A discussion in the casual game community misses the point somewhat.

Last July, the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) formed a new Special Interest Group, the Casual Games SIG. The group produced a useful 125-page white paper on casual games, as well as a Casual Games Quarterly (though it has missed the window for second issue to actually be a quarterly). Additionally, the SIG started the Casual Games Mailing List, which has proven to be quite active, with “name” players in the space contributing to the discussion.

One recent (ongoing) thread deals with the prospects of an accurate/viable listing of top casual games, based on figures from the major game portals. The discussion started with an interesting listing created by one person compiling “Top 10” ranking information published by the portals. It then veered into the accuracy and bias of this data, into a call for actual sales figures like the movie industry, and then onto the technological and political (for lack of a better word) issues for creating such a list. One can view the January 2006 Archives to read the whole thread, Top Download List.

Numbers and rankings are great, and they are easy to understand, the data equivalent of a sound bite (soundbyte?). I love ranking things based on numbers and quasi-arbitrary formulas; I used to create NFL team rankings by hand back when I was a kid, before people used computers for this (and when the season was only 12 games long). For this reason, I think that the original scored list was wonderful, and I even downloaded Mystery Case Files to check it out based on its top position.

The problem with the ensuing discussion, however, is that everybody is so fascinated with rankings, scores, and numbers that they miss the fundamental question:

Why?

There was discussion about the fact that anyone can easily get box office numbers for the movie industry. That is definitely true. The argument was made that the game portals could be convinced to provide confidential numbers for a compiled report because it would ultimately benefit them. It would. Still, pray tell, what would such a listing, especially with sales figures, do for the independent casual game developer?

Box office figures help make the movie industry a hit-driven business, just like retail video games. The reporting generally serves to remind or entice people to go spend money at their local megaplex, likely owned by one of the handful of theatre chains across the country. Do these lists do anything to promote independent films or art house cinemas? (Hint: A movie had to have at least $6.78 Million dollars in box office over last weekend to make the Top 10 in the USA.)

As I see it, a list of top selling casual games is just a bit of mathematical masturbation. It strokes ones ego (and perhaps wallet) to have a game on a hit list, but the overall impact for developers is, at best, nothing. At worst, it will consolidate control of the industry in the hands of the successful portals (even more than now) and genres will become restricted to “what sells”. (Remember, back in 1995-96, the retail industry was abuzz with ‘RPGs are dead.’)

Sales figures complicate the matter more, as the figures would inevitably be compared to retail figures and even movie box office numbers. If the casual numbers are smaller, then the retail game industry will become even more entrenched in the “core gamer” approach. If the numbers are larger, then they only serve to encourage more knockoffs and attract developers of lesser quality, whether by design or lack of talent, and flood the channels with garbage.

I was in the retail game industry in 1993 when a event that I consider a watershed moment occurred. The media reported that the game industry made more money than the movie industry (counting only domestic box office, of course). All of a sudden, basically every movie studio started up game divisions and/or began recklessly throwing money into the industry, and there was a huge influx of self-important wannabes who knew nothing about game design or development. It was a chaotic mess for a while, and a lot of junk was created (or cancelled). LucasArts was, basically, the only one that was already there and the only one that still exists today. To my mind, they were a company that intended to make games, and thereby make money, as opposed to the other studios who were simply out for the money, using games as a seemingly easily conduit.

My point is that I am an independent developer and I make casual games because I like casual games. I relish the freedom that online publishing gives to small game developers. I am concerned that there are efforts to apply some of the restrictive aspects of the retail game industry to our community. There is no reason, in my mind, for developers to assist these efforts, especially when they omit and ignore huge portions of the industry who do not participate in the scheme (i.e., remain independent).

Take an example close to my heart and livelihood. I know no figures to back this up (at least not that I am going to reveal here), but I am willing to bet that Pretty Good Solitaire outsells many of the games on the portal list. However, Pretty Good Solitaire will not make any of these lists because it is not published through portals and sales figures are never revealed. On the other hand, versions of that game have been selling for more than 10 years, and there is no new hit game that tops a list and defined the end of its reign.

