Furcadia/Finances

This is where the staff of Furcadia claims all it's money goes.

Note the number of unnecessary things listed and that they state they don't want to get "real jobs".

QUOTE (Talzhemir @ Feb 2 2006, 10:53 AM)

1. Bandwidth. When people log in to Furcadia, they are making use of the Internet. Although the Internet was a free service largely covered by government funding, that isn't true today anymore. Every big game has to pay a lot of moolah for "bandwidth". The more players we get, the bigger our bills grow. The same business that provides us with bandwidth also does our co-location.

2. Co-location. That just means, a business that houses and maintains the servers. We used to keep a machine right in Felorin's apartment, but we outgrew that a long time ago. The Furcadia hard drives run so fast, they're always 130F degrees. Servers need to be kept in a DFE (dust free environment) CC (climate-controlled) chamber, that is, extra-good air conditioning and an auxilliary power supply in case of power outage. Our IP co-location service keeps the computers running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They charge *us* money because it means staffing the office even during the night there.

3. Non-Furcadia-Client-or-Server Coding. Much more time than I ever anticipated is devoted to making things that most furres never even see. There's a lot of database and web interfacing stuff. The design, engineering, and changeover to the email-verification Accounts system took a while to accomplish.

Whenever a furre takes a Beekin course, it's recorded, so a Teacher can check who's taken which class. We're required to keep detailed records of Digos, and that goes into a database too. If DEP provides personal web pages (and we're seriously hoping we can), that will require a UCCI (User Content Creation Interface). While those look simple (for example, GeoCities), they're notoriously difficult to create. Before we go into that, there's going to be web pages for Groups.

4. Art. That new graphics system means I am going to re-do the interface. YOU don't; everything you have will still work JUST FINE. Furcadia also needs new things from time to time, such as new species and new Digos.

5. Design. This probably doesn't sound like real work, and we do our very best to make it not feel like real work, but it is. We spend significant time debating with each other. We spend time researching so that we have something accurate upon which to base our cases, and we spend time considering the conclusions. Design includes amiable debate. Anytime you've seen me cite some logical fallacy or other in the Forums, you've seen me utilize the tools of the design trade.

"Should we charge a fee for being able to upload Dreams?" "Should we employ a marketing director and sell advertising space on the Furcadia screen?" These are a few examples of stuff we went over early on. We also re-visit old decisions. "Should we have a 'Follow' command?" "Should we have a separate avatar for each gender?" "Should we sell coded weapons that would only work in combat-enabled Dreams?"

Buddy list, anybody...? In-game messaging? How about something that lets you opt-in to listing what other online games you're playing, which Servers, which Sides, what your alt's names are? In order to better understand the latest games, we need to play games such as World of Warcraft and City of Heroes. One of the things I've seen that maybe Furcadia should have is CoH's option for "global" aliases. If you're playing Alt X, you can tell somebody your Global Alias (if you want to). Then, if they message the Global Alias when you're playing Alt Y, you still see the message but you don't have to reveal your alt. "Should we have global aliases?"

6. Client/Server Coding. We spend a lot of time on design because, unlike companies with big budget, we know coder time is at a premium. We don't have the flexibility to redo something later. Design is real work and Client/Server coding is the Even More Real work. It's normal for a computer game company to have 4-6 full time coders on staff, plus 4-5 contractors. We have 2, plus up to 2 contractors (it varies).

The next client has more HTML, and a new graphics system that will allow 256 colors per Object, instead of forcing everyone to use the same palette for the whole Dream. This is probably going to eventually necessitate a rewrite of the FSHeditor. We, the staff, all still love the game; we all sort of "live" in it, and we want new features at least as much, if not more, than you might. smile.gif

7. Customer Service. This can't be done by volunteers. Some matters can be addressed with a form letter but others require a unique letter that typically takes half an hour to an hour to write. Sometimes there's a question of a rule being broken and someone needs to research who plays which alt via the database. Sometimes someone has to investigate something on a web site.

8. Insurance. In-office DEP employees receive pay and they also receive full health insurance coverage. That runs about $600/month ($7200 a year) per person. One of us was diagnosed with cancer of the thyroid; it was frightening but we at least had some peace of mind knowing our insurance covered it. (and, in case you were wondering, the cancer was successfully treated and she's on the slow but assured trail to recovery.)

9. Advertisement. Furcadia pays for ads, notably, on Google.

10. Contractors. Some things done for Dragon's Eye, such as some bits of the art, and work on the web site, are done for-pay.

11. Conventions. We haven't been able to send any official representatives recently, but we've managed to get the team out to Further Confusion, Mephit Fur Meet, and Anthrocon. To save money, we may travel by rented trailer and drive in shifts, but that still adds up to expense in the thousands. We don't have infinite time, and travel by plane is preferable. Plane tickets have become more expensive over the years. Despite special convention rates, so have hotel rooms.

