(03-18-2011, 02:55 PM)vanollefen Wrote: As a moderator, money was a factor, but more of a justification. Running Flying Dutchman Games let me buy new computers, a laser printer (over $2,000 - times change), go to conventions, and paid for my gaming habit. I think in my best year I made around $10,000.
RTG was a full time business for all of us and was our total income. For much of the time I was there we would make that much in a couple weeks, but the catch was expenses were so high that profit was very small (since we had a staff of three owners, two principal employees and 4-5 other GMs).
Our style of games required a critical mass of players. SuperNova regions had a minimum of 150 players (I think) to start a game. Victory had a game setup processed at exactly 40 players, etc. To be an epic space conquest game you needed to have a lot of people to form alliances, bump into each other, etc. If the game was to live for years and years it required a lot of people to start with (since few wanted to join if they are years behind the original players in technology).
Our plan of paying additional GMs and getting a little profit from each additional region just never really paid off. The added equipment, sorting mail, paying GMs, dealing with phone calls, paper costs, etc always ate into the profits enough that we could never stockpile enough money to get off the treadmill. Once we started automating and licensing games we managed to see a little daylight and could begin getting time to develop for the future.
Well, my real job has kicked back in so I will probably drop off on my posts here. It was good to talk with you and I liked the timing of bumping into Rich as well. I think I only saw you once briefly at a convention, but I also remember the ads for Flying Dutchman games. It was a fun time back then.