Digital Dave

Two weeks from today I launched Colorflys into the arena at $1.99 and I find myself looking at some pretty awesome things.

• Featured as New and Noteworthy and What’s Hot
• Featured as Games for Kids
• Top 10 in Kids and Top 20 in Family Games
• 1 Critic Review

It’s hard to not be excited about the list above but I find one element of it really concerning. I’ve received very, very little love from the press. I don’t know if it’s that my e-mails to them are not captivating enough, the game itself doesn’t appeal to their demographics, or that it just takes a fair amount of time to get to reviewing a game. I made the huge mistake of passing out a promotional code in the intro e-mails I sent a couple of weeks ago. The convenience that offered has provided me with nothing but concerns. So, that is, by far, the low point of the release.

Sales have been solid as far as I can tell- it was enough to keep the attention of Apple, which feels great. The sales have blown away my prior projects, which is fantastic. For the most part I just look at the numbers and ask, “Well, do I need to go get some contract work?” Yep. Not quite there, yet.

The only time the support inbox flared up was when people were having trouble playing the game because they were running an old iOS version. I completely forgot about weak linking Game Kit… I patched the issue and pushed a fast update into the store (less than a day or two after I discovered it). I also offered those affected a free game from the app store.

Some Session Stats

• iOS Version: 35% (4.2.1) | 28% (4.3.1) | 24% (4.3) | 9% (3.2.2) | 3% (3.2) | <1% (3.2.1) | <1% (4.2)
• 23% have looked at more games and 9% selected a game
• 13% have viewed the News
• 10.7% have muted the audio from within the main menu while 3% muted the audio from the game
• 9% have launched Twitter and Facebook from main menu

How is More Games working out? This is the current list of games:

• [Added 3.26][Free] Flower Garden: Launched 703 times
• [Added 3.26][Paid] Sneezies: Launched 291 times
• [Added 3.26][Paid] Cooking Dash: Launched 231 times
• [Added 4.4][Free] Pocket Frogs: Launched 191 times
• [Added 4.7][Free] Solar Spirals HD: Launched 51 times
• [Added 4.4[Paid] Big City Adventures: Launched 32 times

Out of those launches almost $600 have been purchased within the window of opportunity (with a very small base). I rotate games through as I find new ones that I like so hopefully that will keep players coming through the section.

A Little Test with the News Section

While my numbers are growing, my reviews have come to a halt. To aid the user I added a link in the news section that they touch that takes them directly to rating the game in iTunes. I put this in there a couple of days ago and of the 45 people have opened the link there have been 0 ratings.

What’s Next?

Colorflys SD is currently being put together for the iPhone/iPod and will go into playtesting soon. I’ve had my concerns with implementing Colorflys for the iPhone/iPod, but I’m going go through with it. It probably won’t be the exact same experience. I won’t find out until I playtest it.

For now I’ve opted to go through with 2 different versions instead of a universal application. I will likely price the SD version at $0.99 and keep the iPad version at $1.99. So picture $2.99 for a universal app. Boom. The core advantages I get from doing it this way is that the players will have their own domains within the leaderboards and, possibly, the experience.

This obviously can create a headache for me since I have to maintain 2 different versions, but I think the players deserve their own experience since it’s 2 completely different worlds. I QA the hell out of my projects so I’m not too concerned about duplicating bug fixing between both of them.

So that’s a little about the launch. Time to get back to it.

And we’re off to the races! I submitted the final build to Apple earlier today. So now I sit and wait for more folks to return my e-mails in regards to setting up reviews.

In the meantime I’ll start thinking about the next project.

Early Level in Stage 2

Since I have the first two stages complete (1 remaining), I’m preparing myself for a final round of playtesting this weekend. The first round of play testing I conducted back in December went well, but I had a hard time not interfering with the players since I  had no tutorial points. My goal is to find folks in a range of ages, observe, take notes, and not interfere until the session is complete. I don’t want to say something that might dictate how the player continues to play the game. I need to see when the player gets stuck and how exactly they get out of the situation.

My 3 biggest questions for the playtest session are;

• Did the player feel that the game was fun? How did kids, teens and adults react? This is a family oriented game, but I’m primarily targeting kids/teens. Are adults having fun?
• Did the player find points of the game too difficult where they couldn’t figure out what to do?
• Would the player buy the game?

As of yesterday I had 13 bugs on my list. Today I’ll knock out the remaining 4 and try to polish things up a bit.

One thing that I polished a few days ago involved the way I was handling fonts in the game. I knew I needed to visit this down the road since flat fonts would a) look generic and b) clash way too much with the painted backgrounds. If you’ve ever created bitmap fonts you know how much of a pain it can be. Thankfully, Glyph Designer released recently and saved me the headache!

