Jeff Vogel, founder of Spiderweb Software and creator of the excellent Geneforge and Avernum series of Indie RPG games, has posted some sales stats for Geneforge 4 in two parts: part 1, part 2.

It’s pretty interesting reading. Geneforge 4 has *almost* made a profit ($120K cost, $117 sakes). He includes salaries for everyone in his expenses so at least we know everyone got paid. The game will go on to make pure bottom line profit in a few months and will continue to profit for years.

One particularly striking phrase is:

“Don’t underestimate the value of owning your own intellectual property.”

I think that’s so true. If you can build a brand (like he has) and leverage your IP for years it’s an excellent path to big passive income. Well done Jeff. I’m keen to meet Jeff one day as he appears to be based in Seattle and I’m not far away in Vancouver, plus I visit Seattle often for meetings at BFG.

Quick warning: I bought Avernum 5 a year ago and I’m still playing it. It’s HUGE, excellent value for money and doesn’t get boring. Ignore the old school graphics and sound, the game is solid and has a really interesting plot that is somewhat out of the norm.

If you are reading this post expecting a conspiracy filled anti-American rant then I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place (and my sneaky title worked), because this post is about Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution on XBox 360.

I bought the game a couple of weeks ago after playing a demo and have played it a lot since because it’s very addictive indeed. The aim of the game is to grow your civilization from ancient times to modern times and to win one of four victory types: Domination, Technological, Cultural, and Economic. I’m now playing the game on Deity level (the hardest level) after having beat it quite a few times on the easier levels.

I first beat Deity level with the Chinese by winning a Technological victory, but it was *hard*! For my next attempt I chose the Americans with the aim of winning an Economic victory. I had build a great civilization but was slightly behind the other civilizations in all areas and they were all warring against me because I seemed to be in the middle of the map. Then the French built and launched an Alpha Centauri colonisation ship which was going to arrive in 10 turns (thus they would win a Technological victory) and the Arabs reached 20,000 gold meaning they could build the World Bank to win an economic victory in a few turns – and I was nowhere near either type of victory!

So I had a brainwave; I got every city I had to make spies which I formed into spy rings (a group of 3 spies) and then I sent them to the nearest two Arab cities and stole their gold – huge amounts of gold. In no time at all I had 20,000 gold and then got my best production city to make the World Bank in 5 turns thus securing an economic victory! It was a pretty funny victory because I thought I was going to loose but I found a new way to turn around my fortune in no time at all – I’m pretty sure there’s a lesson in there somewhere

Anyway the game is great and I totally recommend it (and all the other Civilization games) but beware that they are very addictive and, if you are a tad compulsive like me, you’ll find yourself drawn right in and up very late at night in no time. So if you’ve got a busy schedule as a game developer, you may wish to avoid