The most important skill that every indie developer needs

This post is about marketing, so I should probably post some kind of graph so people take me seriously. Yes, this one will do.

OK, so you’re ready to be a game developer. You’re not some “sellout” going to work on the next over-budget AAA military shooter, oh no. You’re going to make your own game, your way. In fact, not to brag, you see yourself as the next Notch. So, before you get to work, you go down your checklist entitled “Necessary things I should probably know about before trying to make a video game”. Alright, here it goes. Coding? Check. Animation? Check. Ability to make up story that gives you an excuse to fight dragons? Check. Ability to say you chose pixel art animation because it’s “retro” and that you could totally animate in 3d if you really wanted to? Double check. So, you’re good to go right? You start making your game and it’s absolutely incredible. Surely everyone will simply throw money at you as you walk down the street to help you fund it. Something’s not right though. Your Kickstarter has only been funded for $10 and you’re pretty sure that came from your Mom, and the only person to vote for your game on Greenlight is that guy who always followed you around and tried to join your clan-only Team Fortress 2 matches on Steam. What could have possibly have gone wrong? Oh no, you left something off of your checklist! But what could it have been. Then, suddenly, it comes to you in a vision. Marketing.

Gamepad: When does your hobby stop serving you, and you start to serve your hobby?

 I recently watched a short documentary from GameSpot called Video Games vs. Depression, made by the ever-so awesome Irish stud Danny O’Dwyer and his buddy Andy Bauman. The video shows interviews conducted with people who’ve had depression used games as a coping mechanism, and everyone spoke about how positive the experience turned out to be, but it made me wonder: When do you cross the boundaries between gaming and addiction, and how would that affect you.

As people we often fall on hard times, and as gamers those moments may come more frequently than they may do for non-gamers. I’ve found this to be a reality for me, and while it’s not something I feel especially proud of, I’ve found ways to deal with the empty feeling of depression and it’s ugly cousin – social anxiety.

Gamepad: Should we really be surprised about Battlefront?

So here it is. Finally, EA has decided to give us one of the most anticipated games of the year, and it’s not very good. As far as I’m concerned this game is a cash grab and a way to exploit the new Star Wars movie, while also destroying the reputation of a franchise that has a special place in my heart.

I always felt pretty worried about Battlefront. Ever since that thirty second trailer came out, I knew EA would find a way to screw it up. I also remember the winter of last year, when I predicted that the game would feature a co-op mode. Of course, I also wanted an Xbox back then, and got a PS4 only recently, however my prediction came through. It’s a run-of-the-mill shooter game with realistic weapons and flashy Star Wars effects. And that leads me the big problem this game has: Lack of content.

I was notorious for playing the Battlefront Beta for just over an hour, but it was enough to get a taste of the game, and find out that I have no desire to play it whatsoever. It just didn’t click for me. But that was okay, I wasn’t disappointed by it. I just had an eerie feeling in the back of my mind, that EA HAD NO IDEA how to do Star Wars correctly. The only people who knew how to do Star Wars were the people behind Star Wars, and even they had some pretty rough moments. The Beta was successful in luring the people in, but it seems that the final game is successful in pushing them away.

Of course the game will see a spike in player numbers after the new movie comes out, and yes Kylo Ren seems like a pretty cool villain to play as, but still the lack of actual content for day one is getting on my nerves. I remember playing the Instant Action mode in Battlefront 2 for hours and hours on end, while this new Battlefront doesn’t even have a campaign, and that wouldn’t be a problem if the game wasn’t a mixture of Titanfall and Destiny with Star Wars written all over it. It feels fantastic, like you’re actually in Star Wars, but nothing more than that, and that’s pretty sad…

 

Reviewing The Reviewer: NerdCubed

Ooooh, a new series ‘ey? Yeah, thought I’d do something a little different from reviewing a game and actually review a game creator and sort of game reviewer I don’t know if you can call him that but he does a pretty good job of reviewing games and making me want to play things regardless.

So, Nerd3 (Dan Hardhat or whatever his name is) is a YouTuber that creates gaming content and stuff. He also makes games like I stated in my previous paragraph. I’ve actually played a few of them (How to Snooker and Systems Nominal) and they’re extremely fun games, I really enjoyed them.

I enjoyed the games, but did I enjoy his YouTube content? Of course I bloody did, he’s a talented individual. His content is varied and there’s pretty much something for everyone on his channel. You like first person shooters? He’s done videos on Battlefield and Call of Duty. You like simulators? Well aren’t you in for a treat, he’s done videos on Euro Truck Simulator, OMSI, Farming Simulator, everything.

