Sunday, December 29, 2013

Super Action Squad Update - Explodingrabbit Game

Image from: stock.xchng
Jay Pavlina from Explodingrabbit originally budgeted and asked for $10,000 to create a game called Super Retro Squad (later changed the name to Super Action Squad).

He ended up actually getting $53,509 from kickstarter on 7/19/2012. Specifically he got $43,509 more than he claimed to need to make the game for the purpose of adding stretch goals.

Pretty much exactly a year later 0n 7/20/13 Jay Pavlina sets up a page on explodingrabbit.com for Super Action Squad to ask for even more money. He asked for $235,000 more in fact. So pretty much he originally estimated the game to need $10,000 to complete but then "re-estimated" the cost to be a whopping $288,509 dollars. So he is saying his original estimate was only 3% of what he actually needed? That is truly incredible how inaccurate his estimates are. Check out the nifty graph below.


Now mind you that in that year from 7/19/12 to 7/20/13 Jay Pavlina did not provide any tangible updates on what was going on with Super Action Squad.

This new page asking for more money has been called "e-begging" but how well has it worked? Let's do the math.

As of today Jay Pavlina has allegedly got $4,465 through "e-begging" for Super Action Squad as far as I can tell from explodingrabbit.com . It has been 162 days since 7/20/13 so he is getting an average of $27.56 per day or $137.80 for a typical work week (5 days). Now there is certainly no way to tell how this is divided up among the explodingrabbit people, but that is way less than anyone would get from a minimum wage job. This pretty much means that anyone on the explodingrabbit team would be crazy to quit any kind of job to work "full-time" for explodingrabbit.

But then again in a video Jay Pavlina said that the average explodingrabbit employee makes an average of $2,000 per year. Assuming that is split equally among all 8 explodingrabbit team members, Jay Pavlina is pulling in $16,000 per year from advertising revenue for an illegal fan game. Nintendo, can we say damages/lost revenue maybe?

And lastly it looks like on Alexa that explodingrabbit.com had a high point in early 2012 and has been in steady decline since with a current bounce rate of 60% and a global rank decline of 91,277 over the past 3 months. In fact explodingrabbit isn't even ranked on Alexa after around August 2013 because it is not popular enough.


Now the good news is that since this blog has been around, Jay Pavlina has actually been posting updates about Super Action Squad on kickstarter and responding to people's comments on youtube. He has also done some stuff with the illegal game Mario Crossover, but that doesn't matter.

Its great to see the blog had an impact and happy holidays followers!

47 comments:

  1. Now something else to do on the internet away from porno movies :)

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  2. Yeah I do have curiosity of how much they make but he never said so. I think Jay is the only one unemployed so he has to get most of that ad income. Maybe some time he will add how much people make to the faq.

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  3. I hate graphs so quit math

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  4. I hope he adds Sonic to see him with Nintendo characters

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  5. I don't think he ever said he makes $16,000 a year. Ads pay you like 25c

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    1. He did say that the average Exploding Rabbit employee earns $2k, and there are eight of them. 2k*8=16k.
      Also some of the team members have a part-time job elsewhere, so that probably bumps up the average.

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    2. The avg is $2k/year if someone worked a part-timer they would make more than $2k for a year definitely.

      So wow he pulls in $16k in a year for adds.... well I should prob get on making a site with some ads then ;)

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    3. The avg is $2k/year if someone worked a part-timer they would make more than $2k for a year definitely.

      So wow he pulls in $16k in a year for adds.... well I should prob get on making a site with some ads then ;)

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    4. Yo just make a porn site and youll make bank. Trust.

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  6. I support indie game makers and am a fan of smbc. Though I honestly believe setting up that page to ask for tons more money was a terrible PR move.

    Its the worst, its like you bring your into the shop and they say it will cost $100 and be done in a day. Then later they tell you it will be $8,000 and done in 3 months.

    I honestly want Jay to succeed, but he really needs to win me back at this poing.

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  7. Bad PR??? Its a SCAM!!!! Seriously do ppl read the blog or what?!?!

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  8. Yes "people" read it. Dunno if I would call it a scam just yet but more like incompetence from Jay. Not saying incompetence is any better though so....

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  9. I don't know if you guys already know this, and I'm probably going to get shitted on, but here you guys go.
    >because he won't be having a new job, he needs money
    >he gets that money
    >work on the game is going okay, but people want it right now
    >he guesses that the way things are going now, it will be done in 2015
    >with enough money donated, team members can quit their jobs and still have enough money
    >with everyone working fulltime on ER, it would be done by mid-2014
    Or something like that.
    At least that's how I see it.

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    1. what are you on about mate? People usually need a job to make money, I don't give a shit if he wants a job or not that's just what normal people do. People aren't just going to throw cash at him so he doesn't have to work like normal people!

      This is absurd!

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    2. He was saying that he asked for people to throw cash at them so he could get shit done faster to keep this, (everyone getting mad because it seems like nothing is happening,) from happening, but since it didn't work out people use it as a tool to throw insults at him instead of thinking of why he did it.

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    3. ridiculous! he is an unemployed bum and the entire rest of everyone on the team works. They are probably bitter at him for keeping all the money and that's why he now needs to try to get money for them to. Its all just so scummy.

