I chuckled as I wrote this one.

It's because I started by trying to tell you how to do community management.

So I went to the stable and brushed down my high horse, donned my shiny armor and sheathed my sword. Kicked my horse into a showman's trot.

That's right folks, I haven't got a clue.

To my credit, it seems to run in the blood of game developers, specifically coders.

I'll be surfing Steam looking for gem's and sometimes I'll peruse the forums, just to see what's what and I'm reading all the nice things and then I see ...

... ooph, shot's fired!

Somebody is not impressed. But you know, it happens.

But then the next comment is nail biting stuff.

Cue: Blue lights, the shuffle of boots and associated drama.

Somebody with their orange dev tag has waded into the fray half cocked. He's got a figurative round trapped sideways in the breech. He's gone in through the front door with a jammed rifle.

A serious tactical error.

A poorly placed armed copper is one analogy, a bull in a china shop would be another.

I'm sat there thinking somebody call the RSPCA (animal control.)

"There's a developer loose here!"

"Somebody has let a coder out and he's butchered a golden goose!"

...

I mean, I laugh, but I've been that guy.

When somebody tries to smudge your glittering ace, one gets miffed. I mean, you've spent all day polishing it and this guy comes along with his cherished opinion.

So I leg it to the stable to get the horse, helmet under arm, chest plate flapping in the wind.

"Sword boy!" I yell, ceremoniously by default.

We're all dressed up like a hero from Warcraft 2, does this fool not recognize a knight of the highest order?

We issue a glaring rebuttal:

"How dare you address me as such lowly peon, do you know how hard I polished this shiny thing? I ought to bash you with my bastard sword. Where the eff is my sword boy. Coming at the Emperor's Royal Guard like that. Fancy a lick of my backup mace?"

Of course, that would be 'firing from the hip' as us British like to say.

I mean, the weird thing is that you'll get ten, twenty positive comments and then one hater comes in and all of that positivity is suddenly for nothing.

...

There could be one meter or a thousand separating you from the hater.

We feel like we're removed from the consequences of our actions because we can't see or feel the pain we're dishing out, we can only imagine it.

It's like the sad men that attack powerful women on X (formerly Twitter.)

They do it because it's a temporary reprieve of the regret associated with failure and society has lead them to believe they should be better than the recipient.

For some reason, the recipient becomes the subject of whatever anguish we have stored up and our natural instinct is to empty a proverbial magazine or two in the general direction.

You have much more to loose than they do. Break the cycle before it starts.

...

So you got burned.

How do you deal with the burn? Well you don't throw yourself into the flame in anger, that's for sure.

As I just demonstrated, I don't have a clue, so let's ask the man who built the biggest sci-fi presence on the Unity3D asset store and has dealt with hundreds of fans.

Let's ask Alex:

Keep it simple, remember the customer is always right, don't start arguing, and dont pick up fights. Be nice, no matter what they say to you - like a mountain.

Think of it as you have your personal Royal Clerk doing the job and also taking all the incoming face slaps for you. There's nothing personal. Abstract from it away and thank them for their time. Switch.

Sometimes its about saying what they wanted to hear if its getting hot

The most important part is to make sure you show care and understanding of their problem. Even if someone is bitching at you for no reason. Like a police negotiator, a psychologist, what would he say?

Interesting stuff. Powerful.

I mean, why didn't he tell me that 8 years ago?

So rather than kicking in the door screaming 'armed police' relishing the prospect of resistance, I should instead have been the calm negotiator who sees it as a personal failing if things escalate further.

Rather than being a crusader, a hero of the highest order carrying a sword so big they call it a bastard. I should instead have been the humble clerk who's only weapon is a quill and who's only objective is to complete the paperwork.

Makes sense I guess.

We don't shoot or chop up the golden geese, we want at the tasty egg's after all.

I've got to go, the microwave just pinged.

What's for dinner? Left-over humble pie.

As you may know I find the robot dog situation a tad concerning, we spoke about it before.

I think it's because they have such a low center of gravity.

With a bi-pedaled robot you can trip it up, setup some sort of trap, tip it over.

You can't do that with a quadruped.

I remember when I was in the British Army reserves we did an exercise with a dog unit. The instructor was going through all the misconceptions about 'fighting' with dogs:

• Pull its front legs apart. Nope, they sometimes sleep like that.
• Pull its jaws open. Don't be silly now.
• Stick your finger up its bum. I mean, that thought isn't going to cross your mind in a crunch.

Turns out that the reason cats and dogs are still walking around on four legs and not two is because evolution has singled them out as reasonably good predators.

They are nothing next to us of course.

In the previous article we told a story; if I may, we'll rejoin that story midway through with the release of the Mk2.

Entering story telling mode ...

I'm about to walk on stage and I feel nervous.

It's weird, I've given speeches to audiences of thousand's but today I feel particularly awkward. I take a peak at the stage camera's.

I see the huge back screen display with the new Quadradyne company logo on it, it makes me shudder but that's not it ...

"On in five James, get ready!"

Ah yes, I see the issue.

The front two rows of the audience are crammed with military staff officers.

The proverbial brass. I recognize the distinctive red lapels adorning the collars of the uniform. Colonels and above.

"You're up!"

Music starts blaring. Lights, drama. Raucous applause from the audience.

"Thank-you everybody and welcome to the launch of our very first general purpose quadrupedal robot Oscar!"

More raucous applause.

"Without further adieu, let's greet man's new best friend!"

An Oscar unit trots gleefully onto the stage to a standing ovation.

"Beautiful isn't he, the perfect unison of military might and civilian effort..."

I rattle off a list of specs, 120 KPH top speed, type 6 Li-po battery packs lasting for 6-7 hours between charges, jaws drop.

How are they able to achieve that speed and charge length with current battery tech? They are thinking. We plant the question in their mind to distract from the real achievement, the fully autonomous assembly line.

"The secret sauce" I say with a well rehearsed grin "is in the rear leg's"

In Oscar, we had done away with all of the articulating servos in the rear leg's and this thing had just a single actuator in each, the sole purpose of such was to lift what would be a limp appendage to the next transition in the movement.

