iDevGames

i Dev Games, you Dev Game?

The uDevGames 2001 Macintosh game programming contest was made possible by numerous people inside iDevGames, as well as individuals and companies from the Macintosh community. Now that the contest is behind us and the lucky winners announced, it’s time to reflect on the contest and discuss how we can use it as a springboard for improving the state of game development on the Macintosh platform. Before I go into what I felt was good and bad about the contest, I’d like to provide a short background on how it came to be.

In 1998, iDevGames was launched (under the Mac Game Designer name) with a mission to educate, support and enhance the community of programmers and designers that produce games for the Apple Macintosh platform. Over the last few years, I’ve been extremely pleased to see a strong and vibrant community being built by Macintosh game developers of all levels. With an ever increasing user base, and great support from volunteer staff members, I thought that the time was right to take iDevGames to the next level. Although I have been satisfied with the progress of our library of game assets, tutorials, articles, and forum participation, I felt the site needed to do more to expand the availability of source code that developers could share and learn from. Therefore, I suggested to the staff that we should hold a game programming contest. As we thought about the rules (and name) for such a contest, I made a list of three objectives that the contest would have to meet:

• Create — We hope that uDevGames will stimulate the creation of games on the Macintosh by encouraging people to develop new and original games for the platform.
• Educate — The need for qualified Macintosh programmers is greater now than ever thanks to Apple’s exciting new operating system, Mac OS X. Participants in the uDevGames Contest will actively help in the education of the Macintosh developers, as well as encourage and enhance the interest of those new to the platform.

• Succeed — iDevGames hopes this contest will draw attention to those that develop unique and exciting games for the Macintosh, as well as help introduce the best and brightest Macintosh game development talent to development houses and publishers alike.

The staff and I debated the rules and how to meet the objectives that I set for several months, and occasionally+ it appeared that uDevGames would never go beyond our private discussions. There seemed to be many “What-ifs” at each step. For example, “What if only three people enter the contest?” or “What if the prizes we offer only attract the attention of a gnat?” I was also worried about the core idea of having all the entries release their source code. Programmers are indeed like magicians who never like to reveal their tricks. Of course, working on a game for many months, I can understand their reservation over giving away their crown-jewels. Thus, I felt it vital to communicate effectively the importance of sharing source code. Nevertheless, I was determined to sign up as many sponsors as possible to make every Mac game developer take notice. Nothing works better than promises of riches and fame.

The uDevGames Contest was announced on July 16, 2001 to Macintosh news outlets and industry media, as well as game development sites. The press release did its job as iDevGames recorded its highest traffic to date on July 16 and 17. With the attention from Macintosh game developers (and a short time later, Apple as well), the contest was on its way.

What Went Right

Looking back on the contest, I felt several points helped us reach the objectives we had set out with. To my surprise, we even managed to meet some goals that I hadn’t expected. As you read about what went right with the contest, keep in mind that uDevGames 2001 was a combined effort of many talented and generous people.

Support From Sponsors

What is a contest without any prizes? Believe it or not, some early feedback I received indicated that some developers would join the contest for the pure joy of the challenge. It was great to read their enthusiastic emails for the very first Macintosh game programming contest. However, I strongly felt that providing quality prizes would help everyone involved. With powerful game development tools, the winners could go on to produce bigger and better titles in the future. Sponsors would also benefit by the exposure of their tools to Macintosh developers from around the world. It is a win-win situation because when we attract more developers to our platform, the market for the tools produced by our sponsors will increase.

As Laurence Passmore, the Assistant Editor, worked on the rules, I started to contact Macintosh developers. I approached sponsors who offered tools that many developers crave and whom I felt would benefit from the exposure of the contest. I don’t recall how many companies I contacted, but the list was a who’s-who of the Macintosh world. My confidence in the Macintosh and the people who use it was reinforced as sponsors sent me their favorable replies. Each sponsor has my eternal thanks—they not only have great products, but great people behind them. In all, over $4,200 (US) in prizes was collected for the winners of uDevGames 2001 from the sponsors!

New Source Code Additions

Having source code is invaluable to learning the art of game development. When I started iDevGames, I noticed that there seemed to be more of a willingness to release source code on the Windows and Linux side. The staff and I are always on the lookout for source code from older games, as well as recent titles. Thanks to uDevGames 2001, Macintosh developers will now have the source code to twenty-four new games. The code ranges from industry-standard CodeWarrior projects, to alternative development environments such as METAL, the ever popular REALbasic, and Apple’s new Cocoa tools. It is my hope that developers will be able to use the code to create new and original Macintosh titles for everyone to enjoy.

