Gotta carb up!
Age 43, Male
xenophobe
Somewhere in Nevada...
Joined on 3/4/09
I'm really glad you guys finished it, it's true, finishing a game with no immediate feedback loop is very very difficult, both for motivation and for quality assurance. Good luck with your future projects and hope to see you again soon sometime man. Abobo was fun - i got to the zelda levels and died but I should have time this summer to play the next half of it and other games for once too.....
PS, the way that guy was laughing at the ending of your game is priceless, hope it was all worth it.
I'm sure Closure put you 2 through a lot worse, but it's great to see your efforts paying off already and I'm hoping Closure is a huge hit for you 2.
I'll always remember your night terrors when we shared a bed in LA...
I can't imagine how accomplishing anything that you felt you needed to do could ever be conceived as "trite". You guys are warriors. Thank you all for bleeding into the chalice of awesome free entertainment, nostalgia, and respect for a golden age of gaming.
The "trite" statement was just because I was waxing poetic for a moment :-D
Thanks for pitching in to get some promotion for the game going before our launch.
Inspiring. Reminds me that if you ever want to create something meaningful and memorable, you need to commit, keep going and ASK FOR HELP if the burn-out comes!! :)
Yeah, the asking for help part was a good decision.
Abobo was great. You guys did an amazing job. Hope to see more soon from all of you.
It might take us a while to recover before we ever want to do something "grand" again.
READ THE WHOLE THING! Thanks again for telling me what .swc components are. I used em in my final game, so I guess you are my Mike in this situation.
But Abobo sounds like more work than both my biggest games put together. 3+ years oh shit! It's funny you wrote the post-mortem as a fairly feel-good story, cos I'd be bitter as fuck.
I'd love to hear a more personal story than read the technical stuff, but I guess you can only write so much.
Anyway you did it man! Abobo's Big Adventure is the game it was meant to be, and you'll have it in your back pocket fr the rest of your life; it'll never get older n it'll never die. Congrats on the GameInformer feature n all that other shit!
What now?
My pleasure. Abobo wouldn't have happened without helpful outsiders pitching in, and I hope "No Time To Explain" gets you some good recognition and becomes a springboard to bigger and better things in the future.
For the bitter story wait for Pox's write-up. He's much more cynical about the game and the world in general :-)
Fun read, and I'm glad you put some financial stats on there too. Even though you really didn't do it for the money it's really helpful to see how effective ads were in comparison to direct minigame sales.
I usually don't make games for the sake of making money but just to make something impressive and worthwhile. Still money is something we all need so I'll take what I can get.
I went back and forth on including the numbers in this. I don't want to discourage Flash people by highlighting the small effort to payout ratio, but I really wanted to be open and upfront about what we did and what we got from our "marketing" efforts.
You are okay, the game is filled under a parody in court and this would be classed as fair use seeing as you make no profit of there idea and it was just a bit of fun and also a labour of love hell some company's would support this just for the sheer effort you guys put in to this but anyway if you did make a profit....(we didn't see anything) spend the money and say you made nothing MUHUHHAAHAAHH. sorry :)
We did get an email from someone at Nintendo, unofficially encouraging us and telling us they couldn't support it openly, but were big fans.
Great read, I enjoy reading into what goes on "behind the scenes" for a project such as this. It is clear that you guys were truly passionate for the project, and it really showed.
Interesting about the .swc files. I never thought to use them like that, I only ever thought of them as resources for random APIs :P
Yeah, .swc files saved Abobo. Film at 11:00!
That was a good balanced write-up. I think games in general are in an interesting time right now, Totally ignoring the jaded 'indie-ego' aspect of it.
Its inspiring to be in a time when you can make games that YOU want to make. There's a certain honesty and magic in a game you can feel the developers/artists WANTED to make. Its something you cant buy or learn in a tutorial or whatever. Its just something within, probably somewhere near the scrotum area.
Anyway I think some of that was lost briefly when the whole sponsorship shit blew up and everyone(ok maybe not everyone but for the sake of using broad strokes) started just making games that people are used to seeing or piggybacking on genres that are currently financially viable.
Thanks for the note.