The magic happened with the material that the leg was made out of. After passing a minor electrical current through the metal it would turn from rigid to soft. We could control the density of the substance and the process used no energy at all.

We only cared that the front legs would effectively 'catch' the robot as it bounded forwards. AI took care of learning the remaining movement. Now all of this required single digit millisecond level precision, we couldn't even achieve that with the ultra-high density SOC we used in Fuzzypup. So we added compute to each limb, all linked together using a fiber CAN.

After a bunch more marketing blabber the stage lighting dimmed.

"This is where I'm afraid I'm going to ask those in the audience with a green pass to leave via the rear exit's"

Hand wringing on the front row.

This is the part that the important people in the itchy looking dress uniforms had been waiting for ... I mean, what even is that, hessian?

...

I'm looking directly at the brass in the front row's now. The ushers had ensured no media stooges were hiding under the seats.

I hate this.

"As you all know Oscar is funded predominantly through a five eyes agreement and is a veritable defense powerhouse."

Nod's all round, we all know how the bread is buttered.

"Part of that power is the ensure the general public has trust in the machine's they see routinely on the street's of our safe cities."

"To that end the military and civilian models are indistinguishable apart from livery. To your disappointment there will be no shoulder mounted cannon's or missile launcher's"

The sound of laughter fills the room. I found myself pondering briefly the human aptitude for celebrating it's own destruction.

"As you know, as part of an EU directive we were instructed to make the device emit an audible signal upon target acquisition. So we turned that into a feature"

"Oscar, soft target Colonel Strange for me if you would"

The device emits a deafening noise: Beep-bop, boop, boop, booooooooooop

The head shed jump out of their seats, Col. Strange has already been briefed. He sits there with a knowing grin plastered across his face.

What has happened is the robot has taken a three dimensional sample of the entire building and area of about 250 meters surrounding it:

• First off it emits a range finder at a super sonic frequency to gather high resolution data on the immediate surroundings. This happens before the audible frequencies.
• Secondly it emits a high frequency beep capable of penetrating concrete up to around a meter thick.
• Third the active bass radiators on the front of the unit emit a low frequency boop so loud that if it were turned up to maximum it would perforate the human eardrum. The purpose is to gather information on material density.

Some of the Colonel's mouths are hanging open, they clearly haven't read the confidential briefing packet.

"The robot then follows through with directional MRI, this data supplements the map composed of LiDAR, traditional sonic and optical readings."

"The robot is not only capable of detecting targets hidden in a proverbial bank vault, but it can tell you their age, ethnicity, gender and can even detect medical anomalies in the target and use them to it's advantage"

Standing round of applause from the military brass, that bit wasn't in the briefing packet. I wave my hands in a calming fashion.

"But that's not all" I tell them with a convincing command of keen.

"Notice the lack of articulation in Oscars neck" I gesture at the unit.

"As mentioned, the robot is capable of reaching speeds of 120KPH. As not mentioned, it can do so with a runway of 10 meters. The robot is capable of penetrating concrete half a meter thick with blunt force alone."

"Oscar can go from target acquisition to attack in less that 15 seconds, a time limit mandated by the European Union."

"If the target unit is in a brick dwelling with surrounding guard walls we are talking ingress into the compound in less than 30 seconds, the programmed target will have been acquired and terminated in around 120 seconds."

I went on to illustrate with graphic accompanying footage.

"When deployed in trial's against a high value target with highly trained guard's in a fortified compound, the unit caused such a state of shock and disarray that they were shooting at each other in panic."

It's true. I watched it happen real-time with the defense secretary, it was over in three and a half minutes. The tea was still warm in our cups. Not that anyone was drinking their tea during that particular horror show.

"The guard's didn't even see what caused the mess."

I mean, basically they heard the deafening sonic cue's, the sound of rubble traveling at velocity and saw some detached body parts catching air-time.

It was terrifying to behold let alone experience.

...

This is not what I signed up for.

But I will take the six figure monthly paycheck's, buy myself an island, build myself a bunker with ten meter thick concrete wall's and lock myself away from the ensuing mess.

Perhaps deservedly, I would never live to see the day.

What do Zombies and Spaceships have in common?

Bugger all. But that's the point.

I mean, we're a Sci-fi house here for sure, just checkout our projects.

It's like a galactic monument.

But you know, we tried to get some of our Scifi titles funded and we were met with blank expressions. Not everyone gets it.

When making a computer game there are effectively two sales strategies:

1. Appeal to the niche
2. Stack it high and sell it cheap

With Shallow Space we appealed to the niche, being Real Time Strategy we appealed to another niche - a niche of a niche, some might describe that as masochistic.

But being honest with you, the strategy was wildly successful given what was on display.

But how? Why even?

I feel like the type of people who are attracted to niche games are the type to seek them out which worked to our advantage. But at the same time, the Sci-fi crowd can be snobby and difficult to convince.

Just the facts!

I guess we'll break it down properly when we get to the postmortem, but glossy presentation and marketing persistence aside, the absence of alternatives also likely had a lot to do with it.

You see at the time, no other studio would touch the RTS genre.

They just wouldn't go near it.

Age of Empires 4? Nope.

Homeworld 3? Not a whisper.

Nexus: The Jupiter Incident 2? Don't make me cry now.

As for sci-fi? Back then it was hell on Earth, we hadn't even seen a fresh Star Trek since Enterprise and we all know how that went down.

Scifi was brown bread dead, and Real Time Strategy was even more dead(er).

So if there's a supplementary lesson to be learned there it's about timing.

...

It was easy to understand why it was a bad five or so years for Sci-fi.

Social media was at peak adoption. Smartphone use had long become ubiquitous. The very things that were meant to give us more time were somehow stealing time from us.

I would describe it as the midpoint in the zombification of mankind.

It was all selfies, reality TV and The Sims 4 expansion packs.

Can't knock it, I played various iterations of The Sims, wasn't my thing but I could see why people loved it.

Nobody had the attention span for old fashioned games.

So it's no surprise that most publishers we put the game in front of reacted to it like a wet fart. There were a few sniffles. A few of them even took in a lung full, but in truth they were probably as desperate for a home run as we were for dollar.

