#saywat

Exploring game development from a business perspective

Working in the gaming industry you get to explore many different events, from conventions to awards, but the most fun are game jams. A game jam is an event in which people participate to make video games in a limited amount of time, usually a weekend, ideally with a theme at hand.

Every organizer has different ways to put these jams together, just as everyone has a different way to select themes; whether it might be chosen by those who organize it, or voted on by participants. Some even have competitive elements in which people vote.

Such is the case of Ludum Dare. I had heard about them for a very long time, but never had the chance to participate in any – luckily, this recently changed.

Back in 2015 I got to participate in my first game jam, thus Twatter was born. The goal was to do a game from scratch with people who had never done anything game development related. I had worked on four flash games in early 2000, so I decided to invite one of my best friends to join, Gonçalo Gonçalves; he learned Construct, I learned Inkscape. My PC fried, his internet died, but we made it!

I had a lot of fun with TeamUp  Jam, and that’s why I decided to talk the forever grumps Michael Silverman into doing Ludum Dare together. We really had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, but we had so much fun surviving it. You can check out our entry here, Matchy’s Kooky Cookies!

Ludum Dare, the world's largest and longest running game jam event, has thousands of participants with all sorts of talents and experiences. While there are many limitations in terms of how you utilize assets, along with the time, you also set yourself up to be ranked in: graphics, sound, fun, innovation, theme, humor, mood, and overall score.

There are so many takeaways I got from this experience, from the standpoint of what a derivative work is, and understanding reusable assets. As a business mind, I know how to navigate through legal technicalities, but the nuisances of the actual technical artwork in practice, that was somewhat new. Including the fact that something can be fun, yet not have any humorous elements – and vice versa. Overall, it made me aware of plenty little details that, when it comes to marketing and publishing work, are somewhat invisible, yet highly valuable to consider.

In terms of the design leg of work, it’s a far greater appreciation of the anxiety of game development. In publishing, this is not something you get to experience. We get handed over the final build, you don’t get much of a say in development, but after everything is already done – rarely ever, any insight gets considered over budget reasons. It must take an important change for it to go back into development, because it takes on more money for development.  

Having an actual say in these circumstances can help improve graphic choices, thus adding to the whole gaming experience. However, having limited time makes you experience the excruciating stress game developers go through when trying to wrap up a build – a thousand things you would want to do, yet you have to choose prioritize what you can do instead. Experiencing categories to vote on, also brings a new perspective on elements that you don’t normally think of while trying to put together a build in such sort time. Last but not least, including the endless talent of some that do more and better than you, includes a humbling learning curve that motivates you to explore furthermore.

Keeping perspective of what you want, while trying to meet up to what you should do, is not quite the straight forward task. Being able to step out of my comfort zone of business development, and put myself into the stress of game development, sure brings a new found respect for developers. I had no idea how hard doing tutorials were, or the mad rush you get from someone finishing your game, it sure brings perspective. It’s a learning experience that forces me to improve my communication competence, and therefore, make publishing more fruitful.

Game design and game development rush

Previously, I talked about my first takeaway from ludum dare. This time, I would love to explain a bit more how the game development experience happened.

The first step was to discuss what to do. At first, it was not all that clear what we wanted to do. The only thing we knew was that, Michael - my Ludum Dare partner in crime, was doing the programming leg of work, and I would take care of the artwork. Luckily, Michael is an experienced game designer and he had a better picture of how to put things together.

Defining the idea of the game was easy at first. Michael runs Silverware Games, and one of his upcoming games is called Matchy Star. This is a game we both have been working on this year, and we really like it! I asked if we could use that IP for the LDJAM, and he was ok with the idea. When thinking of business development, whenever you work up a pipeline to expand intellectual property, there is something known as brand extension. This is building upon what you already have to make that brand world grow; as a result, you create more from the same idea. The goal is to generate more data on top of the content you already have, meaning you widen your opportunities – either grow your network, or grow your sales. So I figured, this can only benefit the studio in the long run. It is meant to be a free game after all.  

