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

Category: business

The big wide world

It’s a big wide world out there. What percentage of that world is buying my games? Well obviously it’s a tiny chunk, but more relevantly, what percentage of them are in any position whatsoever to buy my games even if they wanted to?

Well first of all, they need internet access, but frankly there is nothing I can do to help there. Then, they need a way to pay for them. I use a number of stores now, including direct sales through BMTMicro, who will take credit cards, debit cards, amazon payments, Google and PayPal, so that’s a LOT of people covered.

Then they have to speak English.

Wait! What? Lets backtrack a bit. The problem with being an English Speaker is you are historically linked to either the UK, North America, Australia or New Zealand. two of these are remote islands where you aren’t going to routinely travel to see foreign-speaking neighbors. One if a country so huge you can travel extensively and still never leave it. Another had a huge Empire and thus arrogantly assumes everyone understands English anyway… As a result, people who speak English tend to think everyone else speaks it. And they don’t. There is a huge world of non-english speaking gamers out there! Now let’s assume that a lot of them speak a language that requires unicode, and my games don’t support it (ouch!). Lets also assume that some are in developing countries and can’t afford games (or piracy is rife). Let’s assume cultural differences prevent a lot of others from considering buying my games. That STILL leaves a huge audience for them that could be enjoying Democracy 3  and my other games if they were translated. How big? Well certainly bigger than the population of New Zealand (4.43 million) If you suddenly found a group of 4.43 million people who might like your game, wouldn’t you go to the effort to sell to them? I’m planning to.

frenchcat

Democracy 3 can now be bought in English German and as of today, French! (BONJOUR!!!). I may not stop there. The biggest hurdle is simply admin. The hassle of new steam builds, and the management of getting the relevant linux/mac builds done is the bottleneck. This is the LAST game where I will have this hassle. GSB2 will have multiple language support built in from the start and handled entirely by an in-game option. All I’ll need to handle is different store pages. I still have other things to tweak. BMT Micro store pages need to be multi-lingual, as do the confirmation emails and download instructions. I’ve still never sent out a foreign-language press release yet.

I can’t see any reason why the MAJORITY of GSB 2’s sales should not be from non-english speaking people.

In other news you can now get Democracy 3 on the Apple App store, if for some reason you refuse to shop anywhere else…

 

 

Positechs website (explicit numbers inside!)

Positech has been around a long time. I am OLD. I remember before VHS. I remember before CD’s. i was there when Sauron was defeated and men were shown to be weak. As a result, I’ve had a website for a long time, and probably due to mere inertia, it’s got a lot of SEO from inbound links, and a lot of (my) games on it, and therefore, it acts as quite a good funnel for traffic and sales. I’ve also advertised a lot over the years and pointed at it, so that has boosted traffic too.

Lets look at some numbers.

In the last year, my direct sales have been $170,000. That actually surprises me. I thought it was less than that. Not bad for an indie website in these days of ‘everybody buys on steam’. If I look at web traffic I get these stats over the last 365 days:

2,700,000 unique visitors according to awstats

23,000,000 pages according to awstats.

site1

That seems pretty good to me. Maybe some of that is my games checking for updates? If I check google analytics, the site got 1.8 million visits. 417k were from organic search. That’s a decent figure. I’d love to know how it compares with other indies sites, and smaller portal/bundle sites. I should also state these figures ignore redshirts site and the gratuitous tank battles site, both of which have their own base domains.

What this has got me thinking is that in effect, I own a mini-portal. I’d wager indies get a fair few emails along the lines of ‘We are an exciting new game store and we would like to grab 30% of your revenue despite having virtually no traffic, if you agree to sell through us!’. I know I do, and I wonder if those sites have less traffic than me. I have signed deals in the past that have earned under $10k a year in sales through a channel, even under $5k. 5% of my direct sales is more than that. You can probably see where I’m going with this?

I have zero time and mental bandwidth, but I do muse over the idea of saying to indies who refuse to sell direct because ‘it’s too much hassle’ something along the lines of ‘I’ll do it for you, and take 15%’. This is just an idle thought, and I’d have to be very impressed with a game I’d add to my own site. But it is worth a thought.

I have been slowly investing in my site over the year. Check out the forums. They now support facebook, google and twitter as logins, and the individual forums have custom graphics. ooh!

