Well, its time for the Monday morning spam trawl of the web-site. Akismet has been doing a good job of catching blog comment spam, but I still have to deal with the dozens of weekly bogus forum registrations by spambots. Oddly, they don’t post anything, just register; but I don’t want the forum memberlist to consist almost entirely by fake accounts. I suspect quite a few of them are actually searching for phpBB forums on outdated/vulnerable board versions. We keep pretty up to date on our versions, but I don’t think the bots discriminate.

Still, it’s something to do while on hold to Pipex to see about getting some resolution on this regular connection drop-out we’ve been getting. There are few things more frustrating than getting 90% of the way through uploading a 1.5GB submission image and having the connection drop.

Only news really worth commenting on is Sony’s PS3 delay in Europe – that’s really going to hurt them this generation. The PS3 is already massively over-priced, any more reasons not to buy it will wipe further swathes off the number of units they finally sell. As it stands, PS3 is difficult to programme, more difficult to get concept approval on, more expensive to buy, and not likely to gain any significant purchase on the market until late next year. So not many compelling reasons to work on a title for them now then. My money’s still on Nintendo for the most effective return on your game development pound.

So I felt it would be churlish of me to miss out on this conference, seeing as its all of about 20 minutes from our front door, and provides some opportunity for networking with other people. Not as much variety of talks as Develop, but at least there are no worries that I might choose the wrong track to attend and miss out on valuable talks.

Day 1

So aside from a fire alarm that left us outside of the Royal College of Physicians for the better part of an hour, this day was most enjoyable.

Keynote – View From The Top by David Gardner of Electronic Arts. Some predictions of the future – nothing particularly surprising or radical there. In-game advertising is a fact of life – we should deal with it. The rise of girls in gaming is coming [but then people have been saying that forever]. User generated content is key – multi-tasking users like to play games and use other content; as a demonstration he showed in-game ESPN footage and live radio – they want people to be getting that content through the console rather than having a TV (or PC) running in the background serving that content.

The Wall Street View by Edward Williams: echoed thoughts from “Money for non-suits” at Develop. Investors like predictability, stability, and profits (pretty much in that order). Basically they like large companies who gain stability through diversification, so that even big flops don’t significantly hurt earnings [that would be Take Two out then]. They like companies with muscle who push to expand the market. On that basis, they like mobile lots, based on massive ‘install base’ figures and perception of growth. I don’t agree with this one, but that’s based on my (probably biased) view of the mobile sector.

Games That Heal, chaired by Ben Sawyer from Serious Games: Serious games guru, pushing use of games in medicine, teaching and e-learning. Talking about the massive budgets available (far beyond the average game development budget) and corporate/government’s increasing desire to make use of games development existing technology and skills. Interesting example was the re-purposing of Full Spectrum Warrior to help combat post traumatic stress disorder in Gulf War victims.

So You Think You Know Games, presented by Nick Parker, Analyst: Talking about development past, present and future. No real surprises here, but interesting nonetheless. There was talk about Nintendo DS and Wii having sales pushed by a few innovative titles, compared to PS3 and 360 more likely to publish more traditional titles. No predictions as to the winner, rather voicing the expectation that households will buy multiple platforms: PS3/360 and another, as the different consoles target different markets, especially with the PS3/360 focus on multi-media. Personally I think the multi-media focus is a mistake – the majority of people aren’t tech-savvy, I don’t believe they’re interested in figuring out how the box under the TV works – they want to push in a disc and have it work. They know if they put a music disc in a hi-fi it plays, a DVD into a DVD player and it plays, a game into a console and it plays. Whether HDTV and Blu-ray/HD-DVD will change that dynamic I don’t know, but my gut feeling is that the multi-media support will remain chronically under-used, as it was with the PS2 generation.

Ofcom’s PSP And The Era Of Public Service Games, chaired by Peter Phillips of Ofcom: This talk was very interesting, although I have a bit of a vested interest in this sector. Basically it was to highlight the existence (or potential existance) of a public service publisher – essentially a vessel for routing public money to content developers, in the same manner that the BBC receives money to make quality content. There is an acceptance that the BBC is not in the best position to produce interactive content for the public benefit – as its a little stuck in its ways. There is also acceptance that interactive media is on the up, just as linear television is on the way down.

