More Indie Advice

These excellent quotes from an interview between RPGWatch and Jeff Vogel, indie developer of Role Playing Games.

I think that game developers need to be far, far more respectful of the time of the player. Leisure time is precious. We should not waste it. We shouldn’t burn time at the beginning making the player grind out levels before he or she can get into the plot. We shouldn’t burn time with faction grinding and trash clearing. We shouldn’t pad the game out with tons of B material.

Part of the reason I wrote those articles was to flog myself for my failures in the past. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve padded. I’ve wasted the time of the player. I want to get better.

And my time is much shorter now. I won’t play any game that wastes my time. God of War 2 gave me 13 hours of first rate material, and I was done. If a game doesn’t give me something like that, I’ll read a good book instead.

I spent an abusive amount of time playing Everquest. Then something happened. The switch flipped in my brain, and I didn’t care anymore. I was really looking forward to the World of Warcraft expansion coming out. Then it came out, and I just didn’t care.

I’ll really seriously have to need an escape from reality before I pick up an MMORPG again. The whole business model is based on keeping you playing for months and months. And, since content is finite and expensive, that means wasting my time.

Oh, and grinding faction is the dumbest thing ever.

The solution is really simple. Think. Design better. Work harder. Instead of placing the same group of monsters, make something new. And, if you run out of time or resources, release a shorter game that has a higher respect for peoples’ time.

The problem, of course, that companies don’t have unlimited budgets or resources. But I would still prefer, given the choice between tedious filler and a shorter game, that they chose the second one.

Change

It’s amazing how much this project has changed over the past few months. 6 months ago I started work on a design and prototype for a fantasy virtual world, with features you might have seen discussed on Raph Koster’s blog. Advanced AI and ecology systems, cause and effect, personal NPCs, NPCs with personalities, deep crafting systems etc. More virtual world rather than game. I had high hopes for developing a niche game for people who were interested in that stuff, and getting noticed for trying something different.

3 months later, and I had some interesting systems in place, and some excellent design methodologies. I came to a realization of much work it was going to be. This would be the first of many. I shelved that project. Dream Games announced their 10k Competition, and I thought it would be a good time to create another MMO, one with a much smaller scope.

Fast forward 3 months again, and I now know the most useful development tool I have is an axe. A metaphorical axe, which I use to carve chunks out of my design to tighten the scope, and make it simpler. Every day I realize how big a task developing a game solo is. Some days I can’t believe I am still at it, and have gotten so much done. It’s simply because it’s something I truly love doing, and have a drive for. I’m a believer in you should do what your good at, what you enjoy, even if it is an incredibly hard slog at times. This is part of the indie spirit.

Over the 3 months of developing Inspire I have cut so much. Deadlines and milestones loom, I’ll get new influences, I’ll examine systems and realise they are too complicated, there’s no way I’ll get that implemented, or that it needs implementing. Scope is so important to game development. The beauty of all this, is while I was carving Inspire into a completely different game than I first planned, it still remains true to my high level goals and vision for it, and it’s always been a game I would love to play. If I’m going to make a game, it has to be something I enjoy, and make for good reason. If I’m going to change the game, it has to remain so.

With Inspire I want to try something different from traditional MMO games, but heavily influenced by existing ludology. Evolution, not revolution or innovation. Something that people will notice. My biggest fear in regards to this, is that players will be players, who whine that current game mechanics suck, but when something different comes along, they ignore it in favour of the safe and comfortable.

Being an indie developer allows me this freedom. It allows me to practice rapid prototyping and agile development. It means I can try new things in an instant, and change huge parts of design and business frequently. However the time has come when I need to release this, and the features have to be evaluated, finalized and locked in. I can’t really tighten my game much further anyway. It’s pretty much full steam on production now, I can design again when it’s time for the next episode.

Biggest regret about the development process? That I knew all this 3 months ago, I could have developed and launched the game in a month, and would have better finances than I do now. That’s life I guess, live and learn.

