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长文,开发者谈独立游戏的十个成功秘诀(以及为什么它们不存在)

发布时间:2018-11-26 09:12:01 Tags:,

长文,开发者谈独立游戏的十个成功秘诀(以及为什么它们不存在)

原作者: Paul Kilduff-Taylor 译者:Vivian Xue

我们的游戏《冰封触点 2》(Frozen Synapse 2)即将发行了。从某种程度上讲,它是我们在独立游戏领域工作17年来的辉煌顶点。这似乎是一个回顾并写些励志文章的好时机,以便能获得社交媒体20分钟的关注,以达到市场营销的目的……

我也没有那么厌倦和愤世嫉俗,不过这些日子以来,为新兴的独立开发者提供有效的战略指导无疑是一个挑战。成功靠的不是什么闪耀的秘诀,不过是运气和努力的共同作用罢了。

正如Rami最近所提出的,“独立游戏的市场规模比以往任何时候都要大,同时它已经死了”。大约从2005年开始,各种各样的人 (可能包括我自己)花了大量时间来说明独立游戏最终会“像音乐一样”,即我们的市场会进入一个超饱和、高度分化的状态,其中少数的大公司拥有巨大的市场影响力,而其余的生存将颇为艰难。

我想,如今我们基本上已处于这个状态了,因此如今对独立游戏的任何具体建议都围绕着努力保持创造力。情况变了,显然比我们当年更具挑战性,但同时我们拥有了一个可供参考的完整的经验世界。

从我们开始做游戏起,独立游戏开发不再是躲在幕后做无名英雄,它已上升成为了一条充满抱负的职业发展道路。这种文化观念的转变导致了行业内的“专家建议”满天飞,而这些兜售建议者根本没有成功开发和发行游戏的直接经验。对此你要保持谨慎,仔细甄别那些过分简单的技巧:我不想再读到另一篇哀叹于一份未能引发公众热议的新闻公告的Gamasutra文章。任何事都需要经历一个过程:如果有人向你承诺你一旦采纳他们的建议就会成功,那么他们在欺骗你。

这些非常具体的建议还存在一个问题,它们很快就会过时。例如,我可以在这里花一些时间阐述Stream愿望单的功能——发行前对它的重视为我们和其他开发者带来了显著的成效——但在我发表这篇文章不久后,这种情况可能会发生变化。我2014年前阐述营销的文章已经严重过时了,因此我更愿意尝试讨论一些与未来五年相关的事情。

我们需要牢记一个很重要的点,游戏产业的发展并不是统一的:产业内不同事物以不同的速率变化。例如,在分析人士宣布零售市场即将消亡多年之后,零售分销仍在继续,而Switch上的“独立游戏大热”仅持续了几个月。除非你决定只利用某一特定平台的某种趋势,否则制定长期战略是你获得持续成功的唯一方式。

因此,我并不会提供什么成功秘诀,而是一些帮助你思考独立游戏开发轨迹的原则。这些原则主要针对新开发者,但是若我的经验值得借鉴的话,其中的一些基本原则对有一定经验的开发者来说可能也有些许帮助。

另外,如果你不同意我观点也没关系:我有自己固有的偏见和误解,你比我更有能力发现它们。

我想在开始讨论前推荐两本书:

Perennial Seller — Ryan Holiday

The Hit Makers — Derek Thompson

这两部作品深入探讨了创意作品的本质,以及它该如何找到受众——它们比我在这里尝试解释的要详细得多。

最后说明一点:我不会去定义什么是独立游戏。我将时不时从商业角度讨论成功,但我不想排除那些非商业性的纯创意作品。免费游戏、艺术性游戏、非游戏性游戏(游戏邦注non-games,由岩田聪提出,指不存在输赢之分、也不为了得出某种结论的娱乐形式,游戏邦注)、反类型游戏(anti-game,一种以非传统方式进行的游戏,游戏邦注)、垃圾游戏、互动体验……这些作品的存在都是有意义、重要的,并且它们帮助推动了游戏对整个文化的贡献。“什么是独立游戏?”和“什么是游戏?”对我们来说都是毫无价值的问题。只要阅读你需要的部分,如果我的语气令您介意,请忽略它。

吃豆人(from gamecareerguide.com)

吃豆人(from gamecareerguide.com)

