作者：Raigan Burns和Mare Sheppard

我们是Raigan Burns与Mare Sheppard，并一起创建了一家名为Metanet Software Inc.的公司。Metanet总部位于加拿大多伦多，即如今集聚着能量与游戏开发精华的城市。但情况并不总是这样。所以我们打算在此讲讲我们如何开始创造游戏的故事，即描绘基于N次迭代的开发，并提及我们在整个过程中所学到的一些开发教训。

我们的故事始于1998年，那时候我们两刚进入多伦多大学。Mare主修的是视觉艺术，社会学和计算机科学，而Raigan则选择哲学，电影和计算机科学。有一天我们开始在实验室里聊天，并觉得彼此很合得来，即都讨厌无聊的应用编程并都喜欢游戏。

在那些让人兴奋的大学时刻，我们花了很多时间从Home Of The Underdogs（游戏邦注：一个拥有许多免费软件，共享软件和“被弃软件”游戏的网站）下载了许多游戏并去玩这些游戏，同时还会像对方推荐自己喜欢的游戏。像《士兵突击》，《Super Bubble Blob》，《Puchiwara No Bouken》以及《Zone Runner》都是一些特别有趣且鼓舞人心的游戏，你很容易从这些游戏中找到共鸣。

在游戏的时候，我们会讨论游戏的乐趣或者我们喜欢的内容的特别之处，并想象如何去创造这样的乐趣；慢慢地我们开始意识到许多的免费软件游戏都是由1,2个人的小团队所创造出来，甚至有些团队还是由学生所组成的。就像我们这样！这一发现在我们的脑子里植入了一个理念，即使只有几个人也能够创造出一款非常出色的游戏。

掌握窍门

不过那时候我们仍然不知道该怎么做，我们也未真正去思考将制作游戏当成一份工作。那时候的大学并未想过与制作游戏挂边，游戏领域也与现在不同：在当地我们很难遇到任何能够与我们分享共同兴趣的人—-我们并不认识多伦多的任何游戏开发者！大多数出色的小游戏似乎都是来自欧洲，这大大超出了我们能够触及的范围，所以我们便只能继续游戏并继续思考。

幸运的是，在一次计算机科学的课程中，我们见到了Jon Mak（之后创建了Queasy Games并创造了《每日射手》和《Sound Shapes》）。他真的具有很强的鼓舞人心的魅力；他向我们呈现了自己在中学的时候创造的一款又一款游戏，并且每一款游戏都比之前的更有趣且更完善。

我们成为了朋友并花了许多时间在谈论游戏。我们谈论了自己喜欢的内容与不喜欢的内容，谈论了我们想要创造的内容与游戏的内容，并谈论了创造游戏的技术等的。Jon解释了他是如何解决某些问题以及他的引擎是如何运行的，我们也呈现给他自己读过并思考过的一些很棒的论文。在交谈的过程中我们都想出了一些新理念，并从彼此的分析中受到启发；我们成为了彼此的催化剂。

实际上，在了解我们之前玩的许多免费软件游戏是由1,2个人所创造的这一事实时，我们还未能真正理解这是怎样的一种情况，直到Jon向我们呈现了他自己在中学时所创造的游戏—-我们终于遇到了这么一个独自创造游戏的疯狂之人！当这种情况真正发生时，我们才算真正理解了：创造游戏的理念变得越来越实在且可行。认识Jon并看到他的作品都让我们觉得自己也有可能做到这点。

在学校中试验

从大学的课程中我们非常熟悉基本的面向对象的程序设计，我们也开始独自学习游戏编程，即多亏于网上的教程以及论坛中一些活跃且具有帮助的社区，不过主要还是靠亲自尝试。

我们开始基于Flash进行一系列试验，尝试着执行我们所感兴趣的各种理念，在这些过程中，除了想学习外我们并未抱着任何目标。看着一些小小的技术演示集合在一起并发挥作用真的很酷，但同时我们也因为这些小小试验未能创造出任何真正的内容而受挫。我们执行了一些简单的粒子系统，基本的布娃娃物理系统，光线投射，碰撞检测，响应原型以及基本的AI测试，但是我们仍然不知道如何组装这些部分并从中创造出一款完整的游戏。

时光飞逝；我们从大学毕业后花了几年时间忙于某些日常工作，微薄的工资只能勉强维持生计。我们与其他学生一起租了一套很便宜的公寓，以此减少生活开资；比起买车，我们选择使用公共交通；最重要的是，我们尝试着一切都自食其力。我们相信保持较低的日常开支非常重要，因为这将提高给你更多的时间去致力于理念中。不管怎样我们坚持在晚上和周末的时候致力于变成项目，不过有时候也不得不加班。然后在2004年初，我们无意听到一个在多伦多举办的名为Flash in the Can的活动，这是关于Flash游戏的一场比赛。

