Team GigaCat

New Logo

2011-06-01T16:33:00.000-07:00

We've settled on a new logo for our little venture. Pretty excited about it and I personally think it's got a great feel to it. We've already made t-shirts and mouse pads with the image and incorporated the logo into the game's start up splash screen.

This obviously is only a fraction of the art that's required for the game, and this one didn't cost anything since we got a friend (*cough* girl-) to do it, but everything else costs, and it doesn't come cheap either.

Given the fact that one of us (me) is unemployed to focus on this full time, it turns out that this game is very quickly running into the red, and will take a non-trivial amount of sales to pull us out of this hole.

Optimally, we were looking to have an artist that wanted to team up with us and would share in the success of the project, but after several weeks with no success, we've had to bite the bullet and commission an artist to do our art.

We already commissioned this artist for a number of the monsters in the game, but now we think we're going to use her for everything (and a lot more monsters). Excited that we're finally going to be getting more art, but not without significant investment.

But hey, without risk there is no reward right?

We're actually looking to start a kickstarter page to help with this very problem. I heard about kickstarter from a PAX panel, and initially didn't think we'd need it since our costs are pretty low (ignoring the opportunity cost of me not working)... but now I see that I was quite naive.

We're actually also going to E3 and we're hoping that we can get the kickstarter up and running before then and maybe (not sure how yet) we can talk to people there and drum up some support for our little indie venture.

To say that this has all been a massive learning experience for me is an understatement of the grandest proportions.

Calculating XP

2011-05-17T19:58:00.000-07:00

There are thousands of games that have some form of experience bar in them. You level your items/cards/monsters/abilities/players/characters... but what's amusing is that when you go to create your own leveling system, something as simple as calculating XP is a little harder than I had expected.

My first attempt at it was some simple thing that I drafted in excel. It scaled very poorly. Then I thought maybe it was exponential growth. HA! I realized very quickly that leveling to higher levels would take astronomical amounts of time.

But surely I don't need to recreate the wheel. That's when I hit up google. I was sure SOMEWHERE someone would have a formula for this. Sure enough, they're out there, and they're not nearly so simple as I had expected.

But for a game, you're going to need two formulas... one to convert from level to XP value, and another to convert from XP value to level.

I settled on the following using Excel formula notation (since that's where I drafted it): The original I believe comes from dungeons and dragons, but this is slightly modified.

To convert from level to XP :
=100*(B8+FACT(B8)/(FACT($C$4)*FACT(B8-$C$4))) where B8 is the level-1 and C4 is a constant (in this case 2)

To convert from XP value to level:
=(1+SQRT(H7/125+1))/2 where H7 is the amount of experience

In Corona (lua) it's relatively trivial to turn these into functions, with the exception of calculating factorial where you'll have to roll your own since it's not part of math.lua. And to convert XP to level, you'll have to use math.floor to round down to the nearest level unless you want your player to be level 5.2349542.

So many little things you take for granted when you're on the game-playing side of the fence that when you have to make it yourself... you sit there scratching your head wondering... HOW did they do that? Thank goodness for google. I really don't know how programmers did it back in the day... low processing power, insanely little memory, no object oriented programming, no libraries, no google. Mad props to them.

I'm not good at video games

2011-05-13T14:13:00.000-07:00

As I demo my game to every person on the planet I come in contact with (shameless I know), I come across this comment quite frequently.

"I'm not good at video games"

It's a sad state of affairs when people think they're not good at video games. That's almost like saying "I'm not good at watching tv." I think we can blame the '80s on this phenomenon when games were insanely difficult due to their coin-op roots and the industry tried to only appeal to the young male demographic, alienating older generations and females.

The fact of the matter is that it simply isn't true for the vast majority of people. And they're starting to discover that thanks to things like apps and facebook/internet games. Video games span such a massive array of different types that it's hard to make the blanket statement that you're not good at ANY of them.

Do you like crosswords or playing cards? Do you like board games? Do you like party games like taboo or win-lose-or-draw? Then there are video games that you'd like. Do you like reading or watching tv or sports? Shoot, there are STILL video games that you'd enjoy.

