Two years for an indie MMO ain’t bad but is it a financial success? Well it’s not what I would call a total failure (the game is still online and still under my control after all) but it never became a full-time job.

For those who don’t know the full story just let me give you a quick overview. In 2007 I decided I would build a browser-based MMO even though I had no idea how to do it and no real game development experience (beside two small experiments). What should have become some wasted space on the web became a game and was released in 2008.

Even though the game was released on September 14th 2008 I only implemented the current microtransactions system in April 2009. If you’re wondering why I waited so long well just refer to the previous paragraph where I’m saying I had no real game development experience. And if you’re wondering why I implemented a microtransactions system well ads and donation buttons don’t work for everyone.

Note that the following numbers are excluding some data from “partners” (that should in theory get potential players to Golemizer but eh …) but that wouldn’t change much anyway.

Golemizer’s revenue

2009
April $192.80
May $152.82
June $94.27
July $186.56
August $295.19
September $351.17
October $206.38
November $357.98
December $148.46

2010
January $321.70
February $320.04
March $437.95
April $151.91
May $103.69
June $323.75
July $382.78

These are sadly not net incomes. Maintaining both servers required to run the game (1 dedicated machine for the game and a cheap VPS for forums, wiki, website) cost $241 each month.

16 months revenue
$4027.45

16 months expenses
$3856.00

Total profit
$171.45

Most of this profit was then reinvested back in the game for new pixel art so there’s not much left in my pockets … still  it’s not a loss … if I leave out the initial investment before the microtransactions system.

Initial investment

When I started to work on Golemizer I’ve been careful to not throw a huge amount of money in it because I had no real idea of what I was getting into, I had no experience and I’m cheap. You can argue that being that careful can be one of the reason (among many others) why the game didn’t do that well but all I know is that today I still have a house, a car, a dog, can afford wine each week and that my ambitions never caused any uneasy financial discussion with my wife.

Back then the game server was a cheaper machine bringing down monthly expenses for servers at $150.

While most graphics are from free graphic libraries I still had to get some custom work done to get everything I needed without any fear of going into legal troubles (you know just in case this thing was to become big). So just to get the game started I spent $1,225 on custom pixel art.

So the total initial investment before seeing any real income (there was some money from ads and donations but not much to talk about) was $2,125.

Total expenses after 22 months

$5,981

Loss after 22 months

$1,953.55

So success or failure?

Well obviously I have yet to make any money with Golemizer but I still think that it’s not that bad considering the point from where I started and that working on Golemizer brought me invaluable experience on many levels (programming, community management, gaming press, game design, “partners”, …). The fact that I didn’t lose my shirt in the process is also to be considered.

Of course I was hoping Golemizer would do better as it was a lot of work, a lot of crazy hours while keeping a day job but to be able to say that I worked on such project is still worth something for me. One thing is sure is that new opportunities are now available to me and I’m surely not done with game development!

Bonus data! How do players spend their money?

The average number of days before a player starts spending money in Golemizer is 32 days. The longer a player has been playing the game the most likely he is to buy something from the in-game store.

Breakdown of Altus Coins packages sold (currency for the in-game store):

$50 : 14%

$20 : 32%

$10 : 19%

$5 : 16%

$2 : 17%

Here are the sales for all items available through the in-game store since it was released in April 2009. Feel free to analyze this data anyway you want! Not sure what an item is about? Why not take a closer look by checking out Golemizer!

184    Exotic Rug
139    Exotic Plant 1
136    Inventory expansion +60
135    NPC Skin Tools (to change appearance of merchants and quest NPCs)
124    Bedside-Manner Inventory expansion (golem powerup)
118    6000 Time Points
77    Piano (small)
72    Victorian Rug
72    Military Uniform – Blue
65    Inventory Expansion +30
50    Giant Pumpkin
48    Market Stand
47    Clothing quality upgrade kit
35    Frequency Analyzer
35    Military Uniform – Red
33    Golem Remote Station
32    Observatory Skin
25    Inventory expansion +10
25    City Blueprint
23    Max Time Points Upgrade – Gold
22    Military Uniform – Yellow
22    Masked Trench Coat – EB
22    Island
20    3000 Time Points
17    Max Time Points Upgrade – Silver
16    500 Time Points
15    200 Time Points
15    Victorian House 1 Skin
13    1500 Time Points
13    Exp. Points Bedside-Manner
13    Mad Manor Skin – Black
12    Haunted Victorian House Skin
11    Max Time Points Upgrade – Copper
10    Military hat 1 – EB
10    Military red coat 1 – EB
9    Victorian House 2 Skin
6    Lighthouse Skin
6    Mad Manor Skin – Green
6    Electron Stamper Upgrade +100
5    Shipyard Skin
2    Mad Manor Skin – Pink
2    Mad Manor Skin – Purple

Sure you get access to the mute and ban commands but those are just boring tools. I have never given a GM account based only on those commands. Want to know how a player becomes a GM? Well he/she was a GM before even knowing it. Most of them never asked me to become a GM and those that did should have become GM long before asking me.

