Game Design Blog by MeTheMinion

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Business Vision and Product

If you're starting your own business or even just thinking about it, and you're even the tiniest bit like me, then chances are good you've spent a whole lot of time agonizing over the vision for your company. Business consultants, investors and pretty much all of the internet has given me the strong impression that product isn't nearly as important as vision. An investor will likely turn you away if all you have is a product but no vision for what your business will be and how it will grow. To be clear, they're not wrong. Having just a product isn't enough. If you're trying to get external funding, then you need to be able to provide some assurance that your company has a future that goes beyond the thing you just made, or are making. As someone who made a product way before ever really thinking about running a business, this presented a problem. I started making a game on my own time after work, and figured I would just toss it into app stores and see what happens later. Then, I got sick, became disabled and gave up my position as full-time game coder and designer because I could no longer see myself as a reliable employee and did not want to burden the studio. I finished my solo game, with ideas for more projects already in mind, so I just started working on the second game. At this point the basic plan was just to make game after game and hope that at least one of them did well. That's great for tinkering in your freetime, but it isn't a business plan.

When writing my own business plans, I was told by various consultants that my plan was worthless so long as I did not define what my company was about. What is my theme? My vision? I made a product, but who cares? Then what? How is the company going to sustain itself in the long term?

I recently binge-watched Silicon Valley, without knowing in advance that the show was actually going to provide some broad parallels and valuable information. In the show, character Richard Hendricks struggles with the same question when pitching to investors about his startup, which is based entirely on a compression algorithm he wrote that promises to revolutionize technology. The problem is, even though his product is potentially worth millions, no investor will take him seriously without a defined vision for his company. Great product, no vision. He spends like three episodes feeling absolutely lost until his friend Elrich Bachman magically pulls a vision out of his ass during a pitch meeting. They skated by on improvised bologne and got their funding, and their company finally had some defitiotion of direction. This got me thinking that having a product and no vision was very common, so I started looking specifically for related search terms, like "company with product but no vision". Finally I was getting hits that helped, and didn't make me feel like I was doomed to fail because I lacked what every other founder seemed to have instinctively. Do you know who had no product-unrelated vision? Steve Jobs. His vision was product-first, and I came to learn that product-first companies were a regular thing. Despite of all the searching and consulting, noone had ever told me this one simple thing: Making great products is a perfectly acceptible vision to have for your company!

That might still be a tad too simple for an investor to risk throwing money at you, and comparing yourself to Steve Jobs during pitch isn't likely to score you bonus points, but if you're bootstrapping, it'll do for now. I had decided to bootstrap for the same reasons that I had quit my dayjob: my illness made me too unreliable and I feared I would struggle or fail to meet some deadlines. Still, I wanted to finetune my vision, because my goal, while solid didn't exactly present any unique selling points. So I did a SWOT analysis.

In case you're unfamiliar, SWOT is a practical business analysis tool invented by management consultant Albert Humphrey in 1966. Among business tools it is one of the most popular. I was excited to also see it used on the TV show Silicon Valley. SWOT is an achronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. It is basically a table with four fields, one for each of those categories. You brainstorm with as many involved minds as possible, ranging from stakeholders to consumers and fill those fields.

My SWOT analayis helped me see what I had been taking for granted and allowed me to further flesh out my vision for Brainscar Games. I am disabled with an autoimmune disease and neurological disorder. Statistically, one in fourty adults has some sort of autoimmune disorders nowadays, with all the chemicals we've been ingesting over the years. One in eight childrend is diagnosed with some degree of autism. Disability is on the rise, and the gaming industry has largely ignored the rising demands of a disabled gamer community. This could be in part due to ignorance on the subject, being detached from it, not being versed in accessibility features, or being aware of them but being unable or unwilling to implement them. I'll be honest. Adding accessibility is extra work, and these features need to be in the design of the game from the beginning as they can be quite difficult to tag on as extra features later on in development. Being disabled actually gives me an edge here. So does having an autistic son. Even my colorblindness is an advantage in this instance. I know from firsthand experience what some disabled gamers need to comfortably play games, and I've done plenty of research to bridge the gaps. There are great resources out there with accessibility checklists for game developers if one is only inclined to look. Making my games accessible has always been a priority, I just saw that as a given.

