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Ex-mobile developer repents and converts to PC development

shihonage

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buzz Your argument is based on the validity of the idea of making games on mobile in "competent" fashion and therefore succeeding. On the cheap, no less. Given the oversaturation of market, however, it is nothing more than the mindset of the person buying lottery tickets because "someone won last time".

It's delusion.
 

buzz

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And your argument is based on you being intentionally obtuse and spewing some radical bullshit with no research. What the fuck are you actually trying to say?
Like seriously, what is the point you're making. That the guy in question in not at fault for wasting such a giant amount of money on such a risky marketplace? That it's absolutely impossible to get a decent revenue out of mobile gaming even though I've proved otherwise several times?




Speaking about delusion though, great job talking of market oversaturation while publishing your game on fucking Desura out of all places. Good job getting that market visibility :bravo:. Did you also share the trailer on 4chan?
 
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Whether or not the games on phones are shitty or if you can reach top spots, that's irrelevant. It doesn't change the fact that this dude spent over 200 thousand dollars making this game (look at the main menu at 0:20):

And then being somewhat shocked that it flopped as heavily as it did.

Oh God :D .
 

Dr Tomo

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Dude, you're looking wrong at that guy's problem. The reason he fucked up is not really because the mobile space is a harsh mistress, or he had to do multiple games at once to survive in that wasteland. Those are some ways of achieving this, but it's not really it.

I know it's hard to believe, but sometimes quality IS serviced on smartphones. These are some best selling or best "grossing" games on both Android and iOS right now:
20130128210828a0ddvjd88eip2k1t.jpg

20131205223004a0dnehpowys5hzwi.jpg

photo-3-630x472.png

Strategy-And-Tactics-USSR-vs.-USA-GamePlay-2.png

gsmarena_008.jpg

Modern-Combat-5-blackout1.jpg

I'm not saying that these games are good or that those market places is not full of shovelware. I'm just saying that if an app costs a lot of money to make, there's a REASON to it. The reason being: good marketing,good production values, fairly well designed (in a casual gaming, skinner box way at least) and so on.

Take another guy as example, he is known as Damp Gnat. Check out two of his games, they're pretty fun:
http://www.dampgnat.com/wonderputt - a minigolf game set in an Escher/Surreal-like world with tons of pretty and inventive animations, and the getting the holes are fairly challenging (given the type of game). Not his first minigolf-type game, but the best one.
http://www.dampgnat.com/icycle - one of my favorite platformers in the last years. Inventive, GORGEOUS AS FUCK graphics, no enemies, the platforming challenge consists on surviving the decaying environment (buildings falling down, melting snow and so on)
I really recommend both but the second one is boss.

Now, this guy went on mobile platforms as well. First with a port of Wonderputt on the iPad, then with a sequel to icycle.

I've read his Facebook page and his blogs and whatever. He spent about 6 months to a years between contract work to make the golf game, and about 1 and a half years to finish the sequel to the platformer. But I think it's clear that in his case, it does make sense why it took so long. He didn't port them to every piece of toaster, he just released on one or two devices at most.

Did he recoup his money? I dunno, I like to think he did. I mean, he did get plenty of coverage in websites, magazines, awards and nominations for awards, Here's what he said about Wonderputt's sales:
So how did it do?
Marvellous!! Way beyond my expectations. By day two it hit #1 in the UK and remained there for a week! Also hitting #1 and #2 in many other countries mainly in Europe. Worldwide sales reached about 35 thousand downloads in its first week with a second burst the following month when Apple featured it in the Appstore. Its hard to say where most users came from during its launch as there are unfortunately no traffic analytics in iTunes connect. But its likely it was a result of favourable reviews from many websites which I've documented in our press page.


So what lesson am I trying to extract out of this? Well, the fact that the "mobile gaming" industry works in the same way anything else related to entertainment does. It's not very different than from kickstarter, really.
If you want "da big money", you need to show that you can make quality products, you need to have a certain degree of experience, a good sense of marketing and a proper way to handle money.
If you want a small project, to make your first game, you can't jump to ridiculous levels. You start small, doing free games, testing the waters, working for the big guys, asking for a little amount of money and so on.

Lack of experience + spending a risking amounts of money on a product that lacks substance = shit and done.

Would I give hundreds of thousands to some random fucking shmuck who made money doing "commerce sites"? Some retard who talks big and reads all kinds of books and goes to conferences where people chew ideas rather than apply them? (see Warren Spector).
Hell fucking no!
But would I give that kind of money to Damp Gnat? Sure, in a jiffy. If he has some people who can help him properly with administrating things and so on, I can't see why not. I'd love to see bigger, proper icycle platformer made by him.

