Political Animals Updates!

Last week I mentioned that the Political Animals team will be attending numerous conventions around the world to promote the game.  We've been hard at work the game to make sure that convention goers will enjoy it, and I'm excited to share some of our work with you.

Particle Effects

Particle Effects are a relatively easy way to add a lot of polish to a game.  Above you can see some particle effects that affect the entire island.  The Rain particles seem particularly apt for me right now given we've been having torrential downpours recently.

The characters also have particle effect now, depending on the actions you give them.  Here Croccy is raising funds, although his animation makes him look like he's throwing away money.  I guess you need to spend money to make money!

Strategy

Despite its cutesy look, we wanted to make it obvious that Political Animals is a strategy game that you can really sink your teeth into.  Marnielle worked on different AI types ranging from Corrupt to Clean to just plain unpredictable, and three levels of difficulty.

We also noticed early on that our playtesters liked trying out different staff combinations.  We now have seven different staff types each with their own special abilities that you can mix and match to devise your personal strategy for winning the elections.

New Candidates!

We are slowly designing and adding new Animal Candidates for you to choose from.  Eventually we'll have an entire menagerie of political aspirants!  Is there a particular animal that you would like to be turned into a candidate?

Polish, Polish, Polish!

As we ramp up to launch a lot of the work now is polishing up the game and making sure everything works properly.  We think it's worth it, and hopefully you do too!

Thanks for reading. If you'd like to be updated on the latest Political Animals, please sign up for our mailing list!

It's Game Convention Season!

Time certainly does fly when you're working your asses off, and suddenly we're in the middle of August already!  September is soon coming upon us, and that means it's time to hit the convention trail.  But first, a trailer!

This was a bit of a rush job by me and Cliff, but it'll do for now.  We'll still work on a much better trailer of course, but in the meantime this will have to do for the FOUR conventions we'll be heading to in September!

PAX West : September 2-5

That's right, for the first time ever I will be heading to the city of Seattle to attend PAX West to show off Party Animals.  And even better, we're part of the Indie Megabooth lineup! Check out the game at the Indie Minibooth Sunday and Monday.

I'm super excited to attend PAX and show off the game.  Not only that, I hope to meet awesome developers from around the world and attend awesome PAX panels like the Giant Bomb variety show!

BICFest : September 9-12

"The Busan Indie Connect Festival (BICFest) is a global independent games conference held annually in Busan, South Korea. Each year, dozens of independent studios and hundreds of developers converge to see sessions, share their projects, and help foster a growing global independent developer community. Organized by and for independent game developers, BIC's primary focus is provide a friendly space for creativity, sharing, and play."

Our youngest programmer Don will be attending the second Busan Indie Connect, an Indie games festival held in Busan, South Korea.  I wanted to join him, but due to flight schedules he's gonna have to go by himself.  If you're in South Korea and into games please do drop by and check out all the awesome indie games!

Tokyo Game Show : Sept 15-18

Meanwhile in Japan, our co-founder and designer Tristan will be joining a Philippine delegation in presenting the best of Indie games from the Philippines.  This is also the first time we're going to be at TGS, and Tristan's first time in Japan!  Hit him up if you want to know about what went into designing the rules and events in the game!

We're hoping the fact that we have a Japanese inspired map will entice Japanese players.  We'll be looking for distributors in Japan interested localizing and releasing the game there so please get in touch if you're interested!

EGX : September 22-25

This is my second time going to EGX, after the Prison Architect Launch last year.  It will have been one year since I first met up with Cliff of Positech Games and sealed a publishing deal that made Political Animals a reality.  In some ways this is us coming full circle, and hopefully the folks at EGX will love the game as much as we do.

This time around I'll be joined by co-founder and programmer Marnel.  Come visit us and chat him up about neural networks, machine learning, and all sorts of nerdy programming shit.  Afterwards we can hang out and knock down a couple of pints of Guinness.

Please Contact Us!

Phew, that's FOUR conventions in just one month!  Unfortunately for us introverts, showing up at these conventions is often crucial for the success of indie games, so we have to do suck it up, do the work, and show off our game to the world.

If you're going to be at these events and want to schedule a meeting, please get in touch with us using the contact tab on this website.  We're looking meeting you!

How Political Animals Got a Publisher: Part 3

In Parts 1 and 2 of this blog I discussed the road that led to Squeaky Wheel getting a publishing deal for Political Animals from Positech Games. My intent was to show that our road to a publishing deal was built over a years long accumulation of experience, networks, and great opportunities that we were lucky to take advantage of. What the previous two posts didn't show was the actual research and work that had to be done to even position ourselves to have an opportunity at a deal.  This post aims to show that process and hopefully help other developers looking to secure a deal.

Having a build

Having a build is a prerequisite for getting a publishing deal. Ideas are a dime a dozen, and execution is key. Beyond that though, having a build shows the prospective publisher that you are committed enough to your game to actually invest your time and money (as a freelancer, those two things are interchangeable to me) in it. It doesn't have to be pretty, and it can evolve over time, but having some sort of build is crucial to convincing anyone that you are serious about actually making a game. Even Kickstarter backers have learned their lesson. Most indie games (especially if you're not a famous gamedev) without any kind of working build or even a demo are ignored.

