Porter's World

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.

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3

Strength In Numbers

I’d like to point this article specifically to any flash developer that does solo work, or even freelance work. An ongoing discussion among members concerning flash game development, is the question of if it’s better to work in a group, or alone. There are a few perks to each side, let’s go over them now and then I’ll elaborate with my professional opinion on the matter.

Working alone has it’s benefits for sure, especially if you’re a decent artist and programmer. The obvious bonus to working alone is that you don’t have to split the cash, all earning drop directly into your hands and you get to dream about what you’re going to buy between work sessions or while you sleep. The next benefit is the ability to work for yourself. You pick when you work, how much you work, and your reasons are your own, nobody can interfere except perhaps the wonderful world of responsibility if you’re doing this as a full time job. One of the more important, and definitely appealing aspects of working alone is that you make the calls. The artwork is as you call it, the design is nothing short of what you make it, you are your own limits.

Now on to the other option, working with a partner or even in a group. One of the most important feature in my eyes to this, is how fast you can work. You’re are able to pump work out at a rate that would look something like the following:

workRate = numberOfMembers*hours+bonus;

As an example, if you work 6 hours, your production is equal to that work time, multiplied by the number of members putting in those hours. Now you’ll notice I added “+bonus” in there, I’ll get to that in my closing opinion. Another positive feature to this work method is that you can have each member of the team excel in a certain ability, thus making your game above average, having great graphics, game-play, and whatever else it may contain that your team can contribute to. One additional, and very important aspect of working with others, is the ability to collaborate your ideas and build upon the original. The progress that can be made during the planning stages via this method is amazing.

If that wasn’t convincing enough, I’ll say it a bit more clearly, working in teams far surpasses that of which one can do alone. First off, yes you split the money, but you work faster as a group. The plus I mentioned in my above formula is the result of combing ideas. When you get together, you come up with ideas faster. You then gain motivation from seeing progress happen at a faster rate. This progress makes you work faster, see more results, thus spiraling you into a much faster development cycle than that of which can be reached alone. In the end you’re getting far more work done per hour if you stay focused and motivated, which is much more likely to happen in a group when others are there to motivate and support you. As mentioned your ideas are more successful and flushed out in a team, and you’re less likely to abandon the project due to a huge workload or lack of motivation, both of which are common among solo developers with a large project.

I’m sure by now you’ve seen my reasoning and would agree that working in a group far surpasses the likes of working solo. Time is saved, ideas are elaborated upon and it’s just all around more fun. If my words alone don’t convince you, look at some of the top games out there today, they’re all developed by teams of 2 or more, and that’s not about to change. The industry is calling for higher quality games, and teams are now forming to compensate for said changes. If you’re solo now and thinking about making the switch to a team, now is the time to do so. Get yourself a steady position with someone else or in an already established team. If you need a great place to find a partner or co-workers, I highly suggest heading over to FlashGameLicense.com and becoming an active member in the community, after all, that’s how I ended up a part of Epic Shadow Entertainment and writing this very article.