Porter's World

What Not To Do

One of the biggest mistake game developers make, is having a game that isn’t fun, even though it is in fact playable. Sometimes this is caused by something rather simple, such as the game running sluggish. Although lag is a huge issue in many games, that’s not what I’m referring to, I simply mean the game plays too slow, the action doesn’t come fast enough. If ever there was something you don’t want to do in game design, this is it, because today’s players have even less patience than those of the past. In addition, you’ll find yourself working weeks, even months on a game, only to have absolutely no sponsor interest, and not an idea why such is the case. If you really think this doesn’t apply to you, read on. Notice I didn’t say “One of the biggest mistake new game developers make” in my opening statement, that’s because even world famous companies make these mistakes, everyone does time to time.

The best example of a game that has been entirely broken from sluggish gameplay is Final Fantasy VI on the PS1; it came with Final Fantasy V in the Final Fantasy Anthology collection. Final Fantasy VI, as many of you may know, is one of the most impressive RPG’s of it’s time, and by no means a bad game. Aside from being impressive, it also had a lot of random battles, which was fine on the SNES, but absolutely horrid due to load times between battles on the PS1. It never should have been ported in my opinion; the down time spent just waiting is so immense that it honestly ruined the game, I didn’t play more than an hour into it. I’ll remind you that when I first got it, I was psyched to play one of my classic favorites again, and have no problems with turned based battles and random encounters; the remake however, was unplayable to my standards. Although the above issue is mostly due to hardware, the company was aware of the issues before releasing the game, it was just poor judgment on their part to ever port the game.

Final Fantasy may be a console game, but that doesn’t mean that flash games can’t suffer the same consequences. In fact, flash games are more susceptible to failing because of this, due to the low patience of casual gamers. As some of you may know, I review a lot of games over at FlashGameLicense; you would be surprised how many games suffer from slow paced gameplay. Slow gameplay issues I’ve encountered vary. I’ve seen action games where the tank moved far too slow, sliding puzzle games where the block moved too slow, games where the player could outrun the bullets shot by his own weapon, and more. As cool as a game could be where you have some power that allows you to slow down time and run around bullets, that wasn’t what this game was going for, and that called for very obvious failure. You may think all of these are novice mistakes, but there are some very professional games out there with this issue, some that suffer horribly, others that could have benefited from an increase in speed in certain aspects.

All of this may sound like another novice mistake that you’re probably telling yourself you’ll never do, but I guarantee that somewhere in your future works, there will be a time when one of your games is severely hurt, or hindered by such an issue. The biggest reason for this, is that most developers generally don’t even notice these issues, this is usually due to a curtain of illusion that is thrown over a developer when they work on their own games; we as developers become oblivious to some of the most obvious faults with our games and will never notice them until told by an outside source. If you ever suspect that you’re game could in fact suffer from such an issue, take a look at Four Second Frenzy or Grid 16, they are fast paced from start to finish, exactly what the market loves. You may be thinking, well I have a puzzle game, or a defense game, same applies; even tower defense games,  such as Flash Element TD 2 offer the ability to speed up the game once you’ve got things under control. No matter what genre your game is, there are always moments when things can get dull, not always due to gameplay elements, but how slowly they’re presented. No matter how open minded about your game you think you are while testing, get others to test the game and give you feedback; you’re far better off being surprised with testers catching sluggish gameplay, rather than your players when the game goes live.

Classic Games

Games have evolved a lot over the years, so much in fact that some developers have begun to forget to focus on the basics in game design. Classic games have been around since the days people camped outside bars to play Pacman, yet despite their age, they still remain popular today. Modern games are often frowned upon for taking too much time making things shiny, and not enough time making things fun. I’m in no way against modern gaming, but it’s my honest opinion that very few developers do things right these days.

