One of the many bug-bears I’ve developed working in the software industry is about bad user interfaces. When I was at university I did a course on human-computer interaction, and though I didn’t think it at the time, I realise now just how valuable it was. I firmly believe, now I’ve seen the fruits of so many bad user interface designs, that the course should not only be compulsory, but it should be repeated several times throughout the degree, just to drive the point home.

The particular bit of software that has inspired this rant is the software for this:

my new phone, the O2 Ice. Hardware wise I can’t fault it - sleek, light, good build quality. Software wise, it’s awful. More than awful, its so bad I find myself shaking it in the air and cursing, trying to resit the urge to bash it off the table in frustration. Almost everything in the user interface runs contrary to even basic usability principles. Buttons change function radically as you move between screens, resulting in a single extra accidental button press (of a button that you need to press), will wipe out a laboriously crafted message, without saving it anywhere, or more crucially prompting if you are sure. Conversely, when you are sure about an operation, for example deleting messages, it prompts you, then, just to make you grind your teeth, prompts you to press okay on a screen that says only ‘deleted successfully’. Why do I need to click okay on a message telling me that you’ve done what I asked you (twice) to do. Sure, tell me if it fails, but don’t tell me if it succeeds. I assume it will succeed!

Worst of all though is the behaviour when a new message comes in - I pull the phone from my pocket and see the message prompt displayed on the screen. Great, all good. But because its not a clamshell design, I habitually lock the keypad before putting it into my pocket. And the act of unlocking the phone causes the message prompt to disappear, and I have to go search through three levels of menus to go find the message that’s arrived. And that’s only for SMS messages, if a multi-media message comes in, pressing any key just freezes the display on the animated message icon - no feedback, nothing. Eventually I found out that holding the power key will free things up again, but that was one of the “don’t throw it across the room, it’s the only phone you have” moments.

Fact is, user interface problems aren’t generally hard to solve. Some of them are tricky because you have design constraints (say only being able to use a one button mouse, or limited feedback options. But in general bad user interfaces are down to bad designers, and there is no excuse for it. The end-user does not care, in the slightest, about how good your software is underneath; if it feels like crap to use, then they will hate it, and you have failed.

Games are normally a bit better in this regard, partly because the limited control mechanisms force us to spend more time thinking about input mechanics, but also because a game that doesn’t feel easy to control will drive players away in droves. Even still, it still makes me curse in frustration every time I use a tool that was chucked out of the door with a sub-standard UI, and everyone is stuck with it just because there are no alternatives on the market. (Rational Rose I’m looking at you…)

This news about the initial sales figures of the Wii amused me more than a little this morning. So far, pretty much all of the launch titles for PS3 have been unimpressive to say the least. I haven’t got my hands on either console yet, but Zelda, Rayman and even Wii Sports are all looking good, and I’ll be out on the 8th to try and pick up a Wii for myself and Pete. If the Wii’s sales momentum keeps up, it will be looking to eclipse the XBox 360’s by sometime next year, but unless some serious fan support (and better production rates) shows up, the PS3 is looking like a poor cousin. I’m wondering how much of a co-incidence the timing of the Gears of War release is - given that its a much more impressive title for the 360 than I’ve seen to date. We shall have to see how it pans out, but I’m sticking by my early bet on Nintendo.

Its been quiet on the posting front recently, mostly because I’ve been working overtime on my contract role, with various planning and build automation things occupying the extra time. But I’m taking some well deserved time back in the home office this week, and tackling the pile of paperwork that has accumulated in my absence. Double curses to the inland revenue now that I have to deal with VAT returns as well as payroll and corporation tax. When the CBI are complaining about the massive tax burden the UK industry is bearing, they’re talking not just about the amount of tax, but the sheer size of the administration required to keep up with all the obscure rules.

This item from Charles Cecil (Revolution) I thought was interesting. Of course, Revolution have been saying this for a while - they’ve gone radically to the other end of production, and adopted a similar model to the one William Latham was presenting in his talk at Develop. I.e. Creative input coming from a tiny core team of IP holders, with the main body of development work being outsourced to work for hire companies. But the fact that the probability of making money from high end development is extremely slim is undeniable. Even the companies that don’t expect royalties and are making all of their profits from up-front publisher advances will die under that model, because even if they survive for a while (by allowing the publisher to accept the risk/loss), the death of the publishers will leave them without anyone to front for their next big project.

Anyway, enough ranting. I’m feeling ill enough this morning without dwelling on depressing subjects. I blame the hot sweaty venues I was in over the weekend watching the Festival preview shows. Some good, some bad - I’d definitely recommend Jason Byrne though.

On a more games related note, I’ll be attending the EIEF this coming 21st/22nd of August, on the grounds that any opportunities to get us noticed and more business is good! Some more interesting talks there, and the fact that its about 10 minutes from my front door is just an added bonus for my lazy self.

