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On April 25 2012 09:26 GogoKodo wrote:
These numbers are all over the place.
A couple small examples.
Kespa is going to give you 1,000,000 your first quarter when you've sold 250,000 copies. Someone there is getting fired for signing that contract.
Your sales go from 250,000 to 180,000 in the second quarter. You would be very optimistic to say your sales will go from 250,000 to 125,000.
sales go from 150,000 (10% of sc2 day1 sales) to 75,000, and continue to drop by 50% from then on. as far as the licensing, i think if the advertising was successful then kespa would be willing to pay a lot more than 1mil to get out of dealing with blizzard (assuming this new project is accepted by the korean population
On April 25 2012 09:29 Melchior wrote:
What's with the downsizing in Y4? You'll also need support staff to provide that great customer service you mention. Also, you'll have a hard time retaining good devs for $60k a year unless you're also giving equity. I also think your sales figures and licensing fees are overly optimistic.
There's room for startups in the game industry -- I don't think anyone's doubting that -- but it's a lot harder than your numbers would imply.
I disagree.. i think with 300,000 in advertising per quarter along with community interaction it would be possible to achieve these sales figures. as far as kespa not paying us, it could easily be replaced by a 1 dollar per quarter fee on consumers.
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On April 25 2012 08:34 Endymion wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2012 08:28 Rkie wrote:Cool numbers. Seeing stuff like this always impresses me because it shows just how greedy companies can get. As soon as you start making money, you have your fanbase, so take advantage of it imo. I am going to go play with some of the numbers later to see what happens. On April 25 2012 08:12 Endymion wrote:
TLDR: blizz should hire me, i could make them millions more than they are because i'm not an arrogant activision executive I support this. it's ridiculous because blizzard is demanding $15 per viewer from Kespa (per quarter) for the SC2 PL, so if 25% of the korean population watches it they'll gross 150,000,000 usd per quarter in licensing revenue...
Is there a source for that $15/viewer figure? Would like to read it.
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On April 25 2012 09:20 Endymion wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2012 09:17 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:
If it was really this simple there would be a quality RTS released in the past decade. I can't think of a franchise that hasn't gone to shit in the past years ^_^ I don't think it's simple, it's just financially feasible assuming you can get some P2P (even if it's just .33 cents/month like my model) to release a free to play game that actually supports the community instead of the BS that is sc2 (i have no idea how to make a game, i just ran through the prospect of doing it)
Anything is financially feasible when your numbers are made up and have no backing.
I'll just make a forum for your awesome game, Endymion's King RTS. First quarter I guess I'll have 15000 active viewers giving me ad revenue of $0.50 per user/day so I'm pulling in $7500 revenue a day. My written content will all be user submitted and I'll also hire hot_bid at $1000/day and I'll use the rest of my revenue to start a pro Endymion's King RTS team which will win the first EKTRS Star League pulling sponsor attention. So we'll get sponsors which will recoup the cost of hardware for my team and give my forum even more active viewers in the second quarter! teamliquid better watch out!
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On April 25 2012 09:32 Chiharu Harukaze wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2012 08:34 Endymion wrote:On April 25 2012 08:28 Rkie wrote:Cool numbers. Seeing stuff like this always impresses me because it shows just how greedy companies can get. As soon as you start making money, you have your fanbase, so take advantage of it imo. I am going to go play with some of the numbers later to see what happens. On April 25 2012 08:12 Endymion wrote:
TLDR: blizz should hire me, i could make them millions more than they are because i'm not an arrogant activision executive I support this. it's ridiculous because blizzard is demanding $15 per viewer from Kespa (per quarter) for the SC2 PL, so if 25% of the korean population watches it they'll gross 150,000,000 usd per quarter in licensing revenue... Is there a source for that $15/viewer figure? Would like to read it.
