Updates and Some Recommended Videos

As much as people would love to know, we still don't have a release date for our console release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. The main reason for this is that we want to wait until we pass all of certification before committing to a date. We figure that people will be less upset if we wait, but actually hit the release date we announce, rather than set a date and miss it because of unforeseen issues.

That said, we have a bunch of new content which will be released with console launch, and that content will come free for PC players as well. This new content also comes along with a slew of bug fixes, stability improvements, and quality of life fixes.

I wanted to share today a few videos that are geared toward game developers or people interested in game development. They're all understandable by people who don't work in the industry, and they can address some issues that game developers talk about often.

The first video, from Extra Credits, is about demos. Should you make a demo? Should you not? We had a demo when our Kickstarter launched, and think it was paramount to our success. 

The next video is not related to video games necessarily, but has very important ideas about innovation and design and branding. If you haven't seen this video already, you really should, no matter what industry you're in.

This next video is an amazing description of meaningful choice in game design, and does a great job of talking about enemy types and why you need to carefully consider their qualities. One of the biggest issues we see with indie games (that have combat and enemies) is the lack of meaningful choice in combat. These games often default to a hack-n-slash kind of mechanic, even when that wasn't the goal.

This last one is a bit game dev-focused, but could still be interesting to people who like video games but are not necessarily making them. 

Anyway, that's all for this update. As soon as we pass certification and choose a release date, we'll make sure to let everyone know.

Some of the Hidden Realities of Game Development

Hi friends! This month I wanted to talk about something that comes up all the time in discussions with other game developers, and actually is something we've sort of addressed in a previous blog post where we outlined some of the details of porting to consoles.

There are a lot of things that go on behind the scenes in a game development company, in fact in all game development companies, that go generally unnoticed by the general population. That's fine, and it's expected, because what you see is what we put out in our game, trailers, blog posts, content updates, and Twitter feeds. But what else goes on that might motivate some of our ideas that the average gamer doesn't know about?

We make games, and games are fun, but we still need to run a business.

In an ideal world, every game developer would make exactly the game they dream of, not limited in the content they can produce, not limited by their own talents or the talents of their colleagues, not limited by a publisher's wishes or orders, and not limited by consumer expectations. But in reality, we run businesses and this ideal world would require infinite time and money.

This doesn't mean that all of our decisions, or even most of our decisions, are driven by making money. What it does mean, however, is that when someone is putting out a single player puzzle game that should last 4 hours and selling it for $9.99, there is absolutely no way for them to make it a real-time co-operative online multiplayer open world procedurally generated puzzle game... still for $9.99.

What the developer wants in that situation is irrelevant, the fact of the matter is that even if the money was there to hire the network programmers, additional artists, etc... there would still be a question of dealing with the cost of keeping those people after launch, based on how much the game might earn. It also means that developer now becomes a manager more than a developer, and needs to learn new skills and work in a new position. There are hundreds more questions that arise from decisions like this, and all are bigger than most people might think.

Our friends at Juicy Beast wrote a nice article explaining why they made Burrito Bison 3, if you'd like some additional reading.

The financials are not always what they seem...

On the surface, as I mentioned earlier, people see games. The games come out every couple of years or so, and are often delayed. What people don't see is that the driving forces for decisions can be very different for different companies. Just in Montreal, I can name five similar sized studios that have fairly significantly different business models and way of funding their projects, making their decisions about what games to work on, hiring employees, etc. Double Stallion Games (BAMF and OK KO), Thunder Lotus Games (Jotun and Sundered), Kitfox Games (Shattered Planet and Moon Hunters), KO-OP Mode (Please Don't, Spacedog! and GNOG), Norsfell (WinterForts, Airline Tycoon) are all accomplished studios which have put out at least two games (more than us so far!) and have reliably kept making quality games and kept people employed making those games. 

