Recently, a fan of Coconut Queen contacted me to ask about the sequel. It’s true, we tried setting the game up to end on a cliffhanger, with lots of unanswered questions, to help push for a sequel. We loved making that game, as the subject material was rich with humorous opportunities wrapped around a very solid mechanic.
But the sequel was not meant to be. As I explained to George T., the game was a critical success but a commercial flop. I won’t go into the reasons, but the game made back less than 10% of what it cost to develop it, by my calculations. Under those circumstances, no sane company would throw more money at a franchise, and I’m not one to disagree! To compound things, the publisher owns the rights, but has gotten out of the casual games industry in favor of a new core competency, and I am no longer with that company.
BUT!
For George and the few other fans, I dug up my notes on CQ2, and will share them here:
Liz made her way to the other side of the island, to find a mirror image setup of the situation she was in, only with a man on the throne, surrounded by beautiful women.
What players would have found out next is that Arthur (yes, the protagonists are Queen Elizabeth and King Arthur) had a similar situation. The natives, who were transplants from Colorado half a century before, had established the original Lui-Lui resort, but had been unable to agree on how to rescue their island from financial and ecological disaster. The natives had finally agreed to try two approaches–tourism and agriculture–in relative isolation from one another. They did their best to pick “clean slate” candidates, and give them nearly completely free rein in tackling their respective problems.
CQ2 would have focused on Arthur’s story, starting a little bit before Liz forced the eruption of Mount Kaba-Lui (an event that one of the level designers with a degree in geography assured me was utterly impossible). Where the first game had you more or less banishing the ugly industrial side in favor of better looking tourist attractions, CQ2 would have you focusing on how to make the best of the food production aspects of life on Lui-Lui.
You would get to meet the female counterparts of Kane, Manu and the rest of the gang on the other side of the island as we poked fun at concepts of “male fantasy” this time around. Picture beautiful women in CoCoCo Coconut Bikinis, an emphasis on gadgets to solve problems, bamboo hot rods and motorcycles (which we cut from the original game), and more.
I wish I could have continued the story and the type of gameplay, as I like “Environment-as-character” mechanics. It’s not entirely out of the realm of likelihood that a sequel could be made, and retroactively boost sales of the original, thereby justifying the investment after the fact. It happened with Westward, another of my games.
But game development is not free. The cost to you, the player, is $7 to $20 for a few hours of entertainment. The idea is that a game will make back its development costs through a high volume of sales at a low price. And there’s no guarantee that we could bring that gang back together for a project. Even if I heavily reused the art and engineering from the original, I’m talking $50,000 to develop, at a bare minimum. It would take 5,000 people paying $10 each and then waiting several months for a return on their investment. I think Coconut Queen, at her best, sold 3,000 copies.
You might think “How about going episodic? Sell each episode for $5-$10, and let each one fund the next?” I’d be for it, but that effectively shuts the door on the major distributors like Big Fish Games. The casual game portals will not sell partial games, modifications to games, or expansion packs, only complete games. They understandably don’t want to be in a situation where a developer forces them to carry a certain product, because it’s required by another product. Every game must be a complete, standalone experience.
That being said, I’ve seen some remarkable crowd-funded projects. This one’s a bit daunting, though.
So there you have it. The passion was there to make a sequel, and the people who played the game enjoyed it, but the numbers didn’t add up to make a commitment to develop it.
Thank you for the update. I loved the original game and have been periodically scouring the internet looking for hints about when the sequel would be coming, but hadn’t been able to find anything about it. I am sad to hear that we will not be getting a sequel, but I really appreciate hearing how the cliffhanger would have been resolved. I loved the free form environment and how you allowed completely individualized planning/scene creation. Yours is one of the only games that truly made a giant leap from the Build-A-Lot model and took the concept to the next level in a unique and logical manner. Thank you for hours of fun!
Pingback: Why there will never be a sequel to Coconut Queen (Downloads) | Trendy Games
I am of the opinion that when a game is critically acclaimed and not commercially successful, the development team has done a great job, but their company has failed to follow up with support. Some companies are in the mindset that they just push it out and expect hordes of customers to flock to it. I’m not blaming the marketing department either as that was only really one person. The organization as a whole just did not believe in marketing a good product. The exact same thing happened to Kelly Green.
We all did a great job on CQ. I’m proud of it. I do wish you could make another.
I am so disappointed there will not be another one! Out of all the games I own (well over 300 but way too many to count) this is the one I replay most often, since I can control things enough to make it a little different every time. It wasn’t the storyline as much as the gameplay that really made me love it so much.
