I did a pre-recorded interview for Canadian radio today. The show is question is this one:

http://www.cbc.ca/spark/

Because it’s a big proper national radio station, they wanted decent quality, so I had to go to the nearest radio studio which turned out to be the historic city of Bath, set for many a Jane Austen novel, and home of lovely bath stone, used for practically every house around here. It also meant having lunch in ye famous Bath Pump Rooms, a very old (1789) building, which just goes to show the elegance, care and grandeur with which people built everything back then. These days we build featureless glass boxes. Bah.

The show itself was quite good fun, I did feel a bit like frasier crane sat in front of a microphone with a light on the wall saying ‘on air’ (although it was pre-recorded). The show was about piracy, and involved me because of this blog post. I’m fine with doing that, but it’s a bit frustrating to be ‘the piracy guy’, just because I’m open about discussing it. There are a ton of hot topics in games I’d love to talk about, the mis-management of projects, development costs, sexism in games, game violence, game pricing, blah blah. Maybe next time :D

I’m not literally talking about what lister had to do: (2 minutes 30 in)

Nope, I’m talking about the phrase often used in software development, or any business these days, which means ‘use your own product’.

I think there is likely a decent correlation between successful businesses, and those that eat their own dog food. I play my games a bit, not enough tbh, although that primarily a lack of time. I’m going to set aside a few hours today to just play through some challenges. I have found so many bugs, and had so many ideas, post-release, just from experiencing my own games with the mindset of an end user.
If you are an indie dev, and there is something, anything, no matter how small that disappoints, bugs or annoys you about your game, then fix it. Fix it now.

Today

. Tomorrow you will find something else that needs fixing, and fix that too. This is how games go from good to really good.

Of course, sadly not everyone eats their own dog food. I bought two products recently that did not. One was a picture frame with a tiny hook on the back to place over a nail. The hook was tiny, and bent easily and was in the middle of a large frame. The sheer physics of it made it literally impossible to hang it on the wall by the hook. They *never* ate that dog food.

Then I bought a TV cupboard thing, one of those ones with a shelf for all of the DVD player stuff, and a hole cut out the back for the cables to tidily go through.
The hole was too small to put a plug through, and most EU appliances now have moulded plugs you can’t remove. The hole was effectively useless. They *never* ate that dog food.

Bon appetit!

There was a time a few years ago when casual games seemed to be the BIG THING. Almost everyone was making a game where you matched 3 things. Then they all cloned Bettys Beer Bar (You might remember the first clone – Diner Dash). Then they all cloned Zuma, then… etc. I lose track of who everyone was cloning after a while.

This wasn’t the golden age of indie game development. In fact, it was the golden age of actual indie game developers rolling their eyes and wondering what the hell people were thinking, when developer after developer announced their ‘innovative’ new clone of whatever was #1 on bigfishgames last week.

Not surprisingly, a lot of casual games bombed and made virtually no money. At least, for the developers. The aggregators, who owned the platform like BigFishGames and Relfexive probably made a fortune. I wasn’t immune, I had Kudos and Rock Legend on a number of those portals. I still get the royalty checks for them, although it’s nothing to get excited about.

Nowadays it seems everyone is cloning farmville, and I think I might have glossed over the bit where everyone was making a browser based MMO game. In 2010, I’m sure there will be a new goldrush (maybe the new mac thing) where indie developers all chase trying to cash in on the latest #1 guaranteed way to make millions.

Because I don’t make games aimed at casual portals anymore, or even ones they would be interested in stocking, I’ve taken my eye off the ball. I have zero interest in games like that right now, I always only make the sort of game I personally think is cool at that point in my life, but I am curious as to the state of the market. Has it collapsed? Or are more and more people each year still shelling out actual money for the latest reskinned dress-up or clickfest time management game?  That would be (as a game designer) a bit depressing, but  it wouldn’t stun me…

I went shopping a few days ago, and even in the middle of a recession caused mainly by lending to people who have no money, this phrase is everywhere:

BUY IT NOW, PAY IN A YEAR

I don’t go for these things. In fact, I only ever bought something (apart from a  car) on credit once, purely because they offered ‘interest free credit’ and refused to give me a discount for paying cash, which I found insulting… Anyway…

Why do these things work? Are people really that stupid to fall for it? Actually yes, and they aren’t stupid, they are emotional, or passionate, and they can’t help it.