I've seen several games recently that... are arguably even hard to describe as games. One such one I saw at the last NY gaming meetup and it involved trying to guess what words are trending on twitter. The premise sounds insanely stupid. (At least it did to me) but when I saw it, I was shocked that it was actually quite compelling! Go ahead and give it a try. Not for everyone, but shoot, even Twitter can be turned into a game! (And I royally suck)

Anyhow, gotta get crackin' if I'm going to get this next build done. Got XP implemented and working (even though it threw balance straight out the window). Next up I've got to redo the UI and convince Cat that this idea in my head makes sense. (Well, have to convince myself too)

New artist joins the effort!

2011-05-11T22:00:00.000-07:00

Had a chat with Peet Cooper today. He is going to have a stab at concepting out art direction for Flip Out. He is incredibly talented and we're very excited to have him help us out!

http://peetcooper.com/

Google IO

2011-05-11T18:04:00.000-07:00

Oh, totally forgot in my last post. If you haven't followed Google IO, I have to say I'm pretty excited.

Google seems to be stepping up to the plate and at least for us developers are gaining parity with Apple as far as quality of Market and app discover-ability is concerned. Will definitely be a crazy eye opening experience when we deploy on all markets simultaneously and see how the markets take it, and at least now the Android market might have a fighting chance against the iTunes behemoth... or it might not... but still, pretty exciting time to be a mobile developer, and all the more reason to go multiplatform.

Co-Captain's Log

2011-05-11T17:30:00.000-07:00

Trying to develop a game while also trying to enjoy time off here and there AND blog about it is not an easy task. So Cat and I are going to try to do a nightly post... no matter what.

Yesterday we had a long discussion about the direction we're taking the game. It's always an amusing experience since obviously different people will have different ideas, and it takes good communication to come to an agreement. There have been things that we implement for the sake of trying it out and play testing, and things that we end up reverting because it worked better "the old way."

We slacked off for a solid week, so now we're buckling up and getting back to business.

The biggest change we've made is we're moving away from time based and towards a turn based mechanic. Think less tetris/puzzle fighter and more puzzle quest/gyromancer. Code wise it was a breeze thanks to the way Cat implemented the timer logic. Basically he created a timer service that yells out notifications based on whatever and whenever you tell it. Since the monster attacks are listening for those notifications to know when to do their attacks, it was as easy as removing the timer, and replacing it with code that sends out the notifications whenever the player touches cards. BAM, we're now turn based.

The biggest concerns I had with the "action" timer version is that I think it strongly penalizes players that are slow, players that aren't particularly video game savvy. It also limits how "strategic" the game can get because how strategic can you be when you're trying to flip cards as fast as your fingers allow. One of our beta testers kept talking about how it's giving him carpel tunnel syndrome.

We're toying with some other ideas. In the current build, the cards are all flash briefly for a moment before they're all flipped over. I think this dramatically changes the game, and combined with the switch to turn based, I'm... whew, not even sure what this means... well, other than a whole lot more re-balancing.

We've also moved things around. Abilities moved up, game board moved down. No more "energy/mana" and instead all abilities are cool-down based. We're kinda splitting abilities into two types. (Still under discussion though) There are the "attack" types that you get access to when the board clears, and then there will be the "special" abilities that are accessible at all times but limited by their cooldowns.

Whenever you're trying to do something, you have to make sure it makes SENSE. Like intuitive sense. This is important for any game, but particularly in the mobile space where people have the attention spans of goldfish, so whatever they need to "learn" to play your game needs to be easy to understand and just plain make sense.

This is why we're having a long discussion about things like separating out two different types of abilities and how they're presented to the user. If our interface isn't clear, the user will be confused and not understand what the buttons do or what they are for or why they have different behaviors.

Anyhow, so we've set some pretty high goals for Saturday. We've also committed to releasing a weekly build to our beta testers (and we've added a bunch of iPhones to the mix thanks to Test Flight App). I'll let cat talk about this, but apparently it makes deploying our iPhone build to them a breeze (because apparently it's a PITA to deploy betas on iPhones, but I wouldn't know, I can't even BUILD an iphone version since I don't have a mac) At least deploying on android is as easy as emailing out an APK. The one "benefit" you could argue for iPhone is that your app can't get into the wild. That's why there is a date-based kill switch in the app though. Sure you can get around it, but really, do you care to for a beta? And shoot, do WE really care if you want our game so bad that you'll play and distribute our beta? Can't say that it bothers me that much. In fact, I'd be flattered.

