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If you are interested in the process of making and selling games, have I got the blog for you!Dinosauria Dev
What’s Up With Dinosauria?
Hi folks- I’m really sorry I’ve been so silent lately. I really appreciate all the patience the fans of Pocketwatch have had and I’m happy all of you have so much faith in me and my work. Anyways, I feel like I owe readers and fans of the Venture Games an explanation for why its been so long since I updated the world on Dinosauria!
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.
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December 15th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Looking forward to trying Monaco when it gets released – good luck with it in the IGF. I think it is definitely important to mix things up like you have in order to vet some distance and perspective especially when you’ve been working at something for a long time. One more question – can you post some links to the web games you mentioned (bower birds and neural nets)? I’m interested in the potential use of ecological (and other scientific) models as the basis for game design concepts. In any case, thanks for the work you’ve done so far and best of luck moving forward.
December 15th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Of course, it was actually in my last blog post, go to http://www.bemybird.com
I think the latest version may be slightly broken, but you will get the idea I think. It was a REALLY rough experiment. :)
December 18th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
I find that taking a break from an idea, letting your subconscious mull it over, and then coming back at it with a new perspective is great way to improve it. I hope you figure out how to make Dinosauria the awesome game you envisioned, because that quetzalcoatlus is drop dead gorgeous (:
December 19th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
You should check out Clash of the Dinosaurs on the Discovery Channel, it features a lot of the same creatures! I can’t wait for V. Dinosauria to come out! I’ve been checking its progress every day! I don’t really care about the FUN adventure feel of it. I like watching the dinos live like they would have, 65 million years ago. Every Dino Game I own I try that, but there’s always a problem.
In Zoo Tycoon: Dino Digs, all the carnivores would kill everything in sight, and they could never agree on one habitat.
Dino Island only allows dinos in cages, and they need people to feed them.
In Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis, the dinos could live together, hunt in moderation, but they couldn’t breed.
In Zoo Tycoon: Extinct Animals, the dinos kept rampaging!
I can’t wait for this, a dream come true!
December 19th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
I’ve been meaning to ask:
You said that it would represent the year before the extinction. After a year in-game, would there be some sort-of movie, showing the impact and effects. I imagine if you had it in the game, it would look like the beginning of Spore. An asteroid crashing, flash of light, tidal wave racing outwards while giant mushroom cloud grows over the impact. Meanwhile, back in your location, a tremor hits. Fir rages, and a cloud of heat burns dinosaurs alive. Many dinos run but it’s of no avail.
After the clip, you could show how dinos evolved into birds.
December 24th, 2009 at 11:31 am
hey when u gonna go back to dinsuaria i’ve been on here since you started the game u finish it or my company won’t make it for the mac and wii and the nintendo ds bub!oh and another thing id like to play it here is my email to send a download like to me Babe@frontiernet.net
December 24th, 2009 at 11:36 am
oh and i think that venture arctic sucks it does i mean come on they can’t have babys like in venture africa which is cool maybe u can make dinosauria like venure africa not arctic email me any time and ooh i got an idea u could use for a game maybe im not sure but u can make a horse game with bears and animals in woods like crows bears racoons i mean if u use an fresh idea that could be fun u could add bees too. he he he he he he he he he he hehe hehehehhehehehehehehehehhehehehehhehehehehehehhhhehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehhehehehehehehehhehehheehehehe
wow i typ fast.
December 24th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Takeing a brake is good, like when I was playing venture africa, I couldn’t pass a lvl so I took a long brake and when I got back on I passed that lvl and a few others, I just was stressed and tried to rush through it, Will you be makeing it still or is dinosauria canncelled?
December 26th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
I have my own secret masterpiece game that I have planned, it’s odd though I’ve nursed the idea of it forever but I still have no idea what the gameplay looks like, all I know is that it’s awesome. Reading this post almost feels like relief because it confirms that I really have to firm up the idea before I start writing code for it :)
December 26th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Caught wind of your game through TIGSource (http://tigsource.com/articles/2009/12/26/holiday-vidyas). I’ve heard of your works in the past and admittedly did not find them appealing, but I am VERY interested in how Monaco turns out. It’s a shame it’s only for the 360 which is the one modern gaming platform I don’t own; any plans for future ports?
In regards to your post, my colleague and I have been in a game prototyping development phase for several months. Though it may have it’s limitations, I find that Unity (http://www.unity3d.com) is a great way to make some throwaway code to rapidly test a few game mechanics without the burden of maintaining clean source or keeping memory limitations in check. Have you considered testing your ideas using this? Do you perhaps use some other game dev suite, or perhaps just implement mechanics directly into your code base?
December 27th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
You’re right, a WiiWare version would be interesting, and the only version of Monaco I would be able to buy.
December 29th, 2009 at 11:17 am
You should be back by now, where are your responses?
December 29th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Hi Hermes! I’m really excited about it to! I can’t give you any good answers right now, but when I have a better sense for this stuff, I will let the community know!
January 1st, 2010 at 5:32 am
Happy New Year! Maybe we can see a release date soon? :)
January 10th, 2010 at 3:45 am
[...] Monaco (Pocketwatch Games) [...]
January 16th, 2010 at 10:10 am
FINALLY up update. I’m glad that Venture Dinosauria is still gonna be made.
January 19th, 2010 at 7:57 am
[...] Schatz’s recent experience with Monaco, as detailed on his blog, has somewhat reassured us that this is the right decision to make — or at least that it [...]
January 19th, 2010 at 3:13 pm
kudos to you on staying with Dinosauria! I’ve long enjoyed both Arctic and Africa and am looking forward to being able to play with dinosaurs! it looks a lot like Venture Africa and that is a good thing. the Africa game was extremely well done. The graphics and actions were much nicer to watch than in Arctic.(Seemed cleaner and brighter? )The game mechanics were also better I thought in V. Africa than V. Arctic. Nice and simple, allowing one to watch the animal interactions without having to constantly keypunch to keep things moving along. A terrific game for use in teaching ecosystem interactions to kids! I hope Dinosauria continues this biological realness. one thing I found myself wanting in VentureAfrica was maybe a larger gameworld and more diversity in plant types. most animals specialize in a type of feeding source, sometimes a specific plant species!
many animals in the real world co-exist together because they use different resources in the same habitat, or even use the same resource differently (i.e. different bird species feeding in different zones in the same tree). this was nicely done in V. Africa and it would be nice to see more of it in Dinosauria. I also really enjoyed that you kept the games realistically balanced predator/prey species-wise. (few top predators,lots of prey species). most dinosaur interactions are thought to have been very similar to modern day ecosystems. Just bigger critters! ever thought of introducing disease as a population controller?
I expect to be wowed by this new one if its anything like V.Africa. looks very impressive already.
February 23rd, 2010 at 12:58 pm
I think to make a dinosaur eco sim game fun you need lots of dinosaur species to keep it fresh maybe have a limited amount of species for the map but the player can choose some of the species for the maps before starting their game
just an idea