IGC Game Impressions. Post them here

#41 Great writeup matt :)

#42 Tube Twist and Venture Africa kicked butt! I spent most of my time chatting with folks and not game testing though. I found a lot of the demos were pretty rough, which is good and bad. Good in that it made me feel better about our demo. Bad because, well I think that is obvious ;)

I think that overall the best part was getting everyone together. The worst part was having large casual game entities whose names end in CAP present. It made me feel dirty. I am also going to say that I am proud that GG didn't just have the vanilla American pee beers. Although Budweiser was present, having Red Hook, etc. on tap earned immediate respect points :)

Question: Although a larger venue would be more $$, would those of us who attended be willing to pay more in order to have IGC somehere else? I liked the food and the small feel, but I think that IGC has outgrown the Mallard Hall. It was too crowded, and the sessions were near impossible to hear over the sound of the playtest area and the other speakers.

-B

#43 @Matt: We ended up having Illumina on about 8 machines, 3 right under the giant poster :P Definitely not as many as we wanted it to be on, but it was tough to get access to computers with so many people playing so many cool games! :)

#44 @Matt -- Thanks for the feedback on Wildlife Tycoon. I've noticed that many people spent a long time getting through the first level, especially when they haven't paid close attention to the tutorial (which they shouldn't have to in a game like this). I may add in a reminder to help speed them along. You are right that the animal interactions are a bit difficult to discern. I mostly programmed the behaviors AFTER I had planned out our asset list, so there's very little visual cues as to whats going on. And the encyclopedia is supposed to help with that, but it needs a bit of work too, it's a bit thin. As for the story, I personally LOVE the limericks, luckily, if you don't like it, you can ignore it. And as for the longevity -- I sent a copy to Josiah of Gish and he's been playing it for the last 3 days. I think some people get into the groove and enjoy it, and perhaps other (hopefully a small group) won't get into that groove. It's not a whiz-bang-flashy game in that respect, so I get what you are saying.

#45 Yeah I think Matt's assessment was pretty good.

As it relates to Oust ... pretty much perfect. Nothing much to do in single player yet. It gets good with a few people bouncing around in multiplayer though ;) Next year we'll actually have a game instead of a prototype and some art pipeline tech ;)

#46 Brian,
The problem is that there isn't anything much larger without us paying a *lot* more. I believe next year we are going to look at getting more sponsors to offset the cost of getting a larger place but we will have to see how that comes together. No promises, k? =)

Blake,
The problem I ran into was that the machines under the poster were the ones used in the artist track so I could never get over there during the sessions (which is when I had the best luck finding an open machine). Sometimes you need to be pushy (but nicely and with patience =) to get your game on all the machines. Hitting them early in the morning, late at night, or during the beginning of a meal are also good times. There was also an announcement on Friday that if someone asked to install something on the machine you were on to please get off as fast as possible.

I hate that I missed you, Matt, and Josh. Were you guys hiding under a table somewhere? =)

Andy,
I must have missed the tutorial and encyclopedia. One thing that Flash Bios (which will always be BitShifter in my head ;) did was that it didn't force you to play the tutorial but it made it obvious/flashy enough that it looked important. It was enough to get me to play it (even though I have played enough Flash Bios to know how it works).

I wasn't trying to imply that the story was bad in any way (I also enjoyed the one limerick I got to see), I just didn't feel like it framed/explained the *gameplay* very well...it didn't give it very much context...rather the context it did give was confusing. For example, the Professor Jaymour storyline in TubeTwist helps to put into context why you were playing with a ball rolling through pipes. It is a very light story and has virtually nothing to do with the actual mechanics of the game but it helps to reinforce the framework/context of "why" they are playing the game. It is a nice little bit of polish that helps to draw the player into the game that extra little bit more (as does the music, voice acting, and the slick gui). While your story helped to set up that you were in Africa it did little to explain why you have the magical ability to add creatures to the watering hole, why you should be doing so (you had to rely on putting the word "Goal" in your gui), and why the player should care (beyond the raw mechanics of it). If the story had been that you were releasing zoo animals back into the wild or that a sickness had struck the watering hole and you were transplanting the animals to rebuild the local ecosystem or even that you were a mad scientist who needs 34 pink flamingos for his experiments it would have helped frame the gameplay itself a little more and would help to draw the player in. See what I am getting at? The other thing is that I only got the one loading screen of story (since I played the first mission for 25 minutes and still didn't finish) which simply wasn't enough to hook me. Instead I just received an almost subconcious jolt of disconnect between what the story was offering and the actual gameplay.

