I have a tendency to be pretty verbose in my blog posts. My typical topic length has inched ever higher over time, and I think it's starting to impact my comfort level in starting new topics. Each new post, it feels harder to write about something because of the growing number of things I've discussed, and the growing number of words I seem to use each time. And as readers, I'm sure the sight of a wall of text is none too enticing.
This week, I had an idea for something different: fake graphs about real things. Basically, there are some concepts in game development that seem like they are easily described in graphs. They're not always possible to quantify, but the trends are pretty easy to qualify. Like describing volume as a function of distance from a speaker, or speed as a function of time spent accelerating, we can describe certain things in our industry in relation to other values.
So, before I accidentally type another paragraph, let's start "graphing!"
Fig. 1: Amount of time spent actually working on game over length of project.
The above one's pretty easy. Particularly if you're a solo indie, this is what you should plan for. In fact, it's a bit incomplete:
Fig 1a: Everything else you'll be doing.
Oh, and one more thing:
Fig 1b: It ain't over 'til it's over.
Here's another one for those running a game-as-a-service or Minecraft-like beta funding model:
Fig 2: Anxiety as a function of build release schedule.
Those with heart conditions shouldn't wait too long between releases! Particularly if:
Fig 2a: Ohgodohgodohgodohgod!
This one, while sobering, is probably no surprise to most:
Fig 3: Game sales over time.
"That's not so bad," you might think. But we may be missing some points of reference:
Fig 3a: WTB rent-free treehouse with free electricity and internet...
There are a few things you can do to help, though:
Fig 3b: Or this might just be a NASA pulsar graph
Each of these peaks will likely have a diminishing effect on the subsequent peaks, as market saturates and relevance decreases over time.
You could also try adjusting the price of your game:
Fig 4: Sales as a function of price.
$0 is a popular price! Conversely, not many people are into mortgaging their homes to buy a game. Though, as the app store has shown us, there are 8 people who will buy your game no matter what (1 of which, accidentally).
How does this look in terms of actual money? Probably something like this:
Fig 4a: Number may not actually be magic.
This assumes some minimum price, of course. Most places aren't selling games for $0.000001. If that were the case, the vertical slopes would be more gradual.
Let's talk about another topic. Phil Fish has recently made the news (again), and you might be wondering what you'd do in his shoes. Being criticized can be unpleasant, but not all criticism is created equal:
Fig 5: Amount of attention paid to criticism vs. how much I respect the critic.
Put another way, if someone is the type of person who slings insults at complete strangers over the internet, it's hard to take them seriously. After all, with such a low barrier to lashing out, they probably do it to everyone. I might even feel left out if they didn't.
Similarly:
Fig 5a: Attention paid as a function of bias.
Overly negative (and positive!) commentary isn't very useful, so I tend to pay the most attention to balanced critique and critics. Overly biased feedback is about as helpful as a ruler with all 8s.
Speaking of usefulness:
Fig 6: Likelihood of reading feedback as a function of its length.
If I open up an email or forum thread, this is pretty much how things are going to play out. Don't get me wrong, the following is also true:
Fig 6a: Wanting and doing are different things, though.
But if it's going to take me 30 minutes to read, 15 minutes to digest, another 10 to re-skim, and then an hour to reply...well, I might not. Of course, I tend to dwell in the far right hand side of this graph when writing, so there's some irony/hypocrisy to be had here.
And while we're on the topic of weaknesses, here's a big one for me:
Fig 7: Desire to postpone decision as a function of its importance.
Decisions can be hard. Big decisions even more so. While it can be healthy to take time to consider options when faced with a decision, it can be unhealthy to postpone for too long:
Fig 7a: "Just a little more research..."
The important feature of this graph is the peak and subsequent negative slope. For every decision, there is some amount of consideration that is optimal, and beyond that, an ever-increasing opportunity cost. The real-world version of this graph may be bumpy, but the general form is the same.
There are more, of course, but this is already quite a bit. Let me know if you found this format to be helpful, entertaining, or even erroneous. And enjoy the break from my walls o' text while you can!
I was playing Rock Band the other day. We dug the plastic instruments out of storage, and fired up the 360 to dust off our faux musician skills. And at one point, we played Nine Inch Nails's "The Hand That Feeds."
As the little, colored notes dropped off the screen, I found myself imagining how cool it must be to make music like that as a career. I love musical instruments, and to be surrounded by synths, sequencers, 1/4" audio cables, humming amps, electric guitars, and mixers would make my day.
I've dabbled in composition from time-to-time, and I've even had some relatively pleasing results. Sure, they're amateur at best, but creating them was fun. I actually long for the time when I'm simultaneously un-busy enough and motivated to get back into that.
That last thought brought me back from my daydream, even as the colored notes continued. "I'm too busy and too tired," I thought, "because I already have a cool day job like that." It was as sobering as it was uplifting.
In reality, Trent Reznor probably doesn't sit in his studio, admiring his collection. He doesn't sit with a cup of tea, trying out all the synth presets on his Korg M1. He doesn't feel the blissful absence of pressure as he surveys his laboratory.
Mr. Reznor has a business to attend to. He has music to compose, a brand to promote, investments to consider, and relationships to manage. What we picture him doing each day is blissfully ignorant of pressure.
What's So Hard About Making Games?
Like with music, I think there are many on the outside looking in at game developers. Each has their vision of what goes on in a developer's day, and some are more accurate than others. Some may picture developers coding away in the late night hours, illuminated by a cold monitor. Others might picture long conference tables, half-empty pizza boxes, and colored dry-erase diagrams.
