Author Archives: admin

the significant other

The most underestimated aspect of having a indie business is the role of your partner, the significant other. At least for those working at home, is essential to share same goals and to respect the other side work.

But you could ask, what are those “problems” ? Here are some examples:

  • doubts about the fact you can make it: this is one of the first obstacles. Unless you’re living in a very poor state, for example where $100/month is already a good income (in this case you should really be able to make it!), the financial problems will be the first thing to face. Rarely your first few games will give you interesting revenues, so there’s a big difference from working with someone that constantly encourages you, or with someone that ask “when you’ll get a real job?” 😉
  • problem for the fact that you’re working at home: as you might know, everything that’s “new” or “different” is a sure cause of troubles in our modern boring social life. So, for example, if your partner works all day in office, he/she could expect you to have done certain housework stuff, like cleaning or cooking. Why? simply, because you were at home. Like that meant that you were at home doing nothing! but surely they don’t understand, at least in most cases and for sure when starting and you don’t even earn enough money.
  • problem of concentration: as I already posted before… people think that programming is just like a normal manual activity, like washing dishes: you start, you can take a break whenever you want and then resume working as nothing happened. Every programmer knows that this isn’t absolutely true! is good to take breaks from long working session, but it’s YOU who decide. You’re about to understand that very difficult pathfinding algorithm and -zack – “dear can you take the dog out please” or “come downstair, there’s a fun thing on TV” and so on. The best advice would be, if you can, get an office SEPARATED from your house. Your productivity would double for sure.
  • where to go living: seems a paradox but the fact that you can basically go living everywhere there’s a internet connection, you could start thinking maybe to go living elsewhere. This is surely and advantage of this kind of job, BUT – be careful – always try to rent first. Buying a house just 100-200km from your hometown, only to realize after a few months that you miss your people, friends, places and so on is really a bad thing. On the other side you could relocate in a completely different country/continent and live happily like our friend svero of Twilight Games 😉

But in ALL the points above, your partner plays an important role. Sometime you have to take difficult decisions, and better be clear from start what your work means and what are the rules – or you could be sorry later and have to take hard decisions (like leave him/her because he/she doesn’t understand you). You can say that misunderstanding happens in every relationship, sure, but as I said, indie business is such a particular kind of work that makes such things happens more frequently than you could think.

pay per content

A recent interesting thread on indiegamer forums talks about the possibility to charge customers for extra content for niche games. An example that everyone can see is Oblivion data packs, like the (in)famous horse pack 😉

Lot of people complained about it, not willing to pay even only $5 for such a “little” update. On the other hands Bethesda replied that it was a huge success. Surely we’re talking about commercial games, I know no example of such business startegy in the casual/niche shareware market.

I thought about it just recently, when I decided to add a modular expansion to my game Magic Stones, the “Quest Mode”. Basically each quest added several new neutral enemy avatar and 2 new playable avatar from 2 new magic schools of Life and Spirit. The quest mode is very different from the rest of the game and I think is the most fun part of it.

So, when I added that, I had to decide if to ask a small amount for each pack, or just release them as a “free add-on” to encourage the potential buyer to make the big step and buy the game.

While I don’t actually have any statistical data to support my idea, I can say that giving away free content (and quality content, not just “extra levels” but valuable new game features) had a very pleasant impact both on customers comment and also on reviewers. Was not uncommon to read phrases like “considering that the game gets frequent updates, is really a bargain at this price”.

In any case, I don’t plan to do that very often for future games, because is very time-consuming (every update requires at least 1-2 weeks of work).

the owlcat!

owlcat

this is my favourite pet, she’s always here by my side when working or going walking around. I call her jokingly “owlcat” because of her big eyes and the funny face she has sometime… like in this photo!

getting in the "mood"

I experience a very fun thing in my job, being an indie devs and working from home independently. Don’t know if is common or not, maybe is just me, but I’m curious to see if someone else feels the same way.

What happens when I woke up, have breakfast and then sit on front of pc ready to work? usually that is the hardest part. That’s where all sort of temptations come out. Browse forums, blogs, game sites, talk with people, with pets even. Everything except starting.

But- what is more fun- ONCE I get started, once I get past those initial 15-20 minutes, I can work without problems for long time, even 4-5h if needed only with short 10-minutes breaks! this is really fun, because I know it: I know that once I start, I can go fast, still every time I try to delay the begining of work! 😀

That’s why is important in my opinion to either get your own office away from home (ideal solution) or try to isolate yourself the best you can, to avoid unwanted interruptions (music, tv, phone ringing, etc). And those days that really seems you can’t start working, well better take it completely off and relax doing something else. Sometime will work much better than “forcing” yourself to work!

are you scared?

Are you scared of playing Scary Forest? My friend at Sakura Games have just released another small but fun game, an arkanoid-style game. No need to tell you the rules I guess…! it plays and feels really like those old retrogames, very small (even as download size) but can guarantee lot of hours of fun.

I particularly enjoyed the 2 players game, survival mode… well survival is available only in the fullversion, but hey, is just a $9.95 game…!