5 ms·
200,000 units is a far cry from just a 'minor hit' - congratulations! During the project, what was the biggest instinct you had that was ultimately validated b
by switz 2y ago
200,000 units is a far cry from just a 'minor hit' - congratulations!
During the project, what was the biggest instinct you had that was ultimately validated by its success, but still surprised you? What was a lesson you learned that you didn't expect? How was working with a publisher? What did they do right and what did they do wrong?
- newobj 2y agoHonest answer? Dancing stick figure guy on the title screen. I did it very early in the project, in a fugue state at 3am. It lingered and lingered there, with ppl wondering "Is this real? Is this the actual title screen?" and luckily by the end I think everyone had drank enough psychedelic koolaid to agree - stick figure man stays. The artist made some better art for his hands/feet, and that was that. He's divisive, but everybody at least remembers him :) Lesson learned that I didn't expect - hmm. Ah, one good one: I spent a LOT of time worrying about stuff being "OP" or degenerately good. Well, turns out, people like OP stuff, or degenerately good stuff, at least in single player score attack games. My biggest lesson learned on the project: people experience your game individually. If they find something broken, in their head, they are the one to have found something broken, and it feels good. You don't have to design for the entire community at once. Don't over-balance your game. Embrace the jank.
- redeux 2y ago> Embrace the jank Love this! I wish you would be been involved with the release team for Helldivers II.
- Waterluvian 2y agoThe minute I read “dancing stick figure” I knew exactly what game we’re talking about. I’m not a stoner and am not really into stoner culture but I’ve watched that figure dance for like 10 mins once, entranced by it. I dunno what exactly it is, but it’s just an absolute home run. I’m not joking, I’d pay for an app that’s literally just that guy dancing to some music.
- _ache_ 2y agoDid the dancing stick is Meta AI applied to some stick like this research paper ? https://ai.meta.com/blog/ai-dataset-animation-drawings/ https://ai.meta.com/blog/ai-dataset-animation-drawings/
- newobj 2y agoIt's a stock animation from mixamo :P
- chefandy 2y agoStock assets: the first “AI”. Honestly still a better option than AI for most anything in game dev with a few workflow-oriented exceptions.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoStock assets were still made by humans, even if the effects of a poopular stock asset remain similar.
- pjc50 2y agoStock assets are nothing to do with AI?
- usrusr 2y agoBalanced games feel like a chore: you just sit through them, trying to avoid those mistakes that aren't balanced away and there's never any hope for some positive discovery. Decisions do not matter and the pro-balancing crowd even thinks that this is a feature, not a bug. Yes, discovering the city-per-tile problem in Civ would ruin the game for you (I never did). That clearly is the bad kind of overpowered. But sending that single chariot to the edge of the known universe before it gets constrained by phalanxes? Awesome.
- paol 2y agoAgree. Over-balancing everything in single player games sucks out the fun. "Single-player" here is key - minutely perfect balancing is often a necessity in multiplayer games, and I suspect sometimes that mentality is carried over to single-player experiences without stopping to question it.
- pjc50 2y agoThe trouble with the internet is that it's hard to stop competitive mentality leaking in; the game may be single player, but there are lots of people playing it, and they can watch each other and show off. (this basically killed puzzle / mystery box games, which survive only in a weird corner for not-very-online people playing on mobile)
- pjc50 2y agoI think that's a great lesson about art: trying to polish things into "objectively good" doesn't work, while human connection and weirdness and jank stay in the memory.
- Sohcahtoa82 2y ago> Ah, one good one: I spent a LOT of time worrying about stuff being "OP" or degenerately good. Well, turns out, people like OP stuff, or degenerately good stuff, at least in single player score attack games. One of the greatest joys in score-attack games like Ballionaire is discovering certain combos that feel brokenly good. During one of my early playthroughs, I got some combo that would spawn a crazy number of balls on every drop. The game would seriously lag for about half a second while the playing field absolutely exploded with balls. It was incredibly entertaining! https://youtu.be/blHxSe9I9WQ https://youtu.be/blHxSe9I9WQ Some developers see this happen and will nerf things into the ground to prevent them, but that's an absolute fun-destroying choice. In a PVP game, yeah, absolutely you should prevent broken builds like that. But a single-player score attack? Nah. Leave that in.
- kflgkans 2y agoWas it your intention that the dancing stick figure gives people nightmares?
- codetrotter 2y agoI suppose that when your previous employer has over 3B users (FB alone, not even counting IG and WA and whatever else they have going on), 200k might seem like a small number of people :P But I agree. OP, 200k is a hugely respectable number for a game or any piece of software for that matter. I’d be happy if 200 people used any of mine, never mind the k :p Congrats! :)
- kbenson 2y agoHey, Meta has something like 67k employees for those 3.35 billion users (for simple stats I could find), and thats. That's 50k users to an employee. I think this dev is doing quite well by those standards. :)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- johnnyanmac 2y agoeven with a publisher, 200k copies at launch for a very small indie team is easily on pace for the 1%. https://intoindiegames.com/features/how-much-money-do-steam-games-make/ https://intoindiegames.com/features/how-much-money-do-steam-... TBH I forgot the 1% was so high, even for an indie. But network effects are crazy, so getting to 700k will eventually be a thing.
- Danieru 2y agoThat article is 5 years old. Sadly the article lacks a date, but you can tell because it claims Steam is 15 years old, when it had its 22 anniversary last year. Next that 7M number is for self-published games. Aka, games where the dev is listed as the publisher. OP has Raw Fury as his publisher. Next Raw Fury posted their contract publically a while ago: it is a pretty harsh contract. 50/50 split, but there is a profit ratio baked into the recoup which is super odd. If OP had held off, did his own marketing for a bit, then negotiated with publishers once he had traction, he might have gotten a better deal. The challenge for Indie devs with publishers is how the good publishers ask a pretty high take. Meanwhile the good deals come from new publishers with poor or no track record. Personally we signed with Hooded Horse which publically offers better deals and is highly effective. The trade off being Hooded Horse is famously quite selective. Thus honestly: self publishing is the default-best choice. We did that for our last game and effectively replaced a publisher by just spending a bunch on marketing.