作者：Devin Becker

我曾经阅读过Roger Corman所著书籍《How I made a hundred movies in hollywood and never lost a dime》，对其中的内容依然印象深刻。书名清楚地指出，他可以从每款制作的电影中盈利，无论预算多么低或者质量多么差。在这篇博文中，我将分析如何将他这些最佳的技术应用于独立游戏开发，这样开发者也就可以从每款游戏中盈利！

How-I-Made-a-Hundred-Movies-in-Hollywood-and-Never-Lost-a-Dime（From betterworldbooks.com）

1、开拓性题材

Corman的电影通常都会被人们打上B电影、题材电影和开拓性的标签。他知晓如何创造和开拓合适的电影题材，比如《自行车》、《护士》、《笼中的妇人》、《埃德加·爱伦·坡》等。有些人可能会认为这是种消极做法，但他自己显然不这么想。这些次题材通常都被认为具有开拓性，因为它们会引起人们的注意。当你在决定是要创造另一个科幻游戏还是遵循Edmund Mcmillen和Adult Swim的游戏设计之路时，以上做法值得考虑。消极的深刻印象依然是种深刻印象！

开拓新颖的流行次题材可以让你成为某个小范围内获得特别关注，而不是常事在已经拥挤的游戏世界中获得稀松平常的注意。反常或令人震惊的举动会激发人们谈论和玩游戏！不幸的是，如果某种题材成功之后，这种技术便会受到众人的仿效，比如僵尸和小鸟游戏。创造属于自己的东西或者选择某些未被充分开发的题材！

灵感来源：电影题材探索的维基百科页面；古典主义的开拓

2、制定低盈利甚至低预算的目标

Corman总是能够盈利的重要原因之一是，他知道如何使得产品预算与预期的ROI（游戏邦注：即投资回报）相符。他并非总是尝试制作能够盈利5亿美元的电影，然后在制作中投入2亿美元，再花1亿美元来做广告。他知道电影只能获得X美元的收入，所以他会花比X少得多的资金来制作和营销，从而实现盈利。调查你的“竞争对手”的真实收入（游戏邦注：不要一开始就以《愤怒的小鸟》之类的游戏为竞争对手），然后树立花较少的资金制成游戏的目标。个人推荐可以通过Game Jam活动来学习如何在时间和金钱有限的情况下制得产品！这里，我还推荐从其他低预算媒介中寻找降低成本的方法，但是请记住，时间本身也是金钱！

灵感来源：控制预算的电影导演

3、依法廉价地对自己进行营销

Corman用来推广电影的某种更具创新性的技巧便是使用影院来作为广告平台以赋予其电影合法性，不幸的是这种方法无法简单地复制到游戏行业中。他可以在这部分上控制成本的做法是，只为自己的电影制作两份海报（游戏邦注：海报的制作费用昂贵，所以他只制作两份，一份用于展示，另一份备用），然后在各影院中巡回展示他的电影，每个影院的时间只有1到2周。这个想法的重点在于，在这个电影直接转变成DVD方式的时代里，影院播放电影便存在合法性问题，某种决定电影是否值得观看的状况。他还意识到，多数人在影片发布的前两周内前往观看电影，所以在影院中花更长的时间来做推广并非利用海报来盈利的绝妙方法。

那么，这种方法如何能被独立游戏开发者所使用呢？不要将金钱花在广告上，应该将时间花在于持续时间较短但获得极大关注度的区域推广游戏，比如Game Jams、节日、比赛、展会、平台特别推荐（游戏邦注：比如iOS推荐的每周游戏以及Steam免费促销等）、捆绑销售、慈善动员和竞标赛（游戏邦注：比如DOTA2等）和Kongregate成就比赛等。巡回数周时间，在可能的情况下尽量展示游戏。

