So it appears that Unity's license for indie developers are now free according to this article. Great news for us and all other indie devs out there!
torsdag 29 oktober 2009
tisdag 20 oktober 2009
2D Boy plays a very interesting marketing trick.
Here´s something I found extremely interesting. In celebration of World of Goo's 1 year anniversary, 2D Boy let people buy the game for as much (or as little) as they wanted to pay for it. In one week they sold 57 000 copies of which almost 17 000 paid 1 cent for it, almost 16 000 paid 1 dollar, 7347 persons paid 5 dollars and so on. 4 people even paid 50 dollars for a game that is usually priced at 20 dollars.
At first glance it may seem like a bad thing since almost 17 000 people got the game almost for free but if you look at the bigger picture 2D Boy made around 100 000 dollars in a week for a 1 year old game.
Here's the article I read about the whole thing.
At first glance it may seem like a bad thing since almost 17 000 people got the game almost for free but if you look at the bigger picture 2D Boy made around 100 000 dollars in a week for a 1 year old game.
Here's the article I read about the whole thing.
Long term goals.
Here´s a long list of goals for our design process. I´m pretty sure I have missed some goals so expect this list to get extended over time.
General Goals:
The name: Has to be appealing to our target audience, should describe what the product is and should attract attention.
Deadline: We should have a vertical slice finished by GGA 2010. No deadline set for the finished game.
New ideas: We want our game to bring some good, new ideas to the market.
Game Design Goals:
Difficulty: 12-14 year olds should be able to play the easiest parts of the game whereas mature, experienced gamers should be able to enjoy the more difficult parts of the game.
Competition and teamplay: It must be important to win and teamplay has got to matter. We dont want players running around on their own without any intention of helping the team.
Pre-made teams vs Pick up and Play: There must be a functionality for pick up and play teams to allow them to adjust classes and tactics and be able to play against pre-made teams.
Ready made characters vs customized, personal characters: Customized characters must be balanced with the ready made characters that are in the game from the start.
No endless grind: All classes must be balanced and fully playable from the start. Players will not benefit from investing 100 hours of playtime into their character.
Building up anticipation for the fights: The customization part should be fun and feel meaningful and not like something you have to get out of the way to get to the fun stuff.
Skill based combat system: The players skill must matter. The game must have enough depth to allow the player to develop his/her skill and playstyle. Buttonmashers shouldn't stand the same chance of winning as skilled, experienced players.
Customizable characters: The customization of characters should not only be costmetical. Every choise the player makes affects their characters play style – even the sex.
Males vs females: Male and female characters should have differences but they must still be balanced and both sexes must be able to fulfill any role in a team.
Story: The story will not be told in a linear timeline throughout the game but rather through the characters, their gear and the different levels.
The world: The levels are spherical with confined spaces where the players can move to create more of an arena feeling.
Weaponry: There must be a distinct difference between the different weapon types.
Art Goals:
2D or 3D: The graphics will be in 3D with full use of textures such as specular, normal and glow maps.
Different graphics: The are style shouldn't resemble other games in the genre.
Art style: The art style should be surreal and somewhat grotesque. The environments should be colorful but yet dirty and worn out. No grey-brown boredom a'la GoW or Fallout 3.
Interface: The interface shouldn't cover too much of the screen. Teammate portraits may not be needed but teammates health must be visible as well as nameplates of enemies.
Technical Goals:
Playability: The game should be playable both through a browser and as a downloadable .exe.
General Goals:
The name: Has to be appealing to our target audience, should describe what the product is and should attract attention.
Deadline: We should have a vertical slice finished by GGA 2010. No deadline set for the finished game.
New ideas: We want our game to bring some good, new ideas to the market.
Game Design Goals:
Difficulty: 12-14 year olds should be able to play the easiest parts of the game whereas mature, experienced gamers should be able to enjoy the more difficult parts of the game.
Competition and teamplay: It must be important to win and teamplay has got to matter. We dont want players running around on their own without any intention of helping the team.
Pre-made teams vs Pick up and Play: There must be a functionality for pick up and play teams to allow them to adjust classes and tactics and be able to play against pre-made teams.
Ready made characters vs customized, personal characters: Customized characters must be balanced with the ready made characters that are in the game from the start.
No endless grind: All classes must be balanced and fully playable from the start. Players will not benefit from investing 100 hours of playtime into their character.
Building up anticipation for the fights: The customization part should be fun and feel meaningful and not like something you have to get out of the way to get to the fun stuff.
Skill based combat system: The players skill must matter. The game must have enough depth to allow the player to develop his/her skill and playstyle. Buttonmashers shouldn't stand the same chance of winning as skilled, experienced players.
Customizable characters: The customization of characters should not only be costmetical. Every choise the player makes affects their characters play style – even the sex.
Males vs females: Male and female characters should have differences but they must still be balanced and both sexes must be able to fulfill any role in a team.
