This forum is for discussing topics of interest to indie developers, such as programming, game design, marketing, shareware distribution, selling online, web hosting, etc. Please keep in mind that these forums are public.

Once you've setup an account here, if you ever need to make changes, just click the "user cp" button in the upper right.

It's my hope that these new forums will evolve into a place where indie developers can work together to help each other succeed. If you know other indie developers or people interested in going indie, please be sure to point them here. Dexterity Software has been online at this same URL since 1995, and we'll be here for a long time to come, so these forums have a great chance of developing into a thriving community.

Hey, Steve!

I gots just one question...

Pink???

;-)

Good to see you here, David. I actually just recently bought your journaling program -- you really did an excellent job on it!

Since I'm colorblind (yeah... a colorblind game developer), I had my wife create the color scheme for the board. I didn't even know there was any pink on it. :eek:

This forum software allows us to create other color schemes, which users can select in their profiles, so perhaps I can get to her to create a few others. :)

Steve, thanks very much for setting this up. It looks like it could be a very valuable resource.

Since you're going to be asked this question again and again (and I didn't really see it in the FAQ), can you talk a bit about what you see as the most important aspects required for indie software -- especially games -- to be successful?

And even more specifically, what are you guys really looking for and really not looking for in game submissions?

(This may be better discussed elsewhere, I'm not sure.)

Thanks.

Ahh...much easier on the eyes now...

Thanks!

And thanks for the feedback about The Journal (http://www.davidrm.com/thejournal). I really appreciate that. :)

aww cyan? I liked pink lol.

I think what makes the most difference is choosing the right type of product to develop in the first place. I wrote a recent article about this here:
http://www.dexterity.com/articles/basic-market-research.htm

It deeply pains me to see a developer invest several months in developing a game for which there is little or no market. Every week we receive many new game submissions, and the hardest ones we have to reject are those which are very well polished games but that simply aren't much fun to play. Whenever Todd, our Producer, and I have to make a tough call, we always fall back on asking, "Is it fun?" If the answer is no, it doesn't matter how gorgeous the game looks or how cool the concept is... we always have to turn it down. The reason these are the toughest games to reject is that there's often nothing the developer can do to fix it without starting from scratch. It's easier to tell a developer that the art or the sound effects need work.

Our Publishing FAQ (http://www.dexterity.com/developer/faq.htm) gives a great deal of info about what types of games we look for. There's really no magic or mystery to our criteria. Above all we look for games that are fun and unique, a quality I refer to as elegance. After that we look into how marketable the game is. We ask, "Will players want to own this game?" When we accept or reject a game, developers are rarely surprised by the decision. Although we do get a large volume of overall submissions, we don't get a super-high volume of games that are really fun and original.

Usually I can tell if we want to publish a game just by playing the first level. Pharaohs' Curse (http://www.dexterity.com/pharaohs-curse/) was such a game. This game was created by three individuals who met online, each living in different parts of the world. When I first played it several months ago, I immediately recognized that it was just the type of game we were looking to publish. The technology is basic 2D, but the gameplay is really interesting and fun. I personally found the game quite addicting. And it's been selling very well, with lots of positive feedback from players.

Another game we'll be publishing next week is called Once Twice Thrice. This is a creative level-based puzzle game where you use the combined powers of three wizards to overcome obstacles. It's completely 2D and written in Visual Basic. It's also very original, fun, and highly addicting.

We put each game through an extensive QA process. This doesn't involve merely testing for bugs -- it involves working closely with the developer to polish the final product so that it will sell well. We tend not to reject fun games that have fixable problems like awkward interfaces if we believe we can help the developer overcome them. With each developer we do our best to create a balance between polishing the game and releasing it in a reasonable amount of time.

So when we find a game where the gameplay itself is very fun, original, and addicting, we do our best to find a way to work with the developer, even if the game needs a lot of polishing. But even the most highly polished game doesn't get anywhere with us if it isn't really fun at a basic level. Recognizing fun is something that you can't do with checklists. It simply comes from the experience of playing thousands of different games across every conceivable genre. It's hard to describe, but you always know it when you see it (or rather, when you feel it).

Uniqueness is important because we want to provide real value to players that gives them a new experience. We see lots of clones of games like Bejeweled/Diamond Mine that are submitted, and we always reject those because other games are already providing those same experiences. A game doesn't have to be stunningly unique such that there's no other game remotely like it. But it does have to offer its own special value to players in a way that respects the player as a real human being rather as a number or dollar sign. Sometimes a new spin on an old concept is enough. For instance, Penguin Puzzle's (http://www.dexterity.com/penguin-puzzle/) gameplay isn't the most unique, but the simple theme of saving trapped animals frozen in ice made the game much more marketable, and it added an emotional context (i.e. cuteness) to the game that players have really enjoyed.

Let me just add one other thing to Steve's post. File size can also be an issue, if the game submitted is too large, its just not feasible to publish it no matter how great and fun it is. Most of our customers are downloading our games, and until such time as broadband access is the norm, large games are just hard to sell. Ideally a demo size would be under 3MB and a Full game under 10MB. Not that we are not flexible, but I have seen some submissions where the demo is 50MB, and the full version is over 100MB.

Todd

not to rain on your parade or anything steve and todd,
but as far as the games that do not fit into what you
market to your customer base......**send them my way (http://www.garagedeveloperinternational.com/profile/demosoncdrom.html)**......:)
the referral would be greatly appreciated since i spend most
weekends looking for content for future releases in my CDRom series.

Great work Steve.

Its great to see you supporting other independent game developers. I have just started work on my first compter game this year and have read all of your articles which were a great help.