Interview: Craig Stern of Sinister Design

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 7, 2011

Craig Stern is the dude behind the indie game studio Sinister Design. He’s one of those developers who seems to be able to do it all – code, art, music, writing. I get really jealous of those guys. And on top of that, as we find out below, he’s apparently pretty smooth with the ladies, using lines like, “Hey, want to be in my videogame?” Man, if I was single, I’d totally try that one…

Oh, wait where was I?

His latest game, Telepath RPG: Servants of God, combines turn-based tactical combat and open-world gameplay with heavy characterization and dialog to tell a story of rebels battling a totalitarian theocracy.  The game is reaching the final stages of development, and is currently available via pre-order at the Sinister Design website. A free demo / tutorial of the game is also available there.

I caught up with Craig and hit him with a barrage of questions about his game, and his path to becoming an indie RPG developer.  For your entertainment and edification, here’s what ensued…

Rampant Coyote: Not that you have to establish your cred or anything, but I’m always curious as to what kind of games influenced today’s indie designers. What games really pushed your buttons? Did you ever play a game and say, “I wish I could have been involved in making that one?”

Craig Stern: The original Shining Force games were a huge influence on me growing up—I loved the heck out of those. Strategy games, such as chess and Magic the Gathering, occupied a lot of my teenage years.

I used to run Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition campaigns with friends back in middle school and high school. I wrote and ran scenarios for the group, but I came to find AD&D’s rules cumbersome and rigid. Its heavy reliance on dice made it very difficult to have combat that was either narratively coherent or tactically satisfying, and the game simply didn’t have systems for much of anything outside of these unpleasantly randomized combat scenarios. So in essence, you would have short stretches of role-playing interrupted by long, poorly-balanced dice games.

Later, I would be strongly influenced by Fallout and Planescape Torment with their rich, interesting worlds and character interactions. Oh, and Dungeon Keeper. Brilliant  game, that.

Rampant Coyote: And on that note – what was it that pushed you over the edge to become an indie developer? Why and how did you go about it?

Craig Stern: I’ve always enjoyed making games. When I was a kid, I would do things like take a pack of index cards and create a card game. Once, I bought an oversized game of checkers from the Cracker Barrel, then created a strategy game by assigning each piece a playing card from a standard 52-card deck.

I started making video games back in 2006, the summer before I began law school. I had a few months to kill before classes started, so I taught myself Flash and created a small RPG.

Rampant Coyote: Your newest game, currently in development, is Telepath RPG: Servants of God. You’ve described it in the past as part “Japanese strategy RPG, part free-roaming Western RPG.” For those who haven’t yet played the online demo, describe your game. What’s it like, what makes it great, and what is the story about?

Craig Stern: Telepath RPG: Servants of God (a.k.a. TSoG) is like an inverted funnel: it starts off very linear, then opens up wider and wider. By the end of the game, it’s all about currying favor with different factions around the continent, trying to secure troops and financing in order to successfully invade your home city, overthrow the theocratic government that has taken root there, and restore democracy.

TSoG is sort of my dream game, the game I always wanted to play as a kid: which is, essentially, a cross between Shining Force and Fallout. So you get your Western cake of exploration and role-playing and you get to eat it topped with the rich, creamy icing of Japanese-style turn-based tactical battles.

Rampant Coyote: Now, this game is actually the third chapter in a series of games – including two spinoff titles, the Telepath Psy Arena games. How long have you been working on the game series, and on TSoG in particular?

Craig Stern: The first game in the series was released back in 2006. It wasn’t a very good game, unfortunately, and I’ve grown more and more ambitious with every release since then. With TSoG, I’ve arguably gone a little overboard. I started developing it around the end of 2007, if that tells you anything.

Rampant Coyote: So your games are in Flash, which is pretty ubiquitous by now as a powerful development tool. But for most players, Flash is synonymous with “Free Web Games.” Yet TSoG is a pretty major, ambitious endeavor – regardless of underlying engine. How do you work with that perception in creating a premium, commercial, downloadable game?

Craig Stern: See, here’s the thing. People see the phrase “flash game,” and they immediately think of portals like Armor Games, Kongregate or Newgrounds, sites that are overflowing with thousands of free games playable in-browser, and many (if not most) of them poorly constructed rip-offs of other games. Players have been trained to expect these sorts of shoddy games out of Flash. However, as you point out, Flash is actually capable of much more than that! People confuse the business model (free and ad-supported) with the engine’s actual capabilities.

