ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 มิ.ย. 2024
- A deep dive into the question "Can you sell a Pico-8 game?"
Data and visualization here:
👉 bit.ly/pico8gamessales
Support the developers with the Pico-8 Premium Bundle:
👉 itch.io/b/1104/pico-8-premium...
Videos and talks I've mentioned in the video:
👉 • Let's Be Realistic: A ...
👉 • How to Survive in Game...
👉 • Investigation: How Rob...
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00:00 Intro
02:18 Disclaimer
03:26 Most successful Pico-8 games
06:27 Thresholds
11:49 Sale strategies
13:21 Graph 2 - Revenue vs Views
18:41 Graph 3 - Payments vs Views
24:00 Graph 4 - Average price
27:23 Pressure to maximize value
33:36 Graph 5 - The Unfair Graph
36:18 Finding value
39:23 Caveats
40:53 Comparisons to other platforms
44:02 Takeaways
48:34 Pico-8 Premium Bundle
49:00 Outro
#pico8 #gamedev #itch #tutorial #indiedev - เกม
This is an insane amount of data! Thanks for doing all this work mate. There's loads of interesting (i.e. unexpected) stuff in here.
This encouraged me to buy the pico-8 premium bundle. Thanks!
I have to say, that was a great video! The findings and takeaways from your research were really interesting to see and there's a lot of interesting stuff to take away from it.
I'm glad I was able to contribute to the data.
Such an amazing video! Amazing breakdown of all of this data, and so glad to be a part of it! Thank you! :)
I've been working for several months now on a PICO-8 game, and as the months grow long, I've started asking myself whether I'd like to monetize it when it's done. Before I watched this video, I had a feeling that $4 would be a fair price. I think it's a funny number, because in my head, games either fall into the $1-$3 range (mobile/browser games), or $5+ (Steam), but I feel like PICO-8 exists just between those markets. So I'm astonished to learn that there is some data that suggests that $4 is an ideal asking price! I still have a lot of variables to consider but this video has been a masterclass - thank you.
Interesting deep dive. As a possibly aspiring Pico-8/Playdate developer, I was looking into the feasibility of at least breaking even for the time spent making a game. Thank you for your research and time spent on condensing all the information into a video format.
Great video! Great food for thought when it comes to not only selling Pico-8 games but any indie games.
This is such a good video. Thank you for putting it together.
Amazing analysis and discussion, very nice.
I think the question is not so much, "Can I sell a Pico-8 game" but "WILL I sell a Pico-8 game." And for that I believe you need consummate skill, not just in the game you are marketing but the process of marketing itself.
Yes. That‘s kinda what the video is about.
Yeah, it’s just a hobby for me, I don’t wanna charge for something like that, unless I feel like I put enough time and effort into it and made it something that I myself would pay to play, but so far I don’t think any of my work is worth money. Maybe one day I can become a real game dev.
amazing video!
i been a fan of pico-8 for many years but haven't interacted much with the comunity, but when a person anounced his pico-8 project on a shmup group, and his intention of selling it on steam, i jumped aboard adding the game to my wish list to notify me when it was released...
I purchased the game but still haven't played it yet, still was cheap on full price.
Personally i wouldn't sell my games on pico-8 at the moment, since for me is more about exploration of game mechanics and the comunity, but i also encourage for people to support other creators that are interested in making money, specially if their game is something you find interesting or compelling.
Great insight! Thank you very much for making the video! Glad my data contributes for making the graph and the video UwU.
As for pico8 game earning, even my game assets total earning has exceeded my pico8 game total earning (even combined with non-exclusive license :').
But even my indie gamedev earning (game + game assets) still got exceeded with my non-gamedev projects by huge margin in just few months and very less effort :').
Yeah that's something I noticed. On Itch.io gaming assets actually tend to sell better than games.
Thank you for the great video, I am trying to bring some Pico-8 games to Apple devices right now just iOS/iPad (but in future appleTV and MacOS)
The turquoise colors in your camera background is juicy. As a guy after film school I gotta say, I like the turquoise spill that falls on your face and a nice contrast with orange skin. Great color grading/lighting. And it is a nice break because every youtuber I see has a purple/blue mix. (which is nice, but I have a little bit enough of looking at it :) )
Thanks for the awesome breakdown of all the data. I'm working on a game in Godot and was a bit curious about the possibility of using a Pico-8 game as a way to drum up attention for a game's release. It would be a simplified version of the game released for free in hopes of getting eyes on my actual game. It probably won't be worth it, but it might be fun to try it anyways.
