2014 Windows and Windows Phone Games Competition - Congratulations winners!

Ah very good!
In the spirit of openes I'm curious and would probably help other devs how do you establish a dialogue with windows phone store people? I'm guessing since it was featured a few times you didn't need to place 3rd to get featured? Also are you wondering why you didn't place 2nd or 1st even? I know you must be happy with 3rd but it seems like it would just be human nature to wonder why you didn't do even better...

 

Christine and I did our Masters together. Errol originally approached us as a concept artist and did some pieces for us. I started cutting them up and creating light cookies as an experiment and it looked great, so we found a cool way to turn him into a production artist through his concept art. When the three of us get together for beers we have the most productive design meetings I've ever had in my career, so we're just a good creative fit.

Sarah is an amazing writer and one of my best friends, who was set designer on a few theatre shows I worked on.

Jonas approached us through a screenshot saturday on reddit.

Nick we knew from our Masters as well

Jeff and Kevin we knew through the local developer community.

In a nutshell, we're all just good friends with good professional working relationships.

For funding, we were in the Microsoft-Nokia AppCampus program, which is nice, but also not substantial. We had to be pretty smart about spending money.

 

Get in touch with your local Microsoft evangelist. They've been great for putting us in touch with the right people. We originally encountered our local guy in person through local tech events, but this seems like a good directory: http://tech-advisors.msdn.microsoft.com/

We have been featured several times since we released in June (every 2-3 days, it's slowed down quite a bit). Most of that is likely due to us coming from the AppCampus program, so we probably did get some extra attention from the various global and local marketing teams that decide storefront features. I had also been to Finland a few weeks prior to release where I met many of the Nokia folks, so we were "on their radar" of games being released soon.

But, I can't say for sure. We just released and then started getting notifications about store features. We were not actively involved in making those happen, they just did.

I think 3rd is absolutely thrilling for us. The top 2 games are very high production quality, well beyond what our team is capable of as of right now. I haven't had a chance to play either of the top games yet, but they have very sharp, focused visual aesthetics and I think they are absolutely deserving and in line with the criteria set out in the contest.

 

So nice of you to respond to questions!
I hope you can get more success with each new game. I'm even thinking you have a really good shot at getting into the ID xbox program. Does that sound like something you would pursue?
Also since Unity makes it super simple to port games to various platforms such as the ps vita would you be willing to provide the vita version?
Also it would be nice to give a shout out to the wonderful asset store authors so just wondering what good assets you used? They help immensely!

 

No worries!

We are starting to ask about ID@XBOX. Will see what happens. It would be nice, but we would also need to put together other funding to do that kind of project. We're considering things like Kickstarter and Canada Media Fund (or both, like The Long Dark did), but we'll see. We might also look for other studios to partner with for something like that.

Unity makes it "super simple" to an extent, but there is still quite a bit of work to be done when deploying for a different platforms. For example, if we were to port to iOS or Android we'd have to spend some time optimizing the art a bit for the wider range of devices. Things like Vita or Xbox One would also cause us to revisit input and controls. In the coming chapter there is more "Tap screen to interact" so we need to look at adapting that to joystick controls.

The Veil is also pitched as a mobile game. The 15-25 minute chapter format is deliberate for playing on the morning commute or during work breaks. For something like Xbox One, it would probably make more sense to bundle the entire game together into a single "Limbo" kind of experience. It changes the narrative design quite a bit.

Asset Store stuff: LOTS. I'll make a separate post at some point when I have time to grab the links.

The big ones are PlayMaker and BEP v2. I'm also about to start working with SECTR to try and get memory and audio better managed. Allegorithmic's various $2 procedural materials have been great as well.

 

Sorry, just to clarify: Unity is great and makes a lot of the tech easy for platform switching - but there's always design considerations to address.

 

ah ok, it looks to have a theatrical feel... so now it makes sense

I'm not sure I have any specific questions as I'm still learning the ropes to say... I know from what I've learned so far that the "figuring out" process seems to be about 90% of everything I do... I guess it would be just interesting to hear your view on what worked, what didn't, or whatever you thought would bring most value to others that you found interesting or important. perhaps I just like a good story lol.

 

Wow, you really need to start blogging!

I'm in Ontario. I've been successful with getting SR&ED tax credits to help with the costs of "figuring out" how to get things done. I'm not sure how your company is structured but you should at least look into SR&ED. I'm happy to give you some advice on this if you need. I had a pretty funny conversation with an SR&ED auditor (it's only funny in hindsight) who couldn't believe that all this stuff hasn't been figured out yet ("If the frame rate is too low, just raise it!").

I don't know what programs you have in BC but we have a few Ontario based funding programs here that I'm in the process of applying for and AppCampus as well. Great to hear that you went through that program.

If you do start blogging, please post a link for us!

