Dim Bulb Games’ lead developer Johnnemann Nordhagen has revealed that Where The Water Tastes Like Wine not only struggled critically, but was a complete flop commercially.
In an honest, post-mortem blogpost, Nordhagen revealed the shortcomings of the studio’s debut game, and argued that games like Where The Water Tastes Like Wine may not have a place anymore in the current market.
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“Commercially, it’s a disaster,” said Nordhagen. “I can’t discuss exact numbers, but in the first few weeks fewer people bought the game than I have Twitter followers, and I don’t have a lot of Twitter followers.”
In case you don’t follow Nordhagen on Twitter – which most of you probably don’t – he has a little over 4,000 followers. This means that less than 5,000 copies were sold in the game’s first few weeks, which even by indie standards, is not good, at all.
Nordhagen further revealed that the game has yet to break even, meaning the studio hasn’t made a single dollar off the product.
“So far, I have made $0 from the game,” said Nordhagen. “That may look like a high number, but consider that it took four years to make — that works out to approximately $0/year … And then once you factor in the ~$140,000 I spent paying my contractors and collaborators for the game, you begin to see that maybe it wasn’t, financially speaking, worth it.”
The deficit would notably be even worse if publisher Good Shepherd didn’t step in to help complete the game and market it, the latter particularly being an expensive thing to do properly.
Norhagen continues:
“Joking aside — that’s dismal. And terrifying. At the end of the day it’s astounding that a game that got this much attention from the press, that won awards, that had an all-star cast of writers and performers, that had a bizarre celebrity guest appearance(!) failed this hard. It scares me.”
“That last part should be worrying for anyone in the indie games industry. [Where The Water Tastes Like Wine could have been a non-commercial game, but it would have had to be very different. It would be far less polished, it wouldn’t have had the collaborators that it did, I could not have paid people who couldn’t afford to work for revenue share or for the love of the game (thus, I fear, cutting out some of the most valuable voices that this game was a platform for). I could have developed it as a side project, but it took me four years as is. Basically, I’m not sure that games like this one can continue to be made in the current market.”
Nordhagen admits that he wasn’t always the best-equipped and knowledgeable enough to tackle the issues that the game ran into during development. It also lost both of its main artists halfway through development, and had very little playtesting. As you may know, the latter is particularly important, and can make or break a game in terms of quality and appeal.
Where The Water Tastes Like Wine – which launched back in February – is available for PC, Mac, and Linux for $19.99 USD.
