BritSoft - Game Dev Story.

[FullAuto]

Year 1

 

So, with BritSoft established, and a new sound engineer hired, and the entire team running on Dead Bull, I've started development of my first game, a PC ninja shooter (tentatively titled Shadow Tits). Fun, graphics and sound are doing well, but creativity is too low. Yet, the game only has three bugs, which are quickly quashed. Pretty good going.

 

Mid-development, Senga announced their new console, the Exodus. Love to develop for it, but that $400k licence fee is steep for little ol' me.

 

The critics bashed Shadow Tits quite seriously, rating it 5/5/4/4, resulting in a total of 18/40. Ouch. Despite online ads, magazine ads, and demo distribution, initial sales barely topped 14k.

 

Can't compare to:

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/iontw7.png

 

Still, continuing sales (74k in total) have helped fund my second PC game, an action cxploration game under the working title of Fudge Tunneler...

 

Year 2

 

Brown Caver went on sale and sold only 66k, with another 18/40 rating, but with only half the advertising spend, which isn't bad. It got my name out there, anyway, and a few contract jobs for game and character design got my creativity up and my bank balance healthy enough to try my first console title, a Marathon Shooter called J. Bullet for the Microx SX (the plot of the game, for those of you who are interested, goes like this: Johnny Bullet is the most popular marathon runner in the world, having wowed crowds everywhere with his style and panache. He turns up for his latest marathon to find it under attack by terrorists. Using his long-distance running skills, he must single out and take down terrorists, recover weaponry from their bodies, and use said weaponry against the bigger terrorist cells waiting for him along the 26 miles of the course).

 

Surely it will be a hit, if John Gameson, my writer/graphics guru, stops messing up every project he gets, pissing money up the wall. D'YOU HEAR ME, JOHNNY BOY? ONE MORE SHITFEST AND YOU'RE FIRED.

 

J. Bullet was my worst game yet, limping to 13/40, yet selling 94k (probably because the SX has a bigger market share than PC). This, combined with some more contracts which my team are consistently bringing in well before the deadline, is building up my money.

 

Year 3

 

Intendro announced their Entertainment System in the new year, eating up 41% of the market share. Senga's Exodus has 24%, the Microx SX 22% and PC 12%. However, the licence for the IES costs $800k, which is out of the question, and even Senga want $400k. So I'm sticking with the SX, as having bought the licence for it, there's only an additional $50k to dev on it per game.

 

So, my fourth game, another shooter because I'll benefit from my prior experience, will this time be in a historical setting. Panzer Churchill follows a German tank in WWII who realises he is on the side of evil and turns against his comrades, crushing his way through panzer divisions on his way to Berlin, where Hitler awaits in his King Tiger.

 

Year 4

 

Another year, another few jobs, another console, in the form of the Intendro Game Kid. Panzer Churchill was a minor hit, selling 131k copies, and taking my balance over a mill for the first time ever, despite Gameson filling it full of bugs with not one but two Creativity efforts. This was quickly followed up by the robot adventure game Roboprobe, which found a particular popularity among the girls. With 104k copies sold, it's a nice little earner, but with the release of the Game Kid, the SX's market share has shrunk to 15%. Intendro, with their two consoles, have 60% of the market, and it's time to get in on that action.

 

Buying a licence, however, is so expensive ($550k for the Game Kid) that it leaves me no money to dev with, so I knock out a couple of contracts and then try my hand at a game. Most of the year went by without me making a game, so I lost a little popularity, but surely J. Bullet 2: Double Tap, will be worth the wait?

 

It's not, selling 58k, and landing me in debt. The decision to release the sequel on another console, and a portable one, was brave but foolish.

 

My team of four are a constant disappointment to me.

 

*John Gameson, I dread him getting up and approaching my desk with an idea to 'improve' our project.

*Callie Fornia, the sound designer who is rubbish at sound.

*Newb Ownerton, the coder/designer who has only recently bothered learning any graphics skills.

*Lady Googoo, my coder, is at least reliably mediocre.

[Bomb Bloke]

"Fudge Tunneler"? "Brown Caver"? Please tell me the protagonist wasn't a gerbil.

[FullAuto]

Fudge Tunneler was just the working title. Brown Caver was the final title, and chronicled the adventures of Richard Pitt, spelunker for hire, who comes across an ancient treasure map hidden in the buttock cleft of an even older Sumerian statue. The map describes the route to the lost city of Iram of the Pillars, or more precisely, its sewer, which contains a lot of treasure. And a lot of ancient poo.

 

A few more contracts, and I try again. The Game Kid, with 35% of the market, will not be difficult to sell on. And so it proves, with the shooter dating game Whore Hunter where you do exactly what the title says. Average reviews (23/40) and cheapo development didn't stop it selling 308k copies, producing more than three times what it cost to develop in revenue.

 

The quick follow up, Whore Kart, a racing dating game, was plagued by errors. First a power cut, then a system crash ensured that reviews were even lower (19/40) and the uncaring public saw it for the cheap cash-in it was and bought 567k of them, reaching #3 in the charts. Thank you docile consumers!

