Matthew Talks About Developing the Casual Game “Little Things”

Matthew, from Klick Tock, talks about developing the Little Things game…

You can download it here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/cc-klick-tock-games-interview.mp3

or listen to it here…

Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m here at Casual Connect and with me today is a special guest. How about you introduce yourself?

Matthew: Good day. How are you going? I’m Matthew Hall from Klick Tock Games in Australia.

Interviewer: What game have you done?

Matthew: Well, I’ve been in game development for about eight years now, and this is my first foray into the casual game genre, and I’m working on a game called Little Things.

Interviewer: What’s the core mechanic behind this?

Matthew: Well, like all casual games, it’s a hidden object game, but mine is a little left of center.

Interviewer: So, you came up with this hidden object game idea. Talk about the development process. How did you go about doing it, and where did you find the twist because you said there’s a little twist in the game mechanic. So, how did you go about developing that and making sure it’s fun?

Matthew: Well, the twist is the first thing that came. I’ve been frequenting websites like Big Fish Games for a very long time and also reading books like Where’s Wally and I Spy. It frustrated me a little the sort of games that are out there and the way the mechanic… I always loved the fact that there was a huge image in the Where’s Wally with massive amounts of data elements. It’s really what I wanted to get into.

So, the first thing I actually developed was The Magnifying Glass.

Interviewer: OK, awesome. So, you really liked… It was Where’s Waldo or Where’s Wally?

Matthew: It’s called Where’s Wally everywhere except the U. S.

Interviewer: Oh, really? So, you saw these things and you decided to develop The Magnifying Glass. Did you have to innovate on any other mechanics to make it a little different than the other hidden object games?

Matthew: The tech was the first thing to come, and the tech was what I stuck with throughout, but then after that it was really about how can I make it similar to the hidden object games, not to alienate the audience?

Interviewer: You developed this alone, so what were the challenges of doing it alone? How did you keep yourself motivated, and how did you do this in conjunction with, maybe, a day job or something?

Matthew: Well, I had the idea three years ago which is when I first started looking at the games and initially started to develop The Magnifying Glass concept, I guess you would say, while I was working at another company. I just kept drilling it down. I found that the work I was doing at my other jobs really was too much. I just couldn’t get enough time outside of work to do it, so I ended up taking six months off and decided to play World of Warcraft instead.

Eventually, I got another job and then quit that one and said that’s it. I’m really going to make a game this time and managed to complete the game over this last year.

Interviewer: OK, you were working on it full time then for the past year.

Matthew: That’s correct.

Interviewer: What were the challenges then of working alone? Did you have a community of people that you met with in person every day or every other day? How did you keep that social… The one benefit of work is that you would, at least, talk to people. Maybe, they aren’t the people you want to talk to, but, at least, you’d have some social contact. So, how did you handle that?

Matthew: That’s a very complex question. At work, obviously, you get feedback constantly on what you’re doing for whatever game you are working on, but that feedback isn’t always valuable. And so, by isolating myself it actually really helped that development process, and every idea I had I constantly evaluated it as if I was multiple people. I looked at the game from, alright: I’m a casual gamer; I’m a 50-year-old woman today; I’m a 15-year-old kid today; I’m a 5-year-old kid today and constantly tried to evaluate the game from those different points of view.

Sometimes, those decisions would take a very long time, in trying to figure out the theme of my game which turned out to be themeless, just objects and objects and objects. It took months to figure out exactly what I wanted to do. A real game development company where there is multiple people, you can never be afforded that time. That was probably the greatest thing is that I didn’t have to worry about pleasing anyone else other than pleasing the imaginary people in my head.

Interviewer: [Laughs] Did you have indie meet ups in the town or city that you’re at, maybe, to bounce ideas off other like-minded people?

Matthew: That’s another excellent question. The town I was in was Adenhope which has a population of 800 people, and I actually live on a sheep farm. So, there’s no one to talk to other than…

Interviewer: The sheep.

Matthew: That’s correct. Through the Internet. Once I got the game to a certain point that I was happy with it-I spent a lot of time on marketing and trying to figure it out. Actually, I have been a long time lurker and indie gamer, forums on indiegamer.com. I credited an account on there and started out and posted the game up and passed on what they thought.

