Future of KSP

[tomkpunkt]

I own 2 copys of KSP, one from the website and one on steam. Thats about 50$ i pay for the game... one of the best games i played for a long time. With 1000+ hours of playtime is KSP one of the cheapest games in my library. But that makes me stomach pains. And i thought about the future of the game.

So I have a topic to discuss:

What if the market is saturated earlier, than the game is feature complete. Squad could run out of money. How can Squad monetize the game. DLC or KSP2? 

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, tomkpunkt said:

What if the market is saturated earlier, than the game is feature complete.

I don't see any knock-offs saturating the market...

[steuben]

I'll let Kyogurt answer this one:

Moichandising, moichandising! Where da real money from da game is made! Kerbals: da T-shirt, Kerbals: da Coloring Book, Kerbals: da Lunchbox, Kerbals: da Breakfast Cereal! Kerbals: da Flame Throwah!! Da kids love dis one."

[bonyetty]

With console versions on the way and their relatively small dev team, I would guess $ for SQUAD is not a major concern for them. However once KSP is released on consoles they may have a problem if they intended to do their banking through Panama. 

[Sandworm]

3 hours ago, tomkpunkt said:

I own 2 copys of KSP, one from the website and one on steam. Thats about 50$ i pay for the game... one of the best games i played for a long time. With 1000+ hours of playtime is KSP one of the cheapest games in my library. But that makes me stomach pains. And i thought about the future of the game.

So I have a topic to discuss:

What if the market is saturated earlier, than the game is feature complete. Squad could run out of money. How can Squad monetize the game. DLC or KSP2? 

Running out of money doesn't matter.  That isn't the point at which a game stops development.  Squad is a business, not a charity.  Development stops when daily or expected revenues no longer meet operating costs.  The past is irrelevant.  Having 50billion dollars in the bank from last months sales doesn't mean that you continue a business that is no longer profitable.  The day that it becomes cheaper/more profitable to close the doors than to keep them open is the day everything stops.  All that matters is future revenue expectations, daily/weekly/monthly sales.  What happened yesterday is irrelevant to the decision.

 

Also, imho recent decisions by squad point to endgame.  The talk of consoles, the preference for steam customers rather than store sales (me) ... it looks like they are shifting into a long-term maintenance mode.  I expect core development to decrease dramatically in the next couple months.  Axes will soon fall.  The move from "We're working on it" to "We're done" is underway.

Edited April 6, 2016 by Sandworm

[FyunchClick]

To me the console move indicates opening up new markets reusing a good chunk of the assets developed over the last few years. If anything, it would mean the computer versions can profit from any assets developed for console. For Squad, the computer version remains a breeding ground for new features they could elevate to standard as the mod scene here is just amazing, so there's a bit of incentive there to not let it fall by the wayside provided the console market compensates reducing sales on the computer side. And finally, the mod scene has the potential to keep new features coming even if Squad calls it quits anytime soon, so I'm not too worried.

And @tomkpunkt, absolutely right this game has been amazing value for money given the enormous amount of time I already spent with it (must be at least double that of nr. two in my library).

[cantab]

4 hours ago, Sandworm said:

Having 50billion dollars in the bank from last months sales doesn't mean that you continue a business that is no longer profitable.  The day that it becomes cheaper/more profitable to close the doors than to keep them open is the day everything stops.  All that matters is future revenue expectations, daily/weekly/monthly sales.  What happened yesterday is irrelevant to the decision.

 

Depends on the business. But I think observationally, the vast majority of companies that find themselves cash-rich but losing money will stay in business hoping to turn things around, not cease trading.

[Tourist]

Squad will move on eventually. It is a business after all. But at some point the torch will be fully passed on entirely to Mod makers.... who themselves will lose interest eventually.

But I don't see the endtimes as being that close, the console ports, paid DLC, bundle sales etc will all keep the revenue trickling in for the immediate future. 

I predict about more two years of active development (on paid additions) after the console releases, then scaling back to just maintenance for a little while after that. Maybe overlapping with the time Squad develops a new property, KSP2: Maximum Ker-splosions (all the "realism" fraternity that read that just cringed ) or the development team is dissolved and all move onto other projects.      

Edited April 6, 2016 by Tourist

[OrbitalBuzzsaw]

I think that a year or so after that, a team of ex-modders will buy the rights and start development again

[Temeter]

9 hours ago, regex said:

I don't see any knock-offs saturating the market...