The event that sparked this section of the post is the announcement that Hibernum (shown below), a seemingly extremely profitable Montreal company that did mostly contract work and used licensed IP to make mobile games, let go of most of their employees last week. Even though I'm close with people from that company (including some executives), and even though their games appeared to be successful, this can happen. So what's the situation under the hood? We never really know. Obviously I can't talk about anyone's (including our) financial situations directly, but in some cases, studios need to put their own ideas on hold and take contract work to survive. Sometimes they need to restructure, sometimes they shut down, and sometimes they make millions of dollars and stay single-person companies.

There's usually more to the story than just design ideas or preferences of the developers.

We can't make all of the changes people suggest, even if we love the ideas.

Games are hard to make. I mean, sure, that's easy to say. Most things are hard to make. Music is hard to make, film is hard to make, fine art is hard to make, engineering plans for a skyscraper are hard to make too. 

But imagine you're making a movie, and you've got this nice set designed, and actors all ready to go. Then the cameraman decides he wants his own experience in your story. He moves through the scene, looking where he pleases, missing the action you so perfectly designed, getting too close to the pyrotechnics you set up... oh but not only that. He also moves to every corner of your set to try to find gaps where things don't look right. Sometimes he shoots your actors, just to see what would happen, and sometimes he just does nothing. This is just an example of how game development can be challenging.

In our own game, we get many requests for changes. We love them because they spark ideas, and some are super useful. Some are less thought out, which is fine, except when they're phrased as "why don't the developers just do this, it's so easy". If we want to attempt to do something "simple" like adding 8 players playing at once ("it's so easy, you already have the characters there"), it would take... I have no idea how much time. Probably months. "Months? But it's so easy!" We would need to redesign the entire user interface, design the user experience as they go through menus and different scenes, change the scoring system, change the way saving data is handled on PC and on consoles, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

I won't suggest to anyone not to give us ideas and suggestions, but gamers need to be aware that there's always more involved than they think. There's always more involved than the developers think, and that's already a lot.

Games are delayed because unexpected things come up that can be avoided in other industries.

Well, in programming (in any field), project managers are always told to take the time estimate given to them by programmers and multiply it, usually by around 3 or 4. Naturally, the fact that you have people working in completely different fields on the same project (programmers, artists, designers, writers, project managers, marketing teams, business people) makes it such that the estimates are never as long as they should be.

Sometimes, people can get some positive feedback or some extra funding to build out more parts to a game which they didn't think they'd be able to do, so they need to produce more content and that takes, quite obviously, more time.

For the most part though, the reason is simply because things come up. Something that was done in the first two weeks of production might cause an issue eight months down the line which causes your networked play not to work, and might require a month of rewriting code. This happens. It's impossible to think of all possible issues, and the best designers can come close to doing it, but there will always be things that will come up.

Also, our industry has unfortunately fallen into a pattern of announcing our games way too early... like, a year too early. Then we're beholden to those dates, even though it's impossible to know a year in advance that a game will be ready. This isn't the audience's fault of course, and we recognize it's something we need to fix.

Our fans are our lifeblood!

On the positive side, one of the things that gamers sometimes don't see is how much they mean to us developers. First of all, we wouldn't exist if it weren't for people buying and playing our games. But beyond existing, we thrive off the knowledge that people are enjoying life experiences through our creations. We don't consider ourselves as providers of a simple product that you use and throw away like paper towel; we consider ourselves as providers of experiences that you can live, tell, imagine and re-imagine, and we are proud when we hear stories of what happened between real life people because of our video games.

Lastly, this blog post isn't meant to complain about what gamers say to game developers, quite the contrary. We appreciate everything that's told to us and we hope and expect to keep hearing it. But as much as we benefit from hearing from you, we also realize that gamers can benefit from knowing a bit more about the industry that they are part of (if you didn't exist, neither would we, so you're part of it!). So thank you, and I hope you enjoyed reading. 

If you'd like to leave a comment, please do so on the Gamasutra article linked here.

So You Wanna Show Your Game, Eh?