http://www.thisisgame.com/board/view.php?id=1133860&category=102&subcategory=
i read it in the comments on this article, but i can't seem to find it now >.>
On April 25 2012 09:34 GogoKodo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2012 09:20 Endymion wrote:On April 25 2012 09:17 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:
If it was really this simple there would be a quality RTS released in the past decade. I can't think of a franchise that hasn't gone to shit in the past years ^_^ I don't think it's simple, it's just financially feasible assuming you can get some P2P (even if it's just .33 cents/month like my model) to release a free to play game that actually supports the community instead of the BS that is sc2 (i have no idea how to make a game, i just ran through the prospect of doing it) Anything is financially feasible when your numbers are made up and have no backing. I'll just make a forum for your awesome game, Endymion's King RTS. First quarter I guess I'll have 15000 active viewers giving me ad revenue of $0.50 per user/day so I'm pulling in $7500 revenue a day. My written content will all be user submitted and I'll also hire hot_bid at $1000/day and I'll use the rest of my revenue to start a pro Endymion's King RTS team which will win the first EKTRS Star League pulling sponsor attention. So we'll get sponsors which will recoup the cost of hardware for my team and give my forum even more active viewers in the second quarter! teamliquid better watch out!
considering most companies charge 45 times what I'm projecting for MMOs, on top of an upfront fee for the actual game, I think my numbers are pretty accurate for a projection..
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On April 25 2012 09:30 Endymion wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2012 09:26 GogoKodo wrote:
These numbers are all over the place.
A couple small examples.
Kespa is going to give you 1,000,000 your first quarter when you've sold 250,000 copies. Someone there is getting fired for signing that contract.
Your sales go from 250,000 to 180,000 in the second quarter. You would be very optimistic to say your sales will go from 250,000 to 125,000. sales go from 150,000 (10% of sc2 day1 sales) to 75,000, and continue to drop by 50% from then on. as far as the licensing, i think if the advertising was successful then kespa would be willing to pay a lot more than 1mil to get out of dealing with blizzard (assuming this new project is accepted by the korean population
I guess your numbers may not be presented very well. You might consider hiring an accountant and including that in your figures.
I see, Price 10$. I see, Sales Revenue $2,500,000 in Y4Q1. Unless I'm reading something wrong.
Also, regardless of all that selling 150,000 copies of a game in a day is incredibly difficult.
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Ah super interesting thread Endymion. Also, we're Freshman in our second semester and had to use C 
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On April 25 2012 09:40 GogoKodo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2012 09:30 Endymion wrote:On April 25 2012 09:26 GogoKodo wrote:
These numbers are all over the place.
A couple small examples.
Kespa is going to give you 1,000,000 your first quarter when you've sold 250,000 copies. Someone there is getting fired for signing that contract.
Your sales go from 250,000 to 180,000 in the second quarter. You would be very optimistic to say your sales will go from 250,000 to 125,000. sales go from 150,000 (10% of sc2 day1 sales) to 75,000, and continue to drop by 50% from then on. as far as the licensing, i think if the advertising was successful then kespa would be willing to pay a lot more than 1mil to get out of dealing with blizzard (assuming this new project is accepted by the korean population I guess your numbers may not be presented very well. You might consider hiring an accountant and including that in your figures. I see, Price 10$. I see, Sales Revenue $2,500,000 in Y4Q1. Unless I'm reading something wrong. Also, regardless of all that selling 150,000 copies of a game in a day is incredibly difficult.
you're reading it right, I don't think 150,000 in the first quarter is too off though, lots of indie games have out sold that Q1 (and this isn't really an indie game with 20 fully employed developers)
also why are you so hostile... my numbers are presented correctly, if there's anything incorrect it's the optimistic projections not my formatting
third edit, even with 0 sales the NPV is still positive from the quarterly income (be it from kespa or subscription based)
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On April 25 2012 09:02 architecture wrote:
There might be something wrong with how Blizzard is being run internally, because they have been ridiculously incompetent.
Consider that the D3 producer left just a month or two ago, before launch! And of course how long D3 has been delayed.
And of course how poor SC2 has been so far.
I think part of the issue is Blizzard is no longer king. They used to be able to put out a game, get great sales, and keep mindshare. But there is easily 10times if not more competition these days for attention. There's a lot of free to play games, games on different non-pc devices etc etc. So Blizzard can still rake in sales, but their same old tricks won't keep people's attention anymore. No one needs UMS maps. There's Steam games, DOTA, LOL, and tons of other stuff to play. It's not 1998 where outside of BNET and CS there were no other multiplayer games. War3 was the last of that period.
2012 is different from 1998 and different from 2004. I don't think they understand that.
Let's not fucking kid ourselves... rose-tinted glasses for BW aside, SC2 itself is a fantastic game and will only get better. Sure, the UI of Bnet 2.0 has a ways to go, but the gameplay is great.