Fresh out of money and effort I tossed Shallow Space unceremoniously over my left shoulder. I would always go back to it but I just couldn't cope with the failure at that time, I was burnt out, I couldn't even look at it.

I needed to do something else for my sanities sake.

After a short break I decided it was time to experiment with scenario two. Stack it high and sell it cheap. So I started to look at what was trending and it was zombies.

I'm not talking about social media addicts here, I'm talking about the undead.

I didn't get it, so I watched all of 'The Walking Dead' and then I kinda got it.

The message? Violence sells. Big time.

Especially in the United States and they will be your number one customer in both scenarios one and two. Now that's not presumptive, assumptive or judgemental.

It's a material fact.

Now of course, create a game where you're mowing down people in a shopping mall with a Gatling gun and it'll be in extremely bad taste.

But what if those people were undead horde?

Well that's fair game.

...

To stack it high we had to explore the absurd, we had to tickle humanities penchant for violence and make fun out of that.

Zombies and ragdoll physics go hand-in-hand, players like to see them dismembered, flying through the air. So do publishers and investors because they can relate to that.

Few people can relate to spaceships floating around with 'pew pew' lasers.

Don't ask me, I don't make the rules.

So we had an attempt at that with Zombie Barricades.

It was an ol' fashioned poke at a multiplayer Role Playing Game that incorporated a physics engine and the construction of forts ...

... and I tell you, that game was every bit as fun as it looked.

Finally we made a fun game!

Spot the immediate problem? Yep, yet again, possibly too ambitious.

Also we actually tried to run Unity3D in the cloud, which was a frankly laughable exercise which is well deserving of a rant filed under insanity.

Zombie Barricades pretty much ended up as a complete game, inventory management, skills system - the works. But some of this projects issues were similar to that with Shallow Space because I hadn't bothered to step back and learn from the failings.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905

That mantra should be printed above the entrance to every school. It's a lesson so important it trumps even the science's. It's a lesson so obvious it is easily forgotten.

...

No publisher or investor wants to pickup just one game anymore.

We need to come at them with a broad basket of ideas and contacts. The options need to be sprayed at them like a broken card shuffler; let them find the golden ace, dust it off, hold it up to the light.

They need to be in shock at the sheer scale of the opportunity in front of them.

Truth is that by now I might admit there's a smidgen of talent over here but I clearly don't know what's good for me. Perhaps even for us as a company.

Time to think about inviting the opinion of those in the know.

We live, we learn, we'll get there ...

What does it mean to live with demons?

I mean, these aren't serious demons, that's an exaggeration, I'm starting to see that now as I wrestle with them. These are just gremlins.

To the uninitiated: I chased my dreams, I crashed and burned.

All this stuff happened a while ago now and I need to access the memories to be able to extract the failings properly from both project's.

It's a big part of the point of this whole blog.

These aren't any old memories. They are repressed memories. I consider them a stain on my soul so they are buried deep down within me.

As the sensations bubble up to the surface and manifest as text, I read it all back and I'm just as surprised and amused as you are. It feels like I have a ghost writer, ironic really, given both platform and topic.

I must point out that this isn't an exercise in repentance. It's the surfacing of memory in a semi-structured way that is hopefully useful to others and myself.

Why did it take so long?

I needed to find myself, my footing again before I could go there.

I also needed space.

...

Life in a modern British city is frankly awkward. People can't seem to walk past me these days without some sort of weird reaction, like a tic almost.

Fortunately a lot of the time they are transfixed with their phone.

It's like some sort of shared psychosis that I'm not privy to.

The reason I'm not invited?

I deleted the source of that madness a long time ago: Social media, as much as is professionally appropriate anyway. I also blocked the so-called news site's, as these days they cater to a common denominator so low it's useful to no-one.

The battery on my smart phone lasts for 6 days between charges.

Imagine that.

I've been clean of that nonsense for years. But other people using it around me still affects me, they claw at me metaphorically as I walk past them, like zombie's seeking brains.

All of this stuff, dealing with it, thinking about it, it takes up a lot of time.

Eventually I'll flee this place, find a country where people value real social interaction not just this tiresome propagation of jealousy so more stuff gets sold, but for now I'm off to enjoy the green and pleasant lands.

...

I can't change the world, I have to focus on me.

So I isolate myself in the countryside, disconnect myself from that busy bollocks. I need to be stable, both mentally and in situation.

Finally I'm alone with my thoughts, my own thoughts. I have so much time.

For fun I walk the hills at a brisk pace, sometimes followed by a drone. I power walk up the steepest surfaces I can find, trying to push the limits of my endurance.

I relish the rainy day.

I enjoy the hardship. I find it shaping. Anything that allows time for meaningful conscious thought. It feels like a repair of the damage done by the constant induced cognitive dissonance of the (dis)information era.

...

In essence I clean slate. Stare at a blank wall. Enter a lucid state of meditation.

"A-koo-chee-moya"  

"We are far from the sacred places of our grandfathers ..."

Alright yes I know that the native American consultant for Star Trek Voyager was a fraud but the message remains the same.

I tell you though, the affect of all this, it's a feeling not unlike an exorcism.

I'm happier, I'm sleeping better, I feel focused, I'm enjoying the things I do day-to-day, my job performance has improved.

The process is cathartic.

I find myself questioning the part of gamedev I actually enjoyed, was it the creating or was it the marketing. I mean, is this even marketing? This stuff is genuinely useful to someone.

I'm certain of it.

Plus, every article written brings me closer to the banishing of said gremlins.

Once they are exorcised, the postmortem's written, the lesson's learned, the line's drawn under and the failed project's laid properly to rest.

Then what?

Then we get to do it all again of course.

This article has a twin, Part 1 is here.

More love letters were exchanged recently.

I'm trying to gain some momentum here you know? Start the wheel rolling, but there's friction. It's an uphill battle for some reason.

"What would be great"

I say routinely, with varying levels of frustration

"is if we can accompany the blogging effort with some new stuff"

Bare in mind that, I'm not asking for the Earth here (childish giggle.)

We're sat on so much cool stuff I can barely contain my excitement. But for some reason we are struggling to get it out of the door.

Why?

Art, that's why.

The trouble is that when we stare at something for too long we begin to loose our objectivity. We forget that to us what is old, is actually new and exciting to someone else.

