Develop - Issue 105 - May 2010

The Good,the Pad & the UglyHighs and lows of making games for Apple’s tablet device

© Disney

ALPHA05 – 07 > dev news from around the globeIndie studio Cohort unveils its plans for the new PlayStation Move motioncontroller, and Develop 100 sponsor Deep Silver explains what it has planned forthe development sector

12 – 15 > opinion and analysisNick Gibson ponders the future of the cyclic console generation model; DavidBraben talks breathing life back into the casual sector; Billy Thompson considersDenki’s Quarrel and the future of word games; and Ben Board offers a guide tobringing your games to XBLA

BETA18 - 21 > the midas touchApple’s iPad goes under the microscope, as leading iPhone studios reveal whatthey think the platform means for app development and the rest of the industry

23 - 24 > bright starsThe essential guide to the UK’s premier industry event, the Develop Conference

26 > serve and protectBrand Protect’s barrister Bernard Whyatt offers advice on protecting IP

29 > number crunchingThe all-important Develop 100 2010 list broken down and analysed up-close

32 - 34 > aussie rulesAustralia’s high-profile indies on the pros and cons of games making Down Under

36 - 39 > the motion pictureWill Sony’s Move controller usher in a new era for game design? We ask the studiosleading the charge to create games for the motion controller

BUILD46 > cubist visionFollowing April’s facial animation focus, Cubic Motion talks adpative pipelines

47 > epic diaries: dust 514Mark Rein looks at why the team behind CCP’s new title chose Unreal Engine 3

48 > heard about: bad company 2DICE detail the tech behind a game renowned for its rich audio backdrop

49 > unity focusA look at how Unity is ready for the iPad, and the features of version 1.7 in focus

ContentsDEVELOP ISSUE 105 MAY 2010

57 – 64studios, tools, services and courses

18

48

23 32

36 29

Develop Magazine. Saxon House, 6a St. Andrew Street.Hertford, Hertfordshire. SG14 1JAISSN: 1365-7240 Copyright 2009Printed by The Manson Group, AL3 6PZ

Tel: 01992 535646 Fax: 01992 535648www.develop-online.net

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Editor-in-ChiefMichael [email protected]

Deputy EditorWill [email protected]

Online EditorRob [email protected]

Staff WriterStuart [email protected]

Advertising ManagerKatie [email protected]

Advertising ExecutiveAlex [email protected]

Production ManagerSuzanne [email protected]

DesignerDan [email protected]

Sub-EditorGemma [email protected]

PublisherStuart [email protected]

Managing EditorLisa [email protected]

Contributors Ben Board, David Braben, JohnBroomhall, Nick Gibson, ThomasGrove, Billy Thomson, Mark Rein,Steve Ince

Enquiries, please email: [email protected]: 01580 883 848Charges cover 11 issues and 1st class postageor airmail dispatch for overseas subscribers.

Develop is published 11 times a year,reaching 8,000 readers throughout the UKand international market.

the international monthly forgames programmers, artists,musicians and producers

13 -15 JULY 2010

Autodesk® Entertainment Creation SuitesAccess the full creative power and production flexibility of one of the industry’s top 3D modeling and animation technology for the creation of higher-quality, more believable game charactersand environments.

Available as a threesome with either Autodesk® Maya® 2010 or Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2010, plus Autodesk® MotionBuilder® 2010 real-time animation and Autodesk® Mudbox™ 2010 digital sculpting software; a modern pipeline in one package.

www.autodesk.com/entertainmentcreationsuites

HOW TO EXPERIENCE A THREESOME.

Autodesk, Maya, MotionBuilder, Mudbox, and 3ds max are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Autodesk reserves the right to alter product and services offerings, and specifications and pricing at anytime without notice, and is not responsible for typographical or graphical errors that may appear in this document. © 2010 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.

DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET MAY 2010 | 05

‘Move will win over core gamers’Lol Scragg, CEO of Dundee studio Cohort, expects new controller can grow PlayStation 3 audience for games developers

THE CORE gamer market’sdisinterest with motion controlgaming has never been moreapparent than it is right now.

With Sony and Microsoftnow completing the motioncontrol triumvirate, themessage routinely emphasisedacross numerous internetforums is simple: core gamersdon’t want to shake, waggleand swipe their way through anight in with their consoles.

That’s all about to change,says the CEO of emergingDundee outfit Cohort Studios.

In an interview withDevelop, Lol Scragg says thatboth Microsoft and Natal willtap into the core market withtheir own first-party efforts.

“I understand that, if you seeany of the forums, you’ll readpeople state they don’t needmotion control, but that’sbecause they’re familiar withthe Wii,” said Scragg.

“Once Sony and Microsoftstart releasing their owngames for their motioncontrollers, I think the core willcome round to it.”

Cohort Studios is currentlybuilding one of the first gamesto be released on thePlayStation Move – an on-railsshooter given the working titleThe Shoot.

Having worked with Sony’snew motion controller since itsearliest days, Scragg was verykeen to heap praise on Sonyand its upcoming motioncontrol peripheral.

“[It’s] a great piece ofhardware,” he said.

“It has a fantastic feel to itand it’s incredibly accurate.We’ve had no issues with it,and the hardware and thelibraries have come on well.”

And when asked if it was fairto compare the tech to the Wiiequivalent, Scragg said thatNintendo’s five-year-old device

doesn’t hold a candle to Sony’snew tech.

“Having used bothcontrollers a lot, I’d say it wasclear that the Move controlleris so much more accurate. Its astep up. And it’s not just acrossthe X and Y axis either, the Zaxis is really accurate as well.”

The interview with Scragg(available at www.develop-online.net) is an appetiser toDevelop’s full three-courseexploration of the PlayStationMove, which you can begin tochew into from page 36.

Elsewhere in the Cohortinterview, Scragg touched on

the difficulties facing third-party studios at the moment.

“Like all independentdevelopers, times are tough,”he said. “People just aren’tcommissioning products foranyone right now.”

He added, having been inmeetings with variouscompanies at GDC, thepublishing business has seenits product remit plummet.

“One told me that the remitfor the year was to find twonew franchises. Two?! The pasttwelve months has seen asignificant drop in the numberof projects commissioned.

“My hope is, somewherealong the lines, publishers aregoing to realise that there’snot much product set up forChristmas 2010 and the firsthalf of 2011, and they’re goingto have to start picking upmore stuff.

“The level of pessimismaround right now goes againstthe market, which is strongand continuing to expand.”

■ Turn to page 36 for more onthe PS Move.

ADVENTURES IN GAMES DEVELOPMENT: NEWS, VIEWS & MORE

“Many have expressed the beliefthat there won’t be a new generation of consoles…”

Nick Gibson, p12

Deep SilverCEO talks

expansionNews, p6

Are you a ‘casual’

developer?Opinion, p14

Bringing yourgames to Xbox

Live ArcadeGuide, p15

by Rob Crossley

It’s clearthat the

Move controller isso muchmoreaccurate.

Lol Scragg, Cohort

06 | MAY 2010

ALPHA | NEWS

THERE HAS BEEN a lot of suggestions that this currentconsole cycle could be the last for games developers,and thus create more stability for studios.

The thinking goes that that disruption by new mobiledevices and the diffusion of players from to a variety ofweb-enabled platforms means that PS4 and Xbox 720are becoming less likely. In turn, developers will be freedfrom the constraints of format holders and empoweredby the laissez-faire world of digital distribution.

What a load of nonsense! If anything, the rapidacceleration of handheld platforms, new controllers andincreased agility offered by the web complicates thebusiness of games development even further. It makesconstant innovation the rule, not the exception.

This month we take a look at two clear examples ofthis: PlayStation Move and the iPad.

It’s no insult to call the latter an oversized iPhone. Withits nice big screen and appealing form factor, it expandsbeyond the limitations of its progenitor.

But as the developers we speak to from page 18onwards explain, that’s both a good and bad thing. Thebig screen create fill-rate issues, for instance; the A4 chipis not a magic bullet for more advanced mobile graphics.

And iPad isn’t just a device that games developers canexpect to claim a chunk of the marketplace as quick asthey did iPhone. It’s as designed for new websites anddigital books, too – all of which compete with games.

Sony’s Move, meanwhile, is generating moreexcitement - it’s not out for about six months, so cautiousoptimism is expected - but likewise, that also demandsdifferent thinking from its development base.

So both are a classic case of generational jumpskeeping developers on their toes. (And, if you check outpage 12, something that will clearly continue.)

It’s not just Sony and Apple that are pushing devices thatencourage – no, force – developers to keep up.

Natal, 3DS, the rush to 3D from all corners… all areproof of rapid acceleration of hardware towards diversity,not away from it. Which means studios aren’t necessarilygoing to have an easier ride. While the opportunities areplentiful, yes, the pressure to make sure developers placethe right bets couldn’t be higher.

Editorial

Michael [email protected]

Keeping the pace

European games giantKoch Media plans toseriously grow and

‘strengthen’ its developmentresource through newacquisitions.

Speaking exclusively toDevelop, Dr. KlemensKundratitz – CEO of thedeveloper-distributor-publisher which runs theDeep Silver label – said hewants to “strengthen DeepSilver’s line-up of brands”.

Dr. Kundratitz told us thatdevelopment deals will helpthe firm ride out the industryshift into digital distributionand casual gaming that hasotherwise forced manypublishers to reconsider theircurrent business models.

Deep Silver and its parentKoch Media hopes to useboth its global physicaldistribution business anddigital distribution platformsas it signs new games andpotentially buys studios.

“Our objective is to creategreat games that sellworldwide. We strive toachieve this by workingclosely with a vast network

of like-minded developmentpartners,” Dr. Kundretitz said.

“We have published anddistributed over a hundredtitles this way since 2003,including S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: ClearSky, the X series, Sacred 2:Fallen Angel and recentlyRisen, the new RPG fromPiranha Bytes.”

Deep Silver has provided amixture of publishing,distributing and PR invarious combinations forthose titles from externaldevelopers, said Kundratitz.

“We think that combiningall of these aspects leaves usa lot of freedom,” he stated.

“With this setup we are onone side able to cooperatewith partners in differentdegrees but also to publishour own titles. Withdistribution we have aninternational expertise inevery local European marketfor more than 10 years - weknow how to bring a productto the customer.”

Looking to the future, headded: “We plan tostrengthen our publishingbusiness with our ownbrands. We have started thatalready with titles like Risen

and Cursed Mountain, butwill expand these activities inthe future.

“Having our own brandsallows us to compete as anindependent publisher in thegames market where thedistribution is declining dueto the growing onlinebusiness,” he said.

Kundratitz said the fastchanging relationshipsbetween publishers anddevelopers were forcingmany companies used tohandling physicaldistribution of games torethink their studio relations.

“While in past years it was possible to allow forerrors on both sides, today itis absolutely important tostay in budget, in time andwithin the expected quality,”he said.

“With budgets for multi-platform titles growing everbigger and gamedevelopment growing evermore complex, a publisherhas to keep a very sharp eyeif the developers stays withinthe given and agreedtimeframe.”

But Kundratitz said viewson both sides need to be

Deep Silver set for Distribution and publishing firm looks to grow stable of studios and

by Stuart Richardson


NEWS | ALPHA

kept in check as developersstart thinking more likepublishers and publishersbecome more sensitive todevelopers’ needs.

“For instance duringdevelopment these days,marketing will have a muchbigger influence on thecreation of a game to assureits marketability,” he said.

“Having a fair relationshipwith developers is veryimportant to us. Only if bothsides have the feeling thatthis is a mutually beneficialrelationship can a qualityproduct be conveyed to thecustomer.”

With the burgeoningonline and social gamingmarkets and increasingconsumer access to digitaldistribution, Dr. Kundratitzalso said the firm is lookingtowards download-only andgames with added DLC.

“These developments arenothing to get nervousabout. Rather they are anatural development withever growing broadbandcapacities available today.DLCs can extend the life spanof a product with keepingthe interest of customers,

media and potential buyersin a game,” he said.

“Free or paid DLCs, asBioware shows with MassEffect 2, can be used to bindbuyers to a product for alonger time period. Weshould face thesedevelopments and see howwe can use them for our ownbusiness. It’s necessary to beprepared in time.”

In all, Deep Silver wants towork with developers inorder to take advantage ofthe expanding market forcasual, online and triple-Avideo games.

“While in the 90s gamingwas limited to a selected few,nowadays everyone can playeverywhere, anytime. Theappeal and acceptance ofgames as a leisure activityhas grown in the generalpublic,” said Kundratitz.

“Be it at home on thedesktop PC, through the useof consoles in the livingroom, on the go throughportable consoles or theiPhone our through apps onFacebook - everyone can findtheir own way of playinggames.”www.deepsilver.com

acquisition spree projects, with plans to sign new games made in the UK and Europe

Deep Silver previouslyfound key titles likeSTALKER and CursedMountain to publish –now it wants to signmore UK and Europeanmade games

While inpast years

it was possible toallow for errorson both sides,today it isabsolutely important to stayin budget, in timeand ofexpectedquality.

Dr. Klemens

Kundratitz

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08 | MAY 2010

ALPHA | EVENTS

FESTIVAL OF GAMESJune 4th to 5thUtrecht, The Netherlandswww.festivalofgames.nl/site

The Dutch Festival of Games isEurope’s most effective businessevent for studios looking to make aprofit from the digital games market.

At the festival, the games industryblends with media andentertainment, big brands and ICT tocreate solutions from shared issues.

The show attracts decision makersin business, strategy, marketing,finance, game art, design, technologyand development.

DEVELOP DIARY

GDC CANADA 2010May 6th to 7thVancouver, Canadawww.gdc-canada.com

MONETISING MOBILEMay 26thBAFTA Londonwww.mobile-ent.biz

GAME IN SCOTLAND 2010May 22ndDundee, Scotlandwww.gameinscotland.com

FESTIVAL OF GAMESJune 4th to 5thUtrecht, The Netherlandswww.festivalofgames.nl/site

E3 2010June 15th to 17thLos Angeles, USwww.e3expo.com

WORLD OF LOVEJune 25thLondon, UKwww.worldoflove.eventbrite.com

GAME HORIZON 2010June 29th to 30thNewcastle, UKwww.gamehorizon.net

ANIMATION 10 - AWARDS NIGHTJuly 9th Manchester, UKwww.cs.manchester.ac.uk

DEVELOP IN BRIGHTONJuly 13th to 15thBrighton, UKwww.develop-conference.com

DEVELOP AWARDSJuly 14thBrighton, UKwww.develop-online.net

CASUAL CONNECT SEATTLEJuly 20th to 22ndSeattle, USseattle.casualconnect.org

GAMESCOM 2010August 18th to 22ndCologne, Germanywww.gamescom-cologne.com

CASUAL CONNECT KYIVOctober 20th to 22nd Kiev, Ukrainekyiv.casualconnect.org

MONTREAL INTERNATIONAL GAMESUMMITNovember 8th to 9th Montreal, Canadawww.sijm.ca/2010/

GDC CHINADecember 5th to 7th Shanghai, Chinawww.gdcchina.com

may 2010

august 2010

october 2010

november 2010

december 2010

YOUR COMPLETE GAMES DEVELOPMENTEVENT CALENDAR FOR THE MONTHS AHEAD…

june 2010

july 2010

ALPHA | WORLDVIEW

WorldViewOur monthly digest of the past month’s global games news…

10 | MAY 2010

DEALS

USAIRATA LABS JOINS NEWSCORPSSan Francisco-based three-man indie studioIrata Labs has been aquired by RupertMurdoch’s News Corp media empire.

The surprise acquisition comes as NewsCorp positions itself to expand operationsinto games development and publishing -both a telling statement on the viability ofthe modern game industry and a warning tothe publishers of today that media giants arestill circling the market.

The LA Times reported that Irata’s biggestsuccess to date is social-network themedouting Spymaster, which gained plenty ofattention thanks to its use of Twitter. A sourceclose to the deal told the paper:

“These guys have shown they can bemould-breakers with great product. Andthat’s what we care about.”

The value of the Irata Labs buyout was notannounced by either party.www.iratalabs.com

SWEDEN/UKIGNITION STRIKES HANSOFTTOOL DEALSwedish management tool company Hansofthas announced a new licensing deal for theirtech with international game developerIgnition Entertainment.

Terms of the agreement were notannounced by either Hansoft or Ignition, so itremains unclear how long Ignition will be

able to make use of Hansoft’s projectmanagement tools.

Ignition – a UK-headquartered companywith offices in LA, Florida, London, Mumbaiand Tokyo – said that the company’s owninternational spread made Hansoft an idealchoice in simplifying the dev process.

“With projects spread across different time-zones and territories it was important for usto have a flexible system that was accessibleto key personnel from anywhere in theworld,” said Ignition senior producer Anne-Christine Gasc.

She added: “[Hansoft’s] pipelines andworkflows functionality allowed us toconfigure the system further to cover ourremaining requirements, and in fact exceedall of them.”www.hansoft.se

USAEX-INFINITY WARD STAFFJOIN RESPAWN Almost 20 ex-Infinity Ward employees havejoined Zampella and West’s RespawnEntertainment - the indie studio formed outof a high-profile legal row with Activision.

Those joining Respawn include leaddesigner Todd Alderman, lead animatorsMark Grisby and John Paul Messerly, leadenvironmental artist Chris Cherubini,software engineer Rayme C. Vinson,programmer Jon Shirling and lead designerMackey McCandlish.

News of the Respawn hires comes soon

after Activision media manager Dan Amrichsaid the Infinity Ward staff walkouts were “notover yet”.

Speaking from a personal perspective, hesaid that “more people will probably go too,looking for new situations.”

He added: “Maybe they will join Respawn,maybe not.”www.respawn.com

AUSTRALIASECTOR 3 AQUIRED BYTRICKSTARAustralian studio Trickstar Games hasacquired developer Sector3, with a plan toexpand its offering an harness the potentialof the huge casual audience.

Specialising in iPhone, Mac and PC titles,Sector3 was formed in 2007, and is most wellknown for it’s StuntMania series, whichTrickstar will help take to console platforms.

“I am very excited to be joining a companythat shares my philosophy and vision forcasual gaming and I am looking forward tocreating great games together,” said SeonRozenblum, founder of Sector3.www.sector3.com

FRANCE/UKPAULINA BOZEK LEAVESATARIPaulina Bozek, the ex-Sony designerresponsible for the Atari SingStar series, hasnow departed from an eighteen-month spellrunning its London studio.

FREE CRYENGINE PLANS EMERGEGlobal indie outfit Crytek told Develop that it wants to release afree engine “that will be up to speed” with the CryEngine 3.

The firm’s CEO Cevat Yerli told Develop that Crytek already givesaway a CryEngine 2 editor to the mod community, but explainedthat Crytek’s expansion strategy stretches way beyond this.

“We have a very vivid community of users and modders andcontent creators, and usually that’s a great way of unlocking theengine,” he said.

When asked if the CryEngine 3 was central to this future strategy,Yerli responded:

“Yes, but not as a mod. So far that’s what we’ve been offering forfree, and it’s easy entry into the production environment. We wantto make a standalone free platform that people can runindependent of CryEngine that will also be up to speed with it.”

It remains unclear what kind of tech and licence deal will emergefrom this strategy.www.crytek.com

Korean studioEntwell hasbecome a licenseeof Emergent’sGamebryotechnology for workon unspecifiedfuture titles.

Warner Interactiveconfirmed that Day1 Studios will bedevelopingforthcoming titleFEAR 3.

Nintendo hascertified Stonetrip’sShiVa 3D multi-platform engine totheir Wii platform.

Autodesk andCraft Animationshave announced asoftware integrationdeal for their CraftDirector Studio andAutodesk’s 2011 3dsMax and Softimagesoftware.

Nintendo hasrenewed a licencewith graphicschipset firm S3Graphics, allowingthem to use new S3TextureCompression tech.

Epic Games haslicensed ScaleformGFx UI tech to bebundled in for freewith their UnrealEngine 3.

Emergent gametechnologies haslicensed itsGamebryo engineto South Korea-based studioSmileGate.

Konami hasrevealed the nextSilent Hill title iscurrently beingdeveloped by Czechstudio VatraGames.

DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

WORLDVIEW | ALPHA

MAY 2010 | 11

SAY WHAT?!?FOR THE LATEST NEWS...

Phil Harrison and David Gardner have alsoresigned from their seat on the company’sboard of directors.

Bozek was hired in 2009 to head up thenew online-focused outfit.

It was uncertain how many were workingat Atari London Studio when Bozek headedup the group. The studio had released onlyone project since Bozek stood in asdevelopment director.

“We recently launched a Facebookapplication called Atari Photo Sauce inOctober,” she recently told Develop.

“It’s a social creative app that lets youdecorate photos with funny stickers,accessories and speech bubbles and ‘PhotoSauce’ your friends.”www.atari.com

UKTREASURY MINISTER VISITSBLITZTreasury Minister Stephen Timms has visitedUK stronghold Blitz Games Studios.

Joined by Labour candidate James Plaskitt,Timms met with Blitz Games’ foundingbrothers Philip and Andrew Oliver to discussthe industry’s strengths and how it can beaided in the future.

Timms said he enjoyed visiting a“fantastically creative and innovativecompany first hand.”

He went on to say that: “Blitz played a keyrole in making the case for the tax breakannounced by the Chancellor in the Budget,

and I look forward to seeing the growth ofthe British video games industry in the courseof the years to come.”

