.:Out-of-the-box:.

I had a very interesting discussion yesterday. I want to summarize it below.

There is a fresh new group of developers who want to start making games. They have quite a decent (but various) programming experiences with different platforms, different project types and scale. All outside gaming of course. During my discussion I heard two very interesting questions, I’ve tried to answer then and will answer also here.

1) Which platform choose for casual indie games.

2) What if we choose wrong platform, how about portability?

Questions seem to be academic and I have a feeling, that I answered quite academically. As for first problem, I asked more questions to better understand it. I was curious what games is that group aiming at and for what audience in specific.

Answers I’ve heard were not clear which I understood as the group is rather looking for certain ideas, than have a complete vision of a certain title. Sounds like a pitfall, right? In further discussion we agreed that first goal is rather to better understand technologies and possibilities potential platforms can offer.

Fair enough. Knowing what you can do and binding it together with some assessment on who usually has such a platform and what games that player expects can help to work on realistic ideas and innovations that have better chance to work. It is good to know though, that it’s not real game development. Rather a technological training, which later can help to better discuss differences and potential on platforms like Facebook, iPhone, XBLA, XNA, PSN and Steam, just to mention a few different examples.

Answering to the second question: what if we choose wrong platform, how about portability?

In this case I believe that sticking to basic programming principles can help. Most programming platforms have for sure one thing in common -> objects and object oriented mechanisms. Syntax may vary and language specific elements can trick out porting efforts. Avoiding them should be part of that best practice, I think. Having objects on mind, in front I’d design abstraction layer with objects that share common elements. Any specific platform just should expose it in its implementation.

Simplified example: If I want to develop 2d sprite based scroller shooter, I need objects like screen that supports pixel-by-pixel redrawing, sprites, some routines for clipping, collision detection for sure. Those should have interfaces which are platform independent as much as possible. Then adding DX, GDI, Silverlight with WriteableBitmap, Xna support or whatever technology should become a task bound to platform but not breaking game features themselves.

This approach is implemented in Unity and Unreal Engine too.. what we see there is a common interface (even including WYSIWYG editors) and platform related implementation that we don’t care much designing game at its basic level.

Sounds very much obvious, yet question like this is really fantastic, because it reveals inexperienced developers or developers who have been bound to a single technology stack for long, if not forever. No big deal, good moment to start learning as many different technologies and languages as possible to push the perceptional horizon further.

From these obvious truths in answer, I suggested to these guys a task, challenge for the team of five as I heard.

I suggested them to develop some short game which isn’t time-consuming as for development. Let’s say it’s Tetris.

In this challenge each team member has to pick a technology and/or platform, different to the rest. When everybody finishes, then each developer should take somebodies else code and port it with the thought and structure of the original concept to another platform&technology.  Take C# or Flash port of Quake (originally in C) as good example of similar task.

When everybody finishes group should meet and discuss what was the biggest pain and if somebody failed, why?
Conclusions taken from that final discussion should help them to avoid practices that are potentially dangerous in such migration.

Interesting porting paths (to and back), I can recommend are:

• Direct3d to OpenGL
• Xna to DirectX
• WPF Xaml+C# to Direct2D based 2d vector graphics and sprites
• From HTML5+Canvas+Javascript to Silverlight and WritableBitmap

Even with Tetris complexity, above examples should be good to reveal some bad habits.

Dreams have powerful impact on many things from our real life to mediums we used to play with as entertainment. From psychological drama to mindful refresh and relax, lucid stories while dreaming, we barely remember them in the morning. That terrible loss and potential hidden meanings were inspiring philosophers, psychologists and entertainers for many years, if not centuries.

Books, movies and games go into dreamworld occasionally and as in first two examples its mostly another art form hard to perform well and so easy to ignore in games I perceive the biggest power of dreams for interactive usage.

I’m not the first one who observed that, in fact I have found many interesting examples of dreams in games already developed, mostly in two scenarios:

SPLITTING WORLDS: DREAMS AIN’T REAL

Dreams by its nature are perfect to give hints and formulate breaks between acts with some important summary and new points in plot yet not revealed fully to give us a reason to stay and ask questions when awaken. In this example role-playing games seemed to be perfect to put dreams in game as specific cut scene in most cases rather to read than watch. Take a look at good&old Baldur’s Gate where without any interaction we were given some clues about the story going forward:

Not so impressive even those times of its origin. Main reason: dreams in BG were only a summary of current achievements. Told well by an intriguing voice of narrator, but completely non-interactive and without any mystery dreams should have.

It’s little bit better in quite a new (comparing to BG) Lost Odyssey, but still has the same flaws even though presentation, including visuals and sound effects, is really well balanced:

In Lost Odyssey, through dreams, we can try to discover some hidden memories from the past. Stories are really well written, but confusing not valuable for the main story at all.  After a couple of dreams, I stopped reading them because of schizophrenic lack of useful content. In jRPG I really respect my gaming time. Dreams in their formula inspired me personally only to dwell for new techniques how to present text on screen (as a programmer).

Role-playing games have no monopoly for dreams and fuzzy memories presented in quite a somnolent way. Action games also presented them in many examples. Take Max Payne and its comic book heritage.

Different approach but still passive, unfortunately. Action game like above is really good to show much more interactive usage.

