Post of the day: mistakes that video game developers make

After studying Design Theory Fundamentals for over half a year now I notice mistakes made in the industry more and more often. These are such basic things that I can't believe that these mistakes are even getting made. I'm going to highlight a few of them in this blog. The ones that crossed my mind recently. I might make a part 2 and part 3 to this sometime later, because I'm absolutely sure that I'll forget to mention a bunch of mistakes today.

First levels are meant to interest and pull in your customer. Make them the best levels out of the whole game. 

Recently Angry Joe did a first impressions video on Elder Scrolls online. His first impressions were not positive, so he started getting comments like these:


A game should not require to take time to get into. If I play for an hour and don't enjoy it, I consider putting the game down and not play it anymore. If I'm testing out a game in a beta, or playing a demo, I'm likely not to buy it. According to some people on the comment section the game gets good after level 10. It will require you 6 hours or more to get there. How many people will sit trough that many hours not enjoying themselves just to get to something good?

Let's compare it to Guild Wars 2. Let's say I created a new asura character. The first thing that I will have to fight before going out to the open world is going to be this:



A big portal monster that is flailing his arms all around.

The point of all of this? First impressions really do matter. Don't allow your customers to have a bad first impression, because they probably won't have the patience to get to the good bits.

Take feedback. Don't be precious. And don't try to censor the Internet

Recently a youtuber named TotalBiscuit has put out a review of an indie game called Guise of the Wolf. The review was negative. This article writes about the events that happened afterwards. The creators of the game are now threatening TotalBiscuit with legal action if he does not take his Twitter and his youtube channel down. Now if you search youtube for "Guise of the Wolf" in the first page there are already two videos discussing the situation instead of showcasing the game. Now if you google "Guise of the Wolf" this is the second link that comes up. It's right there on the first page of your google search.
Now what kind of reputation do you get for acting in such way? What will such acts do to your sales?

Develop for your customer. And don't cut corners.

A lot of gamers over the years had to put up with excuses for laziness. Percentage always translates to cash and how much cash you'll lose after those people won't buy your game.

For example GRID 2 released with no cockpit view because "only 5% of players use it and it eats up too much memory that we can instead use elsewhere." Well modders in a few days after release already had a working cockpit view prototype.  So what was the point in alienating 5% of your player base and making sure that they won't buy your game?


These are just a few discussions that I have encountered today that made me think. I am sure that there are far more games out there with far more mistakes and I'll be sure to write about them when I'll run into them.

Post of the day: MMO, community and sandbox

After playing different MMOs off and on for a while I decided to log back in on Guild Wars 2 today. What I found really surprised me. Instead of finding people in the open world I found them... Here. 

On a beach. In an area with no useful non player controllable characters (NPCs), with no dungeons, with no enemies to kill. Just a beach. People were saying goodbye to this old beach, because this zone will be getting destroyed in a few days. It is so exciting and quite nostalgic to see old places go, therefore people decided to host a beach party. A beach party that already lasted for 5 hours when I discovered it.

That got me thinking. A lot of MMO developers forgot that the best way to keep the player coming back is not new tiers of gear, not putting a piece of loot behind a cruel time gate (time gate is when a developer forces the player to take a certain amount of time to get an item. For example there's a requirement to repeat a daily quest 20 times), but the community. People like to play with people. The log into massively multiplier games because they want to share their experience with hundreds of other people.

Making raid bosses that require a hundred people is the right approach then!

That's not entirely what I'm trying to say. Sure massive bosses in MMO can be fun. However bare in mind that the more people it will require, the less times it will be killed and the more people will be excluded.



For example this is a picture of my server being overly happy after beating a really hard world boss. We were ecstatic. It took us days and days of tries, but we finally did it!
However what happened after our server did it once? Nobody wanted to do it again. Too much effort, too much organization required. We left our mark, we did it once, why do it again?

Let's talk sandbox 

There are two types of sandbox and both are equally good for an MMO:

                                                            Combat Based Sandbox

Leave your players a reason to fight each other. Either add a political system or some uncontrolled areas that players can take over. Add competition.

Look at EVE online for example. Recently the biggest battle in the game has happened. It lasted for over 3 days with players getting more ships and coming back. It must have been an unforgettable experience and a good memory for all those that participated. What did developers have to do for all of this? Nothing. All they needed to do was to set some empty space as something that can be controlled by a guild.

