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In Episode 3 we are introducing Dave McCabe, narrative writer of Tavern Keeper and the person who pitched the game concept and initial game design for the game.
We discuss the motivation for Tavern Keeper, what inspired its game design, the style of stories you might encounter in the game and how writing humorous games can be a challenge.
Participants: Patrick Klug, Daniel Klug
Recorded: April 2019
In this episode, which was recorded before the Patreon launch, Patrick and Daniel predict how the Patreon launch will go.
Once you hear the outro keep listening as we added a post-launch addendum to check our predictions against what actually happened.
Participants: Patrick Klug, Daniel Klug
Recorded: April 2019
This is our first ever episode. Recorded on the first try and delivered to you unedited. Be gentle. We hope you like it!
In this episode the founders (that’s me Patrick, and my brother Daniel) reminisce about the history of Greenheart Games, Game Dev Tycoon and talk about why posting ‘not this year’ on our Tavern Keeper channels last year was perhaps not the best choice.
We also talk about our hopes and vision for the Patreon launch.
This post was originally sent to our newsletter subscribers. You can sign up here.
Hope you are doing well! I know we have been quiet for a while as we are working hard on a number of things.
That’s why today we wanted to give you a BIG update on something new and exciting we want to try – our new behind-the-scenes community program called Greenheart Games Club – an update on our second game Tavern Keeper, and a quick word about Game Dev Tycoon. So, hold onto your seats and here we go
I know that a lot of you appreciate that we don’t spam you with emails every two weeks while others would really appreciate more frequent updates. We have struggled with this conundrum for a while now. Newsletters, social media and other channels are great for sharing images, snapshots and updates but they aren’t ideal for building the type of close community we’d like to foster around the game. That’s why we decided to try something new:
We want to give you the chance to get closer to the development of Tavern Keeper. That means showing you in-progress stuff, asking your opinions, regularly recording behind-the-scenes podcasts and having a new platform for discussions through the Greenheart Games Club.
For anyone interested in becoming a part of our Greenheart Games Club, we have already prepared some cool things like the first episode of the Greenheart Games podcast called Greencast. If you join, you’ll also be one of the first on our official Discord server and there’s plenty more to come. Check out our Patreon page with more launch offers here: https://patreon.com/greenheartgames.
For those of you who don’t want to join the Patreon: No worries, we know it’s not for everyone and we’ll have more news and content for you down the line as we think the Club will have long-term benefits for everyone.
As many of you probably know we have been working relentlessly on our second game, Tavern Keeper.
While the game is not ready yet (as things stand we are probably looking at a release next year) we are proud to say: we are making good progress! We just need to focus on getting the game right and keeping everyone on the team sane, instead of rushing the game towards an unrealistic finish line.
As for today, we wanted to share this new little gif with you to make the time waiting for the game feel that little bit shorter. We will have more updates about the game – as well as our struggles and challenges – for our Club members from now on.
For all our other fans we will of course keep sending updates about big developments your way too. So, thanks for your patience!
Last year, we celebrated the fifth anniversary of Game Dev Tycoon as well as documented our mobile launch (iOS and Android). Naturally, we are focusing on the development of Tavern Keeper right now but we still have a few surprises planned around Game Dev Tycoon. Stay tuned!
That’s all for now. Thanks so much for all the support and we hope to see some of you in the Greenheart Games Club!
Have a great day
Patrick and the whole Greenheart Games team
It’s been five whole years since Game Dev Tycoon released on Steam. Time for a brief illustrated trip through the game’s history.
Back in 2011, my brother Daniel and I (we are both software developers) decided that we wanted to try to make a game. After days of brainstorming and discussions, we settled on the idea of making a game dev simulator. We were inspired by Game Dev Story on the iPhone (made by Kairosoft) and wanted to make a game in that genre with our own spin on it. Our intention was to make a game dev simulator where the player would have finer control over the decisions of what to focus on during game development.
