Porter's World

Klok

Are you self employed? Do you find putting in the right amount of work hours hard? Do you find keeping track of those work hours hard? Never again shall you answer yes to any of the above! Infomercial tone aside, Klok is a wonderful program that will not only keep track of your hours, but help motivate you. I recently wrote an article on being your own boss, and how complicated that could be due to motivating yourself to put in a proper amount of hours; since the discovery of this program, my production has greatly increased, and my work shows as a result. Let’s take a look at what the program has to offer.

The greatest thing about Klok, is how simple it is to use. It doesn’t have a ton of added features, it doesn’t require you to save, it just does what it’s supposed to do, keep track of your work hours. To get started, you simply create a new project. All of your projects will show up on the left side of the screen in a color coded, organized list. This portion of the interface can be collapsed if you so choose, but I personally prefer to keep it open. You can double click on a project to rename it, change it’s color, and add sub projects. As far as project organization goes, that’s up to you. I personally prefer to create a main project with my name, then have a sub project for each one of my projects, such as games, website work, and so on. Within games, I have another sub project for each individual game, and within each game project, sub projects for each task pertaining to that game. In the end, it doesn’t really matter how you set things up, the functionality will be the same, it’s just a matter of preference. Once you’ve created your projects and sub projects, you’re ready to go.

Now for actually using Klok to record your hours. To start recording your work, simply click on the exact project you’re working on, such as Porter/Games/Current Game/Level Design, right click, then press work on. Klok will then start recording your work hours, it’s as simple as that. If you want to work on multiple tasks at once, simply activate them, Klok will even change it’s visual representation of your hours to show that multiple tasks were going on during that given time . To stop working, simply press the stop button, located at the top of the program. Pressing stop does seem to stop recording all your current active projects, so if you stop only one task, be sure to resume the others immediately after. You can also manually edit the hours worked on projects; you can move them around to different times, increase or decrease hours worked, and so on. Use this feature if you wish to make up for hours worked when you forgot to turn on the program, something you’ll find rather common before you make using Klok a regular habit. If you need to delete hours, simply drag and drop them into the trash can found on the bottom left side of the interface.

One of the best features of Klok, is it’s ability to display data back to the user. If you’ve organized your projects and sub projects correctly, you can get some very useful information out of Klok, in no other form than the beloved pie chart. To see these charts, simply click on Reports. You’ll instantly see a pie chart showing the data of all your top level projects. Clicking on a project within the pie chart will then update the chart showing the data for that specific project. If you’ve set up your project correctly, you can look at how many hours you’ve put into an individual project, and how much time you’ve spent on each task within that project.

Klok also has a number of added features, luckily for those who don’t want them, they’re not at all in the way. If you’re in a more work place environment, perhaps your boss requires you to log your hours worked, and what you worked on. When this is the case, bosses will generally require you to use a program such as Microsoft Excel. The developers have kept this in mind, and added a feature to instantly export your Klok data to an Excel project file. Your hours can be exported as either a weekly time sheet, or a monthly time sheet, very handy. If you’re into archiving, you can do so by simply dragging and dropping a project into the archive box at the bottom left of the program; that’s a nice plus for keeping track of previous work. The developers are also working on version 2.0 of the program, and from what I’ve read, they’re also adding in support for third party programs. For now, I suggest using the 1.5 beta, it’s far superior to the 1.0 version is stable from what I can tell. If you have any suggestions for the program, check out the developer’s forums and leave a comment.

All in all, Klok is an amazing program. It’s simple to use, the interface is clean, and it gets the job done. If you are like I was, and had issues putting in the right amount of hours, you’ll definitely find that using Klok fixes this. I’ve always wondered exactly how much money I’ve been making per hour as a flash game developer, with Klok, I’ll actually be able to figure that out accurately, and with ease. If you haven’t installed it yet, I definitely suggest doing so, it’s one of the best free programs I’ve ever come across, and I’m loving it.

Sources For Sounds

Whenever audio is brought up pertaining to game design, most people seem to jump straight into the thought of music. Even I thought of game music first, and proceeded with writing an article on the importance of game music before even touching the thought of sound effects. Where is the importance of game sound effects? It’s definitely there, and just as important to games as music is. Not too long ago I made a list of music for games, now we’ll take a look at some sources at which you can acquire game sound effects.

