Congrats to all the other finalists and I’ll see you in March!

http://www.igf.com/02finalists.html

When I started Pocketwatch Games, Dinosauria was the game I really wanted to make. But I didn’t feel that I was prepared to make my “masterpiece” and I didn’t feel the technology was ready to handle the types of scenes I wanted to create. Venture Africa did pretty well financially, which allowed me to hire someone full-time to help out on Venture Arctic. Arctic didn’t do as well and sadly, I had to let him go. After a while struggling to try and get sales of Arctic up, I had to take on some contract work. I helped out on a website called Green.com, which was a virtual world for kids that never quite got off the ground. After working for someone else, though, it reminded me why I was in business for myself. So I started working on Dinosauria part-time in about September of 2008 and I was full time on it in January 2009.

The guys I got to help me out worked feverishly for the next six months. And while the art was looking fantastic, and the research end of things had uncovered lots of great source material (thanks largely to you guys), the one area where I just wasn’t happy was the game design itself. I didn’t feel the game was fun.

If you know anything about game development, probably the most important rule is this: don’t enter full production on a game until you know that it’s FUN. You really can’t progress until you’ve tried out all the variations of your ideas and you have the ones that work. Well, I spent January through July building things, then wiping the slate clean, building another prototype and then starting over. I once again started to run out of steam. I’ve now been working by myself (with remote contractors) for five years, and I was having a hard time making this game into the masterpiece I wanted it to be.

It could be that I was putting too much pressure on myself: some of the advice I got was to just accept that the game isn’t my dream game and just “get it over with”, but I wasn’t comfortable with that. So I decided to take a break from working on it and work on a couple of small concepts I had rolling around in the back of my head. The point was to try to get my design juices flowing again so that I could come back to Dinosauria with fresh eyes.

So I designed some board game concepts that I thought perhaps I could sell alongside the games. (the Venture Africa game is actually a lot of fun, I’d love to get it published at some point). Then I came back to Dinosauria. And I once again found myself in the same position. No matter what I did, the game just didn’t seem fun.

So I took another break. I made a little web game about bowerbirds and neural networks. And I came back to Dinosauria hoping that I was refreshed. Same situation. The mental and emotional stress this cycle was putting me under probably contributed to my “writer’s block”.

So I decided, ok, I’ll take another break, but this time I’ll make something that I consider an “easy” game design, very much different from the Venture Games. I started working on a 2D co-op stealth game, kind of like Gauntlet crossed with Hitman.

Now I should say that my intention for the Pocketwatch Games “brand” has always been fun, enriching experiences that anyone could play with their kids. I think games like Venture Africa and Arctic and Dinosauria have the potential to change the world for the better. That said, I like to play games. I like games like Call of Duty and Hitman and silly, bloody fun like God of War.

So this little stealth game was called Monaco. It was a game I had been thinking about for a long time, actually. The company I worked for before I started Pocketwatch Games even pitched the idea to Microsoft Game Studios in 2003. So I figured I could just work on it a little bit until I got recharged to go back to Dinosauria.

The irony is, after 9 months of struggling to find the “fun” in Dinosauria, I found it after one week of working on Monaco. The darn thing was really fun after ONE WEEK. I figured, well if this is fun, then I should continue working on it. Another week went by and I was making huge progress.

I quickly began to get stars in my eyes. I was developing the game for XNA (the platform you can use to self publish on the 360). It looked to me like I could probably get the thing done in another 3 weeks or so and be selling the game on the Xbox, which would give me another source of revenue. Yay!

But each week that went by, the game got better and better. I began to think that maybe Monaco had more legs than just a regular old Xbox Indie Games release. It has now been about 10 weeks and the game is fantastic. It’s completely in a different style from anything I’ve done before, which is both scary and refreshing. I can’t wait for everyone to play it.

Luckily, you can at least see Monaco. I just finished up the trailer tonight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFnc6Fdhs2k

So the question remains: what’s up with Dinosauria? The animal and plant models are all done, the core animations for all the dinosaurs are finishing up this week, and I hope to return to my “white whale” of a game in the beginning of 2010. I still plan to make Dinosauria the greatest thing since sliced bread. I’m hoping that the distance I’ve gained from it will allow me to look at it with fresh eyes. And the feeling of success from making something truly FUN with Monaco will power me through to the same kind of success in the dinosaur world.

BeMyBird.com

Plus and Minus buttons train the neural network — try to get your bird to bring flowers back to his nest!  Eventually he’ll do it on his own.

