Category: business

On Sunday I start my trek to the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco. I’ve been many years now, and can pretty much find my way around SF without a map. As usual I’m only buying an indie pass, because frankly, I’;m not a billionaire, or gullible, so I will only be attending a few talks. (its not like there are secret talks that tell you how to make 3x the sales which nobody ever leaks details from…). For me, the real ‘worth’ of GDC is taking the pulse of the industry, and meeting other devs to both socialize and to share information.

I’ve written in the past about whether or not GDC is worth it as an indie, and I stand by my assertion that it depends on your personality. Even though some drugs are now legal in SF which are inexplicably illegal in the UK, that is not going to make me gregarious enough to march up to ‘influential’ journalists, and start giving them an elevator pitch about my game. (seriously, we are happy for the tens of thousands of alcohol and tobacco related deaths each year, but we still ban cookies that make you giggle and eat chocolate bars? wtf?). If my only motivation for GDC was press, frankly I wouldn’t go. I am trying to compensate for not actually being gregarious by wearing a VERY WHITE jacket with a production line logo splashed all over it, in the hope that this subconsciously ‘raises my brand awareness’. Hmmm.

As of writing this, I have ten ‘appointments’ at GDC. None of them are with press, and none of them are likely to in any crucial way result in higher sales or anything like that. The vast majority are just meals with friends, and parties where I can make new friends. There is something cool about being at a party with 200+ people and you know all of them know what ‘indie developer’ means and you don’t have to feel like you do some weird made-up job nobody understands…

With shadowhand heading for a release in a short while, and production line already in alpha, I know a lot of devs would spend the time schmoozing and trying to make press contacts, but I really have decided that the whole ‘schmooze’ side of the business is not really for me. If I make even half the sales that I currently do, and that allows me to just code, design and run the odd ad campaign, then thats cool with me. Increasingly it seems that games get the majority of their real ‘buzz’ from being high quality, and from engaging with the community, rather than knowing the right people.

Of course YMMV, maybe I’m doing it wrong, I often think that I am, which is why I often change my approach to development to see if I’m wrong. I used to think Early-Access was nuts, but am trying it to make sure, and decided I like it. Ditto with youtube. If you think going to shows is nuts, or absolutely a pre-requisite, then it really is worth trying the exact opposite one year to check your hypothesis. And if you think that having a booth at a show is something you MUST do because everyone else does it, don’t forget that it can be very expensive and sometimes it does not help.

See you at GDC. I’m the one in the WHITE jacket.

I really don’t get how indies put so much time and effort into their first game. The ones who get into debt amaze me even more. the ones who mortgage/sell their house scare the crap out of me. Don’t do this.
I’ve made lots of games, here is how they went:

• Asteroid Miner: Meh…sold a few hundred copies, was exciting to see it in a box.
• Starship Tycoon…sold a few hundred copies, also some retail deals, tempted to quit day job… and does! That was a mistake!
• Rocky Racers… mediocre flop.
• Kombat kars… mediocre flop.
• Planetary Defense…not bad considering development time was super short (a few months).
• Kudos…surprise hit. did really well. 3rd party publishing deals that paid actual royalties!
• Kudos 2… even better. Seriously good sales. hit $20k in one month. unbelievable.
• Democracy…not bad, not enough to quit job, but really not bad.
• Democracy 2: Really good, enough to quit job. *quits job AGAIN*. pays off mortgage.
• Gratuitous Space Battles: OMG teh fountain of money. Buys new house.
• Gratuitous Tank Battles. Meh: pretty good, but nowhere near as good as GSB.
• Democracy 3: LOLLERSKATES. Orders brand new car & stupidly expensive laptop. Starts flying business class. Eventually buys stupidly flash electric car.
• GSB2: Yikes, that didn’t go down well. Ouch. what did I do wrong?
• Democracy 3:Africa. Fuck. Americans REALLY don’t care about Africa then? Barely breaks even.
• Production Line: LOL. Almost physically crushed by stampede of pre-orders.

