Future Shock

Future Shock
This panel session focused on how money is being spent by today's
game developers. The comments here are what I was able to glean and
do not represent direct quotes from the individuals named.

$50 M to spend how would you spend it?
Todd: small company, $15M Development, $30M in the bank for interest,
not dictated by budget or time, but dictated by design goals, what do
we want to do, we look at what we want the end result to be and work
back. PC is core base for development. 360 is compelling platform,
architecture is like the PC. have a window into what PS3 devKits. 3
platforms (PC, 360, PS3). Work with Activision,

Ray Muzyka (BioWare|Pandemic): focus, investment in tools,
development of community. Online brand. Immersive worlds, Jade
Empire, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect. What are our core competencies?
Story, characters, etc. Long, rich games in order to build depth of
immersion. Build out game engine and focus on community building.
Continuous ongoing support, post-release, continue to support the
iterations of the game. BioWare's mission is to associate its brand
with quality.

Jon: Asian market focus, online games publishing operations
capabilities; mobile, online casual, These games cost about $1M per
game to develop, $50M goes a long way.

Lee: Start with asking "what do consumers want?" Look for trends
evolving, market analysis, portfolio analysis, internal studios work
on what has a high chance of success, market, portfolio, development.
Farm out the riskier projects to external developers.

Management strategy:
Todd: everyone at id is a "doer" let the stars be the stars in what
they are good at and not managers. These "stars" have high level
guidance with the teams, leverage the publisher's skills at being a
producer. Small developer, art, programmers, designers. Make tools
that makes people's time more efficient. The artist's will never be
done. Final artistic task at the end of the process, but managed in a
way that ensures the final artwork doesn't wreak havok with the
engine and codebase.

Ray: gamble is possiblity of the market not being ready to accept the
idea. having more than one focus helps deal with risk. Genre blends.
Multiple platforms...

Lee: there is no silver bullet, everyone is excited about project,
every project goes through stages ranging from excitement to
complacency, a realistic assessment of the game in development cost
compared to the appropriate amount of investment... when do you pull
the plug on a project that is going south.

Console?
Ray: Xbox 360: investment from the publishers needs to... publishers
need to have buy-in and be ready to distribute the title,

Jon: online is based on microtransactions.

Elevation Partners was an opportunity both ways. EP is a private
equity fund.

id is partnering to do a Doom RPG mobile app. Somewhat adversarial
relationship with publisher. Everyone want something more
valuable.... If you have lemons, make lemonade.

How do you feel about the new consoles?
Lee: stay agnostic. Wii is going to have its own market, its own
niche...

Jon: the new consoles cost more and take longer to make new games.
Nintendo DS is blowing away the PSP.

Ray: localization strategy is needed as we look to taking our games
to multiple locales...

What is a casual games?
Jon: 15 minute game play.

What are your thoughts on using Universities for R&D?
Todd: Don't really use for R&D, alot of companies in the area...
Prefer to use people who have experiencial knowledge even on the
amateur "mods" environment. Schools are trying to do real game
development.

What keeps you up at night?
Lee: Development cost. Quality versus cost effectiveness.
Ray: only time I get to play games.

Will Wright Interview at E3

An interview with Will Wright

Will Wright is the creator of cornerstone gaming environments SimCity
and the Sims through his company Maxis. His most recent creation is a
game called "Spore" that takes the user's exploration of simulated
environments beginning at the micro and through to the macro level.
In this presentation he spoke about gaming trends and the future of
user created content.

Will is trying to create a synergy of biology, chemistry, physics and
astrophysics in a single title. This game focuses on the immersion
experience and plays with a huge set of variables to provide the
level of randomness and chaos that represents the forces of nature we
experience in the real world. Will's experience with game creation
has spanned every level of macro and micro environments ranging from
SimEearth to SimAnts. These titles were true open-ended experiences
that allowed the users to impose their own desire to construct or
destroy the world they created.

Part of the challenge that Wright has faced over the years is
ensuring that the user's mental model of what the game is and how it
should work was consistent and congruent. "The user immediately
develops an expectation of what the game will do and the world they
will experience when they pick that box up off the shelf," says
Wright. The game experience begins well before the game is ever played.

The interview shifted to a production overview and a question of the
optimal development team size came up. The largest team that Will has
work with was around 120 to 140. At this size, many compromises were
made and the effectiveness of the team was questionable. As a result,
the peak optimal team size for Will is about 70 to 75 people. 25% or
less of this team size is associated with content development.

Some points of wisdom that Will shared included (I summarize these
ideas):
- In the absence of good design is bad design, not no design. This
applies the design of game.
- games, like cars, should be designed AND engineered. Don't expect
the player to be willing to learn a whole new set of controls just
for your game.