Before we decided to pull off of Liferaft I had an idea while we were attending IndieCade in early October. Like every other idea I have I wasn’t sure about how doable it would be, but I started fleshing it out right there in the park next to the Ivy Substation in Culver City.

Like Gray, the idea is best boiled down into a simple phrase.
Cliche

“If you love something, you have to set it free.”

This wasn’t the initial spark, but merely a way to compact the complex personal issue I wanted to express into something that would be easier to hone in on. Pterogative is definitely the most personal game I’ve ever worked on. It’s only recently that I’ve started allowing my personal life to influence my games, previously they involved larger issues like politics, religion or Wal-Mart. At IndieCade Daniel gave a talk about how he works and the intangible things that go into the games he makes. It’s always interesting to hear how other people approach creativity, and occasionally bits and pieces can really change the way I approach it. One little bit stuck with me [paraphrasing].

Daniel

“You know it’s getting to the right place when you get a knot in your throat. I’m usually embarrassed or exposed when I release a game. That’s how I know it’s honest.”

That sounds more like the opposite feeling you want to have when releasing a game, but when it comes to communicating something personal about yourself honestly, if you don’t feel naked, then it needs more work.

When I talk about the origins of Pterogative to Mike or other close friends, it’s always embarrassing to some degree. I suppose that’s what reminds me that the idea is honest and worth pursuing. That doesn’t mean the game will have the same effect, but I think it’s on the right track. We will see.

But why would this idea be best expressed in a game? Why not just write a short story about my experience, fiction or non-fiction? That’s fair, but I feel there’s more potential in a game. Beyond any other art-form, games include personal interaction as THE device that allows for a deeply personal experience. People don’t change unless they want to. Yes? If they pick up Passage and don’t let it in, well they weren’t vulnerable enough to let it affect them in the first place. If that same person saw The David in person, I’m not sure that’d garner much more of a reaction than “Whoa, that’s a big naked dude!” Not exactly the intended effect…

Interpretation will always be personal, but games have this whole interaction thing that’s happening every second of the experience [mostly]. Games are actually much more directed. The rules are set, the player has to admit to them and control the game in order to continue. The give and take there creates a bond, however fragile, between the game world and the player’s brain. Rather than leave it up to chance, the game can create its own context and influence people directly. If you don’t think that’s true, then you haven’t noticed the 10+ million people playing WoW.

The cliche itself, “if you love something you have to set it free”, doesn’t really resonate with many people strongly enough to make any real impact. It’s too abstract, too lifeless. The work I want to do now would take an incredibly real piece of life, interpret it simply, then communicate it back to people with that elegant simplicity while retaining as much of the original emotion as possible. Clarify, reflect and change.

Whoops. Re-reading this and it looks like I went on a bit of a rant. BTW, what do you think of the title? I’m still unsure about it and suggestions would be welcome. Do you “get it”? Or is my latin mish-mash far too clever/pretentious?

Hopefully this will be a big success, since we as developers really need more Unity portals out there.  I’ve been working on a couple small Unity games myself and have been a little uncertain if I would be able to shop my games around much.

I even considered e-mailing the guys at Blurst to propose putting something on their site, but it looks like they’ve already done the work required to set something like this up.

More and more, it seems like Matthew Wegner and Steve Swink at Flashbang are becoming the father figures of the indie games scene.  The IGF, the IGS, an indie games portal… What’s next, indie games philanthropy?  An indie games school?  At any rate, I salute the fine gentlemen of Flashbang for their work at building the indie community up.  A Blurst portal is simply the next step for them.

Me

“This is actually kind of easy. It’s not perfect or even great, but making a game with a message is a relatively simple pursuit. So why is making a fun game so hard?”

After some thinking and a few late night discussions with people smarter than me I’m pretty sure I know why.

Fun is a dead horse

When it comes to games, that’s the one trait of a game that people gauge. Sure reviewers will throw in ratings for graphics and music, but that’s mostly naive. Their response to the game directly hinges on if the total package was entertaining. If the art style is horrendous, but the game is fun/engaging [Sexy Hiking] then all is forgiven. The fact is, people have been perfecting the art of making fun games for the last few decades. They’ve gotten pretty amazing at it. Though, take a step back for a moment. Why are we still going after Fun like it’s the Holy Grail?

Golden Developer

“It’s simple. Make a good game.”

That sucks. Not because it’s untrue, but because it doesn’t help at all. Well how do I make a good game?! What is a good game? Well, for the most part, a good game is a fun game. Right? Gray was a game we made that completely ignored fun. In fact we didn’t want it to be fun at all, if it was, it would have muddled the message. But yet, to a fair amount of people, Gray is a good game. As I said earlier, it was fairly easy to make. Certainly much easier than making something like Dinowaurs or even Fig. 8 because those chased Fun.

F • un

What is Fun anyway? Well it’s engaging. Often a challenge of just enough difficulty to be compelling but not enough to be frustrating with enough variety to maintain interest. At least that’s how I see it. Fun is about learning new skills and using those skills and being rewarded for using them. The rewards vary. In WoW, rewards come by way of numbers. Other times rewards are more intangible, such as “skill” in a hand-eye-coordination game like Halo. That’s really it though, and it’s not easy. Designing a game that does this well is no small task.

Though, designing the first Fun video game was probably a bit easier than designing a Fun video game today. Why? Well, we’re spoiled. We get Fun thrown at us from all directions to the point where we have an incredibly high tolerance for it. Each new game must do something slightly different, but not too different or it will be too frustrating/confusing for the players. In the beginning, games were hard. Kid Icarus hard. But now, designers have learned that doesn’t hit the Fun sweet spot, so we’ve altered things to capitalize on the Fun.

Look at Valve. Perhaps the best game developer in the universe, but they don’t have a roadmap for Fun even. They know when they have it, that’s a skill in itself, but they spend years play testing and tweaking a game in order to get it to that point. Do a couple guys with laptops have that kind of time and resources? That’s where we’re at right now. Surely we can still compete through the Fun angle with interesting new ideas even today, which is pretty incredible when you think about it, but it is most certainly rare.