Anyhow, back to work. Have to get this XP/leveling system working properly.

One Point Five Months in

2011-05-06T15:35:00.000-07:00

We've now been working on the game for a little over 1.5 months, and I'm pretty pleased with the progress we've made so far (and that's with very little work being done in the last week). I'm going to put up a video on Youtube to show the current state of affairs this weekend.

We released our "Friends and Family" build which was more proof of concept than anything else. It's interesting because despite the fact that we tried to tell everyone that it doesn't represent the final game, everyone pretty much assumes that what they're playing is extremely close to the end result despite the fact that a large chunk of the game mechanics are not implemented, there is still no final art, and no music. Heck, there isn't really even a menu or an ability to pause (or even suspend) the game at this point. What we really wanted to do was just get a feel for the core "game mechanic" of matching cards.

But I'm very pleased with the friends and family build. Despite how much it's lacking, I think it was successful in that it demonstrated that it is possible to make a game that is fun with extraordinarily simple mechanics. (Though not for lack of examples already out there, Tiny Wings is doing amazingly well and is arguably even simpler than a match game). We had a fair amount of feed back (13 people) and we selected from a diverse group from gamers to non-gamers, male/female of various age groups. We didn't expect the hardcore to be hooked on it as the game is missing most of the "addictive" components and has almost zero re-playability.

It also demonstrated how well Corona does in fact work. The game ran on 8 different types of devices without so much as a hiccup: OG Droid, Evo, Droid 2, Droid X, Droid Pro, Incredible, and even iPad and Xoom.

We'll likely need to increase the quality of some of the assets so that it looks better on the iPad and Xoom than it currently does, but I'm pretty pleased with how little effort that took. So kudos to Corona. They get a thumbs up from me. A few little quirks here and there that we've run into, but all in all, very solid.

The amount I've learned from this experience so far has blown my mind.

We finally got an artist for the monsters. We found her on Deviant art, pretty much what we were looking for. We're still trying to figure out what to do about backgrounds, UI elements, buttons, special effects. Right now I've hacked them all together myself. Has given me newfound respect for people who work on photoshop for a living (though, I'm using GIMP myself). So amazingly painful and time consuming. Definitely not something I particularly enjoy, and I look forward to replacing all of that garbage with something more professional.

Music and sound effects... wow. Haven't even started on that yet, and judging by the feedback I've received, it's something we need to get on top of soon, but I've not even got the faintest idea about how to go about that.

New and improved issue tracking at Github is epic win

2011-04-10T14:05:00.000-07:00

New and improved issue tracking at Github: https://github.com/blog/831-issues-2-0-the-next-generation

With this improvement Github really takes care of all of our issue tracking needs. Ability to assign issue to a member & set and assign issues into milestones.

Awesome job Github! Epic win.

How do I charge for my game? Should I put my game on iPhone or Android?

2011-03-29T11:42:00.000-07:00

Inevitably everyone trying to make a living, or just make some money on the side by making apps will run into this question.

How do I charge for my app?

This is a very difficult question, and one that I've gone back and forth with Cat a lot. There are many variables, and data points, but honestly, contrary to anecdotal evidence from specific developers, there is no clear cut answer.

A lot of fuss has been made about iOS making more than Android for developers. There are a select few, but very vocal set of developers that have come out and said as such. And as anything Apple related, they've gotten a whole lot of publicity for it.

However, the story is not nearly so clean cut.

Some of the conclusions that people have come to are that Apple users have more money and are more willing to pay for apps. This, I believe, is absolutely incorrect. What I DO think we're seeing is the superiority of iTunes over the Google Market in the general case.

There are two main things at work. Up until recently, the Google market sucked badly for discovering apps. In fact, I would still argue that it needs a lot of work. iTunes isn't perfect, but it certainly does a lot better job of putting content in front of people's eyeballs. (Note: Watch the new Amazon Android app store. Things are getting interesting.)

Secondly, Apple markets the hell out of their app store. Their TV spots advertise getting apps ALL THE TIME. They have tied the idea that one of the main reasons to get an iphone is to BUY apps. This is very powerful.

But, there are other interesting data points. A lot of developers are finding that their ad spots make more money on Android then they do on iOS. Additionally, ads can pull in some astronomical numbers for some devs (Read: Rovio - Angry Birds) where the revenue from Ads on Android is quickly over taking the sales revenue on iOS.

But perhaps even more baffling is the story of the guys who made Pocket Legends. Pocket Legends uses the micro-transaction model. Even more hilarious is that Google hasn't even launched their micro transaction service, so they had to build their own.

But amazingly... Pocket Legends on Android is destroying it's iOS counterpart. Not only are Android users more likely to download the game, they spend a great deal MORE per person on in-app purchases than iOS users, and are more likely to click on Ads referring to the game on Android than on iOS.

So what does this all mean? Well, for one it means that there is some complex demographic information here to be extracted, and I can only hazard a guess.

I believe that the android platform is very polarized. On the one hand, you have a lot of casual people who walked into a Verizon store and picked it up because they liked the way it looked. These make up the vast majority of Android users and account for its explosive growth. They could be anyone, but are most likely value/budget users upgrading from a feature phone and taking advantage of some family plan or 2 for 1 deal. They haven't taken to the idea of buying apps yet. They might get there in time, or they will never acclimate to the idea of buying apps. But they DO love playing games. (We'll assume most everyone does) This accounts for the volume of money being pulled in by Ads.

The second group of Android users are the techies/PC Gamers/"Geeks." These are the people who know about all of the phones out there and actively decide to go with Android. This isn't an enormous user base though. These users are very comfortable with buying digital goods. They've been buying games since XBLA (Xbox Live Arcade) launched, they've been using Steam, and they would rather pay for the app than have ads annoying them. These incidentally are the kinds of people that play MMOs.

I think with Pocket Legends is that we're seeing what happens when a game targets a specific demographic. In this case, the type of people who play MMOs and are comfortable with in-app payments are exactly the kind of users that are likely to get Android phones.

In the average case, I do believe that Apple users are more comfortable with buying apps in general. Apple's marketing has done a great job in that regard, though if I'm developing a game, there is NO way I would not try to go multi-platform, ESPECIALLY with the Amazon app store having just launched. Amazon KNOWS how to sell stuff on the internet. Probably better than anyone else. If you're making an app, I think now's the time to go multi-platform, and you should definitely try to get it up on Amazon.

Secondly, consider your demographics and what type of game you're making. Our game is going to be decidedly casual. It's going to be cute and family friendly. That said, we're going to charge for it on all platforms. We're still debating whether to make an ad-supported free version for Android, or if we just make a free gameplay limited demo. We'll let you know when we release how things are playing out, but it's my personal expectation that the iOS version will out perform the Android version, all things equal. Of course, if it gets featured on iTunes, or Google Market, or Amazon, then obviously THAT version will win hands down.

And that would be awesome. One can only hope.

Working with Corona

2011-03-28T15:22:00.000-07:00

This isn't actually the first time Cat and I attempted to make a video game. We've actually been off and on for several years, though we've never actually released anything. One of our first attempts was around the time Facebook first opened up their API, and we got it into our heads to make a facebook game.

Lets just say, not only did we never finish, we were late to the party in an epic way. Farmville came along... and did almost exactly what we drafted in our design phase. Well, ok, so they actually handled the time mechanic better than our implementation might have, but it certainly was a kick in the pants.

Then Android happened. We decided we'd be one of the early developer supporters of Android, and that only partially fizzled. We actually ran up against a technical wall. In order to make it as easy as possible to code, we went with the Android SDK. Now, there are things that the SDK does amazingly well. And especially since I was about as rusty coding as one could ever be, it was comforting to at least know the syntax since it's all java. And the SDK does so much automatically, it alleviated a lot of issues.

But there is one massive problem. The SDK is NOT meant for graphics. Well, that's not 100% true. What I should really say is that the "views" of the SDK are not meant for pushing graphics.

And we realized this a little late. Simple animations, moving of images around the screen was painfully slow. Impossibly slow on a G1, and still pretty bad on a Droid class phone. And our game requires a bit of twitch, a bit of speed.