Have a Pitch Deck

Assuming you have no time to make a build, the next best thing is to make a pitch deck. The first time someone mentioned “pitch deck” to me I had to google it, so if you're confused right now I sympathize with you. Essentially a pitch deck is a presentation showing what game you want to make, the market viability of the game, how much it will cost, and any information you have to support your pitch. Ideally you would have the pitch deck and build in tandem.

When I was doing research on pitch decks I found this very useful resource from bubbleguminteractive.com called “Pitch Deck for Indie Game Developers”. I used this as a basis for our own pitch deck, with some minor tweaks. The article itself explains pitch decks much better than I could, so I'll do a deep dive into some specific topics that I think are important.

Defining your Market

It's important to know who your market is and try to serve them. So for example our market is PC strategy gamers. How do I find out how large that market is? Luckily, we now have Steamspy, which informs me that the highest selling strategy game is...DOTA 2 with 73 million owners. Obviously DOTA is not the kind of strategy game we want to make, plus it's free to play. So let's disregard that. Next on the list is Civ V, with almost 9 million owners. Civ V is so far beyond what we are trying to make, but at least it's in the same turn-based strategy game genre that we're going for. So let's say that 9 million is the absolute highest number of people that would possibly be interested in our game.

To find a more conservative estimate, let's dig deeper and search SteamSpy for games on politics. Now we have much smaller numbers. Tropico leads the pack with 1.3 million owners. It's no Civ 5, but we can say that at the highest level, a game like Civ 5 that deals explicitly with politics has a market of 1.3 million people. Our production values are nowhere near the Tropico series, so let's look at how games with similar production values have done. Democracy 3 is the outlier here, with 450,000 people. But lower on the list are games like The Political Machine, Gremlins Inc. and Rogue State. These are games that are generally within the same production values and expected price point as Political Animals, and their owners range between 30,000-10,000 users. Now we have a good, conservative idea of the market for our game. Later on you will have to assess whether this market is large enough to cover the cost of development, but we'll leave that aside for now.

I should say that even Steamspy admits it is not 100% accurate. You should look articles that can help support your claims about the marekt, like when companies (rarely) annouce their sales figures for games. Regardless, SteamSpy is a very useful tool for making broad decisions about your market, and I'm really grateful it's around.

Defining Costs

This is probably the part of the pitch deck that developers are least interested in, but it's probably the most important for the publisher. Being able to identify and quantify what you need as devs may not be as interesting as actually talking about the game, but there is crucial information here that the publisher needs in order to decide whether to make you an offer.

I'm going to use some imaginary numbers here to help guide you through calculating what your costs will be. Let's assume that there are some monthly fixed costs that you know already:

• Salaries - $10000

• Office Rent - $2000

Now you need to think about all the other additional costs you may have. These include: Software licenses, an accountant, a lawyer, web design, music etc. Unless you've done this before, I know it can be bewildering to even imagine how to start calculating these costs. There are so many variables when it comes to making these estimates that ultimately the best advice I can give is make your best guess on these costs depending on where you live, and then pad increase that number by 10% to cover up any mistakes. So now let's say you ended up with $1000 average monthly cost for miscellaneous fees. Now your monthly cost is:

• Salaries - $8000

• Office Rent - $1000

• Miscellaneous - $1000

At this point you should have a number that expresses your total monthly costs. Now estimate the time it will take you to finish the game. Multiply your monthly costs by the number of months and you should have a general idea of how much money you need from the publisher. Let's assume you need 1 year to finish the game. Using the numbers above, you can then say to the publisher I need $120k ($10k per month x 12 months in a year) in order to finish the game.

Our publisher might kill me for saying this, but don't be too worried about getting the numbers exactly right. There will always be room for error. They'll ask you questions about your numbers, and if they feel like you've estimated too high or low they'll correct you. The key thing is that you're at least close enough to your targeted monthly costs so that the publisher knows you've done your homework. More than anything I think the publisher wants to know that you've actually considered these things because most devs don't even bother.

Aside from the hard numbers, you should also define what you need in the pitch deck. For us, we knew that even though we were all veteran game developers none of us had shepherded an entire game to completion. We also knew that we did not have access to marketing, PR, press, conventions etc. and needed help on that end.

I want to point out once again that the numbers used here are not the actual numbers in our pitch deck.

What's your Break Even Point?

This isn't quite as important to the pitch deck, but is definitely important as background knowledge that a publisher may ask you. It's also a good way for you to decide if your project is financially viable, and how much risk you or the publisher is taking with the game.

The math is pretty basic. Using the previous numbers, we need $120,000 to finish the game. Our conservative estimate for our market is somewhere between 30,000 to 10,000 users, so lets say 15,000. Let's also assume our price point is $15, since that seems like a pretty normal price for indie games these days. Now lets multiply numbers of owners (15,000) with price ($15) and we get $225,000. Factor in Steam's cut by multiplying $225,000 by .7 (to get 70%) and you get revenue of $157,500.

That means that at a cost of $120,000, if we sold 15000 units at $15 per unit, we would make $157500 after Steam takes its cut. Take $157500 and subtract $120000 and you end up with $37500 to be split between you and the publisher depending on your publishing agreement. If you want to take this further, take the $37500 and divide it by your price point ($15) and you get 2500. Subtract that 2500 from the original 15000 units which assumed as your break even point, and you end up with 12,500 units as the minimum number of units you need to sell in order to break even.