LIVING THE DREAM THAT HAS COME TRUE

How about utilizing dreams not to cut scenes or acts and summarize something with blurred memories and reality hardly real? From previous examples and Max Payne as a bridge take a look at Darkness. Main character is dead, undead, not dead, hard to say. Monsters helping him, all strange things bound to the story and especially alternative worlds in different time and dimensions. That’s all what we could easily call dreams, not an idyllic one. Darkness has them, one of the reasons I love to come back to this game:

Game mood like from famous The Crow movie, but with much more dark magic and horror – dreamworld in Darkness is closer to terrors of Lovecraft’s prose than sissy stories full of banality told us literally in Baldur’s Gate and Lost Odyssey.

Writing so, I may sound ignorant, no point in that. Dreams may vary from joyful sex dreams through, “I don’t need to wake up” and “I won a lottery” relaxations, to “My grandma visited me and warned me” and “I died in accident” or “Somebody killed me”. These different settings and atmosphere of dreams can be used in games, but by its interactive nature it’s much easier to expose fear, drama, regret and other not so clear and positive feelings for which as players we rather like to dwell deeper and ask more questions than stay and relax doing nothing. Sometimes as in the best up to date Call of Cthulhu game, we not only didn’t want to wake up, we hadn’t wanted to fall asleep first place. (WARNING FOR BELOW MOVIE: IF YOU DIDN”T FINISH THE GAME, IT HAS OBVIOUS SPOILERS, WATCHING IS SPOILER FREE UNTIL 1:40)

Great escapes full of drama and not possible in real world I found also in one of my favorite games – Fahrenheit (Project Indigo in US). This game and interactive storytelling offer it has, is one of the best usage of dramatic dreamworld as a game-play medium.

All these examples show, that for this medium visuals and music have to get married fast and furious. I’m waiting for tomorrow’s launch date of Heavy Rain. I presume I’ll have more examples from Quantic Dreams, who named themselves perfectly for this article.

But narration shown in Fahrenheit and Heavy Rain with atmosphere where music, visuals and story come together is not Quantic Dream’s invention. They put a lot of innovation in their games for sure, still I find their precursor from mid 90-ties. I mean game called Dream Web. Take a look at intro where setting is already established:

All above examples remind me only one last thing – my dream. I wish to see more games with interactive dreams blended into game-play. I’m also glad for games that have already showed these dreams coming true.

I really enjoy my time spent on playing Pixel Junk Shooter. I haven’t finished it yet, currently I’m in 3rd stage. I’d beaten two interesting bosses and got addicted to the game mechanics. From developer perspective, meantime, I started asking myself a question: What makes this game so great?

I found this game by reading various reviews and watching movie clips like that one above. First thing I noticed, was how well game mechanics and visuals are connected. Literally it’s just a scroller shooter, but much of its spirit is made by fantastic 2d fluid simulation presented visually in very attractive way.

If you’re a programmer interested in further investigation, take a look at below movie, it shows similar concept:

Above clip shows an application developed by Microsoft MVP Rene Schulte. Rene published .NET Framework sources on his personal pages. He’s programmed basic example of technology that can inspire for Pixel Junk Shooter alike physics in games. The only technical problem left to do, is that in PJS you have different fluids interacting between each other (liquid fire, lava, water, oil, etc). Skill to master by a smart coder, I believe.

Aside of fluids, I can’t stop thinking on Pixel Junk Shooter without connecting it to old Amiga games. Sometimes it’s really abstract but it triggers my imagination for potential sequels.

For example, shooting part of game’s mechanics remind me Cannon Fodder. I dream to play Cannon Fodder with two analogs. It should be so much better and PJ’s Shooter shows that well. In Cannon Fodder though, encounters were more dynamic and not so much was to rescue:

Some of game’s mechanics remind me old games from Psygnosis (currently and for long SCE Studios Liverpool).  Take strange combination of Lemmings or maybe rather Benefactor, put it together into a scroller shooter action game with puzzles strictly related to fluid physics. If you take a look at this game this way you immediately start dreaming on more Lemmings/Benefactor alike features. I did, I believe that many ideas should fit well into Pixel Junk Shooter. Imagine situation that little folk you have to rescue moves, and moves in very stupid/uncontrolled way. Imagine situation that you’re bound into a conflict between two sides and rescue good and leave bad guys. Imagine situation, that even though there are two bands of miners who fight/compete for something, you have to rescue both groups before deadly lava will kill them all.

Maybe some of that mechanics will appear in further levels. I’m not sure now, as currently I’m fascinated with maxing up results on these first 15 levels. I’m pretty sure though, that this game will surprise me even more. If not, then it’s definitely worth further experimenting and development.

I’m really glad this game showed up. It proves well my theory of evolutionary design.  I’m expecting good sequels and clones of that concept in near future. It’s rather obvious that games where mechanics are strictly bound to physics seem to be 100% success warranty. I can’t recall any example where it was not.

I’m a believer, that each story should have well defined structure. There are many ways to build it, method depends on dimension we want to bring details for. Analyzing and mapping that well defined structure on actual stories, movies and games can help to comprehend it better and use it while building your own storyline.

Hero-centric approach

Many stories are driven by a central persona – a main character. To have that story truly epic, a hero is chosen. Hero who takes a journey first to discover his heroic abilities in a mundane world, then using those skills and with heroic faith mentioned character goes forward to make the world better, rescue the princess and so on, THE END.

There is no better way to structure hero’s journey than using method discovered and named so by Joseph Campbell. In his book “Hero with a Thousand Faces” he defined a theory of so called monomyth. Under this monomyth’s umbrella Campbell described the same or at least very similar structure of many myths coming from different parts of the world and different cultures. Centric part of that theory is that hero, person who sometimes accidentally finds himself on a journey from a mundane life to and epic end.

