AppCampus

Today we reached our first #1 position in Windows Phone store in the card games category in Brazil. This is a good moment to look back at how we got here.

First concept

Already in 2011 we had an idea of collectible card game Permia - Tournaments. We started working with the title and in March 2012 we hada a working prototype of the game to show in Game Connection - America. (Concept demo) We met with over 20 publishers and most of them liked the idea behind the game. The concept was early stages and we were a brand new team so we did not manage to start co-operation with any of them. We believed in the concept and we continued working towards the closed beta launch. In June 2012 we launched the closed beta mostly because we promised to do so. It really was not in any shape for release, but it was something. At that time we concentrated on selling the idea to the publishers or some funding partners that could help us to continue with the product. For that purpose we produced a new trailer to be shown at Gamescom 2012. (Trailer)

The result was quite similar. People liked the concept but were not ready to take the risk with it. One of our last hopes for the product was AppCampus. They had started the program where they give grants for promising projects with a 6-month exclusivity period. They had an event here in Lappeenranta where they presented the program to us. We sent the application and started waiting for the results. After a couple of weeks they granted 20k€ for our project. That was not enough for us to really deliver the first idea of the concept, but it definitely helped us. It was part of the bigger picture where we managed to get a Tekes project approved as well.

Birth of Permia - Duels

We did not start immediately with the design milestone. The reason was that we really did not have enough resources to continue with the original concept and our hands were full with the other projects. Almost half a year passed before we were ready to continue with the program. One of the close colleagues came up with an new idea for more simple card game that might be more feasible to do with our resources. We created a design plan based on this new concept for AppCampus and they approved it. We were in a hurry because financially it was really tight situation at the time. In 3-4 months we passed the first release candidate to the AppCampus quality team and at the time they were not satisfied with it. There was one big feature missing and the quality of the game was not good enough. That was the first wake up call to really take Windows Phone environment seriously.

AppCademy

We continued to work with the missing feature and decided to apply for the AppCademy (AppCampus acceleration program). We were really sceptical about the acceleration program at first. One month away from home listening to lectures and coaching. Participation means that product would be on hold during that time. However, from the first day we were satisfied with the decision to join the program. We were given top level coaching in all areas from production to branding, marketing and user experience. The time spent there helped us go towards better quality than we would have been able to do without it.

Promotion

We don't have plenty of resources to promote our app. I think it is a same situation with most of the independent teams at start. Today it is crucial to get visibility for your app to have any possibility to really succeed in the market. After we released our game at December 2013 in Windows Phone store we really did not know what to expect. We knew that we have possibility to get some promotion from Microsoft and Nokia if we have good ratings. But the amount of support we have had from AppCampus program has been amazing. First month went almost on our own. It was Christmas time and we were little too late to be part of the Christmas promotions. We used that time well and noticed that downloads from Russia were progressing well without any promotion. We discussed with our Nokia contact about possibility to have local campaign in Russia that we will support by localizing the game. Our Nokia contact was successful and the result was whole week featured in Russia. At the same week we were featured all around the word and it was really good campaign for us. We still have most downloads from the Russia and they are really important market for us. After that we have worked closely with our Nokia contact to plan different campaigns and we have supported those campaigns with game content whenever it has been possible. We have updated the game often and have developed it further.

Final words

If we think about the support from AppCampus. The first thing is the grant. It can be something from 20k€ to 70k€. Money is always welcome and helps. The real difference comes from the other forms of support. They really push for the quality and help us developers to get good ratings with better quality apps. AppCademy is excellent acceleration program and is valued much more than any grant they give. And after those they put so much effort to really help us to promote our apps in store. That is something that is hard to buy with the money. I can imagine that without them Permia - Duels would not have over 260 000 downloads today and our #1 store position in Brazil.

Big thanks to the AppCampus staff. You have been a great asset on our journey to app developer. You have shown the possibilities that are in Windows Phone environment and we are really happy to be part of the program.

Permia - Duels Updates: what's been done and what we're working on next

During the first two months Permia - Duels has been online, we have already done a lot of updates for the game and have much more planned or under development right now. In this post I will shed some light on what's going on with the updates.



This far we have concentrated mostly on fixing bugs and improving the technical side to work well. We had some hiccups at the beginning where increased number of players caused the service to slow down and get "network error" notifications. Another major issue which has been fixed in the latest release is the freezing of the shop screen, which prevented some players from making purchases. Several smaller issues have also been fixed and we will continue the technical optimization of the game. If you encounter a problem, please let us know so we can fix it!

