Experimental Game Dev Podcast Show

Podcast Interview: Producer of Toybox Heroes…

Ryan, producer of Toybox Heroes, talks about developing their student game project that was in the Austin IGF showcase…

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

or listen to it here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/toyboxheroes-podcast.mp3

Btw, there are a lot of podcasts from Austin GDC…to get them out quickly, they are getting released without show notes…it would be great if someone could make show notes for the podcast as you listen to it. Add it to the comments and a link to your site … and we will post the notes with a credit to your site.

Take care,
Action

Podcast Interview: Co-Founder of Mockingbird Games

Troy, co-founder of Mockingbird Games, talks about creating the “YouTube for Games”…

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

or listen to it here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/mockingbirdgames-podcast.mp3

Show Notes:
Indi Game Pod Cast Show
You are listening to Indi Game development Podcast show. Visit www.IndiGamepod.com for more podcasts. This Interview is inspired by a quick meet up at the Austin game developers conference.

Host:
I am here at Austin game developers conference and with me is a special guest. How about you introduce yourself.

Troy:
My name is story Gilbert and I am a co founder of mocking bird names.

HOST:
Ok and what is mocking games about?

Troy:
Well we make a product called mocking bird the name making game which is a kind of a web 2.0 platform for casual players to build there own casual games.

Host:
Awesome and what inspired that?

Troy:

Um! Couples of year’s back we were looking at things like you two then flicker and we were wondering why there was equivalence for games and make sure there websites like congregate or tools like game maker but they really target a more devoted user hobbyist or amateur or independent we wanted something that only take something about five minutes and didn’t require any more skills that it takes to play a game virtual.

Host:
Ok what was the platform you developed this on since you wanted to be very casual? You just developed it in flash or in the web.

Troy:
Yes it’s built on top of a flash and its all custom stuff on top of flash. The games are flash and don’t require any kind of custom plug-ins or anything like that. You can play YouTube videos you can use our tools and play our games.

Host:
Ok and so you had this idea and how did you go about developing and what was the process? Because you said the challenge was to make as simple as possible.

Troy:
Right and so kind of our Montero was how we can make making a game is much like playing a game. So the first thing we did was here eliminating anything that resembles programming. So there’s not even no flow chart or logic or anything like that its all like legers where you plug box together. The next thing we did was we tried to eliminate all unnecessary numbers and choices that users have to make. So you know you drag a flighter ranges from more to less or lots to a little and things like that and in the middle is the default and so its very intruder for the user . The final thing which is a real big thing is that while you are editing the game you are playing the game so there is no kind of two steps process where you go use a level at try to build a game and then you click play and try it out and jump back. That process is a very fun and so basically you play the game and if you want to make a change you click on something in the game and move it or change it or making go faster or slower just like that.

Host:
Ok so when you are developing there something got your product type out. Did you tested as you are developing or did you wait until the entering?

Troy:
Yes so we developed a ! Basically three or four major proto types that we released not to the public but to a group of a hundred or two hundred that we knew and we got a lot of feed back over the last year it was a lot of a feed back was great about you know we wanted to be able to do this or that this seems like extra stuff but we don’t understand how to do this. We wanted to eliminate basically all instructions or all our need for instructions for my application. We finally got to something that we really liked in April of this year and since then we have actually revised it twice two major revisions to the application including introducing a whole new version of the application that makes a kind of a wizard gear in interface instead of an application like interface.

HOST:
And umm!! What were some of that what were the top three I guess challenges that you encounter while you were developing this game.

Troy:
Well the biggest challenge was figuring out how we could have people create kind of game play that felt like it was something they made up without having a program. So the problem was how do you decompose like classic arcade game play into the pieces you could blew together in whatever order in whatever combination and no t be able to make something that break serves seems to not work that’s not fun. We didn’t wanted to be a problem solving exercise for the user at least not anymore so then a puzzle game is. Another big challenge was basically building a user interface that did look just like an application we wanted to be fun looking we wanted it to be a colorful to have a lot of animation but not have alot of traditional looking you eye widgets. So there was a lot of trying to figure out how we can represent a certain control without filling like a user work processor and I guess the third challenge was really the game engine itself is how do we make a kind of a general purpose game engine that’s intruder for the user and really similar to products like little big planet on the play station three we found that having generic physics engine underneath the hood is really intruder for the users because I understand if I run into something it bounces off and things like that and so there’s a generic physics engine under the hood that drives all the behavior.