Both Andrew and Philip Oliver helped leadthe charge in the UK’s campaign for gamedevelopment tax breaks, but both statedtheir belief that there is still more to do.www.blitzgamesstudios.com

CANADASILICON KNIGHTS GRANTED$4M BY GOVERNMENTToo Human studio Silicon Knights has beengranted around $4m from the Canadiangovernment for a new multi-platform titledue within five years.

The money is set to create 65 new jobs atthe studio immediately.

Canadian newspaper The Tribune reportedthat the grant was announced by CanadianMP Rick Dykstra at the Silcon Knights offices.

“This is going to benefit Silicon Knights inways that are profound and long-lasting,” saidcompany president Denis Dyack.

He added that the title planned from theinvestment will be built for next-genconsoles, and that he expected other jobs tobe created during development.

MP Dykstra said that the Canadiangovernment are providing taxpayer money toa private company as there are no competingbusinesses to be impacted by the decision.

“Their growth and their success is veryimportant to our community,” he said.www.siliconknights.com

WARNER BROS. BUYSMMO DEVS TURBINEWarner Bros has acquired indie MMO developerTurbine in what is reported to be a $160m deal.

Turbine – the Massachusetts-based studioresponsible for Lord of the Rings Online andDungeons & Dragons Online – is now a fully ownedWarner subsidiary. Turbine CEO Jim Crowley saidthe acquisition will allow the studio to expand itsbusiness globally.

Warner Bros’ latest buyout completes thepublisher’s full ownership of the Lord of the Ringsgame brand – a franchise often tipped to be thelikeliest to compete with Blizzard’s genre kingpinWorld of Warcraft.

Last year the group purchased J.R.R. Tolkien’soriginal literary Lord of the Rings works from EA.

Numbers behind the deal have not beenannounced, though a purported source close tothe matter said the deal will be reaching figures ashigh as $160 million.

The deal sees Warner’s aggressive gamesindustry expansion continue, having recentlybought up a majority of properties sold by fallenfirm Midway, as well as a majority share in Batman:Arkham Asylum studio Rocksteady Games.www.turbine.com

HEAD TO WWW.DEVELOP-ONLINE.NETOur online resource features news, features, analysis andcommentary posted daly, and is available via the web, mobile,RSS and daily email and news alert blasts.

“We treat ourdevelopers extremely

well.”

In the wake of the ongoing Infinity Warddebacle, Activision COO Thomas Tippl

attempts to defend his company.

“There is a creativeforce in Scotland’scomputer games

industry that we mustsupport.”

Alistair Darling had some more sugar-coated words for developers on his recent

visit to Scottish studios

“There are somepeople in the gamesindustry that think a

tax break might be toonarrow, or

inappropriate.”

But at the time of writing, Tory videogames spokesperson Ed Vaizey and his

party had yet to offer a decent alternative.

“Go screw yourself,Apple.”

Little words, huge statement. Adobe’s‘platform evangelist’ Lee Brimelow kicks

back against Apple’s Flash embargo.

INDUSTRY ANALYSISSPONSORED BY

12 | MAY 2010

ALPHA | OPINION

Anumber of industry figures haveexpressed their belief that the gamesindustry will not see another major

new generation of consoles. Their hypothesis is that the future of console

hardware lies in steady evolutionary footstepsand increasingly open platforms rather thanthe large-scale proprietary technological leapsthat have periodically punctuated the last 30years. They often argue that the investmentrequired by Microsoft and Sony in competingat the cutting edge is simply too onerous andno longer economically viable.

They also often highlight the rapid rise ofserver-based gaming and its lower client-sidehardware requirements. Should such a changetake place, it would have a truly profoundimpact on the games industry. Developerswould be forced to reappraise their approachto content, tools and middlewaredevelopment. Publishers’ financials – and shareprices – would no longer be slaves tocyclicality. Consumers’ buying patterns wouldbe profoundly altered. Given that consolesoftware sales represent over $25 billion perannum, there is much at stake. But how likely isthis game-changing prediction to take place?

Clearly, only the console manufacturers andtheir close industry confidantes know at thisstage. However, I believe that we will see amajor new generation of hardware launched inthe next two-to-four years and that proprietaryconsoles will still be on sale in ten, even 15year’s time. Here’s why.

SELF CONTROLConsole manufacturers invest in proprietaryhardware for one overriding reason: control.Having complete technical and legal controlover their own platforms allows them to justifylevying fees for every disc manufactured andunit distributed digitally. These fees typicallysubsidise lower hardware retail prices, drivingdemand for both hardware and software.

They are acceptable to publishers as a resultand make the console manufacturing businessmodel viable. It is difficult therefore toenvisage Nintendo, Sony or Microsoftrelinquishing control over their own hardware,and easy to see continued investment inproprietary technology and closed platformsto maintain their fee justification.

While Nintendo has opened up the casualconsole games market, the bedrock of both

Sony and Microsoft’s strategy remains thehardcore gamer, a species that is fewer innumber but considerably more valuable perplayer. These gamers’ purchasing decisions aredriven by various factors, but they are uniquein expecting continual improvements in gametechnology sophistication. For Sony orMicrosoft to drop out of the technology armsrace that feeds this consumer demand wouldbe to retreat from the hardcore market.

This would represent a huge strategic risk forthe exiting company and give the survivor amonopolistic market dominance. Microsoftand Sony are tied together in this arms race,whether they like it or not.

But could console manufacturers simplymove to smaller, iterative but still proprietaryand cutting-edge hardware releases every oneto two years rather than $2 to $3 billion blownon a single platform every four to six years?Superficial features and interface innovations

have been used for generations to extendplatform longevity but these are not reallyconsole iterations; they do not fundamentallyimprove the specification and performance ofthe underlying platforms. As Sega found withthe Mega CD, the idea of iterating platformsgradually is flawed in three critical ways: playerfragmentation, development resistance andconsumer confusion.

IRRITATING ITERATIONSWhile the installed base of consoles only everincreases, the active player base follows aparabolic growth curve which, after manyyears and at its peak, can reach up to 50-to-60million players for a single console (c.50 percent of PS2’s installed base). Games publisherstend to experience their greatest individualand collective software sales during this periodusually recording their best financial results

too. In contrast, they often go into loss duringthe platform transition years when the activeuser bases bottom out.

Developers make significant up-frontinvestments with the advent of a newplatform to build best-of-breed technologyand amortise this cost over as many titles andfor as long as possible. Moving to iterativehardware could severely disrupt this –developers would have to make those up-front investments on a more regular basisand be less able to get to grips with the new technology.

They would end up having to createmultiple versions of the same game andwould likely end up prioritising the lowestcommon denominator, the original platform,as it will have the largest installed base. Thiswould contribute to the inevitable playerconfusion and annoyance when faced withmultiple hardware requirements to accessdifferent functionality within the same gameas well as the marketing challenge ofhighlighting what those requirements are.

The console hardware market isundoubtedly undergoing substantial change:the demography of gaming has broadenedhugely, Microsoft and Nintendo aim to extendtheir current platforms’ cycles and digitaldistribution is becoming increasingly prevalent.However, I do not believe that any of these willalter the continued use of the traditional modelof periodic major new platform launches. Andfor that, games developers and publishersshould be very grateful.

Nick Gibson is a director at Games Investor Consulting, providingresearch, strategy consulting and corporate finance services to the games,media and finance industries.www.gamesinvestor.com

Above: Iteratingplatforms gradually isflawed, as Sega foundout with its Mega CD

COMMENT: BUSINESS

by Nick Gibson, Games Investor Consulting

The generation

game

The bedrock of Sonyand Microsoft’s

strategy remains thehardcore gamer, a speciesthat is fewer in number butconsiderably morevaluable per player.


DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

OPINION | ALPHA

Billy Thomson is the creative director of newly-formed developer RuffianGames. Billy has over 13 years experience of designing video games,including design roles on Grand Theft Auto and GTA2, before working aslead designer on Realtime Worlds’ celebrated Crackdown.www.ruffiangames.com

MAY 2010 | 13

What would you say if I offered you agame that had squads of troopsengaged in constant battle, fighting

to dominate entire islands and hiddenfortresses? Set in a land in constant turmoilwhere monolithic structures rise and fall, andancient monuments loom over battlegroundswith imposing menace.

A game where only the sharpest reflexes,quickest minds and strategically adept canhope to survive intact. A game with a bevy ofcarefully crafted and wickedly sharp opponentswho constantly test your abilities to attack,parry and defend. Where captured prisoners areforced to fight for you and where only thosewho truly master the cornering of opponents orsetting cleverly baited traps can hope to wipe-out all comers and assume control.

I’d expect that you would be intrigued andinstantly want to try the game out, I know I didwhen I was offered the opportunity myself.

FOR ARGUMENT’S SAKEAfter reading that high-level summary of thegame, most people would expect some formof action based FPS game, but the fact is thisgame is more akin to a combination ofHangman, Scrabble and Risk. There are noweapons, vehicles or alien enemy forces inthis game, or any need for ninja skills. Thisgame is all about using the old noggin tobeat your challenger, which is a refreshingchange from the endless list of sports andFPS titles that are saturating the charts.

Denki, a local, independent Dundee basedgame developer, has created this fantasticlittle word game named Quarrel.

As I mentioned Quarrel is, quite succinctly,‘war with words’ and playing it is simplicityitself. There are just three key steps to playingwhich anyone can quickly grasp. Step one –choose one of your squads. Step two – pick aneighbour to fight. Step three – make the bestword fastest. Making a higher scoring wordthan your opponent triggers a frantic battlewhere their lands are taken from them, theirtroops crushed and even prisoners can becaptured. Engage in frequent conflicts toimprove your word-making options, tacticaland strategic skills and take on cleverer andmore devious opponents.

The game is complete and it’s great fun toplay. It’s a really well structured, tight designwith a beautiful, playful art style and it’s

fiendishly addictive. On top of all that, it alsohas the potential to help kids learn genuinelyuseful problem solving and language skills thatwill benefit them in everyday life. Somethingthat I would imagine none of the current TopTen selling games can boast right now.

CROSS WORDSYou would think publishers are climbing overthe top of each other to sign this game, yetincredibly it hasn’t been snapped up by any ofthe top publishers in the industry. Apparently,the general publisher opinion is ‘gamers don’tplay word games’. So, from the publisher pointof view there is no viable market for the game,putting any money behind this alreadycomplete and well-polished game would betoo high risk. I’d be able to accept a certainamount of scepticism from people who hadn’tplayed the game, but not from anyone in theindustry who had sat down and played a few

rounds. It’s such a simple yet compellingconcept, and you always want another gowhether you win or lose the last round, whichis a difficult balance to strike in game design.

I’ve asked every developer and gamer Iknow about this game and they all believe thatthere must be a market for it, primarily becausethey’d all buy it themselves. I can see it doingwell as a fun teaching aid in primary schoolsbecause it manages to do that incrediblydifficult job of educating, without you feelinglike you’re being patronised. Something I’dimagine teachers across the country look uponas the Holy Grail of education.

Maybe I’m getting too old and responsible,but I think having games like Quarrel, to mix inwith the mindless fun we have in the countlessnumber of shooters, sports, platformers,fighting and driving games that are out there,is a welcome addition. Isn’t gaming all aboutchoice and variation? I believe this game hasincredible potential on Xbox Live, PSN,Nintendo’s Virtual Console, Facebook, iPhoneand PC – especially for school classrooms.Hopefully I’m not alone in that respect.

Visit www.denki.co.uk/quarrel to get moreinformation on the game and give your support.

Denki’s new wordgame Quarrel is workson many levels – butwhy is it struggling tofind a publisher?

WordPlay

COMMENT: DESIGN

by Billy Thomson, Ruffian Games

I think having gameslike Quarrel – to mix

in with the mindless fun wehave in the countless numberof shooters, sports, fightingand driving – is awelcome addition.


14 | MAY 2010

ALPHA | OPINION

Ihate the term ‘casual gamer’. At Frontierwe have made a number of games thatappeal to a broad audience, including the

so-called ‘casual’ gamer, like the Roller CoasterTycoon games, Thrillville games, Dog’s Lifeand Wallace and Gromit games (we viewLostWinds as primarily a core-gamer game,by-the-way). With each of these games wehave conducted audience studies both in ourown right, and with publishers, as well as theanecdotal feel we all have anyway as gamers.Over time this gives a good impression ofwhat people tend to like and dislike, and it’s asubtle, complex mix.

I regularly answer interview questions,both face-to-face, over the phone and byemail, and a very common question that hascome up time and time again in relation tothese games is: ‘So, how far did you have todumb things down to appeal to the casualgamer?’ Each time I hear it, my heart sinks.The unspoken but clearly felt snobberytowards these players underlying this is a bigproblem. I sometimes think some people inour industry have this private image of thecasual gamer as an inbred potato-faced,straw-chewing idiot, with a fat wallet. It reallyisn’t like that.

In our experience, making gamesaccessible to a broad audience involves justas much, if not more, development effort andfocus testing as a ‘core-gamer’ game. Qualityhas a universal appeal, no matter whatdemographic your player may – or may not –fit into.

GOLDEN ERACast your mind back to ye olden times of1997, which feels like a blink of an eye agofor some of us, and the release of Goldeneyeon the Nintendo 64. I remember manygamers complaining about how hard thecontrols were to come to terms with.Thankfully, they eventually did so and all thisis now forgotten, and it spawned perhaps themost successful genre in our industry, theconsole FPS. There are still purists that thinkmouse and twenty hard-to-rememberkeyboard buttons are the ‘true’ FPSs, but thatis a whole separate rant which just reinforcesmy point.

The previous year, other gamerscomplained about the number of buttonsused in Mario 64 with its move to 3D. This,

and the issues with Goldeneye, is no differentto what a typical casual gamer feels whenthey try to play Modern Warfare 2, especiallywhen they get whupped instantly by pixel-perfect expert players, while they are busytrying to work out how to stop the cameralooking down at their feet. In this sphere,they are merely beginners. We core-gamershave had a gradual build up over a longsequence of FPSs since Goldeneye, eachslightly more complex and unforgiving thanthe last. If our 1997 selves were magicallybrought forward today with just theexperience we had then, we would probablybe considered as casual gamers too, bytoday’s standards.

Those new to gaming now, attracted bythe simple approachability of Wii, iPhone,

iPad, and hopefully in the near future Sony’sMove and Microsoft’s Natal, have not spent alltheir waking moments pouring over gamesreviews or the latest in gaming hardware.They have been doing other things. Thisdoesn’t mean we should treat them likeidiots, but should draw them in by providinginteresting, accessible experiences that aresomething more than shallow party games.

NATAL GAZINGGreat levellers like Heavy Rain, (in that core-gamer skills and twitch response are notneeded), are an interesting move in thisdirection, as it is focussing more on theexperience and choices of the player thantheir ability, and yet is not patronising them with a primary-colours-based simplistic interface.

We have seen new players come to the Wiiin droves, but there has sadly been a

significant exodus since, as I believe we havefailed to follow up with enough variedexperiences to hold the interest of thoseplayers, without overwhelming them withcomplex controls that make them feelfoolish. Clearly many will have bought themachine through fashion, and may still wheelit out occasionally at parties, but no longerbuy any games for it. It may be too late forthose people of the Wii generation – but let’snot underestimate those who come to ourindustry through Natal or Move. Thesepeople are not afraid of technology – theylove it and will buy it in droves – they areafraid of feeling, or being made to lookstupid. It is our job to make them look andfeel clever, to feel involved, to draw them in.

I have even overheard people say ‘themarket for casual games is dead’. It is not. Themarket for some of the cheap rubbish labelledas ‘casual’ games, aiming for the fictitious straw-chewer may well be dead, but the market fornew experiences is as alive as ever. There is adanger that as developers we will look inwardas an industry, studying our collective navels.Microsoft and Sony have staked a great deal ontheir forthcoming technologies, whichtogether present a scale of opportunity forinnovation this industry has hardly seen before.We are in an industry that has never stoppedchanging – we should embrace this and pushthese exciting new technologies to delivergreat new experiences for all our audiences.

David Braben is the founder of Cambridge-based Frontier Developments.Best known as the co-creator of Elite, Braben has contributed to, designedor overseen a number of other projects including Frontier: Elite II, Dog’sLife, Thrillville and LostWinds. Frontier is currently developing his next title,The Outsider. He is also closely involved with Skillset.www.frontier.co.uk

‘Casual’ is a term oftenused by the gamesindustry – but its over-use means we end uppatronising ourgrowing audience

We’re in an industrythat’s never stopped

changing – we shouldembrace this and pushthese new technologies todeliver great newexperiences for allour audiences.

How ‘Casual’

Are You?

COMMENT: INDUSTRY

by David Braben


DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

OPINION | ALPHA

Ben Board is European developer account manager at Microsoft,supporting all studios working on games for Xbox and Games forWindows platforms. He previously worked as a programmer and producerat the likes of Bullfrog, EA and Lionhead.

MAY 2010 | 15

The Xbox 360 is more than a gamesmachine. Sure, it’s a Sky TV player, amovies marketplace, a social

networking client, a DVD player and all that –but above all, it’s a platform. What does that mean?

A platform is much more than just a box ofelectronics, more than a set of APIs,certification requirements, legal policies,brands and logos. Underneath, a platform islike an ecosystem. It’s an environment thatallows many different agencies to worktogether in a way that is, all being well,virtuously circular, supporting and benefitingeveryone. A platform’s games are its flowers:alluring shapes and colours topping longstems of investment, which can be enjoyed intheir own right while providing the pollen fornew growth. Developers, as individualslearning to create ever-better experiences,are agents within as well as fruits of thesystem. Careers are built on platforms, too.

A platform is also a sort of collaboration.We, the platform provider, promise to build,maintain, develop and protect its capabilitiesso that you, the content creator, can use it tobuild your products, observing a few groundrules, and we share the spoils. This modelworks really well, especially for Xbox, whoseecosystem is generally very successful for thedevelopers, publishers and retailers whoinhabit it.

PLATFORM GAMESAs a platform within a platform, Xbox LiveArcade (XBLA) is arguably the mostsuccessful of the three console digital gameschannels; a cornerstone of the Xboxexperience, with an ecosystem of its own thathas matured over the years into a serious wayto make profitable video games, particularlyfor small to mid-sized developers. Thesedevelopers often ask our advice for gettingtheir game onto XBLA. There are essentiallytwo routes. Let me summarise them here.

One is to find a third-party publisher tosponsor your development. This is a pitchprocess much like any other, involving theusual routine of research, approaches, and, ifthings start to gain momentum, meetingsand negotiations, all preceded by bags ofbusiness and design planning and theproduction of that killer demo to blow awaythe publisher. The key to finding a deal this

way is to understand publishers’ needs – whois actively engaged with XBLA, which titlesdo they already publish, and what are theylooking to sign?

The other is to approach Microsoft GameStudios (MGS), the first-party publisher onXbox. MGS has published more XBLA titlesthan any other publisher – around half of thehundreds of games available to the service –so if you’re a dev looking to place your game,or with more questions about that process,you should contact them [email protected]. (It’s worth notingthat we DAMs don’t work for MGS and soaren’t the people to try to pitch your gameto, although this does happen – and we’rereally happy to offer our opinion, or even putin a good word if we see something we think is great, if we’re visiting you on other business.)

Whether you pursue the first or third-partyroute, it’s important to understand whatcharacterises an XBLA title. In my opinion thequality and production values on the servicehave been rising steadily in recent years, andwhile XBLA titles are usually smaller andshorter you’d do well to aim for retail Xboxtitle levels of quality in graphics andgameplay. Look at the big successes forinspiration. Last year alone Trials HD, SplosionMan (both built by small teams), Battlefieldand Shadow Complex all had huge success. Aswith any other marketplace, if you’re sellingthe brightest trinkets, you’ll attract most ofthe attention.

INDEPENDENT THINKINGI’ll close by mentioning two more routes tomarket that we provide to games developers.First is the Xbox Live Indie Games channel,

previously known as Community Games, or XNA Games. Using Windows software that weprovide, you can code up your games in C#,test them on the PC, then compile the samecode for Xbox and deploy it across yourhome network to your retail console – no devkit required. Better still you can then submitit to the channel and charge actual cash forit, and people are doing so, and making realmoney on Xbox.

Xbox is unique among the home consolesin offering that capability. Personally, I thinkthat’s pretty damn awesome. If only I hadmore time... (and talent).

The second route is Windows Phone 7Series, shipping at the end of the year. A bitof Bing sleuthing will lead you to therecently-released preview SDK that enablesyou to write games, also in C#, for the phone– at least, for the included emulator, until thehandsets appear. Windows Phone will be thelatest Microsoft gaming ecosystem: a newplatform on which developers and publisherscan grow their business.

Action platform videogame Splosion Manbrought huge successlast year for TwistedPixel Games

XBLA is the mostsuccessful of the

three console digital gameschannels; an ecosystem ofits own that’s matured overthe years into a serious wayto make profitablevideo games.

