Interview with Greenheart Games. Indie with character
(Interviewer: Marina Virtualtomato , Project Manager at All Correct Localization )
No one will argue that games are different. They spend a lot of money on some, a lot of time on others. Some justify our expectations, while others gather dust on the shelves. Alone, we are waiting and storming stores on the first day of sales. Others are looking forward to it, but the years are coming, but they are not all. And I think every gamer will have such a game that he just loves, even if they don't speak about it at every corner.
Three evenings of 2013 was given to me by the indie game Game Dev Tycoon . This is a small simulator of a game development studio. I enjoyed it, and I wanted to tell the guys who made it, thank you. It turned out that this was the debut of the studio Greenheart Games. Debut is always very exciting. Therefore, I thought that for those who are making their first game now, the story of this, albeit small, but definitely successful, can give confidence and strength to complete what has been started. Yes, and I will satisfy my curiosity.
')
Well, so I wrote my questions to Greenheart. And they took and agreed to answer them. Below is my interview with Patrick Klug, the founder, director and game designer of Greenheart Games.
Marina: Patrick, can you tell us a little about your gaming experience and whether you had any experience in the gaming industry before you founded your own studio?
Patrick: I became a gamer almost from my childhood. I grew up enjoying ASCII games like Castle. In my eyes, the game has evolved more than once. At the same time, having devoted more than 10 years of my life to professional software development, by the time Greenheart Games was created, I had no experience in the gaming industry at all.
M: Why did you decide to start a career with a game that actually copies another popular game - Game Dev Story?
P: The gaming community is quite clearly divided into two groups: one begins to rush instantly with such phrases as “plagiarism”, “replica” or “clone”, while the other understands that “drawing inspiration” in any game is not the same as blindly copying it. To tell the truth, there are quite a few clone games in the industry, but Game Dev Tycoon is not one of them. When creating GDT, we were really inspired by Game Dev Story (you can read about it in detail on our website - on the “About Us” page), but the mechanics of our project is completely different. It would be foolish to create a game studio simulator and not include certain functions in it. Even though they are reminiscent of Game Dev Story, our game, in fact, works completely differently. When creating GDT, we did not study under the GDS magnifying glass. Everything is exactly the opposite - the concept of the game was developed by us from scratch. That is what we were guided by during the work on Game Dev Tycoon. Players often say they like our perception of the genre. Most of those who love Game Dev Story like Game Dev Tycoon, and vice versa.
M: Maybe then Game Dev Story inspired you to create your own studio?
P: I don’t think it was GDS that inspired me to become a game developer. Yes, I spent some time with her, but that was before I began to think about the possibility of working in this industry. The decision to make our first game a game studio simulator did not come immediately: we considered a variety of ideas, some of which were original, and some turned out to be inspired by something.
M: Well, what do you think your own game could push someone to work in the games industry?
P: Perhaps yes. I think that having tried the game developer simulator, some people can really start working on their own games. We are always very pleased to see how players decide on this step and begin to create modifications for our game or even completely independent projects.
M: How much does your game reflect the realities of the gaming market? Is it possible to say that if a player does everything in Game Dev Tycoon and all his releases are successful, then he is so well versed in the gaming industry that he could work with the same success in developing games in real life?
P: Game Dev Tycoon is first and foremost a game. It can not be called an absolutely realistic game studio simulator, so the success achieved in it actually means not so much. On the other hand, our project demonstrates in a favorable light some interesting aspects of game development. For example, we put a lot of effort into trying to introduce mechanisms into the game that force the player in the developer role to set priorities and, if necessary, sacrifice something. We believe that the implementation of this idea came out quite realistic (and unique to GDT as a representative of a particular genre). If in real life you try to create something perfect, failure inevitably awaits you. In our game, everything is exactly the same. In it you have to make very difficult decisions. Perhaps the funniest comment I read was: “Having played Game Dev Tycoon, I now know one thing: to start developing a game, you need to have 70 thousand dollars in your pocket.” 70 thousand is the size of the starting capital in the game. I think this figure is not so far from reality (of course, much still depends on the country in which the future developer lives). Beginners always underestimate the amount of work and the amount required to create even simple games.
