It has been awfully silent about TRAUMA for some time here. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing anything. On the contrary. I’m preparing the steps necessary to actually publish the game. Which also means dealing with the selling side of things.

Bank Account

I have actually opened a new bank account only for my games stuff. I want to keep this apart from my finances. Because banks are assholes, this is more complicated and expensive than necessary. I already have two bank accounts at two different banks (bbbank.de and ing-diba.de). BBBank offers a second account only for an extra monthly fee. DiBa actually doesn’t allow you to have more than one account. I found only after sending in all the necessary forms and documents. Both strategies are plain stupid. Because what it actually encourages me to do is to go to one of their competitors ( postbank.de) and to apply for a free account there. So after filling in the forms for the second time, I finally received most of my account information yesterday. Which brings me to…

Setting Up Payment Options

Obviously, I want to offer as many different payment options as possible. I don’t want to lose customers simply because they can’t pay me. I set up a separate PayPal account for TRAUMA which enables payments via PayPal or credit card. I was able to do this just today actually, because it needed to be associated with a bank account. I was researching alternative systems like Amazon Payments and Google Checkout. Amazon Payments seems to be only for US residents. As for Google Checkout, I was able to create an account. However, when trying to upgrade to “Merchant”, which is needed to accept payments, I was able to only select US and GB as countries. This is actually quite odd because the entire form was already in German. I think the system is not enabled for Germany yet. It seems like I’m stuck with PayPal.

Payment Processing Solutions

I researched some of the other Indies to check out how they deal with payments. I found that most of them either use FastSpring or E-Junkie. I checked out both and decided to use neither. Fastspring seems to have a very comfortable backend. However, the actual process of purchasing is needlessly complicated for the customers – they need to log in and everything. E-Junkie was the preferred platform. It’s light-weight and fairly transparent on the side of users. I just didn’t think I had good control about the download links they generate for the delivery. And in the end, I wasn’t even sure what I was paying them for at all. PayPal would carry most of the process anyway. Also, the side is quite ugly.

I accidentally got in contact with Jeroen Stoat form StoatGames (Dinner Date). He gave me some excellent feedback on the beta. He also described how he set up his system. It’s a very simple, custom solution built on top of PayPal. I especially like how it avoids having any kind of passwords by sending all vital data via E-Mail. I think I will simply code something similar myself. I asked about the observations he made when actually using the system and I will make some small tweaks. I think many people don’t realize that making a PayPal integration is actually deceptively simple as long as you don’t want anything fancy like shopping carts. I found this tutorial useful to get started.

Setting Up the Domain

So I actually have a new domain now. It’s http://www.traumagame.com/. I have set up some alternatives but they don’t works so well right now. From the experience I gained during the beta, I want to have some precise control about the domain the game is hosted on. Small issues can easily mess with the savegames. To this end, I have been experimenting with .htaacess and encountered some issues. If you are familiar with this Apache thing, I could use some help.

Pricing

I’m still struggling with the pricing for the game. I can’t make a proper business calculation because I have no experience with sales numbers yet. I need to rely on opinions. But Everybody seems to say something different. It also heavily depends on the type of game. A game similar to TRAUMA is perhaps Windosill. It costs 3$. Samorost 2 may be also comparable. That one is 5$. It’s funny but I remember a time where people were discussing how going below 20$ was destructive for the Indie community. On the other hand, many simple Indie games still cost easly 10$ or even more on Steam. The recently released Gemini Rue is 15$ for example. The flip-side are all those observations from the App store, where it seems like the cheaper you go, the more revenue you make. But that hardly applies to the world outside the App Store, does it? I have some ideas, but I wanted to ask you, dear readers. What would you think is an appropriate price for a game like TRAUMA?

So I finally finished Beyond Good & Evil HD. Finally. It was good, I think.

See, I’m not that sure anymore. Beyond Good & Evil is one of those games that has an incredibly vocal fan-base. For some reasons, they often turned out to be the kind of people I value the opinion of. I heard the game had some innovative characters, deep storytelling and a rich world. Perhaps my expectations were to high.

It’s certainly nice to have a female protagonist for a change. I often heard praises how the team designing it avoided a lot of clichés. On the other hand, I found Jade quite bland. So bland that she feels out of place in the world the game portrays. It’s a exaggerated, cartoony world inhabited by weird human/animal hybrids. Even the other human characters have stylized proportions and physiognomy. Among this freak-show, Jade sets itself oddly apart by being more realistic and just… normal. Playing the game, I was often reminded of 80ies shows where a human protagonist is transported into a fantasy world inhabited by crazy characters.

