How Untitled Goose Game became a real video game
vox.com
vox.com
A bad goose variation on https://i.imgur.com/WPuSziL.jpg
It's a simple and hilarious game. Haven't finished it yet, but strongly recommend to anyone who's on the fence.
Ugh they leave such a great impression on you. Miss you Joe.
edit: this comment is apparently oddly controversial for a startup-oriented forum. Perhaps someone could explain why? They have really struck marketing gold in a way most small companies would envy.
Nearly.
* Make a developer spit their coffee out.
* Preside over the morning's stand-up.
* Force SketchySeaBeast to buy something on the Epic Store
* Lock somebody out of their office.
* Water the office plants.
The simple fact that Epic offers a much better deal in terms of cost to be on the store. Half of what Valve demands per sale.
Steam are claimed to have 90M active monthly users, I can't find a figure for Epic; it stands to reason it's less though, maybe half their registered users (now Fortnite lost its shine??) would be a reasonable guess?
It probably depends on your demographic considerably; basically if Epic have less than 79M active and the demographics are the same then revenue from Steam will be greater, across a wider user base (which might improve ongoing prospects?).
Your final sentence seems to contradict the rest of the paragraph. If the games are the same price, why are you choosing EGS (to contribute more to the company? but that would be choosing a game store).
Steam's discoverability is pretty piss-poor, and most of the marketing is sales that have convinced your customer base to never buy anything new, just wait for the sale (which cuts into your income with 50%+ discounts).
I'm more bemused by the fanatical loyalty to Steam.
There's a simple solution to that. Just charge more for the game on Steam et al.
For example. Untitled Goose Game is £15.99 on the Epic Game Store, so charge at least £18.39 on Steam.
There have been articles on HN about mailing list conversion rates. Depends on the product, but the usual # was 1-3%, with outliers being as much as 15%.
Why is that part of capitalism where Steam has near-monopoly on Games okay, but not the part where they have to compete with someone? Why would someone have loyalty to one huge corporation over another?
I don't get it.
Maybe that's the push-back?
> Please note that Steam keys cannot be sold on other sites unless the product is also available for purchase on Steam at no higher a price than is offered on any other service or website.
Stuff like cloud sync for game saves or being able to buy games as a gift to someone else's account. It's 2019. You shouldn't launch a game platform without syncing saves to the account. Looking at you too, Oculus.
It's catching up and I haven't minded the platform for Borderlands, but I'd have felt better about using it if they'd had a more fully baked system to launch with.
I also don't love having yet another game store/updater/launcher platform, but that ship has sailed.
IMO they have squandered a lot of it lately but they remain very popular and people are just extremely used to the steam launcher.
I for one am VERY happy that somebody is forcing Steam to stop being complacent and is competing on margins (30% is a LOT of money).
But why not?
In any case there are many more other interesting games out there than I have time for, there's some stuff in my Steam library that I have yet to play, so if some games aren't accessible in the way I prefer, then those will be among the games I'll skip. For the makers of the game their game probably is important and special, but for a customer like me it's not, the competition between games for my time is huge, there's so much good stuff out there that there's no possible reason to jump through hoops (even if they're not that difficult) to get to any particular game, so if any particular game is not in the place where it's most covenient for me, it might as well not exist. There are some exceptions for nostalgic reasons that have driven me to e.g. gog.com for a few games I enjoyed decades ago, but there really has to be a special reason to do so. There was a time in my life where I'd be eager to invest a lot of time and effort just to get a particular game (worldwide distribution of games on floppies and CDs was awkward to say at least) but that's not the case anymore. Especially for short niche/fad games like this one seems to be, their role is like that of an impulse buy or a comfort food - it has to be a 'click here, pay a dozen bucks, enjoy your stuff immediately' experience without having to bother with making yet another account and installing extra stuff that you have to care about.
If devs were just choosing to not release on steam because epic gives a bigger cut that would be fine, but that isn't the case.
I don't mind purchasing games from Steam. I've purchased a game or two on the EA store. I don't know if I purchased anything on the Ubisoft store, but I know it's needed for some of their games. I've purchased games from the Microsoft Store.
I've purchased games from sites like Good old games, Humble Bundle.
I think in practical terms, it's a bit annoying to have different, heavy clients to use to have these different games. It'd be less of a hassle if they all had a Single Sign On, I guess. But, yeah, the vast majority of my games are on Steam and I only use the EA store when I want to play a game that's exclusive to that store.
It makes sense to say "but it's market competition, why would you dislike Epic", but I don't think it appeals to the gamer identity/ethos. Idk how many people actually care about it; it's probably a vocal minority.
