I updated my “About” page. I’ve been following your blog and work for quite some time Danc so I’m always open to hear from someone actually “doing it”

That comes down to the fact that I decided to build an MMO as a first game (ouch!). I couldn’t get my first 10 games out of my system and leaving behind 2 years and half of work to work on something else is difficult to do (thought ultimately can happen).

But even there, I don’t think the problem is the game itself even thought things can always be improved. I expect few will like it and that it’s difficult to get into. It’s really the exposure.

With very little help I’ve been able to get the word out to finally get the game to pay for its cost. I can’t imagine what would be the result with a little push from a significant source of traffic. The game monetize quite well and it wouldn’t require a whole lot of traffic to generate an interesting salary.

Making games is an ongoing learning process. There’s a lovely quote that I need to track down that says “You have 10 bad games in you. Start getting them out of your system as soon as possible.” So it is only natural that your first few games have major playability issues. And players will let you know. The key is put aside your ego, accept that there is room to improve and get down to the hard work of making something better. And yes, it is hard work.

I think of tutorials as the entrance to your house. You can lavish months of effort building the most impressive house possible, but if no one can get in, what is the point of building the house? I’m very familiar with being a one man army and slogging through tutorials. It is another critical game design skill that you need to practice over and over again. Again, there is no point in complaining. The slow and steady experience of creating and recreating functional tutorials is the only way to improve.

Over time, you’ll learn to put customer feedback in the appropriate context. If someone complains about the game after playing for 10 minutes, don’t ignore their comments as uninformed. Instead, examine what it was about the 10 minute experience that provoked their reaction. By building your customer empathy skills and your analytic skills, you’ll become a better designer.

All the best,
Danc

About the less text part, unfortunately it is a mixed bag. I know people hate reading texts (I’ve reached the sad conclusion they can’t read properly) but depending on the game, such skill is required. We can’t dumb down the game to ‘quest: me need [icon] object, you fetch it’. Unfortunately this seem to be trend everywhere: flashy graphics, BIG icons, BIG 3 words text, simplistic gameplay.

I agree with you about tutorials, they are important. But when you are one man army, it’s hard to write proper tutorials since you lack the time and energy.

I’m in the same position as Dave and it’s very annoying when everybody knows better than you what the game should be and what you should do. Especially when some are playing the game for 2 days and they have already lots of suggestions (which many times just show they didn’t know or understand the existing features or just want to transform your game in a clone of something they like).
It seems it’s just fate…

- Defer login. It makes logical sense to put the login up front, but we found that it knocked a whole point off the rating of Bunni. Instead get the player into the game and then at a later point ask them if they want to create a login to save. An alternative that folks used is to simplify login so that you are only asking for a user name and password, but this still gave us bad results.

- Less text. There have been some great usability studies done over the years on how much text people read in games. A) Use graphics and highlight what players should click on instead of text (since most players do not read) B) When players do read, they read 5-7 words at most. This sounds like rather harsh limits, but I’ve seen in play out in usability tests again and again.

- Tutorials are shockingly important. They are worth tweaking and rewriting a dozen more time than you were planning. Put the game in front of strangers and watch where they hesitate or become confused. How fast can you smoothly get them to the point where they are having fun?

All the best,
Danc.

Tho btw failure is some times fatal remember if at first you don’t succeed then sky diving is not for you

That should be the quote