Highest call volume

Hello!

Today is the highest call volume of the year.  The new company @Dormousegames gets created in a couple days.  Which means signing paperwork to form the company and collecting a check.

Regular blog posts will resume soon.  In the mean time check out Daniel Cooks thoughts on Randomness as a mastery element of game design.

Artist(s) wanted

Happy Holidays everyone,

As announced at December Boston Post Mortem, Dormouse Games is starting up this coming year.  We have angel funding and the paper work gets signed in January.  To get a jump on building the business we need artists portfolios and resumes.  2d, or 3d artists (who want to output to 2d) for platformer, puzzle games and possibly card games down the line.  We're willing to look at talented first timers, or experienced folks looking for a start-up indie company.

We have contract work available, with the potential to become full time.  Two games need art and a company logo.  So send us resumes if you are interested, or connect us with worthy folks who want a shot at breaking in.  contact@dormousegames.com

Thanks!

Eric and Jeremy

Dormouse Games

War for the Overworld

You would not be mistaken to think that War for the Overworld sounds kind of familiar.  Particularly if you had played Dungeon Keeper II.  Some fans realized that a DK 3 was never coming along, and went ahead and started their own version.  They have been working on this game for years, and getting some traction.  Especially over on Kickstarter. It's a UK project, so if your based in the U.S. you have to jump through some hoops to contribute.

Peter Molyneux backs their effort.  I am super excited to see this project get funded.  So please back it if you can.  And if not tweet, or share the kickstarter with someone who can.  Thanks!

Violence is a game design cliche.

Starting a game development company during times when the industry is being accused of selling violence to minors may seem like a silly idea.  Despite all the hype, 'we' already know the answer.  There is no correlation between video games and real world violence.  By 'we' I mean 'our industries lobby' the Entertainment Software Association.

That being said try and make a game that is not about violence.  At this point it is simply more creative to make a game that is not about guns, violence, and killing then it is to go back to those tired tropes yet again.  Of the few hundred games released in 2012 how many were first person shooters, or based on killing things?  All of the ones I played...  Xcom, Orcs Must Die 2, Torchlight 2.

"Normality is a lack of creativity".  FPS is pretty well done these days.  Lets demonstrate some creativity and come up with games that don't rely so heavily on violence to solve problems.

A Fieldrunners 2 key found its way into my possession about a week ago.  So after writing a post about creating fewer violent video games, it's time to go shoot some clones with turrets.

Happy Holidays

Welcome back.  I hope your holidays were fun!
Tomorrow we're going to talk about Violence in Video Games.

The best place to incorporate...

Have you considered where the best location to Incorporate is?  Lowest cost, most benefits?  Where do most other companies incorporate.  The answer might surprise you.  Its Delaware!  Wait, what?  Really?  

Yup.  Of all the places you could create a company one of the most popular is Delaware.  Anyone starting a new LLC should seriously consider incorporating in that state.  If for no other reason than all the 'services' in the state which do nothing but register companies.  It’s the local cottage industry.  

Don’t believe me?  Planet Money Podcast recently was talking about creating shell companies to learn how certain people can create tax shelters.  The podcast is an interesting look at the darker side of incorporation and worth checking out if you're curious.  Don't forget to follow up with "What can we do with our shell companies?" and "How to hide money from your spouse."

What Underwear reveals about kickstarter.

Here is a great article on Business Insider.  Anyone considering a kickstarter campaign should give it a read.  It’s about underwear.  Also the problems that success brings.  But it also highlights one reason why game development works better on crowd funding than other products.  


In the case of Flint and Tinder, they have to produce 23,000 pairs of underwear, when they intended to make 3000.  In the case of Scrumble Ship Dirkson has to produce a single game (which gets copied many times).  Software is extremely easy to copy.  Physical goods are not.  Granted the manufacturing process makes it easier for fewer people to do more work, but even the most advanced manufacturing techniques can’t beat Ctrl C, Ctrl V.

Kickstarter can be a dangerous thing whether the project succeeds or fails.  Failing to plan for success can be as detrimental as failing to plan for failure. But know that as long as your swag is digital you have it better then Flint and Tinder.

Mr Ghost may be the best ARG ever.

There's kind of a good sized industry out there for ghost hunting. My guilty pleasure was watching Ghost Hunters. The show was enjoyable, I admit it. Having some small amount of training in Electric Circuits, I've always wondered if those EMF things really worked. Apparently there's an app for that.

Thoughts on High Grounds.

Spry Fox, the creator of Triple Town, has a new deck building game out.  It's a pretty good game and has gotten a good review from PAReport.  With Scrolls coming along slowly and methodically, online collectible card games should have a good couple of years coming up.  Here are some of my thoughts on what it means to have a deck building or collectible card game in a digital medium.

Breaking in by walking in.

Are you breaking into the game dev industry in the Boston area?  Working hard on prototypes but not making any headway?  You need to be attending some of these events.  I've been to a good number of Boston Indies and Boston Post Mortem events.  This year I would like to add WIG attendance.  The networking at these events is top notch.  You can find mentors, contractors, employee's, good advice and most importantly feedback on your game.  The topics are almost always worth learning about.  Even if the law isn't your cup of tea.

Pick an event and go!

Angel Investors or Inspiration is where you find it.

Eric Fritz came to me with a problem.  He has been working with two angel investors for a year attempting to create a profitable game.  He made a game for them.  They kept saying metrics, he kept saying fun.  The focus on metrics, and attempting to repeat Zynga’s success, didn't go as well as they would have liked. That company has been wound down, but they offered to give my friend funds to start his own company.  This is how we founded Dormouse Games.

Boston Post Mortem 12/12/12

John Lanza and Daniel Rose – Legal Issues For Game Dev

Boston Post Mortem is always amazing, and definitely worth the trip to Waltham.  Eric and I made our first announcement, met some awesome folks, and generally had a great time.  Attendance was a little light, but there were plenty of artists, sound designers, and app developers looking for work.  The conversation about legal issues covered mostly Trademark, Copyright and Patent information.  With a bit about Equity Crowd funding at the beginning.

The big announcement?  Eric is the founder and I am the co-founder (more like part time adviser) of a start up!  We're looking for 2d artists (or 3d who can work in 2d).  There is contract work available for sound design, iOS and Android development.  If you are an artist, or know one who's out of work, link me to their portfolio.  Previous work in game design is a plus, but not a requirement.

More information about the company will be coming out soon.  Super exciting!

Indies and the Law

Or timeliest PA Report ever!

Not three hours after meeting with angel investors (woot!) to discuss an ongoing investment deal, Penny Arcade posted the most amazing article.  (actually they posted it before the meeting, I discovered it via twitter a couple hours after).  The article is a crash course on video game law.  Although not everything in it is specifically applicable to every situation, it is fantastic and helpful in the most common areas of legal trouble for indies.

