About a week and a half after we launched the paid version of Vex Blocks on Google Play, Yuhao Zeng of the Paris based App Turbo contacted me to ask if we’d be interested in promoting Vex Blocks with their “App of the Day” app. They expressed interest in our game and thought their users would too. The idea was simple enough. We make a full copy of our paid game available for 24 hours, free, and they’d promote it. As we had our hands full with free version of Vex Blocks, our app marketing had at that point consisted of a few press releases (where we could afford them) and emails to review sites who had historically ignored us. We received the details, talked them over among ourselves and ultimately decided on “What the hell?”

I don’t want to sound like an advertisement for their service, but I like when others share their indie development experiences and if I can help another dev in our shoes, I’m going to pass it along. Yuhao was fantastic throughout the process, quickly answering any and all questions I threw his way. The “App of the Day” app is regional, covering a good chunk of Europe as well as Russia, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Brazil and Japan. Prior to the promotion, the free version of Vex Blocks was managing roughly 100 downloads a day in the 2 weeks since it’s release. We were hoping that perhaps this promotion might give us a boost of a couple of thousand users and help us get the ball rolling a bit.

When all was said and done, over 90,000 users downloaded and played our game in the 24 hours the promotion ran this week, of which roughly 80% have so far stayed as active users. I’m sure that’s nothing to some developers, but for an indie team like ours this is a huge step forward. The next day, the free version of Vex Blocks jumped from it’s regular 100 a day to roughly 6000 where it’s stayed so far. The paid version of Vex Blocks is also experiencing a nice spike. For an English only game, I’m pleasantly surprised that so many decided to give us a try in non-English speaking countries and the feedback from users has been fantastic. The goal was to help Vex Blocks find it’s way into the hands of gamers and raise awareness, and in that this exercise was a complete success. It also served as an excellent opportunity to help narrow the list of the 2000 some Android devices that the game was available on and weed out a few devices that were incapable of playing our game.

There are a number of “Free App” type applications like “App of the Day” (http://appturbo.it/) out there but in our inexperience we didn’t even consider reaching out to them. Although I haven’t used a similar service to promote our titles, I’ll certainly contact the App Turbo team again for this type of service. If you’re a developer with a mobile app to promote, it certainly couldn’t hurt to send a quick email to Yuhao (yuhao@appturbo.it) and see what they can do for you. I know I’ll be partnering up with them again for the iOS release of Vex Blocks and hopefully for future releases after that.

We launched the paid, full version of Vex Blocks on Google Play first for the simple fact that it was finished first.  We knew the market for paid apps on Android was limited compared to others, but I don’t think we were really conscious of just how big a role piracy played.  Our first release, Itzy3d, marked our first steps into the world of mobile game development.  When we released Itzy3d, our plan was to have a full, paid version and then a free, lite version.  The paid version of Itzy3d was all but ignored on the Android marketplace, as we suspected it would be while the lite version was downloaded considerably more than its iOS counterpart, by roughly 5:1.  There was at least an appetite for our products on Android so skipping out on a Google Play release didn’t even occur to us with our follow-up title.

What we didn’t know with Itzy3d was actual numbers on how many copies of the game were installed on devices compared to how many we sold via Google Play.  With Vex Blocks, we’re able to see how many copies are out in the wild compared to how many copies we’ve sold.  These statistics don’t change our approach to Android releases.  The impact is more of an emotional toll when you realize the bulk of gamers out there on Android you’re trying to reach with your product don’t have any interest in supporting that product, even if they use it.

Over the years I’ve heard plenty of arguments trying to justify why piracy isn’t really an issue for developers.  The main one you always hear is, “Those people would have never bought the game in the first place.  No money is lost.”

The idea that certain people just never buy games is ridiculous.  Arguing that pirate gamers would just cease gaming if they couldn’t pirate is utter nonsense.  Add to that the cost barrier for mobile gaming is generally so low, and it just boils down to pirates are cheap.  Full stop.  Pirates who can’t spend half the price of a large cup of coffee to support a game they want to play shouldn’t make excuses or try to rationalise their actions.  They’re cheap and they’d rather open themselves up to malware infected copies found in the gutters of the internet than compensate developers for their work.  Now I’m sympathetic to the fact that in some countries, due to government restrictions, the only way you can access television shows, music and, yes, mobile games is through illegal sites, but the bulk of pirated copies we’re seeing of our game aren’t coming from these countries.

Pirates will argue that nothing is stolen as the product is only copied, so it’s not even a crime, but of course the reality is every pirated copy of a game removes that person from the pool of potential customers and with 95% of your customers not willing to pay for your product, that doesn’t leave developers much room to work with on Android.  So, the piracy ship has sailed and aside from becoming bitter old men who rant on blogs and shake their fist at kids who walk in front of their house too slowly, what can be done?  Price competition isn’t a factor.  The race to the bottom is already over and, surprisingly, no one came out the victor.  Daring to even charge a dollar your game is in itself an invitation to pirate now.  The ease with which pirates can copy a developers work has fundamentally changed the way developers cope and the end result is a diminished product for all.

There are numerous ways a developer can attempt to limit the impact of piracy issues.  You could simply avoid developing for Android, but there is still a market consisting of legitimate Android users out there and it’s not that other platforms are immune to piracy.  I love creating games for Android devices and I’m humbled by the support we’ve received from our players.  I wouldn’t ignore the gamers who do support our products.  Many of the other methods to deal with piracy involve lessening the experience for legitimate gamers on mobile (and on other platforms).  DRM is one route.  The general thinking is, the harder you make it to pirate your work, the more chance that some pirates might actually pay to play your game due to the effort involved in cracking or finding a pirated version.  There’s certainly some validity to that approach but as we’ve witnessed with a few recent, high profile examples of digital rights management such as launch issues surrounding Diablo 3 and SimCity, this has the potential to backfire and hurt your paying users.

You can require mandatory sign-up as well, but this has a tendency to alienate those who simply want to buy a game and play, hassle free.  That leaves the freemium method of releasing your game filled with upgrades, advertisements or both.  It’s certainly the route that more mobile developers are choosing, including ourselves, but again this can lead to a lesser experience as advertisements throughout a game become tiresome quickly, and an over reliance of micro-transactions can also turn gamers away.

Alternately developers can choose to embrace piracy.  There’s the chance that a happy pirate may promote your game simply through word of mouth.  For indie developers, creating a great product is job one, but getting noticed is by far the real battle.  The next great novel could be sitting in a pile of thousands of books but if no one picks it up to read it in the first place the author could very likely die in obscurity.  Similarly, great games need to be played in the first place for anyone to discover them and if they’re played as a result of piracy and discovered in that fashion, the argument can be made that the pirates did the developer a service.  Of course it’s only a service if the pirates tell enough gamers from the 5-10% of Android gamers who legitimately support developers – ideally before those developers are forced to close their doors.

But hey, why should developers going under matter to pirates?  By that point they’ve already moved on to helping themselves to the next game.

The late night adrenalin rush of fixing a bug on the eve of our self-imposed deadline had fired up my brain and my thoughts erratically leap from point to point like popcorn popping while anxiety knotted up in my stomach and settled in for a winter’s nap. I stared at my bedside table for an undetermined length of time before I eventually drifted off into a fitful sleep.

At some point during the night my wife woke up to comfort our baby girl, Hanna and had fallen asleep in her room. My day started when my wife came back to bed and informed me that our 3-year-old, Jake, was awake and calling for Daddy. I squinted, noticed the sun was up so there was no chance at another hour of sleep and rolled out of bed just as Jake hit the living room and started honking the horn of an obnoxiously noisy pink riding car meant for his sister. I settled him down with a cup of a fruit/veggie juice I have yet the had the courage to taste and turned on “The Cat in the Hat knows a lot about that” before heading to my office to launch our second title.

Launch day this time was different. With our first title, our core group hunkered down in my home office in a marathon of testing the ultimately cumulated with “Well. That’s it. Let’s launch.” Someone suggested we should have a drink so we did toasting each other and then that was it. Game launched. The next day I sat, staring at my computer screen knowing I needed to “market” somehow but not having a clue even where to start. This time out there was no empty void of “What the hell do I do now” waiting for me after launch. There’s no one else in the room. No one to raise a toast to. The artwork was finished months ago by very talented student artists. The testers I haven’t actually seen face to face in who knows how long. People complete their assigned tasks and then scatter leaving only us, the two founders of our indie studio, each waking up with their respective families on a cold, Canadian Sunday morning. There was still a long list of of objectives that needed to be completed to launch Vex on other platforms, in other app stores. There’s another team working on our third title that needs checking in on. There’s communications that have been piling up, unanswered while we pushed to complete. The gaping maw of uncertainty that greeted me after the first game released didn’t exist this time out. I know what needs to be done and we can’t afford to slow down.

So while the Cat in the Hat explains to my 3 year old the benefits to singing underwater with a whale I sat down to release our new game. The sun tries to poke through the clouds outside my office window but it just can’t decide whether it wants to clear up or add to the snow on my back deck. I noticed the time and remembered that Daylight Savings had struck again. I could almost feel that hour suddenly sucked away from me like a voodoo spell setting in as I lamented the time shift. I shook the sudden tiredness off and a quick check of my emails included a brief message from our other developer, my brother-in-law Will. No doubt he had a late night as well. If he wasn’t awake due to work, I’m sure his sleep would have been interrupted by their first child only weeks old, waking and bellowing his displeasure. I took the few cosmetic changes to Vex Blocks that Will had pushed up to our server, installed the new build and then uploaded the apk file to Google Play. Then I hit “Publish”.

That was it. I leaned back in my chair and despite being told by an online message that it could take hours to populate to Google’s servers, I punched in the url just to see if it was visible. It wasn’t. I went through my email and then checked a few links to press releases that were scheduled to go live that morning to herald the Vex Blocks release. I clicked refresh on the Google Play site again. Still nothing. I flipped back and forth between press releases, finding the announcements somehow comforting and real, like the launch of the game after ten months wasn’t just a dream. I’d then refresh the Google Play link. I don’t know how many times I did this before the baby monitor in the living room announced that Hanna was awake. I fired off a message to Will for whenever his sleep deprived old bones made his way into his office that morning, informing him that the deed was done.

The links to the game on our Facebook and web pages were live. The press releases were out. The game was published. I went to rescue my daughter from the confines of her crib. She smiled her huge, baby smile when I entered her room, just like she always does and I took her into the living room where she proceeded to make short work of some Cheerios I placed out on the coffee table for her to keep her occupied. My son jumped up on the couch beside me and we talked and watched TV, letting my wife sleep in a bit. Little Einsteins was on now. The rocket ship apparently runs off leg pats, so we patted our laps faster and faster to rev up Rocket as we were instructed, raised our hands as high as we could and announced together “Blast off!” Hanna turned from where she was standing, leaning against our ottoman, swaying a bit on her unsteady little legs. She giggled at us.

It was a good day.

When we started development of Vex Blocks, we set out to create a falling block style arcade game in the vein of Tetris that utilised a device’s rotation.  The job of the player was to chain together blocks on the screen by matching colors, symbols or both and tracing out patterns with their fingers to connect the blocks.  Random blocks would fall into the play area and the job was to clear as many as possible, rotating the device as necessary so blocks would fall into different arrangements.  Once we had created the basic gameplay mechanics, we set about trying to think of how we could change the rules of the game to create different gameplay modes and a “nice to have feature if we have the time” was puzzle mode.

So, as development moved along I ultimately found myself faced with the job of creating various puzzles for our puzzle mode.  I had never set out to create a puzzle before, but how hard could it be?  Start simple, right?

I started by recreating my playing area in Photoshop and went about duplicating the various game pieces so I could simply drag and drop to create the puzzles before coding them into our game.  My next step was to create something aesthetically pleasing before I even thought of how the puzzle would play.  I’d drop in blocks to create geometric shapes and patterns, often drawing inspiration from simple icons as I only had a 5×8 grid to work with.  Once I had a pattern on the screen that I was relatively happy with, I’d start thinking about how it would play.

Here’s where it really started to get fun.  The point of the puzzle mode was to solve the puzzle, clearing all playing blocks from the screen in as few chains as possible, with an upper limit on the amount of chains you could use before the puzzle would reset.  I’d have a look at the blocks in front of me and start tracing out the various options for chains.  If it was too straightforward, then I’d start to throw in obstacles by swapping out blocks that couldn’t be readily chained together, or could only be part of a chain coming from one particular direction.  Or, I’d start with a puzzle and then mimic a few phone rotations to see what I’d end up with.  It was a bit like messing up a Rubik’s cube.  As challenging as a Rubik’s cube is to solve, there’s a certain amount of satisfaction in taking a solved cube and mixing it up for another to solve.  For a few puzzles, that’s exactly what it was like.  Starting with a solved puzzle that was easy to chain together, then scrambling it.  Mmmm…satisfying.

From a design perspective, starting simple was really the only way for this project to evolve.  As I started to become comfortable designing simple puzzles, I’d gradually add in new game mechanics.  What if I add a block that can’t be chained and has to be surrounded?  What if I introduce blocks that stay fixed in one spot despite device orientation?  What if we throw in blocks that explode if you don’t clear them quickly enough?  What about using specific power-ups?  Adding one new gameplay mechanic at a time and exploring that mechanic fully before moving onto the next, then adding them together provided a nice progression in terms of variety and difficulty.  As I became more familiar with process, design started to shift away from the look of the puzzle and instead started with a particular challenge, and then I moulded the look around the puzzle.

Next up I assembled the puzzles in-game and turned them loose on our testers.  I quickly discovered that what seems easy to me after working on the game full-time for nine months isn’t necessarily as easy for gamers who haven’t spent that type of time with the product.  Test, test test.  Who knew?  There’s a fine line between challenging and “Nuts to this” with gamers.  Thankfully, I’ve received some excellent feedback and what was originally a “nice to have feature if we have the time” has become a challenging addition to the title that extends the gameplay options while offering us the opportunity to release additional content if gamers like what they see.

About a year ago, I wrote a blog post here about a weekly blog series on our company blog called “Game Face”. A blog post revisiting a blog post about blog posts? It’s blog posts all the way down. As a refresher, “Game Face” is “our weekly round-up of our internal and external open source work at Agora Games. Internal open source refers to our public projects that you can find over at our Agora Games GitHub account. External open source work refers to projects that we contribute to in off-hours and may or may not have anything to do with video games because we’re swell folks like that.” How’d we do in our open source efforts over the last year? Read on…

THE BRASS TACKS

In 2011, we open sourced 22 projects. In 2012, we open sourced 33 projects. Obviously not all of these projects are going to “stick”, but one man’s trash is another man’s treasure right? The projects aren’t trash, BTW. A few projects came out of internal company-wide Hack-A-Thon sessions that we run every 2 months, but a fair number of them are taken from production applications. In looking at the 2012 project breakdown, by language, we have Ruby (22), Python (3), CoffeeScript (3), JavaScript (2), C++ (2), PHP (1). 7 of our engineers and 21 external people contributed to the various projects that we open sourced in 2012. Contributions range from clarifications in documentation to major new features that are developed, documented and tested.

It is very easy for us to track contributions to all of our open source projects. All of the projects are setup with a service hook to notify our company’s “Open Source” chat room when events happen like code is committed or a pull request is opened or an issue is filed. Every week I create a new “shell” for the “Game Face” blog post after the last one is published. I set it to be published automatically at 9 AM on the following Friday. As contributions come in to our open source projects, next week’s blog post is updated.

I’m not sure if we’ll open source more projects than we did in 2012. 33 is a fair number of projects to have open sourced. We obviously want quality over quantity. I’m always pushing to see if there’s anything we can open source. One of the ideas being tossed around as a way to expand our open source efforts would be to hold a weekly “Office Hours” session where a few engineers hop onto IRC or a Google “hangout” for an hour or so and field questions on our projects.

FIN

We are happy to contribute back in any way we can to open source software, whether it be our own projects or the projects we use on a daily basis. Again, if your company does anything with open source, I’d love to know about it!

Before reading on, please understand that my definition of the AAA gaming model is thus:

A game that you go to your favourite store to buy for £45 / $60, take home and play on a console or PC in the comfort of your own home. You expect that there’s a single player component that will last you at least 8 hours, if not quite a bit more, and a multiplayer component that will be polished and fun.

With that in mind:

Is AAA is dead?

Eighteen months or so ago, this wouldn’t have really even been considered. There were signs that the model was struggling, but sales were still plenty high enough on the big hits of the year and there were plenty of rumours that Sony and Microsoft were working away on the next consoles – a sure fire way to inject new life into the fire.

Today though, it seems to quite a few people’s minds. Sony and Microsoft haven’t unveiled any new hardware yet, and it’s costing more than ever to produce a current generation AAA game, which is against what has happened in the past. I’ve previously mentioned that making AAA games is hard, and nowhere is this more evident but in a simple table:

These are averages – naturally there are games that go against the grain, both up and down. If we take the middle-of-the-road for all of these, it took 19 man years to make a PlayStation 1 game, back in 1995. Fast forward to 2001 and it took 124 years to make a PlayStation 2 game. Today, it takes 420 man years. That’s 22 times longer than it took in 1995, yet games still cost £45 / $60 at retail. Thanks to mobile gaming, people are starting to become unwilling to pay £45, even though in real terms they’re cheaper than ever. In fact, people don’t even want to pay 69p – a lot of people expect entertainment for free. Currently, no one expects Assassin’s Creed III on their mobile phone for 69p, but, as the speed of mobile phones increases, so do customer expectations.

The number of copies you’d need to sell at 69p to make a profit on a game that’s taken 420 man years to make is astronomical, and highly unlikely to happen. Something has to change.

Technology will save us

The two most time consuming elements of making a AAA game are making the game engine and then creating the content to go in. A modern day game engine has a lot of boxes to tick:

• Deferred Rendering
• Texture and Geometry Streaming
• Online Multiplayer Support
• Parallax Mapping
• Blended Animation System
• Rigid Body Physics and IK Solutions
• Motion Blur
• Full Body Rig
• SSAO (Screen Space Ambient Occlusion)
• And on..

Not all of these boxes have to be ticked to make a game, but to get anywhere near the visual quality expected by the audience and gaming press your engine is going to have to do a lot. Technical accomplishments will only get you so far of course – your game needs solid art direction and high quality assets, so you’ll also have to spend a lot of money on high calibre artists, animators and sound designers. When so much money is being spent, it’s rare for a team to be afforded the ability to experiment too much with game mechanics: instead it’s safer to tread the well worn path that successful games have already laid.

As a games designer, this feels wrong to me. Thankfully, it feels that the tide is turning.

A lot of this comes down to the sheer power of hardware becoming available. Right now a mobile phone has more processing power than a top of the range desktop from 6 years ago. That is, officially, bonkers. And it’s only going to get even more so – in another couple of cycles mobiles phones will easily be as fast as current generation consoles, and they’ll continue to get faster.

Speeding up engine development

This power starts to give game makers a little bit of breathing space, because it begins to reduce the requirement to squeeze every last ounce of processing power out of the hardware to get the same results. That, in turn, gives you the ability to make more use of pre-written software libraries. In the past, these might have been avoided or rewritten to be tailored specifically to your exact needs and any additional code removed. As well as software libraries, CPUs and GPUs continue to advance and provide specific processing units for performing some of the heavy work on the chips themselves, such as physics, and this frees up valuable coding time down the line.

In addition to on-chip improvements, APIs, software libraries and even off-the-shelf game engines continue to advance at a good rate, as do protocols to bring about a level of standardisation between devices. In fact, these are the two areas that I think can bring about the biggest change in how game engines are made. This year looks like it’s going to be all about new hardware, with Ouya, a Steambox, an nVidia console, GameStick and a handful of others, and that’s before even considering that the Wii U is only just out and Microsoft and Sony might have something new this year too. That’s a lot of potential fragmentation, and I’ve not even mentioned mobile phones or tablets…

How about, instead of buying a specific device to play games on, you just run the platform of your choice on whatever you have to hand. Think of something like DirectX, but imagine it as a whole console layer. Imagine if you just wrote your game for Steam, and let the APIs, libraries and protocols do everything else to make sure that it runs on the device in your hand, from providing the input layer to rendering the graphics. This is a few years ahead, but I think it will happen. For instance, it wouldn’t matter how many buttons a device has, as long as it adheres to the interface protocol. That layer may be physical buttons, a touch screen, a motion sensor or something else entirely. The device would deal with how the user interacts with it, and push that information to the game as a series of standard inputs.

This might sound slightly ridiculous, but this is already how browsing the internet works. The websites you visit don’t know if you’re using a mouse, a touch screen or a TV remote. They don’t need to: the browser on your device deals with the input layer, and also does all the rendering of the data that gets sent back. Could this be a future for game engines too?

Asset Creation

Shorter term, asset creation is going to benefit greatly from more computing power. As with the engine, the requirement to optimise a model to within an inch of its life is reduced if there’s more processing power and memory available. Equally, as engines continue to become more sophisticated, they can offer perfectly acceptable optimisation of models on the fly. The requirement to create multiple LODs reduces and, soon, should disappear. This will save a lot of time.

In addition to this, the tools that create the content will continue to improve. It makes full financial sense: if you put resources into better tools, you need fewer people using them. If, for instance, six coders working on tools could reduce your art team by twenty, surely that’s the best thing to do?

The ability to scan objects in real time and generate models is becoming a reality. Faceshop for Photoshop can take a 2D image and create a 3D head from it. The results aren’t professional quality yet, but in time tools like this will get better and better.

Finally, the way we interact with computers is constantly evolving. There are a lot of UI developments just round the corner, some of which could help massively with content creation. Imagine sculpting a 3D model using a LEAP controller, or sketching out a 2D layout on PaperTab and having a tool turn that into 3D for you.

With all these developments, and many more, combined:

Gameplay becomes king

If development teams aren’t focused on ticking engine feature boxes, and art teams can produce high quality art in a fraction of the time currently required, then the focus will hopefully shift more onto just making great games. This has already been kickstarted by the mobile and independent scene, and it’s where AAA development is heading. But wait a minute… didn’t we say that AAA might be dead?

Well, yes and no. There will always be a market for high budget entertainment, and there will be developers that will cater for that. They may have to seek a different funding model, possibly a combination of a kickstarter campaign, a traditional publisher deal and in-app purchases. With development cycles being shorter and it being sold as purely a digital download, it should be possible to sell a game for less and still make a profit. See the Steam model.

Will technology have an impact on the type of gameplay? Motion controllers and Kinect opened the door to different types of gameplay interaction, and it’s hard not to assume that new interfaces will bring new gameplay experiences. New controllers are great, but inherently create fragmentation. If you look at mobile games, the ones that are successful aren’t necessarily breaking new gameplay ground. In fact, if anything, they’re relying quite heavily on paradigms that made games successful in the 1980s and 1990s. They are very highly polished, and very well defined – distilled almost down to a few core mechanics. Interestingly, too, is that mobile and independent games often offer a greater challenge than AAA games. Getting 3 stars on every level in Angry Birds is not easy at all, yet people who can’t finish the first mission in Halo will happily sit there for hours until they get them. I still haven’t managed to complete a game of Faster Than Light, but I’m having a lot of fun trying. I could list 50 such examples, but this article is already far longer than I originally intended.

The point I’m trying to make here is that there will be a meeting point of polished gameplay experience that looks as good as the top budget games of today: but for a fraction of the development cost. At the point that it doesn’t cost tens of millions to make Call of Duty, people will have room to take bigger risks with the gameplay.

Wrapping it up

Quite a bit has been made of Ingress, a location based game on Android. You go to a real location – predefined as an ‘energy source’ – and hack in. You’ve already decided side you’re on. Currently, I’ve heard (I haven’t tried it myself), it’s not very engaging. It’s currently in beta and an interesting experiment, and a sign of potential directions that some games will take. Coupled with Project Glass (aka, Google Glasses), it’s not hard to imagine that you could be playing games all the time, as you walk down the street or go shopping.

The technology to synchronise data automatically between devices is already with us, as is the ability to connect your mobile phone up to your TV – effectively turning it into a Wii U controller (iPhones achieve this via Apple TV, whereas other manufactures are looking to incorporate Intel’s WiDi protocols).

All of this means that we’ll be able to play games wherever we are, whenever we want. Whether or not that’s a good thing… I’m not sure because it doesn’t take into account why we play games. Partly we play them for a distraction, a way of turning the mundane into something more. But one of the biggest pleasures of any leisure activity is making time for it. You may be meant to be doing something else, but you’ve decided that for the next few hours you’re going to play a game. This is important, and isn’t going to go away.

The great thing is, there’ll be a huge amount of great games for you to play on whatever you’ve got to hand.

Now, some of you may be wondering who I am to tell you about networking, to whit I like to reference Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by saying “I’m just this guy, you know?”.

In my three years as a student, designer, contractor, and employee, I have picked up a few tips and tricks that may or may not appear to be common sense to you. Yet I consistently get people coming to me saying how outgoing I am, or how it’s insane how much I network, and I’m here to tell you a dirty secret. Networking, to me, is one of the hardest things I have ever done.

I’m actually a pretty huge introvert when left to my own devices, so the physical and mental act of getting out there and meeting people is just daunting. I share this with you because maybe you’re the same way, and feel like I’m being too casual with my advice, but the plain and simple fact is, Network and you will make friends and reap dividends. I have no advice for the introvert short of “get over it and do it”, because that’s how I pull it off. But enough about me, let’s go over some networking tips. This first part will be about your online presence, and some best practices for both online and in person, and then the next part will be about in person and online follow-ups!

Rule #1: Think Before You Post

So we all know that our online presence is a huge deal nowadays. Make one off-color comment that has the potential to be misconstrued, and you’re hosed. An actual example I saw a few months ago comes to mind.

Designer A shares a picture he thinks is funny on social media. Designer B thinks it’s tacky and wrong. Designer B loses respect for Designer A. Designer B will remember that if he is ever in a position to hire Designer A.

Over a simple laugh, Designer A is potentially out a contact, a positive relationship with an acquaintance, and a gig. Awful, yeah? Well it happens all the time.

It may be common knowledge, but I must say it. Think before you post.

Rule #2: Get Your Own Dot Com (And Maintain It!)

This is probably the hardest piece of advice I can give, because maintaining your site can be a pain in the butt. I could go on about your site for an entire post so for brevity I’ll try and boil it down into a few bullet points.

• Make the URL easy to type and relevant. Your name is always a good bet, provided it isn’t far out in how it’s spelled.
• Don’t put up your Works in progress. A recruiter may only look at your resume for 30 seconds. Do you want them to see polished content, or half finished content? Worse, do you want them to see half finished content that they don’t read as WIP, and assume that it’s your polished content? **shudder**
• Put your contact info on every page. EVERY. PAGE. That’s name, number, email address. I know that some people like to break up their address as “my name at domain dot com” to thwart spammers, but come on. Again, people looking at your site have a lot of stuff to look at. Let them click on your email address, and have it come up in outlook. The less energy they exert to contact you, the better your chances.
• Have a tab for your resume. In that tab put your resume down online in plain text, and then provide download links for your resume in both Word and PDF. Give them a choice in how they can view it.
• Update it. All the time. Think your site is good enough? It isn’t. Tweak it. Tweak it again. Never stop being great.

Finally, there is an amazing keynote from GDC by Jacob Minkoff from Naughty Dog. It is hands down the best 50 minutes you will ever spend on your portfolio. Watch it, learn from it, and follow it.

Rule #3: Social Media is a Tool Chest.

A lot of people use social media in a blanket way. Maybe Programmer A uses every account they have to share lolcats. Maybe Programmer B uses every account to be political. In my opinion, that’s paying a disservice to the strengths and weaknesses of each type of social media. Below is a small list of my social accounts, and how I handle them.

Twitter

Twitter is how I make new friends. I try to be interesting, share relevant and fun “geek” links, and get into thoughtful and informative discussions. I can approach anyone I want on Twitter, and be seen. When I post to Twitter, I am posting to an audience of devs I don’t know, recruiters, colleagues, and friends. I am still myself. I still curse a bit. I am still opinionated, but I mold it for a certain audience.  Everyone I meet at a convention also gets followed on Twitter, provided it’s on their business card.

Facebook

Facebook is my next tier of friends. In Facebook you get a glimpse into more of my private life, my photos, my politics, and my overall thoughts. In here lurk family, longtime friends since childhood, and colleagues. If I add you on Facebook it means that we have had numerous conversations, and we both seem to agree that we are rather friendly. Sometimes I will make an exception and add someone on Facebook cold, if they don’t have Twitter and I think they are an especially cool cat.

LinkedIn

Here I keep every single thing I’ve ever done professionally. I keep it current, and tweak it bi-weekly. I connect with anyone that has similar interest to me, and I likewise get the same connection requests from others. I am constantly expanding my network and meeting folks. I also hook my Twitter feed up to LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has a highly underused tool for making connections. I use it all the time. If I see someone I want to be connected with that’s out of my network, I’ll find a friend that is connected, and ask for a recommendation. Here’s the thing, LinkedIn is for one thing and one thing only. Networking. Don’t feel like you’re being ruthless by pointedly networking. The only caveat I can really add is make sure you don’t try and jump too far out of your area when asking for connections. For instance, I wouldn’t ask my buddies at Ubisoft for a connection with a CEO or something, because for one it’s not relevant, and for another it’s level-jumping, and I would be putting my friends in the awkward position of saying no, or feeling uncomfortable and doing it anyway. You never ever want to make anyone feel uncomfortable. Ever. With that in mind, I’ve gotten tons of great contacts just by asking for an introduction. Likewise, I am constantly recommending contacts (but more on that in a bit).

Klout

Klout is a great site that hooks up to your various social media and tells you, in a numerical way, how influential you are within your circle on a number of topics. It’s a great site to check out if you’re interested in seeing what sort of footprint you’re leaving on the internet. If your biggest sphere of influence is Vintage French Nude Lithographs, then maybe you need to reassess. Or not. That’s actually kind of awesome.

