2015-10-15 04:35:29

It feels like more and more people are rising up and developing games.  This is excellent of course, and is helping the community grow!  I have no idea if this thread will be considered appropriate (it can be deleted if it is not), but the thought crossed my mind that I don't see many posts helping new developers know what to expect.

In the past I've heard from people who decided never to make another game, because they said they posted something and their feelings were hurt by the response.  Criticism is going to happen, usually harshly, and not all developers are really ready to handle it.  It can be very tough for someone to stay motivated when people point out flaws in their work.  Especially for new developers, what they handed the community might represent the current best they can do, so it stings deeper to have its flaws brought to light.

Am I saying people shouldn't point out flaws in games or make suggestions, definitely not.  That's just part of the development process, though there are times when comments are overly harsh or developers are overly sensitive.  The important thing is that new developers know that criticism is a normal part of being a game developer, and that it is going to happen once they start posting projects.  Growing a thick skin is something they have to do on their own, but it's best if we can avoid the shock of unexpected criticism.

In a recent, heated discussion, people talked about how a game developer can't really shield themselves from moderator duties once they make a multiplayer game.  Responsibilities can be shared among people you hopefully trust, but at some point you will have to take on a larger role than just a "developer".

Before I go any further, please keep all specific names out of this topic, if we can.  I'm trying to use some general examples, and if people start to throw around names and current situations, all we'll have is a worthless flame war on our hands.  So lets just stick to generic stuff here.  Thanks!  big_smile

Multiplayer games are the "next step" many of our newer developers are heading into.  Just as releasing their first project came with criticism, multiplayer games come with their own obstacles.  It might seem obvious to some of us, but any developer getting into the world of multiplayer gaming needs to expect major problems with some players.  I do believe we've all seen people ranting and raving on these forums, angry about a ban or something in an online game.  If those rants are what they're willing to publicly post (to be judged by all for all time), what do you think they post in private, sent directly to the developers themselves?  It is usually much worse.

By the time a developer is making their first multiplayer game, they've hopefully grown a thick skin and can deal with criticism well.  This is good because criticism will start to take on a more hostile form.  You will have players that seemingly dedicate their lives to ruining the fun of everyone around them, at at some point you're going to have to step in and deal with them.

As time passes, you will have a larger and larger number of people who absolutely hate your guts.  These are the trouble makers who you've had to step in and punish, or the friends and family of those people.  This is just the life of a developer, so don't take it personally.  Like before with the criticism, some developers are so shocked by this that they give up and avoid multiplayer games.  Knowing it Will happen, should help lessen the impact when it happens to you.

Now here is where I'm not 100% sure if my idea is great, or terrible.  To soften the shock of what these multiplayer troublemakers will say to the new developer, I think the best way is to have some of us share the kinds of things that have been said to us.  Basically get to see some examples of what current multiplayer devs are receiving regularly, so you can more easily laugh it off when it happens to you.

I'm sure there are other developers who can add to this list, so I welcome them to do so.  Please keep specific names out so that we avoid flame wars.  The goal here is just to let people know what sorts of things they will have thrown at them once they enter the next stage of their audio games career.

1) Right off the bat, any combination of swear words you can imagine have been thrown at me.  This is an obvious one.
2) I am commonly told I'm racist or prejudice when I warn or punish someone.  Even if I have no idea where they live, they'll say I am only picking on them because they live in whothehellcaresica.  Unfortunately this type of "the developer is racist" attitude spreads around even the players who behave themselves, and ones who live in the same place may start to treat you poorly.
3) I've had many people tell me they hope I die.
4) I've had people tell me they hope my family dies.
5) I've had someone say they are praying to Allah for the death of my loved ones.
6) When word went around that my dog died, I had some people send me letters trying to insult my dog so that I would be angry and/or sad.
7) Essentially everyone boasts how great of a hacker they are and that they'll destroy my server, and/or delete everyone's records.  This one is so common it shows up even more often than people swearing at me.
8) I have had many people say they'll sue me.  One took it far enough to meet with a law firm (who I'm sure laughed them back into the parking lot).
9) I've had someone say they'll come to my home and "break my face".
10) I've had many people say they'll come to my home and hurt me.
11) I've had people say they'll come to my home and kill me.
12) I've had a few people say they'll file fake police reports against me.

This is all that's coming to mind right now.  Obviously many variations on these same themes.  Every now and then I'll casually mention something that someone has said, and it will shock whoever I'm talking to.  I have heard these things for so many years now that I don't even stop to think about how messed up they are.  I do hope that by letting other developers see this list (and ones other developers share), it will help them be able to hear these things and not have it affect them.  The last thing you want is for someone's nasty comment to stay on your mind and wear you down.  That will take away the fun you have developing, and could ultimately lead to you stopping.

