> 2010/6/6 Xavier Antoviaque <[email protected]> > > > Beware of talking about an adult audience, we need to see who is > playing. We could have much more teenagers than you think, for > example... [David] I'm trying to say that given the context of our game and the kind of exp we want to provide, it is going to filter our players. It is perfectly possible that a 15 years old person likes our games, it will just mean that he will share our interests - there is a maturity aspect here, so what term should I use instead of "adult target" according to you ? Mature target ? > "The traditional publishers are not occupying this space yet" => not > true, they are moving in (cf EA/Playfish), the concentration has > started > [David] This quote is part of the paragraph about the adult niche. So I replaced 'space' by 'niche' to be more clear, but I still believe we can say that the traditional publishers are not focusing our target for their social gaming attempts. > "avoid huge acquisition costs" => not so sure, hard for new entrants on > social plateforms, advertising/portal costs is high [David] agreed. But this is why I mention it in this paragraph, don't you think that this is one of the reason why we go for a niche ? To be able to reach the right community more easily, and therefore to reduce the acquisition cost that we would face if we aimed at everyone ? > > The screenshot for in memoriam is horrible : )
[David] yup :), I changed it - [David] a little better now. > > "decentralized and flat model provides the flexibility required for the > operation of free to play games" => incomplete. You provide more > details > later on, but this sentence really undervalues its potential: > better/easier recruitment, removes barrier between studio and players > by > allowing players to join dev discussions, geographical distribution > adapted to internationalization, reduction of costs... [David] ok - I added these elements. > Illustration 2 - Organization of open source development and role of > the > studio => some modifications to make: there is a higher proportion of > players who are likely to be contributors, there are less contributors > than paying users, and only a subset of contributors are paid [David] right - done > It's missing a lot of explanations on the inclusion of players in the > discussion, reversed pyramid/bottom-up model, and the detail of > decision > process [David] yep, I've added these elements now but I chose to include them In the paragraph "how should the studio be organized", it made more sense according to me. Please let me know if it includes everything you had in mind. > > In the examples of companies related to open source, include Wordpress [David] done > "MySQL distributes for free under GPL to users who don't have a > commercial use of the software" => the commercial use is not an issue > with the GPL - it's when you want to use it under a non-free license > that you need to pay MySQL [David] ok, I changed it accordingly > > How should the games be done ? => need to say that the development is > never over, not like retail (obvious but never explicitely said) [David] ok done > "Multiplayer gameplay based on asymmetry of information, as described > above." => where? [David] in the paragraph http://community.hackit.cx/wiki/Business_Plan#Why_do_we_aim_at_an_adult_target.C2.A0.3F, I've added an internal link in the document. > How should the games be done ? => Again, what about women? [David] I added your sentence about women and virality here > Accessibility: "All of this falls into ergonomics" => nope, the game > mecanisms need to be accessible too - if they are too complex the game > won't be accessible, even if the ergonomy and tutorials are very > good... [David] "All of this" refers to the elements I mention above (signs, feedback), not the whole game. Maybe it was unclear so I revamped it a bit. > "The role of the studio, specifically in the open development process > (given that the studio is also operating the games) is to provide the > direction of the game, and to fund and coordinate the development tasks > in the community." => No - the role of the studio is more like a > catalyst, initiating the project, funding the tasks, helping to > coordinate the project, helping discussions to achieve an outcome. But > the direction is coming from the community as a whole (the studio being > included in it). => important to fully describe this consensus-driven > approach and the "popular meritocracy". [David] done, and added a link to http://community.hackit.cx/wiki/Decision_Process > Need to better introduce the difference between the development project > and the game operation. [David] I'm not sure to understand what (and where) you refer to here, can you be a bit more specific please ? > Source of revenues: cf my email about premium service, could be a > reason > to increase conversion too. [David] I'm not sure about which mail you refer to, can you remind me ? > "Average revenue per user is 0,44$" => per user per month [David] yep, done > "this permanent connexion between the user and the company still makes > us, in the open source world, closer to an OVH than to an Ubuntu" => > not > sure about that. It's true from a revenue perspective, but not from a > perception perspective. I'd rather say we take the best of the two > approaches, and talk about Wordpress ;p [David] done > We need to talk more about