USA BASS Championship Sales Hit 33,000 units

Good on ya mate and merry Xmass.
Great to see an actual succes story.
Cheers.

Thats Awsome Mate,

It gives motivation to all of the 3DGS community.
Any tips you can give us, would be welcomed.

Thanks for the nice words.

I had started a Journal thread here in March while I was working on the game. I lost track of it because my father had a serious heart attack and I lost a month of work time. When I went back to work on the game I was behind in my delivery and I did not have time to update the journal.

I will try and get a demo out early next year. I will be out of town most of Decemember so the demo will have to wait, till I get back.

I am really glad to see people are inspired to keep working on their projects. You need to find a good niche, produce a fun game, try not to bite off more than you can accomplish, and get it exposed, this very forum is great for that.

I am working on a mini game using Marco's Physic's that will be shown to a new group of publishers very soon.

Ken

A 3 month project, and youve sold that many copies! Wow, you must have alot talent for game design! Congradulations!
Btw, do you got a demo?
-kris

Hey, not making this about money, but if your publisher only took 1/3 of the sales, wouldn't that set what you made at around $210,000.

WOW! That must be a great publishing company if so many copies have been sold...

Wow wow wow !! And congratulations !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But how much did you made with it??

They sell the prgram at wal-mart for 10 bucks. Good distribution place.

While I'm not sure on any actual numbers here, I'd have to say that odds are he'd be getting anywhere $0.75 to $1 a unit.

At a retail price of 10 dollars, you need to factor in the retailers buy it at wholesale to make their profit. So they are buying it at $5-$7. Now the materials and such to produce the actual physical product; box, art, disc, etc, I could see easily being $1-$2.

We'll take the lower profit number (I always under-estimate when it comes to profits) soooo.... :

$10 Retail Price
$5 Wholesale Price
$3 Profits after Manufacturing costs.

We'll subtract around 75% (guess-timated) for publisher's percentage.

$0.75 per unit profit for Author.

33,000 units at 75 cents a unit is 24,750 in pay.

I could be wrong, but it would seem likely to be something close to this. I'd love to be proven wrong and hear he made more...

It'd be interesting to hear what kind of deal he got, just to have something to compare to.

Well if he paid 900$$$ for the engine he still earn a lot + his reputation is a lot higher then it was

Great job, congratulation

Hi Guys,

I took a sizeable amount of money up front. I need to pay bills while I make the game. By doing this you lower what you get on the back end (royalty).

I can say that I am expecting a royalty check in Feb. The development adavce has been recouped and I am in the Black on royalties.

The software will hit 50,000 units by XMAS. It continues to sell very well.

Deals are between the publisher and developer and they differ greatly so there really is not a rule to this. Just haggle the best deal you can get.

Ken

There is a royalty calculator here

http://www.makegames.com/royaltycalc.html

MakeGames.com is a great site Diana Gruber has written many really good books on video games creation and her husband is the creator of FastGraph (fastgraph.com) They have many published video games and offer alot of insight into the industry. The reason for the calculator is to show that the designers do not get rich from a published game. Here is a qoute from a developer posted on her site, note the company names he wrote games for!

Commentary From A Game Developer
I gotta tell any kid thinking of getting rich some brutal facts from my own experience in writing PC games as a sole author/programmer/designer several years ago for major publishers (I did 9 games under pen names for Sierra On-Line, Adventure International, Electronic Arts, Konami and Broderbund). At least 2 of these sold in excess of 100,000 copies. All (but one) were done on royalty agreements ranging from 5-15% of net.

But in every case I had a hell of a time getting an *honest* or *any* accounting of my earned royalties from the key accounts payable person(s) at these companies. Let alone getting my royalty checks from *its in the mail* to physically in my mail box. Beware. If you're contracting as an individual with these business machines, you will get *f---*! The most common form is to send the programmer an UNSIGNED contract, asking him/her to sign and return it ... only to discover that, as time passes and the market changes or something else, the programmer ends up being contractually committed, the clock starts running, but the company cant find the right person to sign and return you a complete two-way contract.