HOST:
So you mentioned game play um! Did you have to go with the specific game play or do people have different choices of arcade, classic game plays?
Troy:
They have different choices in which they actually break down into building block so I mean you could build an asteroids game or Mario plat former or kind of a top down Zelda adventure game. All are using I think we have about a dozen different actions for the players that you can mix and match or whatever combination you want then we have a kind of twenty additional you know secondary behaviors making an object disappear and reappear randomly and you can combine them with whatever combinations you want and we have accentually tested it so that all the combinations do something sensible and we eliminated all the option where two combinations cancel each other out or no work for break and so that was a huge part of the process is creating those thirty building blocks that can actually make a verity of game play. Right now we have got twelve hundred games on our website that are users have built up through last couple of months and you know I would say I have seen at least a dozen different kind of joiners and game on there right now.

HOST:
So you mentioned twelve hundred games. How do you built that community? And how is building that community going In infact in terms of challenges while you were developing were there any people issues or you know In terms of getting this thing out because took a while to get it out. So?

Troy:
So what are the big things that we decided from the start is that a real easy road for us would have been try to tackle the traditional game making crowd hobbyist and independence. People who use game maker or tools like that but we didn’t want that crowd that crowd is already well served by a lot of other options and we felt we would go off on the wrong path trying to serve features they wanted and So as far as community goes we focused on a kind of building on a static to the website and to the art work we used and everything that was very inclusive that’s why kind of the art work we provide i
nstead of being kind of classic aliens and fantasy characters and kind of sie phi themes or military themes it’s a tall much more like a Looney tones character you know you can almost think of it like the act me factor is delivering all the bits of pieces for your game and we findded that’s much more kind of inclusive way to built it at the same time we have not yet have started any kind of a marketing first so the idea is a kind of our first public appearance we haven’t done any marketing at all and we have really just done one other interview with the press at this point. So this is we are considering it as the beginning of our marketing question in October we will have a kind of a major advertising campaign for movie that would be using our platform allowing users to built a movie inspired game as a promotional item.

HOST:
And how do you? You know you are going to talk about marketing I mean the success of you flicker was actually the games themselves or the videos and the pictures doing the marketing for the site. So how is that working and are there any challenges?

Troy:
Definitely some challenges so um! You know I wanted that things that were facing right now and a lot of this is its just besides the audience we have right now is that. We have a lot of people who are playing with it and they enjoy the process of making their games but their games are necessarily interesting then other people. Our primary goal was people to enjoy the making process and for that reason we eliminated a lot of tools from the application that weren’t fun to use you know there are no spreadsheets you know tile editors or anything like that because they can be very predictive tools they are the test use they are not fun part of making a game. So that in some way is limits that kind of games can be made because we wanted the process to be fun first and playing is to fun secondarily . AS a result we have not had any big kind of viral hits we have had a few games on our home page that have got a quite a bit of play and we actually made one game with our tool kit that we put on addicting game that got millions of plays on addicting game so a big aspect of it is where the games are played so we think as kind of our marketing campaign kind of picks up people start taking games in it better get them on the web site so the games are just like you tube videos you can imbed them on the website you can submit on the dig and things like that so easily and we just have it yet hit by critical massive users for one of those games kind of pop up and get real popular and get a spike like it.

HOST:
So Flicker and you two upload the pictures and videos relevant to you. Can you talk about the challenge of creating a viral game? Do you allow people to upload their own picture and or idoms into the games so that it’s a kind of a personal joke or a personal game for the person that interferes?

Troy:
Yes! Absolutely one of the things we introduced about a month ago is what we call our game kids which essentially all of the games play are a kind of pretty fad an so really all you doing is you are doing level editing and you are doing the skinning of the art work in the sounds. A big part one of our most popular kids what we call is the worst person in the world kid which you know where you go and pick tour bosses picture if you want to in the game or whatever your favorite or most unfavorite politician or something like that and build the game around that concept and another element we did to really kind of make it a personal experience besides just uploading pictures is putting a strong focus on encouraging the user to give the game a title ad a story ad that makes it similar to the description of youtube video or more closely to like a blog post we wanted it to be like you jump on there and you spend five or ten minutes you know making the game that is much relevant to what happen to you today and that’s what we have really focused on is emulating something more like blogger as suppose to something like pork something like that.