So there is my vision. It was always there, but it took some searching to put a name to. The vision of Brainscar Games is to make fun games that tell great stories, which are accessible to everyone, regardless of disability. Now that it's there, it's kind of a no-brainer. Sometimes you just agonize over something so hard that you can't see what's right in front of you.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Press List: People to pitch to

When I was doing PR for Monster Face, I searched high and low for just a list of distributers to submit to, game review sites to pitch to, and youtubers to contact. I couldn't find one. I had to put my own list together out of bits and pieces floating around the web, and now I'm sharing it with you. This is everyone I submitted to and contacted. I hope you find it useful.

Distributers:

I've divided these into three categories. Easy to Submit distributors provide a link or email specifically for receiving game submissions. Catch Me If You Can distributors make you jump a hoop or two. Dead End distributors should be avoided

Easy to Submit

Humble Store: You can submit to the store or apply for their widget at here
gog.com Online Submission Form
itch.io: No submission request. Just create an account and upload your game
GamersGate: submit by email
IndieGameStand: Sign in to an account and use the submission form
MacGameStore : submission form
GameStreamer: submission form

Catch Me If You Can

GreenManGaming: they don't make it easy. Submit using their assistance request form
GetGames: another submission by support ticket
FireFlowerGames: Informal submission via contact submission form
ShinyLoot: contact submission form
Awomo: submit by contact email
WildTangent: contact submission form

Dead End

beamdog.com: Developer portal 404 for months now
desura.com: MIA and not paying devs
indieroyale.com: run by Desura
indiecity.com: no longer being maintained

Demos

It is worth adding that I also created a demo and submitted it to softonic.
Here is a comprehensive submission guide. It's actually easy

Youtubers

Never underestimate the power of a good Let's Play or video review. Again, I've divided the list into youtubers who actually read my pitch and responded, those who went on to make a video, and those I never heard back from. I suggest just sending your pitch to everyone

Game Journalists

RockPaperShotgun: email
allaboutcasualgame.com: contact submission form
CasualGirlGamer.com: email
CasualGamesPortal.com: contact submission form
JayIsGames.com: Games Submission Form
IndieGameReviewer.com: Games/Contact submission form
GamesRadar.com: email
AnimeGeekGamingNation: email
OrdinaryGamer.co.uk (PC Games Only): contact submission form

When submitting a game, especially via email:

When submitting your game(s), please include as much of the following information as possible:

Title
Short information about the game
Screenshots (URLS)
Video (ULRS)*
Genre
Price*
Release Date*
Name of Game Studio/Developer/Company

*If available/possible

Remember your Friends

Keep track of every reply, and especially every resulting review you got from a contact. When you make your next game, those contacts should be the first to get a crack at it, before you send it to anyone else. Let them know you appreciate their help, and show them loyalty.

Has this list helped you? Leave a comment

Selling My First Game - Contacting the Media: A Journey

I must say, I've learned a whole lot about marketing an indie game lately. Most of it doesn't work. What you really need above all is to be persistent and lucky. Persistent how, you say? Here are some things I've tried and how they've affected my views and sales:

Hashtags:

Oh my Gawd, how did I not know how important those are? USE THEM! I've been tweeting about my game for months, and it made absolutely no difference, whatsoever. Then again, I only had about 20 followers on Twitter. I looked up trending hashtags and tweeted a little something about Monster Face, with the hashtags #indiedev and #gamedev

Monster Face had never gotten so much attention. Within 10 minutes, the number of views on itch.io went from 58 to 81. That's one fourth of my total views in a tiny timespan, compared to the other three fourths that took weeks to get. There are bots on twitter that retweet those hashtags and get them to a much larger audience. I got a good amount of new followers in Twitter, and some of them have been favouriting and retweeting me occasionally since then. No sales have come out of this, yet, but I'm definitely getting a lot more attention. None of the marketing guides I read mentioned this, so I'm doing it now.

