Plan for Jeremy Alessi
by Jeremy Alessi · 09/19/2005 (12:21 am) · 23 comments
Whew ... where to begin with this one.
OK ... ok so nearly 2 years ago Aerial Antics was 'completed'. When we launched the game there were still numerous general kinks in the game. We had a reasonable beta test but the major beta test occured between Nov 2003 - Feb 2004. It was not until Feb 2004 that the game launched here on Garage Games but it had been selling on Leadfoot Productions since Nov 2003. Sales weren't too great on our site I think we sold maybe 8 copies in that early period before the game launched here on Garage Games.
The thing is that the conversion ratio of the game was low even when it first launched. It was equally low here on Garage Games ... even after the game had been smoothed out quite a bit from our initial launch. I updated the game once a month for the first 6 months and checked the statistics on our website every month. Nothing seemed to help the conversion rate.
After those first 6 months or so constantly checking to see what I could do to improve the conversion rate of this game I was just burned out on Aerial Antics. I put up my latest versions and just let the game go on its merry way.
I figured the game just wouldn't sell as I wanted no matter what changes I made.
Over the last year and a half or so we've gotten a lot of attention with this game. Magazines featured it, websites gave it great reviews, many many publishers knocked on our door, and it was even on G4 TV! How can a game get this kind of attention and not sell on par with the standard conversion rate?
Well, the sales tool is the demo. I tried many demo setups. I added levels, I removed levels, I added time limits, I removed time limits, I put more nag buttons, prettier nag screens, etc etc... I pretty much followed all the advice I could find online especially one article on Dexterity very closely.
Well I think I followed every bit of advice but one. Adrian had always wanted to do a bit of a montage demo. A demo that featured a variety of gameplay but only showing the first locale so we didn't give away the experience of all the locales (a big draw to purchase) and also so that we saved on the download size. For some reason I was against this big time. I had this idea of continuity within the game. I wanted people to play the levels in order and work their way up the difficulty ladder. If I threw a variety of gameplay diversity into the demo I felt that was screwing with the difficult curve. At least I think that's what I was thinking at the time.
Whatever it was I really had my head stuck in the wrong place for not at least trying it. Aerial Antics still got between 3,000 and 11,000 hits a month on LeadfootProductions.com in 2005. I think that shows how long a shelf life an online game can have. There's still a lot of life left in Aerial Antics that I should have found a way to tap into earlier but I was just too tired/crushed/stumped to keep updating the title.
Our other title in development is going great and early play tests are positive. However, with that being quite a ways off I feel it is imperative to keep looking at our operation as a business and maximize what we've already got. After Aerial Antics seemed to have failed sales wise I put game development as a business on the back burner. It became more of a hobby instead of what I had previously considered my career. I started another business which took care of me financially and I sat back and tried to analyze what went wrong with the game business. Meanwhile I started telling people more and more that I owned a hardwood flooring company instead of telling them that I was a video game developer.
This realization was really brutal. Here I had spent time going to school for computer science and developing games for years leading up to Aerial Antics. Then here I was with a college degree, a published game getting lots of attention but few sales, and what was I doing ... physical labor! Sure it's my own business but when I invested so much time in games it was really pretty sad not to be making my living from them.
Anyway, to make a long story short.
New Demo
If this one is well recieved on our site then I can see about updating what we have here at Garage Games as well. Both versions have had different control schemes but I've found the Leadfoot version to be easier to pick up and play for people unless they have a gamepad. The original game was designed for a gamepad but since most people don't have gamepads I decided to go with a control scheme that works well with PC's.
Any feedback on the new demo from people that have never played the demo or from those who played it and didn't like it would be much appreciated.
I'm also thinking of releasing the game's level editor with the full version but it's a bit of kludge and to be player friendly might need a complete rewrite. The incentive alone though of getting an editor even if it's not a great one might help sell the game more.
Anyway ... if this demo does well for us then I'll be reporting back! If not then I think it soon may be time for a full sequel with the training of the first game, an adventure mode, multiplayer, cross platform, and of course done in Torque.
OK ... ok so nearly 2 years ago Aerial Antics was 'completed'. When we launched the game there were still numerous general kinks in the game. We had a reasonable beta test but the major beta test occured between Nov 2003 - Feb 2004. It was not until Feb 2004 that the game launched here on Garage Games but it had been selling on Leadfoot Productions since Nov 2003. Sales weren't too great on our site I think we sold maybe 8 copies in that early period before the game launched here on Garage Games.
The thing is that the conversion ratio of the game was low even when it first launched. It was equally low here on Garage Games ... even after the game had been smoothed out quite a bit from our initial launch. I updated the game once a month for the first 6 months and checked the statistics on our website every month. Nothing seemed to help the conversion rate.
After those first 6 months or so constantly checking to see what I could do to improve the conversion rate of this game I was just burned out on Aerial Antics. I put up my latest versions and just let the game go on its merry way.
I figured the game just wouldn't sell as I wanted no matter what changes I made.
Over the last year and a half or so we've gotten a lot of attention with this game. Magazines featured it, websites gave it great reviews, many many publishers knocked on our door, and it was even on G4 TV! How can a game get this kind of attention and not sell on par with the standard conversion rate?
Well, the sales tool is the demo. I tried many demo setups. I added levels, I removed levels, I added time limits, I removed time limits, I put more nag buttons, prettier nag screens, etc etc... I pretty much followed all the advice I could find online especially one article on Dexterity very closely.
