Hello backers! One of the key themes of this project is TRANSPARENCY. We really want to share the whole process with you, and that includes something that is usually a big secret on a game: Where does all the money go? Sorry if you don't talk about money in your family, because we're going to talk about it here. As you may know, we recently raised quite a bit.
$3,446,371 to be specific. But that money has to go towards a lot of different things, and that's what we've been working on figuring out over the past couple weeks. In order to schedule out and staff this game, we first had to actually figure out what the game's budget would be. And now we can share a bit of insight into that process!
Fees
The first thing to be deducted from our total was Amazon fees. For every payment made through Kickstarter, Amazon took 5%. After that, Kickstarter took their 5%. There were a handful of failed transactions that were never corrected as well, leaving our final total after fees and failed transactions at
$3,099,660.
Rewards
The next step of this process was figuring out how much it would cost to make and ship all of the physical rewards we offered. It was important that we set aside all this money up front so we could deliver products that live up to our high standards (holy cow you guys are going to be so stoked when you see this stuff). We also wanted to make sure the process of getting this all shipped out had as little impact on the team as possible, so we hired the amazing folks over at Fangamer to handle manufacturing, storing, packing, and shipping all of the rewards. Here's the breakdown on where it landed:
It may look like a lot of money, but hey it's a lot of rewards! These numbers were actually all being run while the Kickstarter project was still underway. Each time we prepared to add a new reward we ran the numbers to see how much it would cost to offer the new reward to existing backers. For each new reward, that amount was covered within hours of adding the item to the project, so this amount paid for itself and then some by enticing more of you lovely backers to sign up.
Documentary
After Kickstarter, Amazon, and rewards had been accounted for, we were left with
$2,626,429. At this point we were ready to split the money with 2 Player Productions. Originally, 2PP was asking for $100,000, but just like us they were asking for a bare bones budget and their production has expanded quite a bit in reaction to the unexpected amount of support and interest in the project. It meant not just following us for 6 months, but for an entire year. It also meant covering a lot more travel (they're in Portland, we're in SF), buying new equipment, and paying for an amazing score from Terrance Lee. Taking this all into account, we agreed that a fair split would be to give 2PP 15% of the money after fees and rewards. This put the documentary budget at
$393,964.
Game
Using the modern miracle that is math, that means we can now deduce that our game budget is
$2,232,465. That's way higher than $300,000! And will most definitely ensure that this game is suuuuuuuuuuper awesome! Here's a neat lil' pie graph to help visualize the breakdown:
At this point things became much more familiar for us. It turned into an exercise in allocating money for expenditures such as VO, localization, music, marketing, and QA testing, then determining how large the team can be and how long the project will run.
In the end it means we're in a much more ideal situation. Instead of a team of 3 working for around 6 months, we'll have a team of 11 working for around a year, which ultimately will result in a better game.
AND IT'S ALL BECAUSE OF YOU!!
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Originally Posted by Greg Rice, Producer
Hello backers! One of the key themes of this project is TRANSPARENCY. We really want to share the whole process with you, and that includes something that is usually a big secret on a game: Where does all the money go? Sorry if you don't talk about money in your family, because we're going to talk about it here. As you may know, we recently raised quite a bit. $3,446,371 to be specific. But that money has to go towards a lot of different things, and that's what we've been working on figuring out over the past couple weeks. In order to schedule out and staff this game, we first had to actually figure out what the game's budget would be. And now we can share a bit of insight into that process!
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