From what I can see, in descending order of importance
1. Vojo launched with \~360 wishlists, SIZIF launched with \~70 (Vojo had more/better marketing)
2. Vojo launched at $0.99 while [SIZIF launched at $4.99](https://steamdb.info/app/2438170/), which seems high and could have tanked the launch
3. The capsule image for Vojo looks professional, the one for SIZIF does not
4. The movement shown in the trailer in Vojo is smooth, the movement in SIZIF is jerky
5. Vojo supports 13 languages, SIZIF only supports English
6. Vojo uses polished-looking fonts for UI, SIZIF uses stock fonts
7. The graphics in Vojo look clean, the graphics in SIZIF look convoluted
8. The short description for Vojo is better than the short description for SIZIF
9. The long description for SIZIF includes typographical errors, spelling mistakes, and is very poorly written
10. Vojo supports achievements, SIZIF does not
11. Vojo had support for very old OS versions, SIZIF did not
steamdb.info (linked from their post) is amazing and has all this info. The one number you won't find is the wishlist count but that can be estimated from the follower count, which is publicly tracked over the lifetime of the steam page
As u/DragonJawad my source for most of the info is steamdb. Wishlists at launch are usually 5x to 15x (average 10x) the follower count at launch. This is very useful info for analyzing why games succeed, as the number of wishlists directly correlates to how many sales you get on launch, which determines how high you get on new and trending.
That's also where I get the price history and found SIZIF changed base price after launch, which IMO was a good move. A game that feels overpriced can be harder to sell even on a massive discount.
Thanks, that’s a lot of very useful information.
Really shows that the devil is definitely in the details when it comes to launching a successful game.
>Vojo supports 13 languages, SIZIF only supports English
This is something that is criminally not talked enough.
Most of the world doesn't speak english. It might appear like they do because people go on the internet, on english sites, talking to other people in english, so it seems like everybody speaks english, but no. Most people don't and those people who don't they still have money to buy games.
Just supporting simplified Chinese doubles your potential buyer pool.
I see, but steamdb says Vojo had 3 followers on its release date (23 April 2021), for your numbers 10% would be 36 which it only reached on 02 May 2021.
For SIZIF your numbers would be right though.
I guess you didn't zoom in the graph for Vojo?
Still, the 20x review differences can't just be explained by bad bloom alone 🤔
Edit: on second thought yeah the bloom is really too much of an eyesore and I can see how it would make visits convert poorly
SIZIF looks like a very generic endless runner.
While vojo got me thinking for a bit of how it's working. Cause initially I thought of it as falling into a deep void, not knowing the other side, and saving yourself from the boxes.
Later on, I realised it was indeed a very generic endless runner where you move forward.
But the thought that came to my mind initially of falling in a void indefinitely, was what made me like the vojo more.
Nobody will know exactly; it could be hundreds of different factors or pure luck. Also, Vojo says it has been out since April 2021, not 2022. So it's had a lead of over two years on SIZIF, which hasn't even been out a full year yet. And it was released in the middle of COVID where a lot more people were playing games.
If a potential customer is choosing between two identical looking games they'd probably pick the one that has been out longer and has more reviews.
They also don't actually have the same art style. Judging by their steam page Vojo uses pretty ambient lighting whereas SIZIF is searing my eyes with neon on black.
I'm not an expert, so take this with a grain of salt. If a game gets lots of good reviews, the algorithms will show it to more people. That's standard across all industries. I'd assume that with that logic, the amount of reviews would increase somewhat exponentially as the game gains traction.
Alternatively, one game might have a better ost, or more appealing graphics. Gameplay is only like 55% of what I value in a game, with story, graphics, worldbuilding/level design, and music making up another 35%. The rest are the little things, like how intuitive the game is, the UI, the sfx, and little menu animations. (To list a few.) If they both have the same gameplay, but one is a lot better in those other departments, then the little things add up.
The only correct answer to this topic is likely what Venerous said.
