Problem Solving

Math, it Tastes Like Chicken

Posted on by magicrat_larry

So, I am going to throw this out there, I hate math and statistics.  With that let me tell you how important they are to understand.  Without math and statistics on your side you are doomed.

So with this mindset, I live in a world that math and stats matter.  I hate it, but it is true.  For example, if you want to be successful with you kickstarter, or Greenlight you can start throwing down simple math to see how you get to victory.  I won’t go into the math, but trust me the numbers are all on the internet just start making equations and get a good understanding of what needs to happen to make your goal possible.

I think my most recent mathematical observation was on Twitter.  I noticed that, women are the fastest growing demographic for gaming.  With that I dug up statistics of how many males vs. females I had following me on Twitter.  It was bad.  I only had 3% women following me.  So obviously I was talking simply to a male audience, either where I was talking, or how I was talking.

Women

So I started trying to do several different things to see if I could get that number to increase.  I changed one thing to start, I started putting more images in my Tweets.  That started the number of women rising.  I also started adding more, what I call mental content, like relate-able quotes etc.  Both those changes increased my percentage drastically.  Yes it is true, it looks like women are more intellectual than guys.  🙂

All of that was possible through statistics and math related to an actual situation in reality.  With information and data you are able to make changes and see the trends.  You are able to see mistakes that are not readily apparent in your current successes.  You can change subtle things and see how the numbers change and better position yourself in the community you are in.  Don’t overlook math and statistics, they are powerful and useful bits of information.  I suggest obsessing about them at least once a week.

I’ll leave you with this statistic – 4,869,900 page views per day on Kickstarter

If you have not checked out my current project…

Violent Sol Worlds home

IndieDB

Facebook – join the conversation

@magicrat_larry – Join me on Twitter

Problems Generated By Successful Actions

Posted on by magicrat_larry

I used to think that game development was this glamorous, fun, coding, experience that was intense but just a blast.  I know better now.  The truth behind game development is that it is a lot of work.  It still is fun, but there is no glamour.

What do I mean?  Well Let me tell you my story.  I used to do this as a hobby.  I loved to make cool things render to the screen.  I would play around with it for a few hours a week.  Then it turned into a few hours a day.  From there I gathered people, they wanted to make games.  So it turned into 20 hours a week.  At that point I mostly coded, still seemed like my vision of what I though game development was was true.

I then started to think, if we get a game to the finish line, how do we sell it?  Then entered marketing time.  I started about 5-10 minutes every day.  That turned into 30 minutes.  Then it turned into and hour.  Before I knew better, it was my entire 20 hours a week.  Is that bad?  No.  I am driven by success, so as I got feedback and validation from people, like you, I spent more time doing it.

Now, I reach a problem.  The fans, followers, and generally great people that I strove to entertain are pushing me further.  I am out of time.  Eventually I need to code the game, keep up marketing, and innovate in both areas.  We have to get this to be a full-time equation soon or things have to be cut.  Problem is you cannot cut either development or marketing because you’d be cutting your own projects head off.

I love this problem, can’t really have a better one.  I just have to solve it and continue to grow.  Love all you people out there that drive me, keep it coming and I do pass it on to our team that is working on the game.  Problems generated by success mean you are participating in life and not just along for the ride.

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

Your Idea Is Awesome, Right?

Posted on by magicrat_larry

Is my idea awesome?  How do you get the answer to that question?  Who has that answer?  That is what I am trying to figure out.  Your game idea is always awesome to you.  So you don’t have the answer.  The answer has to be with your potential consumer, at least that is my initial thought.

So how do we ask them these questions?  Kickstarter seems like a nice place to ask that question, but it is based in money.  That could be good, or it could be bad.  It seems like this question is outside the scope of cash.  Is my idea awesome, usually does correlate directly to a sale though.

Is there another way to ask if the idea is awesome besides Kickstarter?  Places on the net like tigsource could help.  Maybe even Indie DB. But, how do you go about asking that question?  Do you just throw a bunch of content out there and see if anyone likes it, or randomly posts about it?  Or, do you come right out and ask the question, do you like this idea?

So many questions, but they need to be answered quickly and early in order to not waste a lot of time on a game that is not wanted.  We have a lot of work cut out for us to figure this out.  Anyone have any suggestions?

Problem Solve, To the Extreme

Posted on 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.  🙂