Winding down...

Studying to become a Financial Planner is taking up a lot of my time.  It's rewarding and interesting as personal finance is a hobby of mine as much as game design.  While I would love to continue to do both, only one is going to allow me to pay the bills.  This blog, and game design in general is not the one I can continue with.  I wont remove the blog or the posts.  Please feel free to link to them, comment on them, email me.  I want to be engaged in the conversation about games and game design, I just can't devote a lot of time to it lately.

So to keep you entertained here are some statics about my blog. From April 2011 to now I almost 20,000 Pageviews.  That accumulated about $110 until I turned off Ad Sense earlier this month.  Most of that was from a few kind folks who clicked on ads while visiting the site.  If you did, thank you!  I'm going to buy a new monitor because this one is going to stop working very shortly.

Most folks found my blog from my posts on Reddit.  Which is a really great place to drive traffic from.  There are many ways to suggest to Reddit viewers that they check out your page.  My suggestions are pretty blunt methods.  But you should check them out if you want to drive traffic to your blog.

Finally here is a list of my most popular posts. 

Posts

Game idea != Product

Jul 15, 2011, 4 comments                          2315 Pageviews

198+ Game Design Resources

Sep 19 2011 8 Comments                         1,599 Pageviews

3 Business Models for your Mobile Game

Aug 29 2011                                             1,127 Pageviews

1 Free Business Plan for your Computer Game

Aug 14 2011                                                 901 Pageviews

Cheap Game Design

Jun 27, 2011                                                 891 Pageviews

If you want to keep reading about game development and gaming in general I highly recommend checking out Technomancer's Blog, lightspeedgaming.  He's starting to build up a good blog there, and has some interesting things to say.

I hope you learned something about game design.  Hopefully this blog continues to be a resources for you.  I hope you had a good time.  And I hope someday to be able to post back here about games and game design.  But until then, I am super busy learning the ropes of a new game; Financial Planning.

Thanks!

Diablo III

If you have been following my Tweets, and likes on Google Plus you'll notice that Diablo III comes up frequently.  It is going to get a lot of my attention when the game comes out.  Why is that?  The Real Money Auction House (RMAH).  Having play World of Warcraft for many years the thing that kept my attention the longest was the economy of the game world.

The RMAH really excites me because it means that I can attempt to return real money from playing Diablo III.  I don't have lofty goals such as quitting my day job.  But I want to enhance the fun that I have playing D3.  My goals for the RMAH are simple.  1.) Recoup the cost of the game.  2.) Attempt to make some profit (any amount will do).

--Update--

A few weeks after making this post, I received a Diablo III beta key!  Woot.  This happened to arrive during the week in which I started studying for my Series 7 exam.  Boo.  Why Blizzard?  WHY!?!

My first play through was with the Wizard.  Which was quite enjoyable.  Will most likely end up being the character that I play the vast majority of the time.  Second play through with the Witch Doctor, which was ok.

The Auction House is really wonky  at the moment.  I made blizzard bucks by simply flipping my first 2000 gold.  Posting it for a high (but not outrageous price) and then buying it back at a lower asking price.  I made 1.65 BB on my first transaction (fee's included).

My initial thought is that buyer's behavior is going to make each 1K gold amount it's own market.  There is going to be a frequency of purchase associated with each level of gold.  The higher the gold amount the fewer people are going to want to purchase at that amount, and therefore the 1000k market will be fast, with little premium.  While each successive thousand will have a lower frequency of trade and therefore a higher premium.

And that is going to effect how you buy and sell gold.  The possibility exists that you might be able to arbitrage between the gold amounts.  For example you could buy at the 1000 gold level, and resell for higher amounts at the 2000, 3000, 4000 amounts with an added premium.

This is merely a hypothesis at the moment.  The beta is extremely shaky at the moment and it's very difficult to regularly check on auctions or even get into the game.  Markco has asked that I research the auction house fee's, but unfortunately I haven't posted more then the weekly low cost trades.  Once I can do some more research I can test this idea.

Towns

How do you review a game that is not completed yet?  You don't. Fortunately this isn't really a review it's a heads up to my readers.  Towns is a neat game, in the vein of Dwarven Fortress, but easier to understand.  The game is graphic, instead of text based and very basic at the moment.  Currently a city builder/management rts game, but who knows where it will go in the future.

Xavi Canal is making this game, which is progressing nicely, and is a really approachable guy.  Check out his blog, at the moment he has time to reply to comments, questions and requests for help.  New features are appearing in each build.  This is a great solution for folks who attempt to play Dwarven Fortress but just can't get into it.  I've tried a number of times to play DF, with mods which make the game easier, to no avail.  I just can't get into it.  Towns fills a niche within a niche.

