Age, Pleasing Apple, and Trying To Climb Out of the Hole.

I still think these are pretty funny.

I haven't done much blogging for a long time. Part of it is that I don't feel I have much advice to give. The business has changed an awful lot in a last few years, and I'm still mired in the old ways. I'll let the elder statesman mantle pass to those who actually know things about our amazing modern cyberworld.

But there is another reason I haven't been writing. I have been suffering from a massive period of exhaustion, triggered by an ugly combination of age and medication. That, perhaps, is something I can write about usefully.

For a variety of reasons, game industry workers tend to be young. Little gets said about the grim business of growing old in this industry.

(Younger people have now tuned me out. Don't worry. It's fine. You will live forever.)

This is a tale about my age and health, how they helped me make the biggest screw-up in my career, and how I am trying to climb out of the hole.

A Few Practical Comments About Middle-Age

Young people have a notorious disinterest in hearing what things are like when you grow older. Old people are smug and boring and smell weird. Since this is meant to be a practical guide for a long haul in game development, I will be as brief as possible.

I am 45, and my health is getting worse.

Generally, when I tell younger people that, I get a reaction like, "Oh God, no, HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU HAVE LEFT!?" But it's not like that. I'm not dying. At least, not imminently.

But middle age is usually when the long, inevitable decay of your body starts to make itself known. It's when you think, "My chest hurts. I might be having a heart attack," and then immediately think, "Oh, crap. I’m old. It really MIGHT be a heart attack."

(Of course, some young people have poor health, and some lucky people stay healthy into old age. I include this disclaimer for the tiresome folks who get most of their fun from being angry and pedantic in the comments.)

When you reach middle age, your body starts to grumble and slowly break down.  A combination of lost dreams and dying loved ones tends to make your mind a bit of a mess too.

Annoying people always say, "You're only as old as you feel." Well, I feel old.

Do you know him in real life? Then you don't know anything about him.

"Dude, You Are a Whiny Bummer."

I really don't mean to be. Just laying out the facts. It's not all bad. There are good things about growing older, too. I‘m not whining about it. It happens to everyone.

What I am saying, and this is important when understanding creative types, is that something always goes wrong with your health (mental and/or physical) at some point. When this happens, the fractures will deform your work.

Almost everyone makes fun of George R.R. Martin for not making good time on the Game of Thrones books. But, dude, the guy is 66 years old. I'm not going to pretend I know what's going on in his life, but I can think of 10000 things that could be keeping him from writing. I'm not happy that the Game of Thrones books come out so slowly, but I know that these things happen.

I'm 20 years younger than he is, and yet, I recently had a long stretch of problems. I won't bore you with the blah blah details, but they left me on a collection of medicines that left me completely exhausted for long stretches of time.

This led me directly to the biggest professional screw-up of my career.

Falling Into a Hole

I release my games for the iPad. I think tablets are really cool and fun to play with, and I love putting out games for the platform. However, it's not a big moneymaker for us. The market is so super-competitive that we can't compete.

So, early this year, we ported our newest game, Avernum 2: Crystal Souls, to the iPad. It went through testing and we were ready to ship it. It was good to go.

Three days before release, Apple put out a new version of iOS, the iPad operating system. If I was a responsible, together developer, who was fully focused on selling his customers quality products, I would have tested the game on the new OS. But I was too tired.

Had I done so, I would have found that the new OS completely broke the game.

There are more details of the story in an interview I gave here. Basically, the engine I used was old and did things in some outdated ways. The new iOS update was the one that finally broke the engine.

Instead of canceling the release and fixing the problems, I thoughtlessly shipped the game. Then, finding it was broken, I canceled the release, removed the game from sale, and handed out refunds.

Then I tried to fix the problem, but this involved learning a lot about programming iPads. At that point, my fatigue was so bad that my limbs hurt. I didn't have the energy for a real burst of research and programming. So I gave up.

My advice: If you're going to make yourself look like an idiot, do it LOUDLY.