Flash can support games with surprising depth and sophistication. Closure, Meat Boy and Fantastic Contraption were all originally created in Flash. VVVVVV is a Flash game. Machinarium is a Flash game. Captain Forever and its progeny are all Flash games. The bottom line is that Flash is just an engine. If the game is great, it doesn’t matter what’s under the hood. I think this is just one of those things where we have to educate gamers and change attitudes.

Rampant Coyote: Your website suggests that the NPCs in the player’s party have dynamic relationships with the player character. When I hear that, the first thing I think of is the Baldur’s Gate series. How does TSoG compare? Are the dynamics more story-based, or based more on your general actions – sort of a continuous scoring of faction or karma?

Craig Stern: There are some similarities with Baldur’s Gate, in that your choices will impact which characters join your party, stay with you, help you, or—in some cases—even hurt you. People will remember certain things you say or do, but I very specifically chose not to include “cosmic scorecard” elements in the game like alignment or karma. It’s always struck me as a clumsy mechanic to tell the player “that was a Good thing you did, and now all Good people in the game will like you more,” or “that was Evil, so now you are more Evil.” That’s not how people actually behave, and it doesn’t fit with the message I’m trying to send with TSoG.

Because your party is essentially the head of its own faction within the game world, your teammates won’t generally respond to choices you make as far as allying with other factions. Rather, your relationship with each character is tracked on an individual basis. The small-scale choices you make around them, as well as how you conduct yourself during certain missions, will impact their opinion of you, but not the fact that you chose to (for example) ally with the Assassin’s Cult rather than with the Order of the Black Rose. That said, there are always exceptions to the rule, and it is entirely possible that a certain faction may try to assassinate one of your party members if you aren’t paying attention to what’s going on in your ranks.

Rampant Coyote: Of significant interest to me is the tactical, turn-based combat in TSoG. I got a bit of a taste of that in Telepath Psy Arena 2. It definitely had a different flavor to it – more chess-like, I guess, in its emphasis on position and facing and the lack of randomness in the results. What are the tactical battles like in TSoG? What’s new or different from the previous games?

Craig Stern: TSoG uses an improved version of the Telepath Psy Arena 2 battle engine, including a nastier, less predictable enemy AI and the ability to move your characters in any order.

One major change from the earlier games is that you have the ability to swap out team members before each individual battle. There’s a greater diversity of characters and individual abilities than before, with certain characters better suited to certain battlefield roles than others, so you’ll want to take advantage of that flexibility based on which enemies you’re fighting.

You also have greater flexibility in terms of customizing your main character. There are literally dozens of attacks your hero can learn during the course of the game, depending on what choices you make regarding his development as a psy. You’re able to swap those out between battles as well.

Rampant Coyote: You’ve taken the increasingly common strategy of opening up the beta of the game for pre-orders.  How has that gone? Have people already beaten the game, or is that part still not available to early players?

Craig Stern: It’s gone well. I’ve already sold several dozen copies, which I feel good about considering TSoG‘s low profile in the indie game media. Pre-orderers have access to all completed portions of the game, and I’m told that several of them have already reached one of the game’s alternate endings. The game isn’t complete yet, however, so I wouldn’t say that anyone has technically “beaten” it yet.

Rampant Coyote: Do you have any amusing stories from development of the game to share? Unusual / frustrating bugs, things that surprised you, or stories from working with the voice-actors?

Craig Stern: Well! This one time, I was coding, and all of a sudden…um…yeah. I got nothin’. Much to my dismay, it turns out that game development isn’t filled with wacky hijinks. (The movie) Grandma’s Boy was a damned dirty lie.

My favorite moments during the development of the game have almost universally been occasions when I was riding the train. I would suddenly be struck with a brilliant idea for a character, or some dialog, or a scenario. I always carry a yellow legal pad with me for precisely this reason.

Well, not always. I actually had one of these “eureka” moments on a date. I was getting drinks with an actress. Midway through the evening, I suddenly realized that she would be perfect to voice Malis. I mean, perfect. She talked exactly the way I envisioned Malis sounding. I asked her if she was interested, and she agreed, and that is how I found the voice of Malis the shadowling. True story.

