Porter's World

Compared to Consoles

Ever played an amazing flash game, I mean, a truly excellent game, that just happened to be built for flash player? I have, only a few times, but they exist. I came across yet another one of those games recently, Remnants of Skystone, and I realized something, something that really disappoints me and pushes me away from this industry at times. Flash games that are of insane quality, often get judged far more harshly, and on the same level you would expect from a console game.

What happens, is that the game has so much polish, and so much content packed into it, that it works it’s way into the players minds to be treated as a console game. The player becomes far more picky, far more judgmental, and completely loses any ability on how to compare this new, quality game, to the far less quality flash game they played a half hour beforehand. This results in players dropping a 3 or 4 vote (often times lower) on Newgrounds or Kongregate, when they just handed out a 4 or 5 to a game half as well put together or polished just moments before.

It’s almost a compliment to receive such harsh judgment, but at the same time, it can be a punch in the face. For instance, if you don’t grasp that your game is so great that it’s receiving the effects of this odd psychological anomaly, you’ll likely be very angered by the reviews and less-than-deserving scores. The real insult comes when you see one of those games that directly attacks the addictive and power hungry nature of players, with a higher score. It’s annoying both as an observational player, and as a developer to see this sort of thing happen; it’s just discouraging.

I know I’m not the almighty judge who gets to decide what is and isn’t a great game, but I’m going to lay down my personal and well thought out opinion on a few games, and give some examples of what I’m talking about.  Let’s take a look at the most recent victim of this behavior, Remnants of Skystone. The game’s quality is absolutely amazing for a flash game. As a game in general, it’s still impressive. It has it’s flaws, I won’t deny that, but as a flash game, it’s among the best that the flash platform has ever seen. Despite this, it’s current score as of writing this, is a 3.88 on Kongregate. Here’s what really gets me, I’ve seen dress-up games with a score almost as high as this game. This might be fine and all, if the character customization screen alone wasn’t one of the best dress-up games I’ve ever seen; that’s not even looking at the RPG elements, the exploration, the platforming, the art, the towns, the quests, the co-op play, the “float” customization (your personal room), and so on. My point, single elements of this game are better than most flash games out there, and as a package, it’s amazing; yet it’s judged on the level of a console game, and put below many lesser games by score as a result. Another great game that suffers the wrath of this effect, is Drift Runners 2. The game itself is one of LongAnimals best, is significantly better designed than the first game, yet has extremely low ratings and reviews compared to the first, and what what you’d expect to see from it. There’s a few minor faults such as oil spills not effecting the opponent cars, but such small flaws shouldn’t outweigh the quality build this game offers. Those games aside, I’m sure you’ve all encountered an amazing game with reviews dropping zero’s because of something tiny, while the rest of the game is excellent; be it your own game, or one you played.

Overall, there really isn’t too much you can do about the issue, it’s just a bit of human psychology that’s out of our control. The best thing we can do is make sure that every little aggravating wrinkle in our game is removed before launch, because it’s those tiny things that will somehow change the votes of players, despite the amazing features the rest of the game has to offer. I guess we developers should just sit back, and accept the compliment, as backhanded as it may be.

Porter Vs Benologist

Greetings fellow members of the flash game industry. Word on the street is everything this blog has to offer isn’t all it’s cut out to be. Ben Lowry, AKA FlashGameLicense member Benologist, founder of SWFStats, has called me out on my lack of actual work. My perception of our numerous debates, simply put, is that he claims I’m all talk, and no action. Although I’ve created or co-created Stabika 1, Stabika 2, Stabika 3, Dominus Void, Gravibounce, Tower of Greed, Traverse (being released this week by Ninja Kiwi), and a few others that were contract work or not worth mentioning, there may be some truth to that statement. I in absolutely no way work “full time”. Creating flash games is indeed how I pay my rent (with very little help from revenue earned on this site), however I live a very affordable lifestyle which requires very little funds from me. I simply work enough to get by and enjoy a very social life; which is exactly what I’ve tried to accomplish. That being said, I in absolutely no way feel that my lack of releases disqualifies me from sharing (and knowledgeably so) anything on this blog.

