Maze Mice Is Now Profitable - Budget Breakdown
As of today, Maze Mice has made back its development costs! In this post I'll be breaking down how much it cost to make, and some important factors that brought it over the finish line of this capitalist hellhole we live in. Sorry, sorry, that's enough commie talk, I'll begrudgingly put on my businessman hat for this one.
To be clear though, this post is primarily for my fellow indie game developers. It is not for investors, shareholders, or publishers. I'm not trying to brag about sales in an effort to sell TrampolineTales as a company. For as long as I'm alive, that will never happen.
Anyway, let's start with Maze Mice's budget!
Budget
| Expense | Amount | Art | $12,000 |
|---|---|
| Soundtrack | $2,000 |
| Sound Effects | $1,500 |
| Localization | $5,000 |
| Key Art | $2,500 |
| Total | $23,000 |
A few takeaways here:
- These are approximations rounding to the nearest $500 increment.
- I spent $15,000 on a PR/Marketing company to help promote Maze Mice. This was not worth it and I saw barely any return on my investment, so I'm chalking it up as a mistake on my part and will not be taking it into account for the game's budget.
- I've been told by my contractors that I actually pay them a bit more than what they normally charge. I will always stand by paying workers a fair rate and not cutting corners on wages. I'm in a position where I'm able to pay more, so it's only right for me to do so. When you pay above average rates, you get an above average result.
- Programming costs aren't taken into account for the game's budget, since I did all of that.
Sales
So if Maze Mice's budget was $23,000, and a copy of Maze Mice is $9.99, doesn't that mean I've sold about 2,300 copies for it to become profitable? Not quite!
You need to take into account taxes, discounts, regional pricing differences, and the 30% cut most storefronts take. After all that, it's closer to about 6,000 copies needed for Maze Mice to break even, which the game has passed as of today!
Marketing
After I parted ways with my aforementioned PR agency, I went back to my usual methodology for emailing press and influencers. You can read about it here:
Daniel DiIorio
One significant event that got the ball rolling was LocalThunk's endorsement of Maze Mice. A few of the streamers I watched said one of the reasons they checked the game out was from LocalThunk's post.
But a strategy that I think more developers should utilize is setting a deeper than usual launch discount. Traditionally most games on Steam don't launch with a discount below 20% off. I purposefully set Maze Mice's launch discount at 30% off to help build momentum and get the game in Steam's New & Trending section, which worked!
All this combined helped Maze Mice break even, which at some points in Early Access, I was worried it wouldn't do for a very long time!
But thanks to all of you, I'm able to keep making games and am able to support my family while doing so. Thank you so much for helping me live my dream.