Develop - Issue 108 - August 2010

Brothersin Arms

G A M E D E S I G N | C O D I N G | A R T | S O U N D | B U S I N E S S

AUGUST 2010 | #108 | £4 / e7 / $13WWW.DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

Jagex founders crownedDevelop Award Legends

ALSO INSIDEJade Raymond talks

Ubisoft Toronto

Region Focus: Europe

Richard Branson’sreturn to gaming

plus ign’s tech plan • 10 years of axis • naturalmotion profiled & more

ALPHA05 – 07 > dev news from around the globeJust Add Water on securing the rights to the Oddworld series, an overview of theUK Government’s support for the sector, and analysis of how Gamestop’s Kongregate deal is opening the doors of retail to Flash developers

12 – 15 > opinion and analysisRick Gibson turns an eye to the UK Government, Billy Thompson disscusses seeingyour title on the shelves, David Braben ponders innovative interfaces, and BenBoard offers advice on letting consumer become creator

BETA18 – 24 > develop awards: the winnersAll the results from the pivotal ceremony, comments from the winners, and pictures of the revelry that followed the presentations

27 – 31 > euro visionA look at how Europe is standing up to the US and Asia, and a tour of some of thetech firms defining the territory

41 – 42 > virgin returningThe team heading up Richard Branson’s return to the industry on what VirginGaming’s new model means for developers

55 – 56 > jade’s empireJade Raymond outlines her ambitions for the new Ubisoft Toronto studio

55 – 56 > we r the futureA trip behind the scenes of the newly formed social gaming studio

BUILD64 – 65 > a frame of mindNinja Theory and Codemasters talk up NaturalMotion’s morpheme animation tech

68 - 69 > ign tools upIGN’s GameSpy Technology and FilePlanet tech go under the microscope

72 > tutorial: uncharted 2The final part of our special series looking at Uncharted 2’s special effects

78 > heard about: sceeJohn Broomhall asks SCEE’s principal audio programmer about his future vision

ContentsDEVELOP ISSUE 108 AUGUST 2010

81 – 89studios, tools, services and courses

18

55

58 27

64 41

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]

Staff WriterStuart [email protected]

Online EditorRob [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]

Executive EditorOwain [email protected]

Contributors Ben Board, David Braben, JohnBroomhall, Rick Gibson, ThomasGrove, Billy Thomson, Mark Rein,Harrison Baker, DinahLammiman

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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

DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET AUGUST 2010 | 05

Flash devs get retail hotlineGameStop’s swoop for Kongregate means indie developers and start-up studios can tap into retail traffic

CONVENTIONAL WISDOMsays the games industry’sevolution means that newdevelopers are moving awayfrom retail.

But global games giantGameStop wants to bridge thegap between indiedevelopment’s new businessmodels with the still-busyworld of boxed products.

Last month, the firm made asurprise move and boughtFlash games site Kongregate.The 20-man outfit will remainunaffected operationally – stillallowing developers to uploadtheir Flash creations and addthem to a portfolio of gamesthat use a social chat interfaceand achievements.

But Kongregate will helpGameStop push forward frombeing ‘just’ a powerful retailerof physical games content.

And, the site’s co-foundertold Develop, it will also helpintroduce the ‘core’ audienceof 500m global GameStopcustomers to its original,diverse and 30,000-game deepportfolio of titles.

“We’ve built a greataudience, but it is nonethelessbiased towards those who playa lot online,” said Jim Greer,who founded Kongregate withhis sister in 2007. “There is agroup of people who are stillgetting their games offlineand only just going online – Ithink we can now get ahead ofthe curve and reach those

early adopters and lateadopters.”

Greer and the GameStopteam reckon there is a hugecrossover between the ‘core’and ‘casual’ markets that areoften seen as unconnected.Now they want to turn thosehunting triple-A experiencesonto the diverse free contentavailable online as well.

GameStop doesn’t see freecontent necessarily

cannibalising the lucrativeworld of physical triple-A retailreleases, either.

“Retail continues to be animportant focus of GameStop’sbusiness and is the corerevenue driver,” said digitalventures boss Chris Petrovic.“But we do see there are a lotof players that want to playgames outside the livingroom. So we feel there is anopportunity to extend that

relationship – we alreadyspeak to them when they arein stores so why not continuethat when they are playinggames across other devices orother arenas that aren’t theliving room.”

Most important for small-scale developers is thepotential to have their quirkierinnovations promoted to themainstream players thatfrequent GameStop’s chain ofhighstreet stores.

Kongregate, with its 10mplayers, has already helpedturn free and original gameslike the UK-made DesktopTower Defence into populartitles online. With the backingof a major retailer, it canconvert players to thinkingabout playing suchexperiences outside of thecontrolled, franchise-heavyand risk-averse retail shelves.

“GameStop reacheshundreds of millions – we’ll beable to use the video displaysin store and the retail outletsto show off great content.There’s a real opportunity tosay ‘Hey you just boughtCivilization V, why not also trythis free real time strategyMMO that is on Kongregate –and here’s a few dollars’ worthof points for that game youcan get started with’.

“It’s about making the rightrecommendations to theplayers offline so they canmake the rightrecommendations online.”www.kongregate.com

ADVENTURES IN GAMES DEVELOPMENT: NEWS, VIEWS & MORE

“I suspect future ‘core’ games will still be made to appeal to

the sedentary…” David Braben, p14

Just AddWater’s

Oddworld dealNews, p06

Tiga onlobbying thegovernment

News, p07

Ben Board’sguide to

hosting UGCNews, p15

by Michael French

There arepeople

who are stillgettingtheir gamesofflineJim Greer, Kongregate

THE UK GAMES industry isno stranger to curiousbusiness deals – but this oneis decidedly Odd.

UK indie Just Add Water isat work on a number of titlesthat revisit the world of thecritically acclaimed Oddworldseries – originally made by ateam in the USA.

Initially developed byOddworld Inhabitants, theseries began life on theoriginal PlayStation in 1997,and rapidly established a cultfollowing and a status as achampion of the 2Dplatforming genre.

JAW secured the rights tocreate the next Oddworldgames after a conversationat GDC 2009 between theLeeds-based studio’s MDStewart Gilray and Oddworldcreator and game designluminary Lorne Lanning.

Since, JAW has been atwork on a number ofOddworld titles, which Gilrayhints will make use oftechnologies established andforthcoming: “The currentprojects are at various stagesof development and all use

technology in different ways;some new and also sometraditional technologies.”

JAW has also securedaccess to many of those inthe core team behind the

original Oddworld games,including OddworldInhabitants co-founderSherry McKenna.

“I’ve got direct access toLorne, Sherry and LarryShapiro, the CEO,” Gilrayconfirmed. “To give you anidea of some of theprocesses, over the pastcouple of months well

discuss something or showthem something, thensometimes within minutes I’llget emails and so on, askingif we can apply that visual toother aspects etcetera.”

To many, the news that asmall UK studio is at work onan IP traditionally associatedwith US developers and fansmay come as some surprise.

Currently JAW, which hasdescribed the pressure ofhandling such beloved IP asa positive influence, iskeeping details of theprojects close to its chest.

Right now, the key part ofthe deal is the unexpectedmeeting of minds betweenGravity Crash developer JAWand Oddworld Inhabitants,which has created a closecreative bond.

“As you can imagine Lorneand the guys are extremelybusy people, so for me it’sbeen amazing to get thekind of access we’ve had andin turn the conversationsthat have evolved. Lorne andI both have similar ideasabout stuff, and we try toevolve those ideas together.”www.jawltd.com

06 | AUGUST 2010

ALPHA | NEWS

‘Games as service.’It’s such an over-repeated games industry phrase that

to type it out, let alone expect you to read it, feels likewhite noise seeping into the ether.

It’s one of those things about the change in videogames that we all know is true, but has become boringto hear. Yes, yes, we know – games are leaving strictsingle-player and multiplayer labels behind. We’ve heardmany say it and few actually do it – enough already!

One of the Develop team overheard someone sayingexactly that at last month’s Develop Conference, but it’ssomething ignored at your peril.

So let’s try again, slower, to understand why this oftenrepeated - but easily ignored - emergent force needs tobe appreciated by everyone in it.

Games. As. Service. Ah, maybe that’s the problem; it sounds boring.

Service – what an unexciting word to see on the sameline as our precious ‘games’.

Yet it isn’t boring, because when games become aservice, something beyond a fixed item sold in a box, therole of the developer fundamentally changes. The studiogoes from being author to broadcaster.

While many of the day-to-day duties remain the same– content still needs to be made, updates issues,communities monitored – new abilities are needed tomaintain audiences and keep them engaged.

Unfortunately for the biggest, most cutting edgegames and online sites already doing this well, much ofthe hard work is required around the boring stuff; qualityof online service, latency/lag, server management, andso on. It isn’t about sexy stuff like rendering, poly-countsor things like iPad.

But developers must dig beyond wariness over jargon– after all, this is an industry packed with it – to see thepotential emerging avenues for games will offer theirbusiness. We’ve profiled a number of such companiesmaking the jump on this issue (nDreams – p37, Virgin –p41, We R – p58) and the firms out there supportingthem (IGN for one – p68) to get you started onunderstanding exactly why this is beyond a buzzword,and more the shape of things to come.

Editorial

Michael [email protected]

Are you being served?

by Will Freeman

Thecurrent

projects are atvarious stagesand all usetechnology indifferentways.

Stewart Gilray, Just Add Water

JAW’sOdd dealUK indie securesrights to revitalisethe Oddworld series


NEWS | ALPHA

THE UK GAMES industryisn’t getting a tax break –but that doesn’tnecessarily mean itslobbying efforts were all for nought, according to Tiga.

In fact the active call forsupport and recognitionhas given developers anincreased amount ofrespect, the organisation’sCEO Richard Wilson hassaid in a piece written forDevelop Online.

Even though the long-running campaign had nomeasurable, fiscaloutcome, the widespreadycall for governmentsupport “has put theindustry on the politicaland media map,” Wilsonwrote. “This was not anaccident. It happenedbecause the expression‘give up’ isn’t in TIGA’slexicon”.

Indeed: Tiga has alreadyformed a steering groupwith publisher associationELSPA to see how they canwork together onreigniting the tax breakdebate before authorities.

“Tiga’s relentlesscampaign for games taxrelief has had the positiveeffect of raising the profileof the video games sectorfrom a subterraneanactivity to the pinnacle ofpolicy making,” Wilson said.

“Our industry is high onthe agenda of politicians,policy makers and pundits.We have rammed the storyof our industry so far downthe throats of ourpoliticians that they havehad no choice but to sit upand take notice.

“When I took over asCEO of TIGA in 2008, thegames industry was littlecovered in the nationalpress as an economic or abusiness story andpoliticians where ignorantof the sector.”www.tiga.org

‘Lobbying has putgames on the map’Games tax break is off the cards, but active work by the games sector in the UK haspaid off and given developers deserved respect and attention says Tiga boss Wilson

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Our industry is high on theagenda of politicians, policy

makers and pundits. We haverammed the story of our industryso far down the throats of ourpoliticians that they havehad no choice but to sit upand take notice.

Richard Wilson, Tiga

Online registrationfor the DevelopFootball

Challenge has gone live.The five-a-side

tournament is expectedto attract up to 32 teamsfrom studios, outsourcers,service companies and thefinancial community.

Taking place on FridayOctober 8th at PowerLeague, Barnet, the eventwill be given extensivemedia coveragethroughout Develop Onlineand the monthly print edition.

“There is already a hugely successfulsummer football tournament run forthe wider industry by Xbox and MCV,but there has long been demand for adevelopers’ competition,” said Developpublisher Stuart Dinsey.

“Unlike the Xbox event, which is freeand partly invitation-based, theDevelop Football Challenge is paid-entry. But we have tried hard to keepthis affordable for studios andspecialist companies of all sizes.”

Entry fee is £495+VATper squad of 10 players.All teams get tocompete within highquality facilitiesinclusive ofprofessionalorganisation, officials,trophies, lunch andrefreshments.

As well as braggingrights, a trophy,medals and PR, thewinner of this year’sfirst ever DevelopFootball Challenge

will gain free entry into the Top CornerChampions’ Cup 2011 – which featurestop teams from a variety of industries.

“We know the appetite is huge forfootball events amongst studios andassociated development firms, so we’reexpecting a big event,” Dinsey added.For more information or to enter ateam [email protected] opportunities areavailable [email protected]

Expectation is high for industry-only tournament

08 | AUGUST 2010

ALPHA | NEWS & EVENTS

DEVELOP PUB QUIZSeptember 29thSway Bar, London, Englandwww.develop-online.net

Taking place at the Sway Bar inLondon on Wednesday September29th, the latest outing for thisessential networking event will pitteams of five of industry boffinsagainst each other.

All industry members – be theystudios, publishers, QA, recruitmentor localisation companies – areinvited to attend, with a full (andfierce) night of entertainment andcompetition on offer.

Those interested in the Septemberevent should [email protected] to book theirplace, as space is limited.

Exclusive sponsorshipopportunities are also available.www.develop-online.net

DEVELOP DIARYDARE PROTOPLAY August 13th to 15th Edinburgh, Scotlandwww.daretobedigital.com

GDC EUROPEAugust 16th to 18thCologne, Germanywww.gdceurope.com

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

EDINBURGH INTERACTIVEAugust 25th to 26th Edinburgh, Scotlandwww.edinburghinteractivefestival.com

CEDEC 2010August 31st to September 2nd Yokohama, Japanhttp://cedec.cesa.or.jp/2010/en/

DIGITAL SPARKSeptember 1st to 2ndAbertay, Scotlandwww.digitalspark.abertay.ac.uk

FUTURE GAME ONSeptember 9th to 10thParis, Francewww.futuregameon.com

TOKYO GAME SHOWSeptember 16th to 19th Tokyo, Japanhttp://tgs.cesa.or.jp/english

MCV PUB QUIZSeptember 23rdLondon, Englandwww.mcvuk.com

DEVELOP PUB QUIZSeptember 29th London, Englandwww.develop-online.net

EUROGAMER EXPO 2010October 1st to 3rdLondon, Englandexpo.eurogamer.net

LONDON GAMES FESTIVALOctober 1st to November 4thLondon, Englandwww.londongamesfestival.co.uk

GDC ONLINEOctober 5th to 8thAustin, Texaswww.gdconline.com

DEVELOP FOOTBALL CHALLENGEOctober 8thPower League, Englandwww.develop-online.net

PCR FOOTBALL CHALLENGEOctober 15thPower League, Englandwww.pcr-online.biz

CASUAL CONNECT KYIVOctober 21st to 23rdKyiv, Ukrainekyiv.casualconnect.org

august 2010

YOUR COMPLETE GAMES DEVELOPMENTEVENT CALENDAR FOR THE MONTHS AHEAD…

september 2010 october 2010

Kick-off for Develop Challenge

Sourcebook, the annual directoryof interactive entertainmentindustry service companies from

Intent Media, now has anaccompanying website expanding thepriceless referencing services availablefrom the brand.

The website coversevery aspect of thevideo games industry;Creative & Promotional,Digital Distribution;Gaming Accessories,InternationalDistribution, LegalServices, Localisation,QA & Testing,ManufacturingServices, Recruitment,Software Developmentand UK Distributionand Logistics.

Essential knowledge of companiesfrom across the sector is readilyavailable on the new site, alongside adigital version of the print editionwhich is available to download now.

The print copy of Sourcebook waspublished alongside last weeks’ edition

of Develop sister-mag MCV, and is alsoset to be distributed with selectedreader codes of this mag, MobileEntertainment and PCR. Print editioncirculation is 20,000 copies.

“We launched Sourcebook almostten years ago now,having recognised thatthere was a need for adedicated directory ofservice and ancillarycompanies,” said IntentMedia managing editorLisa Foster.

“In 2010 theSourcebook hasbecome the bibile forthe European gamesindustry, covering moresectors and companiesthan it ever has before.

And our new website and digitaledition means that even more peoplewill be able to access the Sourcebookthan before.”For more information, or todownload a digital version ofSourcebook now, visitwww.intentmedia.co.uk/sourcebook

Sourcebook’s prized compendium is now available online to everyone in the video games sector

Services directory site is live

ALPHA | WORLDVIEW

WorldViewOur monthly digest of global games news…

10 | AUGUST 2010

DEALS

UKIAN LIVINGSTONE TO LEADINDUSTRY SKILLS REVIEWIan Livingstone has been appointed as thegovernment’s skills champion for the videogame sector.

Livingstone, life president of Eidos andchairman of the Skillset Computer GamesSkills Council, is now tasked with driving boththe video games and visual effects industryworkforce to increase skills across the board.

The appointment is also setting the scenefor Livingstone to begin work withRevolution Software’s Charles Cecil andDouble Negative’s Alex Hope in launching athorough review of education and training inthe UK games and VFX industries.

The review is set to be carried out byNESTA (National Endowment for Science,Technology and the Arts) and Skillset. It wasannounced by Culture Minister Ed Vaizey atthe Develop Conference 2010 in Brighton.

“This announcement is a fantasticrecognition of all of the brilliant work Ian hasdone for the UK’s games sector. We could notimagine a better qualified person for thisrole,” said Skillset chief executive Dinah Caine.

“Skillset is very pleased to be given theopportunity to contribute to this review,which comes at an important time for oursector. We look forward to working withNESTA and with e-skills-UK as we continueour partnership work championing skillsdevelopment in this sector.”www.skillset.org

USATAX BREAK JOY FOR NORTHCAROLINA STUDIOSNext year the US State of North Carolina willgrant its game studios a 15 per cent tax break– a measure which will bring a keycompetitive advantage to local firms such asEpic Games, FunCom and Red Storm.

The tax break relief will also apply to localcompanies building game platforms –doubling the delight of Gears of War andUnreal Engine creators Epic Games.www.ncgov.com

UKZATTIKKA RAISES $5.5M INFUNDINGOnline and mobile games firm Zattikka hasraised $5.5 million in funding through itsparent company Expedite 5.

Led by Notion Capital and a group ofprivate individuals including Harald Ludwig,co-chair of Lionsgate Entertainment, theinvestment will bolster Zattikka’s efforts withregard to recruitment, R&D and marketing.

The company also plans to further broadenits portfolio of browser and mobile games.

“Over the past two years the consumerappetite for online gaming has increasedsignificantly with revenue already standing atover $2.25bn in 2008 and growing 20 percent per annum. This much broader audienceis being driven by females and premiumgamers developing a passion for casual socialgaming,” said Tim Chaney, CEO, Zattikka.

“To successfully operate in such acompetitive fast-growth industry we arefocused on developing games that appeal tothe different demographics of this wideraudience. This round of funding led byNotion Capital means we can now pushahead with recruiting even more skilledpeople and put substantial investmentbehind product development andmarketing,” he added.www.zattikka.com

CANADAFEMALE RUN STUDIO OPENSIN CANADAIn what is said to be the first of its kind in thecountry, two game industry entrepreneurshave opened a female-owned and operateddev studio.

Experienced industry names Brenda BaileyGershkovitch and Kirsten Forbes are the twoexecs spearheading the Vancouver-basedSilicon Sisters Interactive.

The outfit is said to have a predominantlyfemale workforce, including designer BrendaBrathwaite as a consultant. The group isbuilding two titles – one for PC and anothermobile platforms – but is also open to certainwork-for-hire projects.

Despite making noise about being a studiorooted in sisterhood, Gershkovitch insists thatthe firm’s design philosophy isn’t one grippedby the X-chromosome.

“We’re not interested in ‘pinkifying’ games,”she says.

CODIES SIGNS MORPHEME DEALNaturalMotion, the design tools provider that span out from itshumble roots at Oxford University, has arrived at what is possiblythe firm’s biggest contract yet – a long-term deal with UKstronghold Codemasters.

The agreement between both parties begins with Bodycount,the latest FPS project underway at Codemasters Studios Guildfordunder the guidance of Stuart Black. NaturalMotion is providing itsMorpheme animation engine to the studio, though the wideragreement will see Morpheme licensed out to a number of otherCodemasters projects.

Codemasters CTO Bryan Marshall said that the Morphemeengine “integrates perfectly” with the studio’s famed EGO GameTechnology Platform.

“The Morpheme engine and tools enable fast and compellingcontent creation, driving Bodycount’s explosive animations to newheights,” He added.www.codemasters.co.uk

US-based gameretail giantGameStop hasacquired leadingonline Flash gamesportal Kongregate.

Swedish firmIlluminate Labshas been bought bymiddleware firmAutodesk.

Intel has beennamed as a keyinvestor in cloudgaming serviceGaikai.

Social game groupArkadium haslicensed Hansoft’sprojectmanagement andQA tech.

Twisted PixelGames has licensedRAD Games Tools’animation toolkitfor its new projectComic Jumper.

Emergent GameTechnologies hassigned a deal withAristen thatcombines theirFxStudio with theLightSpeed engine.

Trinigy has inkedseven new VisionEngine licensingdeals with Asianfirms Neowiz, NanoPlay, SmileGate,Aurogon Games,Nsid GlobalandFPTOnline.

Sony OnlineEntertainment hassigned RominoGames’ side-scrolling action RPGSwords & Soldiers.

Disney hasacquired US-basedTap Tap RevengedeveloperTapulous.

DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

WORLDVIEW | ALPHA

AUGUST 2010 | 11

SAY WHAT?!FOR THE LATEST NEWS...

“It’s no coincidence that the games I andmany other female gamers are most drawn tohave had women involved in theirdevelopment. Girls and women gamedifferently than boys and men. Silicon Sistershas studied these differences so we can makegames that truly appeal to and resonate withthe female audience.”www.siliconsisters.ca

GERMANYPERISCOPE STUDIO DEMOS‘INTERACTIVE AUDIO’Interactive audio middleware specialistPeriscope Studio has released a new premiervideo offering a first look at its Psaitechnology in action.

“We wanted to capture Psai’s capabilities,its reaction times to different playing styles,its immersive qualities and above all, itssimplicity and beauty,” explains Finn. “In thiscase, we’re showing off the ‘Action’ mode andour Lightsaber demonstration captures thisperfectly. It’s fun to watch.

“With Psai, players will be controlling –almost conducting – their own soundtrack,”adds Finn.

“Every style of gameplay and genre issupported; from FPS’s to racing games, RPG’sto adventure, everything is covered. Psaisimply means that each and every player willhave a gameplay experience which isunique.”

More will be revealed at Gamescom 2010.www.periscopestudio.de

UKNEW OFFICE FOR IGUANAENTERTAINMENTNorth East studio Iguana Entertainment hasmoved shop into a new Middlesbrough-based office.

“This new office provides a new creativeenvironment for our team of developers, andinspiration as we continue our growth in thesocial gaming market,” said MD Darren Falcus.

