52 Hertz Whale are 3 guys from Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. They were once working at the same local IT company and decided to create an indie game together. Inspired by titles like Limbo, Badland and Ridiculous Fishing, these developers tried to create something unique and gorgeous, and they got it. JELLIES!, a color-matching arcade game. “It has a great simple design, unique entertaining gameplay and awesome little wicked jellies”, says Mikhail Shagin, the co-founder and developer in 52 Hertz Whale, as he shares the story of the game.
Mingle Games is an independent game development studio with main focus on mobile gaming. Based in Prague, the capital of Czech Republic, the company was founded in 2012 by two experienced game developers Vladislav Spevák and Jiří Formánek, who worked for game companies as Disney Mobiles, Centauri Production, or Lonely Sock. Vladislav shares the story of developing the company’s third game, Dark Lands.
Before Dark Lands, Mingle games released two games: a physics-based logical-action game called Save The Birds and a hammer tossing game called Dwarven Hammer. While Save The Birds had some success with over 1.7 million downloads, Dwarven Hammer was pure failure. It was our good learning process though, where we put all the lessons and experience into Dark Lands. I am a programmer turned game designer and producer, while Jiri Formanek is still focusing mainly on programming. We hired Pavel Konfrst as artist to be part of a team.
After we failed with Dwarven Hammer (which was simple and quickly made), it was like a cold shower to wake up and stop doing things that we believe might have been popular, and instead focus on something that is a part of us and what we wanted to really play.
Creating Our Own Feel
We are all fans of fantasy as well as dark and horror themes, so we wanted to make something that would have unique look and artistic feeling, while not spending too many resources on complicated art. At the time, I was playing Limbo and was fascinated with the possibility to make a very strong atmosphere with just silhouettes. From that moment, I felt so inspired that I decided to also try to make a silhouette game, but with a different approach than Limbo. We also love Frank Miller as an artist, so we were inspired by his Sin City and 300!
I felt so inspired that I decided to also try to make a silhouette game, but with a different approach than Limbo.
We started designing the art style and felt it was the way to go. Pavel did a great job bringing all our ideas to life and also putting little details in it that matters. Finally, we believed we had what it takes to be different and still minimalistic with a noir feeling. As a big fan of old games like Another World and the first Prince of Persia, we wanted to make more complex movement so we chose to use skeletal animations instead of sprite, as this allowed us to make way more animations without a great loss of memory.
As I love to play runners, I was playing with an idea to twist the gameplay a little and bring in a fight mode to the game to make it a hack-and-slash runner. I found that games like Punch Quest have a nice fighting model inside, but wanted to make it little more tactical while still using full scale of movement such as slide, jump, double jump, etc. Gameplay was the biggest challenge in the end. We decided to use gestures for running, so a simple swipe up was set for jump and double jump, while swipe down was used to slide, just like in games such as Temple Run. Incorporating a fighting system to this was the most difficult. We tried to use gestures over enemies to slash them (think Fruit Ninja), but that produced chaos in the control and was mixing with other gestures. We even tried virtual buttons for attack and block, but again, it didn’t feel good to mix virtual buttons with gestures. After many fails, testing, and changing of gameplay, we ended up with the simple control we have now: swipe up to jump, swipe down to slide, tap to attack, and two fingers hold to block. It just felt natural, and people we have tested it with finally liked it.
It just felt natural, and people we have tested it with finally liked it.
Finding Funding
The issue with all development processes is always budget. We wanted to create a high-quality game, but time was ticking, so we could not spend too much time on it. We knew that creating another fast game would just result in failure, and we could expect to close the company right after that. Then came AppCampus, and everything good happened from there.
We applied for funding from the AppCampus program, and we were lucky enough to be selected! This was something that we needed, as we believed we had a great idea in Dark Lands and while we put all our knowledge and skills into its creation, we also knew we needed extra time to make it stand out from the rest. They helped us not only with funding, but also mentoring and education that helped us spend way more time on the game and brought in new ideas. We had to release Dark Lands exclusively for Windows Phone for period of three months, so we focused on this part first.
We believed we had a great idea in Dark Lands.
