Lost Garden

Boys and girls, I present my first game, Rocket Renegade. "Don't you want a little taste of the glory, see what it tastes like?" [1] I rocked all of the code and the music [2], so you can run and tell that. The sprite-based graphics appear courtesy of Daniel Cook [3]. Thank you, Daniel, for the graphics that you lovingly created nearly 20 years ago on the Amiga 1200. I hope that my game makes you feel proud and nostalgic. Thank you, John Dunbar [4]. John created Plasma Sky. He was kind enough to answer a number of development-related questions that I had. I'll add that you really need Plasma Sky in your line-up if you love you some shmups. I wanted to talk about a feeling I've been experiencing. I think that you may be able to relate, but the most notable experience that I had during development was working to get comfortable with hardcore, radical, relentless persistence. What I mean here is, I worked incredibly hard to make this game a reality. I hit many roadblocks with Swift in the early betas, and it was tough. Near launch, I hit a bug where things ran flawlessly on hardware, but would have a yard-sale on some, but not all, simulators. Beyond a single hardware unit, I had to rely on simulators due to budget constraints. I've logged millions of points playing this game so that it could be the very best that I could deliver. Millions of points. I've broken down in tears, for a complex reason that's hard to explain, but I'll try, because I feel like it's important to…

For juxtapositional context: This article [1] came out in 2016 and gives a great overview of why and how difficult it is to be successful (especially more than once) in the video game industry. Entertaining people is _very_ challenging work. John Carmack [2]: "The work in the aerospace industry is "simple" compared to the work he does in video games" [1] https://lostgarden.com/2016/11/17/autumn-of-indie-game-markets/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack#Armadillo_Aerospace

https://lostgarden.com https://fs.blog I read a book a week. But I could still argue there are more treasures like the 2 above. They are rare, but they do exist.

They have enough cash to not work on a brink of bankruptcy[0] all the time – Valve has great working conditions too. [0]: http://www.lostgarden.com/2015/04/minimum-sustainable-success.html

I really enjoyed this presentation about platforms and power over their lifetime: http://www.lostgarden.com/2011/03/gdc-2011-game-of-platform-power.html In the framework of this presentation, slack is currently in the 'Engage' phase of the platform. They're all about openness and building something great. But code is law, and eventually their APIs will be used for something they dislike. Building on a platform is always going to be like snatching pennies from in front of a steamroller.

Daniel Cook has some great essays. http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/07/directory-of-posts.html

> They seem to think, nowadays, that bolting on new hardware features will improve demand I don't think Nintendo has ever "bolted on new hardware features" for the sake of selling consoles to consumers. The new hardware features are pretty much always for the sake of luring third parties into developing something innovative for the platform. See this excellent essay: http://www.lostgarden.com/2005/09/nintendos-genre-innovation-strategy.… Nintendo makes money on games that explore new genres. It can't keep doing that unless it keeps increasing the design-space and interaction-space to find those new genres within.

The best article I've ever read that explained Nintendo's product strategy was written in 2005 by Daniel Cook of lostgarden.com (founder of Spry Fox, creators of Triple Town amongst other games) on the eve of the launch of the Wii, and discusses how Nintendo fundamentally needs a creative environment based around product innovation and new input types that it has control over: http://www.lostgarden.com/2005/09/nintendos-genre-innovation-strategy.…

You're kidding, right? I want to like this game; I love vim, and I agree that the premise of the game is very creative. But the execution is vastly below average. They are using free graphics [1], annoying sounds, and they force the user through a strict tutorial instead of encouraging them to explore [2]. They ask for more (25$) than the vast majority of indie games on Steam [3], all of which are a lot more polished than this. And even then your license is only valid for six months, something I thought was only done by MMORPGs! [1] http://www.lostgarden.com/2007/05/dancs-miraculously-flexible-game.htm… [2] http://www.lostgarden.com/2010/01/ribbon-hero-turns-learning-office-in… [3] http://store.steampowered.com/genre/Indie/

Both— > We turned on a new enforcement system yesterday that took user feedback much more heavily into account. —and— > My apologies for the suddenness of the action. The numbers were high enough to cause a real loss of trust in applications, which can impact the entire platform. —remind me of this talk, well worth reading: http://www.lostgarden.com/2011/03/gdc-2011-game-of-platform-power.html It's openly biased toward the developer who feels wronged, but the point that should get across is: if your business depends facebook to provide you with a userbase, then you bought into a game where you have no bargaining power. I don't mean to troll facebook or developers using its platform when I say this, but it's high time everyone in the social app scene started treating platform lock-in as a huge threat, and adjust their strategies accordingly.

