Gamesauce Fall 2009 by Gamesauce

Beware, I live!

Take a look back in time and go inside the development of Sinistar

issue 1 | Fall 2009 | Gamesauce.ORG

Trip Hawkins

on the creativity of game development and shifting media consumption

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Contents Gamesauce

fall 2009

Gamesauce Confidential

Issue 1 Fall 2009

A candid interview with Trip Hawkins

Gamesauce

cover story

Trip Hawkins was the first creative mind to use celebrities and athletes in video games. But if you ask us, he’s the celebrity. Read our interview with the man who’s 30-year career as a new-media pioneer has helped define the industry.

6 10

columns

30 38

Letter from the Publisher

Blast from the Past Reflections on Sinistar

10 Questions… with Scott Miller

Industrial Depression Getting Laid Off

articles

14 44

Productivity and Collaboration The Keys to Working Remotely

Notes From a Start Up The Birth and Life of Eclipse Interactive

Marketing Secrets Revealed! Including MBWA, PR Evangelists, and The Biggest Secret of All

Explicit Expectations How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Outsourcing

Debugging Your Love Life The Curious Link Between Development and Dating

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LETTER FROM THE publisher

Issue 1 | Fall 2009 Trademarks © 2009 Mastermind Studios LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part of this magazine is strictly prohibited. Gamesauce and the Gamesauce logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Mastermind Studios LLC. All other product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. Disclosures Mastermind Studios LLC’s (“Mastermind”) Gamesauce (“Magazine”) is for informational purposes only. The Magazine contains current opinions and estimates which may change at any time; furthermore, Mastermind does not warrant or guarantee statements made by authors of articles in the Magazine. Information in the Magazine should not be used as the basis for any investment, development or strategy decisions. While the information included in the Magazine is derived from reliable sources, the reader is responsible for verification of information enclosed in this Magazine and Mastermind does not guarantee or warrant the accuracy or completeness of the information. Usage Companies inside of the entertainment business may use information in this Magazine for internal purposes and with partners and potential partners. Members of the press may quote the Magazine. Data and information contained in this Magazine must NOT be used for commercial purposes including but not limited to commercial research reports. Subscriptions Gamesauce is available to professional game developers and members of the press. Professional game developers may visit http:// www.Gamesauce.org/ to sign up for a free subscription. Gamesauce is postal mailed to over 19,000 game industry professionals and 2,500 members of the press. Contact Us Address Changes or Removal: Tennille Forsberg, tennille@gamesauce.org Article Submissions: editor@gamesauce.org Publisher: Jessica Tams, jessica@gamesauce.org

Long before he was elected governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger was a really, really bad actor. His multimillion-dollar blockbusters were almost universally films in which he did little but grunt and shoot and blow stuff up. But the movies in which he actually, you know, talked and stuff? Yuck. Case in point: Twins, the 1988 turkey in which “Ahnold,” this big, buff behemoth, was supposed to be the twin of wee little Danny DeVito. Oh, the hilarity. Put a big dude and a little dude together and say they’re twins. Get it?! Yeah, neither did we. I guess we now know why Arnold went into politics. Still, as bad as Twins was, its premise actually reminds me of what we’re seeing in game development these days. We have the big-budget, mega-games in one camp (see: Ahnold) and the small-budget, casual efforts in another (see: DeVito). We’re all in the same industry, but we don’t look much alike. That’s where Gamesauce comes in. It was created to ensure that we as an industry take the best of both worlds to make the best games possible. As an industry, we need to adjust our focus away from rigid product lines and categories and toward the real lifeblood of our business: the consumer. This small shift in thinking will help us see that at the core of it all, we’re here to appeal to gamers. There are gamers who spend hours tethered to their consoles, others downloading games onto their iPhones, and some merely playing Minesweeper during conference calls. (And many who do all three— perhaps during the same conference call.) The motives and pleasures of those playing games are basically the same; the primary differences are the platform and style of game-play. Games have always been more about diversion than budget anyway. There’s a vast audience, and successful games all achieve the same result: They provide fun and a little escape from our monotonous workday existence. Without game developers like us, they’d still be dealing Solitaire from a deck of playing cards. Or worse yet: Sitting around watching Twins. Over the past 30 years, the games industry has helped a lot of people discover that they actually like to play video games. The key has been long hours and painstaking efforts of many of you who have created revolutionary gaming experiences. Think of Gamesauce as a tribute to those efforts—and as our contribution to the advancement of gaming. Let’s work together to make high-quality games that billions will enjoy a lot more than they enjoy watching a roidedout governor and his balding, five-foot twin. We’re all family after all.

Jessica Tams jessica@gamesauce.org

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BLAST FROM THE PAST:

Reflections on the Birth of Sinistar Noah Falstein

y first officially published computer game was a coin-operated arcade game called Sinistar, released by Williams Electronics in 1983. I’ve subsequently worked on a lot of games, including million-unit-sellers like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and Empire at War. But when someone finds out that I was the Project Leader and co-designer of Sinistar, that tends to elicit a stronger reaction than anything I’ve done since. (Maybe I peaked early!) In any case, here are some personal reminiscences that I hope will amuse and instruct—if only to provide some relief—that you don’t have to work back in the ancient world of stone knives, bearskins, and 1-megahertz 8-bit processors. (I should add that any errors in this history are purely my responsibility. Although I’ve recently worked on some Brain Age-style memory enhancing games, sadly they haven’t quite worked in my case!)

The Coin-Op Era When I came to Williams Electronics in 1982, the videogame world looked quite different than it does today. For one thing, arcades were at their peak, and home game consoles like the Atari VCS were dominated by conversions of arcade titles. A big hit like Pac Man could sell 100,000 copies into the arcades—seemingly small numbers by today’s standards; but considering that arcade games cost around $1,500 new in 1982 dollars, it was still a pretty impressive chunk of change (quite literally, since they earned their keep one quarter at a time). Good machines could earn back their initial price in 10 weeks or fewer, and it was pure profit for the arcade owners from Noah Falstein is the President of The Inspiracy, a freelance game design company working in entertainment and serious game titles. His most recent releases are Mata Hari (a German Adventure game) and The Cisco Mind Share Game, a serious training game. Contact information and other background on Noah can be found at: http://www.theinspiracy.com.

then on. Although my first job in the industry was at Milton Bradley (now part of Hasbro), all of my projects there were cancelled by management before publication. So when I landed the job at Williams, I felt like I had arrived in the big leagues. Instead of programming Atari VCS games for a system with a 6502 processor, 2K of ROM, and 256 bytes of RAM, I was now working on systems with the more capable 6809 processor and much larger ROMs. Even so, the full game code and artwork fit into less memory than a single jpeg image in this article.

Full-time Design One of the first people I got to know at Williams was John Newcomer, who was the first full-time game designer I’d ever met. In fact, it wasn’t until I met John that I even realized that game designer was a possible occupation. The games I had worked on up to that time

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The Team and Management by Toll House Eventually that reboot team for what would later be known as Sinistar grew to about five fulltime and many part-time people working just on the software, with many others creating the joystick hardware, cabinet, and other elements. As a 25-year-old who had never managed other people, running a software team that large was pretty intimidating. It helped that everyone was about my age, and that even the most experienced of us had only been making games for four years or so. Not having been through a traditional business school, my management techniques were pretty much improvised. One innovation that was appreciated by the team was my regular dispensing of chocolate chip cookies to team members, with extras for the people who had put in work above and beyond the call of duty.

Special Hardware One intriguing aspect of working in coin-op was that as a software engineer, I worked alongside hardware engineers who built all sorts

of specialized computer hardware, and mechanical engineers who created the cabinets and controls. It meant that not only did a designer get to pick the mix of buttons, joysticks, and other controls, but he also got to have some say in how they were physically arranged—something that is just not possible for console or computer games these days. Sinistar had more specialized hardware than most other arcade games. Starting the year before I arrived, the Williams hardware team had created something called a “blitter chip” that could quickly move graphics from game ROM to video RAM, independent of the main 6809 processor. Since the 6809 was only an 8-bit processor running at 1 megahertz (roughly 10,000 times

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were designed by the people who programmed them—and we also served as artist, sound designer, and producer for the most part. Williams did things on a larger scale, and it was exciting. John showed me a portfolio of hand-drawn concepts he’d worked on, including Joust, the game he was currently helping to finish. My first job was playtesting Joust, and I believe I showed a talent for finding crash bugs. Meanwhile, John had another concept he called Juggernaut (a working title) which involved a giant skull in space being attacked by hordes of minions. Since that project had progressed for a while but stalled out, I was offered the chance to lead a fresh team to do what we would now call a reboot of the Juggernaut concept. I eagerly agreed.

Another innovation was the vertical screen, made by tilting a monitor 90 degrees counterclockwise. This gave us the chance to put a “scanner area” at the top of the screen and still have a roughly square area below, so you had a fairly even viewing area around the ship that was always close to the center of the screen. slower than typical home computer processors today), we needed every advantage we could get. In many ways that chip was the predecessor to the many specialized graphic cards now common in the games industry. Another innovation was the vertical screen, made by tilting a monitor 90 degrees counterclockwise. This gave us the chance to put a “scanner area” at the top of the screen and still have a roughly square area below, so you had a fairly even viewing area around the ship that was always close to the center of the screen. Since we literally could not afford the time in processor cycles to clip images on the right side of the screen (actually the top of our rotated screen), they made some special hardware that clipped all the “blitted” images at the correct spot. But at one point we had a crash bug that mysteriously

would appear in one build, only to disappear in the next. It would be gone for weeks or months and then for no apparent reason return again. We software guys blamed a hardware bug, and the hardware guys were sure it was our fault. Finally, after months of frustration, Sam was able to create a tiny stripped-down version of the game that crashed, and this let us isolate the problem: It was a hardware bug, but it only happened when the blitter command code happened to fall on a specific boundary divisible by 256. Weird. Another innovation was added by my direct boss, Ken Lantz. In those days, standard videogame joysticks were straightforward “eight-way” sticks—9-way sticks if you count the neutral center position and the eight compass directions around it. They were engineered to withstand people using them to rock the entire 200+

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pound cabinet. Since the only way to do this reliably was to make the electrical connections optical, the joystick itself was securely mounted with heavy-duty fittings and only triggered light beams when it moved back and forth. Ken figured out a way to effectively increase the resolution, making a 7x7 matrix of possibilities instead of the standard 3x3 matrix, and that gave us a degree of control combined with a durability that was unprecedented. Earlier games like Tailgunner had used potentiometers

a game. At Milton Bradley, the artists did box covers or the components of board games—not actual pixel art. Jack created the Samuraimask-inspired graphic design of the Sinistar itself, picking 16 colors for the entire game palette out of a larger possible range – 256 I think. He knew to pick a few shades each of red, grey, and blue so he could do shading, and accomplished an amazing amount within those limitations. The Warrior sprites were supposed to be tank-like, and we realized we could save many

that had easily broken, but the Sinistar stick was solid. The extra resolution allowed players to accelerate at variable speeds and aim the ship with a greater angular precision than the old sticks could manage, and although it was a subtle point, arcade players picked up on it and complimented us at the time.

The Art Jack Haeger was the first professional artist I’d worked with on

I Am…NOT Juggernaut!

precious pixels by making a single unmoving body and then adding a rotating turret on top of that which was much smaller and more compact than the full warrior image.

One point of contention was the name. We knew Juggernaut wouldn’t work and talked about alternatives. An inveterate punster, I was thinking about how we wanted the main character to appear sinister, and how we were set in space, and SiniStar jumped into my head. Turns out Jack had the same name in mind at one point, and we never did figure out who came up with it first, but the name stuck. (Later we stopped capitalizing the second S.) Soon the weapons you used to defeat it became Sinibombs, the crystals that built the Sinistar became known as Sinisite, and (particularly after 16-hour work days) we started calling everything we could Sini-Something. When I first saw the pastry chain Cinnabon I wondered if their slogan was “Beware, I Hunger!”

The Voice

Lip Sync on the Cheap

Our VP, Ken Fedesna, suggested that we use a special speech chip that had been developed for pinball games and make Sinistar our first talking videogame. We were only able to fit a tiny amount of voice into the hardware, and had to re-use some larger audio strings to form the seven phrases Sinistar says in the game: “I am Sinistar,” “I hunger,” “I hunger, coward!,” “Run, coward!,” “Run, Run, Run!,” “Beware, coward,” “Beware, I live!,” and a final roar of anger (or pain). The Sinistar often is assembled off-screen and bursts in upon the player at high speed, and we triggered the voice when he shows up. As a new feature of Williams games, the voice really startled quite a few players, getting them to jump back from the controls (only to lose a life). The sitdown version of the game, called a cockpit in coin-op lingo, had powerful speakers built into the seat below and behind the player. I have learned since then that hearing loud noises from behind you is one of the best

Sam came to me one day with a problem. Since this was the first game Williams had done with an animating character who spoke (perhaps the first coin-op game ever with that distinction), he wanted to synchronize the words to the threeframe “jaw flap” animation we had to work with—but he wasn’t sure how to do it. We brainstormed for a while, but it wasn’t until later that Sam called me into his office to show me a perfectly synchronized animation. He had gone to the whiteboard, held a marker to his chin with his face almost touching the board, and then played each voice track. He moved his mouth in time with the words or sounds, sliding from left to right across the board, and ended up with a graph showing how his mouth moved over time. It was crude but fast and surprisingly effective.

We wanted Sinistar to have a roar for when he was attacking, and when he was hit by a Sinibomb … we used a real animal roar, processed to make it sound more mechanical and menacing.

The playfield for Sinistar. Note the “scanner area” on top (actually the right side of a standard monitor) and the 3x5 pixel font. Every byte was precious.

techniques filmmakers use to scare audiences, but we stumbled on it by accident.

Voice and Sound Recording At the urging of one of our engineers with the improbable name

of Python Vladimir Anghelo (he was from Transylvania), we used a local Chicago radio personality, John Doremus, for the voice of Sinistar. I wasn’t at Python’s recording session, but we played the full tape back many times. John did great at all the words, but we wanted Sinistar to have a roar for when he was attacking, and when he was hit by a Sinibomb. John got to that point in the script and let out a strangled yelp that sounded like someone had just pinched him in a sensitive spot. He couldn’t do a convincing one, even after many takes and a lot of profanity. Eventually we used a real animal roar, processed to make it sound more mechanical and menacing. The Williams games also came with an independent sound card with its own RAM, tiny by today’s standards. I think the entire audio had to fit in 4K or perhaps 8K. There was a tricky home-brew audio synthesizer program that ran on it, using a table in the RAM to do all sorts of audio processing, but it was really hard for Mike Metz, our sound engineer, to create really original sounds. One day he powered up the system and hit play without initializing the values, and heard a really strange and intriguing sound. It turned out that on power-up, the RAM was full of random values. So he began flipping the system off and on, seeing what came up each time. He came up with several really unique and otherworldly sounds this way, including the one we used for earning an extra ship (which got re-used many times afterwards in other Williams titles). And then his system died. Turned out he’d burned it out in one afternoon since it wasn’t designed to

be turned on and off repeatedly. Mike got scolded for ruining an expensive piece of equipment—but we got our unique sounds.