So here’s what’s going down; Beno decided that it would be great to give me the rest of the month to come up with something sale worthy. I’m to do everything except for the art, which my partner Andrew will cover. If I’m to succeed in creating a game “sell-able” by April, he’s going to give me $100 USD. If I fail at doing so, he can continue to run his pompous mouth to me about how I never work and I’m all talk, and I’m not to consume any amount of alcohol for 2 weeks. Although I could easily win this bet on a technicality of creating something incredibly simple and “sell-able”, I’m actually going to knock something out of decent quality; at least by the standards of 2 weeks worth of game development.

Before you guys get the wrong idea about the relationship between Benologist and I, let me explain a bit about how this bet came to be. First off, Benologist is a business man. He makes games for money, and almost always no other reason. I almost always make games for fun, unless I’m in need of quick cash, in which case I’ll pull something together to get me some rent money for a few months. Having these different views creates a lot of tension between us during conversation, and very often results in a heated debate. These heated debates generally just die down, with either me or Benologist going back to work, or Benologist choosing a new target within the FGL chat room to badger. Either way, the relationship between the two of us isn’t exactly mortal enemies, sometimes it’s just fun to have a rival or pseudo enemy of sorts. That being said, he does talk a lot of crap about me, and he is an arrogant prick, egotistical, and an ass more often than not, and if I didn’t talk just a little bit of crap about him, this wouldn’t be nearly as fun, so let it begin; compliments to JJWallace for the wonderful art below,

I’m definitely looking forward to seeing how the bet turns out, I love proving people wrong when a worthy opportunity arises. In addition, I don’t need that $100, and to prove this, I’ll be framing the check or $100 bill he sends and sharing it with you all as soon as it’s in my hands. Overall, I’ll take this opportunity to not only prove him wrong, but to grab some extra cash for myself. I’ve already got an idea of what I want to do, so it’s about time I stop writing this and get to work. Check back often, as I’ll be updating my progress every few days up until the final day on April 30th. If you’re taking sides, or just have something to say, be sure to do so; can’t ever get enough entertainment.

Here are the Prince’s top picks of the month, these are the best of the best from March of 2010.

1.) Remnants of Skystone – Remnants of Skystone is an incredibly well-built, steampunk, action-oriented MMORPG. This game has the highest production value of any flash game I’ve ever seen. Incredible visuals, amazing structure, multiple character classes, vast maps to explore, flash really hasn’t seen anything to this degree yet. If you like RPG’s, action games, or MMORPG’s, definitely give Remnants of Skystone a play.

2.) Mushroom Madness 2 – Mushroom Madness is an incredibly polished and addictive action-oriented defense game. The game offers plenty of upgrades, unique enemies, multiple game modes, and a ton of charm. I loved the first one, and the second simply builds upon an already working formula.

3.) Robot Wants Kitty – I definitely have a soft spot for retro games, but I also have on for the Metroid series, this game reaches out to both my likings. Explore and work your way through a single open level, collect upgrades, and get yourself that kitty.

4.) Valthirian Arc – Valthirian Arc is a mini sized action-RPG with a lot of charm. It’s not too complex, it’s easy to play, and it has excellent audio and visuals. It is a bit lacking once you play it for a bit, but for a flash game, it’s just about right.

5.) Sushi Cat – Cats seem to be a theme this month, and Sushi cat is definitely a great addition. Everyone loves sushi (at least anyone awesome), and cats are basically amazing, combine the two, you get an awesome physics strategy game; who would have thought?

If you haven’t checked out all of the above games, I strongly suggest you head over and give them a play, they’re all of excellent quality. Be sure to check back frequently to the greatest source of quality games on the net.

Persistence

Microtransactions have been a pretty hot topic of discussion in the world of games, especially flash games. Services such as MochiCoins and GamerSafe are making their way into more and more games every day. These services definitely accomplish their tasks, and people are using them for sure, but something is still missing. Aren’t the earnings just not exactly where you think they’d be? I think something is missing, and that something is persistence. We all know that microtransactions work, and work well. MMO’s such as MapleStory, Trickster Online, Combat Arms, and more, all thrive from the earnings generated through microtransactions. Well, if it works, and flash games now have services such as GamerSafe and MochCoins, all should be well right? Not as well as you would think actually, because most flash games lack what the above MMO’s don’t, that word again, persistence.