Role-playing based Sandbox

This type of sandbox requires offering the player a lot of different types of interactions that they could use. For example allowing players to play musical instruments, to have different dances, to allow them to hold their own property and similar elements to that.

By adding such elements you encourage creativity in your players, get free advertisement from them on video sites and you're allowed to take more time with making new content because the players are busy doing things like this remix:

What was the point of this article?

I just wanted to say that sandbox is good. I feel the need to say it, because developers seem to keep on forgetting that. Ever since the theme park (theme park means that all of the content is controlled by the developer. They add raids, attractions and players can do nothing else but only participate in this content. Players are not allowed to create) MMOs became unbelievably popular, the ability to add some sandbox elements seems to have been forgotten. So please, provide players with the ability to create their own memories, it will take some of the pressure to get content out as fast as possible from your developers shoulders and it will make your MMO much more lively. 

Post of the day: Let's talk about piracy

I know that I'm tackling a very controversial topic, but bare with me and don't dismiss me yet. I don't want to encourage piracy. I want to talk about games that never got sold and about games that are not getting sold anymore. I want to talk about all those versions and language translations that were only seen by the world due to piracy. And more importantly ask the question of why products get abandoned like that.

The curious case of Princess Maker 2

Princess Maker is a famous game from Japan in a Japanese "Raising-Up Games" genre. You probably never heard of it. And there's a reason for it. It never released in Europe or USA. It got translated to English fully, however due to the companies involved in the translation and selling the translated game going bankrupt the English version never got released. To quote Softegg: "Princess Maker 2 is not, nor has it ever been, freeware, abandonware, or shareware. The rights to the game still belong to NineLives, Gainax, and their licensees. SoftEgg is no longer in a position to grant publication rights to anyone, but still retains the rights to its English language translation (without the source code and art). So please stop pirating the game! Thank you.", however if it wasn't for the piracy I wouldn't know about this game even existing. Why? Because the English translation is out there, on piracy sites, however if you want to buy a real copy, you'll only find Japanese versions. Is it fair to the developer that their game is being pirated? No. Is it fair to the company hired to translate it that the game is getting pirated? No. But what is a consumer supposed to do when the only available English version is on a pirate site?
This raises me a question of "why?". Why not to bother to publish it, if you already have the English version on hands? I am sure that there probably were reasons, but as the situation is right now both the developer and the consumer lose out. The situation is rotten and it is really hard to see piracy as the bad guy here when it managed to preserve a translation of one game in a genre that is absent in Europe and USA.

Abandonia. Piracy that preserves games? 

For the purpose of research I entered abandonia today to check how many games out of the site could I legally buy from the developers of said games.  Pretty much none. Let's take an example - let's say that I wanted to actually buy Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Comet. no new copies to be found anywhere. It begs the question of why we allow these kind of products to perish? When emulators and online stores exist, why can't we sell something that is data indefinitely? Especially when there are stores that obviously specialize just in that and are profiting off it.

How do you beat piracy?

I'll quote Gabe Newell here  "The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.". Before you ask your customers not to pirate make sure that they can buy your game at all. Then make sure that if you have a hand on a translation of the game, you actually release it. At worst release it as an official add on or a mod.

But what about traditional piracy?

According to studies done on musical records you will reduce the piracy by not including DRM. Sounds contradicting, right? But think from the user's point of view - for example the user does not have a constant Internet connection. He wants to buy your game, install it and play it. Nothing else. Imagine his surprise if for example you included DRM that asked him to stay online to play an offline game. Do you think that he'll buy from you again?
Provide your customer with at least some sort of a demo. While we don't have the numbers and a lot of companies don't believe that people pirate the games to try, if the game does not have a demo pirating is the only way to make sure that the game would even run on your computer.

I did all of that. My game is still being pirated!

Only now in my eyes do you have the right to wage war of piracy. Express your unhappiness, maybe send a few lawsuits. However the amount of piracy that you should get now should be far smaller than the piracy that you would get without completing this checklist.

Piracy is a dirty business. But there are reasons why it exists. 

Post of the day: small game Thursday - Cook, Serve, Delicious!

