I’ve started reading a book, and ordered another one, that focus on the topic of business processes for small companies. Essentially the theme of them is that far too many small businesses are built around the hands-on skills and knowledge of a single person -> the founder, and that this can act as a roadblock to the company expanding and flourishing.

This rings very true to me. People sometimes suggest I get a full time artist or coder, but I never do, and what I really need is either a clone of me, or an all-rounder who can do a bit of everything, marketing, business stuff, design, coding, testing and artwork. Such people are not easy to find. A lot of indies use interns or junior / student employees, but I always try to ensure I get the very best, and the very best are normally not looking for a job, they freelance, and are booked up a year on advance.
If I can’t expand by hiring, something I can do is to try and streamline all of the different systems that make up positech. My current systems are a mess. I run backups when I feel like it, I check my ad and marketing budget stuff at random intervals. I have no organised calendar for anything, no dates on GTB milestones, no quarterly assessments of sales, it’s a mess.
So this is something I’m going to work on fixing, over the next few weeks. I’ll hopefully identify a few areas where some new software or cunning scripting can save me time, and make sure I am more organised, and that everything is better documented. One day, I might even end up with some staff.

In the meantime I showed Gratuitous Tank Battles running on a big TV to two fellow indie devs recently. It looked good on the TV, ran without issues, and I think they likedit, which is reassuring

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OH YES!

 http://www.indiegamemag.com/igm-awards-most-anticipated-games-of-2012/

I’m optimising some code this morning. Who knew how careless I could be using STL lists eh?

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This morning, when I woke up I checked my email at a desk in the Southwest UK. The internet routers somewhere in London spoke to my positech server in Dallas, and sent me messages from all across the planet. One of them was from a flash developer I have never met, whose game I am sponsoring. I have no idea which country he lives in. Another was from a business partner in Boston, (as I recall), about a port of my game. While I read these, I also checked share prices of companies around the UK whose shares I buy and sell as a hobby.

If I chose to check, I’m sure there would be people from every continent currently browsing the dallas-hosted server of my UK owned company.

I’ll probably chat to some other indie developers today on forums hosted god-knows-where and who live all over the world. Most of the people I talk to on a daily basis are more than a thousand miles from my home.

My parents were born and worked all their lives in one city. My grandparents were born, worked and died 80+ years later in the same city. My grandfather left the UK only once, as a soldier during the war. My mother remembers before TV, before plastic, before indoor plumbing…

And online, we think people are old now if they remember alta vista, or windows 95.

When the world is so amazingly fast moving, it’s easy to forget to stop and reflect on what an amazing time this is to be alive. Life has never changed with such an incredible pace.

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Sooo.. Gratuitous Tank Battles has had achievements in it for a while, although they get called medals in the game, inkeeping with it’s WW1/2 context. The achievements system is a universal one, based of data stored on my server, so if you bought the game direct, or through any store, it should all still work the same way, and you will get the same experience.

Today, is the day I finally got around to wading through the documentation to get my achievements system working with steam. Steam look like they will be carrying the game, which is great news, and probably not unexpected, but I never count my chickens beforehand etc… Anyway, that means I can blog this image:

yay! Essentially steam is just mirroring my own data at the moment, but at least this means that the achievements will show up on your steam pages, which is vital to many people

Lots more news to come in the next month or three. I am currently taking a look at the possibility of steam cloud, although I write a lot of tiny little files, so it might get very messy…

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Here is a theory, tell me what you think. I’m sure it’s rough around the edges.

The best games are made by people who feel ‘compelled’ to make a certain type of game. Invariably, this is because that sort of game does not already exist. If the perfect game (to that designer’s eye) already existed, they would

a) Waste a lot of their free time playing it

b) Not perceive there is a market for another game like that, and not feel as motivated or driven to make it.

If this theory is true, it follows that the designers that are churning out consistently original or refreshing stuff, are amongst the most frustrated and miserable game-players. They are constantly living in a gaming world populated by other people ‘doing it wrong’.

Now that theory is a bit arbitrary, and I am well aware of the fact that I’m just trying to rationalise my own opinions and convince myself that the fact that I find 90%+ of modern games to be rubbish is because I am perceiving flaws others do not. The other option is that I’m going off games, which I’m pretty certain is not true, judging by my huge addiction to Anno 2070 (dammit I WILL get enough fruity drinks to get that next level of eco inhabitant!!!!), or that I have unusual taste in games (quite likely).

