POSTMORTEM THE LEADING GAME INDUSTRY MAGAZINE VOL19 NO 10 OCTOBER 2012 INSIDE:HOW TO SHUT DOWN YOUR DEV STUDIO postmortem 26 RAYMAN ORIGINS How do you take a time-tested favorite like RAYMAN and make it fresh and fun all over again? In this month’s featured postmortem, Ubisoft designer Chris McEntee talks about how a small team building new, artist-friendly developer tools ended up turning into the triple-A team that put RAYMAN back on the map. By Chris McEntee features 7 SEEING DOUBLE Adding stereoscopic 3D support to your game isn’t necessarily a difficult thing to do, but doing it without having to render any given scene twice—once for each eye—is a bit trickier. Insomniac Games’s Jim Van Verth explains how the stereographic reprojection system behind RATCHET & CLANK: ALL 4 ONE produced an impressive 3D effect without breaking the framerate budget. By Jim Van Verth 17 SIGGRAPH 2012 HIGHLIGHTS The 2012 Siggraph conference featured new technologies and trends for current-generation game devs and more affordable development tools, which could offer new opportunities for studios large and small. Game Developer correspondents Carey Chico and Mike de la Flor give us this year’s show floor highlights—and how they may shape your work in the future. By Carey Chico & Mike de la Flor 21 GAME OVER Sometimes game studios have to shut down. Carey Chico walks us through his own experience closing his own development studio (Globex LA) and explains how you can make sure your own closing process—knock on wood—is handled responsibly, respectfully, and as gracefully as possible. By Carey Chico departments 2 GAMEPLAN By Brandon Sheffield [EDITR O IAL] Spam Me Not 4 HEADS UP DISPLAY By Staff [NEWS] Correlating curse words with code, and the beauty of the game art asset. 32O TO LBOX By Carey Chico [REVIEW] 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse Pro 34 INNER PRODUCT By Bruce Dawson [PROGRAMMING] Floating-Point Misses 41 GDC NEWS By Staff [NEWS] Game Developer’s Choice Online Awards Honor Raph Koster, WorLD OF WARCRAFT 42 PIXEL PUSHER By Steve Theodore [ART] R.I.P Paul Steed 46 DESIGN OF THE TIMES By Damion Schubert [DESIGN] Depth vs. Breadth 48 GooD JOB By Alexandra Hall [CAREER] Q&A with Adam Orth, new studios, and who went where 49 BUSINESS By Kim Pallister [BUSINESS] Crowdfunding and Emotional Equity 50 AURAL FIXATION By Yann Seznec [SOUND] CONTENTS.1012 Procedural Music VOLUME 19 NUMBER 10 52 EDUCATED PLAY By Alexandra Hall [EDUCATION] REFRACTION 56 ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT By Matthew Wasteland [HUMR O ] The PR Coach www.gdMag.COM 1 game developer GAMEgame PLANplaN // BRANDONbraNdoN SHEFFIELDSHeFFIeld magazINe www.gdmag.com UBM LLC. 303 Second Street, Suite 900, South Tower SPAM ME NOT San Francisco, CA 94107 ShoUtiNG ABOVE THE NOISE IN THE GAME WORld t: 415.947.6000 f: 415.947.6090 SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES Notifications and cross-promotions Obviously companies need to get away from the Gangnam district, FOR INFORMATION, ORDER QUESTIONS, AND are getting out of control. Facebook the attention of players, and the the financial hub which most ADDRESS CHANGES wants my attention, to tell me pop-up ad is still in effective use Korean game companies call home! t: 800.250.2429 f: 847.763.9606 someone I’ve never met wants to across the Internet, compelling People have to be so desensitized e: [email protected] be my “friend.” Twitter wants me to confused parents and homemakers to advertising and visual noise www.gdmag.com/contactus know that someone “favorited” my to give their bank information to just to live their normal lives, it’s EDITORIAL tweet, and then emails me about fake Nigerian princes. If, perchance, no wonder these game notification PUBLISHER that once per week even though you do forget to click on a game for tactics I consider aggressive are Simon Carless e: [email protected] I’ve asked it not to. That’s just life a while, the below image is the sort par for the course in the country EDITOR-IN-CHIEF in the digital age. But games have of thing you might see in-game: where the model was perfected. Brandon Sheffield e: [email protected] gotten particularly bad about this, EDITOR Patrick Miller e: [email protected] especially in the free-to-play space. MANAGER, PRODUCTION On the simplest level of spamming, Dan Mallory e: [email protected] you’ll have to click through an ad ART DIRECTOR for a game to get to the one you Joseph Mitch e: [email protected] want to play. Sometimes the ad COnTribuTing WRITErs Jim Van Verth, Carey Chico, Mike De La Flor, Chris takes up most of the screen, but McEntee, Bruce Dawson, Steve