Hero’s Journey has three big phases: Departure, Initiation and Return. Before Departure starts our hero just like in Fable (games), Frodo in Lords of the Rings (book and movie) has his mundane life, he’d just got used to have. Then first motif appears on the horizon which Campbell named “Call to Adventure“. It’s nothing but the signs of the vocation of the hero. Some may be just built by curiosity, some by personal drama, some just happened and still not much is visible both to the character and the audience watching it on the screen, reading a book or simply playing the game. During next step, a “Refusal of the Call“, our character quickly realizes, that it’s not what he wished to have. Folly of the flight from the god is often described in many stories as great wish to come back to the life before adventure started.  Frodo in LOTR had that moment when he wanted to give One Ring to Gandalf. Sometimes it’s just an refusal to agree on an heroic status already given, like modest behavior of Aragorn who didn’t want to discuss his rights to the throne for long. Neo in Matrix also wanted to come back to the “unreal” world shortly after awakening. Manifestations of that refusal may vary as you see. Next step in this theory is a “Supernatural Aid“. Sometimes it’s not literally supernatural, but for sure unexpected assistance that comes to one who has undertaken his proper adventure. “Crossing of the First Threshold” is the first obstacle, a guardian, hero has to “defeat” to enter the realm of magnified power. When he succeeds, he passes the gate to the magical world and he starts believing in his heroic ability. This phase is called “Belly of the Whale“. For Neo in Matrix, that guardian is represented by Morpheus in the martial art combat they performed. Neo entered the passage when he’d started learning all possible fighting techniques with fascination described by single yet powerful sentence “Hit me!”. Funny, the same thing Keanu Reeves said in Johny Mnemonic when his hardrived-head was loaded. Frodo found his guardian in the forest while Orcs had attacked his fellows. Boromir was the the guy who helped Frodo to find his passage. Crossing the river is that magical moment.

Anyway, after crossing the passage, Departure ends and Initiation starts. First moments are hard, our hero is on “The Road of Trials“. Those trials are dangerous aspects gods have put on the road. Neo had to learn how to jump from one building to another. Frodo had to find his way from swamps and other dangerous areas directly to Mordor itself. Moments during trials are really tough. It’s easy to start disbelieving even if hero thought he is the One. To reconstruct, even indirectly his heroic faith “The Meeting With the Goddess” is necessary. Oracle in Matrix made the moment providing more questions than answers to Neo. Frodo met Faramir and during those moments when he helped to save Gollum’s life he encountered that phase. Joseph Campbell, giving analogies to our myths, described it as mythical marriage with the Queen Goddess of the World. That’s why I dare to say, that the Goddess and Campbellian marriage in LOTR is between Frodo and Gollum. When Gollum was “fishing”, Frodo realized truly how strong the bound between them was. Next step called “Woman and the Temptress” Joseph Campbell described as the realization and agony of Oedipus. This is the moment when hero’s life is fully controlled by his Goddess wife. It’s a trap. In Oedipus’ myth, mother and wife concept is blurred. While trapped and in agony hero starts looking for a father, a brother. Helpful hand which Frodo found in Sam, but first he was betrayed by Gollum and almost killed by big spider, Shelob. That moment, reunion, is called “Atonement with the Father” in Campbell’s taxonomy. “Apotheosis” is natural after step. To describe it at the best I’d like to quote Campbell: “Like Buddha himself, this godlike being is a pattern of the divine state to which the human hero attains who has gone beyond the last terrors of ignorance”. If that father, brother or god himself is the true partner, a necessary ingredient hero needs to become the Chosen One, during apotheosis these last “terrors of ignorance”, masks of the world are gone. Neo in Matrix had found that partner  in Morpheus when he rescued him from Agents. Frodo found that partner in Sam. Good thing to train imagination is that in these two examples, different roles were physically suffering. In Matrix Morpheus was on high, interrogated by Agents and hero rescued him. In LOTR hero was deadly trapped and in scenes full of drama he was rescued by his partner. It shows very well that this generic concept works very well even though you as a writer will like to go with different details. “The Ultimate Boon” is a lovely moment that ends Initiation. The ease with which the adventure is here accomplished signifies that the hero is a superior man, a born king. That’s very much visible in The Matrix.

Even so end of initiation looks like end of the story (a happy end indeed), we still have one more part to tell. It is called a Return. With such heroic impact on everything and big success just achieved hero refuses again. “Refusal of the Return” is like avoiding bullets in Matrix. Neo didn’t need a phone call anymore to escape, there was no need to come back to the real world to refresh, reload or get additional aid even though Frodo was still in the middle of Mordor crowded by villains. In fact true refusal of the return in LOTR was when Frodo hesitated to drop the ring to the Mountain of Doom. Responsibility is refused. “Magic Flight” is the moment when hero triumphs and wins blessing of the goddess and is explicitly commissioned to return to the world with some elixir of restoration of the society. The final stage of his adventure is supported by all the powers of his supernatural patron. After that hero may have to be brought back from his supernatural adventure by assistance from without. “Rescue from without” it is called. Birds did it in LOTR rescuing Frodo from certain death on the top of the Mountain of Doom. “Crossing of the Return Threshold” is coming back from the magical world of heroic ability to the mundane world from the beginning. Hero has to accept it to become “Master of Two Worlds” and experience “Freedom to Live“. Realization of inevitable guilt of life as Campbell described may so sicken the heart that Frodo decided to leave world he’d known. Cycle ends and new adventure may just appear on the horizon or not, helping to build the sequel or forget about the creation.

