So after a hiatus of a couple years, i've come back to BYOND. I'm very impressed with what i've been seeing, Silkroad Gaming making waves on the indie scene, BYOND's whole new pager interface makeover, and the brand is just looking professional as ever. But one thing that hasn't changed is the quality of 90% of the website's games.
Let me go on a little rant for a second to help some of our game developers.
Anime Game Developers: You have a very good niche here. Unlike the original game developers, the majority of the advertising work has been done for you (I found BYOND while searching for a bleach game back in 2005).
Use it to your advantage. I come back hoping to see some new games and all I see is rips and redos of old games. I don't even mind rips, but it's the fact that you can at least put enough effort to set it apart from the original game. If I click on a game and the login screen looks just like GOA, i'm going to click off, regardless of whatever modifications you made ingame. First impressions are key.
Not only that, but some variety is really needed in the Anime section. Bleach, Naruto and Dragonball Z were really hot back and made the website blow up back in 2006-2008, but those series have run their course and a good percentage of the games don't even exist anymore. There's alot of anime out there to try, alot of old and alot of new anime, so broaden the horizon and see how many players will come back.
I also see alot of games that throw you in the game, especially RP games, that just expect you to know what to do and who to talk to without a clear guide, then wonder why their playerbase stays between 10-20 people. You need to start seeing your games as actual games instead of just niche BYOND games, and that's how your playerbase will grow and the BYOND community will grow as well.
Original game developers:
I respect original game developers, they can do something that alot of other people can't, and that's create something that's completely their creative property and ideas. Like anime game developers though, you need to look at your games like actual games. Games go through the alpha, beta, then final release stages, and it keeps on growing until it's a full project. Alot of original game designers tend to stop at the alpha stage however, and don't put in the extra effort to advance their games to something that you could envision thousands of people purchasing. Because of this, BYOND is littered with games that look like a 8 year old made it in his spare time, and the sheer quality of these games makes the website look worse as a whole.
As someone who's ventured out to many game engines and game makers, BYOND's IDE is one of the easiest and most efficient i've worked with. Getting multiplayer access and networking is hell in alot of other game makers, but BYOND makes it a 10 second process with Dream Daemon, also making it easy to monetize your game, but I feel that not alot of developers are taking advantage of this and really going the extra mile. BYOND is a gold mine, there's nothing like this out there, and has the potential to create huge projects (You've seen what SilkRoad managed to accomplish), treat it as such and in 5 years you'd be amazed to see where this website is.
ID:1360515
 Aug 23 2013, 10:46 pm
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This is the third time this exact same discussion has cropped up in the last two weeks, right down to the same points. "The anime crowd make too many games based on the same stuff and their games are low quality. The original developers don't try hard enough to make good games and only try to make BYOND games."
Your points aren't wrong, but people keep saying these things repeatedly as if the majority of the folks cranking out anime games actually read the forums or give two craps about constructive criticism (which they don't, by the way), or that the original game developers aren't already trying. It's also very simple to say "developers can and should do better!", without really expanding upon how they can do better or attempting to lead by example. It really does not help improve the situation that we keep having this same discussion freshly brought up on a weekly basis, because all we can do is just nod and go "yeah this guy is speaking some good wisdom, and it would be cool if people started pumping out better and more diverse games." Anyone can bring up a rant about how BYOND is a great engine but the developers don't put out ace material, but no one seems to be stepping up to the plate to provide a solution to the perceived problem. | |
LordAndrew wrote:
the original game developers aren't already trying They are? Because 99 times out of 100 it doesn't look like they are. They're doing the exact same thing the anime game developers do, except they're making half ass copies of original BYOND games. I'm going to sound like an ass now, but whatever. It's not hard to make a BYOND game. Once you get use to it, it does not take a long time to make one, nor does it take a lot of skill. I've been doing this for 10 years, I know what I am talking about. When I look at some of the original BYOND games, I try not to laugh at them, and at the same time try not to get insulted by them. Most of these games appear to have so little effort put into them, that excluding graphics I could make the same thing, if not more within a month. Maybe I work fast, or they work slow, but I can think of 1 or 2 BYOND games that have more than 3 months worth of actual time put into making the game as far as the final result shows. What I find insulting is that people think these games are actually worth bragging about. I've seen games brag about features that would take less than an hour to implement, others brag they have so many features or so much content (like a massive 40 quests), when I've made games with 10 times this amount of content that I would not consider playable. This is insulting. I put hundreds of times more effort into games I don't consider to be in a playable state yet, but you release these half assed attempts at games and try to brag about it. I'm not going to say I am good at making games, but at least I try to make good games, which is more than can be said for the vast majority of BYOND developers. I think the only thing I've seen that is good in some BYOND games is graphics (I would kill to have access to these kind of artists or graphics). Unfortunately these graphics are wasted on the game (pearls before swine and so on). | |
You could keep focusing on what other developers are doing wrong or you could make an original game that will attract a lot of players. You seem to know whats right and wrong when it comes to making a good-original game so that shouldn't be hard.