Theodore, Damion this is easy enough to ignore. Schubert, Alexandra Hall, Yann Seznec, Kim Pallister, Worse, I think, is when your iPad Matthew Wasteland or iPhone wakes up to tell you it’s ADVISORY BOARD time to restock TINY TOWER’S Luxury Mick West Independent Brad Bulkley Microsoft Cruise item in the travel shop. Four Clinton Keith Independent hours later, you’ll do it again, not to Brenda Brathwaite Loot Drop mention all the quicker items, so The free-to-play business model The more desensitized one gets, Bijan Forutanpour Sony Online Entertainment maybe you need to actually keep was honed in Korea. I was just the louder advertising has to get to Mark DeLoura THQ Carey Chico Globex Studios those notifications on if you want in Seoul last week pitching grab your attention. Mike Acton Insomniac to play the game properly. It quickly projects, and I noticed something Many have said that the ADVERTISING SALES begins to feel like work—the interesting. I’ve become so trend toward overnotification and mechanic of “waiting to click,” and conditioned to ignore advertising underhanded tactics like always GLOBAL SALES dirECTOR paying to avoid the wait, is pretty that it took me a few days to see leaving a “1” hovering over the app Aaron Murawski e: [email protected] t: 415.947.6227 much the antithesis of fun. It’s a it, but normal, everyday people in is dissipating. I disagree. The more MEdiA ACCOUNT MANAGER compulsion more than a fun loop, Seoul are basically living inside of a we see of these tactics, the more Jennifer Sulik e: [email protected] and that’s why it makes money. real-life pop-up ad. we come to get used to them. And t: 415.947.6227 Some of these games don’t There are some advertising- that may very well mean the tactics GLOBAL ACCOUNT MANAGER, RECRUITMENT ever let you go. There’s that little light areas, but anywhere you will get even more nefarious. I Gina Gross e: [email protected] t: 415.947.6241 number notification on your might pause, like subway stations, believe we can do better, and GLOBAL ACCOUNT MANAGER, EDUCATION smartphone app, telling you how coffee shops, or gas stations, is high-end PC free-to-play is getting Rafael Vallin e: [email protected] many “things to click” you have a wall of advertisements. Even there. But there’s a long road ahead, t: 415.947.6223 waiting for you upon your return— apartment complexes are branded and as companies like Zynga move ADVERTISING PRODUCTION but some games don’t ever get rid by some business or other. For into gambling, I foresee even more PRODUCTION MANAGER of the “1,” even if you’ve clicked this Seoul trip, I stayed with some clever uses of overnotification in Pete C. Scibilia e: [email protected] everything. There’s always at least friends to save money. This is the our future. t: 516-562-5134 one thing that needs clicking, so first building you see upon leaving As a final note, I’d like to REPRINTS the game can constantly shout at their subway exit. thank everyone for reading Game you to return, because otherwise, Developer over the last several Wright’S media Jason Pampell e: [email protected] why would you go back and click? years. This is my 100th issue as t: 877-652-5295 How would you remember that an editor of this magazine, and I AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT clicking is a fun thing to do? The will now be officially stepping down game needs to constantly be in as editor-in-chief, letting my able AudiEncE DEVELOPMENT MANAGER your face, or else you’ll forget protégé Patrick Miller take up the Nancy Grant e: [email protected] how “fun” it is to touch a field of LIST RENTAL reins of the magazine and this Peter Candito corn to harvest it. That is still the column. But I’ll still have my own Specialist Marketing Services current face of free-to-play on monthly column, fret not! It will t: 631-787-3008 x 3020 smartphones and on the web. be called Insert Credit—you can e: [email protected] Even inside our games we’re expect to read it next month! ubm.sms-inc.com getting an incredibly high ratio And this is just the —Brandon Sheffield of noise to content. Why is this? suburbs—45 minutes by train twitter: @necrosofty 2 game developer | october 2012 WWW.UBM.COM heads-up display bad language correlating curse words with code Every programmer has gotten caught cursing at their code (or maybe a fellow programmer). But which languages inspire the most profanity? U.K.- based web developer Andrew Vos decided to settle the question by pulling just under one million commit messages from GitHub and correlating the presence of certain choice words to the corresponding project’s programming language.