Weapon of Choice DX Out Now!

I'm proud to say that the remastered "Weapon of Choice DX" is out now on all consoles!

Here are all the store links:

Xbox One and Series X (Worldwide)
Nintendo Switch (North America)
Nintendo Switch (Europe)
Playstation 4 and 5 (North America)
Playstation 4 and 5 (Europe)

Way back in 2008, I released Weapon of Choice, my first indie games as "Mommy's Best Games". That was after working in AAA games for 10 years!

A lot has changed, and Weapon of Choice is so old (how old is it??) it was first released in 4:3 aspect ratio, with many gamers playing it on a CRT TV!

The new DX remaster has lots of improvements over the original, and surprising one to need was "16:9 widescreens support"! I didn't just slap some bars on it though, the actual level design and layout was changed to properly support a widescreen play area. In addition the game now blasts along at 60 fps!

There's lots of new changes from the old Xbox 360 release as well, including hidden MBG pies to discover, 7 total difficulty settings, and of course Trophies/Achievements to unlock! 

So grab it this weekend on your favorite console for only $5.99, and let's blast some hideous aliens!

Thanks for all the years of support and happy shooting!

Weapon of Choice DX Is Gunning Soon to Consoles!

Way back in 2008, we released our very first indie game Weapon of Choice on Xbox 360 to great acclaim. And I'm excited to announce it's now being remastered as "Weapon of Choice DX"!

The game will release on September 2nd on Nintendo Switch, both PS4 and PS5, and both on the Xbox One and the Xbox One Series X. I've been working on this one for the past few months with my game dev friends at Super Soul, to port it to all the consoles. 

If you've missed my other DX releases, check out my blog posts on the development of Shoot 1UP DX and Explosionade DX. 

 

Innovations of Choice

As a reminder of what makes the game so special, Weapon of Choice DX is a riff on the "run and gun" sub-genre similar to games like Contra and Mega Man. There are many innovations in the design including "death-brushing" which causes all time to slow down if you are about to be killed, thus giving you a chance to escape your brush with death. 

Another big change is the ability to find new players. You start with 3 "lives" like a traditional shooting game, but here all 3 lives are unique characters. And if you die, you can actually rescue the downed person, and get them out of the level (thus getting your "life" back). Each of these characters has their own special "weapon of choice" for players the learn how to use. Players can also find entirely new characters that have fallen in battle. If you rescue this new character, they permanently stay in your group, ready to fight and add to your total life count.

The level design is also unique. While the game is short to beat, there are many branching paths and 4 possible endings. This encourages replaying the game multiple times, and with different characters.

Deluxe Treatment

Remastering Weapon of Choice DX focused on several technical issues. The game has high-res textures, and large expansive levels. It was difficult and took substantial optimizations from the Super Soul team, to get the game running at 60 frames a second on all consoles. The hand-held mode for the Nintendo Switch is sadly slower and less powerful than most of the other consoles and layouts, so it took extra work to get the game up to par there. 

The hand-drawn was also all up-rezzed to 4K and looks extra nice on a big TV. Full button remapping was added, per console layout, as well.

For gameplay content, the game does remain similar to the Steam release back in 2015. There are "Mommy's Best Games pies" hidden throughout the game. Progress is tracked and recorded and encourages the player to find all the pies for an unlockable Achievement/Trophy! The original Xbox 360 release had 3 difficulty settings, but there are now 7 difficulty settings adding plenty of challenge. 

I also took time to tweak the 'death-brushing' effect. Now the game darkens the background entirely to make it easier to see you and the dangerous threat, which is better than the earlier versions of the game.

Deluxe Challenge

The DX version has also been made a bit tougher than any other version! With the game now running well at 60 fps, some bosses were going down too easily. I personally worked on rebalancing the game (testing on console hardware), and I tweaked all boss health, and some smaller enemy fights to keep things challenging and satisfying. The player speed and movement has been increased making the feel of the game much snappier than the original release.

 Pre-Order Power

Weapon of Choice DX is currently available to pre-order on Xbox One here. 

The Nintendo Switch pre-order starts on July 21st. 

We tried to get as long a pre-order as possible as that seems to help sales. I think this is because the pre-order sits in a special section of the digital stores, basically sectioned off from the giant warehouse of "released games". 

We'll also the have the pre-order in both the Europe and North America Nintendo Switch store pretty early, which we've struggled to get approved as quickly before. This is our 3rd DX game, so at this point, we're finally getting pretty good at the store approval process. It is a lot of work, but clearly important. 

In the meantime, grab the pre-order please, tell your friends, and stay tuned for release on September 2nd!

Development Year in Review 2015

We can't find out what's wrong or what went well if we don't take time to see what we've done!
With that, let's look at what Mommy's Best Games did in 2015!

