Guest Blog: Stop tempting me

I hate the whole “there’s never been a more exciting time” rhetoric. Hate it. Because generally it’s a tool used by spokespeople and media-trained executives to discuss things that, in the grand scheme of things, aren’t actually that exciting and/or have probably been more exciting in the past.

However, it is hard to think of a better time to be even vaguely associated with games development.

The one thing I find myself marvelling at everyday is this: Anyone can make a game. Anyone. No exceptions. A roofer with no experience can develop a title that attracts hundreds of thousands of gamers. Teams of three or four people can create experiences of triple-A quality (or close to it) from their bedroom or garage. An established developer who feels constrained by the studio they work for can branch out and single-handedly rake in millions with a game about rectangles.

 

The barriers to entry have been torn down, largely thanks to the leading engine creators who have released their high-end tech – source code and all – for free. Developers have taken to the internet to share their knowledge, to help new and aspiring games makers learn everything they need to bring their vision to life. So not only can anyone make a game, they’re actively encouraged to.

Which makes my job rather difficult. Not only do I have more ambitious studios and innovative projects than ever to cover, but it’s a massive distraction as the games I see all seem to be saying the same thing: you could do this too, y’know?

 

Every event I attend, every expo floor I browse is a veritable minefield of inspiration, triggering ideas to explode in my mind. Every new tool that makes crucial aspects of games development that little bit more accessible chips away at my internal Wall of Excuses. Every conference talk provides me with hints, tips and strategies that I almost feel obliged to try out for myself, simply because they sound so achievable.

And then there are the developers themselves – wonderful, friendly, approachable people all enjoying the same journey, taking that single, golden idea and trying to make it playable. I genuinely struggle to decide what I enjoy more: catching up with devs who I have met before and hearing the latest on their project, or meeting brand new games makers for the first time and discovering what fresh concepts they’re bringing to this ever-changing industry.

A decade ago, before I even worked in the industry, these people seemed almost out of reach, as if in another world. These were the teams that made the games taking up almost every hour of my spare time – they were gods of creation. And even now I’m learning how brilliantly ordinary these people are. Talented, of course, but ordinary. They’re just like me, I’m just like them. I could be like them. No, wait, feeling tempted again…

So you’ll forgive me if you see me with my fingers in my ears this July!

James Batchelor is Editor at Develop magazine. 

Spring into 2016!!

January has flown by, we’re nearly at the end of February and are heading into spring with the conference season now upon us. This is a great time of year to catch up with old friends, make new contacts and plan for the rest of the year. So, March is a great time to climb out of our developer warrens to see what everyone else is doing in 2016.

Having said all that, July will be here before we know it, and so it’s time for speaker submissions for Develop:Brighton 2016. This is an exciting time of year for me, waiting to see what interesting new topics people want to discuss. I get tingles just thinking about it. Of course with all those hundreds of amazing submissions, comes the commitment from speakers to provide real takeaway for our attendees. So, I implore all of you before you submit your talk this year, to take time to think about what you want to teach or share with those people attending your session. 

- What would YOU want to learn in your 45 minutes?

- Could YOU use the talk to help you work better?

- Would YOU pay to hear someone give this talk?

- Will they be playing Candy Crush instead of listening to YOU?

If you feel like your answers are still positive after doing this exercise then submit right away!

Now let me tell you about what devs seem to be interested in at the moment. Back in December I spent the month catching up with developers to find out what they were concerned about for the next twelve months while having a holiday drink or too. During our sampling of Christmas cheer, I realised that several topics came up in our chats. These topics are ones you should think about when submitting to this year’s conference.

First off was funding - we’ve actually added a Funding Workshop for Indie developers that will offer help improving their pitch and working on their presentation skills. This daylong workshop will help give indies the confidence and expertise they’ll need when putting together their next pitch presentation. We’ve also added our Games Funding Forum conference onto the Tuesday - running alongside Evolve, it will address more mainstream financing issues like alternatives to crowd funding, regional funding and new or different funding models. 

Let’s not forget VR, THE hot topic for everyone this year and something we’ll look to discuss – covering all aspects of VR development in our new VR track within the main conference. We’re also launching a VR gallery within the Expo for the VR providers to showcase their tech and let you get more hands on with what’s happening. 