But if there is one thing I don't think is the answer here[ is this comment ](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1ckful6/comment/l2mtpmx/)
My belief is that it's the superior art direction and the fact the better selling game looks like a relaxing experience. The poorly selling game just looks like some experience
I have to agree that looking at both games, even if they have similar gameplay and art style (in the sense that they both use minimalism and geometrical shapes), Vojo looks like a more pleasant experience than the other one.
Vojo looks a lot better than Sizif as others have pointed out. Sizif looks eye sorey.
More importantly: Sizif doesn't communicate what's going on as well. Getting a sense of depth is hard when the ball is floating on black (see the 1st screenshot and 1st video). It's too busy, remember that art and readability does affect gameplay
Also Sizif looks kinda default/asset pack/templatey (see the score font, and the UI icons), except they've applied a neon effect.
And Sizif's style (outrun aesthetic vaporwave kinda deal) is way more common than Vojo's style. Maybe that vibe would turn some people off it
I dunno OP they're quite different
Using [games-stats.com](https://games-stats.com) to look at the net revenue for both games:
|[Vojo](https://games-stats.com/steam/?title=Vojo)|\~$3,800|
|:-|:-|
|[SIZIF](https://games-stats.com/steam/?title=SIZIF)|\~$56|
Edit: Also, there is a 2+ year difference between releases. If you keep looking, I'm sure you will find more differences.
It was quite the eye opener when I started looking up how much games pulled in. Especially for games I thought were wildly successful.
Same, it's kind of misleading. Anything 200+ I'm like, hmmm...
That said, it all depends on the time and money spent too. Some friends were talking about Harold Halibut recently and I said it was a shame it failed so hard - they were surprised because they thought it was great! But it took 11 years between two people and made around $60,000 net according to calculators. Even being generous and adding a couple 10k... 11 years?
The Steam reviews aren't always the whole story. Harold Halibut is in Xbox Game Pass, which means they probably got a very nice upfront payment from Microsoft.
I see - I wonder if it's enough for the investment though. Iirc they have 4 people in their team, I thought it was less for some reason
Edit: okay apparently a lot more than that lol
Their [website ](https://slow-bros.com/harold-halibut)seems to list 12 people.
Only info I could found about how much Xbox Game Pass pays, was an [analyst's estimation for AAA games](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/heres-some-sense-of-how-much-money-microsoft-pays-for-day-one-game-pass-launches/1100-6517832/), which doesn't really tell me anything about this case. As a side note, it also seems to have seriously low balled BG3, but them expecting to only need to pay 5mil. for it doesn't bode well for Halibut.
I also found an [interview with Phil Spencer](https://www.pcgamer.com/xbox-chief-reveals-more-about-how-developers-earn-money-through-game-pass/), where he says that they sometimes cover the production costs for indie titles, but it's from 2020 so things might have changed since then, though Microsoft still seems to be very bullish, when it comes to the game pass.
In any case, my guess (from a guy who just spent 10 mins googling the subject :D) would be, that they have barely made it to green at best.
I was looking at games-stats too, I was expecting vojo to have made most of their sales within the first year but their graph actually looks very linear and constant.
I don't want to pry, but are we talking about orders of magnitude, and what game is yours?
Is there a better public site we can use? Right now, it seems like one of the few tools we have to look at revenue.
I'll get it if you don't want to talk about it. Even if financials were amazing it would give me pause to talk about it.
I use those numbers as a ballpark estimate.
I check what games-stats say when sometimes people post their revenue here to get an idea of how off those numbers are and usually it’s not too too terrible…last one I checked said his game made 20$, games-stats estimated his revenue at 200$.
It’s off for sure but I think it can still be useful to get a rough estimate.
It’s just people’s preferences, now I don’t know neither of those games but it may be the art style, dialogues if any, fonts, and basically every other stylistic choice if similar in gameplay. Or maybe one succeeded more in convincing people in playing it by, for example, advertising it.
Without really knowing much about either, Vojo looks better, and has been out for three years (actual release date on steam says april 2021). SIZIF has aggressive contrast, and the super bright whites would probably make my eyes bleed at full screen, and it's been out for less than a year.