This set back, combined with our insane work schedules put the project on the back burner again.

When I flew out to LA for a gaming convention, Cat shows me a little demo he made with Corona that ran on the Droid and the ipad with no code change. I didn't actually buy in at that point, since I have no Apple products, I wasn't exactly excited to try to develop something that required a Mac, and I didn't have a clue what Lua was or how it worked.

But that changed. Just a couple of months ago Corona went multi-platform and was available for Windows. So I finally decided to take a serious look. Corona still has a few bugs here and there and a couple of rough edges, but does pretty much exactly what it says. And unlike using views, it can move images fast and smooth. Of course, learning Lua syntax took all of a single day since there aren't really that many different ways to do "if then" statements.

In 2 weeks our code is almost back at the same point it was before in Java (which took us months of off and on work) except this time it runs smooth as silk, which is exciting, and as a bonus the app will run on both iOS and Android.

He still does a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of debugging and cleaning up my spaghetti code, but things are moving along at a decently brisk pace.

At this point, Corona definitely gets a thumbs up from me. It's still pretty early, but it's pretty sweet.

Still need that art though...

Working from opposite sides of the continent

2011-03-24T18:36:00.000-07:00

Hi there. I'm the Cat in GigaCat.

Gig posted a fair bit about the advantages and disadvantages of being on either side of the coast. And it's true that if you are looking for a game industry job with an established game developer, West is probably where you want to be.
But for a small independent team working on a game I really don't think it matters where you are. I'm with 37 signals on this one. We have the technology to overcome geographical limitations and nowadays its cheap to almost free.
Gig and I work from opposite sides of the continent. Our 'virtual office' consists of the following:

Google Talk (free) is our video conferencing software
A shared Google Docs Presentation (free) serves as our white board
A private Github account (some dollars a month) serves as our code repository, task tracker, and wiki

We communicate constantly over IM, email, and voice chat, but we also make it a point to have a standing virtual meeting twice a week: Quick check point call on Tuesday nights and multi-hour working sessions on Saturdays. Gig's made the plunge but I still have a day job, so these standing meetings create the momentum to keep us moving forward.

What we realized is that if we really want to work on a game, we should stop worrying about what coast we are on. We should stop thinking about making a game and just start making one.

Go download the free Corona SDK and jam on the example source codes. Even if you are not a seasoned programmer, if a 14 year old can do it, you can certainly teach yourself to do it.

If you don't use it...

2011-03-17T17:41:00.000-07:00

You know the old adage, "If you don't use it, you lose it.." Well, I've very quickly learned how true that is.

Being a two man team means you have to wear a lot of different hats when it comes to making a game. But one of the most important is the ability to actually code. (With a team this small)

I got a degree in computer science 9 years ago... whew.. first off, the programming landscape is very different now than it was back when I was in college. Sure, for loops and if statements are pretty much identical, but boy have the tools changed.

But that's all relatively minor. The difficulty is thinking in another language. Just like any verbal language, knowing the vocabulary isn't enough. You have to breathe it, you have to think it, you have to use it constantly.

Thankfully my partner has been living, thinking and breathing computer languages for the last 9 years... well, I should say, thankfully for me. He's probably /facepalming daily when he looks at my code.

And we're starting anew. Our first game will be a measured undertaking. We've got an idea that I think is incredibly solid, should be really fun, but, from a technical perspective has been carefully chosen to fit our skill set.

We're missing artists and musicians, without which a video game is an empty shell of code, and tasks that will have to be surmounted. Since my friend will be carrying the load of fixing my busted code and cleaning up my messes (and since he still has a day job) it will be my task to find the solutions to these problems... that is to say, find really cool people that would love to participate!

At the end of the day, I'm finding that I've just got to get my hands dirty. Make little side projects, code, READ and READ, and code some more.

Not having a day job, certainly gives me the time to do exactly that. =)

Why Jon Bon Jovi's Rant against Apple is self-serving

2011-03-16T10:53:00.000-07:00

"Bon Jovi tells The Sunday Times Magazine, "Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album; and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it."