Another big challenge issue for developers is how they work. Many devs are looking for quicker and easier ways to work with their teams spread around the world as well as optimising their work environment. People are using places like We Work for cool office space or Playhubs that offers workspace for game specific companies without all the hassle. They are also using tools like Slack to help them work more efficiently from anywhere in the world. Along with working models changing, business models are changing as more and more studios are interested in working in the Hollywood model. We’ll definitely be addressing these issues at this year’s conference. Do you have examples of your studios experience in how you work that you’d like to share? Submit now: http://www.developconference.com/conference/call-for-speaker-submissions

We are always looking for new faces to speak – so if you’ve never spoken at a conference before, then like last year we have a special submission page for you. Don’t be shy, be the next Rami Ismal or Mike Bitthel and share your work with others.  Build your confidence and give a talk this year at Develop:Brighton. Check out the submission page here: http://www.developconference.com/new-speaker-opportunities

We want you to speak if you’re a veteran developer or a fresh off the boat indie doing some original stuff. Whether it’s a cool VR game you are working on, a successful Kickstarter campaign you ran, how your team works all over the world or something we haven’t even thought of yet, now is the time to share your knowledge with the rest of industry, don’t hide your light under a bushel it doesn’t do any good there. We’d love you to hear from you!!

We are very excited about the new sessions and features we’ll be offering at this year’s conference.  Make sure to sign up for our newsletter here: http://www.developconference.com/news-letter-sign-up  or follow us on social media to stay informed on all the new things happening down by the sea.

Susan Marshall is content director for Develop:Brighton

Submit to speak at this year’s Develop Brighton 2016 here: http://www.developconference.com/conference/call-for-speaker-submissions

Seeing what's really there

I remember as a choreographer at dance school showing my choreography teacher my first dance piece. I'd spent a term making this dance, working with three dancers who were studying with me. This was extra-curricular activity but I wanted to make this dance and I felt good about it. So in search of praise I asked my choreography teacher, Ingegerd Lonnroth, to look at it.

We gathered in a dance studio. I started the music and the dancers danced. I watched the dance and I watched my choreography teacher, my gaze flicking between the two. Then, unexpectedly, my chest tightened and my stomach flipped. This dance was not good. Specifically, the section I was watching was not good. And I was acutely embarrassed. How had I not seen this before? I looked across at Ingegerd but she was impassive. Had she noticed?

When the dancers finished Ingegerd said something supportive and encouraging, to them and to me. Then she said "Show me again the section about a third of the way through, starting from the upstage right corner." Yes, she'd noticed.

I learnt two things that day.

1. That Ingegerd is a very perceptive critic, a skill I made full use of during my time at dance school.

2. That it is very difficult to see what you have made the way the audience will see it.

When I look at a dance I've choreographed or a game I've designed the tendency is to see what I want to see, to see the work as I intend it to be not as it is. Faults are ignored as my imagination smooths them over and delivers to me the experience that I expect, because I expect it.

My tool for overcoming this hazard is in that early experience with Ingegerd. Show it to someone whose opinion matters to you. Watch it with them. Imagine what it looks like for them. Imagine what they are thinking. Don't wait for them to tell you, don't rely on their feedback. Empathise and feel it for yourself.

In theory you can do this without the other person there but it is hard. I find that their presence, watching the dance or playing the game, and my anxiety over their reaction helps me to empathise, to see the work as it really is.

With my current game I have shown it to numerous people. Family, friends, other developers. In many cases I watch the screen over their shoulder, imagining what they are thinking and feeling, and I smile as my chest tightens, my stomach flips, and I add another issue to my to-do list. It's not traditional user testing and for you it may not work, but it helps me a lot.

Richard Lord's session 'Lessons I learnt as a Choreographer and Apply as a Game Designer' takes place on Thursday 16 July at 4pm. 

Simple Complexity - how foreign games can help us better serve our players

The number of people playing games has never been higher.  Three main things have happened to facilitate this:

• Mobile has put a high-end gaming device into the hands of over a billion users, many in countries such as China that haven’t had access to gaming before
• Free-to-play has encouraged those who wouldn't normally pay to download a game to give them a go
• Digital distribution has allowed developers to access consumers all around the world, rather than relying on those retail channels they may have been connected to before 

While, twenty years ago, we would be delighted to make a game that reached half a million players, and ecstatic to hit a million, nowadays we can realistically reach ten or even one hundred times as many – and often need to, if we’re to make a profit. So what do we need to do differently to appeal to this broader, wider market?

It’s easy for us to make assumptions about what our players will understand and enjoy – after all, if we love it, so should they, right?

What I've found from working with Japanese and Asian developers and publishers over the years is that, although we may be converging into a global market, players may have taken a completely different gaming journey from us.  Take China – now a huge mobile games market, but a country that had no gaming systems for decades. All the expectations and knowledge we, and many of our players, have built up over those years are not there. I recently heard from someone who’d watched Chinese players on a well-known mobile platform game.  He was amazed to see them studiously avoid the gold coins in the environment, in the belief they’d be killed if they touched them. It’s easy for us to assume that players will understand what they’re supposed to do, but that’s a dangerous assumption.

