How to become an independent game developer
Note from the translator: if you allow knowledge of the English language, then I strongly recommend that you familiarize yourself with the original . Its author is one of the founders of the Studio Mode 7, which released Frozen Synapse . The article is very large in text size, therefore, if you fail to master it for 1 approach, I would suggest postponing until later, and continue on another day.
To me, as a game developer who has been trying to “dig” in this direction already for a period of probably 5 years or more, and who hasn’t been able to achieve at least any significant financial success, the article seemed extremely useful because sets off brains and shares a sober look at how a team or an individual developer should function in this cruel (but fairly honest) world of game development.
Below is the translation of the article.
Once, quite a while ago, I received a letter asking me, “How do I become an indie game developer?”
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I tried to respond to the letter as best I could, but I was not completely sure what was expected of me as an advice. After that, we received similar questions quite often, so I thought that I would rather write a post that I can refer to in the future, a collection of tips that can be useful to those who decide to become an indie game developer.
As someone commented on my previous article for Gamesbrief:
“The value of these tips will depend entirely on the success of your games. And let the game begin. ”(Original: will let the games begin.)
Mode 7 is an independent game development studio located in Oxford, UK. Formally, we started our activities in the 2005 area and in 2007 we released a not very successful multiplayer sword battle game: “Determinance”.
After that, we switched to the development of Frozen Synapse , which we released in 2011.
Every time I talk about Frozen Synapse (FS), I feel as if “in my apartment it smells of mahogany” (my apartment smells of rich mahogany) ...
Some facts about FS:
- Over 400,000 sales
- Average score 85 on Metacritic
- 9/10 on Edge, Eurogamer, Destructoid (and many high marks from other reviewers)
- FP headed your own Humble Bundle
- Audience Award at the IGF; Prize for the best strategic game of the year PC Gamer; RockPaperShotgun's “Best Glowing Lines” award (seriously)
We are currently working on a version of the game for the iPad, which will be released later this year.
Together with Ian Hardingham (lead designer and developer), we founded the company as co-owners and managing directors. At the moment, in addition to us, there are 4 more people working in the office, 2 of whom are full-time. We also work with various specialists remotely.
I am Paul Taylor. I do business development, marketing, sound, music, lyrics, some art director, some UI designs, some solo game design ... and some other stuff!
To make the topic under discussion more specific, suppose that by asking "How to become an indie game developer," you mean the following:
“I want to stop doing what I am doing now and become an indie full-time developer”
Also, I would like to say that if you play indie games solely for the sake of creativity or pleasure, I don’t write you off. On the contrary, some of the most amazing games I've seen in the past few years have been developed by people who do not have a commercial vein. Some even managed to earn decent money, although this was not their main goal.
Also, perhaps you would like to develop interactive stories in Twine or applications that allow you to get amazing physical experiences like Johann Sebastian Joust . If you would like to develop such projects, and not ordinary computer games, which I will talk about, please do not think that I’ll cross out of you, despite the fact that I’m not focused on you, but on ordinary games.
This is the end of this endless preamble. (That's the interminable preamble: on the show ...)
The process of creating and releasing computer games includes the following disciplines:
- Game design;
- Code;
- Level design (or something else, more tactical, or “micro” forms of game design, if you do not have levels);
- Graphics and animation;
- Sounds and music;
- Texts;
- Business (legal issues, marketing, PR, some web-development and other pieces).
All these skills are necessary and important, as well as extremely difficult to master, and one person can spend his whole life on their improvement.
The first difficulty arises from this: you need to cover all the basic areas yourself, find a responsible partner or pay others to do this work for you.
In my opinion, at the beginning of the journey, you need to be ready to pay professionals so that they are engaged in those areas that you cannot manage yourself. This is the fastest, easiest and often (paradoxically) the cheapest way to do work.
If you have never outsourced to an outsourcing job, then I recommend reading the “ Four Hour Work Week ” by Tim Ferris. Thoughts and ideas expressed in this book will be quite unusual for understanding, but I guarantee the book will make you think.
If you are lucky to know people with whom you can set up a company as partners, then first make sure that they are really interested in such a business and plan to work in it for a long time. Be sure that you can trust them unconditionally and that you are pursuing the same goals with them. Such people are very hard to find, therefore, hold on to them.
Volunteers who do not pay money often give up when there are difficulties. They may not even let you know, and you will lose a lot of time until you understand what happened.
Let's discuss each of the main disciplines and try to understand what exactly is meant by them ...
This , from Derek Yu, who created Spelunky, is one of the best things you can ever read about game design or any creative work. Read it and come back!
Game design is a creative discipline for which it is important to have strong analytical thinking at a high level. This explains why most of the game designers I know are a bit nuts (in a good way)!
Game designers are responsible for game mechanics. Yes, they often participate in the creation of high-level concept plots, but their main task remains the direct creation of the game. To be honest, I am surprised at how many people with whom I communicate do not know this.
There are 3 ways to learn game design, I arranged them in order of decreasing efficiency:
1) The creation of games and the subsequent observation of the people who play these games.
[HUGE HALF]
2) Play other people's games, analyzing them.
3) The study of the theory of game design.
I do not want to say that 2 and 3 methods are useless, they are just less effective. (In the original, an interesting pun is worthless / worth less: I'm not saying that they are worthless by any means; they are just worth less.)
It will be much easier for you to do game design if you are also a competent developer: successful game designers who you might read about who do not have development skills usually work in tandem with large teams of highly-qualified programmers. In the first stages, you will not work in this way unless you have a huge amount of money and you don’t like to risk it.
Of course, it is possible to be an indie game designer who doesn't know how to program at all. In this case, you must have outstanding communication skills to compensate for the lack of development experience.