When an MMO is created and released to the world, it sticks around, usually for a very long time. When a flash game is created and released into the wild, it doesn’t exactly get the longest life out there. Sure it could get front paged, maybe grab some badges on Kongregate, but it won’t be a hit for long, at least not your average, or even above average game. It’s exactly this that makes the effort of putting microtransactions in flash games almost a waste of time. Don’t get me wrong, there are exceptions, and it does offer additional revenue, sometimes rather significant revenue, but with a bit more planning, perhaps some persistence, those numbers could be significantly increased.

So there you have, I’ve mentioned persistence three times now, elaboration would probably be a good idea at this point. As I mentioned, flash games have a much shorter life than other games, at least a much shorter life containing a significant amount of players. This cripples any selling of goods within the game because there simply aren’t that many people around to pay anymore. However, if your game was to offer some persistence, this could be fixed, and earnings could be substantially better. If you were to add weekly updates to your game, such as new levels, bonus maps, new quests, just anything to get players to keep the game in mind and coming back, you would see a huge difference. If the game continues to change, it will continue to grab peoples attention, and that will have them coming back over and over again; granted your game is good enough to keep their interest in the first place, and people can find it.

Fantastic Contraption

That brings us to our next issue, how do players find a game that’s old, even if it has persistence? Sure many players may bookmark the game, remember it’s name, and so on, but many will forget about it as soon as it’s buried in the depths of sites across the net. There are many options on how to go about this, some a bit risky, others less effective. One option is to self sponsor the game and release it into the wild, while having many links lead back to a site dedicated specifically to the game. This could include character class guides, rankings, weapon guides, so on, there’s plenty of things that would draw players in. Once a player has clicked one of these links, they will likely remember the game has it’s own website and play it there, or go there when they can no longer find it on their portal of choice. If your project is a bit bigger, and likely to be more successful, you can take a different approach. You could simply host the game on a single site (generating a lot of traffic to that site in addition), and spread the word to bring people in. This could be done by hosting a development blog, doing press releases, getting some of the bigger review sites to look into your game before, and post completion, advertising with ad networks, so on. This may be a bit harder to start up, but your players will always know where to go to find your game, and you won’t risk getting your game buried around the net. In addition, you’ll see a nice boost in ad revenue from all of your fans playing the game on your site, rather than all around the net.

So we’ve determined what works best and what doesn’t, let’s take a look at a few games. Guardian Rock was a pretty successful sliding tile puzzle game. It uses MochiCoins, offers a few free goodies to users, and allows you to buy additional level packs. Although this game did well, it never made it to the top games section of many sites, if any. This unfortunately leaves this game rather low in views at this point (in comparison to what persistence could have offered), leading to low revenue from MochiCoins sales. Had this game had a bit of persistence for fans, the earnings would have been greatly increased. Fantastic Contraption is an incredibly successful game that made amazing earnings off of selling the full version of the game. It’s perhaps the most successful microtransactions flash game to date, in fact, I’m rather sure it is. As you’ll see, this game has what Guardian Rock doesn’t, a persistent place to play the game, a site dedicated entirely to it. Lastly, my newest example, Remnants of Skystone. Remnants of Skystone is an incredibly well built flash-based MMORPG. The game hits the nail on the head when trying to pull players into their world, as well as their microtransactions setup. The game is free to play, but offers a ton of additional features to those who join the Nidarian Guard, AKA the subscribed users list. Certain NPC’s sell things to Guard members only, menus remind you to join the guard for bonuses (without being annoying), and certain additional game features scream at you (figuratively) to join so that you can use them. The game is constantly getting new updates, and in-game links lead you to the game’s site; this is exactly the kind of persistence that will make a microtransactions game thrive. I keep in mind that Remnants of Skystone is basically a full blown MMORPG. I’m not saying that every flash game with microtransactions needs to be an MMORPG, but somewhere between what Fantastic Contraption and Remnants of Skystone does would be a perfect balance.

