{"id":4455,"date":"2017-02-15T15:38:36","date_gmt":"2017-02-15T15:38:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/?p=4455"},"modified":"2017-02-15T21:40:07","modified_gmt":"2017-02-15T21:40:07","slug":"random-ups-and-downs-of-releasing-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/2017\/02\/15\/random-ups-and-downs-of-releasing-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Random ups and downs of releasing games"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I really don&#8217;t get how indies put so much time and effort into their first game. The ones who get into debt amaze me even more. the ones who mortgage\/sell their house scare the crap out of me. Don&#8217;t do this.<br \/>\nI&#8217;ve made lots of games, here is how they went:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Asteroid Miner: Meh&#8230;sold a few hundred copies, was exciting to see it in a box.<\/li>\n<li>Starship Tycoon&#8230;sold a few hundred copies, also some retail deals, tempted to quit day job&#8230; and does! That was a mistake!<\/li>\n<li>Rocky Racers&#8230; mediocre flop.<\/li>\n<li>Kombat kars&#8230; mediocre flop.<\/li>\n<li>Planetary Defense&#8230;not bad considering development time was super short (a few months).<\/li>\n<li>Kudos&#8230;surprise hit. did really well. 3rd party publishing deals that paid actual royalties!<\/li>\n<li>Kudos 2&#8230; even better. Seriously good sales. hit $20k in one month. unbelievable.<\/li>\n<li>Democracy&#8230;not bad, not enough to quit job, but really not bad.<\/li>\n<li>Democracy 2: Really good, enough to quit job. *quits job AGAIN*. pays off mortgage.<\/li>\n<li>Gratuitous Space Battles: OMG teh fountain of money. Buys new house.<\/li>\n<li>Gratuitous Tank Battles. Meh: pretty good, but nowhere near as good as GSB.<\/li>\n<li>Democracy 3: LOLLERSKATES. Orders brand new car &amp; stupidly expensive laptop. Starts flying business class. Eventually buys stupidly flash electric car.<\/li>\n<li>GSB2: Yikes, that didn&#8217;t go down well. Ouch. what did I do wrong?<\/li>\n<li>Democracy 3:Africa. Fuck. Americans REALLY don&#8217;t care about Africa then? Barely breaks even.<\/li>\n<li>Production Line: LOL. Almost physically crushed by stampede of pre-orders.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My point is&#8230;holy crap you never know what will happen next. Your next game could flop, it could be huge. I *really* think that GSB2 is underappreciated and am surprised it flopped. I&#8217;m still amazed at how many people like political strategy games. YOU NEVER KNOW. So be cautious, and experiment a bit. if I&#8217;d bet my house on Asteroid Miner, I&#8217;d be renting a bedsit whilst still working in IT support trying to pay off debts. I&#8217;ve never borrowed money to make a game, I&#8217;ve never remortgaged, I&#8217;ve never worked for more than 18 months on a single game before putting it on sale.<\/p>\n<p>That might be a bit clinical and unromantic, but its worked for me. Your life is not a feel-good Hollywood movie starring Tom Cruise. Don&#8217;t get stuck in confirmation bias. Many indie games fail. Some fail HARD.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I really don&#8217;t get how indies put so much time and effort into their first game. The ones who get into debt amaze me even more. the ones who mortgage\/sell their house scare the crap out of me. Don&#8217;t do this. I&#8217;ve made lots of games, here is how they went: Asteroid Miner: Meh&#8230;sold a<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-right\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Continue Reading&#8230; Random ups and downs of releasing games<\/span><a class=\"btn btn-secondary continue-reading\" href=\"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/2017\/02\/15\/random-ups-and-downs-of-releasing-games\/\">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-4455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4455","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=4455"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4459,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4455\/revisions\/4459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}