"God, it was a magical, magical time, I hate to sound like an old man now, but I am, and you mark my words, in a generation from now people are going to say: 'What happened?' Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business." http://entertainment.msn.com/news/article.aspx?news=635420&affid=100055&silentchk=1&wa=wsignin1.0

I find this line of reasoning, while quaint, extremely self-serving. It's gotten a lot of publicity, far more than it deserves, but in reality, I find the message borderline dangerous.

The practice of bundling content together, and forcing consumers to buy bundles, takes the power AWAY from the content creators and AWAY from the consumers. The only people that benefit are big business.

The music industry has been a bubble. Just like the tech bubble and the real estate bubble, they have artificially inflated their worth by attempting to exercise complete control over all distribution models. This is why piracy is so scary for them, and they have been dragged, kicking and screaming, over to models that allow the consumer more freedom, and more choice.

When a consumer has disposable income that they want to spend on entertainment, the very act of forcing consumer to buy more expensive bundles increases risk. You never know what you're going to get. You might like one or two songs and hate the rest, but since the bundle is your only option, you have to fork up the cost for the entire thing.

It is because of this very risk that pop idols have made obscene amounts of money, but indie music creators have struggled to get by. The "old money" big wigs put all of their marketing effort into creating pop stars, spend all of their money to get you to buy the bundle that they want you to buy. Since it is a high risk proposition, you as a consumer are only going to be willing to buy the ones that are "safe," that is to say, the ones that they tell you to buy.

It's a positive feedback loop. They put all of their marketing into one basket, and you as the consumer, when evaluating your options, purchase that one, since going with others is more risky.

iTunes, and other digital distribution stores have freed the consumer from that cycle. You can now buy WHAT YOU LIKE. The risk to you is low, you get to try before you buy, and the barriers to entry are much lower. The result is that people tend to spend MORE money, not less. But the caveat is that the pop-stars get LESS money, and more money goes to indies and smaller content creators. The wealth is more evenly distributed. The "old money" big wigs lose control of deciding FOR you what you will buy.

This is vastly superior to the old model for both content creators and consumers. The losers are the middle men. The publishers. And they've fought long and hard to prevent that from happening, but they are losing. The sheer volume of piracy forced them to agree to models that they detest, but even though the music industry is alive and vibrant, their cut, their margin is smaller.

Too bad. Let the money flow from the consumers to the content creators. Stop stifling innovation, stop trying to control us.

Of course Jon Bon Jovi doesn't like the new model. He was made filthy rich from the old model. It's not about the "magical" experience of buying some random bundle of songs that you only like 1/6th of, it's about buying 100% of the songs that you like.

And besides, Pandora and other streaming music stations have completely replaced that "magical" experience of hearing something new. In fact, I'd argue that they are vastly superior in every way. You just choose the type of music you like, and it will find all manner of songs that you might never have been exposed to.

Our kids have it much better than we did. Out with the old money hats. RIAA, MPAA, go stuff it. Adapt rather than stifle.

This model is far more effective. And allows for far more distribution of wealth. Now THAT is magical.

NY Gaming Meetup

2011-03-16T10:33:00.000-07:00

I attended last nights NYC Gaming Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/gaming/events/16761592/ and it was, to say the least, inspiring.

When you quit your day job to try to do what you're passionate about, with little to no income, every day can be a little stressful, a little nerve wrecking.

When you go to PAX and the panelists say "If a company on the west coast hires you, MOVE/JUMP to go to the West" and you realize that you did EXACTLY the opposite and turned down an opportunity... you can almost find yourself doubting that you did the right thing.

But, when I went to the meetup last night... I knew I had made the right choice. These are the guys that have gaming in their blood. These are the self-starters, the ones without fear, the ones that don't need to rely on someone ELSE hiring them, these are the kinds that make their own path.

If you're on the east coast, and you want to be part of the industry... don't listen to the nay-sayers. I highly recommend going to the next NY Gaming Meetup. The date hasn't been posted yet, but I'll be there. I haven't finished my game yet, but I'm excited.

The group is starting to explode at the seams. We had almost 300 people there last night. We are at the ground floor of the creation of an East Coast gaming movement. Don't be afraid.

Now is the time.