 

What a directx developer does in a steambox world

Elaborating on my last post. Valve have made it pretty clear they are heavily betting on Linux. Microsoft, you missed the ball. You didn’t get the hint. What action did you take to get valve back? Apparently not enough. Regardless… Linux will be big for gaming. It’s 2% of my sales right now. This is going to grow and grow fast.
This is no big deal to me, apart from the fact that Linux also means OpenGL. I currently have my own engine which uses DirectX. What should I do? Here are my options…

steambox1) Do nothing.
Just stick with it. 2%? Even if it goes up to 20% so what? My current system is me doing the directx version, then paying a contractor to handle the OSX & Linux ports by converting it all to OpenGL. This works fine so far. This option is easy, but it seems like I just go further down a dead end. I don’t want to be the last guy using DirectX.

2) Prepare my engine to be more cross-platform friendly
I could re-engineer my code so that it’s more modular and easier (re: cheaper, faster) to port to OSX/Linux. This way I still keep directx, but make things simpler for a future transition. This is appealing because it’s a hedge towards either direction, and frankly engines should be built like this anyway.

3) Learn OpenGL.
This is the hardest because it involves serious work. I know everyone will say ‘it’s really similar’, but being ‘familiar’ with OpenGL isn’t what I want. Being VERY sure I know the BEST way to use OpenGL for my purposes is what I need. I love optimizing. I love pushing to get as rich a 2D experience as the hardware allows. I don’t want to trade a really fast DirectX engine for a slow OpenGL one. This involves the most work, to do it right. There is huge opportunity cost for that time as a programmer. This is also by far the most future-proof.

4) Hire a full time Linux/OpenGL coder.
Not a sensible option for me. I couldn’t keep them busy, I still don’t learn anything, and this is effectively 1) but more expensive and with more admin. All it does is guarantee me availability, but at too high a price.

5) Switch to middleware.
An option for 95% of devs. I hate middleware in general, but I also do something very unusual. The engine for GSB 2 works in a very specific way. At it’s core, it is a heavily optimised, shader & post-processing based, lots of render-target flipping 2d engine that assumes a huge amount of 2D objects. I’m not aware of any engines designed specifically to do this except mine. Plus there are costs in terms of learning that new engine,  which represents investment in something I neither own or control. I don’t like this.

I’m thinking about this a lot. I’m currently favoring 2), Possibly 3). I have discounted 4) and 5). Doing 1) seems lazy. This is something I need to get right at some point this year.
Feel free to add your thoughts :D

Steam Dev Days afterthoughts

(I’ve never done this before, but I’m typing this on the plane, so I have time for some detailed thoughts. Long post ahead!)
I’m returning from the first steam dev days conference (they will surely become regular). By now you will have heard all about attendees getting steam boxes & controllers, and the major announcements. I bet journalists have that stuff covered. I’m going to write up more strategic thoughts, combined with some thoughts on business in general that have weighed on my mind.

Linux.
This is the big takeaway for me. I’m not a big Linux fan. Nothing ‘political’, I’m just so used to windows. I’ve used windows constantly since windows 3.11. I don’t know anything about Linux, and I now have to learn. Valve have made this clear. Not ‘Linux is growing’ more ‘learn Linux now… today…’. Personally, I’m not too bothered by this, especially now I have a steam box. What this really means for me is OpenGL. My hand-coded directx engine is now looking like a bit of a dead end. This is unfortunate…

Steam Boxes.
Actually not a big deal for me, this shores up the PC gaming market share against console erosion, which is great. Will PC’s migrate into the living room? maybe… but not for text-heavy strategy games that I make. I think the impact for me may me minor. Ditto the steam controller, although this might be worth using for GSB 2.

Virtual Reality.
I didn’t attend a demo. I should have, stupidly assuming that being stereo-blind would rule me out, but fellow stereo-blind devs assure me its still amazing. I don’t make first person games, I make totally abstract ones, so again, maybe not a big impact for me.

Micro-transactions/economies/user-generated content.
Fascinating stuff, brilliantly presented, and a bit of an eye opener for me in how to do this stuff in a *nice* way. I am hugely motivated about doing work in this area in future. These were the most interesting talks for me, although I hear that the marketing panel was also amazing :D

Deeper Thoughts.
This is kinda separate. I need to add a disclaimer here so I can put these thoughts into context… Positech Games in recent years has become very very successful. I used to publish sales figures back in the day, but I don’t do that now. Things have ramped up big time. I am still basically a one man company, but with an increasing army of contractors and also automated systems and methods to boost my efficiency. As a result, things have gone kind of huge. Not notch level, but damn good.
This isn’t meant to be bragging, this is to put this next section into context.

