Browser development - a year of life and three years of torment

In fact, a year has passed since the last article - the whole year silence was more connected with the absence of large-scale interesting moments, which, for the most part, were covered in the first articles [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]. However, at least a new story can highlight the results of the annual work of the project from the moment of its launch into public access.

For those who are not interested in the details, they just wanted to know the result - no one became a millionaire, did not open offices with lounge areas, the market is not captured, competitors are still a cut above us in terms of development and size of business. True, from the positive aspects, it is worth noting that the project is alive and developing, the team has become wider, more and more involved in the development process and, as a result, more interested in work - the team and the project have a future over which we are working.

Workflow and team

In fact, the process of working on the project has not changed in the main form: we still have several deployed projects from different branches of the version control system for testing, we collect updates every two weeks, but some details have changed. Firstly, the team has expanded quite a lot since the last note: game masters, moderators and testers were added, and very good testers, given the test of various darts in the functionality, to which my brain did not immediately think out. Secondly, one more person added to the artists team who works under the strict guidance of our main artist, which means that the style and ideas will be as remarkable as they were a year ago.

Thirdly and fourthly, there were some events with different time of accomplishment, which led to a change in the time of work on the project for a part of the main team of developers. At the beginning of autumn, the project coordinator left the main workplace and moved to the project on a permanent basis, as the forces for combining were clearly not enough - this is undoubtedly a plus for the project, but a permanent risk for the family budget. Following him, at the beginning of the current year, I personally, in an attempt to change my place of work, could not resist a new employer due to discrepancies in technology, and also moved to a full-time project. As a result, the ease of working on your own project throughout the day, the absence of the boss hanging above your head, your own responsibility for your deadlines, and the ability to distract from your work by necessity outweighed all the advantages of high salaries.
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There were some ideas related to the project, but not directly affecting the project - I can’t say the details yet, but an idea can bring a new audience and open a new direction of work. Since all current labor resources are already scheduled for the year ahead, it was decided to take on an additional developer as a junior part-time student (2-4 hours a day), just for a separate project, in order to help any person to start their journey and at the same time get in the future a loyal proven developer who can be trusted, ready to join our team on a full-fledged working day, when such a moment comes. The first "pancake" turned out, as usual, lumpy, despite the presence of some knowledge in humans. The absence of questions on development, regular work “silently” nullified our cooperation, since it turned out that we did not need mentoring, and loyal attitude could not be achieved. The new man, who came out for the failed colleague to replace, had somewhat less knowledge, but this was offset by desire and aspiration, although as a result - again periodic “holes” in the work schedule, again silence, again a lack of interest.

A few years ago, at a codefest conference, I heard a phrase that the only one I remembered from the entire conference (rather, because it consisted entirely of self-praying speakers, while still worth enough money): “For an employee to at least somehow work - he needs a carrot in front and the carrot in the back. But for an employee to work really well - he needs a “carrot” inside ”, - everyone will understand in his own way, but only the main development team has a“ carrot ”inside, and it’s quite difficult for newcomers to have it. Most likely, when things become a little smaller, we will try to organize a new raid in order to find a student assistant, but forcibly forcing and pulling someone certainly does not make sense.

Society and Fame

This is a rather unusual feeling when an unfamiliar person with whom for some reason it is necessary to form a dialogue turns out to be familiar with the history of the project. Undoubtedly, this is flattering and creates some additional motivation for action.

For example, quite recently a problem arose that made it almost impossible to carry out payments through Robokassa on credit cards, and I had to write and call several times a “support” in order to resolve this issue. In one of these calls, the girl manager still transferred my call from the “first line of defense” to the actual technical support department. I gave the transaction number for which there were complaints from users, and then I heard something like the following: “One minute, I am looking for a transaction. Yes, yes, I see a payment on a bank card, one hundred rubles, a Pernatsk store. Is Pernatsk a game? I read about you on Habré. By the way, the solution to the problem began precisely with this call, as promised, our situation was decided on time and in our favor, we are very grateful. True, the problem then arose again, and again, and again, up to the daily calls to the line and the beginning of a conversation with other banks on the subject of acquiring.

In addition, there are a sufficient number of cases of writing articles about the game for personal blogs and about-game sites, which gave an additional increase in registrations. It should be noted that there was a noticeable contrast of articles about competing projects: we were better responded to, however, I did not feel the difference in the comments (probably, the specificity of the sites played a role). As an additive, periodically receive letters with reviews, tips and suggestions, for which additional thanks to all who are interested in the fate of the project. And in the appendage to the general emotions, three issues of the “underground newspaper” were added, formed under the inspiration of the events taking place in the game (the pictures are clickable).


Undoubtedly, there will always be dissatisfied with every little thing, inadequate and others. Almost from the very beginning of the project, there are well-known personalities who criticize every update of the game - from expressions of dissatisfaction on the quality of execution to complaining about the illogical conditions and delusional idea, but it should be noted that such players persistently chew our "cactus". The only time during the year of the game was the occurrence of the insane spammer, speaking obscene language in the general communication channel, for which he had to resort to emergency measures in the form of redirecting this individual to non-uselessness, because the usual ban did not give a long-term effect.

Someone else's money

One of the most important questions of any “startup”, which we do not consider our team and our project, is “Make it - do it, but from whom to get the money?”. The problem of financing, it would seem, in our time is not a problem as such - in the presence of start-ups, a huge number of investors, a kickstarter and other similar projects - there is always something to choose from. However, someone is thinking about financing, stopping the project for searching, someone is instead trying to solve the project on their own - and we chose the second option.

I will not say that we did not look for investments, on the contrary, we were in some kind of passive search for several months: we placed offers on investment sites like napartner.ru, talked through acquaintances with “big uncles” who could potentially invest money (and it took really a lot, otherwise all the funding did not make sense). And I will say even more - interesting conversations on the topic of cash flow began to spin several times. After being placed on napartner, we were contacted by one of the investors, whom we talked with for quite a long time for several days, but it all ended with the loss of interest from the investor after receiving the full alignment of our current revenues at that time (the notorious APRU \ ARPPU and similar indicators which actually do not interest us much, but people with money are very interested). We did not torture a person with further questions: not interesting - not so interesting.

Then there were conversations through my good friend, who for some reason helped me a lot in various cases, including at one time and searching for a workplace, without asking for anything in return. He has some connections with the “business sharks” who are really involved in investing, and there is interest from the “big uncles”, but there is always some “but” that allows the interest to fade. We always understood that an investor wants to invest his money somewhere and earn an income that is at least three to ten to thirty times higher than the initial investment, and it is better that the repayment period does not exceed a couple of months - exaggerated, but true. And we could never guarantee either a return period short enough to release the hormone of happiness from the investor, nor a multiple increase in cash, relaxing the muscles of the jaw joint. Our calculations were guided by the history of competitive projects and common sense, promising gold diamonds and decorating them with pasta was not in our plans, which is why the result did not keep itself waiting for a long time: after a while, investors always lost interest, probably they found more profitable projects and this is not their fault - this is business.

Several times there were situations when a person addressed us with the intention to create his own game, offering his own funds (and, most importantly, ideas) as initial investments. The size of the estimated investment in all cases was somewhat higher compared to our expenses before the launch of the project, but also small enough to contain a development team. Let's be honest: if we, as a team, were able to create a project without practically investing money in it (and our budget spent over two years is practically nothing), this does not mean that our team will abandon the current project and start making a new one on the same conditions. If an investor wants to create a game, this implies full hiring of the entire team, since two parallel projects are no longer possible, and paid work to maintain the family budgets of developers is obligatory. Total for the minimum work required: game designer, programmer, artist, designer, copywriter, marketing specialist, office worker, office worker, accountant, cleaning lady Aunt Lucy, janitor, cat and a couple of hamsters - you can try to calculate the amount of market wages two or three million rubles is not enough to launch a project from scratch.

“But you can take a ready-made alien engine, take a part of the graphics, finish a little bit - and get a beta version!” - often answered us in response, not even guessing that digging into someone else’s engine, written 5-10 years ago, was arranged I think that my own illustrations for ready-made strangers, the development of the concept of development within the framework of the functionality of the finished project only complicates the task, and in the foreseeable future there will always be a bottleneck requiring either restarting or rewriting. We did not see the meaning and positive emotions during the work, therefore, refused.

Every month at the start-up sites we updated our indicators (those that are APRU \ ARPPU) in order to show the positive dynamics of the project development at the expense of our own forces, but this did not bring any sense. Someone bows at the feet of investors, arranges numerous presentations, visits every startup party in the country, and spends a lot of time and money on it - we are not sure that the time spent in this way, and even more money, will bring results specifically for of our project, since we are not creating something new and incredible. Therefore, the attitude towards potential investors has always been quite simple on our part: if there is no interest equivalent to our motivation for three years of development, you should not hope for further cooperation, because we cannot guarantee financial benefits, therefore the absence of an investor will give us our own peace, which is equivalent having a multi-million dollar budget. And personally, I'm not sure that now it makes sense at all to consider investing in current realities with a crisis and general hysteria, as well as the level of project development.

Its business, its resources and its own profit

Making any profit, regardless of its size, entails paying taxes to the state, the obligation to honestly divide the income between the team, and make decisions related to the project. And if the issue of taxes is due to specific rules "from above", then for the rest, you have to wiggle and negotiate.


Along with the receipt of the first funds to the account, the first major acquisition was made on behalf of the company: the design of a trademark for owning the rights to the name and logo design. As it turned out, our state is not at all oriented to work with companies owning “virtual” assets - for registration of rights to a trademark, you must specify the scope of rights (for example, aircraft manufacturing is not included in our work plan, therefore, a suitable item for such works can be excluded from list), but at the same time there are no suitable items applicable to the activities “in the network”. For a long time we sat in the office of a company engaged in registration of this kind, reading into the list of goods-services subject to registration under a trademark, choosing at least some remotely suitable classes. The registration process has not been completed yet (it lasts about a year on the side of the state machine without our participation from the moment of submission of documents), we expect to receive a certificate in early May this year.