My prediction with his PC game, it's either never going to be finished or it will never pass greenlight. I dunno, maybe he can really make that great game that he promises. But I seriously doubt this will be the case. He got a little attention with his gamasutra articles, I give him that.

Here's his last update on Facebook about Archmage Rises:
I've been struggling for the last week on one aspect of the NPC A.I., what I call "the ripple effect". Every interaction with an NPC "ripples" to other people in the world the NPC has relationships with. In essence I'm trying to replicate what I see in my wife.

Let's say you are mean to my wife on the phone at work. She gets upset and thinks you are a jerk. But then she goes and tells me about it. I think you are a jerk too, but not as strongly as my wife. She then goes and tells her sister, and whichever friend she is around that particular week. The sister cares but probably not as much as I do, and the friend cares but not as much as me or the sister. This I call relationship proximity. The tighter (more important) the relationship the more "impact" shared across the "relationship line".

So in the game, if you are a jerk to a noble, his wife, councilor, and probably the closest guards all think less of you, but to depreciating degrees the further out from the noble you go.

So the reason I'm posting is I think I've figured it out and got it working!
1454977_495218360613516_6116180088431790596_n.jpg
:lol: he's not shooting very far, is it? He's an idea guy dudes, we needed plenty of those in here.

Before that, he was talking about making a more "hardcore" logo for his game, taking inspirational cues from Skyrim and Dragon Age. He came up with this
10460606_493562847445734_7938680351268388898_o.jpg



:hero:God fucking speed, dear fucktard!
Not really sure the point you are trying to make as I was more in line with shihonage that the market is over saturated which adds great difficulty as this is the one thing I see is a common theme among all the failed mobile start ups that does exactly what you say when they post their failures. I don't know the quality of the this guys games or the one you linked or any other mobile title because honestly I don't play them or care about them, I am a hardcore pc elitist fag on this forum. I am not defending him as I think his first mistake was going into mobile to begin with, but that is my personal opinion and I am satisfied he repented his sin and we shall see how well he does on Steam.

I still think he might be successful as it isn't any shortage of games like his that is making some monies (tens of thousands) on Steam every day and there is a consistent influx of people getting into pc gaming propping the indie bubble a float for now. Since he wrote for Gamasutra then maybe he will be successful, by reading the articles of people that already took the dive and shed their wisdom that wants to follow in their foot steps. Or he can be like the Puppy Lab's owner in that thread and be a retard and blame Steam and the user for the failure at which point I say good luck and gtfo out of the game industry as it wasn't meant for you.

I am still going to hold the opinion that mobiles games is a hectic market and there are hundred of games being uploaded per day so so I am quite skeptical that you have a higher chance of success in mobile versus pc/console platforms. I still see for every success story there are dozens of corpses strewn on the road of success.
 

buzz

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Not really sure the point you are trying to make as I was more in line with shihonage that the market is over saturated which adds great difficulty as this is the one thing I see is a common theme among all the failed mobile start ups that does exactly what you say when they post their failures.
My point is that, while market over saturation is indeed a problem, it was nowhere near the SOLE problem for this guy's failure in particular.
Market over saturation exists on almost every level of entertainment. If you look at the Pitchfork website for example, you'll see that they usually review 5 or so albums EVERY DAY. And trust me, they are pretty selective with what they review, there are a shit-ton more albums (both mainstream and niche) that they haven't even touched. For example, they barely review any metal albums (and it's usually more hipstery stuff, like drone metal), only review some well-acknowledged rap albums, a very small selection of pop stuff and so on.

You know how many movies were released last week? 17 according to this site. This week there will be 20 releases.

And this is the more expensive and common stuff. Imagine how awfully over saturated is the market of TV shows, comic books, PC games (look at Greenlight as recent example) and so on.

Yet that doesn't stop anyone for keeping doing it. Because they're not retards spending millions on making an album that will sell a few thousand copies. They play things smart, in a safe and cheap way. When they go big, they usually have experience and people backing them up with proper marketing and everything. And if they make shitty music or movies, they tend to own up to it or some retards blame Hollywood/Justin Bieber and so on. The people finding a scape goat are almost always the people who can't own up to their mistakes.

You are mixing the effect with the cause. The market is over saturated BECAUSE it's a cheap market. The target are people looking for time wasters, people who don't want to pay giant prices to play a game. The platform is small and effective, which means lower development times and costs.
The only minimal costs for publishing on smartphones is this:
- 25bucks once in order to publish an Android app
- 100bucks a year in order to publish an iOS app
That's pretty much it. The rest of the money go into developing the game and maybe, marketing.
Or, if your game is good enough, you can get picked up by a decent publisher and get your game advertised through their channels. That's what happened to the Damp Gnat guy I mentioned earlier, he was published by Chillingo (the guys who published the first Angry Birds and Cut the Rope).