面对转折点

截止日期是在2个月后，这最终证明拥有一个稳定的截止日期将成为激励我们去尝试并真正完成一款游戏的催化剂。

我们最初的计划是创造一款潜行平台游戏；我们创造了一些基于砖块的平台游戏原型，并清楚我们能够找到一些与潜行，爬墙，并遭遇毫无警戒心的守卫等相关的有趣内容。我们同样也知道自己想要创造一款有关忍者的游戏（因为忍者真的很酷），所以很明显我们将创造一款有关忍者精通潜行的游戏。

带着这一基本计划，我们开始拼凑在过去几年里所进行的一些试验内容：碰撞检测，关于敌人AI的光线投射以及影响玩家角色的基本物理模拟。

我们想：“6周！还有很多时间！”但是我们却大错特错。比起轻松地将一些已完成的代码拼凑在一起并兴奋地玩自己的新游戏，我们所面对的6周是疯狂地想办法完成某些内容，但却事先未考虑到要完成的内容有这么做，加上我们白天还有各自的日常工作。

这一次的经历教会了我们不能合理安排时间的可怕性。在之后的几个月时间里我们真的是心力交瘁，并且尝试着去避开这一问题。实际上我们也从中学到了其它东西：当你已经完成了大部分内容时，你需要花多少时间才能真正完成一款游戏！进行估算并将其翻倍，你便能够获得较为接近的数值。

开发如此消耗时间的一部分原因是我们并不清楚自己最终想要以什么内容或者怎样的设计文件而结束；这可能听起来很危险，但即使在今天这也非常适用于我们—-拥有灵活性让游戏能够告诉我们它想成为什么，以及拥有勇气去尝试着调整与改变各种元素都非常重要。

改变方向

当我们致力于一个项目时，我们发现比起缓慢地潜行，我们很难基于较快的速度创造出某些疯狂的移动。这点真的很重要，所以我们便改变了方向去利用它，后来看来这真的是一个明智的决定。

在游戏开发中最重要的时刻便是当我们添加玩家角色的时候，这在之前是以圆圈进行呈现—-我们画了一个简笔人物画，修改它并添加了一些闪光点（是的，这是个双关语），然后开始创动画，使用Flash的关键帧和补间动画系统，然后将来自Muybridge的逐个画面的人物照片动画运转起来。

当我们添加忍者时，游戏马上拥有了个性。这一小小的改变彻底转变了游戏的感觉；它真的呈现出了速度感和特殊的移动，并让它变得更加有趣。还有很多其它类似的时刻，并让整个过程变得更加愉快：我们特别喜欢创造并玩关卡，然后开始带着讨喜的目标为其命名。这么做是有益的，将能够减少游戏开发的压力与整体的难度。这种简单的变化通过缓解我们一天12小时的工作而让我们能够变得更加理智，就像《N》中的布偶猫死亡动画使游戏中的失败变得不再那么残忍。

所以在那6个月过后，《N》最终问世了。游戏的名字看起来就像一个自然的理念：简单，与众不同，并且能够代表游戏本身。（同样地，我们真的很喜欢位图屏幕字体中所呈现的特殊图像：非常抽象且完美的logo。）它只会在人们很难搜索到游戏的时候出现！

（顺带一提的是，通常情况下“N”并不能代表“忍者”—-它代表的是“The Way of the Ninja”，即详细呈现于《N》故事中的虚构的“精神，认知和物理训练先进系统”。讽刺的情节是对于叙述是游戏不可分割的部分的流行概念的一种反应—-《N》的故事便是我们嘲弄这一理念的一种半开玩笑的方式。）

基于各种方式，《N》反应了我们想要在游戏中呈现的内容—-我们结合了自己喜欢的游戏的某些部分，添加了自己所感兴趣的某些内容，并确保避免在其它游戏中看到的不喜欢的内容。这真的是一款愚蠢且不留情面的游戏，但是我们也认为它真的很棒。

为了游戏

我们参加了比赛，并等待着。2周后他们宣布了最终结果：《N》并未出现！最终获胜的游戏是《Starsky and Hutch Pinball》。这真的是一次非常让人失望的经历；但是我们喜欢失败。我们真的很喜欢玩《N》，并相信我们所创造的这件作品非常优秀，尽管全世界都认为《Starsky and Hutch Pinball》比我们出色。因为这显然就是废话，所以我们猜会不会自己的游戏其实没那么棒！

