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

Lets kill the cheap, and begging myth right now ok?

Posted on June 6, 2011

I just read about an indie games bundle where one of the main ‘selling points’ of the bundles was that you can get six games for just $5.

That sucks.

The implication is that the games are worth a dollar each (or less!). I get the idea that people try and make an offer that you’d be mad to turn down, and for a limited time, as a one-off way to grab some press that you can’t get any other way, maybe there is some merit to that, but increasingly it seems to be the case that people think that charging more than $5 for a game is ‘cheeky’ and that indie games should be $0-$5, and of course half of it goes to charity, but even if we get $0.01, we really thank you for your payment etc etc…

Lets just get this out in the open right now:

Indie means ‘independent’. It means you dont’ work for a publisher that controls your output. It means self-funded, with total control. It does NOT mean *cheap* or *low budget* or *desperate* or *hobbyist*. Granted, there are a lot of hobbyist indie devs, but that doesn’t mean some indies don’t employ a bunch of people, have nice offices, spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on development, produce high quality content, and you know what…. I think it’s perfectly reasonable for a lot of those indie games to sell big numbers, and *shock horror* for the developers to make some decent money without being made to feel like they are worse than osama bin laden.

A lot of indies give me a funny look because I have an advertising budget, as though indies are not allowed to advertise, because we have to do ‘guerrilla marketing’ or beg for coverage on hobbyist-blogs rather than run our business like anyone else. Some gamers flat out refuse to buy GSB because it’s more than $10, despite paying £34.99 for ‘non-indie’ games.

I know quite a few indies that make very good money. Better than anyone I know with a mainstream games industry job. I know a lot of them who run their businesses extremely seriously. They shouldn’t be ashamed of having a successful business or feel ‘too corporate’ because they have a marketing budget and use a PR firm. I can just see the howls of hatred and cries of ‘sell out’ the minute minecraft pays for some adverts somewhere, or refers to notch as CEO.

Most indies make no money. We get that. Lets not try to force all of them to stay tiny and huddled around a begging bowl though. There is nothing wrong with success, even in indie gaming :D

Broadcasting your likes (whether you want to or not)

Posted on June 5, 2011

There has been a fair bit of controversy lately about a new tactic by mainstream games publishers that involves only releasing marketing assets (videos, screenshots etc) when a certain threshold of social media activity is reached, such as encouraging people to ‘like’ them on facebook, or retweet a news story.

Personally, I believe it’s a silly marketing strategy. If you have a video that will encourage me to buy Battlefield 3, and I am a potential customer, why on earth have some barrier preventing showing me the video? And who are you kidding anyway, we all know I’ll see the video before the game goes on sale, so don’t patronise me…

However, having said that…

I do find it interesting that people are suddenly getting super-irate about companies asking, or even encouraging them (with benefits in return) for doing something like retweeting a link or liking on facebook / reddit. I udnerstand *why* people feel that way, but I think people forget you do this already about a HUNDRED TIMES A DAY.

Right now, sat at my desk, I can observe without turning my head that my keyboard is by Saitek, my router is a Netgear one, my monitors are iiyama, and my office phone is made by Doro. I can just about see the Logitech microphone and the Bose headphones. That’s 6 logos within my current field of view. On my desktop I can see that Google supplied my clock, and this blog comes courtesy of WordPress. This is ALL advertising, it is ALL marketing, and if you think about it, it’s the equivilant of a forced facebook ‘like’ with no opt-out.

I bought a new car recently, and there were dozens and dozens of options, most of which were hugely overpriced. Do you know the ONE option that was not available at ANY price? It’s removing the car makers logo. Never in a million years. Have you ever seen a car without the makers logo on it?

When a company, even a humble indie games company like mine asks you to retweet something, or ‘like’ it, it might seem a bit pestering, and a bit cynical and a bit ‘markety’, but remember that you are being forced to do this hundreds of times a day anyway. My last car was a Peugeot and it was pretty crap, but I drove up and down with the equivilant of a big ‘+1 peugeot’ advert whether I liked it or not. Games portals also do this all the time (your friend is playing GENERIC SHOOTER #3 right now!)

If you enjoyed this post, why not retweet it, or facebook like it, or submit it to reddit :D

Show Me The Bundle

Posted on June 3, 2011

You know that little side-project website ShowMeTheGames that I talk about now and then? Well guessy what? Go on…  nah…You’ll never guess.

We are running a bundle of indie games through SMTG. It’s basically five high quality indie games for $28.50, which save you $81.33 You have probably heard of some, or all of them. They are (in no particular order)…

Gratuitous Space Battles

This is my latest game. It’s a space strategy affair, where you design spaceships and put together big space fleets, but the battles are stratengely hands-off. :D

Castle Vox

This is by Sillysoft. You remember they made Lux right? It’s influenced by games like Risk. It’s a conquer the world strategy game, and great fun

Evochron: Mercenary

By StarWraith. They have been making excellent space games like this for a while. Watch some videos of it and then tell me you don’t want to own it. I dare you. Awesome graphics, and reminds me of the days of Elite. Ahhhh….

