Gaming on the iPhone: Natural Selection In Real-Time

It all started with a link. It always does.

I can't even remember now where I first saw the link, but I was easily drawn in by the shiny little object: "Mystery House", the 1980 aventure game by Ken and Roberta Williams of On-Line Systems (later Sierra On-Line, later later Sierra), had been ported to the iPhone by Artsiness (Josef W. Wankerl), in all of its original white-on-black lineart glory. This is the game that GamePro tagged the 51st Most Important Video Game of All Time -- nine spots after E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, although I guess that's fair since it wasn't the list of Best Video Games of All Time.

My first thought was, How cool. What a sweet idea, even if today's iPhone casual gamers barely give it notice, or even scoff at the concept.

Then, I saw that the game was being sold in the App Store for $5.99. Of note, the original Mystery House game had been released into the public domain back in 1987.

The responses, in the comments section and in their forums, were not unexpected -- ranging from "We need more nostalgic games like this. Just not $5.99" to "$5.99?! You’ve got to be frickin’ kidding me." Purchasing it was essentially lowered to TOFTT status, mostly because of the price tag.

Well, that and (as one person pointed out) you can play the game right now just as it appeared on the old Apple //e by clicking a single link for free and kicking back, which is a pretty good point. It's just not on the iPhone, which doesn't seem worth the $5.99 entry ticket.

Ignoring for a minute the fact that Mystery House can be played for free online, I find the larger pricing issue interesting, given the relatively young age of the iPhone/iPod Touch gaming scene. $5.99 was probably okay a few months ago when the App Store was still fairly new, but over time this price point has become almost unheard of.

Along similar lines, there is that story circulating just about everywhere about the match-3 iPhone game Dapple, whose author (Owen Goss) recently blogged about the sales performance of the game. Briefly, it took him about 6 months to make, with a budget of about $32,000, and revenue from the first month after release totaled about $535 -- despite good reviews and some decent exposure. There are a lot of factors that have contributed to this, of course, but it is interesting to note that the game went on sale originally for $4.99 in the App Store, and I imagine that had at least some role in its sales performance.

The reaction to this has generally been, "No kidding, really?" It is, after all, yet another match-3 game in a market already oversaturated with similar games. Yes, it had good reviews, yes, it has some original gameplay elements, and yes, it was featured on Kotaku. But there's not a whole lot to make it stand out, and at this point it just seems like another drop in the iPhone App Store ocean. So at $4.99, it isn't terribly surprising that more people haven't been tempted to TOFTT.

But that's where things have begun to settle, just a short time after the App Store started featuring games for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Five bucks is to the iPhone what sixty bucks is to the PC: the high end of the price scale. And the expectation is that, if you're gonna tempt someone to fork over a Lincoln for your hard work, it had better be something special.

I'm not sure why, I just find that fascinating.

This is especially true in light of Jeff Tunnell's comments last week about the challenge of the iPhone market (and, as I just now notice, Jeff has pertinent new comments about Goss's experience posted today). The iPhone is a relatively easy platform for developing games, where you can generally create a game with a small budget and short development time, and be looking at potentially large returns. But the market has become so crowded with casual games that it has become incredibly hard to get your game noticed.

And because it's an open marketplace, prices have gone down and down. The price point of $5.99 or $4.99 is now basically too high, which seems silly given how low that is, comparatively speaking. There are enough games out there now for $1.99 or $0.99 -- and many free games as well -- to choke out the more "expensive" ones.

This is in contrast with the mainstream PC gaming industry, where budgets and prices have generally gone up. But unlike the PC game market, where indies can make games for less and, as a result, charge less and generate sales that way, there's no longer much room for indies to undercut the competition on the iPhone platform.

So how in the world do you actually make back your costs on an iPhone game when you're charging just 99 cents for it? More sales helps, naturally, but you can't just hope to have sales in the tens of thousands. Hope and luck need to be taken out of the equation.

I don't have the answers, but I imagine it takes strategy, planning, and effort. As Tunnell says, don't put all your games in one market if you can help it. Cultivate a community, if you can, like the way Wolfire Games is doing (and elevating to an artform, if I may say). There are many approaches to take, some of which may work and some of which may not. The challenge to the indies is to figure it all out, if they can. It's just another form of natural selection at work.

