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A new Pre App review site has hit the web, and one of their first targets is Word Ace! It’s a great, super-through writeup! Go check it out, and show the site some love! It’s PreAppTastic!
A few years ago, when I asked a coworker why they got into game design (they’d previously been an engineer), their response was, “I want power. You guys get to make all the decisions.”
On the surface, it seems like a sensible thing to say. You see Cliff Bleszinski or Will Wright out there, talking about their games, and these guys are the “visionaries” - at least, that’s how it’s pitched to the public. Who comes up with guns attached to chainsaws, or creature creators that let you build whatever you can imagine, right? These guys are the creative powerhouses behind their games, and if you’re in their position, you’ve got *control*… right?
Now, I’m no cliffyb, or Will Wright. Far from it. But for me, hearing my coworker say that they wanted to go into game design because they wanted power was a strange thing.
To me, design has always been a “service position.” In general, game design is broken up into a couple different sub-disciplines. You’ve got system designers, who build the mechanics of the game. You’ve often got level designers, who create the actual experience that the player will interact with, and you’ve got the lead designers, who both set the tone of the game, and effectively act as the design team’s manager.
What I mean by “service position” is that at each stage of the process, the designer is rarely in “power” - rather, they are in service to some greater force. Let’s start at the top.
Building a game is essentially a giant resource management game in itself. You’re creating something - you’ve usually got a deadline and a budget. Maybe a target audience, and a platform you’re working on. As a lead designer, you have a handful of really important goals:
Just to take an example - when we were first looking at making a game for the Palm Pre, the biggest question was, “What should we make?” On one hand, we had the immense luxury of making that decision ourselves - we weren’t handed a specific set of marketing goals, or a demographic to target. We could make whatever we wanted.
But when you step back a bit, you really … can’t. Or rather, you shouldn’t. Your platform has certain things it’s good at. The original Playstation, for all its vaunted power, was a relatively lousy machine for doing 2D games. The PS3’s controller has a giant dead spot in the middle of the analog stick, so making games that require high degrees of precise input can highlight the console’s flaws. On the Pre, Mojo has some very positive aspects (rapid development, a familiar language), and some negative ones (limited access to the underlying hardware).
In addition, unless you’re in a very, very privileged position, you’re working with limited resources. Limited people, limited money, limited time. This isn’t a bad thing. It can help give your game form. It forces you to concentrate on what’s important and what’s not.
Look at Duke Nukem Forever - 12 years in the making, and never released. Why? Because the developers (at least until the very last moment) never had to say “no.” Why was Star Wars better than the Phantom Menace? Why was Metal Gear better than Metal Gear 2? Because free of restrictions, you don’t have to find creative solutions to your problems, and you’re not forced to take a look at what you have to cut away to get to the core of what you want to make.
Building the best possible game is as much, if not more, about knowing what that chewy center is. Knowing what the experience you want to convey to the players is - building that - and eliminating everything else.
One of my favorite games in recent years was an action-adventure called Ico, for the PS2. Greatest game of its generation by leaps and bounds. It was emotionally engaging despite virtually no dialog. It was epic despite taking place in what amounted to a single setting with only two main characters. It knew what it wanted to focus on - the emotional bond between the two main characters in the game, and it stripped away anything that didn’t serve that purpose.
Can I say that Word Ace or Taxiball is similarly minimalist? Absolutely not. But what I can say is that we knew where the “core fun” of the games were, and we never sacrificed that. We cut a lot of things in the process of making the games, some of which will be added in over time (particularly in Word Ace (and Card Ace)), some of which are better left on the cutting room floor (no, we don’t actually have a “cutting room”). But the games work, I believe, because we took the time to figure out what was important about them, and to make sure that as we developed the games, we focused on the things that emphasized the particular fun, and eliminated things that didn’t.
With Word Ace, for instance, when we were playing it with cards, an absolutely critical component of the experience was the “IN YOUR FACE!” moment when you pulled out a great word. The great word was satisfying in itself, but the booyah! moment - that moment of interaction between players - was something we couldn’t lose. That led to the development of the emote system, which is one of my favorite things in the Ace games.
