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Suggestion on WGT expenses and prizes.

• CharlemagneRH 1,054 Posts

  Fri, Oct 1 2010 12:34 PM

  In earlier threads, I have guessed that creating new courses in this game costs about $300k.  People and equipment have to be flown out, given hotels, meals, rental cars, etc. ($30k), the course has to be rented, or I would assume, at least, that if you are shooting the pictures while people are playing, that you still have to pay some sort of significant fee and that it would cost you extra photoshopping work to remove them ($60k), photos must be arranged and matched with locations, and you have to make note of elevations all over the place ($40k), and then you have to touch each one of ~25,000 photos per course up in photoshop to erase divots, etc. ($40k), then you have to generate the data that allows the engine to know where the fairway, rough, etc. is ($40k), and then you have to make sure the pictures line up correctly with that terrain data and test the courses ($50k.)  There is perhaps some other stuff that I'm overlooking, so we'll tack on an extra $40k.

  As such, it would be nice if you guys didn't make courses simply to add them only for a month, to be later thrown away.  I haven't been around enough to see that happen, but I've heard about it and expect that this is quite possibly what will happen with Celtic Manor.

  I realize that doing stuff like this keeps people in jobs, but if they're going to be doing work, which we pay for, it would be nice if we could permanently benefit from that work.  I wouldn't mind it at all if courses were only available for 9 months out of the year, based on their geographical location (the courses being unavailable during the winter if they are in a location where winters are harsh,) but please try spend money wisely in this regard.  No throwing away $300k (or $80k for CTTH courses)!

  Now, about the prizes!

  Seeing as you guys have made it harder for people to actually put together enough credits to redeem them for gifts, it would be nice to see the price of prizes go down.  A legend who shoots a 31 in a post-changes RG, finishing 4th, 5th, or 6th, with 2-3 tour masters above him, would have shot a 28 or so in a pre-changes RG, finishing 2nd or 3rd, with none of those people who are now considered tour masters being above him.  You could say that the same amount of money is being won, just because the payout has always been 4,000 and that it is simply being distributed differently, but that's not really true because TM's are mostly just staying buoyant with their credits, not really gaining and accumulating credits, and even if they are accumulating credits, no TM out there is active enough to purchase even the $150 gift certs, which is clear from the earnings leaderboard from last month, so it really comes down to a small group of legends, and as demonstrated, their incomes have dropped.

  As we all know, I don't get along with Angeltotti, Iconian, etc., but they do deserve a set of clubs for the effort that they have put into RGs... and I would like to get some myself in 5-6 months!  RG players should get rewards too.  We should see some of that money back instead of being used to subsidize the monthly CTTH vacation prizes.

  RGs are almost pure profit for WGT.  You guys take in $50 for each RG, but prizes are rarely attained from accumulated credits.  I know Iconian has received a $150 gift certificate, but despite the fact that WGT, over the course of its existence, has probably taken in $750k-1mil from RGs, it has only paid out about $1,500 in prizes from accumulated credits earned in RGs.  Payment for the electricity and bandwidth used for those RGs probably accounts for another $50-75k, but we are clearly being used to subsidize other portions of the site, namely the free play and the aforementioned monthly CTTH prizes.

  It would be nice to see the prizes in the gift shop have their price reduced to reflect both the drop in income and a desire to see RG'ers actually win prizes.  I think a 50% reduction in prices would be pretty reasonable.  This might force you to pay out $50k/yr more in prizes, but it would also make everyone a lot happier and you would make that $50k/yr up easily with increased revenue due to people feeling that they can actually earn something for their effort.

• piztaker 5,743 Posts

  Fri, Oct 1 2010 12:49 PM

  That's the most sense I've ever read in one post on here. I hope the powers that be get to read it.

