I'm not an expert on the economics of the video game industry, but I can't believe that would pay a team of 6-10 people for very long.
[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/45588301/woolfe-the-red...
I think they failed to earmark the funds for rewards (they did ship the game, the issue is they didn't ship the art books, wallpapers etc, and went bankrupt), and mostly just failed to build an awesome enough game. They probably expected strong sales as they'd been hyped quite a bit, greenlit in a few days, featured at the E3 etc. But when the sales didn't happen and the loans had to be paid back etc, they went bankrupt and couldn't ship the merchandise rewards.
I see a lot of kickstarter project where a team of 5 is looking for 20K or somesuch. While some teams can and do pull it off, that just seems crazy low and too much risk (especially when you factor in KS' fee and cost of rewards).
EDIT: Removed the as a rule from the first sentence (was I, as a rule, won't back...). After reading andallas' reply, I realised that there are some very rare occasions where I do back projects I otherwise wouldn't, but they have to have really proven themselves.
$50,000 could have afforded them an artist for 6 months, or helped them to secure some essential software, or just supplemented the incomes of the existing team, while they continued doing 'side-jobs' to generally pay the bills.
Now ideally, they would get all their funding from one source (so we know what they received) and it would be enough to pay for everything. But I think a lot of people who pledge on Kickstarter have a gross misunderstanding of how much money a game takes, considering each team-member may have a salary ranging from $50k - $100k is not unreasonable at all.
Descent:Underground [0] and Starfighter Inc. [1] both had well-seasoned teams of industry veterans, including founders who had written popular space games (X-Wing, Wing Commander).
One of the big differences I identified between the two campaigns was that D:U asked for an amount of money that seemed like enough to run a small game studio for a year ($600,000) while SI asked for an amount of money that seemed like it wouldn't get them anywhere close to done ($250,000 for a bigger team). D:U was also really clear in their messaging -- if we don't raise the funds, that's a market signal that we shouldn't make this game. SI communicated several times that if they didn't reach their KS goal they'd just do it another way. What that indicated to me is that D:U had a realistic crowdfunding plan that could get them to release, while SI seemed not to know what they were trying to accomplish with kickstarter.
To be sure, there were a lot of other factors at play. With D:U, Eric Peterson pulled a lot of support from Star Citizen backers and they released an excellent trailer in the last 48 hours of the kickstarter. SI dodged questions about what engine they were using and had a number of other customer interaction problems. But I think one of the big issues was that they didn't ask for a realistic amount of money, which made it seem like they either didn't know what they were doing or were relying on additional funding which would increase the risk for kickstarter backers.
[0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/descendentstudios/desce...
[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/impellerstudios/starfig...
With that said, I've been following Patreon and the financial models at Patreon just make more sense than Kickstarter.
Various game development groups have constantly slipped their schedule, and backers respond typically by keeping the donations steady. As long as the game developer releases a demo demonstrating progress, backers are more than eager to continue their $5/month or so funding.
The main issue is the slow pace of early Patreon funding. A lot of games have to bootstrap with $500 / month or $1000/month for two or three months. Even "successful" Patreons only get $3000/month to $5000/month, and those are few and far between. (Patreon doesn't seem to have the reach of Kickstarter or Indiegogo quite yet. Perhaps if Patreon expanded and grew it'd be better?).
The Patreon model is also better for "subscription" stuffs. Podcasts, youtube videos and the like are more popular there. I can't find too many games on Patreon by searching, but I've seen them advertized on various forums.
In any case, even with $5000/month, it'd be hard to run a team of 6 on such meager money. I've been following a team of 3 and they're barely making it on that.
But Patreon does strike me as more plausible than Kickstarter.
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On the other hand, Kickstarter is extremely good at measuring "hype". So perhaps the Kickstarter model is better if you're trying to prove to outside funding groups that your team is worth investing into.
Patreon seems to work out for smaller-scale projects, like youtube videos or podcasts. Its a bit harder to map it to a video game, but I still think the Patreon model for video games is superior to Kickstarter.