The Gamerscore Run – Week 1 – Finally

So a while ago (about a year or two), I decided to start collecting achievements frequently, my friend in turn, decided to beat my gamerscore when I took a bit of a break. Now I’m gonna try and catch up, beat his gamerscore and stay in the lead. Hopefully all goes well. To make things even more interesting, me, my friend and a few other friends are seeing who can get the most gamerscore every month.

For those who don’t know, I’m Ewan, I’m a writer at updownright.com and now avid achievement hunter. My friend, Joseph, is also an avid achievement hunter and probably a cat person, have yet to come to a conclusive result. So, without further ado, welcome back The Gamerscore Run!

The problem with the term “video game”

What comes to mind when you hear someone say “video games”? No, seriously, I want to know, put it in the comments. For those of us who consider ourselves “gamers”, we probably think of the entire hobby and culture that makes up what video games are to us. To the more casual gamer or those on the outside looking in, a different picture may take shape in their mind when they hear the term “video game”. I had never really put much thought into the use this term until I was working on my last post “With release of “9/11 simulator”, journalists once again criticize any game that wants to speak on a sensitive subject“.

I realized that when video games are spoken of in mainstream media, calling them “games” often immediately devalues the projects themselves. When calling something a “game”, it causes many people to automatically categorize whatever the subject is into things that are fun and usually for kids. This is fine most of the time. For most big developers, the term game works perfectly. Games are meant to be played for fun and entertainment and many of them are developed with kids in mind. Over recent years, though, video games have evolved. Not all video games are just “games” anymore. Video games have things to say, places to take the player, and narratives to tell. Many releases like The Beginner’s Guide, Gone Home, and Cibele are amazing experiences, but calling them “games” (even though The Beginner’s Guide is about games) doesn’t seem to quite fit.

With release of “9/11 simulator”, journalists once again criticize any game that wants to speak on a sensitive subject

As a project for video game development school in France, a group of developers created “8:46”, a virtual reality experience that recreates the fateful few minutes of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11. This is not a commercial for sale, but rather a small project that was released to the public. In 8:46 the player plays as a person on the 101st floor on the first building hit with no escape. After trying to find a way out the player is eventually confronted with the decision to either stay and suffocate, or jump from the 101st floor, both with the same outcome. As you can imagine, the game and developers have received quite a bit of criticism for their project. This seems to have introduced a very important question to those who have never thought of it. Is it OK for developers to include real life tragedies as the focal point for their game?

A Really Fast Rundown of the 104 Backwards Compatible Xbox 360 Games

Alright, really quickly, here’s a list of I think all 104 games that are now backwards compatible, with a brief description of if you should buy it, download it or completely ignore it, throw your Xbox One out of the window and eat a tub of mint flavoured ice cream. Here we go!

How Shigeru Miyamoto can make Nintendo into a powerful company again (A satirical article about love, hate, gaming and pushing the boundaries of character limits in article titles)

A warning from Will Watlington: before reading this post I must warn you that the author, Ewan Gleadow must have been a bit, well, mental, while writing this. So please be sure to comment and give him a mental diagnosis. I’M NOT CRAZY, JUST A LITTLE OFF, LIKE MILK.

Anyone who steals this state of the art, not in any way satirical or comedic walkthrough of how Nintendo can rule the world will be shot. Survivors will be commended for their strength against bullets, then shot again.

Now, we all know Nintendo’s been a bit down on it’s luck recently, Xbox and Playstation have destroyed the market, the OUYA is apparently still a thing and to be quite honest it looks like the Wii U hasn’t done very well. So I’ve taken the liberty of helping out our dear friend Shigeru Miyamoto into making Nintendo a successful company once more! You’re welcome! I’ll take 10% of the Nintendo market share before we start, then a further 60% when I’m done.

The first thing you’re gonna want to do is get two eggs and about 200g of flour actually buy SEGA. Yep, your old rival, the one with that hedgehog that probably shit on you a few times and then Playstation hit it with it’s car sometime in the early 90s and now it’s never really been able to pick itself up from there. Buy all of their assets, even the broken Hedgehog. Now that you’ve acquired these gaming franchises, start making some new Sonic/Alex Kidd/Crazy Taxi games that are Wii U exclusive. None of that 3DS bullshit, give them Super Monkey Ball or some shit, we’re trying to convince people to buy Wii U’s here, it’s all fine and well to have handhelds but that’s not the focus here Miyamoto.

Now that you’ve hopefully amassed what I can only assume is about £13.68 with all those Sonic sales, you’re gonna want to revive THQ, the reason being is they’ll publish literally any old shit you throw at them, you’ll need them for later when Sonic Team starts work on Sonic Boom 2 and all that DLC. I’m pretty sure THQ own the rights to Wheel of Fortune, Destroy all Humans and Darksiders so get them to work on all of those. Actually, while you’re just buying companies on the good word of Ewan, go buy Pandemic, I know it closed it’s doors but go and grab them, they’re talented people.

