Development Indie RPG: analysis of two years of development
Hi guys. For the last two years, we have been developing the prologue After Reset RPG . Some of those who read this article are following the progress of development since Kickstarter. In November, we finally plan to officially release the prologue.
In this article, you will be able with us to zip around all the major highs and lows that have happened to us since KS month after month. Without preukras, without PR, without water. Only a clean case and hard experience. An experience that you are likely to encounter with high probability, taking the path of an indie developer, or have already encountered, if you are already working on your game.
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I wanted to translate my development report into Russian and publish it for indie developers colleagues a bit earlier, because after the release and at the height of our current KS Daedalus campaign, I simply will not have time. At the moment, the preview of this report is available in original (in English) on Kickstarter only for bakers and on our forum for Co-Founders and will be published on Gamasutra after the release of the prologue.
Continuing our tradition of transparency of development, I would like to share the history of the development of the prologue of our game. For convenience of perception, I designed all our adventures in the form of a report by month.
Please keep in mind that this report includes only bright challenges, obstacles, important events and interesting ( read, "faq" ) situations without a routine, which in the development process takes most of the time. Because of the selectivity of the interesting thing, while reading the report, there may be a feeling that all these stories have gone off the screens of dramatic series like Silicon Valley or Halt And Catch Fire , but this is not so. Sometimes reality turns out to be even more dramatic than any scenarios can predict. At the same time, based on inside information that we exchange “without a tie” (and not at konfs and exhibitions, where everyone smiles at each other, tells how cool everyone is and caches nice promo numbers) with several dozens of other indie developers Most of the situations we have experienced are quite typical for the industry and are not extremes or something extraordinary.
Anyway, the events described occupied about 20% of our time. For two years, there were 10-12 hours of daily work, seven days a week, holidays, sick-days, and respites behind their scenes. In the end, it is the good old “patience and work” that turns out to be the very water that grinds away any stones of problems.
Here we go?
AUGUST
• The first nezhdanchik. Exactly one day before the start of the Kickstarter campaign, our lead programmer, with whom we worked on the first build of the game, suddenly disappears. Suddenly and mysteriously, in the best traditions of Inferno , leaving only a short message-rebus on the mailbox that family affairs require his urgent departure for an indefinite period. The trouble does not come alone, and Murphy's laws come into play - exactly on the same day, our build, which we were going to present on Kickstarter, breaks down after the lead programmer disappears. I had only a few hours to deal with the situation, to establish the work of the build, in which only the lead programmer was guided freely, prepare the video and include it in the media materials.
// Update today: curious, but now with Daedalus, too, exactly in one day, but a completely different unexpected crap happened, and most importantly - also exactly in a day, from a completely unexpected place. And again, a miracle on norepinephrine managed to be resolved, but now with additional buns (experience, as in any way “the son of difficult mistakes”). Then in a separate article on Daedalus I will write.
When the first wave of norepinephrine passed, I managed to connect a sleepy spare coder, who was shocked by the sudden responsibility and the legalization of marijuana in the state of California that was coming, and deal with the situation together, fix the bugs, and don’t screw up the PR plan with the media that could fall like dominoes. Banalism is asked for the language, which is easy to advise others, but not easy to translate into your own behavior: you had to keep more programmers and not tie the risks to one thing. It is well advised, and not just done: first, for 2 years of joint work, this particular person never (!) Let us down; secondly, before Kickstarter, practically all development was paid by myself from my savings and it was non-kosher to allocate funds for another leadcoder.
Anyway, by sending him several letters, I tried to understand the situation in order to help resolve it. The difficulty was that he urgently flew to those regions where the Internet is in the same condition as the upcoming "State Teleportation Centers" in Russia. Therefore, until the end of the Kickstarter campaign, we were in the dark about the fate of our Atlanta.
• Kickstarter Month. There is an opinion (I confess, as the player himself thought so earlier), that, truly, serious work on games begins after the collection of resources. In fact, preparing for Kickstarter is a very hard work in itself, it costs thousands of dollars (or tens of thousands) and starts 3-6 months before the official launch of the campaign (not counting the time to develop the alpha build itself).
But the work of the pre-production does not end there either: management and management of the campaign itself (after launch) takes 10-12 hours of daily communication with bakers, media and partners (if you read Le Bona or speak in front of the stadiums, you can imagine that one wrong word or a typo can bring down the emotions of a crowd of thousands on you alone), the implementation of the plan for promotion and marketing, the execution of endless iterations of PDCA , etc.
In the end, it was all over, squeezing me into a drop. At the same time, I and the whole team were very pleased that the project found a response in the hearts of the fans, expressed in real financial support. A biologically necessary solution would be for everyone to take a break for at least 5 days, but even more work and even more stress were already breaking through our door as soon as the long-awaited “Project has been successfully funded” appeared on the platform.
SEPTEMBER
• Wanted programmers. Since the situation with the lead programmer and his future was completely incomprehensible, I began to look for a replacement and additional coders, besides the professional qualities, who also understand the mechanics of games such as Dungeons and Dragons , Fallout 1 & 2 , Baldur's Gate , Neverwinter Nights , and able to understand our current at the time of Kickstarter'a build. An additional complication was the fact that in addition to the competencies (this is now a lot of Unity / C # programmers, and at that time the platform was relatively not run-in), the candidate should also be in our pocket. Eg appealing to the games studios that we were targeting in the US, the programmer receives $ 60k-120k per year in such studios. As you know, this is twice as much as we have gathered NET for the entire draft of the prologue.
The only option for indie developers is to find a budding and talented junior with a suitable basic background and gossip with him or with him. At the same time, the candidate must have high moral and personal qualities, such as a sense of responsibility, which will not allow him to simply go and go to another large studio after such coaching. It doesn't sound realistic, I know, but as Nelson Mandela voiced: “ Everything looks impossible until we do it.”
• Last Supper. At the beginning of the month, I began to receive worrisome signals that the person responsible for the accumulated transfers from Kickstarter ( Jeffrey Pritz ) could simply dump into Mexico with our money.
On the one hand, I did not suffer from the syndrome of blind trust: I always entered into contracts with all team members, development contributors, partners, third parties, and also kept all the documents, checks, official correspondence, etc. to control issues of bills, taxes, intellectual property. The facts are aesthetically pleasing to me. In addition, the man had a profile on IMDB , more than once was at his home, I already had photos of all his documents, SSN. This 45-year-old ** zdyuk even tried to drive up to my niece for several months.
On the other hand, life and business experience as a CMO and CEO dictated that any pickups cannot be ignored if they concern money. Therefore, as soon as the first money began to come from the Bakers, I first requested a withdrawal of $ 50k, and when these first funds were in our hands, I allowed myself to relax. Mea culpa. To celebrate, I ignored a few obvious "bells": like the fact that during our trip, Jeff suddenly suggested that I invest in some of his new business (I refused), then in some piece of land (again refused), and finally and he stated at all that these $ 50k before taxes were all that had come (they say, the rest of the money ate commissions and refusals of transfers). He promised to look more closely at the situation, “blah blah blah” for two weeks, and having decided that the person would not rob the family of the “lover”, I agreed to give him time.
