Sales Stats: Professor Fizzwizzle

[Ryan Clark]

Back when Grubby Games was just getting started, it was very helpful to us to read the sales stats posted by other indies... so, it's now time for us to repay the favour by posting stats of our own.

Here are our Plimus sales stats:

07/02/05 2 <-- Launch
07/03/05 1
07/04/05 13
07/05/05 12 <-- Featured on Apple.com
07/06/05 14
07/07/05 17
07/08/05 22
07/09/05 18
07/10/05 24
07/11/05 18
07/12/05 14
07/13/05 5
07/14/05 11
07/15/05 11
07/16/05 12
07/17/05 17
07/18/05 18
07/19/05 9
07/20/05 12
07/21/05 10
07/22/05 10
07/23/05 8
07/24/05 16
07/25/05 12
07/26/05 6
07/27/05 10
07/28/05 9
07/29/05 10
07/30/05 14
07/31/05 11
08/01/05 10
08/02/05 9
08/03/05 3
08/04/05 7
08/05/05 6
08/06/05 7
08/07/05 9
08/08/05 7
08/09/05 6
08/10/05 6
08/11/05 6
08/12/05 7
08/13/05 10
08/14/05 9
08/15/05 5
08/16/05 3
08/17/05 4 <-- "Indie Game of the Month", PC Zone Magazine
08/18/05 7
08/19/05 7
08/20/05 10
08/21/05 15
08/22/05 10
08/23/05 7
08/24/05 7
08/25/05 3
08/26/05 13 <-- G4TV "Attack of the Show" review
08/27/05 19
08/28/05 16
08/29/05 12
08/30/05 6
08/31/05 9
09/01/05 11 <-- Started promoting the game on Linux gaming sites
09/02/05 19
09/03/05 13
09/04/05 11
09/05/05 13
09/06/05 4
09/07/05 9
09/08/05 8
09/09/05 8
09/10/05 9
09/11/05 7
09/12/05 10
09/13/05 5
09/14/05 6
09/15/05 5
09/16/05 8

We've also had a number of sales via RegNow, but I'm not going to spend the time to add them to the date listing above, instead I'll just give you the total: 171. So, RegNow + Plimus gives us 932 sales in total, about 25% of which have come from affiliates.

Platform breakdown
- Mac OS X: 53%
- Windows: 45%
- Linux: 2%

The game is also selling well on a few portals, but unfortunately we can't comment on portal stats!

We hope you find these numbers interesting/helpful! If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

[Savant]

Wow, you guys are doing well! Congrats!

Definitely shows the value of a Mac port too ...

[terin]

You missed:

7/7/05 - VGsmart Press Release...

-Joe

[svero]

Its good to see the affil sales on Twilight had a little impact. I love games like fizzwizzle that are slick and fun but not necessarily plastererd on the front page of every site in town. I've tended to try and find the best of those games that aren't normally getting tons of exposure elsewhere.. particularly puzzle games which seem to do reasonably well.

[patrox]

Just out of curiosity, how long did it take you to write Prof fizzle. ( and how many people involved )

thank you.
pat.

[Jack Norton]

So, RegNow + Plimus gives us 932 sales in total, about 25% of which have come from affiliates.

Wow awesome! I sold a few Prof. Fizzwizzle too from my site and I'm glad to see it did so well in general. I'm curious to know development time too :)

[lakibuk]

930 sales in 2.5 months, very impressive. Took me 2 years to come to this number. Your first game?
How did you get that much traffic to your site? Only because of the good quality of the game or any special tricks?

[baegsi]

Just played the demo, I can understand now the sales stats, nice work! And this is your first game? Unbelievable

[arcadetown]

Ignore the man behind the curtain, the Wizz is doing nicely here also. Honestly I expected lukewarm sales, good thing I let our users decide as sometimes they give me a big fat warm slap in the face. Really wish Professor had an online version. About 80%/20% pc/mac version sales here.

[cliffski]

great sales figures there. One thing it shows is that indie sales come in on a steady trickle over time, which to be honest is much better than the sudden spike and then near-total falloff that those poor schmucks in retail have to put up with.
Have you spent any money on advertising in the traditional sense? ie, banner adverts and adwords etc?

[Pogacha]

Wow !!! - Congrats!
How did you get that much traffic to your site? Only because of the good quality of the game or any special tricks?
I'm curious too.
GL

[Ryan Clark]

You missed:

7/7/05 - VGsmart Press Release...
Well, I was only listing things that seemed to give us a quick spike. Instead, I credit the VGsmart press release with much of our staying power and longer term traffic. We've seen a fair number of very positive (http://www.insidemacgames.com/features/view.php?ID=383&Page=1) reviews (http://www.geekstreak.com/content/332/Great_Cheap_Games_Professor_Fizzwizzle.html) pop up on various websites, and we attribute that sort of thing to VGsmart, since we didn't approach those sites ourselves.

But yes, for all who are reading: The VGsmart press release has paid for itself many times over!

Its good to see the affil sales on Twilight had a little impact.
Yes, Twilight has been a great affiliate for us! I think your audience fits well with the game. We look forward to the launch of BB on your site :)

Just out of curiosity, how long did it take you to write Prof fizzle. ( and how many people involved )
It took just under 9 months, with me doing the programming, Matt Parry doing the graphics, and Michael Huang (on contract) doing the sound and music.

We could've been faster, but it was our first game! A learning experience.

How did you get that much traffic to your site? Only because of the good quality of the game or any special tricks?
Well, as I said, the press release helped us get traffic from a variety of sources. Also, I think we're getting a fair amount of word-of-mouth, as I see a lot of unreferred visits to our site (ie. the person probably typed in "grubbygames.com" rather than finding the link from a website). Finally, we're the "sponsor" of the Game Programming Wiki (http://gpwiki.org), which certainly brings in a steady stream of visitors.

