My Game of the Year, 2011

30 hours.
I have played this game for 30 hours.
How is this even possible?

Not only have I played The Binding of Isaac for 30 hours, I have beaten mom exactly once, and by beaten mom I mean defeated the heart, not just her foot/hand/eyes. My stats are pathetic, and yet I keep returning to this game, over and over, never getting bored or overly frustrated. I have had playthroughs where I get exactly one key, but I press onward and still manage to make it a good 3 or 4 levels in before dying. No matter what, I always feel like I am making progress while the game becomes more and more challenging and my character continues to look more and more fucked up as a reward for progression.

Few games have the potential to be played in short spurts of 5 minutes but then last 2 or 3 hours. That is certainly an achievement for a game that was made in such a short amount of time as TBoI was.

I started and beat a lot of games this year. I played through Assassin's Creed 1-Brotherhood, and am currently playing Revelations, but they don't beat out Binding of Isaac. I played through both Batman games, and they don't beat out Binding of Isaac. Minecraft's gotten boring. Bastion was incredible but doesn't have nearly the replay value that Isaac has. I could go on, but really, in the end, this was my Game of the Year.

So suck it, Kotaku, it's not that hard to choose a game of the year, just ignore the discs and look through your downloads.

Multi-Camera Google+ Hangouts

This was an idea I had a while back. Since I have my main computer's webcam in front of me, and my laptop's webcam to the side of me, could I run a 2-camera setup in Google+ Hangouts? The answer was yes, but it took some doing. Now I'm going to share my secrets with you!

Step 1: Setup the Hangout. This is the easy part. In G+, click the Start a Hangout button in the right-hand sidebar.

It's not completely necessary, but on the start screen for hangouts, you can click Hangouts with Extras. I prefer using the Extras version of hangouts myself, because it offers desktop sharing functionality, which allows the people you're hanging out with to view your desktop. I've used this for showing off the current builds of my games, but you can use it for whatever you'd like, be it teaching or sharing video, etc.

Step 2: Once you are in the hangout, copy the URL at the top and email it to yourself.

It'll look something like this. Make sure to copy the whole thing, even the part I've pixelated out. Alternatively, if you are setting up a public hangout, you don't need to copy this at all, and you'll see why in a second.

Step 3a: Open up your email on your other computer and click the Hangout link you sent yourself.
Step 3b: If you are running a public hangout, just go to Google+ on your other computer and click the Hangout link.

Step 4: Before you join the hangout, you will want to check your volume settings. Specifically, you will want to mute EVERYTHING on your secondary machine, both Playback and Recording. If you don't, you will get a MASSIVE amount of feedback between both computers, and your ears will be ringing for days.

And no one wants that!

Besides, you will have your camera and mic active from your main computer, so the last thing you want is echo, feedback, or anything of the sort.

Step 5: Once your sound is muted, go ahead and join the Hangout. Voila, you are now visible from 2 cameras!

Now you may be wondering, what's the point of all this? Well, I've come up with a few possibilities.

1. You are giving a presentation but don't want to disappear completely. This way, you can run, say, the Power Point on your laptop, click the mouse to continue, and never have to take your eyes off your audience.
2. Record a video from two different angles
3. You want to do a Podcast with yourself as your own guest!
4. Check your hair!
5. Let those you're hanging out with know, "This is MY HOUSE!"

I'm sure there are more uses that I haven't come up with, but overall this was just a fun little experiment I tried out one day and it worked. I don't think I'll ever Hangout from just one angle ever again.

Silver Shop - Beast Mode Tech Setup

Inspired by my good friend Jon Jones, I have decided to give you guys a rundown of the tech I am currently running. This is all used mainly for game development, but as they're also my personal PC's they're great for gaming in general, watching movies, listening to music, and 2-camera Google+ Hangouts (which I'll go over in a bit).

Here's the setup as it stands today. It consists of my main rig, my laptop, my TouchPad, and my Palm Pre.

Let's get the small stuff out of the way first.

This is my Palm Pre. That's right, it has a gesture area button. This is, indeed, a Palm Pre- on Sprint. Fuck anyone who hates this phone! I have been running all my business off this phone for over two years. The ability to sync all my contacts, calendars, emails, social networks, and various business accounts seamlessly makes handling everything effortless. Got an email? Boom, right in my notifications. Need to update the calendar? Boom, done three minutes before my friends with iPhones can even access their calendar app or figure out how to sync it to the business Google Calendar. webOS is amazing, which brings me to my next piece of tech.