Some people picture...other things.
So when it comes to game development in practice vs. imagination, what actually goes on? What are the types of work being done? Are any of them pure enjoyment? Tedium?
And what is the hardest part?
As with music, games are complex products, the creation of which involves a wide variety of tasks. How hard or enjoyable each of these tasks is will depend on the person(s), their abilities, and their preferences. It will also depend on the type of game being made, the tools being used, and the project constraints.
Since NEO Scavenger and Blue Bottle Games are primarily a solo project, I wear a pretty good number of hats. I do most of the dev work, content creation, business administration, and I've even collaborated with a few talented individuals.
What follows, then, is a review of the types of things I've had to do as part of developing NEO Scavenger and running Blue Bottle Games since it started. Along with each, I'll try to call out some of the more enjoyable, challenging, and tedious aspects of each.
If you're considering getting into game development, maybe this will help illustrate some of the rewards and challenges you'll face. And if you're already there, maybe it'll comfort you to know you're not alone :)
Game Ideas - It won't surprise you to learn that this is one of the easier, more enjoyable aspects of game development. I love coming up with ideas. I can't not do it, in fact. When I get up from bed to go to the bathroom at 3am, I have new ideas by the time I crawl back into bed. I have journals stacked in a drawer with ideas, a massive folder on my hard drive, another on Google Drive. When I bought my first Palm III, it was so I could jot down ideas as I rode the subway to work. I gave up a lucrative job at BioWare so I could make my ideas into games. I've been known to turn down perfectly good ideas in favor of coming up with ideas of my own. Have I mentioned I like coming up with video game ideas?
While usually not tedious, there are a few times when it can be frustrating to come up with an idea. Usually, this is because one needs an idea for a specific problem, but none are coming. Ideas pour when they rain, but they're not always what you need when you need them. They're also notorious for derailing otherwise productive work with distraction.
Research - This one's a bit like ideas, above. I have to restrain myself from researching things if given the chance. Before I start drawing something, I research it. Writing about something? Research. Start building a new system? Research what other games do.
Research can be tedious, of course. Plowing through an academic paper is rarely as instantly gratifying as Wikipedia. And many times, there are conflicting sources that need to be resolved. Vocabulary can also cause research effort to mushroom, as one is confronted with a wall of unfamiliar terminology.
And then there's the question of research's value. Some of it is justifiable, as research can reveal useful strategies or opportunities. Most of the time, though, it's a guilty pleasure that gets in the way of real work. The challenge is often keeping that in check.
Not the hardest part of making games.
Pixel Art - Drawing game graphics is moderately hard work, but I enjoy it. It was harder and less enjoyable when I started, as the results were more frustrating. However, with practice, I'm getting better at producing the level of quality that I want, and I enjoy the process more. (The process grows faster, too.) The least enjoyable part of this job is when a piece requires other "infrastructure" art to help it.
For example, drawing a new rifle is lots of fun. Drawing that same rifle again and again, once for held, worn, and stored versions, and again for the combat UI, then all of the above again for the strapped version, again for the scoped version, and again for the strapped, scoped version? Tedious. I'd rather draw a new rifle. However, for it to work in the game, it needs all of its requisite art done, not just the fun part.
VFX - This one can be a lot of fun, but also very frustrating and complex. The cool thing about it is that subtle changes in code and art can make some really spectacular and interesting things happen. It's almost like a mini game development project within a larger project. (E.g. programming the flying, blinking lights in the Detroit map within NEO Scavenger, below).
The hard part comes when the VFX requires complex algorithms, wrangling multiple coordinate spaces, or bypassing limitations in the platform (e.g. alpha blending that doesn't kill performance).
Audio Design, Recording - Audio work is something I am terribly amateur at, but still enjoy immensely. As hinted at in my musings about Trent Reznor, I'd love to sit down with some audio equipment and just noodle for days. And I've even afforded myself a few such days during the course of NEO Scavenger, field recording, cutting and looping effects, and even composing a title screen piece (mercifully replaced by Josh Culler's great soundtrack work).
It's not fun all the time, though. Sometimes, it means listening carefully to hours of recorded audio for useful bits, cleaning them up, slice and package them, and labeling them with tags for reference later. And in the worst cases, it can be doing this process over and over until it sounds "right."
Frankly, producing good audio is a full-time job of its own, and I haven't given it the love it deserves. It's beyond my capacity right now, as features and bugs eat the lions share of my development time. I still want to, it's just been back-burnered while fish are frying.
Programming - This is where a lot of time is spent. If I had to guess, this probably takes the largest share of my time. For just about everything I create in NEO Scavenger, some coding needs to be done to make it appear. Even coding sometimes requires more coding to work (i.e. bugs).
As I approach the end of the project, that seems to be changing, though. Most of the early art/writing/design was for new systems that needed to be built. Now, I'm mostly filling in content variety in established categories, so the coding is shifting more towards maintenance and fixes.
The difficulty and enjoyment in coding varies pretty wildly. Like with VFX above, coding can sometimes mean big changes from little code. This is also often the case when adding a design feature. At such times, coding is my favorite task.
At other times, coding is a tedium that is hard to endure, or impossible to sort through. Rewriting the GUI for NEO Scavenger is one process that was agonizingly boring and involved. And some of the more complex problems can involve abstract and difficult thinking, especially when the system one is building is dependent on one or more systems that also haven't been built (or defined) yet.
Writing - Writing may actually trump artwork, in terms of time spent on tasks. NEO Scavenger is pretty heavy on text, so a lot of work goes into planning and creating that text.
As with many tasks above, there is fun writing, and there is boring writing. The fun writing comes when my brain is in the right mode, and I have trouble keeping up with it. The story just seems to flow, and I always know what to write next (at least roughly).
The tedious part of writing comes when one needs to handle all the peripheral infrastructure. In NEO Scavenger, players can take multiple paths in encounters, and that means those paths have to be written. The tedium is helped a bit by the fact that I try to make each path interesting. However, nothing helps that sinking feeling when I realize, "ugh, they might do that, and that means a whole new string or tree of encounters I need to conjure up."
The hard part of writing is rather like what I described in programming, above. When so little has been defined, it might seem like one has lots of freedom. However, that freedom can be paralyzing, as one is constantly second-guessing whether the idea or character is plausible, interesting, or whether it might sabotage the story somehow down the line.
"...and the player will be able to choose ANY action they want!"
Game Design - Design is a bit hard to separate from the above, since it involves almost all of them. On a good day, it means recognizing clever ways of making two systems interact, producing a complexity greater than the sum of its parts. At times like these, one can almost enjoy their own game as if they're a new player, watching systems interact in surprising ways.
On other days, there is a design problem that appears to have no good solution. I've spent days on some problems: thinking; starting down a path; recognizing a new issue; erasing; repeating. It can be very disheartening and frustrating. Sometimes, the problems with a new system don't emerge until all the work is done. Then, it becomes a trade-off between spending extensive time fixing, or extensive time rebuilding.
And tedium can rear its head here, too. Some systems require reams of data entry and proofreading. Other times, navigating a web of interdependencies to ensure the systems don't undermine each other.
Build and Platform Management - This refers to the process of getting the game to run on the platform of choice, whether it be a browser, Windows, Mac, or Linux. It also refers to the process of getting that game into the hands of the person who needs it, be they oneself, a collaborator, or a customer.
I'll admit, there's little here that I enjoy. I'm thankful for some of the experiences I've had in making NEO Scavenger cross-platform, but I wouldn't call the work enjoyable. Mostly, it's a mixture of tedious and challenging.
The challenge is usually wrestling with the idiosyncrasies of each platform, be they resolution, user input devices, UI conventions, performance, or unexpected bugs. Flash helps with much of this, but as it turns out, causes almost as many problems.
The tedium is usually the actual build process for me. Creating each of the platform builds requires a lot of PC-hopping, file uploading, changelog-writing, and form-filling.
They LOOK friendly enough...
PR - Interacting with press and public is a job in itself, and can take as much time as you offer. There will always be more conversations out there about your game than you can handle, so you have to set some limits to leave time for game development.
Without a doubt, reading press and player feedback is my favorite part of PR. Praise can be highly motivating, as can constructive criticism. Even knowing that people are simply playing the game can raise one's confidence.
I also enjoy learning about the art of promotion, and creating plans for publicity (e.g. special events, giveaways, strategic link placement, game festivals, etc.).
I'm terrible at executing those plans, though. I hate asking people for things, so cold-calling press outlets is hard for me to do. I also have a hard time pulling the trigger on a PR event, knowing that "just one more" fix or feature would improve the first impression, perpetually delaying my plans.
When it comes to customers, some interactions are easier than others. I love helping people, so if my response can offer something useful to the player, I feel good about it. Conversely, if I don't have anything helpful to offer the player, responding stresses me out.
There are critics out there, but they're actually not as stressful as you might imagine. In cases where the criticism is valid and constructive, it's actually welcomed and helpful. And in cases where it's more insult than critique, it's easy to disregard.
Team Management - NEO Scavenger may be a solo endeavor, but I have had help along the way. And most of my experience prior to Blue Bottle Games was with large teams.
At its best, teamwork is awesome. Being surrounded by talented, creative, and motivated people can make you do amazing things, and create stellar products. Some of my happiest moments (in any career) were when surrounded by a tight team of bright minds with a shared vision.
Working with Josh on NEO Scavenger's music, and Cameron on NEO Scavenger's story and design, was equally inspiring. They could see things I missed, and offer ideas I never would have, helping to produce a fuller, more professional game experience.
If there's any tedium I experienced, it was due to one major mistake I made: making myself the bottleneck. There's nothing more mitigating to a high-performance machine than forcing it to drive in rush-hour traffic, and that's what I did with Josh and Cameron. I never built the infrastructure for collaborators to contribute directly, and I wanted to own as much of the process as possible. As a result, I slowed down their progress. One could argue that I failed at one of the greater challenges of team management: delegation.
Of course, there can also be bad teams. I've been on my share of those as well, and they can cause no end of tedium and frustration (for both the members and managers). Diverging goals and opinions, authority issues, poor communication, and lack of clarity can ruin even the best collections of talent. Bad teams are jobs in themselves, and making games becomes a side project compared to keeping things from melt-down.
Business Analysis - As with PR, this is an area I enjoy exploring quite a bit. And that came as a surprise to me.
Learning about economics, business strategies, and entrepreneurship can be really addictive. I enjoy looking at the game I want to make, the market it's trying to reach, and hashing out features, pricing, sales channels, and partnerships to make it viable.
Running the numbers can be tedious, of course. As can digesting info to keep one's picture of the market up-to-date. However, there's a certain Skinner-like reward to reading news about the industry, and suddenly recognizing an opportunity your product is poised to take advantage of. It's one of those rare moments in life when your "money-making idea" can actually do what it says on the tin.
The hard part, here, is often just finding useful information. Nobody is in the business of writing "A Market Analysis Tailored for Dan Fedor." There's a lot of filling in blanks with educated guesses, extrapolating data, and in some cases, blind faith. Will your next game idea be a hit? Nobody knows. Even the AAA analysts are clueless here.
