Develop - Issue 109 - September 2010

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

SEPTEMBER 2010 | #109 | £4 / e7 / $13

plus softkinetic • system 3 • testology • tools news & more

WWW.DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

The Oliver Brothers celebrate 20 years at the top with Blitz

TWIN PEAKS

ALSO INSIDEGame Audio:

11-page Focus onmusic and SFX

How to optimise games for online bandwidth

Raw talent on show at Dare to be Digital

ALPHA05 – 11 > dev news from around the globeA first look at ELSPA’s rebranding to UKIE; the build-up to Develop Liverpool andEvolve; UK studios prepare for the Develop Quiz 2010

14 – 21 > opinion and analysisNick Gibson observes the metioric rise of the Chinese games industry; Billy Thomson ponders the ongoing row over the pre-owned market; David Brabenbreaks down the pros and cons of the continuing shift towards online gaming;Allan Murphy looks at the Microsoft Windows Phone 7

BETA18 – 36 > make some noiseThis year’s 11-page Audio Special features a series of in-depth articles assessingthe state of video game audio from SCEA, Creative Assembly, SIDE, Pit Stop, HighScore, Nimrod and many others

38 – 39 > all systems goMark Cale from publisher System 3 explains the right way to work with developers for the benefit of everyone

40 – 41 > who dares winsWith this year’s Dare to be Digital winners poised for BAFTA success, Develop looksat what the competition has achieved so far

44 – 46 > the oliver’s twistCOVER FEATURE: As the company celebrates its 20th anniversary, Philip andAndrew Oliver discuss Blitz Game Studios, its past, present and future

BUILD56 > key release: trinigy’s webvisionTrinigy CEO Felix Roeken explains the latest company tech WebVision

58 – 60 > tutorial: bandwith aidSCEA Vinod Tandon gives invaluable advice about bandwith optimisation

62 > art: mirror’s edgeDuncan Harris from Dead End Thrill looks at the artwork in EA’s freerunning title

CODA82 > forward plannerYour guide to upcoming issues of Develop

ContentsDEVELOP ISSUE 109 SEPTEMBER 2010

73 – 81studios, tools, services and courses

18

38

56 62

40 44

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

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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]

Contributors Ben Board, David Braben,John Broomhall, Rick Gibson,Thomas Grove, Billy Thomson,Mark Rein

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

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

the international monthly forgames programmers, artists,musicians and producers

DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET SEPTEMBER 2010 | 05

Trade bodies’ new tacticsRebranded-ELSPA targets developers as it expands remit in UKIE revamp ● Tiga adds individual memberships

THE ASSOCIATION formerlyknown as ELSPA is expandingits remit to include developers.

Now called UKIE, theorganisation which helpedestablish the PEGI ratings hasrebranded and expanded itsremit to better serve thecontinually evolving nature ofthe games industry.

It unveiled the new logo at aWestminster-based eventearlier this month for selectedpublishers, developers, mediaand politicians.

UKIE plans to become moreappealing to developers givenhuge shifts in the industrywhich have seen a number ofstudios move to self-publishing, and no longer relyon the core audience of

publishers that formed ELSPA’score audience.

Its launching a new websiteand wants to give studios avoice in its role interfacingwith the government and themedia when it comes torepresenting the industry.

“The market is no longerfitting into the demarcation ofpublisher, developer, retailer,distributor – we are no longerin silos, but in a morehomogenous market,” directorgeneral Michael Rawlinsontold Develop.

“We are called upon moreoften than not to speak for theentire industry – but we can’tdo that. Neither tradeassociation says that they areable to represent the wholeindustry because theirmemberships do not

completely represent thegames industry.

He said that in timemembership of UKIE will be“companies that are in thebusiness of making andexploiting interactiveentertainment products”,regardless of their label asdeveloper or publisher.

Rawlinson added: “Thegames industry no longerabout just a single physicalpoint of contact – not justconsoles or PCs, it’s MMOs,browser and mobile as wellnow. It’s a much bigger remitthat we want to cover.”

“This is no longer anexclusive club – it iswelcoming and requiresparticipation to make it whatour members want it to be, socome and join us.”

ADVENTURES IN GAMES DEVELOPMENT: NEWS, VIEWS & MORE

“I personally prefer games tohave a strong central storyline

that keeps me engaged.” Billy Thomson, Ruffian Games, p13

The DevelopQuiz returnsthis month

News, p6-7

Spil Gamespredicts

demise ofFlash

News, p08

Rise of the Chinese Industry

News, p12

by Michael French

Themarket is

no longer fittingdemarcation - weare no longer insilos, but a morehomogenousmarket.

Michael Rawlinson,UKIE

UKIE may be targetingdevelopment firms now, butTiga has switched itsmembership tactics as well– it’s now expanded toinclude individual members.

From the autumn Tiga’sIndividual Membership willoffer those who sign upalone discounts on a rangeof related goods – fromretail items to event tickets,software, hardware andtraining – as well as thechance to join regularnetworking events arrangedfor all members.

The organisation isseeking to ensure that nosingle developer is left outof any possible opportunityto join. It means that UKdevelopment studios thatchoose not to be a Tigamember could soon bestaffing people who havejoined the organisationseparately from their newemployer.

Said Tiga CEO RichardWilson: “Individualmembership will provideaccess to a whole range ofbenefits for members,focusing on three core areas– career development;material benefits; andnetworking opportunities.”

Tiga said it is now seekingto help “both aspiringgames developers andthose already working in theindustry to fulfil their careerambitions”.

TIGA ON THEPROWL FORSOLO MEMBERS

06 | SEPTEMBER 2010

ALPHA | NEWS

THE FATHER OF GTA teaming up with the man who built

Psygnosis and the man who produced Donkey Kong Country –

what could possibly go wrong?

Thousands of words have already been written about the sad

demise of Realtime Worlds last month.

But amongst and the accusations of hubris, corporate

overspending and management over-ambition lies a human

story. And it isn’t pretty – lots of individuals are cruelly asking:

Who is to blame for the studio’s failure?

Is it Dave Jones and the exec team, as suggested by the now-

spurned staff, most of which have been cut adrift without pay?

Was it those very workers, who didn’t manage to convince

their superiors that new game APB wasn’t going to cut it, as

many of them claim they suspected all long?

Or the media, for never asking RTW to properly explain its

concept before the game landed, and thus potentially not

sparking any tweaks that could have saved the game?

Perhaps the investors, who ploughed at least $105m into the

studio and give it delusions of grandeur that led to buying back

publishing rights for $10m, failed investments in a Korean

studio and paying for a vast server operation?

EA? Allegedly it told RTW to release APB ASAP.

Or what about old friend Microsoft? It didn’t argue back when

RTW pushed the Crackdown franchise away, effectively handing

a commercial safety net to a rival team just down the road.

The culprit is all of them. Every step along the way in the

Realtime Worlds story, there were missteps and oversights that

can be apportioned to any of those people, and more. (How

about the rubber-necked recruiters, mindless MPs and

pompous pundits who accelerated the studio’s demise by

dismantling its team and reputation, making it a lost cause?)

Of course, hindsight is a remarkable thing – like many studio

collapses, the faults are unique to the situation. And really, I

don’t think anyone of those groups should be singled out.

You can’t blame the RTW team for being ambitious. Back when

the studio was founded in 2004, the excitement in the room

understandably suggested the team were poised for greatness.

APB and RTW were conceived to go against the ideals and

ambitions of the time – go online, and go without publishers. But

it it took six years to fulfil that aim. By 2010 the world had changed.

So maybe there is a lesson there for everyone: be realistic,

and be quick.

Editorial

Michael [email protected]

Reality Check

THIS MONTH SEES thereturn of the Develop Quiz,which provides a chance toprove that you and yourcolleagues are the brainiestin the business.

Places are already sellingfast at the perennialfavourite on the industryevents calendar.

Presently only five tablesremain for the UKIE andDeep Silver sponsored event,which features a free bar,food, the quiz itself, and thechance to walk away withsome fantastic prizes.

First prize is £2,000advertising credit in Developprint or online, plus a bottleof champagne for each teammember.