• neildiamond11790 1,115 Posts

  Fri, Oct 1 2010 1:44 PM

  The number $250K has been thrown around for a while, doublemochaman and myself have offered to do the photographing for far less, haha.  Charle, I think the biggest thing you and others confuse about WGT's revenue is they make absolutely nothing on RG's, premium tourneys, or any other game format.  All of their revenue is realized with $ deposits to purchase credits.  Once they have your money, its revenue because you cannot cash it back out.  RG's gains nor costs them anything besides raking in some credits back out of players hands that they gave away in the free tourneys.

  Purchasing clubs gains them nothing, all that matters is that you buy credits.  Thats why the offers we get dont say "Buy a driver, get 2 sleeves of balls", its "Deposit $20 and get a free driver"

  I am all for WGT actually holding a course adding fundraiser.  Say "We need to raise money to release a new course by January 1st, we will give a 20% bump in anything deposited, example $20 gets your 2400 credits"

• CharlemagneRH 1,054 Posts

  Fri, Oct 1 2010 2:19 PM

  neildiamond11790:

  The number $250K has been thrown around for a while, doublemochaman and myself have offered to do the photographing for far less, haha.  Charle, I think the biggest thing you and others confuse about WGT's revenue is they make absolutely nothing on RG's, premium tourneys, or any other game format.  All of their revenue is realized with $ deposits to purchase credits.  Once they have your money, its revenue because you cannot cash it back out.  RG's gains nor costs them anything besides raking in some credits back out of players hands that they gave away in the free tourneys.

  Purchasing clubs gains them nothing, all that matters is that you buy credits.  Thats why the offers we get dont say "Buy a driver, get 2 sleeves of balls", its "Deposit $20 and get a free driver"

  I am all for WGT actually holding a course adding fundraiser.  Say "We need to raise money to release a new course by January 1st, we will give a 20% bump in anything deposited, example $20 gets your 2400 credits"

  If you think $250k is very unreasonable, I don't think you understand how complicated the job is.  A dozen plane tickets, 6-12 hotel rooms, a lot of meals, several rental cars, and renting the course are unavoidable expenses, as are a lot of the other ones.  As far as "taking pictures" goes, it is not simply going out and snapping photos wherever you please, but rather taking 25,000 photographs at specific locations, making note of the exact location of each one, and then editing every single one of them in photoshop to remove divots, move the flag around for different hole positions, etc.  On top of that, you have to record elevation data for probably every one of those 25,000 locations, put all of that information into terrain data that the game's engine can actually use, and then go back and check that every single photo matches up with that data... that you don't, for example, have a photo that was taken 2 degrees off of its intended line, causing it to not be aligned with the engine-usable terrain data.

  As far as the credits thing goes, people purchase credits because they want to use them for some purpose, e.g. buying clubs, RG entry fees, etc.  If people felt that they could actually win something in an RG, more people would play them, and that would be mean more people would use real money to purchase credits for that purpose, which would mean more revenue for WGT.  Simply put, wiithout any incentive to purchase credits -- for example, if there were no upgraded clubs or RG entry fees -- nobody would spend money to buy them, and vice versa.  It makes perfect sense, then, to say that making RGs rewarding would result in an an increased incentive to purchase credits, thus an increase in the amount of credits actually purchased, and thus, more revenue.  Seeing as how the increase in revenue would be higher than the amount of money they'd have to pay out to buy people gifts, it would not only make their customers happier, but even increase their profits.  Marginal revenue = marginal cost.  Very basic economics.

• andyson 6,415 Posts

  Fri, Oct 1 2010 5:19 PM

  CharlemagneRH:

  If you think $250k is very unreasonable, I don't think you understand how complicated the job is. 

  YuChiang Cheng, WGT CEO, said in this article " It takes a dozen people six months and $200,000 to make one World Golf course simulation,"

  A dozen people working for six months is 6 man years, The cost of a man year can range anywhere from $50K to $150K depending on many factors.

  Even taking the lowest number, $50K, that's $300K in labor plus $200K in other expenses.

  $500K per course is more likely than $250K.

• CharlemagneRH 1,054 Posts

  Fri, Oct 1 2010 6:09 PM

  andyson:

  CharlemagneRH:

  If you think $250k is very unreasonable, I don't think you understand how complicated the job is. 

