Fun is in higher level tasks and the lower level atomic tasks. By atomic, I mean tasks that can't be split into smaller tasks. There's academic writing on this, but I can't be bothered to find it.

Higher level tasks's appeal is the epic win - that's a task so difficult, almost impossible to achieve. That's why they're more common in shitty grindy MMOs.. anything can be an 'epic win' as long as nobody gets there. An epic win in Pacman would be reaching the 'last level' with a full score.

Sid Meier is a perfect example of someone who does the atomic tasks well. You're always looking forward to the next thing. Another example are those MMOs where you're given checklists of easy tasks (like build a house by clicking this one button), then rewards for completing it.

If the atomic tasks are fun, people will keep playing. The fun of mid level tasks don't really matter that much, it's either looking forward to the game now or in the final stages.

The atomic tasks appeal to your sense of flow. The high level tasks appeal to your sense of ambition.

A "recognizable" "silhouette"

Mainly this. Logo, characters, they should all be visible from the silhouette.

Also Mario was in the right place at the right time. Why isn't Super Meat Boy as popular?

Roguelikes are kinda shitty right now because a lot of people who make shitty games where the scope is "everything" starts with a roguelike. They have really bad implementations of their everythings and combined with bad graphics and bad controls and no polish and being proud of being in pre-alpha early release.

If you can't design, just toss ALL your ideas into something, don't bother with a theme and call it a roguelike. If you've got no ideas at all, take a cliche dungeon crawler, add crappy non-animated graphics and call it a casual roguelike.

There's good roguelikes no doubt about it. The genre just starts to suck when they become buzzwords.

Never expected that. I wouldn't even buy 10000000 for a PC because it's not really a 'PC' kind of game. Android games have little competition, so buying 10000000 was a no brainer.

It's not so much the price, but it being a genre that didn't fit so well with PC gamers. So getting 40k sales on desktop is a surprise to me.

10000000 falls into the category of a game where you can play while waiting at the bank. I wouldn't actually play it at home when I have a PC, with games like Spelunky or Dwarf Fortress. For mobile, it's perfect.

Honestly, I probably wouldn't have paid more than $3 for 10000000 on Android there. Really hesitated the first time and only got it because Pixel Dungeon wouldn't let me play past 12 AM. Most of the hesitation was due to the graphics.

But I'm notoriously cheap with buying games, so don't take my advice.

Got Spelunky for cheap yesterday. The level of polish really blew my mind, so I bought a second version as a gift for my sister. I kinda expected little change from the freeware version... was really surprised as how big the difference was.

The core of a lot of game companies is in the engine. If you've struck gold like with Kairosoft's engine or some browser game with reuseable code, the programmer is entitled to much of the profits later on. They can even leave and do consulting to help the company thrive.

Design and art on the other hand, is easily replaceable. Vesting benefits the people who aren't contributing to the core of the business model by putting chains on the person with irreplaceable skills.

People generally don't "suddenly leave". If they leave after putting so much effort into a business, there's something seriously wrong with the partner or business model.

I've been using Sublime Text for a couple years now, and only now just realized that I was using the tip of the iceberg. With the right plugins, it's capable of a lot of the workflow stuff the other IDEs can do.

Awesome tutorial: http://code.tutsplus.com/articles/perfect-workflow-in-sublime-text-free-course--net-27293

Most of the tutorial is worth trying, because they're all incredibly short. The best ones to note IMO:
- Instant file changing/symbols: It swaps between files and searches through methods seamlessly. Huge timesaver if you're dealing with really fat code.

- Snippets: Never realized how powerful snippets were. I've always used a 'cheat sheet' for common task, but snippets just let you put in a whole.. snippet of code with less than 5 keystrokes. The autotabbing makes it extra fast. If you're going to make large online libraries of the stuff, you can also consider the Gists section, which lets Sublime import and export gists to Github in seconds.

- Zen Coding/Emmet: This is just awesome for anyone who's ever done HTML/XML and other annoying nested stuff. Something like
p.class>span#spanid followed by tab
creates
<p class="class"><span id="spanid"></span></p>.

