Game Design Fundamentals - Meaningful Decisions

As someone who's been making games for over ten years, initially as a hobby and now as a full-time career, I've picked up a lot of wisdom and experience that I probably take for granted. While much of it has been collected from my own experiences developing games, most if it has come from other developers who I've met at jams and events, or read about online.

I want to share some of these in my blog so others can learn from what I've learned. Hopefully there'll be plenty of ideas here that will be useful and will be helpful for you in your own game development!

I'll start out by looking at meaningful decisions. When I design and work on my games I try to make every decision as meaningful as possible. Let's have a look at what that means.

Advice for developing iOS games - Edge Online

I was interviewed, alongside Ben Murch of Hunters 2 developer Rodeo Games, by Edge Online. They asked for tips for people wanting to develop iOS games, and so we gave them some! If you're interested in developing for the platform I hope it's useful.

Have a look at the article here, and feel free to ask me if you have any questions about iOS development, on this blog or on twitter!

Making iOS Games: App Store advice from Rodeo Games’ Ben Murch and Greedy Bankers dev Alistair Aitcheson

Steam Greenlight and the Discoverability Challenge

Update: Since writing this post, Steam has introduced a $100 entry fee for Greenlight. I've added my thoughts at the end of this piece.

Last week saw the launch of Steam's new Greenlight programme. For the uninitiated, Greenlight is an initiative by the aforementioned desktop games portal to get its user community deciding what indie games should be published on the service. New game proposals, with demos and screenshots, can be shown in the portal, much like an App Store, and users can upvote games they like, share comments, and help promote the games they are most interested in for selection by Steam.

When I heard about the scheme after its announcement in July, I was apprehensive. While taking game selection out of the hands of a black box of executives was promising, I was concerned that any community-rated games ecosystem would suffer the same issues as the App Store and Google Play do - that is, the games receiving most attention (sales in App Stores, upvotes here) would receive the best promotion, creating a virtuous cycle for those at the top, but a wall for exposure for newcomers. Fortunately, as Mike Rose intelligently explained in his recent Gamasutra article, Greenlight has found a way around this issue…

… by not including a ranking system at all.

10 Gamedev Articles You Must Read (or Watch)

I spend a lot of time catching up with my favourite games blogs and websites, and over the past couple of years have come across a mountain of useful and inspiring articles and videos that have helped me in my work. I've had a trawl through my bookmarks, Readability archive and my old tweets to find some favourites that I hope you will benefit from too!

Pocket Gamer Guest Post - Indie Marketing Begins With Your Game Design

I wrote an article for PocketGamer.biz which went up today. In it, I argue that the most important part of marketing your indie game is the design of your game itself. It's about designing your game to be marketable, and that for a game to be marketable it needs to be remarkable. Your game should encourage discussion, and it's up to you to create a dialogue around your game as early as possible.

Have a look, and I hope you find it useful!

Pocket Gamer: Greedy Bankers' Alistair Aitcheson on why indie marketing starts with game design

Introducing the Best of British Summer Sports Jam!

This week at Develop Conference a team of indie mobile developers took to the floor to announce the Best of British initiative. Best of British is a collective of mobile developers - including Spilt Milk Studios (Hard Lines), Big Pixel (Off the Leash), Mobile Pie (My Star), Future Games of London (Hungry Shark), and myself - who teamed up earlier this year to pool our efforts and share our skills, audiences and connections in order to make a splash in the mobile market.


This weekend we will be developing our first collective game, Best of British Summer Sports, as a 48 hour jam. Mind Candy (Moshi Monsters) have been kind enough to lend us their offices for the event, while Unity are kindly providing sponsorship, and will be on hand to offer technical support.

Best of British Summer Sports will be a collection of rapid-fire minigames, played against the clock. Each member studio will produce a selection of their own micro-challenges, which will be compiled together for continuous play. So you'll be able to sample all the development skills our rag-tag team of misfits has to offer!

We would all like to thank Unity and Mind Candy for helping to make this happen, and also to Osborne Clarke, who have been incredibly supportive throughout the Best of British initiative!

Follow the Best of British team on Facebook

Adventures at Develop Brighton!

I'm back this week from an incredible time at Develop Conference 2012 in Brighton, where I was speaking last Thursday. While the weather didn't exactly hold up there was plenty of warmth from the games industry community and I made a lot of new friends from all sides of the industry.

Particular stand-out talks included Brian Baglow's closing talk from the Indie Marketing Day, highlighting what indie developers should be doing to promote their games but aren't. This earlier talk from him, along similar lines, is a must watch if you weren't there! I was also thoroughly impressed by Fat Pebble's unique plasticene design shown in their talk about their upcoming game Clay Jam, and the creativity and ambition shown by FuturLab in their press and media operations.

Marketing and PR was a key issue on the Indie track this year, and with good reason. It's the hardest part of an indie's operations, in my opinion, and certainly something I've put a lot of time and effort into. So to see such inspiring and thought-provoking discussion was extremely valuable. Other highlights included Benni Hill's talk about running White Paper Games, and Rob Davis (Playniac)'s talk on how they followed up the launch of International Racing Squirrels for Channel 4 - all very insighful.

