How to make money off of a virtual reality game?

Hey guys, I'm currently working on a virtual reality game right now and I might need some advice with regards to how I'm going to make money from it. My main goal is to publish my own games and sell them for a living, but when I did the math on a sheet of paper, I would need an extremely large amount of customers to be able to sustain myself with this type of business.

So far, it's a virtual reality game that has a concise story to it and it involves shooting down skeletons by aiming your headset at them. My current plans for profit involve selling it at Google Play for like $0.99 to $1.99 and promoting it like crazy. Another business model I'm considering is hosting a station of my game to some gaming event and charging people to play my game for a limited amount of time, similar to an arcade.

I'm not sure which profit model would work best but I'm open to other alternatives. In terms of breaking even, I haven't really spent any money in the production of my game since I have relied on open source software and free assets to get much of the job done. However, a lot of time has been spent on this virtual reality game (4 months so far) and I don't want to have to publish this game without a solid plan on how to make substantial profit from it.

I'm open to any possible suggestions or constructive feedback. I have been able to create new assets out of necessity from the creation of my virtual reality game, and that has been paramount to making me money during the tedious development period. I've definitely checked that off as an additional stream of revenue for my game, but what do you guys think?

 

I like your pay-to-play game-event thing. I would do the candy crush thing... where if you die too much, you get hit with a 6 hour wait time to play again. At that point they can choose to spend real money to immediately resume play.

I would also make it free to download, there is a predicted shortage of VR content, so a lot of people would download it. If you can get the gameplay to be addictive, and get creative with the in-app-purchases, you might be able to get some money in your hands.

 

Advertisements could be an alternative if they were designed for VR.

 

Hey, thanks for the replies, guys! I was actually considering making my game free-to-play with advertisements and in-app purchases, but when I published my mobile game, Blox Trapper onto Google Play (free with ads and in-app purchases), I made pretty much no money from it (except for only $2 from ads which is not even at the payout threshhold) even when over 200 people downloaded it. I was thinking that if I had made my game $0.99 rather than free, I would have gotten a lot less downloads, but probably a good chunk of money in the process.

And yeah it's a little more difficult to set up ads and microtransactions with VR, considering that these integrations were designed with a 2D user interface in mind. You'd have to set up an entirely new interface with it and even then the payment process requires you to take out your phone from your headset, which is probably too much work for most players. That's kinda why I went for the pay before you play method, but the game station seems like a pretty good idea so far so I'm kinda leaning on that one right now.

 

Honestly this seems to be pretty normal for Android. At least from what I've read on these forums.

 

Oh, wow... Really? Are things any different for games published through Apple, Steam, or the Windows Store?

 

If I were you I would focus on totally crushing it with the game you're making. If you make something great you can use it as an example and then create custom material for people. For instance, imagine recreating an event with a deceased loved one for someone, an awards show or sporting event experience, etc. Also, if you have 3d models you can import these over to the Xperia AR Effects SDK and make money with one of their apps. This is the kind of thing I write about on VRmakingmoney.com.

 

That's a pretty cool idea. I'm not sure if I can sell my 3D models to Xperia since I don't know that much about 3D modelling (I'm relying almost completely on free assets), but I'm definitely keeping my options open. I saw your website by the way and it was very informative.

 

1. Make a really cool game or app.
2. Give it away for free.
3. Wait until you have 100K + users.
4. Sell the app to a big company for several million $$ let them try to make money.

This has actually been done by some people I know.

 

Yeah shame 99% of people will get stuck at:

 

This is the catch. Some people become so focused on making money that they neglected to make a good game too.

 

I think my game might be pretty good. I'm not sure if it's worth millions of dollars to another major game company though. For now, I'll just start small and see if my game receives a good number of sales and a good number of positive reviews first. Once I understand the public's reception of my game, I can determine whether I should improve upon it or abandon it completely.

If you guys want, I can maybe post screenshots or a video clip of my virtual reality game and maybe get some feedback in the process regarding how to make it more profitable, how to give it better gameplay, or how to improve its exposure through better presentation quality.

(If yes, I'll probably post it sometime after this weekend. I have a 5 page paper that's due on Sunday midnight and I have been working on it these past couple of days like crazy)

 

For games that aren't poopy cash grabs made of slapped together assets and half-baked monetization schemes nobody cares about things are different.

 

Whoa, lol. That sounds a little harsh. Well, I hope my game doesn't fit that criteria once I show it to this thread- I mean, I don't consider myself a game developer that just slaps together assets without applying any substantial work on it myself personally, but I guess that once I start displaying screenshots and video clips of my project's gameplay, people can judge it for themselves and give constructive or positive feedback accordingly. It's no big deal, I'm quite open-minded; I don't mind people here saying my project is bad so long as they give constructive criticism along with it.

 

Don't forget the predicted shortage of VR customers too.

 

That's short shighted. Spoken like somebody who hasn't tried the only truly robust VR system on the market.