HOST:
And how is that going because that is an interesting way to look at gaming as a way for expression?

Troy:
Yes right impersonal expression is exactly what we wanted we want people to make relevant games relevant to them selves or other peoples that are our formal personal expression. Its going well we have some people really get it and we have users to make tons and tons of games and they make it really fast I mean go and sit down like first time they use it they will make ten or fifteen games just because they can do it so quickly and then can play with it and you know and about other people it’s a different enough concept that its not quite clicking what the possibility is and a lot of that Is we still trying to figure it out how to get that massage across the people as quickly as possibly a lot of people are finding our website through some of the games we built so they come here kind of looking for a games portal and they find a bunch of games that are sure simple and they don’t quite understand whats going on and so we are hoping that as we do like independent game festival for the things like that people will come visit the site with some idea of what they are heading for and so don’t have to write context getting into it but we are working on building their eye contact into the site itself.

HOST:
And what are the top three surprises you have seen from your users in terms of either their behavior or how they are using the maker or what?

Troy:
Well one of the biggest surprises is the games that people make so we have had several games that I don’t think we would have ever seen from people who had used traditional game kits I mean we have had like one of the games we had in the first look after this was a game about illegal immigrants crossing the border I have never seen a casual web game about that anywhere we have also have some very simple kind of political games people have made we have a mom who made a game about changing the TV channel to kind of change between political ads and its like using a remote control I mean its kind of a weird kind of combination a game play bit it works in it apparently you know is born out of her frustration of amount of local ads on TV or something like that so what has been really interesting is people who would have never made games before exactly like what blogging did for people who would never have a website before now they are able to share ideas and we really thinks that’s critical thing that’s missing in the game industry right now as there is no way for an un initiated audience member to really participate the process ad we a re really kind of break that glass ceiling so it sneaks with that.

HOST:
There are other competitors out there so how do you! You can do. You consider them competitors I mean you are going out of it from different way yours is more in gaps?

Troy:
Yes well interestingly we have been working on this idea for about a year and a half almost two years now and last summer when we had our kind of a early offer version we went out and talk to a lot of people in the game community and outside the game community about it and we got alot of responses of the people They really want to make games of there own you know this is something people really want to do and we were really convinced that it was but we had a lot of trouble trying to convince other people of that. When we were released in April with in thirty days of us releasing there were three other products with almost the identical concept released including electronic arts Sims carnival.

HOST:
Oh! Yes.

Troy:
Which almost have exact same breakdown of process that we have a website called firebug and several others well we think we really distinguish ourselves from those games or of those website is on how users are able to actually build there
game for example in Sims carnival if you want to write your own rules you senctually have to do programming I mean its like a flowchart but I mean its just a programming with pictures instead of you know with words its still difficult for the un initiated users for ours it actually write the rules its literally you choose two or three pictures and there’s no order of pictures or flow of logic or anything like that its more like tagging as oppose to a higher key and so we find its. We think that we have a better work flow for the non advance user accurse it limits which the advance users can do but we think In the same way that you tube limits it ten minute video clip it’s a necessary limitation in order to kind of you know meet the unmet mean of the larger audience we are aiming for kind of a eighty percent that can make game up to Twenty percent better but if you better they can do it.

HOST:
Now games are usually made clevertivly so is that you are going to do something in the future? Where you actually have ace intern ace type of development?

Troy:
Right now! What we offer is the ability for users to change any other users game so you can do a nit of the Collabra process that way and a very kind of anonymous collaborate process where you play any game on the website that you like but you say Well I want a bit more of this game or make a bit easier or no time limit you can go in there you can make those changes you can swaft the art work out. So you can kind of build on what other people have done as we go down the road we definitely want to have more collaborative features and so a lot of kind of the . The kind of community infrastructure aspects of the project where we are learning the whole lot from the world of blogging software and blogging platforms so we will definitely seek kind of collaborative you know multiple offers on a single platform and options like that and infact later this week or next week we will be rolling out a kind of a new version of the website that provides more flexibility for the users as far as editing games and working collabory.

