作者：Damian Connolly

《Krisgard》是我们过去几年里在Qozmo致力开发的一款游戏（我们花费了2年半的时间基于不同形式进行代码开发，而在此之前已经完成了游戏设计等工作）。那时候，我们几乎改造了这款游戏3次（如果从图像上来看应该是更多次），而这也成为了这家公司最终倒闭，以及这款游戏彻底失败的原因之一。

这并不是一款糟糕的游戏，它也拥有许多出色的功能，但却缺少足够的优化与完善。你可能会问，在将近3年的开发过程中，开发者为何未对其进行优化？而就像我所说的，这款游戏重新改造了3次，而最后一次开发将其从一款回合制战斗刷任务探索游戏彻底变成带有故事的实时战斗游戏。当然也存在一些内部问题影响着我们，但是我们并不打算在此讨论这些问题。我们共花了9个月时间才创造出当前版本的《Krisgard》；并且是由3名开发者，1至2名游戏设计师，1名美术人员以及1名制作人共同完成的。

起源

《Krisard》最初的游戏设定其实很简单，也就是创造一款《口袋妖怪》般的MMO。当最初在构思这款游戏时，我们正在玩Buzzville上的多人游戏，而我们也拥有服务器技术能够轻松做到这一点。我们所设想的最初的游戏理念真的很简单。让玩家在刷任务风格的地图上展开探索，并通过点击打开各种内容，包括道具和战斗。

虽然理念很简单，但也能让玩家与其他玩家共同探索游戏世界。而在最后的改造中，我们需要创造一个持久的世界，一个带有真实故事，任务等内容的真正冒险。所以就变成了：

视觉效果得到了很大的完善，同时也拥有了更多内容。因为如今的游戏世界是持久的，所以地图上不能再随机生成各种内容了，也就等同于地图编辑器。我们同样也需要添加各种内容去填补这个世界。于是我们便添加了NPC，以及各种对话，用于告诉玩家世界中的故事内容（当然也需要故事），提示他们如何游戏。我们还规划了城镇和村庄的位置，从而让游戏世界显得更有序。我们添加了任务去帮助玩家指明方向，还有一些NPC变成了训练员，出于某些原因而对玩家发起战斗。我们也能控制怪兽的设置与级别，从而为玩家调整最合适的难度。我们还需要一个定位系统去引导玩家前进。任务中需要添加一个标记，以告诉玩家他们能在何处完成目标，我们也需要让玩家（不管位于何处）知道这些标记与他们所处位置间的关系。

故事

“Krisgard”世界最初只有一些漂浮的群岛。并不存在生命迹象。突然有一天，Source出现了；一股纯净水流进了最高岛屿的中心。Source带来了生命；灌溉了土地。如此，在地球深处便开始孕育着一个个的小生命。后来，“Krisgard”世界出现了巨大的怪兽。

随后人类便出现了，他们意识到Source是维持生命的唯一方式。人类创造了魔法，创造了艺术，并将其与Source结合在一起，让它们能够和平相处并不断繁殖。

随着时间的流失，越来越多人类出现了，并伴随着各种战斗，从而打破了原本的和平。魔法师在长期观察Source时发现，它能决定喝水之人的不同生活形态。当Source保持着中立态度，既不带有积极情感也不带有消极情感时，他们便需要去修改这一体制，即“净化”Source，让它保持积极元素。

他们的尝试具有很大的风险性，并最终遭遇了失败，Source一分为二。Guardian爆发出了上百个不同的怪物，并分散在世界中的7个角落。带有Source的岛屿分裂成2座，而每一座岛也拥有自己的Source，只是一座岛提供“善”水，另一座提供“恶”水。冲击波和岩石在岛屿下方不断敲打着彼此，并碎裂成各个小块。

最终结果并不是完全糟糕的，随着岛屿的破裂，太阳便能够穿越地表照到地底下，而上百座瀑布也能够创造一片巨大的海洋。有些人开始开拓新土地，也有些人（包括魔法师）致力于阻止“恶”水对整个世界的感染。这时候魔法的作用受到了很大的限制，难以发挥功效。

