Porter's World

Pixel Purge

Awhile back I took on a little bet with Ben Lowry, fellow game developer and founder of Playtomic. The name of the game I created for that bet was titled Pixel Purge. It’s come a long way since that time, and has turned into a rather successful flash game. Although the earnings for the game weren’t nearly what I was hoping for, I did learn more in the few months developing /selling it than I have with any other project to date. I’ll now do a break down of how I thought of the game, my expectations, what worked, what didn’t, earnings, and more.

ORIGINAL PLANNING

The idea came to me where nearly all good game ideas come to me, sitting in the mall eating Taco Bell. It was nothing completely original, in fact, I simply wanted to create a better version of a flash game I had dumped a few hours into myself. That game was Cell Warfare. Cell Warfare itself isn’t ground-breaking in any possible way, but it was at the time (in my opinion) the best arena shooter flash games had to offer. The first thing I did was play the game for a good hour or so, to get a feel of what worked and what didn’t. Here’s a short list of flaws with Cell Warfare, as found in my original GDD (Game Design Document) for Pixel Purge.

• The camera system in Cell Warfare was annoying. You moved closer to the edge of the screen at all times, not just when you reach the end of the arena. This feels cramped, and made the distance between the player and off-screen enemies unfair at times.
• The collision detection in Cell Warfare is horrid. The ink splotches in particular are nearly game-ruining.
• I found the yellow quick chasing enemies to be too fast. My deaths by them felt more cheap than my fault.
• Some of the achievements were just silly/annoying. Dying from each type of enemy is not an achievement, it’s failure.
• The game suffers extreme lag on older machines/laptops. Many people reported getting the impossible badge on Kongregate due to the slow down and their ability to navigate better while it lagged.
• The controls in Cell Warfare felt slightly loose. They weren’t that bad, but they weren’t spot on.
• At later levels in the game, some of the enemies have nearly impossible to see contrast with the background. This was reported by many users in reviews, and I noticed it myself when dying from an enemy I couldn’t see.
• The music didn’t loop too well.

That may seem like a big list, but I’m just being critical. Cell Warfare itself is a great game. It was made awhile ago, and has had a huge success on the web. That being said, the above were huge flaws. I wanted to create an arena shooter that addressed all those issues, and added to the core mechanic. Another game I looked at that was popular in the genre, was Amorphous+. While I’m not as big a fan of Amorphous as I am Cell Warfare, I did recognize it’s success as an arena game. The one thing I found interesting about Amorphous + was it’s inclusion of a Bestiary. Despite a ton of mockery from fellow game developers at the fact that I put in a bestiary for only 10 enemies, it was actually very well received in the wild and I’m sure it gave it a slight boost in ratings. The last game I found inspiration from, was Vector Effect. I had previously enjoyed playing Vector Effect for a long while, but felt it was a bit more on the Geometry Wars side of gameplay, which was not what I was going for. I did however like the upgrade system, and that heavily influenced my decision making when thinking of how to do my own. Aside from finding flaws with the above games by tearing them apart, I also took note of what specifically worked, such as the bestiary. Here’s a list of what worked in Cell Warfare as found in my original GDD.

• Easy to jump in and play.
• Clean menus.
• Addictive arcade feel.
• Achievements
• Increased power based on achievements unlocked.
• A sense of power is given to the player with every kill via screen shake, sounds, and animation.

There were other positive features about Cell Warfare and Amorphous +, but to me, those were the highlights. Lastly, I had to determine what additions I would add to the game. Here’s the list of additions as found in my original GDD.

• Add a combo counter to increase the sense of power for the player.
• Add the combo system into the scoring mechanic.
• Add a more advanced bestiary with back-story, stats, images, and unlockable data.
• Detailed data presented in game on total kills, deaths, shots fired, and other stats.
• Tighter controls.

In the end, not everything on these lists was included in the design of Pixel Purge, but all major issues were fixed, and most additions found their way in. Some additions were left out due to the growing size of the game, my interest in a sequel, and my lack of knowledge on exactly how well the game would be received. All in all, I think I picked a perfect place to cap what was going in, and what wasn’t.

EXPECTATIONS

My expectations for Pixel Purge were fairly high, but nothing outrageous. I had seen the success of similar flash games, read the reviews, old and new, and I knew that there was plenty of room for improvement, even among the best of the genre thus far. I knew that Cell Warfare had a solid 3.9x / 5.00 on Kongregate, a very high 4.1x / 5.00 on Newgrounds, and a solid 8.0 / 10 on ArmorGames. I figured with my addition, and the fact that the bar in quality had been raised since those games were created, that I had a fair chance at surpassing the scores on all sites by just a bit. As far as sponsorship earnings were concerned, I was looking to bring in about $5,000 with a primary sponsorship, and bring in another $1,000, – $3,000 in licenses and revenue. As far as viral spread went, I assumed that it’s high scores and views would correlate, I was wrong.