I Do Not Want Pity

Don't feel sorry for me. My point is, at some point, EVERYONE gets sick. You will, too. When it happens, all of your careful plans fall apart, and you need to put them back together in a new (probably smaller) shape.

After I canceled all of our iPad stuff, I lost several days to depression and self-pity. It was the first time, in a long, solid career, I'd said, "I have to stop doing stuff I was doing because I just suck now." Declining ability is something everyone faces at some point, but it is still hard to face.

I decided to go to the doctor. As much as I needed the medicines I was taking for my health whatevers, I needed work and self-respect more.

I spent time playing with my medication and dealing with various complications. And, eventually, my energy came back. That was two weeks ago.

Climbing Out of the Hole

The first thing I did when I could do things again is begin a massive assault on the design of our next game, Avadon 3, to finally fix the problems that have been in the Avadon games from the start. (I wanted to fix them for Avadon 2, but I was tired. Exhaustion forced me to spend over two years writing that game even in its flawed state.)

Once I convinced myself I could do things again, I went back to fighting with the iPad. I had to. Not for money or PR, but for simple pride and self-confidence. I don't want to have to run in fear from challenges yet.

I needed to rewrite my old engine (happily, it came with source code), which means that I had to learn how to program iPads. Keeping from having to learn iPad programming is why I licensed an engine in the first place.

This is the sort of challenge where being old and having lots of experience helps. Getting older is not all bad news.

In the 30+ years I've been programming, I long ago lost track of the number of foreign languages and systems I've learned to develop for. You get better at it. You learn to avoid the easy mistakes and not create the tricky bugs. You get better at finding answers to tough problems. When I am capable of doing what I do, I'm better at it than I've ever been.

And I did it. It took days of basically constant, family-neglecting work, but I have a working engine and a working game again. I still need to do some planning and testing, and it's pretty humiliating to go back on my word. But being an indie developer means that you get to look stupid to the world occasionally.

Game developer ages, as of 2014. Thank God that, when you turn 50, you don't need to eat anymore.

A Few More Words About Age

Writing a public article about one's bad health is a really good way to make it harder to get jobs in the future. Who wants to hire a sickie?

But ha ha! The joke's on you! I'm already unemployable in games!

Take a look at this chart. Game devs in their forties? 16% In their fifties? 1%

One. Percent. What the hell. Video games are a young art form, but they're not THAT young.

This is a topic I want to write more about, but no discussion about age and writing games would be complete without at least mentioning it.

Want to talk about lack of diversity in the games industry? I'm with you. However, if you don't mention the total lack of old people, that's how I know you're not serious.

If you struggle to get more women, non-whites, etc. into the industry, only to find they all fall back out when they start turning 40, I promise that your victory will turn to ashes in your mouth.

So It's Kind of a Happy Ending.

I thought I couldn't do a thing anymore. I announced it. Then I found I could do it again. Then I announced it, making me look stupid. Now I think I'll be able to ship the game after all, and be proud of it. It should be a happy ending.

Sort of. It has forced me to really think about how my business, my life's work, will end. A series of contractions and abandoned projects, each step accompanied by a cloud of apologies and refunds. Unfortunate and inevitable, but it can be handled ethically and with grace.

If nothing else, this failed release has made me a lot more forgiving of older creators when they fail. Of course, if someone is actively ripping their customers off, that's a problem. But a late Kickstarter? A slow book? I can show some patience and empathy. Qualities the internet could use a lot more of.

If there is anything hopeful I can come up with, it's this: The people who make the games you love? They are human too. They will age. They will falter. Be tolerant. Be supportive. Forgive them.

You will get old too, and you will understand. When that happens, don't have to look back and think, "Wow. I was a jerk."

What? Some Indie Games Made Money?

I think the XBox LIVE Indie Games project is really cool and exciting. For the first time, random losers like me can write a game and sell it on consoles. This really excites me, because my games are far too small and niche and low-budget to have a chance of getting on, say, XBox Live or WiiWare.

Sure, there are problems with the service. It has predictably taken a bit of time for the quality to come up. And I think you should be allowed to charge more than $10 for a game. But this is still a darn cool opportunity for small developers, and Microsoft should be applauded for it.

