Click here to view more event footage by design3.

design3 is celebrating game development this "Dev-ember" (December) by offering 50% Off memberships and giving away prizes worth over $2,500 all month long. Prizes include: Xperia™ PLAYs (on the Verizon Network), Kinects for Xbox 360, games, design3 memberships and exclusive design3 T-shirts. Learn more about the month long design3 "Dev-ember" giveaways.

The New York Games Conference is focused very heavily on the business aspects of mobile and social game development. Given the prevalence of techniques from mobile and social migrating to console gaming, it is useful for game developers of all interests to learn the terms and acronyms common in this space, such as MAU, DAU, ARPU, K-factor and many more, as well as learn how game developers are shaping ongoing relationships with their players in social and mobile games.

To summarize several of the main points discussed during the day: the sector is maturing and there is less room for small start-ups, major industry players have staked out territory in social and mobile game development, there is a large difference between the skillset needed to make the game initially and to manage the ongoing game design tasks and metric analysis after launch, the task of having potential players discover your game is difficult given the state of the app stores and recent limitations of viral promotion of games, and the choice of which platform for which to develop your game needs to be driven by factors deeper than a summary statistic such as adoption rate.

Acronyms and terms

Metrics – data collected to inform the effectiveness of design decisions and to drive ongoing feature development of games deployed on social networks

MAU – monthly active users - a measure of how popular a game is. At its peak Zynga’sCityville had over 100 million MAU as compared to World of Warcraft’s11.4 million active subscribers in May 2011

DAU – Daily active users – a measure of the ‘stickiness’ of the game play, drawing players back to the game repeatedly as well as a way to examine the effectiveness of viral touch points and marketing campaigns

ARPU – Average revenue per user – a measure of how well the company is monetizing the game play across the user base. ARPUs in the range of 4 to 8 cents are commonplace

K-factor–A measure of a game’s success at viral marketing as a means of expanding its userbase. A K-factor of 1 designates that each register user will bring 1 new registered user in to the game (who will in turn bring in another user and so on.) For more details see http://www.stateofse...xt-web-economy/

Touch points–These are areas in your game design that utilize the interaction between the player, your game implementation and the social features allowed by the underlying platform API to help drive notifications about the player’s achievements out to her social graph

Discovery–The process by which a potential player learns of, searches for and finds your game. Current app stores are very bad at this.

Virality–A measure of how well the attracts new users by the game play either causes the player to advertise the existence of the game to her friends or how well the game utilizes the platform API to advertise the existence of the game to its friends

Cloud gaming–A new game distribution paradigm where the game runs completely on servers, including video frame rendering, and the client is used simply to handle input reads and displaying video streams

Mid-core–A game genre emerging on social network platforms that utilizes the social media platform but incorporates higher strategic demands upon its players

UDID – Unique Device Identifier. Deprecated by Apple for future iOS game development, leading mobile developers to seek new methods of tracking players for metrics collection..


Notes from the sessions

The State of the Games Industry - View From The Top

The first session attended was titled “A View from the Top” and was designed to let mobile and social game company executives discuss what the perceived as the direction the industry was headed. The panel was made up of Matt Hulett, GameHouse (Real Networks); OwaisFarooqui, Atari; Julie Shumaker, RockYou; Sean Spector, GameFly; Omar Abdelwahed, Ubisoft Entertainment and was moderated by Eric Goldberg, Crossover Technologies.

The discussion was lively as Goldberg kept the panelists on their toes. He started by asking if there was still room for start-ups to be successful in the social network games space. The panel advised that the bar has been raised quite high for a game entering this market. They thought there is still room for small developers to find a niche market and serve it well, but that the gold rush years were behind us. The panelists mentioned that there are still under-served markets in the social network games space, and that oddly enough, it is the market of 18-34 year old males that is so well served in other sectors of the industry. The game company, Kabam!, has emerged as a leader in the newly emerging mid-core game space by building games on Facebook that require more strategic decisions of their players.

Goldberg also asked the panel about the choice of mobile platform development and whether there was more opportunity in the emerging Android market. Across the board the panel agreed that no matter which mobile device you choose to develop for, the prime hurdle to overcome is discovery, getting players to find your game. The game stores serve developers quite poorly in this regard. Short of being in the top ten for the category that your game is in, it is very difficult to build awareness of your masterpiece with potential buyers. Farooqui drew a comparison with traditional game retail saying that in this environment there is no way to buy prime locations. There are no aisle ‘end-caps’ in a virtual store, just a single very long shelf. The volume of products available makes it extremely difficult for any game to rise up to become an industry standard. And once one does, such as Angry Birds, it tends to stay at the top, reducing the likelihood of other games drawing players.

When asked to compare the development opportunities on iOS versus Android, the panel was surprisingly cautious about Google’s platform. Everyone acknowledged that Android has momentum, but the challenge from a development perspective is the lack of a unified hardware platform and single store. From a development perspective, these leaders see the Android platform as bringing back the ‘bad old days’ of mobile development with developers needing to cut deals with multiple distribution channels and to support a multitude of hardware specifications.

They acknowledged that Google’s handling of Android was what the platform needed at this time, an openness that allows content to easily be developed, but predicted that it is likely that the search giant will need to shift gears in the future to a more curated market place. However, the panel was also interested to see how Google would act as a publisher. Both Facebook and Apple take a portion of every sale. Shumaker bemoaned the fact that this was the only business model those companies were set up to do. The idea of Google potentially offering a greater share of income to developers by leveraging its impressive ad serving capabilities clearly is keeping these executives from discounting a future with Android.

When Goldberg asked about the apparent lack of innovation in the space Abdelwahed (Ubisoft) was unapologetic. For these leaders the perceived future in the social network space is going to be traditional industry players bringing their IP over from consoles and PC gaming. Shumaker was quick to point out that the innovation is taking place after launch, not necessarily in the initial development. While it is important to have a solid game, she stated that the skillsets needed before launch and after launch, where the game is running as a persistent service, are significantly different. Before launch there are all of the needs for designing game play and infrastructure but once the game is in the players’ hands, there is a greater need to focus on how users are playing the game and to tune the game play and to introduce features to increase retention and to monetize the player experience.

If the perceived closing of the space is discouraging, there is a silver lining for developers looking to carve out a business for themselves. The market is still young and the infrastructure to make these products easy to implement and manage is yet to be built. There is tremendous opportunity for those looking to build the core technologies for this market segment. All of the panelists were interested in seeing greater use of HTML5 to drive discovery and if someone can create a better virtual store-front, there will a huge market for your product.

Finally, it is useful to remember that Social and Mobile game production techniques are moving in to other game segments as publishers and developers outside of this space look to capitalize on the monetization models that have proven successful and produced industry juggernauts over the past three years.

Debate Club: Is there a need for portable consoles like PS Vita or Nintendo 3DS after the meteoric rise of iOS and Android smartphones?

The next session pitted Gene Hoffman, CEO, Vindicia and Alex. St. John, CEO, Hi5 supporting the need for portables against Andrew Schneider, President, Live Game rand Teemu Huuhtanen, EVP, Sulake Corporation (Habbo) who argued the supremacy of the smartphone and eventual demise of the dedicated portable.
An informal poll was taken before the session with half of the respondents supporting the pro console side and half coming down on the smartphone side of the debate.

