I've been wanting to share these with you guys for a while now, but the timing is especially appropriate in the wake of Jeff's latest post. Jeff covered all the important benefits of Wolfire's live support. We have had our fair share of exciting visits from higher-ups at gaming news sites, awesome fans who want to give us fun ideas and people in search of interactive help for Lugaru and the Overgrowth alphas. While most conversations tend to be very productive, there are occasionally times when funny things happen. Without further ado, it is my pleasure to share with you my six silliest meebo moments:

Image by Vib Rib

6

(This occurred while I was watching the superbowl and the person left before I had a chance to read his message).
arm: hiii
arm: ill give you money if you can spell the longest word in english
arm: goodbye

5

KEN: YO
John: hey Jerome
KEN: HOW CAN YOU TELL
JEROME: LOL

4

(regarding Aubrey's awesome cat concept art)
ralok: why that cat have a banana strapped to his head
John : he thinks it looks cool
John : it was a really expensive and rare banana
ralok: it serves no purpose it doesnt even keep the sun out of his eyes
John : you're just jealous

3

(unfortunately happened while I was away)
RMC: Hello Hello Hello
RMC: my friend
RMC: i love you
RMC: you and everyone else at wolfire
RMC: you are so AWESOME
RMC: oh fine ignore me
RMC: you think ime gay right
RMC: well im not so shove it where you want
RMC: not gay
RMC: I just love your work
RMC: does this work like MSN or do i have to wait for an email or something
RMC: um...
RMC: *huff*
RMC: *sob* *sob* *cry*
RMC: ill donate $10 to your indie company
RMC: If you talk to me
RMC: OK $20
RMC: PLEASE TALK TO ME
RMC: you are online i can see you are
RMC: what, are you making a coffee or something

2

(this is a 2 parter and they happened in rapid succession so I'm pretty sure the same person was responsible for both)
06go: hello?
John: hello ther
John: how can I help you?
06go: go f**k yourself
06go: OOOOOOOOOOOH
John: :)
06go : [[owned 2009]]

MJad: Greeting!
John: hi there
John: how can I help you?
MJad: What is this?
John: you are chatting with John of Wolfire Games
MJad: Ohh
John: did you see our new video?
MJad: Yes!
MJad: John you do coding here?
John: no coding at the moment
MJad: No?
MJad: THEN GO F**K YOURSELF
John: as much other stuff as I can so the other guys can just code :)
John: thanks

1

Gaygaygay: F**k you guys
WolfireJohn: :)
Gaygaygay: its not funny
WolfireJohn: have you played Lugaru?
Gaygaygay: F**k you
WolfireJohn: we appreciate your feedback
Gaygaygay: F**k off
WolfireJohn: let me know if you have any questions
Gaygaygay: how can you be so happy about this?
WolfireJohn: well we really like making games
Gaygaygay: are you the dalai llama
WolfireJohn: and I think we're making a good one with Overgrowth
WolfireJohn: but we need feedback from fans like you
Gaygaygay: yeah okay i was just kiddin anyway i love your work you guys are awesome!
WolfireJohn: well we appreciate that, how did you find us?
Gaygaygay: sorry about the profanites
WolfireJohn: please continue if you'd like
Gaygaygay: friend turned me onto yous
Gaygaygay: F**K F**K F**K!!
Gaygaygay: heeheeheh
WolfireJohn: well we're glad to hear that
WolfireJohn: because we're a teeny tiny company
WolfireJohn: and no one knows we exist
WolfireJohn: so word of mouth is about all we've got going for us :)
WolfireJohn: have you tried Lugaru by the way?
Gaygaygay: ill tell everyone i see that likes giant rabbits killing each other
Gaygaygay: yeah its fun
Gaygaygay: rabbit kick is so cool

Remember I'm usually available on meebo a good part of the day, every day of the week. So if you want to talk to someone at Wolfire come visit the live chat on our contact page and start typing. Even if I'm not online when you send your message, I'll see it the next time I sign on (but leave some contact info for me if you want me to follow up with you). Thanks for all the visits so far. I look forward to many future chats and kindly ask you not to prank me too much :) .

One advantage that Wolfire has over a lot of other companies is the level of customer service we provide. We often respond to new emails within the hour. We monitor our forum. We read all of our blog comments. What is most unusual though, is that pretty much anytime we are awake, anyone can contact us live and one of us will personally respond. My AIM is osxii and my MSN is jeff@wolfire.com. Add me to your buddy list!

Some developers adopt the attitude that customer service is a chore and only with great reluctance address the emails that are piling up. Communication with their community is shunned instead of celebrated.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when I want to contact another game developer, company, or whoever, and it's just not possible. Either they don't list their email, or flat out don't respond. It seems kind of snooty and in many cases it's just bad business. At Wolfire, we try to do the exact opposite. I don't care who you are, whether you're the head of Electronic Arts or an 11 year old kid who likes to play Lugaru. Everyone is welcome here.

I'm just a humble engineer, but here are a few of the benefits we've seen after having a live chat widget for a while.

You never know who will contact you
Live chat lowers the barrier to contact us. It's hard not to say "hi" when you have a widget on your screen. Sure, some people would have contacted us via email anyway and things would have still happened, but it's so much easier say hello and get things done on AIM or MSN. For instance, we've done impromptu interviews, been contacted randomly by a number of distributors, and have met a lot of other indie developers and other cool people through our live chat.

