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Huh, this is fun! I built Genfanad (http://genfanad.com/ http://genfanad.com/) as a browser based game with similar inspirations to yours a few years ago. A lo

Huh, this is fun! I built Genfanad (http://genfanad.com/ http://genfanad.com/) as a browser based game with similar inspirations to yours a few years ago. A lot of the technologies you mentioned are very similar. It's surprising how easy getting something up and running is these days! We ended up shutting down a few months ago as I couldn't figure out how to take it to profitability. Do you have plans for that, or is it just a fun side project?

onemandevteam 2y ago
Nice job with Genfanad! That looked like a really neat game. I don't have a good plan for profitability other than try to keep my expenses as low as possible and see if I can find some way to scrape by in a year or two.
- Moru 2y ago
  IknowIknow! You could have some lets call it "lootboxes" that people could pay real money for to open. And in them they would find items to use in the game! :-) A bit more serious, I haven't seen many attempts at just making a donation bar showing how much it costs to keep it running per month? Let people donate until the bar is filled, when it overflows it goes to next month. Very visible on login screen. In this bar ofcourse include your salary for keeping it running after developement is doneish. Maybe stretch-goals for donation to make new functions? And please use Ko-fi for donations, much friendlier and less cutting into your profits :-)
  - freeAgent 2y ago
    I think presenting costs as a rough “per user/player” calculation might be more effective than presenting just the total cost. That way people are reminded of their own personal resource usage, which seems like a more manageable/tangible number, and it can be accompanied by the broader stats since of course not everyone voluntarily pays (and some people pay more than their fair share).
    - BizarroLand 2y ago
      Back of the napkin math, but if the servers cost $0.25/month/player and the owner would like to make $5,000/month (very conservative but sure, why not) and there is a 20% "future emergency fund" in place, when the game has 5,000 players then each player would need to contribute on average $1.50/month, or $18/year. I would want, in exchange for that, that the game be fairly stable, that there be things to do such as Quests or Tasks, and that I could enjoy the game for maybe an hour a week, maybe 2 if I'm in a rut.
      - freeAgent 2y ago
        Exactly, and I think that sort of request for contribution is much more likely to make people feel inclined to contribute than some abstract goal of getting $10k/mo in donations or whatever.
  - mdnahas 2y ago
    Valve has some great talks on monetizing free games. People will pay for social features that don’t change the game mechanics. E.g., make every donor’s avatar visually different, so people acknowledge they’re good people. E.g., wear a gold chain around their avatar’s neck or a feather in their hat. Or render them with more polygons! Larger donation = more polygons?! Makes sense to me. Or sell weapons that are the same as regular weapons but trigger fancy death scenes when they kill.
onemandevteam 2y ago
Do you have any suggestions? Your game seemed very popular. Anything you wished you had focused more on?
- akrotkov 2y ago
  Set your expectations accordingly. Coding is the fun part, but it's less than 5% of actually launching and making a successful product. If you don't think you want to spend most of your time not coding, don't try to make it a business! Marketing is more important than making something. You will get a small boost from things like this (I was always too embarrassed to post here!), but it's an endless pit of time and money! To do it right, I've heard all sorts of numbers, but a good rule of thumb is every dollar/hour you put to making your game, put a dollar/hour to marketing it as well. From a technical perspective, your stack is fine. You want to make sure you host all your assets behind cloudflare/s3 or similar, the $5 server is fine for gameplay but if you also try to make it send all the stuff, it's gonna die. (As evidenced today!) Most of my other experience and advice is about how to run a team and set budgets and goals. If you're going about it as a hobby (and that's probably the best way to go!) then just keep doing what you're doing, write some blogs and foster a community instead.
  - onemandevteam 2y ago
    Thank you! I think, like you said, a good strategy will be to keep it fun and hobby-like as long as possible. I can definitely see the business-side of it sucking all my time and energy. I think doing some educational materials will be a worthwhile way to market and gain interest. Community building with something like a Discord server will also help. Competing as a business with something like Jagex is 100x harder than just making a good game.
    - akrotkov 2y ago
      To be clear, it's not Jagex you're competing with. It's the 20+ other indie MMO solo developers who are trying to do the same thing as you, including but not limited to: RetroMMO, New Eden, Valorbound, Carth, Eterspire, Omuri, Shadefell, Cookie Dragon, Cinis, Cinderstone, Legends of Etherell, Legendarium, Mirage Realms, Aether Story, Ethyrial, and so on. There's more that come and go every month. Unfortunately, the #1 lesson that I've learned is that while nostalgia gets some reception, there's a reason no big companies are really making MMOs, even at a smaller scale. There's just not that large a viable market for them.

onemandevteam 2y ago

Nice job with Genfanad! That looked like a really neat game. I don't have a good plan for profitability other than try to keep my expenses as low as possible and see if I can find some way to scrape by in a year or two.