1. 熟悉性和新颖性

Derek Thomson在The Hit Makers一书中详细阐述了这个概念,我在这里快速简要地介绍一下。

流行媒体的共同特点之一是它们都被注入了适量的熟悉或怀旧感。观众将作品与之前的美好记忆联系起来,并被它吸引。

然而,一个作品要想真正得到突破,它还需要一种新颖的元素,为熟悉的公式注入令人兴奋的内容,使其与大量现有作品区分开来。

如果你的游戏太似曾相识,它将是无聊而浅显的。如果太新颖,就会很奇怪并且难为人所理解。

我想为“新颖性”做一个补充,即“解决一个问题”。暴雪是这方面的专家,他们善于利用已存在的游戏模型,并将它们改造得更容易被大众接受、更具回报性:《暗黑破坏神》是对经典RPG的追忆;《炉石传说》的创意源自魔法和炉边聚会的本质,而《守望先锋》是对《军团要塞 2》的致敬。如果你能真正地发现一个流行的现有游戏类型的问题并解决它,那么你就有可能成为赢家。

注意两点:它必须是一个重大的问题,并且你的游戏本身必须与其它同类型游戏形成区别。暴雪在这方面做得非常优秀,因为他们是一个能够调遣巨大的资源的庞大组织,一个小团队则需要谨慎地选择攻克的类型。

我们2011年发行的《冰封触点》是其他战术策略游戏的提炼:与它最接近的游戏是《激光中队:复仇》,一款经典游戏,但它的比赛时间过长,它只支持多人对战并且用户界面已经过时了——以当代标准来看很累赘。当我们发行《冰封触点》时,同类的实时回合制策略游戏还不太多,所以我们能够在一段时间内占有这个微小的利基市场。

把控熟悉和新颖度并非一件易事。我们2015年的游戏《冰封底线》使玩家回想起橄榄球比赛,但有些过头了,体育迷尚且对它不够熟悉,并且从某种程度上,那些对体育不屑的玩家觉得它太新奇了。游戏评价良好,并且试玩过的人都得到了很大的收获,但它对熟悉性和新奇性的调和是不够精准的。

2. Coffee’s for Closers. (咖啡是为成功者准备的)

所有成功的独立游戏都有一个共同点:它们都以某种形式被发行了。

结束项目是一门学问——它是不可忽视的,需要我们花时间准备。如果你以前从未真正完成过一个项目,我强烈建议你在尝试做任何大型游戏之前先进行一次。它可以是一个小作品,但必须是一件完成了的作品。

我是一个完美主义者和拖延症患者:我生来倾向于纠结某件事的一个小方面、为它担忧、然后在我认为它达不到我的要求后放弃它。这些年来,我不得不与这些倾向做斗争,通过自检和听取其他不同性格的人的意见。如果你想做创意性的工作,克服这一点是你个人发展的关键,因此找到一个适合你的策略并坚持下去。

如果你不这么做,亚历克·鲍德温(Alec Baldwin)会出现在你的办公室里并狠狠地斥责你。(亚历克·鲍德温是电影《拜金一族》中推销大师布莱克的扮演者,为了鼓舞员工的士气常常出言刻薄,“咖啡是为成功者准备的”是其经典台词之一,游戏邦注。)

3. 做游戏先从搞艺术开始

电子游戏,至少在商业层面上,是一种视觉媒体。你对游戏的第一印象取决于游戏截图、动图或宣传片的前几秒。

年轻团队令我尤为惊讶的一点是,他们做出来的游戏缺乏艺术感染力,尤其是在竞争激烈的游戏类型中。玩家被游戏的视觉效果吸引而来,并为游戏玩法而留下来,因此每次你在宣传或展示游戏时,你都需要把艺术放在第一位,并且这种艺术必须是世界一流的。

我的意思不是说游戏画面一定要极度还原现实或是极度华丽:使视觉效果出众的方式有很多。以下是一些我认为很美丽的游戏:

这些游戏的艺术风格都很吸引人:它或直接暗示了游戏系统的深度,或展现了游戏独特的乐趣,让人想要深入其中一探究竟。

太多新兴的独立游戏团队尝试复制大型游戏那种绚丽的艺术效果,并在过程中把它变得过于复杂。我们刚开始也犯了这个错误:比较我们的第一款游戏《决斗》(Determinance)和第二款游戏《冰封触点》……

我们在《决斗》中塞进了各种元素,结果元素的艺术风格不一致。为了保持艺术风格的统一,我们必须选择一些更简洁明了的东西,因此在创作《冰封触点》时,我从《核战危机》和Mark Coleran设计的动画中吸取艺术灵感。

华丽、约束性的艺术(constraint art)总是比“我最佳的3A作品”更能唤起人的共鸣。如果你碰巧拥有一位才华横溢的艺术家,能够创作出色的真实环境艺术,那么好好利用这一点,否则你最好谨慎地对待艺术。