Well I think I followed every bit of advice but one. Adrian had always wanted to do a bit of a montage demo. A demo that featured a variety of gameplay but only showing the first locale so we didn't give away the experience of all the locales (a big draw to purchase) and also so that we saved on the download size. For some reason I was against this big time. I had this idea of continuity within the game. I wanted people to play the levels in order and work their way up the difficulty ladder. If I threw a variety of gameplay diversity into the demo I felt that was screwing with the difficult curve. At least I think that's what I was thinking at the time.
Whatever it was I really had my head stuck in the wrong place for not at least trying it. Aerial Antics still got between 3,000 and 11,000 hits a month on LeadfootProductions.com in 2005. I think that shows how long a shelf life an online game can have. There's still a lot of life left in Aerial Antics that I should have found a way to tap into earlier but I was just too tired/crushed/stumped to keep updating the title.
Our other title in development is going great and early play tests are positive. However, with that being quite a ways off I feel it is imperative to keep looking at our operation as a business and maximize what we've already got. After Aerial Antics seemed to have failed sales wise I put game development as a business on the back burner. It became more of a hobby instead of what I had previously considered my career. I started another business which took care of me financially and I sat back and tried to analyze what went wrong with the game business. Meanwhile I started telling people more and more that I owned a hardwood flooring company instead of telling them that I was a video game developer.
This realization was really brutal. Here I had spent time going to school for computer science and developing games for years leading up to Aerial Antics. Then here I was with a college degree, a published game getting lots of attention but few sales, and what was I doing ... physical labor! Sure it's my own business but when I invested so much time in games it was really pretty sad not to be making my living from them.
Anyway, to make a long story short.
New Demo
If this one is well recieved on our site then I can see about updating what we have here at Garage Games as well. Both versions have had different control schemes but I've found the Leadfoot version to be easier to pick up and play for people unless they have a gamepad. The original game was designed for a gamepad but since most people don't have gamepads I decided to go with a control scheme that works well with PC's.
Any feedback on the new demo from people that have never played the demo or from those who played it and didn't like it would be much appreciated.
I'm also thinking of releasing the game's level editor with the full version but it's a bit of kludge and to be player friendly might need a complete rewrite. The incentive alone though of getting an editor even if it's not a great one might help sell the game more.
Anyway ... if this demo does well for us then I'll be reporting back! If not then I think it soon may be time for a full sequel with the training of the first game, an adventure mode, multiplayer, cross platform, and of course done in Torque.
About the author
#2
09/19/2005 (1:51 am)
No it's very useful. I'm finding quite a few people with this problem. Have to get a handle on it as it's possible half our downloads aren't working for people. Not sure what could be causing it though as I've seen it work fine on a wide range of systems.
#3
09/19/2005 (2:05 am)
Well I'm XP pro, Athlon 64 3000+, gig of ram, Geforce 6600. What else could be useful from a diagnostic point of view?
#4
I just tested on both my machines. I got the error only when there had been a previous build of the demo on my older machine. I should create an entirely new demo folder to avoid multiple installs from messing with eachother.
Both of my PC's just ran it fine on a clean install (I deleted all other Aerial Antics installs) downloaded from the net. One with Athlon 64 Processor mated with an ATI 9600XT AGP card the other with an 850MHz Duron and an Nvidia 5200FX PCI card.
Perhaps it is XP Pro but I'm not sure. Where did you install it?
09/19/2005 (2:21 am)
Are you positive you never installed an Aerial Antics demo from either here or from LeadfootProductions.com?I just tested on both my machines. I got the error only when there had been a previous build of the demo on my older machine. I should create an entirely new demo folder to avoid multiple installs from messing with eachother.
Both of my PC's just ran it fine on a clean install (I deleted all other Aerial Antics installs) downloaded from the net. One with Athlon 64 Processor mated with an ATI 9600XT AGP card the other with an 850MHz Duron and an Nvidia 5200FX PCI card.
Perhaps it is XP Pro but I'm not sure. Where did you install it?
#5
P4 2.0 Ghz,
512 ram,
GeForce 3.
The Demo ran fine on my historic machine, Ive never had an install of aerial antics on it before though.
09/19/2005 (2:52 am)
Win 2000,P4 2.0 Ghz,
512 ram,
GeForce 3.
The Demo ran fine on my historic machine, Ive never had an install of aerial antics on it before though.
#6
09/19/2005 (2:54 am)
Absolutely positive. I installed it in the default program files/aerial antics demo/
#7
09/19/2005 (2:58 am)
C drive? Not that I think I have anything hardcoded in there ... but it's been a while!
#8
09/19/2005 (4:37 am)
Yep C drive. If you get any other ideas I don't mind going out of my way to replicate it for you. Just send me an email (should be in my profile).
#9
Having never played AA before (surprisingly) I finally downloaded it and gave it a shot. First, I'll give you the same disclaimer that I gave Mr. Dana when giving feedback about his game, and it's that I dislike 90% of games within the first 3 minutes. At IGC last year, I cranked through every demo installed in my first half hour Friday night, disliking nearly all. Some I spent less than a minute from splash screen to exit. There's even builds of my own game that I've spent an equal amount of time playing before quitting and realizing it needs more work, more tweaks - some minor, some major. You might call me hasty or impatient, but statistically you have about that same amount of time, if even 3 minutes, to grab the gamer and keep them playing. The same is true for many things - people will decide if they like YOU in about that same period of time. First impressions are CRITICAL. That cannot be overstated.