If you use software for creating games, such as Adventure Game Studio , RPG Maker or RenPY , you will reduce the amount of knowledge required to write code in the early stages of development. But, be prepared for the fact that you will be very limited in terms of game design solutions that you can use if you don’t dive into the study of these programs.
Game design is the cornerstone, but it is not the only important component of the game. If you try to put game ratings on game design from 1 to 10, then it turns out that there are a fairly large number of successful indie games, the score of which will be 7-8 points.
There is no reason to try to implement "mediocre" game design. Players come to the game because of presentations, graphics, genre and hype around, but remain due to game design. Also, if you can get an unattainable rating of 10 out of 10, then a lot of other points in the development of the game will suddenly become much easier.
Here are a few points that I would like the designers to think more often:
- Try to build the gameplay so that players can make interesting and important decisions as quickly as possible.
- Try to reduce the total amount of time that players must spend on the boring elements of the game.
- Try to include in the game at least 1 completely new element, even if it is just a small part of the game.
There is nothing wrong with using the popular genre in game development. But people who buy indie games usually prefer these games for their innovation and originality. Be prepared to fail if you have developed a boring game!
A small warning: there is something in game design that makes people believe that they can do it, even if they have never done anything like this before. I do not fully understand what exactly makes people think so, but be prepared for the fact that game design is an incredibly difficult discipline.
In conclusion, I can say that in game design you need to find your own way and try to express yourself. Define your goals and maybe even write them down, as Tom Francis did the creator of Gunpoint recently.
note from the translator: I think, by "concept" was meant "genre"
Game concepts occupy a mysterious place between the aesthetic aspect of the game and its mechanics. They add atmosphere and emotion, as well as the main reason why people try to play or buy a game.
The more general concept for the game (for example, “fantasy MMO”), the higher the requirements for other aspects of the game and the more need for “weirdness” and deviations from the genre (for example, “fantasy MMO, in which battles take place using backgammon in 4 dimensions ").
I wrote a little about the concepts in my article on Gamasutra .
Excerpt from the article:
“Scott Steinberg advises making games with an eye on the mass consumer market. “Music, animals, sports, family values ​​... The basics of the game should use references to the real world when possible.” - Scott Steinberg, Sell More Video Games.
Jeff Tunnell, on the other hand, believes that you should focus on what interests you:
“I make such games that I would like to do and think about whether there is a demand for them later. Attempting to predict is not art or science, it is an exercise in futility. In the past, after Dynamix was absorbed by Sierra, we needed to work with the marketing department and carry out the rituals of predictions, but all of this very rarely turned out to be reliable, and the games I believed in the most, such as The Incredible Machine, got terrible predictions. “- Jeff Tunnell, What is My Game's Sales Potential?
(my part of the article)
There are commercially successful indie games about clumsy rabbits - Kung Fu fighters, abstract computer landscapes inhabited by tiny green squeaky creatures and small quirky droplets of mucus. These games will never be as big as, say, The Sims, but they will never try to be like that. By “commercial success,” I mean here, “make enough money to keep making games”. After all, this is your goal, isn't it?
Grasp the “popular” concept only if you have a passion for it, because you definitely need passion to get through the whole process of creating a game. If you plan to use something "silly" as a concept, then be prepared for the fact that you have to work harder to find your audience. And you should think about how you will do it, even before you start developing. ”
Enough talk about the game design and concept. Both of these disciplines mean nothing if you can't program the game! There is a wealth of resources on how to learn to program, so getting a basic knowledge of programming should be a trivial task. Despite this, I plan to pass the word Ian, so that he gives his advice on the development of indie games ...
"I will assume that you are working with an existing game engine, because You are reading the "how to program games" part. If you are developing your own, then my advice is unlikely to be helpful to you.
Learning programming requires a certain amount of focus and effort, which most programmers lack.
I will advise the same approach both for those who have never programmed before, and for those (including me) who have experience writing code, but who have suddenly encountered a huge game engine of 500,000 lines of code and have not the slightest idea what to do next. Do not worry that it is better to start small, it is better to immediately begin to do what is interesting to you. Nevertheless, you should wisely choose the part of this huge engine with which you would like to start your acquaintance. Find a self-contained part of a large project, something that you could figure out in a month, and let it be your first goal.
Immerse yourself in the writing of the code, be persistent until you can make any changes. Change the color of an object and celebrate it! Get everyone with your questions inside the community dedicated to your engine. At the beginning, your questions will be stupid, but, little by little, they will become less stupid, until one day you find that you are already helping others. If there are books on your engine, then buy them and read them from cover to cover, without writing code or doing exercises. Start performing the exercises only after reading the book completely.
I assume that you have some innate predisposition for programming (if not, then maybe you would be better engaged in a more creative part of creating games), if so, then the only real enemy that you encounter is indecision. NEVER start working on a problem from the point of view “I don’t know how to do it”, or, even worse, “I’m not sure if this is possible”. Anything you try to do is possible. And, if you are sure of this, it will be much easier for you to achieve your goal.
Learning how to program games is as hard as learning anything else. Be prepared that it will take 6 months of hard work to obtain the most basic knowledge. ”
You need to choose a game engine that suits your project. If you don’t know what to choose at all, then turn your attention to Torque, Unity or something based on HTML5. Alternatively, you can try something very powerful, but aimed at newbies, such as GameMaker .
Gamed design and leveling design are two different things. The goal of the first is to develop a gaming system, the goal of the second is to figure out how best to use this system.
Level design is a very specific element of every single game, working with it takes a lot of time and requires a large number of repetitions and improvements. I included this element here, just to remind future independent developers that they might need to do level-design themselves or need to find someone who would like to deal with them.
