NOVEMBER 1999 GAME DEVELOPER MAGAZINE ON THE FRONT LINE OF GAME INNOVATION GAME PLAN DEVELOPER 600 Harrison Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 t: 415.905.2200 f: 415.905.2228 w: www.gdmag.com Can Subsidized Hardware Publisher Cynthia A. Blair cblair@mfi.com EDITORIAL Save PC Gaming? Editorial Director Alex Dunne [email protected] Managing Editor ith one of the largest inch monitor and a color printer for Kimberley Van Hooser [email protected] console launches ever about $90 more than a Dreamcast. Departments Editor just behind us and at While I’m glad that more PCs are Jennifer Olsen [email protected] least two more loom- working their way into homes — it cer- Art Director W Laura Pool lpool@mfi.com ing on the horizon over the next 18 tainly will grow the base of casual Editor-At-Large months, many people are speculating gamers — there are a couple of aspects Chris Hecker [email protected] about the features of these next sys- to these incentives that don’t bode well Contributing Editors tems. Upon seeing the impressive fea- for the PC game industry. First, these Jeff Lander [email protected] Paul Steed [email protected] ture sets of the new consoles, some rebate programs are seeding households Omid Rahmat [email protected] have raised questions as to the long- with machines barely equipped to play Advisory Board term viability of the PC as a gaming today’s games. The latest graphics and Hal Barwood LucasArts platform. It’s tough to look at a console audio hardware won’t be found in a Noah Falstein The Inspiracy Brian Hook Verant Interactive 4 spec sheet, read that it has broadband $289 computer, and without these capa- Susan Lee-Merrow Lucas Learning Internet access, amazing graphics and bilities, the systems offer little in terms Mark Miller Harmonix Dan Teven Teven Consulting audio capabilities, a keyboard, DVD of a cutting-edge gaming experience. Rob Wyatt DreamWorks Interactive support, support for electronic software Second, long-term service agreements distribution and backwards compatibil- with online services like Compuserve ADVERTISING SALES ity, and not see that the PC faces stiff could hamper the growth of broadband Western Regional Sales Manager Jennifer Orvik e: jorvik@mfi.com t: 415.905.2156 competition. The traditional strengths access to the Internet, and enabling Eastern Regional Sales Manager/Recruitment of the PC are being co-opted by con- broadband access is essential for grow- Ayrien Houchin e: ahouchin@mfi.com t: 415.905.2788 soles. I for one don’t believe PC gaming ing the online gaming market. International Sales Representative will go away, but the platform must It would be interesting to see a major Breakout Marketing e: [email protected] t: +49 431 801703 f:+49 431 801797 confront these challenges head-on. game publisher like Electronic Arts step ADVERTISING PRODUCTION To grow the PC market, prices must up and subsidize a line of high-end Senior Vice President/Production Andrew A. Mickus continue to drop. Fortunately they are, game PCs, targeting veteran PC owners Advertising Production Coordinator Dave Perrotti and it’s one reason I’m bullish on the and hard-core gamers. In return for the Reprints Stella Valdez t: 916.983.6971 PC’s future. One big reason for recent rebate at purchase, these consumers MILLER FREEMAN GAME GROUP MARKETING drops in PC prices is the direct result of might agree to buy a certain number of Marketing Director Gabe Zichermann marketing campaigns by ISPs like games from EA over a span of years (the MarCom Manager Susan McDonald Compuserve and AOL. Compuserve, for Columbia House music club model), or Junior MarCom Project Manager Beena Jacob example, is subsidizing the cost of sign a multi-year subscription to a per- CIRCULATION Compaq, HP and eMachine entry-level sistent game world like ULTIMA ONLINE. Vice President/Circulation Jerry M. Okabe systems to the tune of a $400 rebate at The latter option is especially intrigu- Assistant Circulation Director Sara DeCarlo purchase. In return, these consumers ing, since the risk to publishers of these Circulation Manager Stephanie Blake (many of them first-time PC purchasers) games is high — developing and main- Assistant Circulation Manager Craig Diamantine agree to subscribe to Compuserve for taining a persistent world is expensive, Circulation Assistant Kausha Jackson-Crain three years at $21.95 per month. These they are more difficult to manage, and Newsstand Analyst Joyce Gorsuch ISPs are gambling that it’s better to more rides on their success than with INTERNATIONAL LICENSING INFORMATION underwrite the cost of these new traditional games. A publisher could Robert J. Abramson and Associates Inc. machines today and recoup that invest- ensure that when the game was built, t: 914.723.4700 f: 914.723.4722 ment through extended online service some percentage of players would be e: [email protected] agreements. The ISP gets reimbursed for locked into the game. A guaranteed rev- its up-front investment from these enue stream over a period of years looks CEO/Miller Freeman Global Tony Tillin multi-year service agreements, it gets good on the books, and in the hit-or- Chairman/Miller Freeman Inc. Marshall W. Freeman “content” in the form of new chat par- miss world of game publishing, that’s President & CEO Donald A. Pazour ticipants, more eyeballs for which it can important to Wall Street. CFO/COO Ed Pinedo Executive Vice Presidents Darrell Denny, Galen A. sell advertising space on its service, and Of course, there’s nothing stopping Poss, Regina Starr Ridley other assorted benefits. If it persuades any of the console manufacturers from Sr. Vice Presidents Annie Feldman, Howard I. Hauben, these indentured servants — I mean, launching a similar rebate program to Wini D. Ragus, John Pearson, Andrew A. Mickus Sr. Vice President/Development Solutions Group KoAnn customers — to stay with Compuserve entice their customers. It may simply Vikören after the agreement is terminated, so be a matter of who strikes first. ■ Group President/Division SF1 Regina Ridley much the better for the ISP. The bottom line is that as I write this, you can buy a brand new 400MHz eMachine with 15- GAME DEVELOPER NOVEMBER 1999 www.gdmag.com New Products: Metacreations intro- duces Carrara, NxN rolls out Alien- brain, and Criterion unveils its next generation of Renderware. p. 7 Industry Watch: Dell snubs ATI, Microsoft shows off its new console, Sony divulges more PSX2 secrets, and Aureal busts out with boards. p. 8 Product Review: Jeff Lander sings the praises of multi-resolution meshes as he reports on Digimation’s MultiRes Toolkit News from the World of Game Development and Plug-in for 3D Studio Max. p. 10 characteristic of certain wildly popular Alienbrain’s server systems require New Products high-end packages. Windows NT 4.0 or later, and clients Carrara will sell for $499 and run on require Windows 95/98/2000/NT 4.0. by Jennifer Olsen Windows 95/98/2000/NT 4.0 and Pricing was not yet finalized at press Macintosh platforms. time, but the servers are expected to ■ Metacreations Corp. cost in the neighborhood of $4,900, A New Chip off the Old Block Carpinteria, Calif. with client systems priced at around (805) 566-6200 $1,900. NxN also offers flexible volume METACREATIONS has unveiled Carrara, http://www.metacreations.com pricing packages. its newest entry into the fray of “bar- ■ NxN Software AG 7 gain” 3D modeling and animation Munich, Germany packages. The name is appropriate X-File Management and More +49 (89) 27-32-24-0 enough: Italy’s Carrara marble has http://www.alienbrain.com been prized for its unsurpassed quality NXN SOFTWARE has announced Alien- since ancient times, back when a huge brain, the successor to its groundbreak- slab of marble was the original model- ing asset management tool tailored Gearing Up for the Next Generation ing environment for 3D artists. specifically for game developers, Carrara is actually the marriage of MediaStation. Remember back in high CRITERION SOFTWARE has revealed the Metacreations’ Ray Dream Studio and school when you wrote your first game? third generation of its multi-platform Infini-D products. So what separates it Maybe you had a few dozen files and 3D development toolkit, Renderware. from the rest of increasingly crowded kept track of them on the back of your By now we’ve all gotten an idea of pack of 3D modeling and animation physics homework. Whatever system what the near future of 3D gaming programs? It has much the same laun- you had, it wouldn’t work on today’s holds both for PCs and consoles. As dry list of features and effects as many development projects which now com- demands on developers increase, plat- of its competitors, including multiple prise thousands of files and mountains forms diversify and pressure builds to renderers, Direct3D and OpenGL sup- of media to manage. decrease development lead time, more port, importing and exporting of most The folks at NxN feel your pain, and developers may be considering outside industry-standard 2D and 3D file for- Alienbrain is their antidote to the resources for help. mats, scads of shaders and presets, and mind-boggling complexity of manag- Renderware is based on a streamlined an SDK for customization. However, ing a game development project. The plug-in architecture that allows develop- one feature that sets it apart is its clean, client/server system includes four mod- ers to mix and match functionality by attractive user interface, which lacks ules to track file management, version overloading the pipeline with their own the screen-clogging blizzard of buttons control, process automation and pro- tools (physics or collision detection, for ject tracking across differ- example,) when they so desire.