Everything is crap though, some real innovation should happen in this space. Unfortunately, I'm out of ideas...
*unless this was a legitimate case of being 1 month away from launch.
Clearly, the amount of work involved here was way too much.
But if 72k can keep you alive on ramen and a futon so that you can make millions on the back-end ...
Regardless, it's a gamble. But the up-front money isn't the only consideration. Especially if everyone has a real stake (which is not the case for startups in general).
And a single person just cannot turn out something close to a AAA title.
I feel like a lot of people underestimate the work/cost involved in physical rewards. I remember reading a game devs blog post about the subject.
Overwhelmed by rewards seems to be a common failure on KS. The list he rattles off in this case is quite extensive, and the postage cost is all that's preventing it from being sent. I wouldn't be surprised if they have 10k into rewards alone, especially when you account the time spent developing them.
I have friends who've launched XBLA games on much, much less working full time out of a basement. During development, they could barely pay rent. Afterwards, they buy new houses.
I feel like people don't take real risks any more, and seem to misunderstand what actual ownership of the outcome looks like.
Sign of the times?
And the issue of AAA ... well... Get a simple game or playable demo going and build off of that rather than shooting for the stars. Or did we lose site of what an MVP is, too? Sounds like the OP did.
Where did you take this number from?
Try at least, the bare minimum, double that in Western Europe for anyone calling themselves a game developer
Let me say you can find better opportunities outside the field
For example I work in France and I keep approx $36k after all taxes (but still not taking VAT into account, which is 20% on most products). This salary costs around $78k for the company I work for. Approx breakdown: 25k in employer taxes, 12k in employee taxes (the distinction is rather arbitrary, but sometimes the government changes the rate of one or the other...) and then 5k in household income taxes (if you have some capital gains it also goes to income, but actual work is taxed over and over and over... :p )
Also I work full time: 218 days a year (with no fixed number of hours per week, but it is very reasonable). That's more than 6 weeks of paid vacation + a dozen of holiday here and there. And when I was sick for 3 weeks last year, it was not deduced from my vacations (but the sickness indemnity during those 3 weeks were less than my usual rate, maybe 60% but I'm not sure)
I also sometimes work on the side as an independent and on the monetary side the end result is roughly the same: if a client pays me X, at the end I keep approx X/2 and the other X/2 goes to various taxes (but it is better to be salaried, because those X/2 in tax provides you virtually no security as an independent, whereas they do when salaried)
Now to compare anything you'll also have to at least convert in PPP, and also consider what is provided to you (and even to others!) for "free" with your taxes. This is arguably not reducible to a single figure; I would rather make a "little" less if that lets other people have better health care and if that means that nobody will ever ask me a fucking ridiculous amount of money if I need a really expensive medical treatment (not that the French health care system is the best, but I guess it is not that bad compared to some other countries...). Also a lot of social and related services are provided for completely free to the users. And even in areas where housing is expensive you would find it insanely cheap compared to NYC or some places in the silicon valley.
And to finish remember that the value of the Euro has decreased a lot the last few months compared to the USD. That make all the amounts even more difficult to compare: one year ago I would have told you that I keep maybe $47k after all taxes (from an amount in € that was actually a little lower than what i have now...)
This sounds ideal for me, but I like low-level C/C++/assembly programming and wouldn't want to give that up for the web.
Compilers, JIT compilers
Maintenance of old software
The main difference on the downside is a plethora of frameworks that often constrain your design badly. Of course, on any large project there is always a way to do things, and it is not always pleasant ;-) So it's not really so different. I also had to learn quite a lot about databases, something that I shied away from in my earlier days. Again, many frameworks try to shield you from database details, but they bugger up the object modelling so badly that you are much better off being quite aware of what is happening under the hood.
On the plus side, code bases are generally very small. We're talking having to maintain small 10's of KLOC (and very often less than 10k code) as opposed to 100's of KLOC. I wouldn't say they are toy problems, but they are definitely on the small to medium size. You can pretty much understand all of how an app works. Frameworks often bring the total code size up to above 100 KLOC (yes, I have spent some time debugging Rails ;-)), but again, it's not something that would scare a seasoned dev.
