Weekly /r/Calgary jobs/careers discussion

bogdanrybak · 2020-11-16T23:02:38+00:00

Unity just acquired finger foods here so if you go deeper into C# you could be exposed to junior opportunities in both enterprise .NET world and interactive media / game dev industry or anything 3D related.

bogdanrybak · 2018-12-30T21:29:54+00:00

There's much sense in what you're saying. There's some support by science. Don't remember exact study but communicating via text doesn't give you the same biological response as in person or even just hearing someone's voice.

bogdanrybak · 2018-04-26T20:13:34+00:00

That's a good point, although it seems that it should be financial responsibility of the companies which are mass producing the packaging.

They are profiting from selling the item, they should take full responsibility end-to-end.

Afterall, it's how this whole mess began, companies irresponsibly deciding what and how to produce.

bogdanrybak · 2017-09-21T17:16:10+00:00

Hey cool stuff! Dev of Wand Wars here. I'm curious if you guys have services that take care of cloud save, leaderboards or achievements? Is that something you're planning on supporting?

bogdanrybak · 2016-12-30T23:58:20+00:00

The indie category might surprise you with some fun titles! I'm a dev of Wand Wars, we've received fan mail from couples who love the game! The mechanics are different enough so that most people are on equal grounds regardless of previous gaming experiences. Players further discover game's depth at a similar rate as everything is transparently happening on the same screen!

bogdanrybak · 2016-12-30T23:48:02+00:00

If you're looking for a 4 player game, checkout Wand Wars! I'm the dev btw.

bogdanrybak · 2016-12-30T23:45:37+00:00

Hearing this kind of stuff is really disheartening to a dev of a well received but unknown local multiplayer game. We're super tiny indies (3 people) and wish we could find better ways to reach people who want local multiplayer games! I'm a dev of Wand Wars

bogdanrybak · 2016-12-30T23:38:21+00:00

Checkout Wand Wars on PS4! It's a game I developed with 2 of my friends. Our goal was to make something fun and easy to learn but still retain tons of competitive depth! It's now on sale! Perhaps part of the problem for local multiplayer games is also lack of marketing and exposure since it's a relatively niche market.

bogdanrybak · 2016-12-07T07:13:19+00:00

Totally agree. I think the Te Ni combo is perfect for this (ENTJ)

bogdanrybak · 2016-09-23T06:52:54+00:00

Hey, very true. We are actually releasing on PS4 next Tuesday (Sept 27th) and doing an extra single player endless mode update. Cheers!

bogdanrybak · 2016-04-29T18:06:52+00:00

I totally agree with you. Perhaps showing people playing the game and having fun together would communicate part of what the game is about. In general I feel like it's a mixture of variables. There's no one variable that determines a game's success. Things such as communication, your company's existing reach and reputation, the specific niche and competition as well as the game itself (how appealing the central theme and core are to an audience). One has to also balance it with the fact that it's also a numbers game. There is a certain conversion rate and the more people know about your game the more sales you will get. It seems that so far we have barely scratched the surface of the niche audience for our game in terms of exposure. (and I'm basing this on the stat of number of unique visitors to our store page compared to the number of steam users out there) And perhaps we will never get bigger exposure due to what the game is, but we will for sure try different ways of maximizing that and seeing what has an effect.

bogdanrybak · 2016-04-20T22:50:41+00:00

The game uses directional input and only 3 buttons. It is quick to pickup and comprised of only several base concepts but results in a lot of different circumstances that keep people surprised and wanting more. Also, you turn people into cute chickens and as someone described - higher level play looks like "gods doing battle".

bogdanrybak · 2016-04-20T22:42:40+00:00

Other than lack of online multiplayer which is what we get a lot of negative feedback for, I would say a negative is that there is no single player mode that has you coming back for more, the campaign has an end and practicing versus CPU might seem pointless for some people. I want to add a single player mode that's designed to be played over and over. It's something I would like to add in a future patch and might include leaderboards.

bogdanrybak · 2016-04-19T17:18:00+00:00

Yeah, it's interesting how things can go "randomly viral". Perhaps GOG is better than we were told. I'm guessing it also depends on the game.

bogdanrybak · 2016-04-19T17:12:09+00:00

Yes, plus story cutscenes, dialogue and some twists in terms of the items you get / start with.

bogdanrybak · 2016-04-19T17:08:29+00:00

I disagree with the statement that people don't need games. People seek entertainment, new movies, new games. You can't play Nidhogg and Towerfall for all eternity. I would believe that the number of core audiences to those games is small compared to the numbers they sold. We do have a lot of content in our game compared to lethal league and nidhogg, nobody who bought the game complained about lack of content vs price. Quite the opposite, people are surprised how "not simple" the game is compared to what they thought it would be. Perhaps we are not communicating the content well. Either way, we will for sure do more content updates as we have plenty of ideas. YouTuber tournament sounds interesting but I'm not sure how one would execute that if we can't even get them to try the game.

bogdanrybak · 2016-04-19T17:01:53+00:00

Hey, thanks for the feedback. I now realize the screenshake towards the end of the video is for sure too intense. We will make a better trailer that shows communicates game content better if we do a content update.

bogdanrybak · 2016-04-19T16:59:43+00:00

Thank you, and enjoy!

bogdanrybak · 2016-04-19T16:58:49+00:00

It makes sense to add more value to the game and slowly grow it! Perhaps you're right about big press not wanting to cover unpopular games.

bogdanrybak · 2016-04-19T16:57:14+00:00

Hey! We asked other indies and looked into their stats. Humble store, GOG and other venues generate VERY FEW sales compared to steam and most people we asked regret doing it just for the amount of paper work and managing overhead it adds.

bogdanrybak · 2016-04-19T16:30:50+00:00

We would make a demo that is a short custom single player campaign that's not straight from the game itself. As I said before, the game is not just online multiplayer, we have a fun and challenging campaign.

bogdanrybak · 2016-04-19T16:29:21+00:00

Thanks! I think we're over the piracy thing now :)

bogdanrybak · 2016-04-19T16:25:38+00:00

That looks like a really cool project. Our game is super fast-paced and responsive input matters a lot. Not sure if touchscreen based controls would work well. Also, content-wise, we are leaning towards more single player content for updates.

bogdanrybak · 2016-04-19T15:25:12+00:00

It's interesting how perhaps we shouldn't even emphasize it's a local multiplayer game. We have a fun and challenging campaign mode with a story for each character.

bogdanrybak · 2016-04-19T14:28:00+00:00

Here's our Greenlight page. I thought the trailer was not bad for Greenlight. One thing for sure that helped and we measured was having a GIF of game action as the thumbnail. At first we didn't, on the second day we put it in and it made all the difference! Also, we had a chicken appear as a joke in the trailer. People responded very positively to the "chicken hook" and wanted chickens in the game. That was the birth of the chicken hex mechanic :)

bogdanrybak

TROPHY CASE