Like most, if not all, of my peers the endgame or this course is to use it as a springboard into the game development industry whether that be working for a studio as an employee or building and running an indie studio. My preference is for the latter. I’ve tried on many occasions over the years to work in the industry and had a 100% failure rate at even getting an interview. I don’t believe it’s my CV that’s at fault as it’s been extremely successful over the years at getting me interviews and jobs whenever I’ve needed to. I believe there are two things letting me down: no experience in the industry and no portfolio.
I was really pleased to see our post-course journey appearing so early in the material with a look at the University’s employability service. That goes a long way to explain why the University’s graduate employment record is so good.
Choosing to go solo…
Building my own game development studio is still my ultimate goal. I like the freedom and flexibility of running my own business and building on previous experience, this time I plan to have a completely different business model. Instead of trading hours for cash, this one will be asset based: create the asset and give it away for free. The asset then becomes the revenue generating device by offering in-game up-sells. Players can play absolutely free or choose to pay to advance through the tech. tree or levels quicker*. Free access stimulates demand, even though only a small proportion of users typically go from free to fee paying . Assuming a low (1%) and high (10%) conversion rate of the active install base with an average sale value of £5/month will give :
(* Note this is not a ‘loot box’ model, which is not without it’s own issues )
Active Install Base
x
Conversion Rate
=>
Cash Players
x
Average monthly spend
x
No. Yearly Purchases
=
Annual Revenue
10,000
x
1%
=>
100
x
£5
x
12
=
£6,000
100,000
x
1%
=>
1,000
x
£5
x
12
=
£60,000
10,000
x
10%
=>
1,000
x
£5
x
12
=
£60,000
100,000
x
10%
=>
10,000
x
£5
x
12
=
£600,000
Revenue projections based on low and high conversion rates — free-to-play, play-to-win
I suspect this model will be completely abhorrent to my fellow classmates but if I compare this to the more traditional sales model of pay-once-play-forever, the revenue projection tells a very different story:
Prospects
x
Conversion Rate
=>
Customers
x
Average spend
x
No. Purchases
=
Revenue
120,000
x
1%
=>
1,200
x
£5
x
1
=
£6,000
1,200,000
x
1%
=>
12,000
x
£5
x
1
=
£60,000
120,000
x
10%
=>
12,000
x
£5
x
1
=
£60,000
1,200,000
x
10%
=>
120,000
x
£5
x
1
=
£600,000
Revenue projections based on low and high conversion rates — pay once, play forever
In the latter case and assuming the lower conversion rate, the business would need to find and market to no less than 120,000 prospects every year to secure an annual revenue of £6,000. The pay-to-win model simply requires giving the game away, completely free t0 10,000 people to achieve the same £6,000 income.
With my previous business being B2B and geographically constrained I would have struggled to find this number of prospects. Moving into the B2C domain and potentially operating globally the task is suddenly much simpler. It’s still going to be a challenge but I feel now it’s a possible challenge rather than an impossible one.
Is the market viable? I believe so. I’ve personally played several games based on this very model and spoken to some of the cash players too, many of whom would think nothing of dropping £10-£50 per month on the game with one individual admitting to spending over £100 per week. Two of the games I played, Game of War: Fire Age and Vikings (both on the iPad) were particular favourites amongst city bankers and investors. World of Tanks, EVE Online and Clash of Clans are other titles based on the same model.
All these titles have several things in common:
they all have a very strong and loyal player community
they’re all long-running games
the development team’s focus is on creating new content, not new titles
Choosing employment…
The other post course option is to enter the industry as an employee.
This is my least favourite option at the time of writing as, based on my previous attempts, I feel I would struggle to replace my salary given the skills and experience I have to offer. Nevertheless I believe it is important, especially at this stage to keep my options open.
For this, the University’s employability service, RealWORKS, has been useful. I was really hoping toward through the personal branding and the effective online platform modules but they appear to no longer be available — or at least I couldn’t find them if they still do.
Whichever way I choose to go I feel having a strong, consistent brand image is important to start building a community. ScaryBlankPage was a domain I bought back in 2017 for a completely different project that never I really started. Before the course even began I’d decided to spin up a blog to document my learning journey — theLightMatters.com worked very well for my photography business and I wanted to repeat that model here. Imagine my surprise when I discovered a blog was a requirement for the course!
Over the last few weeks, ScaryBlankPage has really grown on me. I originally planned to use an alternative name for my branding but have since decided to keep this one; for the time-being at least.
My daughter designed my logo for me as part of her A-level graphics design course and I’ve since applied to register it as a trademark. I doubt this was strictly necessary but it was good experience for her to see how to do this and should the submission be successful, the certificate will make a good addition to her portfolio.
To build a community following (and by extension a potential target audience) I’ve taken the ScaryBlankPage brand and pushed this out over some of the more prevalent on-line platforms frequented by gamers and game developers.
They all need content and I may not use them all but felt it important to reserve the name. As you can see, somebody already has the Twitter handle but the account has been dormant for several years so once ScaryBlankPage is registered as a trademark I can formally request this fro Twitter.
Conclusion
As with several of my previous reflective entries I don’t ‘feel’ like I have learned very much during this week but it has been incredibly valuable in focussing my thoughts on the future and where I want to go. For instance, I ran the numbers for the free-to-play model back in August but this was the first time I’d really compared it to the traditional pay-once model.
ZENDLE, David, Paul CAIRNS, Herbie BARNETT and Cade MCCALL. 2020. ‘Paying for Loot Boxes Is Linked to Problem Gambling, Regardless of Specific Features like Cash-out and Pay-to-Win’. Computers in Human Behavior 102, 181–91.
BELTAGUI AHMAD, SCHMIDT THOMAS, CANDI MARINA and ROBERTS DEBORAH LYNN. 2019. ‘Overcoming the Monetization Challenge in Freemium Online Games’. Industrial Management & Data Systems 119(6), [online], 1339–56. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-08-2018-0350 [accessed 7 Dec 2020].
Gavin is a part-time student on the MA Indie Games Development programme at Falmouth University. A software architect by trade and a self-confessed Agile evangelist, he is looking for creatives to collaborate with and make games to rival those of the AAA’s. *Available for hire*
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