Imagine you're a video game developer

I'd wake up into reality, where this scenario is literally impossible.

Reported for shit thread.

If the epic marketing campaign was so good and the veteran devs are so great than why did it only sell 10k copies?

I could make a better space game than anything that's come out, like Elite or No Man's Sky, for 5000 shekels.

I'd start by just buying these assets: cgtrader.com/msgamedevelopment

There, done for assets, I can do the programming myself, now I just need some 2D art, voice acting and a few misc things like sounds.

I don't need 500k.

this, look how much money terraria made being a 10$ game, and you dont need 500000 to make a game,

OP you are a fucking faggot

OP is a nigger

Yeah, right. Shit scenario, shit thread.

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A hypothetical question more loaded than your mother on the night of your conception. Go fuck yourself.

boohoo

i bet youre one of those faggots that think using adblock is stealing too

I will go down knowing that a million people enjoyed my game and using that information, I can pitch for a squeal to be made on the hopes that those who pirated the game would contribute money into the game they so enjoyed.
I'd also try to work out why so many people pirated it.
Is it that it's too expensive? I'd create a way of making the game cheaper but still enjoyable
Is it that there's dodgy DRM? I'd remove it or minimize it's impact so it doesn't spoil the consumers rights
Are they unsure of the game's quality? create a free demo
Is it hard to obtain? make it easy and effortless
Is it because they just want a free game? well not much you can really do about it other than try and convince them to pay whatever they can.

If you want to combat piracy, your best bet is to work out why and solve the problem at the source. People will respect you more as a developer if you treat the players with respect, even those who didn't pay for the game. All anti-piracy measures will be cracked, regardless of how tight it's locked up and the more you introduce that become a detriment to the player, the more likely they will be to try and pirate the game or just not play it in general.

how many dicks do you suck on a daily basis?

First of all realize I fucked up by taking a loan and basically signing up as a slave for the kikes. Secondly I would also curse my stupidity in not licensing denuvo.

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Just tell us what game you worked on, OP.

There's really no other answer, it's bad luck and stupidity. There's really no ethical or moral consquence in the question, so it's just a boring, sad situation.

Thank you for the legitimate answer. I asked this purely because I was interested in seeing actual responses

its a sign of wisdom to entertain ideas that you dont necessarily agree with. but to some sad anons everything is reality

I don't pirate you total shit heel. The question is bullshit from the start.

oh wow, who mentioned pirating?

Take a short walk off a woodchipper.

Right here my man .
Please kill yourself.

In what way?

All it says is that on release day it sold poorly and is considered a financial flop and more people pirated than bought the game.

If there was that much marketing and hype, you would have gotten millions of sales first day. Just like NMS did.

Don't be a fucking idiot, OP.

It's next to impossible for a big name game with a publishers and heavy marketing to sell so few games doubly so if it's actually a good game. Probably the only game I can think of that matches this description is Binary Domain and it still sold more than 10,000 copies.

Forgot to add: Binary Domain didn't flop because of piracy either. I suspect the real reason was how generic it looked in marketing and to be fair it's a hard game to sell to someone even if they trust you. I had to be beaten around the head with it by 3 friends whose tastes I generally agree with before I tried it.

maybe youre reading too much into these implications as a defensive measure. youve kind of outed yourself on the matter. but all i know for sure is that you are uncomfortable with the scenario.

Red flag numero uno. You're taking on a shit ton of risk there, friendo. No thanks, I'll pass. Unless you can pool this risk somehow, i.e. get a group of investors preferably the kind you don't have to pay back a la kikestarter then you've already made a grave mistake if your game doesn't pull through. You better be absolutely sure and confident that your product will sell, otherwise you're a dipshit who doesn't deserve to ever get your hands on that kind of money in the first place.
More money out of your own pocket. Talent isn't cheap, it's not like most indie devs can afford to just phone up Jesper Kyd and ask for a musical score to compliment their pixelshit platformer. How much are we talking here? Are they going to be fine with working on a time sensitive contract? Are they going to want royalties in addition to their initial pay?
Holy fucking Christ on a stick, are you trying to imply that 500k wasn't enough to cover the development costs of your game alone? Not only will you have to pay that loan back plus interest, the publisher is going to take a cut of your earnings on top of that? How much extra money do you need?
In this day and age, you can do the marketing yourself. Granted, you CAN hire a firm to help you out in that regard, but my point is that it's easier than ever to communicate to your audience that something new is happening. Fucking hell, set up a blog, set up a facebook page, a twitter, and all that other social media garbage. Set up a youtube channel and provide your audience with a "dev diary" that offers insight into the game's dev cycle from start to finish. How much of that 500k is going to marketing?