Golemizer is a game about creating stuff. Stories, houses, quests, events, … All players can create those. A GM just have access to some cool stuff to do a bit more. The current GMs in Golemizer are artists, quests builders, zone builders and not policemen. Yes they will mute and ban people to keep the game clean but that’s not why they are GM in the first place. It’s because they can make the game a better game on the creative level. All of them were dedicated creative players.

Recently I have started to build some more tools I should have built a long time ago. Tools that will allow GMs to add new items, new skills and even new golems (later) to the game. I’m saying that I’m giving more power to Golemizer’s community because all GMs were once regular players that felt in love with the possibilities Golemizer is offering. And ultimately having GMs to do more will benefit the community since I just can’t keep up with everything.

Let’s say a GM wanted to run a special event and needed a special trophy to give players attending it well it meant that I had to add the item myself before they can carry on with their plan. It would be wonderful that I could sit in front of my computer working all the time on Golemizer but that’s just not possible so it meant that GMs were always waiting after me. Many GMs, only one of me (that I’m aware of …).

Yes it’s a risky move. The moment you give a GM account there’s a risk those new powers will not be used the way you wanted to. So far I’ve been lucky though. I don’t give a GM account easily and a player must have shown a lot of dedication to the game before I even consider it. And no the it doesn’t matter if a player have played Golemizer for more than a year. It makes that player a veteran but not a GM. Those are 2 separate things but not everyone see this. Playing a game is not the same as helping building it …

So GMs now have a bit more power and will have more as I complete the tools. There’s of course a limit to the powers I can give them but what I can give should be more than enough to make Golemizer more active than ever.

Why did I not do this before? Well I thought I would be able to run everything myself to some point. Considering the small size of Golemizer, the money it gets in and my available time though I had no choice but to open the game a bit more at the risk of seeing it slowly die because of the lack of progress.

I don’t think this is the kind of power that could be given to many MMOs but Golemizer happens to be the perfect case to run this experiment. Time will tell if I was right about that.

I don’t care about multiplayer so that leaves me the campaign and matches against the PC. I knew that and the campaign was my only interest. After going through quite some missions all I can say about Starcraft 2 is that they could have released the campaign game some months after Brood War.

Oh yeah the graphics are nice and the cutscenes are looking way much better … but the gameplay is exactly the same. Well at least it’s not much different from what I remember from Starcraft 1. What? Tech tree? Bah it doesn’t really feel like it’s making that much of a difference. It adds some flavor but it’s still not a meal I would order twice.

New units? That’s laughable at best. There are so many of them and most missions are time based so you don’t have enough time to make some fancy plan. So far it seems that every new mission I play is just an introduction to a new unit. Build a lot of this new unit, build bunkers, marines, medics and you’re done.

The saddest part is that the engine behind Starcraft 2 seems really interesting. Why did they not include some of the possibilities in the campaign?!?! If you’re looking for examples take a look here and here. Now that would have been a “new” game. Those boring missions where you control 1 unit and some cannon fodder? Why not make it 3rd person?! It would have felt a bit like they did something a bit different … Heck why not a mission built like a shooter where you control the Hyperion?!?! Nope. There’s none of that. I guess we can expect some cool stuff from modders. Maybe that will make Starcraft 2 worth it. And don’t you dare telling me about the shooter in the cantina. I can find better shooters on Kongregate for free …

The story? Well I can do with it. It’s cheesy but I have to find something positive here so I’ll buy that. They included minor RPG points where you have to make a decision but they lack context and in the end you don’t really care about the consequences of your choices. It’s an RTS and not an RPG … So those choices just feel like a cheap cross-over of some kind …

I have to say that I’m really bad at RTS. I play the campaign at normal difficulty and honestly don’t care about a bigger challenge by raising the difficulty level. They might say Starcraft is an RTS but it’s much more a Real Timer Whatever. If you can hit the keys fast and are able to micro-manage many units than fine you can beat the hardest difficulty level. The strategy ends there. I never felt like I was about to fail any mission even though I had to restart a couple of them. I just wasn’t fast enough and that’s it. It didn’t feel challenging it just felt like I had to learn the shortcut keys correctly. No missions gave me some kind of feeling like “I was about to fail but succeeded anyway”. I know it’s a fake feeling but I like that. It means I’m really into the game. Haven’t felt that with Starcraft 2.