But that leaves a big question: Can any developers actually make money on the darn thing? Well, we now actually have some hard numbers for earnings of the top games. Take a look. They are very interesting.























1. Good stuff makes money!

The top two games for numbers of sales are I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMBIES 1N IT!!!1 and Avatar Drop. And, coincidentally, they're the two games on the service I've actually bought. I MAED A GAM3 is the best dollar I've ever spent on gaming. (Just narrowly edging out CrushCrushCrush on Rock Band.)

Excellent party games, and you should buy them.

1b. I'm just sayin' ...

If someone makes I MAED AVATAR DR0P W1TH ZOMBIES 1N IT!!!1, I will buy it.

2. Don't undercharge for your work!

But look at the profits column. Two of the three most popular games had developers who wisely chose not to charge a paltry dollar for their labors. Though the amusingly named "ezmuze+ Hamst3r edition" is down at #18 in number of sales, its higher price helped it to make a pile. The $2.50 games are making more than the $1 games, because that price increase (from almost nothing to almost nothing) isn't causing sales to drop by 60%.

I MAED A GAM3, to make a lot of money at a dollar price, had to get a LOT of exposure. Most developers won't get that lucky. You can luck into a quick payout, but you can't build a lasting business (meaning making a living off of multiple titles over a period of years) making dollar games. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Don't race to the bottom! Figure out a fair price for your work, and stand by it.

3. The kids love the vibrators.

I hate it when people act like Indie developers have some obligation to be always super-creative and artsy and like Jesus or something. I know some people are miffed by the popularity of the "massage" games, two of which are on the top twenty. But freedom to do whatever you want will result in a lot of ... Well, try out The Drinking Game, and you'll see what I mean.

I personally think that the "massage" games are pretty innovative. They saw demand for something nobody else was doing, and they made it. That is what innovation is. Which teaches a valuable lesson. Even when you get the innovation you want, it will still probably suck.

Resident Evil 5 and Racism!!!

First off, how's that for a article title? Doesn't that just get the blood flowing? (And also get this article to pop out nicely in a list of blog posts, thus generating more hits.) This is how sausage is made.

I got through about three quarters of Resident Evil 5 before my XBox died. I just got my replacement system, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to work up the energy to finish the game. This is a real disappointment to me.

I was really looking forward to Resident Evil 5, since Resident Evil 4 is one of my favorite shooters, like, ever. It was the first Resident Evil game I'd played, and man, I loved it. It's out for pretty much every system in existence. You really should play it, though the Intellivision and Vectrex ports are, frankly, subpar.

And Resident Evil 5 definitely has it's good points. It's very pretty. The battles are paced nicely. It gives you a period of exploration to catch your breath, and then it hits you with a horde of zombies. I'd prefer the hordes were bigger, but still, it rarely irritates you with enemies constantly coming in dribs and drabs. And the boss fights are very cool. I liked them a lot.

But there are several elements I found super-disappointing.

1. The Plot Is Dull. This simply amazes me. The game is about a zombie outbreak. In Africa. Zombies. In Africa. HOW CAN THAT NOT BE AWESOME!?!? Packed cities. Desperately poor people with automatic weapons. Incompetent and corrupt governments. Plus, you know, the relentless assault of the living dead.

And yet, the plot is just sludge. Most of it involves finding out what happened to the former partners of the two main characters (about which I could not care less) and chasing some terrorist for reasons that are never explained. (We're supposed to hate him as part of some Pavlovian response to him being called a terrorist. Didn't work.) And, while the city settings are cool and creepy, you're soon wandering around solving puzzles in some generic ancient tomb, losing all of the awesomeness of being in Africa.

What a waste.

2. The Inventory System Constantly Spoils Your Fun. Fighting the inventory system is a constant distraction. The inventory system in Resident Evil 4 was cool and realistic, and I actually had fun shifting the items around in my briefcase to solve the puzzle of making things fit. In comparison, the new system is an aggravation and trading gear back and forth with your partner is doubly so.