The AI One of my own favorite contributions was the AI that controlled the enemies. On our slow processor, the AI had a tough task: controlling dozens of enemy worker and warrior units, each with a unique location, trajectory and task, all while taking up as little computation time as possible. I

be mined would be 4x louder to a warrior who was 2x closer to the asteroid. Years later I was able to pass this concept on to Dan (later Dani) Bunten for use in Command HQ. I also re-used it on my own design of a Dreamworks game called Chaos Island.

Beware, I Wed One of our team members holds a special place in my life. I hired RJ Mical into the games industry to work on “special effects” (explosions, primarily) for Sinistar.

One of my own favorite contributions was the AI that controlled the enemies …. Instead of having each enemy decide what task to do next, I had each task decide which enemy units should take them on. agonized over this programming challenge for weeks before finally having an inspiration: turning it 180 degrees. Instead of having each enemy decide what task to do next, I had each task decide which enemy units should take them on. For example, instead of assigning a newly-spawned warrior to mine an asteroid for crystals, the asteroid itself would “call” the warrior to it to come do the mining. It turns out that, combined with a linked-list architecture and some very simple math, this was a very efficient way to make it look like all the enemies were quite intelligent. Another key point was that an individual worker or warrior would “hear” his call to duty attenuated by the square of the distance from that task. In other words, an asteroid “calling out” to

SINISTAR: The Aftermath

RJ had just returned from a yearlong trek around the world, and I instantly liked him. He left Williams shortly before I did, following Sam Dicker to a new startup company that was working on the Amiga computer. I later also came out to Northern California, in my case to work for Lucasfilm’s new computer division. But it wasn’t long after that time that RJ met and married Caryn, a co-worker at Amiga. Caryn had a friend named Judith, and I met Judith at a party Caryn and RJ threw. The following year I married Judith in RJ and Caryn’s living room, about 30 feet from the spot where we first met. So in a real sense I owe RJ and Caryn—and Sinistar—for leading me to my wife. Not bad for a game with an 8-bit processor and 48K of RAM!

Sinistar has developed quite a fan base over the years. It has shown up in pop songs, in cartoons, in all sorts of unexpected places. Wikipedia has a good listing of some of the more obscure ones, but The Philosophical Revelations of Sinistar is probably my favorite: http://onastick.net/drew/sinistar/. It analyzes the seven simple voice utterances we were able to fit into the game and works them into something much deeper than we ever intended. It suggests, better than I ever could, the depths to which an intriguing character can drive a fan to creativity, which is certainly one of the biggest compliments a game designer can receive.

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10 QUESTIONS...

…with Scott Miller of 3D Realms keep hearing about Q1 We transmedia. What exactly

does that mean, anyway? Star Wars is my best example of an entertainment property strong with the transmedia force. In fact, I’m working with a co-author to write a book about this topic—a book that will become a film, a graphic novel, a hit music CD, and a videogame. That’s the whole point, right? To make a transmedia property, you need first to build a “storyverse.” This is my catchy coinage to describe a broad and deep foundation of characters, settings, dramatic set-ups, conflicts, themes, mythology, rules, and hooks. But, the purpose of a storyverse is not to define a single story. Instead (and this is critical), its purpose is to create a uniquely compelling playground of story possibilities. A storyverse is to stories what GTA is to FMV games like Dragon’s Lair. (An extra life to those who don’t

need to Google “FMV games.”) In short, you want to both create and constrain a rich possibility space for stories to emerge. For Star Wars, we have a great supply of the characters (including heroes and villains), the planets and outer space (locations), the force (mythology), several conflicts between characters and factions, and unique hooks (Force powers and the lightsaber) within the storyverse. do you prepare IP for Q2 How transmedia?

The secret sauce is all common sense stuff. But, above all, two things are required. The first is a strong lead character (James Bond, Spider-Man), or several strong characters (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings), along with a good supporting cast of secondary characters. Both Star Wars and Star Trek score well in this department. The second requirement is unique hooks like the Force and the lightsaber, both of which translate into unique and compelling gameplay features. I’m certain George Lucas wasn’t thinking about videogames when he wrote the script for Star Wars, but these hooks are what make it so unique and compelling as a videogame franchise. These hooks are what differentiate Star Wars from Star Trek, a franchise that has not successfully crossed into videogames, despite dozens of expensive attempts. I find it revealing, in fact, that of the tens of thousands of films, novels, TV shows, and comics that have been successful in the linear media, only a dozen or so are consistently successful on the nonlinear, interactive side of the fence.

That short list includes Star Wars, Spider-Man, James Bond, Batman, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and only a few others with a track record worth bragging about. That’s because so few have those inherent hooks that translate into unique, compelling game-play features. Here’s where I need to unveil a big caveat. Kid properties don’t count. Kids will indiscriminately buy anything that’s based on a brand they already like, and so they fall willingly for transmedia efforts, even all of the bad ones. THQ became one of the top-tier publishers by taking successful non-transmedia TV shows and making (mostly crappy) games. With adults, though, that emu won’t fly. 3 When making a new IP, what’s important and what’s not? I have a strong interest in creating transmedia properties. Why do anything less? While they can be creatively rewarding, they are also more challenging due to increased pre-planning. In this area I feel like my studio has done well with several of the properties we brought to the market, including Wolfenstein 3D (the last Id Software game to star a named hero), Duke Nukem, and Max Payne. Prey also has potential: MSNBC rated it as one of the five games released in 2006 that should be made into a film, alongside Halo and three others. Games I’ve been involved with have always focused on lead characters with notable, strong personalities. This goes back to the early ‘90s when I realized that all of the popular comics were named after their lead character, like Superman, Batman, Iron Man, Spider-Man, etc. I

figured out that this spotlight on the lead character greatly helped burn the character’s name into readers’ minds, plus it allowed maximum flexibility with future stories. Let me give you an idea of what I mean: As I said when it was first released, Eidos made a boneheaded mistake naming their female Indiana Jones game Tomb Raider. Instead, they should have named it Lara Croft. Think about it: By using Tomb Raider as the brand name for this franchise, each game MUST be about raiding a tomb, otherwise the name doesn’t make sense. In effect, this name entombs the franchise into a limited, repetitive set of stories over its lifespan. Maybe that’s interesting to ancient Egyptians, but we current day humans prefer more variety to our stories. Additionally, Lara Croft is a star character that Eidos obviously wants to promote, but they must also spend time and money promoting the frivolous Tomb Raider brand. Had they named the game Lara Croft, they would have instantly avoided both of these problems.

Q4 Hollywood?

How do you deal with

There’s only one way to deal with the Hollywood beast, and it’s really no different than dealing with the publisher beasts of our industry: It’s all about leverage. Hollywood will pick your bones dry unless you hold the upper hand. Effectively, this means you need to show that you don’t need them. You’ve either got money (unlikely), or you’ve got a very hot property (which creates a bidding war), or you’ve already got the game property funded and in production. This last method of creating leverage is likely the most appropriate for those of us who read this magazine. If you can approach Hollywood with a fleshed-out game design doc and a convincing demo of your game, then you’ll likely get real interest— assuming the game has a compelling story and characters. But, more than likely, unless you’re a publisher or a top independent like Epic and Valve, Hollywood won’t show serious interest until the game is released and has proven itself.

With Max Payne, Hollywood didn’t show much interest until the game series sold seven million copies. Before it proved itself, it didn’t stand a chance. In short, dealing with Hollywood should not be the upfront goal. Still, that doesn’t mean the game shouldn’t be designed as a transmedia project from the beginning. what Is happening with

Q5 Duke Nukem, the game,

the movie, the legend? with the release of the workforce is it all over for duke nukem? First off, we’ve never said that Duke Nukem Forever has ceased development. Yes, we released the internal team, but that doesn’t correlate to the demise of the project. Also, there are numerous other Duke games in various stages of development, several due out this year. We are definitely looking to branch Duke into casual gaming spaces, plus there are other major Duke games in production. Almost all of these are unannounced. The next few years should see a strong resurgence in Duke. And yes, the Duke film is making steady progress. One thing I learned from working on the Max Payne film, these things move slowly but steadily

Eidos made a boneheaded mistake naming their female Indiana Jones game Tomb Raider. Instead, they should have named it Lara Croft. until there’s finally a filming date—at which point things shift into warp drive. I’m guessing most people just have no idea that it requires several years of preparation before getting to the point of actual filming. We’re developing a much more complete storyverse for Duke, filling out all of the details that we’ve left to the imagination in the games, such as: Who are these aliens? Why Earth? What is Duke’s background? And so

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much more. That bible includes a treatment for the film, and that leads us directly into writing the screenplay. 6 Where does the money keep coming from for 3DR and what would you do differently with duke nukem? I get this question a lot. Then I remind people that Duke Nukem 3D

7 What are Radar and Depth? And what do they do? Essentially, Radar is an incubation, funding, design, and management studio for entertainment brands which we own or co-own. Depth is our Hollywood partner, handling the linear media side of our properties. Depth is run by Scott Faye, the company

Publishers and development studios are losing their shirts in the secondhand games market… it’s hurting the creative side of the business noticeably. was made for $300,000, and we made back 25 times our investment—not to mention all of the third-party Duke console games that sold well. Plus, we made a killing with Wolfenstein 3D. And we made the biggest killing on Max Payne! We made $30 million in royalties on that game (off of a $2.5 million investment), plus another $48 million selling the IP to our publisher. Oh, and we were also part owners of Gathering of Developers when that was sold to Take2. And finally, we have been pretty lucky with other investments, both in the stock market and in other studios. The bottom-line is that it really shows how important it is to own your own brands. It is only through ownership that a studio can truly create wealth and long-term sustainability. Even so, I think I would have abandoned internal development six or seven years ago. I much prefer to work with external studios to develop games, as we did with Max Payne and Prey. Radar is following this very model, with no internal development. I wanted 3D Realms to switch to this model years ago, as it’s much more cost effective for us, with lower risk. For other independent developers this advice doesn’t apply. What I’d recommend for them is to not strive for perfection, which is the enemy of completion. For practically all aspects of a game, 80% is good enough.

President and a film producer (Max Payne), who’s on the leading edge of transmedia exploitation within Hollywood. It’s a great collaboration— and one we’re seeing publishers like EA and Ubisoft developing too. 8 What are the biggest missed opportunities you’ve seen in the last year? Where’s a Halo movie? GTA? World of Warcraft? These may be unfair examples because it takes time to develop good films based on games (which are mostly shallow in terms of characters and dramatic setups). These three, though, are among the most obvious that I’d expect to see made into a film within the next three-to-five years.

9 How would Scott Miller bring EA up to the same level of profitability as the Acti-Blizzard juggernaut? I’m actually impressed with some of EA’s recent tries at new IP, such as Dead Space, Army of Two, and Mirror’s Edge. I hope that the lukewarm sales of these games do not cause them to stop trying to take big swings with new properties. EA really does need to broaden the number of game brands it can rely on—big hitters like a Call of Duty, Gears of War, GTA, and so on. What’s the real shame for them is that they were vigorously pushing for new brands

during their recent heyday of soaring stock and untold riches. Like so many other market leaders, they rested on their laurels while Activision—doing its best Avis impersonation (“We’re #2, but we try harder”)—out-EA’ed EA. EA’s only chance, in my opinion, is to acquire Take2 and add GTA, Max Payne, Duke Nukem, Bioshock, and Civilization to it’s lineup. In fact, they tried acquiring Take2 already last year. They need to try again. 10 If there was one thing you could fix in the games industry with the wave of a magic wand, what would it be? My list is long, so here are just two: • Publishers and development studios are losing their shirts in the secondhand games market, primarily led by Gamestop. No one on the creative and risktaking side of the business sees any money from this activity. Yes, it’s a deal for gamers, but it’s hurting the creative side of the business noticeably. When less money flows back to those taking the financial and creative risks, it means less money will be available for future games and fewer risks will be taken. And we’ll just keep seeing publishers playing it safe with sequels rather than taking a few artistic risks with new original games like Bioshock. • This industry has seen a shift in power too much toward publishers—so much so that most triple-A, independent studios are becoming contract work-houses. Rather than taking creative risks on their own concepts, they’re mostly working on licenses and sequels handed to them by publishers. This worsening cycle means we’ll not see any more Ids, Epics, Valves, and Blizzards rise from the independent ranks, because no one will give them a chance with anything other than an already established brand.

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14 Gamesauce fall 2009

industrial depresSion

All that’s worst about the industry Name Withheld

When you tell people you make games for a living they generally say something like, “Wow, that doesn’t even sound like a job,” or “If that’s work, what could you possibly do for fun?” And for the most part it’s true: Making games beats the heck out of, say, cleaning sewers or performing rectal exams (which is sort of the same thing, when you think about it). But here’s what we know that outsiders don’t: Some aspects of this job just SUCK. And we don’t want to whine about it, but occasionally there’s something therapeutic about going on a little rant about the stuff we don’t like. Right? Industrial Depression is a recurring column for just such rants. It will be our quiet little way of purging (there’s that image again) so that we can refocus our energies on making everyone else wish they had our jobs. —Ed.

eing laid off sucks. Everyone knows it, but until it happens to you, you can’t know just how much it sucks. If you’re lucky you’ll never find out firsthand, but the likelihood is that at least a third of us will be laid off over the course of our careers. While it’s something no one wants to happen, having some preparation and foreknowledge of what to do if it does happen to you can make the situation a lot less traumatic.