A lot of things are happening in games. A lot of people are getting into the industry. The industry is growing, but also changing. There is a lot at stake. A well-placed solo indie developer can make or lose a million dollars or more based on a good or bad call. This is high stakes poker, or in some cases roulette. We are playing with live ammunition now. I love metaphors.
I have decisions to make about company growth, platforms, investment, languages, genres. These decisions will make or lose those millions of dollars. The stress and pressure related to those decisions is massive.

Intuitively, I know that I’m fine. Positech has a great financial base. I’m not about to bet my house on a game release, or lose everything if I get things wrong. I have no employees I might have to fire. In many ways I’m lucky, and can relax… but frankly, I like to win. That doesn’t mean at the expense of anyone, I don’t need others to lose, if that makes sense? The most adrenaline-packed and rewarding strategy game I play is called ‘running positech games’. I want to make the right calls and win, it’s burned into me at some primeval level. As a result, I take these decisions incredibly seriously. This leads to intense pressure and stress, that is outwardly completely invisible. I take from this two things:

1) Company executives earn their money. It’s very easy to look at people who run a bank or huge company, in their chauffeured car and executive hotel suite and million+ dollar salary and think that life’s easy for them and anyone can do it. No. There is more to an easy life than having great food and a nice car. Those big salaries come with epic responsibilities and incredible pressure and stress. I cannot imagine how much worse it is at the billion-dollar 10,000 employee level. Get it wrong there and you can kill of thousands of jobs. Intense Pressure. I don’t begrudge anyone in that situation their big salary and aston-martin. I’m surprised there are not more CEO suicides, to be blunt.

2) This can’t be healthy. I’ve taken the opportunity in the last year to have my heart and blood pressure checked. Both were absolutely fine. I could maybe lose a little bit of weight, but generally I’m healthy. This is great, and also very surprising to me. It’s something I try to keep an eye on. I am acutely aware of the fact that high stress and pressure is bad, and I don’t want to be the guy with the highest sales figures in the morgue. So far I seem to be balancing it well, but it isn’t easy. I slept for just 3 hours last night, purely due to stress and pressure. Rare, but still bad. I guess I’m trying to max out all my Kudos 2 stats at once, I want to be healthy, happy and successful. Not easy :D

So there you go, my first post-steam conference thoughts. Maybe a bit scattergun, but I thought I’d jot them down while they are fresh. I have a lot more to say about Linux, but I’ll save that for the next post…

TL ;DR: Linux is coming, Positech is selling lots, This is stressful and creates pressure, but I’m somehow still healthy!

2013 a good year, start of investment, and some consolidation

So 2013 was very good for the business side of Positech Games. it’s definitely been my most profitable year yet. We spent more than ever making games, more than ever on marketing, and made more than ever back. In biz terms there were a lot of firsts…

  • First time I hired a PR agency was in 2013
  • First time I had a proper pro trailer made was 2013
  • First GDC attendance was 2013
  • First time I exhibited at trade shows was 2013.

First time I actually paid out for a site-takeover advert was 2013.

And on the non-biz, but development side…

  • First time I managed a foreign-language translation and…
  • First time I took Mac & Linux porting costs under positechs control, rather than splitting it.

These were all good decisions, everything seems to have gone pretty well. Plus, we released redshirt, the first name under the positech banner developed by someone else (Tiniest Shark).

Those were the exciting new, adventurous things. On the game design front I’ve been more cautious. I released Democracy 3 and started (very early) work on Gratuitous Space Battles 2, both sequels. I truly have become hollywood! My plans extend to a new IP by the tail end of 2014, so don’t think I’ve entirely run out of ideas (far from it!).

Because sales-wise the year went well, I’ve been doing some consolidation and investment for positech too. I’ve had a lot of popular games, but maybe I’ve been lucky. There is no magic rule that says I will earn a single penny in 2014, and given development costs, I *may* actually lose money. As a result, I’m starting to think longer term about investing in making positech a more ‘solid’ company to own. That means a bit of investing (it’s shocking what a terrible rate of return you can get right now, even if you are prepared to lock money away for a loooong time), and a bit of investing in the biz itself, stuff like equipment and improvements to infrastructure. I also see advertising as a long term investment. I know some people take 150+ days from clicking an ad to buying my games, and I suspect the real figure can be longer. A certain chunk of the democracy 3 ad budget will pay dividends in GSB 2.0 or New IP sales. I like to think long term.

2014 offers a lot to look forward to, I have some stuff coming up quite soon(ish) and of course I’m very keen to show off some proper GSB 2.0 screenshots when I finally have something to show :D

Happy new year all!