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

Category: business

World Of Love

I was at this yesterday:

http://indiegamesarcade.com/world-of-love/

Giving a talk about the business side of indie game development. I have my phears that I will be forever known as ‘the piracy guy’ or ‘the business guy’ which would be sad. Even the ‘my powerpoint slides screwed up guy’ would be better than that.

However, I gave a talk on the topic because I know a lot of indie guys struggle financially, and I wish they could afford to be full time, supporting themselves from their games so they get to make more cool games. I hope what I said was helpful, and not too negative. When you look at the hard numbers behind indie gaming, it can seem impossible. If you can’t sell a game every 52 minutes, you will need a day job, basically. (And that means a demo download every 5 minutes, assuming an awesome game, 1 game a year, 100% of the profits, and one person consistantly making popular games without a flop, illness or other eventuality).

Anyway, I met tons of cool people, and shook hands with loads of people I’ve emailed and forum-chatted to but never met. Eskill Steenberg gave an amazing demonstration of how Love was made, which makes my tools look like the amateurish crap that they are! I finally saw a live demo of subversion, and that was fantastic. This may be the first introversion game I like enough to go buy. Plus Terry Cavanagh gave a great presentation of games that made me laugh out loud, which is rare enough.

It was also pretty surreal to end the conference in a karaoke bar singing bon jovi whilst eating chinese/japanese? food. Maybe now people will finally believe me when I say I cannot sing. I accept kierons explanation that I was trying to do ‘Bon Jovi, sung by Bob Dylan’, the best.

I am 100% convinced that waiters in karaoke bars are given special, probably year-long training not to show any facial expression as they enter a cubicle full of drunk english people singing out of tune. Especially if the song is called ‘I touch myself’. All very strange…

Back to work tomorrow methinks.

“Tough on the causes of space battles”

Today was budget day in the UK. The chancellor abolished the plans of the last government to bring in some vague idea of subsidies for UK game developers working on ‘culturally british’ games.

Instead, amongst other things, he reduced the rate of company tax by 1% from next year.

I’m pleased. Even if my games were clearly ‘culturally british’, I’d have to have applied for the subsidy, no doubt by filling out forms that would take days, then probably have to meet someone and pitch for the subsidy, involving me travelling, then debating and arguing, and hoping that some stuffy civil servant in a suit doesnt assume I’m some dody shyster just because I wear jeans and work from home. I bet I’d never have earned a penny from it, although administering the system would doubtless have kept a few civil servants busy.

On the other hand, cutting taxes for all businesses, just makes Positech games 1% more competitive automatically, without any effort involved by anyone. It’s the smarter move, in my opinion. This seems to be a minority view, there is much gnashing of teeth by ‘industry spokespeople’. I’m surprised anyone thought that a pre-election promise to cut taxes would be honored by a different government.

I got retreating working in the campaign today (yay!)

I painted the bathroom door! (yay!)

I paid my years company tax bill today. Even though the online payment system was broken so I had to mail a check. (boo!)

Laughing at activision…

Check out this page:

http://www.gamasutra.com/

If you are lucky you will see a banner advert for infinity ward. Apparently they are ‘the studio behind call of duty’ and apparently they are ‘hiring’.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I wonder why?

Maybe if you treat your staff better, your human resources dept wouldnt need to be working overtime?

Gratuitous Space Bargain

So after getting feedback on what people didn’t like about GSB that prevented some sales, I decided to offer a ‘collectors edition’ of the game that has all 3 expansions in with it, for $25.95. Thats much cheaper than buying them seperately, by a huge chunk. Also, it’s just one installer that blaps everything in the right place, no so more confusion over install paths (yay!)

It’s for sale at that price now on my site:

http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/register.html

Look, theres a picture of boxes and everything! (actual game does NOT come in a box. Who needs boxes these days?). Obviously I’m a completely rational ferengi, so if this means revenue actually falls, I’ll probably put it back as it was.

Sales are pretty slow these days, I’m assuming thats E3 sucking in all the attention. I am not paying much attention to it, but I predict lost of new controllers based on waving your arms around, and some games involving butch space marines kicking butt. With bump maps.

Talking With Customers (or potential ones)

Years ago, I did this blog post, which is why I now run a dedicated server, because mine just MELTED. I was even on the radio, in several countries, yabbering on about piracy. Its still a huge big deal in terms of people recognising my name.

Anyway. I’m sort of going to try and do the same thing, sort of, but on a different tack. it won’t be vaguely as popular, and I bet I get 10 replies, rather than 10,000, but that’s cool. So instead of ‘Why do you pirate my games’, todays question is

“Why didn’t you buy Gratuitous Space Battles?”

Please read this next bit:

I am NOT complaining. I am NOT moaning about sales. I am NOT unhappy with sales, I am not whining or anything like it. I just like making games that people enjoy, and I don’t know why the people who didn’t buy it, didn’t buy it. I’d like to know. The answers may well make it a better game for everyone, if I fix those reasons (if they make sense). It will make the game attractive to current fence-sitters, better for current owners, and more sales for me and my cats.


This cat demands answers NOW.

You can post here, or email me at cliff@positech.co.uk. Subject could be “Why I didn’t buy GSB”. As with the piracy thing, what I 100% absolutely totally want is honesty. Here are some prompts for what you might be thinking, and please email me if any of them are true:

  • “I Thought it would be an arcade game, but it wasn’t and I don’t like strategy games.”
  • “I Don’t like 2D games, or at least won’t pay money for them.”
  • “The demo was too easy”
  • “The demo crashed”
  • “It ran badly on my PC”
  • “I already have lots of space strategy games”
  • “The demo was badly balanced”
  • “I heard bad things about it”
  • “I don’t trust buying it from your website”
  • “It’s too expensive”
  • “I wanted direct control of the ships, and that was frustrating”
  • I wanted a campaign wrapped around the battles. It was too sandboxy”

etc. Obviously, feel free to add to the list, above all, be honest. I’m not offended if you email me and say “The games shit, my dog could make a better game”. I would disagree, but that’s your opinion :D.

If you have friends or interwebs-buddies who you know saw or heard about the game, and don’t own it, I’d love to know their opinions. Obviously if you *did* buy it, you don’t get a vote today. Sorry, and thankyou for buying one of my games. You are clearly happier, more intelligent, discerning and probably more attractive than other people.

My intention here is to hoover up all those comments that invariably get made, that could, in a perfect world, be fed back to the creator of something to make the product better. We, as a species really need to get our shit together on that. If you are like me, you *always* find something about everything you buy which is annoying*, there just isn’t a direct route to the inbox of the designer to send your feedback. My email address is cliff@positech.co.uk. Tell me what improvement would make you a buyer of Gratuitous Space Battles.

*those new nozzles on ketchup bottles give me less control over ketchup distribution, and are affecting my purchase decisions…