Cautionary tales in Financial aspect of Game Development

[Mr.T]

Hi,

I'm hoping to get a discussion going on what NOT to do when investing Money in the development and publishing of games. I'll start of with this rather sad tale I came across when searching for information about kongregate earnings

http://www.combat-extreme.com/forums...php?f=6&t=2995

Here is hoping that at least some of us who read this can avoid desperate set of circumstances like these

If anyone has tales similar to these please share

[khanstruct]

Heh, I've been paying $65 a month for the last 2 years for my Amazon server. And our multiplayer game isn't even online anymore.

Why don't I cancel it, you ask? Because I keep intending to put it to use. Things just don't tend to work out the way you want.

[Mr.T]

Heh, I've been paying $65 a month for the last 2 years for my Amazon server. And our multiplayer game isn't even online anymore.

Why don't I cancel it, you ask? Because I keep intending to put it to use. Things just don't tend to work out the way you want.

65$ a month for 2 years = $1560? That IS quite a bit of money. Here is wishing you all the best in things working out.
Out of curiosity, is that an FPS by any chance?

Always thought of FPS games as a bit of a dicey proposition. From my experience as a game player(not a developer or publisher)I often notice The other types are usually pretty successful in extracting some money from the players via the freemium route

[khanstruct]

Nope. It was basically glorified Battleship.

[Mr.T]

Nope. It was basically glorified Battleship.

Ah Yes, I remember your game. I did play it on kongregate. I found it a little difficult to get the hang of it initially but found it interesting later on.

I am not much of a player these days though. I get very little free time. I do check out kongregate often for any new unity games just to see what the others are churning out. I thought yours was one of the better ones to be honest.

[khanstruct]

Thanks. It was also on Facebook. It's currently offline because the SmartFox Server was updated and we never bothered to fix the client code to support the changes.

Sadly, it was never finished. And now the lead programmer on it has left our team and took the code with him. Once we finish our current title, we'll hopefully be revisiting this one.

[MadRobot]

Thanks. It was also on Facebook. It's currently offline because the SmartFox Server was updated and we never bothered to fix the client code to support the changes.

Sadly, it was never finished. And now the lead programmer on it has left our team and took the code with him. Once we finish our current title, we'll hopefully be revisiting this one.

I tried to put a game on Facebook but could never figure it out. I finally thought I was getting somewhere when I started filling out a bunch of information. Turns out it was just the application to have my game in the Facebook game store or whatever it's called.

Can you point me at any kind of instructions or tutorials on how to put a Unity web-player on Facebook? I tried to follow the Facebook instructions, but I swear there's a major step they are leaving out and aren't telling anyone...

[khanstruct]

Sure. Facebook isn't so much a host for the games, as it is a portal.

Check out this tutorial.

[I am da bawss]

Heh, I've been paying $65 a month for the last 2 years for my Amazon server. And our multiplayer game isn't even online anymore.

Why don't I cancel it, you ask? Because I keep intending to put it to use. Things just don't tend to work out the way you want.

First, why hosted on Amazon?
Second, I thought Amazon S3 is quite cheap - few cents per 100 terabytes or storage or traffic..... so unless you have a million subscribers I don't know how you can be paying $65 dollars a month like that..

http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/

[khanstruct]

The monthly bill is $60 with no usage. My usage for this month was $0.01... not sure where that came from.

Of course... I have had an instance running this whole time. I shut that down now, we'll see if the bill changes.

EDIT: Son of a @%$!!! So yeah, it costs $0.08 per hour that you have an instance running (whether its doing anything or not)... which is about 720 hours per month. *FML

[I am da bawss]

The monthly bill is $60 with no usage. My usage for this month was $0.01... not sure where that came from.

Of course... I have had an instance running this whole time. I shut that down now, we'll see if the bill changes.

EDIT: Son of a @%$!!! So yeah, it costs $0.08 per hour that you have an instance running (whether its doing anything or not)... which is about 720 hours per month. *FML

LOL! Facepalm!

Gotta say... 65$ a month x 2 years = $1560 - you could have save that money and upgrade to Unity 4 Pro + iOS 4 Pro and still have $360 chump change left........ (or buy Unity Pro or any Android/iOS Pro if you don't have it already... )

[ZeroByteDNA]

It's one of those things, where in development locally - you can easily take for granted how much it will cost to operate once you go live. Heck, even if you're not running everything locally - the in development operating costs could be very low compared to those in production costs. Then you look at your revenue and bam...

I want to say thanks for posting this, cause heh - yeah - I'd stopped looking at what the productions costs might be while continuing development locally. Meh...

[Mr.T]

First, why hosted on Amazon?
Second, I thought Amazon S3 is quite cheap - few cents per 100 terabytes or storage or traffic..... so unless you have a million subscribers I don't know how you can be paying $65 dollars a month like that..

http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/

The monthly bill is $60 with no usage. My usage for this month was $0.01... not sure where that came from.

Of course... I have had an instance running this whole time. I shut that down now, we'll see if the bill changes.

EDIT: Son of a @%$!!! So yeah, it costs $0.08 per hour that you have an instance running (whether its doing anything or not)... which is about 720 hours per month. *FML

Glad to notice that some good came from this thread

[Mr.T]

It's one of those things, where in development locally - you can easily take for granted how much it will cost to operate once you go live. Heck, even if you're not running everything locally - the in development operating costs could be very low compared to those in production costs. Then you look at your revenue and bam...

I want to say thanks for posting this, cause heh - yeah - I'd stopped looking at what the productions costs might be while continuing development locally. Meh...

Its all about proper planning I guess. Its important to have a proper plan in place as to how to recover the operating costs for a game. And if that plan fails to quickly construct a Plan B etc.

And if possible scale down , when anticipated revenue doesn't kick in

[ZeroByteDNA]

Its all about proper planning I guess. Its important to have a proper plan in place as to how to recover the operating costs for a game. And if that plan fails to quickly construct a Plan B etc.

And if possible scale down , when anticipated revenue doesn't kick in

Yep, can definitely see folks looking at a project - considering the various things they will need: programmers, artists, musicians, writers, etc, etc, etc, etc. I can see them overlooking the bookkeeping/accounting/business side.

Then again, how many folks are actually looking at developing games that will have those ongoing costs?

Still though, even without that - another aspect that's probably overlooked are potential legal matters...oy vey, eh?

[Aiursrage2k]

Maybe you could go the paid game route (if you have a single player campaign) and a monthly subscription to play the game online.

[dxcam1]

I personally wouldn't pay monthly for an indy game.

[Morning]

Maybe you could go the paid game route (if you have a single player campaign) and a monthly subscription to play the game online.

Then you might as well not bother with multiplayer at all. No one's paying, especially monthly, for empty multiplayer. Unless it's a persistent huge world mmo, there is not much of an excuse to pay monthly.

[blurededge]

Still though, even without that - another aspect that's probably overlooked are potential legal matters...oy vey, eh?

This is a huge point. If you're in business for very long, sooner or later someone is going to take a swipe at you legally speaking.