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How much do indie devs make? (part 6) by chubigans. CSD grossed over $600k to date

A

ashecitism

Member
Cook, Serve, Delicious! for those who don't know. It's very long and hard to trim down properly, so I'm only quoting the opening, ending and some parts featuring the Battle Kitchen Edition expansion. Go to the link for the full story.

Grats, chubigans!

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/DavidGal...much_do_indie_PC_devs_make_anyways_Part_6.php

Two and a half years later, I’ve finally finished launching my game.

Just one year ago I had discussed launching my game, “Cook, Serve, Delicious!” onto Steam and mobile platforms, and how my career was finally starting to take shape. It had been a long, hard battle, but I was finally able to support myself in being a dev full time. Since then so many things have happened that I found myself once again devoting a whole year into supporting my game, learning all kinds of things along the way. Continuing my previous articles (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5, man how the time flies by!) I’ll break down my finances and see what worked, what didn’t work, and the process of launching not only on a new platform but a brand new free expansion, as well as the grand total amount of sales since first launching in October 2013.
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As the fall holiday drew near I wondered if there was anything else I could do to keep CSD relevant and fresh as the winter sales and major games started to line up. I knew CSD would be buried with all the new games coming out, but I wondered…how could I re-launch CSD once again? As I was watching a few CSD streams on Twitch and Youtube people wishing the game had some sort of local multiplayer support it was pretty clear…create an entirely new segment of the game focusing squarely on local multiplayer and leaderboard challenges. A quick glance of the code proved that something like this could be done in a short amount of time. And so on September 24th, I teased a new release of CSD with more details to come.
Click to expand...

The 12pm Sunday deadline hit. CSD: Battle Kitchen appeared on the Steam Store front page with the 50% off discount. The game was still hours from being ready.

I still had every intention of making this a patch for all players. But as I neared release, realizing I didn’t have any time to even test a majority of modes implemented aside from a quick run through, I made the last minute call to release the expansion as a beta program for those wanting to opt into the branch. I uploaded the build and collapsed into bed at 2pm, a few hours past deadline and not as a full release, but still, I had made it.

Twenty minutes later, my phone was buzzing off the hook. A quick glance showed a horrifying glimpse into the Steam CSD forums. The game was completely broken. There were glitches everywhere. Modes didn’t work. Characters didn’t unlock. One mode, the Endurance Challenge, would crash upon finishing…not as a simple bug under certain circumstances, but for all players simply trying to play it. Leaderboards were reversed so that the lowest scores were at the #1 position. Even worse, problems had seeped into the standard single player mode, which was exactly what I was trying to avoid in the first place (such as not even being able to read emails on the main menu screen).

There was no way I could sleep, and so I was back on my computer, trying to figure out the complete mess that had happened. An hour into bug-hunting, I knew this just wasn’t going to happen. I was in no shape to even try to analyze code, as my head was pounding and I couldn’t even think straight. Severely depressed, I posted on the forums that I had gone without sleep for nearly 30 hours now and couldn’t get to the patch until the next day. The messages of support were extremely beneficial in calming me down; I was in pieces and was so damn thankful that I didn’t attempt to release the game as a full patch that day.

pic11.png


By the end of Sunday someone had uploaded a YouTube vid of their Battle Kitchen experiences (BaerTaffy). While they had fun they encountered several bugs which had me wincing the entire time, and closed with the expected crash to desktop after playing Endurance mode. The commentator was surprised, then said something along the lines of, “well hey, it’s a beta so these things are to be expected.”

I found such deep comfort in what he said at that time. While the expansion was game breaking in many ways, a lot of people didn’t find it to be extremely troubling given the beta nature. The support given to me by others greatly helped as well. By 10pm I was able to sleep soundly, after a 40+ hour marathon of coding with no sleep, and didn’t wake up till 1pm the next day.
Click to expand...

