Normally, an update should enchance existing feature and maybe adding some more features. What if changing the core system of the game, which make some existing featues becoming unnecessary? This is the case happening in our game. Our game (Uggy) was released over a month, with poor sales. We studied and compare with with other successful games and concludes some deficiencies from our game. Some deficiencies is related to the core system of the game. Changing the core system may change the game experiene of players, and also may cause some of the features to become unnecessary. While facing the choices "change core gameplay and remove unnecessary feature" VS "ignore the deficiency" what will u choose?
Yup we had also think about this way. But just feeling that we give up the baby too fast. To be responsible to customers who bought the game and also be responsible to the game, we do not want to give it up so fast. We would like to try our best to push the game before declaring its death.
Yeah, but being responsible to customers also means not taking away something they already paid for. Think how you'd feel if next time you ran Software Update on your Mac, it uninstalled iTunes. Pretty mad, right? I agree that if you're changing core gameplay, either make it a new game, or add a new gameplay mode to the old game.
Oh you reminded me...we haven't considered about this before... Adding a new game mode should be a good solution to our situation. Actually those updates for the deficiencies are suitable only for this game. I would consider that making a new game is just an excuse to give up the current one and start another project. Yet the default design has space to improve, we wish every released game under our name would be a best version that we can do on it without any regret. That's why we want to do everything we can before declaring to give it up
We haven't removed any features in Minigore but we've changed plenty of features. For example we changed "Kid Gore" DLC character completely and as long as it improves upon the earlier feature I don't think many people are gonna complain. (in general it's a good idea to listen to what your players want changed so you don't mess up with wrong features)
Hi I am a great fans of Minigore! To be more specific, one of the deficiencies of our game is our scoring system. Current version of the game calculate score simply with distance travelled, and the speed of the game gradually increase as the score increase. We found that the system has misled players to focus on travelling downwards, players would easily feel boring after few minutes of gameplay. We are planning to change the score criteria, which might change the focus of the gameplay. Just imagine changing the goal of classic Mario game from "reach the end of the level" to "collect all coins in the level". If I am going to split the 2 focus into 2 gameplay mode, do you think it is suitable solution?
Making it possible to select game modes could work. The biggest negative side that I see with menus is that the more menus you have the longer it takes to start up the game. It could hurt casual pick up & play games like Canabalt to have too many menus. Imagine handing it to non-gamer and first they have to select player character, then which level they want to play, which control method... Canabalt starts when you press "play". I've shown Canabalt to lots of friends and almost everyone can get it to work immediately - 5 minutes later they want to buy it for themselves! For less casual game like dual-stick shooters additional menus won't be a big problem because people who play them are more experienced players - Heck, they probably wouldn't mind creating their custom character before starting a game! When I show Minigore to non-gamers sometimes they get lost in the menus and if they make it to the game they die in 15 seconds anyway haha We added additional simple "touch to go" controls with autofiring to the latest development version, interesting to see if it helps with casual appeal. So far everyone I've handed the game has been able to play it for extended periods of time with the new controls. Speaking of scoring criteria: we've changed scoring system several times. There's different leaderboards for each episode. One example: At one point people used exploit where they killed only small amount of furries at a time, keeping majority of the group as non-flaming furries - they got to insane scores because they could outrun the non-flaming group. So we added day/night cycle which makes every furry flaming during night. The latest addition is Predator Furry which should add lots of chaos to the 20 000+ score gameplay. Whatever you do don't change the genre. If I buy action game I want it to stay action game Great to hear you've been enjoying Minigore! Cheers, Timo
Yes you are right, a simple and easy flow is a one of the criteria for games targeting casual players. But as the game extends it is always difficult to keep the simplicity in the earliest version. For the control, actually I had studied the tutorial of Minigore long ago. I think it is a very clever design. You suppose players had read the tutorials when they put their fingers on the correct position of the stick and close the tutorials automatically. This flow does not add an extra touch to close the tutorial and start the game. When both of their finger are stand-by on the dual-stick they should be ready to play. That's a clever approach So Minigore is using eposide to separate different scoring system. Is it true that if players upgrade their game to latest version, they changed the scoring system and cannot go back to previous one? Are there any player complaints about this?
Something like Canabalt could probably boot straight into the game, we might do that with Unmarked. (it's a project of myself and Bryan Mitchell) I'm the kinda player who skips all tutorials and then goes around wandering aimlessly for 2 hours The tutorial design stems from that mindset. I first drew this joke image of my nightmare tutorial: After that I started thinking if it would be possible to do a tutorial that I wouldn't skip myself. I must have sat in front of the computer for an hour just staring at the screen until this idea flashed in my head: It's correct that you can't get the earlier version back. (unless players make backup) So far there's been very few complaints about the leaderboards. Certainly nothing compared to when we had cheaters hacking the save game. That caused many angry players and several top players stopped playing the game because it wasn't fair.
haha funny sketch Yup the hackeris very discouraging. Maybe we should make a leaderboard "There are hackers" which upload score to this board if hacked version is detected. Everyone will know which players are hackers
Interesting question. Card Shark has seen many plenty of changes since it was first released, and users aren't shy about screaming bloody murder when something is changed if it doesn't agree with them. Even if it's a vocal minority complaining, I recommend going above and beyond the call of duty to help them, or you may find yourself dinged in user reviews. People are more likely to speak up when they feel strongly (one way or the other) than if they are mildly pleased. Keep in mind that most users don't read the AppStore "new in this update" text when updating and many users don't revisit game options after having updated. If you add a new feature or change something but leave a way to revert, they often won't even realize it. A good way to balance this stuff out is to change the default settings so that any updating user sees the improvements without having to do anything. But also provide a first-time-launch popup message explaining what was changed, and make it easy/obvious how to revert if a user chooses to do so. Leave a convenient "contact author" email button - it's one line of code that can save your butt and keep your most vocal user base happy. All this being said, I don't think any of this will help your game, Uggy. If it's already been out a month and is essentially invisible, no improvements, no matter how dramatic, are likely to turn its sales around. Phil
Leaving a way to contact author is good to provide better "customer service". This provide an alternative way for player to complaint about the game, which might in turn help keeping the review section in app store with less negative buzz We know that this might not help in updating a game that already sunk in app store. In fact "lots of updates" is part of our idea of the game, we would like to try this appraoch at least once to complete the original idea. Of course we will not stop developing new ideas, but just don't want to say give up so easily. But anyway thanks for your advice.
