What We Did Right

By Jesse Lowther, Medaverse Studios CEO and Lead Designer

Despite the mistakes we made, I am incredibly proud of Gravitronix and how it turned out. Despite our inexperience and total lack of resources and funding, we managed to create a game that went on to do exactly what we created it to do: entertain a group of people, regardless of skill level. I've personally seen it do this with the playtesters and random folks who we've sat down to play the game. I've seen a group of high school boys leap from their chairs and high five when they finally beat the CPU opponents in a 4 vs. 4 match, and I've seen a 76 year old woman who had never played a video game in her life yell at the projectiles as she was pushing them out of her territory.

As far as I'm concerned, we have nothing to apologize for. Even the decisions that turned out unwise in the long run were done in the best interest of the customer. We kept the game as small as possible in the hopes of saving people the hassle of "fridge cleaning" because we saw it as such a concern for potential customers, the same concern that Nintendo addressed by adding the SD card support. We were both working to alleviate the same issue for customers, just from different angles.

Here are some of the biggest things that we did right and things I recommend any other developer pay attention to in their own games...

Controls

In any game, the controller should be forgotten by the player. That is to say, they feel like they're simply willing things to happen on screen and they happen, not even acknowledging the device in their hands. If the player is still glancing down at the controller every few minutes, something needs to change.

If you can open a door, you can play Gravitronix

Get feedback about the controls from a range of people. Bring in people from all walks of life and all skills of gaming. We did this and as a result literally anyone can play Gravitronix. I'm a firm believer in the idea that anyone, regardless of skill, should be able to pick up the game and at least perform one function of it successfully. In the case of Gravitronix, twist the controller and press one button and you are doing this. I do, however, recommend including multiple control schemes (something we wanted to do but couldn't because of time).

Stability

Gravitronix is rock-solid when it comes to stability. We set up an automated testing program to watch for memory leaks and any abnormal circumstances, with the record being 5,200 consecutive games before we finally shut the test off. There were a few ultra-rare bugs that would cause projectiles to behave abnormally, bugs we could've probably left in, but we hunted those to the very end and got them as well. Gravitronix is "tournament safe" in the sense that, no matter what, the game behaves as its supposed to in every match.

Even if Gravitronix isn't a looker, it won't have game breaking glitches

Simply put, I feel you HAVE to do this as a developer. Nothing says "We don't care." to a player faster than having the game lock up or having some highly unusual bug pop up and ruin the match for them. Shipping a crash-proof game becomes increasingly more difficult to do as the scope of the game grows larger, but it's an utter necessity if you hope to deliver the experience you want to deliver as a single crash will ruin any chance you have of delivering it. The last three months of development on Gravitronix were spent hunting down bugs and memory leaks to ensure that the game was rock-solid.

Scope

Gravitronix was intended to be a simple action game that could entertain a room full of people. That's it. We had far grander ideas, but we kept scaling them back until Gravitronix was the game we decided to develop first. Had we gone with a one of the bigger ideas, we'd be dead by now with no game shipped.

Even a game as simple as Gravitronix took years to develop

I cannot stress this enough: developers, be patient. Start small and work your way up from there. Had I known how difficult it was going to be to develop a concept as simple as Gravitronix, I'd probably have gone with something even simpler. Yes, we all have ideas for epic 20-hour long adventure games, but you're not the developer you need to be to make those games yet. You probably won't be for another 10 years at least. Focusing the experience of a game to ensure it does what you want it to do is a monumentally difficult task. So difficult that the fact that we've succeeded in delivering the intended experience to SOME people is in itself not just a huge success but a bloody MIRACLE. Had the scope of Gravitronix been any larger (or had we not cut a lot of the planned features) who KNOWS how much worse things might've turned out.

Bottom line, you don't take one karate class and then step into the ring with Bruce Lee. Start small and work your way up.

Playtesting

As I've mentioned, we playtested this game for a good, long time. This allowed us ample time to hone and refine gameplay and listen to concerns voiced by neutral players who were unconnected to the development team.

Though, despite all of the testing, I wish we had done even more. I was a bit shy about asking strangers to volunteer even more of their time, but I probably should've done it anyway. My advice would be to never stop bringing playtesters in until the game ships. You never know if you might discover one critical issue that could've done a great deal of damage after the game has shipped.

Don't cry! You knew this day would come...

Reaction

One of the most important things to remember as a developer is to keep your wits about you, even in the face of criticism that goes far beyond valid criticism and into insult. Your game, no matter how good it is, will be hated by someone, someone who may decide to hate you by association. When this happens, just take it on the jaw and don't even flinch. I've seen some other developers raise a stink about reviews and it has never ended well.

Keep your cool, even if the face of harsh criticism and ridicule

Sometimes critics will legitimately have gripes with the game. Those are the reviews you should read carefully and consider what changes to make in your next development cycle to avoid those issues again. Other times, critics will lampoon your game for the purpose of attracting more hits to their site, and if you fly off the handle over it, that's just going to give them even more hits.

Thumbs up or thumbs down, be ready to accept a critic's review

The point is, it's going to happen. Accept it. Lament it if you have to but don't let it get to you and don't let it prevent you from looking to the future. These are the hurdles that every developer has to get over, and even the greatest developers of our time still have their games regularly mocked and torn to shreds by reviewers. There will NEVER be a point where a game isn't going to see at least some backlash. This is the norm. Just accept that fact and move on. There were a lot of things we could've said in response to some of the criticisms out there, but in the end, nothing would be accomplished by doing so.

We made some mistakes in the development of Gravitronix, all for the "right" reasons, but they didn't turn out the way we had hoped. There were things we could've done better, but we still did quite a few things that worked out for the best and I recommend others do them as well. Again, if nothing else, I hope I can offer advice on what works and what doesn't.

Next week, I'll return to the subject of the start of Medaverse and the development of Gravitronix.

Today's Lesson: For every wrong there is a right. Just as you need to learn from your mistakes, learning about what you did right is vital in your growth as a game developer. Accept and respect the critic's opinion, no matter how harsh or glowing it is, because they can help in realizing what you need to make a better game.