Let's not forget DIY desktop support.
Testing and Debugging - When folks say things like, "oh, you just play games all day?" this is probably of what they're thinking. And they're wrong.
Just about everyone on a game dev team tests and debugs their work. Or at least, anyone worth their salt does. Fire up the game, navigate to the area where your recent work shows up, and start testing it.
This can actually be a pretty fascinating area of work. It rewards good experimental method, note-taking, statistical analysis, and deduction. Sometimes, it can feel like forensics or detective work. And yes, once in a while, you get a chance to play through a section to see how it "feels."
Unfortunately, this type of work can also require a lot of patience and persistence. It's not good enough that one tests entering combat and exiting again. One has to test cases where the player initiates combat with AI, AI with player, player with AI already in combat with AI, AI with player vs. AI. What if the player dies instead of leaving? The AI? What if one AI leaves and another stays? What if the player leaves, and more than one AI stays?
There can be a combinatorial multitude of scenarios to test, and doing this job right means testing them all. Worse yet, once a change is made to the system, this entire suite of tests needs to be run again. And changes to the system are always happening.
Some testing can be quite frustrating, too. A notorious example in NEO Scavenger are the null-pointer bugs that only show up later in a game session. They're frustrating because the cause is unclear, and one must play the game for long periods before the bug might appear. And often, the symptom of the bug varies from game-to-game, making it hard to tell if two bugs are related. If the bug cannot be caused reliably, and requires long periods of play to trigger, imagine trying to fix it. And worse, verifying that the fix works.
Project Management - In an ideal world, each developer could just release the game they want, when they want to. In reality, the pressures of time, budget, and manpower impinge on that ideal. Project management is the process of quantifying those needs and constraints, and finding the compromise that balances those forces best.
A lot of folks picture project management as Gantt charts, scrum, status meetings, and spreadsheets. And a lot of project management involves those things.
However, all of us do some amount of project management subconsciously when we assess the value of a new feature against our capabilities, schedule, and budget. Whether it's a customer asking for widescreen format support, or a teammate asking for alpha channels in their sprites, we're assessing cost vs. value somehow in our decision-making process.
There is little that I enjoy about this process, honestly. Gathering data can be a lot of work, it often involves telling people "no," and the results are based on a lot of guesswork.
That said, the process can reveal useful questions and concerns that are missed in more casual assessments. It can also serve as a common reference point for discussions among others. Even as a solo developer, it can be very helpful to have a to-do list that I can sort by effort, value, finished/unfinished, or other criteria.
So, for me, it's one of those things I'm glad to have done, but dislike doing.
Taxes and Accounting - If you're running your own business, the CRA/IRS wants to know what you earn. And likely, you'll want to know as well.
There is nothing enjoyable nor rewarding about doing taxes. It is 100% tedium and challenge, so I'll leave it at that.
Accounting can be grueling, but the rewards are there if done right. It's important to know how one's business is performing, in order to make sound decisions. And it can sometimes be an ego boost if sales are good. But it's a lot of careful, detailed work, and it can involve some challenges of data-management and research.
More fun than taxes.
Some Additional Hard Parts About Making AAA Games
There are quite a few other areas that I could discuss, particularly from the point of view of a larger team. NEO Scavenger is a pretty small undertaking compared to AAA efforts, and I don't (yet) have to worry about such things as:
Animation - Either traditional or 3D rigging, keyframing, motion capture, and the like.
3D Modeling - 3D models include characters, environment art, props, etc.
Materials - The development of textures, shaders, and other surface material properties for models.
Lighting - 3D worlds, and even some 2D worlds, require sources of light to be placed strategically.
Cinematics - Positioning cameras, moving them around, as well as managing the content being shown, settings for playback, and related work.
Localization - Translating the game for multiple markets.
Physics - Assigning volumes and physical properties to items in the game world.
Licensing - Negotiating permission to use licensed properties.
Other - And everything else I've forgotten about.
What is the Hardest Part About Making Games?
So what is the hardest part about making games? You may have noticed a pattern in the list above, having to do with the aspects which I find tedious or difficult. "God is in the detail," as they say, and this is as true in game development as any other field.
Dabbling in an art or science is fun, but due diligence is work. The hardest part of any task above is when I have to get my hands dirty and follow through with all the details. There's a reason organizations usually have a limited number of leaders with the broad-strokes vision, and an army of workers to do the detail work.
However, even the tasks listed above are manageable on their own. Many are measured in hours, days, or weeks, and not much worse than school assignments in that respect.
The hardest, in my opinion, is finishing a game. Spending hours each day, every day, consecutively for over two years. Waking up on day 520 of NEO Scavenger, and finding the motivation to do one more. That's the hard part. I like making games, but even I get tired of making the same game after all that time.
Don't mind if I do.
The hardest part of making a game is finishing it. For all the things I can do on my project, that's the one I still haven't.
I apologize for the previous gap in updates. Rochelle and I were at the beach with my family for a few weeks, and I made it a point not to do any more work-related stuff than was necessary.
I could get used to these.
Unsurprisingly, work still crept in, here and there. I cut down my email and web administration duties to once every other day, but it still took a few hours each time. There isn't really anyone to cover for me in these cases, so I'm on the hook for order issues, spambot surge mitigation, and customer inquiries. One alternative would be to "go dark" for several weeks, but that seems like an irresponsible thing to do when running a business, particularly where customer support is a component.
