The Still of the Night Causes a Storm in the Mind

If you’ve read through my blog or any my other articles on Gamasutra you’ll notice that I draw many comparisons to magic. I’ve mentioned Harry Potter, The Prestige, and The Illusionist. This article shares its title with the 1996 cult classic (or not) movie which was also about magic.

As a game designer/developer I’m constantly in a relentless pursuit to capture the mastery of my craft, much like a magician I suppose. A craft is like an ever evolving beast though which you can never capture. When I examine my past I’m so enthralled by my progress over the years and yet at the same time I’m completely humbled by the journey that lies before me. A long time ago I said I wanted to be the best that’s ever been. Statements like this are probably tossed out everyday by young wannabe game developers, the sad thing is that I said it when I first started this journey and I still believe it today. How I’ll really accomplish it I don’t know though.

As I pass through life I’m always amazed by the things other people create. Just this evening I collected a few stars in Super Mario Galaxy and I also watched an episode of CSI: Miami. As a creative individual I always pull apart and analyze the components of other creative works but mostly I just sit in awe. Super Mario Galaxy and CSI: Miami might not seem to have much in common but in actuality they do. Both of these creative endeavors bring together a beautiful blend of sounds, visuals, and story that capture our imaginations. Each component is attractive and balanced somehow hooking my attention. Now, I’m not one to consume entertainment like an addict. More or less I appreciate a creative endeavor and then I move on attempting to apply new things I find attractive to my craft so that my products might be more attractive for other people.

Of course looking at other great works of art to enhance the creative or aesthetic components of my products is just a tiny fraction of The Craft. Business, communication, teamwork, time management, and much more comprise to whole of The Craft. The video game business is so complex and competitive that I’m beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t narrow down what component of The Craft I want to master.

As an independent I make what I want and then market it how I want. It’s basically the same tired old story of any indie. I wear many hats and I think at this point in my career that I wear most of them pretty well. I’m far from being really great at any one thing but I do each thing well enough to make a living. The question is, do I have enough time on this Earth to really master each component of this ever growing beastly Craft to even be mentioned among the best?

Right now things are looking bleak. New guys come along everyday and seem to instantly jump to the head of the class. Hearing about Ethan Nicholas or Simon Oliver just ruins my day. Here I’ve been focused on game development for so long and these new guys just swoop in and capture headlines. At times it just seems like a cruel joke or that perhaps it’s all luck.

Yet when I examine my work I see huge fault. I haven’t focused on the actual Craft at hand enough. Forget the business, the tech, or the art. The craft is a dance of delicate balance where you foster an experience that is beautiful and fun for other people. It’s very difficult to explain but I’m so excited about mastering The Craft that most of the time I exhibit an almost ADD type behavior. I love it all and want to participate on every level, so much so that I’m failing to compete among the best successfully.

Recently, I was at a meeting for the Richmond Game Designers’ Special Interest Group. There were several discussions going on among different people. Some were talking business, some gameplay, and others art or technology. As someone who’s been around the block a few times I had something to offer to each conversation. The problem was that I’m only one person and could only participate in one conversation at a time and for the most part I was distracted from whatever conversation I was taking part in because I would hear something else which would catch my interest.

Last winter I really enjoyed The Golden Compass, the aspect where individuals have a morphing animal following them around I found particularly intriguing. I think the morphing animals are a great metaphor for people growing up and deciding who they want to be. I’m very happy with most of my life and feel as if I’ve grown up right and made the choice about who I’m going to be in general. As life becomes more complex though it’s as if you add animals to your collection. Before you know it you have a menagerie of morphing animals walking around with you representative of all the key components of your life which require decisions.

