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kendrixtermina · 6 years ago

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Someone finally uploaded a Kingdom Route run with everyone recruited!

So imma be doing a bit of reacting

Kingdom!Ignatz works a bit like Empire!Felix - He wanted to go his own way unlike what his parents said and is thus following Byleth. In this case it’s of course somewhat less angsty ‘cause the Victors have the means to flee if necessary, unlike Rodrigue who was a prominent leader of the kingdom side of things

In an interesting parallel to how half the cast abandons the kingdom cause it’s a sinking shipload of kamikaze, on the other routes, Raphael complains about the instability and confusing politics of the alliance and how she should probably grab Maya and his grandfather and get them to Garreg Magh. I suppose a lot of people without connections or political accumen must feel this way. the monastery IS light javelin proof, so yeah...Raphael isn’t salty toward Claude himself tho. Then again he has little capacity for salt and in his paralogue it’s kinda shown that he makes a deliberate choice to live a low-salt lifestyle its not just obliviousness, he actively doesnt want grudges or awkwardness in his life

Leonie is also here to babysit Byleth and tells them not to let Dimitri push them around

Hilda: “The Monastery is a mess. So is Dimitri. I’m only here because Byleth is competent and Holst is annoying“

Dorothea and Bernie have so far gotten identical dialogues to the church route

Lysithea is interesting and kinda morally ambiguous. She says outright that she cares nothing for the kingdom or anything other than a peaceful life for her parents. She wants to get at the slitherers for her own revenge and they’re in the empire so she finds Dimitri’s revenge obsession convenient. Also very ironic cause, are she and Edelgard gonna fight each other because they both want to get at Thales? Very interesting bc vanilla BL doesn’t adress the slitherers that much - of course Lysithea says she has beef with “the empire” and doesn’t elaborate. At the same time Lysithea is MUCH more logical and self aware than most of the kingdom crew bar Sylvain so yeah

actually, Lysithea, like Felix, has TONS of route specific dialogue. I guess the devs expected those two to get recruited a lot since they are just flat out the strongest students apart from the house leaders.

The Kingdom is arguably just as infiltrated but Lysithea doesn’t know... and at this point Cornelia’s cooperating with the Empire anyways

General trend of the Alliance recruitees not being all that attached to the Alliance as they hardly knew each other at the start and half of them had nothing to do with politics

Nothing to do with the recruitees, but so THATS what happens if you propose to go to Fhirdiad first. Dimitri is like “You’re supposed to lead the church! Go rescue Rhea!” ...he doesn’t know the whole thing with Byleth being experimented on by Rhea (neither does Byleth at this point) but it is kinda low. Mitya you have no leg to stand on here indeed the main reason I was sympathetic to you last playthrough is that you never ASKED Gilbert & co to put you on the throne and made clear that you’re not interested in that... so following you was on them to an extent. but you don’t get to say “Do your Bishop job” (that Byleth never asked for) if you’re not doing your job cause you’re too busy doing your kamikaze raid. Then again he’s probably too emotional and just plain done with everything rn to see the contradiction/look at this with perspective he’s probably physically incapable of chilling out rn

It just ends with Byleth doing a pointed sadface. daamn Mitya don’t be mean to By-By she still believes in you dude : ( Though it makes sense he’s big on obligation he’s doing this revenge trip because he feels he must. So it’s more a distortion than it really is a contradiction, as far as he’s concerned he IS doing his duty...to the fallen. I guess if you can’t handle him at his “Go be a bishop or something” you don’t deserve him at his “my beloved~”

Still hurts a bit tho. Especially when Claude, though not without his own agenda, was distinctly a good friend on the topic, “Teach you’re in charge now be more confident~ the church doesnt run you, you run the church”

Before Aillel Dorothea says something about the Kingdom people also looking undecided of where to march, but she also wonders if some fighting/ victory will quell uncertainty

Also she and mercie are standing next to each other! Ive said before that it’s weird how they don’t rly have a support though they are the two most popular extroverted ppl on the campus... they GOTTA know each other at least on a smalltalk basis

Alois is like “These kingdom ppl dont seem to know what they want... but hey this allow YOU to shine as a leader”... so basically Byleth is running this show but for all that they’re a good field commander and decisive when it comes to immadiate practical problems, as far as big picture direction goes, well, Sothis’ “boulder” quote comes to mind. They just never had big attachments on convictions, the Felix support chain is also salient here. They kinda just did whatever job they were given until they found a bigger cause/purpose after throwing in their lot with one of the lords or the remaining saints.

I wondered how this would play out as the Kingdom route is very kingdom-specific, whereas Claude, Edelgard and the church all have an universal cause for people to get behind. I guess how this plays out is that before Dimitri’s turnaroud there’s the kingdom faction and the Byleth faction and Byleth is kinda trying to run the show as they think Dimitri would if he were at his best

Caspar is still on the more unphazed side but also substantially more phazed than on the church or GD routes, he wasn’t particularly close to Randolph but he’s not unaffected by Dimitri going a tad over the top here - he also has the takeaway that Dimitri probably never trusted him much since he was born in the empire.

Sylvain actually alledges something about Dimitri not socializing much with any Adrestians even back in the academy days if you recruit him on CF so this does not come out of nowhere. Also kinda makes me wish they had a support - theyre both naturals at smashing things but they have very different attitudes towards it. then again i suppose it would go alot like the raphael one

Ferdie recognizes Myrrdin is a strategically better location but as Aegir territory is closeby he wishes we could have invaded through there so he could take it back... Would the citizens want him back tho? After the war its a no-brainer cause he helped end it, the peasants arent going to complain about too much peace and prosperity nor are they gonna feel nostalgic about anyone who started a war with their tax money and then lost it, but if he waltzed into an area that had thus far been far from the frontlines, following his fathers’s exploitative management and 5 years of semi equal rights under edelgard? he might have been welcomed with pitchforks, through no fault of his own.

