House Party Celebrates Over 300,000 Sales in its First Year!

Hey everybody,

It’s me, Bobby.  I don’t make too many posts to the dev blog these days as I’m super busy with working on the game and managing the company, but I just wanted to make this post myself to announce that House Party, in its first year, has sold over 300,000 copies!  On top of that, the game has held a “Very Positive” review rating on Steam throughout the entire year.  I am so thankful that my silly little idea has brought such laughter and entertainment to so many people.

What an amazing ride it’s been. I started House Party in early 2015.  There I was, just a solo dev trying to do something different; something that’s never been done before.  Creating a full-on 3D game by yourself is no easy task, and I had to learn a lot about game development and graphics.  These were things that me, being a programmer, knew little about.  Taking on a project of this magnitude however, I got a crash course.  Of course I didn’t do things correctly the first time around, and in some cases, not even the second time around.  There was a lot of trial and error.

Eventually I got something that sort of resembled a game, and I created a Patreon account.  I was so amazed by how quickly people started supporting the project and getting behind my idea.  By early 2017, I had several hundred supporters!  Then in February of that same year, something crazy happened.

I saw a video go up from a YouTuber by the name of TurkVanGogH GameZ, and he was playing MY game!  A week later, another streamer called Kubz Scouts was playing it!  Then another streamer and all-around cool guy, MeatyLock was playing my game!  Captain Sauce, Gloom, MattShea, JackSepticEye, Azzyland, Pewdiepie!  Holy shit, my game was everywhere!

The game wasn’t ready though!  I had SO much work to do before it was going to be ready.  I didn’t want to miss this opportunity however, so I pushed to release the game in Early Access on Steam, even though it was still very premature.  The initial reception was amazing, and the game sold well over 30,000 copies in its first several weeks.

Then we had the Steam removal incident, and I thought maybe that was the end.  I figured this roller-coaster ride was over!  Steam was being super cool about it though, and we talked it out and came to an agreement of how the game could be modified so that they could sell it on the Steam store, and within days, the game was back up and running.  Of course, it’s removal and return prompted all kinds of media attention and articles and just buzz in general, so the game was selling like crazy again!

I figured I should hire a team.  I wanted to put the money I was making back into this product to make it the game I wanted it to be.  The game was still so buggy, un-optimized, and well… ugly!  I’ve since hired three 3D modelers, a QA, a Manager of Operations, and a writer.  We became a team of seven, and we diligently pushed out updates to the game almost monthly, and continue to do so on a regular basis.

The game has made leaps and bounds since it’s Early Access release.  We still have a lot to do.  In fact the game was in such infancy when it started getting popular that some of the YouTubers playing the game were just poking fun at how awful the game was.  They were right, but people also saw potential in what the game could be.  Today, it’s running, playing, and looking SO much better, and my awesome team is committed to making it the best it can be!  More recently, we have had even more really influential YouTubers picking up the game such as Nerd Cubed, Achievement Hunters, Game Grumps, and Just Greg.  The list goes on and on.  And that brings us to today, where we’re celebrating over 300,000 sales of the game since that Early Access launch.  Just amazing.  I am so thankful to every single one of you who bought a copy of the game and supported me on Patreon.  My team and I are dedicated to keeping up with those updates, and are also working on a new project we are slated to start later this year.

To All of Our Supporters:

Thank you guys SO much!  I never dreamed that when I started this project, I would be sitting here announcing this milestone.  You have made it possible for me to devote myself to this hobby project and really shape and mold this into something.  I am no longer a solo indie developer because of you.  Eek! Games is now a team of developers, all of whom are lending their talents and molding a shoddy alpha product into an actual game.  You all made that happen, and for that I am eternally grateful.  Because of you, we are now working with Take One Motion Capture Studios who are most famous for the Witcher 3 animations, and several other AAA titles.  We are also working hands on with Unity, and utilizing their business services to help optimize and enhance the game.  And most recently, we’ve started working with Mimic Productions, who are most famous for their work on the Avatar movie, and they will be helping us to give the characters a once-over, and bring the best user-experience that we can to House Party.

To all the Haters:

Of course, no success can be had without hate.  And boy, oh boy do we have haters.  There have been people who have attacked the game over the course of the last year, called for its removal from Steam, called for it to be banned, and have made assumptions and said hateful things about the game and about me for developing it.  It blows my mind the double-standard we have where so many television shows, ripe with sex and in a lot of cases, much more adult-themed nature air on television unchecked, but my game, just because it’s a video game, and involves cartoons having sex, received such controversy.  We also have SO many games already with gratuitous violence and mass-murder, but I showed a penis, so clearly I’m out of my mind.

The game has also been called misogynistic, and so in turn, I must be misogynistic (despite the game containing gay scenes and both women and men in empowering positions as well as submissive).  Some of the people saying these things call themselves “journalists” and “critics”, and it amazes me that they can hold such titles while at the same time being so one-sided, closed minded and oblivious.  This game is first and foremost, a comedy.  Every scenario in the game is meant to be funny and absurd, and also lead to some type of debauchery.  Why shouldn’t we have a game that simulates walking into a group of people you just met and exposing yourself or acting like a complete ass?  We make that the player’s choice in House Party, and allow the player to see the consequences that come from being that guy, or by taking the nice guy route.  That’s what fiction is about.  It’s meant to be offensive sometimes, and portray fantasy scenarios that nobody would ever repeat or mimic in reality.  The very last way that this game should be taken, is seriously.   Maybe I’m just taking it for granted, because it comes so naturally for me, to separate reality from fiction, that this should be obvious… or maybe I just expect too much.

Mind you, I can take a bad review, and you can tell me my game is unfunny, badly written, badly programmed, badly optimized, and whatever else, all day long.  I can respect a review like that, and I even agree, as I mentioned earlier, that I have a lot more work to do on this title.  There have been many positive reviews of the game also, and some negative reviews that were totally fair.  However, I have to question the mindset of somebody when they make blanket judgement and assumptions about me, my team, and the 300,000+ people who purchased my game, a work of fiction intended as comedy.  I don’t really even need to defend myself from a statement like that because it comes off so arrogant and “holier than thou”.  Honestly, I should probably thank these people for giving the game any attention whatsoever, because their coverage contributed to the game’s success, but at the same time I know that these people meant for the opposite to happen and wanted this game to fail, but failed to understand that not everybody thinks like they do, and so the reverse happened, and the game became a success despite their best efforts.

Look guys, I just like to make funny games, and I will continue to make games based around what I think is funny.  I’m not making any political statements, or exposing recesses of my depraved psyche.  I’m just having fun writing a game about being trapped in a house with a bunch of psychopaths in absurd situations and all the while trying to score.  That’s funny to me, and that’s as deep as it goes, sorry.  If you can’t handle that, that’s on you.  Unfortunately for you however, thanks to the success of our Early Access launch, you’ll be seeing a lot more from Eek! Games in the near future!  Cheers!

Bobby