Play it at www.sammysamurai.com

In late November of 2008 I found a forum post on Flashkit that linked to a contest from Mochiads. I wasn’t too excited about the prizes, the runner-up prizes were almost a joke, but I saw this as an opportunity to rush and actually finish something. Winning would be a plus. I hadn’t released a Sokay game in 2008 so I felt it was my last chance.

So I wanted to plan something that I would be able to finish within a month. That meant it had to be a lot simpler than my usual grandiose visions. I passed up on the opportunity to work with the Donut game I’ve been working on because there was a lot of animation that needed to done that I didn’t want to think about.

I had recently been inspired by the Studio Ghibli film Tales from Earthsea. I didn’t think the movie was very good but it has some awesome background design and a few shots had some excellent parallax scrolling going on. The parallax shots were very quick but captured my attention. Thanks to digital compositing they were able to blend many layers without making it obvious where one layer ended and another began. Continue Reading…

So Chris surprised the hell out of me yesterday when he mentioned that there was an independent games festival going on right down the street from me in Culver City — Indiecade ’09. His friend told him about it and he told me. I was feeling kind of down that I wasn’t out raving in the streets of San Francisco this weekend, but I suppose things happen for a reason. I missed Saturday but I checked it out today.

I Wish I Were the Moon by Daniel Benmergui

I didn’t get the opportunity to see everything but the favorite thing that I played was Moon Stories by Daniel Benmergui of Argentina. This is a series a 3 games, which are more like interactive stories. I could spend a paragraph trying to explain it or you can just play the damn thing. I liked that I could just jump in an play around and that the game didn’t expect anything from me. I had fun messing around just to see what would happen. This is really how game stories need to be told more often. Continue Reading…

This is a video of Kyle Gabler‘s keynote to Global Game Jam 2009. I’ve been meaning to post this since I first saw it. I found it super inspiring!

7.  Adjust Expectations – Don’t strive for the next AAA hit, limit your expectations to something reasonable.

6. Create a Low Barrier of Entry – Make sure its fun within the first 15 seconds. Title screen, concise instructions, and jump into gameplay! Please forget the drawn out backstory.

5. Feel Something – Feel music to inspire, have an emotional target.

4. Make the Toy First – Prototype the idea to see if it even works before commiting!

3. Audio! – Sound is super important, make sure it’s not slapped on last minute. Involve it in the design of the game.

2. Harmony – “Think of how you can achieve harmony economincally.” Make sure everything that you have (music, art, gameplay) fits together.

1. Never Fall in Love – Free yourself to experiment with new ideas and don’t get too attached!

I don’t necessary feel that these are laws of game design, but they are very helpful philosophies to be able to complete a game prototype in an accelerated timeframe. I tend to fall in love with every game idea I have, which is why I have so many illegitimate prototypes running through my project folders.

Go play Scarygirl, sucka!

The game’s finally out, been playing it for the last few days. Awesome stuff! I got into making Flash games to create experiences like this game so it’s major inspiration for me. It’s 16 levels with a built in save system, so you can come back and finish it anytime.

Check it out at Scarygirl.com!

Game by Touch My Pixel.

A few months ago the Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood hosted a Making of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune talk, titled An Evening with Naughty Dog. The guest speaker was Richard Lemarchand, the lead designer for Uncharted. An excellent speaker, he opened by shining some light onto the environment of Naughty Dog. I wasn’t just there for the free booze and pizza — I also took some notes.

• Produced by Artisans. Everyone on staff at Naughty Dog actually has a role in making the game. No-one only does management. NO PRODUCERS (sounds like heaven to me). The people with responsibility are creatives that are making the game.
• Disciplined leads should know how long tasks should take to be completed because they do the same work themselves.
• Give people responsibility. Trust the members of the team to have good judgment and make the right decisions.
• Face-to-Face communication. Less disruptive than e-mail. Builds teamwork/camaraderie.
• Short meetings. Keep them brief to get the message across and to stay productive.
• Cross-functional team.
• Allocate work to those who are passionate about it. That’s where the magic comes from.
• Do-acracy — individuals choose tasks for themselves.
• Never get personal w/criticism. Don’t get bent out of shape.
• Micromanagement is usually the enemy of excellence.
• Waterfall development process from software development doesn’t necessarily apply to game development.
• Games are like painting. Before painting you make sketches, research, rough in charcoal, etc. before even touching a brush. Continue Reading…

Bubble Struggle – a prime example of Flash Game Ballin’

I found an inspiring forum post by kreso, the Croatian creator of the Bubble Struggle Flash games. He made a thread asking if anybody wanted to buy his sites that generated $10k a month. Many posters weren’t taking him seriously but he stuck to his claims , adding that about half was generated Mochiads and the other by CPX advertisements.

In the end, he found a deal and left an informative post about the story of his game. How , when he was a kid, he sometimes stole his parents money to play the original at an arcade. How he wanted to make a Flash game more compelling than the lame Flash games running rampant. How he sold the game to Miniclip for only $750 way back when, after initially offering $250. Good stuff.

Check it out here:

http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?p=189080#post189080

An excerpt…

First hours spent on creating Bubble Struggle 1 were actually practicing programming. I created a box that was moving left and right on keypress. Amazing! Then I added bubbles. Wow! Then the harpoon (shot) etc… After I realized that I have all the basic elements of a game I noticed something about internet and got an idea!

What I noticed was this: all of flash games on internet are either a) short in duration (you can finish the whole game within 5-10 minutes) or b) so boring that you don’t want to play it more than 5-10 minutes.

My idea was – what if I would create a game that is a) long in duration b)had a new, different chalenge on every level.

I knew that this ment more programming for me, but as I was just learning and enjoying progamming this was actually a plus. A sidenote: code in my game is disastrous. I just kept adding code for each new level because it was so different than all the others. But I succedded!

If you somehow haven’t played this game before, it’s basically a clone of Buster Bros. It’s a great game and I’ve been wanting to 1-up him by making a game like it myself.

This is one of those “one in a million” success stories that you read about in articles like Gamasutra’s Where’s the Cash for Flash? but it’s definitely encouraging everytime I hear someone having success doing what they genuinely enjoy. Kind of an unfortunate contrast to news that Xbox Live Community Games has yet to yield much success for its developers.

Oh well, let’s make some more games!

I was just talking with my co-worker about possibilities of building a big multiplayer game into a website. We had tried a bit on Hotwheels.com last Fall but it was a disaster because it was missing some critical elements. It doesn’t take a complicated game for people to be compelled to come back everyday to play. I’ve been messing around with SuperPoke! Pets on MySpace, coerced by some lady friends. It’s a simple pyramid scheme type of system which rewards you with in-game cash for coming back everyday — the more friends you get to join, the more cash opportunities you have within a given day. Then you can buy crap to decorate your little room and gift items to your friends.

My co-worker then went to go on about strategy games like Settlers of Catan and M.U.L.E. , which take this kind of gathering concept and create a goal that you can compete with others for. Instead of just building up “bling“. I’d heard of M.U.L.E. before but never knew anything about it. Apparently it’s a 4 player turn-based strategy game for 80s computers. I decided to look up on it and learned about the designer Dani Bunton Berry. A designer, apparently way ahead of her time. Unfortunately, she died in 1998 while working on an online version of M.U.L.E.

I ended up finding her website still intact with a GDC speech from 1997 on multiplayer game design. What is surprising to me is how relevant it still is, over 10 years later. Halo 3 covers most of these bullet points very well… The “pacing needs variety” part reminds me of the time in the lobby between games — usually “good game” or trash-talking time. The “Legends must grow” element was a big feature of Halo 3, which automatically records game matches to your hard drive and allowing you to upload them online and allow others to spectate a past match. The “Leave room for ads” part has grown increasingly relevant as now I’ve begun experimenting with in-game advertising. Dreadful.

So here’s the listo…

Good Multi-player Design Elements

Excerpt from a Lecture for the 1997 Computer Game Developers Conference, Copyright 1997, by Dani Bunten Berry

Here comes my annual punch list of things to consider when designing multi-player games updated and expanded from last year based on what we’ve learned:

• Build in the “Norm Effect” if at all possible. This is named for the character from “Cheers” who when he enters the bar is greeted by everyone calling his name in unison. Pitiful old IRC chat-rooms can provide some of this effect so surely we can find some way to welcome people into our game environments.
• “Zero sum” is bad. Games where I win and you lose are bad. Worse still is “I win and all the rest of you lose”. Notwithstanding the current cultural obsession with endzone strutting by winners, losers do not enjoy themselves and if you can help take the sting out of it, you should. Alliances, cooperative play, ranked “winners” rather than “A winner” with a bunch of losers are all options.
• Pacing needs variety. Slow periods should follow intense ones and forced “time-outs” can offer opportunities to socialize, catch your breath and anticipate things to come. Remember, the players no longer have a “pause key” as they did in a solo-game.
• Strategies need “wiggle room”. People have different personal styles and when playing against each other it’s great to let them “do it their own way” rather than a single approach that all must follow. If possible you should balance the game such that a strategic planner for instance might not always beat the joystick jockey or the detailed tactical type. A game that allows for diverse people to play diverse ways is always best.
• Legends must grow. Provide ways for players to carry their experiences with them. “Game films” are an excellent (and reasonably cost-effective option) in games where what’s sent between the player’s computers is a stream of “deltas”. Saving that stream and running it back through the game engine provides an opportunity to review what happened during the game. This turns an ephemeral, fast paced experience into a story that can be used to “save face” if the player lost, to learn how to win or just to chronicle their accomplishments. At the very least, try to include ongoing statistics or character attributes outside the environment of a single game execution.
• Court your newbies. Nothing will destroy a player’s interest in your game quicker than being humiliated a few times when they are just trying to figure out what to do. If possible build in inducements for advanced players to help newbies in order to get something to advance further in the game environment — like taking an “apprentice” might be the only path to “master rank”. At the very least try to make starting as safe on player’s egos as you can. Continue Reading…

Tarwin of Touchmypixel left a comment informing me of this new trailer for their Scarygirl Flash game. Looks sweet!

This looks like some amazing Flash stuff. I’m wondering how they’re pulling off so much parallax and smooveness. Looking at their blog, it looks like he’s using bitmapData for rendering, using spritesheets and BIT-101’s BigAssCanvas class to work around sprite size limitations.

The trailer definitely increased my expectations. Over 14 levels of goodness. Coming soon to www.scarygirl.com. Just not soon enough!

New Sokay.net, check it out!

I just finished the new Sokay.net layout for 2009. It’s all Flash now. I’m using swfAddress for deeplinking into the Flash content. Very nifty. I’m also using my favorite Flash utility tweener for the transitions. I’ve been working on this on and off for the past month. I wanted it to coincide with a widespread release for our latest game, Sammy Samurai.

I’ve also made the previous versions of Sokay.net available.

Sokay.net circa 2004

Sokay.net circa 2007

I think it’s funny how close the 2004 one is to the current one.

Now that that is done with, time to work on more games!

I was Interneting when I found this bit of coolness. Scarygirl is a platform game based on the Scarygirl line of toys and fun things. The game is by Touch My Pixel, which seems to be a cool Australian Flash game+web company. It’s not out yet but it looks cool as hell!

It’s funny to see this because I totally recognized the Scarygirl site. A year ago I had bought some cool vinyl figurines at a music store in Long Beach and I wanted to find out who made them. I ended up finding Scarygirl on that search — I’m not sure if any of my figurines are from that series.

Anyway, the game looks awesome and the guys at Touch My Pixel have a nice blog so check it out for updates on the project.