Bright future, anyone?

Graffiti by banksy

When I was a kid, older people always said something like “their generation is the future” about me – about us. I’m 28 now, and I keep thinking about my daughter exactly the same. Their generation is the future.

I look around and I see people stroking their phones. Drinking. Being dumb beyond belief. Made by the same defective template. At some point in time we stopped being bright future and turned into dull present. We’ve achieved nothing. And now we lay the responsibility to be the future on kids. Our job is to earn money, their job is to be the future. They’ll do it fine.

We repeat – like repeating stuff makes it true – they are the future. We repeat it until we stop understanding the meaning of those words. We just know – they ARE. For some reason we dare to believe that they will do the job that we have screwed up.

How can we expect good future if we failed to deliver decent present? Where will it come from? We cannot teach them anything good. We have fucked it all up.

Stuff’n’Stuff 10: Let’s Make Moar Shovelware!!!

There is this thing, called stupidity. You probably heard of it – it’s really trendy this time o’year. Really on the rise.

With all the “fucks” being cut from this post (well most of them) it should be pretty short.

So, here is some wisdom, folks, straight from “those who know better”:

• If you make a game, do not make something for players to enjoy, like fun. Make something ugly, and ask money to make it… well less ugly.
• Do not give a fuck about players. Cuz why would you? It’s not like they’re paying you. Or do they? And on a totally unrelated note – why do they?
• Even if it does not increase your profit, you need moar monetization. Don’t you feel rich if you put money from left pocket into the right one?
• If you happen to release something good and it does not require tons of money to pour in the game (can be actually earned) put a price tag on it. Oh, oh, make a good balance and start selling “IWIN” button. Players will love it!
• And testing is for losers.
• Also, only losers write design documents. Real macdaddyz do not need to know how stuff’s gonna work before doing stuff.
• If you do not know how stuff’s gonna work, draw a fucken interface.
• If you’re making a Formula1 simulation, put some weapon customization in it. It worked wonders for Crysis!
• If all your attempts (see above) do not result in increased long-term profit, repeat! And do not even think that you need to keep players engaged (you’d be better off not thinking at all). You do not need those whining fuckers anyway.

Black Cat Project 02: Postmortem.

As you might be aware several days ago I have launched the Black Cat Project. It was a huge success – Windows version was downloaded  4 times (including one time by myself). Linux version performed a little bit less impressive with only 2 downloads (again one of them was mine). Hardly a surprise as Linux is yet to become popular gaming platform. Anyway great success requires a postmortem so here it is!

But first a short list of Frequently Asked Questions!

Q: Really? Someone asked questions?
A: No.

Q: Are you an idiot?
A: God, I hope not!

Q: Are you serious?
A: About being an idiot – yes. About the game – no. It’s a joke.

Now, that it’s out of the way, to the postmortem.

It’s kinda fun to look at the project and remember that distant past when it was merely an idea and everything could have become completely different.

Some people create game based on the gameplay idea, some prefer to make the story to become game’s foundation. Of course the best way is in between but I based Black Cat on the core mechanic. Funny story, though I instantly settled on the mechanic, it could be a game of completely another genre. It could be a tamagochi-like digital pet. It could be an illustration of quantum entanglement nature, commonly known thanks to the famous Schrödinger’s cat. I chose the “find hidden object” genre though, mostly because I’m fairly familiar with its premise for every morning I have to look for my socks in a poorly lit room.

I figured that a game about my socks would not be an interesting one. Moreover I do not know any ancient Chinese quotes about socks so I went with cats. And this is how the Black Cat was born!

If for some reason you are interested here are some links:

• Official Black Cat page.
• Black Cat for Windows.
• Black Cat for Linux.
• Donate

Thanks for reading and have fun!

Black Cat Project 01: Reveal

Hello everyone!

As you may see the main menu of my blog now has one new thing to click. It leads to the official page of my brand-new project. It might come as a shock, but I managed to pull it off without any external help and in a rather short period of time.

The project (I deliberately avoid term “game”) can be classified as “find hidden object”, but with a couple of twists. I’m not going to spoil the fun, but I should warn that Black Cat has rather unusual and experimental game design.