Rampant Coyote: That’s a much better story than I was expecting! That’s about it for me. Anything else you’d like to share about the upcoming release of Telepath RPG: Servants of God?

Craig Stern: Yes: Telepath RPG: Servants of God is great and you should buy it.

Filed Under: Interviews - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights Voted One of the Most Promising CRPGs of 2011

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 4, 2011

I’m giddy. Overwhelmed. Thrilled. And feeling pressure…

RPG Watch announces the most promising / most anticipated RPGs of 2011.

They include the visitor’s poll, as well as the editor’s choice.

If you recall, Frayed Knights was one of the voting options. I’m extremely pleased to see it hit in the top 10 of the reader’s poll (thanks, those that voted!), and even more pleased – and overwhelmed, and all the other adjectives up above – to see it took second place as the editor’s choice for the most promising PC CRPGs of 2011.

Now to make sure that:

#1 – It actually does come out this year (that’s … well, not easy, but not at risk if I stay the course)

#2 – It doesn’t disappoint.

I’m also thrilled to see indie RPG Age of Decadence take third place.  I’ll tell ya, it’s going to be an awesome year for indie RPGs no matter what, but it’ll be especially impressive if both AoD and Dead State manage to ship this year. I’m not too optimistic about Dead State‘s release this year, but AoD sounds like a real possibility.

Filed Under: Frayed Knights, News - Comments: 10 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights: “I Wanna Cast ‘Magic Missile!'”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 3, 2011

Welcome to another installment of the design of the soon-to-be best-selling (in my dreams, at least) old-school-ish turn-based CRPG that hearkens back to a day when gaming meant making sure the supplies of Cheetos and Mountain Dew were fully stocked before attacking the darkness.

Today we’re gonna talk about spells.

Number and Type of Spells

A little bit has been said about the number of spells in this game. I must admit, the whole concept is a little bit daunting even to me. I have a little script I run which reports the totals so I don’t have to do much counting, because the counting is getting a little insane. After the last additions, the counts were:

SORCERER SPELLS: 30 unique spells + 109 variants.
DARK PRIEST SPELLS: 25 unique spells + 101 variants.
LIGHT PRIEST SPELLS: 32 unique spells + 139 variants.
NATURE PRIEST SPELLS: 31 unique spells + 133 variants.

If my minimal math skills serve me well, that’s around 118 unique(ish) spells, plus 482 variants of said spells available in the game. So far. That’s like… 600 in total.  But it really depends on how you count. When I say unique-ish, I mean that there are a few spells (but actually not many) that are shared between classes that are counted as unique, but may share the same effect — though they may actually be cast at a different level and have different endurance costs.  For example, while all three varieties of priests can cast straight-up heals, the divine (light) priests get the spells earlier and cheaper, nature priests (like Benjamin) get it next, and for dark priests tend to get them pretty late and at higher endurance cost.

Spells are divied up, as you can see above, into four categories: Sorcerer, Light Priest, Dark Priest, and Nature Priest. Anybody can take a feat to pick up sorcerer spells (though they will have to pick up a few additional feats to be able to cast the full range of said spells, and will never be QUITE as effective as the sorcerer class at making them “stick”). Anybody can take ONE set of priest spells, too. But only one. The gods are jealous and stuff.

Rare Spells

Not all spells are automatically available when you level up. Some of the better ones have to be found. Most of the time, you have to find a scroll, and have the Arcane Runes feat to be able to use them (Sorcerers – read, “Chloe,” get this automatically. Priests have to pick it up separately). If you use a scroll with an unfamiliar spell on it which you’d be able to cast given your current feats and level (or even if you are only a couple of levels shy of being able to cast it), you are given the option to memorize the spell instead. If you do, the spell becomes permanently part of your repertoire.

There’s also at least one case in FK1 where a spell is acquired through some other means that I won’t go into now.

Spellstones

Most of the spells for a particular level are more-or-less balanced with each other with respect to their effects. But there are a few extra-potent spells that are more powerful than their level suggests (like Incendiary Crackleball). These cost more than just easily-renewed endurance to cast… these require expensive material components called Spellstones. The higher-level spells use more expensive spellstones. Spellstones can be found, or purchased at the right shop.