COMMENT: BUSINESS

by Ben Board, Microsoft

Bringing Your

Games to XBLA


RegionalRoundtable:

Australiap32

Analysis:The 2010

Develop 100p29

In focus:Codeworks’

GameHorizonp40

DEVELOPMENT FEATURES, INTERVIEWS, ESSAYS & MORE

Bust a MoveMeet the PlayStation 3 developerstackling the first Move titles, p36

Smart CasualIs the iPad set to shake up the very ecosystem of app development, or

just make things difficult? Leading iPhone studios tell all, p18

18 | MAY 2010

BETA | IPAD

Midas touch?With the impact of the iPhone on the games industry as atemplate, predicting just what the iPad means for gamesdevelopers should be fairly straightforward. But when WillFreeman spoke to the studios on the front line of App it turnedout that things aren’t quite so simple…

When Steve Jobsunveiled the iPad earlythis year the reaction

of public, press and professionalswas far from hysteric. In contrastto the hype precedingconfirmation of Apple’s tabletdevice, the watchful masses’retort was one of bemusement.


IPAD | BETA

Cut through the hypeand it’s clear iPad isn’takin to a laptop – orthe other extreme, agiant iPhone. It’ssomething completelydifferent. And that’sboth a good and badthing for developers

Equally easy to dismiss as an outsized iPadTouch, misguided netbook or audacious e-reader, the iPad continues to divide opinion.But with Apple’s industry-shatteringreputation, it would be unwise not to take aclose look at the potential of the iPad, andweigh up the pros and cons of the headline-grabbing platform.

Sharing many of the same guts as theiPhone, and built around a near identical userinterface, it’s easy to dismiss the iPad as littlemore than a system-revision. However whenyou speaking to the most renowned appdevelopers, it’s clear that a larger screen isjust the start of a bigger picture.

SIZE MATTERS“The iPad is definitely a platform in its ownright,” insists Rob Murray, CEO of Flight Controlcreator Firemint. “Like going from TV tocinema, it’s a platform where size matters.Once you’ve had an iPad for a while, it’s hardnot to think of an iPod touch as a smaller iPadthat makes up for the limitations of a smallscreen size with the convenience of fittinginto your jeans pocket.”

Murray isn’t alone in thinking that theiPad’s increased size is a catalyst forsubstantial changes to both user behaviourand game design.

“I definitely think it is a distinct newdevice,” affirms Eros Resmini, VP of marketingat Aurora Feint, which offers multiplayer andsocial backend for iPhone games. “I see theiPad as being in between a mobile device anda laptop. I’ve heard the people use the term‘casual computing’ to describe the kind ofusage the iPad inspires.

“If you think of an iPhone, it’s more of a‘lean-in’ experience’, in that you have to getreally close to your device to start using it. Ifind that the iPad is more of a ‘lean-back’experience. Surfing and using the devicefeels very light, and I think that bodes verywell for game developers, and people thathave content more suited to that lean-backscenario.”

Resmini’s observation offers an interestingproposition, suggesting that the new form ofthe iPad effects not just interface design, butalso encourages developers to considertraditional ergonomic concerns aboutphysical interaction.

There’s a general consensus that a largerdevice will encourage longer play sessions andmore time spent with the device in the home,as Todd Northcutt, VP, GameSpy Technologyclarifies: “The form factor, the screen size,technical capabilities and even theenvironment where the device will be mostlyused are radically different than the iPhone.

“What makes a great game for my phone,which I might play in five minute incrementsstanding in a grocery line, will likely not bethe same great experience on the iPad, sittingon my comfy sofa when I have an hour tospend playing.”

Another casual industry stalwart – this timefrom the publishing sector – who eager tohighlight the wider change the device’soutsized dimensions will inspire, is Inteniumproject manager Florian Groß. He warns thatdevelopers are going to need to start to thinkdifferently about the way they design games:“People will use it at home and not on the go.

For games that implies that a one minutegameplay experience might not be enoughfor iPad games.”

There’s certainly no shortage of studiosand bedroom coders keen to embrace theiPad, but even with such a vast collective skillbase, the challenges will be myriad.

Aurora Feint works with a quite staggering17,000 developers, positioning Resminiperfectly to tap into the murmur of concernmasked by the veil of enthusiasm.

“What I hear in the crowd is that just reallygetting used to the new form factor is thebiggest challenge,” reveals Resmini.

“The larger screen can offer a lot ofopportunities to add content to games, but italso presents challenges in terms of titles thatuse accelerometers, and in terms of where toplace the HUD. Some of the key componentsthat needed to be crammed into the iPhonenow have a lot of options. Sometimes thoseoptions can be a bit daunting.”

DOWN TO BUSINESSAn impressive number of iPad games wereavailable at the tablet’s US launch, and manywere immediately praised for harnessing theunique potential of the platform.

Still, many more missed out on theopportunity, overcompensating for the extrascreen space with cluttered UIs, or simplyupscaling their titles. All of which did little todisprove the idea that iPad is little more thana ‘king-sized’ iPhone.

“It’s great to have lots of extra screen real-estate, but all of those extra pixels have to beused properly,” advises Michel Kripalani,former Autodesk games boss and nowfounder of app studio Oceanhouse Media.

“You can’t just take an existing iPhoneexperience, up-res the graphics and expect itto look good. The best iPad apps are the onesthat are designed for that size screen fromday one.”

Kripalani greets the iPad’s arrival with abreed of cautious optimism not uncommonamong his peers, and is quick to highlight thefact that’s Apple’s latest piece of kit providesthe largest multi-touch surface most studioswill ever have worked with. That means aperiod defined by what the Oceanhousepresident refers to as ‘unlocking newgameplay paradigms’; a process that mostagree will take some time. Genres needreinventing, UI design may have to return tobasics and, perhaps more significantly,studios may need to restructure.

“The mechanics and underlyingtechnology may be the same, but I think thatthe craft of making iPad games is different

and will be a new challenge,” says GameSpy’s Northcutt, who proposes thatApple’s latest must-have tech could shake upapp development ecosystem before it’s evensettled in the wake of the iPhone.

“Does that mean more difficult? Probably.I don’t think that the kinds of stories we heardon the iPhone, with short developmentcycles and small teams will be repeated onthe iPad for this very reason. I believe peopleare going to expect much more from theiriPad games and doing that in the samemanner as on the iPhone will be difficult –especially if the higher price points for iPadapps we’ve seen thus far remain the case.”

If Northcutt is correct, then the industrymust brace itself for a leap in consumerexpectation brought on by the increasinglyubiquitous iPad screen.

Miles Jacobson, the man at the driving seatof Football Manager’s recent success oniPhone, and Sports Interactive’s studiodirector, also subscribes to the view that apotential shift in user expectation could beon its way.

In fact Jacobson, who has never shied awayfrom first hand communication with FootballManager’s immense swathe of fans, haspicked up on what could create something ofa problem for the iPhone titles.

“It’s a giant iPod that happens to havesome features available that make it its ownplatform, particularly in the GUI side ofthings,” states the SI boss.

“What it isn’t is a home computer, and fromthe comments that I’m getting at themoment on Twitter and our forums, peopledon’t seem to understand yet that it’s unlikelythey’ll see full blown PC and Mac games onthe device.”

A BLOCK OFF THE OLD CHIPPeel away the tactile casing that has alreadyenamoured early American adopters, and theiPad boasts some impressive credentials (see‘Under the Hood’). There’s a custom-designed1GHz Apple A4 processing chip keepingthings running, and thanks a substantiallyfaster CPU, the iPad does a great deal to leaveits smaller predecessor in a cloud of dust.

Yet despite some box-ticking specs, lifeisn’t necessarily set to get any developersmigrating from iPhone to iPad.

“Developing for the platform is certainlyeasier than it was for the iPhone from acreative perspective, because the extrascreen space gives you more freedom,” saysBrian Greenstone, who serves as CEO forPangea Software – the longest continuallyoperating game developer for Appleplatforms. With over 22 years of toiling withApple SDKs, and a number of iPhone hits likeCro-Mag Rally under its belt, Pangea knowsApple CEO Jobs’ platforms better than most

“The main issue now for a lot of developersis trying to figure out a single code base foran app that has to run on both the iPhoneand the iPad, because obviously there aresome major differences,” says Greenstone,who isn’t afraid to share some of his moretroubling experiences with the iPhone.

According to the Pangea veteran, one ofthe biggest hurdles new iPad developersmust prepare for is the issue of fill rate on the3D chip.

Producing iPadgames in the same

manner as on the iPhonewill be difficult – especiallyif the higher price for iPadapps we’ve seen sofar remain the norm.

Todd Northcutt, GameSpy

“The 3D chip on the iPad appears to be thesame chip as the one in the iPhone. It’s amobile chip, and being a mobile chip it’s notreally designed for such a high resolutionscreen,” reveals Greenstone.

“That means it’s a little bit fill rate limited –if you’ve got a lot of overlapping 3D modelsand fog or a complex environment like a lotof games, it brings the iPad to its knees.

“The processor is super-fast, but thegraphics chip can get bottlenecked, and thathas been the challenge.”

Fortunately, there’s a solution if the 3D chipisn’t quite delivering the goods.

According to Greenstone, for some of hisgames, a small drop of a graphics resolutionslider countered by a 40 per cent upscalingon the hardware’s behalf means a nearunperceivable change that lets the iPad getback on its feet.

HIDE AND SEEKOf course, creating apps isn’t just a matter ofinteractive design; it’s also about sellingproduct, and on the iPhone every developer

knows that means discoverability.The arrival

of the iPad App Store could have been Apple’sopportunity to implement a grand new designand rid its i-devices of the curse of the chart-based searching. But for now at least thatdoesn’t seem the to be part of the plan.

It may even be that there’s little Apple canor has to do about the fact users have to wadethrough the thousands of apps out there, saysGameloft’s vice president of publishing for theAmerica’s Baudouin Corman: “Those issuesexist with any open marketplace. I don’t thinkit’s unique to the App Store. With more than10m paid downloads, we’ve been very

successful in terms of our marketing

Above from left:Developers cautiousbut optimistic aboutiPad. Miles Jacobson(Sports Interactive);Baudouin Corman(Gameloft); Rob(Firemint); PatrickWylie (Big Fish); andAndrew Stein (PopCap)

The 3D chip appearsto be the same as

the one in the iPhone. It’s amobile chip, and being soit’s not really designed forsuch a highresolution screen.

Brian Greenstone, Pangea

Height: 9.56 inches (242.8 mm)Width: 7.47 inches (189.7 mm)Thickness: 0.5 inch (13.4 mm)Weight: Wi-Fi model:

1.5 pounds (0.68 kg) Wi-Fi + 3G model:1.6 pounds (0.73 kg)

DISPLAY■ 9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy

widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPStechnology

■ 1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 pixelsper inch (ppi)

■ Fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating■ Support for display of multiple languages

and characters simultaneously

WIRELESS AND CELLULARWi-Fi model■ Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n)■ Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR technology

Wi-Fi + 3G model■ UMTS/HSDPA (850, 1900, 2100 MHz)■ GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)■ Data only2■ Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n)■ Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR technology

CAPACITY■ 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB flash drive

PROCESSOR■ 1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed,

high-performance, low-powersystem-on-a-chip

SENSORS■ Accelerometer■ Ambient light sensor

INPUT AND OUTPUT■ Dock connector port■ 3.5-mm stereo headphone jack■ Built-in speaker■ Microphone■ Micro-SIM card tray

(Wi-Fi + 3G model only)

UNDER THE BONNET

BETA | IPAD

20 | MAY 2010

DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

IPAD | BETA

and delivering high quality titles to consumers,so we are not too concerned with it.

“We are looking forward to this continuedsuccess with the iPad. We’ll continue to focuson integrating our marketing strategies withsocial networking – YouTube, Facebook,Twitter – to get our games out there.”

Corman’s optimism isn’t isolated, andanother giant of the casual sector is equallyupbeat about the challenge ofdiscoverability. Perhaps it’s experience, orpossibly influence, but PopCap Games seemsconfident that quality product can secureexposure on merit alone.

“As more and more apps launch for theiPad, we do expect the general challenges ofdiscoverability and price erosion to increase,”confesses Andrew Stein, director of mobilebusiness development at PopCap.

“However, we have found that high qualitycontent does bubble up to the top and thereare more and more websites and othersources of information dedicated to helpingiPad and iPhone or iPod touch users find thebest games and other apps. So discoverabilityisn’t totally dependent on placement in theApp Store – although, of course, that doesstill play a huge role.”

Developers accept that poor discoverabilityis set to continue on the iPad, but thelanguage is more commonly about workablesolutions rather than the issue itself.

“There are all kinds of things you can do forvery limited budgets though, so as long as

people don’t treat the platform in the same wayas they would a triple-A boxed product, butmore like an XBLA or PSN game, they should beOK,” says Sports Interactive’s Jacobson

“As with any platform, if the app that youare releasing on it is good quality, and goodvalue for money, it should get noticed as longas you PR it in the right way. But as with manygreat iPod games, you need to work out howto get noticed.”

CONTENT WARUnfortunately, the obstacles thrown up bythe iPad don’t end with studios forming ahard skin to the abrasion of discoverability.Given tha the Apple tablet makes it easier towatch movies, read books and comics andalso browse online, games makers are goingto have to face even more competition fromthose publishing non-gaming content for theplatform than ever.

“Aside from the challenges of designing fora larger screen developers are going to befaced with more competition from within theplatform,” warns Arkadium’s game productiondirector Jeremy Mayes.

“Early polls seemed to indicate that buyerswere less interested in gaming on iPad thanthen they are on iPhone.”

There’s little disputing that the iPadpresents a significant challenge for even the most seasoned game developers, andwith new audiences from demographics like the ‘grey gamer’ set to be welcomed in by the friendly nature of the big screen, thepitfalls and perks of diversity are sure to beseriously amplified.

“[The challenge is] to make more engagingand more mass market titles,” says Mayes. “TheiPad will unlock a more mass market audienceand will take gaming in new directions andopen up gaming to new audiences.”

There is one thorn in the iPad’s side,however, that may make getting familiar withthe format a little less pressure fordevelopers. By lacking phone functionality,Apple’s tablet is without one of the keyselling point of the iPhone, and for thatreason, the speculation is that iPad’s growthmay be faltering at first.

“The iPad’s lack of cell phone capabilitiesmight make its growth slower than iPhone,but after using it while at home and on theroad for the last couple of weeks, I see thehuge potential, so sales could be boostedwhen the iPad goes from being ‘great to have’to ‘need to have’,” suggest Patrick Wylie, VP ofof Big Fish Games.

TRIPLE WORD SCOREConsidering the collective views of some ofthe world’s most incisive touchscreen Appdevelopers, it’s easy to dwell on thedifficulties the iPad presents. But it is thosevery complications which highlight the iPadas a new platform. From Firemint to Big Fish,the language being spoken is of teethingproblems; which iin itself is a sign typical of anew era in game design.

The last word goes to Arkadium’s Mayes,who highlights perhaps the most significantchange the iPad can brings about. It’s adirection that could be seen as a stepbackward, but hints at a revolution given thepotency of online gameplay.

“In my opinion, the biggest opportunityiPad brings to game developers is gettingpeople playing games together again. I’m nottalking about synchronous or asynchronousmultiplayer games, I’m talking aboutpeople playing games together inthe same room. The kind of ‘socialgames’ that were played long beforeFacebook existed. It wasn’t acoincidence that there were a slew ofboard game-like apps at launch – thedevice is perfect as a table top gameboard. Two players can play FlightControl HD across from each otheron the same device.

“It makes social gaming fun again.”

‘Traditional’experiences like thismay not be the key toiPad’s success – nomatter how impressivethe press shot is

We have found thathigh quality content

does bubble up to the topand there are more andmore websites dedicated tohelping users findthe best games.

Andrew Stein, PopCap

AS ANALYSIS OF APPLE’S controversialnew terms of service for the iPhone OS 4.0continues, it’s becoming apparent that thefirm seems to be tightening its grip on theway games are developed for the platform.

To recap: Apple is proposing that alliPhone and iPad applications must be‘originally written’ in C/C++/Objective-C,which would seem to suggest Apple CEOSteve Jobs and his team are eager toimplement an ecosystem that encouragesnative code and the Cocoa Touch API as thesole platform for app development.

This model sounds like bad news for thehigh-profile ‘meta-platforms’ – notablyAdobe’s Flash-to-iPhone compiler. Andalternative App development platformsthat run above Cocoa Touch such as .Net through MonoTouch look set for atough time.

Jobs himself has apparently alreadyvoiced his opinions on the advantages ofminimalising the role of ‘intermediate’platforms in an email conversationpublished by Mashable. Jobs replied to anemail by Tao Effect developer Greg Slepakthat claimed “SDK TOS are growing on [theiPhone products] like an invisible cancer”.

“From a developer’s point of view, you’relimiting creativity itself,” suggested Slepak,to which Jobs replied: “We’ve been therebefore, and intermediate layers betweenthe platform and the developer ultimatelyproduces sub-standard apps and hindersthe progress of the platform.”

The backlash against Apple has alreadybegun, and Adobe’s ‘platform evangelist’Lee Brimelow used his blog to claim Appleis implementing “tyrannical control overdevelopers and more importantly, wanting

to use developers as pawns in their crusadeagainst Adobe”.

“The fact that Apple would make such ahostile and despicable move like this clearlyshows the difference between our twocompanies,” wrote Brimelow.

“All we want is to provide creativeprofessionals an avenue to deploy theirwork to as many devices as possible. We arenot looking to kill anything or anyone.”

Apple’s 4.0 OS, which will introduce anXbox Live-style social network and in-appadvertising system, has actually beenreceived with some warmth by a number ofdevelopers, who left supportive commentsfor the forthcoming upgrade over onDevelop’s sister website CasualGaming.biz.The sentiment is that opening the doors tothe likes of Flash would “simply flood theApp Store with a bunch of crap”.

Elsewhere, on it’s own blog, Unity hasresponded to suggestions that its Unity3Dplatform may be one of many caught in thecrossfire of Apple’s clampdown.

“We haven’t heard anything from Appleabout this affecting us,” said Unity’s CEODavid Helgason.

“We believe that with hundreds of titles(or probably over a thousand by now),including a significant proportion of thebest-selling ones, we’re adding so muchvalue to the iPhone ecosystem that Applecan’t possibly want to shut that down.

“Our current best guess is that we’ll befine. But it would obviously be irresponsibleto guarantee that. What I can guarantee isthat we’ll continue to do everything in ourpower to make this work, and that we willbe here to inform you when we know more– as soon as we know more.”

ON BAD TERMS

MAY 2010 | 21

“Sitel’s Game Masters ensure that consistent high quality service is always provided to the EVE community.”

“Sitel’s Game Masters ensure that consistent high quality service is always provided to the EVE community.”


GAMIFICATION: HOWGAMES AREEVERYWHERE

DavidHelgason,Unity

Drawing on Unity's rapid rise toprominence to analyse howgames are leading the charge onmobile, web, TV and invadingsocial networking – and Howhighly skilled, innovative studioscan thrive beyond the boundariesof traditional development.

KEYNOTES

BUSINESS

DESIGN ART

TRADITIONAL GAMESBREAKING INTO SOCIALNETWORKS

Louis Castle,Instant Action

Louis has recently beenattempting to free the gamesindustry from the shackles ofbricks and mortar anddemocratizing music games inthe process. In this keynote talkhe will be sharing hisexperiences.

TIM SCHAFER KEYNOTE

Tim Schafer,Double Fine

The exact details of the keynoteare not yet known, but Schafercommitted to the conference aswe went to press. The much-loved designer is the president ofDouble Fine Productions, creatorof Psychonauts and Brütal Legend.Prior to Double Fine, he was aproject leader at LucasArts.

BIOWARE KEYNOTE

Ray Muzykaand GregZeschuk,BioWare

The BioWare founders will alsopresent a keynote. The pairoversee a studio network,founded in 1995, respected forstory-driven adventures – recentreleases include Mass Effect andDragon Age. BioWare's Austinteam is working on Star Wars: TheOld Republic.

BURN ZOMBIE BURN.MARKETING, SALES ANDMAKING MONEY

JamesBrooksby,doublesix

The history of the hit game BurnZombie Burn. How it made it toPSN exclusivity then move on todiscussing the marketing thattook Burn Zombie Burn to sell over140,000 units on PSN alone.James promises to show “somenice shiny graphs”.

THE INSIDE GUIDE TOSETTING UP ANINDEPENDENT STUDIO

Robin Lacey,Beatnik Games

An open panel discussion aboutsetting up an independentgames studio from nothing andsucceeding. Or should that besurviving? Advice from studioheads about setting up a team,making a good game and makingit onto digital distribution.

AUDIO KEYNOTE

AdamLevenson,Activision

Truly interactive music anddialogue will revolutionise thevideo game narrative. In thiskeynote for the entire audio track, Activision’s audio guruLevenson will describe some keyaspects of this inevitableparadigm shift.

OPENING PLAYERMETRICS TO COMMUNITYIN JUST CAUSE 2

Jim Blackhurst & Mike Oldman,Square Enix

Examing how metrics wereelevated from an internal tool foroffline analysis to an essentialpart of the communityexperience.

WORKING ON WIIWARE:FROM STUDENTS TOSWORDS AND SOLDIERS

Jasper Koning,Ronimo Games

Discussing the development ofRonimo’s first WiiWare game.Swords & Soldiers started out as aFlash prototype. A quirkytoolchain, extensive internaldelays and balancing depth withaccessibility are some of thechallenges to be discussed.

