What NOT to do

One of the most important things developers need to keep in mind when creating a game, is that you need to avoid annoying the player at all costs. Whether this be avoiding tedious level design, making sure your player doesn’t have to grind in your latest RPG, or simply making menu items contrast well so they don’t have to squint for navigation, you really need to make sure they don’t get bothered by anything. A very popular mistake many developers make is to combine mouse support with keyboard support, but make both mandatory on the same screen.

Out of all things a quality game can do wrong, this is probably the biggest. There’s nothing more annoying then dying in a keyboard controlled game, and having a menu pop up in which you must grab the mouse and press retry, rather than pressing enter or space to continue. There’s really no excuse for this, it’s simply poor design. It may sound minor, but small aggravations such as this really drive players away. Not only will players stop playing your game, they may even be so angered at the moment of quitting, that they’ll drop you a zero vote as they mutter how much the game sucks before leaving the page. This is clearly something you really don’t want happening with games under your name, it lowers it’s success and builds you a bad reputation.

We’ve now gone over what not to do, so how do we stay away from an issue as gargantuan as forcing the player to use both the mouse and keyboard in places where it’s entirely unnecessary? I have a few ideas, but I’ll share just one of them, don’t. When you design a game that uses either mouse or keyboard (but not both) for gameplay, stick to that throughout the whole game. If you play the game with the keyboard and you die, make it so you can retry with the keyboard, there’s no reason to have your user reach for the mouse only to press a button so they can start over. It’s highly recommended that you always add mouse support to increase sponsor click-throughs, but don’t force it, always permit the player to use what the gameplay uses, as well as the mouse.

It really isn’t hard to avoid, but far too many developers forget how annoying this can be to the player, which is a big mistake. I’ve seen some popular artists do this in some rather large titles, and although these games did great, I find it perplexing that such a great artist made such a novice mistake. That’s about all there is to know regarding this matter, pick a control scheme and stick to it, and always allow the mouse in addition to keep your sponsors happy.

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3

Making Games For Fun

Game design to me is and always will be something I do for fun, as it should be for everyone. I know this may sound like incredibly obvious information, and it may be, but too many people don’t understand or practice the importance of this. The flash industry is full of people trying to score some extra cash, and it definitely lacks a fair amount of people designing games for the sole reason of bringing their ideas to life. There are many reasons for creating flash games, money should be nearly the last on that list. Game design should be about fun, not some extra cash.

There are many reasons to make games, and with these reasons generally comes 3 different categories that all games fit into. The first is practice games, games designed mostly to give the developer more experience as they evolve as a game designer. These games are usually started just so that the developer can dive into some new material to build their skills. In the end many of these games come out with a decent quality and it would be a waste not to unleash them upon the world. The second category games fit into, is games created to earn extra cash. This isn’t to say the developer didn’t have fun creating the game, however the original incentive and much of the planning of the game was highly based around bringing in some cash. The last category is games made for fun. A skilled developer creating a game entirely for the sake of fun will see far more success than the other two categories will, and, as the name implies, have more fun.

The developer creating games for fun truly puts themselves in the eyes of the gamer, and because of this creates everything exactly how the gamer would want it. Developers always try and view their games from an outside perspective of the gamer, but this is much easier said than done. The ultimate way to overcome this obstacle is to create your game because you’re passionate about it, you want to play the final version, you want it to have the features you imagine, you are it’s biggest fan and somehow in control of molding it exactly how you please. A successful game that was created purely for fun is Super Mario 63, a very huge hit on the net at the time of writing this. Another decent hit at the time was Stabika Episode 2, with over 1.3 million plays on CrazyMonkeyGames alone. I created Stabika for fun, I put in far more hours than I got paid for, and I didn’t care at all, it was a blast to make. I was learning, I was having fun, that’s what it should always be about. It’s this mindset that allows developers to create truly amazing games, games that go big and rise in the ranks of best games of all time.

As I’ve already said, this is common knowledge, but it truly isn’t practiced as much as it should be. I entered the flash industry making games for fun, with absolutely no idea I could be making money off of what I was creating. I was very picky about how smooth stuff ran, I was constantly upgarding features and I worked very fast, because I was passionate about my work, my fun. It wasn’t until much later that I found out I could get money for my projects and started seeking sponsorships. Regardless of the cash, I always try to create games that are fun that I’ll enjoy playing. I’ll admit that I take extra time thinking of how to increase earnings in the eyes of the sponsor, but all of this comes after one thing, creating a great game, for fun.