Arguing for the pro side Hoffman and St. John scored points by playing to parents’ fears, stating that as long as they are used as digital babysitters, there will be a market for devices that are a safe sand box. They asked “Do you want your child to possess a device that is constantly connected to everything the internet has to offer?” Furthermore, they posited, “aren’t there some things on your phone you would rather your children not see.”

Gaining momentum and seriousness, they also argued that some games shouldn’t be controlled via a touch interface. Dedicated control buttons and sticks still have a place in the world of 3D navigation and shooter style gameplay. They then returned to the reality of the business of game development and pointed out that targeting a known hardware specification was much easier than dealing with the severe fragmentation in the Android market and that there was not a clear path to successfully earning a living on the smartphone platforms for the majority of developers.

They closed their time by turning their attention to the difference between the focus of a dedicated device versus the multiple purposes of a smartphone. St. John was adamant that a notification from other apps interrupting game play was as bad as game notifications interrupting his other uses of his smartphone.

Speaking in favor of the position, Schneider and Huuhtanen pointed out that smartphones are near ubiquitous. The adoption graphs of the two technologies show a definite decline in the purchase of dedicated portable consoles that is directly offset by the rise of in smartphones. Furthermore, the technical advantage of the dedicated consoles is being reduced by high quality graphics chips and fast processors being released for mobile devices. As more games are made for mobile with engines like Unreal, gamers will come to expect the same experience from mobile as console.

With regards to the question of whether children should have cell phones, Schneider pointed to the ‘pass-back’ effect where a parent will pass the phone to a child in the back seat to keep them amused while traveling. The argument is that with the parents having the device on them at all times, it will inevitably become to be seen as a game console. Furthermore, the diversity, quality, convenience and cost of games will be a major driver for adoption of the technology within families.

Huuhtanen rounded out the argument by pointing out that Sony has been relatively unsuccessful with its portable devices and that Nintendo, while successful in the past, has stumbled with the release of the 3DS. The physical fatigue of 3D for some users limits its appeal, and he further pointed out Nintendo’s over reliance on re-purposing its catalog of intellectual property.

In the end, both sides managed to convince some of the supporters from their opponents. The debate ended, and the moderator swears he didn’t rig the results, in a tie.

Sifteo – Special presentation by David Merrill, President and co-founder of Sifteo

For me, the quote of the day was made in this session: “Bad interface design violates the Human Spec Sheet”

Merrill is an MIT interface guru/entrepreneur who has commercialized his research and started a company named Sifteo. The focus of his company is leveraging new user interface mechanisms to get computers to work more in the way that we work as humans. The Sifteo cube set is interesting in that it allows us to interact with physical objects that have a digital core.

The reason this should be interesting to you is because Sifteo is a new platform for game development. It is made up of blocks with a processor, display and sensors that can detect which blocks are next to each other. The platform was just released to the public and there is an SDK based on C# and the MonoDevelop platform for interested developers.

Visit Sifteo.com/developers for more information.

Cloud Gaming – Evolution or Revolution?

The next panel in the track I attended was with panelists David Wilson, GameStop;Tom DuBois, OnLive; Sean Kane, Counsel, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP; Eric Anderson, Samsung Electronics; Chris Lee, Publishing VP, En Masse Entertainment and moderated by Michael Cai, Vice President of Video Games, Interpret.

We already do a lot of our work in the cloud, email, document production, video sharing with friends, keeping up with one another’s lives. How about playing games? You could claim we are already there through matchmaking services like Xbox live and digital distribution platforms like Steam. But this session was about moving the game processing and rendering in to the cloud as well and the production and legal implications for this shift.

Wilson stated the central thesis for this panel, “It is important to keep in mind that cloud is a tool, not the tool. It is good for some things and not for others.” As such, it will end up as a part of a larger corporate strategy for distribution of games.

From a developer’s standpoint, one advantage of cloud processing is that it places PC gaming on an even footing with console development. It will allow programmers to target a single spec on the server side and know that the system is consistent. Lee stated that it’s important to maintain a flexible stance from a development and a publishing end. While there is no guarantee the cloud will be successful for every developer of in distributing for every platform, there will be some combinations that will be profitable. He concluded that there are advantages to targeting that single hardware specification because “right now developing for the PC is like developing for Android. It’s hard to be successful.”

Anderson stated that Samsung is investing in cloud infrastructure because the projected growth of smart TVs is high. This might provide a development and distribution path for a percentage of the market segment that do not want to purchase a console, but still want to play a wide array of games in the living room. The path is yet to be blazed in this regard, but electronics manufacturers are forming strategic partnerships based on cloud distribution of casual games.

Cai asked the panel “Is cloud gaming a way to render existing games or is it a way to change the way games get designed?” The panelists initially agreed that the focus is distribution rather than new game play possibilities. There are hurdles to overcome first such as multiple input devices within a single binary. But upon further prompting one proposed extension of Cloud computing is the ability to take a single game and play across the same game across multiple devices. You could start playing a game on your TV, leave the home and the same game is being played, appropriately scaled back for mobile device/tablet, or even showing up on the embedded screen in your refrigerator. It sounds pie in the sky, and I don’t know that I want to play a game in my kitchen, but it’s interesting in theory.

A major limitation to adopting this method as the sole means of distribution is broadband policy in the United States. In order to stream the video for a HD data stream the client needs 3Mbps download, but there is still a significant percentage of households at less than 2Mbps. In this emerging sector the question is market timing. Finally, the logical place to experiment with this is game trials with digital distribution to consoles, PCs for full game, or episodic content in the cloud.

Smart phones and handhelds – latest in games for portable devices

The next session was with panelists Sean Vanderdasson, SVP, Wildtangent; Volker Hirsch, Research In Motion (RIM); Charles Yim, Google; Stanley Kwon, CBS Interactive; Nathan Camarillo, Freeverse and moderated by Billy Pidgeon, Senior Analyst, M2 Research

The session opened with the panelists mentioning the rise of mid-core gaming and marveling at the ARPU being generated by Kabam!which was significantly higher than other players in the social space. The major point raised here is the migration of console style game play to both social and mobile, markets that are traditionally dominated by more casual game mechanics.

When asked if introducing new people to gaming led to higher revenues, the panelists skirted the issue, instead focusing on platform growth and usage patterns. Kwon was quite optimistic about tablets as an emerging media entertainment device and predicted significant growth in the larger format.Echoing comments made in the portable console/smartphone debate from earlier in the day, Vanderdasson was adamant that game play on smart phones needs to be easily interruptable; arguing that developers should not assume their game is the primary application being used. Tablets, though, have a different usage pattern. The greater screen size and the ability to focus on a single task on a tablet for a longer period of time allows for deeper experiences to be created. The business side note is that the price point for these products could conceivably stabilize at a $20-$30 price point instead of the unsustainable for creators$2.99 – free price point.Finally returning to the question, Hirsch noted that except for Angry Birds, there are no huge franchises that started on this platform. The conclusion he drew is that in this area it is quite difficult to make money.

An interesting side comment bubbled up through the panelists with regard to UI in touch games. The panelists agreed that a very large challenge facing developers is the creation of new user interface paradigms. There was general disapproval for the virtual joystick interaction on screen. It is likely that a creative developer who finds a new interaction paradigm on touch will have an advantage in the near term.