The Future of MMOs and Community

Massively Multiplayer Online Games have arrived at an interesting place. World of Warcraft is the 800lb gorilla which set new standards in polish and accessibility. It also set new standards in the Diku formula, and games competing in this market only evolve sideways. Lord of the Rings Online had few improvements and the strength of the brand was the biggest driver. Warhammer Online is in a similar position – it’s brand, quirky sense of humour and PvP from the ground up are it’s key features in the Diku sea. Monthly subscription fees dominate in this world.

On the next hand, we have Virtual Worlds, who often turn their nose up at being associated with ‘games’. Second Life, Entropia Universe and the like, are tied to real world currency, and have user expression and freedom as their main attractions. They want to stand out from the game industry which spawned them, and Second Life has certainly achieved that.

On yet another hand, we have the Asian market. A market saturated with games, and yet more continue to get made. A world with an entirely different culture to the western market. In Japan, the effeminate and ordinary are the hero, and the muscle bound action guy is the villain. With the huge number of game players in Asia, and their economy’s, micropayments or hourly rates are the primary means of revenue. The Grind and hundreds of levels are the primary gameplay elements.

On a much younger hand, we have casual / social / kid MMOs. Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin, Neopets are all very successful examples of this. Simple 2D graphics, often browser based worlds, there isn’t as much stuff to do in them as traditional MMORPGs. Instead they use their accessibility to draw people in, then leverage peoples inherent social interests. Web 2.0 principles are heavily used in their operation and design. The companies behind them use whatever revenue method suits their product, which is often micropayments.

Finally, we have the indie games. Companies who control their IP, and often risk everything. They have the freedom to be creative and innovative with gameplay, and try different things. A Tale in Desert and Puzzle Pirates are two successful examples of this. Indie games use whatever revenue means suit them, be it free, subscription, micropayments, box-sales, advertising, or other methods.

There are two elements I wish to discuss.

1. They all use the server-client model, for good reason. ‘The client is in the hands of the enemy’. As developers, you have control of the server and the database, and you guard it with your life.

2. All of the games are persistent. Some of them the world is persistent, others only your character. Some use a continuous world, others use zones, others use instanced mini-games or scenarios. All of them have a centralised database, a series of servers which run the worlds, and a client per player which simply shows the output from the servers.

I’m a big fan of this model, but my recent business remodel has made me use brain cells I haven’t since my University days. I’m talking about distributed computing. Now this model isn’t a complete solution, and should be used like just another tool. I’ve talked about this model in my new business model post.

Distributed computing means that you share the application load over multiple systems. For a traditional MMORPG, this would typically mean offloading a lot of the server calculations over the many clients which are joined. Now apart from the increased network load and potential delay, this may sound great. In doing so however, you lose control of the game. This is a problem in a continuous persistent world.

What about games which have a different model? Bang Howdy consists of a number of towns which act as Hubs, where you can shop, chat and meet others to play with. Actual gameplay takes place in instanced, private arenas where it’s just you and the few others you are playing with. Which brings me to community in these games.

Community is the glue for these games, it’s what sets them apart and makes them so special. Community has 2 main forms – outside the game, such as forums, social awareness, talking around the water cooler; and in the game, meeting, chatting, playing together etc. Some would argue that the most social type of game is one where everyone is in the one world, rather than different servers or shards. Where you can spontaneously meet people, or join up with others doing the same task as you. The flip side to this is that people are often uncomfortable playing with strangers, and have a limited amount of people they can know and interact with regularly. Which is where the need for guilds arose from. Given these constraints, a game with instances and minigames is just as successful socially, if not more so, providing more concentrated experiences with your friends.

Think about counterstrike, or other popular first person shooters. They take place in arenas with 4-64 players, a machine has to host the game, and the arena is an instanced scenario, with a discrete beginning, end and results. These results can even be put into a persistent ladder. One player can host the game as well as play, but often a dedicated server will be used. Combine this model with a MMO which uses discrete instances scenarios, and you have a good case for distributed computing.

