http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog Thoughts on games, the games industry, and other gems from the life of the Company Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:20:11 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en So our accountant (who happens to work in the same building as us) popped his head round the door this morning inquiring about when I was going to sort out our 2007/08 accounts. Cue a frenzied morning of tallying, checking of figures, amending totals, and now we have our accounts finalised (finally). They don't really need to be done until much later in the year, since the deadline is the end of January for filing, but I always say that I'm going to sort them out at the end of April once all the figures are in, and invariably get distracted and have to be reminded. A decent profit was made this year, despite my best efforts to hide it with last minute devkit and hardware purchases, so our money-grubbing government will take a slice of it this year (boo, hiss). Somehow I'll find it in me to live with that though. :-) Just been looking over the E3 content from this year though - so thoroughly un-inspiring that I'm not even going to bother linking to any of it. Suffice to say that there's not really anything that I'm head over heels about, although id's new trailer was good-looking enough to raise an eyebrow, even if I'm not convinced that it's anything other than a tech demo at the moment. Things in the office are trundling along much as usual, with our previous prototypes close to running properly on the devkit. We're toing and froing about the direction the prototypes will take at the moment, but I'm just eager to get stuck in and try new things. http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/181 They say that your opinion of someone elses intelligence is pretty much solely based on how much they agree with your views. Well if that's the case, then Clinton Keith over at Agile Game Development [1]must be pretty damned smart. This post [2]covers pretty much exactly what I've said previously [3] about the rising cost vs. stagnant demand for big-budget games, except with pretty graphs and actual numbers. Psshaw - who needs statistics when you have hunches and rhetoric. Nothing that I've seen in the last 2 years has shifted my views on the likely fate of big-budget retail titles, although we haven't seen a wholesale collapse in that sector of the market, so its likely things aren't all that bad. Down here at the shallow end of the pond though it is small affordable to develop (and buy) titles all the way. We're getting ever closer to getting our prototypes up and running on the console kit, but I won't be happy until I can start tinkering properly and see the results on the television. Our story-board is shifting nicely over to the 'done' column though, so it will soon be time to re-fill the board with more significant and less engine-related stories. Note to self though - follow up our post on the one true handed-ness [4] with one on the one true endian-ness. Big endian is not our friend! [1] http://www.agilegamedevelopment.com [2] http://www.agilegamedevelopment.com/2008/06/hit-or-miss-dead.html [3] http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/71 [4] http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/112 http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/180 I was debating with myself over whether or not to attach a picture of our Wii development kit to this post to add a bit of colour. In the end I decided not to, as you could probably construe it as a breach of our promise to Nintendo to keep everything super-secret and hidden. Boo-hiss. Anyway, suffice it to say that we're taking advantage of a lull in our work-for-hire burden to devote to our own game prototyping. For future reference, I'm going to talk about it as Biscuit, because that's the name I use in all of our planning documentation. The name doesn't really have any relation to the work we're doing, I just liked the idea of a biscuit powered engine. Conjures up all sorts of images. :-) So yes, the development kit has been dusted off, the stories board has been cleaned out and refilled with relevant story cards, and we are ploughing through the mountain of documentation for the Wii and getting stuck into getting our test game ported over. Much fun! In other news, since he made grumbling noises when I asked him to write a blog post, I feel compelled to announce Pete's news that he managed a First from his Software Engineering degree - we're all quite proud. So I think that's three Firsts and a Masters for Charlotte: I wonder if that qualifies for some sort of tax break [1]. Probably not. :-/ [1] http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18965 http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/179 A month without a post! That's just not on. Bad Chris, bad! At first it was because I wanted to write a good post about our new team members! But then it was all about the long hours I was putting in for our Four Door Lemon work, to help them get a title out of the door. It's never nice when you're so busy you don't have time for the little stuff, but I'm hopeful that things quieten down a bit now. So yes: new staff! As I mentioned before [1], Charlotte Moseley and Tim Angus have joined Pete and I, to make a nice round number of four. They've both been beavering away in the office since the start of May. Even better, now Pete is finally putting his degree course to bed, he'll be joining us in the office full time as well. So definitely a full house, since our office is only really big enough to fit four people comfortably. We shall have to see about some bigger space at some point soon, so we have room to grow when we next feel the need to. We couldn't let the first day with all four of us in the office go by without marking the occasion though, so I shooed everyone out of the office and round the corner to the Mercat [2] for some celebratory drinks. The wonderful thing about having an office in the centre of Edinburgh is the ready access to nice places to eat and drink after work. Apologies for the grainy picture quality, but I only had my phone camera with me, having stupidly forgotten to bring the proper one! And of course I'm the cameraman, so it's not a proper team photo. I'm sure we'll sort one of them out soon. [1] http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/blog/user/mrcranky/170 [2] http://www.mercatbar.com/ http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/178 Quick rule of thumb for anyone wanting to court Scottish games (or regular) developers [1]: If you promise coffee and/or breakfast, make sure 1) the coffee doesn't run out, and 2) the breakfast consists of carbohydrates. And no, chocolate Hob Nobs don't count as breakfast. Bonus points for the saw player though, she was good, and it was a suitably random intermission! Some pictures from the mingling here [2]. I'm not in any of them thankfully, as I was somewhat hung over (and the short supply of coffee wasn't doing anything to help matters), but you can spot Mr Baglow of Indoctrimat [3]/SG.biz [4] and Andrew Richards of CodePlay [5] in the background of one picture [6] at least. Still, some interesting mingling and people to meet, including the folks from Glasgow-based WeeWorld [7] and some other small local developers who I didn't know existed. [1] http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/473001/ [2] http://www.flickr.com/photos/digitalagency/sets/72157604720973326/ [3] http://indoctrimat.typepad.com/indoctriblog/about-indoctrimat.html [4] http://www.scottishgames.biz/ [5] http://www.codeplay.com/ [6] http://www.flickr.com/photos/digitalagency/2440985116/in/set-72157604720973326/ [7] http://www.weeworld.com/ http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/177 Interesting article here [1] from the Rampant Coyote; also on our blog-roll, so I thought I'd jump them up the order. Basically it is bemoaning the fact that games developers are in a losing business right now. Well, those who are in the traditional publisher-fronts-all-money-as-advance-against-sales model are at least. I wouldn't like to speculate on whether or not other developers are profitable or not, but the sales input versus development costs mis-match is something I've harped on about here before. Rampant Games [2] itself is an indie games portal/developer, with a wide range of games, all developed by independents. I haven't actually played any of the games I must admit, but I still cheer for independent developers who stake out their territory and do well there. The blog [3] is a mix of opinion pieces and development stories, but personally I like it for the in-depth coverage of the progress of their new game (Frayed Knights), which looks quite fun and is just entering the beta stage now. [1] http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/2008/04/why-game-developers-are-screwed.html [2] http://www.rampantgames.com/ [3] http://www.rampantgames.com/blog http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/176 JC Barnett [1]'s Japanmanship [2] is our next link from the side-bar. One of the more widely read developer blogs, not just because the content is funny and insightful, but also because it's one of the few insights that western developers can get into the sometimes impenetrable world that is Japanese games development. It seems that although a few hardy souls have emigrated to Japan for development jobs, it's still very hard to get accepted there. Personally I don't see the appeal, especially given the way that foreigners get treated by the natives, but there's no denying that Japan has always been a significant centre of gaming. The fact that western developers are generally unable to sell significant numbers of games (or consoles, in Microsoft's case) is indicative of the culture mismatch between us that even these days of globalisation hasn't diminished. Regardless, the blog is a good read, and mixes tales of life of a gaijin in Japan with gaming chat and insight. Particularly funny to read are the tales of passive (and not so passive [3]) combat on the subway. [1] http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blogmailto:japanmanship@gmail.com [2] http://japanmanship.blogspot.com/ [3] http://japanmanship.blogspot.com/2008/01/everybody-always-generalises.html http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/175 So, despite the fact that the blog looks no different on the surface, we are actually running on Wordpress 2.5 now - the latest and greatest update to the blogging software. The Control Panel in which I write all the posts