Ten Awesome Gaming Predictions for 2013
Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 1, 2013
Happy New Year, everyone! May 2013 be awesome!
I figured I’d start the new year by making some predictions. Since I don’t actually know jack, these are really easy, and I invite you to contribute your own! Here we go – my ten predictions for the new year:
#1 – The Ouya actually becomes a cult hit, sells a couple million. With the success of the indie game SphereCraft, selling approximately 2 copies per unit, development fever takes hold, and the Ouya becomes the dumping ground for 1 million game “apps”, making an average of $18.27.
#2 – Greece finally comes to the realization that not only are Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar game developers, not spies, but that military bases in Lemnos really don’t have anything worth spying on, anyway. During a break in their riots, they finally manage to find enough officials in the court system to hold trial and set the developers free.
#3 – Minecraft keeps selling craploads. (Hey, I have to put something in here that I can point back to in 2014 and say, “see, I was right!”)
#4 – Frayed Knights 2 pulls ahead of Minecraft in sales for the last four weeks of the year.
#5 -Ubisoft starts using Kickstarter to generate funding for games.
#6 – Not to be outdone by Ubisoft, EA opens an “indie” division, buying or building two dozen “indie” studios, now wholly owned members of the EA family. The only difference between these studios and any other publisher-owned studio is that they get crappy budgets. Dozens of game journalists write long screeds in Kotaku, Joystiq, and GameSpot about how these studios embrace the “indie spirit” and are thus legitimately indie. More indie, some maintain, than the other so-called “indie” studios operating out of their basements self-funded by the the owners working part-time at McDonalds, because, you know, McDonalds.
#7 – Grimoire is actually released, after nearly two decades of development. Dozens of indie RPG fans around the world are shocked and amazed. Then it goes on to outsell Frayed Knights 2 AND Minecraft.
#8 – Apple releases a new iPhone. 50% of current iPhone owners trade in their old models and buy the upgrade, and express 100% satisfaction with the improvements. Then engineers pop open the case and discover that it’s exactly the same hardware as the previous generation. Conversely, the totally re-engineered new Microsoft game console leaves players shrugging their shoulders and claiming the 360 was better.
#9 – Ubisoft tries yet another DRM scheme, from a company called HostageSoft, which threatens to burn out your video card, and send spam to your entire email list, and wipe your hard-drive in 24 hours unless you either prove your legitimate ownership of the game in a face-to-face meeting with a company representative, or deposit $100 for indefinite “safekeeping” in an anonymous bank account in the Cayman Islands. Ubisoft is shocked, SHOCKED to discover that this is considered “malware” and makes every effort to phase this system out by late 2018.
#10 – On December 12, game fans around the world come up with final definitions for “indie” and “Role-Playing Game” that everyone can agree on. Categorization becomes a cinch, and gamers around the world breathe a sigh of relief as a new era is ushered in, stripped of the uncertainty that fueled a million forum trolls. Then, at 6:15 AM eastern time on December 13th, a new kinda-sorta-might-be-an-RPG by some company that should probably be considered indie but is maybe not is released, and heated arguments once again erupt on hundreds of forums across the globe.
Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 10 Comments to Read
Five Steps To Get Motivated to Make Your Indie Game
Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 31, 2012
Full-time indie game developers have a pretty accessible motivator called “the bank account.” Sadly, it works best when diminished, which is not it’s preferred state. But let’s say you are a part-time indie, or an aspiring indie, and your ability to keep eating is not tied to the completion and success of your next game. With all the other hectic issues of life, you lament, it’s so hard to get and stay motivated to work on your game.
Been there, done that. Here’s a secret five-step trick that works for me:
#1 – Play your game in its current state just long enough to generate a list of things that are Not Working (or not working right). If your game isn’t playable at all, it shouldn’t take long at all to generate a list!
#2 – Write the list down. Order it in whatever order you’d like to work on things. Or not. Just make sure the list is in some usable form. I prefer .txt files, though in the past I just kept a paper notebook. This doesn’t need to be exhaustive, just maybe a dozen things you saw during step #1 that you wouldn’t want to ship unless they were taken care of.
#3 – Start working on one of the items on the list. If and when you finish, mark it off, and begin working on the next one.
#4 – Repeat step 3 until you feel motivated, or complete the list.
#5 – Go back to step #1 if the list is completed.
If you complete all five steps without ever getting motivated, well, guess what? You’ve got a game ready to release, now. Release it. That oughta motivate ya!
Okay, so this post is a little bit on the flippant side. But if I’m harping on this, I’m just as much harping on myself, ‘cuz it’s a problem I also face. And the above solution, dumb as it sounds, is IMO really an answer to a key problem:
Motivation (and it’s cousin, inspiration) doesn’t come when it’s convenient.
If you only work when you feel “motivated” you aren’t going to get anywhere. Making games can be a lot of fun. But a lot of the time, it’s work, and not particularly exciting. Spending hours debugging a rare save-game corruption is every bit as NOT exciting as it sounds.
(Okay, I’m lying a little bit. I’m a programmer. Sometimes I take great glee in hunting down and killing bugs in code. It’s not exactly a motivating factor for me, and it’s often extremely frustrating, but there’s a huge sense of job satisfaction solving a major puzzle in your code. But I digress.)
Bottom-line – and again, I’m preaching to myself as much as anybody else – is that making games requires more professionalism than motivation. And really, working on a game after all the other jobs and chores of the day are done can feel a little overwhelming. Getting a session started can be a pain.
But much as a swimming in a pool can be much more enjoyable once you’ve dived in and forced yourself to get acclimated to the water temperature through a quick shock, I find that forcing myself to work on the game when I don’t feel much like working is the best way to get myself in the ‘zone’ where I am most productive AND really enjoy what I’m doing.
This works for writing, too. Sometimes I have to write crap for several minutes before I actually get inspired to write something worthwhile. I “fake it ’till I make it” – go through the motions until my brain finally agrees to go along in the direction discipline or professionalism or stubbornness is leading.
This seems to be the best way for me to get things done. Make it a habit, and motivation and everything else will eventually follow along.
Just don’t forget to make the list.
Filed Under: Production - Comments: 5 Comments to Read
Game Design: The Same Game, Only Different
Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 28, 2012
Today, I’m running a D&D game for my family – well, okay, Pathfinder. Which in and of itself is a very cool thing. My twelve-year-old self would be so impressed. We’re playing the second part of the Age of Worms campaign that came out in Dungeon magazine about seven years ago. It’s pretty well-written and interesting, in spite of being seven years old. Interestingly, I learned that I’m not the only one in my city who is doing this… a friend was asked to fill in as “guest DM” on a campaign a few months ago, and needed to borrow those issues of the magazine as they were also playing Age of Worms.
