In 2013 I will...

[Indinera]

Someone had to kick it off. (stealing Applewood's last year intro lol)

In 2013 I plan to:
* Keep doing what I am doing (reasonable, hopefully)
* Release at least 3 new games
* Get on Steam (dunno how foolish that is but hey, let's have at least one reckless resolution) and possibly other smaller portals
* Make more money than 2012 (very haphazard but who doesn't want to improve upon last year?)
* Try a new game making software, but tbh 2013 might be too early

2012 Aftermath for me:
* release 4 games (will be a fail if 2012 is like 2011 though) -> 3, so almost a success
* increase my income -> did that!! 2012 was my second best year after 2010
Not too shabby overall then.

What are your 2013 resolutions and how did 2012 go?
(old thread: http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthr...In-2012-I-will....)

[Desktop Gaming]

Next year I plan to:

You mean, THIS year?

In 2012 all I wanted to do was get Dr Mal: Practice of Horror released, and I did that with 14 days to spare. Would have been better with a Halloween release but I lost a lot of time early on in the project doing my own artwork, before I decided to get a pro on board.

For 2013...
Release at least two games for PC and Mac.
Start work [at least] on a dedicated mobile game.

[Indinera]

Good catch, aha. Also good idea to add a comment about your 2012 resolutions, I'll add mine.

[Stropp]

When making resolutions, don't just say you plan too. That always seems to fail. Instead, say how you plan to reach these goals. Even if you don't share the how, it's good to have an idea how you're going to do what you say.

[Indinera]

Some of us do achieve our plans and even when we fail it's usually not black or white, so there is something positive out of it still.

[Applewood]

Post-mortem on 2012. These were my stated goals:

Get GLWG actually out on Vita
Publish the sequel to GLWG on at least iOS and Android
Finish my match-3 game and publish on at least iOS and Android
Start (and possibly finish) our "next big thing" (to be announced)
Earn over a million dollars (company wide not just personally)
Take more vacation time

We finished the Vita port but gave up on it when we passed our third month of Sony induced pointless expense and bureaucracy bollocks. We are so not getting involved with these cowboys again that we removed all the Vita support from our engine. With hindsight this was the correct move.

The GLWG sequel came out and managed a "Mobile Strategy Game of the Year" award from IGN. We also got a budget publisher involved to push the PC version into retail stores (mainly USA) and get us on Steam.

Match-3 game completed and even extended - there's a version on Blackberry Playbook and BB10 ready and coming real soon to WP8 phones.

"Next big thing" started but won't be complete until at least Q2. It's a fantasy fighting game that's part hero academy and part league of legends. Also trying out the freemium/virtual currency model with this.

Earn over a million dollars - very nearly. Sounds more impressive than it is as we have a team of seven now, but things are looking great for trying again this year now.

More vacation time, fail. I took some but no more than usual.

=============================================

Targets for 2013

Release our "next big thing" on iOS, Android, PC, BB10 and WP8. Possibly windows 8/RT too.

Earn over a million dollars

That's it really. If the next big thing fails we'll be scratching about, otherwise doing post-release updates to it for the rest of the year.

[Indinera]

Earn over a million dollars

Pocket or company-money?

[Applewood]

Still just company wide atm, sadly. Maybe next year for my personal balance...

[Indinera]

7-figure yearly income is really impressive. I remember the (good ol') days when people on this very forum were writing most devs don't reach 6 figures.

Maybe next year for my personal balance...

by personal balance, do you mean ever since you started?

[Applewood]

No, I mean I am to make a million dollars for myself throughout 2014. Not saying I expect to, but that's the aim!

A million dollar yearly income for a firm with seven industry pros (with appropriate salary expectations) isn't much better than decent tbh. We've existed comfortably etc., but there are no ferraris in the car park.

[Indinera]

Are you all on equal terms? As in, dividing the money by 7 (more or less, don't want the details, but my question is more if there is someone getting 50% and another one getting just 10%)

7 figures would be great aha but until I get on Steam I don't think this is possible Oo

[Applewood]

We're all roughly equal, though some are more equal than others.

Myself and my biz partner take a slice out each month that's generally a little higher than the salaries of the other guys, but sometimes that's been way lower so it balances. Sometimes nothing at all. If we have a good year, the other guys get a good peck at it via bonuses. (Those other guys are actually hired employees, bar a couple who get a very good contractor percentage).

