When games are unexpectedly good
They also made another design choice that was a bit controversial.
Which was fine, since it was just going to be a training project.
LightWeight Ninja isn’t tile based. You know how most side-scrollers
have a lot of repeating graphics in them? That’s because they’re
tile based. They typically have a level editor that lets them go
in and select from a palette of objects and put them on the screen.
This makes creating levels easier and it uses a lot less RAM. But
the interns figured that with today’s systems having at least
32 megs of RAM, gamers would be willing to have a side scroller
that eats up 10 megs of it in order to have free form levels, where
the graphics are all unique. You can have rounded surfaces and a
lot of variety. The results have been really cool in that each level
seems totally different. And when you create the artwork for your
game in Corel Draw with nice rounded pipes to run around on, for
instance, it really shows up well.
Because it's not tile based, the pipes can be
as curvey as we want them to be
So now the game is about a month away from release. But wait a
sec, you haven’t heard of this game right? There are no previews,
no press releases, and until recently, it didn’t even have
a home page.
That’s where the 'I’m in big trouble' comes in. The game
has no marketing budget set aside. It wasn’t supposed to be
a game worth marketing. At the end of last year, when we got together
to budget out where marketing dollars were going to go, Light Weight
Ninja didn’t get a penny.
While the people who happen to read this article might say, “Ah,
but the massive plug this article gives it is marketing”. I’m
talking real marketing. I’m an engineer. I code. Real marketing
involves those guys and girls who bathe and everything. Putting
together press releases written in words that people understand.
Sending out preview kits to magazines. Getting demo versions ready
to go. Since I’m in charge of the ultimate marketing budgets,
it’s my fault the game has no marketing budget.
The good news is that the game will probably do well anyway. Or
at least we’ll get a hard lesson on how well good games do
without any real marketing. And a few people have been moved off
of Galactic Civilizations marketing to LightWeight Ninja. We’re
going to push GalCiv’s release back to 3Q 2002, whereas Ninja
is coming out in a month!
The moral of the story is, don’t confuse ability and experience.
Anyone who’s looked for a software development job in which
the company requires X number of years of experience is seeing the
mistake we’ve made at Stardock with this particular project.
A group of teenagers, most of whom were in college at least part
time, led by a female developer (another unusual thing in the game
industry), managed to create what may be one of the best 2D action
games ever. But will anyone have heard about it?
I’ve learned my lesson. The next project, a 'real' one. will
be a side scroller, too. It’ll be a satire called “Commander
Jill’s Impossible Persian Mission”. And if you really
are into games, you’ll know where each word in the title comes
from. :)
Brad Wardell is currently on the rack in Stardock’s public
pain amplification center. Once properly re-educated, you can reach
him here. His home page
is here. Oh
and Stardock’s home page is here.
LightWeight Ninja's homepage is here.
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