Made 7M with Antivirus on 11.2.1

[Sebastian]

I designed until I4 and developed until 99%. It was super easy, barely an inconvenience. I had no workers hired and made a profit of 7M. I think that needs to be balanced.

[Phiber Optik]

First these questions:
- Difficulty level?
- Did you use a publisher?
- Did the competition release an antivirus or were you the first one?
- How well did the competition do with their antivirus?
- is you antivirus the first one for that OS?
- Mods

All these can contribute to a (maybe lucky) first big sale.

-Difficulty level: speaks for itself. Easy = big bucks easy, medium = sometimes big sometimes small ...
- Publisher: did they do marketing and printing? Because essentially your product got sold under their name. They (publisher) might have done huge marketing costs etc...
- Competition: is there any? any on the OS you released on? Is yours better than theirs?
- mods: do you use gameplay mods like The Xperience mod?

[Gopher]

the biggest issue is this:

publishers throw insane money at your product going significantly in the hole (millions).

Marketing is too easy.

What would balance this is more companies to compete against.

[DoctorDanny]

Thumbs up for the 'super easy, barely an inconvenience'!

[Nickjet45]

Trust me that isn’t broken

If you get it to I4 and 99% then you spent years on the product, meaning you make good on your returns

Most I’ve made on a product is about 60 mill profit (was antivirus)

[Sebastian]

- Difficulty level? MEDIUM

- Did you use a publisher? YES, for marketing - they did great the competition only sparse

- Did the competition release an antivirus or were you the first one?
There were four releases before mine. May, Dec 1980 and May, Dec 1981

- How well did the competition do with their antivirus?
That one what published with me in Dec 1981 made 47M

- is you antivirus the first one for that OS? NO

- Mods NO

>>If you get it to I4 and 99% then you spent years on the product, meaning you make good on your returns

Nope, Started 1980, Release Date December 1981

[Sebastian]

Originally posted by DoctorDanny:

Thumbs up for the 'super easy, barely an inconvenience'!

Up Thumbs are tight!

[test]

Yes , antiviruses are super easy to develop even by yourself. Thsi is how i start most of my games.

[Phiber Optik]

Out of curiousity, did you start a new game or continued a 11.1 save?

[test]

Originally posted by Phiber Optik:

Out of curiousity, did you start a new game or continued a 11.1 save?

I'll assume you were reffering to me

Started a new game.

[Sebastian]

Same here, as mentioned in the title :)

[Phiber Optik]

Because I used console to give my character full skills, let him make an antivirus and (because of the lack of fans in antivirus) I barely made 100k with an almost featureless Antivirus.

settings:
Until iteration 4 (100%).
Review said 10/10
No gameplay mods.
New game.
Game design document recommended 2 programmers, 1 designer, 1 artist. Used 1 guy who was maxed in all.

Will try one now where my guy makes a full feature antivirus that will take 3+ years...

[test]

To clarify, I never made millions from the first release. I dont think thats even possible.

Now, my first release (which had a few features selected, just enough to have 100% satisfaction) only netted me somewhere between 300-600k, enough money to afford hiring a couple dudes and maybe a support dude.
This first antivirus took me somewhere between 1 and 2 years to complete by myself. Only did 2 iterations.

After hiring I started working on a sequel which had the same features as before but I did 3 iterations and made sure the quality was better than before. This only takes 1 year ideally.

Now, i managed to make a few millions. Worst case you will make just 1-2 million but frankly thats more than enough.

[Phiber Optik]

Just made an antivirus with 4 features selected in system (nothing in 2d) and made 2.7 million.
Euhm, well i'm not sure how much balancing should be done.
On the one hand, you need money to advance in the game, on the other getting it too fast seems discouraging...

[Gopher]

well you can't do featureless and expect to make much.

The sliders for example in antivirus - the more the bars are in color, the more the market share you are eligible for.

For example, If you meet 100% of the interest of the market but then it takes you 3+ years to make it then the interest will go down by the time it launches so you won't just a little bit more for buffer.

I made 120 million off one software, never off antivirus though... It was a game.