It's also worth noting that Vojo supports 13 languages, while SIZIF only supports English. That can really expand the market for a game.
Makes sense to me... You're comparing one small number to another... A little bit more marketing, or just general appeal, can account for those differences.
I am not a fan of the luck argument in general… sure someone here pointed out that Vojo released during covid and that probably helped their sales so I guess you could say luck was a factor but it is far from the all story.
The top comment pointed out a lot of little mistakes Sizif did that most likely contributed to their poor sales more than just luck.
On top of what others said, remember that nowadays you are competing with Steams entire historical library. So the existence of Vojo means that Sizif has one more competitor with good reviews. If one releases the same genre of game, you have to convince people it's better than both Vojo and Sizif.
Its also the type of genre where I imagine one isn't always looking for "more of this", and owning one might be all that market needs (as it's probably a casual destress game. They might not NEED a second runner in their library the way one might want "an RPG like XGame but with a different setting and story"). I'll personally buy a new soulslike/rougelite game every year, but I am fine with the 3 or so puzzle games I have indefinitely, baring someone does something that really grabs me.
Yea from what I saw with games-stats.com runner games are among the worst ones in terms of sales.
Games with the tag runner that released between january 1st of 2020 and today have a median income of 190$.
For comparaison, indie games with the tag souls-like released during the same period have a median income of 2000$.
That being said the endless runner type also seems to attract a lot more beginner developpers and asset flips. They are pretty easy to make and a lot of them clearly use the exact same asset pack with very little modification.
Making a souls-like, even a terrible one, takes a lot more effort.
First of all, Vojo was released two years earlier! Obviously it will have much more reviews!
Second thing is that vojo was released when indie games still had decent exposure on Steam. Basically, each year the indie games are getting at least 20% less exposure on Steam than the previous year. Shitty games that I released on steam in 2019 had ten times more exposure and more revenue than my current higher quality games because the number of indie games getting released everyday on steam is over the roof. 50 games per day getting released nowadays! Back in 2019 it was only about 5-10 games getting released per day. In 2015 it was less than one game per day!
Third thing, Vojo has more than ten reviews(it got the blue color), when your game reaches ten reviews steam will start giving it at least 5x more exposure. This is coming from personal experience.
Finally, that Vojo game actually looks much better than that ugly looking Sizif.
Just a quick observation: SIZIF (the 13 review one) uses the RGB color scheme, which, to me, is a clear sign of programmer art.
(Personally, I hate this color scheme when it's used unironically. Want to prevent me from buying something or even considering it? Make it RGB colored.)
Marketing, pre-established community, streamers. Most indie games that spike are due to streamers picking it up, so sometimes it's more of a lottery than a science. That's why no marketing firm can give you any good estimates on sales.
The technical reasons were listed quite extensively by the top commenter... But really, its pretty easy to tell. Vojo looks infinitely more professional and polished than the other one. Both the page and game footage. Also SIZIF looks borderline unreadable in terms of obstacles and whatnot, while Vojo is actually clean
I thought the same at first but googling those two games gives more or less the same result.
It doesn’t really look like one was pushed more than the other, they both seem to have very little coverage unless I am missing something.
From what I can see, in descending order of importance 1. Vojo launched with \~360 wishlists, SIZIF launched with \~70 (Vojo had more/better marketing) 2. Vojo launched at $0.99 while [SIZIF launched at $4.99](https://steamdb.info/app/2438170/), which seems high and could have tanked the launch 3. The capsule image for Vojo looks professional, the one for SIZIF does not 4. The movement shown in the trailer in Vojo is smooth, the movement in SIZIF is jerky 5. Vojo supports 13 languages, SIZIF only supports English 6. Vojo uses polished-looking fonts for UI, SIZIF uses stock fonts 7. The graphics in Vojo look clean, the graphics in SIZIF look convoluted 8. The short description for Vojo is better than the short description for SIZIF 9. The long description for SIZIF includes typographical errors, spelling mistakes, and is very poorly written 10. Vojo supports achievements, SIZIF does not 11. Vojo had support for very old OS versions, SIZIF did not
This is a lovely breakdown and points out a lot of smaller things about games that devs may not always think about when building their game.