This isn't a one-way street. A lot of my time is spent playing Japanese games – it’s fascinated me why the Japanese mobile market is so lucrative, but why the biggest titles there often fail to make an impact in the west. Beyond the obvious issues of western and Japanese graphic styles being different, there are many things that Japanese games assume their audience will understand that western gamers generally don’t.  Whether it’s turn-based combat, buddy systems, live events or gacha mechanics, Japanese games throw players into these systems with no explanation – they don’t need one, everyone already knows how to play.  When those games are localised and launched in the west, many players are lost forever in the first few minutes of play, dropping out due to sheer confusion and frustration.  Those that persevere often go on to love the games, matching the high retention and spending levels of their Japanese counterparts, but so much opportunity is lost because players are not introduced gently into the mechanics.

Even if you’re not targeting those markets yourselves, I’d advise readers to play the English versions of the biggest Japanese and Asian titles. To do so will you give some insight as to how confused you might be making some of your own players, not just those abroad, but also those newer gamers closer to.  It will also expose you to game systems that maybe don’t make sense to us at first glance – ‘auto battle’ being a great example.  To many western gamers and developers, the idea of a game that plays itself seems ludicrous. Auto battle only makes sense when you play a game for a long time. What drew you into a game in the first place – probably a fun, tactile, interactive experience, is really only the window dressing on the game that really engages people. What sits underneath that seemingly simple action title or puzzler is likely a deep and engaging game about collection, team building, social interaction and strategic planning. In that context, where the real fun is to be had once you've mastered the game underneath, auto-play makes more sense – removing the need to grind and allowing you to focus on what really matters.

The most successful mobile games tend to be those that are easy for people to understand, enjoyable in the first minute of play but which offer an ever-deeper and more compelling experience for those players who keep going. The challenge for developers is marrying the accessibility needed to attract global or inexperienced players with the depth needed to keep everyone engaged long term. It’s not easy but, as the top grossing charts prove, when you get it right, you can get it very, very right.

Harry Holmwood  - European CEO of Marvelous, a Japanese mobile and console publisher, and also a Director of The Secret Police, a London-based mobile gaming startup.

The Value of Attending Games Conferences

In the next few months I will be attending my sixth Develop Conference, sixth! It feels like only yesterday when I went to my first one back in 2010 just after having finished University, with a prototype of Q.U.B.E. to show around. I left the event hugely inspired and ready to embark on a journey as an indie developer, not knowing what the future would hold but immensely confident that I would turn the prototype into a full game, whatever the cost. And for the record, I did just that. 

There are many positive takeaways to get from conferences and yes, you may leave feeling a bit worse for wear and would have taken time out of game development but it’s so worth it. For one, you get to mingle with other like-minded developers and compare notes on game dev, funding, PR, time management and many other things. That in itself is valuable as there’s no default way to make games so it’s nice to find out how others work and apply new techniques to your own workflow.

The lectures are a great way to learn about broader topics and gain insights into how other developers handle things, what worked for them and what didn't. Talks can be majorly inspiring and motivational. You can learn about all sorts of things from level design, game art, development best practices and how to fund and market your game.

If you’re looking to secure new business or even land a job, conferences are great for making new connections. I've done several deals in the past from purely being at a conference and meeting people. If you’re a skilled graduate looking for your first job, an employer is more likely to choose a familiar face that they bonded with over a drink at a conference than CV 524 that came in via email.

Another thing a lot of conferences offer is the opportunity to showcase your latest game and enter it into an awards ceremony. Not only is this great exposure for your game and studio, it’s also a good way to get constructive feedback on the title from established game developers.

One of the best parts of going to conferences is that you get to travel a great deal and a lot of the time, travel abroad to some of the most prestigious industry events such as GDC: San Francisco.

It’s not all pure business either. Many fun activities happen outside of conference hours such as poker tournaments, football matches, networking (aka not-working) and hanging out on the beach.

And once you've become comfortable with the above and gained sufficient experience, you can start giving your own talks at these conferences as a way to give back to the developer community and generally get your name out there.

If you’re heading to Develop Conference this year, come along to my talk where I look back on five years of being an indie developer and observe how much has changed since I started out. And if you’re not going, why not!? I look forward to meeting some of you there.

Dan Da Rocha

Director at Fiddlesticks/Toxic Games

@DanDaRocha

Telling Tales of F2P Games

Those core gamers, eh? They don’t like mobile games much, do they. And don’t even get them started on free-to-play. 

And who can blame them? The successful early F2P games were simple – their interactions mundane, their gating mechanics brazen. They were skeletal monetization mechanics, with a paper-thin layer of skin to make them look at least presentable. Meanwhile, in triple-A land, games were going the other way – doubling down on the experience, the spectacle and the set-piece. You might say that they became all meat – or fat, depending on your stance – weighing down a crumbling skeleton.