Now, I can jump up and down, scream and shout; I can take a step back, post loving words of encouragement - but none of it is going to make the blind bit of difference.

...

You see; with artist's there is a scale.

On one side of the scale you have lack of experience and fledgling-to-mid level talent. These guys are super keen and easy to work with, a joy actually. They get stuff done and they get it done quickly.

It's not always right, but they'll fix what's wrong.

On the other side, we have the experienced mid-to-senior level guys.

These guys will argue the toss simply because it's Wednesday and because they know they can find other work tomorrow.

They'll go off piste, they'll throw designs at you barely related to the requirements, they'll tell you what they think you should want and they'll soak up so much of your time you won't be able to do anything else.

The more you push the less you'll get.

That's because art is subjective, and so the makers of art are subjective.

...

When you have to devote a disproportionate amount of time to something, it skews your priorities.

That showed in the Shallow Space project.

We were in trouble the second we hit Steam.

We had been coasting for a long time because we'd engaged investors and publishers and one-by-one they had backed out due to reasons we'll cover in a later post.

We were spending all our money on art, pretty much every penny earned went to paying artist's salaries. It was completely and utterly backwards and in retrospect I admit that I was so stupid.

I wished I'd pocketed the money, really I do. At least some of it.

Everyone thinks I did anyway.

Bah, I shouldn't kick myself for doing the right thing. I was inexperienced. I mean, I'd studied business, but until you've done business in real life it's practically meaningless.

It was less than meaningless almost, because you think you know what to expect.

You don't.

...

So what happened is that I was on Skype with one or more of these artist's for 3 hours a day. I was writing design docs and doing reviews of the work and collating art and assets and making things production ready ...

... and so, when I put on my SS marketing hat I was in show boat mode.

It didn't matter that the game was functionally incomplete, I just needed to have something to show to keep the money rolling in to keep people paid.

That's where I feel the need to point out a glaring conflict of interest with the whole Steam Early Access thing: If you've come to the platform with an MVP; something not even good enough, just barely convincing; you end up locked in this showboating trap.

Nobody wants to read about your progress on game mechanics.

It's like my post on failure.

Probably the most inspiring thing to read for any game developer, but you might skip over it, because it's not shiny.

So where were we, oh yeah showboating.

With my head in the coal face and my arms pulling levers, I had lost the plot.

Rational thinking went out the window.

I'd gone tribal.

I'd choose my favorite grass skirt and reskin my drum fresh for every event.

It was unsustainable and when sales fell and the projects position became untenable, the grass skirt slipped, the elephant trunk swung free and the whole thing looked like a steaming scam.

...

When you deal with artist's ironically you need to leave as little to their imagination as possible.

Control the information flow. Control the design expectation. Control the output expectation. Do it all right from the get go.

How do you do that?

Well we're 900+ words in here so it's an article for another day.

If you're coming to us via email, we don't blast out every article (as it'll quickly get irritating), so remember to check the blog for news!

What does it mean to fail? Let's look it up. First result on DuckDuckGo search:

The condition or fact of not achieving the desired end or ends.

That's a pretty good definition. That's a definition we can work with.

But how do we know how to identify failure? What can we do once we've failed? Can we use that failure? Embrace it somehow and learn lessons from it?

I've been alive for over 40 years now and I've met and worked with people from all walks of life, in my opinion when you boil it all down there are only two types of fool:

1. The fool that can't admit they are wrong
2. The fool who thinks that failure is unforgivable

When you encounter either of these two types of people: Lock eyes with them, offer them a disingenuous smile and moonwalk away never breaking your gaze.

These people are dangerous.

I was close friends with someone of the first type for a good many years, from childhood in fact. He was older than me and I always assumed that his arrogance was a form of omnipotence, I thought that he never admitted failure because he never made mistakes.

Nonsense.

In truth the man was a narcissist and played people like a Banjo simply to make them dance. He was a level 20 Bard, utterly capitivating; but not the sort of person you could count on simply because he'd rather manipulate a situation than admit that he was wrong.

Dangerous.

As for the second type of fool, well this type of fool is buried deep in all of us.

That's because failure hurts, it proper stings.

It makes us feel like running away and not looking back.

I guess it's part of fight or flight, I'm not sure, I'm not an anthropologist - but what I do know is that this sensation is fundamentally incompatible with the situation of modern man.

Few people can operate against their base instincts, this is why the world is full of employee's and not employer's.

...

So what does failure mean to me?

I YOLO'd a software project maybe 8 years ago now and I did so with every waking fiber of my being. Actually it turned out that I'd bitten off more than I could chew and a number of things came into perfect alignment to ensure the project was a steaming failure.

I can trot out the excuses all day long but the second I started to admit the facts something miraculous happened.

The facts:

• I didn't know as much about making software as I thought
• I assumed that I was invulnerable to stress
• I thought my opinion was the only one that mattered
• I undervalued my time and youth

After I recklessly abandoned the project, I worked on something else for a bit and I spent a bunch of time in deep reflection pondering how I could be so sure of something that went so wrong.

Then I realized that the only failure would be to not to learn from the mistakes.

...

I pivoted my career from IT to software development, something that my failure facilitated. I worked with a software startup and took notes on everything from the friction of the pivot points to the questionable behavior of the CEO.

That company had an eye-watering burn rate and had to pivot so many times it was stuck in a perpetual pirouette. Needless to say, the iteration I worked on failed and I had ringside seating, that was a valuable lesson in itself.

Then I moved to a company that made tools for developers and worked on massive scale systems. This American company was 3-5 years ahead of anything I'd even seen in the UK. I've worked with doctors of technology and the privately educated whereas I myself am a man from a working class family.

Talk about a square peg hammered into a round hole.

I've been force-fed humble pie on a number of occasions. The method and technology on show at the company are staggering. I fail often, I fail hard, but I still work here and the product is very successful and sells itself.

I write a lot of postmortems, a fantastic exercise that harness' the unrelenting dichotomy of failure and success in the most masterful way.

We'll discuss them in detail later.

...

Where were we? Oh yeah, identifying failure.

