On 8/22/2018 at 8:42 PM, Tom Sloper said:

I changed the topic title from "design" to "development."

Thanks, development is indeed the word I should have used.

3 hours ago, Anri said:

"Just copy'n'paste code from online tutorials because if it doesn't work then you haven't lost anything.  People who spend years learning computing at university and read books are idiots who are wasting their time..."

This is interesting in the art world we call these "How to draw X" artist and "Tutorial sickness", because these people just copy the things thought step by step, without ever learning the context or principle. Never realized coding had its own version of the same problem.

3 hours ago, Anri said:

"Just because they don't see the code behind a game - even if it works - doesn't mean you should write awful code. Have pride in your work and keep it tidy". 

This is a beautiful quote, I like it. As with many things if you put pride into your work, you just do better. Or maybe it is because you put your pride on the line.

Working late hours so I actually have been thinking alot about the advice I have received.

Bad:

"Just get your game to a tutorial stage, then you can rely on crowdfunding." The bad advice part here is that you can't rely on the money from crowdfunding. What people don't realize is that only a handful of indie games actually make good funding like that.

Most indie games on crowdfunding sites make around $100 - $ 250 a month, the developer doesn't get the full amount and a lot of work goes into collecting even that small amount. My last crowdfunded game just made enough to pay for steam, everything else I had to pay out of my own pocket.

Good:

"you've converted a $0.006/month customer to a $0.70/life customer (that's 10 years at their ad revenue rate!)" This was advice on advert revenue. It worked great. Since it was good advice I thought I would link for readers.

The way I did it in the end was that players who purchased ANY thing from my store also had adverts removed. This boosted traffic to the store by more than 40% and sales by more than 8%. All I did was to have adverts removed from the game with a purchase and it increased my revenue by a lot; most purchases was more than $1. Didn't even take me an hour to make the code.

I realize that I have followed a lot of bad advice and not all just financial; there is a lot I tested and can share; if people are interested.

On 8/24/2018 at 6:12 PM, Scouting Ninja said:

I realize that I have followed a lot of bad advice and not all just financial; there is a lot I tested and can share; if people are interested.

This is a great thread.  Definitely interested in what you have to share.

Bad advice -  "Hey, just google some images and use them as placeholders"

When i was starting out this was another idea from the inexperienced programmer friend, and to my curiosity as to what do game developers do when they develop their games, do they design their own images, doesn't it make the project longer and distracts you from the workflow? His response was "just google some images". And luckily before publishing anything serious i have gotten some common sense as to why this idea is bad and i'd rather paint some fast ugly squares other than use copyrighted assets. It's so easy to trash your name as a dev if you do it officially

Good advice - "don't overthink, aim to make it small, but well working"

And this was not even in a game development, but when i was learning to draw fictional characters and i was starting out to learn all the techniques with different shades, pencil sizes and i've seen some drawings and couldn't make anything close, then i found out about the art, that it doesn't have to be advanced, you can start off with silhouette, and that basically is the first prototype in game development and in everything else.

On 8/25/2018 at 1:12 AM, Scouting Ninja said:

 

Bad:

"Just get your game to a tutorial stage, then you can rely on crowdfunding." The bad advice part here is that you can't rely on the money from crowdfunding. What people don't realize is that only a handful of indie games actually make good funding like that.

Most indie games on crowdfunding sites make around $100 - $ 250 a month, the developer doesn't get the full amount and a lot of work goes into collecting even that small amount. My last crowdfunded game just made enough to pay for steam, everything else I had to pay out of my own pocket.

Good:

"you've converted a $0.006/month customer to a $0.70/life customer (that's 10 years at their ad revenue rate!)" This was advice on advert revenue. It worked great. Since it was good advice I thought I would link for readers.

The way I did it in the end was that players who purchased ANY thing from my store also had adverts removed. This boosted traffic to the store by more than 40% and sales by more than 8%. All I did was to have adverts removed from the game with a purchase and it increased my revenue by a lot; most purchases was more than $1. Didn't even take me an hour to make the code.

 

I realize that I have followed a lot of bad advice and not all just financial; there is a lot I tested and can share; if people are interested.

Well done for meeting your customers half way!

Funding is definitely the achilles heel of any project - whether its a hobby or business.  Where most of us go wrong is thinking that the final game will pay for everything in the end, and its only if you have a big hit that might happen.  One way to avoid that trap is to simply(lol) open a new income stream to counter the cost of the project.

Nintendo might be an example; since the very late 1800s they have been selling playing cards, and apparently still do today.  In another example, I remember a "lone wolf" telling me that they sold custom T-shirts in addition to the day job.  Referring to Masters of Doom,  Nightowl Productions sold batteries...

Which brings us to another piece of advice that is on both sides of the same coin;  "just quit your day job and do what it is you love to do.".  Yes, the day job steals our time away and we will never get it back.  No, in that you immedietly cut off your primary income stream, leaving you up Shit Creak without a paddle!  o_O

But taking the best of both worlds, I personally went for the middle ground;  Reduced the hours at work but also looked at other ways to bring in additional money.  Long story short; I'm tipping my toes into the stock market and watching my outgoings like a hawk.  It has allowed me to get a small game project going which has, so far, been stress free and now taking shape...

