How to make money on games. Computer game production as a business

Method 1. Become an eSports player

The winner of the world tournament receives up to $4,700,000. The competition is watched by millions of people who buy tickets for the spectacular game.

Esports athletes make money and become celebrities. For example, Roman Kushnarev (Ramzes666), winner of 4 Valve Dota 2 tournaments, starred in a Head & Shoulders commercial.

How to become an eSports player:

1. Assemble your team. It is advisable to invite friends from real life.
2. Practice working in a team and completing tasks.
3. Sign up for local virtual competitions. If your partners live far away, you can sign up for a tournament with small prizes on GoodGame.
4. Develop further. If you lose, don't worry. Every defeat is a useful experience that will help you win later. Sign up for larger cyber competitions.
5. You are already an e-sportsman!

Daily training with the team takes up to 8 hours a day.

Having trouble becoming an experienced gamer on your own? You can sign up for training at the Funbo online school.

Tips from experienced eSports players:

• HObbit: “Be patient. It's not easy to get into a top company. You need to play for several hours a day, confidently experience defeats and analyze them. Work on your weaknesses. The path from a simple player to an esports athlete sometimes takes several years. The main thing is to keep moving forward.”
• Ufenok77: “Don’t give up books and sports. Do things that will at least sometimes help you look at life from a different angle and relax. Switch.”
• DrHippi: “I watch professionals a lot: I watch their streams, how they play, I communicate with them. You can play Hearthstone and spy on experienced colleagues. You made your move, roll up the window and watch someone else’s stream.”

The average earnings of professional gamers in the CIS are $600.

Watch a video about the stories of successful and wealthy e-sportsmen.

Anyone can do this!

Developers of games and applications working individually can be found online under the term indie. Studios for creating applications are small, the number of employees reaches 10 people. Knowledge, skills, and capabilities do not matter; you just need to have a personal computer. The network has all the current programs for work. Over time, demands for the quality of applications and games grow, so a high-quality product can be created in approximately 5-6 months.

Game developer

Partially, indie work is considered risky - it involves investing money, spending time, and there is no confidence in the return on investment of the project, its stable operation. The Pareto principle is relevant in the field - 80% of all applications cost less than $300. The remaining 20% ​​is approximately $24,000.

There are several basic areas in this area:

1. Creation of new applications.
2. Covering an existing niche.
3. Creating small, high-quality games.

Well-known world leaders in game creation often work with indies, since they are real generators of relevant ideas.

Method 2. Place bets

Tournaments are not for you, but you want to make money through games? Then place your bets. Here are a few bookmakers that do this:

• GG.bet,
• ECyberBet
• Fonbet.

Some even brag about their earnings on forums. I invested 250 rubles and received 800 rubles at the exit. in one evening.

The whole difficulty is that you do not bet on the winner/loser, but on the number of points (for example, even/odd) or mobs (enemies) that the participant will kill.

Development

There are a lot of articles and courses on mobile application development on the Internet and I don’t want to repeat them.

I will only say that for success in mobile it is now extremely important to stand out, hook the user and make a first impression.

Therefore, the most important thing is the name and icon. Then screenshots, videos and descriptions.

And of course, the application must meet the user's expectations. The application should be fast, adaptive, convenient and, most importantly, useful. Then there is a high chance that it will not be deleted, they will use it (stores take all this into account) and leave a good review.

Method 3. Organize an eSports tournament

You can become an organizer of eSports competitions, but here you need to formalize everything legally and invest at least $10,000. Profits come from ticket sales. This is an “adult” business. Without calculations there is no way.

What will be useful:

• the ability to sell in order to attract the attention of players and viewers through social networks and regular advertising (you can hire a marketer);
• money for renting premises, computers, a huge monitor for spectators;
• budget for the prize fund (in the regions the minimum is 25,000 rubles, in large cities – 70,000 rubles).

In the summer you can rent a computer lab at the school. It will be cheaper.

Who to hire:

1. Judge. He will announce the winner and ensure that the rules are followed.
2. Technical assistant. He will set up computers, install drivers, games, and fix system errors.
3. Videographer. Blog interviews, competition filming, and coverage will take your tournament to the next level and attract bigger players.
4. Director. There is no shame in uploading a video with good editing to the Internet. There will be fans on YouTube too.

You can organize a championship online without renting a room. Players will broadcast the screen recording to administrators, and they will process and broadcast it. To attract players, you need to create your own website, promote on social networks, or find an SMM specialist.

Examples of popular eSports games

For those who want to win big at competitions, I recommend Dota 2 . Although the gaming community is not the same as World of Warcraft, the prize pool is the largest.

The game involves 2 teams of 5 characters competing. One is good, the other is dark. The main goal is to destroy the enemy castle. During battles, heroes level up, collect items, and complete tasks.

The winning team OG (Australia) took home $11,100,000, although they barely made it to 4th place in 2017. In the OG grand final, the Australians fought with the Chinese team PSG.LGD - silver medalists who received $4,000,000.

How to become a member of The International Dota 2? A competitive selection is held annually, where anyone can register. Teams compete at the regional level, the winners advance to the world tournament.

To develop your skills, gain experience and even participate in a tournament, you need to download Dota 2 on Steam. It is shareware. For beauty, you can buy different things for characters.