Any other game designers out there who feel let down/ dissapointed / depressed by most modern games? I have maybe 20 games in my steam account (I admit, I tend to buy retail or direct from developer so that’s only a snapshot) whereas I know many people have 100+ 200+ games. I find most games to be unappealing, at any price. I judge games more by the time required, than the asking price. I’m not saying other games are *bad*, just that they do not appeal to me. Maybe the designer in me has just evolved to constantly find fault in games?

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I’ve never bothered getting personal business cards printed until now, so I figured that I might as well get some l33t ones, and I always liked the design of the swarm horus frigate from Gratuitous Space Battles…

You can’t tell from the picture, but they are metal, with etched-out lettering and cut-throughs. They are a bit thin, so don’t feel especially metal, but they look pretty l33t. I was trying to imagine the sort of business card anakin skywalker would have. That’s pretty much how I chose my car too. Yeah, I’m sad.

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One thing I reckon is pretty neat about Battlefield 3 and other modern man-shooters is the stats stuff, and comparison thereof. I like the idea of beating my friends highs cores in a game, and the great thing about lots of stats, is that even if your buddy is 10x better than you, can always say “yes but who has the ‘fallen in a ditch achievement? it’s me isn’t it?”

Many of the things I’m excited about in Gratuitous Tank Battles are things that I wish I’d done from the start for Gratuitous Space Battles. GSB had some online integration built around challenges, but not much. The center of the GSB community is the modding forums on my website, not the game itself, which means a lot of people miss out on it.

GTB will correct this a bit. There will be integrated friends lists in the game (hurrah!) so you can add some people as your friends, and then filter online challenges only to show your friend’s maps etc. Their comments should probably show up with an icon when you read their thoughts on other maps too (must make a note…)

One feature I put in today (still needs some tweaking) is this in-game ability to compare stats with a friend:

Right now, the comparison is between XP, rank and achievements. Maybe I’ll add other stats in there too at some stage. Like battles played etc. The UI needs a little love too. The biggest issue for this sort of thing is the multithreading and php web coding, two areas I am relatively inexperienced at, compared with normal C++ game coding.

In other news, Ubisofts shit DRM meant I couldn’t play Anno 2070 for 7 hours this weekend. Online DRM doesn’t bug me *that* much, I understand the argument for it, and so do the shareholders earning money from MMOS, but I understand why people hate it. What really makes me hate and despise ubisoft is not their usage of that DRM, but their total inability to fix it within 60 minutes (absolutely TOP whack requirement to fix a server problem if you have dedicated server staff). And where is the big grovelling apology to all their players for their screwup?

Maybe we should just look at funny pictures of tanks* to bring back a smile eh?

*thanks andrew

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When i was a kid we would spend ages glueing together model stuff like this:

Airfix and humbrol FTW!

The problem is, even if you are a 40+ kidult like me who wouldn’t feel silly ordering a model tank to build, the market does not seem to cater to me any more. Lets be honest, those model tanks we built as kids were actually pretty crap. I recall them being stupidly intricate and tricky and lifelike, but in fact they were small, very simple, easy to make, and always looked a bit crap.

of course, if you have money to burn you can buy these:

But they weight 70 KG…

But where is the middle ground? Show me a decent sized, hard to build (but satisfying to build) model tank and I’ll easily waste a weekend fending cats away from the glue as I stick a model together

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The press and publishers often try to split gamers into two groups, the hardcore and the casual. Here are rough descriptions:

Hardcore gamers play serious games, deep games, and they play a LOT. They have a lot of time, and they get invested into games. They play mods, they read strategy guides, they are probably 14 year old boys. They like zombies and killing stuff. They play games like Skyrim, Call of Duty, Men of War, Starcraft. Their favorite color is dark brown, stained with the blood of orcs.

Casual gamers play fun cute games. They play simple games, and only in short chunks. They cannot cope with 2 mouse buttons, or reading instructions. They hate violence. They are all 40+ soccer moms and they like kittens and cooking. They play games like farmville and peggle, and match-3 games. Their favorite color is the fluffy white of a pony’s mane, draped across a basket of flowers.