We defined a concept that would suit the theme, which this time around was “The more you have, the worst it gets”. I made a comment about how cute it would be to see Matchy Star interacting with the little stars he picks up in the game, worked it all from there. Matchy’s Kooky Cookies resulted in this crazy cute clicker game, you must help Matchy protect his stash of cookies from the cookie banditos. In theory, something short, fun and cute.

Personally, I love the work Jim did on Matchy Star, so I decided to reuse some of the original assets of the game – the characters only. While Michael challenge was to build up a clicker on the idea, my challenge was to build up around a game that we wanted to reference with new take on it somehow. I thought it would be simple, but it sort of became a tad more complicated than I had expected.

I get started on defining perspective and colors. One thing I wanted from the get-go was to make Matchy’s Kooky Cookies a complementary experience. I love Matchy Star, so I did not want to redo the most important assets, and I did not want this game to compete with the original vibrant look of the original game. Getting a cute mute like palette was not easy, I can do the job of a technical artist, but colors are always a challenge for me.

Once finished, the kitchen felt empty. That’s why I decided to include details from the Silverware Games world: a mug with ‘Composition J’ art, a cereal box inspired in ‘Don’t Shoot Yourself’ called Shootios, and ‘Matchy Star’ fridge magnets. I figured not many would get the references, but I still wanted to include them. Also, last but not least, the new company logo as cabinet lettering! Because apparently that’s a kitchen decoration thing - the more you know. 

Afterwards, designing the transitions screens was easier. Already had a palette in place, and we had no time, it resulted in minimal effort as default. I ended up including few: tutorial, rounds, score and credits. Tutorial was a challenge, what seemed simple for us did not for others, and we were so very lucky to receive as much feedback on the process to make it better understood.

Once everything was assembled, we experienced people experiencing problems here and there, we tweaked until build felt much more enjoyable. We also took in a lot of great ideas for future builds, including future games. Game jams provide experiential learning that, unlike any textbook, this is something you would rarely ever forget. You learn from what you do, and what you get to see others do, a fantastic experience I recommend anyone that works in the game industry to do.

Personal note here, thanks to Michael for having infinite patience to my relentless and sometimes irrational perfectionism. Game development is not about making things perfect, but making things work as you want them to, and you build up on that one fix at a time. It is good enough not when there is more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away – rude awakening to take from game development. I need to become more comfortable with troubleshooting design dilemmas, understanding simplicity and focus in design.

I was not expecting to end this blog with a life lesson, but there you go. Matchy’s Kooky Cookies is free to play, so you can go ahead and check it out right here. Comments and votes are welcome!

Bootstrap as a metaphor, meaning to better oneself by one's own unaided efforts.

Money continues to be a point of discussion for a lot of game developers in the industry. It can be daunting at times, but that stress never goes away.

Most developers assume that crowdfunding is the only way to go, when in fact, it is one of the many options for funding. Most requirements demand undivided commitment to organizational skills, deadline compromises, and financial responsibility. Crowdfunding is not exempt of all of the things just listed, it only seems to make crowdfunding the most attractive based on the lack of legal consequences. However, regardless of how this might be misconstrued by developers, options do exist for every industry out there. Hopefully, presenting healthier business options will provide for better choices regarding money.

Recently, I ran into an article about business bootstrapping. As a concept, this is what defines entrepreneurs starting out a business with next to no money. Exchanging the word ‘entrepreneur’ with ‘developer’, and it is pretty much an everyday process in the gaming industry.

In order to showcase how it works in practice, these are few of the many companies that started out self-funded, and eventually grew without external financial support. Tech companies that have thrived from keeping their goals in check, and most importantly, keeping their finances in order:

Go-Pro

Nick Woodman got started with a $35,000 loan in 2002, originally named Woodman’s Lab. Woodman kept full responsibility of his finances until 2012, when then he opened up the company to a $200 million investment from Foxconn. Eventually, the company finally goes public in 2014 with a value of $2.96 billion.