Have a master server, which acts as a community hub. It’s secure, it stores the account and character databases. It hosts a community lobby which brings people together, where they can get in a group and play a game. From here, the server application for the game is hosted by the player which started the game. Players can see the games in the lobby, and join them. The lobby handled all the ip and port details behind the scenes, and its a seamless experience for the players. The game uses characters stored on the master server, and updates them with the results of the game.The main problems I see with this model is the computer the game host is using, and the DRM/anti-hacking measures that would need to be put in place.

A few years ago, I player on various NWN1 Persistent Worlds, over a period of a couple of years. They had communities of under 200 players, and everyone knew of each other, at least. You could truly become a well know hero or personality of the world. People play RPGs to be the hero, and this doesn’t translate well to MMORPGs. Things scale. Sure, you might be the best warrior in your guild, but you do the same quests as everyone else, and there’s a whole lot of other guilds and servers out there doing the same thing. If we want the hero status in our online games, we really need to reconsider the scale, scope and rules of the gameplay.

This goes for game development in general. Games are getting prohibitively expensive to make, publishers are the gatekeepers to games, and hold innovation hostage. Thankfully the indie scene is making a huge comeback, with the help of digital distribution. MMO developers really need to look at what they are trying to achieve. There’s nothing wrong with having a small team, with low overheads and a relatively small budget, creating a niche title with certain features, if the revenue from the smaller audience easily covers the development cost and is profitable for the company. Stop trying to make the next megahit, it’s an untenable position. I know there is a lure of making something that is really popular and successful, but even then that has the same problem as the game hero. World of Warcraft, you are not the biggest MMO community, and definitely no where near the largest online community.

It comes down to what goals you want to achieve as a developer, and a player.

Money Sinks

The Rampant Coyote has a post up entitled, ‘What am I going to do with all this money?‘. In it he looks at how computer games treat magical items and loot, compared to how P&P games and stories deal with them. MMORPGs are the worst offenders, with their very design based around a Pavlovian pellet dispensing system. Items have no long term meaning. They are discarded, sold, disenchanted as soon as a more powerful item is found. Is this a problem?

I say no, not if the game is honest and upfront about it. It is, however, a very lowest-common-denominator gamey method, which has little in common with history which spawned it. The soulbound concept is needed to support this system, but is detrimental to social bonds. This post is about money sinks though.

Players like to earn things, which is the most common game mechanic around. Inspire is no different, gaining stuff is part of all it’s mechanics. It does have a different implementation than the traditional MMORPG however.

Coyote has some suggestions:

The Store Sells Only Mundane Magic…
One option, especially in games with lots of randomized loot, is to make sure that the “earned” loot is always superior or less generic to what can be found for sale in the game world. The “store-bought” gear is only useful to replenish consumable (limited use) items, or to fill in gaps in the character’s equipment list. The problem with this is that very soon the player’s wealth vastly exceeds anything they could conceivably purchase, and so any ‘rewards’ that aren’t immediate and direct upgrades become useless to the player.

Upgrades “R” Us
Another option is to allow the player to upgrade a single item, rather than replacing it. This does an admirable job of helping simulate the heroic fantasy that fathered the entire genre. The problem with this is that once the player finds their prized weapon, the game master / designer can no longer reward them with a better weapon. Gandalf throws all other swords into the “for sale” bin, so he can upgrade Glamdring to shoot lighting bolts out of its crossguard and stuff. And once again, upgrading is kind of a mechanical, drama-less activity.

Upgrade II: The Quest For Loot
One thing I’ve experimented with Dice & Paper games is maintaining a “quest component” in the creation of magic items. Maybe the new armor – in addition to requiring a hefty upgrade cost – also requires a rare cockatrice feather or dragon scale (or both…) This – in theory – allows me the opportunity to make the new item a memorable event and make it feel “earned,” even though it remains an upgrade (and a money sink). Unfortunately, that’s harder to implement in a CRPG. Not unless half the game was designed around generating semi-random quests based on the player’s options.

