BG2MVG 03: Let’s Put Together the Prototype!

In this series of posts, I describe the process of me making a brand new video game from scratch. You can read the intro to this series here.

Also, this series is called a “guide” but it does not mean anyone should do things the way I am, it’s just the description of my action, which can be used as a guideline for someone who has never been developing games. Or you might be better off doing just the opposite of what I say=).

Hello everyone!

In previous article we’ve discussed the basics: what kind of game we’re about to make, its main feature and gameplay element (which is jumping), and what devices it is targeted for. Now it’s time to finally do something!

Just a quick intro. My brother’s name is Daniil (his blog). He is a very experienced programmer, though he has never been developing games or working with Unity he’s the best colleague I’ve ever had. I approached him on the 14^th of July and pitched the idea to make a game. He did agree to help me, however he has a science paper to write, so it’s possible he will be unavailable at times. So he’s in charge of coding.

Anyway, in 2 days of getting to know Unity, we decided to actually get started. Some people tend to start from graphics. After all that’s what the players will see, right? So they start drawing some objects they expect to be in the game, units and stuff (again, sad personal experience). Of course sketching is a very appropriate thing to do during the early stages of development, but no visual asset you create will be in the release. I like to feel the game as soon as possible (and neither of us can draw a straight line with a ruler). Our first scene looked like this:

Not very exciting, but better than nothing (please, do not forget that this blog is intended to shed some light on game development for those who are curious what’s it like, but have never been working in the area).

The way I see it, the single most important thing for a game on hand-eye coordination is it’s controls. So that’s what we will focus on and that’s what I will be working on and tuning until I am completely satisfied with it. Having a ball primitive to jump over gaps must be fun, even without any juice. I cannot stress this enough – CONTROLS ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT THING we need to do.

OK, controls. What should they do? Well, avatar can run and jump. And it uses only X and Y axes to do so.  And of course we cannot do everything at once, so we need to move in small baby-steps. That’s what our avatar should be able to do – walk. Or run. Or whatever.

This seems fairly simple, but there are always options:

• How fast should it move?
• Should it have inertia (Mario-style) or not (VVVVVV-style)?
• Should avatar’s acceleration rate be same as its deceleration rate?

We decided that avatar should move with a constant speed as long as movement button is pressed and instantly stop if it is released, because this option is the most intuitive for the player. We played a bit with movement speed, and when we were OK with the result (of course we knew it will be a subject of many tweaks and slight changes, and most probably it’s not over yet), switched to jumps.

The most basic jump there can be is an upwards vertical jump. Thanks to Unity’s built in physics we got a basic jump very quickly. Fast-forward couple of hours, I had a system that allows me at any given time of the jump to alter its velocity (actually it’s “gravity”).

With its help I’ve created several variants of this jump. Click here to see the comparison.

1^st and 3^rd variants are the basic Newton jumps, but they differ in time, required for the avatar to reach its peak position (0.6 sec and 0.45 sec respectively) 2^nd and 4^th variants actually  change their gravity on the fly. The initial acceleration is the same, but at about 85% way up 2^nd and 4^th variants significantly slow down. They spend a little longer “on the top” and fall faster.

OK, in a vertical jump 3^rd and 4^th variants do not differ THAT much to make it worth a trouble. However, we were forced to implement this system because the second most basic jump there is – a long “horizontal” jump was just awful. It felt like avatar was swimming through jelly. Now it looks cool and natural – at first avatar flashes forwards and a bit upwards, then it hovers close to peak height and gently falls down.