Yesterday was Pete and my first visit to the IC CAVE office in Dundee - they are involved in our new project, so we’ll probably be spending a bit of time there over the next six months. Very nice office, although the building itself gave me flashbacks to University. No exams to pass any more though, just games to make.No news from Brave NTSC as yet, although I’m told it’ll be at Sony America in California today. Oh, and as a final note, we are no. 1 in Google, with a page ranking of 3/10! Take that Lionhead.

This was the closing session of the main conference, and from my impression, consisted of a lot of slapping each other on the back really. The panel (including Phil Harrison of Sony and Mark Rein) touched on a few points, but basically summed things up as “things are rosy right now, everything’s going well”. Well, I’m not sure how well everyone else is doing but it doesn’t seem that way to me. So at the end of the session I asked whether or not they thought the next-generation of consoles had really grown the market enough to justify the huge cost increases, and basically was there enough money in the system to support the current crop of developers. Admittedly, all credit to Phil Harrison, he took it on the chin and said ‘No’, but to be frank if he’d pretended otherwise I probably would have got up and walked out.

The gist of the reply was ‘No, people are going to have to be smart, reduce costs, and take advantage of new markets’. That to me says everything is not going well. That to me says that we have a set of developers all scrabbling to develop on the next-generation of consoles, despite the fact that they have a tiny market share compared to the current generation, despite the fact that the games cost many times more to make, and despite the fact that the technology is totally untested. That to me says that the remaining big developers are betting heavily on the next generation, and everyone’s just playing a big game of chicken. No-one wants to say: “actually, we can’t afford to continue like this”, because they’re hoping someone else will say it first, and reduce market congestion, or something else that will save them. And most of all, that says to me that Sony knows they (and Microsoft) are pushing onwards too quickly, and that some developers and publishers are going to die in the transition.

Call me old fashioned, but I’d like to run a company based on something more than just enthusiasm for the new crop of technology. It doesn’t matter if its new and trendy, if it doesn’t sell enough product to make back the cost of developing for it, then its worth nothing.

Unfortunately, that was the last question of the session, and apart from some people talking to me about it as everyone was getting up, there wasn’t much debate about it. I hope at least I did something to damp everyone’s enthusiasm a bit, and get a bit of realism back. My goodness, aren’t I a miserable b&*%ard.

Well, I did start writing a post about this at the time (a week or so ago now), but it turned into a windy rant about bad industry practices; then I ran out of time to finish it up and it seems to have been eaten by Wordpress since then. Since it would probably be very depressing to type it all again, I can sum it up in some very simple points:

1. Letting your staff work an extra month when you know you don’t have the money to pay them is totally, flat out, unacceptable. At least VIS had the courtesy to tell us at the start of the month so we didn’t work any days for free.
2. The way the Edinburgh staff were treated was shocking - being flat out lied to so that they’d migrate the equipment and incur travel expenses that had no itention of being reimbursed is just shoddy management.
3. Letting your company run down all its money and go bankrupt, then when it goes into liquidation immediately starting up a phoenix company with none of the debt and scavenging all the assets for cheap is, frankly, tantamount to fraud in my book. How you expect to hire back developers onto such a team after seeing the way the previous company went is beyond me. Unless of course its all just a temporary thing so the maximum amount of blood can be sweated out of the assets before abandoning everyone to their own fates (again).
4. Damn - thats 3 out of the 4 big Scottish players out of business in less than 14 months; leaving Rockstar North and Real Time Worlds as the only large employers.

I must admit to being a little selfish in this matter - as I mostly want other Scottish games companies to survive so I can poach their good staff when I get the opportunity. But with the liquidations going on, more and more talent is migrating south of the border (where there’s a drought of good people), and there’s little to tempt them back up. And then, there is a hurdle to any new developer wanting to set up shop in Scotland - the fact that talent would have to be relocated in to get it going.

Its small wonder so many good people are leaving the industry - they’re being offered no stability, no decent prospects, and companies which want to offer them opportunities and build are being priced out of the market.

Anyway - my condolences to those people out of work because of this, although from those I talked to on Wednesday while there, I think it might be better off redundant than continuing to work there!

Huzzah. Finally some time to chill out and calm down. Over a month of deadline crunch with Barco has somewhat taken its toll. Today will be entirely devoted to games and catch-up reading.

Some talk over on The Chaos Engine about the forecasted crash of the games industry (due to rising costs), and asking why the big publishers (EA, Activision, Ubisoft) aren’t doing anything about it. For example, trying to rein in the relentless next-gen march, even when it massively inflates costs. The general consensus is the upcoming problems are real, and largely inevitable; but that publishers aren’t doing anything now because they’re still making money.

Massively short-sighted in my opinion - its like we’re a big Katamari ball rolling down a mountain; the outlying bits (the developers and smaller publishers) are being smashed off along the way, but the inner core is just keeping its head tucked in and hoping it will be left at the bottom. Even collecting new bits along the way (as the smaller publishers/developers reform and try again) won’t help in the long run, not to mention the carnage that its causing along the way (in the form of massive venture capital losses). It will only take one bad experience investing in a developer/publisher that falls apart under the current development conditions for a big VC to swear off the games industry for good - making it even harder for new developers to form and build.