As far as the longevity of the game goes, I just mentioned that I *worried* that it would become somewhat rote the longer you played (once the novelty of discovering the interactions was gone). However, if that isn't how it is being received then awesome =) I too hope that it has wide appeal (a successful Torque game only helps me =).

The only other observations I had of Wildlife Tycoon is that it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that hitting the randomize animals button was using up one of my flowers. Perhaps this could have an even flashier/eye catching effect on it or maybe just putting a small flower on the button's graphic? The other thing is that it frustrated me a little that I didn't know how many flowers I needed to activate each animal. Perhaps a onMouseOver tooltip over the animal icons with "1 more flower required" or the like would help to make it flow a little better.

#47 Jeremy,
I felt like the player/bot needs to get up a bit faster when knocked down. This would eliminate the need to knock them around while they are on the ground (this looked and felt a bit awkward). Obviously, this is something you could playtest a lot to get just right. I look forward to getting to play this in multiplayer...you gotta hook me up soon =)

All,
One thing I try to do when I am playtesting a game is to try my best to be in the mindset of someone totally new to the game...someone who just downloaded/bought/borrowed the game and is trying it for the first time with little preconceived notions of how it should or shouldn't work and then just experience it at that level. This is obviously a *lot* harder if it is your own game =) Afterward, I sit down and analyze my gut level reactions to the game and try to figure out *why* I reacted in that way to it. In essence translating all of those "I didn't like the menu" into "The menu option to get started was second on the list forcing me to hunt around for it". In my "reviews" here I tried my best to present gut level reactions, analysis, suggestions, and observations. The one thing to keep in mind is that all of this is getting filtered through all of my likes and dislikes and experiences playing and developing games. Just because I mention that I don't like feature X or Y doesn't mean it isn't the right choice if I am not the target audience. All I can offer is ideas on how to make it more approachable to someone who is like me. So, again, none of what I have mentioned was meant to be personally critical of the developers of the games at IGC.

#48 I wish that there had been a list somewhere that showed what games were on what computer. I wanted to try out every game, but I only got to try out a few. The biggest reason was that I didn't know what games were even on the computers, especially when they were not installed with a start menu shortcut. It was pretty crowded and if you don't want to hog a computer too long, if it is not readily visible then it is lost. Just my opinion.

#49 No, seriously, thanks for the feedback -- but here is where the problem lies: I did a crappy job at showing the game off at IGC!

I wanted to unlock the game to about the midpoint so people could play with a number of different animals -- but that was assuming you had already played through the tutorial and the first half of the levels. Your confusion and feeling left out of the storyline make sense to me now, and it fits into something I was worried about with my IGC presentation.

The animals get unlocked one by one in the game -- but I thought it might show better if people didn't have to play the tutorial and got to play with 7 of the different animals rather than 2 or 3. I would 100% prefer it if these confusions wouldn't happen if the player just jumps into the middle of the game without any instruction -- but then again, the game is different and proudly so!

Seriously, thanks for the feedbcak and sorry for the crappy IGC presentation.

#50 Andy,
Ah...it makes a lot more sense now =) Crafting a good demo is almost as hard as crafting the game itself (sometimes harder ;) so I know where you are coming from!

#51 @ Matt: Hehe, ya not sure how we ended up not talking... :P Especially Saturday when I was pretty loaded up on bruskies I talked to lots of people that night :) Thanks for the suggestions, next year we sorta will know what to expect so it will help us be more prepared.

#52 @Anton: I apologize man, you were one of the folks I was absolutely hoping to meet at IGC, and it didn't happen :(

@Matt: outstanding reviews man...you were another of the people I wanted to see at IGC...and hell, we work at the same company and I STILL didn't see you! At least you got to play some games and give good reviews--I never did even sit down at one of the computers :(

@All: Some really good lessons to learn here about marketing...there IS such a thing as going too far, but proactive is much better than reactive...