In my opinion, from my brief under 5 minute play experience with AA, the problem is with the first impression. I think you're worrying and tweaking all these finer points (i.e. screenshot displays, how much to "give" the demo player for free) while missing the more blunt experience. In 5 minutes, I saw how the game MIGHT be fun if I stuck around, but I wasn't willing to stick around because I didn't have fun yet. And why stick around when there's 1000's of other games to try - why give your game an "extra chance" or slack? There's no reason to; I don't have anything invested in a 5 minute download. Instead, I'm more likely to move on.
First, without dissecting this point quantitatively, on an intuitive level it just felt like there were too many spash screens or load screens/menus or getting pushed around. I felt like a pinball getting bumped around from screen to screen, the channel was always changing and that's OK in itself but the problem was it wasn't clear why, or where I was, or where I was going.
Second, the menus. I think they need to be bigger, more obvious, more intuitive, and more polished. When I complained about the playability of Scorched Earth 3D someone essentially called me on it and said they figured it out no problem. But that's the thing right there, you shouldn't have to figure it out, it shouldn't be work. It should be as intuitive as possible, set up so that a kindergardener could play it. We're programmers and gamers since we were kids - but our audience isn't: casual gamers, remember? Your menus aren't confusing or complex, I'm not saying that, just that they could be much more simple. Compare the menu system of Orbz to that of Gish. I *love* Gish - but the menus could be easier. Orbz is such a great example of a great menu interface. And your menus could use some more graphical polish for sure; it doesn't look like much time/money went into that area. Again, this whole comment about the GUI is mainly with regard to first impressions and not ongoing playability.
Third, the first game experience! I saw the controls listed on the bottom and having played many WASD+mouse games before I was like, OK great, let's go. So I started playing with the controls and flying and it seemed pretty cool, but then all of a sudden I "died" and I was like WTF?! The loading screen came up again and reset the level. And herein lies the third suggestion, and it's two-fold: (1) don't assume people read instructions ("land on the target in front of you"), and (2) introduce your game to people by either (a) BABY steps (smaller than you think), AND/or (b) a sandbox/free play area.
Maybe my timer ran out; in any case, I was annoyed. I didn't realize I had a goal already when I started playing; I just wanted to fly around and check out the gameplay, the controls, learning by doing. So when it "killed" me I was frustrated and felt forced into how the game wanted me to learn/play, rather than the game yielding to how I wanted to learn/play. A free play/sandbox area is what I wanted for an introduction into the game, not a mission right from the get-go. Maybe I passed on the screen that offered that, but it should have been more obvious or even the default option (I just went into the default "let's get playing!" options). And for a tutorial, it should be even smaller than "land on this easy target right in front of you" with the controls displayed. Break it into MICRO steps. The first "mission" should be as simple as press one button to fly straight up. Good job!! The second "mission" should be as simple as, ok now let go of that one button to land. Good job!! and so on.
Look at a game like Marble Blast or Chain Reaction. They do a GREAT job of breaking early game levels/learning into meta-pieces. In MB's first level you get a message telling you how to turn if you move forward but forget to turn! That had to be specially coded in (of course) but it was worth the extra effort. It's a very approachable game for new players to learn. It's "dummy proof."
Fourth, I resented being scored/rated so early in the game. As a new player, having not even known the controls a few seconds ago, I am all but GUARAUNTEED to fail or do poorly. This isn't going to make me feel good or challenge me to do better next time; it's just going to make me feel like a failure, and likely move blame to the game for "sucking." Again, look to MB and CR for making the player feel like a SUCCESS for accomplishing the most minor of tasks. All you do is steer a marble around a flat "C" and you get fireworks! Think back to elementry school when you'd get a special sticker for doing something trivial. Your player is in the "elementry school" of learning to play your game and needs to feel rewarded in order to be encouraged to build upon their successes to tackle further challenges. They're not going to say "this is hard so I need to try harder."
Fifth, the controls were WAY too touchy for a beginning player. I don't see why you can't build in different levels of sensitivity into the game so that early players have an easier time steering and playing, and as they advance through the levels the controls get more precise. Maybe this is transparent so the user doesn't even know it's happening. Maybe it's more obvious via "rocket upgrades" that increase difficultly but grant you more precision. Or just a difficultly setting before starting a level. I want to be introduced to the precision of the game slowly; not have the first mission be "ok, land precisely in the middle of this target with these touchy controls and with keys you haven't learned or used yet."
Six, I didn't get a sense that there was much to do in the game but fly and land on targets, and that's enough to hold my interest for a mini-game but not a "whole" game that I'm going to play over and over (and perhaps purchase). Unless I REALLY like the depth of that particular gameplay. You have to design the game to appeal to BOTH game DEPTH and game BREADTH. I didn't get the sense that the game had much breadth, even if it does (there was one screenshot of some kind of ship...). Again, back to first impressions here. Breadth and depth both have to be pretty obvious to me within the first few minutes of play. Otherwise I will say, "Ok, seen everything there is to see here, time to move along." Which I did.
Seventh, a smaller quibble, but I didn't see how the bomb drop or the stabalize keys were to be used in that first level, and I don't think you should offer a player options that they don't need to utilize until they need them.
