Radical Dog!

Subcard to the Heart

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 05:36:08 -0800

There is a point in your life when you do something you regret; you might let your fish die, or kill your husband’s mistress, or become a regular at Subway. Unfortunately, I have succumbed to the latter.

It started at the beginning of the year, when I discovered how expensive London is. I have grown up paying £2 for lovingly made sandwiches of fair size and taste. (If you visit Truro, find Warren’s by the Cathedral!) Subway had never quite been worth it in my home town – the extra pennies are not justified when the cheese tastes worse than the plastic bag it comes in. However, in London, there is no Warren’s, and every meal costs you more for less. And that was when it started.

Soon, the pretty salad girl smiled at me when she saw me. She would ask how I was. I got a ‘Subcard’, which gives you a free Sub if you spend £50 instore. I ate my free Sub.

Sometimes days would go by, but I would always find myself drawn back to the little Subway at the end of the road. (Originally my brain wrote ‘end of the world’ – perhaps that says too much about my London existence.) It is worse than an addiction simply because it isn’t an addiction – I would find this so much easier if I could just say “I’m addicted”. But I’m not, and I keep returning… My problem is, I think I like Subway.

Yesterday I was miles away, and thought I would try the Subway there. They splatted half a scoop of meat onto the bread, threw a couple of leaves on, and declared the Sub complete. My heart broke; I discovered I do not like Subway. I like my Subway, and the pretty salad girl.

_{PS: I need to get out more.

PPS: This footnote has the HTML tag “<Sub>”. That made me smile.}

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Jump: Ultimate Stars

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:50:51 -0800

Last year I played an absolutely stellar game that you haven’t heard of – what’s more, it turned out to be my favourite game of the entire year. Imagine Super Smash Bros, on a handheld console. Now imagine deeper fighting mechanics, and a tactics system stronger than Pokemon. (Though that’s not saying much.) And finally, imagine that it had licensed characters you recognised – and not just one series, but from 41 series. Forty-one series. This game simply doesn’t sound possible, in this day and age.

Turns out, it’s real! The game is called Jump: Ultimate Stars, and it is simply jaw-droppingly good. It is the best Nintendo DS game. And it has never been released outside of Japan, of course.

It manages to license so many series because it is the game of the manga, Shonen Jump – the manga that launched most of the series on offer. There is something oddly satisfying about using Luffy to beat down Naruto, though I hasten to add I am no particular fan of any series on offer. (Since, alas, Cowboy Bebop was not serialised in Jump). This game is just good, in so many ways.

It requires a little patience when playing without knowing the language, but, on the plus side, complete translations are available through that amazing thing called the internet. Frankly, knowing what ‘Deathmatch’ is in Japanese may be hugely useful in your life, should you ever find yourself taken captive and put in Japanese gladiator matches. But I digress: playing this game in a language I don’t speak was still tons of fun, because good game design is universal.

Allow me to post the first picture on the internet where, in official media, Vegeta punches Rukia in the face:

_{Multi-series violent fanfic now has official material to work from!}

The game’s strength is how it takes the simplistic-yet-addictive mechanics of Smash Bros-style multiplayer combat and adds depth through rock-paper-scissors strengths and weaknesses, and a completely customisable ‘deck’ that is brought into battle on the lower touch screen, for easy character changes, heavy attacks, and bonuses. (Triple jump was my personal favourite, as victory often comes in speedy entries and exits.)

In essence, this game works because it is the only game in the Smash Bros style that focuses on competitive play, where the better player always wins. If you die, it is always your fault, and nothing compares to that feeling.

The game never made it outside Japan because of the immense licensing issues – how would one go about licensing 41 series? (For that matter, that is probably why the magazine the game is based on, Shonen Jump, is not published outside Japan.)

I got it for the startling price of $5.20, though I would recommend it even if it costs ten times that. This is the best game on the DS.
(Also, don’t emulate – this game is for playing with your thumbs!)

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Get Rich Quick(ish)!

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:11:46 -0800

Also known as: Why I will never be as rich as Notch.

It bothers me how often developers ask, “What’s the in genre? What will make me the most money?” I am not bothered by developers being callous and in it only for the money; I am irked by the answers usually given. Indeed, I think any answer that involves a specific genre is wrong.

Tower defense. Physics puzzles. By the time they are popular enough that they are well known as the in genre, there are already dozens if not hundreds of competing games available. If a potential, money-hungry developer asks this question, by the time they have produced their game, sold it, and released it, they will be at best a few months late to the party. At worst, they will become yet another developer whining about how there is no money to be made in Flash.

I would like to draw your attention to Minecraft for a moment. It is freeform. It is creative. And you already know about it.