Game Dev Tycoon started, as many games do, on a single piece of paper.
Back then, we imagined the game as a turn-based game with almost no graphics for phones. Our plan was to create a small but fun game to gain experience and test the market.
This is what the game looked like as a prototype.
We spend a few months in this prototype developing the algorithms on how points are generated, what decisions players make, and how virtual games are reviewed and judged.
Next, we realized how difficult it would be to be successful on mobile without a big marketing partner so, when Windows 8 (remember Windows 8?) was announced, we pivoted hard towards Windows. Our plan was to make Game Dev Tycoon the first simulation game on the very first Windows Store which we thought was a decent marketing strategy.
Windows 8 was all about tablets and touch-screens so our designs – intended for phones – no longer cut it. We changed from a turn-based simulation game with almost no graphics to a real-time isometric simulation game where you see your office at all times.
Windows 8 only had two reasonable technology choices: C++ with Microsoft’s Windows-specific XAML frontend or HTML5. We both had XAML experience and Daniel is a great C++ developer (me, less so :D) but we also both disliked XAML. More importantly, while we heavily bet the game on Windows 8, we had enough experience in the Microsoft ecosystem not to trust the hype blindly. If the Windows 8 Store would flop, what would we do? With that in mind we opted to go for a versatile cross-platform technology instead of what we knew and decided to write our game in HTML5. Neither Daniel nor I had ever written anything in HTML5 before.
We took our prototype and ported it from C# to JavaScript. We also changed our algorithms from turn-based to real-time.
In May 2012 the game looked like this:
What followed was months of intense work to make the Windows 8 launch deadline. Moving to HTML5 was mostly easier than I personally expected but it did take me a whole day to figure out how to stack buttons on top of each other in CSS, not to mention how to center things
Initially, both Daniel and I worked on the game as a side project to our full time jobs but we soon realized that we needed to give it much more attention. I transitioned out of my job and put my savings from 10+ years as a software engineer behind the project to hire artists and finish the game on time, while Daniel worked hard next to his job and on weekends. If my money would run out, he’d have to support us both.
It was an intensely stressful and uncertain time full of the highs and lows of indie development.
Three months later, we published a free ‘lite’ version which just contained the first level of the game on the Windows 8 Consumer Preview store. The rest of the game wasn’t even close to being finished yet.
This looks very familiar at a glance but in the final version we replaced the 3D modeled characters by more cartoony 2D ones and reworked the level art to be more crisp, stylized, and colorful. We also ditched the cut-off wall look.
Left: preview style. Right: release graphics.
We were quite nervous releasing just a preview game but within days we had nearly a thousand downloads and 4.5 star reviews. We were the very first simulation game on the Store.
Fueled by the positive response and early reviews, we put our heads down and developed the rest of the game. Here are a few images from the process.
This is the evolution of our second level. From basic sketch and a painted version in our old art-style to complete reboot and finally a vector draft which is quite close to what we ended up with.
By the time we designed the last level we had optimized our design process. Below you see a much more streamlined progression from sketch to layout concept to final piece.
On the UI front, we quickly decided against a more commonly seen fancy UI and instead focused on big readable text and minimalism. Here is a comparison between an early design versus what it ended up looking like.
After 8 intense months of work, Game Dev Tycoon launched on the Windows 8 Store on December 11th, 2012. With around 420 sales on day 1, we made it to spot 3!
Sadly, Windows 8 and particularly the Windows Store didn’t quite reach the adoption we had hoped for and sales quickly dropped and leveled out. We knew that we had to port the game to a wider audience if we wanted to be able to work on another game full-time.
Our previous decision not to use Windows-Store-only technology for the game now proved crucial and within a few months we made the game run on desktops for Windows/Mac and Linux.
Late April 2013, we published the game on our own store via our website. At the same time we released a modified version on torrent site as a little piracy experiment. I still remember saying that after working non-stop on the game for over a year, I was planning to take a week off. I was just gonna publish the results of our piracy experiments first.