但后来我们意识到这是在欺骗自己，因为我们最终完成了游戏，而这一成就在我们的生命中真的非常重要，如同一石激起千层浪般的效果。我们最终发现我们必须为你们创造游戏，因为只有这样做，你们便能够愉快地尝试某些内容而不管别人的看法。换句话说，我们要这么做只是因为你们喜欢它，而不是因为你认为别人会这么想。（同样地，这也是一次很棒的学习经验，学习能够带来巨大的利益。）

我们真的很喜欢《N》。尽管它并不完美，我们仍觉得它很有趣，所以我们才会说“管它的”并在2004年发行作为免费软件的1.2版本；我们想要报答那些带给我们许多乐趣的游戏社区，这也帮助了我们在一开始学习如何去编程。让人惊讶的是，在1，2个月后，开始有人告诉我们他们喜欢游戏，或者讨厌游戏，并告诉我们《N》是世界上最让人受挫的游戏。我们获得了许多反馈。

发现乐趣（和粉丝）

这些反馈鼓励我们继续致力于这款游戏，去修改它并添加更多关卡以及一些新功能，如在线高分等。我们听取了批评与表扬，并按照我们的愿景去过滤它们，在接下来的一年里我们创造了一些比一开始更棒的内容。（说实话这并不困难：第一个版本的《N》是依赖于NES风格的密码去保存进程，因为我们没有时间去思考如何有效地保存数据！）

我们开玩笑似得创建了Metanet Software。（最终证明这对于我们来说真的就是个玩笑—-因为公司税真的高得可怕。）2005年我们将1.4版本的《N 》带到了独立游戏节；多亏了活跃且热情的在线粉丝社区，它获得了用户选择奖。当我们在下一年于Slamdance Guerrilla游戏节获得用户奖时，我们再次感到非常惊喜，尽管这可能只是归功于运气：我们随便选择了离大门最近的地方去呈现我们的游戏，这意味着我们将比其它游戏获得更多的路人。参加GDC和Slamdance也非常棒：在那里我们遇到了许多来自世界各地的游戏开发者，这真的是非常让人激动的经历。与他们聊天总是备受启发与鼓舞，能够帮助我们更清楚别人是如何以及为何制作游戏。

所以在经历了艰难的开始以及许许多多的付出后，《N》开始走上了正轨。我们对于自己所创造的这一小小的内容能够拥有用户感到吃惊与自豪。一开始我们制作游戏的目的只是因为我们找不到一些自己想要玩的游戏；并且我们发现其他人也想要玩这样的游戏。最让我们感到骄傲的一个成就便是《N》在Home of the Underdogs被命名为“Top Dog”—-能够看到我们自己创造的游戏出现在之前带给我们许多游戏创作灵感的网站上真的非常棒。

因为觉得游戏还很粗糙，并且感激粉丝对于我们的信任，我们做出了将要提供更多更新的承诺。但我们同时也恨不得转向新项目，因为我们在致力于《N》的过程中想出了全新理念。并且《N》的成功也是一把双刃剑—-我们期待着下一款游戏能够取得更好的成绩。虽然我们也致力于其它的一些游戏理念，但我们大多都是顶着压力挣扎着。

除此之外，我们还必须通过节约不断支撑下去；虽然我们仍然还有自己的日常工作，现在还多加了临时免费游戏编程合同，但是因为《N》是一款免费发行的游戏，所以Metanet Software还不能做到自立。

转向XBox

2006年，不管是粉丝还是微软都对创造XBLA版本的游戏充满兴趣，所以我们也开始着眼于这一平台。我们花了很长时间去讨论这是否是一种“畅销”的做法。尽管辞掉日常工作这一想法曾出现在我们的脑海里，但是在那时候我们对产业的业务面还充满质疑：我们是因为喜欢它们才会制作游戏，但是如果与其中一家大型主机公司合作的话我们可能便需要做出改变，即可能会变成为了赚钱去制作游戏。我们并不想要成为这样的人，或者失去一些真正重要的东西。

我们最决定走向Xbox的用户—-拥有一些可能不同于传统AAA级票价的内容，这将激励着我们去面对游戏产业这个让人畏惧的世界，并且只要我们投入更多爱于游戏并创造一些我们所相信的内容，这便是值得尝试的。将我们所创造的一款游戏带向真正的游戏主机就好像一个疯狂的梦想一样，我们不知道如果错过了这一次，以后还会不会有同样的机会。

我们真的想要致力于完整的游戏创造业务（我们都不喜欢自己的日常工作），并渴望能够随便安排时间去创造游戏。所以我们便决定将《N+》带向Xbox 360 Live Arcade上试看看。为了不破产，我们无奈地将《N+》变成一款付费游戏，但我们设定了非常低的价格并为了确保它能够呈献给玩家最棒的价值而计划创造出更多内容。