Iguana are currently working on a numberof casual, online and boxed titles, with moredetails on all expected to follow shortly.www.iguana-entertainment.com

UKPACKED SPEAKER LIST FORNEW ABERTAY EVENTBig names from the UK game industry andthe British government are all set to attendDigital Spark – a new Abertay University –hosted event offering advice on how studioscan leverage and protect their intellectualproperty canon.

Already set to speak at the event is FionaHyslop, the Scottish minister for culture andexternal affairs, as well as Sony ComputerEntertainment Europe’s IP and tech directorHogarth Andall.

Also offering insight will be ELSPA directorgeneral Mike Rawlinson, and the senior vicepresident of Nokia, Louise Pentland.

The event is set to run from September 1st– 2nd in Abertay.www.digitalspark.abertay.ac.uk

CAPCOM AND NAMCO INDEVELOPMENT TEAM-UPCapcom and Namco are collaborating oncrossovers for their popular individual flagshipfighting franchises.

Street Fighter vs. Tekken is in the works forPlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, developed byCapcom, and merges the two long-runningfranchises into one epic fighter.

Like Street Fighter IV, the game will feature 2Dgameplay with stylised 3D character models,according to Capcom.

New gameplay modes including tag team willallow characters from the franchises to both worktogether and lock horns.

Game producer Yoshinori Ono and and Tekkenseries project leader Katsuhiro Harada announcedthe collaboration at the San Diego Comic-Con.

But the two publisher/developers will, like thecharacters in their franchises, be competing as wellas collaborating: Namco is working on a secondgame, Tekken vs. Street Fighter, developed by itsTekken team, which puts all the characters in itsgameworld (rather than vice-versa in Street Fightervs. Tekken).

The likely winner of this one is too close to call.www.capcom.com/www.namco.co.uk

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

“[You worry abouttalking to] One guy?Who cares? That’s a

waste of time.”

Mark Rein interrupts Cliff Harris’ customerrelations comments during an indie studios

panel at the 2010 Develop Conference...

“Triple-A studio bossestrying to lecture me on

how to communicatebetter with gamers?

F*** off.”

Leading Harris of Positech to communicatehis feelings about Rein of Epic Games’

comments very clearly on his blog...

“It’s not like somegreat injustice was

being done andneeded commentary

from me. I was justbeing a jerk.”

Before Rein delivered a master class inhumility, apologising to Harris and

drawing a line under the whole debacle.

“Yeah, Mark can jumpin with guns blazing

sometimes, invited ornot. It’s all intended to

be in good fun, but Iguess it didn’t work

out that way this time.Sorry!”

Causing Epic CEO Tim Sweeney towade into the growing fray and

apologise on his workmate’s behalf...

INDUSTRY ANALYSISSPONSORED BY

12 | AUGUST 2010

ALPHA | OPINION

As tax credits float away from the UKstudio sector, leaving a flotsam ofgood intentions, hard work, broken

promises, and an oily slick of cynicism, whatnext for British games? As the source of mostof the hard data on the current and futurestates of the UK games development sector,GIC has long been in the tricky position ofbalancing the strong potential for a brightfuture for UK studios with the downwardindicators that result from the uneven globalplaying field. So where does the industry gofrom here? Here are three scenarios withpossible responses, based on the CoalitionGovernment spending a fair amount, a smallamount and nothing at all.

Scenario 1 is the least likely: Governmentfinds a modest pot of money for the gamesindustry to use, say between £5m and £20m.The latter’s roughly the amount unused inFilm’s tax credit allocation last year, and,before he got elected, the new Ministerthought he might be able to raid it. Thisseems unlikely, but what could the industrydo with that kind of money? Big measureslike tax credits that benefit many studios areout because that level of budget is too small.That scale suits grant schemes, but they havepatchy track records.

The French specialise in hand-outsproviding temporary relief for wobblycompanies and many supported companiescollapse when funding stops. Slightly betterare educational grants designed to linkindustry with universities, but few have yetdelivered much of commercial value. Moreviable are specialist bodies disbursingmatched grants (Government matchesprivate funding), or low interest orconvertible loans. These can be successfulwhen the right product/studio is backedfollowing vigorous tyre-kicking. Here,matched grants could deliver the mostbang:buck ratio, and assist a modest numberof studios with sub-£0.5m early-stage orprototype financing.

Scenario 2 is barely more likely: Somemoney, say £1m-£2m, is scraped together bycombining various pots in differentdepartments. This will take a fair degree ofpolitical will and capital, whose existence iscurrently unclear. The problem with this levelof funding is that it’s quickly spent,administrative costs can burn a significantproportion, and the remainder could

disappear into low impact schemes such astrade show grants, generic organisationalassistance or ‘innovation grants’. This levelwould see few if any specific projects assistedand it is arguable whether any value wouldbe created at all. Perhaps controversially, I’dsuggest that the trade bodies would bebetter recipients for this level of funding thanGovernment departments. Perhaps TIGA runsa prototype fund like Nordic Game or anindie game competition, or ELSPA teachesthe new marketing or commercial skillsdesperately needed by new digitalbusinesses. Whatever the programme, theseorganisations are better placed to deliverhigh-impact assistance than Government.

Scenario 3 is most likely: Nothing happensat all. Politicians continue to glad hand theindustry, dodge the blows but, since thecupboard is bare, no assistance isforthcoming for the foreseeable future. Inthis scenario renewed calls for tax creditscould fall repeatedly on unfertile ground. Assomeone who has worked on tax credits forover four years, I believe that boat has welland truly sailed. This scenario means organicgrowth or decline, depending on whichgames sub-sector you’re in. Many consolestudios’ headcount has gradually declinedover several years, as publishers increase thesize, but reduce the number of bets placed,usually on bankable IP. These studios willcontinue to win work for hire, but fewercontracts in 2009 could persist as publishersweather the falling console market until thenext generation arrives. Gloomy statementsfrom senior publisher execs on theunlikelihood of increasing their investment inBritain hint that further pain is to come fortraditional studios. Sadly, we see no

indicators strong enough to challenge thetrend of slow decline for the 80 per cent ofthe UK’s developers working in studiosmostly or entirely financed by publishers.

What about the remaining 20 per centworking self or privately funded studios?Almost all are in the online space and noregular reader will be surprised to hear us saythat the online sub-sector’s a healthier placeto be. Most UK companies in this space aregrowing, some at a brisk pace, and ourforecast for online is continued strong andsustainable growth.

That’s a key word – sustainability – surelythe most important criteria whenGovernment asks where it should invest orhow it should help. The bottom line is thatmany online studios we assess for investorshave considerably higher profit margins frommore predictable revenues than offlinestudios. Leaner online studios that servicetheir own audiences and book consumerrevenues are intrinsically more stable, able toraise finance and are ultimately moresustainable. Investors instinctively turntowards service businesses with predictablerevenue flow in a growing market, asopposed to those hoping for a big hit in a flator declining market. Any initiative requiringmatched funding from VCs would naturallyskew towards online businesses. The lowlevels of funding in the first of our twoscenarios are largely inappropriate fortraditional console titles anyway. So, I’dpropose that helping British studios speed uptheir slow transition towards a moresustainable online future is arguably the bestway to make count whatever meagreassistance can be cobbled together by thishair-shirted Government.

Rick 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

This ‘hair-shirted’Government has madeit clear that tax creditsare way off the agendafor the UK gamesindustry

What next for

Government assistance?

COMMENT: BUSINESS

by Rick Gibson, Games Investor Consulting

Gloomy statementsfrom senior

publisher execs on theunlikelihood of increasingtheir investment in Britainhint that furtherpain is to come.


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

AUGUST 2010 | 13

Over the past month or so we’ve beenclosely following as many gamingwebsites and forums as we could.

We’ve also been checking thousands oftweets and Facebook updates looking for anypress preview write-ups and any earlyindications of the public response to theCrackdown 2 demo.

From what we could find the response waspredominantly positive; most people wereplaying the game with their friends onlineand they seemed to be having a lot of fun.We were pleased with the general response;things were looking promising. While wewere pleased to hear that the demo hadbeen going down well, we still had to wait onthe final game going out to the press fortheir final reviews. This is one of the mostnervous times of all for a game developer.

PREPARING FOR LAUNCHWe had spent the past month or so travellingaround the world to all of the press eventsthat had been set up, showing the game offto the world’s media in Europe, as well asAmerica and Canada. During thedemonstrations the press seemed to behaving a great time with the game, so wewere quietly confident that we would getdecent review scores.

The thing is, you’ve spent so much time andeffort pouring your heart and soul into thecreation of the game that any negativefeedback can feel like a hefty kick in the nuts.So, we were all nervously waiting to see if wewould get more pats on the back than bruisesto the nether regions. Over the course of thepast few weeks the reviews have beenpouring in and we’ve been getting some reallygood reviews. Most of the reviewers really

enjoyed the game, but admittedly there are afew that didn’t take to it quite so well. It seemsthat we’ve created the gaming equivalent ofMarmite with Crackdown 2.

The most anxious, nail-biting time of all fora game developer is when the game finallygoes on sale and we get the ultimatereaction from the public – do they decide tospend their hard-earned cash on the game ordo they ignore it and buy something else?Strangely enough a game can get incrediblyhigh review scores and still not sell as manyas you would expect.

In the past few years there have been afew very good games that have beenextremely well received by the gaming pressbut somehow failed to make their mark atretail. Whether this was due to a lack ofsustained marketing or simply a lack ofappetite for the particular genre remains tobe seen.

READY FOR RETAILFinally, it was our turn to run the retailgauntlet. As I said, the demo has been out fora few weeks and is doing amazing downloadnumbers which is great, but at the end of theday it’s all about how the full game does.

We genuinely do make games for love ofcreating them – we’re honestly all gamesplayers at heart – but the cold hard truth isthat we still need to make sure that thepublisher covers its costs and hopefully

makes some profit from the venture, otherwisethey won’t want to continue working with us.And then we’re all out of a job...

Despite any negative comments that yourgame may get, they all sweep away for ashort time when you first see your game onthe shelves in the local game store. I waslucky enough to walk into both GAME andGamestation in Dundee on the UK releaseday and see Crackdown 2 sitting in thenumber one slot, which was a truly fantasticsight. Seeing your game at number one is anunbelievably powerful feeling, but I didquickly bring myself back down to earth byreminding myself that this was likely just thestaff at the store putting the latest big gamerelease up in the top slot.

At the time of writing this – which isadmittedly still very early days – it seems thatCrackdown 2 is doing quite well and iscurrently sitting at the top of the UK AllFormats Top 40 Chart.

Hopefully it stays up there for a wee while. But even if it doesn’t manage to holdon to the top spot for as long as we would alllike, we’ll still be proud of the game that weall made.

It’s a nerve-wrackingtime for all when yourgame arrives in-store.But it’s also a greatfeeling

Great

Expectations

COMMENT: DESIGN

by Billy Thomson, Ruffian Games

Most reviewersenjoyed the game,

but admittedly some didn’ttake to it quite so well. Itseems that we’ve createdthe gaming equivalent ofMarmite withCrackdown 2.


14 | AUGUST 2010

ALPHA | OPINION

The above question is not such a stupidone, especially now, as collectively ourindustry, or at least some parts of it,

seem very poor at judging this. There is apart of our industry – perhaps a bigger partthan many of us will acknowledge – that isconservative through and through. Anychange is automatically bad, unless it is justan improvement on what we already hadbefore, like more polygons, or more buttonson a controller. I can almost hear the rumblesof disagreement, of people discountingthemselves mentally from this group. But tosome extent it probably applies to all of us.

There are so many clear examples. The Wii.Analogue controls on joypads. The mouse.The DS. Giant custom controllers like withGuitar Hero. All the way back to somethinglike Elite – which publishers didn’t want,except the newcomer Acorn, which wasperhaps too ‘inexperienced’ so saw change asa very good thing. I’m glad they did.

I didn’t think a $100 giant plastic guitar-controller that only worked with one gamewould fly commercially, but it did. I loved theWii (but still hate the name), but I too wasscornful at how under-powered the DS was.We are not always wrong (Virtual Boy, forexample – and I don’t mean Milo), and dooccasionally embrace the wrong thing, as Ithink we are currently in danger of doing with3D. Don’t get me wrong, 3D will come, and willbe successful, as I think it will be now on the3DS. But it needs glasses-free technology to betruly mass market, which is still a year or soaway for large TVs. And even then it needs aleap in graphical performance to do full justiceto it. So it will probably only shine across theboard on a future hardware generation.

Where we have got it so wrong is wherethe people who end up buying the devices,games, whatever, are not well representedwithin the industry. The move fromkeyboard-and-mouse to controller was thefirst obvious example of this. This was ourindustry’s first step towards the living roomand the move to dedicated games devices.But many were reluctant to take it as, forthem, it changed the experience, andperhaps made it less intense for some typesof games. Nevertheless, with hindsight it wasthe right thing to have done, as without itour industry would have stagnated, andremained in its ghetto. The transition to theWii was similar.

This year, we are spoiled for choice for newtechnologies, but there is a worryingundercurrent (again) of nay-sayers in someparts of the industry. Kinect, Move, 3DS areall potential major game-changers, enablinggreat new ways of playing games we havenot seen before. The major hardwaremanufacturers have stuck their financialnecks out to make these possible, and weshould embrace them as best we can.

MAKING A KINECTIONAt Frontier we are lucky enough to have beenworking with Microsoft’s Kinect for a longtime now, and as always with new hardware,it has been both a challenging and rewardingexperience. I am very proud of what we aredoing with the Kinectimals game, but I canalso see great opportunities to use thetechnology in the future in different ways, forgames that people would consider ‘core’ aswell as in broad titles like Kinectimals. Thewhole sitting/standing argument is a case in

point. A great new feature of Kinect is youcan determine the position of the player’slegs – making genuine dance and yogagames possible. So many of the activities inthe launch titles use that feature because it isnew. I suspect future ‘core’ games will still bemade to appeal to the sedentary, potentiallyusing a controller too. But that is the point –it is up to us in development.

Look at Avatar – the best-selling film of alltime - the bastard child of the violence ofTerminator and the arthouse beauty ofPrincess Mononoké. Many in the film industryprivately hate its success, perhaps becauseJames Cameron seems to have madeenemies in Hollywood, and possibly out ofjealousy – especially as it was widely toutedas likely to fail catastrophically by those samepeople who denied it funding. But itsucceeded nevertheless, and those peoplewere forced to eat their words. Sadly,complex, emotionally tangled, beautiful ‘arthouse’ film creations generally review well,but sell very little, as they only appeal to thenarrow ‘core’ within the film industry andpeople who follow the industry very closely.

It is a lesson for us too. Let’s not go thatroute. Let’s also appeal to the broad audienceas an industry and so keep out of the ghetto.Let’s embrace the new, and make it what wewant it to be.

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

Microsoft’s Kinect,along with Move and3DS, is a potentialgame-changer

There is a part of ourindustry – perhaps a

bigger part than many of usacknowledge – that isconservative through andthrough. They thinkany change is bad.

COMMENT: INDUSTRY

by David Braben

When are new things

good for games?


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.

AUGUST 2010 | 15

If you were asked to identify the singlemost significant advance in consolegaming in the last ten years, the defining

paradigm shift, what would it be? There arecertainly a number of candidates, but Ireckon the winner is when games wentonline. The benefits of this single advancebarely needs elaborating, from features suchas multiplayer gaming, leaderboards, voicechat and messaging, together with newbusiness opportunities such as Xbox LiveArcade and Indie Games, Games on Demand,demo and video downloads, and DLC.

Add to that list another in-game feature, inthe ascendancy of late: user-generatedcontent. Developers are realising that byproviding players with a way to build levels,paint characters, customise cars, sharereplays, or send images, they are likely tobetter keep their interest – and postpone thetrade-in. The same applies to the audiencewho will peruse that library of user contenteven if they don’t contribute to it. Keepingyour audience engaged is one step towardsbuilding your brand.

APPROACHING UGCSo we’re always happy to hear when a title isincluding UGC features. Now, it doesn’t takegreat insight to understand that within thewide, rolling fields of user creations lurk a fewlandmines. Some UGC tools, particularlyflexible ones such as Forza Motorsport’sawesome car customisation, provide suchpowerful routes to self-expression that someof the more... excitable examples are likely toprompt the audience to express themselveswith equal vigour; notably in alarm, wrath, orwith robust legal action.

Frequenting the flesh-coloured palette inForza’s bodyshop is just the most obviousway to cause trouble, but your PR or legaldepartments are going to get sweaty ifplayers are able to breach copyright, childprotection or privacy laws with theircreations; and if you didn’t protect againstmalicious users’ intent to subvert platformsecurity, things would get really crispy.

But the fact is all these risks can bemitigated, and your DAM will work with youat concept submission stage to discuss therisks and agree on steps to meet them. TodayI’ll briefly sketch this process.

First up: how do you know if your gamefeature is even a UGC tool? Well, could your

QA team feasibly test every one of itsconceivable end products? If not, it is.

When we look at your design we firstgauge the risk, and then establish somemitigation steps.

At the basic level, risks increase as you sharemore widely and store content in morelocations. Your Xbox Live Friends areconsidered to be an audience you can trust –within reason, recognising that your capital-FFriends on Live aren’t necessarily real-lifebuddies. In the simplest UGC design yourestrict visibility of your shared creations toyour XBL Friends, and never store thecreations anywhere, even locally. Sharingsomething inappropriate with a Friend can be

resolved with a personal “Dude, pack it in!”.Worst case, they de-Friend you. That’s oftensufficient for Friend-only sharing. Broadeningthe audience raises the need for a mechanismfor UGC consumers to report creators actingirresponsibly. As the provider, you’ll need torespond to those complaints: offenders couldbe blacklisted from sharing, from using yourtitle online at all, or, in the most serious casesthat would require escalation to us, bannedfrom Live altogether.

CONTAINMENTSo, to storage. If you want to save a local copy– and let’s face it, you probably do – that’sgreat, but it’s then possible for a determinedperson to interfere with it before it’s nextloaded, and you’ll need to anticipate and dealwith that. Perhaps you want to allow remoteplayers to save your content locally? This iswhere things start getting interesting. For astart, you’ll need XLSP to store and share thepackages. You’ll need to provide reportingmechanisms for bad content as well as itscreators, and remove it (and perhaps them)

from your service. You should strong-signcontent packages, and, if the loaded UGCmakes use of any disc-based assets, validatethat those assets haven’t been meddled with.

The risk graph takes a sharp upward turn ifyou allow players to download, edit, and re-share content. You will need to track howcontent packages are derived from oneanother and prepare to pull all packages builton a stem later found to be complaint-worthy.

Finally, you may be planning a servicewhere people create content outside the Xboxand enable it to be brought into Live, andshared. If so, you just pressed the big buttonmarked ‘Take Me to Scarytown’. Clear thecalendar, boil the kettle, fire up the lawyers,and give us a call – you’re about to get busy.

Whatever UGC feature set you choose,there are a few standard steps you will needto follow. TCR 61 mandates that you observethe content-sharing privilege bits the player(or their mum) might have set on theiraccount. TCR 64 indicates that user-generated content can’t be stored on Livestorage; and to comply with TCR 92 you’llneed to run any player-created stringthrough the filter of XStringVerify() before itcan be shared. You should also keep yourlegal people in the loop as your plansdevelop, particularly if you’re working on ahigh-risk flesh-coloured strategy. Lastly,today we don’t support the sale of UGC, northe sharing of executable code or scripts.

Whatever your UGC thoughts, though, youshould maintain a dialogue with your DAMfrom the off. He can advise on risks andmitigations, opportunities and potholes, andultimately will be the person to sign off on yourplan and help your title reach concept approval.

Forza Motorsportboasts impressive carcustomisationoptions…

Developers realisethat by providing

players with a way to buildlevels, paint characters,customise cars, they arelikely to better keeptheir interest – andprevent the trade-in.

COMMENT: OPINION

by Ben Board, Microsoft

User-Generated Content

on Xbox Live


Europe’sdefining tech

firms andstudios

p27

What Virgin’scomebackmeans to

developersp41

Jade Raymondtalks Ubisoft

Torontop55

DEVELOPMENT FEATURES, INTERVIEWS, ESSAYS & MORE

Black Rock Studio opens its doorsfor Disney’s Aim High campaign,

p33

A United FrontTwo gongs for Unity at this year’s Develop Industry Excellence Awards

- turn over for a full breakdown of the winners, p18 - 26

BETA | DEVELOP AWARD WINNERS

18 | AUGUST 2010

GRAND PRIX Unity Technologies

“This is a such a crazy, big honour. We’re such a young company and in many ways newcomers to the gamesindustry, so to be selected as the first pure technology for the Grand Prix is just immense. Phil Harrison’s kindintroduction to us focused on how we have ‘transformed how games are made, distributed and played’, and reallyhit the spot – that exactly describes what we set out to do.”

David Helgason, Unity Technologies

And theWinners are…

Last month Develop brought together thesector’s leading lights for our yearly IndustryExcellence Awards. Here we bring you around up of all the winners…

Host and comedian RufusHound (above) and guestsenjoying the revelry (right)


DEVELOP AWARD WINNERS | BETA

THE JUDGES 66 people voted on this year’s awards and Develop is very grateful for all their support. They are:Jason Bates (Red Lynx), Ian Baverstock (Tenshi), Tony Beckwith (Black Rock Studio), Ian Bell (Slightly Mad Studios), Ben Board (Xbox), James Brooksby (Doublesix),Terry Cavanagh (Distractionware), Charles Cecil (Revolution Software), John Chasey (FinBlade/Metismo), Gavin Cheshire (Codemasters), David Coghlan (Havok),Kieran Connell (Microsoft), Rob Crossley (Develop), Ivan Davies (Catalyst Outsourcing), Ed Daly (Zoe Mode), Stuart Dinsey (Intent Media), Gary Dunn (Sega),Andrew Eades (Relentless), Hugh Edwards (High Score), Harvey Elliot (EA Play), Mark Estdale (Outsource Media UK), Paul Farley (Tag Games),Guillaume de Fondaumiere (Quantic Dream), Will Freeman (Develop), Michael French (Develop), Simon Gardner (Climax Group), Caspar Gray (Square Enix),Mark Healey (Media Molecule), Nils-Holger Henning (Bigpoint), Sefton Hill (Rocksteady Games), Karl Hilton (Crytek UK), Martin Hollis (Zoonami), Adrian Hon (Six to Start),Brendan Iribe (Scaleform), Miles Jacobson (Sports Interactive), Richard Jacques (Richard Jacques Studio), Darren Jobling (Eutechnyx), Daniel Jones (Binary Tweed),John Kearney (VooFooStudios), Richard Keen (IGN), John Klepper (Imagination Studios), Chris Lee (FreeStyleGames), Ian Livingstone (Square Enix),Colin Macdonald (Realtime Worlds), David Mollerstedt (EA DICE), Mike Montgomery (Lightning Fish Games), Mick Morris (Audiomotion), Daniel Neve (Mere Mortals),Patrick O’Luanaigh (nDreams), Patric Palm (Hansoft), Ben Parfitt (MCV), Jason Perkins (Curve Studios), Liz Prince (Amiqus), David Ream (Hello Games),Torsten Reil (NaturalMotion), Stuart Richardson (Develop), Andy Robson (Testology), Martin de Ronde (OneBigGame), Tim Rogers (Eurocom), Keith Russell (Babel Media),Hayden Scott-Baron (Starfruit), James Shepherd (SCE Cambridge), Jonathan Smith (Traveller’s Tales), Samuli Syvähuoko (Recoil Games), Alice Taylor (Channel 4),Sebastian Wloch (Asobo Studio)

DEVELOPMENT LEGENDAndrew and Paul Gower, Jagex

“Looking at the list of people who’ve won this awardover the years – I feel honoured to be listed amongstthem. Sometimes I think of the early days of RuneScapedevelopment. Back then it was pretty much a hobby withhopes of maybe being able to earn myself a living fromit. It blows my mind how far things have come.”

