Visibility the missing component ?

I have writeen several posts in my time about being invisible. Or put another way, not being able to get my game seen or downloaded by a lot of people.

This is a conundrum that all Indies and Big companies alike face when putting out products. In this day and age people are being bombarded with advertisements for stuff all over the place. It used to be simple 20 years ago, now with all the connectivity, it is not simple. there are many choices of where you can advertise your wares, but that does not make it simple, as anyone only has so many dollars or time to spend on the task of getting your product seen. you do not have the kind of money that is put into advertising AAA titles, so you cannot go the way of THQ or EA etc.

Now if your product does not get seen, then there is a lower chance to make any sales at all, never mind making it big! Though i do believe there is a chance you can reach just the right person. That person in turn puts something out on twitter or on facebook and a bunch of people pick up on that and whammo, suddenly you have gone viral.

What if you manage to get seen, get on Kotaku or Joystiq or something like that. Well most likely if you are an Indie developer, you are getting noticed for something bad. I will not go further on that description hower. Still, bad press IS press, so maybe it is good. It certainly paid handsomely for one group i know. Back to the point, if you got your game seen, then you have a lot more chance to reach the viral stage, or the stage below it which is genuine interest. good luck on getting to this stage.

Visibility can be achieved in many ways, but they all seem very difficult to actually get going. Advertise, whell how do you advertise to people only on the xbox? Most xbox users i reckon don't set foot on review sites etc for indie games at least. So instead you have to hope that word of mouth amongst friends on Xbox Live will pick up your game and try to beat each other. Then, through their networks you may get enough downloads to make the creation of the game financially viable.

But back to what you CAN do.
Reviews, get them. as many as you can. These are to start off with are your best chance to get noticed. One of these reviews could possibly spring your game into the light, and i hope they do. I also love reviews because they cannot be bought. They should be unbiased (though some are very biased :( ). some sites use forms to submit for reviews, although not my favourite way to do it, it is certainly a way to weed out the lazy marketing guys. This is a good thing for you now isn't it, cos you are not lazy! Other sites will just take a press pack (Yes, always do a press pack). A Few others you might know and follow already on twitter, be nice. They are fans, and even if your game stinks, being seen is more imjportant than a good review. Oh so onto...

What if my game sucks according to everyone else. Well this has not stopped coutless thousands of downloads of vibrator apps for Xblig, why should this top your game from making money? In all honesty, good and bad games are a subjective thing. Which means that not everyone will find your game offensive. So roll with the punches and kep promoting your title. get more reviews and they will most likely balance out. If they are all bad, that again, is not so bad. People love to watch a train wreck every now and again. But use the reviews and what they say to motivate you to greater hights on your next game.

never Retreat, and Never surrendor.

Try hard, work hard, visibility may come. While your game is out there, you can never ever disount it's chances.

Da Voodoochief

All Games Are Crap

Everyone has their oppinion about a game. It doesn't even matter what that game is. Everyone has an opinion, whether it is good, bad or just meh! What is interesting as a designer is looking at all the comments you are given for your own game. Trying hard to acertain what all these opinions mean. Trying hard the whole while to put togther an image of what your game might look like. To different demographics and such.

I have heard so many comments lately about one person not liking this or that about a game. These observations were queued to the fact that the Indie games in question did not do very well. What i find interesting is that if you asked these people to give an opinion on the 60+ dollar AAA titles that they continue to buy, i am very very sure they would say pretty much the same stuff. However these AAA titles did very well thank you, AND they were Not a dollar to buy.

In the end there is only one conclusion, all games have their annoying or bits that are sub standard. However it is a very subjective area and from 20 people you would most likely get 5-10 different opinions, some total opposites to each other.

So are all games crap? Noooo, not by a long shot. But neither are they perfect, there are alsways flaws in them, flaws that cannot be taken out as taking them out would just get anotehr group of people to feel that was now flawed. I guess as a designer there is only one final choice. Stick with what you believe in, and listen by all means. Only, take all the advice and add it up. If it balances out, then you must be doing something right.

G'night

All in the Voice

I think i would like to have my next game have some or a lot of voice acting. You can blame several factors and i'll list the more relevant ones here.