Does the game feels short? No. That was one of my main concern at first … In fact it even feels a bit long. I can forget about the game for 3-4 days without much caring about “what will happen next”. What can I say. The missions and gameplay feel terribly boring. I guess I enjoy the cutscenes more than the game itself. I should have waited to check them all on YouTube … Will probably do that for the 2 next expansions if they just repeat the Terran gameplay with Zergs and Protoss.

I guess they did a couple of nice things for multiplayer but like I said I don’t care about that. So that pretty much confirms that it’s yet another game with multiplayer as primary focus. I made a bad choice by buying this game but I was still hoping. Like I said they could have released this with the old engine for half the price and it would have been ok. They spent many years building a new engine to create an old game with it. Nice … Let’s see what modders will do with it.

What is interesting me is the story and then getting in the action surrounded by that context. For example I’m a big fan of everything CoD. I really couldn’t care less about graphic/engine upgrades as I’m there to play a shooter in the context of a story. In fact I guess I’m an easy player to please as you can get me to do very repeating things over and over as long you keep the story interesting and evolving. The problem? These stories are always so short …

It took me about 3 days of casual playing to get done with CoD Modern Warfare 2. I enjoyed shooting the bad guys over and over in similar situations because I thought the story was nice. When the story is over then I will never look at that game again and then I have to wait several months to get a new story … that will be wrapped in yet another engine upgrade I couldn’t care less about …

Another good example to explain what kind of gamer I am is Mass Effect 2. I bought all DLC involving new stories (and haven’t touch any of the DLCs about new guns and armors) but I’ve been a bit disappointed about them. Why? Because one of the most amazing thing in ME2 IMO is the interaction with the crew and there’s nothing new in the DLCs about that. You get a bit of dialog with NPCs specific to the mission but your crew is still in the same “sleepy state” it was when you completed the main story. The romances are not evolving, there’s no new interaction between crew members and your crew has nothing new to say when you take them to complete a mission. Since this is the kind of things I enjoy then the missions are less enjoyable as more generic. If I wanted to just shoot bad guys again in ME2 without caring about story I could just start a new campaign …

I know adding new dialogs means more work and probably a higher cost for the DLCs. I wouldn’t mind to pay $20 for a DLC but I guess not everyone thinks like me so I’m left with content that has way less value then the original campaign which is just making the whole thing less enjoyable.

Now Bioware is probably busy working on ME3 and I guess they are still working on a new engine or at least upgrading the existing one just to keep up with graphics offered by other games or maybe even features (apparently there will be coop play in ME3 … bah). Just keeping the exact same code and adding another 30-40 hours of story content would be enough for me to drop another $60 on ME3 in the hope of not having to wait too long to play. But I guess I’m not in the majority so all I can do is for Bioware to complete their new toys to please the spoiled gamers that always want better techs.

So that brings me to Starcraft 2. I’m not a huge fan of RTS (and surely not a fan at all of multiplayer RTS) but I like playing an RTS with a nice story. I guess they can at least match what they have done with Starcraft 1 so I’d be having fun. But will I complete all the campaign in the same time it took me to complete the story for CoD MW2? If so that’s just meh … Is the story just a weak reason for me to buy a multiplayer game that I will end up not playing anyway? Probably. Will I have to wait a year or more before getting another part of the story?

My dream game? Any kind of game with a good story (preferably something like ME2) but all DLC. Each month or maybe faster than that you get a bit of new content but that is really new content. Not just some weak new missions using old assets and no dialogs in it. With something of the quality of the ME2 engine I could buy that kind of DLC for years without ever feeling that the graphics could be better!

But it seems that’s not happening. We’re probably not enough of this type of gamer for a company to take that route which is a shame. I guess that it’s also probably not something an indie studio could do if we’re not enough gamers to keep the studio going. I guess we’ll keep seeing many more DLCs with just new guns and armors. The kind of DLC I don’t care about since I don’t have a new story to use these gadgets.

I guess that’s one more motivation for me to develop games. Do things a bit differently. Do things a bit more the way I’d like them to be within my capacities and resources.

I was once a bit more naïve (mind you I still am a lot but being aware of it is a start). I thought that a clean idea with hard work could get you to your goal in an almost straight line. Yes I know I’ve said that before on this blog… Just hold on. Not knowing that it would be much more harder than that as a newbie game developer was in a way a blessing. It allowed me to get to the end of this project. As long as you can manage the clash with reality it’s fine. I think I can say it’s been not so bad in my case as it already got me a bit higher as a game developer.

