Here is a direct link to the YouTube video.
YouTube - 2008 Latest Edition - Did You Know 3.0 - From Meeting in Rome this Year.

Personally, I am inspired by this type of presentation. Let me know what you think.

-Jeff Tunnell, Game Maker
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Flashbang's Blurst Game Portal

These guys have no idea that I am posting about them. While I met Mathew Wegner a few years back at a Casual Connect, we have not stayed in touch. At the time, I was extremely impressed with his creativity and the types of games they were creating. Since then, their company has really hit its stride. In this article, Gamasutra - News - Interview: Flashbang Studios, Blursting Through?, Gamasutra interviewed the founders.

Here are some of the things that I think they are doing right:

• They have a”day jobs” doing contract work.
• They are creating new Intellectual Property at the rate of six games per year.
• They abandoned their old plan of making casual games to make money to concentrate on games they really believed in.
• They chose a game engine and work within its bounds. They don’t complain about what it does not have, they just crank out great games.
• They are aggregating their efforts in a rapidly evolving portal, Blurst, that is gaining traffic at a nice rate.

In summary, Flashbang is following all of the steps that I advocate in my Foundational Five article about surviving as a game developer. They have a small team of creative, like minded people, they have day jobs, they are creating innovative games, they are building a portfolio of company owned IP. In my mind, these guys, along with companies like Thatgamecompany, Behemoth, and 2D Boy are a new generation of rising stars that will be making the hits of the future. A couple of years from now, I think Blurst will have huge traffic, and these guys will be extremely successful.

-Jeff Tunnell, Game Maker
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PushButton Engine Logo

A fair question that anybody should ask is how our company will survive giving away our efforts for free. I think that is going to be the main question nearly all online products and companies are going to have to answer over time. Our answer is that we are going to give away the game engine foundation for free, then sell premium components, starter kits, and content. In addition, we are opening up our e-commerce and store to anybody that wants to sell technology to our community. You can think of it as an “app store” for game technology.

We did a mini version of this model at GarageGames, but it was a closed system where we were open to submissions or we recruited certain developers to make technology that GG would sell in its developer store. Many developers made nice side income or even enough to make a living selling Torque add ons and tools. Like I always say, don’t quit your day job, and having a nice income stream from selling some technology can really help offset your game development efforts.

Flash has huge momentum and we think there is a great opening to supply Flash developers with even easier and more modular methods of making their games. We envision thousands of free and premium components, starter kits, and content packs all rated, ranked, and easily distributed through our store bringing in great money for the developers creating them.

When we launch our component store (hopefully next week), we will be giving a lot more info, but for now the enticing bits are that our entire infrastructure is built upon Amazon’s amazing EC2 and S3 cloud computing services, and we are using Amazon’s ex-commerce service for the payment system, which allows us to essentially allow micro-payments.

The first premium component created by PushButton Labs will be a real time networking component that is based upon the ideas behind the great open sourced OpenTNL, Torque Networking Library, we released from GarageGames six years ago. PB Networking should be the best real time networking the Flash game world has seen with bit packing, ghosting, and the ability to use Java, C++, or Flash based back end servers. Our test results show it performing better than anything we have seen in the Flash space (but, it is a big space, and we could have missed something). PBN will be released under an Indie and Commercial license that is compatible with the MIT license of the base engine. We have not yet decided on a price, but it will be low as we want to make sure this technology is very accessible.

If you decide to try out the PushButton Engine, please remember it is still in Beta. We have a long way to go to make everything more noobie friendly, and of course, the docs still have a long way to go. Even though we didn’t really try to make a big splash at GDC, we graciously got picked up for an article by Wagner James Au from the GigaOM technology blog, which resulted in coverage by the New Work Times and many other blogs. I hope all those visitors stick with us while we get the training wheels bolted on

-Jeff Tunnell, Game Maker
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A day after the release, the article was picked up by Slashdot, and Owen wrote a follow up article describing the responses he has gotten. Here is an excerpt:

Perception of whining or quitting

Many people perceived my post as whining about my sales, or that I was giving up on the game. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The post was meant purely as informational. I thought it would help people to see that selling an app on the App Store is just like selling any other product: it takes a lot of work and you shouldn’t expect to be an overnight success. I am also not giving up on Dapple; far from it. I’m only just getting started with it. That post was only a single data point on what I hope is a long upward trend for the game. Every game, every company starts somewhere, and I wanted to document where that was for me.

Don't put all of your eggs in one basket, or your games in one market either.

