The co-founder of the independent studio Snapshot Games, David Kaye, told how his company managed to attract almost $2.2 million through crowdfunding and pre-orders for the development and promotion of the Phoenix Point tactical strategy from the author of the famous XCOM game franchise, Julian Gallop.
Crowdfunding on Fig
The Phoenix Point crowdfunding campaign was launched on the Fig platform in April 2017. According to Kay, Snapshot Games preferred Fig to all other sites because of an alternative funding model. Fig offers backers a choice: to support the project and get the product (as on Kickstarter) or to invest money in it and get a percentage of income from its implementation. Snapshot Games decided that the investment model would become popular and attract a new audience to Fig.
In addition, Fig is a young and developing platform that attracts a lot of attention. This coincided with the vision of the management of Snapshot Games, which wanted to actively promote the future game. Kickstarter seemed to developers to be too big, clumsy and crowded with projects, a service where it has become difficult to raise funding in recent years.
The bet on Fig was justified: from April 25 to June 8, 2017, the total fees brought $938 thousand. Of these, $484 thousand came from investment financing, and $454 thousand were targeted contributions for the future product. The initial goal of the campaign of $ 500 thousand was raised in the first week.
Rise, fall and new rise of pre-orders
Two months after the successful completion of the campaign, Snapshot Games began accepting pre-orders for Phoenix Point. To stimulate pre-sales of the game, the studio held a weekly promotion with a 20% discount on the promo code and advertised it on Facebook. This had a good effect — during the discount week, Snapshot Games earned more than $27 thousand.
But then revenues began to decline — for the whole of October, the studio earned as much on pre-orders as it earned in one week in September. In November and December, sales fell even more. As David Kay explained, the success of marketing promotion was affected by seasonality: at the end of the year, advertising prices rose to a maximum due to a large number of holidays.
After the New Year, advertising rates went down, which allowed Snapshot Games to attract more than $100 thousand per month for the first time on Phoenix Point pre-orders in January.
To date, Snapshot Games has earned $1.2 million on pre-orders of the game alone. The number of Phoenix Point buyers exceeded 20 thousand people — twice as many as participated in crowdfunding on Fig.
Phoenix Point revenue in 2017-2018, Snapshot GamesMarketing expenses
Kay said that in total the company spent about $ 250 thousand on marketing, with the main item of advertising expenses being promotion on social networks Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. In addition, sales are stimulated by such a classic method as email mailing. According to David, she provided at least 5% of all purchases.
“Marketing is extremely important. We have to sell the game all the time — first we promote its idea, then we sell the project in the process of work and after the release we continue to sell add-ons. There is no end to it. Our job is not just to make a game. We also need to bring it to gamers,” said David.
Snapshot Games expects to reach an even larger audience, for which it has agreed with Microsoft to include Phoenix Point in the Xbox Game Pass subscription. Microsoft game service subscription holders will be among the first to get access to the title immediately after the release of the game, which is scheduled for June 2019.
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