Some devs do demakes of their games. It is usually more for fun than to promote the full game. I think the other way around it makes more sense - develop a prototype in Pico-8 to test the mechanics and get audience feedback. Later, remake that Pico-8 prototype in a bigger engine as a commercial product. That was basically Celeste or Slipways.
amazing analysis, thank you!
would be cool to see this but for the indie industry
Very good work! It's interesting how the games that make the most money are actually the one's that have a hard paywall. It's hard to evaluate the sweetspot of the offer and demand when most of the games are sold at an underprice.
Thats an awesome amout of data 😲 ... I believe that we all can learn a lot from this. Thank you very very very much 😍
I’m sure this took a lot of work to put together. Thanks for sharing with the community.
Absolutely fantastic video and topic here. I'm glad you mentioned the GDC video by Jake Birkett, that's the first time I'd seen a developer talk so frankly about the touchy subject of sales and revenue.
It'd be interesting to know how many of the paywalled games also have the carts on splore or include the cart in the download so are still kind of 'open' to allow coders to see how it's done even if it has to be paid for first.
Jake is a treasure. Good question about the sourcecode. I have seen some devs doing it, but not often enough to warrant me tacking it. I do think it might be a worthwhile thing to include.
(watches video expecting to see that selling games is a no-no under the TOS somewhere he missed)
(gets a whole meta-analysis on the financial viability of indie games... fascinating)
Hee hee, I'd seen some Pico-8 games with your logo. Amazing work, as always.
Thanks! 😁
Great video. Thanks for covering it!
I'm glad you touched on expectations of platform. I wonder how much the idea that PICO-8 games are meant to be free might make people less willing to spend money on games they might spend on the Switch store Google/Apple phone app store, for example.
Also-and I know this info would be very hard to get-I wonder how to factor in games that might have been supported by backers (e.g. Patreon or Ko-fi). Like, the games are free or pay-what-you-want, but the dev's time was kind of paid for by supporters.
There are not enough crowdfunded Pico-8 devs to make any statistical analysis worthwhile. If you are interested in that I would suggest research crowdfunding for games in general.
I don't really make pico games but if the tool isn't free then its unfair to expect everything made using the tool to be free, right?
🤔 I believe it's more about the work than the tool...look, if I'm a carpenter and someone gives me a hammer, should all the houses or furniture I make with that hammer be free? 🤔
It's an odd way to ask the question. If your argument is that more devs SHOULD put a price on their Pico-8 games then I think we probably agree. But that isn't really tied to the price of the tools. As discussed at 6:40, assuming 100 hours of development time, there is like 4500 USD worth of labor in a Pico-8 game. The price of Pico-8 itself doesn't really move the needle here. Or to put it this way: if Pico-8 was free, nothing about the arguments and the math in the video would change.
I miss the tutorial and classes series... still, excellent video!!
Working on the next one. Don't worry, they'll be back. This is to fill in the waiting time.
So I don't mean any of my comments here to be derogatory against Pico 8. I love the program, but there are some other factors not considered, and some missing data that may affect the ability to monetize a Pico 8 game. The first obvious one would be how much do the limitations of Pico 8 (which I enjoy) limit the ability to make an "attractive" game, as in something that is more likely to sell? While I think what makes a good game is gameplay, there is no doubt that graphics sell, and while I think there are beautiful pico 8 games, there's a limited subset here of what is possible. I'd include the aspect ratio in this. The simple reality is, we live in a widescreen world, and many people don't like the forced aspect ratio. This is a problem for fans of emulation as well, with bezels and all forms of trying to work around this being a very real thing.
The second question I'd have is how much does the nature of how Pico 8 works, and it's own availability to everyone, including the website, the downloadable version with splore, and the fact that you can, if you own the software, make a standalone exe of any game posted to the bbs, affect the potential for sales? If I'm visible on itch.io, and I have a good game, but I've posted to the Lexaloffle bbs, it would make more sense for someone to go straight to Lexaloffle, buy pico 8 and play my game through the splore menu, rather than buy just my game as a one off. In other words, it seems that making a Pico 8 game, and the nature of how great the community is, works against selling my own stuff, but works in favor of selling Pico 8 itself. This leads me to say that when you make a Pico 8 game, it's probably best to consider it a prototyping tool (ala celeste) than to consider it a tool for an end result.
With all that said, I'm not really a Pico 8 user because I ever expected it to make me any money. Being an old school guy (and an old guy :D) it just feels good to use. It's simple, but powerful, and the restriction makes it feel more freeing to me, as I don't have to be bogged won in 200 pages of class/function docs to put a game together. I don't need to think about other tools, and the limitations keep me in check for not scope creeping my basic idea into an unfinishable mess.
