A couple of months ago at Full Indie I recorded a bunch of indies saying funny/cliché things for fun.

This is the resulting video (contains a couple of f-bombs just in case you are offended by that sort of thing).

Enjoy!

Got any more classic indie clichés? Please post in the comments.

image by mrtopp

The three main conferences I go to each year are GDC (San Francisco), Casual Connect (Seattle), PAX Dev + PAX (Seattle).

Someone on a forum I frequent asked what the benefits are, and so I thought I’d list what I specifically find useful about them. Your mileage may vary:

Press/Publishers/Distributors

- Meeting press so you can build personal relationship (Friend of mine gets taken to dinner by well-known press. They always write up his news.)
- Showing game demos to press (Another friend of mine came to GDC the first time this year and got tons of press mentions including a GameSpot video.)
- Meeting new publishers/distributors.
- Strengthening relationships with existing publishers/distributors so they remember you when you ask them to feature your games.
- Initiating or making deals.
- Getting your brand out there. (I wear a Grey Alien Games T-shirt and obviously have lots of business cards)

Other Devs

- Interesting educational/motivational talks with useful takeaways.
- Helps keep your finger on the pulse with regards to what’s happening in the industry as a whole and within your niche.
- Discussing business/marketing strategies and sales figures with other indies who are willing to share.
- Meeting new indies (and people you’ve only spoken to online) and strengthening relationships with indies. Apart from the fact that hanging with indies is enjoyable to me, sometimes it can result in future alliances, or key bits of useful info, or introductions to people etc.
- Checking out the IGF games in one place and meeting the devs. Plus getting a feel for what sort of game wins awards.

Misc Cool Stuff

- Getting motivated to get on with your work when you get back.
- Helping you to decide on new directions to take your business in and give you new ideas about what to do with your old IP.
- A break from your normal routine, and in my case, better weather than at home too!
- Being in another country/city.
- Parties, free food/booze, music.
- Hanging with Notch (or insert game dev celebrity of your choice)

There’s probably more but that’s a good start.

What reasons have I missed that you go to conferences for?

Recently there’s been a meme going round that shows how people’s jobs aren’t what other people think they are and how they are boring or suck. So I thought I’d do my own version about being indie!

Because my picture viewer plugin bugs out when you zoom in, you might want to try this link instead. If you want to spread it, please use this yfrog link instead to save on my bandwidth, thanks!

Another point I’m making with the image that is less obvious is that I’m honest with myself about what my work is and most of my friends are indies, so they know what being indie is like. Also my family has seen me doing indie stuff for years and so has a pretty good idea of what I do. I like to be open about what I do because constructing facades takes too much energy and they are likely to break one day anyway.

Of course, maybe the reality of being indie is not quite as the image implies 100% of the time (like when I’m doing tax returns) But hell, it is awesome quite a lot of the time, and that’s good enough for me!

image by Lorrie McClanahan

I just did some research and found a bunch of neat commonly used keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop. Of course there are tons more that I’ll may learn over time, but already these ones are speeding up my work and teaching me cool new tricks.

Please let me know your favourite shortcuts!

Ctrl + Alt + Shift + K – Show Keyboard Commands

Zoom/View

H – Hand (or use Spacebar to pan around)
Z – Zoom tool
Spacebar – Pan
Ctrl + Spacebar – Temporary Zoom tool
F – Toggle full screen
TAB – Toggle panel visibilities
Ctrl + 0 – Fit to screen
Ctrl + Alt + 0 – Zoom to actual pixels (1:1)
Ctrl + keypad +/- – Zoom in/out
Ctrl + R – Toggle rulers
Ctrl + H – Show/hide guidelines/grid etc.

Movement/Selection

Ctrl + Click when Move tool is active – Select layer under cursor
Ctrl + Drag when a tool is selected – Move a layer
V – Move
M – Marquee (use Shift to make square selections. Also shift to add to selection and Alt to subtract from selection. Alt to centre on start point. Space to move whilst drawing selection.)
L – Lasso
Ctrl + A – Select All
Ctrl + D – Deselect
Ctrl + Shift + I – Invert selection
Ctrl + T – Free transform
Ctrl + Click layer thumbnail – Selects non-transparent pixels in layer
Move tool + Alt – Copies selection/layer
1->0 Tool opacity
Shift + 1->0 Tool flow
1->0 while layer selected – Layer opacity
Ctrl + H – Hide marching ants
Shift whilst moving – Constrain to vert or horiz movement
Ctrl + Shift + ; – Toggle snap
Ctrl + ; – Toggle guidelines
Ctrl + ‘ – Toggle grid

