How Do you Make a Good Game?
One evening a week I teach a game dev class at a university in Vancouver, BC. Hopefully not fulfilling the phrase ‘Those who can’t, teach!’.
I ask my students: How do you make a Game?
I surprise them by telling them it’s a simple 2 step process. Here is my teaching slide:
Works for books, music, painting, sculpture, and even articles!
Step 1. ✅
Step 2. Working on it! Opinions will differ on how far along we are.
I use Redfall as an example for the primary reason games fail on release: they weren’t able to finish Step 2. They needed more time (which usually means budget) to complete Step 2. If you ever play a game that dissatisfies, it’s because step 2 was cut short. Several reasons cut step 2 short, but this is not a class, it’s a news update, so let’s get back on track!
While writing this, I happened to catch a post by new player Mordred who decided to jump in and play. He lost 4.5hrs into the immersion of the game.
We have something. Some of it is engaging/compelling. Some of it is real crap. We need to make it a lot better.
Language note: When I say below “we need to make it fun” I’m not discounting the parts people are enjoying, nor am I trying to persuade anyone having fun that they really aren’t. I mean “it isn’t fun enough”. Meaning it can be much more engaging.
So how do we do this?
Games Ain’t Software
I have 15+ years in Enterprise software, mostly web and mobile platforms.
In software, we have a set of features we must have. Usually, these are dictated by higher ups like the CEO for specific business purposes or to address specific operational pain points. From there, it is up to the team to determine the rest of the system features.
Point being, you make a feature list up front, budget accordingly, and prioritize. This can be done waterfall-ish where the finish line is all decided up front, or agile where a Product Owner decides which ideas become features worth doing as the team builds.
Software just has to work. It is mostly binary: Can I do the thing - send the cost sheet - or can’t I?
There is something to be said about UX and how wonderful or terrible the user’s experience is with executing the feature.
Yet not once, in any of my field tests, did I run up to a user and ask, “Are you having a good time?! Do you want to click that button again?!?”
The system did the thing it was supposed to, we move on to finishing all the features.
This doesn’t seem like the right path…
The Way We Got Here, Doesn’t Get Us There
We have some assets to our advantage:
An idea that seems worth pursuing.
A player community 10,000+ strong, growing every day.
A moldable base clay of basic features (map, combat, towns, quests, simulator) which can be shaped and formed the way we want
But when I playtest the game it isn’t fun enough.
This leads to a key question. One of upmost strategic importance:
“Add more features, hoping it becomes more fun?
- Or-
Find the fun with what you have?”
In software development we talk about tech debt - tech that isn’t quite the way it should be, but you keep putting off dealing with it until some later time. Building on top of this foundation usually just multiples the tech debt.
It sounds ridiculous to say, but I wasn’t terribly interested in how fun the game was, I wanted to get through all the features. I made my list of features, set the roadmap, and started plowing through like it was a software project.
Oops.
Now I have a pile of Fun Debt to work through.
“We have Fun Debt.”
For a solution, let’s look outside of software/games.
How Is a Song Written?
Confession: I’ve never written a song. Not even accidentally!
But I am a curious student of the process. I watch music documentaries of acts as varied as U2, Queen, Rush, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Taylor Swift. I read Rick Rubin’s (co-founder of Def Jam) book on creativity. I’ll even admit to watching every episode of the TV show Nashville! (That’s 40hrs of my life I’ll never get back!)
My interest is wrapped up in my niece as a budding musician. I’ve been able to go to the studio with her a few times and coach her a bit in her career. Recently she wrote a song with hit-band Maroon 5.
Not once* have I seen a musician first write out all the lyrics of a song: course, verse, & bridge. Then try to set music to it.
It starts with the music. A melody, a hook, a few bars from the aether. The musician listens to it, plays around with it, and builds on it. Music and lyric come together, each supporting the other.
In games, if lyrics are the features, then music is the fun. When a game is well made, it truly sings!
(*I believe rap is an exception where lyrics are written first, then a beat is dropped in, then orchestration and producing occurs to make the ‘song’ - but it kinda ruins my analogy!)
The Musical Melody Approach to Game Dev
We need to take the musicians approach by listening. Where is the game’s melody flat? Screeching? Too loud? Too soft? Then adding to it only what makes it sound/play better. To ensure lyric and music, feature and fun, are supporting each other in harmony every step of the way.
As I wrote last week, we (team, new studio) are committed to making this game great. You deserve a great game.
Now is the time to do this. The game is mostly stable (we’re working on that combat first round issue). We’re working on a new UI which includes controller support (oops let that slip).
Now is the time to unite the clans!!!
Unnecessary Braveheart reference, but I love it!
We are working hard on designing the structure of the game, the game loops, how time passes, how you interact with the map, how you get into combat.
We don’t need more features to make this fun. We need to form the disparate notes and words into a beautiful melody.
Once we have that core, we can add features as long as they don’t upset the balance of the music.
So we need a new roadmap, but I don’t even know what it will look like until we get the core loop right.
This new ‘beautiful melody’ fun version of the game is Update #3 - but it is so much more than just changing how resources are found and harvested. It’s turning the pieces of game we have into a game.
For the time being we’ve taken the roadmap off the Steam page game description.
Finally, About The Price Increase
We’ve said for a while now the game price will increase as we reach certain milestones. The roadmap has shown this for 6+ months. We intended to increase the price with the launch of Rivals Combat, but that has been delayed a few times pending improvements. There are Steam rules on when the price can be changed, last week was a window where we could so we increased from $10->$15 USD. This is just one step along our road to $40 USD.
I totally understand how a price increase on the heels of announcing a new studio acquiring us, looks like the new studio is making changes already. It is not. Just a coincidence. In fact, the VC person doesn’t even know I changed the game price.