(Indie) Business is Business

Generally speaking, this is a good time to be an indie game developer. There are scores of inexpensive development tools and environments to choose from, many potential opportunities and channels for marketing and sales, and a number of great online communities for discussion and support. It's tough to make it as a full-time job, though. A few individuals or groups have done consistently well over the years, and of course there are the recent stories like Braid making everyone drool over the possibility of big-time success even for small developer groups. But for the most part, it's incredibly tough to find that sweet spot of just enough critical and financial success.

Take the story of Mousechief's Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble, for instance.

Mousechief has been at it for some time, with a pretty nice track record -- a finalist at the first IGF in 1999 (Flagship Champion), and another finalist at the 2006 IGF (The Witch's Yarn). Then, last year, they released DHSGiT, a casual game set in the 1920's from the "teen romantic comedy" genre. I've only played the demo, and briefly at that, but clearly they did a nice job with the game and they've received a great deal of attention and acclaim for it: it was GameTunnel's 2008 Innovation and Adventure Game of the Year (loosely defining "adventure"); it was on GameTunnel's Top 10 Games of 2008 and a finalist at IndieCade 2008; and it was recently nominated for the 2009 Writers Guild Awards for videogame writing. That's the kind of recognition an indie developer would slobber over.

However, an interview with lead writer Keith Nemitz popped up recently on GameTopius.com, in which I noticed this little nugget:

TC: Has the success of Dangerous High School Girls (critically and financially) changed the way Mousechief plans on approaching games? Does it give you more leeway and confidence going into your next project?

KN: I'd say is been pretty successful since people are still talking about it, eight months after its release. Metacritic-style of the eight reviews so far it's holding a > 80% average. Only two are recognized as official Metacritic reviews. (both at 80%) More are on the way. Financially, especially after catching an arrow from BFG, it has yet to recoup its measly $30,000 budget. But it's still being release on new portals. I'll just have to tighten my belt a couple more notches. I'm not yet at the point where I'll have to cut new notches. However, if it doesn't make a profit this year I won't be able to fund a new game.

A few interesting points to note here.

First, you don't often hear about how much it costs to develop a game, so it's nice to see some actual numbers. $30 grand is a tiny amount of money as far as the games industry is concerned, but for small indie developers, of course, that can be a prohibitive (and perhaps scary) amount as Nemitz suggests -- especially if you're trying to develop more than one game at a time as part of your business plan.

Second, I think it's notable that a game that has received so much critical acclaim has yet to break even. It's been only eight months since its release, yes, but given all of that recognition I would have thought its earnings had surpassed the $30,000 level. There are many potential reasons for this, of course, the most probable of which is the fact that the game got yanked from Big Fish Games just as it was kicking in, due to some content that was deemed "questionable" by a few vocal opponents. And yes, we all know that critical success does not necessarily guarantee financial success, but still. At $20 a pop, they would need 1500 unit sales to break even. If someone had asked me, I would've guessed that they sold that many some time ago, BFG snub notwithstanding.

But that's the thing; 1500 unit sales doesn't sound like a lot, but almost any amount can be a lot for small developers. It's easy to look at that number and think it should be simple to achieve, certainly not too much to ask for a game with as much critical success as they had. But without a dedicated marketing department it is far from an easy task, and in a case like Mousechief's it might mean all the difference between one project and multiple projects. I think it highlights what a lot of small indie developers are up against, whether they know it yet or not.

This is not a criticism of Mousechief, mind you, nor am I trying to implicate that they somehow failed to do everything they could have done to sell more copies. It's a complicated business and this is certainly how it goes sometimes, despite best efforts. Plus, it's still an ongoing process, and more recognition and exposure is likely to come. I admire them for the work they've done, and their recognition is well-deserved.

I do think that DHSGiT will surpass the break even point and be financially successful, eventually. But it's still a battle, even when you've got a solid, innovative game on your hands.

Curse My Expensive Font Tastes

Without question, some of the best advice I've been given on the business of indie game development has come from Tom Buscaglia, the Game Attorney -- probably one of the best attorneys representing game developers. Much of this advice comes from his Game Dev Kit, a set of information and forms for start-up game developers, which in my opinion is an excellent resource for any small start-up indie. Above all, the best advice is:

"Quite simply, you can not sell what you do not own."

