Archive for the ‘Caught our Attention’ Category

New Bold Pixel Engine tutorial

Hey everyone, just a heads up. A quick yet well detailed tutorial on how to use Bold Pixel Engine’s LocalData toolkit class which manages your game’s shared objects.

But… we didn’t write it. The author is Rasmus Wriedt Larsen and he just let us know that he put it up in his gamedev blog.

Take a look.

Best of Online Games

I was feeling good about me, our work and a fine goal we met today. I was preparing to leave a short note on twitter or a small blog post, not about it, but more because of it…

I opened my email client and started to read what seemed to be one of the many “I love your work so much that you have to mention my work!” emails we receive. But as I was reading it, I felt it was something different…

You see, I’m a firm believer that one of the problems of the Internet is that everyone is looking for a special name, something that looks good and easy to read and retain as a domain name also, but few, very few, live up to the tag of their own name. This means that a site called Best of Online Games must be different. It can’t be yet another gaming site, it can’t be yet another script game portal. It has to at least try to be something different.

So I visited the site, noticed a nice article about us (which was the reason for the email we received in the first place) and noticed a fine philosophy behind it. Best of Online Games looks as a nice game portal, but features developers, news and other articles about this industry niche that is online gaming.

I really enjoyed it and I hope you all do to. After some months off, Best of Online Games is back and we wish them good luck! Go visit it at http://www.bestofonlinegames.com

A Love Letter to Flash Game License

I haven’t visited FGL much, mostly due to the fact that we don’t have any self releases. But out of nowhere very late in yet another coding night, I decided to take a break and visit it. I noticed a blog there! “Woot!” – I thought – “Let me add this to my feed reader!” but first I read the only post that was there and I have to say that some of the thing Chris wrote almost made me sad.

You see… I have a dream, a dream I share with my partners, my family and my partners’ families. The dream of building a game development studio, big or small, indie or not, our work, fortune and future will tell. But a dream like this is built in large part of the people we work with, the people with whom we share projects, success and failure. A dream like this is built of risk, of honest discussion, of doubts… a dream like this is built of people that rely on us and people who we rely on.

There were times where the dream could end and I would face a harsh reality. One of those times we found a website called Flash Game License. Because of it we sold some licenses, we made a bit of a name for ourselves, but more important, we were able to keep the dream going one step after the other until we got to current day where there’s no time to make a game to put on FGL, but hey, no complaints here, after all, we are creating games! Would it be possible without FGL? Maybe, who knows? But the honest truth is that it existed and we found it when we need it the most.

But Chris wrote:

I do think that many of these incidents were unintentional, but the result was that developers were emailing me and asking me to take a particular position. Then I started to worry that this was widespread, that there were many developers that had a bad impression of us due to things being said behind our backs. I brooded over this.

I have no idea what really happened, but I felt that we should state our feelings towards FGL, so to Chris, Adam and everyone else there, you have our public and humble thank you. You know that we don’t always agree (oh well, Adam does at least, I’m always complaining to him!) but we have your back and as far as it is up to us, no bad impression will stick for long.

Don’t worry about it and keep up the good work because the indie flash development community needs you guys strong and focused.

/Vlad runs back to finish the damn project!

Thinking about selling your source code?

Through FGL (seems all my reasoning lately is either FGL or Bold Pixel… oh well, moving on) I found a blog post from FlashNinjaClan’s webmaster, the well known Archbob. Here’s the link, come back when you finished reading it, please…

Most of the post was about finding cheap games. I’m fine with that, if a portal wants to find cheap games, by all means, go for it. I found disturbing that developers sell their games WITH source code for $150-$200 and even more disturbing that portals (or at least Archbob) buys it with the intention of using the “engine” (gotta love the easy use of the word) to create more games. Here’s why you should not sell your code for that amount of money:

Source code is not content

When you license a game, you are licensing the use of content you created. That can have a varying value depending on the well known keywords fun, replayability and so on. The source code you used to do it has nothing to do with it. The value portals see is content based, not the time and the engineering expertise you’ve put in it.

That’s what people pay for code: the time and the knowledge. Is your time and knowledge really worth $150-$200?

Source code is as valuable as it is reusable

Archbob said it with a problem: he will use the source to create other games. If other games are created with the same “engine” then the value that was paid to you, the developer, should paid as many times as games created. It’s quite simple and follows the same logic: code is not content! I registered today at flashden… see how much you’ll have to pay for reusable bits of code.

Is it really worth it?

So you did a game that got no bids. Then you got a $150 bid and you’ll sell your game, your code and that’s it. Unfortunatelly, in the long run is much more than that. What will that do to you and all other developers in the long run? What’s the impact of those $150? Maybe you can get a nice thing for yourself and I’m sure you deserve it, but where will that take you in one, two or three years? You are being paid $150 to create competition for yourself and for me for free for the next games built with your game.

So… think about it…

If you are thinking about selling your source code for that amount of money, please do not do it! You are not doing anyone a favor, quite the opposite!

Once upon a time in flash game development – part II

This two post series started because of some difference of opinions. On one side, Greg from Kongregate. On the other Ryan from Untold Entertainment. In part I I tried to set straight my own thoughts about why is flash market different, where do we developers stand and how our expectations can make it or break business wise. I also left a whole section open: production failure and that’s what I’ll try to address now.

What is production failure?

Every time we don’t finish a game and let it die, there is a production failure. All developers faced it. The problem with failing to finish a game is that it can become the rule instead of the exception. There are acceptable reasons to cancel a game production, but there are a bunch of reasons that are just excuses.

Another production failure is to start something aiming high and then accomodate with a small version of it. Been there, done that, I’m guessing all developers have, but again, there aren’t any acceptable reasons to shrink down a project that I can think of. We shrink it down because you underestimated the effort needed. I really can’t imagine any other big reason. We either don’t have the knowledge, or the technology or the time, but we should know that before starting the project, no excuses.

So this leaves us basically with…

Cancelling a game

All the good reasons I can think are met very early on. Flash wise I would say… two weeks tops for a ‘common’ flash game. All the good reasons fall in the category “prototype does not kick in as expected”. If the game isn’t going to work out mechanics wise it’s better to stop right there, let the your brain do the background homework and pick it up later on. Back to the drawing board or to the drawer until better days.

In my opinion, patching it or forcing a solution is not a solution. Better have a canceled game than a bad one. Trick is, you must notice this early!

All the rest is excuses… often developers say that after coding all the mechanics, the game wasn’t being fun at all. If you already coded all the gameplay mechanics, you are heading for the non-fun part. It’s part of the job! It’s the 10-90 rule!

90% of the game takes 10% of the effort

this relates to gameplay… then you have to build the rest… and then polish… and so on… meaning…

10% of the game takes 90% of the effort

and these final 10% of game production that take 90% of the game production time are usually not that fun to do.

And back to Greg and Ryan

Flash game developers are still maturing and it will take a while. There are great examples of established studios that are way ahead of the others from my point of view, but the core developer base still isn’t able to adapt, to grow, to learn and to be bluntly honest: to create games and do business.

If this market was a mature one I would say that Ryan was dead right and Greg dead wrong. But it isn’t… developers are still a giant snowball of bad pratices and unrealistic demands. Developers don’t want or don’t know when or how to adapt. Like I mentioned on part I, what makes us different in the first place was to think out of the box, yet many developers keep their heads burried in a box of bad business and development pratices and still think they have the right to complaint about it.

All developers want a lot of cash for a little work… c’mon… did you think it would be that easy? Think again. Greg is right, no one asked us nothing so to get what we want, we have to be faster, be better and accept no excuses. Only then we are in the position to discuss our true position in this market.

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