{"id":2035,"date":"2014-12-12T10:02:01","date_gmt":"2014-12-12T09:02:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/?p=2035"},"modified":"2014-12-12T10:02:01","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T09:02:01","slug":"small-indies-growing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/2014\/12\/small-indies-growing\/","title":{"rendered":"small indies growing…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_3254\"<\/a>
\nOtello has found a comfortable (?) place in the bathroom…!<\/em><\/p>\n

Today’s blog post is a bit different. I want to talk about a side-effect of when small indies grow \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Back in 2007-2008, I was doing some “research” on indie CRPGs and of course I’ve checked also Jeff Vogel’s site (Spiderweb games). He’s one of the most famous indie doing RPG, so I was curious to see how he was doing. I was surprised when I read in the official forums that “he used” to post there, but now he doesn’t even show up anymore. I was thinking “What? how is possible, he doesn’t care about his users?!”.<\/p>\n

Now, several years later, I understand completely his reasons! When you start growing your business, when you have more titles under your belt, the things to do increase exponentially.<\/p>\n

Just think what there’s to do for each<\/strong> game:<\/p>\n

– support<\/strong>: that’s the biggest problem. No matter how fool-proof you made your registration\/full version delivery, there is always going to be an issue with it. But not just that: hardware configuration problems, sometimes files are downloaded incompletely so people think are corrupted, false antivirus positives, etc. It’s just insane, believe me! Some indies I know have hired people to deal with that, but I honestly wouldn’t trust anyone (since I should give access to orders database, Steam keys, etc). So I do it myself…
\n– marketing\/promotion<\/strong>: I honestly don’t do much of this, but even in this case, there are many things to do. Send press-releases, answer journalists, do interviews, send press-copies, etc etc
\n– social presence<\/strong>: nowadays is essential, so I try to post daily updates on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and so on. Is not a big amount of work each: but if you sum everything, starts to add up (5 min there, another 10 there, etc and voil\u00e0 hours are gone!)
\n– game production management<\/strong>: emailing people, checking what they’re doing, etc. Note that I don’t include the actual game coding<\/strong> in this part, and still is big!<\/p>\n

OK I’ll stop here, I think you got it \ud83d\ude00 so what is happening is that (luckily) this year was very good for me, but also means that my “free time” has greatly decreased…and I don’t mean to be rude or snob people, but I won’t be able to answer anymore people emailing me “to chat”, or “to know how is going”, or asking “when game XYZ will be out” and so on like I used to do in the past. I simply don’t have the time anymore! \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n

Of course I’ll still provide support for customers, I don’t plan to disappear from my forums, and will try to reply on the various sites (blog, twitter, Steam forums, etc…there are so many!) but it will depend on how busy I am in that moment.<\/p>\n

I also realized that I’m spending really too much time in front of the computer: I want to stay more with family… the wife and pets \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

End of the rant! Now, for some quick update on the games, check those screenshots:<\/p>\n

\"skillsQoTWIP\"<\/a>
\nThe skills screen of Queen Of Thieves<\/em><\/p>\n

\"attributes\"<\/a>
\nAttributes screen, similar to SOTW one (work in progress)<\/em><\/p>\n

I got new GUI art done by a new artist who did a great job in my opinion. Is still work in progress but you can see the “return of skilltree” that some players liked so much in Loren \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

Stay tuned for more info next week…Christmas is coming! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Otello has found a comfortable (?) place in the bathroom…! Today’s blog post is a bit different. I want to talk about a side-effect of when small indies grow \ud83d\ude42 Back in 2007-2008, I was doing some “research” on indie CRPGs and of course I’ve checked also Jeff Vogel’s site (Spiderweb games). He’s one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,94,7,9,149,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-development-screenshot","category-development-tricks","category-general-topics","category-indie-life","category-queen-of-thieves","category-strategy-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2035"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2049,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2035\/revisions\/2049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}