💥 🧘🏽 🎇 A millionth shooter from scratch: an indie developer path 🧡 ⛎ 🖐🏾

For the past five years, I have been managing educational programs in the gaming industry at the Higher School of Business Informatics of the Higher School of Economics . We hold many free events with interesting speakers, gathering an audience through Leader-ID. At one of the last meetings, another cool story was heard, where several like-minded people launched a release game that brought in more than 200 thousand dollars.

The story is good in that, in addition to the happy end, it also describes major misses, thanks to which invaluable experience is gained. And most importantly - the guys are happy to share all the details and the list of rakes that they collected on this long journey.

Meet Dmitry Svetlov. For more than 10 years, he runs his own studio of architectural visualization - 3Dmode. At some point, when things were already going well in the company, he had a need to conquer new heights, and he decided to return to his childhood passion - the creation of games.

The next three years, he, along with a friend, devoted to developing a browser-based top-down shooter. They worked mostly in the evenings. Last year, a friend pored over the code all his time. But the project as a result did not come out in release. Then a second attempt followed - the VR shooter Sacralith: the archer's tale - and it turned out to be successful.

Below is a retelling of Dmitry’s lecture, in which he told many interesting details and noted five main obstacles that the team had to face on the way to a successful launch.

Optimism

It sounds strange, but in fact, he became the main reason for the failure of the first project. When Dmitry, together with his friend programmer, started making a browser-based top-down shooter, they had no doubt that everything would work out.

But despite their own rich experience in working with 3D graphics and the experience of a friend-programmer, the guys did not manage to bring the game to release. Belief in success blinded them.

If you look back, you can see how many around the images of "confident people who clearly represent the ultimate goal and achieved unprecedented heights." Such characters are tirelessly replicated in the media space, promoting a simple idea: "the main thing is to believe, and everything will work out." However, there is a significant flaw in this approach.

Competency development

scheme The diagram above indicates the stages that each specialist goes through. Obviously, most of those who blindly believe in success are in the first stage. But the reality is that people who achieve results are not so much talented as hardworking. But this is also not the main thing.

To make a project, you need to be able to do projects. It was precisely understanding how to “start”, how to “make” and how to “complete” a project that was not enough then to release its first game.

Healthy pessimism is exactly what comes with experience. And this is not about faith in one's own strength, but about banal caution and prudence. “Novice”, leaving home, will take a player with him, and “professional” will grab an umbrella, pills for a headache and, possibly, body armor.

Unrealistic expectations

Starting a project, you are laying a certain amount of time and resources for development, as well as representing potential income and expenses . It’s good when expectations and real numbers are close, but for most indie developers this is far from the first time. When people were talking about the death of the flash and the extinction of the era of browser games, they still believed in dizzying success.

There was something similar with Sacralith. One of the main participants, even when he was shown the current metrics, blindly believed that the project would bring millions of dollars. And he eventually brought millions, but rubles. Because of what, he left the team.

Revenues from Sacralith

For many, this is the most interesting part of the story.

Revenue on Steam

Looking at these numbers, it is worth remembering that only half of this amount will reach you. Steam will leave 30%, VAT 5%, then we have currency control and a number of other taxes.

Revenues in the Oculus store.

Bursts on charts are sales arranged by us with discounts of 35-50%. And in the PS Store, things are even worse - there is no way to sell anything without promotion. As a result, in total at all sites currently sold about 12 thousand copies.

Start of development and project costs

The development of Sacralith: The Archer`s Tale started in 2007. At the same time, Dmitry took a professional retraining course “ Game Project Management ” at the Higher School of Economics, Higher School of Economics, because at some point he realized that it was necessary to start with management.

The costs for the entire project were as follows:

Development budget

Calculation is very approximate. If Dmitry paid a salary to himself in the amount of at least 150 thousand rubles. per month, the total development cost would increase by about three-plus million.

A variety of techniques have been used to optimize costs. For example, to record facial animation, the company made its helmet, which cost only 70 € (the original costs 1800 €).

A special face scanner was also assembled (cost 80,000 rubles). Previously, scanning one character in the studio cost 30,000 rubles.

Character faces examples

Time and problems with its calculation

On the example of the work of his 3Dmode studio Dmitry talked about planning. In the first years of work, the studio often did not keep up to date. Dmitry decided to conduct an internal study and introduced a time tracking system in which tasks were divided into categories.

Initially, the process of evaluating the required time was as follows:

After analyzing the real cost of time, the circuit began to look like this:

Real production time was already 12 days.

It did not take into account the time of "internal changes", expectations of customer comments. There was a coefficient of x1.2 for insurance against unforeseen situations, for example: a key specialist became ill, the render crashed, the server was cut off ...