Writing a good game, though it is getting easier every year (thanks to Fastgraph), is still a major investment of time and sweat. Count the hours and you may discover you'd do better at the Burger King. I will *NEVER* do it again without getting a big chunk of cash up front, and some contractual performance clauses that corporate attorneys do not approve, or an absolute time-and-effort fee with a high hourly rate. That is unlikely because these businesses can always find some kid(s) who are motived by the imaginative challenge as fodder for their machines.

Jack Diamond

It doesnt matter how much you earn. It's a great job and I congratulate. If there is a chance to buy your game online then you will have one more customer in next few days

A quick Holiday update.

USA BASS is available at Best Buy along with Walmart.

USA BASS is part of the product scan and get a video demo at Walmart.
At Walmart you just need to place the USA Bass product under the scanner and you get a 30 sec video played on the monitor above the scanner. (I though that was very cool).

Sales remain very good.

I wish all of us Indies a good new year in 2004. 3DGS's additon of shaders help's us compete for shelf space.

Ken

We need to install something like those telethon-thermometer things that shows how close you are to your goal so we can watch the number of units sold climbing and cheer you on.

I think you should do an analysis when this is over like the ones they do on Gamasutra -what went right/what went wrong, as this may prove educational.

Hi Burt,

I will get a royalty report on 2-15-04. That will include sales for 10-03 to 12-03. I will post the results on this forum.

I am proud that this product made by me as an Indie has done so well. I hope I am not sounding like a braggert. I am posting on this thread to encourage 3DGS users to keep trying. I also feel that the retail shelves are not closed to us Indies.

Ken

Sounds great -and not at all like bragging. You should be happy with the results. I think these do give other 3DGS users hope. From looking at your Big John site it looks like you've been involved in plenty of titles. .I'm betting you make a decent living doing what you love to do as an independent. I think too many of us may be dreaming about the pie in the sky mega million dollar game which for most of us will never come, Its good to know that guys like you, Dan and others are using 3DGS to make money now by filling in niche markets. Seems like a good reality check to me.

Hi Brat,

The market research of Deer Hunter was pretty simple.

GT asked the buyer at Walmart what title he thought would be popular. Roger Westmoreland replied a "Deer Hunting Game". Well GT hired Sunstorm to make a Deer Hunting game and Roger was correct the game sold very well. You do not have to look to hard for niche, just ask some questions. What markets are being under represented, which are crowded, hey mister buyer what game would you like us to create that you would buy a shitload of.

Well Sunstorm became successful, they hired a bunch of people and created alot of games. They were very prolific and never made a AA or AAA title. They had a good run before the cost of employees versus development budgets did not match up anymore. Same thing happened to me.

I like being an independent. The label indie is applied to me not by choice but by market conditions.

I truly feel we will see a rebirth of the indie developers with tools like 3DGS, Torque and Cipher. We happen to live in a very exciting game making time.

Ken

Not to steal this thread (not my intention) but I do want to chime in on the fact that you CAN make money using products like 3D GameStudio. I have not made a single game as yet. Even so, I make a good portion of my living off of 3D GameStudio. I found (as others have been talking about here) my niche and it just happens to be, at this time, non-game related.

We are, indeed, living in an exciting time to be involved in RT3D development.

That sucks so bad! I am so jealous!While I have been sitting on my hands, you made a game thats selling at wal-mart and best buy in 90 days! I think I'll go jump off a cliff now.... Seriously though;Good job Nardulus. I really am happy for you.kudos!

Well done Nard. old boy !

Hope to see a Super-Ultra sequel in the works

Best of luck to you on your future endeavours.

Congrats on your success! It's very encouraging to see this, makes me want to sneak out of my day job, go home, and fire up WED (lol).

Now the next time someone says "you can't make anything reasonable with 3DGS" I can send 'em to this thread!

Groovy stuff Ken.

I like the 'Indie' title too. 'Customer'........

I see a few Indie games in PC Gamer lately. (Pssst.....Torque those bass next time - could be very cool).

I did a search on Google and found a lot of strange things about my game.

1) A lot of people have been making cheats for it. Why? Its not that hard to play.

2) It has been added to Warez sites. Doug, I need the Warez Police. It cost's 10 Bucks for Gods sake.

