Avadon Out For Windows, Responding To Critics.

We finally released Avadon: The Black Fortress for Windows. So far, it is functional and selling very well. I am really heartened to the reaction to the game. It is doing way better than I thought it would, and it's doing me a world of good to know that a game I put so much heart into doesn't appear to suck.

Because my morale is so high, I am going to do something I almost never do. I am going to go to a forum full of people who hate my games, my writing, and the mere fact that I still draw oxygen on this planet. Namely, the Avadon thread on RPG Codex.

RPG Codex is an interesting place. It is inhabited by people who like role-playing games, but love hating them. It's full of anger and enough raw bigotry that I would never advertise there. But, if you want to keep your self-esteem under control and read bad things about a game you wrote, go there. Just don't ever let those people get into your head.

So, if you are interested in what it's like to write a game and get feedback from the vast madness of the internet, take a look at these threads (mildly NSFW). Here are some comments from the thread, and my responses to them.

"I love Vogel's games but damn the demo is so boring..."

"The demo area is small and extremely crappy"

Demos are always boring. Tutorials are always dull. There are two ways of doing a demo. One - Put the player in a training wheels dungeon and teach him or her enough to play the real game. Two - Set up a really big, flashy set piece to start the game, and have the player wander through it doing nothing.

They both have their points. I've done both. But tutorials are always work. That is life.

By the way, while my demos are smaller than they used to be, they are still some of the longest demos out there. My demos used to be longer than some other full games, but, to be brutally honest, that's just bad business.

"Anyway, party members not dying but being just unconscious and resurrected after combat ends. DECLINE"

When you're designing an RPG, there are lots of toggles you have to flip. Will people recover from their wounds over time or do they have to go back to town? Will the party jump between towns/dungeons or will the whole outdoors be explorable? Will items be automatically identified? Do you have to keep track of ammo for your bows? Each answer to these questions has its good as bad points. There are no right or wrong answers. You just pick what works best for the design.

There are people who will, for religious issues, say they will never ever buy your game if you make one of these choices or the other. Ignore them and do what is best for what you're trying to do.

Oh, and there are some people who will respond to things about your work by posting an angry smily or some other image meme. Ignore these people. If they had anything valuable to say, they would use words, like people, instead of jpgs.

"I do loathe the worldmap. A single large continent shaped like a rough circle does not an interesting map make. Dunno why it bothers me the way it does but it does. "

Oh. Come. On.

There is an important lesson here for indie developers. When you make a game with a small team, you have millions of decisions to make and little time in which to make them. There isn't time to second guess everything. For a lot of stuff, you have to make the call and move on.

When people nitpick, you can't take it to heart. You have to forgive yourself. People will always nitpick. To borrow a phrase from my favorite SF story ever, the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.

"Got bored with the demo as soon as I was sent to the beginner dungeon to fight rats and spiders. What a lousy piece of shit game."

You are right. I'm sure those two minutes of gameplay were crushingly disappointing!

"It seems like he put in a lot of effort to attract the casual crowd. The "casual" difficulty mode for people who are "new to fantasy RPGs"?"

A lot of complaints that the early game, especially on Normal difficulty, is too easy. When someone says that the default difficulty should be harder, what I hear is, "You should make a pile of money in your backyard and set it on fire."

I make the default difficulty easy enough that 90% of players can get through it. If this doesn't give you a challenge, play on a harder difficulty level. That is why it is there!

Sheesh.

"Yep, Jeff fucked this one up a bit - although not as bad as some people put it. Give him some credit, go to TPB and help yourself."

By TPB, the poster means The Pirate Bay. In other words, he's saying to go pirate it. I honestly think that most of these complaints are not sincere. They're just pretending the game is bad to justify their pirating it (and playing the whole thing three times). Another good reason to be very careful about whose feedback you accept.

"I am seriously disappointed. Shittiest Spiderweb game so far. By a lightyear.  Will definitely not register the demo."

"Hope that it'll flop commercially"

"Started the game right now and I'm lacking words to describe my disappointment."

"Jeff Vogel went full retard"

"I wonder if Spiderweb is going to survive it..."

I think we'll be just fine.

As I said, the game is doing great. A lot of people are playing my bland, dull, derivative demo and saying, "Hey! Want more of that!" This is the biggest lesson for small developers. People who post on forums are a tiny, tiny portion of your audience. Read them occasionally. Pick through them for the rare tidbit of good feedback. But otherwise keep a respectful distance.

And, to those who have registered, thank you so much! I love flattery, but, in the end, there is no compliment better than a credit card number. That people are actually giving me their real, hard-earned money is incredibly flattering, and I thank you for making it possible for me to write Avadon 2.

Edit: I've closed comments. I think everyone who wanted to say something has had a fair chance. Thank you for the bits of interesting feedback. I will be doing more blogging on some of the issues raised. If you have more reasons why I am not cool anymore, you will have a chance to share them then.

Shameless Self-Promotion.