我们拥有策略，但是我们却没有钱去支持开发。幸运的是我们的总部位于加拿大，所以我们向加拿大政府申请并获得了小额贷款去支持《N+》的开发。在这个过程中我们还获得了一些帮助：我们的代理Warren Currell帮助我们与微软进行交涉—-我们中的任何人都不想做这件事，而Jamie Cheng（也是Warren的代理）在文书工作方面提供给我们许多帮助—-那些内容对于还属于菜鸟的我们来说真的非常可怕。

所有的钱最终经历了保证，测试，定位，并且支付（最重要的）给了Slick Entertainment去开发游戏。（Slick曾经致力于Xbox 360游戏，非常了解发行一款“真正的”游戏的细节，所以我们决定如果能够将游戏的主机变成交给专业人士的话，最终的《N+》将会更棒。）为了节约预算，我们甚至不能支付自己薪资！

在接下来一年里我们与Slick进行合作，创造了近乎一千个关卡并尝试着对游戏中的每一个小细节都充满信心。Slick真的是非常棒的合作对象，他们能够移植代码，创建架构，编写网络多人游戏，并轻松地执行我们多次提出的各种吹毛求疵的请求，基于某种方式，这一切的一切最终都组合在了一起。虽然它并不是最完美的，但却非常稳定。

当我们最终于2008年在XBLA上发行《N+》时，我们再次获得了幸运女神的眷顾：游戏卖得异常的好（我们继续对无数360用户愿意尝试表面看来不如《疯狂橄榄球》或《使命召唤》吸引人的内容感到惊讶），并且在我们的生命中第一次赚到足够多的钱能够支付给自己工资！这真的表明也许游戏开发是一份有效的工作，也许我们可以辞去日常工作并拥有绝对的自由去创造自己想要的游戏。回首过去，我们是无意中变成游戏开发者，但这主要是因为我们喜欢游戏，并热爱创造游戏。我们不会将这种情感作为任何交易。

与当地开发者保持联系

当我们开始致力于《N》时，多伦多还是个全新的游戏创作城市。而今天，我们惊喜地发现有许多优秀的游戏是来自这里，并且这里还有许多出色的游戏创造人才。身处由优秀的人才与活跃的社区所组成的环境中真的很振奋人心，并且能够帮助我们有效解决在游戏开发过程中所遇到的许多问题。

在多伦多与其他开发者朋友聊天，并参加像GDC等活动对于我们来说真的很有帮助；我们开始能够理解尽管制作游戏有时候很困难，但是我们并不是独自在努力着，我们可以互相帮助。

在《N》中，要想成为一名技术型玩家，你必须像普通人那样成长与学习。你需要为了避开一些尽头并保持继续前行而改变某些行为。你需要拥有耐心。总之你需要保持冷静并足够专注，不管发生什么事都不要惊慌。也许这也适用于游戏开发。

接下来是什么？

如今的我们继续专职于Metanet Software，它以及发展成为更完善的业务，带有预算，会计，专属服务以及业务计划，但我们仍然尝试着维持尽可能低的日常开支。去年，我们最终决定冒险看看，即租下一间小小的办公室，因为我们的多伦多游戏开发好友们都坚持这比各自在家工作好多了。他们的建议是对的！分开工作与家庭空间非常重要：这能帮助你更好地理解生活中的每个部分的角色与价值，并让你更加适应有效的工作时间表。

我们的计划是创造能够亲自建立原型的游戏，即依靠我们2个人的力量，然后进一步创造出最大的成功，而彼此协作真的非常重要。较低的日常开支让我们有机会能够在不可预知的未来中继续维持下去，并推动着我们继续致力于对自己来说真正重要的项目。这便是对于我来说最重要的。

我们觉得在开发过程中基于什么才是对游戏最好的而改变方向的能力是因为喜欢而制作游戏的一大关键部分—-我们所知道的如何做到这点的唯一方法便是确保我们在这一产业的未来并不会完全依赖于我们所制作的任何内容的成功。当然了，说起来总是比做起来简单。

今年，我们是第三次也是最后一次重新制作《N》（也就是最终的《N++》）。这并不是一个轻松做出的决定：各种版本的《N》的确对我们以及我们所投入的时间产生了重要的影响，但在过去9年里，我们几乎是完全耗尽在《N》上。但是我们却因为未能完成向粉丝承诺的1.5版本的更新并且未能创造出其它游戏而感到内疚。所有的这些压力真的冲淡了我们在游戏开发中找到的乐趣。所以今年我们打算通过努力完成游戏去释放所有与《N》相关的压力。