Become a Member

Persistence in microtransactions games isn’t exactly a genius thought, but nobody seems to be taking the idea in. Perhaps the majority of flash game developers have no experience with PHP and Databases, and because of that leave the idea behind completely, who knows. Regardless of the reasoning, it’s basically common sense to see that persistence will make all the difference in the world. This doesn’t mean you can take a sub-par project and add persistence to make amazing earnings via microtransactions, the game obviously has to be good in order to get a dime out of anyone (or perhaps addicting, but that’s a topic for another day). Either way, you definitely won’t be seeing a game with microtransactions and a lack of persistence out of me, hopefully more and more developers will follow.

Here are the Prince’s top picks of the month, these are the best of the best from January of 2010.

1.) Alice is Dead: Chapter 2 – The incredibly popular point and click adventure delivers its second chapter with even more sketchy fairy-tale goodness.

2.) Battalion: Vengeance – The Battalion series brings itself to a closing with this final chapter; fans of the series won’t be disappointed.

3.) Transcripted – Transcripted is one of the more unique games to come out as of late. It’s fantastic art style and suiting ambiance track create a fantastic atmosphere worth checking out on its own. That aside, it offers a fantastic mix of both puzzle and action elements, definitely a must play for anyone interested in either genre.

4.) Civilizations Wars – Civilizations Wars is a very charming tactical strategy game with a lot of new additions to an already working concept. Fans of Nano War will be pleased with it’s fantastic visuals and enhanced gameplay through the ability to use spells.

5.) Helicops – Helicops is an entertaining action game with very nice pseudo 3D visuals. Tons of upgrades, various enemy types, and fast paced gameplay make this a must play.

If you haven’t checked out all of the above games, I strongly suggest you head over and give them a play, they’re all of excellent quality. Be sure to check back frequently to the greatest source of quality games on the net.

Epic Shadow Office

“After over a year of working together, Andrew and myself are finally united. Andrew has just moved form Illinois to Vermont to officially get things going for Epic Shadow Entertainment. We’ve just finished setting up our first official office in the basement of my house, and will be moving up as we grow. We’ve been through a lot in the last year, had some ups and downs, even a false move at one point, but it’s finally here, and it’s awesome.”

Read More

That’s the word on the street at least, which is pretty accurate seeing as Andrew is just a few feet from me right now. The move has definitely been a huge change in our lives, both in and out of our career related activities. Andrew has upgraded his living environment, I have a significantly better work area, we’ve both been setting goals for the near future that are sure to expand both of our lives in great ways, it’s been good. If you’d like to see some pictures and read a bit more about the move, check out the post over at Alt Tab, our development blog.

Audacity

Anyone who works with audio needs a good program. When it comes to game design, audio is incredibly important, and there is always a bit of editing that must be done. Many people are under the impression that they need to pay for expensive audio software, or even hire someone to do their audio work, this isn’t true. Audacity is a free audio program that will cover all the basic needs of a game develop, and with ease. I won’t cover the entire program, but I will go over the basics that a game developer doing sound work will want to know.

Adjusting Volume Levels

An annoying issue that many games suffer, is the lack of unbalanced volumes for sounds. Having headphones on and suddenly hearing an ear piercing sound effect is the last thing your players want, and believe me it happens. To keep your players pleased with the audio of your game, and to allow them to hear all of your sound effects properly, it’s important to balance the volume of your sounds. Doing so in Audacity is incredibly easy; simply open your audio file, highlight the entire sound (or specific parts if you feel like getting fancy for whatever reason), go to Effect, then Amplify. Here you can drag the bar left and right to alter the volume change. Remember that going negative will decrease the volume of your sounds. Test your sound after each adjustment to see if you have the desired volume. I suggest having your music done first, this way you can run the swf and listen to your sound over the music as well. You should also keep your computer volume at a constant volume as go through all your sounds adjusting their volume, this will ensure that in the end, you’ll have a library of sounds that will work well together, and stand out over your music just the right amount.

