As I'm writing this, it's Monday. It used to be one of the most stressful days of the week, it even affected the day before (Sundays) when the piles of work, deadlines, and pressure started to kick in. For the past year, I've been teaching my self to stop doing this and find ways to have more fun while working. And it se...
Since I'm attending the Pocket Gamer Connects, Helsinki as a speaker this year I wanted to try and write my thoughts of mobile games and monetization here as well.I'm attending the panel "Is this the era of hybrid monetization?" on the first day of the event. I actually got the "questions" upfront, so I decided to write ...
Recently I've had a lot of great discussions with people who either are trying to build a sustainable game studio or planning to do so. I wanted to gather some of the best practices within this blog post, which can help you go forward! Please understand though, that the topic is so wide scale that there is no "single rec...
One of the most important things in game development, is to understand the importance of scheduling.Games are one form of art. Which also means that it's almost impossible to call anything "ready" or "complete" when talking about game features. It can be never ending process, to work with something because it just doesn'...
Know your player! This time we discuss of the topic within a podcast! (If for some reason you can not see the embed link below, you can listen the podcast on Soundcloud.)Let's discuss how and why you should aim to understand your player from the beginning. Listen up the podcast below:
1. You're not making your game fo...
After writing the post "Books for independent game developers" I ended up taking the Theory of Fun -book from the shelf and read it again after a very long break. It sure was not a bad decision, since it brought a lot of thoughts of the core, of making games.[WARNING: Rant ahead!]This made me think again, what really mak...
Testing your game is one of the most valuable things, you can do while making your game. Or to be exact, without it you basically let the luck decide, is your game interesting and/or does it even work!Test early, often and with the right peopleYou're not supposed to make your game a polished diamond to start testing it. ...
This time I'm going to share couple of books, which have affected my design and/or business thinking within the game industry. There is some books which you may have heard of, or maybe even you've read them already. Some of them has nothing to do with "game design" or making games in any way. Let's take a look:1. Start W...
I just took a look into a nice article on Gamasutra which discussed about the"A "Hot or Not" genres on Steam. I wanted to share my thoughts around this, since I find this type of thinking very important, when making your game.THE GENREThe very first thing everyone should understand, when making a game is that you should ...
For some of our readers game jams may be familiar, for someone they may be familiar but don't understand why people are so "hyped" about them. I'm going to drop my "two cents" of why game jams are important and why YOU should attend one as well.Game jams are normally organized as "physical events" where people come toget...
DATA-DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT IN PC GAMESWhen aiming for data-driven development in PC games, things start to get a little tricky. Especially if you're making a premium game, which players purchase to get playing.For premium games, you need to start doing the data-driven development before releasing the game. YOU HAVE JUST AN ...
What is "data-driven development"? To put it in a nutshell, it's when you try to get away from thinking what works inside your team and let the data/metrics tell you the answer. How could this be used while making your indie mobile game?When making a game, it's almost impossible to predict what players are interested in....
Let's look at the top four things which indie game developers should avoid, when working with their project. These are the things, which I personally keep stumbling (even after ten years in the industry) and which I hear people fighting against most often.1 FORGET MARKETINGOf course, the top priority is to make as awesom...
Have you made a game before? Or maybe you would like to try out Construct 3 game engine?I've created a full tutorial series (12 videos) on Youtube, where we make a platformer game from scratch. This tutorial does not require any previous experience from you in making games, programming or graphics. Just hop into editor.c...
Starting your independent game company from the beginningWhat are the best practices to start a game company? What should you focus on, what should you do first, etc? These (and many more) are the questions which people keep on asking when thinking of starting their first game company. I'm going to try and list some of t...
Let's take a look into common mistakes independent game developers make when designing their games. The five mistakes I'm going to list here, are the ones which I keep seeing very often and also, do these myself as well. Let's dig in!1 TRY TO FIT EVERYTHING INGame design can become very personal. After working with your ...
In this post, I give some tips and thoughts on how can you get visibility for your upcoming game release. Hopefully, you can find a thing or two to take as part of your marketing strategy!1 Press listPress sites get a lot of email from game developers and at first, your game is no different than any of those. By sending ...
This time we discuss "Can you make games without programming?" and hey, it's a video! Check the video below: SUPPORT JESTERCRAFTConsider supporting us by pre-ordering our upcoming game Soulrun right here. Pre-orders get the "Supporters Pack (12,99 EUR)" which contains unlock code for in-game content. PRE-ORDER SUPPORTERS...
5 STEPS TO GET INTO MAKING GAMESYou've never made games before, but always dreamed of doing so? It's rather hard to know where to start and especially how to keep on going for the first month or two. I'm going to share some thoughts of best practices, in getting your first game done!STEP 1: USE READY MADE ENGINESIf you h...
Last time I wrote about "How to get players for your mobile game" so now it's time to share some thoughts on PC side!From my experience, marketing a PC game leans more into press coverage, active community building and getting the message out for specific core players. This may consume less money (or is more possible to ...
