Three Reasons Creators Should Never Read Their Forums

If I have learned anything from writing Indie games for a living for fifteen years (and there are plenty who would say that I haven't), it is that it is usually a bad idea for creators to visit online forums discussing them and their work. It doesn't lead to happy ends.

This is why big, smart companies with actual budgets hire community people who do nothing but deal with and sift through forums. Managing fans is real work, and picking out the realistic and worthwhile comments takes a ton of time and judgment. That is why smart companies put a layer between the fans and the creators. If you don't have this layer, you should keep a safe, respectful distance.

It's a pity. My company, Spiderweb Software, has a really awesome, active online forum. Been there for years. Always active, full of all sorts of discussions. However, unless I've just released a game and are looking for signs of early, evil bugs, I have to stay away from it.

Some of my fans really resent this and take it personally, and they haven't been shy about letting me know. But if you've ever wondered why the creators of your beloved games often avoid the forums (especially the Word of Warcraft forums, Yeesh!), this might help you to understand why.

1. It's Not Productive To Read How Much People Hate You

It's been said that, if you want a healthy marriage, you have to say five kind things for every unkind thing. It is in our nature to gloss over and ignore kind words, but to really fixate on and get affected by unkind ones. This is why Facebook will never have a Don't Like button. If you see "Joe likes your post," well, fine. If the average online denizen see "Joe doesn't like this," he or she will probably freak out.

Which brings us to forums.

A few years ago, I wrote an article for IGN about how I felt that Indie games were far from the only source of innovation, and the big companies don't get enough credit for trying to make innovative things. Slashdot was kind enough to link to it. Someone might agree or disagree with me. Fine. But someone wrote this ...

"This is the kind of commentary I'd expect out of a cynical independent ripoff artist in action, really. You know, the kind of person who is too afraid and closed-minded to try anything new, partly because he doesn't want to lose his money or reputation - a sound judgement - and partly because he just doesn't seem to want to try. ...  In other words, nothing to see here. Just near-mindless droning from another cynic with a rather skewed and defeated view of the gaming world."

WHOA! DUDE! What did I ever do to you? Did I run over your dog? Make out with your mom? Go to where you work and mess up the settings on the fry vat? Damn!

Now, I thought that one was pretty funny. I sent links to it to my friends, saying, "Hey! Look what people REALLY think of me!" Over the years, I've developed a pretty thick skin. And yet, if you read lots of people dumping on you, unless you have super-human emotional control, it's eventually going to get to you. Sometimes I'll get weak and look at a forum and see some nasty cheap shot and it'll throw me off my game for hours.

Remember, as Penny Arcade put it (in a far superior and NSFW way), anonymity plus audience makes assholes. (And, for what it's worth, the creators of Penny Arcade don't read their forums either.)

It's a little different on my company's forums. But only a little. Even though it is mainly populated by my fans, it is still full of shots at my design skill, game quality, virility, and facial complexion. Remember, there's a thin line between love and hate. Nobody will lash out at you like a disappointed fan.

When I read the forums for, say, World of Warcraft or xkcd, I'm always amazed at how nasty things get. It makes me think, "If you hate it so much, why are you there?" But that's just the way it is, and excess exposure to insults can really get under your skin, make you doubt yourself, and interfere with your work. It's very sad, but you sometimes need to just protect yourself by staying away. Keep your brain clean.

2. It's Not Going To Be Helpful

It seems like reading forums would be a good way to get design ideas and learn ways to improve your games. With the exception of learning about bugs, this is usually not the case.

It can be tempting, when you're stuck designing a game, to read forums and look for feedback. The problem is this. No matter what the question is, there are people who will advocate strongly for both sides of it. Many of these people reflexively hate change. Many of these people are only happy if the game is much harder (or much easier). Some of them will not, in fact, have a realistic idea about anything. Often, there are issues where intelligent people can come to opposite conclusions, and you can read thousands of furious posts on either side of the issue without getting an inch closer to an actual decision.

Forums contain a cacophony of people telling you to do diametrically opposite things, very loudly, often for bad reasons. There will be plenty of good ideas, but picking them out from the bad ones is unreliable and a lot of work. If you try to make too many people happy at once, you will drive yourself mad. You have to be very, very careful who you let into your head.

Of course, it is still very important for designers to get lots of good, constructive criticism. That is why I have built up an elite cadre of awesome beta testers and interested friends, and I listen to them very closely. And, I must point out, many of those testers were recruited from my forums. You just need to choose carefully the people you ask for advice.

3. You Might Get Suckered Into Getting Angry

Not much to say about this. If you read forums for long enough, you will read a lot of nasty comments and cheap shots. If you read enough cheap shots, you'll get angry. If you are angry enough, you will eventually lash out and flame back.

Snapping angrily at your customers never, ever leads to good results.

One Final Comment

I'm sure some of my fellow Indie developers are reading this and shaking their heads at my idiocy. A lot of developers do maintain close relationships with their forums. It works for them, for now. I'm glad for them, and I hope it keeps working.

Just bear this in mind. When you start out and gain your first following, you get a grace period. You're a fresh face, making awesome new things. Everyone loves you. And, most importantly, you haven't had a chance to start disappointing chunks of your fan base yet.

The longer you are active, the more of your fans will turn on you, justified or not.