This is a diagram of how players go through my games:

This is a diagram of how players go through Minecraft:

I like to craft experiences, where the player is made to feel the emotions that I want them to. (I just made myself sound like an evil dictator. I promise, I do it for the good of my players!) What this means is that I have all sorts of fans, who really enjoyed spending half an hour on my games – and no more. There is a built-in limitation to how involved my fans can be. The way to get the ultimate fandom is to have an experience that never, ever ends.

Give a child a jigsaw, and they will be occupied for a while. However, give a child a bucket of LEGO to build from, and you may occupy them for hours, even days, before they need feeding again. This translates directly into the gaming sphere: Fantastic Contraption, Line Rider, and Canvas Rider are the first Flash examples that spring into my mind.

I confess, this is not how I build games, so I will never be as rich as Notch. But it does answer the original question.
The way to get rich somewhat quicklyish, is to build an addictive game that lasts forever.

_{Has anyone tried building a game-creation engine in Flash?}

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Behind The Moon

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:04:27 -0800

After my post on storytelling, I got a recommendation to try out “To The Moon” from Freebird Games. It truly is a special experience, and I wholeheartedly extend the recommendation to anyone interested in exploring the potential of storytelling in games.

Kan Gao is the team director, and was kind enough to offer a few words to share.

Can you give a quick intro to who you are and why you make games?

Kan: I’m just some guy from Canada who struggles to hold his chopsticks. I make games mainly to tell stories.

What other games inspire you and your projects?

K: The old school RPGs in general, I suppose. I’ve always enjoyed the storytelling in them, even if contrived at times; it made you feel involved.

What era of games did you grow up in?

K: Late 80s and early 90s.

It appears that you use death as a running theme, what draws you to that?

K: It’s only a running theme in To the Moon, I think. At the time I started the project, my grandfather was ill, so it was one of the things that got me thinking, and eventually became the base of the story.

Are you proud of your results?

K: Well, things could’ve always been made better, but aye, I’m more than happy with how things turned out.

That’s good. What is your development process? How long does it take you to produce a game?

K: Not that I recommend it, but it’s pretty loose and non-strict. It’s pretty much just me working away at it, doing one thing today and another tomorrow as fit. Then I’d run into things that I can’t do, and knock on talent peoples’ doors with a jar of cookie while begging for help. To the Moon took about 1.5 year to make, though it wasn’t full time.

Would you ever work for a studio that didn’t give you creative control?

K: Not entirely unlikely; there’s a lot to learn from experiences like that too, such as work ethics. Though for now, I’d be a lot happier to be able to finish To the Moon’s series as I see fit.

Do you have a plan for the future?

K: Late lunch.

Hah. On a more business-oriented note, have sales met expectations? Do you care about finance at all?

K: Aye, it’s my first commercial project and I’m hoping to be able to devote my time to this for a living, so I’m really glad that the sales are gaining enough support to make it viable for now.

Superb, I’m glad to hear it. Finally, do you have any advice for other developers looking to write more compelling stories?

K: Writing stories is a pretty personal thing, so I can’t exactly dictate the exact directions. . . but if there’s a choice, I think it’s better to write smaller-scaled and delicate stories than epic ones. There are plenty of the latter around nowadays, but we could use more of the other.

Thanks for your time, Kan.

K: No problem, thanks for the opportunity!

So there you have it, some thoughts on development and storytelling from the developer behind Gamespot’s Best Story of 2011. If you didn’t notice at the beginning of the article, I seriously enjoyed this game and I demand you download the demo now.

What do you think?

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He’s Dead, Jim!

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 17:44:26 -0800

Post-mortems are terribly, horribly interesting. I love seeing how Flash games died. Some developers are willing to describe all the gory financial details, writing up accounts so that we can all learn from their mistakes.

I have written two post-mortems in the past, and now I have finally added them to this site (with some longer-term stats added to the bottom):

The Man with the Invisible Trousers
Slide Racing

PS: I have a secret wish that people will read those and decide that I should be paid far, far more. 4 million plays per game is worth more!
PPS: For what it’s worth, Unevolve has 210,000 plays and earned $200 for 2 people, so that’s alright for a 2 day game.

But I am not the most interesting developer, nor the richest, nor even the most bitter! I present to you, a list of every post-mortem I could dredge from the mirth of the internet.

Concerned Joe
Community College Sim
Gravinaytor (Which I always read as Gravy-nator, and you should too.)
(I Fell In Love With) The Majesty of Colors
MegaDrill
The Moops – Combos of Joy
Pixel Purge
Plastic Attack
Robo Riot
Solipskier
SpeedRunner
Steambirds
Tentacle Wars
TumbleBall

I will attempt to keep this list updated with all the post-mortems I can find. If you know of any I’ve missed, comment or shoot me an email with the address at the bottom of the page.

