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December 12, 2015

Congressional App Challenge: 2015 Workshop Talk “So Many Hats!”

I’m participating in Congresswoman Slaughter’s Congressional App Challenge as a judge this year. Also I’m giving a short presentation at this weekend’s Congressional App Challenge Workshop at the RIT MAGIC Center. I decided to get the contents of my talk posted and shareable beforehand this time around so I could refer attendees to it. It’s useful stuff to discuss when it comes to creating games and apps in small teams. I wind up having many conversations around these topics with different people I meet.

I’m calling the talk Game and App Development in Small Teams: So Many Hats! since working on games and apps as an individual or in small teams means the people involved are going to be required to assume many roles in the process. I started at Workinman at 2010 when I was person #13 in the studio. Since then we’ve grown a bit to about 44 people at the time of writing this. In a sense we still feel more like a collection of small teams making games rather than a bureaucratic studio that has stark separations between departments.

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Game and app development by small teams and individuals requires people to assume many roles. Your contribution to making your product is only part of it. Beyond needing to encompass programming, art, music and sound composition in game development you also may need to consider things like marketing, social media outreach, project management, business development, and human resources to name a few (I could name more!)

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Make small things, complete them and move on. Trying to make your perfect game right out of the gates is a difficult proposition. You should try to make something as good as you can within the extend of your ability and then move on. Avoid excessive refactoring of old imperfect work. You can make something new that builds off of your cumulative knowledge.

Learn by doing the full process. How will your app publish? What is required of the marketplace it will be available on? You don’t want to be answering these questions for the first time when you’re trying to launch something giant. You can easily sort out some of these details on a smaller pilot product you attempt early on.

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“It’s done when it’s done” mentality can be dangerous. This could lead to a feeling of perpetual development which is unsustainable outside of a hobby context.

Even if you’re comfortable slowly developing a project and money isn’t a question, appreciate that time is still a critical resource.

Don’t let perfectionism be an obstacle to shipping your product. Also consider vehicles like Early Access on Steam and open development. You can build awareness about your product during the process and engage your fan base.

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Feature creep can be necessary at times but it can also put a project at risk. Sometimes new ideas come up during development that are truly too good to pass up. Game design can evolve as it goes, but be wary about changing too much too often.

When do you say “No.” to a good idea? It requires making potentially difficult judgement calls, but sometimes you want to avoid including a good idea if it doesn’t fit the original vision of the product or would potentially throw schedules off course more than other achievable features.

Feature creep can be unavoidable and necessary at times. If you’re making games in a work for hire setting you need to satisfy your client’s needs as well as your own. Depending on the relationship here ideally you can find some compromises to move forward on.

Aim for a balance between pragmatic and frivolous design. Being inflexible in your work process can be frustrating to any partners you have. Also going too far “off the rails” chasing fun ideas can put everyone’s work at risk.

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So how do you approach working in development when it can be intimidating needing to assume so many roles? Focus on your strengths and capabilities. Not every game or app looks the same or has the same level and depth of features.

Work around your skill gaps. If art isn’t your strong suit aim to keep your visuals clean and simple. If programming isn’t your strong suit aim to make a game that focuses on core appeal and has simple features.

If you have a capabilities gap that is a must have, take this as an opportunity to skill-up (if the topic in question is something you want to learn how to do). Or seek help from others. Take these moments as good learning opportunities along the way.

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Remember that developing your app is just one portion of the work to be done.

Publishing and marketing can take up as much of 25% or 50% of a project lifetime to be done thoroughly and well. Once your app exists on one platform you could continue expanding its reach by porting it to other platforms. Marketing can be done in many ways from maintaining social media accounts, working with your marketplace to request premium visibility in their store, to actually purchasing advertising.

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Lightning strikes make for exciting news, but it’s very rare. Don’t depend on your app being a lightning rod and succeeding because of it. Every news outlet loves to tell that “indie success story”, but this doesn’t do credit to the majority of other developers out there who have developed a portfolio of quality games and a dedicated fanbase over years.

Do quality work! Forge relationships with your customers and fan base. Be connected and available. Attend conferences and networking events to connect with your peers. I often hear people asking the question of “How to break in to industry X,” whether it’s indie games or comics. To me it seems like “breaking in” can more or less become “being there”.

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Learn from the successes (and even more so the mistakes) of others. Seek out development postmortems and other industry relevant articles. Gamasutra.com and gdcvault.com/free are excellent places to begin. There are plenty of giants available for you to stand on their shoulder for a moment if you need.

Above all else, do the work because you love doing it! Making games and apps is fun.

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Good luck, have fun!