1. I always fancied doing a bit meself.
2. Clover on Xblig has voice acting and i have been playing that.
3. Just finished Deathspank and it had some wonderful larger than life voice acting. My personal favourite was Von Prong.
4. I believe it can add so much to a game.
5. I have never done enough voice acting in my games. Mainly because i wrote most of my games when it was not possible to store much audio, never mind whole sentences :O

Those are enough reasons for now. The fact is i am not sure what my next game will be. I have an idea i am playing around with. Once i get some pictures drawn i shall try to get them onto the PC (yeah, i sketch with a pencil still :O). That way i can show everyone the way i design some aspects of my game. I won't put it all online, as that would be a real pain in the preverbial.

Now if i am voice acting.. Who should i do, the Epic hero, or the Epic Villain. I can cackle quite well :)

So i will end with a question... Who do you think you could voice?

Laters

Been playing Games all day

It is amazing. The day seems to have gone too fast. It is not very often i play games for too long nowadays. so much to write and design and market etc. Anyone readin this blog will know i am busy on all these fronts. However today i got my wow account restored. so i spent a good while dealing with that. Then moaning about how they did not sort out my sons linked account. To be done i am sure.

So anyway, i sort that for a bit, and try to play some wow with me friend Jeff. We just got into an instance when he was cut off. Then he was unable to sign back in. This bummed me out for a bit, but figured his internet will be sorted once more this coming weekend. We can have soem happy trails then i am sure.

Well i was also playing my new Indie games, apple jack, and Murphid. Both very nice games. Both well put together with nary a hint of being rushed to market (my usual complaint of course for Xblig games!). These are both great games. One is more up my alley than the other and that would be Apple Jack, right from the first jump ya know this game is aok. Murphid is good but not being a match 3 puzzle kinda guy i bought it for the wife and then proceeded to play for like 30 minutes myself, haha! I had to kill myself so i could go fetch my son.

Then.. it was the good stuff..
Me and Lucas went off to one of the Gamestops near where i collected him, well we went after getting some Taco Bell grub. This was my first foray into the Tapo Rd Gamestop. They had 3 staff and no customers. i was in there browsing for 10 minutes and only 1 lady came in to collect Bioshock for her son. I never found the game i was after for me Xbox and so left. Intrigued. .. Is it usually that dead on a Sunday at 12:30pm.
Then me and Lucas headed off to the other Gamestop in Simi valley. This one is in the Simi mall, and i like the manager there. He has helped me market my game Pellmell in the past. This place was quite busy, in about a 10 minute span they must have had a dozen customers and i also found the game i was looking for 'Sonic's Ultmiate Genesis Collection'. As a bonus i also found that Lego 'Indiana Jones 2' was only 20 bicks. SCORE!! So of course i bought them both.
This journey was of course to scout out Sundays as possible days for me to Demo my game. Get feedback and the works. Talking to the managers will be happening very soon i think.

The only issue was.. when i got home, i got to enjoy a bunch of the game from the Genesis and also i started playing with both my children on Lego Indiana 2.. ARGH! then the day was gone...

Finally ended the night watching the last episode of 'Spartacus of Blood and Sand' on netflix on me Xbox. This has been one epic series. One of the most enjoyable mature level series i have ever witnessed.  the story was fabulous, and there was lots of nudity and violence for anyone to be sated. Mind it is very graphic, and i am sure some will not get past the boobs to appreciate the story that unfolds.

Tha last thing i can say tonight is that the base to my stand is not ready. Hopefully a picture tomorrow will prove this.. It is BIG, about 4 inches higher than i expected, as i had forgotten to add in the size of the monitor stand, bah!

G'night

A Shooter not quite ready on the Xbox

I have been really busy tonight. Trying so hard to get the new game ready for some Peer Playtesting. I also had a busy day solving with the help of my workmates, all the bugs for Sony. Woah, am i a busy guy! I also had the pleasure of having a couple of boys stop over with my kids. They had a riot of a time, and especially loved playing Castle Crashers together. They were cheering and group hugging when they finally beat the game. They have been working on that for quite some time it seems.

Anyway, back to my night. I am working hard on getting A Shooter to peer playtest for two reasons. One is to Lock the name noone else can seriously use it then). The other is to see what happens when Peer reveiwers (well playtesters), are confronted with an obviously artstically sub-standard product. But one that has pretty sound gameplay mechanics.

To be honest i have spent a good portion of tonight re-writing some of my MU pulling code. It is a bit more pro-active now. I hope this version works out. Was sort of fun to do. If this works i shall also have to regress it back into Pellmell. Yeech!

One thing i did tonight was to produce a temporary thumbnail for the dashboard :D

A Shooters Thumbnail

Exciting isn't it. And all my own work, lol. I still have a few quirky problems, like the fact i forgot to write the 2 lines of code to allow you to progress through the game (saves section). This is something that i'll now do tomorrow, as i am tired. Not quite sure what else is needed for Playtest. I guess i'll just do it and see what happens....