For what it’s worth, this week I also added three more short stories, if anyone still does fiction!

Until next time… *Batman swoosh*

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Uncharted: Charted

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 19:03:54 -0800

I picked up the original Uncharted in the pre-Christmas rush for a little more than it usually sells for. Alas, the effort was wasted, since I failed to plug in the disc for well over a month. But hey, now I know that I could have saved a couple of pounds around the deadlines doesn’t make me bitter, not at all. Nope.

Uncharted comes from a heritage of Jak and Daxter games, which are staples of any good previous generation gamer’s collection – certainly, they were in mine. (P.S., Calum, if you’re reading this, give me back Jak 2!) Slowly, Naughty Dog has evolved from producing games with luxurious amounts of platforming and no gunplay, to a climax in Uncharted where there is a fragment of platforming among hours upon hours of dreary shootouts.

Allow me to summarise the plot of Uncharted, without spoiling a thing: you play as Nate Dogg. He hunts for treasure, and uses all his meagre wits to open innumerable secret passages, work out complex puzzles, and generally prove that the Aztecs were fantastically good mechanical engineers. And every time you break into a tomb where no-one has treaded for 400 years, there are bad guys to shoot. How? How do they get into every single chamber before you, when you’re solving all the puzzles? It’s like Nathan is going a complex route, when they just used the stairs. (Hah, I made a reference to my own game. Bite me.)

To kill an enemy, you shoot 10 rounds of ammunition into them. They have no fear. I was playing on ‘easy’, because I’m a wuss and also terrible at murder (is that a positive?), and I would shoot 9 rounds into some guy’s neck. As he stands in a pool of his comrades’ corpses. That brave fellow would continue shooting at me for all his worth, without the slightest worry that he would never see his wife and toddler ever again. Truly, I would love to see a game where you shoot someone, and they go, “ARGH, YOU SHOT ME, YOU ASS,” then hide in the fear that you’ll shoot them again.

The only other method is headshots. Unfortunately, all the high-ammunition weapons have a built-in inaccuracy. The enemy’s eyes can be in the crosshairs, and you’ll hit the wall behind them, and their shoulders, but no head. I surprised myself when I took out a room full of guards with a pistol, rather than my ultra machine gun thingmabob, because the pistol actually fires where you point it – an amazing development, I’m sure you’ll agree.

The making-of videos were hilarious. One of the developers joked that Nathan Drake was supposed to be an imperfect character! He had a straight face. I chortled heartily.

The 5 minutes of platforming interspersed in the 8 hours of shootery is good. If your tastes are anything like mine (and they’re not – I have found nary a person who is as disdainful of shooters as I) then it might be worth picking up for the platforming. Just don’t buy it before Christmas.

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Storytelling Is A Game

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:47:09 -0800

You know that emotional pull, when a story grabs you in just the right way? It’s what makes Final Fantasy VII so revered, as generation after generation relives that moment where Aeris dies. Or at least, they would if it weren’t so commonly spoiled that yes, Aeris dies. Takes the fun out of it, right?

I love stories, and it is one of those things that drew me towards game creation. Because while I could make a Flash video series, realistically I would never animate more than perhaps 2 minutes. Game stories suit me: limited animation required, and the player has an automatic reason to care about at least one of the characters. My challenge is to make the player care about multiple characters, in such a way that by the climax of the game, the player has white knuckles from gripping the keyboard so intensely. One day, I shall make a game where the story will make the player squirm, as they wish they could save the day.
And perhaps, just perhaps, they won’t be able to.

I like the idea of a game with an unhappy ending. How about you?

_{I am going to update my blog every Monday for as long as I can muster. If you want to follow my ramblings, use RSS!}

One comment

Blocky McBlockinson

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 10:38:24 -0800

Hey, you know that game I’m not making, called Murderous James?

I’m still not making it.
Deal with it.

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Light My Fire

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 05:41:16 -0700

I think the Kindle Fire is going to actually make tablets feasible.

Why? Because it’s cheaper than a laptop, something which has always made every other tablet just look daft.

It looks like the Kindle Fire… Is a Jobs well done.
_{[Too soon?]}

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The Cutest Massacre

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 05:08:55 -0700

Hey, you know that feeling when you don’t have the resources/time to develop a particular game, but really want to?

Murderous James: The Cutest Massacre is that game for me. Who knows, maybe this is a project for next summer?

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Learnin’ with 3 Dees

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 05:10:32 -0700

The franchise monster known as Nintendo released the 3DS not all that long ago, and then lately added a big price cut, because that’s what they do. Or because they realised that they weren’t selling enough, and that at the new price point, they still make a profit on each unit. (This, for the record, is something that few console manufacturers can claim.)

