Sometimes having things go right involves the selflessness of other people.

For this version of TPG, I approached the best community designer (Jim Swanson) and asked him to develop the courses that would ship with the game. He had two courses in the original game, and for TPG2, he designed six more, and for an incredibly fair price.

4. I mentioned about luck; this is the second factor that you appreciate when you’re a small fish in a huge ocean – generosity. I’ve been blessed to find people like Jim who have been good to us. They know the situation we’re in and they help in some way because they’re nice people. I have a staff of these guys at Wolverine Studios who all contribute to each game in some way, whether it’s monitoring the forums, assisting customers, testing the games, researching data – whatever I need. That’s a huge factor in what went right.

Jim wasn’t the only person outside the company to lend his services to the game. A good friend and fellow indie developer, Shaun Sullivan (creator of Puresim Baseball), was kind enough to lend his talents to the game for the second year. Shaun created the ball flight effects in the original version of the game. This year, he developed the new tri-click system as well as assisted on a few other on-course innovations. When you’re a one-man coding team it’s always great when you get the benefit of a little outside help, especially someone who is as talented as Shaun.

The Tri-Click System

We also had support from the blogging community—in particular, Bill Harris. His feedback is responsible for some of the innovations in the game, including the biggest one of all-- the gallery reaction in a tournament’s final round. Should you find yourself in contention on Sunday, you’ll hear roars and groans from around the course as the leaders scores change. Then you’ll see an updating leaderboard so that you know exactly what happened.

Bill has also written about the game extensively in his blog, including putting together a detailed guide for new players, and called TPG2 the PC Sports Game of the Year last week. To know that we have someone out there taking his own time and using his voice to rally support for our game is a great feeling.

5. Finally, I think the biggest thing that went right is that we found that “one more turn” feel. Many people take a skeptical approach to trying the game. It’s a game that simulates a sport where a dramatic fist-pump by a player is the pinnacle of “action” so we understand the hesitation to try a simulation of that sport. But we focused more than just on making a realistic golf simulation.

The RPG elements of the game combined with the ease of being able to play a round seemed to gel perfectly to create that elusive one more turn feeling and that’s not something you can design; it either happens or it doesn’t. The game is so much deeper than just playing a round of golf and we’ve seen numerous people openly praise the game for sucking them in that we know we got it right on this one.