So that’s social media. You don’t have to follow my template, but remember that each site is a tool that can and must be used differently to be effective. Finally let’s look at a rule that bridges the gap of online and real life networking.

Rule #4: Don’t Be Selfish.

I mentioned earlier in the LinkedIn section about recommending contacts, and it’s so important that I thought I’d give it its own section. This is good for both online and in real life, so take heed.

If you are to become a crazy whirling dervish of networking, you’ve gotta spread the love. You have to share. If you don’t pay it forward, then it stops with you and doesn’t go any further. That’s no good for anyone, and is just plain selfish. When you see two people with common interests, introduce them! There is a classic method of introduction which is a bit formal, but I absolutely love. It goes like this:

*Talking with Artist A, when Artist B walks up*

Me: Oh, hey Artist B! Have you met Artist A?

Artist B: No I haven’t.

Me: Really? Well let me introduce you. This is Artist A. Artist A is an Environmental Artist at Treyarch. Artist A, this is Artist B. Artist B is a Concept Artist at Epic. Now, Artist A and I were just talking about (Blank), what do you think, Artist B?

Boom! Introduction! What you have done is repeated names at least twice, given relevant information, aligned interests, and included everyone in the conversation. Now gently steer the convo until you feel you are no longer needed, then excuse yourself. You have just connected two professionals, and potentially started a long and healthy acquaintanceship.

The thing is, you should want to get your friends gigs. Your friends should want to get you gigs. If you hear about something that isn’t up your alley, pass it on to a buddy. Furthermore, don’t be a mercenary cock. There’s an awesome studio that a few of my friends have been INTENSELY courting for the longest time. I would love to work there, but why would I try to? First off, I don’t have the relationship these guys have built. It would be a waste of my energy with so many places out there. Second, it’s just a dick move. Let them get the gig unobstructed. Getting a gig is hard enough without your friends pulling a fast one. Besides, once your friend gets in, he can try and help you out. Win/Win. Now, if that same studio comes to YOU and says they want to interview you, for the love of god don’t turn it down. All bets are off at that point.

Come back later for my next part, where I talk about networking in person, and how it folds back to the interwebs!

Virtual Reality

I’ve long been a fan of VR and have been disappointed with the consumer level hardware up to this point. That all changed in 2012 with the announcement of the Oculus Rift. With the backing of John Carmack, it was hard for the industry to ignore this new product. It looks like VR has finally turned a corner and (thanks to the booming smart phone market) the technology is available allowing a cheap (almost) consumer grade VR headset to be mass produced. Developers will have most of 2013 to prepare for the consumer grade headset and I see a lot of time and research going into these preparations. Rather than gamers peering through a small (24-70″) window into our worlds, they can now be completely immersed in them. The current fascination with (stereoscopic only) 3D  is one thing, but true immersive head-tracked 3D will take our games to the next level. While there are only a handful of games that support the Oculus Rift at this stage, by the end of 2013 I predict this to be in the hundreds.

Mobile/Tablet

I predict a large number of people (particularly indie’s) will make it big on mobile in 2013. This is still the direction I plan to head in 2013. While some people have moved toward social/Facebook gaming in 2011-2012 I see some of them returning to mobile/tablet gaming in 2013. With Microsoft entering the tablet market (and with a better mobile offering) I see this market growing substantially in 2013. The “get rich quick” attitude many had towards Facebook games has died off a little and I’m seeing a number of indie developers I know pivoting back to mobile rather than pure Facebook/social. I see the mobile/tablet market maturing in 2013 as many developers learn from their mistakes in the past and embrace the benefits of the platform (touch interface, always connected, etc).

Real Social Games

With Zynga shutting down a bunch of their games, I see the need for truly social games. Facebook and other social networks give game developers amazing opportunity for connecting gamers to their friends and others around the world. Rather than abusing these connections I see a switch to meaningful engagement. Games like LetterPress show the simplicity of Facebook to connect users rather than allowing users to bug their friends into getting them in-game items for free. True social games will take this simple connection and use it to enrich their game design. Many older gamers grew up playing together in arcades or lugging their giant computers to each others houses for a chance to play together. I’d like to see this same experience enabled by social games rather than the cheap “social” behavior we see currently. Like it or not, many developers go where the money is and the fact Zynga and the like are now falling on hard times shows the need for more than a superficial social connection if these types of games are to succeed.

No New Apple Product

I don’t see Apple releasing any significantly new products in 2013. They will continue to evolve their existing products, however I see the pace of of their evolution picking up. The iPhone 5 was a disappointment to many of the die-hard Apple fans I know. 2013 will be a real turning point for Apple as they forge new territory without Jobs at the helm. I’m sure much of 2012 had already been planned out but decisions like the iPad Mini show a new course is being set. I’d love to see a new product as innovative as the iPad, but I don’t see that occurring in 2013. Perhaps in a year or two we might see Apple move into the VR market, but I think they will wait and see the response to the Oculus Rift before making a large move like that.

Last Generation of Consoles

It’s looking like the next XBox and Playstation will be released in late 2013. I predict this will be the final “pure console” generation we see. As mobile, tablet and PC converge I think it’s logical that the concept of the console will disappear. With the current console cycle being closer to 10 years than 5, we can expect the next generation to be at least as long. With the current speed of innovation in the tablet/mobile sector, it will only be a matter of years before a portable device is as powerful as the next generation of consoles. The only difference then is the input/output mechanisms. Microsoft has already shown their Surface is compatible with a XBox360 controller and I see this trend continuing.

In the mid-term future, I forsee one, or maybe a couple, of devices powering most of our personal computing. This device will connect to the output device of our choosing to power our experience. On the road we will use the device itself (which will be around the size of a phone and/or tablet, depending on your preference). At work the computing device wirelessly connects to your mouse, keyboard and monitor(s). Playing games and watching movies it will wirelessly connect to a large TV or projector.

Summary

What are your predictions for 2013? Do you agree or disagree with any of my points? What would you love to see in 2013?

The executive summary version: It is a very attractive and fast growing market, but the odds are stacked against small, new and indie game developers. Successful games are usually paid, greatly innovative and highly polished casual titles -specially when working with a good publisher or a known brand- or free to play titles that operate as a service, seeing little revenue for a span of at least six months after launch, adding new content and/or further polishing, balancing and optimizing for retention and monetization. The former approach can be a logical step for studios that already have game development expertise, a team already in place and experience working with publishers. The latter is the approach that might yield the greater rewards, but requires a mid to long term vision, and also a tight and strong combination of resources and execution speed to actually pull it off.

What is mobile game development? We’ll consider it as any game focused development for smartphones or tablets running Android or iOS. What does this market look like? Let’s look at some numbers and insights:

• Mobile Gaming Market Projected to Grow at an Annual Rate of 12.3%
• Apple’s app store revenue is 4X Google Play’s … but Google Play is growing 24X faster
• Google Play revenue grew 17%, iOS revenue contracted 0.7% in Nov 2012 but Apple disputes App Annie report: the app store did NOT grow just 13% this year — it grew over 200%
• A $12-Million-A-Month iOS Game? NaturalMotion Has It With CSR Racing

[Source: eMarketer]

Looks promising, but it’s not all good:

• Some Numbers on the Top Grossing Games in the App Store
• Investors weigh in on falling game-startup valuations
• Analyst: Just 25 Developers Grabbed 50% Of App Revenues On U.S. App Store, Google Play Last Month; Earning $60M Between Them. (also on Venturebeat).
• Sales, Profit And Market Caps: GREE vs. Zynga vs. DeNA (Overview)
• Report: User acquisition costs for iOS shot up 30% last month

So, how to make sense of the opportunity? Is it reasonable? Affordable? Worth pursuing? Let’s start with a list of general projections for gaming on 2013 and summaries for 2012:

• Japanese Gaming Market 2012
• 2012: A Year in App Store (Infographic)
• Social Media Report 2012
• Gamasutra’s Best of 2012
• 2013 Predictions for Mobile Gaming
• What’s Next For Social Mobile Games?
• 7 Predictions For The Mobile Gaming Market For 2013
• The DeanBeat: Game industry predictions for 2013

This is a list of studies, articles and slides worth studying bit by bit to get a clearer picture:

• Internet Trends by KPCB and 2012 KPCB Internet Trends Year-End Update
• How to create a profitable Freemium startup (spreadsheet model included!)
• Casual Games Sector Report: Mobile Gaming
• Acquisition, Retention, Monetization: Final Report
• The Game of Platform Power

[Source: Lostgarden]

Next, a collection of thoughts from established players in the industry:

• Chillingo: Ruthless mobile platform has “no room for anything except perfection”
• The future of mobile games, according to Gree
• Gamers rule: Only 10% of the industry’s $50 billion comes from casuals
• 2012 in review: Doug Scott, ngmoco

Assuming you have a clearer picture now, and you are eager to learn more, what would be good resources to learn about all this?

Business links

• Mobile Freemium Games: Women Thrifty, Men Binge
• Three Steps from Paid to Freemium
• Virtual Goods – An Excerpt from Social Game Design: Monetization Methods and Mechanics
• More money from your mobile game for $0, part 1 and part 2
• BII REPORT: The Mobile Advertising Ecosystem Explained
• You Need $100,000 [Game Development]
• What Do Investors Look for in a Game Developer?
• Steve Blank’s List of Tools for Entrepreneurs. (includes technical tools and software)

[Source: Business Insider]

Game Development links

• How does Rage of Bahamut monetizes? Analysing a Top Grossing Game: Rage of Bahamut and How Rage of Bahamut Monetizes.
• Clash of Clans – the Winning Formula
• Free 2 Play and the Four Currencies
• 7 Ways to Fail at Free-to-Play
• The Free-To-Play Triangle [Game Economics]
• The Principles of Game Monetization
• The Design of Free-to-Play Games, Part 2 (Part 1)
• 5 tips for boosting your virtual economy
• Which Types Of Mobile Games Are In The Engagement Sweet Spot?
• The Ultimate Indie Game Developer Resource List (includes technical tools and software)
• The Big List of Game Making Tools (includes technical tools and software)

[Source: What Games Are]

Going live links

• Analytics: Flurry, Kontagent and AppAnnie.
• The long post : metrics and business model.
• ARPU vs ARPPU / ARPMU … but really LTV and CAC / CPA
• The Biggest Problem in Mobile: Retention
• Refining my first monetisation strategy and part 2.
• Managing a Free To Play Product: A Publisher’s Perspective
• Why your free-to-play users aren’t coming back
• 6 tips for a better mobile analytics experience
• How Canada has become America’s mobile app guinea pig
• The Big List of Indie Game Marketing

[Source: GamesBrief]

Last but not least, Blogs, People and Websites worth following.

Blogs

• Deconstructor of Fun: Monetization in Social Games, written by “the evil monetization guy @ Rovio”.
• Extra Creditz: Not exactly a blog, but lots of fun and thought provoking videos about gaming, game design and game development in general.
• Dr. Serkan Toto: Japan Mobile And Social Games Consulting.
• Andrew Chen’s blog: Great insights about startups in general.
• What Games Are: Great for game design and production.
• Games Brief: Special focus on monetization.
• Dave Sirlin’s blog: Great game design blog.
• Gameconfs: a directory of game industry events.
• Indiebits: Great tips for Indie Game Developers.
• Game Design Concepts and Game Balance Concepts.
• Raph Koster’s blog: The author of Theory of Fun.

People on Twitter: All of them usually share good insights and links about mobile game development

• Devs: Aki Järvinen, Tadhg Kelly, Shawn Foust, Will Luton, Michail Katkoff, Amy Jo Kim, Daniel Cook, Mike Acton, Jesse Schell, Tami Baribeau, Raph Koster.
• Executives: Shanti Bergel, Jussi Laakkonen, Lloyd Melnick, Kevin Dent, Ben Cousins, Charles Hudson, Nabeel Hyatt, Giordano Contestabile,  Scott Dodson
• Press and thought leaders: Christian Nutt, Stephen Totilo, Leigh Alexander, Adrian Crook, Dr. Serkan Toto, Nicholas Lovell, Epona Schweer, Allen Varney, Nicole Lazzaro.

[Source: @BenjaminCousins]

Sites: Good for keeping up with trends, news, good games and stuff

• http://www.altdevblogaday.com/
• http://www.gamasutra.com/
• http://www.pocketgamer.biz/
• http://venturebeat.com/
• http://techcrunch.com/
• http://news.ycombinator.com/
• http://toucharcade.com/
• http://www.appspy.com/
• http://www.insidesocialgames.com/
• http://www.insidemobileapps.com/

I hope all this serves you as a starting point to learn more about your upcoming adventure on mobile gaming this year. Enjoy!

Bonus Tracks

• Time Spent In Mobile Apps Is Starting To Challenge Television, Flurry Says
• All I Want for Christmas Is My Apple TV
• Valve will release PC/console next year
• iPhone And iPad Continue To Reign Over Developer Interest, But Cross-Platform Apps Are Now On Everyone’s Mind
• Stop Trying to Make an Angry Birds. Build a Rovio. Or Supercell. Or move to Finland.
• Rethinking Mobile First.
• 2012 has been ‘the year of mobile’ but the big mobile ad acquisitions were made three years ago

It is important to know why you do things, what drives and motivates you, bringing happiness and a sense of satisfaction. Though most importantly to admit when you made a gigantic cock-up and own up to being an idiot.

In my last post I requested contribution to a survey on why we create. The results were watered down when, by casual. non-formal inquiry of two large studios, I realised the results are not representative. In the inquiry I reminded myself that most people do not read industry press or actively participate in what I will term the “creators community”. Instead the bulk of our co-workers are content in their enjoyable job, which they still see as a job. They are happy, good on them, and many are talented and motivated individuals. Individuals I enjoy working with and who make awesome games. Though for completeness the results of the online survey are presented below.

The reason for the lateness of this post and the original self examination which triggered this exploration was an honest peeling away of my own fate and career. Since leaving Mere-Mortals I have not published work of which I am proud, that is not to say I haven’t worked on amazing things but they just will not see the light of day for a range of reasons, or when they finally do surface I shall not be credited.

Prompted by this situation a good friend whose creative ability and integrity I trust offered me an chance at a large publisher studio which sounded exciting. Much more exciting to me was a chance to turn my currently long distance relationship of almost 3 years into a no-distance relationship. So I packed my bags and moved to Europe with a healthy relocation package in the offering.

When I arrived the situation on the ground was very different. On day one I found out the project had changed from a traditional boxed console product to a free-to-play title. No-one’s fault, things change.

Now the “sensible” thing to do would have been hold out in Europe in a well paid job, cash in the relocation package and enjoy my relationship. This while creating a style of game I have morale issue with and not being able to express myself in the hopes of a relocation or change of circumstance. This is what I like to call “existing while waiting to live”, I have made a similar mistake in the past and refused to repeat it and possible watch my relationship and happiness fall to pieces over it.

So I swallowed what looks to be over £2000 in loss, cancelled my contract 3 days in on moral grounds and returned to the UK. There my previous employer welcomed me back in the most awesome way, way to go Climax. The only part of which I regret being the fact that my relationship is once again long distance.

On my first weekend back in the UK I found myself in my old flat living out of a suitcase, sleeping on the floor next to my heater cuddled in a blanket making a game in 48 hours on my chromebook with my phone providing internet. I was happy. It really doesn’t take much to create and make games and that’s what I enjoy doing.

My experience in Europe has taught me many things. Firstly that free-to-play, while a nuanced topic, will not resolve nicely if we stand on the sidelines. As opponents to it we need to actively offer alternatives to help shape it and lobby for a future without exploitation. Non-participation will not work when companies make the kinds of profits they are currently making.

The industry is secondary to the products it creates. It is a process and machine which aids the creation of games, but games can be created without it. To serve the industry as an end rather than a means to an end is raising the process above the product. Do not glorify the industry for its own sake.

Finally on a personal note I am an entertainer and a creator. I will make games, plays, art, things, watchmacallits and thingymajigs because I enjoy it. I want to enhance the world in some small way through entertainment or education. Yes I have bills to pay, making money is not bad, free-to-play is not evil but the games come first and should be a positive force, not a commercial parasite to maximise profit. To this end I’ve committed to the One Game a Month project for 2013 and to advance the conversation around Free-to-Play with my personal voice I will be launching a project in the new year.

My name is Claire, I make things to feel better about the world and improve it. This is my goal and purpose.

Happy New Years

But before we go into that, the first thing that an indie developer really needs to do is to have their product displayed in as many places as possible. When starting work on Malevolence I started out with just a simple BlogSpot account and did all of my updates on there. Guess how many people cared? None. And why should they? How could they even FIND the blog unless they were told about it?

Take a search engine like Google. It has a “crawler” that goes around the web, finding pages, and finding all of the links on those pages. It analyzes where the links link to, and finds which pages have lots of links heading to them. If a page has hundreds of other pages linking to it, and lots of visitors, then it must be important, right? Well, to make your game more visible, you need to have lots of people visiting your page – a bit of a catch 22 – but you can help it by having a presence in many different places. Oh, and good news everyone… The Internet has many, many viable, justifiable places where you can put your game on show.

For Malevolence, the first big step after BlogSpot was to create a profile on IndieDB/ModDB (creating a profile on one creates one on other other, too). They get quite a lot of traffic on there, and it will actually rank your game against others (a library of about 6000 games) in terms of how much traffic you get. It also rewards your dedication to the public by putting you on the front page whenever you write up a new update post. Given the way it works, and the attention that it gets, it’s very much worth taking the time to make your profile page attractive and thorough. That’s where a bit of the psychology comes in. I have noticed that gamers who browse ModDB for new indie games are a little bit like channel surfers. They flick through profiles quickly – bam bam bam – until they find one that appeals to them very quickly, and then they’ll stop and take a deeper look. So having lots of nice, bright screenshots, thorough videos and lots of clear, solid information about your game readily accessible for them will entice them to stay and take a proper look at your game.

Once you notice that you’re getting more traffic, you can make a move towards putting links on your IndieDB/ModDB profile to other networks that you’re operating on. Some examples of which include YouTube channels, Facebook Fan-pages, Twitter accounts, etc. Any and all are good. Just be sure to make the links subtle. Some nice clean icons, perhaps. Gamers, I have found, dislike feeling like they are being bombarded. Do some research, take some time, look at successful pages and the way they’ve done things. It pays off.

The social media avenue was the next step for me with Malevolence. It started with a YouTube channel where I would make a point to do screen-captures fairly regularly showing the progress of the game’s development. Many people either don’t enjoy or don’t have the time to sit down and read lengthy blog posts (he says in a lengthy blog post) and a nice, quick video can get the whole point across much faster and with more of a sense of interaction. Even taking the time to narrate the video can easily double or triple the amount of information translated in the same time frame. Things to think about there.

After that came the Facebook and Twitter. I actually expected these to be the most active of the network avenues for promoting the game, but in the end they fell into roles of keeping CURRENT fans up to date, and didn’t really do much to draw new fans. Though it seems obvious now, it took me a while to work out why this is. Most people on Facebook and Twitter these days use them on their smartphones, rather than their computer. While it IS possible to go browsing for new content via the smartphone interfaces, they are much more designed to just keep up with what their already follow. That’s not to say that you can’t still make use of these avenues though, as they offer quick and easy mini-update portals for you to address your current fan-base en-masse, and quickly spread links to any major blog updates you do elsewhere.

For the longest time, Steam was one of the holy grails of indie games “making it” and their new Greenlight process has taken that from some dark, incomprehensible process to something more tangible. As soon as it went live I create a profile for Malevolence on there thinking “wow, I might be in for a chance”, and things went fairly well for a time, but then started petering off quick quickly. Valve kept altering and adjusting the vote process for getting games approved and it was quite drastically affecting my game’s ability to get noticed on there. It’s been quite frustrating until it got me thinking… How WOULD you make an unbiased system for gauging a game’s popularity in the middle of a firmly established community of over 50 million users? The more I think about it, the more complex it becomes in my head. Sure, I have lots of problems with the way the Greenlight process works, however, since I can’t come up with a better one myself, I’m happy to leave it up to them to sort out. I’ve had many heated discussions with fellow developers about how the system should work… Mainly about the apparent pointlessness of having a “no vote” button (which I’m sure will create some lovely ‘discussions’ in the comments) however, as I said, I’m happy to leave the process up to Valve, as they would certainly know best. Of all the networks I’ve gotten Malevolence onto, that’s the only one that hasn’t really gone anywhere yet. As the owner of it I can watch the percentage of votes go up and down, and I can’t really make sense out of it, so I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing and hope for the best. The only advice I could give to other indies attempting it would be to make sure that all of your avenues (Facebook, IndieDB, dev blogs, etc) point to your Greenlight so that you can funnel as much of your traffic into it as possible.

HOWEVER, all of that only depends on how badly you want to get onto Steam. I’m aware that some people don’t. Some because they just don’t like how Steam operates, others because they’re making mobile games and it’s kind of useless to them. I, personally, am trying to get on there, but that doesn’t mean that everyone SHOULD.

But I digress. What about the psychology mentioned earlier? Well, that is where your marketing plan comes from. Just sticking your product on some blogs and social network sites isn’t really a marketing plan. It’s just a means to give your game a ‘presence’ on the Internet. A solid presence is a powerful thing, but it takes constant maintenance. It’s not something you can set and forget until you have a large, strong, dedicated community to do it for you. As an indie, that’s just not something that’s likely to happen straight up, so it’s something you’re going to have to do yourself. KEEP your blogs updated. RELEASE lots of screenshots. RECORD lots of videos. ANSWER lots of questions, and above all, MAKE SURE that your community is reminded regularly that you are still working on your game, lest they lose interest.

But what about expanding your community? That’s where your marketing plan comes into play. You’ve got your presence sorted out, you’re maintaining it well, but how do you bring new people in? That, in itself, depends on many different things:

TARGET AUDIENCE: What is the target audience for your game? You can’t just say “gamers” because not all gamers like tower defence games. Not all gamers like FPS games. Not all gamers like RPGs. And then, even within the types there are sub-types. In the RPG player genre there are gamers who like first person RPGs, but don’t necessarily like isometric RPGs or turn-based RPGs. So it’s a matter of specificity. Take the time to work out precisely what your target audience is with your game and market mainly towards them. There’s not much use in wasting energy trying to talk to people who aren’t interested in listening!

ANALYZE: Take the time to analyze the way your target audience acts. Do they talk amongst themselves? Do they operate vocal communities? Is theirs a community of sharing, or of bragging? As an overly abrupt stereotype, FPS gamers tend to have communities that are much more vocal and aggressive than communities of RPG games. I realise that’s a massive generalization, and it is most certainly not ALWAYS the case, but if you look into how the communities of your target audience operate, you can use it to your advantage when creating your marketing plan.

ACT AND REACT: As an indie, much of what you learn, you will learn on the fly. If you make a marketing faux pas, you will learn about it pretty quickly. Try not to be too stubbourn about things. While it can be trying at times, an indie game without fans/players, is nothing. It’s like owning a coffee shop that has no customers. Don’t be too hard-headed to change the way you operate if it’s something small and it keeps people happy. You need to be adaptive, you need to listen and you need to communicate.

So, with these things, you can create your marketing plan. As an example, my marketing plan for Malevolence was to make use of the RPG communities idiosyncrasies. I did my research, joining forums and following blogs, doing the whole Jane Goodall thing and “living with the apes” so to speak (not calling RPG players apes, by the way. Just using a metaphor) and I found that a common trait among them is that they are excited about indie RPG development and will quite often share links to interesting indie RPG projects that they find. BUT, at the same time, while there is a lot of link sharing going on, there isn’t much response to it. Many RPG forums will have an entire section just for sharing indie RPGs that people have found. These sections are often filled with lots of posts with links, but the posts won’t often have many responses. That doesn’t mean that people don’t follow the links, but it means that there is more excitement about sharing the links than there is about the games themselves. RPG fans seemed excited about the IDEA of new RPGs, which is cool.

I made a note of this and built my strategy around it. I planned to start my marketing push at the same time that Skyrim came out. Sounds crazy, right? Well, there was reason behind my madness. I started pushing the links to my various blogs, etc, on forums and other hubs while people were busy getting fussy over Skyrim. The community saw my links and shared them around, but, as expected, not much action happened other than the spreading of the links. Because of this, there ended up being many, many sites with references to this infinite indie RPG. As it spread, more people heard about it, but they didn’t focus on it because… Hey… Skyrim… But that was precisely my plan.

The excitement over every game, no matter how groundbreaking the game was, eventually wears off, and once the attention for Skyrim had started to dim, I was in the position where links to my game were ALL OVER the Internet, and a vast portion of the RPG community had heard something about it. Even if they couldn’t recognise it by name, when someone mentioned “Have you heard about Malevolence, that infinite indie RPG being made” more often than not they would be met with a reaction of “I think I heard something about that, yeah… Can’t remember where though.”

This is where the psychology of my marketing plan came in. Having another person bring it up makes them remember seeing it somewhere which inspires them to look for it again. They hit the search engines and start typing in the word “Malevolence” since they have no idea how to spell “Ahkranox” and, since I have made an effort to have a VERY strong web presence, they see this:

They barely have started typing the word Malevolence, and it shows up. Marketing plan complete. That being said, they may go to the site, look at it and hate it. I unfortunately can’t help you with that. Marketing is one thing, but your product still needs to stand on its own. I was lucky enough to have this strategy work quite well for my game, but sometimes even the most well thought out strategy will fail. Not having a strategy at all, however, will pretty much guarantee that you’ll fall short, so start early!

But that’s where I’ll leave off, I think. In conclusion, when marketing your game, you need to take the time to establish a web presence, develop a marketing plan based on research and analysis of your target audience and attention to detail when looking into the psychology of the way they act as a community. Stick with it. If you believe in your game strongly enough, you won’t have too much difficulty in translating that to your viewership!

I was never around children from the time I left home until nearly 20 years later when I had kids of my own. When I was faced with other people’s children, I often found the experience awkward and a bit uncomfortable. I had no idea how to relate to kids of any age or how to interact with them. Now with children of my own I can hardly remember a time where I didn’t know how to play with children, and in return my kids have opened my eyes to why we find certain things “fun”. I hope I can describe this idea in a way that could prove useful to aspiring developers.

Playing video games in my twenties and thirties I think I lost some of the understanding of why I found games fun to play when I was a kid. Video games to me were about roleplaying or they were about competition and if you had asked me why video games were fun even three years ago, I probably would have described some combination of those two factors but over the years I’d forgotten something. Perhaps not forgotten so much as overlooked. While roleplay and competition can be factors in why games are appealing long term I think what makes video games fun is much more fundamental to the way we learn. Watching my children grow and play has helped me remember what drew me to video games as a child and what still keeps me coming back now. It has to do with learning and the feeling of accomplishment when you finally master a challenging game.

From a very early age, babies love patterns. Nothing quite locks an infant’s gaze like faces and patterns. As they get older it doesn’t stop. We find patterns all around us all the time even when confronted with something that doesn’t seemingly have a pattern. We see shapes in clouds and we instantly look for some sort of familiar arrangement in a jumble of letters or numbers. I watched my son stare at a wooden puzzle, then progress to dumping the pieces and creating chaos only to then restore order. He would continue to play in this manner until eventually it’s no longer challenging to solve that particular puzzle and suddenly that toy is forgotten for good (or until his little sister picks up a piece). He moves onto the next challenge and that’s his day with the exception of naps and meal time.

To me, right there I see two fundamental pieces of what keeps us coming back to a good video game. One factor is some sort of pattern recognition mechanic and the other is a challenge. When I started looking at the video games I enjoyed as a kid and that I enjoyed now they all have, at their core, some sort of pattern recognition element and they all had increasing levels of difficulty. I’d play until I either mastered the game and it became too easy or until the difficulty became such that I grew frustrated and no longer found the experience entertaining. I see the same behaviours in the way my toddler plays. It’s fun unless the task is too difficult, and it’s fun until the task becomes too easy.

When I was a kid I remember spending quite a bit of time on Space Ace, among others games at my local arcade. Space Ace was a cartoon, laser disk based game along the lines of Dragon Slayer. A series of events would play out on the screen and a visual cue would signal the move to make with the timing becoming more challenging as the game progressed. Mastering a game like this in a time before strategy guides and the internet took trial and error, a good memory and a pocketful of quarters and I loved that game. That was, until I beat it. Shortly after I memorized the patterns, I moved onto the next game only occasionally popping in a quarter to feel important when throngs of kids who would gather when they’d see “that kid who can beat Space Ace” start a new game.

Whether it’s timing involved in arcade fighting games or if it’s strategy in an on-line shooter, when you break it down video games are all about recognizing patterns and using them within the confines of the game’s rules.  It’s an understanding of game development that in retrospect I feel I poorly implemented in the first game my team released in our efforts to appeal to a wider audience. Each level of the game was unique, but the challenge of the game, the pattern required to win didn’t vary enough and looking back at the testing, our players enjoyed the game but the question we didn’t ask was “for how long will they enjoy it?” It’s a choice we made in the interest of appealing to a broader base, but I think this choice didn’t do us any favours and by the time we realized this and updated the title with different ways to play our window of opportunity had already closed. It’s something that seems so basic a notion in hindsight but hopefully by bringing this up I can encourage other new developers to take a look at their product differently.

Playing games with a two and a half year old also helped me rethink control schemes as well. My son loves to pick up a controller and ask “Sack-boy, Daddy?” but a Playstation 3 controller and LittleBigPlanet is a bit beyond him currently. However, I sat him down with Angry Birds – Star Wars and within seconds he was flinging birds at piggies and loving it. The same goes playing “Digit Chase” on the Playstation Vita, a quick demo that has users tap numbers on the screen in sequence. There’s something undeniably intuitive about touch screen input as illustrated by how quickly children take to them, but often mobile developers try to shoehorn controller type controls into their mobile games. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with modern game controllers, but controls needs to be intuitive. That doesn’t mean they have to be toddler approved simple, I just think the basic controls should be straightforward. This was a lesson we learned developing our first game and reaffirmed by watching my son play. Just because you have variety of ways to control your game doesn’t mean you should just throw everything in because you can. It’s tempting to do. I know because I did it.