But her blandness is not only superficial. There is actually not much depth there either. What are Jade’s weaknesses? What are her guilty pleasures? Describe her character without mentioning her occupation or her role in the story? Sadly, Jade is barely a notch above an anonymous silent protagonist. A flat goody two-shoes driven only by the desire to save the children. Oh god. Won’t anybody please think of the children.. Yes, she may avoid a lot female clichés. But that’s only because she also avoids any meaningful statements as well.

Which brings me to the story. With a game called “Beyond Good & Evil”, I was expecting something that transcends the tired notion of… well… good vs. evil. This is not what the story of this game is about. It’s the same noble rebellion vs. evil empire we’ve seen a million times now. There is no point in the story where it’s not clear who the bad guys are. Hint: they wear dark, intimidating armor and speak with a low, menacing voice. Funny enough, the game hardly ever gives good reasons to dislike them. The story is runs almost solely on established clichés and self-explanatory character design.

A good example of the many shortcomings of the storytelling is the part where (spoiler) the lightning house is destroyed by the evil dudes. The children living there have being kidnapped (how does Jade know? She just does). In an effort to summon some character depth, Jade has an emotional breakdown because she wasn’t able to protect the children (the children! THE CHILDREN!). What was meant to be a major point in her character arc left me completely cold. Jade is never shown interacting with the children. She spends a vast majority of her time away from the lighting house having awesome adventures. It makes no sense for her to be sad that she failed at protecting the children because she never did anything to keep them safe in the place. There was nothing to do with the children anyway. They just roamed mindlessly the lighthouse level, giving completely forgettable and irrelevant one-lines when approached. I probably cared the most dog. He gave you a heart container when you chased him around the house. But ironically, the dog is the only one that is not being kidnapped!

And finally, the world is not very rich either. It is tiny. Claustrophobic almost. I finished the game in 10 hours and I took my sweet time to collect every pearl and take a picture of every animal. There are 4 dungeons and the last one is basically a boss fight dressed in a lot of cut-scenes and some meager puzzle leftovers. This isn’t necessarily bad. I like how brief the game is, actually. But putting this amount of content in an open-world structure is spreads it unconvincingly thin. I could literally see the game developers struggling to come up with enough content to make the world barely stand. Every time I upgraded my hovercraft I felt disappointed how little difference it made. Yes, I can fly now. But there is nowhere to go.

But maybe it’s just my expectations. The game is certainly solid. It has perhaps the one of the most polished collectibles systems I’ve ever seen (review coming up). The photography mechanic was a refreshing break from the usual fighting and they found a surprising amount of uses for it. And even if the content is thinly spread, the stuff that is there is always polished and never recycled (*cough*Bioware?*cough*). The story is nothing special but it has some good parts too. While the plot twist with the kids fell flat, the one with Pey’j worked perfectly. Jade may not have exceptional depth, but neither do her male counter-parts like Mario, Jak or Ratchet.

I think there are cases where too much critical approval may perpetuate a myth the actual work can never live up to. Beyond Good & Evil is hardly a unique, enlightening, genre-defying masterpiece of interactive storytelling. But it is a cute, short, above-average action-adventure.

I saw the movie Limitless recently. If you haven’t, don’t sweat it. The Trailer pretty much gives it all away.

So the dude from A-Team plays a bad writer until he gets his hands on a secret drug that boosts his brain. From there on, he becomes a successful investment banker. All seems to be going swell until reality catches up with him and things start falling apart. But of course, through ingenuity our hero prevails and gets the girl in the end.

On a basic level, the premise of this movie is insulting. I just don’t know which part is more insulting. The idea that success in finance in the result of intelligence or that smart people are drawn to working in finance. Either way, I’m left to wonder what kind of writer writes a script where he defines his own job as something only dumb losers are interested in.

But there is even more. The premise is even build on some really annoying, common fallacies. Not many people are aware that the 10% myth is plain wrong. Let me spell it out. WE USE 100% OF OUR BRAIN. There is no hidden potential. You don’t even need to be a Neurologist to see that it’s bullshit: it doesn’t even make any sense evolution-wise.

And that’s not the only one. The protagonist suddenly becomes Superman and is able to perform things completely unrelated to intelligence. For example, he instantly learns martial arts just by remembering Kung-Fu movies. Or he learns playing the piano. Or he is able to drive a car very fast. Again, that’s bullshit. Everybody, who did a dancing course once knows exactly what the problem is. Knowing and remembering a certain dance move is something completely different from being able to execute it. Dancing is something you do with your body. You need to physically learn the move by repetition. Or let me put it a different way: you can read all the books you want about how to ride a bike. It won’t stop you from falling over the first time you actually try it. Martial Arts, piano and racing are the same way.