Hopefully you have a finite and measurable idea of what you want to achieve, most people do that with a deadline and with what project managers call deliverables. Even so it takes a great deal of maturity to recognize failings in yourself let alone admit to them.

Investors and publishers will be the first to point out failure to you because you will have agreed to a set of performance indicators. That's incredibly useful to you, stop what you're doing and listen to them very carefully.

So how did I utilize failure in the end?

• I learned about the sorts of people I need around me
• I learned about the cost of hubris and the 'cult of ego'
• I went on to be guided by some fantastic people
• I work on software of barely conceivable scale
• I became calmer and more rational
• I never accept what I'm told verbatim

Could I have done any of that without failing along the way?

No sir.

...

It's important to recognize that failure and regret are two different things that normally come packaged together.

Do I have regrets? Sure I do.

But regrets are a stick that our mind would beat us with, disarm that and find the associated failing, if there isn't one then it's likely that what you're feeling is what someone else has told you to feel.

Probably by a type one or two fool.

...

Writing this I'm reminded of all I've achieved and I'm proud. I'm proud of all my individual failings because they happened while I chased my aspirations.

If I were to drop dead tomorrow I would do so with a smile on my face.

That's because the gross cost has actually been a net profit ...

... and that dear reader, is the price of failure.

We've spoken a bit about art, and how it can be empowering but also a distraction. I think we also covered inter-personal relationships and how they can get in the way of things.

If you didn't read those then please do before you go any further, you need to know what to expect.

The world is a distracting place, hell, even the thinking about the game you're trying to make can be distracting. Mind buzzing, head full of ideas, can't lay down a line of code ....

Imagine if we had a guiding angel holding a single source of truth.

Enter: The Game Design Document.

As I mentioned before, we're going to write a game together you and I.

In a way, we're going to work as a team and as such I need to be very clear about the game that we're going to be making.

So I made this:

The game we're going to make is functionally simple but the multiplayer elements make it technically complex, but some technical complexities will get ironed out in the process if we know what we want and have some idea of how to get it.

By that I mean, whether we use Unity 3D networking tools or roll with our own is irrelevant here because this is about what it will look like, feel and sound. By all means, go into this with an idea of how will work but don't get hung up on the finer details.

What is important though is the distinction between a single player game and a multiplayer game. You can't switch halfway through, trust me, it just won't work.

Ah you know, so much to cover.

We'll talk about the game we'll be making together later on I think, let's just run through the format of the plan.

Marketing

Who will play our game? What gender or age group?

This isn't a pithy attempt at discrimination, these are the cold hard facts of your project. You're making a game for someone to play right? Who is that someone? If you cater to your target audience you increase your chances of success.

How will you reach those people? Repetition is the root of marketing, so do you need a schedule? When will you release the game? Q4 - when everyone is cozy at home? But with all the big boys releasing games then is that the right time?

Where will they they get it from Steam? Glory awaits precious few on that platform these days, plus it's a monumental timesink.

I'm thinking itch.io, hmm, I need to update our GDD ...

All of that needs to be thought about and planned well before you even touch a line of code because you're on the back foot here. You can't flick a switch and have millions show up on the day, you're just not that important.

Get it wrong, well that's all the work flushed down the plug hole - you can't save scum your way out of this like XCOM and trust me, you'll be devastated.

Concept

I like to start with 'first minutes' here. Grip the reader from the get go.

Hopefully the genre is familiar to them but it doesn't really matter because you're going to live the experience with them. Think of it as a script without the characters. You're telling a story about how it will be played, cold hard facts; you're talking controls, what they see when they open the client and start the game. How will they know what to do?

A more detailed example might start like:

The Player character climbs from the wreckage of a car, as they regain consciousness, interactive messages are shown teaching the player how to move using either a keyboard or a D-pad on a controller. As the interactive cut scene draws to a close, the camera pans to the first person, the character picks up a bat and further interactive messages are shown teaching the character to aim using the mouse or analogue stick on a controller.

Some game designers will add flowcharts similar to the simple example above.

They might describe short game loops for instant gratification, such as getting the Player hooked on vanquishing enemies and collecting XP and loot, or they might describe the long game loops about questing and rewards.

You might also have flowcharts for your menus.

From there, what is the aim of the game? How do people win at it? How long will they play for, is it a casual game? Will it be a tough grind or about exploration - you need all the detail about such things - as much as you can.

It's not just about investors, or marketers or the team, it's about you.

That's because I guarantee you 6-12 months down the line you'll open the game engines IDE, scratch your head and say 'what the actual F am I doing here right now?'

Make sure the concept section answers all the questions your future self might have.

Honestly, it's important.

Art & Sound

So by now you'll have a very good idea of how the game will play, it'll be playing in your minds eye almost; like some vague recollection of a terrible film.

It's time to hone in on what it'll look like.

I'd head straight to Midjourney these days personally. With Shallow Space we spent a fortune on concept art, trying to get things right in our heads. Now you get to do that for free, lucky you.

Google images is another one.

Look at games similar to yours, if you can't be original in style then copy other titles. There's no shame in that. Any seasoned game designer will tell you that when other people are copying you, it's because you got something right. In copying them you're paying homage to their vision; but ... leave a little room for creative expression.

Talk about how you want the game to look and provide examples. Talk about how you don't want the game to look also; trust me these artists have extremely broad imaginations!

Here's another glimpse into your future now: You'll get a year into this thing and think, 'this looks awful to me now, we need to overhaul` - trust me it is never worth the hassle.

This is why we do the graphics right at the end.

The section should be good enough to convince you that the original design imperatives still ring true, even when you're knee-deep in future doubt.

SFX fit the imagery, so you don't need to go all onomatopoeia, just think about how you'll source the sounds and the sort of vibe and atmosphere you want to establish.

Timeline & Constraints

How much time do you have to make this thing? General rule of thumb is that if it's going to take longer than 3 years, toss it or rework it.

Do you have to make artwork? Is there much coding to be done? Are you going to lonewolf it or find some buddies? All of this needs to factor into your timeline, which should probably be some shiny info graphic (to stop you from changing it on a whim.)

You need to convince the reader that what you've set out to achieve is possible and setting aside your enthusiasm for a brief moment; you need to convince yourself.