Profit sharing is always a somewhat awkward topic for public discussion, and no specific figures will be announced. Let's just say, there is a narrow circle of people involved in not just the main tasks of the project, but taking on responsibility including running the general business of the company, this circle of persons distributes the profits between the team members, taking into account the cost of rent, advertising, taxes and so on. Further. The division follows the principle: “first, the team at the base rate, then the team as an increase in the rate, then the team according to merit, and what is left is already divided between the founders”. This approach allows one to gradually increase the financial motivation of the team in order to increase their involvement in the process, while leaving enough funds for the founders' interest, from which the maximum number of forces emanates from the whole team. At the same time, accounting is maintained on the basis of an outsourcing organization, although we conduct the main reporting layer for ourselves.

Advertising

It so happened that several years ago I had to work for an Internet advertising company (and I am grateful to the managers of that company for the opportunity to work, I really took a lot out of those projects for myself). During his time at the company, he had the opportunity to participate in the development of the teaser network, CPA network, affiliate programs, and this additionally gave some information about the online advertising market.

First of all, of course, we had to try on our own dot advertising platforms with really tiny budgets: we tried to place advertising posts on entertainment sites, tried banner ads, social networks, but the return didn’t correspond to even the small funds we spent. The next step was to place advertisements in thematic groups in social networks related to birds and animals - the effect was, but not too big. Spending "under zero" all the revenue could not bring the desired number of registrations - due to the specifics of the project, because of our unwillingness to turn the project into pumping out money from the public. Therefore, for the most part, we consider spot advertising as a market breakdown, and nothing more.

The second stage of the advertising campaign began from the moment when responsible people from the team began to place advertising articles on gaming websites and catalogs. Some directories asked for money, some asked for a lot of money, but many agreed to place a “link with a description” for free. The greatest response from users at that time fell on literally one or two resources who asked for a sufficiently small and adequate amount of funds for us (for example, gametarget.ru).

And finally, with the increase in the advertising budget, the option of advertising through CPA networks has become available. I was lucky to stumble upon one of the networks, which provided a more or less adequate service, where managers understood what they were doing - they conducted testing with traffic, determined target achievements, converted the cost of registration into level goals. As the advertising budget dried up, we looked at the profit from such advertising, which was approximately equal to the invested funds, which was quite enough for the gradual development of the project. I understand that people who work through CPA as webmasters who advertise, like investors, want to get their chunk of profit, and are free to choose advertisers who pay more and faster, but we could not afford to give large funds on the goal in the "registration" or goal, "achievable in 2-5 minutes" of playing time. Two goals working in our campaign were achieved in a few hours and two or three days, respectively, and the final effect was equal to the initial test reference amount of 15 rubles per registration.

Subsequently, webmasters stopped directing traffic to our project, moving to more profitable sites, and there could be no complaints from us, but for us the increase in the price of goals or the transition to minute achievements is equivalent to a waste of money, which will not have the opposite effect - we, of course , adjusted their goals in favor of webmasters, but, again, within reason. In addition to the CPA network with which we had the opportunity to work (and it works to this day), there were other offers - from competing CPA networks, but the more managers we communicated with, the more inadequate prices we saw - reached 60-100 rubles for registration without any guarantees of the quality of traffic and strong recommendations not to use pending goals, to which to go more than 5 minutes. Such prices may seem to be normal for monster companies or for “info-businessmen” who videotapes breast augmentation courses for 3999 on the “landing pages”, but obviously not for us.

We do not draw specialized “landing pages”, offering discounts, bonuses and golden mountains for registration, do not try to lure and deceive any visitor, squeeze every last drop, are ready to work only with a voluntary target audience. Probably, because of this, we will not be able to fully achieve the success of our competitors, but at the moment this approach underlies our work.

At the moment, we continue to cooperate with the CPA network, which receives fairly stable traffic that supports the volume of registrations, and we cooperate with one well-known television and media company that places our banners on their projects (thanks to the friend who once again brought us together with “big uncles”), we start cooperation with another payment aggregator not only on the front of making payments, but also in the plane of holding shares and spreading information on “their” side. In other words, the development on the advertising front goes at its own pace, which is due to the need to deliberately spend the advertising budget.

Pest control

It is worth saying a few words about competitive projects, after all. Yes, we are not alone in the market, and the project is not unique, but over the past year several events have occurred, forcing users to look for other resources for spending time. One of the events was the complete closure of two projects of the main competing company. The second event is the "wipe" (complete cleaning of the database) after several years of regular work of another of our competitors.

Every few days in the so-called “Pwitter” inside our project a newcomer necessarily appears, who with all revelation begins to tell what game he came from and why, there are several people who will confirm the correctness of his decision and help him understand the main points of the new habitat player. By the way, such players are the ideal target audience for the project, which form the backbone of active players for us, therefore, like a year ago, word of mouth remains “word of mouth”, as well as for any other project, only in In our case, the factor is enhanced by the destructive actions of competitors, for which they are especially grateful.

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