“Well, seriously, ” said the logic, “We also signed a contract in which he was forbidden to withdraw a cent from the money collected without my written consent. In addition, he is a public person. And if I wanted to steal money, I would have intercepted it from the account before I took off the first $ 50k, I would have run away with them. This is logical. "
However, Game Theory and Life itself warns that people do not always act logically. For me, as well as for Eddard Stark (we share the ESTJ-A personal psycho -type ), meeting face-to-face with such a revelation did not bode well. People tend to go crazy when they feel / see / touch money (de facto, just colored cotton).
• Backup plan. Despite the fact that I usually do not count on a blow in the back from my own mentality, I nevertheless very carefully prepare for possible risks and threats from the outside circle, regarding them as inevitable. “ It doesn’t matter how much money you have on a project - they will always be missed ,” is one of those life hacks whose zen I learned in fifteen years of project management. Well, as gamers, we are already facing this throughout the life of the industry. Very cool and ambitious projects very often sink or degrade by the time of release due to lack of budget or overruns.
In the After Reset development strategy, I focused on three main points: focusing on an adult target audience (with its erudition, life experience and interests), solid science fiction as the basis of the setting (the first video game in this genre), high quality assets of the universe (better less, but with realistic detailing, 4k textures, mocap). According to the idea, this triumvirate singled out After Reset to its unique niche in the market among the mass products of large campaigns and hundreds of thousands of small walk-throughs or experimental ones. Just like a good family restaurant, it retains its place on the street with large fast food chains and numerous hot dog vendors and burritos.
In the event of a shortage of money, in the normal situation, the developers either shut off the players, perfectly continuing to sell products in spite of negative reviews, either close the project, release the cut off 85% of the planned or promised content, or release only the formally promised pass-through version about which you forget within a week after having passed and successfully deleted. Such options did not suit me, as a developer. The project was and is for me something of a child, and I felt and feel personal responsibility for it. Including for any possible shoals and threats that a priori could arise during development. We needed a backup plan that could cover us in case of budget overruns or underestimates. For this purpose, I sold my small retail business in order to continue investing in development on the quality that suited me even if the development period was extended or if there was a shortage of funds during planned development.
• Hacking will not work. On the background of what is happening, we also had disagreements with our level designer. He made the design of the levels "by eye" and began to insist that "and so it will come down", that "People shavayet", that "everyone is doing it." His position was justified in haste to meet the stated EDD-term. Actually, you yourself can see what kind of trash we would release, going on about this strategy: a link to the IDB (there you can download fragments of how the game would look if we released it without spending these months on quality). I believed (and believe) that the release of the game in that capacity was not acceptable. This would destroy the entire development strategy of the project and the universe and kill the potential of all future setting projects. Once Uwe Boll - Uwe Boll forever. A release of the game in that state would forever brand it with indie trash "for $ 1.99." I myself would not install it even for free. Of course, a release of trash for such a price would bring us quick $ 4-10k and, maybe, even formally, we would have fulfilled half the expectations of the fans, but these few thousand would never be enough to complete the whole game even in such a poor quality. That would be the end of After Reset . Therefore, I sent level design to remake everything from scratch with the quality and approach that I was satisfied with (and for which I paid, by the way).
However, despite the fact that we found the designer's level on the recommendation of the highly respected Manufacture K4 , this designer simply stopped responding to me. After a week of unsuccessful attempts to contact him, I simply asked PayPal to return the payment to me by sending our documents and correspondence. PayPal studied the materials and returned the money, and on the same day the level designer suddenly appeared. The week went to trial. As a result, the payment system confirmed our correctness, the designer apologized to close the discus not on a conflict note, I sent part of the money as payment for the time that the designer spent on trash. From that moment on, I made the decision to personally design the levels for the prologue.
OCTOBER
• Lead programmer to contact. MIA-status is canceled. The situation became clearer: due to sudden family problems, he was forced to fly away to help his family just as suddenly. And he did not give an explanation from the desire not to entice us into personal problems. Anything happens, we understand, but because of the current situation, he could not return to work on the project for 2-4 months. To top it off, the Internet was almost inaccessible in the area where his family lived, so for this period as a leader, he was not an assistant to us.
Lowering the pathos, we can say that his family urgently needed money, and since we worked with Kickstarter without a single overlay for two years (from that time to Greellight, when After Reset was just my hobby), I I decided not to put pressure on him and give time to calmly deal with the problems. La familia es todo. Moreover, his unique deep knowledge of the architecture of the project and its code was invaluable just to drop it.
Supported by such arguments, I decided to pay for the coding project in advance, over the coming months. The fact that he would do the work as soon as he solved his family problems, I had no doubt and thought that if you were helped in a difficult situation, it would motivate him even more. In general, I translated our budget for prolog programming.
• Boss, you need more programmers. In the meantime, I have not forgotten about our freelancers. Unfortunately (for us), the most promising of them (the one with which we managed to identify bugs and fix builds a few hours before the start of the campaign) after Kickstarter received a full time offer from the studio’s “not at all indie” and we just couldn’t compete with them for payment. But without despondency, I resumed my search for more and more freelancing and junior programmers. Of course, the coding budget should have gone to the lead programmer, but as he said, he was preparing for the fact that he alone could not cope, and was ready to pay extra hands from his savings. Also, coding should not have been idle while waiting for his return and was obliged to at least a little, but move forward every week.
All the guys freelance programmers with whom he worked (several dozen), though they made a small contribution separately, but in aggregate, together they did a great job, currently about 20% of our current code. To motivate the guys, we often appeal to the early experience of the studios, on which we try to be equal. For example, while working on Neverwinter Nights, the development budget for the Bioware project was millions of dollars and only a team of 40+ people worked on the designer and mechanics of the game (before working on the content) for two years. Last year, the three modern technologies give indie developers more and more tools that were previously available only to million-plus studios. But people are still the most valuable resource. Competent, responsible and at the same time obsessed with the project as much as you are - it is incredibly difficult to find.
• SACPIC mechanics documentation is ready. Finally, I finished the work on the whole mechanics of the game, of which you can poke a few representational sections with a stick in our forum here and a polished version in the under-forum Advanced Player's Guide . In addition to these sections, we have also posted on the forum a huge document with formulas, variables and constants. At the moment, it is valuable, I think, only for programmers, but it is also available to our Bakers and SEA owners with the status of “Co-Founder” on this page . Although the RPG mechanic SACPIC may seem daunting for a fan of casual and RPG endgame fans, but for those gamers who are familiar with the mechanics of DnD 3.5 and SPECIAL, or with games based on them (like Baldur's Gate , Knights of the Old Republic , Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2 , Fallout 1 & 2 ) - our mechanics are intuitive.
• Where is the money, Jeffrey? But go to the basic Development Plan A, based on the money collected on Kickstarter. By the end of October, I never received the second part of the money from Jeffrey, about $ 16,000 (which was 25% of the $ 66,426 NET we collected on KS). Instead, he promised to transfer money in November (although the contract clearly obliged him to transfer this second part no later than 30 days after the end of the campaign).
The most suspicious and disturbing was that he constantly changed his mood in each subsequent letter, and his behavior after it. Then he writes, how grateful that I “lent him this money” (WTF ?!), that “he is very ashamed that he stole this money” (0_0), then “that he successfully invested this money and we all we will soon be rich ”(* facepalm *). The impression was that he was sitting tight on LSD.