Facebook

A Facebook page for Permia - Duels has just been opened. In addition to having the game related information, it's a place to go for discussions about Permia - Duels with other players or us.

Ranking system

The ranking system has had some major tweaks. The starting player has a disadvantage and statistically wins less often that the second player. To balance this out, we have biased the ranking system to favor the starting player. The biasing formula is based on a real game data and is thus able to efficiently balance out the effect of player order. 

Another recent change is that now new players start with score 0. The old system, which started from 15000, resulted for new players being matched against more experienced from the start. As a result the difficulty curve should now be more reasonable for new players. 

We want to allow players to always play without too much waiting. For this reason the match making will pit one against a computer opponent, if a suitable human player is not found in reasonable time. The decks of the computer opponents are based on decks of human players of similar level. We have already done lot to balance the computer players to offer a suitable challenge for players of different levels. This is an ongoing task and we are still finding new ways to do it better.

Platforms and Localization

A big news for us was the recent announcement from Habbo Hotel that they are going to close their game center, in which Permia - Duels is available. In order to allow Habbo players to retain their game progress and continue playing, we have implemented the possibility to link the Habbo accounts to a Seepia account. When the Habbo game center closes, we will open a web client which can be used to play the game using the Seepia account credentials. In future we will allow also Windows Phone players to link their game accounts, so that the game can be played in different platforms alternately.

For the additional platforms we are planning to release a Windows 8.1 version of Permia - Duels in near future. Android and iOS versions are also planned eventually. 

The game was originally released only in English, but currently we have localization for total of 13 languages. We are very grateful for any reports of language mistakes in the localizations.

Next updates

We are constantly developing the game and will be releasing new features regularly. We also want to listen closely the feedback we get from the players. In the last update we added the possibility to buy unlimited vigour as a feature desired in the feedback we received. Related to that we have had feedback wishing for more ways to speed up the upgrade process of units. That is something we are considering at the moment, but have not yet definite plans. 

We want to make the game experience more rewarding for the active players. As a part of that, we are planning to decrease the season length and slightly increase the comparable season rewards. Additionally, we will be adding a daily rewards system, which will allow players to gain special rewards for the first victory each day, including Qual rewards. 

At the moment we are preparing a major UI update for the deck editor. It will be possible to get a detailed view for each unit including the currently missing unit information. These will include full sized images as well as flavour texts to properly link the units to world of Permia.

Another wished for upgrade we are planning to add are "golden directions", which will provide a way to boost a single direction of an unit. 

Future

We of course have lot of plans for developing the game after the next few updates. One thing which needs some love is the tutorial, which we plan on upgrading piece by piece to be more interactive than now. Additional content, such as single player mode, new units, new special powers, ability to see other players information and player clans are also high on the list of things to add to the game.

This is by no means a complete list of updates we will be doing in future. Some may be left out, some new will emerge, but it gives a bit of idea we are planning to do next. If you have a great idea how to make the game better, please let us know! 

Our first mobile release

The last two years have been all about learning. Now we have encountered yet another possibility to learn when we launched our collectible card game Permia - Duels in Windows Phone store at 14 Dec 2013. After about one and a half months and almost 100 000 downloads later we have had first few small ideas what it means to publish a game in a mobile market place.

Earlier we only had experience of releasing game in a small social network Habbo hotel and it has been very much different experience.

Update delay

First of all, we cannot update the game currently whenever we want to. We have not yet implemented the feature that allows us to update the content for the game directly without going through store certification. That is something we definitely want to do in the future. Already we had an issue where Lumia black update changed the way some configuration for the viewport of the game were defined and our game was broken for all the high end devices with HD resolution. You can imagine how grateful I am for Microsoft Store certification team that handled the update in two days instead of one week just before our promotion all over the world started.  All the previous review periods were closer to that one week. Even if the certification goes as fast every time in the future it is still at least couple of days after we have the new version ready before the players can use it.

Analytics

All the data we gather from the game and feedback that we follow have helped us to react to the problems much quicker than it would have been possible without these. We have found couple of bottlenecks in our server code after the release and both times it has been the same. First active user tells that something does not work like it should. Then our ratings start to decrease. These are enough reason to start studying what is the problem. Then simple analytics that we gather from the game pinpoints the place where the problem lies. Both times we were able to fix the bottlenecks in one day after they first started to encounter. For the team that is as small as us I feel that it is amazing to react that fast.