Feature Hell and the Release
As we knew from our past projects, it is very easy to slip into feature hell and get killed by it. So we have been very strict with Dark Lands, making only the core gameplay, a limited amount of bosses and enemies, and two worlds. We wanted to release the game to see if our ideas and our game were what people actually wanted. It is always easy to think that your game is great, but the truth is, only the players will decide if the game is good or not. So we took all the necessary features we believed were needed to make the game feel complete and made those as perfect as we could as fast as possible to release it. Quality is always more important than quantity.
Quality is always more important than quantity.
After a few extra months of development (six months total), we felt we finally had a core game that was ready to release. We self-published on Windows Phone (WP), and we had just a small marketing budget. The game went live on December 12, 2013 just before Slush 2013 in Helsinki. Before release, we were so scared of releasing another failure that we spoke loudly about closing the company after its release. But luckily, the game gained popularity right away. With support from the press as well as promotional help from Nokia and Microsoft we reached over 1,600,000 downloads to the date and became the most successful project of AppCampus. We reached the Top 1 Paid App spot in most of the countries, and also the Top 10 Free spot (we have been setting the game free for promotion). With thanks to all AppCampus team, namely: Paolo Borella, Timo Mustonen (Nokia), Ron Ellington, and rest of their hard working team, we had our breakthrough in mobile gaming.
What’s Next
We’ve been lucky that our game has gained mass popularity in a mostly organic way, so we didn’t have to spend money on promotion. But we released just the core game, and people wanted more. We felt it was time to bring in all the extra features we wanted to do: a level based mode, multiplayer, and new art, enemies, bosses, worlds, etc. Also, we needed to port the game to iOS and Android, so that after the three months WP exclusivity, we can release the game there as well. As the game has had great success on WP, we have had offers from multiple world class publishers for Dark Lands. We chose to go with Bulkypix, as their offer sounded fair, and we’ve known them for a long time. Now we have finished the port, and soon we will bring the game to the iOS, followed by Android, while we carry on updating WP.
We released just the core game, and people wanted more.
As our company is very young, we learned that only hard work and dedication is the key to success. It is necessary to analyze heavily every step and decision to make things happen. Everything we do, we ask yourself why we want to do it, why it is important, and how that can bring interest to the game. It is also important to try it on other people before it is decided for full development. Prototyping is the key and throw ideas away as soon as they doesn’t look as perfect in reality as they do on paper. Not only have we been learning business by our mistakes and failures, but we are also learning how to be more effective, how to not get overworked, and how to not lose time on things that are not important. All this also comes with a large amount of stress and starting a game company is definitely not for everyone, so I would not recommend it if that person doesn’t feel strong urge to do it and is ready to fail and to learn from failure and keep improving. It is a tough business, but it is a beautiful and worthy effort. We are very proud of Dark Lands and how we were able to cooperate to bring it to success and we are so happy to have positive feedback from players. It is so pleasant to read all the mail fans send us. Having the game rating over 4.6 is fantastic and unexpected. But we are only at the beginning of the journey and many hard obstacles are in front of us. We have won this battle, but the war is not over yet.
Mingle Games is preparing lots of updates to content, gameplay and features to Dark Lands, with the iOS and Android version coming soon. Keep in touch with them on Facebook and Twitter.
MildMania is a Turkey-based, self-funded game studio founded in May 2013 by Burkay Ozdemir and Emre Canbazoglu. Their first title Darklings barely made it in the end of November 2013. Making the game was “especially hard in Turkey, where the gaming industry is very small,” Emre recalls. Darklings is a mobile game with “truthfully” unique gameplay where light meets darkness like in epic tales. You control Lum, the face of light, to beat darkness and bring the light back to the Universe. Emre gives us the tale of making the game and beyond.
The Beginning: A Poster of a Games Incubator
It all started with Burkay seeing a poster of the only known (at the end of 2010) incubation centre focused mainly on games. He gathered two of his local friends to apply there. With that team, we submitted a project called Icons, a social board game totally unrelated to Darklings. That same year, Burkay got accepted to the Game Technologies Master Program, which I was also studying. For our term project, we submitted a game similar to the Harry Potter PC games (where you cast spells by drawing), and the Z-Type HTML5 game (where you write letters to blow up asteroids), with the difference that our game was mobile and perfectly adapted for touch screens.
