I just released another new patch for Democracy 2 (1.23) the changes are these:
Married Tax Allowance now makes parents happier
University grants make parents happier
Increased probability of prison riot event
Reduced positive effects of legal aid policy
Bailing out company dilemma now costs money
Creationism policy now affects technological backwater and technological advantage situations
Oil prices now affect the chances of the petrol protests situation
Reduced effectiveness of free buss passes for retired people
New Space Program policy.
New Pirates Attacking Oil tanker event.
Liberals are now angered slightly by citizenship tests
Stem cell research now boosts lifespan
I also have spent all morning doing sales analysis and working out how to keep selling more games. It’s possible that I’m going to always dedicate Monday morning (at least) to being the day where I work on support and marketing for the older games. It’s easy to just ‘forget’ about the old games and get obsessed with the new one, but I can’t afford to do that. My target for all my games is to sell 5,000 copies of each one direct, before I can relax and feel that at least they were not a flop. By this reckoning, Kudos:Rock Legend was a flop, but it did sell OK on Mac, and there are always the portal sales to consider too.
The big problem is web traffic. There are maybe a billion people on-line, and maybe 1% of them play games that’s a lot of potential buyers. The percentage of people who would maybe buy Kudos 2 or Democracy 2 who have actually visited my website must be pretty small. The problem is, it’s not easy to know how to reach them. I currently spend about 10% of my income on advertising. I know some people spend a much bigger chunk, but I use the rest to eat and pay bills. Plus it’s not easy knowing where to find ads that actually convert into real-world sales.
I’ll be back working on the space game tomorrow.