The game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - also known as CS:GO - is a first-person shooter. Only weapons and hands are visible. You can play as terrorists or intelligence agencies of the USA, France, Germany, England, Israel.

At the major tournament ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier 2020, the FaZe Clan team received $500,000 for first place. Surprisingly, all the team players are from different countries: Norway, Sweden, Slovakia. So you can take players from anywhere on the planet, as long as it’s worth it.

League of Legends is a strategy game with online role-playing game elements. The winner is the one who destroyed the enemy fortress. First place in the official League of Legends World Championship tournament is awarded $1,000,000, and other prizes are awarded $100,000.

You can find out about upcoming regional tournaments in the table. Anyone can sign up for the free championship, as long as there are no requirements for the level of characters and team. But to get into the premium competition league, you need to pay. Prices are set by the organizers. In 2020, they asked for $50 to participate.

Overwatch is an online shooter with action. Teams of players fight crime. Each of the characters has their own superpower. For example, the heroine Sombra fights opponents with hacking techniques.

The prize fund in the Major League Gaming and Intel Extreme Masters tournaments is about $100,000.

In addition to effort and time, you will have to invest money. The standard version of the game costs 1,999 rubles, and the sophisticated version costs 3,299 rubles.

Do you want to know how to get to the Overwatch Championship and where to start? Then watch the video.

The next game, Heroes of the Storm , has a smaller prize fund than the previous ones, but there is less competition, which means more chances. MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) is free. For donations you can buy items for characters and upgrade them faster.

In the tournament table you can find out about current competitions and register.

How to make money on games: the process

Often, the profitability of a project depends on the correctness of the work plan. At the first stage, the producer or manager conducts a marketing analysis of the market, during which the demand for certain products is determined over a certain time. As a rule, it takes 1-2 years - that’s how long it takes to develop one average project.

After the idea for a computer game has been thought up, the second stage begins - drawing up a business plan. It examines the entire project as a whole - analysis of competitors, calculation of approximate costs and profits, etc.

The third stage is the most massive. Concept artists and designers take part here. They must describe in the smallest steps all the tasks and levels of the game, the number of heroes, animations, etc. This stage, the so-called pre-production, takes about 4 months. During this time, a plan should be created for all further work.

And the last stage is production, in other words, production. Absolutely the entire staff takes part in it - animators, artists, programmers, designers. This stage is the longest, after which a trial version of the game (alpha version) is released.

Basically, it still contains a bunch of bugs that will be fixed over the next couple of months. After the bugs are corrected, a beta version is released, in which the game is tweaked to match the final version. And only after all these numerous efforts is a product released that is ready to conquer the heights of the gaming world.

Method 4. Streams

Stream is an online broadcast of gameplay. The gamer turns on screen capture and shows what is happening in the game.

The first, largest and most accessible source of income is donation.

Donat - monetary donations from viewers. You set the minimum threshold yourself. For example, you cannot send less than 50 rubles to Karina. You pay for a message that is read live.

Streamer Karina Kozyreva earns 45,000 rubles for one stream, and 1,000,000 rubles for a month. What's the secret? She is unique. The image of a playing aggressive hysterical woman with a pretty face and figure captivated hundreds of thousands of people. Some people troll her live and pay money for messages, others admire her.

At one time I myself dreamed of being like Karina. No, not to swear on the Internet, but to earn money from online broadcasts, where I share useful things, dance, and complete cool tasks from the audience. Everything can still come true.

Turn on your webcam and add a video of your face to the right corner of the broadcast. Dress unusually, don't hold back your emotions. This way you will be remembered by the audience and get more fans.

Streamer MissAngel001 from YouTube was transferred 7,939 rubles for a 4-hour broadcast of CS:GO. This turns out to be 1,984.75 rubles/hour. You can’t make that much money in a day by distributing leaflets.

Streams of these games are watched more often by:

• Minecraft,
• CS:GO,
• GTA 5,
• Fortnite,
• League of Legends,
• Hearthstone.

To get a ton of donations, you need to motivate the public. Arrange challenges: I will attack a passerby in GTA 5 for 100 rubles. or I’ll press the buttons with my foot for 15 minutes for 300 rubles.

Have you ever seen a streamer wear a logo T-shirt or drink a soda while showing off a brand? This is called native advertising. The gamer, as if by chance, shows the product, he is paid decently for this. Moreover, they do this not as flawlessly as in Russian TV series.

There is another option for sponsorship advertising. Somewhere in the corner of the screen you place a picture or video.

Disadvantage: you have to advertise online casinos, cases and other scams, for which people will remember you with unflattering words.

Plus: income is not limited to video hosting.

Another goldmine for streamers is a paid subscription to Twitch. It costs $4.99. Although the gamer gets only 50%, for 100 people the amount is decent - more than 16 thousand rubles every month.

Monthly income of popular streamers:

• Manyrin: 30,000 – 35,000 rubles;
• VJlink: 28,000 – 37,000 rubles;
• VeRsuta: 98,000 – 101,000 rubles.

Although 74% of streamers live on Twitch, the remaining 26% make a confident and good living on YouTube. They film the passage of difficult levels, reveal the secrets of the game (Easter eggs) and review new products.

You won't get far on royalties from displaying ads. They pay from 1 to 5 $. Plus, you still need 500 viewers on Twitch or 1,000 subscribers on YouTube.

