I want to send this story to every idiot that ask me hey can you build me a game like (insert mainstream success here) for free and I'll pay you a percentage once its popular.
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Popular 'Monument Valley' Game Earned More Than $5.8M, Saw 1.7M Sales on iOS
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I'll be picking it up after reading this article. Hopefully it doesn't give me too much of a headache with those spatial puzzles.
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A percentage of 5M is not bad at all!
Just DL'd and played it (finally), visually the game is great. The plot was basically invisible.
After all the hype this game had, I was surprised at how easy it was, I beat in under an hour, I will work on shores tomorrow.
I was also surprised it took a million to develop this 'indie' game.
After all the hype this game had, I was surprised at how easy it was, I beat in under an hour, I will work on shores tomorrow.
I was also surprised it took a million to develop this 'indie' game.
But labour isn't free. Your example makes zero sense unless you can't think past the 19th century. In your view any work, which is the majority of work today, that doesn't produce something physical should just be given away free. Shakespeare work wasn't free when he was around. So no one should develop anything, lets all just go back to the land of horses and bartering for meals.
Do you mean you take it for free ? Well that doesn't negate the amount of labour and actual cost that it took. Don't confuse something that is easy to do, like copying software, with what you should actually do so we can live in a society. If everyone operated like you do it would end society as we know it pretty damn quick.
In your world view, if your primary job is to create software, how can you make a living at it if it should all be free ?
Another note, I really question the cost of the game development as paid in cash. While they claim it costs $800,000 to make the game. I bet a lot of this "cost" was logged labor hours run up against existing labor rates. I'm sure no one payed outright for their time to do this in full.
Start-up ventures like this rarely have someone paying top dollar for development (specifically a high concept game) where most of the "sweat equity" goes into shares of the company or profit sharing.
Running the numbers off the cuff, at $800,000 at a market quote of $50 an hour we have 16,000 hours of work. Typical man-year is 2000 hours of work making this eight man years. They claim an eight man team. Thus, it took eight guys a year of work, probably spread across two years, to get this game out. I'm sure almost all of these guys had day jobs as they developed and promoted this game.
They get about a five to one return, the eight guys with their $5,000,000 in revenue gets just north of a half million each for all their effort if there is no reinvestment. Then there is the tax to the Crown. Good luck on that boys!
Thus, the small game developer studio is alive and well. You just need dedication and side jobs to pay the bills while you get a game out. Seen this done with several start-ups.
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When Shakespeare was alive and well while writing plays, his works were anything but free. Back in the Elizabethan days, it was common for anyone performing a play or a song without authorization of the living author, the holder of the work could engage the infringing in open combat in the middle of the play or find him for a fight at a nearby pub.
The Globe Theater was a site of many a fight between writers and musicians over who could play what songs. Typically the "rights" would become public domain after the author died. Hence why Shakespeare's works are now "free."
If you don't give tribute to the creator of a work, you might as well break in his house and steal his belongings.
Most that spout the "information is free" crap in their youth end up poor reading Shakespeare on sidewalks in Berkeley with their fellow homeless if they don't wake up and know how the world works. I know one in particular that has done this for years just a few blocks from Shattuck.
Start-up ventures like this rarely have someone paying top dollar for development (specifically a high concept game) where most of the "sweat equity" goes into shares of the company or profit sharing.
Running the numbers off the cuff, at $800,000 at a market quote of $50 an hour we have 16,000 hours of work. Typical man-year is 2000 hours of work making this eight man years. They claim an eight man team. Thus, it took eight guys a year of work, probably spread across two years, to get this game out. I'm sure almost all of these guys had day jobs as they developed and promoted this game.
They get about a five to one return, the eight guys with their $5,000,000 in revenue gets just north of a half million each for all their effort if there is no reinvestment. Then there is the tax to the Crown. Good luck on that boys!
Thus, the small game developer studio is alive and well. You just need dedication and side jobs to pay the bills while you get a game out. Seen this done with several start-ups.
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When Shakespeare was alive and well while writing plays, his works were anything but free. Back in the Elizabethan days, it was common for anyone performing a play or a song without authorization of the living author, the holder of the work could engage the infringing in open combat in the middle of the play or find him for a fight at a nearby pub.
The Globe Theater was a site of many a fight between writers and musicians over who could play what songs. Typically the "rights" would become public domain after the author died. Hence why Shakespeare's works are now "free."
If you don't give tribute to the creator of a work, you might as well break in his house and steal his belongings.
Most that spout the "information is free" crap in their youth end up poor reading Shakespeare on sidewalks in Berkeley with their fellow homeless if they don't wake up and know how the world works. I know one in particular that has done this for years just a few blocks from Shattuck.
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Its a great puzzle game and great background music. My two daughters have it memorized by now. They've played it front to back at least 20 times.
Beautiful Game
I am not into games, just not my thing. I do love to see people enjoying theirs. I had never heard of MV until this article. Bought the game. Visually stunning, lots of fun.
I am not into games, just not my thing. I do love to see people enjoying theirs. I had never heard of MV until this article. Bought the game. Visually stunning, lots of fun.
My take is that these "costs" are sweat hours where they were not paid per say but wrote up the hours for the worked they owned. Thus, they "paid" with their own labor time and claimed market labor rates.
Most of these games are written by small houses on a profit sharing manner while having day jobs.
Get a dozen people working together for equity for a year or two and you can write up a million dollars in labor fees real quick.
Who are you talking to? This is a forum of a mac rumors site.. the developers of the game will never read your post.
Maybe you're too young or too old, but the internet doesn't work this way ;D
It means a lot to the developers - they made a boatload of money. Plus it highlights the actual cost of producing a great piece of software on iOS.
