Game Geek Speak

(Yes, the titillating title of this post is meant to incite passion to get your attention. Please continue reading.)

I mentioned a little bit ago that Unity3d is releasing the authoring IDE for Windows with version 2.5. I read in the forums that they would release 2.5 no later than GDC, which is in March.

Unity is tempting me to completely ditch Flash. But there’s one factor making that a bad decision for the moment. Although I think eventually I will make games in Unity exclusively (assuming it all works out as dreamily as it seems like it will), Flash can’t be abandoned yet.

What’s so great about Flash?

Adoption. Everyone and their granny’s dairy goat has Flash installed. Adoption by itself, though, isn’t what makes adoption so great. Its really about…

…distribution. I can get a game in front of hundreds of thousands of eyeballs in a week using Flash. A lot of folks would think, “Gee, maybe you could make a few hundred dollars from ads. That’s not so great. Jason is stupid, and I hate him.” And then they’d go back and continue working on their C++ downloadable game. But I beg to differ.

It’s not about the ad money. It’s the traffic, ya silly persons! Why would I care about a few hundred dollars of ad money when I can get ten thousand visitors to my website each week or month? And I don’t mean putting Google ads on the site and earning from that, either. No, no, no. That’s still small potatoes.

I’m talking about harnessing the traffic machine that is Flash games and then upselling to those visitors with bigger ticket items, like stand alone games or (much more likely in my case) getting them interested in games that utilize microtransactions and/or subscription services. Now you’re talking about significant income.

Make money with ads? Pfft! I use MochiAds because I like their version control, easy encryption and especially their distribution network that sends games out to millions of people for me!

There are some other neat things about Flash, but the real reason I use it is because of distribution and other services that have risen up around it.

There’s this cool idea of sponsorship, where developers are in control, and portals pay us to show their ad to drive traffic back to them. (Did anyone notice these portals are driving traffic back to their sites? See! It’s about traffic, not ad money!)

The thing I like about this sponsorship arrangement is that it is in diametric opposition to how things work with portals that sell downloadable games. There, developers are like slaves who beg for any tiny piece of profit their own work can earn. Portals call the shots, make the money, and generally drive the industry into the ground to the point that now it’s going to be flailing around and coughing up blood for a long time until (hopefully) it finally dies some day. It’s just like the retail games business, where publishers lead developers around by the nose, take all the earnings, and drive the whole industry into the ground in the process.

(I have a lot of friends in the downloadable casual games industry, and I’m not speaking here about anyone in particular. I’m speaking about the industry and the patterns of business that are currently dominant. I certainly don’t mean that I want my casual games friends to lose their jobs! I just think that industry needs to and will evolve away from how it currently operates.)

Wow. Sorry, I was digressing passionately there for a minute.

So now here comes Unity.

Unity lacks that distribution power, and although technically it is a dream come true, the real dream come true is when that technical capability is coupled with distribution and reach on par with Flash. Now that is going to be a sight to see.

I hope that existing portals and services based around Flash will integrate Unity support. Then we can keep the existing structures in place and add Unity games among the Flash games. Oh, let me dream, would ya?!

Now. All that having been said… I am not convinced that adoption itself is a problem for Unity. I think any game that’s good enough will cause players to install the Unity plugin without hesitation. I don’t mean something like a Simon Says clone or some other shovelware game made in three days–it’ll have to be a good game.

Because of Unity’s appeal, which will make convincing players to get the plugin easy, I will start to develop with Unity as soon as I get my shaking-with-excitement hands on a copy. Building more games can only mean more adoption and, eventually, more distribution. Distribution = earnings = I make more games without a day job. Yuussssss!!1!

There are many paths to success as a small development studio. One tried and true is to create games in C++ and offer them as downloads that a user installs and plays. I did that for a long time (well, about three or four years). This turns out to be a really difficult thing to do successfully.

Let me qualify that and say that running a business in any industry is not easy. But trying to get your game noticed, then downloaded to someone’s computer without problems, then installed successfully, then appreciated enough to get that person to your online sales page is really, really, really difficult without some marketing behind it.

You could go guerrilla and try to build a community around the game (but first you have to get some users to start that process), or you could throw money at it (which is what the big companies do). Some folks partner with publishers/distributors (I did that once) for their marketing muscle, but you lose a lot of control and–more importantly–you lose access to your own customers, and the publisher/distributor usually ends up dominating the branding.

