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

Category: business

Killing the golden goose

So when I first released Democracy 2 on steam, I thought to myself ‘it might sell a few copies, would be good to prove to valve that i was right all along and it is a game that matches the steam audience’. And then it sold well, and then better, and better still, and right now it is my #1 top selling game on steam. It is not overall the biggest earner per week, that’s still GSB, because GSB is split amongst the base game and it’s various expansion packs, but even so, when you realize D2 is much *older* than GSB, it’s quite an achievement. A quick check shows Democracy 2 earned $1,900 in the last week. That’s pretty awesome.

steam

And in a sense, it would make sense to  work on that game I keep putting off, or that other game I keep putting off, or the third one, and happily cash the royalty checks from valve for an old game like Democracy 2…

But goddamit I couldn’t do it could I? I just HAD to make a newer, better version. Why?

When I look at democracy 2, lots of things bug me about it. Stuff not done right, stuff not included, graphical roughness, simulation glitches, all kinds of stuff which screams out at the games creator but which most players don’t notice or forgive. I felt that there must be (surely!) lots of people out there who were playing Democracy 2 and thinking ‘he hasn’t really done the concept justice though has he?’.

Democracy3-Brand

So whether or not it was a sensible business decision or not, I took it upon myself to make the third version of Democracy. I’ve never done a ‘3’ before. And as I prepare to launch it into pre-orders and beta (mere days away!), I find myself slightly niggled, in a ferengi sense, that I am about to effectively kill off Democracy 2 by releasing a bigger, bolder, brighter, better version. It may not be the smartest business decision ever. I should probably have made Gratuitous Space Battles 2 instead, or made another new game, and THEN come back to the democracy series.

Sometimes you just have to let the creative part of your brain beat up the business part though :D

Crunch Crunch

I have a day-off booekd for the 24th August. I’ll probably do some programming anyway, but according to my schedule, there is nothing specific booked on that day. Every other day in between has a pile of stuff to do. Why so busy?

Well REDSHIRT will be shipping very soon, insofar as we will start taking pre-orders and make the beta available to people who order it. When I say beta, I really mean beta, not some experimental kickstarter-early-access style tech demo, I mean beta. The game is perfectly playable. Bugs to find, balance to tweak, typos to fix, but everything feature and design wise is looking pretty cool.

rs

Shortly after redshirt going into beta, DEMOCRACY 3 will go into beta as well. This is in the same state, ie: finished, apart from any last minute bugs or balance tweaks. Officially, I’ve balanced the UK, France and half of Germany.  USA,Canada and Australia will be done over the next few days, then I’ve set aside some time to bug hunt in redshirt. Democracy 3 will be on sale from my suite hopefully by the end of the month, with pre-order customers getting to play it straight away, and a steam and final release about a month later.

d3

After both games officially ship, there will be a bit of admin involved in terms of Linux & Mac builds of both games, and an ipad port for Redshirt. Then….who knows what comes next! I have grand plans for Gratuitous Space Battles 2, and also vague other plans, and may actually consider whether it makes sense to carry on like this as the sole designer/coder.

Anyway between now and then is a lot of crunch crunch crunch. Also, in unrelated news, I recommend this book on advertising and neuroscience. half way through it so far, kinda cool.

 

 

Gratuitous Business Expenses

I did some analyzing of the last 10 months of positechs expenses and I get this graph:

chart

‘Training’ might seem weird, but it’s because positech is not just me. There is another person doing some writing and proofreading, and yeah, I’m actually investing in training for that person, which is a very long term investmenty thing.

Infrastructure is stuff like web hosting, accountancy and other ongoing expense stuff. Shows is a new one for me, and basically that’s attending GDC in the US as a visitor (including flights and hotels) and exhibiting 2 games at rezzed (including hotel).

PR includes fees to PR people, plus similar expenses on game trailers and website design and coding, including this blog.

