KickStarter Telepath Tactics - deterministic tactical RPG inspired by Fire Emblem

Yes, you are right about using those to calculate the (hypothetical) costs of a game if done by a third party, it's just that words like "fairly" trigger me

I'm looking forward to the sales figures and hope they allow you to go full-time with your game development. You had some cautious remarks in the piece about lacking polish impeding sales numbers, but I hope, it worked out for you anyway!

In the long run, you'll probably want to move away from AIR, which will certainly require additional resources.

 

A little distortion with those numbers, you point out that you don't receive full price from your sales, but as though publishers selling physical copies do. The budgets for the games you mention can probably be decreased to 1/3-1/2 what you wrote.

Also, ouch on that BMT Micro rate, go with Paypal or Amazon and you'll be paying half or less.

 

Oh, I'm definitely not switching to Paypal--try Googling paypal screws game developer and see what shows up.

 

That seems to be related to very large purchases and pre-orders.

We use paypal as our cc processing where I work and we have no problems getting our money and we only pay ~3.5%.

 

I did. The swordsman, spearman and crossbowman all attack, but the altar survives with one HP. The stones on the side of it can't be damaged, and no unit can attack diagnols, so there's no other way to position them.

 

Your crossbow woman is probably one tile too far back. They need to be lined up directly behind each other. Ranged weapons loose strength with distance.

 

That explains that. The tutorial tutorial doesn't cover that, at least not at that point, (the main game tutorial does)

 

It used to be unnecessary, as the crossbowman couldn't target more than 3 squares away--I think that must have been changed in the tutorial at some point. I'll add in some text explaining damage fall-off.

 

A good concussion is always worth your money

 

I've honestly no idea why Fire Emblem would need that kind of budget. It's kinda mind-blowing, given that it's a very niche, non-AAA strategy RPG. Bloated team, I'd guess.

 

Polish and UI. Studios are not 200 people deep because of the engineering work, but all the assets needed in a short timespan.

 

I don't think that you can infer the budget from the sales numbers this way. Nintendo doesn't get the whole $40 from sales outside its download store (maybe 70% max.), which would equal 7M. Deduct marketing costs, we get a reasonable budget (think what Tim Schafer did with that kind of money). The game is also developed for a platform with an install base of 50M, not wanting to spend (effectively) in-house resources on a niche game not even selling 250.000 copies seems to be reasonable. (Real) third parties could probably produce the game (or a similar title) cheaper than Nintendo, for Nintendo the opportunity costs are too high, the developers could work on a Mario title like Sticker Wars which sells 2M.

 

I dunno about that--I could see them needing it. It's really expensive to pay a team of full-time developers for 2-3 years! Their games may not be deeper or more mechanically complex than Telepath Tactics, but they do have a lot more custom art assets, polish, and marketing, and all of that takes time and money to make happen.

 

Plus cutscenes, devs working on DLC and so on.

FE:A was reported by Nintendo to have sold over 1 million copies some time ago. It's now at 1,5 million or thereabouts.

 

Well it doesn't need that much development budget. It does need it when you count

store cut
shipping costs
printing disks, packages
post release support
breakage/returns
any marketing done

And probably some things I'm not thinking of. Craig kind of plays fast and loose with his numbers, taking out the 30% steam cut from his own revenue, but not taking out the cut plus the cost of physical distribution for Nintendo. There is a reason games got way cheaper when digital distribution became a thing.

 

You may not be aware of this, but Intelligent Systems is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nintendo; I would be surprised if Nintendo were exacting a Steam-style cut out of every sale, as that would basically be tantamount to Nintendo moving its own money around.

As for the rest: if you're developing a game to be manufactured and shipped on physical media, then the costs of producing and shipping it are necessarily part of your budget. I have no idea why you think these expenses shouldn't count in their development budget.

 

Nintendo owns Walmart or whatever store the games are being sold at now?

Because that's not what it costs to develop the game? If they sold it digitally on PC like you are doing, the distribution costs would be a lot smaller than what they are now. Your analysis makes it sound like they're spending all the money on art/programming/writing/design.

 

"Worthwile" doesn't mean that it breaks even at 250k, Nintendo is big company that is interested in their games selling a lot and moving additional console/hand-held units. Besides as far as I remember FE numbers were in decline for years and it was basically Nintendo saying "guys, improve your numbers to at least X or we are wraping this franchise up".

 

New update! We're now up to version 1.038:

 

Good riddance. Any more detailed hints as to what we might see in the future?

 

Yes! This was one of the biggest issues with TT along with no mid-battle save but it doesn't sound like Craig Stern is interested in implementing that piece (changes the dynamics of game-play too much?).

 

Yup! Going forward, I'm planning to finish implementing the new XML save file format and fix any remaining inventory issues. I also want to fix a persistent bug in the Mac version of the map editor and for Windows users, make the map editor check for the Steam install directory if it can't find it in the normal spot. I have other things planned as well, but those ones are top priority for now.

Mid-battle save is on the wish list, but that'll be tough to implement, and I want to get the new save system locked in and debugged before I tackle that.

 

Telepath tactics featured on Super Bunny Hop. Craig Stern i thought your game was known more than this, i had played your telepath games long before i joined the codex. I hope this brings attention to the game, it certainly deserves it.



PS: i always wondered, did character creation do anything to you? i would kill to be able to play your games with my own character, i just cannot get invested in your main characters for some reason.