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[Guillaume]

Hi guys,

I'm in a bit of a dead end here, so input and experience would be appreciated.




Now, this is the story all about how
My project got flipped-turned upside down
And I'd like to take a minute
Just sit right there
I'll tell you how I became the coder of a game that went nowhere


So about one year and a half ago, I had an idea that sounded great for a massively multiplayer browser game (the same kind of stuff as OGame, Travian,...you must have heard about the genre before). I spent the 6-8 months or so prototyping ideas, sketching out code, trying to make everything fit. The idea just seemed to get better and better, so eventually I devoted my time to making a stable code base for a first release.

Things took a bit longer than expected- I planned on being done last June, and a lot of work I couldn't avoid just had to be done (oh, senior thesis)- so I pushed back the project. I worked on it on and off, and today I think that I could be about a month or so away from a first playable version.

The thing is, as I said earlier, it's meant to be massively multiplayer- at the minimum a couple hundreds of players. And the more I think about it, the more it seems unrealizable to me to unroll an alpha version that could be playtested by so many people. For regular debug, I just had a couple accounts to test everything. But to unfold the complete game mechanics, a lots of players are needed.

I can't summon these out of nowhere (BETA TESTERS! ASSEMBLE!  ), and even if I could get some friends, acquaintances, etc. to try it out, they'd quickly get bored because of the lack of dynamics caused by the lack of players. See the vicious circle?

I think the game ideas would work great and be rather original, but I have no idea on how to reach a critical player mass essential for a) playtesting and b) unrolling the game.

So right now, I'm kind of lost on what to do with the game. That project has been taking up my indie coding time for a while (to say the least) and there are tons of random ideas I've gathered during that time that I'd like to experiment with. It just feels like it has been lingering on for too long, and that I just need to forget about it and move on.

But on the other hand, I thought I really had good ideas there (plus a good amount of code), and it kind of saddens me to just forget about it.

Any insights? Any fellow developer that ran in the same problems in the past?

Thanks a lot 

[Mipe]

What you're lacking is boobs. Add boobs into the mix and you'll have thousands of adolescent (more or less) testers. 

More seriously, do you have any contingency plans for low player count? For example, do you think you could introduce some basic AI that would fill the void?

[davidp]

hm, attracting a mass of players with great marketing campaign could do the trick, but can't see that happening as you worked anonymously, have no prior projects that were really successful and you're working on a game online strategy game that can't use mega awesome graphics and explosive trailers to fool your potential players. well, actually, working on a online strategy game like ogame/travian can be a bit of marketing trick - there are tons of players who play these kind of games, even if totaly obscure.

try getting some players with "wanna play game like ogame but with unicorns and magic dwarfes!". that could spark some interest...

[Guillaume]

Mipey >

Hmm, boobs. Good idea. But how do I recruit the boobs? Damn, it's the same problem all over again...  

As for the AI...not really.

Schematically, the gameplay consists of players being separated in groups that fight against each other for the control of territories, etc., but also within their own group to gain a position of power through politics.

For instance, each group has discussion boards on which the leaders and their group can communicate, set up votes, organize secret brotherhoods to overthrow the power in place, etc, etc. It's pretty much a real life politics simulator with real people in it

So yeah, the whole communication/manipulation/etc. part would be hard to replace with an AI.

davidp > That's it! I should add unicorns!  Why did I not think of it before

[Swattkidd]

Maybe on launch or during launch have some kind of "launch party" incentives, "first person to reach a certain rank or something gets a prize." Create some sort of competition or fire inside of your players so they play even when nobody is online. Make them want to just grind alone and become the biggest player out there, even if they are the only player out there 

[Falmil]

Maybe I'm being naive, but it seems like you could ask a bunch of people here to test it for you. Not sure if you could do it more than once if it was too buggy to be played, but I would think you could get a few dozen people from here and other game related communities if you specified a certain time to start for testing purposes or something. Maybe people would be too unreliable to all play at the same time and play multiple times, but some people will play anything.

[increpare]

Put out some notices telling people that registration is open, so they can set up accounts.  Once you get over twice the number you're looking to actually try out the game registered, you can open the game proper, but not any time, on one particular weekend.  Say "the game will be open for testing this weekend, or this week, for only one week.  If you want to play, get playing on such and such day".

