I've spent the day making sure Clover adheres to all the Xbox LIVE Community Games best practices. This includes making sure if anyone's stupid enough to pull out a memory card mid-game, the game handles it sensibly. Note that I say "sensibly" and not "accordingly", as if it was down to me there'd be some kind of auto-slap peripheral for the 360 to smack people across the chops for being so daft.
What, no interviews? I'm awaiting some more questions to be sent over, but there's no new live ones just yet.
I've been scripting some rats, adding in rocks, and creating functionality for variable walking speeds. All super-exciting stuff, honest. Owen's got a lot of the sound effects done, and we need to arrange some time up in London to do some mixing.
Signed up with the accountants today, and might go and buy a new laptop for the artwork some time soon, now that I know I can offset it against tax I've already paid.
I need to work out the next steps in the press assault... We're not going to be at a video-able stage for a while yet, so more screenshots would be good. If I get the time, I might consider a Clover-specific site with some teaser/background content. The tricky part is getting it designed, rather than getting it built.
The nice chaps at Develop Magazine uploaded their interview with me, and I didn't notice. As it happens, the interviewer is an ex Hastings skater... Small old world!
I actually got so excited by accounting last night that I couldn't sleep. Sad I know, but the prospect of getting some free money and being able to buy stuff after four months of near-poverty is almost literally pant-wettingly joyous.
An interview with my good self is now up on Gamers Daily News. I finished another this morning, and have one more to do tomorrow for a large British print mag, which should be fun.
Progress report? Why, of course! Improving loading speed, and adding little animations to tell you the game's saving, only to find that recent improvements I made in the file IO code mean that it's so quick you don't notice anyway.
My bedtime reading tonight is Tax For Small Businesses... Fun!
I've spent today doing the usual - building the game world, doing a bit of scripting, writing a bit of code. Most importantly I've fixed an issue with fade in/out transitions running slow-as-hell on the 360. Whenever you go from one map to another in Clover, the 'page' will fade to white and then back in again.
I really need to beef my knowledge of HLSL, and how that whole shader melarkey works. Book recommendations by email please!
I've also had an interesting conversation with Jason from Novaleaf (creators of Biology Battle) regarding sales figures. I can now unveil that Mervin The Country Mouse was in fact BB, and that it was Novaleaf citing sales of circa 6,000. BB features a unique-to-XBLCG leaderboard that has been feeding them their figures, and seems like a water-tight method for tracking unique copies.
When applying the methodology I outlined in the previous post Jason came up with a far higher figure than his leaderboards suggest. Hopefully for all of us, his leaderboard has a bug! On a more serious note, the good news is that BB has been increasing sales as time goes on, rather than tailing off. This is definitely a good sign, and indicates good word-of-mouth referrals of the title, which isn't at all surprising seeing as it's jolly good fun.
Looking for Clover?
I've spent some time over the last couple of days trying to make some sort of estimate of Xbox LIVE Community Games sales volumes, with the help of a few friendly developers. As some of you are aware, there are no official figures available for anyone involved in the initiative.
The two primary data sources are VGChartz.com 's XBLA sales estimates and Retronator's Popularity Meter. Any results I've derived are therefore as flawed as these data sources. The most glaring assumption* here is that the Popularity Meter ranks games by downloads, but I suspect it might be play time.
One XBLCG developer (who shall go unnamed) has a fair idea that their game, henceforth referred to as Mervin The Country Mouse, has sold 6,000 copies in the first two months of being available. We can look up the popularity of Mervin on the popularity meter, find the nearest XBLA title, and then refer to the sales estimates provided by VGChartz. As it happens, most Community Games have experienced constant popularity for the last 31 days.
Using the above method, Mervin appears to have sold 716 copies in its second month on sale. If we know Mervin has sold a total of 6,000 copies, then it must have sold 5,284 copies in its first month, giving a drop-off rate of around 13%.
We're now going to look at the XBLCG poster-title, Weapon Of Choice. In the popularity ratings we can see it's performing comparably to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which sold 1,473 copies in a 5.8 day period.
- 1,473 divided by 5.8 gives a daily sales rate of 254ish copies
- 254 multiplied by 31 days gives a second-month sales rate of 7,873.
- Applying the inverse drop-off rate to second month sales gives first month sales of 60,622.
Therefore, we can estimate that Weapon Of Choice has sold 68,495 copies.
Obviously there's a lot of assumptions being made there. As pointed out to me by Weapon Of Choice's creator Nathan Fouts, TMNT will most likely have a very high conversion rate, as it's an arcade conversion of a popular game. We could rework the figures using another more typical title.
So, what's the average conversion rate for XBLA titles, which is our most comparable market? Luckily Microsoft have announced figures for trial downloads, which clock in at an impressive 110,000,000. VGChartz estimates total sales of 28,182,946, giving us a conversion rate of about 25%.
Microsoft also once announced that they would delist XBLA titles with a conversion rate of lower than 6%. We can assume that this is a very poor rate, and most titles would achieve greater than this (dependent on quality, obviously!).
