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Since this has gotten a ton of exposure I’m going to try an explain myself a little. I’m leaving the originally article 100% in-tact so people can continue to read it. Please stop flaming me, I don’t mind if you disagree with my viewpoint, but please give me constructive criticism rather than telling me to die in a fire. It makes you a hypocrite to make death threats at me for not treating artists how many of you want.

I would like to start off by showing you this great comment made by Kathryn:

UPDATE

It seems most of you have a problem with how I worded the article rather than I what I actually said in the article. When I originally wrote this it was intended for developers to learn how to get the best art for good prices so it sounds very condescending to artists. I realize that now and I apologize. I greatly appreciate the work and effort that goes into each graphic an artist makes.

We unfortunately live in a market that is determined by supply and demand. Most businesses with the intent to make money will not pay more than they have to for a certain product. I am not trying to “scam” or “rip-off” artists, I’m letting them quote their own prices for what they believe their work is worth. I am not forcing, or tricking anyone into working with me. All artists I work with seem to be very thankful.

Some of you complained about the way I deal with payments, which actually surprised me to a great extent. There have been several times I’ve been working on a game with an artist only to have him/her walk out on me halfway through. Paying after guarantees safety for both parties.

Alright, now about the part the majority of you are most upset about, my “Keep them in the dark” comment. My wording on this was poorly thought out. Many people claim about this being unethical, but in reality it’s how all businesses work. When a company makes a profit, does it take that profit and evenly split it up among all of it’s employee’s? No. The most it ever does is sometimes gives bonuses which I also do when a game performs very well. As I’ve said before, I pay artists based on what they believe their work is worth rather than the estimated value it increases a game by. I’m sorry for anyone that finds capitalism to be the devil.

Please continue making comments, I will try to explain myself more and continue updating this post. Sorry for any poor grammar, I typed this up fairly fast.

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Original Article Starts Here

I’ve hired a bunch of people to do art for some of my largest games, I thought I would give a little insight on what do when hiring yourself.

How to find an artist:

I recommend looking through art sites such as Deviantart for an artist which suits your taste, or any other site that has a decent art community such as Newgrounds. There’s a few reasons you want to find an artist this way. First of all, they’re cheaper. These guys aren’t used to making a lot of money for their work so they will be more appreciative of the chance even if they are being payed slightly less than what professionals are payed. Second of all, they’re better. The quality of art you can find through this method is pretty amazing, and the vast amount of artists guarantee you will find something that suits your tastes and needs. Unless you have a specific price you want to pay in mind, ask THEM what they are willing to charge for the project. This usually causes people to give offers that are lower than what you normally pay, and will make them happy.

How NOT to find an artist:

Do not look for either professional artists, or an artist that has done a lot of game design work in the past. The problem with artists who do this as their full time job is that they’re usually expensive. Compared to what you can find through art sites, these guys tend to cost an arm and a leg. Artists who have done a lot of game design work are also bad for a similar reason, they know how much flash games can earn so they expect a decent percentage of the profit. It’s ridiculous to pay something 50% of a sponsorship when you can find someone else who would accept $500 for the same job. When your game sells for $10,000, the difference in cost is a multitude of 10.

Artist payment:

Make it clear to whomever you hire that they will not be payed until ALL the work is completed, unless it is completed by a predefined date, and unless it matches or exceeds expectations. Sometimes I have an issues getting all of these things, but if you give someone a job they’re expected to treat it as so even if they’re just a hobbyist. Paying prior to the completion of the project is a bad idea for several reasons. Only paying for the finished work encourages the artist to finish their job faster, if you pay up front the artist has no motivation to finish quickly. Similarly, if you pay up front the artist could disappear and you may never get what you payed for!

Keep them in the dark:

This relates back to what I talked about earlier. If an artist knows how much their artwork will increase the value of the game they will then feel they deserve that amount of money. This is not how a market economy works, you hire whoever is able to do the best job for the lowest amount of money, anything else is a loss of money on your end.

Timelines:

Give strict dates about when you need the art done (even if you don’t) and give consequences by deduction in pay if the art is not completed by the date. Unless the person you’ve hired happens to be very punctual, you will need strong motivation to make sure they finish the art in a timely manner. Try to only hire people ages 18+ (I may sound a little hypocritical here), kids are generally less reliable and have more IRL things come up that they can’t control. I’ve had several bad experiences with this.

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Update: Look at this. All businesses function around it

I’m xdragonx10 on reddit by the way.

Overview

(this was written nearly a year ago so some items may not be accurate)

Several developers seem to be stuck making “Good games” which I define as getting between 10,000 – 500,000 hits, and earning in the hundreds to thousands range. Many want to break into the “Great Game” circle and make games that truly go viral all over the web but don’t how to make the jump.

I think I have enough experience now to see the difference, and will try to break it down through the rest of this post.