以下将提供某些如何让这种方式在经济上产生作用的注意点。你的游戏只有在新鲜且获得关注之时才能获得大量收入，随后盈利便会迅速下滑，然后趋于稳定（游戏邦注：捆绑销售可以挽救这个局面，下文将具体阐述）。为什么这种情况算好呢？此时你应当为游戏制定计划，不是专注于尝试将游戏以服务的方式进行出售，而是开始着手制作下款游戏。《愤怒的小鸟》是Rovio的第52款游戏，他们不断努力直到开发出轰动市场的作品，没有将全部的精力和资金都投入到某款游戏中。你应当专注于迅速、低成本且可盈利地制作游戏，随着你通过每款游戏学到新的东西，游戏质量自然会逐渐提升，你的公司和名声会随着每款游戏的发布而逐渐成长。Robert Rodriguez的首个电影巨作《El Mariachi》事实上只是为他制作更大的电影提供资金。他也能够在自己制作的每款电影上获利！

灵感来源：学生独立游戏竞赛；PAX游戏展；Indiecade；独立游戏捆绑包

4、开拓被低估的内容

Corman较不为人知的盈利技巧是低价购买外国影片，然后将其重新编辑便配上新的对话，制作某种混合型电影或者新电影。这种方法的前期投入相对较低，而且所需的工作量和员工也较少，从而产生巨额盈利。如果做法正确的话，可以转化成盈利项目的小型独立游戏和实验多达上千个。我不建议将流行游戏克隆到其他游戏平台上并从中获得盈利的做法，但是可以寻找那些被低估或者尚未完成的游戏，要么将其完全买断，要么与开发者合作，使得游戏成为受大众喜欢的作品。如果你想要些灵感的话，可以看看Ludum Dare游戏比赛的入围作品，它们都是开源且未被完成或润色的游戏想法，这些想法已经获得些许反馈、曝光度和游戏时间，但是也仅此而已。如果你想要得到更具实验性的想法，不妨看看Experimental Gameplay Project上的开放性想法和概念，将它们进一步发展。一旦你的识别能力达到某种程度，你或许可以成为发行人或者某些能够为游戏的发布提供帮助的人。

5、雇佣渴望获得机会的业余人才

首先要澄清的是，我所说的业余人才是指那些目前没有职业依靠自己的才能来赚取金钱的有才华的人。Corman闻名的原因之一是能够帮助优秀的学徒进军好莱坞。或许你曾经听说过Jack Nicholson、Martin Scorsese和Ron Howard等人，他们都曾从师于Corman并做出自己的巨作。他在识别人才方面独具慧眼，让这些人能够有机会真正将自己的作品展示在观众面前，而这是他们自己的努力无法轻易实现的。这些导演中，有些刚开始是替Corman编辑电影预告片，直到后者给予他们导演电影的机会。Jack Nicholson刚开始一直都是编剧，直到Corman某天决定让其在某部电影中展现才华。

在这里，我给独立游戏开发者们的建议是，寻找那些渴望获得展现自己实力的有才华的人。预先告知他们项目的盈利会很少，但他们依然会辛勤工作。其中的价值在于，你会完成并发布游戏，而且会有各种各样的人群玩游戏。许多独立项目从未实现这种目标，但是你的遭遇将有所不同，因为你掌握了这篇博文中所提供的技巧，专注于赚取盈利以制作下款绝妙游戏。刚刚毕业的游戏学校毕业生是可以寻找到此类人才的宝库！

灵感来源：The Corman Film School；Game Career Guide论坛

6、预售产品

Corman之所以能够保证电影获利的部分原因在于，他不仅让降低电影的最初预算，而且还与其他公司合作来预售自己的电影。通常情况下他会将自己的电影预售给经销商以获取盈利，因而只要他能保证电影预算不超支，就无需担心电影的盈利可能性。有些时候，他会利用电影脚本与感兴趣的工作室或电影资助人合作，预先让后者来为尽可能多的制作成本买单。这种做法与书籍撰写者类似，他们也会让发行商来承担成本。在你的知名度相对较低且你的盈利能力未得到验证时，实现上述目标可能很难。那么为何不选择将产品预售给顾客而不是中间商呢？知道有人愿意付费购买你的产品是再好不过的事情。这种模型的两种形式已经取得了显著的成效，那就是Kickstarter和出售预定版本。

