How devs decide to make games for new ecosystems. ByXALAVIER NELSON JR
Too-Early Adoption
WInside Dev: Making a sceneMAKING GAMES IS HARD.
Inside Dev
C
ash payments. Exclusive
development support. Marketing
features with increased visibility.
These are just a few of the incentives
that may be offered to a developer
in return for committing to a new
platform early. An ecosystem needs
projects supporting it, and devs need
to ensure that they have a substantial
audience to sell their games to.
However, when a platform is actual
hardware that takes up space, the
costs and considerations developers
face can vary wildly.
“I first got to try the Magic Leap 1
as part of a contract early in 2018, and
I immediately knew that I wanted to
find a way to work with the device,”
says veteran independent developer
and consultant Ryan Evans. “[Magic
Leap] lets you imbue everyday objects
and spaces around you with new
meaning and lets you interact with
familiar spaces in an all new way.”
However, the cost of innovation was
not cheap. The headset alone cost
him $2,295 dollars — not including
tax — and the company couldn’t ship
it to his home so Evans had to drive to
San Francisco. “The expenses so far
have mostly just been money,” Evans
says. “To their credit, Magic Leap
just had a grant application process
to give money and hardware to
indie developers with ideas. Getting
funding from a platform holder
goes a long way into making early
development viable. In the meantime
I’ll keep looking for consulting work
in the space to continue to self-fund,
and hopefully as a consumer market
comes into existence I can keep
making more games for them.” While
Evans will have to buy necessary
future iterations of the hardware as
well, he believes continued consultingThere’sajoyincreating
something surprising out of
really cheap parts.
jobs that use his growing knowledge
of the technology will put him in
a prime position to recoup costs
and take advantage of the Leap’s
potential growth in the consumer
market in the future.
On the other side of the cost
scale, you’ll find developers like
Alistair Aitcheson, a creator who
uses custom hardware he builds
himself for playful art installations
(such as a piece at the National
Videogame Museum) and interactive
stage shows. “A lot of my work
is made using Arduinos,” says
Aitcheson. “There’s certainly cheaper
alternatives, but I’m happy to pay the
extra to avoid having to faff around
with setup. Other props are found oneBay: Rubber chickens, Duplo and
Morphsuits, for example. There’s a
joy in creating something surprising
out of really cheap parts. People can
see how it was made and be inspired
by that.”
The developers of System Shock-
inspired minimal first-person
adventure Spirits of Xanadu found
their project gaining Tobii Eye
Tracker compatibility with no extra
cost or effort, as the company needed
more titles under their banner.
“In our case, they used a software
wrapper rather than native support
so it didn’t require any effort on our
part to implement,” says Spirits of
Xanadu writer Lee Williams. “With
nothing to lose, and intrigued by the
new tech, we agreed to let them addthe support in return for placement
on their website.”SWEET SPOT
While even low-cost development
for new or custom hardware can
seem daunting, one element that
drives developers to tackle these
challenges is fear. What happens
if a platform is the opportunity
their game needs, and they miss
its golden launch period? That’s
the question the developers of
subversive indie platformer The
Messenger faced with the Nintendo
Switch in early 2018. “We never
doubted that launching on Switch
was a great idea,” studio cofounder
Martin Brouard said. “However as
more and more games started to
come out on Switch in the second
half of 2018, it became harder to be
some kind of no-brainer purchase
for players. Nintendo did give us a
lot of visibility, though, so our sales
on that platform are very good.
But had we launched three to four
months earlier we probably would
have struck gold in a major way.
We are still happy with the results,
though.” In the end, polishing
the game, and receiving major
marketing showcases from Nintendo
as well as publisher Devolver Digital
helped The Messenger surmount
an increasingly crowded market to
some degree.
A new platform—particularly one
with a physical component—is a
risk for everyone involved. However,
the more this risk is assuaged for
the creative people who make the
content these platforms need, the
more likely success is for everyone in
our industry’s constant pursuit of a
new horizon.XALAVIER
NELSONJR.
I’m a full-time
game writer and
narrative designer,
with credits inside
and out of gaming.