Developer Blog

This weekend I decided to try out Googles Adwords and Facebook’s advertising. I did very little reading up on how to do this and took my normal approach of diving right in.

First up was Googles Adwords with the aim of driving people to my kursk.yobowargames.com page. After 10 minutes of clicking and form filling, I had a quick advert put together. After two days I was disappointed with the results and quickly came to the conclusion it was an expensive way (Over a $1 per click) to get people coming to my website.

What was useful through was the keywords that people search on. These were all pre-selected by google when I set up the advert. I can use this information to my advantage in later marketing.

Facebook was next. This time I took the approach of advertising my Steam page. Again after about 10 minutes of clicks and text entering I was up and running.

However, the next day when I looked at the results I realized this was not going to be effective. Over 99% of people that looked at the advert were on a mobile device! How could I expect them to instantly buy a PC game this way?

So I changed the advert and pointed to the iOS version of my game.  I feel that Facebook is giving me better value in that more users clicked on the advert for just a few cents per click.

I didn’t see any real change in people buying the game or a large spike in web views but this may be due to my massive marketing budget of $20.

If I had a Marketing/PR Manager I am sure they would have resigned by now.

Every now and then I ponder whether I should do something about the mismatch of developer accounts I have and get them all nicely assigned to yobowargames.com.

Right now if you buy my game from Steam and post a comment you get a reply from some dude called “Hunter” (More like “Easy Prey” if you find me in any multiplayer game).

If you buy my game from Apple or Google stores you get another dude called “Lance Craner” (As a side note Apple made me give the game a 17+ rating because the splash screen shows two soldiers holding guns. There are no Suggestive Themes in my game I promise you!).

If you email me here you get a reply from “admin@yobowargames.com” (Original intent here was this email address would just be for … well admin type things).

When I was setting up the store page I was thinking whether I should have emails coming from sales@yobowargames.com.

This of course then leads to other possible email addresses:

• complaints@yobowargames.com
• marketing@yobowargames.com
• press@yobowargames.com
• etc etc etc

So why not go ahead and set up everything under yobowargames?

Well (prepares excuses).

• I have to get new developer certificates from Apple and Google that are used to sign my games. It was a pain trying to set them up in the first place.
• I have to pay Apple for the privilege of being a developer again (And then pay them again every year!)
• I have to fill out a whole load of forms
• I lose the history of everything I have done to date

Whenever I ponder the above I soon discount changing anything because:

• I like people seeing me as an individual
• I like the surprise of wondering what the email addressed to admin@yobowargames.com might contain
• I am very fond of my “Hunter” alias on steam
• I am also very fond of my real name!
• I feel there is a benefit to people knowing there is one guy (and his small team of supporters) behind the games

I started this post with “If I had a Marketing Manager…”. Actually, I am the Marketing/PR Manager and we like things just as they are.

This post was written by Hunter, Lance and the Admin of yobowargames.com

 

 

With the help from Erman Calis (Recruited using Upwork) I now have the store up and running!

I am not expecting a sudden rush of sales but hope that gradually this will build into something. As some of you may know the app stores and steam have revenue sharing schemes – meaning that I have to share a certain amount with them for every sale. By operating my own store I am the only one that I have to share with. This also means I can offer my games for a little cheaper. Everyone wins!

I have also refreshed kursk.yobowargames.com. Nothing fancy but a lot better than before – I just didn’t have the time to do anything too fancy.

Check out https://www.yobowargames.com/shop/ to see my first two games on sale – although one, Operation Typhoon, is actually free.

The last ten days have not been very productive for me due to moving to a new home. However it didn’t totally stop game development and it gave me a chance to reflect on how far things have come since I started developing wargames.

One thing I realized was that I am gradually building a team around me consisting of contractors (from upwork or fiverr) and some really great enthusiastic volunteers. Between them they cover Graphics, Quality Assurance, Web Designer and translators.

