The Giants of Surfing... and Game Development?

One of my all-time fave documentaries is Riding Giants, a documentary about three of the pioneers of big wave surfing. It focuses on three different 'eras' of surfing, telling the story of an innovator from each. I often recommend it to friends, and sometimes have commented that it makes a good parallel to innovation in the games industry. I'd never written up why I feel this is the case.

Recently, I recommended it to a friend, Mare Sheppard, who asked "Who is gaming's Laird Hamilton?". I figured I'd write up some thoughts as a response.

I love the documentary for many reasons. great footage and soundtrack, superb editing and pacing, etc. However, the thing I like most is that of the three innovators at the heart of the movie, each innovates in a very different way.

The film starts with coverage of Hawaii's north shore in the early 60's and Greg Noll. Noll is a big, brash tough guy with brass balls, who basically muscles his way onto waves no one else will tackle. He innovates with brute strength. In gaming, Noll's equivalent is maybe Rockstar, or Wargaming, or EA. Pick a goal, throw a pile of money and bodies at it. Take that hill.

The latter part of the movie covers Laird Hamilton. He (and to be fair, some others), invented "tow-in surfing", using zodiacs and jetskis to pull them into giant open-ocean waves at high speed - waves too big to paddle into. They innovated through the use of technology. In gaming, Hamilton's equivalent is Valve, or Epic, or Crytek.

The best part of the movie though, is the middle section, which focuses on Jeff Clark, the first person to surf Mavericks in Half-moon Bay, California. After a couple years of looking at a giant wave breaking off the coast into a death-trap of stones, Clark just decides to do it - because in his heart he knows he must. And then, after no one believes he did it, HE SURFS IT ALONE, WITH NO ONE WATCHING, FOR FIFTEEN YEARS! Clark's innovation is driven by passion. By love of the act itself.

Who is gaming's Jeff Clark? All those indies working on those perfect gems of games that have to be done the best possible way. Jon Blow, Chris Hecker, Robin Hunicke, Dan Cook, and so many others I have the privilege of knowing... including Mare Sheppard, which is why I recommended the film to her to begin with! :-)

[btw, while I recommend the film, if you haven't seen it, at least watch this clip on the Jeff Clark piece]

Book Review: You

I finished Austin Grossman's second novel, You, while on vacation last week, and am just getting to writing some thoughts on it now.

It's quite different than his first novel, Soon I will be Invincible, which I loved.

You is the story of a law-school-dropout-turned-game-designer who accepts a job at the game studio his high school friends have turned into a hit-factory. Like his own career, the game studio has hit a point where its future is in question. The creative genius behind the original games is no longer around, the key founders have left, investors threaten to sell off the company, etc. In trying to prove they still have what it takes, the lead character learns about the company's past games and a lot about himself.

It's in this that the book starts to get interesting. The title "You" is a nod to the second-person narrative involved in many games, going back to the old Infocom titles like Zork ("You are standing in an open field, west of a white house, with a boarded front door"). Without spoiling too much, the company's games' characters, world, and eras are metaphors for the high school friends, events and phases of their lives. The author takes a long time to build this up for the reader. To tell the truth it was initially a little slow for me, and some of it was a little over my head. However, when he brings it all together toward the end it really is quite well done, and I found it very satisfying and quite moving.

I know Austin through friends, and knowing his history working at Looking Glass and on games like Ultima Underworld, I can't help but think that there's a lot of history underlying the work. It certainly is the most realistic depiction of what game development is like that I've ever read.

Some reviews I've seen have made reference to Ready Player One, perhaps because of all the references to games of our youth. I don't think that's fair though. This is far more a book about coming of age. More Breaking Away than Wargames, IMHO.

Good book. Recommended.
You

Update: One more thing I meant to add:

From the book's description of one of the studio's games:

"The game's concept demanded intrigue, mystery, glamour, and romance. Accordingly you couldn't just go around murdering people; there was exactly one bullet in the entire game. Instead, Nick could do things like (F)lirt, (Q)uestion, or (W)altz."

I cannot tell you how sad I am that we don't have this game yet.