Now I know rough sales figures on my own game, Pretty Good MahJongg, and I know that it does not sell as much as its cousin. On the other hand, the income is certainly more than respectable, in my opinion, and I suspect that many developers would be envious of the numbers that it sells each day. More importantly, I enjoy playing the game(s) and know that many other people do as well. Now, if I had a Top 10 List that showed Pretty Good MahJongg at #8, I would… well, I would do nothing different. Knowing that my product outsold all but a few other games on the market would probably give me warm fuzzies, but I certainly would not create a word game just because they filled slots #2-7 that week.

Before people get wrapped up into working out the logistics of doing something like this, I think that it would be a good idea to take a look at the bigger picture. (No, I do not mean motion picture.)

Ten student games garner special recognition.

Yesterday, the Independent Games Festival announced the winners of the 2006 IGF Student Showcase. Eight student game projects were selected from the 59 entries in the main Student Showcase category, plus an additional two projects from 17 submitted in a ‘middleware’ category.

Among the winners was the game, Ballistic, developed by Brandon Furtwangler, Brian Hasselbeck, and Scott Brodie, students at Michigan State University and members of the Spartasoft game development group at MSU. I had previously mentioned Ballistic back in October (in Game Competition Results) and am pleased to see that the IGF has recognized it this year. Incidentally, Spartasoft had a regularly scheduled meeting yesterday, and I imagine that it was an upbeat affair if they were notified in time.

The full list of winners:

• Ballistic (Michigan State University)
• Cloud (University of Southern California)
• Colormental (Full Sail)
• Ocular Ink (Grinnell)
• Narbacular Drop (DigiPen)
• Orblitz (DigiPen)
• Palette (SungKunKwan [South Korea])
• Sea of Chaos (DigiPen)
• Goliath [middleware] (Media Design School [New Zealand])
• NERO [middleware] (University of Texas)

I find it interesting that only two of the winners in the main category were from major universities, while half were from schools dedicated to game and multimedia education (3 from DigiPen Institute of Technology and 1 from Full Sail Real World Education). In any event, I think that this is a wonderful opportunity to showcase the talents of students interested in the game industry.

Congratulations to all of the winners!

It looks like momentum is finally starting to build.

The silver lining to reinstalling a development system from scratch is that one can configure the software and environment exactly as desired, perhaps upgrading a few pieces along the way, while eliminating items that are obsolete and mothballing the relics. This all leads to more efficiency, both functional and mental.

In my case, I replaced two hard drives, giving me more space for programs, data, and code, and I switched my primary development system to Windows XP. The system is still running on the same processors, graphics cards, and memory, but the elimination of considerable “winrot” has increased operational speed noticeably. For those unfamiliar with the term, winrot is the term for the manner in which Windows operating systems gradually slow down through the accumulation of junk (i.e., unnecessary processes and data). I used to reinstall every 3-4 months, but this one took more than a year before being forced upon me.

More importantly, though, since I decided to replace my old 8G source code drive at this juncture (as it had already outlasted two system drives), I had to choose which unfinished projects would be prioritized and which would be relegated to a backup somewhere. All at once, I had to look at the number of playable game prototypes I had not completed while culling the number of active projects down to a handful. I ended up with exactly one internal project for each (current) external project, a manageable number.

Instead of an unruly mass of many interesting projects demanding my time, I now have just a few, complete with a priority order and schedule for each, allowing me to focus better. Additionally, having just spent the better part of a week fighting with hardware and software configuration, I want nothing more than to (continue to) bury myself in programming, and when I polish off the current projects, I just need to choose my favorite working prototype as the next product.

Lest anyone think that everything was smooth sailing after the earlier hardware and driver problems, there was yet another casualty during the week. My CD-ROM drive gave up the ghost, apparently having tired of all the disc changing. Since the development system has another optical drive, a DVD burner, that can function just fine with CDs, I just left the dead hardware in place and continued unabated. When I next get an itch to mess with hardware (maybe in Springtime) I will replace it. Until then, I am just a software guy.

The start of 2006 has not been as smooth as I would have wished.