Use hashtags. I can't oversell this.

Pitch Emails:

Most marketing guides will tell you to write short personalised emails to journalists and youtubers. Have a catchy subject line like "Brainscar Games presents: Monster Face, an addictive casual time-killer". Introduce yourself briefly. Be clear what you want right away "I'd like to ask you to review my game". Describe your game in a single short paragraph, provide screenshots and a gameplay trailer and/or link to a one, and a copy of your game. Thank the reader for taking the time to read your mail, and remind them what you want "...and thank you for considering my game for review"

Also very important, and I made the mistake of forgetting this one. All the guides say, don't leave any questions open. If a contact has to write you back to ask for more information, they probably won't and just discard your mail. Aside from including a playable copy of your game, make sure to also provide a link to where the game can actually be purchased.

That is all good advice. It's how professional pitch emails should be written, and sending out enough of these will get you results sooner or later. I sent out about 60 in the first week. It took me a while, because every single journalist/youtuber got their own personally-written mail. I didn't copy/paste or mass send. The mails are similar, of course, but every person I pitch to got the courtesy of being treated as a person, not just a number on a list.

Every time I send out a block of these, my game views go up a bit for a day, and the press link is used to download Monster Face by about one third the amount of mails written. For example, on June 13-14 I sent out 30 pitch emails. That earned me 33 views and 8 downloads.

Gimmick Pitches:

This isn't just pitching for me, it's research. I want to know what works, and how well. I tried out a new approach. Against all sound advice, I have written a series of pitch emails in parody of the Nigerian Prince scam emails. I start with a subject like "Gamedev from Nigeria wants to give you Important Indie Game", and then claim to be a Nigerian gamedev prince, sending them the last existing copy of Monster Face, and charge them to guard it with their very lives, because the freedom and happiness of my people depends on it. I add that including the press link and gameplay trailer to the mail will surely get me executed if caught, and implore the reader to review the game as quickly as possible, for the sake of my country and gaming rights everywhere.

As it turns out, people didn't get it. I sent out 12 mails, which earned me 1 view and 2 downloads. Those aren't great results. I made up other stories. I sent mails claiming to have been abducted by space pirates who wanted to keep my game for their own planet. I claimed to be a hostage of ninjas who were forcing me to design games in a sweatshop somewhere. Nothing. I tried again by sending 10 pitch emails with the subject "Come With Me If You Want to Live!" in which I claimed to be the mail's recipient from the future, writing himself about the importance of playing my game. The review will be the pivoting point of history which causes video games to be embraced and integrated into all aspects of life. They must hurry, because a terminator has been sent back in time to stop them making the video. The first terminator was accidentally sent to 1984 where it became an actor, but the new one got it right and will be there soon. Two people responded very positively to those emails. I got replies like "This is promotion at it's finest! You really got my attention". That felt great, but even those two people didn't pursue the matter any further. Those 10 mails didn't get me a single view or download. Not one. The regular old pitch emails did better. Gimmick emails get you nowhere. I can't say this didn't disappoint me a little. I really wanted to be able to say creativity can give you an edge.

