Mode 7 indicates that it has doubled its investment of $140,000 in PC exclusive Frozen Synapse, making over $300,000 in five months on just the game’s website. Many of the 300,000 copies were on third party sites like Steam and sold at a discount, but that the company has also exceeded its own sales target of 100,000 copies within the first year.
“Frozen Synapse has, in no way, hit is full potential yet,” writes Taylor. “Sales continue to be strong and even held up during events like the Humble Bundle: most indie games hit a tiny fraction of their potential market, so we have to keep working on new ways to reach new players. Our iPad version has brought a whole new set of opportunities for PR, and I will also be looking into advertising, website optimization and further deals to entice new users in the near future. We wanted to make a game with an aesthetic that wouldn’t date, so it would continue to sell five or even ten years into the future – my hope is that it will be around for a long time to come.”
The game was purposefully targeting a core PC gaming crowd which would pay more than usual for the indie title if the quality was high enough and without spending much on marketing. The ‘paid-for beta’ similar to Minecraft raised over $135,000, and when the full game was released, pricing deals helped give the game a lot of visibility on Steam.
“Frozen Synapse was a labor of love which marked our transition from a low-grade indie company to fully-functional business. Even though the game continues to make a good profit, this transition was by far the most important result,” noted Taylor. “It took over four years – on and off – to create, so now our major challenge is to improve the time it takes to develop games without compromising on the results. Learning to grow and manage an increasingly complex business is a huge challenge, but one we relish.”
Source: GamesBrief
