60k/month Expectations

Wasabi777

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Give me 60k a month and by the end of the second year, I would have a company earning millions. So if you're interested in what actually can be done with that money, first read my story, than I can tell you what can be done with 60k per month.

I had crowdfunding launched which required 120 000$ to start the project. not 120k per month, but 120k total amount. my problem was finding people who would work for me for free until we reached the goal of that 120k. but I guess I couldn't find any good artists, 3d modelers and animators.


I wanted these people to make a demo, videos, and at least sketches and various models to present to the crowd, what kind of game we are making. Obvious without material no one would fund you.

So how 120k is enough? I really in a really poor country and even professionals work on really low cost, like 3d modeler is willing to work for 500$ / month salary, but my idea was that I was making 2 projects at the same time. 1 was obviously a game, the other was "income plan". So with that 120k I would be making a game and earning money at the same time. but the problem is since my country is poor, no one is willing to work for free, even to make that demo. they don;t care about if they will be millionaires tomorrow, they think not to starve today.

So "what can be done with 60k per month".

Since you are on this forum, do you want to make only a game? is your good enough to get you the opportunity to make millions? First of all plan your future, calculate every single step. have plan B for just in case scenarios. You can start by searching on various forums, finding "beginners" but not exactly beginners, there are a lot of good programmers, designers, modelers and etc, but they aren't well known, because they never had the opportunity to show their skills.

careful planning, not wasting money will guarantee you a bright future.


as for updates and etc: I would be delivering an update every month. but it depends on does the game actually needs an update during that period or not. OC i would prefer to add some new content to the game, but sometimes it's not necessary.
 

deepandsilent3dx

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Dec 13, 2018
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I'm posting this in dev section, because I'm interested what (experienced?) devs think.

If a game has $62000 monthly donation on patreon, what would be a realistic expectation regarding the updates? Timing, content per update/month or per 3/6 months?

If you had that kind of money, what do you see possible with your games? What would you do?

Having experience developing games, what do you think about Summertime Saga updates? What do you think is those devs' state of mind right now?
Summertime Saga is a free game, freely available.

Therefore it is completely irrelevant how many patrons and pledges DC has. All patrons just do it because they like what DC does.

So any basis for discussion is gone and this thread is pointless.
 

trdx

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Summertime Saga is a free game, freely available.

Therefore it is completely irrelevant how many patrons and pledges DC has. All patrons just do it because they like what DC does.

So any basis for discussion is gone and this thread is pointless.
None of my points had been addressed by your post (as opposed to some other very interesting posts in this thread), which leads me to believe that you are suffering from bad reading comprehension. If you don't like it, you are free not to post in this thread. You are not the one deciding whether basis for discussion exists or doesn't exist for anyone else but yourself.

Personally, so far, I have learned quite a few interesting viewpoints, just I was expecting. I appreciated brutal honesty from those that said they probably wouldn't change much, and I find interesting potential plans that others have come up with.

Many moons ago I used to work for a company that was releasing best selling PC titles. Few years later I used to work for a company that was "cooperating" with other software developing companies. What I learned during this time is that milestones are everything. You know what you need to do till 1st September. Not done? You get only 90% of the payment that was due to be paid that day. You are more than 14 days late? You get only 80%. It's full of bugs? Penalties. Excuses? Zero accepted. I will never forget the day we released a game that was barely playable at release, simply because we were not able to persuade certain "partners" to postpone release date. The game was massacred by all major publications. It's brutal.

Do I think that's the solution for some of the issues written in the thread? If the game is small, then no. But if the game is big, then iron fist definitely helps. But there has to be ONE person who has the wallet and makes all major decisions. Otherwise it's chaos. The bigger the team is, the less efficient it can be.
Personally if I were to start a project, I would probably set salary as % of the total income, but set maximum and minimum earning. For example, you are earning 10%, but it's always at least $500 and at most $1500, or something like that. With clearly defined milestones and targets. The maximum earning maybe looks a bit unfair to some, but it leaves the opportunity to hire additional staff as the project gets bigger.
 
Apr 24, 2020
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That's the issue with patreon and kickstarter, there's really no contract between you and the developer. Once you've handed over your money, it's pretty much up to them how it will be spent or wasted.

This is again only made worse by newcomers to the platforms that treat them like stores, thinking that if they just throw more money at the issue, more will get done quicker. In reality, getting more money just reaffirms that they are keeping an acceptable pace and level of quality.

Unfortunately nothing will change unless they go belly up, which won't happen. They are the #1 adult game on patreon after all.