Kickstarter和预售1.0筹款系统的概念相似，你提供可玩内容（游戏邦注：如原型和测试版）或以媒体（游戏邦注：如预告片和设计文件）的形式提供游戏概况，然后让人们花些许金钱资助游戏以换取正式版本游戏以及某些额外的利益。Kickstarter的不同之处在于，它通常还未是个可玩的游戏，不同的付费等级对应不同的奖励，如果筹款目标没有达到就不会失去金钱。原型销售的不同之处在于，提供不断更新的可玩游戏、可以对项目开发产生影响的能力，无论筹款目标的达成情况如何，金钱交易是实时进行的。每种方法都有好处和弊端，所以你应当根据游戏目前的进展状况（游戏邦注：你能够给顾客提供哪些东西，你是否认为自己能够达成筹款目标）选择合适的方法。你可以在项目早期（游戏邦注：游戏还未能可玩的阶段）尝试使用Kickstarter，如果无法实现筹款目标，就应当专注于构建原型，然后尽快将其出售。应当注意的是，这些做法与病毒性有所联系，所以应当利用所掌握的所有营销技巧！以下是某些较为成功的范例。

灵感来源：《Zombies, run》；Kickstarter页面；《Minecraft》的销售；《Frozen Synapse》预订页面；RTS游戏《Achron》

7、迅速工作

Corman经常会挑战自己如何快速地制成电影，这既出于盈利原因，也是种个人发展想法。他还将这种心态传达给自己的编剧Charles Griffith，有时会在晚上给后者打电话，概述剧本想法并让其在第二天早晨提交首个剧本草稿！他的最快创作记录是2天！这样做降低了成本，保持了内容的创造性并且能够不断让他学习和制作出新东西。重点在于，他从不发布自认为很烂的电影，他只是保持对制作的较低期望而已。再次，我还要推荐Game Jams，因为这能够让你学习如何实现上述目标。在48个小时内构想并完成游戏，这的确会给人极大的满足感。要成功实现这个目标，你需要学习如何专注于你的游戏并将其精制润色。你必须削去大量游戏特征，但是剩下来的应当变得更好。一旦你掌握了如何迅速工作的技巧，就会更加容易地根据上述第4个建议快速地改造game jam中的游戏想法。

许多独立开发者和游戏工作室（游戏邦注：如3D Realms）将成长和经济上的成功视为在游戏中花更长时间的机会，但是制作时间的长短并不总是等同于游戏的润色程度或盈利，所以不要落入这个陷阱，逐渐缩短每款游戏的制作时间。

灵感来源：在两天内快速制成游戏；Global Game Jam；Game Jams

8、重新使用资产

Corman之所以能够在两天的时间内迅速制成影片，最大的原因之一是结合优秀的前期预制作和重新使用场景和道具。当制作次题材影片时，这种方法特别有效，比如他之前制作的多部《埃德加·爱伦·坡》电影。以重新使用资产的方法来设计游戏应该要比电影制作要简单，因为游戏的基础通常都是大量的成分以及这些成分互动的规则。重新使用资产、角色和场景可以带来两个令人惊异的好处：节省成本和时间；构建世界和IP。在构建粉丝群体和营销时，构建世界和IP可以体现出极大的价值。那么，为何不使用相同的世界或角色来以不同的方法制作多款游戏呢？马里奥、索尼克和古惑狼之类的游戏看起来似乎与游戏初作并没有直接的联系，但是我敢担保其中某些确实有重新使用的资产。当然，行业中也有明显使用初代游戏来制作系列游戏的做法，但是与AAA级游戏相比这似乎并不适合此题材开拓性游戏，因而最好是使用你已经获得的资产来开拓新的游戏机制。