Studying Joseph’s Campbell monomyth’s theory is really fantastic adventure itself. Reading his analogies in many myths from our history is amazing. Mapping this structure on books, movies and games may be really enlightening. Building your own storyline and being aware of the journey is a benefit worth considering.

Many writers and game creators base their plots on that theory. They don’t need to declare it, it’s obvious and visible. Many have modified the original concept and theory has evolved.

One of the variations strictly based on analyzing movies is  Nine Acts Structure invented by David Siegel. In past years it was published on-line, but original dsiegel.com pages are long gone. I found good reference  in Internet Archives. Modifications David Siegel made mainly focus on setting two goals. It gives an illusion of nonlinear plot. Steps (or acts) David Siegel described are outlined below.

As you can see many aspects are similar, some aggregated but the clue is, that somewhere in middle of way hero realizes that he wanted to achieve wrong goal. That’s the culmination point and then he finds true goal which opens second part of the story.

Conclusions

I encourage you to carefully take a look at these steps and their different variations (Internet search on Hero’s Journey can bring even more references). I have given you some snapshot analysis of Matrix and LOTR. Try with other movies like Avatar for example. Try with games too. Try to build your own story based on this structure, it’s real joy.

In this article I mixed my interpretations with some real quotes from the book, Joseph Campbell wrote. I recommend to get it and read it. My thoughts are based on the 3rd edition published by New World Library in 2008. It should be easy to buy it.

I’ve started evaluating Unity 3D. It looked like a cheap start for Indie/Hobbyist experiments, that’s why I’ve chosen it. After a couple of hours of my play with the tool set, I still have some concerns regarding its potential. I’m pretty sure though, that it’s really great app for prototyping. I started with open terrain generator. Standard project Unity provides, named Islands, is also based on open terrain. Default project reveals beautiful landscapes with nice props thrown in various locations, birds flocking above you and other game elements pretty common in areas like that one, already designed. I closed default project and started my own, also with terrain as a starting point. I was amazed how easy and intuitive tool they have provided. Implementing LOD based terrain generator is not hard task to do. That hidden lore had been explained very well at the end of 90-ties with all possible algorithmic variations, I did implement my own at that time too. To have the engine complete WYSIWYG editor is natural next step tool  for real creation.

Above picture shows Unity’s toolbox for terrain generation. It has options more similar to Sim City rather than game development from programmer’s perspective, which is cool by the way. I raised and lowered terrain, did some smoothing with the land’s texture. Adding material works as direct painting on the landscape. With palette of “grass” billboards and tree geometries, I can fill up terrain with some flora and other props (rocks, etc). Nice tool, effects of my 2h long work still are far from a game, but it proved itself very effective in unblocking creative thought around a story.

If we think of classic adventures and especially role playing games, story is often if not usually bound to some map. Every enthusiast of fantasy books and fantasy games should love maps too. It is so amazing to trace what your heroes did, making a virtual travel painted with your finger on those maps. As I said, I clicked here and I clicked there. I raised some mountains, I dug some holes to fill them up with lakes and seas. And started walking around and imagination triggered even on such a primitive example. One stage of my work is exposed below:

From top-down view I copied map like looking image to a painting tool, just to think a little bit more about as a storyteller. “If there is a land what landmarks it hides” was my thinking. So I started putting some dots on the map highlighting areas like below example:

With Tolkienian, classic-fantasy approach to the setting, I separated some details.

I have a hilly land in the middle of the map, surrounded by land I filled up with trees (North-West). South reveals coastal area with two bays, connecting probably to some bigger sea or lake. Northern-east brings big desert or any other kind of desolated area. Southern-East brings big mountains.

Naturally middle is crowded by Men. Forest filled up with elves, mountains with dwarfs. Classic fantasy world works for me. Desert brings only death and forgotten lore. I started adding some details there. In hilly area which cuts that desert, I added some place for some serious villains yet to be designed and figured out. In the middle of sand I put a marker for an Oasis with nomads and many opportunities for adventure.

There is a road ending up near that desert. I put there some small town visited often by merchants and travelers who want to cross the desert to reach some other country on the other side. No road goes to the land of elves for a reason, part of an emerging setting I’ve made. In the middle of the Country of Men I left big, flat and empty space. Good to place there biggest city in the area with city walls and other medieval details. Rest of the hilly country can be used to design some farmlands. Farms on hills remind me Ireland, and their rocky borders between each farm. Could be nice to put those there (Medieval economy was mostly based on farming, plenty of them should be spread around, looking gorgeous) . On the coastal area we have more civilization to describe. Big cliff with only one route to reach the top looks good for a castle construction. Big fortress for a local monarch. Maybe not a king, land seems to be too small for a kingdom, but some local duke who keeps the colony on the borderland between elves, dwarfs and who knows who lives in that dusty desert. Near the castle I added second, small town that feeds its citizen mostly from the water surrounding it. Fishers, smugglers, many different moods for adventure I believe that you can imagine in that area.

Summarizing, from simple point and click map generation I’ve got:

1) A royal colony, far, far away from the country. Ruled by local duke who keeps the land for men in very difficult neighborhood of elves, dwarfs and other unnamed villains.

2) In this very dangerous, yet very interesting area,obviously economics is based on farming and trade. Skilled merchants have their connections to kingdoms of dwarfs and those held by Elves. Most risky business of them gave a birth of legends that very rich country with ancient and high culture lives on the other side of desert. Dwarfs and Elves know more but say no word about that land.

