In the picture above, Othello sitting in a flower vase with a blossoming cherry tree in the background. Took it in my previous home, during spring.

Sometimes when I have a little time I play other games. Recently I bought Alpha Protocol, and was completely fascinated by it (no wonder, Obsidian is one of the best AAA developers around). It interested me a lot because of the RPG/FPS mix, but mostly because of the dialogue system and the multiple paths/branching typical of VNs.

Here is the problem. The game promises lots of different paths, every decision influences the story, and so on. And it’s TRUE. The point is – is useful? Who is going to replay the game from beginning to see what he has missed (and no guarantees that he will really see everything) ? Very FEW people, believe me. Also, in a FPS/RPG you can’t just skip the dialogues forward like in my Renpy games, so you can’t just do a “quick replay” to see what you have missed.

So I thought if wouldn’t have been a wiser choice to have still some branching, but not so many. Or that would lead to a different subplot completely, like I did with Bionic Heart. Such games should either be quickly replayable to let the player see what he missed, or tell the player “Hey, save now because there’s a big branch of the plot now, so you can reload this savegame later and pick a different direction to see what you have missed”.

I watched on youtube many videos of Alpha Protocol just to see what I had missed, because I really couldn’t afford to replay the whole thing from the beginning. It felt like a “waste of time and resources” to me. The devs could have done a longer game (is already long, but could be even longer) instead of making it so “free-play”. After all, in a story-based game, is more important to KNOW that you can have 50 different endings but that you probably will never replay it to see them all (especially if you can’t play fast-forward), or that the story is much longer?

I’m sure most players would pick the second option. That’s why in my upcoming RPG Planet Stronghold I haven’t opted to have lots of different paths: it will have a common main plot, but with missions/quest that let you have some freedom (do them in any order you want) and several romance subplots that are optional, but can be done anytime after chapter4, without the need to restart from beginning (except if you want to see the romance from another gender). In practice, save the game at beginning of chapter 4 and you can then reload it and see all possible endings/branches for your gender.

Speaking of Planet Stronghold, the next version 0.8 will be out hopefully next week, I don’t know the exact day yet because I had some eyesight problem recently, and with the Christmas busy schedule you can never know. Anyway, as I wrote several times, with version 0.8 the pre-order price will increase permanently to $19.99 so if you are interested in the game, be sure to buy it now

Why? I think is because I aged up, am working full-time, and in general I’m used to a more “casual” gameplay (even if the right term would be “less hardcore”, not really casual). Just as example, I liked Torchlight MUCH more… and that’s an action RPG.

What does this means? I asked myself. Probably several things:

• as I said, I’m no longer a teenager or young adult (I’m only 36 but well, I can clearly see that my interests,tastes are different from when I was 28-29 years old). Before, I had lot of free time, so reading a 100 pages manual for me was FUN, not a pain And a game like ToEE was fine, even if had lots of texts to read, even if had a complex inventory and spell management, and so on. Right now, that scares me off!
• the gameplay of CRPGs evolved a lot. Now, you’re used to see several improvement/behaviour that if are missing really annoys you. Like moving the mouse over an item, and instantly see the difference with the one currently equipped in the appropriate slot (this was a feature requested from a user to my upcoming RPG Planet Stronghold and indeed, is very useful but also EXPECTED from nowadays players). So, there’s a long list of things, more or less important, that now players assume will be present by default in a game. And if they don’t find it, they feel frustrated/annoyed!
• Party based vs single character and real-time vs turn based. Most old CRPG were party and turn based. Most of new CRPG are real-time and single player based (you can still have a party, but the NPC AI usually is good enough to fight in your place). When I was playing Mass Effect 2 in particular, I almost never cared of what my other companion were doing. I was just fighting on my own, assuming they would do their part

Of course, not everyone will share the same thoughts as me. But I was a bit surprised to discover how much my gaming tastes have changed in just 7 years! And I can somehow understand why all the new titles are more action oriented, or have excellent GUI system that let you do most of the actions with very few clicks.