The Dreaded Meeting with HR Say you are summoned into the room with HR and told you are done. Now what? For starters: Do not argue. Do not plead. The business decision to let you go has already been made, and making a fuss in the termination interview isn‘t going to change that. No one is going to slap his head and say, “Oh man, you are right. We shouldn’t let you go. Let’s just forget this ever happened.” On the contrary, protesting is going to make

you look like you absolutely should be let go (and it may prompt a call to security). Rather than put up a fight, just sit there, listen and nod appropriately, and don’t make a really bad situation worse. Chances are, the people on the other side of the table aren’t any more thrilled about it than you are (who wants to tell someone else that they’re losing their livelihood?). As you walk away from that meeting, the soul searching will begin: Was it me? Was I just not good enough? Did someone not like me enough? Then you start feeling angry: That company sucks. Management sucks. The publisher sucks. I’m being treated unfairly and like a number. No one cares. At the same time, you begin to consider the unknown: Will I have to move? What if I run out of money? What about my kids’ medical insurance? Shell-shocked, you run through the whole gamut of emotions until you get to the ultimate question: What do I do now?

The main thing to realize at this point is: It’s not you. It’s them. Chances are that being laid off isn’t your fault—especially in this economic climate. Many companies are tightening belts, trying to figure out how to survive the reduction in available funding for game development. It’s no secret that salary and benefits account for 80% of a game developer’s overhead— particularly since the bulk of its income comes in one burst after shipping. Thus, when a developer has to reduce costs, the first (and perhaps only) place to look is at the salaries of the rank and file. It’s usually true what they say: “It’s not personal; it’s business.” Another thing to bear in mind is that just because you were let go doesn’t necessarily mean you are in the bottom 10% or 20%. The decision on who to let go varies from place to place and can depend on current production status. If you are at the tail-end of production then tools guys probably aren’t the most important people to keep on staff, for example. QA will be high on the list of potential cut-backs if projects are in Pre-Pro. Expensive people will often be vulnerable as well—the thinking being that it’s better to keep two average people on staff rather than one great but extremely expensive person. There may even be a situation in which a whole game gets cancelled and the entire team let go—and that would certainly not be about who is best. Even if it is personal—if your manager decides to use a companywide layoff as an excuse to get rid of people considered problematic with no questions asked—it may be a blessing in disguise. Rather than make a fuss about it and call out that manager, it’s better to consider it a lucky escape; at least you won’t have to deal with that bad manager in the future. But first things first. Get your stuff out of the building and do

not get angry with anyone who might be staying when you aren’t. It’s not their fault—taking out your frustration on those who still have a job might seem satisfying at that particular moment, but long-term you’ll regret it. Likewise, you should resist the temptation to vent your anger on your blog or Facebook or Twitter. Maintain your dignity and self-control and you will preserve valuable relationships (and potential references) in the process. If your company offers any outplacement assistance, take it. In the coming months you’ll need every job hunting assistance you can get. Remember to ask for unpaid vacation and PTO time as well. Other things to ask: Will I get a reference? Will there be severance? How much and when do I get it?

on and stay busy, the better off you’ll be. File for unemployment benefits. You’ve made a considerable contribution to the unemployment pool over the years for a circumstance such as this. Don’t let the stigma of being unemployed hold you back from claiming what is legally yours. Get on the website for your local agency and get that ball rolling as job #1. It doesn’t matter if you are given severance or not—it’s always a good idea to sign up for unemployment benefits immediately even if you won’t be collecting right away. Take a good long look at your finances. Even if you have substantial savings, you need to look at your outflows and start cutting back on the extraneous stuff immediately.

Being laid off sucks. Everyone knows it, but until it happens to you, you can’t know just how much it sucks. If you’re lucky you’ll never find out firsthand, but the likelihood is that at least a third of us will be laid off over the course of our careers. Does it come with any strings attached (restrictions on future employment or hiring, for example)? When you are paid severance, many companies will require that you sign some sort of release that prevents you from suing them later or from making public statements about your former employers. Read what they give you, but keep in mind that if you choose not to sign you may be forgoing severance as well. (Needless to say, if you have questions about the terms of the severance you should seek the counsel of a qualified professional.)

Things to Do Immediately There are several things you need to get on with immediately— which is a good thing since it keeps you from dwelling on what just happened and on what might happen. The sooner you can move

Without any corresponding inflows, you need that savings to last as long as possible. In that regard, you must honestly distinguish between what is essential (food, housing) and what is merely nice to have (every premium movie channel, for example, or perhaps membership in the Wine of the Month Club). Then set yourself a budget and stick to it. If you think you may be in danger of missing mortgage or car payments, get in touch with your lenders immediately. If you work with them proactively, you are less likely to make a mess of your credit than if you miss payments and wait for them to come to you. Arrange for references. The best references come from those who have worked with you most recently. If you have moved around a lot, that may require obtaining references from each of your last three

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employers. However, if you’ve been at the same place for years, you should seek out multiple references from within that same company. Be sure to talk to each of your references personally to obtain their consent before you submit their names to prospective employers. That brief conversation will also alert them that a call may be coming their way. Nothing is worse than a call out of the blue asking about someone you haven’t spoke to in a while—especially if it’s someone whose work you would never endorse. (Don’t laugh: I’ve actually had references tell me not to hire the person I am calling about.) Update your résumé. There are lots of articles that talk about how to construct an effective résumé.

game development (after all, you wrote that “non-games” résumé for a reason). Even if you don’t want to leave gaming, you may need to strongly consider pursuing a job outside of the industry. In this environment, having a job is more important than finding that perfect one right out the gate. Besides, being open to totally new opportunities in related sectors could actually turn out to be a good thing for you. I know several people who’ve gone from hardcore AAA development into web casual games as a result of being laid off—and they couldn’t be happier. Talk to friends in the industry. Being recommended at a new place by an old friend already working there trumps the blind

Being recommended at a new place by an old friend already working there trumps the blind résumé submission process every time. Suffice it to say that time spent on making your résumé sparkle is time well spent. With the number of qualified candidates in our industry who are out of work right now, anything that can make your résumé stand out is good. It’s also worth constructing a “non-games” résumé– one that talks about what you’ve been doing but from a different slant. Imagine you are going for a job in a Web 2.0 company and you need a résumé that addresses their requirements. Suddenly all that UI work you were doing becomes “front-end interface” work—it’s the same thing but phrased in way that makes it less games specific. Start looking at job listings. Put your résumé out on Gamasutra and Monster.com. Indicate on LinkedIn you are looking and ensure that your personal information is as up-to-date as you can make it. When you look at job listings, expand your search beyond just

résumé submission process every time. You may be surprised by how many of your old friends are sympathetic to your situation— perhaps because so many in this industry will think: “There but for the grace of God go I.” Talk to headhunters. There are plenty out there and most of them are very good. They can provide introductions to companies you might not have heard of and help you overcome the blind résumé submission filtering process. You may find that headhunters will start coming out of the woodwork once you post your résumé online. Keep track of which one is working with which companies though because you may well find your name submitted to the same company by multiple headhunters—which never ends well (they end up fighting over the commission). One note: If a company ever submits your résumé somewhere without asking you first, you may want to dump them

immediately. (I once had a recruiter suddenly come to me with a timed programmer test—for a company I didn’t want to work for. He had taken it upon himself to submit my résumé to this company and agreed to have me take this programmer test—and the first I heard of it was when I received an email saying “I need this test back within 3 hours.” Needless to say we aren’t working together any more.) Don’t be too picky about which companies you talk to—you never know what might come up in conversation even with a studio that makes games you have no interest in. In fact, you should talk to as many companies as possible. The best possible situation would be to have several offers on the table and make a considered choice among them. Spend an evening bitching and drinking with your friends. This, in fact, may be one of the first things you want to do because it will help you accept your plight and move on. In my experience it usually takes a couple of weeks to get your head out of whatever it was you were working on and to stop caring about it. There’s something cathartic about getting blind drunk with your buddies—take advantage of the excuse to do so. It will be good for you.

A Final Thought It may sound a bit cliché, but being laid off really is an opportunity. It’s hard to immediately see it as that, but there are other jobs out there—some of which provide better pay and opportunity for growth and development. Change is not something to be afraid of but embraced. The more you have this attitude, the more attractive you will be to potential employers as well. There are jobs out there and you will find one. You aren’t alone and like all things, this too will pass. Good luck out there.

BUY IT TODAY! W W W. P R O T O T Y P E G A M E . C O M

© 2009 Activision Publishing, Inc. Activision is a registered trademark and Prototype is a trademark of Activision Publishing, Inc. Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE, and the Xbox logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies and are used under license from Microsoft. “PlayStation” and “PS” Family logo are registered trademarks and “PS3” is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. The ratings icon is a registered trademark of the Entertainment Software Association. All other trademarks and trade names are the properties of their respective owners. All rights reserved.

Gamesauce ial t n e d i f n o C ip Hawkins

An interview with Tr

rgerhas its own la Every industry r s Tige rheroes. Golf ha than-life supe Lloyd k an Fr s cture ha Woods. Archite ethoven. al music has Be Wright. Classic awkins. es have Trip H And video gam 30-year that during his You might say r, Hawkins w media pionee career as a ne a key busy. He played has been a little , founded days of Apple role in the early signed d 3DO, and de Electric Arts an es like John m ga g lin , best-sel award-winning

also authored ll. Oh, and he Madden Footba me idea of To give you so three patents. awkins was our industry: H his impact on athletes in celebrities and the first to use w common n idea that is no video games—a EO of Digital y, Hawkins is C practice. Toda r of casual ading publishe Chocolate, a le ications and social appl mobile games DChoc Cafe e Th , ado Mania including Torn Bloxx. s, and Pyramid series, AvaPeep in games, er re ca ing his Before launch

major at loped his own Hawkins deve graduated he re rsity—whe Harvard Unive ee in Strategy ude with a degr magna cum la nd later ame Theory—a and Applied G rd University. BA from Stanfo received an M executive to e first business He was also th Fame by the to the Hall of in ed ct du in be and Sciences. teractive Arts In of y m de ca A a guy like rred to us that Anyway, it occu to… worth talking that might be —Ed

Let’s talk about the launch of EA. What got you started? Well, you really have to think back to the beginning. When I was a kid, I started playing games and discovered that I was really excited when I played them. I could tell that I was thinking and I was engaged and I was in the flow, and I thought it was a really great activity. This was the golden age of television, and I was having trouble getting my friends to play games with me because they wanted to watch TV. I particularly liked games that had something to do with real life. Of course in those days there were war games, Strat-O-Matic sports simulation games with cards and dice, and things like D&D were being invented. Those games were more elaborate and complicated because they were trying to do something real. You didn’t have a computer, so you had to be the computer—and that was even more alienating. Fewer of your friends were going to be willing to do it. I got exposed to a computer kit that a friend of my father had built. This was around 1970 I think, or ’71. He built a PDP 8, and that’s when the light bulb went on. I realized: Hey, we can put these games in the computer and then it will be a lot easier for players to get to the heart of what they’re trying to enjoy without having to do all this administration and computation. So that’s pretty much when I decided I wanted to do games as a career. But I hadn’t finished school, and I didn’t really know that much about business. I designed a sports simulation game—a football game with cards and charts and dice—and in the process I confirmed for myself that I was an entrepreneur and I wanted to do it again. But as I said, I knew this really should be done with computers—so I spent the next 10 years planning the launch of Electronic Arts, including how I tailored my education, summer jobs, where I wanted to go to work. There was one point in 1975 where I very deliberately plotted it out and concluded that I was going to start Electronic Arts in 1982. On January 1, 1982, I slipped my resignation under Steve Jobs’ door, and the following month I went off and met with Don Valentine and kind of got his encouragement. He offered to let me use office space at his venture capital firm, but by then, I had already been planning and working on it for some time.

What were some of the core principles upon which EA was founded? If you look at the seminal ideas around the foundation of EA, one of them was direct distribution. I had figured out how important that was at Apple. Apple had initially gone through distributors, but because Apple was growing so fast, it couldn’t keep up with the

Gamesauce fall 2009

growth. Eventually Apple decided to go direct, but then there were all these transition problems and lawsuits and chaos. I decided that, first of all, I’d rather go direct right from the beginning and avoid that kind of a transition. While I was at Apple, I also figured out the whole idea of software artists. I was working with really brilliant software engineers, and I realized that they were very much creative brains and divas—like in Hollywood or other creative industries or arts—and they needed to be managed accordingly. At the time, I really thought that was the big idea. And then a third component was the idea of technology leverage. If you’re Richie Valens, and you’ve got a guitar and a tape recorder, you can do a demo tape of La Bamba and get that in front of a record producer. But the record producer is eventually going want to bring you into a place called a studio—with much better sound-proofing, a lot of equipment, the ability to record things properly—so that you can be brought to market in a really professional manner with high production values. I thought: Why don’t we make the equivalent of that for our software artists? It became known as the artist’s workstation.

Since the merger of Vivendi and Activision, EA has slipped to number two in the market. If you were put back into the position of CEO, what would you do to bring EA back to the top? First of all, I wouldn’t be obsessed about being number two or number one. I don’t really think that’s the point. In the first several years at EA, we focused on making a lot of original products and bringing up the production values in

Early Strat-o-matic cards . Image by J. L. Schilling, 2005.

20 Gamesauce fall 2009

the industry. I think everyone in the gaming industry now has to remember that you can only ride the same horse for so long. You really need to be constantly innovating. We’ve got a couple of great role models in the game industry right now. You look at Apple and Nintendo as big corporations that five or six years ago were kind of painted into the corner, no longer #1 in the industries they had invented. A lot of us thought: They’re probably not going to find a way out of this. It’s very unusual for big companies to innovate the way they did. They were able to think outside the box. They were willing to experiment by trying to get into new industries, by addressing new market segments— Nintendo in particular. Nobody in the game industry—including EA back in the old days—thought you could get pre-teen boys to play videogames until Nintendo came along and made a thing called a Gameboy and made a brand

So if the industry is getting broader, why is there still such a high degree of preoccupation with hardcore gamers? You look at the console marketplace and the two big surprises in the last five years are, “Oh my God! How did the Wii outsell the PlayStation 3?” and “Oh my God! Look at Guitar Hero.” And I think that the industry still doesn’t understand what it means. What it means is that even hardcore gamers have changed their behavior. They’ve changed how they allocate their media time and their media budgets. I guarantee you hardcore gamers are also playing games on Facebook with their friends and they’re playing free web games and they’re in free MMOs with virtual goods and they’re obviously playing games on their iPhones. You can no longer think of this as a consolecentered industry in which the next big hit is by definition

You can no longer think of this as a console-centered industry in which the next big hit is by definition going to be some immersive, technically-advanced, 3D thing that takes 30 hours to win. called Pokémon. Nobody thought you could sell games to pre-teen girls (who, by the way, didn’t really like the Pokémon videogames). Some of them collected the cards, but the Gameboys weren’t as popular with girls. But then the DS came along with products like Nintendogs and Littlest Pet Shop and numerous other brands that have brought all the pre-teen girls into the marketplace. Nintendo did the same thing with senior citizens and with fitness and with families. Clearly one of the things happening with the Wii is that there is now a “family market segment” that nobody was addressing before. In many cases, it’s a hardcore gamer who grew up and doesn’t have a hundred hours to spend playing Grand Theft Auto anymore. But he’s got three kids and he wants to play with them, and the Wii is a great way to do that—but it’s got to be a different kind of game. So you have to recognize that there’s this explosion now happening in gaming where everybody’s playing something. That might include distant examples like voting on American Idol, or attending a super bowl party, or going to a friend’s house and playing Guitar Hero, or Wii sports. A lot of these people may not be the kinds of consumers who will ever buy a console, and they may never become traditional console gamers. Even so, the sky’s the limit in thinking about market segments and different customer groups and trying to tailor products for them. So there’s never been a better opportunity for innovation in the industry—but I wouldn’t be so preoccupied with who’s number one.

going to be some immersive, technically-advanced, 3D thing that takes 30 hours to win. Sure, there are going to be those, but everybody should take a step back and realize that Guitar Hero is not one of those, and many of the products on the Wii are not representing that kind of product.