Ignore the man behind the curtain, the Wizz is doing nicely here also.
Yep! We're very pleased with how things are going on ArcadeTown. Thanks for giving us a shot, Brian :)

We're also doing well on Big Fish and we should be up on Reflexive shortly, too.

Have you spent any money on advertising in the traditional sense? ie, banner adverts and adwords etc?
We have a Google AdWords campaign, but it doesn't get us more than one sale every day or two. We're looking into getting ads up on a few websites, but nothing is online just yet.

[arcadetown]

You know I think a good part of it's success are the cute little extra touches. For example, if you rolldown the main menu options the professor types, but if your roll upwards he types differently. Wish a lot more devs would go to that level of detail as think users respond well to it.

[DangerCode]

Congrats, Ryan. I played the demo a couple of weeks ago and was very impressed.

Thank you very much for sharing this data with us.

[vjvj]

Thanks for posting this, and congratulations! I, too, downloaded the demo and was very impressed. I intended to play "only a few minutes", but ended up playing straight to the end of the demo :)

[Dominique Biesmans]

You can add to your list :
09/18/05 11 xx <-- mentioned on boingboing.net

[terin]

Thanks for the support Ryan:

The whole GP Wiki thing is an important and overlooked item. I'm not saying it is the reason for their success, it is merely a cog in the wheel... but if you want to drive traffic I strongly urge developers to create useful content SOMEWHERE and link it back to your site. It has to be original and it has to be useful and somewhere people can find... so that is no easy task. Good job Ryan on finding something to draw traffic.

-Joe

Edit: Create or sponsor or whatever... but be attached to content, not just items you are selling :)

[Nexic]

You just posted these stats to make me feel pathetic didnt you!

Good job, glad to see you doing well. It seems like a fair few of us are really getting somewhere now, let's hope the trend continues!

[Luc Van den Borre]

I would love to know what getting that nice little review on BoingBoing (http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/17/highly_engaging_retr.html) did to your stats. I reckon you will be getting a nice sales burst from that. It's the kind of marketing that money can't buy...

[Escapee]

Glad to see professor doing so well in 2.5 month , Remember the street hawker thing Ryan ? Ha !!

[Greg Squire]

Congrats Ryan and Matt! Nice to hear a good success story. Hope it continues to sell well for you. ;)

[Escapee]

Ryan, i'm wondering if you have done any sales statistic based on gender ?

[SquareDanceSteve]

Fantastic results! And should we assume sales on the portals are much higher?

[Ryan Clark]

Ryan, i'm wondering if you have done any sales statistic based on gender ?
Well, the only way we can guess gender is by looking at the names of people who buy the game... and I think it's probably around 50/50, but I don't have any hard numbers.

Fantastic results! And should we assume sales on the portals are much higher?
Unfortunately, we can't really comment on that :(

[BlueWaldo]

The game is also selling well on a few portals, but unfortunately we can't comment on portal stats!

I know you can't comment on portal sales, so just shot me down if this question you can answer this. Does your business try to focus on selling Professor Fizzwizzle through your website or through portals?

[Ryan Clark]

Does your business try to focus on selling Professor Fizzwizzle through your website or through portals?
We want to do both! Why not? :)

[ManuTOO]

very impressive stats ! :eek:

Is it possible to know how many downloads you got ?

[sparkyboy]

Congrats Ryan, this is one hell of a fun game!!! :D I can see why this is a hit.Nice cartoon-like graphics, cartoon-like sounds, good music, not to mention the little animation touches.

Just showed my fiancee the game and my intention was just to let her know what a hit game plays like, and I found myself being drawn in and HAVING to solve the puzzles!!!!!!! :D

It isn't hard to draw me into a game like this,I must admit, because I adore cerebral challenging games, but this one made me laugh as well!!! Superb job as far as I'm concerned.

Sokoban on a platform eh.......well I never!!!!! ;)


All the best


Mark.

P.S.

You must be ROLLING IN IT by now, so, as a bit of fun, cover yourself in honey first then roll in it. It'll be good fun!!!! ;)

[Ryan Clark]

Is it possible to know how many downloads you got ?
Well, at the time that I posted these numbers, we probably had about 70,000 downloads. But some percentage of those downloads failed (the user lost connection during the download, for example), and we've also had a number of sales come from magazine cover disks, and we don't know how many people played the game via the cover disks... so, it makes it hard to know just how many people have played the game :)

You must be ROLLING IN IT by now, so, as a bit of fun, cover yourself in honey first then roll in it. It'll be good fun!!!! ;)
Thanks for your kind words about the game, sparkyboy! However, we're not rolling in it just yet... but we are making a living, which is obviously the first goal :)

[chanon]

70,000 downloads in 77 days
That's 909 downloads a day!
For your first game, you got so many visitors in so little time, very good website marketing!

[Steve Ince]

I'm new to these forums, but I tried Professor Fizzwizzle based on the comments in this thread. I loved it so much I bought it pretty much straight away. Fabulous game, Ryan.

[arcadetown]

From here add another 30k downloads the first 10 days and just over 40k through 20 days (now). Sales still doing nicely too boot. Very nice product. Think users are reacting to the overall polish and cuteness factor.

[sparkyboy]

Dammmn straight!!!! Those little touches of animation i.e. when the prof is standing still and running into those rubber nets etc, had me laughing no end!!!! :D

Simple game design...BUT WHAT POLISH!!!!!!! :D ;)

Sod you Ryan....GIT :p


All the best


Mark.