But of course this is bullshit.

I am *time poor* when it comes to games, but I love deep hardcore serious strategy stuff, with orcs and blood, and ok, maybe the odd kitten, but it’s a kitten with razor sharp claws who battles his enemies and earns steam achievements.

What I think game designers may have missed, is that the 14 year old hardcore starcraft players of yore, are now 30+ with kids. maybe even 40+ like me. They understand and love serious hardcore games but are time poor. Right now I genuinely play more battlefield 3 than anno because anno takes longer to load for me.

What they want, perhaps… is bite sized hardcore? I present to you, the first draft of

THE BITE SIZED HARDCORE MANIFESTO.

What we demand is…

1) No pandering to casual gaming stereotypes. No gratuitous kittens or ‘cute’ cuddly characters.

2) No time wasting. No splash screens, intros, or FMV. We have 30 minutes tonight for gaming. Ensure all 30 minutes have us interacting with the game.

3) No Grind. We have day jobs. leave the grind to the kids in the F2P MMOs where it belongs. Give me decent, varying content, without filler. And don’t reward grind either, with bonus achievements for time played, or 1,000 low level rats clubbed.

4) No nickel+diming. We have proper jobs and disposable income. If the game is good, we will buy outright. Don’t keep breakign immersion to try and sell us $0.05 worth of magic pixie dust.

5) No oversimplification. We can cope with 2 mouse buttons, maybe even 3, and a wheel. We can cope with right clicking, tech trees, customisable units and mods.

6) No mandatory training levels or tutorials that cover the obvious. This is my 245th first person shooter. I can guess that WSAD moves, the mouse looks, and the mouse shoots. At the very least, let me skip tutorial stuff I don’t need.

7) Don’t patronize us. We shouldn’t get an achievement for hitting the jump key, or told we are awesome soldiers for hitting a tin can. Leave that crap for kids in kindergarten.

Be original. We have gamed before. We have fought in many a crate-strewn corridoor, and killed many a rat and returned their hides to someone who is too lazy to do it themselves. We have heard many tales of lost kingdoms and evil wizards. Surprise us. Please.
What needs adding?

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I’m doing the tutorial for Gratuitous Tank Battles over the next few days. In format, it is similar to the one in Gratuitous Space Battles. I have thought quite a lot about tutorials, and the best approaches to them when i make my games. My starting points come from ym own experiences with game tutorials which are thus:

1. I hate tutorials that are slow. I learn FAST. If your game has a tutorial that will take more than ten minutes, then I’m likely going to skip it and not bother, and then try to wing it. Sorry, but I have little free time…
2. I hate tutorials that rely on spoken voice. I can read. I can read faster than you can speak, even if you are some sort of entertaining rap-singer with extreme vocal dexterity. Plus, the accent and acting will often make me snigger or groan. Text please. (also some people game with the sound off, especially in a room with family members).
3. I dislike tutorials that attempt to be too cute or funny. Save it for the games characters, or the manual, anything but the bit where I am purely after information, not flavour or atmosphere.

With these thoughts in mind, my tutorial is split into different parts of the game, and triggers when you hit them. Its basically text windows with the odd interactive prompt to click a button, and flashing rectangles that highlight which parts of the UI are being referred to. In a sudden outbreak of common sense, there is now a ‘reset tutorial’ button on the options screen, which resets it all and shows it again if you missed something.

There is a lot more to the tutorial than actual modal pop-up windows though. I also think that an effective part of a games tutorial is distributed elsewhere, for example:

1. the website, and it’s forums
2. The manual
3. Videos showing how certain stuff works, linked from the website.
4. Tooltips on everything

I think this works well, because it means you don’t burden veteran GSB and RTS players with forcing them (like FPS games do) to look left and right and click all the buttons before you let them play. Real gaming newcomers can read the manual, and every tooltip and tutorial window, but I’m hopefully not applying the brakes too much for gamers in a hurry who want to plonk down an army of mechs RIGHT NOW and watch things go bang.

Thats’ the plan anyway. I’m looking forward to the manual. Should be fun to do. Most game manuals suck. Hopefully this one will not.

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