Our team started to look for the right tools by joining all our experiences and getting help from friends
But before we could go on working on Icons in our first months with the new team at the incubation centre, there were some precautions to take care of. First of all, no one in the team had game development experience other than a couple of educational projects which were far from polished enough to be commercial games. So our team started to work on finding the right tools for the process by joining all our experiences and getting help from friends: professors at the program, fellow game development teams, and industry experts from the incubation center.
Later on, we put the project submitted to the centre on hold, and started working on a draw-to-kill game, since it felt like it could be finished in few months, under a temporary name of Monstiez.
A Break-Up for the Better
The ready prototype of Monstiez drew the attention of Chillingo and the Startup Turkey 2012 event. Our team was selected as one of the 15 best startups in Turkey, and we got a chance to talk to a lot of investors. Everything seemed to be going well. After we started working with Chillingo, we got a lot of advice on how to make the game better, and also changed the style to black and white - since Limbo and Contre Jour became pretty popular, getting sales and awards at that time.
We changed the style to black and white - since Limbo and Contre Jour became pretty popular, getting sales and awards at that time.
However, after some time, the development process got stuck, because everyone around thought that the game was too monotonous and shallow. As the whole design started to change too frequently, moving forward became frustrating. That and some other things brought the team to the verge of splitting. We weren’t able to work together anymore, and our points of view seemed too different. After long discussions, the team came to a total disagreement, and the break-up was inevitable. The designer decided to leave and take all of his visuals.
However, Burkay and I didn’t give up on the game. We were the ones keeping faith in the idea from the beginning, believing it had the potential of making a huge difference in the market. We tried to learn from our mistakes and not follow the (seemingly) wrong path again. One last time, we started to design the game, thinking everything twice to make sure the new edition was much better.
We didn’t give up on the game. We were the ones keeping faith in the idea from the beginning
We found Juan Pablo Casini for art and visual design and David Stanton for music and sound. What is more, we founded MildMania LLC and worked with Contrast8 to create our corporate identity. As a result, decisions were made much faster than before. It was all exhausting, but we were finally enjoying what we were doing, just like in the beginning.
Teamwork is Business, Friendship and a Relationship with Girlfriend/Boyfriend
One big mistake we made was sticking too much to certain people and the number of team members, and believing issues can be solved and we could go on working as the same team without any problems. Since we started with three people, we had the feeling we should still finish the game with three people.
The game might have been released earlier if all decisions were made right in the beginning
Splitting up is not easy for anyone. But looking back at it now, we see things going much better: from external relationships, connections, important or trivial decisions, and people we have worked with, to satisfaction we get from the results of our work. We understood we could have released the game much sooner and better-planned if we decided to break up and make it with our current designers earlier.
Every company should find out whether they’re able to get along with their partners and work together seamlessly.
This is how we learned that every company should find out whether they’re able to get along with their partners and work together seamlessly, without making every small thing a problem. Any individual should ask themselves if his/her vision or expectations is the same as his/her partners’. This is not just business or friendship, it’s a bit of both, and very similar to the relationship with your girl/boyfriend. 🙂
How to Protect Your Game From Getting Lost in the AppStore
For nine months, we worked with three designers, one audio designer, and two programmers. Three people in this team were freelancers we had been working with for a long time, which meant a relationship good enough to (if necessary) move in an office together and go on working from scratch: from corporate identity and new names to the game visuals. The main reason behind redesigning was not just the break-up, but ultimately the quality: we saw it needs to be much higher than before. We’ve worked with our team members and other people from the industry to modify and change the game to meet the expectations of AppStore users.
We tried to learn from our mistakes and not follow the wrong path again.
While the cost of eight months of redesigning might seem too much for a casual game, we couldn’t let it get lost in the ocean of thousands of apps after sacrificing so much to the project.
Testing Results May Lead to Complete Redesigning
We believe that we made Darklings more enjoyable by adding a lot of content (environment setups, tactical boss fights, objectives and achievements), customization options, and modifying the gameplay mechanics. Testing involved hundreds of people, including development, design, and business managers throughout the world. We performed all tests using TestFlight and beta test subscriptions that were made available after the teaser was released. We invited all people who showed interest to the game, and also our friends from Turkey, who are both game developers and gamers. Hundreds of people from lots of countries have contributed, and we also added an in-game feedback receiver along with some analytics to get all data possible. Darklings right now is nothing like the game we had been working on for a year and a half. All collected feedback helped us fix a lot of bugs.