The forecast for today is a high in the 50s (Fahrenheit), which is quite warm for Michigan in January. It makes it easier for one to get out and about, though it is fairly detrimental for ice racing. It also makes it difficult to chain oneself to the office chair, especially when the developments on the desktop have been as frustrating as they have for me.

After our traditional two week hiatus, we went through the usual motions to jump start the new year. We have a big project meeting in which we discuss the plans and goals for the upcoming 12 months. For 2006, we have the same projects we had toward the end of 2005, and there were a few unfinished pieces of business left over that have to be resolved shortly. I am excited by the prospects, so I jumped right into my part.

Unfortunately, my enthusiasm was quashed in short order. As usual, I manually updated all of my virus and spyware definitions (for 5 products in total) and launched a complete drive scan. No malware was discovered, but during one of the scans, my environment hard drive crashed, leaving my primary development system sans operating system. Fortunately, my source code and data is on a separate physical drive, so nothing was permanently lost, save my time for reinstalling everything (and a couple hundred bucks for hardware).

So I eventually had the system hardware reassembled and (seemingly) functioning, and I decided to upgrade to Windows XP Pro, which was already planned for the next reinstall anyway. The operating system installed fine, but shortly after I enabled my second monitor, on a secondary video card, the machine locked up solid, but not before displaying significant amounts of garbage on that screen. Of course, now that the display is enabled, the system tries to use it on each bootup. Fortunately, I was able to tiptoe through one of these sessions to disable it again, and now I am back to stable operation, it seems.

As I type this on my brand new laptop (which unfortunately does have my email installed yet), I am downloading updated video drivers, hoping against hope that the lockup and screen artifacts are the result of a software bug, despite the appearance of a hardware failure. I am not really looking forward to purchasing a brand new graphics card as well, especially given that two such almost simultaneous problems could indicate a bigger issue (i.e., power supply or motherboard problem). I do not have the time to mess with this stuff.

Alas, one of the (few) problems with having a very small company is that I cannot just hand the problem over to a technician to fix, since I am the technician. When I want to be just a programmer, this is an annoyance and frustration.

Looking at the positive, this problem occurred just as the year was getting started, rather than right before a major milestone deliverable, and now we have it out of the way. If you want to feel progress, you can start at a low point and it is easier to improve. I am looking for the satisfaction of a small victory in being able to simply program.

In a bit of coincidental satire, the radio just played Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s Takin’ Care of Business:
“Look at me, I’m self-employed; I love to work at nothing at all day.“

Not true.

My previous post seems to have been somewhat prophetic.

I have not been able to find much time to write for this blog recently, and since the last entry, my life has taken a few sharp turns. December is usually a busy month anyway, and looking back to last year, I see that the month was entirely silent. This year, we had one project that was slipping and, thus, impacting another project. With two family birthdays early in the month, the holiday season, and an upcoming vacation, it was fairly difficult to maintain focus. It was stressful.

Then, in the midst of this, an event occurred and put everything into perspective rather quickly. My wife’s father died suddenly, albeit not unexpectedly, and really put a damper on both productivity and our ability to enjoy the holiday season. This bit of bad luck is not something that one can control, and when it happens in this manner, one is almost instantly thrust into what seems to be an alternate world.

During the ensuing confusion, I was able to observe the results of poor planning on the part of my father-in-law. Although he had been fairly clear about his wishes, and had put many of his important papers in a single place where we knew to look, he never actually wrote any of this down or made it official. Instead, those who are most affected by and emotional about the death, and least likely to be fully rational, are forced to be making important decisions based on “what he would have wanted”. Suffice it to say that despite his best intentions and a reasonably simple estate, the aftermath is somewhat messy.

The practical lesson to be taken from this is that one should always have a proper will prepared and filed, if only to relieve grieving relatives from the burden of making decisions. We are going to take care of this ourselves, just as soon as I can get my wife back here, physically and otherwise.

Normally, our office closes for the two weeks around the end of the year. Due to the placement of the holidays this year, the scheduled closing does not correspond with school vacation times, so we have split between having a vacation this week and next and (me) having next week and the following week off. The last day before the break is traditionally a half day of work (if even that), with the afternoon devoted to a party and games. Today, though, my development ran into the afternoon, and when I had completed that, I was forced to recognize that I am the only one left here. (Even the cats are away visiting, though I do have the bird.)