This is the strategy we are taking with our Push Button Labs game, Grunts: Skirmish, and a strategy that I am seeing a lot of developers talk about. We will be counting on a lot of activity in the Flash market to drive sales in the other markets. If hundreds of thousands or even millions of people play our game on the Flash version, it will drive traffic to our site so we can potentially upsell them on our High Definition or heavy client versions, or eventually on microtransactions or even subscriptions. Imagine what you would have to pay in advertising dollars to get that kind of exposure, but the cool thing is, we will get PAID to release the Flash version.

Some developers only want to focus on a single platform. As an example, Jeremy Alessi, a frequent commenter on MBG, is just about to release his third game on the iPhone. He is happy with this strategy, and does not want to take the time to develop tools or processes to put the game anywhere else. As always, the best thing about being an Indie is that you have the freedom to do what you want. However, it is my firm belief, as an Indie, that spreading risk around is the best path to success.

I don’t want to turn this blog into a big advertisement, but I do need to mention that our open source Flash based Push Button Engine is the basis of how we are going to be bringing our games to multiple markets. It is currently in closed Beta, but we hope to announce the Open Beta before GDC.

-Jeff Tunnell, Game Maker
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Photo by woodleywonderworks

If you think there are too many games in the iPhone App store now, just wait. There will be many more.

All of this elitist non-informed bullshit needs to be debunked. Crap like this, along with developers complaining that they cannot make $80,000 per year just by making iPhone games is so far from the truth that it is laughable. The bottom line is that markets owe you nothing. If you can’t survive in the market, there will be a hundred other guys that want it more and will take your place.

First of all, get used to the crowding. If there are over 25,000 apps today, there will someday be 100,000, then 200,000, etc. It won’t end. If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen. This is a marketplace, and you either break through or you don’t, but don’t blame other people that want to make games on your problems. Another marketplace, the Internet, has millions of products and games available. It is an open marketplace, and you should be glad for this.

I can tell you with conviction that you don’t want a closed market. If Apple were to close off the market by putting up slotting fees, a big sign off process, etc., only the largest of companies would be able to afford to put games in, effectively cutting off the small guy, probably even the company that gave the interview. This kind of closed distribution system is very similar to the box market, and was what caused the big publishers to evolve to what they are today, i.e. he with the most money wins.

Huge publishers used to kiss Nintendo’s ass to be allowed the honor of paying for development, marketing, cost of goods, plus a big royalty to the NIntendo just to bring their products to market. Today, if you want your game to go on XBLA, you first need to spend the money to make most of the game, then beg Microsoft for a slot, which is worth a lot less than last year due to MS arbitrarily dropping the royalties. Do you want to take your game to the box channel? Then get ready to play the extortion game of paying slotting fees, co-op marketing and selling fees (essentially kick backs), etc. if you can even get an audience with the channel. Again, he with the most money wins.

Making a great game is only part of the process. Marketing is the other part, and developers never really want to acknowledge this fact. We are in a unique period of time right now where new markets are opening up, and some lucky developers have hit the jackpot without giving any thought to how to sell their games. This will not continue. If you only know how to make games, it might be in your best interests to hook up with somebody that understands marketing and sales. That can be in the form of finding a partner that can work on those aspects or even considering finding a publisher that will handle those efforts for you.

I say that open markets are best. Sure a lot of bad games will be made, but they will quickly fall off the new release charts, and they will never be heard from again. If you are counting on the featured lists or the best sellers lists to market your game for you, you might as well pack it up now. That is a naive business model and, while lightning may strike a lucky developer once in a while, you need to have a better plan than relying on pure luck.

-Jeff Tunnell, Game Maker
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Windows vs. Mac is no longer the question.

Instead of debating OSX, Linux, and Windows vs. just Windows, you should be considering all OS’s, Flash, the browser, Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, Steam, Instant Action, Greenhouse, your own site, iPhone, Android, other smart phones, Nintendo DS, Xbox via XNA, XBLA, Playstation Network, Wii Ware, box distribution, Casual Portals like Big Fish Games and Yahoo Games, Flash Portals like Kongregate and New Grounds, international portals.

Concentrating on how you can make your game and intellectual property accessible for as many of these platforms as possible will greatly increase your chances of success. Look at how Popcap is growing like a weed in an era when most of the big publishers are losing money and market share, selling out, or going bankrupt. Concentrating on smaller IP’s that can exploit every platform imaginable is a much more viable strategy for Indies.

If you are an Indie trying to make the next Fable or Halo or Tribes, this approach probably won’t work, but for nearly every other type of game, I think an iterative approach to the development of the game and IP behind the game will work. If you have a BIG idea, you may want to consider making it smaller by using some of the techniques I described in the article The Art of Backing Off. If you have not read that article yet, please click on over, so we are all on the same page for the rest of this article.