The Reasons For Making It

I read a quote that I think bears paraphrasing and applying to games:

"A game is only as good as the reasons for making it"

I think it beautifully captures the reasons why games succeed or fail, as well as why a well crafted indie game like Braid, Portal, or World of Goo take take their place in the pantheon of great games alongside Red Dead Redemption, Half-Life2 or other AAA productions.

A game made for reasons of love and conviction can - if carried through to its maximum potential - trump any game made for want of commercial success.

Hi-end facial mocap in Rockstar's LA Noire

The video below has a nice example of how we're likely to see high end game titles evolve over the next couple years.

With performance more or less tapped out on current gen consoles, which are going to have to live on a few more years, those studios looking to out-gun their competition will increasingly do so by dialing up the spend on the authoring side.

The runtime rendering being done here doesn't look like anything that far beyond what we're seeing in other titles. However, the content authoring - combining a high-end mocap rig with recognizable actors and whats likely to be TONS of dialog - is clearly going to be a huge cost increase.

Red Dead Redemption was rumored to cost north of $100M, and LA Noire looks like it could easily climb north of there.

(And yes, the uncanny valley runs way deep)

Four Pointers on the Future of Games

I read a number of posts over the past week or two that opened my eyes. Here they are:

1. Dan Cook's 'Flash Love Letter' series of posts (two so far: one, two. With more coming soon) on Flash games, the opportunity for premium flash games, how to monetize them, existing (flawed) feedback systems when distributing through portals, etc. His blog has always been gold, but this series of posts shows that he understands this space better than almost anyone who's writing about it. Much of it applies to all digital distribution and not just Flash games.
2. Raph's liveblog of the AGDC panel on monetizing online games: Free-to-play biz model experts discuss successes and stats around different tweaks on the biz model and how it's evolving. I remember when I first worked in casual games, being surprised about how scientific (in the sense of hypothesize-->test-->measure-->analyze results) the business was compared to traditional big-budget retail games. This group takes it up a notch. A must-read.
3. Alice's post on Smokescreen. Smokescreen is an online game that aims to educate teens about issues involved with their online activities, like identity, privacy, security, etc. By all means go play it - at least see the first mission through. It will challenge both what you think is possible in an 'educational' game, and in the quality of production possible in a publicly-commissioned game. On the latter note, I'm not sure what the budget was here, but its clearly NOT your $50k flash game. It's polished, rich, and deep. It doesn't take much to extrapolate a few years out and think about what it means when your games have to compete with free-to-play, $10M+ budget titles funded by your taxes.
4. This GamesIndustry.biz post on Bobby Kotick's comments about 'untethered' Guitar Hero. Kotick has done his share of talking out of his rear, but this is not one of those cases. The idea of a stand-alone SKU of guitar hero, connected to a dedicated service, is not as ludicrous as you might first think. Music games are a phenomenon and there are still a lot of households without consoles. If some of the people who shelled out $250 for a Wii did so to buy 'the Wii sports machine', then I don't see why this wouldn't hold for people that want GH or Rockband but don't own one of the big 3 consoles. And if this is a route for publishers to connect directly to their customers without console holder as middleman? Hmm..

As I said above, these are four must-read posts. A lot of hints as to where we'll be going over the next decade are to be found in there.

Casey's video lectures

A couple years back I'd pointed out that Casey Muratori had posted an interesting tech-talk video on his website, along the lines of a GDC programming lecture without the $1000 entry fee :-)

Anyhow, I just noted from his interview with Gamasutra that he's posted a number of others since that time. covering a good number of topics. 

Link

Edge's "hot 100" list

Edge published their list of the 100 most important people in game development. While it was nice to see some friends make the list, there were also some weird entries and folks missing that should have made the list. Anyhow, congrats to Robin, Trent, John, Clint and everyone else on the list.

MIGS 08 (1 of N posts)

I'm at Montreal Game Summit this week. Have some meetings to attend but am managing some sessions for a change, so will try to blog notes from a number of them. Watch for them in coming posts.

Overall notes on the show:

- good attendance so far (looks 1000-1200-ish?), but they've opened the closing session tommorrow to the public, which is conference speak for "oh my god, how are we going to make the numbers we promised on our hockey-stick graph?". 

- Some great hallway conversations.

- Small show but the caliber of talks and attendees is awesome. 

