There was a primer posted on Gamasutra a couple of weeks ago about the growing role of social communities in games (and the challenges of building one that works). It’s probably obvious by now that there are huge advantages to building an online social community around games — give your players a place to compare notes and shoot the breeze with other players, and you’ve got an almost surefire hit, particularly if the game already has a fanbase. Even games that are entirely played online anyway (say, World of Warcraft) have thriving internet communities because they give players another reason engage with each other while they should be working.

But is it possible to provide too many social options for players? It’s a lot of work to set up such things, and there may be a point at which actual gameplay can be sacrificed for the sake of “social” features. The case in point is Spore. I was pumped about Spore before it came out. I bought it within a week after release. It’s a great game, and it’s revolutionary in several ways, but when you really dig into it, there’s not much game there.

The Spore experience is so focused on encouraging players to share their creations with each other that I felt from the beginning as if I were missing half the game because I didn’t care about looking at other people’s creations. I love that other creations are pulled into my universe automatically, but I haven’t spent a single minute looking at sporepedia online or making friends in the online Spore community.

(Full disclosure time: I’m not a heavy user of social media. I get it, and I think it’s changing the nature of the internet before our eyes. But I lead quite an anti-social online life.)

It’s becoming accepted generally that, if you don’t build social features into your game, you better do it online. In fact, one of the suggestions I’ve heard for indie developers is to focus lots of attention on your online social presence. Make your game about connecting, not just playing, say the experts. They’re probably right–all my favorite and most enduring entertainment experiences have thriving communities. My lack of participation doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

What I’m trying to find, being an ultra-indie, is the right balance. I can’t build or support a big-time social platform to supplement my games. Even if I could, it would almost certainly seem incongruous with the scope of the games themselves. Nor can I hope to compete with the big casual game sites (which naturally have full-featured social elements).

Probably, as with most things, the answer is somewhere in the middle. Create a game with in-game social elements (like multiplayer) and then give players a simple way to connect with each other outside the game using existing platforms like Facebook apps or embeddable web site widgets. Guess I’ll add those to the list of things to learn.

I still find it difficult to call SPUDZOOKA finished. There are still so many things that would make it better. More levels, more cannon parts and paint jobs, more things to shoot at, a new environment to play in (something other than a warehouse) — all would help. I even planned to build a level editor at one point.

But, as I’ve said before, SPUDZOOKA was never supposed to be more than a learning experience. What did I learn, you ask? Did any life lessons stick in my head? Here are a few:

Programming is the easy part
Yes, it’s essential. Interaction (gameplay) is what makes games tick, and programming makes gameplay possible. There’s no denying its importance. But I learned that it’s much more difficult to create compelling visuals than compelling gameplay. Gameplay either works or it doesn’t. There are levels of quality in there, certainly, but once you’ve got your central game mechanic humming along, you’re done with the bulk of the work. Everything else is details.

The visuals, though, can go on forever. You’ve got to model dozens of objects, texture them, and possibly animate them. The process is endless, and it’s made even more nerve-wracking by the fact that it’s always possible to make something look better. I could have spent weeks trying to create the perfect cardboard box, giving it so much character that you would gasp at seeing it for the first time. But I found that the “good enough” threshold for modeling and texturing comes fairly early in the process for me. Partly I was frustrated my lack of knowledge. I don’t know the right tricks to make things look perfect, and I found my patience was limited for experimentation. So I generally created something that was close enough and went with it.

Maybe this means I’m not a natural-born modeler/texturer. Or that I should have been a programmer.

Self-promotion is a tricky game
I loved building the web site for SPUDZOOKA. In my day job I work on a large, convoluted corporate web site. It was fun to create something very simple from scratch. But now that it’s there, how do I get people to see it? I can blog about it endlessly, be sure the site shows up on Google searches, submit it to game publishers like shockwave.com (we’ll see if they respond), post about it on the Unity forum, and post something about it on Facebook. I’ve done all of the above, and I even added an e-mail-a-friend feature to the page where you play the game. But there’s a critical mass to these things, and I haven’t hit it yet. It’s been an interesting test. I’ll keep plugging away, but I’ve learned that it’s a full-time job to promote something like this using the grass-roots tools of the Web.