Pidgeon asked if ads were going to help developers monetize more players. Yim drew an interesting parallel of the current state of the games industry to the early days of cable television. The fracturing of the media space into multiple channels allows for there to be more niche content, but that getting the content to the player does not equate with successfully getting them to pay for the game.Yim went on to state that the challenges facing developers in this area continue to grow as more potential revenue channels emerge. For example in 2008/09 the main drivers of revenue for iOS platform offerings was paid download and advertisements. Now the main driver is in app purchases. He wouldn’t hazard a guess as to what might be the next revenue model. The warning is that developers need to be nimble in thinking how they are going to keep the revenue stream flowing so that they can keep creating new games. He concluded that “Being a game developer is much more complex than it was just two or three years ago.”

The moderator then set his sights on the opportunities in the android market, and asked “is it just numbers?”

This brought up a lively discussion. The overall feeling in the room was that right now, Android is too fragmented a platform to develop for if you are serious about surviving as a developer.Yim began by arguing that the question comes down to distribution and monetization. Just because you acquire a user does not mean you can monetize the user. He offered that the most attractive deployment option might be the Barnes & Noble app store for the Nook. Hirsch followed on with the question every publisher needs to be asking , “Is Google going to go Apple route?” and develop a single Android store. Google has been a hands off partner, allowing for many different stores to exists from different providers. But the flip side is that this makes some industry players remember the “bad old days” of an unfavorable development environment of different platforms, different handsets and most importantly different publishing and distribution deals.

Viral gaming – trends in discovery and promotion

Closing the day out was a panel with Jeff Anderson, Majesco Entertainment; Mihir Shah, Tapjoy; Douglas Yellin, Large Animal Games; Daniel Cheng, Greystripe; and moderated by Brad Hargreaves, General Assembly.

The panel started by examining what had happened with recent changes in patterns of discovery of new games after Facebook changed the manner that developers could push notifications to users’ walls. Facebook users loved that they stopped getting new notification from games, but for developers a major viral channel for discovery had been removed.

Anderson noted that games are driving revenue for Facebook.Accordingly, Facebook will be likely be adding back in some features that developers can use to attract customers through either the ticker of possibly sponsored stories.

With the changes on the Facebook platform, developers have had to innovate to overcome the limitations imposed upon virality. Yellin argued that as a result developers have needed to up the quality of the game to allow the developer to ‘own’ the customer, to make them willing to share their accomplishments in the game with their friends rather than push the notifications out to their news feed from the game directly.The panel agreed that they had witnessed ‘notification fatigue’ with players willing to pay directly rather than spam friends for in game benefits. Yellin went on to give the example of an in game ‘re-mix’ station that Large Animal created which allows their players to generate new content and then to share that with their social network. He stated that this one viral touch-point accounted for 57% of their new traffic generation.

As a group, all panel members agree that there has been a shift away from incentivized campaigns. They wondered if there are certain ads that it makes sense for a player to interact with to unlock content? The general feeling of the panel was that using ads to drive player acquisition was a losing proposition. However, this panel also acknowledged the great difficulty relying on users finding your product in the infinite shelves of an online store. At present they suggested that the best hope for the future is to use ‘vertically striped’ HTML 5 sites to drive traffic toward your game. This could leave companies like Facebook, Apple and other hub owners starving for revenue as stores diminish in importance as the place new products are discovered.

The panel concluded with a final question – is there room for small developers in the social games space? There was agreement across the panel that the land grab days of social game development are over. The bar for content is set too high and the likelihood of gaining an 50 million MAU level is low. Given that USA Today recently reported that Zynga’s next title, Castleville, boasts movie quality production and a soundtrack recorded with a 75 piece orchestra and a choir, I am inclined to agree with the panel. But the panelists also stressed that there are still plenty of opportunities in mobile development. Developers wading in to those waters will need to keep in mind that the development cycles are brutally short, with development complete in one to two weeks and patches delivered in a single day.

Written by Bill Crosbie, photos and editing by Drew Sikora

We’ve also added a simplified editor for creating all the basic sound effects in a game. With this new editor the sound designer can setup a playlist, apply randomization, and assign bank and resampling settings all in the one screen. This will really speed up the creation of assets in projects large and small.

About The Behemoth

About BattleBlock Theater

Interview with Dan Paladin

How old were you when you first started drawing?

Can you tell us a little bit about how you got started in the games industry?

Who would win in a fight, a pig or a rooster?

You have a very unique style to your artwork, what has been your biggest influence?

What tools do you use?

I heard a rumor that you can walk on water, does that make surfing easier?

How do you approach creating a new character and what is the process you follow?

What does your art pipeline look like, from creation to game?

What advice would you give to aspiring game artists?

When they allow human cloning (it can't be far off, can it?) can I clone you and then keep your clone in my closet to churn out artwork on demand?

I heard that your company, The Behemoth has a very unique work structure with flexible working hours and relaxed working conditions. Is this true and if so how does it work out?

What do you look for in potential employees at Behemoth?

Can you tell us a little bit about your latest project, Game 3?

Interview originally conducted in April of 2010. Interview was delayed in posting by the ineptitude of a certain editor in chief who will go unnamed. Oh wait, there's only one. /facepalm
- Gaiiden

Mobile payments allow players of your online game to use their mobile phone account as an alternative to credit cards or online payment services to “pay to play”. Simply using their mobile phone number as their payment account number, charges from you will appear directly on their mobile phone bill and the purchase can be fulfilled in real-time.

When you consider that there are nearly as many people with a mobile phone numbers as there are people who have credit cards all over the world, it makes sense to offer a mobile payment option to your gamers. With the relevance of a mobile phone number and simplicity of such a transaction, many consumers of online games and services prefer using mobile payments over alternatives. That said, while mobile payments are simple, secure, and immediate, they are very different than credit card payments. So what do you need to know to make them work for you and your gamers? Here are the top six things you need to consider.

1. User Experience

2. Conversion Rates

3. Mobile Carrier Regulations

4. Transaction Fees and Other Costs

The amount of the transaction fee and your resulting net payout will vary – potentially by large amounts – by mobile payment provider. Be sure to compare the net transaction fee, factoring in both the carrier withholding and the mobile payment provider transaction fee. You’ll find that the combination of these two numbers may reveal some hidden fees or hopefully an opportunity to improve your margins. When you’re talking about boosting your bottom line by 200 basis points or more, that can represent a significant win. Also be wary of monthly fees or setup charges. The majority of mobile payment providers do not charge setup or monthly fees. That’s good news for you because it means there is really no tangible barrier to entry for you to offer mobile payment options to your game players.

5. Geography

6. Integration

We’re not advocating for the replacement of credit cards or PayPal as direct payment methods, but rather are suggesting that you consider mobile as another necessary payment alternative. With these six things in mind, all that’s standing between your game today and your game MAKING MORE MONEY is the easy path to accepting mobile payments. So hit the road, go mobile, and get paid.

If you are already accepting direct payments in your games and want to get started offering mobile payments today visit Mobile First. You can expect implementation to take one or two days to fully complete and test. For other resources that aggregate multiple direct and indirect payment methods, including mobile, check out some of the “one-stop shops” like OfferPal, Offerwall by Boomerang, and SuperRewards. For payments as well as distribution assistance check out Viximo.

If you have any questions along the way, I’m happy to answer them. Just drop me a line at AskKevin@mobilefirst.com.