So basically, any and all assets put into a game must be owned by the legal entity (company or individual) that owns the game, or they must have an appropriate license from the actual owner of the asset. Once you really get elbows deep into the development of a game, you quickly realize how complicated this can become due to the many categories and sheer volume of assets that are needed for game development. Every model, every texture, every musical piece or sound clip -- all of it must either be owned by the company making and selling the game, or they have to be licensed to sell it commercially.

This can end up being quite the chore, and it's good practice (especially for the small indie developer who is working primarily on his own) to keep a "master asset list" to track all of these assets and their ownership or licensing status. It also helps to bone up on some of the basic legal issues surrounding appropriate documentation of ownership, and to make sure you take care of those issues sooner rather than later. It's far too easy to slap a sound, musical clip, or texture into your game, even as as a placeholder, and then completely forget about it. Believe me, it sucks to have to track down that dude who helped you with your title music a couple years back because you never asked him to verify and transfer the IP over to you.

One of the assets which, I think, is most often overlooked in this respect is fonts.

Fonts are one of those things that I think a lot of people take for granted -- your computer comes with a whole mess of them installed, and it's easy to find hordes of free ones online. They're often passed around as easily, freely, and inappropriately as MP3s. But for games, fonts are an asset just like anything else, and unless you own it or are licensed commercially, you can't sell it. So the solution is to create your own or buy an appropriate commercial license, unless you want to stick with boring public domain fonts.

The problem for me is that I have a special thing for fonts. I love fonts. I collect them. I hoard them the way some women hoard shoes. I'm a regular customer on MyFonts.com and if they offered a frequent buyer rewards program I'm sure I'd soon be platinum level.

So for me, finding the font that is just right for use in Vespers is a long, exhaustive research project. Right now, we're using two main fonts in the game, one for the text input and output windows, and the other for most everything else (the main logo, menu items, titles, buttons, and so forth). The font for the text windows is not a large concern for me, as long as it is clear and legible at multiple sizes, and has at least some interesting style to it. Early on, I settled for a font called Flute, which is shown below. Flute is a pretty cheap font -- I think it originally sold for $8 and last I checked was free on MyFonts.com -- and there shouldn't be any problem getting an appropriate license for our use. The other font, however, is a bit of a problem.

Flute

Until recently, the font I have been using for all of the good stuff is called Cezanne, by P22 Foundry. Those folks make a lot of very high quality fonts that are used widely for commercial purposes. In fact, I've seen Cezanne in a lot of places -- on TV, in print, even on the cover of my local phone book. It's an extrordinary font that I think is absolutely beautiful, and of all of the fonts I've researched, this one really stands out from the others. I hesitate to say that it is perfect, but damn if it isn't close to that.

Cezanne

But you have to write to P22 if you want to use their fonts commercially and get a special license, like for what we're doing. And, of course, they responded by asking a wild amount of money for this, on the order of $1,500 -- half for embedding the font, the other half for the commercial license. Now, I understand this, of course. This font is a work of art, and it makes sense for them to expect an appropriate license payment from someone who wants to make piles of money on a product the appeal of which is due, at least in part, to their craftsmanship. But given that we're a small indie company with a development budget in the low five digits, this represents a significant fraction of our overall development costs. I tried a little negotiation, and they offered an alternative licensing plan that is less expensive, but it's still a lot. So I've been looking at alternatives.

I've always thought, for some reason, that the main font in the game should be a handwritten font. I'm not entirely sure why, I just feel like it communicates the feel of the game (from the Abbot's perspective) the best. So I'm looking to maintain that, but there are only so many options. Once you get past a few good ones, most handwriting or calligraphy fonts start getting far too curly, decorative, or perfect. And I'm not that easy to please.

Suffice it to say that I haven't come across another one yet that has jumped out at me as a clear replacement for Cezanne, but there are a few options. The best of the bunch is a font called Whitechapel, from Blambot, a foundry that specializes in comic fonts and lettering. It's a nice handwriting font that I think conveys the right image, although I still think it's a step below Cezanne and it doesn't completely satisfy me. So when Blambot told me that our use of the font constitutes "redistribution of a derivative work of the font" which would cost $500 for an appropriate license, I thought, "Thanks, but no thanks."