Lastly, the graphics are cool (very cool actually), but I expected much better particle effects (they looked dull and didn't "pop" off the screen; maybe just the particle effects should omit being cell shaded?), and the 3D environments could have used more animations, more movement, more liveliness.
I'm split on advice if you should do a sequel or not. On one hand, you could make a sequel and it could end up having all the same problems that caused a low conversion rate in the first game. On the other hand, how long do you beat the horse before declaring it dead and move on?
All of the issues I list above (strictly my non-authoritative opinion of course) are issues I am grappling with on Shelled. So I'm in the same boat as you Jeremy, though a full half-step behind; I don't have a game completed yet, much less published and publicised! But you could easily put a ton more work into AA while adding very little to the "real" game underneath; that is, if I or someone else stuck it out and saw past the above, I'm sure we'd find AA worth all the accolades it has received. So it's a tough call on what to do, but it's a call only you can make. Good luck.
Josh
09/19/2005 (11:27 am)
Jeremy,Having never played AA before (surprisingly) I finally downloaded it and gave it a shot. First, I'll give you the same disclaimer that I gave Mr. Dana when giving feedback about his game, and it's that I dislike 90% of games within the first 3 minutes. At IGC last year, I cranked through every demo installed in my first half hour Friday night, disliking nearly all. Some I spent less than a minute from splash screen to exit. There's even builds of my own game that I've spent an equal amount of time playing before quitting and realizing it needs more work, more tweaks - some minor, some major. You might call me hasty or impatient, but statistically you have about that same amount of time, if even 3 minutes, to grab the gamer and keep them playing. The same is true for many things - people will decide if they like YOU in about that same period of time. First impressions are CRITICAL. That cannot be overstated.
In my opinion, from my brief under 5 minute play experience with AA, the problem is with the first impression. I think you're worrying and tweaking all these finer points (i.e. screenshot displays, how much to "give" the demo player for free) while missing the more blunt experience. In 5 minutes, I saw how the game MIGHT be fun if I stuck around, but I wasn't willing to stick around because I didn't have fun yet. And why stick around when there's 1000's of other games to try - why give your game an "extra chance" or slack? There's no reason to; I don't have anything invested in a 5 minute download. Instead, I'm more likely to move on.
First, without dissecting this point quantitatively, on an intuitive level it just felt like there were too many spash screens or load screens/menus or getting pushed around. I felt like a pinball getting bumped around from screen to screen, the channel was always changing and that's OK in itself but the problem was it wasn't clear why, or where I was, or where I was going.
Second, the menus. I think they need to be bigger, more obvious, more intuitive, and more polished. When I complained about the playability of Scorched Earth 3D someone essentially called me on it and said they figured it out no problem. But that's the thing right there, you shouldn't have to figure it out, it shouldn't be work. It should be as intuitive as possible, set up so that a kindergardener could play it. We're programmers and gamers since we were kids - but our audience isn't: casual gamers, remember? Your menus aren't confusing or complex, I'm not saying that, just that they could be much more simple. Compare the menu system of Orbz to that of Gish. I *love* Gish - but the menus could be easier. Orbz is such a great example of a great menu interface. And your menus could use some more graphical polish for sure; it doesn't look like much time/money went into that area. Again, this whole comment about the GUI is mainly with regard to first impressions and not ongoing playability.
Third, the first game experience! I saw the controls listed on the bottom and having played many WASD+mouse games before I was like, OK great, let's go. So I started playing with the controls and flying and it seemed pretty cool, but then all of a sudden I "died" and I was like WTF?! The loading screen came up again and reset the level. And herein lies the third suggestion, and it's two-fold: (1) don't assume people read instructions ("land on the target in front of you"), and (2) introduce your game to people by either (a) BABY steps (smaller than you think), AND/or (b) a sandbox/free play area.
Maybe my timer ran out; in any case, I was annoyed. I didn't realize I had a goal already when I started playing; I just wanted to fly around and check out the gameplay, the controls, learning by doing. So when it "killed" me I was frustrated and felt forced into how the game wanted me to learn/play, rather than the game yielding to how I wanted to learn/play. A free play/sandbox area is what I wanted for an introduction into the game, not a mission right from the get-go. Maybe I passed on the screen that offered that, but it should have been more obvious or even the default option (I just went into the default "let's get playing!" options). And for a tutorial, it should be even smaller than "land on this easy target right in front of you" with the controls displayed. Break it into MICRO steps. The first "mission" should be as simple as press one button to fly straight up. Good job!! The second "mission" should be as simple as, ok now let go of that one button to land. Good job!! and so on.
Look at a game like Marble Blast or Chain Reaction. They do a GREAT job of breaking early game levels/learning into meta-pieces. In MB's first level you get a message telling you how to turn if you move forward but forget to turn! That had to be specially coded in (of course) but it was worth the extra effort. It's a very approachable game for new players to learn. It's "dummy proof."
Fourth, I resented being scored/rated so early in the game. As a new player, having not even known the controls a few seconds ago, I am all but GUARAUNTEED to fail or do poorly. This isn't going to make me feel good or challenge me to do better next time; it's just going to make me feel like a failure, and likely move blame to the game for "sucking." Again, look to MB and CR for making the player feel like a SUCCESS for accomplishing the most minor of tasks. All you do is steer a marble around a flat "C" and you get fireworks! Think back to elementry school when you'd get a special sticker for doing something trivial. Your player is in the "elementry school" of learning to play your game and needs to feel rewarded in order to be encouraged to build upon their successes to tackle further challenges. They're not going to say "this is hard so I need to try harder."
