YOUR MOVE, VIDEOGAMES!!!

Hey look man, my name's "I-smel". What I lack in smarts, I at least pay back in honesty. Boink!

Tom Brien @I-smel

Age 32, Male

England, MAN-CHESTer

Joined on 3/2/06

http://tinybuild.com/

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YOUR MOVE, VIDEOGAMES!!!

Posted by I-smel - January 10th, 2012

We submitted No Time to Steam again. We fixed everything, packaged both games together, made it fullscreen, and added all that stuff people were asking for. Everyone's asking us if we'll give out codes to everyone who already bought it, but FUCK IF I KNOW, MAN! That's not up to us.
We're asking for it, and if we don't get it then it's because they said No. It's not cos of some... sneaky plan so everyone buys it twice, or anything weird. So don't get weird on me about it.

So let's say this is the end o the road for this game. WHAT NOW!? Well web games are pretty fuckin scary right now. Have you seen this Flash game? That's a .swf file that you can submit to Newgrounds, right now, the same way every other game goes up. And I can't stop playing Kingdom Rush! I don't even LIKE tower defense!!
The last game I sold on FGL went for $1000, I kinda suck at this. Is anyone else still doin the art n code on their own?

Anyway I skipped AS3; jumped into Unity and tried some C#. It's fairly easy, I made a canabalt. I've got some Flash prototypes of what our next full digital-download for-sale game could be, and I'll post those here as soon as they're showing some good ideas. They're thicker and more interesting mechanics than was in No Time, but still something a couple dudes could make in under 10 months.
My ideal plan, hopefully, is to design a game top to bottom, then find a better coder than me. Then we can both focus on two halves of how to make a game, instead of me playing catch-up on every part and it coming out broken.
I wrote a blog post about planning a new game, but I've not put it up yet. Here's a temp version of it. Comedy games, right? What's up with that?

But coming up with ideas DON'T PAY THE BILLS! I'll have loads of time to not worry about making games for a while, as I've bin brought aboard Casual Social Facebook iPhone App Hashtag-Trending Focus-Testing How-Can-We-Make-This-Look-More-Like-An gry-Birds Megacorp .inc to do some wetwork.
They sent me this, I sent them this, they sent me this, and we all laughed. Am I allowed to share that? Probably not?
I've got a few dragons and robots to redesign, and my main job is to animate a unique intro for all the games they buy. Like the old Megadrive games 1 2 3. So that'll give me some good time to come up with a project #2.
Cos oh my god are indie games good these days or what. I came up with No Time in the shower, that's not gonna fly twice. I personally am NOT expecting to get on Steam (if you ask me)

In other Newgrounds news I think Ortus got Kickstarted, Egoraptor is officially on a reality TV show, and here's Ed McMillen on a podcast. Did you know Komix coded Binding of Isaac? Here's seven photos of Max Gilardi (Whacky Game Jokez 4 Kids) growing up, which I laughed at. And check out exetra's new album fa chrimeny's sake.

That's probably it.
Some fucking hentai game that 4chan made came out and the whole goddamn internet is talking about it, it's really annoying.

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Abobo 2012-01-10 19:08:05

ME AM NO HULK ME AM COOKIE MONSTER!

I-smel 2012-01-10 19:08:05

HAHAHAHAHA ITS TRUE!

TheMajormel 2012-01-10 19:17:16

lol 4chan made a game?

I-smel 2012-01-10 19:17:16

It took them 10 years, and it's a Meet n Fuck. Don't even start this conversation because oh my god.

FatKidWitAJetPak 2012-01-10 21:09:52

Congratulations on your success man. You always said you were bad at coding, but I disagree ;)

ROAAAARROror

I-smel 2012-01-10 21:09:52

Nope! Not a success, still bad at coding.

I-smel 2012-01-10 22:09:01

I was gonna make a Venetian Blinds Anniversary Collection on the 28th of December but forgot. Sorry Newgrounds.

Ansel 2012-01-11 00:43:12

shit, I remember playing a super-early test version of the big crab boss fight in NTTE. Looks way better now. If Season 2 makes it onto Steam, I'll shell out for it.

I hadn't really thought about video games & comedy before. I think you're right about the most crude/glitchy parts of games usually being the funniest, QWOP being a great example. When I think of the games I wanna make, I usually get caught up in all these ideas about vidjogames as the next great art form just waiting to be defined by some TRUE GENIUS'S magnum opus, but that ain't right - there's just as much potential for low-budget hilarity in games as there is in movies.

I've been thinking about trying Unity, cause I've been trying to break away from Flash for a while. Wish Valve would release the Source SDK for OSX.

p.s. really diggin that rolling effect in the file you linked. masks oh boy

I-smel 2012-01-11 00:43:12 (Updated 2012-01-11 12:10:13)

Yeah I packaged Season 1 and Season 2 together as one game. It's actually pretty long.

