Cliff Harris over @ Positech Games[^] asked all the pirates out there what drove them to pirate his games.
Needless to say he started a nice little flamewar and his blog[^] crashed under the pressure of all the traffic. But he actually got loads of sensible(and insensible, I am sure) answers…
It’s absolutely worth the read, as there are som great insight into how pirate-gamers think, and why they *do* pirate games.

So head on over to  his summary page from his little “project” and see why Pirates do pirate games. Talking to Pirates[^].

I guess I have entered a summer hiatus at the moment. Too much to do that don’t involve sitting in front of the computer, so naturally there’s some time between my posts currently.
And when I *do* sit in front of the computer(when it rains and stuff..) I usually work on our game or play Age of Conan. AoC is quite a fun game, but it has it’s lacks as do all MMO’s around today in my opinion.
I’m gonna write up a post about my views and thoughts around Age of Conan and today’s MMO-trend soonish, as soon as my hiatus is finished

I have joined the Vintage Game Club started by Michael Abbott over at Brainy Gamer[^]. And next week, we will start to play through Grim Fandango! I never got to finish that game, so it’s gonna be loads of fun.
You can find more info about The Vintage Game Club over at Brainy Gamer[^]. Even if you’re not interested in the Vintage Club, I suggest you go over there to check out his blog anyway. Cause he has some incredible insights about the more intellectual sides of gaming.

Oh and I will write up an official statement about the game we’re working on soon too, so stay tuned!

I am sad to say that I have been procrastinating even more lately, but that’s mostly because of lack of energy from fixing my back/neck, and a surgery I had to extend my Achilles tendon earlier this year.

Lately though, I have finally got back most of my energy and I am eager to start diving deep into TGE to see how to best make our planned game, but then my computer died…. Gah!!
Luckily it’s a known problem with HP lappies, so I’ll get it back in 2 weeks time or so… 2 weeks… yay!

Anyway, some updates.
As you might have guessed from what I wrote above, we have finally decided on a game engine; Torque Game Engine. With it’s nice low price for indie developers, I found it perfect for our studio, and the engine is way beyond my expectations too.
Our 3D-modeller, Ståle, have made a few models, and as soon as he makes some textures to put on them and I get some landscape going in TGE, we will see about making some early-stage screenshots to show off what we’re working with.
By that time we’ll announce what kind of project we’re working on too and post some more details about our ideas surrounding the concept.

So stay tuned for more information about our under-development game!

A few weeks ago, I promised to compile a list of articles about how to start a Game Studio. After some searching around, I have found a few very nice articles that are out there.
I will update this list as I stumble over more good articles, but keep in mind that I actually read them before posting them, so it might take some time

Anyway, let’s get on to the list!

Starting Your Own Game Company[^] - by Gregg Man. It’s aimed primarily against starting a professional Game Studio, and he has a lot of good advice. But it’s all applicable for an Indie Game Studio too.

How to start and run a computer games company[^] - by Matthew Stibbe. It’s quite old(written in 2001), but it still holds great advice for starting a Game Studio. He focuses mostly on publishing, marketing and finances and what to think about while starting up. A good read for a starting studio.

How To: Create your own game company, Part One[^] & Part Two[^] - by Victor Agreda, Jr. Part one deals mainly with some different resources you should consider when starting up. Lots of good suggestions there. Part two deals with the business part of starting up. Both parts are good articles and he lists tons of links to other related articles and the resources he mentions.

Five Realistic Steps To Starting A Game Development Company[^] - by Jeff Tunnell. A very good guide of how it is to start up as a Game Developer. He starts from the hobbyist stage and work his way up from there.
Be warned though, this article is just a teaser for his upcoming ebook, can’t wait till it’s finished!

The birth of a new game studio[^] - by Daniel Sánchez-Crespo Dalmau. Another 2001 article, but a very good read with loads of good advice. It’s more an account of how they started a game studio than a howto, but that doesn’t make it less valuable.

How to start your own games studio part One[^] & Part Two[^] - by Mark Morris. Part One deals mainly with the decision to start independently and the process of Idea generation, with lots of good advice around how to go about the process. Part Two extends the idea generation and talks about making the prototype of your game. I am looking forward to any future articles in this series from Mark.

An excerpt of what I myself have learned from reading all these articles.

• Use free software where possible, but if you can afford a game engine, it’s highly recommended to buy one. It will save you so much time, it’s without question worth it.
• Build a solid idea and then make a prototype of that idea. It’s while making the prototype you really will discover if this is something you want or are able to do.
• Learn team-building. There are tons of good articles and books about team-building out there, and if you want to start your own studio, you will need all the advice you can get.
• Get someone who knows his/her economics, or try to strike a good deal with an accountant.
• Marketing. You can do viral marketing while building your network, but again, this is usually not too easy without a prototype to show off. I would also recommend joining gamerelease.net[^], it’s cheap and it dumps you right into a already well-developed network of game contacts. And it gives you a way to publish press releases to blogs, RSS feeds etc.
• And last but not least, you need to dedicate your life to this. Game developing takes ALOT of time and resources. You can do it as a hobby, but if you want to make a living from your game studio, it will take most of your free-time. And as Jeff Tunnell put it; Don’t quit your day job!