Even if there were, it's really hard to beat a good original with a knock off. People won't just stop playing Call of Duty and drinking Cola either. I don't really see KSP going away. Didn't even get to the point where Squad would release Addons. Although maybe the gonna start a new project if they get tired of working at KSP?

Well, it's gonna get smaller at some point, but that's how it goes with every game. And even then you still got a hardcore community core that will stay a while.

[jwenting]

5 hours ago, cantab said:

Depends on the business. But I think observationally, the vast majority of companies that find themselves cash-rich but losing money will stay in business hoping to turn things around, not cease trading.

they will also cut things that are not their core business to save money, and KSP isn't Squad's core business (though it probably brought them a nice chunk of income over the last few years).

That may involve shutting down side operations, or selling them.

What helps here is that KSP is a bit of a hobby for them as well as being a source of income

[Los Angeles]

These are all interesting and valid points from everyone. I believe the future of the game will be determined by the gaming community. As long as people are willing to spend time, and more importantly money, on this game, KSP as a program will continue to grow and evolve. Whether this will be Squad, ex-modders or Electronic Arts (or any other organization willing to buy the rights) that will move this process forward is rather speculative. Also, whether this will be towards a direction that will not just satisfy, but also inspire, is another bet, perhaps even bigger. KSP is a successful business that may be generating solid revenue, but its success is coming from its charisma to strike certain chords to both public and developer team. As long as this equation remains, (i hope that) KSP will continue to excel. 

[KSK]

38 minutes ago, Los Angeles said:

These are all interesting and valid points from everyone. I believe the future of the game will be determined by the gaming community. As long as people are willing to spend time, and more importantly money, on this game. *snip*

I hate to be a pessimist but given the past howls of outrage at any mention of paying for new content, I wouldn't be betting heavily on that. I think there's also a limit as to how far KSP can evolve. A lot of the gameplay mechanics (for better or worse) are fixed, making it difficult to implement any radical changes at this stage.

If Squad do intend to keep monetising the kerbal brand, I suspect they'd be better off starting with a clean slate and writing KSP2. Unfortunately that may also be a bigger commitment than they're willing to make - as somebody pointed out, KSP is not Squad's main business.

I think Tourist is about right. Console release, couple of years of ongoing development and then done. But that's just my opinion, written without any knowledge of Squad's business at all, so it's just as likely to be a load of hooey.

 

Edited April 7, 2016 by KSK

[StarStreak2109]

Squad at some point will most definitely move on, either be disbanded or making something else. This will IMHO however not mean that KSP hasn't got a future. There are many games, who have been abandoned by their original creators virtually ages ago and who are still alive and kicking thanks to a big modding community.

One of my favourite examples is Microsoft Train Simulator. Train simulations is one very niche subject. The purpose of a train simulator is to run a train, literally watching it as it runs down miles and miles and miles of track. To some, me included, this is a relaxing, fun way of spending your free time. This enjoyment not only comes from the running of trains, but also from making content. When MS Train Simulator came out, it was BAD! The stock game was flawed, the stock content was looking like sh*t and hadn't the game been very open to custom content (despite the fact there was little to no documentation), it would have died a quick and silent death. But still today, people are creating content and commercial addons are being sold. Third party products, be they commercial or free, have overcome many of the short-comings and have also spawned successors of varying success.

With KSP, I think, once Squad stops eventually working on it, whenever that may be, the modding community will be keeping it alive for quite some time. And that is not something I am even remotely worried about right now. Right now, I am looking forward to moving ahead to 1.1!

[Jhawk1099]

6 hours ago, StarStreak2109 said:

Squad at some point will most definitely move on, either be disbanded or making something else. This will IMHO however not mean that KSP hasn't got a future. There are many games, who have been abandoned by their original creators virtually ages ago and who are still alive and kicking thanks to a big modding community.

One of my favourite examples is Microsoft Train Simulator. Train simulations is one very niche subject. The purpose of a train simulator is to run a train, literally watching it as it runs down miles and miles and miles of track. To some, me included, this is a relaxing, fun way of spending your free time. This enjoyment not only comes from the running of trains, but also from making content. When MS Train Simulator came out, it was BAD! The stock game was flawed, the stock content was looking like sh*t and hadn't the game been very open to custom content (despite the fact there was little to no documentation), it would have died a quick and silent death. But still today, people are creating content and commercial addons are being sold. Third party products, be they commercial or free, have overcome many of the short-comings and have also spawned successors of varying success.

With KSP, I think, once Squad stops eventually working on it, whenever that may be, the modding community will be keeping it alive for quite some time. And that is not something I am even remotely worried about right now. Right now, I am looking forward to moving ahead to 1.1!