Grunts: Skirmish Flash version runs on all OS's

While you may argue that it is extra work to create light client versions of your game, I think it is the best method I have ever experienced for making a game so far in my career. Work on the light client has not slowed down or stopped our development of the intellectual property behind the game, i.e. the characters, back story, logos, or web site design. Plus, it has given us time to create and design a nice progression of milestones and prototypes that we can test along the way toward the end goal of the entire game. For instance, given the response to our characters already, I think people are going to like the IP, but there will be nothing like putting the game up on Kongregate to find out.

If players do end up hating the characters or back story, we are not too far into the concept or idea to kill it. We are flexible and not too invested. Developers that put their all into a huge concept for years, then find out players don’t like it, are screwed. Again, our idea is “too small to fail” right now. If we misjudged the market, we have dry powder to try something different. The same thing goes for the game play. Since we have only developed the first part of the overall game, we are not so invested that we will die if it does not work out.

Besides the above advantages of light and heavy client development, getting onto all of the platforms starts to get much easier. Check out what happens once we ship the Flash version.

• We immediately bring a subset of our full game and IP to a billion potential players world wide on Day One of ship.
• We are immediately available on Windows, OSX, and Linux.
• We are positioned very well to put the product on Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, or any other social network.
• Using some “special sauce” that we have worked up, porting our game to iPhone is fairly an easy task.

In one step, our game is delivered on over half of the platforms I mentioned above. In addition, we now have a great looking calling card and, hopefully, data to back it up, to allow us to pitch the heavy client platforms. Instead of going to Microsoft with a demo or a pitch, we can go to them with data that says our game was played by 7MM people that loved it and are looking for the next version. If you think about it, that is how Flow, Line Rider, and even the Behemoth guys got onto the heavy client platforms, although I don’t think they were thinking about that when those games were originally created.

To summarize, definitely make your game for more than one OS, but open your mind to where games are really being played in Today’s market.

-Jeff Tunnell, Game Maker
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Game prices are falling, and they won't go back up.

One of the first successes in lower priced games came from XBLA, where Microsoft went out and did huge surveys of gamers, and found they would be much more receptive to downloading games at lower price points, so they came up with the $5, $10, and $15 price points (further disguised by using Gamer Points) seen today. Our Marble Blast Ultra was one of the first games in the store at a $10 price point, and it made us hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue, so I finally felt vindicated for my years of lower price point pontification.

Now the flood gates have been opened, and I am telling you to look out below. Today Reflexive, recently acquired by Amazon, opened their new download store, with lowered front tier pricing of $9.99 and second tier pricing of $6.99 for Indie casual games. All of the other casual portals like Big Fish Games and Yahoo games have pricing of of $6.95 by joining their “clubs”. It is my belief that even these prices will not hold up over time.

As an example of the future, look at the game section of the iPhone App Store. In this market, the right price for a game is $0, and I believe that is where all game prices are heading. For a while, there will be successes at $3.99 to $1, but eventually, I think you will see capitulation to the $0 price point.

Why are games going to what many see as absurdly low price points? It is a simple answer. Supply and demand. It used to be difficult and expensive to make games, so few people had the knowledge to create a game, and even if you could figure out how to make a game, there were only a few distribution outlets. There was no Internet, so only a few games could be brought to the few shelves open to selling them. With relatively few games being made, and fewer being distributed via hard media, games were scarce, resulting in high price points.

Contrast that to today, with an uncountable number of inexpensive or free game engines and tools, game development schools and thousands of web sites that teach people how to make games resulting in tens of thousands of game developers and games competing in the market. I always compare game development to music, and I will again. People want to be in bands even though there is no exact way to make money, let alone make enough money to make a living. As proof, there are over four million bands on MySpace alone. In the future, I am sure there will be millions of games developers, and all of them will be putting downward pressure on price points.

This is already happening in the Flash game market, with even a cursory look showing Kongregate, a single Flash games portal, with over 11,000 free games on their site. These games are already fun, but watch for them to get more polished with more features as more sophisticated Flash development gets easier with tools like our upcoming Push Button Engine as well as the foundation of Flash itself getting better. As there are more and more games on the market, developers will have little chance if they do not keep up with bigger and better productions. These great, creative, free games will put tremendous downward price pressure on all other categories and distribution channels.

What about consoles, and big game publishers, and the $60 price points of AAA titles? In depth analysis of this market is another article, but suffice it to say that prices will come down on all of them. Of course, all of this will take time, but it will be an excruciating fall. All you have to do is watch what is going on in the music industry to get a feel for how it will play out. There will be fights, finger pointing, lawsuits, and tons of press while the incumbents attempt to hold onto old business models while thousands of new competitors ravage the old way of doing things.