Video games are porn

I love this quote, though this isn’t verbatim.
John Carmack

“Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It’s expected to be there, but it’s not that important”

Carmack isn’t wrong, but he succumbs to the same notion that all of us have. If film was invented and the only thing we did with it was make porno for 30 years, it’s clear that people would start associating film with porno. Of course there’s a lot more that you can do with film than show people having sex. Why not video games as well?

Well, some of folks are trying. Beyond “art games” plenty of Fun games have nuggets of message in them and they always will, but for those to work they’ve had to have a healthy dose of Fun, and often times having a mechanic that is Fun and provides the right message through gameplay leaves things muddy for the player. They’re focusing on the entertainment, not the meaning. The UnFun games movement isn’t a dead horse at all, in fact it can barely walk! Eventually, though, these will grow and mature into a market that will challenge the traditional video game market. Carmack is right, video games are porn. That might seem outrageous, and it definitely sells Fun video games way too short, but it wouldn’t be a wake-up call if it wasn’t annoying, right?

Now there is huge blank canvas for people to experiment in all kinds of ways. If you cross Fun off your To Do list, then you free yourself as a developer to search an almost endless amount of emotions/responses. That’s really what fun is isn’t it? It’s just a response. There are hundreds more we can look into.

So let’s go do that.

Don’t Compete

If we don’t compete with Fun games, we’ll save ourselves the enormous burden of honing in on that special formula of fun. If few people have really been making any games about honor [right Clint? :P], loss, or obesity, then we don’t have to trump the last guy. The bar is lower and that’s not a bad thing. That’s a great thing!
Kyle Gabler

“AAA game companies have hundreds of people with millions of dollars that allow them to produce high caliber games and would be incredibly daunting to compete with. So don’t.”

Greg and I have gotten a lot of inspiration in the past couple weeks from going to Indiecade and TIGJam, and we’ve more or less realized that we don’t feel comfortable continuing work on Liferaft, which is a very difficult decision this late in development. We started production back in March and we’ve been investing our time in the project since then, giving a little time off for Fig. 8, and that’s a lot of work to just put aside because we’ve gotten tired. I think the source of the problem isn’t that we’re incapable of doing the work or that we don’t like the game, but it is the constant creative challenge and the pressure we’ve put on ourselves to create an amazing game which lives up to all the games we love. There are so many design challenges with a somewhat open 2D platformer which we have never encountered before that we just have no idea how to create the best levels and encounters, and we don’t have the time or money to just keep iterating it until it’s perfect.

I’ve spent a ton of time trying to create tools which would allow us to create a rich living environment, but that simply shifts the problem to actually creating that environment. Building rich levels which really give a sense of place and meaning is incredibly difficult, and fitting that into a series of encounters which gradually push the learning curve is a huge challenge. I believe that we could overcome this challenge if we were rested and excited (and if we had a lot of cash to burn on iterating), but the reality is that we’re too tired to continue pushing.

This obviously doesn’t mean our time on Liferaft was totally wasted, we may still pick up the project if we feel we can return to it, and we’ve also learned a lot during the production. Part of the problem of such a big project is that it becomes very difficult to implement lessons learned into the early part of the project, which isn’t a problem with the development of small games like Fig 8. The thing about our small games, Gray, Wild an Free and Fig 8, is that they’re not perfect and that’s OK. We have the crutch of saying “Well, it’s just a 2 week game, it’s good enough,” which is something we can’t really say with Liferaft. This allows us to create something pure and quick, and we don’t have to worry about perfection because we’ll do better the next time.

So we’re working on two new small-ish Flash games, and Intern Rob is actually doing a third game in Unity, which I’ll be helping with as well. It may seem counter-productive to take on three separate projects when we’re supposedly too exhausted to work on Liferaft, but the reality is that working on small games is really energizing for some reason. Perhaps it is the thought that the end is in sight from the very start that keeps us pushing harder, but Gray and Fig 8 were more like vacations for us than actual work. We truly believe that we’re good at making small games, so it seems natural that we focus on that for a while.

To be honest, I still love Liferaft, and I sincerely hope we get a chance to return to it with a stronger focus and confidence. We haven’t worked very hard to promote interest in it and yet a lot of people have told us how awesome they think it is, which is really gratifying. The response on Kickstarter has been great as well, and it’s really awesome to see people coming out to support us, but the reality is that development over September has been pathetically slow, and we’ve lost a lot of the vision of where to go.

Expect some new stuff from us soon, and hopefully a lot more experimentation. We need to keep trying new things if we’re ever going to make this company work. We’ve got some really neat ideas we’re working on with other indies and I’m really excited about the games we’re doing now, hopefully we can start releasing some info about them soon :)

EDIT:
OH, forgot about the Kickstarter side of the issue. Everything donated so far through Kickstarter has been a pledge, which means no money has changed hands and nobody has actually given us any money yet. We’re going to cancel our project which will make all of the pledges null and all that stuff. We always viewed the Kickstarter page as an experiment, and it’s been a pretty interesting thing to watch, but if we’re not sure we’re going to complete Liferaft then there’s no way we could take any money from our fans. We would much rather just cancel it before we got the money than take your money and then fail to make the game.

To everyone who did support us, thanks so much! Even though we’re not actually going to get your money, your support really does mean a lot to us, it’s awesome to know some people believe in us enough to give money before the game is even done :)

We’ll probably be playing Pong in tennis outfits. Actually I don’t know what would be appropriate – maybe Eliss on a Tablet PC? But I have neither an iPhone nor a tablet, so how about you show up and bring something cool.