GitHub

Originally started in 2008 by Tom Preston-Werner, Chris Wanstrath, and PJ Hyett. It only took a few thousand dollars from their own savings to get things going, which provided enough revenue for all of them at the time. There wasn’t even an office then, they would meet up at coffee places to work a few times a week. It wasn’t until 2012, that they started to take on employees into the company. Years later, GitHub found $100 million investment through venture capital, and achieved $250 million in a second round of venture capital back in 2015. Nowadays, the company makes about $140 million annual revenue. GitHub value is about $2 billion.

Craigslist

It all started in 1995 as some sort of casual newsletter among friends to showcase events around San Francisco. Obviously, the service became a wide spread phenomenon online reaching a million page views per month by 1997, great milestone at the time. Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, was financially independent until 2004 when eBay paid $32 million for a piece of the company, which did not end up well because years later, a lawsuit happened and Newmark bought back the shares. Craigslist, with over 20 billion page views per month, is present in over 70 countries nowadays – tops with $690 million (revenue by 2016), and is roughly appraised in $5 billion these days.

Bootstrapping requires understanding of the financial risk that, as a developer and entrepreneur, they accept. Unlike venture capital, there is a form of total control on every decision as well as full ownership of failure. Personal finance might not be initially enough to provide success at a reasonable rate, but it educates on responsibility by becoming accountable on every financial choice made. Unlike many other ways of funding, mostly when money is third party sourced.

Startups cultivate growth from reinvesting their own profit as it comes, ideally when costs are low and return on investment is high. This financing approach allows developers to maintain control of their business and forces them to spend with discipline. Money can always become a problem when there is absence or abundance of it: if there is too much, it all gets spent now instead of saving to reinvest later; just as there is not enough, it ‘justifies’ lack of quality.

This idea isn’t limiting to startups only, it's a valid way for business owners to treat valuable resources at any stage of their business' growth. Considered one of the most effective and inexpensive ways to ensure a business' positive cash flow. Also, allows businesses to focus on customers rather than investors, increasing the chances of creating a self-sustaining business.

Challenge ideas. Respect people. Celebrate individuality. 

Negotiation is a business method in which people settle a matter of mutual concern in order to resolve conflict. It is a process involving compromise and agreement in the pursue of finding a common ground.

It could be easily defined in three parts, first presenting the problem: my side and your side, exploring the two ends of the situation: what each side wants, and bargaining with a positive closure: making decisions and agreeing upon it. It seems fairly simple, yet, a lost art in everyday situations.

Disagreements are part of human discourse, not just business. Everyone experiences life differently, and as a result, we all convey different thoughts on everything. While celebrating diversity is important, every human joint effort requires understanding for development. Unfortunately, chances are different trades and skills will not always agree intuitively, for example: programmers would consider the code to be the soul of the project, whereas artists might think they are the identity to what everything needs to come together; everyone thinks they know the value of what they do, but not everyone will understand value the same way. Sometimes being caught up in what you do, doesn’t provide sufficient perspective to grasp what you are doing it for - that’s how disagreements are born.

In order to practice negotiation, important variables like listening and respect need to exist. You have to listen, because you are being presented to on a point of view you do not have, and chances are you do not understand. Instead of waiting for your turn to talk, just actively pay attention; and respect, because you may not be able to digest it at first, but you can recognize ideas different to yours exist, and explore them without accepting them as your own.

Negotiation is only one of many steps in how to settle business disagreements. If there is no coherent way to adhere to a conclusion via legal structure or upfront planning, then there are other ways to find resolution. Acquiring a third party to guide and provide guidance on the conflict, via mediation; or by management agreements, commonly known as bylaws – specific contractual guidelines presenting previously agreed scenarios, and options to avoid possible conflict. If all goes wrong, then there is court action, seeking the help of the ultimate arbiter of a business dispute, a judge.