Cleaning Up A Music Loop

First off, and most importantly, you need quality music to work with. If you’re looking for sources, check out my article on music for games. If you’re taking the free approach, and using music such as that which can be found in the Newgrounds Audio Portal, you’ll likely need to do some editing to the tracks before they’re ready to use. If you download a song from the net, even a loop, you’ll still generally have some work to do, depending on the source. Once you’ve selected a music loop, go ahead and open it up in Audacity. You’ll see no issues at first glance, in fact, testing the loop will sound as if it will loop perfectly; in reality, it will be alright, but nowhere near perfect. If you click on the magnifying glass tool, found on the top left in Audacity, you can zoom in on the sound waves to get a closer look. Take a look at the very beginning and end of your audio, you’ll find that there’s a straight line of absolute silence; even if this is 1/5 of a second, it’s going to show (You may have to zoom in multiple times to see this). Zoom in as much as needed and remove the silence as best as possible be selecting it with the mouse, and pressing delete. Do this to the end of the loop as well, removing any silence found at the end of the track. Now for the testing phase. Highlight the entire track, then press Ctrl + C to copy it. Now click on the two arrows pointing to the right in your playback toolbar, this will take your current selection tool to the end of your track. Paste the entire track by pressing Ctrl+V. You should now have a file with your loop copied twice, the copy starting immediately at the end of the original loop. If you successfully removed the silence at the beginning and end of your loop, you should be able to play the sound file and hear absolutely no hiccups in the middle where the repeat is taking place. If the loop still doesn’t sound right, and you’re certain you removed all the silence and copied the track correctly, it’s safe to say that the “loop” you downloaded wasn’t the greatest loop after all. If all went well, press Ctrl + Z until the copy of the loop is removed (this was only needed to test that it does indeed loop). You now have an excellent loop and are good to go, be sure to save the file as a .WAV as well as .mp3, having both is always a great idea. If you’re using flash, you’ll want to use the .WAV file, this will ensure a perfect loop after flash compresses your file to an mp3. If you’re using something else, such as FlashDevelop and Flex to compile, you’ll be forced to use a .mp3 file since .WAV’s aren’t supported. There is a work around for this, however that’s a bit complicated and will be a different post for a different day. All in all, if you’re using flash, use the .WAV file and you should be good to go.

Creating A Loop From A Non-Looping, Full Length Track

If you’re not finding an existing loop with the feel you’re looking for, worry not. Many non looping songs will have portions of the song that can be taken out and turned into a loop, doing this is actually a common task for me, and I find it rather effective. This is where the true power of an audio editing program comes in, you can get some quality loops in a short time, without spending a cent. Take a look at the song Cobalt Blue Sphere, notice how long the song is, and the fact that it isn’t a loop. Now take a look at one of our past games, Gravibounce, created by Andrew and myself of Epic Shadow Entertainment. Go back to Cobalt Blue Sphere on Newgrounds, and listen to the song from 3:58 – 4:25. As you’ll see, this is the portion of the song that you hear in Gravibounce; it was cut out using audacity. Another example of me doing this is in my first solely developed game, Dominus Void. The song “Lost”, by Ryan Stevens, or Reasoner as he’s often referred to as, was edited by myself to be a title screen loop, it came out rather well. With a good ear, some patience, and a free program like audacity, you too can create great loops such as this. This is far more complicated then simply removing the silence before an already created loop, but it gives you a track that nobody else has ever used, and one of great quality. The trick is to listen to the song closely, and use your ear to find a portion of the song that can loop into itself. When you’ve located the proper position, roughly cut out everything before and after the portion of the song you’ll be using. Be sure to give yourself some extra wave length, this is a good idea seeing as you can remove whatever you want, but you can’t add to the file once you’ve removed too much. Zooming in during the editing process will also give you much more accuracy over what you delete, and you can often see where the new measures starts due to the visual increases in wave length. Use your ear and closely narrow the intro down to the first beat of a measure, this is usually pretty easy to determine in a song, unless it’s something with a tremendous amount of percussion. Once you’ve got the intro down, edit the end of the file so that it ends at the end of a measure, this is usually after 4 major beats as most music is in 4/4 time. Be sure to slice only a little off at a time, then use the testing method as mentioned earlier. Count the beats as the loop plays, if it hiccups before the 4th beat plays, you’ve cut too much off, if it plays a little bit passed the 4th beat, you’ve still got a little more cutting to do. This is an advanced technique, and takes some practice, but it can produce some pretty awesome loops, ones that only your game will have at that. As a rule of thumb, always ask the artist if you can edit their work to create a loop, and always give them credit for their original piece.