If you’ve ever found yourself looking for sounds for a retro styled game, look no more. SFXR is a free program that will meet your every need as far as retro sounds go. I came across this wonderful program earlier this year when working on Tower of Greed; never again will I have troubles with finding retro sounds for my games. If you want a more in depth description, follow the above SFXR link to my more in depth review. Be sure to check out Tower of Greed as well, every sound in the game was created using SFXR, so it’s a perfect example of what it’s capable of.

Freesound.org is an excellent source for all sorts of sounds. With a large database of user submitted sounds, you won’t have trouble finding anything, menu bleeps, thunderstorms, you name it, it’s likely here. The search system is great, allowing you to search by file name, description, duration, and so on. Even though you should be good to go with anything you find, always be sure to check the licenses before actually downloading and using any sounds.

Another free source, and rather well known, is Flash Kit. Flash Kit offers numerous free sound effects for all to use. There are multiple categories, sub categories, and plenty of variety. The organization is unfortunately a bit lacking, and there is no way to organize sounds by duration, but they’re all there, and with enough time you’ll definitely find sounds that are of use to you. The licenses vary from sound file to sound file, so be sure to check closely before downloading and using any. Overall, the net is short of free sound sources, and this is one of the best.

PacDV is another great source for free sounds. They offer a medium sized collection of sounds, all entirely free. You won’t find every sound in the world here, but there are definitely enough to fill the basics and get some good background sounds, whether it be a crowd, or rainfall. The sounds are organized in a number of main categories, all rather self explanatory. Overall, it’s a nice collection of sounds; if your desired sound is rather common, chances are you’ll be able to find it here, and for free.

SoundJay is yet another free source for sound effects. This is yet another medium sized selection, but it’s definitely got it’s use. Much like the other free sound sources, they offer a variety of sounds, again all free. The sounds found here are unique to the site, so you don’t have to worry about finding duplicate sounds from previous sites and similar categories. In addition, there are a few short music tracks that are available for free use as well; I found them to be of great quality, so if you’re in search for music as well, give them a listen.

If you’re looking for more variety, as well as higher quality, there’s always the option of buying sounds. Soundsnap is an excellent site for sound effects. The site offers a very large variety of sounds, all of which are incredibly organized. You can filter by category, duration, ratings, date added, and more. I personally find sorting by category and duration best; the 1 second sound effects are generally excellent for games in my opinion. I’ve used them in the past and have been very pleased with them. You can check out Gravibounce for examples of their sounds, I had a lot of fun working with that one and feel the sounds fit very well. The site offers various plans, so depending on your needs you’ll pay anywhere from $30 for a single month of up to 100 downloads, to $150 for a year of unlimited sound effect downloads. I’m rather certain that after my next game sells I’ll be picking up an annual subscription; if you’ve ever spent time looking for sound effects for your game, you’ll know these rates are plenty worth it.

Another great site that offers paid sound effects is PartnersInRhyme. That’s right, not only do they offer an excellent selection of music, but they also have some incredibly well put together sound effect collections. What they offer varies by collection, there’s an all purpose mix offering over 2 gigs of quality sounds, as well as specific collections that are more themed, such as ambiance or horror. All collections offer the ability to preview them, so you don’t have to take a gamble in buying a collection you’re not sure of. Regardless of which collection you purchase here, all are of superb quality and will meet your needs.

There you have it, you now have excellent sources for both game music and sound effects. You now have everything needed to supply all of your future works with high quality audio, both music and sounds. Both lists were compiled using knowledge from my previous experiences, as well as current findings while working on my newest projects. I’ve spent a lot of time narrowing down the best of the best, so be sure to utilize these lists, they’ll save you a lot of time.

What Not To Do

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

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

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

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

Music Sources

Every great flash game needs top notch music in order to fully succeed. If you’re reading this, I’m sure at one point or another, if not now, you’ve wondered where you can go to get great music for your flash games. There are tons of sources, some free, some not. Some are widely known, while others are known only by myself and a few others, up until now. I’ve mentioned the importance of game music numerous times, by utilizing the below sources, you can take those teachings, and apply them to your games.

Let’s take a look at some of the more well known sources. Somatones Interactive Audio may be a bit on the more expensive side for audio, but there isn’t a chance in the world that you’ll walk away feeling like you didn’t get your money’s worth. These guys know what they’re doing, and they do it flawlessly. They have more experience working with music than anyone else in the flash game industry, and it shows. They’ve worked with companies such as Disney, Konami, Nickelodeon, Sony, Ubisoft, and plenty more. Keep in mind that the work they do for you is exclusive to you, meaning your game will have custom music that no other in the world has. Visit Somatones and check out their work and customer feedback, if you can afford their rates, it’s definitely worth it.