In other news - more rumblings about the future US release of Brave, for which I’ve been doing a little bit of work. More details as and when I can…

This post started out as an email to Chris regarding his recent post, Decline of the bedroom coder. Apologies in advance for crude language:

The increase in complexity is certainly reducing the accessibility of games - the recent report of “teenagers playing less games than their parents” may back this up, but it’s probably mostly down to the amount of other distractions for them. YouTube, Google Video etc…

One thing that I realised recently, and I am annoyed at myself for not ‘getting’ it sooner, is that Nintendo is very clever, MS are fairly on the ball, but Sony are very … very dumb. Notice that even since the days of the SNES, all of N’s hardware were clearly below the technical levels that were possible at the times, but always above the invisible ‘this looks shit’ border?

Nintendo clearly appreciate that games are getting more expensive to produce and less accessible due to increasing technical demands - this is what the Revolution, and to a lesser extent the DS, seem to be all about. Lower specs than the rest, innovative controller to bring in new audiences, and a back catalog of classic games to recapture the jaded players.

Even MS has pretty much got it right, although I’m highly confused that they switched to PowerPC as Apple went Intel. The backwards compatibility list is somewhat underwhelming, but then the Xbox didn’t have any killer apps anyway.

And isn’t Geometry Wars the Xbox 360’s biggest seller, and what is it, a $15 Live title that was cooked up in someone’s spare time? That’s gotta have some people (mainly artists) crying and shitting their pants as their current AAA project slips. “What, we’ve been wasting how many years of our lives drawing gloss maps? We could have been billionaires already!”

Sony developers are certainly going to have fun trying to simultaneously exploit 7 CELL processors and whatever else crap the PS3 has installed, while Revolution coders will already be very familiar with their environment. Xbox 360 chaps will be happy with their DirectX.

Sony just don’t get it. Even the PSP is a shit to develop for, and from what I’ve heard, comparatively the DS is a breeze, just like the GBA.

But I’d love to get a game of my own on Xbox Live though. A man can dream… *sigh*

Before you think it, no, I’m not nostalgic for the olden days. Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to see any of the ‘art’ that I’ve made in the past will tell you there’s no way I could make games from my bedroom without someone else providing the visuals.

But my point is, twenty years ago you could make a game with a team of one or two developers (be they programmers or artists). You’d be developing on the NES, Spectrum or Commodore, and your games probably retail for 15-20 pounds sterling. Skip forward to 1991, and you’re developing for the SNES or MegaDrive - your team is around 8-10 people, and your games probably retail for about 40 pounds. Then on to 97 - you have the Playstation and N64, by now your team is around 20 people, and your games are probably retailing for about 40 pounds still. 2002, you’re on the PlayStation 2 or XBox, your team is now 40 or so people, and your game is still retailing for 40 pounds. 2006, you’re starting on a PS3 or XBox360, average team size is now pushing 100 people.

To pluck a cost figure from the air a team of 40 or so people developing on PS2 resulted in a cost of between 1m and 2m pounds per title. Looking over develop’s top 100 list this year, there are many, many games on the top studio’s books that aren’t making back half a million pounds. Okay, so thats just from the UK market, and the US market is much larger, but you see my point that margins are getting tighter and tighter.

The games industry is being led along a growth path where revenue is rising fairly linearly (10% a year is a generous figure), but costs are rising exponentially! The old system where publishers used the massive revenues from the titles that sold well to underwrite the cost of the games that flop is falling apart, solely down to the diminished profits they can make from successful titles. The increasing fragility of both developers and publishers is, in my opinion, just a worrying symptom of the underlying problem. As we let costs spiral out of control, we start to price ourselves out of business.

Even an established and successful studio can be crippled by more than one bad title or deal in a row, because the costs involved in getting even a poor title close to market are growing rapidly massive. Much as I’d like to blame the publishers for the problem (for attempting to keep their costs down by mistreating developers rather than encouraging efficiency), I think in the end the issue lies with the hardware manufacturers. We are moving onto the next generation of hardware, when we’re not limited by technology, but by the level of complexity the market is willing to pay for. Sure, if the consumers were happy to pay double for twice the complexity, or if twice as many units sold when the technology improved, then it would be sustainable, but its not.

Roughly the same consumers who bought the current generation of console will buy the next generation; when they buy games they expect them to be at the same 40-50 pound price point, because they don’t see enough value to justify paying any more for the games. So in the end, the games industry tries to make more complex, expensive games, for the same revenue as before, just so they don’t get left behind.

So what’s my proposed solution? Well, for console games, I don’t think I have one, apart from maybe to keep producing quality games for PS2 for as long as possible. For PC games I think its clear - make games at the same level of costs as now, and try to make use of better technology and middleware to improve the quality, rather than trying to increase complexity to match what the hardware is capable of.

Console timeline cribbed from here.