Second prize is lunch withthe Develop editors, pluschampers for every teammember. And the team inthird place will get a bottle ofbubbly each.

15 teams are alreadysigned up, namelyRocksteady, Firefly Studios,Peppermint PR, HotGen,Splash Damage, Blitz GameStudios, Spov, UKIE,Wonderland Software,

Aardvark Swift, Deep Silver,Big Head Games, Premier Pr,Lunch PR and Centroid. BigHead Games is also a round

sponsor of the event. For just £199 to enter a

team of five, the DevelopQuiz offers not only theopportunity of showing upyour peers and rivals, but achance to attend a fantasticnetworking gathering and away to let your hair down asa team, in a relaxed, socialenvironment.

The Develop Quiz takesplace on September 29th atthe popular Sway Bar, incentral London’s Holborn,and will see 20 teams of fivecompete for the prizes andprestige.

If you’d like to take part inDevelop’s increasinglypopular battle of the brains,simply [email protected] to bookyour place.

Sponsorship opportunitiesare also available.

For more informationcontact [email protected].

by Will Freeman

TheDevelop

Quiz provides achance to foryou to provethat you andyour colleaguesare the brainiestin thesector.

The DevelopQuiz returnsTime to prove that your team is the brainiest in the industry


NEWS | ALPHA

THE CLOSING MONTHS of2010 are to play host totwo essential sister eventsof the recent DevelopConference in Brighton.

In November Develop inLiverpool will bringtogether a cross section ofthe industry at the formerEuropean Capital ofCulture, while Decemberwill play host to Evolve’sfirst outing as a conferencein it’s own right, takingplace in London.

Develop in Liverpool,which is accepting speakersubmissions until October4th this year, is set to lookat how the changingindustry ecosystem has putan end to the reliablerhythm of consolegeneration cycles.

The event will provideinsight into how studiosand individuals shouldapproach thedevelopments that areevolving the coreplatforms, from motioncontrol to games as aservice and user-generatedcontent, and consider therealities of making games

in the wake of theeconomic crisis. Thespeakers will also turn aneye to how to best harnessthe power and potential ofemerging technology likeKinect and Move.

“Last year’s event waswidely heralded as a greatsuccess so we’re lookingforward to bringing someof that back again this year,”said Andy Lane, head oforganiser Tandem Events.“The Develop Conference,whether it’s in Brighton orLiverpool, always offers aninspiring line-up ofspeakers which guaranteesthat everyone goes home

with a better insight thanwhen they arrived.”

Develop in Liverpooltakes place on November25th, 2010.

Meanwhile Evolve, whichhas previously existed as

one of the most popularelements of the DevelopConference in Brighton,will address theinnovations and platformsspearheading gaming’songoing drive into moremainstream areas ofculture, from the iPad andcasual gaming to 3Ddisplays and smartphones.

Panels and sessions willtackle topics such as

micropayments,advertising and therelentless rise of the socialgaming sector, and askhow game developers canmost effectively allocateresources to adapt to thischanging market, withoutwasting money and timeon casual gaming’s lessfruitful avenues.

“Evolve had proved to bea really popular addition tothe Develop Conferenceand has forged areputation for getting togrips with theopportunities andobstacles that facedevelopers of social, casual,mobile and browser-basedgames,” stated Lane. “It’sright at the forefront ofhow games are developingand with this area of themarket changing rapidly,it’s a natural progression forit to become a twiceannual event with Londonthe obvious choice.”

Evolve will take place inLondon on December 8th,2010.www.develop-conference.com

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The Develop Conference,whether it’s in Brighton or

Liverpool, always offers aninspiring line-up of speakers whichguarantees that everyone goeshome with a better insightthan when they arrived.

Andy Lane, Tandem Events

Develop heads toLiverpool as Evolvedebuts in LondonExcitement builds for the leading European conference and expo for games developers and its emerging technology focused sister-event

Apple’s preferred HTML5standard will inevitablyovertake Flash as the

web game platform of choice,says the boss of a popular webgames portal.

Spil Games CEO Peter Driessensaid Apple CEO Steve Jobs “wasright when he said Flash isn’tworking on mobile systems –that’s what I hear fromdevelopers as well.”

Driessen announced lastmonth that Spil’s group of 47game websites – which togetherdraw in some 130 million usersper month – are now all basedon the HTML5 standard, ensuringthey play on the iPhone and iPadas well as a string of otherdevices.

And as a further sign of intent,Spil is also launching a $50,000contest for developers to makepopular games in HTML5.

“I believe HTML5 will riseabove Flash on mobile,” Driessentold Develop.

“In fact I think in three years

the majority of web games willbe in HTML5. It’s inevitable that itwill become the programmingstandard of the future.”

Driessen confessed that thekey reason why it has movedaway from Flash is because ofApple’s reluctance to incorporateit into its glossy iPhone and iPadmobile devices.

Asked whether there’s adanger in placing faith in anascent format which Applecould easily abandon just asswiftly as it did Flash, Driesseninsisted Adobe's alternative isnot future-proof in any event.

“Flash on PC is great, but it’sthe mobile devices – especiallythose with touch screens –where the standard begins tosuffer. Flash on the Androidoperating system is not veryefficient, it hasn’t been a successso far, and we see futureproblems there.

“I don’t think Apple will backoff from using HTML5; it really isthe next big thing, and I think

Apple will continue to supportuntil it becomes the standard.

“It will become the big gamechanger, and our move to HTML5will be the beginning of arevolution where moredevelopers will move away fromFlash and produce greatcontent.”

It is not known whether theexecutive arm of Apple seesSpil’s move as complementary toits own business priorities.

The internet and mobiledevices giant currently controlsthe flow of iPad and iPhonegames through its own AppStore. Spil’s web portal willremove some of that control.

But Driessen remains positive:“Steve Jobs said he’s a bigsupporter of HTML5, so I thinkhe’ll be happy with our decision.But of course for Apple, thisenables a platform that comesvia the App Store.”

For more information visitwww.spilgames.com

Spil Games says the days are numbered for Adobe Flash given the rise of mobile � $50,000 prize fund opens for web devs…

08 | SEPTEMBER 2010

ALPHA | NEWS & EVENTS

LONDON GAMES CONFERENCENovember 4thBAFTA, Londonwww.develop-online.net

With a theme of ‘Survival And Profit InA Changing Industry’, this year’sLondon Games Conference will focuson shifts in revenues, platforms andvarious distribution methods forgame content.

Over 200 delegates are expected atthe event, which is sponsored by IGNUK, Virgin Gaming, InComm and TheHut. Trade body UKIE has offered itsendorsement and inclusion for theevent within the London GamesFestival this autumn.

Chief analyst Ben Keen will presentan exclusive Screen Digest summaryof current and future revenuedistribution for the games industry.

There will also be big namekeynotes, panel sessions and anumber of workshops.

DEVELOP DIARYDIGITAL 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 8thLondon , Englandwww.develop-online.net

PCR FOOTBALL CHALLENGEOctober 15thLondon , Englandwww.pcr-online.biz

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

LONDON GAMES CONFERENCENovember 4thLondon, Englandwww.develop-online.net

MONTREAL INTERNATIONAL GAMESUMMITNovember 8th to 14thMontreal, Canadasijm.ca/2010

NEON 10November 8th to 14thDundee, Scotlandwww.northeastofnorth.com

UNITE 2010 CONFERENCENovember 10th to 12thOld Montreal, Canadaunity3d.com/unite

GAME CONNECTIONNovember 16th to 18thLyon, Francewww.game-connection.com/events

ME AWARDS 2010November 18thLondon, Englandwww.mobile-ent.biz

september 2010

YOUR COMPLETE GAMES DEVELOPMENTEVENT CALENDAR FOR THE MONTHS AHEAD…

october 2010 november 2010

HTML5 - a new standard for web games?

ALPHA | WORLDVIEW

WorldViewOur monthly digest of global games news…

10 | SEPTEMBER 2010

DEALS

UKTIGA TO LAUNCH SELFPUBLISHING SERVICESTiga has announced a series of services forstudios involved self-publishing titles.

The new services include a dedicated,members-only self-publishing informationarea of the Tiga website and the formation ofa self publishing group of key industryprofessionals meeting quarterly to shareinformation.