now looks radically different though, it looks much snazzier and dare I say it more "Web 2.0". Which of course is a farce, as what I really wanted was something that was fast and slick and quick to use, rather than shiny with rounded corners and draggable buttons. Still, it does the job, so I'll stop being so cranky now. http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/174 Don't be put off by the pictures which make him look like Vic Mackie [1] from The Shield [2], this is in fact another game developer blog, written by Jake Simpson [3]. (Sorry Jake, I couldn't resist). Much like Dopass [4], this blog is heavy on the opinion pieces - but Jake has been around the block enough times to give those opinions weight. Midway [5], Maxis [6], Raven [7], and now Linden Labs [8] (on which he wrote a great write-up on The Chaos Engine [9] - sounds like a great place to work). Jake's opinion pieces tend to be written whole cloth rather than just opinion notes on articles, but they're all worth reading, and again I find myself agreeing with much of what he has to say. [1] http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004821/ [2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286486/ [3] http://blog.jakeworld.org/JakeWorld/main.php?main=misc/bio.php [4] http://www.dopass.com/ [5] http://www.midway.com [6] http://www.maxis.com/ [7] http://www.raven-games.com/ [8] http://lindenlab.com/ [9] http://www.thechaosengine.com http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/173 Continuing our trip down our blog-roll: Dopass, [1] written by Snipehunter [2] who always seems to make insightful posts on The Chaos Engine [3] forums. A designer for games, based in the US - the blog has plenty of opinion pieces, based mostly on articles from the web. It's an interesting take on games in general, with a generous dollop of insight. Of course, like most people, my opinion of authors is generally based on how much I agree with what they say, and in that respect, Dopass does pretty well. [1] http://www.dopass.com/ [2] http://www.dopass.com/bio/snipehunter [3] http://www.thechaosengine.com/ http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/172 Next up in our game-dev blog linking frenzy: Headlam [1], written by my old associate from VIS, Larry Docherty. Larry and I worked together on Brave for a long while, and we was a great guy to work with. As he was a filthy weegie [2] ;-), he trekked through to Edinburgh every day - a trauma which I certainly didn't envy. But he more than made up for that affliction with stories of neds from Glasgow which kept us all entertained (and a little worried). Since then he's moved on to pastures new with SCEE [3] in Liverpool and Amsterdam (lucky bugger), He's always had a passion for music, and so his blog (while just getting started) promises to cover games development and music trivia in equal measure. [1] http://headlam.wordpress.com [2] http://www.weegieweb.org.uk/ [3] http://www.scee.net http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/171 Yes, we're not just taking on one new staffer, due to a fortuitous mix of circumstances we're bringing on two! We have Charlotte Moseley, a graduate developer with knowledge of C# who is coming on and getting up to speed with our Evolution work; also we have Tim Angus coming to join us. Like Pete and I, Tim also worked at VIS until it went out of business - had things gone differently a couple of years ago he would have joined us much earlier, but instead he ended up in "regular software land". Luckily we've tempted him back to the straight and narrow of games development, although in truth he's never really left: he's been driving Tremulous [1] in his spare time! Both of our new people will be coming to the new office close to the start of May, and I shall harangue them until they introduce themselves properly here and get added to the about page [2]. [1] http://tremulous.net/ [2] http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/about.php http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/170 The currently running set of articles on Bruce's blog [1] are focusing on his time at Codemasters [2], from its humble beginnings on the home games machines of the 80's up to its less than illustrious current state (it's drawn criticism in industry circles for its treatment of staff and management decisions widely seen as poor). But aside from that the blog covers industry topics far and wide - pretty much whatever Bruce thinks is interesting at the time. He is a marketer by trade, so the blog is well written and updated daily (whereas most of the blogs in the sidebar update far more sporadically like we do), and while I don't always agree with his views, there's no doubting that the blog is written from a wide range of experience and covers topics of importance to game developers with insight and detail. More crucially though, Bruce is the one who has been poking all of us with game-dev blogs to cross link and raise each others profiles (hence the impetus for this series of linking posts). In general we've shown ourselves to be pretty poor at getting ourselves noticed and heard, and for small developers and indeed individuals at larger studios, a higher profile is rarely a bad thing. I've always been a fan of championing the people behind the games, so it's good to see some 'class action' from my colleagues in the industry. [1] http://www.bruceongames.com/ [2] http://www.codemasters.com http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/169 Not just, as the title might suggest, all about survival horror games, this blog [1] covers some wide ranging points on game design, horror movie reviews and other topics. The articles about the evolution [2]of the horror game genre are the most interesting though, and cover a massive range of games dating back decades. Although I must admit, the only horror I remember feeling when playing Alone in the Dark [3] was horror at the camera that insisted on changing angles just when I was trying to sneak somewhere, and leaving me unable to see my character while it was ripped apart by dogs or some such fate. Definitely worth a visit, although I'd say take the time to subscribe the feed in something that allows you to keep posts as new - the posts can be quite large, but it's worth saving them to read for when you have the time. [1] http://www.dreamdawn.com/sh/index.php [2] http://www.dreamdawn.com/sh/post_view.php?index=6524 [3] http://www.dreamdawn.com/sh/gallery.php?name=Alone%20in%20the%20Dark http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/168 Oh yes Chris, that's a great idea. Now you've learned to use the automated posting feature, why not use it on every post even when there's no real need to. That way, when you try out embedding a YouTube video for the first time, you can go away to Runcorn for a day, and leave the blog to be totally shafted for ages until you come back to check it. No brownie points for me today - although all should now be fixed. Feel free to go check out the actual YouTube clip [1] for Goo! that I was trying to embed, and I promise the next time I will check what the post looks like on the actual site before I post it. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXDv0k-0kb4 http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/165 A development blog from PillowFort Games [1], makers of Goo [2], a fun looking game that made it to the 2008 IGF [3], nominated for Technical Excellence. It's all based around fluid dynamics, which I've always thought had good potential for game mechanics and had been sadly under used till now. I remember trying a demo of a different game a while back, also based around fluid mechanics - it looked fantastic, but ran like a dog even on the fastest machine I could find. When I get a chance I'd like to try it out, but it seems (like a lot of the Dare to be Digital entries too) that it wants a 360 controller to let me play. Don't get caught out like me though and just download the patch - the link you want is the "Download Public Beta" one on the right on the download page; oddly it's not given top priority on the page. The blog itself is a diverting read; it delves a lot into the ins and outs of the actually developing the game rather than just technical details or coding rants. It's something sadly neglected in blogs from staff at bigger developers. The nice thing about being an independent developer is that you get to pretty much do and say what you want on your blog. Working with bigger clients always means that you have to worry about what you can say and when, so it's nice to share those details when you can. [1] http://www.pillowfortgames.com [2] http://goo.pillowfortgames.com/ [3] http://www.igf.com/ http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/164 So we've been working with Evolution Studios [1] since early February. Familiar for developing the World Rally Championship series, and more recently Motorstorm, they are now part of a much larger group since becoming part of SCEE [2] last September. We're working on support tools for Evolution rather than assisting with their game development in any way, but with such large teams and a wide range of titles in development, it's a challenging task. The work is interesting, and we're learning to love C# and hate it's oddities. Also I'm getting to know the train down to Runcorn quite intimately, as we visit Evolution regularly to go over recent developments and decide where to go next. I can honestly say it's an enlightening experience, although at the moment the biggest thing learned is don't ever, ever attempt to eat any of the food provided in the Warrington Bank Quay station "buffet". [1] http://www.evos.net/ [2] http://www.scee.net http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/161 We've been working with the folks at Four Door Lemon [1] since the start of January now. They share many similarities with us as a studio - they are relatively small, and provide middle-ware and game development services to all sorts of clients. They are however a bit larger than us, and have a lot of work on just now, so it was a no-brainer for us to collaborate. We've been working with their Lemon engine for a while now to develop some small games that FDL needed made, and it's proved relatively easy to implement some pretty complicated stuff in a short space of time. For confidentiality we can't go into any detail here as to the nature of the games we're developing for FDL, but hopefully we'll have some tales from our on-going work with FDL that will be of interest. [1] http://www.fourdoorlemon.com/ http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/162 