Let’s move on from EA to 3DO. What is the biggest lesson you learned from the experience of launching a console yourself? Well, there are so many it’s hard to know where to start. It’s obviously very difficult to create a successful console. You have to have the perfect storm of the right hardware at the right price, and the right software to go with it. And in 3DO’s case, we were sort of pushing the envelope by using some advanced technologies that were still pretty expensive (like CD-ROM drives), and they required a lot of memory. Memory was expensive at that time, so it hurt the price-point. What’s more, 3DO didn’t have enough sort of “killer app quality” games for quite a long time. I think by the time they showed up, it was too late. When you think about how to get killer apps onto a platform, either the marketer of the platform (like Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft) has to have really good first-party software— and 3DO didn’t have the scale for that—or you have to have all the third-party software companies convinced that the platform is going to be a big success—and they’ll become convinced (or not) based on the degree of the platform company’s financial commitment. So when you

see a company like Sony making a $2 billion commitment and you see 3DO going public and raising $50 million, it is really not even comparable.

You did some really interesting things that no one else has done—for instance, licensing your technology to other manufacturers. Yes. I think that was certainly a reasonable idea. In fact, the business press spent a lot of time in the 1980s discussing whether or not Apple should license their technology to other hardware companies. In choosing not to do so, Apple got killed by Microsoft, who did that. And you could ask the same questions about the iPhone today. I mean, there’s all these companies now trying to clone and follow Apple’s lead, and I think it’s a very interesting strategic question: Should Apple keep it all to themselves and be limited by their own distribution reach and their own manufacturing capacity, or should they, in fact, try to do more what Android is doing? I mean, clearly Google with Android is trying to be more like the Microsoft, but they’re a few years behind. There’s really no comparison today between the user experience on an Android handset and the user experience on an iPhone. The point I’m trying to get to is that licensing is a very reasonable idea, but you still have to have the flagship that convinces everybody that it’s going to be a meaningful platform.

What is your perspective on employees or development teams working remotely? I think there’s a million ways for it to go wrong, and there’s a handful of ways for it to go right, and it’s a very complicated thing to manage. I feel really blessed that it’s working for us. It’s very fortunate that we put a company together with the right people in the right places, and we made good choices about leadership and process. One of the things we have going for us is that we made a decision many years ago that we would build a serious technology base to use to leverage the business. That’s one of the reasons why I think of us as the Pixar of mobile. It’s a lot easier for us to work in different locations because we hire people and we train them on our technology base, and they become sort of part of that system. Of course, that also makes it harder for us to work with outside, thirdparty developers, which is unfortunate. But it’s much more efficient for us to do everything within the confines of our technology base. I kind of think of it like an enormous train station. We keep building on to it, and making it bigger and more powerful. The creative assets have to be built to specifications of the right gauge and the right size of

train car, and then the train cars just very smoothly and effortlessly come right down the track into the train station. We have all these tracks going out to every device and every platform on the other side. And then when something comes along like accelerometer support, you add that to the train station as well. Then you make sure that all of your employees know how you need to build assets to make sure that you’re correctly supporting an accelerometer, and then they efficiently just add it right into the train station. So you just add more platforms and add more devices as they come along. It’s the kind of strategy that requires vertical integration. You have to have a lot more employees and build it up that way—which is one of the reasons it was practical to go overseas. It would have been impossible to build that kind of organization in the

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“Oh my God! Look at Guitar Hero.”

22 Gamesauce fall 2009

San Francisco Bay area. It would just be way way way too expensive and you’d have way too much employee turnover because there are so many shiny objects in Silicon Valley. It’s just very hard to get anybody to stay anywhere for any length of time, and if you’re going to spend several years to build a technology base, you want people that have some continuity in knowing how to make the most of that.

And you could keep the institutional knowledge “in-house” so to speak. Correct. For example, one of the process rules we adopted is that everybody in the company speaks English. We don’t actually even have to travel that much to keep things well coordinated because everybody is

with the iPod, you see it in video with YouTube, you see it with games on the iPhone and games on Facebook. There’s kind of a shift in the customer viewpoint about the benefit. So in traditional gaming it’s about competition and winning and beating the game and then patting yourself on the back and saying, “Yeah, I’m so great.” And the shift here to the omni-gamer is that the omni-gamer is thinking, “I just want to play and enjoy the pleasure of playing with other people.” So there’s maybe less obsession about feeling good about myself for winning the game and a greater interest in game content that I know my friends can handle. Even the hardcore guy— when he chose the Wii over the PS3, that’s what he was thinking. He was thinking: “Well, I had the PlayStation, I had the PlayStation 2, and I managed to alienate all of my friends. They won’t come over anymore because I was mopping the floor with them, so how do I get them back?

If you’re going to reach these omni-consumers, you’re going to have to have games that are on all of these platforms. And that’s going to have to change your thinking about what your game brand is going to be about, and what you are actually going to demand of the player. using the same technology base, we’re on the same page from a creative and planning standpoint, and there’s a lot of routine communication. That’s a major reason why we went into India—because India has the largest number of computer science graduates from college every year, and they have the largest English-speaking population.

What’s the premise behind Digital Chocolate? Well, this is where we started a departure from, shall we say, “traditional” videogames. We thought that since everybody would have a mobile phone, the marketplace would include everybody—not just hardcore gamers— and that even hardcore gamers would probably behave differently around their mobile devices. All of that has turned out to be true. In the very beginning, we wanted people to feel like they were getting away with something and having a moment of indulgence, so what would we call that? Digital Chocolate. We also asked: When are they going to do it? They’re going to do it in a minute, so let’s tell them that they’re going to “seize the minute.” Okay, and what’s the right way to do it? Well, it’s got to be with one button in one hand because they’re probably holding their coffee or holding onto a train, or driving the car, or doing whatever they’re doing with the other hand. So we’ve got to make it really simple: a short play session, instant gratification, really convenient. That principle kind of held up, and what we’ve seen in the last few years is this explosion in the marketplace. I call this the “omni-media” market; you see it in music

I’ve got to get Guitar Hero for the Wii.” Now you bring all of those friends over that are not console gamers, and they’re thinking: “Wow! I didn’t realize they had this kind of thing on the PlayStation,” or “I didn’t know there was a thing like the Wii.” Some of them may then go get a console, but more likely they’re getting more conditioned that the next time somebody invites them to play a Facebook game, they’ll go, “Sure, why not?” I think the key point here is that this omni-audience is so much larger, and the primary benefit is social. I like to use the Super Bowl as an example because in America 140 million people watch the Super Bowl. Five percent of them bought Madden, the most successful game brand in history. Okay, but what about the other 95 percent? Well, they’re all going to a Super Bowl party. Obviously, that’s an event about a game. So they care about games. They are tuning in to the game. They’re discussing tactics and strategy about the game. They’re placing bets on the game. You’re seeing this behavior now with even the hardcore gamers. They’re shifting their behavior to more socially engaging platforms and games, and it’s now beginning to play to our strengths. That’s one of the reasons why we’ve taken off like a moon rocket on the iPhone.

Digital Chocolate started as a mobile game company, but now you work across many platforms. Why did you make that change? It is important for Digital Chocolate to cross platforms because the omni-gamers cross platforms. If my 13-year-

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old son had lived 10 years ago, all of his media time would have been on the PlayStation. All of it. Now he’s got all the consoles and less than 10 percent of his media time is on the consoles. So, if you’re going to reach these omniconsumers, you’re going to have to have games that are on all of these platforms. And that’s going to have to change your thinking about what your game brand is going to be about, and what you are actually going to demand of the player. When we started Digital Chocolate, we were making games for the Series 40 Nokia phones. We still are making Series 40 games, and it’s still a very big part of the business. There are a whole lot of Series 40 phones out there. Maybe you don’t find as many in Silicon Valley, where everybody’s got an iPhone now, but in other countries there’s a load of Series 40 phones. Well on most phones you can’t have a game bigger than 64 kb. So, when you think about it, it’s no big surprise that some of the classic retro arcade games, or games like Tetris, are very popular on mobile—because those were among the most ingenious play mechanics for that level of technology. So we try to make ourselves into a company that could invent game mechanics of that same kind of classic quality and then just polish and polish and polish and then wrap them around interesting themes. This is how Crazy Penguin Catapult became the number one download on the App Store for Christmas. There’s been a shift here in the marketplace that benefits original products that are really well engineered and have some kind of ubiquity—which means that they’re going to appeal to every market demographic on every platform. I

think you have to give Bejeweled credit for being the most ubiquitous cross-platform game because I have found it in airline seats, on hotel set-top boxes, and you can get it on every platform that moves. And we’re not that far behind. We’re trying to bring a whole lot more scale and whole lot more products in that direction.

Do you think that an emphasis on story and narrative can diminish the enjoyment of a pure, skillbased mechanic? Personally, I’m a really big fan of stories and themes, but I think that you can overdo it. I’m a really big fan of interactive media—I’d much rather see people interacting and having their brains stimulated than have them just sitting passively and watching a movie that they have no control over. But if you bog the thing down so much with the narrative that you’re not getting to the interaction, then clearly that’s too much. If you have the right touch with it, a theme can be incredibly powerful in setting a mood and creating opportunities for a stronger emotional attachment. In an abstract game like Tetris, there’s nothing really emotional about it. There is no theme, and yet it’s the most elegant game ever designed. Then there are the classic arcade games where, again, it’s pattern recognition, it’s dexterity, and spatial cognition. There’s some definite fun to that also. But when you add a theme and characters and heroes and villains, and a setting that you can relate to,

“If my 13-year old son had lived 10 years ago, all of his media time would have been on the PlayStation. All of it.”

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that has way more potential. It is likely to not only be more emotionally meaningful, but much more memorable and have longer legs as a brand. People who reviewed M.U.L.E said: “Wow! This is better than a college course in economics.”

Do you think that idea is applicable to the omni-gamer? Oh, absolutely. I feel like I’ve been making omni-games my whole career without knowing it. Way back in the early days of EA, making a game like M.U.L.E., we were trying to teach the public about economics. I basically educated Dan Bunten on economic principles that had to go into the game and then I wrote the manual for the game personally to explain those principles. Sure enough, people who reviewed the game said: “Wow! This is better than a college course in economics.” And the only problem was it was probably a little too geeky and demanding for a truly mass audience. Even so, that was a game that four people could sit down and play together— and it had auction systems and other stuff like that. Here’s a thought-provoking question for the industry: Is Guitar Hero an isolated case that works because it has music and a simple thing you can do around music—and everybody’s going to want to do it because they love music? Well, maybe that’s a core idea that could be applied to a whole lot of other subject matter. Could we do that with any subject? Take cooking for example. Obviously there are a lot of Nintendo games around cooking. Who’s to say (and I’m just making this up on the fly), but why not have a virtual kitchen where you’ve got some buttons and devices that are a little more like the guitar? It would be interesting to have a disciplined discussion about all topics of human interest, to ask: All right, how many undiscovered Guitar Heroes are there?

What would you tell entrepreneurs in emerging markets like Russia or the Middle East who want to make these games and come into this marketplace? What should they be focusing on? I guess I would say two things. One is optimistic and encouraging, and one is kind of a caution. When you look at the phenomenon of the iPhone, we’re scratching the surface of something really, really big. There are already over four billion who have a mobile phone. That number is going to five billion—not counting the number of people in the future who will want a device like the iPod Touch. I think the iPod Touch already represents something over 40% of the devices Apple has sold. And it may have more long-term potential because that type of device has music and video and web browsing and games. It’s convenient enough you can carry it around. And as wi-fi access continues to proliferate, at some point you think, “Who cares if it’s not a phone if I don’t have to pay any monthly charges?” Frankly there’s going to be enough wi-fi around that you could probably make phone calls using VoIP anyway. I get kind of blown away thinking about that. Of course you have this whole industry now that is trying to clone the iPhone. Every carrier wants something like that. Every operating system wants to be like that. Every device wants to be like that. You could see that over the next five years there could be as many as six billion units of demand, in terms of the install-base. So Apple sold 30 million. Well, that’s only one-half of one percent of the six billion. So we’re just really barely getting started.

Apple has demonstrated that a small team—the guys who made Field Runners—can make an awesome game by thieselves. So clearly it is a great entrepreneurial opportunity.

From an entrepreneurial standpoint, what Apple has demonstrated with their merchandising model is that even a small team—the guys who made Field Runners— can make an awesome game by themselves. So clearly it is a great entrepreneurial opportunity. These platforms are more open. They’re more democratic. It’s more of a meritocracy. And they’re global. Again, you think about the old days in the game industry: It took like five years to get a platform to truly be global. Well, they launched the 3G iPhone simultaneously into something like 30 countries. In addition, there’s a lot of opportunity for other devices besides Apple, because of one observation: Apple requires you to have a PC. You know, you can’t actually use the iPhone until you have set up your account on a PC or a Mac using iTunes. Well, there are only a billion PCs, so that means that many billions of this market potential cannot be tethered to a PC. There’s going to be a huge amount of market growth with this paradigm, a whole lot of new customers getting these devices. Some of it will be Apple brand, some of it will be other company brands. A lot of it will follow the archetype of the iPhone, and that’s why (coincidentally) everybody’s announcing a 70% rev share. So, thank you, Apple, for setting the bar the way you did. The caution is that you can see on the iPhone that there are a lot of people self-publishing who do not know what they’re doing—and they’re getting hurt. I mean, you see these sob stories from developers who spent a bunch of money and several months of their lives making something, and they made a hundred bucks. It’s just a disaster. And

independents. There is one weakness in that strategy of course: It’s very difficult to do that with any kind of organized technology model. Your development costs are higher, and it’s harder to get across a lot of platforms.

