The Boss Monster

The Secret to Being a World-class Video Game Designer

2011-11-27T11:11:00.001Z

Who wouldn't want to be world-class? The trick if you're a video game designer? Stop playing so many video games

Who doesn't want to be extraordinary in whatever they do including video game design? I mean, who doesn't want to be the goddamn Batman? There's actually a significant body of work about achieving world-class behavior popularized by Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers" and Colvin's "Talent is Overrated". Its the 10,000 hour rule - to be world-class at something, you need to practice it for 10,000 hours.

Unfortunately, the takeaway from the research often gets misunderstood. The point is not whether talent is irrelevant. The point is not to log the hours. The point is that the quality of how you practice something is likely the single most important factor in determining whether you are simply capable - or truly great.

This is intuitively obvious - otherwise, everybody who worked full time at a job for five years would be world-class. Or everybody who logged a lot of hours playing video games would be a fantastic game designer. Playing games is necessary but insufficient to being world-class. That's because playing games only teaches you to play games. To be great, you have to take it the next level.

What makes for the quality you need to be world-class?

Practising the core skills of your discipline in a way specifically designed to improve performance. You can't phone it in - you have to practice at becoming a better designer. And, yes, this means as you get better you have to take on bigger challenges.
High repetition of the core skills - you must do it over and over and over again.
Clear and unequivocal feedback on when you are - or are not - succeeding. You can't just shoot and pray - you need to see whether you are actually hitting your target.
Coaching to address specific defects in your skills and improve them.

So how does the above apply to being a world-class game designer?

Get a notebook. To start, carry that notebook with you. All the time. Use that notebook. All the time. It is insufficient to have good ideas, you need to realize them in some fashion. You need to put ideas to paper. You need to try and work them out, struggle with and (eventually) wrestle them to the ground. Personally, I favor a graph paper notepad with a multi-colored pen, that way I can scribble down ideas, sketch out rough interfaces, illustrate concepts, etc.

"Play" games differently. That notebook I mentioned? It should be filled with your critiques of the games you are playing. You should have a different process from the average user when playing a game. You should note what does or does not work. Note what you would do to improve it. Scribble down the ideas it inspires. And most importantly, you must write it all down. Yes, you are no longer a passive audience member, simply enjoying the pleasure of a game. This is the price you pay. Do you think Spielberg just watches a movie - or does he tear it apart and put the pieces under the microsoft?

Make a lot of games. The most important thing you can do is make games. A lot of them. I don't mean working on a three year development cycle make a lot of games. I mean, crude little games. The kind of stuff you bang out with ActionScript or Python. The kind of thing you make with paper cards and dice. Whatever it takes, you should aim for high volume of game production. Ask yourself if you could make 10 games this year. 50. 100. They don't have to be perfect (or even, really, good). They don't have to be finished. They can be crude. But the act of making the game will teach you an enormous amount. I try to drive this into the heads of my designers, make a prototype as quickly as you can. Index cards, scissors and a sharpie marker are your greatest tools. Good game designers build games.

Watch other people play. Do the above - and then get other people to use your game. Sure, you have walk them through. Sure, it's likely to be painful. But it will be educational. You need to see how everyone else will view your creation. You need to see if the magical dream that lives in your head actually works in practice. I once asked a designer to imagine a new piece for Chess. He visualized a complex series of interlocking steps - until we put it on a board and realized he was just describing a Bishop in a different way. Real-world use of a game design by real users is vital. Your spouse may get tired of you forcing them to play your crummy little games - but you'll be a better designer for it.

Get mentors and guidance. You need to find other game designers, ones who you respect their opinion, and you need to play with them. Their insight is going to be very different from "normals". Find the best game designer you can and get them to play your game. Get competitive with them. Get into a relationship where you are forced to bring your A-game or suffer the ridicule and mockery of your gaming peers. Lennon and McCartney were successful because they both were talented and they forced each other to always be better. You need to find your equivalent. One of the important things I did in my development as a game designer was play RPG games with other game designers. We tried different systems, tweaks and experiments. The results were often not pretty - but I learned a lot about game design in the crucible.

Does all this sound like hard work?

It is hard work.

Does it mean games are going to be less fun?

It depends on your definition of "fun".

The fun you get is the fun of being a person who creates.

It will be the fun of working with an obsessive level of fanaticism your every waking hour and honing your skills to a razor's edge until you are the pinnacle of your craft

Just like the goddman Batman.

- Sean Dugan is The Boss Monster’s founding editor and all-too-frequent contributor.

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Originality in Video Games and Speaking in German

2010-11-24T22:39:00.000Z

When creating successful video games, truly original thinking is rarely a virtue. Oh yeah, that's right - I went there.

Let us start with the very basics. Video games are commercial art. The art part is all good times and laughs but the commercial part puts food on the table. And so, assuming you wish to live with a bit of financial security and die with both of your ears still attached to your skull, you will have to consider the audience for your game and whether they want to pay for it. And so then, like so many things, originality in video games creates a lot of Sturm und Drang among professionals. But it's rarely a black and white issue, rather its shades of gray - not to mention black and blue at times.

For human beings, coping with unknowns and the unfamiliar is stressful. As people grapple with the unfamiliar, cortisone levels rise which makes it neurologically more difficult to learn. Its why they always say to find a relaxing place to study - you will prime your brain to actually learn better.

But the very essence of gaming is facing the unknown. We ask players to solve problems. Do I turn left or right? Where is princess I have to rescue? Where have have those annoying designers hidden the magic mushroom? What weapon do I need to slay the Balrog? Should I take the blue pill or the red pill?

It is grappling with these unknowns and solving these problems that is the essence of what makes it a game. But that also makes a game stressful and difficult.

When you come up with novel and never before seen game innovations, you're asking people to grapple with another level of unknown - which adds a whole new level of stress.

Here's the analogy:

Go out on a date and try to be a sparkling conversationalist. Try to find that amazing combination of witty, charming and scintillating verbiage that provides the magical key which gets your pants torn off by your date.

Trying to unlock that puzzle is challenging and a bit stressful on its own.

Now, do the exact same thing - but do it in German.

(Or French or Spanish or Urdu or whatever language is out of your comfort zone)

It's a whole 'nother level of challenge when you don't have a basic vocabulary at your disposal.

"Unoriginal" game mechanics can be comforting to a player. Familiarity is sometimes a virtue. They don't have yet another steep learning curve to master - they can build upon already acquired skills. Which is a good reason we will see of Call of Duty-esque FPS until the end of time (the other being the mountains of cash they generate - which is correlated with the above point)

But here's where it gets tricky.

The point of entertainment is to provide a novel experience. The book you already know the ending to is a less entertaining experience. If you are already familiar with all aspects of the thing, it is no longer novel and not nearly as much fun. In a very real way, the essence of entertainment is novelty and originality - and without it, you don't have entertainment.

Others may have a less charitable view but it has been said, the test of intelligence is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time.

So embrace your inner genius and find your way to balancing originality with unoriginality.

- Sean Dugan ist der Herausgeber von der Uber Ungeheuer und schriebt fur sie viel zu viel.

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Video Games and the Art of the Fail

2010-11-08T22:07:00.002Z

They say success has many fathers and failure is an orphan. But I say failure has dubious parentage but everybody sure wants to stare at the ugly little bastard.

I have had my fair share of exposure to cancelled games, aborted projects, shutdown services, less-than-spectacular releases and thunderous earth-shattering meteor impacts. And make no mistake, failure is a spectator sport.

The only thing people like better than a rousing come-from-behind win is a spectacular soul shattering crash and burn. And when the great Fail Whale rears his ugly head, there's inevitably a crowd of Ahabs who are all too happy to opine about which harpoon you should have been using.

Generally I'm not such a fan of the post-mortem confessionals that inevitably pop up around game development failures. It's one thing to talk about failure in the interests of promoting understanding and learning among your peers. It's another thing for someone to crave being the center of some online drama and needing the spotlight. Or worse yet, to just have a nasty axe you want to grind - and plant in someone's back.

But more fundamentally, I don't think you can really assess what went wrong on a game project until you've gotten some distance from it. Or, to put it another way, if you're so damn insightful, where was this prescience when it could have actually done some good? Why weren't you keeping the ship from hitting the iceberg in the first place?

Which brings me to my point: when there's spectacular failure, everybody points fingers. There's plenty of people to blame: the idiot managers and the clueless investors and the feckless developers.

But people rarely point the finger at themselves. Those that do are the extraordinary exceptions.

Being a part of failure means we all have to take our share of responsibility for it.

I have to take my share of responsibility for the failures I've been close to. Maybe not all of it - maybe not even a significant majority - but definitely some. I have to ask myself, what should I have done better to prevent the failure. Sometimes, the answer isn't pretty.

It's amazing to see people with the words "Lead" or "Director" in their title pointing fingers and placing blame. Sure, it's easy to look to the people with "Chief" in their titles - and well you should as they share responsibility - but as a manager or senior developer (you know, the people who day-to-day were running the ship), you don't get to just shrug your shoulders and say there was nothing to be done about it.

If you weren't supposed to keep the ship from hitting the iceberg, then who the hell was?

It rarely easy to look our mistakes in the eye whether in our professional or personal lives. But its how you get better at life. If you're fortunate, you have someone who you trust who will give you the unvarnished truth. If George Lucas had that person, we would have been spared the second trilogy.

And game development is a team sport so we all have a role to play - and take responsibility for. Everyone's efforts matter.

It used to be the city of New York wasn't so far from a post-apocalyptic prison (but with fewer well endowed sassy sidekicks). So they started going after the broken windows. Why would you waste resources policing broken windows when there are murderers running around? Because when you leave a broken window or graffitti on the subway, it sends a signal. The signal that it doesn't matter. And so why not toss garbage on the street? Or engage in vandalism. Or theft. Or assault. And so on.

Little things matter. The kingdom is lost for want of a horseshoe. And so when you find yourself in the middle of a development process, you have to ask what you personally are doing to prevent failure. Ask if you could make the meeting a little more productive. Could you raise a concern in a way that gets attention. Did you bring your A-game to the day.

Your efforts, no matter how small, matter.

It is the sum of all those efforts that make life's inevitable bitter pills a bit more palatable when you have to swallow them.

- Sean Dugan is The Boss Monster’s founding editor and all-too-frequent contributor.

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Why Game Development Experience is Largely Overrated

2010-07-05T17:53:00.000+01:00

Why the "experienced" old dog game developer probably hasn't learned the tricks you really need.

Have you ever had the experience of listening to an exalted Deity of Game Design - and you suddenly realize what they are preaching is hopelessly out of date? Let's face it, experience in game development is highly over-rated. As hiring managers, we chase experienced candidates because it gives us a warm, reassuring feeling to have a CV with a long list of years behind it. Hiring is scary - a bad hire can be disastrous in so many different ways so hiring "experience" is a balm against our fear of lost development time, burned budgets, morale problems, lawsuits, etc.

The problem is that "experience" is an illusion.

Research tells us it takes 10,000 hours to be good at something. We're talking world-class brilliant here. So, hey do the math - every game developer with 5 years of full time work experience should the game designer equivalent of Tiger Woods, right?

Uh-huh.

The reason that most people aren't quite that brilliant isn't the number of hours they put in - it's the kind of hours. It's the concept of deliberate practice.

When you first enter a new domain, there's an enormous, exhausting struggle to gain a footing. You work hard every day to gain some toehold of understanding in your new domain. But then, after about the first year and a half or so, things get easier. You get more comfortable and the going isn't so rough. It doesn't become the constant, deliberate struggle to understand and improve.

But that's exactly the kind of difficult, exhausting practice you need to be engaged in to truly get better. In reality, most people's professional skills top out withing a very short period of time. The difference between the developer with 3 and 10 years of experience is likely negligible - because it is very unlikely that the old hand has continued to significantly truly develop past those first few years.

I say this as a genuine certified old dog of game development - meaning, I am over 29 year old. Oh, sure, there are plenty of video game designers who have been in industry longer than me and who are older - I am assuming here that Methuselah works at a game company.

So I personally have a vested interest in "experience" being a valuable commodity. But we have to recognize that experience actually says very little in and of itself.

The thing we need to be looking for isn't experience but tackling increasing levels of difficulty on a project. Engaging in new technologies and ideas. Struggling with seismic shifts in the game landscape. An attitude of deliberately going after the challenges in game development and figuring out how to tackle them. This isn't to say that you don't play to your strengths - a systems designers doesn't necessarily need to suddently developer the ability to tell compelling interactive narratives - but it does mean that you need to constantly be seeking out new challenges which push the envelope of your skill set.

If you feel like you're able to coast through your work day - then pretty much guaranteed, you're not getting any better at your job.

And I'm going to go even further and say that half of the skills so many developers have acquired are probably rubbish. Far too many games that ship manage that feat in spite of how it was developed. Much of what passes for "experience" in our business is simply not having been killed by a project. It's a badge of honor to have simply survived a hellish product development cycle. It's really management by attrition - the people who can't stand the BS flee first, leaving behind those with the thickest skins. Too many game developers think the fact they somehow survived the horrors and shipped a game means they are actually skilled in game development. By that logic, John McCain would make the most bad-ass game developer ever.

This isn't to say you go the other direction and hire only green newbies. What it really means is that you have to consider the quality of the experience more than the quantity. It turns out then, the thing that separates Tiger Woods from the rest of us isn't that he has super-human aptitude for his domain. It's that he has super-human tenacity in pursuing difficult practice in his domain.

So when it comes to developing professional game development skills, Coach's advice turns out to be the best advice - no pain, no gain.

- Sean Dugan recommends you drop and give me twenty.

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Video Game Management and Radically Rethinking Compensation

2010-06-28T17:29:00.000+01:00

The incentives video game companies dangle to make us productive - options and bonuses - are an insult to creative people.

Every video game company wants to motivate their game developers to get the maximum creative juice and effort out of them. It's in everybody's interest to incentive game developers to great work. But the funny thing is that incentives don't work.

Let me repeat that for the dimmer light bulbs in the back of the room.

When lab coat science types study motivations and incentives for creative people, they are proven to simply not work. I know, it's hard to swallow. You want your creative game designers to produce measurably poorer work? Offer them a bonus.

Maybe the only reason the game industry succeeds at all is our "bonus schemes" are so haphazard, they are the next best thing to non-existent.

Don't get me wrong - I like money. I use it quite frequently in day-to-day life. I want you to fairly compensate me. I would like to enjoy the fruits of my labor when a game is successful. But money doesn't mean anything on its own - I just want it to buy happiness. I could make twice as much money outside the game industry if I'd gone into finance or insurance or law. But I'm a creative person - I choose to work in the game industry. So why don't you reward me in ways that I would actually appreciate?

As a company, we want to incentivize game developers. And we use the thing a company values most - money - to do it. But there are many different ways to "spend money". Like they say, "time is money". We could 'incentivize' creative game designers in numerous ways - but we won't. We won't because as companies we are conservative. We are lazy. We refuse to innovative. We will only do what's comfortable and familiar - as opposed to doing what will actually produce results.

Fundamentally, despite the fact that we produce game products, most companies are run with exactly the same mentality as a widget assembly line - except for maybe having a dusty Xbox in the break area.

What do creative people desire?

Autonomy and Purpose.

What could we possibly do to stimulate our employee's sense of individual liberty and aspirations to some far-reaching goal or ideal? How about we start treating them like creative game developers.