M: How long did it take you to develop a game from concept to release of the first version?
P: The project concept in the form of a design document was developed by my brother and me for about six months. True, we did it only in free time. After that, I worked closely for over a year on the project. Daniel also put many hours of his time into the game, trying to help me at the slightest opportunity. In addition, we additionally hired several specialists to work on animation and graphics. The game required a lot of effort from us.
M: When we discussed the game with my friends, they said that it was impossible to pass, since the pirates are stealing all your profits. At that time I had not yet passed the campaign, so I could only assume that the “heat” would start further down the plot. But when I read the Greenheart blog and got to the post, what happens when I am bankrupt? I understood what was the matter. You did not wait for the pirates , but you yourself made your pirated version and put it on the trackers. Only this version was a trick. Unlike the official version, the high level of piracy in the "pirated" version prevented the game from passing. And all my friends just downloaded the game from the trackers, and I alone bought it on Steam. I must say that what you did is very witty. And this is the best example of anti-piracy I've ever heard of. But here is a question that bothers me. This is your first game, you have not had time to suffer much from the actions of pirates. So why did you immediately clearly define your position? When did the pirates get you that way?
P: The experience with the release of the “pirate version” was an experiment for us. First of all, we wanted to find out how many people would use it. Realizing that the only way to find out is to release such a version ourselves, we could not resist the temptation to play pirates.
The results obtained on the first day can be seen in the corresponding message posted on our blog. To be honest, we were just shocked by the scale of the distribution of the pirated version on launch day. The ensuing storm in the media surprised us a lot. We are very grateful to her: firstly, she drew more attention to the problem of piracy, and secondly, many more people learned about our game than before. At the same time, many of them decided to support our project.
M: Is there, in your opinion, some kind of strategy for independent developers that will allow them to reduce the damage from piracy?
It seems that there are quite a few really effective strategies - you need to develop either a purely multiplayer game that requires constant connection to the network (and its servers should be constantly under control), or use the free-pay-to-win model. To be honest, the last option is deeply disgusting to us. Games still have to be something more than just embellished “one-armed bandits”, demanding more and more new virtual coins from you. Greenheart Games will never use such a model. On the other hand, network projects with a permanent connection to the network seem to be a good alternative, but, unfortunately, as they spread, traditional single-player / offline-games will be pushed out of the market, and to us personally they are much closer in spirit.
M: That is, you are sharply negative about Free-to-Play projects and the spread of microtransactions in games?
P: Many of the pirates do not understand that their “activity” has a great influence on the industry and is the main reason for the emergence of pay-to-win games based on freemium mechanics. Personally, I hate such games with all my heart. Greenheart Games will never resort to such a model, however, when viewed from the position of profitability, it unfortunately turns out to be very effective.
M: Tell me about your experience on Steam? Is it easy? Can you briefly describe the procedure for independent developers?
P: Steam is constantly undergoing some kind of change, so our experience is already different from what developers are working with this system today. In addition, in a statement Valve said that the company plans to get rid of the mechanism of Greenlight (allowing players to vote for adding games to the Steam catalog).
For us personally, Steam has opened up great prospects and continues to open them - after all, there are actually a lot of people in the world who honestly buy games.
M: In the work on localization, you used a collective translation - crowdsourcing. And as far as I can see, you had a pretty clear idea of ​​localization as a process. I liked that you had:
Before deciding on a fan transfer, did you consider any other alternatives? And why in the end did you stop at crowdsourcing?
P: I myself am a German speaker and understand perfectly well how important (and difficult it is) to make a good translation. From my previous experience in the industry, I knew that working with professional translators who get paid for their work is very difficult. Very often, their enthusiasm and knowledge of the product they are working on is very much inferior to those shown by fans. That is why we decided to attract volunteer workers to the project. Of course, such an approach in itself does not guarantee a quality translation - when many people work on it, it is very difficult to maintain consistency and consistency. In order to get a good quality text in such a situation, you need to use very strong intermediaries. We have not yet completed work on this kind of quality control system.