Back in the day (whatever that day was – my aforementioned twelve-year-old self would know), gamers played the same modules. There were only a couple dozen of ’em, so that led to a lot of commonality of experience. One of the tricks of playing Dungeons & Dragons in my circle of friends in those days – if you weren’t running completely home-brewed stuff – was to find a module that nobody in your group had played yet. There was nothing wrong with playing completely custom stuff … it was my preference, actually, assuming a decently creative Dungeon Master (which was sometimes quite an assumption). But there was something special about playing the official game modules. Primarily, it was the shared experience. Now YOU could finally experience what some of the other gamers were talking about.
Now, with MMOs and other CRPGs, that shared experience is much more commonplace. But it’s also a little more sterile, as computer-moderated adventures don’t vary quite so much. Whereas White Plume Mountain could be a vastly different experience depending upon who you were gaming with and who was running the game. Sorta like the difference between going to plays versus movies. While a play is (almost) always the same on most levels, different casts and directors – and even different performances – can make each one a unique experience. This allows for people to compare their experiences in a way you don’t get with movies, where only a few externalities may differ. So it’s… “the same but different.”
Whenever I talk about stuff like this, I like to bring it back to video game design. I guess if I really wanted to seem creative, I should hide my sources. But anyway, here’s a bizarro, probably terrible idea:
You know how occasionally games would ship with different boxes? Off the top of my head, I can think of Starcraft, Warcraft III, and Half Life 2. So what if… WHAT IF…. the game inside the box was a little different for each one?
More particularly — what if, instead of different “editions” of a game being simply different levels of upgrades and pack-ins, what if the editions truly offered a different experience? Not massive differences, in the “build five games for the price of five,” sense. But subtle shading. Maybe you have a ‘black’ edition that’s a little more angsty, a ‘green’ edition that has more emphasis on the romance aspect of the storyline, a ‘yellow’ edition that’s a little more light-hearted. Undoubtedly players would swap the differences between them as mods, so it wouldn’t be possible to strictly enforce the “you get what you get” approach. But having these options “pre-packaged” and letting players compare and contrast the differences could be an interesting experiment, at least.
(UPDATE: Robert Boyd reminded me that this was the “Pokemon” idea… which actually crossed my mind briefly while I was writing this. While that’s not quite what I was aiming for with this, I could at least point to Pokemon and say that the idea has been tried and proven in at least one aspect. Of course, the point of the Pokemon versions was to get players to get together and swap. But there’s maybe a bit more that could be done with it.)
Filed Under: Design, Geek Life - Comments: 4 Comments to Read
Indie Games: After the Gold Rush?
Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 27, 2012
I guess this is a little bit of a follow-up from yesterday’s post, but allow me to get a little pessimistic for a minute. Except I personally think I’m being realistic.
Indie games have been enjoying a gold rush, a boom. Inevitably, after the boom peaks, comes a bust – a contraction. Almost everybody knows this, as it’s a well-documented and commonly understood description of the business cycle, but the point to argue is how close we may be to the peak. Some may argue the peak is a long way off, and the “bust” – the contraction – will take us no lower than we are now. Others – myself included – suspect the peak of the boom cycle is pretty dang close. I’m not the only one.
It’s been a marvelous few years. The ‘core indie game’ – as opposed to casual – was something that was largely marginalized when I started out. Some had figured that its time had passed in the previous ‘gold rush’ in the 1990s, when the shareware games movement produced some incredible hits (and built up some major game studios that are still with us today). Plenty of core (not ‘hardcore’, just ‘core’) indie games were being produced, and some were actually making money. But the gold rush was in the casual games arena. That was really taking off.
It, too, came to an end. A lot of the companies with the glowing success stories of that era aren’t around anymore. They didn’t survive the gold rush. But while casual games are no longer quite the hot news item they were six years ago, they haven’t gone anywhere. Or rather, they’ve continued to go places – the boom in mobile apps have probably been bigger for the casual “space” than for core indie games. After the gold rush, dealing with an oversaturated market and plummeting prices (weird how supply & demand works like that), casual games had to adapt and change as the market matured and changed.
“Core” indie games have really enjoyed an increase in attention lately, thanks in part to mobile platforms (finally) taking off and some major online distributors getting serious about selling indie games. But they are going to go through the same thing, sooner or later… and it’ll be another case of “survival of the fittest.” The fittest may not be the uber-impressive dinosaurs that were at the top of the food chain in the previous cycle. After all, two years ago, Zynga looked like it was unstoppable… (and to continue analogy, which may not hold true forever but works for today — while they’ve had to consolidate and adapt, they are still a big deal).
I’m not sure what the future will hold. I’ve been relishing this golden age, as a gamer, because it’s meant a ton of really interesting games… some of which are destined to be all-time classics spoken of with the some measure of the same reverence that we now give to games like Super Mario Bros and Doom. We’ll look back and complain about how nobody makes games like that anymore… even though they will be.
The growth of California didn’t end with the end of the seven-year California Gold Rush. And I don’t expect that we’ll see indie games going anywhere. Yeah, there’s going to be some rough sledding after we clear the peak. I’m actually looking forward to seeing what’s on the other side. I plan to be there, one way or another.
Filed Under: Biz, Casual Games, Indie Evangelism, Production - Comments: 2 Comments to Read
“Never Gonna Play It.”
Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 26, 2012
I spent less money this year on the annual holiday PC game portal sales than usual. Maybe it’s premature to say that, as some portals are still doing sales until the beginning of next year, but so far the year-end sales haven’t hurt my wallet as much as the past.
This wasn’t really a factor of the economy or anything. I’m just getting to the point that – between numerous sales and bundle deals and decades of building a gaming library, plus the demands of being an indie game developer on top of having an often time-intensive Day Job – I’ve hit something of a saturation point. While there may be a screaming deal on Titan Quest, I realized that I’m just never gonna get around to playing it.
It’s painful for me to recognize this. In spite of the passage of a couple of decades, I don’t feel that far removed from being the poor, starving college student with more time than money who could spend the better part of a Saturday delving through the depths of the Temple of Darkmoon or Castle Wolfenstein, or running missions across the galaxy in Frontier: Elite 2. Back then games were expensive, and time seemed… well, a lot more disposable.
Oh, I still devote a ton of time to playing games; I sometimes resent the Time Played counter in Steam for informing me just how many crazy hours I’ve devoted to a game, particularly one I’m supposed to be all snobbish about. “Oh, I left that one paused for several hours,” is my equivalent of saying, “I can quit anytime I want to.” But those hours are far more hard-won today than they used to be. And my backlog of games which I haven’t given a fair amount of effort to playing – even some that I’ve never even installed, usually via a bundle deal – keeps growing.
