Abstract
The end of the year should mark the beginning of the Absidon Games as a business with a plan to make money. The history of the company is one of lost and it is time to turn that around and at least start with the goal to complete projects and monetize the projects.
The following is a proposal for how to get the foundation of the company started with projected completion. Next will be the projects for which the company will monetize and projects that will be given away. The projects should establish polished and professional development, emphasizing Agile Development practices, developer testing, and user testing.
Company Foundation
The foundation of the business is the absidongames.com web site, which will serve to establish the projects. The focus of the web site is two parts, the front end where members and visitors will visit and the back-end, where developers and administrators will enter.
The front end will list all of the current projects, as well as past (dead) projects. It will have a general overview of the projects, background, explanation, player count, and link to the project site. The site will also have the primary blog for project and company status.
The back-end will manage the development cycles: roadmap, ticket tracking, wiki using Trac from Edgewall. The back-end will also manage the Subversion users and roles for the different projects. The goal of which is to streamline users, project documentation, and project goals and tasks.
The hosting that serve all of the projects, including the absidongames.com site will start with a cheap alternative (Godaddy Virtual Dedicated) and once the earnings hits even with the losses or earns an increase, then the projects will be moved to a better server (probably ThePlanet).
The projects will also utilize WordPress for the projects and build off of the functionality of WordPress. The game projects will also use QGL (Quantum Game Library). Development of the projects will also help with the development of QGL and WordPress.
WordPress Plugins
- Subversion User Management
The Subversion user management plugin will interface with the htpasswd file to manage users that have access to the different Subversion project repositories. It will have to be a custom role(s) for each project and most likely be dynamic, so that the roles can be created and told where the password files are.
The project shouldn’t be that difficult and should be completed fairly quickly. The project will require a little research and also other alternatives. Linux can’t be the only supported platform if it is going to be a public plugin.
- Subversion Log and Source
This plugin will interface with the SVN PHP extension and SVN command line in order to access the Subversion log and display the source.
- Project Management
A simplified bug tracker, basically manages tickets. The projects will start with Trac, but eventually will move over to WordPress Project Management. This project will have a timeline of 6 months and the first iteration will be a collection of plugins. The plugins will be combined, once they are completed, then they will be moved into single WordPress project.
- Wiki
Manage pages and revisions, this is already built into WordPress, will just have to extend and support the current and future iterations of the feature.
- Banner Ad Widgets
Clone of OpenX, except simple administration and integration with WordPress and stats. I want to have stats available for advertisers, and for the administrators. The ads also need to be available to other sites by javascript or HTML invocation. Won’t be as featured as OpenX.
WordPress Projects
- Game Engine
The WordPress game engine will be the base for which the rest of the games will be built off of. It won’t need that many improvements, but will require that the core of WordPress be stripped out or redefined. It will also include QGL, among other custom components.
It will also have to be developed in a way that allows for WordPress core to be upgraded easily.
- Most Game Projects
Most game projects will have the source available with a few that will not. With the multiple game developers, I don’t own the copyright to most of the games, therefore I don’t have control over whether the source is available.
Projected Completed Game Projects For 2008
There are currently three game projects in development that need to be polished. It will be time consuming moving the game code to WordPress Game Engine, but it should be worth it in the long run to have the same base, it won’t require reinventing the wheel and some of the game code can be moved between game projects.
The goal should be to reuse as much code as possible between the projects to save time. This will mean moving code to QGL, when components are generic enough to be reused in game environments.
- Mecha Asylum
Needs to be converted to the WordPress Game Engine and the game needs to be redeveloped. This means almost complete redevelopment. The game is too complex and needs to have the feature set shorten and polished.
- Battle Machines (robomachines)
Game is almost finished and working. The first iteration of the game will run, while the other games are being redeveloped on WordPress Game Engine. The game will need to be polished, have a security review, and perhaps a touch of JavaScript and AJAX here and there to make the game more interesting.