I have taken many liberties with these numbers. First off, you have to assume that Steam sales and bundles will cut into your sales revenue. At the same time Steam isn't the only market in town, and outlets like GOG, the Humble Store, or your own website can make up to 20% additional revenue. As with the previous numbers, it's not necessary (and I feel impossible) for your numbers to be 100% accurate, so your end goal here is to find a number that you and the publisher can talk about. This is useful because now you have a number of units shipped to work towards, instead of just hoping to sell as many as you can.

Finding Publishers

Now that you have your pitch deck and build ready, it's time to find some publishers. Assuming you've already exhausted your personal network, this really just involves a lot of the time on the internet doing google searches for publishers. You should do your best to narrow down your search to publishers who might even have a remote interest in your game. For example, if you find a publisher that only does mobile F2P games, don't waste your time or theirs by pitching a PC only paid strategy game. Publishers who were high on my list included Positech (because Democracy 3) and Paradox Interactive (because strategy games). If you need help finding publishers, Steam Spy can also be helpful because it lists the publishers of games. For example Tropico 4 was published by Kalypso Media, so I can add them to the list of publishers.

After that, it's a matter of emailing the publishers with your build and pitch and seeing if anyone bites. You'll get a lot of rejections, and maybe a few nibbles. Those nibbles will stretch on into really long email threads as you and the publisher get to know each other. As mentioned previously it took more than a year after our initial contact with Positech before they signed off on the deal, and there were definitely moments where I thought that it wouldn't push through. Be patient and persistent, but don't push too hard. If the publisher says they're not interested, always thank them for their time and ask for advice about why they were not interested. Any knowledge you gain that way can be useful for you in the long run.

If you have friends who are devs that have started their own companies, don't hesitate to reach out to them and ask for their advice.  You will ultimately have to make your own decisions when it comes to a publishing deal, but it's always better to make an informed decision.  These people have gone through this process before so the information they share with you can be invaluable.

Final Thoughts

This ends my 3-part series on how Squeaky Wheel found a publisher in Positech Games. I apologize if this last one was disjointed and not as easy to read as the previous two. Convincing a publisher to give you money to make your game is a long, difficult, and oftentimes bumpy road. There were many times I felt like I was flying blind so I hope that this was of some use to people. If you have questions or want me to talk about things that I missed out on, please feel free to respond in the comments and I'll do my best to answer them.

Thanks for reading, and if you'd like to be updated on the latest Political Animals news, please sign up for our mailing list!

How Political Animals Got a Publisher: Part 2

This is the second part of a series of blog posts by Ryan narrating how Squeaky Wheel secured a publishing deal from Positech Games. Part 1 dealt with his career up to the success of Spacechem, and this week we start with his experiences working on Prison Architect.

Third Big Break : Prison Architect

I've previously written about how Introversion Software first contacted me on my personal blog. The short version is that Chris Delay had played Spacechem, liked the art, and contacted me to see if I wanted to work with Introversion Software. Introversion is like the granddaddy of indie game developers. They're one of the first indie game developers that made it big way, way before Braid, Fez, etc. They had a pedigree and I knew it, and it didn't take much convincing for me to sign up to work on Prison Architect.

The story of the development of Prison Architect is kind of crazy, and you can read more about it here. Essentially the Introversion guys made some bad choices after their initial success and Prison Architect was their second chance. If things didn't go well for the game, the studio might have had to consider shutting its doors. This being their second chance, the initial timeline for the game was quite modest. Our initial contract agreement was for me to work on the game for 3 months, up until the launch of Early Access, then maybe a little more polish work after that, depending on how Early Access did. Suffice it to say that their Early Access succeeded beyond their wildest expectations, and I ended up working on the game for 4 years.

Eventually my deal with Introversion was to work on Prison Architect every other month until launch. What a sweet deal! Those 4 years were probably the least stressful years of my freelance life. It was the perfect combination of having steady income while at the same time having some freedom to work on things on the side. But towards the end of my tenure with Introversion I started getting a little worried. Previously I'd been so aggressive about posting my portfolio on all the forums I could find, I would almost always get offers for work that I had to turn down. As I grew more comfortable working for Introversion, those work offers slowly but surely started to dry up. I would need to make a big decision soon. What would I do after Prison Architect? Go back to being a freelancer? Could I still do that? Would I ever find a gig as sweet as working with Introversion?

Working with Introversion and the success of Prison Architect gave me a credibility I could never have imagined. The first time I met my friend Sagar Patel, I was hanging out with some game devs in Japan and introduced myself as “having worked on Spacechem and Prison Architect, not sure if you've heard of those games?” Sagar laughed because it sounded like false modestly on my part, but that's when it dawned on me that the games I worked on have been played by literally millions of players. Being the “artist of Prison Architect” opened doors and conversations that would previously have been closed to me. Introversion were never shy about naming me, with the most touching moment being a (very hoarse)shoutout when Prison Architect won the BAFTA for “Best Persistent Game”. I knew that I had a great opportunity after Prison Architect, and I wanted to make sure I didn't waste it, which finally leads me to my most recent break, meeting and sealing a deal with Cliff Harris of Positech Games.