To be specific I have issues with Epic offering exclusivity deals, especially to games that are KickStarter and had promised to release the product on other platforms. That's it. If games were only available on Epic because Epic offered a better cut I wouldn't take an issue with it.
You might say that in those cases the developers/publishers are more at fault than Epic is, which is fair. However it is kind of like sleeping with someone who is in a monogamous relationship vs. cheating. Sure it isn't as bad as cheating yourself, but I still view it as bad thing to do morally speaking.
Too bad this game is only available there.
I have gotten emails from gmail forgetting to pin in my middle initials with periods.
I'm guessing you wouldn't be screwing over whoever registered the account, since presumably they wouldn't have had a chance to validate their (your) email address.
It's extremely streamer-friendly (i.e. "fun to watch other people play and react to"), which is a big boost to virality, and it got featured by a hugely popular YouTuber (Dunkey) four days after its launch. And it got lucky. It's not an uncommon story.
More than streamer-friendly, it's Reddit- and Twitter-friendly. Any small clip of the game is automatically funny and share-able. The bird's simple design makes it easy for fan artists to make more memes.
This might not seem necessarilty better for the players, but considering how many smaller game studios / creators are on the verge of profitability, this might mean we get to play games we wouldn't otherwise.
Most of the pushback seems to be because everyone is fine with Steam, yet another store seems unnecessary, and it smells a lot like a rich company buying their way into our hearts (exclusives from all that Fortnite money). I think that's why it doesn't sit too well.
It's about on par with or better than what Steam was when it first launched. Steam was an absolute clusterfuck when it first launched, and Valve only got away with it because they tied Half Life 2 to Steam.
I ended up buying it on Switch shortly after its release.
I spent a very fun couple of hours on this game and memed a lot about it with my partner.
It is not going to have the profound emotional impact that e.g. Outer Wilds had on me but that goose animation and sound designs are perfect and make for good memes that I will also remember.
As an example, Wendy's Twitter account has become pretty popular for all their pop culture references and crazy projects like a Dating Simulator and a Tabletop RPG--but at the end of the day, they're advertisements. Personally, it's hard to recognize the time and effort that went into these projects because they were only made to sell fast food; Wendy's isn't releasing these projects because they think they're cool, but because they have a bottom line they want to bring up.
I use an ad-blocker. I haven't seen a television ad in forever. However, I'm sure that this isn't the first time that memes and social media have been used as advertising. It's antithetical to what I've said previously, but I guess the most effective uses of memes as advertising are so good that you can't tell they're ads. Ultimately, if it's funny and not forced, then it's going to spread. And weirdly, I'm okay with it.
I just can't bring myself away from the comparison to how stuff becomes unpopular as soon as your parents start doing it. Facebook became ~uncool~ when our parents started using it, and I don't want to see memes become less of a cultural touchstone because of corporations starting to abuse them.
Additionally the whole meme is pretty far from commercialisable. It's the simplicity and wholesomeness of the goose that gives it strength. It would be difficult to attach the image to a brand without killing the feel.
https://twitter.com/john_harper/status/1177301721837535232?s...
Which, I think, says something.
https://twitter.com/lluvia_deer/status/1177864395822530561?s...
(Based on the legendary vine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6gBu2Zd7Bc )
https://www.film.vic.gov.au/showcase/untitled-goose-game
edit: I mention this as interesting trivia, not as in, "Watch out, Untitled Goose Game is a front for the (Australian) feds"
It just keeps getting bettter!
[0] https://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/05/government-funding-for-gam...
Likening crying at your desk to a delightful video game is exactly the kind of analogy that I would expect from one of Jeff Bezos' employees.
Some people just have that reaction to difficulty and frustration or whatever else, it doesn't have to mean that an environment is terrible or immoral if people cry about it sometimes.
Sometimes there are jobs that have to be done but that make it really hard to control your emotions. And some people have a really hard time controlling their emotions anyway. It’s better to have a safe place to let that out.
Worked with a developer who had to leave the office temporarily one day to go outside and cry in his car.
Was in a team where he could have spoken to any of us and we all would have listened and helped, but I guess sometimes, some people, just need to be alone and cry.
Whatever helps them. I'm not going to judge.
I think the psychology has something to do with growing up on a few hundred acres.
Boy could I have used a crying room. Not to actually cry but just to escape for a while now and then.
Out in the country I was five minutes walk from lochs and l forests. I used to be able to leave the house and walk for twenty plus miles and maybe see a handful of people. Just me, the outside and hours of alone time.
