Business plan of a mobile game development company.

[dknise]

Hola,

Today I started working out the numbers of what I realistically need to produce to generate some worthwhile income from a mobile game development company. Yes, I know what you're thinking, that's step 1 and why I am I just doing this now if I just made a post about releasing my first app... I guess I just woke up from a nap.🙄

I've sort of outlined my ideas / strategy in the following sections. Please feel free to pick it apart, point out my naivities or potential strengths, and give any advice experienced or opinion. I'd much rather have you guys tear it apart than consumers.

Goals:

1. Create the most fun, entertaining, addicting mobile games possible. Make people smile.
2. Act on all user feedback. I am not making games for me to play... I am making games for people to play. If they're not having a fun time and are telling me about it, or if they're having a great time and want me to keep it up, I should listen and respond accordingly.
3. Generate an average eCPM of $.50 or higher. This would be 1 click in 100 impressions. I don't know why, but that sounds reaally high? AdMob consistently talks about $1-2 averages, but I just don't see the potential.
4. Maintain a solid user base on free applications of an average 20,000+ active installs per game.
5. Give at least 10 impressions to each user per game session.
6. Release one solid mobile game per month to Android and iPhone.

Ideology:

1. Keep.It.Simple.Stupid. There are too many great apps out on the Google Play market that are free with less than 10,000 downloads that have been released for over a year. I think the reason is they are way, way, wayyy too complicated for a mobile game. Even the action games still keep the game play interaction super basic, no matter what's being displayed on the screen.
2. Games should be developed quickly and designed with content space for ads constantly in mind. Lesson learned from my first app that will need full screen, rich media video ads to generate revenue.
3. Target gameplay per session should only be about 2 to 5 minutes. Anything further and you've either lost their attention, or they would rather play it on a console.

Assumptions:

1. The more apps I release, the better chance all of them will have at hitting a high download rate.
2. Games don't have to be complicated, but quality, enjoyment, and ease of entry are key.
3. Unless you make a reaaally good paid app, the probability of selling it on the Android market for any substantial income is slim. My primary goal is to keep an active user base on the free app with a paid version to generate instant revenue.

Tools:

1. I'm using Unity 3d as my game framework. Not only was I well on my way to writing my own Java game framework after trying LibGDX and being less than impressed, it was gonna be good! Then I downloaded a "Powered by Unity" engine game and was impressed. After reading their story, they were an indie game company who spent too much time on the tools and never got around to making the games. That was me. I bought Unity.
2. Eclipse IDE for the down and dirty Java to connect to various APIs. Hoping to just purchase the Prime31 plugins for Unity and not have to figure too much out.

Lessons already learned:

1. Don't try and make your own game framework from scratch! You're making games, not game dev tools.
2. Don't try and load the GUI menus and the game into one scene. Not only is it cluttered, but it hits performance. Although my first game runs like a champ on two of my android devices... it get's killed on my Thrive 4.0 ICS device for some reason. If this happens to users, I can surely expect some 1 star feedback.
3. I really, really, despise Apple as a company for forcing me to buy a Mac to build to iPhone and iPads. The war-story continues.:coolgleamA:

Projections:

1. Goal: 1 app * (avg $.50 / 1000 impressions) avg * 20,000 active installs * avg 10 imp / day = avg $100 / day. $3,000 per month.
2. $3,000 per month is chicken shit... but $100 for the first month will suffice.
3. Each additional app with average performance should improve the system by this. When an app doesn't meet this standard, re-evaluate as to why. Graphics? Goal? Simply not fun? Marketing? What is it!

Once a base is achieved:

1. Improve the average eCPM.
2. Improve the average impressions / session.
3. Improve the active installs with marketing.

Exit Strategy:
An admitted weak part in the plan. I haven't done much research into this to be honest. I'm under the assumption that the only game companies that get bought are ones that either have a substantial user base, an innovative game, or a competing app. Things to keep in mind to produce for a fastlane liquidation point.

Thanks everyone.

 

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[dknise]

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