HOST:
And yes! How is the editing going? The fact that you could edit other people’s works is that happenal orders that still not used as much?

Troy:
It doses happen quite a bit the changes are usually fairly shallow where they just changing the art work and they are just kind of experimenting with it. We do have some people that go in and kind of change the levels now we knew edit someone else’s game you basically make a copy of it so it’s a kind of multi play its more evolutionary as a post or collaborative thing where he builds version one and I go and head it towards version two they are both still on the website but you know they are related we do not have this feature on the website yet but one of the things in our list is to let people navigate the game based on kind of what they are based on so you can start with one game and say O! well this game is actually derived from this other game or these twelve games were based on this one and you can kind of explore games that way and so since all of the games are built inside of our tool set we have a really rich set of matrix about the game the kind of game they have the art work they have the goals of the game if so we can build some really interesting recommendation like things for the games that’s simply are possible with the website like miny clip where the games are all independent flash games and they have to rely on there users to tag the games or you know we don’t have to rely on that because we know how the games are actually constructed.

HOST:
And what’s next then or what’s in store for this project?

Troy:
Well what we are doing right now is kind of focusing on kind of our primary business model which is licensing the platform to other IP holders and brands to use for marketing purposes or to built kind of a categorated into there own communities as just kind of another activity there users can do so for example in October we are working with a movie studio to create a campaign where users will be able to create based on the movie they are releasing and so instead of them paying a hundred grant to a small flash studio to built one game you know they will pay half of that to us to built a tool set where there users can built the thousand games based on there property and instead of one game since our one website they got a thousands of games that can scattered all across the web so its huge promotional opportunity just as currently exist right now.

HOST:
In terms of business models have you thought of putting mockiaz on top of every ones game and how would that work?

Troy:
Its actually something that we are looking at in the really long term so if we start to see from a matrix prospective that are games are being distributed wide enough that we really had a worth wile advertising network its certainly something we will look into but right now the website itself and other games theres no advertising anywhere and we consciously made that decision to keep the experience is kind of uncluttered and clean and is focused as possible and not have advertising so for example nowthe whole page has no advertising you can jump in you can use all of it without even signing in you can use all of it and so if you want to save your game you have to sign in and nearly you have to buy the one you are membership which is 9$95cents If you want to write your own rules if you want to build the games from scratch.

HOST:
One of the other interesting things you mention is that people would have descriptions and titles for the games are you going to allow people the box art for the game s I mean make them feel like a game studio or how far would that customization goes that seems to work early while with the casual audience?

Troy:
Yes its on long laundry list divide is that we have tossed around is if we situate this point we are awake for the demand from our audience the idea that if someone wanted to choose a screen shot from the screen and I mean we can burn it to a disc as a standalone executable or you know something like that drop it to the DVD case so you know you imagine a twelve years old kid goes on there makes there own game and a week later they have like our actual game they think it pop it to there computer at home I mean even though they can do it on the website you know a piece of casual media seems cooler you know for certain people but yes we are definitely looking at that kind of customization aspect one of the things we really want to do is we call groups or game teams where essentially you know any combination people can get together and create a group and they essentially can kind of work collaboratively on games and make it have kind of there own game page that features there games on the website as you know if our audience starts demanding those kind of things that’s where we are going to shift our intension right now our intension on kind of business model side of which is licensing the technology.

HOST:
And what are the top three suggestions you have for the other Indi Game developers?

Troy:
My biggest suggestion would be to not focus on technology I mean before I started this project I spent six years working for company like electronics arts helping them plan technology decisions and so my entire life was about game technology and I got to say way to many resources are wasted on trying to build a better will when you got ugly looking car just put it top on the top of it you know I mean if you got to focus on the game for and that reason I would recommend that people really look at flash as a platform because it decides a lot of it the benefits as far as distribution and things like that the constrains that it places on the user and the kind of platform the features that platform provides is a perfect middle ground for building games without having to worry about you know pus
hing polygons or anything like that it really focuses the user another thing I would suggest in these is as quickly as you can to the kind of ditch the ancs tour triple a developer the triple a developers are what make the Indi development possible we have Indi developers have an audience because triple a developers are a kind of burning the path into peoples homes and so sure the games sell out or whatever but people just like there selves our working on them and love them as much as you love your game and so there’s no reason to fight its just you know two different business models and you know there’s no reason to kind of F the publishers and things like that you know it’s the wrong attitude and it aims up in the end just looking very amateur tom outsiders and if it’s a huge turn off to the potential audience for games and last but not least I tell this to people when I talk about Indi game development its about quality not quantity its much better to make five medio for games then never to make that one perfect game even if you not in person of the way there if you focus on the quantity the quality will eventually get there if you focused just on quality you might not ever get to one so it is quantity over quality that’s exactly what we focused on what mocking bird is this kind of taking me to the extreme