Fifth, the controls were WAY too touchy for a beginning player. I don't see why you can't build in different levels of sensitivity into the game so that early players have an easier time steering and playing, and as they advance through the levels the controls get more precise. Maybe this is transparent so the user doesn't even know it's happening. Maybe it's more obvious via "rocket upgrades" that increase difficultly but grant you more precision. Or just a difficultly setting before starting a level. I want to be introduced to the precision of the game slowly; not have the first mission be "ok, land precisely in the middle of this target with these touchy controls and with keys you haven't learned or used yet."
Six, I didn't get a sense that there was much to do in the game but fly and land on targets, and that's enough to hold my interest for a mini-game but not a "whole" game that I'm going to play over and over (and perhaps purchase). Unless I REALLY like the depth of that particular gameplay. You have to design the game to appeal to BOTH game DEPTH and game BREADTH. I didn't get the sense that the game had much breadth, even if it does (there was one screenshot of some kind of ship...). Again, back to first impressions here. Breadth and depth both have to be pretty obvious to me within the first few minutes of play. Otherwise I will say, "Ok, seen everything there is to see here, time to move along." Which I did.
Seventh, a smaller quibble, but I didn't see how the bomb drop or the stabalize keys were to be used in that first level, and I don't think you should offer a player options that they don't need to utilize until they need them.
Lastly, the graphics are cool (very cool actually), but I expected much better particle effects (they looked dull and didn't "pop" off the screen; maybe just the particle effects should omit being cell shaded?), and the 3D environments could have used more animations, more movement, more liveliness.
I'm split on advice if you should do a sequel or not. On one hand, you could make a sequel and it could end up having all the same problems that caused a low conversion rate in the first game. On the other hand, how long do you beat the horse before declaring it dead and move on?
All of the issues I list above (strictly my non-authoritative opinion of course) are issues I am grappling with on Shelled. So I'm in the same boat as you Jeremy, though a full half-step behind; I don't have a game completed yet, much less published and publicised! But you could easily put a ton more work into AA while adding very little to the "real" game underneath; that is, if I or someone else stuck it out and saw past the above, I'm sure we'd find AA worth all the accolades it has received. So it's a tough call on what to do, but it's a call only you can make. Good luck.
Josh
#10
It's funny you mention Marble Blast because I really looked at that game when designing AA. The first level to me is the equivalent. Move your player from point A to point B only. Now maybe Aerial Antics is a bit harder to play but it's still the same concept. I can't see doing any less on the first level then placing the landing pad right in front of the player and saying land on this.
Anyway, for a sequel there's a lot I think could be done. However, what I'm thinking is how to increase the sales of this original game which we've already put so much work into and which has gotten lots of praise and which still gets lots of downloads.
Looking at some of your comments what I might like to do is add more pointers that pop up during the gameplay. This is something Jay suggested as well and maybe that would help out.
Thanks for checking it out I'll take that good feedback and work it into the title!
09/19/2005 (12:00 pm)
Well I did have a more baby stepped tutorial but people would just ignore it anyway. Which is how I came to displaying all the controls for you to use right up front. As for a sandbox. Well you pretty much have a sandbox. You just have to pay attention to warnings that you're leaving the playing area. I could put up an invisible wall but that usually annoys people as well. There's no way to just make a completely free roving level. People want that yes ... but that's not the game exactly. You've got enough time to fly around and do whatever you want in your little zone but you cannot exceed the zone ... just like you can't go off the board in Marble Blast.It's funny you mention Marble Blast because I really looked at that game when designing AA. The first level to me is the equivalent. Move your player from point A to point B only. Now maybe Aerial Antics is a bit harder to play but it's still the same concept. I can't see doing any less on the first level then placing the landing pad right in front of the player and saying land on this.
Anyway, for a sequel there's a lot I think could be done. However, what I'm thinking is how to increase the sales of this original game which we've already put so much work into and which has gotten lots of praise and which still gets lots of downloads.
Looking at some of your comments what I might like to do is add more pointers that pop up during the gameplay. This is something Jay suggested as well and maybe that would help out.
Thanks for checking it out I'll take that good feedback and work it into the title!
#11
The frontend menu's had to be hard coded, so they were for the most part haphazardly thrown together by Jeremy with place holders that i replaced with fairly low quality graphics in order to keep the download size down, pretty much left it at that.
Today with the art path that turned up towards the end of AA's development we could have done so much more with the locales to give them some extra life. And having learnt a large portion of the language that partains to graphics I'd be able to design and build the bulk of the GUI design myself.
As for the gameplay, we did get a lot of feedback since we released the game, from publishers, developers and gamers.
From what I recall of developing AA, we tried to complete the game in 3 months by working crunch hours on a pretty much fulltime basis. Mainly with the hope of creating a little income to motivate us to develop what we hoped would someday be a little franchise we could build up. Unfortunately, the game didn't sell well and having all but burnt ourselves out during development, we pretty much neglected it.
It's kind of cool that the games starting to stir again, Despite not being a great success financialy, it has created a lot of opportunities elsewhere.
09/19/2005 (1:19 pm)
On the graphics and presentation front when we did AA we had a very simple art path so basicly static entities/ meshes with single textures, and vertex colours for lighting and not an awful lot else.The frontend menu's had to be hard coded, so they were for the most part haphazardly thrown together by Jeremy with place holders that i replaced with fairly low quality graphics in order to keep the download size down, pretty much left it at that.