With these two conversion rates, we can at least figure out an expected and worse case scenario. Find a title comparable to your own, apply the above methodology to find your expected scenario. Multiply that by four (getting total downloads based on the average conversion rate of 25%) and then apply the 6% worst case conversion rate to get your it's-all-gone-wrong figures.
*It's also of note that the popularity lists for XBLA and XBLCG titles re the same when looking at demos and full games. We can assume that it's counting both in one bucket.
Y'know, for a change, I don't have much to say.
I've spent the day working on the scripting for the opening scene of Clover, which will be unashamedly familiar to anyone who's played Fantastic Dizzy. It's starting to come together quite nicely, even if I do say so myself.
The afternoon was spent number-crunching, trying to wrestle some sense out of various Xbox LIVE Community Games sales estimates. I'm going to post the results on here on Wednesday I expect, but they vary from bearable to really rather fantastic. I'm hoping it's the latter, but I'm certainly not banking on it.
Looking for Clover?
The first two interviews have been posted online at El33tOnline and the rather lengthily-titled A Little Bit On The Awesome Side, which is a name I approve of wholeheartedly. It's been great communicating with genuinely courteous people about something I'm obviously interested in... It's a far cry from some of the herculean ineptitude I had to put up with in the finance world. Any of my old colleagues will know what I'm talking about!
Artwork is continuing apace, with one of the more important areas of the game world (the town of Trigfere) nearly done. I've spent the day making simple things complicated, swearing at my 360, but ultimately coming up with the goods. Once again the collision detection looked like playing up, but I managed to wrestle the beast back into its cavern.
I've had a nice chat with Nathan Fouts, creator of the spiffing Weapon Of Choice. I've got in touch with some nice peeps in this endeavour. If one of Microsoft's aims with the Community Games project was to foster a co-operative community, I for one think it's succeeded.
If you've just turned up here for the first time and are looking for information on Clover, please scroll down or use the links over to your right.
Things have finally returned to something resembling 'normal' around here. The response to our press release was fantastic, and since then I've been spending a lot of my time replying to emails, organising interviews and answering questions. I genuinely don't think we could have hoped for it to go any better. At last count, we were at around 10 interview requests and over 50 websites reporting the story.
So, back to the grindstone then! This weekend I spent some time with Chris Chillingworth, making small amendments to the soundtrack he's written. As soon as I find some convenient MP3 hosting, I'll post some of the demos. There's one track in particular that has an orgasmically simple hook.
Jeanette's building houses and looking at animation, and I've been busy transcribing the soundtrack, investigating loading algorithms and building the game world. I've got a super-exciting meeting with an accountant on Tuesday, too.
Right, I'm off to teach some kids how to throw people head-first and then stamp on their faces.
At last, I can finally talk about what we've spent the last few months working on.
Clover is a game in the vein of classic titles like the Dizzy series, brought bang up to date without all the frustrations of the older games. We've got autosave, and we've binned 'lives' and 'energy', meaning some people might actually get to finish our first title.
As you can see from the screenshot, the artwork is painted in watercolour by Jeanette Abrahamsen and Paul Alexander Thornton, and the presentation repeats this organic paper feel throughout the game and it's UI.
Here's an excerpt from the press release, replete with corporate big-ups, intolerable sales talk and quite wonderful quotes from my good self.
Binary Tweed Ltd. today announced the return of the classic platform-puzzle adventure with début title Clover, to be released in Q1 '09 via Xbox LIVE Community Games for 400 Microsoft Points. Rendering a much-missed genre in watercolour, accompanied by melancholy piano pieces and laced with political themes, Clover embodies Binary Tweed's frank motto of “New games that are a bit like old games, but better.”
Set in a medieval world ruled by a monarchy with a welfare state, Clover tells the story of Sam, an adolescent teenager. Recently orphaned after his lone parent mother died in a shock attack on the proud nation of Sanha, Clover follows Sam's journey of discovery as he explores the land and events surrounding his loss.
Clover is a plot-driven platformer in the style of classic titles such as Fantastic Dizzy that sees the player solve logical puzzles by collecting items, talking to a diverse cast of characters and exploring artistically realised environments. Featuring many hours of gameplay and plot development, Clover promises value-for-money beyond other Xbox LIVE Community Games. The game innovates on its predecessors with modern gameplay mechanics, such as unique and forgiving alternatives to player 'health' and 'death'.
“Clover is a game about artwork and plot; so much so that we're struggling to fit everything within the size limit,” said Daniel 'Deejay' Jones, Managing Director of Binary Tweed. “We wanted to make a game that has the artistic charm to appeal to a broad audience, whilst exploring issues that communicate to adult gamers.”
I'm down in East Sussex recording with Christopher. We've still got three tracks to write, but I've already got ideas for these. All those years in recording studios as a teenager have paid off at last!
