Selling games without content

[princec]

Occaisionally people moan that my games appear to have little or no content. Now that's dead true of Puppytron - it's especially content free - but Flux and Dudester aren't 10mb of nothing, they're packed full of content. The trouble is all the emphasis is on the gameplay rather than the content.

A game with apparently more content than Flux, say, is Platypus - although in reality there's about the same, and a bit less gameplay to boot. The trick is how that content is applied to disguise gameplay with less depth.

Zuma is a content-free game. It's basically the same all the way through. All that changes is the background pretty much.

My question is, not related to Flux or Dudester or Puppytron please: what are the differences and techniques when trying to sell content-free games? I'm a big fan of games with deep gameplay that's derived from simple rules (and therefore minimal content).


Cas :)

[etali]

This reply probably isn't going to be much use to you, but I like games that are simple but fun too.

What exactly do you mean by 'deep content'? An engrossing storyline? Lots of different levels with different things to solve?

Games like that are fun if you sit and play them and see all the content, but I find their replay value isn't as great as something with a simple premise but that can just be picked up and played for a few minutes now and then.

Who is complaining about the lack of content? Are they people in your target audience? To me gameplay is just as important, if not more so. If a game isn't fun and addictive to play who is going to stay around long enough to see everything you've put in?

[gpetersz]

It is a hard question to answer. Zuma is great, but shame on me, I am starting to stop playing it, because it became a bit boring recently.
Nonetheless, it worth all the money I paid for it, but as you said princec it is content-free. I got to level 9 in adventure mode and that is where my skills reached their boundaries, I cannot complete that stage, or if I could that would be a hard work. I experienced a bit with the survival mode, but it is not that fun (after trying 3-4 levels).

So in my opinion, Zuma is the classic example of a casual game (and I am not a casual gamer ;) ). It is fun to play, addictive until it brings new features (new colored balls, some tricky level) then after some weeks (or days) it loses its shine a bit (my wife still plays it a lot).

For me, it is a great game, without content what makes me to forget it and go on (but I already paid it, so the creators are happy! :D).

There are some games that I do not even delete from my hard drive and they've been always archived (save games and so) for years, like Fantasy General, Age of Wonders (I-II). Very replayable, full of content.

[baegsi]

Do you mean by content story and levels?

I can only speak as a customer here. I don't see much difference in marketing, but I'd say: make the weakness a strength: content-free games are faster to play. While story based games require to play step-by-step and to progress in time, content-free games can be played instantly.

Maybe you should ask yourself why you prefer games with deep gameplay.

But if you find that lack of content harm your sales: why not add a simple story to your games? Shouldn't be a big deal. Last time I thought about how great this adds value to game was when I played Wik.

[svero]

I think zuma is very content aware as are many other casual games. Zuma goes to great lengths to re-use levels while giving the player a nice long overall mission to complete the game. The "content" in this case is the mission length. The amount of time you have to spend playing before you can see all the game has to offer.

Instead zuma could have just had you play the levels 1-20 in order and then go to a highscore screen. That would be like your games. I probably wouldn't have bought that game. It gives me a sense of completion. Nothing more to do.

[baegsi]

Instead zuma could have just had you play the levels 1-20 in order and then go to a highscore screen. That would be like your games. I probably wouldn't have bought that game. It gives me a sense of completion. Nothing more to do.I'd like to second that. Every game tells a story. At the beginning of computer games, the story was: you went from level 1 to level 20, made 1000 points and lost 5 lives. Nowadays, little more details are needed to create excitement. Typically, missions are used for that. But there're plenty of different ways thinkable. But that's off-topic, sorry.

[mahlzeit]

Procedurally generated content allows you to re-use a few elements over and over again. For example, a 3D maze game where you have to escape from a mansion that is different each time you play. The actual content -- doors, walls, staircases, etc -- is limited but is combined in new ways by some fancy algorithm.

[princec]

I specifically think that "story" is not content.. it is usually, for me, just something which I safely ignore and get on with the action. Zzed is a great example of false content. The reality is, Zzed is just a zumalike (ok, I know it's quite different, sort of a snood-zuma-asteroids fusion). It has a story which I simply clicked to get rid of to get to the next level.

When I say content, I mean... like in Doom, the content was the levels. Not so much the monsters as there were actually very few monster types in Doom. You played Doom to see all the levels. Massive investment in level design.

In R-Type, the classic shmup, you played to see the different levels and bosses and all the different wierdy aliens. There were tons of them. Massive art assets went into it.

I know that svero thinks that Flux has little by way of content but in reality 99% of the players don't get to see at least half of the aliens in the game, which are all very, very different. How many people care that there are four bosses?

This is my problem: I'm trying to keep content out of the equation because at the end of the day it takes a lot of investment to create, and as far as I'm concerned, it's a waste of money developing content if it only has a small effect on sales. In Alien Flux, the perennial example of all things wrong, we've got these four bosses which must have taken about a month do build, render, code, test and tune, and waste about a meg of download space to boot because they're really big sprites. But what's the point of them if a) no-one sees them and b) no-one perceives that they are actually content? Could I have gotten away without doing any bosses at all and just had all the different little aliens? I bet I could.