As a side note, I don't know much about the team behind summertime, but a large portion seems to be programmers. From what I've seen the mini game coding looks quite professional, which is why it baffles me so much that all the code during the main story feels like amateur hour.

Something something A types hire A types, B types hire C types.

The game also doesn't seem to have any solid plan of what direction it wants to go. There's a main story, but it seems largely abandoned in favor of side content. Whilst this isn't usually a bad thing, it just felt very much like feature of the month year kind of thing.

None of my points had been addressed by your post (as opposed to some other very interesting posts in this thread), which leads me to believe that you are suffering from bad reading comprehension. If you don't like it, you are free not to post in this thread.
That sounds rather rude and dismissive. deepandsilent3dx is right though, the core issue of this thread seems to be you treating the donations for Summertime Saga as a salary and not as donations. As much as I would expect a better product with that kind of support, it's ultimately up to DC.

Which is why I no longer support or play the game and instead just look at the code and image files.
 
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At $60,000 you could afford to hire at least 10 devs, and have a ton of money to spend on outsourced content. Our experience would explode with content, lol.
 
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deepandsilent3dx

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That sounds rather rude and dismissive. deepandsilent3dx is right though, the core issue of this thread seems to be you treating the donations for Summertime Saga as a salary and not as donations. As much as I would expect a better product with that kind of support, it's ultimately up to DC.
That's right.

95% of the users here do not understand (or do not want to understand) that Patreon is a pure donation platform, even if Patreon wants to suggest with its marketing bullshit slogans that it is a subscription platform.

Nobody is forced to donate, and nobody is forced to deliver anything according to any plans, roadmaps and deadlines. Especially not if the end product is free. They are donations because people like the game, art, or whatever.

Strictly speaking, DC (as an example in the first post of the thread) wouldn't need to spend a single cent from the patron pledges into game development. Because it's not a budget for games, nor a salary for work, nor any prepayments for an end product. They are freewill donations.

Such a success with a free game causes a lot of envy and pain in the ass by many people. But that's life. But I can only tell these people one thing - do it better than him and don't cry around!
 

trdx

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That sounds rather rude and dismissive.
Good. I can't stand people who want to dictate to other people what they can and can't discuss.


That's the issue with patreon and kickstarter, there's really no contract between you and the developer. Once you've handed over your money, it's pretty much up to them how it will be spent or wasted.

the core issue of this thread seems to be you treating the donations for Summertime Saga as a salary and not as donations. As much as I would expect a better product with that kind of support, it's ultimately up to DC.
No, where did you get such impression from my posts? I have been questioning what is happening inside the teams as the patreon money gets bigger. I have noticed that in many cases the development gets worse. So the development does respond to higher donation, but in the negative direction. As some people in this thread have noted, a possible explanation would be that they simply go into patron milking mode and make sure that they don't too much, maybe start "improving" things that aren't necessary to improve, adding a year or two to the project with almost zero return. Other have suggested (and it seems you as well) that it might be due to inefficient team building and lack of management/direction. I think that's very likely. Not everyone is suited to be a manager and companies often have producers that don't know much about coding, art, or any other part of the development that they manage. Their only job is to make sure product is delivered in time and for the available money, and they do that well.
 
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polywog

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Summertime Saga is a free game, freely available.

Therefore it is completely irrelevant how many patrons and pledges DC has. All patrons just do it because they like what DC does.

So any basis for discussion is gone and this thread is pointless.
Street performance is the act of performing in public places for gratuities. Street performance is practiced all over the world and dates back to antiquity.
 
Apr 24, 2020
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No, where did you get such impression from my posts? I have been questioning what is happening inside the teams as the patreon money gets bigger.
My point exactly. Why do you expect people to change if others are willing to donate more for the same amount of work? You seem to expect DC to treat Summertime Saga like a business and expand, when it's likely just his hobby project that made it big and earned him a very comfortable living.
 

trdx

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My point exactly. Why do you expect people to change if others are willing to donate more for the same amount of work? You seem to expect DC to treat Summertime Saga like a business and expand, when it's likely just his hobby project that made it big and earned him a very comfortable living.
What I'm expecting and what I'm not expecting is irrelevant. The fact is that things happen one or another way and the discussion is why is it happening. There are devs that act differently, and some of them have been mentioned in this thread. Quite a few devs also said that they would act differently and they said how exactly they would try to do those changes. So it's worth looking at why different devs act in such a different way. Also I have specifically mentioned, multiple times, that I wonder why some projects start going in the direction of worse performance as the money gets better.