Games to make you cry: best presentation of the day in my opinion. Its patently not true to say games can’t make you cry and that because of that they’re not serious art. I can think of three times without breaking a sweat where games have made me feel something intense while playing. Knights of the Old Republic – while trying to turn Bastila back from the dark side, I had almost managed it but then failed and had to kill her – a real sense of loss; Homeworld, when the pilot of the ship is crippled late on in the game – sorrow and anger; and Call of Duty, in the night assault on Carentan I was cowering behind a wall with a sergeant shouting at me to flank a nasty looking machine gun nest that had already torn lumps out of me – fear. The presenter came up with examples from her game history, but the point was clear – games can tug on heart strings, but game developers need to understand why, and how to do it properly; only then can we make games with real emotional impact. The presentation was also made more fun by me slyly watching Ken Perlin who was sitting next to me, working on some animation things on his laptop, very distracting!

Day 2

Convergence: Hollywood take

Rosanna Sun – Matrix game producer. Pushed by Wachowski brothers into game development from a film role. They were keen to have the game development tightly integrated into the development of the films. She noted difficulty in managing inter-medium dependencies (e.g. VFX are usually done late in film, but she needed them early for the game). Assets were done and re-done to work better with games, Film costumes/sets for example were developed far beyond what was necessary for normal film production because the game needed far more content than the film. She also noted a general push from Hollywood to get better creative integration between films and their licence games. No-one likes to see a great licence used badly in a cheap and cheerful game, which bears little resemblance to the tone and quality of the original.

Convergence: Literary take

The developers/writers of Interactive Alice presented here. Developed essentially as back story for film, they use various techniques flesh out the main character of the film through interactive media. The story of the childhood of the main character in the film is told, and gives depth and reason behind her actions in the film. They premiered the third episode of the story at the presentation; I must admit to liking the story, but not really the presentation. It seemed interactive only in the loosest sense of the term; supposedly this is consistent with the character development, but I was unconvinced. Apparently they plan to improve the interactive aspects in the future, and plan much more complex episodes of the content for the future.

Convergence: my take

Its vital to make good game, regardless of whether it’s well integrated with the film/book/television. Technology and medium of delivery is irrelevant, what matters is that the content is fun, engaging, and develop the story and characters.

Mobile talk

A fairly unconvincing talk from various mobile developers, touting the death of desktop/fixed devices, and the rise of portable devices over the next half dozen years. I find this hard to believe. They raised the point of mobility of data, and the rise of online storage systems for holding user content (see YouTube, etc.) They glossed over some fairly serious flaws in the model however, and came up with no convincing arguments to support the ‘death of PCs’ argument. Degenerated into a demonstration of some new phone the presenter had purchased the week before. However, the theme of content rather than technology was revisited here, and I’ll cover that in a more general evaluation of the themes in the conference.

Machinima

This was a fun presentation, if not very illuminating, and was given by the guys from Red vs Blue (who I’ve been a fan of for a long while). Basically they revelled in the wonderful worlds that games developers create as a background for their stories, and loved the fact that those complex and impressive worlds can be adapted by amateur film-makers to tell their own stories, at minimal cost. Great for the artistic medium certainly – especially with the rise of video sharing sites making it easy for good content to be widely and cheaply published. A good question from the audience concerned how we as game developers make it easier for machinimists to work with our games – the RvB guys asked for user-controllable mouth animation on a button, free camera control (within reason) and the ability to have characters all look at the same point (I’m sure its very useful for them, even though there’s no call for it in game). All very easy for developers to do, its just that machinima is the only reason to have such features, so they don’t tend to make it into actual games.

Ken Perlin

Probably the best talk of the conference for me – Ken is an engaging and interesting speaker, and a genius at animating emotion. He makes simple code to procedurally generate animations which I’ve seen animators take days to do by hand. If anything, I think this work is the kind of thing which can make content generation for next-generation consoles achievable in some kind of sensible budget. I’m not advocating getting rid of animators, but getting them to use procedural tools to make their content rather than hand animating the position of every single joint, every single frame would massively increase their productivity, and I think open up a world of new possibilities. I’d heartily recommend visiting Ken’s website, there are a wealth of little Java applets to demonstrate the sort of things which are possible.

BBFC/PEGI Rating talk

I skipped half of this while trying to see the Lord of the Rings Online screening (which I still missed as it was delayed), but the gist of it was covering the reasoning behind the ratings the BBFC/VSC give. I’ve always thought that we had a sensible ratings system in this country, and I don’t understand the US reluctance to go with a legislated approach. We do need to regulate what titles go to what age groups, and if a regulated system avoids some of the royal screw-ups that have gone on recently, then it should be the solution. A voluntary system is nice when it works, but provides little defence against trouble makers who want to see games banned, rather than regulated. As always though, the body regulating the ratings will never be able to make an exact science out of the system, the best they can hope for is to build a reputation for sensible, predictable decisions; and then when an unusual situation comes up, the public can rely on them to make a reasonable decision.

