I’ll be away for a few days over new year so will not be blogging. So this is the last opportunity to sum up what happened in Positech Land during 2008.
What I did:
- I finished and released Kudos 2. Arguably my most polished game to date, although due to the US elections, Democracy 2 is currently outselling it slightly.
- I finally changed my game engine to support DirectX9. This was long overdue.
- I wrote a blog post that catapulted me onto the radio, slashdot, digg, kotaku and lots of other places, and got me briefly known as the ‘pirate-sympathising game developer’, which is a bit of a miscast role, but it proved to be a fantastic way to get real honest feedback about my games, and also my website from people who hadn’t heard of me. Also got me my first ever check for writing for a newspaper.
- I Switched to a dedicated linux server mainly to prevent the piracy article traffic killing my website. It’s MUCH more expensive :(
- I met up with some fellow indie game developers in Birmingham, got extremely drunk, and then met some of them again in much more local Woking. Finally met people like ‘grey alien’ ‘princec’ ‘papillion’ and the pickford brothers all of which I’d previously chatted to only online.
- I redesigned the positech website, and made it look tons better than it used to. Short of throwing money at a web designer, I’m not sure what else I should do to it right now.
- I seriously considered emigrating, because the UK sucks, and the cost of living here sucks. I’m still thinking about it.
- I changed the blog address to be cliffski.com
What I failed to do:
- Make lots more money. The profit for 2008 was a bit below 2007. 2007 was a bumper year thanks to some good sales of the original Kudos, and the fact that Kudos: Rock Legend didn’t take that long to make. I still make a reasonable amount of money for one guy programming games, so I’m not complaining.
- Make the obscure top-secret game. I have this game idea I keep talking about. It’s either doomed, or awesome. I just don’t know yet. In any case, it’s been put back again. maybe a full year while I do this space thing.
- Hire anyone. I’m still one guy working in a spare bedroom. I’ve employed contractors from time to time to do art and sound and music, but it’s still just me designing and coding. I have thought a lot about how to expand the business, but still haven’t made any concrete steps towards doing it.
All in all, 2008 was a pretty good year. Kudos 2 was fun to make, and I’ve kept the business afloat despite the casual games ‘boom’ narrowing to just remakes of about 3 different games, and the global financial meltdown.
Bottom line is, I’m still here, still making indie games for the PC, not shabby console ports based on movie tie-ins, and there are free demos, mod-support and no DRM.
Happy new year everyone.