SyntaxBomb - Indie Coders

As someone who has never really ever released a successful video game this is a thought that often comes to mind about polishing my games:

It's hard to be motivated to polish beyond a certain point when you have zero idea of how 'hours worked polishing' translates into 'additional happy users'.

If I work an extra 100 hours polishing the game and get 100 more users, that's worth it. But if I continue polishing another 100 hours and only get 10 more users, and then another 100 hours and only get 1 more user, and then finally for every 1000 hours spent polishing you might get one new user from time to time...where's the motivation to continue polishing?

Furthermore - if you never get any users in the first place perhaps because you've never reached the level needed cross the threshold into being an attractive game - then how are you ever going to be motivated to do more work?

I've always thought that polishing a game to a certain level has to be done. Not because it will attract more players, because most of them won't even notice it. But those are the kind of players who would notice it if you didn't.

It's like the old cliche where some people will never review anything unless they have something bad to say. If something is acceptable, or even good to them, then they just enjoy it and tell nobody.

The efforts of polishing _should_ not always create results for just a particular product (here game).

So polish with the lowest hanging fruits approach. And fruits you can reuse (hah!) would be perfect. So if your game needs some nice "screen transitions" to look a bit less "harsh" then the code for screen transitions can easily be used in a different game (logic and mostly also code wise).

Similar things to say about gui animation (menus not just "appearing" but maybe "popping up" ... this is I think useful for casual games, where the target audience enjoys such subtle "swiftness" more than people who care for "efficiency" and dislike having to wait 200ms until a menu is "there").

Add things like "update notifiers" in a useful and "privacy oriented way" (optin for checks ... so ask them nicely if it was ok to do regular update checks and inform them once it is there ....) and if an update is there.. how to inform the user (a popup on each start would annoy, so you need to have checkboxes for a "do not remind me again ..." etc).

Add interactive guides ... alone the "how a tutorial/guide" is done, takes hours and days to properly implement (highlighting elements, text boxes, ...) - but do it once and in the next game you might just have to "adjust" to get things done.

Add localization: yes, many can understand English, but you will be surprised how many would prefer other languages - offering localized products can help too. And to make your game multilangual can be a harder task (eg if texts are containing dynamic/random information for a more dynamic "text" which is not the same all the time) than you think ...  most easily understand: text lengths can differ between languages --- and grammar differs (which is important if you need to support placeholders).


All these things take time to incorporate ... but they will bring your product "further".



I did not try it myself - but maybe think of incorporating Steam into your game(s) - might attract more users (be prepared for both sides of feedback...). And be prepared: the more users you "attract", the more desires will be expressed.


bye
Ron