As it relates to my career in the game industry I basically haven’t quite figured out what I like most. At this point the only position off the table is artist. If I put the time into it I can create some decent art. However, I do feel that it’s my weakest trait as it applies to The Craft. I’ve focused a lot of energy on programming. If there was one thing in the beginning I was fearful would be hard to get past it was the programming and the math. As it turns out I’ve become much more successful in this endeavor than I ever thought possible even in my wildest dreams. If you had asked me in high school whether I was going to be an artist or a programmer I would have jumped on the art bandwagon. As it stands now I’m a solid programmer who can accomplish most tasks especially when it comes to gameplay programming. My business mind has always been strong. I grew up among self-employed parents and I always saw myself running the show just as they did. My step father in particular was an excellent if cut-throat salesman. Through him I learned sales and in fact I sold boats for his company as a teen and did exceedingly well. The one thing I feel that I added to his equation was actually the removal of the cut-throat mentality. It its place I added tenacity, honesty, and just straight-up hard work. These are things I learned from my real father. Where my step-father would take advantage of someone else to alleviate some weight off his own back, my father would not. Until I myself am drowning I do the same. Finally, I’m a freelance writer. I don’t know exactly where this came from other than the fact that I always loved gaming magazines and the buzz they created. In high school I thought I was a decent writer but I remember certain times in college thinking otherwise. At this point in my life writing comes easy. Perhaps it’s all the forum discussions I’ve had throughout the last 10 years. Whatever it is, a certain part of me seems as if it would be content to let go of everything else and write about other people’s pursuit of The Craft. The buzz a good article like Portal Demystified generates puts me on cloud 9.

As I carry around this tiny morphing animal though I realize that a business guy can’t ever be the best game developer, business guys aren’t really developers at all. Then analyzing the game journalist position, it’s readily apparent that creating buzz with a great game has got to feel 10X better than creating buzz with an article about someone else’s great game. That leaves me with programmer and designer. When I go back to that day at the Richmond meet the one conversation I wanted to really participate in was the gameplay and art discussion. If I could somehow block out the rest of the conversations that is what I’d be happy with. I want to develop the fun and the beauty behind the games. For some reason though I’m always afraid I’ll miss out on the news and the big business stories if I put my head down for too long and so I never focus on the craft long enough to create something truly great. It will require great patience but hopefully my animal will take shape soon and I will acquire the harmony within and create that perfect work of art.

I just added a link under Blogroll to davidjaffe.biz. This is the blog of the designer who inspired me to actually pursue a career in game development. Sure, the thought of becoming a game designer had crossed my mind about 5 times as a kid but it wasn’t until I was 18 during my last spring break of high school that I decided I was really going to do this thing. The first Sony Underground Disc (which is still in my personal museum collection) contained a demo of Twisted Metal 2 and an interview with Dave Jaffe then at the tender age of 25 (5 years younger than I am now). I know this because I was just watching some videos on his blog and he mentioned that he’s currently 37. All I can think about though is how time flies and I wonder if I’ve made the most of mine.

Back then my goal was to work for Sony or some other large game company. After graduating I sent a really ridiculously stupid package containing a brand new Texas Instruments TI-85 calculator (bought for the sole purpose of sending it to Jaffe), the first 2 games I ever programmed, and an instruction manual I created with an ancient 486DX 33 MHz PC and a sharpie. As far as I can tell the package never reached Jaffe. It was sent to Jaffe with an SCEA Attention: Laura Dison but a Senior Correspondence Representative named Sandra L. Kay is the only one to ever read it as far as I know.

I was thanked for being such a big Playstation fan and told that no one could examine my “game idea”. Initially, I was a little flustered. First of all, I wasn’t like all the other kids. I realized 5 minutes after I thought about being the “idea guy” that no one was going to make my ideas into games for me. I actually sent some real working games including code, but whatever. The letter also advised me to seek a career counselor and that Sony looked for degrees in Engineering or Computer Science. Again, I was flustered. Out of high school I was not good at math. If you read a Games Demystified article or play one of the physics based games I’ve developed that may be hard to believe but it’s true. Until I created those first 2 calculator games I really didn’t know what algebra was for. Somehow I had managed to get through the classes but it was as if I had to derive it myself through programming before I really understood it. As such, the thought of going to college for Computer Science or Engineering was extremely frightening.

