Categories
Game Development Games Marketing/Business

Why I’m Glad I Didn’t Try to Create a Kickstarter Campaign

Kickstarter

Before Double Fine had their really successful campaign and seemingly everyone thought Kickstarter was suddenly this brilliant way to raise money for indie games, I looked into it.

As development continued on Stop That Hero!, I worried about continuing to fund it with my savings before I actually ran out. I was aware of Kickstarter, since I backed Addicube and most recently Bhaloidam by Corvus Elrod, and I also backed Anthony Salter’s Inaria on 8-bit Funding. All of which were successfully funded, by the way, and I’m proud to have been a part of the reason why.

It seemed to make sense that a relatively unknown indie project could expect to get at least a little bit of funding to help make a game a reality, and I figured a Kickstarter campaign for Stop That Hero! would be an excellent way to experiment with crowdsourced funding.

I figured that I should look up how to run a successful Kickstarter campaign, and I found a lot of good information. Unfortunately, what I learned is that running a Kickstarter campaign is a lot of work, and that means dedicating time to it, and that means I’d be dedicating time away from the project I really want to work on.

Having to spend time on backer award, a high quality video trailer explaining the campaign, and finding people to fund the project? If I had dedicated marketing staff, sure, but I don’t. Plus, I clearly underestimated my budget needs for this project as it is, and I would need to ensure I knew how much to ask for so that I didn’t end up being underfunded. I’d also want to ensure that the requested funds were realistic. I’m not going to be getting millions of dollars for my project, and if I asked for that much, it means a high likelihood that the campaign itself will fail and so I’d lose access to the money that actually gets pledged.

Recently, I read an article on The Ugly Side of Kickstarter, and while the title makes it sound like it exposed some seedy underbelly of crowdsourced funding, the reality is that they’ve found what I found: that a Kickstarter campaign requires a lot of work and isn’t some magic money-making machine.

Basically, my takeaway with my own investigation was that Kickstarter campaigns are fantastic if you have the time, the marketing ability or star power, and a really good reason for it. It’s great for backers to feel some ownership in the development process and for developers to get a great marketing outlet and potential customers.

But I definitely wasn’t going to launch a Kickstarter campaign when I didn’t plan for it in the first place. Perhaps for a future project, but not as an afterthought. No one benefits from a half-assed Kickstarter campaign, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to put together a full-assed one in the time I could spare for it.

Have you looked into Kickstarter, 8-bit funding, or similar crowdsourced funding sites to fund your indie game? Have you backed any projects? How was your experience?

Categories
Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical

A New Direction for “Stop That Hero!”

As much as Stop That Hero! has
provided me with a great opportunity and learning experience,
recent events have led me to seriously invest time
in a much needed redesign. As a casual strategy game, the game
left players with a fun and exciting way to be evil and have
fun at the same time. Still, I’ve received feedback
over the months that have led me to question some of the
original design decisions I’ve made, some of which might be
leaving money on the table, so to speak.

So, the good news is that I’m taking all of the great stuff I’ve
done so far, and I’m going to recreate “Stop That Hero!” as an FPS.
As a strategy game, I find the game enjoyable, but the masses seem to
yearn for something a bit more visceral.

“Stop That Hero!: Reloaded!” puts you in the role of the hero,
fighting off the minions of an evil villain bent on taking over
the world. With the roles reversed in this new design, I think it
can be much more enjoyable and easier for fans to relate to the characters.

It will feature multiple weapons, urban and jungle environments, an
innovative cover system, and customizable uniforms for you and
members of your elite squad of minion-hunting friends (multiplayer content,
including special hats, exclusively available as DLC).

I don’t want to give too much away, but I am excited about this
new direction for “Stop That Hero!” For now, I’ll leave you with this
mock-up to give you a taste of what to expect:

STH: Reloaded
STH: Reloaded mock up. I had to use my niece's toy since I didn't have a gun or banana handy.
Categories
Marketing/Business Personal Development

I Need to Prepare for Anniversaries Better

Today marks six years since GBGames, LLC was officially formed.

Since last year’s anniversary post, I hit a major milestone.

I had my first sale.

My casual strategy game Stop That Hero! is available for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. When I released the initial alpha in December, I had little idea of what to expect. This one-month project became a one-year-plus project, and while the game wasn’t anywhere near finished, I was getting some good feedback from play-testers. I figured the worst-case was that no one would buy the game, but if I didn’t offer it for sale, no one would have an opportunity to say otherwise.

I now have actual customers, and some are even providing feedback to make the game better! It’s gratifying, and I’m looking forward to getting them my next update for “Stop That Hero!” Unfortunately, it’s been slow to develop, partly because my efforts aren’t focused.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the new year, I’m out of savings, and it wasn’t very clear how to proceed. I wanted to continue to work on “Stop That Hero!” and other games, but I couldn’t continue what I had been doing since it wasn’t paying the bills.

I was torn. I wanted to persevere and not give up too soon, but I can’t ignore reality (and my lack of money). I wanted to continue until “Stop That Hero!” was finished, but I wondered if working on a much smaller project would get a quick win out there. I want to spend time on game development and marketing to increase sales and revenues, but I wondered if doing so meant more of the same and therefore the same results, and so instead I should spend time on finding outside work, which makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy since I’m not spending time on the things that would make my business earn me money. And all through this turmoil, I had no forward motion because I wasn’t sure where forward was anymore. It was like I was lost in my life without a compass and no idea how to find my way back out.

Today is not only the anniversary of GBGames. It’s also been one year since I proposed to my girlfriend. My fiancée is incredibly supportive, and in the roller coaster that I’ve been on since going full-time indie, she’s helped me keep things in perspective, especially when I’ve been stressed out and was beating myself up for things not working out very well in my business.

In my mind, I had a deadline to get my business turned around before I need to find an alternative and stable form of income. Something I’m incredibly aware of is that we’re getting married in a matter of months, and we have plans for our future life together. Each day that my business isn’t making me money (and there’s a lot of those days) added pressure on me to do even more before the day comes when I’d feel I had no choice but to give up.

The truth is, I don’t have to choose between continuing to run my business and a happy marriage.

There are plenty of options. If my business becomes a part-time endeavor again, it’s not the end of the world, even though I’ve been trying to avoid that situation.

I was way too attached to the idea of being a full-time indie game developer. The idea that I would need to find outside work felt like a huge failing. From that perspective, I found myself looking back and second-guessing every decision I made. What if I had stopped work on “Stop That Hero!” after that first month and switched to a new project? What if I stopped focusing on making games for Linux-based systems so I could use non-portable tools such as Unity? What if I got a smartphone earlier so I could work on mobile games? What if I was paying more attention to cash flow and would have taken on part-time work earlier? What if, what if, what if?

“The first step to acceptance is to give up hope for a better past.” There are variations on this sentence that I first heard from my friend Alex Myers, but the point is that what’s done is done. Learn from the mistakes, but move forward with those lessons. From this perspective, I’m always learning. I released an alpha of my game and found that there weren’t a lot of people interested. This was always the case, but now I know because I see the results. I could focus on how few customers I have, or I can focus on how many new customers I now have and how to grow that number by providing good value.

It’s odd. Even though things are much more urgent these days, I’m somehow feeling more positive about everything. I think it is because my old perspective made me feel powerless, but my new perspective makes me feel empowered. Even with less time to work on games, I’m somehow getting more done. I know what my goals are, and instead of stressing out that I don’t know how to accomplish them, it’s actually fun coming up with ways to do so. My cash flow is still negative, and yet it is months after the point when I thought I had no more money and I’m still able to pay rent.

As my fiancée put it, it’s natural to feel disappointed in things not working out as you hoped. In a way, I went through a mourning period, and perhaps now I’m out the other side. It may be another anniversary where I didn’t prepare a fun sale or have exciting news to report, but GBGames is still here, and I am, too.

Categories
General

Did You Know The IGDA Has a Healthcare Plan?

Health Insurance

Back in 2009, the International Game Developers Assocation (IGDA) announced the launch of the IGDA Healthcare Program.

When I became a full-time indie game developer, I was going to lose my employer-provided insurance, so I turned to the IGDA’s program to get coverage instead of trying to find my own insurance on my own. Basically, they teamed up with Association Health Programs, and AHP is able to negotiate a block/group rate for you in your state with a quality insurance provider.

Aside from the fact that insurance companies have opaque policies (“Let me get this straight. A medical professional says there is nothing wrong with my ankle, and you still insist there is a preexisting condition? And you won’t cover the visit I had with the doctor who said that there is no condition in the first place because of this supposed preexisting condition?”) and are hard to deal with in general, I’ve been quite pleased with the IGDA’s program. I’ve had decent coverage at a decent price for more than a year now.

Granted, I’m single (for now), have no children (for now), and am generally healthy. I don’t know what the rates might look like for your specific situation. Or mine in the near future. The coverage is not nearly as comprehensive as my previous employer’s, but it’s a bit better than catastrophic insurance.

But I bring this up because whenever I mention the program in conversation, so many people say “Oh, the IGDA has a healthcare program? I had no idea.”

So now you know.

Categories
Game Development Geek / Technical Marketing/Business Personal Development

GDC Badge Pro Tips

While I won’t be going to the Game Developers Conference this year, I thought I would share some tips for making the most of your GDC 2012 badge and holder. These tips are especially important for people who will be attending their first GDC, such as some of the fantastic students I met when I spoke at the University of Iowa last Friday.

Feel free to share this post. And thanks, Ian Schreiber, for these tips when I attended my first GDC last year!

Categories
Game Development Geek / Technical Marketing/Business Personal Development

Hear Me Speak Live at the University of Iowa

I’ll be part of a group of game developers talking to students at University of Iowa on Friday, February 24th, 2012.

Where: Room 240 of Art Building West, Iowa City, IA

When: 4PM

Other speakers include people from Glass Cannon Games, Zach Ellsbury of Seraphic Software, iOS developer Karl Becker, and P.J. Lorenz, organizer of the Midwest Indie Game Developers Meetup group.

Categories
Game Design Game Development Marketing/Business

Filling a No-longer-served Niche

Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb Software wrote about being an indie game bottom feeder. He breaks it down into a few principles.

Stop worrying about piracy and worry about being a person your customers want to support

He talks about coming to terms with the fact that piracy happens. Interestingly, he finds the best way to “combat piracy” isn’t to pass onerous laws such as SOPA but to be a decent person that your games’ players would feel good supporting.

Price appropriately

If you are creating an ultra-casual, appeals-to-everyone kind of game, you can get away with charging less than a dollar or even releasing the game for free and using ads or selling add-ons. But if you’re appealing to an underserved niche, you must charge more for your game. Having 5,000 customers pay you only $1 means you won’t last long. The good news is that your customers are willing to pay for it.

Find the customers who are looking for what is no longer being made

Most small business advice out there says that you should find a niche, Vogel’s advice is similar, except he points out that there are plenty of game genres that used to be wildly popular and are no longer of interest to the larger companies in the game industry. Those are now underserved niches. While the popularity of these now-niches has dropped below the point where EA or Activision would find it worth their time, there are enough people who still want to play those kinds of games to make it profitible for an indie.

Vogel mentions the Atari 2600, which was my first game console. I remember playing games such as Frog n’ Flies, Yar’s Revenge, Solar Fox, and even E.T for hours on end.

And the Atari 2600 is still fun. It’s just not fun enough. The art of game design has progressed far beyond it, and Pitfall doesn’t have what it takes to compete anymore. But you know something? All of those old games can be updated. All of those old genres have tons of fans out there. They just don’t know they’re fans yet.

So does this mean you should clone old games and expect to make tons of money so long as you’re not a jerk?

No, and not just because the clones have been done already.

You can take inspiration from old games that are otherwise still fun today. Take the original Mario Bros for example. It was a platformer with a static level design, and you could collect coins and hit enemies from below before knocking them out. Now look at Super Crate Box, a platformer with a static level design in which you collect crates and use a variety of weapons to fight off enemies. Tell me where you think it partly takes its inspiration from. Yet, it plays very differently. The developers didn’t create a Mario Bros clone. They did something very different.

I think Vogel’s approach sounds similar to Dan Cook’s “reinventing the genre from the root” approach.

It occurred to me that game design, like any evolutionary process, is sensitive to initial conditions. If you want to stand out, you need to head back in time to the very dawn of a genre, strike out in a different direction and then watch your alternate evolutionary path unfurl.

Perhaps having kept my Atari 2600 all these years was a much better idea than I thought.

Categories
Geek / Technical

The Future Is Disorienting

I just jumped years into the future with both my cell phone and my computer. The future is a mixed bag.

The Cell Phone

For quite a few years now, I’ve had a flip-phone and was paying for service out of contract. When people started getting smartphones, I kind of wanted one, but never enough to justify the cost of a phone or tying myself to a new 2-year contract to get a free one.

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I did the math recently. I found out that for what I pay just for voice, data, and texting would be equivalent to getting a new smartphone with a contract. I’d even be able to take advantage of the data plan since the one with my flip-phone which became nearly unusable when they stopped supporting some of the already-poorly supported video options. I went with my fiancee’s Sprint-based provider instead of AT&T, and that referral netted me a discount that made it even cheaper.

It's here! And freezing! on Twitpic

So now I have an Android, the HTC EVO Shift, and I’m fairly happy with it. It’s way more useful than my old phone.

Plus, now I can play the games everyone has been talking about.

Plus plus, I have a device to test my own projects when I start mobile development.

However, I’m still getting used to figuring out how to hold it since I seem to keep accidentally hitting the search button or some part of the screen. I still hit the volume control on the side too often, and I press the power button as I slide the device into my pocket if I’m not careful. And as great as having a keyboard is, the phone automatically unlocks when I slide it out, which has accidentally happened in my coat pocket more than once already. While my old phone let me easily look up a name in my phone book since I could type a letter and it would jump to that section of my phone book, this new device seems to think I want to include everyone I’ve ever emailed, Tweeted, circled on G+, or friended on Facebook when I want to search for someone to call.

But this is the future, and the benefits are outweighing the negatives. Being able to fit a computer more powerful and integrated than my first desktop into my pocket has so far been pretty amazing.

The Computer

And speaking of computers, I’ve mentioned my dying laptop a few weeks ago. My Dell Precision M90 was a fine machine until the video card started failing. I’ve purchased a replacement: the Precision M6600.

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I’m going from:

  • 32-bit 2GHz CoreDuo -> 64-bit 2.2GHz i7 Quad Core
  • 2GB RAM -> 8GB RAM
  • NVIDIA Quadro FX 2500M (512MB) -> Quadro 3000M (2GB)
  • 100GB HD -> 750GB HD
  • 17″ WUXGA display -> 17.3″ 1920×1080 display

That last item unfortunately feels like a downgrade to me. I really liked having a 1920×1200 display. The extra lines of resolution were great for coding work. Unfortunately, it seems that 1920×1200 will no longer be available for most laptops. There’s no real explanation, either. There’s merely speculation that the hardware manufacturers will save money, especially since most people probably just want to watch movies on their laptops anyway.

Still, this new laptop came with Windows 7, and while I’ve used Windows Vista by being the default tech support guy for my family, I hadn’t really become familiar with anything since Windows XP, which is what my old laptop came with. The new interface is somewhat jarring. When I was running Firefox and had the download window open as well as the main browser, I wanted to minimize it, and so I clicked on the button in the taskbar, like I normally would. Instead of minimizing Firefox, it popped up a the windows as buttons so I could choose which one I wanted. Darn new-fangled tech doing things differently than I expected…

But no matter! I repartitioned the drive so that Windows gets about 100GB, and I installed Ubuntu 11.10 on the remaining space. And it turns out that Ubuntu is all new and shiny, too.

See, I used Ubuntu 10.04 Long-Term Support (LTS), and I didn’t want to upgrade to newer versions because I wanted a stable development system to do my work on.

So here I am, jumping two years’ worth of Ubuntu development, and this new Unity interface threw me for a bit until I realized they were trying to make it seem more Mac-like. There’s a launcher, and the buttons are all big and shiny, and there’s a Software Center where I can easily click and download apps and even purchase them. There’s quite a few indie games there, and it seems like it could be a decent marketplace.

But after looking at the entire games collection, I took the time to find the Terminal (more on that later) and typed: “apt-get install nethack-console” as fast as I could.

And then I added the Terminal to the launcher.

Seriously, it’s nice that the UI is 3D-powered and all, but sometimes I don’t want to mess around with a frickin’ mouse. I LIKED being able to open the system menu at a keypress and see ALL of my installed applications. Now I have to explicitly type to search or click on Dash, then click on “More Apps”, and then click some more? On the old system, I could hit Alt+F1 to open the “Applications” menu, then use the arrow keys to move to “Accessories” > Terminal. Now, I press the Windows key to bring up Dash, and if I know the name of the application, I can type it out right there, but if I don’t, it’s faster to click on “More Apps”, then go to “Installed” and click on “see all”, then scroll down until I find it.