And if I’m perfectly honest with myself – I picked up a lot of games off the bargain bin in those poor starving student days that I never got around to playing very much, too.
In spite of my grousing, as I frequently say: This really is a good kind of problem to have, all things considered. And hey, my wallet definitely needed the break this holiday season!
Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 12 Comments to Read
A Very Indie Christmas
Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 24, 2012
Is it sad that I get so excited about taking time off for the holidays so that I can spend time working on my games?
Does Santa have any digital elves that can make me some royalty-free art assets?
My wife used to buy me a video game or two for Christmas. She doesn’t bother anymore. Especially in the era of massive Steam / GOG.COM / GamersGate sales, when I buy something like a two-years’ supply. Every. Frickin’. Year.
Does listening to the “Jingle Bell” tunes from the Serious Sam 2 soundtrack as I code count as being in the Christmas spirit?
It’s snowing. I think, “Crap, gonna be a pain in the butt to drive out to buy a new mouse and a case of Red Bull this morning before the stores close for the holiday.”
If the world of Frayed Knights celebrated Christmas, Arianna would undoubtedly want a cooler, more powerful magic sword. Choe would want a pony. Dirk would undoubtedly simply take whatever he wanted anyway. And Benjamin would want Peace on Earth and Earth-Like Fantasy Worlds and Good Will Towards Mankind and Other Humanoid Races. And maybe something that might kill a few more brain cells.
void MakeAWish()
{
GameObject mcObject = new GameObject();
UILabel mc = mcObject.AddComponent();
mc.transform.parent = GameObject.Find("MainPanel").transform;
mc.font = GameObject.Find("FKMouseHoverMessage").GetComponent().font;
mc.text = "Merry\nChristmas!";
mc.color = new Color(0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f);
mcObject.transform.localScale= new Vector3(25.0f, 25.0f, 1.0f);
TweenScale.Begin(mcObject, 2.0f, new Vector3(250.0f, 250.0f, 1.0f));
}
Hope you have a very happy one, whether you observe it or not! Best wishes to all! Be safe, do well, and have fun!
Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 4 Comments to Read
Rare Arcade Game that Beat Atari in Court Unearthed
Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 21, 2012
I’d never heard of the arcade game Meteors before. It’s hardly surprising – it sounds like the game had near zero distribution, but it does have the distinction of being the winner of a landmark legal decision in a lawsuit from Atari. The problem was… this was a game that, graphically at least… seems quite superior to Asteroids in the same era that Asteroids (and its sequel) were popular in arcades. The judge ruled that Atari could not “own” a genre of video games – in this case, the space ship shooting rocks “genre.” Good thing, too, or we wouldn’t have had Sinistar and many other games. Atari could not own the idea, only the implementation — and this game was not “substantially similar” enough to warrant infringement upon the implementation.
So that’s Meteors‘ claim to fame. Otherwise, it’s just a super-obscure, super-rare title.
But then there’s this video. Like most of us, Eric Holniker had never heard of Meteors, even though his father had been the one who made it and fought (and won) against Atari. After his father’s death last year, he discovered the cabinet – perhaps the only one remaining in existence – and decided to put it into the arcade / lan center that he runs in Maryland. And then he powered it up…
You can get some more more information at Ian Bogost’s site.
But there’s likely a little more to this story. Like what happened following the lawsuit.
While the game “Meteors” may have been super-rare, there’s at least one game that looks identical which was… well, okay, also pretty dang rare but not quite as rare as Meteors. The game is Meteoroids, by Venture Line, and I’ve had it in my MAME library for years. Think I only played it once before now, but on re-playing it, it looked identical in every way except for the title screen & sequence to the game featured in this video.
It’s a raster-based arcade game, as opposed to vector-based as was Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, and Atari’s next Asteroids-follow-up, Space Duel. Key gameplay differences as far as I have seen are that new meteors can appear in in real-time as you play (at the beginning, it looks like), your bullets do not “wrap” to the other side of the screen (but everything else does), and as far as I can tell there’s no hyperspace button. Oh, and on the first “board” of asteroids – er, meteors… meteoroids… ok rocks – the medium-sized rocks are destroyed when you hit them, instead of breaking into small rocks.
If I were to venture a guess… Meteors was the prototype featured in the lawsuit. Following the lawsuit, Amusement World lacked the finances to really mass-produce the game, and then licensed it / sold it to Venture Line, who then rebranded it. The one in the video does not provide a copyright notice on the title screen, which suggests that it was only a prototype and not a production machine, and perhaps this was the intention all along.
Or there’s something incorrect in the above story, but I’ll assume it’s largely correct.
Anyway, it’s an interesting piece of history. It is not a major, earth-shattering discovery, nor an incredible gem of game design that was tragically lost. But the human element is what sets it apart.
Filed Under: Biz, Retro - Comments: 4 Comments to Read
A Trip Back to Baldur’s Gate
Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 20, 2012
I started a new game of Baldur’s Gate earlier this year, after finally purchasing a new copy of the game from GOG.COM (I still have it on CD-ROM, plus the expansion, but there was too good of a sale one day at GOG.COM with a convenient digital download and extras). I didn’t get far before the Enhanced Edition was announced, so I quit playing and waited.
Sadly, the Enhanced Edition came out while I was knee-deep in Day Job stuff, so I haven’t been able to play it much. On the plus side, Beamdog seems really busy with the patches, so I may be missing out on some of the less amusing new “changes” that people have been reporting.
Baldur’s Gate was, in my mind, the weakest of the Infinity Engine games – which includes the Icewind Dale series and Planescape: Torment. And of course Baldur’s Gate II, which was to me something of a magnum opus for D&D-based games, one of my all-time favorites and a game of such scope and detail (a rare combo) that it’s what I think of when I think “epic.” All of the games were pretty dang awesome, but Baldur’s Gate was the one that established the engine & style. It in many ways defined the course that Bioware would take as it evolved a particular “style” of RPGs.
One of the very cool things about the original Baldur’s Gate is that while it has plenty of polish appropriate to a high-end RPG of its era, and its fundamental mechanics are derived from a time-tested game system, the game still feels pretty “raw” design-wise, particularly in the early stages after leaving Candlekeep through about mid-game. Surviving long enough to hit the more survivable third level or so is a chore that requires more luck (and reloads) than skill. The quest design, such as it is, is rough. It feels a lot like a grab-bag of a ton of ideas of what an RPG should be like, thrown together in a stone-soup of a game that only barely ties all this random stuff together in some semblance of an actual storyline.