However, I think you can still have a good gameplay, rule system, and variety even using the good old turn-based or an hybrid approach like real-time with possibility of pause. A good example is Dragon Age, The Witcher and Drakensang. The last two in particular IMHO represent a very good example of “old-school approach” into a “new fashion” of CRPG. They have still many statistics, items, but the interface is not as clumsy as ToEE. They have lots of tactical challenges but still, you aren’t forced by a turn-based system.

Don’t get me wrong, ToEE is still a great title and I wish Troika Games would still be here today, I’m sure they would make a RPG that would kick Bioware’s ass For my upcoming titles though, I think will try a more real-time approach, both for RPGs and also strategy/management games like the Heileen spin-off that I should start prototyping very soon.

1. RPG (roleplaying) games (included my games Magic Stones, Spirited Heart and hopefully will include also my upcoming Planet Stronghold)
2. Dating Sims – (included my games Summer Session and Flower Shop)
3. Sports Simulations – (included my games The Goalkeeper, Universal Soccer Manager 2 and Universal Boxing Manager)
4. Visual Novels – (included my games Heileen 1 & 2 , College Romance and Bionic Heart)
5. Strategy/Simulations – (included my games TV Station Manager and Supernova 2: Spacewar)

those represents total sales though, and are somewhat misleading because there are other factors to consider. First, in the visual novel category there are 4 games but the sales difference vs the strategy/simulation isn’t so big, so each individual game on average sold less than the strategy/simulation ones. Second, I should also consider ROI for each game. How much time I spent vs the revenue obtained for each game? I never calculated it exactly but I can fairly accurately say that the first titles (sports simulation) were the best ROI for me (took me 3-4 months each). But it could be so only because they’re also the oldest titles

Anyway, that’s more a fun statistic than anything to be taken too much seriously, but even talking with other programmers, it seems clearly that RPGs are the best selling genre for indie games. Probably because there aren’t many around (if you exclude RPGMaker ones, otherwise there are a LOT! )

Dating sims share also many elements with RPG (statistics, dialogues, relationships, etc), while sports simulations are very hard to make, but can provide good revenues if they’re original enough. Visual novels can be profitable if made quickly and without spending too much on assets, and strategy/simulation last place is really to be taken with a grain of salt: after speaking with many devs who shared revenues with me privately, if you do a good 3d strategy game this genre can easily beat all others, on par with RPGs.

The web version in particular is quite interesting since it plays until the demo ends, and you can then purchase the game and enter the purchase email and resume playing the game immediately. Let me know what you think about this solution since I might adopt it even for future episodes of Vera series (which won’t be out before next year, as I said).

1. game concept / design – this is the most funny part for sure. You start writing down all the possible amazing/awesome features that your game is going to have. Is easy to get things out of hand during this stage. Already at next stage you can be sure that you’ll read some of those features and think “I was nuts? How I could really think to have a full 3d walkable world??”
2. implementation – this starts great, but as the time goes on, in 99% of cases become like any other “real job”. Bugs shows up, testers complains, you realize that what you thought would be a  great gameplay system actually sucks. Then, what you do? You necessarily have to rethink some parts completely, so you rewrite them and then start testing again, and so on. In this stage you also realize how “this quick 2 months project” will turn into a “long 9 months project” easily.
3. polishing/release – polishing is really an IMPORTANT stage but so many people (including myself) don’t take it into much consideration. How some small little insignificant features are going to change the game sales so much? is not possible! No, you’re wrong, it is very possible Then there’s release day and unless your game sells within a few hours you’ll start having some serious crisis.

Some people get so pissed during stage 2 or 3, that they put project on hiatus, or even abandon it completely. It might seem strange but this happened to me too in the past, with two games. One was a fantasy RPG which I was coding (I realized that was insane to do all the coding myself!) and another was a mission based shoot’em up (I realized that it was such a poor selling genre that I would have wasted my time).

