BTM – coverage and sales week 02
Hi friends,
A new week, a new press and sales review of Blocks That Matter. And you’ll see that if we still have great reviews (like we did last week), the sales are still pretty low.
>> PLAYERS RECEPTION
Few players have already finished the game and they sent us nice and warm messages. Some of you also express their love of Blocks That Matter through fanarts and toys.
Here is a Tetrobot made in salt dough by Skywilly‘s lover:
And this is a cool wallpaper made by CuberToy, with many indie games heroes and Tetrobot is one of them!
On facebook, the french page Le Dixième Art (The Tenth Art) has changed its logo for few days to support Blocks That Matter. This event has created a little controversy cause few readers were really hostile to the game (especially its link with other existing games). The fanpage Blocks That Matter has also been created and it’s ready to collect your “like”. We will organize some stuff on this page later.
The big surprise of this week was in our mailbox: a really young player called Gaspard (hi kid!) sent us an email with a video in which he talks straight to the camera, asking us a very important question : when will the game with the fox be released? It has been quite hard to answer him…
On the XBLIG dashboard side, Blocks That Matter is still at the head of the Top Evaluated games in France (approximatively 4,8/5). And look who was second when we took the screenshot: Sequence, an outstanding RPG/DDR !
Also, great news: the Top Downloaded games list that was frozen since May 10th has been fixed. And we are 2nd, after FortressCraft, thanks to the french players.
We still have little information about the game reception in Spain, Germany, Italy and Canada. But here is our position in the Top Evaluated Games in other countries:
– UK : 12th (we lost 6 places)
– Japan : 34th (we won 51 places)
– US : 39th (we won 10 places)
>> SALES
We only made 200 sales this week (in 8 days precisely). That’s sad. But we can’t force people to download the game, especially when websites like Kotaku and Joystiq don’t answer our mails so…
United States is still 1st and France managed to make more sales than UK. Japan, Sweden, Italy and Spain aren’t very enthusiastic. Maybe swedish players don’t know that Blocks That Matter takes place in their country…
Here is now a little history, day by day, showing the purchase numbers/trials downloads and the conversion rate (between brackets):
– d07 (18/05/2011) : 28 / 246 (11.3%)
– d08 (19/05/2011) : 1 / 18 (5.5%)
– d09 (20/05/2011) : 30 / 212 (14.15%)
– d10 (21/05/2011) : 34 / 220 (15.45%)
– d11 (22/05/2011) : 39 / 192 (20.3%)
– d12 (23/05/2011) : 21 / 203 (10.34%)
– d13 (24/05/2011) : 23 / 137 (16.7%)
– d14 (25/05/2011) : 20 / 20 (100%, but stats are probably false due to a Xbox Live technical issue this day)
– total: 196 / 1248 (15.7%) that’s 66% less than last week
– global: 639 / 5727 (11.1%). The conversion rate has increased, that’s a good point.
And to finish, the downloads versus sales curves:
>> PRESS COVERAGE
This week has been a little bit more calm but still really positive. We’ve even seen articles in more traditional paper magazines!
– PCPowerPlay (EN), an australian magazine, seems to mention BTM in its release of June.
– Weeks ago, we had a video interview with JVN (FR) in Paris, and they mention Blocks That Matter again in their latest show, making it n°1 of their downloadable games selection of the week.
– XBLAFans (EN) made a touching review:
“Rarely do we praise a game as much as Blocks That Matter”
– Destructoid (EN) quickly talked about BTM in its podcast “Zero cool – episode 29”
– IndieGames (EN) probably hasn’t tried the game yet…but they made a short article to say the game is now available (without the trailer, strangely).
– Armless Octopus (EN) talks about BTM in its “round-up” and in the last Armless Octocast (thanks Mike!). A nice review is also available with a score of 5 out of 5.
– Gameblog (FR) reviewed Blocks That Matter and selected it as an “Indispensable Gameblog” (essential game). We know our french readers helped us making this review possible. Thank you MisterP for your open mind.
– IG MAG #14 (FR) published a 4 pages interview of Swing Swing Submarine (p74 to 77) where we talk about Blocks That Matter, of course. The game is also mentioned in the recently released downloadable games (p14) and all this thing has been made possible by Thierry Falcoz from Nolife, a french videogame tv station.
– Factornews (FR) also asked “3 questions to…” William.
– Blog Coop (Moosye – FR) links to the (great) review of BarredeVie (FR) and reminds us that she made an interview of William last year about the videogame industry / art form.
– Indievault (IT) uses a beautiful language to talk about the game.
“If you’ve liked the previous works of Swing Swing Submarine, I don’t need to tell you that Blocks That Matter is a game that truely deserves your attention”
– GameSetWatch (EN) mentions BTM between Sega Rally and Super Adventure Island.
If you think we forgot some articles and reviews (like this one by Lion2 (FR) and this one by IndieGamesCorner (FR)) please tell us in the comments or by mail.
That’s all for this week!
We will probably not make articles about sales and press coverage every week. But, we will soon give you more information about the PC, Mac and Linux version of Blocks That Matter and how we are porting it.
Have a nice day,
William
Guillaume
Nice masheup.
I see Tetrobot from Blocks that Matter, Creeper from Minecraft, Meat Boy from Super Meat Boy, Machinarium, Limbo, the Captain from VVVVVV, a red Angry Bird, Braid, Captain Video from Bit.Trip Runner.