Live chat prevents pile-up
By having an open IRC chat room and a live chat widget, if someone has a problem, we address it immediately. Things don't "get lost in the mail". The dreaded pile-up of emails never happens because things get attention in real time. Maybe it's just me, but it's a lot easier and ultimately faster to help someone over AIM than it is over email.

Good support breeds good supporters
How can just a few guys answer every question anyone in the community has? The truth is, we can't. But because we're active in the community, plenty of people are willing to help us out. We're eternally grateful to the people in IRC and other people who take charge on the forums, helping newcomers with tech support so that we can focus on development. A few shoutouts off the top of my head (there are many more): Jo-Shadow, Ltp0wer, Ozymandias, Skofo, and Nuky.

It helps encourage evangelists
We pay attention to a lot of people. Some people, I admit, don't contribute a lot and it's just a fun diversion. However, every once in a while, someone who contacts us decides we deserve their support, and helps to spread the word about Wolfire and Overgrowth. For example, Silverfish has done a great job on our ModDB page, which has been invaluable for spreading the word.

I have a few questions for you guys.

What can we do beyond live chat? Is this sustainable long term? How can we get the remaining "red" companies to return our emails?

We are going to have lots of different cultures in Overgrowth, not just for each different animal species, but for sub-groups within each species. In order to plan out the background of the game world, we have had a few discussions about the specifics of these cultures and their relationships to their environment.

My job in all this is to help visualize the differences between the cultural artifacts produced by each group. Among the things we considered are the various technology levels, raw materials available, different belief systems, and different aesthetics of each culture. It's also important to make the broad strokes visually distinct-- after all, there isn't any point in going to all this effort if the player doesn't notice, or if it seems random.

Here is a very rough sketch breaking down common visual themes by species:

Within each broad category there will be subcultures that are different. What kind of subcultures would you like to see in Overgrowth?

Some examples of subcultures that we were considering include:

• A small sect of heretic rabbits who worship the moon and night instead of the sun and day.
• An organization of warrior rabbits who believe they are the descendants of a pure bloodline, and have the right to police the world
• A rogue dog soldier squad that is disgusted with how easily the other dogs are persuaded to do grunt work for cats

A lot of people were asking how to use the editor in the latest Overgrowth alpha, so we decided to make a video to show off all the tools! It stars John as the narrator, and includes a tools tutorial, timelapse building construction, and exclusive footage of the elusive Rabbot.

Be sure to watch it in HD!

Press the triangle button for captions (download transcript)

As always, please let us know what you think in the comments. I received a lot of really good suggestions in the comments on my last map editor post. As you may have noticed, I implemented a few of them and lots more are now on my list! For example, a few days ago, Jo-Shadow, in the forums, suggested making the editor grid from Alpha 11 remain stationary as objects move across it. I thought this was a great idea, so I added it just in time for the video -- the grid lines are now stationary and just fade in and out around the object.

After manning the meebo widget for a few months, I've been asked many times about the best way for someone to enter the realm of game development. Granted, Wolfire is a very young company, and out of all the guys on our team I'm probably the least experienced when it comes to game development. However after consulting the other guys, I think I've assembled a decent list of helpful suggestions.

Start early

As you may have seen in our team introductions or read in our interviews, a lot of the guys on team Wolfire began programming very early. In case you don't recognize him, this is our fearless leader David Rosen, already getting started at age 3.

Developing games is very much like playing an instrument or learning a language. You need to get a certain amount of experience under your belt before you can become proficient, so the sooner you start, the better.

Take classes in your discipline

Some people out there might take issue with this claim and I'm sure there are plenty of people out there that are very successful programmers who didn't major in computer science, or artists who didn't take formal classes. However, the cold hard truth is that without classes, you will only fully explore the 'fun' parts of your discipline, and miss important fundamentals that can only be learned through structured study and practice.

Everything Applies to Game Design

Creating a game is not only the process of writing code. Acting, history, and psychology classes, and even walks outside can in many ways be just as useful for learning the art of game design as learning to code or texture. While it's essential to learn your specialized discipline in depth, it's just as important to learn about how everything fits together.

Control Your Scope

Don't try to make Crysis as your first game project when you still don't know how to output "Hello World" on a command prompt. Even David started with Pong as his first major game (though he was quick to add his own signature weapons like fireballs and razor blades to spice things up). If you set the bar too high, too early, you're setting yourself up for unnecessary amounts of frustration.

Do Competitive Analysis (but not too much)

When you're in an industry traveling at the speed of Moore's Law, if you don't pick your head up once in awhile to look at what the other guys are doing, you might get left behind. Who would have thought that playing games could be considered work? Just make sure you don't do too much research on the competition. Reaching level 80 in WOW for example is probably overkill.

Don't Give Up

If you're not struggling at all, you're not learning anything. It's when things are most difficult that one has the greatest opportunity to learn something new and get that warm fuzzy sense of achievement that all programmers have when they solve a problem. There were a few times when I was learning Scheme in college where I almost defenestrated my computer instead of finishing my problem sets but I'm very glad I didn't.

As always feel free to follow up with questions or observations. Do you have any questions that I did not address, or lessons you've learned developing your own games?