Fate Of The World

By Red Redemption. This is the climate-change game. Save the world from Jeremy Clarkson and Exxon. You know you want to. I do my bit by not flying long-haul, but it’s easier to just buy this game instead.

Smugglers IV

Another space strategy game that evokes memories of Elite. This one is by Niels bauer who has been making indie PC games as long, or maybe even longer than moi.

This isn’t a humble bundle, but  it’s a self-confident and proud one. In fact, as bundles go, it has has en-suite bathrooms and 24 hour porterage, and a helpful concierge called Gerald.  The main bonus is that all the money goes to the developers (BMTMicro take a tiny fee for processing payments). SMTG doesn’t make anything from it, and I only make my share of it (from GSB).

There is a webpage with a video about the bundle here. Which is also where you can buy it. Video embedded below. PLEASE retweet, or facebook it, or write witty forum comments over the interwebs about it. The bundle lasts until the 12th June. Forget all that crap about E3, that’s only for shoddy console ports that will cost $100 and have DRM in anyway. Buy this instead :D

 

Games are like donuts, so go get drunk.

Posted on May 30, 2011

I think that games designers, especially younger, keener, and possibly inexperienced ones can get hung-up on the idea that games are like puzzles, when in fact, games are like donuts. Even puzzle games.

When you get game design students to submit game ideas, or you encounter their ideas online, (inevitably in any discussion of game design or criticism of game ideas), you get a huge emphasis on mechanics, and on the numbers, the choices, the decisions, and the maths and principles behind game design. Books have been written on this topic. I have several myself. There are a lot of maxims, and serious theories.

The problem I have with all this, is it treats the player like a rational, thoughtful robot that is aware that games must be perfectly balanced. In other words, the player is expected to take an analytical and rational and logical approach to deciding whether or not a game is fun.

This is silly, because ultimately games are about FUN. You can take your fun seriously, and that’s fine, but lets not kid ourselves. Gaming is a leisure activity, done for fun. Choosing the right gun in Battlefield 2 isn’t the same as choosing what university course to take or your pension provider or next career. There are no life-changing implications to choosing ‘Elf’ rather than ‘Orc’.

We all make a ton of really serious decisions in our lives. I run a business, and that’s all about seriousness, contracts, numbers, blah blah. The last thing I want to do when gaming is take on a whole new serious set of decisions. I strongly suspect that a lot of gamers have a similar attitude, especially really young gamers and the 30+ generation. How many times do you pick a certain character class or weapon or role in a game because of some silly reason, some trivial gut ‘feeling’? I’ll always max out my archery stat in a game that offers it, even if it’s a dumb choice, because I find archery cool. I spent all my cash in mount n blade on the helmet with big horns, because I liked the helmet, who cares if I’m not maximising my armor stat? Horns are cool.

The reason I’m saying games are like donuts, not puzzles, is that when asked what food we want, we pick what we ‘like’, we don’t get too analytical about whether food X has 15% less calories for the same quantity as food ‘Y’. Food ‘X’ has got better reviews than food ‘Y’, but ultimately we don’t care. We like pizza, more than salad, so we choose pizza. We don’t feel like we have to justify it. In this case, the academic game designer is like a nutritionist. The customers decision makes no sense, they have picked the ‘wrong’ food, the lesser food, for completely silly reasons. Can’t they see that the salad contains a better balance of the different calories and proteins and vitamins, and thus is better than something that is all pepperoni and cheese?????? Can’t everyone see that Beethoven is better than the spice girls????

Game design is about fun, and making the player FEEL good (or bad/scared/guilty/powerful..). It’s not a puzzle of stats for the player to win. If you enjoy gratuitous space battles, then you have WON. It’s not about scoring points or beating challenges really, it’s a game that (I hope) makes you FEEL like you control a big space fleet. I’m selling your the feeling of power, not a spreadsheet. Battlefield 2 makes me feel like a cool soldier, and that’s great. It doesn’t really matter if the game is unbalanced, or if it’s just another shooter, or if Call of Duty has more guns, or cost more, or has a better plot. These are bullet points. We don’t have them on donuts.

I strongly think game designers are selling feelings. This is why I find it worrying so many of them are insular, shy, introverts with a limited range of interests / experiences. Game designers need to get drunk, have sex, get into fights and jump out of airplanes. Stop watching firefly for 10 minutes and go something that generates some different emotion in you.

What about you. Do you play and choose games for seemingly trivial reasons? Because you like the wood-chopping noise in age of empires, or because you  like the background music in eve? What’s the silliest most peripheral non-‘game-design-theory’ reason lying behind your choices?  and how does your favorite game make you FEEL?

How to work out why a PC game keeps crashing

Posted on May 27, 2011

Here is some tips and advice from someone who a) develops PC games b) used to be a PC systems engineer and c) handles tech support for a games company.

So your PC game is crashing. You probably want to contact tech support from the developer or publisher, or seek help from other players on their forums. This is the information you need.