许多人可能都看过或者至少听说过Corman的经典作品《Death Race 2000》，但是你可曾知晓电影里的汽车音效来源于其F1竞速电影（游戏邦注：而这个音效是在他去观看比赛时录制下来的）？Troma的Lloyd Kaufman曾经在他的电影中加入汽车碰撞场景，考虑到这个特技的制作成本昂贵，他寻找方法将这个场景插入到自己的其他电影中，以减少制作成本！如果你在某些东西上花钱，那么不要在制作一款游戏之后就将其抛弃！

灵感来源：Troma循环利用；Cheapass Games重新使用桌游的成分

9、开拓性捆绑销售

Corman为B电影的原创含义辩护，他解释为何称不上冒犯，它只是代表着双功能展示中的第二个功能，就像是音乐中的B面那样。B面歌曲和电影的混乱在于，它们通常会显得更加危险，但是有时是更加有趣的发布，尽管营销并不是那么简单，但仍然有潜在的盈利性。将B面与更具有营销型的产品绑定使得公司可以缓和低盈利的风险。提供捆绑销售不仅能够增加顾客的价值感，还有可能使得B面同样获得成功帮助带动销售。

Steam在提供和推广各种类别的独立游戏捆绑方面做得很不错，不仅有助于个体游戏的推广，还能够因所提供的价值而增加销售量。如果没有通过这种方式，部分独立游戏玩家可能根本就不会接触到游戏。这还产生了某种绝妙的方法，使用那些较老的流行游戏来促进销售量。你会看到，Steam的捆绑销售中，发行商会提供某些已经过时的游戏，这些游戏本身可能已经不再独立出售，但是玩家或许对这些游戏有些怀念，他们想要玩这些之前在流行时玩过的游戏。另一个绝佳的例证是Humble Indie Bundle，刚好今天提供了特别的Frozen Synapse Bundle。

你无需等待其他人对游戏进行捆绑，你可以创造出自己的游戏集或特别推广包（游戏邦注：尤其是如果开发者遵循第8个建议开发出一系列单IP游戏）。在这个方向上更进一步，使用捆绑销售来为下款游戏筹集资金或Kickstarter（游戏邦注：正如建议6中所说的那样）。如果J.K. Rowling发表如下声明：“我需要足够的资金来编写《哈利波特》系列小说的最后两部，有个特别推广活动，如果你以这个特别折扣价购买前5部小说的合集，那么你将会免费获得最后两部小说！”，想象下该系列小说的销售量会取得怎样的进步。

灵感来源：Valve Orange Box；MacHeist

10、总是完成或不断循环

Corman理解以下观点：如果你不出售电影的话就无法获得盈利，如果你无法获得盈利的话就无法制作出更多的电影！所有之前的建议中都含有能够让你在预算内快速完成游戏并获得盈利的想法，希望这些目标能够尽快实现。他会在预制作计划中投入大量的精力，利用受到的约束条件来工作，这两种工作方式都促进了电影制作的完成。他专注于使用每部电影的盈利来资助下部电影的制作，这能够确保他在对其他电影想法感到兴奋时依然有充足的理由完成手头正在制作的影片。

如果你是个独立开发者，这或许意味着你需要通过制作游戏来维持生计，那么如果你不出售自己的作品，就无法实现这个目标。正如Joker在《The Dark Knight》中所说的那样：“如果你在某些方面尤为擅长，那么就应该在这方面获得报酬。”这便是业余人士和职业人士之间的差别，职业人士首先要求得到金钱，然后再实现自己的承诺。如果完成某款游戏已不可能，或者游戏完全无法带来乐趣，或者从设计的角度来看是完全无法挽救的，那么你就必须将你投入的资产和时间运用到某些能够出售的内容中。你可以重新使用代码、艺术、音效甚至某些设计，但是可能不能完全使用这些东西。将这种重生视为新的挑战，使用抛弃原有游戏后剩余的预算和时间来开发出新游戏，这样你仍然可以获得盈利。你可以做到这一点，不要放弃！

