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

The entrepreneur/cautious war inside my head

cliffski

Ok, I admit it, I wanted an excuse to type war inside my head. But there really is one.

There is half of me that looks at the games industry, and Positech, and Gratuitous Tank Battles, and reads books on how big big companies (google, amazon etc) got where they are, and thinks:

“We are literally INSANE if we aren’t taking at the very least a third of our profits and throwing them madly into expanding the business by way of advertising spending, promotional activities (conference appearances and promo stands etc), stuff like T-shirts and posters and hiring a proper PR agent to grow the public awareness of the company,

The other half of me thinks:

“Those ads are not converting at a rate that makes any economic sense. It’s money burned. Plus this partnership with X or Y is not as profitable as if I did it myself, plus I can do all my own PR, plus we live in turbulent economic times. If we have $X in the bank, we should definitely leave it there, as an insurance policy against having a really bad year. better safe than sorry”.

It’s a constant battle, which means that my google adwords budget can swing madly from £150 a day (first half of brain is victorious) to zero (second half is winning).

My pet theory is that a lot of entrepreneurs I admire (Jeff Bezos, Duncan Bannatyne) just don’t have the second part of the brain at all. They see no downside, no need for caution, no possibility of failure, and never consider the companies money to be for anything other than growing the company.

Maybe that last sentence is the true key. is positech’s income mine? In a legal and practical sense, it is. But should I stop thinking that it is, and think of it as positech’s? Maybe if I did, I’d be free-er with promotional stuff, and spending in general. I could tell you amusing, fairly embarrassing tales of the stuff I’ve done on my own (badly) because I was too cautious to pay what amounts to quite small amounts of money to get other people to do it.

I may experiment with the idea of thinking that positech and me are different things. Ommmmmmmmmmm……

17 thoughts on The entrepreneur/cautious war inside my head

  1. To be fair, Jeff and Duncan aren’t the only folks lacking that second part of the brain, plenty of folks that live under bridges and in gutters share their world view. Remember that a high risk investment that pays out because the investor knew what they were doing is almost indistinguishable from a high risk investment that pays out due to the investor’s dumb luck.

  2. There’s also the question of whether or not a business *has* to be growing all the time. If you’re making good money and you’re able to make the games you want to make, what’s the incentive to grow the business?

  3. If you are going to do something, go all in or dont do it at all. Its a 50/50 shot it will work, but going just part of the way never works.

  4. My old employer used to (and probably still does) justify booths at comic con, pax and going to gdc as perks or vacations. Go because it’s a fun thing that not a lot of people get to do. If some promotion get done too, bonus!

  5. “If you are going to do something, go all in or dont do it at all. Its a 50/50 shot it will work, but going just part of the way never works.”

    You are aware that if you “bet the house” on something and lose, you lose the house, right? That’s fine for a college kid, but that’s a rather cavalier attitude to take when you are supporting a family.

  6. The main point is also that you actually ARE Positech. Not only the income, but also the production.

    Investing money would make sense in an expansion logic. Which would mean not being the only one doing your own games anymore, but becoming more of an entrepreneur, making the firm grow, hiring people, etc, etc.

    But seriously, if the firm works as it is and you are in the “comfort zone” of income (enough to pay for reasonable necessities, plus money remaining for regular fun stuff) while doing what you love…. I don’t really see a reason to change that. Well, I wouldn’t change that.

  7. There is definitely no urgent need, but ‘only the paranoid survive’. I like to have insurance policies against failure, because I couldnt cope woking for other people again.
    Positech is doing great, but one major flop, or a major change in what gamers want which doesn’t match up with my abilities or style, and I could be in trouble in the next 2-3 years. I’m always trying to look 5-10 years ahead, so I naturally am over-cautious about assuming continued success.

    Also, it would be great fun to be able to comfotably spend more on future games. Imagine Gratuitous Space Battles 2 with a million dollar budget. it would rule :D

  8. Ahh, there’s your mistake. You want to use MONEY YOU EARN to grow instead of going out and getting a big pile of VC money and puttin’ on a show.

    Seriously, I have the same type of business brain as you, and a few years back I had a partner who was the other type, and I was often amazed at some of the things he suggested. Things I would never do but were undeniably brilliant ideas. It was awesome. That said, that company never was successful.

    Now I’m trying again with just my brain type and we’ll see how that turns out.

  9. As far as I can tell, the whole reason why we’re in the economic mess that we are at the moment is people not exercising enough caution with their cash.
    The key question you need to ask yourself is “Can I make the games I love and still live comfortably?”. If the answer is yes then there’s no reason to change anything. As they say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

  10. To be fair, most business want to grow. Nobody is going to turn down a bigger chunk of sales and profit because it gives you the freedom to work on bigger, more ambitious stuff. Look at minecraft, the success of that has given notch the freedom to work on multiple games, which he obviously enjoys.
    I wouldnt expect positech to be any different.

  11. Some people are interested in making games without having the overhead of running a business with employees — and the responsibility that comes with that. Cliff has already expanded his business a bit by hiring another company/team to make Redshirt. That’s certainly his prerogative. Personally, I’m not interested in a lot of business overhead and overseeing projects made by others — I just want the financial freedom to work on the games I want to work on. Not everybody’s interested in “growing their business”. In fact, I’m not sure why the basic purpose of businesses always seems to be “to grow”.

  12. @Christian Knudsen: Hear hear, I’ve been saying this for years, business growth is not the goal, to maintain a healthy business is. And Cliff already proved that a ‘one’ man game company is viable.

    Do what feels right, not what the market demands… I mean the best example of that is the iPhone, or you fellas think Jobs listened to the market… no he created one… big difference in thinking.

    Thats why I believe in Cliffs idea of ‘hardcore’ / deep games for people with a lack of time. Clearly this is a step to creating a new niche / market in games.

    just my 2 cents, cool discussion though.

  13. ” The key question you need to ask yourself is “Can I make the games I love and still live comfortably?”. If the answer is yes then there’s no reason to change anything. As they say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. ”

    While I agree with the first part of that, I really don’t like the ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ approach (or related ‘no need to reinvent the wheel’). In my mind, that kind of approach would have left us driving cars with wooden wheels ;)

    As for the topic at hand, it is all down to your goals, growing the company doesn’t necessarily mean hiring more people. In this instance, investing in promotional activity could grow the business by generating more sales – which is basically more money for future development (which could be used to contract graphic work a big expansion pack).

    What you really need is a third ‘half’ of your brain that mediates between the other two to make sure the goals of side A can be achieved while minimising the concerns of side B.

    “Remember that a high risk investment that pays out because the investor knew what they were doing is almost indistinguishable from a high risk investment that pays out due to the investor’s dumb luck.”

    In much the same way that you’ll hear all about the person that wins millions at a casino by putting their life savings on red, but you won’t hear so much about all the people that do the same thing and lose.

  14. “I may experiment with the idea of thinking that positech and me are different things.”

    Thinking about Positech as a separate entity from yourself makes it easier to care for and look after.

    So long as it’s a living thing apart from you and you understand that it would die or at least stagnate without care and attention to it’s growth – it becomes much easier to live lean and think sustainably about your biz dev.

    Because if you don’t, this entity will die. Or at least never become what it could become.

    HAH can you tell I’m female writing that? My business advice almost always goes maternal :P

    We as game devs are also historically bad at taking care of our needs and of our own growth. Positech being an extension of you faces that same risk.

  15. I thoroughly enjoy your posts and this one is particularly interesting. Many thanks for sharing and for your candor.

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