And to be honest, I love the game for just that reason.
Not that I have anything against tight, focused RPGs. But for many of the same reasons I love indie RPGs, there’s a vibrancy in this game – a raw enthusiasm and passion that hasn’t been too heavily tempered yet by experience – that is missing in many of Bioware’s later titles. More particularly, things haven’t had a chance to get reduced to (far easier to develop and maintain) formulas yet. It’s rough and crazy and somewhat unpredictable (and even confusing) at times. And sometimes downright annoying (frickin’ kobolds…). But they hadn’t developed the “rules” for presenting quests or how to handle certain situations yet, and it left things feeling rough, but open. I really enjoy that.
Maybe I’m just weird this way because of my background – playing dice-and-paper D&D with gamers of varying levels of skill and experience. I played in a couple of games that were sheer disasters from the get-go. Others were really pretty fantastic. But I love the anything-goes mentality, and have a preference for those games that embrace that same mentality. In some cases, they did so just because they were the first of a series and system and were still making up the rules as they went.
Filed Under: Retro - Comments: 4 Comments to Read
Interview with “Telepath Tactics ” Creator Craig Stern
Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 19, 2012
It doesn’t feel like all that long ago that I interviewed Craig about Telepath RPG: Servants of God. But I guess it was actually two years ago. Time flies.
This time, I wanted to chat with him about his “Strategy RPG” in development, Telepath Tactics. This game is approaching its final week on Kickstarter. While I do have some reservations about recommending Kickstarter projects to readers, simply because I know that some of these crowdfunded projects will fail, and I don’t want to be the guy who suggested people throw away money. I do enough of that on the stock market that I don’t like giving suggestions to people. 🙂
However, Craig is another one of those “known quantities.” With several games to his credit, Craig’s producing this game one way or another – but through Kickstarter funding, he hopes to have much higher production values at the end of this journey. So this won’t be the first or last time I’ll break my own guidelines, and suggest that people please take a look at this project and see if it’s worth backing. Even now that indie RPGs are no longer an endangered species, Telepath Tactics stands out as a pretty unique offering.
You can visit the Telepath Tactics Kickstarter page here.
Without any further ado, here’s my conversation with Craig:
Rampant Coyote: Now, you call it a strategy RPG, as opposed to a tactics game. So is this going to be more like Telepath Psy Arena or more like Telepath RPG? And what will be the biggest difference between Telepath Tactics and those two previous games?
Craig: “Strategy RPG” is just the most commonly used name for this subgenre: in reality, of course, these are all tactics games. I’ve shied away from using the term “tactical RPG” in part because, much like “with RPG elements” before it, “tactical” has begun to morph into a throwaway term that developers use to market every single game they make, no matter what genre it belongs in and no matter how shallow and facile its combat mechanics are. “Strategy RPG” still stands for a very specific thing, and I want to make sure people understand what kind of game Telepath Tactics is.
Telepath Tactics shares some commonalities with previous Telepath games, but it’s much more streamlined and focused in structure. Telepath RPG: Servants of God featured exploration and nonlinear progression; Telepath Psy Arena 2 revolved around a tournament league structure with randomly generated training battles. Both of these games had a very flexible character advancement system where the player could spend gold to improve any character in any area.
Unlike its predecessors, Telepath Tactics is single-mindedly focused on exactly two things: combat and narrative. To that end, it progresses through a linear story with an ensemble cast; battles and cut scenes occur in a set order. This has allowed me to focus on two of the things I do best and make sure that I really, really nail them.
Rampant Coyote: How long have you been working on Telepath Tactics already? What’s done, and what’s left to do?
Craig: I’ve been working on Telepath Tactics off and on for about two years, and much more regularly since February (when Telepath RPG: Servants of God was finally released).
The game is still in alpha, but a lot has been done. The game has fully functional local multiplayer with three game types and a load of customization options; the start of the single player campaign; global lighting; weather effects; walking animations; five tilesets; a dialog system complete with scripting; a music / sound effects engine; swimming; elevation effects; the ability to push, pull and throw characters off of cliffs and into water or lava; 22 character classes; numerous unique items; and (last I counted) just shy of 100 unique character attacks and abilities. The AI is coming along well too, with the majority of major routines in place.
Oh, and mod support: that’s already in-game and working beautifully, complete with a slick, functioning map editor.
There are only a few core things left to code: asynchronous online multiplayer, point lighting, and improvements to the enemy AI being the big three. (I won’t be satisfied until the AI gives players nightmares on its hardest setting!) Most of what remains, frankly, is content: attack animations, sound effects, music, character portraits, individualized attack icons and other GUI assets, and the remainder of the single player campaign.
Rampant Coyote: What lessons have you learned in your previous games that you are applying to this one?
There are so many; perhaps the biggest has been the importance of modularity. A modular approach to developing the game’s systems has made it very easy for me to create new content, craft a brutal enemy AI that plays by the same rules as the player, and–of course–modularity has allowed me to offer mod support.
I’ve also learned the importance of focus. I’m just one guy; I can only do quality work if I can avoid spreading myself too thin. To that end, I’m contracting out most of the work of asset creation and concentrating on providing a high quality, linear experience. Attempting a nonlinear wRPG at the same time as I break ground on a brand new, complex tactics engine is just asking for problems. Luckily, thanks to that whole modularity thing, I’ll be able to keep extending the Telepath Tactics engine going forward, allowing me to branch out in interesting and ever-more-ambitious directions.
Rampant Coyote: You’ve made several games in the past without the benefit of Kickstarter. So why did you go for Kickstarter this time around?
Craig: Assets are the majority of what remains to be added to the game, and I want those assets to be high quality assets. Because I am neither a talented graphic artist nor independently wealthy, I need some outside means of paying the substantial costs of contracting artists to create these; Kickstarter just happens to be the best option around for making that happen.
Rampant Coyote: For those who have played tactics games in the past – your own games, or Band of Bugs or the like on the PC, or games like Final Fantasy Tactics or Disgaea on consoles and handhelds – what would really make them stand up and take notice of Telepath Tactics? While the PC isn’t exactly overwhelmed with strategy RPGs these days, what features really set Telepath Tactics apart?
Craig: First, as you point out, games like this are very rare on PC. That’s reason enough to support the game all on its own, I think!
Beyond that, though, Telepath Tactics stands alone in terms of features. It has extensive mod support with support for custom single player campaigns, which means that the game could theoretically have a limitless supply of new content flooding in for years to come. As far as I’m concerned, this will be a game to keep on your hard drive until the day you die.
