Compel and be Compelled

Hi all, this is the producer, Phillip, speaking. My schedule says I have to write a blog post now, so I’ve taken off my programmer cap and put on my producer hat for the occasion. Today, we’re covering the topic of funding, designing the game to be fundable, and attempting to avoid abject failure. Just the essentials, really.

Be Compelled or Be Miserable

MVGIE Studios was incorporated almost two years ago, and we’ve been developing games as a team for even longer. One might think that this would mean that our first game is out and that I can point you towards it, however, as is often the case with indie companies, that hasn’t been the case. We’re working on a narrative-driven simulation/management game about an up-and-coming stand-up comedian, which is sure to impress everyone when it’s finished… but we haven’t finished it yet, and probably won’t for a while. We’ve had over two years, though, so we must be somewhat close, right? As it happens, our current game has only been in development for a few months, which is the result of a pivot from a much larger game, which we won’t think about, for now. It can feel like a reset to start over on a project from scratch. Even if we’ve learned a ton from previous projects and can take our design pillars with us, it has undeniably moved us a little further away from reaching our goals of funding our company.

Our story certainly isn’t unique, and most fresh indie developers are likely to go through some variation of this process, and that’s okay. We can joke about the time we spent on another game now, because we love the process, and we couldn’t imagine ourselves doing anything else. We’re compelled to make games, and even if it can be stressful and demoralising at times, we still want to keep going, and that’s an important lesson to learn. If you don’t love the process of making your own video games, and importantly, of running a business to facilitate your development; then every task, discipline, and struggle along the way will feel excruciating, and it’s not likely going to be worth it. Developing a game from scratch is difficult enough by itself, but running a sustainable business that allows you to do it is several magnitudes of difficulty harder. If you’re thinking about doing it for yourself, my best advice would be to not do it, save yourself the trouble. If you’re still compelled to do it and can’t be told otherwise, then I hope my next few tips can make your journey just a little easier.

The Basics of Asking for Money

The easiest way to keep your game development going without being worried about money is to not rely on it to pay your salary, typically by working a different job and then developing games in your spare time. The flaw of this is obvious: you get less time to develop games. It’s not where most of us want to be when we’re working on our next indie masterpiece, so what are the other options?

Publisher deal

This is an obvious one, and what most indies seem to be aiming for. A publisher can provide you not only with funding, but also marketing help, QA support, localisation, porting, and more, depending on the publisher. This is great, because many developers only know how to develop a game, and not how to do any of the other necessary tasks for releasing a game. The downside? It’s very difficult to convince someone to invest in your game. In the beginning, your studio and game will be all risk, and you have to mitigate it. Has your team worked for a while before? That’s reassuring. Have you released commercial titles before, maybe other indie titles? Great. Is your game a proven market with great potential? That’s a necessity. The list goes on. You need to figure out how to alleviate every risk that a publisher can identify to make this process work. What other options are there? Well, we’re hoping to find a publisher one day, so we can’t be as insightful about other methods, but in brief…

Company Investments

With company investments you give a stake in your company in exchange for money. It’s becoming more popular in indie business, but you lose some of your ownership, and you’d usually need a novel business plan that shows a lot of potential, and work harder on developing your business, rather than your game.

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is another option, which is great if you already have experience with marketing and getting player attention. It might give you a lot of freedom and let you self-publish your game, but you’ll be spending more time on marketing.

Grants

You can also try to bootstrap your business by applying for grants and keeping it afloat on that. Look for game development grants, but also business grants, tech grants, university accelerators, if you’re affiliated with a university, and really anywhere you think there might be money to get. This can be tough and time consuming, but if you have experience with getting grants, it can be a huge help.

Don’t Get Lost

“My game idea has never been attempted before. My vision is beyond the comprehension of publishers, investors, and players. They need to experience it, before they can understand it.”

If that’s the case, then you have a problem on your hands. That’s not to sound dismissive, we haven’t seen our game be attempted before, and even though we get a lot of interest when we talk about it, people, understandably, need to see it to understand what it will become. That isn’t a problem, as long as you can make it and show it, but as it turns out, it’s not just running an indie game business that’s hard, making video games is also hard. How do we make it easier? We work in a structured approach, have specific, quantifiable goals, get useful feedback, and implement changes that always work towards our north star.

When getting an idea for a game, it’s likely that you either had a thought for a cool mechanic that would be really compelling to play, or that you had a grand vision of a complete experience that is itself compelling. Whichever the case, it can be really helpful to have a north star, a design goal, which you’re always working towards, and measuring each decision against it.

Once you know, in broad terms, what you’re working towards, you need to be working in a consistent structure. A lot of software developers like Agile, but you should find what works best for you. The important bit is having regular development periods, with clearly defined goals and milestones. Work week-to-week, month-to-month, bi-weekly, or whatever works for you. A shorter schedule will help you catch mistakes and fruitless endeavours earlier, but can also prevent you from getting useful metrics at the end of each cycle. From here, ask yourself three questions at the end of every development period:

Is my game compelling? In many games, this is actually asking if the game is fun, but it depends on what your goal is. Papers, Please is compelling, but not always fun. Sometimes it’s frustrating and stressful, but that works well for the narrative experience and player journey, which is itself compelling. You need to identify what the compulsion should be for your north star, and then check if that’s achieved in your game at the end of every development cycle.

Is my game intuitive? One thing is having each new feature implemented and you understanding it, but if a total stranger came to play your game, would it be intuitive, would they know what to do? Would that be the case for someone familiar with your genre, or with someone from outside the usual player base? If the game isn’t intuitive and the barrier to understanding is too high, you often lose the compelling elements long before you can collect valuable feedback.

Is my game closer to my grand vision? You can make the game compelling week-to-week and make sure its intuitive, but it also has to be ready for release some day. For each cycle, ask yourself if you’ve achieved your vision yet, and if not, how long you are from it. Ask if the feature you just made really gets you closer to that point, and if not, what would get you closer. This is your opportunity not only to make your game coherent, but also to keep the scope in check. This is especially important if you want to pitch to a publisher, as the sooner you have a coherent, compelling, intuitive demo, which clearly shows what the grand vision could be, the sooner you can get funding, and work towards that goal.

Of course, you can try to follow all of these steps and still end up further away from your goal every week. To prevent it, make sure you aren’t working in isolation. Have players test out your game every cycle, and not the same people, but new people every time. See if they can find the compulsion, and get what the grand vision is. Beyond that, it’s important to have people to talk to about your project. Find your game development community. They’re not going to steal your idea, they’re too busy with their own project. If you want to know more about why that’s so important, check out Alex’ post from last week.

That’s all from me for now, but should we have the privilege of borrowing your attention again next week, then we look forward to seeing you back here, again.

Phillip

phillip@mvgiestudios.com