Story: The story will not be told in a linear timeline throughout the game but rather through the characters, their gear and the different levels.
The world: The levels are spherical with confined spaces where the players can move to create more of an arena feeling.
Weaponry: There must be a distinct difference between the different weapon types.
Art Goals:
2D or 3D: The graphics will be in 3D with full use of textures such as specular, normal and glow maps.
Different graphics: The are style shouldn't resemble other games in the genre.
Art style: The art style should be surreal and somewhat grotesque. The environments should be colorful but yet dirty and worn out. No grey-brown boredom a'la GoW or Fallout 3.
Interface: The interface shouldn't cover too much of the screen. Teammate portraits may not be needed but teammates health must be visible as well as nameplates of enemies.
Technical Goals:
Playability: The game should be playable both through a browser and as a downloadable .exe.
söndag 18 oktober 2009
Concept phase done.
The concept presentation we had last week went really good. Evaluators for the presentations were our tutors Troels and Adam plus Kyle Gabler from 2D Boy, Jasmin Orthbandt from Pixeltamer and Sten Huebler from Crytek. Either they were really tired or they really liked our concept because we didn´t really get any negative feedback at all. I´m hoping it was because they really liked it.
We are now moving into the design phase. This week we have been busy setting up long term goals for the design as well as further developing the art style and the world where our peculiar combatants live and fight.
We are now moving into the design phase. This week we have been busy setting up long term goals for the design as well as further developing the art style and the world where our peculiar combatants live and fight.
söndag 4 oktober 2009
torsdag 1 oktober 2009
Character Concepts
We've been sketching on ideas for characters for a while now and I think we're heading in the right direction.
Here are three of the characters that'll be shown in the Marratech-presentation this Monday.
Here are three of the characters that'll be shown in the Marratech-presentation this Monday.
People who write about games (journalists, critics)
A bit of a mess here, lots of forums where people write about games like blogs, more traditional review sites, magazines, newspapers. Also the people who are writing aren't very homogenous. I cannot come up with one person to represent the game critic/journalist, at least not yet.There seem to be tons of people who write as a hobby and not so many who get paid for it.
In the hobby group the ages span from teens to maybe 30 ish (based on user profiles that I viewed at a couple of forums). The younger ones I would think write to maybe get free games and cred from their friends, the older I think might write for the same reasons but they are likely to have matured and are probably the ones who would be more interested in indie games.
The other group is people that are journalists/game critics who get paid to write. They probably work for more established game sites/blogs or magazines that get their revenue from advertisments. Depending on how much funding they have they might have the possibility to visit game awards and exhibitions. They might also write about things concerning the game industry that are not related to a specific game. These people should (but might not) write about things that they think their readers will find interesting.
I don't think it's relevant for us to have the younger hobby writers as our target audience since they are not in sync with our other target user groups. The older hobby writers and the journalists/critics who get paid are more likely to go well or coincide with our other target groups. It feels obvious that the more established game sites get tons of mails from indie developers who want them to write about their games, so it will take some effort to get attention. However, since they are human beings it should be easier if we could establish some kind of personal relation with them. Maybe it would be good to have a brainstorming session about this sometime to see what ideas we can come up with. What would also be interesting to know is which blogs/websites/magazines our other target user groups read. These would of course be the ones we want to get attention from...
I realize that this post is very general and not very useful yet, but I had to start somewhere. I found a quite informative video about Game journalism here for those who are interested http://media.digitaltrends.com/players-only/rewriting-game-journalism/.
In the hobby group the ages span from teens to maybe 30 ish (based on user profiles that I viewed at a couple of forums). The younger ones I would think write to maybe get free games and cred from their friends, the older I think might write for the same reasons but they are likely to have matured and are probably the ones who would be more interested in indie games.
The other group is people that are journalists/game critics who get paid to write. They probably work for more established game sites/blogs or magazines that get their revenue from advertisments. Depending on how much funding they have they might have the possibility to visit game awards and exhibitions. They might also write about things concerning the game industry that are not related to a specific game. These people should (but might not) write about things that they think their readers will find interesting.
I don't think it's relevant for us to have the younger hobby writers as our target audience since they are not in sync with our other target user groups. The older hobby writers and the journalists/critics who get paid are more likely to go well or coincide with our other target groups. It feels obvious that the more established game sites get tons of mails from indie developers who want them to write about their games, so it will take some effort to get attention. However, since they are human beings it should be easier if we could establish some kind of personal relation with them. Maybe it would be good to have a brainstorming session about this sometime to see what ideas we can come up with. What would also be interesting to know is which blogs/websites/magazines our other target user groups read. These would of course be the ones we want to get attention from...
I realize that this post is very general and not very useful yet, but I had to start somewhere. I found a quite informative video about Game journalism here for those who are interested http://media.digitaltrends.com/players-only/rewriting-game-journalism/.
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