Sigh.

Anyway, before I exit stage left (at least for today), there is a seasonal quote to share:

“Games, Spirit! Games!!“ — Patrick Stewart, as Ebenezer Scrooge
[from A Christmas Carol (1999)]

Alas, Charles Dickens omitted these precise words from the original book, though the games themselves were certainly included.

Let me expound on the relationship between planning and luck.

In response to my Marketing experts post, Scott commented:

“Great advice, and I think you’re largely correct. The point I question is how you listed ‘Good Luck’ as a separate point. While luck in the sense of getting things to go your way is real and important, I would consider coupling that with your ‘Good Planning’ point, as good preparation and foresight is usually what leads to “improved karma’, as you put it.”

In other words, as the 1st century Roman philosopher Seneca wrote, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” I certainly agree with that, and I would be in no position to argue that point (and neither would Seneca, for that matter). Planning and luck are definitely related, as good planning allows one to take advantage of opportunities and adjust to setbacks. This gives the appearance of simple luck, when a significant portion of the outcome is due to preparation.

The best real world example of this that I can think of is the game of Backgammon. Moves in the game are based on the random roll of a pair of dice, and expert players have the ability to optimize their position for any outcome. Novice players often believe that expert opponents get lucky rolls, when the truth of the matter is that experts work towards having more good rolls and fewer bad ones. This phenomenon is so pronounced that one can read the rec.games.backgammon newsgroup and regularly witness accusations of fixed dice, whether the alleged cheating is by computer program, online game site, or even another human player.

However, that “luck” is based on situations for which one can plan and prepare, whereas in my posting, I was referring to the type of luck over which one has no control at all, or may not even understand. For example, economic factors affect sales in unpredictable ways that vary by product type, whether that be by leading, following, bucking, or even ignoring a trend. One also has little or no control over the competition or the direction a particular market goes. This type of luck can be either good or bad.

Let me provide real examples of both bad and good luck that occurred to us at SophSoft in rapid succession. To set the stage, during August and September of 2001, we were developing a self-funded game title. Around that same time, as a contingency plan, I had scheduled a meeting about another job, and it went very well. The game, which had building demolition (as with a wrecking ball) as its theme, was progressing, too.

Then, on September 11th, the world changed as a result of a terrorist attack. Suddenly, a game about tearing down a building was absolutely not entertaining, and we could not bring ourselves to work on the product, much less publish it, in the wake of the tragedy. With the contingency job, which had almost been a done deal, that company immediately froze all hiring indefinitely. Some general preparation helped mitigate damage to our company, but there was no way we could have planned for an event of such global magnitude.

In the following days, we all mourned, and then our company set about to assess the situation. We had little funding with which to build a new game, and contracting prospects were bleak. The only solution was to work to re-theme the existing game prototype on a shoestring and hope that everything would work out decently. After a few weeks of moving in this direction, I received an email inquiring whether I (specifically) was available to do contract work in a game genre I knew intimately. To make a long story short, that unexpected contract saved our company. Sure, we had a plan in action and had prepared the groundwork for receiving such an offer, but the fact that an unsolicited contract offer arrived when we most needed it was absolutely lucky.

To clarify one final point: my advice for improving ones luck was “work to improve your karma“. Fundamentally, the items that I chalk up to luck are those over which one has no control, that basically happen as a result of (mathematical) chaos in the universe. By definition, one cannot exert discernible influence over these occurrences, so instead of suggesting that one hope or pray, I inserted my own version of Pascal’s Wager:

Strive to be a Good Person; it may or may not influence luck in your favor, but in any event, you will always feel good about yourself, and others will tend to help rather than hinder you in your endeavors.

You make your own karma.

Here are a couple of quotes that caught my attention.