3) Country of Men has several interesting landmarks: Royal Castle, Big city, small coastal city, small town (outpost) near desert, farms and I added some hermit hut near the shore too, just for fun.

I have already defined details, that can help to start thinking forward on the real plot, a reason why would you like to put main, player character in the middle of that land.

Some triggers I’m giving as a summary:

Idea 1: Questioning a ruler of that land. Why would you like the be there as a duke. Just ruling and nothing happens? Boring. Maybe that duke was sent there for exile. King is happy that he’s far away not troubling him. How to use that for an adventure?

Idea 2: Duke is an  adventurous conqueror with no mercy to his enemies, who dreams to build his own fiefdom powerful. He found himself stuck on a small territory and strong neighborhood that resists. How about helping him to win against elves and dwarfs. How about tricky intrigues merchants make to block it or push it. If country conquer succeeds, some will loose their connections and business can be at risk. From the other hand, war always equals to profit, so another powerfull clique or complete merchant guild supports that war with resources and politics. If so, then maybe duke is not a conqueror but a naive and weak Muppet playing in somebodies game. How would you put that on stage, when the player character is added to the dramatis personae.

Idea 3 (supplementary): Lets assume that the only connection with the core country is sea. It is obvious, that many of the trades merchants would like to make behind the scenes, illegally. Answer to that is smuggling, gangs and local crime world. Hidden, not so legal guilds, thieves and intrigue can set up adventures and plot. How those guilds and secret organizations will handle the situation. Is that intrigue left only on a street-level murder and assault or maybe involves tricky politics on the court too?

I’ll leave above concepts as an inspiration to you. Story has just begun, but it started simply.. from the map.

After a short break, I'm presenting last part of  the thoughts I had shared with students in December. Speaking of design in games I can hardly avoid a feeling that in near future we will reinvent already known wheel but in very new creative way. This is true to all community and Indie game development initiatives. Platforms like generic Web, Facebook, Mobile phones, Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network give an opportunity to look at the past successes in gaming from early to mid 90'ties. 16 and early 32 bit blockbusters come back now utilizing modern graphics and propose new game play but in details. Generally 2D scrolling platform game isn't anything new we know, yet example I like to give – game called Braid is damn new and fresh indeed. I have more examples of those that keep me even stronger in evolutionary approach to game design.

This is good lesson for wanna be game developers, just starting creators going through the "Indie games" scenario. Many of these guys try to be another Jonathan Blow. Many create great games but also many fail for one simple reason. They start with very high expectations to the project like "a game like none other was before in every aspect". Then some get stuck with  creativity, some find themselves making the perfect engine forever and so on. Evolutionary approach is one of the solutions for this paradox. I found good example of this on web pages from one of American colleges. I don't remember its name, I found it on "Games Career Guide". Case is, that teacher in that school had given simple task to his students. Task was: take a game you like, look at it with criticism, find 5 things in that game that you dislike and propose changes (features) that would help this game been even better. Genius in that task is that you immediately leave way of thinking like "I'll make the best strategy game world has seen" and no details as your vision scope. Results of that training were published so I'd seen classic "Lemming" with a new lemming type who was building a cannon and firing other lemmings. Very drastic alternative for bridge already featured in the game. Many ideas coming from that approach were crap like nothing else in context of game play, but that's okay. I think this is very best way to think and learn what good game play means.

I believe that technology in modern platforms allows to make any possible kind of game with amazing visuals and other technical aspects of the title. We can choose from casual platforms where these visuals might have not yet been so important and in every game beside some geeky hardcore players market demands unique experience while playing. Thinking on ideas big and small should be first while considering games development. Technologies and business models already exist.

From titles like Braid, Flow and Flower to big blockbusters, I observe that emotions in games take bigger role.  From shooters like Halo and Call of Duty, through racing games like Need for Speed to real adventure and role playing games I see that having a story is part of the design decision making. Need for Speed Most Wanted in this case was very surprising to me. Racing like many other released already by EA, you can like or not. But between every major race (a checkpoint in the game) you have a movie alike story to watch and listen which is not bad and quite close the Fast and Furious narration. It's not important for the race winning and totally non-interactive but adds some adrenaline too. Emotional and story driven approach in many different types of games are already highlighted by industry's legends. Peter Molyneux has major impact on evolution in classic RPG genre where you interact in character growth not only counting his levels but also understanding periods of his life from childhood, getting adult, romances, marriage, betrayals. RPG and adventure game is where that should be strongly visible first. Interesting thing was said by Cliff Bleszinski for the British Magazine – Develop. Cliff stated that the future of current shooters is role-playing game. If you take a look at GTA IV, Bioshock examples it's really hard not to agree. Future of adventure games I all the time see in Fahrenheit and upcoming Heavy Rain. Sense of drama and way these games show narration is amazing. This is the potential that was not fully utilized in Mass Effect's dialogue system.

For casual games and massive multi player on-line games social networks should the core element. This is especially true in the Facebook era. If you can create a game where really huge and active community is your key to success, evaluate and test your ideas for that argument and condition. If features you designed can trigger that viral messaging to join the community and play, that's good. In social gaming, it is important to share the experience, to create an atmosphere for conversation, to extend that geeky culture of gamers to the masses. We already know that as for movies and music. When you visit your friends at pub you feel free to mention movies and music you watched and listened to recently. Mentioning games might be still considered geeky and nerdy depending on the company you spend time with. Designing games that will definitively break that stereotype will be a major milestone in casual, social gaming. People like to talk about things that bring positive emotions in their life, use that knowledge.