Inspire doesn’t use any of these. 99% of items come from crafting, and there is no ’soulbound’ mechanic, allowing items to be freely traded. Resources physically drop to the ground to be collected. There are fewer items overall, with the emphasis on quality and utility, and the player’s ability rather than pure numbers.

The big problem here is still, what do players do with all their cash? Especially since currency is able to be bought with game credits. Some solutions I am considering:

• Repair Costs, everyones favorite mechanic.
• Crafting Costs
• Feat Training Costs

Not much so far, and some more will need to be added with play testing, as this is a weak part of my design. Without the players having something to save for, money will become meaningless. I’ll leave it here for now, but there will be more design discussion on this in the future.

More Startup Commandments

From Startupping Forums:

1. You will have at least one catastrophe every three months.
2. Outsource effectively, or be effectively outsourced.
3. Do you thrive on stress and ambiguity? You’d better.
4. The best way to get outside funding is to be successful already. Stupid but true. But you, cheapskate, don’t need money, right?
5. People will think your idea sucks. They’re even probably right. The only way to prove them wrong is to succeed.
6. A startup will require your complete attention and devotion. Thought your first love in High School was clingy? You can’t take out a restraining order on your startup.
7. Being an entrepreneur requires a healthy amount of ignorance. Note I did not say stupidity.
8. Your software sucks. So what. Everyone else’s does also, and re-architecting is the kiss of death for a startup. Startups are no place for architecture astronauts.
9. You do have a public API, right?
10. Abject Terror. Overwhelming Joy. Monstrous Greed. Embrace and harness these emotions you must.

Concept Art

I have a bit of a different approach for concept art when it comes to this project. I’m the main developer for Inspire, and don’t have the funding to do things properly. I have designed the game and business model to be something I can do by myself, which means a small scope and certain types of content.

Levels in Inspire are large structures floating in the sky. To cut building time, each level is made from a set of standard components or ‘prefabs’. When it comes to concept art, it’s mostly me scribbling and sketching in my design book, nothing official and not much that can really be shown. By the time anything comes to the point it’s ready to inform production, it’s more of a reference image to build from rather than pure concept art.

I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. I would love to have the funding and a team to be able to do concept art, but because I’m a lone developer I don’t need much art to portray my vision to anyone else. I also bootstrap and try to cut corners when I can, and so I don’t need anything to be drawn formally until I am ready to actually build it. Since drawing isn’t my strong point I’m also keeping the design of objects fairly simple.

I’m putting some of my ‘concept art’ out there because it goes towards points for the Dream Games competition. Not expecting much but it’s not a total loss.

15 Company Startup Tips

Startupping is a great new community for the entrepreneurs of this age.  Check it out if you have any interest in business or indie development.  Today from it comes 15 Startup tips, which are brilliant and an absolute must-read for anybody considering an idea.

1. Your idea isn’t new. Pick an idea; at least 50 other people have thought of it. Get over your stunning brilliance and realize that execution matters more.
2. Stealth startups suck. You’re not working on the Manhattan Project, Einstein. Get something out as quickly as possible and promote the hell out of it.
3. If you don’t have scaling problems, you’re not growing fast enough.
4. If you’re successful, people will try to take advantage of you. Hope that you’re in that position, and hope that you’re smart enough to not fall for it.
5. People will tell you they know more than you do. If that’s really the case, you shouldn’t be doing your startup.
6. Your competition will inflate their numbers. Take any startup traffic number and slash it in half. At least.
7. Perfection is the enemy of good enough. Leonardo could paint the Mona Lisa only once. You, Bob Ross, can push a bug release every 5 minutes because you were at least smart enough to do a web app.
8. The size of your startup is not a reflection of your manhood. More employees does not make you more of a man (or woman as the case may be).
9. You don’t need business development people. If you’re successful, companies will come to you. The deals will still be distractions and not worth doing, but at least you’re not spending any effort trying to get them.
10. You have to be wrong in the head to start a company. But we have all the fun.
11. Starting a company will teach you what it’s like to be a manic depressive. They, at least, can take medication.
12. Your startup isn’t succeeding? You have two options: go home with your tail between your legs or do something about it. What’s it going to be?
13. If you don’t pay attention to your competition, they will turn out to be geniuses and will crush you. If you do pay attention to them, they will turn out to be idiots and you will have wasted your time. Which would you prefer?
14. Startups are not a democracy. Want a democracy? Go run for class president, Bueller.
15. You’re doing a web app, right? This isn’t the 1980s. Your crummy, half-assed web app will still be more successful than your competitor’s most polished software application.

