Living Conditions

I pay 600$ a month to live in a pretty spacious 2 bedroom apartment. I converted my second bedroom into an office. And while most people would say... "That's great!" or... "You're pretty privileged" Some people are going to ask... "What's wrong with it?" And those some people would be right for asking.

First off. Its not a good neighborhood. I live next to a lot more crime than I used to.

Second off, my landlord, despite being a good friend, is well... A piece of work. And he wouldn't disagree with me. So even if he saw this he probably wouldn't be mad. This place was unlivable when I moved in, and had to deal with a lot of problems from plumbing issues to ungrounded plugs to a lack of air conditioning. It had a non-functioning oven and refrigerator. Windows didn't have any way to keep out the sun (or in the heat), and I am still dealing with a balcony door that just won't close right and has a broken window pane that I tapped up.

I've turned this place into a functional living space... Kinda. But most days I don't have the energy to deal with any of it and it really brings me down.

"Well... Save up and fix the stuff yourself?"

If only it were that simple. Bills, Rent, And Food all consume my money. Its not easy being a part time baker and a part time writer. It doesn't pay. And with this post covid economy, the world is hell for everyone.

***

I think I need to start making video games for the money. If I sold to the same "amount" of people as I have currently for Machina and Magic, I might have a little spending money.

Let me explain.

For the typical "nuclear gaming group" which consists of 1 GM and 4 players, anywhere between 1-2 books are sold. They can share those books. If they are PDFs, the margins are slimmer since lettinf people "borrow" the book is easy. It is TECHNICALLY piracy, but no one in the gaming world (myself included) treat it like such. People need to play the game, and thus as long as someone in the group owns the book, the group can play. That is the SPIRIT of gaming books. Always has been, always will be (though D&D has other plans, so they think).

But let's take a look at video games. If people want to play my game, they will either A. Pirate it. Or B. Buy it on Steam. Of course if my game gets popular enough, people will probably remove whatever weak DRM I have on my game and hand it out, but people can do the exact same thing with Machina and Magic PDFs. But, its a 1 to 1 ratio. Meaning everyone must buy the game for everyone to play. One player, one game, instead of 4 players and a GM, one game. It nearly increases the possible purchase base by 5 times.

If this was true, I would be making roughly 5,000$ in the first year vs the 1,000$ I made. Its a huge monitary difference when you look at it this way... But you can't look at it this way. The profit margins are different. I make about 30$ per copy of Machina and Magic and if I were to do Video Games, I would likely only make about 17$ per copy sold (since Steam has to take their 30%). And remember... The buyer base is BIGGER. So if it were the same number of players, 33 copies becomes 165 which equates to 2,805$ which is significantly better.

But... This is ENTIRELY under the assumption the money goes to just 1 person. If you made a video game with a team of 3 people, that quickly becomes 935$ once split evenly... Not looking so hot.

I think the indie scene —for video games that is— As long as your game is decently made, and you can forgo things like having a big team, there is money to be made. For starters, there is over 337 million accounts on steam. While WotC claims that 50million people have played D&D what they fail to tell you is that those 50million are predicted over the game's entire LIFESPAN and EDITIONS.

Steam claims they have 120 monthly active users. That means that a person logs into steam once a month or plays a game that requires a steam log in. We can probably assume that a fair amount of those players are like me, and won't browse the store. I only buy games after research myself. So I will be mean and assume that only a solid 1% of those people will browse the store thoughly once a year to find new games to play. That means 12 million people will see your game.

This is also a huge difference because with something like Drive Thru RPG, you don't have the same phenomenon. Players are playing games for significantly longer and are not buying new games nearly as often. While we can't find exact statistics, I can assure you that they do not have anywhere close to 337 million registered members. If I had to assume based off nuclear family statistics, which is a terrible way of doing it with 0% accuracy and is a foolish guess... we are looking at only 67.4 million registered users. 24million active monthly users? Then we could say in that 1% only 2.4 million people will see your game?

No. Like I said. That's not accurate. Like I said... D&D's player base covered 50million of the course of it's entire life and many numbers assume the current player base for tabletop roleplaying games covers anywhere from 17-70 million players. That doesn't even compete with Steam's active monthly users. There are more people out there to hand your video game to.

Games like Valhiem who made 94 million dollars (as of recently) isn't even close to selling a copy to 1% of the entire monthly active users that Steam is claiming. A good game will bring in people. Valhiem was released in early alpha in the beginning of 2021. So it has effectively only been out for two and a half years... And it took them 2 years to develop before early access.

Now lets say I work on a video game for 2 years... With 2 other compatriots... And it is a full sized 20 hour RPG, for 30$ a copy. And we sell 10,000 copies our first year, make sure to take off the 30% to steam (270k), Divide it among 3 people... that's 70k a piece, and 35k a year. That's... A little sad.

But, You keep selling the game as long as computers support it. So... That 70k becomes a lot more over time.

But. A reminder. That's 10,000 people. In the grand scheme of things, THAT'S A JOKE. The average game on Steam sells 32,000 copies. The moment we use that number the 672k and 224k per person (or 112k per person per year).

Its fun to think about money like this. And I do it all the time... But real talk, from experience, this is NOT how it works at all. There are hidden expenses. You have advertising, and having to pay for hosting and community outreach, conventions and other things. Not to mention your game might have hidden costs too.

It makes my head spin. But I hate being poor. I want to do my life destiny... But I want to get paid doing it.