I am trying my best to convey the message here and will continue to do so, as long as I have people acting in good faith. The guy who was trolling and was rude in this thread, I just put on ignore, excellent feature. With that said, I think this is the best I can explain, so if you still think that my point is something I claim it isn't, we will just have to leave it there. I can't explain it better.
 

anne O'nymous

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Also I have specifically mentioned, multiple times, that I wonder why some projects start going in the direction of worse performance as the money gets better.
And what if the two are, in fact, totally unrelated ?

What if they earn a lot of money because they do games since years, but update less because during those years a lot of things have changed in their life ? Take ICSTOR by example, he's on Patreon since 4 years. Think about it, how many things have changed in your life since 2016 ?
He can have fall in love, he can have been married, he can have had a child. One of his close relative can now need all his attention, because of a long and hard decease. He can have had to face the death of a relative, what let him with a lack of passion for his game, but he still force himself to continue as much as possible, because there's so many people who like the game and he feel bad to stop it completely. He can... there's so much possible explanation others than "he's milking his patrons".
Devs aren't robot that make games all day long. They are humans and they have a life on their own ; a life that they've absolutely no reason to talk about with us.
 
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trdx

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And what if the two are, in fact, totally unrelated ?

What if they earn a lot of money because they do games since years, but update less because during those years a lot of things have changed in their life ? Take ICSTOR by example, he's on Patreon since 4 years. Think about it, how many things have changed in your life since 2016 ?
He can have fall in love, he can have been married, he can have had a child. One of his close relative can now need all his attention, because of a long and hard decease. He can have had to face the death of a relative, what let him with a lack of passion for his game, but he still force himself to continue as much as possible, because there's so many people who like the game and he feel bad to stop it completely. He can... there's so much possible explanation others than "he's milking his patrons".
Devs aren't robot that make games all day long. They are humans and they have a life on their own ; a life that they've absolutely no reason to talk about with us.
Sure, it's possible. But there are actually jokes running on F95 about all the "major personal issues" that devs of these games have. You could get the feeling that adult game devs are some of the most unlucky people on the planet.

Without being cynical now, where there is pattern, it makes sense to construct a theory that fits the pattern best. So again, my opinion is:
- it's possible that your explanation is true for all cases, but extremely unlikely
- it's very probable that your explanation is true for some of the cases
I don't think it makes sense to start guessing in which cases it's true and in which cases it isn't. I have no bad feelings against anyone. They do what they want to do, it's their game.
 

xoxo

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Devs aren't robot that make games all day long. They are humans and they have a life on their own ; a life that they've absolutely no reason to talk about with us.
This is an important point to make. Most devs start working all day long/using all their free time and live in crunch mode for years - without taking any vacations - before they make it to the top. Then, once they can finally relax and have a decent life working human hours, people start accusing them of milking patrons.

That being said, without a doubt most diseases and personal issues are totally fake :ROFLMAO: They just fear being honest and saying they're burnt out.

I'm glad to see new big devs these days taking more time between releases (2-4 months) because it's breaking those early expectations of monthly releases that usually break devs after some time.
 
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TessSadist

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This is an important point to make. Most devs start working all day long/using all their free time and live in crunch mode for years - without taking any vacations - before they make it to the top. Then, once they can finally relax and have a decent life working human hours, people start accusing them of milking patrons.

That being said, without a doubt most diseases and personal issues are totally fake :ROFLMAO: They just fear being honest and saying they're burnt out.

I'm glad to see new big devs these days taking more time between releases (2-4 months) because it's breaking those early expectations of monthly releases that usually break devs after some time.
I like this post a lot on both the real life realities but also the prevalence of "fake" issues at times with personal problems. I actually proposed to my Patrons the idea of shooting for 2-3 months per release, but that if I took longer than 3 months I would stop billing any following month cycle until it was done. Whether that later will bite me badly I guess is TBD.
 
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anne O'nymous

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Sure, it's possible. But there are actually jokes running on F95 about all the "major personal issues" that devs of these games have. You could get the feeling that adult game devs are some of the most unlucky people on the planet.
Why "unlucky" ? Finding love, being married, or having a child, aren't unlucky things, yet they are things that let you with less free time.


- it's very probable that your explanation is true for some of the cases
Are you sure that it's just "some of the cases" ?