The advice tracks fairly well to the 'stages of game design'.  There's something for the pre company pretotyping/prototyping stages.  There's advice for company formation, and intellectual property post company formation...  There's a lot of great information in there, go read it.   Then mine is for great twitter accounts to follow:

Ben Kuchera
New Media Rights (nonprofit)
Shaun Spalding

The History of the “Lowest Common Denominator” concept.

Years ago (2001-2007) I was heavily involved with the design and running of a Live Action Role Playing game called The Imperium LARP.  You can see what we worked on by pointing the Internet Wayback Machine to www.imperiumlarp.org.  While working on the project the creator drilled the idea of the LCD into our heads...  And made us better game designers because of it.

Metrics Driven Game Design

Zynga has defended the idea that designing a game heavily based on metrics input is a winning strategy.   Although no one likes the idea of what the output is after that process.  The popular trope around the indie game world is a general feeling of distaste for the kind of game that gets produced by putting in more numbers based feedback rather than human based feedback.

Is sticking with your day job a cardinal sin?

If you are attempting to raise funds with an angel investor, they want to see commitment.  It is expected that founders are going to be working full time.  Quitting the day job to work for the start-up is clichéd, because it’s expected, and because it sends a message to the investors.  Also because so many people do it.  The commitment of anyone not working full time for the start-up is questioned.  This may or may not really be the case, but that is the perception.

Paper prototyping... At work

My new day job is going well.  I'm really enjoying being in the operations side of Financial Services.  Six months in sales has taught me that I am not a sales guy.  Call volume was slow for my first two weeks, so I've had some time to paper prototype a card game.  Entrepreneurs always say you have to quit your day job, but there might be a case for not doing that under specific circumstances.  The game is intended to be an HTML5 online CCG.

Online CCG's are surprisingly fun, although there's room for improvement.  And I say that as a former M:tG pro tour hopeful.  I've been playing Clash of the Dragons on Kongregate.  The single player game seems like a bit of a grind, but if you want to draft you have to endure it or spend money.  I think the intent is to have a big PVP focus, but like most MMO's, I'm just playing the single player campaign.  There seems to be some needless complexity in terms of having a game world, player stats, and inventory.  After playing four or five other Kongregate card games, Clash is the best of the bunch in my opinion.

Ichiro Abroad

If you haven't had a chance to yet, pop over to this Gamasutra article and give it a read.  Some really great basic advice, subtle yet powerful.  Short post today due to high call volume in the call center.  The new full time gig is taking up a lot of time, and there may be a big announcement coming soon, which will take up all the rest of the time.  Also, if you just love Ichiro, here is his advice on going to GDC...  Even if you just go to the vicinity of GDC it might be worth it.

Sharing Dave's Social Mobile Protip

During the Smart Money in Gaming event, Dave Biscelgia (b shell ia) provided some great, and very specific advice for social, mobile start ups.  The first piece of advice, test internationally.  This strategy is called a soft launch.  The goal of which is not to generate tons of revenue, but rather to gather user data.  This data helps tune retention, figure out where problems exist in the app/game, and add polish to the product before the real launch in the U.S. market.

Also during the event Tier 5 was mentioned as a specific example of a location where cost to acquire users is extremely low, however conversion is really bad.  There are some terms in that sentence which are new to the blog.  We'll go into them a little more specifically in the near future.

Which Crowd Funding site should I use for my game?

Well if you're anything like Simon Roth, you use all of them.  Steam Greenlight, Kickstarter, and Indeigogo.  Why use just one?  Each game crowd funding site has strengths.  This is a pretty smart strategy.  Of course all projects should link to all others.

Greenlight Concepts
You can put anything up at any stage and use the site to gauge peoples interest in your idea.  Using the Greenlight concept page traffic can be driven from steam to your primary crowd funding site.

Kickstarter
The all or nothing popularity of Kickstarter has a good number of projects going here for initial funding.  Arguably more popular for game design at the moment, but unfortunately only one funding option.

Indiegogo
Different funding options (Fixed Funding and Flexible Funding) allow for more options when setting up a project's funding.

Simon also did something smart with the Indiegogo project.  Being from Manchester U.K. the kickstarter is denominated in pounds.  The Indiegogo however is in U.S. dollars.  Running one project in each currency means that he gets both U.K. and international (we U.S. folks) support.  Noticed the dollar amount on the Indiegogo campaign is set very low.  That's some good crowd funding strategy right there.

Is Kickstarter bad for games?

Not everyone likes kickstarter.  I do...  But then my day job is in financial services, so the complaints about kickstarter are peanuts in comparison.  Rab Florence's great blog THIS FUCKING AMUESMENT ARCADE makes a few points about why kickstarter is bad.  We've taken a look at the good stuff.  Let's look at the bad.

Most of this post was written in the voice of Mike Rugnetta... [insert link to future PBS Idea Channel episode].  There may or may not be a little man crush involved.

Event: Smart Money in Gaming

A current and future look at monetization strategies in Retail, Mobile and Social Gaming

Last night I went over to the Microsoft NERD center (still love that) and hung out with Dave Bisceglia (from Tap Lab) who was a panel member for the event.  It was moderated by Marco Mereu (uCool), and included  Jeff Goodsill (Stomp Games), Chris Rigopolous (Harmonix), and Layne Ainsworth (TapJoy).  As the name implies they talked about making money with games, and I soaked in as much information as possible.  I went with a burning desire to find out if anyone is monetizing HTML5 games on the web or mobile and how they are doing it.

Equity Crowd Funding in 2014?

The game design industry won't see Equity Crowd Funding until 2014...  At the earliest.  Crowdfunding.org projects a best case time frame for the 10 steps between where we are today and active Equity Crowd Funding in the U.S.  This is, however, the federal government we're taking about here.

There is a reason that is good, and a reason that is bad.  On one hand the timing gives another year of practice making, and studying donation based crowd funding.  In general that practice should be very helpful for anyone who wants to be good at Equity Crowd Funding later.

The bad news is that is an awfully long time in the market.  The excitement over crowd funding could be well over by then.  Interest could be less, and dollar amounts could be smaller.  People could be used to being sold idea's instead of products, and maybe even bored with it.

What do you think of Equity Crowd Funding?  Tell me in the comments below.

1 Big red flag that your project won't succeed.

Shadowrun Returns has announced that they are pushing back the release date to expand the scope of the game...  The delay is not the issue. The expanding scope, however, is a big red flag.  Expanding scope is the bane of all projects and the death of first projects.

I still have high hopes for seeing Shadowrun goodness.  These guys are professionals.  However if you are on your first project, don't let the scope creep.  Read more about their development process on their blog.

Kinda regret not getting a Doc Wagon card.

Watch out Sweden, here comes Finland.

