http://www.joystiq.com/2013/02/11/wildman-kickstarter-canceled-by-gas-powered-games/ https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gaspoweredgames/wildman-an-evolutionary-action-rpg Too bad, it looked like a good concept
For a moment I thought holy shoot, he's done another one?! And then I read the URLs, laughed, and didn't bother clicking the links.
That was sad. Final nail in the coffin. I wonder why GPG died like that. Sup Comm & Forged Allicance where HUGE success, and must have earned them a LOT of money...
Well.... No. And after that they created few not great games they almost died. Then Microsoft helped them with Age of Empires Online. But after they finished this game GPG died. Right now they are part of wargaming and they are renamed to "Wargaming Seattle". But this info is also 1 year old. Anybody knows something more?
I think there are also a lot of misconceptions about what "hugely successful" means, in the context of the genre's involved, and games in general. Sup Com and Forged Alliance were both very successful games in the RTS genre, but even so, the last numbers I saw were still south of 2 million units. 2 million sounds like a lot, until you take into account that the publisher gets/got a lot most of that money, and when FA shipped, GPG was over 100 people, working on numerous different projects. The following is all a math exercise and educated guesses, because I was gone from GPG by the time most of these numbers would have been known internally. To my knowledge, other than the rough headcount I know we were at at one point, and a vague idea how many copies of Sup Com and FA sold, the rest of this post is entirely a theoretical project management math exercise with no direct bearing in reality. -------------- A little project management math, that doesn't seem to get discussed very often outside of budgeting/planning meetings. For each person you have on a project, there's a typical calculation on how much the average person costs per month. For some people it's higher, some it's lower, but in the end, they should always average out. Depending on the company, it can be anywhere from $8000 a month to $15k a month. Don't mistake that as salary, however. It figures in a number of things - the overall cost for benefits, salary, space in a build, energy, operations, etc. You get the idea. So if you have a 20 person team, even at the low end, you can assume it costs $160,000 a month to run that team, or $1.92 million a year. Really small indy teams can bring that total cost down quite a bit, depending on their office situations, etc, but as a general rule, it's a good idea to assume at least $8k a month in costs per person when running any sizable company. Depending on the state, the company, and the level of veterancy of the teams, it usually is more like $11k to 13k per person month. If you assume that a game sold a total of 2 million units for an average of $20 that went to the company - most deals are not structured like that, but whatever, not the point. It's an easy set of numbers to work with, but most deals see significantly less money per unit going to the developer, especially if there are advances. If over the course of the entire life cycle, it brought in $40 million, and as a company, you're spending $9.6 million a year for that same 100 people.. if you cost that out over the duration of a multi-year project - say 3 to 5 years, it doesn't leave a lot of money (Like, any). Now, all this math is made fuzzier by the fact that those weren't the only titles that might have been bringing in money, and if you have 100 people, they're often working on different projects. Publishers pay advances, and other projects continue to bring in some amount of revenue long after launch through ongoing sales, and there are costs that can't be captured in a simple per person month cost. The point? Wildly successful can mean a lot of different things, and it doesn't always mean wearing hats made of money. Also, making games is hard, and running a game company is particularly hard. The wild success stories of people making so much money so quickly that everyone's driving a Ferrari are very far and few between. I can only think of four or five examples since 1990 with that level of success.
Well, I will add to this interesting note, that avarage salary for game developers in Poland is about 5000PLN what is about 1700$ per mounth (for coders/artists usually its almost never more than 8kPLN ~ 2,6k$). Next time you will know how to reduce cost per month all that thanks to global economy
Outsourcing / offshoring can save some money, in some situations, and of course, a lot of it is dependent on overall costs of living. But doing that has it's own costs and problems. Generally going with an external group ups the overall time to completion and amount of outsource management significantly to maintain quality. Not because of an inherent lack of quality, but due to the very difficult realities of working with groups that are separated by large distances and often numerous time zones. But in Seattle, the average rent for a 1 bedroom apartment is $1274. Median home price if you want to buy I believe finally broke $500k in the area. Eventually, you'll also see those overall costs of living balance out a lot, and average salaries with it. I have average salary numbers for most countries, and I have done outsource work with Russia, Poland, Ireland, China, India, Australia, and numerous other places, and while it can bring down overall costs a tiny bit, it is a pretty small amount, and often results in much higher costs in project management and travel. Generally, going overseas is something you do when you simply can't find enough local talent to finish your project. Doing it purely to save money usually doesn't end well for anyone.
In my line of work which is as a market research project manager, outsourcing is usually very good for the obvious direct costs. The problem is it often ends up with me and others senior to me spending far more of our own time than if we had a programmer in the office. I know we live in an online world but its amazing how much simpler things are to deal with when you can just walk up to the person who is doing the work and explain face-to-face what is needed. When you average out the costs, it probably doesn't save much overall and things get done much faster without outsourcing!
QFT. There's a reason I've spent over a month in China, and six months in Australia, and multiple weeks in London. Because when working with a great team that is offshore, there is very little replacement for being embedded with them for an extended period of time. Everyone does better work when you're 50 feet away and don't have to wait 12 hours for an answer.