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    4. @Mario-Fan Are you serious? where did he say 2015 now???

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    5. oh im sure hes serious that's why its a SCAM!!!!!

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    6. @January 12
      I don't know why I didn't get round to replying to you yet, but he said that in the video he released half a year ago.
      Also @January 14 I don't see your point at all.

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  10. Nobody gives a shit why he did anything. The facts are the game was supposed to be done long ago and only needed $10,000.

    He just doesn't want to work a normal job so begs people for basically unemployment money. The real fucked up part is that he uses people's appreciation of smbc to con them into giving him money which is so way illegal its crazy.

    It just seems like there is maybe a handful of people who can't see him for the sleeze he really is.

    Tell me this though would you give me $50,000 and then even more money for me to do a ton of nothing but be unemployed? Biggest scam ever right here.... PEOPLE PAY FOR A PRODUCT (not someone to be unemployed)!!

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  11. Oh by the way,
    "Now mind you that in that year from 7/19/12 to 7/20/13 Jay Pavlina did not provide any tangible updates on what was going on with Super Action Squad."
    oh gee, i guess this doesn't exist then
    http://www.explodingrabbit.com/forum/threads/list-of-backer-updates.15552/
    Screenshot: http://prntscr.com/2hjbt6
    Plenty of 2012 dates there.

    Also the music is awesome, especially the Asparagus Kingdom theme.

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    1. Stuff was posted sure about buying a house and crap like that but like the blogger says nothing tangible. Your bias anyway cause of working for him you said.

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    2. There's quite a lot more there about stuff other than buying a house and crap.

      Also it depends on how you define "working for him". I mod the Wiki.

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  12. This "project" seemed mad sketchy from the start so you know what? I didn't give him any money! That's how you make a smart choice and don't end up butt hurt when the sketchy project falls apart ;)

    I mean honestly have you seen him in videos? He literally looks crazy as if that wasn't a sign enough.

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    1. I don't think how he looks has anything to do with anything. Other then that you're entitled to your opinion.

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    2. Actually don't you think he sounds like steven walker? Remember those impressions on snl?

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  13. hbreagershnbasfgverhiyhghbvraehi

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  14. exploding rabbit = 3d realms
    super retro squad = duke nukem forever

    that's it in a nutshell

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    1. I was going to make a comment about Valve, but there isn't exactly a lot of difference between the two cases. Still, while I can see your point, there are a few nitpicky differences (yes I admit to being a nitpicker and a grammar Nazi), such as that ER's not exactly been silent for eight years on end (and three years isn't exactly as long as nine/fifteen years), they're only working on one game at a time right now (SMBC has been degraded to a hobby), Valve and 3D Realms haven't been labelled as scammers to my knowledge (but then again, they never used Kickstarter) and they're less well known.

      Fun fact: Chrome's spellcheck doesn't seem to recognize the word "scammers" or "3D".

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    2. Mario-Fan - Yes I would say the difference of why 3D realms wasn't called a scam is people didn't spend $50,000 in pre-orders and watch it spent on buying a house. If people had, I am sure the reaction would have been the same. Without the money and house buying its just people anticipating and wanting a game.

      Hope that makes sense of why people are calling it a scam.

      Now if he refunded all that money I am sure people would be a lot more supportive. Then they could buy the game when it came out like what normally happens.

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    3. he won't refund cause he spent that on a house

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    4. @January 15th 8:51 AM: Some people (like me) are happy to let him keep the money. (I gave him fifty bucks, but being a Belgian teenager, it's not as hard a hit as it would be if I was in the US*, and the hit wasn't even very hard because I can't think of anything available right now that I would want to use fifty bucks for.) Anyone else can ask for a refund whenever they want -> http://www.explodingrabbit.com/forum/misc/contact
      Or so we're told, at least. I only know of one case where someone walked up to him and asked for a refund because he didn't do so privately, and here it is: http://www.explodingrabbit.com/forum/threads/i-want-my-money-back-resolved.17363/

      *Euros are worth more than dollars, which means $50=roughly 40 euros. And since a lot of prices here are just dollar prices with euros slapped onto them (a particularly big exception is stuff like visits to the doctor, which is <20 euros instead of $100), it's a bit like I bought a $50 game on a -20% sale. If any of that made any sense.

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  15. u really like grafs huh?

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  16. He seems so nice and a bit sad in the videos but I am starting to see the points here. Honestly I hope he can correct this and make a great game. Put the past behind him and do whats right.

    Some of the comments here are maybe a bit harsh but the overall theme makes sense to me slowly. I guess that's what you get with anonymous comments though because people will have no filter.

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  17. Its not right what he did to the backers

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  18. just me or does this blog look stupid? Like wtf is with the feeld for the wall??

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  19. can u see the tears of laughter on my face

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  20. well yeah its less popular. It was populat for some point because of creation of smbc but then it changes really

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  21. I think Jay needs to do some serious PR damage control here. Make things right you know?

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  22. I don't think Jay has the social skills to do something like that. He doesn't seem to be the type who knows how to interact with the average person.

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  23. In a few words... You make me sick. It's unprofessional, whining, exaggerating gits like you that make the internet foul.

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But who cares what we think, what do you think about the Exploding Rabbit scam? You can post anonymously if you want.