“The decision to ramp up our selfpublishing services is born out of theincredible diversity that now exists within theUK interactive sector. Developers now haveaccess to more options in terms of platforms,genres, distribution and funding,” explainedTiga CEO Dr Richard Wilson.

The full service will launch this Autumn.www.tiga.org

FINLAND/USAROVIO TAKES ANGRY BIRDSTO HOLLYWOODRovio is reported to be approachingHollywood studios with a view to make it’siPhone hit Angry Birds into a movie.

According to the source, members of Roviohave been visiting Hollywood studios inrecent weeks, weighing up ancillary offers.

Rovio’s trip the movie industry’s heartlandis based on the fact that guaranteeingsuccess on the iPhone is a hard thing to do.

“It doesn’t make sense [to produce a slateof different games] when you have a hit of

any caliber,” CEO of Rovio Mobile Mikael Hed,told Daily Variety. “When you create brandequity, to do that again would be a difficulttask rather than nurture and build aroundwhat you have.”www.rovio.com

USAIGDA HIRES NEW EXECUTIVEDIRECTORThe International Game DevelopersAssociation (IGDA) has hired Gordon Bellamyas its new acting executive director.

Bellamy has been on the association’sboard of directors since 2009, serving as itschair since March of this year. Brian Robbins isto take over that role in Bellamy’s absence.

“In the past year I have seen first hand theamount of passion, energy and dedicationthat Gordon brings to his work with theIGDA,” said Robbins.

“As acting executive director I amconfident that Gordon will help lead usthrough the changes we as an organizationhave to make to better serve our members,and the industry as a whole.”www.igda.org

CANADAVORTEX COMPETITION CALLSFOR UNDISCOVERED TALENTThe organisers of the Vortex VideogameConference have made a call for aspiringgames makers to enter the developmentcompetition element of the Ontario event.

The Canadian competition is hosted by thefederally incorporated charity McLuhanFestival of the Future, and is taking place thisyear at the new Toronto International FilmFestival Bell Lightbox venue in Toronto.

“We are delighted to partner with DIG as itprovides us with the opportunity to increasethe exposure of emerging entrepreneurs tothe videogame industry throughout Ontario,”said Vortex MD Sari Ruda.

The Vortex competition takes place fromfrom October 2010 to February 2011. Themain conference is to take place in Torontoon three separate days: October 27th 2010,november 9th 2010, and February 9th 2011.The London, Ontario arm of the conferenceoccurs on November 18th 2010.vortexcompetition.com

USADOUBLE FINE SIGNS UP WITHTHQPublisher THQ has signed two of DoubleFine’s upcoming four games, the first beingCostume Quest – a downloadable Halloween-based adventure RPG, set for release on 360and PS3 in October.

Schafer, the Double Fine studio president,revealed last month that his team had beencovertly concepting numerous small digitaltitles whilst developing the EA-publishedBrutal Legend.

And when EA pulled the plug on a BrutalLegend sequel, Schafer and his team pitchedthe four games to various publishers.

DUNDEE RECRUITMENT FRENZYMajor studios from across the UK and Europe have sent recuitmentrepresentitives to Dundee, Scotland, following the recent wave ofredundancies at Realtime Worlds and Cohort Studio.

Crytek, Codemasters, Blitz, Sony, Jagex, Creative Assembly andActivision have all made moves to hire some of the ex-RTW andCohort talent who found themselves out of work following adifficult period for both studios. Recruitment events have beenstaged by some of the studios, while interviews, both casual andformal, have been held by all at various hotels and sites across theScottish city.

“If we can assist in offering new positions to the suitablecandidates with Codemasters then we will be more than happy tohelp at this troubled time,” said Codemasters talent acquisitionmanager Simon Miles.

“We think Realtime Worlds staff will be pleasantly surprised atthe opportunities we can offer them,” said Blitz CEO Philip Oliver.For the latest updates on this story visit www.develop-online.net

3D characteranimation specialistMixamo hassecured a deal thatwill see it offerintegrated supportfor Blender users.

Epiphany hassecured a licensingdeal that will see ituse xaitment’s fiveAI tools to developfantasy RTS FrozenHearth.

Zynga hasannounced it hasacquired ConduitLabs, a Boston-based social gamesdeveloper.

Image Metrics hassigned a deal withmo-cap outfitCentroid that willsee them providean integratedanimation solution.

ZeniMax hasacquired Frenchoutfit ArkaneStudios.

Tools training firmBluegfx has signedan exclusiveEuropean deal withfellow online-basedcompany DigitalTutors.

Trinigy hasannouncedintegrated supportfor Autodesk FBXasset exchange inVision Engine 8.

THQ has licensedGamebryoLightSpeed in amultiplatform deal.

New studioWhiteout haslicensed Crytek’sCryEngine 3 for itsas-yet unspecifiedfirst project.

DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

WORLDVIEW | ALPHA

SEPTEMBER 2010 | 11

SAY WHAT?!

A news report from 1UP states that THQ’ssecond Double Fine game will be a third-person adventure, set for release in 2011.

“We wanted to make a big impression withthese, our first downloadable games ever,”said Schafer.

“So we are coming out swinging with twogreat adventures from two of the mostcreative minds in the company.”

THQ exec Martin Good said that digitaldistribution platforms were “an importantgrowth initiative” for the company.www.doublefine.com

UKREVOLVER HOSTING DUNDEESTART-UPS WORKSHOPRevolver, working in conjunction withInteractive Tayside, is to host a workshop forthose looking to launch their own start upstudios in Dundee.

Designed for developers who have recentlyfound themselves redundant and existingstart-ups, the workshop will bring together anumber of speakers offering advice oncreating a fully-functioning studio.

“The most exciting areas in the gamesmarket are in the independent areas wheresmaller companies are targeting newplatforms and digital distribution channels,”said Brian Baglow, Revolver’s head ofinteractive entertainment.

“Starting a new company can be daunting,so we’ve lined up a range of experts todiscuss the issues a new studio will face.”

Speakers will include representatives fromScottish Enterprise, Blitz and AbertayUniversity.

The workshop is taking place in theScottish Enterprise Dundee offices at 12pmon Tuesday August 31st.revolver-pr.co.uk

USAINSTANTACTION REVEALSNEW MUSIC TITLEInstantAction has revealed its new free-to-play online music-rhythm game Instant Jamat GDC Europe today.

According to InstantAction the game,which is currently available in a FacebookBeta version, is set to be embeddableanywhere online in its final version, and tomake use of the individual music libraries ofconsumers. It will also operate with any USBguitar controllers.

“We created Instant Jam because webelieve people should be able to play alongto any song from any band or any genre theylike, rather than be confined to a handful ofpre-set songs chosen for the game they’replaying,” said InstantAction CEO Louis Castle.

“We also strongly believe that games – likeother forms of entertainment media – shouldbe easier for consumers to discover, try, enjoyand share. Instant Jam embodies all of this.”

The new game will be made available firston the PC, with Mac and Flash versions tofollow afterward.www.instantaction.com

UK ALL-PARTY GAMESGROUP REFORMEDThe All-Party Parliamentary Group for theComputer and Video Games Industry in the UK hasbeen reformed with a new executive committee.

The group, comprised of members of everymajor political party in the UK, was formed lastyear with a remit to “provide a forum to discussbusiness issues affecting video games softwaredevelopers, to develop policies to enhance thesector and to champion an industry thatresponsibly creates content for an audienceranging from children to adults.”

This latest reformation of the group has set outto provide a parliamentary forum to discussindustry issues including Games Tax Relief, skillsand training, and the relationship betweenindustry and universities.

The Group will be co-chaired by the Culture,Media, Olympics and Sport Select CommitteeChair, John Whittingdale OBE MP and the formerLabour Minister, Tom Watson MP.

“I am delighted that the All-Party Group hasbeen reformed with a talented and diverse rangeof parliamentarians,” commented Tiga CEO Dr Richard Wilson.www.publications.parliament.uk

“I am disgusted andangry. It’s hard to

believe that any citizenof our country would

wish to buy such athoroughly un-British

game.”