December 7, 2015

Halloween Forever got Greenlit on Steam!

Awesome News!

The morning after Thanksgiving I was checking my email and I saw this message in my inbox:

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Halloween Forever had been Greenlit and approved to join the Steam catalog! This immediately snapped me out of my post-feasting stupor. I think I might have danced around a little bit too. Awesome news. Since then I’ve been collecting some necessary reading on getting a Gamemaker build ready for Steam integration. Specifically these three so far if you’re interested:

    http://help.yoyogames.com/entries/96364717-Becoming-A-Steamworks-Developer (I think this step is mostly finished)
    http://help.yoyogames.com/entries/96357738-Using-The-Steamworks-SDK-With-GameMaker-Studio
    http://docs.yoyogames.com/source/dadiospice/002_reference/steam%20api/index.html (really excited to dig into this more. All of the Steam related functions that come along with Gamemaker out of the box!)

So What Comes Next?

Firstly I’m going to make sure I can get the current version of Halloween Forever up and launching via Steam. I have a short to medium list of new features and some content I would like to add to make the game more packed with cool stuff and polish for Steam. My tentative list, no promises:

    Some menu polish and refinement. Sound and music toggles
    An additional world or two plus bosses.
    Some new secrets, but trying to not largely change existing world designs. I’m not sure if I will spread the 6 secret runes out through all the worlds or keep them all in place for worlds 1-3.
    Additional music, ideally a custom level theme per world. Currently talking to Robert Mostyn about this!
    Some control remapping would be awesome (at least for keyboard, also possibly for gamepad). Better gamepad support than is currently in too (works with xbox 360 format usb controllers but maybe not other things).
    Switching to 16:9 instead of 4:3, or even view size toggles.

On top of that list I’m considering making the current version of Halloween Forever available via Early Access while things get tweaked and additions get made. Ideally it would be a short Early Access run, maybe 3-4 months, and I’m interested in trying it out on a small scale with a game like this. Must learn somehow!

I’ll be continuing to post updates and info on how things are progressing here as it goes. Looking forward to it!

November 24, 2015

Take a look back in time…Halloween Forever process compilation from Instagram

After a bit of organizing on my phone and tinkering in iMovie I was able to compile this Halloween Forever process video. All of the 40+ clips are from my Instagram and you could find all the individual videos if you sifted through, but I like having this as a document showing where Halloween Forever started and where it ended up. Plus you get to enjoy listening to Night on Bald Mountain! Hope you enjoy strolling down Halloween Forever’s own Memory Lane.

November 11, 2015

Neato Halloween Forever Comic Inking Time Lapse, Imaginary Monsters on Twitch.tv

Time lapse videos. Maybe more to come

I made a time lapse video of me inking the 4th Halloween Forever comic page earlier this week. Hoping to do more progress recording as I go. Next time I’m going to see if I can get the camera horizontal while I work.

Imaginary Monsters on Twitch

I set up a Twitch account and did my first live stream on Monday. I only have half of it recorded since the first half had issues with Photoshop not displaying properly. Something about application window captures being more finicky than just doing a monitor capture. Either way, I’m going to try and Stream some work progress stuff Monday and Wednesday nights at about 9:30 pm EST. We’ll see how it goes!
http://www.twitch.tv/imaginarymonsters

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October 31, 2015

Jim Sterling Rates Halloween Forever “A Billion Pumpkins out of a Billion”

Itch.io Tasty Halloween Edition With Jim Sterling

Jim Sterling found Halloween forever and included it in his Halloween episode of Itch.io Tasty! Check it out!

(Halloween Forever coverage begins around 8:00, but you should watch the whole video! Also give him a like and a subscribe while you’re at it.)

In his review he mentions catching influences of Ghosts n’ Goblins and Castlevania, which is spot on. I’m stoked that the essence of that was able to shine through. Also his video had me reminiscing with Count Duckula and Trapdoor clips for the rest of my night last night.

Thank you Mr. Sterling for making this Halloween that much more fun for me and for helping people find my game! Happy Halloween everybody!

A new challenger approaches! Pumpkin Man now a playable character in Deathstate!
October 30, 2015

Pumpkin Man now a playable character in Deathstate Halloween update!

A new challenger approaches!

Greetings abyssal heroes! Pumpkin Man from Halloween Forever is now available as an unlockable player character in Deathstate! He is getting added along with a few other seasonal creepy goodies for you to find in the game. Deathstate just got a little bit more spooky (some might even say spoopy!) with this update.

Deathstate is available for mac and pc via Steam:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/402120

Stay spooky, my friends.

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