Now is a good time to review the goals I set for 2009 and think about my goals for 2010, so here goes…

2009 Review

Here’s what happened to my 2009 goals:

1) Release my next game mid-late Jan. (Almost. Unwell Mel was released mid-Feb and got to no.2 on BFG.)

2) Develop 2 hit games for BFG that will hit no.1 and gross at least $1,000,000 each. One of these may be a new genre… (Didn’t happen (yet). Unwell Mel took a while to localize into 4 languages inc. Japanese. Current game is taking quite a while but is looking damn good.)

3) Start an Indie/Casual Game scene in Vancouver. (Had a few small meetups and one big one but have not started a scene.)

4) Meet some really interesting people. (For sure. Developers, new agers, fun friends.)

5) Play more games at home. (Did this mainly on the XBox 360.)

6) Start an Aikido club in Vancouver. (Succeeded in September.)

7) Get married. (Had an engagement party in the UK when we went back there for a holiday but the wedding will most likely be in the spring now.)

Generally most goals were met, so I’m pretty happy with that.

Other achievements include:

- Joined Toastmasters and did my Icebreaker speech.
- Did several professional speeches and a workshop.
- Learned Actionscript 3
- Bought a car (Subaru Impreza Wagon)
- Bought a bike and did lots of cycling to work.
- Gave up alcohol all year.
- Had an awesome summer.

2010 Goals

So then, here are my 2010 goals:

1) Finish recently started secret BFG project and watch it make tons of money.
2) Release a top 10 download title (in progress).
3) Get married (in Spring or Summer)
4) Complete 9 more toastmasters speeches so I get the competent communicator award.
5) Get a Canadian driving license (my partner drives the car because my UK license is not valid here!)
6) Build up my Aikido club, get some decent mats, and become profitable as a club.
7) Build up my health and fitness more.
8 ) Improve life work balance.
9) Sort out my looming tax situation. (It’s complicated having to do tax returns in two countries.)

That’ll do for now. In reality I have tons of goals (some are more like outstanding tasks), almost too many, but it’s probably best just to focus on a few so as not to get overwhelmed. As I complete some goals I can choose new ones, and I’m sure that new ones will crop up anyway as the year progresses.

2009 Mistakes

And now the time for honesty; what mistakes did I make in 2009?

- I crunched really hard to finish Unwell Mel and didn’t see my family for about 6 weeks at a time when they really needed me (we had just moved continent). I wish I could have gone about this differently somehow but I had just started a new job and my boss set a tight launch date for the game…Really I should have got more of the game done in England before I moved, but moving continent takes a lot of time to organise.

- I had some trouble adjusting to being an employee in a company with a tight (but normal) anti-compete clause (I was an independent developer used to running my own company before). This lead me to to feel frustrated and have some probably not very “tactical” conversations with my boss.

- I lost a $1000 a month income stream (which I really needed) and fighting over it probably caused problems in the long run too. Can’t really talk about this one much…

- I got off to a slow start with my new game. Partly this was due to the learning curve of making sure that my team had enough stuff to do each day and, because they were new to making games, they needed a lot of guidance. This meant that I spent too little time doing what I was supposed to be doing (designing and making prototypes). Also because I tried to do things the “proper” old-fashioned way and made a giant design doc before starting coding in earnest, there wasn’t much visible progress to show. In future I don’t want to have a team until I have made prototypes and thrashed out the design so that I can focus and be productive.

- I waited too long to set up an Aikido club. I was searching for the perfect venue when in reality it didn’t exist. When I finally realised this, I found something that would work and just started the club. Now I need to refine things, but at least I’ve been teaching since September.

- I’ve hardly played the guitar, or made any music. Also haven’t done many hobbies except play games. Need to fix that, but need more of that illusive “free time”.

- Haven’t explored Canada much or gone skiing or snowboarding. We didn’t have a car until fairly recently due to our tight financial situation (it costs a lot of money for a family of 4 to live in a nice location in Vancouver). We now have a car and our finances are a bit better and, in the words of the Beatles, “getting better all the time”, and so we should be able to explore more and do cool stuff now.

- Haven’t eaten that healthily and I’m less fit than in 2008. I’m doing less Aikido (and the Aikido I’m doing is less intense) so I’ve lost fitness although cycling in the summer helped. Now the winter has set in, and I recently had swine flu, I’ve lost some fitness which I have started to reclaim. Also it’s very easy to eat unhealthily here, and the office has lots of “candy” and “soda” in it, which is nice, but oh too tempting. These things can, and will be, easily improved in 2010.