Apologies for the brief hiatus from posting - what can I say other than that there haven't been enough days in the week to do all the stuff I need to do as well as blogging. While it's nice that we're busy with stuff, I could do with getting my weekends back. And on that note we have good news - a third employee! More about them when they actually start next week. Anyway, they should be able to take the load off me a bit, and we can get back to sensible working weeks and take care of all the other things that mount up when you are busy with development work. I've gotten clearance from our two clients to post a bit more about who they are and what we're doing with them, which is good! It should free us up to mention things a bit more, and I don't have to be so close-mouthed here about the stuff we're working on. More about that later this week, although I won't be posting straight away as I want to pass our initial posts by the clients to make sure they're happy with what I write. It seems there's been a bunch of incoming links from associates in the games industry who also have blogs. Rather than simply regurgitate the original post [1] from Bruce On Games [2], I'd like to take some time and give a little review of each out-going link and give them each their own post. In the meantime, they're all in the right-hand sidebar, if you'd like to visit them before I write about them. [1] http://www.bruceongames.com/2008/02/27/some-great-game-development-blogs/ [2] http://www.bruceongames.com http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/160 Well, someone must have been taking pity on my and my excruciatingly long train journey filled day yesterday, because I found this little gem [1] on my morning news trawl. I've been a Princess Bride fan since the first time I saw it, years ago, so it's a bit of a no brainer that I would happily shell out cash to play a game version, so the pre-order went in about 5 minutes after finding the site. Looking at the trailers and concept art, I think I'll be pleased with the end result - definitely looking forward to the release date later in the year. On an unrelated note, my train journey down to our client's site yesterday was capped by a mother and her kids joining me at my table, a boy of around 6 and a girl probably 9 or 10. The boy had a PSP and was playing away, engrossed, but he would keep banging my laptop in his efforts to show this or that to his mother. So I asked what he was playing, and he replied "Grand Theft Auto". "Hmm," I said, "Liberty City Stories?". "Uh-huh", with an eager nod. "That would be the 18 rated Liberty City Stories then?", which I accompanied by a look for his mother which I hope conveyed the level of my disgust and disappointment in her parenting skills. "Oh, " she says, a bit flustered, "is it?" "Yeah" And with that the conversation died, thankfully. Anything else I could have said would have boiled down to "you're really just a bad parent". Really though, come on: you wouldn't let your five year old watch The Exorcist, or Goodfellas, what on earth makes you think that letting them play an 18 rated game is okay? The government is apparently planning to 'clamp down' on unsuitable video games [2]. If I believed that it was anything other than a cynical vote-grabbing ploy to pander to Daily Mail readers I would heartily endorse this, as I've always been in favour of proper age regulation on games content, just as there is for films and television. Thing is, it's already there. The games industry gets a BBFC/PEGI age rating on pretty much every title that goes out there. The console platform holders (Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo) insist on it as part of the publishing process. Big publishers would never think about not getting their game rated, it's just part of making games. All in all, we've got a great record of self regulation - we are open and up front about the content of games, and we're not trying to sneak games into the hands of younger gamers. None of that makes a blind bit of difference though, as long as irresponsible parents refuse to accept that games deserve the same level of care as films. So you've found your 14 year old playing Manhunt, or GTA with the Hot Coffee mod - you think it's outrageous that the developers can make such games. Well here's a newsflash - we didn't make those games for your 14 year old. We didn't sell them to your 14 year old (high street retailers thankfully do pay attention to age ratings). But if their gran bought them the game for Christmas and you said "Oh, that's nice, now go play" without ever actually checking what the game was like, then I'm afraid that the blame for your child's emotional scarring lies firmly and squarely with you, the responsible adult. Stop trying to blame others for your actions. [1] http://www.princessbridegame.com/ [2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/feb/09/games.digitalmedia http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/159 And we're back! By which I assume that the scheduled down-time [1] while our server was migrated to another data centre has been completed without a hitch. I did intend to post here that it was going to happen, but it did in fact catch me by surprise because I thought it was supposed to be last Friday. My only real mistake was to start reading some of the comments on the Dreamhost [2] status blog regarding the move. Despite the fact that they were open and up front about the move - giving warning on the status page as well as by email more than 2 weeks in advance, they are still customers who feel free to bitch and moan in a most personal and horrific way. Seriously - this sort of stuff really makes me sad to see the sort of attitudes people have these days. Nowhere in the Dreamhost sales pitch does it imply that your 8 USD a month was somehow buying you a service that would be up for absolutely 100% of the time, and yet these folk think that even the best handled server downtime is grounds for some personal abuse. If I were running Dreamhost, I wouldn't hesitate to respond to any of those "this is unacceptable" comments with "Oh I'm sorry, here's a refund for the rest of your service, don't let the door hit you in the arse on the way out". Anyway, trust in Dreamhost's tech staff aside, my paranoia has been in high overdrive recently, so I had taken this opportunity to double check that our nightly backup procedure was working properly - and I was pleased to find it had. Which means that, should Dreamhost fall over at a critical juncture, we can fall back on our local mirror of the server and only lose work done since the previous night. Not that I'm expecting DH to fall over - they seem to have gotten on top of their random downtime issues, and since I've been tracking it with an external tool we've only been off-line for 4 hours out of the last 6 months, and no more than 2 hours in a single outage. Why don't we just host our work locally and use an off-site backup? Well, we do a lot of collaboration with other client, and upstream bandwidth from the office is rather precious. That and the fact that Dreamhost already have quite a few mechanisms in place to restore connection and hardware problems, so they're probably far more reliable than our local server machines anyway. Of course, even that's not enough for us, paranoia wise - not only do we have the primary copies in a well maintained place off site, and secondary copies in the office, we also keep physical (DVD) copies of the repositories in yet another location. Of course the first two are all automated, but the third requires me to actually go over and poke the office server to make a DVD and take it away with me. Unfortunately my attempts to train the local squirrels to do automate the process for me have been unsuccessful, but I have high hopes... [1] http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2008/01/26/randy-cluster-move/ [2] http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2008/02/08/randy-move-going-ahead/comment-page-1/#comments http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/158 Or so it feels - I can barely keep my eyes open. A combination of a very long couple of weeks and a cat who my girlfriend has somehow trained into believing that scratching on our bedroom door from 3:30 am onwards is a good way to get food has left me more than a bit bleary. And today was the day that I was supposed to try out some decaffeinated filter coffee in the machine. Yes, I realise it's breaking the cardinal rule of programming, but I can't seem to get the balance right between coffee that's so strong it makes my teeth jump by mid-afternoon and weak watery rubbish that tastes of nothing. Anyway, I just can't see that happening, so it'll be the regular coffee today, at least until I can perk up a bit. We kick off on the second of our work for hire jobs this morning, so now we are splitting our time between jobs. Not many details to share as yet because I haven't cleared it with our clients, but I hope to rectify that soon and have something to say here about it. Still not heard back from our licensed developer application yet, but I'm putting that down to applying over the holiday season introducing an extra delay. Admittedly, we'd have little time to do any solid work on it right now, but I'm hoping that things will settle into a more forgiving routine soon. Interesting piece here [1] with quotes from Jon Hare (ex Sensible Software) that popped up in the Google Alerts for my name (yes I know, how vain is it to be searching for myself, but it throws up the 'other' Chris Chapman [2] as well). Two major points I agree with: 1) the quality of programming has dropped with the move to larger teams; I think that is somewhat inevitable though, you just can't sustain the same team dynamics that you get with less than a dozen team members. Personally I think the approach of scaling up not by having a larger team, but by using multiple small (<12) teams has merit. Of course, the ability to do that hinges on being able to break up the development effort into tangible pieces that can be tackled by the teams. 