$11k * 7 days = $77k $77k * 4 week = $280k $280k * 12 months = $3.36mil I wouldnt be surprised if most of those 70 people were near minimum wage either. (This is just KaW too, SMASH and PIMD werent included either.)
A fascinating insight into the company. Amazing you were able to schedule a tour. I agree with others four ppl working on this game may explain why some of the issues concerning the KAW community goes unanswered. Like other organizations, you have to stay viable with new games especially in an area I assume is very competitive. At the same time, kaw is their cash cow and it seems to me that more individuals SHOULD be addressing our concerns. If KAW goes, does that mean the company goes as well?
Expanding on that those four workers at most get paid 25$ an hour 4*25*8 (full time is 8hours a day) =800$ and at most electricity and maintenance costs 200$ a day so 11000-200-800=10k of pure profit every day.
Interesting that it took you almost two years to write this up? Do you not think there may have been a lot of changes in that time? Just thinking about the changes I came back to after a two year career break from my job, and there was quite a difference!!
I'm not aware of any other company with more resources allocated to new product development than existing product development and support. Seems like an unusual business practice.
I think it's fair to say most of these issues are being laid to rest. Lately, KaW is getting more attention than it has in years in my opinion, with many advances being made to improve the game. Even in my department with the mods I can see a change. There's more mods currently "enlisted" than all the former ones combined( give or take a few). But yes, games like SMASH are probably the future, but invest in what you have in case it's not.
I am sure operating cost far exceed 200. Business telecom can be astronomical. Also employer tax and insurance liability. Theres server leasing. Software leases. Monthy payments to suopport desk to host all the support features we use. Hell even standard coffee service has a machine and supply fee lol
Ive been playing SMASH and they are getting alot more attention than KAW. SMASH admins are always on wc, and updates every few weeks. So their priority is obviously not on KAW. But wont be spending a dime on SMASH
For the server depending on how much data that is allotted for each user it can be anywhere from 4k to 9k a month
Thanks for the insight Philo. Hopefully things have changed since your visit. Having just 4 people responsible for your most profitable product is definitely a strange business practice. To be fair we have seen a lot of improvements recently, but if this was still the case I would definitely support the game being sold to developers who are interested in the game. I don't think its too much as a consumer to expect the creators to be passionate about their own product.
Hey Philosopher! Nice to see that you're still playing, and thanks for posting this. A lot has happened at ATA since you visited. You are right, we are focused on new games, we love making games, and we’re always trying to create something new. But we also realized at the beginning of this year that we needed to put some extra love into KAW and PIMD, and since then we’ve been devoting more resources to the games. Since January we’ve been ramping up the team and more people work on the product including a full time artist, narrative designer and game designer. If you look at all the things we’ve done since the new year, you can see we have been working hard on new features, and fixing more bugs (some things you might not even see, we worked on lag this week, anyone notice?). Anyway, we are going to keep working on the game and we plan to be here for a long time. Right now there is a lot of frustration in the forums, this isn’t new. While you can’t make everyone happy all of the time we'll be trying our best. Also please note these new people do not include our full time support team which covers all games.