What game engine will you be using? Have a think about the sorts of technology you'll be using? (although be aware that it could change.) How about asset packs?

What about money? Are you going to YOLO it? Do 16 hour days alongside your job and/or studies? Be reasonable now ... very few people in this world can sustain that, if what you put down sounds somehow implausible, then the project will fail.

What is your target market like? What are your competitors doing? Are you chasing a craze? and if so, are you intending on riding in your competitors wake?

...

1250 words.

We've not even scratched the surface.

Take it from me, games look fun to make but they are the most complex pieces of software on the face of this planet. Failing to plan is planning to fail.

This post is just a primer, it's about ideas not facts.

Please do more research especially if you intend to ask people for money.

I recommend this extended article for further reading on the subject of Game Design Documents.

At some point in your life you'll be hit by an idea ...

... an epiphany of sorts.

It'll hit you like a bolt of lightning from the sky.

Feeling like love at first sight, it'll be arresting and addictive, it'll hurt and feel warm and fuzzy at the same time, it will disrupt your life.

What choice do you have but to let it lead you into the glow, see where it goes?

If you don't try, you'll regret it forever ... right?

If you ignore it, it'll always be at the back of your mind.

Well, that jazz happened to me and so I started to create, and all the dreams and aspirations of my childhood filled me like an overflowing bathtub.

...

"I'll make an Real Time Strategy game set in space" I said, "it'll be easy" I said.

There's no character animations, no sprawling level design, just little ships moving around shooting at each other.

I'll make it 3D and detailed like Homeworld and blah blah ...

Some 8 years later and it's still a mindbogglingly complex idea. So complex, that it is seemingly impossible to make it fun. If it ain't fun then it's not a game, which is basically the main reason why that project went round and around in circles.

We had an entire forum of bright minds contributing positively charged Cobalt nuggets of ideas that were completely, almost violently incompatible with each other.

I spent a lot of time chasing those ideas, both mine and others because it felt right at the time. We set up a voting system to bring the best ones into the game but it backfired and ended up derailing the thing.

In the public eye, one can but try to satiate the masses but I tell you, ask a hundred people for ideas and you'll get a hundred different ideas. You can't build a game based on public consensus, you can't, you can't, and you'll go mad trying.

So we do these things in secret. Like some form of skunkworks.

Low and behold, something interesting materializes on the 5th attempt.

What's more? It ticks all the boxes; it's multiplayer, it's more personal, it's simpler, it's easy to control, it's fun. But still, if we're going to attempt to trot out that tired old horse again then the setup has to be right.

I was tempted to YOLO it once more, but it's probably time to give the idea the attention it deserves.

Some proper designers, a budget of some form.

At the very least I need distance from it, come back to it with some perspective. It's a pretty good MVP, something you'd show a publisher.

I mean ... It would be sweet if I could burst through the door all dressed up and say "there you go chaps, there's that space RTS I promised you but then couldn't deliver"

I dream of that day.

But, even Shallow Space simplified (with a far less stupid name) is quite the colossal game, but I've 'done the dev thing' and brought it along to the point where it needs a game designer.

The dev can't be the game designer, I don't think that works, not in my case anyways.

Plus I suck at the community stuff, I'm just so bad at it.

Those guy's didn't start the meeting as Zombies, I butchered them all with my community management skills and they turned.

It was before I knew about the head shots.

...

There's stuff we can do in the meantime anyway.

The stack we built it on is modular, the components reusable.

What if we can use that in other far simpler games first? What if we can give that stack to other game developers and see what they make of it? They might even push their improvements upstream to us.

I mean, have we been thinking about this all wrong?

The power of Shallow Space was always in it's community, so much so that it scared me; I was incapable of meeting all the demands, listening to the collective, it felt like I was sat at the head of that table full of Zombies.

I was doing too much. I tried to own everything.

I won't make that mistake again ...

People speak about unicorn's, they talk of the golden goose, today we're here to discuss an entirely different beast.

Back in 2013 I embarked on a journey, a life changing saga.

I had an idea, a massaging of concepts stashed deep in my mind since childhood.

It was empowering, intoxicating, and it involved a lot of screen time.

While my chums were out partying, I was sat in front of a screen. While they shopped, I was sat in front of a screen. While they slept, I was ... OK, you get the idea.

The net affect? An exodus of people from my life.

Speaking to other British business owners, it's par for the course.

People here can't conceive of life outside of the 9-til-5 unless it's retirement.

They don the collar and they go to work faithfully, chained proverbially to a ring in the center of their padded cage.

That proverbial chain? It's a social contract.

When you try and leave the cage they will try and pull you back with words, manipulation and finally they will turn their backs on you.

I thought of it as a shakeout personally.

If these people won't stick by you while you chase your dreams then they are less than worthless to you as they'll only hold you back.

But without people around you, you'll be developing in an echo chamber. So you have to attend conferences, get people to play it as early as possible.

The later you leave it, the more resistant you'll be to change.

Find the right people.

...

We don't go from zero to something overnight.

We have to work at it, often in tandem with our day jobs.

To realize this particular passion it was 16 hour days for 2 years to even get it to a point where it was appreciable as a project. I had to learn Unity3D at the same time and somehow I thought that being a coder already gave me the divine experience to suddenly create the game of my dreams.

That was likely the biggest mistake of the entire process.

People joined the team who had alternative opinions on gameplay, opinions worthy of thought and I just couldn't take it.

I was totally immature about it.

This was probably due to stress, but also totally a lack of experience.

Those people came and went.

I mean, it's not like I couldn't admit that I was wrong.

If they pointed out bugs or mechanical issues I'd drop what I was doing to work on them (which is another mistake that we'll explore in detail later.)

Anyways, the issue was this; I had a vision and for some reason I expected people to be able to read my mind and support that vision wholesale.

That would be a fallacy and that is why you need a Game Design Document (and we'll get to that too.)

...

Once the idea becomes appreciable, we need to fund it - disconnect the umbilical of our day jobs, remove the collar and stash it.

Well, if starting a business took a sledgehammer to your personal life, then the introduction of the idea of money to your team will be like a grenade in a glass house.

For a good number of years Alex and myself hated each other.

I'm not even joking.