I didn’t want something that completely saturated the screen, just something that signals that a combo chain is active.

I was inspired to get back to experimenting with music from a blog post by Whitaker Blackall, whom is currently working on Casey’s Contraptions. This morning I spent a little time creating this (not for Colorflys, just experimenting):

Energy by mcgraw

I’m still incredibly new with music creation, but being a hybrid with the skill to code and create audio would be very cool. Imagine taking the same emotion you put into game design into your music? That could create quite a powerful experience. For example, check out Aquaria, coded and scored by Alec Holowka, currently working on a new indie project, Marian.

And, finally, a little challenge between items on the to-do list. Planks. I can currently hold the position for 1:32.0. Don’t forget to breathe.

Until next time. Have a successful week!

Over the past year or so I have been really inspired by blogs which are open with their development. The best example I could point to is wolfire.com. Those guys are pretty amazing and  inspire me from design all the way to marketing. I think the biggest concerns with developers not being open with their development is a) they don’t want to spoil gameplay/story and b) they don’t want somebody stealing ideas. I share the same concerns, but my main goal is to inspire the curious and, hopefully, generate some thoughts from you. Since most of you reading are developers, and not yet quite “fans,” hopefully, we will all benefit somehow.

That said, there will be spoilers… So run if you’re a fan. Let’s give this a whirl.

Here are a few highlights dug from the repository since the last blog update.

Added a Notification for Unread Mail Message

The first pass resulted in only a mail icon, with no clear indicator showing the user has something to read.

Well, the only reason why I would tap on something like that is because I’m a news junky and I would be curious to see what’s in there. Most are probably not like that, and need a little eye candy in order to see what is behind door #3. I decided to add an indicator.

Moved Game Center Achievements / Leaderboards from Custom Views to Game Centers standard GK*ViewController

Last month I roughly implemented Game Center in my own custom views. I did that for a few reasons, a) Cocos2D was not handling view rotations very well, so using the standard GK*ViewController was not something I felt like diving further into, and b) I wanted to give them their own custom look to fit in with the game.

I decided against the custom look mainly because I didn’t feel like it was going to look right with the direction I took it. Luckily, I saw that Cocos2D 0.99.5 was unleashed which handles rotation on the iPad much better. Well, a few tweaks later I had the modal view coming into the screen correctly.

Improved Capture Method and Combo System

Before I began polishing the existing method a player only had one way to capture a butterfly.  You touched the screen and created a circle.  In order for a capture to be a success you had to come within a certain distance of your original touch. While this worked perfectly fine through play-testing, I wanted to give the player another option for a little more action. Now they can snip the line wherever they want to commit a capture.

This naturally introduces a much more entertaining combo system. As long as the player doesn’t pick up their finger and they capture within a certain time frame, a combo point is earned.

Implemented Stage 2

A couple of challenges await the player. Each stage will have 20 levels. This stage is by far the trickiest for me to play. In addition to capturing butterflies, the player has to mix primary and secondary butterflies together in order to meet the objectives. Later in the level the player will have to be concerned with specific butterflies that fall into trouble and act quickly.

I have not play-tested this one so I’m curious to see how people handle it.

Flurry Analytics

How many people completed Stage 1? How about Stage 2 and 3? How far did the player get before they quit?  These are some of the questions that I’m curious about in order to improve the game in areas that are weak.

And some other interesting questions I’m curious about; How many people tapped mute? Are people tapping More Games? Are they tapping the links within More Games? Does that mail notification grab attention?

Beginning the Brand Building, Again

This deserves it’s own post, but generally speaking, I put together a small mini-site at http://colorflys.igotitgames.com and continue to speak with the gaming community again on several fronts. Yesterday I added olark to the website that will allow fans/customers to directly reach me with support questions. If a fan takes the time to visit my website, I doubt they’re looking for trouble.

http://colorflys.igotitgames.com

I’ve been working on something for the iPad for a few months now. Progress has been a bit slow due to everything going on, but I am back in motion.

I’m really excited about this project. I’ve had the idea for this project in my bag since before the iPad, but I couldn’t develop it because I wanted more screen space than what the iPhone/iPod provided. When the iPad released I absolutely knew what my first title would be.

At this point I would say I am about a month away from release. My initial goal was to get it released before the GDC so I would have something to show off this time around, but it looks like I will not be able to make it (to the GDC) this year.

Feel free to support the project by following it on Facebook and/or follow me @dlmcgraw and @igotitgames.

Look for some more information being pumped out relatively soon!