Recently, we can observe a rather popular trend of using procedural generation. This approach requires very serious skills in terms of programming, as well as a precise understanding of what will work in your game and what doesn't. Do not think about procedural generation, as an easy way to solve all your problems! Of course, you can get an excellent result in terms of effort, but be prepared for the fact that you may spend almost as much time on setting up the generation process as it would take to create levels manually.
I really respect the indie developers who develop the graphics themselves. Now I play Ben There Dan That from Size Five and I want to say that the graphics in this game (especially the gait of the characters) are very funny and perfectly fit the overall atmosphere of the game.
If you are not the greatest artist in the world, you can either use it as your advantage and make graphics in a very simple style (you can even use free tools like GIMP and Blender ), or you can hire other people to design graphics. .
Graphics - this is probably the simplest element of the game, for the development of which you can hire remote employees. If your game engine adheres to reasonable standards, then usually you can simply transfer the specification to the artist, negotiate the price and leave it alone with the work.
I recommend working with those artists who have a good experience in our industry, with those who have completed a large number of projects. Such people are able to ask the right questions and, working with them, you will have much more chances to complete the work on time. By the way, this advice concerns working with all remote employees, not only with artists.
You can spend a lot of money on graphics, so try to apply the 80/20 rule here. Keep in mind that it is worth focusing on the most important moments for the players. Having beautiful video clips is cool, but if the main character in your game has a crappy animation, people will say that your game looks terrible.
Keep an eye on the artists, do not hire the first available. You really should think about the price-performance ratio.
When developing Frozen Synapse, we made several conclusions for ourselves, which, I think, can be really useful:
We had almost no budget for graphics, so we decided to use more abstract, but aesthetic graphics, which can look good with a small amount of detail, instead of honest and complex 2D graphics. I think that simple graphics are very well suited for complex strategies on a PC (for example, AI War with nice 2D graphics).
Concept art is a very useful tool that gives you the opportunity to see your goal, but do not overdo it. As an independent developer, you should try to use your limited resources to create graphics that you can use in your game.
When players kill someone, they get a reward in the form of a cool death animation and blood spatter. We spent a lot of time and some money to make both of these things look as good as possible in our conditions.
I saw a large number of games with ugly splash screens and menus, and I never understood why the developers do this. After all, these elements of the game are not difficult to do in the right way, after all, usually, these are just static pictures!
If the store has a beautiful interior, but the signboard and the window are decorated as if they were made by a 4-year-old child, deprived of a sense of taste, no one wants to go inside to find out how the store looks from the inside.
The animated menus may not seem like the most important detail, but if I need to show the game to critics, IGF judges or a sophisticated player, this will help keep their attention until something interesting happens on the screen.
The atmosphere and presentation depend on the mood that you can create around them. It is necessary to pay attention to all small details that will help to form an unconscious understanding of the game in others.
Apple is a well-known master of this genre in terms of the design of their products and the UI. Take a look at the iPad - it's a combination of the smallest details that form an impeccable user experience.
Think about how you would like others to feel while playing your game. When you have this understanding, try to adjust all the details of your game to this goal, absolutely everything, from the buttons in the menu to the sound when you click the mouse.
It is not necessary that these parts be expensive, they can be as simple as possible, provided that they form the right overall impression. But rest assured: these details are important. It’s hard to keep track of all the details and do absolutely everything correctly, but by paying attention to detail, you will minimize random errors.
Sound design - this is the least important of the creative disciplines when creating indie games. I can remember a lot of successful games that use absolutely awful sounds and music. I find it hard to talk about it, because I myself am very sensitive to the sound design of games. But, unfortunately, this is true: sound design is not so important.
Until now, when developing a game, you can simply buy a set of pretty lousy sound effects on one of the stocks , for example SoundDogs , adjust their volume level and start using these sounds in your game.
However, when it comes to high-end indie games, things get much more complicated. I really recommend hiring third-party specialists to work with the sound design of the game. But, of course, you can do everything yourself if you are an awesome musician, like Hasper Byrne .
Even if in your game not so many sounds are used, paying attention to the sound design, you make a big jerk in quality, compared to other independent games, because most of them, so far, do not pay attention to this development detail.
Creating a good voice acting can be an incredibly difficult process, and, because this is not the first necessity to create a game, it may be better to avoid voice acting if you are not sure that it is crucial for your game. If you really need to add voice acting to the game, then try to find someone who works in the theater or on television so they can advise you on how best to approach this issue. And again, if you know the right people, many things can be solved much easier and faster.
If you want to learn how to make music yourself, then I would advise you to buy several issues of Computer Music magazine (I advise it, not only because sometimes I write for them!) And perform the exercises that can be found in them.
I really like Ableton Live . As soon as you have this program and a few free synthesizers, you will be able, pretty quickly, to bungle a musical horror composition. You can also use Live for editing and processing effects.
If you have enough money (or skills) to create a good soundtrack, you can get additional benefits from this, and not only by selling soundtracks and making money on things like the Indie Game Music Bundle . You will also have the opportunity to reach the players using a new way to communicate with them.
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One thing that I learned while working with texts for Frozen Synapse is that the vast majority of players prefer a quick and clear description of what is happening. They want to know exactly what they are doing and why. And at the same time, to the amount of text was as minimal as possible.
When working with texts, first make sure that they convey the necessary information about the situation, and only after that, add all sorts of fun creative things that you have planned ...
Be prepared for the fact that many people will understand the texts from your game verbatim, regardless from context .
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As for me, I am not a designer or a programmer, so I work on a 50/50 partnership with someone who has excellent skills in these areas. This allows him to engage in design, programming and management, and for me - to spend time on a bunch of small things in other areas.
Also, we have as many as 2 heads to solve strategic tasks, as well as 2 very different personalities, to evaluate our products. It certainly helps us a lot.
Therefore, I really think that developers in the "man-orchestra" style should think about attracting at least 1 more person to the company (I only propose to think about it!). I do not think that you will be able to unleash your full potential by working alone all the time, for this you will need someone with a different view of things.