- Earth 3045
Game is about halfway finished with the last discussion with the developer. Which means it is also a good candidate for using the WordPress Game Engine. I’ll need to go over the game features and get a short feature set list going. The game needs to be simple, with a quick development cycle. When the game is going, new features can be added in the second version.
Making Money
Money will be made from Google Ads (or another ad provider) and from the banner plugin that will allow for advertisers to add their banners to the game sites. The bunk of the money will probably come from the advertisers and not Google Ads or another ad provider.
Eventually, premium memberships offering removal of ads will be added to the games. The Premium membership will offer other enhancements that offer better view of game controls as well as further ease of game features. The Premium membership will not offer more “tokens” or enhancements, which can only be construed as “cheating.”
The goal of the premium membership, which historically have had a low percentage of enrollment, should be to offer incentive other than more “tokens” per “turn” or decreased time per “next turn”. This will increase the premium memberships, once the trust factor and incentives are established for the user.
Expenses for 2008
- Hosting: $58.46/mo (-$175.38)
Projected Profits for 2008
Nothing
It is not expected that any considerable profit will be obtained the following three months. However the outlook once the games are going should still see a lost for the fiscal year. The traffic
Advertiser Model
Based on the traffic and the amount of active users, the rates will be as follows. There will be one top wide banner that will hold a maximum of 8 banners. There will be one wide banner at the bottom, which will hold 4 banners. There will be three side banners with the dimensions of 125×80 each, which will hold 2 banners each.
- Under 10 Active
- Top Area: $2 each slot per month (Max: $16/mo)
- Side Areas: $1 each slot per month (Max: $6/mo)
- Bottom Area: $.50 each slot per month (Max: $2/mo)
Max Total: $24 per game, so $72 with all three. This is not feasible, since advertisers are not going to be willing to buy ad space for such a cheap price and for so little of visitors.
- 11-30 Active
- Top Area: $4 each slot per month (Max: $32/mo)
- Side Areas: $2 each slot per month (Max: $12/mo)
- Bottom Area: $1 each slot per month (Max: $4/mo)
Max Total: $48 per game, so $144 with all three.
- 31-60 Active
- Top Area: $8 each slot per month (Max: $64/mo)
- Side Areas: $4 each slot per month (Max: $24/mo)
- Bottom Area: $2 each slot per month (Max: $8/mo)
Max Total: $96 per game, so $288 with all three.
- 61-100 Active
- Top Area: $20 each slot per month (Max: $160/mo)
- Side Areas: $10 each slot per month (Max: $60/mo)
- Bottom Area: $10 each slot per month (Max: $40/mo)
Max Total: $260 per game, so $780 with all three.
- +100 Active
- Top Area: $30 each slot per month (Max: $240/mo)
- Side Areas: $20 each slot per month (Max: $120/mo)
- Bottom Area: $18 each slot per month (Max: $72/mo)
Max Total: $432 per game, so $1296 with all three.
The ads will cycle through the banners displaying them if they exist or google ads, if no one bought that slot. The ads will only show up every four page views, once the person has clicked on a banner, it won’t show up for that person for 4 days.
The purpose of this is to keep the click through rate ratio high. So if a person clicks on the ad, then they’ve already seen that site, so they won’t be clicking on it again for at least a little while. So for instance, if they went to the site, ignored it, and then thought about it some more and decided they actually did want to visit the site some more. If they forgotten the URL, then the banner will show up for them after four days giving them a second chance. Number 2, if they are looking at the same banner all of the time, then if they haven’t clicked on the banner already, then they’re not going to click on it the next couple of page views.
It doesn’t make sense to show the same banners over and over again to the same visitors. By limiting the views, then it allows for the viewer the chance to click on the banners, but not be as obtrusive to the experience. This will put off advertisers, since they will want their banners to be displayed always as much as possible. It could be disappointing to them, but I believe that the model will work when it is implemented.
Goals for 2009
The goals for 2009 is to enhance the current three games, once the first iterations are completed. It is also to release three more games. The advertising model will also be revisited for flaws and corrections. The current games should have over 100 active players and on its own dedicated server or servers.
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Sounds feasible. Lets do it.