By the end of that day we would have a system, which allows me to specify basic jump parameters (initial angle, peak height, time to reach top position, changes of gravitation force) and 3 jumps to apply said system to (avatar however didn’t even know how to fall at that time) and avatar could run=)

But there were 2 problems:

• Avatar was constantly running from camera’s line of sight (quick copy-paste of some script from the Internet fixed this problem nicely. Of course one day we will create our custom camera behavior, but the most simple tracking script is sufficient at least for now).
• When the script was ready, in was hard to say if the avatar was running or not, because the floor had no texture. It was my time to shine and demonstrate my awesome drawing skills:

Let’s recap:

• Start with the most basic mechanic, like running.
• Do not try to do everything at once. Our avatar was taught to fall down if there is no floor under its… erm… feet only by the end of the first week of development.
• Fine-tune existing controls until they are perfect. Yes, as new features will appear, controls’ preferences will most probably change, but at any given time they must be perfect (considering, of course, available functions).
• Although sketching is a good idea, do not build “perfect” assets. Whatever is done at this point will never be in the final build. Ever.
• Small things matter. That tiny part of a second at the peak of a jump really can make a difference, even if you can’t tell it at once.
• There are always options. Even if something seems as simple as running, it never is.
• My drawing skills are awesome!

In the next article we will talk about iterating our jump system as I will be creating about 100 jumps. Yeah.

So if you think this series could be interesting and have not yet subscribed to this blog – feel free to do so. Do not forget to share this post to your friends who are interested in trying to make their first video game and please leave your comments!

And we’ll see what happens next!

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.

Stuff’n’Stuff 09: Loss Aversion is a Bitch!

Have you ever heard of loss aversion? Well it is perfectly aware of you anyway. The principle is simple – while finding $100 feels good, losing that same $100 is absolutely afwul. Not a huge leap of thought brings us to the fact that we try avoid feeling bad… at all costs. Here are two cases I’ve encountered while working on one game.

Case I

So there is your avatar and it has some energy. You spend that energy to start a mission. You can win a reward or die trying. Of course, if you die, you get nothing. Or you can resurrect, but it’s not free. If all the costs and rewards represented in totally fictional points it boils down to this: you spend 50 points just to enter the mission. You can earn like 10 points for completing it. Resurrection costs 100 points. Yeah, like that. And guess what – people are willing to pay 100 point just to avoid losing 10 points. Moreover they feel pretty good about that judging by the feedback on forums and number of daily resurrections.

Case II

So those players try to complete simple missions, like going to place B from place A. And if they do they get rewarded. Just yesterday a “quest” system was implemented. In essence it says – if you manage to move from B to A 10 times without losing, you get a reward.

I expected it to be welcomed by the players. After all we reward players with meaningful stuff for doing things they are already trying to do (I bet there were no players willing to fail some of the missions instead of trying to complete them). And of course if one does not like the quest she can skip it for free (there is a cooldown which prevents from abusing quest skipping). It’s like geting paid for breathing. Easy money.

The reaction was like this: quests stink, rewards suck, go to hell.

I believe the reason is simple. Players see a task. And for some reason they fail it (BTW you cannot FAIL the quest – you can have a drawback). And they feel like they have lost the reward completely forgetting that couple hours ago they were not even presented with the possibility to earn it.

Players can skip any quest, but it also feels like losing reward, despite the fact they will get a quest with a similar reward anyway.

The bottom line is that players focus on losing instead of enjoying winning.

But there is the twist to that story: the fear of losing a reward (or cancelling an unwanted quest) makes players invest additional resources in completion of the quest, even if they do not enjoy the tesk (for example the task is to win a couple of rounds in The Forest, and player likes to rock in The Desert). And they end up spending more than earning, which makes me experience 2 contrasting feelings. I am glad to have additional profit. But it saddens me that the quests were completely misunderstood. They were supposed to bring joy, not frustration.

I’m pretty sure that soon players will learn to treat quests as the bonus it is intended to be. Or not. Either way, we’ll see what happens next.

PS I hope this post was not a total loss of your time, cuz u know… loss aversion.

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 07: Why are We Smarter Then Everybody?

In the “Fail of democracy” article, among other things, I suggested that the endowment effect was the reason of our inability to value others’ ideas over our own.

Indeed the mere fact of owning something creates an emotional attachment to that thing. My pen is better than John’s one because mine is cheaper. Jack’s pen is worse than mine because mine is more expensive. Actually my pen appears to have the best possible price and quality ratio.