As such, vacation wasn't a complete break from the stress. Nothing critical arose during the break, thankfully, but it was still something that was in the back of my head. Work check-in was never more than a day or two away, and more significantly, a giant to-do list awaited me when I returned.
I think that while previous vacations have taught me that vacations are necessary and healthy, this vacation added the caveat that vacations can be diminished by obligation. Basically, there would either have to be no obligations to fulfill, or someone to fill those obligations for me in order to completely relax, stress-free.
The former requires that NEO Scavenger be finished and support-free. Admittedly, that goal is pretty far off, if even possible. More than likely, there will be a long tail of support and attention required, no matter how bulletproof I make the game. Platforms evolve, partnerships are formed, and other changes in the business landscape mean that a product is never truly dead (see Homeworld, Wasteland, etc.)
The latter requires that I expand the team, which is a daunting goal in itself. Questions of trust, availability, motivation, and compensation are each topics that require their own, significant, due diligence. I've long been reluctant to let anyone into the sandbox, and these are some of the big reasons why.
It's time to "start finishing."
As such, my current goal is to "level up" NEO Scavenger, and make it newsworthy again. A little more work, and I can at least consider the demo "done," making it ripe for sharing with portal sites like Kongregate and NewGrounds. That should hopefully make new players aware of the game, and if the beta looks like a worthwhile-enough upgrade, drive new sales as well.
The increased awareness would help with the Greenlight campaign, which is a bid for more PR and sales in itself. There are some contests I'm considering, as well as some "taste makers" I'd like to finally contact, now that NEO Scavenger is maturing.
And if things go smoothly, I can see either finishing the home stretch personally (albeit slowly), or maybe investing a little money to speed the remainder of the content work.
It's a scary moment, one of those crossroads where I endlessly find excuses to avoid taking the next step, but it's time to get into high gear. Whatever happens, I'm already happy with the outcome so far, and I only have more to gain from moving forward.
Plus, peace and rest waits for me over that next hill, and I never thought that would be such an enticing goal.
First of all, that's great news! It's encouraging to have folks asking to host NEO Scavenger. And those services each represent good-but-different opportunities to serve a greater market. I look forward to exploring those, and other, options further as NEO Scavenger approaches completion.
The point of this post, however, is more about the big picture, and how to properly balance NEO Scavenger's sale across multiple vendors. Specifically, I want to muse on the topic of "cross play."
What Is Cross-Play?
When I say "cross-play," what I'm referring to is the ability to buy a game from one service, and to have that unlock access on other services. I realize there are a fewdefinitions of "cross-play" out there, but for the purposes of this post, it's about buying the game once, and playing anywhere.
In the case of NEO Scavenger, buying beta access at bluebottlegames.com automatically grants access on Desura. Similarly, buying a copy of the game on Desura allows the user to unlock a copy at bluebottlegames.com, using the Desura Connect feature.
When NEO Scavenger was sold in the Be Mine 5 bundle, Desura keys were given out, so those customers were also eligible for cross-play. Though in retrospect, that was less than fully effective: many customers didn't realize they had Desura keys, and weren't aware how to update, or even that they could. I should probably see about doing keys-only, rather than binaries plus keys, in the future to reduce confusion.
Why Provide Cross-Play?
One of the biggest reasons to provide cross-play is simply because it makes the customer happy. Customers feel like they're part of something bigger, and dealing with a business that values them more than their dollar. It let's them know that no matter which store they bought your product in, they're your customer, and you appreciate them just the same. And customers who feel appreciated are more likely to return for future business.
It also helps keep the audience fragmentation to a minimum. If communities were to develop at each storefront, then those communities may diverge over time, making it difficult to satisfy all tastes as they become incompatible. Smoothing out inroads between communities helps everyone stay on the same page, and helps keep the audience united.
There are also marketing advantages to providing cross-play. Customers who are pleased with the arrangement are more likely to recommend it to friends. And the relative rarity of cross-play may mean the press finds it a newsworthy business practice.
It can also accelerate sales, in the case of a gradual product roll-out (as is the case with NEO Scavenger). Knowing that one's preferred service will be supported in the future sometimes causes hesitation in customers, as they'd prefer to wait until the game comes out there. However, if purchasing the game now entitles them to a free unlock on their service of choice later, then there's no reason to wait. This was particularly the case with Steam users, as noted by the comments in NEO Scavenger's Greenlight page.
Lastly, there's a neat technical benefit to having cross-play enabled for one's game: redundancy. If something fails on one service, there's a way to get affected customers up and running again on a different cross-play service.
A recent example of this was when a new build was launched on Friday to both bluebottlegames.com and Desura. The new version went live immediately on bluebottlegames.com, but the Desura version was awaiting authorization over the weekend. Customers who wanted access right away simply used the connect feature to get the latest version at bluebottlegames.com instead.
Why Not?
One of the first reasons most will think of against providing cross-play is that there's a potential hit to sales. This is probably true. Anecdotal evidence abounds for customers buying and re-buying the same game across different services as they become available. Some are accidental (e.g. losing a CD or key), others are intentional (e.g. wanting the game in their Steam library for convenience). In some cases, they're even points of pride for the customer ("I love this game so much I bought it five times!").
In the first two cases, the customer is repurchasing the game for their own benefit. In the third case, it's primarily benefiting the developer. With cross-play, the customer can still repurchase the game if they want to, so the third situation is unchanged.
The important thing to remember about the first two cases is that customers who don't want to repurchase the game no longer have to. It might cost the developer the price of a new (or discounted) copy, but it gains the developer some good will. And I'd rather have an existing customer's good will than their additional $10 or less.
