How to explain your game to an asshole | Hacker News Reader

How to explain your game to an asshole

pentadact.com

180 pointsarthurbrown36 comments

You can switchout `game` to `startup` and the similarities are quite the same.

The four points that you discuss to explain your game as quick as possible is similar to the elavator pitch for startups, or even more accurately Adeo Ressi's MadLibs for pitching...

My company, __(insert name of company)__, is developing __(a defined offering)__ to help __(a defined audience)__ __(solve a problem)__ with __(secret sauce)__.

He did a video here. https://vimeo.com/16447520

At a glance when I first saw those snapshots of you giving the talk I thought you were Sheldon Cooper for a split second! Perhaps you get that a lot!

That was an awesome video. Thanks!

I'll be pitching new board games this year at shows and I'm certainly going to use this.

I like the sentiment, and I would extend it to websites for just about anything. Often I'll use Wikipedia to learn about X instead of going to X's own website because Wikipedia will at least say what it is instead of blowing a bunch of marketing-speak at me and asking me to download a PDF whitepaper.

The other day I was in the bathroom and there was an Oxford dictionary in front of me, so I looked at the definition for 4 words (root beer, ginger, tumbleweed, ?) in a couple minutes. Then I realized if I had done that on Wikipedia it would probably take me an hour.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Comparing reading a dictionary definition to an encyclopedia entry, and complaining that the encyclopedia had more detail? Perhaps it'd be a fairer comparison if you compared reading the first paragraph of the wikipedia article to the dictionary definition

Perhaps it'd be a fairer comparison if he compared reading the Encyclopedia Britannica to wikipedia. Or perhaps he's trying to make the point that sometimes all you needed was a definition, and you should have <your favourite search engine>'d "define: root beer" instead of going to wikipedia to be distracted?

Yes, but I didn't knew the define trick, so Googling and going to the first result (always Wikipedia) is "consulting the dictionary" these days.

no, it's consulting the encyclopedia. There's a big difference between an encyclopedia and a dictionary...

Who opens m-w.com to check what something means? You just google it, Everyone googles it.

Even worse is when you describe your game by the technology it sues. This is something that tends to happen a lot in the open source world: “X is an SDL/Python platformer for Linux, Window$, Darwin and OS/2 licensed under the GPL (version 3!)”

Exactly, I often get put off with games for Linux. Info that is meant for developers or the tech enthusiasts is not really great for gamers. Also, not greate for developers / tech enthusiasts who are in the "gaming" mode if you get what I mean.

Actually it's a pretty good indication that you should probably not play the game, as it is likely made by someone who values programming more than game design (this is also the reason why there are comparatively many more good open source game engines than good open source games).

This is true, perhaps it is something to do with making sure people have the correct dependencies installed.

Many open source games websites are badly designed also, often the front page is full of feeds from the developers blog or changelogs.

All you really need is a trailer video , a few screenshots and a download link.

Ironically the author had this to say:

"The first bad way to explain your game is to not explain it at all. People often put out some raw footage or a screenshot and let it speak for itself."

Also, I would not be a Minecraft fan if my son had not shown me Paul Soares Jr's excellent "How to survive your first night in Minecraft" video. The Minecraft web site itself never appealed to me though it's better now.

I like this quote "But reasonable people still respond better to writing that values their time, and doesn’t waste it to gratify the writer’s pretensions".

Sadly the author doesn't take his own advice and regales the reader with about 6 paragraphs of text before getting to the point. Once we're at the point, it's all interesting. The lead up, not so much.

You see, I'm an asshole too. I don't really know who you are yet and don't give a flip about why you did or didn't go to GDC. So get to the point first and then add the details about yourself once you have interested me.

Excellent write up otherwise.

Keep in mind this was a talk originally. Talks are going to be structured differently than essays.

Although, a professor at my university gave excellent advice to someone in my research group after an interview talk dry-run: put your conclusions first. Say the most important thing as soon as you can, because most people will not follow the whole talk, for many different reasons. I've tried to structure talks like this since hearing that.

I buy a lot of Humble Bundles.

A lot of those games I haven't even tried, because I can't figure out what any of them really are. Their websites are usually terrible (one game even shut down their website during the bundle. How helpful!).

Why would I spend time on them, then, when I have a ton of games that I know what to expect with?

Interesting article. I like the provocative asshole.. with a nice conclusion at the end specifying that people are just busy and not being direct is just non-respectful to your audience.