当然也存在一些正面元素：修改所有的小故障，完善关卡设计的质量，创造我们想要创造的版本的《N》，并且不去考虑资源或体验。对于我们来说与想要合作的人一起工作真的是个很棒的机会，就像我们的朋友Shawn McGrath（创造了《Dyad》）。在某种程度上，《N++》也意味着是一种复活，即在经过今年的努力后将我们带回完成游戏的最佳状态，但我们也担心自己是否只是尝试着找回发行游戏的乐趣而已。我们担心会止步不前，害怕不能再创造出其它内容，不能再有新的突破。我们怎样才能找到一种方法去继续获得激励并继续朝前发展？

谁知道呢！在某种程度上我们不得不将担心置于一旁并进行尝试—-要知道逃避问题并不是解决问题的方法。我们将尝试着把《N++》变成真正的最终版本—-如此我们便能够允许自己不再致力于这款游戏，不再尝试着去完善它，让我们能够全身心地转向其它游戏。毕竟这是我们喜欢做的事，我们也不想失去这份喜欢—-我们创造游戏是因为想要玩游戏，而不是因为义务或压力。

（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）

To N-finity and Beyond

By Raigan Burns and Mare Sheppard

We’re Mare Sheppard and Raigan Burns, and together we form Metanet Software Inc. Metanet is based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, a city now bustling with energy and game development goodness. But it wasn’t always that way! We’re here to tell the story of how we got started making games, largely by charting the development of the many iterations of N, taking a few tangents and noting some dev lessons we picked up along the way.

Our story begins back in 1998, when we were both attending University of Toronto. Mare was taking visual art, sociology and computer science, and Raigan was taking philosophy, film, and computer science; we met in first year in Java 101. We started chatting in the lab one day and really hit it off, bonding over a hatred of boring application programming and a love of games.

Over the course of those heady U of T days, we spent a lot of time downloading and playing games from Home Of The Underdogs (a site that had lots of freeware, shareware, and “abandonware” games), playing together or recommending our favorites to each other. There were some that stood out: Soldat, Super Bubble Blob, Puchiwara No Bouken, and Zone Runner were exceptionally fun and inspiring, and you can see the echoes of those games in N.

As we played, naturally we talked about what was fun or special about our favourites, and imagined what went into making them; it dawned on us that many of these freeware games were being created by small teams of just one or two people, several of them are tudents. Just like us! This planted the seed in our minds that you could make a pretty great game with just a few people.

Learning the ropes

We still weren’t sure how to go about doing that though, and we certainly weren’t thinking about making games as a business. Back then, universities didn’t want anything to do with games, and the game development scene was nothing like it is now: it was very hard to meet anyone who shared our interests locally-we didn’t know of a single game developer in Toronto! Most of the exciting smaller games seemed to be coming out of Europe, which was beyond our reach, so we just continued playing games and thinking about them.

Luckily, in another comp-sci course, we met Jon Mak (who would later found Queasy Games and make Everyday Shooter and Sound Shapes). He was very inspiring; he showed us game after game that he’d made all on his own in high school, each one of them more interesting and polished than the last.

We became friends and spent a lot of time talking about games. We talked about what we liked, what we disliked, what we wanted to make, and what we wanted to play, and about the technical side of making games as well. Jon explained how he’d solved some problems and how his engines worked, and we showed him some really cool papers we’d been reading and thinking about. As we talked, we were each cultivating new ideas and being inspired by what was being shared; we were accelerating each other.

The fact that those freeware games we’d been playing were each made by only one or two people didn’t fully sink in until Jon had showed us the games that he himself had made in high school-we had finally met one of those crazy people who made their own games! When that happened, in person, we really got it: the idea of making games became concrete and accessible. Knowing Jon as a person and seeing the things he’d been able to accomplish made us feel like maybe we weren’t so different, and maybe it was possible for us to do it too.

Experimenting in school

We were familiar with basic object-oriented programming from courses at university, and we started learning game programming on our own, thanks to online tutorials, active and helpful communities on forums, and mostly by just trying stuff to see how it worked.

We started working on a series of experiments in Flash, trying to implement whatever ideas we were interested in, with no clear goal except learning. It was really cool to watch little tech demos come together and come to life (or often, fail completely), but at the same time, it eventually began to get frustrating because our little experiments never amounted to anything. We had implemented some simple particle systems, basic ragdoll physics, ray-casting, tile-based collision detection and response prototypes, and rudimentary AI tests, but we still had no idea how to take these pieces and make a game out of them.

Time passed; we graduated from university and spent a few years working at day jobs, scraping by on minimum wage and becoming skilled at keeping costs extremely low. We rented cheap apartments with other students to reduce the cost of living, and worked from home; we used public transit and cycled rather than owning cars; and most importantly, we tried to do everything ourselves. Keeping overhead as low as possible is something we still believe is very important, as it gives you more time to work with ideas. Anyway, we played around with programming projects in the evenings and weekends, and occasionally at our jobs (shh!). Then, in early 2004, we randomly heard about an event called Flash in the Can being held in Toronto, which was sponsoring a contest for Flash games.