However, I wonder too if there's some stifling of voices/ideas going on inside Blizz HQ. They are s l o w to make any moves (even announcements or communication with the community) in the public domain, and my cynicism makes me suspect that there's an inflated bureaucracy at work. Things just don't happen, or they happen months (years in the case of Bnet 2.0) after the best impact could have been made.
I still have all my sentiments attached to Blizzard right now and I'm relatively optimistic about them (eventually) making the right decisions for the game, but they aren't exactly making all the right moves in all the right places at the moment. We'll see what happens in the next few years.
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On April 25 2012 09:42 Endymion wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2012 09:40 GogoKodo wrote:On April 25 2012 09:30 Endymion wrote:On April 25 2012 09:26 GogoKodo wrote:
These numbers are all over the place.
A couple small examples.
Kespa is going to give you 1,000,000 your first quarter when you've sold 250,000 copies. Someone there is getting fired for signing that contract.
Your sales go from 250,000 to 180,000 in the second quarter. You would be very optimistic to say your sales will go from 250,000 to 125,000. sales go from 150,000 (10% of sc2 day1 sales) to 75,000, and continue to drop by 50% from then on. as far as the licensing, i think if the advertising was successful then kespa would be willing to pay a lot more than 1mil to get out of dealing with blizzard (assuming this new project is accepted by the korean population I guess your numbers may not be presented very well. You might consider hiring an accountant and including that in your figures. I see, Price 10$. I see, Sales Revenue $2,500,000 in Y4Q1. Unless I'm reading something wrong. Also, regardless of all that selling 150,000 copies of a game in a day is incredibly difficult. you're reading it right, I don't think 150,000 in the first quarter is too off though, lots of indie games have out sold that Q1 (and this isn't really an indie game with 20 fully employed developers) also why are you so hostile... my numbers are presented correctly, if there's anything incorrect it's the optimistic projections not my formatting third edit, even with 0 sales the NPV is still positive from the quarterly income (be it from kespa or subscription based)
The numbers you are saying in these replies don't seem to match up with the numbers I'm seeing in your pictures. Y4Q1, 250,000 sales, Q2 180,000 sales, Q3 160,250 sales etc.
Sorry about sounding hostile. I'd rather my tone somehow convey that this whole thing is just silly.
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On April 25 2012 09:49 Bobo_XIII wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2012 09:02 architecture wrote:
There might be something wrong with how Blizzard is being run internally, because they have been ridiculously incompetent.
Consider that the D3 producer left just a month or two ago, before launch! And of course how long D3 has been delayed.
And of course how poor SC2 has been so far.
I think part of the issue is Blizzard is no longer king. They used to be able to put out a game, get great sales, and keep mindshare. But there is easily 10times if not more competition these days for attention. There's a lot of free to play games, games on different non-pc devices etc etc. So Blizzard can still rake in sales, but their same old tricks won't keep people's attention anymore. No one needs UMS maps. There's Steam games, DOTA, LOL, and tons of other stuff to play. It's not 1998 where outside of BNET and CS there were no other multiplayer games. War3 was the last of that period.
2012 is different from 1998 and different from 2004. I don't think they understand that. Let's not fucking kid ourselves... rose-tinted glasses for BW aside, SC2 itself is a fantastic game and will only get better. Sure, the UI of Bnet 2.0 has a ways to go, but the gameplay is great. However, I wonder too if there's some stifling of voices/ideas going on inside Blizz HQ. They are s l o w to make any moves (even announcements or communication with the community) in the public domain, and my cynicism makes me suspect that there's an inflated bureaucracy at work. Things just don't happen, or they happen months (years in the case of Bnet 2.0) after the best impact could have been made. I still have all my sentiments attached to Blizzard right now and I'm relatively optimistic about them (eventually) making the right decisions for the game, but they aren't exactly making all the right moves in all the right places at the moment. We'll see what happens in the next few years.
This. Starcraft 2 as a game is good, the battle.net UI is obviously bad and needs to be redone. Blizzard hired a new battle.net leader unless I am mistaken and hopefully we can get clan support and what not.
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![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Endymion/Bliz_Blog/year_4_edit.jpg)
you may need to update the page, i changed some of them about an hour ago, here's what i'm seeing (q1 150,000, q2 75,000)
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On April 25 2012 09:50 GogoKodo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2012 09:42 Endymion wrote:On April 25 2012 09:40 GogoKodo wrote:On April 25 2012 09:30 Endymion wrote:On April 25 2012 09:26 GogoKodo wrote:
These numbers are all over the place.