把它做好,把它放在第一位。

4. 给自己一个机会

如果你觉得手头的资源可以助你实施梦想的项目,那就去做吧。在99%的情况下,做一个你真正在乎的游戏——你一直想做并且能够唤醒你的热爱的游戏,比你出于犬儒主义或实用主义所做的事情更有可能获得成功。

除非你所做的项目属于学习过程的一部分 (如我前面讨论过的“学会完成某件事”),否则做一些“似乎明智”的事情是一个可怕的想法。我曾见过一些团队,他们在拿到投资后显然在东拼西凑地完成任务,希望通过这样得到一点资金来做他们自己感兴趣的东西。不要这样做:这是在浪费每个人的时间。

你的这种想法停留的时间非常短,随着年龄的增长,你会感觉时间过得越来越快——你将没有时间,或精神空间去做任何对你来说有意义的事情。如果可以的话,把你的时间花在创造一个你会为之骄傲的事物上。

5. 留在游戏行业里

从我们编写第一行代码开始,我们花了大约9年的时间才从最初的游戏项目中获得了巨大的财务成功。我知道一些开发者花的时间要长得多,许多开发者甚至从未成功过。要想让游戏进行下去,你必须愿意并且能够用尽各种可能的方式留在这里。

制作游戏成本高昂又耗费时间,因此我们很容易把所有的东西都压到一个项目上。有时候这是不可避免的——当然,人们能够根据他们拥有的资源来选择承担风险——但你最好准备一个B计划。合同、现金储备、未来合作项目、重新利用现有技术和IP、外部资金来源……当你陷入困境时,所有这些无聊但明智的商业上的玩意儿都会派上用场。

你应该看看Jake Birkett的演讲“如何在没有成功的情况下在游戏行业生存十一年”(How to Survive in Games for Eleven Years Without a Hit)。

制作游戏还涉及到个人成本,并且这只会随着时间的推移而增加。在20岁出头的时候,你可能满怀斗志地加班加点工作,但当你到了30岁的时候,你的精神状态和体力都会大幅下降。如果你想把做游戏当成一份事业,你真的必须调整自己的节奏。

本文的大部分内容包含的建议比较宽泛,您可以选择性地进行阅读,但以下是一些我认为不可忽视的建议:

-预留时间和精力处理你的人际关系;出于任何理由你都不应在这方面妥协
-坚持每天锻炼,即使15分钟的步行也比没有好得多
-在工作和睡觉之间为自己留出一个间隙,做些有意义的事
-拥有非围绕游戏和游戏行业的兴趣和友谊。
-学会识别压力和透支;一旦发现马上采取行动调整自己。
-记住要善待自己和他人

6. 五分钟,五十分钟,五小时,五十小时

以下是一些对我很有帮助的问题:

当人们开始玩你的游戏,他们首先看到的是什么?

人们第一次上手操作时感觉如何?

游戏在第一个小时内呈现了多少内容?——它们是如何向玩家展示游戏深度的?

游戏从什么时候开始变得无聊——一旦我了解了基本玩法后我为什么要继续玩它?

我能想象某个玩家玩了50小时我的游戏吗?为了实现它我需要做什么?——应该为玩家提供哪些价值?

很多新团队做的游戏企图在前五分钟内向玩家展示游戏精彩的一面——也许是展示华丽的画面、或者像街机动作游戏一样(简要介绍规则后立刻让玩家开始游戏,游戏邦注)——但是,除非玩家能实际地打一段游戏并享受这个过程,你所做的一切都是徒劳的……相反的,一些非常有深度的游戏学习曲线刚开始非常艰难,以至于玩家的第一个小时是在噩梦般的教程中度过的。

站在玩家的角度考虑不同时间段内的游戏体验,这十分关键。根据玩家的需求设计游戏,不要白费力气做重复的工作——创造一些能在游戏初期紧紧抓住玩家的东西。

7. 获取关注度

你需要做一个值得被关注的游戏,然后使它得到应得的关注。

我不打算在此处深入讨论市场营销——关于这一块的最新内容,我推荐你阅读Hayley Uyrus在PC Games Insider 上发布的专栏文章,以及了解Mike Rose为他的发行公司“No More Robots”做的一些工作。如果你想知道一个热门游戏如何进行营销,开发商Paradox Interactive在社区和广告运营方面是一个优秀范例。

你必须与你的玩家保持长久的联系,你不仅要把它当成工作,还得把它落实到你的日常活动中。这很困难,坚持下去需要巨大的耐力。我不擅长这方面,这就是为什么我每七个月才写一篇长文,而不是每周写个小短篇。