Finding people to pitch to:

The internet is ridiculously lacking in lists of you tubers that review games and game news sites. Google it all you want. You're only going to get a short list of the biggest ones. You can write all of them in a day. Then you're back to searching aimlessly for more.
Here's a little help:
Wikia has a very helpful list of let's players on youtube http://letsplay.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Let%27s_Players
There is also a list specifically for female let's player: http://letsplay.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Female_Let's_Players

Contacts with no email address:

Ridiculously, a lot of game news sites don't provide an email address anywhere on their website. Plenty of reviewers and let's players on youtube also don't provide a contact adress. It's like they don't want to be pitched to. So, do a little digging. Game news sites tend to have contact submission forms. If nothing else is available, then use those before you give up on the site entirely. For youtubers, there are usually links to Facebook, twitter and Google+, and with a little luck they listed an email address there, but I've found that this really isn't worth the trouble. If a youtube page does not have an email adress listed, skip that youtuber and invest time in the ones who actually make contacting them possible in this lifetime. I've tried putting in the effort, and have not gotten any responses from youtubers who's emails I eventually managed to unearth.. You can still either message them directly on youtube, which has not gotten me any results so far, or shout them a quick "Hi. I'm an indie dev and would love for you to have a look at my game. Do you have an email address I could send you a download link to?" on their youtube channel discussion panel. None of them have ever responded to my attempts at communicating this way, but if you have the extra time, I wouldn't discard trying this entirely. You might have more luck than I have.

Remember, you're the dev with the product that needs attention. You're the one with the need. But, you're not at the bottom of the food chain, here. You also have something to offer. You just need to get people to see that they need what you have. You worked hard, and now you have something others can benefit from. Don't sell yourself short. We're expected to be thorough in our pitches and leave no questions open, because our pitch will be discarded if the person we contact has to hunt for missing information. If they, on the other hand, aren't able or willing to provide you with easily-obtained contact information, then skip them. You're working hard to grease the PR machine, and you have much more important things to do than focus an hour on one single reviewer who is 80% likely to turn you down anyway. Your time is better spent reaching more people who aren't making it difficult for you. Chances are, your game is great, and anyone you can't even pitch to is missing out.

The results are in:

I've tried personalized, individually written pitch emails, gimmick emails, alternate contact options like youtube messenger and submission forms, and now mass emails. Here's what I discovered. Use mass emails! I spent weeks writing individual emails with next to no results. A few views and downloads, but no replies or exposure whatsoever. Gimmick mails were a total flop. And then, I wrote a single pitch email and sent it to 15 youtubers at once. I got 3 views within 10 minutes of sending. Within that day, I got 4 email responses confirming that they will play my game on their channel, and they were excited about doing so. After ages of failed attempts, my game is finally going to be seen in public.
Driven by the sudden updraft of responses, I took that same pitch email, and sent it to 22 more youtubers. I got even more hits, more downloads, and another video review out of it.
I couldn't be happier with this awesome review the mass mail approach got me:

Important note, whatever you do, only make 1 youtuber the mail's recipient, and put the rest in CC. Nobody likes emails with huge lists of other people right there at the top. Using CCs is cleaner and more considerate. I did it this way, and I got results.

Here's another good one:
Don't forget about Twitch. There are streamers with massive and/or loyal audiences, who might be willing to give your game a try and stream it to them. That's exposure. Don't discount it. Most game marketing guides don't mention Twitch, so I'm mentioning it now. Pitch on Twitch!

Small Audience trumps No Audience

Don't discard youtubers with small audiences. Contact everyone. Even if a channel has only 8 followers, that's 8 people who will have seen your game, and small channels may be more likely to welcome original contact and actually have the time to take you seriously. Getting turned down by a big channel gains you nothing. Getting reviewed on a tiny channel gains you something.

Sell Yourself

Before I was a gamedev, I wrote tabletop RPGs. Before that, I was a vacuum cleaner salesman. I learned a lot about selling, and read a lot on the subject to improve my vacuum cleaner game. One of the most important lessons I learned as a salesman: You're not really selling your product. You're selling YOU. When you're pitching a sale, it doesn't matter what you're selling. All that matters is that the person you are pitching to believes you are sincere. You have to sell your brand. It's no different in the games industry. If Bethesda released a game called World of Poop, and the cover had a turd holding a sword, millions would buy it. Because it's Bethesda. If Skyrim had been released by a company called SomeDevFromKentucky, it might have gotten a little attention as a game that was "incredibly well done considering it came from a small unknown studio", and that would have been the end of it. Sell your brand, then your game. If you're an indie dev, YOU ARE YOUR BRAND. Sell yourself!