Recently Brian wrote a post about indie funding. It got me to mention a case where people were complaining about the price of an indie game on Steam … priced at $10. The game I had in mind my was Zombie Driver. Surely that game is not without flaws but I can assure you that you’ll get at least for $10 of fun out of it. What’s $10? You can barely have a lunch at some fast food for that price. It’s probably the price you pay to see movies at the theater (a bit more if you live in Quebec …). It’s probably the money you have spent this week on way too expensive coffee at Starbucks … But for an indie developer it means everything …

Of course most people don’t care. The standard is set by games like WoW. If WoW is asking you to pay about $50 for the box surely that an indie developer cannot ask more than 10 cents for his game! Just take a look at the content and work needed to achieve both games!!! Most people don’t care because they don’t know what it means to get to a released game. They don’t realize that this indie developer is maybe offering them something different they won’t find from major publishers. They don’t even notice that even if they took the time to spend 10 minutes on trashing this game that they played anyway for 2-3 hours that game (about the price to go see a movie at the theater that is maybe shorter …). They don’t know the work involved to release such game because “they were stolen” … And maybe it’s not their problem either?

I’ve said before that I don’t think the web is reality and while I think the point made by some people is valid I guess I’m too stubborn to change my opinion right now. Whining on the web is so easy while DOING things is so hard that it provides an “unfair” advantage to the whiners. Yes everyone can be a victim of this “unfairness” but it’s also much easier to be forgotten as an indie developer than if you are Blizzard. You are judged on the same criterias but don’t have the same  resources so you can easily IMHO decipher some kind of flaw. Because people don’t know what’s behind the scene (or they don’t care but they often probably don’t care because they don’t know) we can’t ask to “know”. That’s the web. Free speach, oops I meant free trashing for everyone and no easy way to counter it (what’s written remains written).

So as long as you “don’t know” you feel safer in your position to complain. That’s the easy rant to make. Now on to the hard part. Fearing that you are maybe just a piece of shit when you realize that you “don’t know” …

Since I “decided” that I was to focus on Flash games for a multitude of reasons (to be exact I should say when the opportunity was offered to me and the proper conditions lead me to accept that maybe I should go the Flash way to be able to raise my chances of getting some kind of result) a whole new world revealed itself to me. And I felt so much behind everyone …

I like to say that my job is to learn and do stuff and that I’m good at it. I think that’s true but I’m also not 20 anymore. I’m not old (30) but I can assure you that my concerns are not the same anymore and that my ability to learn is not what it used to be. It do bugs me to spend countless hours just to get the basics on a subject when I could just enjoy the time passing by. I still very much enjoy what I do and what I’m good at but my priorities are not the same as when I was 20.

I felt at ease in my own little world of Javascript “boundaries pushing” for a while and when I “learned” what I had push away for so much years I really felt insecure. Yes I’ll catch up eventually and no I don’t constantly live in regrets but clashing with knowledge is brutal. For example I had no idea that you could make any money with a Flash game. It’s not a matter of sticking to what you believe in it’s a matter of giving you 1% more chance to succeed. And that 1% is important.

I also never really paid to indie game development until I finally figured that it’s what I was doing. That’s why I can forgive to people whining over a $10 indie game because I can understand that until you know what it means you don’t care. I never ever underestimated the work of indie developer but just never really paid attention to it. Since then I’ve been mostly spending money on indie games instead of AAA titles. Not that I thought I had to do that but because I realized that I was getting excellent products for my money even if they were not of AAA quality. The downside is that I also now spend more easily $60 on a new AAA title but that’s another story. It got me to evaluate even closer what was the value of the money I was gaining through my salary and honestly the only conclusion was that I was paying very little for all the enjoyment of the games I am playing.

So when “you don’t know” things are way simpler because you couldn’t care less. It also means that to people like me your opinion has 0 value on a creative level (that’s different business wise and I guess that it’s the catch). Not that I think I’m right all the time (I’m way too often wrong IMO) but because that’s now my “basic guideline of thoughts”. I don’t believe that you can stick to the same opinion for very long because we are always thrown in an crazy fast evolving situation. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a personality it just means that a person is partly defined by what’s surrounding him. I could get deeper into this but then you’d need to get a beer with me as I cannot go really further on a blog with my limited abilities to defend a point in an asynchronous way …

Where was I going when I started to write this post? Just to the title. All I’d like to spread is that people should try to “know” a bit more … about everything. Here I have talked about indie game development but the same applies to politic, moral beliefs, history … For the 1,234th time I’ll say that blogging is odd for me because it puts your words on record at a precise time. I have done my best to keep my opinions evolving as time goes by but when I write it’s like I “reveal what I think the truth is” while it’s really not that. I just try to learn a bit each day about many subjects and oh the world would be so much fun if more people were trying to do the same …

If only people were ready to trade a bit of their “safeness” for some knowledge …

I’m not going further until you have played a bit …

…

…

Seriously …

Ok I guess that now you have played a bit now. Here are my random thoughts about it. For some reason I found this oldish post on Gamasutra which I’m sure I’ve seen before but I only recently took the time to read it. I guess that finally telling to myself that I’d work on Flash games might be some kind of incentive … My Javascript games are terribly hard to distribute so I guess I was hiding my head in the sand for some reason.