2) British developers are continually being forced to 'globalise' (i.e. Americanise) their products in order to try and maximise sales in the North American market. But to do that, I think we are selling ourselves short - not just in terms of making the most of the British sense of humour, but also the culture we have here. There are a lot of stories to be told, and game ideas which could only come from a British team - but I think they are being passed over because the publishers think that they won't sell in the broader marketplace. I'm very hopeful that reduced barriers to market from downloadable content will help the balance shift back towards interesting titles (and not just be an excuse for more shovel-ware) [1] http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=180045 [2] http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,2518/ http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/157 Pros: 40 minutes saved walking to and from office = 40 minutes extra work time Hot tasty food for lunch instead of just sandwiches Can use break time to go out and do much needed food shopping Cons: Cats alternating between walking on my keyboard while I'm typing, and lying nearby looking grumpily at me because I'm not playing with and/or feeding them Harder to concentrate (see point about cats) Well, I think it's about even on those. Never mind - back in the office tomorrow, so Bertie [1] won't starve to death in my absence. Working on a Saturday you say? Well that's down to the sheer volume of work we've got on at the moment - the quiet time from before Christmas has been replaced by a deluge, and never one to shy from a bit of hard graft, I'm working a bit extra. I'm pretty confident we'll settle back into a normal routine once both contracts are established, but for now it's a little chaotic. Certainly I'm well aware of my previous rants about 9-5, Monday to Friday being the only sensible way to work, but at least temporarily I'm happy to push a little more if it means we deliver what the clients need. Oh, and with regards to people who have emailed me lately about recruitment, I apologise for the delay in getting back to you, but paperwork has been somewhat shuffled to the back of the agenda. The situation will be rectified soon, I promise. [1] http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/66 http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/156 Hurrah - we survived another holiday season. No, not holiday season, that's a bit too P.C. Christmas damn it! We survived another Christmas. It doesn't just have to be for the Christians. It's a holiday all about giving, receiving, and generally keeping the happy little consumer driven market afloat for another year. But I'm certainly not going to complain, as I came out of it with Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid 3 and Zelda - enough to keep me going for quite a while. Regardless of how much Christmas is about buying of things these days, its still nice to see family, share a little happiness, and generally over-indulge a little. But once it (and the inevitable drinking too much on Hogmanay) are out of the way, I'm happy just to get back to some sort of routine. The new work that we were supposed to start before the holidays has finally kicked off, and we can get stuck in and get some solid stuff produced. Work on our own technology has continued apace over the holidays though, and we've romped through the preliminary work we were doing to test out our engine. We'll have to see how things balance out with external contracts, but I'm hopeful we won't have to shelve our own work entirely, and can continue on prototyping our little game ideas to see what's fun and where we can go with them. http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/155 So as I look out, bleary-eyed, at the huge puffs of steam being vented past our window by the building's boiler, I'm kind of sorry that moving to a proper office has meant that I can't just stay at home in the nice warm flat and work from there on frosty days like these. Still, the office itself is warm enough, it's just the trip to it that means I have to brave the icy conditions. Just read an interesting article here [1] on longer term planning with the Scrum methodology. Good stuff, but there's still the big chasm of "how do we get the publisher to sign up to this". Until the people paying the money are okay with the less detailed milestone definitions that come along with agile planning, there will continue to be issues. It's all very well running teams on agile internally, but until there is a solid contractual way of satisfying the publisher's need for security with the developer's need for flexibility, there will still be problems. At the moment the milestones are defined fully at the start, but it's a naive producer that doesn't expect the content of those milestones to change. It's at the developer's disadvantage though - the contract states that they are bound to deliver what's in the milestone list, and if they don't the publisher is within their rights to cancel the project at their discretion. They generally won't, but it's a quick get out if they want it. Even if the publisher and the developer both know that the milestones have become meaningless, when they're written into the contract it means that there needs to be a re-negotiation to fix them again. Personally I think it's far better to start out with a high level statement of intent - that the developer will be working on a particular title for the publisher, and that they will use their best efforts to deliver builds of acceptable quality. The regular delivery of those builds is part of the process, and the method of arbitration as to what is 'acceptable' is written into the contract as well. That way the publisher still retains the majority of the power (control over what they deem acceptable), but they can't use that control to avoid their responsibilities to allow the developer reasonable time to deliver something acceptable. [1] http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3142/scrum_and_long_term_project_.php http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/154 Okay, so we have had our Jobs [1] page up for a while now, but ever since we started I've had a continual stream of emailed applications from potential employees. Some are impressive, some are not, but this post isn't directed at any of them in particular. It's intended as a guide to anyone else who is thinking of applying, so I'll put a link to it on the right hand side. First off, one of the biggest positive factors for a prospective employee is to show enthusiasm, both for developing games and for our company. We have this web-site and blog - it's always been there, it's fairly open. You could readily skim over everything on it in 5 minutes. So if your application clearly shows that you haven't put in that small amount of effort, expect it to be either binned outright, or at least given short shrift. I make an effort to write a personal reply to every application, but the ones that annoy me get very little attention. That point is at the core of why most applications that turn up in my in-box will fail, but I can sum the rest up in bullet points (most of which represent actual applications). DO understand that you're applying for a games job, not just a 'software' or 'IT' job. Those who end up at games companies are primarily those who have a real passion for games, and that comes through readily in a good application. DON'T show ignorance of who we are and what we do. There are two of us, and we primarily do custom software development for other games studios. And yet we get applications which: talk about things like meshing with our organisation and looking forward to working in a large team. ask about jobs on our QA team are an impersonal email, even though the applicant worked with Pete and/or I at VIS DON'T send a generic "please I would like a job at your company" email. This includes: not mentioning our company at all not making sure the cover letter is appropriate to our company, the worst sin of all: sending the exact same email to every games developer in Scotland, and leaving all of those email addresses clearly visible in the To: line of the email! DO make sure your email and CV are free of spelling and grammar mistakes. Bad spelling and grammar says to me: "I'm so slack that I can't be bothered to spend the 15 minutes it would take to look them over properly, despite the fact that I'm applying for a job that might be hugely important to the next few years of my life". Frankly that's not a person I'm necessarily keen to employ. Paying attention to these details take a very short amount of time. There aren't so many games companies out there that you can't do them for every place you apply to. Personally I think for the potential reward (i.e. getting a job), they're worth it. I'm sure more bad examples will appear in the future, so I'll be keeping this post up to date. [1] http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/jobs.php http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/152 One of the good things about my new, doctor ordered, walk to the office in the morning is that it gives me 20 minutes or so of un-interrupted thinking time. I can't do anything, no-one is asking me anything, so my mind is free to wander. This last week we've been brain-storming development ideas for our own games, finally. Engine and tools work is all very nice and satisfying, but without a clear end-goal, it's not so productive. So Pete and I had a proper idea generating session last week, and settled on a plan for making a small game as a first step. Well, second step really - as an intermediate step we're making Pong, on the grounds that if the engine can do Pong, then it has all the components necessary to prototype game-play for our real first title. The walk to work this morning though was about coming up with the concept for the real game though - we had some good game-play ideas, but nothing to tie them together into a game. I'm very much in favour of the few-short-paragraphs-of-exposition-then-into-the-game approach (think Super Mario Brothers), but we still need that exposition to give us something to focus the game style around. And a name for our protagonist always helps to coalesce ideas around as well. http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/151 So, since I didn't have any pressing deadlines this week, I agreed to visit Paisley University and give a talk to the undergraduates there. Sorry, University of the West of Scotland:Paisley Campus (that's soo got to bite them in the arse when it comes to their stationary). As an industry, I think we've somewhat dug ourselves into a hole in the past few years, by cutting back on hiring new people (and instead insisting on experience); now we're facing a talent shortage, especially on the software side. We've seen the error of our ways now, and I see more adverts for graduates again, but that dry spell will no doubt have diminished our talent pool enough that it will take years to restore. Nothing in the talk was particularly enlightening I'm