https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfPKpT0uRGc
Gentlemen! is, in the words of its creator āa 2-player head-to-head Victorian dueling game for tablets.ā There is no singleplayer mode and its multiplayer is local only. This wouldnāt figure to be an attractive piracy target, but the gameās features donāt seem to matter. In its first three weeks Gentlemen! was downloaded more than 50,000 times, only 144 of which were legitimate purchases.
āWe knew very well that we were making a pretty esoteric game, in the sense that it is limited to iPads and tablets bigger than 7 inches and requires two players, so we didnāt exactly have high expectations,ā said Yann Seznec, of the studio Lucky Frame. (Thatās the gameās trailer, above) āWe also set the price relatively highāstarting at $5, and currently on sale for $3.ā
Yet after a couple of days, they were seeing an explosion in their numbers of unique usersādespite selling only eight copies on Google Play. āThe numbers surprised us so much that we actually contacted the analytics company to confirm that we were interpreting them correctly,ā Seznec wrote.
The only correct interpretation was rampant piracy, much of it coming from China and Russia, Seznec wrote. Compounding matters was the fact Korean singer Psy has a hit single by the same name as the game, making it harder to stand out in app stores. āYou wouldnāt think a pop song would cause problems for an app, but we quickly learned about the seedy world of games and apps piggybacking on other entertainment media,ā Seznec wrote.
Seznec pointed out his team worked on the game for five months and indicates it what theyāve made on it is nowhere near enough to cover the time put into it. His debrief on the release of Gentlemen! and its aftermath reads like a cautionary tale: Some people will pirate anything just because itās available, and check the Top 40 songs before finalizing your gameās name.
Gentlemen! Or, how our most successful game is also our least profitable. [Gamasutra via Joystiq]