灵感来源：Derek Yu——《完成游戏》；Chris Hecker——《请完成你的游戏》

我强烈推荐你自己阅读这本书籍，因为这对成为优秀的导演和制作人不无裨益。如果你觉得低预算电影制作技术很有趣并希望学到更多内容以将其运用到游戏制作中，我还推荐Robert Rodriguez所著《Rebel without and crew》和所有Lloyd Kaufman撰写的有关电影制作的书籍。

希望这篇博文能够激发起那些依靠制作游戏维持生计的独立开发者的灵感。

游戏邦注：本文发稿于2011年9月29日，所涉时间、事件和数据均以此为准。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

10 Things Corman Taught Me About Indie Game Development

Devin Becker

It’s been a while since I read Roger Corman’s book “How I made a hundred movies in hollywood and never lost a dime.” but I remember its lessons vividly. His book title is pretty literal as he made profit on every film he made, no matter how low budget or schlocky. In this post I’d like to share how some of his best techniques can be applied to indie game production so you too can never lose a dime!

1) Exploit genres

Corman’s films were often labeled as B-movies, Genre films and Exploitation. He was a master of creating and exploiting niche film genres such as Bikes, Nurses, Women in cages, Edgar Allen Poe, etc. Some would see this as a negative, but his bottom line sure didn’t. These subgenre’s were generally considered exploitation because they exploited shock value for attention, something worth considering when deciding between creating yet another fantasy game or going the Edmund Mcmillen and Adult Swim games routes. Negative press is still press!

Exploiting a newly popular subgenre or niche gives you the benefit of being a big fish in a small pond rather than trying to get normal mainstream attention in the already crowded world of games journalism. Wacky, weird or shocking will get people talking and playing! Unfortunately this “technique” also leads to tons of me-too games whenever a genre shows mainstream success, ie. Zombies, Bird games, etc. Come up with your own or pick something underutilized!

Some inspiration: Wikipedia page of exploitation genre’s in film; Exploitation classics

2) Aim for low profit, and even lower budget

A good part of the reason Corman always made profit is he knew how to scale his production budget to match his expected ROI (return on investment). He didn’t try and make 500 million a movie while spending 200 million just to make it and another 100 million on advertising, he knew he’d only make X, so he spend much less than X and boom, profit! Find out how much your “competition” realistically makes (hint, don’t consider Angry Birds your competition) and then aim to spend much, much less than that. I recommend doing some Game Jams to really learn how to scale your production down in terms of time and money! The other lessons here offer some great tricks on ways to keep costs down but look for many more and never stop stealing hacks and techniques from other low budget mediums like film but remember, time is money too!

Some inspiration: The frugal auteur

3) Market yourself as legit, cheaply

One of the more innovative tricks Corman used to promote his films that unfortunately can’t easily be repeated now was using theatres as an advertising platform to legitimize his films. The way he did this cheaply was to only make two prints of his film (prints were really expensive so he made 1 for show and 1 in case the first got damaged), then tour around showing his film in theatres for only a week or two at each theatre. What’s important about this idea is that in this day and age of direct to dvd movies there is a legitimacy associated with actually being shown in theatres, a certain status as a film possibly worth seeing. He also realized that people mostly see films during the first 2 weeks of release and wasting his time promoting it at a theatre for longer than that wasn’t a good way to make profit from his print.

How does this apply to you, the indie game developer? Rather than spend your money on advertising, spend your time promoting your game in short run, high attention areas like Game Jams, Festivals, Competitions, Conferences, Platform specific featurings (iOS featured games of the week, Steam free weekends/promotional sales etc), Bundle sales, Charity drives, Tournaments (DOTA2 anyone?), Kongregate achievement competitions, and more. Tour around for a couple weeks and get facetime and game press whenever possible.