Also, if the concept on its own wasn’t enough to bring you here, FLATFORM, an awesome DJ/VJ duo will be doing an audio-visual mix-up of the films along with records of music from the various soundtracks. Even more notable is that ReadyMade magazine will be at the party documenting how awesome it is. If enough of us show up, I bet we could convince them to publish an article about how DIY hipsters should decorate their rooms with indie gaming merch from Attract Mode.

I Always Wanted To Be A Tenenbaum is October 17th at 8pm at 1705 Pleasant St, Apartments #1 & #2.  There will be rooms themed to each film, lots of quality free food, free drinks, and free prizes. Cover is $5 if you get a freaking sweet ticket (pictured above) in advance. Send an e-mail to iheartwesanderson [at] gmail [dot] com. I’ll be going as Bert Fischer, Max Fischer’s dad in Rushmore.

The second party is called MOVEMENT BASH, held at Impromptu Studio (300 SW 5th St) on October 22nd at 6pm. The idea behind this party is to celebrate the local entrepreneurs that are doing cool stuff in the area.  Other people from around the Midwest will be coming to Des Moines for Highlight Midwest, so this is intended as a party to get them warmed up.

I figured we should show up to let them know there are devs around making games.  Like the previous party, there will be free beverages, free food, and free entertainment.  No cover either.  My friend Matt Shwery hand-screenprinted the posters I designed for MOVEMENT BASH.  It was a fun project, and I hope to put those skills to use on some game posters in the future.  Maybe it’s just me, but I fantasize about guerilla marketing antics plastering posters and stickers of indie games all over the city.

Mikengreg just returned safely from IndieCade to the gray plains of Iowa and we couldn’t be happier. It’s Mike’s birthday [wish him well on twitter] today and we’re both charged full of IndieCade. Countless memories, so many new-old friends, it was an unbelievable gathering of intimate and heartfelt personalities that we will never forget. We love you all.

Mike was so happy he dusted off his stripping skills for you all.

While I was considering on writing more of a reflective post on how this has transformed my life, I think right now there’s simply too much to talk about and the message would get lost. For now, here are some videos that capture a little bit of the tone of our experience.

Also check out my flickr set for all of the [crappy] pictures I took during the festival.

IndieCade Videos

Cactus makes for great couch play. ;) Here’s part 2 [much longer at 9+ min.]

Zach and Steph battle it out. Check out Unify

She doesn’t just write adventure games, she lives them!

Not to brag or anything but we slept together. :P

In a lapse of judgement Daniel gives up his trade secret: brain damage.

This kept going on with MarioKart and glitch art. Very cool.

To be clear, a collaboration is a type of working relationship where all parties agree to some kind of revenue split on a per-project basis. This has nothing to do with hiring employees, contractors or anything else. Anyway, here’s some of what I learned about finding good collaborators.

When I start to look for a collaborator, I go through a series of steps to get to the actual point of making the game. It’s my vetting process. But before that, I think it’s important to understand the nature of a collaboration. How it will work for you and the other person[s] and why.

Partners v. Collaborators

Usually, when someone thinks of making they start with The Almighty Game Development Company. It’s how I started. But truthfully, that’s a whole other mess. Finding a partner is a serious commitment, like marrying someone. A collaborator is more of a girlfriend/boyfriend situation, and rarely includes living together! ;) Distinguishing the two is important for a number of reasons.

Short-term commitments

By eliminating the idea of a long-term, serious commitment to a partner you can afford to fail. That’s incredibly important because you will fail a lot in your search for the right collaborator. The trick though, is to fail in short bursts, wasting as little time as possible.

You’re allowed to be desperate

If you were to form up a partnership with someone that would presumably last for many years, you wouldn’t want to go in signing that contract with a shred of desperation. Would you? Put your feelers out, lay yourself out for everyone to see. Sure, the search for a partner/collaborator is very similar but the emotional impact of people abusing your investment is much, much less.

Know what you want

By talking to people with the intention of creating something with them you’ll figure out your own turn-ons and turn-offs and what you’re looking for in someone else. There is a lot of complexity within anyone’s personality so it’s up to you to find out what values are most important to you. For instance, perhaps you need someone that aligns with your style of brainstorming, or you can’t work with people who want to make RTSs [or any other certain kind of game].

I’ve been able to isolate a number of these traits that clash/mesh when working with someone closely on a creative project.

Work style

This is a tough one to pin down because you need to work together first to truly understand how the other works, but that shouldn’t stop you from asking. Ask about their hours, when they are most productive, what’s the usual? The thing about these questions is that they all infer that they work regularly. If they come off as sporadic or unorganized, that’s pretty telling that they haven’t developed a style at all. If that’s the case, I’d recommend moving on since it means they probably haven’t been doing this for long enough anyway.

If they do have a style, know what you can tolerate and what you can’t. Usually this isn’t a large problem if you can understand it early enough. That way you’ll know how to work best with that person. If they need false deadlines, set them. If they binge and do 90% of their work in the space of one manic day, don’t hound them the rest of the week.

Creative Process

Not everyone wants to be a game designer, but most do. Finding a common ground on how to come up with a game idea can definitely be a challenge on its own, let alone two strangers fumbling around trying to agree on one. I think, more than anything, this is what trips up most collaborations. Too often, one person has a really strong attachment to an idea [or type of game] they bring to the table and can’t let it go. It’s important to allow for wiggle room, be lenient and let the idea be owned by all people involved. Even if one person came up with a single area or story idea, that’s still an important contribution. Get excited about the idea and riff on it, don’t obsess about owning the seed, you’ll get nowhere fast.

Demeanor/Personality

This is something that’s often a chemistry issue. While it’s ideal that you meet someone in person to truly gauge whether your personalities blend well, I think with a healthy chat via Skype or something else you can get a good idea for how the person generally is. This is a gut thing, so any further explanation is a bit ridiculous. Just make sure you get that “good feeling” from the other person.

