First Game Learning Points

[Black Hydra]

I often hear from people here about surprises they recieved (usually in the form of over estimating sales or their games greatness) when they first released it.

What I'm interested to know is what you found was a major learning point after you released your first game that you didn't even think about before releasing. More so, what do you think would be information that came as a revelation to you many indies still working on their first game would be the most surprised to here. Seeing as any indie who has spent some time here should know that to have high expectations for a first game is folly, restating that is probably redundant, but I'm sure there were some things large and small that came as a surprise to you after you released your first game.

I suppose you can also list later releases as we learn new things all the time, I just expect that most of these moments probably occurred during that very initial period.

Just in case I didn't set the tone of this thread from the get-go, I think we should try to be informative, but lets not turn this into a rant (try to have some fun guys :D ).

[soniCron]

Whoever said the last 10% took 90% of the time was so wrong. I've found the last 10% takes 99.9% of the time!

[Tertsi]

The first screenshot (first as in the first which user can click on when viewing screenshots) you have available in your website will be put up by just about all websites which mention your game and it's usually the only screenshot that gets posted, so you'd better make sure the first screenshot is the best one unlike I did.

[Nexic]

I learnt that Tucows, and most other advertising is a rip off :)

I also learnt that just randomly slapping together gameplay elements doesn't make a good game, it needs clear direction.

[princec]

1. Make the game easy! I mean, really really easy! I just tried to play AF the other day and I got my arse kicked. It's far too hard. I've given up on it.

2. Proper remote logging will tell you so much more than anything else, and decisively puts paid to FUD spread from your peers. I didn't get logging in until v1.4 and it was a revelation. If only I'd had it in from the start.

3. Get a Mac. Just do it. It'll pay for itself in a month or two. I blithered on for years hoping other people would test the Mac version for me. Only a week ago I bought an iMac (weeee!) and discovered that all this time the sound has been broken in all my games because of a bug in OpenAL. Grr.

Cas :)

[Total Eclipse]

Cas, what exactly do you mean by remote logging?

[Pallav Nawani]

1. Don't cut corners. I did a lot of that in order to make my game small in size and ended up with a 2.7MB game that nobody wants to buy. If adding interesting stuff sends your game over 10MB, so be it.
2. Style is somewhat more important than substance, especially in the demo.
3. Use 3D if it will make your game look better, play better, more stylish.

Things I learnt after my second game:

1. The game should be perfect (Or nearly so) when first released.
2. Fix gameplay problems as soon as they become apparent. You may get used to it later on, and not realise you have a problem until it is too late.
3. 1 great track from a good musician is better that 5 okay tracks from a okay musician.
4. Don't cut corners!! :D
5. Use 800x600 Resolution.

[JoKa]

5. Use 800x600 Resolution.

Hm, is it still important today, better than 1024? I guess most displays support at least 1024x768.

[princec]

Cas, what exactly do you mean by remote logging?
I mean, don't rely on looking at the number of bytes your own webserver tells you have been downloaded: get your games to send a run log to your server, complete with exceptions thrown and other tidbits of information.

Cas :)

[Black Hydra]

...I also learnt that just randomly slapping together gameplay elements doesn't make a good game, it needs clear direction.

Great point. Maybe you could elaborate from your own experiences?

[Roman Budzowski]

Hm, is it still important today, better than 1024? I guess most displays support at least 1024x768.

Just to display the screen is not enough. You need 1.632 more VRAM and your download is that much bigger. And that may be a problem in some cases, depends on how much content do you have.

Roman

[Martoon]

Whoever said the last 10% took 90% of the time was so wrong. I've found the last 10% takes 99.9% of the time!
Very true. You've been on your final two weeks for a couple months now, haven't you? ;)

In all seriousness, a game is never "finished". I think the state of a game as you work on it is actually a curve that converges toward "finished", but will never actually reach it. At some point, you call it done, and ship it.

[Andy]

First Game Learning Points - you ask Hydra? :)

OK. Just publish it and move on the next one. Second or third one could bring you the understanding what realy you should do from the very beginning. But point is you couldn't learn it from somebody else. You just must to go through this by your own. Sad but true. :)

[soniCron]

Very true. You've been on your final two weeks for a couple months now, haven't you? ;) I have and I've since learned to stop quoting deadlines. ;)

[Black Hydra]

Andy - While I think that you can technically learn these kind of points from someone, there is so much that you actually have to experience for yourself for it to have context and meaning as it applies to you. I started this thread just because I wanted to see what things caught new indies off-guard with there first game, rather than a definitive do/don't list (this is the General Chat forum :D)

[Ricardo C]

I'm still at work on my first commercial game, but I think I can contribute this bit:

Learn to say no to the feature crawl bug whispering in your ear. "Wouldn't it be cool to add-" "NO!"

[Chris Evans]

Good topic.

I learned that while the <5MB rule may not be an absolute rule anymore, size still matters, especially if you want to work with other partner sites, portals and affiliates. With my first game, I was planning to have it on CD, so I had little regard for file size even though it was also going to be a downloadble. It wasn't until closer release, I realized that smaller is better but by then it was pretty much too late.