Hey Andy,
Thank you very much for the post. A great read. Sorry to hear taht there would be no CQ2
.
I am also a gamedeveloper and i liked Coconut Queen alot! Though it is a bit strange to hear that Coconut queen did not recoup the investment.
if u check out this link http://casualcharts.com/games/detail/coconutqueen.html
you’ll see that it must’ve sold way more then 3000 copies. It’s hard to say for sure withouth seeing the sales reports, but judging from my experience games with metrics such as this one should deffinately make more.
Thanks!
Danny
Danny, I have no reason to lie about the numbers! Casual Charts doesn’t provide you with any meaningful sales numbers, only a sense of how differently a game performs across different portals. Between the day that Coconut Queen was launched on iWin and the day I was laid off, the game sold 2,200 copies on iWin’s portal. And that was where it performed the best.
I had a lot of success taking a “failed” PC franchise to the iPad. I think this series would be a great fit for iOS.
Matt, I agree wholeheartedly. I have lots of games that I think would do well on the touch screen. In fact, I’m reviving an old and underserved game design right now…
I’m so disappointed to read thru your post! What a let down for all that work and to be so unsupported by the company’s marketing team, that only 3,000 people became aware of the amazing game that is Coconut Queen. It was humorous without being raunchy, it was adorable without being sappy… Of ALL my Big Fish Games (of which I have several Hundred) it’s one of a select few I will play and replay. Personally, I think we should set it up on KickStarter and have all of us Fans Support you through your process!
Good Luck in your continuing Development process and future games!
CQ is the reason I joined IWin as BF was not carrying the game. I read the review on Gamezebo and just had to play the game. I agree there must have been a grave error in marketing for this game to only have appealed to 3K people. There are other games I have purchased after playing a sequel. The reason being I was not into games when the original was released. Hope there is some way CQ2 comes about.
I agree with FairlyCharmed. Kickstarter!
Kickstarter is awesome for projects under $10,000. Making an expansion pack for Coconut Queen would cost 5 times that, and making a true sequel would cost ten times that. Sorry!
Yeah, sad story. It was pleasure to work with you on CQ and I really liked the game itself. Look what I’ve found, couple of saved screenshots from middle stages of development (put in my DropBox):
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20305273/cq_bug_345.png
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20305273/CoconutQueen%202009-02-14%2000-23-37-85.bmp
Aren’t you Andy Megowan? The former Creative Director at iWin whose games were always on time, on budget, and critically acclaimed?
I, too, am very disappointed that there will not be a sequel. I loved the humor, the voices, and the fact that it had such high replay value. I have to agree with many other reviewers who fault the marketing of the game for not meeting sales expectations. I somehow stumbled upon the game, rather than hearing of it and having to find it (again, poor marketing). About 30 minutes into the demo, I knew it was a definite buy!
It is a shame that some devs pump out garbage and manage to continue to get funding, yet a fun, unique, highly replayable game goes by the wayside.
Aside from the constant crashing on the final level this was an exceptional game. My wife downloaded it and on a lark I jumped in and played a level while she was off doing something. I was hooked and have since played it through twice, with some freeplay.
So it’s quite a disappointment to find out that there will be no sequel (though appreciate that you bothered to actually post the news). Point me in the direction of any other games like it and I’ll be there in a flash.
P.S. I’m wondering if part of it’s non-commercial success had something to do with thenaming. I mean come-on, most gamers are guys 18-35 and we aren’t really likely to seek out a game called Coconut Queen. Just saying.
Hi Greg,
It’s a bummer to hear that you and your wife encountered a crash bug. The QA team at iWin banged on the game for months before it was released, as we tried every conceivable way to break the game, and then figured out a way to prevent that breakage.
There’s an ugly reality about games: you have to look at how many people are experiencing a given bug when deciding whether to invest in fixing it. If it’s one consumer that the developer risks losing, then it’s a loss of $7, or a loss of $4 if you bought it somewhere other than iWin.com. The cost to fix the bug involves reproducing the bug, which sometimes involves purchasing a computer that is configured identically to yours, then spending the time to reproduce the bug, come up with a solution, implement it, and then put the whole game through the Quality Assurance process again, to make sure that the fix didn’t have any unintended consequences, breaking something else in another part of the game. So it could cost a few thousand dollars to secure the concrete reward of your $4-$7, plus the less concrete reward of the warm fuzzies caused by doing the right thing
But I need to respond to your point about “most gamers are guys 18-35″. Before 2002, you would have been right. But there are now 3 distinct gaming markets!
