Porter's World

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.

At last, the results of the bet are finally in. Actually, they’ve been in for months now, and I’ve just been neglecting to share with the world what exactly happened. That being said, the bet did come to a close, and there are indeed results to be shared. The results aren’t nearly as clear as I wish they could be, but I believe I can work with what I got.

As I said, the results were a bit iffy. The main contributor to this issue is that the bet lacked any concrete rules. If there were indeed any at all, it was that I had to create a game by the end of April that was sell-able. This is where things get tricky. I did indeed complete a project by the end of April, which I felt could in fact be sold, but that quickly became subjective once it came time to show my work. I also created a game-breaking bug at the last minute where the grunt enemies are way too fast now and then. Before I get any deeper into this, here’s a look what I had to offer April 30th, the deadline for the bet.

Pixel Purge Bet Version

As you can see, the game is nothing special, but it does function, has a few splashes of polish here and there, and in my opinion, could have sold. That being said, the game at that stage completely fell below my expectations. I did in fact spend half my time out and about with friends, but I knew I should have been working, so that’s my own fault. The other reason the game fell short of my expectations is because I added a lot of support into the foundation of the game to expand upon it. I never had any intentions of selling the game after completing the bet, I planned on expanding the game to something much greater from the very start. Truths and excuses aside, as far as the bet was concerned, I should have stuck to the original goal and nothing more.

As I mentioned, I never had any intentions of selling the game as it was at the end of the bet on April 30th. I did in fact continue to build upon the game as I previously stated, and eventually turned it into what is now known as a rather successful game by the name of Pixel Purge. Pixel Purge is in every way superior to the original prototype, and was definitely worth the continued work I put into it. If you’re interested in reading more about the final version of Pixel Purge,  check out my follow-up Pixel Purge Postmortem (Coming soon).

Pixel Purge Final Version

Lastly, on to the results. Looking at my version specifically completed for the bet, I see how much it lacked. It’s a glorified prototype at best. However, it does have a decent title screen, working high scores, great controls, a variation in enemies, power-ups, an arcade leveling system, and a bit of polish here and there. All in all, it’s not that great, but hey, most flash games aren’t. As far as the original terms go, I personally believe the game could have been sold for a few hundred bucks. It wouldn’t make thousands, but that wasn’t the bet. If some rules had been laid out, I would have worked a lot harder to meet whatever guidelines were created, but those didn’t exist, and I met what I believed was needed. At the same time, the game does lack horribly to my standards, and I never actually proved it was sell-able. In the end, I’m going to have to call the entire bet a fluke. There were no real rules, there was no real panel of judges, it just isn’t possible to come to a fair conclusion. Bet aside, the entire situation was a huge success to me since it forced me to get back to work. I learned a lot in the process, and that’s worth a lot more than the pride or $100 I would have got had this been declared a victory. On a side note, I also didn’t drink for far more than 2 weeks for awhile (As were the terms of me losing). This had nothing to do with the bet, but I’m sure Ben is out there somewhere grinning with pleasure at the thought of a pseudo-victory.