Puppytron is a bit of a testament to minimalism.

er.. back to my problem: I'm not sure I'm really marketing content-free games right. Most of the accepted wisdom in the world wrt. indie games marketing is written in the context of upsell based on more more more. More graphics, more powerups, more levels, more guns, more aliens, more bosses, etc. You pay for more stuff, but sadly this means that you spend all that effort on something that only a tiny fraction of people get to see. In effect it's totally wasted effort.

So: rambling on... focus on selling games without content. Let's find some examples apart from Zuma (and even Zuma overdoes it a little)... Strange Adventures in Infinite Space - a very small amount of content cleverly jiggled in a huge number of combinations. Apparently sells well (anyone know if it does or not still?) Bejewelled is another one; bugger all content in it.

What's the trick to selling these kinds of games? What cunning lure can you use to get that conversion? How does one make it addictive enough to make them want more of the same when the demo stops working?

Cas :)

[princec]

Yeah, but would you pay for it? As it sounds, it sounds "interesting" but not "compelling". It's the "compelling" that I'm trying to nail.

Cas :)

[svero]

I think i gave you the trick. Its how you re-use what you have. Alien flux could be re-ordered with a little map and missions in such a way as to appear to have a really big content rich mission to complete without adding more bosses or aliens etc..

Take jewel quest for example. What has it got? Very little. You swap jewels and make combos just like bejeweled. But it seems to have a lot of gameplay simply because a map was added and they keep throwing levels at you and only minor differences from time to time. It's how they differences are introduced.

I think maybe content is the wrong word. A better word might be goals. You have to give the player a lot of goals including really long term goals. Going back to zuma.. there's a game with 1 space level. The space level only appears after you've played every other level to death. Its just 1 final level to get to at the very end. The game still have 20 levels. You could play it 1-20 and be done with it. They chose to hold that level/goal off forcing the player to do a lot more and really get as much out of what content they had before letting the player check that goal off in their hypothetical todo game list.

[princec]

But is the player going to hold off for that space level? I didn't even know there was a space level!

I mean, very few people hold out to see the Alien Brain in 'Flux, and it's a pretty ultra cool boss if you ask me.

But what it seems like you're saying is... you can get away with total lack of content, if you just have a few interacting elements that you can randomly mix and match up to make an apparently cool new level.

Cas :)

[Savant]

One thing that PopCap games do very well is drive the player forward. Sure, it's just level after level of essentially the same gameplay, but they typically wrap the game up in a story with progression between the sets of levels, they award you titles as you achieve higher scores, etc.

That sort of thing makes the player want to keep playing.

Big Kahuna Reef is another example. One of the big things that drives me forward to keep playing is that I want to unlock more fish to add to my tank. That's it. A simple little thing like that, but it kept me playing way beyond my trial hour and into a buying situation.

[Bmc]

I strongly disagree that story isn't content. In fact, story is one of the things that set Mahjong Quest apart from other Mahjong games.

[svero]

>But is the player going to hold off for that space level?

Yes. Players like goals. I think James C Smiths discussion of layered goals was essentially right on the mark. You don't really even need to know there's a space leve so long as you think there's something coming up. Although its best if the goal is clear.

>I mean, very few people hold out to see the Alien Brain in 'Flux, and it's a
>pretty ultra cool boss if you ask me.

Right. Well that's where the maps and so on come in. If there had been some progress indicator in flux with something saying "here is the brain!" then it would have been more motivating. That's why I added a progress bar to my game with the nest at the end.

>But what it seems like you're saying is... you can get away with total lack
>of content, if you just have a few interacting elements that you can
>randomly mix and match up to make an apparently cool new level.

Yep. But to use it to best effect mix it with some kind of goal. Sometimes people try to use stories but it doesnt work that much if the story is not very compelling. I agree for isntance in zzed that the story adds little or nothing to the game. The map of the galaxies to visit is very effective though.

You see the map is not a play device. It's a motivation device, and a marketing device. That is to say.. adding the map doesnt really fundamentally change the game or the levels you have. But it does show the player how much they've completed, how much more they can expect to see, and what their next medium term goal is. (ie reach the next galaxy). It's all about goals. There are other ways to motivate players like collecting stars and so on, but that's why we re-see the map or the thumbnail selection screen. In downloadable games maps aren't just play/goal devices, but they also double as a selling tool because they make clear to the player what the difference between the demo and the full version is in an implicit very visual way.

[princec]

I strongly disagree that story isn't content. In fact, story is one of the things that set Mahjong Quest apart from other Mahjong games.
I could stick in a story in Puppytron that is gradually unveiled every level... but let's face it, you wouldn't call that compelling content, would you? (Cheesy maybe ;))

Ok, let's qualify "content" as being "stuff you are compelled to see more of". I don't think that any game that is not intrinsically based on a storyline has compelling content if it's got a story. Case in point: Zzed. Worthless story, has no effect on playing the game if you read it or not. I didn't read it.

Cas :)

[princec]

Hm, now, I've tried the map in Dudester but it hasn't helped at all. Medals are where it's at I think. The primary goal is to escape in record time; the secondary goal is to get all the medals; the tertiary goal is to see all the levels.

Cas :)

[luggage]

I think there's good content and poor content to be honest. Alien Flux just didn't grab me - first few levels felt exactly the same. Stuff teleported in and off we go again.

A lot of it was to do with the style, just having an empty play area, and then moving onto the next level just felt like the game didn't have much content. You could have a thousand individual handcrafted levels with dozens of bosses but if the first handful of levels are too similar people won't continue to play and won't see them.