I can thank the time I spend playing with my little guy for bringing me back to the basics and helping understand why we find games fun. It’s not about simplifying the games themselves, but it’s recognizing that under everything we’re always searching for patterns and looking to challenge ourselves, because that’s how we learn. It’s not about making controls dead simple, but it couldn’t hurt to imagine a scenario where your game is being played by a gamer who’s never gamed before. Will your controls confuse or will they help the player become comfortable before becoming challenging? It’s easy to lose focus on basic game-play mechanics underneath everything else that makes up modern gaming, especially for experienced gamers. Watching children play and learn helped me realize this and I look forward to gaming with both my kids for years to come, and I look forward to what they have to teach me.

I don’t know what I could have done differently. I just wasn’t happy at work, and there was little I could do to change it. The quality of my work was apparently very good, I was just terrible for morale, because I was either 1) pissing people off or 2) encouraging people to be pissed off at the problems I/we saw. Eventually I got the best advice I’ve ever gotten (which deserves its own blog post), and left the company. I went to the right place and became a positive developer.

And that’s sort of what struck me about the article and about how we typically deal with negative developers. Some developers are just not a good fit, regardless of how amazing their work is. If someone is negative because she is “culturally incompatible”, because there’s nothing you or your manager can do to fix it. And it is worth it to have a frank discussion about whether that person can ever be happy without changes to the studio, and if that person says ‘no’, you should discuss plans to part with mutual respect at a mutually agreed date.

I had to put in my two weeks at my last job to have this advice given to me by the President (GM? Can’t remember) at the time. It convinced me to un-quit, and to stay on another year. It ended up being a miserable year in many ways, but it was the right thing to do and worked out for the best. As managers- and friends and team members of negative developers- we need to keep this advice in mind when dealing with negative developers (and ourselves).

Take of that what you will…

When you look at the make up of a team it will always be staffed by people who raise the game and by some who only bring it down. It’s the nature of taking a group of individual people and asking them to work together for a period of time towards a common goal. It’s the individuality of these people that can take a project and make it fly or cause it to crash and burn.

One thing that’s clear is that it’s much easier for a single individual to bring a team down than it is for an individual to improve the team in any significant way. Negativity will spread like wild fire through a team whilst positivity acts more like treacle and can be much harder to spread around.

But why?

A negative attitude to work is a whole lot easier. Doing less, talking badly about the team or rubbishing the game is much easier than creating excellent content, taking responsibility for your work or stepping outside your defined role and doing something great.

What Defines a Negative Developer?

There are many ways in which a developer might have a negative effect on a team. The most obvious is through their general attitude to their current project, be that general low level complaining, pushing back against work requests for no good reason or general slacking off during the day.

It could be a lack of skill development or even a backsliding in the quality of the work they are producing.

But it could also be an attitude that doesn’t gel with the general ethos the team is aiming for. Maybe you want your developers to take more responsibility for their work and how it’s designed and implemented and one or two developers will only work when they are told exactly what they need to do.

Maybe it’s a developer who doesn’t get involved with the daily meetings, mumbling through and obviously not interested in what other people are doing.

At the end of the day, identifying a developer generating a negative effect on a team is usually pretty easy. They’re the ones who are difficult to deal with in usually many aspects of the development process…

Team Development

Lets have a look at a few situations, where a green developer is a ‘positive’ developer, red a ‘negative’ one.

In the first situation we have two developers working side by side, one working well and another not doing so great. Maybe one of them has a bad attitude, maybe they don’t want to really push what they are doing. Either way, their contribution to the team is much less than that of the positive developer.

In most cases, this will go only one way. The good developer, seeing their partner being allowed to get away with not working so hard, not having to put in as much effort will eventually start to slow down and equalise with the poorer developer.

It’s much less likely that the poorer developer who is getting away with poor work or a bad attitude will see the better developer and decide to put in that extra work. As a result, you now have two bad developers rather than one.

When does it go the other way? When does the poor developer look around and start to raise their game? The answer isn’t very encouraging.

Take the following situation

Theres a tight balance here, but since it’s much easier for a developer to reduce the quality of their work rather than improve it, it’s easier to slide the wrong way and at that point its’ very easy to see where this will go.

Based on a number of observations it seems at though while a 3:1 ratio might get you some good results it still brings risks because should one developer start to slip it then becomes 1:1 which puts us right back at the start.

In most cases you can only really guarantee that other people will not slip if you have a 4+:1 ratio between positive and negative developers. In a number of cases the negative developer didn’t change their attitude without help but other developers didn’t slip due to the peer pressure of the other better developers.

Positive Developers

But in all these situations I’m not giving these positive developers enough credit. A good developer won’t always slack, they’ll continue working hard, producing great content and generally continue to fly high.

But take the following situation…

These developers are good for a reason, be that personal pride, ambition or sheer enjoyment of the work they are doing. And if a good developer finds themselves in the minority for a long period of time, the outcome is inevitable.

Great developers won’t stick around if those around them are not working to their potential or failing to create an environment in which the better developers feel themselves being pushed. And once your great developers leave you have a much higher chance of those left realising they don’t need to actually work that hard to get through the day.

Solving the Problem

There are two ways to deal with poor developers on a team. The first is the most drastic, but initially not an option if you’re working in a region with sane labour laws.

Just drop them.

To be honest I wouldn’t recommend this anyway.  Simply letting someone go generally removes the problem but it can leave a lot of holes on the team and you hired this person for a reason, why not try and get that spark back?

Performance Management structures (you do have a performance management process don’t you?) within an organisation can, if done correctly, not only resolve the problem but allow the poor developer to raise their game and become a star on the team.

Identify the source of the problem.  Does the developer just not like the game, are they having a difficult time outside of work, do they disagree with how work is being allocated or do they just not want to be there?

Depending on what their answers are, you’ll have a good idea of where to go next.

Make sure goals are set. Define goals designed to turn the situation around but don’t just set and forget about them (which happens far to often).  Monitor them on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, setting very short term goals to complement the longer term ones.

Define a fixed period of time.  Don’t just let things drag on with only small improvements here or there, have a deadline at which point things will get more serious.

Make it clear what the end results will be.  Whether they are the chance to work on something different or whether it’s a termination of the contract, make it clear so everyone knows what will happen when the goals are reached or missed.

Keep constant records.  Make sure every meeting is documented and the progress or results of all the goals are recorded daily.

Let them go.  While it is drastic, if improvements are not being made given all the opportunities you’ve given them then there really is no other option.  If you’ve bent over backwards to try and solve the problem and the developer hasn’t taken you up on the offer then there really is nowhere else to go.

And even with those sane labour laws, the documentation you’ve been keeping over the Performance Management period mean you can release the developer from their contract knowing you tried your best and they didn’t want the help.

So negative developers, whatever is defined as negative based on the goals of your team, are almost guaranteed to have a bad effect on a group developers.  Negative attitudes to work and development can spread much faster than you might think and will either cause people on your team to normalise at a level far below where they need to be or will simply leave.

It’s vital that as a group these developers are tackled fast, rather than when their effects start to be felt.

This article was originally posted on Engineering Game Development on Sunday the 30th September 2012

A recent Edge piece asked some creative directors and leads the question. Some give honestly insightful answer and are worth a read. Though this question extends to every member of a studio or aspiring developer, not just the creative directors of the world.

Please bear with me for two paragraphs of personal anecdote to help me discuss this issue.

From a young age I was making games, programming BASIC on C64 before the age of ten. At the same time my brother introduced me to roleplaying games. From those early days until adulthood I was passionately creating games, roleplaying systems, writing/directing plays to stage and drawing a web-comic in the early internet days all while earning money doing freelance photography, websites and just so much stuff.

An important personal question was raised in my late teens: If I wasn’t doing what I was passionate about and being my true self what was the point? This lead to separation from my family over disagreements, hard life choices, being broke for 8 years while working full time and putting myself through university, twice in two countries. Always struggling to break into the industry without compromise. Always broke, often living rough and using my holidays to sit exams or go to interviews. I was in debt when I broke into the industry and quickly got a Lead Programmer credit and since then a Lead Designer credit. I now work as a Designer / Programer. Though my time in the industry has been far from ideal with the last three years in three companies in three cities.

Now the amount I’ve created in the last few years as a full time employed developer is less than in the years where I was not. I use this personal story because my hunger to be in the industry diverted me away from why I wanted to be part of it. In my struggle to become part of the industry and do well, most of my energy is focused towards the industry and not my creations within it, and my situation is not unique. The realities of business can often pull us away from games, while they are required they are a means to an end not ends in themselves.

Too often in the grind of the daily job, the crunch of a project or just an eye on the next thing in the industry we lose sight of why we are pushing bits. Though field leaders one after another will espouse the virtue of direction, putting the why before the how. Just sample a few TED talks# or look at creatives you admire, they have purpose and drive beyond the daily grind.

Now why you make games could be to pay the bills, have difficult challenges, work with fun people, self expression, the desire to create or a million other motivations. The most important thing is that you know what you want to do and why.

Please take a moment to answer these anonymous questions, click here, about why you make games. I have a two follow-ups I want to write, one dealing with unlocking the power of your team and other people’s motivations but also about the responses I hope to get.

It’s not an easy question and for me it’s all about what sort of games do I want to spend my life making. Personally it all comes back to the stage for me, I want my audience to share an experience with me, be it political satire, dark comedy or whimsy. To make things that friends talk about over cocktails and coffee. To make things that matter.

# Look at a few of the top talks and publications across the field and the theme of motivation or why is core.

Now as an innocent kid sneaking a peek at the latest review scores from a magazine at a rural pharmacy, it never occurred to me that companies could be paid for these review scores. Certainly, over the years and with the rise of the internet there’s been much more talk of review sites and publications taking money in exchange for their reviews. It’s hard not to look at a review score on a site that’s pretty much one giant advertisement for this game or another and wonder how much money has exchanged hands prior to the review being written, and how could that not on some level influence the review in question. The internet seems to be in general agreement. Accepting money from game makers for reviews could potentially compromise that review and is, to put it bluntly, a bad thing. Then there’s app review sites.

After launching our first mobile game, Itzy3d, on Android and Iphone in Jan this year, I next set about the daunting task of trying to get our little game noticed. I wrote up a press release, sent this to various PR sites and then set about contacting as many review sites as I could find in the hopes that someone would have a look at our game and, for better or worse, inform their readers of their opinion of the title while the rest of our team started work on our next title. Over 200 emails went out with a short blurb about who we were, what our game was about, a few screen shots and our desire to have our game reviewed.

Almost immediately I started receiving replies from sites, and the average reply would go something like this. “We have a lot of submissions and may not get a chance to review your game. Send us money and we’ll be able to do something for you.”

Now at first I was dead set against this. Paying for reviews? The entire notion just struck me as wrong. I thought reviewers had a lot of testicular fortitude to even suggest I spend money on their opinions. But then more emails came, with more offers for “expedited review services” for a fee. Some offered up advertising as well as a review to add value, but when questioned about click rates, monthly visits and the like, the information I would require in order to make an informed decision on where to spend my advertising dollars was almost never forthcoming. Just send us money. At some point I realized that this wasn’t just a few sites looking to cash in on desperate app developers, asking for money in exchange for app reviews seemed to be the norm. After waiting for weeks for someone, anyone to review our title, reluctantly I opened my wallet and paid for a few reviews. Obviously, I had to pay if I wanted to play their game. The reviews from users on the Apple and Android app store had been very positive, but what we were hoping for was a detailed, well thought out review that could give us some feedback and maybe boost our visibility. I paid for 4 reviews. Two were helpful, one was ok, one just took our blurb from the press release, put it up on their site and slapped 3 stars on it. Of the $100 out of my own pocket spent for reviews, the 200+ initial emails sent out, the follow-up emails and the odd correspondence between myself and review sites, we ended up with 6 reviews, 7 if you count the site that simply slapped a score on our press release.

I resigned myself to the new fact that app sites generally existed to fleece ignorant indies out of their money and given my experience vowed that I would not waste my hard-earned dollars on review sites ever again. Last month, I happened across AppyNation’s: Hall of Infamy. It was a list of sites that engaged in the practice of accepting money in exchange for reviews and encouraged developers to add to the list as they came across sites doing the same. All I could think was, “But don’t most app review sites do this?” Certainly based on my experience with the hundreds I contacted, sites taking money for reviews seemed rather the rule than the exception. Pay or we’ll ignore you completely.

App review sites. Like headcrabs for your wallet!

In a months time (fingers crossed) when we’re ready to launch our next title, Vex Blocks, I’ll still put out a press release, I’ll still attempt to raise awareness of our title anyway I can but you can be sure I’m not about to hold my nose and shell out for any more “expedited” reviews ever again. It didn’t improve my game’s visibility, it didn’t push more downloads – it was simply a waste of money. It shouldn’t be the norm for review sites to ask for money for their reviews. As the indie development community grows, these sites will continue their parasitic ways by preying off developers desperate enough to throw what limited funds they have away in the hopes of giving their game a better chance of success. If a site is reputable and getting decent traffic in the first place, they don’t need your money from reviews. I was fooled by thinking this was the norm simply by the sheer amount of sites doing this. Don’t prove another willing host as I did.

But what’s a competition without prizes!?

We are delighted to anounce that Unity Technologies have kindly agreed to sponsor the event by providing a grand prize for each day of the competition of a Unity Pro license, which will hopefully help students be better able to see their projects completion. We thank Unity for their support, and hope you’ll check out their game development tools.

You are still able to submit your project for consideration to be a part of the AltDev Student Showcase by filling in this form, the deadline is October 13th.

Foot planting, phase matching, complicated IK solutions, procedural layering; they all have their place but we often sacrifice much to keep them working. In film, animators long ago realized that audiences observe characters in a very specific priority order. We start at the eyes, then the head, then the silhouette. Animators work very hard to give the upper body a sense of weight, obey the laws of force, and move in appealing arcs.

When it comes to in-game locomotion, we rarely get to see the eyes clearly as we’re mostly behind our character, so the next stop down the chain of importance is the head. Unfortunately, when we place such a high focus on maintaining solid foot-planting, we create a fulcrum point at the ground and our characters often pivot in extreme ways to compensate. This is especially noticeable in bigger direction changes and when aligning characters to interact with each other (melee, high fives, piggyback rides, etc.).

In reality, the human body pivots around its centre of mass, the mid to lower torso. Through a series of complex mechanisms, humans have evolved the ability to maintain stability in three major areas of the body; the torso (the vestibulospinal reflex), the eyes (the vestibulo-occular reflex), and the head (the vestibulocollic reflex). The fundamental purpose of these mechanisms is to maintain equilibrium as well as visual focus on predators and prey. It’s difficult to run away from a sabre-tooth tiger or catch a shark with your bare hands if your vision is blurry and you keep falling over.

You can see these mechanisms at work in this video. Pay close attention to the head movement of the girl in the green and yellow.

Her head hardly moves for the entire race! (Side note: this is also fantastic squash and stretch reference, but that’s another article)

Let’s look at another reference video. Again, pay attention to the stillness of the head and centre of gravity on each of the athletes. Draw a mental path that the head is traveling along in space. Even in extreme direction changes, such as the guy falling on the skateboard, the head is held relatively still compared to the other extremities.

As you can see, especially in the first two clips of the football players doing cone drills, the legs and arms are being used to redirect the inertia of the centre of mass and the head is doing its best to remain as still as possible. On the sharper turns, the entire body almost appears to rotate around the head’s position in space.

As a former Animation Director was fond of telling us, the only animation principle you need to remember is “Force”. You cannot move an object in any direction without force in the opposite direction. The amount of force being applied is how weight is demonstrated. To make a sharp, 90-degree right-hand turn at a running speed, the character needs to decelerate and redirect his mass by applying force towards the front and left sides of his body. We can see this in action when we break down one of the turns in the video.

The green line represents the path the head is taking throughout the turn. You can see the first application of force on the #1 foot-plant. The right foot is out in front and to the right of the centre of mass to redirect the body. On the #2 foot-plant, the right foot is now behind and to the right of the centre of mass to redirect to the left as well as accelerate the body forward. Notice how throughout the entire turn the body appears to pivot underneath the head to complete the turn.

Taking this reference and knowledge, let’s review some in-game footage from a few random clips I found online.

Hopefully the issues in the head movement on screen are apparent to you now. These types of issues aren’t exclusive to games either. Often in feature films, especially ones with a mix of live action and CG, the CG character “feel” wrong to the viewer but they just can’t pinpoint the reason why. There’s a good chance that the character is exhibiting some of the issues described above.

Here are a few clips showing fluid head and core movement. Notice how even though some of the movement is almost super-human, it still remains quite believable when this principle is applied.

So, the next time you sit down to create a movement system, try to keep the above in mind. As we move towards more elaborate motion requirements on the next gen consoles, stepping back and taking stock of the fundamentals will be even more important.

Start with your higher-frequency animations. If you have some kind of metrics system built into your game, data-mining for which animations get played and seen the most should give you an excellent starting point. Usually this means your main character’s core locomotion. Starts, stops, and turns. Try to avoid getting caught in the common trap of spending a lot of time worrying about an area that will be seen less than 20% of the time. Focus on the 80%.

Unfortunately, there is no “magic bullet” to solve all of this currently. Head tracking, IK, animation layers, procedural systems…all need to be authored with this in mind and working together to maintain a sense of weight and force. Often the cause of these issues is multiple animations systems working against each other. Always be asking if each new component is supporting the greater goal: responsive, believable character movement

I would love to hear in the comments about how other teams have approached this and what your challenges and successes were.

…almost…there…

I swear I can see the finish line up ahead.  If you squint, you can just make it out.  It’s there, I assure you.  As we approach the launch of our second mobile title, Vex Blocks, I can’t help but get excited at the prospect of putting our finished product in front of people.  Now I know…I know – there’s still a never-ending amount of work to be done from testing to marketing, to more testing, continued marketing, then the tweaking followed by testing, then some testing…but my point is we’re nearing that final stage before our launch.  There’s light at the end of the tunnel and I swear the faintest scent of cinnamon buns.  The burndown chart and the task list is at the point where you can at least realistically imagine the launch day, even if it’s still a few weeks away, instead of just dreaming about it happening at some point in the future like flying cars or super-intelligent, faithful monkey servants.  It feels good, like an imaged back rub from said imaginary monkey servants.

Our first title, Itzy3d was and still is well received by gamers even if it didn’t exactly race up the charts.  However, our inexperience developing games led to a bit of a rollercoaster ride creating the title.  Initial performance hurdles, an over complicated control scheme and simply learning the pitfalls of Unity3d/IOS/Android development made the experience of working on Itzy3d a rocky one.  Still, despite it’s shortcomings I can to this day sit back, fire it up and lose myself in the game and take pride in our first outing as an indie game developer.

Vex Blocks’ development wasn’t nearly as up and down and even though I still thoroughly enjoyed working on Itzy3d I find I’ve had much more fun working on our upcoming action/puzzler.  If I’m going to lock myself in my office and gamble mine and my family’s future working on videogames full time, at least I know I’m doing it with a smile on my face.  The anxiety filled nights haven’t entirely gone away, but I’m far more confident in what we can accomplish this time out, and there’s a few reasons for that.

The first is a matter of scope.  When we started Itzy3d we had no idea how long tasks would take us to complete and as such, creating Itzy the spider’s world became a much more ambitious project than we had anticipated.  When planning Vex Blocks we were able to estimate what we could accomplish in our given time frame with far more accuracy than we had with Itzy3d.  We started with a simpler concept so the development schedule didn’t become like Crawmerax the Invincible….lobster-like, purple, one-eyed and nearly impossible to beat at our current skill level.  Feeling that our goals were attainable within our time frame from the start did wonders for the ole confidence level.

The second major boost to all around enjoyment levels on Vex was having the artwork more or less completed when we started.  Vex Blocks was a concept I dreamt up a couple of years ago and it was initially given to a group of students consisting of three artists and two programmers from the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology to build a prototype for us while providing them with a final project for graduation.  Having a willing group of artists working under my instruction provided us the opportunity to start with a completed list of art assets when the prototype was eventually turned back over to our team.  In contrast, Itzy’s artwork hit a wall when our main artist found himself unable to contribute the time necessary to create the assets required for 3 of our 11 huge levels.  It also left us with zero assets for our menus and ultimate left us with menus that looked like they had been designed by programmers.  Starting the project with almost every art asset we could conceive was a huge load off my mind as I knew my Maya and Photoshop skills would not be tested as rigorously as I scrambled to fill in the blanks with my limited artistic ability.

And the biggest difference this time out was experience with Unity3d.  We know what works, what doesn’t, where our graphical ceiling is for mobile, how to implement sounds more efficiently, how to create an asset pool, the GUI bottlenecks, the performance tweaks, the ongoing mobile testing during development to make sure our mobile performance is where it should be and isn’t biting us in the ass, lighting, texturing, shaders…you name it.  Having the ability to predict where we may run into problems and addressing those issues before they became serious instead of charging full ahead into the unknown is a much more relaxed way to develop a game in my opinion.  Who knew?

So this time out it’s all about making the game fun, challenging and having a blast doing it.  As our cycle on this game nears it’s end I can’t wait to see how the game will do in testing and it’s eventual launch.  The thought of others enjoying our work as much as we enjoy building and playing ourselves is all the reward we need.  Well…and monetary compensation.  All the reward we need is seeing others enjoying our work and money.  That sounds about right.

Finding your first 1000 players
For many games, finding that elusive first 1000 users can be the most challenging part of game development. The key is to approach marketing your game like marketing any other technology product. As Eric Ries has stated in his book The Lean Startup, no matter how much your product (ie game) is lacking, early adopters will still love it and play it.

Who are your early adopters?
You might not know this yet, so ask yourself this: why did I make this game? Let’s say you made an asynchronous turn-based strategy game. Chances are, you made it because you love turn-based strategy, or you wished that there was a modern update of Advanced Wars, or what have you. Your early adopters are people that absolutely love turn-based strategy games. Who are they? Well, you’re one of them. You need to dig into your mental pocketbook and figure out what your target early adopter looks like. This can be as concrete as gender and age percentages backed up by statistical analysis, or it can be a hunch based on your experiences playing these games yourself. As long as you’re willing to keep an open mind and try again if your assumptions turn out incorrect, then you should forge ahead.

Where do I find my early adopters?
To find your first group of early adopters, seek out communities of players that are dedicated to the type of game that you’re testing. As per our example, let’s say you’re looking for strategy gamers. You could look at the Strategy section of a large gaming site, a Strategy game-focused forum, or the forum of a Strategy game company that is similar to yours (note: they may not take to this too kindly, so tread carefully). Be sure to create social accounts for your game on Facebook and Twitter, and to use this accounts daily to interact with your first players.

If you’re looking for more focused design and development feedback, you can also seek out communities that support indie game development, like /r/IndieGaming, IndieGamer, or TIGSource. In my experience, a simple forum post by an indie developer asking for participants is usually well received, and these guys love playing games as much as you do. You can also link to your game in your forum signature, so that any other posts you make on these forums also serve as mini-advertisements for your game.

Your goal here is to find people that share your love for the game you’ve created before they even play it. They too love asynchronous strategy games, or wish there was a modern update to Advanced Wars. The goal here is to find kindred spirits that will be naturally interested in your game. The advantage of using this tactic to get your initial group of players is that you are building a relationship with them. This also means they will be more likely to forgive your game’s rough edges and give you valuable feedback.

Building a community around your game
After the first two steps, hopefully you’ve found some early adopters and have done your best to cultivate personal relationships with many of them. The next step is to build a community around your game. Why? Communities are sticky, and will keep players coming back. They also serve as validation for new players that this game is fun, has other players and has a group of people to talk to about the game. As early adopters of game types are often in hardcore niches, this validation is critical for people looking at a game.

As a case study, let’s look at two browser-based strategy games: the beautiful, award-winning Neptune’s Pride and the make-your-own-Risk Conquer Club. Conquer Club’s focus on their community is obvious just from looking at their website, and while their gameplay is hardly unique, their focus on community rewards them with a large audience with a lot of retention. Mafia Wars creator Roger Dickey noted in his talk on game monetization that many people continued playing Mafia Wars long after they were bored of the game because they felt loyal to their Mob. You want to engender this kind of community among your players as well.

Scaling the early adopter community
Once you’ve started to build your community and see some traction, it’s time to starting thinking about how to scale that community. Beyond the community outreach and social media that you should already be doing, it might be time to start thinking about paid advertising and press.

Since you’re reading this guide, we’re going to assume that spending thousands of dollars on user acquisition is not an option. That’s OK, because there are a number of ways to do hyper-targeted advertising that will give you the most bang for your buck:

• Facebook: You can use Facebook’s laser-targeting to target users by country, age and what games they Like or play on Facebook. Done correctly, this can be one of your most cost-effective channels in the short term, but be wary of tapping out a very narrow audience quickly.
• Google Adwords: While not able to segment by habits, Google Adwords can target users by interest, which is just as useful. There’s a lot to be read on keyword research, but I think it can be summed up with the question “If I was a player, what would I type into Google when I was looking for exactly this game?” Then advertise on those keywords.
• Banner ads: When you were searching for early adopter communities, you may have noticed some of them running ads. Now it’s time for you to do the same. Banner ads are expensive yet effective, so make sure you pick which sites to advertise on carefully. It’s also worth spending some time making or commissioning a solid graphic for this purpose. Lastly, make sure you test different messaging or even different graphics to learn about what sticks with players.

At this point, you should hopefully be able to get press in your niche to review your game, giving you valuable exposure that can lead to social media buzz and new players. When approaching press about your game, make sure to do your homework. Look for press outlets that cover indie games in your specific niche (as with paid advertising, the goal is hyper-targeted promotion). In your email to the outlet, you want to do the following to maximize your chances of a story:

• Connect with them: show the reviewer that you read and enjoyed their coverage of similar games
• Get their attention: tell them what is unique about your game
• Meet in-person: if you are co-located and can meet with them to give them a demo in-person this will help ensure coverage.
• Make the sale: explain why your game is a great fit for their audience
• Close the deal: give them a promo code to access your game early and ask them if they would be interested in reviewing your game
• Negotiate embargoes: so that their reviews post when your game is live. This will help drive traffic.

Wrap up
No matter what type of game you’re making or what platform you’re launching on, finding your first 1000 players is not as hard as it seems. It just takes an understanding of the early adopter for your game, marketing your game to those players, and building a community around that initial traction. Our hope is that this will serve as a successful guide for those endeavors. Don’t forget to report back here with your experiences or share existing ones below! Oh and if you liked our guide, you should sign up for our educational newsletter.

Launch is one of the most important moments in your game’s life. A good launch can lead to a strong initial audience that you can leverage for ranks and, in the best case scenario, organic traffic from reaching a Top 25 list. A bad launch leaves you with only the grim prospect that you will need to sink more money into your game in the form of user acquisition spend to see the same results. For small studios and indies without tens of thousands to spend on user acquisition, launch can literally make or break your game.

So how do you craft a successful launch?

Good launches don’t happen by accident. They are the result of rigorous planning, equal parts marketing, PR, and engineering. Bugs and other issues will kill an otherwise good launch, but so will not understanding your market. iOS and Android are very different in how they handle discovery. And that’s the goal of launch: getting your game into a position where it can be discovered by millions. We’ve gathered tips and tricks regarding launch on each platform from many sources, including knowledge from members of the Stanford GSB: Video Games mailing list, to help you make your next launch a success.

The Goal is Discoverability. How you get there is different.
To start planning your game’s launch, you need a lay of the land. iOS and Android are very different when it comes to discoverability.

Discoverability on iOS
For iOS, there are two main ways to get the kind of discovery that drives significant downloads.

The main driver of discovery on iOS is the Top 25 List. Your goal is to get on these lists: they are extremely powerful drivers of organic traffic, even if you only nab a top spot on a subcategory like Games > Strategy. Only download numbers seem to contribute to ranking in this list. Colloquial wisdom states that being in the Top 10 will net you about 50% of the downloads you need to maintain your position on the list, and being in the Top 25 will net you about 30%. While these are rough numbers, they show that simply being on a Top list alone is not enough.

However, an elusive but more valuable way to get discovered on iOS is to get a coveted Feature spot from Apple. You might say that it isn’t realistic to make this a goal, but the potential payoff makes building this goal into your launch worthwhile. While getting Featured is entirely determined by the whims of Apple’s staff, the following is certain:

• Making a beautiful game is required.
• Having your game be free to download significantly improves your chances.
• Don’t forget, Apple doesn’t make these picks for charity: their goal is to make money. If they think your game will monetize well, that will improve your chances.
• Lastly, integrating Apple APIs such as Game Center give you a slight edge as well.

Discoverability on Android
Android discoverability is quite different, and reflects Google’s history as a search company. Like Apple, Google Play drives a lot of organic acquisition through Top 25 lists and Featured placement, and these are a key goal of Launch. However, unlike Apple, a combination of variables determine ranking in the Google Play marketplace:

• App store optimization (ASO, not unlike SEO)
• Daily active user count (DAUs)
• Click-to-install rate
• Uninstall rate

This reflects the second major driver of organic discoverability on Android: search. Your goal is to either establish a strong brand name that you can own (ie “Angry Birds”), or optimize your app’s launch around commonly used search terms in the genre (ie “physics puzzle game”). Let’s jump into the specific launch tactics you should use for each marketplace.

Launching on iOS
You can’t control Featured placement, but you can control one thing: your placement in the Top 25 lists. The only thing that matters for this is downloads, either organic or paid. You want the biggest spike of downloads possible and that’s usually within the first week if not the first few days of launch. Here’s a number of tactics that you can use to maximize your big launch bump.