I seriously doubt that developing a game is less complicated than owning a pen, so there should be other factors at play. Not to mention that the endowment effect is not the correct one.

There are 2 similar but different biases:  the Ikea effect and the NIH effect.

The Ikea effect basically means that labor enhances affection for its results. It makes us favor something that we’ve made over other things, even if both are 100% identical.

Imagine that you were asked to construct a Lego car for me. Before you begin constructing it I make perfectly clear that I would own it. Another person is given exact same task and instructions and will construct exact same car. When both cars are ready you are given a chance to buy one of them. Which one would you choose? Note, that despite the fact that I own both cars, you still, most probably refer to the one constructed by you as “my precious”, or at very least as “mine”. Additionally, chances are if I price your car higher than another one, you’d still be willing to buy your car.

The more effort you put into something, the more attached you get to it. But studies show that even a slight hint of effort is enough for that effect to emerge. Attachment also increases a lot if you manage to complete the project and this factor is a really strong one. In fact, unfinished project can seriously demoralize people. Many lose interest in their current jobs if they put lots of work into a project which gets cancelled. However that’s not what we are discussing today.

The NIH (Not Invented Here) effect makes us fall in love with our ideas.

Like the Ikea effect just a bit of mental work is required to get trapped by it. As much as reordering given words into a sentence. And that is not an exaggeration, there was a study which proves this thesis.

How many times did it happen to you – you suggest an awesome idea, but no one seems to care. But a week later someone who previously declined your idea tells you that he came up with something awesome and basically repeats you (I sure hate when my boss does that). It’s not because they want the credit, or because they are stupid. It’s just the way we are. If we think we came up with something we value it over identical idea, expressed by someone else.

Thoughts are a bit trickier than that. The effect can be amplified. We tend to come up with ideas that are coherent with our views. No wonder all my dark and moody suggestions are declined by happy and lively peers.

Could anything else affect our preferences? Of course! I have no idea how this effect is called, but we tend to associate things with history, memories and experiences. Or don’t you have that old junk, that have not been used for years (not THAT junk!) but you still keep it because you’ve had a history with it long ago? The experience does not even has to belong to you. Let’s say I give you a sweater. It is unremarkable in all the aspects and most probably you have no particular feelongs towards it. Now I can tell you that Paul McCartney owned it. Or that it was serial killer. Would it change the way you look at the sweater? Even if you know I’m messing with you, most people would form a positive or negative to a completely neutral object. And if it happens to things, maybe it could happen to thoughts ot ideas? Like,”Hey wasn’t it what Hitler said before starting a genocide?”

OK, back to the track. The phenomenon of self-admiration seems to be universal and can be easily seen on the road. Have you noticed that you are surrounded by morons? Everybody who drives faster than you do is a damn irresponsible moron. Everybody who drives slower is a damn slowpoke moron. Is it just me or is it the play of several biases fired up by the extreme situation?

Now, what is the point of all of this?
Well I was going to examine my previous articles with these effects in mind, but it turned out to be a long and dull wall of text. So there you go, no dull self-observations, just a little bit of info each of us could use. And I promised to write about it anyways.

PS. On a totally unrelated topic – Otaku still hasn’t got laid and he needs some cash to change the situation ($500 would do the trick). No, not hookres! Virtual ticket to fictional America in a video-game I’m working on! More details here. Or here. It’s the same anyway. Thanks, bye!

Stuff’n’Stuff 04: The Authority of Team Leader and the Fail of Democracy

One of the first rules is as follows “Don’t design by committee. Do not treat the design work as a democratic process in which each person’s opinion has equal value (“design by committee”). One person must have the authority to make final decisions, and the others must acknowledge this person’s authority.”

Ernest Adams, “Fundamentals of Game Design”

 “Programmers always try to change the task to an easier one. Do not let that happen. ”

My boss, on one of my first day at work.

Hello everyone!