The Last, Big Break : EGX, Cliff Harris and Positech Games

Cliff Harris, or rather Positech Games, is one of the most well-known UK indie game devs. His games like Democracy 3 and Gratuitous Space Battle have sold more than 500,000 copies, which is an amazing accomplishment for a single developer. Cliff decided to parlay that success into becoming an indie publisher, which is how he launched Red Shirt and Big Pharma, and very soon Shadowhand and Political Animals. I was a big fan of Democracy 3 and Cliff was always on the top of my list of possible publishers.

I first got introduced to Cliff when I rather boldly inquired with Introversion about the possibility of publishing Political Animals. I say this was bold since I was still in the middle of working Prison Architect then. I'm not sure it was the best move to ask your current employer if they'd like to publish another game you want to work on, but they seemed pretty cool with it. The short answer was that Introversion were too swamped with Prison Architect work to be able to handle another game on their own, so they asked Cliff if he'd be interested in co-publishing the game. Cliff was in the middle of publishing Big Pharma at the time, and for one reason or another, the talks never progressed beyond the initial stages. Given Prison Architect was slated to have an official launch in less than a year, I didn't have time to be too bummed about because I was too busy with work! But at least I had a foot in the door.

Introversion was going to fly me and my wife Aissa over to the UK to join them in launching the game at EGX. I knew that this was going to be my golden opportunity. We live in the age of the internet, so it's not surprising that people sometimes tend to undervalue a face to face meeting. To this day I maintain that the biggest difficulty for Filipino developers is lacking access to conventions like EGX where they can meet both fans and prospective publishers. I was going to make this trip count. I emailed Cliff and other publishers on and off (I'll go into detail on that process in Part 3 of this series) during the rest of 2015 leading up to EGX. By the time the convention had rolled over, I had secured meetings with two publishers and had primed my pitch deck (more on that in the next part of the series) and build for presentation.

EGX was great. The fan turnout for Prison Architect was so positive, and all the Introversion guys and gals were super cool. We even had curry! In the midst of all of that I had meetings with a bunch of different publishers, including Cliff. I presented to Cliff in the food court of the convention complex. We had a chat about politics, about the game, and the possibility of marketing it. I honestly don't remember much more than that, but we shook hands and he told me to follow up with a link to the build so he could review it. Later that night we had fancy burgers and drinks with Introversion and Cliff decided to hang out with us. I think we were generally of a similar temperament, quite pragmatic in our politics, so we got along pretty well. He had just helped fund a school building in Cameroon and was very excited about his new Tesla. After a few more beers we decided to call it a night (we had 3 more days of EGX left). I went back to my hotel room, sent the build, and collapsed into bed. One day later, Cliff made his offer.

The following is a collection of email responses between me and my co-founders Marnielle and Tristan:

Me: Guys, please read the forwarded email and let me know kung may feedback kayo (Let me know if you have feedback). TL:DR Positech made an offer to publish us. DO NOT SHARE THIS INFORMATION FOR NOW and do read it and give me feedback on your concerns.

Marnielle : WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Big shout there! Obviously, I can't do feedback well due to excitement. This is great news!

Tristan: Hmm, yahooooooooo!!!!?

To be perfectly honest I was a little annoyed at how unexcited Tristan sounded (I mean seriously, what was up with that question mark?), but when I learned later on that he threw up in the bathroom afterwards from excitement and nervousness, I felt a little better.

EGX was a prime opportunity for me to meet and pitch to publishers about Political Animals. It felt a little cheeky to be going around looking for a publishing deal on Introversion's dime but I was honest with them about it and they were fully supportive and even gave me advice about getting a deal. I am fully convinced that had I not gone to EGX Political Animals would have gone the way of so many unpublished game projects, and for that I am eternally grateful to Introversion Software.

This ends Part 2 of "How Political Animals Got a Publisher" If you thought that this story about a publishing deal seems too good to be true, then you're right! I wrestled with this a bit, but I didn't want to ruin the narrative by going in and out of the nitty gritty details of preparing for a pitch and securing a publishing deal. I've reserved part 3 of this series to talk about making pitch decks, hunting down publishers emails, and presentation gaffes. Thanks for reading, and if you'd like to be updated on the latest Political Animals news, please sign up for our mailing list!

How Political Animals Got a Publisher: Part 1

In this blog post Ryan writes about his gamedev career and the path that led to a publishing deal with Positech Games.

I love hearing stories about how people achieve success in their careers. It's interesting to see how unique each story is, but also how similar. There is always hardship that needs to be overcome. There is always a benefactor or a stroke of luck that the person, if they are generous, credits with their success. It seems a little self-serving and egocentric, but I've been wanting to share my story for a while. It's important to show that publishing deals like this don't happen overnight, but are the result of hard work, persistence, and a whole lot of luck. 

Starting in the industry

Nokia 6600, once the top of the line Symbian device.