“Me, too. I’m In-de-pen-dent.” — Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
[from Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)]

“I was doing these visualizers for WinAmp, this plugin where you have 3D dancing girl at about 10,000 polygons. Back in 2000, that was pretty respectable. There were lots of bounce physics on those. I came up with the proper solution to the breast bouncing one night over seven Guinnesses with a waitress. I showed her my laptop, and what I was working on, and she happily jumped and bounced for me.” — Paul Steed
[from recent Gamasutra interview]

Keep smiling.

Most marketing “experts” are nothing of the sort.

The problem with self-proclaimed marketing experts is that they primarily market themselves. For the most part, marketers are dealing in something of a psychological art; marketing is not a science. Researchers can conduct experiments to show certain aspects of the process, but they cannot measure everything. However, marketers work in the area of human interaction, outside a controlled environment, so they have little to offer beyond opinions. Results can suggest a correlation between marketing and sales, but there are too many variables to be sure, and most so-called experts do not actually offer real data to support their conclusions.

In my opinion, sales success results from some combination of five ‘good’ factors:

1. Good product
2. Good planning
3. Good marketing
4. Good timing
5. Good luck

There is no doubt that marketing can play a role in building a successful product (defined broadly), but as a scientist might say it, good marketing is neither a required nor sufficient condition for success. I am getting tired of reading opinions stated as fact by people who do not (and cannot) fully understand all of the factors involved, instead chalking every success and failure up to marketing.

Worse yet are those who are so shallow as to believe that the only measure of success is money, and that a product which earns more is necessarily more worthy than one that makes less profit. That flawed concept then becomes the product that is marketed and, alas, some people buy in. Sadly, they sometimes do so in a literal sense.

Here is what I have experienced. The most successful business people I know do not proclaim themselves experts; they earn respect without demanding it. The wealthiest people I know are not prone to declaring how much money they make and do not use their balance sheet as a scorecard. Those who crow about their own importance and/or earnings at every opportunity just strike me as pathetic.

Personally, I generally judge my own success by criteria other than money. I certainly want more money, and I am willing to work hard to earn it. However, I have made many decisions in my life and career that are oriented toward other goals. I value my family, my quality of life, and my personal integrity higher than my checkbook balance. It is important to me that I enjoy what I do for a living, and that I do quality work. My wife and I try to raise our children in a loving environment where they can thrive and become productive citizens (without the insecurity that might cause them to always seek validation by demanding public attention and acknowledgement).

Anyway, we were talking about marketing. (Remember marketing? This is a rant about marketing.)

Marketing advice and ideas should be taken as opinions, mixed with ones own values and common sense, and then flavored to suit the product and circumstances. There is no right answer, and there are always factors beyond ones control. However, there are some wrong answers and obvious mistakes to avoid, and these lessons are probably more valuable than any success story.

The five good factors are listed above in order from most to least control, so here is my advice:

1. product (full control) – create something of quality
2. planning (much control) – prepare for opportunities and setbacks
3. marketing (some control) – think about your customers
4. timing (little control) – either hit the window or fail early
5. luck (no control) – work to improve your karma

Of course, that is merely my opinion, and comments are certainly welcome.

Here is my quick review of this updated development system.

Over the weekend, I took a break from productivity to finally check out Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. The DVDs had been sitting here quietly staring at me ever since I got them early this month, so I finally made some time to install it and see how it measures up to Microsoft Visual Studio / Visual C++ 6.0, which I currently use (and prefer) for the bulk of my development work.

To set the scene, I already had Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 on my system, though I never bothered to try the 2002 version. The only good thing about this product was that it would peacefully coexist with the earlier (not .NET) version, save a few stolen file associations; otherwise, though, the product was a dog. In preparation for a review, I had started on my second full page of notes about problems before I gave up on VS .NET 2003 entirely. I simply did not uninstall for fear (later proven justified) that it would mess up my productive and usable development system.

I had read a few glowing reviews of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, so I was hoping that they were accurate and that I could safely upgrade for new projects, since Microsoft seems to be actively campaigning to eliminate my current system. Apparently the phrase “compiler that is seven years old” appears on some list of talking points, as though it were derogatory. Lame.

