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

Category: business

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…

Why hardcore gamers are the best customers

For a long time, indie game development got completely sidetracked by an unhealthy obsession with making casual games. These games were all made for 40+ ‘soccer moms’ whatever the hell that means. It got so bad that people on the popular indie developer forums even started equating indie with casual, claiming that indie games had to be 2D, use one mouse button and have zero graphical options, so as to minimise ‘confusion’.

These days, from a  developers point of view, casual gaming has imploded.  A single company (BigFishGames) pretty much killed off all the competition, and forced developer cuts so low that they all sodded off to make iphone or facebook games. (“The current goldrush didn’t work, quick! follow the next goldrush!”).

Personally I think indie developers are best off making games for hardcore gamers and here is why.

  • Hardcore gamers have hardware that will run something more demanding than tetris, meaning you can flex your graphical coding muscles.
  • Hardcore gamers spend money on games. Yes, some are sadly pirates, but the ones who aren’t are happy to pay for a decent game. They consider it a serious pastime, and thus worthy of expenditure. Not a coffee-break amusement. Hence, higher prices and deeper games. Yay!
  • Hardcore gamers understand simple tech support steps and bugs and patches. “What video card do you have” actually gets an answer, rather than questions, making tech support much easier.
  • Hardcore gamers are enthusiastic and chatty. They have accounts on web forums where they discuss games they like. They can evangelise your game, if it’s good, to dozens, hundreds or thousands of potential buyers.
  • Hardcore gamers remember the developers name. They know who made World Of Warcraft, and they know you made your game. They are likely to join your newsletter, and may even read it.
  • Hardcore gamers are the forgotten minority. Bad console ports have mistreated PC gamers for years. Give a PC gamer the option to mod a game, run in windowed or fullscreen, and choose graphical options and screen resolutions, and they think its christmas.
  • Hardcore gamers are tough critics with a lot of ideas. This can be a nightmare, but it means you get feedback on your game, what to improve, and what should be added. If you are open-minded about reading feedback from customers, hardcore gamers are a designers best friend.
  • Hardcore gamers are happy to buy a game online that isn’t from amazon or some mega-corp they have heard of. If you have a secure site, then you will get sales.  Hardcore gamers are also more likely to support a developer direct, rather than a portal.

You may disagree, but this is my humble experience :D I have no intention whatsoever of switching to making casual games, or simple games for non gamers. Even if I wanted to, I don’t think I could make a business case for it to myself, or my cats.

Article on pricing

This article on bit-tech is by me:

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2010/05/24/how-much-should-dlc-cost/1

Feel free to retweet or otherwise promote it:D

My point, which is pretty much glossed over in most discussions about DLC, is that variety is good, and the free market will decide. Some DLC is overpriced, some is underpriced. Some price experiments for games are mental, some are a complete giveaway (like Portal for free). Eventually, the free market gives us the right answer.

As an example, I think that $25 for a single horse mount in WoW is flipping MENTAL, when I worry about charging $6 for an extra GSB race. But… the free market has proven me wrong, people bought it in droves. Who am I to criticise either people who think a mount is worth $25, or Blizzard for setting a price that maximises their revenue?

I’m, just a bit sick of kids describing game develoeprs as nazis for not releasing everything they make for free, and thus venting :D

The world wide consortium

There was a time… it seems silly now, and Aleks talked about it on BBC TV recently, when the web was open, free, and very very democratic. Pretty much every site was some dude in their bedroom hitting a keyboard (like me!), but that didn’t last long.

Remember download.com? It used to just be download.com, then it was CNET’s download.com. Now it is owned by CBS Interactive, who also own TV.com, ZDNet,  News.com, VersionTracker.com, gamespot.com and many others.

Remember slashdot.org? it’s now part of geeknet, who also own sourceforge.

Remember IMDB and Alexa? Both owned by Amazon.

YouTube? owned by Google, of course.

Slowly but surely, in fact maybe not even slowly, all the sites on the net buy each other until there are fewer and fewer owners that control what we read, buy, see, listen to and discuss. I see this as very bad. I’m not some bearded anti-capitalist hippy, I’m VERY much a capitalist at heart. But I’m a pure free-market, small-business style capitalist. I love the idea of a dozen different companies competing to make the best product, and to give the consumer better value. I worry these days that the net is heading towards a time where we don’t do that.  Games are going that way too. Lionhead bought by Microsoft. Maxis bought by EA, etc etc…

Facebook are having a rough time over dodgy privacy settings. The problem is, it’s too late to hassle them about it. Facebook have won. they are huge, valued at 20 billion dollars. Thats bigger than the GDP of Nicargaua. Nobody is about to topple facebook as the top social website. Competition is failing.

Amazon have a similar position in the UK for shopping. Ebay have it for auctions, Google for search, maps, video and most likely small business advertising too.

The really scary thing is that this is MUCH worse than the situation at retail. With physical stuff we have vast competition. I bet you can name ten manufacturers of laptop. ten manufacturers of cars. Now name me ten online book stores.

Or even five.