The top 10 paid list has 7 models alone, and this retired independent developer has “laid down and won” again

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GameLook report / What is the highest state of lying win?

Among the three major lists in the App Store, the paid list is often less concerned than the free list and best-selling list. The reason is quite simple: the games on the paid list can’t compete with the free list for downloads, and the best-selling list can’t compete with the amount of krypton gold, not to mention that the domination of “Minecraft” on the paid list in the global market continues.

However, when you look down to the Top 10, GameLook still sees a different scene in the paid list of the App Store in the United States. On today’s list, there are as many as seven games in the Top 10 from the same independent game developer. Even more bizarre is that the winner of this life has announced his retirement last year.

Based on the average downloads on the paid charts and the price of this series of games ($2.99 ​​per game), the retired developer still earns at least millions of dollars in game revenue every year. Compared with being brought to “lay down” by thighs in PvP games, this developer’s “lay down” is undoubtedly more enviable. The seven games that allow him to sit back and enjoy are from the same IP that he created, Five Nights at Freddy’s (FNaF for short).

FNaF mainline sixth real machine demonstrationThe simplest and purest horror unit drama

The first part of FNaF was born in 2014. Whether it is gameplay or graphics, it highlights a “simple”. The story takes place in a fictional restaurant called “Freddy the Fizz the Bear’s Pizza Restaurant”, where players play as a night guard, using different props to survive and avoid being attacked by murderous animal mechanical dolls.

Since the guard room is monitored by the main locations of the restaurant, in this game, the player does not even need to move, but only needs to squat in the guard room from 12:00 in the middle of the night to 6:00 in the morning. During this period, players need to constantly judge whether a mechanical doll is coming through the closed-circuit television screen. At the same time, the player also needs to constantly switch the left and right perspectives to check whether mechanical dolls will suddenly appear at the door on the left and right sides, and close the door in time to avoid being attacked.

Closing the door will lose power, and once the power returns to zero, it will enter an undefended state, so players must accurately grasp the timing of closing the door. And as the name of the game suggests, all the player needs to do is stick to it for five nights, and once the mechanical doll suddenly appears in front of you, the game will end immediately after a momentary jumpscare.

However, it is such a small game with rough graphics and simple gameplay, but it brought developers at least $20 million in revenue (before sharing) in the next 2 years and four sequels. As of last year, this IP has a total of 6 works in the main line series, and 2 branch works. The 7 games shortlisted in the top 10 paid list this time belong to these eight games.

In every sense, the sequel to FNaF is much the same as the first. The core gameplay of “persisting for five nights” and “sudden death when encountering a mechanical doll” has basically been continued in the sequel, and the style of the game is not too much to keep pace with the times. However, the developers still planted some small easter eggs very intentionally, such as the classic pixel mini-games presented in the retro style of 8-bit Atari games, which is also more compatible with the art style of the game itself.

Overall, the FNaF series is like a separate thriller unit. Even if you haven’t played the previous game, you won’t feel inconsistent with any of them. But if you have heard the story behind this developer, you will understand that these seemingly unrelated “unit dramas” have formed a “Marvel Cinematic Universe”-like multi-layered worldview.

The FNaF Universe

The epic “Lying to Win” developer, Scott Cawthon, is a devout Christian. In the early years, he developed games related to religious stories. Like most solo game developers, he has also experienced a period of “applause and unpopularity”, especially the weird art style made it difficult for the mainstream public to accept his games, which even made him despair to commit suicide at one point.

Early works by Cawthon

Eventually, in order to support his family, he decided to change, and launched a children’s game “Chipper & Sons Lumber Co.” (Chipper & Sons Lumber Co.). Not only did the game fail, but it didn’t even make it: some critics lashed out at the game, claiming that Cawthon’s attempt to create a cute character was self-defeating and designed into a terrifying mechanical animal doll.

This time, Cawthon was not knocked down by the negative reviews. Instead, he was inspired and determined to use this to make new games that purposely scare players, and FNaF came into being.

The hard-won experience has taught Cawthon to appreciate the hard-won success of FNaF. Therefore, in the sequel, he is always doing his best to bring more surprises to players. In addition to the mini-games mentioned above, he has also continuously strengthened the IP depth of FNaF, and sorted these unit dramas into several parallel worlds at five levels. In order to achieve this goal, in addition to the eight games independently developed, he also did two things.