As the flash game market becomes harder and harder to stand out in, so does the reality of my financial expectations. To help pitch my game on FGL, I did up my first ever trailer. I’m not entirely sure how helpful it was for sales, but I’m decently sure it did indeed help. Either way, I learned my way around basic video editing, and it came out pretty well.

RECEPTION

As I had originally anticipated, the game was a rather large success (on some grounds, but not all, more on that soon). The game was originally released with a seven day exclusivity to ArmorGames, and had an 8.2 or so. Reviews were great, bugs were reported, and fixes were in place as soon as possible, all was well. We made a substantial number of improvements to the game during this seven day exclusivity, and this resulted in an even more solid product during the viral release. The score on Newgrounds upon launch was as predicted, in the 4.2x region. This won it a daily 1st place award, as well an an unexpected weekly 5th place award. On Kongregate it pulled out of judgement with a strong 4.2x as well, but when scaled, this was a much more successful score than on Newgrounds. All in all, it’s initial release was a huge success.

As weeks passed, the game continued to live strong. We had launched with medals on Newgrounds, and were then given four badges on Kongregate. We also got a very accurate, and mostly positive review from JayIsGames. Youtube videos of people playing, hacking, and reviewing the game were also popping up, which is always fun to see. We got a ton of PM’s from users on sites saying they loved the game, wanted a sequel, and many even listed suggestions. After about 3 weeks in the wild, we’ve hit a little over 1 million views and 1.7 million plays. Views are how many times the game is loaded, plays are how many times people actually jump into a game. For more stats on that, you can view the public reports. The scores as of writing this are finally starting to set in stone, and are as follows. Newgrounds is sitting on a very high 4.45 / 5.00 rating, with a review score of 9.5 / 10 with over 350 reviews. Kongregate has a very solid 4.14 / 5.00, a very respectable score. ArmorGames has the game sitting on a very high 8.3 / 10, nothing record shattering, but definitely way above average. All in all, the scores are excellent, the reviews make me proud of what I do, and the game is loved by most who play it.

WHAT WORKED

As we’ve seen, the game is a pretty huge success in the eyes of the players. So what exactly made it work? Well, if you go back to the beginning of this post, you’ll see most of the answer. All the fixes that were noted from other games, and all the features added are what makes this game tick. Most importantly, the game is easy to jump into and play. The menus are neat, the controls are simple, and there really isn’t much that can confuse even the slowest of people on the internet. You may be thinking that the gameplay and graphics are the core factor in this game’s success, but I assure you having simplistic controls and making the game accessible is just as, if not more important than anything else.

Next we have the genre. From my research, I found that action games that stayed simplistic did incredibly well. Cell Warfare and Amorphous+ were tried and proven examples. I knew this was more than coincidence, it was factual. I stayed true in design to these games, and as anticipated, it worked. The game was very action-packed, had large enemies, and great explosions. I’ve seen some pretty horrible games add the above and be relatively successful because of it. Add those features to a good game, and you get success.

Lastly, this game has enormous amounts of polish. Most people glancing at the game don’t even notice the sheer amount of detail in the game, but I assure you it’s there. Here’s a small list of polish that helps this game stand above the rest in the crowd.

• The thunder and lightening effect adds huge ambiance.
• Silhouetted enemies in the background add great detail (watch closely when lightening flashes).
• Intro story with pictures, text, and voice acting.
• Particle effects on the main menu buttons when hovering add a sense of high production value.
• Parallax scrolling gives the game world more depth, making the player feel more immersed.
• Explosion effects are randomly generated and not a single animation.
• The large blue particle effect ring when leveling up adds a sense of accomplishment to the player.
• The level-up sound when leveling adds a sense of accomplishment to the player.
• The screen shakes when taking down larger enemies, further immersing the player into the game world.
• The upgrade menu spinning adds a great deal of polish to what would otherwise be a boring, unoriginal upgrade menu.
• 50 achievements give the player a reason to keep playing, and reward them while doing so.
• The added bestiary adds back-story to the world, and the enemies that live within it, further immersing the player into the game world.

There are definitely more touches of polish in there, but those are most of the big ones. Weather this list looks impressive or not, without the above, Pixel Purge wouldn’t be half the game it is. All of these features combined, and only combined, are what makes this game as successful as it is.

WHAT DIDN’T

As you can see, a lot went well with the game. That being said, some things didn’t. The most complained about feature of the game is that we only gave the player a single life. For one reason or another, the idea of giving the player 3 lives or more never occurred to me. I myself am a pretty hardcore gamer, and believe that when you die, you die. That being said, I kept the game on the difficult side, it’s just what I like. As far as the games success goes, adding some extra lives probably would have helped the game be a bit more casual.

