Whilst I was at Casuality 2008 in Amsterdam I attended lots of great lectures. One was by Reflexive and Enkord and was called “Passion Vs Profit”, a topic which particularly interests me.

Basically it can be summed up simply as: do you make games that you really want to just for passion, or do you calculatingly make games just for profit? Or is there some kind of middle ground?

During the presentation, Reflexive and Enkord explained which of their games were made for passion and which were made for financial reasons (also some were made for both reasons). They showed this on a simple diagram where passion was on the left and financial was on the right. Then, very interestingly, they revealed whether those games were a financial success or not based on if they had made a profit or loss. This was shown in another diagram beneath the passion/financial one. I took photos of Reflexive’s and Enkord’s diagrams as follows (you may wish to click them to view the full-size images):

Reflexive

You can see that some of Reflexive’s games have indeed made a loss; in fact the worse losses were the games that they made purely for profit! One of their most passionate games, Ricochet Extreme has done extremely well, and interestingly so has Big Kahuna Reef, which they made for both passion and financial reasons (in fact they said that the team was led by James C. Smith who was very passionate about the title but they were sure it would also be a financial success. James really helped to motivate the whole team who just jumped straight to action and made what they felt to be a great game, and I guess that’s reflected in the great sales).

However, it should also be noted that two of the games they made for passion have barely broken even (Wik and Swarm). I also asked them about The Great Tree and they said that it was made for Passion AND Financial reasons and that it seems to be doing pretty well but they don’t have enough data yet to say how well (or they didn’t really want to tell me).

Enkord

Enkord had a different story to tell (well sort of). Because costs are so low in the Ukraine, EVERY game they have made has made a profit - this amused me (I thought it was cool). As a side note, all of my games have made a profit too (some much smaller than others). However a similar pattern is revealed to Reflexive’s - the games that they made for financial reasons only (trying to anticipate the market) have made the least profit, and the games they made for passion, Clash ‘n’ Slash and Emerald Tale, have done very well. Also a game they made for Passion AND Financial reasons, Jewel of Atlantis, has done very well too.

Conclusion

So it seems that when these companies have tried to anticipate the market and have made games purely for financial reasons, those games have not done very well (this may not be the case for all developers of course, especially those now making Hidden Object games). Games made for passion can be hit and miss but when they are a hit they do very well. Perhaps this is just due to the extra care and feeling the developers put into the game.

Also, where passion and financial has been combined so that the market has been studied and a game has been programmed to meet that demand AND the developers have really enjoyed making it, those games have done very well. Personally I think this is the best route and it’s one that I follow. I’ve enjoyed making my games a lot even though they were done for financial reasons also. I played Bejewelled a few years ago and thought it was a great game; I thought that I could improve on it and I had really good fun programming my match-3 clones. Furthermore, when I first played the online version of Fairway Solitaire I was instantly hooked and knew that I’d have a great time programming the downloadable version of the game. I put a lot of passion into that game and I think that it shows; and, bearing out my theory, the sales were great too.

I hope that you’ve enjoyed my synopsis of this great lecture at Casuality. Thanks to Reflexive and Enkord too for a very informative presentation.

P.S. Yes, I’ve just installed the Photopress plugin for Wordpress and I aim to have some more colourful and visually informative posts in the future

OK, whilst at Casuality 2008 in Amsterdam (more on this soon), I talked to the people at Reflexive and BFG who process game submissions to decide which games make it onto their site.

Reflexive put up about 5 games per week but are sent over 50! Terri Hardie at Reflexive told me that they get some really bad games submitted but she is always really excited to look for the gems that really shine out of the submissions. She does look at screenshots (so include links) and she appreciated nice polite emails (like mine - I’m English you see ;-)).

BFG put up a “game a day”, so 7 a week (for the mathematically challenged of you). They used to have two front line people evaluating the submissions, Jessica Sachs and Nate Webb, but now they have a 3rd person called Jeff (and probably even more) because they are getting so many submissions and find it hard to keep up.

