The story of our game startup or "What to do ???"

    Hello. In this article, I will share with you our experience in creating a game-making startup in St. Petersburg.

    So, it all began 2 years ago, in the spring of 2010.

    One day I woke up and realized that something had to be changed. I had a small business (website) that brought some income, which allowed me not to think where to get money for food, plus there was. And I decided that I need to do something while there is an opportunity.

    My friend ( Dartius ) (also a universal programmer) was taken by the collar and it was decided to start.

    Just at that moment, I had seen enough videos from KRI / Flashgamma and realized that the social market is a chance. It was decided to do something social.

    Training.


    My friend and I already tried to do something together (and even did, but the project did not go) and realized the main thing - working at home is almost impossible. Especially considering that a friend, unlike me, still had the main job. Forcing yourself to do something at home after work when there is a TV nearby and other benefits is sometimes difficult.

    It was decided to rent a small office and work there in the evenings.

    The office was found to be very successful - in the same business center where my friend worked at his main job - there was a small and relatively cheap office (now the prices have risen, but then we paid about 16,000 rubles for 23 squares). After comparing prices and conditions, it was decided to rent this particular office.

    So, the room is rented, bought a couple of the cheapest tables and chairs - let's go!


    (The photo was taken later, do not look at the floor - we had no cleaning for several months)

    Question two - what should I do? Having studied the social market a little, the eye caught on MyBrute, then popular - “Panda vs Elk”, that is, zero-fighting game.

    Because none of us can draw, it was decided to resort to the services of a freelancer.

    The idea of ​​zero fighting game was decided to mix with the character editor a la Spore.

    I already wrote a post-mortem of this project on Habré earlier (see the article about " Micronia ").



    Technical details of the project:

    • The client is written in Flash
    • Server - PHP + MySQL
    • Development time - approximately half a year

    VKontakte primary traffic was purchased from spammers. In “My World” and “Odnoklassniki” we went out without advertising (for this case I had to register an IP).

    Result and conclusions:

    • A good character editor was written, with whom we transported the devil knows how much.
    • The freelance artist painted, it seems, everything is fine ... But being assembled - the game still did not look very good. And here you can specify the first file - because characters were created by users, then most of the content of the game (i.e. opponents) was custom. And as a result - there were a huge number of simply disgusting creatures that scared people away.
    • Fail # 2 - animation. It turned out that animating a battle between absolutely custom creatures (with any number of limbs, etc.) is not an easy thing. And it turned out very poorly with us.
    • File # 3 - game design. We wrote the calculation of the battle more on a hunch, instead of sitting down, erasing everything that was and writing in a new way.
    • Anyway - the game turned out to be very strange and original.

    As a result, the project fails. Not many people played, they paid even less ... At the peak of fame, we earned 15 thousand rubles. per month ... And this peak was blown away.

    As a result, the project was sold (for a very small amount, comparable to a few months of profit) and we thought about it.

    Now we will definitely do it right!


    So what have we decided?

    Firstly, we decided not to reinvent the wheel anymore, but to do something that certainly should work.

    Secondly, we realized that a freelance artist is an inconvenient thing. Need a man in a team. And preferably for free (in share). :)

    As a result - after 2 unsuccessful attempts - the artist was found (though not for free - but for the hybrid model - partly in proportion, partly in a small salary so that there was something to eat).

    Regarding "what to do" - at that time (fall 2010) in our social services. networks began to gain momentum citybuilders. And there was practically nothing that would meet our quality criteria. And at the conferences they said "if you want to survive, do a farm / citybuilder."

    Having reasoned and explored the market, we decided to clone the most popular Facebook citybuilder - CityVille.

    By May we already had a demo with which we went to KRI-2011.



    There, a couple of the largest social publishers became interested in us, and promised to make us millionaires and other golden mountains.

    Returning back to Peter, we were on the wave! We’ll finish it now, finish it, and earn millions!



    It took all summer to fine-tune, debug, voice-over, drive in content (quests, houses, etc.). By the fall, we completed the game to a more or less finished product and it was decided that we were ready for a beta launch.



    They tried for a long time to find a free name for the game (there were already a lot of citybuilders for this year). We stopped at the "New City".

    Launch! (Try # 2)


    The launch took place! We were glad and had high hopes! (link to the VKontakte game )

    On the occasion of the launch of the game, we solemnly launched the balloons into the sky and had a small party in our close circle ...

    True, even then the publisher’s complete indifference to us was an alarming bell. Talk about the golden mountains was no longer going on. And in general - no one went. In 4 out of 5 cases, our Skype calls were generated. And if they were not ignored, they sometimes caused outbursts of incomprehensible swearing and other words from the category ("What are you, idiots asking such things ?!").

    It feels like everything depended on the mood of the person on that end of skype in every particular second.

    I note once again that the publisher is one of the largest in the community. And as a publisher, he promised to help us not only with traffic, but also in general - to suggest how best to monetize, how to tighten the balance, etc. But in real life - they put it on us. It turned out "here you have 100 thousand traffic and do what you want with it." Why users paid little and played - no one told us (but promised to share their experience).