Every time (for legal reasons), I, as a boring accountant, was forced to officially unsubscribe to him with the addition of witnesses to the copy that no one “lent” him anything, that he stole this money, that “I don’t want to be rich, that I just want him returned the stolen fucking money! ".
A month has passed. Without fulfilling his obligations, and violating all of the contract deadlines, he came up with an elegant epic excuse: he reported that this $ 16k was never credited to the account because not all payments came from Kickstater, but those that came were consumed Amazon's commissions. “ Yes, you, *****, are you kidding me ?! - that was my first reaction. I didn’t even know how to react, because he knew that I had full access to all accounts and reports, including Amazon and Kickstarter (which, by the way, at my request and after studying the case, deprived him of access). I just unloaded the raw data on transfers and deductions and checked everything in Excel. Then he sent them to him with a reminder that I have full access to the accounts, and with the usual demand to return the fuckin 'money :)
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• . .So, in December 2014, I published information about the imminent delay in development, but I tried to protect them from the continuous shocking catastrophes that have befallen us since KS. Relying on my life experience (including the “ fix that shit first; debate - later ” army habit ), I was sure that I would be able to deal with all situations, as I had done before (they decided more difficult, and more extreme, and real life -or-death). I share the position that with the captain / lead, success is the merit of the whole team, but defeat is your personal back-door.
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JANUARY
• The development of the entire architecture code of the project designer has been completed. Successful completion of the development of the game constructor architecture (the designer, with the SACPIC mechanics core implemented and, at the same time, compatible with a fair amount of Unity solutions) has become one of our largest milestones. With the return of the lead programmer, we again went to the normal development schedule, and the architecture he created, like a skeleton, is still used by us in our work.
• Concept art for all game assets prolog ready. In parallel with the solution of the problems of the human factor, the development of the game continued unabatedly in other aspects. In January, finally, we finished the preparation of all the concepts for all the assemblies of the prologue of the game (special thanks to Angelina!). It is important to remind here that the After Reset setting is quite unique (the first game in the solid science fiction genre) and a huge part of assets we just had to create from scratch, rather than buy in stores. In short, the answer to the question “why?” Can be found by reading my articles on the universe, such as “ Mythbusters: life after the apocalypse ” or “ Mythbusters: armor in video games .” Every piece of the world that you see in the prologue of After Reset RPG is born in a deep relationship with the history and concept of solid science fiction.
Everything from the logo of one of the corporations on the keyboard next to your character to the crumpled piece of paper in the trash can - everything has its own history and place in the world. Even the bunker itself, in which your hero comes to life, was built not for aesthetic reasons, but with the initial design and construction of infrastructure based on real-life similar places. Hundreds of things that you randomly and randomly find or meet (armor, medicine, food, records, toys, personal belongings, etc.) - everything has its place in the narration and readily tells you its personal history and the history of the world (of course if your character is tested for the appropriate skill).
After the release of descriptions (general and specifications for the appropriate skills) of armor, for example, we received several posts and letters with “wow, this is very cool, we are just working on creating something similar in the future) from companies engaged in military developments and contracts. Here, however, it is worth emphasizing that this is not my personal merit, but the joint work with fans (scientific, economic and social consultants) from DARPA, BOEING, VIRGIN and private entrepreneurs working under military contracts with the US Department of Defense.
This is all very cool, but it eats up a lot of time and resources (nevertheless, this is one of the key features of the game, so I plan to keep this approach throughout the development of the whole game). As an example: for one set of clothes / armor, drawing a hard sci-fi concept with my participation takes on average 3-7 days and $ 300-1500 of comparable cost depending on who we work on with it (if with a top studio that was a subcontractor The Last of Us , then more expensive ... if with Star Wars subcontractors, then even more expensive, if Star Citezen , then there is generally inadequate). Well, well, in general, in January 2015, all the concepts were completed, even in the capacity with which he was satisfied.
• Searches for programmers continue. From the moment when the two frinasers left us, we were in search of new talents. We learned our lesson, and now even more seriously tested freelancers, passing them through a series of interviews and complex test tasks. The new protocol provided for a month of interviews and general tests, and another month to create a test program. After that, if the programmer went through both parts, another month he worked only in parts without working in the project itself with the engine core. Only after that we could allow him to work in the engine itself, where he would observe and study for 3 months “without touching” how everything works and how the architecture of the mechanics core is organized.
With such an approach, of course, for a couple of months it was not possible to finish the prologue, but we already learned (in particular, I personally, having paid for the mistake with my money) that blind rush is more expensive and slower. We prepared for the marathon.
FEBRUARY
• Adam Burne comes out of the twilight. I was able to get in touch with Peter Cooper, with whom they worked together on the Telkos Protocol KS project. Being a responsive and responsible guy, Peter contacted the family of Adam. I do not know what he did specifically, but it helped - in February, Adam finally took up work on The Fall of Gyes . Thank you so much to Peter for this. For me, this was a huge relief (especially considering the $ 10k prepayment to Adam!). Anyway, one problem became less.
• All texts of the prologue dialog are ready. In February, I finished writing all the advanced dialogs, and Jeremy (our editor) finished editing them. Dozens of pages of zaboristy text, months of effort and adjustments based on role feedback from Bakers and fans in the style of “how would you act in a similar situation in real life? What would you say / ask / be interested in in such a situation in real life? ” I really like this trick with the transfer of a live role-playing component from the gaming forum into the game itself. I think the possibility of such a direct transfer of wagering in various game situations into the game itself is one of the coolest chips and advantages of Steam Early Access (SEA). When players can add really exciting questions / actions to the game and interact with the world of the game setting without any restrictions (via DM-developer). A third of all the answers and dialogue texts is built precisely on the questions / desired actions of the players themselves from real life. We are thinking of continuing to adhere to such an interactive transference when working on future chapters of the game.
Yes, and we also completed this month on hundreds of pages of solid science fiction Laura (in the form of journal entries) that you can gather / open in the prologue. Some of them will give you puzzle pieces about the events that took place in the place where you found yourself; part - can shed light on your story; part - I will write for different ideas about the world After Reset various people and different groups.
• We interview new candidates for programmers. We managed to pick up two promising candidates this month. Unfortunately, one of them did not pass a series of professional tests. At the same time, the second one passed, and received a decisive test task for the next month. The task is to recreate our special distro shrine shader (you can watch it work in the main menu, when loading new levels, and in several cut scenes - and later, because this VFX is very valuable for narration and history). The task was complicated by the fact that the final solution had to be fully compatible with our GUI system and the project in general. Do not forget that we are developing After Reset RPG simultaneously for three OS architectures (Win, Mac, Lin). Well, I crossed my fingers for luck and the candidate sat down to work.
MARCH
• SEA release. Hooray. We finally released the first public build on Steam Early Access . This has become our next huge milestone in the development of AR RPG .
First, when you code, you can get into the trap of the temptation to "wait until everything is finished, and then unload the entire result to the public." Programmers often forget that players and fans who are not programmers do not have the opportunity to see (and appreciate) the work done, when developers support silent mode and when most of the code runs as a background, is hidden from the players. Simply put: If a player cannot see and touch it, this does not exist. The release on SEA and the subsequent monthly (almost) updates have protected us from this threat.
Secondly, the physical presence of the game on the shelves on Steam was of great importance for the guys in the team. People are much more motivated when working on something tangible. When they themselves observe how their work, ideas and aspirations with each monthly update are embodied in a tangible real product. Especially if this product is placed on the shelves of Steam (yet the world's largest gaming distributor).