Whitechapel

One of the problems here is that our use of the font is a little atypical. Often under most font licenses, it's illegal to include the font file itself, such as the TrueType file, with a distributed game. But with games powered by the Torque Game Engine, you don't need to include font files with your games -- the Torque engine takes all of the fonts used in the game and creates a special kind of bitmap file for each font and size. The characters are basically rendered to a bitmap and stored for later display. There's no way to reverse engineer it, and no way for clients to take that bitmap and somehow install it on their machine. Nevertheless, many of these companies still believe that this constitutes embedding and redistribution.

I do have permission to use another font, Secret Scrypt, a very cool font from another very cool font foundry called Canada Type. It cost a mere $30 for its commercial fee. It's a bit heavy for my tastes, but it was actually the first font I started using for Vespers, so I may end up just going back to the start with respect to this font.

Secret Scrypt

Curse my expensive font tastes.

2008's Top (Mostly Windows-Only) Games

As many folks in the blogosphere have duly pointed out, the end of one year and the start of another is usually accompanied by a proliferation of lists. Best of this, Top Ten of that, and so on. A couple of these that have particular interest to me are Game Tunnel's Top Ten Indie Games of 2008 and GameSetWatch's 20 Best Freeware Adventure Games of 2008.

Throughout the year I generally try to keep track of which games are making news in the indie gaming world, but it's still interesting to see GameTunnel's list to find out just how closely I've been paying attention. As it turns out, I've only even heard of 7 of their top 10 -- I hadn't seen or read anything about Noitu Love 2, Battle of Tiles, or New Star Soccer 4 -- and some, such as Zombie Shooter, Everyday Shooter, and The Spirit Engine 2, I have only sketchy recollection of seeing anything before. So much for being on top of things.

Perhaps even more embarrassing is the fact that I've only played one of the top 10 indie games, World of Goo, which I did purchase. I like World of Goo, mostly because you can tell the folks who created it (Kyle Gabler and Ron Carmel of 2D Boy) did a bang-up job with all aspects of development. Slick artwork, nice audio, smooth animation and gameplay. It's a solid game that's heavy on style. The genre? Not so much, for me at least. I can see why a lot of people like it, but it's not really my cup o'. In fact, that's something that struck me about the GameTunnel list in general -- there isn't a lot there that I would consider a big draw for my tastes.

Most of them sound interesting, certainly enough to give them a shot. I'm attracted by the depth of New Star Soccer 4, for instance, even though I have little to no interest in soccer in general; Noitu Love 2, Mount & Blade, and The Spirit Engine 2 all have elements that sound appealing and worth a peek. But most of them seem to be within genres that I don't spend a lot of time playing. Still, I like to show my support for the other indies out there and I have to admit that I haven't done a good job of it for this group so far.

GameTunnel also has a list of their Top 5 Adventure Games of 2008, but I don't pay much attention to it. As they admit, they group classic adventure games with platform games and "action titles that devote a lot of time to the story," whatever that means, which is really just bizarre. The list reflect this, as there really isn't much there that I would consider a true adventure game.

I don't do a great job keeping up with all of the freeware adventure games out there, admittedly. So I appreciate having a list like GameSetWatch's Top 20 to peek at, just so I know what I'm missing. I like that two of the top 20 are interaction fiction games, Gun Mute and Everybody Dies, although more likely belong on this list. The latter did great in this year's IFComp, although it didn't do so well in my Capture Score evaluation. It was a good example of a game that ended up being great even though it fell somewhat short in its opening. I haven't played any of the other games on the list, although at #18 is DayMare Town 2, the second installment of Mateusz Skutnik's awesomely simple browser-based adventure game. I didn't realize it had been released, so that comes as welcome news.

Most of all, though, I was struck by one thing on both of these lists: the remarkable absence of Mac versions of these games.

Of the GameTunnel Top Ten, only three are listed as having Mac versions (New Star Soccer 4, Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble, and World of Goo), while over on GSW's Top 20, only one of the top 16 is Mac-compatible (Gun Mute). Overall, only six on the list can be played on Macs; aside from the two IF games, the other four are browser-based.