The author of the RecklessPlay channel (11,000 subscribers) was paid $101.27 from an affiliate program for 9 months.

Method 5. Driving – upgrade the customer’s account for money

Skills, enemies, inventory, leveling scheme are different in each game. The longer a person plays, the more experienced he becomes.

A beginner will have to spend 2 - 3 months to prepare the character for battles with the boss, increase the life scale and stamina. You need to buy abilities and weapons based on the idea of ​​what kind of hero you want to get in the end - strong or with good regeneration. You'll have to watch the video and record every step. For an experienced gamer, this is a matter of one week.

For example, in Perfect World, all races except archers receive wings only at level 30. Walking on foot is problematic and takes a long time - strong mobs (enemies) attack you, you have to go around mountains and other obstacles. The flying character gets to the mission location automatically. Now imagine that someone will bring the hero to perfection and that person will be you.

How it works? The customer gives you a password for the account. You play as him, develop your character.

Upgrading a hero from level 1 to 120 in World of Warcraft costs 6,000 – 9,000 rubles. For 3 hours they pay 300 - 600 rubles.

Create a Facebook Ad Campaign to Measure Market Reach

The more detailed you are about the audience who will like the game, the more accurate your prediction will be. For example, if your game appeals to players of all ages from 8 to 80, then it is not clear how it will generate income. Be more specific. “I'm making a game for North American men, 25 to 34 years old, married with children, who enjoy games like Dungeons and Dragons
and
Magic the Gathering
.”

A good way to measure your market reach is to create a Facebook advertising campaign. See Facebook audience definition in Figure. 1.

Rice. 1. Defining your Facebook audience

Now that you have an idea of ​​your audience size, you can set a target number of launch installs. In the case of my game with a market reach of 500,000 people, I was targeting an install base of 150,000 per launch month.

While the goal of F2P is to have your game as a service for 5 years or more and have users install it throughout that time, launch month installs are important for forecasting. This is the initial cohort of players that most accurately predicts your potential success. Most game installations look something like this:

Rice. 2. Standard F2P mobile game installation curve

In Fig. 2 months from the first to the sixth represent testing with a “soft” launch (soft launch), and the seventh month is a launch on world markets. Notice how significantly the curve jumps and falls. This is what a standard F2P game launch looks like (assuming no content is added to the game that could cause peaks/waves in the curve).

The initial install base is called the “golden cohort” - these are the players with the highest potential to turn into buyers, true masters of the game, and long-term fans of the game. For an indie game, installs per launch month can account for 40% of all installs over the life of the game. If you know the target number of installs after the game launches and “player retention”, you can predict DAU.

Method 6. Mentoring

The mentor advises the player in real time on how to level up and defeat enemies. Consultations are cheaper than driving.

In Lineage 2, after level 85 and rebirth, you can take 3 students. In addition to money, you will receive such gaming goodies as:

• 5% to experience,
• 15% to defense,
• 10% to attack.

Where to look for clients:

1. In the game chat. If someone complains that their boss has failed them or they can’t get to the next level, feel free to offer help.
2. On the game forum.

An hour of consultation or assistance in completing a task costs 300 rubles.

Are there apps for making money by investing?

I've tried a hundred different games that require you to invest money to earn money, or give you a bonus to start playing. And it turned out that everywhere there are restrictions that do not allow you to withdraw funds.

All economic games resemble the famous marketing from the MMM . Invite a friend, let him throw in money, and then you will withdraw yours + bonus! So don't invest money in games.

There are, of course, also gambling (casino) and mini-games for money. But everywhere there is an algorithm and commissions that force you to lose your account at a distance. However, if you are a gambler, then there is one game for you!

BitKong - open cells like in a minefield. Where you need to find the fruit behind the closed sign. For each guess we can get a reward and the further we go, the higher the prize!

There is a free faucet - 2 stars every 10 minutes (400 satoshi). They can be placed in the game to accumulate the amount. In general, a free gambling game with the opportunity to earn real money.

Go to BitKong

Method 7. Selling characters and rare items

Easier to sell game items and accounts. If you do this constantly, you can earn up to 30,000 rubles. per month for the sale of a pumped up character.

Create an account for sale on the left e-mail, because it is tied to the game. You give them away together.

Some games, like Diablo 3, have complex skill maps. The wrong choice of skill (ability) will ruin everything. You have to watch training videos on YouTube. And to get a strong hero, you need to spend at least a week. Laziness and the desire to get a cool character immediately push people to buy accounts for decent money.

A zealous gamer managed to earn $150 for a six-month-old WoW character.

You can buy other people's accounts for pennies and resell them at a 70% markup. Try to bargain. If you upgrade your character a little more, feel free to sell it at 2 times the price.

Which games earn the most:

• World of Warcraft,
• Diablo 3,
• Dota 2,
• Lineage 2,
• World of Tanks,
• Counter-Strike: Global Offensive,
• Perfect World.

Fraudsters ask for temporary access to your profile, supposedly to look at it, change the password - and remember your name. Therefore, it is advisable to carry out the transaction through a guarantor or ask for an advance payment of 50%.

On Steam, you can not only buy games, but also trade items in auction mode. The price is automatically determined and the lot is placed in a queue.

Disadvantage: you have to wait months for sales due to competition.

Analogues of the Steam trading platform:

• SteamBroker – log in via Steam and sell items here,
• Skins.cash – sale of Counter-Strike skins.