Ratings

These seem to have power of the god. When we did not ask our players to rate us at all, we mostly got bad ratings. It seems that people remember to tell if they don't like the game or the game does not work much more often than if they like the game and we don't remind them to do that. Permia - Duels average rating was less than 4 before we implementeda "rate us" dialog in the game. We don't want to interrupt the player, but it is crucial for our game to have good ratings. Without good ratings, we don't get promotion from Microsoft. Without good ratings, players do not download the game and because our game is multiplayer game, our game cannot live without plenty of players. Everything starts from ratings. How cruel that is when you are not going to buy those ratings for you. We don't want to buy ratings so we decided to add the dialog. After we had the rate us dialog in the game our ratings have gone up to 4.4 average and still growing. We have had much more ratings than before and it has helped us to get promotion and more importantly the players as well. Yet another story is that only good rating is five stars. All the other will weight ratings in wrong direction. Average 4.3 is minimum that is expected from us.

Reviews

We had an excellent review from WPCentral. We advertised that in our Facebook and Twitter accounts. One day after that we got an excellent review from WP player ratings. We advertised that as well in our Facebook account. I was quite amazed how big difference was with the impact those messages had. The player review was seen by six times more people than the WPCentral one. With this case it seems that people are more interested about what other people say than what media says. The article in WPCentral reminded us about importance of the social media. We really have not been active enough to promote our social media sites. We have had over 1 000 000 players playing our games and we have little over 160 people that likes our Facebook page and little less than 100 people who follows our Twitter. We will test with next update if we can get little more players to follow us because social media is currently best way to notify our players what is happening.

Some final words

I have to say that we feel very welcome in Windows Phone environment. All the great feedback has given us strength and motivation to continue with the path we have taken. We are long way from the product we have in our vision. With the help of the players we will go towards that vision and continue delivering new features one by one. First couple of months we will use to make sure that everything works like it should. We create small adjustments to the game and after we are satisfied with the maturity we will start bringing new features to the game. If you have Windows Phone 8 and you have not yet downloaded the game, now is the perfect time to download it. :)

Pains of UI design, part deux - (dis)similarities

There is one more topic I want to touch on briefly before going into specific UI issues. Are game UIs different from “regular UIs”, i.e. user interfaces in non-game, productivity or entertainment applications? I gave a short lecture on game UIs a while back and this was something I brought up then.

I believe that the key differences are:

• In game UIs, you can occasionally justify putting aesthetics before function
• Games often require rapid user response
• Even turn-based games usually limit the time available to a player
• Psychologically, the fact that games you usually volunteer to play probably makes a difference

Tetrablok sea UI draft

As for the third point, I am sure there are a great deal of productivity applications people volunteer to use. Still, I believe that when you fire up your favourite game, your mindset is somewhat different compared to say, editing holiday photographs (which, I am sure, can be a lot of fun. Photoshopping your mother-in-law into all sorts of hilarious scenarios… we’ve all done it). Even if you occasionally stray from your goal (removing those pesky red eyes), the task itself is far more goal oriented. Gamers, in the main, play to entertain themselves. I am, of course, aware that some gamers are goal-oriented achievers who resolutely work towards a set goal; however, I shan’t digress into the domain of games psychology and player types now. Instead, consider this a preamble for my next point:

It is my firm belief that when designing game UIs you can, occasionally, put aesthetics before function. Emphasis on the word occasionally. Your UI should be designed to, first and foremost, be functional. Frustrating but pretty UIs are just – here comes the pun – pretty frustrating. It comes down to, or so I believe, to psychology. In games, you occasionally expect fireworks and you are more likely to forgive slight usability issues in favour of aesthetically pleasing presentation. Microsoft Excel (okay, pre-ribbon Excel anyway) is a great tool with a pretty slick UI and yet most people would agree that they expect something different from games. In a game, I can often justify placing a button in a sub-optimal position to make room for pretty pictures. Often, you will choose to display numerical attributes in non-numeric form (e.g. progress bar, pie chart) just because it looks prettier. Occasionally the graphical presentation adds value and makes the attribute easier to comprehend. Sometimes it just looks better. I could go on.

The second point, which I’ve strangely decided to elaborate on last, is probably the most self-evident. Many games require fast reflexes and in-a-fraction-of-a-second decision making. Please, allow me to put aside the whole topic of game controllers. Also allow me to ignore the very extremes of fast-pacedness – FPSs and the likes. Controlling your character in FPS games is more about the controller than the UI. Ditto for most games where shortcut keys are the primary interaction method. Game controllers are a fascinating topic but I will stick to UIs for now.