With one exception, you don’t need to use any of the rare spells or the spellstone-requiring spells in the game. But they can be really handy.

Spell Variants

I’ve spoken about this before, but there are five optional feats that allow you to upgrade most spells. Some spells can have their effectiveness upgraded (for example, damage spells made more damaging), while others can have their duration extended (like a spell that causes blindness).  Enhancing a spell means it costs more endurance (and for spellstone-requiring spells, may require two or three spellstones instead of just one), and are cast as if they were one or more levels higher than the original spell.

Oftentimes, a “natural” spell of the same level as the variant is a more cost-effective option. But with so many different kinds of spells, effects, and damage types, there’s a good chance that there simply won’t be the kind of spell you would like at the appropriate level.  Or you may be facing monsters that are highly resistant to the damage type of your highest-level base damage spell, but you’ve got an electrical based spell a couple of levels lower which can be enhanced to do almost as much damage.

The variants have amusing prefixes tacked onto the spell’s original name. And some magical items (or traps) will use these spell variants instead of the original spell. And while the base “Microvenom” spell is generally little more than a nuisance, the Beefy Microvenom spell, only a couple of levels higher, is a serious threat.

Other Modifiers

There are some additional feats that make spells less expensive (priests and sorcerers get one of these feats automatically), or more effective. Non-casters aren’t left completely out of the action, either – there are feats that can grant characters ways of increasing their chance of avoiding magical attacks as well.

Types of Spells

I went overboard on types of spells. I don’t know how I’m going to balance all these, but I’m making an effort. Spells can have up to four effects, which fall into pretty broad categories of enhancements (“buffs”), debilitation (“debuffs”), direct damage, direct healing, damage-over-time, healing-over-time, status effects (sleep, stun, blind, etc.), and so on. And there’s combo spells, such as a disease spell which might cause both damage-over-time and a status effect (“sickened”).

Some really don’t fall into any category, especially utility spells. For example, “Cheat Sheet” is a 1st level sorcerer spell that gathers the maximum information on a particular monster and stores it in your monster journal. Normally, you’d have to fight that monster several times to get that much information in your journal.

Casting Spells

So here are some pictures. When you bring up the cast menu, this is about what you see:

The spells on the left are your Quick Cast spells, which you can designate for your favorite spells to avoid hunting them down in the following menus. The Quick Cast spells can include enhanced variants, not just the base spells.

On the right, you can choose the level range of the base spell you want to cast. You can cast spells up to your character’s level.

In the upper right corner, there’s an “S” and “F” button. This tells you if you are on the Spells or active Feat page. You can click one of those buttons to switch screens, or hit the button immediately below the character portrait to toggle.  The Feat page looks like this:

Okay, let’s say you picked a spell range. Now you get a list of spells available that are within that range. This includes all spells available to you (common ones, and the rare ones you have discovered) for your appropriate feats (or class).  It looks like this:

If you have both sorcerer spells and priest spells of some kind, or have sought out some of the rare spells, there’s a good chance that you will actually have multiple pages of these to flip through. FUN!

Once you have chosen a base spell (or have chosen a base or enhanced spell from your Quick Cast menu), you’ll come to the upgrade and target  screen:

This will show your available upgrades based on the spell level and your spell upgrade feats. Upgrades always increase the effective level of the spell, so spells that are close to your current character level with have fewer upgrades choices.

Just above the spell description are your quick-cast selection buttons. You can click these to put the currently chosen spell (including upgrade) into a quick-cast slot. Which really isn’t THAT quick, I admit, but it’s “quicker,” which works.

If the spell can target a party member, there’s also a target selection menu below the spell description to choose who gets hit with the spell. Spells targeting a single enemy will always fire at the currently selected enemy.

When everything is exactly as you want it, hit “Cast Spell” and let it fly.

A Last Note on Spells

At this point, the spell system is pretty firmed up, but we’re in a development / testing place right now where details may change rapidly as far as what spells are available, what their names and effects (and especially costs) may be, and so forth. There’s still plenty of tweaking and balancing to do, especially at higher levels.

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 17 Comments to Read

I’m on Armchair Arcade Radio

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 2, 2011

I’m at work, so I haven’t heard how the segment finally sounds mixed in (my mic has decided it only wants to operate in really quiet mode). But I wax nostalgic on a classic game that was probably more inspirational for me than it truly deserved to be.

