Top all-time · #6689
Hitbox Team
Company blog · hitboxteam.comgamesbusiness
Hitbox Team is the company blog at hitboxteam.com, writing about games and business. Since 2013, 12 different Hacker News readers have linked it 17 times, most often “Dustforce sales figures”. The last post was in 2016, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Articles by the developers of the indie game Dustforce on their game sales figures and on designing game narrative. HN readers cite them as hard data on indie game revenue and on storytelling in games.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 7 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Dustforce sales figures6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2013-04-16
- Designing game narrative5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2013-10-27
What Hacker News says?
Here is some hard evidence to the contrary: http://hitboxteam.com/content/articles/dustforce-sales-figur... http://hitboxteam.com/dustforce-sales-figures This isn't an exception, either. This is the norm.
Comment linking /dustforce-sales-figures
on “EFF Wins Petition to Inspect and Modify Car Software”Submitted Designing game narrative as a story · 103 points
HN discussionSlightly directed at a sibling comment, but yes indie games (can) make a significant amount of revenue through non-release sales, even at heavy discounts. For example, Dustforce more than doubled its cumulative revenue through a 50% steam sale and inclusion in a Humble Bundle: http://hitboxteam.com/dustforce-sales-figures
Comment linking /dustforce-sales-figures
on “Show HN: The Curious Expedition – A Steam game in HTML5”Submitted Designing game narrative (2013) as a story · 29 points
HN discussionHitbox (devs of indie game Dustforce) wrote a really good article about their numbers: http://hitboxteam.com/dustforce-sales-figures
Comment linking /dustforce-sales-figures
on ““Sierra… well, it was the poor victim of a hostile takeover by criminals””Submitted Dustforce sales figures as a story · 27 points
HN discussionYou don't need to be AAA to be interactive. Plenty of indie games have compelling characters and immersion in spite of (or because of?) their lower fidelity. Hell, many AAA games stray away from interactivity in favour of awe-inspiring, non-interactive movie sequences, railshooter level designs, et cetera. http://hitboxteam.com/designing-game-narrative
Comment linking /designing-game-narrative
on “The tech arms race in AAA games and why I'm abandoning it”Submitted Detailed sales figures for our indie game, Dustforce as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI'd like to drop this link, which was posted to HN before without any reaction: http://hitboxteam.com/designing-game-narrative Especially after the impact that Minecraft has, my impression is that creating games is your best bet to create new ways of story telling and user interactions. My feeling is that we didn't even scratch the surface of what is possible.
Comment linking /designing-game-narrative
on “On Game Development”Submitted Dustforce Sales Figures as a story · 4 points
HN discussionIf you guys are interested in more data, here's the sales stats for our game Dustforce: http://hitboxteam.com/dustforce-sales-figures It's a non-mobile game, and has also been on the Humble Bundle. The article has a lot of details like dollar amounts and sales over time.
Comment linking /dustforce-sales-figures
on “Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery sales statistics”Submitted Dustforce sales figures, insights on indie game development cost as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI don't have any citations. It's not a hard rule and doesn't apply everywhere, but I feel like it would be somewhat applicable in this situation. It's just a thing that I've concluded as a result of my own experiences with selling digital media (games and music). Piracy did indeed spread awareness of my music and game, although it's hard to say if caused any lost revenue. I supposed some fraction of pirates would ha…
Comment linking /dustforce-sales-figures
on “Copying is an act of love. Please copy and share”Submitted Designing game narrative as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted A look at the sales numbers for the first year of our first game as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Dustforce sales figures as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
