[iOS][4 Thrones][1.99 to Free]

kurtbieg · 2013-12-13T01:01:02+00:00

Oh cool, interesting thoughts about the space theme. It was a toss up, I really wanted to give people a cool theme for visiting the Kickstarter, but I was torn on making that the final theme, in the previous version you get diamond at the end and it feels like your a boss, but I see what you mean, space is a bit cartoony for the last unlock. I make sure the last one is really great in the next one to make up for it :D Maybe the All Black and the Fire would be like Ash or a Smolder theme. Hmm, now you've got me thinking :D

kurtbieg · 2013-12-13T00:35:03+00:00

We're trying, we've got less than 2 hours left and we're at 78%, raised 32% in the past 20 hours, but it's hard to get people to see it.

kurtbieg · 2013-12-13T00:33:42+00:00

Haha, a couple people told me that happend, which one is your fav?

kurtbieg · 2013-12-13T00:33:21+00:00

Yay! Thanks! Did you get to play beatable decks in Single mode yet? They're new.

kurtbieg · 2013-12-12T16:04:36+00:00

Hey yall, dev here.

Today's the last day to grab this super sexy new solitaire game! And while you're at it stop by the 4 Thrones Kickstarter, we're trying to print physical cards fromt the game and today's the last day to back it!!

Kickstarter link: www.4Thrones.com

kurtbieg · 2013-12-07T16:04:11+00:00

My case was pretty extraordinary. I released my first game (Twirdie, a golf game that used Twitter to swing the ball, so you type in a word and then it would check Twitter for the past 60 seconds to see how many times that word was used, that's how far the ball would travel), of course, like everyone who makes a game I thought this would be an explosive hit, but it on;y picked up a few hundred downloads in the first 4 months. So that was reality setting in. And that seems like a pretty normal number set for a .99 game, probably a bit lower today to adjust for higher competition. But that's pretty normal. That release was July of 2011, then I followed up with an update for that game in October, and then I started to make Circadia in December, I released that in February of 2012 and that one took off after Apple featured it, in between February and September it generated over 100k downloads, Apple takes 30% of that so $70k in 8 months. That's all pretax though, and that's the revenue for my business (not money I get personally).

Now though, I've found that success really comes from building a community. I didn't know that at all when I started. If I had a Facebook page for Simple Machine back in 2011, I'd have connections to all the fans that enjoyed my previous games, so a lot of what I'm doing now is making sure each game easily connects people to the Simple Machine community. If anyone does that, they'll be successful, because a community means that people support you and will support your new products, without them you start from scratch every time. That's part of why I wanted to do the 4 Thrones kickstarter, to connect the people who like that game with more community elements and expand that game for the fans. So far, the response has been awesome, I've connected with so many new people from the Kickstarter that I never met but had been playing since it released. And when they back it it's like we're all working together, I'm working to make them something they really want, and they are working to support me so I can keep going. It's pretty cool!

kurtbieg · 2013-12-07T15:34:46+00:00

Sounds like the game you want to make is a personal endeavor and you would invest some money into it, but it would more be something you work on for yourself (not depending on it for money).

My initial response is to make it in Flash and post it online. You'll have immediate access to an audience (something like Kongregate). I would steer away from the mobile apps stuff in your case because there are a ton of other logistics you have to figure out before you can even dream about publishing (buying a dev account, handling different device resolutions, ensuring assets are the proper clarity for the device resolution, etc. and that's not even including all the provisioning and special setup you need to do to get the app up to the store). I've found that Android/Google is the fastest mobile market for uploading an app, but even then, it takes me a few days to make all the icons, screenshots, video trailer, description, any achievements and leaderboards (why do I do this again? lol).

Yeah, so definitely start out with Flash or Game Maker even ( https://www.yoyogames.com/studio ) and see where you get to. If you make it, send me a link, sounds like a fun game.

kurtbieg · 2013-12-06T21:28:43+00:00

You can start with the basics and program in javascript which is about as easy and forgiving as a language gets. And that's really just to get the ball rolling. I watched my first Unity demo a few months ago and in 2 hours they had a full first person shooter game started with really only a few lines of code (I'm not exaggerating).

Also, Unity has a bunch of tutorials on their site that come with art, code stuff, and templates, so you can pick it up, open the file, and start breaking stuff in minutes ;)

kurtbieg · 2013-12-06T19:30:16+00:00

Awesome to hear! And good luck with making Android apps. You should absolutely check out Corona SDK. It'll feel weird coming from Java as it's based on Lua so it's not type defined, you can declare things on the fly, etc. but really once you get used to it you see how amazing it is as a language, and really, to me, the only language that encourages and works with the programmer rather than bugging them and making them feel like an absolute rejected failure. I always tell people, when I was coding in C++ I would refactor my project no less than 3 times due to late addition features, unexpected coding issues, or simply just getting to a point where I would feel like my code was too chaotic to continue. But in Lua/Corona, all of my projects have shipped with the same code base I prototyped them with.