Hackit! [David] I've added relevant links for HackIt in the following paragraph of the document -> http://community.hackit.cx/wiki/Business_Plan#Development_of_HackIt.21 I prefer to put links only and not content, to avoid additional maintenance of the document in the future. > Market segmentation => cf my recap in the other email [David] done (http://community.hackit.cx/wiki/Business_Plan#Quick_segmentation_of_the_online_gaming_market ) > "We want to use this leverage but we need to define how because the > zynga fierce strategy of acquisition is not what we aim at, we believe > it would play against us." => not very convincing ;p I'd rather say > we'll leverage it, but avoid spamming and making the interactions > meaningful. [David] ok done > To be honest, we need to talk about facebook market saturation and > increased payment fee coming soon (facebook credits) [David] right - done > "We can also use the traditional and not free ways such as" => we WILL. > Traditional means are part of the marketing toolbox like the other > ways, > as long as it's a profitable way of acquisition (cost of acquisition > > ARPU) [David] done > "rev-share partnerships (with portals such as Newsground and > Armorgames)" => those are flash-based portals. We'd probably need to > look into partnerships with non-obvious portals where our target > demographics goes, such as free software portals, high-traffic > fan-sites, geeks websites, community-based websites... And probably > some > of the mainstream news/generalistic/etc, too. With marketing, we need > to > be imaginative, or we'll pay too much. [David] good point - done > Overview of potential competition => EA *is* a competitor > [David] yep, but what I said remains relevant I think -> I revamped the sentence you'll tell me if it's ok for you. > Zynga do not focus on building communities => actually not completely > true anymore. They have hired traditional CMs, and growing the team... > They yse forums too... But it's true it's not central in their > approach. [David] > "Gameforge, Dofus not addressing the same target as us - rather > children/teen." => beware, we don't know our audience yet [David] We don't know the audience, but we know that we should aim at a niche and we're more interesting to do games for adults right ? > > This work being related to the financials, there are also some > > modifications on the financials document, you can find the latest > > document here -> > > http://community.hackit.cx/wiki/Pitch_and_Business_Plan > > You can also find on this page the differences with the previous > > versions of the financials. > Ooops, looks like it will need to be reviewed in light of the recent > discussions about maintaining expenses very low until we reach certain > success criterias (to define). : ) [David] on the excel financials : 1) separated business plan financials and the growth model in two separate sheets, should be easier to manage 2) started, in the growth model (new tab), a template on weekly basis to check the metrics. It's a draft, I still need to work on it. I'll add the daily cohorts that Xav sent in a mail when I find time a bit later. 3) in the bp financials : - reviewed and merged the staff/subcontracting, because it is not easy to predict our ratio employee/contributor, and it will be easier to work on the document this way. Modified all the other operating expenses in consequence. Added a yearly bonus. - Reduced the expenses for year 1. We are now at 180k€ until end of July 2011. It might still be too high, can you help me by challenging our expenses for the first year ? Compared to the proposal you had sent Xav (Development expenses (5K/month?)/Ads expenses (0.5K/month? gets 100-200 visitors/day)/Admin (1K + 0.1K/month?)/Lawyer (3K?)/Hosting (0.2K/month)), I'm close to your assumptions except for the dev expenses that are higher on my side (can you have a look ?), it explains the difference between our total (+travel, licences, tools, and legal higher than your assumption). This is one of the possible scenarios. The possibility of other scenarios can be found on http://community.hackit.cx/wiki/Financials - added costs for tools. Currently I've added it in Capex (as software we buy). We can put in dev cost later, if we want. I've added stats/BI, CRM - one issue : there are links between the two files (financials and growth model) and when I convert the files to openoffice, I was not able to update the links between the open office files, so these are broken. I still upload them on the wiki, can you please have a look and let me know how it should be done ? Until then it would be good if I can upload the excel sheet but the wiki does not let me upload files with this extension. And finally : - I updated the page http://community.hackit.cx/wiki/Financials where I deported financial information from bp, explained how we will build scenarios according to success and criteria for success/failure - I updated the BP abstract following the modifications on the BP extended doc. - Pitch : I'll update a draft soon (1-2 days). I can't upload a pptx on the wiki, Xav can you please check the extensions on the wiki ? _______________________________________________ Hackit Bar mailing list - [email protected] Wiki: http://community.hackit.cx/ List: http://community.hackit.cx/ml/ Forum: http://community.hackit.cx/forum/ Ideas: http://community.hackit.cx/ideas/ IRC: irc://irc.freenode.net/#politis
