6 ms·

Seems mobile is a good space to be in...

by bond 16y ago

ZeroMinx 16y ago
Indeed! Anyone with insights into Backflip Studios? Number of people working full time, how much money spent building this range of games?
- hesdeadjim 16y ago
  I've worked at Backflip for the last year. The company was started by a few friends of mine from a previous startup here in the Boulder area, and since then it has grown from 6 fulltime employees to 10. We're growing at a good rate and are still looking for great engineers (hint hint). The amount of money we spend making a game for iOS or Android varies a lot depending on the scope of the project. A game like Paper Toss or Strike Knight is primarily art bound, so if you have a great in-house artist or two (we do) then you can figure out the cost based on 1-2 months of dev time for one engineer, 1 month for art, a few weeks for sound, and a few weeks for random QA/marketing/etc at whatever pay rate is applicable to your area. If you need to replace any of those components with contractors, your cost will definitely increase.
  - ZeroMinx 16y ago
    Thanks for the inside info! Always interesting to hear from inside companies like this. You're on the wrong side of the Atlantic for me though :)
robryan 16y ago
As with anything you see the success stories often because they are interesting which masks the fact that the vast majority of those developing mobile games have trouble just breaking even. Without anything first hand experience I get the feeling that advertisers are paying to much at the moment for ad space in iphone apps, given that it's a relatively new advertising direction I don't think it's really stabilized yet and going forward it will probably become harder to pull the same kinds of number from that same traffic.
- tyng 16y ago
  Good point - reminds me of the ridiculous amount of money Yahoo was making back in the early days of internet, probably not going to be sustainable.
bignoggins 16y ago
I don't remember where I saw the study. But mean iPhone app makes 3K and median is $700. This is is total revenues, not monthly. So mobile is definitely a hit-driven industry, as you can see by the delta between the mean and median. The top guys make millions but most indie mobile devs barely make minimum wage.

Seems mobile is a good space to be in...

by bond 16y ago

Seems mobile is a good space to be in...

Indeed! Anyone with insights into Backflip Studios? Number of people working full time, how much money spent building this range of games?

hesdeadjim 16y ago
I've worked at Backflip for the last year. The company was started by a few friends of mine from a previous startup here in the Boulder area, and since then it has grown from 6 fulltime employees to 10. We're growing at a good rate and are still looking for great engineers (hint hint). The amount of money we spend making a game for iOS or Android varies a lot depending on the scope of the project. A game like Paper Toss or Strike Knight is primarily art bound, so if you have a great in-house artist or two (we do) then you can figure out the cost based on 1-2 months of dev time for one engineer, 1 month for art, a few weeks for sound, and a few weeks for random QA/marketing/etc at whatever pay rate is applicable to your area. If you need to replace any of those components with contractors, your cost will definitely increase.
- ZeroMinx 16y ago
  Thanks for the inside info! Always interesting to hear from inside companies like this. You're on the wrong side of the Atlantic for me though :)

robryan 16y ago

As with anything you see the success stories often because they are interesting which masks the fact that the vast majority of those developing mobile games have trouble just breaking even. Without anything first hand experience I get the feeling that advertisers are paying to much at the moment for ad space in iphone apps, given that it's a relatively new advertising direction I don't think it's really stabilized yet and going forward it will probably become harder to pull the same kinds of number from that same traffic.

tyng 16y ago
Good point - reminds me of the ridiculous amount of money Yahoo was making back in the early days of internet, probably not going to be sustainable.

bignoggins 16y ago

I don't remember where I saw the study. But mean iPhone app makes 3K and median is $700. This is is total revenues, not monthly. So mobile is definitely a hit-driven industry, as you can see by the delta between the mean and median. The top guys make millions but most indie mobile devs barely make minimum wage.