Category Archives: development screenshot

Will social / online games completely replace traditional offline gaming?

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Short answer: No.

Long reply:

If you’re a developer or just a player, you’ll have noticed reading all around the net that social /online games “ARE THE FUTURE”. Literally everyone is doing it. Even Google, with his NaCl and the upcoming Chrome Appstore (at least with it people will be able to use their existing code and not use Flash or Javascript!).

But what exactly does this means for players, for indies and for the big AAA studios. I honestly belive that this is just a hype, a bubble that is going to explode. Still, we’re at the very beginning so many YEARS will pass before it’s gone. Let me explain better what I mean in some points:

1. I think players just look at the GAME, at the experience, they don’t care much if is online/offline or in which language is written to.
2. Social games right now are doing most damage to casual games. Also while I don’t have any real figures I really believe that this enormous amount of free content is going to damage everyone in the casual games industry, so that at one point it will have to end or shrink. People that once used to buy casual games from portals, now spend MONTHS playing the social games spending a ridiculous amount of money vs the time spent on them. Maybe also the crisis is helping this?
3. “Downloadables are dead”. This is far from being true. Steam basically is a giant, huge, downloadable webstore. There are many indies doing GREAT with downloadables. I’ve recently been selling Eschalon Book 2 as affiliate and honestly the download market doesn’t seem dead at all… 😉
4. There isn’t just one type of gamer, but several types. There are also taste changes based on the age and time constraint. I myself was playing Everquest almost 10h a day when I was at the university (doing nothing), then when I started to work seriously I completely quit that game and now I don’t play any MMORPG at all. I’ve noticed this same pattern amongst many other friend I know. So, a people’s tastes can vary/change greatly over the years
5. I know many younger people that don’t care about Facebook or social games in general. It’s a bit like saying that nowadays nobody reads books anymore because everyone watches TV or play games 😉 That is not true. You can still make quite good money with books, as well as other creative mediums.

So, while it’s clearly true that right now your best bet to make money is a social, online or MMO game (I’m doing some online game experiments too), this doesn’t mean that everything else is going to be dead soon. It all depends on your target market: if your target are teenagers or casual people, your best bet is to make a FB game now, rather than a downloadable (and still, a decent game on top10 of a major portal like BFG can bring in still LOT of money).

If you’re into niches like I am, you definitely don’t need to worry about which system you’re using. If your game can benefit from being online (for example to reduce the impact of piracy), then do it, otherwise you can just keep doing downloadables like Spiderweb is doing: he just announced his new game series called Avadon (I find hilarious the name because is very similar to Avalon). It will be a downloadable as always, he’s doing it since 1999 (or sooner, I forgot) and it’s surely easier than changing completely the kind of language/platform/system.

What about me? I am making some experiments right now with a Renpy downloadable client+php/mySQL server, and I must admit is VERY HARD. I am making it though 🙂 But I have intention of keeping this project running as a “side-project” because I want still to make normal downloadable games as well.

Time for a screenshot I think:

Not hard to guess what kind of game it is… 😉

Projects status report

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A lot has been going on lately for me. In random order, here’s what happened in last months:

THE BAD

  • google hates me – I had a -25% drop of traffic from google and I have no clue why 🙁 I neglected the marketing side a bit, despite having released quite some games recently (Flower Shop just in february!). But I hope to catch up soon (see below point)
  • some artists I use to work with, are no loger working for me – this was a real pity. I’m talking about Rebecca Gunter (all my visual novels so far, from Summer Session to Heileen 2) who now is booked until NEXT YEAR! Well, I knew that working for me makes people famous, but wasn’t expecting that 😉
  • I had to find replacement for “lost artists” (even if some are only temporarily out). This is very frustrating as I want to have VERY HIGH art quality in my games. And browsing deviantart portfolios is really time consuming. Then, I have also to see how the artist work: some are very good but disorganized/lazy. I had to replace Planet Stronghold artist with a new one (you see an image of the new one on the right) because the 1st was simply too slow and also cheating on reason she was busy – not very professional!
  • The FB/social/MMO hype. I was caught into it as well 🙂 I spend several weeks doing researches on the technology behind those kind of games, so I worked less on my regular offline games. I am not really sure if I’ll ever make one, but at least now I know much more about it.

THE GOOD

  • Card Sweethearts and Vera Blanc 1 are almost done! The first game is being finished by Ayu of Sakevisual, and the second is being proofreaded/edited by her as well. The original proofreader had many university exams to do, so I thought was better to let Ayu finish the job so the game could come out soon.
  • Planet Stronghold is coming out very nicely. I love the new art, and the story is starting to be interesting. The battle engine was polished even more, showing some special effects and lot more feedback on the kind of weapon/armor/item equipped (added new icons for each item). While the first battles are easy, once you start to get some 3 vs 4 or even 4 vs 4 encounter the fight gets much more strategic. I think I am starting to balance it properly.
  • I have now completed an auto-patcher/updater which I plan to use for the pre-orders beta of all my future downloadable games. What is it? Simple, if you preorder one of my games, not only you’ll get a download instantly but the game will check for an update every time you launch it, auto patching itself to the latest version. Very useful for testing (as you know, pre-orders beta are essential to get user feedback, and change things making the game better)
  • Spirited Heart Flash – I had someone make a small flash version of Spirited Heart that I plan to put live this weekend in some major flash portals. I even put the game on Flashgamelicense for sponsorship but of course it was ignored: it has no violence, zombies or blood in it 😉

We need more singleplayer CRPGs!