Armchair Arcade Radio #7

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Alpha, Beta, and Release – Indie Definitions

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

The testing phases of alpha and beta mean different things to different publishers and studios, especially when it comes to games. The terms originate from the hardware industry. As I understand it, alpha testing was component testing, where the individual pieces were rigorously tested for integrity and function. Beta testing was effectively integration testing, when all the pieces were put together into a whole product (or prototype). But in software – especially with non-waterfall development methodologies – the definitions become increasingly fuzzy.  Code complete vs. content complete? Internal vs. external? What about continuous testing?

So may I recommend the following definitions, which seems to have large applicability among commercial indie game developers:

Alpha: Too embarrassed to show it to any but testers.

Beta: Too embarrassed to charge for it yet.

Release: Still embarrassed but need revenue!

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The Worst PC RPG of 2010?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

We’ve heard of multiple awards for the best PC RPGs of last year. How about the worst?

Thus sayeth RPG Watch: The Worst Game Was _______________

The commentary states that it wasn’t necessarily a bad game taken on its own, but rather that it was an immense disappointment and a failure to meet expectations.

They also included the top ten results of the poll by the readership on the worst games of the year. I was saddened to see some indie titles there, but, then again, so was the game voted to be the best RPG of the year.  So they are in good company.

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GameBanshee’s Game of the Year Awards

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 1, 2011

More PC RPG goodness!

GameBanshee has their picks for the game of the year among the PC RPGs of the year. Yes, ’tis the season, but hey – even if you disagree, it at least sparks some discussion and arguments and impassioned commentary.

GameBanshee’s 2010 Game of the Year Awards

And yes, once again I assisted – throwing in my $0.02 and doing the write-ups on the indie winners.   I’d love to help them out again next year, but somehow I get the feeling I’ll be disqualified… 😉

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Matt Chat – Interview with Brian Fargo, Part 3

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 31, 2011

Here is the exciting conclusion of the interview with the man who created the company whose motto was, “By Gamers, For Gamers.” And, alas, the story of the fall of said company, which brought us The Bard’s Tale, Wasteland, Fallout 1 & 2, the Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale series, Planescape: Torment, Battle Chess, Star Trek: 25th Anniversary, and of course – Boogerman: A Pick & Flick Adventure.

And as far as his comments at the end concerning an upcoming Armchair Arcade Radio program: Yes, it’s true.  I get a little adventurous.

Matt’s drinking horn (and Matt Chat videos) can be supported at this page.

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Miscellanious Indie Stories…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 30, 2011

Here are some links I found interesting this week and thought I’d share:

Gamesauce interview with Erin Robinson on Free Games and Indie Life – going from a nobody to a respected veteran by the magic of actually releasing games.

Psychochild’s Blog: Mastery of Might & Magic – Twenty-Five years old, and still going strong in the hearts of fans.

Kieron Gillen’s World of Love presentation last year on How Indies can Abuse the Gaming Press – ‘Cuz they really do want to be abused. Follow-up to his classic article from several years ago.

Indie Games: Designing to Succeed – because success is far more likely if you design for it in the first place.

How to Design an Ideal CRPG – if only it was that easy!

What we expect Doom IV to look like – because the progression in graphics and style from the original Doom is pretty obvious.

Filed Under: Links & Tidbits - Comments: Read the First Comment

RPG Watch Names 2010 RPG of the Year Winners

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 29, 2011

RPG Watch did a poll of viewers (and their editors) for the favorite PC RPG of 2010, which I noted here:

RPG Watch’s 2010 Game of the Year Awards – Best RPGs

The winner of the reader’s choice and the editor’s choice is going to shock and surprise everybody!

Actually, no, it probably won’t.

Alpha Protocol made a pretty good showing in both lists, which was kind of surprising considering how it tended to get panned in reviews. But these are actual RPG fans we’re talking about here (both editors and readers), not jaded reviewers. Eschalon: Book 2 also did fairly well onvotes. But then we already knew RPG Watch has a pretty indie-friendly community. Congrats to the winners – they are all great games.

