OCTOBER 1999 GAME DEVELOPER MAGAZINE ON THE FRONT LINE OF GAME INNOVATION GAME PLAN DEVELOPER 600 Harrison Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 t: 415.905.2200 f: 415.905.2228 w: www.gdmag.com Graphics Fly... Publisher Cynthia A. Blair cblair@mfi.com EDITORIAL Will Developers Fry? Editorial Director Alex Dunne [email protected] Managing Editor his heard at a Siggraph panel: pricing” — $5,000 or less per product, Kimberley Van Hooser [email protected] “Consumer graphics cards in no royalties). These will be inexpensive Departments Editor two years will be more power- tools that even junior developers can Jennifer Olsen [email protected] ful than any graphics card learn in a few weeks, and which can be Art Director T Laura Pool lpool@mfi.com available today at any price.” That’s integrated into a game quickly. Where Editor-At-Large quite a bold prediction, but I agree. will we get these dream tools? That Chris Hecker [email protected] Graphics hardware has entered a phe- brings me to my second point. Contributing Editors nomenal technological growth spurt, At Siggraph, it was evident that the Jeff Lander [email protected] Paul Steed [email protected] thanks in part to the demands of graphics research community desires Omid Rahmat [email protected] today’s games. The latest crop of con- closer ties to the game development Advisory Board sumer 3D chips, such as Nvidia’s industry. The problem is, researchers Hal Barwood LucasArts GeForce 256 (formerly known as NV10), don’t know how to build those relation- Noah Falstein The Inspiracy Brian Hook Verant Interactive 4 boasts features that were found exclu- ships with us, how to identify what Susan Lee-Merrow Lucas Learning sively on high-end workstation cards aspects of their research we might find Mark Miller Harmonix Dan Teven Teven Consulting only a year ago. Consequently, the line useful, and how to craft licensing Rob Wyatt DreamWorks Interactive dividing “consumer” and “workstation” schemes we’d find attractive. So in order class cards gets fuzzier each passing day. for our commercial interests to be ADVERTISING SALES The scary aspect to the aforemen- served, it looks like it’s up to us to build Western Regional Sales Manager Jennifer Orvik e: jorvik@mfi.com t: 415.905.2156 tioned prediction is that, if it pans out, those relationships. How many people Eastern Regional Sales Manager/Recruitment we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us if we on your team regularly investigate tech- Ayrien Houchin e: ahouchin@mfi.com t: 415.905.2788 hope to maximize the capabilities of nologies that are still in the labs? It International Sales Representative that hardware. Or, to put it another might be worth your while to pick up Breakout Marketing e: [email protected] t: +49 431 801703 f:+49 431 801797 way, where are those hundreds of mil- the Siggraph proceedings each year, see ADVERTISING PRODUCTION lions of triangles being drawn on screen what’s been presented, and make licens- Senior Vice President/Production Andrew A. Mickus each second going to come from? It’s ing offers to the appropriate researchers Advertising Production Coordinator Dave Perrotti apparent that game developers are when bits of technology look useful. Reprints Stella Valdez t: 916.983.6971 increasingly playing catch-up with Bridging the gap between the public MILLER FREEMAN GAME GROUP MARKETING hardware. Without changing the way and private sector could give developers Marketing Director Gabe Zichermann things currently work, we risk widening access to reasonably priced, highly spe- MarCom Manager Susan McDonald the gap between what hardware (both cialized software tools for maximizing Junior MarCom Project Manager Beena Jacob PC and console) supports and what the horsepower of graphics hardware. CIRCULATION games actually deliver. To narrow that Finally, we can’t be afraid to take risks Vice President/Circulation Jerry M. Okabe gap, several things need to happen. with technology. Gambling on the Assistant Circulation Director Sara DeCarlo First, we need more specialized tools. capabilities of future graphics hardware Circulation Manager Stephanie Blake Many SDKs currently categorized as seems to be one of the safest decisions Assistant Circulation Manager Craig Diamantine “middleware,” such as physics and 3D you can make today. In this month’s Circulation Assistant Kausha Jackson-Crain animation engines, are often expensive Postmortem of DESCENT 3, for instance, Newsstand Analyst Joyce Gorsuch to license and don’t appear to integrate Jason Leighton and Craig Derrick dis- INTERNATIONAL LICENSING INFORMATION easily into already-underway projects. cuss the reluctance they felt when early Robert J. Abramson and Associates Inc. Perhaps this will change over time as in the project they decided to build a t: 914.723.4700 f: 914.723.4722 more commercial SDKs hit the market, graphics engine that required 3D hard- e: [email protected] causing prices to fall and developers to ware acceleration. Of course, any AAA become better acquainted with using game aiming for the high end of the comprehensive off-the-shelf libraries market today takes 3D acceleration for CEO/Miller Freeman Global Tony Tillin for adding complex functionality into granted, but surely there are technolo- Chairman/Miller Freeman Inc. Marshall W. Freeman President & CEO Donald A. Pazour games. But the types of products that I gies today which look just as risky as CFO Ed Pinedo think will make the most impact on hardware-accelerated 3D did in back Executive Vice Presidents Darrell Denny, Galen A. game development will be highly 1996. With better tools and market fore- Poss, Regina Starr Ridley Sr. Vice Presidents Annie Feldman, Howard I. Hauben, focused — those that sacrifice broad sight, the likelihood of a long death Wini D. Ragus, John Pearson, Andrew A. Mickus feature sets in favor of super-specific march to get your game out will be Sr. Vice President/Development Solutions Group KoAnn functionality (for example, a tracking reduced substantially. ■ Vikören Group President/Division SF1 Regina Ridley camera system for TOMB RAIDER clones, or a flexible terrain editor/generator) and reduced price (what I call “Smacker GAME DEVELOPER OCTOBER 1999 www.gdmag.com SAYS YOU Playing the Political Game August 1999). Languages are not creat- do not believe there to be a necessity ed by committee, they are formed out here as of yet. Art evolves in canvas, not of necessity. The movie term “zoom-in in conference rooms. eading Herr Kreimeier’s chilling dolly-back” was not created because a Adam Heine R vision of game censorship in bunch of directors decided that they via e-mail Germany (“Killing Games: Violence vs. needed to create terms for all the dif- Censorship,” Soapbox, August 1999) ferent shots they did. More likely than AUTHOR DOUG CHURCH RESPONDS: has forced me to briefly divert my atten- not, some director said “O.K., in this “Lexicon” is Game Developer’s word, “Jar- tion from developing games to worrying scene I want the camera to zoom in gon” is your word. “Tools” was my word. about the future of the game industry. while we move the dolly away from The underlying tool idea and specific The thought that in a few years I might the scene,” and when they shot the tools discussed in the article have evolved not be able to develop or play games scene he probably said, “O.K., now through use. During development of where things “blow up good” is not one zoom in and move the dolly back!” UNDERWORLD 1 and 2, we talked about our that I am happy about. I have no prob- and of course the goal to “immerse” the player. On lem with rating systems, but the sup- phrase got shorter SYSTEM SHOCK 1, we discussed pression and confiscation of games and eventually more seriously what tools we based on their content reminds me too caught on We’ll lend you an ear. E-mail us at had to work with. As I stated much of book burning. with other [email protected]. Or write to in my talk on Intention at When I’ve taken time to consider the directors — Game Developer, 600 Harrison Street, the 1997 CGDC, SHOCK had issue (rarely), I’ve always thought of the this is how San Francisco, CA 94107. no conversation mode 7 “anti-violence in videogames” politi- language devel- because we felt that UW con- cians as grand-standers using their ops. The reason versations had little player inten- nutty ideas to win votes from Ma and there are so many tion, especially compared to the 3D Pa Bible Belt. I always figured they’d terms for world. This isn’t a judgement of conversa- have zero chance of actually getting things in the techni- tion, but rather a statement about what anything passed. However, knowing cal side of games is tools fit our game design vision. Tools are what has been done in Germany because they are used to shape games. We continue to try and seeing the rise to dominance needed. It and understand the tools we use and how of mass media publishers who is formed they work. would probably just roll over along with As I see it, “usage” has been happening and accept any such changes, I the technology for years, the GDC talks and this article are now believe that I should because it necessar- “exposure,” and we’ll see if the tools idea involve myself in this issue. ily cannot be described catches on. Step 2, right? I didn’t sit around Unfortunately, like most of myk col- in any other way. in a conference room trying to figure out a leagues, I have only a very small Not only can we not create a topic for a Game Developer article.