Archive for the ‘Portals’ tag

Player.IO: A Huge Step Forward

Are you into developing multiplayer games? I bet you are! Have you been through the headache of supporting it? I bet you haven’t!

In the beggining there was darkness…

Most developers dream of adding multiplayer games to their portfolio and the less wise or experienced often run to embrace a multiplayer project from any tool that offers a tiny bit of ease of use and more than often they either fail or face the fact that their game is not half of what it could be and already took twice the amount they thought it would take.

A good idea: Nonoba’s MP API

Sometime ago Nonoba offered a great API for multiplayer games. We tried it and technically we loved it. It was easy to implement, server-side code was written in C# (which brought tears of happiness to our eyes) and we did a rather small but entertaining game in a couple of days. Enough to say that from a technical point of view, Nonoba proved its point.

Unfortunately from a commercial point of view this API was not interesting for developers such as us, that want to license games. All multiplayer games powered by Nonoba’s MP API showed Nonoba’s branding, which is only natural: they support the servers, they have the service, so if we want it, we have to stick with it, after all, it’s free! All in all Nonoba’s multiplayer API is amazing for developers that do it simply for the love of it with no commercial interest.

So I must say that for all this time we were on a strange position: we love the technology, we hate the branding! Good thing about Nonoba is that they have people that want to hear from developers and believe me I wasted a lot of their time explaining why that didn’t work for us, hoping Nonoba would understand that if it didn’t work for us, it wouldn’t work for many developers.

Player.IO: A Huge Step Forward

Someone once told me:

Do you know what really works? McDonald’s! Everyone can go home, make a big burger and eat it! But for $1 you can eat the burger, without having to cook it and without having to wash dishes.

Let’s translate this to multiplayer game development…

For a given amount of money I can code multiplayer games without having to setup and maintain infrastructure… makes sense? Good, let me present you Player.IO!

All I’ve mentioned above regarding the technical aspect of Nonoba’s API probably stands. I say probably because we haven’t done any code with it for a long time, but I believe that if it’s any different, it’s because it’s better, not the opposite.

The good part is that no branding is present, at least no portal’s branding. As we speak, the free version (yes, there is a free version) will show Player.IO branding, but that’s not competition for any portal, so it’s ok I guess. Moreover, if you sell a license for your game, you’ll probably should consider a plan.

We haven’t touched Player.IO, we just have an idea of what we’ll get from it because of what we tried from Nonoba’s API. What I really like about all this is not the technical part or the branding being gone, but the great feeling that someone was smart enough to hear from developers and take a huge step forward with a strong commercial offer that can fit pretty much any development need.

Player.IO looks very solid and promising, we’ll try it as soon as possible and hopefully confirm it.

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!

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.