Let’s skip the part where I say that Steambirds is a highly polished game with great graphics and easy to understand gameplay. On second thought let’s not because it’s import. So Steambirds is a highly polished game with great graphics and easy to understand gameplay.

It’s important because when you’ll read the Gamasutra article you need to put everything in context. I’ve played (and built some) games that are not matching these criteria so to think that by just giving a shot at building a Flash game you can come up easy with the same results is just not the useful here.

Now that everything is in context I must say that I’m a bit surprised that such money can be attached to Flash games. Not because Flash games cannot be good games but because from the point of view of a novice you don’t see how you can make money with that besides slapping ads around or in the game. Sure we’re not talking about millions here but my thoughts were “if you’re lucky you can make $200″. I guess that’s still true for most games but I never thought that $25,000 could be put in the same post as “Flash game”.

Now I was wondering how much time Steambirds took to complete and a quick Google search pointed me to the best source possible. If you’re too lazy to read it let’s say that development started end of October 2009 and ended at the end of January 2010 so about 3 months of work though not full-time if I understand well. My favorite quote about the development is “I even did a lot of code from the pub on my laptop“. This for me has absolutely no price and this is what I so much like about being indie. If I can code from a pub I don’t need to be able to buy the latest home theater or a fancy sport car.

So a $25,000 deal – 10% for flashgamelicense.com (knew about this service but never really paid a lot of attention to it, that recently changed) and 50% of that for Andy Moore himself so that means $11,250. I guess ads must add a bit to that as I found that by even just giving a new skin to code found in a tutorial you can make money out of that (not a lot but still). My thoughts here are that it’s really really really good. Of course when you consider what is required to make a living it means you must pull that kind of deal 4 times a year but eh, that’s a start.

Now maybe you’re wondering why a $45,000 deal was turned down (from what I understand it included money for a spin-off with predefined required features). Well from what I understand why would you put yourself in a corner with a publisher when you were able to pull a $25,000 deal in the first place. Of course if Andy Moore indeed decides to make a spin-off it’s possible that he won’t get another $25,000 from it but considering how successful the first game was I’d say that a possible $50,000 with no restrictions and a free schedule is better than $45,000 right now with the feeling that you HAVE to pull it off again soon. Anyway if you like being indie why try to put yourself in a situation where you don’t get all the benefits … of being indie … Being indie means risk anyway so better live with it and have fun while doing so.

I don’t really know who is Andy Moore. I plan of fixing this a bit by going through his blog. His success with Steambirds is quite interesting for me specially that he was generous enough to share results and his experience building the game. Here’s yet another nice indie story to use for motivational purposes!

Working at home on your own when you don’t have hard deadlines to reach is not for everyone. It’s so much easier to decide to go swim for 10-15-20 minutes in the pool when it’s 30 in your basement. When your incomes are a direct result of your work it means you have to work really hard to make it happen. Money is hard to get and hard work does not guarantee in any way that you’ll get some.

That’s the boring part. That’s the part I’ve been imposing myself for now 3 years. Why? Just because I wanted to. I never really tasted huge victories but I had a lot of fun doing it. Sure it was hard but I somehow believed that what I was doing would one day get me somewhere. Where? I still don’t know but the ride is exciting.

For the last 2 weeks I’ve been working full-time on an indie game project with Brian ‘Psychochild’ Green. How I ended up working with Brian is a nice special story to me and the last 2 weeks have been a blast.

Back when I was just a the point of showing a very basic prototype of Golemizer Brian commented on my blog giving me some feedback and some advice based on his experience. That was totally random and I was really excited about it since I was following his blog for about a year. The best thing? He told me “Feel free to drop me a line if you have questions.”. Real quote by the way. That was amazing. I was just getting started and someone who meant something for me didn’t mind that I’d harass him with some questions. I’m not sure he had the word “harass” in mind but I think I’ve been careful to not push my luck

So I started to send him mails every 3-4 months to tell him where I was at and to share and “validate” how I felt. He never told me that I would have an easy ride and it wasn’t what I was looking for either. Writing to him was always special as I knew he would read every single word and would answer. I felt like I wasn’t alone in my long trip to build an MMO as a newbie. All I needed was to share some words.

I’m not sure when he started to think that I might actually get to the end of this and me not knowing was great in a way. It would have been easy for him to tell me “kid you have no idea what you’re getting into, better to give up now”. It’s like he gave me a chance to prove him that I would do it. Now I wasn’t only doing it for myself but I knew at least 1 more person was looking at it.