Some of the most exciting game development communities are growing in places that are not the U.S.  I'm not aware of the game development community in Stockholm Sweden before Mojang hit the map, but I can definitely see them becoming the center of Swedish gaming in the future.  But watch out Sweden, here comes Finland.  What is the game development environment like in your corner of the world?  Are you getting a chapter of the IGDA?

Start-up Definitions

Your last vocabulary assignment was about Crowd Funding definitions. Now lets discuss a couple commonly misused words from the classic investment world.  And that really means that I've used these words incorrectly.  They means something specific.  By the way, these are not dictionary definitions...  But rather experiential definitions.

A very short post about F2P

Read Daniel Cook's post about the "Free 2 Play" misnomer. My thinking has been along the lines of GAAS, but the question is: will creating the kind of hobby/service Daniel talks about require procedural generated content?   Minecraft is obviously a hobby and a GAAS (with a single payment).  An MMO like World of Warcraft is obviously a service.  However, Mojang got lucky and MMO's are very expensive to make.  What is the minimum viable content volume for GAAS?  And how do small game companies put out the content needed to be a service?

Or is my basic assumption, that GAAS means content updates, faulty?

Can a small company crank out enough, say puzzle games, to form a service?  Would it have to be some kind of open world?  At what point is there a critical mass of games to move from a 'Fremium'/'Free to play' model to a service model?  It would be interesting to find out.

Ownership and investing.

As a complicated person with many ideas, knowledge and experience I have an odd view point on investing in companies.  If we were to sit down and talk one on one about how to go about investing for retirement  for profit, etc. it would quickly become apparent that I am a fan of Jack Bogle.  Keep expenses low, use EFTS, re-balance every year, etc.  Invest in Exchange Traded Funds and understand regression to the mean.

Likewise as a business major I have strong opinions on when, why, and how to take companies public.  You don't.  Companies perform better when they are private organizations.  People take companies public because they think they'll make boatloads of money. Let's relate this to the game industry.  Facebook and Zynga have both had tons of problems after going public.

But I'm very interested in equity crowd funding.  The JOBS Act signed this past April, although completely up in the air, promises to allow sites like kickstart to do more then just take donations for projects.  Right now you can't buy ownership in a copy.  You pledge funds and if they meet a goal you get swag.  Equity crowd funding means those pledges buy you ownership of the project or company.  Exactly what I would talk you out of as an investor.

This is the central heart of the debate about allowing equity crowd funding.  Being a registered rep and business major there will come a time when I'll someday be involved with asking gamers to help build a game by purchasing ownership in a project or company.  At the moment I'm not sure how to resolve asking for someone to buy equity when I wouldn't advise them to make that purchase if the shoe was on the other foot.

This is all academic moral questioning right now...  But at some point this will have to get sorted out.  Not just by me, but by everyone.

Curiosity killed the Cow.

Peter Molyneux's game(?) app called "Curiosity: What's inside the Cube?" has launched.  And people are clicking on it.  Kind of like Cow Clicker.  But without the satire.  The app itself is free.  And there are in game tools (?) which can be purchased to help the player (?) click more effectively.  These items are purchased with the coins earned for clicking on pixels.

Sorry for all the (?)...  But the very meaning of things like'game' and 'player' are completely open to interpretation in Curiosity.  At this point I've earned around 10,000 coins by clicking for around 10 minutes.  It does start to feel like strategy emerges after a while.  There is emergent gameplay in just about all things, and Curiosity is no exception.

One thought stays in the back of my mind though.  With 68,719,476,736 cubelets is Curiosity the worlds largest progress bar?

Who is Markco Polo Redux?

This deja vu has been brought to you by a glitch in the Matrix.  Actually this post was moved because I was waiting for an affiliate link to go through. This post is still mainly about blogging.  Specifically it's about how to be better at marketing blogs.  Also its about how to be better at buying and selling stuff in games online, but only kinda.  So if you don't care about any of those things I'm giving you an out.  Find out 'Who is Markco Polo?' beneath the cut.

What is the value of a good story?

What makes the D&D brand compelling?  What makes it valuable?  The game is valuable because it is a system of creating emotional meaning to the players (players find it fun and enjoy playing).  The best DM’s are those who can invest meaning in the worlds they create and then use that meaning to emotionally affect the players.  Likewise the best games are those that can invoke an emotional response.  The best way to do that is to create a meaningful game world.  How much is a good story worth in game design?

Thank you

I just wanted to take a minute and say Thank you.  Perhaps I'm starting off the holiday season a little early and thinking about what I'm thankful for.  There have been 30 people subscribed to my feed for quite a number of months now.  At the moment I have no idea who they are, but I appreciate you reading my posts.

I’d love to hear what you appreciate about the blog.  What you don’t like about it.  What do you find useful?  What kinds of articles and links are valuable to you?

Should I call on the monkey to help me?  Ill sic monkey minions on you all!

UK Kickstarter

Kickstarter launched in the UK last week.  There are some amazing looking games starting to filter into the categories. Games like Maia, and Elite: Dangerous.  For Maia in particular, the influences include some of my favorite games.  However other than a few mentions now and then, I'll pretty much be leaving the UK projects alone.  There is too much stuff out there already to be covering projects outside the U.S.

Gambitious, crowd funding games.

Have you heard of Gambitious yet?  After taking a look, it may be worth checking in with every now and again.  It has the look and feel of a kickstarter account, but offers both entrepreneur and 'perks' offerings.  They refer to it as a hybrid model.  Although only EU investors can be equity investors...  At the moment.

If the JOBS ACT opens equity crowd funding up the general public then perhaps they will open up the equity portion to the US...  There are, however, only about 7 games seeking funding on the site.  Not exactly gangbusters.  They have some amazing partnerships though.

Final verdict is a wait and see.  Maybe they will be huge, maybe not.  Good idea though.

The best time to start a company.

Start a company when you are young.  Take chances right out of college.  When you're single and the relative level of requirements on your life are low.  Risk is a young person's game.  So if you think that you might ever want to start a company, take that risk before getting married, having a kid, or buying a house.

You might feel pressure when young from debt.  You may feel that a stable job somewhere makes sense to pay those bills.  But the requirement of stability from debt is nothing compared to being married, having a kid or creating a home.  Add another person or two into the mix, and it becomes very easy to do the stable thing, and very hard to do the risky thing.  Even if that risky thing is your dream.

Stability is a trap.  A very comfortable trap and it's oh so easy to get into.  A great skill to learn early is being comfortable with instability.  Not many people are good a thriving on random events.  Fewer still are good at capitalizing on them.

Tonight (this is being written 11/1/2012) a friend asked me to be a co-founder of his company.  This is a roll of the dice, dream opportunity.  But I can't accept.  My life demands the stable job.  It makes me wonder if I'll have these kinds of chances again.  The Zen answer is yes.  But that is little consolation tonight.

[update] Actually I am co founding that company, despite my busy schedule...  Don't tell my wife.

