Cliffski's Blog

I’ve always known this, but it hit home recently, for various boring reasons. I’m a bit of a maths and stats and numbers geek. I’m actually not that good at pure maths, but I do love spreadsheets and statistics and so on. Can you tell from my games? I thought so. Anyway, because of that, I do a lot of planning, and strategizing, and thinking and extrapolating about business. The holy grail of course, is to think you have found a ‘formula’ that means you can make something for $X and sell it for $X+1, and thus earn billions and be a success. yay!

The trouble is, although it never seems it when you look at spreadsheets, nothing is reproducible in a linear fashion in the world of business. Say my ad campaign costs $0.40 a click and I estimate (through complex formula) that I get $0.44 value for that. That doesn’t mean I should double or quadruple my ad spend. Not vaguely. It just means that I am making money in these exact circumstances right now today. Doubling the ad spend widens the market and dilutes the targeting. it could then *lose* money.

In the rare circumstances where there is a huge market for generic product X, and the market is unfulfilled by others, and nobody else is looking to enter the market, and you can double your output of X with the same cost per unit, and currently X earns you money, then that is a done deal, but this NEVER happens.

Gratuitous Space Battles was a huge hit, back in 2009 or whatever, so a sequel is a no brainer in 2015. Although it isn’t because the market is totally different, the game has to (by definition) vary from the original, so the product is different. The economy is different, and so on…

This is why Positech is basically just me, in terms of full time game production people. Expanding sounds easy. I would like to expand. I have the capability to expand and make more games, definitely not short of ideas. But that would ideally mean cloning me, and sadly thats not possible yet. I have to find someone who likes the same kind of games as me, is VERY good at C++, speaks English, is looking for a job, is willing to work for someone else, who is affordable, who I get along with,  who is trustworthy, who works hard, who is reliable and will do what they are employed to do.

If you think there are lots of those people, you have never tried to hire one.

Business is messy, messy,messy. People are unreliable, or they decide to quit and work elsewhere, or they get ill, or divorced messily and lose focus, or they win the lottery, or their partner gets a promotion and they have to relocate, or they are argumentative, or they are less experienced than they claim or…one of a billion things.

If when running your games studio you think ‘omg this is a nightmare, why am I dealing with all these crappy problems that you never see Elon Musk or Steve Jobs moaning about’, don’t panic. Business is always really messy, and fiddly and frustrating. Thats why most people take jobs with someone else.

I was watching a UK chat show last night on TV, with Johnny Depp and Benedict Cumberbatch on, and it struck me how ‘freaked out’ JD seemed at the way the crowd would whoop and holler at him, for seemingly doing very little. it was like he had suddenly realized how crazy fame was, and wondered what the hell was wrong with everyone. Fame sure is a weird thing. it always has been, and always will be. Am I wrong to think its getting *worse*?

Let me explain…

There is this buzzword out there called ‘attention marketing‘. Its basically a way to describe the way people and brands use social media to try and grab peoples attention, but I think its linkable to the phenomena of everyone seeing themselves as ‘a brand’ and the idea that attention is the new currency. Online, the chances of you earning any actual money are minimal, but if you can generate enough attention, then apparently that leads to fame and thus money in some nebulous way. It sure worked out for pewdiepie, and people who own amusing cats, or that woman who makes youtube tutorials about how to put on makeup.

And in a nutshell, the whole ‘makeup tutorial fame’ thing is about the pinnacle of what I’m writing about. After all, what does everyone want? ATTENTION. How do they get attention? well for women, there is some belief that makeup will get them attention, so what could be more ‘meta’ than getting attention for a ‘how to get attention’ video. And here I am, giving that whole concept much desired attention…

The trouble is, we as humans can’t cope with this in 2015. In 1800, getting attention was easy, and yet mild. You stood in the town square with a red hat on and said ‘listen to me!’ and everyone in the village listened. You were recognizable, its you! the red hat dude! hey, what is that you are saying?”

But in 2015 the village is the internet and its population is mind boggling. Not only that, but everyone in the crowd has realized that the dude with the red hat did very well out of his attention, so now everyone has red hats, and some people invented pointy hats. Then some dude realized he got more attention because he had impressive teeth, then everyone got impressive teeth. Then you needed an unusual name, because everyone was called ‘John’. And then before you know it, you have to be called Benedict Cumberbatch or PewDiePie or Yngwie ‘J’ Malmsteen. Be honest, list all the famous John Smiths you can think of. List all the famous Mark Johnsons. Show me the actual famous people who look and behave normally. I spend a non trivial part of my lfie worrying my teeth are not white enough, because they are the color of teeth, not bleached white foglamps which have become the norm. How did we get here?

These days you have to dress ridiculously, act outrageously and basically push the limits of decency/sanity/coherence before people will even glance in your direction and go ‘meh’. There are exceptions out there. I’ve never seen pop star ‘Adele’ do or wear anything especially nuts, but she is the exception in a land of Grace Jones and Lady GaGa and whoever else I am too old to know the names of. Not that this is a new phenomena in pop music. behold the Crazy World of Arthur Brown:

…anyway…My fear is that this is ‘leaking out’ from the world of popular entertainers into…everyone. It seems like you cannot play a game any more, you have to record yourself doing it, and upload it to youtube with your ‘hilarious’ commentary track over the top. You then need to beg your friends for hits on the video, and likes, even though you won’t get any because they are too busy doing exactly the same thing.

We have a generation of kids who think ATTENTION is what they need, even though its harder to get it now than it ever has been. Fame is considered desirable with no caveats, even though there should be many, not least the fact that failure and poverty are almost certainly the truthful outcome of desiring nothing but fame. This is a betrayal. It’s a betrayal of the young to teach them that they must aspire to something that few will achieve and is almost certainly fleeting and unsatisfactory in any case. I don’t have kids, but if I did, the LAST thing I’d want for them would be fame or attention. Success, sure, but success based on achievements and skills, and doing good work, and learning things, not just fame because you star in a tv show where other people watch you watch tv. (yes really, and it won a BAFTA.).

This desire to be noticed affects everything. David Starkey is famous, not as a historian, but as someone who gets angry in TV politics debates. Scientists on TV have to have quirky appearance or be good looking, and spend a lot of time being photographed on mountains wearing sunglasses. Whatever you do, try not to look ORDINARY. Look like an exaggerated scientist!, like these:

I’m pretty sure all three of those dudes are actually respected scientists in their own right, so why the desire to dress up like children’s TV characters? isn’t getting a phd and becoming a professor good enough any more?

I find myself now finding ‘outrageous’ people to be paradoxically boring. Every youtuber sounds the same because they are all trying to be zany. Every music video is the the same because they are all ‘shocking’. In the desperate bid to get noticed, everyone has become predicable, fake and ridiculous.

And yes..I get the irony here. I have a nickname that is this blogs domain name (cliffski.com) and there is a posed photo of me at the top. Somehow, long ago, I started a blog before it was too fashionable, and I am now better known for this blog than my actual games. This is kinda weird, and yes, I feel very strange when strangers know who I am. In my defense, in my photos I am not dressed up as a chicken and I don’t deliberately exaggerate my ‘personality’ to make myself more ‘interesting’. I never care what I wear when I go to industry ‘events’. In fact, I find it encouraging that an average looking forty-something dude from England with no real distinguishing features can still even be noticed. At least for now. If not, I’m hiring a twenty year old model to run Positech and naming him Zackslicer Thunderpants. He will wear a Fez and have a strong mexican accent. Wish me luck.