This is what you're not understanding. Over saturated or not, the phone market is just like any other market. It works on similar principles. An indie has just as many chances of making a decent living over there as he has in here. He can get published by bigger companies, just like in the PC gaming space. The differences between the mobile and the PC gaming space, I've pointed already.
Advantage, cheaper development costs. Disadvatange, market with more oversaturation than the PC, most consumers don't actually buy apps.

That's what I'm trying to say. The dev in question is a failure at life, this has absolutely nothing with the App market he blames. Yes, the App market is harsh and tons of games are weeded out/ignored. But in this case, it was more than justified. It's hard for me to blame an industry for the mistakes a retard makes.


I don't know the quality of the this guys games or the one you linked or any other mobile title because honestly I don't play them or care about them, I am a hardcore pc elitist fag on this forum. I am not defending him as I think his first mistake was going into mobile to begin with, but that is my personal opinion and I am satisfied he repented his sin and we shall see how well he does on Steam.
The games I've linked are PC games though that you can play in your browser. His move to mobile came after he did the PC games and built an audience. Seriously, try Icycle, it's short and sweet.


I still think he might be successful as it isn't any shortage of games like his that is making some monies (tens of thousands) on Steam every day and there is a consistent influx of people getting into pc gaming propping the indie bubble a float for now. Since he wrote for Gamasutra then maybe he will be successful, by reading the articles of people that already took the dive and shed their wisdom that wants to follow in their foot steps. Or he can be like the Puppy Lab's owner in that thread and be a retard and blame Steam and the user for the failure at which point I say good luck and gtfo out of the game industry as it wasn't meant for you.
Sure, if the game in question actually gets made. Try reading his Facebook page or forums, see what a giant cretin he is.

Look, Unreal World was one of the world's first "survival" games. It has been in continuous development since 1992 and it's one of my favorite games of all time. It mops the floor with all the attempts at making survival games nowadays. It's been on Steam Greenlight since 3 august and it's not top 100/50 (that's how you get greenlighted). An actually released game, continuously updated for over 20 years, available for free RIGHT NOW, doing the whole survival shtick long before Minecraft and Don't Starve, is not able to get greenlighted, let alone sold well. What makes you think the game he is trying to "make" (as in, looking up the Internet for realistic athletic female bodies or making an edgier logo) will fare any better?

Honestly, I hope he does. Goldbox mixed with Sid Meier's Pirates sounds like a dream come true. But seeing his abject failure on mobile games quality-wise, budget-wise and his lack of understanding what went wrong in there, I really doubt it will be his golden goose.
Look, even now, he has hired a "PR firm" to help him :lol:. He's like a robot who can't into human relationships and/or simple reasoning. This guy can't sell lemonade without looking up some advice on how to design the stand and how to channel your creativity properly. He's the kind of person infomercials and Internet advertising was made for.
 

shihonage

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And your argument is based on you being intentionally obtuse and spewing some radical bullshit with no research. What the fuck are you actually trying to say?

I guess I'm trying to say that I got some mouthwash for you. Open wide plz.

Like seriously, what is the point you're making. That the guy in question in not at fault for wasting such a giant amount of money on such a risky marketplace? That it's absolutely impossible to get a decent revenue out of mobile gaming even though I've proved otherwise several times?

Regardless of his business decisions, the main point of the article is - don't work on a platform you despise and are resistant to philosophies of. He's a PC guy, which is why he failed on mobile. He may fail on PC again, but eventually he will succeed, because it's his medium.

Also, there are plenty of articles about mobile app graveyards, and, regardless of your anecdotal evidence, the statistics are astronomically not in the favor of mobile developer. Oversaturation is not just about quantity of apps, but how many of them end up being limited by all the requirements of small screen, touchscreen, F2P, simplistic controls, timewaster philosophy/short attention spans, and in the end the majority of games end up copying other games and creating user fatigue.

There's only so much you can do on the walled garden that is the tiny app store page. The PC scene is much more wide, free, there are many vectors of being noticed and distributed, to appeal to specific communities, and there are many ways to create something that stands out, because the platform is not as limited as mobile platforms inherently are.

I suppose you can do well on mobile (increasingly less now) if you really specialize in it and become an expert on that crappy, crappy platform, but to both me and the author of that article, that feels like self-imposed creative suffocation.

Speaking about delusion though, great job talking of market oversaturation while publishing your game on fucking Desura out of all places. Good job getting that market visibility :bravo:. Did you also share the trailer on 4chan?

Steam Greenlight has a box for a game's IndieDB/Desura page. It will come in handy when I put "Compound" on there. Thanks for caring!
 