About the author: Kevin Spector, Chief Executive Officer, Mobile First
With an extensive background in mobile content that spans both the consumer and carrier ends of the value chain, Kevin Spector understands how to unlock the commerce potential of the mobile phone. As CEO of Mobile First, Kevin is leading the team that brought to market an infinitely scalable mobile billing and payment platform that unites merchants with consumers all over the world. Kevin’s vision is to help harness the international market potential merchant’s can derive from mobile billing, establish mobile as a ubiquitous payment mechanism, and to deliver consumers a highly convenient and secure payment option. Kevin joined Mobile First in 2008 from Funmobile, a leading International direct-to-consumer mobile content provider. As Funmobile’s vice president of business development, Kevin built industry relationships and directed the development of the company’s transaction processing systems. Before Funmobile, Kevin worked in client management at m-Qube through that company’s $250 million sale to VeriSign. Prior to VeriSign he spent five years in strategic business development roles at early-stage interactive marketing firms. In addition to his strong mobile and online background, Kevin has a solid foundation in finance and held investment positions at Merrill Lynch and Fidelity Investments. Kevin graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics.

Conference Background

Within this area you will find dozens of game development companies, with a heavy focus on middleware development from companies like Epic Games and Emergent. The area also hosts many universities that have game development programs like North Carolina State and University of Chapel Hill. What you have here is pretty much a self-contained and sustaining game development ecosystem as the schools and companies work closely together to foster development of the next generation of game developers.

Helping in this endeavor is the Triangle Game Initiative, which is also the driving force behind the TGC. The Initiative is a group of local developers not only looking to foster development at the education level, but the government level as well with tax breaks for local companies, for example. TGI is showing the rest of the industry what is possible if local developers band together for a common goal.

When TGI sought out sponsorships from local colleges/universities for the conference, they decided there was no reason to go with just one, but form a group program involving all that included some form of digital media education, which is pretty much all of them – NC State and Chapel Hill in particular have been investing in computer graphics since the late 1960s. NC State also has a Digital Games Research Center which is the primary focus for students attending for the Game Development and other related Bachelor degrees from the college. Wake Tech Community College, the largest community college in the region, offers an AAS degree in Simulation and Game Development. Chapel Hill, as mentioned, runs a computer graphics program and Duke University boasts strength in computational geometry and AI, with a fully-enclosed, six-sided virtual reality environment.

All these schools are participating in support of the Game Development University, which were targeted sessions that can be attended by those who have purchased a discounted Student Pass ($25/day) and provide students knowledge they can apply to their students and continued growth in game development.

Conference Overview

The venue for the event was primarily located in the Marriott hotel’s ballrooms and conference rooms clustered together on the main floor. A few panels and the keynotes were held across the street at the convention center in one of two rooms. Despite the rather small size of some of the Marriott rooms, I didn’t have much trouble getting in to any of the sessions I was looking to attend when arriving reasonably early (~15 minutes). I do wish they had been able to set up registration in the convention center lobby rather than the hall outside the Marriott ballrooms, as that made things a bit crowded and confusing (“are you standing in line?” “no, just chatting with some friends, go ahead”). Also the signs for the conference were not readily apparent, at least to me. I must be too used to big banners with huge conference logos ? While I didn’t mind traveling between the convention center and hotel for sessions (it's not a long walk or anything) it would be nice to have it all in one place.

TGC had a pretty sizeable expo thanks to all the companies in the area. I didn’t spend much time in there but the stalls were all set up well and there was still plenty of room for people to mill about. Exhibitors ranged from schools to indie developers to robotics clubs to large companies. There was a networking lounge towards the center that had beanbags and chairs (and lollipops!) that hosted gatherings for students and pros alike to partake in various activities like resume reviews. Companies on the floor were also taking resumes from students as well.

Obviously it’s not a game development conference without some parties, and TGC did not disappoint. The local IGDA chapter hosted an opening party at a private bar for anyone to attend, which was a wonderful networking event for any students that happened to stop by (I met a few). The parties the two following nights were reserved only for VIPs and premium pass holders, but that served the purpose of allowing the industry pros a nice tight gathering in which to power network over Mediterranean food one night and yummy appetizers the next.

Select Session Coverage

Breaking into the Games Industry (Gaiiden)
Go Procedural: A Better way to make games (dgreen02)
Practical Direct 3D 11 Tessellation (dgreen02)
How to Qualify your Game Publisher (dgreen02)
Raising Capital to Build a Game (dgreen02)

Breaking into the Games Industry

I’ve listened to a countless number of panels like these, and they all generally spout the same stuff – generally. Yes, this panel was no different, but there are always some new things that crop up here and there that make me sit up and go “hey, haven’t heard that one before!”. Sometimes it’s even as simple as being worded differently but in a way that makes way more sense. The panel for this talk was huge – with seven people on it. Given that panels can quickly digress into la-la land, I wasn’t holding out much hope for an hour long session. But I was pleasantly surprised at the ability of each panel member to stay focused, on topic and succinct. So that’s mainly where a lot of the greatness comes from in this session.

The panelists were John Austin (VP Tech, Emergent); Keith Friedly (Designer, Insomniac); Sandy Dockter (HR, Atomic Games); Paul McLaurin (Red Storm); Tim Johnson (Recruiting Manager, Epic Games); Ryan Stradling (Sr Dev Dir, EA); Suzanne Meiler (Dir Design & Game, Vaco). Each started by describing how they got into the industry:

Keith graduated from the second class of DigiPen in 1997 and actually took a job over in Belgium as a programmer. Yes, he was so dedicated at wanting to get into games he actually left the country. He returned to the US as a designer to work for Sony around 2000 before ending up at Insomniac.

Sandy did an unpaid internship to get the experience she needed. She recommends you do anything you can to show what you can do, HR people love that.

Paul graduated University of Chapel Hill with a Masters in Computer Science, but it was a summer internship that gave him the experience he needed to land a job out of college, stating specifically that he learned more in that one summer than his entire college career (but still recommends going to school!)

Tim simply had the connections, knowing people at Black Storm when they were growing their company and asked to help.

Ryan had to take a round-about approach, having no luck submitting resumes out of college with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. He took a job outside the industry in 3D hardware until he was offered a position at EA 11 years ago. Now he runs the local EA studio in Raleigh. He says to keep the passion alive and always have something playable ready to show.

Susan went to school in Raleigh for communication and was out at SIGGRAPH where she made contacts, including the president of a local Raleigh company. Upon returning home she sent in her resume and landed the job.

John took up Susan’s story and reminded everyone that networking opens a door, a demo gets you in.

Resume tips

Sandy: I spend about 10 seconds on a resume. “Will work for free" is a gamble, sometimes does not match your actual worth. There is a fine line between persistence and peskiness, do not nag companies for a response, but don’t let them think you’re uninterested. Don’t call, email first. Then call once. Show your work!

John: The purpose of a resume is to get you a phone interview, not a job. Relevant information only, no longer than a page

Tim: Make sure your demo works! No HR or recruiter will bother trying to troubleshoot a demo that does not work

Paul: Experience is key. Internship at big company or group project during school. School is important but experience is more so

Ryan: Do not use acronyms the HR person can't understand from out of industry positions. In general, no acronyms at all. Wants to see completed work

Susan: Portfolio of a few really great images vs. pages upon pages of stuff is key

Artist demo reel tips

Tim: List out what exactly you did when showing stuff from group work, don’t take credit for the whole work

Breaking from testing into development

Sandy & Ryan: However, don't focus too much on that higher-level position that you forget that you're supposed to be testing a game and finding bugs - i.e. your current job!!

