by Dan Moren
Monument Valley, by the numbers
The geometry-bending puzzle game Monument Valley was one of the hit games of the last year, and it was hard not to find it delightful–unsurprisingly, it made our top iOS games of the year list. But we already know that critical and even popular success doesn’t always translate into financial success.
The developers behind it, ustwogames, have created a detailed infographic, breaking down of the numbers involved in the game: from sales of it and its expansion to stats about how many people finished the game, which were the most popular chapters, and more. (Note: There is at least one spoiler for the game in the chart, so you might want to avoid if you’re in the midst of playing or plan to play.)
It’s yet another fascinating data point of the economics behind apps, though even this may not paint a full picture–ustwogames is, itself, a smaller part of ustwo, a larger studio, and it’s unclear exactly how this is reflected in aspects like development costs. And, even more to the point, hardly every app–or even one in a thousand or ten thousand–has this kind of success.