Yeah, basically ideas are cheap. As cool and unique as your idea is, there's probably over a hundred other people who've thought the exact same thing.

it depends on how worked out the idea is. its true that vague concepts like "an mmo with kinect controls" or "gta meets minecraft" are p much worthless on their own, but e.g. a finished game design doc is a completely different story.

of course actually making games (or at least prototypes) is the best way though.

I see GDDs something like a business plan. They're essential to any large long-term project, a great reference, but obsolete at the printer. And if you don't have enough experience or at know least a hell lot of theory, you'll create something that doesn't really work in reality.

I'm often skeptical of following them if they're not really calculated right and stuff. Haven't actually come across a great GDD, so just commenting from experience

If you're not making a simulation, realism is a terrible design goal.

It's a design goal for roleplay. Not stat juggling games, actual roleplay. As in roleplaying a leader conquering empires, roleplaying some kind of god, roleplaying a WW1 soldier, etc.

I'd like to make a RPG for a touchphone where the controls don't suck. Heck, even a platformer that doesn't suck would be nice.

I like to use this site!

http://www.colorschemedesigner.com/

That's a damn sweet tool. I wonder why it hasn't popped up on any google searches. Maybe I was just putting in the wrong keywords.

Basically just learn colour theory.

Tried to, but most of the color theory articles that appear on most searches are basically "these are common color schemes, but it's up to you what looks good". Not really much help; thought I was missing out on something.

So, in a lot of art tutorials, I find a lot of references to palettes. A lot of words on how to use a palette, warnings on not taking other people's palettes otherwise it would be like taking their soul, etc. But can't really find anything on how to make a good palette, which is pretty much the big question.

Any tips? Articles? Links?

Yeah, basically ideas are cheap. As cool and unique as your idea is, there's probably over a hundred other people who've thought the exact same thing.

Implementation is difficult. Hell, everyone knows where all the gold is, but be the first to mine it and people will follow you.

If you really don't know where to start programming, look for a game engine most similar to what you want to do, and make a mod. It worked for Magna Mundi, DoTA, Fall From Heaven 2, etc.

Keep to-do lists of small goals and track your progress

Note to programmers: This does NOT mean you should create a network synchronized 3D To-Do List application...

Instead, check out this list of To-Do list managers (or issue trackers as some of us call them).

Would be faster to make your own than figuring out that huge list

BTW, take a look at Dwarf Fortress.

Some updates included disease, the possibility of broken ribs puncturing the heart/lungs, and dwarves moving in a parabola-like movement when hit by a fast, heavy minecart.

Nobody's complained about the new updates being too realistic


Of course, if your game is more arcade-like, this kind of thing would annoy them. Yeah, I'd agree that The Sims is more of a people-themed arcadelike game than a people simulation.

I have only one advice.

Come up with a game idea so good that you could even spend your whole life to make it. If you find your once great idea lousy during developing, ditch it.

This works for me. Though keep in mind awesome game ideas suffer a lot from feature creep, which usually kills development.

And ditching all bad ideas kinda means that you won't get experience actually finishing games. I find that a lot of good developers have a long history of making shitty games. I've been ditching every game project that I didn't like, and with the projects that I do like, I end up against a wall because of bad practice or bad data structures or something.

Lol, I remembered when Bubba in the Turd Dimension was reviewed in a local gaming magazine, was sort of mentioned in the indie games section before the term 'indie game' existed. It was rated something like 4 star, -1 for 'american humor' or something.

I'm pretty sure the casual games are strong on brand recognition as well. For example the Diner/Hotel Dash games, Papa's Pizzeria/Taco Mia, The Sims, etc. The Sims can afford to charge a premium because the players know exactly what they're getting. Similar with games like Diablo 3, which I also consider casual; there's been tons of diablolikes out since Diablo 2.

What builds up your brand name is the game itself. No amount of demos or trailers or media coverage will build your name recognition as good as a full game. People want to buy the game, play it for a while, and turn it off feeling satisfied with their purchase but a little disappointed that the game's over.

It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem that people won't buy a game that they don't know the quality of but don't know the quality because they haven't bought the game.


E.g., what I would do is split an epic RPG up into a lot of small parts, and sell it for cheap. Sell the first few ones at next to nothing, maybe even free, and the ones who love it enough and like the depth will buy the later parts. You can even add a few graphical or engine upgrades on later versions of the game, so the paying players will feel that they're getting a good deal from the payments.

Lol, no. Hackers aren't stupid, they'll just compress it. I've said it before, DRM means the pirates offer a higher quality game than the developers offer

Bandwidth is cheap anyway. We're in the fiber optic era. I can get 100GBs within a week. It's not so much about being patient, I'm not even doing anything else with the bandwidth.

One thing that does work is putting up fake torrents of the game that appear to be cracked, and requires you to play the game for like 30 hours before it crashes, so you don't realize it's a fake torrent until long after you've certified it as a real one.

Unreal World did this, was too annoying to find a fake torrent vs the $3 minimum they wanted, which is why it's the first game I've bought over the Internet.

TO-DO list is the only thing that I follow religiously to keep myself motivated. I'm constantly experimenting with the way I'm creating and managing my tasks to find the best way. I mainly used digital lists, I cherish software with easy to use drag'n'drop GUI etc. (we want to be working, not spending half a day playing with TO-DO), currently using www.trello.com daily.
In the past I created projects, big task trees etc. but now I'm mainly doing Kanban-style lists, with tasks small enough to take less than 30 minutes each. I also archive my 'done' list daily to keep progress. I use the "create combat engine"-like tasks more like a roadmap but that's not something you update daily anyway.