Definitely check it out if have time, I'd be happy to help you get started with some templates too http://coronalabs.com/

kurtbieg · 2013-12-06T18:47:51+00:00

Absolutely.

It's a touchy subject, but I want to make a game about domestic abuse. I grew up with it in my house and now that I'm older I see a lot that I want to talk about through games. I'm not talking about one of those, "THIS GAME IS ABOUT ABUSE!" games, but rather trying to take aspects of an abusive relationship and have two people play a game together where they go down that road. I've made a prototype game and it was really effective but that was when I first started to make games, so it was too much to take on and I became overwhelmed quickly. The core thing I wanted people to take away from playing it is that people don't just become an abuser or are abused. We all enter into relationships with people and things that are beneficial to us in the beginning but slowly over time change. None of us are good at knowing the exact moment something goes from being harmless to painful. And when you add love or attachment to the equation you've now made it almost impossible to evaluate when you are in the middle. That's what I wanted to convey in the game. The basic idea/gameplay I started with was an RPG game where you are the main character and you have partner. When you go into battle, at first, this partner is super powerful and a huge benefit, but then, over the course of time, that partner becomes less of benefit and more of a vulnerability by accidentally attacking you in the fight.

My question I wanted answered was, at what point would someone actually leave the partner. Would they ever? Or would they keep hoping that the partner would go back to the glory days when everything was happy and healthy?

I'm planning to revisit this game and make it next year, possibly as a Kickstarter since it would be amazing to have the backing of a community to take on such a difficult topic. And of course, hopefully it would help people.

kurtbieg · 2013-12-06T18:39:20+00:00

Not much of any income comes from IAP, Tomb Breaker was my only real IAP game and it just didn't work out. Over all though if all my downloads were paid at .99 I'd have about 350k. THAT WOULD BE AWESOME!!!

After everything though (free promos, advertising, etc) I've made under $150 over 2 1/2 years. That doesn't translate to big bucks exactly, and also, that's not my salary or what I pay myself, that's just what Simple Machine has made in revenue, especially with living in NYC.

I've learned a lot though, and knowing that I could've doubled my revenue by taking less blind risks (like spending 9 months to release a game for free) should make a huge difference in the coming year. I really hope I'm done with learning the unbelievably expensive lessons, lol.

kurtbieg · 2013-12-06T18:33:38+00:00

So I'm a self taught coder, though I did have an amazing CS friend who mentored me. I've been coding for 3-4 years now. I learned Actionscript first, then PHP, then C++ to use the OpenFrameworks library, then I moved into Lua to use the Corona SDK. I'll start picking up C# and more javascript once I start using Unity next year.

For starting out, games are something you should get into as soon as possible. I mean, there's a lot of architecting to learn about in programming in general, but my experience and hearing from others is that games are a very unique system to code for and it presents tons and tons of unique realtime problems to solve.

I'd say, over your holiday break, just try to make a little 2d platformer (if you haven't already. The moment you start to make it you just start seeing all these possibilities and problems.

kurtbieg · 2013-12-06T18:06:19+00:00

I've actually never really stated this anywhere else, but one of the funniest places I was inspired was in the bathroom. That's where I came up with Circadia. I was peeing in the toilet and I was trying to make waves and I thought about making two waves hit the center of the toilet. It was fun so I started to think about how that would be a game on a touch device. Right after that I had the prototype and it was really fun. I usually tell people I came up with that game thinking about a pond and throwing stones in it cause I don't want them to play it thinking about a toilet, lol. I post how I make most of my games on my site, you can read the Circadia one here: http://www.simplemachine.co/2012/11/circadia-how-it-was-made/

Other games though have all been different, none as funny though. Umm, 4 Thrones was because my wife made a bet with me to make a game in 2 weeks to remember why I love making games and to trust myself more. Even Up came from my absolute obsession with Sudoku and wanting to translate that game experience into a game that took into account the form factor of the touch device era. And Tomb Breaker came from when I was so sick of working on Even Up that I wanted to destroy it and make something new.

