Today, publisher tinyBuild announced that its Hello Neighbor franchise has reached 30M downloads. Available on PC, Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch, Android and iOS, the horror video game was followed by both a prequel (Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek) and a multiplayer spin-off (Secret Neighbor). Over 30 million people play Hello Neighbor, the game’s audience consists mainly of children 8-16 years old located in the US, China, Russia, Germany, France, South America.
In addition to games, tinyBuild’s decision to work on a book brand brought $16 million of book sales.
Looking at game data from the Hello Neighbor franchise, Alex Nichiporchik, CEO at tinyBuild, explains that the current trend of the video game market is not in favor of publishers — to succeed, he states, a publisher needs to be more creative and focus on building the long-lasting IPs.
Alex Nichiporchik, tinyBuild’s CEO:
“Indie publishing is dead. It stopped being a sustainable business model the minute the number of mid-size publishers exceeded the number of good games being developed. Instead of focusing on one-off publishing deals, it’s better to build strong and entertaining brands. That means a large in-house development infrastructure that can support both internal games and external studios.”
Nichiporchik also notes that it is important to keep your audience in mind. Early review impressions from critics were far from perfect, but understanding the game’s audience made the next steps forward more clear. The kids playing were enjoying the title, regardless of reviews. tinyBuild used that knowledge and launched a book series by children’s author Carly Anne West. At present, that book series has sold 2M copies and received massive traction among Hello Neighbor fans.
About Hello Neighbor
Hello Neighbor is a survival horror game developed by Dynamic Pixels and published by tinyBuild. The goal of the game is to sneak into your neighbor’s house, successfully get to the basement and uncover a secret. Another feature behind Hello Neighbor’s gameplay is procedural AI: a kid playing a game competes against the Neighbor (operated by an AI algorithm). The AI remembers the paths which the player used in previous attempts and modifies the Neighbor’s actions accordingly.
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