8 minutes ago, Marylle said:

Good advice - "don't overthink, aim to make it small, but well working"

 

And this was not even in a game development, but when i was learning to draw fictional characters and i was starting out to learn all the techniques with different shades, pencil sizes and i've seen some drawings and couldn't make anything close, then i found out about the art, that it doesn't have to be advanced, you can start off with silhouette, and that basically is the first prototype in game development and in everything else.

Quoted for agreement!

6 hours ago, Marylle said:

Bad advice -  "Hey, just google some images and use them as placeholders"

Ouch, this one can be really bad and as developers we all know how important placeholders can be. I personally recommend OpenGameArt.org this site has been a great help to me, especially since I am always to busy to make my own placeholders.

Also a great place to recruit new rising artists.

6 hours ago, Anri said:

"just quit your day job and do what it is you love to do.".

The Siren of game development, oh how she sings to me even now. No joke I considered quitting my job on a daily bases. It is only when one of my games fail that I receive that jarring reminder that I am not ready to gamble my live on development.

Yes, games a person can make while working is much smaller; but these can be just as rewarding.

On 9/2/2018 at 10:26 PM, jhegedus said:

Definitely interested in what you have to share.

I am pleased it is useful, I have a lot to share. Probably should start from the top.

Bad advice: "Don't use assets, it will make your game look like rubish"

Popular advice when asset flips started. People try to avoid assets so their games can be unique. The problem is that life doesn't work that way, sometimes the path you take to avoid something, only leads you to it.

Take a look at Pixel Art and Low Poly games. People choose these styles so that they can make all their own assets. The result is that they end up with a game just as generic as all the games they are avoiding to make.

Good advice: "Just because it was made to do one thing, doesn't mean it can't do something else."

On the topic of assets, this was something a sound artist showed me. Music makes for fantastic animations, the rhythm adds style and appeal. Because sound files ranges from -1 to 1 it is often easy to tweak a animation using a sound file.

of course all assets can have multiple uses if you are creative enough.

Both Good and Bad advice: "Learn color theory."

1 hour ago, Scouting Ninja said:

On the topic of assets, this was something a sound artist showed me. Music makes for fantastic animations, the rhythm adds style and appeal. Because sound files ranges from -1 to 1 it is often easy to tweak a animation using a sound file.

That's actually a really interesting idea!  Could I talk you into writing up a brief example to publish as a featured article?  It doesn't have to be a big detailed piece, sometimes just a very quick write-up with an example (like this article on Lerp) can be really helpful to people!   PM me if you have any questions or want to chat about it.

7 hours ago, jbadams said:

Could I talk you into writing up a brief example to publish as a featured article? 

I would really like to but don't actually have much time right now. In the tutorial I will also need to explain the concept of animation drivers and extracting data from sound files; if I expect people to be able to follow along. I will see if I can do something.

Bad advise "you need a team"

I've got this advise very early on. It seems legit, in fact in many case it applies. However this advise relies heavily on the context. Yes you need to be in a team if the project is large enough. However, you don't need one for every kind of project. 

This advise prevent you from start working on a game. Many beginners think they need a team, so until then they just prepare things and hopes that they can find one, or set up one, of their own. That's not how it work. In fact, quite often, you have to work on the project until the POC is playable and it shows the potential. It's then when you show your demo, people get interested and ask to join the team. 

You may think, what about the things that are out of your specialty. I think you don't need to be the master of that skill in order to create something. If you are a programmer, a placeholder assets are quite enough. In fact, assets store can be quite useful here as well. For everybody else, visual programming might fit your taste better.

I think, you need a team only when you have evaluated the workload and found that it is necessary. This is something I don't beginner is able to, so just start working on it until you feel like you need one.

2 hours ago, mr_tawan said:

Bad advise "you need a team"

Totally agree with this post.  While sometimes you need a team, you should focus on building out your vision and pull in what you need when you need it.  Often contracting may be the best answer.  Not game related, but I started four companies with partners and all four eventually fell apart because of issues between the partners.  Finding someone who's vision lines up with yours is really hard and when you haven't built anything yet, it is almost impossible to tell.  This time, I'm building the company myself.  Yes, it is going slower, but I think it will last longer.  Time will tell.  Maybe sometime down the road, I'll bring in others but it isn't a primary goal this time.

Good Advise "Don't do everything all by yourself"

This seems to be contradiction with my "bad advise" above. However, I don't think they are quite opposite to each other. 

This one means, you don't have to do everything on your own. It also means your team don't have to do everything in-house as well. For example, in a game you might need only a few bgm. If you decided to hire a composer full-time, he could get starve for his work. In this case it's much better to hire him as a contractor, or maybe just hire a composer to do only one track at at time. 

In fact, I think for hobbyist or those who work on game as a side project (apart from the main work, etc), I think using contractors and commission works can be a better idea than hiring artist in-house. I mean, If  yourself are not working on it full-time, then it would be quite difficult to manage the workload of your staffs, right?

The main difference between this and "you need a team" is, with this you work on the game while sending out parts of the game to someone else to work on (or even buying one from others). With the team approach, the team members are more responsible for the whole game rather than just the part of it. In other words, the team own the game.