GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development

Filling a No-longer-served Niche

By GBGames, on February 10th, 2012

Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb Software wrote about being an indie game bottom feeder. He breaks it down into a few principles.

Stop worrying about piracy and worry about being a person your customers want to support

He talks about coming to terms with the fact that piracy happens. Interestingly, he finds the best way to “combat piracy” isn’t to pass onerous laws such as SOPA but to be a decent person that your games’ players would feel good supporting.

Price appropriately

If you are creating an ultra-casual, appeals-to-everyone kind of game, you can get away with charging less than a dollar or even releasing the game for free and using ads or selling add-ons. But if you’re appealing to an underserved niche, you must charge more for your game. Having 5,000 customers pay you only $1 means you won’t last long. The good news is that your customers are willing to pay for it.

Find the customers who are looking for what is no longer being made

Most small business advice out there says that you should find a niche, Vogel’s advice is similar, except he points out that there are plenty of game genres that used to be wildly popular and are no longer of interest to the larger companies in the game industry. Those are now underserved niches. While the popularity of these now-niches has dropped below the point where EA or Activision would find it worth their time, there are enough people who still want to play those kinds of games to make it profitible for an indie.

Vogel mentions the Atari 2600, which was my first game console. I remember playing games such as Frog n’ Flies, Yar’s Revenge, Solar Fox, and even E.T for hours on end.

And the Atari 2600 is still fun. It’s just not fun enough. The art of game design has progressed far beyond it, and Pitfall doesn’t have what it takes to compete anymore. But you know something? All of those old games can be updated. All of those old genres have tons of fans out there. They just don’t know they’re fans yet.

So does this mean you should clone old games and expect to make tons of money so long as you’re not a jerk?

No, and not just because the clones have been done already.

You can take inspiration from old games that are otherwise still fun today. Take the original Mario Bros for example. It was a platformer with a static level design, and you could collect coins and hit enemies from below before knocking them out. Now look at Super Crate Box, a platformer with a static level design in which you collect crates and use a variety of weapons to fight off enemies. Tell me where you think it partly takes its inspiration from. Yet, it plays very differently. The developers didn’t create a Mario Bros clone. They did something very different.

I think Vogel’s approach sounds similar to Dan Cook’s “reinventing the genre from the root” approach.

It occurred to me that game design, like any evolutionary process, is sensitive to initial conditions. If you want to stand out, you need to head back in time to the very dawn of a genre, strike out in a different direction and then watch your alternate evolutionary path unfurl.

Perhaps having kept my Atari 2600 all these years was a much better idea than I thought.

The Future Is Disorienting

By GBGames, on February 8th, 2012

I just jumped years into the future with both my cell phone and my computer. The future is a mixed bag.

The Cell Phone

For quite a few years now, I’ve had a flip-phone and was paying for service out of contract. When people started getting smartphones, I kind of wanted one, but never enough to justify the cost of a phone or tying myself to a new 2-year contract to get a free one.

I did the math recently. I found out that for what I pay just for voice, data, and texting would be equivalent to getting a new smartphone with a contract. I’d even be able to take advantage of the data plan since the one with my flip-phone which became nearly unusable when they stopped supporting some of the already-poorly supported video options. I went with my fiancee’s Sprint-based provider instead of AT&T, and that referral netted me a discount that made it even cheaper.

So now I have an Android, the HTC EVO Shift, and I’m fairly happy with it. It’s way more useful than my old phone.

Plus, now I can play the games everyone has been talking about.

Plus plus, I have a device to test my own projects when I start mobile development.

However, I’m still getting used to figuring out how to hold it since I seem to keep accidentally hitting the search button or some part of the screen. I still hit the volume control on the side too often, and I press the power button as I slide the device into my pocket if I’m not careful. And as great as having a keyboard is, the phone automatically unlocks when I slide it out, which has accidentally happened in my coat pocket more than once already. While my old phone let me easily look up a name in my phone book since I could type a letter and it would jump to that section of my phone book, this new device seems to think I want to include everyone I’ve ever emailed, Tweeted, circled on G+, or friended on Facebook when I want to search for someone to call.

But this is the future, and the benefits are outweighing the negatives. Being able to fit a computer more powerful and integrated than my first desktop into my pocket has so far been pretty amazing.

The Computer

And speaking of computers, I’ve mentioned my dying laptop a few weeks ago. My Dell Precision M90 was a fine machine until the video card started failing. I’ve purchased a replacement: the Precision M6600.