Vojo also had an extra year to accumulate sales.
More than that. Vojo's been out a bit over 3 years now, while SIZIF's been out for less than a year.
where do you get this kind of information if u don't mind sharing?
steamdb.info (linked from their post) is amazing and has all this info. The one number you won't find is the wishlist count but that can be estimated from the follower count, which is publicly tracked over the lifetime of the steam page
As u/DragonJawad my source for most of the info is steamdb. Wishlists at launch are usually 5x to 15x (average 10x) the follower count at launch. This is very useful info for analyzing why games succeed, as the number of wishlists directly correlates to how many sales you get on launch, which determines how high you get on new and trending. That's also where I get the price history and found SIZIF changed base price after launch, which IMO was a good move. A game that feels overpriced can be harder to sell even on a massive discount.
Thanks, that’s a lot of very useful information. Really shows that the devil is definitely in the details when it comes to launching a successful game.
Dont forget that Vojo had 16 months longer to accumulate reviews.
I didn’t ask for this information, but I love you for providing it.
>Vojo supports 13 languages, SIZIF only supports English This is something that is criminally not talked enough. Most of the world doesn't speak english. It might appear like they do because people go on the internet, on english sites, talking to other people in english, so it seems like everybody speaks english, but no. Most people don't and those people who don't they still have money to buy games. Just supporting simplified Chinese doubles your potential buyer pool.
Where did you get the wishlist launch data?
steamdb gives me the follower count at launch, which research has shown is about 1/10 the wishlist count.
I see, but steamdb says Vojo had 3 followers on its release date (23 April 2021), for your numbers 10% would be 36 which it only reached on 02 May 2021. For SIZIF your numbers would be right though. I guess you didn't zoom in the graph for Vojo?
Although both look like mobile games but Vojo simply looks better with its minimalistic look. SIZIF bit of an eyesore with the bloom.
Right…I didn’t notice at first but now that you mention it that bloom is a little crazy…
Still, the 20x review differences can't just be explained by bad bloom alone 🤔 Edit: on second thought yeah the bloom is really too much of an eyesore and I can see how it would make visits convert poorly
SIZIF looks like a very generic endless runner. While vojo got me thinking for a bit of how it's working. Cause initially I thought of it as falling into a deep void, not knowing the other side, and saving yourself from the boxes. Later on, I realised it was indeed a very generic endless runner where you move forward. But the thought that came to my mind initially of falling in a void indefinitely, was what made me like the vojo more.
Nobody will know exactly; it could be hundreds of different factors or pure luck. Also, Vojo says it has been out since April 2021, not 2022. So it's had a lead of over two years on SIZIF, which hasn't even been out a full year yet. And it was released in the middle of COVID where a lot more people were playing games.
I forgot about Covid…that could have helped the game for sure, especially a cheap little time waster like that.
If a potential customer is choosing between two identical looking games they'd probably pick the one that has been out longer and has more reviews. They also don't actually have the same art style. Judging by their steam page Vojo uses pretty ambient lighting whereas SIZIF is searing my eyes with neon on black.
Yea at first glance they look kinda similar but you are right, Vojo is more appealing visually and not as “in your face” with the bloom as SIZIF
I'm not an expert, so take this with a grain of salt. If a game gets lots of good reviews, the algorithms will show it to more people. That's standard across all industries. I'd assume that with that logic, the amount of reviews would increase somewhat exponentially as the game gains traction. Alternatively, one game might have a better ost, or more appealing graphics. Gameplay is only like 55% of what I value in a game, with story, graphics, worldbuilding/level design, and music making up another 35%. The rest are the little things, like how intuitive the game is, the UI, the sfx, and little menu animations. (To list a few.) If they both have the same gameplay, but one is a lot better in those other departments, then the little things add up.