We released a new game this year, Finger Derpy. We also re-released 4 of our classic games, as enhanced ports to Steam, and called it the "Mommy's Best Action Pack".

January

Pig Eat Ball is the main project, but after talking to Nintendo and Sony and wanting to have the game on those platforms, it's clear we can't do it as it stands. The game is written in Java and simply won't run on consoles. I talk to John Meister from nearby game group Super Soul and we start working together. His team starts to port the game to Unity. This will allow us to more easily choose what Pig Eat Ball is available on.

In the meantime I start heavily working on Finger Derpy. Matthew and Andrew continue work on Pig Eat Ball core content. This means Matthew is writing code for new gameplay objects, and Andrew is designing and building new levels.

February

I focus on Finger Derpy and getting deals with local businesses to support the game. Here in the presskit, you can read more about our integration with Louisville landmarks.

March

More of the same, development wise.
Plus we show our games at the Louisville Arcade Expo!

April

Finger Derpy launched April 9th

Released Finger Derpy! First to iOS on the 9th, then to Google Play on the 19th. We held our big "Chomp the BIT" launch party that Friday. We organized the event in which 25 local developers showed off their games at an arcade bar in town.
Apple featured the game in the App Store as a 'Best New Game' which was a big deal and really helped downloads.
Also youtuber 'Cuqquake' featured the game, got plenty of views, and we've gotten a decent number of user reviews saying they saw the game on her channel.

May

During April and May we showed Finger Derpy at 10 local shows (in 5 weeks). It was exhausting. Between all of them, the Pegasus Preview Parade and the Thunderblast were beneficial in terms of download numbers. I think this was a matter of 'correct engagement' with large crowds that actually were interested in games.
Some of the events we showed the game at just had lots of drunken people. There was high traffic, but low interest/engagement/memory retention. Just because there's lots of people at an event doesn't mean you should show your game there.

June

Started porting the Mommy's Best Action Pack to Steam. This involved changing the games Weapon of Choice, Shoot 1UP, Explosionade, and Game Type, and making them great Steam ports. These games were all originally released between 2008 and 2011. They were made in XNA.
This involved adding lots of extra, though small features, which takes time. Some of the games did get new content as well, such as the collectible MBG pies in Weapon of Choice.
Scott Slucher from the U of L area started as a coop student working on the port.

July

MBG Action Pack porting by Scott and myself.
I also help Andrew and Matthew continue on PEB. We try to limit too much extra additions because John has to constantly port things from the old Java to the new, half-working Unity build.

August

Much of the same as July.

September

Shipped the Mommy's Best Action Pack on September 23rd!

For Pig Eat Ball, we're continuing to wait on the Unity build to be finished and usable on our side. Until we can write new code in the actual Unity build and until I can give Andrew the level editor that way, we have to continue with the Java build, which is tough having two versions being developed.
 

November

Finger Derpy Thanksgiving update!
Got featured again by Cupquake, definitely helped our player numbers.
Working on Pig Eat Ball gameplay in Java, as the Unity build continues.
Steam Autumn sale for MBG Action Pack.

December

Finger Derpy Winter update!
Unfortunately no big youtubers covered it, but the numbers were up through Christmas.
Working on Pig Eat Ball gameplay as the Unity build continues.
Steam Holiday sale for MBG Action Pack.

Finances

This was our most prolific game year, if you look at straight 'games shipped'--we ported 4 games and released 1 new game. So 5 games were released in this year. But this was our worst year financially.
Serious Sam Double D XXL continues to sell well and supports us, but it's sales are slowly declining.
In years past we were releasing one big game every two years. 2011 was Serious Sam DD to Steam, and 2013 was Serious Sam DD XXL to XBLA and then back to Steam (with lots more content).
2015 should have been Pig Eat Ball, in theory, but it's simply not finished. So instead, we released a free-to-play game, with ad-supported revenue and In-App Purchases, but while it made some money, it has still not covered it's development costs. Then we also released 4 ports of our older games, but they did not sell as well as hoped.

2016

The good news for January is Super Soul finished the Unity port and the game works great! We're working on the game now in Unity and things are moving swiftly.
This is the year for Pig Eat Ball.
Let's make it great, and get it out the door!

Action Pack New Features

We recently released our classic action games to Steam in the Mommy's Best Action Pack. The games are available individually or in this handy bundle: http://store.steampowered.com/sub/76770/
 But these aren't just straight ports--they're new, improved, and super high quality PC entertainment!
Assuming you already know about the original releases, I'll detail what's new in the Steam versions.

Weapon of Choice

Store link:  http://store.steampowered.com/app/373600

All New Achievements

This game never had Achievements, as such, everything in it is new! Of course, there are some easy ones (such as saving an operative) and some very tough ones. A few of the most difficult Achievements involve getting really skilled at using Xerxes and his Jet Engine gun. Those are 'Snappy Start' which is a speed run of the first level, and 'Airtime' which requires you to float through level 1 to the boss, without touching the ground!

