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Comment by techrat | Hacker News Reader

The game is far, far too much of a niche style game for it to even be all that popular, IMHO. I'm not quite sure what the Dev here expected to happen. It's also Early Access and it's fair to say that unless a game has broad appeal (which shop simulators don't) and hype (definitely not in this case), people tend to stay away from Early Access games from unknown developers with insubstantial catalogs. I know I do, been burned enough times.

I'm not saying 'feel bad', here... more along the lines of 'lower your expectations'. Unless you have a big publishing house backing you, marketing money being spent, your first title isn't going to be profitable... and that's before you consider the type of game it is.

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Where do you get the idea that they had high expectations? The whole article is like "I knew this game wouldn't sell, but hey, at least it did better than my first ten games". This person is a grinder and may very possibly achieve moderate success or better if they keep it up. Their trajectory is def normal for successful indie game devs, anyway. You just never hear about the dozen plus games Soderstrom made/released before Hotline Miami or Thorson made/released before Celeste, etc. Because...well, because they failed

This article does serve as yet another good reminder though that platforms are where the money is and that making content is no way to make a living. Make your fuck you money first, THEN make content using the skills you developed along the way. You'll have something to make content about, too, having been out and about in the world to make your nut

> You just never hear about the dozen plus games Soderstrom made/released before Hotline Miami or Thorson made/released before Celeste, etc.

Thorson isn't a good example here, because Celeste was only their 2nd commercial game, and their 1st was Towerfall, which was successful.

Not the best example, I agree. But they did make many small games before Towerfall even if they didn't really try too hard to sell them

He could yet get another bump in sales from a 1.0 release, but you're right the stars are just not aligned to make Yerba Mate Tycoon an indie smash. This was not necessarily a story of loss though. Taking a project all the way to release is a feat, and his attitude toward finishing the game, not to mention supporting it after release is commendable. All this seems like it helps position the developer to solicit publishers for future projects, convince others to work with him, and even help sway potential buyers of future projects. Not to mention it's a critical learning experience, feedback like yours is very helpful. All things considered pretty successful for a first game. This dude definitely has the potential to turn a profit in the future.

Tenth game, according to the post

I believe it is his 10th _attempt_ at a game but 1st finished/published game. The author at least has no other games published on steam.

The other games seem to be mobile.

1st published on steam. He published the other ones on google play it seems.

First Steam game, others were mobile + Web Games.

I got even post about my other game stats: https://donislawdev.com/earnings-and-statistics-from-my-8-ga...

All released.

That Fish Eat Fishes is neat. It's simple to play. It's very visually distinctive. Caught me off guard.

It's maybe too trivial for steam but there's certainly potential to make a game out of it. Add a timer. Add some multiplayer challenge. Add a power or two (dash forward). Make some levels to swim through in increasing difficulty and that's a definitive puzzle/platform game.

For a 22 year old that’s very impressive if true.

> Before the game launch, I knew that game will be a failure. I was expecting most sales from Latin America (low price), my all previous mobile games were a failure, wishlist number was low + in the first month of early access (outside of Steam) I sold 0 games copies. So, there were no success indicators. I got no problem with it, everything is running according to my plan, If my whole life is a failure, then a “failure” is something normal, it won’t affect me :-}

I'd say their expectations were pretty low, and despite that they've got a wonderfully positive attitude about the whole thing. Maybe don't be so quick to rain on that.

This is a massive personal success for any indie-dev, and the fact that he keeps pushing makes me fairly certain he'll eventually make it to a profitability with a title eventually.

My all previous games (mobile + web+ were failure.

From the blog

"Before the game launch, I knew that game will be a failure. I was expecting most sales from Latin America (low price), my all previous mobile games were a failure, wishlist number was low + in the first month of early access (outside of Steam) I sold 0 games copies. So, there were no success indicators. I got no problem with it, everything is running according to my plan, If my whole life is a failure, then a “failure” is something normal, it won’t affect me :-}"

Annoyingly, the dev time travelled back and incorporated all that into their original article. I think they did it just to make your advice look pointless.

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