At some points past release he even offered me his help to find a way to make some money out of it. Me I’m just a programmer. I know I can do pretty much anything I want to and if I commit to it. That doesn’t mean I can do it in a business-wise way but I get things done. That’s a start. He must have seen that I was lacking a lot on the business side so that’s why I guess he offered me his help. The Altus Store in Golemizer and the currency exchange were his ideas that so far have helped to turn some random project into a project that usually pays for itself each month. That’s a lot. Remember that I said that money is hard to get? …

So I launched one project after the other (Blimp Wars, Dungeon of Loot) and my mails to Brian were on a more frequent basis as time was passing by. We learned to decipher a bit of what kind of person was at the other end of the mails and one day he sent me this by Skype: “Once you’re done with Dungeon of Loot, before starting your next project drop me a word”. Another chapter of a story with a still unknown end was about to begin …

He offered me to work on one of his project that was in need of a programmer that would stick until the end. Something in the same line of thought as my previous project so a multiplayer online game. Only problem … the server is in Python and the client in Flash. Two technology I knew nothing about. I was not one to let this opportunity go away however so I accepted and warned him that he was getting a newbie on his project but he took me anyway.

Even though I was really excited about this new project I must say the timing was terrible. I was now on my third project in a row with no real signs that it could get me significant revenue. For 2 and a half-year I was piling up weeks of 70-80 hours of work and couldn’t see when it would get to something more than just a fascinating hobby. On one side I had a day job paying for all my expenses but it was really starting to get the best of me and on the other side I had something I was really passionate about but that wasn’t bringing enough money for me to allow more time to it. Based on my wife’s advice I allowed myself to slow down a bit and hardly touch my computer when I get home at nights. I came to the point I feared … burning myself chasing some kind of dream I wasn’t sure how to reach.

So on one hand I needed a break from the mad schedule I imposed myself for quite a long time but on the other I had committed to someone I highly respect. I was feeling like I was letting him down very soon after agreeing to participate to his project. Something needed to be done.

Call it faith or total randomness but about the same time I really hit a wall at my day job. I really realized that I just couldn’t keep up with it. A lack of challenge, a lack of evolution, too much repetitiveness, a bit of all that. That’s when I decided to take 2 weeks off last-minute to work on Brian’s project.

That meant a loss of money for me and it also meant saying out loud that I would change my professional path in a not so distant future. Tell your boss that you will probably leave soon but are not sure when and see how he reacts … I’m lucky though as after about 10 years working there my boss can understand my state of mind. It might sound like a risk but it was just where I was then. I needed that. After clearing that up with my boss I had my 2 weeks ahead of me to work on that AS3/Python project.

I never did anything in AS3 so in 2 weeks I had to learn and learn fast. Not a problem that’s my job. This is what I’m suppose to be good at so now was the time to show it. For 2 weeks I enjoyed what it could be like to be a full-time indie game developer. It was amazing. Working with Brian was delightful. It’s always tricky to get new coworkers but I can say that working with Brian just felt natural. We had our fun, we worked hard, I learned and we made quite some good progress. Of course if I’d had more experience with AS3 we would have done more in these 2 weeks but we still did enough to be happy with the progress.

So what is this project? The name is Interspace. It is a simple space strategy game that is meant to build the base of more ambitious projects. It is a client-server architecture and we did a lot of work to improve it and prepare for even more exciting projects.

Here’s a screenshot of the screen where you get to customize your ships. Click for full-size!

Interspace as we speak is almost ready for beta so I’m expecting that soon we’ll be able to tell you more about it. In fact I’ll leave this part to Brian as he’ll be much more skillful to explain it and to let you know everything behind this project. It’s his project to start with so I recommend you add his blog to your RSS reader if it’s not already done.

These 2 weeks of work has led us to exchange further about what’s next and I’m really excited about it. I think that Brian and I are mixing together a good set of skills and that we can achieve really nice things together. What’s next? That will be for another post later. Right now we need to finish the work on Interspace and finally get some people trying it!

Those last 2 weeks were really amazing and now the only thing I can wish for is that these 2 weeks become a full-time experience sooner or later. Hopefully sooner but some stuff about money (yep, always money) need to be figured out first. Wish us good luck until then!

In the last few days we have seen a part of the web going crazy about a company announcing in advance how it plans to handle its product/service. Yes I’m choosing my words just like the people that were against such policy chose their words. I know it’s the web and that it gives a voice to everyone for good or bad but that’s also the reason I don’t like as much that nice thing that was making me dream when I was younger. Somehow the web had a much more romantic feel in my mind than what I have finally come to accept as reality.