He says something implying hed like to come rescue his relatives implying that some of them are still alive. of course the pm deserves all Edelgard threw at him and then some, but id be curious about Ferdie’s other relatives. His mom probably looks just like him, because he sure didnt get the looks from his dad... or anything else really, apart from the crest and hair color. - though i think the a support with bernadetta implies that shes no longer around

Lorenz bitterly remarking that of course Claude and his dad eventually made peace since they both only serve their own interests. (”So long as their interests are in allignment they will continue to cooperate”) Says the guy we just rescued from his endeavors in turncoatery. Lorenz you’re pretty opportunistic too, and as for your redeeming features Claude has those too - but of course you’ll never find out in this one. Still, it shows that he’s painfully aware that his father - whom he would have died protecting if we hadn’t spared him - is a villain and a hack

Claude isn’t super trusting and knows that he gets percieved as shifty so he promises people to get them theirs so that they support him out of self interest. No need to take a chace. Of course by the end of this route he WILL take big chance on Dimitri

That says Lorenz is not SO biased that he can’t tell that Claude might be interested in working with the kingdom army

Lysithea (who surprisingly has TONS of unique dialogue here, and I like that it’s a complex mature plot) is having her doubts and not trusting Dimitri for all that she finds him an useful idiot. By and large you get the sense that many consider Byleth the leader of this operation, she’s glad that Byleth is there to issue sensible orders. She tells Byleth not to tell anyone and worries about what will happen once the empire’s vanquished. No faith in team Kingdom... at all. Understandable of course

Hilda’s dialogue is largely the same as in the church route and at times kinda the same in all routes but I like how she’s like “Claude might’ve looked like a lazy bum but he’s smart! If he says he’s on our side he will defs help!” before the gronder fiasco

A lot of NPCs stir the suspicion here so it stands out how much she totally trusts him like hes any other friend

As with the other routes with the recruitees you get an idea of what’s going on in the other territories such as Lysithea deducing that Judith must be backing Claude in his gambit

One moment you think Lorenz is going to add some somber insightful commentary to the sincerity of Claude’s offer but then he’s like, “Granted Dimitri is much improved. He must be asking us for help cause he trusts ME” XD Like... no friend. You’re almost right but if there’s anyone here he was faith in its Byleth. And then he’s even like, “Well no choice but to save poor Claudesy” On the one hand it shows that there not just pure hate there on the other... lulz.

apparently one of the first things Dimitri did after getting his act together post gronder is profusely apologize to Caspar for that ugly business with Randolph. Thats a worthwhile detail and i want fanfic of it. Caspar being Caspar he wasnt really keeping a grudge, they’re a warrior clan and they were at war

They had to move out so quickly that Hilda had no time to go shopping in Fhirdiad #Priorities XD

Meanwhile Ignatz, like a normal person, hopes his folks will be safe

hilda does eventually remember to maybe save her folks and claude but only after making Byleth promise to go on a shopping trip with her. Someone should probably write that fanfic

Someone told me that Ferdinand had some prominent critical lines but it was really just one, and it’s as I suspected actually just a variant of the same “a king can’t be emotional” line he gets in all the routes, this time with the addendum that if he turned around and decided to go rescue the capital, he might be capable of reason/being a decent leader after all. granted I guess compared to how most of the Kingdom people go along with everything it comes off critical? IDK.

Lysithea misses Rodrigue :(

Lorenz and Ignatz standing next to each other was a nice touch they have a fairly wholesome friendship

Leonie’s just glad that ol’ Mitya is “back to normal” especially since she’s pretty sure that they don’t have enough soldiers to get to Fort Merceus let alone Enbarr

For obvious reasons, Petra is pretty sympathetic about the whole “retaking Fhirdiad” thing

Seeing Seteth and Catherine so certain that Rhea would want them to save the people of Fhirdiad first when you know that she wouldn’t hesitate to set the place on fire is just...OUCH. Though it does show the goodness in Seteth and Catherine themselves.

Manuela wishes she could’ve moved her informary to gronder and save a few more peeps :(

It seems like to Leonie, Dimitri will always be just “Dimitri”, King or not. Figures she aaaaalmost adressed even Byleth by name XD You really DO get the sense that he interacted alot with the recruitees

All the house leaders shouldve had more supports.

If you grabbed hanneman he’ll give you some extra backstory on Cornelia - apparently she was originally from the empire and an eminent scholar whose great work Hanneman was vaguely aware of. I would assume that was still the real cornelia. Judging by the timing it sounds like she might’ve smuggled Patricia out of Adrestia. Assuming both were still original at this point this might present a possibility for why she trusted/vouched for cornelia without being complicit / lend itself to a “she was duped” reading

But it’s still suspicious that she would end up courting the second most powerful man in the land right after number one.

Some had suggested that Cornelia caused the plague in the first place but the thing is there was a perfectly credible “mundane” explanation for it (the city’s sewers not being up to date technologically) that theres no reason to doubt

Assuming that all the replacements occurred 14 years before part one when Arundel stopped his donations/ thins being about the time when Cornelia’s personality was noted to have changed completely, that would mean both the “fixing the severs” thing and the soppy story about how Edelgards’ parents met would be real

AAAA everything to do with patricia is just so ambiguous - if they were longtime friends wouldn’t she have noticed something “off”? Same with her brother actually. Lambert had his own country so its not like there was no one to protect her.