The worst RPG of 2010 is coming up next week. As well as the most anticipated RPG of 2011. My vote on the latter category was… well, obvious. 🙂

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Utah Indie Night – January 2011

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 28, 2011

The new year has officially been rung in with a Utah Indie Night.  The attendance was good, though not up to the record levels we’ve had in the past. Maybe due to lack of pizza. This time it was hosted by ITT Tech, and while the student common area isn’t optimal, it sure was a good time.

Naturally, the buzz (or the self-deprecating jokes) this time was about the local 14-year-old indie from Spanish Fork who managed to unseat Angry Birds (if briefly) for the #1 slot for iPhone games. Ray Rackiewicz of ITT said that he’s using that as a motivational point for his students – if some 14-year old kid can do it, why not them? Why not any of us? I guess all of us were feeling a bit like we just got our butts kicked by a local 8th grader.  Maybe Greg can get him to come give the talk at our next indie night.

The evening started with a talk about Conversation Systems. Mark (I’m not gonna try and spell his last name) has been working at a company doing natural language processing for several years, and presented sort of a broad spectrum of conversation systems (and hybrids) throughout gaming history. In spite of his extensive background in NLP, his recommendations for the most open-ended text (or speech) parsing systems didn’t touch much on natural language processing other than to say it’s REALLY hard to do well.

He spoke on the purposes of dialog / conversation systems, their value in revealing information on the game world, NPCs, and even the player himself. He ran through the spectrum of systems from highly linear conversation systems (or linear conversations that are part of a larger hybrid), branching conversations, “branching with state” (popular in RPGs), topic-based conversations (highlighting Ultima IV and Blue Lacuna), simulated conversations, and then “blended” (or mixed) conversation systems.

He spent some time at the end focusing on modern conversation system implementations in Mass Effect 2 and Alpha Protocol. His final thoughts emphasized that nothing kills a game’s conversation system faster than poorly proofread text or bad voice acting, and encouraged games with a lot of text (Curtis Mirci of Califer Games nudged me when he said that) should consider writing a support tool to help manage the flow of all the text, and to allow others to help write game conversations.  And to always consider the costs – especially with voice-overs.

After that, it was time to play games. I had some great fun playing Califer Games’ Siphon Spirit – it’s a bit more impressive than the last time I played (which was something like a year ago).  There was a game about catching flies with chopsticks that was pretty amusing. Cannonball Ruins was a physics-based game in Unity about knocking things down in 3D with artillery. Always fun.

I was surprised to really enjoy an untitled game (which might end up being called, “Bizarre Tile Adventure“) which was part side-view action game and part puzzle game.  You had your basic running, jumping,  jumping on monsters to kill them type of action. But in addition, you had a limited number of tiles you could shoot to build up the level.  The tiles would go in a straight line in one of the four cardinal directions, and would “stick” against the first tile they ran into and form a permanent walkable surface. They’d also create a small, deadly explosion when they hit. The author (Chris?) said that the game has just evolved naturally from his experimentation with the XNA engine’s side-scroller starter kit, sort of a game-design-by-iteration type of thing. I love it!

Anyway, I had a delightful time, had some great conversations with fellow indies (always half the fun of indie night), and left feeling inspired. I really, REALLY want to work on a quick game — like in the Global Game Jam which starts tonight — but I can’t allow myself to do so until Frayed Knights ships. But it’s always a fun learning experience.

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Finish the Game!

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Jeff Vogel talks about the final stages of making and releasing a new RPG.

Avadon Developer Diary #5: Getting It Done

Boy do I ever feel his pain. But I think he’s much better at it by now than I am.

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Why Am I Still Working at 3 AM on a Game?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 27, 2011

I used to stay up all hours of the night playing games.

Now I stay up all hours of the night making them.

Okay, I guess that’s not entirely true. I’ve been making games for almost as long as I’ve been playing them.  Even back to the point where I was trying to squeak something that vaguely resembled gameplay out of BASIC code that had to fit inside of less than 1K of RAM.  There were many nights I’d be up late on a school night programming an adventure game or Missile Command – ish game on my Commodore 64. I rarely finished these projects, but sometimes I enjoyed making games more than playing games.