UI redesigned from scratch: we made a unique fight for each boss
For instance, the UI happened not to work well with mobile phones - some buttons were too small, and players got bored from boss fights. So the latter was redesigned from scratch: we made a unique fight for each boss.
Instead of Getting Sucked into a Public Argument, We Tried to Focus on the Product
We planned the launch date for the 27th of November. After such a long time of waiting and development, we just couldn’t wait to see Darklings in the AppStore, and were very excited to get our first app published, to see “Ready For Sale” instead of test builds. 🙂
We couldn’t wait to see Darklings in the AppStore
But publishers were cautious towards us, considering the project too risky because our team split up before the game was published, and there was a blaming campaign held both publicly and privately by our former designer who was utterly speculating twisted stories and unfair things to stain the name of the game and company. We didn’t really react: instead of getting sucked into a public argument, we tried to focus on the product. Being sure that almost all stories from our old designer were lies, we could go to court and fight for our rights, but that would take years to accomplish. So, instead, we focused and got a different reward: the launch day and the day after. Both were amazing! Darklings was featured in US and Canada AppStore! Forum threads were being started by other people, great reviews came from media, and we received tons of support mails we instantly answered. Watching the Darklings spread over the world was a part of our dream, coming true at long last!
The Brand of Darklings Started Building Itself
Unexpectedly, self-publishing brought us to the new seas. Just a week before the game got to the AppStore, we met with Ajay Chadha, the founder of B27, and agreed to join efforts with them. It wasn’t a publishing deal, more like that of business development and marketing for US and Europe. It helped us self-publish the way we wanted.
Our brand started building up by itself
With additional help from Ajay, we started some really good relationships in the industry, getting recognized for both the quality of our game and our friendship with B27. Our brand started building up by itself. As of now, we’ve made an agreement with Unity Tech Japan and Kakehashi Games for Japanese local publishing, Joygame - for Turkey and MENA publishing, and we’re still negotiating about moving on to the Korean, Chinese, and other markets. We’re also trying to raise some money to grow the team and work on parallel projects without losing quality, and this is where our good relations with investors from the whole world can be useful.
The amount of work has nearly doubled after launch. We’ve discovered that what you do afterwards also matters in making the product successful. A whole different world is there behind the gates of development, and we’re trying to adapt ourselves to it while having a lot of fun.
A whole different world is there behind the gates of development
The business side of the industry, making relations, finding local publishers, giving interviews, getting reviews from press, seeing the game loved by industry veterans, planning the business a year ahead to make the game bigger and stronger – all this is new to us, since we were so focused on development before! Even though the creation process was a total headache, I believe we have proven ourselves that if we managed to enter this industry, we’ll make even better products in the future.
The amount of work has nearly doubled after the launch of Darklings
Right now, we are about to announce Season 2 of Darklings, which could actually be Darklings 2. But we decided to make it as an update because the game is only three months old. On the other hand – it’s something different to the core! This means we’re not going to throw this game to the attic, and will make sure that Darklings is fulfilling its potential.
Darklings is now available in the iOS AppStore. It’s going to be released on Google Play, Samsung Apps, Amazon, LeapMotion and for PC & Mac. The MildMania team says they have more surprises in their pocket, including exclusive releases and new titles, which they will announce soon!
Previously the Managing Editor and Creative Director for The World of Chinese, Andy Deemer was recruited to work on The Stormglass Protocol. He shares the story of its development with Gamesauce.
The Birth of The Stormglass Protocol
Like many things, The Stormglass Protocol was born of secrecy, borders, and government lies.
I was running a propaganda magazine for the Chinese government in Beijing when I received a strange call from India. One of the founders of GameSpot — that celebrated and oft-disparaged website — had moved to India’s tech capital, Bangalore, and had a fantastic idea: a series of games and books about a secret school for junior secret agents — a Hogwarts for spies, perhaps — filled with gripping adventures, devious criminals, and terribly fun puzzles. The GameSpot founder was looking for someone creative to helm the operation. And he thought of me.
I had absolutely no experience in producing games or writing novels, but I’d worked alongside him at GameSpot for eight incredible years. My recent film, a chicken-zombie musical called Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, had been hailed by The New York Times as “perfect.” My photo-novella, Pyongyang Too, was about to be released in France. And Bon Appetit had just publicly mocked my recipe for Philadelphia Cheese Steak Ice Cream. So I must have been an attractive choice.