Svero mentions having a map like screen to find your way around. This is quite a good way to sell a game with not much content. Gives you a chance to see how much of the game there is to play, you can look and see how well you've done, you can see there's boss stages, you can keep some things hidden, etc. And it's not that much extra content.

Likewise you could maybe have a few tiles that... ermm.. tile. With these you could build some simple levels. For the amount of effort to knock up a few gfx and a simple map editor it would add a lot of gameplay\content.

You could tie all this in together for Alien Flux by maybe having a solar system with 5 planets in. Perhaps you start with the closest planet, clicking it gives you a planet view where the individual levels are. Maybe there's 5 say. You can do these levels in any order. The background graphic can look fiery as it's closest to the sun (furthest out would be icy), the tile for making the level would fit into the fiery theme as well. Then have a boss at the end of the planet. You could give each player an award they can see for each level. Let them go back and improve if they wish.

For 5 background graphics, tiles, bosses (granted the bosses might be a bit heavy :) ) - maybe a hidden planet\level or two you've increased the perceived content in the game.

waffle over.

[Bmc]

Hm, now, I've tried the map in Dudester but it hasn't helped at all. Medals are where it's at I think. The primary goal is to escape in record time; the secondary goal is to get all the medals; the tertiary goal is to see all the levels.

The map wasn't really clear. Just a bunch of boxes with a start flag and an end flag.

Honestly, I've played super dudester and it's not bad. I can see reasons why it may not be selling, but it certainly doesn't suck. The only thing is I don't think I'd be willing to pay for it.

Also, it's probably old news by now by I would like to point out a few things:
1) First time it's ever been installed. I run the game and get an alert that says the game did not shutdown properly last time. Strange since I just installed it.
2) After clicking OK on the first dialog I get a second. This once is an Older version alert warning. It tells me to visit puppygames.net and download the newest version (or something along those lines). Strange since I just downloaded it a couple of minutes ago.

I'm running Windows XP Pro.

[princec]

Maybe Flux 2 eh? Hehe. I'm sick to death of tweaking that game. TBH I had thought that the fact that every level, a new alien appears, would seem like content to most people. And every alien is very different from the last and requires a different strategy. That's what I was getting at... how would I manage to make this feel like loads of new stuff? Puppytron for example only has 5 basic alien types or so and it's selling OK. So you're saying the trick is to actually lay out in front of the punter a map of all the content, whether there is any more or not, and that'll help?

You know, svero said this to me over a year ago :) Dammit. But just at the point he said it I'd finally gotten sick of tweaking Flux and moved on.

Cas :)

[svero]

Hm, now, I've tried the map in Dudester but it hasn't helped at all. Medals are where it's at I think. The primary goal is to escape in record time; the secondary goal is to get all the medals; the tertiary goal is to see all the levels.

Cas :)

Well its not exactly right though. The map in dudester does not provide long term or medium term player goals. It's not "Add a map any map".. its "provide a 1 month goal for the player, a 1 minute goal, a 1hr goal"

[svero]

Look at it this way. A player downloads Jewel quest and aargon. They play for an hr of jewel quest and they look at the in game map and see that they've only played 10-20% of the game. So they think to themselves.. if I buy this I'll get another 80% more. If they like the game that can seem like good value for money. Also they're thinking.. I'd like to get to the mysterious temple, and I wonder what the last level is.. and so on.

In aargon there's no map, but there's tons of levels. If you like solving the puzzles you could play for an hr and not scratch the surface. That will feel like good value for the money.

People want to know that when they put out their 20$ they're going to have more "Stuff" to do. Things to collect, awards to win, etc.. Whatever it happens to be.

But also keep in mind that if people basically dont find the gameplay fun none of this will help. This is all to motivate the player to do more of what they do level to level. They have to actually like the swapping of gems or whatever it is. Otherwise it might just seem like 80% more pain. So adding a map or goals isnt going to necessarily fix a game. But it can help.

[Martoon]

Just a little more anecdotal info:

I never considered Bejewelled/Bejewelled 2 to be content driven. I'm pretty much unaware of the background images on the different levels when I play.

But Bejewelled 2 is the only game that my wife has ever enjoyed. I was surprised to find that one of the reasons she keeps playing is to see the different pretty backgrounds, and she gets excited whenever she reaches a new level she's never reached before, and sees the new background.

[princec]

That's precisely what I call "content" - high cost stuff in the game that took some effort to do.

New alien / background / music / map = content
New gem colour / irrelevant storyline != content

Cas :)

[Bmc]

I just want to mention that if you aren't developing games for a hobby then you shouldn't be basing your definition of worthwhile content on your likes and dislikes, but rather the likes and dislikes of your target market/audience.

[dima]

Cas,

Try throwing in some level design. Be it tiles or backgrounds with obstacles, something that defines boundaries and makes people think that there is more to each level than just plain backdrops. Tiles are the most reusable resource you can have. (i still wish I could try Alien Flux, keeps crashing ...)

[baegsi]

New alien / background / music / map = content
New gem colour / irrelevant storyline != contentNow I understand what you mean by content! But honestly: I don't see a way to bypass that when you want to create competitive action games, as you do. You have to make chess or hard core strategy games, because only players of those games look primarily on game mechanics and don't really care about "content".

