Essays about game development, thinking and books

Preparing a business plan for a game on Steam

Earning millions is easier than ever. I'll tell you how :-D

Earning millions is easier than ever. I'll tell you how :-D

When I posted my final presentation [ru] (slides) for World Builders 2023 (my posts, site), I promised to tell how I made a roadmap and a financial model for the game. So, here they are.

At the end of this post, we will have:

  • A brief strategy of our company: what we do, how, and why.
  • A table with our beacons — successful games roughly similar to what we want to make. Similar in gameplay, team size, budget, etc.
  • A composition of the team we need to assemble.
  • A roadmap — a development plan for our game.
  • An outline of our marketing strategy.
  • A financial model — how much we will spend, how much we will earn.
  • A large number of my caveats throughout the post.
  • Jokes and I hope witty remarks.

All the final documents can be found here.

Read more

Concept document for a space exploration MMO

The expected poster for the game. (c) DALL-E

The expected poster for the game. (c) DALL-E

As a hobby, I write concept documents for games. This is first in English. I have a few more in Russian and will eventually translate them.

One more concept for The Tale 2.0.

Title

Lords Captains MMO

Yep, it's a rip-off from Warhammer 40k and Rogue Trader, but it will do for the concept.

One-liner

Explore the infinite universe on a starship with millions of souls on board, unite and develop abandoned worlds.

Platforms

Browsers, mobile.

Genre

Exploration-driven trade-political MMO PVE sandbox.

Closest analogs

EVE, Sim City, Crusader Kings, 4X games, Rogue Trader.

Read more

Preferences of strategy players

Looking at the survey data and trying to find something useful.

Looking at the survey data and trying to find something useful.

Recently I've conducted a survey about the preferences of strategy players.

In the previous post, we cleaned up the data, and in this one, we will try to find insights within it.

In this post you will find an interactive dashboard with a bunch of charts, where you can compare two samples of your choice. There are many samples — for every taste and color, so feel free to explore and share the patterns you find on Telegram and Discord.

But be careful with conclusions. There is little data, in some cases very little. For example, the difference between the sample sizes of male and female respondents is about tenfold => you should be very careful in interpreting the differences between them.

In general, do not take this post as a full-fledged study. I'm sure many analysts would have torn my hands off for such a thing. Then sewed them back and torn them off again :-D Use the post as an interface to the data, and make your own conclusions.

Read more