I don't know where people who play these games congregate, though : /   Can get some here, not sure where else, though.   Evil M word might be involved.

But, yeah, that's one way to deal with the problem of people trickling in.

[Seth]

Whenever I played any of those games I got into it because the early level stuff was interesting on its own right--that is, it was fun to play with little interaction with other players.  I suggest making the game more like a single player game at the introduction and slowly introducing multiple players into the game dynamics

[gimymblert]

Have you a dev log?

[Guillaume]

Thanks everyone for the feedback- I'm still thinking about things

neoshman > No, I do not. I don't like the idea of starting a devlog before I actually have some public, playable foundation. Less talk, more rock

[Lynx]

If you're at the stage that you need verification that your mechanics work when scaled up to a large number of players, I suggest populating your game with very simple robots, that employ very straightforward strategy.

You could have them refuse to participate in any human communication-required forums, or you could advertise to your alpha-testers that they may be in areas with one or several AIs, and they can send private messages to these AIs with certain keywords, to get AIs to (potentially) assist them.

You could potentially also use these AIs as a swarm of baddies that everyone is working together to defeat, so there's no reason for players to try talking to/allying with them, and in fact the first thing humans would want to do is to get rid of them, it's just that there'd be a lot of them.

[AndroidScholar1]

Thanks everyone for the feedback- I'm still thinking about things

neoshman > No, I do not. I don't like the idea of starting a devlog before I actually have some public, playable foundation. Less talk, more rock

Development logs normally are made to show development UP TO the playable stage, and potentially afterwards...

It attracts people as they steadily learn more, and gives it time to accumulate a mass following. Seriously, I suggest making one soon.

The "less talk, more rock" article doesn't really refer to making development logs, just the use of text inside the game and talking thinking things through almost analytically - development logs just show what you've done. Like a journal.

[nihilocrat]

In a certain large-scale MMO I worked on, we split the beta into two components. The "General Beta" was a relatively small set of people who could log in and play as normal. The "Tech Beta" was a much larger number of people who were allowed to login for a few hours each Sunday for a "tech test". The tech test was usually themed: everyone would login to a specific playfield where a specific feature was being tested. The point of these was very clear; test the loads on the servers and such, thus "tech" test. We separated the tests because we wanted to be able to test more general features in the General Beta without the pressure of technical constraints that might not yet be up to snuff for the number of players in a Tech Test. A feature might have been ready for 500 people to play, but not 5,000.

I know this isn't the reason why you want larger numbers of people but it might at least inspire you a little to think of a direction to take. To me your issue here seems more like a marketing one, so I would suggest trying out some clever marketing to suddenly draw attention to the game, even if that attention is short-lived.

I think the AI solution is a good idea if your mechanics are easy for an AI to understand and do not rely heavily on human reasoning. A heavily psychological game that encourages players to accumulate and "spend" trust (I'm thinking of EVE's common corporate hangar/bank scams) would probably not work well, as the AI would probably be predisposed towards performing actions on quantitative data (amount of value in the corp bank versus time spent as a mole in the corp, whatever).

[Linus]

You have
A) A lack of players for massive multiplayer features.
B) A lack of advertisement.
C) A lack of features that work for solo players.

Solving any of these would make your game viable.
The way I see it, solving A is not possible on its own unless you solve B, via for example releasing the game as a facebook service and paying for advertisements there. You'd have a good potential for increasing popularity as long as the initial advertisements pay off.
Solving C is a different approach. Adding solo player features could make the game interesting even if there was only one active player. With such a solution and long-time rewards for returning to the game, you could build up a player base over time.

If your desire is to test a concept, you could ask here, or build a game which can attract an audience before the concept is put in place.

Disregarding these solutions, I believe you're stuck in a catch 22. :<


Linus

[scrubshine]

I would play. But none of my friends would- "bureaucracy simulation" is a cup of tea I'm not given opportunity to share.

Also, if you're going to attract at least a bajillion players, you need a damn good name! Go talk to this guy: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=750.1035

Facebook could work, but you'll have to be very very crafty with how you phrase things.

[Inane]

You could have the game closed until a certain amount of people sign up? You'd still need a way of getting people to sign up, but that would keep people from playing and leaving because there's no one in game.