The StarPop Story

The history, design, and ideas behind StarPop!

Part 4 : It all comes together!

Progressing along

Development progressed really well - and it was incredibly hard for me to not interfere with the development process (suggesting how to implement this, how that should work behind the scenes) - I don't think I was too bad but then Jan might just be being polite! We did have lots of design reviews and tweaked graphics and came up with new ideas for bits that weren't quite right.

Everyone enjoyed it in the office and that's always a good sign. Some of the sounds ("Mama!") had everyone laughing. I'm sure we'll bring that one back somehow!

Of course, I made sure a lot of testing happened at home with my captive (although certainly not unwilling) audience. Maria was great at telling me what she liked from the game. Sometimes I was surprised by the things she noticed, or the things she particularly liked, and that was useful for modifying what we might do in the next update.

One thing that I remember really surprising me was the first time Maria played and unlocked a bonus character. She literally squealed with delight, tore through the house calling "Mum! Mum! Look!" and ran into the kitchen to show Mum the new "moon" she'd unlocked. I thought the idea was pretty good, but I really was amazed just what an effect it had when she unlocked it. That was certainly a feature that would stay in!

My younger son also tried to play the game - but at 2 years old he wasn't quite so competent, and struggled to pop the items so easily. One of the neater game features that's hidden is that if you don't manage to tap and pop any of the objects over a certain time, the game slows them down and makes them easier to hit. Call it an assistance feature if you like!

Beta Testing

There comes a point in the development of the game when we feel it is time for it to be tried out by lots of people with all kinds of different devices. That's where our beta tester team comes in. They are a team - about 150 people currently, who volunteer to help to try out all of our new games before they are ready to be released. Normally we show them a game for the first time when all of the features are complete, but not all of the bugs have been found - they take pride in finding and reporting the bugs!

Sometimes, as with StarPop, we're able to show them the game earlier, while there's still a little time for suggestions and improvements. Many of the testers tried the game with their own children, and plenty of thumbs-up comments came back from that!

Testing with real families!

While our beta testers are great, they are often people with a lot of experience of playing and installing games - some of them have been with us for 8+ years and have helped with nearly 100 titles - that's quite some commitment!

This time, we thought it would be useful to hear from some people who weren't regular testers - or not even game players! We put a call out on a couple of web sites for some volunteers with families who would like to try something out and help us. We thought we might get 10 or so volunteers if we left our submission page up for a week. We closed it after just one day, with nearly 120 volunteers... many more than we needed!

I apologised to some of them who didn't have devices that the game would be running on, but that still left 96 people... I sent them an email explaining what would happen and what they'd be helping with, and then later an email with download details and how to get a registration code to unlock all of the features of the game.

Even though I wrote a "form" letter to everyone, everyone replied back with individual comments, and many of them had questions. I didn't prime people with a full instruction list - I wanted them to just try it, let everyone in the family have a go, and to let me know their comments, thoughts, and feedback. And wow... was there plenty of feedback!

Plenty of the adults liked the games themselves. Some found it captivating, some not. That's no surprise - not everyone finds exactly the same things fun! The design of the game is also very child-friendly, and in some ways that will put off adults who are looking for a more cerebral or challenging game!

The response from the children in the families was really great - mostly reported secondhand via the parents typing to me, but a couple I loved with very deliberate reports direct from the children.

Of course we wanted the feedback and wanted to hear nice comments - but it was useful to hear some of the people who it didn't work for, and some of the concerns people had, like worrying that their younger children might damage the screen - certainly enough cause for us to suggest screen-protectors before allowing younger children to play, as much for fingermarks as anything else!

It was all very useful for us to hear the comments and figure out one of our bigger problems - how to market the game and get the word out, if the target audience is perhaps not the ones who might be buying the game!

The Casual Game Buyer

There's been quite some statistic gathering from many of the big casual games sites - GameHouse, Pogo, PopCap, and more - on their player and buyer demographic. It turns out that their average buyer of games is a "35 year old female". (They have male and female buyers across the whole age distribution I'm sure, but that's their mean age and most often female buyers.)

That gives me quite some hope. There's a better than evens chance that the average buyer has children of their own, or relatives with children, and hopefully of an appropriate age!

We're still figuring this all out of course - getting the word out is sure to be one of our biggest challenges. I know that if we can get people to try the game, their children will like it! Maria certainly loves the game, though I don't think she realises it has been making its way to completion from its initial ideas over half of her lifetime ago!

Ready for launch!

So the game is finished and ready (on our initial target platforms - PDAs) and we're getting ready for a launch very shortly! Counting down the days now...

Our QA (Quality Assurance) team is testing the game over and over on all kinds of devices with all kinds of settings, to make sure that no mistakes have slipped through the net.

Being so close to a project is great in some ways - having a lot of influence and feeling of ownership of a game - but the risks are just that little bit greater. I'll be reading the reviews that bit more carefully than if I hadn't designed it, and crossing my fingers that there at plenty of nice pieces of feedback!

Everyone on the team has been working hard on the game, with people creating the web pages, installers, copy text, adverts and banners, and even a cool preview "flash" animation for our website to give a taste of the game without even having to install it. Certainly a lot of effort for such a simple game!

Designed for fun!

One of the things that has been hardest about the game has been keeping the focus on fun and simplicity. Resisting the urge and requests to add challenges has been quite hard, but I hope worthwhile - the end result is truly playable by anyone and fun for people that wouldn't normally play games. I've even had some great comments of appreciation from others in the industry who respect the hard-line of simplicity I've taken, even though they tell me I'm still nuts. Honest feedback I'm sure!

And they all lived...

So there's the StarPop story! We're ending just as the prince leans down to kiss the princess, and a way before the "Happily ever after", not just because we don't know the future, but also because we're pretty sure this isn't the final chapter... and almost certainly not the final volume!

I hope you've enjoyed some of the insight into how a game - even a simple one - is thought up, designed, developed, polished, and readied for release!

<-- Part 3 : Pops, Pings, Glittery Sparkles!