Month: September 2010

Olivier made me think about the things that make a game get out of the pack, with some sort of passive marketing as I call that.

Minecraft comes from Sweden and if there’s something consistent from North Europe is that indie game developers know how to talk to people and stand out with their game, meaning by the execution and/or theme. From Petri Purho who constantly pushes prototypes with perfect-matching music and sfxs –that adds a LOT to the polishing- to Erik Svedang and his very personal vision of visuals and themes, to the dudes from Secret Exit (Zen Bound’s fame) and their physic-based gameplay to Cactus etc

You’re the same. Your ideas are not better. But be consistent and different.

It’s something I really pay attention to because I’ve always been attracted to everything different and the good thing about it for a product is that it serves as a true and sincere marketing –if done right-, which is pretty much the only one that can work especially with carefully crafted products like computer games.

If you look at the output from North Europe you can see that even if there’s no “marketing campaign”, games have a lot of good things in common.

• A good sounding, attractive and “making sense” name: I know it’s kind of weird but think about it: before even play or see a game, you often hear or read about it. It has to be attractive, it has to feel natural, it has to be special. Kometen, Blueberry Garden, Zen Bound. Sounds like classics, like Mario or Sonic. Minecraft has been the result of a brainstorming on irc and people came up with this name which I find great because it feels like it always has been around. It feels like a huge classic thanks to the craft part (World of War…). It doesn’t feel uncomfortable like Tidalis, it doesn’t sound too generic ala Alien Breed… It’s important.
• A clear, consistent AudioVisual view of it: I still don’t understand how something that obvious is still an issue with gamedev peeps but let’s say it another time: there must be something going on between the visuals and the audio, something must happen between them, something that sparkles some kind of magic. Like Bioshock or Killer7 or the eternal Mario to YouHaveToBurnTheRope. The AudioVisual sandwich is wrong. The AudioVisual sauce is good. Always been the case.
• Near-perfect execution: never had any problem with enjoyable Petri’s prototypes. Any game that fucks up my computer is really not welcome and despite that it’s hard to get to the non-crash state for small games, it’s required. It’s not about technical excellence jerk off, it’s about respect to the player, the buyer.
• All of that must fit with a gameplay or a mix of gameplay. That’s a pretty big question because there are so many solutions! I see Minecraft as a really good example of that: the 8bits 3D representation stands out and makes the first person view (attractive feature for me) an original one, it fits the old school RPG part (not that much an attractive feature for me) and talks to the old school Japanese RPG crowd so hard. The 8bits 3D adds some originality with the physics of the world which attracts YouTube viewers… I have hard times to believe that the developer didn’t think a little bit about all that. Either way, it works because it attracts different people and keeps them around the game. And because of the very low tech, adding new content is simplified to the max and not that limited (remember, limitation helps innovation). That’s a big achievement and it all comes down to a smart mix of things that are pretty standard (first-person, rpg, 8bits).

So all of that is embedded in the game development, it’s not on the side or later, it’s now, in the process of building a game, from the start. These points are not that much about the game or you but about the relationship with the player, about attracting him and make him play. Not in a casino way of course :-)

Anyway the game that does all that well then stands out by itself, even before being actually played. Whatever the first contact you have with the game, hearing about it, reading about it, watching it or listening to it, It is already exciting. and dear game developers that is not like an option or a plus. It’s a requirement.

That’s marketing, that’s PR embedded in the game development. That’s what we need and way too often lack in the US and France on small projects. You might argue “Wait, that’s what AAA games do, we’re indie and stuff ,we can’t do that!”.

I don’t care who does it or how “indie” it is, it’s just required to stand out and make some bucks for what I see… That’s the needed “find its way” part.

Ultimately, ship your game too. Fez did it all right but there’s one more thing to be careful of: being on the right time. In a world of over-tutorialized and rigid-like-a-stick games, Minecraft’s freedom and randomness are also part of its appeal and success. That was a good time to appear. For Polytron’s game it’s difficult to say now…

You certainly have heard of Minecraft. The game is in alpha, it’s made by one main developer with the help of some people.

As a description, it’s a world-building game mixed with a rpg system through a first person view. The world is huge and randomized.

The world is mine

The website is telling us nothing special, the YouTube video just makes you think “what the hell is this shit”.

And yet after about a year of development Minecraft racks up 250 000$-a-day of sales via Paypal. Yeah. I can’t fucking imagine that either but I’m just so happy for him, Markus Persson.

Rock, Paper Shotgun has a Minecraft diary (1 2 3 4 5) and it’s just fascinating. You can see how much a deep gameplay combined with consistent mechanics and freedom to the player is more addictive than crack.

But what really cheers me up with Minecraft’s success is that it kicks off pre-conceived ideas with hard facts:

• The personal computer is awesome. Nothing like that would have been possible on a closed platform like consoles are. And there’s a ton of free PC games out there, there’s billions of free flash games. Minecraft just didn’t care and made it through nonetheless.
• There is no such thing as a target market in games (and overall in the entertainment business, it’s been made up). Build your game with a strong vision and the market will be here, whoever they are, little girls, gay nerds, Irak vets. It doesn’t matter.
• The best Technical mantra: Minecraft works on any PC of the last five years finger in the nose (WoW anyone?). It’s a Java game. Works anywhere and beyond.
• Visually interesting and quite original while being the most rudimentary ever (8bits 3D).
• Single player is important. 
• The only channel of marketing/PR has been word of mouth. Word of mouth made this man with his little team and his Java game millionaire. Read that twice and try to find any product in the world that makes people really wealthy without them spending an insane amount of money to make that happen. I don’t know one.