The point is - there are some people who have the ability to be visionaries. Who have the resources or the stubbornness to build their singular vision. But to me, a good designer builds the right game for the right circumstances - good design is about maximizing… everything. The platform, your resources - finding the “fun” in that and making sure that everything in the game serves that fun. It’s not a position where you lead - it’s a position where you listen. You listen to what the engineers think you’re capable of. You keep up with the state of the art, to know what your competition is doing. You research the future - you can’t design for now, your game’s not coming *out* now - you’re designing for months, sometimes years in the future. You try to understand who will be playing the game. When they’ll play it. What they’re looking for.
You take all that information, and if you listen, it’ll tell you what you should make.
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More later, time permitting (if there’s interest - want more? Leave a comment.).
Topics to come: How do you find “fun”? What *is* a game, anyway? Why designers who don’t play games should find another job.
So, at the end of the year, there’s always a bit of self-reflection, and for us, this year’s been a really crazy one. The year started out with the seeds for Self Aware Games, and between January and March, we had no name, and it was a pair of us working part time out of our living rooms
Taxiball's First Playable
As you can see, in the early days, without an artist, the game looked… um… “functional.” I took a stab at some placeholder art, but it wasn’t a whole lot better. 
(though I still kind of like the style for the water)
Taxiball with Designer Art
Fortunately, not long after this, Crystal joined us, and Taxiball immediately started looking a whole lot better! The pixel-art, eboy-inspired style that she brought to the game was incredibly appealing. Between the hyper-digital style and the all-vocal beatbox soundtrack, the game just felt like nothing else out there. Taxiball wears its influences on its sleeve - the old Labyrinth toys, Crazy Taxi, retro pixel art, but when it’s all smashed together with the beatbox stuff, it’s *still* unlike anything else out there.
Taxiball with Artist Art!
Taxiball was a really satisfying experience. We got our first game out the door to rave reviews, and it was something we were really excited about. The soundtrack was really unique, and while it wasn’t a runaway sales hit that made us all bazillionaires, a lot of people really enjoyed it. Edge Magazine named it #6 in their Top 50 iPhone games, which was really great.
Crystal + Funnel Cake = oog!
Once Taxiball wrapped up, we got to work on the first of two updates, adding levels and polishing up little bits and pieces of the game.
Okay, first we went to Great America, where we all got funnel cakes. For anyone who’s thinking of doing the same, LOOK AT THAT THING! Share your damn funnel cakes. I think we bought four, total, and ate maybe 1.5 of ‘em among the four of us? Seriously. Unless you’re Man vs. Food guy, one funnel cake for 3 people.
We’ve still got things we’d like to do in Taxiball - we had some really bizarre ideas for things that we’d like to do in the game. I hope we’ll get a chance to go back and give it a little more love. (And if you want more Taxiball content, the answer is simple! Get more people to grab the game, and we’ll add more stuff!)
As Taxiball was winding down, the question was, “What next?” One of the most important decisions of the year was to start development on the Palm Pre, and one of the best things that happened early on is that Dan joined the team as our main Pre developer.
We thought long and hard about what we’d do on the Pre, what the audience might want, and how it might differ from the iPhone’s audience. I don’t know whether it’s ended up being the case, but at the time, we thought the Pre would appeal to users of the Treo & Centro, which were slightly more business-oriented than full-blown consumer-oriented. The other thing that we’d learned with Taxiball is that games that require a lot of twitch-based dexterity are a bit self-limiting, audience-wise.
Self Aware Games' first office space!
So, a turn-based game that appealed to a slightly older audience of people on the go, for a platform that was starting from scratch! Card games and word games seemed like the way to go, right from the start - but what? Hold ‘Em? As much as we liked the game, it’s a known quantity - and we wanted to make something really special.
A simple misunderstanding later, and Word Ace was born - not just a word game or a card game, but both together, cross-platform between the Pre, iPhone & (later) Facebook! (In the picture below, avid Word Ace players may note something’s different about that screen than in the final game. That one change took many iterations over many weeks before we settled on the final thing. It’s a small detail, but one that tripped up a lot of early players!)
Word Ace
With Taxiball, we’d laid the groundwork for letting friends keep up with their friends in game through our Friend List-based leaderboards. With Word Ace, we’d take it a step further, and allow people to play together. Sure, there were other online card games, but we wanted to make sure that it felt *social* - like you were playing with people, and not just a bunch of randoms.