Ahhh THIS is how lorenz gets iinto the midset for that prissy, hes pissed that Claude dissolved the Alliance and misses it XD

you DO get to call him out for being a turncoat himself tho. particularly hilarious since Byleth just blinks and asks a casual question there

He immediately changes his tune

oh lorenz dear, i love you but you, sir, are WEAK xD

Lysithea as always calls everything and notes how suspicious arundel was alluding to the hrym nightmare also mentioned in her paralogue

She also mentions that he was said to be good and just at one point suggesting that there was a real Volkhard von Arundel at some point.

if the replacement took place when those donations ceased then Edelgard and Dimitri were 3, 14 years before part 1. Early enough that this could be around the time Patricia left enbarr, if this is when it happened then the romantic tower story might be real assuming that the Arundels were replaced at the same time - whatever arrived in Faerghus recomended patricia for a job so it probably had already happened by then

Its all so ambiguos tho we can only speculate there are so many possibilities

Ignatz marvels at how Claude managed to minimize damage to Alliance lands throughout the war, as in CF only Deirdru itself got particularly thrashed. Ignatz’ folks are safe and sound! Leave it to him to wonder where Claude might have absconded to. He was always one of the insightful ones but not in the same way as the other clever ones. More intuitive I guess. Cant remember if it was indentical to what you get if you spare Claude on CF (Cue the lets player remarking that Claude is probably stuck in a washing machine somewhere... he hadn’t cleared the Alliance route at that point)

Lol HILDA “And then the whole Alliance descended into chaos...” or actually she is surprised that that DIDNT happen and how orderly Claude managed the dissolution. “But I Guess we’re screwed if Dimitri turns out to be a crazed despot... he’s not gonna go crazy again is he?” You of little faith XD But she says all this in her usual cheery nonserious voice like

this chapter has a lot of unique dialogue actually

Linhardt impressed that anyone would have the guts to attack Fort Merceus directly and suggests looking for weak spots in the old walls

He shows up guarding it in SS and Vw doesn’t he? Guess he was visiting Caspar or something - or would have been familiar with the place from visiting the Bergliez clan in the past.

Ferdinand is wowed by Claude bowing out giving him kudos for caring about the peoples wishes. He thinks Edelgard ought to quit at this point and he’s alot harsher on her here than in any of the other routes. (”Not reveryone with noble blood has noble ideals” - Coming from Ferdinand that’s an accusation ) Interestingly at this point hes sticking with Dimitri cause post character developement, lots of ordinary ppl support him at this point and hes popular with the crowds. He’s wholly on the Savior King bandwagon, and maybe that’s why he’s harsher. He’s partial. Says something about him actually, largely good things when you think about it. Dimitri is probably the closest to what Ferdinand’s (and Lorenz’) own beliefs were. He likes the existing order and living in a fancy palace but he thinks the rulers should serve the people.

Its kinda ironic and sad because in ALL the other routes he clearly thinks Dimitri is an idiot and a bad ruler, and says he should be more composed and objective. But Dimitri wasnt at his best there now was he?

now ill be sad everytime I get to those “Ferdinand disses Dimitri” lines. They couldve been buds!

but i dont see this happening in any other route. According to something Sylvain says in cf Dimitri avoided ppl from the empire at the academy so they wouldnt have cozied up pre-timeskip, and its only the version of Dimitri who has his shit together which appeals to Ferdie as a leader.

really torn here on the one hand its a nice synergy to see lorenz and especially Ferdinand (who is waaay less arroganz than lorenz) sort of getting to win on their own terms with a ruler that jives with them and their Lawful Good fantasy classic thing. It’s not just a status quo thing its a protectors of the people thing. It’s heroic. On the other hand it feels like they’re stagnating when they could have had growth. This is basically the same Lorenz and the same Ferdinand we first met except slightly more mature. Notably lorenz is the same in the church route whereas Ferdie isnt as he still ends up rebelling fleeing and fighting against the empire. It helps that he practically winds up leading the remaining Eagles, albeit under Byleth and Seteth.

He still gets that line about being kinda sad to see the empire go though he knows there must be an end to the chaos, i think a few lines are different, so, not wholly without doubt

Shamir muses about hoe the three countries were once one and the same, but wonders that even if we put fodlan togethere theres no guarantee that it wouldnt come apart again. i mean there isnt, and wether thats a bad thing would depend a lot on the circumstances but its also possible that theyll get used to being one and forget they wrere ever separate. no one controls the far future... and should they? After all its always possible that someone in the future will have unforseeable circumstances or better ideas

Caspar sighs with relief that they didn’t have to fight his dad, last second worry about him turning up in the capital nonwithstanding... right does he get to live in this? Carpar wonders what’ll happen to him if they win, but he’s not holding down Faerghus so he might not have died the way he did in Silver Snow and Verdant Wind. It’s at least possible that he was captured alive and pardoned somehow.

Marianne’s adoptive dad sure smelled which way the wind was blowing; He was supporting Claude’s strategy to get the Cloucesters back under controll but sent Marianne to curry favor with the kingdom. Make friends with whoever wins I suppose. Ambitious politician indeed.

When she doesnt her from him in a while she wonders if he forgot about her but says she wouldnt mind that much because at least she wouldnt have to do any more politics? I distinctly recall that in gd there was something about how they got along better after the timeskip. Sigh.

she is real glad that Dimitri and claude ended up cooperating in the end

So does Dorothea but then she makes herself sad wishing that Edelgard was also there :( Me too friend, me too. I think thats the one unique line she gets this route. I like how it’s consistent in the church route she’s also the one who feels the most sad about betraying her, they were pretty close pre timrskip

as far as leonies concerned Dimitri is still just Dimitri even after taking back his kingdom. i like to think hed appreciate that. its also very typical of leonie. as with the “Caspar gets an apology” thing plenty of the recruitees get lines hinting that theres been more personal interaction between them and dimitri, kinda goes with how ppl in his own house follow him more out of personal loyalty than because they follow his plans like with the other two. hes kinda a very approachable sort of leader, makes the decisions with the group or follows whatever gilbert and Byleth decide, in the other routes theres always a distinct inner circle. Its cool how they incorporated the recruitees into that dynamic.

