January 2011
January 2, 2011
IndieGoGo Post-Mortem
I learned a lot running the campaign, and I was extremely nervous prior to launch. What if no one donated? What if it made me somehow look bad or damaged the embryonic brand?
For anyone interested in running a donation drive themselves, either via IndieGoGo, Kickstarter, or even just with a PayPal button, I would first recommend looking at the amazing success of Andrew Plotkin.
If you don’t have the time or interest to read that, and just want it concisely, here’s the common sense run-down of running a donation drive:
- No one gives money to anyone without getting something in return. Having good incentives that are valuable to the target donor are critical.
- No one will trust a considerable sum to someone on the Internet without social proof. As an unknown, I received the most support from those who knew me personally outside of the web.
- Have a relevant story, preferably backed up with years of suffering and a real need for donation. If it doesn’t seem like you need the money, and have no where else to turn, it’s unlikely that the drive will motivate people to donate.
- Have a good video, regular updates, and personal contact with donors. The successful drives all have faces with character attached to them, and make the donors feel like they’re part of the activity they’re funding.
- Deliver on any promises made.
Having just graduated from school without a body of work behind me, I pretty much flopped the social proof requisite. I’ve been building steadily since, but a drive of more than a hundred dollars clearly requires more effort and greater exposure than I was able to lend.
I purchased Unity 3D professional this morning, offset by the 94 dollars that were so kindly donated. Although I’ve gushed and groveled and praised so many times before, I can never thank these people enough. Your early support of Dark Acre has helped motivate and uplift in the difficult launch period when confidence is the most fragile.
If you’d like some singular piece of advice regarding getting funding for whatever endeavor you’re undertaking, I offer this: produce something small that supports your larger efforts and give it away until the social proof begins to build. Then create something larger and more valuable and try to capitalize on it. It’s far more rewarding to earn the money needed to fund larger projects than being reduced to begging.
January 5, 2011
Dark Acre Week 12 Report
12 weeks! That’s like, 3 months! Time flies.
3D modeling is easy when it’s planned, and the units are standardized. Oh wait, that doesn’t just apply to the modeling, but also to the seamless integration of several different models in Unity 3D.
Like putting arms and armor on an avatar.
I’m waiting for the comparisons to Minecraft, 3D Dot Game Heroes, and whatever other games use minimalistic block-style artwork.
My reasons for choosing this aesthetic:
- It’s fast and easy to produce.
- It’s simple to make modular.
- I have an unreasonable envy for developers capable of producing beautiful pixel art, so I Frankenstein it in 3D in a petty act of directionless vengeance.
The side-effect of going this route is also forcing myself to work under constraints to produce recognizable playing-pieces. I’ve learned a ton more about 3D Studio Max 2011 and its cruel companion MotionBuilder. I’ve also reinforced the 3D package-to-Unity pipeline. Wait until there’s some more gameplay visible, then there’ll be the inevitable comparisons to Bastion…
In publishing news, the first book of the Solarus Cycle, Tale of the Madeus, is now available on Amazon. You don’t need to own a Kindle to read it, as there are free viewers available for most platforms. I think it’s a fine story, but I’m naturally biased towards my work.
The second book in the series, Ambia, is moving along at a steady pace. Writing slowed down a bit over the holidays as I handled the publishing side, but it’s steadily picking back up now that I’m back in the production routine.
A little side note regarding the marketing of the book. I’ve created a secondary Twitter account for managing book-related information and advertising. I had a simple plan: do a Twitter search for “space opera” and send a link and description to people that seemed hungry for new books.
Lesson #1 about Twitter marketing: do not do what I did. I was immediately marked as a spammer and decried publicly by several high-profile literary accounts.
Oops.
From that rather embarrassing start I learned a lot about how to really go about Twitter-marketing myself. Twitter is essentially a conversation, and the more a user can come off as human and interesting, the more likely another party will enter into that conversation.
Unfortunately, much like every other business venture since the start of commerce, there is no get-rich quick formula. It’s about establishing real relationships with potential customers that drives the successful marketing campaign, at least via Twitter.
If anyone else has any other helpful advice and recommendations about how to market a self-published anything, please let us all know!
In the opening of this post I mentioned other block-like games. I came across this video just yesterday on a random thread, and it shows off more of the effect I’m going for with the new project. Enjoy, and check out their other games. The cat-stacking one is really good.
January 12, 2011
Dark Acre Week 13 Report
The first week of production is out, and I’d like to talk about persistance and how it relates to solo independent game development.
per-sist-ence |pərˈsistəns|
noun
firm or obstinate continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition : companies must have patience and persistence, but the rewards are there.
I find it pretty ironic that the dictionary example uses a company as its subject, but the sentiment expressed is absolutely true.
When we’re plugging away at our dreams, oftentimes alone or with support of very few close personal contacts who may or may not appreciate the work we’re doing, it’s hard to find encouragement.
In order to get feedback from outside of our work-bubbles, we have to risk wide exposure on-line and even worse, showing our prototypes or ideas in ways that don’t allow for realtime discussion. Forums and Twitter and YouTube and Facebook are all great for gathering impressions and opinions, but they’re not the most ideal for generating physical slaps on the back and high-fives for accomplishing what may have seemed like impossible tasks.
