What’s a Good Game?

Posted on February 11, 2018 by magicrat_larry

I’ve been asking myself the question, what’s a good game. It’s a hard question to answer. Most of the time it comes with a reference, like XCom, or Civilization. The problem is what makes a good game. To some it must be graphically amazing. Some people a story must grab them personally. It is so personal, that no two people are alike.

So for me, I love a tactical game. It can be real-time, it can be turn based, but I love strategy and besting an opponent. I hate multiplayer though. I want to crush an AI that does not tell me how bad my mom is. The thing is, I think that good games are probably more generic than this.

Can we take every game and say if it is good or not? The problem is every game is liked by somebody. So we can at least say there are never any truly bad games to 100% of people. So what makes a game good? Have you ever told anyone about a game that you thought was awesome that you only played for 2 minutes and never will play again?

So, at least one characteristic of a good game is that people play it for a long time. But, then you look at Steam and see that tons of people are playing games for a long time and reviewing them poorly, so why is that? So if you play something for a long time but hate it was the game bad? I don’t think it really was.

You put your life into a game, if you play it for hours, it was good. Even if it strikes you in the end as not being that great, it grabbed you for hours of your short life. You were giving it a shot, it had enough greatness in it to have you give priceless time. So I contend that your final thoughts on a game don’t really matter if you played it long enough. That could be crazy to state, because you could wish you never bought it, but if it made you feel something, isn’t that what a good game does?

What do you think? What makes a great/good game to you? Try to not use a reference to describe it. It’s a challenge to nail down. That is why I love making games.

These Are the Days of Our Gamedev Lives

Posted on October 25, 2015 by magicrat_larry

So Last Friday, it was fun. Fun like taking a kick to the zinger fun. Here is how it all went down…

I started my day as normal, no problems. Got to work and Aaron, our architect, let me know his car broke down. So that is terrible for him. We worked our normal, day job, day. Then go to the weekly game development meeting for Violent Sol Worlds. In this meeting we see the final art for some cars etc. Then we begin to discuss the Kickstarter video.

See, we have somebody else helping us edit the video down and make it great. That person is busy. So we debate how to move forward to meet our deadline we set for the Kick to launch. We figured we would end up editing the video ourselves. Then we kept talking.

At this point I threw out the questions of, why not delay the launch, to start the conversation. Then my head started to freak out. Yes, one more delay. I knew it was the right thing to do, but delaying one more week seemed like I was being asked to kill a puppy. It was hard.

I tried to rationalize it away as I could take a week off and get ready for the deep dive in to design that we will have to take. That did not work. I then realized that I had to convince myself that the video will be much better because we wait the week and that we will be better off for it. That seemed to calm my brain down a lot. I also had to get myself in to a head space of there will be no more delays beyond that.

So the basics is that we are slipping one more week on the Kickstarter we had planned to launch really soon. So we basically were done with our meeting at that time. We did what we always do, and walked out to the parking lot. At which time Ben, sees his car tire is flat.

What a lovely day for game development. It was a great test for the team to have nearly all of us have some sort of mental test that pushed us to a breaking point. We held together, and made what I think were great choices. Like I always say, when the world gives you lemons, it’s a trick, get an axe.

If you have not checked out my current project…

Violent Sol Worlds home

IndieDB

Facebook – join the conversation

@magicrat_larry – Join me on Twitter

Are you Not Entertained?

Posted on October 2, 2015 by magicrat_larry

I have a theory. If you are going to make a game, you should entertain from day 1. Not just when the game is released.

What does this theory do for me? I strive to release content daily that entertains, helps, and energizes people. If you realize that game development is entertainment then things like marketing and game design become one and the same. If you are dull and drab in your development of the game chances are that will show in the game itself. If you move in a direction of entertaining game development you will inject a life into your game that will be felt while playing it.

This also helps you create a community. It drives me to write blogs, to tweet about our progress. If you give yourself the need to have the development cycle be just as fun as playing the game itself it is highly motivating to you and your fans.

I always tell myself – Always be entertaining

You’ve played games that feel dead inside, and you’ve played games that feel like they were made with love. My theory is that the energy that the developers had trickles in to the product and without a feeling of entertainment during the development cycles there is just no life to the product. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. Worst case here is that it makes the hard work more enjoyable and keeps me motivated.

If you have not checked out my current project…

Violent Sol Worlds home

IndieDB

Facebook – join the conversation

@magicrat_larry – Follow me on Twitter

Wish I Had More Time

Posted on August 13, 2015 by magicrat_larry

So I have been busy as can be. We are speeding up toward Kickstarter and Greenlight and it is a lot of work. I hope it is all worth it. I just wish I had more time to do this blog better justice. It is fun writing to the world and seeing if people are listening the the ramblings.

I spend most my time now marketing and such for the push. the blog just kinda falls off because it takes time. It is sad that some of the most quality things you do take a lot of time and often do not get as much bang for the minute as other less quality interactions. People are interesting, I suppose they have little time too, so places like Twitter and Facebook are easier and quicker, but there is still something about having something larger than 140 characters to read and not just clicking a like button on a photo.

The world is getting so fast that even our interactions are fast and less meaningful. Sometimes I wish we had to slow down and do things a bit differently. Well, I am off now. Gotta interact with people in 30 seconds or less. 🙂

If you have not seen the game I am a part of here are a few links…

Facebook – Like us on facebook

ViolentSol.com – Homepage

IndieDB – Indie Games Community with news, screenshots, and video

Life Is Hard

Posted on July 29, 2015 by magicrat_larry

I’m writing this during the middle of the day. Why you ask? Because life is hard. See I had to change my daily schedule due to the difficult nature of life. It happens. I get it. What I hate the most is when this stuff makes people truly believe that the world is almost too hard to succeed in.