I got into the game dev industry after a yearlong stint at a call center. I'd graduated with a Fine Arts degree in Visual Communication, which usually leads to an advertising career. I couldn't land a job with any company, but luckily I had a good command of the English language. Working nights and talking to angry American customers burned me out though, so when I saw an ad looking for a mobile games artist, I jumped at the opportunity. That was the first mobile game explosion, the one that hardly anyone knew about. Tiny J2me games that you downloaded on WAP, where the telcos got a huge cut of the sales. The App store wasn't even a twinkle in Steve Jobs' eye, and without a marketplace, one mobile games company after another folded. The company I joined lasted a year. Same as the next company I joined. The third one belonged to a giant media company that paid shit wages, and so by the time my first big break came, I'd already left and was working a cushy job designing UI for a mobile messaging company.

First Big Break : Disco Pixel

Disco Pixel's latest game, Jungle Rumble.

Trevor Stricker from Disco Pixel contacted me out of the blue in 2007 asking if I'd be willing to meet up while he was in Manila. He'd resigned from SEGA after working on NBA2K and wanted to put his royalty money to good use. He'd found my portfolio on Deviantart and thought I would be a good fit for a DS game he wanted to make. I can't remember if I was suspicious or not. This was 2007, and this kind of micro-outsourcing was still pioneering at the time. I guess I was a sucker for compliments (my kindergarten teacher once noted that I respond best to praise) and at the very least he was buying dinner, so I had nothing to lose.

It's weird the things I remember from our meeting. We had dinner at a Japanese restaurant called Sugi. I told him he was the first Jewish person I'd ever met. He told me I was the first Filipino he met that didn't eat meat (I do eat meat, but at the time a tofu and mushroom meal sounded really good to me). We got along well enough, and towards the end of his trip he said that I was the one that really “got” his project, and he wanted to sign me on as his lead artist. I was excited and terrified at the same time. My UI job paid pretty well and in terms of salary as an artist I thought I'd pretty much peaked. Trevor promised to pay me a lot more, but that also came with the risk of his startup failing. I was 26 and had nothing to lose, so I accepted his offer.

About a year later, the 2008 financial collapse happened. Disco Pixel had been talking to some publishers about funding the game. It actually had gone as far as internal reviewing with some major publishers, but ultimately Trevor decided to fold the company for the moment and find a job. I had just lost the goose that laid the golden egg. My wife and I like to joke that “By the grace of Trevor” we were able to travel around Asia (shoutout to Cebu Pacific) and put a downpayment on a condominium. Little did I know that downpayment was going to haunt my dreams for years to come.

The experience with Trevor and Disco Pixel opened my eyes to the wider range of possibilities when it comes to a career in game development.  Previously, I felt limited by my options in the Philippines.  Working with Disco Pixel showed me that the internet had created a whole new world of opportunities.  But had Trevor not taken a chance on me, I probably would never have dared to risk going freelance in 2008.

Intermission : Learning to Freelance the hard way

After Trevor decided to take a break from being an entrepreneur, I was faced with my own major dilemma. I'd already been replaced at my old company. The game companies that were hiring at the time all paid substantially less than my previous gig with Trevor, and with monthly payments on my then newly bought condo looming, I needed to make money fast. I had a bit of runway left from my leftover savings, so I decided to try my hand at being a freelance artist. I had no idea what I was getting into.

All I had to my name was my portfolio. So for the next few months I signed up for all the internet forums with job ads I could find, looking for any job that would pay me so that I could create portfolio material. I didn't say no to anything, and ended up working on a 2D side scroller built by a man who had created website to cater to family friendly games all the way to sprites for a “Thong Girl” video game. I would literally wake up every single day looking for jobs and negotiating with clients in a singular, desperate effort to make sure I could pay for my mortgage every month. It was the white collar version of living hand to mouth, and I spent many sleepless night worrying about the inevitable drought of work.

I have to say that I was never the best artist out there. But I was willing to work hard, often for below US rates, and I'd like to think that my communication skills also helped. They certainly helped when my next big break came in the form of Zach Barth and Spacechem.

Second Big Break : Spacechem

I forget which forum I found Zach's ad looking for help with Spacechem. What I do remember is playing the free games I found on his website and thinking “This guy is on to something.” He had a small but devoted fanbase and an obvious knack for creating games that caught people's attention (his game Infiniminer was the inspiration for Notch's Minecraft). So when he replied to my inquiry I was super excited to start working with him.

Spacechem was the first ever game that I accepted a royalty agreement on. Previously I never wanted to risk royalty agreements for work because I never believed that the games would make any money. I believed that Spacechem had a chance at being successful, but still couldn't bear the risk, so I negotiated with Zach and we arranged for a smaller royalty in exchange for a minimum monthly payment. Looking back I probably should have stuck to the original, larger royalty agreement. But I've never been much of a risk taker, which is something that will continue to come up in the future.

The success of Spacechem is now a matter of historical fact. It allowed Zach to leave his cushy Microsoft job and start Zachtronics Industries as a full time gig. My Spacechem royalties finally gave me some breathing room from the day to day grind of freelancing. I toyed with doing concept art a bit, bought some videos and practiced hard. I wanted to see if I could get a job as an illustrator, painter, or concept artist instead of working on in-game sprites. But it was not meant to be. A couple of months after the successful launch of Spacechem I got that fateful email from Chris Delay of Introversion Software. He'd liked my work on Spacechem, and was wondering if I'd be interested in working on a game called Prison Architect.

