A New Plan
July 12th, 2012
Oh wow, it’s been longer than I thought. But not to worry, I’m not abandoning the blog by any means. These three-month breaks just build up the all-important anticipation for the next nugget of wisdom.
So, the you-know-what game is finally done in both its versions. In another display of utter predictability, this thing has taken much longer than I anticipated. Also, it hasn’t been the kind of success I was hoping for. But past is past, and it’s finally time to move on to some new ideas. No more lane combat or tower defense. And most importantly, no more five month projects! I’ve got half a dozen promising ideas packed away in the old vault, and something of a new business plan. These new ideas are pretty diverse and relatively simple. The plan is to aim for 3-4 weeks development time per project, with joint launches through Mochi and iOS. The first game in this plan is Age of Inventors, which already has a preview up on the site. This one should be done early next month, but given my track record you shouldn’t believe a word I say about release dates.
Other ideas on the list include a really simple space 4X game with customizable alien aces, a robo combat game (distant descendant of Scrap Metal Heroes), an exploration-focused trading company game, a wilderness survival game, and a defense game featuring airships (but definitely no towers).
But don’t worry, I haven’t quite sold my soul yet. Had I done that, I’d be coding virtual carrot purchasing on Facebook by now. Despite the number of games in this agenda, I’m not planning to produce mindless shovelware. If anything, I’m looking to improve on quality and originality, but still keep the scope down to something a bit more manageable. From a business perspective this rapid development plan makes a lot of sense to me, and it also lets me explore a lot more ideas and themes. With a five-month project I pretty much end up hating my own game by the end; such is the nature of over-exposure.
Another thing I’d like to avoid in the future is lump sum sponsorship deals, even though that’s been my best revenue source to date. But the thing is, it doesn’t really build up anything. It’s just one lump of cash and then it’s off to the next thing. I’d rather work on something to continuously build up my own brand and revenue stream. I mean, passive income is the holy grail, right? And it actually seems perfectly doable in this line of work. For a solo dev like myself, a revenue stream of $200 per day would be great. That adds up to more than 70k per year after all. And with 20 games in a portfolio, each one would only need to make 10 bucks a day. Thirty thousand ad impressions plus seven sales on iOS would do it. With even a half-decent business model, it sure doesn’t seem like much.
But enough of the boring biz talk for now. The inventions are waiting!
– Peace and new ideas
Posted in Ideas and Lore, Random Musings | Comments Off on A New Plan