Even still the game was doing fine on my site. And several portals/partners wanted to carry the game, but the file size scared them off (25MB Demo/70MB Full Version). And they felt the game wasn't hardcore enough to justify the big file size. This hurt the number of distribution channels I could push the game through.

With broadband being more prevalent people are more acceptable of 10-20MB files (which include the full version), but if you go much bigger, you enter a new realm. Depending on your type of game, you might not get much distribution from portals with large file sizes. Obvously if you're doing a puzzle game, you don't have to worry much about this. But if you're doing a level-based action/adventure game, then it's something you have to be mindful of.

[Andy]

Hydra - you asked for main experiences. I've shared with you by my main one. Do you think I'm kidding? - No. Again sad but true.

The rest of recommendations is thin and unnecessary details. ;) You can and should learn them of course - this is always useful. But I ask you to remember my one as well. You will notice later how right I was. And would you follow by it this would make your life much better in that period.

REM: Check the statistics of indies who achieved success in last three years. If you don't like to trust me right now.

[Nexic]

You know, Andy is totally right.

[Black Hydra]

Andy - I wasn't trying to disagree with you, let me clarify, I simply didn't want to imply that this was all that serious a thread :D . I was just interested in hearing some anecdotes and stories not particularly taking notes and making do/don't lists at home. I'm quite aware you're right about most things (nobody can be right about everything :D).

[Andy]

Oh. Andy gets it now Hydra! :D

Well. If so...
1. Don't start stupid questions in forums
2. Make a view that you've achieved a lot - by all possible ways. Especially before you've published something. :D

[Black Hydra]

1. Don't start stupid questions in forums


But then how will I pass my time in my off hours? :D


2. Make a view that you've achieved a lot - by all possible ways. Especially before you've published something. :D

I suppose the thing to do after that would be to insult or argue with people who have achieved a lot. Also base the crux of your arguement on opinions not facts.

I've even had to add a disclaimer at the bottom of my sig when I forget to keep my overenthusiastic mouth shut ;)

[soniCron]

1. Don't start stupid questions in forums Precicely what about his question was stupid?

[Andy]

Precicely what about his question was stupid?

Precisely nothing Daniel. :)
I was just sharing with BlackHydra by my personal experience after the first game. ;)

[Nexic]

Hahah!

You have to remember with Andy that he quite often comes across very hostile, but really hes actually trying to say something completely different :)

[papillon]

Things you learn after the first time? Finishing *the game* isn't finishing your job! There's webpages to build and change, demos to submit, press releases to send out, portals/publishers to try and negotiate with... and you get a lot less chance to practice and improve those skills than you did your coding skills. :)

Also, don't forget the opposite problem to the feature creep bug... the temptation to ditch things that were in your original design purely because you are tired of working on the project and just want to get it done and over with. "No one will notice if I just leave out X" followed by a dozen reviews of "This game really needs X" will make you kick yourself.

[Chris Evans]

Also, don't forget the opposite problem to the feature creep bug... the temptation to ditch things that were in your original design purely because you are tired of working on the project and just want to get it done and over with. "No one will notice if I just leave out X" followed by a dozen reviews of "This game really needs X" will make you kick yourself.

Great point. I usually have to worry about this more than "feature creep". If I had the luxury of taking my sweet time making a game then I probably wouldn't have to worry about hacking features. But I'm not in the six figure Indie club yet, so I still need to be able to release games in a reasonable time frame. This means I have to hack certain features that were in the original designs. Knowing which features hack or modify is an art that I'm still trying to master.

[ggambett]

You have to remember with Andy that he quite often comes across very hostile, but really hes actually trying to say something completely different :)
Also remember he's russian, he drinks a lot of vodka, he fights wild bears in the woods in Siberia with his bare hands, and the Tetris guy is his friend. Random facts which may help you read Andy in the proper context :)

[vjvj]

Also, don't forget the opposite problem to the feature creep bug... the temptation to ditch things that were in your original design purely because you are tired of working on the project and just want to get it done and over with. "No one will notice if I just leave out X" followed by a dozen reviews of "This game really needs X" will make you kick yourself.

Yep! And to me, this balance of feature creep vs. feature purge is a key reason design focus is so important.

Flexibility throughout the design process is great, but you really need to have a keen awareness of the 2-3 fundamental mechanics that define your game in order to avoid adding features that don't help, or throwing out features that make your game fun.

[Black Hydra]

See I disagree with the whole feature creep arguement.

The problem with "feature creep" is when it is something that really doesn't add to gameplay and is just wasting your time (I'm sure we've all been there). But adding features that do improve gameplay is why you see some games that were carefully crafted have sales that go through the roof and games that ditched all but the bare essentials fail miserably.

So adding 18 different types of power-up orbs to Zuma may sound cool it probably is just confusing the original idea. I like when the creators of Oasis said that they were bombarded with tons of suggestions for features but implemented very few as they said that it is "amazing how few features will actually make the game better".

But you look at games like Prof Fizzwizzle and you can see the amount of detail, the smooth animated sprites, and you can understand why it was popular.

But what the hell do I know anyways? :D