I bought one about a week after launch, through eBay, and getting a discount as such. I’m aware that I paid what I thought was a fair price, and I don’t intend to complain about that. However, the price cut reflects the puppy that is Nintendo widdling itself about the mistakes it has made.

Here is my summary of the awkward puddles Ninty has left all over the floor:

The Similarities
Grandma Average knows about her offspring’s offspring’s DS thingymabob. Grandma Average looks at the 3DS, and my word, she cannot tell the blindest bit of difference between it and the predecessor. How will she know about the increased processor power? She doesn’t even know the meaning of the word ‘processor’.
In short, the 3DS looks like a DS, with a warning label that says it will blind small children.

The Price
Yep, it was priced too high for parents to be comfortable with. Why, in the good old days, Gameboys cost £80… And ran on steam and whiskey.
In compensation for adopting before the price drop, I’ve been given Super Mario Bros, as well as 9 other NES games, and soon another 10 Gameboy Advance games to emulate. The NES emulator is absolutely top notch, I daresay this is about as good as you can get without having a big grey box under your TV.

The Games… Well, Pokemon
Pokemon White and Black, the racist editions of your favourite money-printing murder pets franchise, were released just a couple of months earlier for the good old DS. Had these been made exclusive for the 3DS, all the hungry manchildren who still masturbate over Misty would have bought into the console on launch day. Other than that, the launch lineup generally made critics critical, which really didn’t help the system get a kick start.
For the record, I bought Pokemon Black.

The Ball-and-Chain
There is no way for independent developers to make their mark on this machine. Perhaps it’s just me, but how would an indie marketplace be anything other than awesome?
I suppose it could be too-awesome, a phenomenon that would make people reluctant to buy full price titles. But in regards to selling units, I have a hunch this would have doubled sales.

The Waiting
The eShop took around a decade to open up, and now it’s here, it’s about as user friendly as training a dog to light candles. Waiting for games. Waiting for 3D video recording. Waiting for Godot. Nintendo seems to be trying to make us ignore the fact that the 3DS should have released this Winter; I think the strategy was to be the market leader before the PSP 2 was even announced. Alas, they have failed! Poor Nintendo.

The Potential
However, it isn’t a failure. It’s never been sold at a loss, and it would have been very hard for Nintendo to have completely failed with any DS sequel. They’ve made about as many mistakes as it’s possible to, and still they’re doing okay.
I’m looking forward to the future of the console. Ninty look at the world in a different way to every other manufacturer – they’re like the kid who wants to live inside a cloud. While Sony greases up its engine, Nintendo is eating sugar and going ice-skating. They work on the principle of doing things no-one else has tried, while Kinect/Move are examples of executives pointing at Nintendo and saying that motion control is the future. I believe Ninty will make their big 3DS break with a new series that fully utilises the Augmented Reality gaming – then, 3 years later, other companies will jump on that, while Ninty runs off to eat more sugar.

In conclusion, I’ve been selling some gadgets off, but I decided to keep my 3DS. I never owned a DS, so I’ll just play some more games I missed while waiting for the 3DS’s big break.
The DS had Professor Layton and Brain Training; the Wii had Mario Galaxy and Just Dance. The 3DS will have its moment; watch this space.

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Vanity Satisfied!

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 03:04:12 -0700

Just a quickie, to say that General Vimes of Game Gems did an interview with me, and wrote a nice feature. He’s a good guy. So’s anyone who’s that nice to me.

Read it here!
Unless you can’t read.

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A Creepy Guy

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:40:51 -0700

You Are A Creepy Guy: The Game! Released right here, right now.

Look, here it is:

Click it to focus, then use the arrow keys to control.

I think it’s going to be a runaway success.
_{_{Nope, not letting in on what this is a demo for!}}

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The Invisible Hulk

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 16:49:27 -0700

I’ve posted another development video:

This one is of course about The Girl with the Invisible Heart. I think this will be my most successful game this summer, on principle of it not having much of my art in, woo!

In other news, I made a game in 24 hours.

In other news, I’d really really like some beta testers. If you want to help me out, comment saying so and I’ll add your email to my list of super-awesome-testers. If you can write in sentences, and talk trash about games, you’re qualified. Then you can brag to people how you helped make this and that game, to show how cool you are!

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Riot Spice

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 19:37:43 -0700

Hello Rioters. Look at your friend, now back to me. Now at your friend, now back to me. Sadly, he isn’t me, but if he stopped using petrol bombs and started using the job centre he could be me. Look down, back up. Where are we? You’re at an interview with the man your friend could work for. What’s in your hand? Back at me. I have it. It’s an application form to that job you need. Look again. The form is now money. Anything is possible when you get a job, stop looting and grow up. I’m on a horse.

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