Entering an industry where I am likely to remain a small Indie developer made me look realistically at the kind of projects that I could do, thinking about what I could do I decided to take a look at what has been done. The games that I'm going to be showcasing here on Thursdays are going to be small and made by Indie developer companies. However while the games that they made are small in my opinion they are genius. These games made me come back to play them more than an actual AAA title. They are always engaging, addictive and keep you coming back for more. Some of them do something that's not done often, others just perfect the genre that they're in. So let me present to you the gem of today:

Cook, Serve, Delicious! 

The game was made by Vertigo Gaming, an indie developer company that seems like a nice one. Their blogs are always heartwarming, it's obvious that this kind of success that they had with the game was not expected. The person responsible for making Cook, Serve, Delicious! is also running a series on Gamasutra about how hard it is to get profit from your games. I do suggest you all go and read it. It will give you a better insight about what kind of humble person David Galindo really is.

Enough about the developers, let's talk about games

When you enter the game you're greeted with this menu:

I am running a five star restaurant by now, but don't worry all of this gets introduced to you step by step. At the top of the screen you see how much money I have, I can spend that money to buy, upgrade food and buy equipment (menus on the left), equipment lets me cook a bigger variety of food and improves my restaurant. Improving your restaurant causes your guests to be more patient with you, therefore it's very important!

All that Buzz

Buzz is how attractive my restaurant is at the moment. Buzz will give you more customers and is improved by having more popular foods on the menu, that did not stay on the menu for too long (read up on the menu rot mechanic further down), getting perfect or close to perfect days where you didn't fail any orders, days after passing safety inspections, certain weather conditions and earning a new star at the restaurant. I would get buzz so high after my restaurant would get a new star, that I would utterly fail at the service and lose a bunch of buzz!
Actually Buzz is the one thing that makes this game fantastic. It allows the difficulty to be dynamic. If you fail, your buzz will fall and therefore the next day will be easier. If you succeed your buzz will increase and the next day is going to be harder.

Your Active Menu, or choose your own difficulty

This is my active menu at the moment. After playing the game for a while I figured out what foods are really easy to make and what foods are much harder. If I will want an easy day, I'll put only foods that are easy for me to make on the menu, however there are a few mechanics in the game that attempts to make you change your menu often. First one of them is called "menu rot".

It means that your clientele are no longer interested in some products on your menu, because they've been on there too much and you're losing buzz over that. The game is friendly and it will send you a message telling you that menu rot is occurring so don't worry, you won't miss it! How will I recognize the menu rot you ask? Well see how there's green staples on some of the foods? Well you'll see a red mark on the ones suffering from menu rot. Green staple, by the way, means that the food is resistant to menu rot.

Another way how the game is trying to force you out of your comfort zone is by presenting you with challenges that come to you by mail.

Previously in my mail I agreed to date this guy. He likes nachos and will demand that you have nachos on your menu when he will be coming over. I normally don't make nachos, because it's a complex food, but because I want the reward at the end of the dating cycle I am going to be making it.

Besides that the game offers you challenges that you can decide to take.



These are randomized bets that use up a silver ticket (one of the icons at the top of my screen) and then there's also steam challenges that grant you a certain amount of money for participating in the challenge for the first time.

Enough with the management, let's just get into the real game play!

To jump straight into making food all you need to do is press "Start a New Day" and start cooking! The game is highly addictive, because a day only lasts 7 minutes in real life and you keep on telling yourself "just one more day".



Twice a day a rush hour starts. (it's at fixed times - midday and 6 PM), that's the hours that will really test you. You'll get swarmed by customers and having in mind that the customer won't wait forever (when the customer is running out of patience, their order will start sliding back in, like the forth order is doing to me in the picture) you have to move fast! There are two ultimate goals - performing well enough to earn another star for your restaurant



and performing perfectly, because that will get you more money and the money will allow you to buy more things faster.

But what about this this and that?

If I didn't cover something in my review, it's because I want some things to continue being a secret. After all would it be just as fun for you to play the game yourself if I just told you about all of the surprises that the game will throw at you?

To sum up

Good things: the game is highly addictive, it requires skill and keeps you engaged by making you continuously challenge yourself. Going trough one day is really fast (only takes 7 minutes), so it's the perfect game to play even when you can't dedicate a lot of time to gaming daily.