Now you may be thinking I’m just nostalgic for oldschool games, especially with me releasing games such as Tower of Greed and praising Super Mario World all the time, I can assure you this isn’t the case. I am nostalgic for classic games, I won’t deny that, but I take that into consideration when observing games and my thoughts still stand true. Every modern game in existence today builds itself upon ideas that have already been done. New games may expand upon these foundations, but the foundations are always the same. There are certain fundamentals within games that please us over and over again, from game to game, they’re just disguised differently each time. Puzzle games make us think, then give us gratification upon completion, that’s what makes them good, always has, always will be. Action games keep us entertained because we can move quickly, explore, use cool abilities, kill things, experience a challenge, never have a dull moment, the list goes on.  Contra on the NES may not be Ninja Gaiden 2 on the Xbox 360, but the same elements exist, and without them the game would fail. What made Mario so great? You explored (went to new worlds and found secrets), collected coins, avoided tricky situations (were presented challenge), and had a definite ending that was to give you gratification upon completion. Mario hasn’t changed since it’s first game, Super Mario Galaxies may have tons of shiny new features, but those core elements all exist, and the game designers are definitely taking those into consideration when designing the game.

Let’s take a look at a new game that really utilizes what I’m getting at. Grid 16 is an amazing flash game, built almost entirely on a collection of classic mechanics. It adds the neat twist of switching between 16 games as you go, but if you were tossed even 100 crappy games, would you care that it was switching between them? Grid 16 is successful in part by it’s creative switching mechanic, but mostly due to the fact that it presents a bunch of proven games to you all at once. Everyone loves pong, even if for just a few seconds, it’s great fun. Platforming has been around forever, still stands strong to this day. Dodging has been a core element of games such as Pacman and Space Invaders. As you can see, Grid 16 basically is the classics, nearly all of them tossed into one game.

Okay, so all games are built upon the same core foundations, what does this mean? In short, study your classic games, they are a limitless source of knowledge pertaining to what makes all games great. Combining your knowledge of what makes the classics so great, while keeping the importance of originality in mind, is exactly what makes a successful game. If you’re looking for a bit of something to get you into the classic games, I suggest watching the movie “The King of Kong“, it was recently suggested to me and I loved it; it’ll definitely open up your eyes to how the gaming world used to be, and perhaps give you ideas of where you can take things in the near future.

Becoming A Game Developer

There’s a lot of work needed in order to become a game developer. People often feel that if they have an artist who can animate, and a programmer who knows the language, that they’ve got a team ready to produce quality  games. In reality, those skills are just the tip of the iceberg. A team ready to produce games may be true, but nothing at all says those games are going to be of quality. It takes a lot more than knowing the coding language you’re using, or being an excellent artist; game design itself should be thought of as the third skill required along side programming and art.

I myself excel in my ability in game design. I admittedly lack in programming skills greatly in comparison to what I wish I knew, but I make up for that with my ability to both detect what makes a great game, and how to build one. I find it odd that most teams don’t feel they need a project manager of sorts, someone who understands how games work, what games are good, and what it takes to make them. The team doesn’t necessarily need someone dedicated specifically to this, but one of the artists or preferably programmers should have this skill.

The reason I give this position so much credit, other than the fact that it’s my strong point and I’m proud of it, is that it truly is a concept that I hope more teams embrace. We’ve all come to accept that average art won’t do, if you get higher quality art you’ll see your game value multiply by at least two-three times, if not significantly more. That being the artist’s job, we can look at the programmer now. The programmer is supposed to know what the game needs, then program it. They simply look at a set of instructions and bring the game to life. The last position, again in my opinion usually the secondary skill of the programmer, if not both members, is to know what it takes to make a great game. This however does not mean that the artist cannot have the mind set of a programmer and contain these skills as well, I simply imply that I believe them to be more common among programmers. They need to get over the hype of the game idea and analyze if the game will actually be quality fun; far too many games work as far as functionality, but when it comes to fun they’re simply a bore.

You may be wondering why I suggest that the programmer is the one who holds the magic of the third skill, the answer is simple. The programmer generally knows how the game works from the ground up. They must know how the ideas suggested will co-exist with ideas currently out there, and leave room for ideas to come. That being said, the programmer really shouldn’t be some guy reading an instruction manual on how to build the game, he should be deciding how the game itself is built. This can be done with a firm knowledge of programming, however it’s significantly easier if you possess the skill of understanding how games are built, as well as what makes them fun.

If you’ve already got these skills present within your team, you’re in great condition. If you lack these skills however, I highly suggest you look into partnering with somebody who has experience and understands the above concepts. They may seem like common sense at first, but it’s things like this that make the difference between the average games on the net and the big hits. I’ll continue on these thoughts with follow-up articles elaborating on how you can gain such skills yourself or refine what skills already exist. In the mean time, check out some other useful articles such as, The Importance of Plot and Game Inspiration, to help get yourself prepared for becoming a better game developer.