I’m going from:

32-bit 2GHz CoreDuo -> 64-bit 2.2GHz i7 Quad Core
2GB RAM -> 8GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro FX 2500M (512MB) -> Quadro 3000M (2GB)
100GB HD -> 750GB HD
17″ WUXGA display -> 17.3″ 1920×1080 display

That last item unfortunately feels like a downgrade to me. I really liked having a 1920×1200 display. The extra lines of resolution were great for coding work. Unfortunately, it seems that 1920×1200 will no longer be available for most laptops. There’s no real explanation, either. There’s merely speculation that the hardware manufacturers will save money, especially since most people probably just want to watch movies on their laptops anyway.

Still, this new laptop came with Windows 7, and while I’ve used Windows Vista by being the default tech support guy for my family, I hadn’t really become familiar with anything since Windows XP, which is what my old laptop came with. The new interface is somewhat jarring. When I was running Firefox and had the download window open as well as the main browser, I wanted to minimize it, and so I clicked on the button in the taskbar, like I normally would. Instead of minimizing Firefox, it popped up a the windows as buttons so I could choose which one I wanted. Darn new-fangled tech doing things differently than I expected…

But no matter! I repartitioned the drive so that Windows gets about 100GB, and I installed Ubuntu 11.10 on the remaining space. And it turns out that Ubuntu is all new and shiny, too.

See, I used Ubuntu 10.04 Long-Term Support (LTS), and I didn’t want to upgrade to newer versions because I wanted a stable development system to do my work on.

So here I am, jumping two years’ worth of Ubuntu development, and this new Unity interface threw me for a bit until I realized they were trying to make it seem more Mac-like. There’s a launcher, and the buttons are all big and shiny, and there’s a Software Center where I can easily click and download apps and even purchase them. There’s quite a few indie games there, and it seems like it could be a decent marketplace.

But after looking at the entire games collection, I took the time to find the Terminal (more on that later) and typed: “apt-get install nethack-console” as fast as I could.

And then I added the Terminal to the launcher.

Seriously, it’s nice that the UI is 3D-powered and all, but sometimes I don’t want to mess around with a frickin’ mouse. I LIKED being able to open the system menu at a keypress and see ALL of my installed applications. Now I have to explicitly type to search or click on Dash, then click on “More Apps”, and then click some more? On the old system, I could hit Alt+F1 to open the “Applications” menu, then use the arrow keys to move to “Accessories” > Terminal. Now, I press the Windows key to bring up Dash, and if I know the name of the application, I can type it out right there, but if I don’t, it’s faster to click on “More Apps”, then go to “Installed” and click on “see all”, then scroll down until I find it.

I also liked being able to figure out how to open a file within an application by just looking at the screen. Unity has Mac-like context menus that applications share at the top of the screen, which…ok, whatever. Maybe it’s great, and I’ll try it, but why Unity hides the menu until you mouse over it, I don’t know, but I’m not the only one who is unhappy with it. Maybe I just need to get used to it, but there were a couple of times when I opened an application and wondered why the heck I had no way to open a file since the window I was using (seriously, why would I want to shift my eyes all the way to the top of the screen when the application I’m using is over here?) didn’t have a File option.

Unity also seems to hate the idea of customization. At least Windows let me move the taskbar around the screen. Why does the launcher have to stay stuck to the left side? Why do my windows have to have the close and minimize buttons to the left like on a Mac when I prefer them on the right? I’ve yet to find a way to change anything to work the way I want it to work.

I’m aware that it is possible to replace Unity with Ubuntu Classic UI or KDE, but I’m going to try to stick things out just to see how most users are expected to run their new Ubuntu-based systems. I actually do like being able to see all running application instances in an Exposé-like way, and there are parts of the UI that feel more intuitive. And Ubuntu 11.10 does seamlessly run 32-bit and 64-bit applications. I ran Stop That Hero! just to see if I had all of my development libraries installed, and I didn’t even realize that it shouldn’t have worked on this new 64-bit machine. So that was a pleasant surprise.

But if this is the future of computers, where laptop screens get smaller resolutions instead of larger ones, where the UI is made out of candy and shiny at the expense of being useful for people who know what they are doing, I’m not sure I’m happy about it.

I feel like the future is pushing me out of the way to make room for people who just want to watch widescreen movies or use a “workstation” as nothing more than a consumer electronics device.

Am I being unreasonable? Am I just disoriented because everything is different in the future? Is it better and I just need to get used to it?

An Online Conference You Can Attend #AltDevConf

By GBGames, on February 6th, 2012

If you’re not familiar with AltDevBlogADay, you should be. Each day, a game developer posts on a variety of game development topics. There’s a huge backlog of content there now, and while the recent redesign has made it difficult to find the category you want (you have to click on a post to see only some of the tags available as of this writing), it’s great getting regular, up-to-date, state-of-the-art tips and tricks from the people in the trenches. Authors can be mainstream game programmers, indie developers, academics, or anyone who has something valuable to share.