- We rented a house that was too expensive for 10 months, and although our current house costs less, it’s still too expensive really. They are both great houses in a great location but our finances have felt very tight all year, lots of juggling going on, and not much of a feeling of financial freedom. One good thing is that since attending the Millionaire Mind seminar in the spring we set up a “jars” system that is working very well for us and we now have some savings and contingency money and money in other jars (bank accounts), and I even have a pension, gasp!

There are probably tons more, but those are the biggies.

So what about your goals for 2010, and your successes and mistakes in 2009? Please let me know!

Ah it’s this time of year again. OK so here’s what 2008 went like (you can read my 2007 review and 2008 goals here:

2008 Professional Goals Review

1) Develop 2-3 hit games for Big Fish Games (Uh, I actually released 0, but the next one is due out in like 2 weeks, and then we are gonna work like crazed developers on the next games. I’m gonna move this goal to 2009!)

2) My games will reach No. 1 in the BFG Top 10 and on other sites too (See no.1)

3) One or more of my games will gross $1,000,000. (based on past performance, this is a realistic and achievable target – just need around 100,000 sales (See no.1)

4) Start the next big “genre”! (gotta think big ) (See no.1. Hmm, I’m seeing a lot of deferring here!)

5) Meet lots of you at Casuality (Ah yes, it was cool in Amsterdam. Didn’t make it to the one on Seattle. Also met more of you at UK and Vancouver Indie meet ups, which was nice.)

6) Work on an “action” game as a hobby. (Totally failed. I’m not gonna move this to 2009, if it happens it happens.)

7) Continue improving my skills and my game framework. (Yeah, this happened. In fact I sold my framework to BFG for a tidy sum )

8 ) Continue having great fun doing a job that I love! (Absolutely this happened!)

9) Ramp up affiliate sales from my sites and blogs, via more newsletter subscriptions, more blog posts, more marketing etc. (Didn’t do this anywhere as much as I’d have liked to, but I did make some half decent cash at it, so that’s OK. Now that I’m an employee I won’t be doing this any more.)

The main big thing not on that list was getting hired by BFG to work in their new Vancouver studio. That was a surprise!

Personal Goals Review

It’s worth mentioning a few personal goals I achieved such as:
- Got my 2nd Dan in Aikido
- Stopped drinking alcohol (although I started after moving to Vancouver in November, pretty sure I’ll stop again now though).
- Been going to bed and getting up on time more or less (I used to stay up too late programming and playing games).
- Got pretty fit when training for my 2nd Dan, but unfortunately had a hernia! Didn’t stop me though

2009 Goals

If you are still with me then here’s the 2009 goals:

1) Release my next game mid-late Jan
2) Develop 2 hit games for BFG that will hit no.1 and gross at least $1,000,000 each. One of these may be a new genre…
3) Start an Indie/Casual Game scene in Vancouver.
4) Meet some really interesting people.
5) Play more games at home.
6) Start an Aikido club in Vancouver.
7) Get married (I’ve already proposed and been accepted, so the rest is just admin ;-p)

There’ that’ll do…Oh I also want to learn to Ski and Snowboard seeing as I’m now living so close to Whistler mountain. My Ice Skating is already coming on nicely.

2008 Mistakes
Reviewing your mistakes is a good idea as long as you don’t beat yourself up about them. Here’s some of mine:

- Spent way too long making my current game. There are various reasons why it’s taken so long; some to do with team members, some external, and some internal (I admit). This happened with my last game too! However, now that I work in a studio with other team members sitting near to me I’m sure that this won’t happen again.
- Didn’t spend enough time with my family AGAIN. I say this every year. I’m finding it hard to build my career and find quality family time. Now that I’m an employee and not self-employed I’ll be at home even less so I’ll need to carefully manage my hours.
- Didn’t do hardly any hobbies (except for Aikido) such as playing guitar, making trance music, playing games, art etc. However, now I’m no longer self-employed I plan to do this stuff in the evenings and weekends (when I used to find myself working instead). I’ve brought my guitars to Vancouver to make sure I play them!
- Didn’t eat as healthily as I could have. This is because I LOVE food. Also I got some “healthy bowel medicine” called Lepicol that has given me such “bowel confidence” that I’ve been eating lots of dodgy food because now I can handle it You probably didn’t want to know that haha.

OK, now let me hear your reviews and goals!

Well 2007 is gone and 2008 has already started and it’s about this time that I like to take stock of what I achieved in the last year and what mistakes I made and then set some goals for the new year. I highly recommend this process for everyone. Read on…

Here’s what I said at the start of 2007 and how well I actually did:

1) Continued improvement in my self-realisation studies. I probably didn’t do as much in this area as I’d have liked just because I was so busy making Fairway Solitaire, but that’s just an excuse really. However, I did make great strides with myself, my relationship and my finances.

