One gripe that Ryan wasn’t privy to: Social Gold had a fishbowl full of business cards around the event. The sign next to it said “Attendance at the draw for a free iPad is mandatory.” I wanted me an iPad some bad, so I showed up eagerly and early. The event turned out to be poorly attended, and my odds essentially skyrocketed to 1 in 4. I was stoked. I was super excited. I was going to get an iPad and I was going to love Social Gold forever.

You see, SteamBirds is going to be out on the iPad sometime soon, and it’d be really nice to be able to test the game out myself. I really do badly need an iPad for this. With these newfound 1:4 odds, I was fully prepared to accept a distinct loss to someone else in the room.

Imagine my surprise when they decide their event was so poorly attended that they would draw a single card and ship it to a dude not in attendance. WHAT?! I’m a visitor to your fair country of America, so I won’t make a fuss.  But you see, up here in Canada, that shit is illegal. You can’t change the terms of your contests like that!

If a company’s dedicated PR people are willing to screw over some good meaning attenders of their events by changing around legal documents at, what is essentially, a fan convention for their products – imagine the kind of evil they will be capable of on the business side of things. You know, when the happy free-stuff PR people aren’t in charge. Gives me shivers up my spine.

Just sayin’ is all.

Just sayin’.

September 17th-19th, a 48 hour game jam right here in Victoria. I’m really happy/excited/impressed that before the official launch even happend, I’ve already got 7 people signed up!

Check out the official OrcaJam website for all the glorious details. It’s going to be a blast, and you — yes, YOU! — should come!

Picture by Navaboo

I’ve met up with a lot of game developers in the past few months, and seen awesome local-develpment-hangouts, gamejams, and general community cohesion. It seems every major city in Canada has a vibrant Indie Game Development community!

I’ve also lived in Victoria for 10 years, where we have the University of Victoria and it’s awesome Computer Science department. We have a few game studios in town, and even a branch of Disney up island a bit. I don’t know a single developer here. It feels like I’m a monitor with no computer to connect to (see image).

My friend Fieran and I discussed it over a pint, and we’ve decided we’re going to get things moving, instead of waiting for it to happen!

WELCOME TO VDEV. I founded a Meetup.com group, we’re using our University contacts to secure some computing space, and we’re going to have monthly beer-and-games meetups, and a GameJam in September. I’m really trying to get the local university folks involved, because so many students graduate and immediately move to Vancouver. Vancouver surely has more jobs than Victoria (it is a bigger city after all), but most are completely unaware of how fun Indie Game Making is, and I’m hoping to make a few converts!

VDev's current logo.

Don’t get me wrong; I miss all my international friends, and hope to attract a few to the larger events. I hope a bunch from Vancouver will come out. And most of all, I hope all those quiet Victoria devs finally come out of the woodwork and I get to meet you all!

So take a look at the Meetup group. It’s free to join and you’ll be notified (optionally) of any events we hold. I’d love it if you did!

We’re currently aiming to have our first big GameJam on September 17th-19th. Just waiting on space confirmation; already have a few big ticket guys on the line!

(And for those that might have to travel: Victoria is hosting the annual Great Canadian Beer Festival on September 10th and 11th. It might be a good month to visit!)

I think they dawdled on the “What is Indie?” topic a bit too much, but there’s some interesting reading in there and it’ll only take a few minutes of your time. Check it out now!

First up, about the Secrecy; I had often knocked Closed Development practices but hadn’t actually tried them myself. I thought it would only be fair if I gave it a go. Everything I’ve done before SteamBirds has been very open (just see all these posts on Protonaut and Space Squid), and in many cases my productivity apps have had their source code released to someone.

I often thought closed development was an entirely useless proposition, especially in the Indie Space. In the end though, I made an analytical post on the subject and have now declared that Closed Development was a success for me; it helped me focus and gave me more time to put into the project. I’m not concerned about exposure and building a fan base, because this version of the game is designed to build exposure and a fan base for a later iteration of the game. I can’t say I’d make the same choice if this was my final release!

Anyway, let’s recount the tale of SteamBirds, how it came to be, and how I did it (in a very general sense).

September 4th, 2009: It all started with the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, Washington. I was busy working on Protonaut at the time. Greg Wohlwend, partner in the project and graphical genius, needed to take a short break from the game and it was a good chance at a mini-vacation.

I’ve been a long-time fan of Penny Arcade. I won’t say I had the pre-cognition to be a day-one fan; I think I first graced their pages in around 2000. Even when the comic fails to entertain, I’ve often found – at the very least – inspiration in Tycho’s textual truths.

