How To Build a Game While Having Day Jobs

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/gdco-neverbug.mp3

Or listen to it here…

[wp_youtube]RZN-BN-cFZ4[/wp_youtube]

Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m here at Game Developers Conference Online in Austin, Texas and with me today is a special guest. How about you introduce yourself?

Josh: I’m Josh Powers. I’m Co-owner and Creative Director of Neverbug Entertainment.

Interviewer: And what’s Neverbug Entertainment about?

Josh: Neverbug Entertainment is a new startup studio focused on casual games and family friendly games.

Interviewer: So, what’s the first game you’ve released?

Josh: Our first game we just released recently called Zoo Life. You can play it and find it on Facebook right now. It’s just about starting up your own zoo and building it up and decorating it however you want to decorate it, and taking care of the animals that you have to bring in more customers and more money.

Interviewer: You said that your studio is focused on casual games, I mean, these social games. What inspired you to do a social game versus a casual game then?

Josh: A social game, like I said, is social so people are interacting with each other, and the word of mouth just spreads fast. If you have a fun and casual social game, you’re going to get people talking about it to their friends and wanting them to play, whether it’s having to have them as a neighbor or a friend in their game to let them buy a unique item that they could not otherwise buy to just saying, “Hey, I’m having a fun time playing this game.”

Word of mouth is just a huge marketing plan when you’re doing casual games and social.

Interviewer: What languages did you use to develop this game then?

Josh: I believe our Technical Director mostly used Flash Action Script through Flix, and then I think some of the server side things we had to do JavaScript.

Interviewer: Why did you decide on a zoo game versus, say, a farm game versus a city building game or whatever else?

Josh: Right. It was quite a while ago that we decided to do a zoo game, but I know for me personally I love animals, and I loved going to a zoo when I was a kid. It’s fond memories. And so, it’s got a perfect setup for doing an economy and running a business, things like that, that a lot of the casual social games online do but also has a cuteness factor of having animals and having to take care of them, if they get sick or dirty and feed them. And so, for us we’re just really excited to be able to do something that we could have fun with.

Interviewer: So, you go about developing this zoo game. What were some of the challenges you guys faced as you were developing this zoo game?

Josh: Well, we’re not casual gamers-developers by day, so we focus more on console and PC games. Flash and all that was completely foreign technology to us, so that was the biggest hurdle we had to overcome. Once it was that, it was just a matter of finding the proper amount of time to be able to focus on everything and make sure that we had a reasonable scope for our time line.

Interviewer: How do you guys stay focused on this game because you’re developing console games during the day? How are you guys committed? And there’s really no incentive for you to finish this game. You’ve already got… I mean, this is a issue that a lot of part-time developers have. What got you to actually finish the game?

Josh: Honestly, it was the team. It’s me and two other guys.

Interviewer: Did you guys meet… So, maybe, it was because you guys were accountable to each other to actually get stuff going?

Josh: Yeah. I think it’s the drive to be able for us to create our own game and then say, “This is our game.” And so, when one of us would start to get low on morale, somebody else would come in with great news, whether it’s a new feature or something on the business development side that just kept us going.

Interviewer: Were you guys meeting every week or every day? How did you keep the momentum and the feeling going? There’s always some excuse that comes up, like, about this or that or whatever.

Josh: Yeah. Funny enough, all three of us during the course of development were in different time zones. So, we never once were able to meet in person. Now, we’ve worked with each other. I’ve worked with both the Art Director and the Technical Director personally, but while we were developing it was strictly related to email, IM and occasionally conference calls.

It would just basically be waking up in the morning and reading that email from a check-in of 3 a.m., you know, this new feature’s in. It just really gets you excited, and I’m ready to keep going tonight.

Interviewer: Any other surprises while you were developing? Any other discoveries plus while you’re developing this, in the pre-interview you mentioned that it took about nine months of part-time time to develop this?

The game design space and just Facebook was changing significantly. What were you feeling while you were seeing all these changes, and probably around that time you may have seen ZooWorld pop up out of nowhere and go up to, like, two million daily active users on there.

Josh: Right. That was kind of hard to see. There was ZooWorld, it was out for a while, and they got bought out, I think. Then, they just climbed and skyrocketed. Then ZooParadise came out, and that was like, oh, no, no.

But we realized that even though our game’s about a zoo, I don’t feel like it’s fair to compare them directly because I think the direction we’re going with this is a little bit different from the traditional games where I believe ZooParadise and ZooWorld, you both stay in an overview, place your habitats and decorations, and you feed the animals.

That’s a great system, and we definitely liked doing some of that stuff in our game, but we also added the extra being able to go into the habitat and not only decorate it the animals there, but you can also upgrade the habitat. Make them bigger, hold more animals, to hold more props and decorations. Change out backgrounds, mid-grounds and foregrounds. So, we felt like we were really adding a lot of new things that would separate us from the others.