It seems to be such a successful site that they’ve decided to host an online conference. AltDevConf will be held on February 11th and 12th (that’s this coming weekend), featuring three tracks: education, programming, and design & production.

Our goal is twofold: To provide free access to a comprehensive selection of game development topics taught by leading industry experts, and to create a space where bright and innovative voices can also be heard. We are able to do this, because as an online conference we are not subject to the same logistic and economic constrains imposed by the traditional conference model.

As it doesn’t look like I’ll be attending GDC this year (I’m still hoping to win an All Access Pass with my GDC magnets), AltDevConf seems like a high-quality substitute. While it won’t be the same as rubbing elbows with other indies or meeting cool celebrities in the gaming world, I’m excited about it.

Do you plan to attend? Will you be speaking?

Linux Game Publishing CEO Steps Down

By GBGames, on February 2nd, 2012

Yesterday, I woke up to an email saying that Michael Simms is stepping down after 10 years of running Linux Game Publishing and Tux Games.

Wow, 10 years! That’s a lot of enthusiasm and work, and unfortunately it takes its toll:

It took me some months to notice what was going on, and even longer to accept that my burnout was going to kill LGP unless I did something about it. The lack of drive slowed down production of new titles, shipping, customer service, everything that I either handled or had a big part in helping with, was all being compromised.

…

But I didn’t want to let the company die. Of course not, I have invested too much time, money, blood sweat and tears into LGP to just say ‘That is it, bye’. And so I sat down and had a long think about how to save it.

Clive Crous will take the reins at LGP and Tux Games. Good luck, Clive, and good luck with your future endeavors, Michael!

Is Asking Customers to Pre-order a Bad Thing?

By GBGames, on February 1st, 2012

A month ago, there was a post on Reddit asking what people thought about indie developers asking for money up front.

Some people are fine if they get a good quality playable build for pre-ordering, but no one seemed to be happy with the idea of funding basic engine development. It seems the general consensus is that people are getting tired of the so-called “fad” of funding a game before it is finished with no guarantee that they will see a payoff.

Minecraft‘s wild success through pre-orders aside, it’s not really a new funding tactic at all. Lots of indie developers have tried to ask for money before their games are finished, and some have seen more success than others.

The Indie Game Development Survival Guide by David Michael mentions how Samu Games started selling Artifact when it was in the beta testing stage, complete with perks for early customers. And this was in 1999.

Today, sites such as KickStarter and 8-bit Funding have enabled a number of high-profile projects to get funding from fans. Of course, a lot of projects don’t get funded and therefore don’t become high-profile.

So if you don’t have a big name to leverage like Notch or Andy Schatz or Derek Yu, are you doomed to obscurity?

No, but obviously an existing name brand helps. Otherwise, success at crowdfunding requires hard work to get your name out there. In other words, marketing. And you have to be able to demonstrate you can deliver the goods.

I started taking pre-orders for Stop That Hero! late last year, and I’ll admit feeling a bit anxious about it at the time. I didn’t have the game in a playable state yet, and here I was asking people for money in anticipation of the initial release.

While I didn’t get many pre-orders, it was definitely a nice feeling to see people actually spending some money on my game. It showed some interest, and it gave me a productivity boost to know I had existing customers to satisfy.

Now, when it comes to how I marketed the Stop That Hero! pre-order, I’m sure I did a lot of things wrong. Perhaps I should have had more videos of game play as I continued work. Maybe I should have been posting more screenshots. I could have chosen to prioritize work on certain features in the hopes that they would excite players more than the features I did work on. And maybe I wasn’t very assertive with asking for pre-orders in the first place.

At the time, I was struggling to get the alpha build across the finish line, but I kept getting good feedback from playtesters. Since the game was good enough to provide some enjoyment to players, it meant it was good enough to ask for players to pay for that enjoyment.

Now, of course some people weren’t happy with the idea of paying up front for a game they couldn’t see. And it’s hard to blame them. Since many game projects don’t get finished, it’s asking a lot to essentially gamble the cost of a pre-order on an unknown. Especially when indie developers don’t necessarily have the offsite backup solutions of larger studios when disaster strikes. See the Project Zomboid burglary for an example. All of their code was gone when someone stole two laptops, so it was a huge setback for the developers who had to rely on outdated backups to continue.

And it didn’t sit well with some of their customers, judging by the Reddit thread. It seems this experience turned some people off of pre-orders and paying for early builds in general.

All that said, it seems that making pre-orders work requires regular, quality content. Basically, if you stop talking to your customers and prospects, they’ll stop caring.

But if all you do is talk and never produce anything, no one is going to stick around. Whether you’re taking pre-orders or pledges, you have to be able to show that you can deliver results.

If you can do both, then pre-orders are worthwhile. Otherwise, you’re wasting your customers’ time as well as your own.