M.4 Week 5: Funding and Budgeting

 

Cost Estimates for Competitive Product Development

I was originally going to investigate either Dream Daddy or Life is Strange, as they overlap with the target audience of the indie game I intended to make.

However, Life is Strange's team and cost levels were too different from what I had envisioned for my vision, so I decided to look into the development costs of Dream Daddy. The most successful part of Dream Daddy's game are the great storyline and the massive amount of exposure (in terms of a Bara game, but technically it's not a classic Bara game). They did share some of their ideas for writing the story at GDC.
Source:Links to an external site.GDC How to Write Games for the Internet without Embarrassing YourselfLinks to an external site.

And as I researched the team I was shocked at how many people they had to hire to complete the game in 9 months (actually it took 10 months). (And that's not a compliment.)

Before I researched the development team for this game, I thought they were having " unbelievable enormous success", as they have sold 484,000 units so far. 
Source:VG Insights Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator - Steam StatsLinks to an external site.

But after I found out the size of their development team, I revised my assessment to " Quite Successful", especially in terms of marketing and media exposure. Because Game Grumps is a very successful media studio in its own business.

Because there is no literature on the internet about the development cost and official revenue of "Dream Daddy", I can only estimate the development cost based on their staff salaraies, and I suppose they didn't spend too much money on marketing and advertisement because Game Grumps is a very successful Youtube studio, so I believe that they can promote "Dream Daddy's game" very effectively by using their own resources. 
Source: How Game Grumps Created Dream DaddyLinks to an external site.

Here's my estimate of the staffing costs for their "development team".
Source: Wiki - Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating SimulatorLinks to an external site.

• 8 Designers : US$501760 (6,272X8X10) 
  (According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual salary for multimedia artists and animators in 2020 was about $75,270. Based on this data, the average monthly salary will be about US$6,272.5.)
• 2 Writhers : US$116660 (5833X2X10)
  (According to the U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics, the median compensation for scriptwriting in 2020 is estimated to be $33.64 per hour, or about $70,000 per year, which is average of $5,833 a month.)
  

So their rough estimate for staff development costs is US$618420, I believe it should be higher as they mention in the video that they spent almost a year working on the game, so if I multiply the staff costs by two, which is US$1236840, and then according to VGI's estimate, the revenue of the game is US$5,400,000!

In conclusion, I personally believe that Dream Daddy is the best selling Bara game in the history.