Now, I know I wrote a few months ago how you shouldn't be afraid to make changes to your game. But that doesn't mean every change is good. You must be merciless about improving the worst elements of your design, but you also should be determined to leave alone the parts that are actually good.

3. About the Racism Thing. I didn't have any problem with this for most of the game. You have to fight zombies somewhere. And, wherever they are, you're gonna' shoot a bunch of former people. Having that take place in Africa is no more racist then setting the action in Dubuque. The early levels, in the city, are very foreign and cool, and I think you'd have to be pretty oversensitive to have a problem with them.

Then you go out into the back hills. You enter villages of straw huts and fight zombies wearing straw skirts and wielding spears. And the bosses are ooga booga witch doctors with big masks.

I'm not going to call this racist. Throwing that accusation around cheapens it. It's not racist. It's just dumb. I may be wrong, but I suspect, if you go to an African village today, the young men won't have grass skirts and spears. They will be wearing ratty t-shirts and wielding AK-47s. And they will mess you up.

This is like setting the game in modern-day Japan and having the villages be full of sumo wrestlers, samurais, and J-pop stars. Although, of course, if this was the case, I would never stop playing that game.

Also, since every pot in the villages was full of either gold coins or bullets, I think they could afford something a little deadlier than spears.

4. Oh. One more race comment. About your hot, sexy, hot girl sidekick. She's an amazing bit of art direction. It's amazing how they were able to make her as white-looking as a human being could possibly be and still be plausibly identified as not white. I'm just sayin'.

This is all not so much a review as a bunch of impressions. And a bit of public mourning. I suppose it was foolish to expect more, but after the pure game goodness of Resident Evil 4, I wish I could say more than, "Meh. It's worth a rental."

Oh, and to pre-empt any criticism. I'm not politically correct. I'm just plain correct.

Thoughts On Plants vs Zombies

I just spent a bunch of time playing almost all of Plants vs Zombies. Then I watched my seven-year old daughter play it. She loves it. A fairly fun game, and, from an Indie gaming perspective, very, very interesting. If you haven't yet, first watch the viral video that's been selling the game like mad. After that, trying the demo (at the very least) is really worthwhile.

Some observations ...

1. You Could Have Written This Game. - Two or three dedicated people, in two years, could make this game. It'd take hard work and skill, of course, but that is always true. Even in the age of the blockbuster, a small, good team can still make a title that gets a lot of attention.

2. You Can Do Something New With An Old Genre. - If someone had e-mailed me a year ago and asked my opinion about whether it would be worthwhile to write a tower defense game, I would have been, like, "Are you crazy? The secret is to find an underserved market you can really rock, not an insanely saturated one." Shows how little I know. If a genre is popular, it's always possible for a really smart designer to find a new angle on it and gain some serious traction.

3. The Game Is EASY. - Wow, is it easy. Tower defense games are general about being ground down by stronger and stronger waves of implacable foes until your inevitable defeat. Not your cheery, casual-friendly sort of thing. Plants vs. Zombies starts easy and stays easy. Anyone with much gamer experience is going to chew it up and spit out the bones. Only the final survival mode levels (which you have to play most of everything to unlock) require any real thought.

This is GENIUS. I think, if the game is a real success, resisting the urge to make it hard will account for most of the victory. It made it a potential buy for a whole new universe of fans, and, to keep the hardcore around, it has a clever strategy ...

4. A Thousand New Things Is a Thousand New Things - There are dozens of plants you can buy and dozens of types of zombies to fend off. Even when the game is so easy as to be a bit tedious (as I found), the new stuff really helps to maintain interest.

The thing is, most of the new stuff is fairly shallow. "Here's a zombie with a special sort of shield." "Here's a plant that can shoot around that shield." Only a few of the plants and zombie types are really unique, but the constant barrage of pretty new stuff is enough to maintain interest.

In sum, interesting stuff. And the game is a bit on the casual side for me, but I did enjoy it. And it helped to pass the time until my XBox gets fixed.