But I think core gamers are a valid market to target if you’re making a F2P game. To use the cynical terms of the marketeer, these oceans are teeming with whales – millions of people who pay monthly MMO subs, buy collectors’ editions and season passes. Playing to the lowest-common denominator and chasing a broad audience is valid, sure, but it’s ignoring a vast market.

The biggest challenge mobile F2P games have in winning over the core gamer audience is a battle to prove legitimacy; a fight to prove that the game isn’t just a cynical Skinner skin but a full game experience that deserves to be judged amongst “premium” games.

How do you do this? You can do it with graphics - games like Vainglory, Dawn of Titans and Square Enix’s upcoming Mobius Final Fantasy are pushing that particular envelope, partly I believe in an attempt to establish their credibility. But can narrative help with this?

Spoiler: I think so. But I’m a writer so I would, wouldn’t I.

Hear me out though. Narrative is grounding; narrative is glue. To extend the slightly wonky analogy earlier, in addition to being some of the tasty tasty meat, narrative is the layer that binds that meat to the mechanical skeleton. It gives reason and underlying logic for everything. It isn’t just dialogue; it threads through everything – it’s in location design, character design, even interface design. And, importantly in this context, it shows effort: it shows that you’ve thought things through. Creating a cohesive world and distinctive characters is hard and takes a lot of effort, but there are enough high-grossing franchises to prove that’s exactly what gamers want.

If gamers can get a sense that your world isn’t just a Tolkein rip-off but something with its own identity and history; if they can encounter a character who’s been thought about in terms beyond just “carries big sword” or “has tits, will show”; if they can get an inkling of twists and turns that await them – how can this not engender interest? In a market drowning in copycats and reskins, how is this not going to encourage people to launch the app for a second time?

If you’re a numbers person and all this sounds a bit airy-fairy to you, let me put it in your vernacular: yes, I really do think narrative can help your ‘day one retention’. *comedy spitoon noise*

What about beyond that? Can an on-going narrative in mobile F2P games actually continue driving retention? We consume more story now than we probably ever have done – albeit in different media – and an increasing proportion is serialized, long-form content. I’m not going to pretend that a developing story alone will drive people to repeatedly engage with your game - that’s for the gameplay to bear, of course - but is there any reason why it can’t be part of that equation?

So, if you’re not completely repulsed or amused by the idea, come to my talk ‘Narrative as a Service’ at the Develop Conference in Brighton. In addition to looking at this argument in a slightly less slapdash way, we’ll take a look at mobile games that already do this in the Japanese market, and I’ll also give some concrete examples from my experiences attempting to do this and the new challenges it raises.

By Ed Fear, Creative Producer, Mediatonic

How to get the most out of Twitch

Livestreaming is on the rise, and we're yet to see the full force of what Twitch streaming can do for game developers looking to get the word out about the latest and greatest new game experiences.

At tinyBuild, we've been working with Twitch and livestreamers for a while now -- in fact our best ever sales day was thanks to a livestreaming session we put together with PewDiePie last year. If you can get the livestreaming community to care about your game it can yield incredible results for building a fanbase, and of course, scoring sales.

For those of you who have no idea about the ins and outs of Twitch, it's best to get to know how these services really work first. Once you begin to watch lots of content that is in a similar vein to how you'd want to be covered, you'll get a good idea of how to proceed with your Twitch strategies.

Twitch streamers love to focus on interacting with their audiences, so you'll want to give them reasons to use your games to build their communities, rather than just spamming them with links and codes for your game.

When you're contacting Twitch streamers about your game, the best way to make them care is to give them exactly what they need, as quickly as possible. Streamers want a quick description of your game, a code or link to download the game for free, and a video or two of the game in action, so they can assess whether it's worth covering.

As mentioned previously, they also want ways to use your game to interact with their audience, be it extra codes to give away to viewers, or an assurance that you'll tell your own fanbase when a livestreamer starts broadcasting your game.

But before you even get in contact with them, make sure your game actually streams properly! Go download all the most popular streaming software, like Open Broadcaster Software and XSplit, then make sure your game plays nicely with each. If a streamer is put off playing your game because of technical issues, that's just the worst.

There are opportunities to work with Twitch directly too. The company is still pretty fresh and the team is exploring how it can help game developers out. At tinyBuild we've been working with the Twitch team to market some of our upcoming games, including featuring on the front page of Twitch, and it's working rather well for us.

Before I sign off, you might find the following link useful. It's a list of contact information for hundreds of livestreamers, as collected together by myself. Enjoy! http://tinybuild.com/twitch

By Mike Rose. Formerly a video game journalist of eight years, Mike Rose is now the talent scout and general firestarter at indie developer and publisher. tinyBuild Games.