20 Mio. $ Gross Income - does it accelerate development speed?

[Novalis 17]

Congratulations to the Devs, Bohemia Interactive and Dean Hall, you are going to hit 20 Mio. $ total revenues soon.(Or you even already have since DayZ costs 33 $ in some EU countries.)

I'm sure Bohemia Interactive never expected that kind of windfall profits in their projections for ARMA II, (ToH) and ARMA III.

 

So when they hit 700.000 sales in a few days they generated round about 21 Mio. $ revenues in less than a month. 

It is quite possible that this is not the end and we will see 1 Mio. DayZ sales (30 Mio. $) in the first quarter of 2014.

Obviously the decision to use Steam was right, access to more than 65 Mio. potential customers has its merits :)

 

So here comes the question I'm most interested in:

Will the financial success lead to a reevaluation of the planned development? For example are they going to hire additional staff?

I remember Dean Hall saying they basically had one guy working on the map - he definitely did a great job so far - but imagine what one or two additional head counts may accomplish!

I'm also wondering If there are any plans to push up project phases (earlier beta phase e.g.) at certain revenue-milestones?  Or plans to add additional content when the amount of revenues exceeds X $ (similar to Kickstarter milestones like in Star Citizen)? I also think they need to keep in mind that most of the dedicated DayZ players are willing to pay for future DLCs, which means they may create new revenue streams with DLCs in the future.

Edited December 29, 2013 by Novalis

[semipr0 402]

Not until they get their money. Which is likely to take a little while.

 

I am unsure of the publishing deal between Rocket and BIS on this project but if its anything like most publishing and distribution deals, they probably won't physically have their part of that money until March at the earliest.

 

That doesn't specifically mean they can't leverage against those incoming assets and hire in more help, it just means that people assuming sales = money in the bank today aren't always immediately correct.

[PoweredBySoy 5]

I will say it's extremely impressive that this game has been almost constantly at #1 on Steam during the entire week of their hugely popular winter sale - and this game isn't even on sale. Incredible really.

 

Hope it lights a fire under Bohemia's ass to support the development of this project.

Edited December 29, 2013 by PoweredBySoy

[terminal_boy 860]

Money from sales takes a while to turn up in a companies bank account, doubly so if the sales are made through another company such as Steam.

And just because a company has enough money to buy a tropical island or state their own space program, it doesn't mean they can recruit the additional talent they need to boost development in 5 minutes.

Edited December 29, 2013 by Terminal Boy

[desryachri 95]

Simple economics, over time more staff for the company not dayz but the whole company more equipment and resources dayz will have access to which so will other projects.

Sure dayz will be a priority they are are already pulling those resources being used on arma 3 to use them etc.. They will never just hire in a load of experts ( umm no use if they don't know the arma engine all takes time / hence some comunity moders where hired ) because that is stupid economics and the company will go bust in no time.

[mintypie007 57]

Hopefully once the 5 people who are working on DayZ fix all the crap with the engine Bohemia will send over massive amounts of people to start chugging out new weapons, gear, etc. Doing this could really accelerate the process of the alpha and lead to a full game that is packed with content.

[Novalis 17]

I think it is not that relevant when the money arrives in the bank account. They can anticipate quite well how much will eventually come in the near future. 

Of course the total revenues are before Valve gets their share of distribution fee and I heard it maybe up to 30% - but that's useless to debate it's subject to their NDA agreement.

 

Simple economics, over time more staff for the company not dayz but the whole company more equipment and resources dayz will have access to which so will other projects.

 

That is one of the questions, will there only be indirect effects because BI invests in the parent company or will there actually be some direct advantages for the DayZ development?

Of course they don't hire a load of experts, but as I understand the actual dev team for DayZ is very small (only a few people). 

If it's really only 5 people imagine what happens If you hire just two people. 

[twingunz 308]

Normally games work within a budget that they are given at the start of the contract the money made from sales would be determined as profit (once the investors BIS have made their money back that they have put into the game) the physical money from sales has nothing to do with game development this is a business trying to make money.

All that said though the game selling well and making money is good for 2 reasons
1 they know there is a market for their game so it almost instantly guarantees a sequel with a larger budget.
2 seeing this game is still very early in development BIS may invest more funds for development if they feel they can keep the money train rolling.

As much as people probably see the money they spend not going back into the game as a bad thing, they are wrong. it's by far a good thing as this wasn't a kickstarter where your money goes to development, no. you are buying a product and the success of that product can only lead to good things for the game itself and the future, when the money stops rolling in is when the game will be cut off but sales do not go back into the development for the game.

Edited December 29, 2013 by twingunz

[phoboss 224]

Steam gets 30%. Just sayin

[Traveler (DayZ) 27]

Guys, just let us think of the following: The Standalone was kinda delayed a long time. Many people stated that they had no interest anymore in it. Many even stated, that it had outlived its hype and it would fail. The wailing and whining of those people did surely add a feeling of uncertainty for the developer. BIS is a small Indie-studio. If they dump several million $ into a project, and then it sucks because nobody is interested in it anymore...they are dead, they lose their jobs. And with all the complaining on the 'net, that seemd to be a possibility. Not one that I could sse, because everyone I fu**in' knew said they were going to get the game some time or another, but hey.

So I think it went this way: Resources for the Standalone were not as much priuoritized as we would have thought they should be, and maybe BECAUSE of the whining of this wonderful community (mostly on reddit, though). What I guess, they really only tried to reach an Alpha state for the SA, which they in my opinion even failed to do by now - and put it out for sale, along with a warning that it is early Alpha stuff. To see if the fears of "OMG noone will get it, Zombies are soo 2012, and it is late and has outlived its time blabla" were justified, or if they could really dig into the project some more. And hell, the game is kinda unfinished, with Zombies WIP, lacking a lot of weapons, and the crafting system...but it is damn fun to play still! After all, it IS the basis for what the mod should have been.

That being said, I think they will ramp up their efforts to finish th game features and deliver a nice end product now. Because the risk is lower (aka there is none, as the work-to-do has already been paid for), and the gain in profile and user trust by this alone justifies throwing millions at the project to keep it going. Earning >15 million dollars is something that doesn't happen often within one month for a small developer like BI (ok, selling an additional million copies of Arma II because of DayZ mod was nice, too.)!

So, well played Rocket, well played indeed. Love the game, and how deep the mechanics of it seem to go now.

[ninjacalypse 551]

20 Mio. $ Gross Income - does it accelerate development speed?

 

According to Rocket, we'll be in Alpha for a little over a year most likely.  I don't expect that timetable to accelerate based on income...but if it does...great...if not...I can deal.

[Aussie Bogan 350]

According to Rocket, we'll be in Alpha for a little over a year most likely.  I don't expect that timetable to accelerate based on income...but if it does...great...if not...I can deal.

 

Really a year dam...

 

Possible source>>>??

[lauri7x3 100]

the whole bohemia studio team should work on dayz..

 

btw.. how good does arma 3 sales?

[wolffe 52]

Money doesn't matter when the leadership/administrators of a company lack the abilities to see a project succeed properly. People forgave "Rocket" for doing a sloppy job with the mod cuz it was "in his spare time" and "Just for fun using the ArmA engine". Apparently that same thinking still applies to them as any criticism of their capabilities is met with screams of "ALPHA" from the legions of DayZ drones.

 

Most likely will be in development for 2-3 years until "Version 1.0:" releases. But knowing Bohemia, it will still be buggy as hell, be based in the crappy arma engine, still have clunky everything and graphics that make 2007 look good.

 

Any proper businessman would see the potential of DayZ's concept, already proven by irrefutable facts, and be throwing serious dollars into its speedy & proper production. Bohemia isn't doing that.

Bohemia is stupid.

Edited December 29, 2013 by wolffe

[ninjacalypse 551]

Really a year dam...

 

Possible source>>>??

 

Virtually the exact same thing is plastered on most of the sites talking about the release of the Alpha.  I could have sworn there was a direct quote from Rocket on this somewhere but I can't fish up a link right now.

 

This release, according to the developer, “ is a representation of our core pillars, and the framework we have created around them”, but it is lacking some of the features from the mod such as vehicles and support for user mods. Those things are listed under the development roadmap though so they should hit before the full release which is estimated to be more than a year away.

[Novalis 17]

The (in part) unexpected success should lead to the conclusion at Bohemia Interactive HQ that they just launched a new franchise or IP very successfully. They finally managed to monetize the mod, I hope they act accordingly.

As I said before, after they finished DayZ 1.0 they will have a large playerbase willing to pay for DLCs lik e.g. "DayZ Namalsk" or something like that. That means they have the prospect of even more revenues with that platform.

I really hope they raise their investments moderately due to the current monetary success.