A friend of mine sold a ring from Lineage 2 for 5,000 rubles, as well as armor for the same amount.

Websites where game attributes are offered for sale:

• YouHack – create a topic on the forum in the “Sell” section;
• PlayNTrade is a market where they sell any things from games;
• Garantmarket is an account store with a guarantor service.

My brother sold an account for the game “Marvel Heroes” on one of these forums for 1,000 rubles.

How to do business in online games in Russia

Maxim Spiridonov: Since ancient times, one of the most striking illustrations of human needs and desires has been the ancient Roman concept of “bread and circuses.” Moreover, “spectacles” can be interpreted in a broader sense - as “entertainment” in general. Whether we like it or not, after food and sex, entertainment is perhaps the most important thing that concerns the average consumer of any race or nationality. Therefore, the entertainment industry has long been a diverse and well-performing business. On the Internet, one of its most noticeable branches are games: casual, browser-based, games on social networks and the like. Globally, this is now already billions of dollars in annual turnover. Today, if my memory serves me right, for the first time in Runetology we are talking about the business of online games. Our guest is Gevork Sargsyan, general director of the gaming company. Gevork, how and why did you get into online gaming business?

Gevork Sargsyan: Any business should create interest. This industry was not explored at the time when we first began to engage in it. We were one of the first to provide licensed content to users. At that time, the entire Russian market consisted of disparate communities of pirates who were engaged in the only game known at that time - Lineage II. Obviously, any pirate market needs to be made as transparent as possible and turned into a legal one. We were inspired by this idea, and we brought it to life, but since then a lot has changed. Today we understand that what we have learned and what we have today can easily compete with European and even Asian publishers.

— Are you only localizers today?

— Yes, but the localization process is a very delicate and complex business. At first it may seem that everything is simple: you can easily translate the game, launch it and earn money. Many companies have rushed into this market, trying to take some products and sell something. The principle of our company, which has never changed, is that we do everything to provide the user with the highest quality product. We have never chased quantity. This led to the fact that we were one of the first, not only in RuNet, but also in the entire industry, to create a single personal account for all games, a single game launch system, make the user script the simplest, one login password for all games.

— According to the press, your turnover last year was about $20 million. Is that true?

— No, this is an underestimated figure. I don't know where it came from because we haven't officially announced anything.

— Is your turnover actually higher?

- Yes.

— Your biography intertwines service in government agencies and transition to a gaming startup. How did this happen? Have you prepared to become an Internet entrepreneur at the Ministry of Taxes and Duties?

“I think that a person’s skills to get things done are applicable both in the civil service and in business. I cannot say that in my philosophy and character I was then a classic official, but I always felt that I could be a businessman. Even in the civil service, I found solutions that did not lie on the surface and were often difficult to implement. I can say that there are people who can work effectively both in business and in the civil service, but they are few.

“It’s just a different mental entity.” An ordinary official does not think “entrepreneurially.”

— I disagree with you because I thought “entrepreneurially” and always put myself in the shoes of the entrepreneurs with whom I worked. We can say that our service was built according to the following model: we did everything as efficiently as possible, did not build dead ends, tried to overcome all barriers and achieve maximum results. You shouldn’t force everything into the perception of officials; you need to think the way an entrepreneur thinks. My leaders were able to instill this in me.

- This is great, but when I hear about an official with an entrepreneurial mindset, I (and not only me) have a completely negative image. An official is a servant of the people, to put it in a high style. At least he should be. When he thinks like a businessman, he undoubtedly sees his benefit. Then the situations that are described in Navalny’s blog arise...

— We probably understand the meaning of “business” thinking differently. The point is not to make money. I never had such a task, because I come from a wealthy family and I did not have the need to earn a lot of money. Business (entrepreneurial) thinking is that when you see some obstacles and barriers that objectively cannot be overcome, you look for ways to overcome them. A great project manager should ideally outsource all of his tasks both inside and outside the company. When he realizes that the service that the company provides him is of poor quality, he looks for solutions, he needs to solve this problem in the best way for himself. This is a business way of thinking. When you don’t stop and are not limited by resources, when you realize that you have an unlimited amount of resources, you look for ways to distribute these resources as efficiently as possible and get results. There's no point in linking it to money.

— How many people are “on the other side of the border” with an entrepreneurial mindset, with the ability to flexibly navigate circumstances, with the ability to approach a problem in an unconventional way?

- There are not many of them. There are such people in many key positions, but the problem is that if such people are turned in a bad way, as you talked about recently, then things can’t get any worse. On the other side there are very strong people who do not act in the interests of the people.

— Why did you move from the Ministry of Finance to the gaming business? Why didn’t they start making social networks, if we talk about the Internet? Why didn't they start working in the oil industry? - That was one of the ideas. It was discussed with my colleagues for quite a long time, and we decided that we would deal with it.

— That is, there was a group of like-minded people who had the opportunity to invest in the project and the desire to launch this project?

- Yes.

— Often such projects have a very short lifespan. When a group of people who are quite intelligent, enterprising and want to be on the Internet for some reason, who have the money to do so, gathers, it often does not end very well. Your example is one of the few exceptions, when management competence, desire and understanding of the market were added to money, and the result was a gaming startup, which, as you say, now has more than $20 million in turnover. By Runet standards, this is quite a lot of money. What do you think allowed this to happen? What kept you from relaxing?

