Game Developer

Home , Andy Schatz, Castle Story, Double Fine, Double Take Comics, Dragon Fantasy, Homebrew (video games)

SALARY SURVEY SALARY ANNUAL 12TH CROWDFUNDING: ONE YEAR LATER ////////// ONE YEAR LATER + CROWDFUNDING: POSTMORTEM

ENEMY UNKNOWN XCOM:

VOLUME 20 VOLUME NUMBER 04 APRIL 2013

INSIDE: INSIDE: 2013 ISSUE MONEY THE

GAME DEVELOPER MAGAZINE APRIL 2013 THE LEADING GAME INDUSTRY MAGAZINE VOLUME 20 NUMBER 04 SALARY SURVEY SALARY ANNUAL 12TH CROWDFUNDING: ONE YEAR LATER ////////// ONE YEAR LATER + CROWDFUNDING: POSTMORTEM

ENEMY UNKNOWN XCOM:

VOLUME 20 VOLUME NUMBER 04 APRIL 2013

INSIDE: INSIDE: 2013 ISSUE MONEY THE

GAME DEVELOPER MAGAZINE APRIL 2013 THE LEADING GAME INDUSTRY MAGAZINE VOLUME 20 NUMBER 04 MAKE GREAT GAMES

Developers, build HTML5 games for the regulated gaming industry using our:

Certified RNG & game engines

HTML5 Game Development Kit (GDK)

Session handling (resume play)

Cloud content delivery network

Multi-currency handling

Multilingual library & tokens

Territorial rights management

Single licensing and distribution agreement

Drive your success by promoting your games to players and operators on Odobo Play.

Apply today. THERE’S NOTHING VIRTUAL ABOUT THE OPPORTUNITY I N R E A L- MON E Y GAMBLING.

www.odobo.com/developers EARN $100+ PER PLAYER Real-money online gambling is already a regulated $35bn industry outside the US. The US market is quickly emerging. With Odobo, developers can produce games for the leading licensed online casino operators worldwide. Odobo looks after distribution, monetization and compliance. As an Odobo developer, you can earn substantial royalties from the play of your games offered to existing vast player bases. Earn an additional 30% of the lifetime value across all gaming activity when you drive new players via Odobo Play.

The combination of immediate royalty income and affiliate commission earns Odobo developers the highest ARPUs in the games industry.

Want to know more? Get ‘The Real Money Gambling Opportunity’, an exclusive report by H2 Gambling Capital. Visit www.odobo.com for more information or tumblr.odobo.com to download your free copy. Also available by emailing [email protected] LET YOUR CAREER REACH THE PEAK! JOIN PEAK GAMES ! SHAPE AND DRIVE THE FUTURE OF TECHNOLOGY WHILE CONTINUOUSLY DEVELOPING YOURSELF

Talk to us at [email protected]

www.peakgames.net 003 CONTENTS_April 2013 VOLUME 20 NUMBER 04

Postmortem

036 XCOM: ENEMY UNKNOWN Resurrecting a complicated turn-based strategy game that practically deﬁ ned “old-school hard” seems like a recipe for commercial failure in today’s market. In this month’s postmortem, Firaxis Games’s Garth DeAngelis explains how they deﬁ ed the odds with XCOM: ENEMY UNKNOWN. By Garth DeAngelis Features

015 SALARY SURVEY We’re back with another Game Developer Salary Survey! Find out how much the industry made in 2012. By Patrick Miller

22 CROWDFUNDING, ONE YEAR LATER What does crowdfunding look like in 2013? Game Developer talked to Greg Rice (Double Fine), Chris Roberts (Roberts Space Industries), Brenda Romero (Loot Drop), and Jim Rossignol and James Carey (Big Robot) about the current crowdfunding climate. By David Daw

030 THE LANGUAGE OF MONETIZATION DESIGN If you’re going to try to design your game to make money, make sure you know what you’re talking about with this guide to monetization design terms. By Ramin Shokrizade

033 MINI-MORTEM ROUNDUP What’s it like developing for ? The devs behind FASTER game developer magazine THAN LIGHT, DYAD, DRAGON FANTASY, and WAR COMMANDER share their dev experiences in this collection of short postmortems. By Staff Departments

004 Game Plan [Editorial]

008 Heads Up Display [News]

010 Educated Play [Education]

011 Good Job [Career]

012 GDC News [News]

049 Toolbox [Review]

053 Inner Product [Programming]

057 Pixel Pusher [Art]

060 Design of the Times [Design]

063 Aural Fixation [Sound]

064 The Business [Business]

089 Insert Credit [Editorial] game developer magazine

096 Arrested Development [Humor] 003 004 game developer magazine wish f2pwould goaway,we’ll just have to getreally goodatusingit. playing—or making—agamethatfeels like it’s powered byyour wallet, either. Ratherthan pay-once model—which,inturn,meansmore stability andjobsecurity. Butnobodylikes studios ashotatanextraordinarily wideaudience andhigheroverall revenues thanthe times. From abusiness perspective, free-to-play isausefultool because itcan offer smaller “Free-to-play iskillingvideogames!”Ifyou’ve heard itonce, you’ve heard itathousand AND OPPORTUNITY MONETIZATION ISOURINDUSTRY’SNEXTBIGPROBLEM— MONEY ISSUES you to work on.Gamedevs not have anotherproject for “done,” andyour studio might some pointyour gamewill be game developer, though,at version ofWord. Ifyou’re a and working onthenext bugs, releasing new patches, left to dowithfixingremaining you’ll still have plenty ofwork shipped aversion ofWord, be pretty sure thatonce you’ve say, Microsoft Word, you can If you’re adeveloper making, long asthatproduct issold. improving aproduct for as focused onbuildingand you have ateam ofdevelopers development model,where project, andthesoftware of people to produce one assemble aone-timeteam Hollywood model,where you the entertainment industry/ it, issomewhere between development, aswe thinkof about f2p. be alittle bitless skeptical development cycle, you might with thetraditional pay-once of thehiddencosts incurred but ifyou thinkaboutsome to theriseoff2pmodel, gains are necessarily due Certainly, notallofthose increase inaverage salaries. decline inlayoff rates andan surveys, we’ve seenagradual last three years ofsalary pointing outthatover the free-to-play games,it’s worth about heapingdisdainupon consumers alike aren’t shy days. Butwhile devs and everyone’s mindsthese Survey, monetizationison from thisyear’s Salary Judging from thecomments MORE (MONEY,PROBLEMS) GAME PLAN_ 004 reinstalling it.) a previous buildandare having problems, trydeleting and on Google Play!Checkitouthere: bit.ly/11btQ7V (Ifyou installed ANDROID USERS: Traditional game

gp The GameDeveloper Android appisnow live April 2013 yourself whether it’s worth in thathealthmeter, asking marshaling every last pixel and you’ll findyourself at 25cents percontinue, segments over andover. Play up playingthrough thesame more interesting, butyou end continues andthingsget a fixed amountoflives and cost to failing. Playitwith fast because there’s no play modeanditgetsdull fun. Play design; they madepaying Holy Grail ofmonetization those gamesactually hitthe seem to miss isthatsomeof design. Whatmanypeople first example ofmonetization that arcade gameswere the proponents like to mention FUN-TO-PAY? is like working onaTVshow.” blockbuster film,free-to-play once dev islike working ona buddy Brianputit,“Pay- anyway). Asmyfilmeditor games are performing well, in f2pgamedev (whenthe we shouldseefewer layoffs game. Logically, thatmeans employed andworking onthe the dev studio to keep people game, there’s areason for is somethingto addto the after launch.Aslong asthere add new features andcontent coming in,andthengradually order to start gettingrevenue minimum viable product in as they can puttogether a f2p gameslaunchasearly model sustainable. structures thatmake that any oftheunionsorsupport of afilmworker, butwithout end upwithalltheliability On theotherhand,many C ONTRA Free-to-play onfree- @pattheﬂ ip —Patrick Miller VS and consumers—happy. makes everyone—devs, suits, Money Issues inawaythat going to have to solve The around untilretirement, we’re buying homes,andsticking supporting theirfamilies, reasonably seethemselves place where developers can the gameindustry become a developers. Ifwe wantto see cultivate, andretain talented make itharder to attract, after ship”—bothofwhich and “layingeveryone off practices like “crunchtime” gave uswonderful workplace those business modelsalso they were 10years ago,and games are harder to sellthan like acash cow. Butpay-once a gamethatmakes you feel ROUND Nobodywantsto play MAKE THEWORLD GO price tag onin-gamecontent. on inf2pthanjust sticking a suspect we’ll seemore going models continue to develop, I make itworth it.Andasf2p than Iwin,buttheextra thrills real-world weight. Ilose more game momentalittle bitmore the linejust to give eachin- by puttingadollarortwo on myself, Ilove uppingthestakes Fanatiq), butasanenthusiast match between Toan and extremes (seethe taken these to rather ridiculous fighting gamecommunity has the outcome ofagame.The where two players beton time-honored “money match,” monetization designisthe example ofeffective quarters inyour pocket). actual, real-world stakes (the enhanced bythepresence of The experience isactually the next level, andsoon. another 25cents to see . C Another unorthodox APCOM 2 $50,000 money $50,000money M ARVEL gp

Simon Carless [email protected] PUBLISHER EDITORIAL www.gdmag.com/contactus [email protected] t: 800.250.2429f:847.763.9606 ADDRESS CHANGES FOR INFORMATION, ORDERQUESTIONS,AND SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES t: 415.947.6000f:415.947.6090 San Francisco, CA 94107 303 Second Street, Suite 900,SouthTower UBM LLC. ubm.sms-inc.com [email protected] t: 631-787-3008x3020 Specialist Marketing Services Peter Candito LIST RENTAL Nancy Grant e:[email protected] AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT MANAGER AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT t: 877-652-5295 Jason Pampell WRIGHT’S MEDIA REPRINTS t: 516-562-5134 Pete [email protected] PRODUCTION MANAGER ADVERTISING PRODUCTION CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Joseph Mitch [email protected] ART DIRECTOR Dan Mallory [email protected] MANAGER, PRODUCTION Brandon [email protected] EDITOR EMERITUS Patrick Miller [email protected] EDITOR t: 415.947.6223 Rafael Vallin [email protected] GLOBAL ACCOUNT MANAGER, EDUCATION t: 415.947.6241 Gina Gross [email protected] GLOBAL ACCOUNT MANAGER, RECRUITMENT t: 415.947.6227 Jennifer [email protected] MEDIA ACCOUNT MANAGER t: 415.947.6227 Aaron Murawski [email protected] VICE PRESIDENT,SALES ADVERTISING SALES Brenda Romero LootDrop Mike Acton Insomniac Carey Chico Independent Mark DeLoura Independent Bijan Forutanpour SonyOnline Clinton KeithIndependent Brad Bulkley Microsoft Mick West Independent ADVISORY BOARD Matthew Wasteland, MagnusUnderland Schubert, DamianKastbauer, KimPallister, Chris Parnin, Steve Theodore, Damion Shokrizade, GarthDeAngelis,Dave Mark, Alexandra Hall,DavidDaw,Ramin WWW.UBM.COM [email protected] WWW.GDMAG.COM MAGAZINE GAME DEVELOPER Entertainment

Libertad y Orden Libertad y Orden h

008 game developer magazine THROUGH AVIDEOGAME TEACHING THEFORTH PROGRAMMINGLANGUAGE GO FORTH, WARRIOR HEADS-UP DISPLAY 008 the game.(Last Ichecked, theexecutable isaround 41k!)The self-contained compiler andprogramming environment for wonderful source ofmotivation. Forth dialect and arange ofwell-defined tasks would bea thought thatdesigningagame provided asimple, portable the languagebutdidn’tknow whatsortofproject to build.I Forth. I’dtalked to afew programmers whowere curiousabout principles viavideogame? about thelanguageitselfthat makes it easier to teach its tocarryover other modernlanguages? success, for example. Well, JohnEarnest developed asmallgamecalled JE: PM: JE: PM: JOHN EARNEST: PATRICK MILLER: F Holy Grail oftechnological education—see To manyintheindustry, agamethatcan teach programming concepts isthe own petchickens. making pizzafrom scratch anddrawing comics. Iaspire to not tinkering withcompilers orwritingvideogamesIenjoy in programming languagedesignandcompilers. WhenI’m many similaritiesto Forth. another stack-based languagecalled PostScript, whichbears architectures. ThemodernPDFfile format isbasedon like C,soit’s agreat optionfor bootstrapping new computer magnitude smaller andsimpler thanthosefor languages when resources are tight.Forth compilers are anorder of a cultfollowing amongembeddedsystems programmers always alittle too strange to hitmainstream. Itstill maintains radically extend thelanguageto suitthetask athand. but offers metaprogramming facilities thatallow oneto at first. Forth hasthelow-level character ofassembly language, conventionally trained programmers feel everything is“backward” names. Thisleads to code that isvery compact, even if procedures viaanimplicitstack rather thanexplicit variable sort oflike oldHPcalculators, withoperands flowing between formally aconcatenative language.Codeiswritten inpostfix, We Warrior2), inwhichyou control ahero’s actionsusingonly Forth commands. ORTH There aren’t manymodernresources for learning about Forth iswhat’s called astack-based language,ormore Why’d decideto you buildForth Warrior? Was there anything Tell usalittle bitaboutForth. What’s itusedfor? Isthere any The simplicityof Forth certainly madeiteasierto write a The languagewasinvented inthemid-’70s,andwas talked to Johnabouttheprocess ofcoding agameto teach coding. W ARRIOR I’m aPhDstudent atMichiganTech, specializing h What’s day your job?

(https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako/tree/master/games/ _ April 2013 C ODE H ERO ’ S rampant Kickstarter enhancement for decided to revisit a LogoIDEIwrote for usewithalocal after-school program, I sorts ofexternal compilers andtools. Inspired bysuccess with It wasmuchclunkierto work with,since itdependedonall roughly ayear ago—it’s still available inmyGitHubrepository. language features. making, whichinturnprovides opportunitiesto usemore fewer assumptions andperform more elaborate decision- elements interact, gradually forcing theprogrammer to make a test fixture—each explores afew subtleties ofhow thegame rather quickly. Iendedupmakinglevels muchlike Iwould write block-pushing puzzle becomes computationally intractable very difficult for computers. Even ahumble Sokoban-style intuitive leaps, andmanytasks thatare easyfor humansare is aninteresting task. You can’t dependonprograms making way? Warrior? have any Didyou interesting failed iterations along the little more inthespiritofclassics like a desire for ahead-to-head competitive modeinthegame,a audience for more gameslike this.Manyplayers have expressed than anyofmyotherprojects, soitdefinitely seemslike there’s an JE: PM: beat thegamewould betorture withoutit. in retrospect Ithinkwritingsufficiently elaborate programs to code editors wasloudly demandedbymy earliest testers, and more polishedandstandalone. Addingsupport for external JE: PM: test your programs intinypieces asyou goalong. dynamic, interactive nature ofthelanguagehelps too; you can want to continue designing games that educate as they entertain. can’t sayfor certain whatmynext project willbe,butIdefinitely concepts alongside programming, aiming more atbeginners. I a few ideasfor aLogo-basedgame thatcan teach basicgeometry Well, I’ve received more positive feedback for Designing puzzles that are meant to be solved by a computer What’s next? Any plansfor similarprojects? Whatlearn didyou from theprocess of buildingForth I wrote thefirst prototype ofthegameinanafternoon F F ORTH ORTH W W ARRIOR ARRIOR , or maybe a sequel? I also have , ormaybeasequel?Ialsohave andbuildsomethingalittle R OBO W AR F . Maybean ORTH —Patrick Miller W ARRIOR h 009 HEADS-UP DISPLAY_April 2013

INDEPENDENT AGENT A VETERAN INDIE DEV LOOKS BACK—AND FORWARD

Twenty-year industry veteran Keith Nemitz, creator of DANGEROUS HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS IN TROUBLE! and IGF 2013 ﬁ nalist 7 GRAND STEPS, has been indie for over a decade—way before it was hip. We checked in with him in the midst of developing his latest, and possibly last, self-funded game.

ALEXANDRA HALL: What aspects of the biz need to spread the mindshare, to fl atten have changed the most, and least? the nasty curve endemic in hit-driven KEITH NEMITZ: What changed most was the businesses. Every indie’s website should market. Games invent markets, because link to a dozen or more of their favorite all humans play games. It’s taken games, not to their friends’ games or developers 40 years to diversify their craft their heroes’ games or games already enough to reach everyone. Sparse thanks well known outside indies, but to indie to the corporations. Nearly every new games each dev genuinely loves that game market was created by indies. Indie deserve more mindshare. games sold homebrew computers. Indie I’m part of a community of developers games fueled the adoption of PCs. Some who recently formed a philosophy about of those indies became corporations the indie game market. It is functionally (Roberta Williams), some work in infi nite. We are not actually in competition corporations today (Bill Budge), some are with each other. That only happens in still indies (Jeff Minter). contests. I could put my older games on What hasn’t changed much is the hundreds of game websites today, where laser-focus attention on hit games. Most the audiences have never heard of them. DANGEROUS HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS IN TROUBLE! gamers think hit-driven is a fact of the There are millions of gamers who’ve industry, but in reality the system can take never heard of BRAID. The indie game a few simple steps to soften the curve. market is essentially infi nite. AH: Do you miss big teams/budgets? The most diffi cult challenge is getting KN: Honestly, I think I’ve reached my suffi cient attention to achieve profi tability. AH: Any advice for aspiring indies? limit. To make higher-quality games, I’ll We are now in an era of great games, but KN: The chance to succeed is tiny; need to work with partners instead of nobody realizes it because of all the crap. 3% of devs on iPhone are sustaining contractors. Partners have equal input Everyone can point to a few greats: ANGRY themselves, and it’s much worse on and ownership. I dislike imagining and BIRDS, PLANTS VS. ZOMBIES, XCOM, XBLIG. On PC and PSN, devs fare better, deciding everything myself. I remember a DEMON’S SOULS, PERSONA… But there but only the ones selected to be on Steam vivid example. One tiny suggestion, from a are 10 other great games for every hit. I or PSN. The challenges are many: friend, tightened a disconnected narrative just enjoyed playing a fi ne point-and-click into the fantastic story of DANGEROUS adventure, THE SILENT AGE. It’s been out 1 Can you make a great game? HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS IN TROUBLE!: “What for a while, but I’d never heard of it. The 2 Can you drive traffi c to your IP? if the pony was in love with the mayor?” developers even won an award! Will those (build a community) I enjoy the freedom of working for creators of a fi ne game survive? 3 Can you network in the game dev myself, developing games, but I may not ecosphere? (indie and industry) be suffi ciently suited to the business of it. AH: Do you feel optimistic? 4 Can you run a business? KN: I’m super optimistic about our AH: So a small team would be your ideal? industry’s future! Games and audiences If you can’t do all of those well, then KN: For me, yes. I think there’s are diversifying exponentially. The make games for the fun of making diminishing returns as an indie team market is expanding. And, something games, instead of making them your gets larger. Partnering is pretty optimal. which has never happened before in livelihood. Personally, I’m not very good Myself, I would like to work in a team of an artistic medium, independents are at #2 and only okay at #4. Because of four to eight. It’s unlikely I will be able to determining the course of the industry as it, after 10 years of making critically afford that many employees. Nor would it grows/transmogrifi es, not after a few successful games, my company has yet to I want to manage them! So I would corporations and brands have taken all make a profi t. If 7 GRAND STEPS doesn’t work at a company to be part of a team the mindshare. sell twice as well as DANGEROUS HIGH again. This time, it would have to be an One caution, however. If indies SCHOOL GIRLS IN TROUBLE! (my best- exceptional company that honored the continue to rally behind a few “heroes,” selling game), then I will probably be out indie spirit. they are hindering their own futures. We of business next year. —Alexandra Hall game developer magazine 009 010 game developer magazine Showcase. 2013 IGFStudent was afinalist inthe something for usto but thatdefinition was the topic ofmeaning, philosophers about cultural arbiters or insight. We’re not reflection, orgives introspection, personal experience that invites vague—an impactful as somethingadmittedly we looked atmeaning purposes ofourproject perspective. For the thing, even from our particularly cut-and-dry HTTP://WWW.MINDFULXP.COM THE MINDFULXPVOLUME EDUCATED PLAY _ 010 MINDFUL XP: ALEXANDRA HALL: MINDFUL form. Theresult, in waysuniqueto the “meaningful” ideas would communicate form gamesthat a seriesofshort- aimed to create Carnegie Mellon three students at film. To thatend, like literature and alongside mainstays form thatcan stand as aseriousart increasingly accepted video gamesare rocky adolescence, While still ina “meaningful” game.

XP It isn’ta

VOLUME Deﬁne a THE ,

April 2013 ourselves, andhopethat games thatspoke to as creators wascreate game… allwe could do makes ameaningful wrong.” Asto what we’re doingsomething same conclusions, then game andstill reach the movie version ofour the bookorwatch the to, “Ifyou can read We simplified thisdown relates [to] anaudience. depth, especially whenit aspects inunparalleled particular explore these we feel thatgamesin to gamesspecifically, concepts aren’t unique deep way. While these in othermediumsany them unrepresentable them games,rendering or anythingthatmakes mechanics, interactions, their systems, rules, ultimately through meaning must bearrived and specified thatthe went astep further, meaningful game,we meaningful. For a then thatwassomething was somethingto that,” player go,“Yeah, there just enoughto make a trying to express was ours, ifwhatwe were were to playagameof Ideally ifsomeone aspire to ifnotachieve. (or not). reach anend,together trying withmore effort to the people around you or of taking advantage of around amoral choice gameplay wascentered And in time anddistance. relationships over difficulty ofmaintaining that conveyed the focused onasystem thing thatishard to example) isan abstract of cooperation (as an game aboutthepower messages. Makinga with expressing grand MXP: AH: In introspective moments. by thehand,to create of leading someone as themainmechanic through spaces aswell metaphors created connection through formed apowerful made agamethat MXP: AH: find meaninginit. was enoughfor others to we were tryingto say the universality ofwhat your goals? your games bestachieved along theway? C Whichmindfulxp Whatlearn didyou ONNECTIONS We struggled In MARCHwe E MPTINESS we we , the pretentious? as being branded MXP: AH: them goingforward. learned andapplied one aswe took lessons reaction to theprevious game endedupbeinga understandable. Each making ourmessage were important tools in Narrative andaesthetics we were conveying. any overall message game systems diluted that havingtoo many players. Also,we found universally itspoke to message themore intimate we madea Surprisingly, themore that really mattered. refine thesmalldetails which meantwe could personal experiences, were informed through on messages that semester we focused in thesecond halfofthe captured noneofit.So feeling like we had often endedwith us these broad messages capture every nuance of we found thattryingto were allinthisvein, and initially triedto convey The messages we much less athousand. capture for oneperson Did you worry about worry Didyou We didtwo pretty artist Felix Park, lead designer lead programmer DanLin,lead Team members: Mike Lee, Paolo Pedercini. Felix once took aclass under a class underAndyNealen, and under IanBogost, Danonce took A funfact: Mike once took aclass prototypes +MARCH game: 28,849,notincludingall #oflinescode inthe time, blood, sweat, andtears) Development budget:$0(just Development time:15weeks 13, 2012 May 10,2012,volume release May Release date: Finalgamerelease Developer: mindfulxp perception issues. much aware ofpossible (so far). Still,we’re very been overly cautious concerns mighthave best. Intheendour and presumptuous at pretentious atworst just like that,would be something meaningful, to inherently make notion ofbeingable meaning, orthevery attempt to prefabricate could beseenasan more meaningfulgames practices might lead to researching what Our focus around includes ourselves). players (whichofcourse space aswell astheir games inthissame of people whomake though wasthereaction were worried about pretentious. Whatwe being generalized as any hugeconcern about place there really wasn’t expectations inthefirst trying to meetthose Since we weren’t that can bedefined). wider audience (however that would appealto a trying to create games fun games,norwere we weren’t tryingto make damning things—we —Alexandra Hall gj 011 GOOD JOB_April 2013

LEAVING UNITY UNITY CO-FOUNDER NICHOLAS FRANCIS LEAVES TO GO MAKE GAMES

Over the last few years, right, reiterate, fi x things, quite a different place: We Unity has been credited clean them up, and then ship. wanted to make a game, and with radically changing Quite often, when people pretty much the only option the game development come from other engines to was to buy some triple-A landscape by lowering the Unity, they get this serene look engine for an obscene amount technical barrier to entry on their face—like you just of money—of course they and enabling individual handed a glass of ice water wouldn’t tell you what that devs and small studios to someone in Hell. If I had to amount actually was—and to jump in and just start sum up one “greatest thing” you had to sign NDAs before making games. But what that I accomplished, it would you could even try it. Today, to leave right now? do you do once you’re done be that look. all that’s changed: A game NF: It had been coming for changing the industry? We In the early days, we were engine is just something you quite a while—some sort of caught up with Unity co- three guys in a basement fl at, have, like Maya or Photoshop. restlessness. Last autumn I founder Nicholas Francis, so everybody did pretty much This means that pretty much took some time off to think who recently announced he everything; I did a lot of the everyone can make games on the meaning of life. That was leaving Unity to make core graphics programming. today. If you combine that with turned up absolutely nothing. games himself, about his As the company grew, I also the rise of mobile, I think Unity But there were some games I role with Unity and his did a ton of marketing work, has been one of the key factors had to make before I died, and upcoming plans. website design, meeting with in the re-emergence of the since you never know when it’s investors, explaining to people indie game dev. Now, it’s not your time, I guess that means PATRICK MILLER: What was your what we were trying to do. like I think all of this was our you should get started sooner primary role with Unity? Classical founder-type stuff. doing, but it certainly seems rather than later. The plans NICHOLAS FRANCIS: The main As we grew, we got dedicated like we played a key part in solidifi ed over Christmas, and thing I accomplished at Unity teams: GFX programming, that. then it was all about actually was the Unity Editor. Keeping platform teams, marketing, executing it—Unity’s quite it clean. Working with the sales, legal, and so on. That’s PM: From all accounts, you’re spread out, and there were other devs and helping them when I zeroed in on the core leaving Unity to make games some friends I wanted to tell in realize ways of making Unity’s product design. yourself; do you have any person, so it took a while. features simpler and easier to specifi c plans you’re willing to use. I think one of the greatest PM: How would you describe the share? What kind of games do PM: So, now that you’re leaving things about Unity is that impact that Unity has had on you want to make? Unity, you’re going to be there’s not this “Let’s throw a the game dev industry? Where NF: Let’s just say that I’ve working all in Unreal, right? feature together, expose every do you think it will go from always been a cyberpunk fan. NF: …And, in related news, option and let people fi gure here? I have also just picked up it out” mindset. Instead, we NF: I remember back when we PM: Was this in the plans for masochism and taken delivery took the time to get the design started Unity, the world was some time? What prompted you of my fi rst ball gag…

New Studios

w Japanese MOBILE GAMING GIANT GREE has formed a new company with Yahoo! Japan, with the aim to focus on development of social games for smartphones. The joint venture, “GxYz, Inc.,” will combine the user acquisition capabilities of Yahoo! Japan with Gree’s development and operation skills. Who Went Where w LEAGUE OF LEGENDS developer Riot Games has opened a second studio, this time in Sydney, Australia, as it looks to u IAN LIVINGSTONE, co-creator of FIGHTING FANTASY and long-time better support its POPULAR FREE-TO-PLAY MOBA in the Oceania Eidos executive, has been appointed chairman at Playdemic, a region. Riot Games Sydney will focus on marketing, e-sports, social games developer with several Facebook hits to its credit. and the community aspects of LEAGUE OF LEGENDS, and the u Pauline Jacquey has been appointed as managing director of PR teases “much more to share soon.” UBISOFT’S NEWCASTLE-BASED STUDIO, Refl ections. Jacquey has a w In Los Angeles, THE NEW XBOX ENTERTAINMENT STUDIOS is headed long history at Ubi, having produced the console versions of by Nancy Tellem, Microsoft’s president of entertainment and GHOST RECON ADVANCED WARFIGHTER and mobile games in digital media. The studio’s mandate has it creating “visionary the PRINCE OF PERSIA and ASSASSIN’S CREED series. original interactive content” for the company’s consoles. u RAHUL SOOD, former general manager of interactive w PROLETARIAT INC., a new game development studio formed by entertainment business at Microsoft, will now serve as adviser to the original founding group behind Zynga Boston, is open for the board at Razer, makers of hardcore-oriented PC peripherals. business with iOS game LETTER RUSH. game developer magazine 011 012 game developer magazine INTEREST HAVE DEVELOPERS’ STABLE, NEWPLATFORMS CONSOLE DEVELOPMENT INDIE DEVSINCREASING, TRENDS MAJOR REVEALS RESEARCH INDUSTRY OF THE GDC STATE MARCH 25–29,2013MOSCONECENTERSANFRANCISCO,CA GAME DEVELOPERSCONFERENCE preferences andinterests of survey wastheplatform Another majorfocus ofthe DOMINATE DEVPLATFORMS SMARTPHONES, TABLETS, PC current projects. 20% are doingsoontheir last game,while aneven smaller worked with apublisherontheir indie, only 24%ofthose surveyed Further proving themove to companies of10people orless. survey’s respondents work within less thantwo years. have beenindiedevelopers for developers,” andofthose,51% identified themselves as“indie fact, 53%oftherespondents rise like never before. In smaller teams are onthe game development and survey isthatindependent 2013 State oftheIndustry A key finding of theGDC THE RISEOFINDIE San Francisco.) in advance oftheconference in a similarsurvey eachwinter, and more. (GDCintends to fi eld platforms, money, team sizes, notable trends withregard to practices, revealing several 2013—about theirdevelopment 2012—or planned to attend GDC who attended theconference in American gamedevelopers polled more than2,500North Game Developers Conference right before GDC2013,the games business asitlooked In order to paintapicture ofthe In addition, 46% of the In addition,46%ofthe ® currently makingaWiiUgame, U, only 4.6%ofdevelopers are 12.4% theirnext game. game for theconsole, and 13% are releasing theircurrent the 360.For thePlayStation 3, planning theirnext gameon the Xbox 360and close to 14% 13.2% currently developing for from lower numbers, with Microsoft atthetop, albeit and Nintendo, thesurvey found In terms ofSony,Microsoft, STABLE AT ALOWER BASE CONSOLE DEVELOPMENT games onPCs/Macs. and 49%planningtheirnext games for thoseplatforms, 48% developing theircurrent their last gamesfor PCs/Macs, 34.6% ofdevelopers releasing next-strongest platforms, with their next games on these platforms. whopping 58%planto release there. Even more impressive, a are making theircurrent games and tablets collectively, but55% their last gamefor smartphones the survey’s developers released for anyotherplatform; 38%of for smartphonesandtablets than the respondents are developing Android consoles. as PC-basedTVconsoles and new typesofconsoles such market—alongside aslew of are anticipated to come to when next-gen consoles an important topic inayear the development community, In terms of theNintendo Wii PCs andMacsare the The survey found that more of in theplatforms. PC-based 56% respectively interested terms of interest, with58%and are still wayout aheadin current andfuture projects. from whatthey saidabout received avery different response market orcoming soon,and the variety ofplatforms onthe of interest indeveloping for developers abouttheirlevels CHARTS Thesurvey alsoasked TOP DEVELOPER INTEREST PC/ANDROID “CONSOLES” SMARTPHONES, TABLETS, their next gameonthe3DS. developers planto release 3DS game,andonly 2.8%of 2% are currently makinga the Nintendo 3DS’s potential: developers are unconvinced of there. AndNorthAmerican to release theirnext game for Vita, andjust over 5%plan are making theircurrent game game for theconsole, 4.2% respondents madetheirlast While less than2%of extremely low percentages. uptrend insupport,butfrom Vita handheldshowed aslight SUPPORT Sony’s PlayStation HANDHELDS SHOW MINIMAL DEDICATED GAMING and Microsoft platforms.) next gamefor upcoming Sony respondents are makingtheir (Finally, anidentical 11%of next gamefor theconsole. developers are makingtheir and just 6.4%ofoursurveyed Tablets andsmartphones Game Developer. operated byUBMTech, asis summits are owned and future. (GDCandtheGDC 44% planto dosointhe while asurprisingly sizable project thatwascrowdfunded, respondents have worked ona regard to crowdfunding, 8%of primarily crowdfunded. With funded, and4%are actually are still primarily publisher- funded byventure capital; 10% respondents were primarily personal funds(35%). chest (37%)oranindividual’s the company’s existing war games are beingfundedfrom projects. Thevast majorityof developers are fundingtheir survey looked into how BLOOMS Finally, theGDC CROWDFUNDING INTEREST SELF-FUNDING GOESBIG, U and3DS. interest respectively for theWii a relatively small13%and5% lag indeveloper interest, with Nintendo platforms continue to 29% and27%respectively. And the relative graph ranking to and Sonyconsoles shootup interest, next-gen Microsoft simply aboutexpressions of the interest curve at37%. GameStick, are alsohighup consoles, like theOUYA and developers. Android home 45% level ofinterest for Steam Box, have avery high TV consoles, suchasValve’s Only 9%ofoursurvey Interestingly, whenasked )

Photo courtesy of Game Developers Conference.

The Unreal Development Kit, the free edition of See what small Unreal Engine 3, continues to help aspiring game student teams developers harness their creativity and jumpstart can build with their careers. the Unreal Four finalist games in the latest Make Some- thing Unreal competition have been developed Development Kit in around the theme ‘Mendelian inheritance: human six months! genomics and genetics,’ which was set and is supported by the Wellcome Trust, a global charitable organization. Thanks to our mentor studios and industry veterans During the Make Something Unreal Live grand for their advisory contributions to Make Something Un- finale, teams will rapidly iterate on their games real Live 2013: and present work daily to mentors, judges and Climax Studios, Lucid Games, Ninja Theory, Splash the public at the Gadget Show Live, the premier Damage, Jon Hare, Miles Jacobson, Dave Jones, consumer electronics show coming to Birming- Peter Molyneux, Clive Robert, Ella Romanos, Anton ham, UK, from April 2-7, 2013. The winning team Westburgh, Kostas Zarifis. will walk away with an Unreal Engine 4 license for To follow the progress of MSUL 2013, visit PC digital distribution. facebook.com/MakeSomethingUnreal.

Come see Epic at upcoming industry events: Gadget Show Live (April 2-7, Birmingham, UK), East Coast Game Conference (April 24-25, Raleigh, NC), GameHorizon (May 8-9, Newcastle, UK) Email [email protected] for appointments and sign up for our newsletter at unrealengine.com.