Mission/Goal

Make sure you are both doing this for similar reasons. If halfway through you realize that your collaborator is doing this purely for profit, disregarding any possible creative ideas you have about design or awesomeness for the sake of pandering to a canned audience, things will go South very quickly. Again, know who you are and why you’re doing this. If you’re in it for the money, find someone else who’s in it for the money.

I’ve been watching Dexter and there was a really good moment in a recent episode [season 1] where he asks a married couple a very interesting question.
Dexter

Why do you love each other?

Married Couple

Because we share the same dream.

Even though they were killing smuggled Cubans and dumping them in the Pacific, they still shared the same dream. I found that comforting. The dream isn’t important, what’s important is that you share it. There’s someone for everyone.

Conflict Resolution/Breaking Point

This may be one of the hardest things to vet out as nobody [sane] wants to initiate a conflict for the sake of finding out how eachother reacts to it. Though you can definitely understand how someone deals with mini-conflicts by criticizing their ideas/design. If a prospective collaborator were to fly off the handle after you mentioning something about your apprehension to including real-time weather patterns in your game, you might want to step away.

Conflict is a very real and necessary element to any kind of team effort. They will arise and they must be dealt with in one way or another. If they cannot be handled in a reasonable way, that can be a leading cause to a game’s death or some other terrible outcome. Definitely think ahead as much as possible to how someone might respond to adversity.

The Vetting Process

Ok, so that’s some general things to look out for, now for the process itself. In step-by-step form!

STEP ONE: Put the feelers out

What you’re looking for is someone who is everything you’re not. Maybe it’s two people, maybe it’s five. Whatever it is, if you’re an artist, look for games with programmer/amateur art. If you’re a programmer, look for artists with game mockups, paintings and the like. You’re not necessarily looking for amazing games here. Those are games that already have the total package. You need to find half-baked games preferably mocked up or programmed by one person.

Alternatively, it’s important for you to put your best foot forward. If you’re an artist, provide a link to your portfolio that showcases your best and most relevant work. If you’ve made games before, point directly to them. If you’re a programmer, do the same. It’s not enough to simply be interested, you need to prove why you’re going to be awesome to work with. Make your intentions clear. More on that later.

This being the internet, there are loads of places to find people actively looking for collaborators. Though, because of that, things are pretty competitive. Here’s just a few. If you have any suggestions on other places let me know in a comment and I’ll add it to the list.

• TIGForums COLLABORATION THREAD
• Kong’s Collabs
• Kong Collab Forum
• Newgrounds Artists
• Newgrounds Programmers
• Pixelation Job Board
• FlashGameArt Artist List
• FlashGameLicense Collaboration Thread
• DeviantArt suggested by Colm

Now this list is focused around finding someone with experience in making Flash games. That’s where my experience lies, but surely there are other places, if you have one and you’re reading this. Please let me know so I can add it.

There are definitely other places to find collaborators. I met Andy Moore at the 2009 GDC in San Francisco. I found Jiggmin through his game Platform Racing 2. None of those happened based on a post from a forum, I found them by emailing with them directly.

STEP TWO: Set a course

Once you’ve got some prospective collaborators on the line, you’ve got to hook them. I’d encourage you to try and foster an environment that is as creatively open and fair as possible while also maintaining a very small scope for your first collaboration together. There are a few ways to do this.

1. Do not come in to a collaboration with a preconceived game idea
2. Split any future profits equally among original collaborators [for the most part]
3. Define a basic timeline. eg. “Let’s make this game in two weeks.”
4. Go further and agree on a mini-milestone such as: “Game ideas by tomorrow.”
5. Chat with them at length

All of these agreements will tell you a lot about the other person and definitely bring up a good many red flags if they exist. If someone misses the “game ideas by tomorrow” deadline, then that’s probably a red flag that they may not be as committed to this as you are. Alternatively, if they have Idea A that they really want to make and you’re just not into it but they keep pushing, well that’s another red flag. The reason you’re setting a course is so that you both have to follow it.

Frankly, a large part of this is about your gut. If you get a good vibe from the other[s] then move forward. I’ve had a fair amount of collaborations never get past this stage due to a whole host of problems. Many of them are completely understandable. Most of the time, it simply doesn’t work out. It’s nobody’s fault, just a bad combo.

STEP THREE: Fast Prototype

Once you’ve decided on an idea it’s important to get something up and running ASAP. Don’t get entrenched in a series of game design documents and planning schedules. Those can be useful, but if you spent a month doing all that only to find out that when it actually comes to making the game it’s not going to work out, then that’s time wasted. The main idea here is to fast forward to the good part so you can find out if it’s really going to work or not.

STEP FOUR: Communicate and Develop

Decide on a chat program/account that you will both use to keep in touch daily. If you are going on vacation, let the other person know. Since most of these happen remotely this kind of feedback is really important for motivating the other member[s]. Sometimes simply not knowing what’s up with the other person will coerce you into slowly losing hope that the project will actual be completed. If you’re wondering, shoot them an email! If they go AWOL, they go AWOL and that sucks, but at least you know, learn and move on.

It’s a bit ludicrous to reduce this stage [certainly the bulk of the time] to a couple paragraphs, but game development is its own animal all together. The best advice I can give is to communicate throughout the development process, even if it’s just saying “Hi” in the morning. It’s enough to let the other person know you care, which is a lot more important than most people think it is.

STEP FIVE: Profit

Once you’ve finished the game, regardless of the platform, there will certainly be a lot more work to do in order to distribute the game. Even if it’s a Flash game, you’ll probably want to find a sponsor, set up ads or even use some kind of microTX system. Whatever the case, the work continues and it’s important to realize that.

I hope my haphazard brain-dump helps a few folks out there, if you have comments or criticisms please post below. I’d be curious to hear other folk’s experiences with this practice.

Anyway, for the IndieCade dealio we’ll be in LA for the entire thing, October 1st – 5th. Mike and I are doing a “salon” of some sort on Friday morning. They tell us we don’t need a cosmetology license or anything like that so I think it’s just us talking. Come and see to find out!

