a hobby, and not as a potential main source of income, it greatly reduced the stress level. We quickly got used to the fact that we come home from work in the evening and sit down to do Warbits. At first, we communicated by mail using very long e-mail chains, and then switched to Google Hangouts, which allowed us to maintain constant communication. Through Hangouts, we could quickly exchange ideas during the day, and switch to voice communication in the evening.

Development

• Language: Objective-C
• Engine: Cocos-2D
• Platform: Universal iOS

It took 4 years to develop Warbits. I don’t mean that it takes 4 years to create a game like Warbits. It took us 4 years. When you want to create a game, it would be nice to start by knowing exactly how games are made. We spent a good part of all 4 years trying to figure out all sorts of things unfamiliar to us – how to program in Objective-C, what sprites and git repositories are.

We started with a complete mess, but gradually adjusted the process. We worked with Trello, Dropbox and Google Hangouts. We tried other tools for project management, but it was more difficult to work with them. Plus, not all of what these tools offered was necessary for us. We needed a place to gather ideas and work with them. Therefore, Trello, which could be constantly customized to our needs, became an ideal tool.

What did our hobby cost us?

Joe and I split all the expenses, except for what was spent on equipment such as laptops or smartphones, in half. Looking back, I realize that we were very economical.

Total Cost: $12,384

Payment to freelancers: $11,029

• Music and Sound Effects: $2395
• Promotional Trailer: $1,650
• Level Design: $1060
• Backend programming (not needed): $5600
• Map Editor (not needed): $324

Apple Developer License: $396

Dropbox Pro: $959

Macbook Pro (Not included in the total): $2248

What didn’t work out?

As I already mentioned, it was not necessary to grab Warbits right away. The project is too ambitious, the mechanics are too complicated. Therefore, absolutely everything had to be reached through pain and suffering.

This includes a large investment in backend programming, which we made even before we estimated the amount of future work on the game. If we had started with more modest games, we would have felt more confident in working on this project and would have completed it faster. Looking back, I understand that every problem we faced was due to a lack of experience. If it wasn’t for the feature, Warbits could have passed unnoticed at all, and then we would only have to bite our elbows. It’s always easier to survive disappointment with a small project than to invest everything in a big game and miscalculate big.

Launch

• The launch took place on April 13 at 18 o’clock
• Global Release (English only)
• The regular price was $3.99, during the launch there was a discount of up to $2.99
• 20 campaigns with online multiplayer and local multiplayer

A couple of days before the launch, we found that the update rate of the “New Games” section in the App Store had dropped to a minimum. We even heard rumors that some developers were asked not to launch this week. Needless to say, we were very nervous. But the next morning, the charity campaign “For the Good of the Earth” (Apps for Earth) started. In the place where new applications usually appeared, now there were applications that participated in the campaign. And just below was the “Editors’ Choice” with Warbits. We rejoiced.

We have a theory that due to the launch of “For the Good of the Earth”, the release dates of major applications were pushed back, thanks to which Warbits got into the “Editors’ Choice”. We were lucky, and even after the event ended, we stayed in the feature for another week. It couldn’t be better!

Sales and criticism

We created a paid niche game and launched under unusual circumstances. So it’s difficult to compare our results with others. We hope the information below will still be interesting.

In the first two weeks of sales, we collected 87% of the total revenue. The second week of the feature greatly influenced the final amount.

As can be seen from the graph, as soon as the week “For the Good of the Earth” ended, the feature with us moved to the top of the App Store page, which gave the first jump in sales. On the first Friday after the launch, we sold 5 thousand copies. It was a lot of fun watching Warbits climb to the top of iTunes despite the $2.99 price tag. Now that everything has leveled off, we sell about 1 thousand copies a month.

Figures from the American App Store (April 15, 2016)

• Sold: 5290
• Place in the general category: #15
• Place in the “Games” category: #11
• Place in the “Strategies” category: #3
• Place in the “Adventure Games” category: #4

Sales

• Total sold in the first week after launch: 26 thousand
• Second week: 19.5 thousand
• For all time: 53, 1 thousand
• Total sales: $173 thousand
• Total income: $116 thousand

The reviews on both iTunes and blogs were incredibly positive!

Despite the fact that we sent hundreds of letters to the editors of popular gaming sites, there were no reviews there. But the mobile gaming community loved us.

From the very beginning it was clear that it was impossible to please everyone. It’s quite unpleasant to read negative reviews, but some comments can help you find out about small (or not so small) bugs. We try to respond to all feedback.

What happened?

We met a lot of interesting and enthusiastic people. The support from friends, players and professional developers was simply invaluable. The beta launch team helped us a lot, and these guys stayed with us until the very end. We learned a lot about how to make and sell games. At the very beginning, of course, we didn’t understand what we were getting into. But the lessons learned will help us in working on future projects. Amazing reviews have come to our game, so we can’t wait to start a new project.

Source: Gamasutra