[princec]

I just want to mention that if you aren't developing games for a hobby then you shouldn't be basing your definition of worthwhile content on your likes and dislikes, but rather the likes and dislikes of your target market/audience.
It's more to do with the cost of creation versus the impact it has. If stories were genuinely a great compelling bit of content for Zzed then they're laughing all the way to the Leeds. Or maybe not, because they did a load of graphics to go with it. I ignored the lot ;)

Cas :)

[cliffski]

I'm always banging on about content. I'd like to make two points.

1) A game can be superb with no content (bridge builder and tower of goo are good examples). These games can be wicked, popular, fun, critically aclaime,d yet sell no copies. I think adding content doesnt make the game 'better' it makes it better 'perceived' value for money. You could write the most l33t game in the world, but if it has 1 button and 1 ping sound and no other content, nobody is going to buy it

2)By content I also mean gameplay variation. As in 'stuff'. As an example, I'm adding an achievements screen to Democracy. This isn't a change to existing gameplay in any way, but its another 'feature' another 'thing' that's in the game that makes customers feel like they are getting their moneys worth. Its another thing to do, another goal to beat, another button to click on and dialog box full of stuff to read.

You say puppytron is selling well, and thats cool, but I can still easily see the POV of someone who likes it but doesn't buy it because of its perceived lack of content. I think its actually a better game than AF, and that's why its selling. it other words, it sells 'despite' its lack of content, not because of it.

[Screwball]

I think what Cas is refering to is Developed Content. What svero, cliffski and others are refering to is Customer Perceived Content. Arcade/Puzzle style games will generally suffer from low Perceived Content, due to them being "repetative". Things like story modes, level progression maps, level editors (if applicable) and the like may not add to much as far as developed content is concerned, but it does increase the Customers Perceived Content. Your game could have the most content in the world, but if you don't convey this to your customer then your SOL.

Selling anything for profit basicly boils down to getting your Perceived Value to be a lot higher than your Product Price.

[princec]

I'm trying to figure out how to slash development times basically and come up with a way of writing games that sell that only take a month to develop. That pretty much means less graphics, less maps, etc.

Cas :)

[Vorax]

I'm trying to figure out how to slash development times basically and come up with a way of writing games that sell that only take a month to develop. That pretty much means less graphics, less maps, etc.

Cas :)

So basically you want the holy grail of indy development. Good luck Sir Knight!
:)

Not sure how to help with that one. You may be able to do it once if you come up with a really intriguing puzzle game of some kind. Good original play in a puzzle game means you can probably sell lots without much content... Now go forth invent the next Bejewled and then just do that again every month for a year and you will be laughing!

[electronicStar]

I think what Cas is refering to is Developed Content. What svero, cliffski and others are refering to is Customer Perceived Content. Arcade/Puzzle style games will generally suffer from low Perceived Content, due to them being "repetative". Things like story modes, level progression maps, level editors (if applicable) and the like may not add to much as far as developed content is concerned, but it does increase the Customers Perceived Content. Your game could have the most content in the world, but if you don't convey this to your customer then your SOL.

Selling anything for profit basicly boils down to getting your Perceived Value to be a lot higher than your Product Price.
Very well said.

Now Cas, you want to make your games in one/two month and don't "waste time" making content and you are surprised that you are not selling millions.:rolleyes:
I think you are confusing the business of making games with the other software businesses you have been involved with. You have to take conscience that it is first and foremost an artistic activity. You can't rationalize your players' satisfaction like you would if you were a farmer (you'd just add a bit of vitamines in your cows' food), or if you were a MacDonald manager (you'd make the slaves work more and reduce the beef in the burgers).
You need to have a bit of respect for the audience , if they play it's because they want to fill their neural net with something new and exciting and you can't save on content there.

Now the main problem with Dudester is that I didn't know what to do and I didn't seem to be able to die. The baddies just kept hitting me to no avail. A couple of times I saw a game over screen but I didn't know why really.The overall playing experience was rather boring.
Plus the screens were rather empty and if there were different backgrounds , I couldn't tell (all I can remember is a motherboard like background)

Dont take that like a negative comment, somehow your games have this "touch" that makes them interesting in the first few minutes and you have some potential. Plus Dudester seems to be the perfect game to play while being high :)

[20thCenturyBoy]

I'm trying to figure out how to slash development times basically and come up with a way of writing games that sell that only take a month to develop. That pretty much means less graphics, less maps, etc.

Cas :)
How about using more abstract art and colours? Kind of like Kenta Cho does. You still need to make sure it's effective, but you don't need to spend time on "realistic" sprites and animation. If you want to use backdrops, there are plenty of free images on the net, or photograph your own! Just spruce them up a little in Photoshop afterwards. Changing the backdrop frequently is an excellent low cost way of giving people a nice new picture to look at and a sense of progression (remember lots of people like changing their desktop wallpaper for the same reason). IIRC the Alien Flux background looked the same for multiple levels, in fact I don't remember it changing at all.

I know Puppytron has no backgrounds, but I wouldn't mind if it did, as long as the didn't distract from the gameplay.

[illume]

Put the cool, big hard boss first. It's the hammumu style of backwards level design.

It's fun too! The idea is you get to see something cool right away.

L - normal level creatures.
B - boss.