UK Defence Secretary Liam Fox declareshis distaste for EA’s upcoming Medal of

Honor in no uncertain terms.

“Dr Fox was expressinga personal view andwe understand whysome people might

find the subject matterof the game offensive.”

A spokesperson from the Departmentfor Culture, Media and Sport refuses to

back Fox’s statement.

“The point remainsthat part of this gameallows you to play the

part of the Talibanattacking ISAF troopsin central Helmand.”

A spokesperson for Dr Fox get in withthe last word, and the whole sorry saga

hopefully rumbles to a close.

“I don’t know whyfilms and books set inAfghanistan don’t getflack, yet [games] do.”

EA Games president Frank Gibeau bitesback at Medal of Honor detractors.

FOR THE LATEST NEWS...HEAD TO WWW.DEVELOP-ONLINE.NETOur online resource of news, features, analysis and commentaryposted daly. Available via the web, mobile, RSS and email andnews alert blasts.

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12 | SEPTEMBER 2010

ALPHA | OPINION

This year China is likely to become thethird largest games producer in theworld. A burst of acquisitions of US

games companies by Chinese gamescompanies earlier this year signifies thegrowing confidence and financial strength ofthe Chinese games sector and may herald anew phase in the globalisation of the industry.

This month I’ll analyse what China’s meteoricrise into the top tier of global games territoriesmeans for the Western market.

First, Shanda Games spent $80 millionacquiring Mochi Media in January 2010; thencame The9’s $20 million majority acquisition ofRed 5 Studios in March; and most recentlyPerfect World took a majority stake in RunicGames in May for $8.4 million. They representthe first three transactions in the westerngames market by a sector that barely existedfive years ago.

Mimicking recent global economic trends,Chinese games companies have prosperedover the last few years whilst North Americaand Europe have suffered ever-declining salesand their largest indigenous publishers havestruggled to avoid falling revenues and losses.China’s success has been achieved withoutmaterial sales outside of the Asian continent.This minimal global influence is clearly notgoing to last and these recent US transactionshighlight one potential route into the Western market.

CROWDED HOUSEThe Chinese online games market is expectedto grow around 30 per cent this year to reach$4.6bn and, whilst the rate of growth may slowdown, it still has considerable room for long-term expansion.

China already houses the largest internetuser-base in the world at around 400 million,but this still represents less than a third of thepopulation, in comparison to around 75-85 percent for most Western countries.

It has an increasingly tech literate, wealthyand middle class populace benefiting from abuoyant economy and rampantentrepreneurialism. Both the number but alsothe monthly and lifetime value of Chinesegamers is far from peaking.

From this fertile primordial games markethas arisen hundreds of indigenous gamesventures, around a dozen of which willgenerate over $100 million in sales this year.The largest – online and mobile giant Tencent’s

games business – recorded $300 million insales during its most recent quarter, overtakingTHQ, Take 2 and Ubisoft.

The next two, Netease and Shanda Games,are expected to reach $800 million and $700mmillion turnovers respectively in 2010. Moreimpressive is the fact that almost all of thesecompanies are not only profitable butmassively so. 50 per cent-plus net profitmargins are not unheard of. In addition tothrowing off sizeable amounts of cash, many ofthese businesses have sought to bolster theirbalance sheets with IPOs and additional fundraising. Giant Interactive, a mid-tier publisherwith just $200 million in expected sales in2010, currently has some $700 million in liquidassets – more than the combined cash reservesof THQ, Take 2 and Ubisoft – whilst the top-seven have some $5.2 billion to spend inaggregate. The $108.4 million spent so farwould appear, therefore, a drop in the ocean.There is clearly the capability, but is there theappetite to make more purchases in the West?

AN ACQUIRING TASTEThe answer, for me, is a conditional yes. TheWest represents a huge, mature market whose

player base is considerably more valuable thanthose found in China. However, unless there isa radical change in direction, Chinesecompanies are only going to be interested innetwork games businesses in the West; buyinga traditional games developer or publisherwould result in unwelcome earnings dilution,lumber them with business practices,technologies and infrastructure that are bothalien and largely irrelevant to them.

All three acquisitions this year were ofnetwork games ventures that complement theChinese companies’ businesses.

The Chinese companies will primarily seekto apply their capital and business know-howto Western-developed network games,although we also expect more Chinesepublishers to follow Korean publishers’ leadsand establish North American and Europeanoperations to exploit their existing Chinese-developed IP.

I don’t believe Western expansion will be aninvestment priority for several years given therate at which the Chinese and pan-Asianmarkets are growing. The Chinese hordes areamassing but there will be no invasion just yet.

However, I expect to see sporadic additionalacquisitions being made in the West as theChinese flex their financial muscles, and useopportunistic acquisitions and investments to‘learn’ the Western market and build afoundation for future operations.

In the longer term, the question of whetherChina will become significant investors in theWestern games market is, in my mind, more acase of when, rather than if.

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

Above: Perfect Worldnow owns a majoritystake in Runic Games,creator of Torchlight

COMMENT: BUSINESS

by Nick Gibson, Games Investor Consulting

The Chinese

Way

Chinese gaming andChinese games

companies have prosperedin the last few years whilstNorth America and Europehave suffereddeclining sales.


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

SEPTEMBER 2010 | 13

Afew weeks ago a game developer Iknow kicked off a bit of a debate onFacebook about his annoyance at

people constantly claiming that pre-ownedgames were responsible for killing the games market.

It was his opinion that it was the lack ofreplay value in the games that caused peopleto trade them in rather than the desire tomake some easy money. A few otherdevelopers jumped on his original post withtheir opinions with “it’s the retailers pushingpre-owned on the day of release,” and “DLC isthe only way to keep games alive postrelease,” or “digital downloads are the futureof games,” and even “it’s stories that arekilling games. Games equal toys plus rules.”

I’ve written about my views on the pre-owned market before, so it’s a given that Ibelieve that pre-owned games are in someway having a negative effect on the gamesindustry. But I do agree with his point aboutthe lack of replay value being at the heart ofthe problem.

After all, there would be a far smallernumber of games available in the pre-ownedmarket if more people had a desire tocontinue playing them over an extendedperiod of time. I can also see the merit inmost of the other statements, although Ihave to say that the comment about storieskilling games initially had me riled, but aftergiving it more thought I had to admit that itactually does make a fair bit of sense.

NEVERENDING STORYI personally prefer games to have a strongcentral storyline that keeps me engagedthroughout the course of the game. I feel likeI’ve got value for money when I get toexperience a good story with solid,believable characters and varied sets ofobjectives. The thing is, if I’m completelyhonest, I tend to only play these games onceall the way through and very rarely comeback to them again. So while my favourite,most memorable games tend to be storydriven, they’re not the kind of games I keepcoming back to. And the only reason I nevertrade them in is my distaste for the pre-owned market. I can see why your averagegamer trades in the majority of their gamesrather than holding on to them.

So, which games do I come back tocontinuously? Looking back at the titles that

have eaten most of my time over the years,they tend to be games with fairly simplerules and a set of mechanics that are easy topick up and play. Also they offer a level ofdepth that will see you gain a true mastery ofthe game if you put in the time.

These games generally get better overtime through repeated play, due to the factthat you gain the ability to do more withthem, the more you understand how theywork and the more you practice your newlylearned techniques.

In my own personal experience, thesegames fall into several different genres likeracing, fighting, sports, first-person shooters,turn based strategy – and a few I find difficult to categorise, like Bomberman andBust a Move.

Each of these types of game can be playedalone, but they truly come to life when youplay them with other people. Thecombination of the simple rules, depth ofgameplay and the ability to sit on the samecouch with your mates – where multiplayer isavailable at the same time on the samescreen – and dig them in the ribs as you takethe piss out of them when you win, all addup to a gameplay experience that can, anddoes, change each time you play.

PLAY IT AGAIN SAMYou don’t have the same experience eachtime you play because you’re not playingthrough the same story each time. You’resimply obeying a simple set of rules, aimingfor the same goal and ultimately testing yourskills against your opponent.

I still love story-driven, cinematic triple-Ablockbuster games, but I really hope there are afew developers out there working hard to tryto think about how they can make newinnovative games built on simple rules, with anobvious goal and an intuitive set of controlsand a level of depth that truly rewards replay. Itseems like this approach will be the best way toavoid the game being traded in after a singleplaythrough. I know I’d hold onto it anyway.

Above: Bomberman

Replay

Value

COMMENT: DESIGN

I really hope thatthere are a few

developers out thereworking hard to try to thinkabout how they can makenew innovative games builton simple rules, with anobvious goal andintuitive controls.

by Billy Thomson, Ruffian Games


14 | SEPTEMBER 2010

ALPHA | OPINION

Over the last year or so, I’ve heard allsorts of statements about the possibletransition to an online world, and that

it might be the saviour of our industry. Fourstatements stand out. Much of what is saidsounds a little like wishful thinking, ratherthan being based upon sound fact, but each isworthy of some thought:

1. ‘The online world changes week-by-week – dev cycles need to be measured insmall numbers of weeks to respond’:Perhaps if paraphrased as ‘throw any oldrubbish out there, and only develop furtherthe ideas that gain traction’ we can highlightwhere the problem lies – as on the face of itthis sounds like a good idea – but if you dothat, you expose yourself to a mêlée ofunscrupulous companies simply weighing in,responding slightly more quickly or at leastdividing the market.

We have seen this with the multipleshockingly similar farming games onFacebook, like Farm Town, and the slightlylater FarmVille. One or two may make it, but itis rarely the original creator. This shouldchange as soon as we start to see more highquality games arriving in this space. We sawsomething similar at the very dawn of ourindustry in the early ‘80s – where there wasalso a cavalier attitude to other people’s IP,and successful games were copiedmercilessly, but this changed too.

2. ‘You don’t need a publisher to publishonline. It’s great – developers get the lion’sshare of the money’: These two are oftensaid in virtually the same breath, but thenaivety this shows is pretty surprising. Theroute to market is the key element here. It istrue that services like XBLA, PSN and WiiWarepotentially offer a great deal of freedom, butwe should not ignore the primary publishingfunction – that of bringing a game topotential customers – is being done byMicrosoft, Sony, or Nintendo.

It is true that it does bring a great deal offreedom, and yes a greater share of therevenue, but that too may change. It may gothe route of the Apple App Store or Google’sAndroid Store; where 99c games arecommonplace, or there may be an attempt tomaintain and increase quality. The route tomarket is still the issue, and whoever ownsthe portal is in a strong position.

3. ‘Piracy is easy to combat with onlinegaming. Pre-owned will no longer be aproblem’: Again, this is true, but experienceshows it is unlikely to last. There are quite afew worrying aspects to this. Some of theonline distribution services are already nowdamaged by piracy – look at the recent rulingagainst Apple, suggesting ‘jail-breaking’ theiPhone is legitimate (though I’ll be surprisedif Apple does not appeal, it has nothappened at time of going to press).

That is a very dangerous precedent. Thestandard answer that is brought out is thatonline play is the answer. This is of course,true – look at Warcraft. The downside to thisis the maintenance of back-end servers foreach game; not a problem while the game isnew, but when are the servers and supportturned off? Eventually this time will come,and where are the genuine players left then?And what about single player? The key thingis to make sure common platform functionality– offered by Live and PSN – is used rather

than bespoke servers, but this currentlydoesn’t address the pre-owned issue.

4. ‘Web-based games are a new platform’:This is another misconception. There are manyways to bring a web-based game to market.Flash and Unity for example, but each of theseonly cover a subset of the web, and offer alower performance than many players nowexpect. In effect the web is a collection of new,rapidly-changing platforms which are achallenge to monetise, and like with the mobileworld of the ‘90s, only a few will win out.

All of the above statements have elementsof truth within them, but if we accept them atface value we expose ourselves to hugeproblems, as it is unlikely to pan out asindicated above. To most people, onlineequates to ‘free stuff’, and for many there islittle compunction to downloading games‘that I probably wouldn’t have boughtanyway.’ Online distribution makes this easier,not harder, as it dispenses with the obvioussymbol of collecting bought games. Thesechanges are also big opportunities; we simplyneed to avoid complacency, and co-operate.

As an industry, we have rarely had asustained period of stability. Let’s embrace itas we have before, but do so with our eyesopen, to dodge the mistakes of the past.

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

Warcraft’s onlinestructure offerssomething of ananswer to piracy

As an industry, wehave rarely had a

sustained period ofstability. Let’s embrace it aswe have before, but do sowith our eyes open, tododge the mistakesof the past.

COMMENT: INDUSTRY

by David Braben

Online? Have we thought

what this really means?


DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

OPINION | ALPHA

Allan Murphy has worked in the game industry for over 17 years, and onconsoles since the early ‘90s. He has shipped several titles and worked ona wide variety of engine technology, and currently works for Microsoft inthe Advanced Technology Group (ATG) where he helps developers creategames across a range of Microsoft platforms.

SEPTEMBER 2010 | 15

Ben Board has left his keyboard for amoment, so I thought it’d be a greattime for a confession. Working as an

engineer in Microsoft’s Advanced TechnologyGroup, it became a bit embarrassing that Icouldn’t write a competent Windowsapplication. While learning to do that, Ifigured I should do it with the all new – tome, not the rest of the world – .NETframework and C#. As a console coder ofsome 17 years I regarded this as a necessaryevil, and an unwanted and ideally briefdeparture from the wonderful grinding worldof console optimization in C++, and franklyas far beneath C++ as I can get withouthaving to actually make any hardware.

In common with all good coders, I fearchange. So to be frank, I kind of didn’t wantto learn managed code, and I certainly didn’twant to like managed code. Unfortunately,managed has a lot to like about it; like a gothgradually accepting dark purple as a gatewaydrug to other brighter colours and ultimatelysmiling, I did grow to like it.

It’s just that the .NET framework providesswathes of useful functionality you’dnormally have to at least fiddle with in C++, ifnot outright engineer from scratch, orkludge/steal/copy/borrow. And I grudginglyadmit to not worrying about who owns whatmemory is liberating; my fingers normallystart to shake when I type ‘new’ and I oftenreflexively delete the whole line withoutthinking, while wondering why I feel dirtyand used.

TALKING INTELLISENSEBut what broke me was build times andIntellisense support – I mean, it’d be easy tohate if it wasn’t so bloody helpful. I freelyadmit that at first I thought I had mydependencies all wrong and wasn’t buildingstuff correctly – managed builds areunfeasibly quick.

Having VS insert stubs for methods I’ve justdreamt up on the spot, re-ordering parametersproject wide, resolve missing references forme, suggest parameter sets and names foroverloads, and pop one-line descriptions offunction usage as I type them in is anenormous productivity boost. It’s like trying tohate Twiki off of Buck Rogers – you might wantto, but you just can’t stay mad at the little guy.Sure, you like the idea of Colonel WilmaDeering, but she is quite high maintenance.

Why am I telling you this? Our team hasbeen doing some work with Windows Phone7 and mobile developers recently. WindowsPhone 7 development is managed only in C#,via XNA Game Studio, and supported by theXNA Framework. The word ‘only’, raised a lotof developer eyebrows when we firstpresented it, and I can completelyunderstand why – most phone developmentis native, for a start.

Our experience as developers, racingtowards finishing the first WP7 games, hasbeen those initial fears of nightmarishrewrites and hard graft having been allayed.And most developers have come to likemanaged code, for the reasons above, butalso because the XNA framework provides agreat deal of functionality, sitting on top ofthe .NET Compact Framework. Compact inthis case is relative – the full Windows .NETframework distribution weighs in at 82Mb.We’ve had several reports of swathes ofmobile code being replaced with a couple oflines of C# or calls into XNA frameworkclasses. The framework provides a built-in,easily extensible content export pipeline thathandles sprites, textures, geometry, soundeffects, music, movies and so on. TheWindows Phone 7 flavour of the frameworkincludes support for touch input,accelerometer, geolocation and Xbox LIVE services, too.