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Jp72394 wrote:
Silkroad Gaming making waves on the indie scene, (You've seen what SilkRoad managed to accomplish), wat | |
Looking through your creations, I see you've at least made an effort to create games. None of them seem very finished though. If you've created all this in-depth stuff and it isn't hard, where is it?
Instead of pointing your finger at the crowd and telling them what they need to do, it makes more sense to start doing it yourself first. | |
True enough, the games aren't finished, but the effort put into these unfinished games is more than most "finished" BYOND games have.
Go take a look at this for example http://www.byond.com/games/TheMagicMan/WBAT It is almost a perfect recreation of the battle system used in Pokemon. It includes almost every feature used in Pokemon at the time it was made (around Diamond/Pearl release) excluding 2v2 battles. It includes stats, natures, types/elements, abilities, EVs and IVs, evolution, status effects (including buffs and debuffs), weather effects, entry hazards and continuous effects. Instead of Pokemon, the game uses weapons, of the 150+ weapons most have evolutions, all drawn by me and fully animated. Of the 200+ usable moves all of these are again drawn by me and fully animated sometimes using particle effects. It is probably not unreasonable to say the game has inexcess of 10,000 graphics/frames of animation that I drew. I probably went to more effort to recreate the Pokemon battle system than anyone else on BYOND did to make an entire Pokemon game. Is there even a Pokemon game on BYOND that actually uses the actual battle system from the games? As far as I am concerned, this game is finished. It's not a RPG, it is a PVP game and the objective is to fight other players. It could use minor tweaking (and some changed to modernize it since BYOND has changed since it was made), but it's finished. I wont even deny it, I'm lazy as hell. But even I can put this kind of effort into a game, so why can't other people? | |
EmpirezTeam wrote:
Jp72394 wrote: drugz | |
Oh look, a constructive thread criticizing the work ethic of developers on BYOND... This one won't burn down for sure. 110%.
Welcome back, by the way. I don't think it's a lack of trying. I think there are a lot of things that could be improved about BYOND. Most of them are perceptions, however, and that will come as this year's new wave of quality work continues to come out. | |
Dariuc wrote:
Negativity has gripped this place far too long, and people often don't use their brains, they don't devote much thought into being individual, they'd rather fit in. If the status quo is to be a douche, and that's socially acceptable, that's what new people coming here will do to fit in. I'll agree with some of this. And the comment after yours shows the irony of it. Edit: Lol and the try-hard deletes his comment. See you on the next one Falcon. | |
Dariuc wrote:
Ter for instance, who always seems to come directly to me when I respond but never, ever once, has said anything to someone who has instigated an issue with me. ever. Since I've been publicly dragged into this: I know we've had our tiffs in the past, Dariuc, but I really do try to let those slide. I just happen to disagree with about 60% of the things you say, and 99% of the way you say them. --You might take this as harboring a grudge, but I don't mean to come across like I'm targeting you in particular with any meanness. I'm not an overly nice person, but I do *really* try to do nice things for people around here, and I do so quite frequently. --I just tend to come across as quite condescending and egotistical due to my manner of writing, none of which is intended, and I go to great lengths to edit and re-edit posts to try to come across in a more positive way. I don't think you are really hearing what you have been saying on the forums. It's pretty clear you don't actually understand why it is that you have so many haters, though, and I legitimately don't mean to insult you at all, but I don't think you have the required level of introspection to recognize where you stand when it comes to actual skill, knowledge, and practice. A lot of the things you say have a falsely inflated air of "I'm better than everyone else", which, as I told you many months ago, is why you are such a magnet for trolling, and why you have such a confirmation bias toward the negativity in this community. You may not be the worst offender in every conversation, but you are so often perceiving yourself as the victim, and I so often, reading your commentary and responses, can't help but sympathize with those that bait and attack you in response. Yeah, it's not 100% right of me, but I can't help but think that if you keep getting stung, it's time to stop smacking the beehive. I'd appreciate if you would read me in a different light, give me a second chance to show you that I genuinely don't spend my time harassing you, and actually am trying to offer you solid advice, which thus far, you have chosen to not take. Rather than not taking the advice and instead drawing offense, perhaps I could offer an apology, not offer you any advice at all henceforth, and you can merely accept that my advice was given whilst politely rejecting said offered advice. Also: This is a list of every message I've ever written to you, or even mentioned your name: Friendly advice on how to avoid trolling (Not solely directed