A normal game goes like this:
LLLLLBLLLLLB

Boss at the start games go like this:
BLLLLLBLLLLLB


Make a BLLLLLBLLLLLB game! So that people have a goal of getting to the next boss. If they don't see a B at the start they will not know, or want to get to the next boss.


My game holepit is kind of like a princec game I think http://www.holepit.com/

Not as polished or fun, and lacking in 'content'. A really simple game, in the old atari style of game play where it basically has the same basic rules. I really think it needs better goals, and more of a story. Like the good atari style games, which gave you goals which were interesting.

Holepit also needs lots of other things, like making a hole instead of a blue sphere, and a bonus model instead of a yellow donut shape. It also needs to fix its weird input style(like a princec game again!). Instead of having the mouse move the character around, you need to click to change directions.

[Anthony Flack]

I think Svero is right on with the goal philosophy. It's all about motivating the player to keep playing, whether you do that with the promise of loads of extra goodies, or by simpler psychological methods like medals.

Now this isn't especially relevant to your stated aim of 1-month development, but I just wanted to respond to your comments about all the wasted effort going into the content that most people won't see (leaving aside the point that people aren't motivated to seek out stuff they don't know is there).

As an unashamed goodies-driven game designer, It's something I have given a fair bit of thought. Is it right for a really bad player to buy the game and only see 10% of it? Does it make sense to put all that work into developing content and then deny it to people?

I say yes! And no!

Well, rather, I think that a really bad player should be able to set the game to easy and play out the main game from start to finish with a little perseverance. Let's say that that shows them 80% of the total game content.

The other 20% of content would be reserved for rewards, because I do think rewards are important too; and that they should be fought for. Perhaps half the people who play the game should be able to access the next 15% of content. The very last 1% of content is reserved for only the very best players.

That way, most of your work is experienced by most players. That last 1% is not going to be seen by very many people, but the way I look at it, these people are the ones who have played the game to pieces and they deserve a thank you gesture (I'm still feeling guilty about not including a proper ending sequence in Platypus).

[Rainer Deyke]

I'm trying to figure out how to slash development times basically and come up with a way of writing games that sell that only take a month to develop. That pretty much means less graphics, less maps, etc.

So basically you're trying to figure out how to sell games without going to the trouble of making them. I hear there's good money to be made selling other people's games.

[Anthony Flack]

Nope, it's better than that - if you can manage to actually make games without going to the trouble of making them, then you can get other people to sell them for you, too...

[oNyx]

<AF OT>

>I think its actually a better game than AF, and that's why its selling. it other
>words, it sells 'despite' its lack of content, not because of it.

I also have more fun with PT. It's faster and it's single-room/everything-on-screen, which means there is no cam movement involved. AF's cam movement is way too complex for that kind of game. I mean... just try to explain how it behaves to someone. Even that is hard - really hard without using your hands; and as a player you need to compensate the cam movement (which correlates with the position of the ship and the crosshair, which in turn are controlled independly from each other... uhm).

Many people say it's the controls, but imo it's only the cam, which makes it uneasy. One option would be using a platformer like cam system, which swings towards the direction you move to and recenters back to the middle of the screen where the ship is attached to the cam. But... that wouldn't work - or more precisely it would break the existing game mechanics. The boss fights would be a real pain in the rear. Therefore I never suggested anything like that.

Another option would be a cam system which is similar, but instead of swinging ahead it zooms more out the faster you go. But again it wouldn't work at all for the boss fights.

So, the "natural" way to solve that problem would be giving the user the full control about the zooming functionality without using more keys or difficult controls. The ship is always in the middle of the screen and the zoom is 1x until you move the crosshair out of a circle (say... about 3/4 of the height of the screen in diameter)... then it starts zooming out.

I think that could work. Funny that it took me that long to get that idea. Well, I guess it would be quite a lot of work to implement a change like this and most likely Cas doesn't want to put more work into that game, but I wanted to write it down anyways... maybe someone is interested in stuff like this.

</ot>

Content is the "stuff" - the media - the work. But more interesting (for people like us with very small to non existing budgets) is the perceived amount of content. The user wants to see as many as possible new and fresh things. Things which look and feel all fresh n new. The problem is, that you cannot measure such things, therefore it's impossible to approach it from a scientific point of view and backing it up with hard facts also doesn't work.

You get the most bang for your buck with levels. That is, if you have a nice easy to use level editor. Just look at platformers, which use a handfull of different blocks or puzzle games... or things like elastomania and soldat, which use some rather simple poly loop constructs. It's basically always the same - more or less free combination of existing game rules or entity behaviours... and that's great! For the player it's each time a different world with different scenarios, which require a different strategy and/or a different approach.

Basically you need to distribute the project's time slightly different. You also need to ensure - at the very beginning - that the turn over rates will be very high. Otherwise the "content" creation will take too long. Using a scripting language (for behaviours, menu flow and other lightweight logic) also helps a lot, because it usually also boosts the turn over rates and thus productivity.

Of course it's easier said than done ;)

[KNau]

I'm curious where the hesitation to at least try some added content is coming from. I mean, it would take any moderately experienced photoshop artist maybe an hour or two to create a static "progression" page that you could place hilight dots on to show the player's progression - where they've been and how far they have to go. I agree with the comment that customers can't be inspired to buy content if they don't know it's there, a simple map page solves that problem.