Here’s the key to understanding how to make this work financially. You will only make profit for a short time when your game is new and attention is on it, the profits will drop off quickly and be barely a trickle after that (bundles can help later, see below). Why is this good? Plan for it and instead of focusing on trying to sell your games as a service (which is a good alternative biz model but not within the scope of this post) just start working on the next game. Angry Birds was the 52nd game for Rovio, they waited till they had a HUGE hit before putting their eggs in one basket. Focus on making games quickly, low budget and profitable and your quality will naturally improve as you learn new things with each game and your company/name fame (or infamy if you follow lesson 1) will grow with each release. Robert Rodriguez’s first big hit film El Mariachi was actually made to just be part of a 3 part direct to video b-movie series just to help him fund doing bigger and bigger films. He makes profit on every film he makes too!

Some inspiration: Indie student game competitions; PAX (Penny Arcade Expo); Indiecade; Humble indie bundle

4) Exploit undervalued content

One of Corman’s lesser known money making tricks was to buy foreign films cheap then re-edit them and dub new dialog to make a sort of remix or new film. This lead to great profits with relatively low upfront cost and much less work and crew required. There are thousands of small indie games and experiments that could be transformed into a profit if done well. This could be done poorly (Ninja Fishing vs Radical Fishing and Minecraft vs Fortresscraft) or smartly (Muffin Knight vs Super Crate Box). I don’t want to suggest blatently cloning another popular game for another platform and shamelessly raking in profits (Gameloft) but rather finding underappreciated or unfinished games and either buying them outright or working with the developer to make them into a quick buck for everyone involved. Want a great head start on this? Check out Ludum Dare game jam competition entries, they are open source, unfinished/unpolished game ideas that have already gotten some feedback, exposure and playtime without an expectation of anything more. Heck I’ve even put together a list of which games use which kind of programming language/engine/tool to make it easier for you to find one you can easily take the ball and run with. If you want to go a bit more experimental than check out the Experimental Gameplay Project for some radical ideas and people open to taking their concepts further. Once you reach a certain level of recognition you can even potentially act as a publisher or someone who can help port games (the way Halfbrick has been doing for indie’s lately).

5) Employ hungry amateur talent

First to be clear, when I say amateur talent I mean it in the sense of talented people not currently using that talent at a paid professional level. One of the things Corman is famous for is helping apprentice great talent into hollywood. Perhaps you’ve heard of Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, Joe Dante, James Cameron, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, David Carradine, or Robert De Niro? All of them got their big breaks working through and learning from Corman. He was great at recognizing hungry talent and giving them a chance to work on something that would actually be seen by an audience, something they couldn’t easily do on their own. Many of those directors started off editing trailers for Corman till he gave them a chance to direct one of his films. Jack Nicholson started off as a screenwriter till Corman decided to throw him in one of his movies.

What I’m suggesting for Indie game developers is that you find talented people out there who are hungry for a chance to be involved and show off their stuff. Be upfront with them about how little profit and pay there will be and that you will work them HARD but what will make it worth there while is that you WILL finish and release the game and that it will be PLAYED by a good variety of people. Many indie projects never accomplish those things but you will be different because you’re armed with the tricks of this post and a focus on making profit to make the next great thing. Recently graduated game school graduates are a great source of talent looking to build a portfolio!

Some inspiration: “The Corman Film School”; Game Career Guide forums

6) Pre-sell your product

Part of the reason Corman was able to guarentee that he was able to make profit was not just keeping his initial budget low, it was also partnering up with other companies and pre-selling his films. Often he would pre-sell his film to a distributor for a profit and then as long as he kept the film on budget he didn’t even have to worry about the films profit possibilities during film or release. Other times he would get a script or at least treatment written and then partner up with an interested studio or film financer to cover as much of the production cost as possible up front. This works similar to how book authors will get advances from publishers to cover the cost of sitting at a typewriter for ages. This can be a difficult thing to do when you’re relatively unknown and your ability to make profit is untested so rather than focus on selling to middlemen, why not pre-sell your product to customers? There’s nothing better than knowing the demand for your product is there in the form of cold hard cash. This model is already gaining significant ground in two forms: Kickstarter and selling alphas/betas/preorders.