Airtime will take some serious practice!

The most involved Achievement, which really changes the game, is 'Tasty'. This requires you to find 13 hidden MBG pies scattered throughout all the levels. Don't worry, it's not impossible, as there is a list that is shown on the title screen, once you find your first pie, to help you know where to look. "Out of reach places" are a good place to start!

The pie list

This one's a gimmie! Go get it!

Here's a list of more features added to the Steam version of Weapon of Choice:

• Increased player run speed
• Increased resolution in new, widescreen view
• Keyboard controls (in addition to the original Xbox controller option)
• Fully remappable buttons and inputs  
• Steam features: Achievements, Trading Cards, and Steam Cloud for saves

Speaking of which, the Trading Cards and backgrounds are awesome! Enjoy!

Moses Longhorn, taking care of business

Explosionade

Store link:  http://store.steampowered.com/app/373620

New Enemies and Level Layouts

The main issue I had with Explosionade was it was a little easy and didn't have enough unique monsters. I made sure to address that in this new version! There are now nearly double the basic enemy types from the original release! The levels, especially in Serious mode, have all been re-tuned to feature some of the new creatures and bump up the difficulty a bit. The nastiest ones are Horronym Bruisers with the laser cannon. They are relentless and require some real strategy to knock them out of their foxholes.

That laser Bruiser will take you down a notch!

The new Jellies tend to take over you if you don't keep their numbers in check.

Practice Mode

There is now a rich Practice menu system, that let's you select any level, in any difficulty you've already reached, so that you can practice your strategy for the highest score. Whether you want to go for all kills, or go for fastest time, this is the way to climb the leaderboards.

More features added now to the Steam version of Explosionade:

• Improved grenades for better control (you can hold them longer, letting them bounce even further if you want.) 
• Color adjustment to player 2 for better visibility;  laser sight on the mech to improve aiming
• Keyboard controls (in addition to the original Xbox controller option)
• Fully remappable buttons and inputs  
• Steam features: Leaderboards per difficulty, Achievements, Trading Cards, and Steam Cloud for saves

Shoot 1UP 

Store link:  http://store.steampowered.com/app/373610

New Accessibility Modes

Since it's launch Shoot 1UP has been considered by the accessibility world (from One Switch to Able Gamers) as a great shmup with wonderful accessibility features for disabled gamers. We've continued to extend the reach, with new "Goof Off Mode". This changes the game, so it spawns 1UPs at a more frequent rate, making it easier to get to 30 or even 60 ships.
This new mode is perfect for young kids, playing when you're tired, or playing with a casual (non-gamer) friend. The Leaderboards won't register your score, since you're sort of cheating, but it's a lot of fun, and a good way to practice later levels.

There is also the new "Turn-Based Mode", which pauses the game when no input is given. This allows novice or disabled gamers a break, to take it all in first, then make their move (which resumes the action). If you're moving or shooting, the game plays as normal, but as soon as you let off of either, the game pauses for you to start again.

New selection options

With Goof Off mode, it's easy and fun to get to max ships fast.

Additional Shoot 1UP features for the Steam version

• Improved 'score drop' art
• Warning prompts for enemies coming from the sides or bottom.
• Option to *add* more clothing to the robo-girls in Hao.
• Keyboard controls (in addition to the original Xbox controller option)
• Fully remappable buttons and inputs  
• Steam features: Leaderboards per difficulty, Achievements, Trading Cards, and Steam Cloud for saves

Game Type

Store link:  http://store.steampowered.com/app/373630

New Boss

There is now an actual boss to fight in Game Type, and it is of course, the cat from Cat Chat. He hides behind a desk, throwing out different paw, and hairball attacks, along with calling for his tiny, cat minions. The Cat Chat boss shows up at the end of every 3rd loop.

Cat fight!

All New Achievements

Like Weapon of Choice, Game Type never had Achievements for it's Xbox 360 release. Now it has plenty of extra challenges! There's several points-based goals of course, but there's also some fun to be had snooping around the faux Xbox 360 dashboard.

The New Achievements Menu

Rebalanced

The entire game is much more interesting, and playable for the long term as I worked with playtesters from the hardcore shmup community. They really pushed on it, looking for spots where the game was too unpredictable to feel like you could improve at it, or areas that were slow, or boring, or needed clarity. We've improved many of the sprites for the bullets and enemies to make sure everything is easily visible, because when the game starts to *really* speed up around loop 6, you need all the clarity and focus you can muster.


More improvements for Game Type on Steam:

• Keyboard controls (in addition to the original Xbox controller option)
• Fully remappable buttons and inputs  
• Steam features: Leaderboards for All Time and WEEKLY(!), Achievements, Trading Cards, and Steam Cloud for saves

Mommy's Best Action Pack

And that was just the enhanced features!
Make sure to check out the Steam pages for all the original features in each game. Happy shooting!

Case Study: One Game's Amazing Click-Rate on Steam

(Vagueness: The take-away points of this will be intact, but if I act vague about exact numbers or certain practices, it's because I don't want to violate the non-disclosure agreement we (and other developers) have with Valve regarding their store.)

TL:DR

That little, tiny strip of your game logo on Steam is really, really useful. Take a second look at it, and try to improve it to grab more eyes. Also, consider tweaking your Tags.
Unless you've released on Steam before, you probably don't know how extremely powerful that slot is.

We had 4 games released in one day, and we compare and contrast why one game got a lot more clicks than others.

The Steam Front Page

This article is about examining a tiny sliver of art which very much influences how much traffic ends up on your game's Steam page. As we can see by visiting the main page on Steam, there are several categories where games are shown.

Front page on Steam, September 29th, 2015

We can see the large, top part--currently it shows 80 Days--which cycles through many games and the lower, smaller section that reads "New On Steam" just above.

The valuable, New On Steam section.

This "New On Steam" part is where we'll focus on our time and thoughts, but let's first look at a few points.

Front Page Flow

Now, without running afoul of any agreements we have with Steam, we can still determine and talk about some interesting points. Anyone that spends some time analyzing the front page for a few days can see a pattern. If you keep track of games that show up on the Upcoming tab near the bottom, and then compare them to games in the New On Steam section above, you can see that it seems that games that went through the Upcoming section get some time in the New On Steam section.

The Upcoming Games reasonably seem to show up in the New On Steam section.

So we have the idea that, 'Upcoming Games' move to 'New On Steam'.

Lots of Eyes

Without saying how many potential times gamers could be shown your game banner, let me just assure you it's a substantial amount, that any developer would be happy to have.
It's a very nice setup, since independent of your marketing budget the New On Steam section affords (apparently?) every game an opportunity for a lot of people to see it.
So, let's accept the assumption that the New On Steam section is very valuable and powerful.

High Traffic Analytics

Once you have your game on Steam, you get access to some nice traffic analytics, breaking down how many people saw your game banner in the New On Steam section but also how many clicked on it. You get to see total views and total clicks.

I'm personally in an uncommon situation, in that we recently ported 4 of our popular XBLIG games to Steam, and released them all on the same day. From that, I now have 4 data points from the same time period. While anyone could simply watch the Steam front page for a while and track how long games show up in the New On Steam section, I'll tell you, for us all 4 games stayed on there about 10 hours each.

Mommy's Best Action Pack promo

Steam also shares with you the *average click-through rate of other games*.
One of our games matched this average.
Two of our games were nearly twice the average.
And our final game had over *three and half* times the average number of clicks.

The Click-Through Puzzle

All of our games in the "Mommy's Best Action Pack" were critically praised over the years. The popularity of the games goes in this order: Shoot 1UP, Weapon of Choice, Explosionade, and then Game Type. Game Type is a fun but very strange game, plus it's an extremely niche 'caravan' style shoot 'em up. It never sold well, but it was respected.

Of course one has to factor in 'brand awareness' when considering why someone would click on your game banner, after they see it. Maybe they've heard of it before and are interested! (That's of course exactly how brand awareness is supposed to work!)
Instead, in this case, the click-through breakdown went like this: Game Type had 3.5x the average number of click-throughs. Shoot 1UP and Weapon of Choice both were over the average at about 1.8x times. And Explosionade simply had an average number of click-throughs.

What does this mean? For me it shows what I'd expect, that Shoot 1UP and Weapon of Choice had some brand recognition, and brought some people through to their game pages. This is good.

But the puzzle for you to consider is: What happened to Explosionade (average click-through) and Game Type (amazing click through)?

Compare and Contrast Clicks

Obviously we all work hard to create the game logo and the title treatment. But the wide, small game banner used in the New On Steam section is tough. It's horizontal and it's small. You don't have a lot of space to show off your game... or do you?
I took this as an opportunity to consider the art used for each of my 4 games and you should look at yours as well.

Here's what the banners for each game looked like at launch, during the traffic period in question.

Original versions

Here are my notes from looking at the art.
The Explosionade title takes up more room than any other game art here. Game Type text takes up the least space. Weapon of Choice and Shoot 1UP are very colorful by comparison, and bright. Game Type has an identifiable human girl, kicking, which is strange. You can kind of make out a cat in Game Type. For Explosionade, I can make out two bullets sort of, but I can't tell what's happening on the lower left, it's mostly a wasted opportunity. The monster on the bottom right of Explosionade shows his eye, but loses a lot of context, which could mean for some people that the coolness of seeing the glowering monster is lost. The Weapon of Choice 'font' is weird and non-standard and has strange organic shapes all over it. Shoot 1UP has a girl who is peaking over the edge, this is titillating.

Here is the new version of the game art.

New versions (only Game Type and Explosionade were changed)

The main changes to Explosionade are to give things more context, and reduce the text size. Keep in mind players will see your game name, just to the right, in plain text. They will know the game's name, so can reduce your title art somewhat if you have more interesting things to show. I've increased the space the mech on the lower left takes up, and increased the space the monster on the right takes up to indicate the cool fighting in the game. Game Type was made brighter and the other two games were not changed.

Let Tags Do Their Thing

The other thing to consider is that I labelled all my games "Action", and "Indie". There is a *broad* selection of  games on Steam that fall into those categories. I wasted my chance by not labeling Shoot 1UP and Game Type as "shoot 'em up" (much fewer games) and I wasted my chance to label Explosionade as "Mech" (very few games).
Players could have quickly seen those words just to the right and had another reason to click!

What's the Point Now? The Moment Is Not Gone!

Why improve the art, after the games are out of the New On Steam part? Because that same art is used all over Steam, in the 'More Like This' section and the 'Recently Updated'. You get more chances to catch player's eyes!
Redemption! If your game had a poor performing click-through rate on launch, you can do better it!

If you have not released your game consider:
As I said, if I could do it over, I should have added more useful tags to my games (the "User-Defined tags", not the search words, which are also important). Adding custom tags that make sense to your game, but some that are also specific.

In any case, take another look at your game banner, especially the small one, and make sure you're making most of it. There are a lot of eyes on that tiny piece of art and you can get more clicks with it!

----

(And since we're sort of talking about designing box art (but smaller, and wider) I found this to be an inspiring article on how others made some very nice art: http://www.polygon.com/features/2015/8/27/9207581/video-game-box-art)

(And finally, please chime in as to why you think Game Type scored so well and Explosionade only scored 'average'. I'd love to hear different points of view, thank you!)

Cooking in Mommy's Best Kitchen

Hey, time to check out what we're up to.

Those games sure look tasty!
And steamin' hot!

Flotilla and Weapon of Choice in Sale Promotion

Microsoft has a "Fan Appreciation Sale" going on now on the Xbox 360.
http://majornelson.com/2011/11/22/xbox-live-fan-appreciation-sale/

Lots of games on sale, from Super Meat Boy to Stacking.
And we're thrilled to announce two Indie Games have been added to the promotion!

The first XBLIG is Flotilla by Blendo Games, a interesting blend of tactical space-combat and odd-ball adventure.

The second game is our own action-packed Weapon of Choice!

Both games are now 50% off, making each only $2.50! (200 MS Points)
Tell any friends who've been on the fence to take the plunge. Thanks!
(And both games still have free demos to check as well.)

Just in time for it's third birthday--Happy 3 years old Weapon of Choice (originally released November 14, 2008)!

I'm not certain how long the promotional sale will continue. I'd guess probably through this holiday weekend. Happy gaming!

Weapon of Choice in Guinness World Records 2010

We're proud to share that Weapon of Choice was recently entered into the Guinness Book of World Records 2010 Gamer's Edition! On page 57, on the two-page spread for Run and Gun Shooters, Weapon of Choice blasts it's way into history.


In a "Fact" section Weapon of Choice is listed as having the highest professionally rated release on the (then) Xbox Live Community Games channel, as aggregated by Metacritic. Weapon of Choice's Metacritic rating is 74.

The most exciting news comes in the form of a top ten list. I've always loved David Letterman's Top Ten lists, but never before did I imagine one of our games would be listed in the Guinness Book of World Records!

Under the heading "Ten Games You Should Play in this Genre", Weapon of Choice is number 4--above even the mighty, and legendary Contra III!

Here's a pic, and the list in full:
Ten Games You Should Play in this Genre

1. Metal Slug (1996)
2. Gunstar Heroes (1993)
3. Turrican (1990)
4. Weapon of Choice (2008)
5. Contra III (1992)
6. Green Beret (1985)
7. Vectorman (1995)
8. Bionic Commando (1987)
9. Ikari Warriors (1986)
10. Alien Soldier (1995)

Keep in mind, this game is a list covering the run'n'gun genre throughout the history of video games! (Needless to say, I'm pretty excited about it)

Can Shoot 1UP live up to this attention? Who knows, but Shoot 1UP's already got a GameRanking rating of 83%!

November 09 and Year One Numbers

Weapon of Choice data for November 2009:

Trial downloads: 7,145
Sales (240 MS Points): 563

Which puts the conversion rate at about 7.9%

(Click for the big picture.)