Thirdly, publicity. Since the project was released on SEA, more than 100k people have seen our page, 9k of whom added us to their wishlist, showing interest in our game. Without such an early representation (for more than a year now) we, as an indie developer, could not reach such coverage of the target audience without serious investments in marketing and PR (which in modern games is part of the budget 3-10 times larger than development cost). We just could not afford advertising.
Fourth, the release of SEA brought us a bit of money to the development bank: + $ 5k to the budget and 200+ new bakers ( guys, thank you very much! On the incentive I see that most of the SEA buyers were from Russia - mostly for you and translate this article ). I confess that for me, accustomed to looking at large groups of people from the position of Machiavelli and Le Beaune, such support was unexpected - but it had a huge impact on my motivation to inject my own funds into the development no matter what (when I save money on everything, but everything You give money for development). Indeed, I did not expect so many people to be ready to support the development for the full price of the game, recognizing its validity and understanding the enormous importance for us. Once again, the ghosts of Machiavelli and Le Beaune were dispelled by the sincere support of our group of gamer fans. The psychological significance of such support for the moral of the whole team is hard to overestimate.
APRIL
( art colleagues-habrovchanin from here: habrahabr.ru/post/301952 )
• The month when all the money ended with KS. Whatever the size of your budget, money will always be missed. It doesn't matter if you work with several thousand or with several millions. Many indie developers fell victim to this principle, because when they ran out of money, it came as a surprise to them and / or finally knocked the earth out from under their feet. We maintain friendly informational relationships with other indie developers with Kickstarter and have repeatedly witnessed the murder of more than one indie studio by this principle.
We were ready for this turnaround, and from April 2015 we continued to develop mainly on my savings (plus small receipts from the SEA). That is why the moral support of our fans, even just adding us to their Wishlists, and bakers, who showed patience and understanding, and in personal letters shared their personal troubles to show that ours are not as scary as they seem - it was of such great importance. The release on SEA showed that a huge number of players (several times superior even to our current bakers) are waiting for the game and are interested in it, and are doing everything in their power to help the game become a reality! In such a situation, as an author / captain, you simply go, sell everything liquid, get all your money and invest so that the destroyer reaches the target / destination. Because you are not alone on the ship, but on it with about ten thousand passengers who have entrusted you with their voyage.
But along with the emotional uplift, I did not forget about Jeffrey Pritz and the money he stole. I talked to several dozens of collection agencies from California and as a summary: for the removal of the stolen they need a court decision. Doing business costs money - so I had a choice to allocate limited resources for either legal prosecution of a thief or the development of a game. I chose the latter, postponing (but not abandoning) the persecution until the prologue was completed. Now that it is complete (guys, I remind you that I post the Russian version of this article a little earlier than the official one) we can return to the question of the legal prosecution of the thief (all the material evidence is available). If someone can recommend a suitable lawyer for this (or even if he is among those who read this article), please write to me (mrnixon@afterreset.com).
• Programmers are still our weak spot. Remember the guy who passed the interviews and a series of tests last month and started a big final test for shaders? In general, alas, but he failed. Nevertheless, we looked at a couple of new candidates and launched them into the wheel of Sansara recruiting. One of them refused to work during small tests, honestly saying that it is still too difficult for his current knowledge. The second after the tests requested $ 12k / month to continue the work, since I received such an offer from a large studio. Naturally, we could not compete with such a salary.
I’ll clarify that these interviews and tests were for full-timers. Hundreds of small tasks were solved by a dozen small ones coming and leaving freelancers, whose solutions were then manually transferred to the general project code. I think you shouldn’t describe how difficult it is to maintain the project’s homeostasis and to resist entropy, when dozens of different people work with different coding approaches. Here, I think, to all indie developers, the credo to which we have arrived in the selection of candidates for programmers (for both freelancers and full-timers) will be useful: if the programmer cannot (or does not want) work with already existing code or if he offers to demolish everything old and write everything from scratch (supporter of a revolutionary, not an evolutionary approach) - try not to work with it. This does not mean that he is bad: such an attitude simply indicates that he is at the beginning of his professional development. Understanding in someone else's code is unquestionably more difficult, but this skill and understanding of expediency comes with experience.
In the meantime, our lead programmer, who finally managed to solve family problems, was ready to break already seriously to full-time development from next month. Great news!
MAY
• TFOG project completed and successfully submitted. Hooray. Despite the annual delay and budget overruns (according to tradition, covered by me from my own funds in view of personal responsibility for the development of the entire universe), we finished and handed over this project in our intended quality. Digital products with extra bonuses were delivered instantly. Physical products found materiality in the printing houses of Hong Kong and Belgium's 3D printers — and within a few days they found a home in the hands of our bakrs around the world. The morale of the team took off along with the performance: an indescribable feeling when you hold in your hands a materialized idea from your mind, moreover, when it comes to live it is even better!
Successful delivery of the project / product (“frigate”) within the framework of the After Reset universe (“the whole fleet”) was of great importance for boosting the productivity of advancing the development of our AR RPG destroyer.
JUNE
• SCRUM / CANBAN. Our lead programmer returned not empty-handed, but with gifts in the form of an advanced development methodology. He shared his knowledge of flexible programming, which radically influenced our approach. The next few months I spent studying the methodology, developer cases and startups of Silicon Valley, comparing the findings and experiences with my previous experience and the experience of our indie-developers colleagues, completely dug into the practice of SCRUM and CANBAN.
But being realistic, understanding and knowing the methodology is just the beginning; knowledge becomes an effective skill only in the process of practical use. Over the following months, we consistently tested the effectiveness of software solutions based on MS Office, Bitbucket, Jira and, finally, formed our own mix SCRUM / CANBAN based on Trello. Looking back, it is difficult for all of us to imagine that we used to work differently before and resisted subconsciously to the implementation of this methodology.
The natural resistance to change was reinforced by the need for titanic efforts to form, miscalculate, write TK and cards - for putting such a large project on a flexible development track. But since then we have an easily scalable roadmap (by day and month), a route to the destination, along with the personal routes of each team member. And daily meetings with the transfer of promotion chips and work cards bring great satisfaction and clarity to the whole team.
Over time, I would like to give our bakers access to the boards of our development of all projects and personal boards of team members, so that each time they don’t upload screenshots of boards. One way or another, we immediately took the readiness of boards to the principle of accessing them to be transparent for fans, and therefore we need to conduct them adequately and systematically now.
JULY
• All voice conversations and sounds are ready. Thanks to the efforts of our de facto director, casting de facto, bro Michael Sailer), we finally picked up all the suitable audio actors for the dubbing of the prologue dialogues, which had grown to more than 100 pages of text by that time. It took us about half a year to prepare their proper voice acting. Following our approach to quality and solid scientific fantasy, we spent countless hours setting up characters and situational intonations with actors. Eg , , , , , – , , , .
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I also financed this experiment from my savings. And although this release had a favorable effect on the entire series of the After Reset universe , in the short term, it did not even cover $ 500 of my expenses. Actually, you can read a detailed report on this experience on Habré .