There is the possibility of customers giving cross-play keys to friends, so I suppose that's a consideration. I'm not really one to police pirates, though. And I figure that if they're going to pirate the game, cross-play doesn't greatly change their ability over the DRM-free version I sell now.
Technical feasibility may be a bigger reason. So far, cross-play between Desura and bluebottlegames.com has been pretty easy to implement. Desura has a workflow already setup for this, and adding a custom one to my site was entirely up to me. I want to do the same with Steam, though I may only be able to provide one-way unlocks (e.g. bluebottlegames.com customers get Steam keys, but not the other way around) depending on whether Steam has any mechanisms in place for cross-play.
Furthermore, each new case creates an increasing amount of integration work, and it would likely grow out of hand pretty quickly. There are a lot of services out there. E.g. ShinyLoot, Amazon, Good Old Games, Impulse, Origin, Google, iTunes, Ubuntu Software Center, etc. They all likely have different capabilities.
As such, it may be the case that my cross-play plans are impossible across 100% of vendors, even if I had the manpower.
Selective Cross-Play
In all likelihood, 100% reciprocal cross-play will not be possible as I offer NEO Scavenger in more places. So I'll need to come up with an acceptable compromise. The alternative would be to ignore sales channels that didn't offer cross-play tools.
I already suspect Steam is a one-way street in this regard, and cutting out Steam from sales channels would be pretty dumb. In fact, I think most online storefronts lack Desura's "connect" feature, so I may be living in a fantasy land right now.
One thing I can still do, however, is enable cross-play from bluebottlegames.com some other services. I.e. if they purchase at my site, they can get free keys to Steam, Desura, and maybe another service to two. More than likely, Steam and Desura are all most players care about anyway.
Plus, offering the one-way cross-play radiating out from bluebottlegames.com makes it somewhat more attractive to buy it there. The customer could still get a version on the service they want, plus elsewhere in the network. And more of the purchase money goes into developing new games. That seems like a nice win-win.
I'll have to see how this plays out, though. So far, I've been pretty lucky in that my only other vendor, Desura, makes this cross-play easy to do. So I've been treating it as my preferred business practice. But as I start working with new vendors, I'm see that the cross-play option is going to be complex to support.
Hopefully, I can find a way that is both sustainable and appreciated by my customers!
With the ringing of the new year, I thought it might make sense to look over the previous one, to get a sense of where I've been, and what that might imply about where I should go next.
January 2012
Twelve months ago, I was just becoming a Canadian permanent resident. After months of sitting on my hands, it was time to start making things official. I still had a lot left to do before launch, but I could finally submit paperwork and other requests, and start on the process of making my dream business a reality.
NEO Scavenger already looked pretty much like how it does today:
January 2012 vs. January 2013
January 2012 vs. January 2013
However, despite the shared map and item graphics, quite a lot changed under the hood. These changes are only hinted at by some of the UI differences shown above.
And it also received an overhaul to its scavenging mechanic. Prior to 2012, scavenging involved visiting a hex, opening the inventory screen, and hoping there were items on the ground. Not exactly the most engaging mechanic, especially considering it was the namesake for the game.
Skill selection was finally becoming more like what we see now, instead of this:
Nominated for most intuitive UI of 2011.
The inventory screen was changed to rely less on ctrl and shift clicking, instead using "modes" triggered by visible buttons. The UI also got hotkeys for the various screens and modes.
I implemented Playtomic for metrics, which was a partial success. The basic stats are still useful, though the more complex stats I setup are not very usable. A preloader was added, which is still used today. SecureSWF is likewise still pulling its weight as a code obfuscator. And save/load was in its infancy.
January was also the month when I decided on NEO Scavenger's final business model. Until this point, I was expecting it to be launched under the sponsorship model. I also decided on feature voting, as a means to gather measured user feedback.
The game switched from 1280x800 (arbitrarily chosen as half my monitor's screen resolution) to a more universal 800x600 (palatable for game portals). Finally, I added site-locking as I prepared to put NEO Scavenger out there for people to test.
February 2012
In February, I began piecing together all the necessary components for launching a business on the web. Quite a bit of time was spent on everything from creating a website to setting up a payment provider. It was a month filled with more business work than game, though I still managed to cobble together some new in-game items, new artwork, and a spate of newspaper loot with back-story snippets to read.
March 2012
March marked the public launch of both NEO Scavenger and my company, Blue Bottle Games. 9 months after starting development, NEO Scavenger was available for all to try and pre-purchase.
And with that launch came the stresses of running a public-facing service company. I had to quickly adapt my schedule to balance development with PR, and adapt my psyche to the ups and downs of public opinion. Fortunately, most of that opinion was positive. But it was still a bracing experience.
March also marked my first taste of revenue. It started small, then surged wildly with some press coverage, then settled back down to a stream. Fortunately, that stream continues to this day, and even had a few additional, albeit smaller, spikes along the way.
April 2012
In April, sales settled into their steady state, which was (and continues to be) a little less than cost of living. This shrinking of a major launch spike caused some existential concern. As it turns out, this question of "when is it 'done'?" never goes away. It just changes circumstances and specifics over time.
I was also faced with my first major public game design decision: permadeath and save games. I ultimately decided to keep the game more rogue-like in that permadeath means save games are deleted. Months later, I'm glad I did. It was a decision which could have drastically altered NEO Scavenger, and I'm glad that it was altered in a way that keeps it challenging, unique, and with some later tweaking, fun.