I'm not into art games. I think making stuff feel good, and make sense and be fun is art enough for me. Like-- Street Fighter and Gears of War and Metal Slug are art games to me, I don't get why nobody else thinks that.
Also Octodad was another funny idiot-glitch-game that people liked.

I've bin asked like 3 times by this company how I "did that 3D effect" on the robot head, and how they can't do it cos their game's not 3D :|

ALSO this is weird that you come up for the first time in like a hundred years, cos I mentioned you in someone's comments YESTERDAY:
http://redminus.newgrounds.com/ne ws/post/678498

molkman 2012-01-11 07:55:58

You a busy man, yo.

I-smel 2012-01-11 07:55:58

No those other guys I linked at the bottom are busy, I'm just fuckin around.

Luis 2012-01-11 08:52:10

Dont forget to pay your electric bill tom

I-smel 2012-01-11 08:52:10

THIS is super fucking weird, cos I was filing my tax returns when I opened this page, and I literally forgot my electric bill.

Ansel 2012-01-17 19:08:06

the whole idea of an 'art game' is just fluffery. if games are art, which seems to be the message here, why make an 'art' game? i usually just wind up uncomfortably aware of the clumsiness of the mouse & keyboard, which can be a little distracting when I'm playin a game about someone's kid dying or w/e.

I didn't disappear! I'm like Oz behind the curtain. The flaming wizard head is turned off for the season, but I'm still here in the dark twiddling knobs & levers, yo

Horsenwelles 2012-02-06 01:15:34

i thought faggots died off with pagers and newspapers

I-smel 2012-02-06 01:15:34

What? Are you calling me gay or something?

Kajenx 2012-02-08 06:13:16

There's still money in flash. At least, I think so. You can't get away with tech demos anymore, though. I learned that the hard way on 3 games in a row... :(

What's it like making people pay for your games? Can you actually make money doing that? I'd consider doing it but it seems like a lot of work. 3:

I-smel 2012-02-08 06:13:16 (Updated 2012-02-08 07:58:49)

Oh there's still money in Flash alright- I jumped into the FGL chat the other day, and this fuckin guy made a REGULAR-ASS FUCKING TOWER DEFENSE CALLED "ANGRY BEES" for THIRTY THOUSAND DOLLARS.
IN LIKE A COUPLE MONTHS.
It was a regular game, looked like early Dan Paladin or Ansel stuff, but was packed full of achievements and stat-tracking and upgrades n shit; and the guy is really on-the-ball with marketing stuff. That's the problem, really, it's that us Newgrounds folk don't have a clue how to market ourselves. There are some pretty bad Flash games on FGL that go for 40-50 thousand dollars, but god only knows how they do it.
Also yea I have definately learned that the hard way.

Making people pay for your games is really hard when there are glitches you can't fix, and you have to split the game into Season 1 and Season 2, and your forums are full of viruses, and everyone gives you bad reviews, and you don't get on Steam twice, then everyone starts asking "hey where did all that Kickstarter money go?" and there isn't really a good answer for that that fits within 140 characters, and everyone stops buying it. Then Cthulu Saves The World announces 100,000 sales URGH GOD DAMMIT.
I get the regular feelings of liking my games and talking about em, like I do on Newgrounds, but now I get new feelings like guilt and shame from people who don't like it, and bitter jealousy from people who're doing better than me. But I also signed autographs at Minecon, so that side of it's better.

Seriously now, I believe you can make money doing it. Like I said, I don't know anything about marketing myself, so I have a producer on the game who's incredibly good at that. He handles distribution and press releases and contracts n all that stuff you'll need to do if you wanna sell a game. I'd never be able to do that on my own. With a two-man team, all I have to worry about is designing a videogame and makin it; which is perfect. It's not much more work than I usually do.

Also, if you're thinkin about doing this, come up with a game that's easy to sell. It wasn't my idea to make a full version of No Time To Explain, someone just contacted me out of the blue and pitched it. He saw that people were liking it, retweeting it, upvoting it, quoting the lines, it's funny, it's easy to pick up, it makes for a good trailer, etc etc.
OBVIOUSLY I enjoyed making it- you have to pick something you enjoy, obviously- but don't pick William And Sly. Cos people aren't gonna post that trailer around like "I HAVE TO SHOW YOU THIS!!!" cos it's not that kind of game. You're gonna have to make something that really slaps a smile on people's faces and makes a good first impression.
I mean your games have the best art and animation out there, so I'm sure some kind of amazing mysterious world could hook people, like that Pid game.

So long story short:
1-It's higher highs and lower lows
2-Don't go it alone, get a smart, sneaky, connected russian to help you out
3-You've probably got a hundred ideas ready to go; pick the one that'll get people excited in like the first 10 seconds of the first trailer. That'll make things easier.

Now go ask Glaiel the same thing, cos he's about to get on PSN so I bet he'll give you the opposite answer.

YOUR MOVE, VIDEOGAMES!!!

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