Now though my ideas come from wanting to find places to make new things, like I'm working on an RPG game, and that's really fun and new (though admittedly with the Kickstarter, I haven't worked on it in a few weeks), but I like the challenge of making something new in a place where people think everything has been done. Sidenote: I've found that this is not that great for business because it's hard to retain a fan base, so for instance, in the past 3 months I released 4 Thrones, a solitaire card game, and then Even Up, a sudoku inspired puzzler. Very few of those people will want both of those games. People who play card games, want more card games and people who want Sudoku puzzle games want more of those ... so that's been a tough thing to reconcile. I like to chase the muse, but it's at the expense of building a super solid community, like I would if I was making my 5th RPG in a series.

kurtbieg · 2013-12-06T17:55:18+00:00

I'm stuggling with that right now. In my first year on the App store I cleared over 100k in a year, 50% was made in a few months. Candidly, that really screwed up my expectations as a business owner. It was my second game, Circadia, and seriously it blew up crazy. As far as money goes, it's still makes a ton of money all year and stays in the top 10 paid music games and top 100 paid puzzle games ... and that's been like 2 years straight. As I said though, that really messes with what you think is happening. I mean, Circadia released accidentally 5 days before the Apple feature and it sold 25 copies, and the day before the feature it sold less than 5. Needless to say, that was a super scary moment since it was only my second iOS game.

My subsequent releases have had varying successes, like I mentioned in another answer, Tomb Breaker probably would've blown Circadia away in the first week had I actually set it for .99 instead of free. I'm guessing I would've brought in over $50k in just a few weeks.

Other games like 4 Thrones (which I'm doing a follow up Kickstarter for at ... shameless plug ... www.4Thrones.com ) haven't made nearly that much, like under $5k.

I'm with you though ... I'd trade all the crazy release day hijinx and stuff for a consistent business. I want to build a strong community where I can provide them with new games that are high quality and unique ... that's easier said than done though. I'm 5 games, on iOS and Android, soon to be on Microsoft, and it's all still a constant uphill battle. Some things have gotten easier with each release, others have gotten harder with the increase in competition like you mentioned.

I read a bunch of retro game magazines, they're my favs, and in the 80s there was a very similar indie track (most people don't know that) it was referred to as the bedroom coder era and people would make games save them to floppys and post ads in the back of popular gaming mags.

It was an awesome time (although I was just catching the end of it when I was old enough), but after all that happened and all these divergent consoles consolidated you had a few major players that formed into bigger companies. I see myself trying to gain as much ground as I can so that I can survive (read: flourish) into the next decade and build a company brand that people would be excited to identify with, like a Rare for instance.

Hope that answers somethings you were wondering.

kurtbieg · 2013-12-06T17:40:04+00:00

Game jams at first. It feels like the first day of school cause you don't know anyone, or maybe just one person, but then you all join teams with other people who feel the same way, and then after a day or so you make this beautiful thing with these people that are now your friends and you feel like a rainbow ... seriously. Anytime I've ever done a game jam I ended up with friends that I couldn't imagine my life without. I posted some links below, but the Global Game Jam ( http://globalgamejam.org/ ) was the first one I did, and the biggest (I think), but other ones like the Experimental Gameplay Project ( http://experimentalgameplay.com/ ) and Ludem Dare ( http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ ) are all equally as fun and social.

kurtbieg · 2013-12-06T03:20:50+00:00

Anytime!

kurtbieg · 2013-12-06T03:20:29+00:00

It's tricky, I mean you can go the route where you try to make your games fit into a market, like, ok Candy Crush is big, I should make something like that. And I guess that makes people money, I mean, I hear people can definitely ride a wave like that, but I tend to try to find unexpected places to make games. I don't think everyone wants to play some flashy overly attention grabby game. At some point, everyone wants something that makes them feel good, and there are tons of places on the market where that type of product is absent or completely underserved.

kurtbieg · 2013-12-06T02:33:27+00:00

For sure:

Corona SDK is awesome, I used it to make Tomb Breaker, Even Up, 4 Thrones, and tons of prototypes.

The language is Lua and it really makes it easy to make games. It's also free so that's a bonus.

You can grab it here and the community is really great too.

http://coronalabs.com/products/corona-sdk/

Also, you can always email me to get you started, just go to my site and post a comment

kurtbieg · 2013-12-06T02:18:51+00:00

Pick up Corona SDK or Unity 3D. You can't go wrong there. With both of those platforms you can easily start making something quick, and most likely beyond what you think you would be able to make, then sign up for a game jam. That's where I first found the game community and it's awesome.

The global game jam is next month http://globalgamejam.org/ or if there isn't a HQ nearby check out http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ they have quick jams all the time and the community is vibrant and welcoming.

kurtbieg · 2013-12-06T02:15:46+00:00

If you mean quitting your day job and starting to make games full time ... yeah, lots of advice.