也有些人丢失了自己的Guardian。面对全新的野生怪兽，他们需要捕获这些怪兽，并驯服它们，希望这么做能够让自己的Guardian再次苏醒。这些怪兽变成了人类生活的核心，可以是宠物，保护者，也可以是他们对抗外部攻击的重要武器。在逐渐长大后，年轻人可以选择走出村庄，去证明自己有能力成为一名训练者。他们将在“Krisgard”世界漫游着，在不同竞技场中迎接各种挑战，从而不断提升等级以证明自己的实力。

当玩家真正变成训练者时，他便能够获得自己的第一只怪兽，并开始自己的“Krisgard”旅程。

生动的游戏世界

所以玩家到底需要在游戏中做些什么？我们知道自己的技术能力与限制，我们也知道不想创造哪些内容。如今Facebook上的社交游戏已经染上了一些恶名，所以我们想要避免垃圾邮件战术，并想办法发挥社交游戏的优势。我们认为并不存在真正的多人游戏（也许我在这一阶段犯了错）。虽然已经出现了许多异步多人游戏，能够记录你的游戏过程或帮助你了解好友的游戏发展，但它们都不是即时的。我们想要在Facebook游戏中添加一些MMO元素，包括与陌生人或公会一起探索，玩家对抗玩家模式等等。让玩家能够看到其他玩家与游戏世界的互动才能让他们感受到真实性；这一点对我们来说非常重要，因为我们一直想创造一个活灵活现的“Krisgard”世界。

战斗

战斗是游戏中非常重要的一部分。这是关于玩家如何捕获怪兽（也可以花钱购买它们），如何提升自己怪兽的属性，如何获得某些类型的宝石（通过竞技/玩家对抗玩家模式），如何提升排名而进入游戏世界中的新领域。首先，也是考虑到子孙后代，最初的战斗如下：

可以看出最初的战斗非常简单——基于回合制，玩家可以选择自己的怪兽，然后选择目标，让怪兽朝着目标而奔跑。即怪兽只拥有3种技能，一种用于防御，一种用于进攻，还有一种是提供支持。如果玩家的目标是敌人，他便可以使用进攻技能。如果是为了保护自己，则可以使用防御技能。而如果是为了帮助队友，便可以选择支持技能。

这一版本还拥有一个有趣的机制，即玩家可以拦截其它怪兽。如果团队1的怪兽A1在第一轮的目标是团队2的怪兽A2，而团队2的怪兽B2的目标是团队1中的怪兽A1，那么B2便能拦截下A1。这么做将摧毁A1的进攻，并能添加一些类似于“石头剪刀布”的游戏玩法（与怪兽的类型相关），从而让玩家间能够进行一些有趣的猜测。

于是就变成了：

这是实时多人技术，每一种技术都拥有不同的阶段，如准备，使用，间隔等等。这便意味着战斗是较为强烈的事件，并能打开多人玩家vs多人玩家模式——这是最初版本所做不到的。

玩家必须实时控制他们的团队，并且只有怪兽能够获得XP。基于这种方式进行战斗将能提升速度，但这也意味着不同状态或更长久的技术难以发挥作用，因为战斗会在玩家使用这些技术前便结束。如果能回到过去，我便会对此做出改变，延长战斗的时间，并添加更多策略元素。

尽管在某些战斗中，玩家也能够寻求帮助。这将以对话泡的形势出现在玩家的头上。第一个提供帮助的玩家将获得奖励（游戏邦注：当他们帮助的玩家数量越多时，这种奖励也会随之增加），同时战斗中还会出现怪兽精灵为你提供帮助。这一怪兽与敌对怪兽拥有相同的属性，这便意味着当你面对的一个非常强大的敌人时，这种帮助便非常重要了。

世界

“Krisgard”世界非常巨大，它占据了上面地图绿色部分的四分之一。整个世界布满了秘密，任务，NPC和怪兽。其它扩展内容还包括上面的岛屿以及计划或正在开发中的世界（但是在结束之前并不会呈现出这些内容）。为了访问所有内容，玩家需要打败级别大师，并获得对方的等级。不管何时，玩家都能看到级别大师的团队（包括怪兽和级别），所以他们能够拥有一个长期目标去选择使用哪种怪兽以及目标级别。玩家可以随时挑战级别大师，如果玩家擅于战斗，他便能够轻松地打败对方。