I had never been to a PAX event before, despite being very close to the West Coast Venue. I was very excited to go to the September 2009 show, but was not prepared for the level of disappointment I felt. I’m fairly abreast of all industry knowledge/announcements/gameplay videos, and seeing games “first hand” a few days before launch held no special magic for me. I don’t put a premium on games that can only tease me; the same way I’d rather have private sexy-times than go to the strip club.

The table-top floor, however, saved the experience. I had a blast. I soaked up new games, unpublished games, games in testing, and old games. I reveled in it. It was like bathing in a big pool of gaming sexy-times. Board games, of course, have a turn-based monopoly… And I quickly found myself whisked away to thoughts of yester-year, where games like X-Com occupied my every waking moment. Where did all the turn-based games go? Why are there almost no turn-based flash games? Have we been swept up in a digital era of quick-action and forgotten our roots?

September 13th, 2009: Still high on the gaming experience a week before, I tried my hand at creating a turn-based table-top game. Using a set of movement mechanics and pieces of paper as placeholders, Aubrey (my girl) and I raced dirigibles across our coffee table. BlimpRace was born. The blimps could bounce off of each other and we often ended up in comical – if frustrating – situations where we just kept bumping around trying to squeeze through narrow canyon-like checkpoints. I still think the game has promise, but it had a lot of issues in both gameplay balance and pacing.

I’m a licensed pilot myself, and Aubrey has an unhealthy enthusiasm towards all things airship-related. It was just fun “playing in the sky” as it were; it’s really enjoyable engaging in something you find fascinating.

To any prospective developers out there: Make sure you love your subject matter! I started making Protonaut when I knew in my heart that I dislike platformers. Bad idea!

October 1st, 2009: Daniel Cook (of Lost Garden fame) instant-messages me.

October 24th, 2009: Nearly two months from my initial inspiration, the first line of code is written for what would eventually become SteamBirds. It was obviously called “SexyPlane” at the time (obviously).

October 28th, 2009: After 4 days of very lazy, part-time effort (I figure 2 days full-time), the first Prototype is complete. SteamBirds never deviated far from this initial prototype. This version of the game is full of programmer-art and had only the most basic human-generated sound effects (bang! pow! boom!). Daniel Cook is excited, and in the coming weeks we hammer out a collaboration deal.

Daniel Cook made some amazing contributions to the game. His experience and insight into the industry – and more importantly – the minds of the players, was invaluable. I’m absolutely certain that without his design and guidance the game would have ended up being a very different product.

October 29th, 2009: Daniel Cook hands me the first pass of art assets and I get to make the game look really beautiful. After a few days I had a revamped playable version. We ended up going in a completely different direction in the end, but this “cut-out” art style got a lot of praise  from the people I showed it to:

This is right about when I started seriously working on Steambirds. Since the core game mechanic was pretty much final, the work Dan and I were doing was dressing it up to the nines. Inventing new compatible mechanics, implementing UI, balancing gameplay, and polishing the game. I never put in a full effort; my time-tracking software says I put in 3 hours per day, 4 days per week. Very part-time. I even did a lot of code from the pub on my laptop.

Some of my downtime, of course, was spent in the shower thinking about the game – sketching ideas and writing notes – or just plain thinking about problems. It really wasn’t a lot, though. I was busy watching the entirety of Deep Space Nine for the first time.

Goddamn I hate Sisko so hard. I don’t think he can act (for TV; he’s apparantly an accomplished theatre actor/instructor) worth a damn and the only reason the show was watchable for me was the supporting cast. Christ.

December 12th, 2009: I went for lunch with Colin Northway. I expressed my desire to have a top-notch musician on this project; someone who can crank out some epic tunes.

Colin: Why not DannyB?
Me: Pff, I can’t get DannyB. He’s all famous and shit.
Colin: Nah dude, give him a shout! He’s a great guy!

Sure enough, DannyB (Danny Baranowski) jumped on the project right away, and gave it that distinctive sound. I love how the game’s opening screen grabs you by the shirt collar and says “YOU WILL PAY ATTENTION TO ME NOW.” The music is even popular enough to have generated some sales on DannyB’s bandcamp page.

DannyB was also instrumental in securing Jordan Fehr to do the excellent sound effects for the game.

I attribute a lot of the success of the game to the audio design. It really makes the experience a complete package. Just check out the trailer I made and tell me it isn’t made a thousandfold more awesome by the sound:

January 19th, 2010: The gameplay and UI has entered a beta stage. Aside from a few bugs, I would almost be happy releasing the game at this point.

Again, Daniel Cook’s contribution was immeasurably valuable. I think collaborating with him on this project not only made the game better, it made it viable. He was also great at keeping me grounded; keeping me sticking to the basics and not wandering off into “things I want to code” land.

I wanted to make this launch count, though; I began large-scale user testing.