Now that I have conveniently (if somewhat cravenly) narrowed down the gamut of game UIs to consider, we can pit games against productivity apps. If I am permitted to rule out a few games more, let’s assume there is a time constraint of some type embedded in the game mechanics. In Seepia Games’ games, the constraint is usually time per turn. The time constraint has a number of functions: it forces the player to work his brain more intensely, it can be used to control the maximum duration of a match and, perhaps most importantly, it protects the opposing player from dissatisfactory ennui. This sort of artificial time constraint rarely exists in the realm of productivity apps. High pass-through rate (completion of a form, process etc.) is desirable but I cannot think of many scenarios where it would make sense to impose a time limit on the user. Such limit could even backfire causing stress and lowering productivity.

The question then becomes, are games and productivity apps different after all in this sense? Prompt, precise response is the desired user interaction either way. Games simply add a “sweat factor” – the time limit. Therefore, I am happy to accept that the chasm between the two is not that wide after all.

So, I posit that a good game UI looks good but still follows the usual principles of good UX design: it works with the user, not against him; it stays out of the user’s way and lets the user focus on the fun parts; and finally, it excites the senses and tingles the bits of your brain that appreciate aesthetics.

There is one more aspect to this I have not discussed now but to which I may return in future – learning curve. A topic for future post, perhaps.

Twenty fourteen (and a little about 2013)

Happy New Year and… drum roll please, happy 2^nd birthday Seepia Games. Yes, we’ve been at this for two years now. Little longer in fact, Seepia Games was accepted into the Finnish company register in January 2012 but we did get our hands dirty a couple months earlier.

Anyway, 2014. We released Permia ‑ Duels for Windows phone and on Habbo Hotel last month and will now start working to bring the game to other platforms, namely Google Play and App Store. We also have a lot of new players to take care of now so staying in touch with you all is a priority.

The feedback we have received has been great. Our players have supplied us with useful bug reports, helpful feedback, good suggestions etc. Even those who have disliked the game have been very forthcoming – we do like to also hear from those who tried the game and for one reason or another did not find it enjoyable. Keeping an open mind and listening to the players is paramount. In our first update, we added a number of new languages (e.g. Russian, French and German) and made some changes to our ranking system.

We’ve had many questions about our pet-themed game, Pet Shows.  We are (finally) making progress on this front! The game is coming along and 2014 has given us some new ideas. There is not much more to say yet, but we hope to have the game in alpha stage quite soon. It probably comes as no surprise that the alpha launch will be made in Habbo Hotel. Just bear with us a little longer!

 I don’t like to make New Year’s resolutions (no one ever keeps those promises anyway) but I will say, promise even, that Seepia Games will continue to interact with our players, listen to feedback and make great games.

Have a good year!

Journey of game designer

Welcome young designer! Here for my help you are, yes...?

Yes, O lead designer! I have the greatest game idea in the world and I want to found my own game company, what should I do?

"Love games you must!" Are you crazy enough to work long days for years without vacations, salary or any guarantee of eventual success to see the dream to become reality?

"Yes, you say? Good, great potential in you I sense." Then you will only need to find others who share a similar vision and have the right skill set to form a team. Finding the right team is the most crucial part in setting up the company so make sure to pick the right people. It's better to have no one than the wrong one.

I'm scared that someone will steal my great game idea, how do I protect it?

"Worry, you should not." The game industry is not short on ideas, everyone has them. Your unique idea is likely not nearly as unique as you might think. As such, ideas themselves have no real value. The value is in the ability to make quality games out of the ideas. And for that, you need a lot of feedback from anyone who is interested in your game as early as possible.The real risk is that you get too little feedback and fail to make a good game as a result rather than someone stealing your idea.

Oh well, could you take a look on my plans then? It's all here in the 750-page design document... 

"Ready the design is, hmm?" Creating too detailed plans early on tends to be a waste of time and resources. The plans should be kept on a high level at first and just start doing as soon as possible. Prototyping can be used as necessary to learn what works and what does not. Prototyping can be used as necessary to learn what works and what does not. During the process you will learn and the game will change so much that your original plans will be outdated in no time. As resources are limited, prioritizing is essential. The first goal should be to implement only the absolutely minimum setup containing only the very core of the game and get it right through testing.

But the design is already perfect! I don't want to make changes that taint my vision!

"A great designer, hmmm...? Learn humility, you must." It's good to have a strong vision, but it should not become a principle. A good game designer is always ready to listen and adapt the ideas. Don't fall in love with your own ideas. If something does not work, fix it or ditch it without second thoughts, no matter how much effort or love you have put on the idea. Always be ready to question any and every aspect of your design as well as the design as a whole. 

Well, how do I know what works and what does not?