M: Did you have any unsolvable problems with localization? Questions that stumped you? If, for example, you had the opportunity to consult with professionals for free, would you use it?
P: We are still experimenting with languages ​​in which words are written and read from right to left, like Arabic. In addition, we have constant problems with childbirth, which is not in the English original. Especially sharply they arise when translating those fragments of the text where the gender must change depending on the gender of the player. These places are difficult to identify correctly, and so far we have decided to resort to certain compromises on this issue. I would be very happy to learn from my colleagues about their experience in solving such problems. True, I doubt that there can be some kind of panacea, some kind of ideal solution.
M: I think that having localized versions is a show of respect for your fans. And you are great fellows, they did everything they could, so that gamers from all over the world could enjoy your game, regardless of whether they know English or not. I always prefer to play the Russian version, unless localization is disgusting.
The tradition of fan translation is very strong in Russia, because for a very long time our country was simply bypassed in terms of official localizations: a small market, a high level of piracy. Now the situation is changing for the better. Many consider Russia an important market and translate games into Russian. And for smaller studios, crowdsourcing is the answer. But even the best fan localizations ultimately have many flaws. The most common are illiterate Russian language, tracing English constructions, inability to work with variables and tags, and another 99% of translators simply forget that girls also play games, so fan localizations almost always use an appeal to a male player ( English with this is usually no problem, but in Russian this is what we have to work with in each game). Maybe I'm too whimsical, but it annoys me when the game thinks I'm a man :-)
So, I am concerned that the fan translation instills in players a bad taste for localization, distorts their idea of ​​what is good and what is bad. In the end, adversely affects the literacy of gamers. Have you ever thought about it in this way and do you think this is really a problem? Or, maybe, when we talk about games, it is not so important, the main thing is that the user understands his tasks in the game?
P: Yes, I agree that such a problem exists. One of my favorite games is Anno 1602 (the very first in the Anno series). Surely very few people know that it was created in my homeland (in Austria) and therefore was originally in German. Perhaps this game was the first of those that pleased me with first-class German-language texts - before that I had never seen anything like it. Anno 1602 is replete with vivid expressions and beautiful sentences that make full use of the possibilities of the German language. To ensure this quality of text in translation, a world class translator is required.
Of course, a lot of effort must be invested in creating a good translation. In addition, this will require a great team. The problem with using the services of professional translators is that you definitely need a specialist of the highest level (perhaps the one who used to translate books before), whose work is very expensive. In addition (and this is no less important) to find such people, and then to control their work is very difficult. Today, I consider the combination of volunteers with strict quality control to be a good compromise. At the same time, I understand that high-quality translation requires considerable effort, as well as close attention. In the end, we are well aware that the current Russian version is a compromise and needs some work.
M: Is there a studio at the moment, the policy of which appeals to you the most? Is there an example to follow?
P: There are so many companies from which we can take an example of how NOT to do anything. I mean those who concentrate on creating through monetized games or conducting endless promotions with “early access”. There are more than enough examples of both. On the other hand, there have recently appeared quite a lot of newbies who are working on excellent projects. One of them is Tinan Sylvester, the creator of RimWorld. First of all, his book about game design is a real masterpiece (I highly recommend reading it). Secondly, he refused the tempting prospect of constant “new promises” that Kickstarter beckons. Sylvester did not set in advance dozens of above-target goals, thereby retaining complete freedom of development. I really respect this approach and have no doubt that the game will be a big success.
M: Are you going to develop the current project or are you already working on the next game?
P: We really want to start work on a new project as soon as possible, but at the same time we will not disregard Game Dev Tycoon either. New features and additions for the game are unlikely to appear, but the translation into other languages ​​will definitely be improved. In addition, we will try to do our best to help the amazing community of players involved in the modifications for our game.