For the soundtrack we've decided against using any overtly modern or electric sounds. In fact, at this rate it might end up using only piano. The music is going to be fantastically important in terms of setting the mood of the game, so we've got to get it just right. We're writign and demoing at this stage, then I'll go back to London and transcribe the tracks to MIDI to clean them up. After that, we'll record the final versions in perfect timing.
Tomorrow is P-Day, when I go to the press. I can then come clean on the various forums I've been mingling on about what we're developing, which will be a relief. Looking forward to seeing community reaction, because at present it's mostly only people involved in the project that have seen it.
I might try and get in touch with a certain pair of twins tomorrow...
One cunning chap from the world of inforweb forums has figured out what that game's about. 10 points to that man! Nice to have some positive feedback from someone who's not close to the project.
Jeanette's taken the day off (it is the weekend after all) and I've been tinkering with the scripting engine. We've got NPCs jumping, people getting arrested, and farmers shouting "get off my land!" I've also fixed yet another damned collision issue.
Tomorrow we're off to Chris Chillingworth's to work on the soundtrack. We've got a total of nine tracks to write, and four that are down provisionally. Additionally there's some vocal work that we might try and squeeze in, which is going to be entertaining if nothing else.
Can't wait to get the press releases out, and start approaching a certain few people. Will be interesting to see the reactions from a certain pair of twins...
Ha! Just realised there's a pun in the title of this post too!
It's been an interesting few days in Binary Tweed Towers.
The marketing machine is all geared up and ready to go; however our first one-in-a-hundred chance shot at achieving massive publicity has fallen on its arse. No doubt trying to issue a press release from an unknown developer to one of the biggest gaming sites in the world when CES is on wasn't the best strategy I could have chosen, but you have to try!
I've been doing some more informal research that's bordering on guerrilla marketing, and the results of that look promising. There's a lot of affection for games of the ilk we're creating.
I categorically promise that next week, everything will be public and I'll finally be able to talk about our product. That's when it'll all get really interesting.
In terms of progress, the artwork is coming along nicely now, and we're got a project plan that seems reasonable accurate. I've been adding UI polish and building the game world, and fixing another issue with collision detection.
It's Jitsu season again, and so far the Foundation has had 12 hours of my week, and I'm supposed to be training tomorrow for three hours...
Aah... Back in the days of band management, we were encouraged to garner attention by telling outright lies and jokes in our press releases. I'm trying to work out if such a tactic will work on games journalists, and if any of them will remember Codemasters' marketing strategies from the late 1980's.
Probably not is the conclusion I'm coming to. That won't stop me referencing the moustache though.
Naturally when engaging in a business venture, it's prudent to do a bit of research.
Estimating sales figures for Xbox Live Community Games has proven to be a pretty tricky task. The closest similar market is naturally Xbox Live Arcade, and even here sales figures are seldom publicly announced. VGChartz.com does a good job of estimating sales based on a clever web-crawling methodology, but it's still not accurate.
An enterprising chap on the XNA Creators Club forums has come up with another polling tool that checks the Xbox Live Most Popular list on a regular basis. Based on this we can work out approximately what sales volume Community Games are achieving, by comparison to estimated figures for XBLA titles adjacent in the rankings. Current data suggest that Community titles may be selling at levels equal to 20th best-selling Arcade title, which is no mean feat at around 2,000 copies in an average week.
There's a caveat to that, however. There's speculation that these popularity lists aren't entirely accurate in the first place, and that it's counting trial downloads as full game downloads.
Our research has shown so far, on admittedly small samples, that we can expect Community games as a whole to achieve around 15% of Arcade sales. The market shows clear sign for expansion as a significant proportion of respondents had not even checked out the Community Games Marketplace, and others still said that they'd be more inclined to spend points on a larger number of cheap titles.
In conclusion? I'm concerned for the developers basing business decisions on the optimistically-high popularity-based figures, and all developers would do well to market not only their wares, but also CG initiative as a whole in order to reach 'unconverted' market potential.
I've spent almost all of today specifying the locations of doors, stairs and trees in an XML file. I don't think it would be an overstatement to say my brain is about to dribble out of my ear, such is the tedium.
Don't let anyone ever tell you games development is glamorous!
I've been checking out some of the other Community Games titles, and I downloaded Writer's Block yesterday. It's a point and click game, the style of which was popularised by the likes of Monkey Island, back in the day when my PC had 4Mb of RAM.
Writer's Block has very nicely done artwork, and a professional-looking startup screen. It's let down by two factors in my opinion: an incredibly dull starting room with a puzzle I couldn't figure out before the trial expired, and an absolutely woeful control scheme. I'm sure I spent half the trial swearing at the damned thing.
It's a shame what looks like a promising title is let down by such factors. I'm opening myself to a retrospective torrent of abuse on our title's usability here, but why on Earth emulate the control scheme from the oldest of adventure games? Why not the in-line, context-sensitive versions of later titles?
Seeing how such 'minor' considerations can ruin a title, makes one realise how much even the small details matter to the average gamer; even if they don't realise it.
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