I agree it's a great time to be around "indie" game devs. Flash is beginning to garner some respect and many of the devs are blurring the lines between platforms which is exciting.
It will be interesting to see where Adobe's new focus on cross platform development instead of web delivery will take us all.
My one wish from Santa Claus is for Apple to loosen up their blockades in the way of developing for iOS. They basically force you to buy a high-end Mac to develop for them, and then put HUGE barriers to getting approved and provisioning your devices. With Android, it took 5 minutes to export a useable app to my phone and then 15 minutes to launch it on the Android Market. I don't know if Apple's artificial barriers are on purpose or if they're just THAT lame.
Anyway, you're right, the future is bright for Flash devs, though I imagine it's a lot harder to get recognized these days with the flood of competition.
I just read that whole thing and I have to say that it was a great post. I loved playing Abobo's Big Adventure and I hope that you know that you and everyone involved with the project really did create something special.
Thanks buddy :-D
You didn't exactly make it for free if you earned $10,000 from it. Yes, yes, it's a tribute, it took you 100 years to make it, you love the characters and would never do anything to harm them...blah...blah...blah. In the end it's best not to make excuses and just realize you're walking gray area.
I think you did enough with the game to call it a parody, though, so you really don't need any justification in the first place. Nintendo is nicer than Disney, too, if the millions of unprosecuted Mario clones on the internet are any indication.
Did you pay anything to play it? This is known as "free."
The minigame is arguable as "free" but Abobo's Big Adventure definitely is.
I think we're pretty aware of where we're walking :-D
Oh, and how many plays did it get? Ad rev made it sound like about 2.5 million?
Still being played every day. You can check our site to see the latest play stat.
I've never donated to anything on the internet and I am a frequent visitor to the pirate bay but I'm donating as much as I can spare on the 23rd (next payday) so you guys can get going to moar Abobo. My ADD kicked in like 1/4 through your post but I think it said something about the possibility of another Abobo game and something about paypal. lot's of <3 , Mia
Thanks for playing and any donation helps keep us alive :-)
Bah, TV producers don't make shows for free. It's the same thing. :3
TV producers receive payment upfront from networks that have a fairly safe "risk" built into their audience numbers, that's a bit different than releasing something as risky as a Flash game without any guarantee of return.
You have a point that there's probably nothing truly "free" even the truest indie effort has some sort of return built into it. But looking at the degree of risk and return "guaranteed" on something like Abobo's Big Adventure has to sway any logical thinker pretty heavily toward the side of "Done-out-of-love" and "trying-to-pick-up-what-we-can-to -offset-giant-investment-of-time-
and-effort."
Hell, if you value our time at minimum wage we severely LOST money on this project so it's actually more than free.
We're arguing the semantics of the word "free" but I think your assessment is a bit harsh.
Awesome stuff, but the question still in my mind was why didnt you just try get the game sponsored? I mean like newgrounds branding and links back to newgrounds where put in the game so why didn't you get any money from them? if you put the game up for sponsorship im sure it could of hit 20k+ Or was this just an issue of sponsors not wanting to sponsor it due to the potential copyright threats?
Man, great info, great read, great inspiration. You guys rock and you 'did it' You finished the beast. Stay cool and thanks for the feedback on the process.
This is amazing. I love Abobo's Big Adventure and now I love you.
This is my favorite part: "Many have looked down their noses at us for making this choice, but we felt that this game could not have met our expectations and goals in any other way. Our hope is that it transcends the stigma attached to "Sprite" movies and games and provides an experience that elevates and tributes the referenced material."
This was awesome to read. Abobo is an amazing game - one of the only games I've ever played all the way through and I really enjoyed all of it. Thanks for putting in all the work, it was definitely worth it.
Great read- I appreciate you taking the time to write that all up. Nice to know I'm not the only one that falls into a "slump" from time to time- and also very inspirational and motivating that you were able to find ways to re-animate your excitement pull through and finish the game. Great work- Great game and Great article!
MindChamber
excellent post, and its always insightful to learn about the blood sweat and tears that goes into something you truly love.
PestoForce
Thanks for dropping in and for your posts about the game and the Game Informer article.