sure, but I tried to impart a few of the things that you learn after your first years in the games industry: how to write a good CV, what it's like working at smaller or larger companies, how to spot when your company's about to go down the tubes. You know the sort of thing - stuff that no-one will tell you before you actually get your job, the sort of stuff you learn in the pub after work. I always remember talks from industry people when I was at Edinburgh, and they almost invariably had people saying "this is our company, look at how shiny it is, here's our token recently hired graduate, listen to him tell you how shiny it is". It was always about the potential for recruiting the graduates, and glossing over all the potential downsides. So I tried to give a balanced view of the industry: a quick summation of the current state of the business, the potential likelihood that your employer will make you work unpaid overtime to ship the game, and the likelihood that the company folds while you're still working there. Of course, I tried to stress the up-sides as well: the joy involved in making games, the rewards involved in shipping a title that people love. I hope it came out fairly balanced. Otherwise I must look like a bit of a numpty - why would I still be working in the games industry if the pros didn't outweigh the cons?! Anyway, if it didn't come across in the talk, I'll say it now - making games is great. It's fun, it's rewarding, and I find it hard to imagine how a job in the regular software industry would compare. Sure, there's less money in games, but the non-monetary rewards are many. http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/150 And so we finally wrapped up the latest work we've been doing for Add Knowledge yesterday, with a trip up to IC-CAVE at Abertay to drop off the PSP kits and an archive of the final software. Our Scrum board has been slowly shuffling cards over to the 'done' side, and now it's all neat and tidy. Just in time for me to strip them all off and put them in a drawer. I should really look over our velocities and backlogs for the last part of the project, but for now I think it's time to put it to one side. All in all we delivered what was asked for and on time, despite having to shuffle things around for a big demonstration in early October, so I think we can be satisfied with our recent efforts. I think I'll be spending the rest of the day making sure everything is tidied up after the deadline and that all the little bits of admin I've been putting off get done. Then, time for a relaxing weekend, and maybe some time finishing off Phoenix Wright 3. http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/149 Well, with the recent furore around Manhunt 2's omission of certain developers from the credits of a game they clearly developed, the IGDA has put a reminder [1] up about their work on establishing a Game Crediting Guide [2]. It's a fairly comprehensive guide now, and looking over it I agree with most of the  stipulations within. I could argue that attribution of team roles to individuals is perhaps not necessary (especially when some developers fulfil many roles and so appear in the credits many times), but that's probably a rare enough case not to worry about. Proper credits is certainly a real issue though, as it's a tangible benefit to your team. Being able to point to a good and/or successful title and say "I made that" is of real value for their sense of worth and their career long term. While not being credited isn't the end of the world, there are enough unscrupulous people that claim credit for the work of others that not being credited when it is due is sufficient cause for doubt on the part of an interviewer. Credits are, in my experience, usually knocked together at the end of the development process, and not thought about in advance. The list of people is usually drawn up quickly, and if there has been a lot of movement in and out of the team, people can easily be missed. It's the producers job to maintain a credits list throughout development, detailing who worked on the title and for how long, and it's not a chore which should be neglected. Finally, my biggest bug-bear is with the ordering of the credits. I'm sorry, but the publishers, external producers and company management are not the most important people for a game. The director comes first, followed by the core team, and then the less involved parties. It might seem like a good idea to pander to the management or external partners, but you're selling your team short if you don't proclaim them loudly to be the most important part of the game. [1] http://www.igda.org/newsroom/press_051107.php [2] http://www.igda.org/wiki/IGDA_Credits_and_Awards_Committee http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/148 Just back from Glasgow, after attending a seminar from OfCom about their Public Service Publishing work. Yes, I know, PSP. Confusing, and unwieldy to say the full version. Here's hoping they change it before long. I'd suggest British Media Office, but that probably wouldn't get past committee. Anyway, the goal of the PSP is, as far as I can tell, to provide a vehicle for financing public service content, in the same manner that content like the BBC, ITV and C4 currently provide. I believe the remit goes something like "content that informs and entertains, and enriches our cultural heritage".  The consensus is that the traditional TV broadcasters and producers are unsuited to finance new types of content, such as websites (interactive and regular) and games. Of course, it is the games part that interests me. There is, I believe, huge scope for producing games which both inform and entertain. Specifically I object to the fact that we have to Americanise our games in order to target the largest possible audience. Even when set in fantastical or science fiction environments, we still get American voice actors to play our roles. Our children can readily identify many American cultural references, at the expense of our own. We don't have fire-hydrants, our taxis are black, and our postal carriers drive red vans. I think there are many games to be made that use British culture, settings and characters. Be that an adventure game based on Inspector Rebus, or a modification to a real-time strategy game to put it in a British historical setting. We invest much in British programming, for the education of our children or the entertainment of us all. For E.R. we have Casualty, for the Bold and the Beautiful we have Eastenders. But where is GTA: Liverchester? Okay, bad example. Anyway, the seminar itself was informative, but not entirely heartening. The games industry moves very quickly. Project life-spans are measured in the order of months, not years - and I'm not convinced that the PSP would be able to move quickly enough to operate successfully in games. It was clear from the turn-out (a couple of dozen TV industry types, and only myself and someone from Realtime Worlds representing the games sector). Apparently in the London version of this seminar, games weren't represented at all. And yet the shift in people's habits, especially in the young, is clearly moving away from TV and towards games and the internet. While the PSP is a good step towards allowing new content creators access to public money to make worthwhile public content, it still feels like the traditional TV producers, who have little to no games experience (and I'd venture ability) are lining themselves up to be the ones to continue to recieve that public funding. OfCom are still in the process of a 'review' stage that is feeling out the remit of the PSP, and from talk at the seminar, is more than a year away from even really getting going. With the rate at which technology is developing and public attitudes towards how they use media are changing, I can't help but think that this is moving too slowly. So in summary, I think the PSP is a laudable idea, but it needs to stop worrying about the bickering about what exactly the PSP should do (primarily by TV producers and broadcasters who feel their financing is being threatened), and get down and dirty and actually get to encouraging more public 'new media' content. Whether that be by financing, or simply by facilitating existing projects, whatever - as long as what they do results in publicly valuable content being produced that otherwise would not have been. Getting mired in an extended 'consultation period' where people argue back and forth is not only inefficient, it may mean that any action they take is just too late, and the free market will have replaced valuable public service content with commercialised pap (Beauty and the Geek anyone?), and may never get the public's attention back. Speaking strictly from a games industry point of view - unless the PSP is a responsive and fast moving entity, it will never be able to engage the help of the dedicated games sector, and may find itself quickly outpaced. That would relegate public service games to being second rate, pale imitations of their commercial counterparts, and so never gain the attention of the public they are supposed to serve. http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/147 Almost a month without posting - that's very bad of me. We've been going all out to meet varying deadlines for Add Knowledge - most notably some demonstrations to senior politicians to enthuse them about the project. All has seemingly gone well, but not without a serious amount of effort for all concerned! Hopefully we'll start to see some movement on the project proper soon as a result. We seem to have tamed the worst of the PSP, and although the debugger we're using is horrible, it's not been too traumatic to get our previous work converted over to the PSP and add some more features. We've also been in the new office for a month now as well - it's working out better than I had hoped. I was pretty productive working from home before, but something about being in an office environment focuses the mind somewhat, which is good. Having a space where Pete and I can collaborate when he's working on our stuff is a good thing too. I'm determined to get a white-board soon though, as it's really hard to communicate structure concepts when you're drawing on paper or post-its. Anyway, today I came back early, as I have two new cats that I went to pick up today. Lots of mewling and meowing, but they've settled quickly in the flat. Cats seem to be scarily good at making themselves at home wherever they feel like, so hopefully they'll not mind too much when I leave them on their own tomorrow. Breakables hidden away in drawers first I think