No one will argue that games are different. They spend a lot of money on some, a lot of time on others. Some justify our expectations, while others gather dust on the shelves. Alone, we are waiting and storming stores on the first day of sales. Others are looking forward to it, but the years are coming, but they are not all. And I think every gamer will have such a game that he just loves, even if they don't speak about it at every corner.Three evenings of 2013 was given to me by the indie game Game Dev Tycoon . This is a small simulator of a game development studio. I enjoyed it, and I wanted to tell the guys who made it, thank you. It turned out that this was the debut of the studio Greenheart Games. Debut is always very exciting. Therefore, I thought that for those who are making their first game now, the story of this, albeit small, but definitely successful, can give confidence and strength to complete what has been started. Yes, and I will satisfy my curiosity.
')
Well, so I wrote my questions to Greenheart. And they took and agreed to answer them. Below is my interview with Patrick Klug, the founder, director and game designer of Greenheart Games.
About GDT
Marina: Patrick, can you tell us a little about your gaming experience and whether you had any experience in the gaming industry before you founded your own studio?
Patrick: I became a gamer almost from my childhood. I grew up enjoying ASCII games like Castle. In my eyes, the game has evolved more than once. At the same time, having devoted more than 10 years of my life to professional software development, by the time Greenheart Games was created, I had no experience in the gaming industry at all.
M: Why did you decide to start a career with a game that actually copies another popular game - Game Dev Story?
P: The gaming community is quite clearly divided into two groups: one begins to rush instantly with such phrases as “plagiarism”, “replica” or “clone”, while the other understands that “drawing inspiration” in any game is not the same as blindly copying it. To tell the truth, there are quite a few clone games in the industry, but Game Dev Tycoon is not one of them. When creating GDT, we were really inspired by Game Dev Story (you can read about it in detail on our website - on the “About Us” page), but the mechanics of our project is completely different. It would be foolish to create a game studio simulator and not include certain functions in it. Even though they are reminiscent of Game Dev Story, our game, in fact, works completely differently. When creating GDT, we did not study under the GDS magnifying glass. Everything is exactly the opposite - the concept of the game was developed by us from scratch. That is what we were guided by during the work on Game Dev Tycoon. Players often say they like our perception of the genre. Most of those who love Game Dev Story like Game Dev Tycoon, and vice versa.
M: Maybe then Game Dev Story inspired you to create your own studio?
P: I don’t think it was GDS that inspired me to become a game developer. Yes, I spent some time with her, but that was before I began to think about the possibility of working in this industry. The decision to make our first game a game studio simulator did not come immediately: we considered a variety of ideas, some of which were original, and some turned out to be inspired by something.
M: Well, what do you think your own game could push someone to work in the games industry?
P: Perhaps yes. I think that having tried the game developer simulator, some people can really start working on their own games. We are always very pleased to see how players decide on this step and begin to create modifications for our game or even completely independent projects.
M: How much does your game reflect the realities of the gaming market? Is it possible to say that if a player does everything in Game Dev Tycoon and all his releases are successful, then he is so well versed in the gaming industry that he could work with the same success in developing games in real life?
P: Game Dev Tycoon is first and foremost a game. It can not be called an absolutely realistic game studio simulator, so the success achieved in it actually means not so much. On the other hand, our project demonstrates in a favorable light some interesting aspects of game development. For example, we put a lot of effort into trying to introduce mechanisms into the game that force the player in the developer role to set priorities and, if necessary, sacrifice something. We believe that the implementation of this idea came out quite realistic (and unique to GDT as a representative of a particular genre). If in real life you try to create something perfect, failure inevitably awaits you. In our game, everything is exactly the same. In it you have to make very difficult decisions. Perhaps the funniest comment I read was: “Having played Game Dev Tycoon, I now know one thing: to start developing a game, you need to have 70 thousand dollars in your pocket.” 70 thousand is the size of the starting capital in the game. I think this figure is not so far from reality (of course, much still depends on the country in which the future developer lives). Beginners always underestimate the amount of work and the amount required to create even simple games.
M: How long did it take you to develop a game from concept to release of the first version?