Don't set too much store by Steam btw. Our GBWG is finally on there but it's not been a road to riches despite review fairly well and fiting the average demographic. It's been worthwhile but not the "OMG wow" it once may have been.

[BantamCityGames]

In 2012 I will:
1) Start making money on my MMO

One goal... epic fail (5 hours per week doesn't get you much)

In 2013 I will:
1) Start making money on my MMO

Same goal but hopefully a little more realistic with the progress I made last year.

[Jack Norton]

Don't set too much store by Steam btw. Our GBWG is finally on there but it's not been a road to riches despite review fairly well and fiting the average demographic. It's been worthwhile but not the "OMG wow" it once may have been.

Yes, too many see Steam as the only way to make money but it can vary a lot based on the kind of game you make. Yours seems much more fitting the mobile audience. That new fantasy fighting one instead could do well there

[Jack Norton]

How went last year...

• Finish at least 4 of the various active projects I am doing (lol is kinda similar to last year, but brought me luck, so... yes) = FAIL, made 2+1 expansion
• Keep expanding my user base/direct sales, but finally get on iOS/Android. Either with or without Ren'Py = PARTIAL success, at least have many games on Android
• outsource some coding to external people but pay more attention to who and/or use a 3rd party escrow site. Too many dishonest people around sadly (and this year I've realized it WELL...sigh) = SUCCESS, everyone who paid did their job well
• Try making a webgame, but NOT code it directly (that was my mistake in past years) = FAIL, had no time
  
• Ignore the "expert journalists" who don't review/give crap ratings to my games and focus on my fans/niche instead = well, SUCCESS
• Don't even bother submitting my games anymore to any portal! if they want my games, they'll ask me, otherwise no problem I can live without them just fine. = SUCCESS
• spend much less time in front of PC unless it's for work (hopefully next year will make it!) = FAIL, because of a shit summer with 35°C even at 800m on sea level, didn't do much
• keep donating to charity through Kiva even in the worst moments (the easiest thing to achieve, but good) = SUCCESS, I've over 99 loans there now

My 2013 goals are simple:

• finish a new RPG
• finish a new dating sim
• have at least one game ported to Monkeycoder by external coder and submit to iOS to see if there's any hope or better give up on that platform
• TAKE A BREAK !

[Indinera]

My 2013 goals are simple:
finish a new RPG
finish a new dating sim
have at least one game ported to Monkeycoder by external coder and submit to iOS to see if there's any hope or better give up on that platform
TAKE A BREAK !

Aren't you forgetting "change country"? Oo

[MFS]

From 2012
1. Release our 'small OIP' game. (Delver's Mark) - Fail. On indefinite hold.
2. Release our 'big OIP' game. (Delver's Drop) - Fail. Still going at it. Months from release still, but so far so good.
3. Grow the company but become comfortably profitable in the process. - Fail. Added a guy, lost a guy. Razer thin profitable but in general, most of the year was at least comfortable.

Obviously way too much red above and not enough green, but 2012 was actually fairly decent. One of our contract projects moved a million units, but sadly we'd no cut on the back-end. Still a nice milestone to me though.

For 2013
1. Finish Delver's Drop
2. Take on only small contract work - no more several month ordeals.
3. Have a proper vacation

[Nutter2000]

My 2012 Post Mortem
In 2012 I will....
1. Enjoy spending time with my wife, son and our new baby (release date: April )
2. Finish off our AOW reboot web game
3. Earn £100k+ passive income to support my game development habit
4. Begin development on the next phase of our AOW reboot
5. Get some sleep (optional)

2012 turned out to be more personal success than professional so not a total loss but still annoying.

1. Success! We had a baby girl (Caitlin) on May 4th! So the release date slippage was forgiven for being a Star Wars baby
2. Fail. Battled against time constraints but eventually put it on temporary hold.
3. Fail. SEO and Google was to be a big part of this, unfortunately Google decided 2012 was the year to go on a rampage.
4. Fail. See 2. (No precipitation).
5. Mixed Success. Caitlin turned out to be a pretty good sleeper so managed a reasonable amount of sleep and certainly more than Baby version 1.0 (Alex).