If you have never done a game before, please just make one and release it, at least for free. Do not let planning distract you from creating games. You should think about developing first and foremost, and everything else after.
As soon as you understand that you are capable of making games, there will come a time when you can plan for the future.
If you want to develop independent games throughout your career, then you should think of a way to define a niche that will allow you to be different from other game developers, as well as create outstanding games.
This is an area in which the presence of a strong creative leader will help you. If you have great ideas and the ability to present them, then you can find a market for what you are doing.
Be ready to create your next game and immediately, as soon as you finish it, move on. The idea of ​​sitting still and reaping the benefits of one project (especially if this project has become a hit) may seem tempting, but you just have to move on.
You may want to grow your business or, on the contrary, decide to remain a small company. Both options are equally good, despite the fact that people will criticize you, whatever you choose. Most of these decisions come down to personal motivation. If you are not interested in managing a large company with a large number of employees, do not do it!
In my opinion, there are 4 possible ways for an independent studio to exist in the long term. Of course, what I’m going to talk about is only a raw draft, and there are a huge number of other possible ways to act, but pay attention to the following:
1) Permanent release (at least once every 2 years) of good-quality games (but not necessarily hits) that need to buy to play.
OR
2) A large and serious project, possibly with free-to-play monetization, and with good conversion rates and ARPU (average revenue per user - average revenue per user).
OR
3) The one and only smash hit in Minecraft style!
OR
4) Any or all of the items described above, in various combinations among themselves and combining them with contract work.
Most indie developers start from point # 1 (even if they don't know it). This is because they make games, the monetization of which comes down to a one-time purchase. They (the developers) argue as follows: "I will make my game, launch it on the Steam / App Store / Android Marketplace, pay attention to PR and make money." The reason that we are now in the "golden age" of independent developers is that this method can work for the right games!
If you created a good enough game, got a good distribution agreement from a large distributor, and managed to organize enough PR hype around your project, then you can make money.
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At the moment, free-to-play is in trend, and many do not notice the shortcomings of this approach. The developers of several free-to-play games told me that they would very much like for their games to choose the traditional sales model.
Despite the idiotic ratings on the Internet, players of all ages are pretty good at free-to-play models, and games like League Of Legends and Tribes: Ascend prove that this model is suitable for hardcore games. Also, it was recently announced that DOTA2 from Valve will be a free-to-play game, and monetization will occur only through aesthetic content. As far as I know, this is the first example of serious games that will use this approach, and it will be an amazing test of this model.
Free-to-play involves a much longer approach to developing and using practices such as a “minimally viable product” when you develop a game based on community response and statistics. Also, this approach allows you to scale your company in proportion to the profits that your games bring.
And finally, free-to-play means that, compared to the traditional sales model, many more people will try to play your game (even if there is a demo version of the game). If you want to cover as much of the market as possible, and if you are convinced that your game can keep users for a long time, then consider using this monetization approach.
As an example of small free-to-play games you can look at Kongregate(they had a great presentation at GDC this year). The results that single developers can achieve using the free-to-play model are simply amazing.
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If we talk about sales, then publications on such well-known sites like RPS and Kotaku , in combination with sales or large-scale game launches, remain the best way to increase sales. While your game is in development, you can find out more about the journalists who work in major publications, and try to get to know them so that you have the opportunity to contact them when you are ready to launch. Believe me, this effort will pay for itself.
In general, if we are talking about marketing for independent games, the important point is how your game will look to other people, how you can come up with and implement a game that other people sincerely love. All other processes should rely on your belief that you are creating an amazing product, and that you invest everything you can into it.
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I think that for a person with certain skills and strong motivation to work, who starts everything from scratch, it will take at least 2 years to get at least some significant financial result from the development of independent games, most likely, even more. I implore you to prove that I'm wrong! But I really think that most people will need from 3 to 4 years. In any case, if you plan to plunge headlong into the full-time development of independent games, then you should have some savings (or external funding).
You can also develop in your free time, but you need to be prepared for the fact that you don’t have time for social life (and I’m not exaggerating). Also, in some way you will need to figure out how to combine permanent work and the development of something serious. This is one of the hardest things to do. But, as I said, this is possible.
As soon as you immerse yourself in the development of independent games, it is a good idea to start meeting other people like that. Go to some events (for example, Bit of Alright ), chat with other independent developers, tell people about what you do. First of all, you will get some attention to your project and make friends who can help you. Secondly, it will increase the chances of completing the project. The social aspect of deciding on an action is usually the most powerful driving force to complete an action.
Try to always stand in the place of players or buyers (if you have them). Sometimes, it can be difficult, especially when you are faced with a cruel reality in areas where you are not very experienced. But you still have to do it and you have to force yourself to improve the product. You need to think at the same time about what your product is and what kind of experience players get. Try not to be either Borders or Amstrad! ( from the translator: I apologize for this translation, but I could not figure out what the author meant here, the original: try not to be either Borders or Amstrad! )
When you receive feedback from the community, stay true to your ideals and do not deviate from the original idea that inspired you to develop the game.
Games are insanely amazing, stupid, beautiful and versatile art form. If you really want to deal with them, then you need to learn to respect them, and then figure out how you can destroy / re-create / change / improve them.
This year, more than 570 applications were submitted to the Independent Games Festival, and this number will only increase. Your goal: to do something that will rise above this crowd in the future.
I wrote quite a lot about business and money, but ultimately there is no point in doing this if you don’t like to make games. There are as many different ways to be an independent developer as there are independent developers themselves. If you think that I am an idiot, and you want to prove to me that I was wrong, please do it. I will wait for your games.
Good luck and have a good day, as people usually say!
To me, as a game developer who has been trying to “dig” in this direction already for a period of probably 5 years or more, and who hasn’t been able to achieve at least any significant financial success, the article seemed extremely useful because sets off brains and shares a sober look at how a team or an individual developer should function in this cruel (but fairly honest) world of game development.
Below is the translation of the article.
Once, quite a while ago, I received a letter asking me, “How do I become an indie game developer?”
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I tried to respond to the letter as best I could, but I was not completely sure what was expected of me as an advice. After that, we received similar questions quite often, so I thought that I would rather write a post that I can refer to in the future, a collection of tips that can be useful to those who decide to become an indie game developer.
Who are we
As someone commented on my previous article for Gamesbrief:
“The value of these tips will depend entirely on the success of your games. And let the game begin. ”(Original: will let the games begin.)
Mode 7 is an independent game development studio located in Oxford, UK. Formally, we started our activities in the 2005 area and in 2007 we released a not very successful multiplayer sword battle game: “Determinance”.
After that, we switched to the development of Frozen Synapse , which we released in 2011.
Every time I talk about Frozen Synapse (FS), I feel as if “in my apartment it smells of mahogany” (my apartment smells of rich mahogany) ...
Some facts about FS:
- Over 400,000 sales
- Average score 85 on Metacritic
- 9/10 on Edge, Eurogamer, Destructoid (and many high marks from other reviewers)
- FP headed your own Humble Bundle
- Audience Award at the IGF; Prize for the best strategic game of the year PC Gamer; RockPaperShotgun's “Best Glowing Lines” award (seriously)
We are currently working on a version of the game for the iPad, which will be released later this year.
Together with Ian Hardingham (lead designer and developer), we founded the company as co-owners and managing directors. At the moment, in addition to us, there are 4 more people working in the office, 2 of whom are full-time. We also work with various specialists remotely.
Who am i
I am Paul Taylor. I do business development, marketing, sound, music, lyrics, some art director, some UI designs, some solo game design ... and some other stuff!
Question
To make the topic under discussion more specific, suppose that by asking "How to become an indie game developer," you mean the following:
“I want to stop doing what I am doing now and become an indie full-time developer”
Also, I would like to say that if you play indie games solely for the sake of creativity or pleasure, I don’t write you off. On the contrary, some of the most amazing games I've seen in the past few years have been developed by people who do not have a commercial vein. Some even managed to earn decent money, although this was not their main goal.
Also, perhaps you would like to develop interactive stories in Twine or applications that allow you to get amazing physical experiences like Johann Sebastian Joust . If you would like to develop such projects, and not ordinary computer games, which I will talk about, please do not think that I’ll cross out of you, despite the fact that I’m not focused on you, but on ordinary games.
This is the end of this endless preamble. (That's the interminable preamble: on the show ...)
The basics
The process of creating and releasing computer games includes the following disciplines:
- Game design;
- Code;
- Level design (or something else, more tactical, or “micro” forms of game design, if you do not have levels);
- Graphics and animation;
- Sounds and music;
- Texts;
- Business (legal issues, marketing, PR, some web-development and other pieces).
All these skills are necessary and important, as well as extremely difficult to master, and one person can spend his whole life on their improvement.
The first difficulty arises from this: you need to cover all the basic areas yourself, find a responsible partner or pay others to do this work for you.
In my opinion, at the beginning of the journey, you need to be ready to pay professionals so that they are engaged in those areas that you cannot manage yourself. This is the fastest, easiest and often (paradoxically) the cheapest way to do work.
If you have never outsourced to an outsourcing job, then I recommend reading the “ Four Hour Work Week ” by Tim Ferris. Thoughts and ideas expressed in this book will be quite unusual for understanding, but I guarantee the book will make you think.
If you are lucky to know people with whom you can set up a company as partners, then first make sure that they are really interested in such a business and plan to work in it for a long time. Be sure that you can trust them unconditionally and that you are pursuing the same goals with them. Such people are very hard to find, therefore, hold on to them.
Volunteers who do not pay money often give up when there are difficulties. They may not even let you know, and you will lose a lot of time until you understand what happened.
Let's discuss each of the main disciplines and try to understand what exactly is meant by them ...
Game design
This , from Derek Yu, who created Spelunky, is one of the best things you can ever read about game design or any creative work. Read it and come back!
Game design is a creative discipline for which it is important to have strong analytical thinking at a high level. This explains why most of the game designers I know are a bit nuts (in a good way)!
Game designers are responsible for game mechanics. Yes, they often participate in the creation of high-level concept plots, but their main task remains the direct creation of the game. To be honest, I am surprised at how many people with whom I communicate do not know this.
There are 3 ways to learn game design, I arranged them in order of decreasing efficiency:
1) The creation of games and the subsequent observation of the people who play these games.
[HUGE HALF]
2) Play other people's games, analyzing them.
3) The study of the theory of game design.
I do not want to say that 2 and 3 methods are useless, they are just less effective. (In the original, an interesting pun is worthless / worth less: I'm not saying that they are worthless by any means; they are just worth less.)
It will be much easier for you to do game design if you are also a competent developer: successful game designers who you might read about who do not have development skills usually work in tandem with large teams of highly-qualified programmers. In the first stages, you will not work in this way unless you have a huge amount of money and you don’t like to risk it.
Of course, it is possible to be an indie game designer who doesn't know how to program at all. In this case, you must have outstanding communication skills to compensate for the lack of development experience.
If you use software for creating games, such as Adventure Game Studio , RPG Maker or RenPY , you will reduce the amount of knowledge required to write code in the early stages of development. But, be prepared for the fact that you will be very limited in terms of game design solutions that you can use if you don’t dive into the study of these programs.
Game design is the cornerstone, but it is not the only important component of the game. If you try to put game ratings on game design from 1 to 10, then it turns out that there are a fairly large number of successful indie games, the score of which will be 7-8 points.
There is no reason to try to implement "mediocre" game design. Players come to the game because of presentations, graphics, genre and hype around, but remain due to game design. Also, if you can get an unattainable rating of 10 out of 10, then a lot of other points in the development of the game will suddenly become much easier.
Here are a few points that I would like the designers to think more often:
- Try to build the gameplay so that players can make interesting and important decisions as quickly as possible.
- Try to reduce the total amount of time that players must spend on the boring elements of the game.
- Try to include in the game at least 1 completely new element, even if it is just a small part of the game.
There is nothing wrong with using the popular genre in game development. But people who buy indie games usually prefer these games for their innovation and originality. Be prepared to fail if you have developed a boring game!
A small warning: there is something in game design that makes people believe that they can do it, even if they have never done anything like this before. I do not fully understand what exactly makes people think so, but be prepared for the fact that game design is an incredibly difficult discipline.
In conclusion, I can say that in game design you need to find your own way and try to express yourself. Define your goals and maybe even write them down, as Tom Francis did the creator of Gunpoint recently.
Concept
note from the translator: I think, by "concept" was meant "genre"
Game concepts occupy a mysterious place between the aesthetic aspect of the game and its mechanics. They add atmosphere and emotion, as well as the main reason why people try to play or buy a game.
The more general concept for the game (for example, “fantasy MMO”), the higher the requirements for other aspects of the game and the more need for “weirdness” and deviations from the genre (for example, “fantasy MMO, in which battles take place using backgammon in 4 dimensions ").
I wrote a little about the concepts in my article on Gamasutra .
Excerpt from the article:
“Scott Steinberg advises making games with an eye on the mass consumer market. “Music, animals, sports, family values ​​... The basics of the game should use references to the real world when possible.” - Scott Steinberg, Sell More Video Games.
Jeff Tunnell, on the other hand, believes that you should focus on what interests you:
“I make such games that I would like to do and think about whether there is a demand for them later. Attempting to predict is not art or science, it is an exercise in futility. In the past, after Dynamix was absorbed by Sierra, we needed to work with the marketing department and carry out the rituals of predictions, but all of this very rarely turned out to be reliable, and the games I believed in the most, such as The Incredible Machine, got terrible predictions. “- Jeff Tunnell, What is My Game's Sales Potential?
(my part of the article)
There are commercially successful indie games about clumsy rabbits - Kung Fu fighters, abstract computer landscapes inhabited by tiny green squeaky creatures and small quirky droplets of mucus. These games will never be as big as, say, The Sims, but they will never try to be like that. By “commercial success,” I mean here, “make enough money to keep making games”. After all, this is your goal, isn't it?
Grasp the “popular” concept only if you have a passion for it, because you definitely need passion to get through the whole process of creating a game. If you plan to use something "silly" as a concept, then be prepared for the fact that you have to work harder to find your audience. And you should think about how you will do it, even before you start developing. ”
Code
Enough talk about the game design and concept. Both of these disciplines mean nothing if you can't program the game! There is a wealth of resources on how to learn to program, so getting a basic knowledge of programming should be a trivial task. Despite this, I plan to pass the word Ian, so that he gives his advice on the development of indie games ...
"I will assume that you are working with an existing game engine, because You are reading the "how to program games" part. If you are developing your own, then my advice is unlikely to be helpful to you.
Learning programming requires a certain amount of focus and effort, which most programmers lack.
I will advise the same approach both for those who have never programmed before, and for those (including me) who have experience writing code, but who have suddenly encountered a huge game engine of 500,000 lines of code and have not the slightest idea what to do next. Do not worry that it is better to start small, it is better to immediately begin to do what is interesting to you. Nevertheless, you should wisely choose the part of this huge engine with which you would like to start your acquaintance. Find a self-contained part of a large project, something that you could figure out in a month, and let it be your first goal.
Immerse yourself in the writing of the code, be persistent until you can make any changes. Change the color of an object and celebrate it! Get everyone with your questions inside the community dedicated to your engine. At the beginning, your questions will be stupid, but, little by little, they will become less stupid, until one day you find that you are already helping others. If there are books on your engine, then buy them and read them from cover to cover, without writing code or doing exercises. Start performing the exercises only after reading the book completely.
I assume that you have some innate predisposition for programming (if not, then maybe you would be better engaged in a more creative part of creating games), if so, then the only real enemy that you encounter is indecision. NEVER start working on a problem from the point of view “I don’t know how to do it”, or, even worse, “I’m not sure if this is possible”. Anything you try to do is possible. And, if you are sure of this, it will be much easier for you to achieve your goal.
Learning how to program games is as hard as learning anything else. Be prepared that it will take 6 months of hard work to obtain the most basic knowledge. ”
You need to choose a game engine that suits your project. If you don’t know what to choose at all, then turn your attention to Torque, Unity or something based on HTML5. Alternatively, you can try something very powerful, but aimed at newbies, such as GameMaker .
Level design
Gamed design and leveling design are two different things. The goal of the first is to develop a gaming system, the goal of the second is to figure out how best to use this system.
Level design is a very specific element of every single game, working with it takes a lot of time and requires a large number of repetitions and improvements. I included this element here, just to remind future independent developers that they might need to do level-design themselves or need to find someone who would like to deal with them.
Recently, we can observe a rather popular trend of using procedural generation. This approach requires very serious skills in terms of programming, as well as a precise understanding of what will work in your game and what doesn't. Do not think about procedural generation, as an easy way to solve all your problems! Of course, you can get an excellent result in terms of effort, but be prepared for the fact that you may spend almost as much time on setting up the generation process as it would take to create levels manually.
Graphics and Animation
I really respect the indie developers who develop the graphics themselves. Now I play Ben There Dan That from Size Five and I want to say that the graphics in this game (especially the gait of the characters) are very funny and perfectly fit the overall atmosphere of the game.
If you are not the greatest artist in the world, you can either use it as your advantage and make graphics in a very simple style (you can even use free tools like GIMP and Blender ), or you can hire other people to design graphics. .
Graphics - this is probably the simplest element of the game, for the development of which you can hire remote employees. If your game engine adheres to reasonable standards, then usually you can simply transfer the specification to the artist, negotiate the price and leave it alone with the work.
I recommend working with those artists who have a good experience in our industry, with those who have completed a large number of projects. Such people are able to ask the right questions and, working with them, you will have much more chances to complete the work on time. By the way, this advice concerns working with all remote employees, not only with artists.
You can spend a lot of money on graphics, so try to apply the 80/20 rule here. Keep in mind that it is worth focusing on the most important moments for the players. Having beautiful video clips is cool, but if the main character in your game has a crappy animation, people will say that your game looks terrible.
Keep an eye on the artists, do not hire the first available. You really should think about the price-performance ratio.
When developing Frozen Synapse, we made several conclusions for ourselves, which, I think, can be really useful:
Keep it simple
We had almost no budget for graphics, so we decided to use more abstract, but aesthetic graphics, which can look good with a small amount of detail, instead of honest and complex 2D graphics. I think that simple graphics are very well suited for complex strategies on a PC (for example, AI War with nice 2D graphics).
Understand what you are aiming for.
Concept art is a very useful tool that gives you the opportunity to see your goal, but do not overdo it. As an independent developer, you should try to use your limited resources to create graphics that you can use in your game.
Focus on aesthetic rewards
When players kill someone, they get a reward in the form of a cool death animation and blood spatter. We spent a lot of time and some money to make both of these things look as good as possible in our conditions.
The first impression is the most important (original: Front-load the awesome)
I saw a large number of games with ugly splash screens and menus, and I never understood why the developers do this. After all, these elements of the game are not difficult to do in the right way, after all, usually, these are just static pictures!
If the store has a beautiful interior, but the signboard and the window are decorated as if they were made by a 4-year-old child, deprived of a sense of taste, no one wants to go inside to find out how the store looks from the inside.
The animated menus may not seem like the most important detail, but if I need to show the game to critics, IGF judges or a sophisticated player, this will help keep their attention until something interesting happens on the screen.
Modify, refine, refine, refine ...
The atmosphere and presentation depend on the mood that you can create around them. It is necessary to pay attention to all small details that will help to form an unconscious understanding of the game in others.
Apple is a well-known master of this genre in terms of the design of their products and the UI. Take a look at the iPad - it's a combination of the smallest details that form an impeccable user experience.
Think about how you would like others to feel while playing your game. When you have this understanding, try to adjust all the details of your game to this goal, absolutely everything, from the buttons in the menu to the sound when you click the mouse.
It is not necessary that these parts be expensive, they can be as simple as possible, provided that they form the right overall impression. But rest assured: these details are important. It’s hard to keep track of all the details and do absolutely everything correctly, but by paying attention to detail, you will minimize random errors.
Music and sounds
Sound design - this is the least important of the creative disciplines when creating indie games. I can remember a lot of successful games that use absolutely awful sounds and music. I find it hard to talk about it, because I myself am very sensitive to the sound design of games. But, unfortunately, this is true: sound design is not so important.
Until now, when developing a game, you can simply buy a set of pretty lousy sound effects on one of the stocks , for example SoundDogs , adjust their volume level and start using these sounds in your game.
However, when it comes to high-end indie games, things get much more complicated. I really recommend hiring third-party specialists to work with the sound design of the game. But, of course, you can do everything yourself if you are an awesome musician, like Hasper Byrne .
Even if in your game not so many sounds are used, paying attention to the sound design, you make a big jerk in quality, compared to other independent games, because most of them, so far, do not pay attention to this development detail.
Creating a good voice acting can be an incredibly difficult process, and, because this is not the first necessity to create a game, it may be better to avoid voice acting if you are not sure that it is crucial for your game. If you really need to add voice acting to the game, then try to find someone who works in the theater or on television so they can advise you on how best to approach this issue. And again, if you know the right people, many things can be solved much easier and faster.
If you want to learn how to make music yourself, then I would advise you to buy several issues of Computer Music magazine (I advise it, not only because sometimes I write for them!) And perform the exercises that can be found in them.
I really like Ableton Live . As soon as you have this program and a few free synthesizers, you will be able, pretty quickly, to bungle a musical horror composition. You can also use Live for editing and processing effects.
If you have enough money (or skills) to create a good soundtrack, you can get additional benefits from this, and not only by selling soundtracks and making money on things like the Indie Game Music Bundle . You will also have the opportunity to reach the players using a new way to communicate with them.
Texts
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One thing that I learned while working with texts for Frozen Synapse is that the vast majority of players prefer a quick and clear description of what is happening. They want to know exactly what they are doing and why. And at the same time, to the amount of text was as minimal as possible.
When working with texts, first make sure that they convey the necessary information about the situation, and only after that, add all sorts of fun creative things that you have planned ...
Be prepared for the fact that many people will understand the texts from your game verbatim, regardless from context .
Note about remote employees
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As for me, I am not a designer or a programmer, so I work on a 50/50 partnership with someone who has excellent skills in these areas. This allows him to engage in design, programming and management, and for me - to spend time on a bunch of small things in other areas.
Also, we have as many as 2 heads to solve strategic tasks, as well as 2 very different personalities, to evaluate our products. It certainly helps us a lot.
Therefore, I really think that developers in the "man-orchestra" style should think about attracting at least 1 more person to the company (I only propose to think about it!). I do not think that you will be able to unleash your full potential by working alone all the time, for this you will need someone with a different view of things.
?
If you have never done a game before, please just make one and release it, at least for free. Do not let planning distract you from creating games. You should think about developing first and foremost, and everything else after.
As soon as you understand that you are capable of making games, there will come a time when you can plan for the future.
If you want to develop independent games throughout your career, then you should think of a way to define a niche that will allow you to be different from other game developers, as well as create outstanding games.
This is an area in which the presence of a strong creative leader will help you. If you have great ideas and the ability to present them, then you can find a market for what you are doing.
Be ready to create your next game and immediately, as soon as you finish it, move on. The idea of ​​sitting still and reaping the benefits of one project (especially if this project has become a hit) may seem tempting, but you just have to move on.
You may want to grow your business or, on the contrary, decide to remain a small company. Both options are equally good, despite the fact that people will criticize you, whatever you choose. Most of these decisions come down to personal motivation. If you are not interested in managing a large company with a large number of employees, do not do it!
Strategy
In my opinion, there are 4 possible ways for an independent studio to exist in the long term. Of course, what I’m going to talk about is only a raw draft, and there are a huge number of other possible ways to act, but pay attention to the following:
1) Permanent release (at least once every 2 years) of good-quality games (but not necessarily hits) that need to buy to play.
OR
2) A large and serious project, possibly with free-to-play monetization, and with good conversion rates and ARPU (average revenue per user - average revenue per user).
OR
3) The one and only smash hit in Minecraft style!
OR
4) Any or all of the items described above, in various combinations among themselves and combining them with contract work.
Games to buy to play
Most indie developers start from point # 1 (even if they don't know it). This is because they make games, the monetization of which comes down to a one-time purchase. They (the developers) argue as follows: "I will make my game, launch it on the Steam / App Store / Android Marketplace, pay attention to PR and make money." The reason that we are now in the "golden age" of independent developers is that this method can work for the right games!
If you created a good enough game, got a good distribution agreement from a large distributor, and managed to organize enough PR hype around your project, then you can make money.
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At the moment, free-to-play is in trend, and many do not notice the shortcomings of this approach. The developers of several free-to-play games told me that they would very much like for their games to choose the traditional sales model.
Despite the idiotic ratings on the Internet, players of all ages are pretty good at free-to-play models, and games like League Of Legends and Tribes: Ascend prove that this model is suitable for hardcore games. Also, it was recently announced that DOTA2 from Valve will be a free-to-play game, and monetization will occur only through aesthetic content. As far as I know, this is the first example of serious games that will use this approach, and it will be an amazing test of this model.
Free-to-play involves a much longer approach to developing and using practices such as a “minimally viable product” when you develop a game based on community response and statistics. Also, this approach allows you to scale your company in proportion to the profits that your games bring.
And finally, free-to-play means that, compared to the traditional sales model, many more people will try to play your game (even if there is a demo version of the game). If you want to cover as much of the market as possible, and if you are convinced that your game can keep users for a long time, then consider using this monetization approach.
As an example of small free-to-play games you can look at Kongregate(they had a great presentation at GDC this year). The results that single developers can achieve using the free-to-play model are simply amazing.
Contract job
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Marketing
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If we talk about sales, then publications on such well-known sites like RPS and Kotaku , in combination with sales or large-scale game launches, remain the best way to increase sales. While your game is in development, you can find out more about the journalists who work in major publications, and try to get to know them so that you have the opportunity to contact them when you are ready to launch. Believe me, this effort will pay for itself.
In general, if we are talking about marketing for independent games, the important point is how your game will look to other people, how you can come up with and implement a game that other people sincerely love. All other processes should rely on your belief that you are creating an amazing product, and that you invest everything you can into it.
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I think that for a person with certain skills and strong motivation to work, who starts everything from scratch, it will take at least 2 years to get at least some significant financial result from the development of independent games, most likely, even more. I implore you to prove that I'm wrong! But I really think that most people will need from 3 to 4 years. In any case, if you plan to plunge headlong into the full-time development of independent games, then you should have some savings (or external funding).
You can also develop in your free time, but you need to be prepared for the fact that you don’t have time for social life (and I’m not exaggerating). Also, in some way you will need to figure out how to combine permanent work and the development of something serious. This is one of the hardest things to do. But, as I said, this is possible.
As soon as you immerse yourself in the development of independent games, it is a good idea to start meeting other people like that. Go to some events (for example, Bit of Alright ), chat with other independent developers, tell people about what you do. First of all, you will get some attention to your project and make friends who can help you. Secondly, it will increase the chances of completing the project. The social aspect of deciding on an action is usually the most powerful driving force to complete an action.
Try to always stand in the place of players or buyers (if you have them). Sometimes, it can be difficult, especially when you are faced with a cruel reality in areas where you are not very experienced. But you still have to do it and you have to force yourself to improve the product. You need to think at the same time about what your product is and what kind of experience players get. Try not to be either Borders or Amstrad! ( from the translator: I apologize for this translation, but I could not figure out what the author meant here, the original: try not to be either Borders or Amstrad! )
When you receive feedback from the community, stay true to your ideals and do not deviate from the original idea that inspired you to develop the game.
Games are insanely amazing, stupid, beautiful and versatile art form. If you really want to deal with them, then you need to learn to respect them, and then figure out how you can destroy / re-create / change / improve them.
This year, more than 570 applications were submitted to the Independent Games Festival, and this number will only increase. Your goal: to do something that will rise above this crowd in the future.
I wrote quite a lot about business and money, but ultimately there is no point in doing this if you don’t like to make games. There are as many different ways to be an independent developer as there are independent developers themselves. If you think that I am an idiot, and you want to prove to me that I was wrong, please do it. I will wait for your games.
Good luck and have a good day, as people usually say!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/231225/
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