Hey everyone,
We’re coming
up on the 2 year anniversary of when I decided to start Stigma Games. A lot has changed since then. I started the company in an effort to make an
MMORPG. We've since completely stopped
all production on it and moved to other things.
This is why game companies don’t like to talk about what they’re doing
until the very end--because things change.
We’re in a unique position in which, since we’re not funded, we can’t
make rigid schedules. Not just because
people bail--as I've mentioned, our attrition rate has slowed to the point to
where now it’s generally only the new people that we tend to lose--but because
I don’t know when something will get done.
I can’t really get on someone’s case about not meeting their
deadlines. People have work or school,
or often both. People aren't always sure
how long something will take them to do and often hit unexpected roadblocks and
need more input.
Funding will
radically change how we’re able to work.
I’ll be so amazingly happy when I’m able to meet a payroll. My stress levels will also radically increase
as I worry about how to keep making enough money to make payroll each
month. But I can handle that. Anyways, enough of that. Let’s move on to what we’re doing.
A new web
host! Ok, I’m the only one that seems
excited about this. I’ll be paying about
3 times a month for a virtual private server, but man, the old host was really
irritating me. The MySQL was down a lot,
and when it was working, it was slow and about half the time, would time out in
the middle of a query. We use a private
forum and wiki to keep all our design documents and discussions. And it was just miserable to work with. Also, for some reason, all of a sudden php
files stopped working completely. I was
not in the mood to convert everything to html files. That was the last straw. The downside, transferring all the data from
the old MySQL to the new didn't exactly work as well as I thought it
would. I saved the more important data
manually, and it’s taking me a lot of time to manually input everything in the
new. That means all the accounts for the
team have to be recreated. Fun.
I mentioned
last post about the Dawnshine Card Game.
We've hit a stumbling block as we've realized a lot of the game
mechanics we wanted to use as still under a patent owned by Wizards of the
Coast who make Magic: The Gathering.
That patent runs out in about two years.
Do we want to wait that long or come up with something that doesn't
violate their patent? The vote was to do
something new and release sooner rather than later. I've only played Magic once, and it was about
15 years ago. I barely know the
rules. My version of the Dawnshine Card
Game was based more on Battle Systems.
So we might revert back to that somewhat. We've also talked about a type of Tower
Defense and Lane Combat rules. And
furthermore, we've talked about using an actual physical board. I mean, we've already mapped out the zones
for the MMO, so turning that or part of that into a physical board would be
easier.
I’m not the
main designer on this. One of our
marketing people who is obsessed with card games and the local CCG community
and one of our designers who also plays CCGs a lot are both working on
designs. So Wednesday, at our meeting, I’ll
see where they’re at and what they've come up with. I’m really just there to make sure things fit
Dawnshine lore and it’s something I think we can market and sell.
I also mentioned
making single player Dawnshine games. I
finished a Game Design Document for one.
It’s based on a character that I created long before founding Stigma
Games. The character’s name is Theo, and
that will likely be the name of the game “Dawnshine: Theo.” What I was thinking about doing is moving
everyone to it after we finish our other projects. A few people on the team have told me that
they want to get back to Dawnshine. But
I want to do this smarter--meaning getting the design down a lot more solidly
before we have artists and programmers take a crack.
I've
mentioned Raygun Rocketship. I’m still
thinking about the best way to market this game. Space combat games generally aren't things people get excited about unless they’re
being made by people named Chris Roberts.
Speaking of which, I have a feeling Star Citizen is going to be
absolutely amazing, but anyways. Now, I
think Raygun Rocketship is going to be a really fun and cool game and people
will really like it once they play it, but getting people to try it in the
first place will take some doing. So,
how to make it really stand out? I think
the way to go is to really work on the characters, make them really
interesting, and push that angle. Out of
all our projects, this is the one I’m the least involved in, though I’m really
happy with how the team is doing with it.
I've written some dialogue and story, but I told the team it’s totally
cool if they want to throw out all that and have me start again.
I've also
been working on fleshing out the characters for our fighting game parody. I’m fine with changing characters based on
the team’s input. Not that it’s a better
or worse game than Raygun Rocketship, but I think it will be much easier to
market since it’s all about the characters.
Being a parody game, humor is often an easier way to grab people.
Not much to
report on our casual game. I think I've
mentioned the bulk of the main artwork is done.
One of our designers is finishing some story line stuff for it, then he’ll
be freed up for a while until the programmer catches up. In the meantime, I’ll probably move him to the
Dawnshine: Theo game. I’ve already moved
the artist off the casual game and to the fighting game.
This is
something that I've learned. It’s
pointless bringing on a programmer right away.
Which is funny because studios usually bring on writers towards the end
of a project to polish turds and create a story out of art work and game
mechanics. I've learned to do the
opposite. Bring in designers and writers
first. Do a lot of pre-production. Halfway through pre-production, bring in
Tools Programmers so that the designers have the tools to be able to implement what
they create in the game. Halfway through
pre-production, bring in artists to concept out designs and characters once the
artists actually have something to go off of. Do not leave it to artists to come up with
story or character ideas. By that, I’m
not saying not to listen to their, or anyone else’s input, but rather to say
that designers should be designing. All
things being equal, no one designs better than a designer.
Oh, not that
anyone reads this for the latest on game news, but I wanted to mention what’s
going on with Ouya to finish what I said in the last post. Ouya has lowered the “Free the Games Fund”
from $50k to $10k minimum. This is a
much more attainable goal, so I’m happy about this. This makes Raygun Rocketship a more
obtainable goal to enter the contest with.
I also mentioned a sketchy entry where one team raised $171k and got a
lot of crap about it. The game is called
Gridiron Thunder by MogoTXT. Well, they
announced that they would not be taking the matching funds from Ouya. Yeah, that’s a lot of money to turn down just
to improve their PR, but I got to hand them for having the guts to do it. All and all, I have a lot more respect for
Ouya for being flexible. The revenue
devs are getting by releasing on Ouya isn’t very good so far, but I still see
this as a good first step for us.
I let one of
our programmers borrow my Ouya to try and get Raygun Rocketship working on
it. I’m hoping by the meeting this
weekend, it will be working. It’s only
one level so far and it still has some bugs.
It needs a lot of balancing. Once
you play it a few times and get the patterns down, it’s not challenging. So that will need to be adjusted, then play
tested, etc. We still have a long way to
go with it. In general, I’m really happy
with how it’s coming along. I just wish
we had a funded studio so the team could focus on it exclusively.
Anyways, I
have a lot of work to do today, so I have to get back to that.
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