— Let's start with the fact that for me all companies differ in one single component - people. Investments may be the same, only people differ. The key to our success is a team that never hesitates before anything and has contempt for the impossible.

— How was the team assembled?

— At first I collected it myself, and then our HR people, who think in the same paradigm as me. I still personally interview almost every person. I interviewed a lot of HR people and only after some time I found a person who thinks on the same plane as me. After I found him, I began to work closely with him so that we had the same ideas about what kind of people should work, how they should think and what they should strive for.

— Can you somehow formulate the paradigm that you and HR share?

“We create an opportunity for people to find their place in the company and give them the opportunity to improve every day, we try to connect the purpose of their life with our purpose. The employee must explain to me what his goal is in the context of 15–20 years, because our success depends on the period for which we plan our lives. If working in this company, in this environment, gives him the opportunity to achieve this goal, he must explain to me the path that he needs to go through. Working with us should fit within the framework of this path. If it doesn’t fit, then it becomes unclear to me why a person should do what he does with love and passion. I need to know that he will want to improve every day. When people realize that they have the opportunity to achieve what they want, that they have a strong coach who will constantly keep them on their toes.

— Coach - is that you?

— Me or their immediate supervisor. In this case, strong is an important caveat! - people are just happy. Strong athletes always stick to strong coaches, they set high goals for themselves, but the coach sets even higher goals and constantly does everything to coach, train and question them accordingly. We look for such people, find them and educate them in our company.

— Is it possible?

“Using specific examples, I can absolutely say that it succeeds, but there are quite a lot of failures. I agree that you can't relax. A startup has no right to have enough money at all. If you have a lot of money, then you relax. “To run ahead of the pack, you must always be hungry.” Relaxation comes when you are not hungry. Then you stop running ahead of the pack.

— How do you manage to keep yourself hungry?

- I am such a person myself. I tune myself to this wave every day. The same people work for us.

— According to some stories, the motivational schemes at Innova are built on the principle of not carrots, but sticks. Bonuses and premiums are not paid - is this true?

- So.

— Why?

- You can draw an analogy. Do you want to have friends who are on good terms with you when you are wealthy? I think most people will answer no. No key person in the company should be financially motivated. If the key people in the company are financially motivated, this means that you have friends who are friends with you solely because you are in a good state now, and the moment you are in a bad state, these friends will immediately disappear.

— That is, motivation should be personal?

— Motivation should be in achieving the goals that a person sets for himself. I strive to ensure that our employees receive wages above the market and have the opportunity to afford a lot: to go to a good restaurant, to a good concert, and so on. Why is this important to me? Because I want employees to have a sense of taste, to be able to see and taste a lot of things, and to develop emotional intelligence.

— Now you have about 150 people with developing emotional intelligence, if I’m not mistaken.

“I can’t say that everyone is like that, but we are striving for this.” The fact is that in a good company there are usually 20% of people who carry it forward, the rest develops more slowly than the company. For example, Dell. Those people who created the company left, two or three people remained, because the company is developing faster. The company's development vector is faster than that of other people. My task is to ensure that the number of such people is not 20, but 30-40%.

— That is, you divide people into passionaries and ordinary employees?

- No, we don’t have passionaries. We give each person the opportunity to grow, starting from a junior to a specialist in a specific competency, then to a lead in a specific competency, then to a PM who can manage leads in different competencies, and so on. If a person has potential (we only hire people with potential), he can achieve great results in our company.

— Is your flagship product today Lineage II?

- No. I was recently at a conference in Germany, and many CEOs of German companies said that gaming companies usually have one or two flagship products, and all other products are appendages.

— This is usually what happens.

- It’s not like that with us. Today we have a couple of products that we are not very happy with. They're not as good as we wanted, and our expectations when we launched are different than they are now. But all our other products occupy a huge place in the structure of revenue and our users. For example, Point Blank, a shooter that we launched a year ago, is now on par with Lineage II in terms of the number of users.

— With what intensity do you launch new projects?

— We are not focused on launching many projects, we are focused on improving our services and making our overall 4 Game service better. By September it will undergo so many changes that it’s even hard to imagine.

— You have 12 projects. How do you prioritize and manage such a range of different toys? How do you decide which projects to add to the pool and which to close?

— We have a flat structure in the company. Each project has a project manager; he is actually the general director of his project, having the right to make all decisions from start to finish within its framework. He is the project manager, he has the resources to provide his project with what it needs, in the form of internal outsourcing to the translation department, design department, and so on. He also has his own employees who work exclusively on his project.

— How many employees usually are on a project?

— There are five people on Point Blank, twelve on Lineage. It depends on the level of work that needs to be done.

— How do projects come to the company? As I understand it, these are localized Korean and Japanese products?

- All Korean. Now our priority is to work with American products. I believe there will be a couple of American ones next year.

— How do you select products?

— We have an estimation team that deals with assessments, analytics, and watches all the games. She has her own evaluation system that analyzes games in detail, after which the information reaches the project managers, me, the international business team (people who communicate with the external environment), and we decide which project is the most important for us and how we We will fight to represent it in Russia.

— How do you build relationships with the publisher-copyright holder? Are these always different models or is there a standard one?

— These are always different models, which depend on the copyright holder, on how much you want to represent this game in Russia, how much he wants to entrust it to you, and on many other factors.

