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

Category: business

Gratuitous Business Expenses

Posted on August 4, 2013

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

Posted on July 31, 2013

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

Posted on July 25, 2013

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…

Staggered Game Release failure

Posted on July 15, 2013

One of my plans with the game I’m publishing ‘Redshirt‘ was to have it all set up nicely so that it launches in-between my own game releases. I’d therefore keep the positech games name and website alive in every-bodies minds while I huddled in a corner typing away on my next masterpiece. The thing is, no plan survives contact with the real world, and with some stuff going faster than expected, and other stuff going slower, and ‘events dear boy,events’, it turns out that Democracy 3 and Redshirt are going to be close to shipping at almost exactly the same time.

It’s so close that I actually got voiceover for both games on the exact same day. I’m interleaving emails to the press about one game, with emails about the other. It’s CHAOS I tell you. CHAOS!

Obviously I’m sure it will all be ok in the end. Redshirt is looking really cool, and it is crazily crazily addictive already. It requires balancing, as do all games towards the end, and there is the inevitable ‘things act differently on this PC’ nonsense that us PC developers absolutely LOVE.

redshirt_Logo_transparent_500

We will be showing off redshirt to the wider galaxy very shortly, so expect screenshots and more info on the game very soon. Also expect lots of puns about tentacles. I’ve already added a link (for widescreen layouts) to the redshirt site from www.positech.co.uk. I only do this at the last minute, because I tend to prefer to funnel eyeballs towards opportunities to give me money NOW :D

My experience of exhibiting at Rezzed 2013 UK

Posted on June 24, 2013

So… I’m back from the sunny climes of Birmingham UK. For those who don’t know much about Birmingham, here is an up to the minute guide:

But enough about Birmingham, what about the games show known as rezzed?

This was the first time I had ever attended a games show as an exhibitor. I’ve given talks before, but never had a booth and shown off games, either released or in development. My main concern has always been the shaky business case of paying thousands of pounds to hire a few square feet of space for two days. As an analytics boffin, I’m very wary of spending money without being able to quantify what I get for it. Anyway… I decided it was worth doing it properly or not at all, so we had a proper big 4 PC booth showing redshirt and democracy 3:

1

And despite our initial very English doom-and-gloom panic that we were the only strategy game in a sea of call of duty, and nobody would care, our booth was kinda swamped right from the start. It was *very* rare to find a moment of either of the two days where all 4 seats were not taken, sometimes with a small crowd around each player. Redshirt was a big attraction, and democracy 3 seemed to attract all kinds of gamers, young,old,male,female, which was very interesting.

2

3

As well as showing off the games, and getting to watch people play them, we also got to talk to a fair few people from the press, and of course hang out with a bunch of indies we know from previous events. I was busy enough that I only got to attend one of the developer sessions, which I guess is the downside of actually being an exhibitor. We had three people on our booth including me, and maybe we should have had more to free us up to actually walk around, or more importantly, sit down now and then!

We completely ran out of badges, and almost ran out of flyers for both games. People really like game show swag! So anyway… the big question is, was it worth it, and would I do it again? I think the answer is ‘probably yes’. These things are expensive. yes it’s cool that you meet real gamers who play your games, but the gamers are charged for entering the show, and you get charged for providing the games they come to see…seems a little cunning to me. I am in the wrong business clearly… I think if the costs of exhibiting were much higher I’d say it isn’t worth it, given the opportunity cost that the money could also buy a lot of advertising or artwork/promotion in other ways.

I think it’s probably very good to do shows when your game is approaching beta and close to release (as both ours are), but earlier in dev, or attending every show for an already released game? It’s a really tough call. Obviously it also depends on your company’s balance sheet! I saw some indies still fighting to get picked on greenlight, with their first game, and I wonder where they get the money together for an appearance at a games show. Still… there is no right answer for this stuff, everyone has their own strategy. Anyway…back to work…