人们会想要描述(或展示)他们在玩游戏时所发生的故事。这些由游戏和玩家共同创造的故事是你在进行营销时需要重点考虑的。

你们的营销渠道实质上是:

-社交
-社区(聊天应用Discord、论坛、Steam社区等)
-PR
-付费广告
-商店布局

想想如何通过这些渠道去讲述、并鼓励人们去想象这些故事。

另外,别忘了人们对你的创作过程也是很感兴趣的。诚实的工作纪录可以帮助你的获得社区的投资然后继续你的开发。如果你想要一个参考,Tom Francis为游戏开发创建的纪录网站(www.pentadact.com)是个很好的例子。

如果你想知道如何将这种自我营销发挥到极致,看看营销达人Gary Vaynerchuck每天都在做什么吧。他请了一个摄影师专门负责跟拍他的行程,然后让另一组人把他的一天的活动进行剪辑和包装。我不建议你做到这种程度 (变得如此烦人),但人们对于纪录、实况和评论的感兴趣程度是基本上无限的。

8. 保持自信

最近英国游戏基金会(UK Games Fund)在约克市举办了一个活动,我为他们做了些工作。许多寻求资金的团队将在这个活动上练习演讲,来为今年晚些时候的一个更正式的活动做准备。

很多游戏的质量都很高,但是我和在场的其他专家的一致反馈是,团队对他们的游戏或者他们的策略不够自信。当谈到自信和销售实践时,场上甚至引发了一场关于英国文化规范的讨论。

自信,而非傲慢,来源于你对自身和你所做工作的价值的认同。你可以彬彬有礼而谦逊,同时展现出极高的自信:事实上,这些特质常常是紧密结合的。你没必要把自己变成一个成天 “载歌载舞”的外向者,但是如果你在自信方面有问题,那么你确实应该为了自己和其他人努力克服它们:你所获得的回报将远远超出游戏开发的范围。

9. 游戏的润色

我坚信,最好的游戏是广义的大型系统性思维和细微的学究式完美主义相结合的产物。

难以置信的是有些人可以做到二者兼备,但大多数时候,你需要从不同的个体身上获得和利用这些品质。

太过宏观的游戏会疏远你的玩家。太微观又会导致你的游戏缺乏主心骨。此外,无法把握好二者的平衡将会延长你的开发周期。

了解什么时候需要通过更改某一个系统来解决问题,什么时候通过小的迭代来解决,这大概是游戏设计中最难的部分。重要的是尊重每一种方法,并在适当的时候努力学习。

开发中最困难的部分之一是对游戏进行修复和润色:你必须不断处理那些阻碍玩家享受游戏的烦人而棘手问题。就在你认为你已经完成时,总有人会指出一些新问题,让你产生砸墙的冲动。不要这样,继续打磨你的游戏,然后用些技巧把它完成。

10. 诚实面对自己

游戏开发是很有挑战性的。它常常是累人的,令人沮丧的、重复的、无聊的、无回报的、要求苛刻的。即便你一直做着正确的事,仍然可能撞上石头——我建议每个开发人员都看看Hugh Monahan关于开发《战团》(Brigador)的演讲。

你成功的很大一部分将完全取决于运气。你需要意识到这一点,接受它并把它牢记在心。

为了坚持下去,你必须坚信你正在做对的事,并且你必须寻求外部的验证,证明你正在做一些有意义的事情。你的付出需获得相应的回报,不仅体现在财务上,也体现在对个人的影响上。

如果没能成功,你需要做些改变:找新的合作者、新类型的项目、新的挑战、新的方法,甚至是转换你的角色。你从独立游戏开发中学到的技能有种种应用方式——你不必永远以完全相同的方式制作游戏来最大化职业生涯和人生的产出。

不存在的秘诀

我希望我已经说得很清楚了,这个世上没有人能教给你做一个成功独立游戏的秘诀。每个人都会犯错,每个人都需要抓住好运。

想想Mojagn的《卷轴》或者Boss Key的《不法之徒》——取得巨大成功的公司和个人不可能次次都成功。在游戏行业内能够接连成功是非常值得骄傲的事情,这就是为什么我很高兴看到像Dave Gilbert、Wadjet Eye或者Cliff Harris这样经验丰富的独立开发者带着热门作品回归。我坚信一定要坚持下来、尽力而为、生存下去。要做到这一点,你需要建立一套不可动摇的价值观和强大的社会支持网络。