Lessons from failed Kickstarters

You may have noticed a number of kickstarters showcased here recently.  Mostly just mentions of successful and failed projects, and some notes that they would be discussed later.  Now is the time to take a look at an old idea in a new light.  The success of a kickstarter does not mean a game will be made.

Why do so many games go to Kickstarter?

The real brilliance of Kickstarter for game designers is the reversal of quality assurance.  Instead of paying people to debug a game, through kickstarter you can offer 'exclusive' access to Tester Only sections of the forum, and charge more for it.

It sounds snarky to say the really great thing about kickstarter is profiting from QA....  But I seriously considered paying Timber and Stone $50 to get that tier of reward.  For tiny indie game developers this is actually a really great QA solution.  However, if the AAA companies start doing it, that might not be so good.

Dishonored; Looks Boring.

I have not been playing it, but I did watch Dave Bagnall's Dishonored Let's Play.  It has something to do with what seems like a lack of peril.  Xcom can go so very badly wrong sometimes that it really makes you feel something: Tense.

Perhaps the lack of emotional connection is due to watching a Let's Play instead of playing the game...  But usually watching Let's Plays inspire me to want the game.  Dishonored looks a little flat, emotionally.

[Update 11/28/2012]
Nope...  It's just me.  Dishonored has far exceeded sales expectations.  It's headed into franchise territory.

Crowdfunding Definitions

Anyone else notice that I'm very interested in crowd funding games lately?  Yeah.  Fortunately I'm not hooked on spending money I don't have funding them.  Some people have problems.  Over the next few weeks that should shift towards the funding on game companies.  Lets go over some terms, as I use them, to clarify things.

IndieGogo
One of the two big crowd funding websites.  Notable because they allow some projects to complete without reaching a set goal.  Also they have fewer game design projects, and many more art projects.  Still a viable place to fund indie game development.

Kickstarter
One of the two big crowd funding websites, notable because of the pass/fail programs.  Campaigns cannot chose an option that allows them to get whatever funds are completed, the campaigns must reach their goal.  This site is more popular among the indie and some mainstream game developers.

Open Crowd funding
A project which independently creates and runs it's own crowd funding campaign, without using a service like Indiegogo or Kickstarter.  This is a rising trend among AAA game developers.

Equity Crowdfunding
The really neat kind of crowd funding, promised in the JOBS ACT.  Also called Accredited Crowd Funding because Accredited Investors will be able to provide money to start up companies, in exchange for ownership of the company.  They most likely will not get swag as well...  But we shall see.

Iterations on Crowd Funding.

Star Citizen is taking an 'Open Crowd funding' approach.  Looking up Neal Stephenson's CLANG for a friend reminded me that Star Citizen and Mechwarrior Online are not the originators of this tactic.  You can still contribute to CLANG even though the kickstarter successfully completed four months ago.

Leaving contributions open after a kickstarter campaign is a great idea.  Open crowd funding before running a kickstarter seems to be putting the cart before the horse.  If a successful kickstarter can keep funding going after it closes, what about a non successful one?  Can you reach you're goal even after the kickstarter has failed?  And what about a Flexible Funding program that only reaches half the goal?

What is a kickstarter that is not a kickstarter? Successful, apparently.

There are a couple big name game titles, from big players in the industry, who are using the Kickstarter idea.  But without using the Kickstarter website itself.  This is an interesting concept and although successful in a couple big cases is a terribly risky proposition.  The internet is all about removing the middleman.  But where does this trend lead?  Will this be the end of Kickstarter and Indiegogo as everyone does their own thing?

Here are a few 'large' (more then two employees) companies (with offices) which are using kickstarter to get the money to run their company (with expenses), while building a game project.  This, to me, is a terrible idea bound for failure.  But I can't quite put my finger on exactly why.  This sets a bad example for anyone just starting out.  Kickstarter works best when it's used to fund projects, not companies.  But then on the other hand, maybe funding is funding.

SHAKER
How can I tell it's a company: Art.  Great, great art.  They have hired and are paying an artist to make their kickstarter look spectacular.  They have a ton of employees:

Employee compensation is the largest single cost of a company.  Between salary and healthcare.  All those people in the picture?  That's a lot of expense.  Although it's quite possible that some of the people in this picture were let go with the cancellation of Ghost Recon Social game.

Nexus 2: The Gods Awaken
Again, a ton of concept art.  Someone has spent a lot of time (and money), perhaps personal, perhaps company, to create great looking concept art.  Although some of it is reused from a previous title, they also indicate having a large team.  And therefore large expenses.

Double Fine Adventure:
The obvious counter example.  They did really, really well without even naming a project at all.  Their kickstarter sums it up really well "The world of video game design is a mysterious one."  There are surprise successes, and terrible failures.  Do not expect the same results, even if you put in the same effort.  Even if you could make witty videos, you won't be able to get the same results.  One thing I notice in watching the videos, Tim Shafer understands that this is funding for a project.

Being but one person there is no way to find all the successful and unsuccessful kickstarter projects, nor determine which ones were funded at what stage.  But what I can say to the beginner, the person like myself looking to complete their first or second project, understand that a Game Idea != Game, and that Project != a company.  Err on the side of caution, and fund a project with a kickstarter.  If the project does well, use the revenue to then start a company.

Xcom: Sometimes the Redshirts die.

by Jeremy Springfield

Whether you love the game or hate it Xcom: Enemy Unknown pulls off a really neat trick.  It makes you care about the red shirts.  You celebrate when they do well and you frown when they die.  Sometimes their losses are hard to take.  It may be tempting to reload the game when you loose a valuable team member.  Don't do it.

Dungeon Keeper II

by Jeremy Springfield

Instead of discussing new and upcoming titles which have successful kick-starters, this week I want to use my long post to discuss on older title. Dungeon Keeper II is an oft overlooked classic of the RTS Genre and one of my all time favorite games.  One could imagine a parallel track of RTS designs based on the ideas expressed in DKII.  Alas, the world never saw such ideas.  Glimpse this alternate reality below the jump!

Games As A Service

So really who wants to title something GAAS?  I'm sure the SAAS people had enough fun with that acronym.  Then again a company called Valve created a service called Steam.  So I suppose GAAS fits oddly well in this system of tubes we call the internet.

Valve predicts big things for GAAS...  But so what?  Not only does it seem inevitable in the future, it seems that way now.  But there may be a bump in the road.  With cloud computing services from Amazon failing on Monday, it seems like there is still work to be done on this cloud idea.

I've talked about the minecraft business model before, and it looks like some folks have been putting that into the 'GAAS' category.  This is something that I had not previously considered and seems like a correct categorization to me.  But I'm a still little hesitant.  What do you think?  Is Minecraft a GAAS?

Boston Post Mortem, Post Mortem.

Scott K Crabtree @scottcrab discussed "Happy Game Design".  His talk was amazing and is highly recommended!  He highlighted scientific information, studies and the like, which provide insight into building a good work environment.  Although the talk was targeted toward game developers, it's really great information for just about any company.  It was a great presentation on the brain science of management, and working together.

