Unity Game Development: My Game Design Story (Cliffsnotes)

Hello Everyone!  If you don't already know me, let me introduce myself.  My internet name is Belart Wright and I like to create stuff.  I've been doing it for a while now and currently my imagination has extended to the formats of books and game design.  I'm only decent at one of them though.  The other, I have no clue where to begin.  I'm on the cusp of releasing a book this year so you can clearly infer which one I am lost in.

To give a little history, I began my experiments into game design a little before 2007.  Back then I made a few crappy flash shorts and some interactive stuff.  None of it elevated beyond the level of a child playing with finger paint for the first time.  If I had examples, I'd show you.  Actually I do have one example from my newgrounds.com account.  You can find it here http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/509076 in it's full barely animated glory.

I've made worse and tried to get them through the portal but that's the only one that made it.  Anyways it started then and continued into 2007 when I went to a game design school.  There I barely learned anything at all really.  I did pick up some beginners programming and made some cool text based games with that.  I also made a pretty neat board game but beyond that I didn't learn much more about the craft and with the flood of Gen Ed high school level classes I was getting along with the slight peppering of one or (if I was lucky) two game related classes I honestly couldn't justify spending so much money on that tuition.  So I quit and dealt with other personal problems I had at the time.  I also wrote my first book around that time so that was awesome.

My Flash Bros. "Artwork."  All images belonging to Crystal Dynamics, Silicon Knights, Sega, Ubisoft, and Nippon Icchi.

Since then I've been dabbling with a few experimental game design projects.  I've played around with M.U.G.E.N. and RPG Maker.  I made a pretty funny and irreverent RPG back in 2009/2010 with the lovable fighting game character parody, Ipatch Hedband and the boss character Pimpmaster Poundmax along with the Overpowered/Game Breaking fusion character call Mayan Jesus, who could of course walk across water.

All fun stuff but it didn't really feel like I was learning anything lasting in the field.  My closest friends and I were talking in depth at the time about designing a fighting game and all came up with amazing ideas and characters for an epic pet project.  This was the unofficial beginning of our game design group, at the time called Digital Dragon Studios (more on that later).  Now, many years and project concepts later we've finally come up with a solid game plan (no pun intended) and now have the technology and ease-of-use of it to back us up.  We've always had ideas but little money and now with jobs and other priorities, little time.  Unity3d software is our beacon of light guiding us through the depths of hell.  With it, a lot of our design and monetary nightmares are put behind us and we are free to just worry about designing our games.

With that said, I still suck.  I'm honestly still a beginner at game designing.  I've been out of design school since about 2008 and my only frame of reference are my various critiques of the games I like and dislike and my own friends.  It's my fault because I didn't take game design seriously.  I didn't think I could do it all on my own, with no one to teach me.  I didn't think I had the time to do it.  My life was not easy, by any means, back then but I had many choices and I could've chosen to dedicate more time to it.  I deeply regret that.  I do understand however that I was ignorant.  If I had known such a resource as Unity was available, I would've jumped on it long ago and experimented with it.

My game design group, Flubberknuckle Studios has been consistently working on games for a few years now.  I've picked up a few tips and skills working closely with my friend Ryan.  I've given up programming long ago, leaving my skill at the beginner level but my friend Ryan has flourished after rigorously teaching himself the craft.  I've crafted the design documents, created some concept art, designed menus and other UI, written a few things, and co-crafted a few gameplay systems.  All that stuff was very involved but I definitely want to get more hands on.  So to that end, I'm delving into Unity creation.  I've done a few tutorials like learning the interface and Roll-A-Ball.  I'm about halfway through the Space Shooter one so I think I'll start posting my progress here.  Maybe somebody out there will find this helpful.

So that's my story, the summarized version anyway.  What about you guys and gals?  Anyone interested in game design?  Anyone going to school for it or doing it solo dolo?  What's your experience been like and what software do you swear by?  Please if you have any opinions go ahead and comment below.  I'd love to hear from you.  This has been Belart and I just want to again thank you wonderful viewers for the browse!

Card Game Creation Quest Part 2

Protection

So if you don’t already know from Part 1 of these Card Game Creation Quest posts, my partners and I at FlubberKnuckle Studios are hard at work creating a new card game called Flipz.  At this stage of the game I am researching what we need to get the physical version of the card out of the idea phase and into production and on hobby store shelves.  Before production and self-release, I believe our first step should be protecting our IP so that the idea isn’t whisked away while we’re shopping our product around.

So this thinking has led me into the world of copyrighting, which I am considering for my own book Average Joe and the Extraordinaires.  Further research has taken me into the realm of trademarking and patenting as well.  So I wondered which one of those we would need and looked up the differences between them.

So which one does our group need? 

Well I’ll tell you, first however I’d like to explain the difference in layman’s terms because I’m a simple man and found most of this very confusing.