  • The EXACT version number of the game. A lot of games stick this on the main menu screen, or in the ‘readme’ text file in the games folder.
  • The EXACT model of your video card. Go to control panel, then click system, then device manager and look for your video card. You should see the details there. It’s probably some variety of ATI or NVidia.
  • The version of windows you have. Is it 64 bit? 32 bit Windows 7/XP/Vista?
  • if you are doing *anything* unusual, such as running a windows emulator on a mac, or running a beta version of windows, or using beta video card drivers etc.
  • EXACTLY where the game crashes, and the content of any error message that is displayed. You need every detail. ‘It crashed and said something about X’ isn’t specific enough. Especially note any error numbers.
  • if it happens in fullscreen or windowed mode, and your screen resolution.
  • If the game crashed once, or many times, and if the crash can be repeated on demand.
  • If you run other games, and if they work ok. If everything crashes randomly, the game is not at fault.
  • If you have managed to reproduce the exact same issue on a different PC.

Those factors collectively will really help a tech support person. Here is stuff you can try whilst waiting for them to reply.

  1. Reboot your PC and try again. A lot of bad applications can crash and leave your PC, specifically it’s video card driver in a ‘corrupt’ state. Rebooting fixes all stuff like this.
  2. Check there isn’t already a patch for the game. if there is, then install it, because it may well fix your crash. Not every patch notes file contains *all* the fixes.
  3. Install the very latest video card drivers for your PC. You can find a slightly old, but still relevant guide to that here. You probably need to go to nvidia or ati
  4. Go to windows control panel (view by large icons), then administrative tools, then event viewer. windows logs, application log. Look for anything with a red icon, with the name of the game that is crashing. If you find one, click it and you will see in the pane below all kinds of stuff that might help. This is worth sending to the developer in some cases. If the ‘faulting process’ is ATI or nvidia something… then you may have a driver issue, rather than a game code bug.
  5. Check your PC for malware. I recommend antimalwares malwarebytes (free) and microsoft security essentials. Do a deep scan of your whole PC. This could take all day. It is worth doing. A lot of malware generates random-crashing style symptoms, and obviously it’s stuff you want rid of anyway. I have both these programs installed and they are fine, and not at all intrusive.
  6. Check your PC doesn’t badly need defragging. Right click the C drive under windows explorer, select tools, then defrag. If it’s higher than 4% then I’d say do it. If nothing else it speeds up your PC.  While you are there, also check your disk for errors, just in case.
  7. Now we are getting more obscure. is this bug a totally random crash? If you are at your wits end, turn off and unplug your PC. Open the case, and take out the video card and then put it back in. This is called re-seating , and sometimes corrects tiny problems with the socket. Do the same for all of the RAM. In my day, we had a tiny toothbrush to clean the gold connectors with :D. if you aren’t confident opening the case, get your local geek to do it.#
  8. Check your hard drive isn’t full (almost certainly not). In windows explorer right click the C drive and select properties. Do you have at least 1 gig free?
  9. Still no joy? Try running the game as administrator. Right click it’s icon and you will see it as an option. Failing that, experiment with the compatibility mode options in the same place.

If you actually have found a bug in the game, then be aware that this is pretty RARE. You wouldn’t think so, given by online gaming forums, but take a game that sells 50,000 copies (low for retail, high for indie). If there really is a bug, even an obscure one, it’s definitely affected at least 500 people. Maybe 1 in 5 of them emailed the developer. The chances are, the bug was found and patched after the 20th email, let alone the 100th. This is why you should always check your game version number before anything else. It’s still worth emailing the developer with all this information. It will likely help them rule out certain things, the more examples they have.

If you are one of those lucky people to be reporting a bug before it’s fixed, what the developer wants is something called ‘steps to reproduce’. You can be 99.9% sure that the developer has never experienced the crash. If they did, it would be fixed, which means that there is something about how / when / where  you play the game that is different to the way the game was tested. Good steps to reproduce look like this:

  • Start Game in fullscreen mode at 1920×1200 resolution on windows 7 64 bit with nvidia video card, latest drivers
  • Click ‘new game button’
  • Click ‘mission 3’
  • Select Arch wizard chipmunk character, and set all attributes to 7
  • Play mission until you encounter the 5th hobgoblin.
  • Click the ‘use death ray’ icon
  • Game crashes immediately you click the button…

Ideally, what you would do is identify only the steps that cause the game to crash. So if you try to reproduce it, but this time click the ‘use freeze ray’ icon and it still crashes, then you know its not specific to that one button. What the developer really needs is the minimum steps to reproduce the crash, and also to know what is a red herring (in this case, the choice of weapon). In tech support, we called this ‘drawing a box around the problem’. You need to be identify what causes the game to crash, and what is just filler and side-show.

Lastly, remember the game developer isn’t your enemy, they want it fixed more than you do. You aren’t the only person with the bug, and they would rather be coding new stuff than debugging, so they want it done as fast as they can.

If you have any other tips, or suggestions that you know have helped fix awkard and obscure PC game crashes, post them below.