The combat engine itself, in turn, is what happens if you take all that advice (1, 2, 3) I’ve been writing up on SinisterDesign.net over the past year and a half and actually put it into practice. Telepath Tactics is highly deterministic, with straightforward rules that combine in interesting ways to create a huge possibility space. To restate that in plain English: attacks do not have a chance to “miss,” damage is 100% predictable, and there are a lot of easy-to-grasp mechanics that make things interesting: elevation effects; environmental hazards; the ability to push, pull and throw characters; destructible and dynamic scenery; counterattacks; status effects; elemental weaknesses and resistances; character energy that regenerates when resting; up to eight attacks per character; AOE attacks; variable range attacks; movement abilities; backstab bonuses; sidestab bonuses; the ability to create bridges and barricades; explosive satchels that you can place and detonate; random item drops; and so on.
On top of all that, Telepath Tactics has local multiplayer. I’ve actually thrown parties where my friends come over and we play matches, and I can attest that it’s a lot of fun.
Rampant Coyote: So – how about a teaser about the storyline? What’s the core story about? And how will the story be presented in this game?
Craig: The story is presented mostly through cut scenes and character dialog, with occasional exposition. (This stuff is also available to modders, by the way. Script your own cut scenes ftw!)
Without wading too far into spoiler territory, let’s just say that Telepath Tactics features a story of political backstabbing and high intrigue. Here’s a snippet of background:
Shadowlings, disembodied creatures from the nether reaches of the earth, were the first to discover the secrets of vibra mining. The secret to powering steam tech, vibra turned out to be big business–and no place had it in greater concentrations than the Dundar Archipelago.
So when Lon Schmendrick ran for a seat in the Dundar imperial senate, the Vibra Mining Company was more than happy to foot the cost of his campaign. He won, he served his term, and he retired to govern several islands as magistrate. He was set; when the Vibra Mining Company came calling, all he had to do was give them their mining grant. It’s what a smarter man would have done. But then, Lon was never the brightest candle in the candelabrum…
Rampant Coyote: Why did you change from the overhead view to the new of past games to this perspective (and style)?
Craig: The overhead perspective was the number one complaint I received about past games, both from players and in reviews. I remember the first time any of my games was mentioned on Rock Paper Shotgun. It was a Kieron Gillen post about Telepath Psy Arena 2. He made a joke about the birds’ eye view of the camera, quoted from the press release, and called it a day.
Visuals have never been the thing I cared about most in games, but it’s become obvious to me over the years that my work will never be taken seriously until I use visuals pretty enough that most people can ignore them and actually give the game itself a real shot. Getting rid of the much hated top-down camera was step one; step two was adopting a perspective that RPG players already know and love, the side-on oblique perspective.
Rampant Coyote: For the modding community (or those who just like to make sure they have zillions of hours of gameplay from their game courtesy of third-party content) – what sort of tools will be provided to people wanting to add their own content to the game?
Craig: There is already a functional and user-friendly map editor with support for custom tilesets, character classes and destructible objects. I’d eventually like to create tools for editing the various other aspects of the game as well (character classes, items, dialog, etc.)–but for now, all of that stuff is accessible and in clearly labeled, easy-to-edit XML files that you can tinker with in any text editor of your choice. Given how easy it is to read and edit these things, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the community stepped in and created editing tools of its own!
Once again – Here’s the Kickstarter if you’d like to be involved. There’s only a few days left to take it over the top, so check it out today!
And thanks, Craig, for the update and a chance to talk indie RPGs with you again!
Filed Under: Interviews - Comments: 2 Comments to Read
Programming: Algorithms, Deltas, and Exceptions
Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 18, 2012
Sometimes I am a little slow, and need to be taught a lesson a number of times.
My very first day on my first game development job, I was confronted with the design document for the game that would one day be Twisted Metal (actually, I was introduced to both that doc and the Warhawk design doc the same day). Within were tons of meticulously generated spreadsheets describing all kinds of discrete situations and responses for each of the AI-driven vehicles. The idea was quite sound (listen up, designers!): They had a vision of a particular gameplay that they (I think I’m speaking of Dave Jaffe and Mike Giam, though they may not have been the only ones involved) had in mind and wanted to make sure was reflected in the final product, and they wanted to make sure that the AI felt unique and interesting. Fighting Sweet Tooth should be a fundamentally different experience from fighting Yellowjacket, requiring a different approach based on not just the vehicle strengths and weaknesses, but also upon the AI tendencies.
I won’t say these spreadsheets were useless. And maybe they were never intended to be dropped directly into the game as-is – that was simply our inexperience at work. They guided our work on the AI, certainly. And we did implement the chart as best as possible. But there were problems with this approach:
#1 – In the real game, things were a lot more fluid and a lot less clearly defined than would ever be reflected in a spreadsheet. Often several of the conditions (or none of them) applied, or the difference between them got really ‘fuzzy.’
#2 – In the real game, a lot of what sounded cool or interesting or useful or even perceivable on paper proved to be… not. For a concrete example, look at all the rear-firing weapons that were not really included (except in some cases via special moves) in the sequel. While they could kinda-sorta be used to help shake off pursuit (or at least make sure they couldn’t chase you with full impunity), they were difficult to use and the actual gameplay didn’t turn into long running battles in one direction.
#3 – In many cases, the logic for the physics and behaviors were best handled algorithmically rather than through discrete states and behaviors. As an example – if you have unlimited ammo and no gun overheating and a pretty constant stream of bullets available to you, then there’s no penalty at all for just leaving the machine guns on whenever a target is in range and front of you. It’s how humans played. So to have the AI deviate too much otherwise would unnecessarily cripple the AI skill.
#4 – If you had to make a major change to the game logic or balance, it involved going back and changing a whole ton of values. This made changes a pain, and it made experimentation very slow.
So what really happened is that we distilled all these tons of spreadsheets into some nice, algorithmic behavior with a few meaningful parameters and exceptions (I’m talking exceptions from the general game rules, here, not code exceptions). These rules were driven by spreadsheet values initially, and later tweaked when the game was fully playable. The algorithms provided a great course level of control – for handling general behaviors across the board, and balancing the game as a whole. The little exceptional, specific situations gave us the personality.
While my total budget for Frayed Knights wouldn’t have paid for a week of development of many of the games I’ve made in my career, it was also in most ways the biggest, most complicated game I’d ever worked on. And it is also my favorite (so far…), something I was really excited to create, which was probably part of why I lost sight of old lessons. I’ve had game designs buzzing through my head for how a “proper” RPG system should work ever since I first started playing Basic Dungeons & Dragons, and in spite of having played tons of CRPGs, it was the old dice & paper rules that informed my design decisions. This was mostly deliberate – I wanted Frayed Knights to be as much of a return to the feel of classic dice-and-paper gaming as to old-school CRPGs.