Lessons learned:

• Indie game developers are concerned about getting attention for their games. But it seems that if your game is original and deep (and really, this is the hardest part here) it will find its way. Remember, Minecraft is not even finished yet! The thing is we see the market the wrong way, we see it as traditional publishing sees it: you need to make a lot of noise so that a large part of people are hearing about your product and eventually a share of them are going to buy the game. With word of mouth over the internet, it doesn’t work this way: it ramps up with people aggregating and buying from anywhere in the world, silently. It’s a discrete process, totally the opposite of what marketing/PR are doing these days: being obnoxiously in your face all the time, screaming. Trying to sell an indie game this way is not going to work. Never.
• The insane amount of resources used in games for visuals and 3D is a waste. Focus on your gameplay, more and more and again. Open your game to people early and build what they want too. Nothing better than real world beta test. I mean, we can’t stress that enough.
• Minecraft’s business model is neat: play for free in your browser, pay for the premium version that makes you able to download a client. It’s kind of scary to go this way but it doesn’t stop people to buy a copy at 10euros. As of today, 27,27% of registered users have bought the game. That’s just insane. On XBLA if the rate of players buying a game goes over 10% developers jizz in their pants. Point is: in a direct relationship like that, trust and don’t screw your users. They will do the same to you. They will buy your game. They will talk about it. They will be more fan of your game than you ever will.
• The power of communities. Reddit, a news website funnier than Digg was in 2005 mixed with an extraordinary powerful community ala 4chan (without the nsfw tag) played a big role in Minecraft’s success. Don’t go to them to sell your stuff you moron! Just focus on your game and if it’s good enough, a community, somewhere, is going to take action and spread the word. It worked well for Minecraft, the one-man Java game from Sweden. And it’s the case with every success with digital distribution and indie games.

So while people are wondering about the 3DS CPU or how the Bioshock Infinite “gameplay-rollercoaster-without-AI-lol” video is amazing, while the mobile market looks like an awful clusterfuck as the Facebook game thing, a dude from Sweden shows us that you can make some “substantial” money today with a solid Java game for browsers and PCs.

Jesus fucking Christ. Now that’s something.

I read a lot of comments about Apple’s policies and how they don’t differ from consoles manufacturers policies and how we should be ok with them because we didn’t say anything since the NES.

Well, I believe that:

• Apple’s devices are not game focused devices. They’re now claiming that it always has been the case, you know, Apple’s classic rewriting of events. Their devices are mobile computers where any software can be made and sold, even stupid ones like fart apps. The software ecosystem is wild and large like the desktop computer market. Developers always have been free to do whatever they want in an environment like that (windows/linux/osx/symbian you name it). It generates innovation. So these policies are a big step back (same with Windows Phone 7).
• Consoles are more about 25 years old and they had two advantages over computers: the gamepad and the living room. For some reason gamepads only became common on computers around 2000 and they are still tied to consoles. Computers are more and more in the living room but it’s still early. So Nintendo Sega Sony Microsoft console dictatorship over developers has been ok since 85-86.

Why do we comply nowadays even with Apple who should not do that? Besides having a game specifically thought for an input you can’t find anywhere else (Wiimote, touchscreen), which is the case for a minority of games, it’s only for lousy reasons. Gamedev peeps grew up with dreams of making their own game on the obviously awesome next Nintendo console or next Sony station or because they started on their beloved old ass Apple II, they’re doing iPhone stuff. It’s a fanboy thing. It’s  mostly a non-business made decision, sadly.

Never have been a fan of them…Lefty thing?

But  with the explosion of budgets game developers increasingly didn’t really like to work with Nintendo/Microsoft/Sony. Dealing with expensive dev kits, verifications, approvals, delays and people having absolute power over the work of a team is unproductive. Who wants to spend thousands of dollars on hardware to develop a game for a console, with a smiling manufacturer pushing your game release for the last month of the quarter or not pushing it enough in the store because it would cannibalize their product? Months, years of hard work to witness that kind of shit? Thanks but no thanks.

Even worse, today if you are a third-party developer and want to make money –at least in the classic AAA business- you have to do it multi-platform which is basically, like making a game for computers, with different configurations… Add the dictatorship hassle. To be successful on a console today is an impossible task (look at how publishers just bleed money like crazy despite using huge marketing campaign for their games). It’s ridiculous.

Now in 2010, if you’re thinking without emotions from your childhood, the platform of choice is the classic Personal Computer, like it or not. Because you have 250 millions of these sold each year. Multi-core and hundreds of stream processors, gigs of RAM and more and more similar inter-connection and architecture (laptop to TV connection as easy as a console). Digital distribution. Link sharing and its virality via emails and boards. Because game developers can use whatever the fuck they want to build a game, can use any topic and let their minds explore ideas without fearing that it’s going to be rejected by some stupid and arbitrary organization or committee. Mind you, that’s critical to make a good game or at least, get a good start at it.

So there.