Interviewer: When did you release this game, and was there an official release date? Was it just… When did you feel that it was released, and you guys felt some kind of euphoria.

Josh: I don’t know if the euphoria has kicked in quite yet. We are actually still on a soft line. So, we haven’t done any marketing for it yet. User base is growing but very slowly, but it’s still steady. So, that’s exciting us. We’re seeing more users come back, and that’s the big thing.

We are actually hoping to have our hard launch which will coincide with the Halloween pack-up date some time this week or next week at which point hopefully, we’ll be able to step back and say, “All right, this is for real. We’ve done this.”.

Interviewer: Yeah. Are you guys getting feedback already from players? Are they posting in forums and stuff like that to tell you what needs to change?

Josh: We actually haven’t gotten any forums up yet, and that’s actually a really good idea, something we need to do soon. We have been getting some minor feedback from email as well as people just posting on the Facebook app page. And we encourage that because especially since we’re new to this as well.

We’re building this for the fans. This is all about the other players out there. So, if they have anything to tell us, then that’s what we want to know so that we can try to build a better and more enjoyable game for them.

Interviewer: What other things then do you have to do differently in these casual games versus your console games? One thing I think that I’ve seen in these casual games is constant updating. How are you able to do this constant updating while you still have your day jobs?

Josh: It’s tough because, yeah, with consoles and PC games it’s kind of a fire and forget. You launch the game. You have DLCs now which are becoming really big, but you still have anywhere from 4 to 8 weeks or more before your first DLC can hit.

Interviewer: And DLC is downloadable content.

Josh: Correct. So, it’s basically when you see Matt Paxil online for Xbox games, you can download the ad at $5 or whatever price, and it gives you more content for the game. With us or any casual social game, you pretty much have to be, as soon as you launch, you have to be working towards the next update.

Interviewer: OK. So, you’re going to release that Halloween pack. Let’s talk about revenue, and how you guys are going to live the indie dream.

Josh: Ah, yes. Revenue, it’s going to be slow while you’re getting off your feet, especially if you haven’t done any marketing. That’s definitely one thing I definitely advise is to have a marketing plan.

Interviewer: Yeah. How are you guys going to market? Are you going to try to buy ads on Facebook? What is the marketing plan?

Josh: Kevin Manning is our business developer, and he’s got some things highlighted for that. But I think the overall goal is to just work with an ad agency that he’s connected to and be able to figure out the website that we feel like is going to be best suited for our key demographic, and just try to post as much up there as we can.

Interviewer: So, you’re using virtual currency as the business model.

Josh: Yes. There’s several items in the game that will give the player higher benefits of appeal, higher XP, just all around more fun assets to have. And Zoo Bucks will actually be able to buy those, and you can buy Zoo Bucks directly in the game. It goes through PayPal. There’s different packages. The higher price package you get, the better the deal because you’ll get more Zoo Bucks per dollar in the end.

Interviewer: So, this is in addition to your ad revenue. Have you had anyone purchase a Zoo Buck yet?

Josh: Yes. We’ve had some Zoo Bucks purchases.

Interviewer: How did that feel because you’re getting the money directly versus going to…

Josh: It feels good. It’s exciting whether it’s a player we’ve never met or even friends that are playing it and trying to support us, no matter what if it’s people are paying to play our game. That’s a really exciting feeling.

Interviewer: And then, what suggestions do you have for other game developers who have that day job and they want to figure out a way to actually get a game out there, making money and just moving towards their goal of waking up every day and doing what they love to do?

Josh: I think it really boils down to two things, passion and making sure that the market is there. If you look at… I’m sure you’ve heard about Minecraft by now.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Josh: It sounds like the guy that made that wasn’t really planning on making it a big deal. He was doing it for fun, just kind of for grins. And now, he’s doing it full-time. So, without passion and if you’re doing it because you need the money, it’s going to be really hard for you to get through this. After working nine hours or even crunching, coming home and being able to do anything.

Interviewer: You also had other people helping you, I think. Did that accountability may actually have helped you complete or force you to complete the game?

Josh: Right. We have the three of us and, like I said, when morale was low on one of us, somebody else would be there to pick us up and get us excited again. So, between that and just saying, I don’t want to let this guy down, it really helped us push through.

Interviewer: And where can people find out more about your game or even play the game?

Josh: If you go to www.neverbug.com, you can read up about the game. There’s some screen shots, and then at the top right corner of the screen you’ll see a Facebook icon. Just click on that, and it’ll take you to the app page.

Interviewer: Great. Thank you very much.