- Linter: So far I've had trouble getting a good IDE for javascript and HTML, and this lets me check my code almost instantly.

- Task Management/To Do list: For the people who are using Workflowy or notepad to store your todo lists. This lets you store everything within Sublime, and it brings a lot of power, like being able to archive tasks, sort and quickly search them, and tags. As much as I like Asana, I've been shifting a lot of things to PlainTasks just for offline convenience


A lot of the tutorial is directed towards web programmers, so people who do websites should really look at most of the tutorial. You old people who can actually use vim might also want to look at Vintage Mode.

Do it Dwarf Fortress style. Build placeholders for everything and build it one block at a time.

If you cant sell someone in 30-60 seconds you probably aren't selling them at all. Most people make impulse decisions in just a few seconds

Pretty much this. Your elevator pitch lacks passion or buzz. Mixing tower defense with RPG. No thanks. There should be something more which makes the game stand out.

I did like a 3 month gamedev gap. It turned out pretty good. The skills I learned helped a lot in my future career.

I'd say a year is a bit too much. You get sucked into doing work too slowly without a deadline. You'd probably have to focus on something like 3 month schedules. Pressure creates diamonds. Good universities and jobs will give you that pressure better than personal work would.

The state of the industry is currently such that a proper gamedev studio won't even look at your resume unless you have a degree, no matter how many titles you've shipped. (this has actually become a repeatedly-aired gripe amongst seasoned commercial devs!) Furthermore, specialists are more highly valued than generalists.

Kinda disagree totally with this. Maybe it's the case if you work with huge companies like Blizzard or IBM, but generalists are highly valued in small studios. I've even had a discussion with a manager where we came to a conclusion that Masters degrees had negative value because the time you spend on it is worth much more than the Masters degree itself.

Hell I have a ton of finished work on my resume it gets me called for interviews and demanding salaries that people with more than 3 times my working experience don't get. I've done hiring too and I'd say portfolio matters more than qualifications. Especially if you come from those countries where grades are inflated.

There's certain elements in "indie" that I don't like. A lot of indies think it's about appealing to nostalgia - deliberately bad pixel art (like RotMG and Habit RPG), bad controls, shitty design and charging people for buggy pre-alpha releases. A lot of people deliberately go for a raw "indie" feel. Indie games are selling near the same prices as many non-AAA major studio games.

He's not really talking about indie as a way of making games. But "indie" as a brand. It works like "organic" or "natural" food.

I'd just say that the foreground (characters) don't stick out from the background as much as I'd like. But that's probably a matter of taste.

[pointless choices]

Actually, I've found some good CYOA games lately on Android and putting some time in them. Considered making one myself, since it needs less production work than anything else.

The one thing I hate most about them are the pointless choices. You know, your usual "go left or go right" choices. Completely useless. They're just fillers, like random encounters in JRPGs.

And then there's the all paths lead to the same ending.
Choice A: Kill the bad guy. He dies. Go to 281.
Choice B: Run away. The bad guy chases you and you end up trapped in a room with him where you lose 2 HP and kill him anyway. Go to 281.
Choice C: Spare his life. He tries to kill you and you lose 2 HP in the surprise attack. Go to 281.

That's pretty shitty design. You should probably have a bunch of game states to make it easier to design, but these superficial endings are annoying.

What I do like are the games that have a slight element of randomness to them. If you attack the bad guy, you shouldn't be able to win every time. That makes the game predictable and short. Sometimes a risky move gets you killed. Sometimes the risk pays off.

And IMO, there shouldn't be a reliance on resources. You shouldn't expect to play lock and key. There should be at least one path that's possible with nearly no HP or items. HP can still be used, but in the sense that there's only so many combats you can go through.

Getting stuck means that there's a high score in there. I know a lot of people who were bragging about getting to further levels in Candy Crush Saga. It's very similar to those old arcade games, where you pay to try again, just for a shot at getting your name on the arcade. Except Candy Crush lets you do it for free at first.