Also, the folks over at IndieCade wanted us to record a little video interview. We didn’t really know what to do but when we were recording my Mom called and saved the day by asking us some hard-hitting questions. Diane Sawyer is one of her idols and I think her influences really shine through in this revealing exposé. Watch it after the jump.

By the way, if you haven’t played either of these games, you can check them out here:

• Play Fig. 8
• Play Gray

As far as we know, we’ll have a booth/setup at Indiecade with Gray playable at one of our laptops or something and we’ll be there throughout the festival talking with anyone who wants to. For the Eurogamer Expo, we will not be there as we could barely afford the trip to LA, flying across an ocean is a bit out of budget for us. But… if you’re in that neck of the woods there should be an automated version of Fig. 8 at a booth somewhere that you can play. Perhaps they will have some sort of notebook that you can draw in. No guarantees!

Anyway, we’re a bit floored that these little games have garnered so much attention from these shows/festivals and we couldn’t be more proud of our little guys. They grow up so fast! If you have a chance to make it out to IndieCade, don’t hesitate to say hi, we’ve never been to LA so we’ll probably be bored/clueless otherwise.

So if you’re a student at ISU or know of one that is interested in game development please drop us a line. We would have been rabid for this kind of opportunity back when we were in school. There have to be some folks hiding in the basements around campus that are just as crazy. Right?!

For those interested here’s the posting we’re shopping around:
Mikengreg

Hey prospective intern!

We’re Mike Boxleiter and Greg Wohlwend, 2/5 of intuition games, a Midwest based game developer right in your own backyard! This internship will take place in our Ames offices so you will be working directly with Mike and Greg. To learn more about us please visit: http://www.intuitiongames.com. We’re looking for 1 intern for the Fall 2009 semester as part of the Reiman Internship Program through ISU. Right now we’re working on a game called Liferaft, you can play an early alpha build here: http://www.intuitiongames.com/games/liferaft. This is the project you will be working on with us if you’re selected for the internship.

Most likely you will design and edit levels, environments and other gameplay systems. While this boilerplate message does get us to a certain point, we’re much more interested in talking with you in person and finding out more about you. Here’s a bit of what we’re looking for as far as specific skills:

REQUIREMENTS
You must be an ISU student.
You must have a strong desire/passion for game development.

RECOMMENDED SKILLS
Experience with Adobe Flash CS3
and/or
Quick learner of software tools

EXTRA PERKS
Experience with ActionScript3.0
and/or
Experience in drawing/design

Essentially, we want someone who can hit the ground running (within reason) with a great attitude and a passion for game development that matches our own. We understand that’s a bit of a tall-order but that’s why: “There can be only one!” If you think you’re the one, or your friends think you are, but you haven’t built up the necessary confidence yet ;) then send us an email at team@intuitiongames.com with a little bit about yourself. We’ll go from there and set up a meeting.

We’re offering between $10 and $12.50/hr for this internship and hours will be around 20/week.

Right now we’re working on the different levels or “areas” for Liferaft. We’ve never really done that before, not in this scope, and it’s scary. We fleshed out “level 1″ with a fair amount of detail here but that painted us into a serious corner given that we haven’t used our extremely precious friend-playtest-kleenexes yet. It took a very serious conversation and a bit of collapse on my part to realize we need to scrap that entire level and go back to the drawing board with a different approach. It was difficult, but those are the kinds of moments that we must concede to in order to make the best game we possibly can. It also helps with sanity.

Back at the drawing board Mike pointed to the Valve approach towards level design. It’s hard to argue with Valve when it comes to level design. Essentially they ward against putting in any detail into the level before it’s been well tested thoroughly and gone through whatever incredible gauntlet they have over there. The tough part about that for us though, is the gauntlet. We don’t have a gauntlet to stock with dozens of testers nor the time to build or even manage one. Nonetheless, the nugget we can take away from their process is to simply make quick drafts, undetailed “debug-mode” platforms on a black background. That’s how we’re designing levels now and it’s already starting to be a relief. What was once a gigantic task to create the all of episode 1 bit by bit is now something that we can visualize by playing these “skeleton levels.” Even if they’re bad, it’s still something.

Beyond that, there was also some trouble with the manner in which we thought about the levels.

Mike

Let’s think about levels as structures for gameplay and reduce them down to their core values in order to better teach the player how to play the game. We can’t just expect people to understand everything about our game, we don’t want them not knowing about an ability they could always use only to find out from a friend and have a worse experience.

Greg

Let’s think about levels as a physical structure and a real building. Goss grew up in isolation for decades, let’s make it less like a playground and more like a prison with a flood of new and exciting experiences all at once to drive home that feeling of freedom when she finally breaks out.

So those are basically our thesis statements for the argument and it came down to a matter of stamina really. It was a very hard fought dispute from both sides and in the end I think we made the right decision to go with Mike’s idea of focusing on usability as opposed to drama.

While the graph on the right is more interesting, it doesn’t mean it’s a good starting point. By having a clear-cut stairstepped graph to go from and be confident with we can then have more freedom to make modifications as we edit the levels so that the graph on the left begins to look like the graph on the right. But I guess we’ll have to see. Like I said, we don’t really know what we’re doing.

I guess part of me relies on my art background to rationalize this direction. When drawing it’s always best to start with a loose structural sketch of whatever it is that you want to draw. Using the simplest shapes to organize the form into something that may eventually tell a story is always a great starting point when drawing/painting. Between these two methods proposed above, I think it’s clear now that I have taken a step back that the more organized form would be Mike’s way. Sure it’s less romantic, but there’s nothing romantic about perspective drawings or boxy figures. They’re purely functional, you add the story/drama/detail later. Ok, well there’s something sexy about gesture drawings…

Hmmm, what is the game equivalent of a gesture drawing? Cactus? He is the Zen master.