Dr Tomo

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Buzz maybe my English is not clear so I am going to break down your post in bullet style and make one last attempt to simplify my previous posts. It will be in order roughly how your constructed your post.


  • I am not mixing effect or cause in relation to this guy nor do I really give 2 shits about this guy. My point at the beginning was that this guy entered mobile development which is horrid period and immensely risky since he wanted to primarily develop exclusively for the app market retardo period.
  • I am not an apologist, so please get that shit out of your head as he failed as soon as he decided to go into mobile development in my opinion and I don't give a shit if he dumped $200k or a $100 or even $10 billion he was an idiot for entering the market period. The market has high risk and even your clueless investors have caught on and they shit on companies like King or Zynga almost every other week either on Bloomberg or CNBC or WSJ and etc.
  • No the phone market is not the same as the movie market or the pc market or the console market that is plain wrong period. Can you tell me how many Green lit titles gotten approved this year? I can't find many sources but I can guarantee you less then 1k and that is counting vaporware. How many app's get release per day? 850 which is outdated and pain in the ass to dig up. So please explain how it can compare to other forms of entertainment in over saturation?
  • So to further elaborate on the previous point yes there is chance of success, but on average I have noticed more success stories for pc development and consoles over mobile. He is right on the over saturation as he isn't the only developer to fail at this and with 850 which is pretty low being released per day over saturation comparison to Steam or most other forms of entertainment minus music is a joke.
  • The difference between Steam when the indie hipster made it to the scene and now is that you have to market and that is wisdom being imparted as what determines the success of your game and the new reality people will face. Marketing doesn't guarantee success as King has learned, but proven for the other platforms if you are smart about it see Activision.
  • I will try the game possibly, don't hold me to it.
  • Honestly I give 0 fucks about this guy, I just think he has a shot since half of the Steam user base has shit taste anyway.
I see mobile as risky period and it has been compared to tech start ups. I think the market is shitty to get into, but that is my opinion and if someone wants to take that dive more power to them and I look forward to reading their post-mortem on my tablet why they failed or their whining like so many I read during my lunch breaks and while taking a shit. Also Greenlight is a atrocious mess and that is another thing I fucking hate Valve about. Like I mentioned and stated in previous post that I am a bit biased so I am going to shit on mobile games, but the over saturation is a major risk and that is a fact, there is a reason why that some of the people like Steven Dengler (look him up & first person that comes into mind) invests in studios that make games for console or pc platform and never mobile.
 

buzz

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Also, there are plenty of articles about mobile app graveyards, and, regardless of your anecdotal evidence, the statistics are astronomically not in the favor of mobile developer.
There are also plenty of articles on mobile app successes and people with quality (by the standards of mobile industry) products making it through. There also are plenty of articles and statistics pointing problems on the PC market, which is beyond doubt the biggest shovelware market in electronic space.


I think you're both confusing my point with a defense of mobile platforms for game development. I'm not saying that mobile gaming is not mostly shit, because IT IS. I own a smartphone and I constantly download new apps, I know that quite well.

Why is it so hard for Codex members to separate their personal biases from the arguments they make? Look guys, I get it. You're PC mustard race, so am I. Haven't owned a console in more than 15 years and I will never buy a tablet.

Yes, it's probably easier to target a niche PC audience. Yes, doing apps for phones is risky. No, that still doesn't mean absolutely nothing in our current context.

This has nothing to do with the quality of a certain platform and everything to do with the lack of competence of that certain person. You can't dismiss my proof as anecdotal evidence and claim statistics out of your ass, when the whole thread started with the anecdotal evidence of an empty suit who threw thousands of dollars into making a shitty game. Prepare for wall-o-text

Your argument that the app store restricted him would make sense if he wanted to do a proper game on a smartphone.
But that's not the case in here. He wasn't doing a goldbox TB RPG for the iPhone. He was doing CATCH THE FUCKING MONKEY

NfESMz4OAYtYaDr693F6c4tszTKUmZToaLMkzIomt_dbgPqNv9VbdVzJXtIyQVgJ_jMZ=h900


I can't stress this enough. He spent 200 thousand dollars making this game, porting it to every platform available before launch (even though there's absolutely no historical precedent for this, even Candy Crush did its mobile ports half a year after the Facebook launch), hiring his "friend" instead of looking at graphic artists with experience in mobile apps, hiring some shitty and shady distributors/publishers who did absolutely nothing for him.

After that, he made the SAME FUCKING MISTAKES by somehow making an even SHITTIER app. I mean, at least the monkey game has animations and with a bit more polish it could look like a decent game. But A is for App looks like absolute fucking garbage.

