An interview with Neil Yates of Jagged Blade Games
Desperate Space
Phil:
Your games to date have all been shooters. I guess you must have some strong feelings about shooter games. Traditionally I know they haven’t been the easiest thing so sell to a paying audience. How have you found sales?
Neil:
Ironically I only became seriously interested in shooters after becoming an indie. Prior to that my favourite games were RPG titles like Final Fantasy, Baldur’s Gate and Morrowind. I’m quite young so I kind of missed the ‘glory days’ of the shmup.
When I originally started out I planned on making expansive RPGs but I quickly realised that I was aiming far too high and needed to have a more realistic goal. I looked at the current shareware games and saw 3 genres that seemed to have any level of success: cutsie puzzle games, cutsie platformers or shoot em ups. Not wanting to compromise my manliness I decided to go the shooter route.
While I was developing my first few games I spent a lot of time researching the genre and playing older titles like Gradius, R-Type and Raiden. It was only at that point that I really began to fall in love with shmups.
And you’re totally correct, downloadable shooters really don’t sell well. Typically my download to sale conversion rate would be about 0.1%. My best selling downloadable shooter was Desperate Space, which after 4 years has only made about $10,000. It took me six months to make and I spent about 3 months on marketing. I don’t know many people in the UK who could live (not in their parent’s basement) on $1100 per month.
Phil:
After a number of downloadable games, you have switched to a flash based platform that is a sort of MMO hybrid. Can I ask what prompted the move from downloadable to flash based development?
Neil:
According to Einstein the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting to get different results. By the time I had finished Mighty Rodent I realised that I was literally acting like a crazy person. The message was clear, downloadable shoot em ups weren’t selling and I needed to try something different.
I started looking at different technologies, thinking of different business models etc. I played around with Flash for a while and eventually fell in love with it. I found development to be much faster than anything else and the fact that I could easily deploy to a large variety of platforms made it all the more attractive. By this point I wasn’t really sure what my final direction would be, but I knew that it had to be something involving Flash.
Xeno Assault
Phil:
Do you find the flash limits you in terms of the speed of the rendering and the smoothness of movement. I would imagine for shooters, that’s a very important part of the appeal. Having said that when I played Dead Frontier it felt like a slower paced game than your other games anyway. Is this a concious decision to pace the game more slowly?
Neil:
Yes Flash definitely limits you but it’s getting better all the time. With the advent of AS3 and FP10 it’s actually possible to make some quite hardcore stuff. When I originally made Dead Frontier I was working with AS2 and speed was a much bigger issue. My answer was to try to focus the game more on the horror/suspense side of things rather than pure shooting. Having said that the game does get much more intense later on.
Though being a zombie game I’d really like to have more than 8 zombies on screen without the user’s computer exploding. So I’ve gone ahead and hired a Flash guru to help convert the game to AS3 and optimize everything. We’re aiming to have up to 30-50 zombies and 10 players on screen at once without compromising framerate. I’d really like to go for that “OMG EPIC ZOMBIE HORDE!!!!111″ feeling.
Dead Frontier Multiplayer
Phil:
Dead Frontier is a fairly dark game in theme. It is also unusually a flash based MMO. Although there are plenty of those around, they do tend to be fairly bright and happy affairs with a very young audience. How has the public reaction been to a zombie shooter made in flash?
Neil:
The feedback has been 100% positive. My players love zombies, violence, gore and everything that goes with that. Dead Frontier is the only MMO where they can really get it.
Honestly it feels like the casual/female gamer revolution has gone too far. Right now all MMOs seem to be either anime, cartoony or cute and it drives me nuts. It’s not just MMOs either, this plague seems to have infected just about every genre and platform going.
I think there are a lot of people out there that feel the same and want to play something a bit more hardcore. For a long time I had a naked female zombie on the front page. Sure I got a few complaint emails, but I got many more from people praising my boldness.
Dead Frontier Screenshot
Phil:
Can I ask you about the business side of Jagged Blade Games? Are you a one man outfit? Who does the art, business and other things? Are you full-time doing it? Do you have contract work to support yourself?
Neil:
For the longest time it was just me. To start with I lived with my parents and basically gave them any money I earned to go towards for my food/rent. Eventually I scored a part time job with ArcadeTown which gave me enough total income to buy a house an start living as an ‘adult’.
When I launched Dead Frontier it started making some money, nothing amazing but still much more than I’d ever made with my previous games. Literally a month later I was told that I was no longer needed at ArcadeTown. At this point I was incredibly relieved that I still had Dead Frontier to pay the mortgage.
