Make It Big In Games

My daughter Allison is really into photography. Today this photo of an old, worn out Gameboy went up on her Flickr:

A couple of things immediately jumped out at me. First was a wash of nostalgia, remembering the kids playing these things until they were literally worn out. I don’t know how many we went through, but I am sure we used up at least five of these old Gameboys. I remember head to head Tetris with Colleen while laying in bed. That song still gets stuck in my head. I remember the kids trying to “collect them all” in Pokemon, playing Dr. Mario, Mario and Luigi, Golden Sun, etc. Those Gameboys kept the backseat quiet on trips, shortened airplane trips, and were played on beaches in Hawaii or in ski lodges on Mt. Bachelor. They were simply part of our lives. Sniff

The second thing that really hits home is just how much fun can be had with nearly zero processor power, black and white, dinky resolution, and no graphics processing. We didn’t even know what a shader was. 3D was not needed. SFX were minimalistic, yet the songs still ring through our heads. Great design, fun game play, and focus on what is important made the games classic.

Fortunately, these values seem to be coming back to games. There are so many outlets for games that creative teams with innovative visions can bring their creations to wide audiences.

-Jeff Tunnell, Game Maker

Video games continue their trajectory towards increased complexity. We’ve watched the jump from 2D sprites, to rendered 3D objects, to next-gen shaders and high polygon models. We’ve seen games go from multiplayer on the same machine, to multiplayer over a modem, to entire server farms hosting persistent games millions of users strong. In the rush to improve the most surface aspect of games — the graphics — other important aspects like building community have been ignored.

Mario sits pretty in the third dimension — the community dimension — in this community created fan art piece

Community is the latest trend and buzzword to be sure, but an ironic one in that the community features we’re seeing now could have been present in games long ago (and many were, but were ahead of their time). In the same way that 3D graphics don’t merely escalate 2D graphics but add a dimension to them, adding community to games doesn’t merely escalate a multiplayer game but adds a new dimension to them. This blog post is not a theoretical one however, and will help give you ways to “communify” your game, offering you both practical tips and high-concept ideas. Though we ourselves have built a game community via The Great Games Experiment, and are now building a game portal with community features via InstantAction, these tips can be used by any developer for any platform. Use these tips to add the extra dimension of community to your game!
Read the rest of this entry »

With the big acquisition announcement GarageGames made a while ago, sometimes it is hard to stay grounded in the every day. However, there is a very human aspect to all of this news, and I hope I can capture some of it for your enjoyment!

A year ago when I was on my first vacation to Italy and France, I got an email from Josh Williams in an Internet cafe. It was really short, “IAC wants to talk to us.” We had just gone through a couple of months on another acquisition offer that we ended up turning down. I was tired, and ready to just put pedal to the metal with GG and make it go on our own, so my answer was “no thanks.” Then the business side of me kicked in, and I said, “OK, I’m in for discussion, but they need to allow us to keep doing things the way we are, i.e. making game development accessible to everyone, and treat developers like we want to be treated.” BTW, that was pretty much the reaction from all of the GG partners/stakeholders, so Josh pursued it, they loved our strategy, and it kept looking good.

So, as soon as I got back, Josh and I made a trip down to Los Angeles to meet with Victor Kaufman, the Vice Chairman of IAC, to see if we should move forward, and if a deal made sense. We left the meeting stoked. Victor is a finance guy, but he has made movies and done a lot of really creative things in the past, and he made us feel welcomed and genuinely understood what we were trying to do.
Read the rest of this entry »

We’re excited about the new platform we’re developing called InstantAction. We believe it will be an exciting new medium for indies to publish to. But no matter what platform a game resides on or what new technology exists, the same bread and butter principles still guide all good design. Having a cool platform with the opportunities and features that platform affords is not a shortcut to good design. And a part of good design is focusing your game to give players a satisfying experience. This post describes a technique to help bring focus to your design to give players more of what they want and less of what they don’t. This is one technique and not the last word on the matter, but try it and see if it’s useful to you.

You have a vision for what your game should be, but you can’t see it with a hundred percent clarity yet. Sometimes it feels like you’re a jazz musician trying out different riffs and going with what seems cool. In the end, as long as the behavior of the game works — that is, it’s fun — the process of how you got there doesn’t matter. Or does it?

In later stages of game design it takes structure to produce a well balanced design, unlike abstract painting where you dabble and feel your way through the entire process. Game design is in good part a methodology. That methodology taken to its extreme removes the creative element from design. But used in good measure, design benefits from structural techniques. The following is a simple design focusing technique that I employ. In addition to using it, I’ve helped several developers with it to help them focus their designs too. It is another tool for the designer’s arsenal. Let’s begin!
Read the rest of this entry »

IAC/InterActiveCorp today plans to announce it has taken a majority stake in game developer GarageGames to anchor a soon-to-be launched gaming site, InstantAction.