INSPIRATION INANIMATION

Jeff Pratt,Escape Studios

Pixar veteran Jeff Pratt exploressources of inspiration foranimators, and how artists cangenerate fresh ideas by looking atfilm animation for reference. Jeffreveals what has inspired himover the years – everything fromsilent movies to classic Disney.

HOMESPUN FUN - THEART AND DESIGN OFKAHOOTS

Ricky Haggett,Honeyslug

When Honeyslug created PSPMinis title Kahoots, they had nomoney to pay an artist. So theydecided to make all the artthemselves. This talk details theprocess of creating the world ofKahoots and why constraintsfoster creativity.

Bright starsThe Develop conference is just two months away – and we’ve detailed the key sessions. Check www.developconference.com for a full listing…

DEVELOP CONFERENCE | BETA

13 -15 JULY 2010

DEVELOPCONFERENCE& EXPO

WHEN:July 14th to 16th

WHERE:Brighton MetropoleHotel, UK

www.developconference.com

BROADCASTING THEIRINTENTIONS: THE BBC,CHANNEL 4, AND GAMES

Alice Taylor, Channel 4 & DaveAnderson, BBC

How broadcasters hope to tapinto the game space, how theysee the market shaping up, andwhat their interest could meanfor developers and publishers.

AUDIO

24 | MAY 2010

BETA | DEVELOP CONFERENCE

EVOLVE

CODING

DEVELOP DEN PRODUCTION

13 -15 JULY 2010

WHY ARE GAMESEQUELS OFTEN BETTERTHAN FILM SEQUELS?

AnaKronschnabl &TomasRawlings,FluffyLogic

It is easy to think of games whosesequel is equal, or indeed better,than the original – Fallout toFallout 2, GTA to Vice City. HereAna (a filmmaker) and Tomas (agames designer) talk about whythis is the case: why is a filmbetter the first time around?

SEX, BRAWLS, ANDMAGIC DUELS: GAMEDESIGN BEYOND THE TV

DajanaDimovska,CopenhagenGameProductions

What do a no-graphics sex game,a one-button racing game, andan accelerometer-enabled wizardgame have in common? This talkexplores three games developedby the Copenhagen GameCollective, with an eye towardsrepurposing ‘social’ gaming.

USER-MADE CONTENTAND SOCIAL NETWORKSON XBOX LIVE

Ben Board,Microsoft

Attendees will hear how toleverage the Xbox Liveframework to implement user-generated content, and socialnetwork integration, and how towork with the platform policyrequirements to ensure a smoothpassage through certification.

PRODUCTIVITY: MAKELIFE EASIER FOR YOURTEAM

Jason Avent,Black RockStudios

The talk will incorporate concreteexamples of how real-timeupdate, build systems, tools andpractices can be designed toreduce iteration time, decreasefrustration and empower yourteam to boost productivity.

SPU ASSISTEDRENDERING

StephenMcAuley,BizarreCreations

The power of the PS3 is in theSPUs, but how do we takeadvantage of these processors tospeed up our rendering? This talklooks at key issues ofparallelisation andsynchronisation, before givingreal-world examples from Blur.

ADDRESSING HUMANSCALABILITY WITHMULTI-USER EDITING

JohnRittenhouse,CCP Games

With the size and time requiredfor creating content on the rise,human scalability factor isbecoming an increasing issue indelivering more detailed openworlds. This talk as a result looksat ways to alleviate thosebottlenecks.

RIGGED TO BLOW:POWERPLAY PIPELINEFOR SPLIT/SECOND

MatthewRubin, BlackRock Studio

Authoring set pieces anddestructible environmentspresents a unique set ofchallenges across code, art anddesign disciplines. This talk willdescribe the toolchain forproducing the 'Powerplay' assetsin Split/Second.

REAL-TIME HAIRSIMULATION ANDRENDERING IN EYEPET

Ben Tayler,SCEE LondonStudio

Many titles avoid tackling realistichair, citing workflow, processing,memory and renderinglimitations. But the currentgeneration of hardware is capableof achieving good results. Taylerdescribes the system developedfrom scratch for EyePet.

THE IPHONEDEVELOPERS'CONFERENCE CALL

Alan Yu,ngmoco

With the App Store landscapechanging almost daily, this paneldiscussion will provide first-handaccounts from leading iPhonedevelopers on the changingbusiness models, marketingstrategies, and content trends atplay on this unique format.

YESTERDAY'S DESIGNERS:TOMORROW'S SOCIALTECH INNOVATORS

GabeZichermann,beamMe

Looking at the oppotunities openfor game design thinkers toleverage their unique skills andinsight with some of the world'sbiggest brands and most excitingstartups. Drawing on researchinto game-thought innovationand practical experience.

WHY MOBILE GAMESWILL OUTPERFORMCONSOLE GAMING

MichaelSchade,Fishlabs

Demonstrating the evolution of 3D mobile gaming from aslittle as software rendered 500KB Java games to over 100MB in full HD resolutionOpenGL ES 2.0 hardwareaccelerated, true console-style,epic games and beyond.

GAMES AS A SERVICE:DO YOU REALLY KNOWWHAT IT MEANS?

ThomasBidaux, ICOPartners

The concept of service is not thatclearly defined. This talk providesa practical overview on how thecomponents of an online gameservice should be designed andintegrated in the productioncycle to form an optimal playerexperience.

www.imaginationstudios.com

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26 | MAY 2010

BETA | BRAND PROTECT

The world of legal terminology isperennially confusing for many gamedevelopers. With pressing deadlines

and bugs to fix, there’s little time left to spendcatching up with the latest changes to themyriad laws that affect the creative,technological and media industries.

Things are made no easier by the constantflux of local and international legalese, butone area – namely intellectual property law –is so significant to games development that afundamental understanding is absolutelyessential. To make that task easier, firms likeBrand Protect exist, offering tailouredsupport for the games industry that strives toprovide a value for money, easy to use IP-focused service.

A Brand Protect barrister, Bernard Whyatt isa man who speaks the language of lawfluently, but fortunately for developers, healso understands the tongue of the layman.As such, he is a font of practical advice, and achampion of the need to trademark the fruitsof your labour.

THE LETTER OF THE LAW“Registration of a game’s title helps to involveauthorities more quickly,” offers Whyatt.“Trademarks protect against counterfeiting,as well as other developers using similarnames to the games that you are developing,who try to use the reputation developed bythe owner of the game and thereby confusethe public.

“Trademarks also add value to yourbusiness. It is problematic to license IP that isnot registered. Once a title is registered thenit can be licensed – in part or full –mortgaged, charged and even sold.”

The reality is that most developers knowthey should invest time and the reasonablysmall cost in registering their IP, but with theactual impact of the pitfalls of unprotectedworks a relative mystery, for many –trademarks and related protection are a lastminute thought.

Whyatt is quick to warn that trademarkregistering is an essential process: “No oneneeds to register the name of a game, but notto do so leaves a hostage to fortune.

“If you decide not to register your gamestitles then in order to protect those titles youneed to rely on the tort of passing-off. Inorder to prove passing-off, the owner bears

the burden of proof in every aspect of theaction. When a lawyer says this to you, thinkmoney. You need to prove every aspect of thecase. Contrast this with a trademarkinfringement action where in certaincircumstances the trademark owner merelyneeds to prove the existence of the right forthe court to find in his favour.”

The truth of the matter is that for a modestthree-figure sum, you can protect your IP fora decade, or save £200 over ten years, andrun the risk of funding an ugly legal battle.

As if that weren’t enough for developers toworry about, trademark ownership isincreasingly becoming an internationalcompetition, as Whyatt highlights: “TheJapanese developers are becoming moreaggressive in the way that they want to ownintellectual property in the UK and in Europe.Developers must plan to protect andpromote their intellectual property here and abroad.”

A TWO-WAY STREETStudios nervous about the pressure tounderstand legal parlance and systems maytake solace in the fact that the need to learnconstantly is a two-way process. The rapiddiversification of the development sector is aconstant challenge to the legal professionalscharged with representing video game IP owners.

“The legal industry changes at its owninimitable pace,” reveals Whyatt, who admitsthat legal process with regard to IP is oftenslowly responsive, rather than proactive.

IP law’s precedent-led approach to cateringfor developing industries typically relies onanalogy, using the details of previousrelevant cases to apply and set newstandards. That means lawyers are pitched ina constant struggle to catch-up.

Still, with Brand Protect and itscontemporaries keeping a close eye on thegames industry, and developers increasinglyconscious of the merits of legal support, thefuture looks bright for those looking toprotect the results of their time, effort andcreative energy.www.brandprotect.com

Serve andprotectAs the game development sector’s ecosystem grows increasingly intricate, so does the law that underpins it.To make things a little clearer, Will Freeman spoke to Brand Protect barrister Bernard Whyatt about thebewildering world of IP protection…

Japanese developersare becoming moreaggressive in the

way that they want to ownintellectual property in theUK and Europe. Developersmust plan to protectand promote theirshere and abroad.


| BETA

The 2010 edition of theDevelop 100 comeswith this month’s issue

You can also head toDevelop100.com forthe full list

We took up the challenge of codingevery game that sells in the UKback in 2004 and by the launch of

the first Develop 100 co-produced wiithChart-Track (covering sales in 2005) we hadcoded up around 10,000 individual products.

Roll on to the end of 2009 for the latestedition and this had risen to 17,500 products,all with developer credit to an independentor publisher-owned studio and a country ofcoding origin. This means that we haveprobably the most accurate database of titlesanywhere in the world.

Sure, this is applied to sales in the UK, thethird largest gaming market in the world andtherefore cannot account for the culturaldifferences that would apply if we includedUSA and Japan. Nevertheless, this makes for afascinating account of what actually sells inthe UK, coupled to developer share ratherthan the more traditional publisher share ofthe market which is reported the world over.

We recognise the importance of givingcredit where credit is due which is why everyweek we list the developer against each titlein our standard weekly report, as seen on ourwebsite and as subscribed to by just aboutevery publisher active in this market. Theinternational profile of the various charts forvideo games is higher than ever.

Some publishers and developers are nowreaping the benefits with the monthlysyndicated reports that rank developersaccording to their ongoing performance in theUK charts. Get in touch if you want more regularupdates – you’ll receive a full monthly report forfree to give you an idea of what’s on offer (themonthly ranking of publisher-owned andindependent studios, the top titles by formatand even a sales breakdown by territory). Ad-hoc reports are available at any time on adeveloper’s own titles – or its competitors’.

STAT ATTACKLet us cast our minds back to the fairly recenthistory of 2007, the first year when we had all

of the current generation systems in place andthe start of Nintendo’s domination of the No.1developer spot, now three years running.

Nintendo’s domination signalled thewidening ‘casual’ demographic in thetraditional console gaming market, withgames like Dr Kawashima Brain Training on DSplus Wii Fit and Wii Play. By the end of 2009 DrKawashima was still the biggest selling stand-alone game of all time in the UK (3.5m units)while Wii Fit and Wii Play held fourth and fifthin the all time best sellers list. No.2 was GTA:San Andreas, the defining moment from theprevious PS2 generation back in 2004. (No.3has its own section below – Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 2 was the title that single-handedly swung the market back to a moretraditional core gamer focus.)

So three Nintendo firsty-party titles onsingle formats occupy slots in the all time Top5 volume sellers. A pretty impressive feat.And all of the above is before we evenmention Wii Sports, which is bundled withevery Wii console and found a place withinone in four UK homes by the end of 2009 –6.5m is Nintendo Wii’s installed in the UK andtherefore 6.5m copies of Wii Sports.

By the end of 2009 one console per personliving in the UK had been sold (cumulativeconsole sales since 1995 are around 61m, UKpopulation in 2009 was around 61.5m).

UK DEVELOPER TRENDSOf all the thousands of games titles that wetracked and the revenue generated in 2007,the most popular format across all

Tracking SystemThe 2010 edition of the Develop 100 is published with this issue. The widely-read list of the world’s most successfulgame studios is based on data from GfK Chart-Track. Here business group director Dorian Bloch explains thebackground to the figures and provides some analysis of this year’s listing…

By 2009’s end oneconsole per person

in the UK had been sold:cumulative console salessince ‘95 are 61m, UKpopulation in 2009was around 61.5m.

1 NINTENDO

2 INFINITY WARD

3 EA CANADA

4 UBISOFT MONTREAL

5 FOUNDATION 9

6 SEGA

7 CAPCOM

8 TREYARCH

9 YUKE'S

10 LEVEL 5

11 TRAVELLER'S TALES

12 NEVERSOFT

13 KONAMI DIGITAL ENT.

14 TURN 10 STUDIOS

15 CODEMASTERS

16 BUNGIE

17 SLIGHTLY MAD STUDIOS

18 VICARIOUS VISIONS

19 VISCERAL GAMES

20 ROCKSTAR NORTH

21 THE SIMS STUDIO

22 VALVE

23 NAMCO

24 ROCKSTEADY STUDIOS

25 EA TIBURON

26 EA BRIGHT LIGHT

27 UBISOFT FRANCE

28 EA BLACK BOX

29 NAUGHTY DOG

30 SPORTS INTERACTIVE

31 LONDON STUDIO

32 GUERRILLA GAMES

33 BETHESDA

34 RADICAL

35 VOLITION

36 MAXIS

37 GEARBOX SOFTWARE

38 HARMONIX

39 1ST PLAYABLE

40 PANDEMIC STUDIOS

41 GAME FREAK

42 BIOWARE

43 ENSEMBLE STUDIOS

44 A2M

45 SONIC TEAM

46 KUJU ENTERTAINMENT

47 CAT DADDY

48 HB STUDIOS

49 UBISOFT ROMANIA

50 RAVEN SOFTWARE

DEVELOP 100: #1 – #50

30 | MAY 2010

BETA |

developers turned out to be 360 with 21 percent. That was followed by DS with 20 percent, PS2 with 17 per cent, Wii with 15 percent, PS3 with ten per cent, PC ten per centand PSP seven per cent.

In 2009 the percentage share has changeddramatically, with 360 continuing to climb (28per cent), Wii just about holding steady (24 percent, actually up from No.4 to No.2), PS3doubling (21 per cent, up from No.5 to No.3),DS declining four per cent (16 per cent, downfrom No.2 to No.4), PC also down four per cent(six per cent of the market, at No.5) and thenPSP (three per cent) and PS2 (two per cent).

When looking at all products sold in 2007the share for independent studios was 39 percent (with 61 per cent being publisherowned). In 2009 this had dropped to 36 percent independent (64 per cent publisher-owned), so at first glance not a huge decline.

However, the bigger difference ishighlighted in the number of independentstudios within the Top 100 – almost half in2007 (48) compared to just over two-fifths in2009 (42).

Games produced in the top four territories(USA, Japan, Canada and UK) accounted for90 per cent of all units sold in 2007 and 89per cent in 2009 and in descending order for2009 they are USA at No.1 (32 per cent),Japan No.2 (27 per cent), UK No.3 (18 percent), and Canada No.4 (13 per cent). Withinthese numbers USA and Canada haveremained stable, Japan has gained 1.2 percent and UK has lost 1.4 per cent.

Within the UK (i.e. of the 18 per cent of75m units of product sold in the UKdeveloped by UK studios), independentstudios accounted for 42 per cent, publisherowned 58 per cent. Indie share has actuallyincreased dramatically over 2008 (36 percent). Reasons for this stem from the hugeeffect that Rockstar’s GTA IV had on UKdeveloper market share in 2008 and is also

due to new products in 2009 such as VirtuaTennis 2009 (Sumo Digital/Sega), F1 2009(Sumo Digital/Codemasters), but moreover inQ3 ’09 the mega-hit Batman: Arkham Assylum(Rocksteady Studios/Eidos-Square Enix) andalso NFS: Shift (Slightly Mad Studios/EA). Alsoof note is Asylum’s Peppa Pig: The Game, anotable success on DS and Gusto Games’ Wiiversion of Ashes Cricket 2009.

Within Canadian-made games a massive82 per cent of product sold is by a publisher-owned studio, the most top-heavy of all fourterritories, but something that will come asno surprise given the investment over the

years by EA, Ubisoft, Activision and others inthat region. Products such as FIFA 10 (EACanada), Assassin’s Creed II (Ubisoft Monteal)and Prototype (by Activision-owned Radical)spring immediately to mind.

A MODERN MARVELInfinity Ward’s placing at No.2 this yearcannot go without comment. It made thefastest-selling game of all time in the UK:Modern Warfare 2. Launch was on Tuesday,November 10th 2009 and on Wednesday,November 11th GfK Chart-Track was the firstterritory in the world to break the news onday one sales – 1.23m at £47.7m. The 24-hoursell through number beat the entire firstweek on sale for the previous record holder(Rockstar’s GTA IV sold through 927,000 – or£39.9m worth – in its five day launch week). Itis amazing to note that in terms of the dayone sell-through, the UK accounted for amassive 26 per cent of the 4.7m estimated tohave sold through in UK/USA.

So for the launch week we tracked thesales on a daily basis for Activision and wewere again the first to break the news thatMW2 racked up 1.78m units and generated£67.4m in the UK during week one. Puttingthat in perspective, Infinity Ward/Activision’stitle grossed almost twice as much as theentire entertainment software market in theprevious week. The Xbox 360 version of MW2was the lead format and sold over a millionUK units in week one and grossed £38.5m –itself more than the entire market for theprevious week. By the end of 2009 MW2 hadamassed eight straight weeks at No.1 andmoved from simply within the Top 10 tobeing the No.3 cumulative unit seller (2.93m)and the No1. revenue generator (£112m) inthe history of UK videogaming.

Thanks to MW2 2009 was the year wherethe traditional videogame ‘core-gamer’ marketproved that a truly high quality, cinematic,artistic, explosive, action-packed gamingexperience could generate sales of suchmagnitude, that all other entertainment dayone and five-day entertainment industry boxoffice, book and video game sell-throughrecords were eclipsed.

On a global perspective the MW2 week onefigure of $550m was way above previous best,which already saw a game at the top of the tree(GTA IV’s record was $500m). For comparisonwith Hollywood, the cinematic world-wide boxoffice record was Harry Potter and the Half-BloodPrince with $394m in one week.

Depending on the type of developer youare there is either rationalisation, merger,expansion, rude good health or just plainsurvival on the cards for your studio. Having ahit product in what might be ‘only’ the thirdbiggest territory in the world means thatpeople tend to sit up and take notice of yourtalents. Ultimately a studio is judged on thesales success of their games – so whyshouldn’t they be recognised for thecommercial success of their products? TheDevelop 100 is a fascinating report and is agreat read for all publishers and developers.

The Develop 100 2010shows independents inrude health, Blochpoints out

Within Canadian-made games 82 per

cent of product sold is by apublisher-owned studio, no surprise given the manystudio investmentsin the region.

51 EPIC GAMES

52 KROME STUDIOS

53 INSOMNIAC

54 MEDIA MOLECULE

55 ROCKSTAR LEEDS

56 LUXOFLUX

57 HUDSON

58 TECHLAND

59 CREATIVE ASSEMBLY

60 COOKING MAMA LIMITED

61 FREESTYLEGAMES

62 SUCKER PUNCH

63 MIDWAY

64 EA LA

65 TRANSMISSION GAMES

66 GRIN

67 EXIENT

68 EA DICE

69 INIS

70 ASYLUM

71 RESPONDESIGN

72 REBELLION

73 EA SALT LAKE

74 BLACK ROCK STUDIOS

75 HEAVY IRON STUDIOS

76 MONKEY BAR GAMES

77 TERMINAL REALITY

78 CRYSTAL DYNAMICS

79 SORA

80 BLIZZARD

81 CRITERION GAMES

82 BIG FISH GAMES

83 POLYPHONY DIGITAL

84 GENIUS SONORITY

85 N-SPACE

86 MAGIC POCKETS

87 BEENOX

88 MONOLITH

89 EUROCOM

90 MIDWAY NEWCASTLE

91 ROUTE 1 GAMES

92 LIONHEAD STUDIOS

93 RELIC

94 ALTRON

95 WIZARBOX

96 SLAM PRODUCTIONS

97 GUSTO GAMES

98 HIGH VOLTAGE

99 ROCKSTAR SAN DIEGO

100 5TH CELL

DEVELOP 100: #51 - #100

Dorian Bloch Business Group Director,GfK Chart-Track. Email: [email protected]: +44 (0)20 8741 7585

According to the Game DevelopersAssociation of Australia, the industry itrepresents is growing at an incredible

rate. During 2008 alone, the country’s videogame sector reportedly grew by animpressive 47 per cent to $1.96 billion.

Yet thanks to a business ecosystem thatdepends heavily on the US, the economicdownturn meant times were tough inAustralian games development during 2009,and the larger studios felt the pinch as staffcuts became all too common.

Now the industry is bouncing back, and anew model based on small indie teams isproving incredibly popular. So what do thepeople getting Australia back on the mapthink of the country’s games industry today?