Tools

A – Selection tools (for path editing)
T – Text (Hold Ctrl to move text whilst typing)
B – Brush (Hold shift to cycle through brush tools. Works for other multi-tools as well)
E – Eraser
C – Crop Tool
I – Dropper
S – Stamp tool
Q – Quick mask
X – Swap foreground & background color
Alt + Backspace – Fill with foreground color
Ctrl + Backspace – Fill with background color
[] – Brush Size
Ctrl + Tab – Next Point on Curves Adjustment
Keypad Enter or Ctrl + Enter – End text entry

Layers

Ctrl + J – Create new layer from selected one (or selection, or current layer if nothing selected)
Ctrl + E – Merge down
Ctrl + G – Group layers
Ctrl + I (while layer mask selected) – Invert layer mask
Ctrl + Shift + N – New Layer
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + N – New Layer No Dialog
Ctrl + Shift + C – Copy Merged
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E – Stamp Visible

image by zugaldia

Over the years I’ve made quite a few casual games, and played absolutely tons of casual, indie, facebook and mainstream games. As I result I’ve seen plenty of tutorials ranging from non-existent to fantastic. Getting your tutorial right is a fine art and will greatly affect the sales of your game if you are using the Try before Buy model that most casual game portals use. Even if you aren’t using that model, you still want everyone who plays your game to really get into it and tell their friends how great it is – so a good tutorial is vital and not something that should be tacked on at the last minute (which of course it often is due to time/budget constraints – something that I’ve been guilty of myself).

Here are some tips to get you started. Of course every game is different and yours may need a different approach, but hopefully these general guidelines should help:

1: Make a List

List out all the unique game mechanics/features/content in your game.

2: Mark the Important Features

Mark the important items on your list that you want to introduce with a tutorial element of some kind. You may not want to introduce everything if you want players to discover some things naturally.

3: Order the List

Order the list appropriately, which means a) in difficulty AND b) in coolness (to make new players see the epic possibilities of the game).

If you are doing a demo, figure out what to show in the demo and what to leave for the full version (perhaps >50% of features in demo, but not >50% of levels i.e. the full version is padded with more levels using the features in clever ways).

4: Construct Tutorial Levels

Construct (or use existing levels) to show off the mechanics in your chosen order.

5: Have some non-tutorial levels

Make sure there are some levels that don’t introduce anything new but get players to practice previously learned stuff, perhaps in a combined manner. This way it won’t feel like there’s a constant barrage of tutorial levels. Also it helps to pad/pace the demo a little bit.

6: Avoid Modal Windows

Try to avoid modal tutorial dialogs (where you have to read the text + press OK to clear) wherever possible. Sometimes it’s really not possible to avoid a couple of these.

7: Use Popups

Use popups on screen with an animated arrow pointing to the item of interest. These will disappear when the user performs the action.

Alternatively/additionally consider tutorials in the game world that you can walk past and read, and structure the game levels so that you can’t proceed without solving the simple tutorial, and be sure to repeat the lesson in a slightly different way (without tutorial text) soon after so it’s not forgotten.

8: Use Dynamic Popups

Some popups will be at the start of the level or trigger when a normal event/sequence of actions occurs (works better in sandbox-type games). Others will be for special edge cases where the player may have done something wrong (or way cool) and you want to inform them of that.

Don’t forget to point to things like goals or picked up items on the HUD that you want to draw the player’s attention to.

9: Edit the Text

Wield the knife on tutorial text. Make it as small as possible whilst retaining the core message (leave out extra details for skilled players to find out themselves). I’ve seen some very long and wordy tutorial text before than could have been reduced to just a few words.

If English is not your first language and the game is being sold on English sites, then get someone English (who is good with writing) to edit it for you.

10: Use Image/Animations

Try to add images/animations to important tutorial popups that show the player what they are trying to do (picture paints a thousand words…)

11: Ability to turn off tutorial

Decide if you want an option to turn off the tutorial. (Some players may turn it off, then fail to understand the game and quit).

By default the tutorial should repeat every time you play the same levels so that players who didn’t get it and want to can re-read and try again.

Also, if you don’t have a profile management system (unique profile for each player), new players will probably want to see the tutorial so you’ll have to leave it on by default. Profiles are better though.

12: Test it and fix it

Test it. Use Metrics (time level completion, track failures/retries, track when they give up/stop playing). Also watch players.

Look for where players have forgotten simple early lessons later on in the game, and where later lessons are too confusing, or they screw up the sequence that you want them to follow. Then make changes to the tutorial and test again.

Do you have any more tips to add? Please comment!

image by Steve Wampler

Can you make money on XBLIG? This question has been on my mind for over a year now and recently I’ve been researching it a lot, so I thought I’d share my findings with you.