Oh, and the GameSpot founder was also my older brother. That may have sealed the deal.
And so, over a series of international calls, he convinced me to quit working for the Chinese government and outsource myself to India. After all, I’ve always wanted to make a game. And write a book. And live in India. I got to do all three.
Some of the Stormglass 1.0 team
The Original Failure
I arrived in Bangalore to an office filled with employees, computers, and even a resident stray dog: a playful mongrel with no name, but called “O.D.”, short for Office Dog. A team of twenty was already coding away, and within hours, I was whipping out storylines and adventures for the game. Some ideas were “Two San Francisco kids have disappeared — help track their kidnappers!”, “The drinking water at a New York high school has been polluted — find the culprits!”, or even “Catch a magician/confidence man in his lies!”
Video Shoot for Stormglass 1.0
We spent a year perfecting The Stormglass Protocol. It would be web- and subscription-based. In-game videos were shot on RED in a London studio using actors I’d hired over the web, with me directing over a flickery Skype connection. A fitness instructor in Boston developed a series of exercise assignments for kids, a Chinese factory manufactured secret agent Stormglass pens with hidden compartments and UV flashlights, and a Hugo award-winning novelist in Berkeley, Tim Pratt, wrote the first draft of a novel. All development was done in Bangalore. This was a truly international production.
Workdays were 10 hours, sprints were two weeks, and we documented in Jira, coded in Javascript, and tested with a crew of 8-12 year old kids — Stormglass agents — from a local international school. The kids- sorry, agents assured us this was the greatest game they’d ever played, more addictive than Skyrim or GTA. They adored the storyline and in review sessions, they gave Stormglass five stars out of five.
After a year of development, we knew the game was ready for the prime time. On November 6th, 2012, we pushed it live.
And there was nothing. Silence. Utter, painful silence.
Finally, with sick stomachs, we shut the Amazon servers down.
Sure, we could drive users to the site with Google AdWords and Facebook campaigns, but they never stayed long. When the ads were turned off, our analytics flatlined. We spent six months trying to fix gameplay, tinkering with the backend, modifying the UI, tweaking the stories. But it soon became clear we weren’t going to succeed. Days became more disheartened. Members of the team floated away to other companies and more secure jobs. Finally, with sick stomachs, we shut the Amazon servers down.
But this isn’t the postmortem for that original version of The Stormglass Protocol. This is the postmortem for Stormglass Version 2.0. And that didn’t fail.
The Return of Stormglass
The company had six months of operating cash remaining, and I had six months on my Indian residence visa and my apartment’s lease. All three ended on November 1st, 2013. That trifecta of timing seemed to give us just enough space to produce a great game from scratch, but we didn’t want to repeat the same mistakes we’d already made. So we started by brainstorming an entirely new game. Time was short, pressure was on, but we spent two full and very valuable days in an off-site. How can we reinvent Stormglass? I broke the day into individual brainstorms, paired brainstorms, group brainstorms, idea-generation challenges, and absurd physical exercises. The walls became plastered in layers of poster-pages, each filled with scribbled notes, golden gems, and some really truly terrible ideas. Yet we kept coming back to one seed: an iOS room escape game in fully-immersive 3D. Something that — as far as we knew — had never been done before.
I broke the day into individual brainstorms, paired brainstorms, group brainstorms, idea-generation challenges, and absurd physical exercises.
It would be filled with the same dark humor as my other work. We’d feature puzzles parodying Gilbert & George, Magritte, and even one level mimicking Yayoi Kusama’s infinity rooms (This was mere months before her real infinity rooms led to six-hour queues in New York’s snowy streets). In-game ads would promote Fracking (“It’s Like Hugging the Earth”), Affordable Laser Lobotomies, and — of course — Cheese Steak Ice Cream. There’d be Monty Python quotes, celebrations of classic b-movies like They Live and The Toxic Avenger, and subtle references to North Korea and Kim Jong Il.
However, we only had six months to complete it. To start with, I rearranged the team. Only one of us had ever worked in iOS before. Bijoy, a smiley, mild-mannered junior developer, was also the charismatic lead singer of one of India’s leading Christian rock bands, Cross Legacy. He’d spend all day coding, and then ride his motorbike across town to play a stadium show to tens of thousands of cheering fans. He became the dev lead, Javascript-diving into Unity.