Or look at the comic book style story screens of "Betty's Beer Bar", you could throw something like that together using existing artwork and code a fade in / out from panel to panel to create a story between levels. Iggle Pop does this for the tutorial screen between levels - just a mostly static image with dialogue balloons between characters. For both the map and the story cut scenes you're looking at maybe 4 days worth of work - a long weekend, basically.

I agree, it isn't gameplay. It is, well, kinda pointless - but it apparently sells games. I bought Mahjong Quest for my girlfriend because we played out the stupid rhyming story mode in the demo. We were hooked even though we knew the story was basically pointless.

What is a story mode other than just a ladder of short levels? You have the gameplay down - for the amount of work it would really take (not a lot) why not try a story / ladder system?

[baegsi]

I'm trying to figure out how to slash development times basically and come up with a way of writing games that sell that only take a month to develop. That pretty much means less graphics, less maps, etc.Please tell us when you found a way how to do that :)

If the value of a game isn't its content, it has to be delivered by something else. I think there're only two possibilities: you either offer something outstanding new (hard to conceive) or you go hard core in one or more directions, for example great AI (hardcore strategy games), realism (sport sim), deep story (text adventures) and so on. However, I don't think it costs less in terms of development time.

[KNau]

Oh, and on the topic of speeding game creation, we share the same goal and I like the idea of procedural content. I have two backburner projects, a dungeon crawl and a wargame that I'm creating automated map development software for.

The idea is that I only have to create the map elements, the rules for how a level should go together and then let the software "intelligently" spit out a 300 level story mode for me to release with the game. I still have to playtest and tweak the levels but it sure beats building them from scratch.

I read about a breakout game (maybe DX-Ball) that was put together that way. Also I believe Aaron Hall's Dungeon Odyssey uses the same idea, althouth the dungeons are generated at runtime (like Sword of Fargoal), which in my opinion just creates standard level-grind gameplay - but that, too, can be fun.

I don't think it's a holy grail at all, if done right and with a commitment to quality gameplay it's just "working smarter, not harder".

[princec]

I've actually been down this road experimentally a few times and determined that in order to get a random or pseudo-random puzzle generator to work reliably at producing solvable, interesting, logical puzzles of linearly increasing difficulty... is much, much harder and more time consuming than doing it yourself with a tile editor.

So puzzle games aren't really games without content.

What I want is... is... to figure out how to sell games for which the primary goal is simply to play, rather than to "see more". Like Solitaire. I think I'm already quite good at writing such games but don't know how to convert them into sales.

Cas :)

[ERoberts]

The problem is that people are not willing to pay for that (and rightly so, I think). There's so many free games out there, low on content and with the only reason for playing them being simply to play them. Why would anyone pay for a game like this, when there's so many free ones?

As others have said already, the players need to be motivated to continue playing *your* specific game. If there are not clear goals, long term AND short term, and no intermediate rewards (apart from having fun while playing), it is a much better option for the players to go from free game (or demo) to free game, and never buy anything.

But if you actually put some actual content and clear goals, you have something that can not be switched for any other game, but something that is more unique and therefore more compelling to the player. This means they are more likely to buy THAT specific game, because they want more of its content and to reach the goals (long and short term) set in it. No other game will let them reach those specific goals or give them just that content.

[princec]

I don't think it's a holy grail at all, if done right and with a commitment to quality gameplay it's just "working smarter, not harder".Spot on. I have to say that I'm being purely mercenary here. Here's a trivial case study: I bought Platypus because it was fun and I liked the progression. However, I've not seen more than about 2 minutes into the sky level because it's too hard for me. But who cares! Boeh's got my cash! All that time Mr Flack spent on whatever mysteries awaits is probably wasted on me. If he'd known he could get his money out of me and only produce two worlds that'd slash the development time in half and get him twice the profit. Bingo!

Flux took months and months of painstaking 3d rendering to produce the graphics. This was a huge mistake; nobody gives 2 poos about the lovely little sprites. I expect about 50% of the people that buy the game have never even seen the Enormous Jelly or the Alien Brain. So I consider this a huge mistake in the area of game design for profit.

My advice to anyone starting out today is to throw away any idea they can't comfortably produce in entirety in less than a month* (especially as we all know our estimates are invariably 1/3rd of actual time). This is a risk mitigation exercise now. Taking longer than 6 months to start turning a profit selling anything in any business is unusual and a massive big red flashing light that the entire premise of the business is fucked. I've seen people selling genuine Glastonbury rocks at Glastonbury festival. Arch-anomaly Brainwave made $12k. So I'm all up for the minigame with minimal content production; I want to spread my risk over 10 small products instead of one product with 10x the effort gone into it - each is just as likely to flop as the other.

Cas :)

You are of course also advised never to take princec's advice.

[princec]

I have two backburner projects, a dungeon crawl and a wargame that I'm creating automated map development software for.We've got an ultrasimplified nethack in the works. A cross between nethack and Strange Adventures in Infinite space. The 5 minute RPG, the Quest for the Holy Grail no less. Should be done sometime around the end of the year if we keep the schedule up.

Cas :)

[princec]

Now Cas, you want to make your games in one/two month and don't "waste time" making content and you are surprised that you are not selling millions.:rolleyes:Shows how much you know eh? Alien Flux took 18 man months of development, and Super Dudester took 12. Puppytron took just 1 month and is our best seller. Which is why I've cottoned on to this idea in the first place!

