ANNIVERSARY10 ISSUE >>PRODUCT REVIEWS TH 3DS MAX 6 IN TWO TAKES YEAR MAY 2004 THE LEADING GAME INDUSTRY MAGAZINE >>VISIONARIES’ VISIONS >>JASON RUBIN’S >>POSTMORTEM THE NEXT 10 YEARS CALL TO ACTION SURREAL’S THE SUFFERING THE BUSINESS OF EEVERVERQQUESTUEST REVEALEDREVEALED []CONTENTS MAY 2004 VOLUME 11, NUMBER 5 FEATURES 18 INSIDE EVERQUEST If you’re a fan of making money, you’ve got to be curious about how Sony Online Entertainment runs EVERQUEST. You’d think that the trick to running the world’s most successful subscription game 24/7 would be a closely guarded secret, but we discovered an affable SOE VP who’s happy to tell all. Read this quickly before SOE legal yanks it. By Rod Humble 28 THE NEXT 10 YEARS OF GAME DEVELOPMENT Given the sizable window of time between idea 18 and store shelf, you need to have some skill at predicting the future. We at Game Developer don’t pretend to have such skills, which is why we asked some of the leaders and veterans of our industry to give us a peek into what you’ll be doing—and what we’ll be covering—over the next 10 years. 36 28 By Jamil Moledina POSTMORTEM 32 THE ANTI-COMMUNIST MANIFESTO 36 THE GAME DESIGN OF SURREAL’S Jason Rubin doesn’t like to be treated like a nameless, faceless factory worker, and he THE SUFFERING doesn’t want you to be either. At the D.I.C.E. 32 Before you even get to the problems you typically see listed in our Summit, he called for lead developers to postmortems, you need to nail down your design. What’s your control cultivate an industry awareness of their scheme? What are the rules of your gameplay? What is your game even contributions that will trickle down to help their about? Surreal Software got those answers down—but it wasn’t easy getting teams in negotiations. We decided to test his there. See what worked and what didn’t work in designing THE SUFFERING. theory. See how Jason does. By Richard Rouse III By Jamil Moledina DEPARTMENTS COLUMNS 2 GAME PLAN By Jamil Moledina 44 THE INNER PRODUCT By Jonathan Blow [PROGRAMMING] Next Generation Platform Miscellaneous Rants 4 FEEDBACK LOOP 48 PIXEL PUSHER By Steve Theodore [ART] Our readers provide quality assurance Beg, Borrow, and Steal 6 HEADS UP DISPLAY 51 NECESSARY EVIL By Seamus Blackley [BUSINESS] Middleware for all, it’s the software stupid, and other epiphanies from the An Inside Job Game Developers Conference, the D.I.C.E. Summit, and developments 27 [SOUND] in-between AURAL FIXATION By Alexander Brandon The Audio Manager’s Guidebook 12 SKUNK WORKS By Michael Dean and Spencer Lindsay 30 [DESIGN] Discreet’s 3DS Max 6 in Two Takes GAME SHUI By Noah Falstein The Flow Channel 56 A THOUSAND WORDS THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE BATTLE FOR MIDDLE-EARTH COVER ART: A SCREENSHOT FROM EVERQUEST II, PROVIDED BY SONY ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT. WWW.GDMAG.COM 1 GAME PLAN www.gdmag.com [] CMP Media, 600 Harrison St., 3rd Fl., San Francisco, CA 94107 t: 415.947.6000 f: 415.947.6090 YOU CAN REACH JAMIL MOLEDINA AT [email protected] EDITORIAL EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Dominic Milano [email protected] MANAGING EDITOR Jamil Moledina [email protected] DEPARTMENTS EDITOR NEXT GENERATION Kenneth Wong [email protected] PRODUCT REVIEW EDITOR Peter Sheerin [email protected] ART DIRECTOR Audrey Welch [email protected] PLATFORM CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Jonathan Blow [email protected] Noah Falstein [email protected] Steve Theodore [email protected] ADVISORY BOARD Hal Barwood Designer-at-Large advantage of the lead times inherent in print media Ellen Guon Beeman Monolith Andy Gavin Naughty Dog to lend perspective to the news, through in-depth Joby Otero Luxoflux Dave Pottinger Ensemble Studios reporting and alternative perspectives from the George Sanger Big Fat Inc. developer community. And when major events hap- Harvey Smith Ion Storm pen, like Jason Rubin’s incendiary address at D.I.C.E., Paul Steed Microsoft ADVERTISING SALES THIS ISSUE MARKS THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF we can cover it as a feature, as on page 32, instead of GROUP ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Game Developer, and while we did entertain the idea trying to fit it into a pre-structured paragraph or Michele Sweeney e: [email protected] t: 415.947.6217 of celebrating it by enclosing a fine commemorative page. Thus from now on, content will dictate form, SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER, EASTERN REGION & EUROPE Afton Thatcher e: [email protected] t: 404.658-1415 plate shrink-wrapped to the magazine, we ultimately and not vice versa. ACCOUNT MANAGER, NORTHERN CALIFORNIA & MIDWEST chose to put in your hands a vital, new iteration of This enables us to track interesting trends as they Susan Kirby e: [email protected] t: 415.947.6226 ACCOUNT MANAGER, WESTERN REGION & ASIA our publication. Like any good sequel, to borrow a develop. For example, middleware is becoming an Craig Perreault e: [email protected] t: 415.947.6223 phrase from Bing Gordon, this Game Developer is one increasingly critical