Press
By doing some prep work ahead of time, you can get press to review your game, giving you valuable exposure that can lead to social media buzz and significant downloads. To get press to review your game, you should contact them at least two weeks before launch. When approaching press about your game, make sure to do your homework. In your email to the outlet, you want to do the following to maximize your chances of a story:

• Connect with them: Show the reviewer that you read and enjoyed their coverage of similar games.
• Get their attention: Tell them what is unique about your game.
• Meet in-person: If you are in the same city, meet with them in-person to give them a demo.
• Make the sale: Explain why your game is a great fit for their audience.
• Close the deal: Give them a promo code to access your game early and ask them if they would be interested in reviewing your game.
• Negotiate embargoes: So that their reviews post when your game is live. This will help drive traffic.
• Don’t be ashamed to pay: Due to the high number of games being submitted, a number of high quality review sites have started asking for payment to put your game at the “top of the heap”. If you can afford it, do it.

Outreach
Next, you need to start building buzz about your game in the weeks leading up to launch. Be sure to give your Twitter followers and Facebook fans a heads-up that a new game is coming soon (if you don’t have social profiles for your company, now would be a good time to start them). Start sending out teaser screenshots and maybe even a Youtube trailer: this bite-sized content is easy for your fans to share and serves as a great elevator pitch for your game.

Once launch day hits, everyone in your small social corner of the world needs to know about it. Post it on your Twitter feed multiple times over the course of the day. Post it on your Facebook Page and pay to Promote the story to all of your followers. Engage in conversations with your fans about the game, and keep them abreast of any bugs or problems. Be sure to thank any fan that says they downloaded the game or reviewed it. Lastly, reach out to applicable friends and family and ask them to rate and review the game with 5 stars. This will take the whole day, but the result is a big boost to your social media buzz, your downloads, and hopefully a good bunch of 5 star ratings. This is crucial for a successful launch.

Paid acquisition
If you’re looking for a little extra boost and have money to spend, consider buying traffic within the first week of your launch, or even for launch day itself. This needs to be set up in advance and typically will cost between $0.50 and $1.50 per install, but this boost can give you the extra edge you need to break the Top 25 list. Deciding which paid advertising to buy is such a big question that we’d need a whole nother blog post to explain it fully, but here’s the cliff notes:

• Free-app-a-day websites and apps will generate a lot of exposure for you for one day for a lump sum fee. Good for use on launch day.
• Large ad campaigns from mobile ad providers will sell you as many downloads as you can buy, but they will be relatively expensive and require a minimum budget. If you’re going to go with these guys, go big and do it within the first week of launch.
• Self-serve banner advertising will often give you the most bang for your buck, but only after a couple optimization cycles. Best for maintaining position in the charts.

Launching on Android
Let’s be honest, the “Launching for iOS” section above could cover launching on Android just as well. There’s a lot between the two platforms that are similar when it comes to launch, but remember that we do have slightly different ways of achieving our goals on Android. On iOS, the goal is to get as many downloads as possible and push, push, push. With Android, you’re actually better off getting fewer, higher quality downloads that won’t uninstall (while still aiming to get as many of those as possible). Let’s examine some of the key differences from the above strategy.

Press
This is largely the same as before, but in addition to generic “games and apps” press, you want to go after the Android blog network. Android users pay significantly more attention to their cadre of bloggers than iOS users, and significant traction in these circles can pay off handsomely. To get their attention, you can use the same press tactics as mentioned above, but I would recommend being even less sales-y. These guys are often more indie than corporate, and so treat them like a fellow Android fan rather than a business person.

Outreach
Like the close-knit Android blog community, Android has strong communities online in forums and Google Groups. Be sure to build a relationship with these communities before your game launches: solicit their feedback and ideas as you build your game. When your game is ready to launch, sharing it with these communities in addition to the outreached mentioned above will give you a big boost of support.

Paid Advertising
Unlike iOS, doing a big paid advertising push to accompany your launch can backfire on Android. The goal with Android is to find high-quality users that will be less likely to uninstall your game, so your best bet with paid advertising is to start the campaigns small and optimize them before scaling them. Instead of trying to generate a big bump at launch, you should use paid advertising to maintain or increase your ranking over the long term. A long-term campaign with large ad providers or self-serve ad services are the two avenues that are most aligned with this goal.

Conclusion
Whether you’re launching on iOS, Android, Facebook or web, thinking about launch ahead of time will give you a key advantage over competitors, and hopefully this guide has helped you do just that. If you liked our guide, you should sign up for our educational newsletter.

Andy Samberg, hair performance capture session.

The competition for jobs in the gaming industry is getting increasingly fierce (many companies receiving 100′s of applicants for a single position), yet many applicants consistently make the same mistakes which hurt their chances of landing the gig. I’m going to cover some of the more common mistakes I come across, as well as provide some insight into what I (and most others) look for when reviewing an applicant.

There’s no shortage of cover letter, resume, and interview “help” articles and services out there, but anything that really covers it from start to finish with information that is specific to games (and more specifically, game animation) is scarce. Much of the advice offered for cover letters and CV’s is geared towards a corporate position and the demo reel direction is often targeted at a job in film or TV, which could put animators at a disadvantage.

I’ll run through this in chronological order from a hiring perspective: cover letter, resume, demo reel, interview. So, let’s get started!

COVER LETTER…

…must be willing to work overtime for little to no money.

I’ll be honest, up until recently I didn’t write cover letters. They were never requested and rarely read. They seem to be coming back into fashion lately, though, and as part of a well presented application, deserve some attention.

I’m going to say this a few times throughout this article, as it’s one of my biggest pet peeves and a mistake I see in at least 80% of the applications that come across my desk. NAMING CONVENTIONS! We make software for a living and as such, are detail oriented and slaves to organization. Especially naming conventions! Don’t name your cover letter “cover letter.docx” or “COMANY NAME – cover.pdf”. In the folder full of potential applicants sorted alphabetically, those will get lost in the shuffle. I have to open and re-read it to find out who it belongs to (and probably rename it as well, so I don’t have to do this again in the future). Don’t make people do extra work to hire you.

Here are the three rules you should follow:

- Your name is part of it (preferably first, as this will group all of your documents together when sorted)

- The document’s name/type is called out (resume, cover letter, references, etc.)

- NO SPACES! Use underscores, dashes, or capitals to separate words visually. If I send a link to your resume via email, the link will be broken by your space.

A couple of examples of what that should look like:

DaveSmith_CoverLetter.pdf

John-Doe_Cover-Letter.docx

There are a couple of exceptions. First, if a company has specifically requested on their site that you name it a certain way, do that instead. Second, if your cover letter is submitted in the form of an email or web-based form. In those cases, make sure to get your full name in the subject field (and possibly the position you’re after too) to make it easier to find on their end.

So, what should be in the cover letter? I’m sorry to say there is no right answer here as it’s a subjective topic. Generally speaking, it should be short, flattering (to the company or project), confident (without being cocky), and highlight what you bring to the company/project. Make sure your contact info is on there and easy to read/find. If possible, maintain some kind of design continuity with your resume and other submissions (contact info in the same place, same font and layout, etc.). If the job posting described some specific skills and requirements (they usually do), pick a couple of key ones and illustrate how you meet those criteria.

What I’m looking for here is a sense of your personality and your motivation for wanting to work at the company in this role. I have never heard of someone getting turned down for a job based on what they said in their cover letter, so I wouldn’t sweat this one too much. Just make sure it represents you authentically, has been spell checked and proof read by at least a couple of people, is named correctly, and isn’t more than a page in length.

RESUME…

Applying for a Digital Makeup Artist position? Andy Serkis, performance capture for Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

First off, name that resume properly! Follow the three naming rules above and just change the words “cover letter” to “resume” and you’re all set.

A recent study suggests that recruiters spend an average of six seconds reviewing a resume before putting it on the “keep” pile or the “trash” pile. I tend to spend a bit more time than this, but I can also assume that the applicant has made it past the HR filter and is worth considering in more detail. I imagine that six seconds isn’t too far off for some of the more actively hiring companies. Regardless, this means you need to use your time wisely.

I love facts and data, and the study suggests that 80% of that six seconds is spent looking at these six things:

- Name

- Current Title/Company

- Previous Title/Company

- Previous Position Start and End Dates

- Current Position Start and End Dates

- Education

So make those things easy to find and read!

Besides the six above, the main thing I want to know is: What do you think were the biggest accomplishments in your previous job(s) and what did you do to add value to the team/project/company.

In the spirit of keeping your resume easy to digest, do whatever you can to keep it to one page. Six seconds is not enough time to read two or more pages and 90% of employers will probably never read those extra pages anyways (they might even leave them on the printer!). Keep it short, keep me interested, and leave me wanting to find out more.

A great tip I received from fellow #AltDevBlogADay author Alex Darby is to have a few people skim through your cover letter and resume quickly and summarize it back to you. This will give you a good idea of the type of impression you are making and what your strong and weak presentation points are.

Beyond that, try to avoid using photos or getting too fancy with the design. You will use up your valuable eyeball time on that stuff (up to 19%, apparently!). That said, make it appealing to look at and comfortable to read.  I have put down many resumes because they were complete messes and too difficult to get any information from. Here is a great collection of minimal designs that read well and look nice. Deviant Art has tons so check there too!

DEMO REEL…

NOT Andy Serkis’ performance capture.

Once again, name that bad boy properly! Don’t slouch on what is the most important asset when looking for work and often the only thing being passed around the studio for consideration.

ALSO, make sure you have your name and contact info (email is good enough) at both ends of your reel. Make it easy to find and see.

It goes without saying that content is king here. Always choose quality over quantity. I try to make it a point to watch all the reels that cross my desk in their entirety, but sometimes they are just too much. I don’t need to see every little thing you have ever animated; only the things you are most proud of. I’d rather you leave me wanting to see more, than the feeling of seeing too much. This is a tricky balance so my best advice would be to seek out feedback on it as often and as many times as possible (something you should be doing with every piece of animation anyways).

Years ago, I had edited together what I thought was a totally sweet montage of awesome animation and quirky and humorous clips from my favorite 80′s movies. I thought that no company could resist its charm and I would be beating away offers with a stick. After showing it to some people whose feedback I respected (they all hated it) I re-edited it to something more agreeable and the world was a safer place. If you have a limited arsenal of people to get feedback from, reach out to leads and senior animators in the industry. You should be able to turn up a few dozen in no time on LinkedIn and I’m sure many would be happy (flattered, even) to throw a little critique your way. Bonus points for making a new contact in a very network-centric industry!

Now, that stuff has all been said before many times. What I want to cover is some stuff I don’t hear being told to animators enough. The kind of stuff I am looking for when watching a demo reel.

First, and I’m just going to come right out and say it, it’s ok to have mocap on your demo reel. BUT, I want to see what you did TO that mocap if you want to impress me. Take a basic walk loop and adjust it a few different ways to make it have a limp, look more masculine, more feminine, have some emotion…the possibilities are endless. Maybe grab a big action shot and make it more exaggerated with stronger posing. Show me the before and after. There is no avoiding the fact that we use mocap as one of our main tools to create game content, show me you are comfortable using it and bending it to your will. I need people who are comfortable with and good at using mocap. This is a great example of a demo reel using mocap, explaining what is and isn’t capture.

Now, that said, do NOT try to use mocap and claim it as keyframed animation. I, and many others, have been using mocap for a long time and can tell the difference 99% of the time. I have had people actually claim in an interview that certain scenes were keyframed when the movement was clearly full of mocap artifacts and impossibly detailed movement compared to the rest of their work. You just end up looking silly and I would be far more impressed if you told me about how you used this tool to achieve your shot and the challenges you faced doing so.

Adding music is another subjective topic. Personally, I have had some really great conversations in interviews about someone’s choice in music. It tells me a lot about your personality and, ultimately, that’s what the interview is really for anyways. One of my current animators had fantastic animation and effects on his reel, but I just HAD to have him in for an interview so I could ask him what the hell he was thinking putting explicitly hard-core gangster rap on it. It was a funny interview and he has turned out to be one of my favorite people I have ever worked with.

Some people suggest having nothing on there, thinking that it detracts from the animation. I say go for it. Just make sure the soundtrack dips sufficiently when the dialogue is happening. Don’t worry; I won’t turn you away because you put Lady Gaga on there.

A note on rigs: I, like everyone else, have become really tired of seeing the same few characters in every demo reel (I’m looking at you two, Bishop and Norman). I also understand how limited the selection is out there and how much time it takes to make and rig your own character. Hell, I’m in the same boat as you guys. I have asked every character artist I have ever worked with if they had a character I could animate with and have always come up empty handed. You should be spending your time getting better at your craft. It takes several lifetimes to master animation; I don’t expect you to be a master character artist and rigger on top. So, I’m not going to write you off because you’re using a standard school rig (and anyone out there who does needs to get their priorities straight), but it is always refreshing to see something new in a reel, even if the character is a little rough. Like my old animation director was fond of saying, “A good animator should be able to do good animation on anything”.

Besides solid character movement, what I am also looking for is a good understanding of staging, composition, timing (from an editing standpoint), and at least a basic understanding of how to use a camera. These are all key skills in games and will become even more relevant as we continue to push the medium. Storytelling and communication are the main pillars of gameplay and cinematics and these are some of the tools to achieve them. 

For film, you are highly specialized as an animator. You’re there to follow very specific direction to execute someone else’s vision. Camerawork, lighting, and editing are usually someone else’s job. In games, animators tend to wear several hats and work a little less specifically directed. Often an animator is responsible for an entire section of the game, from inception to implementation. The way the engines and tool sets are being engineered, animators are fast becoming “movement designers” and not simply content creators. Showing you are a well-rounded artist will help you immensely.

At the end of the day, great animation is great animation. BUT, a well-polished, lit, and properly edited demo reel with good animation will always win over a default-rendered, grey, static demo reel with good animation.

Here’s the thing, when I look at the whole package (cover letter, resume, demo reel), I take time out to consider the presentation and level of finish of the whole thing. I expect animators to be empowered and to take ownership over their respective areas. How you have represented yourself is indicative of how you will deliver an assignment on the project. The level of care you have taken to present yourself is equal to or greater than the level of care you will take when executing a task. This may or may not be 100% fact, but it is what you are communicating to me in your application. If it’s sloppy and unorganized, I can only assume you conduct your work the same way as well. Consider this when submitting your application to a company.

For inspiration, check out THIS channel on Vimeo.

THE INTERVIEW…

Image from the movie “Taken”. It’s about a father trying to find his son who is trying to save mankind from extermination…or something.

Understand going into the interview that the process itself is fundamentally flawed. Most of the people conducting the interviews have not been trained to do so and it’s a poor way to gauge your ability to do the job. Still, It’s part of the process (you have to meet the team sometime), so you might as well be as prepared as possible going in.

There are two main types of people you’re going to run into in these interviews and both are trying to figure out the answer to two basic questions: Out of all the people applying, are you the best qualified to do the job, and are you the best fit with the current company and team culture. It’s a balance of the two factors and the person with the highest score in each column gets the job. Personally, I would rate the importance 60% ability and 40% personality. Every company places different values on this though, and that’s where preparation comes in. A company like Valve probably places much higher value on personality over immediately applicable skills than a company like EA, for instance. It does have some wiggle room. A team will usually make allowances for some personality issues with a person who is exceptionally skilled and someone who is really easy to work with and takes direction well can be lacking a little in the skills department (I have found it’s more often the former, so don’t assume your witty personality will get them to overlook the fact that you can’t animate).

Who are these two types?

First, there’s the hyper-aggressive interviewer who, subconsciously or not, is trying to get you to fail at the interview. They try to overpower you with ridiculously overwritten questions and problems, trying to trip you up and find your weak points. My best advice on dealing with this type is to remain as positive as possible. I spent several years doing customer service work before games and you learn quickly that you have to fight fire with water, not more fire. Preparation and a proactive attitude are of high value in this industry and ultimately what this person is after anyways. I’m not saying to turn every possible question into rainbows and kittens; you need to remain truthful and honest in your answers. Just remain upbeat and try to find the positive takeaway from each blemish they bring up. The only lessons we learn are through mistakes, right?

The other kind of interviewer is also, thankfully, the majority of people you will encounter. These are people who are clearly not trained in it, don’t have a lot of pre-written questions or standard “where do you see yourself in five years” or “what’s your biggest flaw” type questions. What they’re after is to gauge how you will fit with the rest of the team. You won’t get to this point if your reel didn’t demonstrate your potential to do the job anyways, so that’s the only missing piece of information. You are likely going to spend more time with these people than your friends and family, so it only makes sense that their primary concern is if you will all get along.

Again, the best thing you can do is be as ready as possible for whatever you encounter. How do we prepare? As I mentioned earlier, I am an info junky. I like to go in with as much information as possible. When I have an interview with a company, I will spend at least one evening (often many evenings) finding out everything I can about the company, their employees, their products, and their culture and values.

If you aren’t familiar with the games the company makes and don’t have time to play them (I have a family, I totally understand this), YouTube is your friend. You can watch a full play through of almost any game out there and become well-versed in all of a company’s products in relatively little time.

Start with the company’s website. Check out their “About” page, media pages, and the staff page if they have one. Look for interviews available online. Even press they did for game releases or E3 can give you a useful look at the type of people who work there and what their values are.

If you can, find out who you will be interviewing with and get a little info on them as well. I’m not saying you should e-stalk someone to the point of knowing their kid’s name and wife’s social security number (and please, if you do happen to find out some personal stuff, don’t bring it up. It’s just creepy), but a little background information can be really useful. I have, on several occasions, filled dead spots in interviews by striking up conversations about common backgrounds, mutual acquaintances and so on. Don’t think for a second that they aren’t doing it to you.

That leads me to a small side note. It should be common sense, but be careful about what you put out into the internet. A company will research you before deciding to talk to you. Google yourself and look at the findings objectively. Would you want to hire yourself? In my opinion, you don’t have to be a saint online. Having an opinion and a personality are requirements in my book, so use your own best judgement on what crosses the “bad taste” line.

Speaking of personality, I know several incredible animators who are slow to get excited and to someone just meeting them, come across as uninterested. They have been passed over for jobs and companies have missed out on potentially amazing co-workers. It’s not that you shouldn’t be yourself in the interview, but be aware of how your personality might come across to complete strangers. Even saying something like “Listen, I’m a super mellow guy and I usually come across as disinterested to people who don’t know me well. I am very interested in this position and I wanted to make sure you didn’t get the wrong message.”

When I interview someone, I’m really looking for a few key things that are important to me as a lead. How much direction did you receive to create the work on your reel (how much of that work is your own and how much required some heavy hand holding), how do you take criticism and feedback (I might even give you some in the interview to see how you respond), and are we going to get along when we’re working 60+ hours a week together. If you’ve got a good personality, a bit of talent, and a proactive attitude, I would be more than happy to work with you.

Lastly, don’t come to the interview empty handed. Bring a few extra copies of your cover letter and resume (in case someone hasn’t seen them yet or forgot to print them out). Also, bring a thumb drive with a copy of your reel on it. As I said at the start, don’t make people do extra work to hire you. Bonus extras to bring: artwork, storyboards (I LOVE animators who can storyboard well), work in progress, reference videos of yourself or others you used for the shots on your reel (again, I love this stuff), or anything else you’ve done. Everyone loves to work with and be around people who are passionate about something. Bring that to the interview.

SUMMARY…

Be prepared, be organized, be polished, and be yourself. I hope we get a chance to work together someday. Good luck!

What choice did we have?

When we started Itzy Interactive a little over a year ago, we were already too late. Developers has already undercut each other’s prices on the app store to the point where all games were already pretty much in the $1-2 dollar range, and the freemium pricing model of giving away a game for free and earning revenue from in-app purchases had already taken root. It was a bit like pulling up to the starting line after the race had started and you’re informed that everyone has already piled up in a spectacular crash in the middle of the racetrack but you go ahead anyway. There we were, all shiny and new, ready to go and determined to make our mark and hopefully pay our bills in the process. When we launched Itzy3d we knew right from the start that freemium was the direction we would go with this and future releases. Our second title, Vex Blocks, is also planned as a freemium release.  The reasons just made sense to us and still do.

As a small indie team our resources are limited. When it comes to marketing our products we simply don’t have a lot of options available to us due to our financial constraints. We’ve spoken to other developers who have been successful in the mobile marketplace and a few of them maintain that paying for ads simply doesn’t pay. Certainly the response we’ve seen to the ads we ran in an attempt to test the waters back this up. The increased visibility and downloads we received when running our mobile ad campaigns simply did not pay for the money spent on those ads. Social marketing through our Facebook, Twitter and blogging efforts probably put just as many eyes on our products and didn’t cost us anything but our time.

So that leaves really only two other factors that we have any control over as indie developers: the game we’re creating and the price point we choose for that game. Now game quality is an interesting topic. We’re not so arrogant as to assume our games will be of the same calibre as games made by more experienced teams, or made by larger teams with millions at their disposal. So we endeavour to make the best games we can possibly make given our talents and the resources available to us and that’s all that can be expected of us.

We’re not operating under any illusion that we’ll create the next runaway hit. Something that always strikes me about people I speak with in the industry and developer interviews I see from successful indies is that they never know if what they’ve created is any good. There’s always that nervousness as they release their product into the wild when you simply don’t know how you’ll be received. You’d like to think that you’ve made a game people will enjoy, that you’ve made something that stands out but what you think and what the reviewers, other developers and ultimately gamers think can be completely different. Opinion is opinion. The notion that if you simply create an excellent title people will flock to it is contingent on something you have no control over.  People’s opinions of what constitutes a great game. So you do what you can.  You set out and make the game you want to make and you make it to the best of your abilities. Then you learn from your mistakes and hopefully don’t go broke in the process.

So the only option left to us, the only other thing we can control is the price, and against the hundreds of thousands of other games out there – what chance do our little, independently made games stand against juggernauts that are already charging nothing right out of the gate? Freemium isn’t the only option for mobile developers, but realistically in today’s marketplace – what choice do indies really have? Convert or die. The notion that your games are super special and people will recognize this fact and line up to throw money at you may work in rare instances where the planets align just so but that’s like putting a video of yourself singing up on youtube in the hopes of being discovered.  Sure it happens, but so do lottery wins.  For us it makes more sense to level the playing field as much as possible to maximize our chances of success. That’s why we went freemium. There’s simply too many free games available in today’s mobile marketplace to risk alienating users by asking the price of a cup of coffee for our hard work. At least, not right off the bat.

Making the decision to go freemium doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve sold your soul to Old Scratch either. Freemium games receive a lot of grief from “core” gamers for some very good reasons. There are companies out there that use freemium and combined with habit forming hooks they keep gamers addicted to apps that more than a few gamers would turn their noses up at. There are companies that try to obscure the actual price of in-app purchases. Other companies offer multiplayer games with the option to purchase powerups to gain an advantage over other players. All the above give the freemium model, in my opinion, a bit of a bad reputation but it doesn’t have to be this way.

I prefer to approach freemium games the same way people approached shareware. “Here’s the game to try and if you like the game, please support us by purchasing some of our other options.” No tricks.  Nothing hidden.  If you like it, please support us.  I view the the freemium pricing structure no differently than offering a demo version, but the key to me (and to my conscience) is to not waste gamer’s time with a mere taste but to make it worth their while.  There are a lot of products vying for gamers attention and I always keep that in the back of my mind to make sure our products are offering up enough gameplay that I would be satisfied, as a gamer, with the amount of play I’ve received.  Then, hopefully, gamers will like what they see and respond by opening their wallets.

Kickstarter is the hot new word in indie gaming and beyond. Inspired by the successes of Tim Schaffer’s DoubleFine campaign and many others, countless aspiring game developers have taken to Kickstarter to raise funds for their game. Yet many of these game developers are seeing their projects fail to raise funding, and without serious celebrity status it’s hard to generate significant interest about your project. I’m a member of the Stanford Graduate School of Business mailing list, and last week there was a question about how to effectively use Kickstarter as a game studio. What resulted was a treasure trove of valuable advice, which I wanted to summarize for everyone below.

What are your chances?
The first key mistake that many Kickstarter campaigns make is that they set their goals too high. Take a look at the Kickstarter Zeitgeist, slide 3: the median money raised is $19,058. A project in the $10 – $24k realm is much more likely to be funded than one in a higher fundraising bracket, so you need to consider that when pricing your project.

You can also see that on average, campaigns were oversubscribed by over 2.5X. This is because people will often only put their money in what looks like a “sure thing”, so they are much more likely to back projects that have a significant portion of their funding already closed, or are oversubscribed already. The best way to capitalize on this is to keep your funding target low, to the bare minimum of what you need, and then it’ll be more likely to get funded (and then hopefully oversubscribed).

Creating your project & video
Clear, concise explanation
When you’re creating your project and video, always strive to make it as concise as possible. So many Kickstarter projects are large essays accompanied by 10 minute long videos, and many netizens don’t have that attention span. Instead, make your project description and video clear and concise, preferably less than 5 minutes for the video and less than 2 pages for the project description. It also helps to put a TL;DR summary at the top of the project description.

Show over tell
Rather than having a clip of you telling people how great your game is going to look, show them a clip from what you have so far. The same applies for the description: make liberal use of graphics to show people what the game will be like and what they will be buying.

Compelling stretch goals
Stretch goals are goals that you create for the project if it passes significant funding milestones beyond its fundraising target (such as $30k raised for a $20k project). Tying in with the first paragraph, you should set your fundraising target at your bare-minimum budget and then entice Kickstarters with stretch goals. Make the stretch goals cool, unique, and a bit crazy: this is where you can really make your product stand out and get users excited long after you’ve passed your fundraising target.

Offer proof that you can really pull this off
Talk about your experience building XYZ types of games in your video. Make sure the audience knows that you can pull this off. That said, you want the audience to believe in you based on your past accomplishments, but bragging or being long winded about it will turn them off.

Be confident
Nothing smacks more of an amateur project video than a lot of “ums” and nervous looks away from the camera. You, and anyone in the video, need to be confident spokespersons for your project and your company. Echoing the point directly above, your confidence gives the audience more reason to believe that you can actually deliver on your promises.

Compare your project to others in your price range
When comparing your project, it’s worth comparing what you’re offering to other projects in a similar price and fundraising target range. Just don’t do it in a disparaging light, instead concentrate on what you’re doing that’s cool and unique. More importantly, don’t make the mistake of comparing your project to significantly more ambitious or expensive projects, Kickstarter or otherwise. Saying that your game will be “like Starcraft, but with a twist and on 1/100th of the budget” will not get people excited about your prospects.

Pricing your rewards
This is one of the most contentious issues with Kickstarter campaigns, particularly with games. But it doesn’t need to be complicated; in fact, simple, straightforward rewards actually perform the best for getting people to donate. Stick to the tried-and-true things that people like, such as t-shirts (low tier), unique in-game items (medium tier), and custom in-game NPC characters (high tier). Around those basics, try to build in a couple of rewards that are unique and compelling to your game. And for the godly top tier investments ($1,000 or more), try to make them feel very personal, such as a trip to the office and lunch with the team.

From the Kickstarter Zeitgeist slideshow, we can see that the average donation was $31. Kickstarters live and die by the $20-$80 reward tiers, and you should expect to do the same. To get ideas, look at other projects in your category: do you offer comparable rewards at competitive prices? Once you’ve mapped out what you want your prizes to be, you should make sure that your reward tiers build off of each other. Each reward tier should contain in the previous reward tier, with few exceptions. This entices people to donate more and also makes sure that people don’t have to choose between two donation tiers to get the rewards they want.

Lastly, you should read about Star Command’s experience funding their game on Kickstarter. They made a lot of prizes material goods such as t-shirts, and made those prizes only slightly more expensive than the shirt itself. What ended up happening was they spent a significant amount of their funding just paying out swag. The lessons to learn here are that you should aim to offer compelling virtual goods first, and save material goods for the higher tiers. It also means that you should factor the price of every reward tier into the final “cost” of the reward.

Keeping your audience engaged
Even well-set-up Kickstarter campaigns live and die by marketing. When you’re planning out your Kickstarter project, don’t save marketing planning for later, after the project has been put up. Often times, a big initial project launch burst can create the momentum you need to show prospective donors that your campaign is likely to succeed. Every project launch should be undertaken with a full marketing plan in place for launch day. This should include setting up press about the project (with an embargo for your project launch day), setting up a blog and writing the first post, and setting up social media profiles. In fact, the best campaigns utilize social media and player communities to build buzz about their game from day 1. In particular, submitting your project to relevant sub-Reddits and other content sites can help you get a lot of exposure for your project quickly.

Once you launch the campaign, follow Twitter religiously and make sure you personally follow and thank everyone that Tweets about your project. Be sure to employ similar tactics on social networks, forums, and Reddit. You want to be very engaged and grateful to donors, especially at this early stage. Doing so, you will also build an initial audience that you can use to power your marketing campaign for the rest of the project (even after funding closes!).

With this audience in hand, you want to keep them engaged as much as possible. Post frequent updates to the Kickstarter page, sharing your excitement with your following and giving them sneak peeks at what you’re building. These updates also make great meat for social media and give your audience the impression that you are working hard on your project. You can also opt to release more videos via Youtube of the product’s progress, or even just a thank you video from your team.

Unfair Advantages
While not necessary, there are some things that can provide unfair advantages to your Kickstarter project that you should definitely look into. A big part of why DoubleFine’s Kickstarter project did so well is because it was backed by the star power of Tim Schafer. While it’s not likely that you can get a Tim Schafer-caliber figure to support your project, there’s still something to be said for personally recruiting internet-famous people one-on-one to publicly support your project before you launch. An endorsement from someone dear to the specific player segment you’re targeting would be ideal (ie get Sid Meier to endorse a strategy game, not a racing game). This tactic is a long shot, but it’s the kind of thing that if successful can be a huge boon to your project.