Petra is dissapointed that they DIDNT do a sneak attack on fort Merceus contrasting her usual line about how she likes sneak attacks. Dimitri naps both that an Enbarr head on doesn’t he? The Church has a smaller Army full of peeps who would rather not destroy Enbarr, and Claude agrees with Petra on the sneak attack thing and then Edelgard did that sorta shady but largely very gutsy thing where she didn’t sound the evacuation to restrict Claude’s movements knowing that there was zero danger that he would plow through the civilians (they don’t do this here cause last time they met Dimitri he was not feeling merciful indeed judging by huberts welcome lines and engage quotes he doesnt buy the turnaround), the AM ending narration also suggests that Enbarr wasn’t rebuilt, though Dimitri gave distinct “No pillaging!” orders, so they probably just couldn’t avoid wrecking the buildings and relocated the citizens.

Ashe also speculates where Claude went. That’s one of the things i like about Ashe he consistently averts out of sight out of mind I particularly always loved how he consistently worried about Dedue. Someone ought to.

Ingrid interestingly changed her tune here / kinda speaks positively of claude here - in CF she was like “I always though he was creepy”

Then again that was before fighting him I don’t recall If those two dont get the same lines if you spare Claude, have to go back and check

id like to mention that the lets player put lorenz in the pyjamas/loungewear the whole time as “punishment” for being late to the reunion and poked fun at him throughout.

#fe3h #fire emblem: three houses #fire emblem three houses

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barbosaasouza · 6 years ago

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Developer Insight: Why I Made A Game That Isn’t Fun

The following is a guest post from developer David Stark (reposted with permission from their site) on exploring common monetizing delay mechanics to make the purposely-unfun Sandstorm.

We’ve all played mobile games that get steadily more hostile towards the player as time goes on. The kind of game that wants so desperately for you to become a paying customer that it puts increasing roadblocks in front of you. Pay to skip the wait. Pay to remove the limit. Pay to get a boost, skip the ads, make the numbers go up faster.

Sandstorm is a game that was sparked by a conversation about the intentionality of these kind of mechanics, and the idea that a game could be purposefully unfun.

Background

Some background – in the early days following the Cookie Clicker craze, I wrote a game called CivClicker – one of the seminal games in the genre (though now long forgotten), it blended the clicker mechanics of incremental games with worker management and tech-tree progress inspired by god games. Not a mobile developer myself, and happy to get the game in front of more people, I licensed the game to a company so that they could make a mobile port.

The port was, to no-one’s surprise, awful.

The company had taken the core game and tried to bake in mechanics to monetize it. In their case, they chose delay mechanics. Want to research a new tech? You need to spend the resources, and you need to wait a day. Pay to buy in-game currency. Spend in-game currency to skip the wait and get it instantly. Not uncommon, and at the beginning of the game basically just an inconvenience.

But it steadily got worse. Mechanics that in the original game were carefully balanced to provide a sense of progress were gated off behind increasingly long delays. Active play became impossible – it ended up more like something to check in on once a day and press some more buttons so I could check in tomorrow. I eventually quit playing after a while, deeply frustrated with the experience and lamenting that my name had been connected with it.

The experience, originally created to provide a sense of steady and fun progression, had been ruined by a lack of intentionality in design – or rather, a perversion of that intention, designed to manipulate and coerce. The game wasn’t designed to be fun. It was designed to suck you in, and then hurt you until you paid up or left.

On a roll after finishing this year’s js13k, I wanted a quick project that would tide me over until the judging. A conversation with a friend about the experiences above sparked an interesting idea: what if a game was designed with those kind of anti-fun delay mechanics as the core experience? Would it be fun at all? What would it tell us about game design, about play, and about players?

Games As Art

I’ve always been a proponent of the creation and analysis of games as art pieces. As interactive media, games are in a unique position to communicate certain ideas, feelings, and messages from creator to audience, or even from audience to audience.

What does it mean to say that delay mechanics are unfun? Well, to start with, we are making a bunch of assumptions about what “fun” means. There’s a sense, and I think it’s common, that games should be interesting, stimulating and above all, responsive.

A game that feels unpredictable, or has floaty controls, or doesn’t give you a sense of control is hard to stick with. Elements of polish like sound and visual effects, screen shake and controller rumble are all designed to give direct sensory feedback to the player. An unresponsive game is almost synonymous with bad design – or perhaps more accurately, responsiveness is seen as a mark of well-executed design. Game feel is a nebulous term but everyone knows it when they encounter it, and it seems to me that responsiveness is core to good game feel.

A delay mechanic, by its nature, disconnects the player’s action from the outcome. It cuts the feedback loop, the Skinner Box lever-reward connection that drives so many game interactions. Just one more turn. Just one more level. The core loop, the 30 seconds of button-reward-button-reward gameplay that’s designed to be addictive, to hook you. It’s all cut short by the delay.

This is, of course, why the delay ramps up. They don’t start you out waiting for an entire day. They start you out with 30 seconds. You can wait half a minute, can’t you? Then the next one is a minute. Then two. Then five. And so on – until you’re checking in once a day to see if your countdowns have finished and you can keep playing the game, or else you get frustrated and pay to play now.