And all this happened with previously known and fulfilled tasks. In game development, all tasks turned out to be new. For example, during the recording of the monk’s motion animations for Sacralith, the guys collaborated with the Pilot studio (this is the company that created the popular characters Hryun and Stepan). At first glance, everything was natural, but after the final render, the scene looked somehow unnatural. For a long time they could not understand why. After two weeks of searching, the reason was found. It turned out that there were no problems with the animation of the body, but the whole thing was the unnatural look of the hero.

The team had to urgently develop a system of character procedural gaze. Depending on the situation, the hero could look clearly at the camera, at key points of interest, or simply lower his gaze. No one thought it would take another month of development. And there were a lot of such “trifles” on the way to release.

Entropy and planning neuroticism

Planning is the most important tool for working with complex projects. But the value of the plan in conditions of total uncertainty and unpredictability tends to zero. It is much more important to clearly see your destination than to carefully follow a previously laid route. If each participant in the process understands what he is doing, why he is doing it and when he needs to finish it, development moves.

When creating Sacralith, Dmitry replaced the plan with a conditional scheme consisting of simple goals. For example, the final goal was to release in February and 5,000 sales at a price of $ 20 at the start.

The goal scheme

The next principle that the studio used was the principle of MVP (minimum viable product), i.e. creating a minimally viable product at every stage of development. With this approach, you create a working disc, which you further improve on all the main indicators.

In the picture below you can see that already at the first stage a workable machine should turn out, which subsequently "grows" with details.

On the example of Sacralith, the team identified the following development pyramid, consisting of features, advantages and values:

Features (game features): archery, pumping system, enemies and cut scenes.
Advantages (relative to competitors): cool arrow physics and colorful graphics.
Values (main ideas): the most bloody archer simulator in the Middle Ages.

After identifying these components, you can begin work on MVP. It is important to focus on project values. The better you demonstrate them at an early stage of development, the greater the chances of success of your product.

You can start with features, as shown in the upper left pyramid, but this is a bad option. The normal option is when we make features that can demonstrate value (bottom left), and the best option is when we think about how to demonstrate value to us (bottom right).

Stubbornness

Useful quality in business, but if we are talking about indie development, sometimes it just gets in the way. Let’s take a look at the example of creating mockup animations for Sacralith. To record them, you need special equipment and actors who will depict the movements you need.

Record mockup animation. One of the actors in the photo, the founder of the Pilot studio,

Dmitry, said that he was trying to get the maximum seriousness in the movements from the actors. And, despite all efforts, in the gestures of the actors slipped notes of relatives for them Khryun and Stepan. However, it was this comic nature of the characters that allowed developers to take a fresh look at the project.

As a result, humor appeared in the game, the characters became more charismatic. Yes, all these decisions appeared spontaneously, but the final product only benefited from such changes. Thus, in conditions of limited resources, it is important to go with the flow, and sometimes even change the destination. Of course, if you believe that this will benefit the final product.

A similar story was with character models. Unlike the classical development scheme, Dmitry’s team used the exact opposite approach:

the guys collect a database of ready-made assets (sounds, 3D-models, surroundings) that are available or available for purchase in a specialized store;
on its basis they make the design of levels and characters;
work out the script and finalize the setting (a unique style of play).

Classic pipeline (development scheme)

Pipeline worked out by Sacralith

i.e. the development did not proceed from the plan and scenario, but the scenario was adapted to the available models and other resources. This approach has saved a lot of time and money, so the final product was able to bring profit to the creators.

First reviews: real onions, but everyone thinks differently

Work on the product does not stop after the release of the game on the platform (Steam and others). The first reviews (especially negative) should be perceived adequately, trying to find a rational kernel. And even if you were written just a few words, you should ask the author what exactly confused him in your product.

For example, after the release of Sacralith, the developers received several angry reviews about the unrealistic onions. As it turned out from the dialogue with the user, the problem was the location of the arrow relative to the shaft. In the game, this moment was realized historically true, as in the Middle Ages. But in modern bows, the “shelf” for the arrow is on the left. Because of this, users were outraged, saying "the developers have never held a bow in their hands!" Quickly redoing this detail, the guys immediately received a positive feedback from the audience. We managed to turn several negative reviews into positive ones, which resulted in the necessary 90% positive reviews.

Theft

Surely, many of you are afraid that a brilliant idea may be stolen. If you return to the beginning of the article and remember the words of Edison, you will understand that you should not be afraid of this at all. On the contrary, in order to become better and make a more successful product, it is important to tell everyone about your idea and carefully collect criticism, and then improve the development.

Summary

I hope this story and Dmitry’s experience will be useful for those who are developing their game project or are seriously thinking about it. The main thing is to overcome your self-confidence, to listen to criticism and real metrics.

If you are interested in looking at his live performance, where a little more details, it is here .

A millionth shooter from scratch: an indie developer path