9 ms·

I don't mean to be dismissive, but here are the main issues I see with the process (and the final product): - Bottom line, the game is not particularly fun, no

by dvt 9y ago

I don't mean to be dismissive, but here are the main issues I see with the process (and the final product): - Bottom line, the game is not particularly fun, novel, or difficult. You'll notice that games like Flappy Bird, Agar.io, Papers Please, etc. are at least one of the three. Bist.io is not the type of game that will ever go viral. - You spent money on AdWords but didn't spend money on sponsored Youtube, Instagram, or Twitch content? To me, this just shows a fundamental disconnect with your target audience (gamers). - You should never polish a multi-player game until extensive play-testing. Single player games are a bit different, but with multiplayer games it's the mechanics that sell it. If the mechanics aren't fun, polish doesn't matter. Case in point: H1Z1 and PUBG. Awfully optimized, and generally terrible lag, but still massively fun and massively successful. - Too much premature optimization. Having your servers blow up is a good thing. Don't worry about preventing the blow up until you get there. In other words, you spent too much time on load balancing, etc. This is the canonical reason good engineers make bad business decisions. Going into something (even games) to make the big bucks is perfectly fine, imo, but, in short, your game just isn't very good and you have no idea who your audience is. You added "social" buttons because it's the "thing you're supposed to do" but omitted Twitch and Steam? You're not on IndieDB or TIGSource?

disease 9y ago
I think your first point is the one that matters the most. The primary thing you should be thinking about here is "how compelling is this going to be to the intended audience?" If you can get to the point where you can hammer out a game in a weekend, which isn't that difficult, I'd suggest building a simple game that showcases the concept that you find compelling and submit it a game jam like Ludum Dare. You're going to get a bunch of people playing it and you'll be able to see if they respond to the concept. If they do, then go ahead and make a larger version of the game. If not, well it just costed you a weekend anyway.
- endemic 9y ago
  I think a great example of this is Derek Yu's "Spelunky." He made a quick 'n dirty freeware version, which turned out to be massively popular, then remade a polished commercial version. It was easier for him to pitch the publisher since there was already a working, popular prototype.
  - chii 9y ago
    >quick 'n dirty freeware version the freeware version wasn't "quick 'n dirty" at all - he spent a lot of time doing it (and tweaking/fiddling the random generation). Ditto with another game that may have been seen as a "quick 'n dirty" prototype - super meat boy (the flash version). These games had lots of time and effort spent polishing the mechanics/controls. That's not to say one shouldn't do quick 'n dirty prototypes, but don't put your own prototypes up against those above, and say it sucks - coz you probably didn't put as much time or effort in it as them!
    - jwdunne 9y ago
      Interestingly, Tommy Refenes, which was written in C++, posted a write up that went over the process. What struck me is that he built a tool to export sprites from Flash because that's what the artist used. It shows an iterative development model, focusing on gameplay features step by step. The big take away "focus on making the character do something": http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TommyRefenes/20130107/184432/How_do_I_get_started_programming_games.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TommyRefenes/20130107/184432/...
WalterBright 9y ago
I was unexpectedly successful in the gaming business (Empire). All I did was make the game I wanted to play, but couldn't find.
- nsb1 9y ago
  If you are the Walter Bright, thank you for writing Empire! I played the hell out of that game in one of its ASCII PC ports.
  - WalterBright 9y ago
    > If you are the Walter Bright There can be only one! Anyhow, glad you liked it! I still regularly get email about Empire 40 years later.
- Washuu 9y ago
  That is my goal right now. I am making a game that I want to play and I will release it when I feel it is worth it to do so. The key though is that I have a steady job so I have the free time to work on it without worrying about funding.
- hyperpallium 9y ago
  "Scratch your own itch"; if you like it, maybe others will too; instant user feedback
  - WalterBright 9y ago
    The same idea has worked for a lot of things for me. I often get told I'm a unique snowflake in what I like, but it turns out that's not true at all.
    - throwaway7645 9y ago
      Write any games in D in your spare time sir? If not commercial, just for fun? I'd be curious to hear how good D can be in that area.
georgeecollins 9y ago
Once when I was working at a game publisher I thought it would be fun to help an indie game project anonymously. At that point I had designed or produced many games, but the job was going through a dull phase. So I picked out a project on sourceforge (this was a long time ago) and offered to help out. Pretty much all they were doing was recreating all the UI widgets in any OS (buttons, pull down menus, etc.). Everything was less than half done and there was a lot of work put in. I suggested maybe prototype some gameplay.. No, it was important that they start from a clean code base.
- bartread 9y ago
  On the one hand that's sort of mindblowing, on the other not that surprising, and reading the original article just underscores my (thankfully brief) experience of working in a large enterprise: the one thing you can absolutely trust is that when it comes to product development a senior enterprise developer or architect will always focus on the wrong problem. I find their approach to software development in general, and product development in particular, to be both asinine and perverse, and despite banging on endlessly about architecture and agile none of them seems capable of delivering even mediocre software, let alone anything you'd call good, in anything other than a geological timescale. Applying those observations to this case: they should have focussed on creating a fun game, i.e., on what users want. Instead they focussed on technical and architectural issues and built something that sounds like an impressive piece of software but which is not fun, and which doesn't feel terribly polished or playable. In other words, they failed, although at least they have the stones to admit it. This is enterprise software all over. Seriously, if you want to build good software, where "good" means 10x value adding in your domain of choice, and which users love, do NOT work in a large enterprise, and do not work with enterprise developers. These people will waste your time, hold you back, and drag you down. (All of that being said: interesting article, and a worthwhile read if only as an illustration of how not to do things, and hopefully the author really has learned something useful.)
  - ryandrake 9y ago
    There is value in writing clean, impeccably-designed, beautifully architected, const-correct, lint-free software. Just not much business value in it. I have unreleased hobby projects sitting on my hard drive at home that are works of art (if I must say so myself!), and were great learning experiences, but are commercially pretty much valueless. That's OK. You need to have a goal and adapt your software writing to that goal. If your goal is to make the next Flappy Bird and pull in $100K revenue per day, you probably don't want to be spending your time figuring out why "the time between ticks increased to 20-30 ms and then it dropped again." Your time would be better spent slapping together version 0.01 of about 40 games and shipping them, hoping one of them takes off. Needing to optimize and rearchitect something is a problem you have after you get U$ER$.