I’m down to the wire on Frayed Knights, my time spent on the game has increased (again). Likewise, the “day job” has heated up a bit, demanding a few extra hours. So I find myself still coding or making lousy programmer art or writing the next day’s blog post at 3 in the morning, knowing that my alarm clock is set to go off at just after 7 AM. That’s only four hours. Ouch. That’s math.

And then I made a horrible mistake. I decided to estimate the amount of time I’ve put into this game so far. Yeah. 50 weeks per year, and it’s been about 3.5 years, times the average amount of time I put into the game per week. Granted, I’m intending three games out of this effort, so it’s not all in one game, but the realization hit me of just how much I’d need to personally profit from this for it to even be worth minimum wage to me. Let alone replenishing the money I’ve put into it already (and owe some guys for helping out).

Math sucks sometimes.

When I put my “businessman” hat on, this is pretty frustrating. But then, I’m also looking at ways I can improve my own process, vastly increase my productivity, make it so that future games – even starting from square one like I did on Frayed Knights – take much less time and effort to create something of quality. And in spite of being an indie for as long as I have been, and a pro game developer for much longer than that, so much of this remains a learning process. Constantly. I do this so I can justify the time I put into things, to convince myself (and my very supportive wife) that this is being “productive” and stuff.

But when I take that hat off, there’s a much bigger reason I’m putting hundreds and hundreds of hours into this thing every year (and more hundreds writing about games here on the blog). It’s the same reason I was up late at night on the Commodore 64 writing a Space Invaders clone where I’d made the aliens into my least favorite teachers at my Junior High.

The bottom line is that I love this stuff. I love making games as much as I love playing them. Yeah, much of the time it’s boring, completely un-sexy stuff. But I get an immense satisfaction over seeing my imagination take a form of reality on the monitor.

At that point, the only math that matters is matrix transforms and damage calculations.

Oh, yeah, and the number of hours left when I subtract the alarm-clock setting from the current time. Yikes.

Filed Under: Geek Life, Indie Evangelism, Production - Comments: Read the First Comment

What Minecraft Did Wrong But Didn’t Matter. And What It Did Right That Did Matter

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 26, 2011

So at this point, Minecraft is a phenomenon that is like Doom or Bejeweled for the new decade.  It’s captured the mainstream game industry’s attention, and of course every indie in the world is thinking, “Wow, could I be the next Minecraft?”  At least for those who aren’t wondering if they could be the next Angry Birds or Farmville or whatever.

So was it luck? Can that success be repeated? That’s literally the twelve-million-dollar question.  Simple Lifeforms proposes some answers, kinda:

Minecraft and the Question of Luck [What Games Will Be]

Of course, the answer isn’t simple, and if it was, somebody would be cashing in on it right now.  I’m not sure Simple Lifeforms will be able to, either, though their social-gaming roots are shining through with their use of social networking terms like “tribe.”

But I think the answers are interesting.  Bottom line: No it wasn’t (just) luck. No doubt it was a factor, particularly in what really made it go viral, but there was much more to it than that. Besides the points mentioned, I feel I should add that this was far from Markus “Notch” Persson’s first rodeo, and having seen a time-lapse video of his Ludum Dare efforts, I’ve no doubt he’s a very skilled programmer and talented designer. The guy has labored for years to become an “overnight success.”

I think more than anything, the success of Minecraft demonstrates that this kind of success is highly unpredictable.  Just as The Sims was reportedly “canceled” (or “non-approved”) multiple times before it became one of the best-selling PC games in history, these kinds of break-out games may not fit neatly in any marketer’s vision of what a hit game (or even just a non-failure) looks like. While it’s horribly unpredictable, I think the best games come from “the gut” of a good developer’s or producer’s instincts. This is a view shared by none other than Brian Fargo, so at least I’m in good company in my madness.

Filed Under: Biz, Design - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Indie Games: Be More Indie Please

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 25, 2011

I like to praise the really good subset of indie gaming that is of quality, beautiful, creative, genre-defying, innovative, and / or just extremely well executed. Naturally, I focus on the tip of the iceberg that stands out above the rest. But unfortunately, the indie world is full of crap. And clones. And even clones of crap. On some level, I don’t mind this. A lot of indie games are the result of people learning to make games.

But as a customer and as a gamer, I thought I’d offer a few suggestions for game makers for what I want to see, play, and buy.  While as an RPG fan some of these suggestions may be oriented more towards RPGs, this is really supposed to be genre-agnostic. And I can’t even say if these are commercially viable suggestions. These are just what I’d like to see more of – what tend to grab my attention.

