We’ve been spending quite a while with everything feeling like it’s somewhat up-in-the-air post-TTS. The studio needs a concrete direction to keep it moving forward and I’ve been burning a lot of brain-power deliberating over our options. This was mostly down to focusing on software products vs game projects. I’ve landed on the conclusion that game projects are the right place to spend our energy for the immediate future. This is for several reasons:
It’s the reason we founded the studio
We will progress as game developers more if we make more games
It’s more creatively fulfilling(for us at least)
We have an existing audience
My Unity license is just a liability otherwise
Having said that, I think there are related areas we could spend time on on which would have carry over to our game projects.
Tooling: identify and solve common headaches we experience in development using software
This will save us time and energy and anyone else benefitting or paying for it is a bonus
Web / UI / Branding work: give TwoPM a strong brand image and carry over slick UI and animations into our games
Strategy
Right now we have two projects in progress:
Smokey Valley Mercy Hospital: The medical card game
IHTBAC redux
I had previously thought that aiming to think of, design, develop and release another commercial project before EOFY 2018 was the right course of action. This was mostly to simplify the tax return situation for the studio and to stop having to prop it up out of our savings. Considering that we currently sit at the tail end of November and December tends to be write-off, I think this is way out of reach for something the size of the IHTBAC redux idea.
That leaves two options, one is pretty boring: scope down IHTBAC redux until that’s doable or… Forget about the old plan.
Back to Basics
If I’m being honest, I can see that I have somewhat lost touch with the reasons we started making games and focused too heavily on businessifying™ our process. There is a lot of benefit to this approach but it has seriously hurt my motivation for future projects. My instinctive reaction after the lukewarm reception to TTS was that we needed to make something more ambitious, higher quality and do it faster. Now, that’s not entirely wrong, but we’re probably gonna drop the ball in at least one of those categories if we aim for all three.
I’ve watched the industry clawing at its skin over the last few years, everyone desperately trying to work out the“magic formula” for sustainable revenue as an indie game developer. Recently I’ve been zooming my lens out a bit and wondering what the point is. This desperate mindset is that of a stereotypical Steam developer, what I propose is adopting the mindset of a stereotypical itch.io developer.
Make games because you want to
Have people play them
Have them give you feedback
Use this to improve and test your concepts
Maybe make a little money from donations or small purchase prices
A Path Forward
Rather than being solely a“game studio”, I’m thinking of TwoPM becoming something resembling a“content creator”. Yes, we make games but we produce game adjacent content too, by being open and sharing our struggles and successes.
Prototype tiny versions of many of our ideas
Upload these to itch and engage with the community to get feedback and gauge response
Improve existing ideas based off feedback or abandon them in favour of other new prototypes
Repeat until we find a game concept that we and the community seem to enjoy
This becomes the basis for our next large project
This is the indie equivalent of“failing fast” and"market validation". The best part is that itch is a direct line to the audience most appreciative of small, weird and retro games. This should let us start enjoying our work more, engage with the community and publicise our process. I think there’s a logical, gradual progression to game development that we usually hide from the public.
Here are the phases and what I think we should do at each:
A small prototype to validate that the mechanic is fun
Focus
Strategy
Back to Basics
A Path Forward