It's disappointing, of course, because it means Mac users need to go to extra lengths to play most of these great games, and for most Mac users that just means they won't get played. Not surprising, of course, because I think most of the game-making industry (indie or otherwise) still mistakenly believes the installed Mac base is too small to bother with. There appears to be a growing body of evidence that this is simply not the case, particularly for non-AAA-high-end gaming. Folks like Pocketwatch Games and Prarie Games would most certainly attest to this, and even the InstantAction folks from GarageGames had to put their Mac beta on hold because "all our current information indicates that the initial inflow of Mac users will (be) huge and probably bring IA to a crawl."

Obviously porting a game from Windows to Mac is not a simple, straighforward task, and it's one that requires time and resources, both of which many indie developers don't have. But it's a deceptively large audience and I think small developers are making a large mistake by ignoring this potentially rewarding chunk of attention and revenue.

Orange River Studio, LLC

Many indie game projects start out as fun side pursuits among a small group of friends. Often at the start there is an idea, a concept, some talent, and motivation. A lot of projects, along the way, fall short in one or more of those areas -- the idea isn't as cool as it first sounded; the concept doesn't work as well as expected; the talent to achieve the goal is lacking; or some folks just lose their motivation and the project fizzles out.

If things work out and you have a reasonably good mix of those elements, you reach something of a milestone: that point when you're convinced that you can really do it. With Vespers, that occurred sometime after the first year or so of development.

That milestone is usually followed by a period of laboring away at the many tasks and details of the game. Coding, modeling, animating, testing, squashing bugs, coming up with solutions and workarounds to various problems that arise. Slowly and steadily plodding away at all of the different chores. If things continue to work out, you soon come to another understanding: Not only can you do it, but you really are doing it. But with that awareness comes a realization: if you're truly intent on finishing the job, you're gonna have to start getting serious about the business side of things.

Therein lies the next milestone: you're committed enough and far enough along to take the first steps toward creating a business entity.

It's seems a little silly to me when I think about forming a company, maybe even a little conceited. I mean, really, the truth for most small indie games is that they won't sell more than a few hundred copies at most. Do you really need to spend time and money forming a company for that? And without a long-term plan for additional games beyond this one, doesn't that seem a bit excessive?

The answer, actually, is that it does make a lot of sense. Even for a group as small as ours, even for a single game, and even at this (relatively) early stage of development.

Our situation is not unlike that of many small indie groups, and one person with a lot of experience with these groups is Tom Buscaglia, an attorney from Washington known as "The Game Attorney". Over the years, he's developed a certain expertise in the legal side of indie game companies, and he's done a lot to help small groups take the necessary steps to make sure everything they do is in order and legit.

Often, small hobbyist groups like ours make enough progress on their projects to reach a point where they can put a demo together to show interested parties, like a publisher. But as Tom has said, these scenarios are usually full of potential problems that could make it impossible to get the game to the public. Questions raised include things like:

• What legal entity will interested parties deal with?


• Who on the team gets what if the team succeeds?


• Who owns the assets in the game?


• Are there any problems with the assets that would prevent the game from being taken to market?

As Tom says:

"To a publisher (or a lawyer or businessman) how you address these basic questions at the beginning of your project reflects on whether this team is "together" enough to come through with the finished product. The failure to have dealt with the more mundane legal issues of forming a company, deciding shares first and securing Intellectual Property rights to the game assets may be just a lack of business experience. But to business heads like publishers there will be little sympathy."

A lot of groups don't want to deal with those things -- at least, not until they have to, and by then it's usually late enough to cause big headaches. So Tom's advice, of course, is to take care of these things sooner rather than later. Granted, he's a lawyer with a bias, but it's pretty sound advice -- at least when you've reached that second milestone when you're reasonably certain you're going to have a product ready in the (relatively) near future.

Forming a company like an LLC has a number of distinct advantages, even at this point in time for our group. It defines who other companies deal with, who owns the assets, and how any royalties are split up. And even if we decide down the road that Vespers is to be released for free, it still helps to ensure that the project and all of its components are in order, and helps to define how we might proceed in the future on any additional projects.

There are also a few other reasons for doing this. For one, it's much easier (and more professional) to designate the company as the primary, central entity that deals with outside parties -- other artists or contributors, publishers, and so on. In many of these cases we would be dealing with things like NDAs and contributor agreements, and it's a lot better to specify that these agreements are with the company rather than with me personally.

Then there is also the liability issue. By forming a company like an LLC, liability becomes less of an issue for me (or anyone else associated with the company). For instance, if we release the game and later we get sued by someone for copyright infringement, then in the absence of a company then all of my assets are at risk, including my property, house, car, and so on. By forming an LLC, my personal and professional liability are separated, so none of my personal assets would be at risk as a result of some legal action against the company or one of its games.

That said, creating a company also raises more questions. To this point we haven't really considered ourselves as a "game development company" per se, only as a "Vespers development company" -- that is, is there an expectation that we will really function as a company that makes not just one, but perhaps many, games? And if so, how will the company operate? Who's in charge? Who makes decisions? Who handles different responsibilities? Are there any employees, or just partners? How are those partnerships defined?

Tough questions to answer. I'll be spending a lot of time in the upcoming months trying my best to answer them. For now, however, I'll be working on everything necessary to make Orange River Studio, LLC, a real entity.

Pirate Adventure

Indie Developer Cliff Harris ('cliffski') of Positech Games has been running an interesting experiment of late. In his search to answer the question, "Why do people pirate my games?", he decided to take the question directly to the pirates themselves. A public, genuine request for opinions, posted on his blog. The request was also submitted to slashdot and the Penny Arcade forums, and made its way to other sites like ars technica, digg, and bnet. The response, as it turned out, was huge -- hundreds of comments on the blog, hundreds of e-mails, and many more responses at the other sites. And, interestingly, it seemed as though people really did have something they needed to get off their chests.

cliffski's summary of the results is posted here.

As expected, a number of people pirate because of a serious dislike of DRM. As cliffski says: "If you wanted to change ONE thing to get more pirates to buy games, scrapping DRM is it." No argument there. As a result, he removed all DRM from his games, and will not use it on any future projects. Cheers.

Money, of course, was cited as one of the big reasons. I didn't find that to be a huge surprise, since pirating is (among other things) a way to avoid paying money for something. What I did find interesting is what people seem to think of as a reasonable price for a game. Sure, there was plenty of ire directed at the $60 games, but people even seemed to think that $20, roughly what he charges for his games, was far too high. I had always thought of $20 as a "cheap" price for games.

It's an interesting observation in light of the recent discussions of money and game pricing I brought up earlier. There's a fascinating interplay between cost and perceived value, particularly when placed in the context of a game developer seeking to achieve a certain level of return to stay afloat. If the game is cheaper, will more people buy it? Maybe more pirates will — and maybe not — but then factor in the number of people who might pass on it based on the perceived value of a cheaper game, who knows what the final tally would be. And of course, it's much more complicated than that.

Being Indie, Being Resourceful

Being indie can definitely be tough sometimes. I've often said that indie game projects are kind of like fish eggs: thousands are laid but few manage to survive to adulthood. Content for a 2D or 3D game, whether it's artwork, music, voicework, or animation, can be a real problem for a small team on a shoestring budget. It's no secret that content, specifically character animation, has been the biggest challenge for Vespers.

Sometimes, it takes a little creative thinking to figure out ways to stretch those limited resources.

A while back, when I was looking for help with voiceover work, one idea I had was to try tapping into some good but inexpensive local talent -- theater students at the University of Utah, where I work. The casting call I posted ended up being picked up by a local talent company, which brought in a lot of additional talent, but the end result was exactly what I needed: great people with great voices who enjoyed working on a fun project for what essentially amounted to peanuts.

Animation, however, is a different beast that requires a bit more of a commitment, so I was never very keen on trying a similar approach. Nevertheless, recently I learned that the University of Utah also has a new interdisciplinary program for undergraduates called Entertainment Arts & Engineering, which is a joint program between the School of Computing and the College of Fine Arts. It's basically a curriculum to prepare students for careers in the digital media and entertainment industry, specifically for videogames, digital animation, and computer-generated special effects. How enticing.

So I contacted one of the program directors and told him about Vespers, to see if it might be possible to work something out with a few of the animation students who might be looking for some experience and a chance to showcase their talent. He circulated it among the faculty, and before long I had an informal face-to-face with one of the teaching faculty who specializes in graphics and animation, and has worked in the computer graphics industry since 1985.

The meeting went very well. He seemed to like the idea behind Vespers, and thought it would be a good opportunity for some of his students, many of whom he thinks would really appreciate the chance to work on something like this.