Economy: Well, at least we all agree

I was at a business dinner last night where the subject of the economy came up. Opinions ranged from "everything back to normal in 6 months" to "slump for 3-4 years".

At least the games publishers are in agreement. From back-to-back articles on Gamasutra:

Ubisoft: Next year will be great! Yay!

Take Two: It doesn't look promising! Boo!

Microsoft: There'll be some impact, but we're pretty comfortable! Meh!

Brash Entertainment unavailable for comment!

It should be noted that the comments above were mostly in response to questions about this holiday season's sales. On that front, I fall in the camp of 'modest impact'. 

PS3 as the pricier platform is going to feel some hurt. Nintendo's going to further rocket ahead due to their price-focused hail mary with the Wii. Good for them. Xbox should do well too, offering value beyond the PS3 for the hardcore gamer. Title sales should be fine for the A titles, but I wonder whether the falloff curve for B titles will be steeper.

I'm really pessimistic about long-term prospects though. I think pubs are going to tighten the reins on any projects they don't feel are absolutely on track and solid prospects for AAA hits, which means a lot of projects that would have stayed afloat previously now will get canned. That's going to mean a lot of studios having the rug pulled out from under them, and if they aren't sitting on a pile of cash (and many aren't), there's no access to credit to make payroll & keep projects alive while they line up a new publisher. I really hope I'm wrong.

I had a lunch discussion with someone yesterday about a studio we'd done some work with that went under when their publisher funding got cut. Someone commented that it was stupid to be running a high-burn rate operation with no cash in the bank.

I made the analogy that it was like playing poker in the following situation: You are short stack or perhaps close to it. You don't have the money to buy in, but someone is willing to back you. You manage to double up every couple hands, but to your frustration, the blinds are actually doubling every couple hands as well. You are constantly at risk of getting blinded out. Logic would dictate that you go to another table with smaller stakes, but you look around and realize the other tables are playing blackjack, baccarat, etc, and you only know how (or only want) to play poker. You keep having to turn to your backer and ask for a little bit of money to buy in. If he at some point says he wants his money back, you're done.

The 'other tables' here might be XBLA, iPhone or Facebook games, but if you are a 30-person studio building a big FPS or MMO, that's not exactly an easy switch of gears.

Prince of Persia original reference footage

OK, definitely among the top 5 coolest things happening on the internet:

Prince of Persia Animation Reference 1985 from jordan mechner on Vimeo.

"Jordan Mechner, creator of the original Prince of Persia, has been posting his original development diary entries to his official blog to coincide with the exact date they were written 23 years ago. Each post is a treasure for fans of the games, but the October 20th entry is particularly special: it contains the animation reference video for the Prince Mechner shot in the Reader's Digest parking lot in 1985, using his kid brother as a model."

I viewed it before reading the above blurb, and thought it was someone imitating PoP and doing a good job. Now I get why. So awesome.

via BoingBoing.

Could an end to game piracy reside in a stuffed bear's heart?

When travelling with the family recently, my wife took the kids to the "Build A Bear Workshop"For those unfamiliar with this great little enterprise, here's how it works: You bring the kids in, they pick a type of bear, various accoutrements, and go through a ritual where the bear is 'brought to life' by filling him with stuffing and inserting a heart. Before inserting the heart, your kids rub it on their head to make it smart, on their muscles to make it strong, etc.

Kind of a sugar-coated version of Frankenstein. :-)

Anyhow, the result is that they get a bear that is 'unique', and are given a birth certificate for the bear with the name they give him.

It occurred to me that this kind of visceral experience - which develops quite an bond between child and bear - would be ideal to partner with a kids virtual-world company to go compete with Webkinz and other kids VWs, which I blogged about a while back.

Of course the thing with good ideas is that other people have the same ones, and they've already beaten me to the punch, with BuildABearVille.

Now the key point is this: With Webkinz, you enter your product code, and the online animal matches the physical product you bought at the store - which for kids, is COOL. With BuildABear, you enter a unique ID number off the birth certificate, and you get an online version that is identical to your one-of-a-kind, custom bear that you built. Of course the "one of a kind" bear is only one of given number of permutations of options, but still, to a kid, this is MAGIC!