You need to have a bit of respect for the audience , if they play it's because they want to fill their neural net with something new and exciting and you can't save on content there.*cough* Bejewelled *cough* ;)

Cas :)

[Anthony Flack]

I bought Platypus because it was fun and I liked the progression. However, I've not seen more than about 2 minutes into the sky level because it's too hard for me. But who cares! Boeh's got my cash! All that time Mr Flack spent on whatever mysteries awaits is probably wasted on me. If he'd known he could get his money out of me and only produce two worlds that'd slash the development time in half and get him twice the profit. Bingo!


I see that as a different mistake.

Firstly was the assumption that players would work and practice to get to the end: with a few exceptions, we don't these days. People want to sit down and play a game through from start to finish without getting too stuck along the way.

Second mistake was making the game with an arcade-style difficulty curve - it keeps getting harder until the player is eliminated. This is of course related to the first point - I shouldn't have assumed that people would practice the game in order to get better in order to progress further. Which is why I now feel it's better to be able to set the game to easy, and play through from start to finish even if you're not very good. A shallow difficulty curve.

Since this also makes for a short and unchallenging experience, I'm looking at providing replayability and extra incentives by other means. Including providing nasty skill levels with brutal difficulty, and some extra incentives for completing them (that elusive 1% of additional content).

Even though you've only gotten to see a little over 1/4 of the content of Platypus, and all that extra effort I went to was wasted on you, if I had've known that at the time I still wouldn't have made the game shorter. Because I think that's too short. I'd feel shortchanged if I'd bought it and it was that short. You probably feel a bit shortchanged too, yeah? That's no good.

I don't want to make games just to get people's money off them. I do actually want to provide people with a good experience that they can feel happy about afterwards, and not sell them something they might regret later.

[baegsi]

My advice to anyone starting out today is to throw away any idea they can't comfortably produce in entirety in less than a month* (especially as we all know our estimates are invariably 1/3rd of actual time). This is a risk mitigation exercise now.I'm trying do something even more extreme: I have a stack of ideas. I take on of it and give me exactly one day to implement the core idea. If I cannot make in that time, the idea is too complex. It's really fun to play with constraints.

Alien Flux took 18 man months of development, and Super Dudester took 12. Puppytron took just 1 month and is our best seller.But Cas, one question: didn't take Puppytron 1 month because you already had your framework in place? In other words: how long would it took you if Puppytron were your first game?

[princec]

Admittedly Puppytron could have taken months longer if I'd started out entirely from scratch. However that's just because I use a funny platform and the only code available to do decent 2D games with it is... well, mine. I expect a competent SDL developer or someone with PTK could manage it in less time even than that. In fact look at Frenesia.

In fact Blitz is the ubertool for this sort of endeavour, especially now it's crossplatform. The redistributables will be a couple of megs smaller too.

Cas :)

[Rod Hyde]

We've got an ultrasimplified nethack in the works. A cross between nethack and Strange Adventures in Infinite space.Oh no! Another excuse for me not to write games! NetHack is the one game that I have never deleted from my hard drive.

I'm looking forward to that one.

--- Rod

[baegsi]

What I want is... is... to figure out how to sell games for which the primary goal is simply to play, rather than to "see more". Like Solitaire. I think I'm already quite good at writing such games but don't know how to convert them into sales.Back on topic: how to market such games. Three spontanous ideas:

1.- I wouldn't try to fake any content, instead, I'd make the lack of it my primary market value. You say this already on your website "Only highscores count, loosers need not to apply" etc. But I'd try to go much further, as far as possible. When someone visits your site, it should be clear that this is the place for insane hardcore lovers who only care about scoring and surviving and give a sh** about anything else. For example, your website is cute and fluffy, it should be bloody, simplistic and only for tough guys.

2.- When the primary goal is score and nothing more, my motivation to play your game is competition, more like a sporting challange. Beating my own highscore is fine, beating somone else is better! I'd try to start some kind of competition event around your game. Having an online highscore list is not enough anymore. Why not try to start a league or something? Have a couple of small prices to win ready every month (best: other indie games, maybe you can team up with someone). From here you gain word-of-mouth and you send a clear message what to expect from your games: pure challenging insane hardcore action, nothing more, nothing less.

3.- Beating someone else is of course better suited to multiplayer games. When I play a poker game, the game itself really doesn't matter as long as it does the job. What I want is to beat the other player. So multiplayer games are much more suited for that. Making Puppytron mutliplayer is not possible, but for future games I'd go into that direction. But you said that this is already your plan, if I remeber this right.

Basically my suggestion is: push what make your games exceptional and focus on one clear element, pure action gameplay in your case. And deliver that message clearly and unambiguous.

[cliffski]

How about a feature where if you get a hi-score it asks you for the email address of a friend and emails him a screenshot to show you have beaten his best score.

[baegsi]

Oh, and more point: very cheap to implement, but great improvement for highscore focussed games. Expand highscore into stats. Personally, I love stats! So instead of simple "you made 1000 points", have range of values: longest survival period, best hit accuracy, missed items, etc, you get the picture.

Again, should be fine to market because it would fit nicely into the sport-like competition challange of your games.

[princec]

Stats are fun. I've got them on the online Flux hiscores.