Last time I was talking about the problems one could face, trying to assemble a team and start developing a game. This time I’m going to discuss one of the major difficulties I’ve encountered while actually developing a game.

But first I should provide some background to the events I’m about to describe.

I’m 26 right now. I have been playing games since 6 but for a long time I did not think that I would end up in gamedev. Not that I did not want to, it just did not occur to me. In late 2011 however I have finally came to understanding that it’s the only one thing I actually might enjoy doing.

I’ve started from extensive internet search (sloperama.com was especially helpful). I sent couple of resumes, received several test tasks and eventually got rejected. Totally predictable but still painful. Soon I’ve found a job in a large Russian gaming magazine Igromania.

3 months later I finally entered the game designer club as I got a job in a social gamedev company. I clearly stated that I had no prior game design experience, but I guess I was at least not as bad as others who applied as well. I was the only one game designer in a 20+ person company (now there are more then 40).

Just knowing about this effect could benefit many people. But most of us are incredibly ignorant about our ignorance.

I was assigned to 3 already released games. I was to suggest ways to improve them. I would pinpoint a problem and suggest several ways to solve it, usually trying to point out pros and cons of various solutions. Then I would discuss it with my boss and he would decide what to do. It was a dream come true, only better – maximum creativity and no responsibility whatsoever.

One month later I was assigned to write a concept for a new project. My boss came to me and said: “We want to make a new game. It must be a single-player side-scrolling beat’em up for social networks. You can do whatever you want, but we already have the interface. We need you to write a concept and a story. You will be working with an artist and a programmer. Oh, it has got to be about Japan and there has got to be a woman.”

It was a strange task. Never in my life could I imagine that the interface could be developed for a game without a concept, based only on a vague “beat’em up” definition. But it was great as well – after all I got to start creating a new game from scratch. I still had only one, maybe two months of experience, so I ended up influenced by a programmer – we had sufficiently similar interests to easily communicate, but different enough not to agree on everything, which lead to very productive arguments. He was working like 1 year longer than me, so I listened carefully to his ideas and usually chose his ones over mine. Not blindly of course.

The original theme of the game was pseudo-historical steam-punk in Japan. Looks a bit like Assassin’s creed, though…

The working protocol almost stayed the same – the better part of the core mechanics I would write on my own (still usually suggesting several variants). Some things I would discuss with the programmer and usually changed some parts of the document. The story was totally my domain, and it was only guided by the interface style (weird, right?) and the thesis about Japan. And my boss would decide what to do.

It was the most fun I could have. And our small team of 3 was really productive. Until the artist decided to quit. Not long before that my bosses decided that they are uncomfortable with real names of places and historical characters so some changes were to be made about the story. A new artist joined the team as well. She was unable to maintain the dark pseudo-historical steam-punk style, so the whole visual part had to be redesigned. My vision totally differed from hers.  I was designing a dark and brutal game with blood and sticky feeling of bad things happening no matter what. She was the opposite. She was the one who was working on 3 other titles and her word had more weight.

Moriarty knows how to make smart decisions. He also knows how to make people do as he wants. I might have had a crown but had no authority and power.

Shortly after that I was made the leader of the project. So every single aspect of that game became my personal responsibility. But I still could not enforce my vision to be executed. Fuck. Every single letter in the script was contradicting a gay cowboy dude she had drawn. Luckily she got help from a newly hired artist, who was like drawing straight from my mind. I asked him to draw one boss-character and animate him. This boss was so much cooler then the main cowboy-character, and only blind could not see that her style did not match the task at hand (which I tried to communicate to boss several times, but only this time did a make a stand and finally got what I wanted).