 

@schmosef

Nice! I'm from Toronto originally (was there last week, actually!), with a theatre degree at York. We do know about SRED, we're coming up on our first financials for the company, so we'll see how much of that applies. Always happy to talk and get advice going in. Our "next" game has a much stronger R&D slant for the purpose of things like IRAP and SRED.

Feel free to ping me (twitter: marshmatter) with any questions you have about AppCampus. I'm not quite sure about the current state of the program and if it is being renewed. But, I've been to the offices in Finland, know tons of developers in the program, and many of the folks in charge.

We do have a blog over at http://www.wearewayward.com/devblog/ . I need to use it more, but anything I write will appear there. Based on this exchange I will definitely do more.

I also regularly post visual references for art direction and design on tumblr: http://marshmatter.tumblr.com/ - a lot of recent stuff coming from early stages of two new games (both of which will take us a few years, probably)

@tswalk

I'll probably write a blog about some of those prompts. I've actually written a few thousand words in response, but I need to spend some time making it succinct and poignant.

But that's also kind of the essence of it all: you learn new things and you realize you need to re-do your past work. We did that. A LOT. There's probably 10+ different versions of the "splashdown" area where you first start the game.

 

It's such a small world: my office is on Hwy 7 just north of York U.

Don't get me started on IRAP. What a messed up program!

A few years ago, I did a client project that was partially funded with IRAP (nothing to do with Game Dev). Not a great experience for me. I will do everything possible to avoid IRAP in the future. Good luck if you go that route.

I plan on submitting to AppCampus very soon so I might just take you up on your offer for advice.

Regarding SR&ED, I've been doing it for about 5 or 6 years now. About 2 years of that has been for Game Dev. I've figured out a way of describing the work I do in a way that complies with the program's requirements and (most importantly) passes audit) Feel free to PM me here if you have questions.

 

I too have considered the AppCampus program, I'm sure it could benefit me... loved Finland, I visited more times than I care to admit haha....

 

I see the winners are announced on the unity home page. Very good. But when you go to the page with all the winners there's like 10000 words and a bunch of text links to the runner ups. That won't help sales trust me. It needs screenshots and trailer videos and maybe a description...effort effort!

 

My game has been featured almost every day since I released (early July) in in various markets. It hasn't really helped. The sad fact is that most apps/games have lower than 1% free -> paid conversion rate.

I didn't do anything to get featured. I guess you need to have the relevant art in your app submission, and you need to have a product the Store team thinks is quality enough.

 

which game is that pumpkinszwan?

 

My game is called Game of Clowns (it was called Clowntraptions, but I renamed it):
http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=07b7c65a-1cf1-45cb-bf49-cea9ea381dd9

 

Oh yeah I downloaded it..nice game!!
Well you have to remember that the windows 8 market is relatively small so the 1% conversion won't be as helpful of course like it would be with IOS or android. But 1-2% is pretty normal.
However if all goes according to plan windows 9 will be much better..in fact I bet Unity is already planning to remove the windows 8 exporter haha...hmm but then again I still see the xbox360 exporter. Why is that even in there? And since it's there why doesn't microsoft allow anyone to just publish ...open source the xbox 360 make some news!!! come on!

 

I did some prelim work on something that later went to IRAP - wonder how well that went.

I'm not sure what's going on with AppCampus right now, online applications are still closed. But, the program is university-administered so it might just be general summer slow down.

 

I had a blast in Helsinki while I was at AppCampus for AppCademy. Apparently my cohort partied a little harder than the past cohort.

 

This is the main winners announce page. The winners were printed all over banners at Unite. Games were also being demoed. They interviewed us for Channel 9. But it doesn't matter. Of course it's not going to help download/sales too much - how many users are going to a game engine website to find games?

They are awarding money and licenses. It's awesome. It helps us get traction for additional funding, and to get new projects going.

 

Ahh I didn't know that was there! That is much better than the text links. You're exactly right though showcasing the winners on an engine site is not that productive. I should have thought of that.

 

I think a lot depends on how good your IRAP consultant is...

Interesting about AppCampus online applications not being open right now. I hope you are correct and it's just down for the summer. The blog does have a recent posting.

But it might be down for good due to the restructuring going on at Microsoft. I guess we will see.

 

I was thinking since there were 600+ entries wouldn't it have been great if they gave more pro licenses say 50?
Great benefits to all.
*The judges would have had less pressure
*30 more devs would be a lot happier
*if I won one I would have shut up long ago lol

 

Awesome entries!

 

Hey Dave...just a heads up..broken link...

 

Is there going to be a competition for 2015?

 

Hopefully, there will be a few contests related to the Windows 10 release.

 

Well hopefully they will fix the Unity UI input text box in time for the Windows 10 release. I heard it still doesn't work on Windows Store/Android or IOS.

 

let's hope... I've been cooking a brew for it.

 

Me too, for five years now lol...

 

Hmmm I should bring this up to the team....

 

Yes. Yes, you should!