Interviewer: Can you talk about how you used Internet forums to get feedback to keep the feedback route going and, maybe, the motivation and stuff like that going?

Matthew: Well, I know this [?] but really casual gaming at indiegamer.com really seemed to be the only creditable source to me. There’s probably others out there, but that was the only one I ever found. I knew the people on there could be trusted with whatever they gave me.

Initially, I got a lot of negative feedback. I got some positive feedback with the art style. They definitely found some problems in there and so the last month or two leading up to the conference I have just been polishing and polishing everything that those guys wrote about.

Interviewer: How’s that going? Are you releasing more updates then to the indie gamer forum and getting more feedback?

Matthew: No, I posted one more update, but that was really about it. I think I’ve gleaned all the information I needed to, and from then on it’s just been about polishing and getting ready for the conference; everything but sound. That’s always the last step.

Interviewer: Sure. Why not just release it directly on your website? Why not go true indie? So, why are you at this conference and what are you hoping to get out of here?

Matthew: The game was always written with the Big Fish portal in mind. Like I said, that was where I had the original idea. Looking there, playing the hidden object games, realizing this is a really cool genre and where else it could go. And so, getting the game up on Big Fish is my goal. As to whether or not that happens or not, that’s for the future to decide.

Interviewer: So, you’re trying to pitch it to publishers here and, maybe, they have contacts to Big Fish. How is that process going, you as an indie developer trying to find publishers to pick up the title? What do you have to do to make that happen and arrange these interviews? Is it just jumping in whenever you see the CEO and trying to hand him your demo or what?

Matthew: [Laughs] I have done that, but really I tried to do a lot of pre-preparation with the casualconnect.org website. You can actually jump on there and see who is holding meetings, and they have emails you can send off to and ask about meetings which is what I’ve done with Big Fish and a number of other publishers. But, that doesn’t mean I’ve also just bumped into people at parties or at the conference and just talked to them. Like there’s a number of companies here I’ve never heard of that also publish games, so it’s been really good meeting with them all, just seeing what opportunities are out there.

Interviewer: Have you gone to any other conferences related to game development? Have you found those useful? How do you like this conference compared to others in terms of your goals?

Matthew: Well, this is the first international conference I’ve been to. Other than that, I’ve been a regular attender of the Australian Games Development Conference which is held in November of each year about then. I think that’s been changed now to another conference. I can’t quite remember the name of it off the top of my head. But, that’s also been a very valuable resource.

Obviously, this conference, the Casual Connect Conference, is completely devoted to the games in which I am developing in at the moment whereas the AGDC is much more general and deals with core games.

Interviewer: Cool. Any other suggestions then for other indie game developers looking to go on the same path? What would you do differently if you could do it over again? How would you accelerate this cycle and what would you change?

Matthew: Well, accelerating the cycle isn’t really an option. When I left the core gaming arena, I decided what I was really fed up with was deadlines and always having to… Most of the work I’ve done prior was work for hire. With work for hire, this game is out on September 17th, so quality always goes out the window first. With this, quality is number one.

If the game needs another two weeks or four weeks or six weeks or eight weeks or three months, that’s what I’ve done. I’ve taken the time that’s needed to make the game as great as possible. The other big advice I have is always keep marketing in mind, never make a game just for yourself and always think about the audience to which you are aiming the game. Someone out there is going to buy it. It’s not going to be you because you’ve developed it. It’s essential that you don’t make a game just for yourself. Now, this game has been for myself, but it’s not just for myself.

Interviewer: Sure. Do you have friends and family play it, too? Is that another testing mechanism?

Matthew: That’s always been my focus testers. But no, I have a number of other focus testers as well, but in the casual game space friends and family are actually an excellent place to try out the game because they often are unfamiliar with games, and casual gamers don’t necessarily have the experience that core gamers like I do.

Interviewer: To reach these casual gamers, did you develop it in Flash or is it downloadable?

Matthew: I’ve actually used the PDK engine which is developed in France by a guy called Patrice. That has been used on a number of other casual games already out in the marketplace, including Atlantis and Azada.

Interviewer: Sounds good. Thank you very much.