I published the story late at night, went to bed and when I woke up the next morning everything was on fire. Our piracy story went viral overnight. We had 500 emails in our inbox. Our website was down because it couldn’t handle the traffic and Game Dev Tycoon was suddenly discussed everywhere.
We were utterly unprepared for the sudden spotlight. Emails kept flooding in and because of the sudden influx of players so too did the bug reports. At the same time the discussion around our experiment exploded and the press wanted to talk to us.
We hired some help to handle emails but decided to listen to our players and retreated from the spotlight to focus on the game instead. With all the new players, lots of valuable feedback and critique was brought to our attention and after we were Greenlit for a Steam release we decided to address those concerns. Four months later, this resulted in the release of the improved Steam version on August 30th, 2013.
Since the original Steam release a lot has happened.
– We have released 58 updates to the game.
– Most recently, a major content and quality-of-life update introducing new topics, everyone’s favorite new console, a brand new game mode and several important UX improvements went live for free.
– The technology we developed (and open sourced) to enable Steam support for our game has now been used in 23 other Steam games.
– Game Dev Tycoon has been ported to iOS and Google Play.
– We have manually replied to nearly 40K emails in five years.
– Our modding community is still going strong with hundreds of mods and dozens which go far beyond simple content additions. From the ever-green most subscribed mods to more recent additions like the Compact Topic & Genres mod and the much anticipated upcoming TAG MOD.
Screenshot from the upcoming TAG MOD by Bellwood Studios.
We are incredibly honored and humbled by the success of Game Dev Tycoon and for the past five years we have turned this small two-brother team into a seven-people indie studio and poured our heart into developing our next game: Tavern Keeper. It’s not ready yet but we plan to write an update in coming weeks and give you a better idea of what to expect.
Quite an old screenshot by now. We’ll aim to share more soon.
Please consider following our developer page and sign up to our newsletter if you want to know more. We are also thinking of doing a special Game Dev Tycoon developer stream in a week or so. If you’d be interested in that, please let us know in the comments.
–
Patrick Klug
Greenheart Games
As promised, to celebrate the release of the iOS and Google Play version of Game Dev Tycoon, we’ve now updated the Desktop versions of the game. Here are the goodies:
Try your luck surviving the harsh realities of piracy in this new ultra-hard game mode in which you have to invent DRM and sell company shares to survive.
You can find the pirate mode under the advanced options when starting a new game.
We’ve also added two new achievements:
Inspired by the mobile UI, we’ve revamped the review screen with now 100% more star-power.
Disclaimer: Sudden rushes of anger from receiving a bad score from All Games is unchanged but the feeling of elation from receiving amazing scores is increased by several measurable units of excitement!
Messages and events can now appear in a new sidebar instead of opening automatically and interrupting gameplay.
Messages can stack. You can click on them to read the message (or right-click to dismiss them). They will gently pulse and disappear if you ignore them too long.
We’ve tuned the default settings to be ideal for first-time players but experienced players can control which type of messages should auto-popup and which should appear in the sidebar in the new “Messages” settings tab:
We felt that the un-modded game lacked a few core topics that prevented players from re-making their favorite game in Game Dev Tycoon. This release adds 15 new topics to the game to enable more game combinations and, while we were at it, we completely redesigned the topic picker with shiny new icons.
Adding topic icons made the topic list a bit bigger, so we took this as an opportunity to add kinetic scrolling to lots of scrollable elements in the game. If you want to quickly browse the topic list now just click, drag, and flick it!
We were made aware of a pretty sad bug where the ‘women in tech’ event in the game did not alter the gender balance of job applicants. We have now fixed this and also added a lot more famous women game developers to the game.
In related news, the default character when starting a new game is now randomized and there is a random character button for you to press too.
Turns out that Ninvento can’t stop innovating! We have added the Ninvento Swap to the platform list, including a corresponding news story telling you all about bitter cartridges. We have also added a new late-game PC image to the game.
