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Online vs offline games

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More and more developers I know are going to move online-only (some have already). But what are the key differences of online vs offline games, both from the developer and the user point of view? This is what I gathered so far. If anyone has any comments/suggestion, is welcome.

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… 🙂

Vera Blanc gameplay

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I’m working on the “main game loop” of Vera Blanc right now. There’s a first “introduction” part where you get to know your powers, the setting of the investigation, and meet a few characters. Then after a shocking encounter (which I won’t reveal since I don’t want to spoil the game!) the game will enter in the main loop, showing the map that you can see below in the screenshots.

The game will be time limited, but only after certain events. For example, when you start, there won’t be a deadline of 30 days to solve the case. The days will pass, but until you find a specific clue, the story won’t go on. After some key events are “unlocked” though, you might have to hurry up and find / discover some information within a certain number of days, or in the case of real-time events, some minutes.

In any case the game will inform the player about what’s going to happen next and “suggest” him to save the game to avoid restarting from the beginning!

About the investigation part, there will be choices like in my other VNs but this time with much more freedom. I tried to represent as more choices as possible, and you can repeat the same action many times or try the same thing in different order to change the course of the story. So it’s not really a story with branches, but more like several actions that you can do in a specific location/situation of the story that will lead to different results.

On a final note, I’m happy about the final look of the game. I think that kind of art is more suited for mystery/horror stories than pure manga style (that’s my personal opinion of course) 🙂

The pixel art nostalgia

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I grew up playing pixel art games. Some of the best games, first on C64, then Amiga, and lastly PC (but the first 3d or pseudo-3d games like Doom were already showing).

I really like that style, and it’s a pity that nowadays you can see pixel art only on the small devices like iPhone, Nintendo DS or cellular phones. So, I am thinking to use pixel art for one of my upcoming games! 😀 I know that this might sounds crazy in an era of 3d accelerated cards, shaders, and so on, but I think a good pixel art graphic has something really artistic that you can’t get even with the best 3d real-time art you see in most games nowadays!

Besides, I also think pixel art is very good for cute/girly games, and since one of my upcoming games is definitely made for girls (but also men will be able to play it, fear not) I really want to try. Of course, I won’t feature full 800×600 screens made in pixel art, but for example a tilemap (similar to those you see in all the games made with RPGMaker XP) or perhaps a central part of the screen where the action take place, and all around my usual window/boxes with statistics and hints/tooltips.

I don’t want to announce anything yet, not unless I have implemented some screens with the new art style, but if everything goes well maybe in a month will make a new post with a surprise, a sort of a sequel (even if it will play differently) of one of my most successful games…

Super Heroes and Heroines

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Is Vera Blanc a Super Heroine? No, not really. She is human: she has fear, she feels sympathy or love for certain person, she is jealous, and she can die like anyone else.

Recently I’ve been writting a lot of those “sudden death” endings. It might look weird, but they’re fun to read. Like in the old “Fighting Fantasy” gamebooks: I remember I was always reading the “death” scenes with great interests, even if they meant I had failed in my quest. I don’t know exactly how to express it, but I thought those description were really cool to read, and they’re to write too 🙂

During the game, Vera’s investigations can encounter a premature end in many different ways. However, beside “saving often” (which is always a good advice for all kind of games) I also try to give the player some hints, like subtle warnings, of what might happen if they’re not careful, or what dangers they could encounter. Anyway, it is definitely a different game from my other ones, you won’t be able to rollback and you will also have to think carefully each move. In the game there are LOTs of menu, much more than my other games. It is more interactive, and after the introductive chapter, the game becomes very interactive, with a daily/weekly planner, a map with places to explore/investigate, and a sort of diary (or “cluebook”) where Vera writes down all the clues/info she will discover during her investigation.

The game will also feature a few minigames, the most important being the “Mind-Reading” one. Yes, because one of Vera’s superpowers is the capacity to read other people’s mind. Check the video below for a good explanation on how the minigame works:

Note – of course the game will be completely edited/proofreaded by native english speaker before being released 😉

That’s all for now – next post I hope to be able to show you a video introducing Vera’s story, including her superpowers!

The Year Of The Tiger

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I just discovered a fun thing. One of my best collaborator, Ayu Sakata (Flower Shop’s writer, voice actress / proofreader in Bionic Heart, Heileen 2 and more) and I are both of The Tiger in the Chinese Horoscope. This means that this is our year! 😀
It surely started well with The Flower Shop who is getting a positive response and nice reviews everywhere.

Now she is working on editing what should be my next game (unless I manage to finish Vera Blanc first but I doubt it). It’s a manga visual novel / strip poker game called Card Sweethearts. I started this project last year, asking Ren’Py main programmer Tom to create a poker engine out of his card game system for Ren’Py.
The poker is the classic Texas Hold’em, and will become a classic strip poker (featuring only tasteful images though) when you challenge one of the four girl depicted in the title screen image below:

I absolutely like how Ayu is reworking the original game texts (written by another collaborator of mine who had to quit). Just read at Tobias description of Miko, one of the four girl you can pursue in the game and my personal favourite:
“You mean Rocco? That old guy ain’t much, but his woman Miko. Now she’s a fine piece of work. Hottest thing out of the orient since they invented gunpowder.”

Now that’s what I call really top writing! 😀

Below a in-game screen featuring the poker part. That is really fun, and is cool how it integrates with the story itself. The game will also feature a scheduler like my other dating sims where you’ll be able to decide what to do with your week.

So basically I have in production (or planned) the following games for this year:

  • Cardsweethearts – a visual novel / poker game mix
  • Vera Blanc 1 – an american comic-styled mystery game with several minigames in it (more on this soon)
  • Planet Stronghold – probably my biggest project to date, a sci-fi RPG featuring a battlesystem, many varied enemies, an inventory for each character, a training system, a map system, different weapons/armors types, with a romance/VN background and several possible outcomes!
  • a still unnamed horror/mystery game set in victorian times that most likely will be illustrated by Zyephen (the same artist of Planet Stronghold characters / enemies)
  • a sequel of Flower Shop with a brand new game (not farming sim) seen from “the girls side”
  • an hex-grid turnbased fantasy wargame similar to the good old SSI titles

It’s going to be a very busy year as you can see!