P: The project concept in the form of a design document was developed by my brother and me for about six months. True, we did it only in free time. After that, I worked closely for over a year on the project. Daniel also put many hours of his time into the game, trying to help me at the slightest opportunity. In addition, we additionally hired several specialists to work on animation and graphics. The game required a lot of effort from us.
ABOUT PIRACY
M: When we discussed the game with my friends, they said that it was impossible to pass, since the pirates are stealing all your profits. At that time I had not yet passed the campaign, so I could only assume that the “heat” would start further down the plot. But when I read the Greenheart blog and got to the post, what happens when I am bankrupt? I understood what was the matter. You did not wait for the pirates , but you yourself made your pirated version and put it on the trackers. Only this version was a trick. Unlike the official version, the high level of piracy in the "pirated" version prevented the game from passing. And all my friends just downloaded the game from the trackers, and I alone bought it on Steam. I must say that what you did is very witty. And this is the best example of anti-piracy I've ever heard of. But here is a question that bothers me. This is your first game, you have not had time to suffer much from the actions of pirates. So why did you immediately clearly define your position? When did the pirates get you that way?
P: The experience with the release of the “pirate version” was an experiment for us. First of all, we wanted to find out how many people would use it. Realizing that the only way to find out is to release such a version ourselves, we could not resist the temptation to play pirates.
The results obtained on the first day can be seen in the corresponding message posted on our blog. To be honest, we were just shocked by the scale of the distribution of the pirated version on launch day. The ensuing storm in the media surprised us a lot. We are very grateful to her: firstly, she drew more attention to the problem of piracy, and secondly, many more people learned about our game than before. At the same time, many of them decided to support our project.
M: Is there, in your opinion, some kind of strategy for independent developers that will allow them to reduce the damage from piracy?
It seems that there are quite a few really effective strategies - you need to develop either a purely multiplayer game that requires constant connection to the network (and its servers should be constantly under control), or use the free-pay-to-win model. To be honest, the last option is deeply disgusting to us. Games still have to be something more than just embellished “one-armed bandits”, demanding more and more new virtual coins from you. Greenheart Games will never use such a model. On the other hand, network projects with a permanent connection to the network seem to be a good alternative, but, unfortunately, as they spread, traditional single-player / offline-games will be pushed out of the market, and to us personally they are much closer in spirit.
FREE-TO-PLAY
M: That is, you are sharply negative about Free-to-Play projects and the spread of microtransactions in games?
P: Many of the pirates do not understand that their “activity” has a great influence on the industry and is the main reason for the emergence of pay-to-win games based on freemium mechanics. Personally, I hate such games with all my heart. Greenheart Games will never resort to such a model, however, when viewed from the position of profitability, it unfortunately turns out to be very effective.
STEAM
M: Tell me about your experience on Steam? Is it easy? Can you briefly describe the procedure for independent developers?
P: Steam is constantly undergoing some kind of change, so our experience is already different from what developers are working with this system today. In addition, in a statement Valve said that the company plans to get rid of the mechanism of Greenlight (allowing players to vote for adding games to the Steam catalog).
For us personally, Steam has opened up great prospects and continues to open them - after all, there are actually a lot of people in the world who honestly buy games.
ABOUT LOCALIZATION
M: In the work on localization, you used a collective translation - crowdsourcing. And as far as I can see, you had a pretty clear idea of ​​localization as a process. I liked that you had:
- translation management system - weblate.org;
- some requirements for potential volunteers: they must have a good knowledge of the game, be gamers, understand games and love them;
- translators are native speakers.
Before deciding on a fan transfer, did you consider any other alternatives? And why in the end did you stop at crowdsourcing?
P: I myself am a German speaker and understand perfectly well how important (and difficult it is) to make a good translation. From my previous experience in the industry, I knew that working with professional translators who get paid for their work is very difficult. Very often, their enthusiasm and knowledge of the product they are working on is very much inferior to those shown by fans. That is why we decided to attract volunteer workers to the project. Of course, such an approach in itself does not guarantee a quality translation - when many people work on it, it is very difficult to maintain consistency and consistency. In order to get a good quality text in such a situation, you need to use very strong intermediaries. We have not yet completed work on this kind of quality control system.