Every video game company I've worked for forces its employees to sign highly restrictive Intellectual Property clauses. In other words, every company is saying my mind is their slave. My very ideas are their property. But what would happen if a company pursued the exact opposite strategy? If a company actively encouraged its employees to pursue their ideas and develop new IP? What, are we worried that I'm going to suddenly secure $15 million in funding and go make my dream game, Dangerous Badger Encounter? Even if I managed to come up with an idea so radical that the very whisper of it was worth millions, do you think I might be slightly more inclined to work with you as a company if you didn't treat me as a thief about to steal your property?

Imagine if the workplace was transformed into an incubator for IP. Sure, the company has projects and you are expected to contribute to it as an employee. What if all the resources of the company - people, knowledge, equipment, software - were at your disposal and you were actively encouraged to use your time to bring your Next Big Thing to fruition?

Google has it's well know 20% free time. You will always hear the objections to implementing such a system at game companies - "we can't afford that hit to productivity". But you can afford scheduling an endless series of pointless status meetings? You can have a dozen highly paid professionals sitting around waiting for a meeting to start? You can derail the entire development process and bring a halt to production because of management bottlenecks? That you can afford? So then, you don't mind wasting time - you just want to be the one to decide to waste it.

One of the attractive ideas of the much-hyped Results-Only Work Environment is that you suddenly make people's time precious. You incentivize them to get work done quickly. This is something every freelancer learns when they get paid for projects and not their time. So imagine if you said "once you complete your Company Project work objectives, employees are free to use the remainder of their time to pursue any other project they care about".

What about growth and learning? A lot of companies have libraries and classes - but let's be honest, they are half-assed at best. Compare your company to Pixar University or EA HQ's library and see if you truly measure up. And what if a company's executives considered it their mission to foster the growth of their people? If it was their job to mentor, teach, guide and encourage the next generation to fulfil their dream of releasing a triple-A console version of Dangerous Badger Encounter?

In other words, what would happen if we radically re-thought what the work environment was. What's if it wasn't a goddamn digital factory with creative game designers churning out games on an assembly line? What if instead, the workplace was a university and incubator that supported and fostered the dreams of it's creative people and partnered with them to realize those dreams?

If as a manager, you're reading this and your reaction is "whoa, that's too far" or "its impossible, it could never work with our employees" - then guess what:

You are the problem.

Until managers recognize that we are destroying the motivations of creative people and start fostering a culture of encouraging people's intrinsic motivations, all the talk of "empowering employees" and "encouraging a creative workplace" is one great big sugar coated lie.

- Sean Dugan is The Boss Monster’s founding editor and all-too-frequent contributor.

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Why Video Game Developers Hate Business Types

2010-06-23T19:10:00.001+01:00

Pull up a comfy chair Mr. Business Suit Guy and please allow me to explain to why game developers hate your guts.

I know, it's practically a cliche - video game developers don't get along so well with the business types. "But why?" you ask. "Don't I smile enough in meetings, chit-chat in the break room and throw up the high fives in the hallways?"

Make no mistake - things seem cordial on the surface but we game developers seethe with anger and resentment towards you clean-shirt-with-no-holes-that-lacks-a-video-game-logo types.

It's instinctual - and here's why:

We Bleed to Make These Games
Look, with game development, you have all the enormous headaches of software development. And not just any software development, likely development that pushes the boundaries of technology or at least gets several significantly complex kinds of technology to play well together. That shit is hard enough to start with.

And then on top of that, we have to make it "fun". And what the hell is "fun"?!? Nobody knows but everybody sure has an opinion. (Mention Raph Koster if you want a punch) So we're supposed to hit an ill-defined, ever-moving target which nobody can reliably articulate - but that everybody will second guess you on.

"Real" jobs are so much easier than game development.

This is just a job for you. We had to fight like wildcats to break into this business. We will put our blood, sweat and tears into making this game for years. We are probably making huge personal sacrifices - okay, maybe your average game developer sacrificing their social life isn't much of a loss - but still.

Your job just looks so fucking easy by comparison.

You Don't Even Bother to Understand Our Product
I'm not talking about having memorized the bullet points from the marketing copy on the box.

Raise your hand if you're a CEO who completed Bioshock. Tried different endings in Mass Effect? A Marketing Manager who runs a guild of level 70's? A Biz Dev Director who unlocked the cow level?

Can you imagine the Ford CEO who rides a bike to work? The vegan Director of the Beef Council? The Television executive who prefers to curl up with a good book?

We care about this stuff - probably a lot (and more than is healthy). And you're really proud when you got out of the newb zone in WoW.

Did IQs Suddenly Drop While I Was Away?
It is really hard to keep a job in game development unless you are sharp. I'm not saying game developers are geniuses or without an exceedingly large number of crippling personality flaws. But being dumb is typically not one of them. Game development tends to foster a meritocracy environment for smart people - often at the expense of social niceties like pleasant conversation, non-threatening eye contact, regular bathing....

There are a lot of roles in business that can be occupied by, let us say, the less sharp pencils from the box - as long as they have a few social graces.

When you march in that perky little PR associate with the perky little, uh, associate bits, we know damn well you didn't hire her for her IQ score.

Liar, liar pants on fire
Look, there are weasels everywhere. Spectacularly slippery cunning uber-weasels. Believe me, there are no shortage of poseurs, preeners and pimps on the game development side.

BUT, the nature of creative work means that honesty can be rewarded. People who are honest about a game design that sucks have a chance of making it not suck. Which in turn, has a tendency to make the game more appealing to an audience. Sure, there are lots of exceptions - but we're talking general trends here.

And let's face it - how often does business reward honesty?

To be Truly Successful - We Have to Become You
Whether it's climbing the corporate ladder, going the indie entrepreneur route or building a game company studio, if a game developer is going to really succeed - they need to understand the business. And we fundamentally hate that.

Honestly, when you boil it all down, would rather just make and play awesome games.

Details like "making a profit" or "running a business" be damned.

- Sean Dugan is The Boss Monster’s founding editor and all-too-frequent contributor.

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OnLive + iPad = whoa....

2010-06-18T16:09:00.003+01:00

For an E3 Friday, I simply offer this - a video of OnLive being demoed on an iPad.

- Sean Dugan is The Boss Monster’s founding editor and all-too-frequent contributor.

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The Game Industry - Breaking Down the Console Business Numbers

2010-06-16T20:49:00.002+01:00

For game development execs at E3, I'll expose Kinect's business problems with easy-to-grasp bullet points, pictures and expletives.

Okay, I admit I have already offered a few choice comments about how Natal, er, excuse me, Microsoft's Kinect is an admission the video game industry's console business is effing broke. But it's such a good topic, I cannot resist flogging the dead horse...er, I mean, thoughtfully exploring the topic in careful non-incendiary terms.

Video Game Console Installed Base
Let's talk about the number of seething fanboys and girls out there who we can potentially separate from the bucks in their sweaty little hands:

Wii: 71 million
PS3: 35 million
Xbox360: 40 million

The venerable PS2 had sold about 100 million units by about this point in its life-cycle. Even the whippersnapper upstart the original Xbox managed 24 million units before Microsoft killed it.

To summarize how well this generation of video game console has done compared the previous:

Video Game Console Year-to-Year Sales

Wii: down 72% from previous year
Xbox: down 70% from previous year
PS3: down 67% from previous year

To describe the current state of video game console hardware sales:

Video Game Console Development Costs
Let's look at a break down the cost of a typical console title:

$60 retail price
$15 goes to the retailer. Surly teenager clerks at Gamestop don't come for free.
$7 or so goes to returns, price protection and other business stuff nobody wants to think about.
$3 to $4 goes to cost of goods - the expense to press disks, print manuals, etc.
$7 to $10 is extortion, er, license fee to the platform holder

This leaves us about $25 per title going to the Publisher and the Game Developer. If you assume a budget of, say, $20M to develop and then another $5 million minimum in marketing (which means your marketing effort is one step above updating your Facebook status) - you'll need to move a million units just to cover the money you already spent and keep the lights on.

From here, the money is split between the Publisher and the Game Developer. Here's what that process looks:

Modern Warfare 2 cost about $50M to develop and $200M to market. Red Dead Redemption cost $70M and easily spent $100M in marketing.

The average video game sells about 500,000 units.

The way things are going, Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Aime thinks it's going to cost $60M to develop an average next generation title. Sure, he can be a jackass but he does run a way bigger company than you do, so he might know something. With titles that are that big a bet, I can't imagine spending less than $10M in marketing (probably more). In that case, every game would probably need to sell 3 million units just to cover costs.

Let's summarize what it's like as an independent video game developer:

Extending the Life of a Video Game Console
This E3 is all about adding gimicky junk, er, I mean motion control to the existing generation of console in an attempt to resuscitate the flatlining patient.

Move: $100 for the bundle, or 28.5% of the price of a PS3.
Kinect: $150, 50% of the price of an Xbox360.

So to develop a title Kinect or Move means your install base - in other words, your potential customer pool - will be considerably smaller than the total number of Xbox or Playstation owners.

To summarize the business wisdom of an independent developing a title for Kinect or Move:

But, hey, don't fret. Social gaming will save us with a never-ending happy train of viral growth and casual gamers.

Look at Farmville, it has 85 million players!

I mean, uh, 80 million.

Err, okay, that's 70 million.

Ummm, 64 million...?

- Sean Dugan is The Boss Monster’s founding editor and all-too-frequent contributor.

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Images by Foxgrrl, Mill Zero, Brent Weichsel, Duo de Hale, Canis Wolfie, Cobalt123

Video Game Design: Striving for Perfect v. Good Enough

2010-06-14T20:00:00.002+01:00

When is a video game shippable? When it's as perfect as it can be - or when it's good enough to not embarrass a game dev?

More than a few video game designers have a few credits on our resume which we are, shall we say, less than proud of. Let's face it - most of us have a few real stinkers. Nobody sets out to make a bad game but sometimes circumstances dictate otherwise. Video game development is a commercial art. So by definition, game designers struggle to balance the demands of a business alongside their creative aspirations. Eventually, everybody needs to ship or suffer the ignominious fate of Duke Nukem Forever. But the eternal question for game developers is when is the product done?

There are essentially two answers. On the one hand, it's done when it is as good as it can possibly be - or "perfect". And on the other, it's done at the point of being "good enough" - meaning, there are no illusions about perfection.

In the "Perfect" camp, we have Pixar. For those of us who study the workplace cultures of organizations, Pixar stands out as an aspirational ideal. Their track record for delivering products which are both commercial and creative successes is practically unparalleled. The closest in the game industry I can think of is Blizzard (a company that is more than willing to can games which is feels will besmirch its reputation for quality). Pixar, similarly, has the fortitude to go back to the drawing board for projects which they felt just weren't delivering the Pixar magic. The director of Ratatouille was replaced when the film wasn't coming together. Toy Story 2 was famously halted in mid-production, re-written in a weekend and re-worked through a Herculean effort. But the results speak for themselves. Pixar has developed numerous internal processes for catching under-performing efforts and correcting them, not to mention taking good work and juicing it to max. Everything about their company culture is geared towards delivering "perfection".

In the "Good Enough" camp, we have Zynga. The company is practically premised on the "release early, release often" mantra of web software development. Delivering a product in the online space, they are famous for exposing users early to their efforts, getting detailed and scientific feedback and quickly iterating to deliver a new version which is incrementally better. It's is worth remembering that the first version of Farmville was developed and released in a mere five weeks. Interestingly, Zynga is also a company very willing to kill underwhelming efforts. The difference being that Zynga will kill those games which don't demonstrate they are gaining any traction with users. But where Zynga differs from a Pixar is that I doubt they would claim to producing "perfect" games but rather, games which are good enough to demonstrate an idea or feature. And then listen to their users - to both what they say and what they actually do. Which then leads to a new "good enough" release which is an incremental improvement over the previous. Do it enough times and you deliver a game like Farmville which at it's peak commanded the attention of more than 80 million users - a virtual "nation" larger than Germany, France or the United Kingdom.

So ultimately, which is better? To be perfect or good enough?

I doubt anyone can actually answer this questions - but here's my stab at it anyway. I'd wager most video game designers in their heart of hearts want to deliver perfection. They want to be like Pixar - only delivering the most towering and impressive critical and financial successes. In fact, I think most game designers work in exactly this manner. But I also think the business realities are geared towards "good enough". The average executive or producer would probably admit they'd rather have an on-time, on-budget "good enough" project rather than one that chases the elusive goal of "perfect". This is despite the fact that you can see a direct correlation between games with very high meta-critic ratings and their commercial success.

And I think it's the clash of ideals that causes the problem. When video game designers are chasing perfection when their leadership would be more happy with "good enough", problems ensue. The thing about Pixar and Zynga is that everyone seems to be rowing the boat in the same direction.

And I think its worth noting - it takes enormous discipline to deliver on perfection. It demands a culture of unyielding - and perhaps ruthless - honesty. It's not something that many organizations, not to mention most video game designers, have the stomach to stand. So if you're not willing to pay the very steep price for perfection - maybe you'd better adjust your thinking and start targeting the less-grandiose but likely more achievable "good enough".

- Sean Dugan is The Boss Monster’s founding editor and all-too-frequent contributor.

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Image by Julia Manzerova

Anatomy of a Video Game Industry Hit

2010-06-11T17:47:00.002+01:00

The video game industry has Hollywood's problems but less upside. And I don't mean the lack of starlets and coke.

In the video game industry, can you be both a hit and a flop at the same time? Red Dead Redemption and Take Two show us the way. On the day Take Two announced Red Dead Redemption had sold 5 million units, the response from Wall Street was to pummel the stock 7.7% with the company shedding almost $70 million dollars in value.

A video game developer might credibly ask: "WTF?!?"

RDR has solid sales and a spectacular meta-critic rating. It's promising to be the sort of tentpole game that Take Two desperately needs (you can't just be the Grand Theft Auto studio). So what's the problem?

It's because the economic model of the video game industry is becoming as hit driven as Hollywood but with less sure upside opportunities.

Delivering big hits is hard and expensive. Take Two had to admit, Max Payne III was slipping. Sales in 2009 of Bioshock 2 were actually pretty soft - a lot of copies were on the shelves but they didn't actually sell. In a telling sign of an issue for the video game industry, "sales slowed down sooner than expected." And that's after hyping the video game's massive budget.

What's the big deal you say? Jim Cameron apparently used gold foil toilet paper while filming Avatar and it made money, right? Hollywood throws away more than $100 million on the dreadful fare from Sarah Jessica Parker and Mike Meyers, right? What's the big deal?

In the parlance of Hollywood and the Video Game Industry, it's about the "legs". Films don't just make money the first weekend - sure, it's absolutely critical for eventual success. But it's the importance of a horse coming out of the gate fast - there's still the rest of the race to run.

Films have a strong secondary market worldwide and can typically make as much as they gross in North America. Films have a DVD aftermarket. Films can sell the rights to broadcast. In other words, there's extra millions coming in long after the release date. But it's different in the video game industry - it's a rare game that has legs and still sells strongly after month one. Who wants to play a six month old game? That's an antique. Which is why there's such a strong push for DLC (not to mention the used game market). It doesn't just bring in additional revenue, it helps keep your original title viable past a small window of a couple weeks.

So back to Take Two. They aren't going for many base hits these days - they need home runs. The problem is then what it takes to deliver a bit hit. In RDR's case, a budget in excess of $70 million. That's a big number even by the ever-increasing budget standards of the video game industry. And that's not accounting for the marketing costs which likely at least doubled the money spent. So when you're making bets that big and you only get one shot at it, you can't just deliver hits.