Just another reason why, in spite of being asked regularly to do so, I will NEVER port my app to Android.
And people in this forum seem really out of touch about developer salaries. Ustwo works out of London, NYC, and Sweden, and I can guarantee that at least the NYC devs are making six figure salaries, or they would be poached away in a heartbeat. London and Sweden are probably similar for their local currencies.
That's a good point. According to Wikipedia the game was released for Android over a month later. So maybe they'll make a huge amount of sales via the Google play store within the next month and catch up.... Or something like that
I bought the original game, loved it to bits, and forked over a measly $2 for the expansion without batting an eye. They deserved every penny in my book. I even spent another $1 on the product(RED) promotional level.
It's a tiny studio and creating a whole new set of levels for free would have been nice, but completely unfair to the people spending lots of time to create it. People are just entitled, I guess.
It's a tiny studio and creating a whole new set of levels for free would have been nice, but completely unfair to the people spending lots of time to create it. People are just entitled, I guess.
This statistic shows why myself and many other developers refuse to do Android work. That is, a much lower return on investment than iOS. One software executive I know places Andriod users in the following categories.
1) Low end consumer. Only wants to pay a monthly cell bill with no paid apps.
2) Enterprise IT users. Mass scaling of phones centered around company work with a handful of enterprise apps running.
3) Apple haters. They just use whatever is not Apple and deal with the issues.
4) Lunatic Fringe. Hackers / crackers / modders / OS patches / mountain-men that mod the hell out of their device and have custom kernal work on their phone.
All of these have low margins, if any, for third party app developers. Hence, unless you have a massive hit or an app connected to a subscription service, it is not worth it.
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Boy, you'd be surprised who read this board. I met the developers at UsTwo personally. Two of them read MacRumors regularly. Since they are featured here, I'm sure it is getting a lot of attention.
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And I'm sure a dartboard at the local pub with all the "We want it free!" chants from Android users.
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I have seen several attempts at Escher topography in a computer interface with huge crash and burns. Previously it was either sheer confusion to the user or so limited, it was burdensome to the user showing no advantage.
The crew at TwoUs nailed just the right Escher topography and limited interaction giving it an amusing and oddly intuitive feel. The limited rotation of the levels where one viewing angle makes a walkway passable while other viewing angles don't is great. I was giddy when I first found this on a level.
I was involved in one 90's era, experimental, immersive VR chamber where we tried to make an Escher topography. Some of the beta testers were physically falling down to the floor in fetal position out of sheer confusion. One was not able to even open their eyes for a while after they were taken out of the projection chamber. That environment was stopped real quick and we moved to an normal 3D topology with an occasional teleport spot.
I've always wanted to do a parity of internet types protesting a car dealer. They would shout the cars sold in the lot should be free. Claims would be free cars empower many people and that empowerment of society will pay back the car manufacturer.
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You think iOS developer salary is sweet. Try freelance contracting. I know a few that are commanding anywhere from $250,000 to $500,000 a year contracting with MFi credentials and profit sharing of their works.
Not saying it's a bad game but it taking 1mil+ to develop this game blows my mind. The art work and music is great but 1mil is a lot for an indie studio but I'm guessing they were backed. I wouldn't even know how to spend 1mil on game Dev but then again I wouldn't know how to bring in almost 6 mil either.
Not sure if it was this game but the dev talked about how 95% of their andriod copies were pirated (and people wonder why dev choose ios over andriod haha).
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I know right. How about to the people that thing all games and apps should be free haha.
Not sure if it was this game but the dev talked about how 95% of their andriod copies were pirated (and people wonder why dev choose ios over andriod haha).
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I know right. How about to the people that thing all games and apps should be free haha.
My take is that UsTwo is a "super group" of artists and developers.
I'm sure they have known or known of each other for a while before this. They came together for this on an experimental, night work project and it freaking took off.
The "cost" IMO was mostly hours worked on this with the time compared to going rates. I bet less then $25,000 was paid for promotion and marketing of the app after the code, graphic artwork and music was complete.
All are experts in their field and the timing was just right. Thus a classic "Seven Samurai" team.
Android users, cheap bastards, the lot of them. But I'll still drink with them, don't get me wrong. I'm not classist.
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I guess my main theme is not about right or wrong and more about knowing how the real world works. Since copying is easy and free and virtually unenforceable. If you want to have your try at software, good luck.
Dig into their data you will find that 60% in each platform falls into pirating. iOS had 60% prirating rate as well. Things like sharing a iTunes Store account across multiple users is one way. Or the let me log into the store and get that for you. Sharing the game.
You think it is android but reality it is both.
Amazon free app hurts as they get zero money when it was free app of the day.
That is easier said than done to do. Chances are your devs work on both platforms. Their is shared stuff. For example all graphics are shared. Depending on the engine a lot of that get shared as well.
So knowing that you will also find that whatever side leads it eats more of the cost. Where I work android takes around 70-80% iOS dev time. So based on that android is cheaper right? Reality is iOS takes longer because we develop for it first and figure out all the pitfalls on that. Turn around then do android.
Developers know both platforms so again it gets muddy as we jump between them some times in the same day depending on what qa kicks back or issue that come up.
Long story short it might be impossible to break out and would be miss leading.
I doubt that your scenarios would add up to a 60% "pirating" rate. Keep in mind that Apple has offered this game for free on more than one occasion. More than doubling the user base when offered as an App of the Week is not unusual.
Count me among those who downloaded Monument Valley for free. Great game, and I gladly paid for the RED and Forgotten Shores levels when they became available.
Like what one of of my clients said about mobile development..... the money for developers is in iOS... with Android making up only a small portion of revenue.