I saw Iron Man 3 recently. They put in the 'grind' in the first 10-20 minutes of the movie, where it shows how much work Tony Stark put into his suits and how they fail. Iron Man 1 actually did a better job of showing the grind... his early suits failed quite a bit and the show covered it for like 20-30 minutes.

A lot of the fun in RPG is in sitting back in suspense, following the hero as he goes from being a nobody into a hero. You see the hard work he puts into it, the suffering he goes through, the transformation. This is the grind. If you skip the grind and go straight into hero mode, you lose much of the tension that make RPGs so charming.

In many games, they only simulate the hard work and suffering with repetitive combat and dialogs. Now this is ok, it's worked so far. But after seeing Iron Man movie, I wonder if you can compress that grind into 20-30 minutes.

Iron Man movie isn't optimal either... you may empathize with the first suit he creates. But you won't feel the effort/suffering of him building 20 failed suits by the time he creates a Mk 20 suit or whatever. It works well enough for a two hour movie, but not a 15 hour game.

But playing boring bits in a game for 10+ hours before getting to the heroism part isn't that optimal either. Anyone know any other great examples or methods for grinding a character up without having to bore them?

Look at
The Clue!
Stolen in Sixty Seconds (despite the other Herocraft games, this one is a real gem when it comes to heist games)
The Sting!

First two games are better than Payday and The Art of Theft IMO. The Sting is great too, but it's too comical to get into the mood.

Actually, a cool meta mechanic could be that each job is linked to each other, like the way days pass in Papers Please. The more money you steal, the more the cops are alerted, and maybe there are sort of higher defenses against the tactic you use most often so there's incentive to switch it up.

The Clue actually implements this. Watch a location longer and you'll get better info of where the good stuff is, but people will notice you. Mess up too much and cops will figure out who you are. Use the same guys too often and some of them will get caught because of all the evidence you leave behind.

It becomes like kind of a resource which you have to manage between short term gain and keeping a low profile for the long run. E.g. explosives might get you some good stuff from bank vaults, but they pull the cops on you almost immediately. Even if you don't get caught, you'd get a lot of heat on you.

Stolen in Sixty Seconds seems to be directly inspired by The Clue, in that you have to plan everything, but the fun part is that you're controlling the character during the heist. You can tell your mates where to go and what to steal, but you'd have to keep your own orders in your mind and implement it yourself.

You could make money off games, but reality is that you need to be doing it longer and better than everyone else. Even if you wanted investor/kickstarter money to make games, you'd need to prove that you're capable of making the game in the first place (and freelancing is good for a portfolio as well).

By too big, I mean that it's not viable for most indie developers to try to imitate. It's probably the best business model for games if anyone could hit it, though - no need to worry about diluting the fun with microtransactions and DRM... just make the best possible game you could.

Also, I think we've strayed off my point a bit. I meant that games themselves are like a sports jersey. Something like how cinemas only just break even off the movies themselves, but make big money off popcorn. While some people buy movies off DVD, a lot of the revenue comes from people who pay premium for full immersion in a movie cinema. We just need to find the gamer's equivalent of popcorn and cinemas.

I wish I knew what was cool about Linux, I tried using Ubuntu a week ago and I just lagged on games and had to use that terminal thing forever.

WHATS SO COOL ABOUT IT?

Heh, had the exact opposite experience with Ubuntu a while back. Ubuntu emulators played games faster than Windows Vista did natively. Internet surfing was fun. Compiling code was really quick too. Facebook and browser games were just awesome on Ubuntu.

Sadly, there's not a lot of great apps for Linux. The music players suck, the pdf readers suck, the games built for linux are outdated.

the easiest way that involves work would probably be freelancing; use elance.com or freelancer.com or similar sites and look for jobs which match your skills. those can be language specific (e.g. 'i want someone to code a flash game for me) though. and it's not always specific to games, if you can code, it's easier to find jobs like 'code my site'

if you have skills besides coding (e.g. art, music, writing) you can also apply to jobs in those fields

This. If you want to live longer off it, move to Indonesia or some other country with low living costs and cheap internet. Malaysia's pretty damn good for freelancing jobs too. People with degrees can't actually program (so no competition), and there's tons of money going around the system looking for the right web or app designer. No shortage of people who would fork out thousands for a logo or design or a quick website which you could build off a template.

Downside is that people who hire freelancers tend to be assholes. The bigger they are, the bigger the asshole.

If you have money for two years, shouldn't be too bad. Good programmers get jobs easily, so not too hard to turn back if needed. Freelance jobs are also easy to find, but depends on your living costs. In the future, you're more likely to look back and regret the things you didn't do than regret the things you did do.

However, do you have a good enough skillset to leave your job? IMO, learning when going indie is really slow... you don't have colleagues or bosses who keep you up to date with the latest development trends and techniques.