Challenging Game Developers

Many developers who submitted a game to uDevGames 2001 (and even those that missed the deadline) commented that the contest was a very rewarding experience. It happens often in game development that projects are set aside due to lack of time, motivation, or focus. I’m sure every developer reading this postmortem will agree that finishing a game is a game unto itself. We set an aggressive development period of only two months for several reasons. Foremost on the list was keeping developers and the public focused on the contest. We mentioned on the contest page that we were not looking for the next Quake-killer; rather we were looking for fun and original games. I also thought that smaller games would provide source code that was better suited to educational purposes. An additional challenge to the developers was the 10MB size limitation on entries. Although everyone loves ear-pounding sound tracks and killer graphics, I placed this restriction on the developers to force them to focus on gameplay.

Spotlighting Mac Programmers

It was good to see some familiar names from iDevGames’ forum enter the contest and even better to see many new names. uDevGames 2001 enjoyed participation by developers from around the world and from all walks of life. Many entries were from students and application programmers who dream of becoming professional game developers. I really look forward to the four winners becoming Mac-household names right along side Pangeas’ Brian Greenstone and Westlake’s Glenda Adams. Perhaps someday they will inspire a younger generation of Mac game developers or even start their own development companies. Before I move on to the next topic, I’d like to relate an email I received at the end of the contest from the developer of Lonely Time. This developer is from Japan, which boasts Apple’s second largest market in the world. Living in Japan, I’m eager to see developers here extend their contacts to Mac users from around the world (and vice-versa). The developer was apprehensive in entering the contest due to his lack of English language skills. However, I encouraged him to do his best and explained that it would be a good chance for gamers to try some of his other titles. Although some gamers were confused about Lonely Time’s controls and objectives, the feedback that I read was mostly positive. Visiting his page (Japanese) the other day, I noticed that he posted news about uDevGames 2001. He was extremely happy to have entered the contest and was very proud of the email he received from a game player in France. He writes, “I am now an international person.“ His comment and attitude really made all the work that went into the contest well worth it.

Mac OS X is Here

The Macintosh platform is entering an exciting era. As we say a fond goodbye to the old Operating System that we have come to love, we are now stepping up to the most powerful and elegant OS on any personal computer. Without a doubt Mac OS X is a significant development not only for Mac users, but for developers as well. Reviewing the list of games in uDevGames 2001, I was pleasantly surprised that the majority ran on Mac OS X, and a few were specifically developed on and for Mac OS X. Reports from developers confirm that our platform has the right tools and operating system to create a fantastic gaming platform. With the release of Mac OS X 10.1, more native tools and new development books, I expect to see Mac OS X a de-facto standard in entries for uDevGames 2002.

Great Exposure for iDevGames

I can’t stress enough what the contest has done for our exposure to Mac developers from around the world. Better still, the contest attracted the attention of industry media from outside the Macintosh market. This isn’t just great news for the community we are building here, but for Macintosh gaming itself; the more developers we can attract to our platform, the stronger our market will become. Apple, Westlake Interactive and the Omni Group are doing a great job of evangelizing our platform to non-Macintosh publishers and developers. I look forward to the uDevGames Contest playing an important role in helping to bring more developers and games to the Mac each year.

What Went Wrong

Being the first Macintosh exclusive game programming contest, uDevGames excelled in many areas, however, there are a few points that we need to work on. I’d like to thank the developers and players who shared with me their thoughts on the contest; your voice has been heard and we will work hard to make the contest bigger and better for 2002. With that said, I’d like to remind everyone that iDevGames is supported by a volunteer staff and the site, along with the contest, relies heavily on the participation of the entire community. In addition, as much as we will endeavor to make the contest fair and appealing, we will never be able to meet everyone’s expectation or requests. (But we’ll do our best!)

Server Issues

As the site has grown, we have been forced to move up to new servers to handle the traffic and provide reasonable speeds. However, iDevGames, like many sites, is hosted on a virtual server. This limits the hard drive space and bandwidth that we have. The best solution is to host iDevGames on its own dedicated server. As the staff and I ponder on how we can achieve enough sponsorship and revenue to pay for a dedicated server, we must keep a close eye on our bandwidth and hard drive limits. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of underestimating the demands that providing twenty-four free games would place on our virtual server. With the games listed on MacGameFiles and VersionTracker, as well as other sites, downloaders soon began to receive server errors. Working as quickly as we could the games were soon mirrored on Plaid World Studios and Apple’s iDisk servers. The result of my miscalculation might have resulted in some gamers not attempting to re-download the games. To offset the effect from this problem, we extended the voting period to give gamers more time to download and evaluate the games.

Winner’s Announcement Delayed

The date for announcing the winners came and passed. With the exception of the judges and four finalists, I am sure that many of you were left wondering if there would be an announcement of the winners of uDevGames 2001 before uDevGames 2002 began! Several factors caused the delay. I already mentioned that the schedule was modified resulting from the server problems. In addition, we didn’t budget in the time required to receive the postmortems from the finalists and edit them. Also, the need for a longer period for the final judges to make their evaluations and decisions was evident.