though. http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/146 It occurred to me while watching a re-run of a pilot for a particular popular sci-fi show, that perhaps people worry too much about the plot for their sci-fi games. Sure, the Phl'aarg forces might have strong and compelling reasons for attacking the Kerflump home-world, but let's be honest, your average game player really doesn't care. In my view, the job of a back story for a game is to allow willing suspension of disbelief for long enough that the player can enjoy the game itself. If the game is fun, the player will remember the story with fondness, even if it does follow closely the plot of some more famous film or book. The key factor is that the story shouldn't make the player cringe, and shouldn't contain the kind of horrible glaring inconsistencies that they can't ignore. Some of the most effective game back stories are the simplest. Mario has to rescue Princess Peach. Sonic has to free little animals from the evil Dr. Robotnik. If you are going for a more complex story, consistency is more important than fleshing out details. Once you've persuaded the reader/player to make the first jump to your story, try not to force them to make any more. You might persuade them to accept that magic is real, or that technology allows you to move instantaneously between points, but don't change the rules afterwards to suit some awkward bit of plot development. Choose your universe rules at the start, keep them consistent and simple, and then base your story around those rules. The player then has a nice consistent world view, they understand what's going on, and they're happy because there aren't constant surprises. If you omit details, the player will happily imagine the rest of the universe according to the basic world rules that you've established. Take Star Wars for example - you are shown a very small section of the universe, and the rest is simply implied. By not fleshing out endless irrelevant details, you avoid accidentally introducing glaring inconsistencies, and also avoid boring the player. Take it from the point of view of a character in your world. They don't care about the mechanics of inter-stellar travel, they've been living in a world with it for a long time. It is mundane to them - they wouldn't dwell on the details, they dwell on how it affects them. So don't follow the Star Trek model of baffling the viewer with science details, instead show them the parts which affect them - e.g. travelling between point X and Y will involve hyperspace, and will take Z amount of time. http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/145 Well, BT have (finally) managed to sort themselves out and install a phone line into the new office, which was the only thing holding up us moving in. As such, I popped along yesterday to have a look again at it properly, and I've now got the keys! Very exciting, and I much enjoyed just sitting in the big leather chair and trying to think of all the things that I'd need to sort out to properly imagine working there. I think most notably the place needs some coffee! Can't think straight without coffee. Here are some pictures so you can judge for yourself - it's bare just now, but I'm sure I'll manage to get some character in there soon enough. Our lovely view (it's 3 floors up) Nice big leather chair for my desk. A bit ratty, but hey, furniture that's free you can't complain about. Pete gets the littler desk (have to enforce my dominance over the proles somehow) And room for "employee number 3" when they turn up. So, once there's an obligatory Lara Croft poster up, PCs with cables trailing all over the floor, and a whiteboard or two covered with cryptic programmer like notes, I'll post some more pictures for you to compare. I've also got to update the website with the new address and directions to us, but I think I'll wait until we're all properly installed. Have to make the move go pretty smoothly though, as we've got lots of work on in the next month, and not too much time to do it. So I should get back to it! http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/144 You know, it's days like this I'm glad I don't have to go outside to work. Miserably cold, damp and grey. But for me it's almost a good thing - no glare in my eyes making it hard to see the monitor, no stiflingly hot room once the PSP kit and both PCs have been on for a while. Most of the performance optimisations have been done now - turns out the horrible slowness was almost entirely down to the big textures, which far exceeded the texture cache the PSP has. So trimming colour depth, dropping the resolution a little, and swizzling the textures have all combined to get us back to a healthy normal frame-rate again. Not the 60fps we get on the PC, but certainly playable. So it's time to put the optimisation bat back down again, and wade into new features (animation and audio next). On balance though, the PSP hasn't really impressed me so far. I realise that hand-helds are supposed to be underpowered, but I just groan whenever I have to try and read something on the low-resolution screen. We haven't ventured into using UMD for loading yet, but I suspect that would irritate me even more - the load times are already over 10 seconds, and that's loading a tiny amount of assets. I'd be interested to get our hands on a Nintendo DS for comparison - it's probably got similar issues, but I've got "grass is always greener" issues right now. http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/143 So as I'm waiting for a nearly full rebuild to complete, I thought I should write up a blog entry. Previously I've not been writing much because of the upheaval due to moving and generally been busy sorting out a whole bunch of things. This last few days however, I've not been writing much because I've had my head deep in coding work, which is much more enjoyable! Of course, from your end-user perspective, it doesn't really matter why. Anyway, this week has been particularly busy with coding, because we've finally got things visible and running properly on the PSP, almost as well as they were on the PC, which is immensely satisfying. Unfortunately, it has highlighted all of the things that we need to fix because the PC let us get a way with a lot, performance wise, and still ran well. But that in itself is good, because it means we get to wade in and tackle some nice solid problems like "the texture format is too fat", or "we're making too many state changes"; for which we can see solutions, apply them and instantly see results in the form of improved performance. It's a standing rule that you shouldn't optimise too early, because you'll end up wasting effort. However, when optimisation is appropriate, it's definitely a satisfying task. As problems go, those are the ones programmers like the best. Although we should have moved into our new office by now (by last week in fact), BT have been dragging their heels sorting out getting a phone line installed, and while my new landlords have been very understanding about it all, it's been quite frustrating. I would have liked to have been in and set up by now, so that it was no longer nagging at the back of my head that we have to move in the future. Still, I'm sure the wait will be worth it, and instead I code away here, surrounded by still packed boxes of kit, all still waiting to move to the new office before I unpack them. Right, build's done - back to palletisation. http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/142 There are few things worse as a programmer than to know that you shouldn't do something, know all the reasons why you shouldn't, but yet you do it anyway. You tell yourself that it's more important to get things in quickly, that the code is only preliminary or temporary. You tell yourself that it's better to get things in so you can see whether or not the whole approach will work, and that taking time on the details now would be premature optimisation. Of course you know, deep down, that the code that is supposed to be temporary will stay, because it works. Any bad things you put in there will be left with a @todo comment next to them, and shuffled down the priority list. Which might seem like a good thing on the run-up to a deadline, but is so many times more irritating when it comes back to bite you later on. In this particular case, the standing rule we have at the Company about programming for a fixed memory environment, even on PC, was the one I was ignoring. We were initially developing for PC, and memory handling there can be handed off to the operating system heap management and forgotten about. On every other platform though (especially PSP for which we are now porting things), you don't have that luxury - every drop of memory has to come from the single small fixed arena, any allocations from outside of that will just fail. So I had to spend a couple of days, going through all the allocations in the code and plumbing through proper fixed heaps so that it was clear where all the memory was coming from. Two days, and probably that in itself wiped out any gains we made in the original PC development by working fast and loose. In summary then, no lying to yourself when it comes to weighing up pros and cons of doing something in a way that you know isn't going to be good enough in the long term. Oh, and work to a fixed memory environment. Even on the PC. It will make your code tighter and faster, give you a clear idea of what your memory footprint is, and help reign in the inevitable problems when your memory usage runs away with you and you have to spend time tracking down who is wasting memory and where. Virtual memory hides a lot of sins from you as a developer, but it is a crutch which you can all too easily become addicted too. It doesn't take much to engineer systems to avoid memory fragmentation and waste, but re-engineering them once they are embedded is difficult and problematic. http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/141 Well, you'd think that being isolated from the many distractions the Internet has to offer would make me more productive, right? Not a chance. Source control access over dial-up is excruciating, and I very much live by the policy of many small commits rather than few big ones. So when Eclipse managed to get my broadband back to me on Tuesday (a whole week ahead of their worst-case installation date), I breathed a big sigh of relief. And downloaded about 3.5GB of stuff in the first 24 hours! Anyway, I've learned my lesson, and the phone line for the new office is being installed in advance of us going in, and I won't be shifting