I love XBLIG, it has some really awesome games on it for hardly any money. Also XNA is bliss to program in. I’d dearly love it to be a successful platform, but unfortunately I’m not so sure it is…

Here are some things I’ve discovered:

- You most likely won’t make any money at all, not even chump change. Many games make < $100, no kidding. But many are bad. Better games can make several hundred dollars, and the best can make a few thousand dollars (based on recent stats on the Creators Club Forums).
- To make a few thousand dollars you have to make really stand out excellent games that get in the top 50 download or rated charts, or on the IGN picks (People have not done much external advertising yet except for the Winter Uprising thing. Although there are a few review sites mentioning XBLIG games. Marketing may well be vital to making money on the platform.)
- So if you make a few thousand dollars from a great game (say $5-$10 over quite a few months), that means you need to make a game in a month and pay absolute minimum for content (graphics/music etc.) to make it worthwhile in my opinion. Plus it has to be awesome and maybe have a silly hook to get downloads and convert well. That is NOT an easy task at all. Probably <1% of people will manage it.
- Some of the best devs who are making the most money are considering quitting XBLIG (according to their blogs). Not a good sign.
- Sure that Zombie game made a ton of money, and some of the early games have done OK, but now there's a huge volume of less that stellar titles on it which probably puts a lot of people off even bothering to download anything. Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that it's open and anyone can make a game and get it on a console, cool! But it's crappy if you want to make your game stand out and make money.
- Another problem is eyeballs. The Indie games are a bit hidden away on the Game Marketplace and not many people check them out. Some really great games only get 10K-20K downloads during the launch period (and plenty get <1000 downloads), and if they convert high (10%-20%, which is entirely possible) that might be OK. But that is a fraction of the total Xbox users. Casual games will EASILY get 10x (and even 100x) that many downloads on a portal (but will convert at a lower %)
- Personally I'm going to make some games for XBLIG for fun (early in 2011) and because I like XNA. It will be a good learning exercise. But it may be smart of me to think more about iPad, Facebook, and Download games later in 2011.

I hope that things will change it will become a very successful platform, but I'm not sure how or when that could happen.

Have more info? Perhaps you disagree? Please let me know.

Just read an article on Inside Social Games, and there was a great quote in it by Curt Bererton, the CEO and co-founder of social game developer ZipZapPlay, about building an awesome team that I thought was worth sharing. I’ve seen first-hand what an awesome team can do and also the opposite, so I agree with this statement wholeheartedly (I’ve bolded a key statement):

“Our philosophy is that we aren’t looking for prima donnas or drama queens, just smart and cool people who love games and get things done. Turns out this combination is pretty hard to find. Probably the most significant factor in our success is the people I work with: my co-founder Mathilde and our awesome team of great people. Having fun, highly skilled people without egos working together means you can move quickly without getting bogged down in drama or politics. Speed is the probably the most important factor in the success in almost any business, and this is doubly true in social games. I’m just happy to go to work every day and make great games happen.”

What experience do you have of working in or building an awesome team?

I’ve spent a *long* time analysing Facebook games, working out what makes the good ones successful, and I’ve finally condensed all that knowledge into an awesome next-gen Facebook Game 2.0.

Behold my new Facebook Game that will shove Zynga off the top spot: Progress Ville!

Stay tuned for more incredible insights.

Photo by ~Oryctes~

Someone just emailed me and told me that they want to follow their dream and make an RPG game. They are competent at programming, very knowledgeable of RPGs, and believe that they have what it takes to make an RPG game. They have also begun saving up money for the art and are prepared to live frugally to get the game done.

They wanted to know what sort of money they’d have to spend and what time frame it would take. Here’s my reply…

What “stage” are you at?

Firstly I checked our their site and I can see good examples of programming and a long history of programming, but no actual finished games (although their email does talk about making some games for fun).

My main worry when anyone talks about making an RPG is that it’s a BIG undertaking and that they should finish some smaller projects first.

Check out my 6 steps to massive game development success. I’d say you need to be on stage 4 (made a commercial game), but preferably stage 5 (successful commercial game) before undertaking an RPG if you want to make a return on your investment. If it’s just for the experience and “the dream”, then stage 3 (made a complete free game) should be OK.

Make an Art List

I’m not an expert on the cost of art for games because from what I’ve seen it varies wildly in cost and quality, but I do know first hand that if you spend more and get a good result, you game will most likely make more revenue.

The important thing to do is build up a list of what graphics your RPG would need, but before you can do that you need to decide on the scope of the game and what time you can put into making it (i.e. are you full-time or part-time?).

My advice would be to keep the scope down, so don’t make a massive RPG, make something smaller that you can handle in less than a year in order to get it out the door. For example I played a really great game on XB Live Indie Games today called Soulcaster, check it out. It’s an action game more than an RPG but it has simple graphics and didn’t last that long but was great fun. The pixel art wouldn’t have been that expensive and in fact the programmer did it himself according to the credits. I bought the game, it was worth the $3 or so for sure. I bet it didn’t take him a year (looks like 6 months or so from the blog), and now he can use the profit to make a second better game, and I’ll buy it.