Another unfair advantage is the intellectual property, or IP, associated with your game. While IP is tricky (this is a good slide deck explaining the negotiating process), it is not nearly as difficult to obtain as it seems at first glance. If you have a proven track record in the game industry, you can convince larger brands to partner with you, and if you don’t, you can still convince small or indie brands that don’t have plans to move into the space you’re addressing. When talking to these companies, be sure to lean on the Kickstarter magic and emphasize how your campaign is going to bring them a lot of press and exposure.

Conclusion
In conclusion, creating a successful Kickstarter campaign isn’t hard, but simply putting a project on Kickstarter doesn’t guarantee success either. You need to have a well-produced video, a concise description, compelling prizes, and a solid marketing plan that starts on launch day. And maybe even an unfair advantage or two. Just follow the tips in this guide and you’ll stand out from the countless dud projects that clutter Kickstarter. But remember, building and running a Kickstarter campaign is a full time job, as your project should be for the months after you successfully fundraise. Treat it as such, and you’ll be well on your way to having a successful campaign. Good luck!

Afterward
A big thank you to everyone who contributed their knowledge to the Stanford GSB mailing list thread: Shannon Clark, Corvus Elrod, Chris Hatala (whose project was successful, congrats Chris!), Thomas Bidaux, and others. Your knowledge and advice made this post possible.

For the love of god, put on some clothes

You wouldn’t walk into your office dressed in sweats and a t-shirt and even if this was acceptable, you probably still shouldn’t do it. There’s been a few days when I’ve rolled out of bed and stumbled into my office, but I’m never as productive as I am when awake, showered, had a good breakfast and dressed for work.  I’m not talking about dressing up, I’m mainly talking about things like…putting on pants.  It may sound a bit clichéd but feeling good about yourself makes you more productive and until I’ve cleaned myself up and dressed first thing in the morning I just don’t feel like I’m ready somehow. If you’re content to work in your tighty whities all day with the windows open and your retired neighbours aghast, maybe just try cleaning up one day, spraying on some Axe body spray and getting dressed to see how you feel in comparison.

Regular hours

Set yourself regular work hours. The nice thing about working from home is you can usually be flexible with your working hours but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still have set hours. I found that having a schedule was valuable for maintaining my sanity and improving my productivity. For me, it’s like a switch flips on in my head. “Time for business!” If for some reason I find myself off my schedule it’s hard for me to get into my work groove when I do sit down at my desk. I’m sure there’s some behavioural scientist somewhere that can back me up on this one, but I’ve really found keeping a regular, scheduled work day improves the amount I can accomplish compared to days when I just “wing it.”
It’s also nice to have that end time to look forward to as well, and having a family it’s good to have that moment when “Daddy is available for play now!” You’re not a machine and you can’t work all the time. There needs to be a point where you can stop and focus on yourself, your friends and your family. Also, take breaks and take a scheduled lunch. I’m terrible when it comes to this and by the time my day is done my brain feels fuzzy. Taking a break keeps me from burning out, stressing out and helps me gain my bearings.

Office Rules

If you’re working from home, it’s also a good idea that you lay down some ground rules for the other occupants of your home. It’s hard to get anything done when you’re being interrupted by pets, parents, spouse, children, etc. My wife is currently at home on maternity leave and it’s nice to be available if she needs assistance with the new baby or our 2 year old son but I need time to do my work. You wouldn’t be able to work a regular office job with a toddler on your lap, yelling for Elmo videos so it’s understandable that there needs to be generally uninterrupted work time. So far having my family at home has worked out pretty well, with even our headstrong 2 year old grasping the concept that when Daddy’s office door is closed he’s working and he’ll be able to play later. My son even says “Bye!” to me now and waves when I’m going into the office to start my work day.

Separate work environment and minimize distractions

It’s also useful to have a designated work space. A “zone of work” that you can enter and exit. For myself, I’m lucky enough to have an office in my home but even if you don’t it’s not a bad idea to create a separate space that’s specifically setup for work. Even though it should go without saying, make an effort to decrease distractions. If you’re a PC gamer and you don’t have the willpower to not fire WOW up every couple of hours then perhaps you need a work machine that doesn’t have any games installed, or create a unique login that doesn’t have access to programs you may find distracting. I find it useful for my PC to be work only while receiving my gaming fix on the consoles setup in our den. It’s helpful for me to have that separation.

Don’t limit human interactions

After working in a busy office, this is something that I didn’t think would be an issue but it was. I found the transition from always being in communication with others to working primarily by myself to be a bit jarring. By the end of the work week I found I craved human interaction; that I’d even go a little squirrely without it. As I mentioned in previous blogs, regularly scheduled meetings with my team helps to break up the monotony of this lone programmer’s existence while keeping the team on task. It can never hurt to keep up communications with your team, even going so far as to have a voice chat session running in the background while working occasionally. This may hinder productivity in the short term, but in the long run I find it helps keep me from experiencing cabin fever. A change of venue from time to time couldn’t hurt either. If you can, take a laptop down to your local cafe and get some work done. Again, in the long run this will be beneficial to your working well being. At least it was for me.

These methods have all helped me over the past year and a half I’ve been working from home. Hopefully you find some of these useful as well. Cheers!

For the Student Summit 2012 we intend to host presentations centred around two core themes:

1. All the Things You’ll Never be Taught - In this track, we hope to see professionals sharing their insights into the aspects of the industry that aren’t taught by game development programs, whether this be bits that aren’t taught, or bits that are taught in a way that isn’t reflective of true industry practice or some other angle on the topic. We want this track to help better prepare for life in the industry.

2. A Day in the Life of… - This is somewhat self-explanatory. We’d like to be able to give students an insight into the day to day routine of various different positions within industry. What does a Technical Artist or a Tools Programmer do all day? Obviously one talk won’t necessarily be representative of a single role at all companies, but we hope it will give students a flavour of what to expect.

If you have an idea for a presentation that doesn’t fit within the two themes, we’d still love to hear about it, so we have also included an “other” category for you to propose your presentation in.

Key Dates

Proposal Deadline – 19th August
Notification of Acceptance – 10th September
Event – 10th November

To submit a proposal for the event, please complete this webform, including your name and contact information, a summary of your past speaking history (if any) and a description of your proposal.

Finally, we intend to invite students to submit their current projects as part of a third theme, centred around the students doing a live presentation and demo of the project, followed by industry experts providing feedback and critique, in a format not massively dissimilar to the “Dragons Den” TV show. If you would like to be a part of this, please complete this form.

Questions can be sent to submissions@altdevconf.com

Do you understand Dot product? No, I mean really have you sat down with the math and do you remember it? I thought I had but recently while using Unity on a home project I naively called two functions in separate loops. One to find which side of a plane a point is, the other was how far from the plane the point was. Filtering the points by side and then calculating the distance in a follow-up step.

Moments later while debugging an unrelated but nearby piece of code I looked at the two functions and a brick of memory flew from a lecture of the past and knocked over my stupid forgetful self. Those familiar with the math have already facepalmed and laughed at my mistake, the math to figure out which side of a plane you are on is the same as that used to calculate the distance. The “side function” merely throws away the distance and returns the sign, leading to a leaky abstraction.

It should be noted that in the documentation of these functions, names or a surface level inspection you are not able to discover this fact. In a world where more and more layers of complexity are being shielded from us we are in great danger of not only throwing away useful information but repeating work already done. Increased battery drain, cloud server costs or wasted cycles being the symptoms of this ailment.

Designing for motion or futuristic inputs suffers a similar problem. Too often we see people using keyboard or keypad events with little understanding of the device delivers that from electrical signal to interrupt into a OS message pump or state then exposing that to our program. Often poor understanding introduces additional latency but this issue is magnified when we start using more complex input systems which we see as magic boxes.

The Sony Move controller uses gyroscope, accelerometer and camera feed to derive the position of the controller. The camera using the visible size of a known object, the ball, to do a distance calculation. Accelerometers are inherently noisy. What many people who use the system naively forget is that the data is pre-filtered and sampled over an interval. The default value reallying quite heavily on the visibility of the ball.

This filter step does introduce latency to the user control and in the cases where the ball is obscured the data can spike or drift in certain ways. Certain settings, or approaches can cause an undocumented increase in latency. What should a motion designer be concerning themselves with here you ask? Well when designing gestures where the ball tracking is lost or even partially obscured for a frame is harder than say the Wii or Six-Axis controller. One previous title I worked on around the launch window of the Move, the primary control worked better swinging about the six-axis controller than the Move.

Following this trend at Dare to be Digital last year we saw and impressive use of Kinect but every team was almost entirely relying on skeleton based systems. This is the “3rd stage” of Kinect processing and the system with the highest latency. Many of the control systems they were using could have worked off raw depth data feed, which could have been evaluated faster. Though in Microsoft’s defence they do a brilliant job of exposing the raw feed and stages of processing to developers for optimisation or use where you only care about simpler, faster motions.

So to come full circle from point/plane math to futuristic input systems we will be increasingly surrounded by layers of abstractions from both a coding and a design view. It is important we continue to “de-mystify” these systems, in order to better use them. Though in a call to developers of frameworks, middleware and similar products I have an old and familiar request.

Document your leaky abstractions, publish your process and enable your developers.

All they will do with that information is make you look good.

Introduction

A few months before jumping fulltime into our independent game startup, my co-founder and I started a podcast. We did this largely because of the advice from other successful independent game companies like Wolfire Games, who employ guerilla marketing techniques with remarkable results. It also sounded like a fun excuse to talk shop!

Our podcast (called Lostcast) just landed its first sponsor, which I believe is a significant milestone for any show. So at this point I thought I’d share some insights about podcast production and how other independents could use podcasting to help their companies thrive.

At Lost Decade Games, we often run audits on our time to ensure it’s being used effectively. A few weeks ago, we noticed that Lostcast was taking a significant chunk of my time away from game development, so we needed to take a close look at the podcast to see if it was a worthwhile time investment.

Though it’s difficult to measure its exact impact, Lostcast has definitely opened some doors for us that would otherwise never have been opened. While it might not make sense for your company, I’ll describe some of the reasons that we think it’s proven valuable.

STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD

There are droves of independent game companies out there, spanning across hobbyists and professionals alike. Maintaining blogs and Twitter accounts is practically mandatory for any company dealing with consumers these days, but how does one not get lost in the sea of similar offerings? We receive regular comments that our podcast is a welcome break from the norm and helps people to remember us.

ESTABLISH TIGHT BONDS

The thing about works of audio is that they can be taken anywhere and played anytime. It’s a drastically different medium than the text-based tools in an independent’s marketing arsenal. Many listeners say they listen to Lostcast during their work commute; I personally listen to podcasts while jogging or even grocery shopping. Essentially your show becomes a part of people’s lives. You’re with them when they’re bored or lonely, talking about things that interest them. This establishes a bond.

Not convinced? A while back we were complaining about our poor recording hardware on an episode of the show, and a listener commented that we should start a wishlist for the gear we needed. We made the wishlist and — to our complete amazement — he bought us everything on it. (Thanks Joe!) I believe that this remarkable occurence just wouldn’t have existed in a medium where the fan couldn’t hear our voices and our excitement about making games. As a similarly-minded person, he felt a connection to us and felt compelled to be very generous.

TAP INTO THE PODCAST MARKET

When independent game companies try to get news coverage from the primary outlets, they’re competing against the biggest game companies in the industry. A games journalist can only write so much in any given day, so it’s usually up to the indies themselves to find their own audiences.

Why not the podcast market? There are millions of podcast listeners who don’t use Twitter and won’t find your company there. And maybe they don’t enjoy reading blogs either, so how else would they know about your games? Indies rarely have the luxuries of substantial advertising budgets or featured spots. The difference between having a podcast and not having one could be the difference between many fans knowing your company intimately versus never having heard of it at all.

OTHER OPPORTUNITIES MAY ARISE

Part of success is being able to take advantage of opportunity when it arises. By having a podcast and beginning to cultivate a niche audience, you’re throwing a larger net. Lostcast began as what we thought was simply a fun, unique way to reach a gaming audience. But because we had the show, we were able have conversations about sponsorship, an opportunity that wouldn’t have existed without it.

The bare minimum you need to podcast is simply a computer with a recording device (even a built-in laptop microphone will do). Free software such as Audacity will work fine for recording and editing the audio. The bar can be very low if you’re working on a shoestring budget, but better quality equipment means better recordings. If you want to produce a high quality podcast, it’s worth it to invest in great audio gear.

MICROPHONE(S)

We already had two Shure SM58 (~$100 USD) vocal microphones I had acquired years prior for an audio class in college. These are solid microphones and I highly recommend them. It’s beyond the scope of this article to talk too much about microphones, so I’ll just suggest doing your homework and buying a microphone with great reviews that’s well known for recording terrific vocals. On a side note: don’t be fooled into buying expensive cables! As long as they’re intact, they’re all essentially the same, so just buy cheap cables by a decent brand.

AUDIO INTERFACE

If you’ll be recording multiple podcasters at once, you’ll also need to solve the problem of multiple inputs. We went with an M-Audio Fast Track Ultra (~$350) digital audio interface. This audio interface allows us to easily record ourselves and multiple guests through microphones with either XLR or TRS connectors.

As a hardcore Mac user, I went with Logic Pro ($200), which is Apple’s own offering. I find it to be exceptionally powerful, versatile, and intuitive. Though its large feature set may be overkill if you’re only wanting to record audio, I’ve found its niceties like compressors and gating modules extremely useful.

Offerings similar to Logic Pro (and available on other platforms) include Steinberg Cubase and Avid Pro Tools, which are both excellent choices as well. There may also be less expensive software intended solely to record and edit podcasts.

Record!

Once you’ve got all your gear in place, you’re ready to start recording! Before you begin, you’d do well to listen to several other popular podcasts to get a vibe for what people may be expecting. But the beauty of podcasts is that they can be whatever you want them to be!

While it’s beyond the scope of this article, I also highly recommend finding tutorials on editing, compression, and gating techniques to apply to your podcast after recording. A little post-production love can drastically improve the quality of your show and make your listeners much happier! I also spend a few hours editing out long pauses and filler worlds such as “uh” and “um” that nobody wants to hear.

Publish

The publishing step involves bouncing the recording to disk and making it available on the Internet. The bare minimum is probably to upload an mp3 file to a web server and link to it from a blog or Twitter account. Again, that’s the beauty of podcasts: if that’s all the effort you care to put in, it’s adequate and listeners can still enjoy your show.

However, you really should take the extra effort to get your podcast into popular distribution outlets. It should be no surprise that iTunes is the premiere platform for podcasts. While you could simply upload your podcast to your website and link to it from there, you should seriously consider also including your podcast on iTunes. Fortunately, Apple has provided a useful Making a Podcast document that will walk you through the relatively simple submission process.

Summary

A podcast is a great way to get your company name and your games out there. They may not be a good fit for every team, but they have the ability to establish tight bonds with an audience and help get exposure for your games.

Podcasting can be a lot of work, but the prerequisites are minimal (a laptop microphone and free software will suffice!) and the payoffs can be tremendous. If you’re on the fence about it, I urge you to record a rough episode, even if you do nothing with it. You might just like it!

The Language and Locale Encoding

In the early days I used to simply have an enumeration in a header file that was very similar to this:

enum ELanguage
{
     eLanguage_English,
     eLanguage_French,
     eLanguage_German,
     eLanguage_Spanish,
     eLanguage_Amount
};

20 years ago this was fine, I was developing on a cartridge that had all the languages essentially loaded at once and really there was no need to support regions beyond the specific languages. These days however we need something a little more robust and as you should have picked up from my last post the locale is very important these days. So lets start by looking at how we identify each translation, thankfully two very useful standards have been defined by people who know a lot more about languages and regions than I. These standards allow us to specifying each language and each region as a two digit code.

Language Code www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php

Region Code www.iso.org/iso/country_codes/iso_3166_code_lists/country_names_and_code_elements.htm

Using these we can create a short code for every possible supported language and region we are likely to encounter, for example:

   en-US     English America
   en-GB     English Great Britain
   es-MX     Spanish Mexico
   nl-NL     Dutch Netherlands
   en-CA     English Canada
   fr-CA     French Canada

A Pipeline

This is by no means the only pipeline that can be used for localization, they all have different benefits and issues this one just so happens to be my preference, probably because I like offline tools.

The storage and manipulation of localized strings I have seen done in every way possible from databases to proprietary editing tools. My personal choice is to use Excel for editing and manipulation but this does not come without two issues that you should be aware of;

• Although version control software generally is fairly good at merging xml files the xml generated from Excel always seems to make merging difficult (especially for designers) to the point that it is safest to simply lock the file while it is being edited.
• Not all translators like to work in Excel so you will probably need someone or a tool (probably both) to convert what ever format the translators are working in to the excel format.

  An example of the strings in excel:

Column A contains the identifier string then each column along contains one translation. Notice the encoding id at the top of the sheet, this not only tells us the language / region but is used by the exporter tool to know which files to generate. The export tool exports the data into whatever binary compressed format you prefer to use in-game. Since I have not worked on a game with massive amounts of text I have generally stuck to a text format with each language being written out as a separate text file, like so:

en-US.lang

     PRESS_START=Press [Start]
     OPTIONS=Options
     MUSIC=Music
     …

fr-FR.lang

     PRESS_START=Appuie sur [START]
     OPTIONS=Options
     MUSIC=Musique
     …

Depending on which language / locale is required at run-time just that single translation file is loaded into memory.

The exporter tool can also be useful in other ways:

• Automatically detect and report missing strings.
• Build fonts based upon the characters that are actually used, very important if you are doing Chinese which has thousands of characters, this method alone has been known to save megs of texture space.
• Detect formatting mistakes and illegal / reserved characters.

Strings in Code / Scripts

In order to provide a framework for localization the first thing that needs to be cracked down upon is the use of strings themselves.
Previously you might of written the code or script:

     DrawString(“Hello World, My name is Mr Flibble.”);

instead it should now be written passing a String Identifier like so,

     DrawString( eStringId_HelloMessage );

The string enumerations can be auto generated by the export tool, however I did this for a couple of projects and decided that it was more hassle than it was worth. My recommendation is to avoid this if possible, a better way is to pass the string identifier as a string itself:

     DrawString( “Hello_Message” );

Either way both methods would end up looking into a table to find the specific string to be displayed.

Encoding

There are quite a few encoding systems for text out there, since this ground has been walked quite a few times in a lot of other posts I’ll skip it here with only a note that for game development my take on the subject is if you are working with limited memory use UTF-8 otherwise use UTF-16.

Icons

More often than not it is far simpler to insert an icon into a string than it is to use a long drawn out explanation to describe something. In the text string I indicate where an icon is to be displayed and which one by using the [] markers, for example:

     Press [START] to continue.
     Activate [GEM] by pulling string.

Part of my text rendering manager loads a setup file (text again) at startup that contains a list of all the codes and textures to use when that icon is encountered. Very similar to this:

     START, 0, X360_StartButton.tga
     MOVESTICK, 0, X360_LS.tga

I can add additional textures on the line if I wanted to animate the icon for example:

     DODGE, 4, Wii_RemoteWave_1.tga, Wii_RemoteWave_2.tga, Wii_RemoteWave_3.tga

The number after the code is the animation speed (FPS).

On the subject of icons, consider this:

     "Use [RS] to aim and [RT] to mark enemy before pressing [A] to fire."

Imagine that your project is multi-platform, [A] should really be [X] on the PS3 and [B] on the Wii. An additional issue is that the Wii doesn’t generally have a [RS]! You could create a string unique to each platform but that really would just double or triple the amount of data that needs to be maintained as and when things change.

My solution in the past to this little nightmare has been to ban platform specific icon names, which includes identifiers like [D-PadLeft], [A], [LeftStick], [X], [Y], [Z], [RT], [L1], etc. Instead I encourage game descriptive text:

     "Use [TARGETTING] to aim and [TARGETREGISTER] to mark enemy before pressing [FIRE] to fire."

Then I have a different icon setup file for each platform and everything works between platforms without any major headaches.

Parameters

It’s quite common to construct a string for displaying on screen however it can cause issues for the translators if they don’t know the context. Consider this:

     DrawString(“%s! Get rid of them!”, m_PlayersName );

Now you can see straight away that the %s will be replaced with the players name, however what the translators  see is:

     “%s! Get rid of them!”

Their best guess might be that it is going to be a name of a character but it might also be something else i.e.:

     “Chairs! Get rid of them!”
     “Michael! Get rid of them!”

In order to help the translators I use {} to mark parameters:

     “{s-Name}! Get rid of them!”
     “{s-Object}! Get rid of them!”

The context after the ‘–‘ is ignored when rendering the text, it is purely descriptive text to help the translators.

Formatting

As I’m sure we are all aware by now not everyone writes the date in the same way.

Consider the date 3/4/2012 to me personally this is 3rd April 2012, however to some it is 4th March 2012. Obviously once you get past halfway through the month it becomes a lot easier to spot but it does mean that your region needs to know which date format to use.

Translators

Good translators should produce strings in the new language that are roughly the same length as the original string. I usually estimate a rough 20% difference between the English and other languages. This is another useful feature I have built into my tool, it can detect excessive differences between the lengths of the various translations.

Translators MUST not change the order of parameters in a translation. Obvious from a programming stand point but I have in the past had translations that not only re-ordered the parameters but added additional ones as well!

Keep communication levels between you and the translators to a minimum, there have been times when a 5-10 minute email or phone call could of solved a problem but because it has to be filtered through channels it can end up taking days or even weeks to sort out.

Assets

Asset management for localization has the potential to touch so many different moving parts of an engine it very quickly stops being funny. The solution I describe is tailored to the way my engine works and it may not be applicable to how your tech works, still you might find this useful.

When an asset is requested my manager has a list of directories that it scans for the requested asset, the first instance it finds is the file that gets loaded. By controlling which directories are in the list and their order I can in effect override assets according to the language and region.

This is my directory structure for localization:

If the requested audio file exists in the specific language directory that file will be loaded, if it doesn’t exist the manager will carry on searching the other directories until it finds the asset. Obviously I don’t allow the player the ability to change languages half-way through a game.

It’s simple but it works.

Finally

That’s everything I wanted to talk about in relation to localization, I hope you find it useful.

A quick glimpse on the top grossing games list in App Store and you’ll spot several freemium titles on the top. You see year old titles such as Cut the Rope: Experiments skyrocket on the top of the download ranks once they cut their price from $0.99 to plain just 0. Flurry has even released reports saying that freemium apps now account for over 65% of iOS app revenue. You start to wonder… what if you turned your paid game into a free one? Would this be a good business decision? I put together the following three steps to help you analyse this situation logically and come to the right conclusion for your game.

1. Make the Business Case

Before cutting the price of your app to zero, you need to have a business case ready. Projections of potential growth rates and conversion expectations will be key factors in your decision to go freemium. To get started, you need to construct several scenario analyses based on three key variables: daily active users (DAU), conversion rate (from free to paying), and average revenue per paying user (ARPPU).

Daily Active Users

The whole idea behind cutting away the price of the app is to significantly increase the amount of installs. The increase in installs your app will be getting depends on several variables, such as the current rank in app store, current price, marketing, promotion, and potential cross promotion. Based on these variables, cutting your price to freemium could have a huge impact on your growth. To try this out, you can list your app on a “free app a day” site to see what the combination of promotion and price does to your download rate. (See Picture 2 below to see what kind of installs difference you might see from making your app freemium.)

Also, you should be tracking and aware of the ratio of daily active users to your total users. This will give you an idea of how engaging your game is, and how many of your users will be likely to pay in a freemium game. This leads to our next variable, Conversion.

Conversion

The amount of paying users is very game specific issue and varies typically between 1% and 5%. The reason why I want you to look at your DAUs specifically is because you’ll likely only convert your players once they are engaged. When converting players from free to paying, avoid aggressive offers and steep progression curves to maximize retention, and thus the long-term conversion (read more: Primed Spend).  That way, you won’t be sacrificing engagement later for revenue now.

Average Revenue Per Paying User (ARPPU)

The final variable of the formula is the ARPPU, which is tied to the in-app purchase offering of your app. To maximize ARPPU, you should always try to offer high-value high-price bundles as according to my experience the demand tends to be quite price-inflexible when it comes to high purchase points.

Also, favor consumable items instead of permanent items both in your game and in your promotions. These are more valuable to engaged players because they will use the items during gameplay, and their consumable nature increases re-purchases (read more:Monetizing Free-to-Play Games).

2. Create Demand & Offering

Before you transition your game to freemium, you need to create offerings (in-app purchases and purchase points), and then ensure that there is demand for those offerings. There are two ways you can create demand for in-app purchases: Restrictions and Achievements.

Restrictions

Restricting gameplay creates a strong incentive for in-app purchases. However, there are few rules you should remember when restricting players’ gameplay.

• First, don’t confuse restrictions with walls. By this I mean that players should be able to progress without paying, and restrictions are there only to slow this progress. You are selling a shortcut, not the gameplay itself, which will prevent players from being frustrated.
• Secondly, start with light restrictions, and then increase them slowly and steadily. This way, you won’t scare away players in the beginning, and once player are engaged they will either convert to paying or wait out even the toughest restrictions.
• Lastly, always offer at least two purchase options to bypass the restriction. An example of this would be a smaller amount of paid currency and a significant amount of free currency, while the other option would be a larger amount of paid currency. The intention is to make the small price point offer look extremely unattractive and thus incentivize players to make the reasonable purchase with the higher price point.

Example of Restriction Mechanism:

Title X is a puzzle game, which has players passing various levels. Levels are made into level packs with each pack containing 10 levels.  To restrict the progression, you have added a timer mechanic so that every time players complete a level pack they have to wait for a specific time until they can continue the adventure. Players can skip the waiting period by either purchasing a single unlock, which unlocks the next level pack (10 levels), or by unlocking all the level packs (100 levels) with a slightly larger purchase. The waiting period grows after each completed level pack, making the all levels unlock purchase more and more attractive.

Achievements

In place of or in addition to restricting the player’s progress, you can also add achievements, which reward players for perfecting each level. Now, to perfect a level a player needs to usually play more and refine their strategy, which drives engagement. The first achievements should be pretty easy, but as players progress the achievements should become harder and harder to reach (and therefore demand more play sessions). This leads to demand for boosters and power ups, which assist players in their quest to perfect each level and earn the achievement.

Example of Achievement Mechanism:

Title X is a racing game. For each level, a first place finish earns player 3 stars from that level. Every sixth level is visibly locked in the level selection screen, and the sixth level is typically a more interesting or unique level design. To enter the locked level, a player must get a first place finish in all five previous levels. Players can improve the chances of winning a race by purchasing consumable boosters with in-app purchases, or they can purchase the ability to open the chest outright.

3. Track and Adjust

Now you have a business case, which gives you goals to shoot for in order to make your game a freemium success. You’ve created offers with build-in demand to encourage in-app purchases. Now, in order to successfully make the switch from paid to freemium, you need to implement tracking around your key metrics. Once the app transitions from paid to free in the app stores, the development and marketing teams should be looking to optimize the game based on the data they get.

Be sure to keep the above Restrictions and Achievements in mind when setting up your tracking. Tracking and analyzing the data is essential, both for improving your monetization and engagement and to know how are you doing with regard to the business case you’ve made. Once you know where you stand, it’s much easier to prioritize following updates and achieve the business goals you’ve set.

So now that your game is freemium and you’ve got disappointing numbers, how do you adjust? Let me give you some suggestions below:

DAU

Going from paid to free should be accompanied with a marketing and PR campaign. Have you game featured on FreeAppADay and various blogs and tweets to ensure exposure. If you have other titles, go hard on cross promotion. If this is your only title than consider buying cross promotion (Android only). And featuring from Google or Apple is naturally worth crawling for…

ARPPU

Low ARPPU means usually that either your prices are too low (counterintuitive, but remember only 1-5% of your players are buying) or that your larger price points fail to offer the perceived higher value. Take a closer look at the data and see at which point in the game users are making purchases and what are they purchasing. Once you know this information, you can rearrange you offering so that it better suits players in those converting phases of the game. At the same time, make sure you unbalance the price points so that the higher prices offer unbeatable value compared to the lower ones. Again, because only 1-5% of your players are buying in most games, you want to give them a lot of incentive to make a larger purchase.

Conversion

Conversion is the toughest variable of them all to improve. When it’s low, it implicates that the demand you’ve created isn’t strong enough, or that your in-app offering doesn’t answer to the demand. If you suspect that either of those two cases is true, you need to go back to step two and really analyze how players are playing the game.

However, be sure that you’re not missing the low-hanging fruit in your design and user experience. I’ve seen games where purchasable content is simply too well hidden to be noticed because designers are afraid it might scare players. Don’t be afraid! While you don’t want to be obnoxious about it, most players are now used to freemium games and are not fazed by prompts to buy in-app purchases. From your data, see what percentage of DAUs is seeing the purchase wall. If it’s below 20%, you need make better use of various screens in the game, such as Level Failed, Level Selector and Welcome Screen. In particular, Level Failed is a great place to sell your in-app purchases because players are looking for ways to improve their play.

Conclusion

In the end it’s all about understanding the difference between paid and freemium business models and analysing the potential of your paid game succeeding as a freemium version. The key is in creating demand and giving players the possibility to fulfil the demand with in-app purchases. And one final thing I want to mention: don’t expect to nail the transformation to freemium instantly. You need track and adjust your game to improve your numbers and revenue. Going from paid to freemium is a tough challenge, but if you execute well then it will certainly pay off. Good luck!

The problem is the nagging feeling at every corner, that I haven’t made the “right choice”. That I have missed something or I will not get the full story because of a wrong decision. Of course the game tries very much to reinforce the idea that there are no wrong or right decisions, yet the feeling is still there. To be fair this is not a unique problem. Many games, especially RPGs, play similarly. What makes is that much more noticeable in The Witcher, is that your choices do not only affect a few side quests and the chance to get a special item, but they fundamentally affect the main plot and how the game is unraveled. There are, for example two completely distinct paths through the game, with as many as 16 different endings depending on various decisions made throughout the game (a monumental task by the developer to be sure).