They're not just entertainment to us, though. Conventions bring together ideas and creative energy that inspire us to do more. For me, as an artist, seeing the things Furry artists create is an overwhelming and wonderful experience.

As a bonus, conventions also spread a lot of "buzz" about Furcadia. When we do manage to get to one, we're assured of hundreds of new furres joining us. So conventions do ultimately give alot back in the way of publicity, too.

12. Order Fulfilment. We have more Digo stuff than we can handle, so we work with Infire. Oy!

13. Legal Fees. This is kinda obscure and we seldom actually need it. When Dragon's Eye Productions was first set up, it cost over $500 to pay for "Incorporation". We're considering selling something that might be like gift certificates and might be like in-game currency, and we'll need legal advice.

14. Movies. Sometimes "we have movie sign!" and the Austin/Pflugerville/Round Rock DEP furres get taken to the movies on the company tab. That happens a few times a year maybe.

15. Products. The T-shirts aren't cheap, they're five-color printing and cost us approximately $8 each. We eventually make alot of that back, but in order to do a "run" of printing, we have to commit to making at least 100 shirts, which means, we're handing over at least $800, plus silk screen set-up ("burn") fees. Although they may appear simple or cheap, the Pawtograph books that the Silver Sponsors receive the first time they sign up are not. Because they're miniature sketch books, they're made of heavier archival-quality paper stock. They're designed to take quite a bit of punishment and to last for many convention visits, and they do. It cost several thousand dollars to get a batch made up. We print the color prints and certificates ourselves, on pretty nice paper. Again, it's simple but high quality.

Whether or not a Digo is "expensive" to somebody varies a LOT! For some furres, $10 is far more than they can afford. For some furres, $10 is next to nothing. Either way, I hope that when you see somebody with wings or a dragon or some other special item walk by, that you'll keep this in mind: Furcadia is actually expensive to run, and, by buying those special items, they're helping to keep it free for everybody else, plus, they're making it possible for Furcadia to improve.

QUOTE (Emerald Flame @ Dec 22 2005, 08:12 PM)

Computer Mouse, I notice that in one post you complain about the price of Digo items and in the next you insist that Furcadia needs all these new features. I'm sure you are not aware of the realities of running a business, so I'll inform you a bit. I think this is pretty common among our players.

Dragon's Eye Productions is the company that makes Furcadia. We are what they call in the game industry an Indipendant. This means that we are privately owned and we have no investors or bigger company backing us. We chose to stay that way because investors like to tell you how to run your game and they'd have never agreed to "Forever Free" or volunteers or many of the other thigns we like to do. By choosing to stay that way though, we make sacrafices too. Most big online games that you see out there like WoW and Everquest and even smaller ones, had investment money to produce their games. We are talking about 10s of millions of dollars to produce their games. They have teams between 40 and 200 to just make the game and add new features and a whole other group of that many called the "live team" that actually runs the game day to day.

At DEP, we have Felorin, Talzhemir, Myself, Sanctimonious, Cironir, Gar and Leah, full time and we have a couple of part timers. That's to both make new features and to run a community of 60,000 people. This is really not possible, but we do it anyway and none of us are paid anywhere near what we'd get doing the job for another company. The DEP "offices" are in my spare room. We do this for the love of Furcadia and the belief in producing a non-violent, imaginative, free online game where people from all over the world can meet. Suggestions are nice and we like to hear them, but honestly, we have a good ten years of things already planned for the game.

We do all this work totally off the sales of Digo Market items. How many wings and portrait spaces does it take to do something like, say, pay the lease on our house, pay doctor bills or even go grocery shopping? How about the cost of bandwidth or server machines? You should be very grateful to all those players out there who do buy Digo items, because they are what keeps Furcadia alive. A year ago, we almost lost the company because our players, mainly kids, would buy Digo items without their parents' permission and the parents would charge them back. Paypal only allows for 1% chargebacks and they froze our account right before Christmas, our most important season. The two things that saved us was going with IBV to process orders and the fact that Felorin's parents had pssed away recently and left him some money that he could use to make payrole and pay for the servers for a few months. Our sales have still not fully recovered from that and with the new servers, our expenses go up. Think of going to dinner with your parents for one evening, that usually costs at least 60 dollars or a computer game that you only play a few weeks costs 40. Furcadia Digos are not so expensive.

You might see here why when one thing is going on, say, new forums or a new server, development on the update stops. There is only one set of people to do all of these things, each person is vital to making it all run, and when something major happens, like my getting cancer this year, development slows considerably. You might also think the solution is volunteers. As much as we appreciate our wonderful volunteers and all the help they are, any actual development has to be done or at least supervised by DEP. The programming has to meet quality standards and all work together; the art all has to look good and go together. New dreams have a very complex system they must go through to fit into our vision of the Furcadia world. You can ask an employee to make 20 changes but volunteers are not professionals and they don't take it as well.

So next time you get the urge to complain about things not happening fast enough, or how much Digos cost, or you make a suggestion for yet another feature, think about some of this.