Posted by Latte

With unixmad in charge, it'd probably be more or less the same. They might be making money off Graal, but professional coders/artists are very expensive. To give an idea, a small set of custom pixeled armor can cost $80+. This might be due to the fact that Graal is also purchasing the commercial rights while buying the art(this might go for coding too, but I wouldn't know). So, if they hired professionals, itd be probably be for things that make the game the same, but a little bit better; updated UI, new tiles, new large sellable item, etc. Stuff that are a safe investment for the game. Probably wouldn't be as innovative as you'd expect. I doubt they'd use paid artists for original, creative projects when they can get people to do it for free. tl;dr: expensive things cause safe choices instead of creative ones

I think this is the best explanation for why not to hire devs I've seen.  

stefuhn pls
hier real peeps  

Skill do you remember green guy / iROOSTER

And anytime you want I'm down to help bring SHRUB back  

Posted by Tasai

Skill do you remember green guy / iROOSTER

And anytime you want I'm down to help bring SHRUB back

Yup, I definitely remember you! You were one of our more active members.

@Latte they don't need to hire pixel artists, there are kids/teenagers willing to make stuff for free, it isn't a rare skill. Plus there's custom uploads. But hiring a couple programmers isn't that expensive. It would only cost maybe $50,000 a year each, and the amount of work they could get done is insane. It would cost less too if they outsourced it.  

Posted by Skill

Yup, I definitely remember you! You were one of our more active members.

@Latte they don't need to hire pixel artists, there are kids/teenagers willing to make stuff for free, it isn't a rare skill. Plus there's custom uploads. But hiring a couple programmers isn't that expensive. It would only cost maybe $50,000 a year each, and the amount of work they could get done is insane. It would cost less too if they outsourced it.

Well with towering more popular than ever I believe you should take it into consideration I'm usually on around 10 hours a day so I'll still be an active part of SHRUB but when all is said and done its your decision man I was just thinking about it the other day and happened to see your post on the forums  

Posted by Skill

I really wanna bring it back, but so many core members quit. Maybe if we can get some graalians together to revive the guild and get towers I'll definitely play a lot, but otherwise idk. A lot of our core members moved on or aren't playing anymore, it's not easy to get a successful tower guild started.

10/10 would tower with SHRUB again  

Posted by Skill

Yup, I definitely remember you! You were one of our more active members.

@Latte they don't need to hire pixel artists, there are kids/teenagers willing to make stuff for free, it isn't a rare skill. Plus there's custom uploads. But hiring a couple programmers isn't that expensive. It would only cost maybe $50,000 a year each, and the amount of work they could get done is insane. It would cost less too if they outsourced it.

Coders, under the right management, could take Graal to a new level; definitely not denying that. But really, $50,000-$80,000 a year is probably what Unixmad makes off of Graal alone, considering there aren't any advertising deals or pop-up ads, outside of the one airline sponsership Graal got (which didn't result in paid workers either). But! Coders could easily be paid for if Unixmad wanted to get investors to pay for them. Still, Graal has been around for more than a decade and Graal's business model hasn't matured at all.

Also, I wouldn't underestimate the power of professional art. While Classic's recent work has actually been very professional-looking, Classic as a whole lacks good marketing. There is a lot more art that Classic needs than just stuff that volunteers can do.

The problem isn't as simple as just getting a team that can fix the game and save the day. It's getting investors and growing the business model of Graal itself, neither of which seem to be happening any time soon.  

Posted by Latte

Coders, under the right management, could take Graal to a new level; definitely not denying that. But really, $50,000-$80,000 a year is probably what Unixmad makes off of Graal alone, considering there aren't any advertising deals or pop-up ads, outside of the one airline sponsership Graal got (which didn't result in paid workers either). But! Coders could easily be paid for if Unixmad wanted to get investors to pay for them. Still, Graal has been around for more than a decade and Graal's business model hasn't matured at all.

Also, I wouldn't underestimate the power of professional art. While Classic's recent work has actually been very professional-looking, Classic as a whole lacks good marketing. There is a lot more art that Classic needs than just stuff that volunteers can do.

The problem isn't as simple as just getting a team that can fix the game and save the day. It's getting investors and growing the business model of Graal itself, neither of which seem to be happening any time soon.

+rep  

Posted by MBK

+rep

stop repping the ****poster.  