As the rise of the indie studios like yourown and the proliferation of iPhone andonline games continues, do you feel beingpositioned as you are in Australia meansyou are well placed to take advantage ofthat trend?Alexandra Peters, Firemint: Digitaldistribution is a big thing for Australiandevelopers, because with it becoming moreprominent and easier to access, it’s becomingless relevant where you are geographically.Just in terms of time zones and flights andmeeting people and stuff like that, it’s getting

much easier as everything goes online.David Zwierzchaczewski, 5th World Media:That’s a really big thing that we’ve noticed.Digital distribution has taken away a lot ofthose borders. I honestly think that now youcould set up a developer in the middle of thebush and it wouldn’t matter. That has been abig thing for this country. There’s also been a

lot of infrastructure support from theGovernment that’s really helped us.Simon Joslin, The Voxel Agents: To reiteratesome of that, our company, for example, hasthree founders. All three are living off incomesupport from the Government that isdesigned to pay a year’s wage while you set

up your company. That’s great that theyprovide that, so that we can concentrate onestablishing our own IP rather than worryingabout paying the rent. As well as a greatrange of funding bodies, there’s also anexcess of people looking for this kind of workin the country right now. It’s really easy tofind people who are keen to work in games inAustralia now. They’re happy to do it cheaptoo, which is good for indies.

It seems you have a positive view ofregional bodies and the support offered toyour games industry by the government?Peters: For us in Victoria the stategovernment really does a lot to help out lotsof different segments of the games industry.We’re very lucky, and I hear the Queenslandguys get a lot of help too. Hopefully we’re setto make a lot of progress with the federalgovernment too. I know everyone is reallykeen to see that happen.Andrew Goulding, Brawsome Games: If youknow the right avenues to go down then at agovernment level Australia can be a verysupportive place. There are great incentives inplace to help start-ups and to get the gamesindustry growing – if you know about them.Jason Seed, Codesion: What it boils downtoo, across the entire IT industry in Australia,is that to be successful you have to reach

Aussie Indie

RulesIf you know the rightavenues to go down

then at a government levelAustralia can be a verysupportive place. There aregreat incentives to help start-ups and get the gamesindustry growing.Andrew Goulding, Brawsome Games

32 | MAY 2010

The financial crisis hit Australia’s video game sector hard, but in the wake of several high profile studioclosures numerous indies have risen from the ashes. Will Freeman sat down with some of thecountry’s developers now making a mark on the international stage…

BETA | AUSTRALIAN GAMES DEVELOPMENT


AUSTRALIAN GAMES DEVELOPMENT | BETA

outside of Australia. You’ve always had to dothat, and this current fragmentation of largercompanies that’s happening is actuallyworking in our favour, as we’ve always beenthat way anyway. We’ve got lots of smallteams working from a long way away, and tomake money we’ve always had to sell to theUS or Europe or Asia anyway.

So what challenges unique to Australia dogame developers face?John Lycette, esc Factory: Despite what’schanged, it is still the isolation factor. It’sgreat to see that digital distribution meansour product can easily reach everyone, butface-to-face meetings are obviously still hard.You do need that financial support to getthose face-to-face meetings happening,especially if like me you’re very indie.Peters: Again, I can only speak for the Victoriaarea, but there is help in place to aid with thatkind of thing, and to attend trade shows andso on. The federal Government offers supporttoo, through support programs for exporters.All of us here are exporters really, and on thatnote, from our point of view the mostchallenging thing is the Australian dollar andhow strong it is. That strength comes from allthe resources, and all the mining, which liftseverything up. We’d really like things to kindof go down.

What are the solutions to that isolationissue then?Phil Larsen, Halfbrick Studios: I’m the entiremarketing and PR department for Halfbrick,and overcoming that problem involves meworking to American time quite often. Itseems like a miniscule issue, but in reality itmeans we’re always a day a head or a daybehind. So I have to arrive at work and workbased on what happened the day before,because I’m selling to a worldwide issue. Thatmay not seem too big a deal, but in thegames industry things like coverage in themedia and release dates can be reallyaffected by 24 hours.Peters: Yes. I was up at 3am for the iPadlaunch.Larsen: Exactly, so in terms of solutions weneed to establish a better way ofcommunicating with the people we workwith overseas, and especially in America, asfor me I have to deal with Microsoft everyday.The solutions are to get face-to-face withthese guys at things like GDC, and help themunderstand where we are at and what we’reabout, and understand the challenges we arefacing, so that when we come to them andsay ‘we’re having problems with this’, they’llbe more receptive. Then they can understandwhat we need done and what kind oftimeframes we need.

Goulding: To add to that, dealing withoverseas companies makes it very hard totake a holiday, because we have to work toother country’s public holidays, and miss ourown. It means you don’t get to take off theirpublic holidays either, and end up workingfrom Tuesday to Saturday, and usuallyMonday too, which is a strain.Peters: Trying to hit both the US andEuropean time zones makes things harder.Larsen: Of course, people who work in themedia always work late, so that helps.Peters: Exactly, and there’s a real advantagethere. It’s really awesome when somebodywants a quote fast at 3am in their time zone,and you can be the one to provide it. We’realways ready for that, which is great coveragefor us.

How much of a sense of community is theirshared between developers in Australia?Larsen: Well, many of us all sharerelationships with the same publishers orplatform holders on different projects, and

there’s definitely a sense that we all wanteach other to do well. For indies working onthe iPhone, it’s not as if any of the otherAustralian studios do well it is going todetract from our success. There’s so manyopportunities on the iPhone, we can all findour own way, and maybe help each otherwhen we can.Joslin: There’s two big things that are goingon in Melbourne community-wise. The IGDAhas recently sprung up with a new lust forlife, and has expanded massively in the lastyear, which has been great. The other thingthat has been happening there is that theoffice we share is something like an industrycluster, and one of the CEOs there has set upsomething of a sharing arrangement with abunch of other indies, so they can come inand share space in the office. We have accessto their dev kits, and they’re reallyexperienced dudes that share advice andhelp where they can. It also offers whatbecomes almost cheaper rent, making it a loteasier to set-up, so that’s been really good.Larsen: The thing about Australiandevelopment is that we’ve all got good ideas,and we’re never going to run out of them.There’s just loads coming out of all the indies,so it’s the executions that are the key, andHalfbrick likes to execute in the best waypossible. If other studios do the same wethink that’s great. We all need to worktogether and get lots of good stuff out there.Goulding: Another thing here is that, in my

It’s great to see thatdigital distribution

means our product caneasily reach everyone, butface-to-face meetings arestill hard. You need thatfinancial support toget those happening.

John Lycette, esc Factory

Alexandra Peters,Community Manager,FiremintSpecialising in ‘big gamesfor small devices’, developerFiremint is most famous for creating iPhone hitFlight Control.

DavidZwierzchaczewski,CEO, 5th World MediaBased in Brisbane, 5thWorld Media creates both video games andanimated television,reaching its audiencethrough social media.

Simon Joslin, Founder,The Voxel AgentsFormed by QueenslandUniversity of Technologygraduates, The VoxelAgents has met mostsuccess with its iPhone hitTrain Conductor.

Andrew Goulding,Director, BrawsomeGamesBrawsome is currentlyputting the finishingtouches on its canine-based 2D point and clickadventure Jolly Rover.

Jason Seed, CEO,CodesionHosted source codemanagement expertCodesion offers solutionsfor some 3,400 companies,including a wealth ofdevelopers.

John Lycette, Artist,esc FactoryPitched as an ‘alliance ofcreative geeks’, esc Factory is currently at workexpanding on its portfolioof iPhone games.

Phil Larsen,Marketing/PR co-ordinator, HalfbrickOne of Austalia’s mostprolific studios, Halfbrickhas worked acrossnumerous projects handlinglicensed and original IP

WIZARDS OF OZ

34 | MAY 2010

BETA | AUSTRALIAN GAMES DEVELOPMENT

experience, we don’t really have to worryabout NDAs when we talk to other Australiandevelopers. We usually just chat openlybecause like Phil said, people here haveenough of their own ideas. They just don’tneed your ideas. I can’t say there’s anyprecedent for this, but I’ve never known thereto be any issue with IP stealing. It’s mostly justemployee stealing [laughter].Joslin: The positive side of the gamesindustry is a relatively new thing in someways. I’ve only three years experience, but itdoes feel like there’s been a huge pendulumswing of attitude in the industry here in thepast year. There’s been an indie revival here,and combined with the other thingshappening, there’s a new atmosphere – a newdrive.Peters: Yes. There’s indies everywhere inAustralia. It’s so amazingly thriving, dynamicand exciting. It’s a great place to be right now.Larsen: There’s been so many breakout

successes from here too, like Flight Controland Real Racing – and hopefully some in thefuture – that it’s really helping us all. Once weget a good portfolio of hits that succeedacross the industry and internationally, that’s

when the good studios will start to havemore motivation and opportunities. That’sgood for us all, and that’s what thecommunity can bring us.

Does your geographical isolation makeaccess to tech any harder than normal?Peters: If you’ve got good relationships withthe tech guys, I don’t think distance orlocation is a factor at all. If you do good work,the hardware manufacturers will notice.Seed: One limitation, though, is broadbandin Australia. The hosting fees and wholeinfrastructure cost is extremely high inAustralia in comparison with anywhere elsein the world. You’ve also got latency issues.The tyranny of distance affects so much inAustralia. There’s only a couple of internetpipes that come into Australia, so it’s pretty

much what you could call a control duopoly.Everything’s expensive, for the consumersusing games and downloading content tothe developers using new SaaS stuff. It’sgoing to be hard developing in thoseenvironments when connectivity is an issue.Peters: There is in fact a massiveinfrastructure project that’s just gettingstarted, to establish a national broadbandnetwork, which I think is the biggestinfrastructure project that the country haseever seen. We’re all really waiting for that to happen.

How is Australia’s games industrysupported by educational courses? Is therea good supply of suitably trainedgraduates?Larsen: I can’t speak for the quality of thecourses themselves, because I never did onein Brisbane, but with the QueenslandUniversity of Technology we have a greatrelationship that’s been very useful. Just a fewweeks ago they let us use their filmingstudios to do some videos for nothing really.They just suggested we do a guest lecture.They always have interns that are keen tocome by and learn, and it is brilliant to bepart of that.Peters: We love graduates and we hire loadsof them. We have grads that have been withus for ages, who have gone on to quite seniorpositions. We always look at the individual,and we’re not just about what course theydid, but for programming in particular we geta lot of people that are really well trained inthe ‘hard’ degrees such as engineering. But atthe end of the day, it’s down to the quality oftheir work and what they can do.Zwierzchaczewski: The other thing I found isthat a lot of the lecturers are very active inengaging with us, and finding out what wewant from their students, and what theyshould be teaching them. That’s really handy,and quite refreshing. It’s so much better thanhaving a set, rigid syllabus, that ends upbeing of no use to the students or to theindustry at the end of the day.Goulding: The one downside to having allthese superb games and game-relatedcourses is that they are producing far moregraduates than we can hope to employ. Thereis an over-supply issue for certain.Peters: They have to work hard to stand-outfrom the crowd though, which can be greatfor the industry in Australia. It’s tough, and itcan sometimes be to see the talent of anindividual when they show group work, butfor this country it has been very good havingso many graduates.

Above: The full Firemintteam, who create biggames for small devices

We have grads thathave been with us

for ages, who have gone onto senior positions. We lookat the individual, and we’renot just about what coursethey did. It’s down to qualityof their work andwhat they can do.

Alexandra Peters, Firemint

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BETA | PLAYSTATION MOVE

36 | MAY 2010


PLAYSTATION MOVE | BETA

The Motion Picture

It’s easy to dismiss PlayStation Moveas a tardy attempt at jumping onNintendo’s motion control

bandwagon. That is, until you get yourhands on the controller itself, andrealise how fantastically precise it is.

The potential of a motion sensitivecontroller with the fidelity of atraditional pad offers terrificopportunity for games designers. Inparallel with the coming of Natal, Movecould see the dwindling reputation ofgesture-controlled games return to theforefront of both the professional andpublic mindsets.

But what of the process of actuallycreating games for Move? To answerthat question, Develop sat down withsome of those building the initial waveof titles for the platform.

Joining the debate were EyePetdesigner May Wong and projectmanager Nathan Baseley, the producerof the forthcoming SOCOM ElliotMartin, Sports Champions assistantproducer Olivier Banal, The Shoot’sassociate producer Ray Khalastchi, andTV Superstars designers Sam Dickinsonand Jon Torrens.

Depending on your perspective, PlayStationMove is either the future of motion control,or a rather untimely take on the Wii’sdefining function. Will Freeman sat downwith the first developers tackling Move, toexplore the potential of the technology froma game design perspective...

38 | MAY 2010

BETA | PLAYSTATION MOVE

From a game design perspective, whatopportunities has working with Moveprovided to open up the game or genreyou’re working with?Torrens: Really the Move controller lets usinteract in loads of different new ways.Typically, a player is presented with onecontrol method in game, and encouraged tosimply repeat that. In TV Superstars, thecontroller is used in all kinds of ways. Frombeing used as a whisk or knife in the cookingpart of our game to being a way to affect thephysics of the player’s character as it fliesthrough the air in the action game showparody. The precision of Move means thatthere are loads and loads of different ways forthe player to interact with the game.Dickinson: I think one of the mostinteresting things about technology like thisis that you try to think of all the inventive newways you can use the controller. It’s not justwhat you want the player to do full-stop. Itdoes make you ask: ‘What can we do here?What expressive ideas can we introduce tothe experience?’.Wong: With a game like EyePet, Move helpedus, in that we wanted to use live video feed inthe game to make it feel like EyePet isactually in your living room. The controller inthe player’s hands becomes things in thegame like a shower, shampoo [bottle] or toy,so that the player can really feel like theyreally do interact with the pet. Move lets theplayer feel like everything is actually in theirhands. It makes things much more realisticand believable.Baseley: I just want to second what May saidreally. For EyePet it’s all about immersion.Augmented reality is about making theplayer think that they in the same world asthe EyePet. The Move controller is somethingthat actually exists in the real world and theEyePet world. In terms of the illusion and theimmersion, it makes things one-on-one. Thepet can see the Move controller and so canthe player.Martin: I think the biggest benefit of theMove controller for the SOCOM series is thatof accessibility. Motion controllers in generalgive people a more accessible means orinterface with which to play games, as provedwell by Nintendo. The third-person shootergenre of game for some people is typicallyvery difficult to pick up and play. It involveschanging the viewpoint of the character,using something like the Dual Shockcontroller, and some people just can’t mapthat kind of interface to – without meaningto sound rude – their brain.

With the move controller what it allows usto do with SOCOM is have the player basicallypoint at enemies on screen with Move as ifthey were aiming with a real gun in theirhand. It’s a huge change to the genrebecause rather than having to move thecamera, you can just point and shoot. I thinkMove is going to make that style of game alot more accessible to a lot more people.Banal: Sports Champions is a sportssimulation and Move, with its level ofprecision and its fidelity, allows you to reallyreplicate the real life situations and themotions that appear in each included sport.That’s something the 3D tracking systemallows you to do, whether it’s moving a bat or– in table tennis – putting spin on a ball. Youcan get a really very high level of precisionand realism with Move. That’s something thatis now possible.Khalastchi: For us, what Move introduces isreally about the immediacy of not having torely on other buttons. We’ve got this arcadeshooter, which is very fast paced, and insteadof having to use buttons for various powersand inputs we can use gestures instead. Itreally makes the game faster, moreimmediate and more immersive. We used onedevice, Move, to incorporate all the featuresof the genre. It’s opened up a lot for us, whilekeeping things up to speed.

With games like SOCOM and EyePetsupporting Move, the tech doesn’t seemaimed exclusively at either casual orhardcore audiences. Has it allowed you tomake single games that appeal toaudiences from both demographics?Martin: SOCOM is a series that hastraditionally been perceived as a hardcoretitle. One of the things the team has always

wanted to do is open the game experienceup to other types of players.

The game will support Move and thetraditional Dual Shock controllers which longstanding SOCOM gamers are used to, so thatthey can continue with their experience withthe level of finesse that they are familiar with.

But Move allows the player to correlatewhat’s happening on the screen to theiractions so they don’t loose any of the level ofcontrol; it’s just presented in a way that’seasier for them to understand.

That allows the new SOCOM to be a gamethat genuinely appeals to a hardcoreaudience as well as the newer casual gamerwho may have never have considered a titlelike it before.Dickinson: Move does make it a lot easier forwhat you’d traditionally see as a hardcoregamer and a casual gamer to play together atthe same time. That means family and partygames like TV Superstars, which we’reworking on, don’t have the barrier ofsomeone understanding the controller betterthan someone else. Move certainlyintroduces that.Torrens: I agree. I think Move will definitelybe revolutionary in that way. You do have thisdistinction between the hardcore and thecasual and the Wii’s come along as somethingpeople look at and think ‘that’s the thing withthe pointer, that’s for families and not forserious games,’. Meanwhile the PS3 maybehas been seen as exclusive and a bit hardcore.There’s a division there.

Now I think the PS3 will become properlyinclusive and people will think hardcoregames and casual games all use onecontroller. I really feel that there won’t just becasual gamers picking it up, but the hardcoregamers picking it up and realising we can allTop-to-bottom: Sony

movers NathenBaseley, RayKhalastchi, Jon Torrensand Sam Dickinson

play together. Everyone’s included in thesame thing, and that’s a big deal.Baseley: For me the thing about theprecision is interesting too. If you look aroundthe room today, we’ve all got very differenttitles underway. The move platform presentsso many different options, because you’vegot the camera, meaning you can use the livefeed that we can do; some of the other titlesuse the precision like the sports titles; or youcan adapt and use it more generally. As aplatform, for designers and developers it justgives us loads of options we can play with,that always come back to the same controller.

The consumer interface is the sameregardless of the title, but the way thatdevelopers use it and adapt it is verydifferent. It’s very versatile set of options, thatshould create some interesting games.Martin: In the case of SOCOM, the Movecontroller support was never planned in fromthe beginning, so it was something, whichinternally, as the Move initiative gatheredmomentum, the team were asked toimplement. To be honest, initially they werehesitant because they thought that a newcontrol system meant that they wouldcompletely have to redesign the game.Actually they managed to get the basicimplementation up and running in a matterof just a few hours.

It worked first time, and not only did itwork, but it was immediately very intuitive,and it didn’t require any great change ofmindset. It was very easy to pick up and playstraight away.

From that, because they didn’t have toinvest the time in prototyping lots of things,it allowed them to just concentrate on howthey could use Move in more creative waysthroughout the world of the game. In some

senses Move fuelled a new branch of designwithin SOCOM.

What have you found are the challenges ofworking with Move?Banal: On Sports Champions the team atZindagi Games, who are developing thegame and who have also been involved inthe design of the motion control system, gotreally good at replicating player movementsvery, very accurately. The problem with that isMove replicates very accurately what theplayer is doing wrong.

A few user tests revealed that what thedesigners had got comfortable with, theplayers were struggling with. That reallymade them think about accessibility, withinthat precise device environment. They put alot of effort into implementing an easy modethat offered a more forgiving approach tomovement. That meant that the entry levelwas pretty low for people not at all used toany video games or the sport that is thetheme of the game they are playing.

But that still allows for the difficulty to goall the way up to a level of precision andfidelity that allows the more dedicated andmore experienced players to really enjoythemselves. That was the way to give a fullspectrum of gamers profiles a way to playtogether. You can adapt the precision to caterfor everyone, which is brilliant.Khalastchi: To add to that, it’s important toremember that while Move does open a lot ofopportunities, it does ultimately comedown to good game design. It’snot an answer to everyproblem there is, and that’sreally key if you’re tacklingdeveloping any kind ofmotion control game.

The cool thing on our side is that the actualcontroller itself has be developed in tandemwith our software, so that we’ve been backand forth with all of the teams across theworld who’ve been creating the hardwareitself, who have actually been responding tothe software, which is really cool.

Relative to the typical hurdles faced bydevelopers, is Move an ‘easy’ platform towork with?Baseley: To be honest any of the challengeswe’ve had have been the same challengeswe’ve had before working on anything ingames design. Maybe they are slightlydifferent, but they’re definitely no more orless substantial.Dickinson: Absolutely. It’s petty much thesame as any kind of new tech that you’reworking with for the first time. You’ll alwaysmeet with problems you have to overcome,but working with Move is no better or worse Idon’t think.Wong: Yes. Before, in the last EyePet game, wehad to use the Magic Cards and handgestures, where as now we use the motioncontroller. But Move shows how just one newthing can move the game forward.Torrens: Often in a motion control gameyou’re controlling something in just twodimensions, whether it is on a flat or verticalplane. However, with the Move controller,because we’re actually working formovement in a real 3D space, there is thatmuch more that you then have to make sureyour design is that precise for.

We hadn’t completely considered thatbefore we started work, and it does

place great demands on us, butbecause of that there’s also far

greater opportunities.


PLAYSTATION MOVE | BETA

Sony’s NavigationController (above),along with the mainMove motion sensitivewand (below).

What distinguishes GameHorizonfrom other industry events andconferences currently tempting

sector professionals?Carri Cunliffe: GameHorizion is unique inthat it is the only executive-level conferencethat we have in Europe. It offers people reallyhigh-level networking, the chance to meetthe real decision-makers in the gamesindustry. Those delegates also come fromquite a wide range of games companies. Youcan meet people there from social games

companies, casual games companies, high-end publishers and a great deal ofrepresentitives from independent gamescompanies as well.

The conference isn’t just looking at thegames industry, but we are also observing

trends from other industries to work out a‘best practice’ for our own. This year we willbe looking at the music industry andobserving how they changed from the bigrecord labels to digital distribution of theirmusic to creating community fanbasesthrough viral marketing.Simon Prytherch: From my own perspective,it’s probobly the one conference I go towhere everyone I meet is worth meeting.

