Battle Buddies - Profit and Loss Pitch
Pitch:
Battle Buddies would be a turn-based RPG for casual gamers on iOS, where players challenge their real-life friends to battles. Players can train their characters for these battles by fighting monsters in randomized dungeons, made up of about 25 potential room layouts.
Research:
Pokémon is a turn-based RPG where players can battle each other. Pokémon X/Y was the series most recent game (that wasn’t a remake), and it sold 14.35 million copies according to VGChartz. It is also the generation that has sold the fewest copies in the series, so I’d say that it’s the most reasonable to compare to.
The cheapest option for consumers wanting a Pokémon game is the $10 Virtual Console versions of the first generation games on the 3DS.
Assuming new games in the series start development immediately after the previous, a main series Pokémon game takes about 3.5 years to make on average.
The original staff of Pokémon was made up of only 17 developers.
Words with Friends is an iOS game where players take turns playing the game with each other. I had some difficulty finding accurate and up to date download statistics for this game. According to thinkgaming.com, it’s currently estimated to be installed 24,365 times a day, with a daily revenue of $13,094. However, the only number for total downloads on iOS that I could find was that it had 40.6 million downloads by the end of 2011, according to a post on Quora.com (but its source has since been deleted). If the average daily install rate were consistent since then, the game would be over twice that amount by now. However, since 40.6 million is very generous already, I think it would be safer to just stick with that number.
The game is free-to-play, but you can pay $10 to turn off advertisements. At a 1% conversion rate, 406,000 people would have payed for it.
Assuming that development started immediately after their previous game, the game took 8 months to create.
I couldn’t find how many people worked on the game, but Giant Bomb lists it as 2. It is likely more than that.
Rust Bucket is a mobile game with randomly generated dungeons, simple visuals, and simple movement controls. On iOS, the game has been downloaded by at least 227,125 people, according to its leaderboards in iOS’ Game Center. Since Battle Buddies will only be on iOS, it’s more realistic to simply go by Rust Bucket’s iOS numbers alone and not include its Android numbers.
The game is free-to-play, but contains a $4 in-app purchase that disables advertisements. At a 1% conversion rate, 2,271 people would have payed for it.
I personally tweeted the developers of this game to ask how long development took. They actually responded, and said that it took around 4/5 months to complete.
The team consisted of between 12 and 16 employees at most.
Profit & Loss:
I propose having the average sales price match with Rust Bucket’s “premium” price. We can start selling it for $5, and eventually reduce the price to $3 (just under Rust Bucket’s price). This is assuming that the game will sell equal amounts at both prices.
Since it will be an iOS game, the team will already be familiar with the platform and will not need to learn any new skills.
6 months is the average time it took to create both of the iOS games I researched, and I feel as though that would be an ample amount of time for Battle Buddies.
Based on the games that I researched, a team of about 12 seems on par, and I don’t feel that we could do it with any fewer than that.
Worst case scenario, I’ve taken a 1% conversion rate of Rust Bucket’s numbers, since that is the absolute worst case. Average scenario, I’ve taken a 1% conversion of Words with Friends. Best case scenario, I think going for Pokémon’s full numbers is being a bit too bold, so I’ll choose to go with 1 million units.
Conclusion:
Being the realist that I am, the game likely won’t hit anywhere close to the best case scenario. Also, even if we were to instead go with a 5% conversion rate for Rust Bucket, using it as a worst case scenario would still be at a loss.
That being said, although Rust Bucket has some similarities to the overall random- dungeon style, visual style, and control scheme we’d go for, it also has the least in common with regards to the actual gameplay we are proposing. So it’s entirely possible that the overall units we would sell will not be as low as the conversion rate for that game.
We would have to sell 266,500 copies of the game to at least break even.
While we could double our downloads by also making an Android version, it would take
more time (increasing staff costs), and would need to be marketed on Android as well (increasing marketing costs). However, in our worst case scenario, doubling the units sold would not even get us through with our current costs.
With all of this having been said, I do think that there is potential here. Perhaps changing to a free-to-play model where we could make money off of advertisements (like Words with Friends and Rust Bucket) would be something worth looking into.
Final statement: The potential losses in the worst case scenario for this game with a traditional sales model makes this risky. However, if (and only if) there are no safer pitches from the rest of the team, it may be worth looking into creating this game with a free-to-play model.
Research Material:
http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=pokemon&publisher=&platform=&genre=&minSales=0&results=200
https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-play-Words-With-Friends
https://thinkgaming.com/app-sales-data/9092/new-words-with-friends/from/2009-10-23/until/2016-10-23/
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rust-bucket/id1040158406?mt=8
http://www.giantbomb.com/words-with-friends/3030-28151/credits/
http://nitrome.wikia.com/wiki/Nitrome