M: Did you have any unsolvable problems with localization? Questions that stumped you? If, for example, you had the opportunity to consult with professionals for free, would you use it?
P: We are still experimenting with languages ​​in which words are written and read from right to left, like Arabic. In addition, we have constant problems with childbirth, which is not in the English original. Especially sharply they arise when translating those fragments of the text where the gender must change depending on the gender of the player. These places are difficult to identify correctly, and so far we have decided to resort to certain compromises on this issue. I would be very happy to learn from my colleagues about their experience in solving such problems. True, I doubt that there can be some kind of panacea, some kind of ideal solution.
M: I think that having localized versions is a show of respect for your fans. And you are great fellows, they did everything they could, so that gamers from all over the world could enjoy your game, regardless of whether they know English or not. I always prefer to play the Russian version, unless localization is disgusting.
The tradition of fan translation is very strong in Russia, because for a very long time our country was simply bypassed in terms of official localizations: a small market, a high level of piracy. Now the situation is changing for the better. Many consider Russia an important market and translate games into Russian. And for smaller studios, crowdsourcing is the answer. But even the best fan localizations ultimately have many flaws. The most common are illiterate Russian language, tracing English constructions, inability to work with variables and tags, and another 99% of translators simply forget that girls also play games, so fan localizations almost always use an appeal to a male player ( English with this is usually no problem, but in Russian this is what we have to work with in each game). Maybe I'm too whimsical, but it annoys me when the game thinks I'm a man :-)
So, I am concerned that the fan translation instills in players a bad taste for localization, distorts their idea of ​​what is good and what is bad. In the end, adversely affects the literacy of gamers. Have you ever thought about it in this way and do you think this is really a problem? Or, maybe, when we talk about games, it is not so important, the main thing is that the user understands his tasks in the game?
P: Yes, I agree that such a problem exists. One of my favorite games is Anno 1602 (the very first in the Anno series). Surely very few people know that it was created in my homeland (in Austria) and therefore was originally in German. Perhaps this game was the first of those that pleased me with first-class German-language texts - before that I had never seen anything like it. Anno 1602 is replete with vivid expressions and beautiful sentences that make full use of the possibilities of the German language. To ensure this quality of text in translation, a world class translator is required.
Of course, a lot of effort must be invested in creating a good translation. In addition, this will require a great team. The problem with using the services of professional translators is that you definitely need a specialist of the highest level (perhaps the one who used to translate books before), whose work is very expensive. In addition (and this is no less important) to find such people, and then to control their work is very difficult. Today, I consider the combination of volunteers with strict quality control to be a good compromise. At the same time, I understand that high-quality translation requires considerable effort, as well as close attention. In the end, we are well aware that the current Russian version is a compromise and needs some work.
AN EXAMPLE TO FOLLOW
M: Is there a studio at the moment, the policy of which appeals to you the most? Is there an example to follow?
P: There are so many companies from which we can take an example of how NOT to do anything. I mean those who concentrate on creating through monetized games or conducting endless promotions with “early access”. There are more than enough examples of both. On the other hand, there have recently appeared quite a lot of newbies who are working on excellent projects. One of them is Tinan Sylvester, the creator of RimWorld. First of all, his book about game design is a real masterpiece (I highly recommend reading it). Secondly, he refused the tempting prospect of constant “new promises” that Kickstarter beckons. Sylvester did not set in advance dozens of above-target goals, thereby retaining complete freedom of development. I really respect this approach and have no doubt that the game will be a big success.
ABOUT FUTURE PLANS
M: Are you going to develop the current project or are you already working on the next game?
P: We really want to start work on a new project as soon as possible, but at the same time we will not disregard Game Dev Tycoon either. New features and additions for the game are unlikely to appear, but the translation into other languages ​​will definitely be improved. In addition, we will try to do our best to help the amazing community of players involved in the modifications for our game.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/210998/
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