Ideally, you would want to avoid wasting any time or money. In business, a petty disagreement can make or break teams, including disrupting financial planning. In your personal life, any informal debate can lead to fracturing friendships, or even getting yourself fired – depending how emotionally invested said disagreement can be, even a civil lawsuit. No matter how frustrating it might be, it’s important to keep your emotions in check.

Job negotiations, for example, they can become somewhat difficult at times; yet, being polite and concise might get you considered for another offer, in contrast to being disrespectful, that will only get you automatically discarded. As a society, disagreements are far more common nowadays than any form of kindness, insulting won’t vindicate your perspective, but weaken it. When you disagree, you don’t need to convince those who already agree with you, but bring to your corner those who do not – otherwise, there is very little agreement to be had. Negotiation is a great tool, practice it as needed.

The dysfunctional thinking between what developers have and what they think they want

Valve announced that Steam Greenlight was no more, and then Steam Direct became news everywhere. Not much has been said yet, other than Steam Direct will be about as much as Steam Greenlight was – and this has sparked debate among indie developers. Some show support with the initiative, whereas others are disappointed in the low fee and the consequences they assume from it.

Thinking less competition will provide for better opportunities for sales is absurd. You can try standing on a street downtown selling candy by yourself, but the fact that you would be the only kid diung anything doesn’t mean that anyone would buy from you. Ideally, having a market involves the concept of multiple variables efficiently coexisting, without it the concept of a market doesn’t exist. Without company diversity operating in the same supply and demand, indie developers would be nothing but quirky kids doing creative things that belong nowhere in the economic spectrum. Having a healthy market indicates more to work with, there are more games but also gamers too; having more people to perceive as potential users is a positive thing.

Without the data a market provides, companies like Steam would not exist. There would not be enough of a user base to build up a distribution platform that would operate as an important hub in the industry – you would be stuck working on your own Wordpress website, with your GoDaddy / Shopify store.  I sure remember those days, way before even social media existed. To assume a company should do less to serve third-party expectations is flawed, a company works for itself, even if it is a hub that provides a service to many other smaller companies and indie studios.

 The thing indie developers understand as a problem is the denial to accept the bar gets raised every single time there is a surplus of content. More games dictate gamers will have choices, providing new bars for what is value and price, including options for costs and quality. When more is asked of you, you shouldn’t complain about giving less – learn more instead; there is so much to work with, having fewer people playing games won’t dictate your success, but having more venues to reach out to more.

There is not much to discuss on Steam Direct so far, we need information on how content will be curated now, and what this new platform will offer for indie development. For now, all we can do is revise the concepts of cost and price, and quality and value – all sound similar, yet they are not. Not long ago, I wrote about the difference of cost and price, this time I want to introduce quality and contrast it with the concept of value, all relevant to the future of your games.

Value is something that becomes defined by the user, if it is something that serves a purpose for any specific use, or that it becomes something that resonates in sentiment. Quality relies entirely on the company, and sometimes it might even set the bar for cost and performance. Also, while important, users might buy not because it has quality but they will not buy it in the absence of quality, reason why quality and value need of each other.

Maybe your game presents the most refreshing imaginative creation yet on its genre, but if the game crashes on start, it matters very little how meaningful it is if it’s unplayable. Maybe your game runs perfect, but it is yet again another pointless shooter clone without even a story to it – development should not impair marketing, just as marketing can’t exist without development. Yet, it is often known that developers can market a game for five years and more, or simply just launch without marketing at all – neither scenario is healthy without understanding how variables like quality and value will set the bar for cost and ultimately, price.

Steam is one of many distribution options for digital content, and it is one of the fundamental ones. It widens your options as a publishing platform, but it doesn’t provide success by default. Everything you combine with the concept of cost, quality, value and price will.