When thinking on standard model with retail distribution and boxed packages holding IP called games we can imagine that “simple” business model with strong relation between game developer and publisher including negotiations for the revenue split, responsibilities for marketing the product, responsibilities for on-time, on-quality production and so on. Finally there is a consumer who can buy the box in Best Buy, Game Stop or other store. Last decade revealed alternatives very successful and I’d expect them growing even more in near future.

We hear more often about cloud computing. Microsoft offers Windows Azure very soon, enterprise ready competitors do not sleep either. Games industry known personas refer to that term too. What cloud computing means, if we ask for business models in gaming? I see three big options worth mentioning.

Digital Distribution

Current platforms evaluating Digital Distribution model

In past years we have noticed several successful examples. Xbox Live Arcade or PlayStation Network Store are good for hardcore gamer who seeks for small entertaining titles for cheaper price. Apple’s Store gives amazing opportunity for many different types of applications to land in consumer’s mobile device. Sony is learning on that releasing their PSP Go with Digital Distribution as the only way to play new games. On regular PC, Steam from Valve established itself as the leader. This business will grow definitely and I believe, in future, we will be educated and accustomed to buy license to play rather than physical CD for our collection.

This model has two sides of course. I don’t want to call these sides Bad and Good. I’d rather describe them as opportunities and challenges. For example, digital distribution seems to be great opportunity for Independent Developers to succeed. In fact it has already made itself one of two major directions Indie Game Developers look for. Second is what I call “Gaming inspired by Web 2.0″ which means successful monetizing from the traffic rather directly from customers wallets.  Challenges are also visible. Publishers think that digital distribution will kill piracy and used-games market bringing them more money. It’s very optimistic I’d say. History has shown that every new brute-force anti-piracy method was broken. I’m against piracy with my heart, but I have not seen good way to eradicate it yet. I doubt that it can be killed completely and sometimes I read between the lines that many industry leaders believe in that utopia. Personally, I’m more toward education and equalizing the chances in gamers community coming from countries with different economies, but this is different topic so I don’t want to go deeper into it, this time.
Used-games market is more interesting. Many players who can’t afford launch pricing, wait for cheaper alternatives. Used games are painful for publishers, but it’s natural counter-play from retailers who react on that demand. Seems like publishers perceive less and less opportunity in Platinum (PlayStation) and Classics (Xbox) sales. I believe that if digital distribution wins, it will immediately teach publishing platform vendors to extend sales life cycle with different pricing options over time. One of the reasons Apple’s App Store has won, is average $2-5 price for many apps presented there. They have no need to discount more. $59 price, a year after launch looks ridiculous in my opinion.

Monthly Subscription Fees

I can bet that 99% of gamers asked simply, if they prefer to pay once or many times for playing the same game would answer rhetorically, ONCE. World of Warcraft for a change showed that subscription model can be very successful. Subscription model is still most popular in MMO branch of gaming. Other ways are also tested, like once again monetizing from the traffic with micro payments for example. Another type of games that had tested subscription model is browser games. In late 90ties I found many examples of those. Mainly strategy and role-playing games. They seem to be still popular, but in this case failure of subscription model is pretty much visible. I checked latest examples. Many titles developed by German company InnoGames are strongly advertised in Poland right now. If you don’t recognize titles like Tribal Wars (Polish title “Plemiona”) or The West, maybe you should check them out. These examples go through micro payments now, giving you free opportunity to start. Micro-payment seems to be natural transition from Subscription Fees. Although many would like to see subscriptions dead, I’m expecting it, to be one of three major revenue streams in cloud computing. MMOs and browser games still consider it and even if this outpost fail, I see new opportunities somewhere else where subscription can reestablish itself. One example is games over cable TV. In Edge Magazine (December 2009 paper issue numbered 209) I read about very interesting example. Imagine high quality (AAA) mainstream games available for you through standard cable TV decoder. No game console, just extra game pad additionally to you remote controller. Everything rendered in huge data centers and only graphical data is streamed to you through very strong network. Regardless if you think that this can win or fail, one company from Israel is right now testing it in their own homeland. Business model is exactly, based on monthly subscriptions added to your standard bill for cable TV.
Sad thing, we still have terrorism on our planes. US government after the latest act of terror is considering to ban all electronic devices from the deck during flight. Sounds extreme and I’m personally against it, but if this happens, why not try to duplicate that cable TV model for all Nintendo DS and PSP gamers playing on the planes right now. Technically solution should be even easier to develop than over TV. Scalability is the key, so compare 200-300 passengers, maybe 1/3 representing gamers to multimillion cable TV subscribers as an average for a country in size of Israel. What I’d change on a plane is payment model. Subscription would not work there. I’d go back to digital distribution with credit card swiping to pay for your gaming time.

Monetizing from the Traffic

We are used to see advertisements as a part of real world's architecture

Do we bother though, if adverts become natural part of ARGs?

Micro-payments are related to another gaming experience which is still not defined very well. It’s especially true for MMOs. Black market of items, characters, in game elements on various online stores. Opinions on this phenomena may vary from unregulated to illegal. I personally perceive it as a great puzzle how to bind it into regular industry business. Biggest challenge now in that is that it’s closer to gambling right now than regular trading. I have no good answer how to manage in-game trading. I see one example where it seems to be regulated. Well sort of, I mean of course game called Second Life. This is the only example I know where in and out of game economy is bound bi-directional.