Paul: Keep up side projects so that Q&A doesn't degrade your skills over time

Interview tips

Go Procedural: A Better way to make games

First we were shown a demo of a user-created real-time bullet simulation including- fracturing wall particles, smoke effects, the works. Then he revealed the author of the demo was only 15 years old, which professed the technologies’ ease of use.

When it comes to creating procedural content, they used the analogy of baking a cookie – instead of focusing on the end result (the actual cookie) the focus is on the recipe and the creation process. The first example was a demonstration of a fracturing cube. A cube was created and placed in the world, and then a node was attached to the geometry using the real-time node based modifier list which generated random points on the cube. Finally a fracture node was then attached to the list – after creating the ground plane in the world, and enabling collision detection they started the simulation the cube would fall and fracture on the specified points, like magic. Changing individual elements of the nodes and restarting the simulation would yield different procedural results.

The benefits of procedural content are numerous – smaller teams, higher throughput, higher quality, parallel work flow, more iterations, increased usability and ease of tool creation. The whole mantra of procedural content creation seems to be “explore, create, refine”. The practical in-game uses for these types of procedural effects are also numerous with applications ranging from visual effects, level design/construction, to character customization and animation.

At the end of the presentation Dr. Salvini showed us real-world examples of the technology at work in “Killzone 2” for Playstation 3. Anybody interested in procedural content should jump over to the Side Effects Software homepage and see what they have to offer.

Practical Direct 3D 11 Tessellation

The talk started off with a quick overview of the changes in Direct3D. In Direct3D 9 (D3D9) the pipeline is relatively simple with Vertex and Pixel shaders. In Direct3D 11 (D3D11) the pipeline gets quite a bit more complicated. We have Vertex, Hull, Tessellation, Domain, Geometry and finally Pixel shaders. Confused yet? Yea, this is a sort of complicated topic so I’ll leave the task of teaching D3D11 to somebody else, the main thing I took away from this session ( being a D3D9 developer with no D3D11 experience ) was the large number of technical and art-creation issues raised by this new technology. At the very least we have to change some core aspects of the D3D9 art creation pipeline to get satisfactory results from D3D11.

Ok enough of that, so what is with this whole tessellation thing? With the addition of the tessellation stages to the pipeline we can computationally add geometric detail to rendered models in real-time. I suppose the best example would be a cobble stone surface such as the ones used in the demo shown to us.

Using D3D9 we could do things like normal mapping, relief mapping, etc. to simulate depth/height of the surface. In D3D11 we can dynamically add more geometry in the shader to achieve this effect even better than before. The geometry is best tessellated using distance based level-of-detail, also the angle of the surface (EyeVector (dot) SurfaceNormal ) is useful to modify the amount of a tessellation applied to a piece of geometry.

When it comes to actual creation of art assets for use in a D3D11 game engine with tessellation, you’ll need to take care to assure the mesh is “uniformly quadrafied”, this is hard to explain, but because of the way the tessellation works, if you want consistent results, your geometry will need to be just about uniformly broken into evenly sized quads. Gridded input surfaces are the best food for the tessellation pipeline it seems. You have to be careful with the way the texture UVs are setup, there are certain limitations in addition to careful consideration of smoothing groups and removal of height displacement on geometry seams. Fading in the displacement map heights should go some way to alleviating tessellation artifacts. Some other tips include passing in the screen coverage of the primitive to the tessellator. When it comes to rendering the shadow maps, using the low-poly un-tessellated control mesh is recommended.

These art creation issues are compounded by a relative lack of D3D11-centric-tools. There is the Nvidia Bake Tool, also Crazy Bump to generate the displacement maps for the geometry, in addition to Parallel NSight, and Perf Shader but due to the infancy of D3D11 rendering, we still have a ways to go.

The bottom line is that it’s a lot harder to re-use old Direct3D 9 art assets than anticipated.

How to Qualify your Game Publisher

• Financial Stability
• Reputation
• Experience
• Distribution Abilities
• Producers/Staff
• Acceptance Procedures

You’ll want to investigate the reputation of the publisher as well. Are there other developers coming back for repeat work, are they just working with publisher in “one-offs”? Do research into the public opinion and the press opinion of the publisher. Multiple titles per developer is preferable, as are favorable reviews of their games. In addition be sure to investigate the communities of the games they have published. Any kind words or references from fellow developers are key factors to determining a publisher’s reputation.

The amount of experience a publisher has in publishing games in your genre is crucial. Determine if the games they have published in your genre are successful, and look for examples from other developers in your genre. An added bonus would be if they have produces with a pedigree for moving games of your genre onto the marketplace.

Distribution is a major aspect of a publisher’s duties; you’ll want to see a strong track record domestically, and overseas. Ideally a publisher will have localized versions of their hit games in most major territories. Spend some time going out to the mall, and to major retailers and check to see if their games are sold there. Sure they’re going to tell you they can get your game into “Retail Store X”, go to store X and verify yourself. Look into the publisher’s history of cross platform launches or ports. If the publisher also handles digital distribution check the digital storefronts for games in their catalog.

The producers employed at the publisher are a very important part of your interaction with them. Before you get in bed with a publisher you’d want to make sure they have qualified producers, look to see how long the producers have been working at the publisher. Check how many projects have they been a part of, what were they? You want to gather as much information as possible. How many games does each producer simultaneously work on at the publishing company? You don’t want to see producers taking on more than 3-5 projects at once. How many projects are the producers working on now? Where do they fit in on the “food chain”? These are all questions you should be asking a potential publisher.

Finally the acceptance procedures of the publisher need to be scrutinized. You’ll want to see if your contact in the publishing company is the final decision maker when it comes to signing your product. If not, who is? Who are the other people involved in the decision making loop for the project. When it comes to milestone payments, how long can you expect to wait for feedback or approvals on milestones? What happens if a milestone is not approved? Ideally you’d want a 1-2 week turnaround on milestone payment approval.

The moral of the story is, make sure to investigate every aspect of a potential publisher before you sign your game’s life away.

Raising Capital to Build a Game

I really loved this session, unfortunately there were not many people sitting through this one – but the people who were there meant business. I’ll try to cover some of the more interesting points from the notes that I took. The discussion started out describing the current state of the market – it’s tough to secure capital but it’s getting a bit better according to the panel. The traditional publisher model that has been around for so long is struggling in today’s climate.

So, what can you do to enhance your chances of getting funding? Well you need to have a good business plan and a good team. If necessary fill in members of the team to make the investors comfortable. When it comes to securing money from venture capitalists, they like big bets. It helps to look at things from an investor’s point of view; they want to invest in a company not just a single game. In other words they want to back management who knows how to run and grow a business. This is how you should think of things, not just “how can I get money to make my game”.

The old saying around the racetrack applies to investors, they bet on the jockey not the horse. You need to find a “champion” investor within the group, somebody who believes in you and who will defend your position when you’re not around. If necessary you many need to go out and find a 3rd party commissioned representative (i.e. somebody with experience raiding capital) to interact with the investors on your behalf.