游戏世界分解成不同的地图，玩家也成为了地图中的一个实体。他们能看到其他玩家与NPC交谈，在灌木丛中寻找宝石或与怪兽进行打斗。而这么做能够让玩家感受到更棒的游戏体验。

音乐

我一再强调必须重视质量的一大元素便是游戏音乐。Nicolas Signat负责这款游戏的音乐编曲，他真的很优秀。他能为不同环境和状态设置不同的音乐，并且这些音乐都具有非常高的质量！

玩家

在实时多人游戏中，其他玩家总是非常重要。在其它Facebook游戏中，如果你想要与其他玩家“一起游戏”，他们就需要先变成你的好友。而这与“邀请更多好友加入团队”的游戏机制（以此提高游戏的病毒传播）没有多大区别。当我们着眼于Facebook上大受欢迎的游戏时会发现，当玩家张贴出某些内容时，99%的评论都是“加我吧”。尽管从技术上来看这能让社区管理变得更加轻松，但这并不是个好现象。

因为我们的游戏是实时的，所以我们会提供给那些与陌生人一起游戏的玩家一定的好处。即让他们可以只是成为“Krisgard”世界中的好友，而无需变成Facebook上的好友。玩家可以选择与拥有相同节奏的其他玩家一起游戏，并且可以不用公开自己的图像和信息。我们在之前设想了公会及公会福利（如拥有共同的营地，训练场所等），但最终却未将其添加到游戏中。

与其他玩家成为好友还有其它好处。他们将会出现在你的好友列表中（游戏邦注：游戏中设置了两个标签，一个是关于那些待在当前地图上的人，一个则是关于好友），你可以看到他们何时上线，或者何时开始战斗。除此之外，你还可以对好友发起挑战（但前提是你们必须待在同一张地图上）——出于友好的对决，进行私密的交谈，并访问他们的营地。

所以游戏到底在哪一环出了错？

当你看到这篇文章时，《Krisgard》已经被撤下了。到底是哪些原因导致这款游戏的失败？

与其它失败项目一样，其失败原因主要也是归结为时间和金钱。对于任何游戏项目来说，3年的开发时间真的太长了，更别说这是一款Facebook游戏。如此我们便失去了率先进入市场的优势（游戏邦注：那时候还未出现其它怪兽游戏，实时多人游戏也不多），所以当我们最终推出游戏时，这一类型趋势早已不复存在了。其次便是只面向法国市场发行游戏，我们从未考虑过游戏对于美国玩家的吸引力，不管怎么说，美国市场一般都是Facebook游戏的首要选择之一。游戏设置了默认的本土化机制，所以我们需要去转换其中的对话，并通过游戏测试去寻找任何不合理的文本域。但是直到游戏在法国市场的表现已成定局时，我们才得到修改资金。

我们所获得的资金并不是用于游戏的市场营销，而是用于转变游戏当前的形式。也就是我们需要在9个月时间里完全改变整款游戏，这便意味着我们的一切工作都将匆匆忙忙，并且不得不删除某些功能。比起优化，我们添加了新的图像；比起添加额外功能，我们带来了更多漏洞。我们根本没有时间进行检查并修改任何错误，这真的很让人可耻。虽然当前版本是最优秀的，但这并不意味着最初的版本便是糟糕的。我们总是在不断完善着，并努力创造更加优秀的游戏；而如果你在等待着完美游戏的出现，你便只能继续等待下去了。

游戏本身也存在一些问题。当玩家完成游戏内容时，他们便只能静静地等待下一次更新。像竞技场等功能还处在开发阶段，但是在游戏发行时却还不能使用，所以当玩家完成游戏时，游戏中已不存在任何能够吸引他们再次回来的内容了。