They are all peers or at my sort of level,running a studio, or executives andpublishers. The speakers are great, and thenetworking oppourtunities are amazing.Darren Jobling: GameHorizon isn’t insular. Itdoesn’t presuppose that our industry has allthe answers for our industry. It looks at otherpeople to see what we can learn from them.

What can attendees expect to gain fromGameHorizon?Gareth Edmondson: Having been to variousconferences, this one is more interestingbecause it is aimed at an executive level. It’smore interesting in terms of what talks are onfor people at my level. You really do getsomething out of listening to other studiomanagers, or people high-up in Microsoft orSony or whatever. Everything is set at a muchhigher level.Jobling: It sounds bizzare, but GameHorizonis an uplifting experience. I always walk out ofthere a lot more upbeat an optimistic than Iwas when I walked in. That’s two-pronged aswell, firstly you get to talk to and hear fromother companies facing the same issues asyou are, so you know you are not alone.Secondly, a lot of solutions are bandiedaround. There is no pessimism when like-minded people are working together.Prytherch: I like to go to conferences that are

On The

HorizonThe music industryhandled the

transition into digital reallybadly. It will be interestingto hear the lessons its execsbelieve have learntfrom that.Simon Prytherch, Lightning Fish

40 | MAY 2010

The increasingly prominent GameHorizon Conference in Gateshead attracts attendees from across thebusiness spectrum in order to discern where the future of the games development industry lays.Stuart Richardson spent time with the event’s advisory board to find out more…

BETA | GAMEHORIZION ROUNDTABLE


GAMEHORIZION ROUNDTABLE | BETA

inspirational, and promote tangentalthoughts. GameHorizon has always given methat. That the speakers come from bothwithin and without of the classical gamesdevelopment industry, and they are alwaysinspirational. Last year we had Richard St.John, and that was probobly one of the mostmemorable talks that I have ever been to. Hecame on after lunch when everyone was fulland tired, and before long everyone was ontheir seats.Jobling: This year we have people like MarkSchulman, who has been the drummer withvarious bands like Velvet Revolver and iscurrently drumming on Pink’s UK tour, and Ithink that you can guarantee that no otherEuropean games conference will have people like him coming in from otherindustries and talking. Cunliffe: The conference gives executivelevel people the chance to take time out ofthe office. It’s not just about networking, it’salso about the chance to find out what isgoing on in the future of the industry. It letsexecutives think about what direction theywant to take their companies in over the nextfew years. You don’t really get to think aboutthat kind of thing when you are in the thick ofdeveloping a game, so it kind of allows forsome time out.

How is this year’s event tailored to reflect current trends and challenges inthe industry? For instance, has a themebeen set?Cunliffe: Well GameHorizon is alwaysforward-thinking. The three main areas wealways look at – which are quite broad – arethe future of the industry in terms oftechnology, the future of the industry interms of business models, and content.

This year you will see that there is quite adiverse set of talks. It’s as if the industry is sortof being split into two halves. You still have alot of interest in the high-end graphics andtriple-A titles, but we are also seeing a lot ofthe social and casual games coming up andmaking a lot of money. The industry seems tobe becoming split between those two areas.Jobling: The event looks at stuff liketransactions and social gaming and that sortof thing. It was quite a considerable timebefore most other people picked that up. Welook at what is going on in social gaming, andhow that applies to what others are doingcurrently in the console market. We look atthe oppourtunities there – there has beentalk already about digital distribution, butwhat are people doing now?Prytherch: Talking briefly there about themusic industry, personally I think that theyhandled the transition into digitaldistribution really badly. It will be interestingfor me, in general, to hear the lessons theybelieve that they have learnt from that. Wecan learn from their mistakes.

What is everyone looking forward to themost at this year’s event?Cunliffe: There is a guy called Jesse Schell,who is CEO of Schell Games. I am particularlylooking forward to him because he did anabsolutely amazing talk at the DICE summitearlier this year. His talk at GameHorizon iscalled ‘Roadmap to the Game Apocalypse’,

and he will really be digging deeper into theissues that he discussed at DICE, looking athow games are going to impact our everydaylife in the future. I think that is going to bereally interesting. I am really excited aboutthat one myself.Edmondson: Peter Molyneux is alwaysinteresting, isn’t he? It’s always a rollercosterwith him, and one that I look forward to.Ed Bartlett: I’m most looking forward to TomRothenberg, from the McCann Erickson adagency. They handle all of the marketing forMicrosoft and Xbox, as well as everything forPeter Molyneux. I think a lot of thedevelopers and independents that arecoming through now are starting tounderstand the need to consider themarketing aspect in their appeal toconsumers – even from the concept stage. Ithink marketing is important from then allthe way up to the publishers, and I don’t feelthat you see enough people talking aboutthat at development conferences. I think wewill see some wide-eyes when they showsome of the work that they have been doing

there. That company has always been prettycutting-edge with that.Prytherch: I’m also looking forward to Tom’stalk. The marketing angle doesn’t appeal tome so much, but there is also a guy calledScott Foe who has a varied background increating a wide variety of games. He alsowrites an active blog on the web as well,which is very interesting reading.Cunliffe: Apparently he’s been called the‘Tarantino of the games industry’. I’m notmassively sure what that means, but he is abit ‘out there’.Jobling: I’m excited about Mark Schulman,the drummer. I’ve heard him speak beforeand he always has something interesting andrelevent to say. The stakes are on as well tosee if, as the motivational speaker, he can beas popular as Richard St. John. His drum kit isdefinitely going to be amazing!Cunliffe: Someone else who has confirmedrecently, actually, and was excellent on apanel last year, is Nils Holger-Henning fromBigpoint Games. Bigpoint are one of thebiggest web browser game companies, andhe will be talking about new business models and new technology, so that shouldbe very interesting. People can definitelylearn from the kind of huge success whichthey have had.Bartlett: They did some amazing stuff withthe TV networks in Germany. They used someof the free air space on the cable channels tobroadcast the games that were being playedonline and use that as reciprocal marketing.

From that they have been partly aquired byNBC, the big network in America. They’vedone some incredible things.Jobling: One of the really interesting thingswill be how the likes of Bigpoint, with their110m registered players, plans to do battleagainst their rivals in the likes of EA who owna lot of IP – I think that is going to be reallyinteresting as well.

Why was Gateshead selected as a locationfor GameHorizon?Mark Carrigan: From the council’sperspective, we have long been a supporterof arts, creativity and culture. We built theAngel of the North here, we have a hugeregeneration stratergy in place ceteredaround buildings and the creative industriesin Gateshead. We have a designated businesscentre called the International BusinessCentre which is home to a lot of start-ups.

One of the reallyinteresting things

will be how the likes ofBigpoint, with 110mplayers, plans to do battleagainst IP-rich rivalslike EA.

Darren Jobling, Eutechnyx

Carri CunliffeConference Director,GameHorizon Conference

Simon PrytherchCEO, Lightning Fish

Darren JoblingBiz Dev Director, Eutechnyx

Gareth EdmondsonStudio Manager, Ubisoft Reflections

Ed BartlettVP Publisher Relations –Europe, IGA

George BainDeveloper RelationsAccount Manager, SCEE

Mark CarriganGateshead City Council

MEET THE BOARD

42 | MAY 2010

BETA | GAMEHORIZION ROUNDTABLE

Obviously we are delighted that we have thelikes of Eutechnyx here, plus Atomhawk, andwe are soon to have an international onlinegames developer moving to Gateshead as well.

Part of the regeneration stratergy is tobuild a section designated the ‘CreativeQuarter’, where we are building somethingcalled the Northern Design Centre which is allabout housing digital and creativebusinesses. We are really working to bolsterthe economy with creativity, and games areat the forefront of our minds. We look forwardto helping more start-ups and encouragingcollaboration along the way as well.Jobling: A lot of people come up toGateshead for the first time with a lot ofnegative, preconcieved ideas, and we havebeen a little lucky that so far every time wehave held the conference the weather hasbeen great. An American attendee came to melast year and told me he thought it was betterin Gateshead than in the south of France.

Obviously there is also a big cluster of gamedevelopers here that have developednaturally. GameHorizon is a great, big networkconnected to all the other related networks inthat field. It is where GameHorizon is naturallybased. The council here is also very forward-thinking. Everything that people associatewith Newcastle actually belongs to Gateshead,the Angel of the North, the Baltic, theMillenium Bridge, the Metro Centre and TheSage are all owned by Gateshead.Cunliffe: We always have lots and lots ofpositive feedback from people about theactivities and facilities in Gateshead, thecultural aspect, you’re right next to the Balticart gallery, everybody always says there arewonderful facilities. It’s a great place.Carrigan: If any developers are interested insetting up a business or seeing what sort ofsupport is available from Gateshead Council, Iwould be delighted if they wanted to contactme at [email protected]: From the perspective of someonewho lives in the Midlands and travels toNewcastle and Gateshead a few times a year,including for the conference, I can say that itreally is, and I don’t mean any offense by this,but it is shockingly beautiful. It is just a reallyhigh-quality location.

What does everyone see as the keychallenges and opportunities effecting thegames industry today?Bartlett: The industry has gone through aweird transition in the past ten to 15 years, itbecame huge overnight and now hascompressed again, consolodation hashappened and a lot of new platforms have

come out and have flourished with the onlinemarket and digital distribution and so on. Nowthere is a great oppourtunity for people toflesh-out that ecosystem and find new nichesthat can be filled with interesting content, andthere are a lort of challenges in doing that allfrom scratch once again.

Look at all the people who have suddenlyappeared from nowhere, like Moshi Monstersfor example, who have become a huge,talked-about franchise from nothing.

In the past a lot of people have createdgames because it appeals to them, but now alot of people are creating commercialprospects with games, and there are a lot ofopportunities for that kind of developmentfor the industry.Jobling: The key challenge is obviously thechange that is coming along for thetraditional console-style developers.However, that change is very much going tobe a good thing. Console developers canreally focus on console quality in the nearfuture, looking into things like the free-playmarket, which we will be specifically lookinginto at the conference as well.

Cunliffe: Yes, we have a panel on that. MarkRein and Nicholas Lovell are in it. They will belooking at the kind of high-end graphics thatconsoles are using compared to the casualgaming platforms and social games and soon that use lower end graphics and focusmore on content.Bartlett: People need to look at the risks thatwill be appearing during the transition toonline and digital distribution. There will be anatural fall-off of mainstream consumers aspeople are unable to access certain contentor platforms because they don’t have theright technology or connection speed,whatever it is. There will be an oppourtunityfor people to create new content there to fillthose gaps as well.Jobling: For the first time ever venturecapitalists and other sources of finance arereally interested in what we are up to. You’llsee a lot of analysts, reserchers and the likecoming along. For the first time ever they areexpressing a real interest in the gamesthemselves.Prytherch: Everything is moving over fromretail to digital distribution, and this isn’t aquick process. Many consumers will still onlybuy retail disks, so for us the key challenge isfinding a balance between the two things,discussing digital downloads and retaildistribution for publishers as well.Edmondson: Having worked in the gamesindustry for a number of years, we havegotten really used to change. Change is just

part of what we do all the time, because theindustry changes so dramatically and sooften. The change and the challenges that areoccurring at the moment are just a part of ournatural evolution, which are creatingoppourtunities and forcing us to thinkdifferently and for the better.

The games industry has always been reallygood at that anyway. We haven’t always beena console and disk-based industry, forexample. Change is what we do.Prytherch: One of the main changes is thatdevelopers who have been producing gamesthat get launched and then forgotten aboutare changing from that development modelinto a service model. Providing a service issomething totally different, that is somethingthat will be going on for years to come. A lotof developers aren’t geared up for that, butare trying to change their business internallyto prepare to take that on.Jobling: That’s true, but that is a very similarissue to when games went from 2D to 3Dgraphics. The difference is that now there arethat many more people involved. We stillhave to look at the new skills required andthe new people we need to get on board, it’sjust for a different reason.

Will casual gaming platforms like theiPhone, and browser-based online gamesever compete graphically with currentgeneration console gaming?Prytherch: Why do they need to compete?Most people don’t play a game for that, or atleast not that alone. Certainly that is not whypeople play FarmVille. As long as the graphicsappropriately represent what they are doing,these people care more about the socialaspect of gameplay.Bartlett: If you think about Farmville, thatkind of a game really wouldn’t benefit from aSuper Mario Galaxy-style of control and viewsetup. It would be unessesarry, so I agree withSimon on that point.Edmondson: People are always going towant to exploit hardware as much as they cananyway. There will be improvements in thevisual quality of the handheld stuff, but therewill always be a place for the simple pick-up-and-play titles. There is room for both.Jobling: Certain games can gain somethingfrom high-end graphics, but there are otherswhere nothing is added to the experience.Find out more about the conference at www.gamehorizonconference.com

Above: The Sage,Gateshead is thelocation for theGameHorizonconference

We are reallyworking to bolster

the economy in Gatesheadwith creative firms,and games are atthe forefront of that.

Mark Carrigan,

Gateshead City Council

Organised by

Media SponsorMedia SponsorMedia Sponsor

gamesindustry.biz

Member Discounts Partner

Other Speakers at the Develop Conference include: Activision • BioWare• Channel 4 • Crytek • Disney Black Rock Studios • Electronic Arts •Eurogamer • Lionhead Studios • Microsoft • Team 17 and many more…

Following its hugely successful launch last year, the Develop in Brighton Conference opens again on Tuesday 13 July withEvolve , a day-long conference focusing on emerging platforms, new business models and the integration of Internetservices and user-generated content.

Whether you’re a producer tasked with integrating connected features into your games, a designer exploring user-generated content andFacebook, or interested in exploiting the expanding crossover of TV, social networking, mobile devices and today’s connected gamesconsoles, Evolve is a must-attend event for you.

Who’s Speaking?

Media SponsorMedia Sponsor Media SponsorInternational Media Sponsor

be inspired

The Main Event for European Developers


Gamification: How Games are EverywhereDavid Helgason - CEO, Unity Technologies

"I have been attempting to free the gamesindustry from the shackles of bricks andmortar and democratizing music games inthe process. I'm looking forward to sharingmy experiences at Evolve."

"I'll be talking about how games are everywhereand, more importantly, how we can use them toconquer untapped markets. I'm looking forwardto coming to Evolve and sharing some of thediscoveries we've made with Unity."KEYNOTE KEYNOTE

Traditional Games Breaking into SocialNetworks: A View from the FrontlineLouis Castle - CEO, Instant Action Inc.

Early Bird

Rates until 7 June

New Platforms. New Technologies. New Markets.

Working with WiiWare: From Student Developers to Swordsand SoldiersJasper Koning, Ronimo Games

Hats, Loops and Levers: Experiences of a small studioSimon Oliver, Hand Circus

The iPhone developers' conference callAlan Yu, ngmoco

Yesterday's games designers - tomorrow's social tech innovatorsGabe Zichermann, beamME

Technical perspectives on the evolution of SingStar from game toservice on PlayStation®3Richard Bates, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe


AUDIO:DICE’s Bad

Company 2p48

TUTORIAL:Interactive

dialoguep52

FACIALANIMATION:

Cubic Motionp46

THE LATEST TOOLS NEWS, TECH UPDATES & TUTORIALS

UNITY FOCUSVersion 1.7 features and iPad

support in detail, p49

Gone to IcelandTwo special pieces looking at how CCPis harnessing the power of third-partytechnology for EVE, p47 and p50

Setting the Cubes in motion

46 | MAY 2010

BUILD | CUBIC MOTION

In a follow-up to last month’s in-depth facial animation focus, Cubic Motion tells Will Freeman why adaptable pipelinescan help developers achieve better results with more efficiency…

Last issue Develop took a long look at theevolution of the facial animation sector,and the myriad techniques jostling for

developers’ attention. In what is one of themost technologically diverse specialties,marker-based systems compete with videocapture technology and the talent of handanimators, and each method has its owndistinct pros and cons.

However, in speaking with Cubic Motion’schief executive Gareth Edwards, it’s clear thatwhile selecting the right means to the ends isof key concern for those undertaking facialanimation, the debate over which method is best is perhaps of secondary importance to choosing how to handle any cocktail of approaches.

“Cubic Motion believes the key to overallefficiency is to embrace the idea of adaptablepipelines tailored to each project,” explainsEdwards, who joined Cubic Motion in 2009after a break from his time at Image Metrics,which he founded. “On a game developmentproject of a reasonable size, it’s better toinvest slightly more time in getting thepipeline right, in the context of what theproduction needs, rather than decide onsome particular technology up front andattempt to fit everything around it.”

YOU DO THE MATHCubic Motion pitches its offering as a meta-system, which provides an open frameworkfor combining animation sub-task algorithms.Instead of championing a single approach,Edwards and his team produce facialanimation through a network of interactingsystems woven together with principledmathematical concepts. A typical examplewould be the firm’s data-fusion system, whichsplices a trio of independent feeds combiningmo-cap data and video.

While Cubic Motion does handle entirefacial animation projects outsourced to it bydevelopers, it also works to support teamskeen to keep the creative process within thewalls of their studio, which is where offeringan adaptive and tailoured pipeline comes in.Edwards and his colleagues boast years ofhighly specialised experience, and it is thatunderstanding that lets them supportanimators still struggling with emergingtechnology.

“Wherever we see systems that aren’tdelivering, it’s usually because the teamviolated the rule, well-known in softwaredevelopment but not always applied tobuilding animation pipelines, to optimise atthe end’,” explains Edwards.

“For example, you sometimes see teamsfretting about whether to use a capturesystem accurate to, say one or two millimeter,before they’ve even settled on the characterrigs, when in most cases getting the rig rightor wrong outweighs the impact of choosing

one or the other capture system. It’s easy toinvest in the wrong place if you don’tconsider the whole pipeline.”

In fact, Edwards highlights characterrigging as potentially more important thanany other part of the pipeline. After all, it’sthose rigs that drive much of the animation ingame, and any performance capture isultimately expressed through that rig.

“The key is to be aware of the mechanismby which capture data is expressed through arig; it’s no good simply coming up withsomething that can hit all the shapes bysome magical – and unfathomable –combination of controls.”

Edwards and his co-workers clearly respectthe role of the human touch, and accordingto the sector veteran, facial animation andautomated rigging technologies shouldprovide a compliment to rigging artists,providing support rather than offering an alternative.

WE ARE THE MODSThe modular system for the assemblyalgorithmic components implemented byCubic Motion might sound like a lot of work,as adaptive pipelines effectively entail thecreation of a new approach for every project,but Edwards and his team are confident theirapproach is notably rapid and efficient.

Looking to the future, Edwards has a positiveperspective – he sees trends affecting theentire industry as a defining factor: “One of theunknowns of the next few years is how facialanimation, like many other sub-activities ofdevelopment, will split between outsourcingand in-house work. We expect them to co-existfor many years to come.

“One certainty is that the industry isgetting much better at facial animation. Thisis driving unit costs down and increasingdevelopers’ capacity for extensive, high-quality character animation in their game.”www.cubicmotion.com

Left: The Cubic Motionteam uses a network ofinteracting systems toproduce facialanimation. Above: Itshead office inDaresbury

The industry isgetting better at

facial animation. This isdriving unit costs downand increasing developers’capacity for high-qualitycharacter animationin their games.

To discuss anything raised in this column or general licensing opportunitiesfor Epic Games’ Unreal engine, contact: [email protected]

FOR RECRUITMENT OPPORTUNITIES PLEASE VISIT:www.epicgames.com/epic_jobs.html

CCP’s Dust 514 is an MMO and first-person shooter hybrid for consolesthat will be set in the same deep

universe as Eve Online; the developer’s long-established PC game that has become astaple of the genre.

Developed for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3,Dust 514 allows players of both games tointeract seamlessly across platforms. If thatsounds ambitious, that’s because it is –nothing of its kind has ever been attempted.

CCP’s decision to use Unreal Engine 3 was based on Epic’s reputation, speed and functionality.

“We needed to provide our developmentteam with a solid foundation to work from, anengine that allows rapid prototyping anditeration of our core FPS mechanics,” said AtliMár Sveinsson, creative director of Dust 514.

“With the scope of certain elements of thegame, such as terrain size and lighting, weneeded an engine that was agile enough toprovide quick iteration within the providedframework. Combining that flexibility withthe fact that the Unreal Engine has beenbattletested by some of the greatest titlesever crafted, made Unreal Engine 3 theabsolute best choice for us.”

The team members at CCP and at EpicGames China worked collaboratively, creatinga strong relationship from start to finish.

According to Sveinsson, hands down,accessibility of knowledge was Epic’s greatestasset. Unreal’s long-standing reputation forexcellence and convenience has produced a

multitude of seasoned users, includingmembers of its own development team. TheUnreal Developer Network (UDN), with itsvarious mailing lists and access to thetalented engineers and artists at Epic GamesChina gave it an edge, allowing CCP to trainits team quickly on how to use the tools andhit the ground running.

Paul Meegan, Epic Games China’s CEO,leads efforts to make sure that Epic’s licenseescan walk through a process in a way that’sefficient and fast.

“We found Epic’s licensing process to beoutstanding, starting with a tremendous levelof support during CCP’s evaluation stage,”said Thor Gunnarsson, CCP’s vice president ofbusiness development.