You've to deliver mega-hits.

On schedule.

And on more than one occasion.

Batter up.

- Sean Dugan is The Boss Monster’s founding editor and all-too-frequent contributor.

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Image by Eduardo Amorim

Why Studying Game Design is (Largely) a Waste of Time

2010-06-09T17:45:00.001+01:00

Presumably, it’s not enough to just get a job as a video game designer. You probably want to be a successful game developer.

Maybe you even climb to the point where you’re directing your own eager minions what game we’re all making. To ascend to the rarefied summits of game design, you figure you’d better have the right skills. Naturally then, you want to study all the game design theory you can lay your hands on, right?

Wrong – because overall success in game development relies on skills outside of game design.

Look, you need to know games. If you aren’t a game player, what are you doing in game design? It’s like being a nun and wanting to run a bordello – you might be confused about your career priorities.

So I assume you’ve played hundreds of hours of games. I assume you can point to games you love and tell me why. I presume you’ve got a passion for video games that has driven you to bang on the often unwelcoming doors of the industry.

But the esoteric theory of game design that tends to fill a lot of books isn’t going to get you that far. Game development is usually very pragmatic – and best learned by actually doing. And let’s face it, it’s going to be a while before you have to come up with your keynote speech for GDC or a TED conference.

Ultimately, the genius rock-star game designer who lacks key skills won't go as far as the mere mortal who rounds out their skillset. Success is going to depend a lot on some skills you’ve likely been ignoring:

Writing like HL Mencken
It’s great if you have a brilliant idea for the world’s most compelling game mechanic. If you can’t communicate it in writing, you might as well go home. The majority of what a game designer does day to day is write stuff down. Emails, design documents, etc. I might be a bit biased, but I think the best practice you could get is some journalism training – it teaches you to communicate specific information clearly, directly and under pressure.

Interface design worthy of Steve Jobs
Oh, did you want someone to actually play your game? Well, until we perfect neural interfaces, they’re probably going to need an old fashioned graphical user interface. No less than Miyamoto – the game designer, not the swordsman – starts a game design by spelling out the user controls. Designing your own website and information hierarchy provides a quick education in this area.

The people skills of Bill Clinton
Are you sullen and withdrawn? Do you talk over people? Intrude on their personal space? React to criticism with personal attacks? Say bitingly sarcastic things in a forum other than your personal website? Well , stop it – you’re annoying everyone. Game development is largely a team sport and it helps if you can get along with a variety of people. Learn how to put people at ease, make them laugh and feel heard. Your best training here is probably growing up in a big family – or failing that, go convince someone to marry you.

Presenting like PT Barnum
Can you stand in front of a group of people and pitch a game idea? Well, you’d better learn how because that’s what it is going to take. Written design documents provide a blueprint – but you’re going to need to sell ideas in person. If you’re reduced to a stammering, sweaty mess when speaking in a group, then the most significant career investment you’ll ever make is to take a Dale Carnegie course, joining Toastmasters or getting a part time job as a used car salesmen.

Success in video game design is about more than just being able to come up with a game. And it’s the skills most designers ignore which actually prove to be the most valuable in the long term.

- Sean Dugan can put you into a sweet game previously owned by a little old lady who only drove it to Church on Sunday.

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7 Principles of Good Video Game Design

2010-06-07T14:26:00.075+01:00

As the Apple faithful descend on WWDC, we ask what can Steve Jobs teach a game developer about good video game design?

If "child"-proof bottle tops, blinking VCR clocks and Apple's iPad teaches us anything, its that good design makes a difference. But as game designers, we often struggle to define "good design". Design in the vocabulary of the games industry spans everything from the video game narrative to character visualization to the game combat mechanics to the statistical curve of the level progression. So how do you come up with meaningful criteria for separating the good from the bad? Is there an objective way to evaluate design? Or is good design purely in the eye of the beholder?

To define good design isn't just an academic exercise either. As a manager, we struggle to give direction and feedback to young game designers. So what principles can we offer to designers and metrics that we can judge their work against?

Simplicity
Complexity is generally the enemy of good design. The classic mistake of young game designers is, when in doubt, add more. More features, more gizmos, more stats. The goal of a game designer should be to strip a design down to its absolute bare minimum set of features - that still achieve the goal.

Clarity
Truly great design requires the designer to know the purpose of their creation. What are you actually trying to achieve? And don't just say "fun". Ask yourself what kind of fun or engagement you want to achieve. What sort of reaction are you trying to get from your audience? There are hundreds of ways to represent a combat system in games from strategic to tactical to gut-level visceral - which are you trying to achieve?

Integrity
All rivers should feed into a single design ocean. The various pieces of a game design should feel a part of an integral whole and are supportive of that whole. This is especially important when talking about different sub-systems of a game - your crafting system and your combat system and trading system should all be bound together in a cohesive economy, for instance. When a system feels like it's just dangling off of the whole - cut it.

Utility
It helps if your game design is actually usable. Unwieldy and cumbersome are not the adjectives that describe a good game design. One of my pet peeves is that many game systems under-the-hood are so complicated, they might as well be random. Both results look the same to a user. I can remember working up a complicated, multi-layered conditional AI system for enemies - only to have the end result be creatures behaving like spastic morons. Reverting to a simple random dice roll on an abilities table worked a thousand times better.

Consistency
Rapidly switching between intense action gameplay and thoughtful strategy is probably not indicative of a compelling design. Truly great designs feel like they were authored by a single individual even if there was a large team behind it. You can see it in Apple products (You don't think Steve Jobs is down the lab putting all the pieces together himself, do you?) or in things like the art direction of a game like World of Warcraft.

Invisibility
Perhaps most importantly, good design rarely calls undue attention to itself. You'll see a lot of consumer products which are "designed" but in reality, they are just a little too cute for their own good (and often not able to serve their intended function). Not that all design always has to be subtle but usually, a good design doesn't seem like it has features simple for the sake of calling attention to itself. The first rule of good design is "do no harm".

Engagement
Finally, when in doubt - follow the Zyngas of the world and test the user metrics. While I believe there's value in feedback from users, I think it's primarily in pointing out where you go astray. It tells you where you lose your audience - but it can't really tell you how to capture their attention in the first place. That's where we as game designers must shine - by bringing our vision and showing users the way.

But the trick is always to stay humble enough to listen when you're about to swerve off the road.

- Sean Dugan is The Boss Monster’s founding editor and all-too-frequent contributor.

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Image by Javier Piragauta

5 Video Game Stories to Make You Smart - and 1 to Make You Dumb

2010-06-04T21:33:00.001+01:00

Here's Friday's run down of 5 video game news stories to make you smart - and one to make you dumb.

1. First it was Dungeons and Dragons Online, now Lord of the Rings Online has embraced the free-to-play model.

Why game developers should care: not long ago, monthly subscriptions were the only game in town for MMOs but with WOW continuing to crush the competitors, under-performing online games can be resuscitated with a shift in business models. Being online gives you a second time at bat (maybe).

2. Apple has sold 2 million iPads since its debut April - and some are predicting it will sell 10 million units by the end of 2010.

Why game developers care: by way of comparison, Microsoft shipped about 1.5M Xboxes in a similar time frame (but at a lower price point). In other words, iPad as a gaming platform is loco caliente.

3. In a move to "save" traditional media that are dying like newspapers, the FTC is circulating a proposal for a broad 5% tax on all consumer electronics.

Why game developers care: besides the obvious impact on things like video games, it really demonstrates how skilled traditional media is at playing the politics games - and how bad new media is at it.

4. Zynga bought Austin based casual games studio Challenge Games. Terms weren't disclosed but Challenge had recently closed $14.5M in financing from top tier VCs and an SEC filing suggests Zynga put down $20.5 million.

Why game developers should care: Zynga is moving into re-crafting itself into more than just Facebook's killer app - they want to be a gaming destination in their own right. They'll be moving up the gaming food chain soon enough - Popcap should watch its back.

5. EA is debuting their online pass system for used games - if you want to play online, you're going to have to pay $10.

Why game developers should care: the big publishers are trying to figure out how to get a piece of the used game market - the success or failure of this system will be a bellwether.

Finally, Japan is once again pulling ahead of the world in its ability to produce large scale Gundam and general awesomeness.

Why game developers should care: Umm. Giant freaking robots. Obviously.

- Sean Dugan is The Boss Monster’s founding editor and biggest advocate of giant robots.

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Starting a Game Company the Way for Developers to Survive?

2010-06-02T19:28:00.001+01:00

Are game designers an endangered species? Is the new breed of game developer the "Game Entrepreneur-nus Rex"?

Game development is in upheaval. It's being shaken by the seismic forces of online and mobile gaming rising up from the bottom while the imminent deep impact of crushing AAA mega-title development costs comes streaking out of the sky. The products that are relevant to the market are changing with the mid-range titles eking out an existence in a precarious niche.

Nobody really knows how many game developers there are worldwide. Partly because it's hard to pin down exactly what you mean when you say "game". Modern Warfare to Farmville, PocketGod to World of Warcraft, there's a vast range of console, PC, online, handheld, web and mobile products. The IGDA has about 14,000 paying members. Electronic Arts, Activision-Blizzard and Ubisoft have over 20,000 employees at last count. In July 2009, there were about 16,000 games on the iPhone. In June of 2010, 9 of the top 10 iPhone apps are games. Who knows how many Facebook and other social media games are out there? We do know they're attracting millions of users, millions in revenue and billions in company valuations.

And traditional game company studios are getting savaged by spiraling development costs, a changing marketplace and the forces of online. It's harder and harder for a mid-sized studio to survive. Sure, you might end up working for the giants, but even the big guys are focusing more on fewer but bigger hits. A game needs to either be a big vicious T-Rex or a nimble little critter that can thrive in the bustling ecosystem of web, mobile, handheld and social games.

Full-time, stable employment as previous generations understood it is becoming rarer in the American workforce. But this might not be such bad news for game developers who have an entrepreneurial spirit. I've had interns who published games to the iPhone. While the Zyngas are rare, there is definitely room for micro-studios to become self-sufficient and profitable. There may be a time in the not-too-distant future when "game developer" is all too commonly synonmous with being an entrepreneur, even if on a small scale. The idea of being an employee in the cozy environs of a game studio where "those business guys" worry about the niggling details like revenue and costs may become, if not a thing of the past, the exception rather than the rule. The game business might end up looking more like the model of the film world, where some work in large studios but a vast workforce labors as independent contributors or in tiny shops. In other words, responsible for their own fate.

And if game developers become entrepreneurs by default, they'll be selling products (as opposed to contracting services). That means suddenly they're going to face issues like costs of production, cashflow, company structures, taxes, marketing strategies, etc.

So is your typical game dev ready for that business savvy?

Well, it's really a question of the dinosaur mandate.

You either either evolve or you die.

- Sean Dugan is The Boss Monster’s founding editor and all-too-frequent contributor.

image by pmiaki

Game Developers: The Argument for Taming the Business Side

2010-05-31T15:54:00.004+01:00

Your typical game developer has mixed feelings about business types. In the way a mongoose feels about a cobra.

It's something in the DNA of most game developers. They're instinctively repelled by talk of Brooks Brothers, ties and addressable markets. Many game developers wear their ignorance of business issues as a badge of honor. To be a "suit" is a bad thing. But there's actually a pretty good case for every dyed-in-the-world game developer to master the game of business.

You do actually work in a business.
At the end of the day, games are a commercial art. They need to make money if you want to put food on the table. No matter how cool the game you're making, if you can't answer the fundamental questions of business - who is this for and how are you going to get it to them? - then you're finished before you started.

You can get a promotion.
You can definitely rise in the ranks without much business sense. But if you want to get into the highest reaches, you need the business know-how. The key to the executive suit at most big companies requires a sound grounding in business issues.

You can start your own company.
If you have dreams of ever running your own video game company, better bone up on business. It's pure fantasy to believe that you can run a game company with just a keen game idea and a hopeful attitude. Or, to put it more bluntly, it's a recipe for at best having your dreams shattered and at worst, becoming the "Prison Buddy" of someone more business savvy than you.

You learn the language and it starts to make sense.
Or more sense. Really, discussing ROI and CCR with CPAs is no more annoying than talking TCPIP and SQL with DBAs - it's just a different set of jargon and vocabulary (ones that most game developers just aren't comfortable with). Granted, there's a fine line between jargon and gibberish. When your choice of words is meant to obfuscate rather than clarify, you've crossed over into Dilbert Land.

You discover suits aren't such soulless, money-grubbing ice weasels.
Or as much as you thought. And really, don't we all just want to get along?

But here's the caveat for game devs who learn business - it's important not to lose sight of your main purpose. To make an entertaining product. It's our job to give our customers the fun. And it's a fine line between understanding business and being completely and cynically driven by business. (I regard you Mark Pincus with a dubious and squinty eye)

So is a video game designer who understands business an unholy abomination that makes Sharktopus look like a sound piece of biology?

Maybe, but let's face it - in the world of business, you're swimming with sharks. And if you gotta swim with sharks - there are advantages to being the big fish:

- Sean Dugan would like to proactively touch base with an outside-the-box paradigm shifting solution vis-a-vis this game dev-suit challenge.

Image: Thorinside

5 Game Industry Stories to Make You Smart and 1 to Make You Dumb

2010-05-28T14:01:00.011+01:00

Here's your Friday recap of 5 stories to make you a smarter game developer - and 1 to make you dumber.

1. Red Dead Redemption looks to be a big hit for Take Two. They moved 250K copies on the 1st weekend in just the United Kingdom. This is a win for Rock Star and Take Two, for while the company has GTA, those do take a bit of time to develop. Wall Street likes it when a company makes a profit every year.

2. Microsoft re-orged it's entertainment division because its been a disaster. Apple and Google are way ahead with smart phones and tablets (which are proving highly lucrative gaming platforms). The Xbox was the only thing keeping the unit afloat (and that's after sinking billions into it).

3. And the question is whether Microsoft's investment was worth it. After a bungled PS3 launch, Xbox has been the dominant player in this generation of console. But now, some analysts are predicting that PS3 will catch up to the 360 install base within two years.

4. Lean times are predicted for the next couple of years in the game industry, followed by eventual growth. The big losers will be traditional publishers, as the money (and high margins) move to online and casual games.

5. Mass Effect has taken the first tentative steps towards becoming a film franchise. Don't hold your breath waiting for it to hit the metroplex but it highlights how big publishers like EA are looking to increase their revenue by aggressively licensing their IP to old media.

6. And finally, all-around good sport Jessica Chobot demonstrates what gamers really like (hint: it rhymes with "Loobies").

Project Natal Tells Game Developers the Xbox 360 is Broken

2010-05-27T18:34:00.014+01:00

In case you missed it, Project Natal (or Wave or whatever) is an huge admission that the next generation of video game consoles are FUBAR.

Departing Xbox Godfather Robbie Bach described Natal as a "midlife kicker for the 360". Now, if my math is correct, mid-life generally comes close to the halfway point of a life. With the Xbox 360 launching in Nov. of 2005, that means we can enjoy red-ringing for another four to five years. To put that in perspective, the entire life cycle of the original Xbox was five years.

Sure, Natal looks like fun - and a way to squeeze some more revenue juice out of a platform that has already had the money sunk into it. But there's also a cold, harsh reality behind the scenes - the economics of a new generation of console don't make sense for video game developers (with Xbox or Playstation).