by dvt 9y ago

disease 9y ago

I think your first point is the one that matters the most. The primary thing you should be thinking about here is "how compelling is this going to be to the intended audience?" If you can get to the point where you can hammer out a game in a weekend, which isn't that difficult, I'd suggest building a simple game that showcases the concept that you find compelling and submit it a game jam like Ludum Dare. You're going to get a bunch of people playing it and you'll be able to see if they respond to the concept. If they do, then go ahead and make a larger version of the game. If not, well it just costed you a weekend anyway.

endemic 9y ago
I think a great example of this is Derek Yu's "Spelunky." He made a quick 'n dirty freeware version, which turned out to be massively popular, then remade a polished commercial version. It was easier for him to pitch the publisher since there was already a working, popular prototype.
- chii 9y ago
  >quick 'n dirty freeware version the freeware version wasn't "quick 'n dirty" at all - he spent a lot of time doing it (and tweaking/fiddling the random generation). Ditto with another game that may have been seen as a "quick 'n dirty" prototype - super meat boy (the flash version). These games had lots of time and effort spent polishing the mechanics/controls. That's not to say one shouldn't do quick 'n dirty prototypes, but don't put your own prototypes up against those above, and say it sucks - coz you probably didn't put as much time or effort in it as them!
  - jwdunne 9y ago
    Interestingly, Tommy Refenes, which was written in C++, posted a write up that went over the process. What struck me is that he built a tool to export sprites from Flash because that's what the artist used. It shows an iterative development model, focusing on gameplay features step by step. The big take away "focus on making the character do something": http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TommyRefenes/20130107/184432/How_do_I_get_started_programming_games.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TommyRefenes/20130107/184432/...

WalterBright 9y ago

I was unexpectedly successful in the gaming business (Empire). All I did was make the game I wanted to play, but couldn't find.

nsb1 9y ago
If you are the Walter Bright, thank you for writing Empire! I played the hell out of that game in one of its ASCII PC ports.
- WalterBright 9y ago
  > If you are the Walter Bright There can be only one! Anyhow, glad you liked it! I still regularly get email about Empire 40 years later.
Washuu 9y ago
That is my goal right now. I am making a game that I want to play and I will release it when I feel it is worth it to do so. The key though is that I have a steady job so I have the free time to work on it without worrying about funding.
hyperpallium 9y ago
"Scratch your own itch"; if you like it, maybe others will too; instant user feedback
- WalterBright 9y ago
  The same idea has worked for a lot of things for me. I often get told I'm a unique snowflake in what I like, but it turns out that's not true at all.
  - throwaway7645 9y ago
    Write any games in D in your spare time sir? If not commercial, just for fun? I'd be curious to hear how good D can be in that area.

georgeecollins 9y ago

Once when I was working at a game publisher I thought it would be fun to help an indie game project anonymously. At that point I had designed or produced many games, but the job was going through a dull phase. So I picked out a project on sourceforge (this was a long time ago) and offered to help out. Pretty much all they were doing was recreating all the UI widgets in any OS (buttons, pull down menus, etc.). Everything was less than half done and there was a lot of work put in. I suggested maybe prototype some gameplay.. No, it was important that they start from a clean code base.

bartread 9y ago
On the one hand that's sort of mindblowing, on the other not that surprising, and reading the original article just underscores my (thankfully brief) experience of working in a large enterprise: the one thing you can absolutely trust is that when it comes to product development a senior enterprise developer or architect will always focus on the wrong problem. I find their approach to software development in general, and product development in particular, to be both asinine and perverse, and despite banging on endlessly about architecture and agile none of them seems capable of delivering even mediocre software, let alone anything you'd call good, in anything other than a geological timescale. Applying those observations to this case: they should have focussed on creating a fun game, i.e., on what users want. Instead they focussed on technical and architectural issues and built something that sounds like an impressive piece of software but which is not fun, and which doesn't feel terribly polished or playable. In other words, they failed, although at least they have the stones to admit it. This is enterprise software all over. Seriously, if you want to build good software, where "good" means 10x value adding in your domain of choice, and which users love, do NOT work in a large enterprise, and do not work with enterprise developers. These people will waste your time, hold you back, and drag you down. (All of that being said: interesting article, and a worthwhile read if only as an illustration of how not to do things, and hopefully the author really has learned something useful.)
- ryandrake 9y ago
  There is value in writing clean, impeccably-designed, beautifully architected, const-correct, lint-free software. Just not much business value in it. I have unreleased hobby projects sitting on my hard drive at home that are works of art (if I must say so myself!), and were great learning experiences, but are commercially pretty much valueless. That's OK. You need to have a goal and adapt your software writing to that goal. If your goal is to make the next Flappy Bird and pull in $100K revenue per day, you probably don't want to be spending your time figuring out why "the time between ticks increased to 20-30 ms and then it dropped again." Your time would be better spent slapping together version 0.01 of about 40 games and shipping them, hoping one of them takes off. Needing to optimize and rearchitect something is a problem you have after you get U$ER$.