Spacechem came out at the dawn of the indie revolution.  It was part of the list of games like Braid, Minecraft, and Fez that were the vanguard of indies making a dent in the game development industry.  While these games would never match the graphical fidelity or budgets of the AAA developers, they didn't need to.  They proved that it was now possible to survive as a small independent developer serving a niche of gamers.  Zach's success with Spacechem was probably the first time that I ever thought about the idea of making my own game or building my own studio.

Intermission 2: The Best 2 weeks of my life

There is a two week period that I will always refer to as "probably the best two weeks of my entire life". My wife Aissa and I were on our honeymoon in Japan. I had just gotten my first royalty check from Spacechem. I had sealed the deal with Introversion Software and was already sending some concept work to them. The “hardships” of the past were behind me, I was enjoying a wonderful, hard-earned present with my wife, and the future looked very bright indeed.

This ends Part 1 of "How Political Animals Got a Publisher" .  Next time, I will discuss more about my work with Prison Architect, how I met Cliff from Positech, and if there's enough space talk about the nitty gritty of hunting down publishing deals.  Thanks for reading, and if you'd like to be updated on the latest Political Animals, please sign up for our mailing list!

Positech Games + Squeaky Wheel = Political Animals

We are very excited and proud to finally announce that Positech Games is working with Squeaky Wheel to publish Political Animals.  We definitely will have more details about this in the near future, but for now please check out politicalanimalsgame.com to learn more about the game, and sign up for our mailing list if you want to be the first to hear news about the game.  It's been a crazy ride so far, and we hope you'll join us as we make this crazy game!

I Created a Politically Corrupt AI

This is our first blogpost on our new website.  Previously we blogged here.  In this post, Marnielle writes about creating a new AI for Political Animals:

I've been using Genetic Algorithm as an aide for game design and development. It fills me with excitement that I can simulate natural selection to help me look for the best solutions to problems. Now I'll tell you the story of how I used it to improve our AI.

My GA knowledge is still somewhat limited. I learned how to write code for it using this website (Go read it. It's awesome! So unlike smarty academic papers.) To give you an idea in casual speak, GA is basically simulating the theory of evolution to look for the most “fit” solution. In this simulation, the species or “individuals” are the solutions to the problem. At the start, a certain number of individuals are spawned with random configurations. As such, most of them are dumb solutions at the beginning. Each of them are then assessed and given a fitness score. The ones with higher score means they are closer to the solution. Based from this initial population, we spawn the next generation. To do that, we either mutate or let them breed (Yes, solutions can mate) with a rule that those with higher fitness score has a higher chance of being selected for mutation or breeding. With this new generation, we repeat the process of assessment and spawning the new generation until we can find that one individual that solves our problem.

When coding a GA, you need some important pieces. These are the individual representation, the fitness assessment function, mutation function, and crossover function. If you have these four, you can run a GA. Individual representation is a bit tricky. How do you represent a solution that can also be mutated and bred? One of the most common is a list of bits. This can be represented by a list of booleans or just integers and use bit manipulation. Mutation is just then flipping a random number of bits. Breeding or crossover is simply exchanging a certain number of bits from two individuals.

Representation by bits is the only representation I know of. It's what AI Junkie taught me and I sticked with it. That's until I've read a book called “Essentials of Metaheuristics”, a highly recommended book. The contents are written in an informal way, not in an academic bullshit way. It's a primer on different algorithms in the field of metaheuristics. Most of it, though, is GA. From there, I learned that you can represent an individual with anything. It can be lists, trees, graphs, your own data structure. Mutation and crossover can be any made up alteration of your representation. It can be adding a child, removing a child, changing a value, swapping nodes and edges. Anything! I realized how dumb I was for not going to that thought.

That gave me an aha moment. What if I automate the creation of our AI using GA. Our AI configuration is very simple. At the same time, AI is also the most neglected part of our game. We haven't touched it for a long time. We have a working AI that I configured by hand. But then, our mechanics have already changed too much that we don't know if it's still competitive. Configuring a new AI would take time.

My team gave me a week to work on this, May 2-8, 2016. I'm not so sure if it would work. What if looking for a better AI takes time, like it would take days running the simulation. I certainly thought so because the assessment function is to let two AI players pit against each other. The one who wins has a bigger fitness score. Now, a single playthrough takes time, even if I speed it up. The point is, making the GA could be a waste of time.

The first thing I did is I made a fast mode of our game. No animations, movement becomes teleportation, removed the standby/wait times, etc. It wasn't easy. I don't have time to write another version of the game solely for GA. Instead, I'm using what we have now and provided a mode that it can be played extremely fast. Finally, I have a mode where AI vs AI takes around 1 minute to complete 15 turns. Still not fast enough, but quite good already.

Then I made something called a “multi frame” GA. Basically, it's GA that is spread in multiple frames. Note that the assessment function is for AI to play the game. So the GA must wait for such game to end before it can move to the rest of the algorithm. In fact, if there are 10 indiduals in a generation, 10 games must be played before moving on to spawn the next generation.

Our AI configuration is all code. We use a utility based AI, by the way. It is represented as a set of “task scorers”. Each scorer has an arbitrary set of “considerations”. These considerations are classes that help compute the score for the task. The AI generates all the possible tasks, scores them using the scorers, and picks the one with the highest value.