It's already extremely difficult for an independent game studio to break even on a console title, much less make a profit. Moving 1.5 million units as a 3rd party game developer is a big "so what". And if the cost to produce a game goes up the way it did last generation, good luck making real money unless you're a top title (oh, and it take like $50M to even ante up for that game). A new console generation anytime soon would mean a bloody revolt among video game developers (and I'm not talking a Nintendo-style Revolution)

Unless DLC and other innovate ways to squeeze more cash out of gamers, er, I mean, gain incremental revenue from the retail price, independent game devs won't make enough money to keep the lights on.

As Sean Dugan sneaks up on mid-life, he eagerly awaits his personal kicker.

Image by Juan Pol via Creative Commons license

Back Again For More: Sequels in the Video Game Industry

2010-05-24T20:17:00.014+01:00

If your video game idea is so awesome, then why not double your fun and make it again?

One of the things you notice in the game industry is sequels. Lots and lots of sequels. A mountain of sequels. Holy crap, there's a lot of sequels.

This is not because game designers as breed can be a bit repetitive, sometimes unoriginal in their thinking and have a tendency to lock their jaws on to something with the tenacity of a demented bulldog.

No really.

It's because sequels build on the original games in a big way.

You may have noticed a few modest hits such as Halo, Call of Duty or Gears of War. The sales charts of such sequels have a lovely growth curve which warms the chilly hearts of the company CFO - and ensures that the devs have a place to go to work every morning.

It's an unfortunate reality that all too many studios have a hand-to-mouth existence. And it's a damn shame because if a game is worth funding in the first place, it's probably worth ponying up the cash to make the sequel right from the start.

Look, half of the work is simply getting started with a new title. Hammering out technology and pipeline and figuring out what makes your game actually fun - all that mundane stuff. Once the machine is up and running smoothly - or at least, no longer spewing out fire and smoke - that's when things start to get good. The team has gelled, the platform is stable and you're churning out your content. And, that's when you have to release.

Why not just keep going and make the sequel? (assuming you didn't leave a mountain of developers corpses in the wake of your release)

This is effectively what happens with online games - and it works. Optimizing a game on an existing platform is so much easier than building it in the first place. Even the ugliest of ducklings can grow up to be lovely, er, or somewhat less ungainly swans.

Really, we should just give up the fiction of "pre-production" (that time where you are supposed to figure out what game you are making) and just make your first release the pre-pro. For one thing, I've never a pre-pro that really accomplished what it was supposed to. And if you start with the "first game is pre-pro" mentality in mind, you can probably release a sequel to the market surprisingly fast. If the first one was a hit, you'll follow fast with more of the goodness. If it was a miss, you'll find out where you went wrong and do the necessary course correction.

The original Red Dead Revolver was a somewhat lackluster effort. But God love 'em, Rockstar wasn't going to let the idea die just because everybody seems to think the Western genre is a dead horse unworthy of a flogging. And by most accounts, Red Dead Redemption is going to be a success (time will tell how much).

The Lord of the Rings trilogy happened because they made all three at the same time. Why? Because you couldn't afford to build the sets, costumes and equipment, tear it all down and then come back and do it all over again for the sequel. It was an all-or-nothing bet. Same thing with the Matrix sequels (which, say what you will, did make a mountain of money).

And video games, if you use the same people and/or same technology, scale even better than a film. The cost to do two games is likely not [Cost x 2] but probably something more akin to [Cost x 1.5 or 1.75], if you plan things right.

Games with a somewhat underwhelming first release but build on the establishing technology and team expertise stand a much stronger chance in succeeding big time with release number two.

If you're going to play high stakes poker - why not bring enough money to make more than one bet?

- Sean Dugan is a developer who believes in doubling down, doubling your fun and double espressos.

Image by Alika Christian.

Dear Jesus, Won't You Fund My Video Game Start-up?

2010-04-07T22:47:00.017+01:00

First, let me thank you Jesus for hearing my video game company pitch.

It wasn't easy getting your Sand Hill Road address but I appreciate you making time for a meeting.

I figure, with you being the Lord and omniscient, you've probably heard about the whole real life as a video game design thing. The idea that we can use video game mechanics to make everything from buying toothpaste to filing your taxes to exercising a part of a big game design that you get points for.

Well, here's my pitch to you Jesus:

World of Churchcraft.

Here on my first powerpoint slide, we can see the addressable market and I think you'll agree between Jews, Christians, Muslims Buddhists, Zoroastrians, it's a darn big opportunity. But currently your market is fragmented. I mean, I don't think even a Presbyterian could tell you how they're different from an Episcopalian. And don't get me started on the whole Shiite-Sunni-Sufi thing. What I'm saying is that this is a market poised for disruption.

And that's where we come in with World of Churchcraft

Now, in this presentation, I'm focusing on the Catholics. But everything I'm talking about can be applied to other segments as well.

Now with Catholicism, let's face it - you've got an acquisition and retention problem with your product. And that's where better game mechanics can make all the difference.

Look at your Clergy class. It is seriously underpowered. You give up a lot of perqs other classes get for free and the talents don't make up for it. I mean, "transubstantiation"? Sure, it looks cool in the skill tree - but when you're raiding on a Satuday night, what does it get you? And it's way over-priced - you gotta plow a LOT of your skill points into it. You need a total re-spec. Sure, a lot of people will cry "nerf" - but they'll get over it. I got proposals for new prestige classes you can only unlock if you level up as a Priest or Nun. And we tailor to appeal to both a Western and Asian market. The Japanese are going to totally dig Robo-Nun.

Okay, I tell you're not totally sold on that one - but we've got a lot other game design ideas. We haven't even talked about achievements and unlockables. Help an old lady across the street, earn a badge. Help 10 old ladies, earn a better badge. Help Mother Teresa across the street (she's a very rare spawn), you earn an unlockable item of clothing that you can use to customize your avatar, er, I mean, yourself.

And on the flip side, if people get an experience point debt from committing sins - they'll complain and whine about it, but it's also going to be a serious disincentive for bad behavior.

Now, let's talk about your viral marketing. The Mormons and Scientologists have some great ideas we can build on. Get a convert and earn points towards going to Heaven or Xenu or whatever. But what we've got to do is let people brag a little. We publish a Leaderboard of who's getting into Heaven based on their current score and it's updated in realtime. That kind of competition is really addictive to gamers. But we want to make sure to break the Leaderboard into Leagues as well, so people can compete with their friends. I mean, you know there's no way you're ever going dislodge MasterPriest47 from the number 1 spot on the global leaderboard - but maybe you can beat your next door neighbor Stan. Every league represents it's own little Heaven - and the people that finish the game at the top of the leaderboard get the best place in their Blue Heaven. You finish in the 50th spot in your league, you're going to spend eternity polishing the Halo of number 1.

Now, speaking of your end game, the whole Afterlife thing. The problem here is that people can't see it when they're low level newbs. It's just too far off and so they drop out and stop playing. You got to minimize that churn. How do we get people to invest in the Afterlife? Simple - we have them start leveling their characters now. Believe me, if I've plowed a few hundred hours into leveling up Afterlife Sean, you can bet I won't want to lose that investment. And I tell you, if we put in a housing mechanism and maybe some customizable pets to maintain, you'll be amazed at the conversion rates we'll get.

So how do we monetize the whole thing? That's the easiest part - the Church had the idea ages ago. We bring back the indulgences. You want to get out of the sin you just committed? You gotta spend your Karma points to buy off the debt. We sell 100 Karma points for $19.95 or 500 for $89.95. If you want, we can try some differential pricing models for the packages - try 10 Karma points for two bucks to get people to try it out. We can let 'em use PayPal or go through Facebook (but that's 30 percent off the top for them - and that's a lot of sin wages, my friend)

Okay, so I'll leave the business plan with you - it's got all the numbers and projections. I don't want to sound too cocky but our valuation in five years should make a game company like Zynga look like, well, a bunch of video game designers who couldn't hack it on a Nintendo DS.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I gotta run - I have a meet with Sequoia, Kleiner-Perkins, Benchmark, Andreesson-Horowitz, etc. this afternoon. Now, I tell ya - talk about some guys that really think they can walk on water....

- Sean Dugan is a video game designer who really hopes he's not going to H-E-double-hockey sticks for this one....

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The Apocalyptic Future of a World Ruled by Game Design

2010-03-29T17:14:00.004+01:00

Many game designers feel the Sith Overlords have made them an offer to join the Dark Side.

The hot topic de jour in game design is the notion that game-like mechanisms will become pervasive in the real world. Level up your Microsoft Office skills and unlock an achievement for filing your taxes early. The utopian view presents games as a way to change the world for the better ("better carpool today if I'm going to earn that Al Gore Green Citizen badge...")

But such blatent manipulation, er, incentivizing rubs some game designers the wrong way. They foresee a bleak apocalyptic future where people are ruthlessly manipulated through insidious game mechanics. All the tricks used by Zynga, er, I mean game companies that excel at utilizing psychological incentives will be harnessed to nefarious ends such as getting you to purchase Brand X over Brand Y because it unlocks an achievement (since appealing to vanity, pride, greed and lust has clearly proven ineffective in influencing consumers). The prospect of such manipulation leaves some designers feeling a bit queasy.

But let's be clear about one thing - the job of a game designer is to manipulate. We impose our will upon players. The rules we construct for our games manipulate the behavior of our players and define the bounds of their world. Chess is a simulation of the tactics of war - but while it might quite effective, approved strategies for victory do not generally include shooting your opponent dead (even though you could consider it a valid choice in the context of the warfare model). As designers, we impose our will on the players of our games and such God-like powers are a very heady brew (even in these mini-universes).

If we're going to get up in arms about the dark power of psychological manipulation, we really should be honest with ourselves. Yes, there's evidence of unpleasant qualities to many of the mechanisms used in social games and MMOs. But those game designers who have a moral objection to incentivizing product purchase decisions seem to ignore that we also give rewards for beating up hookers, shooting dark skinned people and murdering every living thing that moves up to and including any and all handy deities (and there is evidence of a cost to all this as well).

The thing is, these psychological techniques already exist in Frequent Flyer programs, credit card rebates, grocery reward programs and school grading programs. They are just pathetically designed. A gold star in the classroom is an X-box achievement by another name. And the grocery rewards program that revamps itself to look more like Farmville meets Pokemon will change that industry.

But what people fail to ultimately take into account is that we are in a relationship with our customer - and they have all the power. "Fun" is one of the most important and yet least necessary elements of life. When something is no longer "fun" (however you might define that) your customers are completely free to just walk away. I may be dying to see the next episode of "Lost" - except that it is pretty much guaranteed I won't actually die if I forget to program my Tivo.

The ultimate implication for designers is simple. Yes, we will see lots of game-like mechanisms enter into our every day lives. This will lead to a legitimacy and respect in the profession it doesn't currently enjoy. Game design will become relevant to life at large by providing something more than simple entertainment.

But with that respect will come responsibility and scrutiny. Manipulating a customer too much or pushing a player too far will lead us to being equated with used car salesmen and late night infomercial hawkers. But more importantly, it will lead to your customers abandoning you. Exploiting your customers is never a sound business strategy.

Game design is a powerful art - so use your powers wisely, young padawan.

- Sean Dugan is a game designer who will consider the Dark Side only if he gets a purple light saber.

Image copyright: Lucasfilm Ltd.

Scary Risk in Game Development

2010-03-23T22:43:00.006Z

There are two kinds of risk in life and game development: Rational Risk and Scary Risk.

Rational Risk is where you can measure the likelihood of disaster and reasonably predict a successful outcome. To be sure, there is genuine danger but you can rationally consider the risk versus the rewards. Race car driving, sky diving and marriage would fall into this category. But then there's risk where you can barely begin to calculate the dangers involved - or if you can, the numbers or potential upside don't add up. Included in this category are liposuction at unlicensed border town clinics, throwing your drink in Mike Tyson's face and and unprotected sex with Courtney Love. These are what you would call Scary Risks.

And beware the game project with Scary Risk.

With a lot of game projects, young designers tend to want to invent entirely new game systems from scratch. Why propose a tried and true approach when you can brainstorm an idea that's never been done before? The wheel is boring and has been done to death - why not be innovative and try the hexagoneel? The thing is, there's often a reason a radically innovative solution hasn't been done before. Or, more likely, it has been done before much to the chagrin of those that tried it. Trying something new is inherently riskier than doing something that has been proven to work in the past. And the more risks you take, the more likely you're doing to run into catastrophic ruin, the kind of disaster you don't recover from well.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have business-minded executives. They are typically risk-averse in a way that verges on hypochondria. It's the reason you see sequels in movies, books and games or new games that are adaptations of properties from other media - you lower your risk by working with existing properties (or at least, that's the theory). It's reason you get mantras like "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM...or Microsoft...or Oracle...or whatever". Don't develop an engine when you can license Unreal. Don't invest in infrastructure when you can utilize the cloud. Don't create your own technology when you can engage a middleware vendor. But the problem with that approach is that it's extremely difficult to stand out from the crowd and score a true home run in the market when you are just another commodity, exactly the same as everybody else.

So the between the eternal tension of product development safety and potential disaster lies the danger zone we call risk. Learning to measure and live with an appropriate amount of risk is crucial to success in the game industry. Risk is like jalapeños - the right amount gives life spice, too much brings tears. So it's good to be able to intelligently map out your risks.

Remember that old adage "fast, cheap or good - you can choose two"? Well, with risk there are three types on a game project: content, technology or organization.

Content risk in games represents your game itself and its systems. This includes things like the IP, as well as the game systems. If you've got an innovative and experimental new game system idea, it's probably best to try it in context of an existing franchise (though there's no guarantee there). Proposing a new IP isn't quite so risky if you have a track record of a delivering games with solid technology which is why Bioware is now in a position to role out games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age after building a reputation on Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons. Or, if you're Blizzard, you can significantly reduce your risk by avoiding out-and-out innovation in favor of nuanced iteration and refinement.

Technology is all that magical code that exists under the hood and makes the games go - and it's an area that can frighteningly risky. Developers find platforms like the iPhone or the Wii appealing because they aren't very risky from a technology standpoint. Being the first generation of games on a new console - that's a recipe for pain while producing a title three years into the life cycle is safe as kittens. Technology risk is also one of the reasons you so many MMOs crash and burn. A client plus a server plus a network layer plus a honking database and a billing and CS backend - well, that my friend is a lot of different points where your risks can bite you on the, er, backend.

Finally, organization is a combination of the personnel, their experience working together as a team, as well as the processes they use as a team. Again, if you want to moderate risk on a project, go with a proven team. Take the guys who made Medal of Honor a hit and fund them to create a new promising war-themed franchise (but here's a hint - don't alienate them, since odds are they'll just go form yet another studio and create another franchise).

If you're smart, you'll look to balance risks - take a risk in one area while playing it safe in another. You can risk a new game feature if you've got a solid team. Push the technology envelope but do it with an established game genre and feature set.

So what about that start-up made up of people who've never worked together but are developing radical new technologies to deliver a unique gaming experience no one has ever had before?

Well, if by some miracle they succeed, there's a good chance you'll all be zillionaires. But in the meantime, you might want to stock up on crash helmets and anti-depressants.

- Sean Dugan learned long ago to wear protective gear when attending certain development meetings.