Thanks for this thoughtful comment, Addison.
Your first concern (limitations reducing sales) is something I've heard a lot and I've been wondering about myself. It was one of the things I wanted to test in this survey. It's essentially what the 3rd graph is about (Starting at 18:41). The gist is: If it exists at all, the effect is smaller than people make it out to be. It's not adequate to explain the overall low revenue. And there are good examples of games selling as well as comparable games in less limited engines. It is most likely not the thing that is limiting the sales. People will buy Pico-8 games basically just like any other game - for better of worse.
As for your second question (Pico-8 ecosystem limiting the sales) - it's a bit of a vague concern. Not sure how you'd measure that in a way that is not already addressed in the question above. I can say that a lot of people, who sell the game through a hard paywall on Itch will often just chose not to upload it to the Lexaloffle BBS or create a limited demo version for the BBS. Personally, I don't think that's even necessary. People will buy even games that are playable directly in the browser on the same page, just for the convenience of being able to run the game as a stand-alone version.
I do agree that Pico-8 is a pleasant and effective prototyping too. Just watch out. It spoils other frameworks for you. ;)
Pico-8 reminds me of the old flash games in a way. Small little things which yeah you *can* sell, technically, but that's not really how it's used best.
Nice!
A phenomenally good analysis video.
So much to take onboard here (& lots of potential tips to consider).
Thank you Krystian
Glad you enjoyed it!
AWESOME
damn good work
i love your breakout tutorial and porklike tutorial :)
Thanks. I love your work on TIC-80. I keep a bookmark for your channel ready for when the times comes to do something in that engine.
@@LazyDevs I actually learnt TIC-80 by watching your Breakout Tutorial lol.
I knew many programming languages before , but i didn't know Lua or API of TIC-80 :)
@@PotatoImaginator I learn from you and you learn from me! 😂
32:40 interesting
If you do it for fun time don't mean much I'd love to mack a game I'm getting in to it free to start just dyslexic so only thing holding me back
Thanks coding is a pain for dyslexic people but is to rong to copy a another game and mack it your Owen so can I still sell it ?
can you sell a pico-8 game?
no, yes, maybe?
celeste:
Well Classic Celeste and Celeste 2 are both free. But I agree, I would easily pay for them
@@LazyDevs celeste is free?? (i should have known)
you can sell, it's in pico8 license, but normally nobody would buy anyway.😂, and generally people in the community prefer open source
That's the first seconds of the video, yes
Oh, and what about devs like me who got PICO-8 itself as part of a bundle? When you measured whether they got back the $15, did you account for this?
The 15$ line is just a reference to have context for the revenue numbers. This is not a cost vs revenue analysis.
Your not selling your work your selling your self.
The worst thing is you can just right click + save as
The game you've embedded on the website doesn't need to be the same you offer for download after purchase. It is possible to offer a limited demo version. But also, people do ask for stand-alone executable versions and will be willing to pay for it
If pico8 is all about sharing and not money then why isn’t pico8 itself free? 🤔
I think you need to spell out your whole argument. I don't quite see what you're getting at.
Pico8 is about learning lua and making hobby projects so as an educational tool it definitely worths the money.
I wouldn't be able to learn lua so quickly if there wasn't pico8.
Because developing the app itself, maintaining the BBS/splore, and managing the many ports all take time and money. The price on the software itself pays for that, and allows the games therein to be largely free (even Poom, if obtained on Splore). The $15 is basically a lifetime infrastructure maintenance fee, if you will.
@@phj9894 well there's love2d though it isn't a fantasy console like pico 8 is, it's just a normal lua based game engine
The conclusion is one.
We need to have micro-transactions in pico-8!!!
...and loot boxes!
Heh, oh god, hopefully not. The fact that predatory monetizing practices exist doesn't man that making money with games has to be exploitative.
So, in short... you can sell it to make *some* money, but don't expect to make much from it unless it's insanely impressive (like POOM)?
Sure, that's a valid takeaway.
8th!
Perasnen happy Ness to mack a game and sell it or it goes big time I'd do 1£ a game
Frage ist ja auch, wie man das mit der Steuer macht...
Ja, kann etwas kompliziert sein. Aber einen Ertrag zu erwirtschaften bei dem man sich um die Steuer sorgen machen muss ist ein erstrebenswertes Ziel.