One is that he chose to develop three cooperative games with more technical partners, including a VR game and an AR game. Through the technical support of its partners, Cawthon not only brings richer gameplay to players, but also builds a lower-level world with more levels.

Table source: Wikipedia

The second is that he turned into a novelist, launching a trilogy of novels, two collections of short stories, a game guide book and a puzzle book. These books effectively supplement the background stories and characters that cannot be described in detail in the game due to financial reasons, further broadening the plot tension of FNaF. Hollywood movie giant Warner Bros. even scrambled for FNaF’s first film adaptation back in 2015.

However, both the movie and the 3A games that Cawthon announced to be developed have become “unfinished projects” with his retirement. But the reason why this 44-year-old gamer chooses to “lie down and win” is not the freedom of wealth. In his retirement announcement last year, he said he was retiring to better care for his six children.

However, some public opinion believes that the last straw that overwhelmed him was actually the fact that he provided tens of thousands of dollars in political donations to a number of Republican candidates, including Trump. He was criticized by anti-Republican groups. “If people feel that I’m doing more harm than good, then maybe it’s better for me to quit (donate) and retire,” Cawthon said. “I’ll take it, and I’ve done a great job in my career.”

“Lying to win” hides the crisis of solo travel

In fact, Warner Bros. has ceded the rights to the film to a low-budget horror film maker due to the game’s waning popularity. When GameLook reported Cawthon’s retirement last year, there were only three FNaF series games in the top 10 paid list. Therefore, today’s “Seven Stars Lianzhu” grand occasion is not only a “return to the light” of FNaF, but also reflects the various difficulties faced by independent game developers.

Even if you expand your attention to the top 20 paid charts in the United States, you can hardly find new games in the past year or two. The few new games launched after 2019 are either IP adaptation games with their own traffic such as “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “Real Estate Tycoon”, or sequel products. In other words, in the past two years, in the U.S. market, there have been almost no indie game hits like FNaF that rely on original IP to dominate the paid charts.

And it’s not just a problem for the U.S. market. It was in September 2019 that Apple officially launched the Apple Arcade subscription service, which is available for iOS, macOS and tvOS systems at the same time, so it is particularly attractive to “Apple Family Bucket” users. For a small monthly fee, they can play a slew of great indie games on all Apple devices, with 231 titles on the platform today.

It’s also a very attractive program for solo game developers, as Apple pays a direct fee to all games that participate in the program. This also allows developers to recover development costs in advance without worrying about the market performance of the game itself. Of course, if you want to get the olive branch from the apple, the quality of the game itself still has to be excellent.

For those solo game developers who are more powerful, the IAA games that have gradually emerged in the past two years have become a more realistic choice for them. Through the method of free game body + advertising monetization, the download threshold is lowered, and continuous and meagre income is obtained by taking the amount of money.

Developers above the waist were “packaged” by Apple, and developers below the waist were “swept away” by IAA games, which almost emptied the solo developer group that should have participated in the paid list competition. The scene of the slaughter. In contrast, the free charts in Europe and America, which are dominated by ultra-casual games, are changing almost every day, and it is often the case that half of the top ten are new games within half a year.

GameLook believes that whether it is to switch to a subscription platform or to IAA, it actually reflects the real problem that independent games are difficult to realize. Under the background that purchase volume has become the usual method of game manufacturers, it is undoubtedly very difficult for independent game developers to gain exposure. Even paid games also need enough downloads and purchases to support their return. In this context, escaping from paid games and relying on the traffic brought by the platform or advertising monetization has become an expedient choice for developers.

It is also this “Great Escape” that led to the “Dugu and Defeat” of FNaF and many similar games. Although the considerable and sustainable income brought by this long-term domination of the list exposes the fact that paid independent mobile games are not competitive enough, it may also be an incentive for solo game developers – since those stand-alone games that have not been updated for two or three years Solo tours can still earn six to seven-digit annual revenue, while the competition in IAA games is getting more and more inward. Under the general trend of high-quality games, returning to the paid solo tour track may be useful for players as well as themselves. Bring more surprises.

This Article is curated from Source and we only provide the English version of the Story.

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