Another great source for music is ibaudio. These guys have a huge library of royalty free music for a very reasonable price. You can purchase music for any genre and feel you desire, some for as low as $10 a loop. Music is purchased using credits which you buy from the site, buying in bulk can save you up to 40%. In addition, you can purchase a 1 year subscription for a one time payment of $213.69; this allows unlimited downloads, which is definitely worth it for anyone pumping out multiple successful titles in a single year. On top of that, any music downloaded during your year subscription may be used by you in the future, even after your subscription is up. Keep in mind the music can be used by you, and only you, any abuse to this system is of course illegal. If you are somehow not finding exactly what you need throughout there massive library, you can also request custom music, they’ll work closely with you to negotiate pricing and get the exact music you’re looking for.

Another great source, despite being less catered towards game music, is Stockmusic. They have an expansive library of music, most tracks being in the $30 range. All music is of excellent sound quality and very professionally done. The site as I said doesn’t exactly target game music, but they offer an amazing search tool that will let you find exactly what you’re looking for. You can also legally alter the music in order to create loops, add echo, or any other reason you may find, so despite the music not being perfect for games right off, it shouldn’t be an issue with anyone who knows how to do basic audio editing. Stockmusic also offers custom music. If you chose to do this, you will be working closely with a composer who fits your genre best, and are supplied demos of the works as they progress, allowing you to suggest changes and customize the music to your liking. I haven’t had any direct experience with these guys, but they definitely look like they know what they’re doing.

Audiosparx is an ideal source for anyone looking to find quality game music. I suggest filtering to search for loops as they’re much more suited for games, but that’s up to you. Rates definitely vary on this site, but the quality is consistently high. Be sure to view “B” rates, these rates pertain to the license you’ll be using in order to legally put the music into your games, distribute them, and profit. These guys have experience with the big guys in the industry, with music in games by companies such as Midway, Atari, EA, and more.

MusicLoops is another great place to find royalty free loops for your game development needs. All tracks are in the form of a loop, so little to no editing will be needed on your part. With a large variety of genres, there’s not a feel you won’t be able to find. The majority of music is roughly $20-$40, which isn’t much for a fitting piece of quality music. A clean design, variety of music, and affordable rates, make this an excellent addition to any list of sites to search when looking for affordable audio for your projects.

Now we’ll take a look at another company I actually have experience with. Partners In Rhyme is an excellent source for virtually all genre’s of music, including seasonal genre’s such as Halloween and Christmas. Each package includes various tracks, each with an incredible assortment of loops, track edits, multiple duration cuts, and the occasional stingers. Some packages will even come with bonus content, including various additional loops and sound effects, some of which you may find even more useful than the original content you purchased. Packages are places at various prices, most resting between $80-$90, which is well worth what you’ll be getting from these guys.

Another site that caters directly to flash games, is Twune. The music is of decent quality, and all packages go for a flat rate of $75. The convenient part of buying from Twune, is that all the editing is entirely done for you. Each package includes multiple loops cut from the same track, allowing you to have multiple loops throughout your game, all with a similar sound. The selection is a bit smaller than some sites, but they’re still growing. Overall, the convenience of multiple loops coming in a single package is convenient, and definitely worth checking out.

In addition to many of the large companies, there is an endless source of freelance musicians just dying to have their music heard by the world. These musicians are incredibly talented, and for the most part, unknown to everyone other than their friends and family. Despite their lack of popularity, these musicians have incredible talent, and will likely be known for it in the future. For the time being however, they lack exposure and are eagerly awaiting to hop on board a project.

A well talented individual that falls into this category is Mike Taylor. I met Mike when living in the wonderful rolling hills of Moscow Idaho. After meeting him, I found out that he was incredibly talented at the piano, as well as doing his own compositions in various other genres. He can do a variety of music, such as techno, trance, ambient, classical, 8-bit, and so on. As far as the flash industry goes, his music can be heard in Dominus Void and Tower of Greed. Dominus Void features features various tracks from multiple artists, track two being Mikes, while Tower of Greed was composed entirely by Mike from scratch. As you can hear, it sounds very authentic to the days of the NES, so much in fact that it sounds as if it could have appeared in a popular title in the early 90’s. Mike is always looking for custom music work, and will listen to all of your ideas and suggestions to make sure the music fits your exact needs. He’s a huge perfectionist, so don’t be surprised when he scraps something you’re proud of and comes back the next day with something far more impressive. His rates are incredibly affordable and definitely worth what they add to your game. He’ll help decide a fair price with you depending on various factors, all of which you’ll both discuss and plan out beforehand.  If you’re interested in having Mike do some work with you, you can contact him via Newgrounds PM, or email him at miketaylorandhisimaginaryband@gmail.com; I know, it’s an awesome email address.

