New Project

© 2014, Reid Case - Work in progress

After my failed attempt to participate in a local Game Jam due to weather, the pilfering of an idea with lots of time and creativity invested in, and my general lack of time and money to actually put a game together that I could publish, I found myself at a bit of a writer's block for game development. A developer's block if you will.

I had a host of demo, free, and other various game engines and development tools installed on my PC from my preparations for the Game Jam. One that caught my interest was Construct 2 from Scirra. I'm not sure why, it could have been the marketing.

It seems a bit like cheating to develop with a tool that "requires no programming," or however they put it, but for me and my time constraints that is a godsend. Although I feel I need to improve my programming skill set, for future employment reasons, developing a game solo or with a partner is a lot of time consuming work. At my current levels I can at best hope for a casual game release. To monetize I may have to pursue mobile as the advertising and monetization tools exist and are easy to integrate. They support developer publishing, and the markets seem to garnish a lot of attention.

Developing for PC would be great but I feel the players expect more. I will save that platform for a time when I have more of just that and hopefully money to employ some assistance.

To begin I set goals like Monster Mash

1. Make a game and actually finish it and put it somewhere popular for people to download and play it. Preferably someplace that supports in game advertising, purchases, or sells the game.

2. Keep it simple to finish it fast.

3. Don't worry about killing this time. People are inherently obsessed with it and its profitable. Add some sex appeal too if it helps sell.

The first goal is obvious. The second I found to be one of my greatest disadvantages. My time constraints with work and significant other do not allow for a fast turn out time. I feel both jealousy and frustration when I see indie developers finishing games in a week and spending the rest of the time pushing the game to players. Meanwhile I find myself chasing my tail with countless bugs, interruptions, and eventual brick wall hitting when I get in over my head with a feature or requirement.

Recently I read a few articles about Flappy Bird/Clumsy Bird, whatever its called or was called. It was astonishing how much the developer theoretically made. All trendy bandwagoning critique aside. Either this guy had a predetermined notion to create a Crappy Bird game and antagonize negative player population backlash against his taboo attempts to peddle it, or he simply had no idea what he was getting into and somehow still benefited from it in theory. His entire marketing strategy seems to revolve around something rooted in 12 year old boy sleep overs. Chalk it up there with sneaking into your friend's dad's closet to catch a glimpse at a few pages of his Playboys to satiate that preteen curiosity of the other sex. More specifically it can be likened to creating noxious liquids from everything found in the kitchen and daring each other to drink it. "Dude, check this game out its terrible!" and so your friend does... Why?

Surrounding the hype, a digital music band released a game in a week about the developers plight with his Frankenstein's monster creation.

My thoughts... I need to get to a point where I can release games that quickly. This is evermore so important when the average no name developer barely brings in $1,000 per release. When the defining factor between success and mediocrity for a game is marketing I need to spend 90% of my time doing just that, marketing. At my current rate if it takes me 1+ years to create even the most basic of casual games that could result in a following 9 or more just peddling it. All time wasted when technology changes and improves at an exponential pace.

So there I was trying to keep it simple. I figured I could jump on the Zynga bandwagon and go the menu driven, calculator/slot machine style route. Damn animations and puppet like avatars. I would create a game that tied into MySQL through PHP back end and find someway to develop the front end that would be cross platform compatible. I wouldn't need to learn the intricate details of the native code I would need to use, as simply navigating scenes and menu items, scripting numerical calculation, and generating random numbers is fairly easy in any language. I thought to mimic an old game from high school and TI-85 days, Drug Wars. I wouldn't directly clone this but simply model from it. Create a game that involved "travelling" to different "areas" and buying and selling in game items to make a profit. Add in some features for improving probability of success and profitability. Add a basic spouse was killed, kid was kidnapped for ransom, all orchestrated by some mob like uber don and leave clues all over. And there you have it. People will hate it and it will be boring as hell, but if I incorporate enough "gamer addicting substance" and market the ever loving hell out of it I might be able to buy a six pack of PBR or a new video card with the proceeds. To butter the fat I may even create a 2D anime style point and click interface. Something reminiscent of Myst combined with flash based dating games.

Construct 2 seemed to provide me with enough pre made bits and pieces. I have enough experience to put them together. After a few, and might I add well put together, tutorials I was off. Note: their tutorials seemed to click with me. Unity, although free and documented in an extremely detailed manual, is for some projects overkill. It may take me a year to get to the same point with something as powerful and there goes my plan. Also Unity seems to attract a host of unprofessional tutorial creators who love nothing better than clicking too fast through the options on poor quality Youtube videos with crappy music in the back ground. What I would pay for a professional educator to devise a learning system for the Unity engine. It may exist but I will have to wade through the muck to find it.

After dinking around with C2 I made the executive decision to kill the menu game and pursue something a little more enjoyable for the player. Two weeks later with maybe 40 hours into the game I have a working skeleton that only needs flesh, pictured above.

I will keep you all updated on the progress as it comes. Back to developing.