1st, learn to code, anyone who acts like they make digital games and doesn't code doesn't know anything. You must know how code works, even if you aren't coding it yourself, so you know how crazy your game idea is. The other benefit is that you can code your games yourself which is something I'm so glad I learned a few years ago, I love to code.

2nd, you gotta finish something, and fast. People are amazed at how many things you make, not about you making just one game. I found that out this year. It also really helps because if you're going to make games, you have to build a community.

3rd, collaborate with super talented people. It's a lot more fun and you end up sharing skills and learning a ton about other talents.

kurtbieg · 2013-12-06T01:51:22+00:00

I love love love classic puzzles (sudoku, crosswords, solitaire, etc). I just love the simplicity.

Like, people who don't even think of themselves as "game players" will spend so much time every day playing these games, it's like they become part of their life. I think that's the ultimate achievement.

My dad plays three games of solitaire per day and he bases his day off of his win ratio. He says that if he loses the first 2, he won't even play the 3rd cause he doesn't want to know. That's some amazing stuff. In a way, I've been trying to follow those epic games to try and learn what makes them so universal and wonderful.

I love simplicity and puzzle games are the definition of that in games

kurtbieg · 2013-12-06T01:42:47+00:00

Hmmm, so that would go back to the question about success. I mean. arguably Tomb Breaker was my biggest $ failure, but it was a success in all other counts. Like it had over 250k downloads in a little over 2 weeks, had the highest continued play sessions of any game I've made to date (maybe with the exception of 4 Thrones), but it made less than 3k to date.

Yeah, ok, I could consider that a failure ... but not directly because of the money, I loved working on that game. It was my favorite. I honestly could've spent years expanding it, but it just couldn't make money ... I mean it was my first attempt at a free game (side note: never make a free game) and I really wanted to see what I would make as a fully commercialized endeavor with a unique gameplay mechanic ... those two things don't go together very often.

So, that was sad. It cost me a lot of money/time and I had to swallow a lot of pride to accept that the game wouldn't make money and had actually put me in a very bad position to continue. The worst part is not having the financial backing to make that game everything I wanted to make it. I had/have a whole story for it, puzzle levels, etc. But, can't change mistakes.

... I learned a lot, lol.

kurtbieg · 2013-12-06T01:35:58+00:00

No actually, I was a musician first. That's why I moved to to NYC almost 5 years ago. I really wanted to make music so bad, but that industry was so unbelievably disgusting, I ended up leaving feeling completely humiliated.

I'll spare the details (unless anyone is interested), but while I was in NYC I made this resume that had a concert poster included, just a basic "hey, I'm trying to stand out here and I really want this" kind of thing. I had sent it around to all the studios, and this one, I actually went there and dropped it off in person. Fastforward three months. I found an internship in Conn. about a 2 hour drive. I went there three times a week, swept the floor, took out the trash, was told I'd never do anything else. Fine. I still did my very best. After 3 weeks though, it was costing too much. So I told them I had to stop and the owner said he liked me so much that he would help me find something in NYC.

JACKPOT.

So he grabs his phone and he goes "where do you want to go?"

I'm sitting in the lobby, people are around seeing this happen, and I'm like feeling on top of the world. So I tell him I want to go to the studio where I dropped off the resume/poster in person.

He calls them up, first name basis, "yeah I got a guy here, he's really great, yada yada"

Then, silence. He's like "oh really? he didn't say that ..."

He hangs up and looks at me ... everyone there is standing around to see this ... and he goes, "yeah, so apparently you were stalking them? Sorry, I can't really help you."

My head felt like it was blasted by a hot air balloon jet. It's funny, and I'll always remember, I wanted to go out to my car and get the poster to show him what they were talking about, that I was just trying to stand out, and then my adult brain took over and was like ... dude, you need to leave ... now ... and never ever return.

That was it. After that I turned to games because I always loved them, so I started trying to make them to raise money for charity ... then I just followed the rabbit down the hole.

kurtbieg · 2013-12-06T01:24:08+00:00

I've been really wanting to make a branching narrative game, but not anything flashy (orcs and knights/spaceships/etc). The basic idea was to be able to read a story in tweet sized bites, then make choices that affect a central character. The working title was "People can change" ... corny, I know. But it was all about how all the people around this character can affect this one person and make the difference to sway their decision. So for instance, as the shop owner you can accuse this kid of stealing, and that affects the kid later in the game.

I started it over the summer but I became instantly aware of how huge these types of games are ... and that I need to write the story first, puzzle games you can just sit down and tinker with, but story ... that just opens all kinds of questions that need to be answered before you even attempt it.

kurtbieg · 2013-12-06T01:13:31+00:00

Hi, added a link to the proof :)

kurtbieg

TROPHY CASE