My Zomblobs! is a game designed in shells. There are layers to the design, allowing for a “bird’s eye” game experience with little micromanaging, all the way down to a Civilization-like world conquering game with a Tactical RPG layer, between them plenty of opportunities to min-max your way into gaming geek happiness.
I’ve thought on more than one occasion that it could also be developed that way. As in, develop the outer shell as a functional game and iterate down through the shells until it’s ready to weld to the TRPG (which could also function on its own) as a complete package. Some of those iterations can stand on their own as playable games, perhaps even marketable ones.
This does spread out the work and allow for monetization to keep a project going, and even allows for design changes if it’s found that one of the iterations or directions isn’t playing well. It also runs the risk of oversaturating the IP, making releases too disparate (in theme and/or release date) and therefore too easily ignored, getting lost in a crowd of shovelware (or becoming shovelware), dev team turnover, and code bloat. There’s also the risk that all the shells may not play nice together if they have to bend to accommodate separate releases.
Still, there’s something appealing about the notion of breaking up a larger project into smaller bites to make it more manageable. I’m not really sold on either approach at the moment, but it is still interesting looking at options. The iPhone market and even XBox Live have allowed for smaller games to have decent viability in recent years, and I instinctively want to leverage that to make something bigger. It’s a business sense that I haven’t honed very well, to be honest, but one that I can’t quite ignore. I’d love to focus purely on designing the game and doing art for it, but the sad reality is that money makes the world go ’round, and if I want to turn the time I’ve spent on this into money (which really would be nice), I need to look at the business side of things.
On the other hand, since this is a one-man show at present, and I don’t have much programming ability or money to hire some, well… this may well all be academic anyway. Sure, I’d like to learn the programming someday, but there are only so many hours in the day.
Still… dream big or go home, right?
At any rate, since I’m thinking of shells, here’s a rough concept of the outermost shell of Zomblobs!, the 3D globe Ataxx-variant I’m dubbing the Cytoglobe:
Cytoglobe layer
It’s a game that could stand alone as a smart phone game (or XBox Live or PC, whatever… though smart phone mobility and connectivity opens up a few new design options), and it could host a variety of variations, from multiplayer rule variants to a full map editor. Ataxx-style play isn’t really all that mentally taxing, but it’s still fun, and I think a global geodesic version could be a nice spin on the idea. (There’s also a fun tactile appeal of playing this on a touch screen… or even with Kinect controls. Sort of a “megalomaniac conquering the globe” feel, as it were.)
Of course, from there it’s possible to drill down into discrete blobs with hit points instead of instant-capture, species-specific boons and weaknesses, location-specific special effects (with real world GPS twists, perhaps), progression mechanics (sometimes mistakenly called “RPG elements”), resource management, research trees and even stories. The full Zomblobs! game would then only be a hop skip and a jump away, pulling all the elements together in a tighter fashion and welding them to the tactical game.
There’s a lot I want to do here, and there are good reasons to limit the scope of any single project. Absent an organized plan of production, things can get hairy fast. I’m still not sure what I’ll even be able to do… but it’s good to at least make sure I look ahead. Forewarned is forearmed, and all that rot.
Any thoughts?
Would you buy a game that’s effectively a “slice” of a larger game? Would you just expect it to be a sort of neo-shareware, offered for free, and the other layers monetized underneath for those who care to dig deeper? Would you like a suite of games that work like cogs in a larger machine, or would you just want the larger machine? Could you wait for new pieces?
…are any of you bored programmers with an itch to work on this?
…would a publicly readable wiki on the design be something worth making available?
…would Battle for Wesnoth eat my lunch anyway?
…EDITED to add the following great link to The Rampant Coyote’s recent article on “Feature Creep”… a highly relevant article as I sort out exactly what I want to do here.
Tish Tosh Tesh 
Looking at the mobile market, the initial slice is probably something that would be offered for free, with additional features/functionality available for a fee.
I do not know about the iOS programming model, but the Android programming model seems to have a service focus, in that you do not necessarily develop a standalone application, but rather different services which in turn can use other (perhaps already existing) services and also provide services to other services to use.
I think that the mobile market would probably be more interesting for distributing and selling smaller pieces – the scope of a product can very well be small, plus it is a large market with payment and distribution systems in place already.
Alternatively possibly a browser-based approach – again large market potential and distribution simplified.
An example of another game that is sold in pieces (with initial piece free) and is using a browser-approach is The Dream Machine: http://www.thedreammachine.se/
Aye, that’s my read on the mobile market, too. The browser approach might work, too… and I’d really like to make both available if I’m going the piecemeal route.
Thanks for the comment and the link! I’ve not heard of that game before… I’ll be paying attention to it, I think. Seems like the TellTale adventure games have a similar episodic approach, albeit monetized differently. I guess the trick there is to make a story worth telling, then wrap it in a game worth playing.
Would a system work where you offer a slice of the game for a small price, then discount that price from the cost of the next slice? If you needed development money, offering the first slice for free wouldn’t be beneficial at that specific moment (it may be beneficial in the future as people get hooked on the game), because it wouldn’t add any upfront value to your process.
Assume some game is broken into 3 parts. Lets be creative and call them: part 1, part 2, and part 3. Part 1 could very well be your Cytoglobe layer, the basics, and could cost $3. Part 2 would use the same layer as Cytoglobe, but add in the progression mechanics. Alone, part 2 would cost $6, but if part 1 was already purchased, part 2 could be offered for $2.
No, my math wasn’t off, the total cost of the two layers – if purchased separately – would only cost $5. It’s a bonus to players taking the chance on the game while it’s still being developed. As part 2 came available, you could only offer part 2 and discontinue selling part 1 as a stand-alone if need be, but I’m not sure that would be necessary.
The same process would occur for every layer/part which the game was broken down into. I’m not sure if that could work or if it’s been done, but it seems logical to me.
This comment is in no way meant to answer your question. 🙂
However, I did want to say that your idea sounds very cool. I like the idea of controlling the game at a multitude of different layers. And I suppose if I have to buy individual layers to give me the widest range of options, I could be persuaded to do that.
Adam, yes, that would also work. I’m sort of leaning to the “free to start” methodology, just because of the lower barrier to entry, but there’s also good sense in asking for at least a minor commitment and offering the perception of value right at the start. There are a lot of marketing tricks involved, to be honest.
And yes, monetizing the first slice would help fund more development. That’s another big plus.
Anjin, I’d definitely include a “buy it all” option at the end. The biggest reason to slice the development and sale of the thing is to make it easier to actually get it done and released. I do still want the overall project to be a complete product to sell, even if the function of the thing still has the internal slices. To me, they are still pieces of a greater whole, cogs in the machine, not just a series of themed minigames.