(That said, the West coast is awesome, and if you CAN go out there, then by all means, it's a great place to be. My friend Cataclyst is out there, so in a way, our Company lives in both worlds)

Times are Changing

2011-03-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

Making money with digital goods is a tricky and complex proposition. The thing that separates digital goods from pretty much anything else we consume is that each additional "copy" of the good costs essentially ZERO.

This makes the notion of "piracy" a difficult one to tackle. The large corporations out there have been increasingly hostile towards piracy, and they make great efforts to paint it as a morally reprehensible thing to do. All of the "entertainment" industries are struggling with this, from Movies to music to Video games. Watching the "old money" big wigs trying to fight piracy by throwing their weight around politicians and lawmakers, all the while using the court system to effectively blackmail people into paying to not get sued, well.. it's just a giant /facepalm. It has done next to ZERO to increase their bottom lines, and instead has caused incredible backlash as people actively deciding to not purchase products that are laden with crippling DRM or that install Rootkits.

I think they are slowly (as is the case with any monolithic organization) coming around to the fact that their anti-piracy schemes are flat out NOT WORKING and are often increasing piracy instead.

Ars has a pretty good write up about it: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/03/report-piracy-a-global-pricing-problem-with-only-one-solution.ars, where the short of is that researchers state that the problem is simply that the prices are too high.

WELL DUH.

Actually, I'd argue that the problem is three fold.

1) Price

2) Punish the people who pay (DRM)

3) Ability to access content

As someone who intends to try to make money in this industry (literally going all-in), it's important that I understand the how's and why's that people pirate, or don't.

Thankfully, this is not newly treaded territory. Believe it or not, Apple is a remarkable case study (ok, those that know me, know that I'm not a huge fan of Apple, but that's another story). They've effectively nailed ALL 3 points for the content they deliver.

1) They forced the music industry's hand to drive down the cost of music. (Despite the idiot ranting of Jon Bon Jovi: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20043351-71.html)

2) They removed DRM from music purchases

3) They make it INCREDIBLY, stupidly easy to purchase and acquire the content.

iTunes music tracks weren't always DRM free. And it is a perfect example of the fact that people are willing to part with their money if they value the product, if you don't screw them over, and if you make it really easy to get.

Mind you, I'm not saying that one must remove DRM completely, but if you ARE going to implement DRM, it must be absolutely and completely invisible to the people who ARE paying for your product. Apple certainly still does have a lot of DRM, but to the average Apple user, they are completely oblivious to it because every use case they have for the content, is satisfied.

The cost of Apps, music are far lower than they were in the past.

And getting what you want is as simple as searching iTunes and downloading. Instant gratification. No need to walk to the nearest store.

So how does one make money in gaming? To be honest, there are a LOT of viable options.

Going retail is only for the big publishers, and I believe that this is a shrinking segment of the industry (in terms of market share of $'s spent on gaming). To be honest, I was surprised that the 3DS sold so well (in Japan) but it remains to be seen how well software will fare. (And how well it will do in the States) Kinect is having similar problems. It sold over 10 million units, but the software isn't moving. Rather, I should say, the full retail software isn't moving.

But, as is normal for the retail model, there will be a few players that pull in the majority of the money in the segment.

There is the give-for-free but use Ads method. This is employed to great effect in the mobile space. I don't care for ads myself, and will always pay to remove them, when given the option, but a lot of people are completely and utterly against paying for apps in online stores. Ask everyone you know who has an android or iphone how many apps they've bought. Unless they are in the industry, most will be zero.

But developers spent countless hours, and, quite frankly deserve to be paid for their work, especially if you're enjoying it. If you want to use something for free, expect Ads.

Rovio (Angry Birds) has shown that it is entirely possible to make a KILLING with Ads. $1Million a month from the android version of Angry Birds from Ads. That frankly blows my mind. I'm curious to see how they price the amazon-app-store exclusive version of their next game.

There is the pay-by-month subscription model, which, for all intents and purposes, has only worked for one game: World of Warcraft. (Ok, there are a few other successful MMOs, but... seriously.. c'mon now) Good luck with that model. It can work, but I don't see many small players being too successful. EVE, I loved thee.