You’re gonna be missing that big pile of cash you’re sat on, I’m hoping Pandemic/SEGA and THQ are doing good for yah, hopefully not as useless as we all know SEGA to be. This next step is a bit tricky seeing as though the rights to this game are lost in “the void”, but buy the rights to Crash Bandicoot. Yeah, you know the one, your son Mario and that thing had a fight at one point and Playstation came out of nowhere and started screaming “Naughty dog!” even though it was definitely a raccoon or some shit. Anyway, go get that furry thing and make him the most badass dating simulator platformer/action/adventure whatever you think is good, I trust yah with this Nintendo.

Hopefully if you don’t cock everything up, the original owners of this wombat will hurry up and come to collect him and you’ll expect the usual reward of £50 for finding someone’s pet. That isn’t the case here though, you’re actually gonna kidnap the CEO of Naughty Dog. Torture him until he merges Naughty Dog with Nintendo and makes Uncharted a Wii U exclusive, that’ll teach Playstation for knocking over your now beloved blue, crippled hedgehog that you can buy merchandise for, at the low price of £13.99 *wink*

Now that you’ve got the Uncharted series under your belt, a majority of Playstation users will probably think “Nolan North, no!” and hop over to Wii U, increasing it’s sales exponentially. Start allowing indie games onto the Wii U at around this time, because that’s one of the few things the PS4 will have that the Wii U doesn’t. Buy out some indie developers, the guy’s who made Braid, Limbo, Thomas Was Alone, all that good stuff. Also, buy Sarah Northaway’s company, I don’t think that’s her exact name but she’s the one that made the Rebuild series and that series is absolutely fantastic, just stick it on the Wii U store and slap a $9.99 price tag on it like you usually do. Hopefully that’ll grab some attention (and hopefully the mysterious disappearance of- Wait, ah christ, Naughty Dog have co-presidents. Alright, don’t panic, just brain one of them with the hammer in your desk and trap the other one in the “fun house”. Have you done that? Yeah? Good.

I hope I don’t have to remind you to make games too, because this next bit may cost a bit of money, you’re going to want to buy the following:

• SNK Playmore so we can get some Metal Slug onto the Wii U
• Harmonix so we can make Guitar Hero games a Wii U exclusive
• Traveller’s Tales so we can make the LEGO games a Wii U exclusive
• Telltale Games because why not and they can make Walking Dead S3 an exclusive
• PopCap so we can make Plants Vs Zombie games against their will as a Wii U exclusive

Hopefully that doesn’t completely bankrupt you like the initial release of the Wii U did but lets keep powering through, there’s still a lot more to do. You’ll have so much power and money by now that every developer and gaming company either dissolves into a heap for you to collect their IP’s or they just join up with you. The only one that stands in your way…

Valve.

Easiest solution, buy out Valve, I’m not sure if they’re a public limited company but buy them anyway, even if you have to sell your arm Miyamoto, just do it. Along with Valve, they’ll bring Steam, with Steam we can probably get rid of that ventilation problem, is that where you’re keeping the bodies? The ghosts’ll be going crazy up there, especially since Iwata is up there with two American’s who founded a company called “Naughty Dog”, Hideo Kojima and the lost and found box which oddly enough has a copy of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, a half eaten hot dog and 27 Virtual Boys, guessing they weren’t lost accidentally though, ‘ey Miyamoto?

Now that you own Valve, you’re only one step away from completing total world domination. You’ve dominated the gaming industry, you cannot be beaten, you own console and PC gaming all over the world. Only one thing to do now. Buy your own space programme, fly into space with a team of armed bandits and rob the space station. Wait, this seems like Call of Duty Ghosts, doesn’t it?

MIYAMOTO, DISREGARD EVERYTHING I SAID, YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN FOR THIS ONE.

An opinionated rant on the lack of personal stories in video games.

Video games are in a sense the unification of basically every other type of media. Writing, acting, music, cinematography, and countless technical skills all combine into one thing. So, theoretically, games have the ability to be the pinnacle of art since so many forms of art must coalesce to make a game possible. In practice, though, many argue that games aren’t even art at all. Now, I’m not going to touch that debate with a ten foot pole right now, but the simple version is I believe games can be art, and can be some of the most effective art possible. So if video games have such huge potential to be interesting and amazing art, why do so few games feel like they are telling a personal story or that the creator is embodying himself in the game, something that creators do in basically every other form of media?