Don't really like the interface of trello.com, a bit slow and doesn't get information across easily. I guess it's ok if you want notekeeping as well.

For to do lists, I mostly just use todoist.com. Very quick, easy to learn, just the right amount of power if you want to tick off stuff, so I'm using it a lot of software development.

Would love to see something like this. If you're making games that you don't have to pay to try, you want to attract the player right off the bat.

I'd say go for it. If you don't really want to think about it, integrate the tutorial as a slow motion, like someone telling you which buttons to press. If you want to just throw the player into the water to teach them to swim, make sure it's shallow enough that they don't drown.

The player character doesn't actually have to be weaker than the boss or overpowered, but just enough that they're motivated to learn the game, and won't be frustrated by the encounter.

Some people want a simple spreadsheet game. Others may want a life simulator. Do whatever you think is fun, you'll find a niche somewhere.

I sell apps, not games, but close enough.

1. Do you set the price of your game based on cost, competition, value, or some combination of those elements?
> Competition mostly. Value is based on competitor price.

Cost is... really hard to define for a software company. Nearly 95% of the cost is in salaries and time. But economies of scale really factors in.. the longer you improve an engine, the more software you can churn out of it. So, it'd take maybe $10000 to make the first game, but $3000 to make the second game based on the first game's engine, $2200 to make the third game, and so on.

And sometimes you come up against a competitor that sells a superior product at 1/100 your price. That's when you're screwed and ragequit the market by giving your product out as freeware and charging for consultation or something.


2. What do you take into consideration when you set your price?
> As above. You can name any price you want for software, but it's always anchored to a competitor's price.

3. When do you change your price?
> Almost never. There's really no reason to lower a price unless it becomes obsolete. As said before, cost doesn't go down. But I sell individually, not to a mass market.

4. What mistakes have you made in pricing your games?
> Trying to increase prices when demand increases.

What pros do is that they set the price to the 'maximum' possible and then claim that there's a discount/sale, when in actuality that's the price that you're willing to charge all along.


5. Do you believe it is a good idea to advertise your price?
> Where I come from, you're expected to negotiate down the price to around 2/3rds of the displayed price. In this case, you want to overprice things a little, and hope that the buyer agrees with the displayed price. Everyone does this, so nobody is really at a disadvantage.

A price is simply something where the negotiations are done for you. Sellers are the disadvantaged party in a negotiation. They should avoid negotiation if possible, because they'd end up losing if someone already has a set price. In Western countries, once you see a price, that's it.

So advertising a price, yeah, very good.

Would have to disagree with Paul Eres on this one - you want people to buy games on a whim. Entertainment is cheap. People buy games because they're bored. They don't want to work to not get bored, it defeats the purpose. They can watch videos/movies/tv for free. Or read Cracked. Or tweak their car. Or go on a date. Or look for a free/cheap game that's better than yours.

Most people will probably play a game for a week (at best) and then get bored. Game developers, reviewers, and their beta testers don't see them, because they're hardcore, willing to play the same game over and over for months. It's funny because people like to sell longevity, when what the 'mass market' want is a game that entertains them for a short time.

If they really want it, they'll just pirate it. You want to make it easier to just buy the game legally (and not torrent it), such that it's not worth spending a few hours trying to get the game for free.

If you hire externally too often, your employees will realise that they can only be promoted via horizontal shifts between organisations.

Funny, that's exactly how the working culture is where I live. Though good companies realize it quickly and give significant raises (like 30% a year) to loyal skilled employees. Programming skill is way harder to find than management skill.

Corporates like to tell you how lucky you are for working for them, and how lucrative is your job, but that's BS.

Lol, I dunno. From what I've seen, a lot of companies are actually trying to get a lot of their dead weight to resign, but can't, so they promote them into useless/harmless positions with low pay, hoping that those people feel underappreciated enough to quit. Most of the time those people actually do a decent enough job to be able to sue companies for firing them. It's a little passive-aggressive.

This is a dumb idea.

Heh, have to agree with this post over all the others. I've worked a bit with complex numbers, and it's rather pretentious to use them for the sake of using them because nobody knows what to do with them.

They're boring. Like negative numbers. Algebra is a fun gameplay tool. Trigonometry is great. Calculus. But complex numbers... it's just extending numbers to reach something you can't get to otherwise. Yeah, the only way it could be interesting is the whole real/imaginary plane concept, but you can do that without complex numbers and not confuse the hell out of the player/yourself.

Uhhh.. this really depends on the game itself.

By default, I prefer single characters. Because it's less work to play.

There are plenty of games that let you bring along a whole party, but most of the time it makes the game not very fun at all. Unless you're actually going to add something fun to the game with multiple characters, don't do it. And if you have to bother to ask, chances are that you don't really have anything special to add.

I mean, like for example, games like X-Com and Chess work great with multiple characters (chess is a rpg too, the pawns level up) but unless you're thinking of something more strategic, stick to single characters. Keep it simple.

Hmm.. I'd like to make a MUD/MMO with lots of sex and violence. But the sex is the main gameplay element, and the violence is the mini-game, unlike how it works in most games. And actually have it fit into the gameplay, with coded rules, not MUSH style roleplaying.

The 'score' would be to have a bunch of different types of characters who are high leveled at sex, rather than having a bunch of different characters who kick ass. Though they can do both.

And it shouldn't be overrun by furries or BDSM freaks (but probably have some kind of vampire-lycanthrope plot thing to let them play out that kind of stuff).


I'm thinking something that captures the feel/mood of Oglaf (NSFW) rather than just a typical sleazy AIF with multiplayer.