Somehow I managed to get through my Computer Science courses. Of course there was a new trend just starting to gain momentum while I was in college, the indie movement. I became obsessed with the idea that I could create a game on my own. Garage Games, DarkBASIC, and Blitz were the big 3 influences at the time and I ate them all up. By the time September 11th 2001 came around I was programming calculator games while listening to my physics professors in class, carrying an idea notebook with me to the restaurant where I worked, and programming PC games in my spare time. It was at this point that I realized life is short and I decided to go full time indie.

One guy I talk about a lot is Jeff Tunnell. He’s the one who sold me on the indie dream and the first real game developer to pay attention to what I was working on and help me move beyond simple tinkering. Jeff frequently references Dave (a recent twitter post got me thinking about this whole sequence of events) and all I can think about is how small the world is. Something else I think about is whether I made the right choice by going indie so early. At this point in my life I’m making a living solely on my own game development work. However, a part of me feels like perhaps I missed out on that old Sony dream.

Dave Jaffe did quit Sony to start his own company which makes me think I made the right choice. However, just because a certain milestone in life is measured by striking out on one’s own doesn’t mean it’s not right to work within some establishment for a period of time. At the end of the day it’s just part of the ride. That makes me wonder what it would have been like to work for Sony.

The game development landscape has changed so much since 1997. Even watching Jaffe’s recent blogs I feel like I’m watching a ghost of the past. I’m still a huge admirer of his work. If there’s one thing I really need to do it’s learn to focus more on the craft. In that regard I feel like I’m light years behind. However, by being “off the reservation” for so long I’ve learned to think for myself unrestrained by the system. At this point in time Sony, retail, and all the rest of the “old industry” I had wanted to join when I was 18 seem like relics. When I enter a GameStop for example I imagine it blowing away like dust in the wind. Dave’s blog and general perception of the game industry still reflects the “old industry” though. One of his recent posts was actually about the stickers GameStop puts on the shelf cases and the pain associated with getting the last copy of a GameStop game. This has always bugged me too, but it’s old news.

I guess the moral of the story is that you never lose respect for your idols but there comes a time when they are no longer idols. The feeling is very similar to the first time you realize that your parents might need you more than you need them. It’s scary and yet empowering all at once. By this measure I feel pretty good about my time spent.

PS, I have to add that there are tidbits of design advice weaved within Dave’s blog that are utterly priceless. Whether his focus is old-school-big-industry or not there’s no accounting for his mastery of the craft which regardless of platform, publisher, or distribution method has not changed. The games he designs are still miles better than most.

Jeff Tunnell over at MakeItBigInGames.com has called me out in his latest entry about the struggles of Dapple developer Owen Goss of Streaming Color Studios. Jeff’s latest crusade is to create the ultimate broad strategy by beginning with a light Flash game and then moving onto a heavy client and other platforms like the iPhone. I’ve recently been experiencing some success with the iPhone/iPod Touch platform (or the iPlatform for short) so I have been expressing my interest in focusing with laser like intensity on one platform.

Now the first thing to understand is that we both look at game development from 2 very different perspectives. Jeff has been in the industry for nearly 30 years and has the resources to do much more than most people. I have been developing games for about 13 years although I didn’t get my professional start until Jeff helped me get Aerial Antics published in 2004. That means I have about 5 years of game business experience. Still to this day I am a struggling indie who’s only goal is to pay the rent by making games.

It is from that perspective that I encourage people to focus on a platform like the iPhone. Now one thing I cannot condone is spending $32,000 on a Match-3 game as Owen Goss did. Of course the first thing to realize is that Owen included his “salary” in that budget. When you’re an entrepreneur you don’t include your “salary” or your time as part of your budget, you only count what you actually spent out of pocket. If his salary was subtracted from that $32,000 he would still undoubtedly have a few grand invested and 6 months worth of time on a Match-3 game.

As much as I hate to do it, this has to be dissected so that other people don’t make the same mistakes Owen did. First, it’s very important to realize that the puzzle category is the most competitive category in the App Store. Dapple is a straight-up puzzle game leaving him little wiggle room to fit into other categories. I wrote about this in the iLang Syne article published by Gamasutra as well as here on this blog. You have to be somewhat creative with your game so that the title is relevant in as many categories as possible. You want to appear in the New Release list of the super popular categories but once that 2-3 day period is up you must be able to transfer into a lower competition category where you will appear in a Top Sellers list.