Another excellent, and unfortunately lesser known artist, is Yiannis Ioannides. I met Yiannis recently while browsing the forums over at Newgrounds. I listened to his music and felt a strong urge to get in contact with him and talk business, so that’s what I did. Yiannis is an incredibly skilled musician who is currently studying film scoring and jazz composition at Berklee College of Music over in Boston, MA. He’s passionate about composing game music, and specializes in music that consists of jazz, electronica, world, classical, ambient, soundscape etc. He’s looking for work and would be more than happy to compose for all sorts of games, from young, colorful, interactive games, to darker, serious, professional games. Rates vary from project to project, and will be negotiated prior to completion. Definitely give his music a listen and keep him in mind for future projects; he’s got a lot of talent just waiting to be put into your future works. You can reach Yiannis for questions and work by emailing him at yioannides@berklee.net.

If you’re looking for some music on the cheaper side of the spectrum, perhaps free, there’s always the Newgrounds Audio Portal. Contrary to popular belief, nearly all of the music on Newgrounds is free. There are a few things to keep in mind however. You must always contact the author of a piece you wish to use, let them know of your project, and always request permission. They’ll decide on the terms when responding to you, but 99% of the time artists are just looking to get some exposure, and are thrilled to hear that their music will be used in a game. They’ll generally ask that you mention them in the credits, as well as link to them on the credits page if possible, which is more than acceptable. The audio portal offers a lot of music in various genres, so you shouldn’t have any issues finding some good music. Seeing as it’s an audio portal run off of user submissions, you will have to filter through a lot of lower quality music in order to find what you’re looking for, but that’s the price you have to pay if you don’t feel like forking over some cash.

Another free source is Incompetech, a website run by Kevin MacLeod. Kevin has a large library of royalty free music that he has composed and recorded himself. You can search by genre, or by mood, giving you plenty to work with when it comes to getting the right feel for your project. Kevin doesn’t charge anything for his music under the creative commons license, but greatly appreciates donations as all artists do. The only thing actually required of you is to list his name in the credits, as well as the piece(s) used. If you like what you hear, Kevin can also compose custom music for you, rates are negotiated on a project by project basis.

As you can see, there’s plenty of sources to get amazing music out there. Until recently, I was one to just go out and get free music and do my best with it, which has never hurt, but after doing the research for this article, I can’t stress how important quality music is. I had always thought that I did a fantastic job selecting music for my games prior to this article, however looking back, I did great, but these services offer a quality that cannot be matched for free. If the above prices sound a bit high, consider the fact that the value great music will add to your game is far more than you’ll be paying. If you can’t afford exceptional music from the above services, perhaps land a sponsor, then point out some music you would like to add to the game; chances are they’ll pay you the amount needed up front (out of your sponsorship money, or in addition) to let you boost the value of the game. If you do find yourself using the above sources, or any for that matter, always check the license agreements for the music you are purchasing, this is extremely important and cannot be stressed enough. All in all, you now have an incredible list of sources to find excellent flash game music, all at varying prices that should be affordable to everyone. I definitely hope to hear an increase in the quality of music in all of your future games, don’t let me down.

Classic Games

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

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

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

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

Becoming A Game Developer

Becoming a game developer is hard work, really hard work. There are however a few advantages to becoming a game developer that other careers in the world just can’t offer. In order to become a lawyer, you have to go to school, lots of school. In order to become a doctor, you have to do the same. To become a game developer however, you just have to be passionate, have an internet connection, and have the occasional motivation boost.

In the previous chapters of becoming a game developer, I spoke of what abilities will help you excel as a game designer, as well as gave some tips on how to analyze games to further yourself as a game developer. By now you may be wondering what it takes to actually get the job, to actually enter the industry and get a paycheck for your hard work. Sure you can make games, but how do you sell them? How do you get hired? When it comes to flash games, you’re good to go from the start. Unlike other careers, you don’t need credentials, you simply need to know how to make games, and do it well. Anyone in the world can start creating games in flash, selling them, and earning some very nice cash. It takes a lot of work, and I mean a lot, but it is within every single person’s grasp to do so if they choose. I started by making games for fun, but I soon found out that I could get paid for what I was doing. Bottom line is this, you don’t need a college degree, you don’t need to find a boss to hire you, you can self teach yourself and become your own boss overnight.