Meiding and Bijoy hard at work
For 3D, we were a little luckier. Meiding and Ebey both had experience. Meiding started out like every other man in his family, as a career soldier in the Indian army. But one day, Meiding decided to put down his gun and pick up Maya. I’d found him on India’s job site Naukri, where I was inviting potential employees to model and texture a vista of auto-rickshaws. Meiding took the challenge, and gave me something that looked like a photo. We hired him immediately. On the original Stormglass, he was a junior designer, but I loved his vision. I put him in charge of the game’s “evil prison-laboratory-office” aesthetics. Meanwhile, Ebey was just a kid, appearing out of nowhere. He was, and still is, a full-time student in 3D and filmmaking, but heard about Stormglass and sent me an unsolicited Hollywood-level demo reel. We didn’t need him, but we couldn’t let him go. So he agreed to juggle full-time work and school. I’m still unclear how he managed it.
Every week, we’d hold all-hands brainstorming sessions to establish room themes and puzzle-types: a game show, a dream room, a museum condemning Thomas Edison’s cruel business practices! And while the dev team was building the first two levels, and the 3D team was building the third and fourth levels, I’d be writing the descriptions and stories for the fifth and sixth levels. Almost every two-week sprint followed that process.
One room idea was a museum condemning Thomas Edison’s cruel business practices!
Learning From the Past
To avoid the largest mistake we’d made with Stormglass 1.0, we didn’t develop for a year and then release a polished product. Instead, we pushed out a rough product with only three basic levels as early as we could. We didn’t have much time — less than six months now — and we needed to know what real users thought, immediately.
Fortunately, they loved it.
We kept a close eye on iTunes reviews, though, and modified the game accordingly. These were our focus groups. When users complained about the navigation — a valid complaint — we redesigned it and pushed out a new release. The next comment was about the puzzles being “too easy”, so we ramped up the difficulty.
I was still working on my novel, editing and rewriting whenever I had time.
This release-review loop quickly became circular. Fans realized new releases addressed their reviews, and updated their reviews with revised feedback. Two-star reviews became five-star reviews. “Too easy” became “Wow.” And most new feedback became three repeated words: build more rooms. We were building as fast as we could with two developers, two modelers, two modeling assistants, a designer and me! Still, we didn’t want the level of immersion — or the quality of the game — to suffer. We wanted Stormglass to have the dark laughs of Limbo, the obsessive confusion of The Room, and the snark of Infocom’s classic Hitchhiker’s Guide. Also, I was still working on my novel, editing and rewriting whenever I had time.
The Final Push
Our November 1st deadline was rapidly approaching. It wasn’t just a goal; it was the last day I could stay in my apartment and in the country. And, perhaps even more important, it was the last day we could afford to pay the team, and still give severance packages. With each release, and each sprint, I found myself cutting so that we could meet our deadline. Puzzles were removed. Characters were eliminated. Easter eggs I’d so loved when they were written, axed. But most of it made it in. Through long nights and dedication to the game, the team managed to fit almost everything in.
And, with one week to spare, we pushed. And the reviews started to appear….
“A definite must-have.” - JustAdventure.com
“A room escape puzzle game like no other.★★★★½” - 148Apps.com
“Rich graphics, an immersive storyline, and puzzles that will have you turned upside down.” - iDownloadBlog.com
“The Stormglass Protocol… pulls the genre out of its stationary roots.” - JayIsGames.com
And, at precisely the same time, the reviews of the novel started to appear. And they, too, were great…
“Like a Bond adventure for kids… undeniably entertaining.” - Kirkus
“A brilliant twist on the classic theme of villainous world domination… a captivating read…★★★★★” - ForeWord Clarion Reviews
“Action-packed and fast-paced… barrels along with a cheerful intensity and no shortage of middle-grade Bond-style adventure.” - Publishers Weekly
The Stormglass 2.0 Team
But time had run out. We said goodbye, the team and I. I didn’t know if or when I’d be back in India, but every member of the Stormglass Protocol 2.0 team — Bijoy, Dharma, Ebey, Krishna, Meiding, Uday, Varun, and Yagnesh — was a crucial part of the game.