My point is…holy crap you never know what will happen next. Your next game could flop, it could be huge. I *really* think that GSB2 is underappreciated and am surprised it flopped. I’m still amazed at how many people like political strategy games. YOU NEVER KNOW. So be cautious, and experiment a bit. if I’d bet my house on Asteroid Miner, I’d be renting a bedsit whilst still working in IT support trying to pay off debts. I’ve never borrowed money to make a game, I’ve never remortgaged, I’ve never worked for more than 18 months on a single game before putting it on sale.

That might be a bit clinical and unromantic, but its worked for me. Your life is not a feel-good Hollywood movie starring Tom Cruise. Don’t get stuck in confirmation bias. Many indie games fail. Some fail HARD.

There are a lot of indie games being released these days, hell, a lot of games full stop. There is evidence of this from this wonderful graph courtesy of steamspys twitter account:

Its hard to imagine the number of gamers has increased to the same extent, or the amount of games press covering indie games, so the inevitable conclusion is that chances of the press caring about your indie game are less than 1/6th as high as they were when I released Democracy 3. In short…in terms of getting press about your game, you are kinda fucked.

And not just you. I haven’t been able to set the world of gaming media on fire with Political Animals or Shadowhand or Production Line either. If it makes you feel better…its me as well. In terms of getting press, I’m probably only slightly less fucked than the average reader of this blog (assuming you are a developer obv.).

The good news is, I don’t think this really matters. These days, I increasingly hear about a new game from world of mouth, a reddit/forum post, twitter or facebook. Or I see it on my steam front page. None of these are areas where the press is dramatically driving eyeballs. The idea that all discussion about video games is emanating like a funnel from the core seed that is planted by a number of gaming websites and print magazines is rooted in the 1990s and 2000s, not today. I actually think that if the editors of Kotaku, Rock Paper Shotgun, PCGamesN and PCGamer all HATED YOU with a vengeance, and refused to ever mention your game, its not really going to have much effect, because the percentage of the games-discussion taking place online that is controlled  by a few media people with megaphones is actually pretty small, and my gut feeling is that it is shrinking.

So how do you fight that?

You don’t, you embrace it.

The fact is, gamers like to find, play and talk about cool stuff. Despite us complaining that only 1% of steam players leave reviews, thats still hundreds of thousands of reviews, and tens or hundreds of thousands of comments, retweets, likes, upvotes and all the other social media stuff. I have to admit, given the option of a front page article on a news site about production Line, or having the game discussed in a top-voted subreddit by hundreds of redditors…I may well choose the reddit option. Social media gets a bad rap, and sure its a cesspool of trolls and people referring to each other as Hitler, but in amongst it all there are a lot of people talking about games, and these people BUY the games, they aren’t the ones getting free press passes.

I, like everyone in any branch of the entertainment industry, have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. Sometimes I’m right, sometimes I’m, wrong, but I like to think I make informed decisions. In a day when googling for almost any topic or question will get you video results near the top of the list, its hilarious that so many once proud gaming websites don’t even have a video channel. The same people who laughed at their bosses not understanding the shift from print to web are missing the shift from web to video. I strongly think that a constantly updated and topical video channel is not just an option for the fully staffed indie studio with a full time community manager, its absolutely essential.

I’ve done 11 blog videos to promote Production Line, and done my best to respond helpfully to all the comments on them. I fully intend to blog every week in video form until final release and then beyond. I may prefer text to video, but many of my customers do not, and they are the ones in charge. I’m no longer releasing videos as a way to persuade the ‘big press’ to run a story with the video link, the video IS my story, and it IS my coverage, and I’m fine with it.

Right now my videos average about 600 views each, hopefully this climbs over time. If the game looks good, people will share the videos and tell their friends. I am not trying to rush this, or be too pushy about encouraging it, I’m hoping to just make a great game and let it gather attention organically for now. I’m not saying i wont advertise at some point, I’m just saying that chasing the conventional press is starting to feel to me like perhaps a bit of a dated strategy.