The hardcore gamers are still out there, your males 18-35, and they will play their hardcore games but also casual games.
But then there are the casual gamers, which are a market that covers all kinds of people, but with its largest group represented by women 35-65! And where the hardcore gamer usually buys 1-2 games per year (and frequently pirates the rest), the casual gamer buys 2-10 games per year, and always pays for them.
Finally, there is the social gamer, the person who plays online social games. There are 400 million people who match this description, and their numbers grow every day. Out of this group, 1% will pay real money for virtual property. That’s right, they’re paying not for a whole game, but rather for tiny fractions of it! That’s still 4 million people spending around $20 a month. And this group, spending more on social games than hardcore and casual games combines, has NO overlap with hardcore gamers.
Anyhow: The places where “Coconut Queen” was distributed targeted the casual audience, primarily women over 30. The game, title, and premise were perfectly targeted at the intended audience. iWin made certain of this through analysis of the market, which had hit titles like “Sally’s Spa”, “Delicious Deluxe”, “Cake Mania”, “Super Granny” and “Samantha Swift”.
Greg, I welcome your commentary, and hope that I’ve shed a little more light on the inner workings of the games industry for you!
Hey Andy,
wouldn’t it be possible to somehow fund a sequel with the help of fans? I have forgotten the name of the site, but there definitely is one where one can collect fundings for certain projects (I think that has been done just recently with gametunnel?!). With good promotion this might really work out.
Greets,
Dave
Hi Dave,
I think that the microfinancing solution that you’re suggesting is Kickstarter. For a great many projects, Kickstarter is a really great solution for connecting the creators of a product to the customers and fans, and also for the fans to invest early in exchange for getting something special.
I would really like a solution like Kickstarter for funding a game’s development. However, the biggest Kickstarter projects bring in at most $10,000, and development of a true sequel would cost at least $70,000. If I put together a team to just make another chapter, it would still cost about $25,000 just to get the franchise going again, and then $15,000 or so to make successive chapters.
If you figure donations of $10 each from enthusiastic fans, then you would need 7,000 people contributing $10 each. Lots of projects offer additional perks to people who donate larger numbers, such as memorabilia, posters, or collectibles. So maybe I come up with some premium object that I can give to $20 “big spenders”, and manage to get 50 such people, then it would still take 50 Big Spenders and 6,900 regular donations. It makes no sense to ask for more than $20 from someone in a market where casual games cost $7 from any major portal.
So the game would need at least 6,900 people pledging money before production could start. Less than 3,000 people bought the original game worldwide. It just doesn’t seem likely.
There is another site that works just like Kickstarter, but just for videogame projects. It’s called 8-Bit Funding. But no project there has managed to secure more than $1,500.
Hi Andy! I was just thinking about how much fun I had working on this game today and decided to look it up and ran into your blog. I wish there would be a CQ2 as well, but we all know that would never happen. Good luck on your new ventures, Andy!
I think it is awesome how everyone has developed such a zeal to play this game (myself included). It really speaks to the quality of your work and the great amount of thought and design you (and others) have invested into Coconut Queen. My 10 year old daughter and I play it and discuss where best to put our buildings etc. We’ve had a fun time with it and I am always grateful for a family-friendly game that I can share with my kids (yes I’m one of your target market – lol). Hoping for your continued success in this field. Thanks again.
Thank you for finally explaining the situation. I’ve been checking up and waiting ever since the original came out, (yes, 3 whole years) for three sequel and at least now I understand what’s going on. I’m one of those 3 thousand that happily bought the game for full price from iWin the day it came out. Heck, I’d still be happy to advance some money for a sequel to come out.
Maybe a site could be set up for pre-ordering? Customers would put down the money on the understanding that if enough people join a sequel could be made, if not, we’d get our money back. Let me put a deposit on that sequel 
I’m a little sad, but at least I have an answer. I’ve been waiting for a sequel since the original came out. Thanks for taking the time to explain, and to answer the subsequent posts. This is one of the most delightful games I’ve played, with lots of replay value. The concept was clever and it’s a shame it won’t get fully realized. Good luck with your future ventures!
I’m really bummed to hear there won’t be a CQ2. I loved the original and I really wish there was a way there would be a sequel.
Just found CQ and after 3 nights of going to sleep at 4am it might be a good thing that there is no CQ2 (LOL!) Anyway, i just wanted you to know how much I enjoyed this game. It is one of the few I own with good replay value! Now, if I can just figure out how to unlock those last two buildings…
I’m sorry the game was not a commercial success. You did a very nice job making this game and I really enjoyed playing it.