What didn’t work was surprisingly the biggest addition to the expansion: the idea of local multiplayer. The tag team events aren’t nearly as fun and chaotic as I had hoped. The premise of that mode was that two to four players would take on a challenge. Every 15 seconds, controls are severed from the player and the next player in line is given 5 seconds to see where they are before controls are handed off to them. So player 1 could be in the middle of a pasta order, then their time is up and it’s up to player 2 to finish the order. It’s (theoretically) fun to watch but not a whole lot of fun to play. As one person said during a livestream who had never played CSD before and was thrown into a tag-team co-op match, “this…sucks!” It was the absolute worst way to get introduced to the game, and that’s absolutely my fault.

It was interesting to see the amount of attention the single player content of Battle Kitchen got but not a whole lot of videos for multiplayer. I honestly don’t think there’s a huge demand for tournaments with the kind of content that’s available in Battle Kitchen anyways, nor did I think the VS. mode that I needed to implement would have created a whole lot of splash, which is why I opted to do an all new mode instead. After that, development on CSD will finally be over (aside from Weekly Challenges, which I will continue to update every Monday, with my goal being a full year of support), and my full attention will be towards my two unannounced games, one of which is coming this year.
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The Grand Total

Just two and a half years ago, I questioned my decision to even make Cook, Serve, Delicious after that awful first weekend of release. Today, Cook, Serve, Delicious has grossed over $610,000 in sales across mobile, Steam, distro websites and my cut from the Humble Bundle, with over 100,000 copies sold. Steam accounts for 78% of that financial figure.

What an insane number. I just can’t believe it. That income allows me to fund my next two games outright and continue pursuing my dream of being a top tier indie dev. We made a lot of progress with Cook, Serve, Delicious, but I feel the biggest has yet to come considering the scope of my next two games. Thank you to everyone for the support, thank you to all the Youtube and Twitch streamers out there enjoying the game, thanks to the community for all the great reviews and thanks to anyone who bought the game and enjoyed it. And of course a huge thanks to Ryan Davis, who was the one to open up the door to this staggering amount of success. I will never, ever forget that.

I don’t know if this is just the beginning, or if this is the pinnacle of my success. I don’t know how my next two games, which are stylistically different from Cook, Serve, Delicious, will be received critically or commercially. I don’t know how console development will go. I don’t know how much longer Cook, Serve, Delicious will provide me with healthy daily income (as of right now it’s still selling great). What I do know is that we’ll find out all these answers together.

The future is completely uncertain, yet I couldn’t be more excited.
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A

adj_noun

Member
Well deserved. I love that game. It gets me into the same zen flying fingers space I used to get from playing Guitar Hero with the Xbox controller.
 
I

Impeccable

Member
Considering how awesome your game was, I am glad you got your just rewards.

Loved sharing a few PMs with you and stories about how your game was the first iOS game my wife and I played together and it opened up a whole world to us of mobile gaming. Wish you continued success going forward!
 
Raonak

Raonak

Banned
That's so awesome! As an indie dev who hasn't yet released a real game, it gives some real inspiration to continue
 
M

MiniBossBattle

Member
Great stuff Chubigans!
I didn't realize till later you also made that Oil Blue game, which consumed one of our programmer's evenings.

I miss you Ryan Davis.
 
Slayer-33

Slayer-33

Liverpool-2
Omg chub you sob grats!

We go back to the ign board days, don't forget me my newly recognized father!

LOL

Seriously amazing, grats on living the dream

nib95 said:
Grats Chubs! Sounds like you're moving up to the big leagues. Wish you all the success going forward.
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Another brethren brotha.
 
K

Kritz

Banned
ThoseDeafMutes said:
I hear that Kritz made billions off Citizen Burger Disorder
Click to expand...

chubigans said:
Wow, thanks y'all! Really appreciate it!



He better have, that game looks awesome.
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you guys wish :p

--

But for realsies chubs, CSD deserves every ounce of success it has. It's fun, it has hella charisma, and it's got one of those real bastard hooks where you keep coming back to it over and over again. If my game can be even a tenth as successful, I'll be psyched.
 
T

Triggerhappytel

Member
I haven't played the game, but found this really interesting reading. Good for you Chubs and I hope you continue to have success in the future. Out of interest I checked out Google Play and I now have the demo to play later on!
 
O

octopiggy

Member
I thoroughly recommend picking up this game to anyone who hasn't tried it yet. Congratulations Chubigans - a real inspiration.
 
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