Today with the art path that turned up towards the end of AA's development we could have done so much more with the locales to give them some extra life. And having learnt a large portion of the language that partains to graphics I'd be able to design and build the bulk of the GUI design myself.
As for the gameplay, we did get a lot of feedback since we released the game, from publishers, developers and gamers.
From what I recall of developing AA, we tried to complete the game in 3 months by working crunch hours on a pretty much fulltime basis. Mainly with the hope of creating a little income to motivate us to develop what we hoped would someday be a little franchise we could build up. Unfortunately, the game didn't sell well and having all but burnt ourselves out during development, we pretty much neglected it.
It's kind of cool that the games starting to stir again, Despite not being a great success financialy, it has created a lot of opportunities elsewhere.
#12
09/19/2005 (1:36 pm)
With the new art path we could totally make it look even sweeter but you know we did have more animation in there ... or it was supposed to be. The first level had the bulldozer which I don't know why we ommitted that. The second locale has the Area 51 doors still but no UFO flies out. The Mountains was supposed to have a car chase going on like Dukes of Hazzard ... we could add some penguins to the ice caves and we could add a few blimps to the air ship locale. I'll have to go back and try to find that bulldozer and re-add it at least. Might be worth adding the others as well ... they were pretty simple spline animations if I remember that worked even without the extensions.
#13
09/19/2005 (1:49 pm)
I also got some memory-related error message when I tried to run the demo at home. It ran fine here at work however. ;)
#14
09/19/2005 (2:01 pm)
yeah I forgot all about that, the old unwrap exporter was a pain in the arse for animation tricky to use properly and didn't optimize keyframes so the animations ended up pretty big if I remember right. Maybe we should add some of those things in again. I'd probably want to redo the whole thing once I started messing with it though lol. the terrains could be so much better now with fewer polys if we took out the vertex lighting and lightmapped instead.
#15
09/19/2005 (2:21 pm)
You know what ... I'm going through and fixing things. I'm thinking of rewriting the whole game if you wanna have another go at it. I can't believe I programmed this thing ... it's so me 3 years ago!
#16
09/19/2005 (2:33 pm)
Yeah ok, we could do that. I think we both learnt a lot since then lol.
#17
09/19/2005 (3:24 pm)
you could do it in torque in a flash... just don't get feature happy for the first iteration with network support etc.
#18
09/19/2005 (4:00 pm)
Yeah we wanted to do a sequel in Torque. However I'm not sure if our art pipeline is ready for it just yet. Also we're working on our other project codename KOTM which until IGC has priority. When we do it in Torque though you can bet we'll have a slew of networked game types. Tough call ... to Torque it right now or not to Torque it right now. Everything I've got going for KOTM could be applied here.
#19
I just played your demo yesterday and this morning, and since you were looking for some feedback on conversion rate I thought I'd give you my thoughts.
First of all, this is a fun game! Once I got into it, I really like the flying mechanic and it felt natural, and reminded me very much of the old Pilotwings days that I enjoyed so much. Also, I can tell you guys put a lot of hard work into it. It is quite a big accomplishment to have completed *anything* from start to finish, let alone a game that plays quite well and that has already gotten lots of good reviews! So I think you guys really do have a lot going for you here, and I hope you won't give up on it.
Ok, so now I'll move on to some constructive criticism. First of all, I have hit the point now that I would feel I'm ready to buy the game. I've seen how fun it is, I feel pretty comfortable flying around and I enjoy it, and I'd really like to reach that canyon level in the demo movie! But, it did take me about 10-15 minutes to reach that point, as opposed to a 2-3 minute period. I have a few ideas on why this might be for me. Again, this is just my opinion, not the "right" one, so take it with a grain of salt and keep what makes sense to you and leave the rest.
Upon first starting the game, as Joshua mentioned, I did notice that the 2d opening screens felt a little uninviting, giving me a small impression that maybe this game would not be professional. I think a little bit of graphic polish here could really help a lot and get rid of that notion, since it is the first thing you see. The graphics aren't bad, it just feels like more polish would really lead to a better impression. It's like writing an awesome, awesome book, then slapping together the cover real fast with tape and glue. Although it might do the job, some people might not pick up the book just because they see the quick job on the cover and figure the whole book is like that.
The second thing adding to this impression for me was also the menu sound effects. I found the mouse over effect, in particular, to be a little bit too over the top. I appreciate the fact you are going for originality with a "bouncy" theme, but it may be worth toning down some, since after all the mouse over effect is played so many times, so any sound effect played a lot has a danger of becoming annoying.
I think the music track is fine, but added on top of the 1st two points, it seemed to also contribute to the "quick job" feeling I had. I may not have felt that way without the first two things happening. One possibility here is to redo the song with higher quality samples, so it sounds more like a band then a computer midi piece. Tennis Critters has a really good example of this, catchy music with high quality samples.
Ok, so that was my opening experience, then I get into the game.
Actually, I did try the first demo, and I thought I would really like this game because I like the idea and really enjoyed Pilotwings on SNES and N64 so much, but back then when I tried it, it just didn't come together for me. I think the game crashed a few times, and the controls seemed a bit strange, so I gave up quickly.