PERFORMING MIRACLESPerformance issues have been pleasantlyeasy to tackle, so far. There have been somedifferent performance areas to watch, forsure, but those are well understood and titleshave no problem reaching 30fps. In the main,

monitoring garbage collection is the mostunfamiliar to native programmers; however,this is no difficult task, and also a very smallprice compared to the cost of hand-managing memory in a traditional nativesituation. If you are accustomed to avoidingallocating at all during gameplay, you arealready home and dry.

There’s no avoiding that translatingexisting C++ to C# for WP7 can only beautomated to a certain extent (and thatignores codebase maintenance issues in thelonger term). However, here’s a dangerousidea: C# to C++ is completely automatable.MSIL recompilers can spit out C++ easily.

Above: Windows Phone7 development ismanaged in C#, viaXNA Game Studio

Performance issueshave been pleasantly

easy to tackle. Managedcode has some differentperformance areas towatch, but those are wellunderstood and titles haveno problemsreaching 30fps.

Caught in.NET

COMMENT: OPINION

by Allan Murphy, Microsoft


The Oliverbrothers talk

Blitz spiritp44

Dare to beDigital’s newtalent hunt

p40

Self-publishing

advicep48

DEVELOPMENT FEATURES, INTERVIEWS, ESSAYS & MORE

“We offer something uniquethat other publishers seem

to have forgotten.”Mark Cale, System 3, p38

Audio IndexStory in song p18Sony Computer EntertainmentAmerica looks at the links betweenaudio and narrative in games

Conducting the fight p19The complex and epic orchestralscores for Empire and Napoleon:Total War are laid bare

Sound of the stars p20How famous voices turn up in videogames and who puts them in there

The AV club p23Audio and animation outsourcers PitStop explain just how it went aboutopening a New York studio

Are you local? p24Localisation is a complex process, soHigh Score looks at how to makeaudio localisation easier

The treble alliance p27In frugal times, Nimrod managed toformalise a business partnership toform new service Mana Sound

Sound management p28Managing staff pools to formeffective sound teams, and how thismodel aids business

Scratch the itch p31DJHero was one of the mostmusically accomplished games yetmade, and this was how

Never tear us apart p32FMOD customers told Firelight theywanted to use their tech with UE3,so Firelight made it happen

Dr Livingstone? p35The industry’s other Ian Livingstoneon getting established in audiooutsourcing

Hearing aid p36Papa Sangre will be an audio-onlygame, and Somethin’ Else explainshow it pulled it off

Make Some

NoiseA series of in-depth articles assessing the stateof video game audio and related services in the

industry today, beginning over the page

18 | SEPTEMBER 2010

BETA | AUDIO: NARRATIVE SOUND DESIGN

Below: God of War IIIlet Johnson and histeam explore narrativethrough audio

Our industry loves Hollywood. We’realways borrowing their writers,directors, and actors.

Why? If I had to pick a single reason otherthan Star Power I’d say the qualitystorytelling. While excellent movies start withexcellent stories, games often originate fromgood gameplay instead. But everyone has feltthe impact of a good story; the connectionwith the characters, caring about whathappens to them, getting wrapped up intheir world. So developers go to great lengthsto add story, and on the list go great music,dialogue, and sound effects. In the end themusic might be epic and tied to analgorithmically-derived threat level, thedialogue may be complete and star-studded,and everything makes an awesome sound.

Added together though it still might notbe quite the experience you’d get in a goodmovie mix. Why? Probably the dialogue.

Dealbreaker. But even beyond dialogue Ithink there are things worth mentioning that,if kept in mind, can help us become betterstorytellers through our audio.

ONCE UPON A TIMEA good place to start; being truly aware ofthe story to begin with. Thinking about thenatural rhythm in the narrative, andenhancing it with deliberate pacing andstrong movement between differentemotional states as the characters, settings,and circumstances change. Consciouslypicking the player up and setting them down

somewhere else. Easier said than done ingames, because we’re colouring in a livingpiece of software, imperfect and lumbering,like Frankenstein. It’s not laid out for us as itwould be in a linear medium; a colouringbook waiting for crayons. It takes selight-of-hand and trickery under the hood, and a lotof help from programmers and designers.

What’s required then is tight collaborationbetween sound and music, engineering, art,and design. Working together to build thehouse, rather than being called in to decorateit. An environment like that fosters creativeinput, and is more prepared for thecoordinated, dynamic movement in a gamethat can bring a good story to life.

There is likely more discussion aboutpacing, tone, perspective, mix, characters,conflict, resolution, etcetera. Crosstalk leadsto more ideas, and you might just find soundinspiring art or new mechanics.

A good way of killing that approach cold isbecoming fixated on a requested list ofsounds and music that someone inevitablycreates (including ourselves). A good startingpoint for sure, but the main focus can shift toaddressing the checklist. Reacting to requestsstarts to take priority over proactivestorytelling. The bigger picture fades; theforest becomes a lot of individual trees.

One ‘big picture’ idea that seems amongthe first to go is the idea that literal, one-to-one pairing of sight and sound is not alwaysthe best solution. Everything actually doesn’t

need to make a sound, or sit evenly in themix, or spike musically and predictably witheach new wave of enemies.

FILM SCHOOLIt never fails that just when I’m thinking gamesound has closed the quality and realism gapfor good, I see a movie that blows me away,and am reminded that subjective,interpretive audio can be more provocative,and a lot cooler. How ironic that movies oftendo a better job at getting into the head ofprotagonists, while in video games you get tobe the protagonist? Conveying a story in thatmanner means being keenly aware of theemotional impact of sounds and instruments,and not being afraid to let go of the realitylifeline. It means thinking of what needs to besaid about the character’s experience andwhat is significant to the moment.

Working with ThatGameCompany onFlower and their next game Journey has mademe a better sound designer, because they’vetrained me to be constantly assessingemotional significance. ‘What is this trying tomake me feel? What does it make me feel?’So simple a concept that it’s easy to skateover, but it’s become my secret weapon forextracting all kinds of interesting things fromgames, film, literature, art, and the rest. Itexplains what we find lacking too – why weget bored, fatigued or frustrated bysomething. With Flower, creative directorJenova Chen wanted each level to portray aparticular set of emotions and the wholegame to present a clear three-act structure,all without characters, text, or dialogue. Itforced composer Vincent Diamante and I toweigh the emotional worth of every soundand every note, to figure out how they fit intothe greater arc, and to work closely with therest of the team to make it happen.

The more we craft memorable momentsand impressions into our work, the more theywill resonate with the player. The more wecan string those together into somethingdynamic and meaningful, the less we’ll needHollywood to bail us out.www.worldwidestudios.net/santamonica

Telling a storythrough songSCEA Santa Monica sound designer Steve Johnson,

whose credits appear on titles like the God of Warseries and ThatGameCompany’s Flower, takes a lookat the relationship between narrative and audio andasseses whether these mutually exclusive enterprises

can ever work together seamlessly…

It’s not laid out forus as it would be in a

linear medium; a colouringbook waiting for crayons. Ittakes sleight-of-hand andtrickery under the hood,and a lot of helpfrom programmers.

SEPTEMBER 2010 | 19

AUDIO: ORCHESTRAS | BETA

Below: The CreativeAssembly’s composerRichard Beddow

Above: Periodauthenticity wasessential for thoseconceiving the audiofor the Total War seriesof games

Twelve years after entering the gamesindustry, currently working as theaudio manager for SEGA’s studio The

Creative Assembly, I have directed audio onvarious projects including Total War’s BAFTAwinning and Ivor Novello nominated Empire:Total War and our latest release Napoleon:Total War.

Part of my responsibility is musicproduction, whether written by myself orutilising freelance composers. We arepassionate about the games we produce andthe high quality we want to deliver.

For this reason I pushed to start recordingour scores live – bringing a depth, detail,musicality and level of emotion to the musicthat’s simply unachievable with electronicrenditions alone.

Games and budgets have grown, qualitybars and expectations raised, and composersnow have to develop skills to be able to workwith, and get the most out of, live orchestralrecordings. This article is an insight in to myapproach on our recent productions, whichhave featured live orchestras, sometimes withchoir and solo performances.

CHAMBER MUSICNapoleon’s score was our most ambitious todate. Conceptually I wanted a period musicflavour, exuding 18th Century style, featuringensembles such as full orchestra, chamberstrings, string quartet and choir, giving thegame depth and colour, musically.

