Does my project have any value?

6 points

17 years ago

This is a post about a personal project, so if you lose interest halfway, I apologize. This is not a review-my-website post, I'm not looking for usability advice (yet).

Over the past few years I've worked on a browser game project. It's very niche and therefore very small, and thereby not financially interesting (current revenue is about $250 per year). It does however have a loyal following of a couple hundred people who use the game site on a daily basis. I've been wondering whether I should increase my dedication to this project (I've been slacking on it the past half year) or just let it be in its current state. Ideally I'd like to get some decent revenue out of this. It's probably not feasible to get a full-time income out of it, but I'd surely appreciate a nice extra on the side to justify the time I put in it.

The project is a political browser game. It simulates elections in which you control a party, and you vote on bills and such to establish yourself in the political landscape. I have a "Classic" version (up since '05) and an alpha of the new version (up since '08). The code base is huge so it's been a pretty large investment in terms of hours.

So I'll evaluate my project's pros and cons here:

Cons

* The website looks like crap. Even the new version looks unprofessional. I'm not a designer, but I do realize that its looks need a lot of work. I'm not really looking for usability advice here since that would take up a whole thread on itself.

* It's a niche subject, which means it can't scale indefinitely.

* Gameplay for a single game world actually depends on <1000 player population, so it's really not scaling-friendly.

* I could be putting my time into something more dollar-efficient.

* Time-intensive: politics can be controversial and personal, so a lot of effort goes into moderation. This is mostly handled by the community though.

* Aside from google ads, the occasional donation and wacky one-time actions like selling a virtual island, there's no business model.

Pros

* Very dedicated player base (players typically hang out for years).

* One of a kind: it's the only political game that offers this kind of depth. Competing games in the same space are little more than glorified social networks and my players appreciate the difference.

* I get around 10,000 page views and 300 uniques per day. That's peanuts, but it's a lot more than zero.

* I like the project personally, but I often doubt whether the hours I invest are at all justified.

* As stated above, there is some revenue, though neglegible.

The game site is http://www.particracy.net/ Make sure to check out both the Classic and Alpha versions.