One of the great things about the independent development scene is that many take the time to write a post mortem, a document looking back at the development of a title to examine what went right and, more importantly, what went wrong. Often too people post them on-line for others to learn from. The time pressure and secrecy of big studio development usually doesn't allow for this necessary "luxury". Here, then, is the post mortem for our main title Flock It! released first in late October of 2009.

What went right

1. The design
Though the Appstore is filled with great titles that force traditional d-pad and button game controls onto the platform, and I have played and enjoyed many of them, they do not, in my estimation, get the best out of the iPhone's strengths: touch control. From the outset we designed Flock It! to be designed specifically for iPhone controls, ie. touch controls. Though sheep flocking games have been around for a while, we were very happy with our interpretation of it, keeping input simple and responsive. We've had reports from customers and our extended circle of friends that everybody has been able to enjoy it, from four year old cousins to people our own age who don't usually play games. On top of that we also enabled replayability and extra objectives per level that more seasoned gamers could find a real challenge too, but all within the simple framework of touching the screen to herd sheep around.

2. The design process
Ideas are our industry's cheapest current coin; everybody has ideas. Indeed, we found we had too many and early design ideas for Flock It! spanned page upon page in our respective notebooks. That is until one day Paul and I spent a few hours in a central Tokyo pub and over a few pints took the knife to our designs. It is said that a piece of writing is finished when there is nothing left to cut out, and in that way we approached all our ambitious ideas until we distilled the design to a simple yet strong core. Things we cut out would not have added to the overall experience or would simply take too much time for the returns they would deliver. The great thing about this was also that the design that was left was focused and allowed us to spend more time on the important basics to make sure they looked and played exactly how we wanted them to. Some of the scrapped ideas would crop up again during development, at which point we could easily remember why exactly we cut it in the first place and keep ourselves focused on what we decided was more important.

Some ideas have not been completely abandoned though, and I'm sure we'll revisit some of the more heartbreaking cuts for other games or, maybe, a sequel.

3. The tools
A lot of time was spent in advance of development on our bespoke toolset. Having both worked in large-scale development we knew the value of a good tool and with Paul's almost compulsive obsession with expandability and well designed code he crafted a tool in which we created all our games with relative ease. This took some time of course, and though Flock It! could possibly have been developed a lot quicker had we hard-coded everything, we wouldn't be able to create extra content so easily, nor would it save time on our next projects where everything would have to be built from scratch. For the first major Flock It! update, for example, I discussed a few ideas with Paul but then set to work on my own, created all the new levels and art by myself within the tool and handed him an art-complete project which Paul added scripts to, in his own simple yet powerful scripting language. Though we spent a lot of time on polish, the update barely took any time at all thanks to the way our tools work, and that is very well worth the initial time investment. Work on the tool continues constantly and at some point it will be powerful enough, and easy enough to use, that hardly any programmer intervention is required in the creation of games. That, at least, is the goal and Flock It! was a great test case in achieving the first steps towards it.

4. Doing it our way
Either we are lucky or we sought each other out, but Paul and I are on pretty much the exact same page when it comes to game development and business direction. When it came to the development of Flock It! we both had our part to play; we had been looking forward to this, the autonomy, the freedom and the responsibility, for a while now and it was time to put our money where our mouths were. I could trust Paul to do his part in the area of coding and do it well. Paul, I would hope to be able to say, could trust me to focus on the design of the levels and art without having to look over my shoulder. We both hunkered down and just got on with it. We found we both were responsible enough not to get precious or sidetracked by self-criticism, we finished our work and we did it to a level we were both pleased with with pretty much no interference from one another. And this, for a developer, is the perfect way to work. I don't have to tell Paul how to do his work or what I expect from him, as he is way ahead of me on that front. Likewise, though I ask for feedback of course, Paul doesn't have to keep checking my artwork to see if it is on spec or good enough. The way Paul created the tool made it very easy for him to implement features I eventually found out I could use to speed up my work. Paul would get ideas which he threw my way which I found myself agreeing with and implementing. Not having to be careful to step on each others' toes and being able to rely on your team makes for a very smooth development process.