But what does a game look like when it deliberately eschews the conventional wisdom of action and immediate reward? Could such a game even be fun to play at all? Honestly – I think the answer is no. But the experience, and working out why, is illuminating.

Designing An Unfun Experience

Indie dev means a lot of interation and a lot of playtesting your own game. The very first work I did on Sandstorm was to implement the input delay that I wanted to overshadow the entire experience.

The idea was to have the user operate a Mars rover, with realistic delay between input and action (the end result was a bit more complicated than that, but broadly speaking that’s what ended up happening), so I started out with a delay of 182 seconds – the time required for light to travel the theoretical minimum distance between Earth and Mars of 54,600,000km.

This input delay immediately got in my way. I couldn’t implement movement or other controls while having to wait 3 minutes before even getting a response: that would be madness. And it was! But it showed me something important. Even testing it once I knew it was working was torture. My brain expected instant response. It’s been trained by years of clicking buttons while staring at screens to demand it.

And so I did what anyone would do, if they could. I turned it off.

Not only that, but I kept the delay off most of the way through development. I did turn it on again occasionally to check that it was still working the way I wanted, and that the experience I was building in my head matched the experience I was expecting the player to have. Each time, I turned it off again – I justified that to myself as it getting in the way, slowing me down, and acting as a pointless obstruction to development, all of which are definitely true. There was a nagging feeling at the back of my head that it was unfun and I should get rid of it.

I wondered if anyone would want to play a game like this. I’m not sure I wanted to, and I made the damn thing. But it was important to me that the game exist in that form, unapologetic and with no way to turn it off. I wanted it to exist as an object model of what not to do; to take a cute and simple game and make it almost literally unplayable. And I wondered what it said about me, that I couldn’t play my own game. It was a challenge.

Themes And Rewards

When I originally envisioned the game, I thought about it having a quiet loneliness and isolation to it. “My battery is low and it’s getting dark”, a poetic interpretation of Opportunity’s final communication with earth, perfectly encapsulates the feeling.

These are themes that have been weighing on me personally as someone with PTSD and depression, and I wanted to communicate them through the game. On the surface it was a perfect vehicle for it – a lonely Mars rover isolated from literally everyone, having to survive on its own and with a “connection” to an operator, the physical limits of which stretch the definition of the word.

But as I worked on it and contemplated what the delay actually meant, and what the experience of the player was actually going to be like, I realized that the player wasn’t going to be the lonely one. The player was the operator, experiencing frustration, forced to wait, needing to exercise patience. And so the themes shifted away from the melancholic and towards the phlegmatic. I still connect with the rover on a personal level, but the game is – in the end – about the player.

There are fragments within the game that can be collected, bearing quotations. There’s a Bennett Foddy-esque quality to them, an external reminder of the metanarrative of the game. Unlike Getting Over It, though, I didn’t want to interject myself and my feelings into those quotes. I might be intentionally putting the overall experience in front of the player, but my intent was to keep them disconnected from both the game and the experience of the game – to act as external anchoring points and opportunities for reflection.

There’s no achievement or bonus for collecting all of them, by the way. In fact, the game doesn’t care if you collect any of them. But they’re there, and require no small amount of dedication and patience to collect. The rewards are, much like the reward for finishing the game, largely intrinsic.

Conclusions

Ultimately, this is a game about overcoming the way games have trained you to expect an immediate response. If you want to see the end, you need to be patient. If you can stand to be with your own thoughts, then it might even be a meditative experience. However if, like me, you can’t play it without switching to something else – well, I don’t blame you. It’s deliberately unfun.

Sandstorm is available now on the developer’s site.

The post Developer Insight: Why I Made A Game That Isn’t Fun appeared first on Indie Games Plus.

Developer Insight: Why I Made A Game That Isn’t Fun published first on https://superworldrom.tumblr.com/

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dorothydelgadillo · 6 years ago

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3 Myths Marketers Believe About What Web Developers Really Do

As we all begin to fundamentally understand that our online efforts and our marketing efforts are intertwined, the interaction between marketers and developers is increasing daily.

While this marriage is essential to a successful online venture, it can lead to some frustration and speed bumps along the way if the two parties don’t understand each others role, value, and process.

You may have experienced this in the past; you submit all the information you’ve painstakingly put together to your development team thinking everyone understands there are likely things that will need to change as we move forward.

Then, you receive the developed product and it’s not what you envisioned or even complete.

Now you go back to development with more information about the missing pieces only to be met with obvious frustration and push back that they “delivered what was requested and what you’re requesting now is a HUGE change requiring a complete re-code.”

Wait...what?

Now you’re frustrated because you feel like you have to defend why it needs to change, everyone is frustrated and no longer on the same page.

Situations like these happen all the time, and it’s mostly due to a lack of collaboration and communication.

Sometimes, though, it simply comes from the misconception that changes to design or functionality won’t affect things that much. I’m here to tell you they certainly do.

For you developers reading this -- yes, I’m looking at you -- marketing’s role is to ensure the website you launch is as tailored to your core customer as humanly possible -- sometimes inhumanly possible.

They also drive everyone to ensure that accurate details regarding site visitor behavior be readily available in order to be able to pivot and adjust strategies as needed.

They’re there to ensure that Sales has a leg up and the leads it needs to increase the overall bottom line.

They push developers to innovate and strive towards that end goal.

That’s a good thing! Anyone that knows me has heard me say, at some point, that “anything is possible with enough time and pressure.”

That said, there are almost always misconceptions about what a developer actually does which lead to delays in production, complete rebuilds and, ultimately, frustration for everyone involved.

We’re going to tackle some of these today and, hopefully, help provide some insight into the process which will help guide everyone to a more symbiotic relationship.