Educational talk

Basically this talk covered the large use of interactive entertainment as a means for teachers to improve their children’s learning. Figures quoted: 11% of teachers actively using games already, with another 40% actively learning and trying to use games. Teachers will use off the shelf titles, custom built software, free software, whatever it takes and whatever suits their needs at the time. A custom version of Myst is being developed which the teachers like, but even Zoo Tycoon is a valuable resource for primary children. Teachers want anything they can to help get the message across, and there is a lot of resources beginning to be pushed into making games specifically to fit their needs. In addition, there is software available which allows the teachers themselves to author content which they can then use and share.

Reservoir Dogs screening

Exactly what you’d expect. Lots of gun-play, references to the film. The lack of voice actors from the film jarred a little, but not terribly so. They made a big deal over the choice the user has to play professionally or like a psychopath (based on body count basically) – didn’t seem like a huge deal to me but it’s nice to have a choice in your play style, and have it affect the game’s outcome (even only in a limited manner). Some basic driving gameplay in there as well. All in all a solid looking title, but didn’t make me think – “wow I want to buy that”.

Summary

Out of the whole conference, I picked up on two main themes (both from the presentations and from talking to people).

1. Don’t mention the MMOs. Seems the development community is no longer favouring MMO games as ‘the way of the future’. Most likely due a combination of the difficulty of competing with World of Warcraft and the doubtful financial feasability of building a decent MMOG. It costs a lot to make a massively multiplayer game, and unless you get it right, it will suck cash faster than it generates it.

2. Content is king. No-body really cares which box wins, nor is anyone sure who to bet on. What matters is making the right games, and delivering them to the consumer. The means of delivery is evolving, and is no longer as simple as a box on a shelf in a shop; X-Box Live Arcade, downloadable content, episodic delivery, all change the classic model. That big up-front cost and then forget about the title is no longer going to cut it – the massively rising costs mean that even a single title has to be milked for all its worth to try and break even (so handheld/online tie-ins, ports, additional content). To me this smacks of desperation in an attempt to save dwindling profit margins, but in the absence of anything better to recommend, heck why not?

Been a while since the last post, due to a frantically busy week followed by a holiday in Glencoe. A rough timeline would go something like: Find out Brave failed submission, attended EIEF (round-up post to follow, albeit rather too late now), off to Dundee to attempt fixes for Brave bugs, day of meetings relating to new contract, burning another set of submission discs for Brave, off to Glencoe (beer, hill, ache, beer, smaller hill, ache, wine, wine, Loch Ness, beer).

We’re still waiting to go forward with the next contract, so groundwork continues apace. Not much else from the world outside, other than the news this morning that Infotari is to fight their Nasdaq de-listing. I’ve got to say, I think the games industry is really too unpredictable for companies to do well on the stock exchange. While its easier for industry people to predict and understand the nature of deadline slips, missed sales targets, etc., the Wall Street investors react violently to things they don’t understand, and can wipe huge chunks off a public company’s value over an entirely foreseeable minor failure. Of course, I’d say that Atari’s loss in stock value is probably due more to long term problems than single slips, but I’m just an uninformed observer. Its likely that they’re just one more big publisher feeling the long term pinch of the things I’ve ranted about before – rising costs and constant returns.

This piece can basically be summed up as: “we need to find more ways to make money out of games, otherwise we’re screwed”. A sentiment I can heartily agree with, although its possibly just my biased spin on the article.

Also, this news on Visual Science is uplifting, if a little late. Hopefully the staff stand a better chance of getting some of their unpaid wages/redundancy on the back of this.

A quieter week this last week, thankfully; mostly dedicated to laying the groundwork for future development. You know the sort of thing, getting all the tools upgraded to the latest versions, sorting out a development structure, and so on. Okay, well if you’re a programmer you know the sort of thing. Suffice to say it’s an interesting challenge to make old code sit nicely in a structure which promotes re-use. So new code doesn’t disappear into a bottomless pit and become wasted work.

Some experimentation was done also to see if a C#/Lua mix would work well in new tools. Short story – it would, but it won’t integrate very well with C++. So tools which need to co-exist with the current engine will have to stay as Lua/C++ instead. There may be scope for a C# tool in the future, but not just yet.