HP TouchPad! I managed to snag one in a TigerDirect HP Laptop sale. The laptop became the company laptop and is currently being used for file syncing on Children of Liberty, so it is not in my possession. However, the TouchPad is, and it was free. This thing is in-fucking-credible and HP really dropped the ball on discontinuing it. Remember how I said running the business was dirt easy on my Pre? With this thing, I can not only keep the calendar and my contacts synced, but typing emails is 100x faster, I can show off screenshots and video at conferences or meetings really easily, and I can even play my Flash games I've put online! Let's see your iPad do that. I used to leave those duties to my laptop, but it has since become a strictly on-the-go work station.

This is my laptop, a Sony Vaio with a quad-core Intel Core i3 at 2.13ghz, 4GB of RAM, 500GB HD space, and an NVIDIA GeForce 310M chipset, running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. I have been using this thing to show off Children of Liberty since its old Multimedia Fusion build (and in fact got it right before PAX East 2010 for that very reason), but have since been using it mainly for bringing back and forth to the office. This thing is fairly light, but I wouldn't want to lug it around for more than a couple hours at a time. This gets carried around in my old Timbuk2 messenger bag from high school, where it fits perfectly into the soft secondary pocket and stays nice and protected, while the power cable, USB cables, and mouse fit into the main bag area. When I need my Wacom or TouchPad with me, that goes into the back pocket. It's certainly not a top-of-the-line laptop, but a very solid mid-range piece of tech. It can play just about anything at medium settings, though, and can just about max the latest Unity build of Children of Liberty. That's all that really matters, because when it comes to gaming and game development, I'm all taken care of.

This is my baby, this is my jam. This mofo is an AMD Phenom X6-powered monster, running at 2.8Ghz PER CORE, 8GB DDR3 RAM, eVGA GeForce GTX 460, Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi (yeah you heard me, sound card, and it's regular PCI so when I have the money to throw in another video card I'll also have the room), almost 3Tb of hard drive space, Logitech G15 keyboard (the greatest keyboard ever made), Logitech MX620 Mouse (frictionless scrolling is such an amazing innovation, I can never go back), DVD writer, a 3.5" floppy disk drive for decoration, multi card reader, Wacom Intuos tablet, XBox 360 controller, HP webcam, and running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit all encased in an Antec 900 chassis with a Samsung SyncMaster 216BW monitor. This thing can run anything at full settings. The venerable Manveer Heir once said of this, "When you turn your computer on, does it say 'Is it in yet?'" It'll take anything I throw at it and laugh. It's a joy for game development, renders HD video at a good speed, Photoshops without a care in the world, can run GTA4 and Assassin's Creed at full settings (not to mention every other game on the planet, yes, even Skyrim), and is just an intimidating piece of machinery if you don't know what you're doing with it. Also, that is a screenshot from Children of Liberty as the background, duh.

My programs for game development consist of:

• Adobe Creative Suite 4 with Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Flash
• Silo3D for modeling
• Multimedia Fusion Developer 2 for prototyping, flash games, game jams, and small projects
• Unity 3.4 Professional for, you know, the big shit
• Pinnacle Studio 14 for video editing
• CeltX Studio for dialog editing
• OpenOffice for business work and design docs
• Google Chrome for everything else
• Steam with way too many games to count or list.

The one thing I'd add to this would be a multiple monitor setup, but as it is I'm too low on desk space to manage it. Some day, though.

Let me know what you guys think! If you have any other questions about my setup I'd be happy to answer them. What's your setup look like? I'd love to see it!

Children of Liberty in the IndieDB 2011 Indie of the Year Awards

Hi everybody! Quick update today to let you all know that my game, Children of Liberty, is currently in IndieDB's 2011 Indie of the Year Awards competition. You'd be doing me and my team a huge favor by just going to this link and clicking on Vote For This Game. We've been busting our asses on it all year and, interestingly, every time we post an update to IndieDB, it gets into the Top 50 games for a couple days, so it's definitely popular.

Need proof? Here are some stats. Bitches love stats.

Total Alpha Plays Since Alpha Launch on September 5: 904

Total Site Views Since Alpha Launch: 1,107

Total Views on IndieDB To Date: 4,235

Total Views on Youtube Channel: 4,408

Not bad for a game that's only been in free alpha for a couple months, eh? Over nine hundred plays! By casting your vote for Children of Liberty, you would be helping us:

• Increase our total playcount, bug reports, and hopefully sales.
• Garner further recognition among the ModDB/IndieDB/Desura Community
• Get our name out to media outlets like Kotaku, Joystiq, Rock Paper Shotgun, and whoever else is actually going to be paying attention to the contest.
• Offer incentive for inclusion in indie bundles such as Indie Royale and The Humble Indie Bundle (if a Linux release ever happens).
• Become a recognizable name for attendees at conventions such as PAX East 2012.
• Make us look really good for when we are ready to approach publishers.