This time around, I thought, "Cool, I'll give the new demo a go." I got into the game, tried it out, and again I had the feeling of wanting to jump ship (thought not as fast). After I broke through that, after about (5-8 minutes?) the game was great. But there was something they're giving me that feeling. So I think this demo is much better then the last one, but maybe it can still be improved in some places.
I agree with Joshua that at the beginning there is a little too much thrown at the player at once, on the screen. I think cleaning up the GUI HUD like the title screen, and changing the font graphic to something more readable and standard will help a lot with the visual impression. The biggest thing, I think, was getting used to the controls. At the beginning, they really were just a little too touchy, making me feel like riding a wild horse with no control. I can see how, with a *game controller*, like an n64 analog stick, that would not be an issue, and I know you designed it with a gamepad in mind. It might work great like that and be a non-issue. But with a keyboard, it seems like the starting speed is just too high. I recommend slowing down the whole experience for the demo, just so no one will get scared away, you can always crank it up later. Make the jets go slower, even maybe make gravity be a bit slower, and give people more time to think. If you want, like Joshua recommended, maybe later add a "jet booster" that lets the player add extra speed when they want, or just give them a "rocket pack upgrade" and make the controls get faster in later missions. But at the beginning, the learning curve is a bit too steep for casual gamers I think.
Once I got it, it was fun! I really like the rings and the bouncy ball in particular. The ball is a great idea. The hilighting of objects upon completing the goals is also really smart. I had fun just scooting around and feeling like I could do anything with my very own jetpack. :)
Those are the biggest points. Other small things are general sound effects (the ball and tree effect sound a bit too thin and tinny), the tutorial has a few too many things and instructions going at once. Also, the instruction fonts were quite small at 1024x768, and felt a little crowded. I think simplifying and polishing the presentation more, not necessarily the meat of it, will make things shine a lot more. Also, maybe seeing one more exciting level, as the last challenge, could help a lot.
Then, the ending splash screen, try to pretty it up some more like everything else. And on a final note, when encouraging people to buy at the start and end, maybe put less emphasis on "tests and challenges", and more on fun and rewards! I think hardcore gamers want challenges, but casual gamers want a relatively easy time that is fun, and not so difficult. Emphasize exploring the interesting locales, all the fun to be had flying around, how easy it is to get into, etc... The one part about "when you are ready for more challenges, buy the game for 50 tests" somehow made me feel like not buying the game. Emphasize the fun more, and how much they will be missing that is fun and exciting by not buying, as opposed to all the challenges they will get. Instead of calling them challenges, call them "air adventures" or something more fun sounding.
Alright, that's it! You guys have a really cool game on your hands from what I can see. I know I wrote a lot, so remember again these are just my views, not the "right" ones. Just keep what makes sense to you. I know at times it is not easy to take criticism, but since you asked I thought I'd take the time to try things out and give you my honest opinion about what I think could be changed to up your conversion rate.
You have a great game on your hands! You have put a lot of hard work in it already, and it clearly has a lot of potential from the press reviews. But like the guy at Dexterity said, his game Dweep took a while before it went up to be a good seller, and he had to make a lot of changes along the way based on feedback. So if you keep at it with an honest try, I would think you have a very good chance of making your investment profitable.
Thanks for a fun demo!
- Drew
09/20/2005 (6:31 am)
Hi Jeremy and Adrian,I just played your demo yesterday and this morning, and since you were looking for some feedback on conversion rate I thought I'd give you my thoughts.
First of all, this is a fun game! Once I got into it, I really like the flying mechanic and it felt natural, and reminded me very much of the old Pilotwings days that I enjoyed so much. Also, I can tell you guys put a lot of hard work into it. It is quite a big accomplishment to have completed *anything* from start to finish, let alone a game that plays quite well and that has already gotten lots of good reviews! So I think you guys really do have a lot going for you here, and I hope you won't give up on it.
Ok, so now I'll move on to some constructive criticism. First of all, I have hit the point now that I would feel I'm ready to buy the game. I've seen how fun it is, I feel pretty comfortable flying around and I enjoy it, and I'd really like to reach that canyon level in the demo movie! But, it did take me about 10-15 minutes to reach that point, as opposed to a 2-3 minute period. I have a few ideas on why this might be for me. Again, this is just my opinion, not the "right" one, so take it with a grain of salt and keep what makes sense to you and leave the rest.
Upon first starting the game, as Joshua mentioned, I did notice that the 2d opening screens felt a little uninviting, giving me a small impression that maybe this game would not be professional. I think a little bit of graphic polish here could really help a lot and get rid of that notion, since it is the first thing you see. The graphics aren't bad, it just feels like more polish would really lead to a better impression. It's like writing an awesome, awesome book, then slapping together the cover real fast with tape and glue. Although it might do the job, some people might not pick up the book just because they see the quick job on the cover and figure the whole book is like that.
The second thing adding to this impression for me was also the menu sound effects. I found the mouse over effect, in particular, to be a little bit too over the top. I appreciate the fact you are going for originality with a "bouncy" theme, but it may be worth toning down some, since after all the mouse over effect is played so many times, so any sound effect played a lot has a danger of becoming annoying.
I think the music track is fine, but added on top of the 1st two points, it seemed to also contribute to the "quick job" feeling I had. I may not have felt that way without the first two things happening. One possibility here is to redo the song with higher quality samples, so it sounds more like a band then a computer midi piece. Tennis Critters has a really good example of this, catchy music with high quality samples.
Ok, so that was my opening experience, then I get into the game.
