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Mandy J Watson1 year ago(+1)

Thanks for this. I really appreciate it when devs post this kind of data because it's incredibly useful to understand what goes on on itch. (Sadly my stats are nothing worth talking about - I'm inching towards 5000 lifetime project views.) It's interesting that the fonts generated so much income, comparatively, especially since they are free, yet the games, unfortunately, usually earn very little (which tracks with what I know from other developers). I wonder how much being a "jam game" factors into this.

I wish you much success in 2024. The font project was really interesting to watch (although you were so quick I still haven't downloaded all of them), and the fonts are really great quality, but I'm looking forward to that longer game!

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Not Jam1 year ago(+1)

Thanks Mandy! Totally agree with you here - I find having some insight into how other dev's work has performed to be really helpful, and would love to see more devs share this kind of info (although I understand why most don't!).

I was really surprised with how the fonts performed too, both in terms of income and downloads, but very glad people are enjoying them! I'd been expecting donations more in line with my music packs, so I've been a little overwhelmed at the support they've received, and very grateful.

As far as games go, I don't permit payments on any of mine at present - they're all very short jam games, often buggy and a little weird, and I wouldn't feel right allowing donations on these just yet. If I'm honest, I'm very nervous at the idea of charging for any games, as I'd want to make sure that anything I release commercially is up to a much higher standard than anything I've put out so far and always worry that I don't have an objective view on anything I'm working on.

One thing I'd be really interested to learn is how similar projects perform if they're released with minimum payment vs released with donations. With the fonts, for example, from 4434 downloads they received 120 payments, so around 2.7% of people made a donation - if I'd charged a small fee for each, how would this have affected the attention they received, total downloads and revenue?*

*(Just to clarify, I don't regret releasing them for free: I'm delighted that I've been able to share these with so many people, and being able to give them away was really rewarding for me. So many of the tools I rely on (Godot, GIMP, Blender etc.) are free, and while I'm not currently in a position to support them financially having another way to give back to the community is really important to me)

Apologies for the stream of conciousness response, I had a lot of stray thoughts left over from writing this up, apparently!

Best of luck to you too - Heist at the Museum was wonderful, and absolutely spot on with its message, so looking forward to seeing what you release next :)

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Mandy J Watson1 year ago

Ah, that explains it with the lack of game revenue then, although I don't think there's a problem with allowing donations because even with jam games someone might appreciate them enough to want to offer a small token of support.

There is a South African dev collective that used to release all its games for free and it made a small amount with donations (I'm probably not at liberty to say how much). They then decided to charge for all the games, which also coincided with some bigger project releases, and I've been meaning to ask how that changed payment behaviour and if it helped but the pandemic got in the way so I have yet to ask the question.

Thanks for your kind words about Heist At The Museum. I'm particularly proud of that one, not just because it was my first Bitsy game, but because even with the jam rush it still worked out quite well, miraculously. I only watched the John Oliver segment about museums a few weeks ago and was amazed at how close it was to what I put in the game. Clearly I have assimilated the nuances of the issue quite well over the years, probably because I'm from a country whose objects (and people) have been stolen by multiple countries.

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