If you haven't tried the game out yet, you can play it for free right now. I completely understand if you'd rather play it first before deciding whether or not to click the Vote button. But remember that if you DO vote, I will love you long time.

Preparing for The Global Game Jam

The Global Game Jam is a wonderful thing. It is an event where game developers the world over come together over the course of a weekend and jam out games based on a challenge. Last year's challenge was "Extinction," which led to some very wacky projects, some very serious projects, and stuff in between. Next year, it takes place between January 27 and 29 (make sure to register), but as is tradition we do not yet know the challenge.

Even so, now that we are only 2 months away from the GGJ, now is a good time to start getting ready. While I admit I have only participated in 2/3 Global Game Jam's (I missed 2010's due to flu), here are my Top 10 Tips that I think will be handy to anyone thinking of participating, veteran or not (because people LOVE Top 10 lists).

Weeeee!

1. Don't Shoot for the Stars

You are not here to make Skyrim. You're not even here to make Desktop Dungeons. You're here to make the first floor of The Binding of Isaac at best. All game jams are for making prototypes. Do not set out with the goal of making a final product. If you like your project and your team, nothing is stopping you from continuing development afterward, or even setting up a Kickstarter to help fund it. The Global Game Jam makes no claims on copyright or IP ownership of your projects as they stand at the end of the jam. This is awesome, and if you love your team and your project, KEEP GOING WITH IT! Just don't try to make it giant in the course of a weekend. Shoot for 3-5 minutes of playtime, enough for you to grab some footage in FRAPS to make a trailer.

Time's a-wastin'!

2. The One Hour Rule
The biggest trap any team can fall into at any Game Jam is to spend more than an hour coming up with what game to make. Keep in mind, you have 48 hours to make a game, and your space may not be open for more than 8-10 hours a day. This means you will most likely not be working on the game for the entire weekend (unless your team's like "Let's all go to Steve's place and keep working!") and you must use your time as efficiently as possible. The best way to do this is to get right to work and iterate your project as you go along, adapt it to what you are and are not able to achieve. Therefore, I like to spend no more than the first hour after the keynote coming up with the game's concept. Last year I worked out my friend Sam's apartment (which coincidentally at the time we referred to as our company's "Office") and so we were able to concept our game over a couple beers, laughter, our own white board, and general goofiness (the result of which can be played here). By the end of the jam we had actually made a complete game. Yes it is short, but it works, and that is a lot more than can be said about a lot of projects. Which brings me to my next point:

3. Be Prepared to Fail

Two days is a really short amount of time to make a game, and you can't always predict what will happen. Maybe your concept was too big for you to achieve, maybe nobody on your team actually showed up after the first day, or maybe, just maybe, your final product sucks. It's okay, they can't all be Gnilley. Failure is a part of life, and it is something you have to accept as a part of any Game Jam. When you do fail (and you will) take note of why you failed and use that as a lesson for your future as a game developer.

Remember this thing? Remember how they said this was what was making America fat? Yeah, that's a lie. We were all skinny when we were following it. Just sayin'.

4. Eat

Caffeine on an empty stomach is useless. If your project has a producer, make sure to send them out to get food for the team. DO NOT make them pay for it themselves. When you have no funding, you go Dutch. Make sure there is a good mix of food with enough real nutrients to keep your team going. Calories and sugar are nice and all, but what you really want is Vitamins, Protein, and good Carbohydrates; in other words REAL FOOD! My first Global Game Jam, we subsisted on nothing but Krispy Kreme donuts. We all felt sick, our productivity declined, we got into fights... it was a nightmare. At last year's Global Game Jam, we ordered Chinese. Our productivity was 10x better because we were able to think straight. Some other food choices I would highly recommend for game jamming are pizza (obviously), hoagies (or submarine sandwiches, depending on your colloquialisms), salads, burgers, cereal... whatever keeps you going.

Two Homers in one blog post? Why not!

5. Sleep

You may be tempted to pull all-nighters for the entire weekend. However, if you schedule your project's development properly, you won't have to. A good night's sleep, even if it's 5 hours instead of 8, will do wonders for your productivity. Before you know it, your game will not only be done but it will look sharp too. You may even have time for polish! So get some sleep every night of the jam, in a BED, not at your desk.

6. Bathe

For the love of Jehova, you're going 48 hours working in close quarters with up to 20 other people. They WILL be able to smell you. Do them a favor and don't stink.

Please be more up to date than this.