2) Turn my self-realisation co-venture into a huge success. This was a flop (although I learnt plenty of things). It started very well but I found I was doing all the work and my partners weren’t contributing as much as I’d have liked. So we agreed that they’d manage it for a while whilst I took a back seat. Unfortunately, they didn’t do very much at all (mainly due to their own activities taking off, which is great for them) and it has since fallen dormant. Very soon I’ll have a meeting with them and either a) quit or b) take it over completely

3) Spend more time relaxing, doing my hobbies (reading/music/games) and with my family. hmm, I always seem to feel I haven’t quite succeeded with this one. Towards the end of the year I played a few games (which was great), haven’t done much music at all, been reading a bit all year. Have had some great family times but I know I could do more. I guess I’m a bit of a workaholic because I enjoy my job so much and there’s always more to do…

4) Make some top 10 portal games that make lots of money so that I can continue in the same career. Well I only made one game, Fairway Solitaire, but what a game! It reached #3 in the BFG top 10 and I’m sure it’ll do well on the other portals when it is released on them.

5) Make some games that I *really* want to make (platformers/shooters etc), even if it’s just for fun. Didn’t do this but it’s a goal for 2008.

6) Become Rich (I’m already happy so I don’t need to worry about that one). Of course this depends on your definition of rich! Helen and I have both done well this year financially and I’ve cleared off some personal debts and we are stable, which is great – but there’s still plenty of room for improvement

Here’s some other ways in which 2007 was great:

- Re-released Easter Bonus and got tons more sales in.
- Improved my game framework considerably ready for the next game.
- Bought a Macbook Pro and converted Holiday Bonus to Mac (more games will be converted soon).
- Went on two special Aikido training courses in Austria and the Ukraine to supplement my normal training/teaching.

Here’s some 2007 mistakes (I made many more than are listed here!):

- Spent too long making Fairway Solitaire which limited what else I could do, but it was all good experience and necessary – so not really a mistake.
- Entered into a business venture with two friends who, as it turned out, left me to do most of the (boring) work. When I stopped working on it and left them to it, it went nowhere fast. I may buy them out and run it myself (with my partner). Check back next year to see if it was also a mistake
- Let my site slip in terms of affiliate game sales, advertising etc.
- Didn’t do as much blogging or game news/reviews as I wanted to.
- Didn’t spend enough time with my family or playing games/music etc. This seems to happen every year and I keep saying I’ll sort it out … hmm…

OK, now the goals for 2008 – First the Game Development ones:

1) Develop 2-3 hit games for Big Fish Games. (Depends on the size of projects we end up choosing)
2) My games will reach No. 1 in the BFG Top 10 and on other sites too.
3) One or more of my games will gross $1,000,000. (based on past performance, this is a realistic and achievable target – just need around 100,000 sales)
4) Start the next big “genre”! (gotta think big )
5) Meet lots of you at Casuality.
6) Work on an “action” game as a hobby.
7) Continue improving my skills and my game framework.
8 ) Continue having great fun doing a job that I love!
9) Ramp up affiliate sales from my sites and blogs, via more newsletter subscriptions, more blog posts, more marketing etc.

Personal Goals for 2008 include (my full list is huge so I’ve just put a few here):

1) More family time + go on some great holidays!
2) Play games, make music and persue other hobbies. (Basically need to get the work/life balance sorted)
3) Get 2nd Dan in Aikido (my Sensei has asked me to go for it after 5+ years of being a black belt, so I need to train hard in 2008)
4) Go to bed on time and get up on time! (This is a big one for me as I love to stay up all night programming or playing games but I have to get up in the morning for the school run and then my day suffers)
5) Diet: reduce alcohol to an absolute minimum, reduce treats/junk food, eat more fruit and healthy food, drink more water. I’m already vegetarian and my weight is fine but I know I can do more.
6) Exercise: breathing exercises every day, more exercises (pull ups, press ups, sit ups, dancing, running, swimming, walking, clycling etc)
7) Keep my positive attitude strong and keep working on self-improvement.

I’m pretty sure that diet, exercise and good sleep are VITAL to pretty much EVERYTHING else. You get the balance right and your brain will work better, you’ll have more energy, be more positive etc.

Anyway, I’m keen to hear about your goals for 2008 (post links to your own blog entires if you like) and I wish you luck for 2008.

Remember that a goal means NOTHING unless you work hard to achieve it and don’t give in!