AuthorTopic: Few Questions / Comments from a new game dev.  (Read 8015 times)

Offline DesignerMichael

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 26
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Few Questions / Comments from a new game dev.

Reply #10 on: September 07, 2008, 03:12:23 am
Another example of a big game... 320,000 users/month. It may have a decent formula... But, damn thats a lack of quality for a game that pulls thousands a month net profit...

http://designermichael.com/share/Armies.gif
http://designermichael.com/share/Armies2.gif

Although, that "GET TO THE CHOPPA!" Part is funny as hell...

Maybe I should make a text based game in a couple months after my two current projects are live and cleaned up... So easy, and they do pretty well.
« Last Edit: September 07, 2008, 03:15:46 am by DesignerMichael »

Offline DesignerMichael

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 26
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Few Questions / Comments from a new game dev.

Reply #11 on: September 07, 2008, 08:35:35 am
Honestly, I'm not even sure graphics really matter in game dev, except to be recognizable and non-confusing. Formula/wording seems to be the big thing.

Look at how big kingdom of loathing is... They have a reported profit of around 1-2mil from this game in the last two years. That is one of the funniest games ever... It's got Moxy! LoL! It has around 60,000 users/month. Pretty good for a game with stick figures. :)
http://kingdomofloathing.com
http://www.quantcast.com/kingdomofloathing.com
« Last Edit: September 07, 2008, 08:41:02 am by DesignerMichael »

Offline Larwick

  • 0011
  • **
  • Posts: 738
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • Larwick
    • http://www.pixeljoint.com/p/3794.htm
    • View Profile
    • Artstation

Re: Few Questions / Comments from a new game dev.

Reply #12 on: September 07, 2008, 03:08:46 pm
Honestly, I'm not even sure graphics really matter in game dev, except to be recognizable and non-confusing. Formula/wording seems to be the big thing.

Look at how big kingdom of loathing is... They have a reported profit of around 1-2mil from this game in the last two years. That is one of the funniest games ever... It's got Moxy! LoL! It has around 60,000 users/month. Pretty good for a game with stick figures. :)
http://kingdomofloathing.com
http://www.quantcast.com/kingdomofloathing.com

The difference may be that they realise that their art is 'crappy'. It's bad because it's their style, almost their talking point or trait. When you're making a game, if you aim to produce low quality graphics that may be okay, but if you go into it expecting to produce decent graphics and yet they turn out as something like that, you're in trouble.

In fact, they're not even necissarily bad, just different. Because they were aiming for that 'style'. When you aim high but hit low, it's more noticeable.

Offline DesignerMichael

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 26
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Few Questions / Comments from a new game dev.

Reply #13 on: September 08, 2008, 05:55:03 am
Interesting...

Well, I don't think it's a matter of "Aiming high and hitting low.", as it's a matter of people building games where the graphical quality doesn't match across the board. Eg, they hire a high quality illustrator, and a low quality sprite artist. Then it makes the game look bad because the illustration was so much better than the sprites.

Any thoughts on that?

It's like where Daniel-Day Lewis absolutely was such an amazingly good actor in Gangs of New York and out shined DiCaprio so bad it hurt the movie... lol


Edit: For some reason this made me think of when I use to play tibia... Oh my god that game was awesome... Talking to cast a spell! Then I pissed off the wrong guild and got hunted down to level 1... LoL! That was the bad thing about the game. Don't even remember how that all went down... Hunting dragons was soo crazy fun!

I never liked fighting in runescape... I was even a member. I did lots of fishing and smithing, but fighting in RS never appealed to me. I guess it's because I only player ranged characters... Achers/mages... And non-melee classes were just not that much fun in RS.

Maplestory is just plain incredible across the board...
« Last Edit: September 08, 2008, 06:21:49 am by DesignerMichael »

Offline sharprm

  • 0011
  • **
  • Posts: 660
  • Karma: +0/-3
  • INTP/INTJ
    • View Profile

Re: Few Questions / Comments from a new game dev.

Reply #14 on: September 14, 2008, 08:37:04 am
edit: for reference, here is some good cute isometric art

http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=3923.0
« Last Edit: September 14, 2008, 10:59:43 pm by sharprm »
Modern artists are told that they must create something totally original-or risk being called "derivative".They've been indoctrinated with the concept that bad=good.The effect is always the same: Meaningless primitivism
http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/Philosophy/phi

Offline DesignerMichael

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 26
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Few Questions / Comments from a new game dev.

Reply #15 on: September 14, 2008, 02:23:36 pm
Edit: Job offer posted. Might as well just bite the bullet and have them redone now...
http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=7095


Yea... I kinda did eventually figure that out. Some of the latest stuff is too crappy to even use. He also send me examples drawn by a different artist that were not his originally, they were actually made by Evo3... I think thats who he ripped his examples off of.

Ill be sure to post a job offer in a bit. I'm going to finish off the game code within the next couple days and send a few thousand in traffic at it to see if it virals. If it doesn't... Ill put up a job offer here for a couple grand to have a bunch of the sprites redone and improved. :) 2k would be like... $2000 / $30 = 66 Hours * 2 = 100-130 sprites? Even if it does virally spread with the current graphics... I will still eventually have all the graphics redone within a few months.

Btw, the other job I mentioned was for a different game. Me and my partner are searching for a good vector artist for that one. We decided vector art would be better for that game. He's not partnered with me on this virtual farming social app.
« Last Edit: September 14, 2008, 03:37:02 pm by DesignerMichael »