7. Bring Your Own Laptop
The space at which you will be working for the GGJ working will probably be a school and yes they probably will have some server space reserved for you. This does not mean, however, that they will have all the software you are accustomed to using. For instance, I recently started using Silo3D as my main 3D modeling toolset, and to be fair it is not as mainstream as Max, Maya, or even Blender. If you are a programmer accustomed to an engine other than Flash or Unreal 2.x (3+ if you're lucky) then there is no guarantee the school at which you are working will have what you know (though luckily the tendency for schools to have Unity installed has greatly increased since I was in college). Save yourself the risk and the downtime by bringing your own equipment. You should be able to request access to your host-site's GGJ server space.

As they say, knowing is half the battle.

8. Work With What You Know
The Global Game Jam is a learning experience, but it is not the time for you to claim you are a programmer and then start learning C++. At the start of the Jam, you will have a chance to tell everyone at your location what your skills are. Be honest, and find a team that needs your unique skillset. If you are an artist, tell everyone whether you work in 2D, 3D, characters, props, environments, etc. If you are a programmer, tell everyone what languages you know and with what engines you are familiar. If you work in sound, tell everyone if you focus on music or effects, if you brought your own equipment (including instruments), and what audio programs you use.

Great work, team!

9. Make Games People Can Play
(This one's going to be controversial, mainly because there are way too many different programming languages, but what I want you to take away from this is keep what you do as simple as possible for the user.) I have seen many, many projects fall into this trap. Even though we live in the era of pluginless, all-inclusive HTML5, many developers at Game Jams get it through their skulls that it would be a good idea to require users to install alien frameworks to have their games run. This goes for pretty much anything beyond Flash, Unity Web Player (its inclusion with Google Chrome makes it an exception), DirectX, Java, and possibly a few others. Making users install things like iPhone or Android emulators because you couldn't build the whole app, various PDK's, or Kinect Hacks is probably a bad idea. Even Silverlight falls under this "avoid" category. Do not scare away your players by requiring them to download all sorts of frameworks just to have your game run. You will be competing with thousands of other games, and if you intimidate a user from playing yours immediately, they'll move onto the next one.

Too cute to resist!

10. Have Fun!
Games are fun and making games is fun. Do not waste time arguing with your team. If no one can come to an agreement on a feature, either try both or try neither. In the end you will have a stronger game if you work in a team that cooperates. Keep yourselves fed, get some sleep, take a shower, don't frustrate yourself or your playerbase, don't argue, be ready to fail, hope to succeed, bring your own equipment, and be honest with yourself and your teammates. In the end, you will have a much more positive experience for remaining positive during the weekend.

If you haven't registered for the Global Game Jam yet, you can do so here. If your local site is booked up, send someone from it an email to see if they can squeeze you in or if you can at least have access to the keynote, challenge info, and any upload info you may need so you can host your game at the end. You can also be generous and open your own jamming site for people to work, but contact the GGJ organizers to find out how you can do this (I don't think the requirements are steep, you certainly don't owe them money for doing so, but there are a few guidelines).

Can't wait to see what you all come up with! See you in January.

Communication is Key

Ever have one of those days, or one of those weeks in my case, where one hand obviously is not talking to the other? Not to sound like Andy Rooney, but I have. It's become so frustrating to the point that I am going to make a blog post about talking. That's right: talking.

Let's start by talking about bundles. There have been a lot of those lately, from The Humble Indie Bundle to IndieRoyale to the latest Indie Game Music Bundle. As was mentioned on the blog Dino Farm Games, these are great for the developers who actually get in, but not so great for those left out. To be fair, it's not like every indie game ever can be in a bundle. After a certain point, there would be too many games included in a bundle for the price to be economically viable per developer, or it would be too expensive for most people to pay in the first place ($100 for 100 games seems awesome, but how many of those are you actually going to have time play?). For the sake of argument, however, let's say a new bundle pops up, and you are an indie developer with a game you'd like to be included, so you send those who run the bundle an email with a link to your game on the day the bundle goes live. A week goes by, you hear nothing back. You send them another, still nothing. Finally, on the third email, you hear that they are not accepting any more games for the next bundle. Sounds like a pretty frustrating scenario, huh? Sadly, it is a real one, and a tough one to avoid if you are just starting out.

Keep crying, no one loves you.

For all this talk about how great social media is, the one thing we've stopped doing is talking to each other. Situations like this could be avoided if people just had the guts to speak up and send out rejection notices immediately instead of dragging people along for weeks on-end. Unfortunately, lack of communication can really eat into a developer's schedule, no matter how small the team may be, and this goes for both outside-in (in the case of bundles or publisher deals) and strictly internally. In fact, internal communication breakdowns are probably the easiest to occur but also the easiest to avoid. For instance, if you have two programmers on team - say one handles input and the other handles AI - and neither programmer is letting the other know what's going on, certain features may end up neglected at build-time, and neither programmer would be happy about that.

And then before you know it, you're out of a job.

The first instinct is to go to the Project Lead or the Producer with new features to go in, and on big teams this make sense. If a problem arises, you want your Producer to know so she can find a way to solve it. As Extra Credits pointed out, though, your Producer will probably pull you into another Programmer's office and say, "Hey, can you solve this problem?" You can save 10 minutes (at least) in your work day by going to that Programmer's office yourself and asking the same thing. Plus, you save your Producer the headache of having to help you do your job. As an employee anywhere, it is part of your job to make sure you know how to talk to everyone there, not just your boss. To be completely blunt, nobody likes it when you go over their heads to solve a problem with which they are involved. People much prefer you'd come to them personally, and I think Producers/Leads would prefer their staff talk to each other instead of having to fill in every tiny hole themselves. Save your company time and money and let your peers know you have a problem. Then you can tell your producer at the daily meeting that you solved a problem on your own. That'll make everyone feel good.

A happy Producer is like a warm summer's day: forgiving!

On a small team, going to the Project Lead to solve a problem instead of the team member whose responsibility it is to solve said problem is practically inexcusable. Something is bound to get lost in translation in the short game of telephone between the three team members, and since your team may not be working out of one central location, it's not exactly easy to drag someone into someone else's office. If you have everyone's contact info, contact your teammates directly. Project Leads on indie teams wear many, many hats and really don't have the time to call someone for you when you have their number.

That's a lot of hats for someone who's not selling hats.

Which brings me to my final point. If you are on a small team, have a phone you can always answer, and if for some reason you can't, always return your phone calls. There is nothing more frustrating than leaving an important message on someone's voicemail only to have them not get it or not return it. Blackberries are notoriously bad at not letting their users know they have a voicemail. Android, iOS, webOS, and even flip-phones do a better job. When you are working, keep your phone next to you, not in your pocket, so that if you get a call you can see the phone light up instead of wondering if it is vibrating (and if you are in an office environment, please do set it to vibrate for the sake of your co-workers). People (well, extroverts at least) much prefer face-to-face or even voice-to-voice communication over six-word (or worse, six-page) emails. Emails are okay, though, especially if what you need to tell the person on the other end is highly technical (fix this code on like 346 to read blahblahblah, for instance). Text messages are too impersonal, and they often cost the receiver money for information you could have called them about or put into an email.

You paid a lot of money for this shit. I don't care if the call quality sucks: USE IT!

Lots of things to keep in mind, I know, so here's the TL;DR version:
1. Groups who run bundles get flooded with a lot of emails from a lot of devs. If they happen to get to you and select your game to go into a bundle, consider yourself lucky.
2. Talk to your peers first, not your leads/producers, when you have a problem they could easily solve.
3. Answer your gorram phone.
4. Emails are good for highly technical problems.

All in all, just don't be afraid to talk to the people you work with. It's hardly even going an extra mile, it's going an step. That's as far as you can go before you go any further.

On Naming Your Games Weird Things

This is DOOM. It is one word, it is short, it is memorable. It is a title that is instantly recognizable. Please, for the love of God, when you are naming your game, follow the same rule of simplicity. Even if it's more than one word, say "God of War" or "Super Meat Boy" stick with words that people know and can immediately form an image in their mind of what the game will be without even seeing it.

"But my game has to have this weird name or my creative vision is compromised!"

Guess what? EVERYBODY judges a book by its cover, and everybody judges a game by its name. Do not allow the narrow scope of your creative vision to potentially hurt any press or sales your game will get in the end.

Take, for instance, Slam Bolt Scrappers. A great game, but not a title that easily defines what the game is. At a Boston Post Mortem, the Fire Hose Team described the troubles they had involving the game's name, mainly that they were getting hits on their site from other Google searches, including "Slam Bot Scrappers" or "Slam Bolt Scrapers." In some cases, these can be as simple as typos, but in others, it can be as bad as people not actually knowing what the name of your game is.

For instance, there was an article recently that referred to my company's game as "Children of Lantana," when the game's name is "Children of Liberty," and the company's name is "Lantana Games." Granted, this is just a slip of the keys, and in the end does not affect our Google results, so this could have been a lot worse.

All I ask is that you take a step back and think about the title of your game from a buyer's perspective. Ask yourself, and your friends, these questions:

1. Can you pronounce the game's title?
2. Can you spell the game's title?
3. What do you think of when you hear this title?