In recent weeks this has been something I’ve been struggling with. It’s hard not to come off like a crazy person when I do a mad jig after getting my game objects to correctly orient themselves through random instantiation. There’s no one really to celebrate with.
And then there’s the long hours of getting to that dance. The Google searches that turn up nothing, the inability to fully share project details with potential assistants on the web, and the eventual soul-crushing creative grind and iteration that produces a solution.
The thing to remember is that the balance of success to failure in game development is always going to be weighted heavily on the fail side. Whether we’re working in a huge hundred-person team or individuals pursuing a dream, the chances that our code won’t work or that the public won’t like the product are extremely high.
But persistence will pay off. Continued, focused, and diligent effort will eventually produce a result that we can be proud of, and an audience will appreciate. Like a wise rapping dog once said, “[You] gotta believe!”
Now, here’s the golden secret to surviving as an independent: when the soul is crushed, and the forehead bruised from desk-banging over elusive solutions, we can walk away. We can take naps. We can go for long strolls in the park or go play some drunken billiards… at ten in the morning. The true freedom of independence is the ability to walk away from the work any time we please.
Of course this is a double-edged sword. Walk away from the work at times when a few more hours of pressure would produce progress, and we end up sacrificing our discipline and risk becoming lazy and unfocused. It’s the constant drive to return with fresh eyes and find solutions that needs to be kept alive.
So be sure to celebrate each success, and remember that we’re engaged in some of the hardest and most complex creative work in history. There won’t always be someone there to hand out a high-five, but it’s the persistence that produces success.
On the writing side, the narrative of the second book is coming together. I’d really like to expand this work to a novel-length piece, and I’m wondering if the only difference between a novella and longer form is the amount of words spent setting something up.
There is also a fine balance to be struck between description and dialog. I’m writing a piece of game lore, and as such I think it has to read close to how paper role-playing game manuals do. It needs to paint as vivid a picture as possible of the universe, but also I recognize the need to bring interesting characters into play, and those people have to talk.
Also another reminder that there’s a second Twitter account that’s updated with writing and self-publishing information, stuff that won’t appear in the main feed. Please follow it if that’s your interest.
Couple of hot links this week. First is a Twitter search that blew up yesterday, #97thingsgamedev (Shockingly, that link still works. –Ed). While not being absolute law, there’s a lot of golden nuggets in there and if you’re interested in myriad opinions about making games, there they are.
Red Letter Media recently released the final parody review of the new Star Wars trilogy. If you’re a die-hard hard-core fan and staunch supporter of Lucas’s work, you may not find these things amusing. Then again, you just might.
See you next week!
January 19, 2011
Dark Acre Week 14 Update
Hard week, so I’ll be brief:
Is there such a thing as seasonal affective disorder? Whatever the case may be, this week was a bit of a slump.
Despite the low period, the overall shop and shopkeeper logic made it in to Project Zero Two before Tuesday.
I’ve also installed and completed the basic tutorials for a FlashDevelop → FlashPunk → OGMO-based workflow, and I’m building something with it. While Unity 3D remains the primary development environment, learning and dabbling with a second can only help reinforcing the first while learning new tricks.
Plus, 2D game development has been a weakness of mine for ages, and I’d really like to overcome that particular knowledge gap.
*Sidenote: It seems that when it comes to development environments and development tools there’s a bunch of civil wars going on. Of course it’s important to make an informed decision when choosing the framework for your next game project, but making claims like Engine X is better than Editor Y is really becoming an apples and oranges debate. I could care less that a given engine won’t publish to a specific platform; as a game developer my prime mandate is completing a project and getting it out in public. If it’s successful after the fact it can be ported to whatever, but when it comes time to pound nails I’m not going to be picky about the hammer I use, so long as I can swing it.
Lastly on the game design front this week I’ve built a toy in Unity 3D that has some game elements to it. I wanted to recapture that feeling of progress and achievement that usually comes with the first week of development, and so I put this thing together in a few hours. It shows a lot of promise and I plan on adding to it whenever I feel like I’m losing steam with the main project.
I think I’m going to keep the details of that one a secret for the time being, though, as it’s outside of the scope of the overall Dark Acre operations.
The writing has suffered in line with the game development, leading me to believe that it’s an overall slump in motivation, and not just one area of creative output. Still, I’ve several thousand more words to page for the follow-up to Tale of the Madeus, and I’m exploring cybernetics now. I’m excited about where this book is going, and can’t wait to get it to a state where I can start sharing it.
A couple of interesting links and a video this week:
- Finally got around to giving Ted Lauterbach’s Sutef a go, and it is well worth the time. Highly recommended.
- Another free game, Space Funeral, as above.
I leave you with this monstrous thing, and apologize in advance to any vegans/vegetarians or people with a general adversity towards excess. But damn if I didn’t want a bite after watching:
January 23, 2011
Brief Words on Marketing
The above video isn’t directly related to the topic, but demonstrates a marketing opportunity that I leveraged and fortunately cost me nothing to do it.
