Porter's World

Perfection

One of the biggest issues I face as a flash game developer is the fact that I’m a perfectionist. I absolutely hate submitting a game to the world that isn’t absolutely polished to the best of my ability. This is both good and bad at times, depending on which way it’s looked at. I’ve been trying to look at both the negative and positives sides of being a perfectionist and have come up with a lot of content for both sides. The biggest matter to come to mind when thinking of this, is the importance of a brand. Is it really worth having a quality brand name? Do players recognize names such as Ninja Kiwi and Berzerk Studios studios and know that the game is going to be good? Such thoughts circle through my mind on a regular basis and keep me from releasing anything below my best efforts.

The negative side of being a perfectionist is a rather big one. On a regular basis I’m sliding by in life spending little money, usually saving up what I’ve earned from previous games for rent. I am admittedly still learning a lot and don’t work nearly as much as I should, but that’s irrelevant for the most part. My main issue is that I just can’t stand the idea of producing a quick mouse avoider or simple puzzle game in a few days, and then selling it for a couple hundred bucks, I just can’t get myself to do that. I feel that everything I do has to be some epic project, something that’s going to be a hit on the net to some extent and not just give me money to survive; I try to design games for fun, not for a living. This obsession goes so far that I’ve actually considered creating a “fake” brand that I would use for my smaller projects and I would literally make no association to my main brand. This is in fact a very simple solution that would indeed work, however I would morally hate myself for sinking so low as to feed sponsors a sub par game that wont’ go anywhere, but will give me my rent. The biggest conflict of working with bigger games is taking a risk, something I’ve been doing for some time now. Every time I get into a project that will take 1-3 months I risk not having rent money to pay my roommates, not a good feeling. If I dedicate that much time to a large project, and it somehow doesn’t pay off, I’m not going to be in a good position. I could go back to working a day job at Domino’s just to pay rent, but I truly do prefer dedicating my life to something I care about, rather than wasting my days away eating pepperoni on the line.

Aside from these complications, there really are a lot of positive aspects to being a perfectionist. Having a quality brand really does pay off. A single hit game will establish a relationship with sponsors and help build a good reputation. Players definitely take a liking to games produced by popular artists, and regardless of the game’s quality, the ratings show. I’m not saying a bad game from a big name will do wonders, but a good game under the right name may go above and beyond, even if it’s not necessarily deserving. One of the biggest issues sites such as Kongregate and Newgrounds suffer is user ratings. A great game can go under the radar on Newgrounds if the right people zero vote your game out of the “awesome score” range of 3.60 or higher. Every game receives it’s fair amount of zero votes, but having a good brand name among the public can easily counteract such assaults. Regardless of the perks with the public, there’s also a certain sense of fulfillment to having a pile of great games under your belt. I don’t mind experiment every now and then and making a game that doesn’t do so well, but having the majority of my games clearly be of great effort is something I hold highly.

Key To Moving Forward

I’ve been a rather active member in the flash community for some time now. I know a lot of people, I’ve helped a lot of people, and I’ve done it all for the learning experience and because I’m a nice guy like that. I’m not a crazy believer of karma, but there’s definitely a great reward to be had to anyone who maintains a good reputation in any community. Whether it be friends, sponsors, or strangers you help out, the good deeds definitely do come around.

Not too long ago I stopped working with my last partner for a number of reasons, this left me in a place many developers should always try to avoid, alone. Although I continued to work on my own, and have learned  a lot since then, it’s always better to have a partner or partners to work with, it’s just far more productive. Yesterday I was contacted by a friend out of the blue with some very good news, a partnership of sorts that would have me back in a group environment and working on set in stone projects. This isn’t so much a success story as it is a lesson, so let’s take a look at how this happened. I met this particular person many months ago on the FlashGameLicense forums, to my memory the time we first clicked as friends was when I expressed a certain opinion on my reason to switch from AS2 to AS3. Since then we talked a lot, reviewed each other’s games and so on. This is a single contact, but it paid off.  This kind and honest behavior of many months ago has now put me in a much better position than I would have been had I never done such things.

Here’s another example of how a good personality and reputation pays off. My last sponsored game Tower of Greed was through Lars over at King. Aside from business, Lars and I spoke rather casually and got along well. We kept in touch after the game was released and eventually started talking about future titles. The positive nature of these conversations and the games success have lead to a new relationship with a very high up sponsor. Good attitude here has lead to a partnership of sorts that can’t be gained any other way.

In addition to the above, helping random strangers in the flash community can also pay off. As some readers may know from previous posts, I gained my first flash development partner through helping out a complete stranger. He was asking a question in the Newgrounds Forums pertaining to some coding in his new game, and I tossed him the code with an explanation of how it worked. Two weeks later I saw him again asking yet another question, I answered it yet again and we then talked of working on the game together. This eventually lead to many projects and could potentially lead to more down the road.

In the end it’s rather clear how important being a positive member in the community is. There’s always times when you yourself will need help, and you’re much more likely to find that help if you’ve been out there helping others when possible and maintaining a positive image. Benefits include finding a new partner to work with, having connections with sponsors to sell games much quicker, or just having some place to go to chat with people who share common interests. Either way, maintaining a good reputation is definitely worth while and can eventually be key in moving your career forward.