Paul Gower, Jagex

■ DRINKS RECEPTIONPARTNER

■ GOLD PARTNER ■ GOLD PARTNER ■ EVENT PARTNER ■ EVENT PARTNER ■ DEVELOPMENT LEGENDAWARD SPONSOR

20 | AUGUST 2009


CREATIVITY

VISUAL ARTS Split/Second (Black Rock Studio)

AUDIO ACCOMPLISHMENTDJ Hero (FreeStyleGames)

PUBLISHING HEROChannel 4

“We’re thrilled that Split/Second received therecognition for Visual Arts. It’s a huge honourand a very proud moment for everyone at Black Rock.”

Paul Ayliffe, Black Rock Studio

BEST NEW DOWNLOAD IP Angry Birds (Rovio)

“Getting an award is one of the greatestcompliments any studio can have. We wouldlike to thank Develop and everybody that votedfor Angry Birds.”

Matthew Wilson, Rovio

BEST USE OF A LICENCE OR IPBatman: Arkham Asylum(Rocksteady Studios)“This is fantastic. We’d like to thank Eidos andWarner Bros for believing in us, the team for alltheir hard work, and everyone who purchasedArkham Asylum.”

Sefton Hill, Rocksteady Studios

BEST NEW IP Heavy Rain (Quantic Dream)

“We are really honoured by this award. I wouldlike to thank everyone who voted for us in theindustry and all the gamers who gave HeavyRain a chance.”

David Cage, Quantic Dream

“I’m astounded and completely delighted toreceive this on behalf of C4 and, of course, all of the indies whose work we publish. Thank you Develop.”

Alice Taylor, Channel 4

“Everyone at FreeStyleGames is delighted thatwe won this award. We have been overwhelmedby the reaction to DJ Hero from both gamersand press.”

Dan Neil, FreeStyleGames

BEST NEW IP | BEST USE OF A LICENCE OR IP | BEST NEW DOWNLOAD IP | VISUAL ARTS | PUBLISHING HERO | AUDIO ACCOMPLISHMENT


DEVELOP AWARD WINNERS | BETA

TECHNOLOGY & SERVICES

VISUAL OUTSOURCER Axis Animation

RECRUITMENT COMPANY Amiqus

“We’re delighted to win at the Develop Awards 2010. To know that guys we work withthink we have had a great year is a real seal of approval.”

Richard Scott, Axis Animation

TOOLS PROVIDER Hansoft“We have launched two strong releases thisspring, and being recognised by our industrypeers feels truly amazing for all of us.”

Patric Palm, Hansoft

AUDIO OUTSOURCER Side“The team at Side are honoured and delightedto have won the Audio Outsourcer award thisyear. A win for Side is great positive feedback.”

Andy Emery, Side

TECHNICAL INNOVATION Unity Engine (Unity Technologies)

“We’re so honoured to receive this fantasticaward. This comes before our launch of Unity 3– our biggest update – which will take Unity tonew places.”

David Helgason, Unity Technologies

SERVICESTestology (Epic Games)

“Winning Best Services at the Develop Awards2010 is an amazing achievement for Testology.Without our extraordinary clients we wouldn’tbe here.”

Andy Robson, Testology

“We’re absolutely delighted to have won thisDevelop Award for the second year running. Wehave exciting times ahead of us at Amiqus.”

Liz Prince, Amiqus

ENGINEUnreal Engine 3“We couldn’t be more excited about UnrealEngine 3’s third consecutive Develop IndustryExcellence Award and what it means to Epicand the industry.”

Mark Rein, Epic Games

TECHNICAL INNOVATION | TOOLS PROVIDER | ENGINE | SERVICES | CREATIVE OUTSOURCING | VISUAL OUTSOURCER | RECRUITMENT COMPANY

STUDIOS

HANDHELD STUDIO SCEE Cambridge“Like a game development Mickey Rourke we’vebeen on the comeback trail, so to be recognised on a studio level means the world toeveryone here.”

James Shepherd, SCE Cambridge Studio

IN-HOUSE STUDIO Rocksteady Studios“We are very honoured to be recognised by ourindustry peers in this way and the covetedtrophy will be prized.”

Jamie Walker, Rocksteady Studios

BEST NEW STUDIO Hello Games“As a studio of four, we are frankly stunned tobe recognised as Best New Studio. From ourphotos, we could have won an award for mostexcited idiots.”

Sean Murray, Hello Games

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Sony XDev“It’s hugely rewarding to win an award forinvesting in new ideas and business within thegames industry. A massive thank you from thewhole XDev team.”

John Rostron, XDev Studio Europe

MICRO STUDIOHello Games“This is a new award, and one where we feel agreat camaraderie with the other nominees.The category is testimony to the rise of thesmall indie studio.”

Sean Murray, Hello Games

INDEPENDENT STUDIO Quantic Dream“We feel humbled by the honour of winningtwo Develop Awards this year. These represent avery special recompense for all the hard work.”

Guillaume de Fondaumière, Quantic Dream

BEST NEW STUDIO | MICRO STUDIO | HANDHELD STUDIO | BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT | IN-HOUSE STUDIO | INDEPENDENT DEVELOPER


24 | AUGUST 2009

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL WINNERS OF THE DEVELOP AWARDS 2010.

From prototyping new gameplay to bringing art into the engine, to designing more believable characters, DEC technology empowers games developers to spend less time on routine tasks, and more time making their game unique.

Autodesk DEC solutions put robust, modular and interoperable solutions in the hands of developers letting them choose what is best for their game. Learn more at www.autodesk.co.uk/games

Autodesk is a registered trademarks 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 offerings and specifications at any time without notice, and is not responsible for typographical or graphical errors that may appear in this document. © 2010 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.

Digital Entertainment Creation


REGION FOCUS: EUROPE| BETA

Above (top to bottom):Ubisoft’s ChristineBurgess-Quémard,Jagex’s Mark Gerhardand ImaginationStudios’ DanielKlemesrud

So vast and varied is Europe’s culture,geography and populace, that it’snot an obvious contender for a

simple definition as a games developmentindustry region.

However, with an increasingly dominantcommon currency, and the significantpower of bodies like the EU on theinternational stage, as a destinationconnecting the companies, services andtechnology behind making games, Europeis clearly as much a hub for developmentas Asia or the US.

For companies like Ubisoft and Crytekthat have thrived by spreading themselvesthroughout Europe’s many countries, thecontinent clearly courts a certain qualitythat makes it a distinct home for ambitiousdevelopers and tech firms.

“All over Europe there are numerouspockets of highly talented people capableof making quality games,” suggestsUbisoft’s executive director of WorldwideStudios Christine Burgess-Quémard.

“Some of those pockets of talent areobvious because they have aconcentration of gaming companies with astrong history of production – as is the casein several areas of the UK. Others are lessvisible because there are fewer companiespresent, but it doesn’t make them any lesscapable of delivering great experiences.”

According to Burgess-Quémard that’sexactly the reason Ubisoft has always keptan open mind when it comes toestablishing or acquiring studios inEurope. And it isn’t only internationalgiants of development and publishing thatare singing the praises of Europe, as VisionEngine creator Trinigy reveals.

“Running a company in mainlandEurope provides a lot of advantages,”confirms the tech firm’s general managerFelix Roeken, adding: “It has a greatinfrastructure and a history oftechnological innovation, culturalsimilarities and a uniform currency. All ofthese things are of great benefit to us.”

SMART MONEYOne of Europe’s distinguishing features as acontinent is of course the Euro, which stillserves as the world’s second largest reservecurrency, after the US dollar.

“To have a common currency in most ofthe European countries was the best thingever,” explains Dr. Andreas Gerber, group CEOof German AI specialist Xaitment. “Maybe notfor the individuals, but for a company itbrings a lot more stability and if you shipproducts to countries out of the Euro zoneyou have to deal with fast changingexchange rates.”

“Having the Euro as a single currency is afantastic foundation for the games industryin Europe,” agrees Roeken. “It not only easesour day-to-day business operations, it alsohelps facilitate global business. For example,many of Trinigy’s Asian customers trust theEuro. As a result, we see many of ourtransactions happening in Euro instead of theUS Dollar or local currencies.”

Additionally, as Philip Belhassen, CEO ofFrench app middleware specialist StoneTripconfirms, the Euro also makes it easier forsmaller companies to manage as they don’thave to think about currency changes.

“Europe is the second largest market forthe video game industry so the Euro has avery important position,” says Belhassen. “Anda complete production chain based in Eurosgrants good stability for business.”

The Euro zone offers a lot more than acommon currency of course, predominantlyin the form of the European Union, which is abenefit to almost every citizen in thecontinent, regardless of their familiarity withthe Euro.

While huge bureaucratic governmentalbodies tend to be large and slower movingthan individual country’s trade organisations,which can fell contrary to the fast-pacedgames industry, the EU isn’t beyond turningits attention to development.

“Particularly recently, the EU has offeredmany very good programs to supportresearch and to bring these results into themarket,” says Gerber. “This is, I would say, notnearly as much as the EU could be doing, butthe situation is getting much better. If welook to what other countries did in the past,and what China plans to do in the nearfuture, it becomes more and more importantthat all games companies in the EUstrengthen their own IP and work closelytogether, so that we do not miss an extreme,fast growing high-tech market again like wehave in the past.”

All that considered, across the EU whatBurgess-Quémard calls the ‘European touch’has proliferated, and continues to be highlysought out by leading industry players acrossall continents.

“Our increasing internationalisation hasfacilitated the emigration of Europeandevelopers to other areas, so it has becomemore difficult to sense where particular titlesare developed. But Europe is far from alone asa development stronghold,” warns theUbisoft senior figure.

However, that European touch does meanEurope can rival the giant development hubsof the US and Asia.

“Compared to companies in the US andAsia, most European game developers seetheir products as a creative effort and will notcompromise on quality or their creativevision,” insists Daniel Klemesrud, businessdevelopment manager at Swedish mo-capand animation specialist Imagination Studios.

Culturally diverse, creatively independent and financially stable, Europe is a worthy rival to bothAsia and the US. Will Freeman talks to the studios and tech firms making the continent shine…

Running a companyin mainland Europe

provides a lot ofadvantages. It has a greatinfrastructure and a historyof technologicalinnovation.

Felix Roeken, Trinigy

28 | AUGUST 2010

BETA | REGION FOCUS: EUROPE

“It’s not about releasing a sequel a year – aswith so many games from the US and Asiathat are on their version 10, 15 and so forth –but rather about providing gamers withintriguing and challenging experiences.

THE SPICE OF LIFEAnother benefit of being based in a continentwith such a variety of cultures is that, forambitious employers, the workforce can offerincredible diversity.

“The benefits to us are huge as you get avaried mix of talents and experiences from allover the world which makes for really richproducts and untraditional thinking andperspectives which is desperately lacking inthis space,” proposes Jagex CEO MarkGerhard, who heads up an impressivelymulticultural team.

“Cultural differences across Europe are stillhuge and that is where local knowledge andexpertise really does help,” continuesGerhard. “Really then, it’s more down to theknowledge of how you present your contentboth in terms of localisation andculturalisation, than a requirement for a local office.”

That cultural variety is not somethingexclusive to large scale development houseseither, and across Europe, from teams likeDutch outfit and Killzone creator Guerrilla,through to tech companies who support thesector, there’s a sense that Europe functionsas a launch pad for products with aninternational presence.

“From our perspective Europe has a wealthof talent and a healthy mix of cultures that isunmatched by any other location,” confirmsImagination Studio’s Klemesrud. “MostEuropean game developers have aninternational staff, and this reflects in thequality of the end product. European gamestend to be more mature and creative.”

What really marks Europe out, of course, isthat the multiculturalism is built on commonroots. The similarities in each nation’scustoms are as stark as their contrasts;something that many recognise as a perfectrecipe for prolific creativity

“Too often we look to the other countriesand tend to forget our strong and veryexciting history that spans thousands ofyears,” suggests Gerber. “The ability to beopen to different cultures is a big plus for us –

to come up with new outstanding ideas andtechnology. If we cooperate together inEurope, we can unleash much more creativityand business.

However, the benefits of multiculturalismbring with them their own set of challenges,as Belhassen is quick to highlight: “Thedifference in culture – mainly for support – isa very important factor that sometimesmakes our localisation complicated, thechallenge is always to provide solid relationswith distant companies. But it is possible withthe right management of priority.”

There’s other challenges too, not exclusiveto Europe, but amplified my the complex mixof competing economies and governments.

“The biggest challenge is money,” admitsGerber. “Especially in these markets, investorsspend much more money on the ideas ofgood people. There is much more trust in thework of people. So the way I see it, there isfive to ten times more money you can raiseby also doing business in the USA and China.

Ultimately, the threat of loosing talent andcash flow to rival regions is a global realitythat will ensure Europe remains commerciallybuoyant as a development sector.

As the likes of Imagination Studios, Ubisoft,Guerrilla Games, Xaitment, Trinigy, Stonetrip,Jagex and Crytek prove, developers and techfirms large and small can thrive in Europe,and, with a loosely synchronised effort,guarantee that the continent remains variedand inspiring as a landmass sandwichedbetween its rivals the US and Asia.

Right: ImaginationStudio’s recent techdemo in action

‘TEAM UP’Senior Tools Programmers

Senior Build Engineers

VFX Lead Artists

Senior Game Designers

Senior Level Designers

Senior Tech Programmers

GUERRILLA IS NOW RECRUITING FOR ITS UPCOMING PROJECTS

[email protected] | www.guerrilla-games.com

30 | AUGUST 2010

BETA | EUROPE: THE CASE STUDIES

STONETRIPSpeciality: Engines

France

Year Founded: 2003

Email: Via web

Web: www.stonetrip.com

FRENCH TECH firm Stonetrip is primarilyconcerned with the design of and support for itsShiVa engine.

Based in two locations in France, and formedseven years ago, the company has attracted adiverse range of clients with a piece of technologyconceived to cater for the easy creation of 3D real-time applications and games for Windows, MacOS, Web, Linux, Wii, iPhone, iPad, Palm web OSand Android.

“The company is focused on delivering apowerful platform for creators through itsindustry leading technology that continues tomake it easier to achieve high quality in less time

with the greatest compatibility,” explains CEOPhilip Belhassen.

Stonetrip continues to add more platforms tothe ShiVa platform as it extends its reach,leveraging its position in the heart of Europe.

“France is one of the top ten countries in theworld for the video game industry and ourlocation, in Sophia Antipolis, is really well placedfor the networking,” says Belhassen. “Nice is thesecond busiest airport in France, so the location isideal for an international business. Even thoughEurope is an expensive place, there is a biginterest in technological development andservices, and this is exactly what we do.”

France also offers Stonetrip and itscontemporaries access to several organisations –including Ubifrance and France Sud – that helpsthe tech outfit to organise participation atdifferent events such as GamesCom, providing aplatform for courting the attention of a pan-continental and global audience; an opportunityBelhassen’s firm has made full use of.

With 65 per cent of its customer baseestablished in the US, and a further 20 per cent inmainland Europe excluding France, Stonetrip hasproved the potential of its host continent toprovide access to the wider industry.

“France accounts for just over 10 per cent,thanks to quite a large number of studios and alsobecause of our French origin,” confirms Belhassen.

“France has a really good general educationand university program,” adds a CEO clearly in lovewith his home nation. “There are good gameschools – public and private – and this allows forhigh competency in recruitment, mainly from atechnical point of view.”

XAITMENTSpeciality: AI middleware

Germany, China, US

Year Founded: 2004

Email: Via web

Web: www.xaitment.com

HEADQUARTERED IN Germany, Xaitment is theleading developer of AI solutions for the videogame and simulation industries, and hasestablished itself as one of Europe’s mostsuccessful tech providers.

The firm has also managed to use Europe as alaunch pad for a global presence, as Dr. AndreasGerber, group CEO, explains: “Due to our fasteconomic growth in the last year, we are happy tohave been able to build our second subsidiary inChina, after we successfully established our firstsubsidiary in Los Angeles.

“Together with our sales and support partnersall over the world, Xaitment targets all key

markets in North America, Europe, Greater China,Korea and Japan.”

Part of the reason behind such an impressiveinternational reach is through harnessing thepower of facilities such as German AI researchcentre DFKI, which, with other universities world-wide, Xaitment shares a very close relationship.

“This allows us to bring innovations to thevideo games market with our out-of-the-boxproducts,” confirms Gerber. “Our products coverthe basic needs of hierarchical NavMesh andNavGraph generation and advanced pathfinding(xaitMap) in a dynamic environment, movementfor single units as well as for complex formationsand crowds (xaitMove) and modelling anddebugging AI behaviours, scripting andgamelogic with a hierarchical probabilistic finitestate machine (xaitControl), as well as high-levelAI for building an ontology and managing theindividual knowledge of bots (xaitKnow) andthinking, inferring and planning based on thatknowledge (xaitThink), to implement an adaptive,self-aware and more intelligent behaviour.”

Game AI is a complicated process, and whenhandled manually, requires painstaking andnotoriously error prone hand coding. Today’s toolsmay offer a degree relief to that manual process,

but most provide little flexibility in terms of thesolution itself. This is where Xaitment can help.

“Rather than forcing developers into a large,‘one-size-fits-all’ package that is often difficult tointegrate, Xaitment has developed an easy-to-use,modular system that enables studios to easilyintegrate only the AI features they need, and nonethey don’t,” says Gerber.

That means modules are easier to integrate intoexisting pipelines and less difficult to customise,offering a less risky, more flexible and far morecost-effective approach to game AI.


EUROPE: THE CASE STUDIES | BETA

CRYTEKSpeciality: Development and engines

Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, Korea, Ukraine, UK

Year Founded: 1999

Email: Via web

Web: www.crytek.com

WITH OFFICES in Frankfurt, Kiev, Nottingham,Sofia and Budapest, developer and tech firmCrytek is truly a prime case study of how a pan-European presence can establish a company as aninternational industry presence.

With a further facility in Seoul, Crytek, which ismost famous for it CryEngine and the Crysis andFar Cry games, has not limited it’s reach to theboundaries of Europe. Yet it remains one of thecontinent’s most significant development andtech firms.

Established over ten years ago by the nowfamed Yerli Brothers, Crytek was conceived to beworld class from day one, and remains so to this

day. The CryEngine is so popular it has become ahousehold name among gaming consumers, andit’s presence on the back of game’s boxes remainsa key selling point.

Now in its third iteration, CryEngine offersdevelopers of both PC and console titles one ofthe world’s most flexible, highly organised genre-agnostic pieces of tech available today.

Promising plenty more is to come fromCryEngine 3, Crytek has assembled a vast teamfrom all over Europe and the rest of the world, andis in many ways defined by its multinational,multicultural workforce, who have created a ninternal atmosphere near unrivalled for its variety.

Cryek began the process of offering what wasconceived to be internal tech in 2002, when otherdevelopers began to contact the Yerli brothers’firm about licensing CryEngine. Quickly,positioned amidst Europe’s developer-richmainland countries, Crytek embraced licensing asa daily part of the business.

Crytek makes no secret of the fact that itconsiders CryEngine 3 next-generation ready,meaning that studios who work with thetechnology will be able to consider both currentand future projects without need to worry aboutwaiting for a new iteration.

CryEngine 3’s multiplatform support is also socomprehensive claims the studio, that licenseeswon’t need parallel teams working on eachplatform of a multiformat release.

Without doubt, Crytek is one of Europe’s mostambitious, multitalented and popularorganisations creating both critically acclaimedgames and high-end technology.

TRINIGYSpeciality: Engines

Germany, US

Year Founded: 2003

Email: [email protected]

Web: www.trinigy.net

ESTABLISHED IN 2003 to develop the VisionEngine, Trinigy started with humble beginningsand a hard working ethos that quickly paid off.

Over 150 projects now take advantage of thefirm’s core tech, which lets developers work acrossa range of platforms and game types. Catering fora diverse industry cross section including casualand traditional titles, digital distribution, MMO’sand serious games, and a sweeping selection ofgenres, the Vision Engine is increasinglyestablishing itself as a leading European solution.

“We are a completely self-funded organisation,which enables us to listen closely to ourcustomers in the development of our game

engine, adapt quickly to market changes, andplace a large amount of emphasis on customersupport,” affirms the company’s general managerFelix Roeken.

Based in Eningen, Germany, Trinigy also has anoffice in Austin, Texas and growing representationacross Asia.

“There has been an exciting boom of successfulonline browser game companies that havebasically slingshot Germany into a globallyleading market position within the last few years,”says Roeken of Trinigy’s location in WesternEurope’s heartland. “That trend has given us aslight advantage over other countries in mainland Europe, and with the recent launch ofVision Engine and our WebVision application forbrowser-based games, has really helped Trinigy as well.”

Trinigy has met with great success operatingglobally, but mainland Europe remains a keymarkets for the Vision Engine. As a result, Roekenand his team have made a habit of buildingstrong relationships across the continent over lastseven years, and continue to welcome client inputand feedback as a valuable resource.

“We had to learn some new lessons when weopened our office in the US about three years ago,

especially in the areas of console games andmarketing,” admits Roeken. “Mainland Europe hastraditionally focused on PC games, while the USand Japan are much more console-oriented.Looking back, that was a valuable step for us froma technological point of view as it factoredconsiderably into the development of our gameengine. We now have a multiplatform gameengine that is far more flexible in terms ofworkflow, and far more optimised forperformance across platforms.”

AXIS ANIMATION | BETA

Above: Richard Scott,MD, executive producerand founder of AxisAnimation

Perfect 10After a decade in the business, Axis Animation has learned a thing or two about howto thrive in tough economic times. Will Freeman asks them what their secret is…

AUGUST 2010 | 33

It’s hard to believe that when AxisAnimation began business at the dawn ofthe new millennium, the

industry–spanning studio barely had astrategy for expansion in place.

With BAFTAs and Imagina Grand Dury Prizegongs now sitting in the Glasgow company’strophy cabinet, the last decade has clearlygone well for the studio, but at its inceptionthings were markedly more humble.

“In our early years strategy wasn’tsomething we discussed too much aseveryone was knuckling down and doing abit of everything,” admits managing director,executive producer and founder RichardScott, who formed Axis with three fellowartists and animators in his home town.

“As we’ve grown we’ve become much morestrategic, you need to if you want to keepgrowing and moving forward.”

ROOM TO BREATHEExpansion and progression are clearlyinstinctive things to a firm like Axis, which hasquickly built up an impressive client listacross the game, film, television andadvertising sectors, recently contributing toMass Effect 2, Singularity and Killzone 2. Sowhat’s the secret?

“I think our success lies in being able toalways strive for the highest quality in ourwork and have the best people possibleworking for us,” suggests Scott.

“Alongside that we are flexible and have apersonal approach. We’ve also adapted a lotduring that growth and not been afraid to trynew structures and work in different waysand for different clients.”

With international business developmentunderway and an ever-expanding client listacross the entertainment industries, it’simpossible to refute Axis’ accomplishments,but the firm’s model does beg one question.In taking on board projects from the silverand small screens, is there not a danger ofspreading too thin?

In fact, reveals Scott, Axis’ broad focus has atwofold advantage: “First we get a range ofexciting projects to consider. This keeps ourportfolio fresh and the team excited, as they

love the variation of tasks. “The second advantage is the ability to not

be pigeonholed as only doing certain work.Recently our focus has fallen on the videogames and commercials work, which gives arange of projects from stylised to photo-real.”

RISING TO FACE ITStill, Axis’ history has not been one withoutchallenge. Aside from having never been inbusiness before the studio’s conception, Scottand his co-workers have had to tackle theproblems all developing businesses face:recruiting the right people, knowing when tohire at the top level, knowing when to addsupport resource, maintaining clientrelationships and most importantly,balancing creativity with profitability.

“I think we have overcome them withdogged determination, passion and the needfor creativity to be at the core of everything;we definitely never let money get in the wayof doing the best job. And of course we havea lot of laughs along the way,” says Scott.

Overcoming those hurdles has of course

defined Axis’ triumph, and in its ten-yearhistory its client list has become something itis extremely proud of.

“We are delighted to have grown into aninternational animation studio from ourGlasgow base which – let’s be honest – hasnever been a big hub for animation,” statesScott. “Our ability work with some of thebiggest names in entertainment is atestament to our people and our aim toproduce the best work no matter what.”

In its position as a leading animationstudio, Axis is also well placed to spot trendsthat will continue to dictate the developmentof the animation sector.

According to Scott, real-time graphics aregoing to influence the animation sectordramatically. Axis has already seen real-timesolutions being used in pre-visualisation offeatures, television and commercials, and thelighting and rendering pipelines of animatedfeatures and VFX.

“As computer power increases we will seethese technologies become more commonand the convergence with the gamesindustry won’t stop,” asserts Scott.

Scott is also quick to defend the work byAxis and its contemporaries, which onoccasion is criticised by consumers suspiciousof footage that isn’t gameplay.

“I think what we do is part of the shift invideo games evolution into mainstreamentertainment. Games need to compete foreveryone’s entertainment dollar and trailersand all marketing materials are a big part ofthat. We’re proud of the trailers that we makeand the excitement they create for lots ofdifferent titles,” he says.

In typically friendly fashion Scott concludeswith some advice for aspiring animationstudios looking to enjoy Axis’ success.

“One of the things we found difficult in theearly years was that we all came from similarcreative backgrounds, which is great whenyou’re really small as you need the ability todo the work and run the business. Eventuallythough, you need different skill sets at amanagement level and the best case scenariowould have been to have those in the originalfounders of the company and have them takethat through every area as you grow.”www.axisanimation.com

Games need tocompete for

everyone’s entertainmentdollar. We’re proud of thetrailers that we make and the excitmentthey create.

Richard Scott, Axis Animation

DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

BETA | TEACHING GAMES

Branding from theDisney XD channel isset to help thecampaign attract some attention

The Kids are AlrightBlack Rock Studio will be throwing their doors open to an invasion of youngsters this summer aspart of Disney XD’s Aim High campaign, which hopes to generate excitement about potentialfuture careers. Stuart Richardson had a chat with the studio’s audio director Steve Rockett andlead designer Ian Hudson to find out just what the kids are getting up to these days…

34 | AUGUST 2010

Disney ain’t what it used to be. This isby no means a bad thing, of course.The Princess and the Frog was

something of a return-to-form for thecompany last summer, but the days ofsurviving on a yearly animated film releasebased on a classic fairytale or legend (orShakespeare tragedy) are long gone.

Modern Disney is Disney-Pixar. It’s EpicMickey, Warren Spector and Steve Jobs. It’salso Black Rock Studio and Split/Second.

This summer, Disney will be running acampaign of mentorships aimed at viewers ofits Disney XD channel – generally boys andgirls between six and 14, though the meanage likely increases around the time TeenageMutant Ninja Turtles is on – in an attempt toget them excited by the prospect of theirfuture careers.

As part of that scheme, alongside otheroppourtunities like meeting Darren Bent andTinchy Stryder, Disney’s game developersubsidiary Black Rock Studio will be openingits doors to a host of XD viewers in order togive them and idea of just what it is like tomake video games for a living.

“Aim High is an inspirational format thatreally delivers a positive message to kids,” saysBlack Rock audio director Steve Rockett, one ofthe assigned metors at the studio. “It inspiresyoung people to try and get the most out of lifeand give the best to whatever they do.”

Black Rock lead designer and joint-mentorIan Hudson agrees with this.

“It’s a great way to introduce kids to thesesort of jobs that they may be interested in,and to show them that they are viable andsomething they should go for,” he says.

“I’m not sure how the industry is pushed asa career in schools, but kids love playinggames so to be able to invite them to comeand try making games and introduce them tothis career is an absolute pleasure.”

Both men seem passionate about sharingtheir knowledge with what could well be thenext generation of coders and designers.

“I think this idea is comparible to what hasbeen going on in the music industry in thepast few years in that it shows we arebecoming much more accessible, and nowpeople see it for what it is – a great place towork,” says Rockett.

“There is huge job satisfaction and in aplace like Black Rock you get to move aroundbetween jobs within a single company asmuch or as little as you see fit.”

In terms of what Black Rock’s contributionto Aim High will be, both men are excitedabout the plans they have in place.

“Well firstly the kids will meet us in theearly afternoon, and with me they will spendtheir time in the studio learning how the

audio for Split/Second was designed,”enthuses Rockett.

“I will introduce them to the whole teamand explain how the audio is created. I willtake them through the process of creatingdifferent sounds for games, all basic but veryimportant and interesting stuff. We will listento car engine sounds and look at how tocapture them, and have a hand-on go atbasic recording as well. At the end of the day,we will try putting some of those sounds topictures, hopefully showing the kids howeasy it can be to enhance a visual image withgood sound design.”

Hudson is equally passionate about hisnew reposibilities as an Aim High mentor.

“As the lead track designer, I will beshowing our guests how we create tracks,and specifically those that we created forSplit/Second, which are very different to anyothers that we have created,” he says.

“We will take them through the processesof animation, environment art, track designand so on. I think the most exciting part ofthe process myself is when you see a trackthat you have designed in-game for the firsttime, so hopefully we will be able to get theguys doing just that and getting to play theirtracks inside the Split/Second world.”

AN EDUCATIONBoth men are also acutely aware of thepotential issues in convincing boys and girlsof a certain age to get involved in anythingthat may fall under the remit of ‘work’. Theyseem convinced, however, that they have themagic formula to pique their interest.

“Kids love playing games,” says Hudson.“When they see their ideas appearing in

those games, well that’s just thrilling, and itdefinitely gives them the idea that this isn’tthat hard to do and they have the ability todo it. I think it will attract a lot of people.

Rockett is equally certain of the ability ofBlack Rock’s set-up to fascinate their visitors:“It’ll be inspiring, I think, for them to see justhow quickly you can get things up andrunning. I think they’ll enjoy that.”

The success of the project will be a difficultthing to ascertain without travelling severaldecades into the future to see what the BlackRock kids will be up to at that time, but AimHigh certainly scores points for proactivityand good intentions. Hudson is also keen topoint out that the whole thing wouldprobably struggle without the aid of Disney.

“It’s such a huge name, and going throughDisney XD will provide us with massiveexposure. That’s obviously a plus for us, toknow that we will be going through such abig channel with a massive audience. So it’sgreat both ways. None of this would havebeen possible if we had been an indie studio.”

Disney ain’t what it used to be.

Kids love playinggames so to be able

to invite them to come andtry making games andintroduce them to thiscareer is an absolute pleasure.

Ian Hudson, Black Rock Studio

Black Rock Studio’sIan Hudson (left) and

Steve Rockett (right)

6 years of bug-hunting.Over 1000 successfully accomplished QA projects.

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GAME CHANGERS: NDREAMS | BETA

Above: PatrickO’Luanaigh, CEO atnDreams

Games are exciting. They let you bewhatever and whoever you like. Theybreak down the passive wall of books,

films and music, drawing you into the thick ofthe action. They utilise revolutionary technologyand ideas to tell their stories, which through theplaying of them become your stories.

Games also cross media with an ease thatother forms of story-telling cannot hope tomatch. They can be played anywhere, at anytime, and in any medium. The possibilites inevery aspect of games are limitless, thoughsome developers could be accused offorgetting this from time-to-time.

Not so with nDreams. The Hampshire-basedfirm, founded in 2006, has been developingalternate reality games based on platforms asvaried as Facebook (Spirit of Adventure);Playstation Home (Xi) and corporate websites(Lewis Hamilton: Secret Life) for the entirety of itsshort existence. It’s been redefining both whata video game is and what a video game studioactually does.

WHAT DREAMS MAY COMEnDreams is currently hard at work on a top

secret title for XBLA and PSN. As for what canbe expected this time, one thing seems certain– judging by the way in which nDreamsoperates creatively – whaever it is up to, itwon’t be like anything we have seen from it ormost likely anyone else before.

“We’re trying to create new kinds of games,”says nDreams CEO Patrick O’Luanaigh.

“We’re planning to push PlayStation Home ina big way as a games platform in its own rightsoon. We have something very exciting in pre-production for PSN and XBLA which will bedifferent from everything that’s come before.”

nDreams is undergoing a level of expansionthat suggests its dream for the future is backedup by a substantial level of business acumen.

“We’re building up the number of newgames and digital content we publish,” says

O’Luanaigh. “We’re also growing our team andreleasing our first iPhone and iPad titles.”

This growth, while undoubtably eminatingfrom the studio’s earlier successes, seems to bebased around the idea that the industry isaltering substantially during the ongoing casualgames and digital distribution revolution.

“Traditional publishers are retreating to thesafety of big triple-A titles during the recession,while new developers and publishers havesprung up focusing on the new digitalplatforms. We’re really excited about the future,and we’re seeing a number of great new UK-based developers and publishers thriving onthe new platforms,” says O’Luanaigh.

This excitement is something that seems tobe shared by nDreams in its entirety, and thattranslated into a prolific period of development.

“We hope to announce a number of newprojects, larger in scale and scope than we’ve

done so far,” explains O’Luanaigh. “We’recontinuing to focus on innovation and creatingnew kinds of games. You’ll see more on theApp Store, PSN, XBLA and Playstation Home.”

The firm has a strong self image, andO’Luanaigh has an impressive level ofconfidence about what nDreams is and why itdeserves to be talked about.

“I hope our appeal is that we deliver highquality games which are commercial yetunique,” he says. “We have a focus on ‘socialstorytelling’, and most of our projects involvenarrative in various forms. We have excitingideas for a different kind of game right now.”

Keeping one step ahead of convention isclearly something that has quickly become sosynonymous with the firm’s image thatmaintaining it is important for keeping itsrelevance. This would be a daunting positionfor the most hardened of veteran studios, butO’Luanaigh and nDreams seem to feed off ofthe challenge and use it for content creation.

“We’re always trying new things. We’ve learnta great deal over the last few years, and we’reusing that knowledge to get beter,” O’Luanaighstates. “In this evolving space, it’s great to beable to switch quickly when necessary.”

And what of the future? For nDreams anaccurate forecast of trends to come, or evenbetter an ability to set those trends, wouldmore than likely be worth every penny in thebank. Luckily perhaps, O’Luanaigh has a veryclear idea of what he thinks is coming: “We’llsee cross-platform digital games, Applebecoming the primary gaming platform owner,a rise in narrative-focused casual games andmore money being made from PSN and XBLAthan through PS3 and Xbox 360 retail.”

Whatever the new projects turn out to be,nDreams will certainly be showing the industrysomething it has never seen before. Whether ornot we’ll want to see it again will largely comeback to O’Luanaigh’s choices for his companyover the coming months and years.

Judging by how things have gone so far,neither man nor firm has anything to fear.www.ndreams.co.uk

Daydream BelieversAs part of Develop’s ongoing Game Changers series, which looks at companies redefining games,we turned our attention to nDreams. Stuart Richardson caught up with CEO Patrick O’Luanaighto discuss the creation of games for the modern audience…

We’re building upthe number of games

and digital content wepublish. We’re alsoreleasing our first iPhoneand iPad titles.

Patrick O’Luanaigh

IN ASSOCIATIONWITH...Amiqus Games is aleading provider ofspecialist talent tothe video gamesindustry. Thecompany recruits forsome of the world’spremier studios forartists, animators,producers,programmers,designers andexecutives such asstudio heads anddirector level roles.

38 | AUGUST 2010

BETA | GAME CHANGERS: ALLEGORITHMIC

Above: Dr. SebastienDeguy, president andfounder of Allegorithmic

In concept at least, what Allegorithmicdoes is very simple. The tech company’smost significant middleware offering,

Substance Redux, serves to automaticallycompress textures for online games.

In reality, Allegorithmic’s creation iscleverly intricate and complex at thebackend, but that alone doesn’t warrant aplace in the Game Changers series. Why theFrench-headquartered firm stars here isbecause Allegorithmic is the proceduraltexture rendering middleware sector.

While other middleware fields, such asanimation and mocap, play host to acacophony of competing companies,Allegoritmic spearheads texture renderingand compression almost single-handedly,with a lead solution that can be implementedat any stage of an online title’s development,from conception to post-release.

Perhaps the field’s relative tranquillity isbecause texturing doesn’t carry theconsumer friendly nature of graphics, anddoesn’t conjure up easily romanticisednotions like the infamous uncanny valley.

Regardless, Redux’s potential to onlinegame developers is considerable. It canreduce the overall size of a game by 20 to 50per cent; a factor that can make or break arelease that’s financial success depends onhow easy it is to download.

COMPILING NEW ORDERLaunched in May this year, Substance Reduxwas actually created when Allegorithmic wastrying to licence Substance Air – anestablished middleware solution for textureproduction – to online game developers inAsia. Many of the studios revealed to themiddleware provider that they wereinterested in a parallel solution to Air for theirexisting games.

“Recreating the textures with SubstanceAir was the solution that provided the bestresults in terms of space savings, but, due totime constraints, it was also very open to asolution for automatically compressingexisting assets,” reveals Dr. Sébastien Deguy,Allegorithmic’s president and founder.

“Substance Redux is the answer to thatissue: it provides a 50 to 70 per cent sizereduction of all your texture assets in just afew short hours with no special skills needed.”

While the team at Deguy’s firm providestools that allow its customers to createtextures in a new and improved way, moreimportantly, Allegorithmic is the onlycompany that has runtime componentsassociated with almost all of its manyproducts.

“Combined with a unique, patented set oftechnologies, this allows us to be a truemiddleware and tools provider, fully

dedicated to the tricky and expensive task ofproducing and delivering huge amounts oftexture data,” confirms Deguy.

Recognising the casual, MMO, mobile, weband free-to-play sectors as key descriptors ofwhat it calls the ‘new order’ for games,Allegorithmic has demonstrated a keenability to recognise leading trends in theindustry and make them its own.

While numerous middleware companiesstruggle to catch-up with the rush to cater fordevelopers making smaller games for digitalplatforms, Allegorithmic is forging ahead withoffering a solution that’ll dramatically increaserevenues for those creating online games.

“Casual equals instant action for players,which means immediate streaming of data.So, the smaller the data, the faster the access,”explains Deguy. “Casual also means a shortdevelopment time and lower budget forcreators, which means dedicated, easy-to-usetools and customisable content.

“MMO means a lot of content needs to becreated and distributed by the developersand publishers. Hence generative techniquesand smaller data sizes are key here.”

Put simply, there’s a range of increasinglyprominent platforms and markets that needwhat Allegorithmic offers. Mobile and webmodels mean ‘on-air’ and online distribution,leading to the need for compact content,while free-to-play demands a directrelationship between the time before playand the success of a game; an area where thefast consumer download times could proveextremely important. The Substance tool suitereally is the key package letting customersproduce compact and dynamic textures.

Allegorithmic is also a company notcontent with resting on laurels.

“We still have a long way to go,” admitsDeguy. “So far, our successes have come fromthe fact that we have been talking to verysmart people in the industry, all from thebiggest companies – Funcom, The 9, NVIDIA,Intel, Autodesk and Dassault Systèmes.

“These companies were able to understandwhat we have, even when it was a prototype.They saw potential, unique technology andthat we are a trustworthy company.”

Deguy is also a man who can recognise andaccept the challenges that his business faces.

“The biggest challenge we have faced isbringing innovation to the market,” saysDeguy. “Texture artists were not expecting tosee a solution like this. We have to create apresence and make the need for this productapparent to those who need it the most. Or, atleast, make them understand the value ofswitching to this new way of creating textures.”

Deguy is the first to admit that, althoughAllegorithmic’s offering brings tremendousvalue to the artists that it serves, creators stillhave to change the way they work.

“But this is also what makes the challengeexciting,” adds Deguy. “When we succeed,we’ll change the industry for the better andour technology will become a standard.”www.allegorithmic.com

We have to create apresence and make

the need for this productapparent. Or make themunderstand the value ofswitching to this new way ofcreating textures.

Dr. Sebastien Deguy

Texture AdventuresNext up in our Game changers series, Will Freeman turns his attention to Allegorithmic and its hugely significantSubstance Redux texturing middleware…

IN ASSOCIATIONWITH...Amiqus Games is aleading provider ofspecialist talent tothe video gamesindustry. Thecompany recruits forsome of the world’spremier studios forartists, animators,producers,programmers,designers andexecutives such asstudio heads anddirector level roles.

AUGUST 2010 | 41

Above: Virgin Gamingco-founders andcompetitive playersBilly Levy (left) andZack Zeldin (right)

Entrepreneur and adventurer SirRichard Branson has turned hisattention back to games. Based on the

business tycoon’s previous relationship withthe industry, that fact could be a significantone for developers.

Established way back in 1984 as apublisher, Virgin Games rose to prominencein the 1990s, when it handled foremostdeveloper labels including LucasArts,Capcom and Bethesda.

Highly regarded series like Broken Swordand Cannon Fodder have Virgin to thank fortheir debuts. Similarly, a number ofdevelopment veterans like David Perry andfamed composer Tommy Tallarico had theircareers launched by Branson’s company,which was most successful operating underthe name Virgin Interactive.

Additionally, Virgin’s investment inTrilobyte’s FMV-based horror title The 7thGuest delivered a significant boost to theevolution of high-end CD-ROM multimediagaming, subsequently providing a milestonefor the development of gaming formats.

Gradually Virgin’s potency in thetraditional games industry faded, as Bransonand his colleague’s shifted their focus toonline prize-based content.

COMPETITIVE SPIRITNow its hiatus from conventional gaming isover, Virgin is back, albeit in a ratherdifferent form. Today Virgin Gaming is basedaround the branding of website that letsplayers from across the globe connect andcompete in a range of online tournaments.Ultimately, the website allows gamers tochallenge one another at a number of

console games, clashing to claim cash andother prizes.

In the past competitive gaming definedhow people consumed interactiveentertainment. In a nod to that heritage,Virgin Gaming’s offering is underpinned by askill ranking system that purports to offer alevelled playing field for all who rise to thechallenge,. Conversely, the team headed upby CEO Rob Segal is also demonstrating asavvy recognition of where consumer’sgaming habits are taking the industry. FromFacebook to XBLA, people are tackling gamestogether and in opposition.

But what tech underpins Virgin’s newvision for gaming, and what does thisevolution mean to developers?

“The technology behind Virgin Gamingreally sets us apart,” insists the firm’s co-founder and president Billy Levy. “We have aproprietary game validation system thatautomatically verifies and updates the resultsof all games played through the site, thusautomating all tournaments and

competitions and adding security andauthenticity to the process.”

That technology guarantees the fair playthat is the cornerstone of Virgin Gaming’sservice, and allows the team handling thecompetitions to be completely flexible withregard to creating and scaling tournaments.Instead of needing days or weeks to organisea large-scale competition, the staff at VirginGaming can organise and run a 256-persononline event in hours.

BENEFIT OF THE CLOUTAs for the benefit to games creators, VirginGaming has a great deal to offer developers,primarily because the platform provides aflexible extension of and complement to their games.

The online tournaments promise toprovide a tool to help generate interest, spursales, extend shelf life and minimise trade ins.Furthermore, Virgin Gaming hasopportunities for developers of all types asthe company instigates its planned movebeyond the console into the popular socialand mobile gaming sector.

It’s hard to refute the fact that VirginGaming’s arrival is incredibly timely in thatregard. It ably rides the wave of changecurrently influencing all most every facet ofgames industry ecosystem; an enviableposition secured though a grass rootsconnection with the world of organisedcompetitive gaming.

“The games industry is constantly evolvingand, since playing games competitively was amajor part of Zack Zeldin [vice president ofgaming operations and co-founder] and mylifestyle. We had the foresight, and luck, to go

We have aproprietary game

validation system thatautomatically verifies andupdates the resultsof all games playedthrough the site

Billy Levy, Virgin Games

Phoenix risingAfter something of a hiatus from the games industry, Richard Branson’s Virgin Group is making ahigh profile return. Will Freeman asks one of its co-founders what that means to developers…

DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

VIRGIN GAMING | BETA

42 | AUGUST 2010

Above: VirginGaming’s cash-stuffedtruck at E3, containingsome of the bountyplayers will clash over

in the direction of competitive, skill-basedgaming. It seemed natural for us; we weredoing it, our friends were doing it, leagueswere popping up all over the place – so wefelt that the natural progression was to takegame tournaments online.”

Billy, who has known Zack since university,tells tales of the pair competing throughgaming for everything from who was buyingtakeaways to who had to clean the dishes.The pair also spent a lot of money enteringgaming tournaments – a fact that played amajor part in inspiring them to create whathas become the new Virgin Gaming service.

PARALLEL LINESHowever, while personal enthusiasm andexperience makes for a robust keystone forany business, it doesn’t guarantee aprofessional experience free from challenges.Fortunately for Levy and his colleagues, anopen-minded approach has allowed them topre-empt many of the hurdles that havebecome a stalling point for the few rivalplatforms that offer a parallel service.

“We knew many of the challenges going in,but we discovered a lot of new ones as weprogressed,” admits Levy. “We looked at all ofthe problems that existed on some of theother sites that were trying to offer onlinevideo game tournaments – that was when werealised that our technology needed to bereally sound. We couldn’t rely on the

individual players to accurately self-reportwins and losses,” he adds.

“We also needed to have a reputationsystem in place so that the community couldpolice itself – similar to eBay. Finally, we knewthat our customer service team had to becomprised of actual gamers that werefamiliar with the games we featured and thatwould be able to resolve any issues in amanner that would be fair and satisfactory toboth parties involved.”

Ultimately, Levy is confident about boththe potential of the new Virgin Gamingbusiness, and what it can offer to developers.Playing on the sporting nature that is innateto many players, and the inherentcompetitive mechanic that is at the core ofmany titles’ design, Virgin Gaming has everychance of success.

“The fact that gamers can take somethingthey are passionate about and be able to getmore out of it than just bragging rights ishuge,” concludes Levy. “Virgin Gaming is alsoan ideal place for gamers to just network andfind quality competition.

“Some of the best feedback we’ve hadfrom our community has been about friendsthey’ve made and/or the quality ofcompetition they’ve found on the site.”

Developers interested in more informationcan contact the Virgin Gaming team [email protected]

BETA | VIRGIN GAMING

VIRGIN GAMING’S NEW APPROACH togaming is undeniably an intriguing one,but ultimately its success depends on onefactor; consumers need to warm to thecompetitive structure.

For many, the likes of Xbox Live haveperpetuated the myth that playingagainst strangers means beingannihilated by a youngster on the otherside of the planet who has apparentlyinnumerable hours to perfect their ability.

“We want developers to understandthat our goal is to take their great gamesand make them even better by allowingplayers from around the world toparticipate in massive tournaments forhuge prizes,” explains Virgin Gaming’s co-founder and president Billy Levy.

“We work together with our partners tohelp market their games and provide yetanother avenue for their audience toengage and compete.”

It’s at that point that the ranking systemcomes into play. Virgin Gaming isdesigned to make it possible for gamersof all skill levels to enter a tournamentand feel confident that they have a realchance of walking away a winner.

That considered, it looks very likely thatthe competitive tournament gamingmodel could work, meaning developerscould quickly reap the benefits Levy andhis team promise.

The return of Virgin Gaming may wellshake up the industry to exactly the samelevel it did a decade ago, when it madechanges that can still be felt to this day.

PULLING RANK

AUGUST 2010 | 51

Below: Honeyslug’s PSPdownlaod Kahoots wasdesigned throughconstraints as much aswith creative freedom

In other parts of the media world – film, TVand even business, structured creativityhas been a regular part of the innovative

process for some time. The games industrymay be a little behind the curve, but we’rebeginning to realise its value. Coming upwith and developing good ideas is a learntskill, you don’t have to be born with it. With alittle bit of training it becomes second nature.

HERE ARE TEN IDEAS TO RECHARGE YOURCREATIVE HABIT

1. Go wildDon’t start by thinking about what’s possible,what the publisher wants or whether it canbe done. Those are concerns for further alongthe development line. Crazy, wacky,apparently completely unworkable or justplain weird ideas are the best starting placefor being original.

“SingStar began life as a game idea aboutaboriginal dreamtime”, says Jamie Macdonald,former vice president of development at SCEand now senior vice president at Codemasters.‘The central mechanic involved singing to treesin a forest.”

“We realised we needed the technology toidentify pitch and rhythm. In the end weweren’t sure the market was ready for a gameabout aboriginal dreamtime but by thatstage we’d developed a neat bit oftechnology. Then we thought – we’ve gotthis, can we use it in a different way?’ And socame SingStar.”

2. Learn to think laterallyJames Dyson famously spent ten yearsdeveloping phenomenal power for hisrevolutionary vacuum cleaner. But what elsecould he use that technology for? What if youturn the one thing you know to be true abouta vacuum cleaner on its head.

Redirect its incredible sucking power andmake it blow. It not might be much use for avacuum cleaner but it could be perfect fordrying hands quickly. So Dyson was on to yetanother revolutionary product – the DysonAirblade hand dryer.

3. Don’t stamp on ideas too earlyThose that start out wild are often the bestones but you need to run with them, explorethe possibilities fully before you choosewhich to stick with. If singing to the trees had been chucked out as a downright loopyidea (which, some might say, would be afair comment), SingStar would never havebeen born.

4. Give yourself constraintsToo much freedom can paralyse innovation.There’s nothing more intimidating than beingtold to go off and be creative. Some hourslater you find yourself with a blank sheet ofpaper facing you, waiting for that great ideato turn up. Putting in some real or imaginedconstraints can help focus your thoughts.

Talking to Develop recently, Honeyslugproducer, Mark Inman, described how theirsmall budgets and lo-fi nature of the studiohelped them produce claymation-styledpuzzler Kahoots, one of the consistentlyhighest rated games of the new PSP minis:“We’ve found that it’s actually no harder tocharm someone with a game, make themlaugh even, on a shoestring budget. In fact,it’s possibly easier, because the limitationsseem to make us more creative.

“This was definitely the case with Kahoots,where we had an art budget of £35, andbought all kinds of stuff from Kentish Townhigh street to scan or photograph, madecharacters from plasticine and wool, anddrew the interface with felt tips.”

5. Be prepared to be a little uncomfortableCreativity relies on breaking out of acceptedways of thinking and operating. Provokeyourself and your team. Take risks. Ignoregood judgment. Be silly and extreme,especially if it’s not in your nature to do so.

6. Failure is OK. It might even bea good thingMost managers stop short of encouragingfailure but James Dyson suggests failure iswhere true originality springs from. Dysonmade 5,127 prototypes of his vacuum beforeI got it right. Failure is a necessary part ofprocess. It’s management’s job to ensurethere is the capability to recover built into theteam culture.

7. Use outsiders’ experienceIt’s easy to be blinkered by familiarity. Refreshyour thinking by changing the perspective.

While watching a Formula One race, DrAllan Goldman and his colleague MartinElliott realised the pitstop team’s smoothfunctioning could help them solve a problem.As head of paediatric cardiac intensive care atGreat Ormond Street Hospital, Dr Goldman’sconcern had been improving the critical post-op handover from the theatre to theintensive care team.

“We spoke to the F1 teams about theprocesses and safety culture and designed asimple process we could use,” says Goldman.

At Sony Jamie Macdonald found bringingin outsiders to work with a team led to new

Provoke yourselfand your team. Take

risks. Ignore goodjudgment. Be silly andextreme, especially if it’snot in your natureto do so.

Dinah Lammiman, Kudi

10 ways to generate

great ideasAs the economy continues to contract, innovation and new initiatives can be squeezed out. Butcreative thinking is more necessary now than ever. So how do you maximise you team’s creativity?Kudi’s Dinah Lammiman presents some tips to help you realise your creative potential...

DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

CREATIVE THINKING | BETA

52 | AUGUST 2010

Unbridaled creativity,silliness and lateralthinking could help youdesign the nextSingStar (Right), orDyson Airblade (below)

dynamics and new ideas: “Outsiders canbreak down internal barriers and draw outcontributions from individuals from whateverdiscipline that wouldn’t normally have theopportunity to voice their idea.”

8. Establish an ego-less exchange ofideas and commentsIdeally get in there right at the beginning –and then follow it through. When KumarJacob was director of HR at Criterion, he andFiona Sperry, VP of games development,wanted new staff to understand their ideaswere just as relevant to Criterion’s culture astheir longer standing colleagues’. So, at theinduction sessions, they surprised thenewcomers by asking what they liked abouttheir previous company.

“It worked on several levels” clarifies Jacob. “It was a novel approach. The newintake felt listened to – and the good ideasthey suggested were acted on. Sometimes immediately.”

On one occasion, while the session was stillgoing on, Jacob and Sperry discussed andthen implemented one of the new recruits’suggestions during the coffee break.

“It showed them what a dynamic companythey were joining,” adds Jacob.

9. Do something different Mix it up. Try doing something entirelydifferent – cooking classes or drummingworkshops – and see how it refreshes yourteam’s thinking.

10. Introduce some structure Structured creativity is about repeatableeffective, idea generation.

At SCE Macdonald found in each teamthere would typically be one member whowas considered the visionary. “ That’s not abad thing but you need the process andcreative structure to maximise their vision.Structuring creativity is aboutdemythologising the creative process andbringing it into line with other parts of thebusiness. All have a process and a technicalinfrastructure. This is no different.”

Smart people, working within a creativeframework maximises the collective IQ. ForMacdonald, the introduction of a structureenabled a quick and effective response tochanging circumstances: “One week oneteam might need to respond to short termmarket opportunity next week it would be along term product strategy. We would use the same overarching structure and processfor both.”

Embedding the creative structure into thecompany means senior management hasmore freedom. Responding to changingcircumstances is no longer a problembecause the team has the mindset to dealwith it.

Gamers are ready for more sophisticationand more innovation. Your audience isbecoming more demanding.

Commenting on the critical andcommercial success of Heavy Rain in theGuardian recently Quantic Dream’s DavidCage said it was time for the games industry

to understand that gamers had changed:“The commercial success of the game showsone thing: gamers are not who we thoughtthey are. They are older, eager for somethingnew, ready for more sophistication than whatmost games have to offer.”

Innovate and stay ahead. To quote DavidOgilvy, who is arguably the father ofcontemporary advertising: “Encourageinnovation. Change is our lifeblood,stagnation our death knell.”

Dinah Lammiman workedas development producer,reporter and series producerat the BBC for many years.She and Joanna Irlam,formerly of Criterion, set upKudi earlier this year toprovide tailor-made

specialist training packages and creativitytraining for leading companies in both thegames and media industries.www.www.kudi.co.uk

BETA | CREATIVE THINKING

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UBISOFT TORONTO | BETA

Above: Jade Raymondhas ambitious plans forUbisoft’s newly formedToronto studio, whichis working on the nextSplinter Cell

Ubisoft’s bold new Toronto studio isboth buzzing and bleak. It is bright,dark, warm, cold, cosy, empty,

vibrant and derelict. It is near-guaranteed tobecome one of the most influentialdevelopment hubs in the world. But today itis a skimpy enterprise.

Ubisoft has invested ₤312 million – alongwith a generous ₤164 million bonus from theOntario government – to ensure Torontobecomes one of the largest studios in theworld. Yet today the multistorey complexinhabits about fifty staff – seven per cent ofthe building’s estimated capacity.

As a testament to the sheer size of theToronto complex, some areas are littered withenough developers to remind that the studiohas already started work on two separateprojects.

The red-bricked ex-factory, with its grandwindows and skylights, is dotted with motleyarrangements of colourful desk furniture,multi-monitor PC rigs, trendy artwork anddevelopers at their battle stations. Otherrooms are more like office chasms, vast andempty aside from the stripped walls andload-bearing pillars.

“We have a lot of space at the moment,”says the studio’s new managing director JadeRaymond. “We want to hold 800 developersin Toronto within ten years’ time, but rightnow we have 45 staff [laughs], so it’s a properstart-up at the moment.”

Raymond’s insistence on calling Toronto astart-up is another of the studio’s manypeculiarities. This isn’t a studio that dreams ofbecoming huge, this is a development housealready lined and bankrolled to do so.

To a point, Raymond agrees that Torontoisn’t quite like the traditional start-up. “We

have all that great stuff but much less of therisk, because we’re fully backed by Ubisoftand already have veteran staff,” she says.

“The biggest draw we have is all the great things about a start-up; we want togrow to 800 staff in ten years, we’re on twomajor projects now, eventually we’ll beworking on five.”

Raymond had previously raised eyebrowswhen declaring Toronto will be a studio withthe exclusive purpose of making triple-Agames. But five at the same time?

“Well I can’t say specifics now, we don’twant to get ahead of ourselves in our firstyear. But yeah, that’s the plan,” she says.

“If developers have ambition to maketriple-A projects, and want to have their placein what is a thriving start-up, the UbisoftToronto is the place for them.”

‘Start-up’ or not, Toronto appears to be thedefinitive, final solution in Ubisoft’s fearsomeexpansion into Canada.

BIZARRE INCWith studios also in Quebec and Vancouver,Ubisoft is aiming to employ some 3,000 gamedevelopers within a single country – surely anational and global record. And though theambition here is of a bizarre enormity,perhaps Ubisoft’s plan to plunder Canada’sworkforce is a inevitability. Perhaps it isforetoken to how the dev sector will naturallyadapt to a mushroomed market and itsimpossibly escalating demands for quality.

“The bottom line is the way we aredeveloping games today is changing.”Raymond says.

“Games are growing into huge-scale triple-A projects. If you look at any big brandlike GTA, the games are being done acrossmultiple studios and multiple teams,” addsthe studio managing director.

Raymond is snappish, yet confident. Shehas a fierce, commanding presence that isoften forgotten in the face of her unavoidably

If developers haveambition to make

triple-A projects, and wantto have their place in whatis a thriving start-up, theUbisoft Toronto isthe place for them.

Jade Raymond, Ubisoft

Jade’s EmpireUbisoft’s ₤500m Toronto studio will take the publisher’s Canadian workforce closeto the 3,000 mark. Rob Crossley sits down with managing director Jade Raymondto discuss the mass effect it will have on the region, and the industry as a whole…

56 | AUGUST 2010

BETA | UBISOFT TORONTO

renowned good looks. Naturally, she hasgreat belief in the new Toronto studio –particularly when Develop suggests it couldcapture all the local talent and effectivelycreate a vacuum within the region’s thrivingindie scene.

“Obviously there are people [withinToronto] who want to work on bigger triple-Aprojects, and now that we’re in the areathey’re going to be sending in their CVs. Ican’t say to you that’s not going to happen,and I can’t say that hasn’t happened a littlebit already.

“[But] developers have the choice, but ifthey want to work on triple-A titles they’llprobably want to come to us. In the longterm though, once a city is known for itsmasses of game developers, it attracts moreand more developers, because it makesmoving there a great deal more interesting.

“It allows developers to say ‘Oh well if itdoesn’t work out with that studio I haveoptions to join nearby studios’. So ultimately Ithink we’re helping the whole gamedevelopment population there.”

Perhaps the local indie bosses can relax fornow; Ubisoft Toronto is certainly in no hurryto expand. The plan, as Raymond explains, isto carefully construct foundations for long-term future growth.

TRIPLE THREAT“We’re setting up a three-prong strategy,” shesays. “First, we want Toronto to become thebest place to fast-track your career, andsecondly, we want to ship great triple-Aprojects from the get-go.”

Those 50 staff that inhabit Ubisoft Torontoalready – many of them the core Montrealteam – will be mentoring hundreds of young,aspiring apprentices that join the company.

The plan is that when those apprenticesbecome masters of their craft, they in turnwill mentor the next breed. All the studioneeds to do is attract masses of developers,which Raymond is confident will happen.

“I was lucky enough to have a great teamof superstars come across from UbisoftMontreal,” she says. “So there is this excellentcore team here, which is working on the nextSplinter Cell.

“Because we are going to be working ontriple-A products from the start, we’ve beenable to attract a lot of senior talent as well,and that means we have a good base ofpeople who can be mentors and coach theother people working at the studio.”

The chess pieces are in place. UbisoftToronto is ready to become a self-sustainingacademy that creates some of the biggestgames in the world. That’s the two most vitalelements to the three-prong strategy.

As Develop’s interview with Raymondcomes to its conclusion, the famed Ubisoftstaffer is asked about that unknown thirdelement. Her answer encapsulates both theambition and sense of mystery that stillsurrounds almost every facet of the newCanadian studio.

“There is a third part to our plan which islooking out to the future,” she says. “Torontois in an interesting strategic position. I can’ttalk too much about this, but I will say thatwe have a technology group, and we arebuilding central tech for Ubisoft.

“That’s going to be the team that startslooking to the future. Real cutting edge stuff.”

Raymond and hercolleagues hopeUbisoft Toronto willquickly become thehive of activity that thefirm’s Montreal Studio(pictured above)already is today Once a city is known

for its masses ofgame developers, it attractsmore and more developers,because it makes movingthere a great dealmore interesting.

Jade Raymond, Ubisoft

58 | AUGUST 2010

BETA | WE R INTERACTIVE

Left to right: We RInteractive foundersDavid Rose, OliMadgett, Chris Kelly,Tom Thirlwall andGavin Rowe

Developers get funding from whereever they can. Venture capitalists,publishers and games industry

veterans have all put money forward to helpnew studios find their feet.

Still, when We R Interactive came out ofhiding last month, the fact that the new outfitwas funded by a collective of television andfilm industry luminaries meant the studioinstantly stood out.

With investment from ITV commercial headFrank Hazlitt, Working Title Films co-chairmanEric Fellner, and advertising expert PeterMead, We R has bold plans for changing theface of social gaming with title forsmartphone and web

Formed by seven veterans of storytelling,film production, branding and games designto capitalise on a new era of multi-disciplinary collaboration, We R Interactive isworking intently on bringing togetherimmersive filmed content and 3D interactionin a new way.

But what does that mean in terms of thegames the player will enjoy? Companyfounder and former Eidos developmentdirector and Psygnosis studio manger DavidRose is the man to answer that question.

“Our games will bring a greater sense ofauthenticity and immersion,” confirms Rose.“For the first time players will feel that theyare in the game; not just playing butanticipating the outcome of their decisionsand interactions.

“Film captures characterisation andemotion like no other medium. We havestrived for years to get close to this usinggraphics at increasing cost and without everquite reaching realism. With improvements inbandwidth, dynamic editing andcomposition of both video and 3D elementswe believe that users will benefit fromimmersive stories where 3D sequences havean integral role in helping tell an emergingnarrative they influence.”

Born from the growing independentdevelopment sector and its habit of

refocusing on intelligent game and softwaredesign, We R Interactive was founded as adirect response to an apparent lack of riskadverse attitudes from the band of largerpublishing houses.

“In harsh economic conditions it feels likethere are real opportunities for small groupsof intelligent, motivated game developers to

make and publish games independently,”suggests Rose, who is with his team strivingto allow players a never before seen level ofcontrol, influence and engagement acrossmultiple platforms.

Arguably using filmed content is nothingnew, and many will point an accusatory digit,highlighting the fact that the less thanimpressive live action arcade games andfilmed Philips CDi titles prove there is littlepotential in such an approach.

MAD DOG MCCREES AND ENGLISHMENHowever, those finger wavers would bemissing a very important point. We RInteractive is doing a lot more that justpasting together footage under a looselyfitting veil of interaction.

It is harnessing a multitude of newtechnologies and platforms as foundationsfor narrative journeys that can be personal toeach and every user, blurring the lines thattraditionally separate the digital and real

worlds. A point in the evolution of games thatmakes the ARG redundant, if you like.

Purporting to use its wildly diverse staffskill set and some mystery shroudedtechniques to do wonderful new things, thefirm is already encouragingly confident.

“The majority of our staff from the film andgame industries are known to us,” says Rose,“and therefore we’ve hit the ground runningand managed to create a super creativeatmosphere and culture very quickly.”

Furthermore, We R Interactive’s uniquecreative approach means it can sidestepsome of the traditional developmentproblems all together.

“We avoid the Uncanny Valley problem byusing filmed media instead of animatedmodels,” offer Rose, as an example.

“Take a look at some of the animation workof Ken Perlin and you can see that the nextgeneration of animators is likely to be usingprocedural animation where the model iscontinually active and engaged with itssubject and environment. This will changethe nature of the problem away from theinanimate but perfectly renderedmannequins and refocus it on what theseagents are doing and saying.”

Happy to admit the road ahead is onelikely to throw up an abundance ofchallenges, Rose is still confident he and histeam will still be turning heads and creatinggames for social good and educationpurposes for years to come: “We will strive tobe leaders in interactive storytelling andfurther bringing film and interactiveentertainment together. Our focus is originalcontent, and breaking new content to aglobal audience is our overall aim. The UKremains a source of phenomenal talent, buthas been hard hit in recent years; we aim toreaddress this,” he concludes.

For now, the concrete particulars of We RInteractive’s debut remain a near unknown,but one thing is certain; Rose and hiscolleagues are ones to watch.www.werinteractive.com

We R Interactive might not have released a game yet, but the social video game and onlinedrama specialist is set to make waves across the industry, as Will Freeman discovers...

In harsh economicconditions it feels

like there are realopportunities for smallgroups of intelligent,motivated gamedevelopers.

David Rose, We R Interactive

Welcome to the second Golden Ageof games development. And, wow,is it better than the first one.

The first Golden Age of video gamesstarted with the first home video gamesystems and ended in 1983 in a wave of over-expansion, hubris and the rumoured burial ofmillions of copies of E.T. for the Atari 2600.

Why was it a Golden Age? It depends onwhom you ask.

For game creators, it was an era ofextraordinary opportunity. New devicesallowed new types or artistic expression. Ageneration of designers were just making art;they were making up the rules of the formitself, because no-one had been there to do itbefore them. It was a heady, febrile time forgames developers.

For people who think business innovationis as exciting as content innovation – and I’mone of them – the Golden Age was evenmore exciting. Disruptive technologies bringvast opportunities to create brand newcompanies, business and revenues. Most ofthe companies that we revere today havetheir roots in the Golden Age.

THE DAWN OF THE PUBLISHER AGEThe Golden Age eventually came to an end. Itwas destroyed not by the publisher but by afundamental truth of twentieth centurymedia: it was expensive to distribute content.

It’s not actually expensive to createcontent. No, really, it isn’t. How much does itcost to create a best-selling album? Whatabout a novel? Even a great game (World ofGoo cost $120,000; Braid cost $180,000)?Across all of the media industries, the contentcreators are not the key cost. Distribution iswhere things get expensive.

At an average newspaper, the editorial costis less than 15 per cent of total costs. Anauthor will generally get a royalty of less than10 per cent of the price of her novel. ModernWarfare 2, cost $50 million to develop but$200 million to manufacture, market anddistribute. And that’s not includingActivision’s corporate overhead.

Publishing in a physical world is a verychallenging activity. The moment that youpress the button on the release of a triple-Agame (or a book, or a movie or anything else),you are totally committed. That entiredevelopment budget is spent. It’s sunk. Younow have to spend a huge sum onmanufacturing and distribution to get thatgame into stores all across the planet.

Having invested all of that money into agame, it would be terrible if consumers didn’tbuy it simply because they didn’t know aboutit. So sensible publishers double down byinvesting a multiple of the dev budget intomarketing. And as budgets go up fordevelopment and marketing, few companiescan afford to participate in this game.

The Publisher Age saw the end of the smallindependent game creator overseeingeverything from the idea to the box in aconsumer’s hand. The economics didn’t stackup. And so, as the twenty-first centurydawned, it looked as if the Publisher Agewould be upon us for ever.

Luckily, the world changed.

BLOOD-SUCKING LEECHESPublisher-bashing is an easy option. It’s alsodeeply unfair. In the era of physicaldistribution, publishers deserved to makemost of the money.

It is hard to arrange for all of yesterday’snews to be written, subbed, laid-out, printedand distributed to every newsagent in anisland of over 60 million people by six in themorning. It’s so hard, in fact, that only alimited number of companies could makeany profits at all trying to do it.

It’s not so hard to deliver that news online,and to do it instantly.

It’s hard to manage a transmission networkof broadcast towers and repeaters to delivertelevision county to an entire nation.

It’s also not so difficult to upload content tosites like YouTube.

It used to be hard to get a game into aconsumer’s hand. You had to manufacture it.You had to distribute it. You had to persuadeGAME and their equivalents in every countryin the world to stock it and promote it.

Distribution used to be both very hard andvery expensive to do right. It was so difficult,and so risky, that publishers could, andfrequently did, take around 80 per cent of therevenue from titles – and even more of theprofits – on the games that they financed,marketed and distributed.

Publisher-bashing isan easy option. It’s

also a deeply unfair one. Inthe era of physicaldistribution, publishersdeserved to makemost of the money.

60 | AUGUST 2010

Welcome to the

Golden Agefor games development

There has never been a better time to be a game developer, says NicholasLovell, who in the first in a series of articles for Develop looks at how fortuneshave reversed from corporate publishers to small development teams…

BETA | A NEW ERA


A NEW ERA | BETA

And you know what, I’m not sure that wasunfair. They did something that was difficult.Something that no developer could do forthemselves. They added value.

Those days are changing. Publishers werenot blood-sucking leeches when they didsomething special.

It’s just that with the arrival of the internet,what used to be very difficult is now much,much easier.

REACHING A GLOBAL FOOTPRINTThe Internet has made reaching a globalaudience possible for anyone. A developercan have a global footprint overnight viaXBLA, PSN, Steam, iPhone, Facebook, its ownwebsite and a bunch of other routes.

But just because you can reach anaudience, doesn’t mean that it’s easy to do so.Or even that you should try. There are stillmany occasions when a publisher not onlyadds value, they are the only sensible way fora developer to bring their game to market,especially if it’s a triple-A title.

But the arrival, or perhaps more accurately,the increasing maturity, of the internet haspermanently changed the relationshipbetween publishers and developers

OUTSOURCING TO PUBLISHERSI would like all of you – every person readingthis – to take a deep breath and prepare toflip your perspective. Imagine you are lookingat an MC Escher painting and where before

you only saw black demons, surrounded byempty white space, you are about to seewhite angels surrounded by black space.

Now change your perspective: “Publishersdon’t outsource development to thedevelopers; developers outsource publishingto the publishers."

By flipping the publisher/developerrelationship on its head, I hope to help you -the global development community - realisethat you have a choice. You can choose whoshould fulfill the key roles of the publisher:sales, marketing, distribution, and finance.

They can be done either by you or by thepublisher. They can also be outsourced toagencies, contractors or freelancers. They canbe performed by a platform holder like Sony,Microsoft or like Apple. But they really dohave to be done.

All developers need to understand thesecore commercial functions to run a successfulbusiness - even one that doesn’t self-publish.

If you are going to self-publish, it’sabsolutely critical that you understand them.After all, you wouldn’t outsource your assetcreation or motion capture without a prettygood understanding not only of what wasinvolved, but what you wanted to get back.

HOW TO PUBLISH A GAMEOver the next couple of issues, and morefrequently on developmag.com, I will begiving you a crash course into the four keyelements of publishing a game successfully.My focus will be on digital distribution,building a long-term community andincreasing your profits.

In short, I’m going to help you to take backpublishing control.

There has never been a better time to be agame developer. Now go, make games, andcome back next month to find out more.

Pubishers were notblood-sucking

leeches when they didsomething special. It’s justthat with the arrival of theinternet, what wasdifficult is nowmuch, much easier.

Nicholas Lovell is the authorof How to Publish a Game.A former investment bankerand web entrepreneur, hehas been involved in thegames industry since 1996.He also writes about thebusiness of games at

www.gamesbrief.com and advises a number ofgames and media companies on strategy andself-publishing. www.nicholaslovell.com


TOOLS:IGN’s techdouble act

p68 -69

TUTORIAL:Uncharted2’s special

effectsp72 -74

KEY RELEASE:Stonetrip’s

ShiVa 3Dp66

THE LATEST TOOLS NEWS, TECH UPDATES & TUTORIALS

UNITY FOCUS: The engine’screators on Unity 3, p79

Animation grows up

EPIC DIARIES: HOW UE3 CHANGED TRANSFORMERS P76

Ninja Theory and Codemasters onNaturalMotion’s morpheme tech

64 | AUGUST 2010

Such is the public’s obsession withphotorealism in games, that for yearsthe output of animators has struggled

for recognition. Quite simply, it’s a matter ofthe static image.

Good graphics translate into goodscreenshots, which are a means for highsales; a fact that has made graphic artists thedarlings of publisher, PR and press.Meanwhile, the animator’s craft is one thatonly really shines in motion.

Subsequently, across the industryanimation has become seen as the lessersibling of graphics, and relatively speaking,has been underrepresented by investmentand technology.

SEA CHANGEThankfully, the tide is changing, and anincreasingly sizeable body of middleware ischampioning the plight of the animator. Oneof the companies at the forefront of thatdrive is NaturalMotion, which offers anumber of tools, including the graphically-authorable animation engine Morpheme.

“Animation has grown in importance overthe past few years,” suggests NaturalMotion’sCEO Torsten Reil. “A major reason for this isthat animation quality had fallen behindrendering fidelity. Whilst a lot of developerattention was spent on how to exploit bettergraphics hardware, less was spent on how tomake characters move naturally. This hasresulted in an obvious visual disconnect.”

Part of the problem, argues Reil, is thatbolstered computing power alone won’timprove animation quality. Advancements inauthoring tools and new types of algorithmsare perhaps just as important, which requirea great deal of time and investment.

“In general, the animation problem is notsolved,” declares Reil. “Apart from somenotable exceptions, most game charactersmove awkwardly, which really takes awayfrom the experience. In addition, the oldanimation playback approach fundamentallylimits how interactive and surprising a gamecan be. When these shackles are removed,the game experience moves to a completelynew level, as titles like GTA IV and Red DeadRedemption clearly demonstrate.”

NaturalMotion’s frank recognition of therealities in the animation sector today is

undoubtedly part of its success. In recentmonths the Morpheme engine – whichconsists of a runtime animation engine and apowerful 3D authoring application foranimators – has recently been adopted bytwo more UK studios readying the launch ofa high profile title each.

Ninja Theory has selected the solution forits Alex Garland-penned tactical adventuregame Enslaved, while Codemasters StudiosGuildford is embracing Morpheme for use onnew shooter Bodycount.

It’s perhaps little coincidence that bothstudios also recognise the conundrum facingthe contemporary animation sector.

“I think animation in games overall needsfurther progression to help it stand out,”suggests Daven Coburn, Codemasters’animations supervisor. He says the pointwhen the first round of last-generation sportstitles started to use motion capture properlyas an example of a rare milestone forcharacter movement and realism.

“Since then the progression hasn’t had abig leap forward. Aside from technicaladvances the industry needs to stop thinkingthat it’s just a video game – and thereforeanimations are expected to slip, slide, andpop – and that it won’t matter as long as thegame is fun, but instead understand thatcreating triple-A titles means all areas aredone to a high quality.”

SET IN MOTIONOver in the Ninja Theory camp, ‘chieftechnical ninja’ and company co-founderMike Ball is equally aware that animation as adiscipline suffers from something of acontradiction of recognition.

“I think that generally everyone is aware ofhow important animation is to a project,”states Ball, adding: “However, whilst reviewsmay score things like graphics and gameplaythey don’t specifically rate the animation,which is a shame and a missed opportunity,as I have seen plenty of projects that looktruly gorgeous and then the movement ofthe characters utterly break the illusion.”

However, as a staunch supporter of theachievements of animation in games, Ball isalso quick to point to the fact that computeranimation long ago captured the attention of

Above from top: NinjaTheory’s Mike Ball,NaturalMotion’sTorsten Reil andCodemasters’ DavenCoburn

When animationshackles are

removed, gameexperiences move to acompletely new level, astitles like RedDead Redemptiondemonstrate.

A frame of mindHaving recently signed deals with Codemasters and Ninja Theory, NaturalMotion is leading a new drive to giveanimators the tools and recognition they deserve. However, as Will Freeman discovers, there’s lots of work still to do…

A frame of mind

BUILD | NATURALMOTION


both consumer and industry: “Pixar proved along time ago that taking a simple objectand animating it beautifully well can createan experience that is utterly captivating.”

Having identified Morpheme as the besttool to push the potential of their animators,and to put them on a level with their graphicartists (see ‘Natural Selection’) bothCodemasters Studios Guildford and NinjaTheory began work on their projects, andwere quick to reap the benefits of theirchosen tech.

According to Ball, Morpheme has quiteliterally transformed the production pipelinefor animating characters in Enslaved,providing a common interface for bothanimators and programmers that still givesthose working on lifelike in-game movementa large degree of autonomy.

“For Ninja Theory in particular this hasreduced the time required to developcharacter animation and thus has allowed usto add extra complexity to the movement ofthe characters so that the fluidity andresponse of the characters is even betterthan what we had in our previous projects,”explains Ball.

“It gives the animators one more steptowards the ability to see and affect theanimations in game,” adds Coburn. “This isvery important as there can be periods whenwe can’t get everything in the actual game.

A COOL CUSTOMERTwo more satisfied customers is hugelyimportant to NaturalMotion, simply becausethe quality of development talent behindeach project can act as a showcase for theMorpheme technology. However, the workwith Codemasters and Ninja Theory means

more to Reil than an expanded show reel. From a business development perspective,

Morpheme adoption does a great deal morethan simply show off the capabilities of thetechnology. “We continue to learn a lot fromworking with high-end developers, whichgives us invaluable information for futurefeatures,” says the CEO.

“The deals also reflect a general trend,” headds. “Many of the most capable studios nowlicence advanced technology for core partsof their game.”

Certainly, things are looking up for

NaturalMotion, its clients and the animationsector as a whole, but that doesn’t mean thefuture isn’t free from hurdles.

One challenge NaturalMotion comesacross is the lack of influence of animators onanimation-related decisions. While it’s clearprogrammers need to be involved with howanimation is authored and executed, Reil andhis colleagues have again and again seengames held back by animators not gettingwhat they need to produce the goods.

“Secondly,” confirms Reil, “the complexity

of animation networks has risen dramaticallyover recent years, but information on how tobuild them – both in terms of underlyingassets as well as architecture – is very scarce.We can do a lot better in making thesegeneral guidelines – tips and tricks –available, NaturalMotion included.”

“Video games have often suffered from theproblem of having animations that arecyclical or repeated ad-infinitum,” adds Ball.“We can create variants, however, eventhough we use an excellent animationcompression system, our characters havemore bones to animate than ever and somemory storage is still a big issue for us.Procedural animation systems provide asolution to this.”

The future of animation and the relatedmiddleware is an exciting one, whereprocedural, physics-led and AI basedanimation are set to rise to power.

With high profile clients and a highlyregarded animation engine backed up by itseuphoria and endorphin dynamic motionsynthesis systems, NaturalMotion looks set tocontinue to be a key player as the sector thatis its specialty rapidly accelerates on theheels of animation.

It is the complex nature of that future thatmakes using NaturalMotion’s middleware soimportant, concludes Reil: “Animation techhas become so advanced that is now difficultand expensive to maintain internaltechnology that remains cutting edge.

“We have spent millions of pounds ondeveloping production-proven tools, enginesand algorithms, and our customers benefitfrom this investment and experience.”

Glance over the fruits of NaturalMotion’sclient’s labour and it’s hard to disagree.

The complexity ofanimation

networks has risendramatically over recentyears, but information onhow to build themis very scarce. Wecan do a lot better.

Natural SelectionFor both Codemasters Studios Guildford andNinja Theory, the decision to choose Morphemeas an animation studio was relatively clear cut.

“Whilst the animators have the best tools forcreating the initial animations, the path tointegrate the animations into the game was along and arduous one,” says Mike Ball of thestudio he co-founded, Ninja Theory.

“Once it was actually in the game theanimators then had little control over theanimation blends, timing and animation statechanges – all the things critical to ensuring thatthe in game animation was realistic and moreimportantly fluid.

“NaturalMotion’s Morpheme package offereda solution to this problem by giving theanimators complete control over the animationcontrol logic directly within the editor.”

Over at Codemasters, it was a matter ofselecting software that was both intuitive andsupportive of stronger communication betweencode and animation.

Daven Coburn, Codemasters’ animationssupervisor explains: “Morpheme stood out asmiddleware that would enable the animators tofollow their workflow and pipelines straight intotheir game, maintaining the visual quality of theanimations while gaining some level ofunderstanding of the limitations required tomake them playable.”www.naturalmotion.com

NATURALMOTION | BUILD

66 | AUGUST 2010

BUILD | SOFTWARE

ShiVa 3D

Licence to ThrillSHIVA IS ONE OF several big names in‘little’ engines. Over the past few yearsoffering top flight tech at affordable priceshas become something of an industrytrend. Firms like Unity, Vision Engine andthe Unreal Engine are all claiming part ofthis new empire.

For Belhassen, being a part of this groupis all well and good, but he standsadamantly by what he sees as an importantseperating factor for Stonetrip as well.

“One place where we really stand out isin our licence model,” he says.

“We don’t charge a royalty, and we don’tcharge by the platform. If you have a ShiValicence, you can make as many games asyou want on any of the platforms wesupport. Of course, for Wii and PSP you also need a development licence from first-party, but we do believe we have thebest solution for developers looking tocreate great games on any of the platformswe support.”

And so the engine market continues todiversify and expand, and the future ofgames changes with it. In times like thiscertainty is in short supply, but Stonetrip ingeneral and Belhassen in particular seemfocussed on making sure they are aroundfor a good long while. At this rate, thatnotion is far from outlandish indeed.

Time was, defining a goodengine was an easy task. Allyou had to do was look at the

back of the boxes of the biggestgames available on supermarketshelves. In many ways this rule stillapplies, but today those boxes willonly give you part of the picture.

Defining ‘good’ is hard enoughanyway. Good for what? Cry Engine 3can make things look pretty, butwhat use does a mobile gamesdeveloper need an integratedvegitation and terrain covergeneration system for? Similarly, it’shard to imagine firms like NaughtyDog, Bungie or Quantic Dream everrushing to make heavy use of thelatest iteration of Adobe Flash.

It’s a diverse market with manyneeds, and success can be foundproviding for any and all of them.Shiva 3D has proved a fine exampleof this. The engine can and has builtgames and graphical simulations forthe likes of Windows, Linux, iPhone,Android and WebOS, and beforeversion 1.9 is released this summer aproduct discount has also been givento Mac developers using the engine.

“We don’t yet have native Macsupport, while we know a lot ofdevelopers are using ShiVa 3D withparallels and other emulationsoftware for the Mac,” says StonetripCEO Philip Belhassen.

“We wanted to level out theplaying field so that everyone has thechance to develop with ShiVa.”

And as for the upcoming 1.9iteration, Belhassen is keen to outlinewhat updates are set to appear.

“With the release of ShiVa Editor1.9, we’ll be making a lot of updatesincluding plug-in support for thingslike Fmod, Allegorithmic and PhysX.There will be a unified authoring toolfor all supported platforms; NativeCompilation – the editor can nowconvert Lua to readable C++ code toimprove script performance.”

“We’re also adding the ability tocode in C, C++, Cocoa and Objective-

C so users can code their gamecompletely or partially inside Lua andcustom tags.

“There’s a new Mesh API so themesh structure can be altered byboth Lua and C++ code plug-ins toallow mesh creation anddeformation. The ability to exportjust user generated content will alsofeature, which is useful if you’redeveloping an add-on for a game.”

Even outside of the 1.9 update,Stonetrip is a busy company rightnow. Belhassen is clearly, and manywould say quite rightly, proud of theflurry of activity.

“ShiVa continues to add newplatforms and grow as a company.On top of adding Android, iPad, PalmwebOS, Wii and PSP support over thepast few months, we’ve also recentlyadded industry veteran JohnGoodale to the company to grow ourbusiness development efforts inNorth America and Asia,” theStonetrip CEO enthuses.

Belhassen also believes thatchange is on the way yet again, andthat when it comes, Stonetrip will beready for it.

“There will be more platforms andmore interest in self-publishing. Ithink we’ll also see more studioslooking to diversify projects by goingto six to ten different platforms witha game to spread the costs out, butalso hit different and emerginggamers,” he theorises.

“Casual games and social gameshave been very popular lately and wesee that trend continuing as well. Forengine developers, it’s going to beabout how well they can service theusers of their engine and continuallydeliver upgrades and enhancementsthat make development faster andeasier, while increasing the quality ofthe final product.”

Stonetrip has come far. Those inthe know, know the company.Perhaps the big issue now, forStonetrip as well as its rivals, is howto generate the kind of exposure thebig engines still get from having theirnames on the boxes of today’s bigtitles. Still, with people like Belhassenon board, you get the impressionthey’ll figure it out.

KEYRELEASE

We wanted tolevel out theplaying field

so that everyone hasthe chance todevelop withShiVa.Philip Belhassen, Stonetrip

In three short years, Stonetrip’s ShiVa 3D engine has compiled a ‘made-with’ catalogue of over 8,000 apps, and nowsupports a huge array of platforms. With version 1.9 set for release soon, Stuart Richardson caught up with StonetripCEO Philip Belhasen to chat about walking the straight path to engine success…

If you would like to work with Deep Silver and find out more about any publishing opportunties we can offer you please contact Stuart Chiplin - Head of Publishing

+44(0)8700 [email protected]

a healthy alternative

BUILD | IGN

Top: The new Medal ofHonor, which usedFilePlanet, and (above)IGN Entertainment’ssenior director ofconsumer products JillAlbin

Such is the success of the IGN’sconsumer editorially-lead gamingwebsite, that is easy to let the

company’s other products slip your attention.As a developer, there’s every chance you’ve

heard of the FilePlanet online downloadplatform, and you’ll surely be aware of theGameSpy Technology Suite. But what doesthis duo of products offer, and why shouldgame developers pay them any attention?

To answer that question, let’s first take alook at the FilePlanet platform. For yourcustomers, it’s an easy to use downloadservice that offers a quite staggering 425,000files for download. For developers, it offers farmore than a simple distribution andmarketing channel.

Established in 1999, FilePlanet initiallyprovides a pool of over 35 million registeredusers, with over five million unique visitorshitting the website each month. Add upthose numbers, and the outcome is an sumone to remember; over ten milliondownloads a month.

On top of that rock solid foundation,FilePlanet offers developers a range ofopportunities, from hosting demos, modsand trailers to a comprehensive closed andopen beta service (see Beta It).

Launched in 2003 with Sony OnlineEntertainment’s Planetside, FilePlanet’s beta-ing capabilities have attracted titles like APB,LittleBigPlanet, World of Warcraft and theforthcoming return of Medal of Honor.

There’s also a recently launched hostingand affiliate partnership service fordevelopers and their publishers in theincreasingly popular the free-to-play space,which opens up distribution channels toaudience of feverish consumers. Already theservice has wooed the likes of Sony OnlineEntertainment, EA and Atari.

THE WAIT IS OVER“On the technical side, we have the ability topreload a demo to our customers, whichmeans they can sign up for a demo inadvance and it will load in the backgroundover time, activating instantly the moment

the demo is officially ‘live’,” explains IGNEntertainment’s senior director of consumerproducts Jill Albin.

“This means that FilePlanet customersaren’t waiting to download on release day,but are up and playing immediately. We alsohost patches for games, including patchnotifications and auto-patching, allowing ourusers a one-stop-shop to make sure that theirgames are all up to date.”

Digging deeper below the bonnet ofFilePlanet’s developer-facing end, a wealth ofmore intricate features become apparent,including high-end abilities like secure keydistribution and validation, bug tracking,NDA and EULA management, consumeremail and marketing data collection,segmentation by region for specific tests,distinct consumer selection and affiliate andpartner site participation.

For developers, FilePlanet really is morethan just a new marketplace; it’s a way to test,promote and evaluate your game. There’seven ways to tie pre-orders with beta testingvia IGN’s thriving Direct2Drive digital retailplatform, and the chance to harness themarketing potential of the IGN network ofconsumer sites.

“We’ve been fortunate to have a team ofincredible engineers and operations and ITspecialists dedicated to FilePlanet,” says Albinof the service’s robust reputation. “Theplatform itself has greatly evolved over theyears in response to market needs andfeedback from our userbase.”

There’s more to come too, with theFilePlanet team currently looking at offeringdevelopers the ability to help themselveswith self-service beta management forsmaller-scale beta key distribution,community management and patchingprograms. The doors are even opening toindie devs and publishers keen to self-publish through FilePanet withouthaving to resort to DRM.

TOGETHER AS ONEIGN’s other lead tech takes a form perhapsmore familiar to developers. The GameSpyTechnology suite, built on the mantra that‘sharing experiences makes games more fun’,includes the essential services that bothstudios and players have come to expect asstandard in any connected game.

That means the platform allows developersto add dedicated server and lobby-basedmatchmaking, social networking elementsand messaging, leaderboards, and onlinecommerce, as well as a host of other featuresincluding authentication keys and patching.

And that’s not all, says GameSpyTechnology’s senior product manager SeanFlinn: “It also includes high value services tohelp developers create deeply engagingexperiences that make their games stand out:deep user stats – the ability to track 10s of1000s of data points for millions of players;cloud data storage – for everything from savegames and screenshots to playable content,like game modifications or levels; social push– sharing your experiences with your friendsvia social networks and services; and team-based gaming – the ability to help buildpersistent online communities around teams,guilds and clans.”

The GameSpy tools are also availableacross the PC, console and handheldplatforms via a common API. And, thanks toin-game and web-based hooks, they allow foran enriching portable game experience.

Titles that harness the power of GameSpycan report gameplay stats to players in-gameor on the Web, and can create iPhone apps –or use an iPhone UI Toolkit – to enable

IGN tools upWith FilePlanet and the GameSpy Technology suite, IGN is attracting the attention of increasing numbers ofdevelopers. Will Freeman takes a looks at exactly what the company offers today’s studios...

We provide easy-to-integrate,

compelling online servicesfor your games withoutrequiring you to sacrificeyour independenceor worry.

Sean Flinn, IGN

68 | AUGUST 2010


IGN | BUILD

iPhone-to-in-game messaging. You can evenmaintain and manage your communityacross a given title’s official website.

“We provide easy-to-integrate, compellingonline services for your games withoutrequiring you to sacrifice your independenceor worry about success at scale,” states Flinn,explaining why he believes developersshould embrace GameSpy Technology.“Whatever your studio size, whatever yourbudget, whatever your chosen platform.GameSpy Technology provides a foundationfor heroic success,” he adds.