It’s Definitely Not Like You’ve Seen in the Movies

If you’ve seen any movie depicting a developer at work and aren't familiar with the field, you may be really confused about what it takes to arrive at an end product.

In an effort to ensure every viewer understands what’s going on, Hollywood will sometimes oversimplify what a coder/developer/programmer sees or does when executing something on the screen.

They make it look like a programmer can simply sit down at a keyboard and go.

Even worse, they illustrate the actions of a few keystrokes as a graphic representation that any viewer will understand.

Essentially they’re dumbing it down -- and that makes real-world developers like me cringe.

Developers, coders, and software programmers essentially look at text the whole day and all the construction happens in their imagination.

In that sense, development could be considered an art form.

Every single element you see on a web page starts out as a plain old box -- white background and black text. That box has a handful of elements to play with -- padding to give you some space inside it, a border, margin and the content width and height. That’s it!

Using those elements only, a developer encodes values -- which is just another way of saying types out the values -- in order to achieve a predetermined look-and-feel.

How those individual boxes are laid out, what happens when the screen width is reduced, and what happens when other inherent events occur (like a mouse hover, for example) also have to be manually specified.

Now, that only represents the work of the front-end developer whose primary role is to take charge of coding the aesthetic representation of the site.

Usually, they'll be the person that takes an approved design and architects it for the web. Some cross over a bit into other areas, but this is their primary function.

There are all sorts of other considerations when trying to program functionality that deals with data.

When working with data, depending on the platform you use, there are security implications, software efficiency and rendering at play, too. The best part, sarcastically speaking, is that it rarely works the first time.

Now, it’s true, nowadays there are standardized frameworks and a ton of open source -- meaning free and community supported vs. coming from a big software company -- solutions available to a developer that will streamline and facilitate this process.

Still, those frameworks are only meant to provide a base on which to build on.

As for the libraries available, those come with a speed-related price.

Whether you link out to a resource or funnel it into your own code base, an excess use of these will typically result in page speed penalties in some way, shape or form.

The Top 3 Myths Marketers Believe About What Developers Actually Do

1. Development doesn't require much planning.

Some people think that developers can take an idea and simply begin to write code which will turn that idea into software.

This misunderstanding often leads to misguided expectations about timeline and scope.

Before going to work, a developer must always understand the purpose, goal, and worth of such idea that will guide them into the most efficient ways to handle its creation.

Even then, expecting a developer to just “Go! Code!” is fundamentally impossible.

There are so many ways to architect functionality and sometimes it takes time to sit back and think.

They also must take into account any specifications or limitations you may have. For example, perhaps your web host doesn't support certain types of styles. All of this needs to be considered when implementing a solution.

2. The little details just work themselves out.

This is one of the most misguided ideas about what developers do.

Specifics related to your project, what the goal is or, even, anything that’s missing from the information you’re providing are essential from the outset because each facet of the functionality has to be programmed line by line.

One little detail could result in a complete shift in approach from a development standpoint.

To illustrate, if someone sat you down at a computer and asked you to “Write something!” you might have some questions.

What am I writing? Where will my writing be used? Who is meant to enjoy my writing?

And if, after you’d written your masterpiece with all of these questions answered, you were asked to simply change one part of it, you might not be able to fix it without starting all over.

This is because you laid elements leading into that detail they want to remove that no longer work without it. It no longer feels natural.

Development and programming is the same way.

3. Once a developer launches the site, traffic should start to pour in.

This is not the case at all. In order for your brand new website to start driving the traffic you envision, there’s still so much more work to do post-launch.

This usually takes a whole team of other people to market, promote, and optimize the site.

Most marketers who lean on outsource dev firms already enjoy the benefit of having these items taken care of, but for those of you going it alone, here are some tips:

“Google isn’t finding my website!”

In order for Google to know your website exists, a sitemap and a crawl request has to be submitted through their search console. Here is an awesome article to help you get started with Google Search Console.

What about SEO?

Even after you’ve submitted everything to Google, you still may not end up on the first or even the second page of search results when one of your industry keywords are searched. If you’ve not laid out a solid plan for this, it’s going to be very difficult to increase your rankings. Again, this is something you might want to research and

Sometimes it takes a little further investment.

For the super competitive industry categories, all the SEO and planning in the world may not be enough and an online paid media campaign may be necessary to help promote your site and increase your position on those search result pages. This isn’t organic, since that needs time to build, but it just might be the nudge you need to get going.

Bridging the Gap

These are only three of the most prevalent myths or misconceptions I’ve encountered over the years, both, as a freelancer and as part of a development team. I truly believe that communication and buy-in from all parties involved is the solution to most problems that arise in any endeavor.

Now that you know a little bit more about our process, it may save you from further uncomfortable situations and promote a healthier overall culture. It’s the perfect time -- every time -- to reach out to someone in your development team and pick their brain before the outset of any given project.

Not only will this action provide you with the tools you need to get the right kind of information from the very beginning, but it will also give you an opportunity to convey the intent and drive the outcome with the buy-in you’ll receive.

from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/myths-marketers-believe-about-what-web-developers-do

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onlinemarketingcourses · 6 years ago

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Six most common travel SEO mistakes to get right in 2019

Here’s a bold statement: “SEO in the travel industry is immensely challenging.”

The sheer number of pages to manage, complexities of properties, flights, accommodation, availability, occupancy, destinations, not to mention the crazy amount of APIs and databases to make a travel site function, can all make life tricky for an SEO, particularly when it comes to the development queue…

Having said that, there are still common mistakes and missed opportunities out there that have the potential to be really impactful and believe it or not, they don’t actually require a huge amount of resource to put right.