APRIL-SEPTEMBER
• Throughout this period, we have not had any extraordinary problems, shocks or challenges. Only quiet monotonous work day 10-12 hours a day. Except, perhaps, July, when a close person died in my family, and I dropped out of the funeral and other things for a month. But the team continued to work without me (thanks to the set methodology) according to our roadmap in Trello. So the development of my personal circumstances did not affect.
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Sincerely
Richard.
In this article, you will be able with us to zip around all the major highs and lows that have happened to us since KS month after month. Without preukras, without PR, without water. Only a clean case and hard experience. An experience that you are likely to encounter with high probability, taking the path of an indie developer, or have already encountered, if you are already working on your game.
')
I wanted to translate my development report into Russian and publish it for indie developers colleagues a bit earlier, because after the release and at the height of our current KS Daedalus campaign, I simply will not have time. At the moment, the preview of this report is available in original (in English) on Kickstarter only for bakers and on our forum for Co-Founders and will be published on Gamasutra after the release of the prologue.
* * *
Continuing our tradition of transparency of development, I would like to share the history of the development of the prologue of our game. For convenience of perception, I designed all our adventures in the form of a report by month.
Please keep in mind that this report includes only bright challenges, obstacles, important events and interesting ( read, "faq" ) situations without a routine, which in the development process takes most of the time. Because of the selectivity of the interesting thing, while reading the report, there may be a feeling that all these stories have gone off the screens of dramatic series like Silicon Valley or Halt And Catch Fire , but this is not so. Sometimes reality turns out to be even more dramatic than any scenarios can predict. At the same time, based on inside information that we exchange “without a tie” (and not at konfs and exhibitions, where everyone smiles at each other, tells how cool everyone is and caches nice promo numbers) with several dozens of other indie developers Most of the situations we have experienced are quite typical for the industry and are not extremes or something extraordinary.
Anyway, the events described occupied about 20% of our time. For two years, there were 10-12 hours of daily work, seven days a week, holidays, sick-days, and respites behind their scenes. In the end, it is the good old “patience and work” that turns out to be the very water that grinds away any stones of problems.
Here we go?
2014
AUGUST
• The first nezhdanchik. Exactly one day before the start of the Kickstarter campaign, our lead programmer, with whom we worked on the first build of the game, suddenly disappears. Suddenly and mysteriously, in the best traditions of Inferno , leaving only a short message-rebus on the mailbox that family affairs require his urgent departure for an indefinite period. The trouble does not come alone, and Murphy's laws come into play - exactly on the same day, our build, which we were going to present on Kickstarter, breaks down after the lead programmer disappears. I had only a few hours to deal with the situation, to establish the work of the build, in which only the lead programmer was guided freely, prepare the video and include it in the media materials.
// Update today: curious, but now with Daedalus, too, exactly in one day, but a completely different unexpected crap happened, and most importantly - also exactly in a day, from a completely unexpected place. And again, a miracle on norepinephrine managed to be resolved, but now with additional buns (experience, as in any way “the son of difficult mistakes”). Then in a separate article on Daedalus I will write.
When the first wave of norepinephrine passed, I managed to connect a sleepy spare coder, who was shocked by the sudden responsibility and the legalization of marijuana in the state of California that was coming, and deal with the situation together, fix the bugs, and don’t screw up the PR plan with the media that could fall like dominoes. Banalism is asked for the language, which is easy to advise others, but not easy to translate into your own behavior: you had to keep more programmers and not tie the risks to one thing. It is well advised, and not just done: first, for 2 years of joint work, this particular person never (!) Let us down; secondly, before Kickstarter, practically all development was paid by myself from my savings and it was non-kosher to allocate funds for another leadcoder.
Anyway, by sending him several letters, I tried to understand the situation in order to help resolve it. The difficulty was that he urgently flew to those regions where the Internet is in the same condition as the upcoming "State Teleportation Centers" in Russia. Therefore, until the end of the Kickstarter campaign, we were in the dark about the fate of our Atlanta.
• Kickstarter Month. There is an opinion (I confess, as the player himself thought so earlier), that, truly, serious work on games begins after the collection of resources. In fact, preparing for Kickstarter is a very hard work in itself, it costs thousands of dollars (or tens of thousands) and starts 3-6 months before the official launch of the campaign (not counting the time to develop the alpha build itself).
But the work of the pre-production does not end there either: management and management of the campaign itself (after launch) takes 10-12 hours of daily communication with bakers, media and partners (if you read Le Bona or speak in front of the stadiums, you can imagine that one wrong word or a typo can bring down the emotions of a crowd of thousands on you alone), the implementation of the plan for promotion and marketing, the execution of endless iterations of PDCA , etc.
In the end, it was all over, squeezing me into a drop. At the same time, I and the whole team were very pleased that the project found a response in the hearts of the fans, expressed in real financial support. A biologically necessary solution would be for everyone to take a break for at least 5 days, but even more work and even more stress were already breaking through our door as soon as the long-awaited “Project has been successfully funded” appeared on the platform.
SEPTEMBER
• Wanted programmers. Since the situation with the lead programmer and his future was completely incomprehensible, I began to look for a replacement and additional coders, besides the professional qualities, who also understand the mechanics of games such as Dungeons and Dragons , Fallout 1 & 2 , Baldur's Gate , Neverwinter Nights , and able to understand our current at the time of Kickstarter'a build. An additional complication was the fact that in addition to the competencies (this is now a lot of Unity / C # programmers, and at that time the platform was relatively not run-in), the candidate should also be in our pocket. Eg appealing to the games studios that we were targeting in the US, the programmer receives $ 60k-120k per year in such studios. As you know, this is twice as much as we have gathered NET for the entire draft of the prologue.
The only option for indie developers is to find a budding and talented junior with a suitable basic background and gossip with him or with him. At the same time, the candidate must have high moral and personal qualities, such as a sense of responsibility, which will not allow him to simply go and go to another large studio after such coaching. It doesn't sound realistic, I know, but as Nelson Mandela voiced: “ Everything looks impossible until we do it.”
• Last Supper. At the beginning of the month, I began to receive worrisome signals that the person responsible for the accumulated transfers from Kickstarter ( Jeffrey Pritz ) could simply dump into Mexico with our money.
On the one hand, I did not suffer from the syndrome of blind trust: I always entered into contracts with all team members, development contributors, partners, third parties, and also kept all the documents, checks, official correspondence, etc. to control issues of bills, taxes, intellectual property. The facts are aesthetically pleasing to me. In addition, the man had a profile on IMDB , more than once was at his home, I already had photos of all his documents, SSN. This 45-year-old ** zdyuk even tried to drive up to my niece for several months.
On the other hand, life and business experience as a CMO and CEO dictated that any pickups cannot be ignored if they concern money. Therefore, as soon as the first money began to come from the Bakers, I first requested a withdrawal of $ 50k, and when these first funds were in our hands, I allowed myself to relax. Mea culpa. To celebrate, I ignored a few obvious "bells": like the fact that during our trip, Jeff suddenly suggested that I invest in some of his new business (I refused), then in some piece of land (again refused), and finally and he stated at all that these $ 50k before taxes were all that had come (they say, the rest of the money ate commissions and refusals of transfers). He promised to look more closely at the situation, “blah blah blah” for two weeks, and having decided that the person would not rob the family of the “lover”, I agreed to give him time.
