WGTC: Dementium Remastered, a game that I enjoyed my time with, and you recently said it had a low sales performance. How disappointing has the game been sales-wise? It seems like you would have a good set of data from Moon Chronicles as to what sales would be like.
JW: The sales of Dementium Remastered have been very low so far. Much lower than I expected. My expectations were based on how our other games have sold, and as such were already quite conservative. I am very surprised that they are lower than my conservative projections. We will still continue with releasing the game in Europe and also release Dementium II Remastered, but the sales results definitely make us pause with future development on 3DS beyond Mutant Mudds Super Challenge and Treasurenauts, which is very unfortunate. In an ideal world, I would love to continue developing games for 3DS. It is my personal favorite console to play games on, but if we cant generate enough revenue from our games to cover the cost of 4 people with no office space, then something must change.
WGTC: Looking back, do you think a different price point or date wouldve garnered more sales? As far as eShop releases go, Dementium Remastered was one of the more hyped releases in 2015.
JW: I do wish that we were able to release the game on Halloween, but that was not possible, unfortunately. I think the price is fair for the game. We put a lot of time, effort, and financial investment into the remastering of Dementium, and as such it is a game that I am very proud of. It looks great, it plays great, and it is a unique experience for the 3DS. There are many reasons that it hasnt sold much, but it is what it is. We must move on.
WGTC: Treasurenauts has been in development for quite some time. What has been the reason for the long development cycle? Is it just wanting to prioritize other projects, or has Treasurenauts been difficult to fully realize?
JW: The reason Treasurenauts has been delayed is due to cashflow. We must have money coming in so we can continue making games. This means that sometimes we have to reorganize our efforts in order to release a game sooner, and sometimes we take on work-for-hire, which results in the our other projects to be delayed.
WGTC: You engage fans quite often on social media, and often poll fans feelings on matters such as if there is a demand for your games in Europe. Do you feel like this has backfired in the past? Have you found that people are more willing to say yes to potentially buying something, and then not actually make the purchase once they get what they said they wanted?
JW: The polls and questions I pose on Twitter are not an exact science. I always take the results as a small sampling of a specific audience. Anecdotal at best.
WGTC: Renegade Kid always seems to have 2 or 3 games in development at all times. How do you manage juggling that many projects around, and why does it work better for the studio than just focusing on one game at a time?
JW: I would prefer we focus on just one game at a time, but that has not proven to be financially successful for us therefore requiring us to develop more than one in order to keep rolling along.