So once the scope is decided, make a full-art list. This list could take you several days if you do it properly and of course is subject to change. Of course, to make an art list you really should have made design doc first, and that can take weeks.

Get some quotes

Now that you have an art list you can go about getting some quotes. The artists will no doubt ask a bunch of questions which will help you tighten up the art list. These quotes will give you a healthy reality check on how much it’ll take to make the game, and you may wish to descope at that point

2D or 3D

According to the email the game is going to be isometric. Therefore you are better off doing the characters in a 3D program so that once they are created you can then rotate and display them at all the angles required. If you add character animations you don’t want the artist to be drawing them all again at each different angles, you just want to re-render at all the different angles. However finding someone fast and competent in 3D on a budget is going to be a challenge as most of them will already be working for someone else if they are any good. I don’t have enough experience with 3D artist rates and how long it takes to offer any cost advice (but I’m hoping readers can help out) because I’ve only used 2D graphics for my games – although My Tribe (Facebook game I worked on) uses 3D people and it did take a long time to create the relatively small number of animated models, but there may have been some learning curve.

Alternatively you could try the old-skool Zelda semi-overhead view and do that with pixel art which may be less expensive. Still the characters need to be drawn at all 4 angles though, but it’s way easier to do than isometric characters.

Art Style Guide

Some of the games I’ve worked on have had medium 5 figure art budgets and have taken a professional artist around 10 months (others have had more artists and cost lots more) – and that’s just for 2D casual games.

An RPG does need a lot of content, but one thing that may help is to decide how high you want to set the art bar at the beginning. You can do this by creating an art style guide with the artist. Then stick to that so that the artist doesn’t spend overly long on some graphics and not long enough on other ones. Another good reason for an art style guide is if you loose the artist, the new one can check out the style guide to hopefully keep things consistent.

Also get the artist to do work in clear batches that you can evaluate, get right, and then plug into the game. Plus worst case, if they leave, you’ll hopefully have a complete batch.

Spiderweb Software is famous for great RPGs that don’t look that good, but the gameplay rules and they have a huge following. Remember that when making the art style guide.

Who to Hire?

You may want to hire more than one artist. For example, someone to do all the in-game graphics (or just the characters and someone else does the scenery), and someone to do all the title screens, dialogs and UI. Remember there’s a lot more to a game than just the in-game graphics, all that dialog stuff (especially in an RPG) takes an age to make.

You’ll get the best results by hiring a full-time professional who you pay partially upfront and partially on completion. Everything else is a compromise based on your budget. If you try to pay the professional just at the end, they may not do the work or may even stop working on the project – this is even more likely if they are hobbyist and part-time (always check out their track record). You might be able to pay someone half now and the rest from royalties. If you’ve made and shipped games before they should have the faith to work with you otherwise it may be harder to convince someone to team up with you for half-pay and/or royalties unless they are really very dedicated and/or want to prove themselves

Conclusion

OK, I’ve rambled a bit but I hope that I’ve generated some points for further examination. Also check out: How I sourced the art and music for my games.

If any readers have any further advice, please help out and post it. Many thanks in advance!

Photo by 3rd Wheel

How do you get from here to there, where: here = dream about massive game success, and there = massive game success?

They try to teach this at video game design schools, but I will give you some hints that I have learned from my experience. Well there are 6 steps as I see it:

1) Learn to program. Hopefully in a language conducive to game programming!

2) Fiddle around making incomplete games and engine code. This is where you get better at applying programming and begin to learn about game design.

3) Make a complete free game. Many people never reach this stage. Making a 100% complete game (even a small one) is not easy and takes a lot of staying power.

4) Make a commercial game. This is a complete game that is commercially viable that you sell and actually make money from. Many people never reach this stage after stage 3.

5) Make a successful commercial game. I added a word, but oh it’s an important word. Almost everyone reaching stage 4 will not have made a game that makes any decent money, and so many people give in at that stage. The ones that carry on may have to make several games, honing their craft (game design AND marketing), before they reach stage 5.

6) Make a massively successful game. Once you hit stage 5, stage 6 can be achieved by further improving yours skills, investing money, getting a lucky break etc. It is possible, but only a few developers will ever achieve this final accolade.

I’m at stage 5.5 Stage 5 has been done a few times, and now I’m part of a team working on stage 6 which I believe is inevitable based on everyone’s skill and the financial backing we have. (We recently released a popular Facebook game called My Tribe that is now scaling rapidly. It’s very exciting to be part of it).

Think of these stages as belts in a martial art. Stage 5 is your black belt, but Stage 6 is becoming the master. To progress through the stages needs regular hard work, determination, and skill. Wimping out at Stage 2 or 3 because it hurts or you are tired won’t get you a black belt.

Which stage are you at?