“Well, seriously, ” said the logic, “We also signed a contract in which he was forbidden to withdraw a cent from the money collected without my written consent. In addition, he is a public person. And if I wanted to steal money, I would have intercepted it from the account before I took off the first $ 50k, I would have run away with them. This is logical. "
However, Game Theory and Life itself warns that people do not always act logically. For me, as well as for Eddard Stark (we share the ESTJ-A personal psycho -type ), meeting face-to-face with such a revelation did not bode well. People tend to go crazy when they feel / see / touch money (de facto, just colored cotton).
• Backup plan. Despite the fact that I usually do not count on a blow in the back from my own mentality, I nevertheless very carefully prepare for possible risks and threats from the outside circle, regarding them as inevitable. “ It doesn’t matter how much money you have on a project - they will always be missed ,” is one of those life hacks whose zen I learned in fifteen years of project management. Well, as gamers, we are already facing this throughout the life of the industry. Very cool and ambitious projects very often sink or degrade by the time of release due to lack of budget or overruns.
In the After Reset development strategy, I focused on three main points: focusing on an adult target audience (with its erudition, life experience and interests), solid science fiction as the basis of the setting (the first video game in this genre), high quality assets of the universe (better less, but with realistic detailing, 4k textures, mocap). According to the idea, this triumvirate singled out After Reset to its unique niche in the market among the mass products of large campaigns and hundreds of thousands of small walk-throughs or experimental ones. Just like a good family restaurant, it retains its place on the street with large fast food chains and numerous hot dog vendors and burritos.
In the event of a shortage of money, in the normal situation, the developers either shut off the players, perfectly continuing to sell products in spite of negative reviews, either close the project, release the cut off 85% of the planned or promised content, or release only the formally promised pass-through version about which you forget within a week after having passed and successfully deleted. Such options did not suit me, as a developer. The project was and is for me something of a child, and I felt and feel personal responsibility for it. Including for any possible shoals and threats that a priori could arise during development. We needed a backup plan that could cover us in case of budget overruns or underestimates. For this purpose, I sold my small retail business in order to continue investing in development on the quality that suited me even if the development period was extended or if there was a shortage of funds during planned development.
• Hacking will not work. On the background of what is happening, we also had disagreements with our level designer. He made the design of the levels "by eye" and began to insist that "and so it will come down", that "People shavayet", that "everyone is doing it." His position was justified in haste to meet the stated EDD-term. Actually, you yourself can see what kind of trash we would release, going on about this strategy: a link to the IDB (there you can download fragments of how the game would look if we released it without spending these months on quality). I believed (and believe) that the release of the game in that capacity was not acceptable. This would destroy the entire development strategy of the project and the universe and kill the potential of all future setting projects. Once Uwe Boll - Uwe Boll forever. A release of the game in that state would forever brand it with indie trash "for $ 1.99." I myself would not install it even for free. Of course, a release of trash for such a price would bring us quick $ 4-10k and, maybe, even formally, we would have fulfilled half the expectations of the fans, but these few thousand would never be enough to complete the whole game even in such a poor quality. That would be the end of After Reset . Therefore, I sent level design to remake everything from scratch with the quality and approach that I was satisfied with (and for which I paid, by the way).
However, despite the fact that we found the designer's level on the recommendation of the highly respected Manufacture K4 , this designer simply stopped responding to me. After a week of unsuccessful attempts to contact him, I simply asked PayPal to return the payment to me by sending our documents and correspondence. PayPal studied the materials and returned the money, and on the same day the level designer suddenly appeared. The week went to trial. As a result, the payment system confirmed our correctness, the designer apologized to close the discus not on a conflict note, I sent part of the money as payment for the time that the designer spent on trash. From that moment on, I made the decision to personally design the levels for the prologue.
OCTOBER
• Lead programmer to contact. MIA-status is canceled. The situation became clearer: due to sudden family problems, he was forced to fly away to help his family just as suddenly. And he did not give an explanation from the desire not to entice us into personal problems. Anything happens, we understand, but because of the current situation, he could not return to work on the project for 2-4 months. To top it off, the Internet was almost inaccessible in the area where his family lived, so for this period as a leader, he was not an assistant to us.
Lowering the pathos, we can say that his family urgently needed money, and since we worked with Kickstarter without a single overlay for two years (from that time to Greellight, when After Reset was just my hobby), I I decided not to put pressure on him and give time to calmly deal with the problems. La familia es todo. Moreover, his unique deep knowledge of the architecture of the project and its code was invaluable just to drop it.
Supported by such arguments, I decided to pay for the coding project in advance, over the coming months. The fact that he would do the work as soon as he solved his family problems, I had no doubt and thought that if you were helped in a difficult situation, it would motivate him even more. In general, I translated our budget for prolog programming.
• Boss, you need more programmers. In the meantime, I have not forgotten about our freelancers. Unfortunately (for us), the most promising of them (the one with which we managed to identify bugs and fix builds a few hours before the start of the campaign) after Kickstarter received a full time offer from the studio’s “not at all indie” and we just couldn’t compete with them for payment. But without despondency, I resumed my search for more and more freelancing and junior programmers. Of course, the coding budget should have gone to the lead programmer, but as he said, he was preparing for the fact that he alone could not cope, and was ready to pay extra hands from his savings. Also, coding should not have been idle while waiting for his return and was obliged to at least a little, but move forward every week.
All the guys freelance programmers with whom he worked (several dozen), though they made a small contribution separately, but in aggregate, together they did a great job, currently about 20% of our current code. To motivate the guys, we often appeal to the early experience of the studios, on which we try to be equal. For example, while working on Neverwinter Nights, the development budget for the Bioware project was millions of dollars and only a team of 40+ people worked on the designer and mechanics of the game (before working on the content) for two years. Last year, the three modern technologies give indie developers more and more tools that were previously available only to million-plus studios. But people are still the most valuable resource. Competent, responsible and at the same time obsessed with the project as much as you are - it is incredibly difficult to find.
• SACPIC mechanics documentation is ready. Finally, I finished the work on the whole mechanics of the game, of which you can poke a few representational sections with a stick in our forum here and a polished version in the under-forum Advanced Player's Guide . In addition to these sections, we have also posted on the forum a huge document with formulas, variables and constants. At the moment, it is valuable, I think, only for programmers, but it is also available to our Bakers and SEA owners with the status of “Co-Founder” on this page . Although the RPG mechanic SACPIC may seem daunting for a fan of casual and RPG endgame fans, but for those gamers who are familiar with the mechanics of DnD 3.5 and SPECIAL, or with games based on them (like Baldur's Gate , Knights of the Old Republic , Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2 , Fallout 1 & 2 ) - our mechanics are intuitive.
• Where is the money, Jeffrey? But go to the basic Development Plan A, based on the money collected on Kickstarter. By the end of October, I never received the second part of the money from Jeffrey, about $ 16,000 (which was 25% of the $ 66,426 NET we collected on KS). Instead, he promised to transfer money in November (although the contract clearly obliged him to transfer this second part no later than 30 days after the end of the campaign).
The most suspicious and disturbing was that he constantly changed his mood in each subsequent letter, and his behavior after it. Then he writes, how grateful that I “lent him this money” (WTF ?!), that “he is very ashamed that he stole this money” (0_0), then “that he successfully invested this money and we all we will soon be rich ”(* facepalm *). The impression was that he was sitting tight on LSD.