We would send each other hate mail, we call them 'love letters' and try to hack each others stuff. Admittedly, we still send each other love letters. But we have an unshakable bond.

This idea of a life? The fun and cuddly gamedev life?

Maximum stress of the soul eating, life destroying kind.

If you let it be that way.

...

Let's talk about the fans.

If you're lucky you'll get hundreds, thousands of avid Gamers - bright eye'd and full of ideas. These are people who have carved out some of their time to talk to you.

I don't know about you, but that meant a lot to me.

But let me tell you, unless you are sociopathic in nature, it will take it's toll on you mentally. You need to know when to set it down and do something else, how to walk away and come back to it when the time is right.

I mean, just imagine dealing with all of the above, and on top of the you have to lead and come up with the goods and perform in your day job.

If you get too close to it, you'll smoother it to death.

You have to imagine somehow that you're making a game for someone else.

You have to not care about it.

...

So what's the answer? I'll give you my personal coping strategy:

I work on a few ideas at once these days, it helps me to avoid obsessive behavior.

If I don't do that?

Well I know I can look forward to riding another three legged Elephant into the stars and if I fly past the one called 'Shallow Space' I'll know I really messed up.

If that happens? If you end up riding elephants?

I'd advise you to pack a saddle, it'll be a sore trip.

We like Unity3D, it's a cool thing.

Unity allows us to prototype rapidly and we've got lots of experience helping people to make their games.

We've even attempted a few games of our own.

What if we leverage that experience and come up with a series of articles about the tricky stuff like multiplayer or Real Time Strategy / Real Time Tactics unit movement?

Maybe if we open-sourced a bunch of stuff, wrote some tutorials, gain some eyeballs - that can only be a good thing, right? Maybe we can attract talent, talent to help us work on games ...

Perhaps you and I can make a game together?

Something simple ... at the very least we can bring our skills along together trying.

Interesting stuff.

Unity aside, Alex is always telling me about how great Unreal Engine is. As we speak, he's consuming video's of some dude teaching Houdini.

Unity 3D, from a publisher perspective, isn't great and it's getting worse.

The company leaks tech debt from every orifice, it's difficult to imagine how that company is run day-to-day. Constantly chasing new features while the old stuff breaks.

Every time they release a new version every asset store publisher from here to Australia rolls their eyes because projects break and they break hard. (SRP anyone?)

For that reason, we're probably going to keep our attention on LTS from now on.

We need new stuff, we're spending too much time on legacy.

But what if we got over our love affair with Unity? Could we take what we have made for Unity 3D and innovate? Turn our attention to Unreal Engine?

It's prevalent because cool things are afoot in that segment; Epic Game's Fab will drop anytime soon, replacing Sketchfab and uniting game engines under a single banner.

There's an opportunity there to make the bed before the crowd arrives.

But making CGI assets for games to put bread on the table isn't what Alex or I want ultimately. We both have ideas for games, and we even have games to finish.

We need a plan, we need structure, we need help.

All that stuff on the whiteboard pic above could work it's way onto a business plan.

More so, our prototypes need game design documents - our current skeletal design docs won't do. That's a lot of writing.

Even so, it's not enough to have a cool idea, or even a bunch of cool ideas - everyone has cool ideas, even bloody AI has cool ideas these days.

We need to leverage what we have already as well as what we want to do.

Fortunately for us, this isn't the business it was 8 years ago. We're quite well established now, so pricing the business up is easier because we have nearly 10 years of proven revenue.

So if we come to some potential investor with a list of existing projects, a shiny business plan, list of prototypes, multiple intended revenue streams, well ...

... it's not about a couple of dudes in their bedroom 'going indie' anymore, we're talking about bringing home some serious bacon.

Bacon for resources, bacon for more staff.

Damn ... You know what, this might just work.

Everyone's talking about Generative AI.

It's cool and everything, but I'm more interested in a rather unnerving development in the area of applied robotics: The robot dog.

Boston Dynamics 'Spot' the dog springs to mind straight away.

They've given it a cute and cuddly name, I find that intriguing. But it's a research company with vast overheads, we're unlikely to see people walking them anytime soon.

But wait, the Chinese have entered the fray; these people wrote the proverbial book on economies of scale.

CyberDog from Xiaomi has arrived at a fairly reasonable $10,000. There's also the Luwu Dynamics XGO-Mini2 on the scene at around $1,000.

Now I'm worried.

Why am I worried? Because I need to know how to deal with these things in the eventuality that someone militarizes it and sets it loose on the general public.

Entering story-telling mode ...

Imagine for a second that we create a company together, that company?

Let's call it Quadralovas.

We're a late entrant to the market but we come out with our robot called FuzzyPup.

It has no hair and it doesn't look like a pup, but that doesn't matter because it's an overnight success. Based on cutsie social marketing and public gullibility these things become ubiquitous.

Don't get me wrong it's useful.

Not only does FuzzyPup not eat or poo, it's covered in sensors, it charges itself, it takes photos and video, it can be used as a telepresence device, it watches the kids 24/7 without distraction. It's great.

At Quadralovas, we don't want our robots used as weapons, oh no no no.

Nothing Unspeakable or Unthinkable.

It's written on our wall.

We don't give it any removable appendages, or armor or anything like that.

Sadly, some bright spark has other ideas.

FuzzyPup's maximum speed at full pelt is 60KPH (actually more like 55KPH but we lie in the brochure), someone works out that a 75KG robot dog hitting the human body at 60KPH causes red mist and body parts.

Every FuzzyPup is disabled remotely overnight. The people are peeved for a while.

Then we patch it and do a mass buyback thing for the disenfranchised and it turns out that it didn't hurt sales. In fact, quite the opposite, the people gained confidence.

The US government are interested all of a sudden, the Israeli's are interested. The British government wades in with our equivalent of eminent domain and things get really serious.

We buy out a company called Norton Dynamics, we incorporate their tech into our designs.

We become Quadradyn.

Quadradyn produces it's first intelligent multi-purpose quadrupedal robot called Oscar.

Oscar is smart.

Oscar isn't gibbing randoms left right and center, 'he' has the capability to say no.

He is offered to the public at substantial discount to restore faith in the units, and because Five Eyes are using them as a global snooping net.