Cutting Down A Sound Effect’s File Size

Audio is by far the biggest contributor to flash game file size. Although there are a number of compression options to reduce file sizes for audio, there are also a number of techniques that can be done before the files are even imported into your game’s library. One of the most simple, and effective, is to cut the length of your sound effects. If you open up many of your sound effects in audacity, you’ll notice that the sound waves die out, and trickle for some time, often times doubling the wave length of a sound. Although there is indeed sound going on here, you often times can’t hear it, especially over music. To greatly reduce the file size of effects, simply cut off these trickling endings bit by bit. Each time you cut, listen to the sound to ensure that quality isn’t lost, if it isn’t, cut some more. You’ll be surprised at how much of a sound wave can be cut off before any audible changes occur. Using this method on your entire library of sound effects will greatly reduce your file size, making for quicker load times, and in the end, happier players.

Correcting Audio Files

Ever had an mp3 file that flash just wouldn’t accept? The reason for this is most likely that your mp3 file has a bit rate that flash doesn’t support. You can check the bit rate by right clicking on your sound file, going to properties, then to summary. If the bit rate is not one that is shown on chart below, you’ll likely encounter problems. The good news is, you can simply import your audio file into Audacity, then export it as an mp3 again; this will change the bit rate to 112 kbps, the default bit rate for mp3′s in Audacity.

Bit Rate Chart, Source: Articulate Blog

Conclusion

That’s a lot of power for a free audio program, respect to the authors for such an awesome program. Aside from the above, you can do plenty of other complex variations to your audio files. Some of these include pitch changes, tempo changes, adding echo, adding reverberation, bass amplification, and more. Audacity may not be a full fledged audio program, but it definitely has what’s needed to take care of your basic audio editing needs, and that should be enough for any flash game developer.

The Boss

Being your own boss is pretty sweet. As a full time web developer, and flash game developer, I’ve come to enjoy far more time in my room and outside, rather than making pizza on the make line at Domino’s. As great as being self employed is, I perhaps jumped into the self employed role a bit too early, and I’m facing the consequences of that now. I do however plan to push through hard times and succeed, but I’m here to share the pros and cons of being your own boss, and what you can do to ensure a smother ride if you happen to choose this wonderful route.

Everyone wants to be there own boss; nobody likes taking orders from others, especially when your input on matters isn’t really appreciated, or even listened to. Aside from the horrible wages and lack of free time I experienced working a “normal” job, I also got sick of taking orders from someone above me, especially when that someone wasn’t exactly as intelligent or deserving of that position in comparison to myself. This is one of many things that finally drove me to the decision of quitting my job and becoming self employed. Sounds awesome right? For the most part, yes, but there are a few negative aspects to it that I’ll go over now.

I admittedly jumped into being self employed a little too soon, I can cope with it now, but at a price I would have avoided had I known what I know now. I definitely should have gotten more experience under my belt before making this my actual day to day job, especially without having too much funds saved up. Stability of income is an incredibly important thing, if you’re not entirely prepared to be out on your own and self employed, you’ll find yourself facing unstable income from time to time. This can all be easily avoided if you save up enough funds to support possible issues, so I definitely advise anyone considering becoming self employed to do so. I also encourage you to be well prepared for what it is you’re doing. If you’re a programmer, make sure you know your stuff, learning is much harder when you have to worry about paying the rent and where that money will come from.