She left the project and only 3 of us remained. Unfortunately, along the way we appeared in a position where the visual style again dictated the concept, so I had to rewrite the whole goddamn story again and rethink the style. The carousel of artists turned into a 3 month-worth setback as we had to start work on visuals from scratch. Again. If I took a stand earlier the loss would be at least 1 month less. Staying true to what you believe is crucial. Unfortunately for me I rarely did so…

As I said – before I got promoted, boss was the one to make the decisions. Sometimes he liked my ideas better, sometimes he preferred programmer’s ones. At first it seemed like nothing have changed: I still discussed stuff with programmer and we still argued. But now it was my job to choose from several options. And, like my boss, I sometimes preferred my ideas and sometimes not.

It’s really hard to make an unbiased evaluation of ideas and to compare them.

First of all it’s natural for people to value something that belongs to them, over something that belongs to other people.  A good example of this concept is shown in a short YouTube clip by Dan Ariely. He discusses this quirk more extensively in his book “Predictably irrational”. It’s a good read.

So for example if my idea is in its outcome it absolutely identical to your idea, it’s hard for us to see it this way. Well theoretically. I’m not a psychologist.

The other feature of our brain is that we easier see others’ mistakes, then our own. “We are often confident even when we are wrong, and an objective observer is more likely to detect our errors than we are.” (Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman).

So for example if my idea has a flaw, and my your idea has an identical flaw, I feel like your flaw is worse.

This situation is tough on itself but it actually gets worse.

So, I am aware if the biases which can affect my judgment. Now I can resist them. But my opponent does not give a shit about it. It goes like this:

My Idea is a “5” and his idea is a “5”. If I knew nothing about human brain I would evaluate my Idea as a “10” and his idea as a “1”. And that is what my opponent does. So we both theoretically push our idea with the force of a “10” and criticize other’s ideas as “1”. The more stubborn one wins.

But I am aware of the biases. So I try to be objective. I probably end up evaluating my “5” as a “7” and his “5” as a “3”. But he still thinks he has a “10” and I have a ”1”. Who will push harder, how do you think? I eventually tried to explain the biases, but it only made things worse. People do not like smart asses.

I wish I had the persuasive abilities of this brutal dude…

And it goes worse. So I sometimes think that his ideas are actually better than mine. Which in my book is great for me, him, team and project. But he thinks that I am weak and if applied enough pressure I will give up. So the arguments become less and less productive and a lot longer.

It’s bad on itself – the productivity of the arguments decreased as well as the actual time on writing code. But it made the chemistry of the team bad. I started to think of him as of a jerk, and I am pretty sure the feeling was mutual.

Now, you probably have heard of the halo effect (it has got nothing to do with the game. Well maybe it has, the title is so hyped…). The halo effect or halo error is a cognitive bias in which one’s judgments of a person’s character can be influenced by one’s overall impression of him or her.

In short it means that if I like how the candidate looks and talks, I expect him to be a man of honor and I believe he will be a good president, even if I have no clue what his political or moral values are. Or if I’m pissed at my coworker I might end up thinking that all his ideas suck. Or he will think this way about me. And it cannot be good.

Our disagreements were getting out of hand.  There were 3 people in our team. So we started to vote. The most ridiculous thing is that I think of myself as a man of honor, so if we vote, I tend to obey the collective decision. But it was not the case with him (or, it’s just the availability bias talking). If he was outvoted he would continue to argue. At that point of time I would sometimes lose my temper and yell at him (not proud of it) stuff like “I’m in fucken charge here, shut the fuck up and do what I say for fuck’s sake”. Not a good idea. Well yes, he would sometimes do as I said, but not for long. And it was bad for my self-respect, and I’m sure the others began to think less of me. I know I did.

Knowing how brain works can sometimes be really helpful. But I still have no idea what to do if someone refuses to listen to reason? How to compare my ideas versus other’s? Or how to be a person you believe you are?

The basic idea behind the arguments, in theory, was simple – a bunch of people discuss several ideas and come to a consensus. They make decisions and they act accordingly. It was a serious surprise for me when I found out that several of the decisions we’ve made were executed not the way I’ve suggested (and we settled on them), but the way he wanted to. Now I had to double check every detail to make sure that he did not do things which counteracted my decisions.