Since I no longer had a job I focused all of my attention on improving the game and the income started to increase exponentially. Right now I have two full-time employees, Ian who handles customer support/community management and Nick who handles promotion of the game. I also work with a range of freelancers/part timers: Greg Taylor (art), Jesse Hopkins (sound), Matthew Bowie (server admin) and David Patterson (programming). I’ve got some big plans for the future and I expect the game to eventually grow around 5x it’s current size.
Phil:
In many ways, choosing shooters as a genre to work in is a very risky move. Many indies choose to try for the casual market, although that has come under increasing price pressures recently. You obviously made a decision when you switched to creating flash based games. Did you not get tempted to move outside of the shooter genre and go more “casual”?
Neil:
I was seriously tempted to try making a match-3 or time management game a few years ago when I wasn’t making any decent money and you could still sell them for $20. I’m glad I never did it but the whole casual craze did have a big negative impact on me. I always felt like the answer to more sales was to make my games more and more casual as that was the prevailing advice at the time. The closest I ever came was with Mighty Rodent; my only cartoony game. I thought that by dressing a shooter in cute clothes I could get more sales. Turned out I was wrong and it actually made less money than some of my more hardcore games. After that I promised myself that I would never pander to portals again; I would make exactly the kind of game I want and never make compromises.
And that’s exactly what I did. When I was brainstorming for new ideas I said to myself, “what would I really like to play?”. The answer was a survival horror MMO. So that’s what I made.
Realspace 3
Phil:
Looking to the future, how do you see your games evolving? Do you think that you will ever create downloadables again? How about platforms like steam, or consoles?
Neil:
Well I’ve got some really neat ideas for both MMOs and downloadables but right now I simply wouldn’t have the time to begin work on another project.
The upside with downloadables is that when you’ve finished a game you can generally move on to something else quite quickly. MMOs aren’t like that at all, if they become successful then you’re basically tethered to them until they die or get bought out. Though that isn’t necessarily a bad thing since it gives you the chance to make something really big and really special.
Not really interested in other platforms, although if I were to do a downloadable I’d definitely like to give steam a whirl. They appear to be the only portal where a hardcore game can do well.
Phil:
Finally, is there anything you want to say to aspiring indies in the UK thinking about going it alone and starting thier own studio?
Neil:
My advice would be not to set your sights too low. Right now a lot of people seem to think the route to success is by keeping your dev time short in order to get the maximum ROI on time spent. That’s great if you’re happy to just scrape by, churning out endless streams of mediocre titles. That’s what I tried to do in my early years and let me tell you first hand – it sucks.
If you really want to make it big then you’re going to need a big hit. To do that you need a game that’s really special and that simply isn’t going to come from a 3 month development cycle. I would also recommend trying things that haven’t been done before. Nothing better than having an entire niche all to yourself.
Thanks to Neil for giving us such a great insight into his life as an indie developer. You can check out Neil’s latest game Dead Frontier at www.deadfrontier.com and his other games at www.jaggedbladegames.com
Until next week!
holy fucking shizz 50 zeds on a screen..
30 – 50 Zombies per screen?!
*drools heavily*
Yours truly.
Modemkill.
Hardcore fan of DF.
30-50 Zombies and 10 people.
*Shits a brick*
Better be off then.
I shat bricks.
I seriously can’t wait for 10 players on screen
That will be epic!
I love you PWN (no homo) and I’d have to agree with most of what he said, and he’s pretty much nailed the game based on his intended audience(16 year old boys)
wow, 30-50…
0_0 i wonder if i can survive,,…
Awesome can’t wait to be overrun and run like a little bitch.
It’s nice to know who the other people involved with Dead Frontier’s development, and good luck with growing this game! Hope it’ll grow so big, so great, and so successful that it gets bought out someday and you’ll move to a huge mansion.
I can’t believe Dead Frontier is growing so fast!
Good luck to my favorite non-downloadable MMO!
How good of Neil to give this interview, to give a look into his thoughts.
And yes, “ZOMG! 50 ZOMBEH ONSCREEN WIFF TEN PEOPLE! W00T!”
Ahem.
dead frontier is the best horror mmo and the only zombie mmo
id like it to become the best mmo
Hey, I’ve been playing since the beta started and I can’t believe how much it has changed. it used to be walking around being lonely, seeing what you could find in a car, usually $2-$6. Now, it is running through a zombie infested city with 2 of your best friends with 10 sprinting zombies coming fast behind you, and doing what you can to survive.