What do you do for fun? Well, I’m a baseball fanatic. I’m kind of well known for that. I’ve been a season ticket holder for twenty-five years. I root for a team in San Francisco that has never won a world championship. So the fact that I go back every year and go to another 40 or 50 games says something. I actually designed a couple of what might be called fantasy-type sports experiences that I play with my friends. It’s called BTY (Betty), which stands for “Beat the Yankees.” It’s basically a fantasy format in which you get an average National League payroll. I tell you at the start of the season: “Here’s all the players who are free agents and you can sign. Here’s what their salaries are.” Then you have to demonstrate that you can assemble a team that can beat the Yankees. I run it through a simulation at the end of the season and see how we all did. And by the way: It’s actually not that hard to beat the Yankees. They really waste a lot of money—let’s just put it that way. So, baseball’s the big personal hobby. Right now my other big hobby is browsing the app store. I just think that it’s incredibly entertaining. In fact, I read a lot of the reviews that are posted. We’ve had over 500,000 reviews about our games posted in the last five months. It’s an amazing community experience. My favorite one was a

These platforms are more open. They’re more democratic. It’s more of a meritocracy. And they’re global. Again, you think about the old days in the game industry: It took like five years to get a platform to truly be global. Well, they launched the 3G iPhone simultaneously into something like 30 countries. routinely you see mistakes that people make: They’ve got the wrong name, they’ve got the wrong price, they built the wrong product, they didn’t get it to work properly. You can just tell that there are a whole bunch of business disciplines that they don’t appreciate but they need in order to be a part of the mix. (That, by the way, also creates the possibility for the creation of another company—a company that does a good job of professionalizing and providing editorial polish for a bunch of these diamonds in the rough. Again, this new market is opening up potential for a lot of what launched EA.) Any developer can get its hands on a PC and it can get fabulous tools compared to what you used to be able to use, and it can make something and get it into the app store. That’s going to be true for all of these other cloned platforms. I think there already are some companies that are trying to align themselves on the iPhone. They’re trying to become the gatekeeper that can attract the best

guy who said: “The game’s really good, but it’s nowhere near as entertaining as reading these reviews.” These guys will get up on a soap box, and they’ll be pushing for some cause or they’ll be lobbying for you to reduce the price, or they’re trying to offend other people, and then it will just snowball. I am just so amazed with the experience of browsing and shopping on the device. However, I’m not a fan of the iTunes store on the PC. I think that is a very average Internet experience. But on the device it’s just an amazing experience—and I don’t like to shop, as my wife would tell you. It’s really hard to drag me to a shopping center but I’m just constantly going into the app store and browsing around just to see what’s going on. It’s like a little town that I want to go visit to see what’s up with everybody. Trip Hawkins is the CEO & Founder of Digital Chocolate. You can reach him at trip.hawkins@Gamesauce.org.

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Productivity and Collaboration The keys to working remotely

Jake Simpson

ecently I was party to a conversation between a studio CTO and one of his engineers. It seems the engineer wanted to work at home a couple of days a week because he found the open-form office environment too distracting. The response from the CTO was swift and immediate: “No.” There was no discussion, no conversation—just a simple and sharp “absolutely no way.” The CTO then added something about such accommodations being available only to long-term employees who “earn” the privilege. At the time I wondered why the CTO found working from home so objectionable. In fact his negative attitude is prevalent throughout the games industry. Why is that? Why would anybody think that working from home is a benefit that must be earned?

Maintaining Productivity

Jake Simpson has been making games for longer than it’s actually possible to have been making games. So when he tells you he was personally involved in making Eliza, just nod, buy him another beer, and then edge away slowly. He’s had a hand in everything from Midway Arcade games to MMOs and virtual worlds, with some stops at PC gaming along the way. Although recently he deserted and went to try his hand making CG movies instead, it was probably just so he could get chicks.

One reason people object to having employees working alone offsite is productivity. In part, that concern may be a reflection of a manager’s insecurities about what it means to “manage” people. If a manager isn’t entirely sure how to manage, he may wander around watching what people are doing and trying to mentor and push tasks forward. He may invent belief systems about what managing is: “I’m here to make sure we get 40 good hours out of you,” or “My job is to ensure that everyone is working to maximum efficiency.” The general belief seems to be that if employees are being watched, they will work; and if they aren’t being watched, they probably won’t work (or at least won’t work as hard or as much). The underlying belief is that if you want

to get a full day’s work out of an employee, you’d better keep an eye on him. (The corollary, of course, might be this: If an employee can be equally or more productive without supervision, who needs a supervisor? But I digress.) That isn’t to say that concerns about productivity aren’t justified. We’ve all heard stories of guys “working” from home who sat in their underwear watching Friends reruns all day. But that doesn’t prove that working from home doesn’t actually work. It merely shows that working from home isn’t for everyone. Some employees really are what managers fear them to be—diligent workers when closely managed but complete slackers when not. Some employees really are not cut out to work by themselves and get the job done adequately. Which is why most places that allow employees to work remotely have a policy whereby everyone who wants to work remotely has a probationary period to see how it works out. (Such a trial period can also be a good way to convince reluctant managers that not every employee has to be onsite, by the way.) So how do you judge if it is working out? How do you effectively track if someone is getting stuff done? Interestingly enough you use the same methods you would if they were in house, only in this case you have to track what they are doing using provable metrics for tasks performed. It’s all stuff that development houses should be doing anyway, but they often don’t simply because the people concerned are in a cube over there and you can just go ask them. Task tracking and allocation

suddenly become way more important when team members are working remotely since often it’s the only way of monitoring what people are doing and how well they are doing it. Task duration estimation becomes more important, as does constant communication of any blockages or dependencies. Again though, this is all stuff that should be done as part of the development process anyway. It’s also essential to establish constant communication (and required layers of communication) using multiple methods of access. In addition to the obvious (email, mobile phone), remote employees should remain connected to the main office through an instant messaging application such as Skype or AIM along with a good calendar application like Outlook or Google calendar. Voluntary transparency into whatever a given individual is doing

helps tremendously to calm nervous managers’ minds. Using daily internal development blogs and the like can be an excellent means of keeping everyone informed of a remote developer’s progress. The more easily a manager can see what an employee is working on at any given time (and also how well he has been performing to date), the more likely it is that the remote arrangement will succeed. That’s what this is all about at the end of the day: generating the trust that

Maintaining Collaboration Another common objection to having employees work remotely is that game development is a highly collaborative discipline that cannot be maintained if everyone isn’t together in one place. The underlying assumption of this objection—that development is collaborative—is indisputable; but not all collaboration has to be accomplished face-to-face. Sometimes collaboration requires that everyone be in the

Voluntary transparency into whatever a given individual is doing helps tremendously to calm nervous manager’s minds. Using daily internal development blogs and the like can be an excellent means of keeping everyone informed of a remote developer’s progress. employees will do what’s required to get the job done even though there’s no Eye of Sauron turned in their direction.

same room at the same time. Brainstorming and problemsolving sessions are generally best accomplished with everyone

Open form office environments encourage collaboration but can often be too distracting for some tasks

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together, as anyone who has tried to participate via conference call can attest. That’s why those working remotely are rarely remote 100% of the time. Sometimes having offsite employees come in for a day (or a week, or whatever) is essential to keeping them involved in the overall development process. It’s also why those who cannot come from time to time—because, for example, they work on the other side of the world—tend to

our day-to-day collaboration is independent of location, merely requiring the timely sharing of information: “I need that document you are preparing so I can do a technical evaluation on it.” Whereas brainstorming is truly real-time collaborative, most daily collaboration is more serial and would not be hindered in any way by having two employees working in completely different locations. In fact, such remote collaboration can

It is clear that even without making large changes in how work gets done, it’s quite possible to maintain productivity and collaboration even with some employees working offsite. work on specific, isolated tasks and struggle to remain fully integrated members of the team. At the same time, much of

actually be more helpful inasmuch as it requires clearer documentation and communication—and that’s never a bad thing.

The Downside Although it is clear that even without making large changes in how work gets done, it’s quite possible to maintain productivity and collaboration even with some employees working offsite. Nevertheless, there are some obvious downsides to such an arrangement. For starters, not having the whole team together most of the time makes it harder to establish and maintain the corporate culture. Quite a lot of how a company works is transferred via osmosis—by just interacting with the other employees in trivial ways. Without such interaction, employees may occasionally feel disenfranchised from the company—a kind of Them versus Me situation. One solution is to provide forums and news group

discussion within the company. The more you encourage people to participate and really speak their minds, the greater the impact. Likewise, as management maintains transparency within the operation, allowing employees to see and know “what’s really going on” (down to monthly accounts, if necessary), it’s hard for remote employees to feel like they are being left out. Another drawback to working remotely is that hallway conversations tend to be lost. Serendipitous discoveries or ideas may not be uncovered as frequently, nor will there be as much sharing of the sort of casual

information that passes between employees while they’re standing at the copy machine or waiting in line at the local sandwich shop. Employee relations can suffer as well—which is why it is important to get your employees together a couple of times a year just so people can get to know each other better. Being familiar with someone in person goes a long way towards solving the sorts of problems that occur when people who don’t know each other in the real world have to deal with conflicting decisions via text. When two people have an established relationship, they are less likely to misunderstand one another—and

more likely to give each other the benefit of the doubt in the midst of a disagreement.

Conclusion The bottom line here is that working remotely can work. All it takes are five things: 1. Willing managers 2. Dedicated employees 3. Clear processes 4. Collaboration tools 5. Occasional face-to-face meetings With those small accommodations, a company can thrive even if all of its employees are not in the office every day.

Just because someone is in the office doesn’t mean they are working

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Notes From a UK Start-Up The birth and life of Eclipse Interactive

hy on earth would anyone start up an independent games development studio in a time when devs all over the world are being put to the sword? When even the biggest publishers are taking out their marketing inadequacies on our creative brothers and sisters on the battlefront, canning them rather than the people behind the lines who decide on the budgets and timescales? Well, in the case of Eclipse Interactive, it wasn’t that we had a burning desire to turn a large fortune into a non-existent one (not that anyone involved in this story had large fortunes to begin with—or have them now for that matter—or are likely to have one any time soon). Rather we did it because we felt it was the right time and the right place, and we had the right people for just such a venture.

Going Indie

Les Ellis is co-founder and Director of independent development studio Eclipse Interactive based in Manchester in the UK. Formerly a games journalist for 13 years, Les has been producing titles across genres and formats for many of the major publishers in the UK, US and Japan. After a year developing for PC, iPhone, Android and other high-end mobile gaming systems, Eclipse is making the move into console and downloadable/online gaming as well as community games. Watch this space.

Eclipse Interactive was formed from the ashes of a Manchesterbased Eidos internal studio. During one of the many restructures and reshuffles going on in London, “management” decided to close the studio (along with the entire division it belonged to), throwing a bunch of tight-knit teams into turmoil and leaving a bunch of developers feeling that they had been screwed by a publisher— again. By a strange coincidence, Nic Garner and I had been having a few preliminary conversations about going for it with a start-up studio, and needless to say the Eidos collapse accelerated these conversations. We were lucky in that we knew a couple of different publishers who could potentially put a few small projects our way to

Les Ellis start us off. Thanks to some shrewd negotiation and arm-twisting on Nic’s part we even managed to secure signing fees and great milestone arrangements, meaning that we could launch our business without taking on a penny of debt— pretty unique for an indie start-up in this day and age. From day one we were completely self-sufficient and not dependant on outside money from people who might not understand how the games industry works. It’s probably just as well seeing as the British banks are in such turmoil at the moment that the only people who can get money out of them seem to be their own directors. Maybe we should have started up a bank instead. That’s not to say it was all smooth sailing, even at the start. The very day that we opened our doors (after a couple of months of hard work behind the scenes), one of our promised projects was pulled—even though it was already staffed and ready to go. Although it caused a few sleepless nights, luck was on our side, and new projects came along to replace it. Shame though, as the promise of turning that original game IP into a series of games was certainly an alluring one. That early experience confirmed a valuable lesson for any independent developer: Having ongoing conversations with potential publisher partners constantly is essential. Even if you can’t take on new work right away, you never know when a promised project might be pulled. Maintaining strong, active relationships with a variety of publishers is the best way to ensure that you can always find something to fill the void.

Day One After a couple of months buried in spreadsheets, project docs, staff plans—not to mention the mounds of paperwork from banks, lawyers and accountants— day one of team development started. In addition to some good teams we had recruited from our previous studio, we also persuaded some great people we had known for a while to come on board and take the journey with us. Everyone knows how important it is to get the core people right, and we were fortunate to work alongside some great developers as we drove this juggernaut forward. Before long we had outgrown our first office—something of an accomplishment, come to think of it. Yet again, fortune smiled upon us and we found new offices in the same building. We spent a

busy weekend shifting furniture and setting up the hardware—a fun couple of days that went much more smoothly than the installation of the new kitchen in the office, I might add. (There’s nothing quite like sitting in an office one afternoon, hearing a massive bang from your kitchen, and seeing water spraying everywhere. British plumbers: Best in the world.)

Recruitment Our recruiting raised an issue that as a company we feel strongly about: That of giving people a chance, giving them their break. Time and again we have all seen companies reject job applicants due to a lack of experience, which of course illustrates the Catch-22: These people have little chance of getting the experience they

Some would see this as a huge risk for a small startup, but sometimes you just have to give these guys a break instead of relying on overpriced agency recommendations or poaching.

need. One guy fresh from college boldly came to us directly, asking for the chance to prove himself, even offering to work for free to start with. While we couldn’t morally or legally let him work for nothing, we took the plunge and took the guy on to see if all these companies who refused to even talk to him due to lack of experience had made a mistake. Turns out, thankfully, that they had. We ended up with a young, enthusiastic coder who, while being mentored by some of the more senior guys, certainly has added his own “unique” perspective to our coding teams. Some would see this as a huge risk for a small start-up, but we have done it twice now and both times have been rewarded with hard-working, solid developers with bright futures ahead of them.

