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Why I lost $42,500 making a VR game

gamasutra.com

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Re: Why I lost $42,500 making a VR game

#31

Post by dleslie »

SquareWheel wrote: post #26
joenathanone wrote: post #15

Check out the reviews of the game. https://store.steampowered.com/app/528930/Fruit_for_the_Vill... There are three reviews and they are all negative. Maybe the only reason he didn't make money is it's just not a good game.

If the reviews were positive, would it have made a difference? You may think so due to word of mouth. However the Steam store has hundreds of games with high reviews that still have no players. Discoverability goes beyond making a good game.

... yes?

A user perchance manages to discover this game's Steam Store page and sees that its reviews are Bad; I would certainly expect that they would remain incredulous to the prospect of playing. Whereas if the reviews were Very Good or better...

Moreover, it's in Steam's interest to keep bad games from being discovered. They don't profit more by exposing their customers to a deluge of poor product. Reviews ought to influence discoverability.

Re: Why I lost $42,500 making a VR game

#32

Post by ralfd »

pavlov wrote: post #3

The story is informative -- VR games don't sell well, except if you can time to new hardware -- but the math behind the $42.5k number is dubious. Can I value all my hobby projects at $60/hour too? Over a million USD accumulated losses during my adult life so far...

Today I learned I lost at least $60,000 playing Sid Meier’s Civilization...

Re: Why I lost $42,500 making a VR game

#33

Post by jnwatson »

Animats wrote: post #14

VR goggles are dead.[1] At least for this generation. [1] https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/proof-vr-sales-numbe...

The problem is the cheap ones are bad and the good ones are quite expensive. Cryptocurrency made it even more expensive, since the minimum graphics card is still several hundred dollars.

Re: Why I lost $42,500 making a VR game

#34

Post by anoncoward111 »

peteradio wrote: post #17
anoncoward111 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently making $17/hr pre-tax and it is liveable in my suburban area. With overtime which is generously available at 1.5x pay, I could afford to raise a family even, and this job feels much more stable than other tech industry jobs I've had in the past. I currently work for Star Gas, which is a northeastern USA based company that delivers heating oil to over 600,000 customers with revenue of about 1B per year (but…

What is the cost of living? That seems rough almost anywhere to support a family. What do you do?

I started out in customer service making that rate, and I've also done sales and billing adjustments at the company for the same rate of pay. Those roles are more like "internally advertised", whereas customer service is externally advertised because of the high need for these roles and the relatively high turn-over rate in the position because of the type of work (shouting customers who are angry about price or tardiness of service lol).

My half of the rent and utilities is currently $1000 a month. A car payment, phone payment, insurances of various kinds and some food and entertainment spending cap out at about another grand per month, so $2000 total. With no overtime and after taxes, you start out at about $2200 a month in post tax, very reliable income. If you are willing to do 10-12 hour days, you can pull in about $4000 a month with no college degree and, to my experience, no crazy office politics or externalities.

It might not be enough to support a stay at home spouse, 2 kids, 2 range rovers, a large mortgage, vacations and shopping, and a robust family medical insurance plan, but it is definitely enough for a normal apartment in a normal suburb, driving an older vehicle and enjoying some westernized habits like eating at a restaurant or doing lots of christmas shopping :)

Thanks for asking, because I actually left tech sales completely for this field instead and I am pretty happy with the forced change of industry so far (oracle laid me off!!!)

Re: Why I lost $42,500 making a VR game

#35

Post by hesdeadjim »

dleslie wrote: post #29
joenathanone wrote: post #15

Check out the reviews of the game. https://store.steampowered.com/app/528930/Fruit_for_the_Vill... There are three reviews and they are all negative. Maybe the only reason he didn't make money is it's just not a good game.

It's a narrative game at that. They're incredibly niche even when they're not VR games.

This x 100. There have been enough Steam data leaks to calculate that as a genre narrative games are extremely niche compared to the wider market. Then combine that with a VR market of 1% of gamers and good luck making any money at all.

Re: Why I lost $42,500 making a VR game

#36

Post by jblow »

peapicker wrote: post #20
jerkstate wrote: post #4

that's not $42,500, that's 820 hours

Another thing that's crazy is that writers, artists, 3d model animators, and voice actors[1] never make $60 an hour doing this kind of work, and yet he lumped those things under "developer time" high-level wages. [1](Unless they're famous people for their particular talent category)

Union voice actors make hundreds of dollars per hour typically (a standard good but not-very-famous video game voice actor makes 2x scale).

Re: Why I lost $42,500 making a VR game

#37

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

hesdeadjim wrote: post #27

This is pretty poor analysis on his part about why the game wasn't successful and what it means for the state of the VR market. From a talk at the Game Developer's Conference last March it was shown that the average Steam game makes about $30k in it's first year. That's non-VR. According to the Steam hardware survey, about 1% of users own a VR headset. This paints a pretty grim picture about what an average VR game c…

> and combined the PC and PS4 have grossed us mid-six figures.

Which platform brought in more sales?

Re: Why I lost $42,500 making a VR game

#38

Post by hesdeadjim »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #37
hesdeadjim wrote: post #27

This is pretty poor analysis on his part about why the game wasn't successful and what it means for the state of the VR market. From a talk at the Game Developer's Conference last March it was shown that the average Steam game makes about $30k in it's first year. That's non-VR. According to the Steam hardware survey, about 1% of users own a VR headset. This paints a pretty grim picture about what an average VR game c…

> and combined the PC and PS4 have grossed us mid-six figures. Which platform brought in more sales?

Can't share exact numbers due to NDAs, but it's pretty even.

Re: Why I lost $42,500 making a VR game

#39

Post by rwallace »

dleslie wrote: post #29
joenathanone wrote: post #15

Check out the reviews of the game. https://store.steampowered.com/app/528930/Fruit_for_the_Vill... There are three reviews and they are all negative. Maybe the only reason he didn't make money is it's just not a good game.

It's a narrative game at that. They're incredibly niche even when they're not VR games.

I was about to express surprise at this, but then it occurs to me: are you using 'narrative game' in a different sense, to mean specifically a game where there is a voiced narration, like The Stanley Parable or Oxenfree?

Re: Why I lost $42,500 making a VR game

#40

Post by freeflight »

dleslie wrote: post #29
joenathanone wrote: post #15

Check out the reviews of the game. https://store.steampowered.com/app/528930/Fruit_for_the_Vill... There are three reviews and they are all negative. Maybe the only reason he didn't make money is it's just not a good game.

It's a narrative game at that. They're incredibly niche even when they're not VR games.

No offense, but "it's a narrative game" seems to have become the new excuse for games that lack any interesting gameplay or actual content and thus have to play up the "artistic angle" by pretending to tell some amazing story.

Looking at the Steam page for this its genre is listed as a clicker, a review points out there's literally no progression for the clicker gameplay part, that's a bad clicker right there because those are usually all about the progression.

You can't make an oversight like that up with narrative, if the gameplay is driving away the player then you can have the most amazing narrative in the world, most people still won't experience it because they won't get past the bad gameplay.

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