
Draw Something craze 'banks dev $100k per day' - mwilcox
http://www.develop-online.net/news/40228/Draw-Something-craze-banks-dev-100k-per-day
======
stevenwei
From the linked (and more interesting, IMO) NY Times piece:

    
    
      Draw Something is the creation of OMGPop, a social gaming start-up in 
      New York that has been churning out titles for the last four years, but
      has struggled to produce a hit. Games like Cupcake Corner, a bakery
      simulation, and Puppy World, in which players care for virtual canines, 
      both gained modest followings but failed to catch on among a wider audience.
    
      “For a long time, we made games that did not get any traction,” 
      said Dan Porter, the chief executive of the company. Draw Something,
      however, “was a crazy out-of-the-box success,” he said.
    
      Draw Something has charted a turnaround for OMGPop, whose finances
      were flailing. Its original founder, Charles Foreman, left the company
      about a year ago. Although the start-up raised $17 million in venture
      financing, the company had nearly burned through that reservoir. Now,
      though, Mr. Porter said, the company earns revenue in the six figures,
      generating more money for the company “in a day than we used to in a month.”
    

Similar parallels to Rovio here, it's interesting to hear about how many other
games they made before they found their massive hit.

Also interesting to find out that they were nearly out of cash.

~~~
untog
I heard from a friend that used to work there that they were oddly averse to
making mobile games- until recently all their games were Facebook-based. Draw
Something is one of the few they actually prioritised as a mobile app, and it
paid off.

~~~
saturdaysaint
_This_ is the story! I was interested in this company early on because the
products were great - I was playing the progenitor to this game, "Draw My
Thing", _four years ago_ \- so I agree that there's more than luck going on
here. For all their talk about "trying for years", it's telling that a search
for OMGPOP on the App Store basically only yields three games.

Their main aim seemed to be to become a _platform_ (albeit consisting of their
own games) more than making hits. So they were reluctant to build iOS or
Android-specific things (their early efforts were half-hearted compared to
their impressive web games) and they were slow to build on Facebook as I
recall.

------
MicahWedemeyer
To anyone thinking of jumping on the App store get-rich-quick bandwagon, this
is probably the most important piece of the article:

 _The studio, which has been in operation for about four years, had previously
struggled to make any traction on the App Store_

~~~
thesash
And, they've previously raised ~17M in funding.

------
tatsuke95
> _"That would be 36.5M$/year although I doubt those kind of revenues are
> sustainable."_

Of course it's not sustainable, but you can certainly recover your investment,
plus... _a lot more_. Then you move onto the next thing. It works if you're
making $10k or even $1k a day.

It's a proven model that should be used more often in this "hits-driven", fad-
based tech world. You can get cash flowing positively and quickly with a good
idea. Not every game or photo sharing app that takes off should be thought of
as a billion dollar, world changing business. Sometimes it's nice to provide a
few jobs and make some bank.

~~~
arn
You might have said the same about Angry Birds, and yet they've been able to
milk that into about $100 million in annual revenue with App sales and
licensing.

[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/37c3d96e-280c-11e1-a4c4-00144feabd...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/37c3d96e-280c-11e1-a4c4-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1pZCY8S2B)

~~~
ValG
It's difficult to make the comparison, Angry bird had a product that you could
build a brand around (albeit a fairly one dimensional brand); where this game
is inherently much less "brand-able" However, this does reset the clock and
put some revenue into the system. I wonder which of the games/portfolio of
games OMGPOP pitched to VCs to get to $17million... It must have been a really
good one; just goes to show you that even the best "ideas" don't always pan
out. There will always be an element of luck associated with a new venture.
Maybe this is where OMGPOP turns the corner...

~~~
arn
I don't know if I agree with that. At the time of the original Angry Birds
launch, I didn't really think they could branch out as far as they could.

Rovio really redefined the limits.

Draw Something would obviously have to go in a different direction. But board
game, game show?

~~~
ValG
Angry Birds lends itself to a product, they have a very specific set of
characters and goals/tasks, as well as a back story. DrawSomething is much
more broad, there is no direction in it; the only goal is to essentially play
pictionary; I can do that at home. Where they've changed the game is that you
can now do it easily with your friends hundreds of miles away. That simplicity
is what limits it, but also makes it so popular. You can draw a parallel to
something like pinterest; is it a hugely popular site, absolutely, but what
can they do now to make money? license it? develop a product? sell you
products that people pin? so far the answer is no for all 3 of these options
(the last option is something they're working furiously on to monetize the
site, but the volume and randomness of items that people pin make it so
fragmented that it's difficult...)

~~~
ValG
By the way, it looks like Zynga is in talks to buy OMGPOP, looks like one big
hit is all it takes!

------
PanMan
Warning: Anecdote, not data, etc: I just started playing with Draw Something
last weekend, and I do have to say, it's really powerful: Getting a message a
friend of you (!) has drawn something(!) and you don't know what(!) and you
can score points(!) by guessing is really powerful, and wants you to open the
message (and, thus, reply, as that is built in). I also like how they combined
free users and paying users, to grow the network and make revenue. I don't
know if they will exist in a year, but in a few weeks they have grown faster
than Instagram in 1.5 years (and THAT was a really quick growth in itself!).

~~~
joelhaasnoot
This is actually the first mobile app that my friends were using before me.
Wordfeud was pretty big, saw a couple people every now and then playing it on
the train. DrawSomething I've seen dozens of people playing on the train and
lots of my friends play too.

------
sebilasse
> The studio, which has been in operation for about four years, had previously
> struggled to make any traction

Yet another story of an overnight success that took 4 years. Congrats to the
developers

------
mrchess
One of the smartest moves from this game is that after you see what someone
has drawn for you, it automatically forces you to draw back to them.

1\. Check drawing

2\. See drawing

3\. Get forced to pick word (no options to reply later)

4\. Draw for them

5\. Repeat

So if you ever want to see what anyone drew for you, you're pretty much forced
to draw back thus a neverending cycle.