As I said, I began creating and selling games when I was 18 years old, back in the days of living in my first apartment away from home. One of the greatest things about entering the flash game industry is that you can do it at any age. You can be 13 years old, have a passion for games, take the time out to teach yourself, and instantly hop into making games. You won’t succeed with your first game, at least not on the level you would like to, but practice really does make perfect, especially in the flash gaming industry. I really do wish I had been into this when I was younger, I can’t imagine how evolved my skills would be had I started doing this at the age of 14 or so. Granted I was messing around with flash 4, getting an understanding of the time line and flash IDE, but I never actually touched code until much later. If you’re a younger reader and interested, don’t get discouraged, keep trying and I assure you time and patience will bring you to a very nice place once you get things down. In fact, if you’re a younger reader, I encourage you to start your career early, even if just as a hobby. One of the hardest things I find in trying to make this a full time job, is the inconsistency of pay. Start while you’re living at home, or at the very least get a few thousand dollars to sit on before you go and pour yourself into the job, it may take longer to pay off than you anticipate.

Alright, so you don’t need credentials, your age doesn’t really matter, so how do you actually get started? Adobe Flash is a rather expensive product itself, a great tool, but a bit expensive. I suggest using FlashDevelop if the price of Flash it too high, it’s an amazing program that is better suited for your programming needs than flash itself, not meant for animating, but that can be done in other programs. If you read up on the FlashDevelop page, you’ll find instructions for downloading Flex and other programs in order to compile your projects, in the end, creating a completely free set up. Once compiled, you can either play the swf in the browser, or you can download the flash debug player. All in all, that’s about all you’ll need to get started.

There you have it, you’re ready to start programming games. You don’t need to be any specific age, you don’t need a $600 program, and you don’t need to go to school and earn a fancy degree in order to secure your position. You will need determination, more common sense than the average human seems to carry these days, and a lot of free time, but if you’re reading this I have confidence that you can pass the above prerequisites. Enjoying your job and becoming financially stable doesn’t come easy in this world, and most of the time your caught within the system of going to college and following the rest of the cycle. In the flash industry the opportunity is up to you, you choose how far to go. If you really want this to be your future, get to work and make it a reality, it really is entirely up to you.

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3

Becoming A Game Developer

As we’re all aware, or should be aware of, the path to becoming a game developer is not one that can be completed over night. Not only must you have certain mental abilities, but the skills that you must posses can not only exist, but must be refined. For example, I myself have a good eye for what elements in a game make the game more fun, and the elements that just make a game annoying. Despite my keen eye for this, I have a lot to learn, as all developers do. Certain activities should be done on a regular basis to refine the skills needed to be a successful developer, whether you’re a professional or just starting out. Playing games of all types on a regular basis is one of them.

It’s no mystery that playing games is something that all game developers should do. If you don’t play games that are successful, as well as unsuccessful, how can you possibly make a game that will come close to doing great itself? This may be common sense, but it goes a bit deeper. A common misconception floating around game developers and game testers is that when we play games, we’re just playing games. It’s not exactly like that, and if you think it is, I urge you to read on. When a developer or tester is playing games, they’re doing far more than laying back and enjoying some awesome games. As a developer, you must constantly analyze various aspects of games while playing them. Some of these include the length of the game, the fun factor, bugs, pacing, what’s annoying, difficulty, how easy is it to understand, and so on. Each of these aspects is just a main category as well, all can contain sub categories making the list larger than you would expect. It’s these game aspects that you need to pay attention to when playing a game.