In preparation for PAX East in a couple of weeks, I'm writing a guide for Canadians to show their games in the U.S. at trade shows and conferences. I've had a lot of experience with annoyance at the border and have started to get the question about what's needed in terms of paperwork and documentation to go down to a game expo like, say, PAX. 

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer! I take no responsibility if you get arrested or exiled. This is what I've learned from talking to people (officials and other devs) and doing research.

What Can You Bring?

You're allowed to bring anything that is for the trade show that you can't sell or can't use to generate profit. You can generate leads by having meetings with people (therefore you can bring a computer, business cards, etc.) but you can't do "work".

What Can't You Bring?

Merchandise

You're technically not allowed to sell merchandise within the U.S. if you're not an American corporation with a registered tax number in the state where you'll be showing. This means that pretty much every booth you see at PAX which sells stuff (i.e. all of them) is doing so illegally. Usually no one cares, though there have been rumors of IRS folks walking around and fining people at shows (never seen it though throughout 3 PAXes). 

You're allowed to give stuff away as promotion, but at the border they'll be the judge of whether it's promotional or for sale (spoiler alert: they like having power and like abusing it even more, don't take too many chances). 

Work Materials

My friend once got denied entry to the US because he had a camera with him to shoot some footage of the show... they decided he was "going to do work" and therefore wasn't allowed. So if anyone asks, you can be doing business development but I believe as soon as you're signing a contract it counts as work and is thus not legal.

Selling Your Game

You definitely can't bring physical copies of your game to sell, and you're not technically allowed to sell digital copies either (if you're receiving cash for them on-site). I'm not sure how anyone could know whether or not that was happening, but I'm just talking in terms of legality.

What's Needed

Here's some documentation taken from the CBP.gov site. You'll need:

• Official documentation date and location of the Trade Show
• Confirmation that you are an exhibitor
• List of items "Not for Sale"
• Documentation indicating value of items (usually on the same list of items)
• Mark items "Not for Sale" or mutilate the items
• Contact the Port of Entry prior to travel
• Complete CBP 7523 "Entry and Manifest of Merchandise Free of Duty" (For NAFTA items only).
• Check with the government agency that regulates your product for any possible restrictions or required documentation
• Obtain the HTSUS code for your items

The CBP 7523 should only be filled if you're bringing in merchandise, though the limit of what you're legally allowed to take seems to be extremely subjective. Last time, we brought pins that we were giving away (1000 pins that were valued at $0.25 each) and we had to pay about $10 in duties for them.

What's a Carnet?

The following bit is very important: if what you're bringing has a value of over $2500 USD or if you're shipping supplies, the best option is to get a Temporary Importation Under Bond (also known as a Carnet). Some info about what a Carnet is can be found here, and how to apply for one can be found here, along with the processing fees involved. This involves going to the Chamber of Commerce and registering, and it also involves paying 40% of the value of the goods you're bringing across, which gets refunded to you when you come back (though I've heard mysterious stories about it not being fully refunded).

Other Forms

I believe this information was from a call with a border agent, where I was also told to bring:

• FDA form 2877: for bringing in electronics
• FCC form 740: for bringing in electronics to a trade show. On this form, there's an area for the Harmonized Tariff Number, which is the same as the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, and that can be looked up here. Most normal things you're bringing will not have a tariff.

I'm not actually sure if the 2877 is needed if the FCC form is already being filled out, but we're doing both just in case.

Don't Be Too Worried Though...

Note that this is the best way to go through without trouble, and have all the documentation ready in case they decide to be assholes. We've had really bad experiences with the CBP, and I imagine we'll continue to have issues forever, so we really make sure that everything is legit and well documented. Most people get through without any searches or without any documentation, but it's a risk you've got to be willing to take. We've never had issues where we were denied entry or had to pay fees, but we have been delayed by a few hours with some paperwork.

Anyway, this was our experience and hopefully we can help someone avoid issues in the future or clarify questions that they've had.

Cheers! If you have questions or comments or corrections, please add them on Gamasutra.