My main pleasures are being able to work with 100% free software tools from back to front. It's truly awesome to be able to debug and tweak anything I want. For frameworks and libraries, no longer do I have to depend on marginal documentation to see how something works -- I can just read the code. This is a massive plus.
For me, the acceptance of unit testing as a normal development procedure has been wonderful. Not all web devs subscribe to it, and very few do it well, but it is at least a mainstream concept. Also the tools available for TDD are really great. Rspec style tools (including Jasmine) are worth their weight in gold.
I think the biggest surprise for me making the transition was that there is a huge amount of complexity in web development. Yes, there are lots of people who do web development as a kind of paint by numbers, but honestly I've seen those kind of devs everywhere I've gone.
If you are looking for a change, I wouldn't rule web development out.
72k USD will get you one senior developer for one year.
20k is far too low, you can make more than that waiting tables. Jesus 9.615/hr. I made about double that as a waiter in Oklahoma in the mid 1990s.
Update your resume sir/ma'am!
If you make $80k where I am, I would be expect the same person to make around $105k in Seattle. I'd wager the person you replied to is also somewhere in the Midwest.
I'm the tech lead for my team at a medium sized company that builds high demand, critical backend services. Customers include small businesses, some well known Silicon Valley companies and some established Fortune 500s. I like what I do and get to see just how well software I work on scales with customers that push it to the limit. I mostly use C# with a bit of C++ right now, but previous jobs I used Python, Java, JavaScript and PHP. VCSs have ranged from SVN, TFS to Git. The one used mostly depends on when the company was founded. Early 00s probably means SVN while the last 5 to 10 years probably means Git or TFS.
Does company culture differ here? I don't think so really. Like anywhere, it depends on where and whom you work for. I work 40 hours a week on average, have a workstation that rivals my own gaming PC at home (we also had the choice of a high end laptop, but I prefer a desktop) and wear jeans/shorts/t-shirts to work (assuming I'm not working at home that day). My brother works for a company with a similar culture to mine and they have their own personal chef that serves them lunch every day. My employer and his are only about 10 to 15 years old, so that probably contributes somewhat to the cultural similarities.
Feels like there's a real dearth of opportunity here in Seattle compared to the Bay Area. There's mainly Amazon and Microsoft, and nobody I personally know who work in either place like it much. Google and Facebook have some small offices here, but most of the interesting and exciting work they do appears to be done in the Bay Area.
Do you feel like you can find another job you'd enjoy in the city where you live pretty easily?
Columbus, OH. Around 800k-850k if you just include the city limits and well over a million with the metro area. Third largest city in the Midwest. Lots of job growth and probably more tech jobs here than anywhere else in state. Factor that with cost of living being pretty cheap, I don't have much of a reason to leave right now.
> Do you feel like you can find another job you'd enjoy in the city where you live pretty easily?
I'm sure I could. I didn't used to think so, until I actually started looking for work after doing mostly consulting and contract work. I think companies here have more trouble finding versatile developers that can wear "many hats" versus developers finding interesting work. Most only know one language well enough to use it (mostly Java or C#) and are either bound into knowing Linux or Windows Platform development and rarely both. That's just my opinion on it though. I'm comfortable with doing most types of development in most languages, so that helps with finding jobs I like.
No interest really in working for large companies. From my experience, that's generally the reason people move West (or East) that live here. I prefer companies where people actually know who I am.
Going out to lunch here at a decent sit-down restaurant is around 8-10 dollars with tip (assuming you're drinking water). Somewhere like SF or NYC will be much higher.
Out of my friends that graduated with me, in the set of {Google, Microsoft, Amazon, General Dynamics, AMD, Intel} employers, no-one, and I mean no one made above 90k starting. These people all graduated Suma Cum Laude (>3.96), with >3 years experience on average through internships.
No one should ever assume their counterparts are making anywhere close to them.