Take care,
Action

Podcast Interview: Developer of OokiBloks, IGF Finalist 2008

Brian and Matt talk about making OokiBloks.

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

Show Notes:
Description of the game

First came up with the core-mechanic…after finding the basic mechanic of moving blocks…and then had to find a theme around it…knew people liked monkeys so themed it with monkeys.

Developed the game for 2 years and it wasn’t working out. Showed the game in a forum and Matt found it…and started helping…they scrapped the old game and focused on making a solid game.

It was coincidence that Matt found the artwork…as Brian rarely shows off artwork of a game before release.

Did remote development.

Once met together, took about 1 year to develop. Most play-testing done in the IGF…really useful feedback.

Will release a PC version done…and may do a console version of self-publish online.

It is challenging to find someone to help you virtually…it is challenging to find someone that knows what they are doing and can help.

Podcast Interview: Producer of Critter Crunch, IGF 2008 Best Mobile Game Winner

Sean, from Capybaragames, talks about developing Critter Crunch for the mobile phone…

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

or listen to it here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/crittercrunch-podcast.mp3

Show Notes:
Set it up and iterated until found the game that worked. Good art helped to make the game feel better to players.

Tested the game with people. Was too complicated, so had to make it simpler.

Also do some playtesting…and publishers help with testing.

Mobile Development Cycle means time is very limited.

Biggest Challenges to Mobile Game Development:
1) Being focused on original IP makes it difficult for publishers and carriers to pick up
2) Handling all the different mobile handsets…making sure the game works on them, etc.

The Future of Mobile Gaming…
3D was hyped, but not seeing it much.

Location based games talked about, but it hasn’t happened yet.

Can be successful with 2D games that aren’t connected.

Podcast Interview: Developer of Audio Surf, IGF 2008 Finalist

Audiosurf
Dylan, developer of Audiosurf, talks about developing the game.

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

or listen to it here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/audiosurf-podcast.mp3

Show Notes:
Audio Gameplay…

Process was a lot of experimentation. Messed with the music idea for 8 years.
Did a First Person shooter based on sound

Once the prototype “felt” good, then knew it was the right design.

Had a lot of usability tests to catch a lot of the issues that caused confusion among players.

Once tweaked, sent it off to IGF

Finding out that was nominated was amazing experience

Wanted to make something that was compelling and different.

To start doing something compelling is very hard…but it’s easy to do something different.
If you do enough different things, you’ll find something compelling.

Used Quest3D as a tool to develop the game, really useuful.

Take care,
Action

Interesting Alternative Reality Gaming Videos…

Found a nice set of videos on the Alternate Reality Gaming conference, ’07…you can check them out here…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8tX2uMj5ok]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq_oL9Ix25g]

ARGs may be an interesting space for indie game developers.

Take care,
Action

Podcast Interview: Designer of Synaesthete, IGF Student Game Winner

Joseph, designer of Synaesthete, talks about developing the innovative game for IGF.

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

or listen to it here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/synaesthete-podcast.mp3

Show Notes:
Designer of Synaesthete

Psychedelic Rhythm Shooter

A while back, inspired to make a game that plays like Windows Media Player visualization. Then saw Geometry Wars…

Developed the game while at Digipen

Built the engine and then the game.

Did massive testing to make sure the game was fun.

Twice a week…

At Digipen, high schoolers and middle schoolers came in … so would use them to see how the game was playing, etc.

Based on the feedback…
One of the advisors suggested that the game needs to aim for the person…
That put the game in a whole new direction

Since became GDC nominee, been getting 2-3 e-mails a day about it.

Focus test is important…must constantly do that

Take care,
Action

Show Intern Request…

Hi,

Response to the podcast show has been pretty positive. We’ve been getting a lot more interviews too…and now requires more time to edit.

