Spaceteam Retrospective

I recently posted a link to my Numbers page, which details Spaceteam downloads and sales over the last year. This led to a Twitter discussion about business models, whether I should have charged money for the game, and general lamenting that these numbers were “bad news”.

I want to share some more thoughts on this.

First, some facts:

Now some more details and clarifications:

1. It actually made more money than just the In-App Purchase revenue

The Numbers page shows that I’ve made ~$12,000 so far from people buying Upgrades in the game. But the game has also generated:

So if you’re counting total monetary value it made more than $25,000. This still isn’t quite enough for me to live on, but it’s getting close. However…

2. Making money was not my priority

My goals for Spaceteam from the beginning were to:

I had always intended to release this first “small” project for free. The original plan was to then charge money for my next game (this plan has now changed, but Spaceteam’s purpose remains the same).

Worrying about how to “monetize” effectively might have compromised the game design and almost certainly would have hindered the last goal (getting my name out) because there would have been much more resistance to sharing and spreading the game.

If I had prioritized making money, then I would not have made a game like Spaceteam.

3. It certainly wasn’t a failure

I’m pretty confident that I achieved all the goals above, but that’s not the only way I measure success. Here are some other stories and opportunities that Spaceteam has generated:

Sure, all these things might have happened if it had cost $1 so perhaps it could have made more money. But if you look at everything on that list and are still unhappy with how Spaceteam has performed then maybe your priorities are different than mine.

Which is fine. We all need to make money. I certainly believe that artists should be paid for their work. But I think there are a lot of problems with the current business models and I want to try something new…

4. I want to keep making free games

There are several reasons I don’t want to charge money for Spaceteam or future games, and I’ll go into those reasons in another blog post. But if my games are free then I need to get paid in some other way.

So… I’ve decided that my next step is to run a crowdfunding campaign to unite the community of Spaceteam fans that are already out there (hopefully attracting new ones in the process) and give them another way to help. Some of them might even pay more than the typical mobile-game price tag of $1.

This feels more honest and sustainable to me and the pay-what-you-can model seems fair for everyone else. I’ll be talking a lot more about the campaign in the coming weeks.

I really believe that Spaceteam’s success is measured in many different ways, is growing and ongoing, and will lead to more success in the future.