I will content myself with MUDs and my N64 until such time that Sins shows up on the bargain rack at Wal-Mart for $9.96 or the discount GOTY edition is released. If this does happen, there won't be an Ironclad or Stardock to develop new games funny craig.. assuming that the game has already sold 100k copies at 40 a shot, that's 4million bucks in revenue.. lets say that the company got 10% of that, that would still be about a half a million bucks.. no idea what your bills are, but I wouldn't spit at that..The thing I don't understand is that if there have been 100k copies sold, how come the online usually only has 300 players at a time
I apologize, but I think that it
is funny. Call me conceited, but I certainly would spit at that. In fact, unless I failed my basic math classes (which might be possible), I'd even "hock a loogie" at it. Let's assume that they received four million US dollars in revenue you provided. And let's assume that they got not 10%, but 50% of the revenue (not too unrealistic - Stardock gets a cut, but isn't vicious, as far as I know). Since Sins was unveiled in 2005, I will assume that Ironclad spent about four years in total time developing the game. I don't know how large Ironclad is, but let's assume that it's about 40 people.
Assuming that all the money they get from revenue ($2 million) is used to pay the employees, each employee has made $50,000 over four years, so that comes out to effectively $12,500 per year per employee(without discounting). The federal minimum wage in the US is $5.85 an hour, which comes out to $12,168 a year with regular 40-hour work weeks. I'm pretty sure Ironclad works more than 40 hours a week, and have to pay for, you know, expensive computers and software that they use to develop the game.
So I'm going to have to ask you this question: would you go to college, business school, or an art institute for years just to make the federal minimum wage with no benefits? I sure as heck hope they sell significantly more than 100,000 copies. Remember: to you, it's a game, to them, it's their livelihood.
Ironlore (not Ironclad), the producers of Titan Quest, went out of business in February. Michael Fitch (THQ employee) left a somewhat misguided (in my opinion) post on the Quarter to Three forums on the significant role piracy had in Ironlore's demise. Apparently, Titan Quest was leaked and the leaked version crashed constantly due to the anti-piracy software the team had to implement. This did not stop the hordes of pirates from posting about how buggy the
pre-release pirated game was on every relevant forum. It was suggested to Mr. Fitch that they should not have implemented anti-piracy measures in the first place. As another developer responded: "When your publisher tells you to eat sh** and like it, you eat sh** and like it." Not everyone has the luxury of publishing under Stardock.
I, like millions of other programmers/musicians/artists, am not even going to bother applying to work in the games/digital entertainment industry. People are going to pirate the games you make, and people are going to complain about it being excessively priced. There's no money, there's not a lot of jobs, there's not much respect, there's mandatory overtime, there's unreasonable deadlines... I could go on and on. I refuse to constantly "eat sh** and like it", even if I'm doing what I would ideally like to do for a career.
Do keep in mind that almost none of the money you pay for cheap, bargain bin copies you get years later will go to the developers. It mostly goes to the store and whoever has the rights to sell the game - usually not the developer. When you're a small developer, the reaction to a game in the first few months is
critical. Publishers aren't going to invest in a failed enterprise. Stardock isn't any different.