— How is the proceeds divided? In half?

— No, usually 25-30% goes to the copyright holder.

— Do you keep the rest?

- Yes, but all expenses are our part. Everything, including taxes, servers, software and so on.

— Your website states that you have 2 million users. So 2 million are registered?

- No. The number of registered people is an irrelevant indicator, because 10 million can register. I think that according to registration we have 12-15 million. We don't even consider this indicator because we are not interested in it. We consider the indicator of active users (we consider active users to be those who visited us four times a month). Currently we have about a million active users, and there are about 2 million people who logged into the project once within a month.

— A fair portion of the entire RuNet. Or do you not only have RuNet, but also users from other countries?

— Mainly Russia, five to seven percent — Ukraine.

— While preparing for the program, I thought about what games should now hypothetically be interesting from a business point of view, and I was inclined to think that everything should gravitate towards games on social networks. However, oddly enough, in a conversation with an external expert (we asked Alisa Chumachenko to comment; she is the founder and president of Game Insight), it turned out that she, although she is mainly involved in games on social networks, considers your industry quite promising. Let's listen to her comment.

Alisa Chumachenko: From a business point of view, in my opinion, anything that works according to the free to play model can now be considered a promising direction. In fact, it doesn’t matter what genre and direction these games are. Both simple iPad games with microtransactions and hardcore games that work according to this model perform well. As for saturation, I really believe that this market is practically impossible to saturate. In a sense, I think this market is rubber.

— Do you agree with Alice's opinion?

— I don’t agree with the fact that it’s made of rubber. On the Internet you have to be either first or second. If you are the fifth, then you are no longer worth it, because now a lot of games are launched that have a thousand users. This seems frivolous to me.

— Is the social gaming sector dangerous for you? It's easier for the user with them. Considering that the technical capabilities of browser games on social networks are growing, they do not require downloading, it turns out that what you are doing may not be very necessary and not very in demand in the future.

- This is wrong. We deeply explore this ground and know all the technologies that people have used and will use when creating such games. We do a bit of social gaming now, but not in the same way as everyone else. The fact is that a gaming user is born on social networks, starts playing social games, then he may get bored with it because there is not enough content and engagement is low. At this moment, he needs to be captivated by light and simple casual MMOs. For men it could be Point Blank. We believe that this is why the growth of users of this game is so noticeable. This game appeals to people who have learned to play and use the Internet while they are on, and who have not yet reached hardcore games (games with a complex scenario, with a detailed political and economic system. - Forbes.ru ). Then the user starts playing hardcore MMOs - Lineage II, for example.

— How do you combat piracy? This topic is popular in your field. You yourself began your story by saying that there were many pirates. I think they exist now too.

“There are very few of them compared to what they used to be.” When we discussed issues of countering pirates, it was not serious. Until users understand that your service is much better and choose you, don’t even think about shutting down any pirates using law enforcement methods. Your unique victory over pirates will be if you achieve good and high-quality service for users, because you have resources, you have the opportunity to hire the best people, but pirates do not have such opportunities. You have the opportunity to buy the best servers, install the best equipment, and receive support from the Korean side. If you cannot win this battle, then nothing will help you.

— Is there any specificity, specific and clearly expressed, in working with games in Russia, Western Europe, America? Or are the specifics different?

— Different, because mentally we are very different. What Russian users like may not attract an Asian or European user, so we have to demonstrate a custom approach, try to do everything to satisfy the Russian user.

— How do Russian users usually pay? Electronic money?

- Anything, anything. The most popular payment methods now are Qiwi and Yandex.Money. The share of credit cards is growing, but so far it is too small in volume.

— How much interest do you charge on credit card payments?

— About 5%, before it was 3%.

— What is your average bill?

— I cannot answer this question, because this is classified information.

— And approximately how much does a function or option included in the game cost?

— From $1 to $20.

— Are all your toys free to play?

— No, we have the game Aion: today it is probably the top game on the market, and not only in Russia. It works on a subscription model. We had a meeting today about whether we can make a subscription game successful in Russia, and we came to the conclusion that we can. There is a completely different community there, it is very intelligent and civilized, and we really like it.

— How are you doing with your competitors? There are strong competitors: Astrum Nival, Russobit and others.

— I don’t consider competitors as competitors, because we do everything to ensure that users have a choice. This gives us the opportunity to improve every day to provide the user with the best service. We created this market, we continue to create and develop it. I don't see competition in this.

— You, apparently, are inclined to the same opinion that Alice voiced. Do you also think that the market is so big that your competitors are not bothering you yet?

— I fundamentally disagree with the thesis “competitors are in the way.” If you are confident in yourself, then your competitors will only help you.

— Let's return to business from the point of view of such games. What is the average return horizon for the game? Do you invest some money at the beginning, and how long does it usually take to see a return on investment?

— The game begins to pay for itself within a year. It begins to pay for itself every month, but this does not mean that you have returned the money.

— Roughly describe the cost structure. Entrance fee, team, technical support?

— Guarantees to the copyright holder. Guarantees that every year you will at least generate a certain amount of money. If you don’t generate that much, you will still pay this amount.

— How is the market growing in the world and in Russia in particular? How intense?

— It is growing quickly.

— Now questions from the listeners. “ How monetizable is the gaming audience? And what is the average age of the player?