One of the most memorable things Zig Ziglar said, most memorably to me, at least was that the net worth of a person is the average net worth of the sum of his closest associates. That can be applied in many ways, and this is one of them. Be active socially. Network. Talk to other devs. Make successful people your associates, and it will raise your own market value as a dev. Get to know people, get out there. Sell yourself!

This gets mentioned a lot, and I was going to leave it out, but it's important and can't be overstated. No matter how much marketing you do, now matter how many people you contact or show your game to, if your game isn't "finished", it will get you nowhere. Releasing a game with a lot of bugs or unfinished graphics you plan on upgrading in a patch later is a giant turn-off. The internet remembers everything! If you release an unpolished game, and release updates a month later that make it the greatest game in the world, people googling your game are always going to find those first crappy images and posts of people complaining about bugs, because shortly after release is when your game will receive the most media attention it's ever going to get. Do it right the first time, THEN start pitching. Otherwise you're just shooting yourself in the foot.

I hope my research into contacting the media can be of help to other new devs out there. Remember, don't give up. It took me almost 2 months to get a reply, but I stuck with it and things are starting to roll along now. Keep contacting people. Someone will listen!

Friday, June 19, 2015

Selling My First Game

It's been a long time coming, but I've finished and released my first game, Monster Face on June 6, 2015. As I've read many a times, and as I'm experiencing now, marketing an indie game is tough. The game has been available for 2 weeks now, and here are my experiences so far:

It's not all rainbows and lollipops. When you make a game, no matter how proud of it you are, no matter how much time and effort you poured into it, without exposure, you will sell nothing. To date, I haven't sold a single copy of Monster Face. I even posted the odd free download link for a free copy to the first person who grabs it, and those links are as of yet unused. I gave my sister a link attached to birthday wishes. Unused. I can't seem to give this game away. Not even to friends and family. It's disheartening, but by no means should you give up, and neither will I.

I can see on my dashboard on itch.io that the purchase page has been viewed 60 times. Most of those views came the day after I sent out a total of 33 pitch emails to PC game review sites and selected youtubers. When I was applying for internships with game studios, we were required to send out at least 45 applications. So, 33 pitch emails really isn't much. And more views than pitches isn't bad. The free download link for press purposes I included in those mails was also used 8 times. So, 8 people downloaded and played my game. That's something.

One of the more frustrating aspects was locating enough PC game review sites to contact. There really isn't a conclusive list of review sites out there. I did find a decent database of youtubers who review games on pixelprospector.com. Review sites are tough. I'm keeping a list of all the ones I've found and have written, and I'll be posting it when I'm done so that maybe some other poor soul will have an easier time of it.

All the indie marketing guides, and common sense demand that I continue getting the word out, and that is what I am still doing. That means, locating more review sites and youtubers, picking the right indie game competition to enter Monster Face into, and staying active on twitter and social media. Sooner or later, somebody with followers is bound to say something about it. Even a "oh my god don't ever play this" is better than no exposure at all. PewDiePie said exactly that about Flappy Bird, and it made Flappy Bird as successful as it was. I'll do sales weeks and post free links at choice locations.

I'm sharing my experience to show that marketing your first game can be quite the discouraging hurdle. But, the only way you'll ever tackle a hurdle is to keep pushing. Don't give up, this is your biggest challenge. Once people know who you and your game are, it's bound to get at least a bit easier.

Friday, March 27, 2015

Almost There...

I really need to do better about upkeeping my internet presence and networking. The last 2 years have been very high-maintenance. Cranking out games at Silent Dreams is challenging, and I've learned a whole lot.