So, here’s a list of the six most common travel SEO mistakes to get right for 2019:

Forgetting about index bloat

There are a LOT of facets and filters when it comes to commercial travel category pages, arguably the most of any industry.

Typically with every facet or filter, be it; availability, location, facilities, amenities nearby, occupancy etc. A URL is created with the associated parameters selected by the user.

If not handled correctly, this can produce thousands of indexable pages that have no unique organic value to users.

This is a problem for a number of reasons:

It can be confusing for search engines because they can find it tricky to identify the best and most relevant URL to rank and show users depending on their query

It can dilute domain level ranking signals drastically

It can cause a huge amount of duplicate content issues

It can waste crawl budget which for big travel sites is super important

Combined, this can cause big losses in rankings, traffic and subsequently conversion!

How to identify index bloat

Go to Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) and check your ‘Index Coverage’ report or, in the old version, check ‘Index Status’ to see if you can see any spikes or growth in ‘Total Indexed’ pages. If you notice something like the graph below and it’s not expected, then there may be a problem:

If you find there is a big increase and you can’t explain why, conduct some ‘Site:’ operator searches and spot check areas of your site where this may be commonplace to see what you can find.

Here’s an example of index bloat from the page speed tool ‘Pingdom’. It seems as though every input a user executes produces an indexable URL:

Once you’ve found a problem like this, review the extent of it with a Screaming Frog crawl. This way you can see how many URLs are affected and distinguish between whether they are actually indexable or not.

For example, there may be a few hundred pages that are indexable but have not yet been found and indexed by Google.

How to fix index bloat:

Noindex – Use a page level meta ‘noindex’ directive on the culprit pages

Where possible redirect – index bloat can happen as a result of mountains of historical 404 pages too, 301 redirect them into the most appropriate page to consolidate

Canonicalisation – apply an absolute canonical tag to the culprit pages to indicate that they are duplicate

Pagination – where possible use rel=”next” & rel=”prev” markup to show that pages are part of a series

URL parameter tool – By far the easiest but arguably the most risky method is using Google’s parameter handling tool to indicate the purpose of the culprit pages, be careful though, this can cause bigger problems if implemented incorrectly

Expert tip

If any of the above are difficult to get implemented in your dev queue and you don’t trust yourself using the parameter handling tool, you can actually noindex web pages & directories in your robots.txt file. You can actually add lines reading:

Noindex: /directory/

Noindex: /page/

This could save you a lot of time and is fully reversible, so less risky if you have control over your robots file. If you’ve never heard of this, don’t worry it is supported and it does work!

Unemotive meta titles

It’s pretty staggering but in the UK, there’s a lot going on in January for travel — it is certainly the biggest spike in the year for many brands, followed by ‘holiday blues’ peaks after summer.

Here’s the trend of interest over time for the query ‘tenerife holidays’ (a destination famed for its good weather all year round) to show you what I mean:

January might be a bad time to experiment because of the higher interest but, the rest of the year presents a great opportunity to get creative with your titles.

Why would you?

Simply, keyword heavy titles don’t inspire high click-through rates.

Creative titles entice users into your landing pages, give your brand a personality and increase your click-through rate. This sends strong positive relevancy signals to Google which helps towards highlighting that your website is the best for the initial user query.

Here are a few things you can try with supportive content and commercial landers:

Get emotional, people buy holidays on the experiences they anticipate having. Play on that with your titles – how will products/content from this page make the user feel?

Where possible use a numbered list to be as descriptive as possible

Use strengthening words such as premium, secret, amazing, proven, guaranteed

Tie in emotional hooks using words like; fun, adventure, seamless, safe, welcoming, luxury, relaxing

Experiment with ‘price from’ and actually quote pricing in the title

Switch up your ��PHP’ generated title tags for property pages and experiment with more descriptive wording and not just PROPERTY NAME | LOCATION | BRAND – but don’t remove any keyword targeting, just improve those titles.

Expert Tip

Write five completely unique title tags for the same page and test each one with a Facebook or PPC ad to see whether they outperform your current iteration in terms of engagement.

Poor merchandising

As previously mentioned, the travel industry experiences peaks and troughs of consumer behavior trend throughout the year which causes the majority intent to switch dramatically across different months in the year.

So, having a deep understanding of what users are actually looking for is really important when merchandising high traffic pages to get the best conversion out of your audience.

In short, gaining an understanding of what works when, is huge.

Here’s some tips to help you make better merchandising decisions:

Use last year’s email open rate data – what type of content/product worked?

Use Google Search Console to find pages that peaked in organic traffic at different times

Involve the social media team to get a better understanding of what your audience is engaging with and why

Use Google Trend data to verify your hunches and find clearer answers

Use UGC sites such as Quora to find questions users are asking during different months of the year. Use the following site operator and swap out ‘holiday’ for your topic: ‘site:quora.com inurl:holiday’ and then filter by custom date range on your search

Often consumers are exposed to the same offers, destinations and visuals on key landing pages all year round which is such a missed opportunity.

We now live in a world of immediacy and those in the industry know the challenges of users cross-shopping between brands, even those who are brand loyal. This often means that if users can’t find what they are looking for quickly, they will bounce and find a site that serves them the content they are looking for.

For example, there’s an argument for promoting and focusing on media-based content, more so than product, later in the year, to cater to users that are in the ‘consideration’ part of the purchasing funnel.

Expert tip

Use number five in this list to pull even more clues to help inform merchandising

Holding back on the informational market share

I grant you, this is a tall order, travel advice, blogs and guides are a standalone business but, the opportunity for commercial travel sites to compete with the likes of TripAdvisor is massive.

An opportunity estimated from our recent Travel Sector Report at 232,057 monthly clicks from 22,040 keywords and only Thomas Cook is pushing into the top 10.