Kickstarter and Pre-v1.0 fundraising systems both work off a similar concept, you provide a pitch in the form of media (mockups, trailer, design docs, etc) and/or playable content (prototype, demo, alpha/beta version, etc) and then get people to pony up to help fund the game in exchange for a copy of the game and some additional bonuses. Kickstarter differs in that its usually not a playable game yet, there are different payment levels with different kinds of bonuses, and money isn’t withdrawn unless the funding goal is hit. Prototype/Alpha/Beta sales differ in providing a constantly updating playable game, an ability to help influence the development of the project, and money transactions (and something to play!) are instant regardless of any funding goals. There are tradeoffs and benefits to each method so pick the one most appropriate to where your game is at now, what you can provide customers, and whether you think you can reach a funding goal. You can always try Kickstarter while at the early stages (non-playable) and if it fails to reach a funding goal focus on building your prototype and then sell as soon as you can. Keep in mind these depend on virality so take advantage of any marketing tricks you can! See below for some successful examples.

Some inspiration: Zombies, run!; Kickstarter page; Minecraft sales; Frozen Synapse pre-order page; Achron RTS

7) Work fast

Corman often challenged himself to see how fast he could make films both for profit reasons and just as a personal development idea. He pushed the same mentality on his pet screenwriter, Charles Griffith, sometimes calling him in the evening, outlining a script idea and asking to get a first draft script by morning, and getting it! His quickest production was a whole 2 days, 2 days! This kept costs down, keep things creatively exciting and kept him learning and making new things. The important thing is that he didn’t release films he thought were garbage, he just kept his production expectations low and scaled accordingly. This again is where I’ll recommend Game Jams as the ultimate boot camp in learning how to do this. There’s nothing as exhilirating and satisfying as conceiving and finishing a game in 48 hours. In order to successfully pull it off though you need to learn how to focus your game and polish a pearl not a bowling ball. You will have to cut out lots of features but what’s left will be that much better for it. Once you’ve got the hang of doing this it will be that much easier to follow the suggestions of lesson #4 and play off game jam games for quick turnaround.
Many indie’s and game studios see growth and financial success as an opportunity to spend longer on their games (ie 3D Realms) but length doesn’t always equate to polish or profit so don’t fall into this trap, make each game quicker than the last (see the next lesson for how).

Some inspiration: Little shop of horrors shot in 2 days; Global Game Jam; Game Jams

8   ）   Reuse assets

One of the biggest reasons Corman was able to film movies in sometimes as short as two days was good pre-production combined with reusing sets and props. This works especially well when working within a subgenre such as when he did multiple Edgar Allen Poe films. There was even one of his films where he realized he had a spare day or two before one of his Poe sets was going to be dismantled and had a script written that night to take advantage of that small window to produce one more film. Games are designed in a way that reusing assets should be even easier than in films as they are often based around lots of components and the rules for how those components interact. Reusing your assets, characters and settings can have two amazing benefits: cost/time savings, world/ip building. There’s tremendous value in building up a world/ip when it comes to building a fan base and marketing so why not make multiple games that take different approaches to the same world or characters? Heck look at all the things they’ve done with Mario, Sonic and Crash Bandicoot that have nothing to do with their debut games but I’m sure some of them reused assets (probably sound more than art but I digress). There’s also of course the obvious move of making sequels but that may not work as well for subgenre exploitation games as it does for AAA tentpole games, so better to explore new mechanics with the assets you’ve got.
Many of you reading this have probably seen or at least heard of the Corman classic Death Race 2000, but did you know that the car sounds were reused from his F1 racing film (which itself used real race footage he recorded cheaply by going to the races)? Lloyd Kaufman of Troma once put a car crash scene in one of his films and considered it kind of an expensive stunt so he mitigated the cost by finding some way to include that scene in as many of his other films as possible! If you spend money on something, don’t throw it away after 1 game! I’d also recommend studying what has worked/not worked for Telltale with their episodic games as a great learning opportunity for asset reuse (sadly they probably don’t reuse as much as they could).