Moru 2y ago
IknowIknow! You could have some lets call it "lootboxes" that people could pay real money for to open. And in them they would find items to use in the game! :-) A bit more serious, I haven't seen many attempts at just making a donation bar showing how much it costs to keep it running per month? Let people donate until the bar is filled, when it overflows it goes to next month. Very visible on login screen. In this bar ofcourse include your salary for keeping it running after developement is doneish. Maybe stretch-goals for donation to make new functions? And please use Ko-fi for donations, much friendlier and less cutting into your profits :-)
- freeAgent 2y ago
  I think presenting costs as a rough “per user/player” calculation might be more effective than presenting just the total cost. That way people are reminded of their own personal resource usage, which seems like a more manageable/tangible number, and it can be accompanied by the broader stats since of course not everyone voluntarily pays (and some people pay more than their fair share).
  - BizarroLand 2y ago
    Back of the napkin math, but if the servers cost $0.25/month/player and the owner would like to make $5,000/month (very conservative but sure, why not) and there is a 20% "future emergency fund" in place, when the game has 5,000 players then each player would need to contribute on average $1.50/month, or $18/year. I would want, in exchange for that, that the game be fairly stable, that there be things to do such as Quests or Tasks, and that I could enjoy the game for maybe an hour a week, maybe 2 if I'm in a rut.
    - freeAgent 2y ago
      Exactly, and I think that sort of request for contribution is much more likely to make people feel inclined to contribute than some abstract goal of getting $10k/mo in donations or whatever.
- mdnahas 2y ago
  Valve has some great talks on monetizing free games. People will pay for social features that don’t change the game mechanics. E.g., make every donor’s avatar visually different, so people acknowledge they’re good people. E.g., wear a gold chain around their avatar’s neck or a feather in their hat. Or render them with more polygons! Larger donation = more polygons?! Makes sense to me. Or sell weapons that are the same as regular weapons but trigger fancy death scenes when they kill.

onemandevteam 2y ago

Do you have any suggestions? Your game seemed very popular. Anything you wished you had focused more on?

akrotkov 2y ago
Set your expectations accordingly. Coding is the fun part, but it's less than 5% of actually launching and making a successful product. If you don't think you want to spend most of your time not coding, don't try to make it a business! Marketing is more important than making something. You will get a small boost from things like this (I was always too embarrassed to post here!), but it's an endless pit of time and money! To do it right, I've heard all sorts of numbers, but a good rule of thumb is every dollar/hour you put to making your game, put a dollar/hour to marketing it as well. From a technical perspective, your stack is fine. You want to make sure you host all your assets behind cloudflare/s3 or similar, the $5 server is fine for gameplay but if you also try to make it send all the stuff, it's gonna die. (As evidenced today!) Most of my other experience and advice is about how to run a team and set budgets and goals. If you're going about it as a hobby (and that's probably the best way to go!) then just keep doing what you're doing, write some blogs and foster a community instead.
- onemandevteam 2y ago
  Thank you! I think, like you said, a good strategy will be to keep it fun and hobby-like as long as possible. I can definitely see the business-side of it sucking all my time and energy. I think doing some educational materials will be a worthwhile way to market and gain interest. Community building with something like a Discord server will also help. Competing as a business with something like Jagex is 100x harder than just making a good game.
  - akrotkov 2y ago
    To be clear, it's not Jagex you're competing with. It's the 20+ other indie MMO solo developers who are trying to do the same thing as you, including but not limited to: RetroMMO, New Eden, Valorbound, Carth, Eterspire, Omuri, Shadefell, Cookie Dragon, Cinis, Cinderstone, Legends of Etherell, Legendarium, Mirage Realms, Aether Story, Ethyrial, and so on. There's more that come and go every month. Unfortunately, the #1 lesson that I've learned is that while nostalgia gets some reception, there's a reason no big companies are really making MMOs, even at a smaller scale. There's just not that large a viable market for them.