Existing mods should continue to function as they have before but we have added a few new features which modders can make use of:
– Mods can now add an (optional) icon to their topics by specifying an iconUrl (documentation).
– Mods can now add their own settings UI to the game’s settings-panel via a call to `GDT.addSettingsTab(title, content);` (documentation).
– Mods can spawn messages in the new sidebar. (documentation).
– The game now ships the Greensock GSAP animation library which modders can use to its full potential (documentation).
Hope you all enjoy this free update. We will now head back into fantasy land and focus on our second game. We hope we can talk more about it soon. If you haven’t done so yet, *please* sign up to our newsletter on tavernkeeper.com.
– If you are on Steam or itch.io, the update should be delivered to you automatically.
– If you bought the game from us directly, then you can re-use your original download link to download the game. In case you can’t find it anymore or the link doesn’t work please write a quick email to orders@fastspring.com (our payment providers) and they will resend you your link. If you have any troubles at all, get in touch with us via support@greenheartgames.com and we’ll help.
– If you bought the game on Humble or MacGameStore please download the new version from your account page.
– If you are a Linux user please note that we are still working on the Linux downloadable distributables. They should be ready in a day or so. If you are on Steam, it’s all good as the new version is already available for Linux there.
v1.6.11
–New: super-difficult ‘pirate’ game mode including new piracy, DRM and company ownership game mechanics.
–New: Added Ninvento Swap console and 100% more mentioning of denatonium benzoate in the game.
–New: Added new modern PC image.
–New: UI panels have now a kinetic drag behaviour.
–New: Updated review screen with new star animations.
–New: Added 15 new topics.
–New: Nicer topic and genre picker with all new topic and genre icons.
–New: Added icons to context menu.
–New: New message sidebar where messages can appear without interrupting gameplay.
–New: New ‘Messages’ settings allow you to set which in-game messages should auto-popup and which should open in the new sidebar.
–New: Character can now be randomized when starting a company.
–New: Settings, achievements and highscore panels are now draggable.
–New (modding): Mods can now add their own settings panel via GDT.addSettingsTab(title,jqueryContent);
–New (modding): Custom topics can now specify a iconUrl to show a custom icon (otherwise generic fallback is used).
–New: Modders can now make use of greensocks GSAP animation library: https://greensock.com/gsap
–Improved: Added more famous women to the game.
-Added: Translations of new content.
-Improved: Removed UI selection outline from slider handle.
-Improved: Added visual clue when there are not enough research points to start a research project.
-Improved: Small story window is now slightly wider.
-Improved: Sponsoring the women in tech event now causes more women to apply for jobs.
-Improved: Combobox in new game window is now larger.
-Improved: The default character when starting a new company is now randomized.
-Changed: Progression hint messages are now categorized as company milestones and will auto-open by default.
-Fixed: Randomize character button in company creation screen has missing icon.
-Fixed: Animation sounds would sometimes continue playing when starting a new game.
-Fixed: Typewriting animation would sometimes speed up on the intro screen when starting a new game.
-Fixed: Several buttons do not play a sound when clicked.
-Fixed: It was possible to have a game that never went off the market if a company had lost all fans and then released another bad game.
-Fixed: The splashscreen is no longer draggable.
-Fixed: When stories picked team members, often the first staff got picked.
Welcome to the surprising second part of our Android release reports. If you missed part one, you can catch up on it here.
In this report, I had expected to write about sales numbers and piracy rates but given the series of mind-boggling events this past week, this will have to wait a little.
After the phenomenal reaction on our first day, things continued quite well, and by day six, we had an unbelievable rating of 5.0 from over two thousand players.
The exact average rating was 4.96 (99.2% 5-stars) but Google Play shows everything above 4.95 as a clean 5.0
We were so excited until, an hour later, we mysteriously lost 438 of our 5-star reviews. Within a moment, over 25% of all our reviews were just gone.