During the presentation he recommended a number of books with great research to back them up.  Once I get the list from Scott, I will post them here.  So check back for that.

If you're looking to be a better project manager, check out his work.  If you want a happier, healthier, work environment definitely check out his website, HappyBrainScience.com.

P.S. Sorry about the URL recycling.  This information is way more interesting then what was here before, trust me.  It was a half complete blog post.

Indie Game: The Movie

Although shown locally at the Brattle Theatre, I watched Indie Game: The Movie on Netflix.  It really doesn't feel like 6 months have gone by between each event.  Wow.  Anyway it is a great movie, and sums up a lot of the feel of the development environment of the Boston indie scene.

The Greatest Gaming Advice ever.

Often times creators of any kind of game attempt to write plot. We see this a lot in table top RPG's and Live Action Role Playing games.  But also often in computer games. Plot is a terrible thing to write in a dynamic situation like a RPG or LARP. It can cause really problems in sandbox games. The greatest gaming advice ever is a way to counter the trap that 'writing plot' represents.

A game design challenge...

Imagine designing a game that the player couldn't look at, or touch.  Oh, and it's played while driving so it can't be overly distracting.  Given those conditions what kind of game would you design?  BRIGHTdriver is a company tackling that with two games.  They are using kickstarter to fund the final polish on those two games.

As for the kickstarter itself; the dollar amount seems to be correct based on finishing two games.  They are asking for funds to finish a project, but ultimately looking to start a company.  This is an interesting test case for project vs company kickstarter.  We shall see how things turn out.

The business challenge, which is much more interesting, is the gut reaction most folks have.  "This isn't safe".  Overcoming that issue is a much bigger challenge.  That may be a bigger and more interesting challenge facing BrightDriver.  More then the game design issue, the business issue interests me.

Space: the New Zombie Game.

Kickstarter has a whole host of games, and right now Space games seem to be extremely popular.  From strategy to tactical, to resource management these projects range from the one man show up to the professional studio looking for fund a sequel.   Here are a few of the space related computer games on kickstarter.  Not counting Scrumbleship, here are five new games up on kickstarter.

Two Successful Kickstarters

At some point these two should be analyzed a bit more for what they did well, and what they did badly.  For right now I just want to mention that both Scrumble Ship and Dysis have either reached their goal or completed their kickstarter.

Scrumble Ship ends today at 1:27 pm EDT and is over their goal.  Dirkson requested $8000, but total pledges at just over $12,000.
Dysis has 17 days left.  They started with a $5000 dollar goal, but so far have pledges of over $15,000.

Now that they have succesfully raised money will they go on to be successful projects as well?  I hope so, and I'll be following them to find out.

2 things we can learn from Dysis

Dysis is an interesting game.  The kickstarter video could use a little more polish, and the project overall doesn't motivate me to want to contribute.  But I noticed two interesting things.  The Minecraft business model continues to be used by new game development projects.  And small dollar goals.

Christopher Farrell is basically asking for people to pay for software and counting that as a success.  This is a very reasonable request for a professional with a day job trying to create a game in his spare time.  The stretch goals, and all money above the $5000 base are going to flesh out the software and get poured into the game.  This kickstarter is well designed for the creators situation.  Indiegames.com picked up on the story last week.

As of 1:11 today the kickstarter is successfully funded, with 18 more days to go.  They are closing in on 3x the amount asked for.  Things are looking good for games of this type, like Scrumbleship.  Has anyone else noticed many Space games out there lately?  Seems like Space is the new Zombie.

Makers and Game Developers

Here is a chunk of the text called "The Long Tail of Lego" from the book "Makers: The New Industrial Revolution" by Chris Anderson.

To wrap the section up quickly for you, it talks about the transition from old manufacturing to modern manufacturing.  The difference between the original mass production Ford style assembly line, and a new emerging model.  In the new model a primary company produces the same goods using classic manufacturing techniques (Lego), but then niche companies produce specific products, where there is demand, but not enough for the primary company to produce product (BrickArms).

I wonder how well this model describes the relationship between AAA and indie games.  AAA companies churn out mass produced, but popular, titles under manufacturing like conditions.  Indie studios produce smaller title that smaller niche segments of the population are interesting in playing.

"Crossing the Chasm" by Geoffrey A Moore.

"Crossing the Chasm"
by Geoffrey A Moore.

I wrote this post a long long time ago, and was shocked that it wasn't posted yet.  This book is so fundamental to how I view technology, and the foundation of some of the blog posts about Minecraft.  In retrospect this should have been posted first to give you a chance to read it before jumping into a discussion of 'the technology innovation curve'.

Kickstarter Reluctance

Old School (now SHAKER) seems like a great idea being put together by a solid company with incredible credentials.  You can tell that if they get the funding the project will be completed.  This is not 2 guys in a basement with no project management experience.  This is the real deal.

So why am I reluctant to back this project?  My gaming hobby (is it addiction or lifestyle?) started with Apple IIe, D&D in Jr High and Ultima on the Nintendo. But Old School gaming is not really interesting to me.  Perhaps my reluctance to be excited about this project is that game nostalgia has no hold over me.  Well maybe certain titles...

The story seems really compelling, a nice balance between D&D and Cyberpunk. AKA Fantasy and Sci Fi, the two big genre's from the 80's.  But it just doesn't compel me to support the project.  It's just not pulling the right strings.  It was featured by Kickstarter via tweet on 10/7/2012, so apparently there are some fans out there.

Their request for a million dollars feels high.  It doesn't feel like funding a kickstarter to me.  It feels like a Studio seeking investors.  Maybe kickstarter to me means funding guys like Xavi (Towns) and Dirkson (Scrumbleship).  Maybe at heart I'm an Angel, not a VC.

A really sneaky aspect of Kickstarter is that we each individually get to decide what kickstarter means to us.  To me, it's funding that little guy who has no support but has good ideas and can prove themselves.  I don't have any right or intent to tell you what you should support.  Nor do you have any right to tell me what to support.  The beauty here is that doesn't matter.  We all get to support what we want to.

SimCity

...Oh yeah.  SimCity.  I remember playing that as a kid.  RCI, Roads, and water pumps and electricity.  I remember all that, it was very enjoyable.  My brother (the political communications major) LOVED that game.

Reddit brought this video to my attention last week.  Over many versions SimCity became more and more complex.  It looks like they have finally started reducing complexity.  Especially when it comes to power, water, and roads.  They are all simplified into one system.  Instead of forcing you to lock yourself on to a preexisting grid, the system zones automatically based on the weird roads you draw.  Looks awesome.

Good thinking EA or Maxxis or whoever's making this game.  Now, will it be on Steam?  #wishfullthinking

[News] 3 day Pax East tickets sold out.