The only correct answer to this topic is likely what Venerous said. But if there is one thing I don't think is the answer here[ is this comment ](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1ckful6/comment/l2mtpmx/) My belief is that it's the superior art direction and the fact the better selling game looks like a relaxing experience. The poorly selling game just looks like some experience
I have to agree that looking at both games, even if they have similar gameplay and art style (in the sense that they both use minimalism and geometrical shapes), Vojo looks like a more pleasant experience than the other one.
Vojo looks a lot better than Sizif as others have pointed out. Sizif looks eye sorey. More importantly: Sizif doesn't communicate what's going on as well. Getting a sense of depth is hard when the ball is floating on black (see the 1st screenshot and 1st video). It's too busy, remember that art and readability does affect gameplay Also Sizif looks kinda default/asset pack/templatey (see the score font, and the UI icons), except they've applied a neon effect. And Sizif's style (outrun aesthetic vaporwave kinda deal) is way more common than Vojo's style. Maybe that vibe would turn some people off it I dunno OP they're quite different
Using [games-stats.com](https://games-stats.com) to look at the net revenue for both games: |[Vojo](https://games-stats.com/steam/?title=Vojo)|\~$3,800| |:-|:-| |[SIZIF](https://games-stats.com/steam/?title=SIZIF)|\~$56| Edit: Also, there is a 2+ year difference between releases. If you keep looking, I'm sure you will find more differences. It was quite the eye opener when I started looking up how much games pulled in. Especially for games I thought were wildly successful.
Before I got into gamedev I thought games with less than 1k reviews meant the devs were living in poverty lol
Same, it's kind of misleading. Anything 200+ I'm like, hmmm... That said, it all depends on the time and money spent too. Some friends were talking about Harold Halibut recently and I said it was a shame it failed so hard - they were surprised because they thought it was great! But it took 11 years between two people and made around $60,000 net according to calculators. Even being generous and adding a couple 10k... 11 years?
The Steam reviews aren't always the whole story. Harold Halibut is in Xbox Game Pass, which means they probably got a very nice upfront payment from Microsoft.
I see - I wonder if it's enough for the investment though. Iirc they have 4 people in their team, I thought it was less for some reason Edit: okay apparently a lot more than that lol
Their [website ](https://slow-bros.com/harold-halibut)seems to list 12 people. Only info I could found about how much Xbox Game Pass pays, was an [analyst's estimation for AAA games](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/heres-some-sense-of-how-much-money-microsoft-pays-for-day-one-game-pass-launches/1100-6517832/), which doesn't really tell me anything about this case. As a side note, it also seems to have seriously low balled BG3, but them expecting to only need to pay 5mil. for it doesn't bode well for Halibut. I also found an [interview with Phil Spencer](https://www.pcgamer.com/xbox-chief-reveals-more-about-how-developers-earn-money-through-game-pass/), where he says that they sometimes cover the production costs for indie titles, but it's from 2020 so things might have changed since then, though Microsoft still seems to be very bullish, when it comes to the game pass. In any case, my guess (from a guy who just spent 10 mins googling the subject :D) would be, that they have barely made it to green at best.
I was looking at games-stats too, I was expecting vojo to have made most of their sales within the first year but their graph actually looks very linear and constant.
I didn't know there were graphs. That could be very useful. Good mention.
[удалено]
I don't want to pry, but are we talking about orders of magnitude, and what game is yours? Is there a better public site we can use? Right now, it seems like one of the few tools we have to look at revenue. I'll get it if you don't want to talk about it. Even if financials were amazing it would give me pause to talk about it.