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3

Both Games, Different Designs

Throughout the last few years I’ve studied what works in the flash gaming community and what doesn’t. There is without a doubt a number of tactics to be followed to ensure that your game is fit for this industry. Such tactics exist because there is a clear difference in how game design for the flash industry works when compared to game design for console systems. Everything from the difficulty to the controls used must be thought out differently when developing a flash game, not doing so could result in a great game, in the wrong market.

As much as I hate to admit it sometimes, there really is a difference in flash game design in comparison to console game design. Games developed for flash must be far more casual in most cases, and even when not casual must be developed entirely differently in other aspects. The controls in your game must be very clear, and very simple to use. Most flash game players don’t have enough hand eye coordination to press two or three different buttons as well as the arrow keys or WASD keys to move, it’s just too complicated and takes more time to get used to than most players have or are willing to give. Aspects such as difficulty must be decreased significantly in order to appeal to the majority of players. A good way to go about this is to make what you think is easy, hard, and move from there.

Flash game players have far less of an attention span compared to console players as well, for numerous reasons. Firstly, they don’t pay for your game, so they don’t feel compelled to stick around and get their money’s worth out of it. Secondly, there’s a lot more games out there, every day tons of new flash games come out, if your game doesn’t impress them very quickly, they’ll move on to the next one without thinking twice. Another reason your first impression must be so important is due to a games pre-release exposure. Flash games get very little exposure before release, if any. Console games will have trailers, articles, tons of talk among gamers for months to come, some times years. This allows users to have more patience when trying out the game, because they know it gets good from what they’ve seen. With a flash game however, they don’t know what’s coming, and if you don’t impress them right off, they’re not about to stick around and find that out.

The above brings quite the issue to any developers plate, especially those in favor of retro games. Many developers such as myself have a craving to develop games in the style of NES and SNES games, challenging, minimal instructions, and fun. The issue with this however, is that although such a game can be a top notch game in general, the flash industry isn’t always the best place for it due to the above reasons. If someone was to develop a new IP and have it play nearly identical to a hit SNES or NES game, it will do alright in the flash industry, but never live to it’s full potential in comparison to a non-flash platform. Games such as these just aren’t meant for the web, at least if you’re looking to get the money the game quality deserves. Such games in my opinion belong on systems such as the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP, or perhaps on Xbox Live Arcade.

With the above in mind, I urge all developers to really just develop what they want. I’m in no way saying you shouldn’t make  games such as Tower of Greed or Raider Episode 1, I’m simply warning you of the financial consequences of doing so. I myself will never stop trying to perfect a balance of both, but it certainly isn’t an easy one and I’ll lose out on a lot of potential revenue in the process. Either way, with the above knowledge you can further your planning methods in game development when trying to maximize your profits for your final product; remember though, it’s not all about the cash, making games for fun is where it’s at.

Raider Episode 1

They just don’t make games like they used to, or do they? Some developers do indeed make them like they used to and Raider Episode 1 is proof. Raider Episode 1 looks and feels like an incredibly refined NES game. It offers incredible challenge, simple controls and tons of platforming goodness. In my opinion, Raider Episode 1 has definitely come the closest any flash game has ever come to delivering the challenge and feel of a a great classic NES game.

As I mentioned, Raider Episode 1 offers an incredibly challenging experience. It is by far too challenging for any casual flash gamer, but it delivers an experience unlike any other flash game on the net today. The level design is fantastic, the enemies simple, yet fun, and the distance between check points far enough to nearly drive you crazy, but close enough to keep you addicted and trying over and over when you die and start at the last one. The art is very retro, but refined to appeal to those who dislike pure 8-bit graphics, which is a smart move since I’ve found that points are often taken away in the public’s eye if you go too retro. The music is awesome and the sound effects incredibly retro and fitting. There are 3 difficulty modes for players to select, the easiest still being a bit too hard for casual flash gamers, and the hardest challenging the most hardcore NES veterans. For those who really desire a challenge, the game awards you a rank after completion which ranges from E to S, S being the best. This rank will be saved to your computer and read in when playing future installments of the game as well. Regardless of the difficulty selected, there is enough difficulty in this game to satisfy anyone with a thirst for challenge.

