On Moving Goalposts

Here's the first of your weekly blog updates. These will be in-depth looks at the development of our games, or essays about the game industry and game design in general.

This week, since it's relevant to the launch of the Patreon, I'd like to talk about how I've re-aligned how I look at success. Because to date, Fiction Factory Games could be considered a complete failure... depending on a Certain Point Of View, to quote Obi-Wan.

Here's how I saw things before:

(Patreon doesn't allow for Alt Text, apparently, but I'm gonna narrate this image so don't worry.)

Arcade Spirits was a lower-budgeted game, thanks to a lot of people involved being willing to drop their usual asking price since it was our first project. We got a lot of things like art, music, and voice direction at a discount. We had a very agreeable royalty contract as well, a nice 30/70 split in our favor. It was also heavily and successfully promoted. As a result, it's the single best-earning project we've got, at 385% of its budget earned -- and that's after royalties paid out to the participants.

The New Challengers was... kind of the opposite. It was twice the budget, since we no longer got "Aww, it's your first project, that's cute!" discounts and wanted to pay people their normal asking rates. The royalties were 50/50 splits. The promotion was not successful -- even people who love AS1 to this day don't know TNC exists. The saving grace was that our contract re-imbursed the entire cost of development, so we'd at least have 100% of the budget... but we'd earn next to no royalties whatsoever beyond that until it turns a profit. It hasn't turned a profit and at this point it likely never will, as sales have dropped off the face of the earth. So... this was a break-even, and nothing further.

And then we have Penny Larceny. It bombed. Let's be clear about that -- it was budgeted just a bit under New Challengers and it BOMBED, earning only 12% of its budget. Even taking into account no console release (which would've massively inflated the budget) the PC version hasn't sold anywhere near the others. The marketing team burned $12,000 in their backyard barbecue and ran for the hills. Mistakes were made. It's dead in the water barring some kind of viral world-of-mouth.

Finally, the Shadow Over Cyberspace's budget is comparatively very, very small thanks to a thrifty game design relying a lot on Creative Commons, but since it hasn't released it's earned nothing -- and because it's such a text-heavy and dramatic game without flashy visuals, it risked being another box office bomb.

So when you put all this together we have one success, two failures, and one question mark. How the heck do you run a game studio when only one of your projects will ever make any meaningful money?

Answer -- you turn this on its side and re-imagine what success should mean.

Instead of looking at each individual project as "Success" or "Failure," let's look at every single thing we've done for the last six years put together into one huge wad.

By that metric, thanks to the success of Arcade Spirits, we have actually turned a profit! We've earned back 127% of everything we've put into development on every game we've ever made. If you consider the project of "Fiction Factory Games" as a whole, we're actually not bad. It's not a huge profit but it's enough, and leaves 27% to play with for Shadow Over Cyberspace and beyond.

And that "enough," plus Patreon, plus Twitch, plus ongoing sales... that's enough to turn things around and say "our future games could be free releases." Less marketing and publishing costs, less concern about royalties and profits, more using what we have plus what I'm willing to kick in from my own resources to make GAMES. To make games everyone can play, period.

My goal was never profit. My goal was to create art, and in doing so, improve my own mental health by giving me a way to share my words with the world. And when you move the goalposts to say "Are you able to make more art" instead of "Do you have profitable projects" it all works out. 

With your support, we can keep this rolling. Make more games, keep going until I'm too old and busted to continue. Let's see how far this can go. 

Thank you.