next »

[EdgeOfProphecy]

Thanks for the advice you guys. This is a lot to chew on, I'll be sending these off to the other members. I had suggested that we do game jams as a social activity as well as getting used to developing ideas. Anybody have any jam experience or tips?

Advertise them aggressively, and keep the door open to people who aren't just club members.  In my personal opinion, the more people you have at a jam the better (within reason, don't exceed your capacity to host).

Also, try to do them pretty frequently, especially if you get people who are actually coming to them.  If you start canceling events or changing the schedule on people, they'll get frustrated and lose interest and stop coming in a heartbeat.  It might work to give them a solid, predictable date like "First Saturday of every month."

A really easy and effective format for jams can be to literally put some words in a hat and draw them.  You can format it such that you draw a couple words, like adjective + noun or somesuch.

In college, some friends of mine had a really cool jam type thing they'd do once every month called the 5 second game club.  They'd meet and try to make a micro-game meant to be played in 5 seconds around a random theme.  It was fun, and the 5 second design rule kept people from trying to make games that were too complicated to finish.

[Archibald]

I took me 15 years to finish my first computer game

W-w-what did you make?

Nothing I have not completed a single computer game in the first 15 years (fortunatelly, I finished during that time several boardgames which kept me from going insane ).

And what is the point of worldwide release but financial reward?

Games are meant to be played. If it is not played it is not a game. Period.

So, where does the motivation for making games come from? Games themselves.

Players. The game is irrelevant and has no value in itself. It is the enjoyment the player gets (OK, and money too for some people in some cases ). That's all it counts, that's what making games is about. If you are making a game in the sake of making a game it is simply an art and has nothing to do with making games.

[Manuel Magalhães]

It's 50/50 for me. My motivation for making games is to make them the way I always wanted to do them, but at the same time I also want people to enjoy my vision. I would hate to do a game which I'm not happy with even if it got popular, as I would hate to do a game I'm proud of but that didn't got the popularity that I wanted for it.
----
I think in the end what is important is to make the games that you want to do, regardless of being small or big.  

[rivon]

Just make whatever games you want, though pick the ones which are realistically possible. I.e. no MMORPGs, that's a waste of time

[mirosurabu]

@Archibald:

When you make games for YOURSELF, a kind of YOURSELF that wants to play games, you are making games for players since YOURSELF is a representative of some tribe of players. This is NOT the same as "making art for the sake of art".

That said, games have players way before they are released. You are the player. Your friends are players. Your closed group of playtesters are players. And so on.

[JWK5]

If they want to make a turn-based RPG start them off with a Dragon Warrior/Quest clone, which would be fairly easy to make in something like Game Maker and requires only a small amount of initial resources. Dragon Warrior/Quest is such a basic and light template that it is really easy to build onto and expand feature-by-feature so it'd be a great learning experience.

[Zest]

Good advice, JWK5. I'll bring it up with the others next time we meet.

[Graham.]

The most important thing for something like what you're doing is to get stuff done. It doesn't matter what it is. No one's getting paid, everyone's a hobbyist, no one's really committed (University is about being irresponsible). If you build/do stuff, things will go well. If you don't, well, things won't go as well. If you have two options, something you will definitely do, and something you'll probably do, choose the first. That's the key. Choose the first. Do whatever you've got to do so you're presented with those two options and choose the first. Once you have momentum, dreaming will become realistic, and you'll understand what's likely to work in the future.

...

Err, I see the fight over big/small games. It doesn't matter which way you go, as long as you make clear progress it doesn't matter if you're building a road up your own asshole. ... It's important that you do things you believe in. You find out what you believe in by trying out things you think you believe in, and eventually you figure it out what's going on, and then come the ladies. Right? Right.


To the fighting guys...

