Attempting validated learning with Sol Trader
Sol Trader has been out just about two weeks now. It’s been great fun to actually launch the product and gain real feedback from people.
I’ve sold about forty copies. It’s a start, and a really good one. Thank you to those of you who have already purchased the game, and for all the feedback and encouraging emails I’ve received. I’ve learnt a huge amount already and it’s really helped me guide the way ahead.
The big question is: what’s next? How do I go from these humble yet encouraging beginnings to turning this game into something truly wonderful?
Validated learning
I’ve read Eric Ries’ excellent book The Lean Startup recently. In it he introduces a concept called Validated learning and goes on to define learning as the one important progress metric of startups: much more important than ‘customer numbers’ or ‘features’. Rather than define startups purely by ‘profit’ or ‘growth figures’, how can we ensure that we’re learning about how our business as fast as possible?
For Sol Trader, there are two main things that I need to find out.
- How can I ensure that I’m creating a game that people want to play, want to come back to, and want to tell their friends about?
- How can I ensure a steady stream of new players for the game?
The Sol Trader Hypothesis board
In order to support this learning, I’ve created the Sol Trader hypothesis progress chart:
This is what I’m using to track my theories. A good week would be one where I’ve managed to prove or disprove a theory or two, rather than simply adding in more and more ‘stuff’.
Note the Kanban limits to work in progress. In order to get theories tested as fast as possible, it’s important to get them through the process as fast as possible.
You can view and interact with the board for yourself: it’s on Trello here. I’m determined to do as much of this learning in the open as possible. I’d love your input into the hypotheses that I’m testing: you can vote and comment on particular theories and tell me why you think they’re a true (or completely wrong). Any input you give here will have an effect on what I work on next, so if you want to influence the development, then get involved!
Freed from featuritis
I’ve really enjoyed freeing myself from the continual focus on “features features features”. Features by themselves mean nothing: they are actually a drag on your product, as you have to spend time and effort maintaining them. It’s only the value that your customers gain from them that’s important. Focusing on theories has meant that I’m always making progress, even if I’m simply learning what doesn’t work.
Hang on: where is creativity in all this?
There’s a delicate balance here between listening to your customers and leading them in the direction you think they should go. I’m not going to sacrifice design flair and narrative to satisfy the baying (buying?) masses. This will likely always be a little bit of a niche game: there is a limit to the number of people interested in the genre. I plan to ultimately build the game I want to play, as opposed to the selling of something rubbish to satisfy everyone. Where’s the fun in that?
The important thing is to learn about your customer base, within the context of your original vision. If you cannot build a product within those constraints, time to look for a new business. Luckily, one of the earliest things I learnt through mailing list signups and a couple of hacker news appearances is that there’s a fair amount of latent demand for the vision I’ve got for the game, which is what spurred me on to get the alpha out in the first place.
What do you think of learning in public like this, and what do you think of my development approach?
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The Job Is Not To Build
Startup CTOs or founding developers are the first technical people in the business. It is natural to think your job is to write code and build software. This is backwards.
Your first job is not to build software. Your role is to use your technical expertise to help the startup figure out fast if you have a valid solution to a compelling problem, and then a valid product for a big enough market.
You might do this through building software, but you might not need to.
Here is a story of how I did this wrong, and how you can do it right.
Read moreEaldorlight: A Kickstarter retrospective
It’s now been over three months since the end of the Ealdorlight Kickstarter campaign. I’ve deliberately been taking some time to think and learn from the fact that it didn’t reach the target, and to work out what to do next. Frankly, I was pretty upset that the campaign didn’t make it, and it’s taken a while to get over it.
It’s also taken a while to think through the campaign properly. Some things are obvious in hindsight, and others less so. A lot of post-Kickstarter analysis feels like a stab in the dark. Nevertheless I’ve given it a lot of thought, and these are my best guesses for why I think Ealdorlight’s Kickstarter failed:
Read moreEaldorlight's Kickstarter is live at 4pm today
The sixth of June is a significant day for me personally. In 2004, I spent the entire of the day in hospital. I remember the 60th anniversary commemorations of D-day on the TV in the background, as I sat beside my wife, in labour with our first child. I became a father an hour after midnight on the 7th June; my son becomes a teenager tomorrow.
Twelve years later, in 2016, I spent the entire of 6th June glued to Steam watching and waiting whilst my first game Sol Trader was released to the world. This was a career dream come true: since I started programming at six years old I’d always wanted to create and ship my own games. Sol Trader’s release was ultimately a painfully formative experience for me, which I wrote about at the time and was interviewed about recently in GamesIndustry.biz.
Over the last year, I’ve been keeping busy doing two things. One is to support Sol Trader as much as I can with countless updates and patches. I’ve also been very busy working on a new game, Ealdorlight, a medieval RPG-style take on Sol Trader’s mechanics, with turn-based combat, realistic damage and great graphics. I announced Ealdorlight in March and demonstrated it at Rezzed, strengthening my hope that the idea was a good one.
I decided fairly early on that I wanted to take Ealdorlight to Kickstarter. Sol Trader’s successful Kickstarter was a brilliant experience. The Kickstarter community is one of the kindest, most positive on the Internet. I also needed funding for this game: Sol Trader was self-funded through many long evenings and contracting work, and for Ealdorlight I need a bigger team to realise the vision. It’s built in Unreal Engine 4, which simultaneously saves me loads of development time and means I need a bigger team to pull off the realistic art style I’ve gone for.
As time came near to launch, the first anniversary of Sol Trader’s released seemed an appropriate day to launch the campaign. So today, 6th June 2017, I will spend the entire day glued to Kickstarter as my campaign goes live at 4pm today.
Visit Ealdorlight’s Kickstarter Campaign
There’s plenty more about Ealdorlight on the campaign - head over there and read all about it! A huge amount of work has gone into it, and I’m very grateful for all the support and help I’ve received from the team I’ve put together, and for friends and family who have given me endless encouragements and feedback.
This post is a little earlier than 4pm so that you can watch it go live if you want. Earlier backers get lower edition numberings on some of the rewards, so you might want to be there from the start!
Read moreHow Ealdorlight's story stands out
As we head towards the Kickstarter campaign launch on June 6th, I want to talk a little about the story behind Ealdorlight works.
The basic story stays the same for each game: you are discovered wandering through a remote village at a young age, and realise your destiny is to overthrow the King. However, like in Sol Trader, every person you meet is randomly generated. This means that your real identity will be different every time, and you’ll have to discover it all over again every time you generate a new game.
Handcrafted story in a random world
The trick is layering a great story on top of a generated world with random characters. Building empathy with the main character and his family when all characters are generated is hard, and hinges around being able to hook the story in at the right moments.
My plan is to write plenty of tightly connected story arcs that are triggered on events that happen during history generation. These will in turn trigger future quests the player can undertake. Not all story-arcs will appear in every game: it will depend on how the history generation goes. I will constrain things such that there is always a route through the game, and that players always have a way to overthrow the King, even if that might be easier or harder depending on the starting setup. These story-arcs then should interact with each other, hopefully producing a unique path through the game.
Identity
Ealdorlight is set within a low fantasy world, and there’s no traditional magic. The player gets more powerful through discovering key pieces of knowledge about their past. These insights into of your real past feed directly into your character’s stats, skills and abilities.
I’ve long been fascinated with identity: knowledge of who we truly are affects many areas of our lives for the better. In Ealdorlight I wanted to tell a story which takes this to an almost supernatural level. By removing the player from their birth family, they start as an entirely normal person within the world. It’s only after their early game encounter with the Ealdorlight and the discovery of their past that things begin to change.
Much more on this to come, but in the meantime, here’s a glimpse of our story’s beginning.
Ealdorlight: backstory teaser (updated)
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Ealdorlight Kickstarter on 6th June, Sol Trader 1.3 released
I am now back from some extended time away after Rezzed, both on holiday with the family and training some clients away from home. I’ve released Sol Trader 1.3 today, and set the Kickstarter for Ealdorlight to 6th June.
Rezzed was fantastic: it was great to see lots and lots of people wearing our Ealdorlight crowns. We ran out of crowns on both days, with some creative head displays on offer:
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Ealdorlight Kickstarter launch date: 6th June
Yes, I know I said May :) I’ve decided to go for a 31-day campaign, starting on the 6th June, for a few reasons:
- It doesn’t clash with any major US holidays, like Memorial Day. The 48-hour reminder email should go out on the day after 4th July.
- I want to give myself the best chance of success by polishing the combat demo hard. It was great to get such good feedback at Rezzed and I think it’ll be a great hook. I need more time to do that well.
- 6th June is the first anniversary of Sol Trader’s launch, so it ties in nicely with the ongoing Revelation Games story.
I’m excited and nervous about this Kickstarter campaign: my third one to date. After succeeding last time I’m really trying to take my time and get it right.
Sol Trader 1.3 released!
Now that I’m back, I’m able to support a new release of Sol Trader: 1.3 is now finally released after a length beta period.
Here are the highlights:
- You can now chat to characters directly on the right if they’re in the same location as you
- Pirate Chief and criminals are now more likely to try to destroy you
- Fix a bug where you’re not paid enough for a mission
- Dignitaries now fly around a little less than before to make it easier to pin them down
- Inter-faction missions now pay slightly less
- Business trips now pay slightly less
- Taxi missions now pay slightly more
- Talking to your criminal parents will no longer cause them to forget who you are
- Fix crash where a character develops an opinion of the player mid-conversation
- Fix crash when showing GUI for a ship the AI is driving
- Fix crash where a character would attempt to sell a good on a ship they’ve lent to the player
- Can now initiate conversations when paused - will restart the game but at realtime speed
- Fixed the Tiger II achievement
Your steam copy should automatically update. I’ll be releasing an updated downloadable version to SendOwl in the next few days.
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