As you can see from the graph, Thanksgiving day/weekend was nicely higher than a normal week. And weekends in general were higher, but Mondays were lower, at least for trial downloads.

Also this post I wanted to share the first year data from November 19th 2008 to 2009 since Weapon of Choice just celebrated its first birthday.

Trial downloads: 182,055
Sales: 11,293
(400 MS Points: 10,250, 240 MS Points: 1043)

Conversion rate's about 6.2% for that period, including both prices.

Make sure to click the sales label below for past month data!

Happy Birthday Weapon of Choice!

Original box art--feel the nostalgia!

Today marks the birthday of Weapon of Choice and Xbox 360 Indie Games! Of course back on November 19th 2008, the service was called Community Games, but it's grown since.

The Microsoft homepage for all things XNA has a snazzy splash currently up with Constance fighting a nasty Scat Thrower (second from right).
Let's take a trip down memory lane...
Here's a hilarious story about pricing the game:
http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/11/21/weapon-of-choice-pricing/
Yeah, so much has been improved on Indie Games! Now we have price changing abilities, the Top Rated section and user ratings, and daily sales data.

And here's the first reported sales week on Major Nelson!
http://majornelson.com/archive/2008/12/09/live-activity-for-week-of-december-1st-now-with-community-games.aspx

Top Community Games NEW! (Full Versions purchased)
1 Word Soup
2 Golden Royal Balckjack (sic)
3 Weapon of Choice
4 Colosseum
5 ZSX4 Guitarpocalypse
6 Sin(Surfing)
7 In the Pit
8 Head Banger
9 Snake360
10 Swords and Monsters

Ahh just think back...Swords and Monsters was driving people nuts and we hadn't even heard of an 'app' yet.. at least not on the 360.

Fast forward to more recently, here are some newish stories about the game:
http://www.auntiepixelante.com/?p=435
http://gaygamer.net/2009/09/review_weapon_of_choice.html

Modern day box art--note the less stylish, but actually legible title!

And finally the newest update of Weapon of Choice IS NOW AVAILABLE!
It includes:

• 4 new difficulty settings (six total now!) but they aren't simply increases in enemy health!
  
• Easy--for taking your time
• Wicked--spinning spiked pain aplenty
• Mega Death--no Deathbrushing for you, see how you fare!
• Mega Wicked--spinning spikey madness, and no Deathbrushing to save you, how will you possibly survive?
  
• Also...
  
• 4 control schemes possible
• More enemy balancing and tuning
• 10% more hookahs

October 09 Numbers

First edition of monthly sales numbers, and it's pretty interesting!

(Click for zoom)

This is for sales of Weapon of Choice for October 2009 which includes dropping the price from 400 MS Points to 240 MS Points.

Trial downloads: 13,118
Total sales: 870
165 at 400 MS Points
705 at 240 MS Points

Our conversion rate is about 6.6% which higher than it has been.

In the graph, you can clearly see the jump in sales once we dropped the price. Some Indie Games' sales haven't improved with dropping the price. Weapon of Choice's sales have probably increased because it's fortunately had a lot of press and critical praise, so it worked out pretty well.

Update:
Broken down by 240 vs 400 we have:
Trial downloads October 1st to the 12th (400 point period): 4,221
With 165 sales, the conversion rate is 3.9%

Trial downloads October 13th to the 31st (240 point period): 8,897
With 705 sales, the conversion rate is 7.9%

Update 2:
Average trial downloads per day for 400 point period: 351
Average trial downloads per day for 240 point period: 494
Trial downloads increases approximately 1.4 times daily after the price was lowered.

Additionally it's reasonable to conclude we had a revenue increase for this month as well.
We can approximate how many much money we would have grossed if we simply had kept the 400 points as follows:
351 average downloads a day * 31 days in the month = 10881 downloads
10881 downloads * 0.039 = 424 sales
We'll use the American prices to make our math simpler.
424 * $5 = $2,120

And here's what we actually grossed for the month:
165 (400 Point sales) * $5 = 825
705 (240 Point sales) * $3 = 2115
825+2115 = $2,940
We can then divide 2,940 by 2,120 and see that our revenue increased by about 1.38 times.

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin flavored Air Bladder.. mmm.....

Oh, and the new, fancier version of Weapon of Choice just entered the "peer review" stage.. should be updated on your Xbox pretty soon!

Controls play-test drive

Version 1.08 of Weapon of Choice has just entered the "Playtest" phase in the XNA pipeline. In this case it means the finished update should be out for gamers to play in a few short weeks.

If you're an XNA developer (such as this Short-fused group) please consider giving the game a spin while it's in Playtest! I'd love to hear comments about the new changes (in the Playtest forums of course, but you can also share thoughts here). There are new control schemes, new difficulty settings, and several other fancy options to try out.