Finally, the one that I personally find the most exciting. The micro-transaction model. I think one of the premier examples is League of Legends. (Though I think they should start slapping Ads in the faces of everyone that isn't willing to pay a cent toward it, there are just too many freeloaders) Glu Games is doing some really interesting stuff in the mobile space with this as well. There are a lot of examples, and once Android fully supports micro transactions, this space is ripe for an explosion. We're really late to the party here, and I'm surprised that Korean companies aren't leading the way since they've been doing micro-transactions for easily the last 8 years.

The exciting parts about these is that the prices for entry are far lower (read:free) for users to get hooked.

How do you pirate free?

The funny thing is, that all of the piracy "problems" are very soon going to not be limited to the software industry. With all of these 3D printers appearing, and driving the cost of making goods down... even small trinkets and plastic figurines will suffer from this same "problem." And one can easily extrapolate this into the future with future nano-tech advances.

I find it exciting and refreshing, but the people who run large companies will HATE the loss of control.

If you want to get into gaming, move to the West Coast...

2011-03-14T12:13:00.000-07:00

I've heard this over and over again. If you want to be part of the gaming industry, move to the west coast.

I've heard it from friends in the industry, I heard it from community managers at PAX.

But to that I say "NAY! I will NOT move to the west! I will make games HERE in the EAST!"

It's true, most of the publishers, and most of the dev houses are on the west coast. But I'm a New Yorker thru and thru. I won't let a little detail like "location of jobs" get in the way!

And I don't think that "all" of the jobs will remain located in the West anyway. We've got a small, but rapidly growing set of Indies, small companies, and social media based game houses over here on the East.

We've got a lot going on, and most of all, we've got the talent.. the knack, to just take the plunge and risk it all (Or is that just me?). The West coast might have Silicon Valley. I vote for the name "Silicon Village" on the East.

And judging by the meetup groups getting bigger and bigger over here, I'm certain we will be a force to be reckoned with.

That is, of course, if the West doesn't snatch up all the talent! *Cough* Cataclyst *Cough*

Team GigaCat?

2011-03-14T11:52:00.000-07:00

What the heck is a GigaCat?

Obviously it's a kitten that's struck by lightning!

Actually, it is just an amalgamation of the handles of two long time College friends.

I'm known (occasionally in real life) as Gigaflop. "Gig" for short. It's about as dorky, nerdy, geeky, [insert other adjectives], as it could possibly get. I've claimed Gigaflop on any and every possible venue that I could. Forums, email addresses, gaming systems. I've got a lot of them, but where I miss out because someone else beats me to the punch and steals my handle, I'm "TheGigaflop." Of course, the internet being what it is, means that from now on, both Gigaflop and TheGigaflop will be taken before I get to claim them.

I've been Gigaflop since 7th grade. How disturbing is that. I've had the same handle (nick/alias) for 18 years.

My friend is almost as bad as me. He goes by the name Cataclyst, and he similarly owns the name across almost everything. He has it easy though, since his isn't even in the dictionary (note the misspelling), his is rarely taken. And I think he might have been using his for almost as long as I have used mine.

So there you have it. We're going to be making video games. Small ones for Android and iOS, maybe other projects as well. And our Team, brand, company will be called "Team GigaCat."

We're just 2 people. But we've got passion (and some might even say a little bit of smarts), and the drive to do it.

Pax East 2011

2011-03-14T11:42:00.000-07:00

I've just returned from PAX, my first incidentally, and it was very different from anything I had expected.

I've been to Blizzcons and E3's, but PAX has a different vibe, it caters to a different person. The people that attend aren't just gamers (those that PLAY video games), they are the people that are passionate about the entire industry. They want to be a part of it, they want to make games, draw art, and compose music. And I think that's the kind of person I am. I need to check out GDC, because I have a feeling I'm might also be THAT kind of person.

In fact, I've recently done something incredibly insane. I quit my day job. A good paying, stable one for a very large company in the beauty industry.

People have said "you've got balls" and "I'm jealous that you can do that." But the reality is that I'm scared shitless. But sometimes you have to do what you have to do, and I'm not the type that backs down from a challenge.

The challenge in this case, just happens to be finding my passion. And so, it is today, the day after PaxEast ends, that I will do just that.

And so this blog is born.