Each of these methods: copyrighting, patenting, and trademarking are used to give you (the creator) certain protections on your creation.  You can sell your product all willy-nilly and make money off of it but if someone suddenly wants to market that product, idea, or service themselves or take the steps of copyrighting, patenting, or trademarking the work/invention that you made then they have that right.  What’s more, they can tell you that you can’t market the product that you created/conceptualized and they would be valid because the law would be on their side since you didn’t have the proper protections.  If you create anything and think you’ll sell it or want credit for it then one of the below methods of protection should be sought out.

So I’ll start with copyrighting, since that’s so near and dear to my heart (and my novels).  With copyrighting what’s protected are intellectual properties (IP’s) such as books, music (lyrics and beats), plays, movies, T.V. shows, and scripts.  In a nutshell, it protects any images, words, or sounds that have been authored and considered tangible forms of expression.  It does not however protect a slogan or a single word (trademarks do that).  It has to be substantial and it has to be original.

To seek out a copyright you want to head over to the Copyright Office over at the Library of Congress.  They have a phone number which is, (202) 707-3002 or 1-877-476-0778.  They can also be conveniently reached at their website (http://www.copyright.gov/).

Copyrighting is said to be a much quicker and cheaper process than either Patenting or Trademarking/Service marking.

After reading up on copyrighting it definitely looks like what we’ll need for our card game.  But I still want to read up on the other two, so next is…

Trademarking or service marking is actually explained by looking at the word itself.  When I read up on what trademarking does I had to go “oh, that makes sense.”  I’m sure many of you will have that moment too.  You see, trademarking is used to basically separate your product, or service for service marking, from other products and services.  Useful for federal trading of your product, and local too.  This is done by registering a symbol, word, or phrase to your product.  Think the McDonald’s yellow (golden) arches and the words McDonald’s.  These are trademarked symbols for the company.  Trademarks are basically used to stop others from using similar symbols to confuse or steal your customers.  A trademark does not prevent your product from being used or sold by someone else though.  Trademarks/Service marks can be sought at the Trademark and Patent office.

Patent and trademark info can be found at http://www.uspto.gov/.

Trademarking didn’t seem like a NEED to us but I figured we’d need to it anyhow.

So now we get to patenting.  A patent is used to protect an inventor’s inventions.  It prevents others from being able to make, use, offer for sale, or sale your invention but only applies to the boundaries of the United States.  A patent does not protect you from having someone overseas recreate your invention and sell it under their name overseas.  You’d have to seek a patent in that country to secure your rights to your invention there.  Patents, like trademarks, can be sought at the Trademark and Patents office.

After extensively researching each of these methods I’ve come to the conclusion that our card game will need a copyright…and a patent…and a trademark.  The copyright will be applied to the game’s concept, artwork, and rules.  The patent will apply to the actual physical card game and the overall mechanics.  The trademark will be used for the logo to ensure branding.  We’re going to have to spend a lot of money to get this board game off the ground.  Next up, I’m going to check out the costs of manufacturing and see if I can get a few of these companies on the horn.

Here are some links to the articles I used for research:

Copyright vs. Trademark vs. Patent
http://www.lawmart.com/forms/difference.htm

http://www.copyright.gov/

http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/basics/trade_defin.jsp

http://www.uspto.gov/patents/index.jsp

The Cost of Various Patents
http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2011/01/28/the-cost-of-obtaining-patent/id=14668/?spammer=confirm

Patenting Board Games
http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2011/12/22/patenting-board-games-101/id=21356/

Card Game Creation Quest Part 1

The Rundown

I, your humble blog writer, and the group to which I am a part of, FlubberKnuckle Studios, have a plan to release an awesome card based videogame called Flipz.  Our card game started, ever-so-humbly, from a college assignment made by my close friend and business partner, Hawk.  Back then it was a physical card game and made with random graphics taken from the internet taped to the back of playing cards and placed inside of a card sleeve with the picture facing outwards.  The game proved to be a hell of a lot of fun.  Because we haven’t officially released anything yet or even copyrighted the thing yet I’ll hold off on describing the game itself, for now at least.

We’ve been hard at work making the digital version of said card game for well over a year as our studios first foray into videogame production.  It’s been a hard road and the journey has taught us a lot about ourselves and our potential.  I’ve demoed that game a hundred times at least and can say that it’s very faithful to the physical card game which we’ve been perfecting these last two years.  Now, however, we want to pull back a little and go for a different approach than the one we were planning.  We’ve had some changes throughout the group, mainly in how we operate and what we’re shooting for.  We’ve come up with a new strategy and new software to use for Flipz.

Now the first step will be to make the physical card game and release it.  That is our current focus.  We will use Hawk’s prototype and expand it to actual production and we will sell it to as many hobby stores as we can and market the hell out of the thing.  These physical copies will let the purchasers know that pretty soon, they can look forward to a digital copy of the same game.

I will chronicle out steps to production here on my blog for anyone else interested in learning about indie card game production.