Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
I mentioned the Early Access mechanism on Steam in the previous section. Such an open
development mechanism is also interesting from a marketing point of view. It allows you to attract
players to your game and get them involved in the game's development. By involving players in the
early stages of game development, you can create a very strong bond between the players and the
game, because they feel like they're part of the development process. If you're smart about it, these
players will act as salespeople for your game, doing a lot of marketing for you.
Peter: “For us, it is all about our fans and the brand. The power of the brand Angry Birds
allows us to spend less money on traditional marketing means such as advertising.
If you look at typical game-development studios, I think people don't realize how
much they need to spend on marketing. Typically, the game-development costs are
a fraction of what is spent on marketing.
We build the brand with our games and with our actions on the marketing side. We
started with very strong characters, and we built the brand around that. To build
a brand, there are as many different ways as there are companies. If you look at
how brands were built traditionally, you can see that starting to happen in the game
industry as well, through for example TV advertising. It's not that different from
building a brand in any business when it comes to games.”
Final Thoughts
This topic has covered many aspects of programming in JavaScript. You now have a solid
foundation in JavaScript programming and in particular in game programming. As you've probably
realized by reading Mark's and Peter's thoughts, the world changes quickly. Operating systems such
as iOS and Android are regularly updated with new features. Mobile devices are getting faster and
faster. Devices that were popular a few years ago are now obsolete. And in the middle of all that are
HTML5 and JavaScript. A striking example of the growing importance of JavaScript is the desktop/
JavaScript and HTML5! It's impossible to predict the future, but one thing is certain: HTML5 and
JavaScript are here to stay. I hope that this topic helps you come to grips with the language and that
it provides you with a good starting point to explore game programming yourself. I'll conclude this
book with two things that Mark and Peter said during their interview:
Mark: “Think about what you want to achieve. For example, you may simply have
a creative idea that you would like to implement. This is a very different goal than
wanting to earn a living making games. It's not always by definition important that
many people play your game. Making a game can be a reward in itself.”
Peter: “Don't copy blindly, but try to do things differently instead of doing what
everyone else is doing. Think about how you can stand out from the hundreds of
thousands of other games. Surprise and delight. It doesn't cost anything to surprise
people. That said, learn as much as you possibly can from others. Then do your
own thing.”