Of course, category limitation wasn’t the only mistake. Dapple is $4.99. This means the game is competing with Rolando, Payback, Brothers In Arms and a whole host of high profile games. Dapple is a $0.99 according to the screen shots. The game is way too expensive.

Another issue is that the developer spent 6 months on this title. The only developers who should be spending 6 months on an iPhone game are the big guys like ngmoco, Gameloft, and Freeverse. These are the companies that have a fan base already. They are already making money and furthermore they have the trust of the players. They can afford to spend big time and money on a game because they’ve already proven themselves. First time developers should spend 1 month on a game and make it as good as it can be in that time frame. If it works out great, if not you could deliver 6 games in the time that Dapple was created and learn a lot more about the fickle iPhone market with little impact on your name brand.

The basic idea is to develop something quickly to get your feet wet. If you find the least bit of success, then take your next game further and invest 2 months into it. Rinse, repeat, and before you know it those early efforts will supply you with the resources to spend 6 months on a game armed with the knowledge of how the App Store actually works and hopefully a small fan base.

The iPhone market is the fastest paced market in the game industry. It evolves on a daily basis and it’s sad to hear stories like Owen’s. Hopefully the lite version of Dapple will net him some success. Already, the story of his struggle with the iPhone market has reached far and wide and it looks like he’ll be getting some coverage, at least of the lite version on the big sites like TouchArcade. Still, it’s important to note that even TouchArcade only reaches a small sliver of the overall market. None of the titles I developed have ever been featured on TouchArcade or any other review site and I’m still making money. In order to succeed on the App Store you have to work it head-on.

The good news is that if Dapple somehow manages to repeat the success of iShoot ( which didn’t perform well until the developer released a lite version ) Owen could find himself replenishing his full budget in just a single day

I just had to post this follow-up to App Store Strategy to express how accurate my estimates were. At the time of writing the initial post I was fighting whether or not to go into the racing category over the simulation category. I estimated that I could get the 27th spot (as opposed to 53 in Simulation) in the racing category if I made the switch. Well, lo and behold, on Sunday when the switch was complete the 27th slot of the Racing Top Sellers list belonged to SkylineBlade proving my estimation to be accurate. This in turn moved my rank up in the Adventure category from 37th to 31st. Now when the next update launches I will replay my strategy and see if I can do some more leap frogging.

Jeff Tunnell over at MakeItBigInGames.com just posted a blog dealing with the various marketing complaints against the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPod games. It’s a good read as are all of his articles so check it out.

I personally am heavily invested in iPlatform (iPhone / iPod Touch) development and marketing. Earlier today I was thinking of doing a blog on this very subject because I had to do a hardcore turn around from developer to marketing strategist to get the most out of my last 2 months worth of development time. Last week I was working 20 hour days to get the game done and this week I’m constantly watching the game’s iTunes popularity, cross referencing other titles with similar keywords, and then choosing new categories which will allow my game to maintain some visibility while I work on an update to bring it back to the top of the New Release list.

With over 25,000 Apps available it’s obvious that any single developer is merely a needle in a very large haystack. The first step to getting recognized as a “special” needle is to make contact with players. I personally love TouchArcade.com. This is the largest website dedicated to games on the iPlatform and the founder ( Arnold Kim ) is actually a local to my region which is super cool.

My first 2 games barely registered with the TouchArcade crowd but I kept posting and attempting to communicate with players. Finally, on my third attempt I registered a small blip on the players’ radar. My first communique was a post with an alpha video on YouTube showing off a city with the basic flight mechanics. The response was OK, some people were intrigued others communicated concern over the graphics.