Danc, at GDC, gave a great presentation on this topic: http://www.lostgarden.com/2011/03/gdc-2011-game-of-platform-power.html

For those interested in reading more: The presenter is Daniel Cook (Danc) who worked for Epic Megagames long ago doing game art and design. Some of his essays have made it to HN before, those and some of his art can be found at his site: http://www.lostgarden.com/

If I've learned nothing else from Dan Cook of http://lostgarden.com it's that just thinking up a game-mechanic is practically useless - you have to make a prototype, play with it (as a game) and tweak it (as a coder) to bring out the fun. Like any other fiendishly complicated, non-linear function, the psychological response to 'fun' is not something you can just sketch out on a napkin and say 'yeah, that'll work'. Here's hoping someone with a bit of time on their hands will take this spec, stick it into some RAD game tool and see what happens.

If you read about small-scale game development, this is a common practice. Danc (http://www.lostgarden.com/) talks a lot about rapid prototyping. Since games have a clear but poorly-defined goal (they have to be "fun"), it's easy to make a limited product around a proposed method of finding that fun, and then either going along with it or throwing it out if it doesn't seem promising. Thus, you can (and probably will) start over several times before making a complete, polished game.

Resources which helped me get started: "Challenges for Games Designers" by Brathwaite & Schreiber. This was by far the most helpful, as it laid out a process of finding & refining fun game ideas. "Game Feel" by Swink. Examines why jumping feels better in Super Mario than Donkey Kong, why Street Fighter feels the way it does, etc. This way of breaking down & examining mechanics was eye opening and can be applied to other kinds of games. lostgarden.com, especially https://lostgarden.com/2008/12/06/post-it-note-design-docs/, which describes a process for rapidly iterating on ideas, and https://lostgarden.com/2006/10/24/what-are-game-mechanics/, which introduced me to some of the fundamental building blocks of game mechanics. Resources which helped me later: I found "Art of Game Design" to be helpful later, when working on making a good game into a great game. The different lenses were great for finding areas where I could improve a game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg really drove home how important polish is. This was useful after I had a game which was already a bit fun. Finally, an observation & a suggestion, if you're open to them: You admit that you don't know game design, yet you're attempting to innovate by removing limits. This seems like an enormous challenge for a beginner, like someone who doesn't know how to play an instrument attempting to make a new style of jazz. I think you'd have more success if you learned to play the instrument first:…

I would be amazed if it were sustainable for even that long. My recollection is that it's a couple of weeks before productivity ends up back where it would be if you were just working reasonable hours. And then you rapidly descend into less and less productive states. (There used to be a great presentation with linked research about this here [1], but their website seems shaky.) I think it's an especially bad idea at high levels of the company, because of the long feedback loops. If a line worker makes a mistake, they will hopefully catch that within hours. If they make a bunch, somebody's going to come talk to them in short order. If an executive makes a mistake, it can be months or years before the problem is obvious. But the more tired I am, the more my focus shifts short-term and the less I notice subtleties and small mistakes. increased error rates and long feedback loops are a very bad combination. [1] http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-presentation.h…

"At the end of a YC batch, the general consensus among the partners is that about 25% of the companies are on a trajectory that could lead to a multi-billion dollar company. Of course, only a handful of them do. Most go on to be decent or bad." "You have to keep up a high level of intensity for many, many years." Don't take this the wrong way /u/sama, but could it be that perhaps business models are the problem and not founders not grinding away for years on "real work"? 90% of startups fail [1] [2]. I am highly suspect of the idea that this is caused by teams not being committed or working on "fake work". More likely, markets shift, business models aren't viable, and so forth. This is not a case of people "not giving it their all". [1] http://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-startups-fail?share=1 [2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/neilpatel/2015/01/16/90-of-startups-will-f… EDIT: Its been proven scientifically that people encounter diminising returns past 40-50 hour work weeks. [3] Don't encourage grinding harder. Encourage finding where to exert the most leverage, and hiring best people you can hire today. Quality people + automation leverage (your software) + quality marketing is a solid formula (but not a guarantee) for success. Luck, while no one wants to admit it, is a non-insignificant component of success ("right place at the right time"). [3] http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-presentation.h…