~~~
wtn
One of the worst features… forces you to force-quit.

------
sreyaNotfilc
I'm noticing that a good amount of these successful game apps are remakes of
popular children games and Milton Bradley games.

Angry Birds - Slingshot Draw Something - Pictionary/Hangman Words with Friends
- Scrabble

You'd think that MB would do extremely well with their catalogue of board
games.

~~~
georgieporgie
From what I've seen, classic game makers get obsessed on silliness enabled by
the platform. Annoying, repetitive cut-scene animations, for example. Monopoly
on the DS was like the website of a retailer (or Homer Simpson) in 1996.

I think independent developers do a better job understanding the platform and
how to cut to the fundamentals of the game with the best presentation.

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tdoggette
What an awful headline.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Indeed. It took going to the actual article to obtain enough hints to actually
parse this bit of malformed pseudo-English.

------
citricsquid
A potential relevant gaming point, Minecraft does double that ($210k per day
average) and has done consistently for over a year now.

~~~
bignoggins
Based on my own sales history (I've made 5 figures in one day on the app store
before), I can guarantee you that based on their top grossing rankings, they
are making much more than $100K. They are sandbagging when they say "more than
100K"

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torstesu
With 2 billion drawings, Omgpop possesses a valuable source of information. It
would be interesting to see how different people illustrate equal words
differently or equally in their illustrations. This could contribute to e.g.
best practices when communicating with graphics or the like.

------
nikcub
1\. Think of popular board game not in app store

2\. Build it and submit it to the app store

3\. Profit

~~~
apike
There are _many_ Pictionary-style apps on the store. So many that most would
bet against Draw Something (I would have).

Try this instead:

    
    
      1. Execution.
      2. Execution.
      3. Profit.

~~~
Impossible
I think its more like:

1\. Execution 2\. Luck 3\. Profit

I know that luck is the intersection of preparation and opportunity, but I
think the opportunity part of that equation is still a little random,
especially in the context of casual social and mobile games becoming big
hits\fads.

------
hboon
No one mentioned this - another good job done by a YC portfolio company.
Congrats!

------
alaskamiller
Annnnnddd... Zynga is rumored to be buying OMGpop
[http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/19/zynga-is-in-talks-to-buy-
dr...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/19/zynga-is-in-talks-to-buy-draw-
something-maker-omgpop/)

What a roundabout turn for a YC company.

------
bicknergseng
Another case for the myth of overnight success
[http://cdixon.org/2012/03/16/the-myth-of-the-overnight-
succe...](http://cdixon.org/2012/03/16/the-myth-of-the-overnight-success/).

It's (relatively) easy to find successes, but I'd be more interested in
postmortems of the ones that fail... companies that make good products for
years but never get that push over the cliff.

------
finne
Slightly O/T, but does anyone else find the reviews for this app a tad, well,
suspicious? Virtually all 5* and the wording of the reviews is all very
similar.

~~~
mcfunley
The app prompts you to give it a five star review at various points. It
presents you with a button that says "rate this app five stars" or something
along those lines. I haven't pressed it so I couldn't tell you what process
comes after that, if any.

~~~
finne
Ah, thanks. I deleted the app as soon as it asked to me to give a Facebook
login or email address.

~~~
NDizzle
How else would your friends get in touch with you to start trading drawings?
It's unobtrusive and slick. The only facebook related things I've seen from
this app are terrible drawings that people are sharing.

~~~
natesm
I shared my username with my friend via iMessage. I am very wary of adding any
sort of application to Facebook, especially anything with "in-app purchase".

------
tonylemesmer
Is there not some kind of IP issue arising from copying the fundamental part
of an existing game e.g. pictionary - "guessing a word from a picture".

I'm only asking, just seems a bit like shooting fish in a barrel releasing
these kind of games and sooner or later one of the people who came up with
these ideas is going to start noticing and want a piece of the action.

~~~
Karunamon
Pictionary includes a board game element with teams and some other folderol I
think.. the core gameplay element, I.e. "I draw something, you guess what it
is" has been around long before there was a Pictionary, or a Draw Something,
or an Isketch, or InkLink, or ....

It would be like trying to sue someone for an implementation of tic tac toe.
Though in today's environment, I'd be shocked to learn someone hasn't tried.

------
joshmlewis
Key words:

> “For a long time, we made games that did not get any traction,” said Dan
> Porter, the chief executive at Omgpop.

------
olalonde
That would be 36.5M$/year although I doubt those kind of revenues are
sustainable.

------
noduerme
Whooooa. They raised $17M in VC to develop this game _and were in danger of
running dry_? I mean my God... something's not right about that. It's hard to
imagine an iOS game that couldn't be developed, tested and deployed for well
under $1M. To put this in perspective, Halo 3 employed about 300 devs and
artists, and cost around $30M. I get that VCs need to put in a lot of money to
fill their quotas, but what was all of that spent on? Marketing?

[EDIT]Sorry. My mistake. I misread the article as meaning that $17M was raised
for this game. I didn't know they'd put out 42 games. I retract my
criticism.[/EDIT]

~~~
ynniv
iminlikewithyou raised money four years ago to develop games for the web.
You're just hearing about them years after after they changed their name to
omgpop and released 42(!) games.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Games_on_Omgpop>