Unlike most NES games, Raider Episode 1 does in fact have a story. It’s going to be slowly introduced throughout five episodes. You play as Arkus Zei, a space pirate in need of some currency. Arkus is told of a rumor regarding a great ship filled with relics from a civilization that long ago destroyed themselves. Out of curiosity you pursue the coordinates you were told and indeed arrive upon a large ship. You must navigate this ship in search for relics and escape with the loot. You are armed with a close range sword and a long ranged blaster to defeat any threats you encounter. In addition to the default story, players will be able to see a slightly altered version of the story in the final installment, if their rank throughout all five episodes meets the requirements. The story is interesting enough and most will enjoy the additional content, and those who don’t can simply skip it. All in all it’s a nice addition that helps wrap up the package for this great game.

Overall there can’t be enough said to do this game justice. The game did suffer some rather low ratings on the net, but that’s unfortunately the result of developers holding the hands of players and making things too easy in modern day games. In the end, Raider Episode 1 is perfect for anyone looking to go back to the NES days or a great challenge, definitely give this game a fair play, you won’t regret it.

Inspiration

Game inspiration is one of the most important aspects of game design. Inspiration can be found in a wide variety of things, ranging from classic or modern games, to a real life event that you witnessed or read about. Such things help make the designer passionate about the project, and this passion generally fuels a much stronger creative process and higher willpower to complete the project at hand. No matter how well you can program, or how well you can do art, having proper inspiration will definitely boost the outcome of your projects.

There is definitely a difference in flash game design Vs console game design, but that’s an entirely different topic, one to come in a few days at that. Regardless of these differences, inspiration can be found nearly anywhere. I personally find games that reside on the classic systems to hold the most inspiration. Not only are these games the most fun and most challenging, they are the most diverse with their use of basic gameplay mechanics as well as creativity of combining those mechanics. Games such as Shatterhand on the NES executed elements such as platforming, customizable power-ups, gravity switching, boss battles, and much more, something that many games just don’t go to such lengths to do anymore, especially flash games. Although nostalgia definitely plays a part, I think there’s a deeper reason for why games like Super Mario World and Super Metroid are still remembered so well today, they were simply better games with far more thought put into them. I can’t think of a single modern game that captures my imagination as well as Little Nemo: The Dream Master did, and it’s reasons such as this that make classic games far more inspirational for me.

I used the classics as my first example, but that’s definitely not where your inspiration needs to start or stop. I find inspiration in many other games, flash games included. A small list of games that have really reached out to me and sparked my creative process include (but are not limited to), Castle Crashing the Beard, Chronotron, Closure, Don’t Look Back, Drakojan Skies Acolytes, Fishing Girl and RaidenX. All of these games are top notch in production value, but most importantly are incredibly inspirational. When I look at Castle Crashing the Beard, I instantly think of River City Ransom for the NES and what could be done to combine these two games. The smooth 2D fighting Castle Crashing the Beard offers, combined with the RPG elements, variety of attacks, and explorative gameplay River City Ransom offers would create one of the best flash games the net has ever seen. It’s this kind of inspiration that game designers need, they need to be able to look at a few different games, figure out how to combine the best elements those games offer, and then evolve upon the idea. If developers would just stop repeating what’s already been done and proven to work, and just take a risk like designers of the past did, we would see modern games that rival, or even surpass those of our past.

Games are definitely a great place to find inspiration for game design, but believe or not it can easily be found elsewhere. Inspiration can be found basically anywhere, such as books, movies, dreams, and even a real life situation. A simple day dream can turn into a full fledged idea if you can relate the scenario to a game you’ve played before, or if you can pick a few basic mechanics that would fit well with the scenario. For instance, if you day dream about jumping over tall buildings in giant leaps, you probably don’t want to build a puzzle game, you may however look into what popular platforming tricks have been used and think of how you can turn the concept into something fun. As far as real life scenarios go, I’ve caught myself staring off at a scenery over the lake that had fog over the mountains, and then proceeded to coming up with a random RPG oriented world with a fair amount of depth all pertaining to this one scene. As corny as that sounds, it’s a great place to start. That idea, combined with a game I played on a PS1 demo disk nearly 10 years ago sparked an even further  idea, one I’ll eventually bring out someday.