And, if you are a member of my forums reading this, know this. I love you guys. The idea that anyone wants to discuss my work at all, even to dump on it, is insanely flattering. I just hope that this makes clearer the instincts of efficiency and self-preservation that lead me to keep a little bit of distance.

Edit: Changed "think skin" to "thick skin."

The Ugly Truth About Classic Games. They Are Terrible.

It's no secret that I love classic games. My games are all, in some way, tributes to classics. I have a huge personal collection of old Atari 2600/5200/7200/Intellivision/Colecovision/Vectrex/Astrocade/Odyssey 2 cartridges. (All in good working order, thank you.) That you can still buy old Atari games in stores and on XBox Live, among other places, warms my heart.

But let's not put too fine a point on it. They are not, for the most part, fun. One of my favorite things about my classic games collection is my ability to keep having this conversation with my friends:

"Oooh! Old games! I loved Pitfall! Do you have Pitfall?"

"Of course."

"Can I play it?"

"Sure."

(Five minutes pass.)

"This isn't any fun."

"No, it's not."

I have this huge collection of old games, but I spend all my gaming time with my XBox 360 or PS3. (Or, on increasingly rare occasions, my Wii.)

The reason I bring it up is because of this fascinating article about the unquestionable classic, that inspirational breakthrough, that great of greats, Ultima IV.

Basic summary: Professor teaches class on classic video games. Makes students play old games. Goes all right until they try Ultima IV. They find it to be opaque, dull, and completely unplayable.

Well, YEAH.

Look, nobody worships at the altar of Lord British more than me, and you can't put into words what a breakthrough Ultima IV was at the time. It set me on the path to writing games for a living. I played it again and again. It literally Changed My Life.

But it isn't playable now. The controls make no sense. The dialogue is bland. All of the little UI tricks that make RPGs accessible (tooltips, in-game maps, pathfinding) were not yet invented. And, and this is really important, everything that Ultima IV introduced everyone has done far better. Ultima IV had an epic quest and morality woven into the game, which was amazing at the time. But everyone does those things way better now.

So it's been years and years since I've recommended anyone play a game with Ultima in the title. Or, if they really want to try a game in the series, I recommend Ultima VI, which is awesome.

I like looking back to the past. Nostalgia. History. And there are some old designs that really should be modernized. (Archon. M.U.L.E.) But, hey, classic gaming back in the day? Pong? The Atari 2600? Man, I was there. It's better now. Wherez mah Halo?

Oh, and I will finally know that we have shaken off the dust of the past when it is no longer possible to play Joust. God, but I hate Joust.

Yet Even More About Evil DRM From Hell.

The story so far: Piracy drives PC games makers mad with rage. Ubisoft responds by releasing its games (most notably Assassin's Creed 2) with DRM that requires a constant internet connection. Your connection goes? So does your game. Everyone not a PC games maker gets justifiably enraged. Games ship with this DRM, and entirely predictable disasters occur.

So I stepped into this crapstorm and wrote an article which got quite a bit of attention. In it, I said that, entirely apart from the practical considerations of this DRM (which I think is a terrible idea), it would work. Which is to say that it could stay unbroken for the first 1-2 months of the game's release, when the title will get most of its sales. The Internet responded by calling me a moron, as it is an issue of religious faith that DRM can be broken instantly.

So let's look back in and see what's been going on. I think it is interesting in several ways.

The DRM has, apparently, 6 weeks after release, been released in a cracked form that is easy for the average laymen to install. Six weeks. In other words, long enough. I've read two articles to this effect.

(Some people on forums have claimed that a tricky-to-install crack was kicked out 4 weeks after release, but who trusts random people on forums? I have seen nothing in the Gaming Press on the topic. Which says a lot about the Gaming Press. But more on that in a second.)

So, and this point is very significant, I was right and everyone who criticized me was wrong! It's official! I win teh Internet!

(Happy dance.)

Ahem. Anyway.

Also, while crackers will get better at beating this DRM in its current form, it will only get better. I and others have suggested ways to make it stronger. It's only a matter of time. And that means that this DRM, loathsome as it is, is here to stay. If the game company executives were crazed enough by piracy to implement it, they're crazy enough to keep using it. Insert dire predictions about the future of PC gaming here.

But I want to chip in one more comment here, about the lamentable state of the gaming press. I honestly think that this new DRM is one of the biggest stories on PC Gaming in years. How Ubisoft's system works will determine if PC Gaming has a future, and how much that future will suck. It's an interesting story. So why hasn't anyone at the gaming sites actually investigated, like actual reporters, whether the DRM was cracked or not?

Look at the articles I linked to. One by the Escapist, long one of the best and most thoughtful sites writing on gaming, and one by cnet, a company with actual reporters and resources. They say that crackers have claimed they've broken this DRM (something others have claimed, only to be proven wrong). Why don't they check? If it's worth reporting on the claim, isn't it worth reporting on what reality actually is? I think this quote from the Escapist article (whose sole source is the cnet article) is very interesting.

I don't know if the claim is legit and I have neither Assassin's Creed 2 nor the patience necessary to dick around with warez sites and cracks in order to find out.

Now, I'm an Indie gaming developer, so calling out members of the gaming press is a very stupid thing to do. So I'm simply going to say to Andy Chalk, the author of the Escapist piece, that this is a great opportunity to do some investigative reporting and scoop everyone else in the world on a story of some interest. Go get 'em! I'd link to you!