I also liked being able to figure out how to open a file within an application by just looking at the screen. Unity has Mac-like context menus that applications share at the top of the screen, which…ok, whatever. Maybe it’s great, and I’ll try it, but why Unity hides the menu until you mouse over it, I don’t know, but I’m not the only one who is unhappy with it. Maybe I just need to get used to it, but there were a couple of times when I opened an application and wondered why the heck I had no way to open a file since the window I was using (seriously, why would I want to shift my eyes all the way to the top of the screen when the application I’m using is over here?) didn’t have a File option.

Unity also seems to hate the idea of customization. At least Windows let me move the taskbar around the screen. Why does the launcher have to stay stuck to the left side? Why do my windows have to have the close and minimize buttons to the left like on a Mac when I prefer them on the right? I’ve yet to find a way to change anything to work the way I want it to work.

I’m aware that it is possible to replace Unity with Ubuntu Classic UI or KDE, but I’m going to try to stick things out just to see how most users are expected to run their new Ubuntu-based systems. I actually do like being able to see all running application instances in an Exposé-like way, and there are parts of the UI that feel more intuitive. And Ubuntu 11.10 does seamlessly run 32-bit and 64-bit applications. I ran Stop That Hero! just to see if I had all of my development libraries installed, and I didn’t even realize that it shouldn’t have worked on this new 64-bit machine. So that was a pleasant surprise.

But if this is the future of computers, where laptop screens get smaller resolutions instead of larger ones, where the UI is made out of candy and shiny at the expense of being useful for people who know what they are doing, I’m not sure I’m happy about it.

I feel like the future is pushing me out of the way to make room for people who just want to watch widescreen movies or use a “workstation” as nothing more than a consumer electronics device.

Am I being unreasonable? Am I just disoriented because everything is different in the future? Is it better and I just need to get used to it?

Categories
Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical Marketing/Business Personal Development

An Online Conference You Can Attend #AltDevConf

If you’re not familiar with AltDevBlogADay, you should be. Each day, a game developer posts on a variety of game development topics. There’s a huge backlog of content there now, and while the recent redesign has made it difficult to find the category you want (you have to click on a post to see only some of the tags available as of this writing), it’s great getting regular, up-to-date, state-of-the-art tips and tricks from the people in the trenches. Authors can be mainstream game programmers, indie developers, academics, or anyone who has something valuable to share.

AltDevConf

It seems to be such a successful site that they’ve decided to host an online conference. AltDevConf will be held on February 11th and 12th (that’s this coming weekend), featuring three tracks: education, programming, and design & production.

Our goal is twofold: To provide free access to a comprehensive selection of game development topics taught by leading industry experts, and to create a space where bright and innovative voices can also be heard. We are able to do this, because as an online conference we are not subject to the same logistic and economic constrains imposed by the traditional conference model.

As it doesn’t look like I’ll be attending GDC this year (I’m still hoping to win an All Access Pass with my GDC magnets), AltDevConf seems like a high-quality substitute. While it won’t be the same as rubbing elbows with other indies or meeting cool celebrities in the gaming world, I’m excited about it.

Do you plan to attend? Will you be speaking?

Categories
Linux Game Development Marketing/Business

Linux Game Publishing CEO Steps Down

Yesterday, I woke up to an email saying that Michael Simms is stepping down after 10 years of running Linux Game Publishing and Tux Games.

Wow, 10 years! That’s a lot of enthusiasm and work, and unfortunately it takes its toll:

It took me some months to notice what was going on, and even longer to accept that my burnout was going to kill LGP unless I did something about it. The lack of drive slowed down production of new titles, shipping, customer service, everything that I either handled or had a big part in helping with, was all being compromised.

…

But I didn’t want to let the company die. Of course not, I have invested too much time, money, blood sweat and tears into LGP to just say ‘That is it, bye’. And so I sat down and had a long think about how to save it.

Clive Crous will take the reins at LGP and Tux Games. Good luck, Clive, and good luck with your future endeavors, Michael!