at you.) Blunt advice on marketing to your audience (Not solely directed at you.) A fairly negative remark that acknowledges that there is some quality here (Not solely directed at you.) Advice directed to Kboy33 that you responded to as though it was meant for you directly Me telling you I wasn't talking to you, but rather to the person I replied to. Correcting your historical claims objectively. This was your response to my correction on your comments about history: Sniping/arguing/trolling Correcting you on copyright law involving videogames In which I correct a minor code oversight (You handled this well) In which I warn you about the dangers of not keeping up with the mainstream gamedev community's resource bank. In which I debate programming methodology objectively In I offered correction on matters of philosophy, due to a self-contradictory statement made about atheists... While discussing bigfoot. (lol!) Unfortunately, there are probably a half dozen messages I cannot link due to their deletion. One involved a thread you started with my name on it, dragging out a laundry-list of complaints about my character, and insinuating that I was racist. Another few were pager messages in which you repeatedly asserted that I was racist, and that I was a 30-something no-life that needed to move on with his life instead of bullying anime fans. You got so aggressively inflammatory you were permanently banned from my shoutbox and pager. I will freely admit that I commented on your ego a number of times, but always well after you had begun hurling insinuations of racism and personal insult. I also recall shaming you for your disgraceful airing of dirty laundry in such a manner. I will also admit to attempting to chide you for using your race (which I was not aware of until you called me racist, only afterward disclosing your heritage) as a means of smearing others. So really, we can either drop this grudge, because I don't *really* care (I just have a photographic memory, and a 130wpm typing speed, so this is really no trouble for me to dig up), or you can keep the grudge, but cease this libelous claim of me harassing you, when in almost each and every case, I was responding to a discussion you had begun, or offering polite correction until personal insults began to fly, at which point, publicly, I maintained composure and attempted to dissuade you from continuation of said course of action. I think though, the above post history (completely unedited, and disclosed in as full a state as exists in my browser history), should demonstrate that I have never shown in public any semblance of ill will toward you, since the better part of 8 months have passed since your permanent pagerban, we have had no non-public contact, continuing to assert that I am harassing you, and/or stalking you, is quite as libelous as it is frivolous. | |
To save my having to lock yet another topic because of this, I'd appreciate if Dariuc vs ... everyone, did the reader the courtesy of providing no further reply on that particular aside, and stick to the OP more directly, if they decide to reply at all.
The topic, as I read it, regards game production and design quality. | |
The Magic Man wrote:
True enough, the games aren't finished, but the effort put into these unfinished games is more than most "finished" BYOND games have. Pokemon Atom http://www.byond.com/games/Kidpaddle45/PokemonOnline Using turn based battle and an interface SIMILAR to the DS games (I never say I did something perfectly). Online Gameplay video with screenshots and details: http://www.byond.com/forum/?post=1359081 Over 200 Pokemon, 200 TMs/Moves, a storyline. The game is up every few days to test new contents. | |
And this game, with all this effort put into it, has no one playing it at my time of posting this. And is beaten in popularity by 2 other games that don't put in a fraction of the effort shown in this game.
Is it just me, or is the BYOND community backwards? This game, which looks impressive and like the person making it put effort in is losing to other games that are basically inferior in every imaginable way. Am I the only one who has noticed that if you want people from the BYOND website to play your game, you make it bad? Even with the games I've made, the worst ones were also the most popular. I don't get it. It's like the average BYOND player prefers to play bad games. If only it was easy and possible to disassociate a game made with BYOND from the BYOND website/community/identity. | |
I suspect, that the very reason why it isn't popular is because effort was put into it. Not having played it yet, I'm going to assume the game is faithful to the original Pokemon games in both terms of mechanics and balance, which is... generally not what the user base of BYOND at large wants.
I've seen this before with other fan-games that attempt to move towards being more realistic and balanced, in which the player base revolts because the game then falls out of line with what they've come to know and expect from a BYOND game: ridiculously high stats, instant gratification from grinding, and good old statpanels crammed full of verbs. Unfortunately the expectations of a game needing to be a "BYOND game" are a very real thing, and even fan-games that don't conform are left unplayed. | |
Which is totally messed up and about as backwards as you can get. Good games should get played, bad games ignored and left to die. Not the other way around.