HELP IS AT HANDGameSpy’s offering is also about more thanjust adding multiplayer and communityfeatures to your games; the team alsoprovides a rather unique consulting serviceto help studios envisage and execute far fromtraditional connected features.

“The GameSpy consulting team’sassistance covers everything from featurelevel customised extensions and add-ons forour core services to entirely new servicedevelopment,” explains Flinn.

“They’re really around to ensure that moreof the brilliant ideas in a game’s designdocument actually make it into the game,” headds. “In a world of tightening budgets andeven tighter delivery schedules, it’s tough fordev teams to shepherd the sum total of theirvision from inception to execution. Eitherthey find themselves lacking manpower orspecialised skill sets that it just doesn’t makesense to hire full-time.”

Ultimately, explains Flinn, that lack ofresource can lead to missing out on scalingout elaborate stats and online competitionfeatures, building unique team managementelements, or creating unique content sharingand collaboration platforms; all areas whereGameSpy can help in its consulting capacity.

GameSpy Technology also endeavours tomake developers’ lives a great deal easierthrough integration with a wide range ofcommon tools. That approach has beenimplemented to negate the need for studioswith an established method or technologicalpreference to invest an excess of time infamiliarising themselves with newtechnology and tools.

“If the online services they want or need touse are already integrated into a commonlyused engine – like Unreal 3 – or into a user-interface solution – like Scaleform – it savesthem time and effort. They can get to the funstuff, or start innovating on what’s alreadythere, that much faster,” suggests Flinn.

Claiming to be the only service provider tooffer its package on every platform,additionally GameSpy Technologystreamlines the process of learning onlineservice APIs for studios looking atmultiformat releases or creating several titlessimultaneously across different platforms. Inshort, the IGN tech delivers a rapidlyflattening learning curve.

Flinn concludes: “Almost a thousand gamesof every shape and size have used GameSpyTechnology to get online, from indie titles toblockbusters like Red Dead Redemption. Wehandle more players for one title than someservice providers handle across all titles. So, ifyou happen to create the iconic iPad game,we’ll make sure that you don’t have to worrythat your user base has suddenly outstrippedyour service provider’s capacity.”

FILEPLANET’S BETA HOSTINGCAPABILITY is perhaps thesingle feature thatdistinguishes it most from rivalonline download platforms.

Defining a true beta as a testof key game functionality withconsumers that reachesbeyond what is possible withbasic internal QA, the FilePlanetteam hopes to offer input andengagement from core earlyadopters that studios can easilyconvert to evangelisers whilefine-tuning their game.

“Over the past decade,FilePlanet has hosted thebiggest betas since weinnovated the concept in 2003with PlanetSide, specialising in

secure file and key distributionand extensive, customisedpromotion to tens to hundredsof thousands of players acrossFilePlanet and the rest of theIGN networks,” explains IGNEntertainment’s senior directorof consumer products Jill Albin.

“We’ve also added cross-platform support for theconsole world. Mostimportantly, we also have awide variety of data collectionand tracking that we candeliver to developer andpublishers both pre- and post-beta that reveals a hugeamount of consumerbehaviours and feedback.”www.fileplanet.com

BETA ITACCORDING TO SEAN FLINN,senior product manager ofIGN’s GameSpy Technology, thefuture of game developmenttech will be defined openness.

“Adopting open standards,sharing gameplay data moreopenly, and embracingcollaboration while rejecting aclosed, proprietary world, is thekey to a productive, prolificdevelopment landscape,”argues Flinn.

IGN conceived its ambitoushopes for a collaborative futurewith nothing more than asimple bit of soul searching.

“A few months ago, we tooka broad look at the gamingspace in general and asked

ourselves: ‘What would gamingbe like today if its technologyand platforms had developedmore like the Web?’ It would beinherently more collaborative,more innovative, moreconducive to sharing – which,according to our bedrock belief,means more fun.”

It’s hard not to warm toFlinn’s vision of the future, andif it becomes a reality,tomorrow’s world is one whereeverybody in the sector is setto reap the benefits.

With firms like IGN already tocommitted to that prospect, itslooking a lot more conceivablethan a well meant pipe dream.www.poweredbygamespy.com

WHO SHARES, WINS

70 | AUGUST 2010

BUILD | PROFILE: TESTOLOGY

Testing time

The Testology teamcosy up before

another day of QA

Neatly symbolising the growingrelevance of the QA andconsultancy sector in the global

games industry – as well as itsexpanding presence within it –Testology took away the trophy in theServices category of the 2010 DevelopAwards held at the Brighton HiltonMetropole hotel last month.

The firm has had something of adefining year or two up to this point. Aswell as having provided services for thelikes of LittleBigPlanet, Fable 2 and DJHero, it has been able to boast anexpansion of its client list and acontinued strong association with theUK tech licensing firm amBX.

An impressive new client has alsoappeared on Testology’s books in theform of Channel 4’s educationdepartment. Being able to branch outinto the educational, social networkingand browser-based markets is anoppourtunity that the firm has gladlyleaped upon, intent on diversifyingexpertise on progressive platforms andonline mediums.

Departmental growth with this kindof targeted expansion was aninevitability for Testology. With the helpof QA manager Justin Amore, thecompany has set up a compliancedepartment that looks to reflect thesuccess achieved since 2006 infunctionality testing.

Having racked up over ten years ofindustry and development experience,Amore joined the ranks at the afterworking with the likes of BullfrogProductions and Sega Europe. Hissubstantial awareness of thecompliance process has seen himperfectly placed as the individual to

oversee the development of thedepartment, ensuring that the level ofquality that Testology look to achieve istranslated into the compliance sector.This preservation of quality wassomething that was seen as verydesirable for the firm when assembling

a compliance team, as Amoreexplained to Develop.

“We have assembled a comlianceteam that has a long, proven trackrecord of getting titles through thesubmission processfirst time, on allplatforms,” he explained.

“Testology has an unparalleledreputation for producing functionaltesting to the highest quality and weaim to maintain this standard in thecomliance department. We have thecapabilities to make a title as compliant

as possible, making us supremelyconfident that our client’s titles willhave a strong chance of passing firsttime. There is no doubt in my mind thatTestology will prove to be the industryleader in compliance testing.”

COMPLY OR DIETestology has, as a firm, structureditself on the idea that complaincetesting is a core component of the QAdevelopmental process and is oftenoverlooked when considering this. It iswidely recognised that titles will oftenfail submissions because of insufficientunderstanding of complainceguidelines and inadequate factoring ofthem into QA schedules. Testology hassought to acknowledge this possibility,within the QA cycle, and now offers aservice that seeks to ensure adequateattention is given.

When referencing the company’scompliance department, MD AndyRobson took the time to outline thenew services available from Testology:“We offer a full and verycomprehensive compliance check onall Sony, Nintendo and Microsoftplatforms,” he explains.

“We can replicate the platformholders testing environment and arewell versed in using all of the requiredtesting tools.”

Further outlining his personal faith inthe new services his company isoffering, Robson outlines an “early-bird” promotional offer that will becoinciding with Testology’s latestexpansion into compliance QA: “Toshow how confident we are thatexcellence is the defining feature of ourcompliance service, we are offering the

first five clients a 25 per cent discount.This is a reduction on an alreadycompetitive rate”.

A MATCH MADE IN HEAVENAs one of the first operational changesto have occured at Testology, the firmhopes that the complaince departmentwill complement the existingfunctional service that has risen toindustry recognition so rapidly.

Amore, who has worked on animpressive number of titles that havepassed with first time submissions,recognises the importance of strongcandidates when a title can fail overjust one bug.

This limited room for error is notsomething Testology shys away from,however. In fact, the department hasmade first time passes a centralobjective in what it refers to as its“pursuit of quality.”

Meticulous attention has also beenfocused on the compliancedepartment’s recuitment process,seeking to ensure that the job wouldbe completed as Robson himself wouldhave done it.

“Our interview process is extremelythorough. The importance ofrecuitment can never be overstatedwhen considering the standards westrive to reach,” Robson states.

Testology sees this as anoppourtunity to combine excellence infunctionality testing with compliance.The fear of re-submission is somethingthat the firm is striving to ensure will begreatly reduced inside a compliancedepartment that works so consistentlytowards first time passes.www.testology.co.uk

We haveassembled a

compliance team thathas a proven trackrecord of getting titlesthrough the submissionprocess first time, on allplatforms. We have theability to make a title ascomplaint aspossible.

Justin Amore, Testology

72 | AUGUST 2010

BUILD | TUTORIAL: UNCHARTED 2

VERY SPECIAL EFFECTS In the second of our extensive extracts from The

Art of Uncharted 2, Develop looks at the makingof the explosive elements in the PS3 action game’sintense and impressive action sequences…

ONE OF THE THINGS we wanted toimprove over Uncharted: Drake’s Fortunewas our use of real-time physics-drivenevents; situations like a character movingthrough an environment where he’sknocking things over, or he’s destroyingcover with the machine guns.

We really wanted to bring more life to theenvironments with things that are dangling,or hanging off of the ceiling, that you canbump into and shoot and see them react inreal-time. We also wanted to increase ouruse of pre-simulated physics so if we had amajor destruction effect like a buildingcollapsing, we’d pre-simulate all that inMaya, bake all that animation down, andthen run that through the game engine. Soyou’d have real-time control of the player,but the building collapsing is a pre-simulated event.

To push things further we also wanted tolayer our real-time physics objects over thepre-simulated events. So in the collapsingbuilding sequence we’ve also got computermonitors and plants that are rolling aroundin real-time reacting to the environment.

To add a third layer on top of that, wealso added physics-driven particles, so wehave sparks that are coming off the lightfixtures, that are particles hitting theground and bouncing. It’s pretty amazingthat it actually works.

To complete the effect you’ve gotenemies that you’re shooting while thebuilding is collapsing, and when they’rekilled they turn into rag-dolls flopping

around the environment. The overall resultof all these effects is to overwhelm theplayer so that they don’t really have time topick it apart and figure out: ‘Hey, that’s pre-simulated, and that’s real-time.’ We just wantthem to get caught up and pulled into thewhole experience. All they know is they’recontrolling Drake and trying to survive.

Our team’s brief was ‘More awesome!How do we make this more awesome thanthe first game?’

From an effects viewpoint ‘Moreawesome!’ equals bigger effects, and pacingthem out so those big effects have moredramatic impact. It also means having moreinteractive stuff in the environment. Thefirst game had very few physics-drivenitems so we definitely wanted to have a lotmore this time around.

Part of our goals from the very beginningwas to have more interactive items, morereal-time physics-driven items, and to doaway with exploding barrels so we’d findmore creative solutions to our gameplayproblems. We had to find more creativeways to do the same tricks that we’vealways been doing.

We ‘gate’ the player off from area, butthat’s packaged up in an awesomeexplosion, and a great dramatic momentfinalised by a funny remark from Drakecommenting on what he just experienced.All those things are sleight-of-handdistractions for the mechanics of what we’retrying to accomplish while moving theplayer from start to finish.

EFFECTSNaughty Dog’s Mike Hatfield - Uncharted 2’s lead technical artist -on the thinking behind the special effects sequences in Uncharted 2

NAUGHTY DOGEFFECTS TEAMDYNAMIC ARTISTSMichael FadolloneEben Cook

PARTICLE ARTISTSKeith GuerretteMike DudleyMichael Gevorkian


WE BROUGHT IN THE Havok physicsengine for Uncharted 2. Before we hadHavok we had our own in-house physicssystem, developed by one of ourprogrammers, which we used for the firstgame. It was great, and it worked well, butwe were limited in how much we could dowith it and how many different features ithad, because it was the work of oneprogrammer.

Havok is supported by a huge company,and has been through several revisions, soit made things easier for our artists to use.The Havok system gave us the tools to dothings like having a light fixture that’shanging from the ceiling that swingsaround in real-time, and can react to theplayer or even gunfire. Havok also gave ussome performance improvements so wewere able to push more physics objectsaround in any given frame.

USING HAVOKIN THE NEPAL WARZONE, Drake is chasedby a Hind attack helicopter. The Hinddestroys the bridge Drake is hanging fromwith machine gun fire, dropping him onto aseries of awnings. He then starts runningand jumping to avoid the incoming roundsspraying the windows. We got all thosewindows blowing out with someconvincing particle effects.

Drake and Chloe make it to a rooftopgarden, so we had a lot of plants in pots andthe great thing was that the plants were setup with real-time Havok physics. Not onlywould they be interactive if the player shotor walked through them, but we could alsogenerate wind that was coming from thehelicopter. As the helicopter moves frompoint to point you can see the direction thatthe wind is coming from by how it affectsthe plants. The plants also blow violentlywhen the helicopter hovers.

HIND ATTACKTHE GAME DESIGNER WILL have an ideaof what they’d like to see in a level, butthey need the co-operation of thebackground artist and the effects artist tomake it happen. The designer has overallresponsibility for establishing the pacingand making sure that the level as a wholeis the experience that they want to deliver.Within that there’s a lot of room forconversation and compromise and that ishow we end up with well-paced games.

When those moments come, they’refantastic. It’s the culmination of a lot ofpeople’s great ideas all mixed together.The most satisfying thing about workingat Naughty Dog is the collaborative effort.It’s not just among artists and designers,but also the programmers. Programmersare more in touch with our technicallimitations than anybody else in the team.Artists are pie-in-the-sky people.

We want to see everything. We wanthigh-res textures, and unlimited polygons.The programmers are tethered to reality,but we try to inspire them to find ways tomake the technology facilitate theseamazing things that we want to do. It’s allcollaborative, it’s all compromise, and thenhopefully in the end we come up withsomething that feels like a win foreverybody involved, including the player.

COLLABORATION

TUTORIAL: UNCHARTED 2 | BUILD

The Art ofUncharted 2 is a272-page bookshowcases theamazing unseen artand ideas thathelped makeUncharted 2: AmongThieves one of themost universally andcritically acclaimedgames ever created.From concept art, tocharacter studies,environment art,character modeling,game art,cinematics, motion-capture, animation,and effects.WWW.BALLISTICPUBLISHING.COM

74 | AUGUST 2010

BUILD | TUTORIAL: UNCHARTED 2

ANYTHING THAT GETS DESTROYEDrequires pretty extensive testing becausewe have to make sure that any real-timeevents happen randomly enough to besatisfying. We also have to make sure thatit happens in a controlled way thatprevents the player from getting stuck.

We blow up a lot of stuff in the game,and then we have to put all that rubblesomewhere. If we’re going to create a bigpile of rubble from something we destroy,we have the testers climb all over thatthing and give us all kinds of bugs aboutwherever they see any collision problems.If any combat has to happen in the vicinityof the debris then it’s especially importantthat we have smooth traversal over thatgeometry. So we do a lot of testing on thepiles of rubble that we create, basically tomake sure that we don’t break the gameand ruin the experience.

RUBBLEIN THE CONVOY LEVEL, we had large rockoutcroppings that the vehicles weredriving between, so if you hit one of thoseoutcroppings they would collapse. If itcollapsed in front of a vehicle, the vehiclewould smash into it, so you could takeguys out that way. The vehiclesthemselves turn into physics-drivenobjects once they get blown up, becausewe never know exactly where they’ll bewhen they get destroyed. We have to beready at any time to switch from theirpredefined animation path to physics-driven behaviour to let them fly into theair and see where they land. That’s part ofthe fun of real-time physics. It’s never thesame result twice, and you never knowwhen you’re going to see something reallyamusing, like sending a jeep full of guysflying off the side of a cliff and seeingthem tumble through the air.

CONVOY

IN THE TRAIN WRECK level there’s aburning tanker car that you can use as avisual beacon through the blizzard to keepyour bearings. As a rule, we keep peopleheaded towards the light. The tankereventually explodes during the battle andsends a big piece of debris flying throughthe environment. The explosion blows acap off the tanker and if that cap happensto hit an enemy, it will kill them. It’llhappen every once in a while, and it’sreally cool to see.

HEAD TOTHE LIGHT

WE DIDN’T HAVE AS many player-initiated large destruction events inUncharted 2, but we did have a lot ofdestructible cover. When hiding behind alow cover wall while the enemy isshooting, you’ll see your cover chippedaway bit by bit‚ eventually taking enoughdamage to collapse.

That gave our designers a tool to pushthe player in the direction they wantedthem to go, and to create time-constraintsfor different combat situations. We lookedat the story beats to decide when weneeded to blow something up, or have abig event like a wall being blown out.

Often, they’d be triggered when Drakegets close, and the blast knocks him off his feet. This takes away control for asecond and forces the player to be passivefor a moment while Drake collects himself. This gives you chance to evaluateyour environment, and decide on yournext move.

BLOWINGTHINGS UP DRAKE’S TRAIN JOURNEY ENDS when he

blows up some gas cylinders and derailsthe whole train, causing a massive trainwreck. There’s a blizzard that’s rising inintensity over the course of the level.When you start there’s just a gentle snowfalling, but over the course of the levelwe’re able to dynamically ramp up theintensity of the blizzard so that by the endyou’re fighting your way through a prettyheavy blizzard with limited visibility.

At one point when you’re climbingthrough these battered train cars, you getup on top of one of them just as anothercar explodes on the hillside next to you.We call this sequence the ‘washingmachine’ because the explosion sendsanother car sliding down the hillsidewhich t-bones the car that Drake isstanding on top of, knocking him backinside the car, which then tumbles like awashing machine towards the edge of acliff.

The camera’s actually inside the car inthis sequence, so you get to see just whenthe impact happens, and we shatter all theglass. The camera is stationary as the cartumbles around. The camera’s inside thecar going with it but the car is tumblingand you see Drake flopping around insidethe car. Drake gets knocked out for a littlewhile at the end of that. That’s just a coolsequence. You’re walking, you’re lookingaround, exploring, trying to figure yourway out and then all of a sudden ‘bam’,there’s a big explosion and a huge amountof noise and this incredibly violent scenethat happens.

BLIZZARD

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

High Moon Studios last worked itsHollywood magic with Unreal Engine3 by introducing Jason Bourne to

gamers with The Bourne Conspiracy. The developer recently shipped another

game based on a blockbuster film franchise.But rather than turning a book-to-filmproperty into a game, they worked withHasbro to add a new chapter to theTransformers story.

The Transformers: War for Cybertron game isset on the Transformers home planet beforethe events seen in the recent ParamountPictures films.

The Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PCversions were created using Unreal Engine 3by a core team of 68 individuals with asupport group that totaled 30.

Matt Tieger, game director at High MoonStudios, said having previously shipped TheBourne Conspiracy game on Unreal was ahuge advantage, as they were able to hit theground running from the first day.

“Knowing the pipeline allowed us to worksmart and fast,” added Tieger. “We were alsoable to iterate on our internal tools for asecond game and leverage the work flowspeed that has granted us, especially on theart side. We wanted to continue to leveragewhat we knew and Unreal Engine 3 is a greatengine for us to work with for the type of titleTransformers: War for Cybertron wouldbecome – a third-person action shooter.”

High Moon used Unreal Kismet for all of itsdesign scripting and utilised Unreal Matinee

sequences for in-game cut scenes andanimation vignettes.

The team also took advantage of the UE3framework for multiplayer and co-op gaming, and the technology helped with thecreation of the game across multipleplatforms as well.

The game environments were built toaccommodate both the hulking Transformersand their hidden vehicles. High Moon workedwith Hasbro and used UE3 to bring thefantastical world of Cybertron to life withdestructible environments.

High Moon also introduced a lot of firstswith the new Transformers game. Players cancreate their own Transformers and take themonline for head-to-head multiplayer combat.Four character classes and an array ofcustomisation options can be used online.

Players can also select from a wide varietyof weapons, and customise their skillsloadout, with the ability to level up charactersand gain new upgrades and attributes in aimpressively deep, genuinely rewardingmultiplayer experience.

“Gamers are in for something special withmultiplayer because the strategies and tacticsused are familiar and at the same timeunique,” said Tieger. “The foundation of theexperience is intuitive controls and gameplay modes, but the tactics changesurprisingly when you can transform into avehicle at a whim.

“The other key aspect of our multiplayer isthat there are several distinct classes to

choose from, each with strengths andweaknesses, as well as character growth asyou level up each class.”

In addition to the online multiplayercombat, High Moon is introducing somesuperb co-operative gameplay elements.Never before in a Transformers game havefans had an oppotunity to play with theirfriends in this way.

The new game offers drop-in and drop-outco-op for the entire campaign game,including all the boss fights.

High Moon Studios has used UE3 toassemble the perfect blend of original actioncombat for one of the most popular brandsout there with Transformers: War forCybertron, allowing fans to explore the homeworld in an all-new interactive adventure.

TRANSFORMERS: WAR FOR CYBERTRONPOWERED BY UNREAL ENGINE 3

upcoming epicattended events:GDC EuropeCologne, GermanyAugust 16th to18th, 2010

Gamescom Cologne, GermanyAugust 18th to 22nd, 2010

GDC Online Austin, USOctober 5th to 8th, 2010

Please email: [email protected] for appointments.

76 | AUGUST 2010

BUILD | EPIC DIARIES

Above: Transformers:War for Cybertronharnessing the powerof Unreal Engine 3

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

develop

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Sponsorship opportunities available via [email protected]

Friday October 8th 2010GET YOUR KIT ON

★ AT LEAST SIX GAMES PER TEAM ★ GOURMET BARBEQUE

★ TEAM AND INDIVIDUAL TROPHY PRESENTATIONS ★

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78 | AUGUST 2010

BUILD | AUDIO

Nicolas Fournel has an impressive 20years’ experience developingcommercial digital audio software. He

started out coding Amiga sample editors inassembler and went on to build audiotechnology for Factor 5 (including theGameCube SDK audio tools), Konami Hawaiiand Electronic Arts, Vancouver before arrivingat his current senior position within SCEE’sCreative Services Group.

So, how does he see the current and futurestate of game audio programming?

He says: “A significant focus for me is audioanalysis to help create smarter tools, improveaudio engines and enhance or even creategameplays,” he says. “For example you cananalyse the spectral content of your assets andexport this information to the game asmetadata. When sounds are triggered ormodified at runtime, you update the spectralmatrix – a representation of the game’s overalloutput in the frequency domain. The audioengine can then make informed decisions:how to dynamically mix the game, to apply (ornot) audio shaders to a sound effect based onits audio properties, and so on.

Perceptual voice management is also madepossible, supplementing voice prioritysystems, to decide whether frequency-wise,it’s appropriate to start a new sound or not. Ifthere are already ten very low frequencysounds playing on the left you might notwant to add more. Remember – audio enginesare deaf. They take decisions that impact thewhole gaming experience without ‘listening’.