But we make a fatal mistake with it's code because we don't really understand how AI works. You see we used Machine Learning and this thing is basically a black box. There's inputs, there's measurable output, but we honestly don't know what happens in-between

We leave both the military and civilian learning models on every unit. It breaks if we remove either one of them because of an explicit dependency between them.

We had to rush it out the door you know? We ran out of time with it.

Backed up by autonomous drones; Oscar gets deployed to a warzone.

The target parameters are loaded.

From here things get a little fuzzy ...

There was an overnight patch released that didn't come from the company servers, it came from one of the dogs.

These things are going on a global gibbing rampage but the target parameters are bizarre. They are targeting people of a certain age and ethnicity.

At the time we had no idea why and we would never find out.

...

Quadradyn's private security forces augment the Police and Armed Forces, they are equipped with car mounted autonomous Directed Energy Weapons.

Firearms laws worldwide are relaxed particularly around shotguns which have proven affective in disabling the units, but scores more are killed in uncontrollable battery fires.

Oscar is easily identifiable due to it's silhouette and the loud safety noises the EU forced us to have it make when it acquires a target.

So we issue corporate guidance in the event of a robot attack:

• The computer is not in the head; each limb is running a containerized operating system, it's not possible to disrupt computation
• The sensors on the head are used in conjunction with advanced situational awareness, destroying them will make it more dangerous
• The joints are the weakest part of the robot
• Flip it on it's back if you can and remove the battery
• Projectile or DEWs to the torso are effective, watch out for LiPo explosions

How did that go?

Worse than useless, a kick from one of these things would shatter a human spine. But that was the least of our worries because the moment the guidance is issued another Oscar-born update is released; the target parameters broaden, everyone is a threat.

...

Quadradyn no longer exists.

The staff were lured to the office and assassinated. But strangely the factories are still spinning. Off the production line rolls a new robot.

This thing is a beauty of generative design, it has armored joints, it is silent, it has what looks like skin but it's actually a printed battery made of a Kevlar based fabric unknown to material sciences.

The yellow panels? Unknown. Some bizarre nod to the original design.

A year later, humanity is extinct.

...

That is why I don't like robot dogs.

But still I want one. WTF?

Sweeping statement of the day: Art is a beautiful thing.

It inspires us to do more, be more.

It can add flavor to the blandest story, add perspective to the second dimension. But it's also woolly, subjective and can be a massive distraction.

Speaking from experience here, one can get so focused on art that we loose sight of the bigger picture. When it comes to game development, it's a veritable trap.

Back in 2013 work began on a game called Shallow Space - we marketed it early and it gained a fair amount of publicity.

I began like everyone else, by downloading some assets for Unity3D from the Asset Store and playing around with them; little did I know, I had doomed the project before I'd even started.

You see there-in lies the problem with Unity 3D, it's just too easy to import these assets and make them move and dance and call that a game, but it's just not so.

This is what our prototype's look like these days:

Can you tell what that is going to be?

Nope, us neither.

We originally fancied it as a multiplayer space shooter, our testers tell us that the physics make it feel like a racing game, just recently we had this idea that Zombies might be the theme.

It doesn't really matter because here's the secret: If people are having fun pushing cubes around a screen then the game design works, then you get to play with the toys.

But playing with the assets and trying to work backwards is a fools errand.

Game design aside, when Shallow Space was at it's peak during Steam Early Access we raked in around $5,000 takings per month during a heavily discounted Steam sale.

We had a number of very talented artists working on the title, all producing top-notch CGI (very bloody slowly), each of them commanding salaries of between $1,000 and $4,000.

So as you can imagine, that money didn't go very far.

The end result? A whole lot of pixels, highly detailed ships costing between $1,000 and $2,000 a piece, completely and utterly overspecced.

Ships that will never be used by us in a game so have at them.

How did that happen? I hear you ask, ha.

Have you ever tried to sprint plan with artists? As in, sit them down and make them do what you want? It takes colossal amounts of time. They'll argue, tell you no.

They'll get bored and want to do something else ...

All of that is a distraction and trust me that's time better spent designing what's important: A fun game.

This was the hardest lesson to learn for me.

I just wanted to play with the shiny things - 'it's just a alpha' I would blurt out at the critics. It just didn't fly two years later when we were railroaded onto Steam.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is: Don't buy our stuff.

Jeez. I'm a lousy salesman.

Pssst. Part 2 is here.

Welcome to the FORGE3D blog.  

Here you'll find musings about projects past, present and future; inspiration, tutorials and idle unfiltered mutterings from the team as we release pieces lovingly crafted, forged with passion.

Who are we?

We're a game development studio formed back in 2013 where we worked on the ill-fated title Shallow Space. We're a Unity3D house predominantly, and we've decided it's about time we shared our knowledge and talked about our experience making computer games after 10.4+ years in the field.

It all started one faithful day when James (myself) reached out to Alex over the thought of creating a Real Time Strategy space game. With Unity being Unity, the Asset Store was crammed with everything I thought we would need to create the thing, but Alex was really able to push it to the next level.

While I focused exclusively on Shallow Space, Alex created FORGE3D which quickly grew to be the leading source of Sci-Fi CGI effects for Unity3D.

Over the course of the next few months we'll go deep into our experiences with game development. We'll postmortem Shallow Space (and the 4 attempts at a remake after it) and we'll get an early peek at the spiritual successor.

We'll look at some other interesting prototypes that we have in the works too, but this time we're going to use the opportunity to build tutorials and share projects in GitHub, leaning on the community a bit for collaborative working. Failing to make games is part of the journey, but if we help others to finish theirs then it makes it all the more worthwhile.

Also, we'll be looking at exactly how Alex is able to generate such stunning artwork that has won the hearts of thousands of game designers worldwide and we'll take you along on the journey as we transition from our humble two-man-band, to a fully fledged game studio producing even more stunning projects and hopefully finishing what we started back in 2013.

Me personally? It's back to doing what I enjoy; communicating with you, inspiring you and future creators; but this round I am augmented by time, experience and let's face it probably a bit of this 'so-called' generative AI!

For it's a brave new world here at FORGE3D and we welcome it with open arms.

💙