Photo by Shayan via Creative Commons License

The social gaming gold rush - and why you missed it

2010-03-18T07:46:00.001Z

Opportunity is timing. Right now, many game designers see social gaming as the opportunity of their lifetime (or at least, this generation of computer gaming). But for most, the window of opportunity to score big in social gaming has already closed.

Most American's don't like to hear that a good deal of success is based on luck. It's ingrained in our culture and mythology that through hard work, anyone can achieve greatness. And one of the amazing things about America is that people can actually achieve greatness based on innate talent and hard work. But to deny that good old fashioned chance doesn't play a role is simply naive. Put it this way - where would Apple be if Steve Jobs had had the misfortune of being hit by a bus when crossing El Camino Real in Cupertino one day? Would we have the Beatles if Lennon and McCartney hadn't met at a Quarrymen concert? A random turn of events can be the difference between greatness and obscurity.

Right now, the gaming world is abuzz about social gaming. Or, more specifically, the business savvy types are frothing with excitement about companies like Zynga and Playfish which are getting multi-million and billion dollar valuations. And while many game developers view offerings such as Farmville or Pet Society as a slightly less entertaining game than Microsoft Excel, a host of developers are jumping ship from traditional gaming giants to take up residence at the new hot thing.

Now, headlong gold rushes to California are nothing new. Perhaps I'm bit jaded as I witnessed first hand the boom years of the dot-coms and saw friends and colleagues become millionaires literally overnight - while others poured their lives and health into startups that were destined to be punch lines in business books. But its almost a law of nature that by the time you see the big rush - most of the gold has already been mined. Anyone expecting to be the next Zynga is in for a big disappointment. The opportunity has already past - and guess what, Zynga is already the next Zynga.

Zynga benefited from a unique set of conditions which aren't likely to repeat themselves. Their success was built on the back of Facebook and its explosive growth. Facebook provided an opportunity to reach an audience with almost no cost - and then continuously build on that audience through viral mechanisms. Whether you consider the mechanisms employed spam or not, their success in bootstrapping Zynga is undeniable. But the folks at Facebook aren't exactly morons. They recognized that they were becoming a platform for games and were risking losing control of their platform. So they changed the rules.

The early days of Facebook games were the Wild West. Lawlessness and obnoxious spamming was the rule of the day. But life on the frontier always settles down eventually. Inevitably, a sheriff moves in and tames the more bothersome troublemakers. While the West has hardly been won, we've seen a big shift from roaring 49ers boom town to a more stable frontier town. Growth is still impressive - but we are quite simply not going to see another Zynga because the tools that Zynga used to grow it's business at such a phenomenal rate are no longer available. The world has changed and moved on.

Furthermore, Zynga has grabbed some of the best land. They have build an audience of such density, they can bootstrap a new game into millions of daily unique visitors simply by virtue of referencing the new game from their existing games. It's a crucial bit of leverage that you don't get until your audience is in the millions.

To be sure, there are still more success stories to come in social gaming. A game designer making the leap to one of these companies can definitely enjoy success and some even argue that we have yet to see our killer app or defining game in the space. But the social gaming industry has already established its 800 pound gorilla, as well as the 400 orangutan, 200 pound chimpanzee and even 98 pound lemur. New successes in social gaming are going to be about carving out a niche in the context of the existing players - or finding a new unexploited frontier.

For that's the real trick. Having the insight, timing - and just plain luck - to recognize when a golden opportunity is knocking. Game designers with dreams of social gaming gold should probably temper their expectations - and be on the lookout for the next phenomenon. And don't worry, if history is any indication, it should arrive in the next decade - so better sharpen those skills now.

- Sean Dugan is a game designer with aspirations to middle-weight baboon status.

Image from Mykl Roventine via Creative Commons

The Future of Video Game Design

2010-03-13T02:35:00.003Z

Video game designers have an almost pathological distaste for "suits", those nefarious types which worry about the nasty details of how to run a business and how to make money. But the role of game designer is changing - and designers better get comfortable with Armani and Brooks Brothers.

For those of you who haven't been paying attention, the game industry is in a seismic shift. Now, there's a tendency to say that every few years. But believe it or not, this time it's for realsies. Promise.

It's because of a confluence of factors. For one thing, the console business as it used to be is done, finished, finito. The economics of developing for a console platform are rapidly becoming untenable. Game budgets roughly tripled since the last generation of hardware. And believe me, the install base of users did not match pace. There simply will not be a next generation of consoles unless somebody figures out how to make money on them.

Which is where online comes into play. DLC and virtual goods and all that cool stuff that the interwebs makes possible. It all boils down to making incremental revenue by pushing digital content.

The rise of social gaming also plays into this mess. Quite simply, "gaming" is shifting into the mainstream. And guess what, its not going to be pretty for a lot of people. In a very basic way, gaming has been a rarified field. It's been a small segment of the population making games for themselves. All you have to do is consider the difference in reach between getting 15 million people to play Modern Warfare 2 - and getting 80 million to play Farmville every month.

But there's a downside to the world of the mainstream. Besides the fact that many designers are not looking forward to crafting games for Mr. and Mrs Middle America, it is fundamentally more challenging to make a viable business of it. It's not that money can't be made - simply that its far more complicated. It used to be you just made a game and sold a number of copies of it. X units times Y price equals Money. Now, there's numerous overlapping revenue sources from virtual goods to ads to referrals to upsells.

So whether you are trying to keep your console and PC business alive or venturing into the bold world of mainstream social gaming, your business is extraordinarily sensitive to manipulation through the game mechanics.

To put it another way, game design will be the difference between a viable business and moving back into Mom and Dad's basement.

Game designers are going to be driving the video game business. It will be through design decisions that new business opportunities will be created and exploited. The measurement of success for a game designer will be coldly objective and often brutal. Ubiquitous online connectivity means all designs will be mercilessly vetted. If your customers like the new digital widget you're pushing or find they can't help but come back every day to play your game, you will succeed. But if you fail to connect with your customer....

Game designers will need not only mastery of DPS balancing and leveling curves but also revenue models and ARPU and cost to acquire users. Game design is going to be a bold world that combines game mechanic theory, human psychology and business savvy.

The game designer of future will look in the mirror - and find someone in a suit starting back at them.

- Sean Dugan is a designer who figures if you have to wear a suit, it might as well be a tuxedo.

Leveling Up as a Video Game Designer, Part III

2010-03-09T16:41:00.003Z

Here we come to the conclusion of our video game designer odyssey and discover what exactly separates the wee tadpoles from the mighty bullfrogs.

The Lead Designer
Or, now it's your job to make people panic

Whether you're called a lead, supervisor, manager or some other title, the role takes a big step into a vast new realm - the world of management. What people often don't realize is what exactly management actually entails.

Management is the capability to have uncomfortable conversations.

Managers make demands of their people. Managers ask people to do hard things and accomplish challenging tasks. Managers tell people when they are not doing a good job. Managers direct people back onto the path when they go astray. Managers probe to discover problems. Manager cut to the heart of conflicts. Managers seek ways to keep their people from growing stale.

In other words, it's a manager's job to put themselves directly into uncomfortable situations and in many ways, to prevent the status quo from creeping in to the workplace. Unless of course, the status quo for your organization is that everything works perfectly, everyone gets along splendidly and everybody is performing at the optimal level. If so, congratulations to you - life at Gumdrop Studioes on Lollipop Lane in Happy Land sure sounds swell.

But unfortunately, the rest of live in a slightly different realm. Besides all their functional design skills, the Lead has the ability to manage a team. They can guide and nudge the work of other Designers without being intrusive and meddlesome, as well as handling the issues that come with personnel management.

The Lead has developed the ability to work with a wide variety of people and personalities from a variety of levels within the organization. No longer are "the suits" simply the enemy. Or, well, at least the Lead has learned to carefully hold close to their vest their feelings. They can interact effectively with a first day intern as well as not becoming a tongue-tied stuttering mess when encountering the company CEO. They can communicate effectively to groups in a variety of situations and formats including the dreaded all company Powerpoint presentation.

When you boil it down, a Lead takes responsibility. They are invested in finding a way for the team to succeed on both a personal and professional level. They actively look for thorny project issues and find ways to resolve them. The Lead identifies the needed work across a project and matches it up with appropriate team members (including themselves).

Creative Director
Or, welcome to your sales career.

Many people have what I consider a very mistaken notion about what it is to be a Creative Director. They think being a CD means you finally have all that power you've always dreamed of. You have been crowned the Mighty Design King. Finally, you can sit up in your Tower and tell everybody what to do - dropping those creative missives on the puny underlings below (or dousing them with flaming oil if they grumble too much).

In my experience, being a Creative Director means almost the exact opposite. Sure, you do have genuine power and influence - but often, your influence is as much based on personal skills as title responsibility. In many ways, being the CD means suddenly, you have so many more people to convince and constantly sell on your vision.

You can bark orders are underlings - but that won't make them believe. And it certainly won't get them to embrace your idea and run with it as if it were their own. You can throw your weight around, but often times that comes back to haunt you. And when you are the Big Boss, one of the hardest things to do is influence a project in a way that empowers a team and never makes them feel demoralized or inadequate. The very best Creative Directors have an uncanny knack for getting a team enthused about an idea...which just so happens to be the CD's.

CD's have a comprehensive vision for a product and a variety of tools at their disposal to communicate that vision to the team. They understand the competitive landscape for a product and can effectively position a new idea within that context. They have a keen sense of what the layperson simply calls ‘fun’. They can Lead other Leaders and give effective guidance to highly experienced professionals.

They have the skills to entertain, educate and charm large and small groups, as well as individuals. They can sell a vision for a product to a design team as well as people with no design background. They are comfortable interacted with managers and executives across a variety of disciplines. They have the ability to draw the best work out of talented people, inspiring and challenging as needed.

They can get people excited and interested in a game that exists only in their mind and find a way to get a team to make that idea their own. The Creative Director is patient zero for the viral idea that is a new game. And it's the job of a good CD to infect everyone around them with their enthusiasm.

- Sean Dugan is a designer who wants to know what its going to take to get you to drive off the lot with this fantastic new game idea....

Leveling Up as a Video Game Designer, Part II

2010-03-02T22:59:00.003Z

Here's Part II in this series examining the qualities of what makes for different seniority levels of video game designers.

The Designer
Or, the time to panic is over.

Young designers seem to be in a constant state of panic. It's all a bit exhausting for their managers. Youthful enthusiasm is greatly valued - but it often translates into making everything into a big crisis. Think of your college dorm and you know what I'm talking about. If a first playable version of a game is a creaky mess, it's a disaster. A pipeline that isn't running smoothly is a cataclysm. If players are getting lost in a level, it's a catastrophe. And if we have to go back and re-factor some work, my God was that the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse I saw in the break room? It must be the End of Days.

Basically, young designers have a tendency to be drama queens.

So, if you're a young designer, you probably resent what I just said and are about to go sulk about it. If you're a senior designer, you're probably smiling and laughing at yourself for how you used to go sulk in corners over these kinds of things.

And if you're on the cusp of leaving being junior behind, you probably bristled for a second there - and then let it go.

For the Designer has started to let go of their emotional over-reactions. They have enough experience in taking a design from an idea into reality to realize that birthing can be a messy process. They have seen the difference between paper ideas and practical implementation. They have a marked tendency to no over-react - or at least, not as often. They are able to express their view on a design question and support their position effectively in groups and one-on-one. They have demonstrated the ability to think clearly about a design and communicate their insight to their fellows. Finally, by this time, the Designer has developed aptitude and expertise in one of the primary disciplines (Systems, Content or Level).

The Designer works effectively as part of a team. They are comfortable in a professional environment, understanding their work is part of a larger context on the project. They participate effectively in design meetings, accepting critique and offering insight and suggestions. They've graduated from being the fly-on-the-wall or note-taker to being a participant. Maybe even leading a discussion on occasion.

The Designer is eager to demonstrate their ideas. They are looking to make their mark on a facet of a project. They are taking the initiative to present their work, advocating their design ideas. They are able to effectively pitch a design idea to more Senior Designers whether it’s in a hallway conversation or an email. The Designer is able to take minor setbacks and put them in their proper context. A Designer takes on assigned work and looks for ways to improve it or create more value from the assignment.

The primary theme for the Designer is that they have become comfortable in their role as a professional working with other professionals in a business organization.

The Senior Designer
Or, now is the time to get jaded.

This is a paradox I've found with Senior Designers - the good ones don't care as much.

Ponder that zen koan, oh young padawan.

Am I saying a good designer doesn't care? Far from it. I'm saying that younger designers have a tendency to invest everything into their work. And often, that isn't a good thing. Passion is admirable quality but it's also one that doesn't lend itself to objectivity. And it's vital for a Senior Designer to see problems clearly.

A Senior Designer has developed a level of dispassionate professionalism. They still care and strive to do their best work - but their entire being isn't riding on the next design and their worth as a human being isn't devastated by a misstep at work. And its because of this professional detachment that they can achieve their best work. It's sort of the Samurai ethos - complete commitment but detachment from the outcome. It's a state of paradox but then that's why Seniors get those big bucks.

This flies in the face of the image of Artist as tortured soul and fiery, temperamental creator. Well, besides being hard on the furniture, that kind of passion doesn't really allow for creative growth. Whatever their personal foibles, you can bet that Picasso and Hemingway and Van Gogh all had the capacity to evaluate their art with dispassion in order to make it better. And that's the same thing you want in a Senior Designer.

A Senior has a range of experiences across different design areas. They have first hand experience with system, content and level design and they’ve developed at least one of these areas to a high degree. They’ve probably developed some additional expertise – scripting/programming, art skills, writing, etc.

A good Senior keeps their cool under fire. They've gone through the development equivalent of storming Omaha Beach and raising the flag at Iwo Jima. They’ve experienced the beginning, middle and end of a project development cycle. They have personal experiences which act as points of reference for guiding future decisions while they are still able to adapt to new circumstances. Because of their combination of expertise in design and practical experience, a Senior has impeccable judgment on a project and can be significantly self-directing (something your Lead will really appreciate).

One of the most valuable traits for a Senior is the ability to work with younger Designer and mentor them. Their professional detachment allows them to effectively critique work and handle the ups-and-downs that come with passionate young designers. The Senior backs up their Lead and helps manage a project day-to-day just by being there. They have sound judgment and can be trusted with significant delegation of responsibility. They are also able to work outside the design department interacting extensively with other functional areas as well as being able to Lead cross-department ‘strike team’ style efforts. A Senior is able to identify areas in need of work and take on those assignments.

A Senior understands they are helping to set the tone for a project. When faced with uncertainty and questions, they seek answers. They offer instruction and feedback rather than criticism. Rather than being focused on problems, they are looking for solutions. Their attitude, especially in the face of adversity, helps steady the nerves of less experienced team members. When people get ready to panic, the Senior helps everybody take a breath.

The theme for a Senior is that they are a steadying influence on a project - where they go, there are less waves. A good Senior is like the eye of whirlwind - powerful but calm, all at the same time.

In Part III of this series, we'll discuss the role of Lead Designer and Creative Director. And in Part I we discussed being a Junior.

- Sean Dugan feels designers should be issued their towels at the start of development.

Image by Jim Linwood via Creative Commons License

Leveling Up as a Video Game Designer, Part I

2010-02-25T21:07:00.005Z

Even if you don’t have ruthless Gordon Gecko-esque ambition, you probably want to get ahead in your game designer job – or at least get a pay raise.

But if you want to get ahead as a video game designer, you need to understand the expectation for a professional at different levels. A wise man once said, fake it until you make it. But you can’t fake it until you know what “it” actually is. Part I of this series explores the expectations around different seniority levels for a video game designer.

