You said that when you just started, indie community gave you really warm welcome. Unfortunetaly this is not what happened to me, I make lot of ok games, but it seems nobody really cares. I have a feeling that indie is like a closed circle. Do you have advice how to become part of it ? Thanks !

January 24, 2014

The easiest way is to go to events and actively reach out to people you admire. Indie is quite open, and there are a lot of people part of the scene that are still working on their first 'real' project. If you want more specific advice, I'll need a more specific description of your situation. Do you live in a country with events? What games did you make? I'd love to give them a go.

You said that you were invited to talk at several Brazilian game conferences and that's awesome! Is there a particular reason why you didn't came here yet or are you planning to accept one of those invitations?

January 23, 2014

It sadly always coincided with another conference and one cancelled their invitation over financial reasons. If you know of any events that I could speak at, do feel free to let me know and I'll get in touch.

What's one thing that you notice a lot of new indies often screw up PR/marketing-wise? What are some steps we can take to fix this?

January 23, 2014

They think of it like developers think about audio in games way too often: as a thing you can do at the end. Marketing a game is making sure people care about your game, and secrecy or being scared to show it won't help with that. A lot of these things are actually carbon copies of design-related advice: test early and often, be empathic towards the player (even if it is to use it against them), don't be scared to show your game.

The second most common mistake seems to be when people are scared of the press, or refuse to go to events that they could attend that are around the corner. Even if you can't buy a ticket to an event, if you can afford traveling there, you should be there. Every contact is a contact, and nothing will humanise press more than talking to them. They're just like humans, you know. Some of them might actually be human, too!

Thoughts on Kings.com?

January 23, 2014

These are complex questions, but the short version is that their claims, actions and official statements all contradict. Trademarking "Candy" is already too far, but going after "Saga" - a word literally nobody calls the game by - and then litigating against small studios like Stoic is way out of bounds. This is not a defensive act, it's an offensive act.

I can't wait for the Candy Game Jam.

Liked by: Lazar Gruev

A Nuclear Throne design question: why weapons have no recoil on the player, like on Super Crate Box, that some weapons push the player back? Does it have something to do with the camera angle view?

January 22, 2014

I think Nuclear Throne is a lot more about the fluidity of motion than Super Crate Box was, so it didn't make sense to have it. Super Crate Box was about creating maximum diversity with a minimum arsenal, while Nuclear Throne is not. If a mechanic does not support your goals, kill it.

I'll ask J.W. and see if he has further thoughts. If he does, I'll post those too.

Do you have any tips on how best to succeed during a game jam? :)

January 22, 2014

Control your scope and prototype as fast as you can. Make something you can make in two to four hours and then polish it during the other forty-four hours. If you can make it fun in four hours, you can make it good in the remaining time. Don't be afraid to look at your game after four hours and killing it, but also don't be afraid to chase something if it's even remotely fun.

Jamming is about learning, so unless you do absolutely nothing even failure to make a game is a success in terms of jamming. One Game A Week / One Game A Month are wonderful examples of that mindset.

When will Super Crate Box work on iMac again?

January 22, 2014

If it's broken, please email rami@vlambeer.com. Interesting trick: if you see a brown bar and it doesn't crash, type your name, press enter, down, down, enter, enter. That should fix it.

Will you be at the Nordic Game Jam? If yes, when would be the best time to come up to you and say hi?

January 22, 2014

I wish, but between virtually keynoting the Melbourne Global Game Jam and flying to Montreal on the 26th to visit Execution Labs, it seems unlikely that I'll have enough time to jam myself. I'll jam the week after, maybe visiting Austin.

Would you ever want to work on a game that could be considered "AAA" in terms of budget, manpower and marketing effort?

January 22, 2014

I... I don't think so. I like having a strong feeling of ownership, and I don't think I'd be able to get that kick out of a AAA production. I know other developers do get that feeling in AAA - so I guess it's really a personal preference.

Wanna come over for dinner? I am making Noodles with duck flavor

January 22, 2014

Depends on where you live, but I'm up for Noodles with Duck-flavor!

If some day Vlambeer ends, what would you do?

January 22, 2014

Do something else! I just can't help wanting to make things, or trying to help people. It's how I keep myself sane.

How did you and J.W. meet up?

January 22, 2014

We met in the train to university, and the first thing J.W. ever told me was to 'shut the fuck up'. I had been talking about my previous project and he didn't like game-related conversation at 8AM in the morning. Either way, we didn't really like each other, so it took us two years and a shared dislike for our school to really start talking.

When we decided to drop out, we took J.W.'s Crates From Hell prototype and decided to make it into Super Crate Box. We made Radical Fishing for some money, because we had absolutely no money back then.

How was your evolution on learning game development and skills, from making games with 6 years old 'till rocking the world with Vlambeer? The most useful knowledge bits that you gathered on all those years?

January 22, 2014

I spent ten years just making awful things and then a few years working for somebody else. I learned a lot of programming there. I actually learned most of my business-related skills that helped Vlambeer out early on selling computers at an electronics store.