What you need:

Knowledge You need to know how to code sufficiently, and have the ability to research concepts you don’t understand. You’re probably at this point once you can code a simple game without having to refer to any code you’ve previously made.

Art Either the ability to produce appealing art or the ability to hire someone to make it for you. The art in your games does not have to be great, but often games suffer due to what is known as programming art. If you don’t have art abilities I suggest looking at my previous post about how to hire an artist.

Time/Expectations Games can take anywhere from a few hours to a few months to complete depending on the game and your skill level, take this into consideration when you decide what you want to make. If you’re a full time student who’s always bogged down with homework, don’t try to create an extensive RPG with 10 classes, 500+ weapons, and 50 levels of dungeon.

Final Product Once you finish your game, at the end you should have the desire to truly say “I want to play this”. You may be burned out, but if you should still have some enjoyment of the game when it’s finish, otherwise others will not.

If you don’t have any of the above making a great game isn’t going to happen for you.

Some things to point out:

Genre does not matter, a good game can come from anywhere. The key to a great game is execution, the original concept only has a slight impact. Polish is extremely important. Having bugs and loose ends can ruin an otherwise great game. Your game should include a lot of content, games made in 1-2 days rarely become massive hits (This is assuming you don’t want to make a Mindjolt game, but that’s a whole nother blog post).

Alright, now to actually go through the steps of making a great game

Concept Come up with a concept, copying previously successful base concepts is fine as long as you don’t leave too many similarities (Users hate direct copies, and you can get sued.. It’s a lose-lose). Your concept should be more complex than “A Mouse Avoider”, make it very detailed. When doing this step I would suggest fully laying everything out (but always leave room for changes). Make sure when the game is finished it has a lot of variety, nobody likes doing the same thing more than few times.

Envision Envision the end goal, you need to know that you’re going to make this game as good as possible. You can go the “Make it up as I go” approach, but this often leaves you uninspired when you don’t see where you’re headed. I wouldn’t suggest it, especially if you have a record of not completeting what you start.

Prototype Finish a Prototype, and make sure that you enjoy the underlying game mechanic. If the game can be fun with no graphics whatsoever it’s probably going to turn out to be at least somewhat successful. If you had seen Penguin Massacre before it received Art, Animation, and Polish you would have laughed when I told you the game would earn me nearly $20,000.

Art As I said before, if you can’t do art yourself, hire someone else. Artists are cheap and their is no real excuse for not getting one. If you have absolutely no money you can offer a percentage of the revenue the game produces.

Testing Get people to test your game, collect feedback and make changes accordingly. You at this point have become too invested in the game to see obvious flaws. You’re so used to playing it the correct way you will miss any UI quirks and odd bugs. When people that don’t know how to play your game play your game, crazy things can happen.

Content Add more content (And by content I mean more unique features that vary the gameplay, not just ways to make the game longer). This is probably the number one complaint in all of my games. You may have a great base mechanic, but after doing the same thing for 20 minutes even that can get boring. Fast paced with constantly new game mechanics being introduced to the game can keep it interesting and fun.

Beta Test Have others beta test the game and look at their feedback critically, if you want your game to be great you need them to honestly tell you they enjoy playing your game just as much as other top hits. FGL’s FI system is somewhat useful here. This is the same thing as testing which I mentioned before, make sure you do it constantly if you want your game to turn out well.

More Always look at your game and say “How can I make it better”, “What can I add”, and “What do other games have that I don’t” and constantly make changes until your answers are “I can’t (be very honest, don’t get lazy and say you can’t because it would take too long)”, “Nothing”, and “Nothing” respectively.

Balance Balance the game, a good difficulty curve is crucial. Too easy and players will get bored. Too hard and players will get frustrated. This is a hard thing to do and is often overlooked, you can completely change how a game is played by changing a single variable such as doubling the enemies’ health. Experiment, and remember that the game will be easier to you than it will to other people. Testing again.

Polish Polish the game making sure there are no loose ends and adding in little extras (These go a long way). This sort of goes along with Art, but it’s more about the specific details. A simple screen fade in and out can add a lot to a game. Players don’t realize these things individually, but when they are added up they make the game feel like a much better experience. This is one of the, if not the biggest consistent difference between good and great games.

Final Beta Test Beta test again, leave no bugs or loose ends. If you do, players will rip you to shreds. A single bug can bring a game that should be a 4.00 to a 3.00, I’ve seen it happen several times.

Sponsored Get Sponsored, release the game, and smile as you watch you MochiBot climb to millions of plays.

Now the above things will make your game well liked and spread well, but if you want a lot of plays you need to include factors that make the game replayable.

What makes a game replayable

Achievements
Level Editor
Randomization
Lots of content W/ a save system
Customization of something

After this it just comes down to experience, try different things and see what you’re best at.

Final note: Good games always fall short somewhere along the list of steps to make a great a game, making great games doesn’t require more skill than good games, all you have to do is not cut corners.