A month later I posted some new screen shots which demonstrated the work Ori Cohen and I put into better graphics. Now we actually turned a few heads. Mind you this was nothing compared to the attention the top sellers get, but at least some people were getting legitimately interested in playing the game. My third post showed off the final graphics (which are great by current iPhone standards) and a video. This time people were really almost impressed. The reaction was actually somewhat the opposite of my first communique. Instead of people expressing concern over the crappy graphics some expressed concern that the game was a mere tech demo.

Finally, the game launched and people began asking each other if the game was any good. The first response was something like:

“The screen shots look interesting, but it sucks”.

Afterward, a host of other players debunked this first response by saying something like:

“Whoever the hell said it’s bad is lying!”

A whole group of players were apparently really having fun with it and they rescued me, the developer, from drowning. This was awesome! The best part is that this had nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with me being honest with players about what the game entailed and them having some faith that the game would be better than the first commenter suggested.

There’s only so much you can directly connect with players though. After that you need some strategy to get move exposure for your App. On day 3 my strategy was to abandon the New Release list which currently had my App listed under the Action and Simulation categories. Instead I wanted to target two lower competition categories like Adventure and Racing which are both perfectly applicable for SkylineBlade. The goal of the switch was of course to get on one or more Top Sellers lists.

Fortunately, I had changed the game from Action to Adventure first. This resulted in a boost in sales which actually took me from a ranking of ~127 in the Simulation category to a rank of about 53. Thus I did not actually need to dive into the lower competition Racing category. Now my App is listed as a top seller in both the Adventure and Simulation categories. It might be beneficial to be in the racing category since I’d mostly like be ranked a lot higher (like 27th perhaps) but I feel pretty comfortable with a rank of 53 in the higher competition simulation category for now.

At the end of the day there is a strategy to selling well in the App Store. You start out with only the New Release list and a few Internet forums to help you get noticed. Then by carefully examining the competition you can tell what games are selling by using similar keywords for search and then by cross referencing those other games with various other categories to see where your game would rank in some of the Top Sellers lists. It’s important that your game be somewhat dynamic in genre to take full advantage of the category system. Players have at times called certain games out for not being a specific genre. Overall though if you’ve made something that’s slightly imaginative then you can squeeze into more than 2 categories.

Speaking of categories, it’s really important to note that you can only be featured in 2 categories simultaneously except when your game is in transition from one to another. For example I switched SkylineBlade from Action to Adventure today which actually resulted in the title being listed in both for a while. This is because iTunes relies on multiple servers and server persistence for it’s listings. I wasn’t in both categories on every server but the combination seemed just right that I was somehow on the right servers at the right time to be listed in 3 categories instead of 2. This means that it pays to switch categories. It’s possible that to be listed in 4 categories although the technical limit is 2 because of the server persistence loop hole.

It’s difficult to accurately measure the loop hole’s effect on sales. To be honest it’s possible that it might be better to be in 2 solid categories constantly because there can be some down time involved in category switches where your App isn’t listed in either of the 2 transition categories. I will say this, it pays to experiment with category switches at the very least. Whatever you do though do not switch both of your original categories simultaneously. You want to make sure that you have a constant presence in at least one category.

There’s so much more involved but this post forms the basis for App Store sales strategy.

- Connect directly with players via iPhone/iPod gaming forums
- Release new apps in relevant high competition categories
- Once the app has dropped down on the New Release list, switch to relevant lower competition categories where the app will be listed as high as possible in a Top Seller list
- Experiment with various relevant categories but don’t switch both of your category options at the same time
- Finally, don’t ever switch prices in between updates, whenever you switch prices your app experiences some downtime. This not only subtracts hours of sales time but it will decrease the app’s rank which will result in a multiplied decrease in sales (whether you raise or lower the price). It’s best to change prices when your app gets an update to get a smooth transition without downtime.

By following this strategy I’ve been able to triple sales.

More to come …

SkylineBlade 1.0 should be available in the App Store this week. I’m excited about this project which I just got done crunching on. There’s a lot more that could be done with the concept but as of right now I think we’ve got the best blend of graphics, flight model, and action of any 3D helicopter sim on the iPlatform.

… and the obligatory YouTube video: