Casually Hardcore devlog

Brain dump – What I learnt from GDC 2008 (one year LATER)

Here are notes I almost made right after attending GDC 2008 (last year) talk about finding angel investor funding for games. None of it makes sense raw so I’ll add comments at the end:

Lots of money
Angels for bridge
Tailwinds
Simple & compelling

Pitch first
Team > Idea
Bootstrap!
Reputation!

Keiretsu
Gameplayholdings

http://www.garage.com/

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Unaccredited investors – BAD
Exit strategy

My comments:

1. Lots of money – Angels / VC have piles of cash seeking out worthy investments.
2. Angels for bridge – Angels (personal investors) are great for temp funding right after the bootstrap stage.
3. Tailwinds – Your project should have some relation to the current fads – MMO, Social networking, Web, advergaming, etc.
4. Simple & compelling – The sales pitch must be understandable and convincing.
5. Pitch first – i.e. Try out your idea first to see if the response is positive rather than building something nobody wants.
6. Team > Idea – because investors pay nothing for an idea and want to see a solid team/management in place. “Success” in the end is related to the talent/experience of the team. Artistically this means “process” takes precedent over “ideas” and “creativity”
7. Bootstrap! – Build it because nobody will believe you can until you do and also nobody will fund you unless you are proven.
8. Reputation! – Build one from the start. Nothing screams failure than working on money-losing, late, canceled projects all your life. IMO this is good and bad advice. It’s great advice to steer away from poorly managed, low-success projects, but at the same time high-profile work can be emotionally/personally devoid.
9. Keiretsu – An organization of angel investors
10. Gameplayholdings – An advisory company.
11. http://www.garage.com/ – Guy Kawasaki’s company
12. Notes about game pitching – short and simple

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13. Unaccredited investors – BAD – because of SEC/US rules. You want accredited investors (net worth of a $1M?) to avoid lawsuits and because future investors often need to buyout previous ones. It’s complicated, but avoid taking large sums from friends and family if you are starting a potentially mid-to-large sized studio.
14. Exit strategy - All studios/projects have to pay out sometime, how?

To summarize – none of the above should concern independent developers! The above is for people wishing to form the next spin-off studio made up of ex-EA, ex-Sony, ex-Activision employees.

Add comment February 15th, 2009

The game industry needs less Jon Blow and more Paolo Pedercini

A few nights ago I attended a small gathering in Toronto by the Hand Eye Society – which is a new group dedicated to getting local indie developers together for a social rather than for professional reason (like IGDA).

The main speaker of the night was Paolo Pedercini who is infamous for his political games:

His games try to “make a difference” to the world – they are socially + politically relevant. I make games for pure entertainment sake (enjoyment). Paolo makes games because he wants to change the world or show the world its flaws – in an “entertaining” way rather than in an essay or article.

The world needs more Paolo Pedercini – well he does once in a while delve into uber-touchy subjects: Pedopriest

My twitter account

Where I post small development updates (rather on this blog):

http://twitter.com/sunnyleo

Add comment February 15th, 2009

Kids these days…

9-year old writes successful iPhone painting application

“Lim, who is fluent in six programing languages, started using the computer at the age of 2. He has since completed about 20 programing projects.”

When I was his age, I was copying BASIC programs from magazines. I stop after 3 I think. My brother continued on and ended up working for REALbasic.

Add comment February 11th, 2009

Another ex co-worker success story

In a different vein, I discovered another non-game developer ex co-worker (a mouthful there!) programmed a little game on his spare time which became commercially successful (I got direct figures, but I won’t quote them here) on this Sudoku game:

Add comment February 9th, 2009

Congrats to Mike Kasprzak / Sykhronics Entertainment

An IGF 2009 mobile finalist (and ex co-worker of mine):

Add comment February 9th, 2009

It’s all about gameplay! It’s all about story!

It’s all a pile of BS. It’s true. Thousands of developers “claim” to focus on gameplay just like thousand of animators “claim” to focus on story… but in the end, I’ve always believed the final quality is related to the average skill/talent of the people who made the game/film no matter what the ideologies the people espouse.

Ed Catmull (of Pixar fame) talks about how many studios “focus on stories just like Pixar” but fail to deliver quality storytelling “just like Pixar.” He believes it’s the people who contributed the most to Pixar’s success and so I do.

Catmull says, “If you give a good idea to incompetent people, they will ruin it. If you give a bad idea to a great team, they will fix it.”

Here’s his Stanford talk about Pixar and why it has been successful.

His main motto is: The difference in a successful company and a failed one is “the people.”

Add comment February 6th, 2009

Indie is cool, but why?

Indie game development has been the “it” thing to do for the past two years:

…following on the footsteps of indie music and film. A few developers I’ve met are more into the “idea of indie” rather than “being indie” – which to me is: to do the hell what you what regardless of commercial consequences.