Or, you could rethink how you approach things entirely. That’s what I’ve done over the last year or so.

It’s probably fairly obvious that I will be focusing on web games from now on. No more download/install games for me! Here are some major differences from the old way I was doing things:

• No download/install/uninstall barrier – play right in the browser, optionally loading/streaming assets on demand rather than in one up-front, huge download
• Much easier to get exposure – a decentralized network of small/large sites come to me and spread my game all over the place for free and without my involvement
• Plenty of lateral sales channels – ads, sponsorships, licensing, etc
• All games are becoming more web integrated and multi-platform (pc, mobile phone, set top box, console) – Flash is web-ready and is gaining or now has reach across those platforms

There are downsides, but they are minor compared to the gains, so I’m not going to labor that other than to acknowledge that there are some tradeoffs, like with anything.

Something else important to note is that the lateral sales channels either don’t exist or are far less accepted when you have a downloadable game. That’s really important, because having multiple income streams is one way to build resilience into your product and business.

I am also going to experiment with microtransaction sales as a central part of my strategy. You simply can’t make much money on ads alone, and sponsorships don’t always come through, but all of these things combined will begin to add up very quickly.

The key to getting someone to pay for a Flash game, though, is that the quality and value have to be there, just like a downloadable game that people will pay for. It simply won’t work for shovelware. So the next phase of my technology is to integrate my website backend with a game frontend which can facilitate user authentication and even an item mall right in my games.

With all this in mind, I got around to doing a redesign of the Creatrix Games website.

Here’s to a great 2009 and a new business model launch! *clinks champagne glass*

Yay!

So here’s what I’ve been slaving away on, trying to talk about it without talking about it. Well, the cat’s outta the bag.

I made this game to enter into the MochiAds Walk of Fame contest. It has a moderate amount of polish, but the level design was rushed and so is a lot weaker than I’d like (but the boss fight definitely is fun). Well, I learned a lot in the process, at least, even if I don’t win anything.

UPDATE 2: It seems the MochiCrypt wrapper was causing some problems with my Flex app, but all seems well now. Please let me know if you have any issues starting the game after the ad shows.

UPDATE: We’ve had a few reports of the game not working beyond the ad screen. If you get this, please let me know. I’d like to get an idea of how widespread this is and what common factors might contribute to it. Please mention your OS and web browser. Thanks!

The Pain, the Agony, the Fun

This has possibly been one of the hardest months of my life. I’ve suffered and toiled and shunned my family, the holidays, and my personal hygiene to get this game out the door. In a month. That still flabbergasts me. How did I make this in a single month?! I don’t even know. But it’s a month that I can’t really remember much about. Yeah, I didn’t sleep or eat very often.

Of course, a large chunk of the core engine was already completed. Things like the component system, game states, rendering pipeline, and other nuts and bolts. But there was no editor at all, and there was no game logic at all, no art, no levels, no plan beyond an old design doc that seems like it can be made into a nice little trilogy of games.

What we have so far is not the best it could be. I mean, we cranked out these levels in a matter of a few days, literally. But we’ll be updating it over time, building, and eventually it’s going to be pretty dang cool. And then we’ll make another one!

The Team

I recruited my very talented wife to help me build levels, and without her help I would never have hit the deadline or had this version out by now. *bows in gratitude and wonderment* Jamie rules!!! No, wait.

My thanks is endless to her. For most levels, I laid out the major elements, then she went along and tirelessly and always without complaining added details and her own creative touches. And a few of the levels coming up are her creations entirely. She quickly learned to use the editor fluently, despite its clunky nature. We’ve had a good time working on it together.

And of course, how could we leave out the man behind the visuals? Greg is really excessively good at this kind of art, so the game looks good even though he cranked out the stuff in maybe two days. Three cheers for Greg and his pixels of beauty!!!

The Future

Now that my blood pressure is starting to come back to normal, I can relax a little (catch up on Heroes, play someone else’s games, actually talk to my kids!) and spend more time and thought on the level progression and narrative. There is a story there, but I didn’t have any time to convey it, really. Updates will fix that, though.

I really, really like this kind of development. Make a little game, release, update, repeat. Now if I can earn some money on this, that would be icing on the cake.

I’ll post more later, but for now I have to sleep for about 14 hours straight in order to catch up. Ta-ta!