One of the key features of the Black Cat Project is that once you know the rules you can play it on any device you have including but not limited to TV sets, Nokia 3120, switched off displays, refrigerators or walls. Hell, you will not even need those to be successful in this game.

If you are into tech stuff like how have I managed to achieve it – I used Unity4 and a bit of controversial imagination. The former is free while the latter usually costs me dearly.

Note that this is just the first version of the game. I strongly believe it can be improved. My primary goal is to add more realistic lighting and complex particle system.

Also, in order to make more serious games (in some sense) I could use some money. So if you kinda like the Black Cat, feel free to donate. Or just tell about this project to someone. Sharing links are right below this post.

Useful links:

• Official Black Cat page.
• Black Cat for Windows.
• Black Cat for Linux.

Please, leave your comments, I’m dying to read them!

Hope you like Black Cat and we’ll see what happens next!

Stuff’n’Stuff 08: Wonders of Digital Economy

Time is a tricky thing.  Seems only yesterday I was posting an entry on IKEA effect and yet it turns out 2 weeks have passed. I need more discipline=). So I guess I’ll just discuss stuff that happens on work. It gives almost daily stuff to discuss and it has a potential to be interesting. So…

…one more disclaimer. I’m a game designer. As design games for money. But I’m not a math guy. I’m not an economy guy. At least compared to real math and economy dudes (bad for me, yeah-yeah, I know). Most times I work with words and concepts, not numbers. But sometimes a need to calculate stuff arises. Like this time.

So, there is this game I’m working on. It was released year ago and I was recently transferred to this project. It has some sort of economy and balance, calculated long before me. My current task is to implement a quest system. Which is fun. But I am to calculate rewards for said quests as well. So I had to dive into numbers. Most of them are more or less logical, but not all.

The game is F2p. It has 2 currencies. First currency can be easily earned in the game (let’s call it “chips”). The other one can be bought for real money (let’s call it “gold”). And there is the “exchange” where players can buy 1 gold for 400 chips.

And of course there is the shop. Most items can be purchased both for chips and gold. The 1-to-400 coefficient is in place – I can easily buy one “item” for 800 chips or 2 gold, for example. And it absolutely makes no difference whether the gold was purchased for real money or chips.

But there is also the potion which restores mana. Players can buy small potion for chips only and big potion for gold only. Small mana potion costs 100 chips and restores 50 mana. Big mana potion restores 100 mana and costs 2 coins. Of course one can buy 2 small mana potions for 200 chips.

In other words 200 chips = 100 mana = 2 gold = 800 chips  which makes no sense.

It bothers me a lot, and not just because of this I cannot figure out the value of mana (which can be used as a reward for quest completion, or can be necessary to pass other quests, so it’s kinda important to know) but because I fail to understand the logic behind it. And because there are other instances of this phenomenon but with totally different coefficients, which makes my task even harder.

I’ve talked to people who were working on the project before me and they claim that it’s OK, but fail to explain why.

IMO we – the developer – are interested in players buying potions for gold, not chips. Moreover we are interested in players being happy as they buy stuff for gold. So it makes sense to make it appealing but at the moment it is opposite to that.

Once again, I’m not a math or economy guy, I recognize that I may be mistaken, so if there is something I do not see, please tell me. The comments sections is all yours=)

Stuff’n’Stuff 05: A Week of Nonsense

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.

– Albert Einstein (or not)

Asking a question is like painting a target. Answering a question is like shooting an arrow at a target. Your goal in painting the target is to get an arrow quivering dead smack in the center of the target you just painted. If you (the advice seeker) don’t paint a clear target with a nice crisp center, or if your target is obscured by fog or distance, you run the danger of not having the advice giver hit the target for you. Ever asked somebody a question and gotten totally the wrong answer? Maybe you didn’t paint a clear enough target.

– Tom Sloper @ sloperama.com

Last time I was discussing toxic work environment a project leader could have. Now, as I have no team, I’ll share some nonsense that happened to me and my colleagues – the usual employees.  My faith in humanity was shattered. Again.

Nonsense 1: Use your head and I’m not telling you.

This Monday my boss told me:

“I have thought it through already. I know what to do. But I’m not telling you. Go do it yourself.”

