{"id":2680,"date":"2013-12-30T23:05:36","date_gmt":"2013-12-30T23:05:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/?p=2680"},"modified":"2013-12-30T23:05:36","modified_gmt":"2013-12-30T23:05:36","slug":"2013-a-good-year-start-of-investment-and-some-consolidation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/2013\/12\/30\/2013-a-good-year-start-of-investment-and-some-consolidation\/","title":{"rendered":"2013 a good year, start of investment, and some consolidation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So 2013 was very good for the business side of Positech Games. it&#8217;s definitely been my most profitable year yet. We spent more than ever making games, more than ever on marketing, and made more than ever back. In biz terms there were a lot of firsts&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>First time I hired a PR agency was in 2013<\/li>\n<li>First time I had a proper pro trailer made was 2013<\/li>\n<li>First GDC attendance was 2013<\/li>\n<li>First time I exhibited at trade shows was 2013.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>First time I actually paid out for a site-takeover advert was 2013.<\/p>\n<p>And on the non-biz, but development side&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>First time I managed a foreign-language translation and&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>First time I took Mac &amp; Linux porting costs under positechs control, rather than splitting it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These were all good decisions, everything seems to have gone pretty well. Plus, we released redshirt, the first name under the positech banner developed by someone else (Tiniest Shark).<\/p>\n<p>Those were the exciting new, adventurous things. On the game design front I&#8217;ve been more cautious. I released Democracy 3 and started (very early) work on Gratuitous Space Battles 2, both sequels. I truly have become hollywood! My plans extend to a new IP by the tail end of 2014, so don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve entirely run out of ideas (far from it!).<\/p>\n<p>Because sales-wise the year went well, I&#8217;ve been doing some consolidation and investment for positech too. I&#8217;ve had a lot of popular games, but maybe I&#8217;ve been lucky. There is no magic rule that says I will earn a single penny in 2014, and given development costs, I *may* actually lose money. As a result, I&#8217;m starting to think longer term about investing in making positech a more &#8216;solid&#8217; company to own. That means a bit of investing (it&#8217;s shocking what a terrible rate of return you can get right now, even if you are prepared to lock money away for a loooong time), and a bit of investing in the biz itself, stuff like equipment and improvements to infrastructure. I also see advertising as a long term investment. I know some people take 150+ days from clicking an ad to buying my games, and I suspect the real figure can be longer. A certain chunk of the democracy 3 ad budget will pay dividends in GSB 2.0 or New IP sales. I like to think long term.<\/p>\n<p>2014 offers a lot to look forward to, I have some stuff coming up quite soon(ish) and of course I&#8217;m very keen to show off some proper GSB 2.0 screenshots when I finally have something to show :D<\/p>\n<p>Happy new year all!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So 2013 was very good for the business side of Positech Games. it&#8217;s definitely been my most profitable year yet. We spent more than ever making games, more than ever on marketing, and made more than ever back. In biz terms there were a lot of firsts&#8230; First time I hired a PR agency was<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-right\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Continue Reading&#8230; 2013 a good year, start of investment, and some consolidation<\/span><a class=\"btn btn-secondary continue-reading\" href=\"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/2013\/12\/30\/2013-a-good-year-start-of-investment-and-some-consolidation\/\">Continue Reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2681,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2680\/revisions\/2681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}