游戏中的经济也并不完善，在游戏发行时并不存在真正的盈利机制。玩家可以花钱购买游戏中的道具，但却没有购买的理由。玩家是携带着大量宝石（游戏邦注：游戏内部货币）开始游戏，并在探索过程中收获更多宝石。因为玩家并不需要为什么东西花费宝石，或者说需要交换的内容都很便宜，所以他们便没有理由为游戏投入更多现金。

玩家营地的存在也不具有真正的目的。这是早前设计所遗留下来的内容，之所以未将其删除是因为如果没有了营地，这便不像是一款Facebook游戏。营地只能用于治疗怪兽与选择新团队。并且因为玩家总是会花费大量时间于探索与战斗中，所以营地在游戏中也就没有多少存在价值。

教训

回想起来，造成《Krisgard》和Qozmo衰败的所有原因都非常明显。我们需要 从中吸取经验教训：

尽早发行游戏。你所面对的是网页平台，你可以在一个小时内便推出游戏的新版本内容。没有什么比投入大量时间去创造没人喜欢的游戏更糟糕的事了。

如果你的游戏是受内容所驱动（拥有故事），你便需要1）想办法放慢玩家的脚步，2）创造一些其它内容，因为玩家终会走到最后。

只要游戏中存在漏洞，不管多隐蔽，玩家都能找到。

教程非常重要。我说不出未能完成教程地图的准确人数，但通常这些人数都会超出我们的预期。虽然我们的教程经过了多次迭代，但最终效果还是不尽人意。

优秀的工具很重要。在创造《Krisgard》的过程中我们开发了8至9种不同的工具。拥有GUI当然比手动编辑或输入来得轻松。

人们并不会注意到某些功能是否存在或执行，但是当你未能有效执行功能时，他们便能够清楚地察觉到。所以在添加任何新功能前你必须拥有一个稳定的基础。半成品游戏总比充满缺陷的游戏深得人心。

明确什么对游戏才是最重要的。拿我个人来讲，我不认为游戏需要营地，所以我希望可以将创造营地的时间用于完善其它内容。

最后，你需要清楚这是一项业务，你需要有钱去支付那些为你工作的人。有时候，对游戏有利的决定却不一定能给公司带来好处。

亲自玩游戏。包括为每次冲刺调试时间。因为太专注于功能的创造，我们未留出足够的时间进行测试，从而导致游戏漏洞的出现。

如果你是基于当前市场上的产品设计/创造游戏，你便落后别人一大截了。

敲定游戏的外观和感觉。我们的游戏便混合了各种不同的类型，包括程序员式的美术设计，这让游戏显得较为外行。

其实游戏并不是那么糟糕。尽管存在一些毛病，但我仍为它感到自豪。我们现在唯一能做的便是吸取经验教训，并将其应用于未来的项目中。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Post-Mortem: Krisgard – A real-time multiplayer game for Facebook, but not anymore

by Damian Connolly

Krisgard is a game we’ve been working on, here in Qozmo, for around a few years now (code development has been ongoing in one form or another for about two and a half years, game design etc. was before that). In that time, it’s been completely redeveloped three times (the art probably more), which is probably one of the reasons why the company is closing and the game will now die off. Depending on when you’re reading this, you might be able to play it on Facebook. More than likely not.

So this leaves me to present a bit of a post-mortem on the project, so that I haven’t completely wasted the last few years. It’s not a bad game, and has plenty of features, but suffers from a lack of polish and being rough around the edges. How can it be unpolished with nearly 3 years of dev in it, you might ask? Like I said, it was redeveloped 3 times, with the last development changing it from a turn-based-combat-grid-exploration game to a real-time-persistant-iso-world-with-story-and-real-time-combat game. There were other, internal, issues that heavily affected us, but this isn’t the forum for that. The current version of the game accounts for about 9 months work; 3 devs, 1-2 game designers, 1 artist, and 1 producer.

The origin

The elevator pitch for Krisard is simply: Pokémon MMO. When we had originally conceived the game, we had some experience in multiplayer games from our portal Buzzville, and we had server tech that let us do it easily. Take an idea that you know is successful, and bring it to Facebook (this was before multiplayer games really existed, and there were no other monster-genre games at the time). The original idea was pretty simple. Exploration would be grid-style maps, where players would click to uncover tiles, which would either be an item, or a fight.

