Spiderweb Games - How Many Games I Sell

It's kind of funny that we have two threads going on in this forum at the same time, both at opposite ends. In this one we're talking about indies and their biggest cost which is, naturally, the cost of employees.

The other is about an established studio that may have to close its doors, Big Huge Games. For some reason it's harder for a lot of folks to accept the idea that employee salaries are usually also their single-biggest cost.

Since indies are typically small privately-held companies, they're in a better position to offer employees equity in lieu of high salaries (or something else along the lines of what RC described). That might be a good idea for them.

I wonder if a higher marketing budget would yield Jeff a better return or the target market is too small for that.
I also wonder why Jeff won't use a popular distribution platform like Steam. Steam has a lot of low budget titles, so they must be reasonable with pricing.

I was surprised at the low sales and expenses figures.

From this, in isolation, it seems remarkable that Jeff is able to squeak by. But in reality, his long pipeline of games, and the continued revenue from the older games, probably keeps him afloat.

Squeek, you can't eat equity in potential future sales of an unreleased game. Your idea might work if the game is more of a hobby while you hold down a full time job, but working fulltime for a year in the hope of being paid a percentage of eventual sales while paying bills etc, just won't work.

No, you're missing the context I was referring to. He already has quite a few under his belt, from how far back? You can't just look at one game with such a long product line continuing to provide revenue for game developed in the past.

Originally Posted by Thrasher
No, you're missing the context I was referring to. He already has quite a few under his belt, from how far back? You can't just look at one game with such a long product line continuing to provide revenue for game developed in the past.

No, you're missing the context Corwin was referring to. He was replying to Squeek's commentary on equity, not you.

Nevermind.

From blog comment:
About the iPhone: I plan to make a full post on this eventually. For now, I'll sum up. It would take a lot of work to adapt one of our games to run on that tiny screen. The acceptable price point on the iPhone is really low (.99 to 1.99 usually). The platform doesn't seem really suited to long form 40 hour games like mine. And there is some indication that the gold rush is over. So I'm keeping it at arm's length for now.

Nice to see him resisting the iPhone-klondike and sticking with what he knows best.

Originally Posted by Corwin
Squeek, you can't eat equity in potential future sales of an unreleased game. Your idea might work if the game is more of a hobby while you hold down a full time job, but working fulltime for a year in the hope of being paid a percentage of eventual sales while paying bills etc, just won't work.

That would depend, wouldn't it? You can get pretty creative with equity offers and compensation packages. I'm only suggesting that it's something that might reduce the burdon of paying salaries, not eliminate it completely.

Great article! I'm surprised that so many people buy the hint books. 20% seems like an awfully high number, though I guess we sales of only 4k, there isn't a huge community that is providing hints online.

Originally Posted by blatantninja
Great article! I'm surprised that so many people buy the hint books. 20% seems like an awfully high number, though I guess we sales of only 4k, there isn't a huge community that is providing hints online.

I would suspect that it's a bit of a collectible for some of the most hardcore fans.

Also my first impression. But probably wrong, as Bethesda's experience shows.