Don’t Give Me Something I’ve Played Before

I’m enough of both a gaming geek and programming geek to be intimately familiar with the thrill of getting stuff up on the screen that works the way you envision it in your head, or more particularly from another game. Remember: Your job isn’t done there. It’s not enough to emulate your inspiration. If you are trying to appeal to me, as a fan of the original, remember that I’ve already played that game.  I don’t want a reskinned, low-budget rehash of a game I loved. I want something familiar but different.

Provide a new twist on the mechanics.  Play with concepts that were not taken far enough. Hey, you are an indie on a budget, why don’t you try scaling down the mechanics and distilling the experience into an even tighter core. Maybe your idea is a counter-terrorism version of X-Com. Seize upon that theme and think about what else could be done with that concept to make the gameplay more authentic to the theme and more interesting. IEDs? Hostages? Political twists?

Don’t just clone an older game. Use it for a jumping-off point, not a destination.

Put Some of Yourself Into the Game

Don’t be afraid to put some of your own personality into your game. One of the reasons I have been so fond of the Aveyond series has been because of how the personality of the designer (or, I guess, designers, with the latest offerings) come through.  Sure, older games (especially adventure games and RPGs) were filled with some silly aspects and pop culture references that haven’t aged well. But in spite of that, I think that the “authorial voice” behind them was what gave them the staying power in my imagination, while many newer games have have either that “designed by committee” lack-of-flavor, or a lack of consistency caused by too many cooks.  I still enjoy them, and they are still of high quality, but I do like my games to have a little personality in them.

Better yet, look at Dejobaan Games’  AaaaaAaAaaAaaaaAAAa! A Reckless Disregard for Gravity.  It’s got personality in spades. Maybe too much for some, but for me it’s a big part of what makes the game so  fun.

Explore some themes or beliefs that are important to you, too. Remember what Ultima IV did with the virtues, or what Ultima VII did with the idea of organized religion. Fallout used parody and science fiction to offer a little bit of social commentary on government and corporatism.

Now, there’s definitely a danger there, and you don’t want to get preachy about that. The above games are great examples because they did not go there. You need to be genuine. Use the metaphors as a chance to hold up a mirror to the player and let them draw their own conclusions. Maybe they won’t agree with yours, but that’s okay. Also, don’t try too hard to be “edgy.” There’s a point where it ceases to be cool and interesting, and it comes off as disingenuous. I have no interest in contrived shock effect.

Within some pretty generous boundaries here, I think there’s plenty of room for personal expression and for game creators to try and make more of a personal connection with their players. Don’t be safe and generic.

Play to Your Strengths

This is another item where I need to kick myself and follow my own advice more often. But while tiny teams and tiny budgets are often perceived as a disadvantage for an indie, they’ve got a lot of advantages they can exploit as well.  Look at the success of Minecraft and VVVVVV and what they were able to accomplish in spite of (or perhaps because of) the lack of high-quality art.  Or what some of the RPG Maker developers (or Unity developers, for that matter) have managed to do without extensive coding backgrounds.

Ultimately, indies have several things going in their favor. They have freedom that big studios and publishers don’t have.  They have more ways to distribute and monetize their games than ever before. There’s an amazing array of tools out there that are cheap and more powerful than ever, especially for a studio that doesn’t need to stay on the bleeding edge of technology.  These are powerful advantages all by themselves.

Indies should play to these strengths. And the successful ones are doing just that. Focus more on quality of mechanics, not on quantity of content. Focus more on depth of a few simple systems, not scope. Go low-budget, go low-tech, and make the most of it! Be agile. Be quirky. Be cool.

Be indie.

Filed Under: Game Development, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 13 Comments to Read

Matt Chat Interview with Brian Fargo, Part 2

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 24, 2011

A continuation of last week’s interview, Matt Barton grills Brian Fargo about Wasteland, Stonekeep, Fallout, and modern RPGs vs classic 80’s RPG design:

To support Matt’s desire to keep his drinking horn full, please consider a donation if you enjoy these.

Filed Under: Interviews, Mainstream Games, Retro - Comments: Comments are off for this article



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