There are some solutions though that can help indies to finish their project and avoid burning. Some are rather obvious, others less:

1. take breaks from PC. Seriously, go out, take a walk, take a break of a few days, go on holiday, anything – if you’re burned, and if you’re late but insist on working you’re most likely to be burned even more and lose days doing nothing but getting stressed. Even only a small break can let you regain motivation and reduce stress.
2. have a small side-project. This has really worked well for me. For example now I’m doing Planet Stronghold but at same time several other “minor” games. This helps me because if one day I’m too tired to code complex RPG mechanics, I can always “relax” by going on with some much simpler gameplay elements.
3. do other tasks. When making a game there are LOT of other task beside programming it. Things that are usually easy and don’t take much time/resources. You have done the website of the game? did you setup the product in your vendor control panel? did you wrote the PR (press release)? have you blogged about it? did you contact some journalists to ask for interview/previews of the game? the list is long…
4. outsource/find a partner. This is really useful if you’re like me, and even if you can code yourself you’re too tired to do it now. Beside, if you outsource to the right person, you’ll get a better overall result. In the beginning I was doing *everything* myself: coding, art (using poser), gamedesign… But now I have started outsourcing art already since 2 years, and next year I’m probably going to outsource coding as well, because what I do better is gamedesign. If you’re a coder, is stupid to save a few thousands and try to do yourself the art. And viceversa if you’re an artist, is stupid to waste lot of time trying to understand how to code (even with some easy tools) when you can outsource or partner with someone else.
5. better have a smaller game finished than a big game never finished. Some indies attempt making something too big. Cut features out , as long as the main gameplay stays intact. If the smaller game works out, you can always make a sequel with all the features you cut out and the game will sell more. Some examples of this are Positech Kudos 1-2 and Democracy 1-2. Each sequel adds much more to the original game and I’m sure they sold more. So, build a smaller game to “test the waters” and if works, work on something bigger.

I know this well because I make games that, typically, are very short to play, since they’re story-based and are very similar to books, movies, comics. I think it’s totally absurd to judge a game by the length (unless it lasts 15 minutes of course!!!). For several reasons, most of them already very well explained by Cliff.

Making some comparison: you’d rather watch a dull, boring long movie, or a short but exciting, innovative, interesting one? This might look like an idiot question (and, it is) but then, why some people complain about games length, IF the game story is good? (I’m talking specifically about VN/dating sims).

One of the best recent examples is the game Jisei by Sakevisual. The game IS short. If you play it all at once, will last an hour or so. Yet, has an interesting plot, has high production values and good voice acting. You would rather play a very long but banal visual novel instead? Of course I know you might say: I want an interesting AND long story. Well, that’s what everyone would like to play, but since writing VN is like writing a book or a comic, you can well imagine that is not easy at all to make a story at same time interesting AND long.

On the opposite, there are many examples in tv-series that insisted on length (starting a new season when they should have stopped) and the result was that they produced a very crap result, reducing the overall interest of their fans.

Beside, most new games that comes out are based on the MMORPG/social system. Basically to make each action you must wait several minutes, or repeat certain tasks. While those games are fun, especially at the beginning (I played a lot Everquest for example), after a while they’re super boring, and really would be better shorter but with better gameplay/variety.

Just yesterday I wanted to buy a game on steam. I browsed all the various FPS, but I found really nothing interesting and ended up buying an adventure game (Alter Ego) because I enjoyed the atmosphere, description, the quality. I am still playing it so not sure how long it is, but for sure I’m enjoying it much more than any of those all-identic FPS games that comes out today.

“One of the worst things about what I do for a living is that hardly anyone else does it. You might think that not having competitors is a good thing. It is not. In the game industry, competitors help as well as hurt you. When EA spends millions of dollars advertising Dragon Age and Mass Effect, they aren’t just pushing their games. They are also advertising the whole idea of playing RPGs. Dragon Age makes as many potential customers for me as it takes.”