But anyway. Since this sort of DRM seems to work well enough, the people who can make the decisions about whether to use it will feel that their decision was justified. Remember, they see piracy as an existential threat. This is important. They believe that unless they reduce piracy, the PC gaming biz is not worth it. When someone sees something as a life or death decision, they won't care how angry people get on the forums.

So I suspect you'll be seeing a lot more of it in the future. And, when enough of the titles people really want come out with it, most PC gamers will either grit their teeth and put up with it or abandon the platform.

And, as for me? I blame the pirates. Ubisoft's system is obnoxious, but it is legal, and they are in their right to do it. In a democracy, we all get what the worst of us deserve.

God, if I try to write about this again, please strike me down with holy, peace-bringing fire.

The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work

So, when I read that Assassin's Creed 2 for the PC would fight piracy by requiring a live internet connection all the time when you were playing, I thought it was a joke. Sort of a dry, post-modern satire of the whole idea of DRM. Then I learned that, if your internet connection broke while playing it, the game would freeze. What's more, if the connection didn't return soon enough, the game would quit and your progress would be unsaved. This convinced me that the whole thing was a joke.

Then I learned, as explicitly confirmed by Ubisoft representatives, no. Not a joke. Not at all.

Of course, this is pretty harsh medicine, and the many reasons this set-up is hostile have been ably discussed. What if you have an inconsistent internet connection? What if servers ever go down? (Due to malfunction, bankruptcy, or no longer wanting to pay to maintain them.)

Also, you don't hold onto your saved games anymore. They do. This part is really significant. That's why the game needs the net connection all the time. It's not just for their amusement. The constant contact is necessary because your game is saved on their machine. Not yours. They are claiming that this is for your convenience, because then you can get at your saved games from any computer anywhere, but nobody is fooled.

But, in all the writing and bitching on the topic, everyone seems to be missing the most significant detail of this new system. Everyone always assumes that all DRM will be broken immediately and pirated versions will appear instantly and anti-hacker measures never work. But this system (and I know saying this will immediately get me written off as an idiot, but bear with me) is the one that will finally do a good enough job of holding off pirates. It won't hold them off forever (I think) but it will hold them long enough for the game to get its sales.

Here's why ... This is how hacking usually works. A game (or word processor, or operating system) is programmed to, say, check in at launch with the home server to make sure it's a legal copy. The hacker goes through the code and looks for that line of software and disables it. Snip. And the program is cracked and ready to be sent to the Torrents. This is a bit of a simplification, but it gets at the heart of the thing. Most hacking require disabling a small chunk of the program, and that is not hard.

But Assassin's Creed 2 is different. Remember, all of the code for saving and loading games (a significant feature, I'm sure you would agree) is tied into logging into a distant server and sending data back and forth. This vital and complex bit of code has been written from the ground up to require having the saved games live on a machine far away, with said machine being programmed to accept, save, and return the game data. This is a far more difficult problem for a hacker to circumvent. What are the options?

1. Make your own, free saved game server and alter the application code to use it.

This means a lot of work and expense, both to duplicate Ubisoft's game saving code and to set up and maintain the servers. Won't happen.

2. Trick the Ubisoft servers into believing you have a legit copy, so that they will let you save your game.

OK, the hackers will probably eventually come up with a keygen program. This is tricky, because the software that generates the keys will be in Ubisoft's hands, far from prying eyes. But they could possible do it, given a bit of time. But if they ever figure out you have a fake or duplicate key (and I bet they have their ways), poof. Your account and saved games disappear. I don't think this will work.

3. Hack the game to not need to save games on a remote server.

This means a hacker has to figure out the saved game format, somehow jam into the application new code to write the saved data and new code to read it, TEST IT, and get it to work. Doable. But it will take time, and I bet you'd get some bugs in the process.

So this will be a tough nut to crack.

Remember what it takes to get DRM to work. It doesn't have to be uncrackable. Nothing is. All it has to do is delay the hackers long enough for the game to get a couple months worth of sales. And by turning a key part of their game into a MMO ("We, like WoW, control the saved game, not you."), they have come up with a clever and brutal way to do just that.

But this will make everyone hate them.

Perhaps. Make no mistake. Ubisoft will lose customers and earn much nerdrage over this. But they are engaged in a grand experiment. They are seeing if an adequately pirate-proof game can make money. Will keeping cracked copies off the Torrents for a month make extra sales? And enough extra sales to make writing PC games worthwhile? Because the current system, where 90% of the copies out there are pirated and only megahits that could turn a profit on that 10%, doesn't seem to be working.

But it's an amazingly harsh system. As much as I hope for someone to come up with an anti-hacker measure that can reliably hold off the thieves for a few months without ticking the entire planet off (so that I can start using it), well, I wouldn't buy a game with the system Ubisoft is using. I really sympathize with what they're trying to do, and I can't join in with the (almost) unanimous chorus of rage. But this doesn't feel like the answer.

People might buy more copies of Assassin's Creed 2, but this is the sort of measure that can sour people on PC gaming as a whole. And that hurts everyone. Including me.

Edit: Thanks everyone for the comments! A couple responses.

Yes, of course there are solutions for making your own authentication server. But for the DRM to work, all it has to do is 1. delay the cracking, and 2. make it difficult/unreliable for the bulk of non-super-technically-apt gamers. Making people set up their own servers (on their own machines or not) is enough of a barrier to entry to get the job done.