— The average age of a player is from 15 to 25 years.

— After this age do people cool down?

— The average age is constantly growing, because those people who started playing five years ago grow up, but do not lose their passion for the game. We have many users over 30 and over 40.

— Is there over 50-60?

- Eat. I even know some of them personally.

— Do you know many users? Do you communicate with them?

— We have an advisory board mechanism where I personally communicate with users, and in some cases we take calls from users in a conference room so that everyone can listen to how the user is indignant about this or that fact, so that all managers are aware this.

— “Does your company make games for entertainment? Will there be games for education?

“We employ a lot of people who want to do something socially significant. We are currently working on the Mechtarium.com project. This is a project for children. We believe that the most important thing for a child is imagination. Until the age of seven, parents must do everything to ensure that the child develops his imagination. After the New Year, we launched it, we will develop it, we want to bring it to the masses. We are also doing the Astronauts project. It's a small social toy for kids, but almost all of the content is educational. There are educational cartoons, games - everything is done so that the child has the opportunity to play, and play profitably. The parent can set whatever he wants (set the time, how long the child can do one, the other, and so on).

— Are you acting as a publisher or localizing something?

- These are our own developments.

— Have you thought about localizing any children’s games? There are virtual worlds bought by Disney . For example, Club Penguin, P anfu.de.

— We studied similar projects, our project manager is very competent in this matter. It seems to us that the project we are doing is better, but this feeling can be deceptive. As long as we believe in him, let's see what the result will be.

— “How do you see the future of online games on tablets due to the features of the interface, controls, and platform?” — I’ve already seen a couple of interesting games. I think they will develop. Graphically they certainly won't be like Aion or Lineage, but I think a lot of people will find something in those games. It's more of a casual MMO because the engagement isn't very high.

— “You are probably considering many game genres for further development, but what styles will Innova please users in the near future?”

“This is a difficult question because we ourselves often ask ourselves: “What style should we provide to users this time?” Perhaps it will be some kind of analogue of session games like StarCraft.

Method 8. Game testing

Do you want to earn money without investment, just playing? You can start testing new games for money. A freelancer receives from 100 to 1,000 rubles for one task, while full-time employees are paid from 20,000 to 70,000 rubles.

What do testers do? You are given a checklist. You play and if you find errors, mark them in each item. You have a curator who checks the reports.

The head of the MMORPG games testing department himself creates a checklist for testing.

What do you need for work? Attentiveness, 3 – 4 free hours, computer or set-top box.

Start as a freelancer. Gain experience and put together a portfolio. Companies usually look for people with experience. You will find one-time orders on freelance exchanges.

If you want to test new games in the office, look for vacancies on sites like HeadHunter and SuperJob.

Why is it beneficial to be a tester:

• a sea of ​​pleasure;
• play the latest games that will go on sale in months;
• work without a schedule at any time;
• saving on games.

You will never be replaced by robots. It is technically possible to write a program for the test, but you will constantly have to catch flaws and add new data. It's easier and faster to hire people.

Sales of computer games

Selling computer games involves intermediary services between the developer and the end consumer.

There are several ways to do business:

• opening a store;
• creation of an online store.

Both options may involve both the sale of game discs and the sale of codes for them.

One of the large online stores of this kind is Steam. A computer player goes to the site, buys a key and downloads the full game.

To implement this idea in Russia, a massive purchase of disks or keys is required. Large companies, 1C and others offer their services for the wholesale supply of games and software. Such a system involves purchasing boxes of games from official representatives, registering the keys and then selling them. This game can be launched either from disk or downloaded using a key.

Investments in a business idea are required mainly for advertising and the purchase of necessary materials. The minimum order for game discs from a wholesale company is $200.

Method 9. Game development

Being a game developer is cool. In addition to creating the game of your dreams, you will also get paid for it.

Talented programmers, designers, and sound engineers can join the gaming industry. But the profit will drop to the usual fixed salary. In Russia, the salary situation is like this, here are the approximate figures:

• software engineer: 95,000 – 135,000 rubles;
• designer: 50,000 – 55,000 rubles;
• producer: 90,000 – 105,000 rubles;
• sound engineer and marketer: 60,000 – 65,000 rubles.

Those who make a game on their own in a small company (5 – 10 people) are proudly called indies.

Followed by 3 examples of self-taught people who prove that it’s really possible to make money from games.

Dungeon Rats . Genre: strategy. Sales – 4,721. Income – $16,031.

This Is the Police. Genre: adventure, strategy. Sales – 109,231. Income – $1,125,182.69.

Nebula Online. Genre: shooters. Sales – 69,655. Income – $243,078.45.

When you want to work for hire, go to the Playrix website in the “Career” section. There are many interesting vacancies for game developers there.

How much do they earn on mobile games: examples

Developing phone games is easier. You can download the program for creating them on the tracker and try to bring your idea to life.

User EndermAH sold BounceDroid for $100 to another company. There were 2 people in the team. It took 3 months, no investment. Not a bad start.

An adventure game with a ball that needs to be guided away from obstacles.

Android game – POiSE: Space Adventure . The creator won 3,132,500 rubles for it in the challenge. A certain Mefisto worked on it together with 3 outsourcers (artists and composer). It took a year and 40,000 rubles.

Advice from the developer: “Invest your money. You won’t earn much from playing at the “and so it goes” level.”

