Category: business

With steam announcing that they are greenlighting 100 new games today, it seems that ‘securing distribution on big name portals‘ is a task for new and upcoming indies which just got a bit easier. That’s good news, but there is only so much scope for people to sell games, it probably just means that the things indie devs might need help with haven’t reduced, but just changed. This has got me thinking about the medium term future of Positech, and what I’d like to do, and what maybe I *could* do for indies. If I’d made the list a few years ago it might be this:

1. Provide web-hosting
2. Process payments
3. Handle mailing list stuff
4. Take care of PR
5. Provide funding for development
6. Sort out contracts and admin/businessy stuff like contracts with artists/sound/music people
7. Provide general business advice
8. Take care of advertising

Some of these are maybe less of a need now than they used to be. I know it’s possible to do *all* of this yourself. I do. But I’ve been doing this for decades. if you are 18 years old and programming your first game, do you want to do those 7 things too? Aren’t you busy debugging? :D. For some people, no doubt the answer is yes. And of course some people could do it all, but may choose not to. I quite like looking at sales charts and advertising stats, but few game designers really do.

Certainly 2) is something that has been kinda dealt a blow if it’s easy to get on steam. But has it really? Firstly not everyone gets on steam, even now, and secondly, they take their cut of the sales, which is a non trivial amount. You can use a payment provider and sell direct, but you need an account with them, and need to learn how they work, and then handle currency conversions etc etc. Maybe that is still something people would rather not do?

5) Would normally be a HUGE big deal, but now we have kickstarter. Had this made funding for indies easier? or just for established indies? Something that has not got any easier is likely to be 7) and maybe 8). I’ve been around a while, and know a bit about the games market. I might be able to provide some value there perhaps.

So I guess what I’m thinking about is whether I should be looking for the classic ‘first time indie’, that has great programming skills, great game design skills, but doesn’t know where to go from there. Could positech.co.uk turn into a storefront for games not just made by me, but also games developed (like redshirt) by other developers but published by me? I think it’s definitely something worth considering, in the medium term. I just wonder how many developers fall into that category. if you are working on your first game, would you pay a cut to someone to handle all this?

I did some analyzing of the last 10 months of positechs expenses and I get this graph:

‘Training’ might seem weird, but it’s because positech is not just me. There is another person doing some writing and proofreading, and yeah, I’m actually investing in training for that person, which is a very long term investmenty thing.

Infrastructure is stuff like web hosting, accountancy and other ongoing expense stuff. Shows is a new one for me, and basically that’s attending GDC in the US as a visitor (including flights and hotels) and exhibiting 2 games at rezzed (including hotel).

PR includes fees to PR people, plus similar expenses on game trailers and website design and coding, including this blog.

Actual expenses are about 22% of revenue. Note that salaries and dividends as the owner of the company aren’t included in all this. Game production costs are basically contractor payments.Obviously if I included a calculation for my own time, the game production cost would be dramatically higher.

Current projections put this years profits lower than last years, although that may turn around once Redshirt and Democracy 3 go into beta.

Yeah, I’m a chartaholic.

I enjoy reading about the early days of the internet. I have a strong feeling that only one guy really understood it. Only one guy really got what was going on, and what to do. I don’t mean Bill gates, or The google guys, or Steve Jobs. I don’t mean Woz, I don’t mean Tim Berners lee. I mean Jeff Bezos.

Jeff Bezos understood that the internet was like a big new country being discovered, where all the land was free. And soon, everyone would be emigrating there. Whoever owned all that land would be very very wealthy and powerful. He Realized he had to ‘get big fast’ and more importantly he realized that it was a long term win, where if you didn’t make money for a decade, in fact if you absolutely threw money down the drain for the first decade, it didn’t matter, as long as you won.

Gaming is pretty big, and it’s getting bigger. For a long time, gamers were just kids. Nobody over 30 played games. It was a niche thing. You wouldn’t make a living doing it. Then it became something that made decent money. then game developers started driving ferraris. Then Call of Duty started appearing on the news. The Minecraft happened. And so on…

Gaming is like a great big country waiting to be conquered, and right now, we do not know who has won. Some might say apple have won, because of the app store. others say maybe Microsoft win by default, due to the X-Box and Windows. or maybe Valve have won? or Zynga? The important thing right now is *we have no clear winner*. And long may that continue.

Thankfully, there is still a slight element of the free market in gaming. There is Kickstarter, Humble Bundle, Gamersgate, D2D,Steam and GoG, and that’s just third party PC game stores. We have some clear frontrunners but nobody has actually ‘won’ yet. I do have a great fear that the main word there is *yet*. As consumers, we will do absolutely NOTHING to maintain the free-market and level playing field. It’s just not in our nature. We worry that the supermarket will out-compete the local butchers, but we drive to the supermarket anyway because they have convenient parking. We are not the best guardians of free markets and competition. We are also, on the whole, oblivious of the fierce war being fought for our loyalty, our eyeballs, and our attention. Attention is everything. I *REALLY* want you to visit my site www.positech.co.uk and buy my games from there, or at least hear about me as an independent entity. If I could guarantee that you would buy my next few games from my website, it easily makes sense for em to offer you my current games for free, or even at a loss.

Indies don’t generally think like this. Especially with their first game. You normally have bills to pay, and getting into debt is scary. If you earn $1,000 in a month, the thought of spending that $1,00 on adverts to get people to come buy your current game at a loss…. that’s madness right?

That’s what Jeff Bezos did.

Me…I don’t quite have the balls for that, but I’m pointing out that the big boys out there who want your eyeballs do. There is a war going on for the attention of gamers. To the winners go huge spoils. It’s fascinating, exciting and frightening to see. I just hope there’s still room for little old me.