Kinda wondered why it's "to an asshole"? It's a great set of tips that would make sense for explaining anything you are seriously passionate about to anyone who isn't quite as passionate about it.

Would you have clicked on a link titled "How to explain your game"? I probably wouldn't have.

So, link bait. Fun.

It definitely gets the point across that they care a lot less about what you're talking about than you do.

I think the point is that most people will let you fumble around/meander until they understand or until you stop. Whereas an 'asshole' will simply tune you out otherwise.

From my experience.....this is how to explain your game to everybody. An asshole will just tell you to stfu if you waste his time. Which I guess is how the article concludes itself.

Maybe there's a series to be made here, a little like Zed Shaw's "Learn X the hard way", only it would be "Explain Y to an arsehole".

Point number two, before you even finish your first sentence, is to tell us the coolest unique thing about it.

There isn't a cool unique new thing in one game. There is a cool unique new thing every 3-5 years. It's just a fact: most games are remake if you prefer. I'm not saying games are not enjoyable and if they are for you, it's very cool.

Most indie games have a cool quirk that makes them unique. Maybe it's not new, or even unheard of, but the way it is baked into the gameplay is what sets them apart.

Of course if you're a game company making a generic zombie FPS, then you might not have something cool and unique to pitch your game with— but in that case, it won't be a surprise to anyone if your game performs miserably.

I made a 2d platformer game. It's a remake in many ways. I didn't spend much time on it.

But does it have something cool and unique?

Yup.

It has a custom physics engine.

Is the physics engine better than the ones other people make? Does it have some fancy theoretical advance? No way. It's simple and naive.

But it's different b/c i just made one up from scratch instead of copying it. It's a little quirky. That means if you played a bunch of platformers before, this one won't feel too repetitive, because the physics are different. It gives you something new to learn and get used to and figure out how to use to your advantage.

Example: in my game, ground tiles have high friction, air has much less, and ice tiles have even less than that. Therefore to land on ice and stop yourself you usually want to jump right after landing and put on the brakes while back in the air instead of while sliding on the ice.

Every game really does need to have something that's different from other games to give you some reason to play this game instead of those other games.

And it's not that hard to do that. Even if you're making a remake. All remakes should change something to be a little different from prior games.

Even if you're doing a sequel and do not change the art or game engine at all, you could still say "what it has that no other game has is MORE LEVELS that you haven't played before in the original". That will explain to people why to buy it.

Do your customers agree with your definition of unique? If yes, it's very cool.

If they don't find value in what I made, then it won't sell. And that's as it should be. Shrug. My first customer is me. I like it.

It's quite possible to make stuff different in a way no one likes. But you can and should make your stuff different in some way or other and then use this as a reason people might want to buy it.

By the way, I wish you the best for your game. How is it called? Can we test it somewhere? :)

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gruesomely-hard-platformer/id...

I can give out a few promo codes if people email me curi@curi.us

It's made with MacRuby.

I agree with the sentiment here, but the bigger issue is most games may not have a cool unique new thing that is communicable to listeners. Considering most games take at least a year to create, they usually stumble upon at least a few innovative, but small, ideas. Looking back at a game like Halo, probably the coolest feature was the ability to only hold two weapons at a time, a nowadays popular design choice which radically alters gameplay balance. However if you had told me before release that was the "killer feature", I would have been bored and uninterested.

Agreed. You just touched on one of the oddest quirks in psychology as well. People don't like to have their options taken away. But at the same time they don't want to think about the options they have.

So even though only having two weapons at a time is arguably a killer feature, it would be almost impossible to convince someone that this is true. Another example might be Apple, every time they take away an option and people complain they are arguably making their product better, but theres no way they can convince people that's true.

If people don't know they have an option they usually don't care about it or put up with any inconvenience.

I believe Halo's killer feature was the physics engine/warhog ... And we were VERY excited about it.

The two weapon thing isn't any different than the alt fire that unreal and halflife/counter strike were already doing.

Halo had tech demos of the warthog driving around a desert that was mind blowing.

MDK2 (released in March of 2000) had you play a third of the levels as a four-armed anthropomorphic dog and respectively let you hold four weapons at the same time. The gameplay balance they were going for was similar to Serious Sam, I think... i.e. everybody dies in large numbers (except you, occasionally). Actually, that game was made up almost exclusively of cool new features, go play it. The fact that one of the best third-person shooters/adventures was produced by BioWare of all companies still blows my mind a bit.

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