The developer behind Teach My Little Sister How to Drive, a driving instruction sim where you instruct a generative-AI-powered, dynamic NPC, has been spending $1,000 dollars a day to keep the demo working.
The developer behind Teach My Little Sister How to Drive, a driving instruction sim where you instruct a generative-AI-powered, dynamic NPC, has been spending $1,000 dollars a day to keep the demo working.
Loans are normal and you take losses to capture the market then you enshittify
But loans don’t scale with the amount of players and played hours. They typically purely factor into the cost of development and support.
Server costs.
Typically scales fractional to the user count and often in steps. These costs stay relatively stable no matter if you have 1 or 10000 players (for example), then rise a bit to support 18000 players, etc. And they should not start out high enough to require a loan just for them.
If you build an MMO and get a sudden influx of millions on players… ok. Then maybe. But they typically also grow somewhat organically.
Each user causing you direct costs that even increase with their usage is… not optimal. But hey, it’s worth a shot, I guess.