 

The only people I know who own VR sets are devs...

It's possible that VR is poised "about to take off" in which case good products and studios that get in on the bottom floor will do well.

It's also possible that the technology will not interest consumers and flop. In which case studios and products will collapse.

It's an exciting market to to be in. But it's also a risky one.

 

Every VR game I've tried out at conventions etc, have made me sea-sick!

They need to figure out that first.

 

The Vive will not make you motion sick, trust me. It's been resolved for arcade-style games (and they feel amazing).

It feels like there is a theme park in my living room. Every person I have given a random act of viveness has left with a smile glued to their face that lasted a day and a half.

There is a huge and thriving niche community, and if you know a lot of "developers" who have Vives, it's because guess what: we started developing because of the Vive. Some of us will go on to do great things with it. That's why I am reading books more than making posts.

It's not going to take off to a mass market and it doesn't need to. The cost barrier is there, but so is small-scale manufacturing. It's profitable, it's amazing, and that means it's going nowhere. They're not going to stop manufacturing Vives because they can "only" sell 10,000 more- the future is adaptive & reactive short-run manufacturing anyway.

It is not possible the technology will not interest consumers. It is the arcade you were promised from the 80's that technology could never deliver manifest. It has been teased for two decades and pined for over five. People were attempting to build this in futility in the 60's without computers. You want it.

If you don't want it, you either lack imagination or haven't tried it. Or you're a mountain man. Different strokes. Or you think you've tried it but you've only tried the half-baked version.

It is the panacea of interactive entertainment software, even with an umbilical cable. Even trite games like Audiosurf become addictive and compelling when you have to throw your whole body against them, there's something primal about it. Using the system is almost ritualistic; firing up the compositor, watching the beacons spool, kneeling in the middle of the room, over a rectangular center-carpet, and donning the headset, then reaching out for the wands.

The other big thing is Valve's backing VR with their "open" closed API. As someone with about two months of computer asset authoring experience, I am able to look in there and see that basically it's a system that will map whatever can give a vector 3 position from a device to an object in my game, bringing supporting a wide range of proprietary devices into the realm of feasibility. The manufacturers of the devices develop their end of the code and SteamVR wraps it into the same TrackedObject outputs. That's why it's closed source, because it's curated by hardware manufacturers / valve.

We have the tools. There is no risk for entrepreneurs. Maybe old die-hards of "the industry" think there is, because they've come to believe they are entitled to some aspect of wealth and don't have confidence in their own ability to develop a marketable product... probably because all they've been doing is trying to develop marketable products for so long they've lost touch with what their demographic wants. Worst thing that can happen is nobody buys my game and I don't support Unity or Valve with royalties as a result, and life continues except I've made a game.

They're out there, they're sharpening flags to plant, and the forest will not stop growing. I wish I were not so late to the party.

 

Fortunately there are more developers now than there have ever been... unfortunately they're not all good at it.

I'd settle for actually having a computer capable of driving the headset... and the money for a headset.

 

There is always risk. At the very least you risk whatever you invested up front to develop the game. Plus there is the opportunity cost of whatever else you could be doing instead of making the game.

Put it another way. If I invested a million dollars in a VR game, would I get it back in sales?

 

If we're discussing risks we should consider that Facebook paid a couple billion. Unless virtual reality takes over in a spectacular way I simply don't see them recouping that investment.

What platforms would you be targeting? You might be able to recoup a part of your investment with PC but it wouldn't surprise me if targeting mobile-based headsets (Google Cardboard, etc) would have the biggest potential.

 

You're not very familiar with how the business world works. A product can be achieving a modest degree of success but if the investors feel their money can be put towards a product with a better return they may simply pull funding. Additionally you have to take into consideration any behind the scenes costs.

 

Nobody cares, I don't need investors. I have Unity. I'm not alone. The HMD's will keep selling. You haven't tried the Vive.

It's going places and if you think it isn't you've only tried bad VR implementations. Everything was expensive and exclusive at one point. Lots of things stay that way and also stay profitable.

If you need a million dollars to develop a Unity game, you're doing it wrong.

 

Or I might simply not be blinded by hype and naivety. I never said it won't go places though. I'm simply skeptical. You have to realize that some of us were in this business when past attempts were made at virtual reality and they failed miserably.

Right. Just looking at the graphics card market is a good example of this. At the same time though computing gaming being expensive is why consoles and mobile gaming managed to catch on to the degree they did. The Vive has great potential but it still remains to be seen if it will be more popular or even successful at all.

After all if you have to spend a fortune for a headset you will want the one with the most supported games.

Or you're simply not a hobbyist, an individual, or a very small team. Millions of dollars is not a requirement until you start developing a high quality project and virtual reality will very much need some high quality titles.

 

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Thanks

 

Meh, I hate Sony, so I refuse to buy a PS4 for their VR Headsets.

And the whole VR gimmick failed in the 90s so why would it work now? Better technology? That means sod all if the games still suck.