Actual expenses are about 22% of revenue. Note that salaries and dividends as the owner of the company aren’t included in all this. Game production costs are basically contractor payments.Obviously if I included a calculation for my own time, the game production cost would be dramatically higher.

Current projections put this years profits lower than last years, although that may turn around once Redshirt and Democracy 3 go into beta.

Yeah, I’m a chartaholic.

The land grab for gamers eyeballs

I enjoy reading about the early days of the internet. I have a strong feeling that only one guy really understood it. Only one guy really got what was going on, and what to do. I don’t mean Bill gates, or The google guys, or Steve Jobs. I don’t mean Woz, I don’t mean Tim Berners lee. I mean Jeff Bezos.

Jeff Bezos understood that the internet was like a big new country being discovered, where all the land was free. And soon, everyone would be emigrating there. Whoever owned all that land would be very very wealthy and powerful. He Realized he had to ‘get big fast’ and more importantly he realized that it was a long term win, where if you didn’t make money for a decade, in fact if you absolutely threw money down the drain for the first decade, it didn’t matter, as long as you won.

bezos

Gaming is pretty big, and it’s getting bigger. For a long time, gamers were just kids. Nobody over 30 played games. It was a niche thing. You wouldn’t make a living doing it. Then it became something that made decent money. then game developers started driving ferraris. Then Call of Duty started appearing on the news. The Minecraft happened. And so on…

Gaming is like a great big country waiting to be conquered, and right now, we do not know who has won. Some might say apple have won, because of the app store. others say maybe Microsoft win by default, due to the X-Box and Windows. or maybe Valve have won? or Zynga? The important thing right now is *we have no clear winner*. And long may that continue.

Thankfully, there is still a slight element of the free market in gaming. There is Kickstarter, Humble Bundle, Gamersgate, D2D,Steam and GoG, and that’s just third party PC game stores. We have some clear frontrunners but nobody has actually ‘won’ yet. I do have a great fear that the main word there is *yet*. As consumers, we will do absolutely NOTHING to maintain the free-market and level playing field. It’s just not in our nature. We worry that the supermarket will out-compete the local butchers, but we drive to the supermarket anyway because they have convenient parking. We are not the best guardians of free markets and competition. We are also, on the whole, oblivious of the fierce war being fought for our loyalty, our eyeballs, and our attention. Attention is everything. I *REALLY* want you to visit my site www.positech.co.uk and buy my games from there, or at least hear about me as an independent entity. If I could guarantee that you would buy my next few games from my website, it easily makes sense for em to offer you my current games for free, or even at a loss.

Indies don’t generally think like this. Especially with their first game. You normally have bills to pay, and getting into debt is scary. If you earn $1,000 in a month, the thought of spending that $1,00 on adverts to get people to come buy your current game at a loss…. that’s madness right?

That’s what Jeff Bezos did.

Me…I don’t quite have the balls for that, but I’m pointing out that the big boys out there who want your eyeballs do. There is a war going on for the attention of gamers. To the winners go huge spoils. It’s fascinating, exciting and frightening to see. I just hope there’s still room for little old me.

 

The Humble Positech Sale

So today is exciting because it’s the start of the HUMBLE POSITECH SALE. You can go grab the games and donate to charity (and the developer!) over at the site here (or click the image below)

humble

It’s especially cool to have been involved with picking the charities for the bundle, which are the red cross and barefoot college. Who? well I first heard about barefoot college after watching as really cool documentary on them in the UK, where they followed the path of a woman who was taken to the college to learn how to manufacture and maintain solar lights. The idea is that they take those skills, and that independence and spread it to other villages and other people. This is quite a tough struggle against poverty, indifference, and quite a bit of sexism too. The documentary is great and it’s a worthy cause. And of course it supports renewable energy, which I’m really into.

But hey, also, there are some cool games of mine there. And they are at a good price. Go grab em. or tell your friends!  or both! And there are videos of me talking about stuff too…