The thing is, human-moderated rules really are a whole different animal, by necessity, from computer-driven ones. Just as you’d not want to make a movie that is simply a scene-by-scene recreation of what is described in a book, making a computer RPG directly out of the rules of a dice & paper game is pretty sub-optimal. And making a new game system for a CRPG with too much devotion to the way the dice & paper games do it is likewise less than ideal. Again, it comes down to all those charts and tables – what passes f0r a spreadsheet in a human-moderated game. We humans don’t do complex calculations in our head very well… having the numbers out in front of us in chart form is much easier. But for a computer, those calculations and algorithms are simple.
A mistake I made was defining all these charts – in spreadsheet form – and putting them all in the game. The silly part of it was that I generated much of the data in the spreadsheet algorithmically – to keep things balanced. Why generate a pile of numbers, tweak them, and then enter them all individually into the game? Why not only generate the tweaks – the deltas and exceptions – from the norm?
Consequently, I ran into all the problems I listed above – the data didn’t respond well to changes or make it easy to experiment; and as the game evolved, multiple changes were necessary. And many of those items that I so meticulously entered, tweaked and re-tweaked, and maintained through multiple revisions turned out to be pretty useless in the grand scheme of the game. Certain statistics had such little impact that they were lost in the noise.
So again, the lesson is this: keep as much of the overall game balance in simple, global parameters for algorithms. Define the unique elements by their deltas and exceptions (again, game rule exceptions, not code exceptions) which can scale with the global changes.
For example, lets say your average sword does 8 points of damage – a value cribbed just now from good-ol’-fashioned D&D. The wrong way to do it (hello! This was me!) is to have a magic sword listed as doing 9 points of damage. What happens if you change the average damage of a sword to 10? Suddenly your magical sword becomes a defective sword. A better way to handle it would be to define the sword as doing +1 additional damage.
But then, what if you multiply hit points across the board by 10, so that a normal sword now does 80 points of damage? Suddenly this +1 sword sounds pretty pathetic. An even better, more scalable approach would be to list this weapon as one that does +12.5% more damage than normal. But then there’s still another problem – what if you actually reduce the average sword’s damage from 8 to 4? Now +12.5% damage is only a half a point, and if you don’t round up, then this means your magic sword is no better than a normal sword. So you could even go one level further, and say this magic sword has a “Low Level Upgrade” on damage, and let “Low Level Upgrade” be an algorithmically determined modifier.
Of course, you can get absolutely insane with these generalizations, and they can come with their own problems. The important part is keeping things scalable and easy to change. Games are not just interactive in the final product – the process of development is (and should be) highly interactive as well, with lots of changes and improvements and balancing and tweaking and p0lishing as a constant process. Giant charts of discrete data with tons of foundational interdependencies is pretty much the opposite of how you want to develop your game. Keep your data-driven aspects hierarchical and solved at as high a level as possible, and keep the low-level stuff for making things special and cool.
Good luck, and have fun.
Filed Under: Programming - Comments: 4 Comments to Read
The Line Between Controversy and Exploitation
Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 17, 2012
Brian Moriarty once inspired me in a Game Developer’s Conference (back when it was CGDC, I think) by talking about the wonderful potential of the medium, how it would be the dominant entertainment medium of the 21st century, and the power of the medium to educate and provoke thought. He said something about how you wouldn’t just read about Auschwitz and how that came to happen – we could have (virtually) our own hands on the lever of the gas chamber.
It sounded cool at the time, coming from a guy who had created some pretty deep interactive fiction for Infocom and who had just given a lecture about getting games beyond the dialog of violence.
But since then I’ve seen a few games that put you in that kind of role. It’s not always as thought-provoking as he suggested. Sometimes it feels like it’s simply reveling in shock value and exploitation. In a couple of instances, I felt like I was being dragged along into someone else’s sick fantasy. At that point, I’m not sure if the fantasy was the intent, or inspiring revulsion was the intent. The line can be pretty fine across numerous axes.
For me, it really comes down to a level of trust of the developer. Yet another reason for my harping on the subject of authorship. If a game is going to take me into dark places, I want to know I can trust the author – the designer – to lead me back out again. I have no interest in the gratuitous, the exploitative, the shock for shock value’s sake.
(And on the flip side, I have very little patience for preachy, either).
Filed Under: Design - Comments: 8 Comments to Read
Two Great Arcade Urban Legends
Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 14, 2012
On twitter (I’m @RampantCoyote ) I was chatting a little bit about arcade urban legends. Most of the ones I was familiar with were pretty local – some kid pulling my leg claiming to have gone to a totally new world through the Stargate in Defender Stargate (later redubbed Defender II). Or how it was possible to get into the ghost pen in Pac-Man (for what reason, I cannot fathom). There was no Internet back then (well, okay, technically there was, but it was inaccessible to anyone but certain colleges and defense contractors), and few magazines, so real information was hard to come by. These awesome machines seemed to appear as if by magic.
Here are a couple of awesome stories of the era. One is true. The other… probably not, but who knows? You’ve probably heard about them already, but in case you haven’t, here they are:
Army Battlezone
I remember a magazine publishing a short blurb about the U.S. Army contracting a custom version of Battlezone for training purposes way, WAY back circa 1981. And that was the last I heard of it. But I happily shared the rumor. After all, it was in print, so it must be true, right?
As it turns out, it was true. Two prototypes were created, although there are rumors that there were others that were manufactured and actually used in training. The game simulated what would eventually be dubbed the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and was purely for training the gunner. In the prototype, the vehicle did not move – although the programmers vaguely remember it was perhaps supposed to move under computer control. The enemy vehicles did not fire. The game presented a mix of friendly and enemy targets, and firing upon a friendly target immediately ended the game in failure. Otherwise, the only way to “lose” was to run out of ammunition.
The game had a variety of friendly and enemy targets, including helicopters, and simulated the three different weapon systems of the Bradley: a machine gun, the cannon (with selectable high-explosive or armor piercing rounds), and the TOW missile launcher with an optical range finder.
According to stories, the game was never completed fully to its intended specs, though it was reportedly a hit at the conference. Speculation was that the intention may have been to actually use it as an arcade game in commissaries and whatnot, to have the soldiers ‘practice’ with it as a game and yet hone real-life skills. Done this way, they could avoid dealing with Atari as a defense contractor. Nevertheless, there was a lot of resistance among many employees at Atari for working with the military.