According to the panel there are investment rounds of different scales based on the types of investor involved. For instance Angel Investors will do rounds of up to $1M, where Venture Capitalists typically invest a lot more, millions of dollars at a time. There was a brief discussion about the impact of geographical location on investor attitudes; for the most part the south east is about 20 years behind the curve of technological investments. The panel advised to look to the west coast for investment money, suggesting companies on the west coast will be quicker to get the joke.

In addition to investment money from Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors; there are also government grants available to small businesses. Some include NC Idea, Movable Code, and SBIR Grants. In order to secure a government grant you need a “catchy differentiator” to make you stand out from the rest of the businesses applying for the grant. “One North Carolina” is a grant specifically for first time entrepreneurs. Becoming a Qualified Business Venture ( QBV ) allow your investors to receive a tax credit for up to 25% of money invested into the company. This certainly can’t hurt things; the only catch is that you’ll need to generate a financial review statement for these kinds of benefits will usually cost a company around $10k a year. I asked the panel if this 25% tax break applies to funds you invest in your own company, the answer is no. Only people who are not employed at the company are applicable for the 25% tax break.

It’s not easy, and never will be – but if you present yourself as a well managed business entity, and you can win over some investors in a group, your chances of receiving funding should be greatly increased.

There is no doubt that 2009 was a challenging year for the video games market. The economic meltdown slowed funding of new projects, and took a bite out of consumer spending. Studios closed. Talent was laid off. Budgets shifted to strong IPs, or were cut altogether.

However, there were some bright spots. Social and casual gaming gained more acceptance, as witnessed by EA’s recent purchase of Playfish to the tune of $275 million in cash ($400 million if you factor in stocks and earnouts). The iPhone continues to grow as a popular platform. So too does the PC, driven in large part by the success of online gaming in places like China and Korea. All of these trends are attracting new game players and new developers to the market.

In addition, 2009 saw some key consumer trends that gamers and game developers could not ignore. Most notable among these was the announcement of Sony and Microsoft motion controllers, the rise in digital distribution, and the continued push for cloud computing and stereoscopic 3D.

These trends were pretty clear. What is not so clear is how those trends are affecting game technology companies (middleware companies). To get a better sense of this, we reached out to a number of executives at those middleware companies to get their take. This article encapsulates those findings.

According to Wanda Meloni at M2 Research, layoffs mainly occurred in departments where outsourcing is more common. “There were some specific trends found in the [layoff] data. For example, many of the layoffs were in QA departments, and from a cost-cutting measure that seems like an understandable strategy. QA tends to be something that is becoming more of an outsourced service for many companies.”

Despite market slowdowns, most middleware companies still see potential in the market. Brendan Iribe, CEO of Scaleform, the developer of GFx 3.0 user interface middleware and design solution, mentioned that “while his solution has been sold into many early adopters, there is still a lot of growth potential in the market.”

Trinigy, the makers of the Vision game engine, backed up that comment with a slightly different take. “We’ve seen the market go through cyclical shifts before,” said Felix Roeken, general manager at Trinigy. “And while 2009 was a tough market, we still saw growth in our business. What’s more, there is plenty of talent in the ranks of the currently unemployed. As investment comes back, many of those skilled developers will start new studios and grow into powerful players.”

Going Indie

Why is this? New platforms have attracted development to the games market. New genres continue to emerge. There has been unprecedented growth in the Asian online games market. All of these trends have attracted new players. 20 years ago, the vast majority of core gamers were male, and 18-35 years old. M2 Research estimates women “currently represent over 45% of the total PC gaming market. In casual and social gaming, the percentage is quite a bit higher, ranging anywhere from 55% - 80%, depending on the company and games.”

The layoffs and lack of investment in larger development studios, coupled with the increase in new platforms and genres, has given rise to a new breed of small independent developer – one that can fund his start-up on a shoestring budget because he no longer needs the capital for expensive tool pipelines and console development kits. Many of these developers tend to focus on the newer platforms, such as iPhone or Facebook, which are far less costly to produce for.

Certain middleware companies addressed these developers with very targeted strategies. In October 2009, Unity announced that it would release the previous version of its engine for free. Shortly thereafter, Unreal announced the Unreal Development Kit (UDK). This version of the Unreal Engine 3 is free until the developer makes over $5,000 on the game, at which point a 25% royalty applies. Those moves by Unity and Unreal have already placed strong technology in many developers’ hands, especially those operating on smaller budgets.

Even those middleware companies who have not announced “freemium” versions of their offerings see the potential in the independent developer market. According to Mary Beth Haggerty, Sr. Games Industry Manager of Autodesk, “innovators and independent developers rely on Autodesk tools. We are actively engaging with this [mobile and social gaming] community to learn what we can do to better serve them.”

“The spectrum of games is expanding,” offered Trinigy’s Roeken. “We’re focusing a lot of attention on how to offer this growing market a solid solution that incorporates the very best technologies across platforms."

Carry-Over Trends

“Believable character motion is an area that Autodesk pursues with both our software products — MotionBuilder, Maya, 3ds Max and Softimage — and our middleware products — HumanIK and Kynapse,” said Autodesk’s Haggerty. “As our customers push new boundaries in entertainment, Autodesk is serving the industry with the tools and middleware to create believable characters.”

Making the gamut of available tools easier to work with is another ongoing trend. Many game engine companies offer a range of integrations into their product in order to put more creative power at the fingertips of the game developer. “The Vision game engine currently integrates with fifteen technologies to give our customers more choices. For that reason, we’ve spent a lot of development time ensuring that the workflow in our engine is as fluid as possible to allow developers to easily access those tools, and to quickly extend our engine with new tools if needed.”

In fact, working more efficiently with the tools is a key concern of all the companies with whom we spoke. “One of our core focuses for 2010 will be ensuring that people can get up and running faster with our tools,” said Scaleform’s Iribe. “That means more documentation, more support and easier out-of-the-box implementation, especially for developers who do not have Flash developers.”

Emerging Trends for 2010

Scaleform’s Iribe reiterated this sentiment. “The new platforms and motion controllers open up completely new ways for players to interact with their game environment.”

Stereoscopic 3D games is another topic that is getting attention as more and more monitor companies, graphics companies and the like tout the unique experience it will provide game players. One need only look to the recent CES show in Las Vegas to see all the hype. The middleware companies seem poised to take advantage of it. “We’ve had the ability to render 3D imagery in our engine for quite some time, and are ready to support developers when they start moving in this direction,” said Trinigy’s Roeken. The question is, when will they start moving in that direction in earnest and what will be the catalyst?

Finally, digital distribution and cloud computing have not only grabbed the attention of middleware companies who are supporting the effort, such as Steam, OnLive, virtual economy platforms such as Twofish, AMD, Intel and others; it could become a viable option for middleware companies themselves in the form of SaaS solutions.

According to a blog post from Marc Petit at Autodesk: “We are exploring Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service, but we are also interested in providing new capabilities on-line. Autodesk is already offering 7 different SaaS applications in various fields.” In the future, might more and more game tools be distributed from the cloud? It remains to be seen.

End Game

The economic changes of 2009 persist, and it has taken rapid decision-making on the part of middleware companies to keep pace. Whether it's a new business strategy, a new technical innovation, or both, middleware companies must decide if, and how, they plan to address the growing independent space and the decline in AAA projects.

On the technological front, the market is moving a bit slower as trends take hold. More realistic games, better workflows, cloud computing, stereoscopic 3D – these trends have been on the minds of game developers for some time. Smart middleware companies have already reacted and continue to innovate along these lines.