In the Bangalore airport, with my visa expiring in just three hours, I checked in for my 2 AM flight back to San Francisco. Repatriating myself, I filled out the customs forms with a smile. I was, after all, using my hidden compartment and UV flashlight Stormglass pen. My spy pen. And my mission, of course, was accomplished.
The Stormglass Protocol is on iPad, and you can experience The Stormglass Protocol for yourself here. You can also purchase the Stormglass Novel here. You can see more of Andy’s traveling adventures on his blog and his weird eats on The Huffington Post.
Living as an indie developer for more than five years and currently doing a weekly podcast with other indie developers, George Zarkua has created a summary of his experience in QA mode.
Working as an Indie
I believe the life of an independent developer is the choice for people who understand that in a company, they do not get what indie work could give them. He may be a loner who feels that he can grow stronger, can release a more independent product, make more money, or make better use of his time. After separating from a company, he gets all the freedoms and limitations that are inherent for indie.
The first thing you have to think about, unfortunately, is time and money. You must honestly ask yourself how much time you can share with your PC. Then multiply this figure by two. At this time, we need some minimum cash cushion, big enough to cover sickness (paid health insurance and gyms are not included in an indie life package), fun (very few people can be productive in a state of depression), and contingencies. This amount is the budget of your game. Of course, these issues are only for a full-time indie. If you are developing parallel to your main work, then it is simply impossible to calculate time.
You must honestly ask yourself how much time you can share with your PC.
When you becoming an indie, you become free. There is the freedom to choose a convenient schedule, programs, and partners. But almost immediately, it becomes apparent that indies can’t compete with the big companies. They must either create a studio with suitable rules or otherwise cheat. You are competing with studios that specialize in having spent a lot of time creating animation and content, and with a lot of people who are doing essentially the same job. In my opinion, indies should surprise the competition with ideas, unique style, and atmosphere. The ability to look to the future is the best quality for the companies; the ability to surprise is the best quality for an indie.
Making a Game
Experience helps avoid errors that you will understand only while making games.
Certainly, an indie’s first game could be a great game (Beginner’s Luck), but that does not guarantee that it will hit the top. However, the experience provides a broader view on the development of a variety of tools, working schedule, and a sense of the market. Experience helps avoid errors that you will understand only while making games. For example, you might forget to add a button of turning on sound and run into the crowd of disgruntled users who will write angry reviews and put a minus wherever possible. Or make an active area for a button on the screen, and not the button entirely. Even if your game has super cool music, particularly harmful players will not forgive you for these blunders. Welcome to the Internet! But through the experience of making ten buttons correctly, the eleventh will be done automatically. This will help you avoid a hit from a foolish fail and polishes your creation.
It is possible to gain experience without making games, but for me, this attempt turned into a failure. A long time ago, I found a great resource with a stupendous number of articles for indies. There was an incredible collection of articles on game design, development, sales as a whole, free graphics and music, and more. Almost everything was very interesting, and I read through it, trying to apply all in one game. But the negative of such articles is that they are designed for people who have some experience, and therefore were not dismantling the problematic issues that may arise for beginners. That’s because the layers are important in the experience. Layer by layer, we create an understanding of development. Reading articles about behaviorism in MMO without experience is like having a second-grader read Kafka.
In my opinion, the first game should be small and test-like. Even if you have a super idea for a super game, you still have no budget, nor the sense of the market and the audience. Postpone that idea for a while, and take up a small test project instead. When working on a small game, it is now incredibly easy to make a prototype of the game. In a worst case scenario, it could take three days.
Often, there is a sense to do it all from scratch as we learn a new technique of painting or read a book about the architecture of the code. Small games are good so that we have time to finish the game before we come to destroyable thoughts. And even if you decide to remake the game or after the remarks on the unprecedented lag of it even on the most powerful computers, you don’t rewrite as much. However, a small game does not have time to change ideologically. In any game, even the great games, it is important to keep the idea, the rod of the game. We can add features, change the appearance, but the idea of it should remain unchanged.
If you want new ideas to the game, or a second head, which will criticize you, look for a partner.