operations there until we have net access up and stable. Oh, and yes - new office! Admittedly it's just a room, but it's proper office space, with room for 3 or 4 of us, central Edinburgh, nice street. Pictures and more details will come closer to the time, but suffice to say I'm quite excited. This will give us the chance to hire additional people (not just those I can trust to work from home), and aside from anything else should satisfy Nintendo's strict policy for developer status. Add to that the fact that Nintendo development kits are really quite cheap, and we'll be seriously considering getting one or two to work on our own stuff in addition to any work for hire jobs we take on. http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/140 So the last week has almost entirely been lost for me due to moving, with only Pete holding the fort and continuing working. Most frustratingly of all though, the broadband order was (inevitably) delayed, and so I'm stuck with only dial-up access until the end of the month. It's maddeningly slow, and all of the normal work operations I take for granted are next to impossible to do with such slow internet speed. Still, it's only a temporary thing, so I'm sure I can manage. We've just switched to developing on PSP again, and now both have functional PSP dev-kits - time to get some of our own stuff on there, and not just the samples that come with it. http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/139 Another rewarding experience this year, some interesting talks. A couple of turkeys on the first day, but on average certainly worthwhile. The most obvious emerging theme was, again, convergence of games with television, films, books and the Web. However while I think there is some evidence to back it up, I don't think it is nearly as important as is being implied here. It feels like there is a need amongst the high level executives in the games industry to be seen to be thinking about something, and that convergence of the different media types is a convenient topic. Not so vague that it can't be talked about, but not as embarassing as "we're committed to making games so expensive that they rarely make their cost back". It seems like in all of the conferences, there is a lot of back-slapping and self-congratulation, but little self-examination. Yes, there has been massive growth in the last couple of years, and the transition to the new generation of consoles has gone pretty well (as long as you're not Sony). But it has done well on the back of innovative titles, which push away from the hard-core gamers, and the ridiculously over-specced hardware, and back to what it should be: making fun games, that people like to play. I'd like to see a conference where we look at the issues that are important to the average game developer, not just the EAs and Ubisofts (and companies who wish they were that size) - about what we can do about the recruitment crisis, about what we can do to make better games, more polished games. I'd like a conference that addresses issues like why we keep re-inventing the wheel every time we make a game, and why we don't collaborate on technology and sharing of knowledge to benefit the industry as a whole. Above all, I'd like to see a conference that dwells on the success stories, and how we can learn from those developers/publishers and emulate that success. With that in mind, I'd rate Hilmar Petursson's talk on EVE as the talk of the show for me, not because I learned a whole lot from it, but because it was good to see a developer that stuck to their guns and made a game they were proud of, and have been proved right by the game-playing public. http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/137 Several developers who work in Second Life, and more generally in virtual worlds to create content for the virtual world users. Many topics covered, and some interesting videos, but I can't help but feel that Second Life is a poor example of how this could develop. It seems that there are lots of ways to experiment in Second Life, and lots of experimentation, but woefully short on convincing examples of how to make it work. Certainly apart from advertising and improving brand recognition, the examples given are gimmicky, and lack polish. One of the interviewees who works for Linden Labs brought up the point that I thought was most relevant was that Linden Labs is forming a bottleneck to the continued development of the possibilities involved - the space and the users are growing at a faster rate than LL can grow to support. So by opening the API and allowing content developers to extend the world in unusual ways there is the possibility of refining the virtual experience, and perhaps polishing it in a useful fashion. Of course, I'm a little bitter right now, as Second Life are unable to charge either my credit card or my Paypal account, due to some internal uselessness in their systems, and so have disabled my account, so you should take all this with a pinch of salt. http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/138 I nipped across town at this point rather than seeing the next couple of talks, as I wanted to see the end results of the Dare to be Digital competition. As promised on Sunday night, there was an impressive range of games on display, and all showed promise in one form or another. Titles to note were the Cupid game from the guys from Guildford, where you fly around encouraging people to falling in love by causing accidental meetings that might lead to a whirlwind romance; also a fun and polished puzzle title in the vein of Loco Roco, where the player has to guide a pool of water through the level, tilting the world and freezing and boiling the water to change its form; and a stealth-based third person ninja title with an interesting audible/visual mechanic. My vote eventually went to a local (Edinburgh) team though, who made a nice two player physics based game, with some neat gameplay mechanics and a real co-operative feel to the gameplay. It was very nicely polished, and looked visually impressive. If I was to have any criticism of some of the titles on display it would be the lack of polish, but really that would be unfair of developers new to the work of making games to a fixed time-scale! Certainly the results are very impressive for the 10-week project, and the students involved all seem to have enjoyed the game and coped well with the pressure they were under. http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/136 Interesting stuff from what I caught - some frank admissions from the panellists (a couple from Realtime Worlds, and a few independents) that recruitment and training into the industry has been sadly neglected these last few years. Certainly I'd agree - the pool of talented developers is diminishing as people naturally leave (or get pressured out by the bad working conditions that permeate the industry). We need to take some more risks on entry-level people, but that will largely be dependant on the successfulness of the industry - we need more spare money swilling around to be able to afford to train developers. Or perhaps we should just accept that it is a necessary cost (if you take the long term view) and build it into the amounts we charge the publishers/consumers. http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/135 I skipped out on this one half way through to check out the "How to get into games" panel, but it was a fairly straightforward message. Singstar's producer Pauline Bozek did a bit on how they've updated it for the PS3 - basically integrating the social aspects which have naturally surrounded the game in the past into the game. For example, right now many people video themselves having Singstar parties and upload them to share - this is now integrated into the game. Secondly, they've integrated an iTunes-like music purchasing interface into the game, to allow people to customise their gameplay experience. Up until now, they have been milking Singstar by releasing a variety of track listings - almost like albums. Now they've killed that, but replaced it with a practically unlimited money making opportunity by allowing users to buy individual tracks. I caught a brief glimpse of the PS3 home interface as well - again it looks like Sony are trying to push the integration aspect. They want users to use their virtual interface to be the social community/lobby aspect to all of their multiplayer games. A laudable goal, but I can't help but think that it will take a while to smooth out the rough edges of the new style of play. XBox-Live took years to mature into the capable interface it has now, I don't see that being any different for Sony. However, if they do it right, and the poor uptake of the PS3 doesn't kill it first, I think it's got real potential. Certainly Sony seem to be in it for the long haul, rather than the short term success. http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/134 Admittedly, by this point in the proceedings, my last coffee had worn off and I was running on fumes and about to nod off. Luckily Ian presenting an easy going and light hearted presentation, dwelling on existing examples of good characterisation. Oh, and a hearty helping of plugs for IO's new game - Kane and Lynch. Basically I can sum up the whole talk in a few bullet points: Develop the character first, give them background, identifiability, and depth. Build the character first, and the story second. Decide on visual style, make it fit the game, make it a unique selling point if possible. Decide on audio style - give them a voice, make it an emotive one. Use professional voice actors! Choose the right name. Make it memorable http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/133 Certainly not the strongest talk of the day, with weak moderation meaning that little of worth was said. Some interesting market research was shown though, and in summary: 19% of females game, and make up 41% of all gamers in Europe. Similarly in the UK, 24% of females game, making up 43% of gamers. In the 6-15 age range, more than 79% of people play games regularly, dropping to 50% in the 15-19 age range. Beyond that, it tapers off to below 30% and diminishes roughly proportionally to age. More interestingly, in the last 3 years, although boys still play for longer and spend more on games, girls are catching up somewhat. So although there is still an issue, perhaps we're addressing it. Certainly Nintendo's work is reaching more female gamers than I would have expected, and there is a realisation in the industry in general that non-traditional games more popular with women are not only possible