My biggest problem last year was simply a lack of time.
I'm in a bit of a hole having had to take a new full time job at the end of 2011 which turns out I utterly hate and I barely get to do any decent coding there.
Unfortunately, with a young family your free time tends to disappear and you're just exhausted all the time so digging myself out of the hole is a lot harder than I hoped.

However, that being said....

In 2013 I will....

1. Release multiple quick, simple games on iOS/Android/WP8 and others for a quick ROI.
2. Earn enough to support myself and family to quit aforementioned hated job.
3. Redevelop Ferion for responsive web design and mobile, do design work, work on better monetisation then hire someone (cheap) to do the actual work!
4. By the end of the year, begin work on better, more impressive games such as the AOW reboot.

[lennard]

Release WWII - Europe single player game in the Endless Empires game series.

Improve Dungeon Demon.

Next version of Real Estate Empire on web, desktop and tablet.

Ready, set, go! GL all.

[Bram]

The goals I set last year:

Add support for this awesome input device to the little crane that could for MacOSX.
SUCCESS

Maintain my 2011 income (had a very good year).
BIGGER SUCCESS

Release my first Android Game.
SUCCESS

Release an update for Hover Biker.
SUCCESS

New level for the little crane that could iOS version.
SUCCESS

Port the little crane that could to Android.
SUCCESS

Attend GDC.
SUCCESS

It is amazing, but I hit all my goals. Maybe it is true what they say about: writing down goals make them come true. Although I did cheat a tiny bit: 'Port Little Crane to Android' and 'Publish Android Game' were originally intended to be separate games, but meh.

For 2013 I will:

Publish an OUYA game.

Hit 30K OUYA downloads.

Hit 10M downloads (cumulative over all platforms, all years) for Little Crane That Could.

Maintain 2012 income.

Reach 750 followers on Twitter.

Publish my first multiplayer game.

[Nutter2000]

Congratulation Bram that's a nice achievement :-)

[Olofson]

So, how did my 2012 go? Well...

1. Add more fun and do more marketing for Kobo II, to hopefully sell more than symbolic numbers to mostly Kobo Deluxe fans.
   FAIL
   I did release three tech previews that were increasingly "playable", but didn't get anywhere near what I had in mind. "Lost" at least half a year to engine coding and...
   
   
2. Actually make some money, one way or another. More contract work, most likely.
   SUCCESS
   ...contract work! So, at least I'm not bankrupt. Things are going to take even longer than originally intended - but I'm still in business.
   
   
3. Get a proper toolchain for ZeeSpace going, for less work, better results and smaller downloads.
   FAIL
   Basically gave up on structured/procedural graphics for this game at some point, as it just seemed to require too much engine and tool development. However, doing anything reasonably good looking in GIMP is rather time consuming too...!
   
   
4. Find or write(!) a simple but effective Linux MIDI sequencer that doesn't crash all the time, or just frustrate me to no end. The state of these things is just ridiculous...
   FAIL/SUCCESS
   Actually, I didn't even bother. Turned out just hand-coding the music in Audiality 2 (formerly ChipSound) script worked better than expected, so I just kept doing that.
   
   
5. And, well... I dunno? Anything fun I can come up with, that might make some money, directly or indirectly.
   FAIL
   No time for that...

So, all in all, I only got about halfway to my goals for 2012.

One thing that turned out better than expected though, is the Audiality 2 sound engine. (Formerly called ChipSound.) It's now doing multichannel modular synthesis with subsample accurate scripting, has a proper unit/plugin API and stuff - and it's all hard realtime. So, a few more simple DSP units, and that thing will do pretty much anything I ever wanted to do in terms of game audio.

New goals for 2013:

1. Keep working with my current main client. Less negotiations and research - more paid work!
2. Kobo II: Multiplayer! More fun! Proper levels! To speed things up without dumbing down the mechanics, I'm going to drop my custom physics engine for Chipmunk. A persistent scene graph rendering engine is going in, to improve performance and eliminate OpenGL from the scripting level.
3. New release of Kobo Deluxe! It's had somewhere around 200k downloads, and is also included with a few Linux distros and other things - but few of those players have any idea there is a related game in development!
4. Finish a small sidescroller I started working on: Project Pixelfire.
5. Port at least one game to OUYA - probably Project Pixelfire. (Too heavy scripting in Kobo II, so that's probably going to need a native compiler. Later...)
6. Get back up to speed with music! Almost dropped coding for music about two decades ago - but then I burned out, and this is about all I've done over the last 15 years. I'm beginning to realize I need to pick it up again to stay sane.

