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.

Work to Payout Graph

There’s always a balance in everything. In the flash industry there’s a balance in how much you work, to how much you get paid for that work. It’s important to find this balance if you plan to make a full time job as a game developer. Below we’ll take a look at the lower end, the higher end, and of course the golden area right in the middle. Keep in mind there are always reasons to branch off of this price/payout golden area, and we’ll go over those as well.

Let’s take a look at the lower end of the chart. Mini games have always been accepted in flash. A simple concept that can be picked up and played, but doesn’t have too much depth. Without an amazingly original and exciting idea, these games don’t pay off too much, nor do they require that much work. They may only pay a few hundred dollars in payout, but they also only take 10-20 hours to create. There are a few advantages to this. First off, it’s easy to get the idea, keep motivation and see your project through to the end. Longer projects tend to drag on after awhile and the developers efforts dwindle as a result in the later days of production. It’s also a useful tactic to follow for bill paying purposes, some people prefer to be paid on a weekly or bi weekly basis, this is definitely the way to go for you.

Next we’ll look at what I’ll call the golden area, right in the middle. This area offers the most money for your hard work. Medium hours and optimal payout for those hours. You don’t work months and months on end on a project, you work a month or two depending on your team size and hours put in. This area is the best as I’ve said because you get the most money for your work. A small game that could get you a few hundred dollars for 10-20 hours. Let’s say such a game would get you $600 USD. Now let’s visualize turning that small idea into a more in depth game, but nothing over the top. Something with replay value, levels and perhaps a short story, again, keeping this game at a medium sized project. If we can manage to do such a thing and only double our hours, or go slightly over that, we can turn $500 USD into $5000 USD. Not all games will fetch such a price, but even so reaching the $2000-$3000 mark isn’t unreal by any means. As you can see, if you’re capable of creating such games with your creative abilities, it’s definitely worth your time to expand upon those small ideas.

Work to Payout Graph

The last section we’ll look at is the high end. This section requires the most work, and even if you’re games are huge and very successful, you’ll find that the money really doesn’t compensate for how many hours you put in. There isn’t really much to say on this, you just generally don’t get as much money for the large amount of work you put in. There are exceptions, but as a general rule of the market It’s best to avoid this unless you’re looking into micro-transactions, a website specifically for the game and many other additions that will keep your money coming in, and again, your game must be a hit for any of this to matter. This area is unfortunately one many new comers fall into without realizing two things, they probably aren’t capable of finishing such a project yet, and second, it’s not worth it. The last exception to going into this area is one that should not be forgotten, doing it for the fun. If you’re passionate about your project and just want to see it come to life, go for it, designing games should never just be about the money, but don’t forget that you probably won’t see the cash the work should bring in, but if you’re really into your project that shouldn’t be an issue.

So as you’ve seen, there are definitely different many things to consider when determining the size of your project. There are bonus’s to all sized projects, some better for casual production and others better for bringing in the right amount of cash. It’s ultimately up to you to decide which sized project you’ll pick, but make sure to take all the above into consideration when you do so.

It's Never Really Finished

One of the most common mistakes I’ve seen in the flash game industry by other developers, is that too many of them feel their games are done far before this is a reality. Such things result in a flooding of insufficient quality games on FlashGameLicense.com, and it also creates a lot of let down for those who are new to the industry when they don’t get much attention. The simple fact is, most “finished games” aren’t truly done, or have plenty of room for improvement that shouldn’t just be saved for a sequel, after all, a sequel can’t exist if the first game never takes off in the first place.

This thought occurred to me this morning when I woke up at the usual time of post 12 PM. I did my routine morning check of newgrounds, kongregate and then FGL. I checked out my topic in the general forum titled “Finished Games With No Luck? Come Here!” which was started by myself to get some of completed games off of FGL that were lacking attention. Many of the games on this list are quality games, they have what it takes to survive in the industry, but they lack the polish needed to properly grab a sponsors eyes. This is what brings me to my main though, as developers, we need to understand that our games are never really done, there is absolutely always room for improvement.

The hardest part in my opinion about game design, is that our (the developer) views on our own games are flawed. We can’t see them for what they truly are, we can’t know for sure if our game is as fun as we think. This is why we need to always expect that our games aren’t done, we need to constantly step out of developer mode, look at the game as an average user as best we can, then increase the production value of our games in every way we see possible, no matter how big or small. If you find yourself clipping an edge 1 out of 10 times while doing a certain jump in a platformer, fix it, chances are 3 out of 10 average users will hit it if you’re hitting 1 in 10 times. Small things like that really get to users and lower their vision on your game as a whole.

An example of extreme refining that I’ve found myself doing lately is map editing. In Epic Shadow Entertainments newest upcoming game Tower of Greed, I’ve created 64 maps for that wonderful beast of a tower. I cannot possibly stress how many times I’ve edited those maps. From appearance issues to finding a jump ever so slightly annoying, I’ve spent hours upon hours just editing maps thought to already be completed. Where I’m not able to share with you how much I’ve done this and truly get my point across, perhaps Andrew can share how many times I’ve sent him a minor update over MSN, go ahead, ask him about it haha. Anyway, this is just one section of the game, just maps. Many developers “finish” a portion of their games and never touch it again, I’ve spent hours upon hours just on our maps, Andrew has refined our engine, fixed up graphics numerous times from scratch and we’ve added additions that were never in the original outline of the game. The bottom line is this, and it can’t be stressed enough, you’re game is never truly done. If you’re still not convinced, think of the last time you saw the most attractive guy/girl you’ve ever seen, is that the most attractive person ever? I doubt it, there’s always room for improvement.

After reading this, you may be asking, “When am I ready to sell my game then?”, the answer is simple, as soon as you truly feel it’s in great condition and sponsors as well as other developers start recognizing it as a real piece of work. There is a point in which you need to decide if it’s worth it to you to spend more time on the game or not, but if it hasn’t sold yet, and you’ve already put in 20-40 hours, you might as well spend a few more getting it in the proper condition for the wild.