Commercial sites that don’t have a huge amount of authority might struggle to rank for informational queries because dedicated travel sites that aren’t directly commercial are usually deemed to provide better/unbiased content for users.

Having said that, you can see clearly from above that it IS possible!

So, here’s what you should do…

…focus on one thing and do it better than anyone else

Sounds pretty straightforward and you’re probably thinking ‘I’ve heard this before’ but, only a handful in the travel industry are actually doing this well.

Often you see the same information from one travel site to the next, average weather, flight times, the location of the country on a map, a little bit of fluff about the history of the destination and then straight into accommodation.

This is fine, it’s useful, but it’s not outstanding.

Let’s take Thomas Cook as an example.

Thomas Cook has built a network of weather pages that provide live forecasts, annual overviews as well as unique insights into when is best to go to different destinations. It even has a tool to shop for holidays by the weather (something very important to Brits) called ‘Where’s Hot When?’

The content is relevant, useful, concise, complete, easy to use, contemporary in design and, most importantly, better than anyone else’s.

In short, Thomas Cook is nailing it.

They have focused on weather and haven’t stopped until it’s as best as it can be.

Why did they bother with weather? Well it’s approximately a third of all travel-related informational searches that we found in our keyword set from the Travel Sector Report:

Apply Thomas Cook’s methodology to something that is relevant to your audience, it could be; family attractions, adult only tour guides, Michelin star eateries, international laws families should be concerned about, the list is plentiful!

Find something, nail it.

Ignoring the gold in on-site search

There are some big travel sites out there that don’t have an on-site search function which is a huge missed opportunity. Travel sites are inherently difficult to navigate with such a volume of pages, site search is quite often a great solution for users.

As well as this, it can give marketers some amazing insight into what users are looking for, not just generally in terms of the keywords users might be using but also the queries users are searching on a page by page level.

For example, you could drill down into the differences between queries searched on your homepage vs queries searched on specific landing pages to spot trends in behavior and fix the content gaps from these areas of the site.

You could also use the data to inform merchandising decisions to address number three on this list.

In doing this, users are actually telling you exactly what they are looking for, at what time, whether they are a repeat visitor or a new one and where they’ve come from to visit your site.

If you spend the time, this data is gold!

If you can’t get buy in for this, test the theory with an out of the box search function that plugs straight into your site like searchnode. Try it for six months, you might be surprised at how many users turn to it and you will get some really actionable data out of it.

It’s also super easy to track in Google Analytics and the reports are really straightforward:

1. Go to Admin

2. Click ‘View Settings’

3. Switch ‘Site search Tracking’ on

4. Strip the letter that appears in your site’s search URL before the search terms e.g. for wordpress this is usually the letter “s”: http://bit.ly/2CBFu3t

5. Click ‘save’, boom you’re done.

Let Google collect data, extract it monthly and dig, dig furiously!

Ignoring custom 404 errors pages

Who doesn’t love a witty 404 page. More and more often you’ll find that when webmasters optimize a 404 error page they make them lighthearted. Here’s a great example from Broadway Travel:

There is a reason why webmasters aim for a giggle.

Think about it… when users hit a 404 error page, 100% of the time there’s a problem, which is a big inconvenience when you’re minding your own business and having a browse, so, something to make you laugh goes a long way at keeping you unfrustrated.

Time to name names, and show you some 404 error pages that need some work…

British Airways

TUI & Firstchoice

Expedia

Momondo

404 error pages happen over time, it’s totally normal.

It’s also normal to get traffic to your 404 error page. But it’s not just any old traffic, it’s traffic that you’ve worked hard to get hold of.

If, at this point, you’re thinking, ‘my site has recently been audited and internal links to 404 pages have been cleared up’.

Think again!

Users can misspell URLs, ancient external links can point to old pages, the product team can make mistakes, as meticulous as you may be, please don’t discount this one.

Losing quality users because of a bad 404 experience is an SEO’s idea of nails down a chalkboard.

Here are some tips to optimize your 404 pages:

Hit them with something witty but don’t be controversial

Feature the main site query forms prominently so users can conduct another ‘base’ search

Feature a site search option as well – an error page is a perfect opportunity to get users to conduct a site search to give you some insight into what they are looking for (number five on this list)

Include curated links to most popular top level pages such as destinations, guides, hotels, deals etc. This will allow users to start from at the top of each section and it will also allow search engines to continue crawling if they hit a 404 page

Re-emphasize branding, USPs, value proposition and trust signals to subconsciously remind users of why they’re on your site in the first place

Even if you think your 404 is awesome don’t neglect them when they pop up:

Review the 404 page data in Google Analytics behavior flow to find broken links you may not have known about and fix them

Keep on top of your 404 pages in Google Search Console and redirect to appropriate pages where necessary

404’s are often the bane of an SEO’s life and you might think about ways to get out of keeping on top of them.

Sadly there aren’t any short cuts….

…Bonus SEO mistake

Creating a global 301 redirect rule for every 404 page and direct them to your homepage.

This is surprisingly common but is poor SEO practice for a number of reasons, firstly you won’t be able to identify where users are having issues on your site when 404 pages pop up.

You may also be redirecting a page that could have originally had content on it that was totally irrelevant to your homepage. It’s likely in this situation that Google will actually override your redirect and classify it as a soft 404, not to mention the links that may have originally pointed to your 404’s.

Save your users, build a 404 page!

Final thoughts

No site is perfect, and although it might appear as though we’re pointing fingers, we want you to be able to overcome any challenges that come with SEO implementation — there’s always a bigger priority but keep your mind open and don’t neglect the small stuff to stay ahead of the game.

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