[chanon]

Last year's (2012) Goals:

1. Release our first Facebook game.
FAILED - it's not done yet! But we made a ton of progress.

2. Complete casual downloadable game.
SUCCESS - Shop-N-Spree 3 has been released with Big Fish Games

3. Begin work on our next big thing whatever that might be.
FAILED - Didn't have time

Overall 2012 wasn't a great year for the company, but I don't consider it a bad year personally. Learned a ton and had many fun vacations with my wife.

2013 Goals:

1. Complete move to our brand new house.
2. Work hard.
3. Release Facebook game.
4. Make enough from Facebook game to cover monthly expenses.
5. Start work on next thing (ooooh can't wait!).

[vbovio]

From 2012:
1. port my games on at least 2 other platforms. --> SUCCESS!
2. release at least 2 new games. --> SUCCESS!
3. double my income. --> FAIL made about the same

2013, a bit more realistic:
1. make 2 or more new games.
2. try something new: a new platform and/or other monetization model.
3. earn more than 2012

[TMK]

In 2013, we will:

- Release Zombies & Trains! for iOS, Android, Mac and PC (launches in 1 month!).
- Release Heroes Guild, an RPG management game.
- Hopefully release 1-2 more smaller games.
- Do some more 48 hour game prototypes.
- Get better at marketing-fu (tweeting/facebook/blogging and all that).

Better get cracking!

[zoombapup]

How went last year...

• spend much less time in front of PC unless it's for work (hopefully next year will make it!) = FAIL, because of a shit summer with 35°C even at 800m on sea level, didn't do much

Erm, why is 35 degrees bad? you could try OUR summer, which was basically rain. Lots of rain.

[Olofson]

Yeah, rain... Lots of that here too - until suddenly, a few short weeks of "OMG everything's brown! My lawn is on fire! I'm on fire!"

[zoombapup]

So summary of last year:

Ship alpha "pathfinder" build of EverSky

Failed, mainly because I realized a new direction the game was taking me in and shifted towards it. It feels stronger for that. Its now called HOPE and is up on indiedb and greenlight as a "concept". I have something I can ship as alpha, but I'm doing a local alpha test first, so its only half-failed

Ship alpha "Damzel" build of EverSky and start accepting money for it (through whatever form).


Failed, see above. Decided I don't want money until I'm happy with it. Was considering kickstarter but ultimately decided not to. At least not yet.

Make enough from continuing development to pay for an artist to add content.

Same deal really. Decided against trying to get early funds. Just didn't feel right.

Personal:
Continue my research and write a few more academic papers on Digital Actors


Success. Published a few papers in this area, furthered my research base. Switching to thesis only now though, so don't have to publish papers so much. Probably a good thing as it takes forever to write a paper. Did get in 2 books this year though, which was good.

I also shipped a prototype that got us venture capital money, went through the whole VC startup experience and learnt a lot from that about what I don't want to do (I'm really not motivated by money it seems).

My goals for this year:

• Build out the game to the point where I am happy for a public alpha (not too far off).
• Continue building up a community, posting info and generally being "out there"
• Get one of these android based console thingies and get a quick game out on them
• Find an artist to partner with
• Get greenlit
• Finish my PhD (very unlikely, but one can hope).

[Stropp]

Erm, why is 35 degrees bad? you could try OUR summer, which was basically rain. Lots of rain.

I think I'd prefer the rain. 35 is getting uncomfortable, and we've had a week of 35+ lately with one day getting to 45C.

[Jack Norton]

Erm, why is 35 degrees bad? you could try OUR summer, which was basically rain. Lots of rain.

It's not that I like rain, but with the current global climate totally FRAKKED by the global warming, either you get all rainy days of some places like UK, or if you're in Italy you get 35°C AND humidity (didn't rain for 3 months, but was still humid) and you simply CAN'T work. And you can't even go outside! I remember we went one morning to take a walk in a mountain nearby at 1000m and was already 26°C at 7AM :|
If you try just one summer here when there are such temperatures I'm sure you won't complain about the rain anymore