Background
Blimp Wars (www.blimpwarsonline.com) is a browser based multiplayer action game where players fight in the sky at the controls of steam punk blimps. The game was developed by indie developer Dave Toulouse and veteran game developer Brian ‘Psychochild’ Green who provided game design and business advice, as well as moral support.
Over to you Dave…
In 2007 I started to work on what became my first game, Golemizer (www.golemizer.com). It was probably a bold move to work on an MMO for a first game (and a sandbox one) but I was badly in need of a challenge that my day job (which I still have) wasn’t able to provide. I started from scratch and coded everything myself only based on my experience as a web developer and how I thought such thing should be built.
I decided to use only Javascript to code the client. Not to prove anything to anyone but just because that’s what I already knew. Flash would probably have been a wiser choice but I knew I was in for a long ride and learning something completely new wouldn’t probably be helping me. Besides there were already some interesting Javascript games around so I thought that with my 9 years of experience as a web developer I should be up to the challenge.
It was clear then that I was first developing a framework that would allow me to build very different games. I decided only 6 months later that the first project would be Golemizer. As you can imagine, I encountered many issues and my abilities were challenged on a regular basis. It was a wonderful learning experience but many times I thought I reached the limit of my capacities. It went to changing the AI system one month before release to just learning how to configure the server properly to support a virtual world with thousands of active NPCs at the same. All of that while keeping a day job that felt more and more in my way but was still paying all the bills.
One year later I released Golemizer without any fanfare. Not having released a game before I knew nothing about how to “try” to do a proper release. With still a lot of work in the year following release the game managed to get over 30,000 registered accounts and even started to make some money even though it was far from enough to leave my job.
So still stuck at my safe but not inspiring job I had 2 choices: Deal with it and look for another job or use the safe side of my current one to start working on another game and try to do better this time. Of course I choose the second option. The point surely wasn’t to become rich or maybe not even to quit my day job but at least to do better and hope for more. My two years of work on Golemizer taught me a lot on many levels and I knew I was ready to take things more seriously and set more ambitious goals.
I’m a big fan of KDice (www.kdice.com) and was wondering what kind of game I could build that would allow people to have the same kind of 10 minutes of multiplayer fun while reusing the framework I already built. Blimps were introduced for some time in Golemizer and have always been popular since then. That’s when I thought that the best thing to do would be to stick with the same IP and expand it a bit. I could have just introduced this as a mini-game in Golemizer but I needed a fresh start which would allow me to avoid some mistakes based on everything I learned so far.
Blimp Wars was to become my second game.
Development
The hardest thing about game development for me is far from being anything related to coding. It’s do to so only about 3-4 hours per day while skipping Friday and Saturday for social life. Still, with a now stable framework, the development of Blimp Wars took only about 5 months part time. I must say that it’s only then I could really tell that this framework I built for Golemizer really achieved its goal of being easily used for something completely different. In only a few days I had a working prototype and was able to play a quick game against myself.
Having spent quite some time fleshing out my idea on paper and based on how fast I was able to come up with a prototype I immediately started to look for artists. I wanted to keep the game simple so my needs for graphics were clear right from the start. While Golemizer was mostly built with free graphic libraries there was no way I would be doing the same for Blimp Wars. I knew I’d be able to release and I knew some people appreciated my work so I needed to set the bar higher this time. Original art was a no brainer this time even if the money made from Golemizer wasn’t enough to finance this new project.
I found developing a multiplayer game alone very tricky. Nobody around me is quite into gaming and even less into game development. That’s why I knew I had to get to a beta release as soon as possible to receive feedback I badly needed. That’s when I encountered the second hardest thing for me about game development, promotion.
Sure Golemizer’s players were a good crowd to contact first but few players are actually willing to test or are good at it. I did sent mails to some websites in the hope of receiving some attention but me being still an unknown face mixed with poor marketing skills my call remained mostly unanswered. I ended up to run some ads here and there and finally gathered enough testers.
The coding process went particularly well without any big problems similar to Golemizer’s development. I was using code I knew very well and all the small bits I learned in the past years made this a smooth sail. The AI system is probably the feature I’m the most proud of. Each NPC is running dynamically compiled code so I can easily hop in a game in progress, activate the AI editor and make changes to the behaviours of an NPC. In fact the whole framework is allowing me to build a world, a room while actually “playing” the game. It’s similar to the powers a GM might have in an MMO but will full control over any pieces of the world.
Release
As much as I was having fun to build the game I knew that sooner or later I’d have to face the release of the game. Not that I was afraid the game would crash on the first day but because I knew I was releasing a multiplayer game as an unknown indie developer. How do I get enough people online at the same time at first so they don’t just close the browser because they’re alone? Well to be honest I still don’t know the perfect answer. There are a lot of articles around on how to write press release, how to contact the press, how to do a successful release, etc. All good but no guarantee of success here. You can follow advice to the letter but advice is cheap and until you have somehow proven you are worth it your calls may remain unanswered. Now most indie developers are facing this same issue so the only thing one can do is to keep working and keep doing better each time until you reach your goals. Nobody’s getting a free pass here and you have to prove you are up to the challenge which is what I’m trying to do and planning to keep doing until I get where I want to.
So to help to spread the word about Blimp Wars I built my first Flash game. Distributing a Flash game could not be any easier even if you haven’t built the “next big hit”. I developed a simple shooter called The adventures of Bret Airborne (http://www.kongregate.com/games/Over00/the-adventures-of-bret-airborne-episode-1) built on the same theme as Blimp Wars. While I could have probably spent more time on this little game the goal has been reached: spread links to Blimp Wars that were previously out of my reach. Besides I kept a door open by adding “Episode 1″ next to its name so there’s always the possibility to improve my Flash skills and come back with Episode 2!
While it’s still early and getting enough players online at the same time is not completely achieved there is now a bit more than 500 persons that have created an account on Blimp Wars. With more time and as the game receive more coverage I’m sure there will be soon plenty of players to keep the game running 24 hours a day.
Could I have done a better release? Probably. Did I learn? Constantly. Do I give up? Surely not!
Budget
The game cost $1,000 to develop (most of that money went into artists’ work) and there is recurrent expenses of $140 per month for the server. The advertising budget is still not completely settled but I expect that it might possibly exceed the development budget.
For now I have the luxury to consider the money I put in these projects the same as anyone else that would be spending money on some hobby. Hopefully Blimp Wars will be able to cover the expenses of my next game and I hope even more to allow me to spend more time on game development.
If you’re curious to see if I’ll succeed you can follow my progress on www.over00.com!
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