

Can a game startup be lean? - DanielRibeiro
http://airik.blogspot.com/2011/03/gameday-tycoon-lean-startup-challenge.html

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redthrowaway
Looking at the successful indie games, Minecraft first and foremost, the key
simply seems to be to make something people have never seen before, and do it
well. Notch made Minecraft as leanly as possible - by himself. He didn't hire
anyone until he already had significant revenue. Now, before it's even out of
beta, he's made 30MM in revenue.

Gaming is not a new field, and I think that it's a mistake to apply web
startup ideals to an industry with many well-established success stories over
3 decades. All successful development houses got their start the same way -
they made a great game that people loved, then another. When Gabe Newell
started Valve, he looked at the Quake II's of the world, and said, "this is
stupid. The last game had a double-barrel shotgun, so you put 4 barrels on
this one and call it an improvement?" They made a great game by focussing on
gameplay and the players' experience.

The key seems to be that while the major publishers focus on graphics and
production value, the upstarts focus on gameplay. EA could have never
published Minecraft; the graphics alone would have sent them running. Look at
QWOP and GIRP and Too Many Ninjas: the graphics are terrible even by Flash
standards, but they're addicting as hell.

As a gamer, all I can say is this: I don't care what your game looks like, I
care how it plays. If you can make something that stands out in this tired
market, I'll buy it. The major production houses aren't your enemies, they're
your friends: they're the ones putting out the endless stream of repetitive
crap that will make your game seem great by comparison. Just don't try to copy
them.

~~~
zach
I was going to disagree with you but I think you nailed it. Make something
that people (i.e. most people) have never seen before. But that's not saying
make something that _nobody_ has seen before, just something that _the people
you're marketing to_ have never seen before.

That is, I think the key technique for success in any game market (indie or
mass market) is to take a gaming experience that's proven to be fun and make
it way more polished and accessible (I left out the Zynga games to save
space):

Infiniminer => Minecraft

Tower Defense => Plants vs. Zombies

Guitar Freaks => Guitar Hero

The Game Maker => Game Dev Story

Boom Blox/Crush the Castle => Angry Birds

Rogue => EverQuest => World of Warcraft

DECWar => Galcon

Narbacular Drop => Portal

Herzog Zwei => Dune II => Warcraft

Dwarf Fortress => ???

Someone fill in that last one. It'll be tough, but you'll be a multi-
millionaire. If you have this many people obsessed with a text mode game in
2011, there's something amazing waiting to happen.

~~~
mtinkerhess
I agree that Minecraft isn't a wholly original concept, but the other examples
you cited aren't from "lean" game studios. Your advice to incrementally
improve upon previous successes (your own or others') is a good strategy
across the game industry, but probably less so in indie / agile studios, where
having less to lose allows designers to take more risks with their work.

~~~
zach
I think championing the gameplay of an obscure (maybe even non-electronic) but
fun game is a pretty significant risk itself.

I've been an IGF judge and I love original gameplay, but I also know that
almost everything really is a remix when it comes to game design and that
there is more fun gameplay that has yet to find its audience than is generally
acknowledged.

If you're trying to fulfill your artistic goals, I understand that originality
is its own goal. If you're creating a game because you want people to enjoy
playing it, maybe you should start from fun.

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elbrodeur
I think the moral of the story is that talking to your users is one of the
most important things you can do during -- or even before -- development. User
testing is cheap, easy and shouldn't cost you that much time -- 50 people is
way more than necessary if your test is designed well. The experience is
pretty magical.

For lean startup user/usability testing tips, check out Steve Krug's Don't
Make Me Think. There's a chapter called "Usability Testing on a Shoestring
Budget".

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xiaoma
It's an interesting question. One piece I recently read comes down clearly on
the other side from the author of this post. The fact that it was written by a
successful insider makes it more compelling:
[http://whatgamesare.com/2011/02/you-need-four-coders-
product...](http://whatgamesare.com/2011/02/you-need-four-coders-
production.html)

I think the key element that makes it tough for games to be lean is that in
many cases, the only real fanfare a game will get is on its release day. If
your game sucks on day 1, odds aren't very good that you'll be getting people
to try it out after you've ironed out the bugs. Obviously this is more true of
console games and PC games than it is of mini-games on FB or flash sites.

~~~
echan00
I'm the author of the article of this post.

I disagree with the idea that a game is all about the pop on the first day of
release. Probably for console games, but definitely not for web games. Web
games are services and can improve dramatically over time.

You don't HAVE TO get the same users to try it again. There are always tonnes
of new users on the internet :)

~~~
xiaoma
Would you mind sharing a few pointers? I have very limited experience with
flash games. In a few small projects, I've gone with Kongregate and Mochi,
either of which will send some traffic just for a game being new.
Unfortunately, if the initial rating is poor, the game just disappears. In the
case of my most recent game, I improved it dramatically over half a dozen
patches, but over 95% of all the traffic it ever saw was in the first couple
of days (version 1.00)

What's your general workflow for releasing games? What sites to you start with
and where do you put them after making improvements?

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hanifvirani
Notch (the guy who made Minecraft) recently did an AMA on reddit. To quote
something simple yet valuable from one of his comments, which is relevant
here:

 _"Developing in the dark is scary and probably wrong."_

