John Zeitler

There’s been a lot of discussion regarding the effect that illicit copying of video games has on independent game developers. Seeing how as I am about to become an independent developer, I figure it’s probably worth a look at what I expect out of the experience of working on my game.

I want, first, to take a look at the example of developer 2D Boy, whose World of Goo has been a critical darling– while its publisher, Brighter Minds, surrendered to bankruptcy amidst reports that the piracy rate of the game approached 90%. That means that, out of every ten copies of the game being played, only one was paid for. (It should be noted that before fact-checking, that sentence read 50%. What that says about my outlook on human behavior is left as an exercise for the reader.) This isn’t as bad as it sounds for 2D Boy; as the developers, they got paid already. In most software development, the developer bills the publisher upfront, and only rarely sees residuals based on massive sales or reception. Because 2D Boy managed to work with a publisher– who literally threw themselves in front of the metaphorical bus– they’re a bad example, I suppose. Still, the reaction of 2D Boy– “hey, they’re playing”– is an important lesson.

For my game, I’m both the developer and the publisher. I’m financing the whole thing myself, out of pocket, and the only real costs I’m expecting to incur are the Creator’s Club fee, and paying my artist(s) and composer(s)– everything else is either freely available (Visual Studio 2008 Express), something I already owned (the computer and Xbox), or taken care of for me (distribution– I’m getting to that). If the game bombs, the losses are on me and me alone, but since I’m not going to go into huge amounts of debt (or any debt, really) doing this, losses are limited to just what I pay out. If the game is a success, well– let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It needs to be finished first.

Distribution is the key role of a game publisher. In order to sell the game, it has to be made available to people, either physically or digitally. Physically is very expensive, but has the biggest impact; digitally is more economical but isn’t always given the respect it’s due by some outlets or gamers. That last point is changing very quickly, though; in 2008 alone, some very high-quality digitally-distributed games made major impacts on the gaming world, including Pixeljunk Eden, Mega Man 9, Bionic Commando ReArmed, and the Strong Bad episodic series, all of which received significant critical acclaim and blew away expectations in terms of sales and quality. Even this week, the first downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto IV, “The Lost And Damned”, is being treated as if it were a major retail release.

As a publisher, then, I have to play the precarious balance between getting the game out to the most people, while balancing the costs of getting it there. As you might have expected by now, I’ve decided that, as a first shot, the game will be released only on the Xbox 360′s Community Games platform. The reasoning behind this is that I already have the majority of the gear needed to develop for this platform, to say nothing of the fact that I lack the track record necessary to develop for the Live Arcade directly– or any other platform besides the PC, for that matter.

Around the beginning of the year, the gaming blogs were gorging themselves over the antics of one Bob Pelloni, whose… what should we call it? How about “Quixotic efforts”? Regardless of the nomenclature, Mr. Pelloni had spent five years developing, without official support, a DS game (which may have started as a GBA game). Named “Bob’s Game”, the program was in a more or less completed state. Pelloni contacted Nintendo to apply for a dev kit; when he did not receive a response one way or the other, well… For lack of any better phrasing, he went ballistic. Pelloni threw tantrums, ranted on his blog, directly and publicly insulted Nintendo and their approval processes, and started a one hundred-day campaign of publicity that ultimately served two purposes. First, it evoked a polite, calm, form letter from Nintendo saying that his application had been rejected, due to the fact that Pelloni was not part of a company. Secondly, and more significantly, it ensured that Pelloni had obliterated any possible trace of credibility or employability in any capacity in any sector of the gaming industry (or, more likely, employability in total).

Yeah, I’m not going to do that.

I’m designing for the Community Games platform specifically because I don’t have a track record. I’m an unknown. I have no games to my name, and no writing to my name published by people other than me. Community Games is friendly to this sort of development style; it’s a relatively uncrowded atmosphere, and a well-polished game stands out amid what’s been provided so far. Even if all that I get out of the deal is a bullet point on my resume that says I now have completed a professional-quality C# project, from scratch no less, then really I’ll be quite happy with that.

However, mitigating my losses is a significant concern, particularly because I do tend to like money. I’m still greatly worried about the price point for the game; I’m 99% sure it’s not going to be small enough in size to permit the $2.50 price point, so it’s split between the $5 and $10 points. This is the kind of decision a publisher has to face: do you price it high enough to guarantee a few bucks out of each rare sale, or low enough to promote sales which only get you a fraction of the profit? If it were up to me, really, I’d pay everything out of pocket and not charge a dime; for me, the project is about getting my name into the ring and getting some experience with both C# and game development. But it would be nice to come out a little bit on the plus side on the whole thing, after paying for the art and music. I’ve got a running expenses file going in order to see how much I sink into this.

I don’t have a ton of expectations about the game; I just want people to play it and enjoy it for what it is. It seems to me that when you start talking about expectations, you wind up getting into a situation where you’re forced to hype your game to the point where it will never be good enough; I think I’ve made my thoughts sufficiently clear on the example of “Braid”, so I’ll just leave it at that. My goal for the game is to get a polished, professional-level game out that people will enjoy, with a good story and high-quality art and music. Everything else is periphery: critical reception, impact on the industry, hell, even sales (though it’s hard to say that people like the game if nobody buys it). If I make even one person happy with the game, then so be it.

I do want to write up a few essays on the process of getting the game finished and out the door, though; it’s a learning process for me, and I think a lot of younger developers might benefit from knowing exactly what goes into the process, especially if you go it mostly alone, like I’m doing. This could be considered to be the first one, really. I’m taking this time, at this milestone, to reflect a bit on where I’ve come from, what my goals are for the project, and what my next few steps are. I don’t expect I’ll be writing another one until after the full, preliminary-artwork technical demo is ready and shown off to the Creator’s Club forums. (Read: oh hell no please don’t make me create more atrocious programmer art in photoshop i’ll be good please no.) At that point, I think I’ll be ready to start approaching some of the aesthetics folks for the art and music (plus I’ll have banked some money to put towards that effort as well).

I do want to continue this discussion, as well as get some input on some of the specifics of the game. I invite you all to take a look at the thread in the forums to see what progress has been made (literally more information than you require on that aspect, I’m afraid) and give feedback on the whole deal. I’ll be asking some questions sooner or later in a more public manner.