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

Why good companies can do evil things. (even in gaming)

Here is a pet theory.

lets say there are two logging companies. Treehugger Corp only cuts down trees in sustainable plantations, and its price per kilo to customers is $20. Bastard Corp cuts down trees where the hell it likes, and it’s price per kilo to customers is $20 too. Customers are happy with the $20 price point. $2/kilo is the ‘normal profit’ that makes the industry a worthwhile endeavour.

But…

profit / kilo for treehugger is $2. for bastard corp, it’s $4. So what does bastard corp do? It obviously lowers it’s price to $18. It still makes a decent profit margin, but suddenly treehugger corp costs more. 95% of customers don’t look past the PR spin to see which company is really the ‘nice’ company, and thus treehugger desperately loses market share. With falling market share and revenue, it cannot afford to fight back. Soon Bastard corp has the market to itself. cackle cackle, twirl moustache. They probably even raise their prices to $22 later.

Here is where my theory kicks in…

Lets say there is a third company ‘CleverCorp‘. Clevercorp would like to be like treehugger corp, but once-bitten twice shy. They aren’t going to go-down like TreeHugger corp, but they have the same ‘nice’ goals. When BastardCorp lowers it’s price, CC does the same, and begins to sell unsustainable wood too. At the same time it complains to the government and the press, that this is all wrong, and that the industry needs regulation, pointing to BastardCorp. The problem is, to the cynical public, govt and media, Clever Corp is as bad as Bastard Corp. They are involved in the same shady practices too, and their bleeding-heart PR is just a smokescreen. How can we have any sympathy for Clever Corp?

I’m reminded of this phenomena (game theory probably has a nice name for it, if it’s not just a moral race-to-the-bottom?) when I see ‘bullshots’ (mocked-up screenshots) and sexist ads for games. I’ll never release screenshots that were mocked up in photoshop, nor will I stick a semi-naked buxom elf in my games, or my ads. I do, however, realise this puts me at a commercial disadvantage.

This is why it’s really good for customers and industry pundits to rail against stuff that is bad, like the aforementioned PR lies and sexism. note also Duke Nukems PR threats to journalists for higher scores, flying journos to the bahamas to review a game, and the old story of how people in gaming are worked to death for shit wages.

When that sort of stuff is made unacceptable, it’s not only a welcome kick to the bastard corps, it’s also a change that enables the ‘nice’ corps to stay idealistic, and not go down the understandable-but-still-evil middle route.

This coming week is solar week. By friday, it might become OMFGLOOKITSIMAGESOFANEWGAME week.

Zyngas numbers are scary

Lets look at how many people are logged into steam right now, in the middle of their BIG summer sale:

2.3 million

Wow etc. Lets all say how huge the steam audience is. It certainly shows how much bigger valve is than positech, that’s for sure :D. But hold on…

Zyngas IPO means some real stats on the people playing zyngas games:

148 million unique monthly players

Holy alphabeti spaghetti batman. That’s a lot of people. Even though the majority of them never give Z any money, it’s still a staggeringly good business. Granted, Zyngas profits aren’t that high given the silly value the company has been put at, but even so, lets forget the money for a moment, and look at the fact that there are 148 million people prepared to play zyngas games.

That’s incredible.

It’s just a pity that the company was founded by a guy who didn’t give a fuck about his customers, and even bragged about it. I don’t care if my next game sells 1/100th of GSB. I still won’t bundle some shitty toolbar with it.

I hate it when companies like that do so well, mostly because it sends out signals that encourage the good guys to do the same thing. That’s whats so cool about successes by minecraft, frozen synapse, world of goo etc. It’s so cool when game devs who are nice guys and genuinely love games do so well. You don’t have to be like zynga to make a career from making games :D

Deferred Rendering / lighting. Balls, maybe not

For a while I’ve been thinking about putting deferred lighting with normal maps into GTB. This was something I talked about briefly during the development of GSB but it never happened. it basically a way to ‘fake’ the 3D lighting effect with a 2D image, *if* you have the original 3D model theĀ  2D image came from, and thus can make a ‘normal map’.

Here is what I mean:

http://experimentalized.blogspot.com/2010/07/2d-deferred-normal-lighting.html

This stuff is definitely not my area of expertise, and to confound the problem, all of the tutorials and explanations of the effect seems to concentrate on XNA or doing it with actual 3D scenes, whereas mine is a 2D engine.

Plus, it seems that it doesn’t do what i wanted it to, which is to take a lightmap full of various light sources (image the whole scene, with just the ‘light’ rendered onto it), and convert that into realistic looking shadows on 2D sprites. it appears to be a single-light source only solution, involving pixel shaders. Bah.

As I type this, I wonder out loud if bump maps are the answer to my problem? It’s not a disaster if there isn’t a solution, as GSB looked fairly pretty, but I’d like to take things up a level with GTB. There is only so far you can go with 2D top-down view rendered stuff, but I’d like to be the prettiest, shiniest 2D game of it’s type, if at all possible. The other effect I tried once but wimped out of was those distortion-map effects where you get a sphere that distorts the pixels accross it, and thus get a ‘shockwave-air-blast’ style effect. I think Call of Duty 4 used it a lot. I ran into ‘tearing’ and other bugs and eventually abandoned it in a strop :D

Anyone got any tips for fairly awesome 2D top-down effects in games?

(The minute I have my logo finished I’ll talk about GTB)

 

Opened the fridge: Achievement unlocked!

I quite like achievements in games, but have you noticed how they, and general ‘gamification’ is now showing up everywhere, including really silly places?
I posted a question for the first time recently on stackoverflow, a site where coders ask and answer questions. I asked ONE question, and got 6 replies. For this, my account unlocked what seemed like a dozen ‘badges’ and ‘achievements’ I think I got some ‘reputation’ and probably other crap too. Meh…

I notice project wonderful is doing the same thing. As an advertiser, I can unlock ‘achievements’ there too.

Sorry but this is bullshit. I like earning super-duper-medals when I’m pretending to be space captain cliffski or slaying dragons, but when I pick advertising or debug my code I don’t need to be treated like I’m playing pokemon. It’s just silly. I’m sure it *works*, and makes busienss sense, but I still find it a bit weird.

What’s the strangest place you’ve encountered points, achievements and gamification lately? Does it bug you?