So here it is: our Kickstarter Project for Liferaft. As you can see on the page there, there are a variety of options for funding our little game, all of them including the game itself when we release. Liferaft won’t be a free-to-play game like so many of our past releases, it will be something akin to shareware, though we’re not going to settle on the specifics just yet.

Darius Kazemi of Orbus has also posted a bit about our Kickstarter endeavor in relation to Daniel’s fundraising efforts which I think is a pretty fair comparison. Anyway, please check us out over there on Kickstarter. You can watch a bit of a video interview by us explaining the project as well as some narrated gameplay as an added bonus!

• July 10th – Wrapped up most of the production and put up 90% version on FGL
• July 12th – Made an update to 98% completion on FGL and sent out form email to sponsors announcing Fig. 8 on FGL
• July 15th – $1000 bid by “Jeff Interactive”
• July 15th – $1000 bid by YoArcade [with $500 bonus for 4.0+ rating on Kong and NG after one month]
• July 19th – Game goes to 100% “finalized” on FGL
• July 19th – Massive form email to sponsors mentioning updates to the game
• July 22nd – Directly emailed three different sponsors with creative sponsorship opportunities
• July 23rd – Emailed/bugged FGL admins to put Fig. 8 on their Editor’s Spotlight
• July 27th – Fig. 8 Trailer released and put up on FGL trailers page
• July 28th – Trailer picked up by IndieGames Blog, Offworld, GameSetWatch and other press
• July 29th – $1250 bid by “Oscar Games”
• July 30th – $1400 bid by YoArcade [with $200 bonus for 3.8+ and $300 for 4.0+]
• August 1st – $2000 bid by “Sarah Entertainment” [with $250 bonus for 3.8+ and $500 bonus for 4.0+]
• August 1st – $2100 bid by YoArcade [with $350 bonus for 3.8+ and $550 bonus for 4.0+]
• August 1st – $2500 bid by “Sarah Entertainment” [with $500 bonus for 3.8+ and $1000 bonus for 4.0+]
• August 1st – $2600 bid by YoArcade [with $650 bonus for 3.8+ and $1050 bonus for 4.0+]
• August 1st – $3000 bid by “Sarah Entertainment” [with $500 bonus for 3.8+ and $1000 bonus for 4.0+]
• August 1st – $3200 bid by YoArcade [with $700 bonus for 3.8+ and $1100 bonus for 4.0+]
• August 1st – $3600 bid by “Sarah Entertainment” [with $500 bonus for 3.8+ and $1000 bonus for 4.0+]
• August 1st – $3700 bid by YoArcade [with $850 bonus for 3.8+ and $1250 bonus for 4.0+]
• August 3rd – Minor tweaks to music and other bug fixes. Game now “really” 100%
• August 4th – $2750 bid by “Sarah Entertainment” [with bonuses for so many million plays*]
• August 10th – Emailed a few more sponsors directly requesting they consider Fig. 8.
• August 16th – YoArcade’s bid of $3700 accepted.

As you can see from the bidding breakdown, the trailer and press for the trailer might have made all the difference. While we continued to tweak the game throughout this process nothing seemed to turn sponsors attention as seeing the game in action and on a few well-known gaming websites. It’s hard to say what exactly tipped them off about it since it could have been the comments from readers/viewers, the trailer itself or even just getting a blog post out there into the ether. Nonetheless this strategy worked really well for Fig. 8 as I think it was a kick-in-the-pants to sponsors working them into a bit of a frenzy with the buzz.

I hoped to instill this feeling:
Sponsor X

“Oh no, now everyone knows about Fig. 8 and they’re going to go after it.”

It’s the kind of feeling you get when you’re sitting on a secret and you’re just hoping that eBay auction goes through and doesn’t get noticed. You want the auction item to get as buried as possible. So the trailer effectively brought it to the surface so everyone would see it. If sponsors never see your game, how can they bid on it? It’s one thing to send an email and let everyone know about it, but it’s quite another when each individual sponsor knows that every other sponsor is aware of it as well.

*Bonus included $1000 for 2.5 million plays after 5 months, $2000 for 4 million plays, $3000 for 5m, $4000 for 6m and $5000 for 7m.

Play the game here at YoArcade.

There are no high scores tables as of yet, but feel free to post your best here in the comments. Mine is 800,250 points. We plan to start the high score competitions in earnest over at Kong when we release the game there sometime in early September.

Fig. 8 is our latest game here at Intuition. It’s a relatively simple concept, you control a bike through a technical diagram. At first Fig. 8 was actually called US and it was an art installation. In my junior year of college I was walking in the snow one night and I noticed some bike tracks running through the snow; an unusual scene in the middle of winter. While I walked along I noticed the two paths diverging then returning to a single unified track, it made me think about how relationships change over time how we grow distant then return. The more distant the wheels become, while they may briefly intersect, if it’s too great they’ll separate again and perhaps even crash the entire bike, bringing it all to a standstill. That’s what US is about, but doesn’t necessarily have a lot to do with Fig. 8.

I was telling Mike and Joe about it one day at work and they thought it might work pretty well as a scoring mechanic for a game. Perhaps eliminate the difficult control scheme of keeping a bike balanced through obstacles and just use it as a means of rewarding expert players. We went ahead with it. I started how I usually start with these smaller games and that’s through research. Sifting through lots of entries about bicycle history and how it all got started I got really attracted to the idea of this velocipede coming to life off of a patent page. Looking at that image there it’s obvious to see that I more or less hijacked the design of that entire document. The circle was complete after finding the proper typeface [Sirenne Eighteen MVB thanks to typographica's twitter rescue].

I’m not going to say making the game was easy, there are a lot of things that we’ve learned about making these 2 week style games over the last 6 months. For one, you just dive in. There’s no room for real planning when you’re aiming to get a fully playable alpha build out in a week. We usually aim for getting something playable start to finish within a week, then spend the next entire week on polish and bug fixes, perhaps a few new features, music and etc. It’s pretty break-neck but it works and simply having an alpha in your pocket goes a long way towards feeling comfortable that the game will actually get done. Simply grinding on docs and drawings still leaves a lot up in the air and with a 2 week cycle, you’ve got to stay on the ground as long as possible.

