Kickstarter Launching for 3 Step Studio!
by Kyle N. Miller · 12/27/2012 (1:25 pm) · 28 comments
GarageGames Launching Kickstarter Campaign for 3 Step Studio
We are excited to announce we will be launching a Kickstarter campaign for 3 Step Studio!
For those who may not recognize me, I’m a programmer at GarageGames and I’ve recently stepped into the Producer role for 3 Step Studio. I’ve been spending most of the past year on that product, but I’m always closely following the community here as well. We have one of the best game development communities on the web, and I can’t wait to see what we can do together on this campaign.
What is 3 Step Studio?
3 Step Studio has been discussed many times on this site, but it’s never been formally introduced. 3 Step Studio will allow gamers everywhere to make their own games for the iPad, iPhone, Windows, or Mac. No programming required. It revolves around 3 simple steps:1. Choose a Template
Choose a template in your favorite game genre - Physics Launcher, Tower Defense, Blackjack, Platformer, RPG, and more!
2. Make it your own
Design your game to make it unique; express your creativity. You can customize and import your own artwork and audio and tweak gameplay values. It’s amazing to see how much you can do with the right tools.
3. Share your Game!
Publish your game to iPad, iPhone, Windows, and Mac.
You can check out the alpha version of the 3 Step Studio site here, and there will be many more details on the Kickstarter page.
Why We Need Your Help...
We’ve embraced the open-source community with the recent announcements of Torque 3D and Torque 2D under the MIT license. We support these efforts with service work and with projects like 3 Step Studio.3 Step Studio is also our primary client for Torque 2D, driving development of our 2D technology this year. The improvements are incredible, which you’ll see in the coming updates to iTorque 2D and Torque 2D, and the pending release of Torque 2D MIT. The contributions from the open-source community will be folded into the product, and feature requests from 3 Step Studio will drive development from GarageGames. It’s a mutually beneficial development relationship that will build up two great products.
We need you to help us:
- Fund development. Your contribution will help us push toward release of the initial product and templates and continue to build upon that base. We want to provide as many templates and features as possible. We’ll have some great rewards!
- Make it free. We don’t want price to stop anyone from making their game a reality.
- SPREAD THE WORD! We need the power of our community to help this thing go viral! Please do not spam, but we encourage you to talk about it in forums and chat, and to share the news with your friends on Facebook and Twitter!
The Launch
We plan to launch the Kickstarter campaign next week, and will post another blog (with the Kickstarter link) once it’s live!
#22
- IAP
- Ad revenue (Chartboost, RevMob)
Since we switched to monetization through ad revenue our revenue has increased by over 1000%
Will the templates support these channels?
12/29/2012 (8:04 am)
I think this is a good idea but for us (MeYuMe) to make any revenue it would need:- IAP
- Ad revenue (Chartboost, RevMob)
Since we switched to monetization through ad revenue our revenue has increased by over 1000%
Will the templates support these channels?
#23
12/29/2012 (10:25 am)
Sounds cool... love Kickstarter 
#24
Yeah, the IndieGoGo video was done without a budget and it definitely shows, but we tried to match an indie feel as closely as possible with found equipment and spaces. The KS video has much higher production values.
12/29/2012 (11:20 am)
@antoine strollYeah, the IndieGoGo video was done without a budget and it definitely shows, but we tried to match an indie feel as closely as possible with found equipment and spaces. The KS video has much higher production values.
#25
I see many many MANY points arising in this discussion that are missing the whole vision here - this is a learning tool for complete beginners. As experienced developers you all see many shortcomings in this tool that the target audience won't really have a problem with - they're looking to learn how game design works, not how to speed up that quad tree so culling is faster. They can share their games with their friends and family, and if they come up with an interesting twist they could potentially make some money selling their game, but we all know the competition is pretty stiff out there.
It took me a while to get my head in this space because I also was looking at the whole thing as "needless hand-holding" and "insane coddling" of the users - but the whole thing is to look at it as raising a kid; you give them a safe environment to play and learn and they will grow. If you don't give them that safe learning environment they get discouraged and never grow into using more advanced tools.
As a final note - you can do more with it than you might at first think. During a game jam here at the office we broke into teams of two and made games with the tools - no cheating (read that: no scripting - only what the tool provides) - and there were some surprising things made.
01/02/2013 (9:31 am)
@Jeremy - it's really more of a matter of "outgrowing 3 Step Studio and moving on to T2D." Our initial purpose with this product is to get people who have never made a game but would love to try involved with the experience. If they enjoy it they will learn and grow, and when they're ready to dig deeper T2D MIT will be there for them. I don't think we're really looking for "commercial quality games" from this product - not impossible, you can do some neat things with it already - but help people get past the "I'm interested in game development" stage and into the "I'm ready to dig in and learn game development" stage.I see many many MANY points arising in this discussion that are missing the whole vision here - this is a learning tool for complete beginners. As experienced developers you all see many shortcomings in this tool that the target audience won't really have a problem with - they're looking to learn how game design works, not how to speed up that quad tree so culling is faster. They can share their games with their friends and family, and if they come up with an interesting twist they could potentially make some money selling their game, but we all know the competition is pretty stiff out there.
It took me a while to get my head in this space because I also was looking at the whole thing as "needless hand-holding" and "insane coddling" of the users - but the whole thing is to look at it as raising a kid; you give them a safe environment to play and learn and they will grow. If you don't give them that safe learning environment they get discouraged and never grow into using more advanced tools.
As a final note - you can do more with it than you might at first think. During a game jam here at the office we broke into teams of two and made games with the tools - no cheating (read that: no scripting - only what the tool provides) - and there were some surprising things made.
#26
Sounds like you are shooting for something like Microsoft Kodu or Game Blocks which is ok by me.
01/03/2013 (1:39 am)
@Richard True, I think I got confused when the thread started talking about targeting various platforms like Windows Phone, iPhone, Android, and so on. With such device coverage I figured it would be some what commercially viable for the end user.Sounds like you are shooting for something like Microsoft Kodu or Game Blocks which is ok by me.
#27
We don't know what the future will hold, but in this discussion we've already talked about a wide range of possibilities. We've been back and forth over a wide range of options and for our opener we think we've picked a good starting point.
01/03/2013 (9:56 am)
To me the added targets add more accessibility to the product, but ultimately development of 3 Step drives improvements to T2D and improvements to T2D come back to benefit 3 Step. So if 3 Step supports new platforms, so will T2D - and that's good news all around.We don't know what the future will hold, but in this discussion we've already talked about a wide range of possibilities. We've been back and forth over a wide range of options and for our opener we think we've picked a good starting point.
Torque Owner Jeremy Easoz
You use the templates, learn the logic, learn the building blocks to making a game and then what do you after you learn this? If the product does not contain any kind of scripting then you are forced to go learn a new software package or engine because you can't put what you learned to the test.
I think GameMaker is a good example of this. Back in the day when it lacked scripting you could never truly make a real commercial quality game. You learned the editor, and the drag and drop logic to make some simple games but the software didn't really grow with you. You had to go learn another engine or software package after that to make use of the logic you learned. In the newer versions most of the commercial games use the vary basic drag and drop logic to tie scripts together that run the game.
In the end if you don't have some kind of scripting and custom templates maybe we (community) can come up with some kind of templates and guild lines for transitioning from 3 Step to Torque2D MIT.