Actually, I did try the first demo, and I thought I would really like this game because I like the idea and really enjoyed Pilotwings on SNES and N64 so much, but back then when I tried it, it just didn't come together for me. I think the game crashed a few times, and the controls seemed a bit strange, so I gave up quickly.
This time around, I thought, "Cool, I'll give the new demo a go." I got into the game, tried it out, and again I had the feeling of wanting to jump ship (thought not as fast). After I broke through that, after about (5-8 minutes?) the game was great. But there was something they're giving me that feeling. So I think this demo is much better then the last one, but maybe it can still be improved in some places.
I agree with Joshua that at the beginning there is a little too much thrown at the player at once, on the screen. I think cleaning up the GUI HUD like the title screen, and changing the font graphic to something more readable and standard will help a lot with the visual impression. The biggest thing, I think, was getting used to the controls. At the beginning, they really were just a little too touchy, making me feel like riding a wild horse with no control. I can see how, with a *game controller*, like an n64 analog stick, that would not be an issue, and I know you designed it with a gamepad in mind. It might work great like that and be a non-issue. But with a keyboard, it seems like the starting speed is just too high. I recommend slowing down the whole experience for the demo, just so no one will get scared away, you can always crank it up later. Make the jets go slower, even maybe make gravity be a bit slower, and give people more time to think. If you want, like Joshua recommended, maybe later add a "jet booster" that lets the player add extra speed when they want, or just give them a "rocket pack upgrade" and make the controls get faster in later missions. But at the beginning, the learning curve is a bit too steep for casual gamers I think.
Once I got it, it was fun! I really like the rings and the bouncy ball in particular. The ball is a great idea. The hilighting of objects upon completing the goals is also really smart. I had fun just scooting around and feeling like I could do anything with my very own jetpack. :)
Those are the biggest points. Other small things are general sound effects (the ball and tree effect sound a bit too thin and tinny), the tutorial has a few too many things and instructions going at once. Also, the instruction fonts were quite small at 1024x768, and felt a little crowded. I think simplifying and polishing the presentation more, not necessarily the meat of it, will make things shine a lot more. Also, maybe seeing one more exciting level, as the last challenge, could help a lot.
Then, the ending splash screen, try to pretty it up some more like everything else. And on a final note, when encouraging people to buy at the start and end, maybe put less emphasis on "tests and challenges", and more on fun and rewards! I think hardcore gamers want challenges, but casual gamers want a relatively easy time that is fun, and not so difficult. Emphasize exploring the interesting locales, all the fun to be had flying around, how easy it is to get into, etc... The one part about "when you are ready for more challenges, buy the game for 50 tests" somehow made me feel like not buying the game. Emphasize the fun more, and how much they will be missing that is fun and exciting by not buying, as opposed to all the challenges they will get. Instead of calling them challenges, call them "air adventures" or something more fun sounding.
Alright, that's it! You guys have a really cool game on your hands from what I can see. I know I wrote a lot, so remember again these are just my views, not the "right" ones. Just keep what makes sense to you. I know at times it is not easy to take criticism, but since you asked I thought I'd take the time to try things out and give you my honest opinion about what I think could be changed to up your conversion rate.
You have a great game on your hands! You have put a lot of hard work in it already, and it clearly has a lot of potential from the press reviews. But like the guy at Dexterity said, his game Dweep took a while before it went up to be a good seller, and he had to make a lot of changes along the way based on feedback. So if you keep at it with an honest try, I would think you have a very good chance of making your investment profitable.
Thanks for a fun demo!
- Drew
#20
To me it seems the same as the last one I played years ago, I could not remember anything being different.
Things I liked are the graphics, menus and all I found good but do agree that the fonts for the level instructions are too small and instructions seemed too long, it took me longer to read the instructions than to get through the level, that's a bit odd.
Things I didn't like are..
Demo not long enough for my likeing, it should have been 3 times as long.
You cant rebind your controls, I wanted to make spacebar = jet, like I do for tribes, it makes it much more natural in my opinion.
I agree the jet acceleration is 2 times as strong as it should be for me
The stabilizer felt odd and unnatural and I didn't use it at all after seeing it.
The ball I found too bouncy and floaty, same with the jet man really.
One thing that I found really odd was that the jet dood cant even walk or run on the ground?
But over all, I did find it fun, so, thanks, and good luck to you.
09/20/2005 (8:28 am)
I just played the new demo, Ill give my feed back and I will try not to hold back because I guess that's what you would want. To me it seems the same as the last one I played years ago, I could not remember anything being different.
Things I liked are the graphics, menus and all I found good but do agree that the fonts for the level instructions are too small and instructions seemed too long, it took me longer to read the instructions than to get through the level, that's a bit odd.
Things I didn't like are..
Demo not long enough for my likeing, it should have been 3 times as long.
You cant rebind your controls, I wanted to make spacebar = jet, like I do for tribes, it makes it much more natural in my opinion.
I agree the jet acceleration is 2 times as strong as it should be for me
The stabilizer felt odd and unnatural and I didn't use it at all after seeing it.
The ball I found too bouncy and floaty, same with the jet man really.
One thing that I found really odd was that the jet dood cant even walk or run on the ground?
But over all, I did find it fun, so, thanks, and good luck to you.
Torque Owner Vernon Finch
It installed fine, but upon launching I got a window and then a pop up error message saying "Memory Access Violation". I reinstalled, same problem again.