Well, I uninstalled VS .NET 2003 and began the installation of VS 2005. The first thing to notice is that somebody in marketing figured out that “.NET” does not sell product (but does allow “.NOT” comments), and therefore that portion of the name is gone. The installation was smooth, and faster than for the predecessor, although the stylized graphics overlaid upon the same three people looked like they were either peering through a jungle gym or possibly prison bars. The selection of models was interesting, too.

After installation was complete, I went to create my first simple project. The missing “.NET” was the elephant in the room, as none of the options mention .NET by name, and knowing that it was a large part of this product, I was not sure what to avoid. Absolutely the last thing I want to do is accidentally build a game that requires another 24M download. I believe that “CLR” (for Common Language Runtime) is the first euphemistic acronym I have encountered in my career, though I could be forgetting something. I will also note that there are no project options for creating a static library (.LIB), nor for a standard DLL, unless it uses MFC. (Yuck.)

Anyway, the answer was that “Win32 Project” implies no .NET or CLR dependency. The empty project was created nicely, and I went to type a copyright symbol in my file header. No dice. It seems that the standard [Alt][0][1][6][9] does not work in the editor, a major oversight in my book. Wait a second. It works if I toggle the [NumLock] key to on. It also apparently works in a “text file” but not in a “C++ file”, so it may have something to do with the silly code outlining.

The good news is that Microsoft finally figured out how to make a help window pop up maximized, which is a massive improvement from VS 2003 being challenged to even get the miniscule window onto the correct monitor, nevermind properly sized. Unfortunately, the default for help is to hit the internet first before checking the almost 2G of help that I just put on my hard drive. That is an amazingly stupid default. Worse, I was just checking for WinMain() documentation and it just jumped to the first (wrong) thing it found, and when I got to the correct page, the declaration for the function was simply wrong!

I will also mention that much of the user interface is gratuitous fluff. There is no purpose to the non-standard menus, nor to the altered toolbar. Some standard items from version 6.0 were altered in strange ways that just made them harder to use. Whoever thought that pulldown menus to select an output window was a better idea than the tabs used previously was delusional, and the concept of windows (or options) appearing and disappearing based on context is much more confusing than useful.

When it comes to interface customization, though, the team struck out by removing icons from functions that had them in previous versions, so for my PC-lint toolbar icon, I can have text only, draw my own by hand (no pasting!), or select from a small palette of irrelevant images. (I now click an eight ball to lint a file, or a smiley face to lint the whole project.) The new icons provided look nice, but eliminating icons was a definite, if minor, step backwards.

So here is the heart of the matter for using VS 2005: actual development. I was able to use the editor and it did not seem as sluggish as the 2003 version. I was able to ignore the outlining and annoying highlighting fairly quickly so productivity there was not adversely impacted. I loaded up a version of Most Popular Solitaire and attempted to compile it. There is a new set of warnings about certain “unsafe” library calls, which were easy (albeit unnecessary) to address, and then the project compiled. It is also executed just fine.

This review needs benchmarks, of course. Actually, I only realized it needed benchmarks when I noticed a discernible (read: obvious) difference in compilation speed. One feature that VS 2005 advertises is simultaneous compilation, which seems like it should benefit my multi-processor development system. A complete rebuild of the Most Popular Solitaire project consists of three executables: release, debug, and checked. I timed a complete rebuild of the same project on my system, first with MSVC 6.0 and then with VS 2005 (allowing for the possibility of a speed advantage for the latter due to drive caching).

The difference in compilation speed was dramatic, 67 seconds versus 5 minutes 12 (312 seconds). The only problem is that the “compiler that is seven years old” was the quick one. The old compiler is roughly four and a half times the speed of the “improved” version. When I am programming, I compile quite often, and this difference between the two products could definitely impact my productivity adversely. Making the switch to VS 2005 would cost me an hour for every 15 rebuilds (of a fairly small project). Yikes!

The bottom line is that Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 is only decent when compared to its immediate predecessor, but the .NET line of this development system has still not reached the functional level achieved by the last of the purely native compilers, although it is getting closer. If one needs a feature unique to VS 2005, such as smart device emulation or .NET compilation, then this system is usable. If you are, like most shareware and PC game developers, developing native games or applications for Windows, I recommend sticking with Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 (with all of the service packs, of course).