Let’s take a deeper look into a specific game genre. Let’s go with any generic “Beat em up” game, Streets of rage, Captain Commando, Turtles in Time, take your pick. When thinking of these games, what important characteristics of the genre come to mind? First off, I would look into the move speed of the character. If the character is moving too slow, then those scrolling backgrounds better be damn pretty or the player is going to get bored fast. Second off, the amount of enemies the game throws at you per each area needs to be carefully thought out. If a game has too many enemies per small checkpoint, it may do one of two things. First off, it may be too hard. These games often aren’t too hard, that is, until one or more enemies decides to attack you at once like the little punks they usually are. Second off, it may make the pacing of the game drag, so it’s important that the number of enemies is too few rather than too many. Next, what makes this game stand out from the others? Almost every game out there has another game like it, if not many, so it’s important to have a few original features. In these games, that usually consisted of special moves (such as the cop car in streets of rage, or the different abilities for the 4 characters in Captain Commando). Although walking around and beating guys up is fun, the occasional destructible terrain such as boxes or phone booths is a very welcome addition. Looking back to difficulty, it’s important that there are enough items laying around to replenish your health (such as the infamous piece of meat on a place), but it’s also important not to have too many as this would decrease the difficulty dramatically. As far as level design goes, it’s important to keep the visuals new, and the way the level progresses interesting. For instance, most levels move left to right, the end resulting in a boss fight. It’s important that this isn’t the case in all levels. Elevators leading to new floors, holes in the floor to drop down into, getting on trains, hopping onto moving trucks, and many other forms of level navigation add to level design greatly and help mix things up. As you can see, I’ve gone into some pretty deep detail as to what should be examined in a “Beat em up” game. That said, there’s plenty more that could be examined; this is only a start, a nice start, but a start none the less.

Playing games doesn’t sound so fun now does it? Well it is, so don’t let the above get you down. Playing games as a developer is definitely hard work, but it’s one of the best activities you can do to get yourself to become a better game developer. In addition, a true game developer can analyze a game while enjoying it simultaneously. That said, if you’re a game developer in the works, or someone who’s just forgotten about how important it is to analyze games, make sure you really tear what makes a game what is apart next time you play.

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3

Becoming A Game Developer

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

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

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

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

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

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3

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.

Click Through Rate

Recently a lot has been on my mind concerning the approach I should take when designing games. I’ve learned a lot as of late concerning shaping my games specifically for this industry, things such as the importance of mouse support and catering to the desires of casual gamers. Despite my knowledge of what works well, and what works not so well, I still have a desire to create retro styled games that stay true to the classics I grew up on. Despite the fact that I won’t be making as much money, I realized that games of that nature are the reason I got into game design; A few extra bucks (okay, perhaps a couple thousand, whatever, I’ll keep eating cheap Ramen) isn’t enough of a reason to stop creating games the way I love them. Such thoughts got me to asking myself questions such as, do sponsors care about more than CTR (Click Through Rate)? Do they care about more than getting their money back directly from the games they sponsor?

Many developers may be under the impression that the answer is no, but after a bit of thought, and a quick interview with Lars, the games acquisition manager of King, I realized there’s a bit more to it. My primary question pertaining to this matter was this; is sponsoring a game that doesn’t perform well in returning it’s sponsorship cost through click backs beneficial to the sponsor? Here’s what Lars had to say on the matter,

“CTR is very important, but not everything. The quality of the traffic is equally important because sponsors want traffic that like their site, and traffic that returns to play again. High-quality games, and a wide array of games, help with this retention since players only return if they like the games. Moreover, publishing high-quality games that end up with high ratings and front-page features (achievements, etc) obviously increase the brand presence of a site ‘out there’, which in turn increases the likelihood that previously acquired traffic returns. Hence, the answer is: No, CTR is not everything, you need quality and success to attract and retain visitors.”

It was refreshing to hear that there was indeed still a place in sponsor’s hearts for games that are of high quality, but don’t necessarily perform so well as far as CTR goes. The value of a game that is high quality and low CTR can easily surpass the value of a medium quality game that has a CTR of 40%. Having a very diverse game that can’t be found anywhere else is definitely something sponsors want. If you have something original and of decent quality, than it’s of high value, even if the money earned back directly from the CTR of your game isn’t nearly as high as other games. Sponsors want variety to attract the most players possible. If your game is in a genre that doesn’t normally do well among players as far as ratings, but is superb for it’s type, sponsors want that because there is in fact an audience for the genre, one they want to control. Sponsors want quality traffic, traffic that doesn’t just click an in game link because it was well placed, but traffic that clicks those links because they agree with the sponsors taste, traffic that will become a long time visitor.

As my original plan was, I shall continue creating games both to get myself enough cash to survive, and because I love doing so. I’ll mix things up between what sponsors want, and what I want. It’s good to know that even what I want has a place in the world if it’s of great quality, despite how well it may treat the sponsor directly with click backs, because to be honest, the flash industry has far too many rules for me to completely express my creativeness. The fact that Lars said that King looks for a great variety of games definitely backs up my thoughts on the importance of originality. If you find yourself having any trouble deciding whether to follow the various guidelines to help you produce more cash, or going with what your passion for game design wants you to create, think back to the above information, there is always a place for your game if it’s of good quality, despite all the rules.