Remember, I didn't say it was uncrackable, only that it was difficult/slow enough to give a profitable first few months.

As for the game making local copies of the saved games. IF this turns out to be the case, and IF the game also has easily accessible features in place for loading those saves (as opposed to only caching them there and only being able to load from the distant server), then yes, it's a dumb and easily crackable system. But even if this is the case, that doesn't change the fact that the next game to use this system will be slow to crack for the reasons given above, and all of the factors and consequences given above still apply.

Edit 2: One quick question for the "Anything can be cracked right away." crowd. Where do I get my cracked copy of World of Warcraft that can play the real game (not some cobbled together emulation server) without paying. Answer: You can't.

Once you accept the need for a constant internet connection, the developer can just load more and more of the game logic onto the servers. Right now, they're just trying it with saved games. (And who knows what else? Do any of us really know what the game is using that constant internet connection for?) But they can put more and more of the game onto their end until cracking the game will involve rewriting the damn thing.

Oh, and by the way, people accept their game needing a constant internet connection all the time. WoW. CounterStrike. Team Fortress. So saying people won't accept it for single player games is a bit of a stretch. They'll get used to it soon enough.

Edit 3: Wow. Main page Slashdot. The Escapist. All the hate is making my face burn. I've written a follow-up article, but I'm posting a squib from it now because I want to address the most common and fallacious point, that any system can easily be cracked:

"You want your very-difficult-to-crack DRM system? Here it is! Take all the statistics and scripts for creatures and items and weapons and put them on the server. The game only downloads them when it needs them. This is ten thousand scripts and bits of data, and it will take a long time for a cracker to get the game to download them so he can isolate and read them all and put them in his fake server/cracked game. And God help you if he missed an item. Don't just wave your hands and go, "Oh, someone could break that easy." This. Would. Work.

(And I bet Assassin's Creed 2 has some of this and they just haven't told us yet. Remember, it has to be using that constant net connection for something.)"

Hulu Charging For Shows? Oh noes!

There are rumblings that awesome TV show site hulu.com may have to start charging for TV shows. This has resulted in the predictable Nerdhate and rage.

But come on. I'm no happier about this that you. But. Of course they will do this, and it's hardly a terrible idea, for two reasons:

Advertising Is Not An Infinite Pool of Money From Which We Can Drink Without Limit - If the net should have taught us anything over the last few decade, it's that, "Hey, let's give things away for free and make money from adventising" only works if you're Google. Hulu is an awesome, awesome deal. It's just too beautiful to live.

People Pay For TV Shows! - Look at iTunes. People will happily give a buck for a TV show they like if it's really easy and convenient. To say that nobody will pay hulu is ludicrous. Some people will turn back to torrents. People like me, whose time has value, will just pay the dollar.

People hate to hear this, but it's true. Making TV shows is difficult and expensive. If ads don't make enough money (and I really doubt that the handful of ads hulu shows pay the bills), they will have no choice but to start charging. It's just the math of the thing.

Rock Band. Guitar Hero. Why They Are Doomed.

So I will begin this by saying I am an unashamed Rock Band fanboy. Playing expert guitar and drums (and, when I'm feeling brave, vocals) is now one of my favored ways to listen to music and relax at the end of the day. I'll be in line for Beatles Rock Band on day one. I've written about how wrong-headed criticisms of these games are and how they are a cool, new way to appreciate music. Playing fake plastic drums is probably the most fun I've had with a video game, ever. I am one of the music game dead-enders.

Which is why it pains me so much to be the turd in the punchbowl. The fad is dying. Fast.

We all know it. We've all seen the glut. (What? Eight rhythm games out this year? Yikes!) It's the sure sign of trying to cash in on the installed base as much as possible before the fall. Sales for new Guitar Hero titles are, well, not encouraging.

If there could have been any question, the offer of a free Guitar Hero: Van Halen with purchase of Guitar Hero 5, before either of those games is even out, is the clearest sign you could possibly want. (This deal actually tempted me a little, until I realized that taking it would put me at risk of listening to Van Halen.)

The Beatles game will goose the genre a little, but even new releases with serious, broad appeal (Led Zeppelin? Pink Floyd?) will only slow the decay.

But, here's the thing. It's easy to blame the glut for the death of the fad, but, even if music games had been released at a reasonable pace, the thing was doomed to collapse. It wasn't sustainable, ever. I think it's interesting to look at why.

i. The Magic Wore Off

Now, most of this is based on my own personal observations and thus should be taken with a grain of salt. But isn't the magic gone? When Rock Band was new, I and two other friends frequently threw Rock Band parties, and they were well attended. Getting four people to pick up the plastic instruments was easy. Two years later? Not so much. I stopped throwing Rock Band parties after my last one, when I looked around during one song and realized I was the only one left playing. Everyone else had migrated to the next room. It was pathetic.

There is a certain sort of brain that has a compelling, all-consuming urge to hit those little colored spots as they come down the track. I have such a brain. But for everyone else, well, let's face it. Pressing the red button to hit the red light and the green button to hit the green light does not compelling gameplay make. It was a kick to do it a few evenings. Now it's done. Even a game for the Casual Market (tm) has to have SOMETHING to it.

ii. It Is An Expensive Activity ...