The gaming site GameBanshee was kind enough to call our newest game, Avernum 6, in their annual awards. We were runner-ups in the Independent RPG of the Year and RPG Game of the Year categories. Thank you very much!

This sort of thing is exciting to me, and not just because of the obvious self-esteem and greed motivations. The recession has been really rough on the gaming press, and, because of that, it's been rough on us. Many of the writers and editors who liked to cover us lost their jobs, and many of the small news outlets that were willing to cover humble Indie games like ours disappeared or were absorbed. It's been depressing.

The hardest part about being a small Indie is getting attention. Press coverage is oxygen. It takes the tenacity of the cockroach to eventually find editors who are willing to say, "Sure, they're small, but I believe in what they're doing. I'm going to back them up." And, when it happens (such as the recent coverage of us in PC Gamer), I'm incredibly grateful.

Avadon Developer Diary #5 - Getting It Done.

This will probably be the last developer diary for Avadon: The Black Fortress. We hope to release it for the Macintosh at the end of February. Then the process of porting it to Windows and the iPad shall commence. Of course, I could get the flu or be hit by a truck, which will alter the release schedule slightly.

The first preview of Avadon recently appeared on Inside Mac Games. There's a lot of good information there.

I've already written diaries about the origin of the game, the tone, the sorts of decisions that need to be made, and the character classes. For me, the longest, most grueling part of writing the game is making the scenario. Dungeons have to be designed. Dialogue needs to be written. Gold coins, clay pots, and spoons need to be placed. In other words, the game itself needs to be made.

That process finally ended last week, meaning that we're in the endgame. Time to wrap up all the odd details and kick the game out the door! This is what I generally call the OHGODOHGODITBURNSGETITOFFMEGETITOFFMEEEEEEEEE phase.

This process, during which everyone involved is pretty much running off fumes, has several parts: Odds and Ends, Endgame Balance, Bug Fixing, and Getting the Game Stable.

Odds and Ends

There are always lots of aggravating parts of the job of writing a game that I put off and put off. Now they can't be put off anymore. Every job I hate. Doing the sound effects. And writing the documentation (and hint book). And making the game icon, and the installer. Nothing can be delayed anymore.

A lot of this work is very important, as they determine a player's first impression. Things like the icon and the starting music and art are the first things a player will experience. These details require a lot of attention, so I work on them at a time when I can focus on them as much as possible.

For Avadon, I've put a lot of work into directing the art at the beginning of the game so that they help the player understand a complicated world, with a lot of intricate politics. The early moments of the game can't be wasted. I want to intrigue the player with the story at every possible moment.

Endgame Balance

Balancing the end of the game is particularly difficult. There are several reasons for that. First, there is a wide spread in power levels among players. The dedicated grinders and min-maxers have made characters that are about as powerful as the game allows. More casual players have characters who have fallen farther and farther behind. An encounter that is challenging to a hardcore player will be impossible for a casual player, and an encounter that is tough for a casual player is probably painfully easy for the serious player.

It's a very difficult target to hit, complicated by the fact that at least some of the epic battles at the end of the game should have some pushback to them. They should feel a little tough.

So I try to make the late game fights hard but not impossible for the more casual players. I also try to put in some optional endgame fights that are a real challenge for the toughest players. These two targets are actually tricky to hit precisely, and it requires a lot of feedback and rebalancing.

In Avadon, I want the player to be able to challenge Redbeard for control of the Black Fortress. I want this fight to be soul-crushing, but, with great skill, preparation, and luck, winnable. This is an extra-difficult target to hit. Making something almost impossible is hard. Still, I think I'm getting close.

Bug Fixing and Getting the Game Stable

Of course, this should happen. Now that the game is mostly done, I am getting to the point where everything has been tested and is basically playable. Now that I am trying to actually release the game, I am trying to get it to the most stable, functional point I possibly can.

It's tricky, because Avadon has a lot of player decisions that can make big changes in the ending. Fortunately, my industrious beta testers are doing a great job of trying out all the different possibilities.

This is actually a much more complicated process than it sounds. You see, whenever I make a change, even the most seemingly tiny, innocuous change, there is a chance that I just broke everything.

Games Are Like Giant Cubes of Jello

One of my favorite books on software development describes an unshipped piece of software as a ten by ten by ten foot cube of jello. When you finish it, it is wobbling and shaking. Then, slowly, the vibrations stop and it becomes stable. However, whenever you poke the jello, it starts to wobble again and it takes a long time to become still.

Avadon is a huge cube of jello that is wobbling like mad. As testers play it and don't find serious problems, it stops wobbling. When I make a change, any change at all, I poke it. When the jello is almost still, I go, "OK, I will release the game ... NOW!" and hope it isn't broken. This is how the process works at its best.

So fixing bugs now is a process of triage. When I get a bug report, I think, "Is this serious enough to risk fixing it, bearing in mind that my fix might completely mess up the game?" As we get closer and closer to the ship date, more and more minor issues get kicked off to the v1.0.1 release.