Posted by MrSimons

stop repping the ****poster.

thats a nice amount of rep u have
would be a shame if
something
happened
to
it  

I actually feel pretty strongly about the volunteer-based system Graal uses. Honestly, I think it's wrong and exploitative. The higher ups (Unixmad, Toonslab) RELY on the blood, sweat and tears of unapaid volunteers, and then profit on this unpaid work. It's sad. They do the absolute minimum for the game, yet reap all the rewards. Without these volunteers, the game would go nowhere.  

Posted by Latte

thats a nice amount of rep u have
would be a shame if
something
happened
to
it

i guess one could say I "have a brilliant future" ahead of me?

Posted by Crag

I actually feel pretty strongly about the volunteer-based system Graal uses. Honestly, I think it's wrong and exploitative. The higher ups (Unixmad, Toonslab) RELY on the blood, sweat and tears of unapaid volunteers, and then profit on this unpaid work. It's sad. They do the absolute minimum for the game, yet reap all the rewards. Without these volunteers, the game would go nowhere.

They are volunteers, if they are okay spending time developing for free, and having someone else earn money off of it, thats their deal. I can guarantee you most devs that you ask will say that they do not even want to be paid for working on Graal, there was a thread like this before and a few of the current devs actually came in and talked about how they'd rather not prefer to be paid.  

I agree with not wanting to being paid. It sets standards (sometimes unrealistic) and creates a strange work environment (im referring to Graal, as normal jobs are much different).

That being said though, the "higher ups" should acknowledge the volunteer work that is being done and take steps to improve the game. For example, lag has always been an issue for Graal, yet Unixmad hasn't done much of anything to fix that issue. It would help for him to be communicative in the community, but I don't see that happening either.

So in ways I agree that the volunteer work is exploitative, only because the higher ups aren't even relevant in the game, just the team of volunteers are. And even then, they have little to no contact to the higher ups too.  

Posted by Latte

thats a nice amount of rep u have
would be a shame if
something
happened
to
it

OOOOOOOOOOO Mr.Simons...afterall...she is a SUPER MODERATOR!...
Latte...if u ever want to do anything with his rep...throw a little at me too <3  

Posted by Latte

Coders, under the right management, could take Graal to a new level; definitely not denying that. But really, $50,000-$80,000 a year is probably what Unixmad makes off of Graal alone, considering there aren't any advertising deals or pop-up ads, outside of the one airline sponsership Graal got (which didn't result in paid workers either). But! Coders could easily be paid for if Unixmad wanted to get investors to pay for them. Still, Graal has been around for more than a decade and Graal's business model hasn't matured at all.

Also, I wouldn't underestimate the power of professional art. While Classic's recent work has actually been very professional-looking, Classic as a whole lacks good marketing. There is a lot more art that Classic needs than just stuff that volunteers can do.

The problem isn't as simple as just getting a team that can fix the game and save the day. It's getting investors and growing the business model of Graal itself, neither of which seem to be happening any time soon.

I'm pretty sure they make a lot more than $50-80K a year. There's over 3000 players online at a time on Graal Classic alone. Combine all the servers and its between 5-10K.

In comparison, Tera's concurrent userbase on Steam ranges from 10-20K(which is likely inflated due to people keeping the launcher open when they aren't playing). Now, Steam doesn't account for all the players, but from my experiences in Tera it seems like the population doubled after the Steam launch(maybe even tripled, servers that were "dead" even have login queues now. I'd assume Steam accounts for over half of the playerbase currently.

There's also Tera in Korean and Japan which are much smaller, so in total we're looking at maybe 50-100K concurrent users at most.

Tera generated over $200 million in revenue in 2013, and this was BEFORE the Steam launch, or the expansion. it's probably much higher now because the population went up immensely. With 10x the population, it generated over 1000 times what you estimated Unixmad makes off of Graal.

Also look at other games like Rise of Immortals, that had a team of dedicated developers to support an online playerbase of 50-100 players at a time before it eventually shut down. You'd be surprised how much money f2p games generate.

Also, if Unixmad hired developers, the population would likely grow and generate more revenue as a result. If they added cool items actually worth buying that actually did things besides look pretty, maybe people would buy gralat packs.

Need more reliable evidence? Team Fortress 2 is a Steam exclusive. In 2013, it generated $139 Million in revenue. Team Fortress 2 currently has 60,000 Online, Graal has ~5000 online between all servers. Also keep in mind tons of people in TF2 are probably idling/botting on multiple accounts for drops.

So at 1/10th the size, Graal would theoretically generate ~$13 million in revenue annually. Obviously it'll vary(maybe people are more likely to spend money on TF2 than Graal), but populationwise Graal is bigger than you think.