Hi,

Just stumbled accross PlanetsCon, a very small event to celebrate a game known as Planets Nu (which itself is a remake from a game that was popular in play-by-mail during the mid/late 90s).

Joshua Perina, principal at Geographical Media Inc was the guest spokesman of the event (and creator of the game). He revealed interesting numbers that I thought I'd share.

I believe that a number of developers have this understanding that building a "good game" is what's important, but business often gets in the way and demands a larger target audience (that's how we generally end up with AAA or Farmville type social games).

It turns out that Planets Nu is actually profitable despite having no more than 1500 Monthly Active users.

Its only monetization is an optional subscription of 3$, without which you're mildly restricted (except in higher level competition matches).

As it turns out, the game became quite popular & profitable despite a failed kickstarter attempt in 2012:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/172779664/vga-planets-nu-the-official-remake

That's refreshing news for an indie that believes in Gameplay first!

That $54k income is for 1 year after the primary development costs have presumably been paid off. So the real question is, how much actual effort and costs are there in maintaining the game as it stands today? If you had to spend 80 hours a year maintaining the game, that's what, $675 an hour?

I'll take that.