 

The pirate puzzle game Crude Surgery was a creative change of direction for BritSoft, and it proved fruitful. Playing Petey Chopper the Pirate Doctor, you have to arrange/heal/chop off your crewmates' internal organs, injuries and limbs. With the best reviews yet (28/40) and dev costs topping $2 million, it sold 507k, and the profits got us to a bigger office and two more staff, Biggs Porkins and Gilly Bates, both coders.

 

Forgettable cartoony shooter Cartoon Killa sold 336k, and it was time to use the proceeds from that cheapest of games to fund a return to one of the must under-rated ninja shooter series' of all time after a six-year hiatus. Shadow Tits 2 was a triumph, selling 696k copies when the PC had about 5% of the market, earning three times what it cost, and scoring 31/40 from the critics, and getting to #3 in the charts.

 

After proving that the PC can still mix it with the best of them, I went back to the Game Kid, and knocked out the dating sim Lonely Weirdo, which stopped just shy of a million sales (947k) despite serious advertising spend pre-release getting it hyped. It made enough money for the Super IES licence anyway, and thus Shadow Tits 3 was born for the SIES. The change to ninja simulation was not well-liked, and the critics gave it a kicking at 18/40. 380k sales seemed decent, reaching #5, but development was expensive, so it brought in about twice what it cost.

 

Resurrecting old names seemed to work well for me, so fitness sim The Bullet, where the player controls the famous marathon runner Johnny Bullet, was born. This was the first time I'd ever seriously fiddled with the direction of a game, and approachability, cuteness, etc were dropped in favour of realism and innovation. Reviews were decent (27/40), but sales took off, with 1.029 million copies sold. Magazine articles, online buzz, TV adverts, it all came together.

 

Those serious profits went into Tactical Sexer, a romantic action RPG for the SIES, my most expensive game to date at $3.1 million. A similar (!?) title was released around the same time, which hurt my sales, and it managed a respectable 821k, with reviews grudgingly handing over 25/40. However, it went on to win Best Design at the GOTY awards, and I topped 20k visitors at my booth at Gamedex, the game developer's yearly exhibition.

 

Whore of Duty, a war-themed shooter for the SIES where you control a time-travelling prostitute trapped in war zones throughout the ages, backfired horribly, making hardly any money at all despite sales of 503k.

 

Swelling costs made me hanker for my roots, so back to PC I went, developing a detective audio novel called Sherlock Hoes. Developed almost entirely in-house, it was another PC surprise hit, reviewing nicely (30/40) and doing serious business, selling 687k and bringing in $4.8 million. At a time when the PC market has shrunk (thanks to the release of the Senga Uranus, Sonny PlayStatus, Nipon Playdion and Intendro Game Box) to about 2%, that is serious sales.

 

I pulled out all the stops for Stalkathon, a romance sim for the SIES. Gameson was tied to his chair, no expense was spared with the subcontractors, and as a result the game's quality went through the roof (well, for Fun and Creativity they did. Graphics were shit). It reviewed well (32/40) and made me $7.4 million, with 1.069 million copies sold.

 

Sherlock Hoes and Stalkathon picked up Best Design and Sound respectively at the GOTY awards, and attendance at Gamedex topped 30k.

 

Now, in my twelfth year, looking at the new consoles and their bigger market share made me hungry. $10 mill to dev on the PlayStatus, $12 mill for the Uranus, $15 mill for the Playdion and a whopping $25 mill for the Game Box (but then again the Game Box has 25% of the market, the biggest slice). Stalkathon's profits saw me move to an even bigger office, hire two more staff (Frank Biller, a director, and Dexter McPhee, a hacker) and try and save some money for a console licence. Hence, Whose Bullets? a mystery shooter for the PC. Now, reviews weren't amazing (27/40), sales weren't amazing (306k), but it only cost $139k to make. And it make $2.1 million. So it made about 14x its budget? Not too shabby a return.

 

I decided to give it another go, entirely in-house creation on PC, except this time back on terra firma, the romantic action RPG. Love Dungeon had cuteness and approachability coming out of its arse, and this brought in a good chunk of the female demographic. How will it sell? I dunno, but it only cost $234k to make, so I don't care.

 

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/GDS/LD.png

 

With my latest on sale, and millions still in the bank, it's time to strike out for pastures new, so a ninja MMORPG seems about right. ShaTi Online has only the best (well, sort of) to work on it. Get away from me, Gameson.

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/GDS/Gameson.png

It's a miracle.

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/GDS/Surprise.png

Despite somewhat sub-par sound, is actually a cracking game. 33/40 from the reviewers, but the release is obscured by Sonny's new console, the Mini Status.

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/GDS/MiniStatus.png

Bastards.

[Bomb Bloke]

The quick follow up, Whore Kart, a racing dating game, was plagued by errors. First a power cut, then a system crash ensured that reviews were even lower (19/40) and the uncaring public saw it for the cheap cash-in it was and bought 567k of them, reaching #3 in the charts. Thank you docile consumers!

One thing I've noticed in the real world, somehow all the best games have the largest bug collections.

[Knan]

One thing I've noticed in the real world, somehow all the best games have the largest bug collections.

And unless you're Bioware, they tend to sell not-quite-enough.

 

Go BritSoft!