Archive for the ‘Caught our Attention’ Category

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.

Once upon a time in flash game development – part I

It seems there is a bit of a rant about what Kongregate’s well known Greg McClanahan had to say about developer expectations regarding the return on their investment regarding game sponsorship. As quoted by Ryan of Untold Entertainment and transcribed from GameZebo’s website, what Greg said was:

Developers are shocked when they produce a game that they’ve been working on for four months and they only get a $1,000 or $2,000 sponsorship offer on it. The thing is, no one really asked them to make this game. It’s something they did on their own, and reverse logic doesn’t really work when you try to break it down by the hour. It doesn’t matter how long you spent on the game, it’s the final product that matters.

Funny enough… this post was “refactored”… nothing like a bit of coders geekness to set things up. But down to what matters, in my opinion Greg is absolutely right and he is right because…

Market rules apply

Once upon a time in flash game development, a growing number of people was creating games for the love of it. There weren’t many professional full-time flash game developers. Ideas were born and amazingly addictive mechanics were created. These designers, considered below-par developers because they lacked all the huge technical skills from PC and console market, were able to do what the game industry was starting to lack: fun!

As soon as this was noted and portals popped like mushrooms, it became a business and with it, market rules apply. Good portals get money, good developers get money, all the rest strive and fail.

From a game developer point of view reasons for failure fit two categories: business failure and production failure.

Business failure

When we launched Tech Wars, we were asked how much we wanted for the game. I put up my calculator, saw how much work was involved and gave a figure. The portal in question said that for that number they were not interested.

We ended up loosing money with Tech Wars, but we learnt something. We learnt that, like Greg mentions, we should not expect to be paid by the hour and now I agree. As a matter of fact, if I wanted to be paid by the hour, I could have another job, working for an employee, right?

We had to adapt… again… just like we had done with the previous game, but we survived and future looks sharp right now. As a matter of fact our adaptation was very influenced by two email exchanges I had when we were launching Tech Wars.

To avoid business failure a flash game developer needs also to be able to think outside of the box, that’s what made this whole market work in the first place. The model upon which the market grew is different from other media, or entertainment or gaming, even the game desing is thought out of the box from day one. I mean this, not from a development point of view, but from a business point of view. We, flash game developers MUST DO what other game developers cannot do: embrace risk and walk that extra mile for our games. We are not hired like other developers are, we do games for the love of our games and the bigger the love, the bigger the pay, if you use your brain.

So?… now what?

I will deal with production failure on a separate post. The subject is big enough to deserve it’s own set of paragraps. I’ve thought a great deal about what Greg and Ryan wrote. Like I said this post has been corrected and re-written as I mature my opinion about it, but once upon a time in flash game development, there was more care for the game, not the hourly return of investment. If we start focusing on that, flash game development will be just like any other segment of the game industry and when that happens we will be endlessly searching for a way to keep our by that time very dull IPs instead of refreshing our designs and ideas. Then, a kid in the mom’s basement is going to make a hit game that will be better than ours, because he was just too excited about it while we were too worried about money.

It did happen to us, with Tech Wars. I believe we learnt a lesson back then and even if for the very nature of working full-time on game development we are very business oriented, I don’t doubt for a minute that we returned to the basics of the pure pleasure of creation and that made a huge difference.

Learn to fly

My name is Vlad and I’m a Learn to Fly addict… That’s what I’ll say in some years while getting up from a dusty chair looking in the eyes of other Learn to Fly addicts. I could write about this game, simply because I love it, but I want to say something about the developer.

The game got to the top place of the highest rated games on Kongregate. Some users asked how it was possible that something so simple would be in that spot. The author answered:

To all those commenting about “How this game got first”, I must say that I agree there are many better, more complex and complete game than this one. However, I think Learn to Fly got it’s ranking simply because fewer people must be giving low ratings. It is probably a game that has a larger target audience when compared to Sonnny for example. Sonny is a great game, very well built, but let’s say someone who hates the genre tries it… he might rate 1/5 just because he doesn’t like RPGs. I honestly believe other games would deserve to be ahead of mine, however I won’t be the one to complain about it ! Have a nice day people !

Is this a class act or what? I don’t know light_bringer777… I have no opinion other than really liking this particular game. But I think that there’s great personality and character in these words that he addressed to players.

What can I say? Congratulations for a successful game and kudos for being honest about yourself and others.

The art and code of PhotonStorm

PhotonStorm

There are a number of developers I trully admire. My developer wise admiration often triggers when two factors are present in the same person: technical quality and the capacity to openly discuss any subject in a true open minded way.

Richard Davey, better known as PhotonStorm fits the description perfectly and I can prove that! Or at least the technical quality…

PhotonStorm entered The Flash 4K Competition and his results are astonishing. Infinite Ammo is his entry and an admirable feat on my book. I know some other great developers are running, maybe Richard’s entry isn’t even the competition winner, but after chatting with him about it and going through the source code I have to say I’m surrendered to the quality of his art and code and can only wonder what would he do if he could use 16KB.

Well done mate!

    Newer Entries »