I’m going to try to apply these more to the Inspire project.

Down with Brown: A study in colour

With all the MMOs being announced lately, the first thing I do is check out the screenshots, as a quick way to get a feel of the game. Remember, first impressions count. All too often my first thought is, ‘Too Much Brown’. Now I don’t always mean brown specifically, but the choice in colour palette, contrast, saturation, lighting etc. Although in the case of most RPG’s, it is literally ‘too much brown’, as it seems to be the dominant medieval colour.

Game graphics don’t have to be the most cutting edge – indeed, indie games often emphasise gameplay over graphics. But they do need to be stylish, or cute, or endearing – something that makes the game pleasant on the eyes. This is what I am aiming for with Inspire. Bold, high saturation graphics, a ‘fun’ look and feel. Since I suck at describing what I want, here is a visual study in what’s right and wrong.

What’s Wrong. First, a disclaimer that these games can look beautiful, and there is a large market for muted, more realistic graphics. However, the style ages fast, and can look quite boring and drab at times. I’m playing for fun, and I want the world to reflect that. Here is a random selection from google.

Dark and Light

Vanguard

Age of Conan

The next lot of screenshots arn’t from MMOs, which begs the question, why can’t our MMOs look like this? I’ve taken all these images from my Inspiration folder. They represent the art direction I’d like to take, but given that I am using TGE for now, won’t completely achieve.

Ballance

Marble Blast Ultra

Silverfall

Not sure what this game is, if you know tell me.

And to finish, an obligatory World of Warcraft shot:

So to summarise: Game graphics can look awesome and fun.

Indie Inspire

MMO’s are the latest big thing, a lot of people are taking notice of this space right now, and a lot of money is being poured into it. It’s not just the big players developing either, indie developers having been quietly building similar games in the background for years also. I say similar, because MMO isn’t the right acronym. Most games arn’t massive when compared to World of Warcraft, Runescape, Habbo Hotel etc. Danc of Lost Garden refers to them as ‘Village Games’ in his article, A Game Business Model: Learning From Touring Bands:

Village games, on the other hand, excite me.

Here is a market niche where a passionate team with a bit of money put aside can carve out a viable, vibrant community that is insulated from outside competition. They can perfect a game over years of face-to-face interaction with their biggest fans. Most importantly, they can own their own destiny, be it success or failure. And to be honest, the odds aren’t bad.

What does this have to do with Inspire? I’m calling Inspire an MMO-Lite mainly because that’s a phrase most gamers will understand, and it gets more search hits. In truth, Inspire is a small community game, with a tighter focus on more meaningful interactions. It’s not going to get tens of thousands playing, and I don’t have the money to compete with anything that would, so why attempt to?

Inspire is an indie developed game. At the moment it’s just me, self funded running a bootstrap operation, contracting out to freelancers when need be. The scope and budget are small, increasing my chances of operating profitably faster. My current design motto is, how can it be made simpler, what can I cut out? I’m aiming small, for a tight and polished gameplay experience, with persistence and community layers on top.

Inspire is a casual game with no subscription fee, so players can feel free to drop in and play for as little or as long as they like. Revenue will be through buying credits or game items. My vision is for an arcade experience where you can play with your friends without having to jump through any hoops or grind first. There will be no experience points, and no traditional levels, or classes.

The big players in the MMO space won’t risk money on doing something different. I’ve got a lot less to lose, so why not try a game I’d like to play, and try a few new things while I’m at it.