Huge traffic can be the trigger to many different concepts, but first while making a game, developer has to be sure that he implemented all tools that may bring that traffic to his game. Choice of good platform may be critical. I mentioned in-browser games. Tribal Wars have been released in about 10-15 countries, average traffic seems to be 100k per installation. Not so big comparing to Facebook’s hits. Facebook gathered about 350 million users. Multimilion of them are gamers for sure. Games like Mafia Wars or Texas Hold’em Poker hit the board. Mafia Wars has more than 25 millions of fans, Texas Hold’em only 5 million. Fans are not equal to active players, but definitely show the reach. Electronic Arts has quite recently acquired a company called PlayFish, for 350 million dollars. I checked what has done the unknown company worth so much. They had released games for Facebook only. Most popular I found, is called Restaurant City. This game has about 15 million active users. For the next generation browser games, I’d strongly consider Facebook instead of promoting your own site. FB has users right now, your dot-com has to build its base.

Traffic as I wrote is an open door to many different concepts. I think that successful platform with huge traffic can reshape the industry not only in relation between game developer and game consumer. Imagine the press. Instead of paper and own electronic platforms to distribute news, reviews and other journalism I imagine dedicated channels on Xbox Live, PSN, App Store, Facebook and Steam. In this case I perceive URL rather a data source than destination address. It’s slowly happening right now, I believe future may only bring maturity in that.

Edge Magazine published opinion of their readers about best of the decade 2000-2009 in gaming. There is something missing in that summary.

If I looked for best examples in each category Edge mentioned, I’d look for something that has changed our perception and shaped the industry. Saying so it’s really hard to say who is the winner. That should not be the point. Good examples with comment why it has mattered is more fruitful for further discussion.

In games category, I somehow agree with World of Warcraft as a great example of a game which unblocked the MMO business. Before WoW we had many MMOs but none of them were so successful. In fact each MMO creator was struggling to motivate players to pay for the experience. Many good titles failed because players were not used to adopt subscription model. World of Warcraft was first where more and more gamers wanted to pay for. Now we can reckon about ten millions WoW players around the globe. If next after WoW had 1/10 of that it’s still success, because thanks to Blizzard gamers are already educated to pay monthly fees if game is good. It wasn’t that easy during Ultima Online period.

Beside WoW phenomena, I’d add Indie Games as nominee to best games of decade. Particular examples like Braid and World of Goo encouraged people to start commercial garage projects again. Last years of 90′ties was killing period for that. With companies growing strong, platform and projects being more and more expensive in games production home-brew projects were pushed to free, open source projects usually not complete, usually not giving that experience as I see in above two examples. Most important – similar problem as with MMO – customers were not educated to pay for small games. Expectations have changed and amazing Indie games blossom both in quality as well as in quantity.

As for the hardware, it seems that Edge and its readers have celebrated sold units not innovation. PS2 was really successful, but aside of bigger hardware capacities than PS1 and already established brand that helped sell zylions of units, I see Sony’s competitors more innovative during this decade.

First Xbox in 2001 revealed network gaming on the console platform like none other before. I know that Sega Dreamcast was first, but Xbox and Xbox 360 with XBL, Achievements, True Skill matching and other little details showed to competitors how to approach hardcore console gamer who wants to be on-line.

I agree on Nintendo, both Dual Screen and Wii were experiments nobody believed in at the beginning. Yet Nintendo sells it like crazy all the time. These two devices have been really important to the industry, because they defined so called casual gamer and brought to the community massive amount of new customers.

For the same reason Apple’s iPhone is also this decade’s phenomena. They enabled higher and higher quality mobile games, unblocking Internet usage on the mobile platform and showed really well how successful digital distribution can be.

In hardware category, during this decade, I believe industry has learned much more from Microsoft, Nintendo and Apple than Sony itself.

I don’t want to discuss and propose my types for the developer and publisher category. Too many of them have made genuine games. As for most important people, whole teams worked hard for these games I believe. Who we know in the industry is only a tiny fragment of that, persons self-promoted or promoted by their employers to speak. Part of the marketing story, games are not movies I don’t see the point in Games Industry Celebrities culture.

Last thing mentioned by Edge is biggest failure of the decade. I’d not go that extreme as it’s done there. Xbox 360’s RROD was epic, indeed, but company’s approach how to solve it was also perfectly balanced, gentle bow toward its customers. Door to door support, fast console replacement, warranty extensions. All these activities I had seen before, but in car industry when some fatal and deadly malfunctions appeared. Microsoft proved that even being relatively new on this market, they treat customers responsibly and seriously. I hope all other platform vendors would make the same if they encountered similar issues.

Sony’s marketing was also funny during PS3 early days, but if it was the biggest failure of the decade. I’d not say so. Big disappointment for many fans, yes, but failure? That’s too strong judgment for bad execution on not so bad strategy.

I won’t comment Gizmondo, because that was just a curiosity which had little chances to win by design.

All these examples show me that we have not had big failures in this decade. Instead of Gizmondo I’d rather say that Nokia has failed with NGage idea. Apple accidentally proved that Nokia’s concept to go with mobile gaming was right. Why Nokia couldn’t not execute that well? That’s the failure I’d definitely like to investigate if I was them.

In this decade I didn’t notice any bankruptcy that would impact the industry. In 90′ties Commodore failed big time. Nothing like that happened in last 10 years, even though many companies made numerous errors in their strategies and execution. The only example I remember is Interplay. Once huge player with many great IPs now a shadow of its greatest glory fighting with Zenimax over lost rights for Fallout.