A useful book I’ve found that influenced some of my thinking is How to Lead. It’s a terribly, terribly British book but I’ve found it to be a worthy read and full of pragmatic career advice.

So when I think about the qualities that make up a professional video game designer, I basically boil it down to three general headings:

Professional Skills
This covers the necessary skills to actually do the job. If you’re a game designer, it’s how to design games. If you’re an artist, it’s how to illustrate and model. If you’re a software engineer, it’s how to code. If you’re a producer – it’s how to book meetings that keep the people above from doing their work (and yes – I have been a producer)

People Skills
This combines the ability to communicate, act like a team member, play nice with others and all those other skills that they were supposed to teach you in Kindergarten (but are often shockingly absent in adults)

Attitude
This represents a mindset and outlook. It is how you carry yourself in your job. Your demeanor is often one of the most overlooked – but vital – career assets. Quite simply, people will follow someone who has the attitude of a leader.

So what does all this mean for the different levels of video game designer?

The Junior Designer
Or, you are no longer a game player.

Every game designer starts out as a game player. But they make a critical leap – from being the audience to being the creator. The game is a lot different in the bleachers than it is on the playing field.

A junior game designer is able to think critically about design and understand the difference between being a game consumer and a game creator. Many things a player thinks they want for a game, they actually would hate if they had to play it. (perma-death is a recurring theme in this area, as well as shared worlds where everyone can make a profound impact on the world). Junior designers have the ability to pull apart and dissect a game design, understanding that certain design decisions were made for a reason and what kind of results those decisions might produce. They demonstrate an appreciation for the aesthetics of game design, which are the factors that go into a good design as opposed to a bad design. They may not always be able to make those calls yet – but they can typically recognize them after the fact.

The junior designer demonstrates appropriate behavior for a team environment and professional setting. They understand that they have entered the professional game industry and this is a business setting. Frequently, a first job in the game industry is a dream come true for a young game designer – it’s sort of like when a teenager get out from under Mom and Dad’s thumb and goes off to university. But while it’s often easy to mistake the casual environment of a video game company for a college dormitory – there are some definite differences. Showering at least semi-frequently is mandatory and please leave the “No Fat Chicks” t-shirts at home.

Finally, the most important things a junior game designer can demonstrate is an open mind, a flexible attitude and a willingness to take direction and learn. They understand their role is to become educated and grow on a design team. Often this means, a junior goes the dog work. But this isn’t a punishment – this is work that needs doing and believe me, you’ll understand a lot about how items in games work after you’ve had to do the data entry work for a few hundred.

Basically, a junior game designer takes on well-defined assignments with enthusiasm and an interest in doing the best work they can.

In part II, I’ll explore what makes a full Designer and a Senior Designer. And in part III, we talk about the rarified heights of being a Lead Designer and Creative Director.

- Sean Dugan is a video game designer who dimly remembers a time when "junior" was applied to him.

Image by Frank Black Noir via Creative Commons

Before You Work for a Start-up Game Company, Part II

2010-02-19T20:04:00.010Z

So, you're about to take the plunge and work for a start-up video game company?

You've been asking the right questions - you know the executives are sharp (or at least didn't manage a hedge fund previously) and the team that's assembled looks like they can ship a product. What else do you need to ask before you take the plunge and jump on board the start-up?

Who doesn't work there?

Almost as important as who works there is who doesn’t work there anyway. If you can, you’ll want to check the people who have left a company. Check your network specifically for those who have left the company. Often, it’s more telling than who is still at the company.

That’s not to say a few departures are a disaster – in fact, its probably a good sign. It takes a while for a start-up to work out the kinks and get its culture to gel. Those that don’t quite fit in, right or wrong, end up leaving. Start-ups are inherently volatile, so a bit of churn is to be expected. That’s often a painful process but it’s not necessarily a bad sign for the company’s future. The question when considering departures is one of scale. Unless you are living in Egypt under a Pharoh, mass exoduses are generally not a positive sign. If people are leaving in droves, it’s in your interest to find out why.

What about the money?

Finally, you need to understand the company's bottom line. How much money has the company raised? Is this money that's actually in the bank or is it just promised? Where did the money come from and how likely are you to get any more? You need to consider the company’s ambitions in comparison to its means. As a wise philosopher once said, don’t let your mouth write a check that your butt can’t cash. If the company is trying to make a Halo-killer, do they have $25 million available to them?

Scratch the surface and all too often, "we've raised $25 million" actually means the company has a half million in Angel investment seed money and a 'cross my heart and hope to die' promise for the rest – spread out over the next three years. Maybe, if everything goes well and economy doesn’t tank and I don’t come across a better investment. The thing about promises - until the money is actually in the bank, they're worth exactly what you think they are.

Even if there's a big check in the bank, you want to know if that's all the money. How much of the promised $25 million is in the bank today? When does the rest come? Typically, investments are divided into tranches (or slices) that are awarded at certain times. And there's usually a few strings attached to getting each new payment. If you want to be a real boy, Pinocchio, better understand how to get free of your strings.

You also need to know how much money has been spent. Ask what the company's current burn rate is - that gives you a timeline until disaster or the necessary next round of funding. This is the lifespan of the company – and you need to know if it’s a fruit fly or a sea turtle.

And speaking of new funding - can you get more money? Every company needs rainmakers. Can you get more money from the publishers or VCs or whoever? Or will you all be asked Aunt Violet to put up her IRA to keep the company afloat? With your rainmakers, there's also a fine art to identifying which ones are the real deal and which are hot air. The best advice there - ask around and find out what deals they actually closed. Again, money in the bank is the only thing that matters at the end of the day.

All this advice comes with a huge caveat. Almost guaranteed, you’ll find something you don’t like with any start-up you would consider. The nature of start-ups is that they’re funky and imperfect. If you want low risk, go to work for...well, frankly, another industry. Video game development is volatile and start-ups are doubly so.

Really, it’s the start-up that seems absolutely perfect and too-good-to-be-true that should be handled like an Ebola infected radioactive kitty litter box. I remember interviewing during the height of the dot-com boom with a company that was ‘perfect’ – it had the founder pedigree, the VC funding, the splashy cover stories on all the right magazines. But something seemed amiss when everybody I interviewed with asked the same question - could I figure out how the company was supposed to make money? It struck me that the business should probably have some inkling already as to how to generate a bit of cash. Fast forward and you can guess that company’s eventual fate.

Working for a start-up can be the adventure of a lifetime. The excitement of working for a young, aggressive company that wants to change the world is undeniable. But if you want to keep your heart from getting broken, be sure to go in with your eyes wide open.

Image via Wikipedia Commons

Before You Work for a Start-up Game Company, Part I

2010-02-17T19:50:00.007Z

It's the opportunity of a lifetime, your chance to be the next big thing, to seize the brass ring.

You have a chance to work for a cool, new start-up game company. A year later, the company has missed four paychecks, you're working 80 hour weeks and the CEO has caught the redeye to Aruba.

Taking a new job at a new company is always a bit transition. Despite everything, there's inevitably a few surprises along the way. But when the new company you are working for is a start-up game company, the surprises can come fast and furious.

How do you keep your start-up game company dreams from becoming a nightmare? You have to approach this the same way a savvy investor would. Investors (that don't lose their shirts) require due diligence before putting up the money.

First, we'll define a start up as a company that doesn't have a revenue stream (or one steady enough to have any shot of keeping the company afloat). That means, whatever war chest the company has is steadily being drained until somebody figures out how to bring in some cash. Fundamentally, this means that you are on a countdown with a start-up - the only question is whether its a countdown to blast off or detonation.

If you are going to have any shot of being a part of one and not the other, there's some big questions to ask:

Who are the executives?
You know all those names on the website? The one's that have impressive C-level titles? You want to find out who these people are. Game developers often have an allergy to business and "suits" - but you need to understand who the suits in the corner office are. If you don't want to worry your pretty little head about the business, you better make sure damn sure the execs know the ins and outs.

Google their name and the name of their last company. Find out what happened to that company. Was it sold successfully? Did it go bankrupt? Was there an investor lawsuit? An SEC investigation? These are shockingly more plausible than you might realize.

Also, look at the business that they used to manage. If you're a World Wildlife Fund member, you might have some moral qualms of working for the former CEO of Seal Pelts, Inc. There are a lot of businesses that exist in a moral gray area for some people so you need to ask yourself if you can work with these people. How do you feel about tying your fate to an Enron or Goldman Saches executive? On a more basic level, how much game industry experience do they have? Much of business is universal - but a C-level exec who has never worked in a creative industry is almost certain to butt heads with those creative types during the production process.

Who is the team?
These are the line managers and co-workers, the people who are going to be your immediate boss and make the ship go. You want to know who they are. Ideally, you've already worked with them - and that's why you're even considering working for the company. Going blind into a start-up without any history with its peeps is a risky roll of the dice.

But even if you do know the team, you need to ask yourself the hard question - are these the people you want to be at a start-up with? We all know game developers who, frankly, fit in better in a big company than a lean and aggressive start-up. Picking a start-up team is a little like getting a roommate - that buddy from school who's great to hang out with on a Friday might not be the guy you want to share cleaning chores with on a Sunday.

And if you don't know the team first hand, find out. Figure out who you know in common - and ask them tough questions. You've got to find a source who will give you the straight scoop. And if you want my opinion, Linkedin recommendations are next to worthless. Yes, I have recommendations and I've recommended people. And the folks I've recommended are the people I genuinely believe in. But Linkedin is a game - people use social obligation to get softball recommendations. I've seen too many people who literally had dozens and dozens of recommendations who turned out to be incompetent. For me, too many recommendations is a warning sign as well as ones which have a certain bland, generic quality. If someone isn't motivated enough to write a stirring recommendation, it's probably not a real recommendation.

Also, you want to know what products they've shipped. The quality of those games is not the most important thing - there are far too many variables there - but you want to know that these people have been through the wars. Moby Games is a nice start - but its always incomplete. Credits are a dicey issue in this industry and someone's published credits doesn't always reflect their actual work experience. Again, the best source is someone you trust who worked on the project.

Check out Part II for more on Start-ups.

Image via Wikipedia Commons

Game Designers - Tiger Got Your IP by the Tail?

2010-02-15T17:41:00.003Z

Jump through the looking glass to a reality where a game franchise made a different decision. How is alternate reality Electronic Art's football juggernaut "OJ Simpson NFL 2010" doing?

This is the problem with having your Intellectual Property inextricably tied to a living person. People, upon occasion, do some rather unbelievable things.

Back in our reality, EA went with John Madden and thankfully for their marketing team, our garrulous gridiron guru seems to have no more damning foibles than a fondness for curly cheese fries and overly-enthusiastic onomatopoeias. The EA team never had to deal with the prospect of a multi-million dollar sports franchise suddenly finding itself in a potentially compromising position thanks to the actions of the celebrity face on the box.

Er, except of course, for that little Tiger Woods problem.

Not long after Tiger's fall from grace, the corporate sponsors started their mass exodus from Brand Tiger. Accenture, Tag Heuer and a host of other companies are either dropping Tiger or significantly downplaying their association with him. You can argue about the wisdom of this strategy given we live in the Post-Clinton Era (and that Tiger is for all intents and purposes, about 40% of the value of the PGA).

But what's really laughable is the specualtion that EA would drop Tiger Woods from their PGA Tour game. No consumer knows the game as 'PGA Tour'. When consumers are looking for the next version of that good game they played last year, they aren't looking for that PGA game or that EA Golf game - they're looking for Tiger. The game is Tiger Woods, period. Drop Tiger and you are starting over from zero with your franchise. You might as well try and create a Fuzzy Zoeller franchise from scratch. It is perhaps the height of irony that EA and Tiger Woods will likely weather the storm as they're pretty much bound together - for better or worse.

Sure, EA needs to do the due diligence to assess how much damage is done. They've polled their customers to see if sales will be impacted - that's just seeing where you stand. But realistically, it's just a question of damage control - not whether they are going to sever ties to Tiger. EA is not selling Xbox and PS3 games to corner office executives with a fondness for the links. They're selling to young(er) golf fans who have been attracted to the game, at least in part, because they found somebody they could identify with. EA quite simply built their golf franchise on the back of Tiger's appeal and they never tried to make the brand at all distinct from Tiger himself.

And of course, that's the problem.

When you're creating an IP, you might want to consider developing it in such a way that it's not totally dependent on one person. In the movies, you're very tightly bound to Bruce Willis and his particular style of character if you want to do a Die Hard movie but Batman can be re-cast a half-dozen times and still work. But it's pretty hard to imagine "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater" without the Hawk.

One of the particular strengths of game franchises and virtual characters is their longevity. Lara Croft never has to worry about facelifts, Mickey doesn't get DUIs and the Simpsons's progeny can stay in the 4th grade for twenty years.

Celebrity is a powerful marketing tool. It gives you instant access to a mass audience. It's the reason you see so many games using famous actors in voice role cameos. Put that guy from TV in your game and you can get a lot of press. Or at least, you put a name on the box that people recognize.

The difficulty is when you tie your game IP inextricably to that celebrity. Then you are bound to their fate. If they decide to start showing up in public without their underwear, you might have a problem marketing effectively to your pre-teen audience any more.

This is why, if you are going to use the power of celebrity in your marketing efforts, you might want to find a way to ensure your product can be independent of the celebrity. Even if your celebrity doesn't publicly self-destruct, if you have a successful franchise you're going to eventually find yourself held hostage during the next round of license negotiations. It's interesting that Tiger Woods, back in 2004, brought in Cedric the Entertainer as a character in the game. Now, it's doubtful that Cedric can do the same heavy lifting Tiger can - but the idea of integrating a variety of well-known celebrity golfers isn't such a crazy idea. Celebrity Golf Tournaments create a brand by bringing in celebrities - not any one specific celebrity.

When it comes to intellectual property, control is power. JK Rowlings controls her creation which gives her power. If you are going to do to the effort to create a massive game franchise, you'd be smart to get control over it. Creating a brand that's distinct from the celebrity endorser or building up ancillary characters (whether virtual or not) at least spreads your risk around a bit. Licensed properties and celebrity tie-ins can be a short-cut to success - but ultimately, you'll just be a passenger while someone else is in the driver's seat.

And then, when they're about to crash into a tree, all you can do is close your eyes and hope they swerve.

Image by Brooke Novak by Creative Commons License.

Why Your Game Idea is Just About Worthless

2010-02-11T21:46:00.006Z

Most game developers have a "yeah but" game. As in, "yeah we had this great idea but then this happened....".

And what follows is a series of disasters that caused brilliant ideas to go horribly awry. The culprits can range from broken pipelines and processes to flakey technology and tools to sheer outright incompetence by staff or management.

In the game industry, you hear a lot of cocktail party pitches for new video games. "I have a great idea for a game - it'll be about fighting plaque inside somebody's mouth" slurs the Dentist as he half-spills his Gin Gimlet on my shoes. You can debate the brilliance of any given idea - but I would argue that it's pointless since the value of ideas is just barely North of worthless.

This flies in the face of how most people like to think. The Big Idea is a celebrated cult - come up with a big enough idea and it's a game changed. But the cold hard reality is that a fair idea implemented well is worth more than a brilliant that never gets realized.

Ed Catmull, one of the brilliant founders of Pixar, has this to say about ideas: "If you give a good idea to a mediocre team they will screw it up; if you give a mediocre idea to a great team they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something that works." Given the creative track record of Pixar, this is man whose opinion you probably want to respect.