Hope this list will help you as much as it did me. It’s quite the nice compilation of advice for starting up a game studio. So if you’re still set on starting up, good for you and best of luck to you! And welcome to the life of a game developer.

The Kybernesis site and blog has been unavailable for some days now, and I must apologize for that.

It seems there has been some problems with my Dynamic DNS synchronizer against EasyDNS. But it seems like I finally fixed it by re-installing the application.

This gave me quite a lesson though.. I need to have a backup site for when these things happen, so I’m gonna have to put some time into that in the next few weeks.. *sigh* Even more to do! At least I enjoy the spelunkering

Oh! And I almost forgot.. I’m gonna try and post up the list of How-to guides about starting a game company in the next few days..”Only” a couple weeks late

Mark Morris of Introversion[^] has posted part 1 of an article series on bit-tech[^], titled: How To Start Your Own Games Studio[^].

The first part is an interesting read, although it mentions things you hear from anyone experienced, that you ask this question.
But I think it’s a great initiative by Mark to do this, I know there are a lot of people that ask themselves, or professionals this question. And there isn’t any place on the net where you can get an answer as straight to the point as this one.
Usually, you need to either buy a book or browse through pages and pages of a forum or a blog.

Hmmm.. That gets me thinking..  I think I will do some research on exactly that and post an overview of what I find regarding this exact question.
So stay tuned for a post coming up on this in a weeks time(I hope).

Gamecareerguide has posted a new Ask the Experts feature post: Ask the Experts: Console vs. PC Development[^] that I find very informative for anyone who wants to start developing indie games.

Consoles might be a nice platform to develop for, when it comes to possible profits, but as Jill Duffy points out, it’s usually alot more expensive to develop for them. In addition, you need to get access to the development ki, which means another money sink AND a meeting with the company making the console; Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft.

Our [Kybernesis] games will be made primarily on PC, and maybe ported to consoles when we can afford it. Cause I have the same philosophy as the panelists mentioned in the feature points out in the end. Keep costs to the minimum… At least in the start-up phase!

Gamasutra has also posted a Postmortem: How Puzzle Quest Saved Infinite Interactive[^] which gives some very good insights into developing Indie games, specifically a casual puzzle game. But their experiences could very well fit any kind of Indie developed game.

There’s an essay @ Gamasutra about gameplay patents[^] by Ernest Adams. Well worth the read!

I agree on the points he make, the US patent-system just don’t work as it is today.. It restricts freedom of creativity which in my opinion is synonymous with restricting creativity. Cause there can’t be any *real* creativity without freedom!

Imagine if everyone and their cat patented all the innovative parts of their game…. On one side, it would demand innovation in games, no matter what! On the other side, it would kill all indie-developers, since only the big companies would be able to afford the extra cost from using someone else’s patent.
Or it would kill all innovation whatsoever! Cause all the big companies would patent their innovations and stick to them, never straying from the patented path. It would be even worse than it is today…

I’m glad it isn’t like this though, and I sure hope they will remove the possibility to patent gameplay in the future.

Oh, and don’t forget programming code!! As Ernest points out, if the creators of all the sorting algorithms that we programmers use today, had patented them.. There would be no effective programming. I shudder at the mere thought…

Gamasutra has posted a talk from GDC: Dave Jones talks about APB[^].
This guy has some really good points!

He talks about how the level grind of the old days-MMO is absolete, or in his own words:

One MMO concept Jones also eschews is the traditional level grind. “How will people be playing this in six months? What’s going to keep them playing again and again and again?” He asks. “How long will I have to get all the cool stuff and level 99? …I think that’s wrong, it’s broken.”

I couldn’t agree more! There are so many other things one could incorporate into a MMO that don’t involve endless, boring grinding of some sorts..
Like player generated content, player-made stories, player-made communities. Put the player in control, and stop forcing them to blindly play with [the company’s] content.
Like he mentions too in his talk:

So Jones eliminated the concept of character levels for APB. “I didn’t want any grinding. It’s a very broken instrument to drive gameplay. It’s customization that’ll drive players.”

The day [Kybernesis] makes a MMO, we’re gonna focus on the same.. Customization, player-created content, making the world so the players make it their own world. And not giving players access to a static world of [Kybernesis’] design.

All MMO’s today brag about being dynamic, persistent, listening to their community.. Granted, MMO’s are persistent, but not all dynamic.. The only dynamic today is when the company decide to release a content-patch or an expansion. Then it just goes back to be static again… Ugh!
It has to stop!

Gamasutra have posted a really interesting interview with Team Blizzard form the 2008 DICE summit in Las Vegas on their site; “DICE: Team Blizzard On Building Its 17 Year Success[^]”.

Coming on Blizzard’s 17th anniversary as a company, the lead team — co-founder and CEO Mike Morhaime, game design senior VP Rob Pardo, and product development executive VP Frank Pearce — got together at the 2008 DICE Summit in Las Vegas to reflect, and to discuss how small steps on a long journey helped create a game industry giant.

A lot of good  insight and tips in that interview ^^