So while I have done nothing they have continued to produce work for me. First up is my Graphics designer who has been working on some graphics for Kampfgruppe and also Maps for a Sci-fi game I am working on (More to come on that in a later article!).

I think these look pretty impressive!

I also have a webmaster helping me out setting up the ability for me to sell my games on this website. I am not expecting to generate much sales from this initially but hope to build this up.

Back to unpacking now… More next time.

This week I have been working on improving my code dealing with retreat. Since this is a common feature of war games I thought I had better make it work better than I presently have.

There are several problems I am battling (no pun intended!) with at the moment.

Take a look at the below scenario

Here the Russian 167 Rifle Division (Center of the screen)  is required to retreat 3 hexes. Possible final retreat hexes are marked with the yellow outlines.

So the problems I am wrestling with:

• Do I let a human player choose the hex they can retreat to? This, of course, would be the norm in a board game. Not so common in PC war games.
• What about the AI? How can I replicate how a human would choose the final retreat hex?
• If I really can’t replicate how a human player would choose then is it fair in the game to give the human player a possible advantage over the AI?
• Do game players even want this level of control?
• Should a 2 player game allow players to choose retreat hexes but not when playing against the computer?
• What about PBEM? I cannot expect the players to email every battle when there is a retreat decision needed by the opposing player.

With Kursk – Battle at Prochorovka I let the computer decide on a random retreat hex with little real thought on how it decided which one to pick.

My current thinking is I will let the computer control the final retreat location but I will try to give more reasoning to the final location by for example looking at things like:

• Does the final retreat hex help maintain the front line
• Is it a hex with defensive benefits
• Is the retreat hex in supply
• Are other friendly units nearby

So I will give each Hex a value and then the one with the highest score becomes the choice.

I will also backport these improvements into Kursk – Battle at Prochorovka so that players of that game benefit from the things I learn/improve as I develop more games.

For the last week I have not written a line of code. Any free time I have has been taken up with preparing my game for its final release. I have also decided to launch it on Google Play and Apple Store. I was going to hold off from releasing it to these two stores but decided there was no real reason for this.

The mobile version is actually exactly the same as the PC version – So best suited for Tablets but I am sure people will also download it to play on their tiny mobile screens!

I am unsure what pricing strategy I should take with the mobile versions so have priced them a little higher than other available games. I figure I can always reduce the price later if there are no sales but not increase it. Not expecting much from Android or iOS sales – more a case of testing the waters and seeing if there is still an audience out there that will pay for a mobile game.

So for the last 2 days I have been battling with the development tools to get my game in review with the people at Apple. Its a fairly simple process once you know how to do it. However the last time I published a game in the App store was 8 months ago so I have forgotten everything and had to look up how to do many of the needed actions.

Getting a game ready for actual launch takes a lot of time and its something I need to plan out and prepare for better next time. You need screenshots, icons, text, instructions, translations and so on. I have not done my best with preparing the assets needed this time. I really think I will engage my graphics guy next time to help me prepare some professional looking screenshots and icons. This time I did it myself – unfortunately cost is a consideration at this time until I know games I write will at least sell enough to cover off my costs to produce (The development hours are a labour of love…).

For my next game – Battle for Korsun – I am going to try to localize for the Asian market. China, Korea and Japan are getting to be big markets on steam and it will be interesting to see if there is a market for a traditional hex based wargame. I have had a couple people from China and Korea buy Kursk in the Early Access store – so I know there is a level of interest there.

I have also been fairly heavily engaged with my graphics artist this week on my various projects. He is not a WW2 buff so I need to guide him on what I want to achieve. I really like his work so the effort needed to help him get things right is worth it to me. Plus his work really motivates me to finish projects and see everything come together to produce a game.

My motivating this week is the new splash screen for Battle for Korsun. I think it looks great. I am really enjoying working on this game.

I have a very specific target audience in mind for my games. They are either wargamers that like PC based war games or they are board wargamers who occasionally dabble in PC war games.

