Reviewing Goals

This is one of the things I do regularly. Take a look at the goals I wanted when I started the game and see if everything still lines up. If it doesn't, you have to adjust things. So lets look at my major goal.

"Be earning enough stable money to pay my living expenses while working on my games for 30+ hours a week from home."

Have I made this? No. I've earned zero. I need a game to come out before this even has a possibility of happening. So what am I doing about it? Well I need to get Reclaimate out as fast as possible, and for a while I'm going to be making very small games for flash, iPod etc. A ton of small games will start to see the money coming in, and give me much better ability to tweak and tune things. So I am working towards this.

Now the 3 major goals for Reclaimate:

• All systems go - It feels like "complete" (yet short) flash game. All subsystems such as music, SFX, control schemes etc are all in the game. Both the experience of making a completed indy product and some of the systems can be used for the next game.

This is on schedule for the end of this month. And I don't see this as a problem. Yes it definitely will be a "short" game. I'm totally fine with that.

• Working Revenue Stream System - Players who wish to be able to contribute money to the game creator via paypal can. This does not include revenue from ads. The amount of money actually earned has nothing to do with this goal.

I added a paypal donate button. It works. I'll be surprised if I get even a single click, but the point is, it's there. It also forced me to look into how most value added things are done for games. All in all, this is already complete. I'll make it more comprehensive next time.

• Game is Fun - Most players who try this game should consider it "fun". As a metric, I'd like to get 80% or better ratings when 1000 or so ratings are in. This also accomplishes the goal of making this a show piece.

With everything else. This actually is a very ambitious goal. I didn't factor in time to make all the systems and everything else. So this is the goal in highest risk. I'll do the best I can but it won't be the end of the world if I don't score 80%. I do want to emphasize quality in further products though. So I'll continue to have a goal like this for all of them.

So not too bad! I do have to focus on the money a bit more. Again, I do have to eat, live in a warm place in the winter, have electricity and all that basic stuff. :-)

For this weekend I'm just finishing off the weapon system. And I'll be doing VFX for this next week. After that it's just bug fixing and tuning. (And a lot of it.) I may play with the idea of putting path finding in as well as a minimap but we'll see about time first.

Where's the video blog at? I'll just have to say it will come when it comes. I have to make the Reclaimate stuff my first priority. But I haven't forgotten.