© 2013, Epic Games, Inc. Epic, Epic Games, the Epic Games logo, Unreal, Unreal Development Kit, UDK, Unreal Engine, UE3 and UE4 are trademarks or registered trademarks of Epic Games, Inc. in the United States of America and elsewhere. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved. BY PAT RICK MILLER

INDUST RY IN

T HE 12T H ANNUAL GD MAGAZINE SALARY SURVEY

That’s the main year, asking a slew of related felt satisfi ed, and 27% who felt devs were much more negative takeaway from the questions along the way. For somewhat satisfi ed. than last year. 12th annual Game some numbers, the industry is However, the literal In other words, even T Developer magazine looking up. We found that the comments revealed a shared though most numbers are Salary Survey. On one hand, we average salary across the U.S. feeling that the industry was in going up, they might not tell saw the industry explode with game industry is $84,337, which fl ux; practically every comment the whole story. It seems like creativity and new tech; on the is up approximately $3,100 over we received spoke to the decline everyone knows that mobile other hand, seeing several high- last year’s average. Layoffs of triple-A and traditional and multiplatform is where the profi le studio closures left many are at 12%, down 1% from last console-development paths, the industry is headed, but that worrying about the long-term year. 64% of developers made rise of mobile games as the new knowledge isn’t particularly outlook for their career. Overall, more money than last year, 29% industry focus (and an associated reassuring. Between the most game developers made made the same, and only 7% unease with the prospects of console developers worried more money and received better made less. When asked if they getting noticed on overfl owing about fi nding a place in the new benefi t coverage than last year thought the game industry was app stores), distrust of a growing job market, indies still waiting (with roughly a 12–15% increase a great industry to work in, 24% free-to-play bubble, and a mix of for their passion projects to in medical, dental, and vision of developers strongly agreed, enthusiasm for indie developers’ pay off, current mobile devs coverage across the board), but 45% agreed, 21% felt neutral, creativity, and worry about indie underwhelmed by how their that didn’t stop developers from and only 7% disagreed and 3% developers’ earnings. When games have fared in the hyper- expressing uncertainty about strongly disagreed. Only 9% asked whether they thought competitive app stores, and the the industry’s direction. of developers reported being there were more jobs in 2012 for possibility of another bubble Every year, we ask dissatisfi ed with their potential game developers, whether the forming (and bursting) on the thousands of Game Developer career path (down 2% from last game industry was picking up, horizon, a few extra bucks here

and Gamasutra readers to tell year), compared to 22% who felt and whether there were more and there isn’t going to do much game developer magazine us what they made in the last extremely satisﬁ ed, 41% who opportunities than ever before, to assuage those fears. ››› 015 016 game developer magazine salary survey_ 016 Female Male Gender averaged $43,914,whichisdown $2,900. about $4,300from last year, andEuropean programmers experience. Contract programmers averaged $62,500thisyear. 3–6 years ofexperience anddown $7,000for over sixyears of last year, andlead programmers’ salariesare down $3,500for positions; technical directors’ salariesare down $10,300from Furthermore, most ofthosecutscame from more senior and thosewithover sixyears ofexperience made$2,500less. programmers with3–6years ofexperience made$900less, reported salaries$8,000higherthanlast year’s, while experienced sideoftheindustry: Newer programmers of thosecuts,interestingly enough,came onthemore- salary isdown slightly ($811)from last year’s average. Most of overall compensation. Thisyear’s average programmer they’re second only to thebusiness andlegal people interms Programmers make the(game)world go’round; once again, programmers ALL PROGRAMMERSANDENGINEERS Programmer salaries peryears experience andposition 100K Years experience intheindustry 10K 20K 30K 40K 50K 60K 70K 80K 90K Programmer/Engineer 0K Canadian programmers averaged $70,712,whichisdown

27% $74,008 ‹ 3yrs

‹ 3years Gender stats Represented 36% $83,243 3–6 yrs 96% $72,198 4% % f

37% $111,281 6 yrs › l

$96,136 $91,969 Average Salary Lead Programmer u April 2013 3–6 years

$79,870 x Vision Dental Medical Type ofbenefits received Percent receiving benefits: Stock options/equity Royalties Project/title bonus Profit sharing to Retirement plan Pension/Employer contribution Annual bonus received Type ofadditionalcompensation Average additionalincome: % receiving additional income: $93,581

Technical Director $92,151 {avg. salary}

6 years › $106,559 >

$112,286 > $15,797 $15,797

$124,833 > 86% 88% 95% 97% 33% 24% 10% 41% 45% 81% 5%

Female Male Gender still make about$16,000more thantheirfemale counterparts. year’s. Male artists’ andanimators’ salaries fell $1,300,butthey 16% female, andtheiraverage salarybumpedup $7,400over last animators this year, bumping the gender balance up to 84% male, year andputsthemrightbackwhere they were in2010. and animators averaged $40,776,whichisup$5,000from last year (down $3,400from last year), andEurope-based artists Contract artists averaged $64,741thisyear. salary average above thatofthemore-senior artdirector title. actually made$10,000more thanlast year, pushingtheir enough, lead/tech artists withover sixyears ofexperience art directors averaged $30,000less thanlast year. Interestingly years ofexperience averaged $16,500less thanlast year, and more-experienced devs: Artists oranimators withover six last year’s survey average. Again,most ofthelosses were from Artists andanimators alsosawaslightdecline($770)from animators artists

ALL ARTISTS ANDANIMATORS Artist andAnimator salariesperyears experience andposition 100K Years experience intheindustry 10K 20K 30K 40K 50K 60K 70K 80K 90K Artist andAnimator 0K We received 3%more responses from female artists and Canada-based artists andanimators averaged $63,227this

31% $67,139 3–6 yrs

20% $48.400 ‹ 3yrs ‹ 3years Gender stats Represented

16% 84% $55,682 %

and 49% $90,038 6 yrs ›

Lead Artist/Tech Artist $60,238 $77,791 Average Salary

3–6 years

$64,619

Vision Dental Medical Type ofbenefits received Royalties Project/title bonus Profit sharing to Retirement plan Pension/Employer contribution Average additionalincome: % receiving additional income: Percent receiving benefits: Stock options/equity Annual bonus received Type ofadditionalcompensation $69,545

$75,009 Art Director {avg. salary}

6 years › $76,653

$102,917 > $14,300

25% 26% $91,346 80% 88% 92% 93% 30% 26% 32% 40% 84%

Female Male Gender last year’s salary. the same,while male designers averaged $2,400more over design field. Female designers’ average salariesalso stayed designers’ average of$43,600isup$5,400from last year’s. average isdown $3,750over last year’s, while Europe-based game designers didn’tfare quite sowell, though;their$56,576 increase. Contract designers averaged $46,786.Canada-based free-to-play games,we’re notterribly surprisedto seethis year level. Consideringhow important designisfor mobile and more atthe3–6year level and$6,500more attheover-six- year, while creative directors andlead designers made$16,600 with over sixyears ofexperience made$5,000more thanlast years ofexperience made$1,500less, andgamedesigners saw a$6,300increase over last year; gamedesigners with3–6 we have inprevious salarysurveys. Entry-level gamedesigners that we weren’t able to break outtheirresults separately like Unfortunately, ourwriter respondent poolwassosmallthisyear designers game ALL GAME DESIGNERS Game Designersalariesperyears experience andposition 100K Years experience intheindustry 10K 20K 30K 40K 50K 60K 70K 80K 90K Game Designer 0K Gender balance remained the same(89%male) inthe

37%

$63,639 3–6 yrs 18% $55,313 ‹ 3yrs ‹ 3years Gender stats Represented

11% 89% $54,611 %

45% $92,583 6 yrs › Creative Director/Lead Designer

$61,983 $76,646 Average

Salary 3–6 years

Vision Dental Medical Type ofbenefits received Percent receiving benefits: Stock options/equity Royalties Project/title bonus Profit sharing to Retirement plan Pension/Employer contribution Annual bonus received Type ofadditionalcompensation Average additionalincome: % receiving additional income: $60,238 $87,143

$75,065 {avg. salary}

6 years › $82,742

$14,534 $105,865 >

30% 85% 93% 96% 96% 24% 13% 39% 36% 79% 5%

year, while female producers madeanextra $650. male producers sawa$1,500average salarydecrease from last producers, bringingthecount to 77%male, 23%female. Overall, that trend witha7%increase inresponses from female have inotherdevelopment disciplines, andthisyear continues year’s average. producers averaged $54,167,whichis$2,200less thanlast ($5,400 higherthanlast year’s average), while Europe-based producers averaged $65,833. of experience made$12,000more thanlast year. Contract less, respectively. Also,producers/project leads with3–6years producers withover sixyears made$6,000less and$13,000 experience made$4,500less, andproject leads andexecutive made $8,000less, associate producers with3–6years of pretty muchacross theboard; entry-level associate producers Producers averaged $1,500less thanlast year, withcutsfelt Female Male Gender producers

ALL PRODUCERS Producer salariesperyears experience andposition 100K Years experience intheindustry 10K 20K 30K 40K 50K 60K 70K 80K 90K Associate Producer 0K Historically, we’ve seenmore women inproduction thanwe Canada-based producers fared better, averaging $76,875

33% $77,077 3–6 yrs

17% $63,472 ‹ 3years ‹ 3yrs Gender stats Represented $50,313 23% 77% % $73,553

50%

$95,976 6 yrs › salary survey_

Producer/Project Lead $78,989 $85,591 Average Salary 3–6 years f Vision Dental Medical Type ofbenefits received Percent receiving benefits: Royalties Profit sharing to Retirement plan Pension/Employer contribution Average additionalincome: % receiving additional income: Project/title bonus Annual bonus received Type ofadditionalcompensation Stock options/equity $51,389 l $80,045

x Executive Producer $84,127 {avg. salary}

017

April 2013

6 years › $66,563

$92,500

$16,454 $16,454

$126,413 > 85% 92% 94% 97% 35% 14% 40% 58% 82% 5% 9%

017 game developer magazine 018 game developer magazine salary survey_ 018 Female Male Gender level audioprofessionals to break theirsalariesout. Unfortunately, we didn’treceive enoughresponses from entry- experience actually sawagainof$1,600over last year’s salary. cut. Sound/audiodesigners orengineers with3–6years of saw a$16,000cut,andsound/audiodirectors a$3,000 years ofexperience; sound/audiodesigners and engineers contractors averaged $110,500. industry isgradually addingmore full-timeaudiojobs.Audio audio respondents thantheyear before, soitlooks like the devs thisyear over last year, andlast year we saw30%more we didgetabout15%more respondents from salariedaudio contract rather thanfull-timepermanentpositions.However, audio jobsoutthere, andmost oftheavailable audiogigsare compared to otherdisciplines;there simply aren’t thatmany response rate for salariedaudioworkers isalways fairly low decrease ofabout$1,600from last year. Note thatour Salaried audioprofessionals’ average salarysawaslight pro audio ALL AUDIODEVELOPERS Audio Professional salariesperyears experience andposition 100K Years experience intheindustry 10K 20K 30K 40K 50K 60K 70K 80K 90K Sound/Audio Designer/Engineer 0K Most ofthisyear’s decrease came from devs withover six

31% $68,187 3–6 yrs

15% $40,000 f ‹ 3years ‹ 3yrs Gender stats Represented essio

96% N/A 4% % f

54% $98,846 6 yrs › l

n $50,000 $82,944 Average Salary als

u April 2013 3–6 years x 401K/Retirement Dental Medical Type ofbenefits received Percent receiving benefits: Stock options/equity Royalties Project/title bonus Profit sharing to Retirement plan Pension/Employer contribution Annual bonus received Type ofadditionalcompensation Average additionalincome: % receiving additional income: $59,500 Sound/Audio Director

$81,543

{avg. salary}

6 years › $93,333

$13,000 $107,500 >

11% 83% 87% 91% 96% 25% 26% 11% 35% 44% 78% Female Male Gender fell by$1,200,bringingtheiraverage salaryto $31,346. less thanlast year’s average salary. European QAsalariesalso saw anaverage increase of$200over last year. profit-sharing plan over last year. Contractors, meanwhile, only receive anannualbonusand9%more likely to participate ina that didreceive additionalincome were 10%more likely to received additionalincome (besidessalary)fell 2%,thedevs a $6,400increase. Also,while thepercentage ofQAdevs that increase, andQAleads withover sixyears intheindustry saw last year, testers with3–6years ofexperience sawa$5,400 less thanthree years’ experience sawa$2,200increase over the average QAcontractor’s income ($27,237).Testers with bump of$700thisyear, whichputsthematalmost twice in gamedevelopment. Overall, salariedQAtesters saw aslight QA testers andleads continue to bethelowest-paid profession qa

ALL QA TESTERS QA Tester salariesperyears experience andposition 100K Years experience intheindustry 10K 20K 30K 40K 50K 60K 70K 80K 90K Tester 0K Canada-based testers averaged $41,731,whichis$1,500

29%

$65,000

6 yrs ›

testers ‹ 3years 31% Gender stats $40,833 Represented ‹ 3yrs QA Lead

93% $39,773 7% %

40% $44,167 3–6 yrs

$39,375 $49,196 Average Salary 3–6 years 401K/Retirement Dental Medical Type ofbenefits received Percent receiving benefits: Royalties Project/title bonus Profit sharing to Retirement plan Pension/Employer contribution Average additionalincome: % receiving additional income: Annual bonus received Type ofadditionalcompensation Stock options/equity $46,500

$48,611

{avg. salary}

6 years ›

$61,591 $12,102 $12,102

82% 70% 68% 91% 21% 16% 16% 50% 59% 75% 5% simply sendinginaresume orCV (10%). methods were byreferral (32%),searching jobpostings (18%),and industry isever-so-slightly stabilizing year over year. multiple responses were allowed.) Once again,itappears thatthe 11% simply reported “Other.” (Note thatfor thissurvey question, (down 1%);12%haven’t found new work since (down 1%),and new company (down 3%);14% went into indiegame development contracting orconsulting (down 3%); 7%founded orco-founded a at astudio orpublisher(up1%from last year); 16% went into a 7%decrease inlayoffs over thelast three years. than 2011’s rate and2%lower than2010’s rate. Overall, we’ve seen respondents were laidoffatsometimein2012,whichis1%lower Layoff rates continue to trend slightly downward; 12%of 18% 82% Female Male Represented Gender roughly by same 82% over experience last they the actually salary acquisition marketing, executives The legal business { ALL BUSINESSANDLEGALPEOPLES Years la

$9,000.

Entry-level The This When itcame to finding new jobs,thethree most popular Of thedevs whowere laidoff,59%found new employment y

most

year’s “business saw o male, six

26%

23%

from $67,348 ff r experience $85,081 in 3–6 ‹

gender 3 $26,000 aggregated up years

the a yrs Gender non-salary

yrs

That

average, 18% a $4,400

and about last and made legal

industry, es

people

and

businesspeople

ratio

executive said, year,

female. licensing, } higher

experience

Average stats in staff,

$1,800

$6,800 decrease

51% $128,819 legal the

group while

in income the

while

yrs and Salary and

$108,571

industry human the

than $82,292 Men’s

average ›

over

people” more managers,

businesspeople

2012

and typically business women’s

from

the made in

last

average

resources,

general

the than saw was

average

401K/Retirement Dental Medical Type ofbenefits received Percent receiving benefits: Stock options/equity Royalties Project/title bonus Profit sharing Retirement plan Pension/Employer contribution to Annual bonus received Type ofadditionalcompensation Average additionalincome: % receiving additionalincome: businessman’s last category

year.

industry, $5,000 receives

no field a average

last

community

year’s decrease

salaries This administration exception;

businesswoman’s. year, remained

IT, more with includes

the group non-salary though

salaries $103,934 content

and

stayed

3–6

highest

than

{avg. salary}

salary managers,

its

also

$4,500

those

years this chief

average

increased last a

about

staff.

receives

is income.

steady average

year

with

$20,473 $20,473 of from year.

12% 53%

75% 82% 90% 90% 33% 15% 22% 30% 82% the

4 3 2 1 (across alllevels ofexperience, excluding states withlow sample size) { East South M West (across alllevels ofexperience anddisciplines) {AVE (17.9%), **Most Ontario *Most Programmer (across alllevels ofexperience, bydiscipline,given inUSD) {AVE H ho {A Programmer {A 7 6 Art 5 Game Non- Art 10 9 8 Production Game Audio Production Business QA Business QA Audio

Top $88,049 omeowners idwest ve ve

m New Oregon California Washington M Virginia North M Colorado Nevada and and

H aryland ichigan R R r r Canadian eo 10St

Design Design European omeowners

(24%). AGE SALA AGE SALA age age France

Animation $78,041 Animation

Jersey w

Carolina ne S S a

(11.5%), respondents ala ala r t

$77,027 $72,480 $70,906 $90,822 respondents es s

b RY R ry} f ry} B } w y

IES} IN Poland } B u

$68,039 $71,354 $75,694 $84,167 $83,375 i salary survey_

$N/A . t $N/A E E

s o Y Y were as as h

were . r

U. r

u H (11.4%), t t .

T ighes egion s s from

from HE U.S.,CANADA,ANDEU

. . r f m 8,0 4% $107,500 $111,219 $106,951 45% 27% 45% $87,500 $87,561 $90,907 8,5 4% $102,500 $93,056 44% 62% $81,250 $82,000 7,3 33% $99,500 $78,636 41% $85,833 7,2 4% $93,750 $87,500 45% 48% $78,125 $78,145 7,3 4% $91,667 41% $76,136 R AVERAGE

British and eo EGION egion

the

$103,934 $81,543 L $85,611 $55,000 $63,500 $60,000 $63,125 $75,009 $92,151 $75,065 $84,127 M M 4,1 $41,731 $48,611 $75,577 ARY

$ $N/A $N/A i i t A dwes dwes

w l U.S. N/A Sweden

United ne

Columbia ve S t S t

b r u

y DISCIPLINE Kingdom

age (7%).

P vs O ercen wn Ho

$86,167 $58,392 $63,773 $68,654 $78,333 $75,203

$78,777 x (20%), 7,1 $43,914 $63,227 $70,712 $56,576 $76,875 $77,143 $78,750 AAA EUROPE** CANADA* S $N/A $N/A . ou ou t non m

ala

Wh (18.2%), h W th W th es 019

April 2013 o

Quebec A

ies

Germany

$106,243

vg $101,168 $114,457 (44%), $40,776 $94,808 $43,600 $77,176 $79,304 $54,167 $78,869 $31,346 $41,071 $54,464 $82,770 $90,248 $72,652 R m .

S eowners OPE a es es l ary o t t

and

019 game developer magazine 020 game developer magazine salary survey_ 020 we comes Jo and between $2,000 $2,000, 28% did, methods make obtain; opportunities) awards/grants, sources made $5,000 and DLC); includes sale made out. results indie common.) number rather the average average. is average of year’s $23,130 developers’ industry. their teams, developers, survey THE Everything M S Bachelors A S High (across alllevels ofexperience) {AVERAGE SALARY} BY ome ome ssociates

asters T down indie b

decided

year

25%

$3,000, 20% Half Functions of

made

perspective game school/

G C 13% any over less

average,

drastic

individual their and and

79% and are

22%

teams

$86,250 ollege raduate

$20,000 is

of was of

after appears

before

made in-app $10,000 (Note of Individual made Degree

indie

money

report, data year This $420

than income

only made

Ind

between $200,000.

Degree

still

$10,000, $30,000,

indie sales

contractors to When

average all. / $734 N/A $77,344 N/A Degree independent

15%

of games

master’s made up GE

change fluctuation remain

reported

indie

that

job less is

over we’ve for while

that, Of $19,487, rather sponsorship $500

purchases lower $26,780 / NA / NA 9,8 NA N/A N/A $99,583 N/A N/A N/A N/A D

from

made developers

independent between to

on from and revenue,

the When

where f it

the functions,

our (advertising, between

indie

last

be degree

(which

than

comes

devs $100 $20,000. income the 5% and so

Alternate

Programming members fourth from collected

$20,000, last

devs

the hard

than spread

rather these indie

between l

$105,000

some

for an it year’s 7,8 $73,350 $77,187

made

from which we

5% $100,

didn’t

was

and in duc

/ $60,357 N/A

year’s

$500

the

REPORT the

and to that last to

April 2013

this

u of

omitted

tion

$84,405

$71,875 x

due to employees which changing as year’s this contracted respective significant (4%). production, other audio (19%), QA most development). as contracted role continues yet, specialists can’t role meanwhile, game to (and popular are, Programming, 8% 11% by was reported specialized out hats, requires that contribution. developer’s survey level A

the contract to 19% it

though t ein Pro Design rt

For (24%), as

which

and

year’s understandably, (most that being programming, insufficient is in

perhaps

afford

but

There

popular

assorted and creation);

nuts

“other,” roles survey,

programming

with this

QA,

contractors, in

primary audio

a wearing indie their we

the design,

disciplines nd di to followed

design an

likely

dev

survey proportions $101,100 $106,786

fluctuation to

8% out and

year

dev and

out. in.

mainstream to primary $98,636 appears (7%), hasn’t

need

wanted be

responses. N/A indie

handle the

way

discipline teams bring

development

so primary

40% studios in

and

with design,

roles bolts

roles

a which survey, to

production,

one s disciplines

know

production,

it multiple most

rather

and 12% N/A salaried (10% cip

and they

reflect

dev been 2%

seems followed of by

indies,

the

that

the quite of simply (8%), between

indies (17%),

indie

writing

art

roles last

aren’t

role

and in

in find crucial handle be

of 7,5 $74,600 $74,551 $81,346 $86,084 $91,538 each), indie

niche

game

much

most art,

is the d

audio.

e each

uction

it just art

devs

$65,682

$77,833 $70,508 $79,808

roles salaried handle aren’t seems A O Q Programming Production Design A A by {indi O Writing/ Q Programming Production Design A A by { u CONT d udio rt udio rt A. hr...... 8% ther...... A. hr...... 8% ther...... o Q io jo jo ...... 12% ...... 24% ......

...... 12% ...... 19% ...... to

changing

es . . as which b

b ...... 2% ...... 10% ...... contract

RA ...... 19% ...... 10% ...... employees function function

} } S though 1482 $48,750 $104,842

9,7 $25,000 $94,872 $94,817 $47,321 N/A $88,630 $89,375 CTO cenario

...... 40% ...... 7% ......

roles A RS}

. . Business the ...... 8% ...... 17% ......

out.

dev N/A

. need

..... 4% ...... and way

studios

which

they

Developers subscribers, sent Email of 2012 through fiscal in Survey Game Developer Now {ME 4.2% plus employees margin 95% plus with game be in information who independent 527; Canada in among usable included Canada consolidated compensation, primarily classification key records averages. unnaturally their were greater number and and salaries report. to compensation survey who worldwide, responses to com attendees,

February our the

be Audience participate projected

The The We

demographic

educators. the

participated provided

and a

confidence

or or members to GameDeveloper in high with

excluded Ho included for

year

developer U.S.

invitations salary margin

provided

gathered

sample was

salaried its

minus minus of sample survey than

salaries that 367, and

of of December

Europe.

422 separately.

includes

numbers We the

error

12th

from

also reported January less was and

but

skewing Conference conducted

2013

worldwide. Insights.

were

Europe

$202,500

O and to

contractors Game survey

for

figures

numbers. also

Canada compensation

assistance

of in

information 5%, 2.6% GY}

not

The asking reflected

than but

Gamasutra. excluded

the 1,520, year,

represented

enough

for developers

employees the level.

of 4,042 Salary

community indies

the

error in prevent for were

for and

missing

excluded

all U.S. and

students

the U.S. salaried

small 1, from

31,

salaries

survey.

can were

$10,000 the

final Europe The the from

the

2012

for The

them

a of

is and

PHOTO COURTESY OF GAME DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE f l u x 021 salary survey_April 2013 salary survey comments

The bad picking up, crunchmongering own platform. Now they’re industry to make. I would, “ It was more developers are dying off, and realizing that strong titles ideally, never want to work enjoyable when it new business models are may need to include multiple on creating a low-budget, was less mature.” supporting innovation like devices, some of which may monetizing treadmill.” never before.” not be made by themselves.” Indies QA is undervalued and not The variety of opportunity I would feel like an “There are more “compensated fairly.” “(given the huge rise in casual “outdated dinosaur developing opportunities for and independent games) is for consoles… even indie developers, I’m seeing the failures greater than ever.” unreleased hardware. Mobile but less for “(some spectacular) of more is clearly king, and developers everything else.” and more studios lately. Not always the highest- must react or continue to shut New ones are sprouting up “paying option, but the game their doors.” as well, but it doesn’t feel industry is the most rewarding There are more ways like there are as many new career path I could imagine.” The bloodletting in console “than ever now for indie game ones as there are failing old “dev is scary, especially since developers to do well and ones. I worry about long-term There’s no better way to mobile/indie doesn’t seem publish their games.” sustainability for my career “earn a living. While it has its to have the $$ to pick up the as I continue to get older (I’m ups and downs and unique talent.” In 2012 I felt like a drop 41 now).” challenges, I’m very happy to “in the app-store ocean, and be working within it, and hope Mobile that as an indie, I had neither When I got my first to do so for a very long time.” “The mobile and the development resources “industry job in 2005, it felt like casual space is nor the marketing budget there were all these Sure Bet F2P quite the exciting to compete. That has since Career jobs out there. Now, “F2P rules.” area to be in.” changed in 2013 as I’m now less than 10 years later, I developing for the OUYA, and can’t think of a single job that it feels great to be part of a will be safely guaranteed to be Free-2-play. Do you speak Mobile games suck.” small but growing community around for 5 years.” “it!?” “ with prospects, and be The mobile space is very involved at something from I hear dentistry is in Monetization sucks.” “competitive, and not very the ground floor.” “demand.” “ profitable.” This current influx of It’s a great time to be an We’re a bit stuck in the “quick-cash-grab F2P and The obsession with “employee in mobile/web, but it “mud. I don’t see a whole lot of social games is strongly “mobile platforms taking seems like financing is drying pure innovation (but I’m not reminiscent of the early ’80s over is just another trend. up for people who want to sure that’s really what people pre-crash boom.” Of course mobile is and start their own companies. want anyway). I’d like to see looks to remain a very viable “Going indie” isn’t really some honest excitement A bit sad that it’s now platform for monetization; viable in expensive places in games again because “focusing on monetization however, developers should like Silicon Valley, so the “day I think we’re getting a bit [more] than ever.” stay more focused on pleasing job” can feel like a prison at predictable.” customers than trying to times.” It’s been a downward figure out the next big profit It’s difficult to get in to my “spiral. Soon, you will have wave to ride. That’ll be the key There is an obvious and “line of work. All the jobs that to pay people to play your to a respectful future.” “exciting increase in the exist are filled. Companies that games. In fact, it’s already number of opportunities don’t have writers or editors happening!” Mobile/casual games are for game developers on an can’t be convinced that they “a scary potential direction. individual and independent need them. It’s really a pain.” Consoles The games the casual level. Anyone who wasn’t “2012 was the market wants to play are working on a personal project The Good first year I not the games I got into the in 2012 is falling behind.” “It was noticed our refreshing to see company strongly smaller, more recognize the unique games get importance of recognition this personal devices year.” and how they can enhance a console Lots of turnover, but experience.” “lots of new opportunities for smaller companies.” I’ve worked for a major I absolutely love the “first-party developer for over “industry I work in. I can’t 15 years and they’ve never imagine any other career acknowledged the existence track. Quality of Life is of anything besides their game developer magazine PHOTO COURTESY OF GAME DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE DEVELOPERS OF GAME COURTESY PHOTO 021 022 game developer magazine to builditanyway,let’s just builditanddoupfront.” some kindofoptionfor PayPal orwhatever, so we ﬁgured, “Ifyou have interacting withyour community, andeveryone always has to have ends atsomepoint.Sothenyou’ve gotto have somewaythatyou’re own solution,even withKickstarter, because a Kickstarter campaign us abitofleg upinterms oftheinitialawareness incrowdfunding. to signupandregister whenwe launchedthecampaign, whichgave to aggregate thereally diehard fans. We’d gotten about30,000 people month before we started thecrowdfunding campaign—the ideawas the game,andinteract, sowhywaitto dothatlater on? that backed you are goingto hangout,listen to what’s happeningwith felt like nomatter what,you’ve gotto have aplace where allthepeople and over, andIwasfairly disappointed withwhathappenedafter that.I was really good—butonce you didtheinitialcampaign, itwasdone like ifIlooked ateverything goingonthrough Kickstarter, alot ofit fans ofmyprevious games,andfans ofspace simsingeneral. Ifelt most ofourmoney’s beenraised outsideofKickstarter. Kickstarter, butthatwasjust onesmallpartofwhatwe did.Infact, ROBERTS: DAW: CHRIS ROBERTS: DAVID DAW: ADVICE ONWHAT WORKEDFORTHEM AND WHAT THEY’DDODIFFERENTLY. ROSSIGNOL AND JAMES CAREY (SIR,YOU ARE BEINGHUNTED)—FORTHEIRTHOUGHTS AND CITIZEN), BRENDA ROMERO(SHAKER), GREGRICE(DOUBLE FINE ADVENTURE), AND JIM SEVERAL MAJORCROWDFUNDING PUSHESFROMTHELASTYEAR—CHRIS ROBERTS(STAR YEAR AFTER KICKSTARTER EXPLODED ONTOTHESCENE?WE ASKED DEVSBEHIND WHAT DOESTHECROWDFUNDING LANDSCAPE LOOK LIKEFORGAMEDEVELOPERS ONE BY DAVID DAW investment. How’d come you upwiththat mix? combination of in-housecrowdfunding, andtraditional Kickstarter, prototype, sowe didn’thave alot ofmoney to spendonareally big, if there’s alot ofdemand onit.We spentmost ofthe money onthe didn’t count onisthatit’s notsoeasyto buildarobust scalable site CROWDFUNDING 022 I thinkitreally just came outofthefact thatyou’ve gotto have your So we actually launchedateaser site for whatwe were doinga I’ve always felt like there wasapretty strong community thatwere Why decide to didyou continue thecampaign onKickstarter? ROBERTS SP CHRIS ROBERTS,ST Later on,we went to Kickstarter because theonethingwe You fundedS Yeah, we’re nottypical. Everybody talks aboutour 1 A TAR CE INDUSTRIES _ C David Daw ITIZEN with a rather unorthodox witharather A R CITIZEN

campaign launched. How do you decide what “done” is for your campaign? campaign launched.How decidewhat doyou “done” isforcampaign? your DAW: ROBERTS: DAW: to orto Kickstarter fansingeneral? “Wargaming.net has video games,thatmakes somemoney.” You’re basically saying games, soit’s awhole different thing.They just go“Ohyeah, a traditional ﬁnancial investor, halfofthem don’teven playthe schedule. sense, islike that, butyou’re ayear ortwo years aheadofthat to GameStop andreserve theircopy. Crowdfunding, inagame the E3reveal, anddotheexclusive interviews, andpeople godown is whyit’s cool.” It’s like areally long lead timepreorder. You read done, saying“Here’s what I’mgoingto build,thisiswhatitis, is really similarto pitching to your audience when it’s close to opposed to traditional investment. and more connected to whatyou’re doing incrowdfunding as but wantto know thebusiness reasons for it.Itfeels more pure investors, basically, they’re assuming you’ll make adecent game, you’re pitching iswhat you’re building.Whenyou’re pitching to should invest inus.” It’s avery different logic. them andyour investment willbeworth alot ofmoney, soyou dollars permonth,andifwe doreally well, we can become like 8 andaquarter millionrightnow, whichispretty amazing. the actualcount for thecrowdfunding campaign, soIthinkwe’re at still raising money. We’ve collected over $2millionsince we closed at theendofday,Istill thinkitwasagooddecisionbecause we’re Basically, we experienced thedownside ofbuildingourown site, but plug-ins, anditkindacollapsed undertheweight oftheinitialinterest. ecommerce-style robust site; we builtontop ofWordPress withsome So you focus muchmore onthegame.IfIwaspitching to I actually muchprefer pitching to thecrowd because what S How doespitching investor to from atraditional differ pitching TAR It’s very different. Pitching onacrowdfunding campaign C ITIZEN hadalot of really impressive visualsready whenthe W ORLD

OF T ANKS , andthey’re doingXmillion ROBERTS: How have enoughcontent decidewhenyou doyou to get people excited? the crowdfunding front, because there’s somethingmore tangible. were fundedbyamajorpublisher,myguess isyou’ll dobetter on look like andthefeel ofit.Ifyou treat itmore like you would ifyou pretty ambitious,andIneededto show everyone whatitwould prototype because Ifelt like Ineededto dosomethingthatwas from the traditional fundingroute. the samelevel ofattention andrespect thatIwould ifIwasdoingit hyped. SoIsortofviewed goinginto thecrowdfunding campaign with the release, andyou’re basically doingthatto getpeople excited and it atE3,andthenthere would beayear ofpress hype,leading upto it ifIwasfundedbyEAorMicrosoft: Atsomepoint,Iwould reveal of thepark,we shouldtreat itexactly thesamewaywe would treat nostalgia standpoint,” butIthoughtifwe really wanted to hititout at everything andIsaid,“Ithinkcan raise somemoney from a S TAR That’s notnormalfor crowdfunding stuff. Ispentayear onthe C ITIZEN I thinkitsortofdependsonhow you approach it.Ilooked . THE STATE OFGAME-DEVELOPMENT CROWDFUNDING IN2013 ROBERTS: DAW: When you seesomebodysittinginfront ofacamera saying,“Hey, How spendonthePRcampaign muchtimedidyou for about three monthsbefore Imadetheformal announcement, nostalgia, butIthinkthat’s alot harder to donowadays. year, atthebeginningofthiswhole craze, you could getaway[with] who’s backingit.Ithinkyou’ve gotta treat thatreally seriously. Last much more upfront, show whatyou’re goingto getassomeone are doing well, orwilldowell, are theonesthatare able to show on thescene. liked it,butnothingspeakslouder thansomereally great imagery some credit ifthey’ve seenwhatyou’ve donebefore andthey’ve there’s only somuchyou can take. Ifyou’re aname,they’ll give you I really wantto revolutionize thiskind ofgameandchangethis,” When you seesomebodysittinginfront ofacamera saying,“Hey, I thinkyou’ll seethatthesortofcrowdfunded campaigns that You spentonthegamebefore saidyou aboutayear launching. Istarted liningupthepress andthewhole campaign S TAR C ITIZEN ?