Games beat is reporting that 3 day passes have sold out.  Pax Site confirms it's true.  So it's single day passes or nothing.  Buy them now, or you're not likely to get in.  I was able to acquire 1 3 days pass.  No you can't have it.

Minecraft Biomes o' Plenty

The Minecraft mod Biomes O' Plenty does one thing.  It adds 60 (at the moment) more terrain regions the player can wander through.  This is a great example of something simple done very well.  The mod isn't overpowering players, it does not give them an edge in playing the game...  But it does make the Minecraft world a lot more interesting to explore.

There is a greater lesson in simplicity for game developers.  Simplicity is key.  You want the core mechanics and core game play to be as succinct as possible.  Sometimes you have to strip out all those bells and whistles that you think might be fun in order to reduce complexity and provide a simple yet moving experience.  Biomes O' Plenty is a simple and great mod.  If you have a game idea that's too big to tackle on your own, can you instead mod an existing game?

BOP (not Birds of Paradise) a great mod, and you should check it out.  Especially if you are an Explorer at heart.  As of my writing the current version is a bit buggy and causes lag spikes and block lag.  The author of the mod TDWP_FTW indicated this has presumably been cleared up for the next release.  Looking forward to it!

[News] Pax East tickets available.

Jump over the Registration page to claim your tickets to Pax East.  I'll be there all three days.

Greenlight Towns

Towns is one of the first 9 games to be 'greenlit' on steams new Greenlight Service.  This is amazing!  It is right up there with Project Zombiod, and Black Mesa.  This did not take long considering the game was posted to Greenlight on Aug 30, 2012 @ 2:27pm.  Congradulations Xavi!

It would be helpful if Greenlight also recorded the date the game was 'greenlit'.  Is that a word we can use?  'Greenlit'?

6 Reasons why I hate Mojangs new office.

The title may make you think that I hate Mojang.  Far from it.  I love the company, the business model and Minecraft.  Kotaku recently reported on the amazing new offices of Mojang.  They are certainly pretty, perhaps a bit too pretty.  As evidenced by the comments to the kotaku piece. When it comes right down to it, they made a mistake here.  After the jump, are 6 reasons why.

Windows 8 and Ouya

"I hope we can keep a lot of open and free platforms around. If Microsoft decides to lock down Windows 8, it would be very very bad for Indie games and competition in general.
If we can keep open platforms around, there's going to be a lot of very interesting games in ten years, mixed in with the huge AAA games that we all love." -[Notch]

"Windows 8 locking down is the best thing that could possibly happen to the Ouya."
-Me to Caleb Garner 10/2/2012

The timing of the Ouya may be perfect, assuming Microsoft doesn't change plans to fully integrate Xbox with Windows 8.  Even if it takes a year after Win 8, launching an open platform like Ouya could really be a coup if gamer and game developer angst is running high.

Developers who write their own code, and don't look to get approval through the XNA platform have reason to fear the future.  Anyone who codes for iOS says "Meh, been there, done that".  Personally I think it's all noise.  Trying to search 'Windows 8 lock down' returns so much Persson that it's hard to find any real details.

The State of Play

'The state of play' was a New England Game SiG event held at the Microfsoft NERD Center on Oct 2nd 2012.  It was well attended by all kinds of developers, designers, and even the CEO of Kickin Kitchen, an educational website looking to open up a game platform to their existing audience.  The presentation and talks evolved from a panel discussion into more of a 'town hall meeting'.  There was some good back and forth between the panel and the audience, and even some great interaction between audience members.

The big issue, raised by the brilliant Caroline Murphy, is the lack of funding to game development companies in the Boston Area.  Boston has incubators, game developers, great students, and great start-ups.  It's almost a perfect atmosphere to build game companies.  Except Boston Angel and VC execs rarely come from a game design background, therefore are hesitant to fund game companies.  The Boston Indies scene was created by and supports tons of great bootstrap start-ups that develop games.  But save a very few examples, there has not been much VC support.

There was one problem with the night, microphones always seem to be in short supply in the NERD Center. But ultimately not a big deal.  Mike, look into that for next time.

Google+

I just found and pushed the Google+ button on my blog.  Let's see what happens!

Also I have accepted a contract position with Sallie Mae's Upromise group.  So starting in November I'll be helping companies administer their 529 plans!  It also happens to be for the highest hourly rate I've ever been paid in my life.  Which is a nice way to close out this time of doing the best I can during bad economic times.  Very exciting!

I have a great blog post coming up on Monday: "6 reasons I hate Mojang's new office".  I think you'll get a kick out of it.  Stay tuned.

Scrumbleship; more then Minecraft in space. Hopefully.

Minecraft is an inspiration for just about everyone who wants to design games. Everything from straight up copies to 'inspired by' titles are popping up all the time. There are plenty of not so interesting clones... cough Yogventures, cough. (Which feels more like a retaliation then a game).  But there are some equally fantastic projects such as Towns and now Scrumbleship. Check below the jump for an introduction to the Scrumbleship kickstarter and game.

Great Gaming podcasts

The new job is eating up all my spare time!  But I'm in Kendall square, which is nice.  It's taking me an hour and a half to go 5.5 miles on public transportation.  Parking a car in Kendall is simply out of the question due to the expense.  On the other hand I have plenty of time to listen to fantastic podcasts on the commute.  Here are few great gaming podcasts which you may or many not be paying attention to.

Another look at Towns

This past year has been pretty busy for me; unemployment, employment that has caused me to close the blog, the job search.  It means that I haven't been following games over this past year.  It is nice to see that Towns is still being worked on, and that it's still improving.  If you like Minecraft and or Dwarf Fortress this is a game to keep your eyes on!

Status update

My experience of job hunting has been true to the old adage "Finding work is a full time job."  My dream of game design does not seem to be turning into a career in game design.  But you know what, that's not a terrible thing.  Perhaps 'hobby game design' would be better for me.  Or maybe even just 'gamer with inside knowledge'.  Besides Financial Services pays way better and helping people with their financial troubles is really rewarding.

So if you know anyone looking for a Fund Accountant, Credit Analyst, Underwriter, of Customer Service Representative let me know.  Actually I'll take just about anything entry level in financial services at this point. Probably not sales (unless it has salary plus commission).  Got to update my worker bee resume on the Zorts page.

At some point I do want to have enough time to be able to blog more.  Thank you all for hanging with me (all 30 of you).  And my G+ followers (of which there seem to be many more).

Diablo III vs Torchlight

I have to admit, I have not played Diablo III 1.04  It just hasn't interested me since realizing there are some fundamental breaches of verisimilitude.  Torchlight 2 is available for pre-order on Steam and to my surprise it came with a free copy of Torchlight.  Oh, good!  I had lost my copy a while ago, and needed to buy it again.

Give them a listen

A quick plug for a great podcast, Core Elements.  If you are considering game development you really should go through the backlog of this podcast.  They interview some amazing folks.  Some of them are even famous, but all of them are interesting.