#53 I noticed that the same few games were being played over and over again in the show off center. I also noticed that I was playing those same games over and over again too. It wasn't until Tuesday afternoon when Tom Bampton and I were playing games during TBC that I realized where all the other games were hiding...

So here's my comments on getting your games played at IGC:


Put the Icon on the Desktop

Believe it or not several teams placed their games in folders on the desktop, or in the games directory on the machine without creating a desktop icon!

With 30-40 games to choose from, when am I going to get the time to search for your game?

You need to make sure your game icon is obvious to the player. In an environment like IGC if your icon is missing people assume the game is not at IGC or not on that PC.


Create an Original Icon

Realizing that I was playing the same 10 games over and over again, I stopped to search for a few new games. After reading the tittles under the icons instead of just looking for cool icons (yes like most people I look for shiny icons then read the text underneath) I realized that there were easily 15 more games right on the desktop - why didn't I see them? They were all using the Torque or Synapse Gaming icons, or worse the Windows default icon.

My mind filters out Torque and Synapse Gaming icons, I easily have 10 of these on my dev desktop related to various builds etc, so when I'm relaxing and playing a few games those icons don't even register in my mind.

If you want people to see and play your games create a nice icon, something flashy that draws attention to itself over a cluttered desktop.


Easy Game Play!

Ok at this point I'll mention one of the largest barriers to playing a game at IGC; game play. Players at IGC want to sit down and jump into a game (I certainly feel the same way), so the game play and the controls for your game should be relatively simple, if not the player will simply choose another game to play.

At this point I'm going to single out a particular game, because I loved the artwork and the game play was preventing me from getting into the game, even though I collectively spent more time playing the game than all others combined...

Golf? The artwork was awesome, the characters had tons of life to them, and the artistic world was great, but the full page of control mappings shown at the beginning of the game guaranteed that I would never get the hang of the game without a few hours on my hands and a nice quiet environment. The game's artwork really pulled me in and I continued to fire up the game day after day, but sadly after an entire weekend of playing I was still running around the course and not once during that time played golf.


Create a Mac Port!

Come on, if there's one thing to take a way from this year's IGC it's; do a mac port!

On the PC your game in competing with 40 icons in a cluttered desktop on a 20" screen. On the Mac your game is one of 5-10 icons on a bright and huge 30" screen. Every player was initially attracted to the big screens, and who wouldn't? If your game is on the Mac congratulations you have practically no competition for players and everyone can see your game from a mile away. :)



Anyway those are my comments. These are only meant to help out for next year's IGC and certainly are not meant to offend anyone. Personally I liked a lot of the games this year, and I'm hoping to see them mature into released games.

As for a favorite, it's TubeTwist hands down - I think I'm going through withdrawal. :)

-John

Edit: SP

#54 Re: Age of Time
Yeah that's the name of the game. It's an intentionally silly name to reflect how much I care about being "realisitic" - whatever the heck that means in a fantasy rpg setting. You'd be amazed at the online debates I've had regarding the authenticity of womens' underthings in "ye olden times". Mainly the feedback I've gotten boils down to "plz make more of everything, thx", which is good I guess. There's no interface for the spells yet because I just tacked them on for fun. But if you press I, theres a fairly adequate inventory gui. In case anyone missed it, the game is available for download at www.ageoftime.com.

What I learned from IGC is that you gotta have some kind of "Press F1 for help" thingy to explain the basic controls. I about died explaining blockland's controls over and over. And even though there are little tool tips on the gui, no one ever saw them. People just don't like to read while playing a game. I think the best plan would be to have some kind of visual keyboard layout shown on the screen when you hit F1.

Also I feel I have to mention that I tried to play Illumina but after the 2+ minutes of mission lighting, I gave up and went to bed. I would have given up during Facade's marathon loading too, but the creator was standing right behind me so I sat it out.

#55 There is definitely an issue on the lighting loading times on one of the missions in Illumina. However, there were plenty of maps that load under one minute. We are working on that particular mission now, and it should be fixed before beta.