You're both right you know. There's the bitch small-gamer who makes bitch small games because he's a big giant pussy. That's not either of you, hopefully nobody on tigsource. But he exists, and you definitely don't want to be him because you've only got one life and you should do the work you believe in. Bream big, right? And then there's Mr. Ego pants who wants to take the world because he, like, doesn't understand how much work it is to do stuff. Neither of you again. Right?  Sometimes big games are bad, sometimes small games are bad. What's most important is that you're doing good work. You iterate a small game, or you iterate the fundamentals of a big game; either one works. You don't need to release something small to know how to iterate. I've spent 6 years working towards my game, 3 of them nearly full-time, and I've never released a game. But my game kicks ass because I iterate the shit out of the basics. I've prototyped the core mechanics so many times my pants fell down (or maybe those things were unrelated). It's like working on a small game, but hey, it's a big game. And I can do that because I've completed so many other non-game ideas that I know how to be critical of my own work. I don't need the public's opinion every cycle to show me my place. Different strategies for different people.

Let's be friends and make love (or not) and go hate the real idiots of this world, everybody else.

[baconman]

Where on your large/small scale would you fit titles like the Momodora games, or Space Captain McCallery? I think there's a "medium sized" project range that works well for indie developers, actually. Especially ones bored of doing small-scale projects that don't have a lot of wiggle room.

That's the sweet spot we should eventually be setting our sights for, because they're deep enough to have character, and actually achievable on a tight/small scale. Not only that, oftentimes there's even engines and assets predeveloped to help you in that process. Which means you're programming less, and developing more.


Afterthought: Who's to say MMO's have to be large-scale anyways? Don't plenty of them use dry cut-and-paste levels (or in the better case, some light PGC - which we discuss plenty of in Technical anyhow?), simple quests/objectives in endless loops, and overall just become basic equipment/stat grinding? Sure, some are turn-based like RPGs, and some are more action-adventure style, but that's pretty much the jist of it, give or take networking/multiplayer (an admittedly underdiscussed topic, especially for an ONLINE GAME-LOVING COMMUNITY).


I'd like some of you guys to entertain the following questions:

1. How WOULD you make a small-scale, managable MMO?
2. How would you make that small-scale MMO actually FUN?

It's not that it can't be done, it's just that Terraria's the closest to that we've gotten so far. Even that concept can be "demaked" into a managable format - even one without the crafting! (IE: Exploring rewards you directly with the equipment and items.)

[ANtY]

I'd like some of you guys to entertain the following questions:

1. How WOULD you make a small-scale, managable MMO?
2. How would you make that small-scale MMO actually FUN?

simplified Realm of the Mad God

[Graham.]

Ditto (to Mad God).

Size doesn't matter. Medium, big, whatever. It's about whether you can do more good stuff in 2 smaller games, or 1 large one. I find the bigger I make a game, the more room I have to make the mechanics richer, proportionately to what I could've done with the same amount of work on consecutive smaller games. I like systems, they're probably my biggest strength, so I like bigger games. The advantage of smaller games is trying out different unrelated ideas. If you work 6 years on something that you only partially love, you'll burn out or your work will become dry. I'm also pretty good at combining unrelated ideas into a single system, and I iterate hard, so I don't have that problem. But if you're inexperienced with production, or the labor to combine ideas doesn't turn you on, then smaller games is for you.

I think the only delusion is to think there's a simple system to follow to decide which path you belong on. It's too personal.

[Soulliard]

Getting back on topic...

I was VP of my school's game design club for a few years. We tried doing lectures and showing game-related movies, but neither was very popular. Most would-be game devs probably got enough of that stuff from game design classes.

We ran two special events that were very popular, though:
Rapid Game Development Days - Basically a one-day game jam, anything goes. I strongly recommend running game jams of some sort or other, and making them open to the public.

Indie Game Showcase - We took over one of the computer labs for a day, and installed a different indie game on each computer (mostly short-form and arcade-style games). Over 100 people showed up to this event. It was especially good for running multiplayer games.

[baconman]

One simple way of doing jams is to use a game with a level editor, and do "level jams." Bonus points for open-source software that people can edit to preference, in case that plays into the equation.