游戏为玩家提供了一个独特的渠道。这是一个数量庞大的,多样化的群体,这有时可能会让事情变得有些棘手,但从本质上看,他们是一群希望寻找全新的体验、希望能被带到新的空间的一群人。整体上我对玩家群体仍然充满信心,尽管其中的某些人在过去几年的行为确实令人厌恶。

这个行业本身也充满了许多真正关心他人,一心希望大家一起成功的人。游戏行业与其他行业有着根本上的不同,任何转行来的人都谈论着它是多么的友好。我很幸运拥有过一些奇妙的经历并遇到了一些传奇的人物。

我现在已经完成了四款原创游戏,两款已发行的游戏,以及大量的移植和合同作品。一个月前,我刚过完35岁生日,与19岁时和我的共同创始人(也是我们的首席设计师/程序员) Ian Hardingham刚开始合作时相比,我感觉真是很不一样了。

我不知道独立游戏开发这条路将把我带向何处。我仍然坚信,我和Ian之间的合作——他的设计与我的某些胡乱点缀,似乎在某个基本层面上交织在了一起,成为Mode 7游戏的核心。我知道我得写更多的“音乐”,我想进行更多的合作,这样才能更有效把精力放在对我来说重要的事情上,但是谁知道会发生什么。

如果你想走这条路,或者你刚刚开始,我在这里告诉你,这很难,但绝对值得。

不要试图寻找捷径,不要嫉妒那些拥有比你更多关注度或资金的人,也不要仅仅因为读了某篇白痴的博客就真的按它说的去做,运动除外——你真该锻炼身体了。

本文由游戏邦编译,转载请注明来源,或咨询微信zhengjintiao

We’re about to release Frozen Synapse 2. In some ways, it’s the culmination of 17 years of involvement with indie games in one form or another. This would seem like a good time to look back and write some kind of inspirational blog post in order to get 20 minutes of social media attention to leverage for marketing purposes…

I’m not really that jaded and cynical, but it’s certainly a challenge to find valid tactical advice to give to indie dev newcomers these days. There are no glittering secrets to success, only a dull brick comprised of luck and effort.

As the inevitable Rami put it recently, “Indie is bigger than ever and also it is dead”. Various talking heads (myself included probably) spent a lot of time since 2005 or so saying how indie games were going to be “just like music” eventually, meaning that we’d enter a super-saturated, super-stratified state where a few big players would get a lot of mindshare and everyone else would be left swirling around in the bowl of corporate-mediated distribution networks.

Well, we’ve basically reached that point now, so advice specific to indie games is now effectively germane to any creative endeavour. Things are demonstrably more challenging than they were when we started, but also there’s now a whole world of experience to draw from.

Since we started out, indie game development has ascended from being the preserve of back-room tinkerers to the lofty heights of an aspirational career path. This kind of cultural shift can lead to the rise of a meta-industry of advice-peddlers who do not have directly relevant experience of developing and releasing successful games. Watch out for this, and be wary of overly simplistic hacks and tricks: I never want to read another Gamasutra postmortem which laments the failure of a single press release to generate a raft of launch day reviews. Everything is a process: if anyone promises you success as a direct consequence of employing their advice then they are lying to you.

Another problem with very specific guidance is a short use-by date. For example, I could spend some time here expounding on the efficacy of Steam Wishlists — focussing on them pre-launch has worked well for us and for some other indies who have adapted to this aspect of Valve’s infrastructure — but that could well change shortly after I publish this. My pre-2014 marketing articles have already dated horribly, so I’d rather attempt to write something which is going to be relevant over the next five years.

One thing that’s important to bear in mind is that the pace of the games industry is not a unified force: things change at different rates. For example, retail distribution is still clinging to life many years after analysts pronounced its imminent demise, whereas the “indie boom” on Switch lasted for just a few months. Unless you’re absolutely primed to take advantage of a situation on a specific platform, developing long-term strategies is the only shot you have at consistent success.

So, instead of secrets, I’m going to offer up some principles which might help you to think about your indie game dev trajectory. These will largely be aimed at newer devs but, if my own experience is anything to go by, those who have been around the block several times could still do with a reminder of some fundamentals.

Also, please feel free to disagree with me: I have my own built-in biases and misconceptions; you’re better qualified to spot them than I am.

I’d like to recommend two books before I get started:

Perennial Seller — Ryan Holiday

The Hit Makers — Derek Thompson

These are both thoughtful investigations into the nature of creative work and how that work can find an audience — they go into far more detail than I’m going to attempt here.

