A Year of Crime: Penny Larceny's Anniversary

(Setting this blog post free for all! If you'd like to join the Patreon and help fund our next project, drop a few coins in the box.)

Penny Larceny: Gig Economy Supervillain was a labor of love. My chance to self-publish a project near and dear to me, something with satire and comedy and heart and something to say about the world we live in. It was a gameplay experiment into making something short but very replayable, where you have a very different relationship to the main character, along with with interwoven timelines and a slow build to an ultimate finale. I put so much into this game, knowing it would be great, that it would soar.

One year on, and... uh... it's earned back 14% of its budget. Basically, it tanked right out of the gate. Crash and burn. Box office bomb. No chance left of success one year out from being a hot new thing.

It's understandable. The budget came in hot, and the marketing went out cold. (You'd think the hot price I paid those guys to help me market it would get me SOME coverage, but you'd be wrong.) The majority of Arcade Spirits fans either weren't interested or never found out it existed. Even before its release I had to cancel plans for things like voice acting, ongoing free DLC releases, and a console port because the trending predicted a flop and the trending was proven right.

This changed a lot of things for me. I decided I'm done trying to fight a crowded indie marketplace, throwing elbows with others like me trying to break even. I'm done with huge budget games. I'm done with go big or go home mentalities.

I've shifted to a fan-supported model here on Patreon, focusing on smaller budget games that I can pour my heart and soul into without the anxiety of "will capitalism give me a headpat?". They're likely releasing for free from now on. I never wanted to be a hustle culture self-starter, I wanted to be a writer. The art is what matters.

And heck, even on the money side I'm winning if you reframe it -- Penny Larceny and The New Challengers will never break even (yep, that one's flopped too) but the sales from the original Arcade Spirits alone have put the entire Fiction Factory Games endeavor in the green. So as a whole FFG is enduring nicely.

The next project, The Shadow Over Cyberspace, is a sci-fi noir which will be releasing for free when it's done. It's taken a long time due to disability health issues and day job devouring my time, but it's coming in 2025, and anyone backing at $5+ can play an incomplete testing copy right now if they're so inclined. (If not, that's cool too.)

But let's bring it back around to Penny Larceny. Lessons learned and goals achieved. Her adventure is something I'm deeply proud of. Anti-capitalist, anti-fascist, queer as fuck, and just a darn good time. While I'd love for more people to play it, I'm glad for making the game and glad I could release her story into the world. We need that spirit of kindness and rebellion she offers, now more than ever.

Thanks for your support. Fiction Factory Games has had a rough road to travel, but travel we must.