In addition to the text chat, we introduced a little “click & flick” emote system, where you can quickly swap out your profile picture for a happy or sad face. It was pretty amazing how fast Word Ace was prototyped, and as a result, how early we’d been able to play it online. For months, we’d play against each other (and our friends, our beta testers), often late, late at night. I’d be lying in bed at 2am, playing Word Ace against bots, when Colin, Crystal or Dan would suddenly appear at the table.
We talked about bugs via the in-game chat. We played face-to-face in the office. Heck, once we submitted the game to Palm, we even talked about bugs with their people via the in-game chat!
CTS defends our desks!
At the San Diego Comic-Con, Colin got a chance to talk to Tycho, from Penny Arcade, about Word Ace. When the game launched on the iPhone, he posted a note on their site. As longtime fans of PA, we were over the moon.
Word Ace launched on the Pre. It was an ambitious game on a new platform, and the fact that it launched as smoothly as it did was a testament to both the hardworking folks at Palm, and the hours and hours of hard work our team put in making sure that we’d be prepared for the launch. Thousands of people started playing, and the feedback about the game was incredible. We’d made it free, so that as many people could try it as possible. Once the game was completely solid, we’d turn on chip sales & donations, so people who wanted to support the game could spend whatever they wanted on the game to help support further development.
Chip sales went up a few weeks after launch, and donations are slated to be part of the next update. It’s been really fascinating watching the competition on the App Store/App Catalog, and seeing how things have shaken out - how they’ve been different from each other, how pricing evolves as people realize that the $0.99 price point isn’t sustainable, and it’s been a learning experience.
Dan Rarely Drives to Work
Speaking of learning experiences, there’s nothing that teaches you about what you did right or wrong like releasing a game. And one of the greatest things about working on mobile platforms is how fast development is. I came from a console game development background, where most projects are a minimum of 1.5 years, and some projects take 3x that long.
I’d never want to go back to that. You spend so long trying to make sure that your game is fun, but you only get that learning experience once every 2-3 years. Now, we learn a massive amount about how to do things better once every 3-4 months! Heck, with each update we learn something new, which brings that time down to once every few weeks.
With Taxiball, we learned about pricing, about making a game that’s dexterity-based, about how important generating awareness is on the App Store, and how to work with a new team. With Word Ace, we’ve learned a lot, again, about pricing, about keeping people playing the game, the importance of good & proactive moderation, and the perils of building an always-on, always-online game.
The One Constant? Bakesale Betty.
And some of the time, we still work out of the living room, and not the office.
Not long after the launch of Word Ace, the next step became really clear. Hold ‘Em. There wasn’t a Hold ‘Em game on the Pre, and Word Ace’s interface was so good that by taking that and applying it to Hold ‘Em, we were confident we’d have an exceptional version of online Texas Hold ‘Em. People wanted it. We got e-mails asking for it the moment Word Ace went live. Who were we to argue?
Card Ace!
We also really wanted to do a version of Word Ace (and Card Ace) for Facebook. Rylan joined the team and built the Facebook (and fubar) versions of Word Ace & Card Ace in a ridiculously short time, bringing our total “official” team size to five.
So in the course of the last year, we’ve released: Taxiball (iPhone), Taxiball Free (iPhone), Word Ace (webOS (Pre & Pixi)/iPhone/Facebook) and Card Ace (webOS (Pre & Pixi)/iPhone/Facebook). That’s a lot for a small team in a year, and we couldn’t have done it without help from some very critical people.
Every single one of those games is something I’m proud to have been a part of, and to both the players and the people who’ve made Self Aware Games possible, thank you.
It's Not a Mugshot.
I’d never have thought that this is how 2009 would have turned out.
So… what’s next? I can’t tell you. What I will say is that I thought I was as excited about a concept as I could be with Word Ace, and I’m even more excited about this. And if you thought Word Ace was different than Taxiball, this new thing is as different from both of those as you can imagine.
The Eyepatch Is Just for Kicks
Onward to the future!
I was looking back through the blog, and it occurred to me that I don’t seem to have ever announced on the blog that we’ve got Facebook versions of Word Ace & Card Ace available. :O
If you’ve got friends without a Pre or an iPhone, you should get ‘em to check it out! All they need is a PC and a Facebook account!
If you’ve got a Pre, you can also link up your Card Ace/Word Ace accounts with your Facebook account - just go to Profile, and click “Import Account,” then follow the directions there. (Account linking on iPhone is coming soon.)