Work is awesome for the 'wax in, wax out' grind in improving your skills and work rate, without having to worry about how you're going to make money.

Normally I do the refactoring thing in pauses between projects, like after a major version release and not being in the mood to add other features. Yeah, you shouldn't let it break your stride. But it should be done in between strides, so that you're not forced to refactor later while you're getting good momentum going along.

Apply as a tester first if you want a foot in. Sometimes it's easier to get promoted. If you don't get promoted, at least you know how the system works.

IMO, game making is something you do late in life, like when you're at least 30. Especially if you live in a first world country. I can live comfortably off $8 an hour, and lavishly on $20 an hour. In first world countries, you'd be under immense pressure to live on that.

Games are one of the hardest things anyone could make. And yet there's too much competition. Before games, do software. Go for a small company or a big company that guarantees a lot of training (ask them about training during the interview). Be the underpaid, overworked guy. That way, you get trusted and you get access to industry secrets and know how.

Universities don't really teach you how to program as an indie. They teach you to write code together with huge groups. A lot of practices don't apply to solo programming. A lot of that optimization, compiler stuff is useless in most workplaces.

What most companies care about is releasing products on time, bringing time/costs down and profits up. That's a very important skill to learn, and you won't get that as an indie programmer who doesn't have to worry about time or budget.

You'll fail a lot before you can make a game that works. I'd estimate around 3-8 failed games before you can make one that makes enough money to pay for your failed ones. So try to get someone else to pay for your failures, or train you not to fail.

Games as vehicles to sell t-shirts? Sounds awful.

Yeah, I wrote this post about 3 hours before daylight after two weeks straight of overtime

Regardless, I think something in there could work. Angry Birds actually sells their brand more than their game, but they're too big to be a good example.

I guess one final note--don't take investment advice from anyone on any online forum. :-D

Yeah.

Actually, thinking about it a bit, stocks on any reliable game company is going to be priced way higher than it's worth. It's that way with any major brand name.

The best game company to invest in is probably EA right now, because of the controversies surrounding it lately would make people dump it, yet it doesn't affect the fact that they make money. But while you're at it, you might as well sell electronic cigarettes to children.

Or I guess you could look for a 'trend' like Guitar Hero.

1) Who cares if something is perceived as "hardcore" or not?

1) If you are putting thought in to who is going to play your game, then you should care. Thinking about your target audience is an incredibly important step in producing games, or any product for that matter.

"Hardcore" is just a fancy term for "niche". Of course F2P doesn't work with niche markets.

F2P works best in appealing to a mass market, and then getting money by either selling premium products. Or by people who sometimes have money willing to spend on it. There's also things like selling 'luxury' products in a game (gold membership, VIP boards, privileges), and having a strong community is a requirement for luxury products to work.

Look at sports teams now. They make most of their revenue from tickets, TV, and sponsorship. There's a bit from 'merchandising' (jerseys, clothes, banners) from hardcore fans who want to show their support. But those hardcore fans make up maybe about 10-20% of their total fans.

Look at music. A while back, their business model was albums. Today, thanks to piracy, it's not. A lot of money comes from concerts, or selling ads on TV. Musicians make a little money from their hardcore fans buying their album. Most people will tell you they just want a single song from the album, not to buy the whole thing. Their album is just merchandise, much like posters of a band.


IMO, games are about the same. The people actually buying games are hardcore fans who want to support the game. Everyone else will pirate it. You do get revenue, but they're from a select few 5-20% of your fans.

So why not try to sell the physical game as merchandise to the hardcore few and make revenue from other sources? About 90% of game players won't pay for the game.

Kickstarter campaigns have proved that merchandising does pay very well... things like game t-shirts, hint books, or special privileges are appreciated. Perhaps we should be moving more towards selling Kickstarter-style goods without having to do an actual Kickstarter.

(This is cutting out the mass market who don't know how to pirate games. But you guys are indie developers and unless you're advertising your game in stores, billboards, or TV, they won't find your game anyway.)

They have prices for RPG sprite characters at 100+ dollars. This seems fairly high to me, though.

How is that high? $100 is about a day's salary.

You might say, hey, I can draw a sprite in an hour. But they have to discuss with the client to settle on the requirements (how big is the sprite, what palette, what's the feel of the game, hair color, bra size, etc). This takes hours, even when rushed. And they have clients who are cheap and retarded and complain that they want at least 10 frames for each animation...

Well that does seem high to me they specifically state 4 directions 3 frames per animation.  The quality also doesn't seem there to me, the website looks tacky etc...  Also if you aren't paying someone you can expect them not to stay very long.

Ah, right, I just looked there and saw the quality. But I suppose $100 is about right for a cheap, mass produced sprite.

Another approach might be just to go to a school art club and pay them & train them to do sprites. Maybe check your country's laws on child labor, lol. But I would've loved it if an indie developer came to me and offered $100 just to do a four directional sprite.