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

Article on pricing

Posted on May 25, 2010

This article on bit-tech is by me:

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2010/05/24/how-much-should-dlc-cost/1

Feel free to retweet or otherwise promote it:D

My point, which is pretty much glossed over in most discussions about DLC, is that variety is good, and the free market will decide. Some DLC is overpriced, some is underpriced. Some price experiments for games are mental, some are a complete giveaway (like Portal for free). Eventually, the free market gives us the right answer.

As an example, I think that $25 for a single horse mount in WoW is flipping MENTAL, when I worry about charging $6 for an extra GSB race. But… the free market has proven me wrong, people bought it in droves. Who am I to criticise either people who think a mount is worth $25, or Blizzard for setting a price that maximises their revenue?

I’m, just a bit sick of kids describing game develoeprs as nazis for not releasing everything they make for free, and thus venting :D

Doing your best

Posted on May 22, 2010

I hate the x-factor and american idol and similar programs for many, many reasons. One of them, is that you constantly hear people who are awful at singing or dancing saying they have ‘done their best’. This is clearly bullshit 99% of the time.

We seem to have developed an entire culture based around low expectations and under-achievement. Mediocrity is the new celebrity. Putting effort in is so last year. The reason we all love ‘reality tv stars’ is that they perpetuate this bullshit that you can have the trappings of success and fame without doing any work. No need to do your best any more…

There is a great scene in an episode of Star Trek: DS9, where worf fails to help his brother die in a ritualistic suicide because they are interrupted by some humans. Worfs brother confronts him over his failure to help him, and worf protests that they were interrupted by two (weaker) humans. His brothers response:

“Did you fight them? Did you threaten to kill them both if they interfered? And are you here now with a mevak dagger to slit my throat and bring me the death I deserve?”

In other words, this is the klingon way of saying “So? is that the best you could have done?”
I like that. I see it so often, in others, and also in myself. I don’t think I’ve “given it 100%” or “done my very best” very often in my life. I rowed like a maniac once in a thames river race, but despite being knackered at the race end, I didn’t actually collapse and need to be taken to hospital. I didn’t burst a blood vessel with effort. If the life of myself and the people closest to me had been at stake, I could have rowed much much harder.
Gratuitous Space Battles is a game I worked very very hard on, But I didn’t work 100 hours a week on it. I didn’t skip TV entirely for a year to do it, or sell everything I owned to invest it in the artwork. I didn’t scrap the entire game and re-do it and the slightest hint of dissastisfaction. I didn’t do my best.

One of the best things about knowing, accepting and really understanding what it means to do your best, and to know you have not done so, is it means you can definitely, 100% no doubt about it, do better next time. People who go through life saying “I gave it my best shot” are just scared of admitting that in all likelihood, they didn’t, and have themselves to blame.
Of course, it might not be worth it to you to go to the extreme, insane lengths of actually doing your very best in everything you do, but I think its a good policy to know the tradeofs you make, as you make them.

Yup, I’m in motivational speaking mood :D

Campaign Scrappage schemes

Posted on May 21, 2010

I’ve been slightly sidetracked recently by the release of the Swarm DLC on steam (few technical issues there) and some updates to the core game which will filter through in the eventual next patch. Meanwhile, slow but sure progress continues on the fun and games of the campaign game. Here is a current work-in-progress coder art style screenshot. I’ve just finished coding the ‘scrap ships’ UI so you can scrap ships to recover some of the money. You only get 25% of the value, so it’s a desperate measure rather than a simple way to refit the fleet. It might be useful for when you have damaged ships not worth repairing, or for when you capture enemy ships that don’t suit your current fleet.

In other news, I now no longer find the big clump of black birds that live in a tree in our garden to be cute. Bastard things woke me up at 6AM this morning. I suspect they are ravens, or maybe pterodactyls. Certainly not as cute as I recall. Jack now has my express permission to get the bastards. He’s been practicing on the smaller birds. So far it’s about 5:0 to him. Nature eh?

The world wide consortium

Posted on May 17, 2010

There was a time… it seems silly now, and Aleks talked about it on BBC TV recently, when the web was open, free, and very very democratic. Pretty much every site was some dude in their bedroom hitting a keyboard (like me!), but that didn’t last long.

Remember download.com? It used to just be download.com, then it was CNET’s download.com. Now it is owned by CBS Interactive, who also own TV.com, ZDNet,  News.com, VersionTracker.com, gamespot.com and many others.

Remember slashdot.org? it’s now part of geeknet, who also own sourceforge.

Remember IMDB and Alexa? Both owned by Amazon.

YouTube? owned by Google, of course.

Slowly but surely, in fact maybe not even slowly, all the sites on the net buy each other until there are fewer and fewer owners that control what we read, buy, see, listen to and discuss. I see this as very bad. I’m not some bearded anti-capitalist hippy, I’m VERY much a capitalist at heart. But I’m a pure free-market, small-business style capitalist. I love the idea of a dozen different companies competing to make the best product, and to give the consumer better value. I worry these days that the net is heading towards a time where we don’t do that.  Games are going that way too. Lionhead bought by Microsoft. Maxis bought by EA, etc etc…

Facebook are having a rough time over dodgy privacy settings. The problem is, it’s too late to hassle them about it. Facebook have won. they are huge, valued at 20 billion dollars. Thats bigger than the GDP of Nicargaua. Nobody is about to topple facebook as the top social website. Competition is failing.

Amazon have a similar position in the UK for shopping. Ebay have it for auctions, Google for search, maps, video and most likely small business advertising too.

The really scary thing is that this is MUCH worse than the situation at retail. With physical stuff we have vast competition. I bet you can name ten manufacturers of laptop. ten manufacturers of cars. Now name me ten online book stores.

Or even five.

Pill Box in Barnes London

Posted on May 15, 2010

Ignore this post, it’s here purely for google, unless you know the answer.

When I was a kid, I lived in Barnes, London. I remember that near Beverly Brook there was a  piece of wasteland, not far from station road. Eventually they built a housing estate there. I’m sure I remember there being a WW2 pillbox and some factory gates there, during the early seventies. Am I imagining it? Is it true there was a factory there, maybe a munitions factory that got bombed? If so, what do you know about it? Just curious… :D