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

Category: business

Amazon Cloudfront

In a recent discussion amongst indies, someone had stats showing that by switching to a cloud-based file host for their demo, they got a lot more demo downloads than before. I was naturally intrigued.

As a result, I set up an account with Amazon cloudfront, which requires an account with Amazon S3, and a lot of complex nonsense. Eventually, I worked out how to do something simple, like let them host a file, and link to it. grrrr… I lvoe the way you can’t actually see how many times a file was downloaded, or at what speed. That’s awesome reporting they have there….

Anyway, it’s cost be $9 so far, and I’m only doing it for the GSB demo link. Basically, if you download the GSB demo from here, it’s from my server, but the GSB demo from here, is from cloudfront, and theoretically much faster. If anyone is bored/curious enough to test, could you say if there is an appreciable difference?

Also, would it make a difference to you? I have 7MB broadband, and I have very very often cancelled demo downloads if they look like they will take > 30 minutes. I don’t really know why, it just bugs me. I’ve also likely downloaded demos on a whim then forgotten about them. I’m trying to quantify the extent to which a fast download of a demo matters to people.

In other news, I’m coding like mad on LB. Can’t talk about it yet, until it looks anything worth looking at, and thats likely 2 months off. I’m also arranging those extra GSB maps, and dreaming about getting planning permission for something, anything, one day.

Gratuitous Modding Awesomeness

Because there are only 24 hours in the day, and I sleep at least 7 of them, it means I can’t do everything or keep up with everything, so it sometimes takes a while for me to spot totally awesome GSB modding efforts like this:

http://positech.co.uk/forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=5906

There is a community-run ship modding competition, basically, and some really cool designs have been submitted. People on the positech forums are voting for the best one, so feel free to go take a look.  There are loads of cool entries, I especially like this one:

I need to ensure LB has better support for modding. GSB is a bit flaky in that regard, in terms of having a lack of easy ways to turn mods on or off. At least it has separate mod folder support, so it’s not too bad.

In other news, I’ve picked my map-designer for the Galactic Conquest bonus maps and emailed them. I simply do not have the time to email everyone who applied, so I’m sorry to not get back to everyone, but there was a lot of really good entrants and it was very difficult to pick someone. I’ve never employed anyone to work on game design stuff before, but I need to start doing this if positech is to make the quality and size games that I want to make in future. I need to be dedicated to LB, and I hate to leave anything in GSB unfinished, so this is a step towards achieving that.

Thanks for everyone who expressed an interest in the idea.

Game designer job. (yes really)

I’m not actually offering someone a *job*, job. It’s not a permanent thing. I’m looking for a contractor, just for a week. Even if I *did* have the work (and money) for a permanent employee, I wouldn’t do it. The UK insists on burdening employers with so much paperwork and bureaucracy it’s literally better to just not bother and stay a one-man business. Bah etc…

Anyway…

See Gratuitous Space Battles?

See the campaign add on Galactic Conquest?

That campaign add-on has only ONE map. It’s fixed, every time, and people would prefer it to to have variety. Hence I want to have another 3 maps made that are different, and let the player choose from them. This will require some coding by me, which isn’t a lot, but it would involve a fair amount of editing, play testing and balancing, and I don’t have the time to do it.

This is where my new padawan will come in.

Basically I want someone to take the GSB campaign, and come up with 3 new maps, all new planet names, all new facility locations and anomaly locations, and a new network of connecting hyperspace doodahs. There is a debug editor, of sorts, built into the game (I’d get a debug copy to them) which is flaky as hell, because my tools suck, but I used it myself so it can’t be too bad.

I’m thinking it’s probably a full time job for a week. I’m thinking it’s worth $1,000. I know full time lead designers don’t work for that, but this is more of a junior designer/tester thing anyway. Don’t shout at me, I’m only a frail humble indie :D

This is who I need:

  • Someone who speaks and types very good English. Language barriers can be hell.
  • Someone over 18.  This sounds horribly cruel, but it’s purely because if you are under 18, there are probably all kinds of horrific laws about employing a minor, and I don’t want angry parents suing me. Sorry about this…
  • A very keen gamer, likely someone who has played GSB and likes it, and plays a lot of strategy games. You will definitely have to be very familiar with how the game plays, and be reasonably good at it before starting to do this.
  • Someone who has a free week coming up very soon (Feb/March, really). I don’t want to leave it longer than that. I doubt it’s doable in evenings and weekends, but you can try and convince me otherwise.
  • Someone professional , with a good eye for detail, organised and capable. I’m pretty sure I could talk people into doing this for free, I’m paying hard earned cash because I want a top notch job done that I can happily put my name to.