You dont realise how much you miss that! Now in a city with no car and its so hard to get away from everything. Jusy to get away and clear my head.
Yeah, I live alone but sitting inside my house unable to get out and away from life can feel so trapping.
One day ill get back.
There are so many valid criticisms of Bezos, the companies he owns, etc. This is so unnecessary. The quoted line says nothing about Bezos.
Just one example: https://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/11/27/undercover-reporter...
Given that, it is not too much of a stretch to associate Jeff's example and style of leadership with this person's statement - in a mostly tongue-in-cheek manner, mind you.
This article is about a video games, the story doesn't mention Amazon or even her workplace specifically, the quote was a lighthearted joke (jokes use exaggeration to be funny, ie. "punching a wall" at an office), etc.
I would expect them to identify more with "crying as you pack boxes as fast as you possibly can for 12 hours."
- Goat Simulator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvWGLcdI8o8
- Untitled Goose Game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LL2AtHo1gk
- Pigeon Simulator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb30jQ_Bpmg
Well, that and maybe the original Leisure Suit Larry, just to see why I wasn't allowed to open that game at all.
I sat there guessing all the trivia questions anyway and then did all the things I wasn't supposed to do.
Good times.
I think we're headed into good territory though. Check out this clearly Harvest Moon inspired cat sim: http://cattailsgame.com/
Personally, I would like to see an animal-centric classic Gamemaker style RPG a la Chef Boyardee's Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden with an audacious plot on the level of Cats & Dogs.
tl;dw: Those other games are more about generating absurd and funny situations through (carefully designed) intentionally awkward controls and silly physics. Goose Game is carefully designed to allow the player to set up and execute a joke for themselves.
Bread Simulator: https://www.bossastudios.com/games/i-am-bread/
That said, I think both the games they've produced (Firewatch and Untitled Goose Game) are duds. They're flashy, well marketed, and totally underbaked. I expected to love both of those games, being a fan of "walking simulators" and story focused games (which Firewatch fumbled), and Hitman and stealth games (which UGG fumbled).
I vastly prefer Gone Home, which is a very similar type of game, with much less flashy visual style but the characters, voice acting, and storytelling are handled, imho, perfectly.
The game itself is great fun for a casual game and it's fun to watch people play and laugh.
The inherent share-ability / meme-ability of goose antics is viral marketing at it's best.
Well deserved success, I hope they do a goose-2 with co-op mischief!
(No, not mine.)
In that case, this will likely join my list of fun, but pretty odd games:
* The Stanley Parable
* The Goat Simulator
* I am Bread
* Starwhals
* Octodad
I'd also like to throw Surgeon Simulator into the mix.
I want more games like this.
Probably one of the more harrowing things I've ever done was egg addling for goose population control in a lake nearby. Nothing like balancing on a canoe fighting off geese with a paddle while the other person sneaks up behind to the nest and does the job.
The one thing the game seemed to fail to capture is the horror as a goose comes up hisses in your face. Geese do this. You know that when some animal comes up and hisses at you it means business.
We too used to live near a lake, in an apartment. The geese there terrorized people one year.
We had a tiny little partially disabled girl ferret. She could barely walk but slithered and bounced around with gusto and she had a surfeit of chutzpah.
We bought a little leash for her, and let her explore the grass, bushes, mulch and edge of the lake, and she loved every minute of it, chucking and dooking happily.
Then the geese saw us, and started their "feed us or suffer" swarm. We of course began to back up, and as the long necked avian assholes drew closer, we thought of beating a hasty retreat.
But then our saviour leaped forth! Tiny disabled girl ferret happily bounced around at our feet and then charged at the geese like a little flailing bezerker, loudly dooking the whole time.
I'd never before seen a goose visibly think "oh fuck", and here was a couple dozen double taking geese stopping dead in their webby tracks, like a European general trying to advance east during a Russian winter. Each goose looked shocked, then confused, then terrified as they abandoned any thoughts of camaraderie and fled from this tiny whirling daemon dervish of death.
Tiny girl ferret didn't get within 4 feet of the geese. Not a single of Nature's red teeth or claws were used. But a pound or so of sinewy insane calamity managed to put the fear of a goose god into those beaky bastards.
Unfortunately they kept attacking people and were dealt with somehow. We weren't told how, the apartment complex wouldn't say anything.
----- * -----
This is a true story. If you want to scare geese away, get yourself a ferret. In fact, get 3 because they are stinky social weasels who love to sleep cuddled up together. I miss my girls and boys, they were so much fun!
https://www.howtogeek.com/423643/how-to-use-google-chromes-h...
Cant make avoiding adverts too easy, after all.