Perhaps I’m in a minority, to find all the different possible decision points frustrating in a way. Perhaps most people enjoy, and are comfortable with, having to make these decisions in the game and being content with their consequences. Then again maybe not. A friend recently was telling me how as a child they found “Choose Your Own Adventure” books frustrating because they wanted to know the alternative outcomes. I therefore decided to dig a little deeper and think about what the source of this frustration might be. I came up with a few thoughts, and would love to hear more from you:

Human Factor – Nature

Australian Band, Human Nature

It doesn’t take a psychologist to figure out that as human beings, we have a core need for resolution. If we leave something unfinished at work, we often still think about it afterwards. We can’t wait to see the next episode of our favorite TV series because of the cliffhanger from the last episode. Another good example is how we look for, and find pleasing to the ear, Resolution in music. There are in fact theories that suggest the reason for dreaming is to act out expectations that were unfulfilled during the day.

Perhaps this is going a bit off-topic, but what I mean here is that when you are going through a game that offers you many choices, you will feel a lack of resolution on many fronts, be it a quest that is not finished, a dialog path that is not experienced, or an ending that’s not reached. This goes against our nature to want to (eventually) obtain complete resolution.

Human Factor – Nurture

Of course as human beings we are deeply affected by our environment, as much as we affect it. Without wanting to open a can of worms, I’ll point out that many educational systems around the world, especially during primary and secondary years, do not widely encourage choice. We are presented with information, we learn them, and then we repeat them back. Examination and tests consist of a series of right or wrong answers. I feel this is the very reason why a good number of people (at least several that I know of) have a hard time deciding what they want to do once they finish high school. They might enter university just because it’s something to do. Often they’ll jump from course to course, and might even drop out eventually. Why? In part I think it’s because they have not learnt how to make decisions, and more importantly being comfortable with and sticking to those decisions! Suddenly after years of being told what subjects to study, or what the expected answer for a given assignment is, they have a sea of options open to them. They don’t even have to show up to class if they don’t want to. And many of their assignments require actual research and open thinking, with no predetermined outcome.

Another example is film. Many Hollywood movies (certainly not all) are known for giving the audience a well-explained and resolved ending. And the audiences have in turn become accustomed to that. Games are no exception, then, as we are not used to playing “what if”.

Design Factor – Knowledge of the Alternative

Too Much Information…

Alright, so our nature and our environment leads us to want to have things laid out in a straight-forward way, and not have to think about the alternatives that we would forgo. But wait, that doesn’t sound quite right either. I mean, as human beings, making decisions is THE thing we do. We do it many times each and every day (to be fair making decisions that determine the fate of a people is a little less frequent…but you get the idea). So why does it seem more awkward and frustrating within a game?

I think one issue is the fact that in real life we make decisions without often realizing what the alternatives really were. We do it in an intuitive and implicit way. This is different in a game like The Witcher in two ways. The first is the knowledge we have of it outside the game. As part of its marketing campaign, the game is advertised to be full of choices that change the outcome of the story. It is further advertised that the game can end in one of 16 possible states. Going into the game for the first time, this very knowledge had me second guessing every decision I made, thinking about how it might affect the outcome.

The second way decision making is different in this game as compared to real life, is how the choices are presented to us. Or perhaps the very fact that all the choices are presented to us. I can best describe this with an example: Let’s say you meet a character in your journey who is asking your for help, to try a new drink they have been experimenting with. The dialog options you are given might be:

• Sure, I’ll give it a try
• Sorry, I don’t trust you… it’s probably poisoned
• That’s going to cost you 100 coins

Looking at this, you are immediately in an awkward position. On the one hand you might be trying to stay true to your character in your choice. On the other hand you are trying to figure out what’s the “best” answer to get the most out of the game, in form of experience points, coins, story, etc. So by presenting all the possible choices, the decision making process has become somewhat unintuitive.

Now let’s imagine the exact same scenario, but in a futuristic game engine, with an AI system that is capable of understanding your voice and responding accordingly. In this case, without being shown any options, you simply say “That’s going to cost you 100 coins”. You’ve still made a meaningful choice, but because you are not aware of all the possible directions you can take, this is a much more comfortable decision to make.

Of course meaningful voice recognition is not something we can expect from games today. But there are other ways to present decisions without it being a multiple choice. In fact The Witcher does do this in many cases. Looking through some walk-throughs I realize that I have made certain choices without realizing it, and those are really the best kinds of choice. Sometimes it’s clever wording in the dialog that makes it less obvious that you are making an explicit choice. Other times you are relying on actions rather than the dialog system (e.g. whether or not the player draws their sword and attacks a NPC).

Design Factor – By Choice, But Not My Choice

No Comment

This is something which is discussed often, but is worth mentioning here. Of course, The Witcher is based on a well established character and draws a lot of its charms from it. It is a fully realized character with his own background and personality traits within the game world. As such I did feel at times, when a choice was presented to me, I would be thinking “Now what would Geralt of Rivia do?” and the result didn’t always match what I wanted to do.

This one is on the fence for me. I am a huge fan of involved stories and narratives in games, and based on my experience, you can’t reach the same level of engagement in the story when the player character is simply a shell; something that games like Diablo utilize. But when it comes to decision making, this can backfire.

Speaking of which, I should probably try Diablo III…

Is this the Point?

As I was writing this post, a very different thought occurred to me. What if this “frustration” I felt in the game when having to make decisions, is the very reason I found the game so engaging? So much so that I finished it in a just a few days? I honestly can’t prove or disprove this theory…something to think about.

Email communication only can sometimes lead to unintended consequences

Itzy Interactive is, at its core, three primary individuals working from their home offices.  We’ve found it useful, and cost effective, to contract out specific work around the world but the main group consists of three.  Myself, the ex-financial guy, Will, my brother-in-law and friend of almost 20 years who’s been programming the last 15 years and Cole, a 20 something programmer and designer I met and worked with while re-training for a career outside of the brokerage industry after losing my job with an economy in free fall.  You wouldn’t think that managing a three person team would present many problems, but without the financing for a centralised studio, the challenges presented managing a team working from their homes using email as their primary communication became apparent quite quickly.

Managing our projects this way produced unique problems.  During development of our first mobile title, Itzy3d, the main issue was one of communication.  From the start we were using Mercurial for our version control while we managed our project using Acunote as our project management software.  This enabled us to keep track of our task lists while letting each member know what the other members of the team were currently working on in hopes that we didn’t trip over each other or duplicate work.  The thought was that by using version control and tracking/reporting our progress would keep everyone moving forward together.

The problems we ran into were decidedly human problems.  They were issues of miscommunication that quickly lead to bruised egos.  As all of us can attest to, email is a limited means of communication and the longer we went without speaking to each other, the more issues would simmer.  We quickly came to find that using only email was detrimental to the well-being of the team.  Often recommendations were taken as criticism, omissions made team members feel like their comments were being ignored and issues that seemed straight forward to one team member would be misinterpreted by another.  Added into the mix, the delay between emails due to work load or different working hours often left comments to fester in the minds of team members to the point where they would become blown out of proportion by the time clarifying emails arrived.  As much as we’d like to think we were all professional enough to address these types of issues rationally, the reality was steps needed to be taken to mitigate problems before they grew into more than they needed to be.

Luckily we were always able to address the challenges as they arose, usually by initiating a group voice chat.  This helped us maintain our team dynamic but we certainly couldn’t spend an hour each day chatting about what we were currently working on to make sure everyone was apprised to limit confusion.  There had to be some sort of balance.  While working on Itzy3d we decided that to make sure everyone was moving forward in the same direction we would endeavor to meet, face to face at least every month and a half.  These meetings were always informal and we would alternate the location.  What we found was the meetings enabled us to not only make sure that we were all on the same page on the project, but they also served as a useful break from the monotony of the solitary coding existence we had condemned ourselves to during our regular working week while helping us become more at ease with each other.  In the same room we could work on our “common ground.”

Just a regular, weekly scrum

Now as we’ve recognized the benefits of these types of face to face meetings, we’ve taken steps to have more regular meetings without taking the day off required to meet each other physically.  Starting with the development of our new title, Vex Blocks, we’ve mandated a regularly scheduled, weekly meeting via webcam using Google Hangouts.  During these scrum meetings, despite continuing to track our tasks and progress using Jira for our project management software, we still take the time to recap our weekly progress and outline what we plan on working on in the coming week.  Then we take time for a quick brain storming session to share ideas we had during the week.  While many may balk at the thought of using video in these chats due to an aversion to video in general, we’ve found team members are more likely to pay attention to what’s being said when you can see that everyone is paying attention.

So far this seems to have completely eliminated the type of conflicts we experienced during the development of Itzy3d.  We still try to have our physical meetings due to the much needed break it affords, but the weekly scrum meetings have proven invaluable in keeping everyone on track while helping build upon our existing team dynamic.

Kompu gacha, or “complete gacha”, is a system that strongly incentivizes the gacha monetization method. Gacha is similar to a prize vending machine at a carnival: you pay a small amount of money to receive an item at random. Kompu gacha expands on this mechanic by offering players an extremely valuable grand prize for completing a set of gacha prizes. Since the gacha prizes are awarded at random, it’s very hard to get these grand prizes. If you do the math, they can be worth hundreds of dollars each on average.

This means big money for Japanese social game companies, whose monetization metrics have long been the envy of their Western counterparts. Kompu gacha and the utilization of random rewards play a big part of GREE and DeNA’s record revenues. The extent of this reliance can vary by game (competitive games rely on it much more than casual games), but the overall ARPU lift is clear to see in the graph above. However, kompu gacha as a monetization method isn’t evil: in fact, it’s one that players overwhelmingly enjoy. Kompu gacha mechanics are incredibly popular among players, who enjoy the thrill of possibly winning that grand prize. The use of these mechanics has often been viewed as a win-win for developers and players. Which begs the question:

Why was kompu gacha made illegal?

Kompu gacha is essentially an extension of the core “gacha” mechanic, which gives the player the ability to pay for a chance at a random reward. Random reward schedules area powerful driver for freemium game monetization, and this method is not unlike the “mystery box” mechanic commonly used by American social game companies. The reward is virtual, so this is not explicitly gambling, but the virtual items often have a virtual currency value that can be to a real-money amount. This method has escaped regulation in the past because players can never take their money out of the system, so whether they spent the money “gambling” in game or simply purchasing virtual goods was irrelevant.

However, while gacha itself is not being made illegal, kompu gacha compounded the issue because it has a much lower chance of a much higher payout. This made kompu gacha mechanics feel too close to gambling for Japan’s Consumer Affairs Agency, which banned the practice on May 18th. In addition, concerns were raised that the mechanic exposed gambling gameplay to children under the age of 18. There were two extreme, well publicized cases where a middle school boy spent $5,000 in a month, and one younger student spent $1,500 in three days. While GREE and DeNA have specifically enacted their own consumer protection agency to combat these issues, the government still decided to take additional action.

The kompu gacha scandal teaches two key lessons. First, players love real-money betting on both virtual and real rewards. And second, that social game companies should create a safe, self-regulated environment to prevent excess and restrict players under the age of 18.  Many social games’ similarities to real-money gambling mean that it should be given the same care and attention that gambling companies give their games. All reputable gambling companies, including Betable, are required by law to provide self-exclusion features for gambling addicts and vigilantly restrict players under the age of 18. As social casino gaming explodes onto Facebook and iOS, it’s increasingly important that game companies act responsibly, lest they succumb to a similar fate as kompu gacha.

This was also posted on the Betable Game Monetization Blog.

Last week, our SF Game Monetization meetup group hosted its second speaker event, Maximize Your Virtual Goods Revenue. We had over 150 people attend to socialize and watch three awesome speakers share what they’ve learned about game monetization. Check out each speaker’s presentation below.

(Author’s note: I can’t get the embedded Slideshare presentations doesn’t work. Please click on the title to go to each slide deck.)

Leveraging Branded Virtual Goods, by YuChiang Cheng – Founder & CEO of WGT

YuChiang Cheng is the co-founder of WGT (World Golf Tour), the #1 online golf game with a community of millions of online players, making it the largest golf website in the world. Prior to WGT, YuChiang served on the executive team at WagerWorks, launching Virgin Games, World Poker Tour and Hard Rock Casino. WagerWorks was acquired by IGT for $90 million in 2005.

In his presentation, YuChiang shared the pros and cons of working with large, established brands and licensing their IP for your game. This is a great primer for anyone looking into IP for your game so that you can maximize your return on investment, negotiate appropriately and avoid the potential pitfalls of a licensing deal.

Best Practices for Maximizing Revenue in Free-to-Play Games, by Josh Burns – Associate Director, Products at 6Waves

Josh is a Associate Director, Products for 6waves, the largest global publisher of independent games on Facebook, iOS, and Android. Josh has worked with developers on more than 50+ games across Facebook, iOS, and Android to provide game advisory, including Kingdoms of Camelot, Ravenwood Fair and Mall World. Prior to joining 6waves in early 2010, Josh held a hybrid market research, analytics and product management role at Electronic Arts.

In his talk, Josh shared his learnings from working with some of the top social games of the last 5 years on their monetization and virality strategies. With 50 slides and 11 Best Practices, this deck is a great playbook of tactics for any free-to-play game.

Color of Money (Monetization of Emotion), by Max Skibinsky – Founder of Hive7 (Sold to Playdom), Founder of Inporia

Max Skibinsky is serial entrepreneur, angel investor & start-up mentor for past 17 years in Silicon Valley. He bootstrapped his first consulting startup over decade ago working with clients such as Netscape, AOL, and Electronic Arts. He founded Hive7, one of the very first social gaming companies, which produced first Facebook MMOG Knighthood that grew over 6 million players. In 2010 Hive7 was sold to Playdom/Disney. Most recently, Max co-founded mobile e-commerce startup Inporia that secured investments from Y-Combinator, Ron Conway, NEA, Clearstone & 500 Startups.

Max’s presentation, Color of Money, talks about the psychology behind game monetization and what really drives the user’s intent to purchase. When a player’s emotions are involved (such as their investment in a character, or their desire for revenge against a foe), they have a much stronger incentive to pay.

This was originally posted on the Betable blog.

Gaming culture has a problem and that problem has a lot to do with gamers themselves.  To be clear, I’m not talking about all gamers but rather a subset of gamers whose antisocial behaviour and habits drive people away from gaming.  Analysts at Piper Jaffray recently conducted a survey that found nearly 66% of high school students surveyed across the US claimed they were losing interest in traditional videogames with slightly over 66% stating they were interested in social, mobile games which was an increase from 34% who answered the same question the year prior.  Gaming as we know it is changing for a variety of reasons and one of those reasons is gamers have chosen to turn on each other as well as the people who make the videogames they play.  While gaming culture tries to evolve and leave the primordial seas, certain gamers are busy running along the shore with sharpened sticks trying to force us all back in.

The problem lies with the internet and the anonymity it affords its users.  This effect certainly isn’t limited to just gaming circles but as gamers tend to be a largely wired group of individuals the impact is pronounced.  Gaming has always had a social side but over the decades that’s changed, and you could certainly argue, not for the better.  Back in the 80’s and 90’s, gamers would flock to arcades or journey to friend’s houses to partake in the hottest, latest releases.  To illustrate how it’s changed, imagine four friends over for an afternoon session of GoldenEye sitting in their family den.  Now imagine one of those children lets loose with a barrage of profanity laced, racist, homophobic rants aimed at his fellow gamers.  Or imagine someone’s little sister is also invited to play and subjected to a stream of masturbation and rape jokes.  There’s a very good chance that the child would simply never be invited back for another GoldenEye marathon.  There’s also a chance that little Jimmy’s mother, having overheard the obscene rant would never allow that child in her house ever again and would make a quick phone call to inform the offending child’s parents of their unacceptable behaviour.

This type of antisocial behaviour infects network gaming and social interactions across the internet and therein lies the difference between gaming culture now and gaming culture then.  There are few, if any, social repercussions in gaming today and the impact of these behaviours eats at the fun factor of gaming for a large number of gamers, children and adult alike.  It doesn’t matter if you’re looking to game socially on your console or if you’re looking to partake in a general gaming discussion on the internet, odds are your experience will be sullied by another gamer hiding behind their internet pseudonym.

Researchers refer to this as “toxic disinhibition”.  The anonymity the internet and online gaming networks offers often results in the complete abandonment of social restrictions that would generally be present in face to face interactions such as in the days when we gamed locally with other people in the room.  The result of this “trolling” is we see more and more gamers being turned off of gaming, or seeing their enjoyment of games lessened, thus inhibiting the growth of gaming culture.  The impact of this online disinhibition also affects developers who can find themselves loathe to engage their own fan base for fear of fanboy backlash through internet flaming.

Recently, gamers made headlines for their disproportionate backlash against Mass Effect 3 developer Bioware.  The actions of certain gamers painted all gamers as whiney, entitled children prone to screaming fits when denied their pacifier.  Bioware found itself facing a FTC complaint while its writers and staff were targets of hate campaigns and death threats as some found the end of their latest game offering to be unsatisfactory.  Other gamers and non-gamers alike shook their collective heads in disbelief.  Blizzard also suffered a ridiculous backlash from gamers when screenshots of their now released Diablo 3 title were deemed “too bright” by some prior to the game’s launch, prompting Blizzard to mock the users by releasing screenshots containing unicorns shooting rainbows from their posteriors.  While Blizzard used the experience to have a bit of fun, the example illustrates a growing trend among gamers to instantaneously and viciously attack developers and other gamers alike for even perceived slights and as a whole, the gaming community becomes a less inviting place.

The online disinhibition effect certainly isn’t limited to gaming forums either as the development community itself isn’t immune from unprofessional behaviour.  I’ve seen my own personal blog postings regarding my development experiences targeted by other developers leveling harsh and often unfair criticisms.  For example, I’ve had a developer lambast the simply inclusion of our company logo on a splash page because “no one cares about your company”.  I’ve even had a local developer I didn’t know and had never met criticize my company online for the slight of not consulting with their group prior to launching our first game.  This type of challenging behaviour is far more likely to be witnessed online than in face to face interactions or official business communication and unfortunately it is becoming more prevalent.

They say in general you need a thick skin to blog but backlash I received from a recent blog post made me question the value of blogging my own experiences as a developer.  I posted a personal blog listing some of the complete, all in one game engines available that may be of interest to independent developers.  While researching game engines for my company I would have found such a blog useful as I looked for a game engine that offered features I required, such as Android and iOS porting and clearly the blog was not meant as an in depth review piece.  As I had not the opportunity to try each engine I listed, I made sure to note that where I was unfamiliar with the engine I was simply relaying information and opinions from various reviews I had come across and I provided links to each product so users could conduct further research.  Rather than promote a thoughtful discussion on the merits of various game engines as I had intended or to provide a starting point for further research, the resulting comments were almost all attacks against myself personally and my attempt to inform other indie developers.

The comments included people calling me a liar, posters comparing my blog to vulgar activities, writers incensed that I didn’t whole heartedly endorse their particular favorite engine.  I even read claims that I was intentionally trying to harm product reputations despite the fact I noted these opinions were sometimes not even mine but were simply being passed along when I lacked particular knowledge of the product being discussed.  I was frankly shocked by the lack of decorum I witnessed in response to a personal blog intended to simply inform and facilitate further research, and if other developers hadn’t contacted me directly to offer their support (with one commenting he would have done it publicly if not afraid of being “flamed” himself) I most likely would have never written another blog regarding my game development experiences.  This general lack of professionalism in a workplace environment would never be tolerated.  Indeed, when gamers and developers are afraid to share ideas due to fear of reprisal it’s time to take a hard look at the current situation and what repercussions this could have to our industry as a whole.  As a community, this type of behaviour should not be allowed to propagate.  I’ve been subjected to all manner of hate mail and threats from casual gamers and stalking fanboys alike over the years writing opinion pieces regarding the games industry, however the lack of professionalism I’ve witnessed since becoming a developer myself truly surprised me.

Gaming culture is suffering due to experiences like this, due to experiences like those Bioware recently endured and due to the ongoing profane, racist and homophobic behaviour tolerated every day in online gaming matches and in internet gaming forums.  The anonymity of the internet mixed with complacency among gamers and developers has led to this situation and the associated cyberbullying that goes along with it but as the genie is out of the bottle with regards to the internet, there is little that we can do to curb its impact.  The removal of anonymity in online gaming by the companies that operate these networks could potentially result in fewer incidents as people are less inclined to act in socially unacceptable manners when their real names and locations are attached to their actions, however this system would still rely on reporting tools that already exist are underutilized by the majority of gamers.  Most prefer to simply ignore the problem, and this does nothing to stem the rise of anti-social behaviour in the gaming community.

As more teens are turning towards social gaming where they can exercise more direct control over their social interactions through use of things like Facebook friend lists, as more potential gamers are turned off by what they see of gamers in the news and more core gamers turn away from online gaming and game forums based on the sliding social environment, today’s gaming culture must change or it will face decline.  We’re already seeing traditional game sales slide as gamers look elsewhere and a shift towards mobile games is evident.  Partial blame falls on gamers themselves for creating and tolerating an increasingly toxic game culture that runs contrary to the social spirit that videogames created for many of us while gaming in the 80’s and 90’s, and even some developers themselves are letting professionalism standards slump in their online communications which itself is the start of a slippery slope.  We can never go back to the way gaming was, but we can shape the future of gaming culture for the better by being conscious of where it went wrong and why.

A Brief History of Freemium

Take away the freemium model and you’re left with users having to pay for games up front. With traditional disk-based media that worked, the barrier to entry meant that there were relatively few titles on sale so it was possible to get a game noticed given a decent advertising push and by word of mouth – and that meant publishers could afford decent budgets and take a few risks. The business model wasn’t perfect, but it sufficed. Innovation wasn’t always top priority, but the quality bar was fairly consistent.

Fast forward to the age of downloads, in particular the AppStore, and the barrier to entry for developers was suddenly much lower – almost anyone with a computer and a compiler could release a game. Initially this seemed like a good thing, there was much excitement about “indie gaming” and a few notable success stories, but soon the market was flooded and developers began undercutting each other on price in order to get sales.

This process, commonly dubbed “the race to the bottom”, now seems to have run its course, with the majority of games now in the $1-2 bracket, and that has warped the general perception of value. Paying $5 for a game may have seemed cheap once but now looks expensive against the backdrop of bargain bucket titles – despite the fact that people will happily fork out more than that for a latte and a sandwich. As a result it has become incredibly risky to invest in making a high quality game for the mobile and tablet market. Even if your $5+ game is awesome, the chances of enough people finding it and paying for it are slim. They’re more likely to download half a dozen separate dollar titles and conclude that all mobile games are rubbish.

That’s where freemium enters the frame. If you can give your game away for free there’s nothing (bar the initial download) to stop people trying it out – sure, the market is still flooded with choice, but you’ve improved your chances dramatically. Once you’ve got people hooked on your game, then you can start billing them for items, and make your money that way instead – and because you’ve already hooked people in you can charge them a lot more than the minimum app price that people have come to expect for paid apps. Recently we’ve seen a few games exploit this system to make large sums of money.

So what’s the problem?

Notice I used the word “exploit” in the last sentence? Well, that’s the problem with freemium at the moment. Games don’t simply draw you in and then ask for a single payment to continue playing; they attempt to sell you a whole plethora of in-game items, often using devious means that encourage addictive behaviour and disguise the true cost. A while back I played a game called Paradise Island on Android that was a perfect example; you could buy special buildings for your island, but the way you did so involved so many different forms of currency along the way that it wasn’t immediately obvious what the cost would be. I once sat down and calculated that the true cost of a single building in their Halloween pack was a staggering $50.

It’s this addiction-feeding style of game which I believe has given freemium such a bad name. After all, if you look back to the era when magazine cover-disks were the norm you realise that freemium has been with us in spirit for decades, even if the buzzword hasn’t.

Can the problem be fixed?

I think we’re beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel. Some recent games have started to implement less aggressive forms of in-app purchasing – for example Triple Town works by limiting the free version to a fixed number of ‘turns’ per day, and gives you the option to purchase unlimited turns for a fixed fee. It still has the option to buy items to essentially cheat your way to victory, but at least you can opt out of that and make a one off payment. It’s a step in the right direction.

Perhaps more importantly though, the Japanese courts have just stepped in to ban the “kompu gacha” mechanic, whereby players pay a small fee for the chance of unlocking a rare item (in essence, a lottery), but can only do so after unlocking a whole set of other items more common items through the same mechanic. It’s only one specific mechanic that they’ve banned, and it’s only the tip of the iceberg, but the case has drawn a lot of attention from the press over the last few days, and looks like it might be the tipping point that wakes regulatory bodies, and players themselves, up to the devious way in which they’ve been manipulated.

Nice Freemium

Much as the makers of yoghurt products keep telling us there “bad bacteria” and “good bacteria”, I believe there can also be “evil freemium” and “nice freemium”. The evil freemium games are built purely to extort money from their players, while nice freemium are good honest fun, that just happens to come in a freemium package.

I doubt we’ve seen the back of evil freemium just yet, but rather than despair at the state of the freemium market, why not try making your own game freemium – just make sure it’s nice freemium.

I also really love having a cerabal cortex, so I left the studio life and learned biz magic.

I make a really good living in biz, I LOVE doing what I do now; I get to work with amazing people, I get to talk to amazing people. For the love of god, I spoke to the creator of Fruit Ninja tonight to have “chat”. How cool is that? Dude totally rocks btw.

My gig allows me to talk to my heroes. Seriously, I love playing video games that much.

The most common thing people say to me is “….wow, you are a business guy and you love playing video games?”

When I stepped out of the studio, I made myself the pledge that I would only work on titles that touched me deeply. I would only work on games that I personally wanted to play. I would be way richer if I just kissed ass and decided to suck it up for the lord, god, almighty dollar!

If I do say so myself, I was pretty decent on the creative side of things too, but to be brutally honest; I was running a studio that sucked at business.

So one day I stopped. One day I decided that I would step out of the studio. I put a 22 year old in charge of it and for 7 mobile games -feature phones- he was shit. Then he just flipped the page and was brilliant.

Recently, I met a guy called Jason Brice. He sent me @ messages constantly, he was really cool and then one day I seen the maps he made in an FPS.

OMFG

They were great!

I looked at them -I hated the crane on the harbor map- BUT I loved the game itself.

Jason was creating the game that I wanted to play.

His view was that there were way too many layers between the player and AK47′ing another guy in the face.

He had me at “hello”.

So as I play this game, I talk about it, I reveal things about it and then I talk about it again.

Simply put, THIS IS GAMING!

I listen to an average of 14 game pitches a week, this was one of the first game pitches that I have seen that melted my resolve. Here I thought that I knew everything and these noobz are teaching me how to love video gaming again.

I want to be fair, I want to be honest and I do not want to be a prick.

BUT I am sick of the modern day FPS titles or as I like to call them “We just came up with another feature that allows us to get you to buy another sequel”………….. ok that is a long title.

I am sick that on NPD day that we all shiver with anticipation at how many people bought our game. Here is a novel fucking idea, I am sick with anticipation at the thought of how many people enjoyed our game.

The game is ReKoil BTW. BUY IT PLUX

I am my most vulnerable when I am sitting in front of a metrics screen looking at the numbers, asking, wanting, no begging video gamers to like my title.

That is weak sauce, I want them to like me. I want them, no I crave that they like me!

It is the vulnerable essence of every video game maker. It is that vulnerability that allows me to exist.

This very insecurity, allows me to make games that I want to play, this insecurity allows Jason and the team to jump off a cliff and trust the fact that someone on the team will catch him.

Guess what? When someone that you consider a blood friend jumps off a cliff; you always catch them.

I am proud of what we are making today, I love that we are participating in the conversation! Will we beat Black-Op’s 2? God no! Their budget is 60X what people say that we are worth, but we will be participating in the conversation.

We are basically fighting the good fight, we are throwing punches and getting the shit kicked out of us. BUT we are Marty McFly and we will knock Biff the fuck out.

Am I desperate? FUCK YEAH!

Just tonight I sent this email:

From: Kevin Dent [mailto:kevin@XXX.XXXX]
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2012 8:50 PM
To: ‘Andy McNamara’
Subject: Front cover

Hi Andy,

Who do I have to screw to get the front cover for ReKoil?

Cheers,

Kevin

As of today, we are not on Kickstarter, we are totally self-funded and we are totally throwing ourselves under the bus in an attempted to make a better game.

Let me be clear, Andy is an amazing person and I love him dearly. He is smart, contiencious and endearing. BUT Game Informer is owned by Game Stop and those dudes are hardcore publisher fuckers, there is zero chance of us getting the cover.

There is no way that, me, you or your freak parents will get us on the front cover of GI and nor should it. Brilliant games get on there 12 a year at least.

That said, it was worth a shot, we are living in the era of the indie.

There has been so many amazing titles in the last twelve months made by people with way more talent than me.

I rejoice at the next gen of game creators.

I am humbed by them.

But the truth is, that Jason Brice, asked me to jump off a cliff and I made the leap.

Who will catch me?

Kevin

The lizard brain is not merely a concept. It’s real, and it’s living on the top of your spine, fighting for your survival. But, of course, survival and success are not the same thing. The lizard brain is the reason you’re afraid, the reason you don’t do all the art you can, the reason you don’t ship when you can. The lizard brain is the source of the resistance.”
― Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

I’ve adapted a guest post I wrote over at becoming minimalist to speak more to game development. Thanks to Joshua Becker for the opportunity to write for his blog and his help with the original post.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to single tasking, focus and distractions in my professional and personal life. Here is what I believe to be the four biggest factors contributing to distracting us from doing great creative work. By the way “creative work” to me means art, code, design, music you name it. Many facets and roles in gamedev are creative, perhaps not at first glance, but any creative problem solving applies, in my humble opinion.