So, he spent another 200 thousand dollars making an even SHITTIER app and repeating the mistakes. He didn't fire the friend early on even if his drawings are obviously subpar, he hired the SAME FUCKING PUBLISHERS to help him market the game (shit, the whole point of him hiring some guys to publish him instead of getting sponsored/funded is hilarious in itself) and again he ported the thing to multiple platforms, including platforms where no NO ONE BOTHERS TO, like on Blackberry (Candy Crush is not even available on that platform, instead they have a clone called Candy Slash Story).
Look how many alphabet apps are on the android store: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=alphabet&c=apps&hl=en
FUCKING HUNDREDS and THOUSANDS. Logic dictates, when you make another alphabet app yourself, you make it at very low costs or you pour lots of money into marketing and polishing so it sells well. He didn't do either.

Let's take a random one from the bottom part of the page. Kids Learn Alphabets, posted on 17 April 2014.
mItdQ2F3G6_8Zmn6uiAvAGTHGK3HI-GbqiJAZOfhmy2ZYiQD6QYnXB-TgKi7WijO7cFa=h900

vMFHRbXPLIHxCyUm8-IdxJHk5AbdJahdLZFJ6Wee-3AkBhmWw7gVvwl49PIuTbZ-mGQ=h900
Obviously it looks like shit, though I'd argue it's better than that retard's app.
Let's see how many reviews it has ... 79 total. Do you know how many review does A is for App has? FUCKING ONE.

Now, here's the real kicker. If you go to the page of the developer who did the Kids Learn Alphabets, surprise fucking surprise, they made about 18 apps as of today. Their first app was actually the one with the alphabet, the last was made one month ago and truly, it only has 2 reviews.

Wait, you mean they published 18 apps in 4 months? Yeah. Do you think they spent 200k dollars on each?
Oh shit, I looked up the app and the company in the Apple Store and they're not there. Apparently they weren't PC-centric enough to think of porting the game on every piece of toaster in the world.

See, these guys will fail or have probably failed already. Their main website is not working anymore and they haven't published a new app since July 23rd. But here lies the difference.
They published plenty of small apps at what can be assumed to be VERY minimal costs. Their losses, if any, were minimal.

Now, let's look at the guys who published Catch the Monkey and A is for App. They are called Marmalade Play
https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Marmalade+Play
Now the funny thing about these guys is that they published both flops and relatively successful ones. Flops like Catch the Monkey and A is for App and Feed the Frog, which got 2 or 3 reviews. Then they got apps with 30 or so reviews. Some apps with hundreds of reviews.
Then the big ones, with thousands of reviews. The biggest one is this game called Blur Overdrive with 4727 reviews, giving it a fairly average/shit score. It looks like this
5Z7Ypj--ngiNtpoQKrEcJhs9FVYoYYmLpMj6IPO3C2NKhclf0vU8978ZivZxmOspNQ=h900

PHxPKFgwvfjWvkT5cMabonJyPnW0bckocI-dOG25nGkE17SnitsLB3PB9igVfHbUJkk=h900

iHoZ2EdDStVmbaurkOAWGJ7QG_AGv2edXDOZ9veExmkmCyN1vItkUVVRjOPEJQRS9T6D=h900

How much do you think they spent on this, huh? Millions? I don't know why, but I feel this game was not THAT much more expensive than Catch the fucking Monkey was.

Granted, this game is not a colossal success or anything. Minecraft had 544k reviews, Clash of Clans has 5,66 millions, Candy Crush has 8 millions, Plants vs Zombies has 71k reviews, Fruit Ninja has 59k and so on. Baldur's Gate EE has 7620 reviews. But it has to be a moderate one since they kept publishing games afterwards, including the shitty ones with 0 reviews.

You get my point, it's not easy to get those giant numbers, just like it's not easy for Wasteland 2 to sell more than GTA V this autumn or for Stasis to compete with Witcher 3 next year. No one is denying that it's hard to compete in such markets, especially on the mobile spectrum of gaming.

What is ridiculous however, is to blame an industry for your failure. Like Double Fine making half a shitty game for millions of fucking dollars and being shocked it didn't sell well enough. Or this "PC centric" dude doing the equivalent of Newsground flash games for almost half a million dollars and being shocked it flopped.


I get it, being hippy about game developers is hip thing to do in these circles. Let's blame the publishers, let's blame the journalists and let's blame the marketplaces.
But hey, maybe he'll fare better on PC. Let's see a few things from his site:
Where did this idea come from?
LordYabo was reading the Dragonlance Chronicles and Legends trilogies (again). The Legends trilogy revolves around the mage Raistlin and his pursuit of power. Perhaps it is because it was LordYabo’s fourth time reading it, a lot of the subtler details of the life of a mage came to life. And he started wondering what would it be like to:

  • Quest across the realm searching for spell books and artifacts of ancient powerful mages?
  • Learn powerful new spells that perhaps no one else knows? Maybe even create spells no one else could cast?
  • Battle other mages who don’t trust or like you, who want your powerful artifacts for themselves?
  • Use your spells to manipulate the political agendas of the world you live in?
  • Take on and oversee apprentices?
  • Build and direct a Mage Tower with powerful and secretive rooms?
  • Have strategic (not twitch) magic battles of epic proportions?
  • Make difficult moral choices with meaningful outcomes?
That sounded pretty good to us, so the project was started.