Cas :)

[aiosup]

Basically my suggestion is: push what make your games exceptional and focus on one clear element, pure action gameplay in your case. And deliver that message clearly and unambiguous.
Hmmm... why not adding a number of simple tracks, just to increase the number of positive feedbacks to the user (you are the first to do this... and the 29th to that...)? Not only stat(istic)s, but also some real things.

[oNyx]

Procedual levels only work well for logic mazes (or very similar genres), but it's damn tough. With most other genres it will feel too random and there won't be any direction or a big idea behind the level. With logic mazes you can't tell if it's hand crafted or generated and quite often the generated levels are more interesting, because the generator can spit out very unhuman and tricky levels (which are really fun to beat).

[...]
1.- I wouldn't try to fake any content[...]

A well crafted level with 8 different tiles can be much more interesting than a level with hundrets of different tiles. It's about getting the most impact with the same amout of work (or less work if possible). Of course I would like having a mind blowing amount of content, but I can't afford spending hundret years on a single game (literally).

And for the player a well designed level has more value than 20 more tiles. And you also need to look on the other side of the medal. Less content can also support your game, because it gives the player the ability to recognize enemys and tiles, which helps him/her to develop a suited strategy as fast as possible. An example would be two different enemys are on the screen... the player knows both kinds, therefore he/she is able to judge very fast which one of both is more dangerous or which one should be taken down first (eg if one of em explodes you pick that one and hope that the explosion will tear the other one appart, too).

People want to be able to predict things to a certain degree. They want to see (some) patterns in order to be able to do just that - predict things, because they want to be prepared. If you manage to get that working for you it's a good thing, right?

Of course each game is different. Quite a lot of games don't even have anything you could call a level and there are also games which are 100% content (media) driven like point'n'click adventures.

The perfect media-light-weight game could be a logic maze with maybe 10 different tiles, some sound effects, title screen, menu, and some characters with almost no animation. 100% generated levels with... say... 100 levels which are sorted by difficulty (test players' stats) and an unlimited amount of generated levels which are roughly spun around a specific difficulty setting. And just for the kicks you could add perlin noise dust/dirt to the tiles (woohoo every tile is looks unique)... and that's about it. I would do such a game right away if I had a good game idea and if I would be a bit smarter (I think I couldn't create a good level generator... it's way too tricky for me).

Hm. I'm wondering if it's a good idea to do a smaller game in between. I really want to get it rolling asap.

[svero]

I dont know whats meant by "fake" content. But I think adding goals any way you can is a good thing regardless of whether they give you something really new or not. Like.. look at a game like quake3. You can play the same level forever because the goalposts keep moving. New players etc... Its not the actual level content that makes it fun. It's the variety of gameplay when you're actually playing.

Take mario3d for example. You have levels where you need to collect stars. The SAME level has 5 stars to get with minor variations. The creators of the game didnt need to make 5 completely new maps. Playing and collecting the 2nd star and 3rd star are still quite fun. Maybe more fun in a way as you learn the ins and outs of a level. Sometimes its more fun to explore and play in an area you know well. I use to prefer playing arenas I was familiar with in quake3. It was all about the game and not so much about figuring where to go and so on.

So if you re-use the same level and only vary it mildly, or even not at all, but you move the goalpost slightly that can be lots of fun and I don't consider it cheap or fake etc..

[baegsi]

I dont know whats meant by "fake" content.I should select my words more carefully (especially as a non-native speaker :o ). I meant this only in terms of marketing. Of course it is good to implement procedural generated content or to have moving goals etc. But if my game doesn't provide any varying content and it's even on purpose, I wouldn't try to hide this fact or try to compete with other games that do have content, but I would make the lack of content a strength by emphasizing the idea that my games are only about game play and nothing else.

Edit: compare this for example to mtv unplugged - they build a whole brand out of the idea of reducing music to the bare minimum. Why not have puppytron unplugged or something similar? I think you could make something out this. But you have to go as far as possible to have a clear message what your games are about. You can do this with anything.

[tolik]

I hope I'll be able to show you a game without content which we made TODAY in 6-7 hours. It'll be a First April game making fun out of all the match games.

[sand858]

Didn't seem to be touched on this thread (though a very interesting thread to me, a programmer with almost 0 artistic skill for producing high quality content), but has anyone considered how episode packs might factor into this equation?

Initial game takes 3 months to make, then you expansion pack for 6 months, 1 a month. Of course, your original game needs to be good enough to warrant the expansion packs.

Just a quick thought...

[Vectrex]

Shows how much you know eh? Alien Flux took 18 man months of development, and Super Dudester took 12. Puppytron took just 1 month and is our best seller. Which is why I've cottoned on to this idea in the first place!


Puppytron is just a better game, that is all. 'Ownership' is the key I think. Puppytron is better because the upgrades give you control over your own game experience and make you 'care' about your character. The gameplay is much tighter and deliberate. In fact I enjoyed puppyinvaders loads more than AF and SD simply because of the shop upgrades, an ideal driving force through bordem. AF & SD just seemed like a bunch of 'stuff' crammed into a game (Although SD was pretty good I think)

As for contentless games, why not let the user create their own content as part of the game? My favorite thing in gaming is creating your base in rts's. No previous content required and much more satisfying (ownership again). These are some principals I use to avoid work anyway :D

[tolik]

In case somebody have missed it:

http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=2683

This is the summary of all contentless games :)