Andy Moore Blog: SteamBirds: Survival – By the Numbers

Andy Moore Blog: SteamBirds: Survival – By the Numbers:

Well! I’m back from the Game Developer’s Conference and the Flash Gaming Summit, where I spoke about how SteamBirds is doing and let all my cats out of their respective bags. I think it’s time for another by-the-numbers gig!

When I last left you, my very popular SteamBirds: By The Numbers article let you know that SteamBirds had made approximately $34,000 USD (gross).  This article was so popular it was copied over to Gamasutra and into two different magazines! (score!) I suppose that means you guys want more?

So let’s start by getting caught up.

SteamBirds: The Original

Since last writing, SB went on to make an addition $11K in various sitelocks and licenses, and to this day is still generating more business (did 3 sitelocks in January alone!). I’m fairly confident that the original SB is going to make money for a loooong time.

SteamBirds has now made approximately $45,000 USD.

Here’s a popular chart: breaking down the sources of all revenues for the original SB:

I really like this graph because it visually represents how much I loathe advertisements.

I say this a lot, but there’s no harm in re-iterating: I hate ads, I’m really bad at deploying good ads, and I have no advertising strategy other than “tack it on hastily.” You can see it really paid off;

• Mochi ad revenue has paid so little, it hasn’t even sent me a cheque yet (they promise they owe me $78 though)
• CPMStar sends me regular cheques, though the amounts are dwindlingly low
• Kongregate’s revenue-sharing advertising model is about the only thing that pays out, and it pays out IN SPADES.

4-5x more revenue than CPMStar and Mochi combined?? Why does anyone even bother with advertising anymore?!

And even then: All advertising combined is hardly 10% of combined revenues. It might be worth it, but only in this larger-scale economy. I don’t think I’d bother with advertisements at all if I had a game that was expecting to make less than $30K.

As far as traffic and popularity goes:

 

(Click for Big)

It seems like traffic is dwindling off to nothing, but it’s been nearly a solid year of 50,000 plays per day (and trended up to 150K/day around the time of Survival’s launch). That’s more web traffic per day than I’ve ever hoped for with a personal blog, so I call it a success!

But that’s enough whinging on about the original SteamBirds. Let’s jump into the fun, new stuff!

SteamBirds: iOS

The wonderful fellows at SemiSecret Software (Eric and Adam) worked hard at making an iOS version of the game. They launched two separate SKUs – one for iPhone/iPod Touch ($0.99), and an HD version ($1.99) for the iPad.

The iOS version of the game was identical to the original flash game, except:

• The game came complete with the “Bonus Missions” (previously only available at ArmorGames)
• The in-game art was completely redone by hand by Adam
• The game got a brilliant, awesome title screen (also by Adam)
• Features all the original, epic, awesome music by DannyB (buy the soundtrack here, and support more awesome music from DannyB!)

[...]