Problems

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.  🙂