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Sometimes you just have to give these guys a break instead of relying on over-priced agency recommendations or poaching. Oh, the agencies. Some of these need to take a long, hard look at themselves to see if they are really serving this business in the best way possible. How we enjoyed the call from someone head-hunting the management and staff of a week-old company, whose big selling point was that he handled the recruitment for the company that had previously laid off 90% of the people we had recently hired. Of course, recruiting staff does throw up some strange quirks. Our phantom penis doodler has established himself—doesn’t every company have one of these? No notepad, sketch book, white board or Post-it note pad is safe. Barely a week goes by without someone

and useful rather than mindless interference can be a key step to make sure you get it right. In that sense, timing is everything (well, almost everything.) We know the publisher wants the best game possible. We want the best game possible—after all, it’s an advertisement for what we can do. But too often publishers don’t realize that extra requests, changes, and complete level rebuilds take time—and that time has to be added to or taken from somewhere. And preferably that doesn’t mean that we’re working all night every night for a month to get the game moved one polygon to the left. One day they’ll get it and to give them credit, many do. But that’s not to say that there haven’t been emails with requests in them that make you wonder about the sanity of the marketing suits that send them.

On the one hand, we feel compelled to offer the aggressive schedules and attractive budgets that will persuade a publisher that it’s worth placing a job with us; and on the other, we want to maintain realistic timescales that will enable us to make and deliver high-quality, fun-to-play games. turning over a new page and seeing some bizarre and slightlyscary drawing of a penis staring out of the page at them. There’s nothing like sitting down for a conference call, turning over a new page, and trying to keep a fit of giggles back when a phallic monstrosity appears.

Working with Publishers We have been fortunate to work with some big publishers from all over the world, including America and Japan. Maintaining the relationship through good times and through slightly more strained times can be a fulltime job in itself. Making sure that feedback is constructive

Evolution of the Business Now that the tricky opening months are behind us, staying focused on key issues gets more and more important to us. Keeping everyone’s expectations realistic and having contingency plans for unexpected little mishaps is key as we start to make the transition from short-term plans to mid-term. It’s very easy to get sucked into constantly pitching for big-budget, next-gen console games, or daydreaming of making the next Gears of War. While we aspire to get there, we’re evolving constantly but organically—rather than going down the road of venture capital or major outside investment. (Well,

so far anyway.) As for contingency plans, you’ve got to have something for when that milestone payment doesn’t fall on the day that you expect it to, especially when payroll is dependent on it—which happens more often with a smaller developer than you might think. We’ve made it a priority to maintain the bankroll to cover it. Thankfully we are small enough that this doesn’t run into millions to cover the burn for a couple of months or so. We continue to work to maintain balance. On the one hand, we feel compelled to offer the aggressive schedules and attractive budgets that will persuade a publisher that it’s worth placing a job with us; and on the other, we want to maintain realistic timescales that will enable us to make and deliver high-quality, fun-to-play games. It’s a fine line, but you really need to stick to your guns and stay on the right side of it. You really don’t want to face the pain that is waiting on the other side of that line because as pain goes, it really hurts everyone involved. While there’s nothing wrong with a little crunch to polish up some good work (sometimes that can be fun), endless nights of slogging it out with a QA team does nothing for morale, your bank balance, your personal life, or your general will to live. So we have evolved. The small, six-man start-up crammed into an old QA room in the old studio office has now blossomed into a 20-person outfit that is about to outgrow its second office in a year (despite our efforts to keep it small and compact). We have six small-size projects currently in development, with advanced negotiations for the follow-on titles that the teams can move on to once they have completed these. It’s tempting, of course, to sign everything to start immediately, but if you do so you end up

expanding horizontally—and before you know it, you’re recruiting more and more people and spending more time finding new projects for them to do once their current work is done. We prefer to maintain sensible team sizes and to book titles in a way that keeps the staff we have busy for the longer term. So far it’s worked very well for us, and it’s something we are keen to keep going. Whether this is possible as we enter the realms of console work remains to be seen. Here’s hoping!

been bloody hard work. Most of the people in this industry have dreamed at one stage or another of trying to do their own gig, to make sure that what has been done to them doesn’t get done to their people, to let rip with their creativity and turn the gaming world on its head. But be aware that originality and innovation

to the title for sequels. Chances are it will be a while before you get to let rip, so you better be in it for the long-haul as those overnight successes get rarer and rarer. But with the right people, the right ideas and the right drive, it is possible. I hope. (Watch this space.) Even so, I know I wouldn’t

The very day that we opened our doors (after a couple of months of hard work behind the scenes), one of our promised projects was pulled—even though it was already staffed and ready to go.

Final Thoughts After reading this you may get the sense that forming a small, indie development shop has been easy. Well, probably not, but for the purposes of this final thought we’ll assume you do. That’s about as far from fact as it can be. It’s

seems to scare the hell out of most publishers. Show them concepts or demos of something new and you can feel the chill come over the room as they desperately try to think of similar titles or work out how they could add a number

want to be doing anything else. This is life on the edge, and it’s invigorating, exhilarating, and downright scary. It means plenty of sleepless nights, late nights of work, and worry; but it’s living as life is meant to be lived.

RANCH RUSH TM

Top 10 paid app!

For more information go to FRESHGAMES.com/development

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Marketing Secrets Revealed! Including MBWA, PR Evangelists, and the biggest secret of all!

here will be many development people reading this who know exactly what I look like. And I don’t mean in some carefully-posed corporate photograph either. I mean in the shambolic, 3D, real-world flesh. In fact they will be far more familiar with my ugly appearance than that of just about any other co-worker from Marketing. The reason for this is very simple and very complicated at the same time. For I am a practitioner of a dark management art called MBWA. An art so powerful that it was behind Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard building the biggest technology company in the world from an investment of just $538. An art that is often unknown by modern managers yet which yields almost mystical powers in those that have the vital knowledge. An art that has also been instrumental in the success of many of the the most successful companies on Earth, including Apple, GE, Wal-Mart, Pepsi, Disney, Dell, 3M, Lucasfilm and McDonalds—to name a few.

The Power of MBWA

Bruce Everiss is a veteran games industry marketer who has been walking about at leading-edge UK companies including Imagine, Codemasters and Miles Gordon Technology since the mid-1970s. He regularly blogs at www.bruceongames.com.

To understand just a small part of the powers of MBWA in publishing a game that is a commercial success, there is an essential fact that everyone in the games industry needs to know. And that fact is that if a game has zero marketing it will have zero sales. Given that, just telling your mum about it constitutes marketing. You see, development and marketing work hand-in-hand. Like a rifle and bullet, they are pretty useless in isolation, yet used properly together they make a lethal combination. But in the real world of the modern game

Bruce Everiss

industry they rarely work together as they are supposed to—and it is the fault of the marketing people. It is their job to communicate. And in order to communicate they need knowledge. In fact they need more than knowledge, they need passion and commitment as well. Which can only come from visiting the team that makes the game they are marketing. Frequently. MBWA is an acronym for Management By Walking (or Wandering) About. Seriously. If you Google it you will find that it is a well-regarded professional management technique. Books have been written about it, and it is well proven to be mightily effective, as the many number one games I have worked on help to illustrate. Yet too many managers in the video game industry do not know that it exists. They hide behind their keyboards and go to endless, time-wasting meetings with other marketing people instead. Which is a pity because MBWA is especially effective when you are bringing together disparate groups with widely differing skills, all in an effort to hit the bull’s-eye with that metaphorical rifle. For the record, it isn’t just the development teams that have had the frequent and dubious pleasure of seeing my ugly face. There was also QA, central tech, sound, compatibility, licensing, IT, legal, and every other department in the company. Why send an email when you can walk over and have a chat with someone and maybe bump into a few others along the way? Do this every day and pretty soon you have the real pulse of the whole company. You know

what is going to happen before it does, because this is the sort of knowledge that gives you second sight—and number one games.

Smarter Marketing It is indeed possible to do your marketing better by being different and using your brain, which is why I want to cry when I see so many game advertisements on television before Christmas. With a bit of intelligence and application, the companies involved could spend half as much and get far better results. Television is a fragmented and dying medium with dodgy audience-targeting and advertising that is easily avoided, yet the networks still ask you to pay a premium for airtime. So how come our industry wastes all this money? Basically, publishing a boxed game has very high fixed costs (primarily development) and very low variable costs (cardboard and plastic). So you can throw money at the marketing like crazy and you are still ahead so long as you are getting incremental sales. This means that marketing managers are given massive budgets to burn through and the first thing they tend to turn to is television—whereas the reality is that they could create far more sales on a smaller budget without television if they were really forced to. For instance let’s look at radio. Compared to television, radio advertising is cheap. And because people listen to the radio while doing something else they are less likely to skip the adverts. Plus radio stations tend to be targeted more towards specific demographics. And radio adverts are a lot cheaper, quicker and easier to make than TV adverts. So say you are releasing a game on a Friday. On the prior Tuesday and Wednesday you can hype it up with “This Friday . . .”

advertisements. On Thursday they become “In the shops tomorrow . . .” advertisements and on Friday you can do the big “Released today . . .” thing, followed on Saturday by “This weekend. . . .” So you can engage massive audiences in an event. You can get your messages over lots of times. And you have spent a lot less.

PR the Way It Should Be Then there is PR. Some people think that PR means sending out press releases about what is happening. Poor misguided fools. PR is about managing the news-flow in order to get your key messages over to your target audience as many times and in as big a way as possible. For a boxed

It is indeed possible to do your marketing better by being different and using your brain, which is why I want to cry when I see so many game advertisements on television before Christmas. It makes a lot more sense to me than some of the TV campaigns I see. And it is just one of a whole myriad of tools that sit in a good marketer’s toolbox, just waiting to be brought out at precisely the right moment to do precisely the right job.

AAA console game, I like to start a year before street date. Just tell the world the project exists. This is big news, so you don’t have to tell them much more. So it is a good opportunity for some juicy quotes to raise the profile of key people. Then you need a

Compared to television, radio advertising is cheap. And because people listen to the radio while doing something else they are less likely to skip the adverts. Plus radio stations tend to be targeted more towards specific demographics. And radio adverts are a lot cheaper, quicker and easier to make than TV adverts.

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follow-up release every month or so, each one containing genuine news that gradually reveals what an amazing game you are going to unleash on the world. Each release is planned weeks or even months in advance, and each is supported with loads of assets such as videos, screenshots, box art, renders, etc. And you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just send the release to journalists. Each one should form an article on the game website and on the game blog, and it can provide an exciting new thread on the game forum. A release can also function as an online newsletter, and your community marketing team can

use it as ammunition to run amok all over the web. You need to use every avenue to spread the knowledge as widely as possible. Which brings me very nicely to fan sites. You want as many of these as possible since each one is like a free marketing department evangelizing your game like crazy. The problem is that they can also do naughty things that you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like. The solution is an accredidation scheme. To borrow an old saying: You want these people inside the tent pissing out, not outside the tent pissing in. You give them a set of simple, clear rules that

stop the worst excesses. Then you look after them with a fansite toolkit of resources, with the press releases and with special favors and access. Then about three months before street date you invite, say, the top five or so fansite owners to visit the company for the day (choose a school holiday!), chill out with the development team, and find out firsthand whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s happening with the game. Can you even begin to imagine just how much coverage this is going to get you all over the web? I have been there and seen it and it is pretty impressive.

Everyone is far more interested in people than they are in things. Make someone famous and you really do change the rules of the game.

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The Biggest Secret of All Now that you are getting an idea that marketing can be fun, devious, challenging, and immensely powerful, it is time for me to tell you the biggest marketing secret there is. Quite simply: Everyone is far more interested in people than they are in things. That’s it. It is programmed genetically into every one of us when we are conceived and we cannot escape it. (Just look at the news. How much is real news and how much is just following personalities?) Once you understand this you can use it to get your key messages to your target audience with far more power and far greater ease. Once again I know this because I have done it, repeatedly. Make someone famous and you really do change the rules of the game. Everything they say is far more widely believed, and consequently the press starts pursuing you for content instead of vice versa. This is an amazing power. Yet game industry marketing is totally rubbish at it—which is puzzling to me because we have the examples of the film and music industries that both do it so well. Another thing that has always worked extremely well for me in marketing is being different—for the sake of being different. If you look at the advertising for certain genres of games it has become extremely formulaic—to the point where, quite frankly, you have to put special effort into working out which particular game it is for. And if someone from within the industry has to put that special effort in, then so does everyone else, which most often they won’t bother doing. The result: More marketing spend being thrown away. The basic problem you have as a marketer is that everyone you want to reach is already being hit by thousands of marketing messages every day. And everyone has developed powerful

To be a good marketer requires creativity in the same way that a good game designer needs creativity. filters to stop these marketing messages from getting through. Which is why lots of clever people are paid lots of money to come up with ideas that will get past your filters. So just ask yourself which marketing messages you have actually been conscious of recently. Most times it will be the ones that are different. It helps if they are zany. And it especially helps if they include a goodlooking person (see above). But it is being different that is the key. So you can see what I am

coming ’round to here: Creativity. A good marketer needs a huge amount of knowledge. The toolbox that makes his marketing mix is very complex and ever-changing, and its real-world use can be fiendishly complex. But this is nothing compared to creativity. To be a good marketer requires creativity in the same way that a good game designer needs creativity. In both cases, it is creativity that makes the difference between those who can do the job and those who excel at it.

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Explicit Expectations How I learned to stop worrying and love outsourcing

Jon Jones has been working in the game industry professionally for eight years and as a contract artist for eleven years. Currently he is an Art Outsourcing Manager at an unannounced new game development studio in Austin. Jon is recognized by many as an expert on the subject of outsourcing art. Recently, he spoke at the Casual Games Association’s Casual Connect Seattle conference on the subject of managing an outsourced art team. He runs a blog titled “Jon Jones, smArtist” (www.thejonjones.com).

here I was one day, plugging along and producing art, content to do this for as long as it held my interest. I’d been making art professionally in the games industry for years—when suddenly a new opportunity arose. It was the chance to work on a different type of game than I’d worked on before, a job in which I’d get to build and manage my own art team. Fascinating! The only catch? The team must be completely outsourced! Wait, what? I’d never outsourced art before. I mean, yeah, I’d worked as a contract artist, worked at an art studio, dealt with contracts and some of the organizational aspects of it, helped other people hire and negotiate with contract artists—but I’d never actually done it myself in a leadership role. Different, but interesting. Well, hey, what’s the worst that could happen? I can learn something new, have some fun, meet cool people and see how this whole outsourcing business works. Maybe I can write about it. Hell, I make art. It’ll be a snap to manage people to do it remotely, right? Wrong! As I discovered through many fascinating and harrowing trials, tribulations, and mad-scientist-style experiments, there’s a lot to know about outsourcing art that would have made my job a hell of a lot easier if I’d known it before I started. Inasmuch as there’s precious little writing done on the subject, I decided that, shucks, I may as well be the first. I’ve learned a colossal amount since then with the help of my friends, my colleagues, and the artists I’ve worked with, and I’ve been chronicling the lessons I’ve

Jon Jones learned and the mistakes I’ve made along the way. You see, managing a relationship with an external vendor requires a completely different skill-set than making art. A typical game developer is unlikely to know intuitively how to manage an external vendor—which is why you’re likely to see a lot of mistakes at first. Most career advancement in the game industry seems to come from people who are so skilled at their craft that they’re promoted into management—a field in which they have no experience, by the way. Consequently, they no longer get to actually create the art they were good at in the first place. It’s batty, really, but what can you do?