I also spent an hour or so answering questions for an old compatriot (Phil Vaughan, now a lecturer at Duncan of Jordanstone in Dundee) on the old art/code divide, and what it means as team sizes grow larger and larger. I’ll probably polish up and condense what was said and post it up here as a rant, although the gist of it is “agile yay, monolithic management in big teams nay”. I’m a firm believer that game development teams just don’t scale well beyond 20 people, and any project that needs more resources than that should be worked in such a way that it can be done with several smaller teams.

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.

Right! Just finished making submission discs for Evolved so they can submit Brave for SCEA approval. What a nightmarish process its turned out to be. I could blame Sony for insisting that title submissions are done on certain hardware (that’s invariably out of production by the time it’s added to the approved list, and thus very hard to find), but I understand their submissions department’s reasons; they don’t want to be wasting time trying to test and approve builds burned on shoddy media, or worse, putting titles through to the duplication process only to find they have a minor flaw which results in thousands of useless discs.

No, the people I have to blame are the online retailers and couriers that have repeatedly messed up, and been thoroughly useless. So in no particular order:

• Virtual Direct
  Ordered: 30x Verbatim 8x DVD-Rs (#43273), promised next day delivery
  Arrived: Next afternoon, 30x Verbatim 16x DVD-Rs (#43521).
  Customer service: Took 5 minutes to grasp the fact that they’d delivered unacceptable goods, promised next day delivery of correct discs, only to send an email 2 hours later saying they had none in stock and they’d canceled the order
  Time wasted: 2 days
  Overall score: 0/5
• Rambox
  Ordered: 1x Pioneer DVR-110D (the only approved burner still for sale outside of eBay), promised next-day delivery
  Arrived: Next afternoon, 1x Pioneer DVR-111D (not approved)
  Customer service: Took 10 minutes to grasp the fact that only particular burners were okay, and that a substitute wasn’t acceptable. Was unable to tell me when more stock would arrive, but promised to check and try and ship one before the end of the day, which to their credit, they did manage.
  Time wasted: 1 day
  Overall score: 1/5 (points off for making me pay to send back the unneeded 110D, as well as using a rubbish courier – see Interlink Express)
• Snip-PC
  Ordered: 30x Verbatim 8x DVD-Rs (#43273), promised next day delivery, including 10 minutes on the phone, clearly and carefully explaining to the sales girl not to ship me any other kinds of DVD. She insisted they had those particular DVDs in stock, and that I would recieve them on Friday.
  Arrived: Wednesday, after being ordered on Thursday, 30x Verbatim 16x DVD-Rs (#43521), and failing to deliver once (see Parceline). The package wasn’t even dispatched until Monday.
  Time wasted: 4 days
  Overall score: 1/5 (given a point to reflect the fact that they apologised and refunded the money without requiring the items back)
• Parceline
  Failed deliveries: 1 (noted as failed to deliver because the recipient refused the package. When I queried the Dundee office, no-one had been asked to sign for a package. Apparently trying to deliver to entirely the wrong address counts as ‘refused’. Calling the helpline not more than 5 minutes after the website showed the failed delivery finds the driver didn’t know where he was going. Despite giving clear directions, the driver refused to turn round and return to Dundee and deliver that day, insisting on waiting until the next day)
  Overall score:1/5 (at least it got to where it was supposed to eventually, and was at least attempted delivery next day after dispatch)
• Interlink Express
  Failed deliveries:2
  1) Didn’t even find the street given the address on the package first time. Customer services was called, and after speaking to the driver, explained where he was supposed to deliver it. Although apparently not…
  2) Armed with explicit directions, driver delivered the package to a completely different address – the janitor at the student halls a few streets along from 4J signed for it (don’t ask me why). The driver didn’t query the fact that the building bore no resemblence to the directions he’d been given, nor the fact that there was no 4J Studios sign, or that the person there had no knowledge of the addressee at all. Apparently those things aren’t important these days…
  Overall score: 0/5 (not even an apology when it was determined they’d delivered to totally the wrong place and I was personally going to have to go down the road to locate the package that they’d lost for me)
• Federal Express
  Failed deliveries: 0
  Apparently Dundee is considered the arse end of the world for international shipments, incurring an entire extra day’s delay in any package delivered, despite the fact its only 2 hours max from the depot in Edinburgh. In the end, it was easier for me personally to go their depot near Edinburgh airport and pick up the package containing (finally) valid media for Sony submissions.
  However, they get the best score of the lot, because unlike the others, they were friendly, helpful, and actually did what they said they were going to do.
  Overall score: 3/5

So thumbs-up to Fedex, thumbs down to every other muppet I’ve had to deal with who has made this little job into a horrifically long and drawn out process. And thumbs-up to me as well, for writing this post without all of the expletives and fist-shaking that have come with dealing with this.