The problem for me is they are also a very scattered group. There is really not one go to place to reach out to them. Many of them are part of small online groups with words in the title such as PBEM,  HEX Based Wargames, Avalon Hill, Historical and so on.

I need to be careful when telling them about my game as some don’t like the idea of being advertised to in their group. I fully understand and respect this – so how do I get them engaged and at least aware I exist and am trying to produce games they may like to play.?

I have started to build up a list of these groups, researching what is allowed in their forums, asking permission if I cannot see that someone has announced a game previously. It takes time and patience. I do not want to offend any one of these groups.

But it has been useful. I have found a small PBEM group and I think they would be ideal to reach out to and ask them to test my next game which will include PBEM. They get a free game I get valuable feedback – I am hoping it will be a win win situation.

Of course these groups want their members to be active in their forums. I have a genuine interest in everything they talk about but not enough time to be as engaged as I should be. Its tough for me to spread my time around all the things I need to do to get a game published (and remember I have a full time day job too!).

For my next game, Battle for Korsun, I am going to try and get some interest in the game from some of the big review sites that cover off war games. I am a little wary about this as I don’t have a lot of time to produce slick videos or fancy marketing – and yet I want them to know I am serious and passionate about what I am doing.

So far I have not upset anyone. Fingers crossed it stays that way!

I am sure a majority of wargamers would agree that dealing with stacks is a pain in the ass. In a printed game you have to keep checking them to see what units you have in there and possibly their state. They get knocked over when trying to move nearby units. You have to be careful when moving them on a crowded map board.

You would think with a computer game dealing with stacks would be a whole lot easier. But I believe the reality is quite the opposite. When dealing with stacks I have to check the following when deciding why the player selected the stack:

• They want to move it
• They want to see the terrain the stack is in
• They want to look through the stack
• They want to Re-order it
• They want to pick one or combination of units to perform some action (likely move or combat)
• They want to add a unit/s to the stack

Most players expect to use a mouse to point, click and execute an action. So I have to take the limited actions available from a mouse and translate to the above.

I don’t believe there is a universally accepted standard for what to do in each circumstance so I have to train the game player how they can perform all the above actions.

So how have I implemented the multitude of possible actions?

• If they left click on stack I assume they wanted to select the whole stack
• If they left click on the stack while pressing the shift key I select the top unit
• If they click on the stack again while still pressing the shift key I rotate through the stack bringing a new unit to the top with each click
• If they right click on the stack I expand the stack out to show all units in the stack

• If its movement turn I highlight allowable hexes to move to based on whether we have a stack or unit selected
• I can add up the combat values of the stack
• If it’s a combat turn I can add a stack to the combat

I have so many ideas but never enough time to implement them and always have at least 3 projects on the go at anyone time.

My excuse for this is that if I hit a roadblock on the current most important project I can move to something different to clear my head and within a couple of days something normally pops into my heads that solves the roadblock.

For the last month I have been heads down getting some decent AI into my Kursk game. The testing of every little change is time consuming. When ever it got too much I switched to working on my next game “Battle for Korsun”. This is coming along quite nicely and I now have the map, counters and basic movement in place. The biggest headache in this game is dealing with stacked units – I will write a piece on this soon as it really is a pain to deal with and allow a computer player to manipulate a stack of virtual counters.

Finally I have been working with my artist on the game I have always wanted to write. I have always been a great fan of Squad Leader. I can still remember the first day I got it as a Christmas present. All those counters and map boards! Sadly its not possible to convert Squad Leader to a computer game as all the rights are with Paradox Interactive who have had them for 10 years now – but with no plans to do anything with them.

So I going to write my own Tactical Game, based on my own rules and with my own implementation. I have many ideas around how I want this game to work and to make it as open to Modders and the wargaming community as possible. But at the moment they are just ideas.

I am thinking of calling the game Kampfgruppe – which is German for Battlegroup. Below is the first publicly available screenshot. I hope it is not the last!