Allow me to gain your interest by dropping names you already know...

Johnathan Blow
Daniel Cook
Zack Barth
Justin Korthof (Of Robot Entertainment)
Team Meat Edmund Mcmillan

But really listen to each podcast.  Even the people that might not be public facing have great insight and opinions on the game development industry.  And I bet that if you listen to the folks whose names you don't recognize, in 5 years you'll start hearing their names all the time.

Verisimilitude in Diablo III

Last night The New England Institute of Art held it's SIGGRAPH event.  After the event the presenters visitors and students (of age) went for a beer nearby.  While there we talked about Diablo III as quite a few people around the table are playing (when not designing their own games).  The topic of Verisimilitude in Diablo 3's Auction house came up, and in retrospect I think the problems with D3 can really be summed up nicely as 'violations of verisimilitude'.  Let me explain why...

Diablo 3 Commodity App

What am I working on?

My last post was about the VERY few apps in iTunes specifically for the Diablo III Auction House.  By the way, if I missed an important one, post a comment and link to it.  I'll take a look at it and add it to the list.  There seems to be a great many apps for the perfect build, dps, lore...  But what about tracking all that Auction House Data?

4 useful Diablo III Apps

Although Blizzard tried for simplicity there is still a lot of complexity in Diablo 3.  Layered simplicity can still be overwhelming.  Add to that 'the invisible hand of the market', and you have a recipe for confusion.  App Developers can offer little ways to cut down on the confusion.  Although few have stepped up to the plate and made an app.

At the moment there are 4 apps (only 4) specifically related to the Diablo III Auction House up on the iTunes App store.  Before you plunk down your $.99 (no doubt earned from the RMAH), you want to know what they do and if they are any good. Here is a review of each.

My week in Diablo 3

After posting regularly for a while, I hit the wall.  Actually not a writing inspired wall, but rather the Inferno ACT 1 wall.  A solid stone curtain wall of frustration and self doubt.  It took me a week or two of grinding to get exactly nowhere with gear.  Culminating in 5 or six wasted attempts at killing The Butcher, with help, for the first time last night.  In reality I could not get past Araneae the Spider Queen alone.  A friend hopped me from there to the end of Act I.  Despairing and assuming the worst (that I'm bad at this game), I decided to do something really weird.  I decided to ditch my Rare level 60 gear and start buying Magic items.

The plan was this: Stop with the hodge podge of weird attributes on the gear.  Most of the gear was in the direction of +damage and + life with some additions to various resistances and resist all...  But it really wasn't cohesive.  Start buying Chromatic [Item] of Valor instead.  Cohesive armor that increases resistance to all, and Vitality. Markco has a more nuanced approach to it, but I'm going dead simple.

Playing as the Barbarian means that three of my abilities have life gain Skill Runes associated with them.  Frenzy, Rend, and Revenge are the three main attacks.  Which basically spams life gain as I attack.  So far I have replaced 5 items and have done a single farming run, with success.  I need to do a few more farming runs tonight.


Another trick I picked up.  Selling unidentified items.  Especially ilevel 63 items.  Sell them in trade chat for 250,000 to 275,000 gold.  I love this because it's way more then I can get for putting them up on the AH.  I HATE trying to price and sell items let alone try and flip them.  Having always been better on the buy side of the equation means I'm way better at generating cash from commodities.  Unidentified items are basically reduced to a commodity.  Like selling a Magic: the Gathering booster pack.  You're selling the hope.  Most people don't get that the odds are stacked against them.  That I can sell!

I have got some new things to try, and a new plan, which means I'm a lot more excited about this weeks round of farming then last weeks.

Blogging a game idea.

In a previous post a closed economy fantasy game design was suggested.  This post is going to follow up on that idea and flesh it out a little more.  First we'll recap the basics, then flesh out the game a little more.  Feel free to add feedback, suggest additions, etc.

Weekend Selling Report

Just got back from a mini vacation. With a number of Diablo III gold auctions of commodities having completed over the weekend I was excitedly expecting to see some gold waiting or me.

Instead I found 10 items in my auction log. Not one success. Complete and total failure. Could this be dumb luck, or does it prove that you simply cannot ever place a bet over the weekend. Is this proof that you must actively manage selling every single thing you put in the AH? While one try does not prove anything there most likely won't be many times in the future where I'll need to make such a bet.

The big problem with the plan is that it violates 'buy low; sell normal'. It was a bad idea from the beginning because you have no way of know what 'normal' will mean in the future. It would have been better for me to dole out those items over the course of the few days before the weekend before prices rose... I still would have made profit, because all items were acquired well below 'normal'. It just would not have been as much gold as what I was guessing the weekend high would be.

Live and learn. And listen to Markco.

Weekend Selling Strategy.

Here's a problem.  Most of my gold is currently locked up in commodities and I'm about to take a vacation for the weekend.  How am I going to move all these goods that I've gathered through the week?

I have collected 8 Fiery Brimstone (to experiment with).  Currently they are going for around 83,000 each.  I acquired them for 50,000, each, or less .  One was actually a drop from a Rare salvage!  I would like to double my investment.

I want them to sell near the top of the market, but I don't know what that is.  I have to place my bets now, because I'll have no access to D3 until Sunday Night/ Monday Morning.

Most of my auctions are going to be devoted to commodities this weekend.  Two auctions of 8 total Fiery Brimstone.  Another 4 auctions of 200+ total Exquisite Essence.  And maybe one or two of Iridescent Tears to get ride of them.

5 Fiery Brimstone for 100,000 gold each. 3 Fiery Brimstone for 90,000 gold each.  Basically I'm assuming that FB are going to hit 100k at some point this weekend and they will get purchased.  Why that assumption?  Path 1.0.3 decreased the drop rate, and the increased activity over the weekend.  More people can play, so weekends are a good time to sell.

Granted, it's a total guess on my part about the price going that high.  And we know how well that guessing worked out in the past.  I'll report back Monday about how it went.


D3 Commodities 6/21/2012

Exquisite Essence: 1935 gold
Iridescent Tear: 214 gold
Fiery Brimstone: 81505 gold
Tome of Black Smithing: 44 gold
Tome of Jewel Crafting: 1087 gold
Tome of Secrets: 530 gold

D3 Commodities 6/21/2012

Exquisite Essence: 1977 gold
Iridescent Tear: 312 gold
Fiery Brimstone: 63000 gold
Tome of Black Smithing: 56 gold
Tome of Jewel Crafting: 892 gold
Tome of Secrets: 527 gold

 These prices change on a minute by minute basis. Something that is addressed by Marcko on Diablo 3 Gold Guide Blog. Which makes recording them a little problematic.  Quoting a single price gives the impression that the price was steady all day.  Which is not the case.  It makes the most sense to record the lowest values seen that day as most folks use the lowest price to get their products to move.  In addition to reporting them in the blog, there's a google doc started to record the data.