My plan is to use GA to generate different combinations of these scorers and considerations until we get the one that beats the current best configuration. Before anything else, I needed my configuration to be saved in a file. Every time the GA finds a better AI, it should save the configuration in a file. So I turned the AI configuration into XML. I used the class names and variables of consideration classes in this file. I load them back using reflection. It looks like this now:

<ScorerSet id="IndividualZero" fitness="1" timestamp="">

<Scorer taskId="Bribe">

<Consideration name="BlockadedDistrictConsideration" />

<Consideration name="TerrorizedConsideration" />

<Consideration name="MinimumBudgetConsideration">

<Variable type="NamedInt" name="minimumBudget" value="1000" />

</Consideration>

<Consideration name="ReachableConsideration">

<Variable type="NamedFloat" name="multiplierIfUnreachable" value="0" />

</Consideration>

<Consideration name="MustHaveMatchingPlatformConsideration" />

<Consideration name="ReachReputationConsideration">

<Variable type="NamedFloat" name="populationPercentage" value="0.85" />

</Consideration>

<Consideration name="BonusTuningConsideration">

<Variable type="NamedFloat" name="bonusToSet" value="1.0" />

</Consideration>

<Consideration name="CommandPointsConsideration" />

<Consideration name="NeighborCountConsideration">

<Variable type="NamedInt" name="desirableCount" value="4" />

</Consideration>

<Consideration name="OpponentStaffCountConsideration" />

<Consideration name="BribeBetterThanCampaignConsideration">

<Variable type="NamedInt" name="minReputationGainDifference" value="1000" />

<Variable type="NamedInt" name="rankIfMet" value="17" />

<Variable type="NamedInt" name="bonusIfMet" value="10" />

<Variable type="NamedFloat" name="multiplierIfMet" value="5" />

</Consideration>

<Consideration name="ScandalCountReachedConsideration">

<Variable type="NamedInt" name="scandalCount" value="4" />

<Variable type="NamedFloat" name="multiplierIfMet" value="0" />

</Consideration>

</Scorer>

<Scorer taskId="RaiseFunds">

<Consideration name="BlockadedDistrictConsideration" />

<Consideration name="TerrorizedConsideration" />

<Consideration name="ReachableConsideration">

<Variable type="NamedFloat" name="multiplierIfUnreachable" value="0" />

</Consideration>

<Consideration name="HasSignificantFundsConsideration">

<Variable type="NamedInt" name="preferredAmountToRaise" value="1000" />

</Consideration>

<Consideration name="BonusTuningConsideration">

<Variable type="NamedFloat" name="bonusToSet" value="1.0" />

</Consideration>

<Consideration name="LowFundsConsideration">

<Variable type="NamedFloat" name="fundsThreshold" value="0.3" />

</Consideration>

<Consideration name="CommandPointsConsideration" />

<Consideration name="HigherReputationConsideration" />

<Consideration name="NeighborCountConsideration">

<Variable type="NamedInt" name="desirableCount" value="4" />

</Consideration>

<Consideration name="NearBailiwickConsideration" />

</Scorer>

<!-- ... Rest is ommitted -->

</ScorerSet>

The mutation function then is just a matter of:

• Add random consideration

• Remove random consideration

• Change some random variables

Crossover between two individuals is simply swapping a random number of considerations.

For the initial population, I used our existing AI as a starting point. I called it “Individual Zero”. The first population are individuals that are mutated versions of him. Now with all the pieces together, I have a GA that looks for a better AI.

First Runs

When I was about to finish, I was too excited to run it. I know it will take time so I plan to run the simulation overnight when I'm asleep. It was Saturday night. I'm sleepy and tired. I fixed some errors that would potentially halt the simulation. I set the settings for the fast mode. Every game lasts only 15 turns. The population size is set to only 10. Then finally I let the baby run. I watched the first few AI matches. After a while, nothing goes wrong, I locked the laptop and went to bed.

When I woke up, I checked it immediately. The simulation had hung. I looked at the Task Manager. 90% RAM usage. So I closed it. But lo and behold, it generated 10 AI configurations, each one better than the last one before it. So I was like “that went well”. I pushed my work and restarted my laptop. Then my laptop won't start. It only said “Diagnosing Your PC”. But I wasn't worried. I know I didn't do anything stupid. The simulation just probably messed up the memory. An hour later, my laptop was alive again. I immediately fixed the memory leak. Lesson learned when writing a resource intensive GA like this one.

After coffee, I decided to play a game against the new AI and see if it's really indeed better. Maybe it's just better against other AI but not humans. So I used my usual strategy. Bribed supporters on the first few turns. I acquired districts as soon as I can. I was winning. Every 5 turns, the game shows this graph about how many supporters each candidate has. I beat his numbers every time. I even have more acquired districts than him. Am I really playing against a better AI? On the last turn, I've made my actions. I knew I was gonna win. I controlled more districts than him. That dread that I probably just wasted time returned again. Election came... the AI won an unbelievable landslide. Jaw dropped. Turns out he didn't care about the voters and was befriending more patrons than me. Well, I guess I created a monster.

Thanks for reading. If you'd like to be updated on the latest Political Animals, please sign up for our mailing list!

How to Playtest Your Game

In this post, Tristan talks about our playtesting method.