IMO, it's not bad design. The payment bit only kicks in for the hardcore players. Most of us will just get bored and play something else.

Android isn't so bad. I've paid for $3 games lately and I'm relatively poor. I've paid $10 for AAA bundles but won't go higher unless it comes with an extensive demo. All in all I've spent more money for Android games than PC games.

Copying your APK then demanding a refund isn't a major problem - most people won't go through that effort to skimp on a dollar.

There are plenty of games making lots of money on Android sales. And the bar for competition is pretty low.. I'm fine with paying $3 for a game that entertains me for 3 days (totaling maybe 2 hours). Kairosoft level games, which go up to like 15 hours on a straight play, are good at $5.

I pretty much hate all PC to smartphone ports though. Mouse and keyboard translate poorly to touchscreens. There are decent ones that port from smartphone to PC (e.g. Angry Birds), but they're not that good. Keyword is control. Different target markets, different controls, different expectations. Comparing apples to oranges.

Something like Pixel Dungeon is a superb touchphone game but is too simple to stand against PC roguelikes. Kairosoft games can't even translate to tablets, much less PC. They're good strategy games to play while you're lying down, but won't be saleable for much more on PC. Avadon was an ok PC game. Once ported to Android, it's horrible because there's no mouse over mechanics. It gets high ratings, but I could barely play it because it's so damn tiny and kept clicking the wrong things. Nobody wants to squint when playing a game while relaxing.

I'd bet if you can get something with high replayability and a lot of fun time without being stressed out over controls, people would be happy paying PC AAA prices for it.

Yeah, I'm starting to slowly come to the conclusion that spending your marketing budget updating the game with content (for a small game obviously) is worth more from the press release then spending the the money on ads. Along with making your fans happy.

Marketing works best for awareness for unknown companies. Not really for companies that have released 2 sequels and are popular enough to get a Steam page. Even then, I bet guerrilla marketing works better.

Man, I can't even figure how to port this. The interface itself looks like it requires a huge overhaul to get into a touchphone app. How will you aim, shoot, and move around with a touchphone?

Luxury stuff. Like some of the skins in DOTA 2 or TF2's hats. Things that make you stand out from the norm, yet only give really minor advantages, like -3% cooldown or something.

Something like fully leveled players getting a maximum +10 Sword and I get a +10 Talking Sword.

Monsterhearts is a game where the core of the gameplay relies on "strings". I'll use the word "string" here because it's a nicer term than "favor" or "social obligation".

You can utilize this and call a favor on someone. Like say you're an adventurer who wants to get past the castle gates late at night. A guard might have to go against his orders to let you in. If he lets you in, he gets a String on you. If you've saved his life before, you have a String on him and can use it to convince him to let you in.

If he has a String on you, he could convince you to bail him out of trouble. Or get him a job somewhere. Or if he ends up penniless, he can use that String to beg you for a loan.

Someone who's a celebrity or person in power might have a String on everyone... able to ask everyone who's eager to impress them a favor. If a guy has a crush on a girl, that girl holds a String on him.

So the question is, what other ways can these favors or Strings be used in a RPG? In what way can a compulsion from a String be turned down by a player trying to game the system? Alignment shift towards evil? Reputation shifting towards unreliable? Would your reputation still go down with an enemy of the person you turned away?

Are you saying battle is necessary because it is about "economy." Can you expand?

It's about linking economy with progression.

Your progression might be along the lines of "kill the warlock". The GM determines that the Warlock is level 10 or whatever and you need to get 9 levels worth of experience and loot (potions, gear, wands) to get that. Those levels and loot are your "economy" and your "progression".

The convenient way is combat. How else can you get that much loot? How else do you get that much experience and items? You go into caves, kill evil things, and take their moneys.

You can probably make a similar route like robbing houses or working jobs, but who plays a RPG to work at the blacksmith? Harvest Moon is one rare exception of both progression and economics working without combat.

The more I think about this, the more I feel it'd make for a great competition. Who can make a RPG good without any classical monster combat?