Well, after several weeks of plans and pitches and back and forth, we’ve come to an agreement to develop a pilot project for an educational title! Much relief on my part, as I can finally stop hedging on whether or not it would go ahead. We’ll be ramping up over the next month or so, depending on how long it takes to become a ‘Sony Approved’ developer, as well as taking on another couple of developers part-time (and no, we’ve already found the people, so there aren’t any jobs up for grabs I’m afraid). Still no office to begin with, at least until things settle down. Which is probably a good thing, as working remotely means we can do the work wherever is sensible, instead of being crammed into a little office where no doubt the air conditioning would have trouble keeping up! Not a good thing in this awful heat.

Once we get going, I’ll be prodding the guys to start blogging here to, so it won’t be just my incessant rambling you’ll have to listen to any more.

On unrelated news, we’re still trying hard to get a proper build of Brave made for the US market; the struggle now is to find a Sony Approved DVD burner and media. The fact that DVD manufacturers change models at least once a year seems to mean that the only models approved for making game submissions are the ones already out of production. Ebay is our friend now it seems! Anyway, a big thanks to 4J Studios for their help with trying to get Brave out (again).

Thought I’d escaped most of the picture snapping at Develop – there’s a brief glimpse of me here about halfway down the IGDA blog from Jason Della Rocca, blatently staring, mesmerised by the free beer supplied by Codemasters, instead of taking the chance to chat to Ken Perlin. I’ve found a lot of his stuff really interesting over the years, but must admit I didn’t actually know what he looked like. Ken’s talk was the one I skipped to go to the ‘Strategies for Success’ talk. Think I took the wrong option there! Still, it was re-scheduled from the previous afternoon, where it didn’t conflict, just the way these things work out.

Also found the pictures from the Develop Industry Excellence awards which we tried to blag our way into. Here’s myself and István with one of the reception cuties. No, I’m not that drunk. Well, okay maybe just a little. It was free beer damnit!

Have had my head buried in spreadsheets and plans for a couple of days, although that should be done with now. I’ve got some web-development work to do, I have to call our accountant and get the 2005-6 year end returns filed properly, and then its on to working on some pre-cursor work for our big deal, in advance of actually getting it signed.

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.

Okay, here are some assorted thoughts about the various sessions attended over the two days. I’ve split the final, debrief panel session into another blog post as it degenerated a little into a rant about the state of the industry.

Keynote [Mark Rein (Epic)]

An interesting talk, although a bit opinionated; I missed the first half so maybe he said other things. Basically he slated episodic development as a broken business model, and Intel’s trend of putting shoddy graphics chips into low-end PC systems.

The episodic thing was a fair point, although only in a very limited sense – he was saying that traditional huge AAA titles couldn’t simply be broken into chunks in an effort to raise money earlier in the development cycle. However he conveniently skipped over all the episodic titles where it does make sense (e.g. Sam & Max by Telltale), labelling them ‘casual’ throwaway titles. He was mostly shouted down by Jason Della Rocca and various others as being a dinosaur of the industry, and representing titles built on the Unreal Engine as also being old-fashioned titles, which I thought was a little harsh.

The PC thing is a valid point though I think (although not just Intel to blame) – we used to have Intel driving technology forward because business PCs were capable of running games, but only the games taxed the technology. So ordinary users would upgrade their tech to be able to play games as well. Now machines are getting faster and faster CPUs with more memory, but a business machine comes with rubbish Intel graphics as standard, and usually can’t be upgraded. So we [the games industry] lose large chunks of the market, as non-technical people will simply buy what they are given. Of course, I think its not just Intel, but Dell and the other system manufacturers that are at fault. For the sake of a 5 dollar component (the difference between an integrated chip that won’t run games, and a low end nVidia/ATI chip that will run them, albeight slowly), they diminish a market which has traditionally pushed tech. forward and helped them force the upgrade curve higher. Bad for us now, bad for them in a few years. Short-sighted decisions by these companies.