Inflation Economics in Game Design

Playing the Auction house and running through various levels grinding gold has got me thinking about inflation and economics in games.  There are quite a few players who are disparaged by the inflation in Diablo 3.  Instead of griping about how the D3 economy is at the moment it would be more productive to think about how different games could be balanced in order to re-leave some of the player tensions.

D3 Commodities 6/20/12

Exquisite Essence: 2000-2100 gold
Iridescent Tear: 400-500 gold
Fiery Brimstone: 53000 gold

These are today's ranges for the commodities.  As a big fan of Disenchanting from WOW, salvaging seems like the way to go to gather some serious gold.  The best way to do that is to track the market.  What's the best way to track that data and display it on blogger?

Google Docs -> Blogger?

Gem Experiments

The patch notes seemed to suggest that there would be increased demand for gems.  Prices on gem combinations were drastically reduced.  Which seems like it would increase the number of sales of gems.  Spending all day testing this has been both simple and boring.  They haven't sold.

This means my last post is wrong.  The price of combining really isn't a factor in the value or liquidity of gems on the AH.  Droping the price of combining gems hasn't really effected the short term market.  Too bad, I was going to sell through all mine today.  I have quite the stockpile.

Something that was a pleasant surprise, a spike in the price of Fiery Brimstone.  The price then dropped during the day back.  This may be a bit premature as the salvage rate has greatly changed.  One sold early today for 53125 gold, and I'm going to buy one now, and watch the price to see what happens.  Don't sell your last one!

Also I put together a fair set of Gold Find items.  All level 60 Magic Items, all 25,000 gold or under per piece.  Tried it out in nightmare, attempting to put together the Staff of Herding.  Got first three components with no problem.  Shinbone had droped randomly for me without even looking for it, which kicked off my interest.  The mushroom took a few runs, but showed up fairly quickly.  Bought the bell, no trouble.  Ran the quests for the other two pieces for 3 hours last night, and 4 or 5 hours this morning.  Never got the other two.  Decided to do Izual to break things up a bit, and the plans dropped on the first run.

How have things been going of you out there?  Good gems sales today?  Bad?

Patch Day...

It's time for another patch day, and there are some big changes if you play the auction house.  Things are getting fixed, bugs squashed, and paths corrected.  And we sit here and write blogs to kill time before we can play again.  But how is this going to affect your ability to make money?  The official patch notes are posted on Reddit.  Let's take a look.

There are two things that jump out right away.  Crafting changes and changes to drop rates. These are the obvious 'first glance' changes that are going to impact the AH and RMAH right away.

The Three Hundredth Spear: Item Analysis

The key to selling an item on the auction house is understanding how to value the item.  To value the item you have to be able to pick out the things that players want.  Here is a great presentation that goes into the topic of item valuation among a lot of other things.  Markco, who formerly made a fantastic WOW gold guide, has been talking about Diablo 3 with Sixen.

Initially this seemed like a bad Legendary item which would never sell.  But that opinion may have been created by the failure of my first item up for auction on the RMAH.  After listening to Markco and taking a second look The Three Hundredth Spear has a really nice stat and may be worth selling after all.  Let's take a look at the item, and discuss how to use it to best effectiveness.

Diablo 3 RMAH Experiment Day 2

Are there buyers?  Yes and no.  There are buyers for level 60 gear.  ONLY.

It was pointed out on /r/diablo that trying to sell anything under level 60 is pointless. It seems they are correct.  My level 42 Legendary did not sell for the $75 buyout price, nor the $60 asking price.  Theories of arbitrage tell us there is a price that people would be willing to pay.  The only question is, hoe low is that price?  It seems like bad legendary items will not pay for my copy of Diablo 3 after all.  Well at least not a single such bad legendary.

The item was re-posted for a $29.99 buyout.  It's doubtful it will sell.  Next stop $14.99.  Perhaps we should cut to the chase and just put it up for $4.99...  But lets play it out and see if we can get someone to buy it for more.

On the other side of the auction house I have been raking in the gold using old WOW techniques.  Even before leveling my barbarian to 60 I started bidding on level 60 Magic Items.  Buying at a certain price point and salvaging the items yields a nice profit.  There is basically a constant supply of such items as most gearing is done with rare or better items.

This illuminated a key point in my mind. You have to learn how to buy something in order to know how to sell it.  My last post was basically a 'guess and check' experiment.  It was my first data point in learning how to sell things in the RMAH.

At this point 3 legendary items have dropped.  Level 42 Armor, Level 44 Weapon, and a Level 55 Spear.  Basically crap.  Why?  The market is only interested in level 60 items.  Just like WOW, Diablo 3's economy will suffer from late game, or level cap issues.  Most players will want to spend money at the top level for better gear.  This means the economy will be relatively flat.  If you don't have THE best item, you cannot command prices anywhere near the top.

This will also mean that all those $250 valuations we see will be coming down quickly in the near future.

Diablo 3: RMAH. Are there Buyers?

Personal stuff

Diablo 3 RMAH fact and speculation after the jump!

Having passed series 6 and series 63 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts says that I can sell people investments in mutual funds.  However, over the past 6 months I've learned that working on comission is not for me.  So I'm looking to work for New York Life Investment Management in Customer Service.  Fortunately that job requires series 6 and series 63 licensing.  My future and the future of this blog is unknown.  At this point it's a waiting game until NYLIM goes through the interview process.  Until then I have a few clients that need some financial goods and services to tide me over.

From a game design point of view, a small Ma game development company likes one of my game concepts, and wants to work on it.  This is a loose deal, but means actually making a real game prototype with someone who knows what they're doing.  I expect no profit from this, but look forward to starting a real game and giving it a go.  (Well another go).

So in the past year I've started two businesses, and two businesses have failed.  This is encouraging.  At this rate I'll be a successful entrepreneur in 2 years (or 4 more failed businesses, which ever one comes first)!  What better way to celebrate then with some speculating in Digital Goods!  Maybe D3 can be business #3.  That brings me to Diablo III!

Boston Indies 01/16/2012: Demo Night

Some excellent games making their debut at Boston Indies.

For example:

The Look is fun, and fresh.  Art is done by Luigi Guatieri, a talented new comer to the Boston Scene.  Check out his blog and portfolio.  Unfortunately I did not get to meet or talk with the creator of the game, but the mechanics are really interesting.  There was a deep creativity to the game mechanics.  The pace of the intro and explanation is pitch perfect to have you learning new mechanics, but playing cleaver games at the same time.  It's quite possible that the game is based on a whole genre of mechanics that I know nothing about, or it's possible the games creator is just that good.  This game looked like tons of fun.

Also 82apps.com has a new prototype/demo of a game based on New World Colony.  It's still a work in progress and there are no official statements yet, but it gets under your skin.  Very difficult, but very fun.