#1 We’re distracted by notifications
Everyone is “always on”. We have our email open all day and internal instant messaging clients humming – not to mention the external social networks and IM chats. Instant notifications are being pushed from everywhere to wherever we are at the moment, sitting at our desktops or walking about with our phones. Most of us are on digital leashes of some kind even when we don’t need to be. We’re in a state of constant multiple deliverables or actionable tasks as well as completely open to distractions. How do we get anything done?

Some studies even propose that people can be addicted to the micro-endorphin rush we get when we get an email or a tweet. That’s why we can’t stop checking our phones when we’re away from work or even when we’re driving. Most folks agree that these short bursts of interruptions are changing our brains.

Can you read through this entire 1500 hundred word post without a notification going off?

#2 We’re distracted by geography
Office geography has the entire team sitting in cube farms. These close-knit cubes are designed to “enhance communication.” For example, artists can quickly look over the half-wall and ask a programmer a question. This is great for immediate problem solving, however, the creative tasks we perform require dedicated and focused work in order to be fully realized. The constant interruptions hinder our productivity. What’s the tradeoff? Does the immediate communication outweigh the lack of focus?

Interruptions are hurting productivity, not helping it.

#3 We can’t focus
In this land of distractions, how do we concentrate long enough on a creative task to produce quality? Mental context switching is hard to quantify as there are so many variables. However, I have heard that switching between 3 tasks costs a person 40% of their available work time. You can just throw (at least) one of those tasks out the window, I hope it wasn’t important.

Does your company have a lot of meetings? Meetings in the middle of the day can be a drastic productivity and creativity killer.

Multi-tasking just doesn’t work. Is there a “sweet spot” in your workday that you can work uninterrupted for more than an hour on a single task?

#4 We’re comfortable and afraid
Our lizard brains want us to be stuck in a rut. Safety is the Lizard Brain’s primary objective. Safe is free of conflicts and challenges. Safe is the same thing over and over again. Safe is not standing out in the crowd. Safe, as the lizard brain defines it, is not good for your creativity and thereby the projects you work on.

Image courtesy of Alex Moore

Here are some of the things that I’m using or trying out to combat the lizard brain, distractions and multi-tasking.

Control your time.
Batch processing your email can be effective. Once at the beginning of the day and again at the end. This is more efficient than shifting to outlook with each new notification and processing each single email. If you think that is too long to be out of contact, do the email dance for 10 minutes every two hours. Or whatever works for you, just try to keep the notifications off. If there truly is an emergency you will know, someone will come find you.

Turn off your work IM. Same rules as above. Maybe you’re available and on IM only in the afternoon. Or set your status to do not disturb and teach people politely what that means. Try things and see how they work for you.

Do one thing at a time. Make a list of the 3 or 5 most important things for that day. Do them as early in the day as you can. You’ll accomplish the “big things” early and everything else after that is icing on the cake.

All of this can be tricky at first if your culture wants you to respond immediately, but I think it pays off in the end. You have more uninterrupted time to do something good. Talk to your manager if you need to before implementing a radical change.

Have the good kind of meetings.
The morning standup with your team is probably the best type of meeting. It’s early, not in the middle of the day. Everyone says what they are working on, if anything is blocking them and what they’ll do next. Preferably everyone stands. It is called a stand up after all. This is a bold choice, but decline any meeting that you think is a waste of time. Reply that you can’t make it and ask for a recap. Meeting Agendas and Recaps are such a great tool for meetings, we seem to forget about them.

The Agenda: When booking the meeting provide a list of what topics to discuss, who is responsible for talking for each topic and a guesstimate on how long they’ll have to talk. Send the agenda out a couple of days beforehand and make it known that the attendees are expected to be prepared. Simon Cooke suggests formulating the agenda as questions to get people thinking and vested.

During the meeting, stick to the schedule. Get in, do good stuff, get out.

The Recap: briefly state what was discussed.

Here’s a sample meeting agenda:

Todays Date, Galactic Domination Meeting Agenda

• Overview, Palpatine, 15 minutes
• Death Star #2 construction status, Tarkin, 5 minutes
• Various disturbances in the force, Vader, 10 minutes

And the recap:

Overview, Palpatine, 15 minutes

Squash rebellion by destroying secret base.

Eliminate Galactic Senate via political maneuvering.

Death Star #2 construction status, Tarkin, 5 minutes

We fixed the exhaust port / proton torpedo bug

Various disturbances in the force, Vader, 10 minutes

Obi-Wan is dead, but no one is sure why he just disappeared.

Follow up on plan to turn Son of Skywalker to the dark side.

Wait.
Can you wait a while to talk to the artist? Look at him, he has his headphones on (game developer code for “Do Not Disturb”) and is obviously “in the zone” sculpting in the 3D modeling application with a ton of reference images on the other monitor. Don’t interrupt him asking for his hours spent this week on his tasks. Let him do his job. That User Interface Engineer who’s sliding her chair back and forth from her development kit and her two-screen computer rig? She’s fixing a bug in the UI on her computer, testing it on the kit, and she’s obviously busy. Do not walk over and ask her how it’s going right now. Let her do her job. Your opportunity to ask your question will come… but you may need to wait your turn to ask it.

Get people on board.
Use team signals to tell others “do not disturb.” I’ve seen flags put up by artists to denote when they are in the zone and to please come back later. I’ve also seen tech teams have one team member wear a hat signaling that he/she is the person on call for help that day. Find a way of signaling people and teach them to recognize and respect it. Work it out with your team so you can be efficient together.

Protect your industry’s most valuable asset.
The most valuable asset any company has are its people. People make the art, tech and design of a game. They support the game or the other people making the games. There are certain parts of the day when creativity runs wild and other parts of the day that are more suitable for less creative tasks. Do what you can to help reduce roadblocks and ask your Manager for support.

I certainly don’t have all the answers. But I’m trying to communicate with one person at a time, handle one problem at a time, and work on one idea at a time. All as a part of my effort to bring the principles of minimalism, simplicity and single tasking into my personal and professional life. I’d love to hear your thoughts on these topics.

Currently I’m writing the story for the game Connectorium. It’ll be the second story I’m writing in full, after co-writing the Revival short film (I’m not counting the one or two short stories here and there, and a failed attempt at writing a fantasy novel after watching the first Lord of the Rings film. Who didn’t do that, right?). Here are just a collection of random thoughts, observations, and experiences about the process. Obviously these are not the opinions of an expert; I’m merely hoping it opens up the way for a conversation and invites thoughts from you.

From Abstraction to Realization

This is something that is universal to the creative process. You begin with an empty canvas. Maybe a concept that is completely abstract and vague. Then with every sentence, with every stroke of a brush, with every added note, or with every line of code, you bring that abstraction one step closer to existence (and also the number of possibilities of what that end product will be reduces with every step). But there is a key thing I have realized: this is a two way process. The original idea, or concept affects what you create. But what you create also affects the idea over time. To a point where the final product may in no way resemble the original idea. I think this a very important part of the creative process: the organic nature of it.

As far as a story goes, that initial concept and idea can be many different things. Maybe it’s a particular character, or a specific plot point. Maybe it’s a particular setting. Maybe it’s a mechanic in the game you are designing. Either way, it’s important to keep in mind that your completed story may be nothing like what you had initially conceived. And that’s OK. In fact it’s more than OK. It’s usually a good thing.

Working Backwards

When I first started working on Connectorium, I had a general idea for the story. The game is about systems and connections, so the story was going to be about a little girl who wakes up one morning to a world where all connections have gone missing. Her adventure would be about her meeting various characters, helping them restore the missing connections, and solving the mystery. For some time though, I stalled fleshing out the story more. Eventually I asked myself, why am I wasting time? Why don’t I just write the story? And it occurred to me: it’s because I didn’t know how it’s going to end.

So one morning I decided to take my iPad, go to a quiet park, and not come back home until I have figured out how the story will end. It took a couple of hours, but eventually I came up with an idea, quite suddenly really. I had a big smile on my face right at that moment, because I knew I could start writing the story now.

Maybe this is more a function of the kinds of story that I enjoy and like to write, but I find that I really need to know the ending early on. Everything in the plot, the characters, the gameplay in the case of a game, is pushing the audience towards that ending. It’s what keeps the story coherent to me.

Characters or Plot

One of my favorite writers, Isaac Asimov, is often criticized for having somewhat uninteresting and 2D characters. Nevertheless he is an amazing story teller.

But one can’t argue that the best of stories combine a great plot, with believable and great characters. What I have noticed is that personally I’m much more interested and focused on the plot. So I always need to be conscious of the “flatness” of my characters. For that reason, after I have written the initial draft of the story, I’ll do an iteration where I’ll focus specifically on each character, writing more back story, fixing the dialog, descriptions, and so on, of course adjusting the plot where necessary. I can imagine the reverse can work just as well: building a detailed and interesting character, and developing the story around that character (or characters).

Dialog, Dialog, Dialog

For me, probably the hardest part of writing a story is the dialog. Not only is it really hard to write a believable, natural, and flowing conversation between two or more characters, it’s even harder to have all your characters not sound exactly the same! Exactly like…you!

More than anything, it just requires time, and rewrites to improve this. It is also important to have back stories for characters, even if none of it is ever revealed to the audience. Where do they come from? What do they do? What do they eat? What was their childhood like? What are their relationships like? What is their motivation? All of these impact how a character speaks, how they would react to a situation, and how they’d express themselves.

Another thing that has helped me is trying to picture a real life person acting out that character. Maybe someone you know, or an actor. Putting a face and voice to a line of dialog goes a long way to help you see if it’s the right fit. Sometimes reading it out loud in the voice that you think the character would be speaking in also helps here.

On the Subject of Games

I’ve been talking a lot about stories, and haven’t really talked much about games. Here is point I want to make which I can expect at least some to disagree with.

I feel that the gameplay must reinforce the story as much as possible. At the very least it shouldn’t contradict it, because that takes you out of the immersion that you might otherwise have. How often do you run around in a game, killing various things, and collecting numerous items, stats, etc, just to be reminded by a cut scene that you’re actually trying to resolve a much greater conflict.

And here is another (potentially less popular) thought. Given that there are practically infinite possible stories, why is it that a good percentage of games, especially those with plots and characters, include combat in some form as their core mechanic? Is it that we are simply avoiding stories where combat isn’t an integral component? Or are we throwing in combat into the mix, regardless of whether or not it reinforces the story?

Just a thought. Would love to hear yours.

Game Design

Game design is always about looking back before looking forward. Sometimes this is done consciously, other times it is done unconsciously, but it always happens. Every great new idea is built on improving an one or more old ideas, and the best game designers are well aware of this. One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone says to me “don’t reinvent the wheel”, which they often quickly regret saying as I begin to lecture them on how if no-one ever reinvented the wheel we would never have tyres, suspension, alignments, treading, etc. All things which have made the wheel more efficient, smoother and just generally better.

A great design for a reinvented wheel

But for a wheel to be reinvented, one must start with a wheel to begin with, and that is what we are always doing in the games industry. A good example is the recently successful iOS game, Jetpack Joyride, from HalfBrick studios. An excellent game, and quite obviously modelled off of those Amiga/Commodore-era “don’t touch the sides of the tunnel with your helicopter” games. They took that solid idea, and evolved it with pickups, achievements, special gear you can earn, etc, and made a great game out of it. They reinvented the wheel and it worked.

An example screen from Jetpack Joyride

Does it Always Work?

No, it doesn’t always work. Some past ideas weren’t that great, let’s be honest. But some have not only been ridiculously successful, but have also done the unthinkable and withstood the test of time. Two good examples in relatively different genres are Quake 3: Arena (1999) and Diablo II (2000). There are many more, of course, but these are my case studies for this particular article.

Well over a decade on and these two games are still being played with distinct regularity, are favourites at private LAN parties and have graphics which still stack up fairly well against their more modern competitors. Why is this and what can modern game developers do to make a game that withstands the test of time so well? The answer lies in how the button is pressed.

…The Button?

I mean this metaphorically, of course. But let me explain with a story. In my day job, I am quite involved in the gambling industry, and as such am exposed to many new products before they hit the market. One such product came about which was a “re-launch” (as it were) of the old-style “one-armed bandit” poker machines of yesteryear, which fell out of use in Australia decades ago.

What the pokies used to look like

In an attempt to latch onto the “retro rush” that seems to be going on… Well… Everywhere, people thought that re-releasing a classic-style one-armed bandit machine would inspire people’s nostalgia and that they would be a viable new product. I was quite excited when I heard the news as I remember my grandfather having one under his house back in the 80s and I loved the feel of the flywheel revving up as I pulled down the lever. I loved seeing it kick the spinners into gear and watching all of the colourful fruits lock into place on the wheeled display.

Needless to say, when the first units came into the test room, I was excited to feel that little piece of nostalgia again. The machines certainly looked the same, if not a bit more modern. The digital displays had even been replaced by the classic wheels with the printed artwork on them. It was in test mode and ready to play, so I grabbed the lever and pulled. The wheels started spinning and the lights started flashing, but it was all wrong. It felt so wrong that I thought perhaps the machine was broken… It wasn’t, of course, it worked perfectly well. But the machine was no longer clockwork, obviously, and the lever arm was simply a spring-loaded arm which pressed a small button when it was fully depressed. There was no sense of “winding” the machine up. No sense of having some sort of influence over the device and no sense of being connected to its operation in any way. It was a jarring sensation of being completely disconnected. What was once – for lack of a better term – an intimate interaction experience had now become somewhat cold, clinical and disconnected.

I voiced my concerns at this, and was – of course – laughed off. I even went so far as to suggest they could build a small flywheel mechanism into the arm that has no functional purpose other than generating that “feel” when you pull the lever. They ignored my counsel and released the product anyway. Needless to say, it was very unpopular and never really took off. The official reasoning was that “people don’t like the ‘retro thing’ in gambling”.

How is it Relevant to Video Games?

How does this relate to video games such as Quake 3 Arena and Diablo 2? Well, think of that “button” as being the interaction between the player and the game. It has to feel good, just like the poker machine arm. There are things you can do to the button to make it feel better, and be more intimate, or there are things you can do to the button to make the user feel disconnected from the machine, and they both come down to a deep level of design.

When beginning a game project, try to describe the game in a short, concise sentence. Once you’ve got that sentence, every single thing you add to the game which complies with that sentence will make the game “cleaner” to play, but the more you stray from that sentence, the more disjointed it will seem.

Quake 3 Arena:

Take Quake 3 Arena as the first example. It can easily be described as “Fast-paced, sci-fi, multiplayer deathmatching” and nothing else. The reason that game was so popular for so long, was twofold. Firstly, it was built on a very beautifully made engine made by John Carmack, which was powerful enough to drive MANY other games for the next decade (RTCW, Jedi Academy, Call of Duty, etc) and secondly, it followed a clean design based on a simple concept which could be summed up in that one sentence. Every aspect of the game conformed to it. There was nothing confusing, or particularly intricate about it. When you played it, you were immersed in the game. No part of it “fought” against you or detached you from the experience. You had four movement buttons, a jump button and a shoot button. A control system which could be replicated on a classic GameBoy. The player movement was swift, smooth, consistent. The game never slowed down, or became badly paced at any point, yet still gave the user enough freedom to develop their own style of play and put it into the game.

Conversely, a later id Software game, Doom III, was not quite as smooth. The gameplay was slower and more disjointed. It was still a great game, yes, but things such as having to stop to punch numbers into a keypad or having to put down your weapon to pull out a torch disconnected the player from an otherwise immersive, cathartic experience.

Diablo II:

Diablo II is another fine example of this. Fans of the series will know that it has an incredible complex control system consisting of one button… Oh, yes, you can use the number buttons on the keyboard as well if you like, but there is essentially the left-click button and a couple of others which you use occasionally. The entire game is about as non-confrontational as you can get, and anyone can pick it up. It is also paced beautifully, with the first area being almost impossible to die in, yet still giving you enough of a sense of risk to keep you engaged and on your toes.

A typical scene from Diablo II

It had very simple multiplayer, a beautifully crafted procedural item and level system and enough replayability to ensure people would be able to play it for years, and indeed they did. Blizzard, in true Blizzard form, found all of the features of Diablo I that left the player feeling disconnected and removed or remodelled them, making a game which is clean, simple, elegant and extremely replayable. They followed a simple design sentence of “Explore, kill and loot while progressing character” and every aspect of the game reflects that. Nothing gets in your way, nothing slows the progress. There are no repetitive cut scenes or cloned combat encounters or scripted events, all of which can make a procedural game lag something awful. This “neatness” has ensured the game’s continuing success both in the single player and multiplayer worlds and place on game store shelves over a decade after it first was released.

So What are you Saying?

When designing a game, before doing anything else, describe what you want it to be in one concise sentence. After that, with every decision you make or feature you go to add, check to see if it fits neatly with that short description. If it strays too far out of that, or the description ends up being too long, you will end up with a convoluted game and the player will feel disconnected from it. Remember that games are a form of escapism, and the player should forget that there is even a keyboard or other controller between them and the game. The graphics help, yes. The story helps, yes. But it’s the FEEL of the game that will ensure a captive audience. It’s just like the one-armed bandit. The aim of the poker machine is to pull the lever and get the wheels spinning, but if you just focus on making the lever spin the wheels, people won’t play it. They need to enjoy the act of pulling the lever and pushing the button just as much as the result of that action on the screen.

Anyway, thanks for listening to my little rant :) I hope it helps to inspire all of you other game developers.

UDK

http://udk.com/

Most are familiar with the Unreal Development Kit.  It’s a proven engine that’s been used in a tonne of AAA titles, but how does it fare for indie developers?  The first thing you’ll notice with UDK is the learning curve.  It’s steep.  Developers I’ve spoken to have all expressed this same sentiment, and my own experiences with UDK left me feeling that UDK seemed needlessly complicated.  I had taken a few courses using the UDK in the past and while practice makes perfect, even when I became more familiar with UDK I found I simply didn’t like using it compared to other alternatives.  The second strike is the need to learn Unreal Script.  It’s a fairly straight forward language in my opinion however just that you need be confined to Unreal Script can take away from valuable development time when you’re starting off.

UDK is capable of delivering high quality graphics out of the box but it seems geared towards First Person Shooters (much like CryEngine).  I’ve heard some complain about the difficulties involved in trying to bend UDK to other genres.  FPS games developed with UDK also have a tendency to end up feeling like Unreal Tournament clones.  UDK now supports iOS development in addition to Windows but don’t expect to port your projects over to anything else.

UDK is free for non-commercial use.  Plan on selling your game and you’ll need to fork over $100 with no royalties to worry about until $50,000.  After that, expect to pay a 25% royalty, which when you consider IOS development and the 30% Apple takes, can certainly add up.  UDK is a bit of a sacred cow for some in the development community, but for indie developers it’s big, unwieldy and just limited in supported platforms.  If you’re looking to add your shooter to a saturated shooter market, UDK may work for you but I wouldn’t recommend for smaller teams of developers.

Notable title:  The Ball

Shiva3D

I’ve got the slides up online now, so even though you can’t hear my dulcet tones, you should be able to imagine Morgan Freeman narrating for you as you read the accompanying speaker notes. Except this should be a weird English/American Morgan Freeman, who isn’t half as sexy.

So what’s in the deck?

Learn a variety of battle-hardened tricks and tactics for building teams, keeping them running smoothly, and how to handle your team’s worst enemy: the panic of shipping a game.

Learn:

• How to keep your team together under crunch
• How to help teams not hate the producer, especially if their last one suuuuuuucked
• Avoid crunch entirely – and justify it with research
• Stop large teams across large companies from grinding to a halt where all your games – no matter how geographically disparate your studios are – end up shipping in lockstep
• Why you need meetings, scooters, or both
• Panic leads to blame, blame leads to anger, anger leads to the dark side…
• That our brains have really buggy code/design limitations
• What Sierra’s Carrot is, who invented it, and how amazingly well it works to ship on time, every time. (Warning: singular of data = anecdote).

This slide deck (with, theoretically, audio!* and better jokes than the ones in the speaker notes that I can’t remember because my forebrain was wiped by the adrenaline) should be available in the GDC Vault soon.

The Files

Download a zip file containing the slide deck (in PowerPoint format). Download the free PowerPoint Viewer here.

Next year? I’m thinking of going for the GDC “EGOT”, and doing a talk on game design and how your brain works. Probably called “Sticks and stickiness – Primal Game Design”.

*Note: Audio may have been processed and filtered by GDC staff to not actually sound like an English Morgan Freeman at all. It’s a conspiracy, I tell ya.

And time for a small apology… I’ve been meaning to write an entire series of follow up posts to my previous one on #AltDevBlogADay ($10,000 is the Magic Number), but I’ve not had the time – yet. But I do intend to fix that, so stay tuned.

Background

Let me start with some info on Pop Corny. Pop Corny was designed to be a simple and fun casual game, covering the need for short game session experiences that mobile phone games require.

I self funded, developed, published and initially launched the game as a paid application at the $0.99 tier. Later on, it switched to free and monetizing with IAPs, but bare with me for the details of this decision.

Below are some more technical details of the game:

• Development time: 8 months
• Number of developers: 1
• Outside contractors for sound and most graphics
• Build using a fork of Sylphis3D Game Engine
• Support of all iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices
• Source code (gamecode + game engine code excluding third party libraries):
  
-----------------------------------------
Language files blank comment code
-----------------------------------------
Lua 52 2631 1026 10415
C/C++ Header 77 1209 1111 3718
C++ 32 731 882 2552
XML 1 1 0 788
Python 9 170 136 630
Bourne Shell 13 70 167 284
Objective C 2 14 14 25
-----------------------------------------
SUM: 186 4826 3336 18412
-----------------------------------------

• Game code accounted for 5983 lines of the above LUA code
• The total source dataset reached up to 0.4 GB
• Resulting “compiled” dataset at 10MB
• Initial price $0.99 (50 days) then dropped to free
• Total sales in two months: ~150000
• IAP conversion rate: ~2.0%
• Ratings: 4.5/5 (from 600 ratings, 70% of which are 5 star)

Promotion

As I said the game was funded and published without any help from the outside. This easily translates to: no money for marketing. Therefore I had to find ways to make the best I could on the cheap. One of the major aids on that seemed to be the famous launch day.

Everyone developing on the AppStore will tell you that the launch day is one of the most important events in effectively publishing your game. You must do the best in your powers not to fail that day. And this is true. I had published 3 more applications on the AppStore prior to this game and the launch day will give you eye balls costing thousands of dollars for free. This is through the AppStore’s new releases list.

My approach was to combine that visibility with all the “social” publicity I could harvest, doing my best to leap as high as I could on the charts. Then possibly some game journalists would notice and write about it, thus keeping the fire burning. To do that I created a trailer video for the game and one week earlier I created an event on Facebook for the “unveiling of the video trailer”. I invited everyone I could and one week later (on January 31th) I presented the video. That day I also posted the video on every related forum I could. This caused some fuzz but mostly in Greece where most of my facebook friends live in.

The release day was set on February 3rd. I already had approval from Apple and I was already sending out promo codes to game journalists before that. For this I was carefully compiling a list of game review websites and journalists from early on the development cycle. I had these ordered by alexa ranking by review scores and game types. When I got the game approved by Apple, I send out all 40 promo codes I had available, and contacted 100 more without a promo code.

Early on the development cycle I took another big decision based on marketing. That was to support OpenFeint in addition to GameCenter. OpenFeint has its own top games, featured games and new releases, which can give some extra exposure to your new and unknown game. I decided that I needed that extra eyeballs, so I supported both social gaming networks.

In short what I did prior to the release day were these:

• Created a “coming soon” video trailer
• Created Facebook page and Twitter page for the game
• Organized a Facebook event for the unveiling of the game video
• Send out all 40 promo codes to game journalists (with all media packs, bells and whistles)
• Wrote posts in “new releases” parts of forums
• Prepared a cross promotion among my other apps
• Supported OpenFeint

Then all I had to do was wait for the launch day and the sweet success… or not…

Apple spilling the milk

With everything set and the game automatically scheduled to launch at the world’s AppStores on February 3rd, an unexpected nightmare started for me on February 2nd (since we live in a globe and in New Zealand it was already “tomorrow”). Of course I was viewing the New Zealand’s AppStore waiting for Pop Corny to appear, and it did. Oh! The Joy! After all these months of hard work it was there… taking its chance! Couldn’t be happier and more stressed at the same time… however the moments of joy ended shortly after I looked closer. Fear filled my heart when I noticed next to my game’s icon a release day of “Jan 31th”. I rushed to the new releases list like a maniac looking for Pop Corny which was nowhere to be found. What happened? Had the app gone live 3 days ago and I didn’t notice? Hardly… the app was not live on any other AppStore. I manually checked every other AppStore… not released…

AppStore entry showing
the wrong release day

I was optimistic, these distributed systems are slow to update and initially things like that might happen. However, Feb 3rd started to dawn in more countries and the same story was repeating. Pop Corny was appearing as a 3 days old app. 3 days when you launch on the AppStore is an eternity. I was out of the front page, before I even got the time to get on it. I tried to contact Apple through the support system but that is easier said than done.

It was then I realised how small and expendable I was. There is absolutely no way to solve a situation like this with a system that works by choosing among 15 nested problem categories before you finally get a text box to write down your problem. No way to resolve it with an one day round trip for getting a reply that was canned and had nothing to do with what I described. No way when you can’t -at least- follow up on the answer you get. I tried again and again for the next days by submitting from the start my problem rephrased in the best way I would… fail.

It was almost 7pm US time when auto-magicaly the release day of Pop Corny rolled to the correct Feb 3rd on all AppStores. However it was too late. Some AppStores were about to go on Feb 5th by then. The icing on the cake however was the reply to my last plea at Apple that told me that they don’t see any problem with the date as it is Feb 3rd. The irony!

The problem also managed to mess up OpenFeint’s releases system. OpenFeint, once you have the app approved, scans the AppStore to see when your game releases. I guess that was the reason Pop Corny didn’t got on OpenFeint’s lists. One week later I contacted them about the problem and they said that somehow the system skipped my app, and that they had to add it manually. They couldn’t find an explanation, but I could…

This way I had zero exposure from the AppStore new releases, resulting in next to zero sales. It was a disaster. Apple should really make up to me for this someday by featuring it for a day or two… I can wait.

Getting a grip and keep walking

The above disaster affected all the AppStores in the world. It resulted in Pop Corny selling 10 units on release day in the US. I know crap-ware that were released the same day and sold more (based on their top paid ranking). It was so, because no one knew of my new released game.

In Greece, however, it was another story. Here is most of my “social network”. People knew about Pop Corny and they were expecting it. Several major local iPhone blogs wrote about it and the game took off. In less than 24 hours Pop Corny was number one top paid application. That was among all applications, not just games. 5 stars reviews started coming and it was heaven. A few days at the top and it was also on the local TV media.

This contrast between Greece and all other countries was to me a great illustration of how publicity is king. You must bring your game in front of the players face. And that is hard. It is the hardest part for a small developer. No one will look at you when you are small. Getting big seems like a self fulfilling prophecy.

From the 150 emails I send to reviewers I only got replies from 10 people. 8 of them kindly suggested I pay some fee and the rest two just told me that they were too busy to bother. By monitoring the downloads on the media pack I could see that just two of them bothered to download it. It is clear that something is wrong here. It seems that the only way to get covered these days is through dollars.

Being the number one top paid application in Greece translates to 200 sales a day (yes it is a small store). This is 100 euros a day after Apple’s cut. Does not sound that bad, but given the universal decay law of the AppStore (I will talk about it next), it was not enough. Meanwhile on all other AppStores the app was doing poorly.

I knew that it was out of my reach to reverse this situation, so I decided to step back, stop desperately trying to push it, and focus on fixing some bugs, implement some new features until the day the game would go free. Going free was in my mind since the development days. The game was actually designed to work as a free game from development day one but the final decision to go paid was taken a few days before the release.

I saw this as a second chance. My means of getting more eyeballs on the game. But I knew that going free is not easy. It is a whole different arena. Going free will give you a big sales boost mainly because of applications like AppShoper. These kind of apps scan the AppStore every day and report to its users which apps has gone free, resulting in many sales. However many is not enough when competing with free applications. You need LOTS more.

There are services out there like OpenFeint’s “Free Game Of The Day” that provide you with the extra visibility you need for the day you go free. They feature one game every day, and promote it through their website and their iPhone app. I contacted them, they liked the game and I took the first slot that was available, that happened to be Thursday, Match 22nd (yeap the day Angry Birds Space came out… no fear!). They are very well organized and the process of submitting artwork was very streamlined and efficient. I submitted the appropriate banners and texts and there was nothing more left to do but wait for the day.

The day came and Pop Corny became free. The effect of this promotion was overwhelming. Pop Corny started to climb the charts all over the world at incredible speeds. It was not much later that it was ranking in the top 10 of more than 20 AppStores, and being number one of its category in 10 AppStores.

At startup the game checks for a .plist file on my server that contains possible news to present to the user. This allowed me to measure the rate of downloads in realtime. It reached a whopping 48 downloads/min. A few hours in the promotion 148apps.com featured it and even more downloads happened. This continued for the whole day (which is actually 48 hours to cover all the globe) and I had the opportunity to correlate the spikes I saw on the news file consumption with mentions on twitter, and posts on blogs, etc. A very educative experience.

With the game on so many charts it would be stupid to just turn to paid after the promotion day, switch charts, and lose the exposure. Also the revenue from the free version was already a multiple of the revenue with the paid. So I took the decision to keep it free. I believe I did the right thing. The game did 70000 downloads in the weekend following the promotion day, received very good reviews from the users and the revenue from the IAP was climbing. I was totally satisfied.