Game designers tend to be full of ideas. It sort of comes with the job description. Many of them are even good ideas. The problem is that ideas aren't nearly as valuable as we want to think.

Let's be clear - great ideas are in fact great ideas. They are to be cherished and sought after. When they are discovered, they are to be nutured and cared for. But the problem is that an idea is gossamer. It has no reality until someone makes it so. The idea of an umbrella won't keep you dry in the rain. And that's where things get sticky. Your idea is only going to be as good as your ability to implement.

And implementation is where so many game developers fall down. Pre-production is often a never-ending fountain of ideas and brainstorming. Sure, it's great fun - but so many of those ideas then get chucked when reality starts to set in. When you realize that your engineers don't like working with your designers. When you discover your tools are completely broken for creating your content. When it dawns on you that your team thinks of management as the enemy. When you do the math on the amount of time the publisher is going to give you to develop - and the sums come up woefully short.

A great idea can change everything - if the idea gets implemented in a way that does justice to it. Now, there is a curious effect with truly great ideas. They have a tendency to be more robust and can be treated a bit more roughly. The truly awesome ones do often have a knack for surviving some of the most horrible mishandling. Dugan's Law of Great Ideas states that the greater the idea, the lower the standard of just sufficient implemenation is. But what a waste of a great idea to only just barely realize it.

You will never justice to the great when it is served by the mediocre. You will just squeak by. This means that creative managers should be focused on their process and team culture rather than just on chasing ideas. Find the truly motivated individuals and multi-talented players for your team. Give them autonomy and the room to explore (and make mistakes). Hold them accountable to standards of the highest quality. And then build an organization founded on trust and respect between departments. Put in place processes that get results - and practice, practice, practice.

Do that for a few projects and maybe a few years - and then your team might be ready to truly handle a great idea.

Image by Kyle May by Creative Commons License

Playing Dr. Freud to Your Intellectual Property

2010-02-08T14:25:00.004Z

Sigmund Freud analyzed his patients’ dreams to understand what they were about. You have a similar job as a developer when you are working with an existing IP. As a video game designer, it’s your job to put your Intellectual Property on the couch and coax out its deepest secrets. You need to understand what makes your IP tick – welcome to digital psychology.

Whether it’s an IP from film, television, comics or a cherished video game classic, at some point most game developers will work with existing IP. And when you do, you are signing up for a sacred trust. You are taking someone's baby, the child of another's effort and you are nurturing it in new ways. You have to balance the need to re-invent and innovate against the expectations of the fans. This can lead to triumph or it can be a disaster.

And the essence of delivering a satisfying game based on existing IP is to understand what that IP is truly about.

You might want to repeat that. It’s a concept of deceptively subtle simplicity.

You might ask, is it really necessary to point out you must understand your IP? But then, you might ask what cooking recipes and being the medic droid has to do with Star Wars.

To deliver on the expectations of your IP, you must truly understand what it is about. And then you must make a game of that.

Let's look at three examples torn from the four color pages of comics: Batman, Superman and Iron Man.

Batman

Batman has an uneven history with video game adaptations. But the last year was kind to the Dark Knight. Batman: Akham Asylum succeeded because it delivered on a very straight-forward proposition - it felt like you were the Batman.

Batman is a man - a well trained, well armed, tactical genius - but a man never-the-less. He is not bullet proof or unstoppable. He overcomes not because he is a brawny brawler or has a gadget for every occasion. The Batman is thinker and he is fundamentally tactical. He plans his encounters. He uses his wits to overcome his adversaries. And this was how Akham succeeded. You felt like you were using your wits to outthink you opponents - and then delivered a devastating blow with your myriad of skills, deceptions or gadgets. As Batman you always felt a step ahead of your enemies and like you had a range of contingencies available for your encounters. Combine this with well balanced gameplay and a new spin on the iconic character and his opponents and you’ve got a true standout game for the year.

Superman

The Superman Returns game had some good ideas. The notion of sandbox game is appealing for Superman. He is a god among men, after all. And the notion that Superman is invulnerable and it is those in his care that matter, that is inspired. Superman's vulnerability is not kryptonite - it is his all-too-human heart which cares deeply for the mere mortals of Metropolis who are far more fragile than he.

The problem with that game (besides good old fashioned bugs) is that the game punishes you for having fun.

If you are Superman, you want to engage in super-human feats. You want to leap tall buildings and all that. What’s the point of being Superman if you cannot be super-human? Super-man as a character probably has to feel terribly restrained every day of his life for fear of destroying everything around him – but that’s not as much fun in a game. When you smash things in the game, you are penalized. The thing you most want to do - to be Super - is actively discouraged by the game systems.

Superman is about with awesome power comes an awesome responsibility. But Superman also always finds a way to succeed. He triumphs over the impossible – because he is Superman. In the classic Superman the Movie dilemma, Superman must choose between saving millions and saving the woman he loves. And in true Superman fashion, he finds a lateral solution to the problem and slices the Gordian Knot. Superman never gives up and always finds a way to triumph, even if it means the ultimate sacrifice for him.

A Superman game that had you care for Metropolis - but also presented you with plenty of opportunity to stop your opponents with creative use of your power would be appealing. Solving insoluble problems by the application of your super powers, now that would be a game. Super Returns the game represents then an understanding of much of what makes the Superman IP, but it glosses over some of the fundamental aspects of what makes Superman appealing and thereby runs afoul when it translates into gameplay.

Iron Man

What is Iron Man about? Flying, having repulsor blasts and ripping the top off a tank? These are cool, to be sure. Is it techno-wizardry and a protagonist with a smarmy attitude, playboy lifestyle and never-ending supply of quips? Sure, these are qualities of the IP - but they are not what defines Iron Man.

In all of his various incarnations, Tony Stark is a fundamentally flawed man. A very fallible human. Whether it is the literal physical flaw of a perforated heart or some psychological holes in his soul such as alcoholism and delusions of grandeur.

As Iron Man, he is a juggernaut - a man with steel skin and an arsenal of devastating weapons. But inside his iron shell is a very frail and vulnerable human being. Superman’s nature is to be invulnerable whether he’s in his costume or not. But Tony Stark is only invulnerable as long as his technology functions.

But Tony’s faults are redeemed by his amazing ingenuity. He is a creative genius and has an awesome talent for improvisation. One of the reason's Iron Man's origin story works so well is that it encapsulates all the most crucial elements of his mythology. A man with deep flaws finds himself hoist literally by own petard. With the mother of all ticking clocks against him, Stark must find a way to save his life and escape his captivity - and he does so through an astonishing act of improvisation. In the most inhospitable of conditions, he forges an instrument of awesome power, turning his imminent defeat into triumph. But there is always the lurking spectre of his technology failing him, leaving him once again terribly vulnerable.

This is what makes Iron Man and it’s a game designer’s job to translate this into a game. A proper Iron Man game should be these core ideas. Clearly, as Iron Man, a player should feel awesome and powerful in the face of daunting firepower. They should feel like a walking tank.

But Iron Man’s armor should feel like a tool at his disposal, an instrument to wield not just a characteristic of the man. The player should be able to adapt and reconfigure their armor for different missions and situations. They should have “all power to forward shields” kind of options.

There should also be the nagging prospect of Iron Man’s armor failing him. Taking enough damage or losing power should shut down systems. And if Iron Man has no armor, he is very vulnerable. But he should also always have Tony’s genius to stave off disaster. A quick re-route of circuitry (perhaps via a mini-game) can restore power or malfunctioning systems. Making novel use of the environment to improvise critical technology or discover novel power sources.

Ultimately, Iron Man is a technological juggernaut that is powered by the ingenuity of a man – and that’s the experience a player should have playing an Iron Man game.

Some developers see working with an existing IP as a hack or a chore. But it’s a trust. A trust between you, the people who created the IP and the audience who (presumably) loves that IP.

If you understand that trust – then you are on the way to understanding your IP and doing it justice in a game.

Image by PaintMonkey by Creative Commons License

Video Game Design By the Numbers, Part I

2010-02-05T16:48:00.003Z

Inspiration is tough to pin down and when the Muse visits, she does not appreciate you demanding her exact height, weight and brassiere size.

Video game design and development is a frequently a profession of gut instincts and hunches. Artistry and creativity come from a deep and mysterious place that's maddeningly hard to quantify much less predict. When your business is "fun", some of your standards are rather subjective. Various people will describe running 26.2 miles, wading hip deep in a bog or grinding Molten Core for the ten-thousandth time as "fun".

Clearly, standards of fun differ.

But one of the biggest failures of many game designers is not fortifying their personal instincts and opinions with a few cold, hard numbers.

Let's boil it down to brass tacks. Video game design and development is a commercial art. All of our grand theories about the nature of fun and flow and optimal experience and blah blah blah must be in the end be sullied by talk of the almighty dollar. Eventually, we all must descend from the Ivory Tower and roll around in the mud with the dirty old swine of Commerce.

In other words, as a video game developer, your career prospects will be greatly enhanced if your game sells.

It's is all fine and well to be driven by your artistic and creative impulses and the quest for fun and The Awesome when you create a game. In fact, that's a prerequisite for being any good as a game designer. But you also need to temper your enthusiasm with a bit of objective reality.

Asking a junior designer "what did you think of [FILL IN THE BLANK]?" and you'll hear about how they lost the entire weekend to playing [FILL IN THE BLANK]. And that's exactly the kind of passion you want in a young game designer.

The thing to add is an understanding of what other people thought of the game. Their opinion matters too.

Really, there are two key questions to ask about a game (in addition to your own opinion).

What's the meta-critic rating?
There is more than one aggregator of game reviews out there and none are perfect. First, there's a lot of subjective evaluation in game reviews. And to say the state of game journalism it uneven at best is an understatement. Even if you assume the reviews are honest and genuine, there's a subjective evaluation in translating a review into a score. But it's really the best tool we have for evaluating the quality of a game. Look at the top meta-critic games and you'll see what most people would call "good games". More and more, publishers and game developers use meta-critic scores as a means of arguing quality even if sales are not overwhelming. "Maybe we only sold a million units - but our meta-critic was through the roof".

The other trick with meta-critic is evaluating the meaning of the score. There isn't much difference between a game in the low 70's and the high 70's - but an 82 metacritic score is a lot different than an 89. Getting a feeling for the plateaus of the scores is crucial to using metacritic (and yes, it's awfully subjective too).

But the other big question to ask is pretty obvious:

What are the unit sales?
Rather than relying on gut feelings about whether something 'did well', you need to get some real numbers. It's vital to understand how the marketplace responded to a product. NPD tracks game sales and you should be following the monthly charts religiously. You should understand what moving 250,000 units in a week means given whether that was the launch week, what were the pre-sales, what is the install base of the platform and how big of a marketing effort there was. There is a huge difference in sales between an modest title developed by a new studio on a modest platform compared to a license tie-in backed by a powerhouse publisher with a gazillion marketing dollars.

Does this mean game design should be driven by purely mechanical evaluation of sales potential? Absolutely not. You'll never see a breakout hit unless you truly have a product with a soul. Innovation and true creativity drive new markets in the game industry. But you also need to understand the temperament of the market. Before you pitch your Japanese Cowboy Mech game, you might want to have a sense of how previous titles have fared.

But how do you actually judge is a title is a "hit"? What is it that separates a title that turns a tidy profit from a title that puts a studio out of business? That's a question that can only be answered by examining the economics of game production, which will be Part II of this series.

- Sean Dugan's number is up with this entry.

Image by Ira R Gerich used via Creative Commons License

The Big Three Questions of Starting a Game Company

2010-02-02T21:52:00.011Z

"Let's go start a video game company". And with those words, the dreams of innumerable game developers were ground into a thin tar-like paste.

It's not that starting a game company is impossible. Far from it - in this age of iPhone apps and social games, it's well within the reach of a lot of game developers. But that's not what most developers mean when they say they want to start a game company. They want to make a $20 million AAA console title or launch a $40 million MMO.

And to do either of those, you'll need more money than you've got stashed in your 401K.

You're going to need to get outside money. The kind that comes from venture capitalists, angel investors, publishers - and a whole lot of hustle.

But let's assume you've got the hustle and drive. Assuming that, the next step is figuring out your answers to the Big Three Questions. These are the crucial questions that any potential investor is going ask you (assuming this investor isn't, say, your Mom)

What are the Big Three Questions you have to answer?

Question One: what experience do you have?
There are really only two good answers here.

First, you can have a track record of solid performance across a range of industry recognized companies. You've shipped games and held some confidence inspiring titles with words such as "Lead", "Director" or "Executive" in them (or even better, "VP"). And these posts have been held at a host of companies whose names rhyme with "Lizard" or "Lubisoft" or have an excessive use of vowels.

The other option is you worked on a smash title.

Not just a solid seller - we're talking a Barry Bonds knock-it-into-the-bleachers home run. A huge mega-hit. It'd ideally a game that's a household name. The more well known, the lower on the hierarchy you can be. If it shipped five million units, being a member of the team is gold. If it shipped 10 million, being the contract QA tester is enough. If it was Modern Warfare 2, I'm pretty sure the guy who delivered the crunch pizzas can get a development deal.

Question Two: what team can you put together?
Unless you're an army of one, you need a team to make a game - and investors care about a lot about that team.

This is not a hypothetical "oh, I'm sure I can find the right people at GDC conference" type of question. It's a "you have their phone numbers and enough blackmail photos to ensure they'll stay through shipping your first title" type of question.

Your ideal is that you have a team which just shipped a big title that did well and they all want to jump ship, start a new company and essentially re-make that exact game - only better (and depositing the checks in a different bank account). A team that's proven to work together and ship product is worth its weight in gold.

But you're also going to want adult supervision. A lot development folks bring creative, technical or production disciplines to the equation. And those are crucial, no doubt. But you also want somebody who not only owns a suit - but is comfortable wearing it while going over a powerpoint with financial projections.

In other words, you need somebody who knows the business side. Somebody who has experience in the arcane world of financials and corporate structures and the other dark arts derived from malevolent tomes.

And if your investors don't seem overly concerned that you lack a hard-nosed business type on your team? It's like the old poker adage: if you can't spot the sucker at the table - then its you.

Question Three: what is your actual game idea?
This is where a lot of game developers start - but its actually pretty far down on the list. And it's about more than a game idea. Yes, you probably want to have a good game idea. A stellar one even. But honestly, the game idea isn't likely to be the most important thing.

Most investors want to hear about how your idea makes money. They want a business plan, even if it boils down to "When we made this game before, it sold 3.5 million units - and so we're going to do that again".

Publishers will care a bit more about you having a game idea. They'll be more insightful - and ask tougher questions. They're also a lot more likely to demand a working prototype. Other investors will be more concerned about a business model. To get them excited, you'll want a novel spin. A couple years ago, it was say to say the magic words "MMO". Today, you want to say "social gaming". Next year - it'll probably be 3D geo-located super-whiz-bangery.

Investor-types will forgive a certain ambiguity with a game in favor of a compelling business model. And they'll be less insightful into the flaws of a particular game idea - but they'll respond to eye candy. Publishers like eye candy too - but they're more likely to forgive some roughness in favor of game that sounds compelling. But they're also much more likely to play Back Seat Designer and question your every decision. I seriously doubt anybody could have pitched Mafia Wars or Farmville - they would have been laughed out of the mahagony lined conference room by sensible game executives.