One final note: I’m not going to be prescriptive about the definition of indie games. I’ll be talking about success in commercial terms at times but I don’t want to preclude purely creative work which has zero commercial aspirations. Free games, art games, non-games, anti-games, trash games, interactive experiences…this whole exciting spectrum of work is valid, important and serves to bolster the contribution of gaming to culture as a whole. “What is indie?” and “What is a game?” are worthless questions for our purposes. Just take what you need and ignore my tone if it bothers you.

1. Familiarity and Novelty

This is a concept which Derek Thomson develops well in The Hit Makers, but I’ll run with it a little here.

One of the common traits of popular media is that it contains a healthy dose of familiarity or nostalgia. The audience associates the work with pre-existing positive memories, and is drawn to it.

However, for a work to truly break out, it also requires a novel element: something that puts an exciting spin on the formula; something that differentiates it from the masses.

If your game is too familiar, it’ll be boring and obvious. If it’s too novel, it’ll be weird and difficult to parse.

I’d add an adjunct to the “novelty” component here: “solving a problem”. Blizzard are masters at taking existing gaming paradigms and making them more accessible and rewarding: look at Diablo as a reaction against classic RPG’s; Hearthstone as a distillation of Magic the Gathering and Overwatch as a response to Team Fortress 2. If you can genuinely identify and solve a problem with a popular existing genre, then you could be on to a winner.

Two notes of caution: the problem has to be significant, and your game has to stand up against other players in the genre on its own terms. Blizzard are positioned well to do this because they are a huge organisation capable of deploying immense resources, a small team really has to pick its battles.

Our 2011 game Frozen Synapse was a refinement of other tactical strategy games: its nearest neighbour was Laser Squad Nemesis. LSN is a classic game, but matches took a long time to play, it was multiplayer only and had a dated UI which was cumbersome by contemporary standards. When we released FS, there really wasn’t much other competition in terms of simultaneous-turn-based tactical games, so we were able to own this tiny niche for a while.

Familiarity and novelty can be difficult masters. Our 2015 title Frozen Cortex reminded people too much of a football game; it wasn’t familiar enough for sports fans and it was, in some ways, too novel for a particular group of gamers who disdained any sporting associations. It reviewed well, and people who check it out tend to get a lot out of it, but it didn’t get this combination precisely right.

2. Coffee’s for Closers

There is one thing that every successful indie game has in common: it was released in some form.

Finishing projects is a discipline — it takes time to cultivate and it should not be neglected. If you’ve never finished a serious project before, I strongly recommend doing so before attempting to make any kind of significant game. It can be a small thing, but it must be a finished thing.

I am a perfectionist and a procrastinator: my natural tendency is to tweak small aspects of something, worry about it, and then stop working on it because I think it’s inadequate. Over the years, I’ve had to battle these tendencies by recognising them in myself and listening to others who have different traits. Getting over this is an essential part of your personal development if you want to do creative work, so find a strategy that chimes with you and stick to it.

If you don’t, Alec Baldwin will show up in your office and berate you in a decidedly non-PC manner.

3. Start with Art

Video games are, at the commercial level at least, a visual medium. Your first impression of a game is predicated on a screenshot, GIF or the opening seconds of a trailer.

One thing which astonishes me from younger teams in particular is the lack of impactful art, particularly in competitive genres. Players come for the visuals and stay for the gameplay, so every time you are pitching a game or showing it off, you need to front-load art, and that art has to be world-beating.

I’m not talking about realism or whizzy shaders here: there are other ways to compete. Here are some games that I think are beautiful:

The art for all of these games is fascinating: it directly implies systemic depth, or a unique kind of fun, and it makes me want to dive in.

Too many new indie teams set out trying to replicate glossy game art from big ticket games and overcomplicate things in the process. We definitely got this wrong originally: compare our first game Determinance and our second Frozen Synapse…

We threw everything at Determinance but the result was a disjointed art style. To keep things coherent, we had to aim for something much more straightforward, so with Frozen Synapse I took my art direction cues from games like DEFCON and the motion graphics work of designer Mark Coleran.

Stylish, constrained art is always a thousand times more evocative than “my best stab at AAA”. If you do happen to have an insanely talented artist who is capable of gloriously photorealistic environment art, then use that to your advantage, but otherwise being tactical with art is almost always your best bet.

Make it good and shove it to the fore.

4. Give Yourself a Chance

If your dream project can plausibly be executed with the resources you currently have available, then go for it. In 99% of cases, a game that you care about deeply — an expression of everything you’ve always wanted to make and an evocation of your love for the form — is going to have a much greater chance of success than something you’re doing out of cynicism or pragmatism.

