This biz idea keeps coming to my head: spotify for games. I’ll briefly explain what spotify is for those of you who aren’t familiar with the service. Basically, with spotify, you can listen to music for free (with some ads here and there) or you can buy monthly subscription for $9.99 (or so) and listen to all the music without ads. There’s tons of music available – possibly everything you can imagine.

Now, I was thinking this same concept for games. We could start with indie games if you wish. Bit like WoW except you get to play tons of games.

Basically, for a monthly subscription (let’s say $9.99) you can play any games you want as long as you keep subscribing to the service. It might be possible to have a lite version which would show ads here and there until you get so annoyed that you want to (1) stop playing or (2) buy the subscription (or (3) more likely: find a hack)

The revenue share could go so that major part of the pie would go to developers (let’s say 70%), rest of it would be split between publisher (10-30%) and perhaps with affiliates (20%). These figures are just in top of my head.

How would developers share the pool of money? I’m thinking that the playing times (and/or downloads) could be tracked. The more downloads/playing time one game gets, the more money that game earns.

Just thinking out loud.

What you feel about this? Part 2 – “spotify for indie games” continues here.

I just read the five golden rules for new indies from winterwolves blog.

I’m adding sixth one:

6. finish your game
By finishing games, one learns how to finish games. That’s a crucial thing in this industry. It’s okay to prototype and it’s even okay to drop projects, but if you follow the fifth rule (“no epic projects”) then you should also focus on this rule.

What’s the next golden rule in your opinion?

Game development has given me possibilities to do tons of mistakes. Here’s some of the most stupid mistakes I’ve done during these years. Like they say in tv ads: do not try these at home.

Mistake #5 – Getting a development team
Around 2001 I was working on this “MMO” game which started from the idea of “having this dark island where guy moves with a cool torch in his hand”. That’s not a bad start for a MMO, but the worse idea was me getting this “development team to work on profit basis”.

Okay, I eventually found a good friends (this part of the MMO was not a mistake, Tim) but other than that it was a huge mess. I remember taking aboard some people who didn’t have a clue on things. One guy was saying he was a “texture ‘expert’”. Which meant he shot (or “loaned”) some photos of some ancient museum swords. That’s like pretty nice, but spending 2 months to some helmet images that will never get in the game was not such a smart move.

I was thinking that “the more people get in, the better the result will be”.

Now I realize that “the more people got in, the bigger the trouble I was facing”

Okay, maybe some “we’ll share the profits later / do this thing for free” team can prove me wrong, but I thought it was heckofa mess. Fun mess though.

Mistake #4 – Not getting a development team
The other alternative (after realizing how big mess it is to have tons of people around) was to try do everything related to my big idea on my own. This was perhaps a slightly smarter move than getting a huge group (at least for people like me) but then it became obvious that I need more time & donuts to get the ball moving.

Alone, with not enuf skills (modeling, programming, designing, mapping, sounds, music… you name it) it sort of became obvious that this path won’t work.

Well, good news is that from this mistake I learnt that outsourcing and purchasing 3rd party stuff can be a solution. And also the smaller the project scope, the bigger chances for solo survival there is.

Mistake #3 – Choosing a bloody long company name
The reason why I always direct people to gameproducer.net is instead to my company site (polycountproductions.com) that my company name is so bloody long that I just find it easier to use a shorter name. This means my company stuff is “somewhere in the back in the papers” and I haven’t even updated the site for long.

Not such a bad mistake, but still annoys me after 5 years and I keep thinking “I should change the company name”.

Mistake #2 – Starting about 17 projects simultaneously
I’ve improved my skills on this area, and nowadays I have only 1 game project going on simultaneously. I still get new ideas for games and simply write them down or discuss them a bit with my friends, and then write them down. Earlier (long, very long time ago), I might have got several game ideas and plans going on. I still have several side projects and things going on/fading away here and there (it’s just so fun to start new things), but I’m getting better at focusing on one main thing and getting that finished before new stuff.

Mistake #1 – Not making enough mistakes
During the last 5 years in this company gaming thing I’ve been doing more mistakes than ever in my life. I’ve probably learned more than ever in my life. Mistakes are good. Gotta keep doing more of them.

Somebody has said “if you aren’t failing ever, then you are not fighting in the right league” (or something like that, I might have made a mistake here).

Me likes that attitude.

See also 10 worst game production mistakes (article written 3 years ago).

It’s possible to backup PS3 stuff somehow. My PS3 has 250 gig hard drive. It’s connected to my main router via cable (read the story here and laught at me). I wonder if I could somehow backup my game dev stuff to it?

Anyone tried this?

I’ve used two methods when working with artists. The first one was telling them what to do and then pointing out “flaws” in their work and ignoring their recommendations and then eventually realizing that (1) they have quite a bit more experience on that stuff than I do and (2) this approach doesn’t work. I sort of tried to keep the control over creative stuff, and could not let go. End result: time wasted in communicating the vision back and forth, poorer quality of work.

The next method worked better: giving ideas/concepts/videos/pointers to material that described what kind of style I was looking, and then told them to “use your artistic freedom” to get it done. This has worked wonders: this resulted in much less time needed for communication and more motivated artist who will surprise you with the quality of his work*.

Let the artists do their job. That’s why you hired them.

* Bonus tip: he’ll also surprise you with the “hours spent” sum if you don’t have any control over resources that he is supposed to use on the work.