  YuChiang Cheng, WGT CEO, said in this article " It takes a dozen people six months and $200,000 to make one World Golf course simulation,"

  A dozen people working for six months is 6 man years, The cost of a man year can range anywhere from $50K to $150K depending on many factors.

  Even taking the lowest number, $50K, that's $300K in labor plus $200K in other expenses.

  $500K per course is more likely than $250K.

  It's something that depends on how much they have automated.  Sure, it could cost a million, two million, or even 3-5 million to do it, but with some charity on the course's part, a highly efficient team, and a lot of automation, it could cost as little as $200,000.

  And I'm guessing that nobody around here actually knows whether or not they have to actually rent the entire golf course.  Access to the course, in and of itself, could either be completely free or up to perhaps $200k depending on how many days they need it and how much the course typically makes in green fees, beer cart sales, and clubhouse meals, drinks, and doodads (although I would assume that they could ask to be let on the back 9 for free in the morning, seeing as how nobody would be on it.)

  My number might be a little low, but the point is that it is expensive and something that shouldn't simply be thrown away.  Whether or not he's being honest there (business people do have a habit of exaggerating ;) ), whether or not they have increased automation within their process since then, and whether or not he was interpolating the fixed costs across however many courses they had done at that point, etc., are questions that still make the numbers that we might throw around conjecture, but like I said, the point was that it is not $10,000.  It's a substantial amount of money, and they should commit to making new courses good enough to be both permanent additions and playable in stroke play games.  The game would be better if it had 12 stroke-and-CTTH courses + 6 CTTH-only courses rather than 3 stroke-and-CTTH play courses + 12 CTTH-only courses + 6 courses that were here for a month and then gone forever (exaggerating the numbers a bit there for emphasis of the point), and they should spend their money wisely.

• andyson 6,415 Posts

  Sat, Oct 2 2010 5:43 AM

  CharlemagneRH:

  As such, it would be nice if you guys didn't make courses simply to add them only for a month or only for CTTH.  A CTTH course might not require the same level of refinement and attention to detail, so it is perhaps only 60% as much money to make, but CTTH is played only about 20% as much as stroke play. 

  I did some research for you Charley.  A CTTH uses only 12-16 photos per hole or 216 to 288 for all 18 holes as was done for Hilversumsche and Celtic Manor.  (vs 25,000 for a full course) Roughly 1.2% of the photos needed for a full course. 

  That is in comparison very little effort processing the photos.  The dates on the images indicate they were taken June 8-12 at Celtic Manor and June 15-17 at Hilversumsche.  So a combined single trip to Europe for WGT netting 4 different 9 hole CTTH venues.

  These were all implemented in just 2 to 3 months after photo sessions.  Hilversumsche released as the KLM Open on 8/25 and Celtic Manor released 9/15.

  They still need to send a crew, probably smaller than for a full course, take laser maps of the greens and get a drone or helicopter to take aerial photos.

  I'll go out on a limb and estimate the cost of a CTTH is only 20% of the cost of a full course. (ignoring the fact a full course also provides a CTTH)

  One suggestion I have for WGT is to leverage the assets of the full courses by producing several different CTTHs for KIA, BPB, STA, and OAK.  With the Blitz game now in use it doubles the benefit of producing additional CTTHs from the current full course assets.

• CharlemagneRH 1,054 Posts

  Sat, Oct 2 2010 5:48 AM

  andyson:

  I did some research for you Charley.  A CTTH uses only 12-16 photos per hole or 216 to 288 for all 18 holes as was done for Hilversumsche and Celtic Manor.  (vs 25,000 for a full course) Roughly 1.2% of the photos needed for a full course.

  Point taken.

  They still have to make a 3-d model of each hole and assign what is fairway, rough, sand, etc., though, even if they are working with far less pictures, and like you said, they still have to fly someone out, etc.  I obviously overestimated the cost of creating a CTTH course, which is probably 25% of a stroke play course, so I removed the CTTH material from the original post.