Previous Experiments:

The Abrupt Goodbye

If you are interested in the board game market, there certainly seem to be some similarities with the game market.  A few big hits in recent years have probably given the board game industry additional strength (see Caracassonne, Ticket to Ride, and Settlers of Catan) but I’ve found that the strategic (non party-game) segment of the market is still very personal and cottage-industry-like.  In general, the German market has been a breeding ground for lots of off-beat, strategic games.  Knowing this, I sent my first board game pitch to Kosmos, a German publisher of games like Settlers of Catan (the M.U.L.E. of board games), Lost Cities, and Ubongo.

A few months ago, I put together a board game based on Venture Africa (post 1, 2, 3).  I’m pretty proud of it — it’s a Chess-like game with a modifyable board.  Two players breed and battle with 6 species of African animal.

Anyways, I sent a pitch (along with the game rules) off to Kosmos.  Today I received a rejection letter.

This was not entirely surprising to me — I’ve never tried to get a board game published before.  What did surprise me was how informative and constructive the feedback was.  Here is his email, reprinted below:

Dear Andy,

I must confess that we hardly had the chance to check game ideas between Essen and Christmas. So I am still catching up with the ideas from last year. Among them was also Venture Africa.

First of all, thank you for sending the idea to us. As you surely know, we do have quite some “abstract” games, some of them with an optical theme like Ubongo or Keltis, which are doing pretty well. So as a kind of abstract game, Venture Africa is not misplaced at Kosmos.

But considering the mechanisms, I think the game would face some difficulties:

First of all, the game bases as you as well noted, on the chess type games.

Of course, as an ancient game, it has a lot of history and therefore a lot of appeal to people. But that is also the problem. The mechanism is well known. To come up with something that adds to the game is not really easy.

There are often efforts, but hardly ever with financial success. Of course there is Hive, which is doing quite well. Purely strategic as well, but with less rules and specialties to keep in mind and therefore “ligher”, easier accessible. And Hive addresses only the Hardcore gamers as well, selling low numbers…

But so much for the general statement. Considering the mechanisms, it is a typical strategy game with some extras. Althougnthis suits the theme (which is of course replacable), the game is still purely strategic. And since no luck is included, which would undoubtedly appeal to the hardcore strategists, it would also frighten off the casual players. The better player will always win, which is something, we mostly wish to avoid. Since there are special abilities for the animals, this has to be taken into account for cinsidering the next step as well, together with the movement of the rainfall and breeding, which prepares the next move of the opponent, etc. There is a lot to consider. Again, for strategists ideal, but since this is just a small target group, we doubt that the game would succeed in the market.

Therefore, I have to say that we do not see the game in our programme line.

It is definitely not a bad game, but because of the aforementioned points nothing for Kosmos. That does not necessarily mean that other publishers will judge likewise. It is just too strategic for us.

Anyway, thank you for the confidence shown to us and we would be glad to see new game ideas from you in the future!

Best regards,

Michael Baskal

The talk that Dan Paladin and I gave at E-for-all detailed this design process.

1. Pick a market/platform
2. Create a protagonist
3. Create an antagonist
4. Design the genre/ruleset around the protagonist and antagonist

As you can see, the genre and ruleset comes last in the design process, and it’s built around the character and theme of the game.

In my games, of course, the protagonist (not necessarily the player) is represented by the animals in the ecosystem.  In Dan’s games, the protagonist is represented by the main character and his abilities.  With my animals, the basic idea is that they are autonomous, but the player can affect their behavior directly or by altering their environment.

The antagonist in Dan’s games is usually a bad guy.  In my games, the antagonist is the environment itself.  The challenge in my games revolves around the difficulties presented by the level: how far the food sources are from water, how much shelter there is, etc.

The ruleset tends to just flow from there.  A compelling character and antagonist or environment provides enough constraint to imagine the more difficult to conceptualize theoretical ruleset.  It also makes the ruleset flow from real-world elements that are tied to your character, keeping the ruleset grounded in the theme of the game.

That said, I don’t personally believe in designing a complete story first, just the bare bones of the protagnist/antagonist relationship.  The most common mistake* I see aspiring game designers make is that they write a complex story replete with minor characters and events before they design the utility of the game: the abilities of the main characters and their relationship to one another is all you need… back story can and should come later.

*However, I’m also of the opinion that great breakthroughs in game design can only come from ingoring the so-called experts, and in fact, one of my (and everyone’s) design heroes Tim Schaefer designs more complete stories up front.

So, how did I apply all this to making a board game?  Despite the game being a two-player competitive game, the protagonist is not simply YOU and the antagonist is not simply YOUR OPPONENT.  The protagonist is actually the herbivores and the antagonist is the carnivores.

Even though you are trying to eat all of your opponent’s herbivores with your carnivores, the game is player-agnostic, meaning that your lions can eat your zebras, and you have to be careful about how you position your crocodiles because you could weaken the defenses of your own herbivores by being too close.