Bad things: it requiring you to pass 20 days to go up a star makes the game a bit stretched out. When you reach about 10 days towards your new star the game settles down. The buzz is no longer over the roof and you're used to the difficulty, so suddenly the days start feeling slow. I would have preferred more stars, but less days required to gain a star.

Similar games: if you go to Vertigo Gaming website and view all of their games you'll notice that there was already a similar game made called Ore no Ryomi 1 & 2 and that it was inspired by Ore no Ryouri, a Japanese game. I, myself, have no experience with these games. The one game from a similar genre that I played before was Youda Sushi Chef. You can play a demo of that game here, however bare in mind that Youda Sushi Chef is much more simplistic.

I would give the game 9/10 (one point taken away for it requiring a bit too many days to gain a star). I would highly recommend it. The game is only 7 pounds and having 21 hours played I'm still yet to finish my first play trough. Impressed? Search the app store and get it on your smart phone, or go here to get it for your PC (if you don't like Steam, you can get a DRM free version here). It is a very good game and I would say that the developer deserves all the money he can get for making it.

Post of the day: Life simulation - the genre that's crumbling to pieces, or what's wrong with The Sims 3?

Hello all, like I said I'm going to be hosting some opinions. From now on I'll try to get one post a day in here (hence the post of the day bit), no more, no less. I don't want to spam you guys. When writing down my opinion I'll try to keep professional and respectful while arguing my points.

So then what's wrong with life simulation genre? Well it's simply dominated by one company and one line of products. Besides an odd Indie developer creating a small game like Kudos for the last 14 years pretty much all we've seen is Sims. Other genres previously controlled by one or two companies finally got some variety in recent years (flight simulators, city builder games), however life simulation remains untouched and EA remains unchallenged.

What's wrong with that you say? Well when a niche market is controlled by one company they don't need to try as hard anymore. If they chose to charge more, sell you less, add less effort into the game what will the buyer have to do? Choices are to abandon the genre or continue buying from the dominating company. What if you're really into life sims? Well if you did not find The Sims 3 appealing, you probably stuck with The Sims 2 and The Sims 1.

Well then, let's start. What is wrong with The Sims 3?

The lack of attention to detail.

look specifically at the lips and hair of this lady. What are those black marks on the lips? Why is her hair so shinny and stuck together? She looks like she has dirt on her lips and has plastic hair.

The same lady with her lipstick on. Notice how the lipstick does not cover her entire lips.

Let's downgrade to The Sims 2 now. 

The hair, while it doesn't look perfect doesn't look like plastic either and the lips are no longer dirty! 

You choose a lipstick and it covers the lips perfectly.


Now attention - a purely opinionated statement is incoming!

The women in The Sims 3 somehow look more male than in The Sims 2

Now this might be just me being bias, but I just feel this way. Maybe it's because women in The Sims 3 has less hips? Maybe because their lines seem more expressed? Maybe it's because of their overly broad shoulders? No matter how many characters I would make in The Sims 3 they would just feel off. You can't take points off for something purely based on opinion though.

Neighborhoods full of houses, but where can I add the expansion content to play it?

This is the way The Sims 1 did it. After you installed an expansion an extra part of your neighborhood just got attached to your current one. Without the expansion there wouldn't be any of the land on the lower right courner. Essentially everything that you see after you cross the bridge wouldn't exist.

And this is how The Sims 2 did it. On the neighborhood select screen you just attached the expansion cities to the neighborhood and your sims could visit those cities after driving a car there or calling a taxi to be taken there.

Now in The Sims 3 every single expansion comes with its own city, however you can't connect said city to the one you're currently playing. But what if you want to experience the expansion content without having to create a new family in a new town? Well get to building plopping! Yes, you can take an expansion building and just put it down in your neighborhood! What's the problem then? Take a look at the image in front of your eyes. Where is there any space to put down a new lot?

Flat terrain versus a varied terrain

this was what you would normally see in a The Sims 2 neighborhood. Very little cluster, flat ground, perhaps less appealing, however far more comfortable to play in. At the moment I can see at least 3 places where I could place a new lot.

A far more varied terrain. However what am I supposed to do if I want to play in a new lot? Even though you don't necessarily have to place lots in front of roads anymore finding a place to place them became so much tougher.

Where did my difficulty go?