It was a norm for me to ask him to do A, and he would say that he will do B and we’ll see how it works. It was better than searching for stuff he’d do his way. At least I knew what was going on.

I began to fear every single feature that had to be implemented. I would spend hours trying to force myself to start working on a feature. I was second guessing every minor decision. It’s not that I have forgotten all the game design principles, it was the fear of the upcoming unavoidable at least 2-hour long arguments.

It had, of course, obvious counterproductive effects. Lengthy arguments tend to come down to tiniest irrelevant details and blow them out of proportion (you can read more about this in Dan Ariely’s “Predictably irrational” or Jamie Madigan’s “Psychology of games” blog) and it makes everyone involved to forget about the big picture, the general direction or even what is this feature needed for. It’s like you want to milk a cow but during an argument comes up a thesis that a horse is more user-friendly and you end up building a chariot.

But as bad as it was, it still could go worse and it did. He began to alter the story – the only one thing he did not care about before. I mean what the fuck? Folks from other projects would come to me so that I write them texts, because they knew I was the man to ask. I did not have to help them – I was not working on their project, and had enough on my plate, but I did help them. And everyone knew that I could write in different styles and I could write long or short, I could make the text funny, brutal, creepy or anything they needed (my Russian is much better than English, but I hope to change it with practice). And the only person who found my texts bad was actually supposed to be subordinate to me.

If you’re in the same room with Joker – you are in trouble. If he points a gun at you – it’s time to pray. But if i had a choice – put myself into the situation I’ve experiensed or in front of that barrel, I’d choose the latter. Joker is fun after all, and Batman might save me…

It kept going like this for 8 or 9 months. We actually released the game. Despite the fact that it was half ready (hey, only 3 people were working on it for 8 months, 3 of them (months, not people) were lost in the very beginning) I am really proud of the outcome, considering… We actually had much more mechanics, but we did not have enough visual content like main character’s animation, which is not a good thing for a brawler.

It was not received very well, but at least we tried to pull out something that no one in Russian social gaming space tried to – develop a real time beat’em up with a deep skill system and real-time player interaction. Could it be better? Of course. Could it be worse? Yes, it could.

Maybe I should have preferred more of my decisions from the beginning, or maybe we would be better off with his ideas. Or maybe the best outcome would be if we switched all his ideas for mine and vice versa. But most probably it’s something else. In the end it were my decisions, no matter who suggested the ideas behind them. And my bad decisions led to a not so good game.

I feel like in school again, when my mom thought me not to copy others, but to make my own decision. And I lived by that code until last year. The simple fact, which I knew from school, remains true. It sucks to make mistakes. But it sucks even more to make mistakes of other people.

I still think that the best features of the game were born out of our discussions. But when the discussion is over, the decision is made, the whole team has to commit to it. Is it too much to ask?

Broken pieces still can be put together.

2 weeks ago the project was closed till better times come. Our small team exists no more – but we all continue to work on other games, and I hope on ourselves. I do.

As I continue working in that company, I still am trying to make my own game. Since my last post (and frankly a bit earlier) I’ve had some major progress there, so I might soon dedicate a post to it.

The last 8 month thought me 2 very important things, which you probably already know:

• stay true to your own vision
• be careful with the people you choose to work with

I hope you will not have to experience what I’ve had to experience, and I hope this post, though very long for such a simple message, will be useful to someone. Do not do my mistakes. Better do your own ones.

And we’ll see what happens next.

Update, 17 april 2013
More then a month has passed since my team was dismissed.
My relationship with that programmer could not be better. Any ideas why?

Stuff’n’Stuff 03: The Crushing Power of Still

So I have this Cool Idea for a game. I guess you know the rest…

It usually goes like this – you come up with The Idea, tell your friends about it, they get excited. Together you decide to give it a shot and make something tangible. Hellyeah! The world will be yours. You and your friends are destined for fame, wealth and glory, and hot chicks will give you free blowjobs on the streets, and heavy metal stars will ask you how to rock and… and there will be boobs and… and booze… and… and boobs and… and not a single goddamn thing gets done.