It was simple, yet still gave the sense of exploring a world with other players. With the last redevelopment, a persistent world was called for; a real adventure, with a real story, quests and everything. That gave us:

A big visual improvement, but also a lot more content. As the world was now persistent, maps couldn’t be (pseudo)randomly generated any more. That meant a map editor. We also needed to fill that world with things. NPCs were added, along with dialog that would tell the player everything from parts of the story of the world (oh, a story was needed as well), to hints on how to play the game. Towns and villages were mapped out to give the countryside some order. Quests were added to give the player direction, and certain NPCs became trainers themselves, offering the player combats for one reason or another. Monsters were given zones so that we could control their placement and level, allowing us to adjust the difficulty for the player. We also needed a system for handling locations; directing the player where to go. Quests would have a “marker” added, showing the location where the player could complete their objectives, and we needed to be able to direct the player no matter where in the world that marker was in relation to where they were.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The story

In the beginning, Krisgard was an archipelago of floating islands. No sign of life existed. Then, one day, the Source appeared; pure water that pooled at the center of the highest island. The Source brought with it life; where it flowed, the land was rendered fertile. From out of the bowels of the earth, where the water finally dripped, a creature appeared. This giant beast wandered the world of Krisgard; a solitary explorer.

Humans appeared, and they came to realise that the Source was sole guarantee of life in the world, and the beast the guardian of that life. The humans developed magic, and their arts, mixed with the Source, allowed them to live in peace and multiply.

As time passed, the more humans became numerous, the more tensions and fighting rose to disturb the peace. The mages of the era, having long studied the Source, found that it could determine the style of life for the people that drank it. As the Source was neutral, encouraging neither positive nor negative emotions, they undertook to modify its constitution, to “purify” it, and thus enforce postive elements.

Their attempt, dangerous as it was, failed disastrously and the Source split into two. The Guardian, beside the Source as it happened, exploded into a hundred different monsters spread over the seven corners of the world. The island of the Source was rendered in two, each having their own Source, one now producing “good” water, while the other concentrating the badness of the world. The shockwaves and rocks rent the islands underneath, shattering some into pieces, destroying others.

The consequences weren’t considered all bad, as the breaking up of the islands had finally allowed the sun to pass to the earth below, while hundreds of waterfalls created a vast ocean below. Some humans descended to colonise the new lands, while others, including the mages, worked to prevent as much of the corrupted Source from infecting the world as possible. Magic was restricted severly and taught only sporadically, until the practice began to die off.

For the other humans, they had lost their Guardian. With all the new wild monsters, they undertook to capture and train them, believing that it could be possible to recombine them so that their Guardian could live again. Monsters rapidly became central to the human way of life; as pets, as protectors, as a way of settling conflict. When passing into adulthood, a youth could choose go out into the world to prove themselves worthy of becoming a trainer. They would travel Krisgard, fighting in arenas to gain the ranks necessary to prove themselves.

Enter you. You’re a new trainer, on the cusp of adulthood. Given your first monster, you begin your journey in Krisgard.

The good

So what can you actually do in the game? We knew the capabilities and limits of our technologies, and we knew what we didn’t want to have. Social games on Facebook now almost have a stigma against them, and in some cases, rightly so. We wanted to avoid the spammy tactics and try and push what social games could be. From what we’d seen (I might be wrong at this stage), there was no real multiplayer games. There were plenty of asynchronous multiplayer games; lots of posting about progress or seeing snapshots of your friends’ games, but nothing in real-time. We wanted to bring some MMO staples to Facebook games; questing with strangers, guilds, PVPing etc. You should be able to see other players running around interacting with the world, it makes it feel so much more alive; important for our game where we’re trying to push the universe of Krisgard as a living, breathing place.