I started with 6 species: Lion, crocodile, zebra, elephant, giraffe, and wildebeest.  I designed each with one special ability.  Then I just playtested and playtested and playtested until I came up with the right balance.  In the process of balancing, wildebeest got switched out for monkey, and giraffe was switched for rhino.

In the end, I hope to publish the game with plastic molded animals (like plastic army men) on the modifyable board.  Again, if anyone knows anyone in the board game industry that might be interested in publishing this game, please let me know!

The board game consists of two players controlling six species of animal (lion, crocodile, elephant, rhino, zebra, monkey).  Players are trying to keep their animals alive while using their lions and crocodiles to eat the other player’s prey.

Players start their turn with 3 movement points, which they can distribute amongst their animals.  Terrain squares have an impact on movement, and each animal has a special ability.  It’s like chess, except that instead of making the pieces unique by how they move, the pieces are unique in how they attack and defend themselves.

Animals also chase a raincloud around the board, which is how they breed.  Breeding can keep a species alive for a little while, but eventually, the other player will take out the last of a species, and then it can’t return.  Eventually, one player wins by taking out all of the animals of the other player.  Games last about 60 minutes.

You might also notice that the game board can be modified, making every game quite different.  This is one of my favorite features of the game as it’s a blast to create the topography and then analyze how that affects gameplay.  The manual includes a number of preset boards, so people can compare individual games without having the include a diagram of the board placement.

The main thing you’ll notice about the board game is that it is multiplayer and competitive.  I mention this because the video game is single player, and to some extent, non-competitive.  There is no antagonist in the video game (though you could say that the environment is the antagonist, always threatening the lives of the protagonists, the animals).

This philosophy reamins intact (to some extent) in the board game, in that the pieces are actually player-agnostic.  Lions can eat zebras of either player; special abilities of animals do not depend on the color of the animal.  In this sense, you get the feeling that both players are controlling parts of a single ecosystem, rather than two opposing armies.

I haven’t played it yet, but my boardgamegeek friend Eryn mentioned that the game reminded him of Manoeuvre.  I’ll have to give that one a try.

In any case, like I said, I’m searching for a publisher, and I’ll keep you updated on the progress!

As for the process I went through to design this game, that’s for another post!

Inspired by a board game he is developing, I decided to try my hand at building one as well.  One Saturday later, and Venture Africa the Board Game was born!

I’ve been tweaking the ruleset and playtesting the thing, and doggonit, this thing is really fun!  It’s simple, strategic, it’s different every time, and it’s got a great theme.

Of course my early and seemingly instant success at designing the game gave me an ego, and I instantly dove into designing a game based around Venture Arctic.  While the meta game surrounding that one was great, the actual turn-by-turn gameplay was not so great.  Sound familiar?

At any rate, I’m currently in the process of finding a publisher for the Venture Africa game.  If anyone knows anyone in the board game industry that might be interested, send them my direction!

I’ll get into the ruleset (as well as my Venture Arctic experiment) in a later post…

I’m been doing some thought experiments lately on user-generated content.  Here’s a quick little game I threw together while thinking about conversation trees.

Play The Abrupt Goodbye

You play a character in a conversation.  You are given choices of what to say, which are conversational responses written by previous players of the game.  You can at any point type in your own response.

Responses are sorted and removed from the database based on their popularity.  If certain responses don’t get clicked, they move down the list and eventually get removed.

A conversation might go something like this:

You are a blind man. You are sitting on a bench in the subway. Someone sits next to you.

Say one of the following:

• Where you goin? 
• The train is on FIIIRRRREEEE!
• Mornin.
• Get yer own bench.
• [Type your own response]

You choose “Where you goin?”

The young woman says, “Uptown, and you?”

Choose:

• Oh, I got no place to go.
• [Type your own response]

You choose “Oh, I got no place to go.”

The young woman says, “Would you like my sandwich?”

Choose:

• [Type your own response]

 You type: “Lady, I don’t eat ham.”

The woman gets up and walks away. She is gone.

The End

Granted, this is a fairly mundane conversation.  Eventually, however, you could probably get some pretty interesting (and long) conversation chains, depending on the creativity of the player base.

A system like this could be an interesting way to build complex NPCs in an MMO.

The first is that I wanted to learn to make pixel art.  I suppose I already knew how, since I did this sort of thing when I was a kid and resolutions were much lower, but it’s probably been 15 or 20 years since I last picked up the pixel-brush.

Here’s my first pass at some goofy little animals:

A couple that I wasn’t as happy with (they didn’t fit the boxy style I was going for):

My first attempts (not pictured) were miserable.  So I did a little research.  Turns out Derek Yu of TIGSource and Aquaria fame has done a nice little tutorial on making pixel art.

I used Graphics Gale to make these, as suggested by this other Pixel Art tutorial.