I think the most useful knowledge is to never assume anything - try things, even if they feel unreasonable or weird to you. That's the only way to truly know anything for sure in an ever-changing industry.

Liked by: Felipe Nanni

Hi. I first met you at E3, but have never been sure if I pronounced your name correctly! Is Rami pronounced "Raw-mee," "Ray-mee," or "Ram-ee?" Thanks!

January 22, 2014

Ra-mee, but Ray-mee will work too.

Vlambeer is almost like a AAA company - it's a group of people who gets a salary, have to produce games that generate revenue and each takes care of its own thing. Having a dedicated bussiness guys makes it even more so. How indie you guys really are, compared to other medium-sized companies?

January 22, 2014

It's two people that make games with friends, of which one does business, programming and production and the other does design and prototyping. We have no 'dedicated' business guys, we don't have to generate revenue with our games, we get a minor salary and we spend a lot of our time on helping out other independent studios. As far as I'm concerned, that's an indie studio - but you're obviously free to disagree.

So a central point of your talks are always: go make games. Do you have any concrete advice as to how to get started? What are some good entry-level gameprograms, code editors and asset sources? Maybe some pitfalls you should watch out for as a beginner?

January 22, 2014

As for tools: Unity, Game Maker, Stencyl, Construct, Paint, SFXR and Microsoft Paint. The biggest pitfalls you can run into are taking honest criticism personally, thinking you need to fix every piece of feedback and making big games. Make small games, listen to people and learn to select what feedback you want to act on.

Pindakaas met hagelslag of pindakaas met suiker?

January 22, 2014

I don't like peanut butter at all.

I started to learn game dev by myself recently and I like to use your games as inspiration to learn. I keep trying to replicate a mechanic I like, to build skills. I know about Vlambeer's history with clonning, but what I do is to learn, I do my stuff too. I can stop if it bothers you. Does it?

January 22, 2014

It doesn't bother us at all. Absolutely not. Trying to recreate other games is a wonderful way of learning about the challenges and choices that went into a game, and something I recommend starting developers to do until they feel comfortable making an increasing amount of people. The problem arises when somebody clones a game simply to earn money.

I saw that, on Steam, when hovering the mouse over Luftrausers in the Coming Soon guide, the Release Date is set for April 30th, even though it says Early 2014. My girlfriend is waiting the release so she can give me my 2013 christimas gift, can you make it sooner?

January 22, 2014

I wish. It depends on Sony, rather than ourselves - when Sony greenlights the PS3/PS Vita versions, we can go ahead and announce the final release date. Up until that point, things are in flux regarding the LUFTRAUSERS launch.

Was it hard to get your games on Steam?

January 22, 2014

We got lucky with Super Crate Box getting nominated for the Independent Games Festival awards. That give us a contact with a few people within Steam, and they set up our listing there.

I have met some game developers who think you are an asshole, ignoring them and not acknowledging them and their work. That was not my experience. were you an ass hole to some other game developers? if not, why do you think they would think that?

January 22, 2014

I guess you can't please everybody. I've found that the more visible you get, the lower the ratio is of people you can make feel like you gave them your full attention. I do really try, often to the point of randomly dropping all my work to hop onto Skype with a complete stranger and help them out. This account here is simply an attempt to improve on exactly that sort of thing a bit.

I appreciate every game, because even though not every game is good or has potential, there's always the effort somebody put into the game and the experience someone got out of making it. As I like to say, "every game that is released is a fucking miracle".

Would you recommend going to some bigger game jams (like nordic game jam) if a person wants to make games but doesn't have any game making experience?

January 22, 2014

Absolutely. Game jams are a great place to get some early experience. If you want to be a bit prepared grab Unity, Game Maker, Construct or Stencyl before going and play around with some of those a bit.

Do you have any thoughts about the lack of a gamedev scene in countries that consume a lot of videogames? For exemple: Brazil. I personally can't find a reason for this absence os local groups.

January 22, 2014

I actually find there is strong emerging gamedev scene in Brazil and South American territories in general. I've been invited to talk at several Brazilian game conferences recently, so there definitely is a developers community.

The golden rule is that if you want something that doesn't exist, you should make that happen yourself. There was no developers scene in Utrecht when we started, so we just started building a community ourselves.

When I met you, I thought you didn't liked me. But when I said goodbye you hugged me and, even though I've read that you hug everybody, that was special to me. Now I like to think that you were just too overwhelmed with the event and trying to make the best of it all! Am I correct?

January 22, 2014

Absolutely. I barely ever meet anybody I don't like at events - the games industry tends to be full of open-minded and wonderful, creative, smart people. It does get a bit much every now and then - especially when I visit several events in a row. I guess that sort of thing is exactly why I made this account.

Have you ever made a game without JW, or designed more by you than him?

January 22, 2014

Yes, quite often even. I spend my period between being 1994 year old and 2010 making small games by myself. At Vlambeer though, Jan Willem makes the design calls. That's the way we set things up and that's perfectly fine with me. Every now and then I'll try and correct things a bit if they stray too far away from the goals we are continuously reestablishing, but in general I completely trust J.W. with the design choices.

Rami Ismail

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