"USA Bass Championship" brings up many entries on Google. I guess we have hit the big time.

I will post XMAS sales when I get them later in Feburary.

@Digital Dave

Torqued Bass, that sounds like animal cruelty, getting those fishies all pissed off.


Ken

10 bucks is just too much! How are the warez kidz going to afford their crack if they have to pay for software?? We're so inconsiderate sometimes

@Dave

"Torqued" up here in Minnesota means "Mad" or "Angry". I was just smiling thinking of Angry Fish.

I am building a game in Torque right now. It's a flying game and needs the outdoor features Torque is good at. I do not like how difficult it is to get models into Torque. The 3DMAX plugin is slow and painful, Milkshape does not run on my machines, and Unwrap 3D does not support DTS. I like Unwrap3D as a converter very much. The target audience for my game is in classrooms so the Mac componet of Torque is huge.

I am also making a new game with 3DGS which does not need the huge outdoor levels. 3DGS physic's for balls is quite good. The shading control in 3DGS also is a plus for a sports game. The collision control in 3DGS is still not quite right but I think it is getting there.

The right tool for the right job. Torque, A6 or Cipher I like them all.

@Dave have you gotten a publisher for your racing game? I can make a submission for you with a local publisher if you would like.

Ken

Mighty kind of you to offer Ken. We are putting the Monster Minis game on an arcade machine, but haven't decided on where to publish the PC version yet. Karen will contact you in a few days about this.

Looks like you have a solid business avenue there that we should look at.

Thanks

Do you know how can I purchase this in Europe? Valusoft only ships in US?
Just to support your efforts and also examine (and hopefully understand) how did you manage to make a hit!
btw. I did a search in Google and like you said it's full of links to cheats, codes, warez etc. But did not find links to any retail sellers.

I will ask the publisher about European distribution.

Valusoft is a Division of THQ, which has European distribution.

Dave I look forward to hearing from your group.

Ken

hey Nard... howd you do during the holiday sales period... any idea...

Continued Good Sales...

--Mike

I get the report 45 days after the quarter's end.

Since the quarter ended Dec 31st, 2003. I will get the report on 2-15-04. So three more weeks and I should have the XMAS sales results.

I will post the update then. Over XMAS the game was at many more retail outlets, I am crossing my fingers that it will hit 50K.

Ken

Heya Ken, I got some interesting stuff you may wanna check out...

Neuro

I am looking for content for a publisher.

They guy I am working with is Dan Hammett, former President of Activision Value. His forming a new publishing company and he is partnering with a large publisher to get distribution.

I am looking for finished software that is retail quality. We can fund development of proven developers, Once the partnership deal is complete.

Neuro shoot me an email and we can discuss further. I would love to help you if I can.

Ken

Ken, is this new company specializing in a particular market/genre? I'm still some months away from completion, but if I may be inmodest, I'd call my project "retail quality". It's a still-untitled RPG. Do you think I might be able to submit the finished product later this year?

Firestorm,

We will take a look at it.

Please undestand that the publishing deal is negoiations right now. It could all fall apart. (I have been working on this for six months) If the deal goes through being an Indie developer myself I would love to help Indies get a chance.

I am crossing my fingers that we can get this down. We will start out in the value price category. Then work upwards from there.

Ken

Best of luck, dude.

Hey Nard,

I'm an indie developer from the chi(cago) working in his first title. How exactly did you get valusoft to take an interest in your product... game?

Good job bringing back the subject!

HI Hawk,

Go Bears.........

The producer at Valusoft was the producer at GT Interactive when we created the FLW fishing series for them.

I have created over 40 commerical games / educational products. So I am able to us my past pedigree to keep the door open to pitch product concepts. There are alot of people I have worked with in the past that are still in the business.

You need to be persistent with producers and keep plugging away. Valusoft supports indie developers, it may be a little trickier if you have not gotten a game produced yet, be as professional as possible and really research sales potential of your game.

USA BASS has sold through over 90,000 units now. I am working on USA BASS 2, which will be released this spring. The game needs a face lift graphically and alot of little bugs need to be cleaned up for the sequel. I am adding some suprises also.


Ken