What does it play like?
If you have played Sid Meir’s Pirates! that is the best example of the gameplay we are going for. It’s Sid Meir’s Pirates, with mages, spellbooks, and elves. Oh, and a flying citadel. And maybe a Death Knight.

The early 1990′s were the heyday of CRPG’s. SSI made numerous “gold box” versions of TSR’s Dungeons & Dragons. Most of those were based on the AD&D 2nd edition rules. Eye of the Beholder, Champions of Krynn, Pools of Radiance, these were all favorites from my childhood. There was a simplicity yet depth to playing those games. Since not every item had to be modeled in 3d, the designers and the player’s imaginations could run more free. We want to capture that essence and bring it to a modern game.

Games that Inspire Archmage
To give you a feel for the game, here is a list of games that inspire us in making this game and why. If you like these games, maybe you will like Archmage:

  1. Dwarf Fortress – We love the idea of starting with a pregenerated open world. The freedom and possibilities in the game is very inspiring.
  2. X-Com — the base building mechanics of X-Com is what we are studying for our Mage Tower base building.
  3. Dungeons & Dragons (d20)– the theme of the game, and the sense of what a wizard or mage is and isn’t
  4. The Sims – skill training system
  5. Sid Meir’s Pirates – An open world you influence through playing
When will it be available?
When it is done. Sign up to our email newsletter to be in the know on the latest developments as they happen.

What platforms will it be on?
We are targeting PC Steam. We are using Unity so we could also target iPad/Android tablets and Mac if we choose too. Right now we are working on the best PC experience.
Remember, this is his first serious, PC "centric" (you can see he's thinking about an iPad port) game after a string of two massive failures in the casual gaming world (absolutely hilarious by any standards).
He's not overshooting, is he? Making this sort of Dwarf Fortess/X-com/Sims/Pirates combo. Wanna see how he spends his time on development?
http://defiancegamestudio.com/Forum...ng-Fantasy-RPG-Women-and-Realistic-Women.aspx
fantasy-women-vs-realistic-women.jpg


So I'm working with an artist to create some dark elf warriors. I thought it would be cool/interesting if they were female. The artist asked for reference material, so I searched the internets.

I can't find a single realistic fantasy warrior woman on the internet to send him!
I'm not making a peep show here, I'm trying to make a game!

So, I then looked for a real world athletic woman. Once I found one, I thought it would be interesting to see the contrast between the all to common unrealistic athlete and the real one.

I've drawn lines at 4 key points:
1. The chin -- notice that the heads are the same size. So far so good
2. This is the nipple line -- About 6" off to start with, but also gravity defying.
3. This is my best estimate for where the belly button is -- again, about 6" off which makes it clear the fantasy woman has a compressed torso, complete.
4. The knuckle line -- see, their arms are the same length, proving this is a fair comparison

My rant is not that there are "artistically exaggerated" warrior women on the internet. My rant is that there are so many, for so many years, that artists don't even know how to draw a realistic woman when you ask them too!

As gamers and artists we are forgetting what a woman looks like!

How does this affect our wives, daughters, and nieces?
I think his posts speak volumes.


I don't know, if you read all of that, and still think he failed primarily because he made two phone apps instead of two PC games, then we can stop the conversation right here. You're literally defending the equivalent of the excuse "we don't make games on PC because everyone on PC pirates" without being aware of it.

There's nothing more tiring than fighting cliche anti-establishment messages made by people with poor research and biased views into one thing or another. If the point of your posts were to say "water is wet" or "phone games are shit", then I guess you both did an excellent job.
My point was to say that he was a shitty developer with a gross lack of competence and ability to measure the market and you keep missing that mark for some reason, up to ignoring the footage and screenshots of the obviously shit and overbudgeted games. Suit yourself, we'll see if he makes the awesome PC game he promises.



You are wrong about Dengler by the way, Dracogen did invest in some mobile games like this and this.
 
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:hmmm: 200k dollars ... for this game.

screen480x480.jpeg

:hmmm: 200k dollars for this ... thing

You tell me, is this funny?
Yes, yes it is. You're the funniest sad clown I've ever had the pleasure to see/read.

:x how the fuck do people like him and those who funded him even manage to breathe?


