What do you think the ration of succesful and failed games are with Unity?

I was just wondering. Out of all the projects people have made with Unity what do you think the ratio is between successful and failed games?
I think the ratio is really high. However that is not because of anything revolving around Unity. It has to do with the creator of the project. Just wanting to hear your opinion.

 

Around 1 in 100 i think, i believe it has everything to do with unity because its free! so anyone can make a game with it.

 

On a generalized note, I don't think it has to do with just the creator, but other team members also.

 

With any project, having one or 2 very dedicated people are key, I run a social network with a friend as well . Last year around this time we had about 10 people saying how much they wanted to work with us , but when it comes to putting in the time , alot of people flak out .

 

Impossible to answer for a host of reasons. What qualifies as success or failure? If I make a game for $1000 and I make $5000, is that a success or a failure? Depends where you live, how you value your time (if at all) and what you were hoping for. If I make a game for $2000 and it makes me $500, is that a failure? What if it also helps me land a contract worth $50k? What if you just measure it purely in terms of what you personally aimed for? Again, not much of a metric. If I set my sights ridiculously high and almost achieve it, that's not going to be a failure in the eyes of most people, but just me.

So I'm going to be awkward and say 1 out of 1. There's no such thing as a failure. Every project is a success in some terms. If it doesn't make you money, it teaches you something or you learned a lesson or you made mistakes you won't make again, or you just made one of those ten crap games you have to make before you make a good one.

 

True dat.

I have a project that is about 5 or 6 years old which was completed long ago, but it needs a good deal of work (it's a utility app for a MMOG, so it needs constant changes to keep up with the game)

Number of people with read/write SVN access to the project code: 34
Number of people with active commits in the last year: 6
Number of people with more than 10 commits in the last year: 2
Total number of commits in the year: 110

So yeah, the vast majority of the work is done by 2 people. Out of 34. I find that's pretty typical. You have a couple of people that are motivated, the rest are slackers

 

I say 1 in 1000 or worse, but because I count every project that gets started and never finished (because the team didn't have what it takes) as a failed project.

 

I'd say it depends on what you consider an attempt, Like I'd say out of teams that see a playable Alpha , 1 in 10,
Teams that see a playable beta( as in the game just needs bug fixes), i;d actually think most will complete their game

 

Everything i'm thinking ...

 

(1 in 1000) given you take the failing of started projects in the forums and eventual finally getting the thing out the door it then has to compete globally, Regardless of any personal satisfaction it may bring.

Personally I have thrown good money at this and yet to have product ready for the market place but any hard return would be fantastic for my ego.

 

Define what it means to start a game to begin with. Right now I'm leaning on 1000+.

 

I consider having a GDD and a group of 3 (unless its a solo project) I think once you start recruiting people is when your projects pretty much starts.

 

So you are only ruling out projects where there are only 2 people working?

 

This could mean anything from a flash game prototype, to an iOS app to to a console distribution. Care to clarify what is sucessful? If you mean finished and out the door, I still assume the number would be quite high.

 

Allow me to postulate on a simple formula for what is a successful indie game...

Income from game sales / Game development cost = Income ratio

Thus if your game costs $5000 to make, and it makes $10000..
10000 / 5000 = 2

If your game costs $5000 to make, and it makes back only $5000...
5000 / 5000 = 1

Anything under a ratio of 1 = a failure, since you didn't even make your development costs back

Anything between 1 2 = a marginal success, you'll have enough to continue making another game, but how will you eat and drink and be merry and go on holiday?

Anything >= 2 = A successful game! You made your money back, allowing you to continue to be an indie game company and develop another cool game, and on top of that you made some money too so you can eat and drink and be merry

 

I think a successful game with Unity is a complete project. It does not have to make money or anything. Just a simple clean working game (or app) Because of Unity being free lots of people have it. And since lots of people have it there are a lot of thrown out projects.

 

It's probably not too high if you consider projects that had funding and a team to begin with, I think they do pretty well/go far with unity.

But yea I've got several "unfinished" unity games..... more of an educational experience than "failure". But I've gotten several orders of magnitude further with Unity than I did putting the same effort into torque, udk, and c4engine.

 

That's called a completed game.

 

Granted everyone's definition of success is different, but mine is making enough money to be able to support myself and make another game.

Right now I'll admit to not being a successful developer.

 

i would say that less than 1% of people who start a project finishes it, and much less for commercially successful games