Draw Something craze 'banks dev $100k per day'
develop-online.net
develop-online.net
Draw Something is the creation of OMGPop, a social gaming start-up in
New York that has been churning out titles for the last four years, but
has struggled to produce a hit. Games like Cupcake Corner, a bakery
simulation, and Puppy World, in which players care for virtual canines,
both gained modest followings but failed to catch on among a wider audience.
“For a long time, we made games that did not get any traction,”
said Dan Porter, the chief executive of the company. Draw Something,
however, “was a crazy out-of-the-box success,” he said.
Draw Something has charted a turnaround for OMGPop, whose finances
were flailing. Its original founder, Charles Foreman, left the company
about a year ago. Although the start-up raised $17 million in venture
financing, the company had nearly burned through that reservoir. Now,
though, Mr. Porter said, the company earns revenue in the six figures,
generating more money for the company “in a day than we used to in a month.”
Also interesting to find out that they were nearly out of cash.
Their main aim seemed to be to become a platform (albeit consisting of their own games) more than making hits. So they were reluctant to build iOS or Android-specific things (their early efforts were half-hearted compared to their impressive web games) and they were slow to build on Facebook as I recall.
The studio, which has been in operation for about four years, had previously struggled to make any traction on the App Store
Of course it's not sustainable, but you can certainly recover your investment, plus...a lot more. Then you move onto the next thing. It works if you're making $10k or even $1k a day.
It's a proven model that should be used more often in this "hits-driven", fad-based tech world. You can get cash flowing positively and quickly with a good idea. Not every game or photo sharing app that takes off should be thought of as a billion dollar, world changing business. Sometimes it's nice to provide a few jobs and make some bank.
Unfortunately, with $17M VC funding, I doubt the stock owners feel the same.
There are a couple of clocks ticking. One is burn rate versus reserves, and having a portfolio strategy where you produce X flops to 1 hit and then cover your expenses does stop that clock. There are other clocks (+), and the studio model does not really have a pause button for them unless you're acquired for strategic reasons.
+ Prominent among them "How many days are left before nine months before the date at which the oldest VC fund from which took money expires?"
There are unfortunate-for-the-entrepreneur consequences of any of those clocks running out, since right before the buzzer it will be suggested that they sell the company. At that point, the value of the portfolio amassed by the studio model gets evaluated, and unfortunately the value of most past-the-new-release-window studio-esque IP is very, very, very tiny compared to the value of e.g. a company with an existing base of 200,000 customers and permission to charge 220,000 credit cards next month. It is not necessarily the case that the sale will value the company higher than the investor's liquidation preferences. That is just one way under which an entrepreneur who lead a company generating profits every year could be told that their 30% stake in the company was valueless.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/37c3d96e-280c-11e1-a4c4-00144feabd...
Rovio really redefined the limits.
Draw Something would obviously have to go in a different direction. But board game, game show?
Yet another story of an overnight success that took 4 years. Congrats to the developers
1. Check drawing
2. See drawing
3. Get forced to pick word (no options to reply later)
4. Draw for them
5. Repeat
So if you ever want to see what anyone drew for you, you're pretty much forced to draw back thus a neverending cycle.
Angry Birds - Slingshot Draw Something - Pictionary/Hangman Words with Friends - Scrabble
You'd think that MB would do extremely well with their catalogue of board games.
I think independent developers do a better job understanding the platform and how to cut to the fundamentals of the game with the best presentation.
2. Build it and submit it to the app store
3. Profit
Try this instead:
1. Execution.
2. Execution.
3. Profit.1. Execution 2. Luck 3. Profit
I know that luck is the intersection of preparation and opportunity, but I think the opportunity part of that equation is still a little random, especially in the context of casual social and mobile games becoming big hits\fads.
What a roundabout turn for a YC company.
It's (relatively) easy to find successes, but I'd be more interested in postmortems of the ones that fail... companies that make good products for years but never get that push over the cliff.
I'm only asking, just seems a bit like shooting fish in a barrel releasing these kind of games and sooner or later one of the people who came up with these ideas is going to start noticing and want a piece of the action.
It would be like trying to sue someone for an implementation of tic tac toe. Though in today's environment, I'd be shocked to learn someone hasn't tried.
> “For a long time, we made games that did not get any traction,” said Dan Porter, the chief executive at Omgpop.
[EDIT]Sorry. My mistake. I misread the article as meaning that $17M was raised for this game. I didn't know they'd put out 42 games. I retract my criticism.[/EDIT]