$249 for the full Beatles: Rock Band set. Again, yikes.

Happily, in an effort to avoid flaming suicide, it was just announced that there will be cheaper bundles available. And yet, MSRP of $160 is still pretty darn spendy.

iii. ... and Not Just In Cash

I'm talking about cost in resources. And my liberal leanings are going to show a little in the next paragraph, so be warned.

It takes a lot of resources to make these bulky instruments (especially drums), pack them up, ship them over the sea, get them to you, and, from there, dump them in landfills. A lot of plastic and oil in our new oil-short, global-warming reality. And, if this recession should have taught us anything, it's that we're going too much in debt buying too much useless crap from the Chinese. Something has got to go. And I think shoddy plastic Fisher Price drum kits will be first in line.

And, perhaps most significantly, these games consume a lot of space in stores. You want to know when there will be serious blood on the walls in the music game business? It'll be when some executive at Best Buy looks at the enormous amount of precious floor space taken up by big, bulky Rock Band and Guitar Hero boxes, remembers the sloping sales, and says, "Enough."

What Is the Future?

Of course, music games will remain a profitable little niche in this huge industry. Nothing that generates as many sales as Guitar Hero 3 had can ever disappear. But how will it evolve in a sustainable form?

First, games with vocals will always do all right. Microphones are small and easy to make. People love singing drunken karaoke. SingStar fans have nothing to worry about.

Guitar games will always survive. Fake plastic guitars are relatively small, flat, and easy to pack. Stores will always have a small section with two or three brands of plastic geetar. Borderline Asperger's cases like me will always have little, bright lights to hit.

Which brings us to my beloved drums. Harmonix did an amazing job of creating a mode of gameplay which sits interestingly in the shadow zone between video games and real instruments. Fake plastic drums are awesome. But let's face it. They're big. They're bulky. They don't last long under heavy use. (No cheap plastic toy will withstand being hit with a stick thousands of times.) And they aren't popular. The current mode of fake drum playing is just too tricky for the casual types these games need to live.

The drums will have to go. And when they do, band games will have to go too. Music games will fragment into singing games (for the many who love that) and guitar games (which two people can play, instead of four). Rock Band, if it survives, will still provide drum charts for the installed base. But in a few years, when we go to the next generation of consoles? Forget it.

And, someday, we will look back on the Great Music Game Fad and remember the glut of titles and the mountains of instruments at Best Buy and the $299 video game controller and go, "Wow, what was that all about?" and laugh and laugh and laugh.

The Joy Of Rereleasing Old Games.

Warning: This blog entry contains unpopular views, a mercenary attitude, and an unattractive display of pure, raw greed. Those who prefer a purer, more principled breed of Indie developer should look elsewhere.

A little over fifteen years ago, I started writing my first game, Exile: Escape From the Pit. (I am old.) This is quite a milestone for me. Since then, I have found that life as a self-employed Indie has many advantages, some small, some large. As I work on Avernum 6, the last game in my longest-running and most successful series, one of them has been very much on my mind.

I own my own intellectual property (or, as the cool kids call it, IP).

Why is this so awesome? Because then I get to rewrite and rerelease my older games, letting me make a bunch of money for a small amount of work. For example, Exile: Escape From the Pit came out in 1995. Its first rewrite, Avernum, came out in 2000. So, in 2011, over a decade after its previous iteration, I plan to release a super flashy new version of Avernum, with really sharp new graphics and sounds, a new dungeon or three, and some nice new features added. It won't be a huge amount of work. It'll be a great new product. I will clean up.

I once wrote a game called Nethergate, which developed quite a cult following. Then, as time passed, it became very shaky and outdated. So, two years ago, I released Nethergate: Resurrection. It took two months to do it. I really liked this game, and putting out a newer, nicer version was very rewarding, both emotionally and financially.

A lot of people have complained to me over the years about doing this. I don't understand it. It's good for me and its good for players. There are several good reasons to exploit your old IP:

Good Games Deserve To Exist

One of the most frustrating things for me about video games as an art is that individual titles die out. The older a game gets, the better the chance it will stop working on new machines. There was this awesome old Mac game called System's Twilight. It was a lot of fun, but it won't run at all on any new mac. The machines that will run it grow ever older and dustier. I think this is HUGELY wasteful.

Someday, people won't be able to play Baldur's Gate 2 or Planescape: Torment anymore. This really sucks. I want to delay my games going the same way as long as possible.

Avernum is starting to get wonky on new machines. The tech support complaints are growing steadily. Until I get some sort of universal language I can use to make games that run well forever, all I can do is freshen them up with new versions myself.

It Doesn't Keep Me From Making New Games

Sometimes, people say to me, "You should use the time to make something new." Hey, I'll still make new stuff. But if one old game dies off so I can make one new game, I haven't increased the number of games in the universe.

Releasing a nicer new Avernum will introduce it to a whole new audience. And hey, it's new to them.

It Makes Lots Of Money

A carefully done and marketed rewrite takes a fraction of the time to develop of a whole new game, and it can sell almost as much. A week hasn't gone by in the last fifteen or so years that I haven't made money off of Exile (in one form of it or another), and I have every intention of eating out on that game until I die. That is the reward of being brave, starting your own business, and making your own IP.

So Indie developers, if you put out a game and it gets some traction, and a decade passes, freshen it up, expand it a little, and kick it out there again! If it's good in year X, it'll still be good in year X + 10.

