Day One - Keynote

The first day of the conference came and Rich and I both drove down to find that they didn’t happen to have any breakfast out. Bummer! We ran quick to a local Safeway to grab some sandwiches and made it back before the first keynote started, which was being given by Wideload Games CEO Alex Seropian. Best known for his role in the development of the original Halo game and coming from Bungie to start his own game company, Alex shared a unique view of the independent industry after his experiences in mainstream game development, and again when trying to take his games as an indie to a mainstream publisher. In the case of Stubbs the Zombie, the publisher tried to take the usual run-of-the-mill road saying “well, usually in games you’re the guys killing the zombies, not being the zombie. So why can’t your game have the player armed with huge weapons killing zombies?” Of course this totally destroyed the original idea behind the game – but what mainstream publisher cares about originality these days? Hence, Seropian concludes that “if you want to kill the zombies, you're probably a publisher. If you want to be a zombie, you're one of us." To him, that’s a way to define the independent developer.

Alex also explained why “right now is absolutely the best time to be a developer making games”, citing the fact that demand for games is constantly on the rise and our industry is doing nothing but growing larger and reaching more audiences every single year. The Sims, WoW and GTA have all proven that billion-dollar franchises are possible; high-profile studio acquisitions like Rare ($375M) and Harmonix ($250M) show how valuable game studios are becoming. Distribution channels have exploded to the point where “anything with a screen and an input device can play games”, such as airline seat back displays. InstantAction, Xbox Live Arcade, PSN, WiiWare and the internet in general all offer alternatives to the traditional retail market. One of the best things about the industry is that the majority of the time developers are receiving money to fund projects while still retaining their Intellectual Property. Alex pointed out that "the only other business I can think of where you can sell something and still own it is prostitution. So we're in good company."

However there are still some challenges facing us as developers. The cost of making games is constantly rising, as is the time involved for developing them and the size of the teams that are working on them. There are many more specialized positions nowadays, which also helps to increase team size. Complicated hardware makes games costlier to develop. The manpower involved is directly associated with the cost and risk of a project, meaning the investment goes into the team, which makes a lot of publishers nervous about loosening the purse strings. The market is very hit-driven (I point I’ve heard mentioned at other lectures), competitive and it’s hard to predict success. There’s also the fact that a lot of things are out of our control, such as hardware, manufacturers and the rise and ebb of the retail market.

So what’s Wideload’s way of developing games and beating the market? Alex shared with us his company’s Commandments:

    #1 – Thou shalt establish your creative direction (be original)
    #2 – Be no one’s beeotch (be independent)
    #3 – Own thine IP (think long-term)
    #4 – Keep thine overhead low (small burn rate)

It’s important that you be original. Wideload commonly designs 100 games per year. Obviously they don’t produce 100 games a year, but they design constantly in search of their next title. Every few months they have little design parties where they get together to share ideas, or break into teams to compete. Then maybe they spend a day or two prototyping. One of the first things they do no matter what is make sure to establish their IP before seeking out any funding. Holding on to your IP creates a long-term investment that can be used to increase your company’s value, so creating it and maintaining it is very important. Wideload maintains a small team of less than 20 developers to keep their overhead low, while partnering with external developers to increase production. They’ve built their team culture to incorporate these remote developers into their team environment, extending to them tools like Perforce and engine tech. They usually end up licensing their game technology, as their focus is on the IP, not the engine creation. In their experience working with partners, they’ve found it creates easy-to-predict overhead, as it’s a fixed cost, and easy to compartmentalize pipelines.

In closing Alex stated that if anyone had asked him two years ago whether starting up one’s own company was possible, he would have said “doubt it” – now however his response would be “Absolutely”

_{(additional source – Shacknews)}

Day One - Lectures