“Analysis is also the key to creating higher-level tools. The more your application knowsabout the data you’re manipulating, thebetter because it can assist with creativechoices. Content-aware tools can representyour assets in a meaningful and useful way -for instance, maybe for a debris sound effect

what is important is the distribution of theimpacts in time and the overall envelope. Fora pitched musical instrument it will be theharmonics and the pitch. Audio analysis canbe used to extract all kinds of features fromamplitude to spectral shapes and more.

“As to enhancing gameplay, an examplefrom my own experience would be when Iworked on Lost In Blue, a DS game where theplayer is lost on an island and has to make afire. You use the stylus to rub wood together

onscreen whilst physically blowing into themicrophone. In this case, an envelopefollower can be used to analyse the incomingaudio signal and autocorrelation evaluates ifthe player might just be saying ‘aah’ instead ofactually blowing. It’s a simple example butthere’s no reason you couldn’t have gameplaybased on how you clap your hands, whistle,or hit a resonant object.”

Fournel is convinced that real-timeprocessing methodology will continue todevelop with more content dynamicallyupdated at run-time, believing that talk ofaudio assets will give way to talk of models ofassets. He explains: “Real-time soundgeneration - including voice and sound

effects - is the next big step for game audio.One of the main tasks of a sound designer iscreating dynamic content from static sounds.Usually, this is done with scripting andrandomisation, and by multiplying thenumber of assets – but this is still playingstatic snapshots rather than a truly dynamicmodel. It would be naïve to say thatprocedural audio will replace everythingthough; it won’t make sense for all cases. Butit’s a perfect solution for physics-basedsounds – impacts and contacts for example.”

All well and good though the industry stillfaces a shortage of audio programmers.Moreover, Fournel is concerned about hiringthe right individuals: “Requirements haveevolved significantly. I want to hire audioprogrammers with synthesis, processing andanalysis knowledge. There are enough goodgame programmers who can stream files andcalculate the 3D position of an emitter – nowwe need people passionate about audio whounderstand band-limited oscillators, filterdesign, or the Q-transform – who can inventfresh audio-centric solutions to our problems.

“Hopefully, the industry will attract morepeople into this discipline. There are reallyinteresting technical challenges. For instance,right now I’m looking at analysing library soundeffects to create dynamic models of them sothat for procedural audio, the sound designerdoesn’t have to go to an animal anatomy classto be able to build a bird call model. There’s theopportunity to make really rewarding, smartsolutions, push back boundaries and realiseentirely new ideas.”

The Future Of Game AudioProgramming John Broomhall talks to SCEE’s Creative Services Group’s

principal audio programmer, Nicolas Fournel...

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

Above: Nicolas Fournel,principal audioprogrammer at SCEE’sCreative Services Group

HEARDABOUT

Real-time soundgeneration – voice

and sound – is the next bigstep for game audio. It’d benaïve to say procedural willreplace everything,though.

Nicolas Fournel, SCEE

AUGUST 2010 | 79DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

UNITY FOCUS | BUILD

UNITYFOCUS

Unity 3 is looking to be itscreators biggest release to date– bringing with it source-level

debugging, deferred rendering, best-in-class lightmapping and occlusionculling, and a unified editor. With thelaunch nearly at hand, Thomas Grovéasked members of the Unity team whatfeatures they are most excited about.

Roald Høyer-Hansen,3D ArtistBeast lightmapping, no doubt. Neverhas lighting a scene been so much fun.Great interface and superb integrationwith Unity. It has actually changed theway I work, as I now do all mylightmapping/baking inside Unity, withBeast. I am sure 90 per cent of thegames we’ll see after 3.0 will look 10times as good as the ones seen today.

Charles Hinshaw,Editor DeveloperThere are big features, but I’m reallyenjoying the little scene view tweaksthat improve daily use. Vertexsnapping, look-at rotation, livepreviews for materials, draggingprefabs into the scene live with ray-snapping, interactive light gizmos, andrect selection — get used to them andthen use a 2.x build and see howfrustrating it gets. Unity 3 is going toallow for scenes to be constructedmuch more quickly and accurately.

Aras Pranckevicius,Code ChefPersonally, I’m quite happy with all thebehind the scenes stuff that went into3.0 rendering – surface shaders,seamless shader compilation intoOpenGL ES shading language, the waywe encode deferred lighting buffersand so on.

Obscure features that are awesome:XOR operator support in JavaScript.XOR is cool because:■ It’s exclusive - very exclusive.■ No short circuiting semantics with

this guy.■ It appreciates differences in people,

or at least in operands, which isalmost the same as people.

■ It has an X in it. Everything that hasan X in it is cool. And this one startswith an X.

Samantha Kalman,Senior QA SpecialistI’m most thrilled about the new audiofeatures. Big things like FX filters and

reverb zones to add atmosphere toyour audio are really awesome, butlittle details like reliable synching ofmultiple playing sources aresomething I think are just completely wonderful.

Combined with spectrum analysisyou can do things like procedurallymodify colours, meshes, lighting, oranything else based on audio playback.

Nicolaj Schweitz,Test SpecialistI love the new audio features,especially the possibility to use audioto affect any runtime variable. I can’twait to see what people get out of this.The mod tracker file support mightstart a new epoch in music for games— or should I say a revival of the demo

scene trackers.I am also amazed by the brilliant

new physics features. Cloth is a powerful feature that

along with DSP effects and reverbzones will expand the way our userswill present their game worlds.

I am really happy that we havemanaged to include a lot of details intothe mix, audio preview in the scene,object selector, audio rolloff curves, UIfor the player settings – I could veryeasily go on and on.

It soothes my perfectionist heart tosee that many minor improvements in Unity.Rune Skovbo Johansen,Creative ProgrammerA few things that are exciting to me,and haven’t been mentioned yet:

■ New font back-end and text inputwith IME support should make Unityfar more interesting to developerstargeting Asia and other markets thathave unique fonts.■ A few very typical basic mathfunctions have been added that you’dneed in many games, but which arenot trivial for newbies to come up withon their own: MoveTowards (for floatsand vectors) RotateTowards (forrotations and vectors), and others.■ Lots of small bug fixes all around thatimprove stability and performance. ■ Full debugging capabilities

Joachim Ante,CTOI think Unity has made the transition tobeing a robust level editing tool —developers can place modeled objectsfrom inside Unity as opposed to artistscreating the whole level in maya/max.You could always use Unity in that wayin theory, but there were somedrawbacks why people didn’t do itworkflow-wise and feature-wise whenthey were doing a high-endproduction.

There is a bunch of stuff thatcontributed to it, in order ofimportance:1. Being able to lightmap from withinUnity itself.2. Static batching.3. Being able to place things with thevertex snapping and raycast snapping.4. Occlusion culling so you can getperformance out of big scenes.5. Being able to quickly find assets withthe object picker.6. Being able to search stuff in a superawesome looking way.

Equally important is the unifiededitor; we actually managed to get allplatforms back under one tool again.This is awesome right now, but we alsospent a lot of time making it easier toadd new platforms, so that after 3.0 wecan add new platforms at the speed ofa rocket ship.

To watch video previews of Unity 3’snew features, check outhttp://unity3d.com/3

Unity 3 – What are its developers most proud of?As the release of the next version of Unity draws ever closer, Thomas Grové talks to the tech’s dev teamabout what they have been creating…


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studios

82 | August 2010

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

Dilute Recordings 01483 306 834 www.diluterecordings.comStudio NewsThis month: CrowdStar, NewsCorp and Ogmento

EXPANSION AT CROWDSTAR GAMESTop social game studio Crowdstar has announced theappointment of four new members to its executive team.

Pete Hawley, Mike Ouye, Robert Einspruch and Mark Hulljoin the company that boasts a network of some 50 millioncasual gamers.

“Mike, Pete, Mark, and Robert share the singular vision ofCrowdStar as an agile, creative company gunning to benumber one,” said the firm’s CEO Niren Hiro.

“Their global and entrepreneurial perspective is a perfect match for CrowdStar as wecontinue to scale with great games that delight our users.”

Hawley previously worked for EA as vice president of product development. Beforethat he led product development for Criterion Games, SCEE and Lionhead. He will takeon the role of vice president of product development for Crowdstar.

Hull has been appointed as product marketing and community vice president,following 14 years experience working for firms such as Vivaty, iWin and Yahoo.

Mike Ouye recently worked for rival developer Playdom before joining CrowdStar asmonetisation and merchandising VP.

Einspruch, the new business development director, has over 15 years experience infinance, product management and business development, and has worked for the likesof Apple, Amazon and MumboJumbo.www.crowdstar.com

NEWSCORP HIRES GAMES BOSSNewsCorp’s slow but inevitable move into direct games productioncontinues to gather pace - its digital division has hired a boss for itsnew games unit.

US online service and social network expert Sean Ryan has becomeexec vice president and general manager at NewsCorp Digital Games.

He’s got a raft of experience at online consulting venires includingTAG Strategic and Zeus Research, but also was CEO of virtual avatarfirm Meez, acting CEO of LiveJournal, and board member ofmicrotranscaction platform Live Gamer.

Paidcontent reports that Ryan’s appointment comes in the wake of NewsCorp’spurchasing of small indie social games developer Irata Labs - he will form the newgames division around that studio, and also hire more to join his team.

He will report to IGN president Roy Bahat, but the games production and gameseditorial teams will be kept separate, church and state-style - much in the same wayIGN.com is kept at arm’s length from subsidiary sites Direct2Drive, GameSpy andGameSpy Technologies.www.newscorp.com

OGMENTO ADDS THREEAugmented reality gaming startup Ogmento hasannounced three new hires to its executive team.

Rick Ernst is taking on the role of the company’snew lead game designer, Tim Hernandez joins as its latest director of production, andJames Chung becomes the company’s newest art director.

All three have long experience in the games industry: Ernst at companies includingLooking Glass, Pandemic and Sony Online; Hernandez at EA Mobile’s FutureTechnologies team; and Chung also at EA Mobile, and Infinity Ward.

“We have assembled an amazing team of veterans in the video game industry,” sayspresident and chief creative officer Brian Selzer.

“They all understand the unique opportunity ahead of us, and are dedicated to ourgoal of making innovative AR games a reality.”

Ogmento was founded last year, and is working on AR games for platforms includingiPhone and Android, but also PC and console.

The company raised $3.5 million in Series A funding back in May of this year, and hasalready started on work with clients including the likes of Penguin Publishing, SAP,Orange and PBS.www.ogmento.com

brought to you by…

WWW.DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET AUGUST 2010 | 83

studios

Stainless Games [email protected] www.stainlessgames.com

Slightly Mad Studios +44 (0) 207 252 1843 www.slightlymadstudios.com

SpotlightStudio

EPIC GAMESEpic Games’ studio history has beenone of almost continuous success.Founded as ‘Potomac ComputerSystems’ in 1991 by Tim Sweeney inRockville, Maryland, the firm releasedits popular DOS game creation systemZZT the same year.

Since that time the company hasgone from strength to strength. After arenaming to Epic MegaGames, thestudio released a series of highly-regarded shareware titles like EpicPinball, Jill of the Jungle and One MustFall: 2097. Throughout the ninetees Epicalso began publishing titles for otherstudios, one of which was SafariSoftware, a firm later brought outentirely by Epic MegaGames.

In 1998 the company releasedUnreal, a critically acclaimed FPS thatmade the name of its first UnrealEngine, the propriatoiry tech series thatwent on to become a dominant force inengine licencing for many years.

The following year, Epic MegaGamesbecame Epic Games and moved toCary, North Carolina, from where Unrealbecame a hugely successful gamefranchise over the following decade.Nine seperate titles had been releasedby 2007.

In 2006, Epic released Gears of War,the first part in what has gone on tobecome one of the most populargames of the current consolegeneration. The following year itaquired a majority stake in Polishstudio People Can Fly. Then, in 2008,Epic aquired Chair Entertainment, andwith it developed XBLA title ShadowComplex in 2009.

Epic has today opened divisions inChina, through which it owns Titan

Studios, Korea, and soon will beopening an office in Japan for enginesupport, technology and later on gamedevelopment.

The third part of the widely repectedGears of War trilogy is currently set forrelease in April 2011.

Last month, Epic reached what manyat Develop consider its greatestachievement to date when it picked upthe presigious Best Engine gong at theDevelop Awards in Brighton for thesecond time.

CONTACT:Epic Games Inc.620 Crossroads Blvd,Cary, NC 27518,USA

P: (USA) +1 919 854 0070E: [email protected]: www.epicgames.com

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tools

Emergent Game Technologies has signed six licensing dealsfor casual and downloadable titles to be powered by itsGamebryo engine.

Fire Hose Games has licensed the engine for upcomingdigital download title Sam Bolt Scrappers; Tornado Studios is developing an unnamedtitle for PSN and Xbox Live; Manifest is building a hair styling game called Busy Scissorsand Virtual Air Guitar Company is developing Kung-Fu LIVE for PSN.

Other studios involved in the multiple signings include Perpetual FX, who isdeveloping an unannounced project for PSN and Zivix, building Jam Party: Be the Musicfor PSN, Xbox Live and PC.

“Emergent is pleased that our technologies and flexible licensing model are helpingstudios meet the extremely short production cycles and scaled budgets ofdownloadable titles without compromising the features or gameplay,” said KatieMorgan, Emergent vice president of sales and marketing.

“The diverse and growing list of studios using our tech for digital titles, on allplatforms, illustrates the flexibility and optimized abilities of Gamebryo and LightSpeedfor creating casual and digitally downloadable titles.”www.emergent.net

Italian studio Raylight has made itsXrayunwrap 1.5 toolset, the latest iterationin its automatic UV unwrapping plug-inseries, available for purchase.

Xrayunwrap is designed specifically as aplug-in for 3ds Max, and features aredesigned interface integrated inside uvwunwrap modifier and Live Unwrap, whichRaylight has stated allows users to selectedges and see the results in real time.

Xrayunwrap is available for downloadfrom Raylight’s website, with a discount for users who already own the 1.0 toolset.

“Xrayunwrap comes from continual developments of our internal technology.Throughout this year, we will be actively promoting our technology to existing andaspiring games developers, starting last month with the promotion for our Blueroses3D mobile engine trial for developers working on the Samsung Bada OS,” said RaylightCEO Massi Di Monda.

“Raylight is a founding member of the Italian Videogame Developers association andwe are at the forefront of pushing the Italian development community upwards tocompete globally, and providing access to our tech helps this cause.”

Di Monda was also keen to discuss Raylight’s international intentions.“Raylight is now raising its profile in overseas markets, so it makes sense to offer this

technology to everyone. Xrayunwrap has helped Raylight produce higher qualitygames through shorter production schedules and it is technology of which we’re veryproud,” he said.www.raylightgames.com

Facial animation tech specialistImage Metrics has aquired avatarcreation company CharacterFX.

As part of the deal, theCharacterFX founder John Riggshas joined Image Metrics as director of avatar development.

The CharacterFX offering provides an integrated facial rigging tool-set, which Riggsauthoured for Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max. The solution lets developers createcharacter facial rigs using a proprietary automated weighting transfer systemconceined to rapidly shift a given character’s facial motion, for what promise to behigh-level life-like movements.

Image Metrics has acquired CharacterFX with a view to integrate the tool into itspopular animation suite Faceware.

“It takes a great computer-generated character and a great performance driving it tomake a scene feel real and believable. To create facial animation that features theseelements, Image Metrics has developed a unique technology for capturing the soul ofan actor’s performance, and the addition of the Character-FX technology will massivelyaccelerate our ability to create and animate great character models,” said MichaelStarkenburg, Image Metrics’ CEO.

Riggs brings with him over 15 years as a 3D animator working in the video game,television and film industries.

Image Metrics and CharacterFX have already worked closely together, in acollaborative advertising project for the National College Basketball Championships.www.image-metrics.com

Blitz Games Studios 01926 880000 www.BlitzGamesStudios.com

This month: Emergent, Raylight andImage Metrics

Audio Kinetic www.audiokinetic.comTools News

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tools

AUGUST 2010 | 85

bluegfx 01483 467200 www.bluegfx.com

Dolby 01793 842922 [email protected] Fork Particle 1(925) 417 1785 www.forkparticle.com

86 | August 2010

tools

SpotlightTool

HANSOFT 6.1

Hansoft has released the new 6.1version of its well-regarded projectmanagement tool.

The new version of Hansoft includesextensive support for the leandevelopment technique Kanban, withthe ability to handle multiple parallelswimlanes of workflow.

“Kanban is hot in the developmentcommunity right now and we are proudto introduce, not only the mostextensive and easy to use support forKanban, but also a unique support forKanbans with multiple swimlanes ofworkflow,” said Hansoft chiefdevelopment officer Hans Andersson.

Hansoft 6.1 also features morepowerful release and sprint burndownswith graphical metrics for points andideal days, as well as more extensiveXML export and import of data intoHansoft tech.

“Hansoft 6.1 increases visibility onproject and program progress andmakes forecasting and long termplanning easier,” Andersson continued.

“The improved export and importfunctionality makes migration toHansoft from other tools fast and easy,and you don’t have to worry aboutlosing any data in the move.”

Major new features in Hansoft 6.1include Kanban support in the wallview, the ability to create Kanbans with

multiple parallel swim lanes. Extensiveexport to spreadsheet functionality isalso featured, allowing exports of allinformation from Hansoft to xls. XMLimport and import of data into Hansoftwith full support for custom columnsfeatures for easy migration fromcountless other tools.

Release burndown with workremaining, points or ideal days directlyin the project schedule are also new,alongside sprint burndowns withsupport for points, ideal days andgraphical comparisons in the mainproject view.

CONTACT:Hansoft ABDragarbrunnsgatan 39SE-753 20 UppsalaSweden

P: +46 18 488 10 00E: [email protected]: www.hansoft.se

TECHNOLOGY: PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Havok +1 415 543 4620 www.havok.com

We engineer AI game tools that go far beyond pathfinding.

Give NPCs the brainpower to challenge even the most seasoned gamer and be-come part of our team.

NOW RECRUITING• Application Engineer USA • Application Engineer Asia• Game AI Developer • Senior Developer

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WWW.DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET AUGUST 2010 | 87

services

Services News

Michael Souto has been appointed as businessdevelopment director at localization tooldeveloper LocalizeDirect.

With 15 years game industry experience, tenyears of which spent at Eidos and most recentlyat nDreams, Souto adds a wealth of internal andexternal development production experience tothe LocalizeDirect team.

Perfectly placed to appreciate developer andpublisher issues during the localisation phase, heis able to reinforce and promote LocalizeDirect’saim to streamline and de-stress the process.

Christoffer Nilsson, MD ofLocalizeDirect said: “Whilst atEidos, Michael produced 18titles resulting in 160 localisedreleases. He’s gone throughlocalisation so many times fromboth publisher and developerperspective so instantly knowsthe pain experienced first-hand.This is key. We want clients tounderstand that not only canwe negate the cause oflocalisation problems but wealso understand what theseproblems can do to a teamunder pressure.”

Michael is based in London and is responsible for developing working relationshipswith existing and prospective LocalizeDirect customers and partners. He will also beresponsible for developing strategies for attracting new clients and promoting serviceenhancements across the board.www.localizedirect.com

Web-based animation service Mixamo hasretooled its 3D character tech to enhancecharacter customisation.

Using the tech, developers can go onlineto create fully-rigged characters for theirprojects in as quickly as a few minutes. A fullrange of Mixamo animations can be appliedto each character in real-time, and if thedeveloper likes the result, the model can bebought and downloaded.

Mixamo co-founder Stefano Corazza says the service provides an alternative tomanually rigging characters for different levels of detail or resolutions.

“With our Custom Character Creator suite, users now have a great complement toour character upload and mapping feature,” Corazza added. “And any characterscreated work seamlessly with all of our motions using Mixamo’s automatic, real-timeretargeting system.”

Mixamo says its range of characters are used in numerous capacities, from charactersto NPCs, cut-scenes, animated shorts and even 3D storyboarding. Both ‘standard’ and‘pro’ characters are available, each at different costs and varied levels of detail.www.mixamo.com

This month: LocalizeDirect managementhiring, Mixamo tech retooling

Amiqus www.amiqus.com

Elitest 0121 706 0463 www.elitest.co.uk

services

88 | August 2010

Testology www.testology.co.ukPartnertrans +44 (0) 1273 229030 www.partnertrans.com

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

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courses

Escape Studios has unveiled a new brand identity and a highly sophisticated newwebsite to support its expansion internationally. The makeover reflects Escape Studios’global ambitions, as it prepares to open its first overseas branch in the USA. Meanwhileits new website harnesses the latest social media and collaboration technologies, toensure the Escape Studios learning experience is faithfully reproduced for students ofits distance learning courses.

Escape Studios’ new website boasts an enhanced e-learning engine to supportcloser collaboration between students and tutors. The platform fully integrates withsocial networking channels like Facebook and Twitter, enabling students to collaborateand share information with their peers. The secure e-learning site also encouragesstudents to submit assignments for grading, communicate directly with tutors, andwork together with friends on projects.

Dominic Davenport, CEO at Escape Studios said: “This is an exciting time for EscapeStudios as we look to replicate the success we’ve achieved in the UK globally. Webelieve our new identity and the technical innovations in our online learning systemwill help those wishing to build a career in the CG industry, and set the bar for CGtalent – both in the UK and worldwide.”www.escapestudios.com

Search for a Star2010 winnercollects awardSearch for a Star winner Pieter Bothapicked up his trophy at the DevelopIndustry Excellence Awards inBrighton’s Hilton Metropole hotellast month.

Pieter, who is currently finishinghis degree in Computer GamesDesign and Development at QueensUniversity Belfast, said he was veryhappy to have received the award.

“This feels like a dream cometrue,” he said.

“I feel like I have now been givena proper chance at getting mydream job in the games industry.”www.aswift.com

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

Escape Studios gets a makeover tomatch global ambitions…

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90 | AUGUST 2010

SEPTEMBER 2010Special Focus: Audio SpecialAn in-depth look at the games audio sector, profiling newtechnology, standout titles and the leading experts in the field today

ISSUE OUT (PRINT & ONLINE):September 2nd, 2010

DEADLINE:Editorial: August 19th, 2010Advertising: August 19th, 2010

AUDIO SPECIAL

Copy Deadline: August 19th

LONDON GAMES CONFERENCE

Regional Focus: Asia

Copy Deadline: September 16th

Region Focus: Canada

Copy Deadline: October 15th Copy Deadline: November 19th

RECRUITMENT SPECIAL

Copy Deadline: January 14th

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EDITORIAL enquiries should go through to [email protected], or call him on 01992 535646

To discuss ADVERTISING contact [email protected], or call her on 01992 535647

september 2010 october 2010 november 2010

Coming soon in

OCTOBER 2010

Region Focus: AsiaAsia’s development sector profiled. We turn our attention toChina, Singapore, Korea, Vietnam and more

ISSUE OUT (PRINT & ONLINE):September 30th, 2010

DEADLINE:Editorial: September 16th, 2010Advertising: September 16th, 2010

dec/jan 2010 february 2010

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Documents

Develop - Issue 108 - August 2010