“The Dust 514 team in CCP’s Shanghaioffice was able to prototype and iterate earlyproof of concept with close proximity to, andsupport from the Epic Games China team,which proved to be invaluable. As wecompleted this phase and moved tocommercial licensing, confidence and trust inthe working relationship was cemented,leading to a rapid and streamlinedcommercial licensing pipeline.” ContinuedThor Gunnarsson.

In just six months, dynamic lighting andmassive mega terrains were implemented inDust 514 due to the standardising on UnrealEngine 3 that gives CCP’s development teamthe time and flexibility to focus on perfectingthe optimal client-side engine and pipeline tofully realise its creative and artistic vision.

With its own core technology platform, CCPcreated a fully scalable and persistent onlinegaming experience that meets both thevisual, technical and creative demands forDust 514.

“Unreal Engine 3, which complements andintegrates easily with our own technology,provides CCP with precisely the sort of elegantsolution we favour. Having a provenframework for consoles supporting our firstventure into that genre allows the Dust 514developers to focus their time, talent andenergy squarely on making an incrediblegame,” said CCP’s CEO Hilmar Veigar Petursson.

For more information about CCP orDUST 514, please visit www.ccp.com orwww.dust514.org

CCP Developing a genre mash-up using

UNREAL ENGINE 3

upcoming epicattended events:E3 2010Los Angeles, CAJune 15th to 17th, 2010

Develop Brighton, UKJuly 13th to 15th, 2010

Gamescom Cologne, GermanyAugust 18th to 22nd, 2010

Please email: [email protected] for appointments.

Dust 514 is an MMO-FPShybrid by CCP


EPIC DIARIES | BUILD

Mark Rein is vice president of Epic Games based inRaleigh, North Carolina. Since 1992 Mark has worked onEpic’s licensing and publishing deals, businessdevelopment, public relations, academic relations,marketing and business operations.www.epicgames.com

48 | MAY 2010

AUDIO | BUILD

Even down the line from Sweden, you canjust tell Stefan Strandberg is oozing withan infectious enthusiasm and passion for

audio in games. He says it like it is, his candourmarking a man and his audio team who areconfident but not cocky about their vision andability to deliver it. With the first Battlefield BadCompany in the bag, they had already beenthere and bought the t-shirt in some style. BC2gave them the time and opportunity to buildon a solid foundation and start pushing theboundaries in some surprising new ways.

Strandberg says: “As with any sequel, we dugdeeper, expanding diversity and asset quality.The game plays better – both single and multi-player – and a game that plays better, soundsbetter. We’ve gotten out of the audio roomsand worked with other disciplines morecollaboratively. For example, if you want tomake something louder, sometimes pushingup the volume slider isn’t enough. So we wentto the FX artists and said, ‘look, the explosionswon’t feel dangerous if we don’t shake thecamera,’ and in an unusual development, weaudio guys ended up controlling the camerashake so we could ensure perfectsynchronisation. In fact, not only do we triggerand control the shaking x, y and z parametersfrom the audio engine, we also triggerrumbling of the joypad. It’s all done subtly butit makes the explosions seem louder – it’s likewe’ve got more dimensions to work in.”

This ‘perception illusion’ of audio-drivencamera shake and rumble now featuresthroughout, in situations ranging from say thefairly obvious instance of a tank drive-bythrough to more oblique examples like aparachute-opening, all to great effect.Strandberg adds: “It really amplifies keymoments – with Destruction 2.0 you can bringdown a whole house and so a couple ofseconds before it collapses, you’ll hear thebuilding starting to creak and moan and thecamera starts shaking and the pad starts

rumbling – all in complete sync. It’s whatcreates that, ‘I gotta get out of here,’ reaction.Audio alone is not as powerful. It has been oneof the best things we’ve ever done and we’lldevelop it further in the future.”

Another area of improvement has beentweaking the HDR dynamic mixing system asfeatured in Develop previously. AlthoughStrandberg is playing his cards close to his cheston this one, he does offer the following: “I willsay we’ve been working on making the overall

sound easier on the ear – kind of shinier. I was alittle tired of the super-noisy soundscape, socoming to this project we reset our ears andstarted listening afresh to BC1, recording theoutputs and conducting some analysis.”

This process led to the realisation that therewas much more dynamic range to use in thelower regions resulting in the team addingsignificant amounts of bass – a key factor in thein-game delivery of some new weapon assetsarising from a quite extraordinary gunwrangling and recording session in LA and FortIrwin (complete with mocked-up Iraqi village).

“I think it’s the biggest gun recording everattempted – a joint venture with the Medal ofHonor team. For two days we had movie guysJean Paul Fasal and Brian Watkins there with an

80 microphone set-up capturing every weaponsound you can imagine to both computer andanalogue tape recorders. We even had peoplesync-recording in the mountains five-kilometers away. The resulting ProToolssessions allow you to create any kind ofweapon sound you like, though the portrait ofthe tail is a constant, which is why we still like touse ‘guerrilla’ recordings we make during themilitary exercises that take place aroundStockholm periodically. Running around theforest with shotgun mics – recording from thehip – also yields some fantastic assets.

“So you update your libraries and find stuffyou just love and you think, ‘this one soundchanges everything.’ Then you adapt otheraudio to work with that sound – it’s likeyou’ve found the Rosetta Stone. For instance,we got a much bassier recording of amachine gun and used it at different pitchesto homogenise a lot of the weapons. It reallyhelps to create iconical differences betweenassault rifles and machine guns.

“In fact, we’ve worked very closely withdesign to make sure there are small sonicallyunique identifiers for everything in the gameproviding important audio cues which willimprove you as a soldier. Though they’re notmentioned in the manual, it’s cool howpeople pick up on them – it’s all part of thegameplay depth.

“It’s great we had more time to do thesethings – a year-and-a-half. Last time aroundwe were building a new engine at the sametime as making a game which is horrible. Wewere able to just polish – and wheneverybody is polishing, what it brings to theproduct is amazing.”

Battlefield Bad Company 2

John Broomhall is an independent audio director,consultant and content [email protected]

DEVELOPER:Dice

PUBLISHER:Electronic Arts

AUDIO TEAM:Audio Director: Stefan StrandbergSound Design: Bence Pajor, Mari Saastamoinen,Ben Minto, Stefan Strandberg, Olof StrömqvistOriginal Music: Mikael KarlssonDialogue Direction: Olof Strömqvist

HEARDABOUT

As with any sequel,we dug deeper,

expanding diversity andasset quality. The gameplays better – and a gamethat plays better,sounds better.

Stefan Strandberg, Dice

John Broomhall talks to EA DICE’s audio ace, Stefan Strandberg…

MAY 2010 | 49DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

UNITY FOCUS | BUILD

UNITYFOCUS

The benefits of using Unity as adevelopment platform extendpast its elegant user interface

and workflow. When you decide to use Unity, you’re

not only investing your time into a toolthat supports the most interestingplatforms to currently develop for froma technological and market place standpoint, but also the most interesting andviable platforms of the future as well.

This was the case earlier last monthwith the advent of the iPad. Unity’scrack team of engineers got iPadsupport up and running, and into betatesters’ hands, soon after the iPad devtools were released. Beta testingcontinued up until the day before theiPad launched in the United States, atwhich point Unity Technologiesreleased Unity iPhone 1.7 to its userbase– a free upgrade which enables iPad publishing.

On launch day there were more than20 Unity authored iPad games in theApp Store, adding to the more than600 Unity iPhone games alreadypublished. Publishers of these newapps included notable names likeDisney, Warner Bros, and Chillingo.

AUTHOR ONCE, DEPLOY ANYWHERE… AGAIN‘Author once, deploy anywhere’ is atrend that isn’t going to stop. Theability to repurpose your existinggames, while altering them to makethe most of the target platform, just

makes too much sense. Because of this,Unity is quickly becoming one of thefew tools that the industry isstandardising on. Developers are ableto use their familiarity with the Unityeditor to create titles efficiently andthen redeploy to new platforms as theybecome available.

Many of the iPad launch titles fit intothis paradigm; just before the iPadlaunch I asked two launch titledevelopers about the experience of using Unity to deploy to unreleased hardware.

Getting there first: Unity’s zero-day iPad supportWith Apple’s new iPad set to revitalise the app gaming landscape, Thomas Grovéexplains how Unity is ready to support every developer’s needs…

■ Free iPad deployment for usersof Unity iPhone.

■ iPad Simulator support –developers can create iPad apps,even if they do not yet haveiPad hardware.

■ Universal application support –apps can be designed toautomatically work on iPad,iPhone, and iPod touch.

For more information about usingUnity to create games for mobile,console, and the web, visitunity3d.com

FEATUREHIGHLIGHTS OFUNITY IPHONE 1.7

What games are you releasing? We are releasing part of our backcatalogue: two Objective-C games(Smack Boxing and Touch Wars) as wellas a Unity game – Monster Ball.

Have they been submitted/ acceptedto the app store?All three have gone through the pre-acceptance with approval for thegrand launch, and were submitted lastnight as final versions. So baring anyunknown issues, we should have thosein the app store on Saturday tocoincide with the iPad launch.

How was your experiencedeveloping an iPad app with Unity iPhone? Our experience is best described bycomparing the process required for theObjective-C games and the Unitygame. For the two Objective-C gameswe spent days re-rendering all of theart, then we had to run through theentire code and pixel push things inplace. It was super boring work andtook man-days to complete.

With our Unity game it was literallyjust a matter of setting up a few playerpreference parameters and hittingbuild. The Unity GUI system alreadytook care of aspect ratio changes, sothe iPad portwas simple,pain free and itjust worked.Once againthe investmentof using Unityhas paid off.

INTERVIEW: MONSTER BALL CO-CREATORTHOMAS HENTSCHEL LUND

What games are you releasing?iQuarium HD, Sailboat ChampionshipPRO HD, and Jelly Invaders HD – all ofwhich are Unity authored games.

Have they been submitted/accepted to the app store? Yes, all of these games weresubmitted and accepted. The mailfrom Apple told us that the gameswill be available at launch.

How was your experiencedeveloping an iPad app withUnity iPhone? The experience was great. It took ussomething around half an hour torun the first build in the iPadsimulator and then probably a dayto setup everything for HD. We wereable to get our games submittedand accepted to the iPad App Storewithout ever seeing hardware. WithUnity it just works.

INTERVIEW: SEWERYN ‘YONEK’PANCZYNIAK, LEAD PROGRAMMER ATINFINITE DREAMS

50 | MAY 2010

BUILD | AUDIO

EVE is more than a game – it’s aworldwide phenomenon. Set tens ofthousands of years in the future,

critically-acclaimed EVE Online is abreathtaking journey to the stars foradventure, riches, danger and glory. Thegame features a vast player-run economywhere your greatest asset is the starship,designed to accommodate your specificneeds, skills and ambitions. EVE offers youprofessions ranging from commodities-traderto mercenary; industrial entrepreneur topirate; mining engineer to battle-fleetcommander – or any combination. Frombrokering business deals to waging war, EVEprovides a diverse array of sophisticated toolsand interfaces with which to forge your own destiny.

EVE stats are mind-blowing – over 300,000subscribers (and still counting) and at peak,more than 50,000 concurrent players co-operating in their thousands to undertakehuge group battles, vying for control of EVE’s5,000-plus solar systems. A typical playermight be a 27-year-old male college studentor white-collar professional, logging 20hours’ play per week. An impressive 20 percent of all EVE subscribers become ‘life-time’players.

EVE’s developer and publisher is industry-leading pioneer of single-server persistentuniverse architecture, CCP. Privately ownedand founded in Reykjavik, Iceland (whosepopulation size is about the same as EVE’s) in1997, CCP has over 400 employees withsatellite offices in Atlanta, Shanghai andLondon. Audio director Baldur Baldurssonsums up the mission: “Utilising a cross-discipline approach, combining cutting-edgetechnology and artistic excellence, CCP is

dedicated to providing vibrant, compellingproducts that transcend the boundaries ofconventional MMOs and facilitate socialnetworking through virtual worlds. EVEOnline is designed to foster experiencesunattainable in any other form of media,where true human interaction and humanemotions can be shared and experienced in aliving and evolving world.”

MIDDLEWARE TECHNOLOGYPart of CCP’s modus operandi is tostrategically tap into middleware technologywith a view to keeping more in-house timeand energy available for game-making andcaretaking their massive virtual world.Baldursson explains why a switch of audiotechnology had become necessary and whythe team chose Audiokinetic’s WWise: “Wehad a mixed bag of technologies handlingaudio and it required a clean-up. As part ofthat process, we needed to find a solutionthat could serve all our audio needs. Ratherthan bear the cost of considerably enlargingour audio department to write a brand newaudio engine, we quickly realised the

middleware path would work well. We lookedat various options and when we researchedAudiokinetic we liked what we saw. Meetingand working with them, learning first-handhow knowledgeable and responsive theywere, served to assure us they were the bestchoice for EVE.

“It was very useful to be able to downloadWwise and have a play with it. Having thecomplete tool enabled me, as a contentcreator, to see exactly what it was capable ofbefore making a commitment. I would evengo so far as to say it was a prime factor in ourdecision to go with Wwise – alongsidecomparing notes with other audioprofessionals. The first thing that caught myattention with Wwise was the slick interfaceand how cleverly everything seemed to belaid out. Somehow it felt very familiar. Afterexperiencing the demo, we set therequirement that other middleware had to atleast come close to this.”

Audio programmer Andri Mar Jonssontakes up the story: “The migration processwent fairly well. Of course there were a fewkinks, but overall it’s been an enjoyableexperience. At first, when I heard thesentence, ‘Oh, we want a new sound systemin EVE in three months using only twoprogrammers and two sound engineers whohad never used Wwise in a productionenvironment I wasn’t very optimistic – so I’mvery pleased how quickly it all fell into place.There were a few, mostly architecturally-related problems since Wwise abstractsthings a lot better than our previoussolutions. For example, the minor butsurprisingly difficult problem of trying toconvince our programmers they would nolonger be playing files – they would be

A Wwise choice

The first thing thatcaught my attention

with Wwise was the slickinterface and how cleverlyeverything seemed to belaid out. Somehow itfelt very familiar.

Baldur Baldursson, CCP

When renowned developer CCP upgraded its audio tech for flagship MMO EVE Online it choseAudiokinetic’s Wwise. John Broomhall talks to audio director Baldur J Baldursson, soundengineer/composer Jon Hallur Haraldsson and audio programmer Andri Mar Jonsson to find out why...


EVE’s epic space setting has attracted as many players as itsdeveloper’s homenation

sending events and that would be the onlything they needed to worry about.

“Email support from Audiokinetic was verygood and the software stable and bug-free. Ihave never had the authoring tool crash onme, for instance. Once things are up andrunning, it works without a hitch and takesalmost everything we throw at it. This hasbuilt up trust with the programmers, meaningthey waste less time searching for a bug inthe engine – experience has shown them thatin 99 per cent of cases, it’s in their code.

“We found Wwise was struggling at highload points to start with but that was beforewe read about stuff like virtual voices. Afterdiscovering and implementing some of thosefeatures, along with limiting sounds in acertain group or bus, things improved a lot.All-in-all, after discovering the tweakingknobs of Wwise, we have been very pleasedwith its performance.”

MMO HEADACHEClearly, audio is a vitally important part of theEVE experience but MMOs provide somespecific audio development headaches assound engineer and composer, Jon HallurHaraldsson explains: “Being a somewhatyoung genre and, in the case of EVE, very openand non-linear, there are quite a fewchallenges for us. As we use over-the-internetdelivery of the content, we have to be veryselective of each kilobyte we ship. Also, withthe sandbox nature of the game, a playermight find himself spending a lot of time inthe same place, repeating the same actions,seeing the same atmosphere. The human earis very sensitive to repetition but the contenthas to be kept relatively small. This is also anissue with the music. The nature of the game

makes it hard to determine danger levels andthe length of conflicts, so creating a concretesystem for music playback that underpins theexperience can be quite difficult.”

Baldursson continues: “For regular singleplayer games you can design audio almostwithout worrying about repetition – mostpeople play the game only once and for thosewho keep on playing for two or three months,it’s no big deal hearing the same sound a fewtimes. In an MMO we have to be careful indesigning sounds in such a way that peopledon’t get too tired hearing them over andover, month after month. We may have tosacrifice some cool sound effects created inthe design phase simply because they don’tstand up to repetition. Wwise makes things alittle easier by allowing us to randomly select asound say, from a list of eight sounds, and thenrandomly alter the pitch and high-pass filter.”

On this note, Haraldsson said: “The abilityto randomise almost every parameter inWwise is awesome – also the logic systemused with the state engine, blend containersand so on. The internal logic part of Wwiseenables content creators to do extremelycomplex state management without usingany code. If used properly, the event andlogic system can become a programminglanguage of sorts, accessible by the contentcreators. Also, being able to test thingswithout having to actually integrate theminto the game itself is immensely helpful.”

Faced with their perennial repetition issue,the team have been exploring SoundSeed, aninteractive sound generator for Wwise whichuses innovative DSP technology to greatlyreduce memory usage while facilitating richdynamic audio content. By creating anunlimited number of variations from a single

‘footprint’ sound, SoundSeed Impact enablesaudio developers to get tons more variationfor resonant sound effects in a memory-efficient and cost-effective way.

Baldursson: “So far it looks like SoundSeedcan make a lot of difference for us. It mayactually add a new layer of creativity,allowing for a new type of sound design – adesign that happens within the tool itself.This will benefit everyone, especially the enduser who will experience more variety. If wedidn’t have to worry about memory usage weprobably wouldn’t have noticed SoundSeedin the first place. Its main advantage for us istechnical and concerns the use of RAM. Forexample, we can use only one gun soundwaveform for a particular type of gun insteadof five to ten. Multiply this with all the soundswhere this is possible and we may be savinghuge amounts of precious RAM. It looks likeSoundSeed can save us some considerabletime and money once we get it up andrunning in EVE, and our sound designmethods are geared towards the use of it.”

For Baldursson and his team, choosingAudiokinetic’s technology has clearly been apositive experience, with the promise of ityielding yet more production efficiencies andbenefits in the months to come. Theinvestment in Wwise has been well worth it ashe concludes: “The first phase of implementingthe tools and technology into both our ownsystems and way of thought has requiredsome extra effort. What this means though isthat from now on we won’t have to rely on aprogrammer for almost anything we do foraudio in our games. This was one of the mainreasons we decided to go this route in the firstplace and we are already using Wwise onanother product in development right now.”

AUDIO | BUILD

Heavy Rain has highlighted the strength detailed dialogue can provide to a game’s narrative, Steve Ince offers upa best practice guide for implementing interactive conversations in your game…

With the success of Heavy Rain,narrative is once again thrust tothe forefront of game

development. Like casual and social gaminghave recently done in their own areas of thegaming spectrum, Heavy Rain hasbroadened the interactive experience inwhat has traditionally been regarded as the‘hardcore’ arena. The lines that define whatmakes a game have been blurred oncemore, but what might it mean fordevelopers in general and game writers inparticular?

If the industry is to embrace stronger,character-driven narrative withoutabandoning the heart of what makes a greatgame – solid gameplay – how might weapproach it? How can we structure interactivescenes and dialogue in a way to give theplayer gameplay control without becomingoverwhelmed at the writing stage?

The key to a writer of interactive dialoguekeeping control of the writing process andfeeding into the game’s design anddevelopment in a constructive way istwofold. Firstly, a writer should learn to thinkthrough the structure of interactive scenesin terms of Boolean variables and secondly,they should abandon all thoughts ofdialogue trees.

Although I’m aiming this article primarilyat game writers, it is also intended foranyone involved in developing the structureof interactive dialogue scenes. Designers, forinstance, may not have the job of writing thedialogue in the scenes, but understandingand working with the structure is important,particularly if they are the ones who need totrack down and fix bugs later in the game’sproduction and development.

How much interactive dialogue a gameneeds or the degree to which it isimplemented depends very much on therequirements of the game. This approach tointeractive dialogue should always be a partof the overall development with theimportance of its role defined by the team’screative leads.

STRUCTURE AND BOOLEAN VARIABLESFor any writers who may not know what aBoolean variable is – perhaps not having anyexperience in coding at any level – it is a

simple variable that has just two values: Trueor False. The beauty here is that there is noambiguity, which enables everything to bekept neat and tidy. But, you may ask, howwill this help those writers who never gonear scripts that contain variables?

While writers don’t need to learn to createlogic scripts or step on the developmentteam’s toes in this respect, they will find itincredibly helpful to think in this way, not onlyto keep track of the complex interactionstaking place, but also use Booleans as a tool inthe creation of the structure.

At the simplest level, the use of Booleanvariables can stop multiple characters tellingthe player character the same piece ofinformation or stop a character repeatingdramatic dialogue and diminishing the drama.

One of the problems with developinginteractive scenes is that they can quicklybecome very daunting and may overwhelmwriters if they don’t have some method ofstructuring their approach. Yes, be aware ofthe larger picture, but concentrate on thebuilding blocks themselves in a way thatcreates that picture.

When approaching any interactivedialogue scene try defining – in terms ofBooleans – what the player character knows,what he needs to know, who he has spokento, what has been discussed, what he has inhis inventory and what his goals/objectivesare. For example: Has the PC spoken to Mary?Is there a bomb in the inventory? Does the PChave the name of the murder victim?

The dialogue itself will be coloured bystory, plot, the agendas of the othercharacters and whatever sub-plots aretaking place, but controlling the informationstates with Boolean variables will keep thestructure manageable. You end up with a lotof variables, but if they are named in waysthat make sense it can be easy to track them.

