Tom Francis’ outstanding stealth/hacking/spy-comedy game hasn’t just been a critical success. It’s selling like hotcakes.
In a celebratory post at his workblog, Francis (in his usual low-key manner) shares that the game recouped its development costs in 64 seconds. Not hugely surprising, since as he points out, the entire development cost of the game consisted of a single $30 purchase of Game Maker 8.
Francis goes on to share some enjoyable graphs that show just how far the game exceeded his sales expectations, explaining that because of Gunpoint‘s runaway success, he has quit his job at PC Gamer and decided to make games full time.
More amazingly, I can do it with total creative freedom. There’s really no pressure for my next thing to make a particular amount of money, so I can do whatever I think will be most exciting.
It also means I can afford to keep being nice. I didn’t let anyone pay for Gunpoint until I was ready to put a free demo out, so everyone would have a way to make sure it ran OK on their system and that they liked it before giving me any money.
This all ties in with the development manifesto Francis posted a while back (a manifesto for which Gunpoint feels like a proof-of-concept), and leaves me hopeful that we’ll be seeing many more great games in the future. Or, you know, he could just make Gunpoint II: The Gunpointining. Console-exclusive first-person shooter! Stealth elements! RPG skill-trees! Mo-cap cinematics!
Comments
5 responses to “Gunpoint Has Been A Crashing, Near-Instant Success”
Bought it. Played it. Loved it. Fantastic game. Can’t wait for either more missions or a deeper, more complex Gunpoint 2. The only thing they need to do is stop you being able to do unlimited distance cabling for electric devices lol. I had whole complex webs setup between multiple buildings…
Loved the game. Found it a bit short and too easy but it’s an awesome first step.
I’d love to play more.
Good game, funny guy.
Guy makes interesting and innovative game. People buy it.
This is apparently something that doesn’t happen in the games industry, or so I’m told. I should get better news sources than BlizztivisiEA News.
Brilliant game, really nice guy.
Not starting pre-orders until he had a demo available so people could make sure they wanted to spend money? I’m sold, double sold.
Fantastic game. Only two missions I’ve not been able to get a+ on
Wish he’d fix the problems with the editor and spend a bit more time on the bug report forum.