So anyhow, it's cool, and I suggest you check it out. Take your kid, or a friends kid, or a kid-at-heart, to your local BuildaBear Workshop and give it a whirl.

So what does this have to do with software piracy? Bear with me (and my puns)...

This month's Wired has a great piece in which David Byrne interviews Radiohead's Thom Yorke and the two of them discuss the shift in the music business of recent times, where music went from being about performance and artist relationship to being about manufactured product and now it's being shifted back the other way, where the manufactured product is no longer monetizable as it once was, and so the value will come from performance and from the relationship that artists can have with fans.

Others have been talking about this too, how the value is in the artist/fan relationship, not in the product per se; and how if the relationship is there, people will gladly pay for it (and the product in turn).

Traditionally in games, the discussion around 'relationship' has been around that of service provision. e.g. You provide a service and the pays for that service on an ongoing basis, whether it's on a per-month basis, per-game basis, per-item basis or whatever. MMO's, Xbox Live, Kart Rider, Gametap, are all examples of this.

But perhaps another path exists, other than "service provision as proof of relationship". What if we think about "Personalized product as expression of relationship"?

So what do I mean by this? Consider things like architecture plans. These are copyrighted, architects that do plans for 'cookie cutter' houses and the like have to worry about their designs being used without their permission. However, an architect hired to do a custom design for a client very likely has to worry less. Why? Because the plans were done for THAT client, and that client very likely doesn't want his design copied and takes pride in it's uniqueness and that it was done for him. "Look at my kitchen. Personally designed for me by Hans Arkitekt."

To take this to games, if we could find a way to build a game for a specific customer, tailored to them, then this should mean that they could share it with someone else, but that person wouldn't want it, they'd want their own. In the same way that I may covet my friend's tailored suit, but that doesn't mean I want his suit, but rather that I want one of my own.

So what would it mean to build a game *for a specific customer*? I'm not sure. But I'm not talking about nonsense like binding it to the user's machine with DRM and the like. No, that's silly and people will find a way to strip it out anyway. No, the personalization has to add value in some way.

It could be an object of social status ("Look, Cliffy B personally autographed my copy of Gears and thanked me for my business"), an element of personal integration ("It came pre-built with my character stats already set up!"), or custom fitting ("all the graphics assets and settings came perfectly tuned for set up for my personal machine").... who knows.

Actually, it's very likely none of the above. Minds more creative than mine will come up with far better ideas. The best example I can think of is that of The Behemoth and the custom trophies they built for leaderboard winners. Still, I do think there's something to this, and the first requirement would be a change in mindset. To change from viewing the game as mass-produced product to viewing the finished game as an asset; 95% completed, and now ready for customization and personal delivery to each and every one of your fans. The extent you *value* each one of those relationships, is the extent to which they'll provide value in return.

I guess like any relationship, you have to decide if you are ready to put some work into it and hold up your end of the bargain...

Results of the Generic Defense Game experiment

Jim Greer of Kongregate points us to this great post from 'PsychoGoldfish', creator of Generic Defense Game. As the game's creator puts it, GDG "was built and distributed as an experiment to get some insight on the current state of the independent web-based gaming community"

It's a fantastic read, though I wish he'd actually disclosed figures behind comments like "The ads in the game were a real surprise to me. I did not expect the high level of performance the would ultimately yield".

Anyhow, here's the money quote from the whole article:

Now, a lot of commercialized sites have made it possible to earn a pretty good living in this industry without having to build your own income generating websites. These commercialized sites kicked off a whole new generation of talent, and really helped to raise the bar in quality…at least.. that was how it started.

Today, everyone from high-school kids to seasoned vetrans, are whipping off generic games (not just in the defense genre) because the big commercial sites will dish out $500 or so, for pretty much anything that works (and even some things that don’t). The casual players tend to stick to these commercialized sites, because they brand all the games they sponsor to the degree that the players feel these sites are where all the games are coming from. For many casual players… these are the only sites they check for new games.

This is great for these sites, as they build strong user bases, and stronger revenue streams. This is good for the developers because they can earn sponsorships without having to put fourth a great deal of effort. This is bad for the industry because the quality content is being buried by the quantity content.