I'll do a post shortly detailing the various new changes to Weapon of Choice once it's available on the Indie Games channel.
And in related news, Weapon of Choice is now only 240 MS points! Yes, just three US bucks will get you more alien guts than you can stir with a jet engine, so go give it a try today! (And just think you'll be getting even more cool stuff in Weapon of Choice version 1.08 soon!)

Illusions of Control

I've been working on a new update to the original Weapon of Choice, which doesn't sound as fun as working on something new like Grapple Buggy, but I think it's necessary. Weapon of Choice is currently still in the Top Rated list, but as other new, fun things become available it might lose footing (rate WoC high if you haven't already, thanks!). To make the most of the higher exposure, I'd like to do as much as possible to continue to refine the demo experience and the game in general.

One area that could use broader support is the controls. I've heard various podcasts, seen forum posts, and gotten emails that wished the controller layout were different. Weapon of Choice uses a modern take on the side-scrolling, "Contra-style" genre in which the left stick controls the character and the right stick controls where he shoots. Since your thumbs are on the sticks, you can't reasonably operate the face buttons for jumping or switching which are moved to the shoulder buttons.

Throughout the post here, I'll show each of the three current layouts planned. I'm certainly open to hearing feedback in the comments on these new layouts.

For me, and thankfully the majority of gamers, this is a perfectly natural extension of the Contra-style genre and works with modern controllers. But since the genre itself is old, some gamers have expected and requested face button controls for jumping and shooting. I'm working on an update that should be available shortly, with these new control schemes.

But why would I have not allowed for such configuration from the start? It seems obvious in hind-sight. The main issue is, I couldn't imagine it any other way! Oh, and probably a dollop of hubris. Yes, some of that too. But in general I think I was standing too close to the painting for too long. To light-heartedly pick on the very snazzy developer Halfbrick, their recent game Halfbrick Rocket Racing seems to have suffered from a similar control issue also, as is evident in these reflections from XNPlay. Though they already did offer several control layouts, it looks like from the comments some people still couldn't find the best fit.

With more time and thought, Weapon of Choice will shortly have more control options, and some new difficulty modes (especially for the masochists out there!)

The lesson here is, if you're pushing a new control scheme, at least offer the original, expected layout somewhere in the game (even if it's buried) to temper the delivery somewhat. Otherwise, you'll end up looking like this.

10,000 sales

Weapon of Choice recently passed the 10,000 sales mark, selling at 400 MS points! While I could have picked 9,837 sales as our arbitrary milestone, I thought 10k had a better ring to it. We're very happy and grateful to all the fans that have supported the game along the way. We know you have lots of gaming choices and it's a honor that you've picked our game to have and to hold and to use to kill disgusting aliens.

Originally we had higher expectations for the service. Since then we've recalibrated our estimates and believe 10k is a solid achievement, as it places Weapon of Choice in the Top Ten best-selling Indie Games to date*. And to better convey the size, I've compiled a small list of relative concepts that 10k copies of Weapon of Choice represents:

• 47,823,213 gallons of alien blood spilled.
• 919,534 brushes with Death. Under similar circumstances, Death would have stolen player's lives in other action games.
• 423,525 references by gamers to Wilford Brimley, followed by 173,189 trips to his wiki page.
• 276,207 frowns turned upside-down as the Vengeance Missile did its job.
• 184,622 WTF's when encountering the various ungodly alien invaders throughout the game.

(All statistics discretely recorded by PARMAbots tele-imported from the year 2188.)

On a serious note, when possible I like to share information about our business's inner workings with the hopes of helping other developers in some way down the road. I want reveal information about Weapon of Choice's sales to encourage others to share more information about their sales more frequently. Xbox Indie Games is not even a year old and has shown it is different from the other digital stores. The more information developers have, the better decisions they can make in the future.

Weapon of Choice from November 19, 2008 to September 21, 2009:
Total sales : 10,010
Total trial downloads: 160,000+
Approximate conversion rate: 6.25%

SALES

This is a graph of the running total for sales.
(Click to zoom!)

And this shows the daily totals for sales.

TRIAL DOWNLOADS

Here is the running total for trial downloads.

And here is the daily trial downloads.

In addition to on-going game development posts, I also plan to release each month's new sales of Weapon of Choice on the dev log here for all to see.
(*Source: Xbox 360 dashboard->Game Marketplace->Indie Games->Browse All->All->Sort by Best Selling)

OTAKU is forever

When we heard that Indie Games would be available in Japan we started work immediately on translating a press release and contacting the Japanese press to help promote Weapon of Choice. We hired a friend of a friend who speaks Japanese to help us translate our materials to make the extra effort when dealing with the press there. The sad news is I don't know if any of that helped. We haven't been contacted by anyone that we think was influenced by what we sent.
BUT the extra cool hyper super jet mode news is--Famitsu contacted us! Yes, that Famitsu, and out of the blue I received an email from a writer who was interested in an interview.
We received a copy of the magazine recently and wanted to share it with everyone. We're in the Otaku section, but guess what--I don't mind! In fact, that section is almost as big as the rest of the magazine covering "proper" games, so I think it's all pretty good. Sure, I haven't had the text translated, but I'm just hoping for the best that everything reads pretty well.