I really can’t agree more with this – but under the “niche games” perspective. We all know what happened to the casual market. First, Bejeweled and Zuma. Then in a few years, 150.000 clones of those games: then the rise of Hidden Object games, and lastly, the pricewars. That had several DANGEROUS side effect (for us game developers):

1. market flood. What if there were 3 RPG games out every day? Pretty cool (for us RPG fans), but a bit less cool for people like Spiderweb. It’s easy to say “other games also advertise the same kind of games I make, so is good because buyers might eventually find out about me”. Sure, but what if there were 3 new RPG games out every day? Seems impossible right now and probably will never happen (that’s why I overall agree with him) but this changes everything. It surely changed the casual market for the worse, because such a market flood caused…
2. pricewars. Pricewars is when two big companies compete lowering the prices of their products (in this case the games) to gain market share. It’s a very common tecnique, used in many fields. It’s surely good for the end user, you would think. Well – yes and no. Yes, in the beginning for sure: imagine getting those great games you were paying $20 for $5 instead. Sounds great! The problem is, that doing simple maths, unless the sales also multiply by x4, devs are going to make MUCH LESS money. If they make less money, they have also less money to invest. Less money spent in game assets usually mean lower quality of games, or shorter games. So, in the end, you’ll have also worse games as consumer
3. clones / lack of cretivity. The last consequence I can think of, related to  “minimizing business risks” is to have games that look and play identical (or almost). No need to say that this is quite evident in the casual market. You will rarely see an original game in the casual market. It’s inevitable: they know which model works, and they make game using that “template”. Why risk losing money, when you know what works? But once in a while, some more brave developer comes out with something original and in almost all cases is a hit (which I find quite ironic): Azada, Plant vs Zombies, Virtual Villagers, Build a Lot. Those are all games that innovated in the casual market and all of them were TOP HITs.

What is my take about competition? It’s good, I like it, as long as I can sell as affiliate

Jokes apart, as long as are product made with heart, passion, and not simple clones made quickly to make some fast money, they’re all welcome. For example, I recently played a great game by Sakevisual called Jisei. Is really very well done, and beside the fact that I know the author and the artist well, I honestly think is a good product. It was fun when was released because I was still working on my game Vera Blanc since December 2009: so seeing such a quality game that was started just a few months (I think May) already out BEFORE mine, obviously made me thinking “What, how is possible!?”

But like Jeff says, it’s good, and also I think that we indie devs should help each other (that’s why I often promote games as affiliate to my huge mailing list and other devs to the same with my games). Maybe people playing Jisei will find out about my other detective/supernatural game Vera Blanc (when it will be out, hopefully soon!!), and vice versa, maybe people playing Vera Blanc will also find out about Jisei and love it.

Online

Pros:

As developer, you basically eliminate piracy. People making online games in general make MUCH more money than people making offline games. Also, online enable you to use subscriptions, microtransactions, pay per item, and so on.

As player, you can now compete/collaborate with friends. You can have new experiences otherwise unattainable by offline gaming, like new content/leves, updates, bugfixes.

Cons

As developer, you enter a whole new realm. You need to guarantee people are able to play. If your server is offline, your game is useless and this will make people angry, very angry. Also it means you need to learn network programming, which is a pain. There are also increased costs (but as we saw you should also expect increased profits). Usually once you go online, you’ll need to focus on one game. Most online games takes YEARS to make, so be sure to have a backup plan. Also, you enter a VERY CROWDED market: everyone is making MMOs now, so while the potential revenues are much higher, the competition is also more fierce. Online games are mutually exclusive too: people playing WoW are likely to play that for 4-5h a day, leaving no room for other games. This means that if a big player has established a foothold in a certain niche/segment of the market, will be very hard for you to get new players.

As player, you can say goodbye to immersion. Most people playing MMO knows how annoying some people can be. You can meet anyone, from a 60 years old polite university professor to a 16-years old boy always yelling at you. There can’t be a plot in a online game. You’re also going to pay MUCH more, and some games feels more like a scam. With normal offline games you pay a price and know what you get. Online games are designed like mousetrap: they lure you in with the FREE word, and then you get addicted and you’ll end up paying even hundred of dollars for, let’s be honest, what you could get for 1/10 less. You’re also going to spend much more time to a single game and become an addict (that’s exactly what the companies want).