Outside of projects which are specifically part of a well defined learning process (maybe ‘learning to finish something’, as I discussed above), doing something “that seems sensible” is a dreadful idea. I’ve seen teams pitching for funding who clearly cobbled something together simply because money is offer, in the hope that they could pay themselves for a bit to work on something relatively interesting. Don’t do this: it’s a waste of everyone’s time.

Your sojourn on this plane of reality is incredibly short and your perception of time accelerates as you get older — you will not have the hours, or the mental space, to work on everything that matters to you in your lifetime. If you can, spend your time creating a legacy that you will be proud of.

5. Stay in the Game

From the first line of code ever written on one of our games, it took us about 9 years to have a significant financial success with an original game project. I know devs for whom it has taken much longer, and many others for whom it has never happened. To play the game, you have to be willing and able to stick around by any means possible.

Games are expensive and time-consuming to make, so it can be tempting to throw everything at a single project. Sometimes this is unavoidable — of course, people are able to assume variable amounts of risk based on their resources — but in all other situations it is good to have a fallback plan. Contract work, cash reserves, future collaborative projects, repurposing existing tech and IP, external funding sources…all of that boring, sensible business stuff can come in very handy when you’re going out on a limb.

You should watch Jake Birkett’s talk “How to Survive in Games for Eleven Years Without a Hit”.

There’s also the personal cost of making games, and this only mounts over time. You might well be crunching enthusiastically in your early 20’s, but when you hit your 30’s your capacity to do this will drop significantly. If you want to work in games for your entire career, you really do have to pace yourself.

Most of this article consists of somewhat nebulous advice that you can choose to ignore at your discretion, but here are some things I consider to be immutable:

-Reserve real time and energy to spend on your relationships; never compromise on this for any reason
-Aim to exercise every day without exception, even 15 minutes of walking is significantly better than nothing
-Give yourself a meaningful gap between working and trying to go to sleep
-Have interests and friendships which do not revolve around games and the games industry
-Learn to spot signs of stress, burn-out and “overwhelm”; do not hesitate to act on them
-Remember to be kind to yourself and others

6. Five minutes, fifty minutes, five hours, fifty hours

Here are some questions I find helpful:

What’s the first thing someone sees when they start your game?

What does the first interaction with the controls feel like?

How does the scope of the game open up within the first hour — how does it demonstrate its depth to the player?

When does the game start to get boring — why would I keep playing once I’ve learned the basics?

Can I imagine someone playing my game for fifty hours? What would it take to help them get there — what is the value going to be for them?

A lot of indie games from new teams punch hard in the first five minutes — maybe they’re designed for shows or just generally predicated on arcade action — but unless someone can realistically play for a substantial session and have a good time, you’re just not going to get anywhere. Conversely, some very deep games have a brutal on-ramp which makes the first hour a fiddly tutorialised nightmare.

It’s essential to think across different time-frames and empathise with the experience of players. Fight for the users. Don’t reinvent the wheel — give players something to grab onto initially.

7. Attention Scum

You need to make a game that deserves attention, then you have to get it the attention that it deserves.

I’m not going to go in-depth on marketing here — for recent great stuff on that I recommend you check out Hayley Uyrus’ column on PC Games Insider, as well as taking a look at some of the work Mike Rose has been doing with his No More Robots label. If you want to see how a big hitter handles it, Paradox do great work with their community and advertising.

You must have the continual drive and desire to connect with your audience, and this drive must flow from the work itself through into your daily activities. This is tough and requires a lot of stamina — it’s very hard to be consistent. I’m bad at it, which is why I do things like write over-long blog posts once every seven months, instead of smaller bite-sized ones every week.

People want to tell (or show) the story of what is happening to them when they play a game. This story, which the game and player create in tandem, is the thing you need to focus on when you think about marketing.

Your marketing channels are essentially:

-Social
-Community (Discord, forums, Steam community etc)
-PR
-Paid advertising
-Store placement

Think about how each of those can be used to tell, and encourage people to imagine, these stories.

Also, don’t forget that your process is interesting to people. Honest documentation of your work can help your community to invest in your story and follow along with development. If you want a reference point, Tom Francis does this really well.

If you want the “turned-up-to-11-beyond-all-comprehension-bizarro-world” version of this concept, look at this stuff that the marketing guru Gary Vaynerchuck pumps out on a daily basis. He literally has a man whose entire job it is to follow him around and film him, then another team of people who edit and chop up his day into neatly packaged soundbites. I’m not suggesting you go this far (or become this annoying) but the extent to which people want documentary, commentary and comment in a field which interests them is virtually limitless.

