Anybody who has drifted around the game development scene (if such a “scene� can be said to exist) is likely familiar with the Gamasutra.com website and the “Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie� articles by Ernest Adams. The “No Twinkie� series points out sloppy but common design flaws in video games with the goal of shaming game designers into changing their ways.
I guess game designers have no shame (and we all know publishers don’t!) because years later all of the maligned design errors can still be found in effect. The retail shelves are still full of games that lack on-demand saving, use arbitrary time limits and have levels full of crates stacked in odd locations that no lift could ever reach.
Having spent the past year reviewing games for Game Tunnel and playing just about everything the indie community has to offer I feel that the time is right to pay homage to the “No Twinkie� articles, this time with the indie game developer in mind. Thus I present: “Bad Indie Developer, No Frappucino!�
Yes, like any self-respecting indie I am cloning the mainstream ;)
Since the indie developers I’ve encountered seem to be more health conscious than typical studio programmers I doubt they would want a Twinkie even if it were offered, so the reward here has been changed to a Frappucino. I’m aware of the irony that a Frappucino has a higher fat content than a Twinkie but let’s not descend into nutritional nitpicking.
For this first installment I found that most of my gripes are technical in nature and don’t really involve game play. For one thing, I think indie developers have been doing a great of a job in releasing quality games and backing them up with community support. Certainly our record is better than that of the retail industry.
We may be waiting an eternity for “They Came From Hollywood� to be released but when it is I’m willing to bet that it will be feature complete, competently beta tested and not require a patch twice the size of the original EXE just to get it running.
However, before we can shed light on the common game design errors of the indie community we must first be able get the damned game – and that’s where this list of unfortunate oddities begins…
Hidden Pricing On Your Website
There must be some crackpot marketing guide out there that tells people it’s best to not show the price of your product until the user clicks on the “buy� button. If there is, I’d love to forward the author the dozens of bulletin board posts where developers complain about shopping cart abandonment.
If a person has to click “buy� just to find out the price of your game then they will do so – and then quickly leave. They aren’t clicking “buy� because they have chosen to purchase your game yet; they’re doing it because you’ve given them no other alternative. The whole tactic has a greasy “used car salesman� feel to it but unfortunately it’s still a fairly common practice.
List your price clearly on your game’s information page, preferably as a part of your “buy� button layout.
Limited Registrations
There was a recent article over at Adrenaline Vault where Bob Mandel came down pretty hard against shareware registration schemes that required accessing the internet to obtain an unlock code. At first I thought the author’s stance was a little extreme but now I’ve come to see the “internet connection� method as a new symptom of the consistent and growing mistrust on the part of indie developers towards their customers.
I recommend all developers read the Adrenaline Vault article so they can understand that when a customer buys a copy of your game they should own it! They are not “temporarily licensing� anything. Besides, no matter what obnoxious registration scheme you’ve adopted they can always find a patch that circumvents it if forced to - and that’s exactly what these tactics encourage!
Hosting the full game as a separate download seems thus far to be the most effective method of combating casual hackers and it allows the customer the freedom to enjoy the product they paid for whenever and wherever they choose.
Inescapable Logos, Intros and Story Elements
This is a nasty habit borrowed from mainstream developers. As brilliant as your logo and title screen are - they aren’t your game. The player should be able to skip past anything that isn’t the game and get right down to the good stuff.
With the possible exception of Blizzard and Id (rightfully so), there is no brand loyalty when it comes to video games. Besides, the user downloaded the game from your website, they already know what your logo looks like.
I’m going to go further than some have suggested and say that the player should even be able to skip “first run� displays. It doesn’t matter if I haven’t seen the opening animation or read the back story yet. If I don’t want to then I shouldn’t have to.
Besides, I have yet to read a back story that doesn’t reek of second rate, high school creative writing. And that includes all the mainstream titles, too. The less I read about your “growing darkness that has befallen the land� the better.
It’s simple; click the mouse or hit the space key to skip past any non-game play elements.