A couple small examples.
Kespa is going to give you 1,000,000 your first quarter when you've sold 250,000 copies. Someone there is getting fired for signing that contract.
Your sales go from 250,000 to 180,000 in the second quarter. You would be very optimistic to say your sales will go from 250,000 to 125,000. sales go from 150,000 (10% of sc2 day1 sales) to 75,000, and continue to drop by 50% from then on. as far as the licensing, i think if the advertising was successful then kespa would be willing to pay a lot more than 1mil to get out of dealing with blizzard (assuming this new project is accepted by the korean population I guess your numbers may not be presented very well. You might consider hiring an accountant and including that in your figures. I see, Price 10$. I see, Sales Revenue $2,500,000 in Y4Q1. Unless I'm reading something wrong. Also, regardless of all that selling 150,000 copies of a game in a day is incredibly difficult. you're reading it right, I don't think 150,000 in the first quarter is too off though, lots of indie games have out sold that Q1 (and this isn't really an indie game with 20 fully employed developers) also why are you so hostile... my numbers are presented correctly, if there's anything incorrect it's the optimistic projections not my formatting third edit, even with 0 sales the NPV is still positive from the quarterly income (be it from kespa or subscription based) The numbers you are saying in these replies don't seem to match up with the numbers I'm seeing in your pictures. Y4Q1, 250,000 sales, Q2 180,000 sales, Q3 160,250 sales etc. Sorry about sounding hostile. I'd rather my tone somehow convey that this whole thing is just silly.
You don't sound hostile at all. I totally understand your tone.
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On April 25 2012 09:53 Endymion wrote:you may need to update the page, i changed some of them about an hour ago, here's what i'm seeing (q1 150,000, q2 75,000)
Ah I see those numbers now. It was difficult to discern because you don't have any labeling.
Your estimates are still wacky though.
I guess the real point I'm trying to get across is that your post doesn't really present any kind of interesting information. We know that games can be financially feasible already. You've basically started at the end point of having good numbers and used it to prove that a game could be made provided you get those good numbers. We could take my silly example of starting a forum again. If we take teamliquid's numbers as a currently successful website and then use those to say, "look, we can make a starcraft focused esports site work!" it's not very interesting. Yes, that can be done, but it doesn't account for so many factors and it's just giving us information we already know, that there is a currently successful starcraft focused esports site.
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Your numbers pretty much have you making the indie hit of the decade. Amnesia sold just over 400k and that's with being on sale multiple times and with dozens of viral videos on youtube. A multiplayer-only RTS isn't going to sell as much. Then you have to actually reverse situation of small eSports games and get the league to pay you to run your game instead of you paying them. You won't actually support your game with 5 employees when you have to do antihack, server admining, customer support, tournament relations, patches... On top of all that, 20 guys won't make something as good as SC2 in 3 years.
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http://investor.activision.com/annuals.cfm
Although the most recent one is from 2009 i would urge everybody to open that one and go to page 34, the consolidated statements of operations. The cost of product development was 627 million USD. The total costs that year were 4,305 million USD. Do no mistake the numbers in this blog to being closely accurate: the developing of new content is only a part of Blizzard's costs. Public relations, HRM, accounting, management, legal, the servers and internet connection needed to make multiplayer work.... do i need to go on?
I'm sorry if this post seems harsh but so much hate everywhere... companies trying to fuck us over, the government trying to fuck you over... all "proven" with overly simplistic reasoning. Maybe this post is my way of relieving the frustration but damn.....
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Honestly guys, call me an optimist but I think you're wrong. I think blizzard is severly overstaffed for what they're outputting, and I think a staff of 20 could make something similar to SC2 in 3 years. I've looked at the numbers again, and assuming you can't get kespa to pay fees and you have to charge monthly you're right. it would take about $15 quarterly to make a profit after 6 years with only 35,000 sales and subs at $10 initially.. however, if you can double those subs then your profits will be closer to 5 million. The interesting point to me is just how powerful a monthly fee can be in funding a game, i'm surprised more companies aren't doing it.
Here's some more info, to get an NPV of 0 with no sales you would need 474,819 people initially paying .33/month.