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Yes, as the title says. I’m talking about indie scene, of course, even if the same could be said even for mainstream games.
Recently, thing are starting to change. Not just Bioware, with their Dragon Age and Mass Effect series, or Bethesda with Fallout, but also other new entries like Drakensang, The Witcher, and so on.

And in the indie scene? Yes even here. Almost everyone knows about Spiderweb, Basilisk games and their Eschalon series is getting known, Amaranth with their Aveyond series, Aldorlea and their various big/small RPGs, and so on.

And I? I am working on it, I swear. Is quite funny to think that, despite RPGs being my favourite kind of games, I never released a real one!!  The closest is Magic Stones but is more a strategy game with RPG elements than a pure RPG.
So this year I decided to do a real one. That’s why I started writing the RPG engine behind Planet Stronghold. I picked sci-fi settings for several reasons: first, the sci-fi setting is underused. There aren’t many good sci-i RPG, so I have less competition 🙂 But also because I like the setting in particular.

Second, the engine can be easily adapted to a fantasy setting. So while this first game will be sci-fi (and if does well I hope to release a sequel), I can easily change the art and tweak a bit the attack system (to include melee attacks, spells, and so on) and make a fantasy RPG.

What is more important to me though, is the story. That’s why I’m trying to write a good story, with uncommon characters. Not just “the good” and “the evil” characters, but simply factions fighting each other, every one with their motivations.

I gave up the possibility to choose between male/female character in the beginning since would require too much work – so the main character will be a female, but I’m sure that male players won’t complain to play as her 😉 Anyway, in the game you’ll control a full party, so while the story will be told from her perspective, you will still be able to control a range of different characters.

There’s still much work to do before the game is released, but slowly, step by step, I’m building my system that will be cross-platform (pc/mac/linux) and will also be able to retrieve updates automatically and also notify the user of new downloadable content patches availables (I plan to release several add-ons in the months after the game release).

Today for example I added a new thing in the inventory screen: instead of just showing off the items as a 1 line text description+some icons/stats, I display them as BIG icons that make the inventory screen look really polished IMHO (enlarge the screenshot in this post to check for yourself.)

Games as comic books

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That would be my goal with the Vera Blanc game series. Even if, as I’m not totally clueless, I “only” planned 2 episodes/games for now. But of course if the game gets some decent sales/becomes popular enough, I would plan/add more episodes. Just like in the comic books, is very common to have different artists working on each episode. That’s what will happen with Vera as well, even if I really like the new artist, so in case of a possible 3rd episode I probably would stick with him 🙂
(n.b. the 2nd artist is the one on the left in the gallery)
Take a look at the gallery below. For each image there are two versions, one from each artist. It’s the “introduction” to the character of Vera and his background, so had to be the same scene. It’s interesting to notice how each artists drew the same scene, using the same description:

It’s true though that using that kind of comic-style art, the lines are more thick, this is due on the method by which they were digitized/draw (they’re not digital art, but traditional pencil/ink art!). The only solution would be to make them at bigger size but as you can imagine then the costs would increase exponentially… if you compare that kind of art vs my first games (artist was the super-skilled Rebecca Gunter) you can notice the difference in the lineart and in the colors.
However, I’m planning to do more of those comic style games because I like the way in which I can tell my story with them: more scenes means more power to the images, and less to the words. While my VNs are comparable to books or illustrated books, Vera Blanc is really comparable to a comic book.

A new Spirited Heart

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I got many requests for a sequel since I released my game Spirited Heart last year. I did a Deluxe version this december, but now is time to start something new. I am still in the early stages of planning/development, and as you can see from the WIP screenshot on this page, there is still lot decisions to be made.

However, I can anticipate a few things:

1) the version 1.0 will focus on the character development, the various jobs/skills, and various job endings. So there won’t be any romance in the first version! Also, the version 1.0 won’t have the demon character 😉

2) But fear not, because I have in mind to release several downloadable content for it, using my new system of autoupdater/patcher right from the game. This means you’ll be notified when a new update is available right when you start the game (and also by email to be sure you won’t miss it). Each update will be a very small fee, between $5-10, and will add new features to the game. The first planned is indeed the romance one and then the demon one.

3) Thanks to this “open ended” structure, it means that I can release an update with 6 characters, but nothing forbids me to do another update with 6 more characters to have romance! Or add a new type of job, a new pet (yes, there will be pets in the game), or even a new race. This means that I can develop a much more detailed game, since each update will be carefully planned. For example when I add the demon race, there will be a backstory behind it (a reason why it’s there), there will be new towns and maybe even new jobs related to it.

As you can see is an approach somewhat similar to those online games, with the difference that you’ll clearly know what you’re paying/getting, and that the game won’t require you to stay online, only to check the version and update it. It will also means that now you will be sure to play the latest version immediately, with all the bugfixes and new features.

I don’t have any estimate release yet, my HOPE is for next Christmas, however I really am not sure since have several other projects going on at the same time 🙂