It can be tempting to use variables thatincrement, but this can cause logic bugswhich are difficult to track down and hard tofix. If you had a variable calledBill_Conversation that incremented witheach subject discussed, it would only bepossible to discuss topics in a specific orderor the incrementation and conditional topicswill break down and bugs will appear.Forcing a specific order goes against the

52 | MAY 2010

BUILD | TUTORIAL

Interactive Dialogue –An Approach to Structure

A writer shouldthink through the

structure of interactivescenes in terms of Booleanvariables and abandon allthoughts ofdialogue trees.

whole idea of an interactive dialogue sceneand it may as well be a cut scene.

Naming variables based on the purposethey serve and the characters or objects towhich they relate enables you to manage alist of them much more easily. If we havethree characters in a game: Tom (playercharacter), Dick and Harry, we may havevariables named:

- Tom_Knows_Banana – he knows he needs a

banana.

- Dick_Spoken_Banana – Tom has spoken

to Dick about the banana

- Harry_Spoken_Banana – Tom has spoken

to Harry about the banana

All these variables will start out as Falseand Tom cannot speak to Dick or Harryabout the banana until he knows he needsto do so.

If Tom, through the actions of the player,finds that he needs a banana, we set theTom_Knows_Banana variable to True. This inturn means that when the player interactswith Dick, say, we can trigger the part of hisinteractive scene that’s conditional on thisvariable. When Tom has discussed thebanana with Dick we set theDick_Spoken_Banana variable to True. Notonly can we use this to stop Tom and Dicktalking about the banana again (unless wespecifically want them to), it also acts as aninformation flag that Tom is effectivelycarrying around with him from this point on.

If the player interacts with Harry, he andTom can talk about the banana. Tom andHarry may talk before Tom and Dick, butwe’ll assume that Tom has already spoken toDick about the banana before talking toHarry. Tom asks Harry about a banana andhe then tells Tom that Dick likes fruit andmight have one. Because Tom has alreadyspoken to Dick, the variableDick_Spoken_Banana is True and triggers anested condition where Tom explains thathe already asked Dick. In scripting terms itmay look like this:

IF((Tom_Knows_Banana == True) &&

(Harry_Spoken_Banana == False))

{

[Ask Harry about the banana. Harry says

Dick may have one.]

IF(Dick_Spoken_Banana == True)

{

[Tom says he already asked Dick.]

}

Harry_Spoken_Banana = True;

}

Obviously, talking about bananas is a verysimple example, but even this can getcomplex if the number of charactersincreases or the route to getting theinformation about the banana has additionalgameplay complexity. We may, for instance,introduce another interactive character, Sally,who will only say something important afterTom has spoken to both Dick and Harry. Thispart of Sally’s scene is then dependent onboth variables Dick_Spoken_ Banana andHarry_Spoken_Banana being set to True.

What you may notice is that althoughwe’ve potentially created a lot of structure,

there is no dialogue. While we establish thestructure dialogue is irrelevant – writers canhave the fun of creating that at a later stage.In a sense, this has a parallel with the scenecreation approach to film scriptwriting, butin terms of game writing it becomespotentially much more complex. A typicalfilm might have around forty scenes but agame may have hundreds.

One particular beauty in this structuralapproach is that the development team cansee the shape that’s forming much earlierbecause they don’t have to wait for thedialogue. The gameplay implementation ofthe interactive scenes can take place beforethe writer has completed the dialogue,which will likely benefit schedules andmilestone targets.

NO DIALOGUE TREESSome people may think it an absolutenecessity to have dialogue trees in orderthat scenes will be fully interactive, but I findthat thinking in terms of dialogue trees isdistracting. In seventeen years of developinginteractive dialogue scenes I’ve never used abranching tree structure. I find that thestructure I outlined above is far more flexibleand enables the writer to think of eachdiscussion topic as a separate building blockbut linked and perhaps modified by the useof the Boolean variables and what thosevariables control.

To me it’s much clearer when approachinga scene to think of all discussion topics asbeing at the same level. The availability ofthe topics is controlled through the script bythe Booleans as described above. Afterdiscussing a topic the dialogue engineshould return back to that same level toenable the player to choose the next topic.

One of the problems of developingdialogue with a tree structure in mind is thatthere is often the need to copy whole sectionsof dialogue into new places in the tree in orderto get them to trigger in the right way. Thisstrikes me as very clumsy and a huge waste oftime. If dialogue needs to be copied andpasted anywhere, then there is likely to be aproblem with the scene structure or thesystem that drives the dialogue.

FURTHER COMPLEXITYThere may be times when the “flat” approachto topics will need to deal with a secondlayer temporarily. The writer may want togive the player choices that have differentoutcomes and doesn’t want to return to themain level and confuse the issue with topicsthat don’t have an immediate bearing. Aninterrogation, for example, may throw upcritical information that the player characterconcentrates on until the resultant sub-topics have been exhausted.

This second level of topics is not a treestructure and can best be described as anested level of topics. It should be thoughtof in the same “flat” way. In scripting termsyou might think of it as a kind of “while loop”where the conversation is held in this leveluntil the condition for release is met, atwhich point the system should return to theoriginal topic level.

Many games will not have a need for thecomplexity of multiple levels, but if it is

required the team needs to ensure it is builtinto the dialogue system.

Emotions are a further way to addcomplexity, particularly if the choices theplayer makes and the actions of thegameplay have an effect on the emotions ofthe other characters. If the player has donesomething to make Dick angry with Tom wemay set a Dick_Angry variable to True andcreate conditional dialogue within theinteractive scene that is triggered by thisvariable. It may be, for instance, that Dickrefuses to talk about anything at all whilehe’s Angry with Tom, in which case theplayer may need to discover a way to placateDick before he can get the information heneeds. Or the player may need to discoveranother way altogether to get that sameinformation.

As mentioned before, how muchcomplexity you need is dictated by therequirements of the game and howimportant interactive dialogue is to theexperience you want to give the player. Takethese ideas and adapt them to your needs.

CONCLUSIONIn many ways, approaching the writing ofinteractive scenes is blurring the boundariesbetween writing and design, which is not abad thing. The more they becomeintertwined the better integrated the storyand gameplay will be. The two aspects willmarry closely and share a clear vision.

Because Boolean variables can only beTrue or False, it may seem that there is adanger of losing the spectrum of subtlety.They are not there to define the subtlety, orthe lack of such, but control the structurewithin which the team creates the subtlety.The use of multiple Booleans workingtogether will create its own subtlety, ofcourse, but the real subtlety will alwayscome from the writer knowing thecharacters well and knowing how they willreact to being teased, seduced, and so forth.

The interactive structure is not asubstitute for good writing, but a tool thatenables the writer and designers to make itwork in the best possible way for the player.

Heavy Rain has proventhat games can featureheavily-scriptedsequences that changewith player inputs

TUTORIAL | BUILD

DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

Steve Ince is a games writer-designer with 17 years ingame development. After 11 years with RevolutionSoftware, Steve turned freelance in 2004. In 2008 hereceived an award nomination from the Writers’ Guild ofGreat Britain for the game, So Blonde.

MAY 2010 | 53

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Ark VFX Ltd.Tel: 0114 268 4999www.arkvfx.net

Barrington HarveyTel: +44 (0)1462 456780www.bhpress.co.uk

BastionTel: +44 (0)20 7421 7600www.bastion.co.uk

Gfk Chart-Track LtdTel: +44 (0) 20 8741 7585www.chart-track.com

Dilute RecordingsTel: 01483 306834www.diluterecordings.com

Eye-D Creative LtdTel: +44 (0)20 7407 1440www.eye-dcreative.co.uk

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FINK Creative LtdTel: 01480 302350www.finkcreative.com

FluidTel: +44 (0)121 212 0121www.fluidesign.co.uk

Freeform.LondonTel: 020 7183 6664www.freeformlondon.co.uk

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uk distribution and logistics

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ook 2010CE COMPANIES

COPY DEADLINE: FRIDAY JUNE 11th


PEOPLE: West and

Zampella formRespawn

p58

TOOLS: Havok MD DavidO’Meara to leave

in Junep60

SERVICES: Heavy Rain staropens mocap

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studios

58 | MAY 2010

Studio News

Moving on up

This month: Blitz Games Studio, Kuju, Side & Lightning Fish

NIGEL ROBBINS APPOINTED KUJU CEOFormer MTV networks man Nigel Robbins has beenhired as CEO at Kuju, while its founders are steppingdown to non-exec roles.

Kuju includes a range of studios – Zoë Mode, Vatra,Headstrong and Doublesix – which has slimmed downover recent months.

“Ian and Jonathan are consummate industryprofessionals and they have led the charge at Kujumagnificently for more than two decades,” said chairmanDominic Wheatley.

“It’s great for us that they will maintain that closeconnection, given their in depth knowledge andexperience of the company they founded and theindustry in which it operates.”

Robbins is tasked with growing Kuju’s stable of studios and looking at new ways toexpand the business.

Robbins was previously the president of MTV Networks Asia Pacific, overseeing overthirty MTV, Nickelodeon and VH1 branded TV, online and digital content services inthat region.www.kuju.com

LIGHTNING FISH EXPANDSMotion tracking companyLightning Fish hasannounced the appointmentof two programmers, AdrianSmith and Karl Mitson.

Both join after recentlygraduating from HuddersfieldUniversity. Adrian holdseighteen months industryexperience helping to developan XBLA tile YoHo Kablammo.

Karl won first place in theUK Imagine Cup.

Both men were part of the team that won second place in the X48: Microsoft XNAGameCamp competition at Derby University.

“I am enjoying working along side the people who have made many of my favouritegames,”said Adrian.

“At Lightning Fish I am happy to be able to work with the latest games technology.”added Karl.www.lightningfishgames.com

NEW CEO JOINS IDEAWORKS3DUK mobile gaming firm Ideaworks3D hasa new CEO: Niall Murphy, co-founder ofwi-fi network The Cloud.

He takes over the role from presidentand CEO Alex Caccia, who will remain atthe company as president.

The move follows Ideaworks3D’s recentinvestment round, and the separation ofits studio and technology divisions.

“With these developments we’vedecided to increase the breadth anddepth of our management team,” says astatement provided to MobileEntertainment by the company.www.ideaworkslabs.com

Our monthly focus on a rising star in gamesdevelopment who has recently taken a new role

Qualified as a professional Illustrator from Falmouth School of Art& Design, migrated to the games industry in 1993. Served a seven-year stint at Rare. Reporting to the Studio CTO, his current title ofStudio Design Director sees him responsible for the Studio’sdesign department as part of the Studio Development Group.

WEST AND ZAMPELLA FORM RESPAWNENTERTAINMENTJason West and Vince Zampella haveformed a new independent studio calledRespawn Entertainment.

The two were ousted as heads fromInfinity Ward in early March underaccusations of insubordination from parentcompany Activision.

They filed a suit against Activision, whofiled a counter-claim accusing the pair of,amongst other things, delaying thedevelopment of Modern Warfare 3.

New outfit Respawn is currently in itsformative stages and claim to be“assembling a world-class team ofdesigners, artists and engineers”.

The studio’s exec team get to keep the IP they make, and EA Partners getsdistribution rights to all Respawn’s future games.www.respawn.com

brought to you by…

John Nash,Develop Q&AStudio Design Director,Blitz Games Studios

Q) What to you hope to achieve inyour new role at Blitz GamesStudios?With the combined efforts of thedesigners and senior managers I hopeto empower people at the studio todesign great new game experienceswith the least amount of hassle. I wantBlitz to be recognised as a centre ofdesign quality and innovation. I’m aman with a plan – let’s see if it works!

Q) Where would you like to be in fiveyears?I will still be at the sharp end of gamecreation and hopefully helping moregame developers experience theexhilaration of being part of aproductive team that achieves multi-million selling games. I also haveworked out a few new approaches tocommunicating complex design and Iwould hope to have proven these andbe sharing my findings with the gamescommunity as a whole.

Q) What excites you about the videogames industry and why? Maybe it’s our collective ability tocreate new experiences conceived inour imaginations or the even continualtussle between technologicalinnovation and game design. In theend though, there is little downside toworking in the fastest growing, mostdesirable sector of modern mass-market entertainment – I am (we are)lucky indeed.

Q) What advice would you have forpeople hoping to emulate yoursuccess?Works hard, learn everything, shareknowledge and above all else, bringsomething of you to the party. I alsolearned early on in my career to alwaysaim high, to always shoot for the stars.Most importantly for designers though,in order to achieve innovation, youhave to ‘be’ the innovation.www.blitzgames.com

WWW.DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET MAY 2010 | 59

studios

Stainless Games [email protected] www.stainlessgames.com

Epic +1-919-870-1516 www.epicgames.com

Develop Magazine 01992 535647 www.develop-online.net

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60 | MAY 2010

tools

David O’Meara, MD of influential Dublin-based physics middleware developers Havok,has announced his intention to leave the firm in June this year.

O’Meara has been with Havok since 2003, initially as chief executive and later as MDafter the acquisition of the company by Intel. He has yet to make any statements abouthis future plans. In an official comment, Havok stated O’meara will be pursuing “otherbusiness interests”.

“Havok is a true Irish success story and continually demonstrates what it takes toforge ahead in a competitive global business. It is synonymous with quality andinnovation,” O’Meara said.

“I feel great about all the achievements and innovations at Havok over the pastseven years and I consider myself fortunate to have worked with such a great team.The company is in good hands and its position in the global market is unmatched.”

Havok chairman and Intel VP Renee James said a new MD will be appointed soon.“David will leave the company in a very strong position and we thank him for theleadership he has shown,” she added.www.havok.com

Blitz Games Studios 01926 880000 www.BlitzGamesStudios.com

Havok MD O’Meara to leave

Trademarks are property of their respective owners.Wii is a trademark of Nintendo.

MAKE GAMES.3D Cross platform engine with provendigital stereoscopic 3D capability

BlitzTech.com/licensing

bluegfx 01483 467200 www.bluegfx.com

Tools News

WWW.DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

tools

SpotlightTool

SCALEFORM GFX 3.2

Flash-based middleware providers anduser interface creators Scaleform hasreleased Scaleform GFx 3.2, an updatedversion of its UI technology.

Scaleform GFx 3.2 includes the 3Disuite of 3D Flash creation tools, whichScaleform claims will ease thedevelopment of 3D menus, heads updisplays and in-game interfaces,including Stereoscopic 3D menus.

Also included is a Flash profiling toolfor programmers and artists called AMP.

“Game developers are continuallylooking for ways to push the creativeenvelope while continuing to improveperformance and reducing schedulingrisk,” said Scaleform president and CEOBrendan Iribe.

“Scaleform GFx 3.2 addresses thosecore challenges by giving UI designersmore creative freedom with its dazzling3Di rendering and animation, powerfulnew AMP performance-tuning toolset,

and additional ready-to-use UI Kits thatmake it faster and easier than everbefore to implement robust UIs.”

Scaleform GFx 3.2 also includes theScaleform AMP profiler, which grants aview of the CPU usage, rendering statsand memory allocation for developerswhile they tune Flash content.

Scaleform is also providing more UIkits, specifically a front-end Menu Kitand in-game 3Di Menu Kit, grantingdevelopers a starting point from whichto design their individual UIs.

Scaleform GFx 3.2 supports nativeFlash filters and contains video tutorialsfor all of its major features.

“We’re excited to lead the way for thefuture of interface design as developerstake traditional 2D interfaces to thenext dimension and create stunning in-game 3D interfaces that rival the CGIspecial effects of high-budget films,”added Iribe.

CONTACT:Scaleform Corporation6305 Ivy Lane,Suite 310, Greenbelt,MD 20770

E: [email protected]: www.scaleform.com

MAY 2010 | 61

Dolby 01793 842922 [email protected]

TECHNOLOGY TYPE: MIDDLEWARE

Havok +1 415 543 4620 www.havok.com

62 | MAY 2010

services

Services News

Side, the award winning providers ofcreative production services to the videogames industry, have welcomed BenRyalls to their expanding team asbusiness development manager. Ben hasa background based in businessdevelopment, sales, marketing andfinance, and holds a lifelong passion forvideo games.

“For me this is an exceptionalopportunity to use my existing skills in anindustry I’m already passionate about.To be part of Side’s ongoing growth is anexciting prospect.”

Ben’s role is to promote Side’s range ofstory and character related serviceswithin the industry, as well as adding aspark of creative flair to the developmentof the business.

Creative Director Andy Emery said;“Ben’s knowledge of the games industryand its mechanics, coupled with his salesand marketing skills make him a valuableasset to Side moving forward.”www.side.com

Media law firm Wiggin has hired NavSunner to head up its new ComputerGames practice. Sunner joins the firm fromOsborne Clarke, where he was co-head ofthe Interactive Entertainment Group.

Sunner will be responsible fordeveloping a full service computer gamespractice at Wiggin and will support thefirm’s clients in their increasing interactionwith the computer games industry andtheir moves into digital distribution.

Sunner previously held senior positionsat the publishing divisions of Codemastersand Mastertronic.

“I am thrilled to be joining Wiggin andam excited by its plans for the future. It’s afantastic firm that truly understands sectorfocus and is filled with people who arepassionate about the work they do andthe clients they work with,” Sunner said.

“The firm is also perfectly positioned todeal with the rapid convergence of mediacaused by the digital revolution. It’s theideal place for me to build a superbcomputer games practice and add to thesuccess it has already achieved.”www.wiggin.co.uk

Pascal Langdale, the star ofQuantic Dream’s best selling titleHeavy Rain, has launched amotion capture company calledMotives in Movement.

The company claims to use anew method of generating andre-using mo-cap narrative film forgames based on characterbehavior. MIM say this can cutmo-cap costs by around 30%.

The technology is basedaround catagorising behaviorand producing pre-filmedreaction and expression libraries.www.motivesinmovement.com

This month: new faces at Side, Wigginand Motives in Movement...

Amiqus www.amiqus.com

Brand Protect +44 (0) 1869 346160 www.bptm.co.uk

WWW.DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET MAY 2010 | 63

servicesPartnertrans +44 (0) 1273 229030 www.partnertrans.com

Testronic Labs +44 (0) 1753 653 722 www.testronic labs.com

Outso Ltd. www.outso.com

Specialist Games ServicesLocalisation

» Global network of games specialised linguists » Translators to cover all genres of games

» All languages covered» In game, scripts, paper parts and marketing translations

Quality Assurance» All platforms (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, PC and Mobile)

» Localisation QA» Compliance checks for TRC, TCR and LOT approval

» Functionality QA

Audio» Voice overs across all languages

» Full casting service» Pre and post production including lip synching

» Highly experienced voice directors and engineers

Universally SpeakingPriory Chambers, Priory Lane, St Neots, Cambs., PE19 2BH, UK

Tel: +44 (0)1480 210621 [email protected] www.usspeaking.com

Universally Speaking 01480 210621 www.usspeaking.com

courses

Futureworks school of media in Manchester has joined up with Emergent GameTechnologies to enable its games students to use the Middleware engine GamebryoLightspeed in their studies.

Futureworks will become an academic partner of Emergent and will be the onlyprivate education institution in the UK authorised to utilise its Gamebryo engine.The partnership will also provide Futureworks students with access to the technologyof eighteen of Emergent’s industry partners.

Futureworks students of both the Games Design degree and the GameDevelopment diploma will be able to make use of Gamebryo. The Futureworks gamescourses have been designed to enable students from each of the games disciplines tocollaborate throughout their studies and the software will also aid in that process.

“This partnership with Emergent is the latest achievement in our ongoing realisationof ambitions to strengthen links with industry for the benefit of our students,” saidFutureworks’ Ben Norris.

“Utilising cutting-edge software like Gamebryo will enable them to gain the skillsand experience needed for a successful career in the games industry, and will ensurewe are helping to cultivate a workforce with the expertise the UK needs to remaincompetitive. for many years to come”www.futureworks.co.uk | www.emergent.net

Futureworks unites with EmergentTraining News

TIGA has published a‘Training, Education andSkills’ manifesto detailingchanges to the way itbelieves the nationalcurriculum shouldoperate. The suggestionsheavily promote skillsrelating to thedevelopment industry.

In the manifestoforeword, TIGA states thata pilot SME Training TaxRelief (TTR) should belaunched as a future taxcredit for all staff andeducation outreach activities withinvideo games development.

It also describes the need for‘generous’ bursaries for trainee teachersin mathematics and the sciences, as wellas larger golden hellos for thesedisciplines, and the wiping of studentloans for teachers remaining in thesedisciplines for a set length of time.

More generally, the manifesto declaresthe need for greater expenditure onhigher education, as well as heavierpromotion of the video games industryas a career option in schools.

It also suggests reducing tuition fees

for students studying maths andcomputer science degrees, stating thatthe cuts could come from eitherindividual universities or by futureGovernment intervention.

The manifesto seeks to promote thefurther funding of ‘blue sky’ research attop gaming universities which, it states,should be protected as it stands andincreased in the future.www.tiga.org

TIGA outlines plans for gameeducation reform

Futureworks +44(0) 161 237 7570 www.futureworks.co.uk

The University of Hull +44(0) 1482 465951 www.mscgames.com

64 | MAY 2010

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Documents

Develop - Issue 105 - May 2010