"To listen, you need learn." Mirroring your own ideas to all the feedback you get is the key. Be it from the players, the data you collect from the game, testing sessions, other team members, things you learn by playing other games or any other source. Never dismiss new viewpoints at first hand, even if they seem unrelated or contradict your own vision. They rarely come in clearly understandable form. You need to always consider what is the heart of the idea and can it be used  in some form to make the game better? Best ideas often come from unexpected sources.

Okay... Do you have any advice how to make the game a success?

"Easy will it not be".Game industry is a hit business. Only the best succeed, nobody cares about mediocrity. You need to be able to stand out with something, be it the original idea, polished mechanics, great story, known brand, special style, unmatched gameplay, innovative controls, less contested category or distribution channel, superior marketing plan or anything else you come up with. Don't polish the game forever before publishing but don't publish crap either. It's better to have half of a game that works than full game that doesn't. The rest of the features can be added later once the potential of the game is confirmed.

How can I be best with so many games around?

"Learn from others you must." If something has already been done, make sure you don't make a game which does the same thing but worse. Making a game differ from another is a wrong motive to do changes: if you can not improve an existing concept, use it as it is. If this would make you game a copy of an existing product, you are in wrong market. If you can not honestly say that your game will be better at least on some aspects than your most direct competitors, the game is not worth making in the first place.

Oh... Any more concrete advises?

"Bite more than you can chew must you not." Always consider the resources you have available. If your game concept is too big for the available resources, do something smaller first. Don't let the project bloat with new features, concentrate in getting the game ready first. Concentrate on one project at a time and give that your full attention.

"Also remember finances you should." As cool as it is to make games, if you can not make money from them, the company will be short lived. Especially in the free-to-play world the monetization is an important part of the design process. It must be taken into account from the start to integrate it flawlessly in the game. Poorly designed monetization can easily destroy the game balance and player experience. And of course, if people don't know about your game, they can not buy it. Be it a publisher, marketer, self marketing or a combination of those, the earlier the marketing is planned and started, the better.

"Pick your battles, you must." Challenging the big studios and their huge resources in the AAA market might not be the most productive idea. Luckily game industry is in the middle of big changes and many of the trends favor small indie studios.

What are these trends you mention?

"Opportunities I see, hmmm..." There are several big trends currently in the game industry which offer possibilities for small companies which are willing to adapt to the rapid changes. Digital distribution, rise of mobile and social gaming, triumph of free-to-play business model, popularity of crowd funding and the possibilities of cloud computing are among those. Technologies like Unity3D and HTML5 allow easy ways to make multiplatform games and not be restricted to a single platform and it's success or lack of it.

Thank you O lead designer! I will now retire to meditate on the wisdom you shared.

"May the ideas flow freely from you, my young designer. Farewell."

The pains of user interface design

Designing good user interfaces is hard work. That is a given. Designing good user interfaces for multiplatform games doubly so. For us, multiplatform means everything from mobile phones to web browsers. This, together with limited resources, makes user interface design a real challenge. This blog post will start a series where I alight on a number of issues we have faced in terms of UI design. In this first post, I will not delve too deep into any specific UI issues. I will instead give you an overview of where we are coming from and how it affects our UI choices.

In the web design world, one of the biggest contemporary trends is response design. In summary, it is a change of mindset from “we need a desktop site, a browser-optimized version and a mobile app” towards “we need a website that works across all devices”. This is achieved using fluid layouts and a number of other techniques (see Wikipedia). Responsive design makes content a first-class citizen, a position it rightly deserves. As a bonus, this tends to lead to far less crippled mobile services (go find a handful of news websites. Now, visit their mobile sites and see if their comments functionality is still there).

The reason I mention responsive web design is simple: it has made the web far less device-oriented. There are other positives but for the purposes of this post, the moving away from designing for particular devices is sufficient.

In our minds, simply porting your game to another platform does not make it “multiplatform”. We see multiplayer games as games that do not build barriers between players just because they happen to play on a different platform. Games, where you can transition from one device to another, using one account. Games, where the device is really just an access point into the game.

We believe this “access point” thinking is the future of serious mobile games. Unfortunately, it also makes user interface design a far greater challenge than it would otherwise be. Now, if we had the time and resources to design the interface separately for each “access point” (desktop browser, tablets, mobile phones etc.), life would be easy. Alas, we cannot. We have to design UIs which work on the entire range of devices our games support. We must be mindful of available screen estate and make sure everything is readable even in the smallest displays. We cannot rely on hover effects because of all the touch devices. We must take note of platform specific features (e.g. the availability or absence of a hardware back button). Good thing we don't mind challenging undertakings.

In the next post, I will talk about some UI designs we have chosen and I will also go over some specific issues we still need to tackle.