There’s more information (and speculation) to be found here, and here. Sadly, between Atari’s storied penchant for secrecy and obfuscation, and the military’s natural tendency for the same (not always intentionally), there’s not a lot of concrete information. But at least there is a rescued prototype.
Of course, the stories like this – of arcade machines being used to train gamers in military skills, or perhaps to select extremely talented individuals for recruitment – abound, and were even made into a cheesy sci-fi movie – The Last Starfighter. It’s fun to know there was an element of truth there.
Polybius
I never heard about this one until a few years ago, and was reminded of it by Hanako. As far as I can tell, this legend originated far more recently, suggesting that it truly is an invention. The story goes that an arcade machine appeared in a few select arcades in the Portland area for a few weeks. The game reputedly had gameplay somewhat similar to Tempest, and proved very popular (and… addictive). Yet strange things began happening to players after they played the game – from ill effects to amnesia, night terrors, and even suicide. Then there’s the rumors of men in black visiting the arcade and gathering unusual data about the players, and subliminal messages hidden in the graphics.
While rumors and accounts abound, most appear to be hoaxes.
What’s most likely is that the story is a conflation of several real elements with some fanciful embellishments.
First of all, it was common practice for game companies to place early prototypes of games in test arcades to see how actual gamers responded. If a game did poorly, it might be canceled rather than going into the cost of full production. In an era where the cost of manufacturing the machines could exceed the cost of developing the games, this wasn’t unheard of. It’s even possible that a “Polybius” game might have appeared in one or more select arcades, done poorly, and was canceled and never seen again.
Another possibility was that it was actually an early version of Tempest. Perhaps it was truly was popular with the test audience, but that beta version was causing problems with players prone to photosensitive epilepsy or motion sickness (I’ve gotten motion sick with a few games, myself… Descent, in particular, made me horribly ill for almost 24 hours after a 2 or 3 hour long session.) Maybe the early version was not named “Tempest,” although I suspect the reliance on word-of-mouth would make it likely that they wouldn’t want to change the name of something that proved popular.
The men in black, the night terrors and amnesia… I suspect that to all be embellishments thrown into whatever grains of truth may exist about Polybius. But the stories really would resonate back in the arcade days, particularly when the concept was new. People didn’t understand video games, and there were a lot of questions about what they were, what they could be, and what effects they might have on players – especially when they enjoyed such a sudden rise in popularity. And this was also an era where there was a bit of concern over subliminal messages and advertising. Mix these elements with the rumors (sometimes true, as with Battlezone) that they could be used for military recruitment and training, and it is surprising there aren’t more stories like this.
In the meantime, Polybius has become something of a video game culture “in joke,” even appearing in an episode of The Simpsons.
Did Polybius exist? Was it actually a front for a secret government experiment? We’ll probably never know for sure. But hey, sounds like ripe material for a story for a game, doesn’t it? HMMMMM….
Filed Under: Geek Life, Retro - Comments: Comments are off for this article
One Game A Month?
Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 13, 2012
Christer Kaitila, a fellow who’s name I am terrible at spelling, and the author of The Game Jam Survival Guide
Besides completing twelve non-commercial games, which is worth bragging rights, what were the benefits of this year-long exercise?
In his blog post, 12 Games in 12 Months, he states: “Like daily workouts, each game project made me stronger. Faster. Better.” How much better? In a reply to a comment, he says, “What used to take 5 hours now takes 3 hours and the quality is higher.”
So he’s offered a challenge to other game developers to do the same – one game every month, for a year. Now, there are very few rules, and so little “game jam” projects are allowed. So a game doesn’t have to take an entire month to build. Sequels, game jam entries, and team entries are allowed. The point is to get practice finishing and releasing games – a skill that doesn’t get practiced much by game jammers and pure hobbyists. We start a lot of projects, but finish very few.
Due to the time commitments with Frayed Knights 2, I don’t think I’ll be participating, but even as a “seasoned vet” I can see how this would be beneficial. The “Zero Hour” game I worked on a few weeks ago was a breath of fresh air and a worthy 5-hour break, but I don’t know that I could commit to that on a monthly basis. But I felt even something as tiny and simple as that was of benefit to me as a developer, and I do intend to spend more time this year doing that kind of thing. As soon as the day job relents… 😉 (It will, any day now…) I’m not sure it’ll be a game a month, but I’ll definitely be making an effort to produce more “micro-games” as exercises this year.
This is a Good Thing. For pretty much anybody, but especially for devs that have had trouble getting off the ground. EVERY game studio – big or small – struggles with things like scope (everyone thinks too big), polish, and schedule. Practicing on a regular basis may very well be the ticket we could all use to help improve our processes, skills, and strategies for development.
Filed Under: Indie Evangelism - Comments: 2 Comments to Read
Rumors of Their Death May Be Exaggerated…
Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 12, 2012
I complain about the “race to the bottom” in terms of pricing for indie games. It’s a problem for indies.
It’s possibly an even bigger problem for AAA studios, as an article by Josh Bycer sums up: Are AAA Studios DOA?
My answer to the title is actually, “No, they aren’t, but there will be more contraction & consolidation.”
Sadly, I predict some contraction in the indie space, too, particularly among some of the newer studios that have a business plan something like, “Make expensive indie game, sell it on Steam, make enough to fund 3 more games just like it.” Great idea, if it pans out. But parts 2 and 3 are rarely guaranteed…
The games biz is pretty cyclical. I’ve seen expansions, contractions before. When I got started in the industry, it was in the latter part of a pretty awesome expansion. It was a boom not unlike what we’re seeing in the indie games space now. It wasn’t going to last. Then we saw a contraction – sorta like the contraction that’s been going on over the last 4 years amongst the high-end game studios & publishers, and in the MMO space. Or what has been happening over the last few years in the casual game space (which, ironically, was what many people misunderstood to be ‘indie games’ – the two terms were in danger of becoming synonymous for a couple of years).
But casual games are far from dead. The contraction in the late 90’s / early 2000s didn’t kill AAA game development. Indie games will still be awesome when the current boom inevitably hits a wall. For that matter, RPGs – declared dead on multiple occasions – appear to be going as strong as ever now with the combination of indie & mainstream development (particularly if you include MMORPGs), the “long-dead” adventure game genre has enjoyed a cool new boom (with Telltale’s The Walking Dead enjoying some particular mainstream acclaim), and even the flight sim genre – once a staple of PC gaming which had gone pretty dormant for the last decade – has enjoyed some relatively recent, significant releases.