Game development production is fundamental: the time you take working on something, the time it takes to promote said something, the money you inject into it. There are so many variables that need time and money, and if you do not have the money then it should take ten times the work and attention. But thinking because you can’t afford it, that it might not be needed, is what makes indie developers fight to be in a new releases listing rather than organize a genuine marketing plan instead. Invest your efforts wisely, don’t be afraid of competition – grow with it.

Creating value is the defining essence of your business  

Most people understand Marketing as a conduit to generate sales, whereas it should be understood as a communication platform. Marketing needs to be practiced as a means to engage and understand those who make your company, who support your game - and most important of all, to inherently create value in these conversations and interactions.

While sales might be a result to healthy business practices, it should never be something that would hinder you from growth. It is important to withstand costs, and generate revenue, but it is far more important to ground yourself and create opportunities instead. Not every chance of exposure will automatically result in a sale, but you can gain supporters that might become sale leads in the future. Brand awareness cultivates ideas that will not only assist with profitability, but enables network growths that will passively work over time.

The key is to understand who you are, and try to convey value before sales. A solid business plan, or at least a clear guideline, needs to define everything: from how much you can spend, and what you should spend it on; to your strengths and weakness as a team, highlight what defines you as a brand. Either casual gaming or perhaps cultivating an MMO-like experience, whichever it is, value comes from developer’s efforts, and it should understand what the gamers want. Communication is necessary when it comes to establishing expectations, just as much as you expect any marketing strategy to generate results.

Value can be understood in multiple ways, the one thing to keep present is that there is no way to explore consumer behavior without a direct reference to personal values. Value is that one determining factor that will influence purchase choices, it can provoke or ruin its chances entirely. The way to identify and measure this is by opening up to consumer perception theory, learning about gamers self- perception and market price perception. How both concepts come together as something that is meant to provide quality to their lives.

Companies don’t define what value means, it is their audience who does. Every consumer is ultimately drawn to efforts that address their needs and wants; there is no direct understanding of costs in the gaming industry, but what expectations they build upon what they want from what they eventually get. It is important to highlight that, while there is value in the actual gaming experience, this conversation is aimed at optimizing business efforts. This isn’t about how to improve game development, but how to create value through business development.

Value can be broken down in two larger realms, one being the utilitarian value, which comes from solving a problem via product or service; or hedonic value, the instant gratification that is provoked by experiences. One is entirely practical, whereas the other one is emotional in nature. Being influenced by both internal and external variables, they go along with understanding they satisfy a particular need which is defined by the demographics present in your audience.

Gaming represents a vast industry that can produce incredible stories, educational tools, casual distraction, and plenty of experiences in the realm of entertainment. Ideally, you want marketing to stay consistent to the essence of the project – if the game is a casual and short experience, do not present it as an epic Final Fantasy inspired homage. Captivating advertisement will never make up for disappointing experiences, creating false windows of expectation can only reflect buyer’s remorse, resulting in losing credibility from people who already trusted enough to invest in you.

In order to be able to create perceived value is to listen to those who listen to you. Find out who they are, what they do, translate this information in action, then try to produce content that will represent who you are, and at the same time, provide content that will be perceived as valuable. Think of it like having a best friend, there are things you have in common, and with time, you develop your own world of jokes, activities, interests and experiences. It never happens overnight, it sure takes time, patience, and being present for your community. Creating these environments is fundamental to growing a network, understanding these dynamics is what will create chances of building trust. Nowadays, being seen or heard of is not enough, most people tend to gravitate towards things they already know; meaning, building trust is no longer a branding attribute, but an actual variable that makes the difference between a sale or not. If you have yet to cultivate trust, you should invest in finding ways to give value to the people that matter.

Everyone becomes fascinated with the belief of “find your passion” and “follow your dreams”, romanticizing the idea that motivation somehow will drive you there. Then reality sets in, and you find out motivation comes and goes every other day, making every effort become ambiguous at best.