The game has finally reached a point where we're ready to show it to the world! Well not yet exactly, but we did show it to a few friends. As any self respecting game designer would know, play-testing a game is one of the more important parts of the game design process. In fact, if there are any doubts about a game mechanic, play-testing it is the way to go. In this article, I talk about how we conducted preliminary play tests for the game, and some of the interesting things we learned during the play-tests.

The Play-testers

First let me talk about the play-testers. Our very first play-testers are a few friends from the game industry who we lured with our charms, err, the promise of free food, and those unlucky enough to sit by our table during the recent Manila Game Jam held at the Ateneo De Manila University(ADMU). Seriously guys we really appreciate you taking the time to sit through the game and answer our questions. Speaking of questions, what play-test would be complete without a play-test questionnaire?

The Play-test Questionnaire

For our first play tests we decided to go for a more general questionnaire, since our primary goal in doing these play-tests is to gauge where the game is in terms of fun, and to see if any problems will arise. As we iterate on the game based on preliminary feedback,  we'll also iterate on the questions, refining them until we're ready to test the game with more people.

Our questionnaire consists of two parts: Pre-game, and Post-game:

Pre Game Questions

The first part of the questionnaire deals mainly with knowing who the play tester is. This is important because answers to the questions will mostly be opinions of the player towards the game. Knowing the play tester will help us later on when deciding how much weight to put on his suggestions/feedback later on. Here are some of our Pre-game questions:

1) Do you consider yourself as a strategy gamer?

2) Please list down at least three strategy games that you have played.

3) Rate your skill as a strategy gamer.(1 lowest,5 highest)

4) Rate your interest in a game about politics. (1 lowest, 5 highest)

5) Rate how clean a campaign you will run.(1 dirty, 5 clean)

Questions 1,2, and 3 allows us to know what the play testers game preferences are which may shed some light on some of his/her Post Game answers later on.  Question 5 is of interest because it tells us how the player plans to play the game ( good or evil) at the start, and later on we compare it to his actual play style.

Tester Plays the Game

After answering the Pre Game questions, the play tester is given a short introduction to the game, the goals of the player, and basic mechanics by yours truly. Afterwards, the player is let loose in the districts of Summer Island to test his political mettle against the opposing candidate. During the course of the game, the play-tester is allowed to comment and ask questions about the game, while we take notes.

Post Game Questions

When winner of the Summer Island elections have been revealed, it's now time for the play-tester to answer the Post Game questions. The Post Game questions deal mainly about the play-testers feelings towards the game. Some of the questions:

1)  How fun was the game? (1 lowest, 5 highest)

2) Which part of the game did you enjoy the most?

3) Which part of the game did you find the most difficult?

4) How difficult is the game? ( 1 lowest, 5 highest)

5) How corrupt were you in the game? ( 1 lowest, 5 highest)

Remember during the Pre Game questions we asked how clean a campaign the player could run? In the Post game questions we ask how corrupt the player's candidate was during the campaign. It was quite surprising and fun( insert evil laugh here) to see that most players ended up being more corrupt than they thought they would be.  But the best feedback was one tester that insisted they would be super corrupt but ended up only being moderately corrupt (wouldn't it be wonderful if more of ouir politicians were like that?)

Play-test Results

First a disclaimer before we present our results. Since we just play-tested with a very small pool of players, results from the play-test are not accurate at all, and should be used merely to present a different perspective on the game. Also, a majority of the play-testers are game industry professionals who have insight into the game development process which may or may not have coloured their reaction towards the game.

The play-testers had an average of 2.78 (skill as a strategy gamer), 3.33 (interest in politics), 2.89 (running a clean campaign), 3.22( corruption), 3.5( had fun), 3.44( game difficulty), 4.17( accurate to political theme).

Aside from the values above, we also received qualitative feedback from the play tests.

Things Players Did Not Enjoy

Too Many Stats to Track

These were game feedback which had keywords like info, and stats  attached to words like Too much or Too many. These feedback seems to deal with the playing having a hard time processing game information hindering them from making decisions during the game.

AI Turn is too Fast

These were game feedback which mentioned keywords like AI, Fast and Quick. These feedback seems to deal with the player having a hard time knowing what the opponent is doing.

Things the Player Enjoyed

Being Corrupt

These were game feedback which mentioned the keywords dirty, bribery, and scandals. The feedback seems to show that the player enjoyed doing bad things in the game.

Dominating Districts

These were game feedback which mentioned the keywords domination, and winning.  These feedback seems to show that the player enjoyed seeing his territory expand visually in the game through the borders of districts he has captured.

Looking Forward To More Play-tests

If you're looking to do a similar process during your own play-tests here's a few things to keep in mind:

• Quantitative data is not useful with a very small pool of play-testers because results won't be reliable. Try using open ended questions in your questionnaire.

• Ask follow up questions. The play-tester rated fun as 4.5? Ask him what kept him from giving the game the full 5 points.

• Always clarify if the play-tester's answer is vague. The play-tester might not mean what you think he means. (at the same team be careful not lead the tester to conclusions)

• Observe which questions the player isn't asking. If there's a mechanic important enough to the game and the player is not asking questions about it, don't assume that the mechanic is clear to the player.

Thanks for reading.  Here's a copy of our playtest feedback questions for your reference.  If you'd like to be updated on the latest Party Animals, please sign up for our mailing list!