So, let's get this straight; 500k is supposed to cover cost of development, cost of marketing, cost of distribution, licensing, and pretty much any other expenses like dev kits/software/building rental/transportation/etc.? This sounds like a disaster. Okay, let's roll with it an assume you make a game
10k copies in a single day? Not bad. Congratulations, you've climbed the mountain and made it to the top. Now for the easy part, take in that view. You sit back and wait for critical reception. Oh, what's that? You're trying to imply that a single day is enough time to gauge whether or not your game will make back its money? Maybe if you sold around 10k copies in anywhere from 6 months to a year and half, then it'd be time to get worried. The number of copies sold is going to be perceived as good or bad depending on a number of variables, like how well your brand name is known, the type of game being sold and whether or not it appeals to "the widest audience possible", whether or not other competing products are also being released at or around the same time as yours, and a number of other things. Oh, but
So that must mean that poor, filthy, dirty, cocksucking GAMERS are to blame for your financial woes! It's not that you decided to bet the entire fucking farm on one venture, no. It's not that nobody knows who the fuck you are and don't give a shit about "Indie Flavor of The Month: Special Snowflake Edition". It must be those dastardly GAMERS.

Alright, I'm being hyperbolic. The truth is, yeah, it'd obviously bother me that my product has failed to meet projected sales expectations. How am I going to pay my bills now that the game has "failed"? However, if I sold 10k copies and for every copy sold 100 people downloaded it illegally, then surely I did something right. I managed to make a million people play something I created. Maybe I haven't YET managed to acquire a return on my asinine investment, but in some respect my game has managed to penetrate the minds of enough people that I can safely say that it has achieved a comfortable amount of exposure. Maybe this exposure will lead to additional sales? Who's to say that I won't gradually see a return on my game over a lengthy period of time? Sure, that won't pay the bills overnight. Still, it quite a feat to get people talking about, playing, and creating content based on your game. They wouldn't be doing that if they didn't think it was worth the time and effort, and you even allude to the idea that people consider it GOTY material.

In short, from a financial perspective it seems like an initial failure, but if enough people liked it that they'd go out of their way to acquire it through any means necessary, then that implies that my game is valuable and some additional effort on my part could coax people into investing money. You could make a 'definitive edition' with some tweaks and extra content. You could do DLC. However, this assumes that people LIKE THE GAME. You don't DESERVE a return on your investment if your game is shit. Sorry, that's not (ideally) how the market works. I know, you'd like to be able to ensure that you acquire the most amount of money in the shortest amount of time. However, your audience, a potential consumer base, has the right to reserve payment until they know for sure that the product you're selling meets all their expectations. If they don't consider it a worthy buy, then you don't get money. If you haven't provided your audience with a way to gauge whether or not your product is good based on their own terms, then you can't complain when these people try to acquire it in order to see for themselves.

Sure, some of them just wanted to get the game for free. However, not everyone who pirates is like that. You can't assume that they only want to "rob" you of a sale.

Nice joke.

Also, doesn't happen. I used Denuvo and only released on wii u/ps4/xbone. The age of vidya piracy is ending, folks. You're not stealing anything anymore.

if you switch those figures around, your post would be a lot less bullshit.

I'm pirating as I post this.

This is where I'd start worrying because, as "law" dictates: "The harder you try, the harder you fail", or something like that. The more hype it gets, the bigger a chance it's gonna be that it'll fuck up, like Destiny or whatever it's called.
I'd still thank the people who actually cared enough to go out and pirate it, I guess? I remember RWS saying something about "If you can't buy our games, just pirate them". You also forgot to factor in whether or not other countries have banned/restricted sales of your game; In order for the 1/100 buy-to-pirate ratio to be correct, this would imply that the game is extremely popular in areas where it's regionally censored, like australia, china, new zealand, australia, etc.

Just my 2 shekels cents.

I realize I took a bad decision by becoming a game developer and realize that only because I dida game, as good as it could have, no one have to suck my dick. In fact, I may deserve that flop for supporting this shit industry.

I should also mention that it's a very stupid name for a game. Sounds like a "game" they make you play in fifth grade that teaches you mathematics. It makes sense in context, but that doesn't mean anything to someone who has never heard of it.

Be glad that my game is distributed and played by more people, man up and make a new game.

If I'm more concerned about making profits like a Jew than making good games, I have no business being a game developer.