Ninja Robot Dinosaur

In two days I leave for the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco. GDC is hands-down my favorite event of the year. Yes, Comic-Con is fun, PAX is going to be awesome and so are all of the smaller events that happen in the Vancouver area. But GDC has a special place in my heart.

GDC is where the shroud of secrecy is broken.

It’s an event where developers from around the world come together to celebrate their love of making games. Want to know how BioWare tackled cinematics in Mass Effect 2? Go check out Armando’s talk. Interested in the latest AI developments, there’s a WHOLE summit just for Artificial Intelligence.

Every time I go to GDC (I think this will be my 8th time), I’m amazed at how open and candid the other developers are. These are trade secrets, their companies competitive advantage, that they are sharing.

While it’s true that some of the sessions are pretty light and filled with marketing and PR buzzwords, but if you have ever been at a Clint Hocking GDC presentation, you will leave that room with a better understanding of how to design better games, if it doesn’t all go over your head.

And the candor doesn’t end in the presentations. If you want to know more, chances are that a deeper discussion into the topic at hand is only a few beers away.

On top of this assault of information, there is the added bonus of a little thing called ‘Friendship’. While some people will degrade the term by calling it ‘networking’, GDC is a place where I can meet up with past co-workers who have drifted to all corners of the globe, as well as meet new friends.

This year also marks my first trip to the Flash Gaming Summit (which, after being a HUGE success last year, I’m surprised isn’t a part of the official GDC this year) and it will be great to see what the big movers and shakers in my newly adopted Flash world are thinking 2010 has in store.

I’ll be posting pics and stories from GDC on my Twitter @shaneneville .

And if you are going to be at GDC, and you don’t know me, please come up and say hi (I’ll be the guy in the NinjaRobotDinosaur shirt) or hit me on Twitter to meet up.

The decision to leave a job running a video game studio to go out on my own and make Flash games has caused a lot of my friends and peers to shake their heads.

A lot of people just don’t get it.

Flash Tactics is a series of blog posts outlining why I believe that Flash is not only a great game platform, but how I believe developers can find success on a platform that is dismissed by so many developers.

Flash Tactics Part 1: The Most Accessible Gaming Platform in the World.

For me, it’s as simple as this – no other gaming platform in the world has the install base, accessibility and reach that Flash has.

As a developer, my goal has always been to get my games in front of as many people as possible. With this goal in mind, Flash became the only real option when I decided to go out on my own.

The Flash Player install base is huge – in most markets, it’s north of 98%, meaning that for almost every player there are no barriers preventing them from playing your game. They simply have to go to a webpage and play the game.

No trips to a store, no logging in, no credit cards, no download or installs – just go to a site and play.

This sort of access is unheard of on all other platforms and it multiplies your audience by a tremendous margin.

Consider that a ‘hit’ PC game will sell 1 million units in the first year of release, before it’s removed from the shelves. Through the long tail of digital download services like Steam and D2D, you can probably tack on another 500K units sold at extreme discounts through the lifetime of the game. In addition, it’ll probably be pirated an additional 2 million times. So if you make a hit PC game, you’ll hit 3-4 million people. Not bad.

Compare that to a good Flash game, which can get 1 Million plays in its first week. A hit Flash game can get close to 1 million plays/day. It’s not unheard of for a hit Flash game to have 50-80 Million plays in a year. And these numbers don’t fade in the way that traditional games do.

A twitter search for ‘Flash Game’ will reveal mentions of ‘classic’ flash games like Desktop Tower Defense and Fancy Pants Adventures alongside 2009 hits like Canabalt and Crush the Castle. People are still discovering these games for the first time and they are sharing them with their friends.

When most games have faded from peoples memories and sales dwindle, Flash games are still out there, building an audience for your game.

Flash is free, Flash is everywhere and new people are discovering Flash games every day.

As a game developer, this is simply too tempting an audience to pass up, and that’s why I chose Flash.

In upcoming Flash Tactics posts I will answer the second most common question I get: “How do you make money giving your game away for free?” (and I’ll try not to quote Chris Anderson’s book on the subject too much…)

Captain Forever - Build a Ship

Captain Forever is a new flash game from Farbs in which you fly through the galaxy, blowing up other ships and salvaging what is left for your own ship.

The gameplay itself is wonderfully addictive in how you always want to try and build different shapes of ships. Combat is very interesting in that you want to destroy the enemy ship, but also want to save pieces for you to salvage.

If you like Captain Forever – for $20 you can become a supporter and have access to the game Captain Successor.

Here’s a fan-made video to give you an idea of what’s in store when you play Captain Forever:

This New York Times article asks the simple question – can DIY Supplant the First Person Shooter in the game industry?

It looks at the rise of the independent developer in the game industry, the video game as art and what the future may hold. It’s a terrific read that I highly recommend.