And now, it's finally almost ready: my very own solo-project. A game of my very own. Granted, it's basically an app but it's fun and addictive. Monster Face is complete and ready to play. All it needs now is platform support like leaderboards. With any luck, I'll be putting it on iOS and Android soon, and with a little more luck maybe it will even be greenlit on Steam for PC/Mac/Linux.

Originally the game was extremely simple. You throw food at a monster's face and try to hit the open mouth. If you miss, the game ends and your score is saved. I'm fortunate to have two awesome children ages 4 and 5, and they loved the faces but found the game too difficult and frustrating. It occurred to me that while Monster Face is meant to be challenging, it shouldn't exclude kids. So I added a few modes of varying game-play and difficulty, and viola: The kids love the new Zen Mode.

For the last month I've been looking into all the bureaucratic nonsense involved in selling an app from Germany. It's ridiculous really. They take you for everything you have before you even have a chance to have it. So, I'm looking into other options, but one way or another, this is going to happen.

I'm extremely excited about this. When it's time, I'll be posting updates on the progress of Monster Face, and hopefully on the next game in line, Rocket Potato, for which I've even gone and learned some graphic design and animating. Necessary skills if you're going to make games on our own. The skills came just in line for Monster Face, because I was running out of graphic artist friends with enough free time to make me some faces. A huge thank you to Bea Sucrow, by the way for making the faces of Optie and Bubbles with only my sketches to work from. If Monster Face does well, I will definitely be making a sequel with animated faces, now that I know how.

I don't want to pre-hype, because the game is so ridiculously simple that anyone could copy it with little effort and potentially release before I do, but as soon as it's uploaded, I'll upload a trailer and spread the word in much greater detail.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

I Am The Evil Midnight Blogger What Blogs At Midnight

So, it's been ages since I posted. With my recent move and various acts of chaos in my life, I haven't had much free time, but that's not really it. I think this is why: Do you know how tedious it is to write as not-yourself? Let me explain. I wrote everything in this blog myself, but when I read what I've got so far, I don't like how I come across, so much. I make awesome points, and as being right about stuff all the time is one of my super powers, I'm right about stuff. But it's all, I dunno. Like, I'm trying too hard to sound professional. Not that I'm not a professional. Let me get back on track here!

When I started this blog I had already been reading multiple blogs of other devs. I was brand new to the scene and tried to gleen as much wisdom from the veterans and other creatives as I could. I still do. All those blogs, at least the one I followed, are well-written, informative and often full of nifty little goodies that I can't wait to try implementing, myself. On top of that, I discovered game journalist Daav Valentaten. The guy has kind of become my go-to for the age-old question: "Should I buy that game or does it suck?", because uncannily, everything he says is great turns out to be something I want to make babies with, and everything he says is terrible, is actually terrible. And he's a super-smart dude who has a real way with using words to express what his mind wants to say.

When I started blogging, I wanted to write like Daav, and I wanted my blog to be informative and have that "teachy" tone of the other dev blogs I had read. And, as it turns out, I can't write like Daav. Maybe with a lot of practice I can learn to be as consistently eloquent. But when I look at my previous blogs sounding like not-me, coming across teachy, like the blog of a dev who has been in the industry for a long time, I don't like it. I'm new and excited to be here. So, why shouldn't I write that way? Here's my resolution. To hell with teachy. I shouldn't sound teachy and veteran-y (not a word, I know). I am in the most awesome industry on the planet. I love my job immensely. Every day, I learn something new and really cool that I can't wait to try out. When I learned about fuzzy logic it blew my mind. Neural networking. Holy crap! How awesome is that? Even on the most routine days of writing endless amounts of code or laboring over design documents, something exciting is always right around the corner. I always dreamed of making games. Now I live it.