More information here:

IAC/Interactive Takes Game Designer Stake

I will be talking about this a lot in the future, but for tonight, I can just let it all soak in:)

-Jeff Tunnell, Game Maker
Make It Big In Games
GarageGames

Lately, GarageGames has had the good fortune to begin to fund game ideas for publication. So, for a few months, starting last April, I began to talk to outside developers about what games they would like to create. My job was to pull together a portfolio of games that would be unique, fun, and, since it is a business, eventually sell and make money. I thought it would be no problem since we have been making games for six years with absolutely no money. I figured a few calls to developers that we had been working with and met over the years, and the portfolio would practically fall into place. Turns out I was wrong.

Our only requirement was that the games be fun. I was not looking to change the world, just pull together some fun games. After all, games should be fun, first, and anything else later. My assumption was that developers would be walking the talk of all the Indie blogs and game blogs that are complaining about mainstream publishers putting out the same old crap, and and have a bunch of ideas just bursting to get out into the world. Well, not so much. At least 80% of the developers we approached were like a deer in the headlights when asked to come up with an idea. We did end up with a bunch of great games, but it was just a lot harder than I thought it would be.

I can’t go into all of this too much more, but will cover it at a later time. Besides, the above story is just an anecdote to set up the premise of this article. The actual premise is game ideas. You should have literally hundreds of them floating around in your head. Even better, you should have hundreds of them written in your own design portfolio or journal.

I have been preaching this for years. At every IGC, I have gone over it, yet continue to see game developers that have only ONE idea. One idea won’t cut it. What if you can’t get other people on your team to buy into your one idea? What if the technology is not available to get you one idea done? What if you can’t find a publisher if your idea is too big to fund yourself? There are many, many reasons why you need a LOT of game ideas.
Read the rest of this entry »

As you may have noticed, the How to Pitch Your Game post was not written by me. It was written by Josh Dallman, a producer at GarageGames. Here is Josh’s profile on Great Games Experiment.

Josh is one of the best producers I have ever worked with. He understands game designs at a very deep level, can help with the contracting process, is extremely organized, and has lived the “Indie” life. After a stint at Microsoft, Josh decided he wanted to make games. He took the advice of “right sizing your life” to the most extreme level I have ever seen by selling all of his stuff, getting in his car (that became his house), and moving to Mexico in order to save enough money to get his game made. For anybody that thinks game development should be easy or handed to them on a silver platter, Josh is a living example that you are wrong.

After turning me down several times, Josh finally accepted a position at GarageGames, where he has been in charge of acquiring games for the GG Game Store as well as some other important tasks that we can’t talk about right now. Josh has agreed to help me get more regular posts out here on Make It Big In Games as well as help fill out our lingering game development wiki.

-Jeff Tunnell, Game Maker
Make It Big In Games

It was one year ago that GarageGames introduced the Affiliated Developer program. In that year as a producer I’ve reviewed countless video game pitches from good to awful. I am marking the one year occasion by guest authoring Jeff’s blog to offer broad tips that will help independent game developers successfully pitch themselves or their game to any publisher without boring the publisher or losing their interest. Batter up!

Insider tip: “Zzzz” is not the sound of approval

First, a quick reminder on what our own AD program is:

“We are working with a few great developers to make games that are exclusive to GarageGames and that we help bring to market. We call this our Affiliated Developer partnership program.”

- Jeff Tunnell in Sept 2006, coining the Affiliated Developer program

Even before the coining of Affiliated Developer we always got pitches and sought good developers. It did not change with the AD program and has not changed since. Good publishers are always on the lookout for new projects and people to work with and we are no exception. This has always been the case and is no different now.

My goal here is to help you make better pitches by sharing what I’ve seen. It is broad advice and totally non-specific to GG (making it highly DIGGable *wink*). The subtitle for this post could be “pitching tips from a game industry catcher.”

The range of pitches I’ve reviewed is huge, from literally two word emails (”you like?” followed by an attached movie) to 30 page design docs complete with appendix detailing every mouse click. Everything from casual puzzle games to WOW clones; from someone who’s never shipped a game requesting a third of a million dollars to start their business to experienced developers delivering sober proposals. From that stack, here’s my advice:
Read the rest of this entry »

Testing, testing. Fhh, fhhh, fhhhhhhh.

Is this thing on?

Time to blow the cobwebs out of the RSS pipes, and get back to blogging.

Wow, time flies when you are having fun. After working on Great Games Experiment for the last part of 2006, I have moved on to actually making games! After seven years of working on GarageGames, and kind of delaying gratification by not getting to work directly on games, I am finally back in the saddle… and it feels awesome!

Of course, I have been working on some more top secret stuff that will be announced soon, but isn’t that always the case? Can’t wait to discuss publicly.

I am looking forward to writing about what is rapidly shaping up to be the absolute best time in history to make games. There is money to make games, rabid demand from gamers on all formats is pushing competition harder than ever, but that is creating huge opportunities. If you ever wanted to make games, now is the time. The slump is WAAAAY over, and it is time to hammer it!

-Jeff Tunnell, Game Maker

Make It Big In Games blog has been quiet for a couple of months because most of my time has been spent working on our social networking site, Great Games Experiment (GGE). I have also been working on some new games, but that is fodder for future posts.

Great Games Experiment is a social networking site built around games.
What is social networking for games? Here are just some of the features.

Read the rest of this entry »