My own talk went down very well indeed. Several delegates commented that they found it inspiring and useful - something that I am, to be perfectly honest, chuffed to bits about! I plan to produce a video based on my talk on Indie Exposure, but do take a look at my blog series if it's a subject you would like to know more about.

Finally, I made some fantastic new connections and was glad to meet up with games journalists, other indie studios, and many more fascinating faces from the industry. I'd definitely recommend going to the next one, event for the networking alone. Develop Liverpool will be in November this year, and the conference will return to Brighton next summer. I hope to see you there!

The slides from my talk can be downloaded from here

Indie Exposure: A Rundown

With my Develop Conference talk coming very soon (Thursday 12th July everyone!), what better time to put up a summary of my Indie Exposure series of articles? The articles have been kindly reposted on GamesBrief, an in-depth resource for games business articles that you should definitely take a look at.

Part 1: Why is Exposure So Difficult?

The biggest obstacle to success as an indie, in my view, has been exposure of my game to its audience. How do I get people to know about my game? This article looks at where these challenges come from, especially in open marketplaces such as the iOS App Store.

Part 2: Making the Most of your USP

Part and parcel of your game's marketablity is its unique selling point. Being able to explain why your product is awesome in one sentence or image is incredibly powerful. Emphasising what makes your product remarkable, rather than its general quality or polish, is what gets people talking. But you need to find a marketplace that is looking for something to talk about.

Part 2b: Virality

A response to Kevin Allocca's informative TED talk about viral videos. The video explains the mechanics which determine what content goes viral and the importance of tastemakers - all of which is equally applicable to making a marketable game!

Part 3: The Personal Touch

As an indie developer you're able to operate on a personal level in a way that larger studios cannot. Use this to leverage your audience and the press by offering them memorable experiences and a genuine connection to the creator. Your personal efforts are hugely effective in gaining the interests of tastemakers.

Part 4: The Free and the Exposed

There is perfectly logical reasoning why putting your game out for free can engage more users and make viral propogation of your game more likely. However, it is by now means a magic bullet. This article reflects on my own experience with Greedy Bankers: Bailout! and asks why a free price band may not necessarily help your game spread.

Indie Exposure: The Realities of Free

It's been a while since the last Indie Exposure post, hasn't it? When I was planning to post this instalment, I was preparing Greedy Bankers: Bailout! for launch - that is, the free version of the game with expanded game modes for in-app purchases. I fully expected this to make a massive difference to the game's fortunes - specifically, enabling much better exposure.

Of course, as with the best laid plans, this strategy didn't go the way I expected. While I am receiving consistently higher downloads of the free version as I had been getting on the paid version, I was expecting the userbase to grow by significantly more than it actually did. I needed to do some thinking before I could wax lyrical about the exposure opportunities for free games. 

I'll begin with my starting logic: offering your game for free should make it more open to recommendation, and hence benefit your exposure. Let's think about why.

The Logic

Put yourself in your customers' shoes, or look at your own purchasing decisions. I presume I am not an atypical iOS user, and from my own experience even paying 69p for an app requires a big decision. After all, how many times do I want to spend 69p before I find something that I really enjoy? Unless I am cautious about my spending those 69p's could really add up!

When I buy a cup of coffee, I know exactly what I'm going to get and have a fairly accurate estimate of how much I'll enjoy it. So paying £1.80 for my medium Americano is not a big decision. With a game I have only the vaguest idea how much I'll enjoy it, even if I take time to read all the copy, see the reviews and look at the screenshots. In short, I'll be taking a risk. 

Speaking at Develop Brighton, 12 July 2012

Hi everyone! Just to let you know I'll be speaking at the Develop Conference in Brighton this July. I'll be giving a talk titled Indie Exposure: Tackling the Challenges, based on my recent blog series.

Breaking into the market as an indie developer takes more than just a great game, with publicity and exposure being major barriers to success. Drawing lessons from his Greedy Bankers series on iOS, one-man studio Alistair Aitcheson examines why visibility remains such a challenge, and explores ways to achieve it.

He’ll explore how freely-accessible marketplaces like the App Store are approached by consumers, the importance of a bold and remarkable USP, and how pricing and platform affect your ability to draw attention. He also examines the opportunities unique to indie developers, to take memorable design risks and to become identifiable personalities.

I'll be speaking as part of the Indie Dev Day on 12th July. Early bird tickets for the day are £75 before 13 July. I went to this day last year and found it both insightful and useful, and an affordable alternative to the full conference for smaller studios, so it's highly recommended! I'll be in Brighton for all three days of the conference this year, so if anyone else is going it'll be great to see you there.

The feedback I got from my Develop Liverpool talk was so encouraging, and thoroughly enjoyed giving my presentation. So I'm excited to be able to speak at the main event in Brighton this year!

The conference is also running an Indie Marketing Day on 11th of July, which has a very exciting lineup of talks, and is definitely work taking a look at.