Check out the Let's Play series on Youtube.  Or learn a bit more about town layout.  For the full playlist of uploaded videos go here.

I'm curious to see where Towns goes, and what it becomes.  Will the game be inherently less intricate than DF because it's based on graphics?  Will it be a nice compromise for folks who just can't get into DF?  Will this game follow the same business model of Minecraft?  Will it have the same underground following of developers as Dwarven Fortress?  Only time will tell.  I am however very interested in seeing how things play out.

The Price Of Making Your RTS “E-Sports Friendly”

Recently Technomancer from Light Speed Gaming contacted me about replying to my eSports opinion. I'm really excited to have his follow up post about design options lost when deciding between making a classic RTS and an eSport. His interest in the topic is very timely as Joseph Burchett and Devin Becker tackle the same topic on Game Developers Radio. Technomancer adds some interesting points to the eSport discussion below the cut.

Wireframing for Game Design

Dave and Ralph over at The Tap Lab created an awesome game called TapCity and gave a great presentation about it at Mobile Monday Boston #momobo.  They also talked game startups at Boston Indies. But before building TapCity they built a binder called BigCity. This binder is a 'wire frame' of the game. The intention was to be able to sit down with the binder, and like a choose your own adventure game, play TapCity.  Of course like all projects, the scope had to be reduced to get things moving.  Unfortunately BigCity did not turn into a playable iOS prototype. Despite not being what they dreamed, BigCity is a tremendous resources and is worth learning from.

This post has some rather large graphics in it.  More after the break...

"Head First Java" by Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates

"Head First Java" 2nd Edition
by Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates

The 'Head First' in this book has a double meaning.  You are diving into Java head first, but you are also considering how the mind works.  The authors know how best to teach people about a topic which can be occasionally less than interesting...  By leveraging the way our brains process information.

Applying knowledge of human behavior to any topic is interesting to me.  Combining two geeky topics is always a winner.  With the background information, the pictures, and lots of 'why' as well as what this is a great book to learn Java from.  The exercises never feel like a burden, many of them had me running to my computer to test them out.  They also switch things up with puzzles, crosswords, and matching games to keep anything from getting repetitive and boring.

This book is definitely not written like a text book.  Although it would make a great text book for any Java class.  To supplement the information in this book head over to thenewboston and watch a few of Bucky Robert's tutorials.  Overall I am very pleased with "Head First Java" as a first book on the topic.

Next week's post is a great write up of wire framing a game design!  Stick around, its a great post.  On the fourteenth we're going to have a guest poster.  If you would like to guest post contact me.

RTS eSports Opinion

Most RTS titles from the big game companies are attempting to move in a direction of eSports.  This is somewhat similar to the arch of Magic: the Gathering.  If you are not familiar with M:tG it's the classic CCG that came out in the early 1990's.  When first released most players were hardcore table top RPG nerds playing classic Dungeons and Dragons.  The draw of the game was being able to cast spells and magic away from the D&D table.  Eventually it became about competitive winning at the pro tour.  Creating the DCI (Bonus points if you know what DCI stands for) was an amazingly smart and forward thinking move on the part of Wizards of the Coast.  However the tournament scene caused the innovation and the refinement of winning deck design to take over the community.  There were really two different games running simultaneously.  The people playing 'just for fun' and the people playing in the Pro Tour.

The RTS genre is going through a similar change.  Warcraft was originally about fun and storytelling.  Dark Reign was also a very entertaining, although buggy, RTS game.  Blizzard has, however, moved the genre towards entertainment by way of competition.  Whether you claim they are learning from real sports, or M:TG or getting their ideas from somewhere else, proponents of esports are definitely aiming to keep players attention by making them compete with each other.  It's an interesting solution to the problem of longevity in AAA title design.

On the other end of the gaming spectrum we have the absolutely amazing success of Minecraft.  Some people may say they have gotten a 'lucky' hand dealt to them at just about every turn. I think they have tapped something altogether lacking in most game titles.  There is no real sport to MC.  Not at the moment at least.  I personally doubt that Spleef or any other Minecraft activity will ever dwarf the amount of time people spend simply expressing their creativity.  At least I hope that is the case.  The game is about expressing one's creativity and has tapped a deep seated desire to create and control a world.  The replay value of the game comes not from competition with others, but rather through expression.

Competition is not inherently worse than creative play.  It's just not what everyone is into.   The major game labels are missing out on an audience that is looking for creative sandbox play.  There are plenty of eSport RTS games out there (Starcraft II, Firefall), but it would be nice to have some more titles out there like Dwarven Fortress, Minecraft, Dungeon Keeper, where yes it is real time, and yes it is strategy, but it also provides the opportunity for creative play.