Indie games: Still Too Cheap. Getting Cheaper.

I wrote a couple of articles not long ago about how the expected price for Indie games is becoming really cheap. Too cheap to support a thriving, innovative Indie scene. I thought that pricing all games below 10 bucks on Amazon and XNA Community games, sets a dangerous standard and steals the freedom to influence prices that developers need. I got a reasonable amount of abuse for this, because, of course, people hate being told that the things they want are unsustainable.

Which brings us to the new development at Big Fish Games, one of the larger casual games portals ...






Their current pricing scheme, as I understand it, is that you can get any of their games for $6.99. This subscribes you to their service, which charges you that amount per month and gives you another game in return. Of course, you can pay the $6.99, get the game, and immediately unsubscribe from the service, which is what I suspect a number of people do.

So I decided to poke around for a bit and find out how standard this sort of pricing is. At Yahoo games ...










... and MSN games ...











... and GameHouse ...











and so on. $6.95 is currently the magic price. Generally, to get that price, you need to buy a subscription. In other words, use the developer's game as a loss leader to win their private route into your credit card.

So let's run some numbers. A typical deal on these portals is that the portal keeps, say, 10% of a sale for expenses and then pays a 40% royalty. (This is pretty close to what I generally get.) Which means each sale of a game on Big Fish would earn you roughly $2.50. You better hope you're earning more per copy elsewhere because otherwise, if you want a pretty meager payout for your work (say, $100K before expenses), you have to sell forty thousand games. You know how hard it is to move that many copies? PRETTY DARN HARD.

Now, this is the point where generally some Internet knucklehead says, "Well, they have the right to do whatever they want." Yeah, of course. And I have the right to point out the gruesome consequences of their exercising that right.

To have a chance of not getting murdered at those prices, you need to sell a monster pile of copies. This is exactly the situation that punishes serving niche markets, taking risks, and doing new things. And those are exactly the roles people are supposedly looking to Indie developers to fill.

I have been arguing that these low prices will result in a desolate and uncreative Indie games space. Look at the offerings at the casual portals, and I think you'll see that I have a point. PopCap provides some cool, innovative games (they're basically the Pixar/Blizzard of casual games), but otherwise the casual portals are a dry expanse of Bejewled/Zuma variants, simple puzzle games, and milking of established properties. Much like in Hollywood, the need to get a blockbuster to survive delivers a harsh blow to creativity.

Of course, it's easy to say, "But they're casual game fans. They don't want anything challenging. Scrabble and hidden object games are the limit for such simple creatures." I personally think that this is nonsense. But the way we're going, we'll never find out.

So What To Do About It?

First, support and encourage portals that don't force developers to sell their work for a pittance. Like Steam, Greenhouse, and MacGameStore.

Second, if you are writing a game of your own, don't let anyone steamroll you into giving your work away. If a portal is going to sell your work for $6.95, make sure you've written a game that can compete in that market. If not, at the very least, don't give them your newest freshest stuff. I'll let them sell an older game for that price for the advertising and exposure, but only after I've already made good money off of it.

What I care about is having a marketplace where a wide variety of Indies can write a wide variety of games and make a living. The casual portals have their place, but, if you aren't prepared for how little they're going to pay you, they're a trap.

Edit: I should have also mentioned Reflexive games, who are also being admirable in pricing Indies at a level where they can actually make money.

So Someone Has To Dislike the Star Trek Movie

God, I was looking forward to the Star Trek movie. I really, really did. But I ended up being the living embodiment of that awesome Onion sketch about nerds hating Star Trek. It just seemed like a mediocre action movie with the names of some characters from a TV show I like spackled on top.

Why do they make movies with this enormous special effects budgets and edit them so spastically I can't ever just sit back and go "Oooh!" Why did they have to take the already brain-churningly lame science of Trek and double down on that? (As much as I'd like a tiny vial of black hole making goo for myself.) And why couldn't Kirk win the Kobayashi Maru without being such a fratboy douchebag about it?

There were high points, of course. It was thrilling to know that, when Kirk listens to the Beastie Boys, he only does it on his Nokia. So there is that.

So, as much as I fought it, I've ended up being That Guy. Oh, Lord. Please don't let Up suck. Please, please, please.

Indie Games Should Cost More, Pt. 2, The Expensening!

Last week, I wrote about how Indie games are becoming too cheap and what factors we should use to price our games in the future. This post attracted some attention and the occasional explosions of misplaced rage. A quick summary of the article:

• There are an increasing number of Indie game outlets where low, low prices are expected or enforced.
• Not all Indie games, for a variety of reasons, can profitably be sold for so little.
• Thus, the new markets are going to choke what Indie games can accomplish, not encourage it.

This isn't good for anyone. Developers. Customers. Distributors. Anyone.

This week, I talk about the reasons I've been given to make my games cheaper, why I ignore them, and what I think should happen now.

One Quick Point

Some people on forums criticized what I wrote because they mistakenly thought I was trying to repeal the law of Supply and Demand. This is unbelievable nonsense. I LIKE the idea of pricing according to Supply and Demand. It is our outlets to the marketplace setting arbitrary price caps that is countering the good work of economics, not me.

Refuting nonsense on Internet forums is such a Sisyphean task that I hate spending even a moment at it. But this particular misrepresentation was so common that I had to say something.

Why Do You Charge So Much? You Suck!

In the last fifteen years, I have heard just about every reason why my games should be cheaper. These arguments refute infallibly the old maxim that "The customer is always right." I prefer the much more accurate "You can't win an argument with a customer." Which is why complaints about my prices tend to go unanswered. So, without further ado, here is the litany of shame ...

"Your Games Are Too Crude and Old-School To Justify the Price"

Then dude, seriously, don't buy them. (And, if I may ask, why are you playing them?) I have my pride. If you don't think my games are worth it, don't give me money.

But consider this. I write plot-heavy old-school, turn-based RPGs. Almost nobody else does. I provide a quality niche service few others provide. Some people LIKE the crude, old-school thing I got going on. The scarcity of the service I provide justifies the price.

"If You Charged Less, You Would Sell More Copies"

This is true. The problem is that I won't sell enough more to justify the lower prices.

Microeconomics tells us that as we charge less, we sell more, but we make less per sale. At some point, there is a best price, a point where (number of sales) * (profit per sale) is at its maximum. The question is, where is it? Based on my experiences shifting prices up and down, I think I'm actually at the sweet spot.

Suppose I charged a World Of Goo price, like $15. This would roughly halve my profit per sale. (Because of the way credit card fees work, the less I charge per sale, the smaller percentage of profits I make.) To make up for this cut, I would have to double my sales. Double! That is a huge increase! Doubling would be big!

Based on data I've received from distributors, I believe that about 3% of my downloads turn into sales (this is called the Conversion Rate). To make up for the price cut, I would have to increase my conversion rate to 6%. This is a HUGE rate, pretty much impossible to get for a niche product like mine. If I had a more casual-friendly product, I might manage it, but that's not my niche. I have to set a price to reflect the nature of my niche.

"Steam Cut Their Prices Way Back, and Their Sales Went Up"

True. But their brief sale got a lot of press. There is no reason to believe this would result in an increase of profits over the long run, for the reasons given above.

We have sales too. They got attention and an uptick in sales. Then that increase petered out and sales returned pretty quickly to the old levels (but with less profit per sale). If sales had stayed high, we would probably have lowered prices permanently by now, but that's not how it worked out.

"I Can Buy Better Old Games At the Game Store For Far Less"

This is, honestly, a pretty hard charge to answer. When someone says, "Why should I get your game when I can get Baldur's Gate 2 for $10?" what I think is, "Dude, you haven't played Baldur's Gate 2 yet? Go get it! It's awesome! And you know something? In a few weeks, when you're done with it, I'll still be here."

I can't compete on price with old classic. Nobody can. To expect me (or anyone) to match price with a handful of old games is completely ridiculous. Can't happen.

But my games have an advantage. They're new. Go ahead and play the old classics, or at least the ones you haven't played already. Go play Fallout or Planescape: Torment. They're SWEET.

You'll be done soon enough. And, when you are, I'll still be here.

"I Can Play Games Just Like Yours For Free on Kongregate Or Whatever"

No. You can't. I make sure to write games that aren't already being done by everyone else. That's why I can charge so much for them. And, prospective Indie developers, if there is a similar version of the game you're writing already available for free, write a different game.

"You Don't Deserve That Much Money. Period."

Then don't pay. The day nobody thinks my games are worth the price, I will fold up shop and go get a real job. But I will never, ever be shamed into charging less than what I feel is a fair price for my labor. I work hard, and I have earned a living. The service I provide to my fans is worth the ability to keep food on my family's table and a roof over their head.

If you disagree, that is your right. But I am not going to send everything I've built over a cliff to appease your wrongness.

What Should Be Done

After all this griping and ranting, I should offer some actual suggestions for what should happen in the future. You shouldn't complain without suggesting a better alternative, amirite?

If all of us (developers, customers, distributors) want a healthy Indie scene in which we can all make money, we should all want the people who make the content to be able to make a living. If you agree, there are things each of us can do to help this happen.

Customers - Don't pirate Indie games. Sure, it's wrong to pirate any game, but not all crimes are equal. But when the game is the direct source of the cash that puts food on a family's table, that is an extra-intense level of Bad.

Anyone who would deny the two guys who made World of Goo their lousy fifteen bucks deserves a good, sharp kick.

Developers - Figure out the right price for your game and stick with it. Don't let anyone shame you into going lower. It stings to pass on distribution on Amazon, sure. But if you can't get the price you need to charge, swallow hard and move on. Maybe if they aren't able to sell more of the titles they want to sell, they will change to a wiser path.

Distributors - Don't set arbitrary price ceilings (like at Amazon or XBox Live Community Games). If you are setting the price yourselves, use the developers price as a guide. Then let the magic of the marketplace do its work, punishing the foolish and rewarding the smart. If a game is too expensive, the price can be lowered later. But if your overly low prices don't support the people who make the products that make you money, well, that is not in your simple, dollars-and-sense best interest. Don't cut the developer off at the knees before his or her product even reaches the market.

None of this is unreasonable. I'm not being all idealistic or hippy-dippy. I'm just using hard, simple business sense. This accelerating rush to give our products away is simple craziness.

So go ahead. Try it. Charge what you're worth. See what happens. You might as well. Because we'll all have to do it sooner or later. You might as well do it while you're still in business.

Indie Games Should Cost More, Pt. 1

I have a friendly little message for my fellow Indie game designers.