Documentation Is Everything I’ve learned a couple things that have helped me create fruitful longterm relationships with external vendors—and to do it quickly so I don’t waste time spinning my wheels working with the wrong ideas or the wrong people. Finding out in the middle of a big contract that you need to switch vendors suddenly can wreak havoc on anyone’s development plan. I’ll focus on some tips for setting the groundwork for building a strong and effective outsourced art team, which is crucial to get right as quickly as possible. One of the first lessons I learned was this: Documentation is everything. Documentation is absolutely the most important component of outsourcing. If you’re not fully documented and prepared to explain every step of the pipeline in detail to someone who’s never seen your project before, you’re not ready to outsource.

Many of the artists who work at art studios may never have directly worked on an actual game before, yet they’re still expected to create solid, game-ready assets for you. Worse still, the people involved in their management—who lack the experience and perspective of a seasoned developer—may not know what questions to ask to ensure total clarity, and as a result you may face nasty time crunches down the road when you least expect it. Getting documentation right up front is the best way to prepare the people you’re working with for as many contingencies as possible. Excellent documentation also has the tremendous benefit of showing your partners that you’re professional, thorough, meticulous, and wellprepared. From the first moment of contact, they’ll see you’re on top of your game, you know what’s going on, and you’re the boss. It’s your job to lead—so show you’re a leader in everything you do and say. If you don’t know what you’re doing or what you’re looking for, neither will they; and you simply won’t get acceptable results.

Filling the Knowledge Gap What’s obvious—but what many still forget—is that most people in a game development studio environment rely on collective institutional knowledge built up over time to do their job every day. Whether it’s remembering that thing that guy said that time about how the exporter works, using that neat 3DSMAX script you found, or simply having someone to go ask about what happened to that one technical specification, you have a network of collective institutional knowledge to lean on if you don’t know what to do. Newsflash: External artists don’t have that! They lack context, and they rely on you to provide them the information they need to do their jobs—the sort of information that you probably take for granted. Providing that kind of knowledge download

can be immensely time-consuming if you explain it to every new artist each time you bring someone new on board. You just want the guy to make art, not tie you up asking questions all day! This is where documentation comes in. The best way to buffer against such delays is to generate thorough

needs to be able to do his job. Your overall goal is to create solid, detailed, informative documentation you can send to any new contractor in the future and have him hit the ground running. The bulk of the work will only need to be done once, and the amount of time you’ll save over the course of

As I discovered through many fascinating and harrowing trials, tribulations, and mad-scientist-style experiments, there’s a lot to know about outsourcing art that would have made my job a hell of a lot easier if I’d known it before I started. and solid documentation before you even talk to a contractor. It’s actually a fascinating mental exercise to put yourself far outside of your role and approach it as though you’re the new guy who has a job to do but no idea where to start.

Assume Nothing. Provide It All. When writing the documentation, never make assumptions. Something obvious to the writer and studio may not be obvious to the person who will eventually be reading the documentation and working on the project. Go through the entire process yourself step by step and detail everything as you go instead of trying to recall it from memory. Why? Because more often than not, you will otherwise forget something. Working through the process yourself enables you to identify things that contract artists would not necessarily know unless they already work with a particular toolset or process. The key is to create as much context and documentation as possible to assist the uninitiated in getting up to speed. I find that one of the best ways to do this is to assemble all the information needed per asset type into generic Animation Outsourcing Kits—kits that I can grab and quickly send off to new contractors to get them up to speed (see sidebar). Each kit includes everything a contractor

your project is considerable. Take the time and do it right. Most important, however, is this: Documentation should always evolve! If you learned something from a previous feedback iteration that you should have included in the first draft, update the documentation to include that and send it back to all of your contractors. Documentation doesn’t have to be a big ugly mess that you have to sit down for hours and write all the time. It can and should be incremental. After all, why answer the same question more than once?

Frontload Your Negotiations Another lesson I learned is this: Frontload all negotiations! Successfully negotiating the price and contract structure saves you time and money—and it is a powerful contractor vetting tool besides. Provide the contractor with a highly accurate initial spec for the contract. Explain and detail all the work in advance as much as possible, and minimize any nasty surprises that may crop up later. Setting initial expectations early is important for all future negotiation—for more reasons than you might think. Always maintain some flexibility on cost from day one. Let the contractor know that you’ll adjust prices up or down depending on how the first batch of work goes. If the work is harder, adjust the

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price upward; if it’s simpler, adjust it downward. Let them know you’re willing to fairly compensate them for their time and effort. Being open, candid, and fair in the beginning of the negotiation process pays off down the road, and you’ll soon see why. It may help to visualize the structure of a contract as a series of modular pieces. You define what those pieces are at the beginning of a contract, and you quickly and easily add or remove them as the job progresses instead of stopping constantly to renegotiate. Here’s an example of what those pieces would be for a single character asset:

Model Model UVs $12 UVsTexture 50 Rig Textures 3 Revisions Rig

3 Revisions

312 50

Minor Change

(25% )

625

Medium Change

(50%

)

937 50

Major Change

(75% )

1250

Complete Redo

(100%

)

I’ll give you an example of how this works in practice. Let’s assume that you used up the original 3 revisions, then changed the spec after the work was done and decided the character should have a different chestpiece than originally planned. This will require a Minor Change to redo that part of the model. This is what that “bill of sale” would look like when the contractor invoices for the work:

Model $ 1250 UVs Textures Rig 3 Revisions

312 50

Minor Change Total:

(25% )

1562 50

(50%

)

Making Assignments When you’re choosing what work to send out, divide the job into as few meaningful divisions as possible. Typically, I’ll divide by asset type and then by difficulty. There’s an art to it beyond that, though. I don’t like dividing or categorizing anything too much. Too small, and it becomes too granular to organize efficiently. Too big, and it feels like nothing ever actually gets done. You’ll probably have to experiment a little with dividing up the work, with the ultimate goal to maximize efficiency and productivity without driving yourself crazy in the process. If I’m outsourcing a full character, I try to keep each chunk fairly flexible. I’ll price out the individual cost of the model, the texture, and the rig and make that precise. Then I’ll add those three numbers together, round up to the nearest hundred or two, and that’s the cost of one average character. It leaves wiggle room for small variations. For example, say the character needs 10% more polygons—or say it can reuse another texture instead of painting a new one. If your contractors understand beforehand what the average asset is and what the maximum amount of variation within that asset type is, you will save time renegotiating cost when specs vary or change. Take my word for it: You don’t want to find yourself in the middle of working on a single character when you have to suddenly stop and renegotiate for a 512×256 texture instead of a 512×512. If the difference is substantial, then

sure, you’ll renegotiate. But don’t sweat the small stuff, and price out the work accordingly. If you have a reasonable expectation of suddenly needing another texture on some assets midway through the contract, then price that out in the initial negotiation. Essentially, you’re frontloading all the serious negotiation and division of assets so you don’t waste time midway through the contract trying to figure out how to price additional work. Remember: Your goal is to keep the new art rolling in, rather than spending all your time figuring out how much to pay for each Space Marine’s toenail.

Money & Morale When the workload is less discrete than “one character,” I’ve had great results by dividing each chunk of work into one to two day segments on a contract that’s invoiceable every two weeks. Morale stays high, and contractors keep cranking out results consistently and without getting bored. I’ve switched to this approach with slow and unmotivated artists and achieved wildly successful results. Who doesn’t enjoy accomplishing something daily and receiving a regular, bi-weekly paycheck as a reward for those accomplishments? This leads me into two more very important considerations: ease of amending the contract and ease of invoicing. If you have broken down the work into reasonably modular chunks, it’ll be easy to add on extra work to an existing contract without mid-stream renegotiation. However, if you have priced it out as one large block or added some type of strange and arbitrary division in the middle of a piece of work, billing and invoicing get complicated. You don’t know how to amend the contract to add or remove more work, so you have to put on the brakes in the middle of production to figure out what the hell to do.

However, if you show initial goodwill and flexibility and divide the work meaningfully, this is a nonissue and production keeps moving smoothly. Your contractors will know what’s involved in creating each asset, how much it costs, how much it can vary at that price point, and how iterations are defined. More importantly, they’ll have learned that you’re meticulous, wellprepared, and reasonable—so you’re not going to spring something nasty on them in the middle of a job. This saves enormous amounts of time later if the workload increases or decreases, or if the contract is split up into separate invoiceable segments.

Handling Iterations & Changes The other big question mark that should be addressed in the initial negotiations is how to handle iterations. I have a simple method for this: Roll a preset revision number into the per-asset cost, then price out extra revisions as a separate percentage of that. Defining an acceptable number of revisions in the beginning of a contract is crucial. I like the number three as a safe buffer built into the cost of each individual asset or chunk of work. If more than three revisions are needed, I’ll pay an agreed-upon percentage of that asset’s cost. If 50% of the asset has to be reworked, I’ll pay an additional 50% of the cost of the original asset. If 25%, then 25%. If the asset has to be completely redone, however, that’s a different issue. I always include provisions detailing when a “revision” turns into a completely new asset, and who eats the cost of that rework. Iterations can provide a useful metric for determining whether process improvements need to be made. If I spec things out properly, explain them well, and I pick the right contractors, I shouldn’t need to revise anything more than twice. Period. On the other hand, if I’ve

failed to spec something out well and that creates extra revisions beyond what we’ve specified initially, that one’s on me: I’ll revise the spec, pay the contractor the agreed-upon amount for the rework, and eat the cost of my mistake. If I planned poorly—and my contractor essentially did what I asked—why should he have to pay for my oversight? Then again, if my spec is good but the outside studio fails to meet our mutual expectations, it’s up to them to make it right and eat the cost. At that point, we have a discussion. We may need to remove some artists from the project and bring on some new ones. We may need to shorten the contract. We may even need to stop working with that studio altogether. Circumstances such as these are exactly why you set expectations as early as possible, ensure compliance, and set solid standards of quality and behavior from the beginning of a contract: You don’t waste time hemming and hawing about what’s going wrong. Either you botched the documentation, or they botched the job. The problem and solution become immediately obvious. So it is that I preach cost flexibility and transparency up

completed portion of the asset they were unable to complete, and then I go find a new vendor. And since I have already negotiated the price of partial assets when I started the contract, I can end it quickly if I need to!

The Ultimate Benefit of Explicit Expectations Specing and negotiation are actually my favorite parts of the outsourcing process. Doing it right clears away all ambiguity and speeds up production, and every stage of it is an instant and binary vetting process! If you get them to buy into your framework of honesty, candor, transparency, and specific, predetermined expectations, any deviation will be immediately obvious to both parties. When that happens, the only possible responses are: 1) fix it; or 2) break it off. There’s no ambiguity, there’s no guesswork, and there’s no drama. The key is to maintain a healthy level of self-reflection, a willingness to admit that you’re wrong if you make a mistake. If you can maintain that standard for yourself and for your artists, a beautiful thing happens: Eventually, only talented, honest, worthwhile vendors will be able to continue working with you. The conditions for working

The results you get out of outsourcing can be either great or terrible, depending on how you approach the task at hand and how prepared you are to deal with the intricacies of managing external teams. front: It makes people more honest, less defensive, and more willing to admit that they have made a mistake. If they take any pride in their work and if they value my business, they’ll make it right. If we can’t reach a result we both agree upon, then I cut the contract short, pay them for the completed work up to that point, pay for the

with you are so transparent, open, and clear that you’re never left wondering what to do when a problem arises. If you operate by those rules long enough, everyone who can’t meet your standards gets replaced. As a consequence, you’ll find yourself working only with extremely talented vendors of high moral character.

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The Animation Outsourcing Kit

n Animation Outsourcing Kit has three main parts. First, there’s the documentation, which includes technical specifications and an overview of the animation work. Second, the kit should include any proprietary tools that an animator needs to work seamlessly with the in-house studio. In addition, the kit should include a reference section with animation samples and AVIs. As an illustration, here’s what a typical Kit might look like for a generic, fantasy dungeoncrawler. Naturally, your game will probably differ from this, but this seemed like the easiest way to get my point across.

Section One: Documentation Technical Specifications: For each asset type in my game, there is a guidelines document with detailed technical specifications. Animation frame-rate (30?), average sequence length (2s\60 frames, 5s\180 frames?), MAX or Maya, Skin or Physique, bone count limit, vertex influence limit, etc.

to set up your contractors with a copy of the engine and the ability to export to the engine and test the animation.) List of animations: Here I would include a master list of the game’s animations divided by type: characters, creatures, animated objects, miscellaneous, etc. From that basic designation, I would break each down into structured lists divided by their role in the game. For example, creatures might be either Melee (hand-to-hand combat), Ranged (attack with guns or bows), or Caster (magic user). Each role would have a unique animation set, so I would list all the animations in each set. Then when I want to create a new creature, I wouldn’t have to decide which animations it has; I could simply copy and paste those pre-made animation lists and send the assignment-specific details to the animator. Time savings ahoy! Style guides: I would include the style guides relevant to the race of creature to be animated so that the artist can get a sense of the relative size and demeanor of other members of that race.

Overview of the Animation Work: The Outsourcing Kits should be so thorough that it anticipates most questions before they are asked. At a minimum, a complete kit would Scale guide: I would also have a include: MAX file demonstrating the scale of • Style of animation: realistic, the object in the world so the animator cartoony, cartoony realism? can get a better sense of how to • Type of sequences: run, walk, jump, appropriately animate what it is I’m attack, pain, etc. giving him. • Division of labor: Who creates the skeleton, the rigging, and FAQ: I’ve assembled a brief FAQ the character setup? Which of full of common questions I’ve been those things should be done asked by my contractors. It was a by the animator and which are huge breakthrough for me to realize being handled in-house? Who that every time I talk to one of my integrates the animation? Are contractors to explain something or you going to handle all the game’s answer a question, I’m generating implementation in-house or will the verbal documentation. Everything I say contractor? (Depending on your is usable. So I just remember to write desired level of risk, it may be easier Image © Barry Collins - barrycollins@gmail.com

it down in one document, organize it, give it a coat of spit-shine, and my project is better documented!