While we’re on the subject of casual, I’ll now add that I basically bombed that in nearly every possible way. The game may have been easy to jump into, and easy to play, but that’s about all I did right as far as casual gaming goes. Not adding a campaign was probably the worst decision made in the entire creation of the game. The reason this wasn’t added is because the entire project was supposed to be much smaller in size, and it just wasn’t part of the formula. Keeping it as a simple arcade game meant small, at least, that was the plan. The reason a campaign mode is needed in this kind of game, is because casual gamers need a short-term sense of gratification. Killing enemies in Pixel Purge is rewarding. There’s a giant explosion, a sweet sound effect, and particles fly everywhere. That only lasts so long though, and the next sense of achievement is getting a high score, when you die. There’s nothing between those points, nothing to keep the player satisfied and feeling achieved every few minutes. Adding a campaign would have solved this issue entirely. In addition, it also would have allowed me to scale the difficulty much easier, create some more unique gameplay, add some bosses, and an actual ending to the game. The voice acting intro to the game was great, but the story basically ends there. Players felt cheated when there wasn’t an equally awesome ending to the game.

Lastly, the viral distribution of the game leaves something to be desired. If you look at the public reports, you’ll see that the game only has a little over 1 million views. Many games that are significantly worse in the eyes of the player do 20x the amount of traffic Pixel Purge is pulling. There are a number of reasons this happened, and the most valuable part of this entire project was learning them. First off, having a space theme for this genre of game greatly reduces sponsor interest and viral distribution. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but a space theme hinders a games success more often than not. Proof of this would be comparing our last game Traverse, to Numz. Numz has a very similar rating to Traverse, however it’s viral distribution and earnings far exceed Traverse. Although the above reasons do hinder the viral distribution of the game, I believe there’s another reason the actual views are so low. If you look at the public reports, you’ll notice that the average play time is above 18 minutes for each user, that’s rather impressive. I believe that the replay value that was added, just wasn’t enough. The views mostly consisted of players leaving right off, or staying a full 40 minutes to an hour and beating the entire game in every possible way. In a sense, it’s possible the game was so fun that it was beaten in a single play and left little reason to come back for the average, casual player.  Between the difficulty of the game, the lack of a campaign mode, and the space theme, Pixel Purge just isn’t all that casual and doesn’t offer a reason to keep coming back, and that’s what killed it’s earnings.

EARNINGS

The actual time spent working on the game was roughly 3-4 weeks of solid 8+ hour days from two people. Keep in mind that I’m not an advanced programmer and still have a lot to learn, so every project for me is a combination of work and learning, more so than for most people. In the end, the money earned was barely worth half the time spent.

When the game went up on Flash Game License, it almost immediately received it’s first bid of $500. Bidding then climbed slowly, and eventually halted around $2,000.  The two competing sponsors were PlayedOnline, and ArmorGames. Bidding eventually drew to a halt, so I decided to personally message both sponsors to work out a final deal. I tried pushing for roughly $4,000, or a value of around $2,000 + a performance deal, but neither sponsor was up for it. I eventually got PlayedOnline to offer me $2500, and Armor to offer $2250, I chose Armor. The reason I went with the lower value and Armor, is because I felt that the Armor branding, distribution they could offer our game, and the relationship I would start with Dan, would be worth far more than $250. I still stick to that decision today, and feel that my new-found relationship with Dan of ArmorGames will go much further in the near future. I will admit that I was at first extremely pissed with the low value of the primary sponsorship earnings when I saw the games huge success on Newgrounds, Kongregate, Armor, and so on, but my realizations listed above about how the game isn’t very viral, casual and so on, quickly cleared that up.

Primary Sponsorship – $2250
Non-Exclusive Licenses – $1425
Kongregate Contests – $400 (Weekly 2nd and monthly 6th)
Kongregate Ad Revenue – $343

Total Earnings (To Date)- $4418
My Share (To Date)- $2209

CONCLUSION

The biggest disappointment with the entire project is that I was hoping for this game to be my lucky break. I was really hoping that Pixel Purge would bring us a bit more cash, and give me a chance to finally work on some more ambitious projects that I’ve had in mind for some time now. Although the earnings aren’t bad, a lot of additional post-production work went into raising the earnings to where they are now, which was more time dumped into an already finished game. Despite the somewhat low earnings, I did gain a lot of knowledge from this project. Hopefully with that new-found knowledge I can crank up the earnings on some of my upcoming projects, and eventually get to creating games I’d like to. Overall, I learned a ton, I’ve read hundreds of very inspiring reviews, and I know that I have what it takes to go big. This game may not have given me the break I’ve been looking for, but it’s definitely paved the way for such a thing to happen.

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.”

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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.