What I found just amazingly generous is that he essentially volunteered to be something of a faculty representative for the students, and take on the tasks of finding interested students, teaching them the pipeline, providing help when needed, and holding them to the task. It's difficult to overstate the value of someone in this position; having a person that knows all the details about the animation, exporting, and file preparation process, and who also knows the students and is in a position to manage and organize them, is worth more than I can imagine. I'm still just astonished that he is willing to take on this effort.

It will still be some time before things get rolling, though. The biggest issue is that we've done all of our models and animations to this point in 3DS Max, and he and the students basically work only in Maya. So first there is the issue of converting our character models to Maya format, which is not nearly as simple as it should be. Then there's the task of getting him familiar with creating and exporting animations from Maya to files that work with the Torque Game Engine, which is a quirky process that anyone familiar with TGE will tell you requires some time to learn. Once we reach that point, he can then be in a position to get the students up to speed, and so far there are at least a handful who have expressed interest in working on the project.

I'm really excited about the arrangement, and if things work out it could be the real boost this project needs. I'd also like to think that it could lead to other projects down the line, since it seems to fill a need on both ends. We'll see how it goes.

Better Than Free (or Pirated?)

I read a couple of interesting blogs recently, and began to wonder how they might be related to the indie game scene.

The original piece was written by Kevin Kelly who, among many other notable things, helped co-found Wired magazine. On his "semi-blog" The Technium, where he posts thoughts on his next book, he authored a piece called "Better Than Free" back on January 31st -- and it triggered an avalanche of discussion, all of which I naturally missed since I have no sense of these things.

In the piece, he discusses how to approach the creation of product value in a digital world, where free copies proliferate in the "super-distribution system" of the internet:

Yet the previous round of wealth in this economy was built on selling precious copies, so the free flow of free copies tends to undermine the established order. If reproductions of our best efforts are free, how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies?

I have an answer. The simplest way I can put it is thus:

When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.

When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.

He goes on to discuss his eight categories of "intangible value" that we can buy when we pay for something that could be free: things like immediacy, personalization, authenticity, and so on. Some very interesting thoughts, and if you're an internet hermit like me and haven't seen or heard of this piece before now, I recommend checking it out.

I was directed to the piece by an entry on Jason Scott's blog, ASCII. Jason is the creator of the BBS Documentary, an awesome DVD set that archives the history of the electronic BBS (which I highly recommend). He's also currently working on a new documentary, GET LAMP, a similar work on the history of text adventures, and one which I'm really looking forward to.

In his blog, Jason talks about how he applied some of the principles discussed in Kevin's blog to his projects. For instance:

His version of Immediacy (the ability to get the stuff hot off the presses from the content people) is basically what I exploited/used for the BBS Documentary, selling pre-orders by the bucketful and ending up with something like 400-500 DVD sets ready to go out the door as soon as they arrived at my house. In fact, I ended up having to hand assemble these things to get them out quicker. We're talking tens of thousands of dollars of pre-ordering, so I took that stuff seriously.

He's doing a similar thing for GET LAMP, but in the blog he also brainstorms new ideas for the project. One he seems to like is an "ultra-deluxe" version of the film, which buys you a special code. When you e-mail the code back to him with your phone number, he responds with a personal telephone call. You can chat with him, praise him, yell profanities at him, whatever you like; that's the added value you get, a brief period of access to the creator of the film.

While this method seems more appropriate for getting the customers who would normally pay for the product to pay more than they might have originally, the system in general is trying to push "things which can not be copied," which in this case is a one-on-one conversation with someone with whom you might not otherwise have access.

Just as with music and movies, of course, games suffer from the problem of "super abundance" from pirating, and it makes me wonder if indie game developers have or could use this type of strategy as a response -- providing value where there is otherwise none. It might not be very successful at converting pirates into paying customers (such a thing likely does not exist), but it could be an approach that indies might take advantage of to improve sales and revenue in a difficult marketplace.

It seems to me that indies are better suited for this kind of approach than the big developers; better positioned to provide the kind of personal service that is apparently the key to this strategy.

I haven't paid close enough attention to the business side of indie games to know if there are developers out there who have tried approaches like this that would qualify as ways of providing "intangible value", but I would be interested in hearing about those who have done so or are thinking about it...