Oh God I'm rolling on my sides laughing :lol:

I would nuke the game called "Archmage Rises" from the orbit.
 

shihonage

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buzz I read the entirety of your post. It's become clear that you're arguing about a subject I never really started arguing about in the first place. I continuously evaded discussing this specific developer's level of (in)competence because even if he is mediocre, he still made a good point.

You're questioning author's credibility in order to invalidate that point, or perhaps the conclusions of his personal journey. But regardless of how he arrived to them, they're the right conclusions. He's a PC guy, and he should grow on PC. There's a certain falseness to developing on a platform you don't align with, just in hopes of getting money. For me it works the same way as going someplace I hate just to meet women. As in, it doesn't. I don't belong there, it doesn't feel natural, and neither does the result.

On some level this happened to me with Dead Colony. The platform was right, but the decision to work on "secondary game" instead of the game I really wanted to work on - Compound - delivered subpar results. It was out of alignment with my true intent and passion, and as result wasted a ton of energy and time.

But it was also a learning experience on completing a game, which is also the case for this guy and his mobile projects. Knowing what it takes to complete one, to sew everything together, gives him an advantage over someone who hasn't released anything at all.
 
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Wait a second. This "A for App" (and apparently thousands of other similar apps) is just a set of images, like one for every letter in alphabet? That's it?
 

buzz

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You're right, but you can go the extra mile and say this: There's a certain falseness to doing a job you don't align with, just in hopes of getting money. For me it works the same way as going someplace I hate just to meet women. As in, it doesn't. I don't belong there, it doesn't feel natural, and neither does the result.

I also dreamt of making video games, or being a rockstar. Alas, I know my limits and I only restrict myself to casually playing a guitar for some easily-impressionable college girls.

But again, maybe his PC game will hit the jackpot, though from what I've read from him in his articles and his forum posts, I'm highly skeptical. You can diagnose his problem as being the focus on mobile games, but I personally diagnose his problem as lack of focus on game development.

I mean, I don't know if I mentioned this before, but they did describe themselves as this back when he did phone games:
MirthWerx is a team of ridiculously talented and imaginative people who build creative, engaging, electronic entertainment for the world. As we do this, we play an active role in the independent gaming community and strive to be a Light to the gaming industry overall.
Along side pages and pages of blog posts where he talks about the development of his games and other related shit. Pretty modest, eh? :retarded:

I don't know, I feel like he just loves the idea of being a veteran game developer more and passing wisdom in how to do things rather than actually developing games. He recently did a piece on gamasutra again about the development of Archmage Rises and most of the time he spent giving advices and chewing ideas, like buying software for better organization of your thoughts and bullshit like that.

So, to cut my ramblings short again, I don't think he's a PC guy as much as he's ... a Molyneux/Spector guy :lol:. He's not very different from your typical youtube "video game critic". A self-described expert like I said before. Maybe I'm wrong, hope that's the case his PC game will turn out to be awesome.
 
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I mean, I don't know if I mentioned this before, but they did describe themselves as this back when he did phone games:
MirthWerx is a team of ridiculously talented and imaginative people who build creative, engaging, electronic entertainment for the world. As we do this, we play an active role in the independent gaming community and strive to be a Light to the gaming industry overall.
Along side pages and pages of blog posts where he talks about the development of his games and other related shit. Pretty modest, eh? :retarded:
I hate marketing talk like this. People trying to pretend they are so awesome when they aren't even good. All these positive shiteaters. I fucking hate them.
 

Dr Tomo

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Also, there are plenty of articles about mobile app graveyards, and, regardless of your anecdotal evidence, the statistics are astronomically not in the favor of mobile developer.
There are also plenty of articles on mobile app successes and people with quality (by the standards of mobile industry) products making it through. There also are plenty of articles and statistics pointing problems on the PC market, which is beyond doubt the biggest shovelware market in electronic space.
There done. Yea becsue obviously 800 app per day we don't have as much shovelware as 1000 games released on Steam per year.


I think you're both confusing my point with a defense of mobile platforms for game development. I'm not saying that mobile gaming is not mostly shit, because IT IS. I own a smartphone and I constantly download new apps, I know that quite well.
No you are confusing yourself. We are saying (or at least me) that mobile platform is toxic and odds are stacked against the developers (not this one only in particular).

Why is it so hard for Codex members to have basic reading comprehension and separate their personal biases from the arguments they make? Look guys, I get it. You're PC mustard race, so am I. Haven't owned a console in more than 15 years and I will never buy a tablet.

Yes, it's probably easier to target a niche PC audience. Yes, doing apps for phones is risky. No, that still doesn't mean absolutely nothing in our current context.

