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Nicholas Lovell
Home   >   Sandbox   >   GAMESbrief in 2011

GAMESbrief in 2011

By on January 4, 2012

When you work on your own, you sometimes lose track of what you have achieved. I’m inclined to think of myself as a slacker, because there are so many things that I want to do each day/week/year, and never get them all done.

I wrote a review of 2010 this time last year. I thought it was time to review what GAMESbrief achieved in 2011.

Biggest achievements

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Writing

  • Become a paid columnist for Gamasutra
  • Wrote six articles in the Wall Street Journal
  • Had both Volume 1 and Volume 2available to buy on Amazon
  • Launched Have Kids, Will Sail
  • Started conversations with two major publishing houses about a book on the future of business based on lessons from the games industry
  • Saw growing monthly sales of How to Publish a Game.

GAMESbrief

  • Hired an editorial assistant (Zoya Street), worked with talented freelancer writers like Dan Griliopolous and Rob Fahey, and developers Jay Margalus, Elizabeth Davies and Tom Hart.
  • Launched the GAMESbrief freelance database(well, a pre-alpha anyway)
  • Redesigned GAMESbrief
  • Launched the free GAMESbrief free-to-play spreadsheet
  • Recorded the highest page views in a month

Consultancy

  • Worked with great clients including Firefly, nDreams, IPC, Channel 4, Rebellion, Square Enix, Hero Engine, Supercell, TAG, several venture capital funds and many others.
  • Spoke at 18 conferences including the Virtual Goods Summit, the Browser Games Forum, Futurebook, the London Games Conference and Develop
  • Ran 8 successful masterclasseson How to Make Money from Social Games both in-house at major games companies and for independent delegates in the UK, Ireland, France and Poland.
  • Achieved my objective of having more international clients (US, Poland, Finland)
  • Becoming a Gerson Lehrman GroupScholar (in the top 9% of their global network of 26,000 expert consultants)
  • Hosted lunches (alongside Paul Gardner of Osborne Clarke) every quarter to provide an informal forum for venture capitalists and games companies to get to know each other

Looking ahead

I’m still working through my objectives for 2012. My current list has so many things on it that even I have to admit I can’t do them all.

But looking back, 2011 saw a lot of progress for me and for GAMESbrief. I hope the same is true for you, and that you have lots of plans for 2012.

 

* A Black Swan is a unpredictable event that no-one can foretell. My Black Swans are approximations: things that have potentially very big upside. they include equity stakes in startups, books, websites – anything that if it takes off could get really really big. Two of my Black Swans had successful outcomes in 2011. I hope for even more in 2012.

About Nicholas Lovell

Nicholas is the founder of Gamesbrief, a blog dedicated to the business of games. It aims to be informative, authoritative and above all helpful to developers grappling with business strategy. He is the author of a growing list of books about making money in the games industry and other digital media, including How to Publish a Game and Design Rules for Free-to-Play Games, and Penguin-published title The Curve: thecurveonline.com