Confused, we took to twitter and asked our players whether anyone could confirm that their review had disappeared and, sure enough, minutes later, multiple confirmations came trickling in.
It looked like Google was removing genuine reviews from our Store page, en masse.
A bit of research brought up a story from a year ago (source) that puts the blame on Google’s algorithm for fighting fake reviews and concluding that genuine reviews are also deleted by it as collateral damage. This particular story talked about losing 4-6 reviews a day. We had just lost over 400.
But our troubles weren’t over. The next day, we lost another 430 reviews. Two days later another 655 reviews were silently removed and then another 500+, gone forever.
By our calculations, if Google’s algorithm hadn’t intervened, we would have nearly 3,000 reviews by now. Instead, 13 days after our release, we have 25 fewer reviews (622) than what we had on the first day. Google seems to have quietly removed at least 77% of all our reviews.
We are lucky that despite the culling of thousands of 5-star reviews, only a handful of people rated the game 3-stars or lower and so our average is still a respectable 4.92 but even so, the question of Why? burns in our minds.
We are not engaging in any dubious practices regarding reviews. We don’t incentivize reviews, we don’t buy reviews, we don’t review the game ourselves and we don’t even tell our friends to review it. The only way we encourage reviews is through an in-game reminder on the mobile version which seems to be the industry standard. In short, there is no reason we can think of to explain why our reviews should have disappeared.
We reached out to Google about this mystery and they got back to us within a day (thanks!). They told us that our ratings were removed on purpose and pointed us to their Comments and Ratings policy. They also said that they triple-checked that this was done in according to their policies.
Further questions for clarification were politely declined, again pointing to above policy but refusing to be transparent about particular reasons.
The policies page mentioned by Google is divided into two sections.
One section lists specific policies to prevent abuse which contain things like: “Don’t post content that is abusive or hateful or threatens or harasses others” and “Don’t post fake reviews intended to boost or lower ratings”
The other section is labelled guidelines and tips and states things like: “Keep it readable; don’t use excessive capitalization and punctuation” and “Try to include both positives and drawbacks”.
We asked our players if they would be willing to share the review text that was removed from Google. Lots of them just gave the game a 5-star rating without a custom text. It’s puzzling how a review without text can be against a content policy but even more puzzling is that hand-written reviews like the following one, were also deleted:
Awesome little game that is great to play for 5 minutes or 5 hours. Also one of the best (and best working) ports I’ve seen onto mobile and an all round good time.
one of the reviews silently deleted by Google
Unless Google actually treats the guidelines and tips section as policy and sees a review without downsides as a violation there is just no reasonable cause for this review to have been removed. Unfortunately, because Google are not transparent about their practices and have no accountability for their actions, we have no way to oppose this.
My best guess is that Google uses the same algorithm to identify fake reviews on both free-to-play games and premium games.
I’m sure there are heaps of services out there that would add hundreds of very positive reviews for cheap on a free-to-play title because cheaters could setup hundreds of fake Google Play users and don’t have to fork out money to purchase a game to review it. Google probably invented and tuned the algorithm to remove these kind of fake reviews from free-to-play titles, but for a premium title, where everyone pays 5$ to even be allowed to write a review, this just doesn’t make any sense.
I’m not so upset that our ratings are now 4.92 instead of 4.96, particularly because I assume that this affects everyone on the Google Play store.
What upsets me most is that this completely disrespects our players. Google lets an algorithm and a machine wipe genuine human expressions from history. Around 3,000 people on this planet not only bought and played the game but then spent extra time to tell others about it. A blink later their voice has been erased forever.
It’s also interesting that Google seems content with removing thousands of reviews left by genuine paying customers on their own store front, yet doesn’t have any safe-guards to prevent hundreds of pirate sites showing up on Google when someone searches for ‘download Game Dev Tycoon APK for free’. Surely, an algorithm could help there…
Anyway, more on the topic of the incredible eco-system of pirated APKs, in a future report.
– Patrick Klug
Greenheart Games
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