Right now, we’re looking for an intern to help edit some of the podcasts. This is a great way to meet indie game developers…and you’ll also be helping the few thousand people that enjoy this show every month.

If you’re interested, leave a comment on this blog post with your e-mail address (the comments for this post will not be published, so posting your e-mail address is fine).

Podcast Interview: Student Developer from The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom

Paul, a University of Southern California Game Design student, talks about developing The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom

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

or listen to it here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/pbwinterbottom-podcast.mp3

Check out the trailer…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDxX3AQHogk]

Show Notes…

0:00 – 5:00
Interesting game where you record a certain action and then it replays in the game.
Game based on playing with time…

Prototyped game in flash and kept prototyping to get enough to hold a team down.

Did other prototype other games while doing this one.

Also used paper prototyping.

Focused on System Mechanics…

Did test board game prototypes on a few team members and users…

5:00 – 10:00
The call to recruit more team-members…

Had a recruitment meeting and showed demo to recruit other folks.

Put up a flier all over campus. Put out an e-mail blast…and went to classes, etc.

Thirty people showed up to the meeting…

All of them were pretty much designers. But they were looking for engineers.

Let everyone stay…and the person that kept showing up week after week…those are the ones with
the passion.

Found a high schooler to help do the programming.

Visual design of the game is very unique…
One of the designers was also an artist

10:00 – 15:00
One challenge was listening to an Engineer professor about using a 3D engine instead of Flash…
so tried it for a month, but it wasn’t working after a month…so went back to flash…it was hard to change
to change back at the time, but it was a good decision.

At University of Southern California, the environment allows for innovation. Design on paper, etc.
Even though most folks in the game design program there are not programmers, try to collaborate with engineering school to
help with games.
2 things learned from game design school…
1) Prototype
2) Get the game out there

Future plans are to get the game out as a downloadable on one of the console games

Wants to be a producer.

Take care,
Action

Podcast Interview: Chocolatier Developer…

Michael, from Big Splash Games, talks about developing a sim game for the casual gaming market…

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

or listen to it here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/dewplayer.swf?mp3=http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/chocolatier-podcast.mp3

Special Thanks to PlayFirst for setting up this interview and a few other upcoming interviews…they provided excellent developers and allowed them to share some really useful information…

Show Notes:
0:00 – 5:00
Chocolatier and Chocolatier 2
They are casual sim games

The best way to bring it to the audience is mostly a question of tuning…it’s pretty hard to
fail in the game

In Chocolatier 2, had to make it a little more challenging…made the mini-games fro level to level

Ramped up pricing on ingredients as moved through levels

5:00 – 10:00
Worked with PlayFirst…and they helped with the extensive testing of the game to make sure that
it was working well. PlayFirst sent it to 100s of beta testers and mined data from that.

Also hired a formal testing company to take care of things.

Chocolatier players are engaged in the story…that was surprising

Started Chocolatier 2 from the story perspective

Allowed for personalization in the game…to allow expression

Development was pretty smooth since had a senior game dev team

The things needed to make a simulation game compelling…
They benefitted a lot from their team
They did a ton of research … visited chocolate factories, etc.
Simulation tuning still matters in the design space…
Changing the price of one ingredient could mess up a series of quests in the game…so requires
a lot of attention

Testing a game like this requires a lot…because the game builds on itself and have to play the game from
scratch again even if change one variable

10:00 – 15:00
Suggestion for indie game developers…
hunger for innovation…there is a lot of cloning…in the Casual Gaming space, if can come up with something new,
you can easily prototype it

With prototyping…it should be fun very quickly…if you are prototyping it and it’s not fun, then move on…it should
be fun in a week otherwise, change gears

If it isn’t fun after a week, move on…there hasn’t been a case where it didn’t work for a week and then all of a sudden working

Have to move back, keep your ego out of it…change and move on if can’t find the “fun” quickly…

Benefit of a publisher vs. self-publishing…
There are trade-offs
Benefit of being with PlayFirst is that they have great relationships with the other portals
With a publisher, they can handle the business side so you can focus on making a fun game.
PlayFirst can handle the QA/High Score server stuff, etc.

Goal of the studio…
Stay small
Generate some more intellectual property
Let it grow organically

*****

Take care,
Action