The universal decay law of the AppStore

One of the biggest myths busted by my experience with launching Pop Corny was that visibility on the AppStore is king. It seems like everyone believes that being on the top 10 is the way to sell. That this will translate to visibility and sales in a feedback process that will sustain enough to make a profit. You must do all you can to enter the charts as a way to make your game sell more. For me now, this is the biggest misconception about the AppStore.
With the huge amount of applications in the AppStore and the new ones that enter everyday, the charts only act as a capacitor. They smooth out spikes. Most sales today start outside the AppStore and not inside. The people that will buy your application because they saw it on the charts are not enough to sustain it on its position, let alone to lift it. Therefore we witness “the universal decay law of the AppStore” as I call it. Any application that is not receiving some external to the AppStore’s charts force will follow the graph below:

Let that be paid or free. The only thing that changes is the absolute amount of downloads, which is orders of magnitude larger when free. How fast is the decay depends on the competition, how much you icon and descriptions attracts buyers and what rating you have.

Bottom line is that the charts cannot sustain you these days. It probably did some years ago, but not anymore. You should never think of the charts as your means to sales. Use it just as an indicator of how well you are doing. The game is played out of this field. Get reviews, tweets, mentions, and of course get featured by Apple.

Conclusion

The AppStore is not an easy place to publish in 2012. I was not expecting it to be easy, since Pop Corny was not my first application published there. However I would really love not to have been squashed by that bug with the release day. At least it would make me feel much better if I knew I could efficiently communicate the problem to Apple.

In the end however I think that Pop Corny did very well and will do better with time. I learned a lot through the process, it has almost covered its development costs and also gave me the joy of having hundred of thousands of people playing my game. With a zero marketing budget and being my first game, it certainly exceeded my expectations. It proved that you can still have a chance on the AppStore without some big dollar marketing campaign. However it is getting really hard to do so.

[UPDATE: Pop Corny is now available for Android also! Get is here]

First, I’d like to say I understand some fan disappointment.  Without going into spoiler territory, Mass Effect has always been about choices and the choices the player makes throughout the game brings with it a very personal connection to the characters and events as they play out.  It’s the interactive nature of our media that differentiates the consumer experience of videogames from that of other media such as movies or television.  Bioware has never been shy about discussing and promoting the impact of the moral choices in their games, however those familiar with the series know that when it came to player decisions versus main plot points, plot points won out every time.  This should not have surprised anyone when it came down to the series conclusion.  Criticisms regarding plot holes and the lack of a satisfying ending may be warranted, but the fan reaction seems completely out of proportion.  We’ve all been disappointed by the ending of something or another and the more complicated a plot, the harder it is to wrap everything up into a neat little package.  This may come as a shock to some fans but you can’t always get what you want.

Good stories have a beginning, middle and end.  Not “ends.”  I feel it is unrealistic to expect writers to create a strong, complex plot and then be expected to create multiple, satisfying endings.  I’m happy with one satisfying ending but many would argue that Mass Effect didn’t even give players that.  Many also think the ending was just fine.  I feel the gamers being the most vocal need to ask themselves, what would actually make you happy?  If there was an update tomorrow and when you replayed the game the ending was completely different, would that erase the memory of the original conclusion you received and leave you satisfied?   If the new endings still didn’t satisfy a certain amount of fans would you demand they do it again?  What are the rules on how many fans need to be vocally dissatisfied with an ending before you feel a company should be forced to change their artistic vision for a game?  What consideration is given, if any, to those happy with the current ending and what gives you the right to change the experience for those gamers?

You can’t please everyone all the time.  Whenever anything becomes popular, there will always be a subset of fans that find a reason to hate simply because they can.  There is no pleasing them.  It doesn’t matter if it’s videogames, music, movies or television you’ll always have a vocal minority that will hate what you’ve created just for the sake of hating, especially if something becomes popular.  We saw fans turn on Rockstar after their masterpiece Grand Theft Auto 4 was released; we’ve seen a backlash against Infinity Ward despite consistently shipping an excellent product.  We’re seeing it now with Bioware.  To cave into these vocal fanatics sets a dangerous precedent and takes creative control away from the artists to see their creative visions realized.  I firmly hope Bioware doesn’t touch the ending.  All it does is teach the entitled among us that if they scream and cry long enough and loud enough, they can get their way and as a parent I can attest, that’s a recipe for future disaster.  Give in and it will never end.   Bioware needs to stand by their work and continue their strong stand against those targeting their staff directly.  If gamers don’t like it, let them vote with their wallets.

Fans have often influenced their favorite series and if a writer wishes to remain popular it is important to listen to fans to an extent, but ultimate creative control needs to reside with creators.  Sherlock Holmes appeared to be famously killed off only to be resurrected at a later point due to fan demands.  Spock met his heroic end in Star Trek 2, only to be brought kicking and screaming back from the dead in the terrible, terrible Star Trek 3 but some Mass Effect fans are asking for a complete do-over of the ending.  Bioware has commented that they were willing to possibly have loose ends addressed in upcoming DLC (and I support this move as should fans) but imagine Star Trek 2 edited so Spock makes it out alive and pops out of his coffin at the end to yell  “Hiyoooo!” because it would be more pleasing.  Expecting Bioware to simply rewrite their ending is carpet chewing mad and Bioware shouldn’t even entertain the idea.  Already we see Hollywood taking fewer and fewer risks with story-telling trying to cater to everyone.  The end result is often bland and generic.  This happens to an extent currently in the games industry with developers and publishers erring on the side of caution in an attempt to protect the massive investment associated with developing big titles.  Gamers always rally against this effect but here the message Mass Effect gamers are sending resoundingly to the game industry is “Don’t take risks and don’t upset us or we’ll turn on you in a heartbeat.”

I have your new ending to Mass Effect 3 right here.

I’ve heard others draw parallels with Stephen King’s Misery where a crazed fan holds a writer captive and submits him to numerous tortures because she’s unhappy with his recent book’s ending.  She forces him to write a follow-up novel bringing the main character back to life to continue the story.  I don’t think this is a fair comparison.  Even in her madness, Annie Wilkes never expected the author to rewrite history and change the ending as some Mass Effect fans are demanding.   For the good of games as a truly creative medium, this movement needs to be squashed.  #ChangeTheEnding

*WARNING: SPOILERS*

If there’s a group of people on this planet that have mastered the art of storytelling, it’s John Lasseter and the crew at Pixar, and I firmly believe that opening to Up represents the pinnacle of their storytelling abilities. In the first 10 minutes of the film we learn everything we need to need to know about about Carl and Ellie’s relationship without a single word of dialogue being spoken. In a matter of minutes we see Carl and Ellie go from a young couple in love, to a couple devastated by an inability to start a family, to them overcoming their grief and moving on with their lives, and the pain Carl goes through as Ellie passes away. We know from the opening montage that despite the gruff exterior Carl displays in beginning, he is a loyal and caring man to those who are closest to him. We understand why he went to such extreme lengths to journey to Paradise Falls and what reaching his destination really means to him, and we understand the full emotional gravitas of his decision to sacrifice his journey in favor of saving Russel at the end of the film.

On the other end of the emotional spectrum is Ruin, which unlike Up isn’t trying to tell an emotional story, so that makes its job a little easier. Like the intro to Up, there isn’t a single word spoken throughout the entire course of short, but we learn everything we need to about the world the story is set in. From the opening establishing shots we see Ruin is set in a future where nature has begun to reclaim what was built by humans and has been at it for a t least a few decades. We’re then given a brief taste of how far humanity had progressed before its downfall with the introduction of the main character. We see him capable of creating a link with certain types of technology and controlling said technology with a mere thought. We’re shown brief hints of the possible downfall of man through quick flashes of a warning about a quarantine. Without a single word being uttered, we know everything we would need to know about this world.

Now, these are just two examples of the “Show, Don’t Tell” principle, and for every good example there are just as many, if not more, bad ones. I will be the first to admit that it far easier to apply this principle in a visual medium, such as animation and film, than it is in literature, but the principle still applies none-the-less. By showing your audience what you’re trying to say you help create a richer and deeper experience that will stay with with them long after they’ve finished watching, reading, or playing.

A rapidly growing market
It’s no secret that there’s been a ton of interest in social casino games in the past 6 months. Two social casino game companies, Playtika and DoubleDown, were recently purchased at massive, 9-figure valuations. Everyone from EA to Zynga are getting in on what is expected to be the next hot social game genre. Kontagent also commented that their fastest-growing customer segment has been social and mobile casino games. But what does this all mean for game developers looking to get into the space?

First of all, if you’re not sitting on a pile of cash, don’t bother looking at Facebook. The viral channels that made Facebook a great platform for indie game developers are dead, says Dave. While this is true for Facebook in particular, competition in the social casino games genre has driven up CPA prices on all platforms. You should expect to be at war from day 1. Many newcomers are looking at cross-platform development solutions so they can spread their eggs across multiple baskets.

When being born into wartime, it’s important to pick your beachhead early. For poker, skill-based and sports-based games, Dave recommends targeting a young male audience. For slots and other chance-based games, the audience remains primarily older females (typically 65% of slot players are female according to Dave) but is starting to drift closer to an even gender ratio. This drift is due to the changing nature of how slots are presented to the player: men can try the game for free, play for home, and play online. These changes make slots-type games more appealing to a broader audience.

Furthermore, these changes make casino-style games more appealing to a broader audience across the board. If you look at the difference in growth curves between FarmVille style games and social casino games, casino games show more consistent, wider growth curves. This shows that casino games keep players engaged longer and are less reliant on a huge launch for success.

Lastly, Dave warned social game developers that real-money gambling games are going to be launched in many if not all major platforms in the next year. Facebook is already looking into allowing real-money gambling in the UK, and the few mobile gambling apps that already inhabit the Apple and Google app stores are experiencing meteoric growth. Real-money gambling games are going to be tough to compete against because these companies can afford a much higher CPA than virtual currency game developers. However, real-money gambling companies come from a world where each player is a paying player, and aren’t as familiar with the freemium model. If you’re intelligent with your user acquisition and optimize your free-to-paid conversion, you can compete with these giants.. for now.

SlotSpot Case Study: Build, learn, iterate
Blitzoo built SlotSpot in just 6 weeks with a single-minded focus on a Minimum Viable Product, or MVP. The game had no friends bar (a staple of Facebook games), no quests, no gifts, no achievements, and only 3 slot machines to play. The game did have levels and XP, but there was no reward for levelling up. Instead, Blitzoo focused on cranking out new features each week to fill in the gaps in their product. By cultivating customer feedback via their Facebook page, they were able to quickly prioritize the most important features on their product roadmap. Then, through live A/B testing of their game, they were able to test these assumptions about what features the audience was really interested in. All in all, Blitzoo used Eric Ries’ Lean Startup methodology to impressive effect with their first social game (more on this in a later post).

When building his MVP product, Dave highlighted the importance of analytics and metrics. You need metrics for every piece of the game business:

User Acquisition. You need to segment your inbound users and see which creative, which demographics and which countries converted most effectively.

Free-to-paid Conversion. Which trigger got players to purchase? Which offer got that finicky player to finally buy? What creative was most effective?

Game Balance. What is the average session length? How many spins does it take until they are out of money? How does this change as they level up?

Player Temperature. This was Blitzoo’s own measure of positive vs. negative player feedback.

As you are building your game, you should always be asking yourself: what do I need to know? The answer will help you determine the metrics that are most important to your business.

SlotSpot Case Study: Maximizing revenue
When looking to maximize your revenue, the first step you should take is to identify your high value players. For the social casino genre, there are two types of high value players: whales and evangelists. Whales are the players that spend the most, typically spending over 10x more than the typical ARPPU rate of your game. These players can spend over $1,000 per game and make up a substantial portion of your game’s revenue. Evangelists are players that love your game. They invite their friends, are active on forums, and give you valuable feedback. Catering to these two groups is of utmost importance for any social casino game.

To appeal to these high value customers, you should segment them internally via your analytics and present them with unique offers. You should also track their playing habits and retention so that you can optimize your game to keep these players around. When dealing with their support or feature requests, take a little more time to write a custom response. Small tweaks like these can create the best experience for these players and keep them coming back.

Your second step when maximizing revenue is a no brainer: maximize your revenue from all of your players. Run A/B Tests and experiments on players, using the Lean Startup as a framework. Notice how in the graph above, the revenue spikes get larger and larger. This is because the A/B tests are improving the promotions’ effectiveness over time.

When running these experiments, be sure to segment each test by player type, whether it’s a whale, evangelist, first-time buyer or someone who has never purchased. Dave says that 90% of players on Facebook never pay, 5% will typically pay, and 5% will maybe pay. The key to maximizing the amount of players that do pay is by running these experiments. Test different offers, such as coin bundles, sales or referral promotions, to see which copy performs better. Be sure you test one thing with each test: the copy, the collateral, or the offer itself. However, never test yourself into having only one “optimal” offer. Dave’s advice is that a variety of offers always performs better than one “best” offer. Also, be sure to vary your delivery method of the offers, whether it’s from an interstitial ad, a banner ad, or an in-game graphic.

SlotSpot Case Study: Analytics as an immune system
The last key use for analytics is as an early warning system for bugs or problems with your game. Use your analytics tool to track errors, customer service requests, ARPPU, free-to-paid conversion, virality, average bet size, and anything else that is a mission-critical function of the game. If any of these numbers spike or drop dramatically, your canary is dead and it’s time to troubleshoot the coal mine. For example, Blitzoo had a problem where their overall revenue suddenly dropped. From their analytics, they could see that they had seen a significant increase in free-to-paid conversion rate, but an even larger decrease in ARPPU. It turned out that a promotion created by their marketing team was too aggressive, and undercut their price significantly. Once the error was spotted, fixing it was simple and the situation was resolved (damn it, marketing! :P).

Mobile: The Next Frontier
To conclude his presentation, Dave talked about Blitzoo’s upcoming transition to mobile and how they planned to adapt SlotSpot to the new space. He reiterated analytics’ importance on mobile because there are even more factors to a mobile player than a social player. There is no “single solution” for social sharing on mobile like there is on Facebook, so you need to incorporate and track a variety of them. Also, customer acquisition is done on a per-deal basis rather than run all through Facebook, so there’s a lot of segmentation there as well. Finally, customer onboarding is incredibly important to building a successful game on mobile and A/B tests are the key to optimizing your initial onboarding flow.

Dave pointed out that you simply cannot port a social network game to a mobile platform and expect the same results. For one, there’s a much shorter session length: mobile players spend 3 minutes per session on average while social players can spend up to 20 minutes. This requires a complete overhaul of game balance and the willingness to take an ax to your feature set. Offers are responded to differently on mobile, so you will need to start your in-game marketing testing all over again. Lastly, engagement is king on mobile. It’s much harder to keep players engaged with a mobile game and re-engage players that have been lost. Making all of these adjustments has been key to Blitzoo’s preparation for the mobile launch of their SlotSpots app.

Wrapping up
Thanks again to Blitzoo and Kontagent for throwing a great webinar. I’d recommend getting on their webinar circuit by signing up for their mailing list, each one I attend keeps getting better.

The social casino space is on fire right now, and one can only expect the fire to spread to mobile. If you’re looking to get into this space, move quickly and buckle up, because it’s about to take off. And while you’re busy fending off incumbents, trying to keep distance from the newcomer nipping at your heels, and avoiding the real-money giants, you might want to look into Betable. We’re the first and only platform that lets you add real-money gambling to games, and it might be the weapon you need to win in the social casino game space.

I recently started a weekly blog series on our company blog called “Game Face”. It is “our weekly round-up of our internal and external open source work here at Agora Games. Internal open source refers to our public projects that you can find over at our Agora Games GitHub account. External open source work refers to projects that we contribute to in off-hours and may or may not have anything to do with video games because we’re swell folks like that.” This is important for our company and I think it should be for your company.

PUTTING ON THE GAME FACE

At the beginning of 2012, I did an assessment of all the projects we open sourced in 2011. Late much? 22 projects wasn’t bad and I want to beat that number in 2012, but it got me thinking that this kind of information is timely and needs more regular attention. So, I started kicking around ideas for a blog series name. After a day, I settled on “Game Face”. “Game” obviously referred to the work we do in developing gaming-related libraries and middleware. “Face” would refer to the code-wise public face of the company and the developer(s) working on the individual libraries.

It will help you become a better writer: If you’re a developer and you’re scared about writing a weekly blog series, you shouldn’t be. The focus of the blog is technical in nature, so you don’t need to spend a lot of time on exposition. If you’re good with your commit messages or keeping a CHANGELOG, the blog posts write themselves. For example, from an item in a recent blog post, “This releases addresses the first future idea from the README when the gem was released over a year ago to add a method allowing for bulk insert of data into a leaderboard.” Cut and paste for the most part my friends. The intrepid developer might even automate the creation of the initial blog post that can be wordsmithed by someone you deem more fluent in languages other than C++ :)

It will help you become a better developer: We get feedback on our code each day from our co-workers. By opening up your code to the world, you get peer feedback beyond your immediate peanut gallery. You also get comments, questions and sometimes code where developers are using your code in new and interesting ways that you hadn’t thought of yet. Case-and-point: I recently integrated a patch to our leaderboard library with all the code and tests to allow for leaderboards in “reverse” (lowest-to-highest) sorted order. I just hadn’t come across that use case in the games we’ve worked on where I needed a leaderboard appropriate for a racing game. But someone else did. And now our library is better off because of it. Beyond peer feedback, or any feedback, opening up your code and talking about it helps you to think about the ramifications of changes when there are developers other than you or your company using your code.

It will help you as a company: By highlighting your company’s open source work, it may motivate your developers to want to take a stab at open source in the first place or to clean up a library for external publishing. You might also attract developers who put a high value on knowing their contributions will be recognized, whether they are internal or external, and that their contributions may see the light of day outside of your company’s hallowed halls. The last “Game Face” blog post I wrote highlighted a new library one of our developers had released that allowed you to parse Beersmith2 (beer brewing software) files in Ruby. I imagine many video game companies rely on open source to some degree, and so by publicly promoting your contributions to open source, it can also help you in the eyes of the open source community.

It will help you have awkward conversations: I can’t tell you what to open source and what not to open source. You’ll have to talk as a team, as a company, and possibly with your lawyers to understand what you can and cannot open source. In 2011, there was only one instance where I went to our CEO to get a check on, “Can I open source this?” We walked around the block and our conversation went basically as follows:

Me: “I’d like to open source a leaderboard library. Given this is a core thing we do, is that OK?”

CEO: “So, someone else could do this before us using a similar method?”

Me: “Yes.”

CEO: “Ship it!”

FIN

Hopefully I’ve made some compelling arguments that your company should highlight your internal and external open source development. Our weekly blog post series highlighting our internal and external open source work comes out on Friday and now I usually get one or two messages throughout the week in our group chat room asking, “What’s going in to Game Face this week?” It feels pretty good when I can say back, “Your face.” If your company does anything with open source, I’d love to know about it!

However, over the course of being heavily involved in a variety of volunteer operations, it’s come to my attention that the general understanding of what it means to volunteer may vary from person to person. It’s not just raising your hand and feeling good. These two steps are indeed part of the process, but there’s a lot more to it than that!

The following are general guidelines for volunteering, which I’m hoping may serve as standards to help a variety of organizations, groups, and individuals by better educating budding volunteers on how they can most effectively serve their cause.

 Initial Steps

The first step to volunteering isn’t just saying you’ll do something. If you’re eager to get involved with an effort, please start by:

1. identifying available opportunities
2. evaluating how realistic it is for you to contribute, based on your existing workload, schedule, and abilities

You might begin by asking a professional organization like IGDA how you can help out, and in turn, receive a list of items that could currently use some attention.

Take a moment and actively match yourself to things you know you can accomplish. That isn’t to say you shouldn’t push yourself to grow, but you should be able to fulfill the basic need you’re stepping up for. If you volunteer for something that’s completely beyond your capabilities, the organizer is basically back to square one when this detail is discovered, which works against the overall intent of helping people.

Playing to your strengths and thoughtfully managing your time will overall aid you in becoming an outstanding volunteer.

Following Through

Similarly, it’s extremely important to finish what you’ve started. The bottom line is, someone needed help with X. Therefore, the most useful thing you can do is actually take X from a need to a finished objective.

Offering your time to help an organization, group, or individual should be considered a commitment. When you volunteer, people are now counting on you to pitch in with something!

For example, say I needed someone to make posters for an event. If no one came forward, I would be aware that I had something unasigned and I’d unconsciously operate with the understanding that I need to stretch my resources to cover it. However, if I have volunteers, my organizational thoughts change. I might start pouring more effort into my primary tasks, in the interest of making the event all that much better. Having more hands to help essentially means you can do more!

Unfortunately, when a volunteer bails last minute or otherwise falls short, an organizer suddenly has an unanticipated hole in their plans, and thus, must scramble to shuffle things around and make it right. Be aware that flaking out on something you committed to makes it harder for everyone else involved. Volunteers should strive to be a helpful and accountable.

That being said, it’s understandable that sometimes life happens and things don’t always go according to plan (emergencies, etc.) If something uncontrollable comes up, be sure to let your coordinator or organizer know as soon as possible.

Doing it Well

Keep in mind that volunteering generally results in some form of work–although it can often be quite enjoyable–and thus, your volunteering efforts should be held to a high quality standard. You want to be proud of your work, right? Unless the original objective stated was to “slap something rough together,” treat your task as you would a paid job. If you’re not sure what the expectation is, don’t be afraid to ask! Most coordinators are more than happy to detail out tasks and get you everything you need to accomplish the given goal.

Additionally, in the game development community, always demonstrating that you uphold high quality standards as a volunteer is a great way to build an awesome reputation. In all, it publicly demonstrates that you’re a hard worker. It’s no secret that this is a very close-knit industry and people talk. If they have great things to say, it’s highly beneficial to how others (including potential employers,) may regard you. In contrast, if they have nothing good to say, it can have the opposite effect.

Enjoying the Benefits

So it might sound like a great deal of effort, but in general, volunteering in the game development industry is great for both personal and professional growth.

• You get out there and meet tons of great new people in your field! This is exceptionally useful to networking efforts.
• You often acquire new skills along the way! For example, I learned the logistics behind running an IGF booth last year.
• You feel awesome for contributing to something larger than you could do on your own.
• You continue to nurture the game development community, which is carried entirely by volunteers who are dedicated to their craft and the constant improvement of it.

The Big Picture

My hope is that these tips will help you be the best volunteers you can be, and through teaching each other, we can continue to nurture the quality and reach of our community efforts.

For those of you already out there, doing all of these things and more: thank you so much! You are the amazing force that makes this field so inspiring to work in.

And to all aspiring super-volunteers in the making: go forth and be excellent!

So this week a year ago I was…

• Listening to this classic song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzMhh8zhTiY ) while improving my Starcraft 2 Laddering position of course.
• Working Hard: Quote “Stress + Overtime = Weight gain -> More Stress -> Stress + Overtime… (T_T)”
• Learning to use Blender: http://yfrog.com/h413067151p
• Bitching about it’s lack of ngons, which it now has in dev branch (^_^) Great job guys!
• Which led to this game asset: http://yfrog.com/h0oiyp, http://yfrog.com/h2zxzvfzj, http://yfrog.com/h2og8sbj

I was going to write another designer skill-up post regards art tools but then I wanted to  follow up the brilliant, “You Should be Drawing” post by Mike Jungbluth, with a piece on the Flour Sack doodle. How everyone should doodle old school animation at least once to get a feel for motion and weight in animation… which led to me just wanting to shout from the roof tops.

BE ASPIRATIONAL!

If you’re reading AltDev, or better yet contributing, you have at least made the first steps. I encourage you to draw up a bucket list or a dream list of stuff you want to do! Try Schemer!

Start your list with some traditional gamedev skills.

• Code
• Make “Hello World”
• Make Pong
• Make Particle Fountain
• Art
• Draw Flour Sack Animation
• Draw Human Hand
• Model Something on Your Desk
• Design
• Invent a Card Game using a normal playing deck
• Make a Boardgame
• Write a Roleplaying Module

Nothing is stopping you extending that list to include:

• Cook a Quiche
• Crochet a Scarf
• Model something out of clay
• Learn to Cat Yodel

There is no such thing as a useless skill! Aspire to be more, learn more, do more! Also being reminded about last year via timehop and making plans in schemer are not bad places to start.

Everyone I’ve ever met worth anything wanted to me worth more.

P.S. Sorry about the fluffy post but I got super fired up and needed to shout!
P.P.S Also there are similiar services to TimeHop & Schemer. They just happen to be the ones I’m using.
P.P.P.S Should I think things through more and be less impulsive… maybe
P.P.P.P.S I really will do a more technical, solid post next time I promise.
P.P.P.P.P.S: Can you make a recursive Post Script? I wonder…

You should be drawing

Why does that phrase hold so much power? Does it do more harm than good? What is so important about drawing anyway?

The best answer I’ve ever heard¹ in regards to that question is “Everyone draws when they are a kid, and then most people grow out of it. I just never grew out of it.” For me, that perfectly sums up why I should be drawing. It is creativity and fun in its purest form.

Drawing is a tool for play and communication. And an incredibly powerful tool at that. It can be academic or it can be entirely free form. It can be permanent or fleeting. It can be beautiful or it can be crass. It can be honest or it can be deceiving. And best of all, it can be done by anyone, at anytime, anywhere.

This is inevitably the part where someone says, “Sure, but all I can draw is stick figures.” So what, that hasn’t stopped others from being successful. Stick figures are action figures that can never break. Skill level isn’t important. Even your meeting doodles are incredibly valuable.

What is important is that drawing affords an outlet that requires only the most basic of tools and technology, which can then scale infinitely to the artist’s wishes. Drawing allows you to cut through any technology or large production constraints and get right to the heart of execution. All you need to do is approach art like you would game design.

You should be playing

Drawing, at its core, is play. You are given an open world with a set of tools and only one core objective. Make your mark. Which probably explains why kids love drawing and adults are terrified by it. The only structure that exists is what you bring to it, and adults bring so much ridiculous structure when they are given the chance to draw that they just freeze up. So, the first step towards enjoying drawing again is to let go of those preconceived notions of what is good and what is bad and just play.

So to let go, approach drawing like you would design a game, which are the tools at hand and any rules you want to add to them.

Start with some tools that encourage energetic mark making. Finger paints, vine charcoal, chalk. Tools that get you messy and have an inherent level of imprecision are the rocket launchers of art. They are inherently bright, loud and able to make anyone hit their target at least in a small way. Then, as your precision with the rocket launcher gets better, you can move towards a machine gun, like water colors. Pencils, Charcoal, Conte, etc are the sniper rifles of art. Starting with those can quickly lead to frustration as they inherently force a steady hand. It isn’t until you’ve used them a lot that you feel comfortable no-scoping them.

Oil paints are a genre able to be scaled amongst themselves based again on the tools. You have access to the entire dev panel with oil paints. Painting only with a palette knife vs a fine sable brush is like God mode with confetti headshots vs one hit kills.

This leads naturally into wanting to create some rules to play with. Draw some random shapes on a page, and then like staring a clouds, turn them into whatever you think they look like. Try drawing the image upside down. Or with your alternate hand. Or with your feet. Or with your eyes closed². Find rules that allow for you to stop thinking about the physical act of drawing and transport your mind into pure creation. You want rules that foster a sense of fun without the concern that you will be judged. Because once being judged is added into the equation, it requires dedication and becomes work.

You should be growing

Judgement is adding difficulty settings to your game of drawing. It is adding weight to the win/lose conditions of the rules decided upon when you begin to play. Inherently, judgement itself isn’t a bad thing, you just need to set it to a level where your work to success rate isn’t frustrating. Essentially, you need to balance your drawings.

Just like balancing your game, you need to be aware of the intended players and their skill level. If you set the difficulty too high, you are going to rage quit. If it is too low, you are going to get bored and lose focus. Just like with anything, honestly examine what you want out of the experience and then turn the dial up one more notch to push yourself without breaking yourself. Do you want to learn how to design more appealing characters? Do you want to learn color theory? Do you want to learn how to paint environments? Choose a specific goal or objective, like you would in a game, and work towards that. Simply saying, “I want to draw better” is the equivalent of starting a game with the only objective being “Save the world.” Without a specific task or direction, most people, like most players, are just going to wander around aimlessly. Unless you have your difficulty setting high, this probably isn’t an approach that will work well for you.

When you start to feel good about what you have, play test your work. There are countless online forums and communities that gladly give honest critiques and tips to aspiring artists of any skill level. Local colleges or schools often have life drawing classes available to those interested. The artists in your studio might even have draw nights at a local pub or coffee shop. These are your lifelines towards leveling up and having gone through the same process, will gladly lend their eye and focus to give you the honest feedback you need, appropriate to the difficulty level you have established for yourself. Find groups that approach their artistic community like a game of co-op, there to get everyone’s back. And then once you are ready, and are capable of the occasional rocket jump, search out a team deathmatch art group to really have your skills put to the test.

If your difficulty level is set appropriately, you are going to fail sometimes. But that is fine. You have endless continues. Just click restart by picking that pencil back up and making a note of what knocked you into that pit last time. So when you come up against it again, you can jump on its head and knock it out. Because as much fun as just playing a free form game with no difficulty can be, there is nothing quite as rewarding as overcoming that tricky obstacle that kept knocking you down.

You should be doing

This obviously doesn’t have to just be about drawing. It could be about weight lifting. It could be about cooking. It could be about gardening. Ultimately, what it comes down to is opening your eye towards observing the world around you and then honing those observations into something you can communicate successfully. It is about taking your ideas and crafting them as only you can. It is about play. Sometimes with a purpose.

So what are you waiting for?

You should be drawing

_________

¹ I believe that quote belongs to Joshua Middleton, but it was told to me second hand many years ago, so I could be wrong. But regardless of who said it, the answer is still brilliant.

² I came across the by limb experiment by way of Ty Dunitz. I love how energetic and loose the lines are as each step moves forward. Makes me realize how much I need to relax my main hand during the initial sketch. Fun fact, it seems our most capable drawing foot coincides with our most capable drawing hand. The more you know.