In the summary, I like the idea Edge proposed, but results of their survey miss the point. They look like sales celebration and opinions of particular gamers who have their disconnected preferences they voted for. I miss comments that would cover bigger picture. You have just read mine.

Jonathan Blow, creator of Braid on game development few years before he revealed his game to the world

In 2004 Jonathan Blow, few years before we all could recognize him as the genius behind Braid game, wrote an interesting article about game project’s complexity. It was published in ACM Queue. Jonathan in that article said that “the hardest part of making game has always been engineering”. This point is very important. Braid’s father in the article added very nice diagrams with typical game architecture from 1994 to present time. I recommend to take a look at it. In 1994 components are just a few, we were in pre-3d era still. 1996 is interesting because with PSX and Voodoo on the market we had switched from 2d to 3d in the mainstream gaming experience. From 1996 to 2004 (another diagram) what I’ve seen and I agree with Jonathan, projects were growing in size and complexity in tremendous speed. 2004’s modern game architecture including Massive Multiplayer Online scenarios shows the challenge a single indie developer can’t afford. There is no single person who can beat the market in masterpiece 3d skill, networking vision for 10 million gamers and all those remaining pieces of the puzzle. Current games we see in retails store are highly complex projects involving hundreds of people in different roles to make it possible. Referring to role-playing game. I remember article in Gamasutra somewhere in 2000 with Baldur’s Gate II post-mortem. I can’t find it now on their pages, but I remember some numbers very well. Ray Muzyka wrote that project’s timeline was about 3 years long and involved 250 people working on the project at peak times. That simply triggers my imagination. I wonder how it looks like for Dragon Age. This example shows another thing. If I wish to make game which includes so many different aspects I would like to reuse as many components as possible and try to avoid re-engineering the wheel as much as I can. This argument goes back to technology and engineering. From many commercial leaders to open source alternatives, very good gaming technology is already available for evaluation. Havok for free in most scenarios. Latest Unreal Engine free to learn what it is. Very unfair pricing if you think to switch from free to commercial project but I think Epic Games would be more than happy to discuss individually every serious opportunity for further adoption. For community games, Xna proves itself at least for prototyping. Xna is double powerful if I consider using if with XSI|Softimage’s free edition called Mod Tool. Cut strongly, still much more powerful than any other alternative I have found for the same “price”, if I consider game project. Lesson here before first code of line is made is to make serious research on what’s available. If you’re a person who wants to make game, why to stuck and frustrate yourself with first projects where outputs are just engines, not games. We have a few stars in the industry who have strong technical background and achievements, we have plenty who are known because they made great game-play experience. I’m big fan of game production close to maximally 2 years of development. This is average period of complete PC replacement. If game development of a PC game takes longer, I see it as great risk to completely change the technology behind. I know many examples of games which were developed like for 5-6 years. These guys had to have really strong arguments given to their sponsors. 2 years is is also solid but still reasonable part of game console life-cycle. Creating games in 2 years gives a chance to get familiarized with the platform in more than a one project before that technology change dramatically.

Recent debate on IP shared over Internet reminds me another thing related to technology. This is especially true if you target smaller platforms (as for hardware requirements) where retro gaming is still attractive. Seems that technology itself in those projects is outdated by design. So while looking for components you think that you should be able to find many options for free over Internet. Latest lesson with id software shows that with huge attraction of these platforms commercial giants might consider withdrawing their IPs from the so called open and free world. Mind carefully whom with are you partnering not to pay double.

Yesterday I had a session on one of Polish Colleges. I met about 100 students and spoke about Trends in Games Industry. Very broad and very interesting topic. If we say trends in gaming, many people think on the next game they would like to buy and play. On my speech, that was not the case. I tried to explain young people who may dream of game creation, how to think on next games they would like to make. Games not only they would like to play after creation, but those which can help them become commercially successful and find millions of fans around the world. If you look at it from this perspective, very important issue reveals itself, and that was the reason why I spoke about trends. I call this issue by the name, huge aspirations of young creators for their first projects.

Many young and especially programmers I've spoken to, take following direction. They meet with other talented guys and say: We have talent, we have skills so let's make the best of the best game like none before have even existed. And then they agree to pick up a very complicated idea of a game which by the name is huge and resource consuming project, like role-playing game for example. I'm glad that market matured to give them alternatives. I'm glad that we have already on the market good examples of much smaller and still innovative projects can be done within months by one to few people devoted to the subject. I made that comparison between huge and small projects on different platforms especially when I spoke about technological changes and trends for the future in technology. Innovation in games is always strongly connected to game design.

Good design of a game I understand in good game-play features and experience. Job well or not so well done in that area may, in my opinion, push a project very easily into a crap category instead of super-cool. Much easier than if game's technology itself is outstanding or not. Joint point between these two is technology in design and that is another extremely important subject I was talking about. Last part of my speech was about different business models in games industry. I spoke both about those which are already stable and evolving. I mentioned also those which still look kind of abstract (like AAA games offer in Cable TV network or idea of re-used games market in the world of digital distribution mentioned in last Edge (December's paper edition).

Whole that content was positioned to be valuable for junior/wanna be game creator with big aspirations but maybe yet not so experienced in the combat. Message was articulated rather for designers, producers and game project managing persons than developers (programmers) themselves. Mind it while reading below details about my thoughts in subject:

Technology | Design | Business Models