What is the game that recorded sales of over 50 million yen even though it was developed in 30 minutes?
Advances in technology have made download sales of games commonplace, and games developed by individuals can now be easily distributed on home game consoles such as PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch. As a result, the games available on download stores are a mixed bag, and some of them make you wonder, 'Is this really a game?' The British daily newspaper The Guardian is featuring a developer who earned sales of over 50 million yen from a game he developed in about 30 minutes.
Stroke of genius? How one developer earned over £250k from games made in 30 minutes | Games | The Guardian
``Stroke'', which was featured by The Guardian, is a game series that is available for download on the PlayStation Store and can be purchased for the regular price of 550 yen. The following is 'Stroke the Dog', but in addition to dogs, there are various animal versions such as cats, rabbits, turtles, beavers, hamsters, snakes, etc.
stroke the dog
https://store.playstation.com/ja-jp/product/JP7943-CUSA36657_00-0973185763005683
You can check the game screen of 'Stroke the Dog' in the movie below.
Stroke The Dog Gameplay/Walkthrough - YouTube
When you start the game, a dog will appear in the center of the screen. The only other thing is '0 Strokes' written in the upper left.
✕Press the button and the dog will flash. Then, the number on the top left increases by the number of times you press the ✕ button. Since it means Stroke, the fact that the dog blinked probably indicates that the dog was stroked. However, the dog is just a static image, so there is no movement other than blinking.
After stroking it 25 times, the trophy was unlocked.
Trophies were unlocked depending on the number of strokes, and the platinum trophy was unlocked after stroking 2000 times. There's nothing left to do in this game. There's no movement in the game, no sound effects, just pictures of animals under a Creative Commons license and some pretty poor background music. Even if the animal is different, the content is exactly the same, only the picture of the animal displayed changes.
Various goals are set for games, but in recent games, trophies (achievements) have become one of the indicators for gameplay. When you achieve a goal set as an achievement in-game, it will be recorded in your account. This is a source of great pride for players, many of whom play completed games over and over again to collect trophies. For this reason, many games such as the 'Stroke' series are released solely for collecting platinum trophies.
T.J. Gardner, the developer of the 'Stroke' series, asked, 'Is the Stroke series a game?' In response to a question from The Guardian, he answered, 'It depends on how you define a 'game'. There is interaction, of course it's very limited, but it also has goals. It's not difficult or complicated at all, but... It’s still a game.”
Mr. Gardner has learned programming by himself, and it seems that it took about 7 to 8 hours to make ``Stroke the Dog'', which was first released in September 2022. However, now it can be developed in about 30 minutes. This first ``stroke'' was downloaded over 120,000 times at the time of article creation and recorded sales of 275,000 pounds (approximately 52 million yen). The PlayStation Store charges 30% of game sales, so Mr. Gardner only received about 36 million yen.
Gardner said, ``I did some research and found that it is very easy to pass the PlayStation Store's quality assurance.I was able to register Stroke the Dog in the store in 2022 without any problems. This time, we tried registering it using a clearly different animal.'
As a result, there are a large number of 'Stroke' series titles. According to Gardner, hamsters are the most popular, followed by cats, and in third place is turtles. It seems that 11,105 copies of 'Stroke the Hamster' have been sold at the time of article creation, but only 10 people asked for a refund.
However, there are many critical opinions on the Internet about Mr. Gardner's methods, and some criticize Sony for allowing the 'Stroke' series to be registered on the PlayStation Store. In response to this criticism, Sony reportedly sent a message to developers saying, ``Games that only collect trophies, such as the ``Stroke'' series, will be removed from the PlayStation Store, but at the time of writing the article, Sony actually did not collect trophies. There is no evidence that collectible games are being excluded.
Mr. Gardner apparently used part of the proceeds to pay off debts, and when asked by The Guardian if he regrets releasing the Stroke series, he answered, ``Honestly, no. It was for my family.'' I will never regret what I did to help my family.' The money is also used to cover the operating costs of GameAchievment.com , a site where you can check your in-game achievements on multiple platforms.
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