If a target-shooting game takes four months…
How long will it take to create an RPG with memorable characters, a sweeping story, and a vast world to explore? This is the big one. It will take (more) years, and a lot of dedication to make it happen. I might be better off focusing on a series of smaller projects and putting the big project aside indefinitely. Or I could figure out a way to divide the big project into smaller ones. Maybe there’s another kind of story I can tell that won’t be so ridiculously large. Instead of aiming right an an epic, perhaps I should start with a short story.

Regardless of what I decide, I have to decide on something. I’ll probably spend the next week or two mulling the possibilities and see what develops. SPUDZOOKA is the first step. Now I have to take the next.

I’ve never been that interested in casual games. Aside from Tetris, which I played as a child when it was the coolest thing around, I’ve never spent more than 10 or 15 minutes playing a casual game.

And yet, with SPUDZOOKA getting closer to being finished, I find myself strangely drawn to the money-making possibilities of more laid back virtual entertainment. I don’t expect SPUDZOOKA to make money. The main reason for this defeatist attitude is, of course, that I don’t intend to sell it. It’s my first game. It’s not that good.

I do think a lot, though, about how I might make some extra cash making games. Developing casual games is one way to do that. It wouldn’t be a lot of money, but this new feature article on Gamasutra by Daniel Cook (have I mentioned I really like their articles?) has put some crazy ideas in my head about how it might be possible. The secret? Online community. Create a place where people come to play your games and, once they arrive, make some friends. Sure they’ll come back because they like your games, but they’ll also come back to hang out.

There are some pretty daunting challenges, though, like customer support and the growing super-power of online casual game portals (or maybe the fact that you still have to crank out games). Cook suggests that well-known portals like Shockwave.com are essential to a blossoming casual-game business, but that their value is to help you win long-term customers, not sell one-off games. This is a good thought, since most portals don’t demand exclusive rights to publish a game.

But, as one reader pointed out in a comment, what happens when the portals realize what’s happening and won’t promote your games unless you agree that they won’t be attached to any other social space? Then you’re left with nothing but word-of-mouth to generate new customers. That’s where I am now with SPUDZOOKA. It’s a struggle, and I’m not even selling it.

Despite the challenges, this article has my head buzzing with possibilities. But that’s nothing new; my head is always fuzzy with crazy ideas and delusions of grandeur.

It’s easy to get discouraged as a solo game developer. There’s just so much to do and so many skills to learn. Indeed, I accept that I will ever be more than a hack at most of the skills involved in game development.

But this post over at Tales of the Rampant Coyote (a blog from indie developer Rampant Games) is proof that indie developers can create expansive, immersive role-playing games.

No, I’ve never played any of the games listed in that post. Most probably won’t even run on my Mac. What gives me hope is that the list is so long. It means someone is actually publishing completed games.

SPUDZOOKA isn’t an RPG, but it will be my first full game. And I will finish it. I have modest hopes for it. I hope some of you will play it. I hope some of you who play it will enjoy it. Everything else is just gravy.

What I really want to do is make games that tell stories. I have to start somewhere, but it’s nice to think that maybe one day I’ll publish a game that makes somebody’s list.

There’s a nice post from Leo Stableford today about the pros and cons of self-publishing. He’s discussing things in context of writing, but I have a feeling many of the same issues apply to self-publishing games.

It would be easy enough to post SPUDZOOKA to a site of my own designing, set up a Google AdSense account and maybe earn a few dollars. If I did a decent job promoting the game, people might come play it.

On the other hand, if I attempt to get my game published on a well-trafficked game site like Shockwave.com, I would definitely get more players and could potentially make more money. The question is whether self-publishing would hurt my chances of being published on a site like Shockwave. Honestly I don’t know. The game publishing business is certainly not as well established as print publishing, so my guess is that there are still more avenues available for indie game developers to publish and distribute their games.

I’m just starting to research the possibilities, but maybe I’m getting ahead of my self. I still have a game to finish before I can even publish it myself.