We’ve spent just under $70,000 dollars on the development of Monsters & Memories (2020-2023).

This amount was paid out of pocket so we only owe ourselves, and this was only possible because we’ve dedicated years of our free time to this as a passion project.

This means that when we go into Early Access, we can start small and grow the game over time without a looming financial deadline or worrying about only getting one chance to get things right.

It’s been a steady grind so far, and we expect it will remain a steady grind post-launch.

The costs listed above were utilized in the following manner:

Accounting and Legal ($11,070.83 — 16.4%)

• Establishing the LLC

• Intellectual property agreements (to ensure the company owns the IP)

• Trademark registration

• Annual tax filings

• Various legal questions

We have a lawyer on the team now, so we’ve been able to save on smaller questions without always needing to go to our primary lawyer.

Contractors ($36,619.84 — 54.2%)

• Initial concept art

• Early character art outsourcing

• Environment texture exploration

• Ongoing contract work

We have some freelancers on the team who we’ve assisted/assist.

Servers ($7,296.47 — 10.8%)

• Development servers

• Playtest servers

• Build pipeline servers

Software & Cloud Services ($12,520.93 — 18.5%)

• Development software & services

• Collaboration web services

• Build-pipeline management services

Past Cost Breakdowns

• October 2020 through December 2023

Post-Launch Plan

As mentioned elsewhere, we plan on providing the live game and ongoing updates for one basic subscription fee. We’ve discussed the idea of providing you the opportunity to tip us anonymously, as well as purchase gift subscriptions for other players.

We’ll also sell physical merch, such as t-shirts, prints, and socks for extended gaming sessions in our merch shop.

The revenue generated from these things will go towards the costs listed above (including increased server costs), as well as additional costs that we’ll incur as part of being live (e.g. additional bookkeeping costs, employment related legal assistance & expenses, etc.).

Transparency

Once the game is live, we’ll continue to provide a breakdown of expenses similar to the chart provided above.

We’ll also give you a revenue breakdown, so you can follow the growth (and health) of the game and see what cash came from where (subscriptions, tips, merch, etc.).

As part of our reporting, we’ll also be open about how we allocate profits across the following pools:

• Profit sharing

• Growth

• Reserves/war chest

Profit Sharing

The team has volunteered their time to create Monsters & Memories. As the game grows, we’ll work to employ many of them full-time. Some team members have really good day jobs and will always remain part-time members of the team, working in their off hours.

With this in mind, once profit becomes available, we’ll begin allocating a portion of it to compensate the team for their efforts.

This is an area where we’ll always remain as aggressive as possible in compensating the team for their efforts and faith in the project, whether we have 100 subscribers or 100,000.

Growth

Once we’re able, we’ll begin bringing our team members onboard full-time. This will likely start with the folks who are already freelancers and/or in critical roles that we need full-time more immediately.

At the onset, we’ll continue as we have to date: as volunteers, with different team members wearing a variety of hats. This includes people like Ali, Nick, and Shawn serving as GMs while the game gets going. So, file your petitions wisely.

Don’t worry, we hope to eventually have a dedicated Customer Service team (composed of people that know and understand our game and community).

We may also spend some amount of this pool on outsourcing to help expedite the growth of game content. Specific decisions here will be something we discuss with the team once opportunities present themselves.

Reserves/War Chest

Our first goal with building our reserves is to ensure that we’ve got cash put aside for a reasonable amount of severance for any person we bring on full-time. This will be a condition for bringing people on full-time, so that our team is always secure in their decision to join us.

Over time, we’ll want to grow these reserves to provide an even greater buffer for our team. Should something happen to our company, we want our team and their families to rest easy.

Once we’ve got the team covered, we’ll use these reserves as a means of ensuring the stability of our service, should we run into downtrends in subscriptions or F something up bad enough to require some time to recover. Shit happens, so we want to be prepared to weather any storm.

And finally, the reserves will serve as a war chest for exploring opportunities to create or support other niche projects, but the health, stability, and quality of Monsters & Memories will always come first.

In Closing

Monsters & Memories is being developed by an all volunteer team, with costs being paid out of pocket by the team’s founders. This has allowed us to stick to our vision without external pressures.

Because of the team’s dedication and willingness to work as volunteers, we’re not under the same pressures as other teams that have a finite “runway” of capital to cover development costs.

When we mention that we want to go live as soon as possible, it’s with the understanding that we’ll be continuing to develop Monsters & Memories after it is live, adding new content, systems, and gameplay for years to come.

For us, even a small subscriber base at launch will put us in a better place financially, and development will move even faster.