Ideally, your passion and your job should not be all that different from each other, but truth is, life can be unfair and chances are that is not the case. As we grow older, we realize the things we are good at are not exactly the same as the things we wish we could do, and this happens because we overestimate the capacity of motivation. It doesn’t mean we can’t learn new things and become proficient at new things, the only reason we are ever good at something is because we repeatedly do it, improving as we go along – which means, given enough exposure and practice, we can materialize expertise.

Motivation works on the assumption that a particular emotion or mental state is needed to complete a task, whereas discipline functions outside any circumstances relying on responsibility instead. If you wait until you feel like doing anything, chances are you will not dedicate the time it needs to get it done – sadly, everything requires a trial and error phase which demands patience, and needs time to build up into anything which requires consistency. Motivation works entirely disproportionate to negative experiences, the worst it gets, the less willing we want to go into it; reason why discipline helps you stay focused getting you through time to get things done, it doesn’t matter how you feel, you just need to comply with a schedule.

Anything you let your feelings determine, it might lead into procrastination, which Is a very well-known downside of game development, sometimes even freelancing. Motivation requires a lot of attention, it has a short life and needs constant positive reassuring. By contrast, discipline is something that doesn’t require anything but action, it leads to productivity and it is consistently more reliable in the long run, even if it doesn’t feel as fantastic at the time.

Stop trying to convince yourself into doing stuff, instead organize your goals into tasks, pace yourself and give it the time it needs.

Business planning and financial responsibility are the right way to get anything started.

One of the benefits of business planning is that it gives perspective of the landscape of your project. From short term goals to long term goals, it provides direction to optimize your business performance. Clarity and focus of operations leads to better decision making and the ability to tackle and anticipate problems.

First, draft your business plan.  The business plan should present the basics of the company and detail of the tasks and how these activities are supposed to happen. Once these ideas are lined up, it becomes much easier to assign costs to every step - introducing the concept of budgeting to your business. Few game developers understand these practices. Financial responsibility can make or break a project.

It is easy to get distracted with every day work, which is why business plans are the blueprint to not just making one game, but becoming a development studio that can become a real business. Budgeting is the integral  part of the process that will manage all monetary resources such as costs, profit, including details such as cash flow, expenditures, and more. It is fundamental to outline the process in order to be able to grasp full control of the current commitments and future responsibilities.

Creating a budget shouldn’t be complicated.  It should reflect resources and timing, including the costs and expenses that come along. When you get started, you don’t have sales or income to consider; however, costs are a permanent variable throughout every necessary budgeting process.

One of the most common ways to understand costs are: direct, which are exactly what it takes to produce the specific good or service; and indirect, the expenses that come along while providing said product or service. Going further into these concepts only leads to accounting specifics, not particularly required for you to draft estimates in order to keep track of funds.

Direct costs can be defined as labour (people), raw materials, and software licenses. Indirect costs would be directly related to office space (rent), internet, and office equipment; you would assess as needed. Either way, costs need to be included in the planning proposals.

Once you have listed all cost, you can move on grounding a budget approach. There are different ways to get started: either find out specifically how much money is required per costs, or simply use a ballpark figure and work from there.  Unfortunately, money isn’t infinite, so chances are you will need to work on detailing costs rather than having a bunch of money and trying to make sense out of it.  Eventually, you will need to monitor your data and make sure things go as planned - evaluate and control your expenses to keep from going over budget.

Research should be the first step for you to get started on your budget responsibilities. Your business plan needs to define what your goals are – and as you revise this information, strategy ideas will come along through research. It’s important to expand on the information you already have to identify what opportunities are best for you. Then, define all costs. It doesn’t matter if you eventually need to re-define estimates. As long as you have a core idea of what is necessary, you can eventually scale up or down as needed. If you are budgeting for an ongoing business, then by all means include average income along with your personnel and operating expenses.

Last but not least, monitor resources. As your plan is drafted up, the idea is to keep up with it and evaluate it periodically. Time is on your side as long as you include it in the strategy.  Organization is one of the most important tools you can have when it comes to business discipline – budget away!