Increasing the quality of the game and leaving the level of “small games”, you will be competing with the big companies and studios. If you start to feel that you can not make a competitive game - look for an assistant. The type of the assistant should depend on your confidence in the game. If you feel the game itself is lame or you poorly see the idea, it is better to find a partner. If you want new ideas to the game, or a second head, which will criticize you, look for a partner. The only difference between an assistant and a partner is that the partner is involved in the development of the game, not just doing the job, but that difference is huge. Choosing a partner for a long project is like choosing a partner for a flight into space. If something goes wrong after six months of work, replacing will be very expensive.
Surviving as an Indie
I think an indie’s significance is hard to overestimate. Now is the era of indie developers. Indie games are no longer for hipsters. Steam introduced an indie games section where you can buy them on a par with the games from bigger campaigns. Apple Store gives indie games the same privileges as games of big companies. Sony and Microsoft are also looking for indie cooperation. The market does not reject that talent. There are sites for people looking for a direct link with the customer, such as Kickstarter, as well as conferences and meetings.
Now is the era of indie developers.
The issue of earnings is always painful. Each platform has their own rules and profits. There is practically no limit. For example, Minecraft earned about 100 million for 2012. But not all situations are so smooth. According to the well-known statistics of mobile applications, the top 25 developers received half of all profits in 2012. 80 percent of developers get three percent profit. 19 percent of apps earn $24k, and for the 80 percent, $300. Even if your mobile game will earn 100k on iOS, 30 percent of it you give Apple, 30 percent to your publishers, and then you have to divide the rest with your partner and tax.(source: The Game Bakers)
To start receiving more than you would have received in office and still do it all the time, you have to be strategic. I’ve learned to think about games in terms of categories. The first category are the games with new ideas, mechanics, and games with the new features of the devices. These are usually hits. Next on the list are quality sequels of old hits, complete with a bunch of fans and games that can be headed by a certain niche of the market. Finally, there are the games that cover some deficiencies of hits with new features. After that are the clones and trash.
To succeed, you must either make a game out of the first category (like Minecraft and Journey), or make one or two games from the second category (like Shank 2, the successful continuation of the epic Shank, and Limbo), or make lots of games from the third category. Surprisingly, some studios are ready to cope with it. For example, Berzerk Studio, a group of six people, provides great games month after month, almost always on the old mechanics. They have over 20 games. Berzerk Ball 2 went for 100k , and their new one went for 50k, so we can assume that the guys with such strategies have success.
I’ve learned to think about games in terms of categories.
However, I think everything in a game shouldn’t be unique. What should be exclusive is the idea and style. Freedom of game elements is a vise, and there is the possibility of being misunderstood. The human brain is based on past experience, so to enhance the audience’s understanding of the game, you should use images with recognizable patterns. Choose a technique for illustrations, so that it strengthens the idea inherent in the game and matches the audience. If you want to reach the maximum audience, then you need to learn from movies/cartoons with a maximum audience (Shrek, Pirates of the Caribbean, Cut the Rope). Use recognizable patterns and be moderately predictable. In the case of niche games, rules are dictated by the specific audience. Use references for the drawing and screenshots of successful games for the understanding of the principles of drawing, but do not copy.
Games are remembered for their distinctive features: Ideas, graphics, music, and easter eggs. In Alien Anarchy, I did a lot of content, but almost all the comments were about the Easter eggs from the movies that I left. When the player is done with the game, he remembers what can be shared with others: a tough situation, a high score, and funny stories.
Use recognizable patterns and be moderately predictable.
Food for Thought
Indies should remember that an end product is expected. Without a good product, no one cares how much effort and energy was put into the game. The game is above the developer; this is important. If you want everyone to know your story, then place it in the game. Independent developers are asking questions and answers themselves, rather than just doing tasks. This gives them the opportunity to show off their own look. But be prepared for the fact that your opinion is not shared by all, and your game will not be the second Minecraft .
Before you finish the game, it is best to show it to a test group - your friends, family, and colleagues. Do not ask them what needs to be changed in the game. This is the number one mistake. Never ask them. You need to watch how they play. Just watch.
Creating a successful game is consistently making the right decisions, from the selection of the engine and the platform to the last pixel. The secret to being a successful indie is to do what you like. Otherwise, what is the sense of been indie? Make your strong brands stronger and new games cooler.
Currently, George is working on a mobile version of his strong brand, Alien Anarchy, Jim’s Dream, and the new version of Dream Symphony, which will be available to play at Casual Connect Kyiv 2013‘s Indie Prize Showcase.