You really need to start charging more for your games.

Every year, life is getting more and more expensive. Insurance. Rent. Food. And, at the same time, your games are getting cheaper and cheaper, sometimes as cheap as a dollar, as you engage in a full speed race to the bottom.

Now don't get me wrong. Some games (casual quickies, simple puzzle games) should be inexpensive. But everyone (retailers, reviewers, customers) is enabling a mindset where all games, even the niche products and larger, deeper, less casual titles, are expected to be desperately cheap. This is not going to help developers stay in business. This is not how a healthy industry is maintained.

Creating the Expectation of Insulting Cheapness

There is an increasing attitude that Indie games should be cheap. Super cheap. Like, pennies on the dollar, "How can a developer make a living that way?" cheap.

XBox Live gave the trend a big push by charging $5 or $10 for most titles. That was still enough to get rich on when the gold rush was going. It isn't going anymore. I was genuinely surprised when people seriously complained that Braid, one of the coolest, most innovative titles out last year, was an entirely reasonable fifteen bucks.

Then Microsoft created XNA, a set of tools anyone can use to write and sell games on the XBox. Sounds cool, so far, but the maximum anyone can sell their game for is $10. Not good. Think that, sometimes, some games should actually sell for more than that? You are, apparently, crazy.

Then Amazon opened their game download store, selling all titles for ten bucks or less. Not good. (Oh, and look at the comments in the article I just linked to if you don't think people are now expecting games to be that cheap.)

Now the iPhone has boldly lowered the bar, with $4.99 being the highest price point for most of the titles, and the user reviews on most $4.99 titles are about how excessively expensive they are. (As if.) And many of the games are going for ninety-nine cents. Cents! Once the gold rush is over, only the lowest budget, most casual titles are going to be able to make money at that price.

Bargain basement prices are becoming the expectation. It wasn't always that way.

A Bit of Ancient History

When I first founded Spiderweb Software, in 1994, I spent a lot of time thinking about pricing my first game, Exile. Back then, there was a good rule of thumb for pricing your shareware product:

Charge half as much as the comparable product being sold in boxes on store shelves.

Back then, new games sold for $50. So Exile was $25, which was a very common price for shareware games back then.

A few years later, I started sending the registered version on a CD (instead of E-mailing a registration code). I charged $30 for a CD. Sales changed very little.

Two years later, I went back to an E-mailed code system and lowered the price back down to $25. Sales changed very little.

Three years ago, I looked at all of our expenses (credit card fees, postage, insurance, etc) and went "Holy crap! We need to raise prices to account for this." We raised our price to $28 (still about half the price of comparable products on store shelves). Since then, our money intake has actually increased. We're doing quite well now.

And yet, in the last few years, Indie game prices have been falling through the floor. They get more and more expensive to write but are approaching unheard of levels of cheapness. ($10. $5. $1.)

So What's the Problem, Loudmouth?

Some games being sold cheap doesn't bother me. Some games SHOULD be sold cheap. Braid and World of Goo, both fantastic games, are perfectly priced at $15 for 6-7 rich, no-filler hours of play. $28 would be too much for them.

What bothers me is the increasing number of outlets where low, low prices, no matter what the quality or depth or size of the game, are the expectation. (hi2u Amazon and iTunes) This squeezes out the niche products. Niche products (like single-player RPGs, adventure games, wargames) are going to have small, intense audiences. They need to charge a fair price to survive. And that means taking all the factors into account.

How Should You Price An Indie Game?

The difference between an amateur and a professional is that the professional knows how much to charge for his or her work. When people argue about how much an Indie game should sell for, they tend to ignore several important factors that should go into the decision:

• How Big is the Game? - Braid lasts about 6 hours, or about $2.50 an hour. A little on the pricey side, but the game gets away with it by being so fun. Our newest game, Geneforge 5: Overthrow, lasts about 30 hours, or less than a buck an hour (not counting considerable replay value). $28 seems very fair.
• How Niche Is the Game? - Economics says that scarcer things should sell for more. A Bejeweled clone is common and thus should be cheap. Good single-player RPGs are scarce. They should sell for more.
• How Much Do I Need To Earn To Live? - Suppose your game takes a year to write and thus, counting salaries, needs to earn about $100K to break even. If you sell it on iTunes for $.99, after Apple's cut, you need to sell around 130000 copies to break even. That is a LOT of copies. A spiffy and addictive puzzle game (which is harder to write than you think) might sell that many. A plot-heavy niche RPG? No.

When you price your game, you take the factors into account and you come up with a number. Then you try to sell the game. And if the number you need to charge is too high for what the portals will let you charge? You have a real problem. And, when good games get squeezed out of the market because of penny pinching, we all have a problem.

Indie developers are harmed by a blanket idea of what their games "should" cost. Everyone who allows this bargain basement attitude is part of the problem.

Oh, And a Quick Note For Those Who Disagree With Me ...

If you don't care about the people who work so hard to entertain you being able to charge a price that enables them to survive, I have no interest in what you have to say.

Why You Shouldn't Go Cheap, and What You, Yes You, Should Do

This is already pretty TLDR for a blog post. Next week, I'll give some of the reasons to sell games cheaply (I've heard them all over the years) and why they are bogus. And I'll give some suggestions for how everyone can maintain a market in which ALL Indies can survive.