element of game development, ACCOUNT MANAGER, TARGET PAVILION, EDUCATION, & RECRUITMENT third new, one third improved, and one third exactly especially as we teeter between platform genera- Aaron Murawski e: [email protected] t: 415.947.6227 the same. tions. Valve held court at GDC to rapt audiences at the ADVERTISING PRODUCTION ADVERTISING PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Kevin Chanel Numerology aside, there are a couple of strong rea- ATI booth at GDC, demonstrating their Source engine REPRINTS Julie Rapp e: [email protected] t: 510.985.1954 sons to evolve the magazine. Over the past 10 years, from HALF-LIFE 2, which encompasses a wide range of GAMA NETWORK MARKETING Game Developer faithfully served the disciplines of AI, animation, physics, and rendering systems. DIRECTOR OF MARKETING Michele Maguire programming, art, design, and audio, expanding its Criterion showed their solution on an invitation-only SENIOR MARCOM MANAGER Jennifer McLean range of coverage as the industry grew. Now that our basis, offering an infrastructure for 500 game devel- MARKETING COORDINATOR Scott Lyon industry has grown to rival the film and recording opment processes that is generation-agnostic, to be CIRCULATION industries, depending on what you include and delivered as part of a hands-on service program. CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Kevin Regan CIRCULATION MANAGER Peter Birmingham exclude, it’s necessary for us to expand our coverage Similarly, THX is branching out in game audio and ASST. CIRCULATION MANAGER Lisa Oddo again, this time giving business, legal, and manage- video certification through a developer service pro- Game Developer CIRCULATION COORDINATOR Jessica Ward is BPA approved ment issues their own column, titled Necessary Evil. gram. These proactive steps by vendors both in and It debuts on page 51, with the inside scoop on ancillary to the industry offer unique and compre- SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES FOR INFORMATION, ORDER QUESTIONS, AND ADDRESS CHANGES approaching publishers, by Seamus Blackley. hensive opportunities for developers to focus on t: 800.250.2429 or 847.763.59581 f: 847.763.9606 We’re also giving greater attention to overall indus- what they do best, which may be the most important e: [email protected] try issues in the features, as evidenced by this theme at the GDC this year (other than the mantra INTERNATIONAL LICENSING INFORMATION Mario Salinas issue’s story on the business of EVERQUEST on page “We need a Citizen Kane!”). e: [email protected] t: 650.513.4234 f: 650.513.4482 18. While some remark that the MMOG market is too And like good middleware, our own redesign also EDITORIAL FEEDBACK hard to break into, Rod Humble, a VP at Sony Online gives developers a chance to focus on what they do [email protected] Entertainment, lays out exactly how to run a suc- best. A Thousand Words, a brand new section at the CMP MEDIA MANAGEMENT PRESIDENT & CEO Gary Marshall cessful 24-hour service, and manage a subscription back of the book, gives game artists a stage to share EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT & CFO John Day game. But he’s not the only one out there making it their original art from games in development. We’re EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT & COO Steve Weitzner work. At the Game Developers Conference, Mark also introducing First Person comments, for developers EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, CORPORATE SALES & MARKETING Jeff Patterson Jacobs of Mythic Entertainment told me he wasn’t to contribute a line or two on the news of the day, when CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER Mike Mikos PRESIDENT, TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS Robert Faletra daunted by the market’s profile, and by using a pub- they don’t have the time to string together 750 words or PRESIDENT, CMP HEALTHCARE MEDIA Vicki Masseria lic domain brand, he was also able to build and oper- more. All of these changes underscore our continuing SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, OPERATIONS Bill Amstutz ate a successful MMOG, DARK AGE OF CAMELOT. At the commitment to reflect, inform, and represent the full SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, HUMAN RESOURCES Leah Landro D.I.C.E. Summit earlier that month, Sheree Tsao of range of the game development community. VP & GENERAL COUNSEL Sandra Grayson VP, GROUP PUBLISHER APPLIED TECHNOLOGIES Philip Chapnick InterServ International, a developer/publisher serv- Welcome to the second decade of Game Developer. VP, GROUP PUBLISHER INFORMATIONWEEK MEDIA NETWORK ing Taiwan and China, mentioned over lunch that Michael Friedenberg MMOGs are the dominant form of gaming in their VP, GROUP PUBLISHER ELECTRONICS Paul Miller VP, GROUP PUBLISHER ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE GROUP Fritz Nelson region, given the rampant piracy of SKUs, and that VP, GROUP PUBLISHER SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT MEDIA Peter Westerman many publishers are eyeing that market intently.