Des Moines Parties Relevant to Iowa Game Developers

I would like to invite any Iowa game developers to two upcoming parties here in Des Moines.  The first is a Wes Anderson-themed costume party entitled I Always Wanted To Be A Tenenbaum. Since a friend or two from 8monkey Labs will be showing up, I figured I would invite any other devs in the area to stop on by and hang out.

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.

We just got back from IndieCade and it’s Mike’s birthday.

Wow.

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.

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How I find good folks to collaborate with.

I just got off the phone with my friend and intuition collective member, Ted Martens, and we were talking a bit about collaborations. Being that game development is rarely the product of just one person, [some exceptions being: cactus, eskill and mossmouth] collaborations of some kind are often useful. But when I talk to people interested in finding a deal like this with someone else, regardless of expertise, they are often lost on where to begin and what to look for.

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.

Gray is in IndieCade and Fig. 8 will be at the Eurogamer Expo.

So we’ve known about the IndieCade thing for awhile but haven’t gotten around to announcing it officially just yet here. Though, we just found out Fig. 8 will be across the pond in the Eurogamer 2009 expo so I figured we’d get two announcements with one stone! It’s a pro PR move by us, to minimize our number of press releases. ;)

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.

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We’re looking for a student intern.

I just finished the second round of “marketing” for our first internship. This won’t be our first employee but it’s close enough that we’re a bit frightened/excited. ISU has offered us a great deal for providing one lucky student [we think] with a paid internship for this Fall semester and we’re doing our best to find someone. So far the first wave has fallen flat on the ISU students. I thought a lot of folks wanted to make video games, but maybe not. We’ve received some interest, but none from students. Even if we get a dozen applicants, it’s still not guaranteed that any of them will make sense to bring on as an intern. Nonetheless, we remain hopeful that our latest Craigslist post, ISU job-board listing and this blog post will have them breaking down our door in droves!

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.

The trouble with not knowing what we’re doing.

Design has been on my mind a lot lately. Liferaft has recently been in a kind of growing-pains stage which is a point in the development where Mike and I fumble around and try to learn how to develop video games. That’s actually a lot of it for us. Each new game we do is usually a whole new challenge with a lot of different problems that we’ve never solved before. The pain comes in the form of arguments between Mike and I, general frustration towards not knowing the best way to do something and all the shitty feelings that come with that.

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.

Liferaft is up on Kickstarter

A few weeks ago we were graciously invited to join Kickstarter, an interesting community centered around funding more personal projects/endeavors. Only a few days before, Mike and Josh had just got wind of it and were really interested in how we could use it to bootstrap some ongoing projects we have. For Mike and I with Liferaft, it made a lot of sense to use this kind of thing as a way to run fancy preorders and get a little peace of mind while we’re developing Liferaft for 6 months [probably more].

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!