I uploaded a copy of my game to FlashGameLicense and used their FirstImpressions service to get some initial big-issue feedback. This service selects random people from around the world (any age group, country, preferences, etc.; only requisite is they know how to use a mouse and keyboard) and forces them to play your game for 5 minutes and write up some feedback. I occasionally re-used this service throughout the coming month, and eventually got the “Average Fun Rating” from 5 points up to 7.5.

I was also user-testing in-person. As valuable as FirstImpressions are, they aren’t very detailed and you can’t watch users get frustrated with things or quit at strange times. I cannot stress enough how important real-user testing is.

I even had Daniel Cook and Colin Northway do some user tests on my behalf. Do not skirt user-testing! I spent nearly an entire month on this stage!

January 30th, 2010: I posted the game up for Auction at this point. I’ll go into a lot more detail in the next blog post about the numbers and figures on this end of things. Development essentially stopped here, and the game is largely feature complete. Minor bug fixes and statistics-reporting APIs developed.

February 22nd, 2010: Armor Games wins the FGL bidding war and even commissions me to make a few bonus levels in the game for his site. I spend half a week of full-time dev working on the requested changes and preparing the game for final release to the wild.

March 3rd, 2010: SteamBirds goes live on Armor Games. Exactly* ten years previous, Penny Arcade posted this comic:

Shit. I was really hoping the comic would be a telling metaphor for my situation! Well.. damnit. If I fudge the date a few days earlier at least I can get a topical comic about videogames as art.

All in all, the game’s development timeline was very short. If you assume full-time days, it took me 2 days to code and around a month of polish to get things to the sellable point. Maybe a further week or two of full time coding setting up things for sequels, ads, sponsors, viral versions, and various things like highscore integrations and badges for sites that support them.

In real-world-time, I spent around 3 months on the game and a further month on post-sale issues and updates. The reason for part-time work? I’m lazy. I had some other work going on on the side, but I spent way too much time catching up on old unwatched StarTrek episodes. :)

I’ll post some details on the numbers and deals next! Until then, any questions you guys have on the process? Timing? Tools I used? Feel free to ask in the comments.

I’ve done a fairly in-depth post-mortem of 2009, so I won’t go blabbing about the past again. Suffice it to say that it feels like a dozen years have gone by when it has in fact only been one; I feel like an industry veteran; I’ve been invited/spoken at 4 different events; and I’ve even been hosted on The Independant Gaming Radio Show twice (once just last night, about GDC and Steambirds; the other back in January about community management).

The one thing that has really stood out for me in the last year, though, is the new friends I’ve made. Experiencing the legendary Indie Love firsthand. Excuse me for a moment while I go and embarrass myself and several others:

I still remember a year ago, when I was considering whether or not I should attend GDC at all. I remember sitting there at the back of the Independent Gaming Summit talks, wondering who all them friendly-looking folk at the front were. But now, each of those astounding folks are my friends.

I really have to give credit to three people in particular:

• Colin Northway: Convinced me to go to GDC in the first place, and while at GDC, convinced me to write my own game.
• Phil Hassey: Inspired me to make my first game while at GDC (after learning he made one of my favorite games, Galcon, in only 48 hours).
• Greg Wohlwend: Showed me how amazing and easy it is to collaborate on projects; working with him convinced me that this could be a career and not a flirting interest (and for making the best game trailer I’ve ever witnessed).

If it weren’t for those three chums, I’d not have the chance to be sitting at the IndieLove campfire in Derek Yu’s backyard. I wouldn’t have added around 60 new people to facebook in the last few months alone.

Heck, I just spent a week sharing a room with Indie Gaming’s Patron Saint of Passion, Devotion, and Chemicals: Phil Fish.

A final shout out has to go to Matthew Wegner, who usually escapes the focus of my blog thanks to his undefinable grandiosity. Matthew seems to be everything and everywhere: Organizing IGS, operating my favorite blog, running an awesome company, and starting TIGRadio, just to name a small fraction of his resume off the top of my head. Yet at the same time, he isn’t up on stage like some guitar-slinging rock god; he’s more the guy in the booth that lights the entire Indie Stage. I’d venture to say that the fundamental Indie landscape would be different without him.

But enough with all these blowjobs.

I brought my camera with me down to SanFrancisco and got some excellent shots of some architecture. I’m not usually a fan of architecture, but sometimes a particular view or piece of scenery will strike me as particularly enjoyable. You can see my entire (short) GDC photoset here, but I’ll post one of my favorites:

I love that without any context, this photo goes quickly from “neat” to “striking” — in my mind, anyway! :)

SteamBirds is doing excellently, to say the least. I don’t want to post my post-mortem or stats yet, because it’s still collecting me dollaz. I’ll probably post something closer to the end of the month.