And that’s not even all of it. The protagonist is not only smart but incredibly charming and popular. Back in the real life, going to an actual University you quickly learn that brains and charisma are actually quite unrelated.

To be fair, there are no claims in the movie on how the drug is supposed to work. For all we know it may re-wire brains to excel at each of those things. And yes, if you accept all that bullshit, the movie is actually enjoyable. It has some solid cinematography and some watchable acting. I’d say good rental.

And then there is a weird aftertaste. After all, even though the premise is dumb and insulting, I’m having a hard time to dismiss it’s allure. I’m reminded of the Culture on Drugs post. The drug in the move is the perfect Caffeine. It a magic pill to keep us awake, motivated, focused, organized, inspired. It’s all those things we crave in a society where most people are doing some sort of a desk job. At the same time, it perpetuates the belief that if we just managed to get all those this, we would be instantly rich and beloved. It paints a picture that perfectly caters to this time’s work culture. It’s attractiveness is difficult to deny.

Seems like I’m the only one who adores Princess Nuriko.

Nuriko is my little Nurikabe puzzle game, which I released in November 2010 for Android mobile phones. Updated it a few times this year and today added 20 more levels (total of 62 now).

I did not expect huge sales nor huge demo downloads from Android, as I did not invest in any marketing. But the real result is truly shocking: 30 sales in 4 1/2 months.

Checking the available statistics on other half-successful games with similarities, it would be great to have 300 sales a month. And I expected to not start with more than 10% of that. But with less than 7 sales a month, I’ve not even reached 3% … and there is no growth

Please take a look at the following video showing a bit of gameplay and feel free to leave a hug or anything else helpful in the comments

Basically, when I release a new version, its posted under “newest games” in Android Market. Of course this is “shortly” gone, because of the many updates to many games. But due to the fact of the huge user base, I can really see it as spikes in demo downloads, but not as spike in sales.

Actual sales seem to happen only by people who search for the type of puzzle (or any other keyword that is in my App description).

The conclusion I draw is: the game is too special. Normal people (which are interested to download the demo) are probably shocked by the genre or any details in regard to the puzzle gameplay I’m unaware of (i.e. probably the demo levels are already way to hard) ?

So only people interested enough to search for keywords from that genre are actually potential buyers.

Get the game here!
Get the free demo here!

You might remember my exorbitant games backlog and the rules I set myself to reduce it. Time for another recap.

The last time, I set out to play 5 games. I actually finished 4 of them and ended up playing something different for the 5th:

1. Diner Dash Completed this one first. I played it on the iPhone. I still think it’s a very good game with plenty of depth. Totally different league than the recent Angry Bird fluff.
2. Another World Turns out I was so close to finishing it. I wrote about it here.
3. Pilotwings Loads of fun and short too. I wrote about it here.
4. Plants vs. Zombies That might have been the least fun game from that list. I explained why here.
5. Goof Troop Actually I wanted to play Scribblenauts but ended finishing Goof Troop first. I wrote about it here.

So with that I fully gained the right to enjoy my copy of Gran Turismo 5. To be honest, this system isn’t working so well. The 5:1 ratio is a bit too harsh. I ended up getting some games for the podcast or “accidentally” as part of GameBoy eBay auctions. I’m thinking about reducing it to 1:3 or differentiating between finishing and finishing with all achievements. On the other hand, I successfully resisted quite a few temptations. Let’s see how the next batch goes. Here is what’s coming up next.

1. Monster Hunter Tri I have been playing this for ages. I will continue playing it due to the podcast. But now I almost finished all the quests which is where I want to call it “completed” for the sake of this list.
2. Beyond Good and Evil I’m still at the beginning. But the HD version should keep my attention long enough to seriously dig into it. I heard it’s not that long anyway.
3. Pokémon Red/Blue I recently dug up red, transferred my old Pokémon from blue over and started a new game. I’m going for all 151 this time. And I already have the majority. With having already very strong Pokémon in my team, I should be able to get trough this one with minimal grind.
4. Final Fantasy: Crysis Core I guess I could finish the game right now but I got stuck grinding the sub-quest and somewhat lost track of it. I should be able to finish this one off fairly quickly.
5. Scribblenauts Again. Didn’t get around playing it yet. This game has a LOT of content. It certainly overstays it’s welcome.

I don’t know what I will get after finishing these 5 but I’m sure I will be able to think of something. Perhaps the 3DS? Or LA Noir?