This level of optimism and faith is something I wish I had. But the fact that I am relatively new to this game means I have a lot more to do before I will get tired of this game 

[nobodyhasthis2]

This is a sensible question and it deserves a good answer.  First let my say that I do have a business degree but that does not make me an expert on anything. Let alone business so take all of the following with a pinch of salt folks and please give feed back.

Also I have to mention. I have ended up privately joining in with crown source funding in support of KSP development which is a strange situation to be in 

On 4/6/2016 at 3:40 PM, tomkpunkt said:

What if the market is saturated earlier, than the game is feature complete. 

It will not. The term market share does not really apply to games sales. There is no other similar product. People either buy it or they don't. The term does however apply to hardware distribution. How many people have PC vs X box for example.

What we have here is a PC only game in development with amazing sales. It has no sales on consoles. That means there is a ton of potential money to be made. That a lone attracts investment. That is enough alone to justify the ROI of console porting. It is even enough to do outsourcing to a third party to do the work. 

On 4/6/2016 at 3:44 PM, regex said:

I don't see any knock-offs saturating the market...

I agree. I am unaware of any similar games. Furthermore it should have happened by now. it has great sales, has won awards and has gotten noticed in main stream media. Yet it has not got knockoffs.

This is ironically because there is not enough money in it. Wait, is that not a contradiction of what I said about sales.The fact is for the same ROI. We could knock off another game with more sales and more popularity. KSP does look like it is worth it. So looking around the market place is there any aspect of it that we can steal?

Oh, look cockpit IVAs. Lets make those as games. In fact lets make those as games and give them away free of charge. Just sign up of for an expensive VR headset today. That is not a knock off as much as a spin off. The market is there because KSP created interest. Any new market will be exploited by new products, accessories and lifestyle choices. 

Here is the real reason why there is no big knock offs. You lot reading this. Not exactly a bunch of dummies that are going to accept cheap substitutes are you? 

However just suppose they really got desperate for money at Squad. Well lets look at how the company was founded. Advertising and corporate branding development ...

On 4/6/2016 at 3:54 PM, steuben said:

I'll let Kyogurt answer this one:

Moichandising, moichandising! Where da real money from da game is made! Kerbals: da T-shirt, Kerbals: da Coloring Book, Kerbals: da Lunchbox, Kerbals: da Breakfast Cereal! Kerbals: da Flame Throwah!! Da kids love dis one."

Which is an amazing way of putting it . As is.....

On 4/7/2016 at 5:12 AM, jwenting said:

What helps here is that KSP is a bit of a hobby for them as well as being a source of income

It is indeed not the core business. This tells us about the business decisions getting made.

It is not just a hobby. It is a huge business risk. One of the worse kinds. If you look at this through an Ansoff's Matrix. Diversification is the name given to the growth strategy where a business markets new products in new markets. This is an inherently a high risk strategy because the business is moving into markets in which it has little or no experience. You only go down that road if you can afford to lose in the first place. This is where entrepreneurial leadership is an amazing skill to have. 

They hit pay dirt straight away and that tells another story.

If KSP 2 comes along well it is less of a risk. There is tonnes of data. As in business data like HR records, sales data, knowledge of development environment, etc. A previous project to lean on. Essential it would attract more investment that KSP 1 had. For a start it would be 64 bit straight away. Lessons learned and battles won in getting that working. Let's not do that again they would say.

Just ask yourself if somebody wanted to remake KSP in the future. Could it be as easy as launching a Kickstarter or something similar to keep the game afloat. Knowing in advance about the games popularity?

On 4/6/2016 at 0:55 AM, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

I think that a year or so after that, a team of ex-modders will buy the rights and start development again

Agreed.

Well here is where it gets weird. Outsourcing to a third party to do the work right now. So we have modders that are now employees. Some of which also get privately funded by the community. So more investment going in by another route. In theory when Squad calls in a day. There is still money on the table for some modders to carry on. Modders don't care about the money. It is not the motivation they have for working on KSP. It is an itch they have it must be scratched as one put it. They money however is also kind nice to have. Getting payed to do a hobby is neat. 

TL;DR. Money is not the issue for this game although it is kind of sweet that fans think like that. They care deeply about the games future. 

 

 

Edited April 9, 2016 by nobodyhasthis2

[Zoidos]

I doubt that KSP is nearing "Endgame". 

Recently someone posted a GIF from KSP on 9gag and dozens if not hundreds of people asked what the game is called. Pretty sure at least some of them bought it since. There's still a huge potential market for KSP.