Combat

Combat is an enormous part of the game. It’s how you capture monsters (you could buy them, either), how you boost your monsters’ stats, how you gain certain types of gems (arena/PVP), and how you pass ranks, giving you access to new parts of the world. First, for posterity’s sake, here’s what the original combat looked like:

It was pretty simple; turn-based, choose your monster, then choose your target, then let it run. This got simplified into giving the monsters 3 techniques, one offensive, one defensive and one support. If you targeting the opponent, you used the offensive. Yourself, and you used the defensive. A teammate, and you used the support. You can see a short YouTube video of it here.

While that video doesn’t show it, this version had an interesting mechanic where you could intercept other monsters. If monster A1 on team1 targeted monster A2 on team2 in the first round, while monster B2 on team2 targeted monster A1 on team1 for their first round, B2 would intercept A1. This could break A1′s attack entirely so it never happened, which, added with some rock-paper-scissors gameplay in relation to the types of monsters, lead to some interesting second-guessing with other players in multiplayer.

That morphed into this:

Real-time, multiple techniques; each one having different phases such as ready, use, cooldown etc. It meant that the combat was a much more intense affair, and also opened the way to multiple players vs multiple players, something that wasn’t available in the original. You can check out a video of an 3v3 arena fight, or a 1v1 rank match if you want to get an idea of how it worked.

The player had to control their team in real-time, with only the monsters that took part getting any XP. Doing the combat this way tended to speed it up – a good thing if you’re having multiple fights in one session, but it also meant that different statuses or longer techniques didn’t come into play, as the combat was over before they could really be used. If I was going back to it now, I’d change it to draw the fights out a bit longer, and make them more strategic, something which is lacking in the current version.

While in certain combats, the player could also ask for help. This would appear in a speech bubble above their heads in the exploration for all the other players in the map. The first player to help the fighting player would gain a reward (which would increase the more they helped players), while a spirit monster appeared in the combat. This monster would have the same attributes as the opponent monster, meaning that if you were against a strong opponent, this help could be quite substantial.

The world

The world of Krisgard is pretty big. This speedrun video is about an hour of gameplay (a bit rushed as well) compressed to 5 minutes. It accounts for maybe a quarter of the green part of the map above (btw, click on it for a 1:8 sized PNG (5.2Mb), or 1:4 (16.1Mb), 1:2 (54.5Mb), or a bandwidth-busting 1:1 (125Mb)). It’s full of secrets, quests, NPCs and monsters. Other expansions, including the islands above and the world below where planned and in alpha development, but never made it in before the end. To access everything, the player would need to fight the rank masters and gain their ranks. At any time, the player can see the rank master’s team (monsters and levels), so they always have a long term goal for choosing which monsters to have in their team and the level they’ll need to be. You can challenge the rank master at any time; if you’re good at combat, you can beat them with an inferior team.

The world is broken up into maps, and players are added to an instance of a map. They can see other player talking to NPCs, exploring bushes for gems, or fighting monsters. Seeing other players in the same world as you, interacting with the same items adds a lot to the gameplay experience.

The music

One of the things that I should really call out for quality, is the music of the game. It was composed by Nicolas Signat, whom I can’t recommend highly enough. He put together a number of melodies for the different environments and states and all of them are top quality. Check out the movies of the project to listen a small sample of his work.

The players

For a real-time multiplayer game, other players are obviously pretty important. In other Facebook games, if you want to play “with” other people, they had to be your friends. Normally this was tied to a “invite more people to access this item” mechanic to increase virality. Take a look at the Pages for a lot of the popular games; anytime they post anything, no matter what it is, about 99% of the comments are “Add me pls”. While it technically makes community management a lot easier, it’s not a good thing.

As our game is real-time, we have the benefit of players playing with relative strangers. Letting them become Krisgard friends, without forcing them to become Facebook friends at the same time was an immediate no-brainer. Play with other people who have the same rhythm as you, keep your pictures and info private. One thing planned which didn’t make it into the game was the addition of guilds, with guild benefits (common camp, training buildings, etc).

Being friends with other players had other benefits as well. They were added to your friends list (we had 2 tabs; one for the people in the current map, one for your friends), and you could see when they were online, or in a fight. You could challenge them at any time (otherwise you’d need to be in the same map) – both for friendly duels, or otherwise, and you could chat privately. You could also visit their camp – everybody loves visiting camps.