Related Links:

Mods are becoming an ever increasingly important factor in the games industry today and bring many benefits to the industry. For a game, mods can extend the lifetime and dramatically increase sales. Mods also benefit the game development industry by helping to train current and future game development professionals. By working on a mod a person can vastly increase their skill, and get exposure to industry level technology. Many people use mods to gain experience with industry technology and use as a demo reel to potential employers.

Motivating factors behind mods are not financial incentives but the passion and commitment of the team members who give up their afternoons, nights and weekends to produce a high quality realisation of their vision.

Due to the nature of mod development there are many significant challenges that plague mod teams, and strong leadership is essential to successfully producing a mod. Without strong leadership it's very easy for the team members to divert from the original vision and lose cohesion on the project. Strong leadership helps maintain this cohesive vision, as well as keep members motivated, aiming for common goals, and above all communicating.

This article will describe some of the problems faced by mod authors, some of the solutions used during the development of Hostile Takeover 2050 and some points for improvement.

Team Structure

The team structure we adopted in Hostile Takeover 2050 was that each "team" had a lead. We had a lead for map/prop creation, programming, characters, and sound. Some of our teams ended up only being one man teams due to troubles with recruiting. However the multi-person teams worked effectively through this method. It meant that communication was segmented appropriately between teams, but there was still good cross communication and co-operation between the teams. It also made the role of Project Coordinator much easier as the number of people to liaise with was much lower. It's important to note that the person who was team lead was not always the first person to join that team. The lead had to be a good communicator, committed to the project, and online fairly consistently. People that go dark don't really suit this role. The lead also needed to have a solid understanding of what they and the team were working on so proper planning could take place.

On top of this we also had a Project Coordinator. This person liaised with all the leads to plan milestones, keep communication happening between teams and keep track of the whole project. This also ended up involving PR, web administration, release packaging and recruiting.

Recruiting Team Members

When trying to recruit, the first stop should be the usual channels in which people in the modding community for your chosen engine/game congregate. The IRC channels, forums, mailing lists etc. Another thing to try is finding some non-engine specific forums where people interested in the same kind of work (modelling or sound engineering for example) congregate. Be sure to check back regularly when posts are made, as we lost a few potential recruits by members forgetting to check where they posted until a few weeks later.

When considering new team members there are a few things to take into account. Age is often used too quickly to dismiss team members, however on Hostile Takeover we found it was a poor indicator of performance and commitment. Some of our oldest and youngest members were our best performers and the most professional acting.

Also take into account, but do not dismiss based upon, the native language of the potential new member. Some will turn out to be very competent communicators and many will be very talented, producing great work. You may also find that another team member can speak that person’s language as well as yours in a fluent-enough manner to facilitate communication.

A few potential recruits for Hostile Takeover were from Turkey, and also around Europe. While we had no problems with this, and were quite excited with the previous work of these members, we found that the communication of ideas and working conditions was hard to translate. One recruit pulled out after doing a little bit of work as they didn't understand it was a volunteer project and was expecting payment. We only dealt with non-native english speakers on a few occasions, and often the agreement fell through due to communication issues. It is important to remember that communication is a very critical factor in mod development, and this is more complex than in an office environment due to time zones affecting real time communication.

Consider also the timezone of the potential recruit as this can make meetings a nightmare to organise, or affect communication in a bad way.

You should also clarify a few things up front with potential new members, such as whether it's a paid position or not, and what the copyright on all work will be. This might mean that it is author-retained copyright with a permanent irrevocable license to the mod, or whether copyright is assigned to the mod team. By discussing these things up front everyone has the same understanding and expectations and it can help avoid conflicts later on.

Communication - The Backbone of a Mod Team

Common communication channels must be set and mandated early to provide trouble-free communication. Many different communication methods must be available to team members so that the methods themselves never get in the way. For instance when a member has a small clarification question that can be answered in 30 seconds, the procedure shouldn't be to create a forum thread and wait for the person who can answer it to check the forum and answer which could be 24 hours or longer. A more appropriate method would be ensuring everyone has a common instant messaging program.

Ideally communications should be logged when possible so they can be revisited at a later time for clarification. This isn't always possible or practical, for instance with VoIP, so there should be a procedure in place to allow most of the contents of the important discussions to be captured. For every scheduled meeting, a person should be nominated as a note taker, and minutes should be published in a central location (forum, wiki, etc.).

When a member goes "dark", it means they have just dropped off the radar, they aren't giving status updates and are hard to contact. This may mean they are just dealing with issues for a while and will come back when they can, or it could mean the member has dropped off the project for good. Make it clear you'd like members to check in regularly even if they are dealing with issues, just fire off an email once a week or before they disappear for a period, just to let the team know what's going on. This makes it easier for the rest of the team to deal with any issues during that time, for instance the team can re-prioritise other work to cover an important section the missing member was working on

Scheduled meetings provide an effective way of keeping members motivated and keeping communication active. Scheduling a meeting once a week allows all members to see every other members progress, which in turn inspires them, and reduces how often people go dark. It is alright to vary the frequency of these meetings every so often. During Hostile Takeover's development cycle we varied it a few times to according to what was happening with development. As deadlines approached frequency was increased to twice a week, over the Christmas period our team would cancel all meetings for a month, and during times when everyone was busy frequency was reduced to once every 2 weeks. I can't think of many things that are less fun than turning up to meetings twice a week with zero progress to speak of.

When organising meetings you may find, due to the locations of all members, that choosing a time for the meeting can be difficult. This shouldn’t discourage you from trying to meet often. We found the meetings were very useful for keeping the team up to date and on track and many members were willing to get up early or stay up late to attend meetings.

In the early days of Hostile Takeover, a few members went dark at the same time for a period of several weeks. After several attempts to contact them we found out what was going on, they were all studying hard for upcoming university assignments and exams. This helped us realise that we needed to identify possible times when members were likely to go dark. From then on we always asked members to let us know of upcoming situations, and kept track of university semesters regardless of status updates so we could plan work and communication with the possibility of periods where members would go dark.

One thing to try and avoid also is different teams not communicating enough and causing conflicts. For instance we noticed the art team got frustrated with the code team on a few occasions because there was no visible work being done. This issue arose from the teams not understanding each other’s disciplines and not enough communication was happening to show that the programmers were still hard at work.

The communication methods used on Hostile Takeover 2050 are documented below. These were not the only communication channels, some members spoke to each other through other means, but these were the ones required so the team had a variety of standard contact mediums.

HT 2050 Communication Guidelines and Rules

Wiki

Skype IM

Members could also branch off into private conversations through text or voice really easily through this.

Ventrilo

Ventrilo was used instead of Skype due to issues with Skype not scaling particularly well past ~3-4 users, drop-outs were noticed, and Ventrilo allowed push-to-talk.

Forums

Email

Mobiles/SMS

Documentation

It's important that there are procedures in place so all important processes are documented. This includes the development environment setup, how to build the mod, how to package the mod into an installer, etc. The procedures don't need to be written in legalese as if you were sending them to a client on a multi-billion dollar deal, they just need to be complete and clear. Adding plenty of screenshots can help vastly in making the instructions easy to understand.