Now ask me what I think of “exposing your real identity with your total agreement”. I can’t say that’s something I wish would happen to all the web or to any media as people with good filters are able to make their own opinion without going crazy. When it’s about a game though I just couldn’t care less. Even if some people consider that this game have become some kind of iconic pop figure that is much more than a game.

The first thing I’ll hear is that “it’s not what people agreed for”. I know people laugh at things like “experience may change during online play” but there is a reason why it is written on the damn box you’re buying. Just like nobody care reading the terms of agreements when installing a new software yet we all agree anyway. At the end of the day you are paying for a service/product and customers always have the power by voting with their wallet. But why make a choice when you can just use a wonderful media to express your anger … about some game … I won’t even bother to mention that some people have been imprisoned for what they said on the web and no there was no games involved in this …

Do I want everyone to be able to stalk me even when I’m just “joking around having some fun”? No. That’s why you won’t find much on my Facebook profile. Sure it would be damn much easier for me to complain that Facebook must be better at protecting my personal info but somehow I chose to not put much on Facebook to start with. I have the power to chose and Facebook will never know that on some monday morning I decided to call sick while I spent the day swimming in my pool. Not a real story if you are wondering …

Oh! I have a blog! I’m writing on it! That means I have no problem with anyone knowing everything about me because obviously I’m an attention whore! I still decide what to put on this blog and if I go too far then the only person to blame is me. Should I blame WordPress for being so easy to use? Should I blame my host for not filtering what I’m putting on my blog? Should I blame Google or the the Internet Archive to keep a copy of everything I put on my blog? Why can’t I blame myself for writing something that shouldn’t have been post in the first time? Oh right! Here (Canada and US for what I know) we live in a society of rights … with no duties attached to it … People are always innocent and we can always blame the government or some corporation for anything bad happening … We are all innocents … and innocent in french can also mean stupid …

Wait! I think I’m forgetting something … What could it be? Of course! The security argument!!! What if a woman is stalked by some freak and something bad happens to her … Breaking news! Freaks are stalking women and children every single day and for most people it only means 2 minutes on TV … You know that time where you go to the toilet? Oh but what if we could blame a game?!?! I bet we can do 2 hours on TV (if not more) and have people call to say how terrible games companies are …

Oh and if your 10 year old kid have a computer with Internet access in his bedroom it’s the exact same thing as telling him to ride his bike on the highway. I know not everyone have the right education to know that but count on me to harass everyone around me to know about that … Do your part please …

So would I agree with a game that wasn’t publishing real names before that decides to now publish the real names of people after having announcing doing so in advance (not retroactively I must say)? No. Would I play such game to start with? No … Oh wait! We can’t ask people to stop play a game! They have “invested in the company providing the service they are enjoying so obviously nothing can ever change about that company”.

So no the Interweb is not real because people value more their anonymity than their freedom of choice. It means for me that the services we are using are not services anymore. It means we have become slave to them, not being able anymore to refuse to use them. It’s not real because we are unable to make real choices about it. Even in 2010 we consider it as “something else that is not real life”. Guess what. The web IS real life. Welcome to the 21st century …

Again … Do I think it would have been bad for Blizzard to show real names in forums? Yes. Do I wish it they would have gone bankrupt if they would have decided to go on even if the opposition was so strong? Yes. Do I think it is lame that people are not able to vote based on their opinions and values when they actually have the power? Yes …

Don’t even get me started on the power of web opinion … People just like to complain because it’s so easy to do so. I do not qualify this as freedom of speech or freedom of CHOICE …

I’ve said before that blogging was odd for me as I know that in 2 minutes I’ll read that post again and then think “oh I should have said that instead or I should have used these words instead”. That’s what blogging is about. A picture in time … And right now these are the words I want to use even though it’s not a complete picture of my thoughts and even though I’m not done talking about the oddity of blogging (which is really not the same thing as writing a book or some more extensive writing work). I’ll still live with the consequences of those words because at that very moment I can just click that big red X instead of clicking “publish”. You know … I have the choice …

If you can’t sell a game every 52 minutes, you will need a day job, basically.

That quote is from Cliffski. That guy make games and make a living out of them. Don’t get me wrong. I fully know the value of money but that quote still struck imagination.

So I know the value of money? Yep! You know I’m a cheap guy. Before buying something I always ask myself “how many hours do I have to work to buy this?”. It is often followed by “how many days of vacation could I afford by not buying this” since I know quite well what to do with a day of vacation … work that is.

