Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Month: July 2008

Risk Aversion?

It might seem weird for me to worry that I’m too risk Averse. After all, I’m the idiot who bought a bunch of shorted Lead Futures on the stock market without really understanding what it was (up 0.83% today!, still down overall…).

But I think one of my failings as a business person is my risk-aversion. I do not invest a huge amount of my savings into making a game. I *do* spend more on art and sounds and so on than a lot of indie devs I know, but am I *really* doing everything it takes to make the game the best ever? have I spent every penny in the Positech Account on artwork and programming? have I re-mortgaged the house to spend that money on a kick-ass advertising campaign?  Did I have to take out a bank loan to pay for the content creation and professional team of QA and testing staff?

No.

I read a lot of books and stories about businesses that became really successful. It’s amazing how many of them really risked everything to get where they are today. The pattern I often see is that someone is very successful, then rather than cashing the check, they invest it *all* (and then some) into the next level of their business and become stratospherically wealthy.  valve took ALL the money from half Life and invested it in an amazing next gen engine for HL2. George Lucas took ALL his money from American Graffitti (he was a millionaire before SW) and invested it in Star Wars. he then took ALL that and invested it in Empire…

The closest I’ve got to ‘success’ was Democracy & Democracy 2. They both sold pretty well by indie game standards. They made enough for me to work comfortably from home. But did I take all that money and invest it in K2?

No

I *have* spent more on k2 in times and money than any game before now. I *do* plan to spend even more on advertising and QA than ever before, and it is the biggest game-related risk I’ve ever taken, but I won’t be re-mortgaging the house or getting into debt. I even just booked a holiday. Maybe I’m doing the *sensible* thing, but when did sensible ever make someone a millionaire?

Incoming Fighter Planes. VROOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!11111

Something bloody fast, possibly this (the Eurofighter)  just flew over my house. I heard what sounded like a major thunderclap, and thought it was weird, considering the bright sunshine. Then realised what was going on.

I live near Farnborough, where they hold the air show, and you often hear and see stuff like this at this time of year. I’ve seen the eurofighter before, from a hill nearby. Damned thing flew absolutely dead down towards the ground like a missile before pulling out. Adrenaline rush FTW I guess. Pity its now totally useless outside of the remote chance of a ten minute war with the USSR or China before nukes kill everyone. Ho hum…

Overweight Gaming (The Sisko Dilemma)

I’m having a design quandary about characters who become overweight in Kudos 2. I need to really nail down the game play effects of letting your character become jabba-sized.

There are some effects already, in that a few acting jobs require you to be below a certain weight. I could probably extend that to the police jobs, but beyond that does it really matter? The obvious negative side to being overweight is the health effects, but to be honest most of the activities that increase weight are reducing health, and health is directly used in calculating illness. What I may do, is have a locally used (not shown to the player) calculation for obesity, and use that as an extra accelerator in determining illness. Then you have the age old problem of conveying this data to the player. kudos 1 did lots of clever stuff the player was never told about, and I need to be more aware of that this time around.

The other possible uses in game terms for ‘weight’ are all a bit ‘dodgy’. Should being overweight reduce confdence? Should I reduce your chances of getting a job in general if you are overweight? I might not mind how big people are, but is there a real world prejudice there? and if there is, is it ok to represent it in game? I currently don’t have black avatars (another worrying, but budget-related situation), but if I did, should I give them less chance of a good job to reflect society’s racism? For that matter, should I reduce your chance of romance if you weigh too much? Is that just reflecting society as it is, or is that encouraging prejudice?

I guess I’m half way between Ben Sisko and Kassidy Yates on the whole ‘We shouldn’t pretend the world is better than is’ (Ben) and ‘Lets just enjoy the way it should be’ (Cassidy). I’m glad I’m not programming a holodeck.

What do you think?

Bad few days…

Sadly everything seems to be going wrong lately. Sales have not been at all good, last night I got a parking tiket from the bastard scumbags at Hammersmith & Fulham council for not understanding their cryptic parking explanations, and this morning I realise some sad little thug has kicked the wingmirror off of my car…

Plus my shares I bought are in freefall…

So it’s all a bit pear-shaped right now. There are a few potential pieces of positive news around the corner, such as finishing Kudos 2, getting a Mac release for Democracy 2, and a possible portal release for Democracy 2, and also for a slimmed down version of the game for the casual portals. (more on that when I know it’s happening).

Hopefully next week will go better.