Development Period Too Short

Determining the length of the development time was extremely difficult. I outlined the reasons above for a short duration. In hindsight, I think an additional month would have allowed more entries and improved games. As I read the reviews of the games, and talked to developers and judges, it seemed that an extra month could have led to better quality assurance and more polished final submissions. Perhaps some of the entries would have also qualified as games and not just technology “demos.” Related to this point is the expectation of game players. I’m sure that most savvy game players realize the enormous resources required to bring an AAA game to market, not to mention the fact that they are created by teams of programmers, artists, and designers. Expectations of shareware games have also increased due to titles from DanLabGames, Freeverse Software and Ambrosia Software. In the end, I thought that we didn’t effectively educate players to the fact that uDevGames 2001 entries were created during a very intensive two-month period.

The Voting System

Next to the length of time, selecting the method of choosing the winner was extensively debated by the staff. Every proposal seemed to have merits as well as downsides. It was very difficult designing a perfect voting system, and perhaps we may never settle on a system that appeals to all involved. I’d like to take some time to examine the voting system for uDevGames 2001. The idea was to get gamers and the public involved so that they could help us find the best entries in the group. This comes from my belief that inside many game players, there is a game developer waiting to burst out. Sharing a contest like uDevGames can perhaps encourage some of them to take their first steps into the world of game development.

To this end, we began the voting process by making all twenty-four entries available to the public. Ideally each voter would download and evaluate all the games, and then vote for their four favorites. While conceptually sound, this method had its drawbacks. Not all voters could spend the time to download and play all the games, resulting in the possibility that some were not given equal attention.

With the top four popular games selected, the finalist would then proceed to a second phase of voting that would be conducted by judges from the media and development industry. Looking at the voting and the results, I think that most of you will agree that the voting system did in fact help to determine the best games in uDevGames 2001. Our webmaster worked very hard to install a voting system which would reduce voting fraud. Not showing the results and requiring four votes also made the contest more democratic in my mind. From the very first vote to the last, I followed the patterns very carefully to spot any abnormalities.

Low Voter Turnout

We reported that around 30,000 downloads took place. This is a combined estimate based on the sites that listed the games, such as MacGameFiles and VersionTracker, and our own server logs. However, because the games were also copied, mirrored and uploaded to other sites, it is difficult to place an exact number on total downloads. At the end of the voting period, we had counted about 300 votes. A message thread in our forum asked why this number was so low compared to the number of downloads. I felt that there was no single reason for the difference in ratio, but rather a combination of several factors. Some staff, however, thought that the turnout was higher than they had expected and mentioned that the results would have been the same with even 3,000 votes.

Let’s look at some of the reasons we had 300 votes for an estimated 30,000 downloads:

• Downloading and playing twenty-four games, as well as voting, was difficult for gamers who have low-bandwidth connections or simply lack the time.
• Sometimes, the description of the games on the gaming sites mentioned the contest and the other games, but there were some games that lacked this vital information. So it is highly likely that a game player simply clicked a download link and never learned of the contest.
• Most of the downloads lacked some promotion of the contest and other entries, for example inside the read me document or about splash screen.
• International users might have not understood the game and simply ignored the English contest pages.

• Motivation for gamers to vote and try all games was lacking.

There are a few more points that could be raised about the voter turnout, and I am sure this issue will continue to be discussed in our forum.

Preparing the Entries for the Public

Before the public could learn about and download the games, several things needed to happen. Some of these steps caused delays and affected the issues which I have already covered. The first problem that arose was in adding the game’s vital stats to the contest page. Our submission form lacked fields that would have allowed us to gather the information that was required. In some cases, information was provided but was incomplete or lacked marketing pizazz which would have helped sell the game to the public. The procedure for submitting screenshots was also lacking, and I found myself playing email tag with some developers to get that vital eye candy up on the contest page.

Once the game was listed on the contest page, it was my job to submit the entries to the various Mac game sites and VersionTracker. Since only one author thought ahead of time to do this on his own, I spent a great deal of time adding and editing numerous fields for each entry. This was especially rough when we went through the server problems, and I was required to contact and update the information on all the sites that were helping us promote the games—no small task!

uDevGames 2002 and Beyond

Towards the end of uDevGames 2001, users in the forum started to ask whether the contest would become an annual event. I’d like to officially announce that uDevGames will indeed become an annual event in the Macintosh gaming world. Committing to an annual event is no small task though, and I encourage all Macintosh game developers and other visitors to participate in uDevGames 2002 at all levels. As we go forward, we need to focus on a few areas to make the uDevGames Contest the best that it can be. Rest assured, iDevGames is a community site and we will be conducting major polls in the future to obtain your thoughts on these issues:

• Longer development period
• Higher quality entries
• A new voting system
• Improved rules and submission process
• Greater involvement from professional developers

• More prizes and gifts

In closing, I want to thank the sponsors for their generosity, all the developers who entered, the four winners David Rosen (GL Fighters), Will Helling (Turtle Turmoil), William Thimbleby (Silly Balls), Sacha Saxer (Evolution), and my wife, who allowed me to spend many weekends working on the contest.

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