So no I don’t buy a lot of things. My TV was given from the mother of my wife. My furniture is a mix of given stuff and low quality (but still not bad) bought stuff. I buy new clothes once every 3 years because my wife can’t stand my old stuff. I don’t buy much stuff because I know how much it cost. I also don’t need a lot to be frank. A bottle of wine and 1-2 friends and it’s all I need. The most expensive thing in my house is probable my computer because it’s my tool. I still have my last computer and it takes about 20 minutes to boot …

Oh I have a house! Yeah … the most expensive thing I have. That was a quality life improvement. I lived in a 3 rooms and a half apartment for 7 years and I did so because I didn’t want my wife to be to have to work while she was going to university. We offered ourselves some quality but it wasn’t “go to bars each friday” kind of quality. That was just “hey honey we still have time for ourselves”.

The day job I currently have but will soon leave is giving me $50,000 per year. I could probably make $60,000 if not $70,000 with 10 years of experience and excellent referrals. That’s not to sound arrogant that’s just the truth. I’m good at what I do and not afraid to say so. I’m bad at a lot of things but I still can say I’m good at some stuff. Problem? I just don’t feel like doing so anymore. It’s not enough challenge. It’s boring. Yep! I make a good salary and have a “good quality of life” but that’s still not enough! The more you have the more you want … Or the more you know yourself the more you make choices that will not sacrifice your quality of life.

Ask my wife … She doesn’t like to ask me how my day went because she knows the answer: “Same old boring stuff I was doing 10 years ago”. Yes I could just sit on it and shut my mouth. A lot of people do that as long as the money gets in. That might seems a wise choice … You don’t get to live with them every single day though … I surely wouldn’t be able to stand myself for more than a week …

So back to the value of money. Money is something that is hard to get when you’re really after it. I could just live in some sort of coma and make plenty of money to be happy … on the weekend. What if I want to be happy all week long? Each day I need to make $100 (give or take some). At the end of the day if I haven’t made $100 it means that I can’t keep the minimum I have (house, car, internet, electricity? …). That’s a real long shot if you ask me.

I’ve said it before and here it is again. I thought I was going to pull some kind Sherwood Dungeon or Kingdom of Loathing success and just make enough for me to be happy with it. That didn’t happened. Reality strucked but hey! I have that job bringing $50,000 a year! Yeah right … That worked for some time. Maybe I should have put orcs and dragons instead of clockwork gnomes and X-Rex who knows. Probably.

So where am I going with this? Well I recently saw a couple of “thoughts provoking” posts about “what if World of Warcraft was to go F2P”. No I don’t like seeing that kind of post in my RSS reader because I know the people posting these just do this to make the same kind of $50,000 I currently make (maybe less or more I don’t care). That’s just empty talk but I guess that brings visitors… Oh those people must love their job … However it sure does bring some anger. “If WoW because F2P I will quit!!!!” Pfff … The hate against F2P is so laughable that I already have laughed for a thousand years. Yes you would still play because the game would be the same anyway and it’s the perfect recipe for mindless time wasting.

Let’s for a moment consider Golemizer as a pay X per month game. I’m not saying that will happen!!! That’s just some random toughts! Let’s say you’d have to pay $10 per month to play. That’s 5$ cheaper than WoW! My last numbers are telling me that I had 1030 “active players” in June. Well Kongregate is messing up a bit those numbers so let’s say what if it would cost only $5 per month to play Golemizer and the real number of active players is only half so 500. Quick math tells me that it would mean $30,000 per year. That’s not $50,000 but it’s still not bad. That means I’d have something to hope for.

Now imagine I’d say all players they have to pay $5 per month to play … I can imagine some kind of riot. Funny hey? The opposite of WoW going F2P would bring the exact same reaction … I guess that I’m not wrong about that. Of course if Golemizer would cost $5 we could say that I wouldn’t have the same number of players … Really? Probably but there’s something telling me that I can’t be 100% sure about that. I’ll never be I guess …

So money is hard to get and hard work doesn’t always get you some. Good ideas neither. A mix of both is still not a guarantee for success. So what can give you hope? Trying honestly. If you don’t try then you’re sure nothing will ever happen. Trying honestly is surely not enough but at least you’re giving it a shot. That’s the least you can do. You can succeed or fail but by not trying you’re sure to fail.

So $100 a day … Can it be done? It can be tried at least. At all cost? No. But somehow you need to believe. I just said no to a bit more than $1,000 to have 2 weeks off to work on a game. That’s a start. Where will it lead? I don’t know but I’m giving it a shot … Will I give up my house and my marriage for that? No. But I think I know enough what’s the value of money to take a risk without loosing my shirt in the process …

Wish me good luck (because a lot is that … luck) and we might meet in some years when I don’t post this kind of things anymore …

So for me it’s a small “victory”. I take what I’m given. Now if only the number of plays would be reversed … 28,026 VS 861,985 …

Would the ranking of Golemizer be lower if it had 800,000 + plays? Possibily but look … right now I just appreciate what I see without thinking too much about it. That’s good for motivation I tell you …