The euphoria fades, new inspiration never comes. Why the hell should it? The results of the work done are the best motivators after all.

Anyway, they all give up and you do not hear from them for weeks, and when they finally show up, everyone is like “your idea was not THAT good”. Sometimes you will think this way too and sometimes you will be right.

BTW If you do not know it yet, never ask you friends, unless you are 1000000% sure they are not going to lie to you so that they do not hurt your feelings. And never act on your idea at once if you are not a pro (and why a pro would read amateur’s blog?). Write your thoughts down, let it go for a couple of weeks, then revisit it. Still think it’s good? Now act.

You may repeat this fruitless process indefinitely, or you may try to change things a bit. Wise internet folk say “no one cares about your idea” and “do it yourself” and “your idea sucks” and they are right. But they are wrong.

The thing is, gamedevs are pretty creative and have lots of ideas of their own. And they actually have no interest in your idea especially if they have some experience. Inexperienced ones most usually come up with crap or give up quickly (no offence, we’re on same side here) so why would anyone care about them? But, guess what, not a single thing can be done without an idea behind it.

Unsurprisingly the topic of the day in gamedev is the lack of innovation and, get this, new ideas.

It’s incredibly hard to make a game even if you have lots of experience. It’s close to impossible to make a game on your own without help and previous experience. It’s even harder to make a game that other people might like.

Most people do not bother to address game publishers with their ideas (and they are right, no chance here with their quality standards and submission policies), still, I hear, publishers get crazy lots of proposals. Intuitively most beginners tend to flock with the ones like themselves, after their friends are eliminated from the “possible help” list.

As opposed to friends, who always say that your ideas are cool, random folk usually have quite an ego (this is a good topic for an article itself) and tend to reject 99% of what you say. It’s damn hard to find someone with similar values and vision or to develop some sort of direction which would suit everyone (this process has so many pitfalls and I definitely going to share my own experience on that matter).

What I’m leading to is how does one tell whether his idea is good or not? And do not tell me, that it’s all about the execution. Execution is important but execution is nothing more than a row of decisions based on a set of ideas and assumptions. Furthermore, a good starting idea is a basis of the rest. Your pretty building has better chances if it stands on a solid ground and not on a marsh.

So I have this Cool Idea for a game. I’ve had it for a year now (it makes me think that I am either really dumb or my idea is not actually that bad, if it managed to excite me for a year without having any visible results, which is really frustrating TBH). I’ve had several “got help from friends” rounds; I even tried to pay them (bad idea). I’ve also tried to do something myself. If you guess that I have no tangible results, you are right. But it’s too early to give up. Next on my list is asking for help from internet community.

We’ll see what happens.

Stuff’n’Stuff 02: A Crap into the Future and Kicking in the Balls

I’ve been exposed to the Internet for more that a decade, and look at me – writing my second post like a grown man. Given the fact that no one gives a fuck (well, that didn’t take long) about what I’m going to say, I feel not like an adult, but like an old moron.

Anyway, here is some crap I intend to talk about:

1. the value of ideas and why friends suck
2. my hypotheses (and an experiment) about whether one should pay strangers to help him make a game
3. authority of team leader and the fail of democracy
4. paranoia of creative folk, even if they are not creative at all
5. the image of an indie developer
6. how big fails encourage and small ones frustrate

It’s going to be mainly my observations of my own mistakes. Hope it’s going to be entertaining – who does not like to see others fail – makes you feel so smart and think you would never do such an idiotic thing. It’s like a joke, some dude gets kicked in the balls – so much sadistic fun, until it happens to you.

So, I guess I’ll eventually write my version of “how to make wrong decisions” or “what dummies do” or “trivial stuff, I should have googled it”. And yeah, most of this stuff can be easily found in the Internet. And I even read most of it. But like I said – kicking in the balls.

But wait, what about me, talking about the game of my dreams?

We’ll get to it.