I do understand trying to appeal to a bigger audience. There's nothing wrong with that. However people that want to challenge themselves should be allowed to do so. I decided to put down the biggest lot available in both games, create a new character, move them in and try and find out how comfortable (easy) would it be to set them up with limited money.

In The Sims 2 the biggest lot has cost me 18 500 simoleons. A newly created character starts with 20 000. I had 1 500 left for necessities of life. After building that small bathroom, I was only able to afford a bed, a toilet and a telephone. How will I survive with no fridge? What will I do when the air goes cold? I don't know. But that's the fun of it. You don't need the biggest lot and if you want it you can hoard riches while living a comfortable life in a small lot and later move to a big one, however players seeking a challenge can start out like I did.

A newly created character on The Sims 3 has 16 000 simoleons. The biggest lot costs 8 000. That left me enough money to build this lovely little house, fully furnished with everything that you might ever need.

Everything costs less. Here are some of the furniture price comparisons:

take a note how a mini fridge in The Sims 2 is nearly as expensive as a full big fridge in The Sims 3.

There are lots of extra examples how the game is easier, but I think that prices alone show my point and therefore I don't need to spam you with pictures.

Why shouldn't we charge extra for what previously we gave you for free?

Take a look at the lot in front of you. It's a pet shop. When you bought the Pets expansion you got this building that allowed your characters to go to the store and buy a pet.

Read the features list for The Sims 3 Pets. "Limited Edition includes a pet store filled with one-of-a-kind objects." Limited edition is limited and costs more than a regular one. Now you have to pay for what would have normally came with an expansion. Oh and you were late and couldn't get the expansion on release? Well limited edition is limited, no more pet store for you.

Why should we develop it if we can just turn into a rabbit hole?

this is the inside of The Sims 2 grocery store. The only way to get more food was for your character to go here and buy it or to order it on the phone.

The building with the number 4 next to it is a grocery store in The Sims 3. Like you can see the icon is red. That means that your character enters the store, but you can't see the interior of it. Why would one want to see the interior? Immersion. Realism. Pick a reason.


I'm going to stop my rant right here, though this is a topic that I can go on and on about. The newest sequel has its fanbase that likes it, I know that, however with no life simulation games on the market where should people like me go? People wanting difficulty, realism mixed with humour? The only reason why it even leaves such a bad taste in my mouth is because the genre is dominated solely by this franchise, so I hate to see it change into something that I simply can not like. I know that I was thought to develop for the buyer and not for yourself, however I wouldn't mind developers developing solely their own vision as long as they can bring variety to this genre. I know that one day I will attempt my own hand at developing life simulation, however I wouldn't want to wait until I myself make a big scale product just to play life simulation again. Therefore I must ask - developers, where are you? The audience is there, just please develop for it!

I promised you some pictures...

Unedited picture time!

In February I found some spring

using the off center technique. Are you intrigued by that bush? Or the burger king add at least?

might turn this one into something pretty. I liked the road sign.

Wanted to focus on the Edwards sign. I think it ended up looking just odd.

In the train station, on the opposite side of the platform there's stuff just standing there...

Needed to go out and photograph industrial buildings for an assignment. I like the water.

the sky just looks so gloomy

A bit of a bad picture in my opinion, however I still decided to leave it in, mainly because of how red the building on the right is. I might be able to intensify that colour even more.

Cars make pretty light streaks

Trying out some odd angles.

I just really loved that orange plant. I don't think that the environment does it service though.

beautiful beautiful building.

tried to see if there's anything interesting to photograph while waiting for my train. I really liked the cranes. 

A bad picture in my opinion. I really liked the plant life, however the lighting did not do me any favors.

wanted to see how my camera handles train motion. It did alright.

more odd objects, this time I centered on two instead of 3. (Though the rule is that when there's either 1 or 3 objects in the shot your eye will like it more)

A very very red building.

shooting trough a fence. It provides a nice frame.

Shooting trough the bridge planks. It provides a nice frame.

different angle, no fence this time.

I thought that photographing a dirty side of a building might be a good idea.

those pretty pretty car lights.

street lamp illuminates a tree.

I like the blurriness of this photo. It ended up giving a nice effect.

this one might be slightly boring. I can't exactly put my finger to what is missing though. It just lacks feeling and action and maybe the building is too much in the center?