I also started to formalize my PR policy by the time April came around. Fortunately, I wasn't faced with too much internet hate, but the hate I did receive forced me to grapple with my rules of engagement. Put succinctly, ignore attacks, and focus on being constructive and responsive to those that are constructive.
In development of the game itself, the camping and night/lighting features were big items. They were the first major features, in fact. Lots of loading/saving fixes were required as well. And the website and order process had some growing pains to resolve.
Development of the game, on the other hand, was in full force. As I would soon discover, plot is hard to do. For nearly a month, all that readers saw coming down the wire was "did more plot work today." I don't enjoy phases where there's little to share with fans, but I also don't want to spoil the fun by revealing the story out of order.
Encounter Editor
Fortunately, there were a few updates sprinkled in to keep folks entertained. One such change was the chase, which opened up various new gameplay tools for tracking and hiding AI. The oft-requested pockets were also added.
And May is also when I started working with my first collaborator: Cameron Harris. His input to both design and plot has been a real asset, and I believe NEO Scavenger is a better game for it.
June 2012
I was on the road for part of June, so activity was a bit limited. It did give me a chance to try out developing on the road, and to see how poorly I was prepared.
Still, a lot got done on NEO Scavenger in June. In particular, I made my second major decision: to work on improving combat ahead of schedule. Combat was pretty poor in early versions of NEO Scavenger. Its dependence on luck made it more frustrating than fun.
New Combat UI
By the end of June, combat had a new face, and it was far more tactical and engaging. It also included some improvements to AI.
July 2012
In July, I started lamenting my poor work and exercise habits. While I feel my workaholism has improved (I took 2 weeks off at Christmas, despite the temptation to only take 1), I'm still short on exercise. I made my second, and more serious, dip into the world of business accounting. And I was approached by Desura for inclusion in their service!
With the new combat system launched, I began work on a wounding system that would integrate with the extant player conditions, and offer opportunities for resourcefulness and strategy in dealing with wounds. I would argue that this suite of combat and wounding systems was one of the more important changes to NEO Scavenger so far, as it greatly enhanced the game's uniqueness, depth, and fun factor.
July is also the month where I began working with my second collaborator, Josh Culler. Josh's music has added a wonderful sense of atmosphere to the game, and has been very effective in promotional trailers as well.
With the Desura and Greenlight launches done, I decided to do a mini retrospective. In it, I look over some of the sales stats to-date, and how both launching on Desura and Greenlight affected them.
I also officially enter the Mac and Linux realm with my first Mac hardware. $500 netted me hardware I could create Mac binaries with, as well as dual-boot Linux for that version.
I also had a few hardware failures, which cost some time and money to isolate and fix, but were thankfully minimal in impact otherwise.
NEO Scavenger is featured in its first bundle. While a success by most standards, I decide that I'll probably wait until after v1.0 is done to do another, and turn down subsequent bundle offers accordingly.
Player frustration mounts, and the question of game design and permadeath resurfaces. I decide to take a long look at the game's design, to see where it might be failing. I still want to keep permadeath and NEO Scavenger's rogue-like qualities, but I also want to offer players the tools they need to overcome adversity. It is likely to be an ongoing balancing act.
The process of plot work remains slow and grueling, with little to show while in progress. However, I finally finish entering data for the random encounters. The Desura website gets the ability to connect owners there to accounts at bluebottlegames.com.
Work begins on one of the most deceptively difficult bugs in history: item stacking.
November 2012
With random encounters increasing the encounter node count above 750, the encounter editor fails to start anymore. I begin rebuilding the editor in Haxe NME, partially as a solution to the above performance issue, and partially as a test to see if NEO Scavenger is worth porting to NME. The results are pretty good, but there are a few stumbling blocks. I decide that NME holds promise, but I might wait a while before porting NEO Scavenger.
The stacking change continues to ripple bugs into mid-November, but finally works. The mouse is upgraded to take advantage of new Flash plugin features: hardware mouse and right clicking. Plot work resumes in the new editor.
Work on the DMC map continues, adding both detail and animated VFX for interest. Rather than releasing a full screenshot of it, I decide to do a teaser with one of Josh's new music pieces for the city.
I briefly start thinking about currency, then exercise some discipline and decide to focus on higher priorities: city encounters. Finally comfortable admitting the DMC will not be ready for Christmas, I decide to take a player's suggestion to release some wallpapers instead.
Desktop Wallpaper of DMC
Looking Back, and Looking Forward
It was a good year, overall. I had some good successes, made some mistakes, and learned some big lessons. NEO Scavenger earned more than I expected, but less than I hoped. It's poised for success, though, as long as I keep working hard.
The biggest issue I see, moving forward, is determining when to consider NEO Scavenger finished, and to move on to the next project. I'm resolved to release it this year, and have been telling myself and others that spring is the timeframe. Spanning that last stretch, and finishing with the right suite of features will be a big decision.
But as I go into 2013, I am more seasoned and confident, and I have optimism for the year to come. I'll no doubt make new mistakes, but also surmount new obstacles and claim new victories. Here's to acknowledging the past, and looking forward with hope!
Spending at least $5 rewards the buyer with the following:
Tropico 3
Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD
The Sixth Gun Vol 1 (pdf graphic novel)
Sharknife: Stage First (pdf graphic novel)
Wasteland Vol. 1: Cities in Dust (pdf graphic novel)
Every few days, they announce new goals, such as mp3 albums at 6500, or additional games at 8500 units sold.
Revenue is split among the developers/writers/musicians, and a 20% cut goes to a charity. In this case, it's MercyCorps.
Wait, Isn't NEO Scavenger Still in Beta?