If the answer to any of these questions is, "I Don't Know," especially the third one, you've done something wrong. A title needs to conjure up images of... something, anything! Even if it's wrong, it needs to get the buyer's brain churning. Take "Lord of the Rings," for instance. Even if you had never read the books, just from hearing the title, you would know there is some kind of watchful figure who had something to do with having a godlike power over some rings, and from that we can infer those rings must be very, very powerful. Now then, if you had never heard of "Slam Bolt Scrappers" what would you think the game is about?

I've been guilty of this on a couple occasions. I once made a Poker/Tetris combo game named "Avalanche," a word that has nothing to do with cards. My first game after college, "The Longest Night," didn't describe the fact that you'd be running a homeless shelter, but it gave the sense that you would be in for, well, a long night, possibly with some tedium.

Please keep simplicity in mind in your titles. You will find that you gain a lot more traction a lot quicker if you appeal to the lowest common denominator. It may not seem ideal. In fact, it may feel like selling out, but when it comes down to it, would you rather people play and enjoy your game, or see its really weird title and keep walking?

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

I'm not an Apple man. Never have been. Oh sure I have an iPod Shuffle and use iTunes to listen to my music, but that's the extent of my Apple devotion. I've always used Windows. I have a Palm Pre instead of an iPhone. My laptop is a Sony. I don't even have a tablet computer. Yet, it's hard to deny the impact the man had on the world of technology.

May I also remind you that Steve Jobs was rich - very, very rich - thanks to people like you (and me) who have purchased Apple products. As we speak, there are hundreds of thousands of protesters out in New York, Boston, and other cities demanding that the rich "pay their fair share." I cannot help but wonder how many protesters have Tweeted this on their iPhones.

Steve would not have wanted you to demand sympathy from others. He would have wanted you to go out and do something great, to come up with something fantastic and new that can change the world. Sympathy is earned. I am sympathetic toward Steve's family. I am not sympathetic toward people who demand money for doing nothing, especially when they are trust fund babies. Steve was not a man who did nothing. He made more of his life in his short 56 years than most of us do in twice that time, from inventing and reinventing Apple; to Pixar and NeXT; to defining the PC, digital music, and smartphone worlds.

Everyone has potential. Even those of you out there now, in the cold October night, hold up in tents, protesting whatever it is you read on Facebook, could be at home instead with your friends and loved ones, enjoying their company, and thinking about how you can change the world like Steve Jobs did. It's not about the money; it's about what you leave behind when you're gone.

RIP Steve Jobs, 1955-2011.

Don't Be a Dick

Too often I hear people give excuses for not having an XBox Live Gold account for a reason similar to "everyone on there is an asshole." Unfortunately, I don't disagree. The last decade created a culture of immaturity in online gaming that can only be surpassed by anyone who thinks George W. Bush is still the President. But before that, I remember making some really great friends in online games, friends with whom I ended up going to college, friends who now have jobs at some pretty prestigious companies. So what went wrong, and when did the general dickishness anonymity of the internet bleed over into games?

To find out, we need to return to the beginning of the last decade, as the N64 was beginning to be phased out and online gaming was just becoming a possibility on consoles. Up until this point, multiplayer gaming across the information superhighway more commonly known as "the interweb" had been a strictly PC gaming affair, with DOOM pioneering the same Deathmatch mode we still play to this day, and MUDs laying the groundwork for MMOs. These were games where the community was limited and new games with internet connectivity were sparse enough that you could actually get to know a player or two before they moved onto a different game, maybe even get their e-mail address or AIM or ICQ information to keep in touch. Back in late 90's/early 2000's, I played a ton of Jazz Jackrabbit 2 online, and to this day I view it as the best online experience I have ever had and will ever have (but more on that in a bit). This culture of sociable multiplayer bled over to the Dreamcast, as again, not many people had the connectors to hook their Dreamcasts up to the internet, and most people were still on dialup anyway.

Then, two things happened simultaneously in 2001. First, the XBox was released and Microsoft who, like it or not, had always had a stake in gaming with Windows, officially entered the console market. This gargantuan piece of machinery had, at the time, an unused ethernet port in the back. This allowed for some roundabout multiplayer gaming, but was still fairly limited. You have to assume most users wouldn't have gone through the trouble of logging into unofficially supported multiplayer services if it was tough to even know if they existed in the first place. Most people who did that had most likely come from the PC online gaming crowd, and were used to such roundabout hacks to get games going.