Stay strong my fellow developers!  big_smile

- Aprone
Please try out my games and programs:
Aprone's software

2015-10-15 06:42:25 (edited by Sam_Tupy 2015-10-15 06:44:18)

Hi. Well written, aprone. I agree that a topic like this would be good. Me being the developer of an online game my self I can say i've had all of these issues. Speaking of your rasis comment you get, some said people decided they were going to throw together an entire force to destroy my game. They thought I hated them because of whare they lived, so got every blind person they could that had heard of my game together and they started devising ways to cause me the most trouble they could. Yay for me coding a bad banning system... big_smile anyway, that's something I would recommend to people who want to develop an online game. You really need to try your best, before releasing any multiplayer game, to have a very very secure banning system. Now don't take that hard, that's one of those things that's very hard to do and theres usually gonna be someone on this earth who is going to be able to go threw it like a cloud of mist, but you really need to put a lot of work and detication into it, in my opinion. That's what I learned the hard way. What happened, was that hole group of people was totally kicking my butt. Ok, makes me sceme like a baby, I know. Hehehe. They were busting threw there bans in litterily 2 minutes, because I only spent an hour developing a banning system to keep players off the game. Hmmm, that... wasn't smart? I'd recommend spending a lot of time developing a good banning system to make these issues easier to deal with. Those people used to break threw there bans and then spit at me telling me I can do nothing and that all I can do is try to temperarily ban themn and that it was only my quote dream quote to ban them for ever. Well, after a long process of talking to people who new what they were talking about in turms of security, those same people now beg me to unban them over and over and over, and it's more of an annoyance rather than something game threatoning. You should make your game expecting hackers. Sad but true, it's going to happen, no matter how good your game is. It just happens. There are some real jirks out there who only want to cheat and make things as bad as they can, and if you just expect smooth sailing, that's litterily your first mistake. When making a multiplayer game, you have to expect it to be rough from the start. Maybe you'll have the off chance that it won't but chances are, it's probably going to happen. I don't write this to down anyones spirits, but the topic sort of entails, what to expect. so i'm just telling the trooth. And as aprone mensioned, you have to somehow make sure your good at moderation and professionalism in most cases. I sucked at this for a long time with my game and many people will tell you that. It even went as far once as me posting someones IP address publicly, which is the worst thing you can do as an online game dev. I learned that mistake the hard way and hate my self for doing it. The only advice I can give you is... Don't ever do that. It's a really bad thing to do, and exposes loads of privacy issues, and it's just mean. People will trust that your server is secure and safe, and for the main mod to post an IP address... You have the people, most people who will forgive you. But if you were to make that mistake, you have to understand that there are major consiquences that you shouldn't even try to avoid. Well ok, I don't want that to come threw in the rong way... If you read this you would know i'm telling you you have to be really careful if you are trying to be an online game dev. I wasn't, and I learned my lesson, and am glad I did. I didn't try to avoid the fact that people would get angry at me, or that people would stop playing my game because I did something very stupid and immature. Because unlike how an offline game is more controled by your updates and the people playing it, an online game is way more controled by you and if you do something bad... Ok i'm sure i've repeated my self about 20 times here so i'll stop, but in short, moderation is something you need to think about and take very seriously when creating an online game. I didn't, and well, that's what happened. I let my emotions get the best of me, and could have put someones privacy, that the players trust you with, in danger. So that's my hole take on the matter and just what i've experienced. Some of this stuff might sceme very odviest, but it's good to have a reminder, that would have helped me. Someone did finily just tell me flat out I wasn't doing a good job and i'm glad they did. It allowed me to try to fix what I was doing rong. I was a really, really, really crappy moderater in survive the wild when the game was newer. Anyone who played the game in those days would know that. Sence then, i've been trying to fix that and do what i'm supposed to in turms of moderation. But my moderation problems is something to be discussed elsewhere, haha. I hope I didn't write this to bad and that you all get something out of it, and sorry if I got a bit too repetitive.

I am a web designer, and a game developer. If you wish see me at http://www.samtupy.com

2015-10-15 09:24:45

Ah yes, I forgot about that too... groups forming to work together to make your life miserable!  LOL!  I've been there too sir, so I feel your pain.

No one's going to get everything right the first time, and Sam I do believe your story of the mistakes you feel you made could help others avoid them themselves.  Even if they still make similar mistakes, they'll have heard that people can recover from them and move forward.