So what went wrong?

By the time you read this, Krisgard will have been taken offline, existing only in people’s memories and on an SVN far, far away. So why didn’t it work?

Like any other failed project, it basically boiled down to time and money. Nearly 3 years is a long time for any game project, let alone a Facebook game. We lost the first-to-market advantage (at the time, there were no other monster games, and little or no real-time multiplayer games), so when we did come out the genre trend had moved on. Released in French-only, we also never got to see how it would appeal to the American market, arguably one of the first markets you should be targeting with Facebook games. The game had localisation built in by default, so all that was needed was to translate the dialog etc. and do some playtesting to find any errant TextFields. But the investment for that was not forthcoming until the results in France picked up, so we were kind of caught.

We had received investment, which instead of being put to use in marketing the game we had, it was decided to use it to turn the game into it’s current form. On a deadline of about 9 months, and with an entire game to redevelop, things ended up being rushed, and features were cut. Instead of a polish we had programmer art. Instead of additional features, we had additional bugs. There was no real time to go back and clean up what you had done, which is a shame, because the potential was there. The current version is undoubtedly better, but that doesn’t mean the previous version was bad. You’re always improving, always making better games; if you’re waiting for the perfect game, you’re going to be waiting a while.

There were a few problems with the game in itself. Once you’d finished the content, there was pretty much nothing for you to do while you waited for the next update. Features such as the arenas etc. were under development, but weren’t available at the game’s launch, so when players finished (a lot of them played for two or three hours straight), they left with nothing to bring them back the next day.

The economy of the game was also broken, and there was no real monetisation in place when we released. There were things that you could buy, but no reason to. Players started out with too many gems (our in-game currency), and got more through exploration. With nothing to really spend it on, or the things that you spend it on being too cheap, players never needed to spend any real money in the game.

The player’s camp also didn’t really serve any real purpose. It was a relic of an older design, and was kept because, well, it’s not a Facebook game unless you have a camp, duh. There wasn’t much to do there; serving only to heal your monsters and choose a new team, there was nothing that couldn’t be done through in-game menus elsewhere. Besides, players spent the vast majority of their time in the exploration and combat, so it never really justified its place in the game.

Lessons

In hindsight, all the problems that led to the demise of Krisgard and Qozmo are pretty obvious. Painful lesson learned, experience++ and all that. Some of what I’m personally taking away from all this:

Release early. This is the web, where you can have a new version of your game up in an hour. There’s nothing worse that spending time building a product that no-one wants

If your game is content driven (has a story), then you need either a) a way to slow people down, or b) something else to do, because people will burn through it

If there’s a bug, no matter how obscure, people will find it

Tutorial’s are important. I’m not sure of the exact percentage of people that couldn’t finish the tutorial map, but it was higher than it should have been. Our tutorial went through a number of iterations, but still wasn’t quite right

Good tools make a world of difference. We developed 8 or 9 different tools over the course of Krisgard. Having a GUI is much easier than trying to edit/input JSON by hand

People don’t notice the features that aren’t there, or aren’t implemented yet – for them, they don’t exist, so how could they? They will, however, notice when the features you have aren’t implemented properly. You need a solid base before adding new features. Half a game is better than a half-assed game

Consider what’s important to your game. Personally, I don’t think our game needed a camp, so for me, that dev time could have gone somewhere else

At the end of the day, this is a business, and you’re going to need money to pay all those bills that people keep handing you. Sometimes, what’s good for the company is going to clash with your ideals for the game. Don’t get bogged down in it

Play your game. Include debug time into every sprint. We got too focused on getting features done that we never had time to properly test them, which lead to bugs in the game

If you’re designing/building your game based on what’s coming out now, you’re already behind

Get your look and feel locked down. We ended up with a mélange of different styles, including programmer art, which left the game looking amateur in some instances

It’s not all bad. I’m pretty proud of the game, despite its faults. We tried to do something different, and maybe if we had have had the €€€’s to continue, it might have been vindicated. As it is, all we can do is take what we’ve learned and apply it to the future. Nothing is ever a complete failure.(source:gamasutra)