Some inspiration: Troma recycling; Cheapass Games reuses board game components

9) Exploit Bundles

Corman defends the original meaning of the term B-movie by explaining why it wasn’t originally an insult, it simply meant the second feature of a double feature showing (like drive-ins still do), similar to the term B-side in music. The upside of B-side songs and movies is they are usually the riskier but sometimes more interesting releases, the ones not as easily marketed but still potentially profitable. Having a B-side bundled with a more marketable product allows a company to mitigate the risk of lower profits by providing a bundle with not only an increased value perception for the customer but also the possibility that the B-side could also be successful and help drive sales further.

Steam has been great at providing and promoting bundles for indie games of various categories to not only help promote the individual games but also to increase sales due to the value provided. There are quite a few Indie games gamers might not have otherwise played had they not be part of a bundle and profits that might never have been gained. This also provides a great way to get a short boost of income using your old, unpopular games to boost the bundle value. You see this with Steam’s bundles from publishers providing back catalogue games that probably wouldn’t sell on their own anymore but that gamers might have some nostalgia for or want to play because they missed it when it was popular. Another great example is the Humble Indie Bundle which coincidentally is today offering a special Frozen Synapse Bundle (two things I’ve mentioned earlier as great examples).

You don’t have to wait for someone else to create a bundle, create your own “greatest hits” catalogs or special promotional bundles (especially if you create a great series of single ip games by following lesson #8). Go one step further and use the bundle sale as a fundraiser or kickstarter for your next game (as in lesson #6). Imagine the sales that could have happened if J.K. Rowling had put up a page saying “I need funding for the final two Harry Potter books as they are a two-parter, as a special promotion if you buy the first 5 Harry Potter books as a bundle at this special discount price you will get the next two books free!”.

Some inspiration: Valve Orange Box; MacHeist

10) Always finish or recycle

Corman understood you can’t make a profit on your films if you don’t sell them, and if you can’t make profit you can’t make more! All of the previous lessons include ideas that will commit you to a promise of finishing your game, fast, within budget and make profit, hopefully as early as possible. He put a lot of focus on good pre-production planning and working with constraints instead of against them, both of which go a long way towards making that finish possible. His focus on using the profit from each movie to fund the next one made sure that if he was excited about other film ideas he still had a great reason to finish the current one first.
If you’re an Indie developer that probably means you want to make a living making games and you can’t do that without selling what you do. As the Joker in The Dark Knight said, “if you’re good at something you should get paid for it”. That’s the difference between an amateur and a professional, a professional asks for money and comes through with their promises. If finishing a game really becomes impossible or the game is just absolutely not working and looks unsaveable from a design perspective then you absolutely must recycle the assets and time you’ve spent into something that WILL sell. Chances are you can reuse code, art and sound and maybe even some design, but probably not all of it (maybe in a future game though). Treat this rebirth as a bonus challenge to develop the new game using the remaining time you had budgeted for the game you are scrapping so that you absolutely still hit budget and make profit. You can do it so don’t wuss out!

Some inspiration: Derek Yu – Finishing a game; Chris Hecker – Please finish your game

I highly recommend reading the book yourself as it’s a great read about a great Director/Producer. If you find low budget film making technqiues and hacks interesting and want to learn more to apply to your game production I also recommend Robert Rodriguez’s “Rebel without and crew” and any of Lloyd Kaufman’s (of Troma fame) books on filmmaking (he even has a dvd version now).

Cheeky plug: If you liked this post check out the most recent episode of the Game Developers Radio show I co-host, “Exploring Design”, on the topic of gimmicks in games.

Hope this helps at least provoke some thought for the indie’s out there struggling to make a living! (Source: Gamasutra)