Every time (for legal reasons), I, as a boring accountant, was forced to officially unsubscribe to him with the addition of witnesses to the copy that no one “lent” him anything, that he stole this money, that “I don’t want to be rich, that I just want him returned the stolen fucking money! ".
A month has passed. Without fulfilling his obligations, and violating all of the contract deadlines, he came up with an elegant epic excuse: he reported that this $ 16k was never credited to the account because not all payments came from Kickstater, but those that came were consumed Amazon's commissions. “ Yes, you, *****, are you kidding me ?! - that was my first reaction. I didn’t even know how to react, because he knew that I had full access to all accounts and reports, including Amazon and Kickstarter (which, by the way, at my request and after studying the case, deprived him of access). I just unloaded the raw data on transfers and deductions and checked everything in Excel. Then he sent them to him with a reminder that I have full access to the accounts, and with the usual demand to return the fuckin 'money :)
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2015
JANUARY
• The development of the entire architecture code of the project designer has been completed. Successful completion of the development of the game constructor architecture (the designer, with the SACPIC mechanics core implemented and, at the same time, compatible with a fair amount of Unity solutions) has become one of our largest milestones. With the return of the lead programmer, we again went to the normal development schedule, and the architecture he created, like a skeleton, is still used by us in our work.
• Concept art for all game assets prolog ready. In parallel with the solution of the problems of the human factor, the development of the game continued unabatedly in other aspects. In January, finally, we finished the preparation of all the concepts for all the assemblies of the prologue of the game (special thanks to Angelina!). It is important to remind here that the After Reset setting is quite unique (the first game in the solid science fiction genre) and a huge part of assets we just had to create from scratch, rather than buy in stores. In short, the answer to the question “why?” Can be found by reading my articles on the universe, such as “ Mythbusters: life after the apocalypse ” or “ Mythbusters: armor in video games .” Every piece of the world that you see in the prologue of After Reset RPG is born in a deep relationship with the history and concept of solid science fiction.
Everything from the logo of one of the corporations on the keyboard next to your character to the crumpled piece of paper in the trash can - everything has its own history and place in the world. Even the bunker itself, in which your hero comes to life, was built not for aesthetic reasons, but with the initial design and construction of infrastructure based on real-life similar places. Hundreds of things that you randomly and randomly find or meet (armor, medicine, food, records, toys, personal belongings, etc.) - everything has its place in the narration and readily tells you its personal history and the history of the world (of course if your character is tested for the appropriate skill).
After the release of descriptions (general and specifications for the appropriate skills) of armor, for example, we received several posts and letters with “wow, this is very cool, we are just working on creating something similar in the future) from companies engaged in military developments and contracts. Here, however, it is worth emphasizing that this is not my personal merit, but the joint work with fans (scientific, economic and social consultants) from DARPA, BOEING, VIRGIN and private entrepreneurs working under military contracts with the US Department of Defense.
This is all very cool, but it eats up a lot of time and resources (nevertheless, this is one of the key features of the game, so I plan to keep this approach throughout the development of the whole game). As an example: for one set of clothes / armor, drawing a hard sci-fi concept with my participation takes on average 3-7 days and $ 300-1500 of comparable cost depending on who we work on with it (if with a top studio that was a subcontractor The Last of Us , then more expensive ... if with Star Wars subcontractors, then even more expensive, if Star Citezen , then there is generally inadequate). Well, well, in general, in January 2015, all the concepts were completed, even in the capacity with which he was satisfied.
• Searches for programmers continue. From the moment when the two frinasers left us, we were in search of new talents. We learned our lesson, and now even more seriously tested freelancers, passing them through a series of interviews and complex test tasks. The new protocol provided for a month of interviews and general tests, and another month to create a test program. After that, if the programmer went through both parts, another month he worked only in parts without working in the project itself with the engine core. Only after that we could allow him to work in the engine itself, where he would observe and study for 3 months “without touching” how everything works and how the architecture of the mechanics core is organized.
With such an approach, of course, for a couple of months it was not possible to finish the prologue, but we already learned (in particular, I personally, having paid for the mistake with my money) that blind rush is more expensive and slower. We prepared for the marathon.
FEBRUARY
• Adam Burne comes out of the twilight. I was able to get in touch with Peter Cooper, with whom they worked together on the Telkos Protocol KS project. Being a responsive and responsible guy, Peter contacted the family of Adam. I do not know what he did specifically, but it helped - in February, Adam finally took up work on The Fall of Gyes . Thank you so much to Peter for this. For me, this was a huge relief (especially considering the $ 10k prepayment to Adam!). Anyway, one problem became less.
• All texts of the prologue dialog are ready. In February, I finished writing all the advanced dialogs, and Jeremy (our editor) finished editing them. Dozens of pages of zaboristy text, months of effort and adjustments based on role feedback from Bakers and fans in the style of “how would you act in a similar situation in real life? What would you say / ask / be interested in in such a situation in real life? ” I really like this trick with the transfer of a live role-playing component from the gaming forum into the game itself. I think the possibility of such a direct transfer of wagering in various game situations into the game itself is one of the coolest chips and advantages of Steam Early Access (SEA). When players can add really exciting questions / actions to the game and interact with the world of the game setting without any restrictions (via DM-developer). A third of all the answers and dialogue texts is built precisely on the questions / desired actions of the players themselves from real life. We are thinking of continuing to adhere to such an interactive transference when working on future chapters of the game.
Yes, and we also completed this month on hundreds of pages of solid science fiction Laura (in the form of journal entries) that you can gather / open in the prologue. Some of them will give you puzzle pieces about the events that took place in the place where you found yourself; part - can shed light on your story; part - I will write for different ideas about the world After Reset various people and different groups.
• We interview new candidates for programmers. We managed to pick up two promising candidates this month. Unfortunately, one of them did not pass a series of professional tests. At the same time, the second one passed, and received a decisive test task for the next month. The task is to recreate our special distro shrine shader (you can watch it work in the main menu, when loading new levels, and in several cut scenes - and later, because this VFX is very valuable for narration and history). The task was complicated by the fact that the final solution had to be fully compatible with our GUI system and the project in general. Do not forget that we are developing After Reset RPG simultaneously for three OS architectures (Win, Mac, Lin). Well, I crossed my fingers for luck and the candidate sat down to work.
MARCH
• SEA release. Hooray. We finally released the first public build on Steam Early Access . This has become our next huge milestone in the development of AR RPG .
First, when you code, you can get into the trap of the temptation to "wait until everything is finished, and then unload the entire result to the public." Programmers often forget that players and fans who are not programmers do not have the opportunity to see (and appreciate) the work done, when developers support silent mode and when most of the code runs as a background, is hidden from the players. Simply put: If a player cannot see and touch it, this does not exist. The release on SEA and the subsequent monthly (almost) updates have protected us from this threat.
Secondly, the physical presence of the game on the shelves on Steam was of great importance for the guys in the team. People are much more motivated when working on something tangible. When they themselves observe how their work, ideas and aspirations with each monthly update are embodied in a tangible real product. Especially if this product is placed on the shelves of Steam (yet the world's largest gaming distributor).
Thirdly, publicity. Since the project was released on SEA, more than 100k people have seen our page, 9k of whom added us to their wishlist, showing interest in our game. Without such an early representation (for more than a year now) we, as an indie developer, could not reach such coverage of the target audience without serious investments in marketing and PR (which in modern games is part of the budget 3-10 times larger than development cost). We just could not afford advertising.
Fourth, the release of SEA brought us a bit of money to the development bank: + $ 5k to the budget and 200+ new bakers ( guys, thank you very much! On the incentive I see that most of the SEA buyers were from Russia - mostly for you and translate this article ). I confess that for me, accustomed to looking at large groups of people from the position of Machiavelli and Le Beaune, such support was unexpected - but it had a huge impact on my motivation to inject my own funds into the development no matter what (when I save money on everything, but everything You give money for development). Indeed, I did not expect so many people to be ready to support the development for the full price of the game, recognizing its validity and understanding the enormous importance for us. Once again, the ghosts of Machiavelli and Le Beaune were dispelled by the sincere support of our group of gamer fans. The psychological significance of such support for the moral of the whole team is hard to overestimate.
APRIL
( art colleagues-habrovchanin from here: habrahabr.ru/post/301952 )
• The month when all the money ended with KS. Whatever the size of your budget, money will always be missed. It doesn't matter if you work with several thousand or with several millions. Many indie developers fell victim to this principle, because when they ran out of money, it came as a surprise to them and / or finally knocked the earth out from under their feet. We maintain friendly informational relationships with other indie developers with Kickstarter and have repeatedly witnessed the murder of more than one indie studio by this principle.
We were ready for this turnaround, and from April 2015 we continued to develop mainly on my savings (plus small receipts from the SEA). That is why the moral support of our fans, even just adding us to their Wishlists, and bakers, who showed patience and understanding, and in personal letters shared their personal troubles to show that ours are not as scary as they seem - it was of such great importance. The release on SEA showed that a huge number of players (several times superior even to our current bakers) are waiting for the game and are interested in it, and are doing everything in their power to help the game become a reality! In such a situation, as an author / captain, you simply go, sell everything liquid, get all your money and invest so that the destroyer reaches the target / destination. Because you are not alone on the ship, but on it with about ten thousand passengers who have entrusted you with their voyage.
But along with the emotional uplift, I did not forget about Jeffrey Pritz and the money he stole. I talked to several dozens of collection agencies from California and as a summary: for the removal of the stolen they need a court decision. Doing business costs money - so I had a choice to allocate limited resources for either legal prosecution of a thief or the development of a game. I chose the latter, postponing (but not abandoning) the persecution until the prologue was completed. Now that it is complete (guys, I remind you that I post the Russian version of this article a little earlier than the official one) we can return to the question of the legal prosecution of the thief (all the material evidence is available). If someone can recommend a suitable lawyer for this (or even if he is among those who read this article), please write to me (mrnixon@afterreset.com).
• Programmers are still our weak spot. Remember the guy who passed the interviews and a series of tests last month and started a big final test for shaders? In general, alas, but he failed. Nevertheless, we looked at a couple of new candidates and launched them into the wheel of Sansara recruiting. One of them refused to work during small tests, honestly saying that it is still too difficult for his current knowledge. The second after the tests requested $ 12k / month to continue the work, since I received such an offer from a large studio. Naturally, we could not compete with such a salary.
I’ll clarify that these interviews and tests were for full-timers. Hundreds of small tasks were solved by a dozen small ones coming and leaving freelancers, whose solutions were then manually transferred to the general project code. I think you shouldn’t describe how difficult it is to maintain the project’s homeostasis and to resist entropy, when dozens of different people work with different coding approaches. Here, I think, to all indie developers, the credo to which we have arrived in the selection of candidates for programmers (for both freelancers and full-timers) will be useful: if the programmer cannot (or does not want) work with already existing code or if he offers to demolish everything old and write everything from scratch (supporter of a revolutionary, not an evolutionary approach) - try not to work with it. This does not mean that he is bad: such an attitude simply indicates that he is at the beginning of his professional development. Understanding in someone else's code is unquestionably more difficult, but this skill and understanding of expediency comes with experience.
In the meantime, our lead programmer, who finally managed to solve family problems, was ready to break already seriously to full-time development from next month. Great news!
MAY
• TFOG project completed and successfully submitted. Hooray. Despite the annual delay and budget overruns (according to tradition, covered by me from my own funds in view of personal responsibility for the development of the entire universe), we finished and handed over this project in our intended quality. Digital products with extra bonuses were delivered instantly. Physical products found materiality in the printing houses of Hong Kong and Belgium's 3D printers — and within a few days they found a home in the hands of our bakrs around the world. The morale of the team took off along with the performance: an indescribable feeling when you hold in your hands a materialized idea from your mind, moreover, when it comes to live it is even better!
Successful delivery of the project / product (“frigate”) within the framework of the After Reset universe (“the whole fleet”) was of great importance for boosting the productivity of advancing the development of our AR RPG destroyer.
JUNE
• SCRUM / CANBAN. Our lead programmer returned not empty-handed, but with gifts in the form of an advanced development methodology. He shared his knowledge of flexible programming, which radically influenced our approach. The next few months I spent studying the methodology, developer cases and startups of Silicon Valley, comparing the findings and experiences with my previous experience and the experience of our indie-developers colleagues, completely dug into the practice of SCRUM and CANBAN.
But being realistic, understanding and knowing the methodology is just the beginning; knowledge becomes an effective skill only in the process of practical use. Over the following months, we consistently tested the effectiveness of software solutions based on MS Office, Bitbucket, Jira and, finally, formed our own mix SCRUM / CANBAN based on Trello. Looking back, it is difficult for all of us to imagine that we used to work differently before and resisted subconsciously to the implementation of this methodology.
The natural resistance to change was reinforced by the need for titanic efforts to form, miscalculate, write TK and cards - for putting such a large project on a flexible development track. But since then we have an easily scalable roadmap (by day and month), a route to the destination, along with the personal routes of each team member. And daily meetings with the transfer of promotion chips and work cards bring great satisfaction and clarity to the whole team.
Over time, I would like to give our bakers access to the boards of our development of all projects and personal boards of team members, so that each time they don’t upload screenshots of boards. One way or another, we immediately took the readiness of boards to the principle of accessing them to be transparent for fans, and therefore we need to conduct them adequately and systematically now.
JULY
• All voice conversations and sounds are ready. Thanks to the efforts of our de facto director, casting de facto, bro Michael Sailer), we finally picked up all the suitable audio actors for the dubbing of the prologue dialogues, which had grown to more than 100 pages of text by that time. It took us about half a year to prepare their proper voice acting. Following our approach to quality and solid scientific fantasy, we spent countless hours setting up characters and situational intonations with actors. Eg , , , , , – , , , .
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I also financed this experiment from my savings. And although this release had a favorable effect on the entire series of the After Reset universe , in the short term, it did not even cover $ 500 of my expenses. Actually, you can read a detailed report on this experience on Habré .
APRIL-SEPTEMBER
• Throughout this period, we have not had any extraordinary problems, shocks or challenges. Only quiet monotonous work day 10-12 hours a day. Except, perhaps, July, when a close person died in my family, and I dropped out of the funeral and other things for a month. But the team continued to work without me (thanks to the set methodology) according to our roadmap in Trello. So the development of my personal circumstances did not affect.
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, Skype!
Sincerely
Richard.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/314210/
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