If you've ever wondered why games ship with bugs, this is part of the answer. There is no excuse for releasing a broken game. However, small flaws are always tolerated in order to avoid disaster. Perfection is for v1.0.4.

So Back To Work

If you've been reading these diaries, thank you! I hope I made Avadon sound interesting, and I hope the game is to your liking. It's been a very long road. I've put a lot of myself into this game, and it really is the sort of game I would want to play. Thus, if it turns out to be a failure, I'll have a lot of thinking to do.

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you on the flip side!

December Odds, Ends, and Rock Band 3.

A few mixed things for the month ...

Hear Me Talk About ME!

There is a nice interview of me up in Inside Mac Games. I got to say a lot of things about the game industry, Macs, DRM, and our upcoming game, Avadon: The Black Fortress. I haven't gotten lots of e-mails yet about how wrong and dumb I am, so the interview was probably a failure. But you might find it interesting.


Die, Bunny! Die!

One thing I forgot to mention about Red Dead: Redemption. I spent a lot of time hunting animals, for money, for cheevos, and to break the monotony of long horsey rides.

At one point, I shot a rabbit but only grazed it. It started flailing around on the ground in tormented agony.

Animating characters is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. And yet, someone at Rockstar took the time to animate a crippled bunny. This is the sort of excessive, terrifying craftsmanship that keeps me coming back to their games.

Pity that you don't have a radio, ala Grand Theft Auto. It wouldn't be historically accurate, but I would have loved to borrow 99 Luftballoons from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City to keep my energy levels up during long rides across Mexico.

Last Thoughts About Red Dead: Redemption

I finished Red Dead: Redemption, and I enjoyed that game as much as any I've played in a long time. The last time I wrote about it, I heard from some people who were infuriated by the awkwardness going through doors. I suppose the doors could be better, but you really spend very little of the game in places that even have doors.

(Minor spoilers ahead.)

One thing I really loved about the game: The storyline in the last ten missions or so. You see, in most games, after you kill the Head Bad Guy, that's it. You're done. Cutscene, credits, and out. But in this game, after the bad guy is gone, you then have a bunch of missions at your home. You meet your family, try to relate to your son, and work to rebuild your farm.

These missions are quiet, simple, and really quite affecting. It helps a lot that the relationships between John Marston and his wife and son are very nicely done. I really felt for them as characters and it made the last chunk of the game much more engaging. Which might make it a little bit relevant to that whole, tedious "Are games art?" argument that keeps resurfacing, no matter how much we might wish it'd stop.

Rock Band 3 Reviewish Thing

I've never hidden my huge love of Rock Band, and I've written about the series on several occasions. However, I can't work up the energy to write a Rock Band 3 review. It's got a lot of awesome songs, fantastic interface improvements, some nicely done Pro Modes that only 1% of the players will care about, and a keyboard.

But music games are a fad that is slowly choking on its own blood. Don't believe me? Look at it this way. When your development house releases its classic for the ages, and, a couple of weeks later, your owner puts you up for sale, well, not so good.

And, while the keyboard is a nice little bit of variety, it's just more of the same simple "Hit the green button. Now hit the yellow button." gameplay that most people have gotten totally tired of by now. It won't save the genre, and, considering that my half-assed efforts easily put me high up on the leaderboards, not many people are playing.

But hey, I'm a dead-ender. You'll have to pry my fakey drumsticks from my cold dead fingers. And I just dropped twenty bucks for the new Billy Joel pack. I will keep enjoying this niche genre for a while longer. But it will never again be anything but a niche genre.

Spiderweb Software's Fifteenth Birthday Sale!

(This is the official press release for our fifteenth birthday sale. I'm posting it here because it's funny. Also, shameless self-promotion and all that.)

Spiderweb Software's Fifteenth Birthday Sale!

It was fifteen years ago that fledgling Indie game developer Spiderweb Software released its first game out into the wild. This was, by game industry standards, a long time ago. Back then, small developers sold something called "shareware." The World Wide Web barely existed. People took photographs on "film." Cell phones were the size of loaves of bread. Also, dinosaurs ruled the Earth.

Yes,  the past millennium was a dark and confusing time. And yet, we prevailed, making many fine Retro fantasy role-playing games for Windows and Macintosh. And now we invite you to celebrate our continued survival by offering hefty discounts on the fruits of our labors. For the whole month of October, all collections of our games are 25% off, and everything else we sell is 10% off. CDs containing three or five deep, full-length RPGs, already sold at a discount, are now even cheaper!

So, whether you need a big pile of distractions from the recession and the cold, dark of winter, or you need a nice CD to give as a gift to a gamer friend, or you just like collecting shiny discs, we are eager to help.

Not convinced? Try out one of our huge, free demos.

And here's hoping for another fifteen years. With any luck, our 30th birthday e-mail will be sent out from inside our Pleasure Pod and will celebrate flying cars and the Cure For Death.