Meeting the milestone

The deadline was about two months away, which turned out to be quite important-having a concrete deadline was a catalyst that motivated us to try and actually finish a game, building on our previous programming experiments.

Our initial plan was to make a stealth-based platformer; we had made several tile-based platforming prototypes, and figured we could find something fun to do related to sneaking around, climbing walls, and dropping on unsuspecting guards. We also knew we wanted to make a game about ninjas (because ninjas are cool), so it seemed obvious to us to make the game about sneaking -ninjas are, after all, masters of being sneaky.

With this basic plan, we began to hastily cobble together many of the little experiments we had worked on over the past few years: collision detection, ray-casting for the enemy AIs, and a basic physics simulation affecting the player character (who was a circle, at this point-both graphically and in terms of collision shape).

“Six weeks!” We thought, “that’s plenty of time!” We were spectacularly wrong. Instead of six languid weeks of us neatly slotting together finished chunks of code, birds singing at the window as we put our feet up and cheerfully played our new game, what followed was six insane weeks of us frantically rushing to get something done, stunned by how much there was to complete that we hadn’t even considered (making levels, UI and menus, saving progress, etc.)-plus we were still working full-time at those day jobs.

This experience taught us how grueling and horrible crunch is; we were burnt out for months afterwards, and we’ve made a point to try to avoid it ever since. Actually, we learned something else as well: how long it can take to really finish a game even when you’ve got most of the parts ready to assemble! Take your estimation and double it, and you might be getting close.

Part of the reason development was so time-consuming was that we didn’t have a crystal clear idea of what we wanted to end up with, or a design doc; this may sound dangerous, but even today this tends to work well for us-having the flexibility to let the game tell us what it wants to be, and the courage to try tweaking and changing various aspects of it is so important.

Changing directions

As we worked on the project, we discovered that it was far more fun to careen around levels pulling off crazy moves at top speed than it was to sneak around slowly and stealthily. That felt significant, so we changed gears to take advantage of it, which was definitely the right decision in hindsight.

One of the most pivotal moments in the game’s development was when we added the player character, which had previously been represented by a circle-we drew out a little stick figure, tweaked it and added some flare (oh yes, pun intended) and then began animating, using Flash’s keyframe and tweening system, and borrowing heavily from Muybridge’s frame-by-frame photo animations of people in motion.

As soon as we added the ninja, the game immediately gained a personality, an identity of its own. That one little change transformed the feel of the game completely; it really “sold” the feeling of speed and acrobatic movement and made it more exciting to play. There were many other little moments like that, which made the process thoroughly enjoyable: we especially liked making and playing levels, and started to name them with the goal of making each other laugh. It was rewarding, which took the edge off the intense stress and overall difficulty of game development. This sort of silly levity kept us sane by helping to make our 12-hour days a bit less gruelling, in much the same way as the slapstick ragdoll death animations in N help to soften it a bit and make failure in the game less brutal to repeatedly endure.

So, over the course of those six weeks, N eventually emerged. The name seemed like a natural idea: simple, minimal, different, and representative of the game itself. (Also, we really liked how that particular glyph looked in the bitmap screen font we wanted to use: very abstract and monolithic, the perfect logo.) It didn’t occur to us until afterwards that it would be terrifically difficult for people to search for the game!

(Incidentally, the name “N” doesn’t, as is commonly assumed, stand for “Ninja”-it represents The Way of the Ninja, the fictitious “highly advanced system of spiritual, cognitive and physical training” detailed in N’s story. The sarcastic plot was a reaction to the still-prevalent notion that narrative is somehow an integral part of what games are-N’s story was our tongue-in-cheek way of poking fun at that idea.)

In a lot of ways, N was a reflection of what we liked in games-we combined parts of some games we loved, added some things we were interested in, and made sure to avoid what we didn’t like about other games. It was a silly, irreverent game made just for us, and not surprisingly, we thought it was pretty good.

For the love of the game

We entered the contest, and waited, and waited. Two weeks passed, and the finalists were announced: N didn’t even place! The game that eventually won the final round was Starsky and Hutch Pinball. This was a very disappointing experience; we felt like failures. We really enjoyed playing N, and had begun to mistakenly believe that this thing we’d made was objectively amazing, but the world said Starsky and Hutch Pinball was better. And since that was obviously crap, we figured our game must be even worse!