but profitable. Key points from Pauline Jacquey (Ubisoft producer, heading up their accessible games drive) about improving accessibility in games: Shorten gaming sessions (10min) Invest heavily in UI development and polish Allow players to track their progress In addition, although it's easier to create 'shrink and pink' versions of games, in reality those types of games are rarely big hits, and in the long term it is better to create products with real value (such as The Sims, Brain Training, or Nintendogz). http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/132 Much more interesting was the talk from EVE Online's Hilmar Petursson. Admittedly the content was very close to my heart - massively multi-player virtual online worlds, but as I mentioned to some other delegates, sometimes it's good to hear from a developer that made a good game, made it well, and has done well out of it. There are too many 'fluff' talks here, about things which might be, or projections, or spin on developers/markets that aren't quite as good as they are made out to be. And given the current disenchantment with MMOG developers in the games industry, it's good to hear that if done well it can be profitable. Anyway, Hilmar told a story of a rocky start, with a long pre-production time for EVE, including a period of a good 6 months where they ran out of start-up capital and relied on the goodwill of their staff to keep working for free essentially, entirely based on their faith in the product. After their rocky start, and some publishing woes (they sold the rights to a book publisher which then decided to neglect it entirely in favour of their book business), they eventually started to self-publish EVE, based on an entirely digital download model (no boxed game = no distributors). With a solid core of 30,000 players, they've grown their player base continually (and sometimes exponentially) since then. The amazing growth of the player base is matched only by their loyalty and immersion in the game, to the point at which they now have over one hundred thousand subscribers, and are on track to hit 200,000 before the end of this year. Soon, it seems, they will be the first developer to have more subscribers than the population of their home country (Iceland only has 300,000 residents)! It's this massive player-base, all sharing a single virtual universe, which leads to the parts of the game-play which captivate the players. Simple but solid core mechanics, closely modelled on their real-world equivalents (markets with bid/buy/sell systems, corporations with management structure, etc.) provide a framework on top of which the players operate rich social structures. It is these social structures which provide the real interesting play in the game; very much an example of emergent game-play. Hilmar differentiates between two different styles of MMOG - the 'theme-park' games (EverQuest, World of Warcraft, etc.) where play is rich, but tightly scripted and given to the player in neat, measured doses; and sand-box games (EVE, Ultima Online), where a virtual world with some basic rules and mechanics is presented to the player, and they are free to create whatever interesting systems within that world that they like. My favourite part was some video and concepts of the upcoming revisions to the game, which extend it to allow users to walk around inside space stations as a 3D character avatar - a vast improvement over the user-is-a-ship mechanic currently employed. CCP feel that it is this limiting factor which is skewing the player-base massively in favour of men (95% of the players), and hope that the new focus on personalisation in the game will redress that balance. Certainly this means that they are one step closer to my own vision of a virtual universe which scales from the personal scale to the universe scale, although I can see the technological challenges remain massive. It seems like they are feeling their way gently towards that system, with the personal avatars initially being limited to wandering around some lovely interior environments and chatting. They hope to eventually move to allowing indoor combat, but I think it is wise to work out the teething problems with the system first! They are also re-visiting the graphics of EVE - always one of its strongest points, to scale it up to current hardware levels. Regardless, I think it may be time to re-visit EVE once again - the last time I played was a couple of years ago, with a much smaller player-base, and fewer features. Certainly the growth of the player-base makes me think that it is worth another try. http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/131 This talk, from an executive at Endemol (they of Big Brother and Deal or No Deal fame), was mostly about the acceptance of the fact that traditional TV production and development is an aging dinosaur in todays entertainment medium. The younger audience is playing increasing amounts of games, at the expense of the time they used to spend watching television. Good for us, not so good for the television producers. Mostly this talk was telling us things that we already knew - that TV producers take a blinkered view of content production, and that kids and younger people prefer interactive media to non-interactive (TV and films). Web-based content, both games and social networking, are being used increasingly to maintain the reach of traditional platform holders such as the BBC or Channel 4. Most interestingly, they claim to have done research that shows that as users grow past 18 and school leaving age, they tend to be less biased towards interactive media, and tend to start using their mobiles and PCs in 'more adult' ways. Personally, I suspect this is an outgrowth of the free-time factor, that the younger audience spends more time on interactive media because they have more time to spend! Once they have more interesting pressures on their time, the desire for interactive content drops away. Still, a long talk for not very much reward. http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/130 This talk was interrupted by the fire alarm last year, so it was good to get through it unmolested this time. Again, I'm not sure just how relevant it is to a small developer, but it's interesting to get a feel for the current climate at the top, as it feeds down the chain a bit in terms of work available for us. Certainly the last couple of weeks have been bad for the majority of the stock market, and in general terms that means that risky investments are the first to be dropped. Unfortunately, games development is always a risky investment! Even the big players have suffered in the last couple of months, lots of volatility caused by a real lack of predictability. Not so good. In Ed's opinion, there were still opportunities, but they are in the low cost markets which are up and coming: mobile, downloadable games, casual titles, etc. Again, showing the risk aversion here - the big budget, big risk titles are not the sort of things investors want to deal with. Small scale, fast turnover games can show predictable results, without the all-or-nothing issue a AAA title might have. Also covered was the massive growth shown in 2006, certainly a big surprise to me, but good news. Income across the market is up 68% to $995m, of which subscriptions make up a tad more than two thirds. Forecasts for 2008 are for more than $1.3bn, which is optimistic but doesn't feel like crazy numbers to me. More interestingly for us, the massive growth of outsourcing we were talking about in 2005 has outstripped even those projections, $1.1bn in 2006 (40% of costs). For a lot of companies it's still about off-shoring to cheaper countries, but even local outsourcing is shown to keep costs under control, and reduce the risk that the publishers/developers have to take on for any given title. More work for us then. :-) http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/129 Focusing on the upcoming challenges for Ubisoft - the second biggest player in the industry after EA. Almost entirely positive, which is a good thing for a keynote, but in my opinion dwelled a little over-long on the things that Ubisoft were doing rather than taking a more general industry-wide view. The overriding theme was that of large market growth (backed up in a later talk quoting 68% growth of income in 2006). Ubisoft see the growth as being driven by 3 things: the new generation of console (increased power -> improved immersion -> increased sales). Not sure about that, but my cynicism relating to the new generation is well known. Also driving growth: accessible games, as evidenced by Nintendo DS and Wii. It definitely felt like Ubisoft view the Nintendo platforms as only good for family friendly, casual fun and learning titles, and the traditional AAA blockbuster titles are reserved for the 360 and PS3. Finally, they echoed the sentiments from last year that user-generated content is driving growth too. Frankly, this rings hollow for me - where are the increased sales from this sort of content. Perhaps I'm too disconnected from the reality of mass marked gaming these days, but I'm just not aware of where this obsession with user generated content is coming from, or what evidence has appeared since last year to convince us that this new way of making games is actually here. I can understand wanting to build good community tools to improve the way people play their games and interact, especially in multi-player titles, but I'm not sure how that ties in to user generated content. Onto Ubisoft's actual strategy - for accessible titles on the Wii and DS, they're focusing massively on usability and polish, and implied much smaller teams, and much smaller titles, developed quickly.. Fthey're going for the big team, big cost approach for their AAA titles (200+ experienced staff is their idea of a 'good size' for teams). They know they need to increase sales to amortise their costs, but I'm not sure that they have any real way of doing that effectively. However, they do have the economies of scale, and the intelligence to try and maximise re-use of tools and engines to minimise their development costs. Crucially, they know they face recruitment issues with such massive teams, not to mention the cost implications. As such, they are building whole teams (note, crucially they're not outsourcing to independents, they're building Ubisoft Studios), but in places where the cost is far cheaper. Well, it must be nice to be such a big fish, but I'm not sure just how relevant that sort of strategy is to us, the little fish in the pond. http://blackcompanystudios.co.uk/blog/user/mrcranky/128