The next issue, and biggest issue for myself and others from what I’ve heard, is motivation. It’s really hard to put in the proper amount of hours, as well as actually stay focused, when sitting in front of a computer. I’m not addicted to any social networking sites, nor do I play any MMO’s, yet I still find myself wasting far too much time in front of the computer; this generally consists of doing things such as browsing the net, reading interesting articles, looking at computer parts on Newegg, and so on, it’s just one thing after another. When I finally do get settled down, and into a mental state that is ready for work, a friend will call me up and invite me to some gathering that all my friends are going to, something I have a hard time passing up when there isn’t someone there to tell me no. It’s not that I don’t have self control (believe me, I’ve passed many events in the last few months), it’s just not as easy to pass up a good time when nobody is stopping you but yourself. If you think that this could be a possible issue for yourself, check out my other article titled Motivation Boost. In addition, I strongly advise you to change your desktop background to a little motivation, it’s effects are rather impressive.

Lastly, there’s the wonderful world of taxes. This really shouldn’t be an issue, at least once you’ve learned what’s required of you as someone who is self employed, but unfortunately for me, I’m one of those people who has been delaying the research and will have to deal with it when the time comes. Some sponsors require you to fill out a W2, while others don’t. Regardless, I don’t exactly know what to do when it comes to my taxes and being self employed, and this could prove to be an issue in a few years. It really isn’t a huge issue since I have records of all my game sponsorships, but it’s still something you have to be aware of when becoming self employed.

Cons aside, there are definitely perks to being your own boss. I can sleep in as late as I want, whenever I want. I’ll repeat that for those who are in shock, yes, I can sleep in as late as I want. There is no greater perk to being your own boss than that. I don’t have to rush out of bed, take a shower, catch a bus, then fly down to a place I don’t want to be. Instead, I can wake up slowly, grab some food, hop online for awhile, then let the course of my day roll out as I please. We all remember the dreaded sound of an alarm clock waking us up for school or work, rarely do I hear that sound anymore, and when I do, it’s not I who has to wake up with the feeling that smashing something against the wall is a great idea.

As far as free time goes, there is a lot more free time to be had, and it really won’t hurt you if you use a bit of self control and plan out your work schedule. On that note, I highly suggest you plan out actual hours for yourself, don’t feel that you have to work those exact hours, but giving yourself a rough outline will help you maintain a balance of free time and actual work accomplished. I suggest using the program Klok, it’s an excellent program to keep track of the hours you work, and those you don’t.You’ll also find that having more free time makes you a happier person, which in turn makes your actual production hours more valuable because you’re in a better mindset. The amount of work achieved when happy and working on something passionate is significantly larger than work you have to do, and really don’t give a damn about.

Lastly, and most importantly, there is a certain sense of accomplishment one gets from working for him or herself. My biggest complaint with a “normal” job is that I constantly felt like I was wasting my life, like I was literally a slave to society and the system that it rests within. Making pizza is fine, but it’s not something I want to do, it’s not something I can feel proud of. People shouldn’t have to sit behind counters and take orders for nearly 25% of their life (168 hours in a week, full time employment is 40 hours, often times more). If I’m going to be working that long, it’s going to be towards something I’m passionate about, something that I enjoy, regardless of how tiresome it can be at times. That being said, I would rather work 40 hours a week as a game designer and just barely be able to pay my rent, then work 20 hours at a gas station making more, it’s just that much more fulfilling.

All in all, being your own boss is excellent. You’ll live a happier lifestyle, feel more accomplished, and eventually make more money than any retail job will ever pay you. It takes a lot more work than those jobs do, and often times it’s much harder work, but you’ll gain valuable knowledge along the way, and actually enjoy yourself. The few cons I mentioned aren’t really cons, but more things you should be aware of before becoming self employed. If you enter carefully, and well prepared, you’ll find yourself a much happier and successful individual.

Here are this week’s useful links posted by me, for you, check them out,

1.) Macropayments: Steve, over at 8bit rocket, expresses his opinion on the idea of a macropayments.
2.) Unity3D Game Portals: Unity3D is slowly on the rise, follow it closely, it could impact flash games greatly.
3.) Why You Should Use Flex And Flash Together: Title says it all, check it out.
4.) 3 Minute Lesson: Lain gives us some quick pointers on some key factors you need to keep in mind when making games.
5.) Destroy All Cars: Squiz is working on a new game in which you can drive fast and smash things, I’m sold.

Check back with the Prince often, because I love you.

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.