The Exporter: I always include a copy of our proprietary 3DSMAX exporter plug-in along with simple installation and usage instructions. The Editor: I also include a copy of our proprietary Model Editor along with simple usage instructions so the animator can create usable assets for our engine. Why should I have to spend time fixing each asset myself later, when I can explain it once and pay him to do it instead?

Section Three: Reference

Section Two: Proprietary Tools

Of course, since you hold the purse-strings, you don’t necessarily need to be this open or flexible. But would you rather they pumped out art because they’re afraid you’ll fire them, or because they genuinely like working with you and want to give you their best? In my experience, well-treated artists make better art, more reliably, and for longer term. It gives artists greater job satisfaction, minimizes turnover, and maximizes productivity—all to the benefit of the overall development plan. Besides, if you’re going to outsource, wouldn’t you prefer to work with people who are pleasant, productive, and honest?

Ideally, fire up Premiere or a video editing app and put captions in there. “Note that the windup here is Animation Samples in the powerful.” “This movement gives the Animation Package: I have sense that the character has weight.” directories set aside that offer example “The impact is very heavy and he animations of every sequence for really looks devastated by it.” Use each type of creature and animatable plain language but be very specific. object. In this example, there would be Never assume that someone else will a directory for the Melee Animation automatically know what you like Set, the Ranged Animation Set, and about each one. the Caster Animation Set. I never leave At first, including both MAX and gaps in reference for things like this. AVI samples of animation may seem redundant. Realistically, the animator Animation Sample AVIs: In is probably not going to look at all of addition to providing MAX or Maya these if he has the kit but no specific animation reference files from your assignment. The reason to have all game, show an existing AVI sample of these included in the Animation (with a widely compatible codec, or Outsourcing Kit is so that when you include the codec in the contractor create the specific assignment and kit) of every animation you expect to assemble that information, you can receive from the studio. Whether or pick and choose which animations not it’s a sample of something existing to use as reference. “For the idle from your game, this should be a style animation, check out Fat_Ogre_Idle_04. target to hit. The crucial part here is to max. For the attack animation, check not only show the reference, but also to out LOTR_Cavetroll_smash.AVI.” explain what is good about each one.

Conclusion The bottom line is that outsourcing can be a tremendously effective development tool, but is by no means an end-all, be-all solution to keeping a lower budget. The results you get out of outsourcing can be either great or terrible, depending on how you approach the task at hand and how prepared you are to deal with the intricacies of managing external teams. If you can understand what artists need to get the job done, anticipate their needs, and give them the tools to do their job, your life gets easier and so does theirs. What’s more, if you treat them the way you want to be treated— offering clear and defined goals, clear and defined quality expectations, ample example and reference—great things can happen.

Gamesauce fall 2009

DEBUGGING your

LOVElife The curious link between development and dating

By Chris Rhinehart

Most proposals for articles have something to do with running a studio or managing projects or writing code it seems. But occasionally we get one that is—how shall we put this?—a little unconventional, a little out there. And if it is sufficiently intriguing— like this one—we print it, hoping as we do so that it will provoke some lively discussion. We know: You didn’t ask. But you should have. . . . — Ed.

o you’re a game developer and you’re single. (But I repeat myself.) Perhaps you’ve been in the industry for many years, or perhaps you’ve just joined us. Maybe you’re working on your first project, or perhaps you’ve shipped a few million-sellers. Either way, you’re still single. Maybe the dating scene is too daunting. Maybe you just recently left a long-term relationship. Maybe you just don’t have any free time due to crunch and your whipcracking boss. Maybe you dress like an Orc. Or smell like one. Whatever the reason, you’re still single. Don’t fret. There are steps you can take to change your singleness if you so desire. And surprisingly, you can follow a formula that you probably know quite well. Dating closely mimics the stage gate process. That’s right: If you think about pre-production, production and post-production, you’ll find that there are a lot of lessons to be learned, over and above the fact that crunch is often necessary and that the success and polish of the end result is a direct factor of how much effort you put in up front. This article focuses on the first two stages: Concept and Pre-production (meeting people). See chart. Both Production (serious relationships) and Gold Master (marriage) are beyond the scope of this article.

Stage 1: Concept As you would when beginning a development project, when you begin dating you need to figure out why you are doing it in the first place. What are the high-level goals for this project? What do you define as wild success? Are you looking for marriage or companionship? Or do you maybe just want to go out, have fun, and meet new people? Whatever your goals, figure out what you want and start thinking about what sort of investment you need to put in to reach those goals. How much time are you willing to spend on this dating project?

Identity Every game project has an identity, ranging from the genre of the game to the core mechanics. What does the game look like? How does it play? What emotions do you feel from playing it? What are the strengths and weaknesses of this project? So, what’s your identity? What are your strengths and weaknesses? Are you a pretty funny guy? Are you really shy and have a hard time talking to strangers? What is it about you that makes you interesting to others? These may be difficult questions to answer. You need to take a long, hard look at yourself—at who you truly are—and figure out your identity. Sometimes it’s useful to hear others’ opinions (see Focus Testing below)—so ask your friends for an honest opinion of you. The danger of this selfassessment is that too often we concentrate on our weaknesses and ignore our strengths. That’s backwards—especially when it comes to firing up your social life. You should put more effort into making your strengths shine and put just enough effort into your weaknesses so they don’t screw you up. And, if you plan to change your identity in some way, there’s something to be said for the old adage, “Fake it till you make it.” But don’t completely try to change everything overnight. You’ll come off as a phony—clearly uncomfortable in your own skin. Apply slow, steady changes and you’ll reach your goal faster than you imagined.

Determine the Risks The riskiest part of dating (other than meeting a psycho stalker

who will boil your pets) is lacking confidence. We humans are wired to be able to pick up on subtle bodylanguage signals, and confidence (or the lack of it) will always come through loud and clear. How do you obtain confidence? Well, obviously step one is to write an article about how to pick up women if you are a game developer. If you can’t go that route, however, you should think about your comfort zone— those areas in which you are most confident. Then you need to figure out how to expand your comfort zone to include some areas in which you currently lack confidence. For example, years ago I noticed that I tended to avoid looking people in the eye. So I started an experiment in which I made a conscious effort to look people in the eye until they looked away first. Fortunately, most people look away after just a few seconds, so it turned out to be surprisingly easy after a while—to the point that now it has become second nature to me. Of course, there was that one time when this one dude thought that I was being aggressive and tried to pick a fight, but that’s a story for another time (at GDC perhaps, over a beer?).

Stage 2: Pre-production Pre-production is all about prototyping, finding the fun, and preparing for production. Similarly, dating is all about meeting new people, finding people you have fun with, and preparing for more serious dating. Pre-production is also about iteration: Experiment, learn, apply the results to the next experiment.

Prototyping/Finding the Fun When you enter the prototyping phase of dating, it’s time to get out, meet people, have some fun, and see if you are compatible. Just like prototyping game mechanics, don’t be too fixated on the end goal. Just go out there and meet people. (Too busy right now to meet people? See Outsourcing below.)

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46 Gamesauce fall 2009

The best way to meet someone at a public place is to simply go up and talk to them. This can be extremely hard to do if you aren’t comfortable talking to strangers (and very few people are). Once again, you may have to fake it till you make it, getting better at it every day. Some key tips to keep in mind: • First impressions are crucial. Just like demo-ing a game to the press, you need to hook them right away. Dress nicely, and don’t act too needy. • People love intrigue. Tell amusing stories about something crazy that has happened to you. But don’t take up all of her time. Chat with her briefly, make her laugh, impress her and her friends, get her number and move on. That’s one formula for success. • Take the time to think about your stories ahead of time. Everyone has some funny or interesting things that have happened to them. Think about the most interesting, dramatic personal story you’ve got, and practice telling it. • Learn from experience. You know how you always think of the right thing to say, only you think of it 10 minutes too late? Write it down and remember it. That situation will

•

almost certainly come up again, and when it does, you’ll be ready. Confidence is sexy. Tweaking your body language can help convey confidence. Stand up straight, don’t speak too fast, keep your head up and maintain eye contact (but don’t stare like a creep!). Don’t directly face the girl at all times. That’s another body language cue. We tend to face people if we are interested in them. By not facing her at first, we don’t give the signal right away that we are interested. It’s okay to send a mixed signal here: that just adds to the intrigue. Just remember: Don’t “z-target” her! Start with small doses. If she’s out with friends (which is most of the time), be careful not to take up too much of their time at first. Either bring one of her friends into the conversation, or take the chance to get the girl’s number so you can continue the conversation at a later time. When in doubt, go digital. Having difficulty getting a phone number? Consider asking for her email address instead. It’s considered much safer for a girl to hand out her email address. In Double Your Dating, author David DeAngelo

Stages Stage

1. Concept

2. Pre-production

Game Development

Dating

High-level goals

What do you want out of dating?

Project identity

What is your identity?

Determine risks

What issues must you overcome?

Prototype

Meeting people, going on dates

Find the Fun Prepare for production

3. Production

Implementation

Serious dating

Iteration

4. Post-Production

Polish, bug-fix, tweaks

Engagement

5. Gold Master

Final product

Marriage

recommends asking, “Do you have email?” When she says yes, respond: “Cool—write it down,” and hand her a pen and paper. Notice how you don’t actually ask for her email address. Rather you ask if she has email and assume she will give it to you. • Be prepared for rejection. It’s going to happen—probably fairly often. Keep in mind that during prototyping you need to be prepared to throw out your work. Move on, learn from it, and don’t take it personally. • Start with something safe and easy. When asking a girl out for the first time, avoid the typical “dinner/ movie” date. Instead, suggest something simple during the day. For instance, you might propose getting together for coffee at a cool local coffee house. Not only will it give you the chance to get to know each other better, it’s a far safer, less threatening date besides. Consequently, she’ll be more likely to say yes when you suggest it. Remember, in the early going you’re just prototyping. It’s all a fun experiment. Figure out what you can learn from each attempt and apply it to the next iteration. Just don’t change too many variables at once.

End of Pre-Production At some point, things may be getting a bit more serious—just as when the publisher likes what it’s seen and wants to go to full production. Maybe you’re thinking that you’ve found that special someone and you want to take things to the next level. Maybe she’s made the decision for you and has even changed her Facebook status to “In a Relationship.” Keep in mind that some people consider the end of pre-production the point when you reach a Vertical Slice.

Additional Stuff Focus Testing/Iteration. Focus

test yourself now and then to make sure everything is going smoothly. The best way is to find some female friends whose opinion you trust (such as a cute, red-headed exotic dancer) and ask them their opinions about you (best features, clothing styles, hair styles, etc). Even better is to then take them along to go shopping and help you pick out clothes and shoes to fit the look you are going for. Having an immediate female opinion will come in very useful. You might even bring your focus testing group along next time you go out. Trust me, other women’s interest in you will skyrocket if you walk in with a girl or two along with you.

Outsourcing Time is valuable to us all, so seeking outside help via online dating can be worthwhile. It’s convenient and it doesn’t take too much time. There are a lot of resources out there, such as eHarmony, match.com, okcupid.com, and hotornot.com. (I’m not affiliated with any of these). It’s worth the time spent researching each of these (and the many others out there) to see if any fit your needs, budget, and goals. Some are more about casual dating while others are targeted towards people looking for marriage. Some are free, and others have a monthly fee. Take time to make your profile interesting and unique—but avoid anything creepy or nerdy. You have the coolest job in the world, so put it in a positive light. Remember, it’s all about being both mysterious and playful. Post a good picture of yourself in which you are genuinely smiling. You’ll look twice as attractive smiling as when you have a dopey look on your face or a frown. A few words of caution—a few guidelines as it were: • If the girl is posing with too many cats: avoid. • Beware if she’s posing with a horse. • Don’t outright reject people if they

Gamesauce fall 2009

don’t have a picture up, especially if their profile is new. Sometimes people put up profiles and haven’t yet put up a pic. • Do NOT worry about going outside your comfort zone in terms of how attractive the potential date might be. Who knew Remedy was capable of Max Payne or Human Head capable of Prey? But they were, so give it a chance. The worst she can say is No…and ridicule you to her friends, obviously. But that’s a risk you have to take. • Get your female focus test friends to help you refine your profile.

Graphics Aren’t Everything It’s the classic argument: Which is more important: game-play or graphics? History has shown that game play is king, but pretty visuals can be compelling as well. Ideally, you’d want the whole package. Even so, keep in mind that graphics are subjective. What I find visually compelling may be different than what you find. We’re all unique. Of course it’s also possible that you are the victim of bad LODs: What looks good from a distance doesn’t look good when the camera is close up. These things happen. When they do, don’t throw your joystick against the wall.

Concentrate on the game-play and understand that malformed meshes might be in the same file as other better built models. In other words, she might have cute friends.

Project Cancellation From time to time, projects are cancelled. The reasons vary. Perhaps the project is running too far behind schedule, or it isn’t clear where the project is headed, or the quality isn’t up to the right standards. Or maybe the person with the purse strings just suddenly got cold feet and decided to cut his investment. Whatever the reason, if your project is cancelled, don’t take it personally. Best to move on, learn from the experience, and make your next project better than ever.

Conclusion I hope this article has been useful and entertaining. There’s a wealth of knowledge out there about dating and meeting people. Life is short, so you should invest the time into yourself. Your career is important (did I mention that you work in one of the coolest industries in the world?), but you owe it to yourself to find that special someone if that’s what you want. Best of luck!

A 15-year veteran of the game industry, Chris Rhinehart got his start as a game-play and technology programmer at Raven Software where he worked on such classic titles as Heretic and Hexen. In 1997, he left Raven to co-found Human Head Studios, where he was a programmer on Human Head’s first project, the third-person Viking melee game, Rune. Later, Chris served as project lead and programmer on the highly acclaimed sci-fi FPS, Prey. Chris is currently working as project lead on an unannounced project at Human Head. To paraphrase the late, great Mitch Hedberg: Chris doesn’t have a girlfriend, but he does know a woman who’d be mad at him for saying that.

EVEN IF YOU GOT YOUR OFFICE CHAIRS FROM THAT DUMPSTER BEHIND THE BUILDING, your game can be Unreal.

No matter what size your budget. No matter what type of game. Unreal can be your game engine. Email Mark Rein at getunreal@epicgames.com.