AAA Gaming isn’t going anywhere, but it may get smaller. Quite frankly, how many first-person shooters can one person play in a year? (Okay, yeah, quite a lot, but how much WILL an average gamer be willing to buy & play?)
As much as I rail on AAA games, I know most of us wouldn’t want to see them go away. As much as I love many of the indie RPGs that have come out over the last year or so, I still get a kick out of the occasional high-budget, lavishly produced spectacle from the major publishers. I would truly hate to see them go completely to the wayside. And I seriously cannot imagine it happening. But I think there’s very limited room for games with $50+ million budgets, and we’ve hit a saturation point where it won’t grow all that fast. But somehow, another boom will happen at the high end someday soon. It always does. Just never quite where you expect it.
Filed Under: Biz - Comments: Comments are off for this article
Escapism? You’d Better Believe It
Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 11, 2012
Whenever I hear fiction, movies, or especially video games denigrated as useless escapism, my defensive response (and suppression of the desire to smack the critic) isn’t just based on my profession.
I tend to trace my love of video games to a couple of days spent in Phoenix as a kid. I’d played and enjoyed video games before that. But it was during that conference, when I had a few dollar’s worth of quarters to spend and three arcade machines to study (by playing, watching other people play, and looking over their ‘attract mode’ demos in detail), that I think my lifelong obsession with the medium really began.
I can’t even remember if the hotel was in Phoenix or Albuquerque. But I remember the games. Or, more specifically, I remember the feelings I had when I was there. The magical other worlds behind the screen where things were black and white (literally, on two of the games – the third was in color).
And I remember walking into the hotel room and finding my dad on the phone, in tears, begging my mom not to make any final decision until he’d got back home and had a chance to talk to her in person. And I remember those feelings all too well, also. The worry about what would happen next – whether there’d be a home for me to go back to after my summer excursion. The feeling of helplessness, being out of control as my world got shaken up. I remember anger and pain and sadness and rolled up together in a bitter combination that wouldn’t leave.
Except when I was playing the games. For just a couple of minutes at a time, at the cost of a quarter, I’d forget everything. One of the wonderful things about these games was the amount of focus they required – the engagement, physically and mentally, with the machine. For a couple of minutes I’d be dancing around asteroids (well, okay, staggering around crazily, but it LOOKED cool) shooting at flying saucers, oblivious to anything around me – or the events of the last twenty-four hours. And afterwards, with the adrenaline dying down the memory of the most recent game slowly getting pushed around in my memory, it felt like the sorrow and frustration and helplessness was lessened somewhat. Emotionally, it felt like I was living in two worlds, and a visit to the one behind the plexiglass of the cabinet – with every success heroic and every loss temporary – made a return to the real world a little more bearable. At least for a while.
Escapism? Damn straight. Useless? Absolutely not. It’s not like there was anything else I could do in this situation – the games helped me cope. And hey, they turned into a lifelong passion and a career.
This was hardly the only time I used games as an escape – I still do. They still provide a great palate-cleanser for the brain after work, a stress-purger. They work better than television for me.
So yeah, I have a bone to pick with anyone who is dismissive of video games and their role in culture. I get defensive. There’s way more to them than escapist fantasy, but even if there wasn’t, it’d be enough for me.
Filed Under: General - Comments: 8 Comments to Read
Making Games. Faster.
Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 10, 2012
I was reading a little bit this weekend about fiction writers “going indie.” I’m not very in tune with the fiction biz, but what little I gleaned sounded like indie is progressing in that industry about at the same pace as indie games, maybe a couple of years behind. However, those writers who have effectively “gone indie” have a little bit of a leg up on their game-making cousins, due to experience in a far more mature industry, and the fact that there isn’t such a huge difference between the two in terms of content. A novel is still a novel whether it’s published by Bantam or self-published.
One thing that struck me was that success in the indie book field – in general – is not too different from success as an indie game developer. It often comes down to perseverance, having several titles for sale, and some pretty good marketing / salesmanship. An indie author cannot expect to release a novel they haven’t managed to sell to a publisher and expect to see hundreds of thousands (let alone millions) of dollars start rolling in from Amazon. One article suggested that newcomers find a day job (where have I heard that before?) while generating a number of novels and short stories to offer to readers.
And the number… well, that’s where things get interesting. In the Amazon world, the above link recommended somewhere around ten stories (or novels) where – if you are good and once you are “found” – things go dramatically from next-to-nothing to something that might, on a good day, resemble a living wage if you squint really hard.
The rate of production which an author can create short stories and novels is a lot faster than what most indies could hope to achieve. I’ve seen some small studios, particularly during the heyday of the iPhone boom (it’s still booming, just really, really saturated) produce roughly a game every 4-8 weeks, often with gameplay no more deep than Simon Says. Hey, if it worked and kept them in business, good for them.
But where a novelist might be able to produce 2-4 novels a year, your average small-team (1-4 developers) indie game studio would have a pretty tough time maintaining that pace unless they are consistently re-using the same engine, and re-using as many game mechanics and content as they can.
And maybe that’s the trick of it.
I had a really good time making that 0-hour game a few weeks ago. That’s the video game equivalent of a thumbnail sketch or one-page vignette, I guess. But taking the kind of time it took to make Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon? Or even Void War? Unacceptable. Even as a part-timer, I should be able to do better than that. Okay, maybe not when the day job is working me over 60 hours a week or stuff like that, but in general.
There are a ton of games I want to make. Soon. But a nagging feeling I’ve been dealing with lately has been this:
Let’s say Frayed Knights 1 had done well enough all by itself for me to quit the day job that’s currently running me ragged, and made enough besides for me to hire a couple of guys and go full-time. Could I do it? Do I feel confident in my abilities as a game producer, manager, whatever, to transition to full-time and feel like I wasn’t going to pull a Duke Nukem Forever?
To be brutally honest, I don’t know that I’m quite there yet. Particularly for making RPGs. I don’t have a process down. Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon was a great learning experience, and I’m trying to apply what I’ve learned to the sequel. But I haven’t taken the effort to break it down into a process. It’s still kind of seat-of-the-pants development now tempered with greater experience. That’s not something I’d feel willing to gamble the house on.
I don’t know if most indies think of these things. I expect many of the long-time successes out there, if they haven’t actually been through the effort to formally codify a process, nevertheless have evolved something along those lines which they now practice intuitively.
What that doesn’t mean is breaking it down into a formula. Yes, I know, there are many authors out there who do quite well writing to formula. And some game developers out there who prosper (for a while) effectively re-skinning a game. That’s not where I want to be. But it does seem like there is a lot more I should be doing to make what time I am spending making games more productive.
Filed Under: Production - Comments: 7 Comments to Read
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