    Probably, an attentive reader already by intonation guessed that the project did not take off.

    We still don’t know why the publisher’s attitude towards us turned around 180 degrees. Perhaps, closer to the launch, we just got tired of them and they got carried away with something new ... Perhaps they decided that they no longer want a city builder ...

    Conclusions No. 2 (pros / cons of our project):
    • [+] In my opinion, our artist produced excellent art. The whole picture looks very colorful and vibrant.
    • [+] We wrote an excellent, high-tech server (in Java). With the ability to scale horizontally (with all cross-server interactions, etc.)
    • [+] We used heaps of technology. For example, Alchemy - to quickly find the way. And the shaders on PixelBender are for pulling colored textures on humans (as in this method ).
    • [-] Count. the engine required processing - in large cities the download speed, and indeed the work - left much to be desired.
    • [-] We could not understand why the project had a small ARPU at the start. There simply was not enough experience in marketing and monetization of social networks.
    • [-] In the first version of the game there was not much content.

    But in general - the game looked very viable.

    But no. The publisher generally went to ignore. And that’s all. (Thank God that we did not manage to sign any contracts and did not transfer any rights ... but we managed to create the LLC that the publisher wanted for this business).

    Well little one! Well, a bit more!


    I did not want to drop the project. No joke! More than a year of work, a lot of effort expended, a lot of money (office + artist).

    It was decided to move in two ways:

    1. Rewrite the graph. an engine to speed up the whole thing (in the process we were so carried away that we wrote a thing fundamentally unique to flash - see below).

    2. Trying to find either a publisher who will take our hand and help, or even an investor (since another artist and game designer would not hurt us).

    But it was decided to do this after the New Year, and now (a couple of months remained) - we decided to quickly rivet the project for iOS. Just to unwind, and we (as it turned out to no avail) were looking for an investor.

    Flash on iOS => Jungle Rush


    I already wrote about our mobile game . We decided to try what flash is capable of for mobiles (Air). Anyway - probe the App Store.

    Result:
    • The game is made in a month and a half
    • Flash in some places did not please with performance (and as it turned out, it crashes on some old devices, apparently due to memory)
    • Sales did not go. In total, they earned less than $ 100.



    New Year!


    At the beginning of 2012 we started picking the engine. Just then Flash Player 11 began to appear. We decided that when developing a new engine, we needed (optionally) to add new features.

    As a result, an engine was written with support for dynamic light, shaders, and a normal map for lighting. You can see the demonstration here (buildings are illuminated with light, taking into account their geometry):



    Plus particle effects: www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsTRoAjGF7Y

    You can write a separate article about how this is done.

    I even made a report on our innovative engine at the local St. Petersburg player conference "OGIC":



    But it did not bring any profit. There were no useful contacts.

    What is an investor?


    But nothing!

    Not a single publisher was interested in our project (we probably went around everyone).

    With investors - that’s how it was ... At first there was a friend who promised to find us money. In fact, a friend turned out to be a complete yap.

    Then they began to search for themselves. We talked ... we made several business plans ... But every time they didn’t come to anything ...

    Yes, it’s understandable - in order for our project to make money, we need a very competent approach.

    They also tried to find “go under the wing” options for some other studio (while remaining a separate studio), but so far nothing has grown together ...

    What's next?


    There were plans to port this business to mobile platforms. For this we mastered Unity and even partially ported the engine.

    But then again - a game-making office that wanted to help us with game design, finance and publishing - after thinking, I decided that it was not risky ...

    What should I do? Unclear.

    Now we have an idea for a game for mobile platforms. We think in a month to write an alpha version and go with it to the publishers ...

    I don’t know. Hard. Enthusiasm is almost gone.

    Summary.


    So what was created during this time?

    Created, in my opinion - a great team.

    The artist is wonderful.

    Programmers are beyond praise :) New technologies and languages ​​are clicked like nuts. We decided to write a server in Java without knowing anything about it - no question, after 2 weeks there was already a finished prototype. We decided to go into the wilds of flash optimization and cross C and Flash - we figured it out in Alchemy. Zayuzat 3D chips of the new flash? Ok, sorted out 3D, shaders, normals and other three-dimensional. Do you need mobile phones? It’s not a question - they took unity and a week later they repeated our graphic engine on the iPad. And a week later - they wrote dynamic lighting shaders for Unity (but they spat on them, realizing that the iPad is not pulling).

    We read a couple of thick kny books on game design. Although, of course, ideally - we would need a separate game designer.

    An unrealistic amount of money was spent (in total) and effort. A bunch of code has been written, some workflow, libraries ... A lot of technologies have been mastered - from a real-time server in Java to 3D and mobile platforms. Drawn a bunch of art.

    We got involved in a bunch of bureaucracy - created IP, LLC, Apple Developer Account ...

    Honestly? I have no idea what will happen next. Revenues are falling. Paying for an office and for an artist is getting harder ...

    Can it be that a team of really good specialists cannot earn their own food? .. The question is still open ...



    But we are not giving up! :)

    Also popular now: