Kickstarter.com, one of the most well-known crowdfunding sites, has proven to be a big boon for independent publishers, including those of video games. The basic concept of crowdfunding is a simple one. An individual or business posts a project on a crowdfunding site such as Kickstarter and sets a funding limit for the project. If this limit is reached, the project receives the money. Anyone can donate to a crowdfunded project, not just big-wallet investors. This method of fundraising has seen a massive amount of success in the gaming industry, especially after Double Fine Productions managed to raise $3 million dollars for its game project, “Double Fine Adventure.”

The Benefits for Independent Game Developers

Indie game developers see $1,000-$10,000 in profit for 25 percent of their games, reports Gamasutra. If they make a great game and have plenty of luck, they can break into higher profit tiers, but it’s more likely the developer only earns up to $1,000 per title, if there are any sales at all. Video game development is a tough industry to break into, especially for a developer who doesn’t have big-name publisher support. Digital distribution services such as Steam help out, but that doesn’t give the developer a way to fund games. Some developers work on indie games as a side project while working a full-time job in another industry.

Photo of Kickstarter logo by unknown via Wikimedia Commons

With Kickstarter, an indie developer can secure funding for a project instead of hoping for a successful game to cover development costs afterward. Funding allows the developer to pay for needed development time, game assets, testing and other expenses that go into making a game. The developer creates a more polished and bug-free game, instead of taking it to market with limited resources.

The Benefits for Consumers

Kickstarter has helped 1,656 game projects get successfully funded, according to Crowdfund Insider. If it hadn’t been for a successful crowdfunding project, these games may have taken a significantly longer amount of time to get released, not been released at all or been released with limited features.

Developers take chances on game concepts that aren’t tried and tested. Instead of another first-person military shooter or fantasy RPG, genres such as adventure games, MMO trading card games, www.iWin.com hidden object games, sci-fi sports games and other interesting takes on classic game genres have found an audience. Sequels to cult classics are another common theme with the Kickstarter games section.

In addition to getting unique games on the market, helping crowdfund a project gives gamers a greater emotional investment in the success of a particular game or publisher. The funding goes directly to the developers, instead of a publisher who controls essential parts of the development process. Kickstarter’s game section is the second-largest on the site, showing gamers care so much about indie developers, they’re willing to put their money where their mouths are. From old franchises to new IPs, crowdfunding has had a massive positive effect on the indie development scene.

What are your predictions for crowdfunding and gaming? Tell us in the comments.

The post Kickstarter’s Effect on Independent Game Developers appeared first on Androidizen.

This month Google announced tools to help developers make their games more social at the Google I/O Conference.

The new Google Play Services API will allow developers to implement; Cloud Saves, Achievements and Leaderboards, and Multiplayer Matchmaking.

The interesting part is that these services are available to Android as well as iOS developers.

These services are available for all Android users, on Froyo and up.

Android Cloud Saves

This means a gamer can shift from one device to another, and the data will refresh once they switch to a different device, weather it is their phone, tablet , desktop browser , or –wait for it–   even their, iOS device. Developers like Rovio(developers of Angry Birds), have taken it upon themselves to implement their own cloud-saving features, but this should make it easy for any developer to do the same without much effort at all.

Achievements and Leaderboards

Developers can now add leaderboards and achievements to their games that exist on Google Play. Now gamers can compete with people from around the world, or just with people on their Google+ circles, through highscores.

Achievements can be set to different actions performed in the game, such as beating a particular level or unlocking the highest difficulty mode.

Multiplayer Matchmaking

The multiplayer API allows you to challenge your friends online to games through Google+. The multiplayer aspect of the service will feature both a matchmaking aspect, but the focus is clearly on connecting you to your Google+ friends. Multiplayer is a very big problem to tackle, with difficult netcode making the feature an extremely big hurdle for a lot of small developers. Developers will be able to access tools that allow the multiplayer to load quickly.

Sadly, part of the demo failed at the keynote on the day, but these are services that game developers will latch on to.

Progress on our first Android Game

Meanwhile, this month has been really interesting for us. The plan was to finalise the character this month, but that didn’t work out that well. But we did finalise on the artist who would be helping us with the artwork of the game.

Also, as Google came out with a new API, a major part of this month was spent on learning. Going through reference codes and tutorials given by Google to help integrate their services in the game.

The multiplayer feature is the one that excites me the most. Other than that, we do plan on using the Cloud Save, and Leaderboard too for the game.

We had already set up our server with which we were planning on syncing the Leaderboard, so for now we’ll be using that for our final game. But no doubt, the new API is amazing, and gives developers a lot more to do, and make their game interesting.

Do you think these additions will help Google developers? Let us know in the comments.

The post Hellboy Studios Developer Diary Part 2: Google’s new Games API a developers opportunity appeared first on Androidizen.

Kicking off the first of our Developer Blog series are Daksh Tandon & Mike Knight of  Hellboy Studios, a Delhi-based development team working on their first game.

Look out for the continuation of their blog series over the next few months as they build and market their new game. If you’re a developer and would like a development blog right here on Androidizen get in touch.

Daksh Tandon

I’m currently perusing architecture from Delhi. With so much free time after college, and a passion for games, one day I started a tutorial for java, and got hooked. It was so easy; quickly I completed that, learned Android. And what started as a one month trial, soon expanded and two months from then, I am still coding, and adding more stuff to it.

Gaming is always my favorite  Some might be quite hard but are challenging. Suddenly I thought about my life a little. I had to make a game always. There were so many games already. My life would take a big leap. I am in my final stage of concept and design. I am gonna make a game that people are gonna spend days clicking buttons.

The main concept behind the game was to make something that people of all age groups enjoy playing. And since it’s on the cell phone, I wanted something that people would enjoy playing in the train, bus, while travelling, to work, or back home. A casual 2D game, that people feel relaxed after playing, and also didn’t require stressing themselves about. I wanted everyone to enjoy playing the game, kids , adults, gamers, casual gamers. The game would cater to people who just spend say 10-15 min, playing on their phones while travelling, but at the same time, there will be something in store for people looking to complete objectives and are looking to spend more time on their mobile.

Mike Knight

Hi, I’m in my final years of business studies. Soon I’m gonna take a big leap in my life. But I was a little undecided about my future. There were so many options- I had to choose one quickly. But now I restarted my life a little. It sounds quite hard but not impossible. Gaming was always a pleasure.

When I met Daksh, he had already begun on the game. He had asked one of our mutual friends for some help with the promotion of the game. He had his final exams coming up, and I was always into games. So he introduced us two as he was busy around that time.

Right now it is just the two of us in the core team. Daksh works on the code, mostly alone, while I am responsible for getting coverage for the game. Because of his architecture background, his graphics is good, but for the final game, we will be taking help from someone. There are a lot of things that need to be covered apart from the coding, and that’s the graphics, website, promotion, and sounds of the game. And I’ll be responsible for either finding the right person for these things.

For the graphics, we both are working on it together, and but are also contacting freelance artists whose work we like.

The beginning of the development process: Placeholder content

The important thing regarding place holder content is, that the performance of the game shouldn’t get affected once you replace it with the original content. So suppose I’m using a temp image for the main character of the game. I will make sure that the size of the image file is (if not exact), around the same size and dimensions of how I want the final image to be.

Also, if I have a background sound that’ll be looping. Even though we have not finalised on the track, we still use an audio clip looping in the background. Because if I integrate the audio track only at the final moment, there is a chance that the thread might start to lag, or might crash because of some reason.

So, the basic idea is that, when we have the final content ready and integrate it with the game, there shouldn’t be any errors that causes the thread to crash, or slow down; that is the main thing to remember.

The post Hellboy Studios Developer Diary part 1 – Introduction and handling placeholder content appeared first on Androidizen.