So after you supply good answers to the Big Three Questions, what else do you need?

The leadership skills of Hannibal, the showmanship of PT Barnum and the charm of the Devil himself.

Oh, and more of those blackmail photos don't hurt either.

- Sean Dugan is convinced that in many cases, a picture is worth a thousand words. Or a thousand dollars.

image by Marco Bellucci under Creative Commons License

How to Get a Game Designer Job Today

2010-01-28T21:47:00.024Z

It's the first question every would-be game developer asks - how do I break in and get that game designer job?

Is the secret going to the right video game design schools? Hobnobbing at industry networking events? Getting incriminating photos of the Creative Director from his holiday in Thailand?

Well, all those methods can work. But if I'm the guy sitting on the other side of the hiring desk, I'll tell you exactly how you stand out from the crowd and get my attention.

Here's the grim reality of hiring: you rarely get exactly the candidate you want. All too often, you settle on the compromise candidate. The guy or gal that ticked enough of the boxes to make them the best candidate. As the former Secretary of Defense once memorably stated, sometimes you go to war with the army you have (not the army you want).

But it's your job to get the hiring manager excited. It's your job to convince them that you are the only possible candidate. You want your manager to be eager to go to war with you - because that's what's going to happen when you get into production.

So here's how you blow me away - and make want to hire you today.

Show me a design document you wrote

Take a game you love (and that I know) and write a design doc for it. Document either a level or scenario. Do it to a professional level of quality and I'll be highly motivated to put you on my team.

You see, one of the key things designers do is communicate. If you can't write a good document - you're going to have your work cut out for you in this business. That's not to say you need to be Shakespeare - you just need to be logical and clear. And if the idea of writing documents fills you with dread - you may want to re-think your career choice.

I'm looking for concise - but accurate - documentation of what you envision as a designer. You'll probably need to talk about things like location, starting points, key encounter areas, points of interest and enemy placement. You might want to include information about characters, dialogue and background.

What I don't want is a phone book or your version of War and Peace. If its too long, nobody will read it. A good designer is not a control freak specifying ever single detail. They are someone who can logically break down a scenario and communicate to other reasonably intelligent developers with a minimum of fuss.

Rule of Thumb: if there are environmentalists outside your house protesting Amazon de-forestation - your document is too big. Design docs generally do not improve with more pages - they get much, much worse.

Which game should you write your document for? Make sure it's a game I'm likely to know - a good rule of thumb is anything with a meta-critic score in the 90s. And I'll bet you're wondering about what format for the design document? Well, that's a big topic - more than I can cover in this post. Suffice to say, there are as many different design docs as they are designers. But google can help you find some good ones.

Show me a level you built

Take an established game engine and build a level for it. Show me a level that I can actually play. Better yet, show me video footage of you playing it (You don't me to wrestle with installing your game engine of choice). Demonstrate to me you have an understanding of guiding a player through space. Don't show me a giant maze or a big open plain. I'm not a lab rat and I've already visited Kansas. I'm interested in that you understand how the physical environment interacts with the player and game systems. And if you're really clever, the level you've built will be in an engine that my company uses in development (so I know you're already far along on the learning curve for production).

Show me a mod you made

Take that level you made in a game engine - and mod it. Do something different with an existing game engine. Make Unreal into a Sin City-style noir thriller game. Or turn Crysis into a mech game. Not only are you going to show me some level design chops, you're going to impress me with your ingenuity. You're also going to tell me a lot about what kind of designer are you. Do you care more about atmosphere and aesthetics? Innovative gameplay? There's no right or wrong answer here - I just want to see the work.

Just make sure of two things: that I can tell what you actually modified. And that it actually works (rather than crashing my computer)

Show me a game you made

That's right - the best calling card for demonstrating you're a game designer - is to have designed an actual game. And it's probably not as difficult as you think. You don't need to know assembly code. There's a lot tools to choose from Unity to Flash, Java to C++. And any of those skills make you vastly more marketable as a game designer (even if you're skills are a little rough). Heck, there's even a lot of game building engines that are practically point-and-click. I'm not grading you on how technical you are - I'm looking at how motivated you are to find a solution and deliver a product.

Your game doesn't have to be the next Bejeweled. If it was, I'd tell you don't work for me, go make yourself rich, kid. No, what I'm looking for is a game with a reasonable degree of polish that I can play and see the fun. I'm looking for promise. Something that shows me you can conceive of a game and bring it through to delivery.

And if you want to really impress the hell out of me - put your game up on Facebook or in the iPhone store. Show me your game like that and watch how fast I race down to HR to process your hiring paperwork.

What do all these things have in common? It boils down to initiative. Taking the initiative like this will convince me you're serious about your career as a game designer.

So there it is - the magic formula for how to get a game designer job.

Now all you have to do - is do it.

- Sean Dugan remembers being a wide-eyed young developer during the days when Pac Man roamed the world freely.

Image by Duchamp under Creative Commons License

Facebook demands a piece of the Social Gaming action

2010-01-27T23:03:00.014Z

Social game developers have been getting a free viral marketing ride on the Facebook gravy train - but this ride is about to come to a grinding halt.

Alongside the explosive growth of Facebook has come the amazing rise of social or viral gaming - a billion dollar virtual market of black sheep and mob gombas. People are crazy to spend a dollar here and there to acquire cute dresses or the right to play for just a few more minutes, something that's been pretty obvious in Asia for a while now. But there's been a looming cloud on the social gaming horizon - what happens when Facebook requires all the social games to use it's currency system for purchasing virtual goods?

Now it's being reported that Facebook's virtual currency system is imminent. "Imminent" in the sense that if this was your pregnant wife, you'd be barreling through red lights as she screams in your ear that if you tell her to breath one more time, she's giving you a vasectomy with a spork.

So all the social game designers are girding their loins in preparation for the bad news - and it's grim indeed. According to the reports, FB is taking a 30% piece of the action.

Tony Soprano would be proud. Or Steve Jobs, for that matter.

Clearly, the iPhone App Store is the model being watched closely. Since the iPhone debuted, developers have been complaining - quite loudly - about the 30% license fee Apple charges. That hefty slice of revenue greatly cuts into the profit margin of any small - or large for that matter - game developer who thinks they've got the baddest iPhone app in the room. It's the kind of fee that can strangle developers and shut them out of the market. To hear the naysayers, a percentage that large dooms the iPhone store to oblivion.

At last count, there just under 400 bazillion iPhone apps available.

So apparently the market has spoken on the viability of 30%.

What it highlights is the simple power of being in complete control of a platform with no significant competitors. In the console world, there's at least a semblance of competition between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.

But looking at the social games on Facebook - what options does a game designer really have? Even the mighty Zynga is beholden to the platform Facebook provides. Zynga is trying to test the waters with Farmville.com to see if they can ditch Facebook someday. But the initial results are sobering. 74 million users on Facebook versus 250,000 on their website.

For all intents and purposes, developers of social games are dependent on Facebook. When faced with the option of either migrating to something like MySpace - which is in decline (which is as good as dead in the business world) - or trying to build your own web presence and drive traffic to it, most developers will grumble and complain - and in the end, pay Facebook it's piece of the action.

So for the social gaming world, it's time to send big Marko his piece of the action. But cheer up, at least he's not breaking legs - yet.

- Sean Dugan really hopes he doesn't wake up with the head of Marc Pincus in his bed.

Image by Alberto P. Viega under Creative Commons License

Video Game Terms: The X statement

2010-01-26T18:17:00.005Z

The X statement of a video game is a concise statement meant to inform and guide both the game development efforts and the marketing efforts. It is intended to paint a clear picture of both gameplay and how the product would be positioned in the market. It's origin is from EA and reflects the idea of finding the intersection where game developers and marketeers cross.

Usage: "You need to find the X statement for your game - something like the original Medal of Honor was 'Saving Private Ryan: the game'"

Translation: "You need a bullet point for your Powerpoint that's stupid enough for executives but not so dumb it offends developers"

Video Game Writing – or How to Commit Career Suicide in One Simple Step

2010-01-25T19:10:00.041Z

Are you interested in a long video game career as a writer? Then the get the word “writer” out of your title.

You’d probably be better off exploring promising canary opportunities in the coal mining industry than being a writer in the game industry. Make no mistake, there are fantastic writers in video game development. Men and women who wield words with the same precision Inigo handled his rapier. People who can make you laugh or cry, who can genuinely touch something inside you and take to you an unexpected emotional place.

And the game developers who weren’t looking for work every six months didn’t have the word “writer” in their title. Because being a “writer” in the game industry is about as prudent as going for a swim off the Great Barrier Reef wearing your favorite raw steak suit.

Look, there’s a fundamental conflict at work here. Good stories tend to have a linear format. Video games, not so much. It’s not impossible to reconcile the two – but it’s damned hard. Which means writers have a role that tends to annoy and irritate the other developers with persistent, bothersome concerns over ‘fictional consistency’, ‘character development’ and ‘narrative arc’.

And let’s face it – many developers have pretty bad literary taste. The latest Star Wars best-seller is about as close to literary classics they’ll get. To a lot of folks, writing is slapping a “fiction wrapper” on whatever game mechanic happened to strike them as cool.

This means writers tend to be the first ones cut loose from a project.

So they tend to spend a lot of time looking for work.

Which means they tend to write a lot of books on how to write for video games.

If you want to write for video games and collect a semi-regular paycheck, you need to be a game designer – who just also happens to write.

But what about glory, you ask? What about your dreams of winning a Writer’s Guild Award? Then make sure you get the word “writer” in your credits – but not your title. Guild rules dictate that to be eligible for a WGA award, you need guild membership (not as hard to get as you might think – but we’ll talk about that later) and to be credited on a project as a writer. The Writer’s Guild wants to squirm its way into the game industry and so far the only lever they have is the glamour of Hollywood. They dangle the promise of red carpets, starlets and hobnobbing with Spielberg. Believe me, these days you probably have a much better chance of hobnobbing with Spielberg as a game designer than being a writer. Hollywood hates its own writers. (And Spielberg likes and understands games a lot)

Oh, sure, there are some high profile writers who get into games. You can write a best-selling novel or comic book or get credit for a screenplay that turns into a movie somebody heard of. In those cases, you can probably get a nice cushy writing job for a few months. And odds are, an enormous amount of aggravation along the way and the bonus of having your work completely tossed out. Those big names you associate with your favorite book, movie or comic that get credited for a video game? They probably worked for a few months, wrote volumes of material, collected a nice sized paycheck – and had every word tossed out by the devs who then went back to the drawing board and started from scratch.

Hence is the way of the game industry.

And here’s final reason to not be a “writer”. Go to a game conference and announce you’ve got free mood stabilizers – see how many writer's hands shoot up. While I’ve worked with all manner of 'characters', 'eccentrics', 'rascals', 'oddballs' and out-and-out liars – by far, the highest percentage of straight out crazy weirdos were the game writers.

Oh, and did I mention – I started my career in the industry as a writer?

That’s how I know what I’m talking about.

Do yourself a favor and develop a career in the video game industry – by not being a writer.

Video Game Company: Electronic Arts (ERTS)

2010-01-24T11:41:00.012Z

Formerly the number one computer game company, EA is a name that divides gaming fans. On the one hand, your average consumer knows EA almost entirely thanks to their top-selling sports franchises. "It's in the game" is the closet thing the industry has to Nike's "Just Do It". But that success at marketing is also at the heart of the hatred of EA. Perceived as a heartless corporate juggernaut more concerned with churning out licensed shovelware than creating excellent games. They are in many ways the Inverse Blizzard.

In recent years though, the company has fallen on hard times. Earnings have been decimated by changes to the industry. Rising product costs combined with the fact that its been a long time since EA had a runaway hit have undermined their core AAA console title business. Their retail channel dominance is threatened by alternate distribution channels and the used game market. Mobile, online and social gaming have shifted the industry landscape and EA's track record in responding have been mixed. The Sims is a lifeline that brings steady cash into EA without the high costs associated with licensed products but the company needs to find new revenue streams. High profile projects like Spore and Warhammer have underwhelmed.

Key Strengths:

Marketing savvy
Retail channel strength
Industry clout

Key Weaknesses:

Inability to capitalize on online space
New IP development
Managing the culture of acquired companies

Key Franchises:

The Sims
Madden
FIFA
Need for Speed

Strategic Moves:

Playfish acquisition: for about $300 million EA has bought a place in the social gaming space.
Attempt to acquire Take Two: attempted to purchase the GTA IP but the deal fell apart and hasn't been re-visited (with both stocks at lows)
Pandemic and Bioware acquisition: part of the push to turn EA into a respected center of game innovation.

Looking to the Future:

Knights of the Old Republic: the MMO that has the potential to be what Star Wars Galaxies should have been.
Deadspace 2: the original underwhelmed but it's been growing a fanbase and the company is looking to turn a basehit into a home run.
Dante's Inferno: the company's simultaneous entry into the crowded God of War knock-off market and the GTA stir up controversy market.
Army of Two 2: first person shooters sell and the co-op play has a lot of potential that was just scratched with the original.
Medal of Honor: with Modern Warfare becoming a billion dollar franchise, suddenly there's great interest in re-booting EA's almost-dead WWII franchise.

Image by psd used under creative commons license

Video Game Terms: Vertical Slice

2010-01-23T13:55:00.012Z

A vertical slice is a subset of a game which demonstrates almost all of the core systems or end-to-end features working but only over covers a limited amount of the total content expected for the finished game.

Usage: "Our publisher will give us the next tranche of money to complete "Shotgun Rampage 5" if we can demo a vertical slice of the entire 1st level of the game."

Translation: "You'll get the money to complete your game when you can show that you've already pretty much completed your game."

Electronic Arts: At what price innovation?

2010-01-21T11:34:00.009Z

Gamers tend to loudly demand better and more innovative video games. They throw down the guantlet for the industry - give us better quality video games. In recent years, industry giant Electronic Arts has responded to the challenge and picked up the guantlet - and it's about to cost the CEO his job.

Our story starts when exec John Riccitiello left Electronic Arts to form a game VC firm with Bono (yes, really). Then, he merged BioWare and Pandemic, got that company bought by EA and returned to head the whole she-bang. Since returning to EA, he’s been banging the drum of developing new IP. This is a concept the company paid lip service to for years – and then continued to churn out dubious licensed games.

And then, strangely, Riccitiello actually started doing something about it.

Army of Two, Mirror’s Edge, Deadspace, Dragon Age – these are all original IP that have various degrees of innovation. They may not be Bioshock or Assassin's Creed II but they're better than a lot of EA offerings. He’s rightly observed that licensed intellectual property doesn't build new businesses – to do that, a company needs to invest in new IP.

And the response from Wall Street? To hammer the company.

EA's stock value has dropped more than 70% since he took over. (And yes, I still retain some stock from tenure there - sadly!) The company’s games may get better metacritic scores – but they aren’t selling as well. Now, the economy plays a role in this. But there’s considerable pressure to just going back to sloughing second-rate Madden, Harry Potter and movie tie-in games onto the shelves. And to further complicate the situation, there’s fundamental changes happening in gaming landscape. Console development is plagued by skyrocketing budgets while attachment rates drop and online redefines the gaming space (whether it’s Zynga style games or massive multiplayer efforts like WoW). The company has made moves to adapt to these realities – but not fast enough in the opinion of many.

So now, it's a horse race to see whether EA has a break-out new IP smash - or Riccitiello is ousted and the company goes back to unremarkable shovelware.