It has gotten much harder and is almost a completely different game, and I love it. I can’t imagine when there are 30-50 zombies on screen, it will be just amazing. Something I do feel should be higher priority though is multiplayer sync. I don’t think you can have a true mmorpg unless you really benefit from multiplayer, which you can’t when you can’t trust if what you see on screen is what is really going on. When multiplayer is even just a little bit more in sync, you cn expect me to be online 24/7.
The one thing I don’t like is that about half the members are people who add Zs to everything and choose to type inways they think are cute, IE; “zomgz lyk wye u gotsa be soz meenz an notz give mi some monyz?”
But that is completely expected.
The thing that got me into dead frontier was thinking about being with 2 or 3 friends baarricaded and running when zombies bust through and having to work together to survive, and I hope someday that will be us. I got into zombie mod in counter strike source for w hile because of that, but that game is just too glitchy and the game was left to rot basically, all of counter strike.
-timtard (don’t ask, I get enough crap about the name, I was slap happy when I made the account and didnt plan on keeping it)-
Im happy to see that things are looking up for you. Game artists, espacialy with flash are haveing an extremely hard time right now. When I saw Deadfrontier about a year and a half ago I new you had to be struggling financialy espacially with the rappid advanceing of the game. In the last year it has improved 10fold. I congradulate you on such a terrific and original game as well as your improved lifestile.
Ps. AS3 will be a major improvement
Pss. I can finally call you something besides PWN !Neil!
omg 50 zombies (pisses pants and runs away)
Wow *shivers* and I had trouble when it was just 8 Long Arms but 30 to 50, can’t wait!
After playing Dead Fronter for awhile now, I have to say that you (Neil) did indeed create something very unique for a very cliched genre. I am too looking forward into becoming a game designer and I find you as one of my inspirations. I will be looking forward into updates or projects in the future. So until then, keep it up. We all appreciate this, especaly on what you had to go through to make it here durring these tough times.
>_>
30-50 zombies per screen!? D:
sounds like fun! :3
30-50 zombies wtf?
alot still needs changing
rifles need to able to penetrate to zombies flesh and hit the other zombies at the back of it since 30-50 zombies?
and other weps need more dmg to kill the zombies faster still 30-50 zombies only a GAU can be able to survive 70%
melee users 1%
To all those reading this interview thinking if the game is for you, all I can say is if you like shooter games, zombie pandemics, and even the MMO style of gaming, this is a complete and total hit.
As one of many long time players this game is growing at such a large rate, it’s hard to keep up with all the great features added into the game to make things interesting as well as very fun to come back to again and again to play.
Fairview while being on the brink of a zombie pandemic spiraling out of control, has to have in my humble opinion one of the greatest communities and loyal players I have ever seen for this type of game. With the likes of Neil and his staff being open to many of the ideas thrown out by the players themselves, and the in game forum keeps many coming back regularly as apposed to a close minded creator who is head strong on “This is my game like it or leave” additude.
Even now in beta testing, their is a very large community of thousands of players with almost a 100% positive feedback on the game itself. With tweeks and fine tuning here and there this game is sure to go far past even Neils expectations.
So, if you are reading this and wondering if you should try it out, or if you would like it, I can honestly say, try it out you will not be disappointed in the slightest bit.
To the comment of upgrading the amount of players in a multiplayer game I love the idea and can’t wait for such. To the idea of 30-50 zombies on screen running at you full speed from all over, I simply can say … bring it!
To Neil thank you for your fearless devotion to this amazing game, which we all really enjoy.
HOLY SHIZ! i just shat bricks, also, i was the one who introduced this interview to the rest of the DF audience
Admin, I am seriously glad you didn’t make DF casual. It is awesome as is, and with 30-50 zombies per screen this will really help with the higher levels. Imagin looting a GLA with maxed aggro and 49 other LA’s sprinting at you.
My God,set your goals high,haw Neil
30-50 zeds on-screen? LOL! I’m already pissing myself! This is already so epic even in the Beta stages, it makes me wonder what the final product will be like.
its meee
eeeeee
Cat Warrior
i cant wait till 30 zps
Ok, many zombies on screen + more players on screen…
That =
Really nice…
Admin you are a god can’t wait for new updates on DF
OH FCKING-A!!! thats gonna be awsome! super happy agro fun… with zombies!
Admin is win.
you’re setting yourself some nice goals ^^
to even the 30-50 zombies for melee tohugh made make it so you could do combos
(lift swipe right swipe then a down cut) or hit more then 1 zombie in 1 swing 
LOL if he put it noaw i would die every time and mellle will become usefull =D
…i…….love…..you
(NO HOMO)
Merci pour cet info simple et très bien fait.
if were going to be fighting that many zeds at wonce they would need to be a lot easer to kill
30-50 zeds….. that will make single player insanely harder to play
.