I'm tempted to purposely make an ironically bad game and just see how many people here take it seriously. | |
I'm kind of just ignoring the ter / dariuc discussion no offense intended to either of you.
I've mentioned a few things in another post recently Magic Man in design philosophy. I never received a response there. @Jp72394 I feel there's several issues with the development cycle (or development period) on Byond. 1) Originality as you mentioned, Anime games have / have had a shot for a long time but they often make games that are direct clones of a Anime. Just think if they put all the effort they've done into making DBZ / Naruto / Pokemon systems of what they could accomplish if they created their own unique content design. 2) Effort, yes, many games in Byond are created, they hit alpha stage, the developer loses interest because either they're fed up with the idea, or they're fed up that their alpha didn't have the critical acclaim that they expected it would. Alphas generally don't unless you promote / market them enough AND show a alpha worth releasing. 3) Reiterating on marketing: You cannot succeed if all you do is market your game on Byond, it has a very limited player base and to succeed you must step outside of it and bring more people in. Silkroad's tried this, they didn't achieve the complete result desired but they made 'waves' as you say, they tried and they did have a influx of players for a time. 4) I fully believe that Byond game development needs to stop being centered around a single person as the developer. Most of the games are developed by a individual and I believe that developers need to start forming teams, working out their differences and making good, more featured and polished products by using the increased resources and creativity of a game development / design team. 5) Developers need to stop giving up when their product doesn't gain the traction they thought it would. They need to find out 'why' it didn't, and what they could possibly do to improve it. | |
Dariuc wrote:
Take it a step further. From a system point of view, you can't. These are all shortcomings of individuals, and can only be fixed by people changing their own mindset. (or by changing our userbase to one with the proper mindset)0 Perhaps the rest of the community can try to influence people to make these changes, maybe lead by example, maybe put some good-natured pressure on those that are failing to live up to these goals. But ultimately, these are all problems within the user, not the system. BYOND faces a unique problem among development platforms, in that the average age/maturity level of our userbase is much, much lower than everywhere else. We're talking pre-teens as the majority of users. Certainly, the regulars on these development forums are generally older, wiser, and more mature, but they're a definite minority. Even among BYOND's "developer" base, the average age is still very low (mostly because the majority of "developers" are just spill-overs from the player base, who love brand X anime fangame, and want their own) And it's a terrible feedback loop. A young crowd draws young newcomers, who only come here to play games tailored to a young crowd (also, word-of-mouth tends to travel only among peer groups... young users only talk about BYOND to other young people) BYOND's ease-of-use is also a double-edged sword on this front. It's a great platform for beginners (which expands greatly with experience), but that lowers the barrier-to-entry to allow all of these kids to jump in and "create" "games" with no prior experience, knowledge, skill, or a decent level of motivation. Other, more difficult-to-use platforms keep out all but the truly dedicated. That should not change, though. BYOND really needs to remain as user-friendly as it always has been. That's likely it's main point of differentiation in this "market". However, it does mostly serve to reinforce the impression that BYOND is for kids. The only way to break BYOND out of this ever-deepening hole is for more of the dedicated, older, experienced, skilled, etc. developers to start making and marketing games that are of high enough quality that it reflects well on BYOND among the older crowd. We need to raise the average user age by quite a bit. However, as I've mentioned at least 3 times over just the last week or two, it seems that most of our truly capable developers can't stop spinning their wheels and actually get anywhere... They're the place where a community change has to start. (but again, this is of no control by the BYOND system/staff; you can't make people do what they refuse to do; this has to be more of a peer-pressure kind of thing) | |
I should note: I'm not on the BYOND staff, and I do not have access to actual userbase statistics. I'm just speaking from my own observations when I mention that our userbase is very young.
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One thing I have to say to BYOND users is you need to stop making BYOND games, and start making real games. The average BYOND game is only ever going to be accepted on the BYOND website, and nowhere else. I'd actually be ashamed of saying "I play this game" to other people about almost every single BYOND game I've played.
Most BYOND games aren't even amateurish, they're purely half assed. I could understand if you tried to make a good game, but it wasn't good due to lack of skill/experience. But I can't understand why you don't even try to make a good game just because other BYOND games suck.
It is like BYOND has this quality line (which is very, very low), and once people reach it, they are satisfied and don't try to improve a games quality anymore. It's like people who make BYOND games only ever play BYOND games, so when they go to make a game they forget everything about every other (well designed) game they've played, and just try to copy or imitate the BYOND games they've played.
It makes no sense. None at all.