What went wrong

1. Ignorance about the Appstore
We knew we still had a lot to learn, about everything. Just because we have both worked a decade or more at big studios we don't know everything about development, even if we like to think we do. One thing we didn't research enough, for example, was the way the Appstore handles certain issues. When our first batch of games was released we were in a flurry of excitement. I created and sent out masses of press releases and links to various websites. To try and "play the system" we set the release date to that very day to hopefully appear at he top of new releases lists. However, the Appstore was on American time, and Tokyo time was a day ahead. Suddenly we had told the Appstore to release the games "tomorrow" instead of today, we found, and they promptly disappeared from the store. With the emails sent out already this caused rather a panic, and it takes a few hours for changes to go through, so we were in a limbo for a while. This and many other smaller issues could have easily been avoided had we taken the time to research our platform better. We have learned by now, of course, but we did miss a few good opportunities and windows because of our ignorance.

2. Ignorance about the audience
Alongside learning about the Appstore we should also have taken more time researching our audience. Though we felt confident the style and design of the game made it accessible to anyone, but what we didn't realise was how people use their iPhones outside of gaming. As tech geeks ourselves it never occurred to us people wouldn't upgrade their firmware, so when we released our game to work on the latest version of the iPhone's OS alone we didn't realise we were only targeting 10% of users. During this time we were proud to be listed under the "Staff Picks" section of the Appstore, but partly because of this oversight we simply weren't reaching the customers. We quickly updated the game to be playable from OS 2.2.1 upwards, instead of just OS 3 upwards, but at the time the staff handling submissions were swamped with the pre-Christmas rush and getting approval took a good two weeks, at which time the "Staff Picks" section had cycled through and Flock It! was no longer on it. This was a great opportunity we wasted simply by not knowing the facts and figures of iPhone users.

3. PR and marketing
It is a cliché that game developers hate their company's marketing department; they always make silly requests for art, screenshots and information when we are busy finishing the game. However, every developer secretly know that PR and marketing are one of the most important aspects of the video game market and that without it there simply wouldn't be an industry, or at least not one as huge as today's. We knew we would have to do all the marketing ourselves, and we knew it was important, but we were both relatively new to the processes behind it. We did what we thought was best; we sent our press releases, created a great little trailer, pulled strings, cold-called (emailed) journalists, went on Twitter, tried everything and found it was a tough, uphill battle. We still have to find the best way of getting the word out and Flock It!, as well as our other games, have certainly been a learning process, but it is undeniable our lack of experience in this field has harmed Flock It! sales and exposure. It's something we will continuously learn about and train ourselves in, it is unavoidable, but had we had the money hiring a PR person with the knowledge and contacts would have helped tremendously.

4. Timing
We released Flock It! when it was ready. Maybe we should have planned it better. It was around Halloween when the Appstore was awash with Halloween-themed games and updates. What followed was Thanksgiving, when everybody and their cats has special offers, free giveaways and extra marketing pushes. Thereafter it was Christmas where people were giving away games for free and offering more special deals. It is extremely hard for a newcomer to the scene to get noticed as it is, but during the madness of the holiday seasons it is even worse. We participated with our own competitions, Twitter giveaways and special deals, but in the end they got drowned out by the millions of others, better established names and games, doing the exact same thing. On the one hand it was good for us, as having Flock It! out there gave us the feedback we needed to create the updates and get the ball rolling on our marketing, but it was too tough a battle to pick and made us rely more on the "long tail" of sales as opposed to the initial push we had been hoping. Some better planning, stricter milestones and more strategic marketing and timing are called for.

Conclusions

Flock It! was very much a learning experience on many fronts, but in the end it's a title we are proud of. Pride butters no turnips, of course, and we are constantly learning, improving our games to meet the demands of our audience while at the same time developing our technology and new games. Going independent, we knew, was never going to be a cakewalk, and our initial experiences certainly bear this out; it is what we always wanted to do, so despite the fact it is hard, hard work we are thoroughly enjoying it.

While developing our new titles we can use what we have learned so far, but be prepared to read some more post mortems later, as we know we still have a long road ahead of us, and mistakes will be made!

I hope this post mortem was useful or insightful. If you are an independent developer and have posted your own post mortem, or are simply interested and have questions or comments we'd love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via info@score-studios.jp

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