However, the other thing that happened on the XBox launch day was the launch of the Halo series, and with that First Person Shooters began falling into the hands of frat boys around the country, previously relegated to Madden games on the SNES and Playstation. Their assholery at first was confined to their own rooms and houses, and we didn't have to hear them. But their numbers were growing, and they were just waiting to take their hate online.

Then, exactly a year later, XBox Live went, well, live. It started small, but we all suspected what would happen. The Halo 2 was announced, and we knew what was coming. Finally, once Halo 2 was released, that was it. Online gaming would never be the same, and from that point on you would never be able to join a game without someone telling you to suck their dick.

Am I putting ALL the blame on the Halo series? That would be easy, wouldn't it? It's not Bungie's fault. I repeat: IT'S NOT BUNGIE'S FAULT. I'd just like to get that out of the way right now. They made a brilliant game, and it just happened to fall into the hands of a few bad eggs who created a culture of making it okay to turn smack talking into a despicable artform. What did happen, however, and what's ignored, is that children don't buy their own games. Parents buy games for their kids, no matter the regulations on "age restrictions." So before you know it, an impressionable 12 year old is playing Halo 2 online with a bunch of drunk 21-year olds shotgunning each other in the face and mocking each other for it with very colorful language. That 12 year old then grows up not knowing a different way to act online, and teaching their friends to act online in the same way. Before you know it, you have an entire generation formed around making enemies online instead of making friends, which then influences the NEXT generation to get themselves choked via playing games online because they think there are no consequences for their actions.

The Simpsons Did It First!

The solution? Well, there's no absolute solution to the problem, and I think various services will start cracking down on this kind of social behavior (choking not withstanding, which is really, ahem, out of their hands) in one way or another. Maybe black marks against accounts that have a history of verbal abuse that prevent them from joining specific servers online? Maybe just flat out banning users who can't keep their big mouths shut?

Personally, I'd prefer to see a softer approach. No, not ignoring the problem, but a solution no one has come up with: encouraging us game developers to create games that would foster more positive communities through more positive gameplay. Returning to Jazz Jackrabbit 2, what made that game so great to play online was the gameplay itself was light-hearted; there was no punishment for death (respawning was nearly instant); user generated content was distributed effortlessly by just joining a server, including custom made "Hotel" levels where violence flat out was NOT allowed, and yet the gameplay remained just as engaging (try doing THAT in Call of Duty); and the community was small but devoted. Nowadays, when a game isn't big, you can't find anyone playing multiplayer at all, but to this day you can still find a few people playing JJ2 online. All this created a positive multiplayer environment, and that's what we lack today. Social games focus on asymmetrical multiplayer gameplay, so they're actually the least social of all multiplayer games in existence. League of Legends on the surface looks like a fun game to play, but the community takes it so seriously that if you're new you're really not welcome and the game doesn't offer a true chance to learn its rules in-depth. EVE Online... don't get me started. World of Warcraft had to specifically dumb down the first 60 levels to make sure new players could get up to speed as quickly as possible, lest their community start to dwindle over time. Granted, this comes close to fostering positive interaction, but didn't change anything when it came to "partying with noobs." In all honesty, I haven't ever read an article that says anything about a game having a welcoming online community. If you weren't there on Day One, they don't want you there at all, and if you can't get a headshot on every single snipe, get the fuck off of their server.

I think that we, as game developers, can and should do more to foster better communities for our games. Our games, our rules. While we do not have the right to say who can and cannot buy our games, we do have the right to say, "Hey, you're making this a miserable experience for everyone else. Please leave." Followed by a swift strike of the banhammer. You owe it to your players to make sure no one feels threatened by trying to enjoy your art.

Game Design vs. Monetization: Why Are We Fighting?

Two recent occurrences have got me thinking about this whole new "monetization" approach to game development. First, I read the article "Who killed videogames," which focuses on this exact topic. The gist is that social games "hook you before you've started playing." Play for 1 minute, you're hooked for five. Play for 10 minutes, you're hooked for an hour. Don't give them too much game at once or they'll see no reason to come back. Make them wait for 2 hours and then make their phone buzz. It's a psychological attack, a kid constantly tugging at your arm in the grocery store and saying, "I'm hungry!" In the world of social games, this makes money. How? Spend money to speed up the process. Once people have learned the basic systems, they'll put in a dollar to speed those systems up.

The second occurrence happened the next day when I received an email which asked, "What is your monetization strategy for Children of Liberty?" to which I responded, "Sales." Their heads must have exploded.

Now I'll admit, I am no stranger to social games. Many people think that just because I ignore every request for Farmville and Frontierville that I loathe all games on the internet. This is simply not true. As a matter of fact, I spent an entire year playing Lord of Ultima, a game I highly recommend for several reasons.

