HeyAndrei

@nanowerx

Cipher Prime dev here.

We respectfully disagree, in part. Here's our funding chart from Kickstarter, soon after we hit our goal (http://imgur.com/a/T4XeO).

As of this Monday we'd basically spent three and a half weeks wondering how the hell we would make it. Trying to get big gaming sites to write about our studio was like banging our head against the wall. We really are just one of many game companies out there. On Monday we began our all out push (mailing list hit, facebook/twitter campaign, begging backers to up their pledges). Then Patrick Klepeck from Giant Bomb contacted us and ended up doing a bigger story than we thought.

Kickstarter is absolutely not useless. It's certainly not easy, but there are a lot of things you can do to work on your company's publicity, even if you're a small studio (http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/rgf7j/some_of_the_things_we_learned_from_our_soon_to/). If we'd had a smaller project without any big press, we could have succeeded just doing what we were doing. That's without any gaming community clout, just a ton of awesome friends and fans.

But because we did have a project in the tens of thousands of dollars, it was just monumentally harder, and we are extremely lucky in having had a prior popular game with plenty of fans, and in the timing of coming in the wake of two huge Kickstarter successes.

@chuanl

Replying to all your posts in this one, to save space. Again, I'm writing this mainly to clarify our situation for others, because I feel as if no matter what I say you'll continue to criticize us.

Some more history: Auditorium was written in Flash. Publishers ported it to iOS and the PSN for us. Fractal was written in Flash. It was ported to the iOS using Unity by us. Pulse was built in Unity. We have two other games in the pipeline, both Unity. We're not jumping ship to Unity through this Kickstarter.

If you read Jess's previous article, we try to explain that the amount you make from sales does not always help you break even. In Auditorium Duet's case, we've estimated the amount of time development will take to make a game of the caliber we want, based on previous experience.

The Kickstarter money helps keep the studio open for a portion of that time. Otherwise we focus on making less ambitious games and can't devote the time we want to Duet. That's all. If you ask why don't we work cheaper, I answered you above. If you ask why don't we work faster, it would be awesome if we were smarter/more efficient/more creative, and I don't have any answer for you.

Unity Pro Licenses allow two simultaneous installs for one person, you can't swap licenses, and you can't mix Free and Pro use in the same office. Being a bit resourceful sounds like violating these restrictions. Asset server is free now, and in any case none of this Unity stuff is even considered in our graph as part of our minimum operating cost, or as something the Kickstarter money would fund.

@chuanl

Kickstarter ate my other response. Basically:

Could we make stuff while never seeing each other face to face? Probably. But being an independent developer does not mean we must forgo all convenience, and function with only the bare minimum.

An office where we can work face-to-face is something we think we've earned through our prior work. We're not Kickstarting because the survival of the company depends on it. We're trying to fund a specific project that requires more money than we have. If enough people are interested it, we get a chance to make it. If the Kickstarter fails, we'll simply (sadly) go on to other projects.

The criticism of us not being more frugal is unfair, I think, because there are lots of things we could do to save money. We could all eat less so we don't spend as much on food. We could not use any of a dozen services that make our life easier and let us spend more time on our work. At some point you have to draw the line, and we're comfortable with where we've drawn ours.

- I am not sure about exactly what the utilities breakdown is, outside of the general internet, phone, electricity, water, gas, and repair. I can find out if you're really interested. Sales numbers likewise (though, note that Steam and Apple take 30% cuts off our $3 to $7 games). Unity Pro is necessary for our products, and there are very detailed licensing restrictions (available on their FAQ).

- Lawyer's fees aren't monthly (phew!). The breakdown is averaged out from longer time period that included legal fees.

- I want to address your criticisms (which are fine criticisms) because other people may be interested and we really do want to be as forthcoming as possible about this information. We're not bad people!

@sigma8

Yes, in the infographic payroll covers what's paid out to the four of us in the company. Rent is just the office space, we try not to live here.

The $75 per week in groceries covers the food that's stocked in our fridge, which usually includes deli meats, granola bars, snacks, etc. I probably eat at least one or two meals in the office a day. We count it as one of our perks!

This graph represents the minimum cost of running the company that we've decided on, because in the past few years of operation we've found it to be the safest way to do things. If we make more than that in a month we reinvest it in the company, purchasing new hardware or equipment, paying down bills, funding networking opportunities, etc. If we make less than that we usually cut into pay roll.

@nimzy

Cipher Prime dev here, when we purchased the licenses, 6k was the price at the time for Unity Pro, Asset Server + Mobile. And we needed two seats.

@Vic Fontaine

You are absolutely right! In our case, however, we are not asking for donations to keep our business open. We are asking for the money to fund a specific product, one that we wouldn't make otherwise (but which we would really like to make!). If the Kickstarter fails, we're just going to have to focus on other work.

@BritC

As Jess mentions in her article, we're not completely opposed to publishing. We know that publishing has its niche and that there are people it can definitely help. We've just found that we've been better off and have had fewer headaches on the projects where we've gone it on our own, or were backed by fan donations.

Unfortunately, being able to shop around for different publishing options isn't the easiest thing to do. It's by no means impossible, but they are difficult waters to navigate if you don't have the experience or contacts. We didn't have those things when we started out, as much as we wish we did.

@sigma8

Hello! One of devs here.

You bring up a lot of good points, and I'm not going to disagree with them because they are all true. A large part of the game development cost is labor cost; that's a fact. If you've got the hardware, software, skills, time, and internet, you can make and sell a game out of thin air, without any additional funding.

If the Kickstarter fails, we will rely on our savings and on making new games to try and keep the company (now four employees) running. If that doesn't work out, we'll do what we did when we started the company, like stop giving ourselves paychecks, or take on contract work or part-time jobs. We're not pinning the ultimate survival of the company on it, just the direction.

But if the Kickstarter succeeds, we don't have to worry about that and we will make an awesome product we've always wanted to make. We'll also know that there were enough people interested in the game for us to bring it into existence in the first place.

We believe that our games are better when we're spending all our time making them. But ultimately it comes down to a lifestyle decision. We would rather live hand to mouth spending hours doing what we love instead of earning a little extra doing what we're not interested in or only mildly interested in. If the world gives us a chance to do that, we'll do that.This doesn't puzzle me at all.

@(Unverified)

You are right that Flash 11 and Stage3D have brought marked improvements, and we could probably tweak our wording a little to make it clearer. We were mainly thinking of Flash's limitations when we used it to build the original Auditorium. We wanted to emphasize the power of Unity as a development environment, because we do believe it makes for a much more streamlined development pipeline, especially for cross-platform ports. Hope that clarifies things!

@GokieKS

Thank you so much! For your support and for letting us know how much enjoyed our game! We really do want to make the sequel much more and better.