Xbox Live: Now and in the Future [Jeff Sullivan]

A nice ‘introduction to Xbox’ talk, well presented. Microsoft really seem to have their integrated online strategy sorted out here. A lot of good stuff about integration of online components, rewards, and shared content that really appeals to gamers. Couple that with their maturing Live support, and the future integration between Vista and Xbox 360 (already 2 titles in development where as a PC user you will be able to play against a 360 player across Live); I think they’re onto a winner with this (as long as 360 takes off as a platform). Certainly they put the Sony PS3 strategy (or lack of) to shame, especially in this important area of development.

Levelling the Playing Field [William Latham]

A good talk about the broken business model (which I’ve lamented here before) of the industry at the moment, and a proposed change to the system. Basically to coalesce the industry into 3 tiers: 1) the far-east outsource market, responsible for content generation but with no creative input, 2) a smaller, prototype developer level, responsible for developing the game idea and mechanics, working under the direction of 3) a core team of IP/brand generators, responsible for the design. The first two levels are essentially work for hire people (much like the film industry), and the third is the creative level. Money for the system comes through external guarantors, who green-light a project based on its merits (and the confidence in the creative team). Not sure if I agree that there’s enough money in the industry to merit such an approach, especially given the uncertain nature of success. However, the system as it is is broken, and I can see merits in this more structured approach to development, as opposed to the ad-hoc and shambolic approach currently in use, which can be blamed for a lot of the business failures currently going on.

Money for Non-Suits [Jonathan Smith, Nicholas Lovell]

Another business talk – aimed at illuminating why companies do what they do. Lots of talk about creating value, and the difference between profits, and growth. Basically to say that you can grow to add value, and you can make money to add value, but either way you need to have value, and that requires thinking long-term. Much discussion about stock market dealings, and basically a consensus that games companies really shouldn’t be publicly traded. Too much is conjecture and hearsay, and the difficult to predict nature of the industry can have horrifically bad consequences for a company’s value, without really being justified. Private investors tend to be calmer and more aware of the company they have invested in, leading to more sensible value/investment decisions.

PlayStation 3: A Parallel Universe [István Fábián (SCEE)]

A tech talk this time – dwelling on various ways of architecting software systems to make the most of the PS3 parallelism. Some very interesting stuff, and confirmed my view that the PS3 was more powerful, and yet harder to develop for than the 360. I can see wonderful algorithms and systems to make the most of the hardware, but it requires real knowledge of the underlying systems to get the most out of it (much like the PS2). I caught up with István afterwards at:

Beers with Codemasters

Where the Codemasters guys opened the next door bar for free beer for all developers. Thumbs up from me for that one! Good way to recruit as well. Chatting with István about some of the tech stuff dealt with at the earlier talk – I think we agreed that the tools are vital in making use of the PS3 tech, but that there won’t (and never will be) a silver-bullet solution. Developers need to think architecturally differently to make things work on next-gen technology, and from what I’ve seen so far, most developers aren’t up to the task. I think everyone probably needs to be made to develop a distributed system of some kind to really appreciate the problems involved in true (not just multi-threaded) multi-node processing. I also mentioned my surprise at Sony’s lack of effort to work with Codeplay, a company known for making compilers for custom hardware to aid parallelism.

Also bumped into Ralph Fulton, an ex-VIS designer now working for Codies, who confirmed other reports I’d had that DC Studios were horrifically bad to work for. After all the bad things we said about working at VIS, to hear someone say that DC was an order of magnitude worse opens up my eyes a little as to just how bad things can get!

Second day:

Leveraging the Ageia PhysX SDK for advanced multi-core simulation [Jonas Gustavsson]

A disappointing one this one – basically touting the wonders of PhysX, although feature wise it seems competent, the presentation left me feeling their software was a little immature. All of the demos shown had ‘frame-rate issues’ which were badly explained away, some so bad that they wouldn’t show them. All of the demos that were shown were unconvincing, showing contrived gameplay to utilise physics systems. I stand by my opinion that a physics system is best used to augment gameplay, not to replace it. Just because you can do bendable objects and breakable systems, doesn’t mean you should.

Strategies for success [Jamie McDonald (SCEE), Chris Deering (Codies)]

More an insight into what Sony London look for than anything really. Some interesting points about what a mature and successful studio look for in external studios. Chris Deering had some points about mobile and markets, but to be honest it was a little hard to follow and didn’t seem hugely relevant.

Design by democracy: How to keep your vision – while taking on board everyone else’s [Peter Molyneux]

An excuse to go see Peter Molyneux really, there was an independent developers group gathering but I was over-heated from the sun and didn’t feel like networking at the time. A good talk, dwelling on the difficulties in ramping up to a huge design team, and on the difficulties of following a game concept through to full production.