Without monthly payments you would need the following..
to float purely on sales(price = 10) you would need to start with Y4Q1 sales of 595,584..
to float on a $60 price you would need 99,266 sales.
fuck.. blizzard still wins i guess lol
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On April 25 2012 09:02 architecture wrote:
There might be something wrong with how Blizzard is being run internally, because they have been ridiculously incompetent.
Consider that the D3 producer left just a month or two ago, before launch! And of course how long D3 has been delayed.
And of course how poor SC2 has been so far.
I think part of the issue is Blizzard is no longer king. They used to be able to put out a game, get great sales, and keep mindshare. But there is easily 10times if not more competition these days for attention. There's a lot of free to play games, games on different non-pc devices etc etc. So Blizzard can still rake in sales, but their same old tricks won't keep people's attention anymore. No one needs UMS maps. There's Steam games, DOTA, LOL, and tons of other stuff to play. It's not 1998 where outside of BNET and CS there were no other multiplayer games. War3 was the last of that period.
2012 is different from 1998 and different from 2004. I don't think they understand that.
But there really isn't any serious competition for RTS, and Blizzard(or Activiosion, I should say) does understand that. So they don't do anything for their base, the ones who are already going to buy the game, because their is no need.
There needs to be a serious competitor in the RTS genre, or else Blizz is simply not going to change and we'll be left with a product of much lower quality then it should be.
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Wait, your creating a game with 20 programmers? No testers? A lot the cost of creating anything in software is testing.
And for the game itself..Game designers, sound engineers, artists,voice actor, motion capture? You seem to think that creating a game is about putting a bunch of programmers together in a room with computers.
Cost of "Computers" at 30k? Visual studio pro licenses cost 500$ per dev. Even if you have a ton of discounts through ms dev programs, you'll still need a build server, source control, and bug tracking system. Oh and once your done with a few test cases, you'll need to automate them, so you 'll need a bunch of stuff for that.
5 people post release? I think you have more than 5 people on just battle.net forums answering queries . Plus you also have the cost of keeping a massive system like bnet alive(you might think it's broken, but it is still huge system).
A big problem in a field like this is attrition, and to deal with that you'll have indirect cost of HR work/management, corporate structure. I'm sorry but this just looks like you have no idea of developing anything software related.
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Shit, after reading your first 3 sentences, you should be president of Blizzard.
But I don't know anything about finances or business models, so I can't really comment on the specific numbers of your post :3
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United States1719 Posts
While I absolutely agree with you that blizzard is doing nothing but twiddling their thumbs while raking in money, your projections don't seem realistic; hockey sticks in projected profits almost always raise a red flag to investors. The biggest flaw in your projections is that the whole scheme hinges on the assumption that the game, developed by a company of merely twenty programmers at that, will be successful enough to capture an audience of millions for years, when not many games have been able to survive past the 3 year mark in the e-sports scene. A close analogy would be pitching a mobile app that lets you take videos and share it with your friends, akin to what Instagram does except in video. Instagram was recently acquired by Facebook for a whopping $1billion, with a staff of nine nonetheless, so you could probably come up with a business plan full of enticing numbers. However, the truth is that Instagram is a one-in-a-million case, with tons and tons of luck involved, and acquisitions like it will almost certainly never happen in the field of mobile apps ever again.
Your projections have your game selling 300k copies in its first year after release, and a viewership of 1 million right off the bat, which doubles (!) in less than three years. In reality, an RTS developed by an indy company with shitty graphics (most likely), shitty voice acting (most definitely), shitty artwork, shitty sound effects, shitty music, and basically shitty everything else but awesome game-play will not sell 150k copies in its first quarter, nor will it attract a million viewers. Then there are other factors like employee benefits (certainly can hire them as independent contractors but I doubt you will attract good talent without giving them good benefits), intellectual property (HUGE concern in the field of tech start-ups, big money sink due to attorney fees), other misc. fees going towards stuff like server maintenance, and the fact that even if your game really took off, you won't sustain a company with a revenue of that size with merely 25 employees.
To come back full circle, however, I definitely agree that blizzard's goal with SC2 was never about making an awesome game, but launching an awesomely lucrative product, and they aren't doing shit except ogling their revenue stream. The company is basically doing the absolute bare minimum to keep up the image of SC2 as the flagship e-sports game, just so they can continue to milk money from it without the fans abandoning it. My two cents.
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EPT