023 game developer magazine 022 game developer magazine to builditanyway,let’s just builditanddoupfront.” some kindofoptionfor PayPal orwhatever, so we ﬁgured, “Ifyou have interacting withyour community, andeveryone always has to have ends atsomepoint.Sothenyou’ve gotto have somewaythatyou’re own solution,even withKickstarter, because a Kickstarter campaign us abitofleg upinterms oftheinitialawareness incrowdfunding. to signupandregister whenwe launchedthecampaign, whichgave to aggregate thereally diehard fans. We’d gotten about30,000 people month before we started thecrowdfunding campaign—the ideawas the game,andinteract, sowhywaitto dothatlater on? that backed you are goingto hangout,listen to what’s happeningwith felt like nomatter what,you’ve gotto have aplace where allthepeople and over, andIwasfairly disappointed withwhathappenedafter that.I was really good—butonce you didtheinitialcampaign, itwasdone like ifIlooked ateverything goingonthrough Kickstarter, alot ofit fans ofmyprevious games,andfans ofspace simsingeneral. Ifelt most ofourmoney’s beenraised outsideofKickstarter. Kickstarter, butthatwasjust onesmallpartofwhatwe did.Infact, ROBERTS: DAW: CHRIS ROBERTS: DAVID DAW: ADVICE ONWHAT WORKEDFORTHEM AND WHAT THEY’DDODIFFERENTLY. ROSSIGNOL AND JAMES CAREY (SIR,YOU ARE BEINGHUNTED)—FORTHEIRTHOUGHTS AND CITIZEN), BRENDA ROMERO(SHAKER), GREGRICE(DOUBLE FINE ADVENTURE), AND JIM SEVERAL MAJORCROWDFUNDING PUSHESFROMTHELASTYEAR—CHRIS ROBERTS(STAR YEAR AFTER KICKSTARTER EXPLODED ONTOTHESCENE?WE ASKED DEVSBEHIND WHAT DOESTHECROWDFUNDING LANDSCAPE LOOK LIKEFORGAMEDEVELOPERS ONE BY DAVID DAW investment. How’d come you upwiththat mix? combination of in-housecrowdfunding, andtraditional Kickstarter, prototype, sowe didn’thave alot ofmoney to spendonareally big, if there’s alot ofdemand onit.We spentmost ofthe money onthe didn’t count onisthatit’s notsoeasyto buildarobust scalable site CROWDFUNDING 022 I thinkitreally just came outofthefact thatyou’ve gotto have your So we actually launchedateaser site for whatwe were doinga I’ve always felt like there wasapretty strong community thatwere Why decide to didyou continue thecampaign onKickstarter? ROBERTS SPACE INDUSTRIES CHRIS ROBERTS,STAR CITIZEN Later on,we went to Kickstarter because theonethingwe You funded Yeah, we’re nottypical. Everybody talks aboutour 1 S TAR _ C David Daw ITIZEN with a rather unorthodox witharather campaign launched. How do you decide what “done” is for your campaign? campaign launched.How decidewhat doyou “done” isforcampaign? your DAW: ROBERTS: DAW: to orto Kickstarter fansingeneral? “Wargaming.net has video games,thatmakes somemoney.” You’re basically saying games, soit’s awhole different thing.They just go“Ohyeah, a traditional ﬁnancial investor, halfofthem don’teven playthe schedule. sense, islike that, butyou’re ayear ortwo years aheadofthat to GameStop andreserve theircopy. Crowdfunding, inagame the E3reveal, anddotheexclusive interviews, andpeople godown is whyit’s cool.” It’s like areally long lead timepreorder. You read done, saying“Here’s what I’mgoingto build,thisiswhatitis, is really similarto pitching to your audience when it’s close to opposed to traditional investment. and more connected to whatyou’re doing incrowdfunding as but wantto know thebusiness reasons for it.Itfeels more pure investors, basically, they’re assuming you’ll make adecent game, you’re pitching iswhat you’re building.Whenyou’re pitching to should invest inus.” It’s avery different logic. them andyour investment willbeworth alot ofmoney, soyou dollars permonth,andifwe doreally well, we can become like 8 andaquarter millionrightnow, whichispretty amazing. the actualcount for thecrowdfunding campaign, soIthinkwe’re at still raising money. We’ve collected over $2millionsince we closed at theendofday,Istill thinkitwasagooddecisionbecause we’re Basically, we experienced thedownside ofbuildingourown site, but plug-ins, anditkindacollapsed undertheweight oftheinitialinterest. ecommerce-style robust site; we builtontop ofWordPress withsome So you focus muchmore onthegame.IfIwaspitching to I actually muchprefer pitching to thecrowd because what How doespitching investor to from atraditional differ pitching S TAR It’s very different. Pitching onacrowdfunding campaign C ITIZEN hadalot of really impressive visualsready whenthe W ORLD

023 game developer magazine 024 game developer magazine ROBERTS: DAW: do itwell it’s abunchofwork to getitteed upandready. R&D phase.Ifyou’re really goingto take itseriously and the money we’d beinaproduction phaseinstead ofan full production, andanyissues we’d see,soonce we raised doing alot ofR&DonthingsthatI’dneedto know for the hard to make. got thebest intentions, butthey’ve never madeanythingthat tell thatthepeople behindthemare basically naive. They’ve some crowdfunding where Ilook atthecampaigns andIcan some time—butyou can’t screw up.Idefinitely thinkI’ve seen of leeway because they know makingsomethinggoodtakes when you don’tdeliver onit,people willgive you alittle bit you wantto deliver onthem. I’ve donemyhomework, because whenyou’re makingpromises promising somethingto thecrowd, Iwantto really make sure that or aplayer withXpolys? Iwanted to getagoodgauge.IfI’m what theissues are—how long itwould take to buildaspaceship campaign wasto research how thegame’s goingto getbuilt,and because Ijust feel like that’s really important to getpeople excited. them myprototype andtalked themthrough whatIwanted to do Francisco, andIsatdown withabunchofkey outlets andshowed Austin, where Iwent to Germany,Iwent to New York, Iwent to San record andIhave myrelationships, soIsortofknew thegig. and Originbefore that.Ihave anadvantage because there’s atrack maybe four months.I’ve donethisbefore, withEA,andMicrosoft, making sure hitdeadlines? you development cycles interms of deliverablesand That sideisalittle scary butit’s definitely motivating. there wasacertain pointwhere Ihadto getitoutthere… it to look asgoodpossible. But,Ihadthatdayso the demo,because that’s just mynature. Iwant another two to three weeks polishingtheprototype and I did,ifdidn’thave thatdate I’dhave probably spent an example, ontheOctober 10thGDCOnlinereveal invigorating, because itmakes you focus. To give you don’t necessarily have anissue withthat.It’s kindof do thatto somedegree. publisher decidesto just write you off, you’ll beable to or, “Ineedsomemore money.” Typically, unless the be able to say,“Ineedafew more months,” kinda know. Ifthey’re into it,you know you’ll you sortofhave thisrelationship thatyou and beup-front aboutit.Withapublisher, a really goodreason, andexplain itto them, going to deliver onadate, Ineedto give them I’ve gotmore pressure to deliver, andifI’mnot S CROWDFUNDING_ 024 TAR One ofthebiggest thingsofthepreparation year was It’s great wheneverybody gives you allthismoney, and The otherthingthatwasimportant to meintheyear before the I didapress tour for aweek before we didtheannouncement in I feel like you’ve gotless give withthecrowd. I How doeshaving to to thecrowd answer change C ITIZEN Idefinitely feel thatwiththecrowd, .

1 David Daw David Daw wave ofwave gamespassed? bigKickstarter-funded BRENDA ROMERO: DAVID DAW: and you don’treally have thatdirect communication. development cycle, you gooffand work for two, three, four years, top five thingsthey wantto doinyour game.Too often inatypical you areally great focus group interms oftheirhotspots,andthe so muchthey’re givingyou money before thegameismadegives game muchearlier. Having100,000-pluspeople wholove thisgame process is thatthey helpyou focus onwhat’s important inyour network, andit’s incredibly funto seewhat’s on there, butthat go around hasgonearound. Kickstarter really isitsown social There’s notasmuchmoney because the money there wasto is abitofatrophy inthecommunity andapathyinthecommunity. and you’re notseeingasmuchofthatthesedays.SoIthinkthere coverage of“Here’s someRPGsonKickstarter you mightlike,” used to be.Ialsothinkintheearly daysthere was alot ofpress Kickstarters, andIthinkthemarket isalot more crowded thanit for better orfor worse, ashumans,there’s somethingto that. watch themfail. Watching people succeed andwatching people fail, It’s funto watch themsucceed, andit’s fun,inasadistic game,to a spectator sport,andit’s superfunto beinvolved intheseprojects. I dothinkthatwhatthecrowd doesaddto thedevelopment I thinkpeople have alimited amountoffundsto spendon wanes after awhile. LOOT DROP BRENDA ROMERO,SHAKER shaken upagain? games we’re settling into, or do you think the model will get settling into, thinkthemodelwillget ordoyou we’re games DAW: there astandardized format for successful Kickstarter is askingfor alittle money to putthemover thetop. Is where alot ofhasalready work goneon,andthedeveloper Do you think that the Kickstarter has shifted? Hasthe thinkthat hasshifted? Do you theKickstarter ROMERO: Many devs think we’ve settledMany devs thinkwe’ve format onaKickstarter game design,that’s iteration. publisher andthey say,“I like thiselement here, a bitdifferent?” Idon’t call thatafailure—that’s and Ilike this,buthow aboutifwe didsomething a publisherwithpitch. WhenImeetwitha possibility, butthere’s alsothe“We’re done, “What’s notrighthere? Whatdowe needto do?” help usgetenoughmoney through preorders and that’s whenitbecame obviousthatwe were Kickstarter inandofitselfhasbecome agame.It’s spending more timeaddressing theweakness to actually publishthething.”Sogameis zero, just like whenyou’re passing through That wasmyfirst response [to of thepitch thanwe were buildingtheworld, done, butyou needthemoney for community so better to walkawayandcome backwith wasn’t asfully realized asitcould be. management orwhathave you, sothewhole a goodly sumofcash to create agamethat something stronger. failure—an actualfailure would beto spend thing isbasically apreorder platform. The Kickender, Iguess you’d call it,isa Kickstarter actually prevents abigger enough to make mewantto playthegame. So onecan view Kickstarter asmilestone Kickstarters,” andit’s funnyto me,because gem offunthere thatwasinteresting I’ve never viewed thegamesthatdidn’t They’re just notthere yet, orthere’s some get fundedonKickstarter as“failures.” You saidsomethingabout“successful S HAKER ]. Failure’s okay. Whatmatters isdebuggingafter thefailure. away mygamedeveloper card. It’s awonderfully humblingexperience. again, because theworld didn’tchange.Nobodyshowed upto take Once you fail, interestingly enough,you don’tfeel afraid ofdoingit doesn’t feel horrible. There’s thisweird, wonderful dayofacceptance. sooner rather thanlater. Naturally, itdoesn’tfeel great, butitalso or oneperson incharge ofgreen-lighting your idea. is 9,000individuals,orbackers, orfive people sittingaround atable, game development. You have to please theboard, whetherthatboard Kickstarter shares someofthesamehurdles we find intraditional looked atKickstarter asthesilver bullet for gamedevelopment, but Kickstarter, you have to come outwithitall.Ayear orsoago,people systems, andhow thesystems are playingandfeeling. Butwith instance, wayaheadofmyconcern for story ismyconcern for campaign closed? DAW: GREG RICE: DAVID DAW: ROMERO: DAW: pressure thannormal? publisher,forto instance? atraditional terms? That hasless Kickstarter binary ofandtake agive thangoing and whythey shouldbeexcited aboutthegame. they’re aware ofwhatissues we’re facing (ifwe are facing issues) informed ofwhat’s happening,andthey’ve beenable to feel like Then, withthe2Player guys,we’ve beenable to keep ourbackers what they’re doing,andthey’ve beenable to make aspecialgame. a lot ofgamestogether here atDouble Finebefore. They know talented, very seniorteam working onthisproject andthey’ve made because ofthatitendedupgoingpretty smoothly. a fulfillment agencyto helpusoutwiththatkindofstuff, and and thingslike that.Butwe didhire acommunity managerand or changetheirshippingaddresses, ordealingwithlost packages, support requests from people, say,wantingto changetheiremails, thoroughly before we started… Early onIwasn’texpecting asmany because we plannedoutalot ofstuff, like reward structures, really D OUBLE If thecrowd doesn’tlike your pitch, sobeit.It’s better to know Ultimately, we’ve beenpretty successful because we have avery Does Kickstarter makeDoes Kickstarter feel you any more orless production feelDo you like pushessuccess Kickstarter andfailure in DOUBLE FINE GREG RICE,DOUBLEFINEADVENTURE F INE It’s tough, because whenI’mjust makingagame,for A We actually didn’truninto too manysurprises, What learned have you aboutcrowdfunding since the DVENTURE . It’s really freeing to nothave to answer to thosekindofstrict deep into production onthegame,thingsare feeling great. that we neededto answer to. issues come outofKickstarter aswell, like having9,000backers before, butnow we hadto take allofthoseon.Alot ofsupport of thoseonourPCgames,andwe hadstarted to doourmarketing testing, anddistributing builds,andmarketing, we’d donepieces able to actually getcodes anddeliver themto backers. everything, from how ourreward structure wasconceived, to being to allthequestions Ihad,andto make sure we’d thoughtthrough February. Soitdefinitely took along timeto track down answers together around November of2011,andwe launchedthatnext our project around. Istarted working onputtingourKickstarter because we didn’thave too manytouchstones to look atandbase RICE: S HAKER We definitely have settled into it,though,andnow thatwe’re A lot ofthingsthatapublishertypically handles onagame,like It hasbeenalearning experience. Itwasdifficult for us, concept art. CROWDFUNDING_ WE LOPPED A LOT OFTHIS WISH THAT WE HADDONE TO WASTE YOUR BUDGET. HOW MUCH ISGOINGINTO TO FANS BUTISN’TGOING KICKSTARTER BACKERS." A GOODMARGINOFHOW DIFFERENTLY WAS THAT INTO THEGAMEVERSUS THE KICKSTARTER. ONE THAT’LL BE APPEALING CONTENT OFF TOONLY MAKE SUREYOU HAVE MUCH MONEY ISGOING REWARD STRUCTURE. THINK THROUGHYOUR OF THETHINGSTHAT I MAKE ITSOMETHING 1 025 025 David Daw David Daw “

025 game developer magazine 024 game developer magazine ROBERTS: DAW: do itwell it’s abunchofwork to getitteed upandready. R&D phase.Ifyou’re really goingto take itseriously and the money we’d beinaproduction phaseinstead ofan full production, andanyissues we’d see,soonce we raised doing alot ofR&DonthingsthatI’dneedto know for the hard to make. got thebest intentions, butthey’ve never madeanythingthat tell thatthepeople behindthemare basically naive. They’ve some crowdfunding where Ilook atthecampaigns andIcan some time—butyou can’t screw up.Idefinitely thinkI’ve seen of leeway because they know makingsomethinggoodtakes when you don’tdeliver onit,people willgive you alittle bit you wantto deliver onthem. I’ve donemyhomework, because whenyou’re makingpromises promising somethingto thecrowd, Iwantto really make sure that or aplayer withXpolys? Iwanted to getagoodgauge.IfI’m what theissues are—how long itwould take to buildaspaceship campaign wasto research how thegame’s goingto getbuilt,and because Ijust feel like that’s really important to getpeople excited. them myprototype andtalked themthrough whatIwanted to do Francisco, andIsatdown withabunchofkey outlets andshowed Austin, where Iwent to Germany,Iwent to New York, Iwent to San record andIhave myrelationships, soIsortofknew thegig. and Originbefore that.Ihave anadvantage because there’s atrack maybe four months.I’ve donethisbefore, withEA,andMicrosoft, making sure hitdeadlines? you development cycles interms of deliverablesand That sideisalittle scary butit’s definitely motivating. there wasacertain pointwhere Ihadto getitoutthere… it to look asgoodpossible. But,Ihadthatdayso the demo,because that’s just mynature. Iwant another two to three weeks polishingtheprototype and I did,ifdidn’thave thatdate I’dhave probably spent an example, ontheOctober 10thGDCOnlinereveal invigorating, because itmakes you focus. To give you don’t necessarily have anissue withthat.It’s kindof do thatto somedegree. publisher decidesto just write you off, you’ll beable to or, “Ineedsomemore money.” Typically, unless the be able to say,“Ineedafew more months,” kinda know. Ifthey’re into it,you know you’ll you sortofhave thisrelationship thatyou and beup-front aboutit.Withapublisher, a really goodreason, andexplain itto them, going to deliver onadate, Ineedto give them I’ve gotmore pressure to deliver, andifI’mnot S CROWDFUNDING_ 024 TAR One ofthebiggest thingsofthepreparation year was It’s great wheneverybody gives you allthismoney, and The otherthingthatwasimportant to meintheyear before the I didapress tour for aweek before we didtheannouncement in I feel like you’ve gotless give withthecrowd. I How doeshaving to to thecrowd answer change C ITIZEN Idefinitely feel thatwiththecrowd, .

1 David Daw David Daw and you don’treally have thatdirect communication. development cycle, you gooffand work for two, three, four years, top five thingsthey wantto doinyour game.Too often inatypical you areally great focus group interms oftheirhotspots,andthe so muchthey’re givingyou money before thegameismadegives game muchearlier. Having100,000-pluspeople wholove thisgame process is thatthey helpyou focus onwhat’s important inyour wave ofwave gamespassed? bigKickstarter-funded BRENDA ROMERO: DAVID DAW: network, andit’s incredibly funto seewhat’s on there, butthat go around hasgonearound. Kickstarter really isitsown social There’s notasmuchmoney because the money there wasto is abitofatrophy inthecommunity andapathyinthecommunity. and you’re notseeingasmuchofthatthesedays.SoIthinkthere coverage of“Here’s someRPGsonKickstarter you mightlike,” used to be.Ialsothinkintheearly daysthere was alot ofpress Kickstarters, andIthinkthemarket isalot more crowded thanit for better orfor worse, ashumans,there’s somethingto that. watch themfail. Watching people succeed andwatching people fail, It’s funto watch themsucceed, andit’s fun,inasadistic game,to a spectator sport,andit’s superfunto beinvolved intheseprojects. I dothinkthatwhatthecrowd doesaddto thedevelopment I thinkpeople have alimited amountoffundsto spendon wanes after awhile. LOOT DROP BRENDA ROMERO,SHAKER shaken upagain? games we’re settling into, or do you think the model will get settling into, thinkthemodelwillget ordoyou we’re games DAW: there astandardized format for successful Kickstarter is askingfor alittle money to putthemover thetop. Is where alot ofhasalready work goneon,andthedeveloper Do you think that the Kickstarter has shifted? Hasthe thinkthat hasshifted? Do you theKickstarter ROMERO: Many devs think we’ve settledMany devs thinkwe’ve format onaKickstarter game design,that’s iteration. publisher andthey say,“I like thiselement here, a bitdifferent?” Idon’t call thatafailure—that’s and Ilike this,buthow aboutifwe didsomething a publisherwithpitch. WhenImeetwitha possibility, butthere’s alsothe“We’re done, “What’s notrighthere? Whatdowe needto do?” help usgetenoughmoney through preorders and that’s whenitbecame obviousthatwe were Kickstarter inandofitselfhasbecome agame.It’s spending more timeaddressing theweakness to actually publishthething.”Sogameis zero, just like whenyou’re passing through That wasmyfirst response [to of thepitch thanwe were buildingtheworld, done, butyou needthemoney for community so better to walkawayandcome backwith wasn’t asfully realized asitcould be. management orwhathave you, sothewhole a goodly sumofcash to create agamethat something stronger. failure—an actualfailure would beto spend thing isbasically apreorder platform. The Kickender, Iguess you’d call it,isa Kickstarter actually prevents abigger enough to make mewantto playthegame. So onecan view Kickstarter asmilestone Kickstarters,” andit’s funnyto me,because gem offunthere thatwasinteresting I’ve never viewed thegamesthatdidn’t They’re just notthere yet, orthere’s some get fundedonKickstarter as“failures.” You saidsomethingabout“successful S HAKER ]. Failure’s okay. Whatmatters isdebuggingafter thefailure. away mygamedeveloper card. It’s awonderfully humblingexperience. again, because theworld didn’tchange.Nobodyshowed upto take Once you fail, interestingly enough,you don’tfeel afraid ofdoingit doesn’t feel horrible. There’s thisweird, wonderful dayofacceptance. sooner rather thanlater. Naturally, itdoesn’tfeel great, butitalso or oneperson incharge ofgreen-lighting your idea. is 9,000individuals,orbackers, orfive people sittingaround atable, game development. You have to please theboard, whetherthatboard Kickstarter shares someofthesamehurdles we find intraditional looked atKickstarter asthesilver bullet for gamedevelopment, but Kickstarter, you have to come outwithitall.Ayear orsoago,people systems, andhow thesystems are playingandfeeling. Butwith instance, wayaheadofmyconcern for story ismyconcern for campaign closed? DAW: GREG RICE: DAVID DAW: ROMERO: DAW: pressure thannormal? publisher,forto instance? atraditional terms? That hasless Kickstarter binary ofandtake agive thangoing and whythey shouldbeexcited aboutthegame. they’re aware ofwhatissues we’re facing (ifwe are facing issues) informed ofwhat’s happening,andthey’ve beenable to feel like Then, withthe2Player guys,we’ve beenable to keep ourbackers what they’re doing,andthey’ve beenable to make aspecialgame. a lot ofgamestogether here atDouble Finebefore. They know talented, very seniorteam working onthisproject andthey’ve made because ofthatitendedupgoingpretty smoothly. a fulfillment agencyto helpusoutwiththatkindofstuff, and and thingslike that.Butwe didhire acommunity managerand or changetheirshippingaddresses, ordealingwithlost packages, support requests from people, say,wantingto changetheiremails, thoroughly before we started… Early onIwasn’texpecting asmany because we plannedoutalot ofstuff, like reward structures, really D OUBLE If thecrowd doesn’tlike your pitch, sobeit.It’s better to know Ultimately, we’ve beenpretty successful because we have avery Does Kickstarter makeDoes Kickstarter feel you any more orless production feelDo you like pushessuccess Kickstarter andfailure in DOUBLE FINE GREG RICE,DOUBLEFINEADVENTURE F INE It’s tough, because whenI’mjust makingagame,for A We actually didn’truninto too manysurprises, What learned have you aboutcrowdfunding since the DVENTURE . It’s really freeing to nothave to answer to thosekindofstrict deep into production onthegame,thingsare feeling great. that we neededto answer to. issues come outofKickstarter aswell, like having9,000backers before, butnow we hadto take allofthoseon.Alot ofsupport of thoseonourPCgames,andwe hadstarted to doourmarketing testing, anddistributing builds,andmarketing, we’d donepieces able to actually getcodes anddeliver themto backers. everything, from how ourreward structure wasconceived, to being to allthequestions Ihad,andto make sure we’d thoughtthrough February. Soitdefinitely took along timeto track down answers together around November of2011,andwe launchedthatnext our project around. Istarted working onputtingourKickstarter because we didn’thave too manytouchstones to look atandbase RICE: S HAKER We definitely have settled into it,though,andnow thatwe’re A lot ofthingsthatapublishertypically handles onagame,like It hasbeenalearning experience. Itwasdifficult for us, concept art. CROWDFUNDING_ WE LOPPED A LOT OFTHIS WISH THAT WE HADDONE TO WASTE YOUR BUDGET. HOW MUCH ISGOINGINTO TO FANS BUTISN’TGOING KICKSTARTER BACKERS." A GOODMARGINOFHOW DIFFERENTLY WAS THAT INTO THEGAMEVERSUS THE KICKSTARTER. ONE THAT’LL BE APPEALING CONTENT OFF TOONLY MAKE SUREYOU HAVE MUCH MONEY ISGOING REWARD STRUCTURE. THINK THROUGHYOUR OF THETHINGSTHAT I MAKE ITSOMETHING 1 025 025 David Daw David Daw “

025 game developer magazine 026 game developer magazine together into astory, andmake itentertaining for people to figure can just stay in thebackground, and watch things,andpiece that without really taking resources awayfrom thegame.They kinda how thingsare going, andalsobeable to take partinitalittle bit, be areally nice opportunityto let theminontheprocess, and see Player Productions guyscame onboard. We thoughtthatwould projects were going,withoutseverely impacting theproject itself. of figuring outhow to continue to keep themup-to-date, onhow the who have already given usmoney, itwasjust goingto beamatter Kickstarter. Once we hadthousands offans invested inthe game D RICE: DAW: milestone structure thathadbeensetyears in advance. important thingatthatmoment,withouthavingto answer to a and make sure the team isworking onwhat’s goingto bethemost to beable to beflexible with them,make changesaswe seefit, and working toward allthosemilestones anddates, butit’s nice milestone schedules. Onourend,we are still buildingschedules any way? Doesitchangehow you’re developing thegame? OUBLE CROWDFUNDING_ 026 That wasoneofthereasons we gotreally excited whenthe2 Does crowdfunding relationship changeyour withtheaudience in That wasdefinitely oneofourbigworries from thestart with F INE A DVENTURE

. 1 David Daw David Daw website, andblogs, and Twitter, and Tumblr, andtrying to putmore well. We’ve triedto putalot more effort into beingmore vocal onour we really wanted to start doingthatmore on ourotherprojects as they loved every bitofinformation they’ve beengettingongames, see how excited fans getaboutthatstuff. Once we sawhow much about agamereally early. It’s been nice to beable to dothat,andto since we don’thave to worry about apublisher,we’re able to speak community. It’s also allowed usthefreedom to beable to dothat— has kindaforced usto spendalot more timeonworking withour wanted to bemore involved withourcommunity. TheKickstarter is like, andhelpeddefine ourbrand, butultimately we’ve always have helpedto move usalong, sothat’s beenrad. supportive, and in some cases have even pitched in some ideas that that’s abitdifficult, they’re alljust really trusting ofusand been sosupportive andevery timewe come upagainst something out where theproject isandwhat’s goingon. RICE: DAW: and green-light projects internally? In thatsense,it’s been awesome because thebackers have Has thesuccess pitch ofchangedtheway Kickstarter you your I thinkithaslet people getaglimpseofwhatDouble Fine who they are. There’s noexcitement about famous children’s illustrator, andinthegameworld nobodyknows renowned. They have acouple ofguysthatare famous animators, a animation studio—40 or50 people inthe animationworld. They’re articles about“What’s goingonwith people are kindaclueless aboutwhat’s happened.We seealot of what development islooking like. Outsideofthatthough,alot of getting agoodideaofwhat’s beengoingonwiththegame,and documentary footage that’s exclusive to backers, sothey’ve been lopped alot ofthiscontent offto only Kickstarter backers. of thethingsthatIwishwe haddonedifferently wasthatwe into thegameversus how muchisgoinginto theKickstarter. One Make sure you have agoodmargin ofhow muchmoney isgoing that’ll beappealingto fans butisn’tgoingto waste your budget. video gamestudio andwhatthatlooks like. this upbecause it’s suchanintimate, transparent look atadayin a goodthingfor themto look at,andIfeel like people are kindaeating about whatajobingameslooks like. Unfortunately, there hasn’tbeen games, andare interested intheindustry, andwantto find out more those two weeks. SoIthinkthatthere’s alot ofpeople thatlove video you would seethesamepeople just sittingthere allday,every day,for were definitely eatingitup.We were doingeight-hourlivestreams, and concepts, andeverything to theforums aswe were going,andfans moved thoseto theexternal forums. People were posting music,and back andforth ontheproject, andfor AmnesiaFortnight we kindajust stages before they’re usedto seeingithasbeendifficult. how to navigate thosewaters andshow agameto fans inearly it waseven anidea,oreven hadateam behindit.So,figuring out about agameuntilit’s inalpha.We announced ourgamebefore earlier thanpeople usually hearaboutagame.Usually you don’thear it wasalittle strange, just because thisperiodofthegamecame way being atevents, andthingslike that,sopeople willstart seeingit.But for thegame,we’ll start doingthingslike teasers andtrailers, and because we promised to keep everything exclusive to backers. It launchedayear agoandwe haven’t heard anythingaboutit,” that space? an audience campaignaren’t withaKickstarter ifyou abignamein people knew asagamedesigner. you How goaboutbuilding doyou isprobablyJim, butIthinktheKickstarter thefirst timealot of JIM ROSSIGNOL: DAVID DAW: BIGROBOT RICE: DAW: RICE: DAW: things outthere for ourfans to enjoy. Itseemslike it’s working. guys from Moonbotwhoare doing struggled while beingreally amazingly talented. Iwastalking to the people new to Kickstarter. There are certainly people whohave I thinkwe asindividualsprobably hadabitmore profile thansome Shotgun. Althoughthisisourfirst gamewithanysignificant profi le, in theU.K.press helped.Ihadsomeprofile from RockPaper other people. Thefact thatbothJamesandIhave lots ofcontacts sidestepped that you’d warn othersidestepped developers thatwarn you’d about? to sendto theteam seemedto beputuponthepublicforums. Amnesia Fortnight. Alot of normally thingsthat would besmallnotes these guyshave noprofile atall.They’re only bigin theirown field. brilliant. It’s anamazingproposition, and yet inthegamingworld, project looks incredible, theartwork’s fantastic, andtheideais We have dozensofforum posts andhours andhours of Now, aswe’re gettingcloser to ourtraditional marketing campaign What are problems someKickstarter maybe thatguys you It seemedlike especially that was noticeable duringtherecent Think through your reward structure. Make itsomething We’ve always hadinternal forums for people to throw stuff SIR, YOUARE BEINGHUNTED JIM ROSSIGNOL&JAMES CAREY Obviously name’s your known around thegamingpress, We definitely didn’thave to work ashard assome T HE D OUBLE G OLEM T HE F . Moonbotisabig INE G OLEM A DVENTURE atall.The ? crowds before launch,soreach you outto them. The wisdomof crowds willdetermine get ifyou funding.You access have to those launched, andthat feedback addressed problems easily could Ivery fi have xed. its launchfrom gamedevelopers whowishedIhadshown itto thembefore we think about this Kickstarter we’rethink aboutthisKickstarter going to launch?” wanted to let butIrarely know islive!” you ourKickstarter get askeddoyou “What is missing. Ican’t telltheamount you of [notices] Kickstarter Iget saying, “Just Look for that stuff. Askaboutwhat rewards they don’tlike, andwhat they think before itlaunches.Andshare feedback. negative itwithpeople you whogive possible, particularly thoseinthedevelopment community. Linkto thething upwithafishows nished product. todon’t want beoneof thepeople whohasasuccessful butnever Kickstarter really MinimumViable getwillnot thisamount,bedoomed.”You Ask:“Ifwe a term outthere, “MinimumViable Product.” that withKickstarter it’s Ibelieve are over. People are expecting developers of to theburden. shoulderpart There’s can make thegamewith,because thedays of “Thisiswhat itwill cost to dothis” D D D D D important. Whentheyimportant. feelthey’re engagedwithyou bestmarketing. your that foldssome stuff intheirinput,that really pays off. Your community isreally top of allthat,manageto ifyou listen to what thecommunity says andcome upwith to backsomething. Askthemquestionsandshow allthetime.On themnew stuff Friday” got people thing;you’ve allaround indifferent theworld timezoneswanting campaigns get really exhausting because it’s not an“Idoitfrom 9to 5,Monday to going to befunny, orfullof action,orcool, from thetrailers. go into amovie of know theater sort seethetrailers, ifamovie’s andyou andyou $700,000 andthey’d justgraduatedfrom university. of liken Isort itto you theway personally, because needto you dothat. hundreds day. of them every Beprepared single every oneof to them answer realize: Kickstarter’s backer messages, messenger you get andyou’ll willgive momentum of that drive. someideaofhave what content you’re goingto beable to addto that to buildthe you’re ready to for fully Kickstarter theentire your support month. to get peopleand trying asexcited aspossible. make So sure that once it launches to get people andtrying interviews, toproject talkaboutyour asmuchpossible, launch,it’ssoon asyou goingtomonth down beastraight of to PR,oftrack trying neededto respondwe to were allof themandwe getting dozensof thoseaday. As questions come, many times,intheform of direct messages. Ultimately, felt like we so many eyeballs ontheproject, there’s goingto bealot of questions,andthose for them. an answer know ifthere goingto beDRM. Thinkthrough was allof thosedetails have soyou launched, peopleAs soonaswe wantedto know aboutplatforms, andwantedto askifthey thinkafanwould wereyou reading it,because it’s going to happen. beneficial tobutnot you, for them. only onKickstarter. work They’ll read through thatdo that anything you issuper it something that thefansshouldbeexcited about,andsomething that could about thisgame,andfi aroundnd ahookinthestory that Kickstarter makes your who cares aboutthat. You needto think more aboutwhy thefansshouldbeexcited why it’s goingto make themmoney. you’re OnKickstarter not talkingto somebody you’re to pitch apublisheronwhy trying thisgame’s goingto besuccessful, and before here, Iwas easy. sothat was Whenyou’re planningto pitchgame, your really justthinklike able afan. Iwas to dothat afanof because Double Iwas Fine were three kidsinMontreal that didthisthingcalled Some of thebestfeedback that IgotSome onthe Before share Kickstarter, launchyour you itwithasmany critical eyes as Also, you needtocommunityAlso, you engageyour onadaily basis.Kickstarter Be prepared for theamount that’ll of becoming PRandsupport afterward.With Also, make sure to pore detail,allthequestions andaskyourself every over ask for thefundingnecessary—ask for thesmallest thinkyou fundingyou G queries from people viaKickstarter. That’s onethingalot of people don’t updates.Plan your say Theother is to thingIwould expect loads of day of whole every your have month campaign worked should out,butyou Plan, to someextent, thewhole campaign. That needto doesn’tmeanyou messaging videosandyour rewards,page, includingyour and isto One of themajorthingsinconceiving around Kickstarter everything your needto don’teven There bewell-known. andyou game is.Dothat well, clear pitch, where avery Have can you visually understandwhat the o inwiththeminimumamount of money itwilltake to you dothis.Don’t KICKSTARTER S HAKER

C ASTLE BRENDA Kickstarter came Kickstarter after JIM CHRIS

JAMES S ROSSIGNOL TORY ROBERTS GREG D ROMERO ; they raised CAREY TIPS RICE

game developer magazine 026 game developer magazine together into astory, andmake itentertaining for people to figure can just stay in thebackground, and watch things,andpiece that without really taking resources awayfrom thegame.They kinda how thingsare going, andalsobeable to take partinitalittle bit, be areally nice opportunityto let theminontheprocess, and see Player Productions guyscame onboard. We thoughtthatwould projects were going,withoutseverely impacting theproject itself. of figuring outhow to continue to keep themup-to-date, onhow the who have already given usmoney, itwasjust goingto beamatter Kickstarter. Once we hadthousands offans invested inthe game RICE: DAW: milestone structure thathadbeensetyears in advance. important thingatthatmoment,withouthavingto answer to a and make sure the team isworking onwhat’s goingto bethemost to beable to beflexible withthem,make changesaswe seefit, and working toward allthosemilestones anddates, butit’s nice milestone schedules. Onourend,we are still buildingschedules D any way? Doesitchangehow you’re developing thegame? OUBLE CROWDFUNDING_ 026 That wasoneofthereasons we gotreally excited whenthe2 Does crowdfunding relationship changeyour withtheaudience in That wasdefinitely oneofourbigworries from thestart with F INE A DVENTURE

. 1 David Daw David Daw website, andblogs, and Twitter, and Tumblr, andtrying to putmore well. We’ve triedto putalot more effort into beingmore vocal onour we really wanted to start doingthatmore on ourotherprojects as they loved every bitofinformation they’ve beengettingongames, see how excited fans getaboutthatstuff. Once we sawhow much about agamereally early. It’s been nice to beable to dothat,andto since we don’thave to worry about apublisher,we’re able to speak community. It’s also allowed usthefreedom to beable to dothat— has kindaforced usto spendalot more timeonworking withour wanted to bemore involved withourcommunity. TheKickstarter is like, andhelpeddefine ourbrand, butultimately we’ve always have helpedto move usalong, sothat’s beenrad. supportive, and in some cases have even pitched in some ideas that that’s abitdifficult, they’re alljust really trusting ofusand been sosupportive andevery timewe come upagainst something out where theproject isandwhat’s goingon. RICE: DAW: and green-light projects internally? In thatsense,it’s been awesome because thebackers have Has thesuccess pitch ofchangedtheway Kickstarter you your I thinkithaslet people getaglimpseofwhatDouble Fine who they are. There’s noexcitement aboutT famous children’s illustrator, andinthegameworld nobodyknows renowned. They have acouple ofguysthatare famous animators, a animation studio—40 or50 people inthe animationworld. They’re articles about“What’s goingonwithD people are kindaclueless aboutwhat’s happened.We seealot of what development islooking like. Outsideofthatthough,alot of getting agoodideaofwhat’s beengoingonwiththegame,and documentary footage that’s exclusive to backers, sothey’ve been lopped alot ofthiscontent offto only Kickstarter backers. of thethingsthatIwishwe haddonedifferently wasthatwe into thegameversus how muchisgoinginto theKickstarter. One Make sure you have agoodmargin ofhow muchmoney isgoing that’ll beappealingto fans butisn’tgoingto waste your budget. video gamestudio andwhatthatlooks like. this upbecause it’s suchanintimate, transparent look atadayin a goodthingfor themto look at,andIfeel like people are kindaeating about whatajobingameslooks like. Unfortunately, there hasn’tbeen games, andare interested intheindustry, andwantto find out more those two weeks. SoIthinkthatthere’s alot ofpeople thatlove video you would seethesamepeople just sittingthere allday,every day,for were definitely eatingitup.We were doingeight-hourlivestreams, and concepts, andeverything to theforums aswe were going,andfans moved thoseto theexternal forums. People were posting music,and back andforth ontheproject, andfor AmnesiaFortnight we kindajust stages before they’re usedto seeingithasbeendifficult. how to navigate thosewaters andshow agameto fans inearly it waseven anidea,oreven hadateam behindit.So,figuring out about agameuntilit’s inalpha.We announced ourgamebefore earlier thanpeople usually hearaboutagame.Usually you don’thear it wasalittle strange, just because thisperiodofthegamecame way being atevents, andthingslike that,sopeople willstart seeingit.But for thegame,we’ll start doingthingslike teasers andtrailers, and because we promised to keep everything exclusive to backers. It launchedayear agoandwe haven’t heard anythingaboutit,” that space? an audience campaignaren’t withaKickstarter ifyou abignamein people knew asagamedesigner. you How goaboutbuilding doyou isprobablyJim, butIthinktheKickstarter thefirst timealot of things outthere for ourfans to enjoy. Itseemslike it’s working. JIM ROSSIGNOL: DAVID DAW: BIGROBOT RICE: DAW: RICE: DAW: guys from Moonbotwhoare doing struggled while beingreally amazingly talented. Iwastalking to the people new to Kickstarter. There are certainly people whohave I thinkwe asindividualsprobably hadabitmore profile thansome Shotgun. Althoughthisisourfirst gamewithanysignificant profi le, in theU.K.press helped.Ihadsomeprofile from RockPaper other people. The fact thatbothJamesandIhave lots ofcontacts sidestepped that you’d warn othersidestepped developers thatwarn you’d about? to sendto theteam seemedto beputuponthepublicforums. Amnesia Fortnight. Alot of normally thingsthat would besmallnotes these guyshave noprofile atall.They’re only big intheirown field. brilliant. It’s anamazingproposition, and yet inthegamingworld, project looks incredible, theartwork’s fantastic, andtheideais We have dozensofforum posts andhours andhours of Now, aswe’re gettingcloser to ourtraditional marketing campaign What are problems someKickstarter maybe thatguys you It seemedlike especially that was noticeable duringtherecent Think through your reward structure. Make itsomething We’ve always hadinternal forums for people to throw stuff SIR, YOUARE BEINGHUNTED JIM ROSSIGNOL&JAMES CAREY Obviously name’s your known around thegamingpress, We definitely didn’thave to work ashard assome T HE OUBLE G OLEM HE F . Moonbotisabig INE G OLEM A DVENTURE atall.The ? crowds before launch,soreach you outto them. The wisdomof crowds willdetermine get ifyou funding.You access have to those launched, andthat feedback addressed problems easily could Ivery fi have xed. its launchfrom gamedevelopers whowishedIhadshown itto thembefore we think about this Kickstarter we’rethink aboutthisKickstarter going to launch?” wanted to let butIrarely know islive!” you ourKickstarter get askeddoyou “What is missing. Ican’t telltheamount you of [notices] Kickstarter Iget saying, “Just Look for that stuff. Askaboutwhat rewards they don’tlike, andwhat they think before itlaunches.Andshare feedback. negative itwithpeople you whogive possible, particularly thoseinthedevelopment community. Linkto thething upwithafishows nished product. todon’t want beoneof thepeople whohasasuccessful butnever Kickstarter really MinimumViable getwillnot thisamount,bedoomed.”You Ask:“Ifwe a term outthere, “MinimumViable Product.” that withKickstarter it’s Ibelieve are over. People are expecting developers of to theburden. shoulderpart There’s can make thegamewith,because thedays of “Thisiswhat itwill cost to dothis” D D D D D important. Whentheyimportant. feelthey’re engagedwithyou bestmarketing. your that foldssome stuff intheirinput,that really pays off. Your community isreally top of allthat,manageto ifyou listen to what thecommunity says andcome upwith to backsomething. Askthemquestionsandshow allthetime.On themnew stuff Friday” got people thing;you’ve allaround indifferent theworld timezoneswanting campaigns get really exhausting because it’s not an“Idoitfrom 9to 5,Monday to going to befunny, orfullof action,orcool, from thetrailers. go into amovie of know theater sort seethetrailers, ifamovie’s andyou andyou $700,000 andthey’d justgraduatedfrom university. of liken Isort itto you theway were three kidsinMontreal that didthisthingcalled personally, because needto you dothat. hundreds day. of them every Beprepared single every oneof to them answer realize: Kickstarter’s backer messages, messenger you get andyou’ll willgive momentum of that drive. someideaofhave what content you’re goingto beable to addto that to buildthe you’re ready to for fully Kickstarter theentire your support month. to get peopleand trying asexcited aspossible. make So sure that once it launches to get people andtrying interviews, toproject talkaboutyour asmuchpossible, launch,it’ssoon asyou goingtomonth down beastraight of to PR,oftrack trying neededto respondwe to were allof themandwe getting dozensof thoseaday. As questions come, many times,intheform of direct messages. Ultimately, felt like we so many eyeballs ontheproject, there’s goingto bealot of questions,andthose for them. an answer know ifthere goingto beDRM. Thinkthrough was allof thosedetails have soyou launched, peopleAs soonaswe wantedto know aboutplatforms, andwantedto askifthey thinkafanwould wereyou reading it,because it’s going to happen. beneficial tobutnot you, for them. only onKickstarter. work They’ll read through thatdo that anything you issuper it something that thefansshouldbeexcited about,andsomething that could about thisgame,andfi aroundnd ahookinthestory that Kickstarter makes your who cares aboutthat. You needto think more aboutwhy thefansshouldbeexcited why it’s goingto make themmoney. you’re OnKickstarter not talkingto somebody you’re to pitch apublisheronwhy trying thisgame’s goingto besuccessful, and before here, Iwas easy. sothat was Whenyou’re planningto pitchgame, your really justthinklike able afan. Iwas to dothat afanof because Double Iwas Fine Some of thebestfeedback that IgotSome onthe Before share Kickstarter, launchyour you itwithasmany critical eyes as Also, you needtocommunityAlso, you engageyour onadaily basis.Kickstarter Be prepared for theamount that’ll of becoming PRandsupport afterward.With Also, make sure to pore detail,allthequestions andaskyourself every over ask for thefundingnecessary—ask for thesmallest thinkyou fundingyou G game is. Do that well, and you don’t even needto don’teven There bewell-known. andyou game is.Dothat well, clear pitch, where avery Have can you visually understandwhat the queries from people viaKickstarter. That’s onethingalot of people don’t updates.Plan your say Theother is to thingIwould expect loads of day of whole every your have month campaign worked should out,butyou Plan, to someextent, thewhole campaign. That needto doesn’tmeanyou messaging videosandyour rewards,page, includingyour and isto One of themajorthingsinconceiving around Kickstarter everything your o inwiththeminimumamount of money itwilltake to you dothis.Don’t KICKSTARTER S HAKER

C ASTLE BRENDA Kickstarter came Kickstarter after JIM CHRIS

JAMES S ROSSIGNOL TORY ROBERTS GREG D ROMERO ; they raised CAREY TIPS RICE

game developer magazine 028 game developer magazine S CROWDFUNDING_ 028 IR , Y OU A RE B EING H

UNTED 1 . David Daw convinced people are ataglance. think makes abigdifference to how thepitch isperceived andhow than we could promise whenwe’re just acouple ofguys,whichI guys have theresources to convince people, andto promise more some ofthestuff thattheseestablished studios were able to. Those We’re just notbigenoughfor that.Sowe weren’t able to roll out reel off videosandreel offart.We don’thave anin-houseartist. content assomeofthesemore established guysthatwere able to get Kickstarter money,” whichisperhaps ashameinsomecases. anything by saying, “Thisproject just isn’tgoingto work unless we make itwork somehow, andtheselarger studios thathave failed to do to it,soIthinkthere’s adifference between guyswhoare goingto but for us,itwaseverything. Imeanwe were already committed that point,really goingfor it. before we went for aKickstarter, sowe were fully entrenched at our own money andahugeamountofourtime.Itwassixmonths all thestuff we’ve done.”Imean,we’ve put[in]alarge amountof we really are along wayinto this.We have committed to it.Lookat to work, even ifyou’re someonewithaname,whichisthat,“Look, we approached itmayendupbeingthewaythatKickstarter has getting theresources they expect andstuff like that.Ithinktheway Kickstarter now. Starting to getsomehigh-profile namesnot anyway—it wasjust quite anambitious ideafor agame, usingsome it. Ithinkwe perhaps benefited abitfrom how ambitiouswe were wanted to getdone,nomatter how muchitwould take to achieve going to be,andgetasfar toward that aswe could. make thepitch really strong wasto work out what thegamewas on was:Given thatwe hadsomemoney andtime, thebest wayto us aswell. ButIthinktheotherthingwe discussed quite early so allthereasons people usually go for Kickstarter appealed to coming into itsown atthetime,plusitgave usfullownership, process thatKickstarter would bethebest prospect. Itwasreally would gofor Kickstarter. Ithinkwe realized pretty early inthat we’ve got,andthatwasthesortofdecidingfactor for whenwe the bigonefor us,ourbig,exploratory, experimental thing. we’ve spentafew years exploring related technologies. Thiswas we are.” Imean,we hadn’tdoneagamelike thisbefore, though much doneaswe can onthebasisofthatbudgetand seewhere own money into it,sowe said,“We have thismuch,let’s getas we went onKickstarter. very clear thatwe wanted to have somethingto show people before and we wouldn’t runourKickstarter untilwe hadthat.We were wanted to do,andwhenwe wanted to beable to show certain stuff, for allkindsofvideos,andhave aplanfrom theoutsetfor whatwe Kickstarters are puttingup?”Ithinkitwashelpfulto have aplan had people going“Where’s allthecontent thatalltheseother The Frontier sortofran theinitialpartoftheircampaign—they ROSSIGNOL: JAMES CAREY: nostalgia andnotgettinganywhere. indie games.There are otherpeople thatare tryingto cash inon from themodcommunity, orifthey have somekindofprofile in sphere didhelpusandIthinkit’s helpingothers, ifthey come ROSSIGNOL: DAW: ROSSIGNOL: CAREY: with thegame? pitch seemsexciting withoutoverpromising onwhatcan you deliver deliver. going to be,andwhatthey’re goingto get,what we’re aimingto So people seeingitactually getareal ideaofwhatthegame’s any kindofplaceholder UIorbroken geometryorthingslike that. We saidwe’re goingto tryandnotshow anykindofbroken bitsor Perhaps that’s notpossible for larger studios withbiggeroverheads, So nothingthatwas promised wasoutofboundsfor whatwe We just wanted to seewhatwe could make withthemoney I thinkjust thefact thatwe have sometraction inthegame How scope doyou gamefor to your Kickstarter make sure your We were determined to show alevel ofprofessional polish. The biggest factor for uswasthatwe basically putour Even then,we felt abitlike we didn’thave asmuch You’re starting to getalittle bitofabacklashon I thinkthat’s sortofshown abitwiththeway that’s great. multiplayer stuff inagamewe’ve putsomuchtimeinto already, interesting experiences. and seeinghow they can bethrown together inthismixto make scientific exploration process of tryingalot ofdifferent things and notjust us,isthatalot ofgamedevelopment isakindof thing is,andthisiswhyKickstarter isbrilliantfor alot ofpeople to kindofgetonwithitandmake that,isgood.Ithinktheother going to enduphavingamultiplayer gameatsome point.So, was themost natural thing,because we were already clearly you have onyour “nice to have” list butthataren’t really essential. balance ofthegameneedsto be. more thingslike it.Soyou’re constantly testing whatyou thinkthe can doisn’tworking, orifit’s working sowell you want to have and thekindofstuff thatyou needto do,orifsomethingthatyou development thinkingaboutwhethersomethingisviable ornot, the question ofhow fair itwasfor meto cover myown gameon aren’t goingto getit. asks for something elseinthefuture, thechances are thatthey says, “We’re goingto dothis!”andthenthey can’t doit,andthen itself; Kickstarter’s goingto bearound for awhile. Ifsomebody damaging to theindividual thanit’s goingto befor Kickstarter if you’re completely new to it.ButIthinkthat’s goingto bemore this up,andthemoney will come, andyou’ll getgoing,especially CAREY: DAW: CAREY: DAW: ROSSIGNOL: CAREY: ROSSIGNOL: CAREY: DAW: see beingusedthewaythatwe’re usingit. technology thatgetsalot ofprofile, butthatyou don’tnecessarily into the game industry or do you think your case was relatively case thinkyour was ordoyou into thegameindustry unique? that wasthethingthat… me andto Jamesthatmultiplayer isabigtask. Atthesametime, interests, itfelt like thebiggest gamble, andpeople were sayingto most pleased to have ticked offthelist. Because ofourexisting multiplayer upwasagamble. Butit’s alsotheonethatwe feel the single-player, being-hunted experience, andIthinkthatputting player game,butwe knew thecore ofthegamehadto bethis was addingmultiplayer to it.We didn’tjust wantto doasingle- could extend, because we knew how itwould allwork. unreasonable. Itwasallwithinthescope ofadesigndocthatwe is to addallthosethings.Noneofthestretch goal thingswere it, andhow NPCbehaviorcould extend it,andthechallenge now that’s allinthegameanditworks. down andconcepted andsaid,“Thisishow thatshouldwork,” to playatcombat. Allofthatexciting stuff thatwe originally sat the behaviors thatwe want,whohuntsyou down andallows us because it’s playable just withthisone NPCthatwe’ve given stage anyway,butthatmighthave beenthegamewe putout, if we hadn’thadtheKickstarter money, we’d have gotten to that gentlemen. Thatnow works asacomplete game.Ithink,perhaps, NPC, just thehunters, theoriginalconcept artoftherobotic and now itworks essentially asacomplete gamewithjust one prototype stage we had,andsmoothedoutthemajorissues, going to work, andwe knew how itcould beextended. things thatshouldbeoptional.”We knew whatthecore gamewas where hewassaying,“Whataweird thingto doto bepromising For usto beable to goonanddothatexperiment withthe Stretch goalskindoffall into thatfor me.They’re kindofstuff that I thinkactually themost challenging thingfor us,initially, But we can extend that,and we knew how we could extend We’re ataninteresting stage now, where we’ve builtonthe How organize didyou PRfor campaign? your theKickstarter Do you think Kickstarter can thinkKickstarter bewidelyDo you usedasaway to break How dostretch scope? goalschangeyour There’s atouch ofcontroversy there because there was Stretch goalsare really weird. You’re constantly in I thinkthere’s alot ofdangerinassuming thatyou’ll put It’s thestretch goal,right?It’s thethingto stretch toward. It wasthethingto stretch toward, butIalsofelt it I hadaconversation withAndySchatz( M ONACO ) lot ofstuff now andnotgotten the gamesyet. exhaustion withitnow. People have backed a World, Io9,andGameDeveloper. games, TV,andtechnology for publications like PC comic booksandzombiemovies. He'swritten about David Daw(@davidhdaw) to went NYUand studied *** ROSSIGNOL: CAREY: watch this video of this game called “Aside from whatwe’re talking aboutnow, Ireally wantyou to I was,andnoideawhoJameswas. who backed itknew nothingaboutmyRPSstuff, hadnoideawho about coming to Kickstarter isthatIthinkthemajorityofpeople what theirfriendsrecommend to them.Sowhatwasfascinating games stuff. They buyessentially whatthey seeadvertised or don’t read thespecialist press atall,have essentially nofeel for that ahugenumberofgamers, orahugenumberofpeople who a lot ofpeople around thegamingpress don’treally realize, is interesting aboutthat,though,andit’s probably somethingthat a whole lot ofotherpeople talking aboutit.Ithinkwhat’s really reading everyone else.Sowhenthatwent up,we were able to get honesty, andyou stick withthatthenitworks just fine. in.” Butouraudience seemedto totally accept that.Ifthepolicyis myself. Thisissomethingthatcomes from whatI’minterested be objective aboutthisbecause thisissomethingI’mmaking RPS are goingto wantto know whatI’mdoingwithBigRobot. I’ve gotto just beopenonbothofthose,andthepeople whoread owner ofBigRobotandtheowner ofRockPaper Shotgun,and and asdishonest asnottalking aboutit.Itfelt to melike I’mthe it onthewebsite thatIown just seemsbizarrely self-defeating, games, and I am making games and enjoy doing so, to not discuss honesty wastheonly wayto gowiththisstuff. discussed withinRockPaper Shotgun.We endedupfeeling that my own independentwebsite. Thatwassomethingthatwe all important ifnotmore important. browsing thesite hasbeenjust as huge Kickstarter audience and theleverage ofhavingthat actually just goingonKickstarter community, generally Ithink the connections withinthegaming to leverage RockPaper Shotgunand to gothrough. So,althoughwe were able about it,hasbeenanawesome thingfor us seeing thosepeople onKickstarter excited seen orheard anythingofthegamebefore, completely unfamiliar withus,whohaven’t essentially have thesame audience. stuff, andallread thesamepress releases, and all read eachother,andallreblog eachother’s powerful isthatitsaudience isn’tthataudience ofgamesites that have donethat.Ithinkoneofthereasons thatKickstarter isso something Iwantto happen.”Ithinklots ofpeople onKickstarter me atall,hejust sawitonKickstarter andthought“Wow, that’s And hesaid“Wow, I’dbackthat,”buthehadn’tconnected itto Kickstarter. and thatseemedto beagood timeto hit We gotinjust before Christmas, bit before abitofthebacklash. that interest init,andperhapsa we came onrightatthecrest of with Kickstarter aswell, that In fact, Ispoke to KenLevine afew weeks agoandIsaid, I supposetheconsequence ofallthatiseveryone is I didwantto heavily disclaimthatandsay,“Ofcourse Ican’t If Iwasopenandhonest abouteverything, andIwantto make Being able to have people come inandbe I thinkwe hitthewave There doesseemto besome CROWDFUNDING_ S IR , Y , OU 1 1 A RE 029 B David Daw EING H UNTED

.” .”

029 game developer magazine 028 game developer magazine S CROWDFUNDING_ 028 IR , Y OU A RE B EING H

UNTED 1 . David Daw anyway—it wasjust quite anambitious ideafor agame, usingsome it. Ithinkwe perhaps benefited abitfrom how ambitiouswe were wanted to getdone,nomatter how muchitwould take to achieve going to be,andgetasfar toward that aswe could. make thepitch really strong wasto work out what thegamewas on was:Given thatwe hadsomemoney andtime, thebest wayto us aswell. ButIthinktheotherthingwe discussed quite early so allthereasons people usually go for Kickstarter appealed to coming into itsown atthetime,plusitgave usfullownership, process thatKickstarter would bethebest prospect. Itwasreally would gofor Kickstarter. Ithinkwe realized pretty early inthat we’ve got,andthatwasthesortofdecidingfactor for whenwe the bigonefor us,ourbig,exploratory, experimental thing. we’ve spentafew years exploring related technologies. Thiswas we are.” Imean,we hadn’tdoneagamelike thisbefore, though much doneaswe can onthebasisofthatbudgetand seewhere own money into it,sowe said,“We have thismuch,let’s getas get Kickstarter money,” whichisperhaps ashameinsomecases. anything by saying, “Thisproject just isn’tgoingto work unless we make itwork somehow, andtheselarger studios thathave failed to do to it,soIthinkthere’s adifference between guyswhoare goingto but for us,itwaseverything. Imeanwe were already committed that point,really goingfor it. before we went for aKickstarter, sowe were fully entrenched at our own money andahugeamountofourtime.Itwassixmonths all thestuff we’ve done.”Imean,we’ve put[in]alarge amountof we really are along wayinto this.We have committed to it.Lookat to work, even ifyou’re someonewithaname,whichisthat,“Look, we approached itmayendupbeingthewaythatKickstarter has getting theresources they expect andstuff like that.Ithinktheway Kickstarter now. Starting to getsomehigh-profile namesnot convinced people are ataglance. think makes abigdifference to how thepitch isperceived andhow than we could promise whenwe’re just acouple ofguys,whichI guys have theresources to convince people, andto promise more some ofthestuff thattheseestablished studios were able to. Those We’re just notbigenoughfor that.Sowe weren’t able to roll out reel off videosandreel offart.We don’thave anin-houseartist. content assomeofthesemore established guysthatwere able to we went onKickstarter. very clear thatwe wanted to have somethingto show people before and we wouldn’t runourKickstarter untilwe hadthat.We were wanted to do,andwhenwe wanted to beable to show certain stuff, for allkindsofvideos,andhave aplanfrom theoutsetfor whatwe Kickstarters are puttingup?”Ithinkitwashelpfulto have aplan had people going“Where’s allthecontent thatalltheseother The Frontier sortofran theinitialpartoftheircampaign—they ROSSIGNOL: JAMES CAREY: nostalgia andnotgettinganywhere. indie games.There are otherpeople thatare tryingto cash inon from themodcommunity, orifthey have somekindofprofile in sphere didhelpusandIthinkit’s helpingothers, ifthey come ROSSIGNOL: DAW: ROSSIGNOL: CAREY: with thegame? pitch seemsexciting withoutoverpromising onwhatcan you deliver deliver. going to be,andwhatthey’re goingto get,what we’re aimingto So people seeingitactually getareal ideaofwhatthegame’s any kindofplaceholder UIorbroken geometryorthingslike that. We saidwe’re goingto tryandnotshow anykindofbroken bitsor So nothingthatwas promised wasoutofboundsfor whatwe We just wanted to seewhatwe could make withthemoney Perhaps that’s notpossible for larger studios withbiggeroverheads, I thinkjust thefact thatwe have sometraction inthegame How scope doyou gamefor to your Kickstarter make sure your We were determined to show alevel ofprofessional polish. The biggest factor for uswasthatwe basically putour You’re starting to getalittle bitofabacklashon Even then,we felt abitlike we didn’thave asmuch I thinkthat’s sortofshown abitwiththeway that’s great. multiplayer stuff inagamewe’ve putsomuchtimeinto already, interesting experiences. and seeinghow they can bethrown together inthismixto make scientific exploration process of tryingalot ofdifferent things and notjust us,isthatalot ofgamedevelopment isakindof thing is,andthisiswhyKickstarter isbrilliantfor alot ofpeople to kindofgetonwithitandmake that,isgood.Ithinktheother going to enduphavingamultiplayer gameatsome point.So, was themost natural thing,because we were already clearly you have onyour “nice to have” list butthataren’t really essential. balance ofthegameneedsto be. more thingslike it.Soyou’re constantly testing whatyou thinkthe can doisn’tworking, orifit’s working sowell you want to have and thekindofstuff thatyou needto do,orifsomethingthatyou development thinkingaboutwhethersomethingisviable ornot, the question ofhow fair itwasfor meto cover myown gameon aren’t goingto getit. asks for something elseinthefuture, thechances are thatthey says, “We’re goingto dothis!”andthenthey can’t doit,andthen itself; Kickstarter’s goingto bearound for awhile. Ifsomebody damaging to theindividual thanit’s goingto befor Kickstarter if you’re completely new to it.ButIthinkthat’s goingto bemore this up,andthemoney will come, andyou’ll getgoing,especially CAREY: DAW: CAREY: DAW: ROSSIGNOL: CAREY: ROSSIGNOL: CAREY: DAW: see beingusedthewaythatwe’re usingit. technology thatgetsalot ofprofile, butthatyou don’tnecessarily into the game industry or do you think your case was relatively case thinkyour was ordoyou into thegameindustry unique? that wasthethingthat… me andto Jamesthatmultiplayer isabigtask. Atthesametime, interests, itfelt like thebiggest gamble, andpeople were sayingto most pleased to have ticked offthelist. Because ofourexisting multiplayer upwasagamble. Butit’s alsotheonethatwe feel the single-player, being-hunted experience, andIthinkthatputting player game,butwe knew thecore ofthegamehadto bethis was addingmultiplayer to it.We didn’tjust wantto doasingle- could extend, because we knew how itwould allwork. unreasonable. Itwasallwithinthescope ofadesigndocthatwe is to addallthosethings.Noneofthestretch goal thingswere it, andhow NPCbehaviorcould extend it,andthechallenge now that’s allinthegameanditworks. down andconcepted andsaid,“Thisishow thatshouldwork,” to playatcombat. Allofthatexciting stuff thatwe originally sat the behaviors thatwe want,whohuntsyou down andallows us because it’s playable just withthisone NPCthatwe’ve given stage anyway,butthatmighthave beenthegamewe putout, if we hadn’thadtheKickstarter money, we’d have gotten to that gentlemen. Thatnow works asacomplete game.Ithink,perhaps, NPC, just thehunters, theoriginalconcept artoftherobotic and now itworks essentially asacomplete gamewithjust one prototype stage we had,andsmoothedoutthemajorissues, going to work, andwe knew how itcould beextended. things thatshouldbeoptional.”We knew whatthecore gamewas where hewassaying,“Whataweird thingto doto bepromising For usto beable to goonanddothatexperiment withthe Stretch goalskindoffall into thatfor me.They’re kindofstuff that I thinkactually themost challenging thingfor us,initially, But we can extend that,and we knew how we could extend We’re ataninteresting stage now, where we’ve builtonthe How organize didyou PRfor campaign? your theKickstarter How dostretch scope? goalschangeyour Do you think Kickstarter can thinkKickstarter bewidelyDo you usedasaway to break There’s atouch ofcontroversy there because there was Stretch goalsare really weird. You’re constantly in I thinkthere’s alot ofdangerinassuming thatyou’ll put It’s thestretch goal,right?It’s thethingto stretch toward. It wasthethingto stretch toward, butIalsofelt it I hadaconversation withAndySchatz(M ONACO ) lot ofstuff now andnotgotten the gamesyet. exhaustion withitnow. People have backed a World, Io9,andGameDeveloper. games, TV,andtechnology for publications like PC comic booksandzombiemovies. He'swritten about David Daw(@davidhdaw) to went NYUand studied *** ROSSIGNOL: CAREY: watch this video of this game called “Aside from whatwe’re talking aboutnow, Ireally wantyou to I was,andnoideawhoJameswas. who backed itknew nothingaboutmyRPSstuff, hadnoideawho about coming to Kickstarter isthatIthinkthemajorityofpeople what theirfriendsrecommend to them.Sowhatwasfascinating games stuff. They buyessentially whatthey seeadvertised or don’t read thespecialist press atall,have essentially nofeel for that ahugenumberofgamers, orahugenumberofpeople who a lot ofpeople around thegamingpress don’treally realize, is interesting aboutthat,though,andit’s probably somethingthat a whole lot ofotherpeople talking aboutit.Ithinkwhat’s really reading everyone else.Sowhenthatwent up,we were able to get honesty, andyou stick withthatthenitworks just fine. in.” Butouraudience seemedto totally accept that.Ifthepolicyis myself. Thisissomethingthatcomes from whatI’minterested be objective aboutthisbecause thisissomethingI’mmaking RPS are goingto wantto know whatI’mdoingwithBigRobot. I’ve gotto just beopenonbothofthose,andthepeople whoread owner ofBigRobotandtheowner ofRockPaper Shotgun,and and asdishonest asnottalking aboutit.Itfelt to melike I’mthe it onthewebsite thatIown just seemsbizarrely self-defeating, games, and I am making games and enjoy doing so, to not discuss honesty wastheonly wayto gowiththisstuff. discussed withinRockPaper Shotgun.We endedupfeeling that my own independentwebsite. Thatwassomethingthatwe all important ifnotmore important. browsing thesite hasbeenjust as huge Kickstarter audience and theleverage ofhavingthat actually just goingonKickstarter community, generally Ithink the connections withinthegaming to leverage RockPaper Shotgunand to gothrough. So,althoughwe were able about it,hasbeenanawesome thingfor us seeing thosepeople onKickstarter excited seen orheard anythingofthegamebefore, completely unfamiliar withus,whohaven’t essentially have thesame audience. stuff, andallread thesamepress releases, and all read eachother,andallreblog eachother’s powerful isthatitsaudience isn’tthataudience ofgamesites that have donethat.Ithinkoneofthereasons thatKickstarter isso something Iwantto happen.”Ithinklots ofpeople onKickstarter me atall,hejust sawitonKickstarter andthought“Wow, that’s And hesaid“Wow, I’dbackthat,”buthehadn’tconnected itto Kickstarter. and thatseemedto beagood timeto hit We gotinjust before Christmas, bit before abitofthebacklash. that interest init,andperhapsa we came onrightatthecrest of with Kickstarter aswell, that In fact, Ispoke to KenLevine afew weeks agoandIsaid, I supposetheconsequence ofallthatiseveryone is I didwantto heavily disclaimthatandsay,“Ofcourse Ican’t If Iwasopenandhonest abouteverything, andIwantto make Being able to have people come inandbe I thinkwe hitthewave There doesseemto besome CROWDFUNDING_ S IR , Y , OU 1 1 A RE 029 B David Daw EING H UNTED

.” .”

029 game developer magazine 030 CROSS-PLATFORM_Ramin Shokrizade

MONEY TALK SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE OF MONETIZATION DESIGN

Automobiles and computers were so simplistic in their ﬁ rst 10 years that today we have a hard time looking back and appreciating just what a leap in technology they were at the time. Like all technology, they beneﬁ ted from the iterative process, slowly adapting to changes in allied technologies, consumer demands, and infrastructure. Today both cars and computers have components in them that did not even have names 10 or 20 years ago. Before those components could be added to these products, they had to be thought about and given names so that they could then be optimized and adapted to various uses.

Today the technology of monetization design recurring fashion. Instead of forcing your it was purchased piecemeal. So here I is literally in its fi rst years of creation. The players into an all-or-nothing unlimited- will discuss the what of nonsubscription concepts can be quite complex, but in use subscription model, you might fi nd content purchases and attempt to wean us talking about them we use broad terms that a more fl exible pricing system built off the term “microtransaction.” like free-to-play, microtransactions, and around gating your content around smaller pay-to-win to describe concepts that would subscriptions (“microsubscriptions”) will be Virtual Goods Sales: Nexon began playing be diffi cult to explain in detail. The upside an easier sell to a wider consumer audience. with microtransactioned virtual goods of this is that it gives others a general idea Microsubscriptions can be used to gate sales when I was working for them as a of what you mean without a long academic content access, boosts, time, or any other designer in 2001. There are two dynamics discussion. If a developer says, “I am going feature you can think of. There are two that are important here. Do the items to replace the subscription on my game with primary advantages to offering multiple provide a competitive advantage? If so, microtransactions,” we all nod and pretend microsubscriptions in your product: I call them “Supremacy Goods” (see to understand what the developer means. We Reference 1). Supremacy goods can can also pretend the developer understands COMMAND & CONQUER: . have profoundly negative effects on your what they’re saying. The downside to this monetization effi cacy. Non-supremacy simplifi cation is that often no one in the goods generally take the form of cosmetic conversation understands what is going on at and “fl avor” items that do not provide a a level that can be applied to product. clear competitive advantage in a game. In this article, I am going to attempt There are gray areas that may sell well, for the fi rst time to put a majority of the like items that are balanced but give more monetization design language I have been tactical options and thus provide more developing over the last four years in one “fl exibility” to the user. short article. All of these terms have been Virtual goods can, in some cases, be used in my other papers on gameful. sold by entities other than the developer. org and here in Game Developer and In these cases the process is often Gamasutra, but never in one place. I cannot described as a real money transfer understate the importance of a unifi ed ͷ This allows consumers to tailor (RMT) sale. (For a full discussion of these language for this space. Its importance goes your product to their needs. You dynamics, see Reference 2). I break down beyond intellectual discussion. The whole cannot (and should not want to try RMT into three categories: RMT3 consists “Subscription vs. Microtransaction” paradigm to) predict how each consumer will of industrial-scale gold farmers and is so limiting that it is crippling our industry. use your game. Make it fl exible sellers, which were organized almost 10 There are not two ways to monetize a game. enough to appeal to the widest years ago by a company called IGE that There are millions, limited only by our possible audience. caused considerable harm to our industry. imagination and our ability to articulate our ͷ This allows you to continue RMT1 consists of the now-standard set ideas to our colleagues. charging for your game service, of developer-designed options that we and thus maintains your revenue usually now call “microtransactions.” WHAT IS A “SUBSCRIPTION”? Generally, stream beyond the fi rst month. RMT2 is what came before both of these, a subscription is defi ned as a recurring what I call “expert trades” between active charge for service. In games, it usually The end result is you capture the biggest participants in a virtual world. It was means you pay one fee monthly and get possible slice of each consumer’s available essentially wiped out by both RMT3 and the entire game 24 hours a day, seven gaming budget. RMT1. Blizzard recently attempted to bring days a week. For clarity’s sake, I describe back RMT2 and monetize it using a real this as the Unlimited Use Subscription WHAT IS A “MICROTRANSACTION”? A money auction house in DIABLO 3 without Model. The weaknesses of this model are microtransaction is the purchase of one understanding the involved potential profound, and go beyond the scope of this “piece” of your game for a set price. It is a pitfalls (see Reference 3). article. Think of it this way: Potentially any one-time transaction that in some cases If you sell an item that can normally be part of your game can be charged for in can be repeated. Used by itself, the term is earned in gameplay, then you are selling a recurring fashion, for any duration you so broad that it becomes a liability in any game objectives, which can break your set, and you can have as many modules discussion, because what you are selling game (see Reference 4). This will have game developer magazine of your game as you like charged for in a is much more important than the fact that negative effects on your revenue generation. 030 031 Cross-platform_Ramin Shokrizade

Diablo 3.

Content Sales: If there is some part of Once a player has had their fill of your on average, and typically eight or more your game that is inaccessible until you content, they will move on, as there is no hours on at least one day per week) may be pay to unlock it, then I consider this a way you can create content as fast as your your most vocal, they are not necessarily content sale. DLC sales are exactly the gamers can consume it. Uncontrolled time your biggest spenders. People with a job, same thing, though usually that term is also acts as a Supremacy Good, with the high income, and very little free time will associated with single-player games, not added disadvantage that you are not being spend a premium for quality entertainment online multiplayer games. Note that while paid for it. This will make your game much on those times when they do have time players can compete against each other less attractive to those players with huge to play. Creating a game that provides a in single-player games via leaderboards money budgets and small time budgets quality experience for these high-budget (a very useful method of motivating (your ideal customer). but relatively casual players, but without your customers), this also reduces the resorting to selling Supremacy Goods, Supremacy Goods effect of selling content Defining Pay-to-Win When you should be the ultimate goal of a well-crafted that gives players a gameplay advantage. sell game advantage via any of the above monetization design. Obviously, exceptions Please note that for something to be methods, you’re intentionally breaking will occur in the case of niche products, but a content sale and not a time gate (see the game. (I would go so far as to say your those niches can get crowded very quickly, below) it has to allow access to some part product is no longer a game, but just an leading to rapid loss of positive net income. of your game that is normally completely entertainment product.) Further, when you Just as there are almost infinite ways inaccessible without payment. make the game highly competitive between to craft said design, there are also just as players, you create what is in reality an ante many ways to really foul up your design. Time Controls: Time in-game can be game (see Reference 5). An ante game is The key is to know your consumers, and rationed via time gates. A time gate one where you can win just by raising the how any change you make to your design prevents one player from getting ahead ante to the point where your competitors will affect the relationship between you, of another player just because they have cannot match you. Skill and effort become them, and your product. more time to play. Turn-based games like irrelevant. Most Facebook ante games chess and checkers do this automatically. have no cap at all. Some games, like EA’s *** As soon as you remove all time gates, browser-based iteration of its Command Ramin Shokrizade is a lifelong gamer, having players will be motivated to win your game & Conquer franchise, have such high started as a competitive chess player at age five, by not sleeping (or eating, or working, caps that the game still becomes an ante then moving to play-by-(e)mail, tabletop role etc.). This has substantial negative effects game. This has negative effects on revenue playing, and computer games as they became on revenue generation, though a full generation as further detailed in my available. He has focused on creating advanced discussion of why this happens is beyond Supremacy Goods microeconomic model. monetization models for online games and the scope of this article. explaining the fundamentals of applied virtual Note that a time gate need not strictly Superior Monetization While economics in the hope that his work will lead to use a time metric—it can also ration a your “hardcore” gamers (I define these healthier, more profitable, and more sustainable player’s actions. Zynga does this in all of as playing more than two hours per day virtual economies and business models worldwide. their products via the energy resource, for example. This is a preferable approach to using time itself as the control, as players References will get aggravated if real life draws their attention away from the game and they 1 Next Generation Monetization: Supremacy Goods http://gamasutra.com/view/feature/177190/ return to find their time has expired. The next_generation_monetization_.php greatest weakness of the Zynga time gate 2 Real Money Transfer Classification http://gameful.org/group/games-for-change/forum/ is that it can be bypassed completely with topics/real-money-transfer-classification money, thus breaking it. 3 Smedley’s Dream: Predictions of the Diablo 3 RMAH http://gameful.org/group/games-for- A game without a time control is a bit change/forum/topics/smedley-s-dream-part-1-2-predictions-of-the-diablo-3-rmah like an “all you can eat” restaurant. This 4 Game Monetization Defined http://gameful.org/group/games-for-change/forum/topics/game- works for some restaurants because they monetization-defined) can just keep putting out cheap content 5 How Pay-to-Win Works http://gameful.org/group/games-for-change/forum/topics/how-pay- forever, but for game developers, very little to-win-works in the way of attractive content is “cheap.” game developer magazine 031 Scotland. Famous for golf and innovative games development. All the best players come here.

We’ve got quite a reputation for invention, innovation developing new and converging technologies across and discovery. And it stretches way beyond Highland a range of platforms. Games, the bicycle and golf. We were the first to Above all, our people are dedicated, committed and award a degree in Computer Games Technology and passionate for success. And this passion, combined our pioneering games work ranges from the creation with our world-class academic institutions, outstanding of Grand Theft Auto to Bloons and Quarrel. The fact is, research and superb facilities make Scotland financially Scotland is one of Europe’s top games development irresistible. We can develop your products and help locations. We have a growing hive of creative and shape your business. And that’s what makes Scotland talented games developers and our universities are such a popular place to live, work and play. To see what we can do for your business, visit www.sdi.co.uk/games

SCOTLAND. SUCCESS LIKES IT HERE. mini-mortem_ C on for the mini-mortems. ››› standout gamesfrom last year, read right andwrong witha handfulof want to learn more aboutwhat went grass really isgreener, oryou just single-platform dev wondering ifthe D platform: Muteki’s a gamedeveloped for adifferent shorter postmortems, eachfor put together acollection offour possible audience. That’s whywe’ve opportunities to reach thewidest- platform outthere, orriskmissing current onevery potential game it’s thatdev studios needto stay over thelast year atGameDeveloper , If there isonethingwe’ve learned (mobile), SubsetGames’s T han omman ya d (console). Sowhetheryou’re a L ight d er (PC),KIXEYE’s

(social),andRSBLSB’s 033 April 2013 D ragon F W aster F ar antasy

033 game developer magazine 034 minimortem_April 2013

ftl: faster than light pc By Justin Ma and Matthew Davis

Faster Than Light (FTL) was a hobby Initially we thought that there would was just the start of our fortuitous timing. project that tumbled into success. be no potential market for a game this By early 2012, we were running out of Here are our highs and lows from unforgiving, and we were surprised by funds and started to look into crowdfunding the development process—and the how much other people liked it. In the options. This was before Kickstarter had Kickstarter campaign. end, we believe that the desire to create been used to raise millions of dollars for a game that we ourselves wanted to play game projects, and at the time we thought allowed us to come up with something that it would be a good way to reach out to what went right appealed to others. This sentiment has some people and raise a few thousand Unique, novel design FTL started been stated by developers for ages, but we dollars. We had gained some publicity with as a pretty basic concept. We felt that think it played an especially large role in honorable mentions in the 2012 IGF, which space games often focused on the act of FTL’s success. got us a public demo on OnLive’s service piloting a ship or managing a fleet, but during GDC, so we were already planning to never let you feel like the captain. We Amazing timing (and luck) In early line up our Kickstarter with those events— wanted to experience making high-level 2011 we had both quit our jobs to spend but our luckiest break actually came when decisions about the ship’s strategy as well a year making small game prototypes. Double Fine launched their Kickstarter as managing every action of the crew. In After starting FTL, we used the IGF China campaign, which was two weeks before our search for an enjoyable experience we 2011 submission deadline as a concrete we were ready. Thanks to Double Fine, our created a unique type of gameplay: part milestone for our development; we decided Kickstarter got much more traffic. simulation/strategy, part “choose your that if we couldn’t get a solid game So in just one week, the FTL Kickstarter own adventure,” and part RPG. prototype by that time, we’d move on to benefited from the “Double Fine effect,” two We found that for many people, the another idea. We then spent four months IGF honorable mentions, and a demo available strength of the basic gameplay (with the working on game mechanics, rather than a on OnLive and the GDC show floor. This help of amazing music from Ben Prunty) game, and we were frustrated and unsure perfect storm of publicity undoubtedly led to was enough to overlook what they might what the game would be until something our Kickstarter’s overwhelming success. have considered flaws in the game: clicked during the last two weeks. We the simplistic graphics, its repetitive determined the game’s structure and pacing Kickstarter: Positives Money nature, and the sometimes frustratingly almost overnight, and were able to submit changes everything. The Kickstarter’s brutal difficulty. It effectively satisfied our first playable prototype to IGF, where it success changed FTL from a hobby project the little fantasy that we’ve all had when was well received. Indie game competition to a business overnight. We became a watching great science fiction movies and deadlines continued to line up nicely as “studio” with a decent number of fans game developer magazine TV shows. periodic development milestones, but that keenly awaiting the release of our game. 034 more. Every day we hadto learn how to do contracts withdistributors, andmuch a company, findingalawyer, discussing building acommunity, we were setting up could focus ondevelopment. manage publicrelations for ussothatwe retrospect, we shouldhave hadsomeone challenges we’ve never experienced. In fans, whichinvolved additionaltechnical building acommunity space for ournew manager. We setupaforum to start we didn’thave aPRfirmormarketing a lot more publicrelations work, and was far from asmoothexperience. only two weeks later thanexpected, butit The gamewasgreatly expanded andreleased balancing thescope andtimeexpectations. time to getitdone,sowe hadahard time technology, andsoon)alsorequired more the project (hiringmore help,licensing better of theKickstarter. Nearly every wayto expand date thatwasonly five monthsfrom the end previously planned,butwe hadsetarelease the gameshouldbebiggerandbetter than people felt thatwiththeextra financing, expectations are boundto change.Many in fundingandnearl Kic what wentwrong polished andstable gamefor it. beta testers, andFTLbecame afar more part oftheKickstarter; we gotalmost 3,000 private beta was possibly the most important game andhost ourbeta onSteam. This of Valve, allowing usto bothdistribute the press attention. Iteven gottheattention successes—both ofwhichled to alot of first” from thatnew wave ofKickstarter when we released, we became oneof“the an expanding Kickstarter movement, and meaning more ships,aliens,andweapons. Jubert to expand FTL’s universe andlore, soundtrack, andwe enlisted writer Tom our initially slimmusicplaninto afull able to expand FTL’s scope; Benexpanded worry aboutpayingrent. We were also First andforemost, we nolonger hadto positive benefitsonourdevelopment: over $200,000infunding. described above, we endedupwithjust But dueto thefortunate timingofevents very lucky,perhapsachieve $15Kto $18K. we could barely reach thatamount,or,if the modest goalof$10,000,expecting that we launchedaKickstarter campaign with food andrent to licenses andalawyer, so product, we’d have to cover everything from on releasing thegameasacommercial year into development. Ifwe planned primary source ofstress andissues. success inFTL’s development, butalsothe This wasoneofthebiggest momentsof In additionto contracting outhelpand The extra fans andpublicityalsomeant Our campaign alsomadeuspartof The Kickstarter hadanumberof Our savingswere allbutusedupone k starter: Negatives With$200,000 y 10,000new fans, public development isgenerally a great plan;we M after the first encounter. tons ofuniqueevents thatlose theirimpact events more compelling rather than adding better spentfindingways to make common replays. Perhaps ourtimewould have been needed to keep itfresh for hundreds of art, it’s hard to pumpoutthesheervolume into agamethanuniqueanimations and text is perhaps easier to create and integrate couldn’t create the variety we wanted. While working for six monthspriorto release, we repetition ofevents. Even withawriter reviewers andplayers have withFTLis 20,000 words start to spread pretty thin. divide theevents between thesectors, even amount would notbeenough. Whenyou of text, butwe discovered thateven this FTL hadnearly 20,000words. That’s alot worth ofevents. Bytheendofproject, something intherealm of10,000words locations andevents. Atthatpoint,we had number ofalienraces, whichmeantmore expand thegameuniverse byaddinga more variety. How hard could thatbe? was to simply addmore text ifwe needed in aboard game.Our(perhapsnaive) plan something similarto adeckofevent cards texts for eachtype.We wanted to create event typeswithadozendifferent flavor thought we would have adozenorsobasic the originalvisionwasquite limited. We out asasmallexperimental project, Qua business, too. didn’t realize we hadto learn how to make a and family. We setoutto make agameand relied onourextremely generous friends were wholly unprepared for allofit,and things we’ve never hadto dobefore. We developme ulti- One ofthemost common issues After theKickstarter, we decidedto n tity ofeve OS lau n t time n ch n Cross-platform ts/limited Since FTLstarted from dayonewasnot ideal. manageable. Stumblinginto itclueless release would have madethingsmore until two to four weeks after theWindows up theprocess! quirks withjust two people doesn’tspeed ideal, andtesting four buildswithunique new developers, ourbuildpipelinewasn’t 64-bit Linux)before we could release it.As builds (Windows, OSX,andboth 32-bitand each onerequired makingandtesting four release to solve system-specific issues, and We released two patches withinamonthof during the immediate post-release support. launching smoothly, butitwashard earned. to Linux-portingexperts. We endedup intense all-nighters andfrantic phone calls Linux flavors. Fixingtheproblems involved on asubstantial numberofthedifferent we discovered theLinuxbuildwouldn’t run we’d succeeded, four daysbefore thelaunch cross-platform work. Even once we thought Windows version, muchless thelast-minute 12- to 15-hourworkdays to just finishthe Windows buildwasready to go. finish offtheOSXandLinuxbuildsonce the foolishly, thatitwould beaneasytask to the 18monthsofdevelopment. We believed, of FTLfor Linuxasearly asfive monthsinto and there waseven adevelopment version (mostly) easily transfer to othersystems, game, soallofthelibraries andcode would planned from dayoneto beacross-platform not agreat plan. release for your very first gameproject is attempting asimultaneous, three-platform as manyinterested players aspossible. But systems andexpand ouruserbaseto reach wanted to supportalternative operating Subset Games. Subset Justin MaandMatthew Davis are thefounders of *** Simply delayingthe Linux/OSXreleases Supporting extra OSescauses problems The crunchofrelease involved thetypical We thoughtwe were prepared—FTL was minimortem_ 035 April 2013 mm

035 game developer magazine 036 game developer magazine August 23,2011. of short amountoftime!Thefirstchapter get alotofworkdoneinsurprisingly as hewaswithoneproject, hesure did particularly healthytobeasobsessed stress inhislife.Whileitprobably wasn’t a waytocopewiththedepression and Tom. Adamstartedmakingthegameas 1, 2011asatributetoAdam’slatefather, that led themto decide to include it wasourdedication andcult-favorite status development ofthe game,andIbelieve that bumped into Sonyseveral timesduringthe game viashows andviathepress. Also,we We learned alot abouthow to market our community, whichhasbeenahugehelp. made alot offriends intheindiedeveloper it earneduswasahugebenefit. We’ve updates, thegoodwilland reputation that successful from allofourfree content content we could keep sales consistent. it, hopingthatbycontinually addingnew set to work onaddingmore content to was amodest success, andwe immediately Regula what wentright We startedon By AdamRipponandBryanSawler dragon fantasy minimortem_ 036 D While we weren’t hugely financially ragon r content updates F antasy D

ragon launched on iOS on launchedoniOS

April 2013 F antasy D on April onApril The game ragon

Gr G Great press goesalong way. from thatbeautifularticle? Very, very nice. they ran thisone. Oh, andthesales bump U.S. to runKotaku Australia’s articles, but Apparently it wasn’t that common for Kotaku copy ofitto his grandma. (Itwasthatgood.) on hiswall,andmomeven mailed a Adam hasacopy ofitprinted andhungup was ourinterview withKotaku Australia— shout-outs. Andourcrowning achievement loves thegame.Joystiq gave ussomegreat RPGamer, whoseeditor-in-chief absolutely FREE” crowd. We gotgreat coverage from entitled rage ofthe“OMGWHYISN’TIT iOS andAndroid, despite theperpetually of ’em.We enjoy a4.5star rating onboth side, it’s great reviews—and we gotlots thing you absolutely needto have onyour wouldn’t bewritingthisarticle rightnow! put outchapter oneandcalled itaday,I F boon to the production ofourvery powerful the work on always rolled ourown engineandtools, and and whatnot,but you’d besurprised!We’ve engine, whatwithalltheginormous pixels may notlook like it’s asuperhigh-end antasy ood techhelps eat p

B mobile r ook ess cove D ragon II inthePubFund. Hadwe F D r antasy ragon age Ifthere’s one was a serious wasaserious F antasy

quickly withoutalarger base.Lesson by doing paid updates, but it would diminish have potentially had more financialsuccess your updates somanytimes.We might can only rely onmobile gamesites to cover tastes about mobile games. That,andyou hard to inform gamers withmore hardcore not to saythey didn’t exist, butit’s very interested inan 8-bitRPGonmobile. That’s harder andharder to reach more users update we realized thatitwasgetting We launchedonmobileWitheach what wentwrong could have just done and very easy-to-use UIsystem. pretty proud ofthat. that itwasn’tanative iPhoneapp. dozens ofblogs, notasingle onenoticed news app!Anddespite beingreviewed by even goingsofar asto useitinapolitical for larger clientsusingourMuTech engine, projects. We’ve done numerous paid projects tech we builtfor thegameonothercontract itself, we didmake afair bit byusingthe didn’t make aton ofmoney onthegame have themeans. platform, application-agnostic engineifyou serious benefits to building your own cross- some off-the-shelfengine,there are some

So while we probably D ragon F antasy

While we

We’re with with you can cutcorners ontesting. it works oneverything else,doesn’tmean and we come to lesson three: Just because 7 (“sorry,you can’t putthosefiles there!”) things wherever, it’s fine”)up to Windows of Windows, ranging from XP (“just put installed. Addto thatthedifferent versions sure appropriate versions ofDirectX were an installer, runtimes,andchecksto make necessary onotherplatforms—things like game neededalot ofthingsthatweren’t great product atlaunch.TheWindows sufficient and… Well, itjust wasn’t a On thePCside,ourtesting simply wasn’t and hasenjoyed afairly stable existence. that theMacportwaspretty heavily tested those ports. us beingoverly confident aboutthe state of ease withwhichwe ported thegameled to both MacandWindows. Unfortunately, the up let usportthegamequickly from iOSto it to otherplatforms. Thetech we hadbuilt in obscurityonmobile, we started porting D problem, andonethatstill hauntsuswith the average mobile consumer. when your audience ismore hardcore than on mobile isashard asthey sayitis,even one: Findinganaudience for a$3game F Since we loved working on Easy portingl avoid beingcalled “amobile port.” core game,launchonother platforms first to me tell you.) Lesson two: Ifyou’re makinga ports. (Iwasincredibly punchythatday,let told usthey weren’t interested inmobile the other,more indie-friendly stores outright months before they were rejected, andoneof mobile. OurSteam submission(s) took anyone to payattention to usoutsideof a tremendous amountofdifficultygetting made byasmallteam onmobile we had a crappy mobile RPG,butbecause itwas mobile games.Ourgamedidn’tfeel like antasy ragon Being primarily aMacshopmeant And, speaking of launching: Our biggest And, speakingoflaunching:Ourbiggest F and really didn’t want to see it end antasy 1 today, isthestigma of e d to und D ragon e rt e

sting W feedback we received ispartofthereason we ever hada shot.Lookingbackover the turned more potential gamers awaybefore this feedback just meantthatwe had we were inspired by. Ourchoosingto ignore there inthemid-1980sto playthegames people whojust didn’t“getit”orweren’t how badthegamelooked. about titles justcries fine,but still we saw ground against thevery best-looking NES things. Someofourmapscould stand their games looking like are two very different looked like, and what people remember 8-bit agree. We learned thatwhat8-bitgames thought itwasgreat, themasses didn’t and even alot ofthepress we spoke to is, while asdevelopers we appreciate that, the numberofcolors-per-tile. Theproblem putting out,andeven limited ourartwork to of colors theoriginalNESwascapable of everything. We stuck strictly to therange we took prideinhow authenticwe kept started talking to thepress aboutthegame, e Internally, we brushedtheseoffas

we r e too auth e ntic When we first Final Warrior Qu biggest possible audience! vision, butpresenting itinawayto getthe nothing “notindie”aboutkeeping your line upwithwhatpeople want.There’s updated alloftheartwork to muchbetter for existing platforms) we went backand of thegameonPS3/PSVita (andupdates that whenpreparing ourbig“relaunch” expect to getalot oftraction. you’re well-known orincredibly lucky,don’t releases astheiTunes AppStore? Unless a challenge, but oneassmothered bynew audience for your gameonanyplatform is amount ofmoney to thelaunch.Findingan behind your title whocan devote alarge to bereally noticed isbygettingapublisher has somuchcompetition thatthebest way cost andremoving theneedfor apublisher small developers achance withacheapentry that theplatform largely laudedfor giving they target iOS.Now we have to face the irony almost guaranteed thatI’dhave suggested platform to develop theirindiegamefor, it’s were to askusthree ormore years agowhat specific code with effortless style andgrace. juggling thebusiness, engineering, andplatform- is thepresident Sawler meat. Bryan of Muteki, and alover ofandshanks of videogames, art, writer andlead programmer Fantasy, for Dragon Adam Ripponisthecreative director for Muteki, *** truly make itshineonandgofor it. places to putyour game.Pickoneyou can with aswell thesedays).There are alot of we’ve heard Nintendo isalot easierto work speak firsthand aboutSony,andfrom what opening upalot more to indies(we can comeback, andeven theconsoles are our next games.ThePChasmadeahuge the first platform we look to whenplanning altogether, butit’s far removed from being we’re notabandoningiOSasaplatform And so,coming outof minimortem_ e If someone st Ifsomeone 037 D April 2013 ragon F mm antasy

037 game developer magazine 038 game developer magazine and peaked(forme)with end ofthegame,thiswasahugeletdown. session wastheepicbattles toward the For someonewhosefavorite partofaRTS troops you lost andresources you looted. a battle report informing you ofhow many and attacks were instant; allyou sawwas in (thelocation ofbuildingsdidn’tmatter) affairs, you hadslots you placed buildings games to playinmyspare time. was looking for somebrowser-based RTS Inspired bythemodswe played in Paul Preece. games—including KIXEYEco-founder met severalgoodfriendsthrough those I playedthosegamestodeath,and and W II games:Itstartedwith strategy (RTS) I’ve alwaysbeenahugefanofreal-time By DavidScott war commander for Facebook ( were working onaversion ofdesktop TD time. Fast-forward three years, andwe to quitourjobsandmake gamesfull- Flash thatwere successful enoughfor us developed afew tower defense gamesin , continuedinto arcraft minimortem_ 038 The gamesIfound were simple HTML C omman , in2007Paul andIhad D d esktop &

T o C t onquer al D

A April 2013 efender nn W i h : G arcraf i la enerals ti ) andI on D , t III une

real time. got to watch andtake partintheattack in mattered and,more importantly, where you placement ofyour buildingsanddefenses RTS into onegame;agamewhere the We wanted to merge Tower Defense and guns, inyour backyard). As building bases,instead oftanks and friendly andplayfulartdirection (monsters that builtcore RTSmechanicsaround a you gofrom “We shouldtotally remake 8.6 hours in-gameperweek. Butwhen Facebook, withtheaverage player spending has become themost popularMMORTSon only 12monthsearlier—andsince then,it to bethegamewe were too afraid to make suicide bombers, theworks! Inshort,itwas have tanks, guns,airplanes,helicopters, game withnothingheldback;we would success, Isetto work oncreating B B and edgy. updated thegraphics to bemore realistic our confidence (andplayer base)grew, we C M o ackyar ackyard onsters mm In early 2010Istarted work on Emboldened by an d d M er M launchedto rave reviews and onsters . onsters Itwasto beanMMORTS

social B ackyar

, anMMORTS with tanks and B d ackyard M onsters W ar

’ s

is fully embrace thestudio model.Each is extremely fast. minimum and,asaresult, early progress keeps communication overhead down to a closer to launch.Keepingtheteam small and others to theteam asthegamegets out themechanics,andslowly addtech game andmakingprototypes to prove with just oneortwo people designingthe game teams. We start allourgames we’re still pretty lean compared to other headcount into double digits, andtoday pretty efficient!It took a year to getthe in sixmonthswiththree people; that’s k Keeping theteamleanand what wentright launch rapidly addingnew content. we hadto spendthefirst few monthsafter would progress through thegame,andso and we weren’t ready for how quickly players one millioninstalls inourfirst three months, after launch.We hadn’tanticipated getting corners withtheintent ofre-adding them four-person team, you endupcuttingsome guns,” to alive gameinsixmonthswitha een We launched Another thingwe dorightatKIXEYE W ar

C o mm an d er

039 minimortem_April 2013

team is fully independent with the executive April 2012, eight months after launch. Battles, so now players who were online producer acting as the CEO of their own As soon as we released it we saw a 25% at the same time could take part in the little company. What works for one team jump in engagement, retention, and same battle and interact with them in real may not work for another, so we don’t monetization—and realized how important time. We knew this was not going to be enforce certain methodologies cross-team. the world map metagame layer was (and something that would drive monetization We do have shared learnings, but it’s more how stupid we had been in not delivering in a big way, but we did it anyway because organic, with people chatting over lunch it sooner). it was cool and we were not happy putting to their counterparts in other teams, and our name to an RTS that didn’t have weekly presentations to break down past Not going wide enough, soon synchronous PvP battles. releases and discuss upcoming features. enough For too long we went down the We knew it would be hard to retrofit path of adding more buildings and units synchronous multiplayer into a live game Making tracks! War Commander is to the game to satisfy the needs of the while continuing to develop and release new two years old and still has weekly updates late-game players. Instead we should have features, but we had no idea how long it with new content and features. We now added features that create sandboxes they would actually take. We had to rewrite a very have five tracks in development: The can play in. Instead of offering them new large portion of the game in a completely first track is for large features that may things to build, we should have given the different language (a language none of the take over a month to develop (the world players new ways to tweak existing content existing dev team was familiar with) so it map or customizable units, for example), to make the game unique to each player could run on both the client and server. This the second track is for smaller features and his or her army/base. This changes took us a painful, drawn-out six months or (anything that requires one or two weeks the game from “I have everything built so to develop, test, and release. If we had of dev time), and tracks 3, 4, and 5 are and at max level” to “I have everything done it before we launched, we might have dedicated to improving infrastructure, at max level, but maybe this isn’t the been able to save ourselves a few months of fixing bugs and exploits, and improving best combination of things; I need to work, and if we had taken the time to sit operational efficiencies. experiment!”. This attitude has the benefit down and correctly break out all the tasks All five tracks work independently of of creating a wider variety in base designs and estimate them, instead of just diving each other, so if one is delayed it doesn’t and attack strategies, making it more into production, we could have better impact the progress on the others. We move varied for the attackers and defenders. planned our time. The one silver lining developers between the tracks to keep to come out of it all was a new process things fresh for them—it’s good to have Poor time estimates We had a solid on the team that has helped us hit every everyone on the team working on something RTS game; you had your base, your army, deadline since the launch of Live Battles that is player-facing now and then. and a world to dominate, but there was with a pretty high level of accuracy and one bit missing: real-time battles. For minimal crunch.mm The vertical slice With the exception many technical reasons we didn’t allow of the world map (explained later in this attacking between two players that were *** article), we made the right calls on what online at the same time. We fixed this David Scott is a co-founder and executive producer to cut to get the game out on time and on in October 2012 with the launch of Live at KIXEYE. quality. We had to sacrifice a few buildings to launch with air units, cull the number of infantry units to add a wider variety of weapons, and cut music to have the units speak when you give them orders, but it was all worth it. Making a vertical slice was key to this success. It forces you to develop each part of the game a little, instead of getting bogged down in one area. As an indie game developer, I know it’s very easy to narrow your focus down to a very tiny and insignificant area of a game and just keep iterating on it. If there’s only one thing you take away from this article, make it this: Build a vertical slice of your game ASAP, and play through it end-to- end before developing out any one aspect. what went wrong Skimping on the metagame One of the corners we cut to get the game out was the world map that you play in. In the early days of War Commander, you were presented with a list of targets (AI- and player-controlled bases). You could scout and attack anyone on the list, and killing them would remove them from your list and replace them with a higher-level target. The system worked well, but it was a poor substitute for a real world map, which is a game in itself. We didn’t get around to adding a map until game developer magazine 039 040 game developer magazine for three yearsstraight. Itwasworthit. hours aday,sixorsevendays a week, unsolvable problems. Iworked10-16 three yearstrying tosolveseemingly project, andIcontinuedonforover were wrong. Pekkoeventually left the I’m too p what wentright T T I liked was playingalotofKentaChogames; difficult process. ItallstartedwhenI Developing Dyadwasalongand By ShawnMcGrath dyad problems andmake controls unnecessarily. game gotfaster, orcomplicatethe reflexes andmusclememoryasthe instead offorcing youtorely solely on encouraged youtothinktactically, We wantedtomakeagamethat make agamethatfixedthoseissues. had incommon,anddecidedto few designissuesmostracinggames other racinggames,discovered a So PekkoKoskinenandIdissected out, andthought it’d beeasyto dothe discard months ofwork ifitwasn’tworking I heard stories ofMiyamoto’s abilityto orus orus minimortem_ 040 We figured we’dsolvethese T T r rooper rooper R ootage i cky Before making , alongwithsome wasn’tdoingitforme.

and

console D

P April 2013 yad arsec inayear. We D 47 yad , but , the work Ididon same. Itisn’t.Ithrew away90-95%ofall she’s very goodat several hours ofone-on-onetutoring (and even teach mywife how they worked after it wascompletely unteachable. Icouldn’t than therest ofthegamecombined, but more variation andinteresting gameplay zip linescalled “gates.” Gates contained on amechanicthatfollowed andreplaced Do like, butIcan’t cutanymore ofit. stuff. Asitis,thegame islonger thanI’d threw allofitawayexcept for thevery best them. Icreated over 200otherlevels, andI able to uselow-level graphic effects and load timesdown to <1second, andIwas my own engine, Iwasable to getthe year ofdevelopment. Byprogramming and apart-timeco-designer for thefirst except for somehelpwiththePS3version design, andgraphics essentially bymyself, as muchtimeIneeded. way, Icould make thegameIwanted with possible anddraining my life savings.That to payfor itmyselfbylivingascheaply as staffing up.I called italloffanddecided interest. We negotiated gettingfundingand publishers, andthree showed serious In 2010Ishowed thegameto several i I didalltheprogramming, game ng (almost)everyth D D yad yad . Ispentninemonths ), soIscrapped i ng myself to come upwiththevisualsin Without this,Iwouldn’t have beenable and thecode andseethechangesinstantly. game, whichlet mechangethegraphics Photoshop, onefor code, andonefor the graphics techniques. Iusedonemonitor for experiment withawidevariety ofnew showed I spenttwo daysassembling itbefore I into myChevy Impala.JasonDeGroot and 2011 withthedisassembled chairpacked in-game actions,andwent to PAX East in that tiltsandrotates to match theplayer’s large motorized chair(“THEMACHINE”) advertising. Thisstarted whenIbuilt a game designideas. have beenable to test outnearly asmany without thelive code update, Iwouldn’t 3. any otherway. time-consuming Iwouldn’t have doneit marketing myself. Even thoughitwasvery so Idecidedatthatpointto doallthe a lot ofpositive press from PAX East, audience withTHEMACHINE. Ireceived what’s possible with K Toronto. He’dsend mestems ofthe song the first track: Hewasin Oakland, Iwasin system. We worked for four monthson anaga DavidKanagareally pushed M I alsodidallmyown promotion and us i D c collaborat ya d for thefirst time to alarge D yad i ’ s on w reactive music D yad i th Dav , and id

and where theplayer isgoing. make iteasierto seewhere theplayer is exaggerate lateral motioninorder to of position.Thetrails behindtheplayer player’s center isjust avague indicator depending onpolarity. player can also betwo different sizes the player isabout100timesbigger. The relative to normalenemies.Whenlancing, center ofthe graze circle thanthey are smaller relative to theenemyin grazing, theplayer isabout10times size constantly shrinksandgrows. When representation ofitshitbox. Itsphysical circle inthecenter isapurposefully vague The brightmaincolor andblack/white visually designedto beentirely functional. front of them. most enemiesalsohave atrail drawn in will leave afaint highlightonthetube,and make iteasierto discern depth: Enemies are two primaryelements inthetunnelthat hard, especially when moving quickly. There those elements. game completely breaks. I’llexplain afew of and ifoneoftheseelements isn’tperfect the million tinyelements designedto helpyou, almost impossible to process itallwithouta the type/state/location ofeachenemy. It’s immune status/combo status/polarity, and location andstate oftheiravatar, their games Iknow; players must track the D Speed make what wentwrong unique songs! to match thegamerules, andwrite 27 create uniquemusicrules for eachlevel with nomusic,andDavidwasable to game. Thegamewasessentially done tell themthemusicwasaddedlast inthe Toronto to finish everything. out thefinal12 levels, then came back to capable ofplayingthegame,andsketched back to Oakland,thistimewithacomputer worked onthefirst 15 levels orso.He went he wasable to flyout to Toronto where we this backandforth for four monthsuntil playing thegamewithhissystem. We did change themix.I’dsendhimavideoofme and how different gameelements should he’d explain to mehow hewanted itmixed changes andinteraction event sounds,and he madefor thelevel, complete withchord needs to feel like afluidspace while point for allobjectsinthegame,and processing. Thetubeactsas areference important area inmaximizinginformation motion from peripheral vision only. easy to perceive theplayer’s positionand avatar, soIdesigned thetrails to make it too fast for theplayer to even look attheir ya All ofthisinformation ishidden;the The player’s “space squid”avatar is Representing depthona2Dscreen is Most people don’tbelieve mewhenI The tubedesignwasanother d isoneofthefastest, most complicated s thing s complicated D ya d isfar what players have linedup. distance andenemypatterns, andto see pattern to make iteasyto discern looking pretty. Most levels useagrid reasonable learning curve. and atleast anotheryear before ithada anyone could playitwithoutassistance, a year ofnear-constant playtesting before Design event. Stillunplayable. Ittook over it againatanOntario College ofArtand added areasonable tutorial, andshowed pick upandplayit;they couldn’t. ThenI event expecting everyone to beable to the first timeataScott Pilgrimlaunch are fucking weird. Ishowed thegamefor H a while to realize that visual designspace. and would have loved more freedom inthe expect there to besomanyrestrictions processing asefficientpossible. Ididn’t techniques inplayto make information to seewhat’s goingon. area in front oftheplayer to make iteasy player. Blending isusedto “white out”the the eye to thearea directly infront ofthe increases thevisualnoise,anddraws at thebottom where theplayer is.This that theinnerandouter tubeslineup as itfeels. Theouter tubeisoffsetsuch you’ll notice thegameisn’tnearly asfast carefully on theplayer vs. enemyspeed, exaggerated depthspeed—ifyou focus speed inorder to match thehyper- tube to enhance theperception oflateral ard-to-teach mechanic In There are manymore visualdesign D ya d , most levels have adouble D ya d ’ s mechanics s Ittook me compromising itsgame-ness. a wayto talk aboutthegamewithout people). Iwishcould have come upwith (and therefore very uninteresting to most the thingsthat from other mediums.Communicating as possible, withoutrelying ontropes can’t describewhat C structure ofthegame. early 2011before Irevamped theentire game led meto anervous breakdown in concepts. Theinexplicable nature ofthe to grasp whatIthoughtwere simple irritating to seepeople completely unable been otherwise,butitwasextremely a milliontimesbetter thanitwould have any time.Intheend,thismadegame the mechanicsavailable to theplayer at and interesting, withvarying subsetsof goals andmodesto keep thegamefresh had to come upwithabunchofunique mechanics are boringinisolation,soI pieces andteach themindividually. The to splitthemechanicsupinto small Shawn McGrath isthecreatorShawn McGrath of *** D D sales more thananythingelse.Imade are unique to film.Ithinkdidthatwith as amovie meantto doonly thingsthat , whichfilm ManWithaMovie Camera it. Igotalot ofinspiration from Vertov’s while playingisimpossible withoutplaying ommunicating what ya ya The entire gameisatutorial. Ihad d d minimortem_ , whichmadeithard to talk about to beas“pure” ofagameexperience D ya d D doesto your brain ya d is,whichhurt 041 April 2013 D D yad i yad mm . s Ireally

041 game developer magazine 042 game developer magazine

April 2013 042 pm postmortem_ postmortem_ pm 043 April 2013

April 2013 042 pm POSTMORTEM_ any code waswritten oranyart completed, Jake deﬁned core pillars thatwould actasthefoundation for individual soldiers. Fast-forward almost two decades, andFiraxis Gameshasreleased management against analieninvasion blended withboots-on-the-ground, intimate combat controlling The turn-basedstrategy title accumulated adevoted fanbase for itsuniquetake onhigh-level any code waswritten oranyart completed, Jake deﬁned core pillars thatwould actasthefoundation for C spark discussionspark discussion regarding regarding resuscitating resuscitating one ofthegreatest oneofthegreatest strategy strategy titles titles ofalltime. ofalltime.After After shipping shipping original X-COM” original X-COM”andasadesigner/programmerand asadesigner/programmer working working directly directly withSidMeier, withSidMeier,itmadesenseto itmadesenseto seed withinthecreative wallsof Firaxis Gamesin2004.Astheself-proclaimed “biggest fan ofthe 1 UPHELDTHESPIRITOF ORIGINAL LeaddesignerJake Solomon planted asmall team remained resolute, andinOctober 2012,against allodds,the development team not enoughpeople… Ifyou’re agamedeveloper, you know the story. Butthrough itall,theentire arduous one.We mademanyofthesamemistakes thatotherdevs have made(anddocumented in individual soldiers. Fast-forward almost two decades, andFiraxis Gameshasreleased management against analieninvasion blended withboots-on-the-ground, intimate combat controlling The turn-basedstrategy title accumulated adevoted fanbase for itsuniquetake onhigh-level permanent death.¶In1994,Microprose released aspecialPCgamecalled There mayhave beenwounds, butsomehow, the managed to save Earth team remained resolute, andinOctober 2012,against allodds,thedevelopment team not enoughpeople… Ifyou’re agamedeveloper, you know the story. Butthrough itall,theentire previous GameDeveloper postmortems): feature creep, communication shortfalls, notenoughtime, arduous one.We mademanyofthesamemistakes thatotherdevs have made(anddocumented in U permanent death.¶In1994,Microprose released aspecialPCgamecalled IVILIZATION NKNOWN , areimagining ofJulianGollop’s originaldesign. ¶Theroad to completing XCOM wasan R EVOLUTION , thestars beganto align,andtherebuilding ofXCOM became areality. Before shipXCOM onPC,Xbox 360,andPlayStation 3. postmortems): feature creep, communication shortfalls, notenoughtime, Lead designerJake Solomon planted asmall XCOM: E NEMY POSTMORTEM_ U BY GARTH DEANGELIS NKNOWN development team evaded UFO: E pm NEMY 043 April 2013 XCOM: E U NKNOWN

NEMY

game developer magazine 044 game developer magazine what madeXCOM sospecialandripefor arebirth wouldn’t be strategy gamewould be achallenge, andsimply verbalizing Getting thegreen light to remake anantiquated turn-based as abig-budgetendeavor, sowe needed to make amajorsplash. but thenagain,we were pitching whatwasessentially anew IP process thatpreviously had notbeenattempted withpast projects, 2 Buildingthevisionearly Firaxis underwent apitch UFO: E environment; fully destructible environments, asatisfyingstaple from of war and how visibility would be communicated to the player in a 3D game structure, andthatequaled potential bigrisk. those unfamiliar withtheXCOM franchise, thiswasaforeign understood theappealoftheseinterdependent systems, butto to counter thesimulated alieninvasion. Fans oftheoriginalgame where theplayer runsandbuildstheirown secret headquarters the micro combat layer andamacro, grand strategic mode, The gamewould alsopreserve thesymbioticrelationship between age offrenetic first-person shooters and real-time actiongames. a turn-basedcombat system, whichseemedriskyinthemodern the originalremain holy. Theseinspirations includedmaintaining Jake remained adamantthatcertain high-level elements from since 1994,from gameand narrative designto userinterface, but the game.Allfacets ofgamedevelopment hadclearly evolved pillars thatwould actasthefoundation for designingtherest of consequences, just like the foundation for achallenging experience thatpresented true fans are alltoo familiar with.Collectively, thesepillars provided safe environments. Thisled to anunnervingdespairthatXCOM introduce amenagerieofnew andclassic aliensinto theseusually they mayrecall from their own neighborhoodorcity—andthen critical to place theplayer inaworld they recognized—in settings lives; andrecreating thetense atmosphere from theoriginal.Itwas when itcomes to XCOM soldiers, there are nosuchthingsasextra scope; reintroducing players to permanentdeath,andthefact that postmortem_ 044 Other smaller pillars included:updatingsystems suchas thefog n e my U nkn

pm o wn , butapotential challenge inagameofthis UFO: E April 2013 n e my U nkn o wn . slept the course ofmultiple months, Greg andhisteam ate, breathed, and a smallbandofartists to create agameplayprevisualization. Over project—something beyond astatic presentation. understand whywe were sopassionate aboutundertaking this enough. Theteam neededsomethingthatwould make everyone those whofell inlove withtheoriginal. XCOM fans would beskeptical thatourwork would holdupto a complex gamewithahardcore past, andwe anticipated that the masses” could betheultimate transgression, especially for against accessibility wasn’twithoutmerit!Makinga game“for played themselves, makingfailure impossible, sothisstigma hyperbolic, butI’ve seengameswitheasymodesthatliterally the world could understand, buy,andplaysaidgame.Itsounds game anddistill itsintricacies to itsbarest form sotheentirety of developers would take anotherwisedeep,rich,andsatisfying “accessible” translated to “dumbingdown,” the ideathat become too easy. Thedevelopment (ormarketing) buzzword beginning work onXCOM, we heard itallbefore: Gameshad 3 edge, distinctive, andthrillinginthemodernageof video games. classic turn-basedexperience to bereborn assomethingcutting- page, butalsocommunicated to nondevelopers thepotential for a previsualization thatnotonly gotthedevelopment team onthesame and bigconcepts alike. Thiscollaboration led to acompelling themselves intheoriginalgame, becoming familiar withitsnuances Jake would sitinaroom withtheteam while they immersed universe would notonly look, butalsohow itwould play. OnFridays, sequence thatwould illustrate how Firaxis’s take ontheXCOM standards thelearning curve waslike climbingMt.Everest. independently belonged inanelite club,because bytoday’s game. We often joked that thediehards whomastered thegame it wasalsoaunique beast whenitcame to beginninga new O Jake beganworking withproject artdirector Greg Foertsch and While vercoming the“accessi UFO: E UFO: E n e my nemy U nkn U o nkno wn , ultimately planningastoryboarded wn mayhave beenmagnificent, b le” stigmaEven before the buildingvisibility system underwent various ceiling, wall,and realized thatthestrongest solutionwasto remove them. lines. After monthsoftryingto get sightlinesto work, we eventually determine whatwasgoing onamidst theplethora ofmulticolored system digestible, but unfortunately, it was tough for the player to engineering team andartists diligently worked to make this alike, soitwasclear whateachunitcould see.Ourgraphics sightlines to bedrawn from every gameunit,soldier,andalien course ofafew milestones inmidproduction, designasked for determining anew direction wasneeded.For example, over the were built,iterated upon,andsomewere even discarded after be technically supported inmanycomplex situations.Systems producing incredible content to polishthegame. were continually course-adjusting dueto dependencies,yet still From theaudiogroup to theanimationandnarrative team, they and overcoming monumental obstacles throughout development. professional, witheachdisciplineplaying thehero role atsomepoint 4 DEDICATED TEAMEFFORT Thedevelopers atFiraxis are extremely features or“dumbingdown” theconsole versions) across allplatforms. happy we could provide thesameexperience (withoutcompromising traditionally available onXbox 360andPlayStation 3,butwe’re extremely experience for consoles as well. We knew games like XCOM weren’t but theteam didanadmirable jobofcrafting ahistorically PC wrong (anddidhave itsinherent challenges, detailed later), experience. Thisisanelement thatcould have gonehorribly design anduserinterface teams buildaplatform-agnostic feeling like unnecessary filler. vitally important, promoting group tactics withnomoves absolute longest missions). Sixunitsalsomadeevery decision should average 20minutes, notto exceed 50minutes onthe made perturn(we found, dependingonmapsize,battles approximate timespentonamapandnumberof decisions team finding acombat “sweet spot”withrespect to over thecourse ofmanymonths,withthedevelopment these changeswere theresult ofinternal playtesting Units andcapping thesquadloadout atsix.Bothof mechanics from theoriginal,suchasremoving Time redesigned. Jake andthedesignteam refined low-level certain typesofX-COMfans). by skippingthetutorial altogether, whichissomewhat appropriate for we alsoknew someplayers, even in2012,would wantthatold-schoolbadgeofhonor experienced players could save Earthagainwithoutthetutorial force-fed to them(and layer atatime.Itwasimportant to keep thishour-and-a-halfexperience optional,as built anoptional,integrated tutorial thatpeeled off thecomponents of XCOM one want to alienate anyone simply dueto alackofinformation. To accomplish this,we the experience dueto thegame’s challenge, we were okaywiththat;butwe didn’t and challenge ingrained inthecore pillars. Ifsomeonewanted to walkawayfrom their own accord. Atthesametime,we neededto preserve alloftherichness, depth, a whirlwithoutexpecting themto become fluent inthegame’s manysystems on that accessibility equaled adirtyword. We wanted anyone to beable to give XCOM bear to dumbXCOM down. the truly funelements withoutoverly testing theirpatience. Butneithercould we honor, we ultimately knew that,in2012,we neededto enable gamers to experience found thislearning curve to beapartofthegame’s charmandwore itasabadgeof you even seeyour first alien—welcome to XCOM!). While manyfans ontheteam do first step offtheSkyranger, thegamewillkilloffafew ofyour soldiers before direction. hinted atthepossibility for baseexpansion), for example—the player isgiven no context asto whatthosewould meanlater on),andexamining ablueprint(which (unexplained) financial reports, approving manufacturing requests (withoutany silently looming, andvarious optionsto explore withinyour base—includingreading We were onamission to flip theperception onstreamlining, to remove thestigma As soonasyou fire uptheoriginal,you’re placed inaGeoscape withtheEarth There were plenty ofotherchallenging systems to decipher: On theengineeringfront, monthsofchangingdesignhadto This “new era ofaccessible” mindsetalsohelpedthe The introduction to thegamewasn’tonly area we We were onamission to flip theperception onstreamlining, to remove thestigma Even goingonyour first combat mission can beabitofmystery (andwhenyou The developers atFiraxis are extremely POSTMORTEM_ pm 045 April 2013

045 game developer magazine 046 game developer magazine be hand-placed bytheplayer. After makingvarious isometric on thestrategy layer, withdozensofexpandable rooms thatcould ended upexceeding theoriginalgoalof70uniquemaps. for two fullplaythroughs). Intheend,ourmodestly sizedlevel team of content creation (we neededto have approximately enoughmaps gameplay testing andfeedback permap,andanextreme amount of collaboration between level designandlevel art,weeks of level assets. Thisspecifically required aninordinate amount to buildapipelinethatwould let usefficiently designandbuild strategy system still ontop ofit,noless), sowe hadto learn how Firaxis hadnever created alevel-driven gamebefore (witha together, andthisrequires tightcoordination andlots oftime. different disciplinessomehow crafting thesamesculpture all levels, andwantmore ofthem;butthey are anexus ofmany primary example wasthegame’s levels. We all love mapsand but we’re proud oftheeffort given intherace to thefinish line. these bugsfeverishly. Obviously, we couldn’t find andfi x every bug, engineering raised thebaroffinal player experience bysquashing not only difficult to reproduce, butchallenging to even find! Together, game withmanyprocedural elements. Thismeantthatmanybugswere fix thousandsofbugsinpostproduction. XCOM isalarge, system-driven time neededto make thegameabetter experience. nature ofiterative designandadmirably continued to putinthe ultimately bethrown out.To theteam’s credit, they understood the playtesting. Inallofthesecases, initialengineeringefforts hadto (combat andstrategy) received drastic overhauls after monthsof engineering andperformance. Additionally, eachgameplaylayer in production, whichproved to beanightmare for bothgraphics toughness system; andthefog ofwarwasafull3Dcloud early floor rule changes;destruction fi delity fl uctuated through ashaky POSTMORTEM_ 046 Beyond levels, there wasstill anentire headquarters to build The artandcontent teams alsoworked minormiracles. A In addition,theengineers bandedtogether inaHerculean effort to

pm April 2013 including acover reveal withGameInformer magazineandvarious diligently to uncover manyvaluable opportunitiesfor thegame, candidly communicate thatvisionto theplayer base.PRworked and value oftheproject, andallowed theteam leads to directly and awareness for XCOM. They took thetimeto understand thevision This typeofsupportproved invaluable to finish thegame. critical late andballooned beyond ourinitialresource estimations. resources to buildanintegrated tutorial, somethingthatbecame trusted inourdesignvision.2Kalsoprovided uswithadditional feedback, every item wasup for discussion, andthey ultimately direction ofthetitle. While they provided in-depthmilestone ecstatic to learn we would begiven thisopportunity. XCOM andalsounderstood thattaking riskwasnecessary. We were Development group believed inthepotential for areimagined we’re notsosure would have happenedelsewhere. The2KProduct multiplatform, turn-basedstrategy gameinrecent memory. considering nomajorpublishers have fundedalarge-scale, we were overwhelmingly happywith 2KGames’s support—especially While there wasgive-and-take from bothsides(asinanyrelationship), our partnership with2KGameswasnotoneofthosehorror stories. creativity, dictating direction, orcreating impossible deadlines—but stories aboutpublisher-developer relations, withpublishers stifl ing 5 2K/FIRAXISPARTNERSHIP We’ve heard countless horror on headquarters while finalizing allofthecombat maps. well, butDave andtheartteam concurrently exceeded expectations connected withtheentire team. Thiswasanentirely new process as Black pitched the“antfarm,” adiorama-style sideview thatinstantly like; somethingwasmissing. Leadtechnical andHQartist Dave prototypes, we realized thebase wasn’tnearly asgrippingwe’d Also, 2K’s publicrelations team wasinstrumental inraising the Furthermore, 2Ktrusted inusasastudio to own thecreative 2K believed inourvisionandgreenlit theproject, something late satisfied with,butitwasneglected for too long andrequired a Ultimately, thestrategy layer wasmoldedinto theversion we’re and itstagnated while the team focused onimproving combat. strategic layer wasaturn-basedcard system for various months, that didn’tprogress aswe’d hoped.Bymidproduction, the challenging. We spentvarious milestones oncertain features the key to unlocking themagicwithinXCOM universe. games, anddiscovering thatspecialsynergy between thetwo was two interdependent systems thatcould almost bestandalone a product thatisunlike anyotherwe’ve built before. XCOM boasts seriously. Sometimes,funcan beachallenge to find, especially in by themantra “FindtheFun,” and the company takes thatvery beyond Alpha.Itmaysoundcliché,butFiraxis hasalways lived constant designiteration, withsomefeatures beingimplemented 1 DESIGNCONTINUEDINTO POST-PRODUCTION XCOM required “1000 StupidIdeasontheRoadto Glory.” video (http://bit.ly/T1TPK8) andexciting paneldiscussions like PAX’s team, leading to jointinitiatives like the“Jake Solomon Undercover” also astrong working relationship between PRandthedevelopment what they liked (ordisliked) aboutthegame’s potential. There was the seed in our most passionate advocates—the press—to pass along demo presentations to targeted press. Thesepresentations planted implementation schedule. of thestrategy layer hadaconcrete game planandaclear would meet every morning,every day,untileach component Solomon, andothermembers ofthedev team asnecessary) Trying to focus concurrently onbothgameplaylayers was H ALF -L IFE -inspired Cabalprocess to getthere. We (myself, infesting theframework ofanotherwisebeautiful house.Initially, The reported bug count rapidly multipliedlike termites silently workload untilQAbeganfully testing thegamefor afew weeks. systems were most playable, but itwasdifficult to quantifythetrue the team hadagoodsense ofthestate ofthegameandwhich was looming around the corner: thebugdatabase. Before Alpha, only afew systems neededto beimplemented, butanew challenge 2 ADDITIONALHELPMEANT WORK ByAlpha, for thegamebuttaxing ontheteam. bulk ofourwishlist shipped inthefinal product, whichwasgreat preproduction wrapped up.We didultimately cutcontent, butthe have locked down as manyhigh-risksystems aspossible as of thegamethatweren’t fun,butin aperfect world, we would discovery andexperimentation. into theschedule, allowing theteam to find theanswers through future ofXCOM, sowe kept theprocess malleable muchlater disconnected strategy layer would have spelled disaster for the process. Shippinganunpolishedcombat gamewithacompletely can bestifling to theiterative andtricky-to-quantify creative challenges: Holding agame’s designto immovable deadlines earlier intheschedule. Thisisoneofgamedevelopment’s largest asking whetherwe could have madetough calls oncertain systems could possibly befrom agameplayperspective, butit’s worth finalize high-qualitycinematicsinanextremely shorttimeframe. animators, writers, andaudio)came underimmensepressure to since thedesigntentpoles ran late, thenarrative team (including game, couldn’t bepushedto final untilthedesignwaslocked. And Practices like thedesigncabal helpedtheteam focus onareas The extra designtimehelpedmake thegameasgoodit Additionally, thetutorial andnarrative, critical components ofthe POSTMORTEM_ pm 047 April 2013

047 game developer magazine 048 game developer magazine process between engineering andthespecificdisciplines. There maps, audiofiles, texture budget,andanimation sizeswasa continual Understanding theconsole constraints for items like number of were significantly more difficult, particularly for the consoles. multiplatform challenges faced daily. instance arguably didn’tgo“wrong,” itisasmallexample ofthe that took timeto master across theboard. While thisspecific abilities, andcrafting auniform ShotHUDwere just afew areas system, mapping a system to supportdozensofcontextual than accommodating apoint-and-shootmechanic.Themovement were accessible viagamepad,andthisinvolved quite abitmore tied to thisgenre. Theteam hadto ensure alltactical commands to accommodate multiplatform userinterface design,specifically front, there were continuous challenges throughout development scheme. While thedesignandUIteam didanadmirable jobonthis between PCandconsoles; theonly difference would bethecontrol massive amountofwork. for three different platforms. Itturnedoutmanagingallthree wasa was alsothefirst time we’ve had to concurrently develop versions structure ofXCOM unlike anythingthestudio hadbuiltbefore, this 4 formal communication. excessive meetingtime,hedgingtoward more opportunitiesfor an appropriate balance between optimalinformation flow and end ofproduction. formalized stand-up process, whichwe implemented toward the feature-specific teams) surely could have benefited from amore Finally, cross-discipline groups (like level designandlevel art,and as agameplayengineer,hewould often betiedupwithcoding. to thedesignofgame,butwithourlead designerdoubling members wanted quicker information onthehigh-level changes for additionalofficial communication channels.Also, team members appreciated this,others were understandably yearning fruitful perdeveloper. While theleadership team andsometeam discipline’s lead, whichwasintended to bemore focused and maintained informal butintimate one-on-onereviews witheach along withcostly, 20-plus-person large-scale meetings.We still even amongst ourselves. Process-driven meetingswere reduced working hours bybeingjudiciousregarding meetingrequests, the leadership team wanted to maximizeeachdeveloper’s 3 Lack ofcommunication Once we were late into production, feedback loop andmisinterpretations offeedback viaemail. external partners often led to significant delaysdue to the remote troubleshoot anysetbacks.Also,providing creative feedback to most to speedwithours (nofault oftheirs), itwasextremely challenging to were dozensofunanticipated clerical issues just to gettheirtools up overseas led to astaggered communication channel.Since there during production. Communicating withanexternal cinematicteam aggressive workload. of internal team members whowere already responsible for an to anextreme amountofoverhead thatultimately fell onto thelaps and communications inherent inoutsourcing relationships allled the codebase, content thatneededto befixed byinternal artists, undesired consequences. Knock-onbugsdueto unfamiliarity with the endofproduction, we found thatafloodof external helpers had publisher wasgenerous withadditionalresources to assist toward engineers help. team. We hadashipdate to hitandwe wanted to getourdedicated of work neededto fixthegame relative to theengineers onthe with theinfluxofbugs.There were concerns abouttheamount clearer, we knew we were infor aninordinate effort to keep pace we weren’t quite sure whatto expect, butasthepicture became postmortem_ 048 N The system-specific optimizationsneeded for eachplatform Design-wise, theteam knew there would befeature parity Moving forward, theleadership team knows itneedsto strike Outsourcing challenges alsohitthecontent-creation team But themythical man-monthisavery trueconcept. While our ew, M u l tip

l pm atform April 2013 C ha ll enges Notonly wasthegame Garth DeAngelis was thelead DeAngeliswas Garth producer andalevel designer onXCOM: *** 5 but thesewere solutionsthatemerged late indevelopment. project to own theXbox 360technical certification requirements, and anotherinternal systems engineerjoinedthecause late inthe most difficultissues whenhewasfree from puttingoutotherfires, to nameafew majorworkloads. Ourlead engineerassisted onthe requests, andothergeneral andtechnical requirement bugs,just work ontheirplates: universal systemic issues, artoptimization While they worked together effectively, they simply hadtoo much had to partneronallofthesecomplex issues across theboard. didn’t have adedicated platform engineer,whichmeantthatthey crashes thatate upmuchofourseniorengineers’ time. were alsosevere, system-specific bugs, technical requirements, and hardcore fans oftheoriginalalike. capturing themagicofX-COMfor anew generation ofgamers and together to contribute to theunlikely revitalization ofaclassic game, Most importantly, awildly creative andcross-discipline team banded of gameaccolades, andwon 13Overall GameoftheYear awards. near-90 Metacritic from videogame journalists, garnered hundreds the project withinweeks ofouroriginaltarget release date, earneda end, theXCOM development team emerged victorious. We shipped the wake ofevery hopefulorconcerned hallway discussion, inthe accompanied eachnew system, through every team meal,andin dozens (hundreds?) ofgameplayprototypes andhealthydebate that hundreds oflevel playtests dissecting every piece ofcover, the And after alloftheextra hours, thethousandsofbugsfixed, the D way we wanted to make it. accurately predict how much timewe’d needto make thegame certain inefficiencies throughout production, we simply couldn’t we hadto iterate somuchontheprocess itself. While we improved first time we created agameofthis structure, andthefirst time production crunchesto finishallmaps.Assaidbefore, thiswasthe load for theengineers. On the artside,content creators had and thelackoftesting onlate gameplaysystems led to aheavybug (especially impactingaudio,effects, cinematics,anduserinterface) in thetrenches. Certain dependencieswere continually pushed structure ofthegameled to frustration aswe were knee-deep some pointfor thegoodofproject. For many,themalleable team, andallteam members putinseriousextra hours at had to crunchto finish XCOM. We have adedicated andpassionate U nknown eve E xtended crunchWe’re notproud aboutthefact thatwe Our systems engineeringteam wasavery talented duo,butthey l oper . F rom T he D In the end, we avoided permadeath. eep Intheend,we avoided permadeath. pm E nemy

set outto dowith RAIN{indie}. task ofcreating theactualbehaviors. After all,isn’tthatwhatUnityisallabout?Well, that’s whatRival Theory tool thatallowed themto bypass themessy work ofcreating theunderlying infrastructure andgetrightto the Developer), creating AIarchitectures isnotaneasytask. Unityusers would simply bebetter offifthere wasa infrastructure. Even armedwith Mexican food metaphors (seemyAIPrimerinthe August 2012issue ofGame coming up:How doImake AI? process). However, astickled aspeople were to beable to dive into Unityand“make things,”onequestion kept straight to theprocess ofcreating worlds, levels, andultimately games(whichis,inandofitself,acomplicated of creating theirown rendering engine,lighting effects, physicsmodeling,andmore. Instead, they could get audience. Unityallowed people to sidestep theknowledge, time,and frustration ofthecomplicated process When theUnityenginecame onthescene, itopeneduptheworld ofgamedevelopment to asignificantly wider a numberofdifferent AI myself inshortorder. I probably could have doneit the processes were, Irealized found outhow simple manyof taking uphistime—once I actually felt alittle guiltyfor achieve thoseend results. I me how thetools are usedto William’s explanation showed behavioral enginecould do. the endresult ofwhattheir in varying degrees offidelity, applications. Theseshowed, a walkthrough theirdemo their site, installed it,andtaken downloaded the product from William Klein. Ihadalready Theory founder andCEO, product’s features byRival given atour ofthenew were still evolving, soIwas documentation ofRAIN{indie} writing, thetutorials and for tools. who maynothave thebudget bonus to thesmalldeveloper free download. That’s ahuge RAIN{indie} isavailable asa was apurchased product, importantly, while theoriginal the most access to. More smaller developer needs focuses more onwhatthe a tightened feature setthat has subtle differences, with Its successor, RAIN{indie}, initial product, RAIN{one}. me abriefdemooftheir year agowhenthey showed introduced to Rival Theorya AI FOR FREEIwasoriginally Much like theothersystems listed above, creating even simple gameAIoften takes alot ofinvestment in RAIN{indie} isactually At thetimeofthis add-in. Thisflexibility, inandof default tech orthatofanother combining themwithUnity’s some modified fashion—even you can usethem“asis”orin accessible. Thismeansthat the modules themselves are once addedto your projects, Unity add-in.More importantly, to addinganyothersortof them to your project is similar individually asdesired. Adding separate andcan beincluded system. Thesystems are fully behavior trees, andasensory the actualpathfinding code, creating pathfinding assets, the packageare supportfor products inone.Included traversable angle (e.g., 45°), cell size andmaximum for optionssuchasthedesired Unity scene, setting parameters a RAINRecast objectto your navmesh isassimple asadding generator. Auto-generating a include avoxel-based navmesh components inRAIN{indie} RAIN{indie} PATHFINDING WITH middleware packages. selling thatoften comes with the chains,cages, orsoul- into theirprojects without about incorporating RAIN{indie} allow users to feel comfortable itself, issomethingthatshould The pathfinding TOOLBOX_ of theauto-created walkable resolution change,the fidelity a larger size,butaswith any number ofcells byspecifying nav mesh.You can reduce the nav graph rather than atrue an oddhybridofavery dense The result looks more like cells—even inlarge openareas. of 1,thismakes for many accustomed to. Atacell size ones thatmanyofusare typical “odd-shapedpolygon” grid-based rather thanthe the generated navmeshesare in seconds orminutes. Oddly, you have agenerated navmesh Depending onyour region size, and clickingRefresh Recast. t overlaid onto alevel. (Note that semi-transparency is FIGURE 1:ARAIN{indie}- 049 Dave Mark generated navmesh mine for clarity.)

049 game developer magazine 050 game developer magazine Nonstandard, grid-based 3 Documentation andtutorials still 2 Stillonly aframework—not a 1 CONS: Hellooo? It’s FREE? 3 Graphical behavior tree structure 2 Componentsare usable and 1 PROS: Unity (Mac/PC) Any computer capable ofrunning SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: Free PRICE: Rival Theoryrivaltheory.com/rainindie RAIN{indie} TOOLBOX_ 050 navmeshes “in process” magic bullet editor editable directly inUnity

Dave Mark t “look ahead”steering that behaviors. Itusesaform of collision avoidance andsteering RAIN{indie} hasbuilt-in Figure 2). based line-of-sightchecks(see each otherbasedonraycast- automatically connected to into theenvironment and can bedragged anddropped gizmo,” navigationnodes agents. Usingthe“waypoint up aspathsto assign to your to eachother,andhookthem environment, connect them you can addwaypoints to your (see Figure 1). solution iscertainly workable areas suffers. Regardless, the In additionto pathfi nding, On top ofyour navmesh, solutions, thesteering in as more-involved, custom robust incomplex situations helped outthesituation. where anavmeshwould have he wasusingsteering only muddle through. To hiscredit, an obstacle, butmanagedto a combination ofterrain and would getalittle hungupon one agentinthedemowho dynamic obstacle. There was when there wasmore thanone performed respectably even an environment), andthey just capsules glidingthrough in thesteering demo(really with someofthesamples dynamic obstacles. Iplayed responds to terrain, static, and While notnecessarily as tree showing theselection tree editor withthedialog FIGURE 3:Thebehavior for addingnodesto the waypoints to thescene of possible actions. with the“waypoint FIGURE 2:Editing gizmo.” graphically isas easyas more (seeFigure 3). animations, sound events, and interface, you can alsoassign selectors rightfrom thetree types suchassequencers and only can you inserttypical node are fairly straightforward. Not and editingnodesofthetree is inplace, adding,moving, mouse clicks. Once that “mind” character only involves afew attaching abehaviortree to a components inRAIN{indie}, RAIN{indie}. as theoneincludedwith with visualdesigntools such constructed andmanipulated also lend themselves to being they are constructed, they Thankfully, because ofhow of behaviortree architecture. today are usingsomeform many ofthetriple-A games powerful—so muchsothat easy to understand and crafting AI.They are both as thego-to architecture for becoming increasingly popular know, behaviortrees are my eye. For thosethatdon’t is somethingthatreally caught tree component inRAIN{indie} features are nice, thebehavior agent—if only conceptually. up a“taste sensor”to your It isamusing,however, to hook fields, teenage angst, whatever. you wanted: ghosts, tachyon define thesenseasanything sense. Theoretically, you could define whatitisattempting to and shape,sometags to collider ofaspecified size difference between them—a Really, there isn’tmuch sound, smell,andyes… taste. vision, butalsofor touch, specify sensors for notonly of objects.You can actually specified objectsortypes looking for intersections with amount to colliders thatare in theworld. Inessence, these the agent’s detection ofobjects help streamline thesetupof easy-to-attach sensors that RAIN{indie} alsoincludes BEHAVIOR TREEEDITOR SENSORY SYSTEM AND dynamic environments. avoidance insimple enough to create intelligent RAIN{indie} performed well Editing theentire tree Again, aswiththeother While alloftheabove t 051 TOOLBOX_Dave Mark

that code. Many middleware Rival Theory seems to have solutions are closed, black accomplished what it set out box systems; you do it their to do, however: Make creating way whether you want to or AI for Unity characters simple not. With RAIN{indie}, you yet powerful. Another thing can lean on the system to do it certainly did right is the most of it on its own, or you price. Regardless of any of the can utilize only the framework features, beneﬁ ts, and caveats and write the bulk of the code that RAIN{indie} provides, on your own. This is a huge there is really no risk in giving FIGURE 4: A larger behavior tree expanded in the editor. Note that some of the boon that allows the product it a test run. t parameters are editable from the properties screen. to scale gracefully from the casual dabbler to the more *** dragging and dropping. This is Naturally the nodes advanced user. Dave is the president and lead important, of course, because, themselves are not the end designer of Intrinsic Algorithm, an as with any AI development, of the journey. If you want, MAKING IT RAIN All told, independent game development constructing behavior trees is RAIN will do a lot of the heavy RAIN{indie} brings a lot to the studio and AI consulting company often a very iterative process. lifting for you; the editor will table. I feel somewhat remiss in Omaha, Nebraska. He is the To not have to worry about create the scripts for you as a reviewer since there is author of the book Behavioral xml braces, tags, indenting, in JavaScript, C#, or Boo. no way that I have completely Mathematics for Game AI and etc. is very relieving. Also the However, depending on what kicked all the proverbial tires is a contributor to the AI Game graphical tree structure is your behaviors do or what on the product. That means Programming Wisdom and Game easy to read and helps you decision logic you need to there might be more for me Programming Gems book series visualize the overall structure leverage, you may still have to discover—both positive and from Charles River Media. Dave of your AI. Key parameters for to write some code on your negative, of course. As they is also a founding member of the the selected node are exposed own. This is a very key point, ﬂ esh out the documentation and AI Game Programmers Guild, has right in the tree editor so that though. The fact that the tutorial videos, getting to know spoken at numerous conferences, browsing the tree is simple BT editor is writing code for the ins and outs of the different and was a co-advisor for the and intuitive (see Figure 4). you means that you can edit features will certainly be easier. previous AI Summits at GDC. game developer magazine 051

founder JasonFried saystheoffice is where we goto getinterrupted. ››› founder Paul Graham stresses the differences between amaker’s schedule anda manager’s schedule, and37signals produce a similarnumber. Nevertheless, numerous figures insoftware development have weighed in: YCombinator tossed around for gettingbackinto the“zone” isatleast 15minutes after aninterruption. Interviews withprogrammers fragmented state, because 57%oftasks are interrupted (seeReferences for citations). twice aslong andcontain twice asmanyerrors asuninterrupted tasks. They alsofound that workers have to work ina our decliningabilityto handle thesemental workloads andinterruptions aswe age. hours orinterrupted bymeetingstoo frequently to doanywork, whohaslittle defense against thesedemands.Ialsofear THE COST OFINTERRUPTIONEvery few monthsIseeanotherprogrammer asked to notuseheadphonesduringwork evidence, andwhatcan we doaboutit? remedies for restoring focus are nottoo far from homeopathiccures andbloodletting leeches. Butwhatisthe bubble. Like you, Iam“programmer, interrupted.” Unfortunately, ourunderstanding ofinterruption and distraction-free inthelate night.Butitisonly solong before interruption finds awayto pierce my protective using thePomodoro Technique, working incoffee shops,wearing headphones,andavoiding work untilbeing I’m writingthisarticle inadullstate: low sleep, busy,disorientated, andinterrupted. I try alltheremedies: PROGRAMMER, INTERRUPTED STRATEGIES FOR AVOIDING INTERRUPTEDCODING SESSIONS For programmers, there isless evidence oftheeffects and prevalence ofinterruptions; typically, thenumberthatgets Researchers whohave studied thecosts ofinterruptions inoffice environments estimate thatinterrupted tasks take INNER PRODUCT_ ip Chris Parnin 053

053game developer magazine 054 game developer magazine During  problematic: in found thesestates to beespecially programmer less desired aninterruption An experiment evaluating whichstate a memory state to alow memorystate. minutes before they transition from ahigh programmers often needatleast seven interruption can bereduced. However, “good breakpoint,” thentheimpactof suspend theirworking state orreach a signals into words. have even beenable to decode these of ourthoughts.Recently, researchers likening subvocal signalsto theconduits has long intriguedresearchers, some can bedetected. Thisphenomenon set to thetongue, lips,orvocal cords) subvocal utterances (electrical signals 2). Whenpeople perform complex tasks, during programming tasks (seeFigure to finddifferent levels ofmemory load utterances duringaprogramming task disruption (seeFigure 1). during peakloads cause thebiggest studies have shown thatinterruptions measuring pupildiameter, for example), neural correlates for memoryload (by they have thehighest memoryload. Using worst timeto interrupt anyone iswhen programmer T A  Programmers  Most  programmers coped withinterruption: We alsolooked atsomeoftheways  When  A  programmers, we found: and VisualStudio,asurvey of414 from 86programmers usingEclipse 10,000 programming sessions recorded interruption Basedonananalysis of Studying programmer inner product_ 054 A he wor from start concurrent If aninterrupted person isallowed to In ourstudy, we looked atsubvocal cumbersome way reminder. compile before to uninterrupted time. in method,

programmer

source programmer

less several

editing an sessions

interrupted

recover than resuming an

t timeto interrupta

interruption. errors

a diff

edit, locations programmer

edits

code is

Research shows thatthe

minute to ip two-hour

insert programmers is

state, seen especially takes to

review.

likely in an

force after during

multiple

to edit.

intentional since 10-15 only

to rebuild

session resuming a a resumed Chris Parnin

get

“roadblock” last-resort

with 10%

it minutes

locations. just edit

can navigated

context of

one

the work a work

day. a

circumstances—for to Prospective P some conceptual aids that can support them. burdened duringprogramming, anddiscuss that getdisrupted orheavily memory of next section,I’llintroduce sometypes that often result from interruption. Inthis reduce theimpactonmemoryfailures the problem.) on Butwe can findways to interruption gives usachance to reflect task isnotasimportant, orbecause the and possibly because we realize thatthe 40% ofinterrupted tasks are notresumed, cases, interruption mayeven bebeneficial; cannot eliminate interruptions. (Insome s Structuring your environmentto IDE  Comprehending  Navigation  of thismechanism isthatthere isno the code they are working on.A drawback developers often leave TODO comments in prospective memoryfailures. For example, developers have triedto cope with Various studies have describedhow ___ to difficulty. Figure 1: Figure 2: modifying a upport your memory ro

buy perform flow s

pective memory milk

window

T E code.

on racking thechangeinpupildiameter over timefor individualsgiven tasks ofvarying future lectromyogram (

T memory etris game.

the

and

way out actions

example, data

holds

of home

focus.

flow

in activities. EMG

reminders Ultimately, we

from specific reminding

and ) signalscorrelated with a13-minute programming task for

work.

control

you

change can lead to manycomplications, change. Unfortunately, even asimple all thoselocations affected bythe desired needs to systematically andcarefully edit version ofanAPI, thenthatdeveloper another, orupdate thecode to useanew to move a component from one location to developer needsto refactor code inorder across acodebase—for example, ifa a developer hasto make similarchanges This can come upinprogramming when ___ memories A Attentive programming equivalent ofaPost-It note. reminder (seeFigure 3).It’s basically the checking incode, orspatialproximity to a conditions, suchasateammate that can betriggered basedonspecific emails to themselves. office workers do: leave sticky notes and Finally, developers alsodowhatother to anothertask onthesamecodebase. because they inhibittheabilityto switch compile errors creates adifferent problem, to perform atask. However, introducing compile error to ensure they remember developers mayintentionally leave a Instead, to force aprospective prompt, impetus for viewing thesereminders. ttentive memory A “smartreminder” isareminder

memory

that

can

holds

freely

conscious

attended

to.

those isthelackofabilityto track many deficiencies in tool support,andoneof refactoring practices have found several locations incode. Studiesexamining programmer to track status across many edited locations confound retrieval. evaporate andthenumerous visited and statuses inattentive memoryquickly worse, after theinterruption, thetracked status ofmanylocations inthecode. Even requiring thedeveloper to track the see whichplaces have changedandflag locations thatmayneedspecialattention. Figure 4:Asetoftouch pointscreated from asearch andeditoperation, allowing adeveloper to reminder (e.g.,notvisible wheninanotherproject ornamespace). Figure 3:Anambientreminder thatbecomes more visible asyou getnearthesource ofthe GAMA13_GDmaghalf_F.indd 1 Touch points(seeFigure 4 ) allow a searched for. of code recently visited, edited, and automatically byderivingallpoints compile errors. They can berecovered are inspired from how developers use and can still lead to errors. Touch points track changesisnotageneral solution Unfortunately, usingcompile errors to were introduced whenrefactoring. and instead rely oncompile errors that developers abandonrefactoring tools locations incode. Asaworkaround,

inner product_ in thesamestimulus, more pathwaysare file inhierarchy). on file), and structural (logical positionof operational (edit/search/debug step action spatial (positionofscroll barortab), highlighting code), lexical (nameoffile), include: visual(error underlinebars, modalities andcorresponding stimuli visual pathways.Examples ofdifferent regions ofthebrain, suchasauditory or perception thatisprocessed bydistinct a modalityrefers to adistinct typeof an associative memory. Inthissense, in astimulus increases theabilityto form devs from recalling associative memories. elements, suchasdocumenttabs, prevent and stable environmental cuesininterface view next. Researchers believe thelackofrich the places ofcode they are viewing orwhatto a developer must recall information about associative memoryfailures thatarise when code. Thedisorientation stems from disorientation whennavigatingto unfamiliar Developers commonly experience ___ of co-occurring stimuli. nonconscious linksbetween manifestations Associative memoryholdsasetof Associ When multiple modalitiesare present The presence ofmultiple modalities a tive memory ip Chris Parnin 055 3/12/13 10:41AM

055 game developer magazine 056 game developer magazine supported; for example, areview modefor activity. Different types ofnarratives can be details and thehistory ofprogramming aid thathelpsadeveloper recall contextual implementing partofthetask. such asablog post thatwasusedfor a programming task, or forget details forget thechangesthey performed for events. For example, adeveloper may essential details orrecollect thekey failures thatlimittheirabilityto recall developers commonly experience When recalling from episodicmemory, ___ experiences from theirepisodicmemory. developers are able to recollect those such acquired knowledge requires that their craft. Retaining andmakinguseof encounter new learning experiences about events. Software developers continually Episodic memory is the recollection of past Episodic m icons (operational). modalities: suchaserror lines(visual)andedit Two tabs adornedwithcuesofdifferent recall from associative memory. the document,we could seeincreased spartan, often showing just thenameof default configurations are especially navigating documenttabs, whichin name, starves associability. Byimproving tabs, whichoften contain only afile paucity ofinterface elements suchas disturbs thestate ofthecues,and insufficient: Theactofnavigationoften However, thesecuesare often maintaining context duringnavigation. cues, suchastabs andscrollbars, for associations withenvironmental suggest thatthey frequently rely on element; observations ofdevelopers of multiple modalitieswithaprogram programmer bysituatinginformation associative memory. single modalityisless likely to form an contrast, amonotonous stimulus witha of forming anassociative memory. In activated, thusincreasing thechance inner product_ 056 A code narrative isanepisodicmemory An associative linkhelpsa e mory

ip Chris Parnin memory whereas novices useattentive of theirbrains: Expertsuseconceptual novices, they alsousedifferent parts experts require less brain activitythan differences inbrain activity. Notonly do performance differences arisefrom between anexpert andnovice findthat and new oneslearned. many concepts thatmust beputaside becoming aweb developer, there are domains, like thedesktop developer experts tryingto become experts innew be a10-year journey. Furthermore, for For anovice, evidence suggests thiscan becoming anexpert isnoteasily walked: careers. Unfortunately, thepathto expertise intheircraft throughout their Developers are expected to maintain ___ progressively higherlevels ofabstraction. and thenorganizes thosefeatures into grains andmetal curves ofahammer, of encountered stimuli, suchasthewood “tool”? Well, it first learns basic features such asahammerandconcepts suchas How doesthebrain remember objects between perceptions andabstractions. Conceptual memoryisacontinuum C hasn’t beenupdated recently.) (Note thatasofthiswriting,theblog semiautomatically viaacode narrative. com/), whichisshared and published out thisblog (http://codenarratives.tumblr. for publishingacoding task for others. high-level recall ofevents andashare mode onc extra mental space to build andremember concepts aboutcode. By expanding theprogramming environment to tablets, sketchlets on a“ Studies examining thedifference For more oncode narratives, check e p t ual m e mory sketchlet.sourceforge.net. refreshed. You can tryitfor yourself at and reviewing concepts thatneedto be prime concepts bysupportingabstraction designed to helpaprogrammer form and attentive memory. hold primitive representations in memory, whereas novices must to exploit abstractions inconceptual memory. Thatis,experts are able *** ideas? [email protected]. inanexperimentin participating any orhave including Microsoft Research andGTRI. Interested He hasalsoworked organizations atvarious HCI, andcognitive neuroscience perspectives. studying software engineeringfrom empirical, Chris Parnin isaPhDcandidate atGeorgia Tech HCI (Iqbal)http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/985921.986094 Task-evoked pupillaryresponse to mental workload in edu/~vector/papers/emg.pdf of Developers (Parnin) http://www.cc.gatech. Subvocalization —Toward HearingtheInnerThoughts edu/~vector/papers/sqj.pdf tasks (Parnin, Rugaber) http://www.cc.gatech. Resumption strategies for interrupted programming cfm?doid=1054972.1055017 fragmented work (Mark)http://dl.acm.org/citation. No task left behind?:examining thenature of (Czerwinski) http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/985692.985715 A diarystudy oftask switching andinterruptions programmer-interrupted/ original post here: http://blog.ninlabs.com/2013/01/ For afulllist ofcitations andreferences, read the

Sketchlet (alpha)isasoftware tool your teammates remember A C how you didatask andthe timelineofprogramming ode activities can helpyou or P resources you used. ad” can provide ip References

pp 057 PIXEL PUSHER_Steve Theodore

THE DOWNWARD SLOPE WHY ARTISTS’ SALARIES ARE DECLINING, AND WHAT WE SHOULD DO ABOUT IT

The annual Game Developer struggling indies living off of goes back even further. Most Salary Survey always makes Kickstarter and Visa cards. veterans of the premillennial interesting reading. As of However, there is one thing days (your humble columnist last year, the average annual you really can see by looking included) can tell you that the salary for game artists was at those averages: Overall, our market for CG artists was a about $75,000. That’s a pretty wage picture is not improving. lot hotter back in the closing respectable average—it Back in 2001, the average artist years of the 20th century. I compares favorably with the salary was close to $61,000. In started in games in 1995, and average salary for teachers the last decade the average has my starting salary back in in the U.S. (around $55,000). increased by 16% or so, and those distant days works out It’s also notably higher than when you adjust for infl ation, to just over $77,000 in today’s the average given by the the comparison isn’t so rosy: dollars. The Game Developer Bureau of Labor Statistics for $61,000 in 2001 dollars is survey puts today’s starting “multimedia animators”— around $79,000 today. In other salary’s average at around which includes fi lm and games words, the average salary has $45,000. That’s a decline of but also web, advertising, actually slipped by almost 10% over 45% in real terms over and other kinds of computer in real terms from where it was the last couple of decades. animations, and is quoted a decade ago. as $58,000. So, it’s hardly a It’s tempting to blame the OUCH. Now, you might think terrible number. decline on the recession, but that cushy starting salary of the trend is actually consistent mine was a recognition of But averages are always across the whole decade. The my sheer artistic genius… or suspect. There’s no such biggest dip doesn’t appear in perhaps I might like you to thing as an “average” artist— 2009 or 2010 (as you might think that. The truth, however, Artist salaries have been these numbers include both expect if the recession were to is that the going rate in increasing. However, successful veterans with fat blame); it’s actually in 2003. those heady days was a lot adjusted for infl ation, profi t-sharing checks, and Moreover, that trend line heftier than it is today. For they’re actually falling.

ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION NOMINAL $50,000 $55,000 $60,000 $65,000 $70,000 $75,000 $80,000

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002 2001 art 057 058 game developer magazine you take inﬂation into account. third over thelast 15years when Guild, have fallen bynearly a as reported bytheAnimator’s Hollywood CGanimator salaries, forces sowe can planmore effectively for help usmake senseofallthosehidden our futures. Averages, surveys, andthelike that larger shiftsinthebusiness are driving friends. Whatwe don’talways seeistheway who boughtPorsches while layingoffour paid stupid money andtheshadychiselers disasters. We remember companies that looked like sure thingsbutturnedoutto be the successful gambles andthejobsthat remember ourstruggles andourtriumphs, your economic life. We seethedetails: We view ofthemacro trends thatare shaping and buildacareer, it’s hard to getagood to make senseofthebusiness you’re in one-third inadecade. Double ouch. our average, butit’s adrop ofmore than in today’s dollars. Sure, it’s still higherthan data, for 2008,works outto about$93,000 point here isthatthelatest numberintheir interesting (orrather, really depressing) frequent periodswithoutwork.) Thereally with ahighcost ofliving,uniondues,and to L.A.,remember thatﬁlm work comes (Of course, before you bookyour tickets just abouttwice today’s average for games. for thatyear, equivalent to $137,000today— rate thatworks outto awhopping$96,000 1997, andthey report anaverage weekly started doingtheirown salarysurveys in (the Hollywood unionthatcovers CGartists) comparison’s sake, theAnimators Guild NOMINAL ADJUSTED FORINFLATION PIXEL PUSHER_ 058 2000 2005 2006 2008 2003 2007 2001 1998 1999 1997 As anindividualartist, whenyou’re trying

pp 8,0 9,0 1000$1,0 1000$3,0 $140,000 $130,000 $120,000 $110,000 $100,000 $90,000 $80,000 Steve Theodore representative oftheanimator’s union: observation from Steve Hulett, thebusiness salary numbers endedwiththislaconic web site thatposted theHollywood CG averages tell usapretty scary tale. ourselves andourcareers. Inthiscase, the secondhand embarrassment, an“Advanced teach thecourses. Irecall, withparticular there were few experienced users to exotic workstations andpricey software, when theschoolscould find themoney for taught thetools ofthetrade—and even of course Toy (1995). Story Terminator 2(1992),JurassicPark (1993),and really captured the publicimaginationwith in 1982,computer-generated imagery realm; althoughcultfavorite TRON academic research into theentertainment graphics hadonly just emerged from vastly outstripped thesupply. Computer processes of3Dmodelingandanimation work withtheclunkysoftware andarcane the 1990s,demandfor people whocould formed inauniquehistorical moment.In in general, andofgameartists inparticular, The culture and outlook of the game business MEDITATION ONOURSITUATION. THIS IS,SADTO SAY, APROFOUND meaning.’)” demand have weight and is: ‘Thelawsofsupply and conclusions. (Theone Idraw “Soak theminanddraw your The blog entryontheAnimator’s Guild Back then,there were few schoolsthat debuted debuted as we’ve said,are slowly falling relative to and thepicture isalot less rosy. Wages, though, it was a pretty good time to be in CG. jockeys andnot“real artists.” Allinall, perception thatthey were merely software had to labor(notalways unjustly) underthe to thissilvery cloud wasthatmanyartists and signingbonuses.Theonly darklining with swanky hospitality suites, lavish parties, reasonable reel wasaggressively pursued NBA draft. Anybodywhocould produce a recruiting—were ascompetitive asthe production housesdidthebulkoftheir SIGGRAPH, where Hollywood andbigTV markets oftheCGbusiness—particularly new andunfamiliar technology. Themeat companies whowere grappling withthe programs oftheera could fi nd ajobwith or hadthepatience to wrestle thebeastly esoterica ofrunninganSGIworkstation breed. Anybodywhocould master the teaching, computer artists were arare for formal education orinformal self- new Mustang convertible. workstation thatcost aboutthesameasa brand-new Cadillac,anditrequired aUnix to Maya) ran inthesameprice range asa of AliasPowerAnimator (thepredecessor learn ontheirown: afully tricked-out seat pressed to find tools thatwould let them hobbyists andenthusiasts were hard- Wavefront manual.Outsidethe schools, professor rifling nervously through athick which consisted mostly ofwatching the Rhode IslandSchoolofDesigncirca 1992, Computer Graphics Workshop” atthe Fast-forward a decade ortwo, though, Unsurprisingly, withfew opportunities animator CG CG A imagining how itwillfeel to bethenext there are a lot ofmobile andcasual devs a triple-A behemoth(though,to befair #356 working ontheseventh iteration of becoming anovernight millionaire asartist inflation. It’s harder to imagineyourself Sketchup to the Unreal SDK. to learn with,from Source Filmmaker to There are plenty offree, high-qualitytools every piece ofsoftware and genre ofart. discussion sites, andonlineclasses for an unimaginable bountyoftutorials, to goto school—the internet offers and motivated kids don’teven need creation to middle schoolers. Ambitious teach therudimentsof3D andgame after-school programs andcamps that enthusiasts, andindies.It’s easyto find infinitely more accessible to hobbyists, would-be artists. Gameshave become drive—and italsoexpands thesupply of factor gives gameartenthusiasmand ourselves how to make them.Thewannabe here because we love games andtaught degree-heavy business; alot ofusare supply anddemandfor you. it alsokeeps wages down. That’s thelawof better-looking games.Unfortunately for us, and, ifyou’re agameconsumer, itmeans makes iteasier for employers to bepicky reels and decent technical skills.That of young artists outthere withreasonable have changedthelandscape: There are alot back inthe1990s. cost ofsettingupyour own workstation bargain compared to theluxury-car level mediocre vocational schoolisn’tahuge a degree incomputer animationfrom a cost—at $60,000for atwo-year program, education business, particularly given the industry vets to becynical abouttheart- a business they idolize.It’s easyfor game who have grown upongames to getinto student loans andtheeagerness ofkids diploma millsmakingbankoffofcheap tech, while others are little more than in traditional artandthemost up-to-date Some schoolsprovide asolidfoundation artists looking to break into thebusiness. are rapidly becoming anecessity for young and ofcourse official credentials—which coursework, access to therightsoftware, growing) educational industry thatoffers job. Today, though,there’s a huge(and trial-and-error andlearned onthe it could befound; they operated on scrounging for information wherever game artists were largely self-taught, was quite hard to getinto. Old-school us. Notonly wasthefield itselfnew, it because there just weren’t thatmanyof market recently. former colleague who’s hadto hitthejob computer artists anymore—just askany Above all,there’s noshortage oftalented NGRY Traditionally, we have notbeena Like themornot,though,theschools It usedto behard to find artists B IRDS

or L EAGUE

OF L EGENDS ). less lucrative—than itusedto be. is alot more crowded—and hence alot face upto the fact thatourcozy little niche we dothatit’s emotionally quite hard to and ambitionare suchabasicpartofwhat game industry’s DNAisdifficult. Optimism market mentality thatisbuiltinto the the last decade. Even so,losing thebull are replacing thetriple-A behemothsof smaller studios andsmaller projects game industry ischanging quickly, as We’re notagrowth field anymore. The next decade—compared to 16%overall. animation willgrow byabout8%over the employment incomputer graphics and Labor Statistics ispredicting thatthe days are behindus.TheBureau of titles. Oyvey. less content-intensive mobile andsocial shift from bigconsole gamesto smaller, mentioned automation, outsourcing, orthe keeps prices down. again, theiron lawofsupply anddemand than there wasadecade ago—and once more high-qualityCGartwork around now perfecting asingle sculpt.There isalot of enthusiasts whocan spendsixmonths direction—with thehighly polishedwork and sometimesunderdebatable art deadline pressure, technical constraints, compare ourportfolios—done under to dosomesoul-searching whenwe Most ofusprofessionals have had schlubs whohave to paythemortgage. this, too, raises thebarfor usworking artists andinnovative work. Unfortunately hobbyist communities produce amazing so great for oursalaries. is great for ourcreativity andenergy… butnot ever for wannabesto getinto theindustry. This rapid growth ofgameeducation, it’s easierthan With onlineinformation, better tools, andthe The fact is,theWild-West boom Depressed yet? We haven’t even Today’s vibrant andsophisticated PIXEL PUSHER_ will work out. average work. Kickenoughass, andthings didn’t getinto thiscrazy artform to do average artist oranaverage game.We never forget: There’s nosuchthingasan say, preparing tax forms for aliving.And adding fins to spaceships compared to, your dayspaintingscales ondragons and that it’s pretty damnawesome to spend Even triple-A dinosaurs needto remember they keep gameculture from gettingstale. the-hip gusto ofearliertimes.Let’s hope games still retain alot oftheshoot-from- expectations. Casual,mobile, andsocial won’t succumb to thegray fog oflowered and enthusiasmthattypifygameartists can hopethattheoptimism,humor, in theless-expansive timesahead.We much old-schoolgameculture survives better ordemandless. in thetowel andgoonto careers thatpay of indieandmobile games.Somewillthrow seek thehigherrisksandrewards for thecause diminishesapace. Manywill willingness to sacrifice family andhealth game become smaller for manyofus,our time; astherewards ofworking ona clear-eyed approach to thingslike crunch market themselves. They’ll needto have a in games,andthinkinghard abouthow to keeping upwithchangingtech andtrends to beconstantly upgrading theirskills, The artists ofthenext decade willhave business were forged inheadiertimes. hard for vets whoseemotionaltiesto the today’s conditions. Thiscan beespecially “big business” isn’taviable strategy under luck andavague sensethatgamesare increasingly crowded field. Trusting in realistic aboutourprospects inan level they were intheboomdays. reset the clock andpushwagesbackto the even anupturningamesales isn’tgoingto triple-A cred counts for less). However, web gaming,where salariesare lower and to beinthenew frontiers ofmobile and future (thoughalot ofthegrowth isgoing There willbejobsandopportunitiesinthe picking upagainover thenext few years. that thebusiness sideofgameswillstart Stock watchers andindustry analysts think spending $60,000ormore onadegree! think long andhard aboutthewisdomof does meanprospective students oughtto new computer artdegree programs. It is nofuture for theproducts ofallthose going to disappearovernight, orthatthere C S than a dozen years. Hiscreditsthan adozenyears. include Steve Theodore hasbeenpushingpixels for more *** art directorart at Seattle’s UndeadLabs. conferences.industry He’s currently thetechnical asafrequentand technical aswell artist, speaker at TRIKE OMMANDER It willbeinteresting to seehow The upshotisthatwe have to be Now, thisdoesnotmeanyour jobis , and H , H ALO ALF 3 pp -L . He’s beenamodeler, animator, IFE Steve Theodore pp , T EAM

059 059 F ORTRESS M ECH , C OUNTER

059 game developer magazine 060 d DESIGN OF THE TIMES_Damion Schubert

RESPECTING THE PLAYER’S WALLET FREE-TO-PLAY AS A DESIGN OPPORTUNITY 060 It’s been a long time since there has built with this billing model in mind. Kids today grew up in a different been a complete revolution in video Meanwhile, older titles like LORD OF world, fi nding music on YouTube game design, but we are in the midst THE RINGS ONLINE, TEAM FORTRESS 2, and Spotify, then purchasing songs of one now. Free-to-play gameplay and and (my employer’s own) STAR WARS: individually on iTunes. They buy movies microtransactions used to be limited THE OLD REPUBLIC have all made quick on demand from a number of sources to indie games and Korean massively adjustments to this billing model. All if their parents don’t subscribe to HBO. multiplayer titles; now, it’s broken into of these games enjoyed strong sales They grew up playing CLUB PENGUIN the mainstream in a big way, and has and market presence in their original and MAPLE STORY, and now play triple-A increasingly become the way players incarnation, but all reported signifi cant games like LEAGUE OF LEGENDS, paying expect to play their games. increases in both revenue as well as as much money as they feel they can player populations from the change in afford, which very frequently is none at The success of LEAGUE OF LEGENDS is billing model. all. The next generation of gamers grew largely credited for this transition; at up in a world where entertainment was launch this pioneer allowed players to THE CHANGING MARKET The market tried for free and bought à la carte. V play a substantial portion of the game conversion has not happened without It’s not impossible to see why. without paying a dime; as of July 2012, some bumps in the road, however. While older gamers see free-to-play it had 12 million unique players per day, Many gamers dislike or resent the microtransaction models as an attempt with over 32 million registrations, putting microtransaction trend. They tend to be to fl eece the customer, the reality is Riot Games on the map. By comparison, older players, who grew up buying their quite different. The vast majority of those FIFA 13 sold 12 million copies worldwide games for a $60 price point, and like never who play these games do, in fact, opt to total in 2012, and WORLD OF WARCRAFT being asked for another dollar again. This never spend a dime, and this means that peaked at about the same. includes a substantial portion of the game these customers never spend $60 on a The rest of the industry noticed, and developer community, who feel like the game that they dislike. The free-to-play began moving quickly to a f2p model. industry is nickel-and-diming customers model becomes the ultimate free trial, New titles like TRIBES: ASCEND and the to death, and then shaking their corpses and it puts a huge onus on the designer upcoming NEVERWINTER NIGHTS were for loose change. to create a quality, polished gameplay experience that the player quickly fi nds fun and engaging. When looked at LEAGUE OF LEGENDS. through this lens, it is very easy to see the free-to-play model as far kinder to the customer base than was the old premium box model that we all grew up with.

AN EVOLVING DESIGN PERSPECTIVE Needless to say, f2p requires designers to make signifi cant changes to the way they approach their craft. Some of these are subtle but crucial. As an example, classic MMO design is, fi rst and foremost, designed to encourage subscriptions at all costs. Designers know that once a player cancels their credit card in a game, it can be very diffi cult to get that customer to re-engage. By contrast, it’s not so distressing if players of a free-to-play game bounce out of the game for a little while. Designers of true free-to-play games no longer care if you quit in April and May if they can get game developer magazine you to bounce back in June to play for a 060 d 061 DESIGN OF THE TIMES_Damion Schubert

while and buy some stuff. Since no credit playing music, golf—you name it. And only doomed card information needs to be entered, while shops that cater to these hobbies to be more players are much more likely to stop by are more than eager to help newcomers expensive than when nostalgia for the game kicks in. get off the ground with their new hobby, what they want, In my opinion, this model much more most of them live or die by their regulars, but also one accurately maps to real life than the old who are more than willing to spend their built with the subscription model—the world is full of disposable income on the hobby that philosophy of competing interests, be it the new hottest gives them so much joy. nickel-and- competitor to come down the pike, or real- Looked at in this light, the classic diming them life competition like television, school, or game model doesn’t make sense. No to death. Even romance. The free-to-play model is less matter how much you loved the original worse, all of this desperate to maintain a player’s interest STARCRAFT, your spending in the game happens before and subscription through all obstacles at was pretty much limited to the original the customer is all costs, but can instead focus on high- box product and the expansion. A emotionally engaged with the game. It is profi le events designed to recapture the hardcore player’s spend was going to be easy and expected in these cases for the player’s attention. in the same order of magnitude as the player to walk away. new player’s, while the new player’s entry By contrast, when we converted STAR THE VALUE OF FREE PLAYERS fee was high enough to be a disincentive WARS: THE OLD REPUBLIC to follow the Designers must also consider the for many players to try it out. The rise of free-to-play model last year, we made widely disparate ratio of spenders vs. DLC as a revenue source has attempted a concerted effort not to oversell our nonspenders. The exact ratio varies to better capitalize on these devoted fans, microtransactions. Players are rarely, if wildly from game to game, but can be a but since they tend to still be content ever, prompted to spend money in the huge swing. Facebook games seem to driven, the hardcore hit a hard ceiling of fi rst 10 levels, and the player is likely to have among the widest disparities, with how much they can spend—even if they forget that doing so is even possible. Even developers reporting that frequently fewer want to spend more (and most people like when spending is possible, we make it than 2% of the population pay any money spending money on hobbies they love). clear that the entirety of the game can at all. The other 98%, and all of the costs Games that go free-to-play need to be experienced (albeit with limitations) they incur, are effectively subsidized by better capitalize on their devoted fans. without spending a dime. Our logic is that small sliver of the population. Magic: The Gathering has what developers simple: We think that players are more It is easy to think of that 98% as call a “repeatable spend”—players buy likely to invest their time and money in a shiftless moochers, but in most cases, the random boosters to make their decks game that they love, so fi rst and foremost game is served well by having a large free- better and complete their collections. we want our players to fall in love with to-play population. Players are content for This is a highly scalable activity—Wizards the game. We see the player’s respect as other players. In MMOs, they make your of the Coast spends a lot of time something that needs to be earned before towns more full and social, and fi ll your providing cheap, entry-level decks and we win that dollar. game with more potential party members creating drafts and “pauper” leagues for your dungeons and player-vs.-player designed to engage low-level spenders, MICROTRANSACTIONS IN THE WILD battle scenarios. In WORLD OF TANKS, free while high-end tournament decks can WEST The free-to-play microtransaction players fi ll the world with fodder for your have aftermarket values of $400-600. The game model is coming fast now, and it is paying customers to destroy. top customers are the fi nancial lifeblood not inconceivable to imagine a world in the And this goes beyond the social value of the game, and Wizards goes to great next decade where the majority of games that having a large paying population lengths to elevate these customers and available to users are delivered in this offers. Even if only a fraction are paying decks, but in general, players of any skill reality. For the time being, though, we are for your game, having a free population and spending level can fi nd a satisfying still in a Wild West game design reality, of a couple million means that you game experience. where every design shop is attempting have a couple million people potentially different ways to earn that dollar— evangelizing the game to their friends and RESPECTING THE WALLET Perhaps the some of those bordering on shady and family. These big numbers are easier to most important lesson for those aspiring questionable. market to boot. to enter the world of microtransactions Still, game designers need to start is fi guring out how to do so while still by acknowledging that a small number MONETIZING YOUR BIG SPENDERS maintaining a healthy respect for the of heavy users will likely subsidize However, since potentially a small sliver of player and their wallet. It is easy to fi nd the majority of the efforts in their the population is actually monetizing the new and exotic ways to charge your microtransaction-oriented game. To game, in many genres, designers need to customers money, particularly now me, as a game designer, this is a good re-evaluate exactly how money is spent in while the microtransaction model is still thing; making a game that earns the love the game, to allow players to spend what in its infancy in the United States. But and devotion of players is the right path. they want to spend. just because you can charge a buck for Making a great game with a solid design If you look at most hobbies, they allow something doesn’t mean that you should. and a respect for your player’s wallet is spending to scale to level of interest. The most common mistake I see in still the best way forward. d It is possible to knit on the cheap, the iPhone games I download is that picking up only some needles and a the games are entirely too aggressive in *** ball of yarn at Hobby Lobby. Hardcore attempting to charge their customers. Damion Schubert is the lead systems designer of knitters, on the other hand, may spend Their “free-to-play” games often ask STAR WARS: THE OLD REPUBLIC at BioWare Austin. thousands of dollars amassing huge the player to pay for more energy within He has spent nearly a decade working on the yarn collections, and even fl y across the fi ve minutes of initial download. The design of games, with experience on MERIDIAN59 country to go to sock-knitting conventions human mind is a great pattern-matching and SHADOWBANE as well as other virtual worlds. (yes, they exist). This level of optional machine, and a player will almost certainly Damion also is responsible for Zen of Design, a spend is found in most major hobbies: extrapolate that pattern to the future—and blog devoted to game design issues. email him at woodworking, building model trains, what they will see is a game that is not [email protected]. game developer magazine 061 ADVERTISEMENT

THE REAL MONEY OPPORTUNITY FOR THE ODOBO GAMES DEVELOPER

Ashley Lang, founder and CEO of Odobo, brings more than 12 years’ experience to the online gambling industry and has held senior executive level and directorship positions with two of the largest European online gambling operators. He is regarded as an expert in conversion optimization, player acquisition, affiliate marketing and has been responsible for programs generating millions of customers for regulated gambling operators. Lang has a strong entrepreneurial track record as co-founder of Green Room Media, and is a partner in both poker word game AlphaBet, and iOS game developer, Granville Games.