I decided that with my future projects I would NOT play the do-it-all guy.  I needed an artist and refused to release something without one.

Well finding an artist to work with us took an extremely long time — somewhere around 2 months?

A lot, and I mean a lot of artists do not like working on a project without earning a high $/hr and many artists completely misunderstand the independent nature of being an independent game developer.  Taking the time to spot someone with that passion is absolutely critical.  If you bring on an artist and they can’t rattle off an independent game, or even a game, that they’ve enjoyed recently they are not the right person.  The core problem I envision is someone bailing midway through the project, which would really, really suck.  It also helps having someone who understands games and how they can create an interactive experience with their artwork.

I find it very interesting to be around creative people, but for whatever reason I have yet to make a lot of contact with artists whom are interested in game development.  It’s the common dilemma surrounding coders.  I could rattle off quite a few coders I know.  Artists? Not so much.

I started this adventure to find an artist by taking advantage of my current environment.  I work with 300+ artists of varying degree at the visual effects studio I work with.  I had a surprisingly small amount of people interested in collaborating.  I say surprisingly, mainly, because I see quite a lot of independent things going around the studio.  So I know people are doing things outside of work.  We even have quite a few folks that are from the game industry.

During the time above, I listed something on a freelance website for an iPad project I will be doing after the current one.  My experience was pretty lackluster.  The artist had a great reputation/portfolio, but it has taken a long time to get anything out of them.

I then moved into some of the independent forums and craigslist.  Craigslist, by far, was where I gained a tremendous amount of traction.  You can skip paying $75 (bay area) listing fee by posting in gigs.  Within that first evening I had over 20 responses.

What is really interesting here is that I specifically tried to narrow down the responses immediately by asking a simple question within my listing.

What was a game you recently played that may have inspired you artistically?

This question was aimed to gauge if the person had any knowledge of games (bonus if they mention independent games) and also served as a way to filter submissions that were merely spam.  I was very shocked here.  Only 5 – 10% of my responses answered the question.  From there, maybe 2% actually put an effort into answering the question.

Yet, people wonder why they can’t find work?  You need to show some passion and some interest into what you’re responding to!

We’ll be posting game updates on Facebook and Twitter in the near future.  If you would prefer to keep up to date via Email, you can sign up for our Newsletter.

Have you ever built something and sent it out into the world for public consumption?  Did you wonder why people didn’t exactly have the response you thought they would have?  They didn’t respond the way you thought because they are not you.  People perceive what they experience differently depending on their skills, knowledge and passion.  While it is impossible to cater to every personality you can get a fairly good glimpse of this picture during your development phases.  In the end you will likely have buffed away issues that would have been common around the board.

Playtesting

So with Colorflys, unlike my prior projects, I planned to have playtesting sessions very frequently.  I will search out individuals after I complete each of my major milestones that incorporate major functionality into the game.  This way I will immediately see what people are having trouble with and what they like/dislike about the project.  If all goes well, by the time I ship the product I will have made a better game since I adjusted it from what people have already perceived of it.  It may not be enough to send you to the million download mark, but any improvement is a good one.

It’s not enough to have playtesting sessions while watching the participant.  You must take notes, ask solid questions that revolve around your goals for the session, and really listen — all with an open mind.  It will be frustrating to see people stumbling on things you could have swore were easy, or with things you thought were hard, but, again, these people are not you.  Don’t ignore reoccurring issues.

Beginning the Session

Before you begin your playtesting sessions, pin down exactly what you want out of the session.

For example, I recently completed my initial build for my pathing/movement routine and my main gameplay component.  For this playtest I had two major questions that I wanted to answer with each participant.

1. How challenging was it for the player to execute the main gameplay component?
2. If there was a noticeable problem, what did the player think would make the task easier?

You should always add a final question, ‘Did you leave the player wanting more?’ If you can talk about where you’re project is going after the session, and feel a good vibe, then I say you’re on the right path.

I select participants by how often they play games.  Some of them had very little gaming experience, while others were more hardcore.

The Outcome

At this point of the game I don’t want this to be hard for any player.  Overall, the results showed that it was not challenging to execute the main gameplay component, which was exactly what I wanted.  But, there was one participant that has played a game similar to this.  This is a case of old habits die hard.  They were used to committing this action a certain way and expected it to be exactly the same.  My takeaway is that I will incorporate a way of handling users that fit into this category because, in the end, it was not an unreasonable expectation.

The Next Session

My next playtest session will be conducted with a new batch of faces (5 – 10 people) after the level/progression system is incorporated.  My goal is to get a feel for how challenging the actual game will be for players.