Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Small world.

Posted on January 20, 2012

This morning, when I woke up I checked my email at a desk in the Southwest UK. The internet routers somewhere in London spoke to my positech server in Dallas, and sent me messages from all across the planet. One of them was from a flash developer I have never met, whose game I am sponsoring. I have no idea which country he lives in. Another was from a business partner in Boston, (as I recall), about a port of my game. While I read these, I also checked share prices of companies around the UK whose shares I buy and sell as a hobby.

If I chose to check, I’m sure there would be people from every continent currently browsing the dallas-hosted server of my UK owned company.

I’ll probably chat to some other indie developers today on forums hosted god-knows-where and who live all over the world. Most of the people I talk to on a daily basis are more than a thousand miles from my home.

My parents were born and worked all their lives in one city. My grandparents were born, worked and died 80+ years later in the same city. My grandfather left the UK only once, as a soldier during the war. My mother remembers before TV, before plastic, before indoor plumbing…

And online, we think people are old now if they remember alta vista, or windows 95.

When the world is so amazingly fast moving, it’s easy to forget to stop and reflect on what an amazing time this is to be alive. Life has never changed with such an incredible pace.

Let us ACHIEVE things!

Posted on January 18, 2012

Sooo.. Gratuitous Tank Battles has had achievements in it for a while, although they get called medals in the game, inkeeping with it’s WW1/2 context. The achievements system is a universal one, based of data stored on my server, so if you bought the game direct, or through any store, it should all still work the same way, and you will get the same experience.

Today, is the day I finally got around to wading through the documentation to get my achievements system working with steam. Steam look like they will be carrying the game, which is great news, and probably not unexpected, but I never count my chickens beforehand etc… Anyway, that means I can blog this image:

yay! Essentially steam is just mirroring my own data at the moment, but at least this means that the achievements will show up on your steam pages, which is vital to many people :D

Lots more news to come in the next month or three. I am currently taking a look at the possibility of steam cloud, although I write a lot of tiny little files, so it might get very messy…

Theory: The best game designers have little fun playing games

Posted on January 14, 2012

Here is a theory, tell me what you think. I’m sure it’s rough around the edges.

The best games are made by people who feel ‘compelled’ to make a certain type of game. Invariably, this is because that sort of game does not already exist. If the perfect game (to that designer’s eye) already existed, they would

a) Waste a lot of their free time playing it

b) Not perceive there is a market for another game like that, and not feel as motivated or driven to make it.

If this theory is true, it follows that the designers that are churning out consistently original or refreshing stuff, are amongst the most frustrated and miserable game-players. They are constantly living in a gaming world populated by other people ‘doing it wrong’.

Now that theory is a bit arbitrary, and I am well aware of the fact that I’m just trying to rationalise my own opinions and convince myself that the fact that I find 90%+ of modern games to be rubbish is because I am perceiving flaws others do not. The other option is that I’m going off games, which I’m pretty certain is not true, judging by my huge addiction to Anno 2070 (dammit I WILL get enough fruity drinks to get that next level of eco inhabitant!!!!), or that I have unusual taste in games (quite likely).

Any other game designers out there who feel let down/ dissapointed / depressed by most modern games? I have maybe 20 games in my steam account (I admit, I tend to buy retail or direct from developer so that’s only a snapshot) whereas I know many people have 100+ 200+ games. I find most games to be unappealing, at any price. I judge games more by the time required, than the asking price. I’m not saying other games are *bad*, just that they do not appeal to me. Maybe the designer in me has just evolved to constantly find fault in games?

Sith business cards

Posted on January 11, 2012

I’ve never bothered getting personal business cards printed until now, so I figured that I might as well get some l33t ones, and I always liked the design of the swarm horus frigate from Gratuitous Space Battles…

You can’t tell from the picture, but they are metal, with etched-out lettering and cut-throughs. They are a bit thin, so don’t feel especially metal, but they look pretty l33t. I was trying to imagine the sort of business card anakin skywalker would have. That’s pretty much how I chose my car too. Yeah, I’m sad.