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

Can I quote you on that?

Posted on September 9, 2014

“Cliff is awesome, but a bit arrogant, Would talk to again 4.5/5”

I’m shamelessly fishing for reviews. Not actually for ME, as I already have enough of an inflated ego to drown out any potential reviewed downsides. Nope, I’m after reviews for Democracy 3, from people who bought it. Just one-sentence reviews (or maybe 2) with peoples names and rough locations (Ohio! for example).

You know the kind of thing

I’m going to collect some and put them on the Democracy 3 page. They have to be genuine obviously, because I have ethics, like a vulcan. So if you bought the game direct from me, that would be awesome, because I can then look up your order and confirm it’s real. Maybe I’m being too paranoid there, I just don’t want people to think I’m being dishonest, which I’m not. Obviously there are tons of great steam reviews, but those are probably copyrighted or whatever.

Anyway, if you did like the game, pls email cliff AT positech dot co dot uk, with your review, and that would be fab :D

Gratuitous Space Battles 2 Ship Customizer! Oh yes…

Posted on September 8, 2014

Behold the latest video. I think you will like this one. Plus, this is with my spangly new (pricey) microphone. can you tell the difference? Not sure I can, but let me know if it’s any better!

I’m sure people will have some questions. If you don’t see this is a big cool new feature that totally changes GSB, then watch it again :D It’s going to be awesome fun seeing what people can do, especially given how crazy people went with mods for GSB1 and that was without any ability to change graphics within the game. Let me know what you think…

Marketing games in 2014…hmmmmm.

Posted on September 7, 2014

I’m always a bit paranoid about being out of date. I don’t want to be the guy who is putting the finishing touches to his betamax product line just before he hears about VHS. I don’t care so much about coding tech, as I think the costs ofg switching tech to the latest version outweigh the benefits. Especially if you do whatever Microsoft say is cool, which changes every year. Is silverlight still a thing? hell…I remember when VRML was the tech of the FUTURE.

But like it or not, the internet changes, gamers change, and we have to roll with it. Subscription MMO’s are dead. F2P is the default now. That’s a BIG change. iOS games went from being non-existent, to gold-rush, to a great way to lose money in just a few years. Internet ads have gone through so many fads it’s hard to keep up!

So where do we find ourselves? I’d guess we find ourselves in 2014 with these priorities:

  • Video content is king
  • Social media is king
  • Buying your way to attention is getting very expensive
  • Huge centralization of online community control.

I am not a youtube user, on the whole. I watch the odd trailer and technical video, but I never watch let’s plays. I am too impatient for that. I don’t want to hear someone talk about the main menu screen for 5 minutes, I might only *play* a game for 5 minutes. And when I’m relaxing, I’m in a room with a TV on, so I prefer text only. But like it or not, video is huge. As a result, I spent a lot more now on producing video content than I did before. I have an actual video camera (a cheap one, but at least a proper one) and a decent microphone, ready for test-driving tomorrow. I’m going to try and release more and more video content.

Social media is a big thing, but tbh I don’t mind. My twitter account seems weirdly popular, and this blog is even more popular. This has never been a strategy, it’s just me being me, so that worked out quite nicely. I’ve made a bit less use of facebook, reddit etc, because I just have so little time, but I can see they are important.

Simply sitting in a dark room without either of those and just buying advertising space is getting harder. Ad-costs are high. A lot of billion-dollar companies are throwing cash at each other in a mud-fight, and us indies can’t afford to get in the middle. Some of the CPC ads can still be worth doing, but CPM is going up and up. Anyone who thinks $5-10 CPM is ‘a good deal’ is smoking something. It absolutely isn’t, unless you are selling accident insurance.

There are very few places now to be heard. A lot of those big gamer sites you enjoy are owned by parent organizations who own three or four or more of them. Big media companies like buying other media companies. I think starting a new site these days is very very hard. You struggle so much to get the slightest attention. Right now there are probably just about enough media outlets for indie PC gaming to keep up a sense of competition, but if things consolidate more I’d start to worry that we are back to 2 or 3 companies deciding your fate as an indie games business.

Interesting times…

Dirty Dozen promotion post-mortem

Posted on September 4, 2014

I can’t give you exact sales figures, because they are confidential. But that sale did ok. It wasn’t launched at the best time, but it did nevertheless make as good money as the majority of the ‘indie bundles’ out there, ignoring the humble one of course :D.

I’m definitely going to run another one, later in the year. I think I’ve done enough work to know that the model works, and setting it up will be easier next time around. Now that the sale has run once, I can say to developers ‘the sale earned an average of $X per developer last time’, which might bring in some developers who would otherwise turn it down. Funnily enough, I still get developers who refuse to be listed on showmethegames. I don’t understand why. Maybe they hate traffic, or money, or me. Whatever.

Anyway, it will still be the only ‘100% developer share’ bundle that is not PWYW. So it should continue to attract devs that want to build up their direct sales and who don’t want their games available for under a dollar. It’s a nice little side project for my spare time anyway.

Gratuitous Space Battles 2 : First battle video!

Posted on September 1, 2014

Well I’ve been working on this beast long enough, so it’s time to share my efforts with you wonderful people of the internet. I have a whole bunch of stuff I’ll eventually talk about and show to you, but I thought I’d start off the Gratuitous Space battles 2 videos with a decent 9 minute explanation by me of the stuff that is new (so far) in the graphics engine for the GSB 2 battles. There is a lot to talk about:…

I tend to do more written stuff than videos just because I find the majority of video content moves ‘too slow’ for me. I want all the information and spectacle of stuff condensed as much as possible because I take information in very very fast. If someone has a really slow speaking voice it’s even more agonizing. But hey, I’m not the audience, you are, and the good people of the internet seem to prefer video content to written, so I’m going to try and do my bit to keep up with your youtube-watching ways. or twitch, or whoever is cool this week :D

It’s difficult because I hate my own voice, and I have broadband (ha!) delivered by a sliver of copper the size of an angels nostril hair, so my upload speed is about 45kb/s on a GOOD day. This vid took nearly 4 hours to upload. Grr. Luckily I should have a chance of getting fiber here in December.

Anyway, enjoy the vid, post any comments here or on youtube or on the GSB2 official forums. I have more stuff to show off in a few weeks!