Offline

Pros:

As developer, offline games are much easier to program. Even if you’re not an expert programmer you can easily put a normal downloadable game together. You don’t need to have a dedicated server or be a network expert.

As player, you know what you get. You can have immersive games with wonderful plot and NPCs, like Dragon Age (or any of my games hehe), you can play RTS knowing your ping doesn’t matter, you can play while flying on a plane with a laptop, you can pause anytime, you can play games at your pace (and not be tied to a raid or a online event) and the list goes on. All of this knowing you’re going to pay a FIXED amount (that recently is getting lower and lower).

(Note – I am one of those players. I can’t honestly believe that people pay 15-20 eur a month to play WoW when they can get wonderful games from Bioware for a fixed price!)

Cons:

As developer, expect to make much less money: except very rare cases, a offline game is always going to earn less than a online one, since you can’t bill multiple time the same person (selling him subscriptions or items for example).  Also you have to deal with piracy which is a real pain and will seriously hurt your business.

As player, I am not really sure what are the cons of offline games. I guess stupid/paranoid DRMs are the worst thing you can experience. Apart for that, I can’t really think about any cons, except if you like competition, ladders, etc. But then you wouldn’t be playing offline games at all

That is. As you can see there are several things to consider, both for the developer and the player. I also think that the age influences what people play: I used to play EQ1-2 when I was younger, and had more free time than now. As I grow older, I found I hadn’t time anymore to invest HOURS in a character, or pay for a monthly subscription when I wasn’t sure I would be able to play the game. About the new free to play games, I honestly think it’s plain stupid to pay $5 “for a sword” when you can get complete new games for the price of 2-3 swords Also I like games with plots and writing, so that’s not really what I want. But know many devs making a fortune with free to play / MMO games.

Will I be making a online game? No, not really soon. But who knows, maybe one day…

Ok, but why you say this? What exactly defines a visual novel, and differentiate it from a normal RPG game? Well in the cases above is really difficult, but I think I could say that while RPGs had NPC and quests already as a feature, the way those two games present the dialogues and the choices makes them much more close to visual novel than other games. Indeed, there aren’t simply quests: first, there is LOT of dialogue. Those games are fully voiced (well, like all my future ones) so that helps a lot. Many people don’t like when there’s much text to read, but if you present the same text under the form of a movie/cartoon, with moving actors, scenes and voices, it’s VERY different (in practice is the difference between reading a book or watching a tv movie). In those games, there are MANY choices. Both on Mass Effect and The Witcher you can influence lots of characters/factions, and in the end, really change your ending.

RPGs always had the possibility to make choices, but to influence the world/characters around you and “unlock” different endings? No, that’s more a visual novel thing, to me

Both those games were huge successes, selling million of copies. Of course, it’s not JUST because of the visual novel component: but I like to think that it played a big role. Yes, you can have visual novels features in a AAA game and not bore the western gaming public: you just need to insert them into a context with many other gameplay types (shooters, strategy, simulations). That’s what I’m going to do with The Flower Shop and Planet Stronghold

On the development side, some good news: Spirited Heart is going very well, though I think I won’t include a combat sub-game in it (I’m still not sure about that). But the characte generation is done, and also the status screen with all the various game options: Work, Study/Train, Relax, Relationship and Check Status.

It will be a weird game I think. Similar to Cute Knight, but without the dungeon part, and with a slightly different gameplay mechanic. I am also thinking to ask Hanako’s programmer to license the use the dungeon-crawler engine he used in that game, so I finally could resume working on Tower Of Destiny, which is in hiatus-mode since 2005! :/

Anyway for now I’m concentrating on Spirited Heart and 3 more “mysterious games” that will be released during next year. I don’t want to disclose too much, but each game can be described with a word: Poker, Robot and Flower.