- Aprone
Please try out my games and programs:
Aprone's software

2015-10-17 12:09:14 (edited by visualstudio 2015-11-15 09:13:51)

hello,
an ediom is exist in my language which i translate it here:
more enemies, more progress
but my advice:
if you want to develop a multiplayer game, skip these people
try to fix security bugs, if your game has security bug, it can be exploited and some how those people can get access to your server or cheat in the game
try to encrypt data between client and server, and if it is possible, try to do something that can be cheated from client into server side
about banning system:
try to ban people from there device board serial number such as motherboard's serial, then they have to change there computer in order to be able to connect to game
ban in both client-side or server-side
this helps more checking users for banning
do not ban people from there IP address because some of ip addresses are dynamic and when people restart there router, they will get a new IP
or maybe, an IP address that is banned in server can be assigned to a person that have not done anything
in my idea, use reliable packets instead of unreliable packets
if i remember anything, i will tell you

2015-10-19 17:41:17

i read an article a while ago about hacking/cheating on multi player games and how to combat it as much as you can. i'll quote a few things in the article of note that i think are good one liners that people should know especially when developing games; but more specifically multi player games. the article in full is here

Just how seriously should you as a developer take the possibility of online cheating? If your game is single-player only, then you have nothing to worry about. But if your game is multiplayer only, the success of your entire product is at stake. If your game does both, you're somewhere in the middle.

Rule #1: If you build it, they will come -- to hack and cheat.
Rule #2: hacking attempts increase with the success of your game.
Rule #3: cheaters actively try to keep developers from learning their cheats.
Rule #4: Your game, along with everything on the cheater's computer, is not secure. The files are not secure. Memory is not secure. Services and drivers are not secure.
Rule #5: Obscurity is not security.

now if you want to learn more about those topics go read. but its well worth anyone who's thinking about programming games to go read it.

I don’t believe in fighting unnecessarily.  But if something is worth fighting for, then its always a fight worth winning.
check me out on Twitter and on GitHub

2015-10-23 18:32:15

Speaking as someone who was one of the first to do one of these advanced online games like survive the wild, i'll list a few of my own personal experiences here. 1, pick your testers wizely, and watch their activitys. Their's nothing stopping them from adding more and more people you don't know to the testing team. 2, balance, balance, balance! I can't stress that enough. My extreme failure, with v1 of dmnb and the reason I took it down and am replacing it, is I spent way too much time listening to though's who didn't cair about my own vision, and who just wanted the game to be an audio version of their own vision. As a result, the game ended up being a crossover between star trek and dead space and stuck in limbo, something I wasn't happy with. 3, and this one is just out of personal experience so if you can handle this, ignore what i'm about to say and skip onto the next thing. Be careful who you let into your own personal life as a result of your development. Their are people who refuse to flat out cair for the person you are, and will only cair to ask you why you have not implemented any of their suggestions, which ties into my next point. 4, remember suggestions are suggestions. It is importent to realize that just as people can give harsh crittisism's, sometimes its required for you to stand up and give it right back, or flat out ignore. The reason I tied this into feature suggestions is because this all comes into one big, importent lesson. You can't please everyone all the time. And last of all, and this is just from my own experience, make sure you enjoy and your happy with your work. If your happy with your work, it doesn't matter who is against it. I've found that the more I'm happy with a game i've done, the more other players who like what i'm doing are happy as well. Considering i've stayed up all night doing coding work now, i'm a bit tired so this is all the material I have right now, and these are just my experiences. But I would like to say this. Don't do what I did and wait 9 or 10 months to realize your not happy with a project. Believe me, the mistakes you'll make can have far lasting consaquences if uyou over stress yourself because your not happy with what your doing. If your not happy with what your doing, take a break, maybe make adjustments in the game mecanics until your happy with it. Believe me i've done just that with dmnb v2 and my other sequel to project alpha, dm prototype, and now that i'm back to my own vision and not paying attention to the bad crittisism, i'm feeling much more better than i've been in a long while.

Check out the new reality software site. http://realitysoftware.noip.us

2015-10-23 21:50:12

Hello There,
This is in general a good topic for those that are not familiair with the situation.
From personal experience i can list the below what happened to me.

When i still had sight i ran a very big mmo game emulation called Silkroad Online.
I had a constant of 10000 players online, and most were young kids that wanted the best weapons and items.

If they didnt they would kill other players for fun and flame constant against other people here are some examples .

- If you dont help me i will hack your server.
- I hate you you ugly .... you can think of what he said.
- And loads more.

However not just players do this , i have had many people in my team that gavee players items and such, which caused me to banish them from the team of course.
And their response was not to happy as you can imagine.

So a heads up its not just the players but it can also be the people on the team.

Put your coding where your mouth is.