There are two types of people that think life is hard. The first is the “Life is so hard, I can hardly stand it” person and the second is the “Normally life is easy, but I make my life more difficult because I interact with the world” person. I am the second person. If I wanted to I could lay back and have a simple life. I have a good job, a great family and I generally enjoy everything about my days.

I personally hate that, oo life is good, feeling and always push myself, and the world to the next level and feel satisfied doing it. So The other people, sit around waiting for an excuse to explain why they do not do anything other than what they do today. I hate that. Don’t be one of those people, please!

Do something that is hard. Make life hard. I took my normal life and said I need to do more with it. So I started fitting more and more in and now it is bursting at the seems. Not because life is hard, but because I choose the difficulty level. I choose to be a game developer chasing a dream after work. I choose to play with my child whenever I can. I choose to get up early and sleep less. I choose how difficult my life is and my life is hard and I love it.

How to be Better Than a Wild Monkey

Posted on July 26, 2015 by magicrat_larry

So, I am the king of saying things that make people cringe so here it goes, making a game is easy and takes just a small amount of talent. BOOM! Yup, just about anyone can throw down a game, game jams are a huge example of that. Don’t get me wrong, people who code games are some of the best programmers out there and anyone in business should hire them as coders. When it comes to problem solving a game programmer is tops, but it’s not that hard to make games.

So why isn’t there 5 billion different people throwing games out like wild monkeys? There are, the key is that you have never seen most of them. Yup, WILD MONKEYS! Truthfully, people throw down games like nobodies business, but hardly any of them take on the roles they need to from day one to get it out the door better than a wild monkey could.

Step 1: On your first day, define something and market it.

Step 2: On every other day, define more things and market them.

Step 3: When you hit problems market those too.

Step 4: When you take a break market that.

Step 5: When you mow your lawn market that.

Step 6: When you take a nap, market that.

Get the picture? Nobody buys games from an indie development studio. They buy the people behind it. Be alive, be engaged, be you, and tell everyone about it. Others are out there that believe in your dream so give them the information, from ground zero, on how it is you are perusing that dream. Market everything you do. Even if you don’t have a game idea yet, market the process to get one. Really, sooner or later you will be finished with something and find yourself in a sea of wild monkeys and wish you did.

Dear God Why?????? Ask Why!!!

Posted on July 18, 2015 by magicrat_larry

So, try something for me. Just little something. It’s easy and will probably change your life. Don’t tune out yet, I have something, ask why.

It is that simple, just ask why. How would this change your life? Let me first be clear, don’t ask why of anyone other than yourself. If you stand up to go get a drink, ask why. If you start to get sleepy, ask why. If you put your pants on backwards, say it with me now, ask why.

Why is the most powerful question we have in language. It leaves you open to many responses and a ton of learning. If you asked why to everything you do, you would either begin to see value in things, or begin to see where you have no reason to do what you are doing. Take note of those things that have an answer like, because, or I want to. Those things are not worth much to you.

If you have no good reason, why do what you are doing? Your time, and energy, could go to something else. Couldn’t you quickly find something else, if you were doing it right now, you’d have a great answer to why? Try it out, take a day and ask why. You never know, it could just change your life, it did mine.

Life is Hard, Let’s Make It Worse!

Posted on July 14, 2015 by magicrat_larry

My Twitter bio (@magicrat_larry) has a line in it – “If your life is easy, you are doing it wrong.”

I live that way. I don’t go out and find trouble or anything, but the fact is if you are getting no resistance from anything you are not doing anything at all. You can go through every day the exact same as, you did before, and have an easy life, but in the end, you will have done nothing at all.

I want to live everyday pushing it to the limits. I want to go to sleep knowing that I could not have done more. Life is not long, life is meant to be a quick ride. What ride are you riding? Are you riding the largest roller coaster in the world, or are you watch others ride it?

Jump on, Jump in, live life. If you have a dream, make it happen. If you want to do something, do it. Don’t sit on the couch, or lay in bed resting. Get it all done. Games aren’t going to make themselves.

Problem Solve, To the Extreme

Posted on July 13, 2015 by magicrat_larry

I do something nearly constantly every day that I think is just normal. But, it occurred to me that maybe everyone else does not do this, or maybe they do, I don’t know. I take stuff to an extreme to help put the reality into perspective. What does that mean? Do I go get a dirt bike and launch myself off ramps to understand game balance? Nope.

What I do is this, if I have a simple thing like health of an enemy, what should it be? Say it is 50 now, and he feels too weak. If I just add 10 would that help? how about 20 would that help? this could go on for a long time, but I am searching for a cap where he is just right. Instead of doing that, my first step is always to do something like this, what if it was 50,000,000 would that help?

What did I just do? You say 50,000,000 is probably always too high. Probably always too high isn’t good enough for me. How about 50,000,000,000 would that help? Now we are talking, the odds of that not being too high are very slim. So what does this do to our thinking? Now we have a range. somewhere between 50 and 50,000,000,000 is the correct answer. Now you can binary search for it at a faster pace than just trying to get it right by guessing.

I do this in every problem I am trying to solve, from business, to game development. Try it out, take a situation to an extreme, then usually the correct answer is simple to find.

EXTREME!!!! I had to yell it once. 🙂

Break Day

Posted on July 12, 2015 by magicrat_larry

Sorry gamedev brain readers, taking a writing break today. Enjoying manual labor in the yard, and I don’t really mean enjoying. See you tomorrow. Real life calls. 😦