How will you survive in a market with a $0 price point and millions of competitors? I have ideas, and I can’t say for sure, but I do know there will be no one way of succeeding. I’ll explore different strategies such as ad supported games, micro-transactions, etc. in future articles. Don’t get me wrong, if you are already an Indie with nothing to lose, and you are following my Foundational Five ways of running your company, you should be excited about the changes.

-Jeff Tunnell, Game Maker
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Dividing Company Equity Is Not As Easy As Cutting Pizza

Before we get started, I have to give the big IANAL (I am not a lawyer) disclaimer, but I have been through a bunch of company start ups, so I have some experience here. Lawyers are going to be a big reach for any unfunded Indie developer. My take on all of this is to make sure you have a great honest relationship with the people you are working with. Once you have that, completely discuss everything as clearly and honestly as you can, then put down your agreements in plain terms (I’ll give some examples below), then once you get some traction, you can make things official later. This is the way Damon Slye and I did it for Dynamix. We didn’t have attorney drawn up papers for years, and once we got bigger we still went back to our original personally written documents if we had questions. In other words, you need to have partners you can trust and if you don’t, no amount of legalese or contracts can make things work. Partners have to want to make things work with each other.

Once you have found partners you want to work with, the next big decision is how much equity each partner gets. If you have never done it before, this is a tricky subject. How do you even bring it up? How do you put a value on human relationships? How can you say one person is more valuable than another? Well, I can tell you it is difficult, but it must be done. This is a negotiation issue, and if it is not taken care of at the start of your company, it can fester, causing you to eventually lose your best people.

In two of my previous start ups, Dynamix, and GarageGames, we simply winged it, giving the all of the original partners the same equity, and then negotiated new equity when new shareholders were brought in. Other than the negotiations for new shareholders, this simple division of the equity for original “partners” is the easiest, least conflicted way to go. In both of those cases, things worked out for all of us, and I am glad we did it that way.

In many cases, however, simple division of the equity is not appropriate. For Push Button Labs I devised an algorithmic method of dividing the equity, and so far I am pretty happy with the method and the results. Simply put it goes like this: everybody in the company works for less than “industry standard wages” and that “sweat equity” over a two year period is their contribution to the company. All of the sweat equity and real money investments go into a spreadsheet and the percentage of the company that each individual gets is automatically determined. Here is a link to a Google Docs spreadsheet that we used at PBL. Disclaimer: I have never publicly published anything on Google Docs, so let me know if there are any problems. Below is a screen shot of the spreadsheet:

Algorithmic Method of Dividing Company Equity

Below are examples of some of the simple, personal agreements that work better in plainly worded documents:

• Stock options vest over four years, no payback if employee leaves prior to two years.
• Angel equity is subject to a standard (TBD) equity deal.
• If employee leaves after two years, earned equity converts to a loan payable over (N) years, starting on (N)th company anniversary.

Any one of the above fine points of creating a start up company have article potential, but putting them all in an article would turn it into a book. If MBG readers are interested, I would be happy to cover more of these issues. Let me know in the comments and MBG forums.

-Jeff Tunnell, Game Maker
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Photo by Igkiii

-Jeff Tunnell, Game Maker
Make It Big In Games
Follow me on Twitter

I agree with Gladwell’s take on this. What? You mean it is going to take me FIVE YEARS to get good at making games? No, I’m saying it is going to take you five years to get good at what you do, but it may take much longer to really make it.

Of course, you can point to some products like iShoot, where the developer had never made a game before and is now quitting his day job due to his game’s success on the iPhone. Sure, there will be some lucky developers that break out and get a hit before they have put in their time, but those will not be the norm. Seth Godin has a good take on this, and argues that the 10,000 hours can vary depending upon the market, and smaller, newer markets are more likely to have lucky break out hits. He puts it really well with this statement:

But, ready for this? The Dip is much closer in niche areas, new areas, unexplored areas. You can get through the Dip in an online network or with a new kind of music because being seen as the best in that area is easier (at least for now). You can get through the Dip as a real estate broker in a new, growing town a lot quicker than someone in midtown Manhattan. The competition is thinner and probably less motivated.

So, even though there may be some niches in games that you can break into because they are over looked or just emerging, my take is that you don’t want to count on luck. Just buckle down and become really great at what you do. If you don’t want to work hard, there is somebody out there that is working hard at becoming great, and they will take your place. I have written a basic outline of how to spend those fives year in my Five Realistic Steps To Becoming A Game Developer article. If you love what you are doing, the time will fly by.

-Jeff Tunnell, Game Maker
Make It Big In Games
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