Also, throughout the development we always had a clear vision in mind. It was simple really, we have this bike, two wheels and a scoring mechanism. You avoid the stuff on the page as the camera scrolls independently of the bike. With those three elements we had a design that was relatively easy to visualize, even if there were the typical personal aberrations between Mike and I. All in all, the development went smoothly. I’d say perhaps the one thing that we struggled with most was the music. First in finding the right theme that would really push the game over the edge and also second in finding tasteful royalty-free music that would all work together. In the end I think it’s one of the games strongest points because we took it so seriously.

Selling the Game

Now here’s the real reason I’m writing this post. There’s not a lot to talk about with the development, all was well for the most part in that department. However, selling this game has been something of a learning experience. Like I said it took about 2 weeks to create the game from start to finish, however to sell it, it’s been about 4 weeks now. Now that doesn’t mean we’re both spending every waking minute selling this game, but personally I have spent over 2 weeks solid doing things to sell this game. Pushing out a trailer, putting it out there in the internet, talking to sponsors and trying to show them all the press we got. So far, it’s been going well, though not as well as we’d hoped for. Looking back it blows me away the amount of time spent on simply selling this thing.

Generally, everything I’ve been doing to try and raise Fig. 8’s stock has been an experiment. In the past we we simply left it up to luck and FGL. Sometimes it worked, others it didn’t. The only games we’ve actually gotten sponsorships for are Effing Hail [with Jiggmin] and Wild ‘n’ Free: EX. All the other games we’ve made, we received no money from. Well… ad money but that amounts to about $90 total. That’s not exactly going to pay the rent. So when Fig. 8 saw some bid action [very low bid action] initially I was disturbed. It drove me to put everything I have into selling this thing because I strongly believe in the quality of our games, particularly this one. While we’re still in the process of finding the right sponsor for the game I think it’s safe to say that my efforts have at least made some impact. So because this was an experiment, we learned a fair bit about how to “sell” for a sponsorship. Here’s a bit of a breakdown.

Put it on FGL

First off, if you’re a flash developer and you’re not familiar with FlashGameLicense.com defintely check it out and survey the land over there. There’s quite a bit of resources just in the FAQs alone on how the sponsorship model works. After you’ve done that, you should consider more than just the form they give you to fill out. FGL is a world all its own and deserves a fair amount of your attention.

Is your game ready for FGL?

Eric, one of the admins at FGL, has put together a very good report on the importance of waiting to put your game up until its in good enough shape. In this advice he stresses how important an Editor’s rating can be to getting valuable sponsor eyeballs on your game. If you put it up too early, you may suffer a poor Editor rating and risk getting your game buried. Aside from the status of the gameplay itself, here’s some other things to consider.

• Does your game take too long to load? If you’re getting a bunch of 1 minute plays, perhaps you need to make a preloader to curb some of that player impatience.
• At least have a menu of some sort in the game so the sponsor can see how they’re branding may be implemented. This is possibly the most important element a sponsor considers beyond the actual value of the game itself.
• Test your game. Bugs, especially early in the game, can drive off sponsors or a fair editor rating.

Make your FGL game page attractive

Take screenshots, be clear and concise in your short description. Play up what’s great about your game in one sentence. Post the screenshots to your page if you have some levels that you want the sponsor to see that they might not get to in a normal play-through. Take care of your thumbnail, make one that stands out or expresses what your game is all about. All of these things are trivially individually, but combined they can not only show your game off, but also show that you value your game quite a bit by putting in all this extra work.

Open up your game on FGL

The posted game on FGL can be a great place to lead interested devs, media or sponsors. Don’t be afraid of showing your game to people on FGL, it’s secure and that’s kind of the point. Use their Kindisoft service if you’re extra paranoid of getting your game jacked. I see a lot of devs putting up their games and not letting other developers view them, I’m not totally sure if that’s the way to go or not. We usually open it up to devs on FGL that have 1 or more game on their account. It lets devs come in and play the game and give [usually] nice compliments. We reciprocate if we like their game and I think it drives sponsor interest up a bit.

In addition, we open up the game to all possible avenues of monetization. We feel it’s up to us to decide if a deal is bad on an individual basis. If someone wants to offer us 100K for an exclusive deal with some strings attached, we certainly wouldn’t want that filtered out because we only checked the Primary Sponsorship box.

Push for the Editor’s Spotlight

Get on FGL and get involved. Start messaging Steve, Chris, Eric and the whole gang if you feel strongly your game deserves more attention. Get the ball rolling. I’ve pestered Chris many times about getting games in there and even other games. I’m sure he’s tired of it by now, but it’s just another thing that can put your game over the edge and into a bidding war.

First Impressions

This is a bit of a strange environment here. First Impressions can be a great way to get some solid [but more often sparse] feedback on your game. You pay $1 per First Impression and FGL magically makes sure someone plays it for at least 5 minutes. First Impressions can be great for working out usability issues, but keep in mind the rating is shown to sponsors and that can sometimes scare them away as it’s a sample of the player base. Though, often a grossly small and unsatisfactory one…

For us, it’s hard not to use them to get an idea of what people think of our game. We’re suckers for punishment. In addition to these remote impressions, I’d urge any game developer out there to sit down and watch a few people play your game while you don’t say a word. You’ll get a great idea for places to improve on usability, level design and overall feel.

Go way beyond FGL

I’ll be honest, I haven’t had great luck [at least directly] from “cold-calling” sponsors, but it never hurts to try. I have a handful [about 30] emails that I’ve collected manually of sponsor email addresses. After I throw it up on FGL and everything seems to be automatic over there I send out a big general email to all of them. Usually, 1-2 people respond. Here’s the actual email I sent.

Greg Wohlwend

Ahoy!