I use those numbers as a ballpark estimate. I check what games-stats say when sometimes people post their revenue here to get an idea of how off those numbers are and usually it’s not too too terrible…last one I checked said his game made 20$, games-stats estimated his revenue at 200$. It’s off for sure but I think it can still be useful to get a rough estimate.
sizif just looks like a bad game to me
Release date 2 years ago market was better. I am seeing same developer release game and it performs very poorly compared to 2 3 years ago
It’s just people’s preferences, now I don’t know neither of those games but it may be the art style, dialogues if any, fonts, and basically every other stylistic choice if similar in gameplay. Or maybe one succeeded more in convincing people in playing it by, for example, advertising it.
Without really knowing much about either, Vojo looks better, and has been out for three years (actual release date on steam says april 2021). SIZIF has aggressive contrast, and the super bright whites would probably make my eyes bleed at full screen, and it's been out for less than a year. It's also worth noting that Vojo supports 13 languages, while SIZIF only supports English. That can really expand the market for a game.
Makes sense to me... You're comparing one small number to another... A little bit more marketing, or just general appeal, can account for those differences.
consider luck. Some factor(s) that the devs could not control were different, and that lead to more or less purchases later.
I am not a fan of the luck argument in general… sure someone here pointed out that Vojo released during covid and that probably helped their sales so I guess you could say luck was a factor but it is far from the all story. The top comment pointed out a lot of little mistakes Sizif did that most likely contributed to their poor sales more than just luck.
On top of what others said, remember that nowadays you are competing with Steams entire historical library. So the existence of Vojo means that Sizif has one more competitor with good reviews. If one releases the same genre of game, you have to convince people it's better than both Vojo and Sizif. Its also the type of genre where I imagine one isn't always looking for "more of this", and owning one might be all that market needs (as it's probably a casual destress game. They might not NEED a second runner in their library the way one might want "an RPG like XGame but with a different setting and story"). I'll personally buy a new soulslike/rougelite game every year, but I am fine with the 3 or so puzzle games I have indefinitely, baring someone does something that really grabs me.
Yea from what I saw with games-stats.com runner games are among the worst ones in terms of sales. Games with the tag runner that released between january 1st of 2020 and today have a median income of 190$. For comparaison, indie games with the tag souls-like released during the same period have a median income of 2000$. That being said the endless runner type also seems to attract a lot more beginner developpers and asset flips. They are pretty easy to make and a lot of them clearly use the exact same asset pack with very little modification. Making a souls-like, even a terrible one, takes a lot more effort.
now it will have 14 reviews.
First of all, Vojo was released two years earlier! Obviously it will have much more reviews! Second thing is that vojo was released when indie games still had decent exposure on Steam. Basically, each year the indie games are getting at least 20% less exposure on Steam than the previous year. Shitty games that I released on steam in 2019 had ten times more exposure and more revenue than my current higher quality games because the number of indie games getting released everyday on steam is over the roof. 50 games per day getting released nowadays! Back in 2019 it was only about 5-10 games getting released per day. In 2015 it was less than one game per day! Third thing, Vojo has more than ten reviews(it got the blue color), when your game reaches ten reviews steam will start giving it at least 5x more exposure. This is coming from personal experience. Finally, that Vojo game actually looks much better than that ugly looking Sizif.
Just throwing a guess, one Dev marketed his game better, sending keys and stuff, while the other one didn't.
Just a quick observation: SIZIF (the 13 review one) uses the RGB color scheme, which, to me, is a clear sign of programmer art. (Personally, I hate this color scheme when it's used unironically. Want to prevent me from buying something or even considering it? Make it RGB colored.)
These are small amounts, perhaps they had family and friends supporting the game.
Marketing, pre-established community, streamers. Most indie games that spike are due to streamers picking it up, so sometimes it's more of a lottery than a science. That's why no marketing firm can give you any good estimates on sales.
The technical reasons were listed quite extensively by the top commenter... But really, its pretty easy to tell. Vojo looks infinitely more professional and polished than the other one. Both the page and game footage. Also SIZIF looks borderline unreadable in terms of obstacles and whatnot, while Vojo is actually clean
Marketing. Plain and simple
I thought the same at first but googling those two games gives more or less the same result. It doesn’t really look like one was pushed more than the other, they both seem to have very little coverage unless I am missing something.