There fixed and I redircet that question back to you. Obviously I am a bit biased like any other person and I stated it, the least you can do is the same with mobile and not making it obvious by downplaying the over saturation of the market. There is risk for developing in any platform and yes the mobile app development has significant risk as King is showing right now right after Zynga. Marketing can only do so much for a platform that is mostly one hit wonders.

This has nothing to do with the quality of a certain platform and everything to do with the lack of competence of that certain person. You can't dismiss my proof as anecdotal evidence and claim statistics out of your ass, when the whole thread started with the anecdotal evidence of an empty suit who threw thousands of dollars into making a shitty game. Prepare for wall-o-text
Uh I stated I stopped giving a shit about the person when you started to defend the platform. That is what my discussion is about and always has been and I would assume Shihonage is the same.


I don't know, if you read all of that, and still think he failed primarily because he made two phone apps instead of two PC games, then we can stop the conversation right here. You're literally defending the equivalent of the excuse "we don't make games on PC because everyone on PC pirates" without being aware of it.
No I haven't since it seems like after 2 posts you still haven't read mine and at this point not sure what the hell you are ranting about and also don't care now.

There's nothing more tiring than fighting cliche anti-establishment messages made by people with poor research and biased views into one thing or another. If the point of your posts were to say "water is wet" or "phone games are shit", then I guess you both did an excellent job
Says the poster that made a comparison to music but doesn't pull any stats even out of their own ass and then proceeds to compare apps to movies or you kidding? At least I gave you rough idea of how many apps are released per day which is a major problem in discoverability. Now please be my guest and prove to me that mobile platforms isn't toxic and nothing is keeping people from trying.

My point was to say that he was a shitty developer with a gross lack of competence and ability to measure the market and you keep missing that mark for some reason, up to ignoring the footage and screenshots of the obviously shit and overbudgeted games. Suit yourself, we'll see if he makes the awesome PC game he promises

Please for the love of god get off this guys dick, as I have already said the discussion was over and general consensus was he was a moron. If all you want to do is talk about this developer then I am out and I am sure Shihonage won't bother as well.

You are wrong about Dengler by the way, Dracogen did invest in some mobile games like this and this.
Okay, so he decided to fund the IOS studios afterwards and also congrats you are an idiot as the latter one was Double Fine which derp derp was part of the deal that was paired with the other Double Fine Adventure games like Psychonauts. So you just don't have English comprehension got it. *quick edit so he is taking a risk and funding a mobile only game, but double fine he is offsetting that risk with the adventure games that is being ported to other platforms.
 
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buzz

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No one is saying that the mobile market is good, you retarded cunt. What I'm saying is blaming the market for one's obvious personal failures is utterly fucking wrong.

The reason that market has 800 apps every day is because those apps are made by high school students in china for the budget of peanuts. And this guy made a shovelware game for 200 thousand dollars and made all the wrong possible decisions. The question of whether or not the market is toxic has been turned IRRELEVANT the moment he overspent on two extremely shitty apps. Your thick skull can not understand that in this PARTICULAR case, the choice of platform is absolutely irrelevant to his loss. If he made that game for PC or a console, it would still flop due to its very nature.

Why can't you understand the basic process of "scale"? Yes, Steam launched 1000 games per year. None of those games are being sold for a dollar or free with microtransactions.
Also, the PC market is not just Steam. There's Desura, GoG, GamersHell, Origin retail, kongregate, newsground, even Facebook. If you put them all together you get similar numbers to those stores.


It's like making a million dollar YouTube video with shitty marketing and being shocked it didn't go "viral". You're missing the point of that service, which is its low barrier of entry. The biggest youtuber right now is a guy playing video games and making funny faces and while it's hard to impossible to beat him at the game, the point of trying and going onto his footsteps requires a shitty camera and a microphone, not a shit-ton of money.

Look, I don't recommend anyone to make a career out of mobile gaming, not unless you work on bigger projects like the ones doing GPS apps. The only good part of making a game for phones is as training wheels for game development. As hard as it is to sell a shitty app or small game on iPhone, it's hundreds of times harder to sell a little flash game on PC in this day and age.

The mobile gaming industry is a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and that guy was selling jewelry instead of water and fuel. Can't explain it simpler than that.

Did the AppStore touch you in the wrong places Tomo? Were you molested by a Zynga employee in your childhood? Just so I know why do you keep pursuing this angle even though I've been repeatedly stated in the 3 pages of this thread that I'm talking about that guy's failures, both on the phone market and on the PC one and I've agreed with you several times that the mobile industry is shit.
Whatever, I'm tired of talking to walls.
 
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Abelian

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I also agree that PC gaming is better than casual/mobile gaming and that the guy spent too much money on his two simple apps.
Isn't nice when the Codex occasionally reaches a consensus?
:troll:
 

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