8. Confidence

I did some work for UK Games Fund at an event in York recently. A large number of teams looking for funding got to practise their pitches in advance of a more formal event later in the year.

Many of the games were high quality but the overwhelming feedback from myself and the other industry observers present was that the teams weren’t confident enough in their games, or in their approach. There was even a discussion about British cultural norms when it comes to self-confidence and sales practises.

Confidence, rather than arrogance, comes from being able to see the true value in yourself and in your work. You can be polite and humble but still have high self-confidence: in fact, these traits often go hand in hand. You do not have to become an all-singing all-dancing extrovert, but if you have issues in this area then you do owe it to yourself and others to work on them: the rewards will extend well beyond game development.

9. Polish is the accumulation of small abrasions

I firmly believe that the best games are created by a combination of generalised grand-scale systems-oriented thinking, and microscopic nit-picking pedantic perfectionism.

Some incredible people are capable of both, but most of the time you’re going to need to bring those different perspectives to bear via the input of different individuals.

Too much macro and you get games which end up alienating players. Too much micro and you can wind up with projects that lack a spine. Also, any imbalance here can lead to very long development times.

Knowing when an issue needs to be solved with a single systemic change, or a series of very small iterative alterations is probably the toughest skill in game design. The important thing is to respect each approach and try to learn when it’s applicable.

One of the hardest parts of development is polishing: you have to keep working on annoying knotty problems that get in the way of the player’s enjoyment. Just when you think you’re done, someone will point something out and your inclination will be to throw a heavy object at them. Instead, keep polishing, then use your closing skills to call time and finish the thing off.

10. Be honest with yourself

Game development is very challenging. It is often exhausting, frustrating, repetitive, boring, unrewarding and excessively demanding. You can do a lot of things right and still hit the rocks — I recommend that every developer watch Hugh Monahan talk about his experience with Brigador.

A very large proportion of any success you have will be entirely down to luck. You need to be conscious of this, embrace it and take it to heart.

You have to believe in what you’re doing in order to stick at it, and you have to seek external verification that you’re producing something worthwhile. The outcome needs to make the process worth it, not only financially but also in terms of its personal impact.

If things aren’t working out, you need to make changes: find new collaborators, new types of project, new challenges, new methods, maybe even a new role entirely. The skills you learn from indie game development are relevant to a whole range of different applications — you don’t have to make games in exactly the same way forever in order to get the most out of your career and your life.

No More Secrets

I hope I’ve made it clear that no advice in the world will give you the keys to producing a successful indie game. Everyone makes mistakes, everyone needs to catch that wave of good fortune.

Think of Mojang’s Scrolls or Boss Key’s LawBreakers — companies and individuals who have had enormous success can’t get it right every time. Any consistency whatsoever in games is something to be immensely proud of, that’s why I’m delighted to see veteran indie developers like Dave Gilbert from Wadjet Eye or Cliff Harris return with hit titles recently. I fully believe in sticking around, trying your best and staying alive. To do that, you’ve got to develop a strong value system as well as a support network to keep you going.

Games provide a unique conduit to reach an audience. It’s a big, diverse audience and sometimes things can get quite rowdy, but it’s also by nature a collection of people who are willing to seek out new experiences and allow themselves to be taken to new places. I still have faith in the audience for games as a whole, despite some elements of it behaving in an absolutely dreadful way over the last few years.

The industry itself is also packed with people who genuinely care about others and want nothing more than to see everyone succeed together. This is radically different from some other places you could chose to work — anyone coming to games from the outside remarks on how friendly it is. I’ve been lucky enough to have some amazing experiences and meet some legendary people.

I’ve now worked on four original games, two published titles and a bunch of ports and contract things. I turned 35 a month ago and I certainly feel pretty different from when my co-founder (and our Lead Designer / Programmer) Ian Hardingham and I first started collaborating when I was 19.

I don’t know where indie game development is going to take me next. I still strongly believe in the collaboration between myself and Ian at the heart of Mode 7’s games — his design and the frilly nonsense that I drape over it seem to mesh together on a fundamental level. I do know that I need to write some more music, and that I want to collaborate more so that I can focus more effectively on the things that really matter to me, but who knows what will happen.

If you’re thinking of embarking on this path, or perhaps you’re just starting out, I’m here to tell you that it’s hard but that it can absolutely be worth it.

Don’t try to find shortcuts, don’t get jealous of those who have more attention or money than you, and don’t do anything just because you read it in some idiot’s blog post. Apart from the exercise thing — you really should do that.

Good luck.

Thank you for reading! Please check out our forthcoming games and give them a Wishlist on Steam if they take your fancy…(source:Gamasutra


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