I also spoke to some other people that worked at the portals and they said that they try to play every game which is published (even just for 10 minutes) to keep abreast of what the current games are like.

So what can we conclude from this? Basically only 10% (or less) of games sent to portals are actually put on the sites! This means that your game had really better shine out more than the others. Well actually it needs to be RELEVANT to the portal, so don’t sent “Zombie Killers 3″ to BFG (although it might do OK on Reflexive). Then make sure it is polished and has enough content to compete with modern titles.

How can you find out how polish you game should be and how much content it needs? Simply play the current top 10 games on a variety of portals. It’s amazing how many people don’t follow this simple tip before embarking on programming “Killer Car Death Chase Vampire Shooter”…

That’s the question on a lot of people’s minds. Here’s my story anyway…

6 products

I have made 6 products since starting to program games properly in November 2004 (I was a hobbyist since the age of 8 and a professional Delphi/SQL developer for 9 years). The first 7-8 months were spent learning the ropes and making freeware games as practice.

My first commercial casual game, Xmas Bonus, launched in December 2005. This was followed by Easter Bonus in spring 2006. In Spring 2006 I switched from BlitzPlus to BlitzMax and began developing my BlitzMax Game Framework which is continually in development. I used the framework to make The Wonderful Wizard of Oz which launched in November 2006, and Holiday Bonus in December 2006. In 2007 I only made one game, Fairway Solitaire. You can find all my games here. I’m contracted to make two games in 2008 for Big Fish Games, so wish me luck!

Show me the Money!

OK so here’s the low down. In order from best to worse, here’s how much money I’ve made per hour making my products (I keep a detailed log of time spent programming and on related tasks for each product):

- Fairway Solitaire (cannot say how much I’ve made due to contract)

- Wizard of Oz = £11.48 (this is continually rising with royalties + Mac version is about to launch)

- Game Framework = £8.47 (this is rising with sales but goes down when I do more work on it. The framework is used for all my recent games so it’s more than a standalone product - it’s extremely useful, vital in fact)

- Holiday Bonus = £9.18 (It sells a good number of copies all year round so it will keep going up)

- Easter Bonus = £3.75 (Yep, that’s below minimum wage! but it was all good experience)

- Xmas Bonus = £2.43 (this is based on an estimated number of hours as I didn’t keep a proper log. This was my first game, so the fact it made me any money at all is cool).

My next game should make me more money per hour than Fairway Solitaire which will be nice

Conclusion

So you can see that I worked for nothing per hour at first (when making freeware games), then a very low amount per hour for my first two games (I was doing IT consultancy work @ £30 per hour and getting out loans at the time to keep my finances in check). Then Oz was pretty good (and the game framework provides a regular low level income) and Fairway was great. Also I make money from affiliate sales and adsense revenue, although not very much (it’s rising all the time, however).

Bear in mind that each game took 250+ solid hours to make (except for Fairway Solitaire which took WAY more) and that I still have business admin to do (accounts, filing, tax returns etc) and run my home finances etc. So when I’m doing that other stuff, I’m not making any money by programming games (thank God for royalties and affiliate sales which occur 24 hours a day). Also bear in mind that it’s taken 2 years for the Xmas Bonus money to reach the level that I’ve reported above. When you finish a game, assuming you are not being paid to write it, it will take about 2 months before you’ll get the first batch of royalties through and then they’ll keep on coming through at a lower level for years, so it’s a long term game. You don’t just program the game and collect the money (unless it’s a contract job).

Clearly the amounts I was earning at the start are not enough to provide a full income unless you have very low overheads (which I don’t). That’s why I was doing IT consultancy work (my old job) and gradually phasing it out and doing more programming work. Some weeks though I did tons of hours and had to work really hard in order to meet game targets and get jobs done for my consultancy clients. You’ve all got different life situations and skills so I suggest you way them up carefully before deciding to make games for a living. I think it’s a great job, but getting here wasn’t easy…

Hope this info is useful to you! Thanks for reading.