We realized we’d let ourselves get deluded, thinking that because we’d finally finished a game, and this achievement was so momentous in our lives, that it would of course make a big splash outside of them as well. Not necessarily so! We learned that at the end of the day, you really have to be making games for you, because then you’ll have something you’re happy with regardless of what anyone else thinks. In other words, do it because you love it, but not because you think other people will. (Also, it’s a great learning experience, and learning is incredibly rewarding.)

And we did love N. Imperfect as it was, we still thought it was fun, so we said ‘what the hell’ and released version 1.2 as freeware in 2004; we wanted to give back to the game community that had given us so many hours of enjoyment, and that had helped us learn how to program in the first place. Surprisingly, after a month or two, people wrote to us saying they liked it. And that they hated it. They told us N was the most frustrating game in the world (fair point). We got a lot of feedback.

Finding the fun (and the fans)

That feedback encouraged us to continue working on the game, refining it, adding more levels, and some new functionality such as online high scores. We listened to the criticism and praise, filtered by our own vision, and over the course of the next year we made something that was better than it was when we started. (To be fair, this wasn’t hard: The first version of N relied on NES-style passwords to save progress, because we hadn’t had time to figure out how to save data properly! Yikes.)

We giddily incorporated Metanet Software, as a joke. (It turns out that the joke was on us-corporate taxes are horrible.) We entered N v1.4 into the Independent Games Festival in 2005; it managed to win the Audience Choice Award, thanks mostly to the active and passionate online community of fans which had sprung up around the game. When we won the Audience Award at the Slamdance Guerrilla Games Festival the following year, we were again quite amazed, although this may have been pure luck: we randomly chose the table closest to the door to display our game, which meant we got a lot more walk-by traffic than other games. Attending GDC and Slamdance was wonderful: to be around lots of other game developers from around the world was an immensely exciting experience. Talking with them was incredibly inspiring and energizing, and gave us a ton of insight on how and why other people make games.

So, after a rough start and a lot of work, N was starting to do alright. We were shocked and proud that this little thing we’d made had found an audience. The whole point of us making games in the first place was that there were games that we wanted to play that didn’t yet exist; we found it a bit mindblowing that other people wanted to play it too. One of our most proud achievements was that N was named a “Top Dog” on Home of the Underdogs-seeing a game we ourselves had made on the very site that was the source of our original inspiration to make games was really rewarding.

Feeling like the game was still pretty rough and unfinished, and that we owed our fans something really special for believing in us, we promised more updates. But we were also itching to move on to new projects, since we’d gained insight and a whole whack of new ideas during the process of working on N. The success we’d experienced with N was a double-edged sword-our own expectations for our second game were immensely high, and we could feel that weight every day. We worked on a few other game ideas, but we mostly floundered under the pressure.

On top of that, we were struggling to stay afloat, bolstered only by our extreme frugality; we were still working day jobs, now supplemented with the occasional freelance game programming contract, but since we had released N for free, Metanet Software was not yet self-sustaining.

N to the X(box)

In 2006, there was a lot of interest from both fans and Microsoft in making a version for XBLA (which was still sort of new at the time), so we started to look into it. We had a lengthy – and often quite heated — internal debate about whether or not this would qualify as “selling out”.
Although the thought of quitting our day jobs to work on games full time, as a legitimate business, had certainly crossed our minds, in those days we were especially cynical about the business side of the industry: we were making games for the love of them, and worried that to work with one of the big console companies would mean that we would change, and start making games for money instead of for themselves. We didn’t want to be those people, or lose something important.

We eventually decided that exposing the audience of Xbox-owners to something that was maybe a bit weird or different than the usual AAA fare was a strong enough motivation to face the terrifying world of the games industry proper, and that as long as we put love into the game and made something we both believed in, it would be worth trying. Having a game that we made on an actual games console seemed like a crazy dream come true, and we didn’t know if we would ever have such an opportunity again.

We really wanted this whole game-making enterprise to work (neither of us enjoyed our day jobs) and we yearned for the freedom to spend all of our time making games. So, we decided to make a go of it at Xbox 360 Live Arcade, with N+.
In order to not go bankrupt, we somewhat reluctantly decided to make N+ a paid title, but we set the price low and planned as much content as possible in order to make sure it had the best possible value for players.

We had a strategy, but we didn’t have the money to fund development. Luckily, we are based in Canada, so we applied for and received a small loan from the Canadian government to fund development of N+. We had some help with this process: our agent Warren Currell helped us deal with Microsoft-which is definitely not something either of us wanted to do!-and Jamie Cheng (from Klei, also a client of Warren’s) helped us a lot with the paperwork, which was quite intimidating for the noobs we were.