It has been studied (first in 1909 by Henry Ford!). As I understand it the results agree with the original post. In short, you can use crunch time strategically to meet deadlines but you always need a recovery period afterwards. If you work 60 hour weeks, in about 4 weeks your productivity will drop lower than it was when you were working 40 hour weeks - despite putting in 50% more hours. Also many people in this burnout zone will self report that their productivity is higher than it was (and they're wrong). If you've been crunching for a month straight, you're working ineffectively and you're too tired to tell. Here's a presentation on the topic from Dan Cook, with links to papers: http://lostgarden.com/Rules%20of%20Productivity.pdf And here's a fantastic write-up of a recent quantitative study in the games industry. They looked at how the success of video games correlates with crunch time and overwork. I suspect that these results would also hold true amongst startups: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PaulTozour/20150120/234443/The_Game_Out…

I don't get this. On the one hand there's the 40h-a-week camp, backed up by plenty of research [1] and on the other hand there's the work-as-much-as-you-possibly-can camp, which seems to be what plenty of successful startup have been following. So what's the deal? Why this discrepancy? It's not about manual vs knowledge working - studies on knowledge workers show that even less than 40h / week is beneficial. Is it about the difference in possible leverage? Self-directed work? The close link between work and payoff? The stressful situation in a startup? The 100% commitment? Any attempts to pin down why and under what circumstances [2] different work hour guidelines should apply would be greatly appreciated. 1: See studies in this pdf http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-presentation.h… 2: What's the difference between starting your own company, running your own company, joining a startup, doing a PhD, being in a research team, working at an established startup?

http://lostgarden.com/ has some good stuff

Personally I feel that hard work and determination are probably two of the most important things needed to really be successful. With that said... Sometimes you have to scratch the itch in order to focus. It might cost you a day or two, but if it helps you get back on track it is probably worth it rather than weeks of being unfocused. If you find the new thing you're working on so much more compelling, you might be better off sticking with it, especially if you're more likely to stay with it. You might be interested in using a stage gate method for helping to determine whether or not to keep with the current project: http://lostgarden.com/2007/02/rockets-cars-and-gardens-visualizing.htm… I think it is especially hard to let go of failing projects and being able to put things on the shelf will save you years of lost time. Is the rough patch an indicator that maybe the idea isn't as good as you first thought or just hard work, or?

> longer than a year without drastically losing productivity. The data suggests you can get away with it for 4 weeks[0]. Then you hit the inflection point. [0]: https://lostgarden.com/2008/09/28/rules-of-productivity-presentation/

That's exactly what has been found, as cited on another comment in this discussion: http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-presentation.h… The cited research claims total overall productivity of working 60 hours a week starts showing a deficit to working 40 hour weeks, after about 4 weeks.

It's not that you should get rich from such an investment. It's that basically no one is getting rich from the Mac App Store. The desktop app store is a failure in many respects. It did not take off the same way mobile app stores have. As for Monument Valley, that's a pretty poor example. They invested 1.5m and made 5.8m. For a core team of 8 people it's not fuck you money. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/527b69fbe4b0febeee4fc9f7/t/54b8… They didn't even make 10x their investment. There is a strong argument to made that a 10x project is the minimum you need just to have a sustainable company. Sustainable! That's a long, long way from rich. http://www.lostgarden.com/2015/04/minimum-sustainable-success.html

At first I thought the name was a bit misleading. It looked more like a how-to on visual effects than underlying mechanics. But then I saw the linked page, and it gave a pretty decent definition of Game Mechanics: http://www.lostgarden.com/2006/10/what-are-game-mechanics.html

That's a shame...on those 20 somethings you know and on their managers. I can see working north of 40 hours during an important crunch time, but only if my superior(s) is/are aware and planning for the post-sprint crash that's an inseparable part of our human condition. Stress takes its toll. Google Image Search: work hours vs productivity Productivity Presentation: http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-presentation.h…

As a matter of fact, freely usable Tyrian gfx are also available at that blog :) http://www.lostgarden.com/2007/04/free-game-graphics-tyrian-ships-and.…

There is some data from the games industry, which I would say applies to knowledge workers: http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-presentation.h… (blog post from 2008 with linked presentation pdf/ppt)

Here's a link to the original 2008 blog post by DanC http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-presentation.h…

I have no doubt that determination and enthusiasm are positively correlated with both success and with working long hours. However, as a rational skeptic, I've yet to see evidence that working long hours has a causal relationship to success. However, there is evidence to suggest an inverse relationship may exist. Furthermore, hazing is effective in building solidarity, and people are generally more likely to retroactively justify hardship, which makes me think there may be a psychological bias towards overvaluing poor work/life balance. In my particular line of work, Daniel Cook put it better than I ever could: http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-presentation.h…