Mathnook bought Cowboy Zombie for 12,996 rubles. A certain Oleg created a game in 2 months without investing a penny.

There is another way to quickly get passive income without investments - selling Falco Software or MyPlayCity phone games. They will upload your brainchild to torrents, forums, and embed advertisements and toolbars there. Money trickles in for every download. If everything goes well, you will receive $2 per day.

The game doesn't pay off? Try selling it to some company. For them, indie developers are generators of ideas and cool content.

How much can you earn making games?

This question is almost in the first place for all entrepreneurs who want to start this business. It will be very difficult to answer, but let's try.

To print one disc you need about 30 cents. Here we add good printing and colorful packaging (box) - plus another 20 cents. The price for one disk is about 24 dollars. It is worth considering that this is not retail, but wholesale. From one disk the creator has no more than a dollar.

Of course, this is not a lot of money, but if the circulation is considerable, then the profit will also increase. On average, a good project can bring from 200 to 300 thousand dollars per game. And this is for sale only in Russia. Although it also happens that from the CIS countries you can get the same profit as from the rest of the world. The promotion factor of the game may influence this.

At the same time, it is worth paying attention to the fact that the business of online games could bring in completely different money if not for pirated sales. For example, more than 500,000 legal discs of the popular game “Truck Drivers” were sold. This brought the developers almost $750,000. And if not for pirated fakes, this number could have doubled.

Method 10. Gaming blog or website

Are you up to date with the latest gaming news? Can you safely call yourself a “feather shark”? Become a copywriter - write about games or start your own website.

I invite beginners who have not yet learned to captivate the reader with their articles to our copywriting courses.

But creating your own website is more profitable. The income from the articles you once write will continue to trickle in for years. Contextual advertising and affiliate programs are only part of the sources of profit.

I found this site on an online auction site. I want to strive for these indicators. The piggy bank of the owner of the gaming portal is replenished monthly by 413,851 rubles. And he sells it for 5,000,000 rubles. 26,321 people visit it daily.

By the way, you can also sell your project for a huge amount after promotion.

Is it possible to make money on economic games?

In an economic game, virtual items are sold for real money. Your chicken laid 900 eggs, you hand them over to the game poultry farm and get 9 rubles. Dial the minimum wage of 10 rubles and withdraw to your wallet.

I would classify economic games as the 11th way to make money, if not for one “but”. Almost all of them are financial pyramids like MMM. Money is paid from new players who top up their balance. When the flow of newcomers dries up, the game will go bankrupt and investors will be left without money.

It is written right in the rules that the organizer is not obliged to pay. Read them carefully in every economic game.

This is not the worst case scenario. Games like Farm Frenzy generally take everything for themselves. As soon as the minimum wage is reached, you are asked to bring 5 people or deposit money into your account. Once you have fulfilled the conditions, you will not see what you have earned. An error will immediately appear on the site or you will be blocked.

Is it possible to get rich playing the economic game? Yes, if you created it, otherwise no. For the sake of interest and for you, dear readers, I invested 131 rubles. to the popular Golden Birds project. They exchanged them for 13,000 silver. With them I bought 8 green birds (1,000 silver - 1 pc.) and 1 gold (5,000 silver - 1 pc.) + 1 was given as a gift after registration.

They lay 840 eggs per hour; if converted into money, it would be 0.08 rubles/hour and 3.2 rubles/day. Also, half of your earnings goes into your shopping account, from which you cannot withdraw funds. I will reach the minimum wage in 10 days, and my investment will pay off in 82 days.

Participated in the lottery. I gave 100 silver coins (10 kopecks). She was among the top three winners, but did not receive the prize – 250 silver coins.

List of economic games for earning bitcoins:

1. CoinBrawl – battles between gladiators, where the gladiator receives up to 500 satoshi (2.14 rubles) + 3,000 satoshi upon registration. The minimum amount for withdrawal is 10,000 satoshi (27 rubles).
2. BandiRun - a little fox runs, collects fruits, and you exchange them for satoshi. At the rate for 300 apples you get 20 satoshi (8 kopecks). You can transfer your accumulated funds to ePay or Blockchain.
3. SmurfGo – a gnome runs around looking for coins. As soon as there are 250 of them, you can exchange them for 25 satoshi.
4. TomyGame – invest, fight in teams, help Jerry move the cheese to the hole and get bitcoins for it. You won’t earn much here, but you will have fun and make good use of it.

Such projects close quickly, so you must withdraw your earnings when you have accumulated the minimum wage, then it’s not so scary, at least some of the funds will be returned. Another trick - resetting the service due to hackers - a scam, if you have already reached this point - the game will soon be closed.

How to make money on games: the complexities of business

Every business venture has its own nuances. So, for example, in order for your computer games business not to go underwater immediately after launching the project, it is necessary that it be competitive. And this factor largely depends on the quality of the games and how much they can interest users.

Competition is growing every day. Every day, more than a hundred new games are born all over the world, each of which someone wants to get rich. But only a few of them gain real popularity and, accordingly, bring good profits to their creators.

The second problem that those who do not yet know how to make money from creating games may encounter is the variability of fashion. It takes about a year or two to develop one toy. And during this time, the interests of users can change in any direction. Many creators admit that sometimes it is easier to stop a project rather than continue to finance it, since by the time the next game is ready for release, it may no longer be relevant.