This is his all-time favorite manner to give an assignment.

Its close competitor is “Do the thing. You know, with the stuff. How should I know what thing? You should know it. Now do it.”

I can’t help to remember Tom Sloper’s notes on “How to ask questions”.

Which leads to two options of failure:

1. You walk away, do something, report the results. They are incorrect because apparently “YOU DID NOT USE YOUR HEAD!“
2. You walk away, start doing something, but cannot do anything due to the way a task was assigned, try to get some more information but get yelled at because “WHY CAN’T YOU USE YOUR HEAD!“

The second scenario has its variations. Just this Tuesday (and basically every other week before that) I witnessed a situation when he would assign a task in his trademark manner and then criticize an employee:

Boss: You’ve done it all wrong. Redo EVERYTHING!

Employee (with a hint of hope): How do you want me to do it?

Boss: USE YOUR HEAD. I know how it should be done, but I won’t tell you!

This Wednesday my boss asked me to revisit one of our pop-up windows and sketch a better one. I should note that I design core mechanics, not interfaces. But I did what he asked. I showed the sketch to boss and he gave it a green light. Now an actual designer took my sketch an produced a window the way it would look in the game. After that I had a lovely conversation with my boss:

Boss: It sucks!

Me: Could you be more constructive?

Boss: No.

Yeah….

Nonsense 2: One boss bad, two bosses are &^$#ing crazy

(especially if one of them is a dick and the other one is a pussy).

This same boss (boss1) has another cool feature – he changes his mind all the time.

This Tuesday was really demonstrative.

I was asked to design a feature. I did what I was asked to do. I several times approached boss1 to discuss it, but he was busy. At 17:30 he decided that he was ready so we began our small 2ppl meeting. It was surprisingly productive – he was mostly happy about the concept but we have changed some of the details. At 18:40 (40 minutes of overtime, but who’s counting, right?) he said “I like it. Let’s do it this way. But I have one more question…” and at this point boss2 entered the room. 10 seconds later he claimed that I am an idiot (hey!), that there is no point of arguing with me (we were not arguing) and that both of us were wrong (huh…). The boss1 immediately agreed that the concept was awful and that he has seen all the flaws but did not tell me, because ‘he wanted me to see them by myself’. For the next 80 minutes boss2 was describing the said feature the way he’d do it.

I get it, they are the bosses and they are the smartest people in the universe. But why the fuck do they hire us, idiots? I’ll just assume that they are so generous and altruistic and god-like.

And they have no fucken clue that they have no fucken clue they are not.

This situation happens all the time with every employee. Sometimes even without boss2. Boss1 can change his mind on the fly.

If you are a boss and your employees are too happy, motivated and productive, apply this technique. It’s really irritating!

BTW, anyone knows where to buy a mind-reading device or some sort of a magical crystal ball?

Nonsense 3: Interface vs design.

This argument has nothing to do with bosses.

The premise is so moronic on itself, that the argument can be omitted.

The leader of a project (I’m so glad I work on another game) claimed, that the interface is the only thing that affects usability of a game or site, while the design is only responsible for visual attractiveness.

A clarification is needed: in his world interface means the relative position of various elements and their size. According to him, design is the way said elements are visualized (for example color).

His salary is much bigger than mine. I should become an idiot.

Nonsense 4: Talking about the salaries.

Some time ago the game I was working on was cancelled and my team transferred on other projects. When bosses announced this, they also said that my team members will have a raise of the salary. “You can tell them”, bosses said. I delivered the news and after that had a 2 weeks of a long-awaited vacation.

The vacation ended and I asked my ex-teammates whether the bosses raised their salaries. Turned out they have not. I addressed the bosses and they said that “They’ll have their raise. You can tell them.” And again I did.

Office manager has to know about that stuff, and bosses usually forget to inform her, so employees do it. I informed her and she said that she never heard about my ex-teammates raise. She promised to talk to the boss. In 2 days she delivered the news – no raise will be granted.

Good job at keeping your word and keeping your employees motivated!

I have again addressed bosses and they claim that the raise will happen. But I have a feeling it’s not over yet. We’ll see what happens next.