• The gameplay goes thousands of times deeper strategically than anything you can find on Facebook.
• No one in the game is truly an ally. No one has to come by and water your crops, and no one is locked into their alliance. This means threats to your castles and palaces, cities with powerful buildings which give you and your alliance major stat and military bonuses, loom everywhere.
• It is hands-down the most aesthetically pleasing social game in existence.

I had played Lord of Ultima for about 6 months before I dropped $10 on Diamonds, the in-game microtransaction resource. This was, to this day, the only time I've spent money on a social game. But, being in the #2 alliance on the server, and a war with the #1 alliance looming, I felt I needed the boost to up my defenses and speed development of my military cities. If you're into strategy games that are heavily stats-based and have a relatively steep learning curve, play it. It doesn't follow the "wait 2 hours to do anything," beyond the first few days. Eventually, you'll always have something to do.

What Lord of Ultima taught me is that social games can in fact follow a different pattern than "same game, different metaphor." Even Zynga has started doing this with Adventure World, and discovering the benefits of deeper gameplay, but I guarantee its taken a few years of cajoling executives to break away from the "5 minutes of gameplay, make them wait an hour" blueprint, whether or not it means they'll make less money.

Unfortunately, microtransactions do still come down to a "pay to cheat" model. I can hear you now, screaming, "But Dan, you can't call it cheating if it doesn't alter gameplay! Don't you know the people are SUPPOSED to pay to make everything go faster?" As a matter of fact, I do, but here's the simple fact of the matter. The majority of your players will pay a grand total of $0.00 and just have the game go slowly. The majority rules, and in this case it's the majority's rules. Then you have those who will pay $10 for some temporary boosts, and one person who will pay $10,000 for a lifetime of boosts. These are the people who have typed in IDDQD and eliminated all challenge. THEY have changed the rules of the game because YOU gave them a way to make it EASIER.

You may argue that arcades did the same thing, that games became "easier" as you pumped in more quarters. I rebute this fallacy by pointing out that quarters never actually changed the rules of the game. By today's microtransaction standards, a quarter would give you 2X attack power in Street Fighter II for 3 minutes, and the true champion wouldn't be determined by who had the most skill, but by who brought the biggest bag of quarters (under normal circumstances, you can hardly call someone a champion if they're stuck on the character select screen because their friend was 1 quarter short and now can't play). Putting a quarter into an arcade machine's slot was, quite simply, renting the game for a very limited amount of time.

There is no "right way" to handle monetization. If you're going to make your game free-to-play, you have to come to grips with the fact that some money has to come from somewhere. Team Fortress 2 does this with hats. League of Legends does this with variations on character models, and runes that give minor boosts to your stats. The current build of my game is online for free, but with a donation button next to it.

The fact of the matter is, businesses need to make money, but if games are art (they are) then game design is an artform (my BFA says so). I personally feel that the art of game design is lost on many of these businessmen who go into game development because they hear there's a ton of money to be made on Facebook. To be fair, investors are hungry as hell to for Facebook game developers. So, someone new to the field will see Restaurant City or Sims Social, say, "I can make that!" and create the same feedback loops "Click This, Wait 5 Minutes Till You Can Click It Again OR Pay $1 to Click It Again Now" for everything in the game, and done. Heck, you can put in a leveling system to make the player feel like they're progressing, but all you're really doing is increasing the amount of time they have to wait between clicks. Meanwhile, the Diablo III beta takes OVER 9000 clicks to get through. Can you imagine if THOSE clicks were monetized? Even 1 cent per click would set the player back $90 by the end of 2 hours of gameplay, and social game developers think they have it right by making players pay to speed gameplay up? Of course, this exact scenario was poked fun at by the Blizzard team in an episode of the Jace Hall Show. I'm not encouraging this kind of design, I'm just pointing out that it could, in fact, happen. Would it make many gamers angry? Yes. Would some still play it? Oh you bet. Luckily, Blizzard has come up with a unique monetization system in the form of Diablo III trading, letting you spend real money to buy other player's items. Will this give an advantage to people with money to spend on loot? Absolutely. Can you find this loot in the world just by adventuring? Well, how do you think the seller found it?

In conclusion, the point I am trying to make is that game design can be used to fuel monetization. Do not abandon the craft, and most importantly do not attempt to bleed your audience's wallets dry. We know you like money. Heck, I like money. But now is not the time economically for trying to bankrupt your players. At the very least, truly reward them for spending extra money while not breaking the game's balance. I don't think we've hit this point of fair business practices in game design yet, but when we do, we'll all be able to breathe a sigh of relief that the real game designers took social game design away from the suits.