My blog should be written from the perspective I actually have. Game development, when seen through my eyes, shouldn't be text-book, routine, or matter of fact. It should be seen with the amazement and wonder I see it with every day. Because, every algorithm I've learned, from bubble sorting to flocking behavior AI, rocks! Every character I create or story I write opens a whole world to me, with endless staggering potential. I could be earning next to nothing, and to be honest, sometimes that is exactly what I earn, and I wouldn't want to work in any other field than game development. And that's how I'm going to write about it from now on.

Hold on to your butts!

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

RPG Dialogues: More Than Meets the Eye

Back when I was just a gamer, dialogues were just there. It never occurred to me that any kind of thought had to be put into anything other than the actual content, the words. Now that I am a developer, I am acquiring an analytic eye. That new trait and personal experience writing dialogues for RPGs has taught me that more thought goes into a uniform structure for how dialogues work in your game, or at least "should" go into. Consistency is the key.

When writing for an RPG in which the player controls a main character, you have to think about how you want your players to relate to him/her. How much "I" association do you want the player to have? Is the player meant to feel that it is him inside the game, or do you prefer a more cinematic atmosphere in which the character has his own name and identity apart from the player? With a little variation used here and there, I have found two main approaches for RPG dialogue structure.

The first is what I like to call the immersive approach. Elder Scrolls is a great example for this method, and it is best suited for games with encompassing character creation. Starting the game with control over whom and what your character is gives a player the feeling that he decides his character's motives and response to his environment. From a dev standpoint, it is a good idea to run with that.

With the immersive dialogue approach, the main character is pretty much mute. Yup, never says a thing. The actual audible dialogue is done completely by the supporting cast. In addition, everything the main character says, and I really mean everything, is a player choice, a branch in the dialogue tree. That sounds like a lot of work, and it does mean you need to write more dialogue, but no one will be too upset if both choices lead to the same response. The point is to get across that the demeanor and attitude of the main character is in the player's hands, regardless of how NPCs respond. Full dialogue branches are, of course, neater, and some purists may disagree with me here, but they are not always necessary. Dragon Age, Fallout 3 and Kingdoms of Amalur: The Reckoning are also excellent examples of the immersive method.

I like to refer to my favorite alternative as the cinematic method. The Mass Effect series makes use of this one. Voice recognition in Mass Effect 3 does add a more immersive quality, but the essence is the same. In this approach, the main character does more talking than anyone else. Sometimes the player chooses what the character has to say; sometimes the main character is an automatic part of the ongoing dialogue. Important to note with this method: Every dialogue choice comes with an actual line the main character says. That is because this method gives your game a different kind of immersion. Where the immersion method aims to give the impression of playing yourself in fantastic scenarios, the cinematic method conveys the feeling of acting out an important role in a story; like getting to play a character in a movie or novel.

If there is audible voice acting for character text, sticking to the rule of following a dialogue choice with actual main character dialogue is doubly important, because in this case you are hearing the conversation. Listening to a dialogue in which lines are missing disrupts immersion, like a hiccup in your brain. While you are reading the entire dialogue, and can follow it, part of your brain still registers the conversation as "not making sense". On the other hand, a complete dialogue where everyone is actually saying their lines really lets your mind settle into the story. The Gothic series is a good example of this approach.

Finally, there is what I call the static method. It is simpler and maybe less immersive, but not to be underestimated, as it has served countless RPGs well over many years, and I feel it deserves mention. The static method doesn't give dialogue choices. Typically, the player is only required to press a button to progress to the next line of text, but the whole thing is entirely pre-scripted. The advantage to this method is that it is very solid; you can't do much wrong with it. The static method is also the most classic and well-tried. It has shown its worth in games like Chrono Trigger, Wild Arms, Final Fantasy, Shadow Hearts, Kingdom Hearts, etc, etc, etc

The next time I write game dialogue, I will strive to pick a method and stick with it. I really don't recommend mixing them. Writing this entry was a learning experience for me, it really helped me analyze, compare and organize my thoughts on the whole thing. I hope it can do the same for anyone reading it.