Oh, and i also had to change the name from 'ashooter' to what i really wanted 'A Shooter'. Cool huh! haha

Though somehow i am apprehensive. I have always put finished products into Playtest before...

Wish me luck

G'night

A Shooter Gamplay Trailer - Level 11

The Advanced Levels. This is where i start throwing more at the player. Make them move around more than before. Further down this article I will describe my design phylosophies to achieve this goal. Firstly though, there is the Video to show you the level. This will help anyone understand my waffle.

There ya go, I Hope you enjoyed Level 11.

Now onto some details. Let's start by getting around some basic facts...
1. I took a hit at the start. Yup, i should have been paying more attention, my excuse is that i was distratced by Fraps :D (always gotta have an excuse ready!)
2. I died on the end Boss. Yup i did. You didn't think i was spoil the Boss for ya now did ya ? I will some time int he future do a real EOLB video compilation. so people can get hints if they want to. Not today though. Or maybe he is just too good for me ?

Ok, let's get on with discussing my design goals here...
1. One goal i have is to make the Advanced levels distinctive. The previous 10 levels could get a bit forgetfull, and that was ok. They were really training, for what is to come.
2. Second goal was to make you move around more, any fool can sit still and shoot something. Though i did today toy with a boss you had to stay completely still to destroy him.
3. Was to make my test graphics as colorful as a set of Smarties :) (or M&Ms)

For the levels to be more Distinctive i am going to choose paterns, patterns of Aliens you will recognize and say 'Woah it's the Big Red Blocker level', or words to that effect. Though if you really say it out loud, people might start looking at you funny. This level is in fact the Big Red Blocker Alien level. They are there to make it harder to shoot the aliens that are your real enemy, the ones that are actively trying to shoot you down. as these blockers move around. It forces you to move around too, especially with all those bullets flying your way.

Making you move around is really part of the last paragraph. The blockers block you from annihilating the weak enemy ships, and therefore allow more bullets to come on screen. The best part is that the longer the small enemies are on screen the more angles they will be firing at you from. Therefore making you move around even more. This same effect can be achieved by putting aliens on the screen from the sides or back (as I have done in a previous level).

Pretty test graphics... Well, i had to be able to tell them apart. And why not make test graphics pretty. The color of the enemies or even their looks does not play in any part of the gameplay. The gameplay will be the same, and just as solid as it is now, when the graphics look beautiful. This is also the same for the boring backdrop. It is only boring for screenshots, cos anyone playing the game won't see anything but the aliens and their bullets, well only that .. if they want to survive.

I hope you can see these easy to use ideas for gameplay mechanics, as they are easy to implement and also can work for platformers and FPsers.

Laters

Seeing other creative works can be inspiring

I love it when i see something i enjoy. I love it in a special way that makes me ooze confidence about my own stuff. So when i see a creative work, i get all buzzy and excited about my own creative works.

Yesterday i saw the movie 'How to train your Dragon'. It was simply stunning. I had one complaint, and that was so very minor and covered up by the artistic desicion contingency plan.

I also got this feeling when i watched the new series of Dr Who, the first episode had to introduce a New Dr, a new Tardis, AND a new companion. It is astounding this was done, while telling any kind of story that did not feel too rushed. Excellent stuff. Again this gives me confidence in my own works.

More Detail
The Dragon movie made me feel happy and wondrous. I hope to make some of my upcoming games feel like this. My series of books also fall into this category for new readers, and their parents. It makes me want to write more. It also has the down side of showing me just how much more story telling my games need. But i am not sure that XBLIG and a part time job are the place for such lofty goals. Now if i can start making some money doing thee things, then by golly i will put more in, story included.

Dr Who is a series i have always loved. It tried so very hard not to stagnate. A lot of it's main elements help this. When the main character actor changes every few years, you know it is either the kiss of death or soemthing creatively special. Dr Whos new episode made me feel a nice connection to humour. This is fairly rare, but a difficult one to bring into a game environment. I would love to experiment more with this kind of thing. Guybrush Threepwood had this covered in his games Secret of Monkey Island. Though most games do not do humour.

There are other aspects of life i use as my Muse, but they are too many to list here. Maybe i will get some time to write a sequel to this post, explaining more of my muses.

Till then, Good luck, and see the possibilities all around you, most going quietly unnoticed.

laters