I’m Greg from Intuition Games. You might have already received an email from me when shopping around Effing Hail or The Great Red Herring Chase, but in case not… Hello! You might also know us from our multiplayer game Dinowaurs. We’ve just recently created a racing-exploration game and are in search of a sponsporship.

Anyway, it’s called Fig. 8. In it you control a bike through what is essentially architectural diagrams of a suburban landscape. It may sound a bit weird from that blurb but we think it’s a lot of fun. It’s been up on FGL for a bit now and as usual, has been a bit buried so far. We’d love if you could take some time to check it out here.

We’re looking for a primary or secondary sponsorships or perhaps a performance based sponsorship of some kind. If you’re interested please use FGL as a means for communicating that interest.

Thanks for your time!
Greg Wohlwend

After I sent that 2 sponsors responded and ultimately nothing came out of it other than a few views on FGL. Still, you must stay strong and not give up hope. It’s at this time that I started to get creative.

Make a video trailer

Get a trial of a program or purchase a relatively cheap application that does high quality video capture. I use Snapz Pro X. It’s something like $70 and while that seems like a lot, i’ve used it for every single trailer we’ve made and it takes excellent quality video. Once you have your video, you need to edit it together with a program like FinalCut or AfterEffects. There are much cheaper solutions though I’m not knowledgeable enough to know them.

When you’re making your trailer force yourself to keep it under 2 minutes. 2:22 actually. That’s the magic number. Also, when you’re making this trailer, think about what it is you want to show and who you’re showing it to. At first glance, this is a trailer for sponsors, so you might be inclined to show off unspeakable action or maybe show people playing it and having tons of fun! But frankly that can be dishonest and feel strange. Besides, the main goal with the trailer is two pronged. It should be aimed to get people in general excited about your game.

The big disconnect with a sponsor and a developer is that the sponsor doesn’t want to take a risk on your fresh new game. Or at least that’s usually the way it is for us. They’d rather sponsor a sure thing than a innovative risk. So, you’re trying to get people clamoring for this game, show them that it’s not such a big risk and that people actually want to play something other than a tower defense clone. By releasing a trailer to the public you’re generating buzz. It’s like a mini focus group test. Sponsors/marketing people love to form people’s opinion into cold hard data, now you can do that to a certain degree with trailer.

Push it to the press

Now you’ve got your beautiful trailer. Show it to everyone. Tell them your story. I posted mine on the Announcements section of the TigForums. I gave them the link to the trailer, some screenshots and even a peek into the background of the game. Most importantly, I was up front about why the hell I was doing it. Frankly, I have a chip on my shoulder when it comes to these Flash sponsors. I think they grossly undervalue the games they sponsor, especially the experimental ones that are so exciting. Though, it’s hard to fault them for trying to run as profitable a business as possible [not that hard, though] so I figured getting some press out there to prove this is an exciting game would do well to drive that home.

The only two places I posted the trailer were on my twitter and on TigForums. Now… That seems like dumb luck, but I spend a hell of a lot of time at both of those places. Being an active community member is huge in being taken seriously when it comes time to “cash in”. Also, it’s not like I’m there just to pimp my games, [like so many are] but I thoroughly enjoy being an active member of the indie dev community. If you’re not much for community, I suggest you give it the ol’ college try. Otherwise, you can try individually emailing press outlets with your trailer, they might pick it up too. This is just how I like to operate. So… after putting the trailer out there with a bit of a plea as to what it was about, we got some press.

• Offworld
• Indie Games
• And Beyond!

Get creative and engage potential sponsors

Phew, ok this is getting long. But that’s because there’s a lot to do. While the press was getting underway I decided to contact a few potential sponsors directly. I won’t list them specifically but it’s important to note that my contact with them was very personal and directed towards them and their company. I wanted to get creative with how we approached sponsoring Fig. 8 in hopes of striking an interesting deal. At least it’d be in the spirit of this whole experimental business! I would highly recommend this approach. There are a few portals out there that aren’t yet in the sponsorship game, mostly because they’re quite young, though it can’t hurt to contact them. As young portals, a boost in users might be just the thing they need to grow a bit more.

While we didn’t have any explicit success with this, I think by rule of thumb that targeting sponsors specifically and seeking them out puts them on the spot to respond. With this approach you’re more likely to get a response from a sponsor and it feels more like a partnership than an exchange of goods.

Keep talking

Right now, with this very post I’m creating exposure for Fig. 8, an unreleased freeware flash game. Sure, I’m not writing this post because I’m desperate for attention [remains to be seen] or to explicitly sell Fig. 8. I’m actually writing because a few folks have been interested in reading some tips on getting a sponsorship. I’ve learned a lot in the last couple weeks, most of it I never really wanted to learn but it’s necessary to wear many hats being an indie. In a way, this whole process has depressed me a bit. I’ve realized that to be successful making more experimental and smaller games you’ve got to put in a lot of energy selling the game. Sometimes more than the actual game made. That’s not where I want to be spending my time, but it’s certainly something I felt I had to do with Fig. 8.

Never settle

Now, we have some moderate bids, but even today I’m still working on selling the game, though in a much smaller capacity. I check up on FGL, email the occasional sponsor, talk to press here and there. A surprising amount of people are interested in the game even though they’ve never played it. That’s a strong power that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to wield if you just kept your little 2 week game under wraps.

Fig. 8 is a game I strongly believe in. You’ve got to believe in your game and that it’s worth a fair bit of money. Mike didn’t agree with my approach when I started on this death-march to see what kind of effect “creating hype” would have on the sale of our game, but I think it’s clear that is has had an effect. I was compelled to never give up on finding a proper home for this little guy, and I still am. I don’t think it’s right that re-skinning the same design over and over again makes more money than original design.

Howard Aiken

Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it is original you will have to ram it down their throats.

Spread the word, create a big marketing buzz frenzy for us so you guys can play the game and we can eat sandwiches.