But what’s the guy with the lips and viking helmet in the top left? Which game is he from?
Hi Angry Newton and Mr. Gravity dude :]
Thanks for following us 🙂
And congratz for Mr. Gravity, it’s a really smart game, good gamedesign and small price!
For BTM, we do not really know what went wrong with the trial… we can only make suppositions:
– the trial allows you to play until level 10 (the trial save your progress but is limited to 7 minutes sessions). The only place where we tell the player that he can play the trial again and again is in the special level where the bad guy talk to you and where 2 portals stand in front of you “Main menu” or “Buy game”.
– I think maybe we should have added a text everywhere that specify “Trial version, play again and again until level 10” or something.
– I don’t think the trial is too short nor too long: we let the player go through the 10 “tutorial” levels, to let him get the 3 mains feature of the game (drill/puzzle mode to put pieces/puzzle mode to destroy lines).
– Maybe people wait to finish the first 10 levels, it can be long depending your skill (and time to play games)
– Maybe the players think that they’ve already did the 1/4 of the game (10 levels/40)… but the later levels are sometimes (a lot) longer and hard than the first 10th.
– I agree that maybe we should have introduced more “complex” level that mix all the mechanics your learned during the 10 first levels. Because maybe player think “Okay, I’ve got all the basic powers at level 10, no the game will be a repetitive replay of the first 10th levels, with more difficulty”, and it’s wrong… but if we want to show the specificity of all the puzzle… then we have to let the trial play all the levels :-/
– Or maybe the first level is not self explanatory and people get lost and directly stop because they don’t understand what to do!
– Finally, maybe we are both in the average sales of this marketplace. I mean few games really make big sales. I saw that Arkedo didn’t sold its firsts Arkedo Series (http://bit.ly/eKH82k), only the last one (Pixel!) made with Pastagames achieved very great sales.
– The price (240mspoint) is maybe too high for some players used to purchase only 80Mspoint games ? … because I noticed that the granularity in the MS virtual Cards is huge: when you add point, the minimum amount is 500Mspoints!
This means that if you have 160MsPoint in you virtual wallet… you’ll have to spend more than 6$ to get the game (well not spend 6$ in the game but in filling you virtual wallet)
– Maybe players like games featuring avatars because that’s “afford” the things they purchased or earned in game for their avatar.
– Maybe players want real multiplayer games. BTM is single player but a lot of people who tried the game, tried it by playing surrounded by friends that advise them when playing.
– There is a lot of theories, but I’ll stop here for now 🙂
Thanks for bringing your thought 🙂 Really appreciated!
Thanks for helping get the word :]
Take care!
We are seeing similar results in our sells as well, which we came out a couple days after you, with Mr. Gravity. We are having the exact same results with the press, with positive feedback and a lot of chatter, but the sales just don’t display it. Personally, I think we may have figured out what we did wrong, which was due to the length of our trial. Is it possible that your trial doesn’t demonstrate enough of what really makes BTM fun or challenging? It’s hard to provide a trial that is easy enough to stick with long enough to learn, but hard enough that it drives your sell, but I think without that balance, people are going to ignore buying the game. Its just a thought.
BTW, I followed you on twitter 🙂 I’ll try and help get the word out when I can
@Clément:
On ne sait pas si ça apportera des ventes, en tous les cas ça va nous aider à crédibiliser BTM auprès des plateformes de téléchargement PC !
Merci de nous avoir prévenu pour le test et la note jv.com 🙂
@Shinakiyama:
Hehe, so you know our scary faces 🙂 For Steam, we will keep our fingers crossed… but hopefully the reviews you saw and the others on the internet will help us to appear more credible in front of PC digital distribution platforms!
Thanks both of you for your sweat words.
Thanks all of you for supporting us!
I saw you in the tv show “Extra Life” on Nolife and I must say that I was pretty amazed about your work in spite of the few means you have at disposal.
Now, I have just read a few reviews about BTM (on Gameblog.fr and Jeuxvideo.com) and the conclusion is: “I can’t wait for a Steam release of your game ! (the simple pc version will also do, but on steam, it would get the visibility it deserves)”
I hope this will be possible and that you’ll get huge success (fingers crossed).
jeuxvideo.com a noté votre jeu 18/20, je pense que ça ne peut qu’être une bonne nouvelle pour le jeu, et j’espère pour vous de meilleures ventes dans les semaines à venir. 😉
Thanks you all for your sweet comments :]
Glad to hear that there are some Linux users in Da place 🙂
@Tetsuo:
For sure there will be a demo version! 😉 This time it will be not limited in duration (like the seven minutes on the XBLIG version, even if it’s possible to restart the game and continue with your progression saved until level 10).
Hi,
It’s too bad that the sells don’t follow the reviews and comments.
But because ther were some sells anyway and reviews were very good, this is not a failure and I hope you are proud of your performance.
Hope you will be able to distribute it via Steam for the PC version.
Keep going dudes!
Why are there some people who hate BTTM, and what game do they think it has connections with?
Get the Linux version out and I’ll tell all my Swedish friends to try it out 🙂 assuming there’ll be a playable demo that is..
I wish you best of luck with PC launch, your game deserves it. Good luck on your future project, you are making great games!
So sorry to hear the game isn’t selling as much as you’d hoped. 🙁 It looks great! The moment this is released for Linux, you can add a Belgian sale to that list.
Can’t wait for the pc version guys !!