Long Loading Or Initialization Times
Another holdover from the mainstream industry but with shareware it’s even more baffling. I understand the kind of “artificial delay� that is often used in demo versions to entice the user to buy the full game. What I don’t understand is how a game that’s less than 10 megabytes can have a 30-second loading / processing time between the main menu screen and starting the game.
Again, I suspect that the mistrust of the customer is rearing it’s ugly head because I see this most often in games where the developer had hidden or compressed their art assets into locked pak or custom files.
The funny thing is, I have yet to see a game where the quality was so good that hoarding of artwork was warranted. Sure, wannabe developers might nick a sprite or two but the community is pretty good at policing itself and it’s highly unlikely that they would get away with the theft for long. Otherwise it’s an optimization issue but either way it’s irritating and unnecessary.
Too Much Menu Navigation
I forget who first suggested it but the best guideline for developing your menu navigation is that “the player should never be more than two clicks away from a game�.
A recent game I played required four levels of menu that had to be navigated before you could start playing and three levels to get back out. A brilliant menu system isn’t going to sell anyone on your game; your goal should be to get the user playing as fast a possible.
Too Many Pages Of Instructions
People in general are notoriously bad for not reading instructions so don’t make it any more difficult on them than it needs to be. I’ve seen extreme cases where there were five or more pages of pure text on how to play a game and needless to say, I never read past the first one.
If you need more than one screen to describe your game play then create interactive tutorials instead. And use one tutorial per feature, not one really long tutorial that tries to teach the whole game. Also, launching a web browser or including HTML pages and a text file doesn’t count at all towards instructing the player. It should all be in-game.
No Pause, No Escape
Few things are worse than having to backtrack through multiple levels of menus just to get to the main screen - except games that don’t use the escape key at all!
ESC is the universal key for “Crap the phone is ringing and someone’s at my door! I need to get the heck out of here!� Make sure your escape key stops the game immediately and gives the user the option to quit directly to the main menu or exit to the operating system.
Use a different key for canceling missions, returning to base or restarting any in-game activities. Escape should always be reserved for getting out of the game completely and there is no excuse for not having this feature.
Generic Windows Dialogs
You spent all this time creating great graphics and game play and then blow it all away by using crappy generic windows dialogue boxes. This isn’t 1995 and windows pop-ups don’t cut it anymore for name entry, high score tables or any aspect of your game. Even “Are you sure you want to quit?� dialogs should use custom artwork. Then your game won’t look like something you did as a project for computer science class.
Incomplete Or Obfuscated Uninstallers
The uninstall needs to be listed in the programs menu alongside your main game. Don’t make the user go into their control panel for it. I don’t know why developers like to hide their uninstallers but is seems to be a very popular thing to do.
Lastly, make sure your uninstall deletes everything – registry entries, save files, itself and even the folder it came in. So many games, even from bigger developers who should know better, are leaving empty folders, items in the start menu, saved files and even the uninstall exe on the hard drive. I can’t begin to think of what the excuse must be since most of the popular installers are easy enough to configure effectively. Check that your installer and uninstaller are working properly before releasing your game!
Conclusion
So there you have the first summary list of sloppy indie developer habits. If you are a developer did you recognize any of yourself in the above examples? Have you avoided all these pitfalls and earned yourself a Frappucino?
The most painful part of compiling this list was realizing that at various points I’ve been guilty of a number of these offences myself. Game development is an endless learning process and I hope that this will spawn some discussion in the indie community, or at least provide a forum for others to air their pet peeves. Truthfully these are only minor complaints in the overall scheme of things - to be taken as a gentle reminder that we could always do better.
If you are an indie game player, did you see any gripes that you agree with? If so then I would recommend e-mailing developers you see committing these or other errors and let them know how you feel. Believe it or not (despite the seeming mistrust) indie developers are extremely open to input from the gaming public and more often than not your e-mail goes directly to the person responsible for the error. That’s the kind of direct communication that you just can’t get with retail products.
Can you think of anything that I missed or do you disagree with any of these points? Post your thoughts here for open discussion or e-mail us for inclusion in a possible future follow-up article.
Action
Adventure
Arkanoid
Fighting
Platform
Puzzle & Casual
Hidden Object
RPG
Shooter
Simulation
Sports
Strategy
Download Games