The procedures should be set out early so the documentation is created as the mod progresses. If you start the documentation process too late you'll have a lot of documentation to write in one big chunk. If the procedure is in place early it will also provide the most benefit to the team as the documentation will be there for when new members come on board.

With Hostile Takeover, we set up our wiki later in the production of the mod after trialing several methods of keeping documents. Unfortunately because the other methods didn't work out too well, our documentation was lacking in the early days. As opposed to spending days and weeks purely on documentation we took the path of creating the documentation as a situation occurred that made the documentation process easy and/or would provide a benefit. For instance, we wrote the development environment setup document as a new member was about to come on board.

Documentation doesn't only apply to the technical aspects of how features work, documentation also includes details on servers that are used for testing, communication, as well as documentation on game design and inspiration.

Managing Game Design

Game Design Document

Initial Development

During this stage of the game concept development we wrote a short recount from the perspective of the character to give a good mental picture of the game. If you decide to write a short story like this, remember, it doesn't have to be long, just enough to identify the desired feel and pacing of the game. Strive to use some colourful language in this story so you can create a very vivid mental picture. Here is a snippet from ours:

The team fans out, some of the infiltrators hear guards approaching. Their footsteps are very loud on the linoleum floor. Someone yells out "Stealth" over the intercomm. Each of the team finds various corners and engage their stealth suits, the guards wander in and spy the dissolved window. You just know they are radioing this in to their comrades. They quickly stand back to back and scan looking for a stealthed charater. You know it’s only a matter of time before they spot one of the distorted images. Several guys start firing their guns in tranquiliser mode. They aim at the guards legs, 4-5 shots hit the guards simultaneously, they don't even have time to get dizzy, they go down like a sack of potatoes.

Culling Features

For many features it will be a difficult balancing act to decide whether or not to include the feature. Some features might be a nice addition to the game, however the extra time needed for this feature may drag out the project too long, or be above the engine or team’s capabilities. Keep in mind that while the development time of a feature is less important on a mod than on an industry project it is still a big issue and must be taken into consideration as it will affect developer motivation, dictate how many developers are required on the mod, and impact the timeline of the project.

As you cull ideas don't just delete them, add them to another section of your game design document called "Version 2" or something. This way as you approach the finish line for the game you have have a few ideas saved up in case you want to take it further, or create a sequel. This can also come in handy during the development of the game if you feel it's shaping up to be a little unbalanced. You can always reference back to this section for some extra ideas to balance out one side or skill.

Evolving Design

Once you've had a few play tests your game design will show what is working, what isn't, and what needs a bit of adjustment. Don't be afraid to change the game design, just be mindful of the impact of every change to the time frame, the resources required and the game itself. Be sure to update the game design document to reflect every change.

Organising and Sharing Content

The solution we decided upon wasn't perfect, however it allowed us to develop relatively hassle free without spending a fortune on software, hosting or bandwidth. We used a privately hosted Subversion server for all code files. Version control software was a lot easier to work for the programming side than it was for the art side. This didn't use much bandwidth at all.

For our art content we ended up just using a shared hosting service which provided plenty of bandwidth and storage space without costing a fortune. We used this for our public and development forums, our website and also the main usage was the FTP side for content management. Due to the unreliable reputation of cheap shared hosting solutions we made sure we had regular backups of the FTP, however we never ran into an issue. If you do follow this method, make sure you do take care with backups.

To help avoid change conflicts we had 2 directories for each type of content, an In and Out folder. When a developer was working on a file they would move it to the Out directory and would put their name in the file name. When the developer was done with the file they would re-upload it to the In directory and delete the file from the Out directory. This allowed other developers to know that changes were being made to it and who they could contact to discuss the work they needed to do.

We had scripts which would auto-download any changed files and would extract them to the appropriate places. To avoid issues and conflicts the scripts could have certain portions disabled. This prevented instances of two developers working on a file, and when one uploaded it automatically wiping the other developers changes. While this wouldn't have been an ideal circumstance anyway, it was something we didn't want to ignore as work could be exported and re-imported into the correct file.

While version control would have been nice for the art content, we never found a solution which would have worked for us. Hosting costs or software costs were prohibitive for a volunteer project. However the potential issues never arose for us as the art developers would keep regularly dated copies of their work so we were always able to revert when required.

It's important to plan some time for the team to develop some custom tools and scripts to aid in a lot of this work. Whether it be installers, build scripts, auto updaters, or anything else. This also involves getting the team to follow strict processes on things like content directory layouts. The time spent developing these tools and processes greatly reduces the time lost later when everyone is trying to sync up for a test game, or when a developer accidently corrupts their environment. Even when building the final release, having a tested script that builds the game and packages it into an installer ensures that no steps are missed and a solid release is ready for upload.

Planning Deadlines

Don't attempt to use deadlines to rush development. We tried this in Hostile Takeover 2050, and found it didn't really work. The team enjoyed the sound the deadlines made as they whizzed past. We found deadlines were most useful to keep the team on track and motivated. Realise the project is still going to take a significant amount of time. You must remember all members are volunteers with a life outside of the mod.

When unexpected set backs happen, such as a member going dark, just power through and ask other members to step up and try and cover the position that's down. Hopefully your team will have a few standout members who will help cover the position. With well planned deadlines and some helpful standout members, you shouldn't fall behind much, if at all.

Preparing for Releases

• Developing and testing an installer
• Icon Art
• User Guides
• Release Page
• Organising Download Mirrors
• Splash Screen Art

After you have released you should make sure members have plenty of time set aside for community interaction, watching message boards, replying to comments, watching for bug reports etc. This constant activity can be helpful in growing the community. We found scheduling a few games against the developers was helpful in regards to getting players onto the servers at the same times. We watched a lot of players log onto the server, get bored waiting and logging off 2 minutes before another person did the same thing.

Managing Community

Another good thing to do is to look at some of the challenges you face each month and write a blog post about it. Write about some technical challenges, and how you got around it. Whether this be on the coding side, or on the mapping side. This is good for a few reasons: It shows the community that development is still progressing, it shows off the technical skills of the team (which is good in inspiring confidence in the quality of the mod, and for portfolios), and it gives back to the modding community that exists around that engine. Also write about some design challenges you have had to overcome, this can show the community more information about the game and give them more insight which will help build interest. We didn't do this as regularly as we should have in Hostile Takeover 2050, however when we did, we saw big spikes in traffic and interest in our mod.

Another mistake we made in Hostile Takeover 2050 was hoarding information up front, and not releasing anything early. We did this out of fear of the idea being stolen, which in a modding environment is not something you have to worry about. Everyone has their own ideas which they would much prefer to work on, and it's not going to be stolen and exploited commercially until it's been a proven success, at which point you will already have the market and the interest in your IP and team. This harmed our team greatly because we found it hard to recruit members as people weren't interested in our mod with nothing to show, and by the time we did release information everyone was already in teams and engaged in projects, which was exacerbated by the Make Something Unreal Competition.

This differs substantially from the industry as trade secrets don't come into play when the communities are so open, and marketing is an entirely different ball game.

Conclusion

Hopefully by sharing some of the lessons we learned while developing Hostile Takeover 2050 you can avoid making some similar mistakes or at least have some guidance during your own projects. We all enjoyed working on Hostile Takeover 2050 and have gained a great deal of knowledge, both in the technical aspects and in management.

If you have any questions or comments please feel free to email me at philip@gdcorner.com or comment on the article in the forums.