Yes, it is. I told myself I'd wait on participating in bundles until later in the dev cycle. Perhaps once it was gold and sales had died down. In fact, I gently turned down the first invite from Groupees (as I did with other bundle providers).
Looking over their previous Be Mine and other bundles, they regularly net about 5k units sold. 10 on more successful runs. Some even quote dollaramounts, which was helpful. I estimated that an average run for them was about 5k units sold, at about $5 per unit.
Given the number of titles per bundle (~5 games, plus 3-8 books and albums), and that 20% goes to charity, I expected the revenue share to be pretty low. And running the numbers, it was probably on the order of a few thousand dollars.
Just to be clear, a few thousand dollars is nothing to shake a stick at. That pays rent, utilities, and groceries for a month or two. But I was afraid of what revenue I'd be giving up selling at pennies on the dollar. What if this saturates my market? Would I be selling myself out of future revenue for a short burst now?
On the other hand, that's potentially 5000 new people playing the game. Potentially 5000 new people talking about it. In exchange for the majority of revenue per copy, I get more copies sold, and more publicity. And as many indies have already figured out, raising awareness is at least half the battle.
"What the hell," I decided. I was pretty sure there were more than 5000 people out there who'd buy NEO Scavenger. In fact, I'd bet there could even be 50,000, judging by some voodoo napkin math when looking at Playtomic play stats, Steam Greenlight votes, sales, page hits, etc.
When Groupees got back to me, I decided to ask for more info. Their offer was about what I expected, though their sales expectations were much higher. (They originally had some lofty titles in negotiation, which probably skewed those estimates.) A few emails later, I decided to sign the contract.
So? Was It Worth It?
As is always the case with data at Game Dev Gone Rogue, things are still developing :)
The BM5 bundle launched last Thursday (Oct. 4th) at midnight. The offer runs for 2 weeks, so we're coming up on the end of week 1. As of this post, the bundle is selling better than my expectations, and more in-line with their other Be Mine bundles:
Figure 1: Not bad!
Of course, units can sell for as little as $1. However, the highest donation so far was $425, and with a bonus offered at $5, I expect we'll see an average price of $4-5 per bundle.
Web traffic also increased. The BM5 promotion roughly doubled visitors over the past few days:
Figure 2: Also not bad!
Given that the BM5 site doesn't directly link to bluebottlegames.com, that's pretty cool. It means a lot of people are bothering to learn more about NEO Scavenger than usual.
"Wait, BM5 doesn't link to your product page? What gives?"
True, this might seem a bit counter-intuitive. Though readers who have run promotions before won't be too surprised. The point is to sell bundles, and raise money for charity, first and foremost. So it doesn't make sense for them to lead viewers to another purchase option directly.
However, they were good enough to direct-link to my Greenlight page. And the effects were pretty staggering:
Fligure 3: Blowing the average out of the water.
This is what game authors see on their Greenlight dashboard. It's a graph showing voting trends over the past week, compared to what an average top 100 game in Greenlight gets. The tiny green slivers on Wednesday and Thursday are what I'm used to seeing.
Following the BM5 launch, though, NEO Scavenger skyrocketed to four times the top 100 average, and is still holding at several multiples above what it used to be. What's more, NEO Scavenger ascended ranks from #71 to #62 in a matter of days. As a Greenlight promotion tool, BM5 was an unequivocal success.
So What About Sales?
What about the thing that scared me? Did the bundle cannibalize sales?
So far, that's a definite "no." In fact, I'm still watching the data to see if it might actually be the reverse. Sales at Desura appear almost unchanged so far. They're the usual spike-and-trough I've been seeing in days previous to BM5.
Sales through bluebottlegames.com, however, have either not changed or increased (depending on the weekend effect). These direct sales fluctuate a lot, even before BM5, so it's hard to pinpoint cause and effect. What I can say is that the days following BM5 have been better than average, but not-quite-media-event big.
Conclusion
Am I glad I did it? I am, actually. I won't know for some time whether there were any cannibalizing effects, and what the final tallies are in terms of sales and publicity. But it has definitely helped in the past few days, and might be just the kind of surge needed to level-up NEO Scavenger's success.
Plus, I was treated to some really entertaining mini-reviews of NEO Scavenger in unsuspecting players' hands:
MagSlug It's like a Choose Your Own Adventure book combined with the early "explore the world" phase from a Civilization game combined with that one scene from They Live where Keith David and Rowdy Roddy Piper beat each other up in an alley.
or this pair:
Robert Miller Who cares? As an indie bundle addict with hundreds of steam games I've never touched, I can say that Neo Scavenger is by far my favourite game in this bundle. It's tons of fun, even if it is still in Alpha and incredibly difficult.
nickelpat Robert: I feel the same way. I bought it for Stranger's Wrath, but thought "Ah, what the hell, might as well check out this non-Steam piece of crap game." Yeah... still playing it.
Encouragement doesn't pay the bills, but it definitely feeds the soul :)
Every indie game and studio needs different things, so this isn't a one-size-fits-all case. But it's yet another valuable tool to consider when growing a brand. There's no doubt that bundles are a fast way to ratchet up awareness of your game. And it gets you a small boost in income.
On the flip side, it's sales at a fraction of the revenue you're probably used to. Especially if you sell your game in the double-digit dollar range.
I'll probably shy away from doing more bundles in the near future, at least until NEO Scavenger gets further along. I have a feeling that even in successful cases like this one, I would see diminishing returns from overusing the bundle approach. I'd like to try out some other tools before coming back to bundles.
However, I'll definitely be looking into bundles for later in the NEO Scavenger sales cycle, as well as for future titles.