It seems like the take away is, pico-8 is for making games, not making money lol
As in, use it to learn game dev, and be part of the community
The take away is more like "making money with games is hard and Pico-8 is no different"
If you wanna work in the gaming industry, showing up to an interview with a Pico 8 game instead of a degree will give you the best odds.
Are you for real?
@@Ram-lr6ud Yes. Do you think otherwise?
@@ustrucx just curious. I would love to get a coding job but don't know how to break into the industry.
@@Ram-lr6ud As someone who have hired extensively I can guarantee you have better odds if you show something you coded. It can be anything, if it is related to the area you are applying for it is twice as good.
When they ask, and they will ask, during the interview "what have you been doing in the mean time/in between jobs/since college?" if you can honestly answer something like "I have been learning how to use GitHub and have committed/forked these test/personal projects to it, I also kept track of these projects using Jira and made documentation for the code on this Google Doc/Confluence. Also, for the fun, I made these OKRs for my personal growth and ended up learning a bit of Linux/Docker in the process".
This works best for startups because you will likely be interviewing with your boss and peers and they will love the fact that they don't have to teach you how to do basic industry stuff. Plus startups will offer options if you join early enough and you will have the opportunity to learn all the things no one likes to do so you become indispensable and have enough time to vest the sweet sweet options. Good luck!!
@@Ram-lr6ud That is great!!! You should be proud and definitely show it during interviews!!! It is very likely once you show this to a coder they will make the whole interview about it, which is great for you.
Aren't PICO-8 games open-source by nature? How can you then prevent others from simply copying and spreading your game?
What do you mean. All games are just files. Everbody can copy any game and spread it. It's just illegal
@@LazyDevs Yes, but when your game is literally nothing more than a 32k image file it sure becomes VERY easy. In a matter of speaking, you could pass it along simply using smoke signals. Or by sneezing a couple of times, lol. Also, PICO's entire philosophy seems to be about learning, sharing, improving each-others games.
So any personal morals aside, _realistically_ a PICO-8 game could _at most_ be considered donationware.
@@keplerfinn The size of games does little to prevent or encourage piracy. Many retro games are also tiny for modern standards. Still plenty of retro re-releases, compilations and virtual consoles are financially viable. The prices for original retro games and systems are at an all-time high despite emulation being widely available.
I do agree with point on Pico-8's philosophy. I address that in the video.
If your goal is people to play it, the more you market the more people will play it. And to effectively market you need money. So you choose the best way to achieve your goals.
BRASIIIIIIILLLL EEEEEEOOOOO 🇧🇷 🇧🇷 🇧🇷 🇧🇷 🇧🇷
BRASIIIILLLL EEEEEEOOOOOOO
The title is a bit confusing considering the actual topic.
Perhaps a more on-topic one would be better?
Like "Can You Make Good Money from Selling PICO-8 Games?" or something snappier.
Yes. But I also discuss this issue literally one minute into the video ;)
@@LazyDevs Indeed, I did see that part.
However, people who only get to see the title might think otherwise (lots of people don't click if the title doesn't hook them).
I believe the PICO-8 site does say you can sell your games, and if people decide to check that, they might decide to skip your video.
Eh, perhaps I'm being overly concerned.
@@FloatingSunfish Oh I see what you mean. Yeah there is potential for misunderstanding. I chose the less accurate phrasing in favor of snappiness. Also I believe this is this is the first thing people would type in as a search phrase when researching the topic.
Legally you can, but you can't make something that worths money with pico8.
By the time you complete a basic gameplay loop the token limit locks you.
A common sentiment but ultimately not one that is supported by the numbers. Certainly not to that extent. I discuss this multiple times in the video, for example 28:50
I mean, you won't make a lot, but it's possible to do well within the token limit. or hypothetically sidestep it.
man this was bleak if you want to make a living out of it
I'm going to guess that because the quality of PICO-8 games is purposely lower end not many people are going to see the purchase as worth it for any amount over a dollar.
To really make money you would be better off selling games at a lower cost, .50 cents, maybe even .25. While this sum is terribly low especially for the amount of work put in and even the quality gained from the product, for most people it's a poultry sum that they would buy it with almost as much consideration as if it was free.
An alternative is to bundle multiple games for roughly a dollar, increasing the value of the package, thus making it more likely that someone will buy the games. Although I'm going to guess that people are less likely to buy 4 games for a dollar than they are one game for .25 cents or even .50 cents.
Sounds like you haven't watched the video
Pushamo's site also says it gives 100% of its sales to the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network. Do you think that contributes to its success?
Great video, thank you so much for taking the time to generate and offer your insight.
I don't think charity donations make a difference.
Nice!