Rarely do I digress into such pointless philosophical debates such as “indie vs. mainstream” and “what it means to be indie” because the end result is that indie game development isn’t much different than independent film. As they filmmakers say, “People knock Hollywood for their formulaic movies but the indie world is just as predictable.” I’d guess 95% of indie games are simply re-hashed old game ideas. Heck, my project started off as a bit of a re-hash and only developed its own style over time.

It’s no surprise that prominent indie game developers, like Jon Blow, have moved away from “innovation” and accepted some formula i.e either making a genre game or using existing ideas. I do believe indie games should be “artful” – in that they are works of expression by an artist (game developer) trying to evoke emotions or convey an idea. I don’t believe they should be crude pixelated junk like

The Marriage

OR Passage

..because a piece of art is a sequence of well thought out decisions and I find in both games, the decisions to be weak.

The Marriage explains – “I wanted a game that the graphics and other elements took second stage. So for example Chess is a great game whether playing with stones or diamond encrusted ivory sculpted pieces. One should not assume the game is incomplete because of its graphical simplicity, I cheated a little here by using colour symbolism similar to painting. This is also the reason there is no sound to the game, any element I could remove that got in the way of the game itself I did. Sound and music is a very powerful medium in and of itself, I feared its inclusion would overwhelm the subtle message of the game.”

From playing The Marriage, I feel there might be two layers of meaning, but both are fairly superficial, need excessive explanation, and do not evoke any emotions from me. In storytelling, the hidden layers below the surface is called subtext. There doesn’t seem to be much subtext in The Marriage or it’s poorly conveyed.

To borrow a cliche – subtext is like “layers of an onion” – peel each one and another is revealed below.

I’m more intrigued by flOw and the Grow series of games than The Marriage. Heck, the original SimCity had artistic depth.

i.e On the surface, you were a city planner, but complex emergent behavior arose from your actions. Will Wright is an artist, no doubt. He has an idea and set of emotions he wants to convey and executes them in a multi-layered experience via “a game.”

OTOH, the overhyped BioShock is about as deep as Britney Spear’s music. You can not force subtext. It’s NEVER overtly spoken about.

Add comment January 14th, 2009

XBLA sales – booms and busts

For indie developers, XBLA (and PSN) seem to be viable platforms, but there are warning signs that all is not well. Here at the top 20 XBLA sellers.

From Major Nelson

Top Arcade Titles of 2008 (Full Versions purchased)

Note: Bolded are original games from indie studios.

1. Castle Crashers
2. Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2
3. Braid
4. A Kingdom for Keflings
5. UNO
6. Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix
7. Fable II Pub Games
8. Duke Nukem 3D
9. Bionic Commando: Rearmed
10. Worms
11. SOULCALIBUR
12. Portal: Still Alive
13. DOOM
14. 1942: Joint Strike
15. Bomberman Live
16. MEGA MAN 9
17. N+
18. Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3
19. Marble Blast Ultra
20. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3

If you dig deeper using sales data from vgchartz have been some busts… either mediocre sales or outright big busts considering the cost of development + VMC testing and ESRB + PEGI ratings.

The following 50 games probably have lost money. I’d say sub-10,000 units is pretty pathetic (saleswise) and definitely very concerning. A few here are recent releases (Age of Booty, Vigilante 8 Arcade, etc.) that will likely recoup by the end of 2009. I do not believe in long-tail for XBLA games as new releases drastically push down sales figures of previous releases.

Note: Bolded are original games from indie studios.

Again, considering cost of development is anywhere between $200K to $600K for a XBLA title, the above sales figures are horrible.

Add comment January 5th, 2009

The Future is in Game Design houses.

I’m seeing the separation from designer and implementator strongly in the animation/film business and believe that the game business will follow suit. What this means is we will have “game design houses” that specialize solely in creating new game ideas, mocking them up, and finally passing them on to development studios to fully implement.

So instead of publisher + developer we will have publisher + gameplay/art/sound design studios + developer (probably overseas)… a natural progression in our specialization crazy world.

For example, the ad business you have AKQA:

Why will this happen? Because of two reasons:

1. It’s cheaper to hire a developer overseas in Eastern Europe or Asia than one based in North America (for publishers it’s about the bottom line). The entire animation business went this route about 30 years ago and has never looked back.
2. Many North American development studios are horrible at game design even though they are fantastic at the implementation aspect(high polished art + amazing tech). Design has become as important as the implementation aspect. No longer can studios just be a collection of great artists and great programmers, there also needs to be great designers which are in short supply. In animation you can spend more time in pre-production than actual production due to the sheer volume of decisions that need to be made early on.

For indie game studios there are three paths to take:

1. Become cheaper than others so the shift overseas does not adversely affect you.
2. Produce higher-quality games – either better game design or better tech (or both)
3. Transform into one of the specialized game/art/sound design houses.

Add comment December 20th, 2008