Statistically speaking, everything that have 0.1% chance/risk to happen to someone, will happen to 3 of the 3 781 game creators that have a Patreon account. It mean that (globally) 3 will lost their wife/husband before the age of 60, 15 will lost a child, 700 will have a long and hard decease, 150 will be injured and left with a hard handicap, and so on.
Just with that, it's already 868 devs that will be hit hard by life. Not necessarily now, and it's not necessarily the reason why they disappeared or do less. But it change the perspective, especially since I used the statistics for the Western world (not all of them live there), and didn't included the happy reasons to have less free time.



I'm glad to see new big devs these days taking more time between releases (2-4 months) because it's breaking those early expectations of monthly releases that usually break devs after some time.
Totally agree with this. Especially since, in the same time, they tend to compensate by offering us updates of good quality.
 

trdx

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I'm glad to see new big devs these days taking more time between releases (2-4 months) because it's breaking those early expectations of monthly releases that usually break devs after some time.
Excellent point. I don't care how long someone takes between releases, as I can always adjust monthly donation to suit the content delivery interval. Many devs I've supported take long time to make updates, and don't make promises about when it's going to happen.



Why "unlucky" ? Finding love, being married, or having a child, aren't unlucky things, yet they are things that let you with less free time.
We'll just have to agree to disagree. I'm not saying it makes your view wrong by default, but I'm pretty sure most people would agree that in most cases devs are not completely honest about reasons for going offline for 5 months and then coming back again for another post in 4 months. Besides, why not pausing patreon? It's one thing if someone is writing patreon messages every 2 weeks, and sometimes saying I've been sick or - as is case with one of the devs I support - having both of his parents just got healthy again, after being infected with covid-19. And yet he still was working on the game, just wasn't able to do what he wanted to do, wasn't in right state of mind.

So you have this in one corner. And you want to compare this to devs who just disappear and every 3 months write a post that they will get back, for 9 months, not pausing patreon at any point. There's too much of that.
I will give benefit of the doubt to the former devs every time. They are always told by patreons to take it easy. I will not give benefit of the doubt to the latter, though, and I think you are being too naive if you think that most of their excuses are valid. And if they are valid, don't keep promising releases every few months and then not deliver. Just say you will not be working on the game for a while. How hard is that?

Your stats are not valid, as you are taking extremely long time periods for calculation. I've been here for less than 2 years and based on what I've seen in this time period, the chance of something extremely bad happening, and lasting for a considerable time, has been more like 5% in any 18 month period. When I compare this to people I know in real life, it is of course not anywhere close to being realistic.

That's why people are joking about adult game dev biz being one of the most dangerous. Because we all have a pretty good feeling how often terrible things are happening to people we know.
 

jamdan

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Hypothetically, If I had a game and somehow managed to make 60k per month from it, that must mean the game is already of excellent quality and thus nothing needs to change.

So, I'm going to put that amount much lower. Lets say I make 10k per month, which is a lot but its *only* around 1000-1200 patrons. Definitely popular, but not some massive number. That's when I would make some hires. To turn this 10k game into a 60k game.

First, I'd save up and get some higher end rendering machines for myself, assuming I hadn't already done that.
Then, I'd hire an animator. Just someone that I can say "Hey, I need some animations. Here is the stuff that you need, send them over when you're done".
Then, since I'm able to render better, in theory, that means I can make more complex games. So, I'd hire a coder. This person just compiles the game in the end of the process and makes sure it works.

And that's basically it. I may consider hiring some art helpers, just give them specific tasks to do. "Hey, I need a gym, make me one of them?" "Hey, can you make a couple new side-characters for this scene" etc. As far as writing goes, It depends on how you work. Do you like the writing? Are you good at it? Then I don't think you need any co-writers. You can consult the fans for ideas and have some beta-readers look over it and provide feedback. No hires needed.

You don't need some massive team. Maybe 5 people at most. You, a coder, an animator and maybe if you want some helpers.
 

anne O'nymous

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So you have this in one corner. And you want to compare this to devs who just disappear and every 3 months write a post that they will get back, for 9 months, not pausing patreon at any point.
Oh, really, I want that ? I'm curious, can you tell me exactly where I wrote something that can eventually be read this way ?


[...] and I think you are being too naive if you think that most of their excuses are valid.
And also where exactly I wrote something that can eventually be read this way...


Your stats are not valid, as you are taking extremely long time periods for calculation.
How the fact that each year 0.1% of the population lost his husband/wife before the age of 60, can be defined as "extremely long time period" ? Because it's what I used (and rounded to simplify), statistics over a year.
We do our best to not see that it happen so often, because it's self reassuring, but it doesn't mean that each one of the events I used in my example aren't effectively this frequent.
Yet, since apparently I need to point the obvious to you, this doesn't mean that those are facts and not just statistics.