I hope you get a chance to check ‘em out!
Woohoo! Kevin, one of the first people to grab a deck of Word Ace cards, sends in the aftermath of his first game with the new deck! How cool is that?
Got pics of you playing Word Ace with your friends? Send ‘em in, and we’ll post ‘em on the Self Aware blog! Get the best photo, and there might be a surprise in it for you! 
So… almost all the physical decks of Word Ace cards have been spoken for - and 85% of the decks have shipped out. We’re waiting on a shipment of the plastic cases for the last bunch, and we’ll be off to the races. For those that have already paid, you’re guaranteed a deck (if you’ve paid by 3pm Friday 12/11), and they’ll ship as soon as the cases come in.
Thanks so much for your interest and support. And to those whose decks are on their way, send us a pic of you playing with your friends, and we’ll put it on our blog!
Cheers!
Finished card packs! Just about ready to ship.
Rylan signs a whole mess of instructional leaflets. Each pack in the 1st run of cards is hand signed & numbered by each member of the Self Aware Games team!
Crystal & Dan peeling stickers and putting ‘em on the card cases. Crystal’s happier than she looks. Seriously.
The first batch of cards is just about to go out. It’s going out a day late because we had a delay in the shipment of the card cases. They’ll be going out first thing tomorrow morning, and additional shipments will follow in the coming days.
Woo!
One of the little things we’re including in the Word Ace physical decks are stickers of the Word Ace ‘W’ icon! Slap ‘em on your phones! Got a Touchstone? They happen to fit just right on that, too!
So, you’ve probably seen the very first version of Word Ace that we played with:
Word Ace Prototype Kit
And I’d guess you’ve probably seen the final version:
But as we started development of the actual software, we went through a couple iterations of how it would look. Crystal will probably shoot me, but here’s what one of the first variations of the game looked like. It wasn’t meant to be stylistically complete, but more to work out how big buttons would be and the like. You’ll notice a few pretty big differences, but surprisingly, not a huge amount changed, interface-wise, even from this early version:
New versions of Card Ace & Word Ace just went live on webOS! Version 1.0.4 brings a handful of really awesome new improvements. First off, when you click on a player, you’ll notice a new “expanded chiclet” that gives you more information about the people you’re playing with.
The first thing you’ll notice is the big “Thumbs Up” and “Thumbs Down” buttons. These are ways for you to rate the people you’re playing with. Like playing with someone? Give ‘em a Thumbs Up, and it’ll immediately be reflected in their public rating. Someone being a huge jerk, or playing in a really obnoxious manner? Give ‘em a Thumbs Down - they won’t see it, but *we* will. And if someone’s being legitimately obnoxious, we’ll let ‘em know about it.
You can change your vote for someone any time - so if you liked someone, but now they’re a jerk, just switch your vote with a click of the button.
The other things you’ll notice are that in Word Ace, you can now see a player’s best word, and their average word score. In Card Ace, you can see their best hand. It’s not going to change the world, but it’s nice to get a little info about the people you’re playing with.
In Card Ace, we’ve also got a brand new feature - Auto-Actions! Auto actions let you set up what you’re going to do on your next turn before it’s your turn. So if you know you’re gonna fold, just check “Fold” any time, and when your turn rolls around, you’ll fold right away. If you want to “Check,” just click the check button. If someone raises, it’ll automatically un-check (of course!). If you click both “Check” and “Fold” it’ll check if you can, and fold if you can’t. All this should speed up the game for everyone!
We’ve also made a couple stability tweaks, and fixed a weird issue that causes some players, some of the time, to not be able to connect, even when they have a good connection. So, download version 1.0.4 of Card Ace and Word Ace on the Palm App Catalog today! All these features are coming soon on the iPhone as well!
We’ve also got a new version of Card Ace on Facebook (http://apps.facebook.com/cardace), which revamps the Friends UI, and adds player ratings. Auto-Actions are coming soon to Card Ace on Facebook, and a new Facebook version of Word Ace is also just about ready for release!
In addition, we’re working on something… well, it’s still super secret.
But what’s NOT secret is that Crystal just won 2nd place at SF Food Wars! Congratulations to Crystal and her award-winning recipe for Spinach stuffing balls! They were fanTASTIC.
Woo!