Odobo launched in late 2012 as The regulated online gambling market the new HTML5 game development is estimated at $35bn annually today Ashley Lang explains how platform and marketplace for the and is forecast to exceed $40bn by the Odobo platform provides regulated gambling industry. Just 2015. In the US several states have game developers with an as the Apple, Android and Facebook introduced legislation to allow online incredible opportunity to developer program models were gambling. The U.S. market for online join the regulated $35bn instrumental in bringing creativity gambling alone may reach $7.4 billion a and innovation from new developers year by 2017, according to Manchester, real-money online gambling - and ultimately driving engagement U.K.-based researcher H2 Gaming (RMG) industry where ARPUs and sales for the host and device Capital. This is too big an opportunity can exceed $100 per player. manufacturers - Odobo aims to do for game developers to ignore. the same in the regulated gambling industry. By enabling a wider group of Odobo allows games developers to top-tier game developers to more easily distribute content through a network bring their game concepts to market of licensed established operators in the highly lucrative RMG industry, around the globe in regulated markets. Odobo aims to fuel innovation and Qualifying developers can produce creativity in game production that will games for real-money play without delight both existing and new players needing to become the licensed attracted by the content to the market. operator or having to develop much of In the process, games developers who the technology required by relying on have previously faced high barriers to Odobo’s multi-million dollar platform entry can enjoy significantly higher and games development kit (GDK). revenues than in other forms of gaming (social, casual, console). Average player values in regulated LUCRATIVE NEW REVENUE STREAMS: US AND INTERNATIONAL MARKETS: gambling are over 15x higher than social and casual gaming. The ARPUs In the Odobo model, games developers Regulated online gambling is finally can exceed $100 per player in RMG earn revenue from two models. When becoming a reality in North America as as opposed to approximately €1.50 gaming operators license games from states such as Nevada, New Jersey and blended average income in the the Odobo Marketplace they pay the Delaware begin to license and regulate App Store. games developer a royalty based upon the activity and the potential once the gaming revenues generated from other states come online is massive. Producing content for the RMG industry their customer’s play of the game. However, the opportunity outside the was previously only available to a Odobo tracks and collects these US is already there in countries such select few game development studios, royalties for participating developers. as the UK, several other European because platform fragmentation, In addition, games developers can take countries, Canada and elsewhere. poor documentation of development an active role in marketing their games There will be a big advantage for US protocols, tightly held specific and driving new players to play their game developers who cut their teeth knowledge of requirements and low games with participating operators in now in open markets outside the US, transparency on distribution and regulated markets. When the games while waiting for the US to continue on revenue generation, provided too developer is also the referrer of the new its path of state-by-state regulation. many hurdles for most developers player, the game developer is eligible to overcome. for an affiliate commissions based With the promotion of a standard upon the lifetime value of the player platform for the development and Odobo has rewritten the rules on the (not just on their games – affiliate publication of games content, players way content is produced, licensed, commissions are paid on the lifetime across the US, and internationally, will distributed and monetised for the value of the referred player across all be able to play the same great games regulated gambling industry. The games and all gambling products). despite being serviced by different Odobo Developers Program provides The combination of game royalties state licensed operators with point-of a transparent business opportunity and affiliate commissions can result consumption regulatory requirements. for the game developer to leverage in ARPUs in excess of $100 per player This is the opportunity Odobo the core technologies of the Odobo to the developer. This new revenue represents for game developers and Games Development Kit (GDK) in the stream can be reinvested in marketing gaming operators alike. production of their game, and the the developer’s games across all simplified downstream distribution monetization channels (social, casual, THE ODOBO GAMES DEVELOPMENT and licensing model of the Odobo and real-money) “The incoming tide KIT (GDK) AND HTML5: Marketplace. raises all ships.” Core ‘commodity’ technologies, which are not specific to any game concept, yet are required in the provision of every game, can now be standardized and provided to the developer at the platform level. These include a random number generator, network communications handling, localisation handling (currency and language), persistence (state handling), authentication and player account communications. ADVERTISEMENT

It is extremely expensive and inefficient The soon to launch Odobo Play is The combination allows game for game developers to need to invest the consumer-facing B2C side of the developers to focus on what they are in core distribution technologies marketplace, which will showcase best at - creating great new games. when they are not specific to their the greatest games, the developers To make the debut into RMG world game concept. Odobo provides these that produced them, and the licensed easier, Odobo gives the games components at the platform level. and regulated online casinos that developer a dedicated account support their play in a discovery- representative to provide direct The ‘tectonic shift’ to mobile gaming as friendly format for players worldwide. assistance and support throughout. players migrate from PC and console This will also provide an optimized game-play to tablets and mobile marketing channel designed by Odobo RAISE YOUR GAME: devices, presents a challenge for the for developers and brand owners to regulated gambling industry as native promote their games to existing and The Odobo model brings together the app distribution of gambling-enabled new audiences and to participate in creative global games development applications is restricted to few the lucrative ‘new player’ affiliate community with the huge revenue markets and significant investment commissions on offer. opportunity presented by the online is spent reaching players on tablets regulated gambling industry and to the and mobiles, only to offer them Flash ODOBO SUPPORT: benefit of games developers, players games which are unsupported on and operators alike. these modern devices. A key part of The platform allows developers to the answer lies in HTML5 and Odobo manage their games by territory, is showing that HTML5 enables select royalty rates and to see detailed developers to produce content that analytics on player activity and rivals the quality of Flash or native detailed statements on their financial applications, whilst being unrestricted performance. This is designed to give by native app store distribution (and the developers visibility into the player fees) and allows play across all HTML5 activity that drives their revenues and supported devices. Content produced to help developers to make better using the Odobo GDK looks and plays products. brilliantly on a large desktop full- screen cinema display, tablets and An operator who has integrated Odobo mobile devices and is available for can select games and with just a distribution to players in all licensed couple of clicks they can license the operator supported markets. developers’ game from the marketplace and install it in their Odobo integrated THE ODOBO MARKETPLACE AND and regulated environment, with the ODOBO PLAY: confidence that it is built on proven and compliant processes, before launching Content produced using the Odobo the game to their players.. GDK is offered to licensed online casino operators via the Odobo B2B A single license agreement covering Marketplace. These licensed operators all content licensed from the Odobo in turn publish the games to their vast Marketplace, simplifies contractual customer bases of qualified players relationships with developers. The and reward the games developer with Odobo GDK allows the game developer royalties based upon the gaming to focus more on the design, concept revenue generated. and user experience of the game allowing greater innovation. www.odobo.com AURAL FIXATION_ 062

a f Damian Kastbauer M sound of even today. Itwasclear thatthe these soundsspeakto you If you were there backthen, signature synthesizedswearing. sound of synthesis. We allremember the the simple languageofsound being communicated to us in internalized thecuesthatwere those ofuswhogrew upwithit chip sounds and 8-bit sonorities, and televisions cranking out home consoles. Withcabinets during thebirthofarcades and on theiconic soundscreated game audiohasachieved hinges the pop-culture reputation that BEFORE It’s likely thatmost of YOU’VE HEARDTHISONE STOP MEIFYOU THINK we sayingtherightthings? that speakto theplayer, are it comes to repetitive sounds much more subtle. Butwhen sound-as-communication is game audioto thepointthat iconic underpinningsofearlier has swiftly replaced most as-representation-of-reality emergence ofvaried sound- within limitations. The creating somethingnew the massive upheaval of constant reinvention during limitations, hasallowed for coupled witheachgeneration’s best practices. Thisspirit, “worked” whenitcomes to on whathashistorically special case instead ofrelying people treat eachgameasa most gamedevelopment; A cavalier attitudesurrounds A HARDLOOK AT THEUSEOFICONICSOUNDSINGAMES STUCK ONREPEAT sound from mychildhood coupled withthecoin-collect much to meuntilIheard it a free throw never meant as I heard itatabasketball game; had reached icon status when limitations, or exposing monophonicplayback dots, themultiple explosions resource chronicling themost Niederquell created a define ourmodernlives. we grew upinandcontinue to living rooms andbowling alleys have goneonto transcend the serve aspositive feedback; they ARIO Sound designerMike . Thosesoundsdon’tjust S M UPER S . P Q-B AC M -M ARIO ERT AN ’ S B gobbling gobbling ROS . level in hear thecoin soundduringa BACK How manytimesdoyou SOMETHING PULLSMERIGHT to augmenttheirgameplay. into thesesoundsandusethem strong thatplayers would tune And thatassociation became so an association for theplayer. represented andhelpedto build way ofreinforcing theactionit sound over andover hada into RAM.Hearingthesame multiple variations ofasound resources orinabilityto load limitation imposedbyalackof of gamesoundwasonce a repeated sounds.Thisaspect the list isthatoffrequently recurring themesthroughout design. Tellingly, oneofthe synthesis and“musical” sound beyond just theearly daysof variety ofexamples thatgo com, whichhosts awide sounds over atTheSonicSpread. memorable andiconic game or extra element thathelps a lower pitch, alayered impact, are created equal.Whether it’s soon find thatnotallfootsteps differently sizedcharacters, we look atthefootstep typesfor into theenvironment. Ifwe seamlessly (and nonintrusively) to makingsure itblends of afootstep issecondary designers, finding the“voice” sound-design process, butfor speaks to thecore ofthe that helpdifferentiate asound versions. Findingthequalities modifications across different it while still allowing for slight aspects thatcan help“brand” your soundsetwithiconic mean you can’t still imbue with sound—butthatdoesn’t that asclosely aspossible game, itmakes senseto honor the designaesthetic for the simulation. Ifreality ispartof more varied thananycurrent game. Reallife isinfinitely able to match them to a specific frequently), butyou wouldn’t be as frequently (ifnotmore heard thesesoundsjust Chances are goodthatyou’ve gust ofwind,orbullet impact. times you hearafootstep, Now thinkabouthow many S UPER M ARIO B ROS . ? restrictions, much to the current file sizeandquality audio willbefreed from the approaching anagewhere SKIPPING We are swiftly MY HEART’SSKIPPING, communicate your intention. the players’ experience and for avaried soundwillenrich finding therighticonic heart train theplayer withaudiocues; real. However, we still needto that theworlds we create are desire to convince theplayer reality. Coupled withthisisthe our perception ofsoundin our gamebybetter mirroring deeply immerse theplayer in real-life equivalent, lets usmore for actionsthatmayhave a pitch, andfrequency filtering, sounds andrandomize volume, able to draw uponmultiple sound through variation. Being more realistic representation of the abilityto move toward a sound designers have gained power through theyears, we sound’s intention. is aclearer indication ofthe these differences, theoutcome communicate to theplayer As consoles have grown in AURAL FIXATION_ player intheworld. varied enoughto immerse the character, while still being iconic soundsthatconvey than to create memorable, experience, we could doworse a lasting impression oftheir quest to leave theplayer with our culture. Inthenever-ending for whathascaptured theearof otherwise, isagoodtemplate of iconic soundsingames,and Looking athistorical examples attention to somethingspecifi c. a tool to gettheplayer to pay reality, andtheuseofsoundas the useofsoundasamirror for designers, we’ll have to balance the worlds we create. Assound the soundswe useto represent will expect more diversity in in space andquality,players everywhere. Withthisincrease delight ofgameaudiophiles receiving end.”—Little Boots especially whenit’s that’s you onthe “Communication simple, isnever com and onTwitter: @lostlab. across theland at LostChocolateLab. minstrel of gameaudio,traipsing Damian Kastbaueris awandering *** _ Damian Kastbauer Damian Kastbauer a f f 065 065 a f M S . P AC -M AN

065 game developer magazine [PRICE]—I can get[OTHER GAME] for [LOWER PRICE].” ever hearis“that[PERCEIVEDGENRE]gameisn’tworth One ofthemost frustrating thingsagame developer will HOW TO AVOID COMPARISON-PRICING PITFALLS 066 game developer magazine RELATIVITY THE POWER OF it beingperceived astoo expensive. sell your game for somewhere between 99cents and$2.99,orrisk the consequences are rather predictable: You’re goingto have to with theconsequences. Inthemobile world, more often thannot, some othergame.Andwhenthat comparison ismade, you willlive Odds are, whetheryou like itornot,it’s goingto becompared to So, to bringthisbackto gamedevelopment: You’re making a game. TRIPLE TOWN: THEPUZZLEGAME THAT WISHEDITWASN’T containing that stone, bythatdesignershouldactually beworth?) with. (Whotheheckknows what an18kgoldnecklace inthatshape, in person onproducts (withhighmargins) thatyou’re less familiar for aprice you’re likely to perceive ascheap,while thenupsellingyou advertisements showing aproduct you are likely to befamiliar with each other. Andthey attempt to reel you into theirstores with Retailers very carefully pickwhatproducts they sellbeside countering and exploiting thisfundamental humantendency. wealthier neighborhoods). life (unless, ofcourse, you spendabunchoftimedrivingaround rarely feel jealous ofyour neighbors ordissatisfied withyour lot in are right—ifyou own thenicest housein your neighborhood,you’ll of whatmanyfinancial advisors willtell you, butthepsychologists the nicest houseinourneighborhood.Thisistheexact opposite displayed nearbyfor $5.99each.It’s allrelative. store carried only theorganic variety andiforganic mangoswere for 79cents, butthatsameapple would seemcheap ifyour grocery ludicrously overpriced at$1.99because conventional apples sell to somethingelsewe’re familiar with.Anorganic apple seems fundamental humantendency to compare everything inourlives edition. We believed thatwe had created somethingspecial,but the power ofrelativity. No,notE=mc very large andgrowing clubofdevelopers whounderestimated but your company greedy. and now you’re gettingtwo-star reviews calling your gamegood price. Butitdoesn’tmatter. Thecomparisons are beingmade simply thinkyour gameisbetter anddeserves to getahigher might offer more content orreplayability. Heck,you might not bevery similarto thegamesit’s beingcompared to, or It’s frustrating for awhole bunchofreasons. Your gamemight THE BUSINESS_ 066 You can tryto fight thisthewaywe did in A hugepartoftraditional retail marketing isdedicated to Psychologists tell uswe can increase ourhappiness byowning If thatsoundsfamiliar, congratulations. You’re partofthe

b David Edery 2 . I’mtalking aboutthe T RIPLE T OWN ’ S mobile experience with intrinsic interest inplaying No more, noless. But atleast thatnumberisderived from your worth? What’s ahealthpotionworth? “character slot” inthiscontext worth? What’s more inventory space R similar to, exactly? More importantly, the things we soldwithin shooter MMOfeaturing permadeathand80-manraids (inFlash!) was generally resistant to comparison. Whatisan8-bitbullet hell turns in the sameasmine.)Sowe gave people alimited numberoffree unlimited turns.(Tricky word, “fair.” Your deﬁnition probably isn’t we knew thatnobodywould paywhatwe believed was“fair” for a momentandcompare ourexperience with REALM OFTHEMADGOD:ANTI-REFERENCENow take market thatvalues itsolittle. spending thetimeto create somethingoriginalandbeautiful ina cents for, withrare exception. It’s hard to beenthusiastic about games thatconsumers are nolonger willingto paymore than99 compared to “most traditional puzzle games”;inotherwords, conversion rate thanmost traditional puzzle games. did itwrong in comfortable with. than most casual gamesachieve, andwe doitataprice we feel general we convert free players to payingusers atahigherrate it seemedto work. We still gettheoccasional complaint, butin dare we charge somuch?!Sowe ratcheted thatbackto $3.99and $6.99 andconsumers absolutely lost theirmindswithrage. How shopper. Itkindaworked. We started outwithunlimited turnsat quality ofthegamewould winover even themost jaded99-cent OT Well, I’lltell you: It’s worth whatyou’re willingto payfor it. We diditwrong precisely because we allowed ourselves to be With allthatsaid,whatIwantyou to understand isthatwe MG aren’t easily compared to otherproducts. What, exactly, isa T RIPLE T T R RIPLE OWN EALM every day,withthehopethateventually the T

OF OWN

THE R . Yes, even thoughwe have ahigher OT M MG AD (relative to anyothergame)and G OD . For starters, T RIPLE T OWN R OT to our MG

ILLUSTRATION: BRENT PORTER ILLUSTRATION: BRENT PORTER example ofthisis,again, can charge whatever you wantfor in-apppurchases.” Theperfect context thatdoesnotencourage suchcrudecomparison shopping. goods thatyou are sellingoffthe“supermarket andinto a shelf” play gamesthatdefycomparison—have anopportunityto liftthe in accordance withhow muchpeople like your game! and therefore your gameshould,too. Whataconcept—being paid units. our revenue bysellingbooster packsofnonconsumable playable our recent games, is to leverage thehelpfulcomparisons. For example, inoneof comparisons isjust onesideofthiscoin. Theotherside,ofcourse, RELATIVITY CAN HELP,TOO Breaking free ofunhelpful game. Ithasto bedifferent. IAP can’t simply beathinly veiled upsellto thefullversion ofthe it is.Ifyou really wantto break free ofthesupermarket, your higher sale price thanksto how extremely engagingandreplayable on thesupermarket shelfandonly managesto achieve aslightly an upgrade to the“paidversion.” Consequently, thegameremains in-app purchase thatisnevertheless perceived byconsumers as derived from thearbitrary fact that your personal opinionofagiven item’s likely value to you. Itisnot opposed to anegative one. benefit ofcomparing ourselves to apositive reference pointas admit thatthey “getit”even ifthey “don’tlike it.” That’s the packs astheirrevenue system. Even sometrolls willgrudgingly respected history ofgameslike MtGthathave usedbooster our fans often springto ourdefense byinvoking thelong and player complains aboutourbusiness modelinourforums, part oftheequationfor SpryFox. Whentheinevitable angry to respond well to this. don’t “payto win,”you “payto playdifferently.” Players really seem library andenjoy amuchgreater diversity ofstrategic options.You and becompetitive, oryou can spendalot to really flesh outyour You can spendvery little (orinourcase, zero) andstill have fun out there whoappreciate thefundamental promise ofthegame: very well understood revenue model.There are millionsofpeople wholly embraced it. between thegames,we like thatdescriptionsomuchwe’ve without cards,” andeven thoughthere are substantial differences To beclear, thisdoesn’tmean“make aF2Pgameandyou In otherwords, free-to-play games—especially originalfree-to- I shouldemphasizethatouravoidance of“payto win”isonly The reason thiscomparison ishelpfulto usisthatMtGhasa H IGHGROUNDS H IGHGROUNDS hasbeendescribedas“Magic:TheGathering T RIPLE T , we generate essentially allof OWN A NGRY . Unlimited turnsare an B IRDS sellsfor 99cents, a gamelike that impacthow your gamewillbeperceived andcompared. Take with allthetraditional trappings, you can still make decisions game,inatraditional genre, to develop atraditional, non-F2P MARKETS MATTER It’s worth notingthateven ifyou’re planning you decidewhat,ifanything,you’ll liken itto. You control to whatyour gameiscompared. platform, willhave animpactonhow your gameisperceived and genre, to your game’s business model,to your game’s launch mercy ofthemarket. Every choice you make, from your game’s WRAPPING UPThebottom lineisthis:You are notpurely atthe coffee++ andstrongly suggests thatyou cannot compare thetwo. In otherwords, 7-Eleven sellsyou coffee; Starbucks sellsyou the experience ofdrinkingitinourcomfortable andtrendy café.” this cupofcoffee because not only isittastier, butyou willenjoy from a mountain springinSwitzerland.”And“You can pay$4for spending afortune onthiswater because we shippeditto you and/or less-refined substitutes. dollars convincing usto disassociate theirproducts from cheaper companies have marketing machinesthatspendmillionsof coffee for $4,orthatEviancan sellbottled water for $3.These something to belearned from thefact thatStarbucks can sell Unfortunately, bitterness won’t helpyou sellgames,andthere’s someone holdinga$4latte saysthatyour $2gameisoverpriced. IF ONLY IWAS SELLINGCOFFEEIt’s easyto feel bitter when certainly won’t. can’t ignore relativity, because your prospective customers on Steam before itlaunchesonmobile phones?Ofcourse, you game be worth several times more money just because it launches platforms like Steam. sold for prices ashigh$10withregular discounts to $5on improvement. Instead, thegamelaunchedelsewhere, andwas not worthy ofahigherprice withoutsubstantial expansion or been branded asamobile phonegameandtherefore somehow And once FTLhadlaunchedonmobile phones,itmayhave that isquestionable for anindiegameofthisscope nowadays. unlikely to sustain ahigher-than-$2.99price point,andeven quality level andwithanappropriate UI,itwould have been releases inthepast few years. You are thefirst person to describeyour gameto thepublic; Their marketers are pushingamessage: “You can justify If you ignore relativity, itdoesn’tmake anysense.Whyshoulda If FTLhadfirst launchedonmobile phonesattheexact same FTL: F F ASTER ASTER T HAN T HAN

LIGHT THE BUSINESS_ L . IGHT

manager for Xbox Arcade. Live gamesportfolio theworldwide was THE has worked ongamessuchas Fox istheCEOofDavid Spry Edery and *** T what… now, thatbitisupto you. can’t escape that.Butrelative to Everything isrelative. We simply competitor if you don’twantto. make something withanobvious in general; you don’thave to how originalyour gamewillbe, course, you are theonedeciding them more favorable. Andof invoke, andhow you mightmake comparisons thosecontexts will game. Thinkhard aboutwhat purchases, ifthere are anyinyour the context ofyour in-game (FTL)—one ofmyfavorite indie OWN M . Prior to founding Spry Fox,. Priorto founding Spry David AD G OD , S TEAMBIRDS b David Edery 067 , and R EALM T RIPLE

OF b

067 game developer magazine 0068068 game developer magazine “mentally unstable.” This wassofar counter to whathe big interview in2008,madehimsoupset thathebecame which, ashetold consumer publication EGMinhislast employees fed, hewould have to make licensed games, control hiscreative destiny. formed hisown company, EIM,because hewanted to as itgrew from 10to 30people. Hequithisstable joband with boththestyle ofgameandthesize ofhiscompany action gamesintheNESera, butquickly became frustrated Warp to thepast Who fightsfor the user? more people like him. force thatwould notbetamed, andwhichwould notbow down. Andinourindustry, we desperately need Eno, known for gameslike D, On February 20,2013,thegameindustry lost oneofits few great iconoclasts. Thiswasthedate whenKenji R equiem for industrypioneerKenji It soonbecame evident thatinorder to keep his Eno begancreating run-of-the-mill E nemy Z ero , and E R no eal S ound he wanted to shockplayers outoftheircomplacency, and made hisbiggest impression. When creating thegameD, creative integrity isalready rather rare, it’s atWarp that he the developer for whichhe’s best known. games wastoo strong. Uponhisreturn, hefounded Warp, working atanauto magazine,buttheitch to return to company andleft theindustry entirely for atime.Hebegan he became independentinthefirst place—so heclosed the He wanted to work onoriginalthings—after all,that’s why wanted to dothat hecouldn’t even gointo hisown office. Though quittinga joborclosing a company because of , passed away,leaving alegacy asacreative

make them think differently about games. (The shocker, in this a game called One Dot Enemies.” He may not have been the case, was a scene involving cannibalism.) He figured the censors firecracker he was earlier in his career, but he was still blazing wouldn’t allow this scene to pass, so he submitted a clean version the occasional trail. of his gold master after the deadline, knowing that he would have After Eno’s death, I was speaking to NanaOn-Sha president to hand-deliver the final disc by plane. The clean version was Masaya Matsuura about the loss, and he told me this: “[English approved, and while he was in flight he switched the discs to the psychedelic rock pioneer] Kevin Ayers also passed away on one he really wanted to show the world, sneaking his cannibalism February 18, and a note was found by his bed which said, ‘You scene into the game under the publisher’s nose. The game then can’t shine if you don’t burn.’ These words fit with Kenji’s went on to sell one million copies in Japan alone. memories for me.” It’s rash, and may seem irresponsible to some—it would most likely be the subject of a lawsuit in this day and age. But how Who will carry on? The traditional game industry—the many of us would go so far to create something we believe in? sector characterized by the developer/publisher relationship, big We’ve seen a few in the last few years, and most of them have budgets, and a focus on developing for consoles—is shrinking, and gone completely independent, eschewing the traditional game companies pumping millions of dollars into sequels won’t save it. industry entirely. In many ways, Eno was the prototypical indie If the traditional game industry wants to survive, it needs to identify developer, shouting in the face of authority. and support its iconoclasts—people who believe in what they’re His next big game, Enemy Zero, was meant to be for the doing so much they will risk everything to make it happen. Eno PlayStation. His team had already started developing for Sony’s proved you could be an iconoclast and still be successful. He proved platform, but he was upset with how Sony had short-changed his that you can have a wildly creative career and still be a success. shipment of D, shipping less than a third of what they said they At the moment, we have plenty of iconoclasts—but aren’t they all would. So he took his revenge at a Sony press conference. As he indies? Notch, for example, has blazed his own path with Minecraft walked out on stage to announce his new title, the screen behind and its business model. It’s not because he fights the power, but him showed a PlayStation logo… which quietly warped into a Sega because he doesn’t care about the power. He has rocketed past most Saturn logo, and he went on to announce his game for Sony’s rival of the big companies that keep developers under their thumbs. But platform, at their own event, simply because they’d backed out he’s outside the traditional game industry. What does Sega or Sony of a promise. He wasn’t going to take any slight lying down. How or Activision mean to him, other than companies that occasionally often have we all had to grin and bear similar indignities, with no make games he might like to play? Who will be Activision’s way to vent our frustrations? When Enemy Zero was finally released on the Saturn, he made Kenji Eno (middle) and Brandon Sheffield (right). a limited run of 20 special editions, and if you paid $2,000 for one, he would hand-deliver the game to you. They sold out immediately, and Eno drove his truck across Japan delivering games to his customers. He had always wanted to have a direct relationship with players of his games, and here now was a way. Today, this is a common high-tier Kickstarter reward—hang out with the developers for a bit, and get your game hand-delivered. Eno did this in 1996. For his next game, Sega wanted to make it an exclusive— whatever it was. Eno had recently met with some sight-impaired folks who liked to play action games, and he asked himself, “What if you made a game that the blind and the sighted could play equally?” So he created the game Real Sound, which is an audio- only retail game, and made Sega promise that if he made the game exclusive to them, they would donate 1,000 Saturns to blind people, and he would supply 1,000 copies of the game. Again, this was an unusual idea for 1996, but he felt the stagnancy of the industry, and went to great lengths to shake it up. champion now? When the founders of Infinity Ward go on to sue His next game, D2, came during the next generation of consoles; their former employers, only to get funding from EA, can our current D2 had moved to the Dreamcast, and he found himself making a infrastructure even support such dissidents? “normal” game again. As he told EGM, “I had all of these kinds of Kenji Eno was that sort of champion, and now that he’s gone, ideas [in the past] because I was seeing the game industry from the we need more people like him. Lots more, if we want traditional outside. But around the time of D2, I felt like I was getting too close games to evolve and change with the times. We need more people to the inside; I felt like I was turning into a normal game creator.” who are willing to take the world on their backs in order to make And so around 1999 he left the game industry yet again, to refresh his it move. Maybe we need to take breaks from games and get some perspective, becoming a creative consultant for a variety of industries. outside perspective, like Eno did. Maybe we need to believe in But he just couldn’t leave games completely alone. I first met ourselves more, and believe in the power of our own ideas. But him in 2005 at an E3 event, even though he wouldn’t go on to no matter what, we need to stop spinning in place with genre release another game for several years. He impressed me as a and theme and play style, and move forward. I’ll leave you with wild force of personality and eccentricities, but also of principle. another line from Eno, given during that EGM interview. His urge to create was strong, so eventually he did come back to games in 2008, but not as the powerhouse he was before. Some of “I want to move forward. You have a short life; you’re going to the fire was gone—Eno was no longer making headlines or fiercely die someday. So I don’t want to waste my time looking back on challenging industry norms—but the creative force remained. something I did in the past.” ic Just last year, for example, I was at a potluck in Brooklyn with some interactive media artist-types, and one was telling me *** about how his company had gotten a lot of press and recognition Brandon Sheffield is director of Oakland, California–based Necrosoft Games, for an iPhone game sendup about just chasing one pixel around and editor emeritus of Game Developer magazine. He has worked on on a screen. They had just made this thing in early 2012. “That’s over a dozen titles, and is currently developing two small-team games for funny,” I said, “Kenji Eno did this already, way back in 2009, with PlayStation Mobile. Follow him on Twitter via @necrosofty. game developer magazine 069 070 game developer magazine -8-1-36o [email protected] w.etroAte.o -OnlinePortfolio 1-888-411-9336 [email protected] www.CenturionArtDev.com Art Development Art CENTURION A GeniusAlternative Specializing inthe5disciplinesofvideogameartproduction

Complete Art DevelopmentandProduction!

Weighting

Keyframe Keyframe • & Rigging Layout, 3D, and 2D - Animation

3D - High Quality High - 3D •

2D - Concept, Design & Illustration - Production Concepts Production - Illustration & Design Concept, - 2D • 3D - High Quality Quality High - 3D • CG & Dev Game for Assets Animation

Competitive Rates based on Overseas Production Overseas on based Rates Competitive •

Communication

Professional Project Managment & Production Production & Managment Project Professional •

Ningbo

3 Production Studios in China - (North) Beijing & (South) (South) & Beijing (North) - China in Studios Production 3 •

USA • Support Customer & Sales Based www.supergenius-studio.com To ArtOutsourcing CONTRACTOR CORNER Creativity & Innovation & Creativity Tailored to your needs your to Tailored S O I D U T S gamasutra.com the artandbusiness ofmakinggames www. forgestudios .com 071 Ad index_April 2013

advertiser index

COMPANY NAME PAGE # SMARTBOX ENTERTAINMENT 070 SUPERGENIUS 070 ART BULLY PRODUCTIONS 070 TECHEXCEL INC 005 BALLY TECHNOLOGIES 051 TECHNICOLOR DIGITAL PRODUCTION 070 CENTURION ART DEVELOPMENT 070 VANCOUVER FILM SCHOOL 013 COSTA IMC 006,007 E3 052 In association with ubm tech PAGE # EPIC GAMES 014 FORGE STUDIOS 070 GDC VAULT 071 ODOBO C3,C4,001 GAMASUTRA JOBS 055 ODOBO Advertorial 062,063,064 PEAK GAMES 002 RAD GAME TOOLS C6 RESEARCH IN MOTION CORPORATION C5 SCOTTISH DEVELOPMENT INT. 032 SHARP SHADOW STUDIO 070 For more information visit www.jointhegamenetwork.com

gd Game Developer (ISSN 1073-922X) is published monthly by UBM LLC, 303 Second Street, Suite 900 South, South Tower, San Francisco, CA 94107, (415) 947-6000. Please direct advertising and editorial inquiries to this address. Canadian Registered for GST as UBM LLC, GST No. R13288078, Customer No. 2116057, Agreement No. 40011901. Subscription Rates: Subscription rate for the U.S. is $49.95 for twelve issues. Countries outside the U.S. must be prepaid in U.S. funds drawn on a U.S. bank or via credit card. Canada/Mexico: $59.95; all other countries: $69.95 (issues shipped via air delivery). Periodical postage paid at San Francisco, CA and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to Game Developer, P.O. Box 1274, Skokie, IL 60076- 8274. Customer Service: For subscription orders and changes of address, call toll-free in the U.S. (800) 250-2429 or fax (847) 647-5972. All other countries call (1) (847) 647-5928 or fax (1) (847) 647-5972. Send payments to gd Game Developer, P.O. Box 1274, Skokie, IL 60076-8274. Call toll-free in the U.S./ Canada (800) 444-4881 or fax (785) 838-7566. All other countries call (1) (785) 841-1631 or fax (1) (785) 841-2624. Please remember to indicate gd Game

Developer on any correspondence. All content, copyright gd Game Developer magazine/UBM LLC, unless otherwise indicated. Don’t steal any of it. Or else. game developer magazine 071 072 game developer magazine well, that’s simple! Just fire up your sosh… bland, huh?You want to upgrade ita bit— and you’re enjoying it,butitseemsalittle else. Anyway,you’ve gotyour free muffin doesn’t apply to free goods,oranything REGULATION (roll your eyes, everyone) Act of2039ensured thatGOVERNMENT as food. That’s okaythough,theRand ingredients anditisn’treally, um,classified muffin. TheBasic version doesn’tlist the get muchofachoice ofwhat’s inthe you want! any FOUD™ Vendotron and take anything 2113, ifyou wantamuffin, you just goup to didn’t you, you past-dwelling rube?Well in muffin on your desk.Ibet you paid for that, could ever wantisfree to use!Take that product, every service, everything anyone but thatwasjust thebeginning.Every scarcity. Itstarted withfree-to-play games, future, we live inautopian societywithout multiple revenue streams, obviously. Inthe mean leveraging userengagementto scale Ha ha,you people are real jokers. No,I Free to e humanity’s greatest problem! this very team isontheverge ofsolving game studio. You maynotyet realize it,but began—right here inthishumble little video thank you, because thisiswhere itall uh, 2113to you). AndI’ve come backto I swear! I’mfrom theyear A.P. 50(that’s, not actually atimetraveler”—but it’s true, thinking: “Thisguyisjust somekook and holo-museum. Hey, Iknow whatyou’re it! Huh,itlooks different thanitdoesinthe is? 2013,you say?Praise Pincus,Imade *BAMF* M. WASTELAND &M.U arrested development_ 072 Now ofcourse, for free, you don’t Hey, anybodyknow whatyear it a Okay, who said hunger? t Okay,whosaidhunger? ad nde r land someone elseand your Gapple Glasses will Mention aproduct byname inperson to latest thing,though,isreal-life impressions. Aug have alot offrienollowers itreally addsup! a FOUDcoin, andyou getonetoo. Ifyou friends whouplikevotes your comment gets #coffee #delicious”andevery oneofyour morning! Nootherbrand will do!#stubbs like, “Gotta getmyStubbs™Coffee this you post somethingonTwitrBookk+, Online impressions work pretty well— impressions onthepeople around you. stream in,though,you have to make free stuff, huh? though—ha ha!Whatagreat wayto earn not like you actually have to payattention different adsatonce, oneto eacheye. It’s you drive. Somepeople even stream two a few adsonyour Gapple™ Glasses while earning FOUDcash™ simply bywatching time, isn’tit?Inthefuture, you could be to work—well that’s wasted unproductive working professionals like us. You’re driving stuff, though.Letmetell you how itisfor f It’s soe with succulent rehydrated blueberries! fireworks, presto, your muffinisbrimming “Upgrade.” After thebitof“Odeto Joy” and muffin backinto the Vendotron andselect get afree upgrade yourself! Plugthat an upgrade inthenext five minutes, you is. Ifanyofthemalsogetamuffinwith about themuffinandhow awesome it for you, haha.Tell allyour frienollowers oh, sorry,your “social,”Iguess istheterm r i If you really wanttheFOUDcash to ends m ented soc a Any schoolchild knows that sy to sh ia a l re re w a l i th your i The ty The And premium experience! time andmighteven beupgraded to the brand andeverything, you’ll getmore on TwitrBookk+, mentioning your shampoo of water, andifyou talk aboutshowering is alsocompletely free. You get100seconds once lived thisway. Inthefuture, showering pay for. Ha!It’s amazingto methatpeople you showered withwater thatyou hadto Streak going.Theirloyalty isreally inspiring! friend to shoutbrand namesatto keep their half hourinthemiddle ofthenightto call a couple folks whoactually wake upevery POINTS for thenext 30minutes! Iknow a go onaRepStreak—earning DOUBLE And ifyou sayTHREEpositive things,you’ll about it,you’ll getanotherbitofFOUDcash. long asyou sayatleast onepositive thing detect thebrand namebeingmentioned!As #pastpeopledressweird #oldskool #backin2013#timetravel muffins to getbackhome.See ya! #jumpin able to make enough impressions about of France! Anyway,Ishouldhave been how Britney Spears istheprimeminister RepStreaks to earnfree Doritos yet, or told you abouthow people can use is runningout.Too bad—Ihaven’t even at [email protected]. other topics at www.above49.ca. Emailhim Magnus Underland writes aboutgamesand Email himat [email protected]. Wasteland (www.magicalwasteland.com). and gamedevelopment onhisblog, Magical Matthew Wasteland writes aboutgames *** And it’s notjust food. ThismorningIbet m ore… Well, looks like mytime ad

ILLUSTRATION: JUAN RAMIREZ GAME DESTINATION: BLACKBERRY 10

It’s where your game belongs.

BlackBerry® 10 o ers a powerful and easy platform for game development. It’s integrated with major development tools and leading game engines, including Unity, Marmalade and Shiva 3D. Plus, the leading BlackBerry 10 hardware produces a visually stunning and incredibly immersive gaming experience that really lets your masterpiece shine.

Learn more developer.blackberry.com/games

© 2013 Research In Motion Limited. All rights reserved. BlackBerry,® RIM,® Research In Motion® and related trademarks, names and logos are the property of Research In Motion Limited and are registered and/or used in the U.S. and countries around the world. Used under license from Research In Motion Limited. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. IT’S HERE 2

Bink 2 Video has up to 6 times the quality than Bink 1 at the same bandwidth. It's also up to 3x faster due to it's SIMD design (70% of all instructions are SIMD in a frame decode) and perfect two CPU scaling. Available for Windows, Mac, Linux, (or any x86 or x64 system), Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PS Vita, iOS and Android. www.radgametools.com 425-893-4300