As you can see, inspiration can be found basically anywhere if you’re looking for it. Not everybody can remember every mechanic of NES games they played 10 years ago, or stare across a lake and get a brilliant idea, but with a bit of work and desire, I’m sure there’s plenty of inspiration to be found. Game design is as open as writing, it’s not set in stone. Just because things have been done, and certain things continue to be an unofficial standard, there’s nothing stopping  you from going completely out of the ordinary and pulling something new together. All in all, there’s plenty of inspiration to be found; if you weren’t seeing it all that clearly before, perhaps this article will open the way.

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.

Physics Games

I’m sure nearly everyone reading this is aware of the success that physics based games have been bringing in. Games such as Splitter, Super Stacker, Fantastic Contraption, Totem Destroyer and Civiballs have done amazingly well on the net thus far. There’s clearly something majestic about these games in the eye of the player, but what is it? Do they feel that the game is better because it offers realistic physics which are rarely seen in games? Does the general public (dare I say it) enjoy using their brains to solve puzzles using real life knowledge? There’s something about these games that really draws players in, and because of that, sponsors too.

Many developers have heard of the Box2D physics engine, the power behind nearly all of these highly successful physics games. Many developers enjoy using this amazing tool, while others put it down for one reason or another. Regardless of developers opinions, it’s clear that the games produced with Box2D that were given a decent amount of effort pay off very well. Civiballs is the highest paid sponsored game by King.com, and many other physics games are up there among other sponsors. Many developers like to use Gemcraft as the ideal example of a successful game, which it certainly is, but what many of them don’t know, is that some of these physics based games have sold for more, a lot more. Without a doubt, games such as Gemcraft have a ton of more work put into them, but somehow these physics games with a significantly lower effort put into them (not low, just lower) are doing amazingly well along side them. With this newly found info to many of you, you may want to think twice about ignoring Box2D any longer, unless you prefer making less money for more work. That’s not to say developers should all flock to physics games and abandon others, but I’d love to see some more creative takes on the genre, and I’m sure sponsors would be willing to dish out the cash, judging by recent sales of similar games.

Let’s take a closer look at a physics game and dissect it, let’s try and figure out what makes these games so successful. Dynamic Systems is a brand new game (at the time of writing this) that was sponsored for a price that definitely sits up among the top paid for games. The goal is to guide a small metal ball to the bucket in each stage using various tools such as dominoes, bouncing platforms, metal rails and more. My first impression of this game’s success, as with most physics based games, is that it’s incredibly user friendly. I’m against hand-holding in most cases, but it actually works in these kind of games and I know from experience in game design that players love to have things spelled out for them, at least at first. There really isn’t any confusion to be found within the first few levels, new elements are introduced one by one and in very easy scenarios. The trick here is that the difficulty would be boring if it was the same over and over, however since a new mechanic is introduced every level for some time, the difficulty is completely disregarded, a smart move in level design. Once you’ve learned every mechanic the game has to offer, it’s up to you to think on your own and solve the puzzles combining your newly found knowledge. From a player perspective, I believe I can see why these games do so well. Most flash game players are complete novices at games, they don’t like a huge challenge, especially at first. These games teach you everything you need to know step by step in a way that isn’t boring, nor does it actually appear to be a tutorial you would normally click through, despite the fact that the first few levels indeed are just a tutorial in disguise. Aside from that, I believe the realistic approach of using physics, something we encounter every day in the real world, really appeals to gamers. I believe they feel like the developer has done a good job mimicking the real world and that impresses them. Not only that, the real physics makes them feel comfortable because they’re already aware of many of the reactions they will get in the game, because it’s based on what they live with every day in the real world.

Regardless of my opinion on why these games are successful, they certainly do well. Players love them time after time and the games seem to recieve a higher number of views than their surrounding games on nearly all portals. Weather you’re a fan of Box2D or not, I would recommend giving it a look. If you’ve got a creative mind and the ability to use this library, you’re certain to come out with some very nice cash in the next few months. On a complete side note, I recently said that achievements were going to be the next big thing in flash games, now it seems that real physics is the new trend, sponsors better check their bank accounts when developers start using both.