I’ve been reading more pop neuroscience books, and reading about the difference between the amygdala and the pre-frontal cortex. Basically the amygdala does the emotional stuff, the PFC does the analytical bit.  The amygdala is seeing “BUY NOW” or more importantly “NOW” and the PFC is seeing “pay later…“.

Why does this work? Because the response from the amigdyla is faster, and often (for most people) louder. It’s especially true for the young, when the PFC is still developing.  Thats partly why they can be more impulsive and reckless, and why kids can’t resist taking sweets even when they understand they will get more sweets later if they resist the urge for 5 minutes (Someone tested that, and found it a phenomenally good indicator of future financial success).

It’s all down to evolution, the amygdala gets first dibs on our attention because it does the rapid pattern-matching stuff such as “IT’S A SNAKE!!!!” rather than the cool analytical “it’s a stick” that takes longer. The amygdala takes care of time sensitive vital emotional stuff like fear, hunger, lust etc. It’s the bit that makes negative scary political TV ads work, and it’s also why BUY NOW PAY LATER works.

Our brains have evolved in creatures concerned for short term survival. Its way more important to eat when we find food than it is to worry about being overweight, hence we have huge trouble  dieting. The same is true of all problems with long term planning. You conciously want to work on your indie game, but your amigdyla just wants you to eat, sleep and have sex. It’s a tug of war!

I’ve read that the stroop test is an indication of how your amygdala beats your PFC, but although it’s fun i’m not convinced. Thats just two different types of pattern matching going on surely?

However, I’m sure there is some truth to the thing that we are hard wired for irrational short term passionate thinking. that’s why some we are rubbish at saving, dieting, healthy eating, or basically doing anything that fights our emotions. we are a long way off becoming vulcans :D

If you are thinking how does this make me sell more games, it’s all about how and why people make purchasing decisions.

You could be playing Gratuitous Space Battles RIGHT NOW. Just Click here for free food sex and sleep.:D

I have had recent (bad) experiences with this phenomena, but it’s not the first time.

How many times have you gone to a website for a game, a service, an ISP, some software, whatever, and found an ‘official’ self-help forum for users? I seem to recall Dell used to do it, and now almost everyone does it.

“Welcome to the community help forums where fellow member of the ABC community help solve each other’s technical problems”

What this translates (to me) as is this…

“Fuck customer service. We will let you dumb schmucks who bought our stuff fix each others problems. Meanwhile, we are on the beach! Good luck losers…”

I check my forums daily. I don’t post in every thread, and I don’t fix every problem, but I at least flipping TRY to do so. I read every support email I get, and I won’t make you jump through hoops to email a real person. The person is ME. here is my email address: cliff@positech.co.uk.  Here is a clickable one:

cliff@positech.co.uk

Here it is bigger;

cliff@positech.co.uk

I get quite a pile of spam because I am so free with my email address. You know whose problem that is? MINE. Whose problem is it not? My customers.

Fuck email forms, fuck ‘self-help community forums. Fuck “your call is important to us” and definitely fuck “We are experiencing higher than normal traffic“. If you bought a game from me, and it doesn’t run email me. email me now, and I’ll do my best to fix it.

And the next time you encounter a software provider or other company that expects you to not only make do with ‘community’ tech support, but to act as their unpaid helpdesk staff, make a mental note to avoid them in future. Only by hurting the business of people like that will things improve…

And just to add some positivity, who can I name with the same attitude?

Seth Godin, the marketing guy.

BMTMicro, my payment provider,

Cater Allen, the UK bank.

errr….. feel free to add to the list.