This pallet would provide a goodfoundation but the final component wouldbe writing that conveyed characteristics ofthe period. Not since my university days had Istudied the classical composers.

I delved back in to the scores of Mozart,Beethoven and their contemporaries,listening to their music, absorbing theflavours and deciding what felt appropriatefor the game and how to use this to createthe thematic ideas that were woven in to thefabric of the music, personifying Napoleonand gelling the game together.

Recording orchestras is quite an involvedprocess. Furthermore, preparation is crucial

to minimise risk and reduce stress. Some important areas beyondcomposing are:

Researching and picking musicalcontractors / musicians.Recording venues / engineersOrchestratorsConductorsPreparing MIDI filesDirecting the recording sessionProducing and approving final mixes

Over time we’ve gotten used to havingabsolute control over the sculpting andcreating of our music in the electronic realmwith MIDI. However, a live orchestra/choir areliving, breathing organisms that interpret ourmusical intentions via printed instructions onsheet music – things can be interpretedincorrectly, so prepare adequately.

Additionally, as composers we’re able touse musical or production techniques thatmay not translate well to a live performance.These have to be dealt with throughorchestration or by keeping certain elementselectronic to combine with the live recording.

It takes time exploring the professionalrecording orchestras, choirs, contractors andengineers, honing in on the ones to trust withrecording your score, making calls, listeningto demos and obtaining quotes etc.

Once you have settled on your choice, youset the date for the session or sessions and

plan everything leading up to that, taking into account all of your specific projectmilestone dates.

To minimise surprises, I want to know thatwhen we record, it will sound like when Icomposed it. Helping achieve that is anorchestrator who’ll proof check theinstrument parts making any necessaryamendments, but I also create fullyorchestrated MIDI mock-ups using DigitalPerformer for each piece. This serves twopurposes; firstly that there will be less chanceof surprises during the recording andsecondly, if for any reason the recording didnot happen, we’d always have good qualityMIDI versions for backup.

Once finished, MIDI files are produced forthe music, note lengths and timings tidiedand the structure organised to make it easyfor the orchestrator to follow and producethe sheet music.

IT’S ABOUT TIMEDuring the recording, as producer, time iswhere the pressure lies. This is spent pouringover the score, following as the orchestraplays, ensuring what we hear is what iswritten, identifying areas for improvement.

It’s a strange situation; on one hand you’reexcited about hearing your music come alive,on the other mindful of the fact that in eachsession a certain amount of minutes needsrecording and there is high pressure fromthat – especially when trying to extractmaximum quality out of each session.

Of the recent scores I’ve produced, all havebeen recorded with the entire orchestraperforming together. This offers a cohesiverecording more naturally balanced. Howeverif mistakes occur everyone has to re-performuntil correct, thus adding pressure, whilemixing flexibility is also sacrificed.

You can record in instrumental orchestralsections at the expense of intonation andbalance, but gaining ability to fix things on amore detailed level mixes better. Whichoption you choose to select of coursedepends on your own particular project.www.creative-assembly.co.uk

Conductingthe battle

Award winning composer Richard Beddow explains the painstakingprocess behind the creation of the Ivor Novello nominated score

from Empire: Total War and its sequel Napoleon: Total War…

I delved back in tothe scores of

Mozart, Beethoven andtheir contemporaries,listening to their music,absorbing the flavours anddeciding what feltappropriate.

20 | SEPTEMBER 2010

BETA | AUDIO: VOICE TALENT CASTING

Below: Brian Cox atwork with Side

With more developers looking toengage high profile acting talenton video game projects, it’s

important to realise the full benefits, as wellas potential pitfalls, of this delicate process.

Over the years Side has cast high profileactors for a number of titles. Highlights haveincluded Brian Cox as Leader Visari in Killzone(2004), Keeley Hawes as the voice of LaraCroft in Tomb Raider: Legends (2005), StephenFry as the narrator in LittleBigPlanet (2008),John Cleese as The Butler in Fable III (2010)and Sir Patrick Stewart and Robert Carlyle asZobek and Gabriel in Castlevania: Lords ofShadow (2010).

There are a number of key pointsdevelopers must consider to ensure they aretargeting the best actor for the job, have thebest chance of closing the deal and achievethe performance they had hoped for.

It is easy to get swept away with a ‘fantasy’Hollywood cast list for your latest project butprofile actors cost a lot of money so theremust be solid creative and commercialbenefits behind your decisions. The keycreative factor is the performance a profileactor can bring to your specific character andthe key commercial factor is what additionalearly interest having this actor on board cangenerate for your game.

IN GOOD VOICEMost of the time an actor’s performance foryour game is going to be mostly a vocal one,so it is important to think about where theirstrengths lay. If they are best known for theirexpressive eyes or amazing ability to look likewell-known figures they may not be the bestperson for the job.

Thinking ahead to marketing, consider theactor’s recognition factor – are they knownglobally? Will their television or film audience– especially if known for a certain genre, suchas a sci-fi – overlap with potential players? Ofcourse it’s a bonus if they are known for theirpassion for games.

This will all start your casting long list.These are your ideals: the stars you had inmind when creating the character, the person

you watched on screen and thought ‘that’sour hero (or Big Boss)’. It’s also good toconsider actors whose profiles are rising.Side’s casting team puts a lot of time inbuilding relationships with agents, going totheatre, keeping up with film and televisioncareers, even predicting award nominations.

The long list is then cut down to a realisticshort list considering budget, known projectsthe talent is currently involved in, or just areality check: is Tom Cruise actually going tobe interested?

Now it’s time to approach the agents. Don’tunderestimate the importance ofrelationships with agents. Trust is a veryimportant factor, especially if this is their firstgame. There are going to be concerns aboutexposure – could their involvement affecttheir career? Side has had to jump the trusthurdle with countless agencies; helping themunderstand game projects, what the fees are,what the record sessions are like. We’re nowin the enviable position of having agentswhose clients have had such positiveexperiences with us that they are askingabout more opportunities. Whoever isdealing with the agents must understandhow to present the game, and how tomanage the agent’s financial expectations.

With an approach you need to be sure ofyour budget and record date. You can’t justfish around for a high profile’s interest or fee.You offer them a role: if they say yes, they’reon board. You must also have a characterdescription and script ready to send. If you

flounder you lose credibility. Points to coverwhen negotiating a contract should coverrecord and pickup dates and what marketingextras you want (interviews, photos,appearances ). Be specific and detailed. Thevaguer you are, the higher the fee.

Profile talent secured, there are key factorsin ensuring you get the best performancefrom them. Too many times we’ve heardabout ‘diva’ or difficult behaviour. More oftenthan not it is because they’ve walked into anenvironment not conducive to performance.

Don’t spring surprises. There shouldn’t be aphotographer unless photos have beennegotiated. Don’t have too many people atthe session. Everyone may want to meet thetalent they’ve paid for, but there’s an intimacyrequired for good performance.

THE DIRECTOR APPROACHIt is also important to have a professionaldirector at the session. There’s amisconception that experienced actors don’tneed a director. But the director is not thereto tell them how to do their job, they arethere to help them understand the game’sworld and guide them towards theperformance you want, using the languagethe actor understands.

The attention the video game industry isnow getting from other media is clearlyreflected in how much more receptive profileactors and their agents are to working ongames. As games have a greater focus onstory, actors are being provided with moreinteresting characters. But money is still a keyfactor in any decision for a profile actor. Wehave not yet reached a stage where aperformance on a game will enhance a highprofile actor’s CV.

This will change though, especially as moreyoung actors who have grown up with videogames become established. Hopefully it willnot be long before these actors will be willingto take a punt on a new, interesting gameproject for a low fee in the same way theywould appear in a low-budget indie moviewith an exciting new director. Happy casting.www.side.com

The soundof the stars

Side’s Creative Director Andy Emery has heard some bigvoices over the years. Casting and working with big name

actors in video games, and making sure you always find theright voice for the job, is no easy task…

Too many timeswe’ve heard about

‘diva’ or difficult behaviour.More often than not it isbecause they’ve walkedinto an environment notconducive toperformance.