I'll take a quick business detour and show how the Famitsu article impacted downloads for Weapon of Choice.

(Click for more detail)

On the 9th and 10th of September Weapon of Choice had 40 and 56 trial downloads respectively, up from 12 on the previous day, so I imagine the magazine hit newsstands around the 9th. (Do they still have newsstands in Japan?) Sadly sales didn't really spike with the trials, though at least they continued to hop around between 1 to 2 sales a day in Japan.

Even after skimming around the web about how Otaku is perceived in Japan I'm fairly confused. Since it's not definitive I just hope for the positive side of things, that when Japanese kids see Weapon of Choice in that section they find the screenshots intriguing. How about you? Do you think Otaku a pejorative term or not?

Box Art of Choice

Along with a minor update (demo level changes to hopefully draw in more people) to Weapon of Choice, I'll also be changing the box art. There's a poll running over at xboxindies.com acting as my "Ask the Audience Lifeline" for box art selection. I'm trying to find the one that piques people's interest the most.

I've made the image annoyingly small in order to simulate how small an area the image takes up on your TV when you're searching games on your Xbox 360.

Please detail in the comments below what you liked or didn't like and about whatever images strike your fancy.
For instance,

1. Does the girl need that "European look" made famous in MGS2?
2. Does the blueprint need more mauve?
3. Is the monster a giant spider thing, or a pile of Skittles on the ground?
4. Have the millions of dollars I've spent on brand marketing made the original box the only art you could ever love?

Media Coverage Matters

Prepare thine eyeballs for fancy data picture overload!

(Click on any graph to see more detail! Sorry, but I scaled the previews down to fit into the tiny blog width. )

I've shuffled and jumbled the Weapon of Choice numbers from sales, free downloads, countries, dates, and put them all together in pretty picture form.

Up first is one of the most informative graphs. This shows free downloads and sales along with important dates of media coverage. It's pretty obvious that when we got media coverage, we got a bump in downloads.

(Remember--click the pictures for up close details!)

The biggest spike was of course around the Community Games launch day. The largest other spike was when Microsoft sent out their weekly email to Xbox 360 owners, and this one included a small part about Community Games and Weapon of Choice.

It was also really nice to see a spike in January 2009 related to the announcement of our speed run contest.

The following is the same data, but with the logarithmic view to better see some of the action in early 2009.
This next group is interesting as you can see trials and sales by country. Keep an eye on the number value for first giant spike, per country.

I think the USA vs UK comparison is interesting when you consider the first and second large spikes on the left.
Here we see that the second 'Xbox News' spike is not only larger absolutely, but also proportionately.

The US "Xbox News-to-CG Launch" spike ratio is about: 2,000 to 7,000. The second spike here is nearly 30% the first spike
The UK "Xbox News-to-CG Launch" spike ratio is about: 380 to 1,750. The second spike here is about 20% of the first spike.

Also, there was also apparently some UK coverage of which I have no good record (not surprising) as around Valentines day, there was a much bigger increase in downloads there, than in the US.

On to the rest of the WORLD!


I'd like to close with a delicious slice of pie. American pie. All-American Apple pie. Or "Triple A" pie for short.

But then again the UK slice is pretty tasty too. What do they eat in their pies again? Cow brains? Sheep guts? Whatever it is, it tastes pretty good here.

And let's not forget Canada! That was over half of our UK downloads, which is pretty impressive considering most Americans don't even know they're 'up' there. I like to think of their slice as covered in maple-syrup as I'm pretty sure they can't grow any sort of fruit there. Or maybe Ice? Can you have ice pie?

Update:
By request I put together another pie which yielded some interesting results.

This shows approximate percentage sales and conversion rates (ratio of people that bought the game to people that downloaded the game). What's interesting here is the noticeably lower conversion rates in France, Italy, and Spain.

This could be the result of several factors such as differing cultural interests, but it could also be because the game was only available in English which turned off more gamers. While there's not a lot of story in Weapon of Choice, there is certainly some dialog (over 200 lines!) and not being able to enjoy the story, the menus, and the controls could have contributed to less purchases.

In conclusion, I know it sounds obvious that getting media coverage should increase downloads, but occasionally you get people questioning the idea. I find it comforting, like feeling terra firma beneath my feet, to see coverage pretty clearly linked with downloads, here with the real data.