If this applies to you, please email me at cliff@positech.co.uk, with details about you. Any references or CV style stuff would be welcome, but not essential. if you are a game design student at some college or university, then maybe this is a good opportunity to wangle it into the course. If you are an unemployed game designer with pro experience, this is ideal for you. Don’t forget you can work from home, and 90% of the time you will just be fighting space battles, and checking it’s fun. There are worse jobs out there, trust me. Plus it looks good on CVs.

I’ll pay the full amount by paypal or bank transfer on completion. You can trust me, I’ve been around decades, and employed dozens of people in similar ways. I always pay! There will be a contract/NDA to sign, naturally.

If you know anyone suitable, please tweet this to them, or whatever you hip kids do these days.

BTW this will be a free update, not new DLC.

Democracy and steam

Sooo… After being annoyed about reading a message from someone along the lines of ‘I’ll only buy games on steam’ I tweeted angrily earlier and pointed out that steam was not the whole PC market, and got dozens of tweets from people extolling the virtues of steam. I know the virtues of steam, I’m a gamer too. I have an account on there, and buy some games there. My beef isn’t with steam (I love steam), but with the mindset that you turn over your freedom of purchase choice to a third party. I would go berzerk if I was told I can only buy food from Sainsburys, or could only watch the BBC, yet people seem happily to confine their game purchasing to the stock of a single store.

Anyway…

I made a game called Democracy 2. (I did the original too). It’s a politics sim, a sort of ‘Sim Country’ game, and it’s quite complex and technical. It has, however, sold extremely well over the years, and continues to sell now. I’ve sold seven copies so far today, and it’s only 2PM. Not bad at all. It’s also won various awards and praise in reviews yada yada. It is *not* as polished or good-looking a game as GSB. But it has depth and lots of originality.

Screenie:

Anyway…

You can’t buy Democracy 2 on steam. You can get it from impulse, direct2drive and gamersgate, but not Steam. Obviously you can buy it direct. I offerred it to valve ages ago, and they rejected it. I then offered it again, after GSB had sold ten zillion copies, but they still rejected it again, which is a pity. They said

"This is just not a good fit for distribution on Steam."

Now obviously, steam can do what they like. They are a private company. They might think the game is too amateurish. they might think it won’t sell. They might think that their time is better spent getting bigger budget, or newer games listed. Democracy 2 is a few years old now. This is all up to them. However, I can’t help but think it would sell really well. It’s a game that looks a bit sucky in screenshots, but people get into it really quickly. I think there is a market there, especially amongst the ‘I only buy games on steam’ crowd. It’s very moddable too.

Sooo, if you are someone who quite likes the look of D2, but would only buy it if it was on steam, please let them know. It only takes 2 minutes, just fire off an email to valve, hopefully linking to this post, and saying you would like to buy Democracy 2 if valve sold it. I’d appreciate it, and you never know, it might get listed. Stranger things have happened!

http://www.valvesoftware.com/contact/

The perfect indie game company

2012

Here is my vision of positech industries in 2012.

There is one full time employee, and it’s still me. Most of the personal stuff relating to the core business is still done by me. It’s still me on twitter, writing this blog, and designing the games. It’s still me making the big business decisions, and I still own the company 100%

The Positech Engine is now much bigger than before, and takes up a larger chunk of each games source code. Some code is being written by contractors, such as all of the editors and mod tools.

The positech website is completely outsourced, with a web developer and designer paid to update and improve the site. The developer also doubles up as a server admin, and handles coding all of the php and database stuff required for positech’s games. Possibly the same person is a community manager, forum admin and moderator, and in charge of replying to tech support emails. Either the same, or another person runs showmethegames.com

Specially written client software handles all of the business data for everything, integrating sales data from all the different sales channels, and tying it in with multiple advertising agencies to produce simple, accurate charts showing how everything is going. Ad budgets and management is all handled automatically, occasionally emailing a contract artist to request some new variants of existing adverts to keep the campaigns fresh. Every single buyer of the game can be tied, as much as possible to the way they heard about my company or games.

A large portion (at least 25%) of the profit for the company still comes direct from sales to gamers, not through third parties.

Positech has multiple games selling on steam.

There is a contract assistant game designer who helps with level balancing and design, and some back story stuff. There is also an artist employed on a contract basis, but working probably six months a year. Pre-release testing is handled by a dedicated tester, employed on a contract basis. New games are tested out on actual gamers in meatspace, and they are filmed whilst playing the game so I can analyse facial expressions as they play.

Positech has diversified slightly, just in case, maybe by buying a part-share in a large wind turbine, or maybe buying some woodland, or investing in a non-games tech company.

Oh and I nearly forgot. I celebrate New Year 2012 by finally getting planning permission for solar panels.

HA!

like THAT is going to happen :D