I’m in the business of games to get people to play with my creations, and hopefully hand over their fair value in cash when the quality is worthy of re-compensation.
A lot of independents claim to build games for the sheer joy of it. The sheer joy of slamming your head into brick wall after brick wall as the machine taunts you from behind its veil of command miscommunications. The sheer joy of finding out after months of development that what seemed like fun and engaging in your mind was less interesting than watching ramen noodles boil. The sheer joy of having anonymous commenters on portals try to tread on your very humanity.
Where was I? Oh yes. Regardless of whether we’re in it to try and replicate Minecraftian levels of success or simply tell the stories we’ve got bubbling behind our eyes, we’ll eventually need an audience for our work.
This is where marketing comes in. We are fortunate enough to be living in a time where our product of digital design and the tools to market it are so closely intertwined that they oftentimes become one.
Share progress to Facebook walls? Tweet latest high score? Games have become marketing engines in and of themselves to the savvy developer.
Working madly in a vacuum and keeping absolute secrecy about a project is one way to go about development. It is admirable, if only for the fact that the developer in question is capable of staying so focused on their work that the outside world becomes a meaningless haze of background noise and the game is all.
The trouble with this approach is that when it comes time to launch, no one knows about it. Time must then be spent building up social proof and spreading the word about the game. No matter how astounding or amazing the end result may be, it will take precious time for anyone to notice it. I’m discounting freak luck, of course. There is always the chance that a high-profile somebody will make a video of gameplay and it will spread like wildfire in an orgy of shares and re-Tweets, but this is not a phenomenon we can bank on.
Here’s a list of marketing tips for the independent game developer who wants to spend more time making the game than they do talking about making the game:
- Create a Twitter account either for yourself as a developer or for the game itself. I’m a solo developer, a guy in his underpants tapping away at the keyboard, and I felt that it was best to make a personal account rather than pretend that I’ve got a huge enterprise at my back. Twitter is all about relationships and one-to-one contact with people, and the closer we are to the quick, the more genuine the communication.
- Create a Facebook page as above. Same rules, and in my case I chose to make it a slightly more professional extension of the Twitter account where the Facebook page represents the company I’ve established to handle the business end of the development. Even without business ambitions, a Facebook page will reach the people who don’t use Twitter and tends to produce more static hits to your website as the digestion rate of Facebook information is slower than that of Twitter. A lot of Tweets go unread, but unless a person has hundreds of active Facebook Friends there’s a good chance that they’ll see your page updates.
- Create and post YouTube (or Vimeo) videos of progress, game assets, successes and failures. If you’re savvy enough to be putting together a thing as complex as a digital interactive experience, there’s really no excuse for not being able to capture some images of your project and throw them up on YouTube. This also ends up creating a more permanent, journaled record of progress, something that Twitter can’t do.
- Participate in “events”. They can be as complex and wide-ranging as the Global Game Jam, Ludum Dare 48, or as simple as the weekly #screenshotsaturday postings on Twitter. An event will motivate and push you to succeed in ways a long-term project can’t, and can supplement an existing project by creating mini public milestones, like the Twitter screenshot event.
- Join forums relevant to your interests and establish a dialogue with the members. Regular postings and participation in discussions helps spread the word about who you are and what you’re doing. I don’t advise dropping in on forums and info-bombing them with a new thread. Rather, take the time to see if it’s a community that you want to be a part of, and if there’s people there that share your interests. Create a signature that subtly links to your other online presences, and make meaningful posts in threads.
- Blog about what you’re doing. Even something as simple as weekly update with a few words, some lessons learned, and an image or two, can go a long way in establishing web-presence. It’s also a great chance to offer a direct venue to your audience through comments, generating feedback and impressions of your results. And for the love of all that’s holy, burn your feeds and slap an RSS chicklet up somewhere! I’ve posted about this at some length along with some general Twitter advice.
- Make sure everything is connected to everything else. Make those hyperlinks as hyper as a six year-old on Red Bull! Put links to your blog in your Twitter bio, link your Twitter to your Facebook to your YouTube to your Vimeo. Create a comprehensive information loop that pulls the audience from one outlet to the next, letting them decide how they want to get your details. I also recommend establishing an About.me profile and populating it with everything, then using that as a catch-all for e-mail and forum signatures.
Total cost of the above marketing efforts? Monetarily nothing, absolute zero, but it will take time away from development. How much time depends on how active you want to be. Be warned, participating in social networking, particular Twitter and Facebook, can become intrusive to development time.
Personally I allot 30 minutes between each development session for Twitter checking and updating, do a weekly video post to YouTube and Facebook, participate in #screenshotsaturday, and take part in any other events that fit my schedule and that I feel I can use to leverage current progress in a given project.
The bottom line is that word and proof of work will spread, and it’s not necessary to wait until a project is launched to begin marketing efforts. In my experience, it’s far better to start talking and showing (within reason, we still have to use common sense and avoid theft of our ideas) as it helps keep me motivated and establishes a regular cycle of reporting to the public.
You may find that once you feel obligated to prove out a week’s worth of work, you’ll find yourself striving to produce the best quality results you can.
2011.01.01 – 2011.01.31