All the money ended up going to certification, testing, localization, and (most importantly) to pay the awesome Slick Entertainment to develop it. (Slick had worked on Xbox 360 games before, and knew all the ins and outs of shipping a “real” game, and we decided N+ would turn out best if we left the console programming to professionals.) In order to make the budget work, we couldn’t even pay ourselves! Good times.

We worked with Slick for the next year, making almost a thousand levels and trying to feel confident about every single little detail in the game. Slick was absolutely fantastic to work with, they were able to port the code, build the architecture, write the network multiplayer, and implement our hundreds of sometimes nit-picky requests with ease-and over the year, somehow it all came together. It wasn’t perfect, but it was solid.

When we finally released N+ on XBLA in 2008, again we were lucky: the game sold surprisingly well (we continue to be amazed at how many 360 owners are willing to take a chance on something that on the surface isn’t as appealing as Madden or Call of Duty), and for the first time in our lives we had enough money to pay ourselves! This was a real indication that maybe this game dev thing could work out after all, maybe we could quit our day jobs and finally have that freedom to make the games we want. Looking back, we sort of stumbled into becoming game developers, but it came from a love of games and turned into a love of making games too. And we wouldn’t trade that for anything.

Liaising with the locals

When we started working on N, Toronto was very young as a place for making games. Today, it’s exciting (and a bit intimidating) to see the number of great games being created here and the number of amazingly talented people making them. Being surrounded by bright people and a thriving community is immensely inspiring, and often the key to solving many of the problems we all face during game development.

Talking with other developer friends in Toronto (like Capy, Queasy, ][, and Bigpants) and at events like GDC has been instrumental for us; we’ve been able to understand that while making games can be incredibly difficult sometimes (as with any creative enterprise), we’re not alone in our struggle, and we can all help each other.

In N, to become a skilled player, you have to grow and learn as a person. You need to change your behaviour subtly to avoid dead-ends and keep moving forward. You need to have patience. Most of all, you need to stay calm and focused, and to not panic no matter what happens. Maybe that’s a pretty good metaphor for game development as well. Huh. Who knew that all this time, N was really an art game!

What’s (N)ext?

These days we continue to work full time at Metanet Software, which has evolved into more of a proper business, with budgets and accountants and dedicated servers and a business plan, but we still try to keep our overhead as low as possible. Last year we finally took the plunge and rented a small office space, after our Toronto game dev friends all insisted that it was a lot better than working from home. They were right! That division of separate work and home spaces is important: it helps you to understand better the role and value of each part of your life, and lends itself to a more structured and efficient work schedule too.

Our plan is to make games that we prototype in-house, with just the two of us, and then develop the most successful of those further, teaming up with collaborators as necessary. A low overhead gives us the best chance to stay afloat in an unpredictable and potentially volatile future, continuing only work on projects that really matter to us, or that speak to us in a significant way. That’s what it’s about, for us.

We feel that the ability to change direction at any point during development based on what feels best about the game is a crucial part of making games for the love of it — the only way we know how to do that is to ensure that our future in this industry is not completely dependent on the success of whatever we’re working on at any given time. Easier said than done, of course.

This year, we’re remaking N for the third-and absolutely final-time, and it will be called N++. It’s a decision that was not easy to make: The various versions of N certainly had a massive impact on who we are and how we’ve spent our time thus far, but over the past nine years we’ve become – perhaps understandably — pretty burnt-out on N. Still, we have always felt quite guilty about never having finished the v1.5 update we promised to fans and not having any other games to show for all the effort we put in to them over the years…All of that pressure really watered down the enjoyment we find in game development. So this year we’re eliminating all N-related stress by finishing it all for good.

There are certainly pros: fixing all the little glitches, improving the quality of the level design, making the version of N we always wanted to make but didn’t have the resources or experience (or perspective!) to properly realize. It’s also a great opportunity for us to work with people we’ve always wanted to work with, like our friend Shawn McGrath (who made Dyad). To a certain extent N++ is meant to be a kind of rehab, to get us back into the groove of finishing games after a few years of struggling, but we do worry that we’re just trying to recapture the exhilaration of how it feels to actually ship a game. We’re worried that we’re stalled, afraid that we’ll never be able to make anything else, and that this is the best we can do. How can we find a way to continue to feel motivated and to continue moving forward if that’s true?

Who knows! It occurred to us at a certain point though that we have to put that worry aside and try-running away from problems doesn’t do much in the way of solving them. We’re going to try our best to make N++ the absolute definitive version-the N-liest version of N that ever N-ed-so that we can give ourselves permission to stop working on it, stop trying to perfect it, let it (and us) be what it is and wholeheartedly move on to other games. After all, this is what we love to do, and we never want to lose that love — making games because we want to play them, and not because of obligation or pressure: that feels like the right thing to do. (source:gamecareerguide)