SEPTEMBER 2010 | 23

AUDIO: OUTSOURCING FACILITIES | BETA

Below: A first look at PitStop’s New York studio

Above: Pit StopProductions’ MD JohnSanderson

John Sanderson established Pit StopProductions in 1997 as a ‘one-stop’service for all audio and animation

needs. Over the ensuing years the firm hasexpanded substantially, most recentlyopening a new office in New York.

Despite the rapid expansion, Sandersonwants Pit Stop to remain a focused force inaudio outsourcing. Develop was keen to findout about life in an expanding service firmduring a troubled business era.

What does Pit Stop Productions Do?Pit Stop is an audio and visual creativecompany with its head office based in theNorth of England. Three years ago we tookthe step to buy, design and build a facilitythat could serve as a one-stop shop forclients who required audio and visual creativeservices. Our head office in the UK serves as ahub to the studios we a year later set up inLondon, Paris, Rome, Stuttgart and Malaga.These are primarily for voice work. InFebruary this year we opened up In New YorkCity. We are team of 12 talented individualswho really enjoy what we do.

What is Pit Stop New York working on?We’re currently working on the new Silent Hillwith Vatra and Konami. We have also recentlycompleted a few titles for Sony - Invizimals,The Fight Lights Out and The Shoot.

What do you think has helped Pit Stop tosurvive and flourish since 1997? For Pit Stop it has been our business model.We set out and still hold true to this: strive tooffer the best quality audio at a sensibleprice. It can be a really dangerous line to godown for some publishers and developers,as it may be percieved that if the price islower than another company’s, your qualitymust be inferior.

However, by setting up an infrastructurewhereby you can clearly control your costs,you are able to lower the price. Of courseacting and other such creative talent willalways have its ‘market’ value but I do think,especially in the US, publishers and

developers in some instances are payingthrough the nose. That was another reasonfor setting up in New York. We were paying$1,500 a day for a studio. With the work wehad on, it made sense to have our own place.Not being able to control your studio rentalsmakes it very tough when it comes tokeeping a project within budget.

We have spent a lot ot time on developinggood working relationships with manycompanies. New titles often pose audiocreative opportunities and challenges.Sometimes they work and sometimes theydon’t. If you have like minded clients, whoare prepared to try new ideas out, I think thathelps, as long as they don’t end up paying foryour mistakes.

Later this year we’ll release two homegrown products: The Times Table Adventureand a 3D short movie entitled Boris! The DogThat Hated Christmas.

The reason for us doing this is so we candevelop our in house skills further, and havethe freedom to try out concepts beforeproviding them to clients.

We have multiple revenue streams cominginto the business and from that we haveconsequently strived to build on that eachyear. Building the studio complex in one year,then moving into Europe the next, thenAmerica after that has helped us grow. Wealso make a huge effort not just to makegame audio.

Its a case of one hand washing the otheras we like to think we have a grasp on whatthe target market likes to hear.

Before going into game audio I was writingmusicals and stage shows. Although it maynot appear relevant to games as its largely adifferent market, it taught me the process ofhow to sit someone down for two and halfhours and entertain them.

What are the major issues within videogames audio today? How does Pit Stop getaround them?In terms of composition - there is majorcompetition in terms of ‘named composers’.They are eagerly looking at the gamesindustry and this is hard for even establishedgame composers to compete with.

Pit Stop has not really tried to get aroundthis, more a case of working through it. If apublisher wants a named composer you haveto roll with it. If they want the sound andquality they would expect from such acomposer, you have to have put yourinfrastructure in place. For example, there is agreat deal of film music being recorded in theUK, and there are many talented conductors,arrangers and sound engineers doing thismusic justice. With that in place, a lesser wellknown composer could put to a publishingmarketing team a more compelling case ofwhy they should be using him or her.

There is a huge amount of potential forunique audio production in games that Ibelieve will come from specialist audio teams that really understand the craft ofaudio for games.www.pitstopproductions.co.uk

The AV ClubPit Stop Productions offers integrated audioand visual solutions for developers in need.

MD John Sanderson explains how the firm isexpanding into the States...

There is a hugeamount of potential

for unique audio productionin games that I believe willcome from specialistaudio teams.

John Sanderson, Pit Stop

24 | SEPTEMBER 2010

BETA | AUDIO: LOCALISATION

Below: Over the yearsHugh Edwards hasseen the good and thebad of audiolocalisation

Here at High Score Productions, we areinvolved in lots of different audio-related activities in the gaming

industry – music, sound design, dialogueproduction, midi-authoring, licensing, projectmanagement, etcetera.

However, one area which has grownhugely over the last few years is thelocalisation of dialogue into other languages.

Historically, dialogue localisation hasalways been less than perfect – there arealways exceptions. Hence the modern-daypigeon-call from publishers that theiraudiences are now demanding an everincreasing bar with their localised dialogue.

History also shows us that there is abusiness model which still exists to this daywhich isn’t really suited to localising dialogue,where the developer pays for and managesthe English dialogue and the publisher doesthe FIGS; French, Italian, German and Spanish.This has inherent problems which make it farharder to achieve good quality FIGS dialogue.

This column is aimed at illustrating whatthe publishers and developers can do tobefore we the audio-outsourcers are activelyinvolved.

THE DEAF LEADING THE BLINDFollowing on from Ciaran Walsh’s excellentlecture at Develop ’09, involving audio-outsourcers as early as possible is ultimatelykey. No-one would dream of asking an art-outsourcer to start and complete all the artassets for a game a month before Alpha –audio is just as much a skilled craft and themore time dedicated to it, the better resultswill be achieved.

BREAK THE CYCLEIn general, most voice projects are run by firstrecording the English-language dialogue, andthen localising based on the English audiofiles. As a model, this works well for a varietyof reasons. The problem comes with thehistoric publisher/developer contractedrelationship where inevitably you find adifferent company producing the English asto the FIGS. If your English voice director

doesn’t pay enough attention to the fact thatthe dialogue will be localised later, you aregoing to have issues.

These problems are made much worse ifthere are time-constraints on the dialogue.For example cut-scenes, which of course areall being developed with the Englishdialogue. If you consider that German willhave around 20 to 30 per cent more syllablesthan English, then over long sentences youend up either having to rush the German orhaving over-running sentences – I’ve actuallyseen localised titles where the game effectivelypauses to wait for FIGS dialogue to finish.

Imagine Obi Wan Kenobi giving his famousspeech to Vader and him having to deliver ittwice as quick as he did on the film – it wouldsound ludicrous and you would lose alldramatic emphasis.

This is almost always why FIGS reviewshistorically came back more negative thanthe English – not enough attention was paidto the English recordings in the first place.

A lot of companies do recognise this now,and I estimate that 50 per cent of our voiceprojects are English and FIGS. But that stillleaves fifty per cent.

So try and break the contractual cycle ofthe developer having one language and thepublisher having the rest – fundamentally,the publisher will be left with whatever he isgiven from the English, however good or bad,and then it’s too late. And if you can’t breakthis cycle, why not employ a FIGS director to

sit in on the English recordings? It’s a smallprice to pay – why negate four languages forjust one.www.high-score.co.uk

THE DEVIL’S IN THE DETAILThere are plenty of other things that can gowrong with dialogue production before we,the audio-outsourcers, are called in.

We do this for a living, day-in, day-out. Ifyou want any help/advice in the planningstage – just call us.

Employ a good writer – gone are thedays when Bob from the QA team willsuffice, just because he has a GCSE inEnglish. Enslaved is a prime example of howit should be done.

Streams: If you’re using multiple studiosto develop your game for differentplatforms, make sure you have onededicated audio project managersupervising the audio for all streams. Thissounds obvious, but it’s rarer than youwould imagine.

Translations: Again, obviously essential,but use a reputable company. Educatethem on the game. The number of times Ihave had native voice-actors question lines which are so obviously mis-translatedisn’t funny.

Filenames: Use numerators precedingthe filename structure. E.g., instead of1_Filename.wav, use 000001_Filename.wav– this will save time and effort later.

Furthermore, be sure to steer away fromconcatenated filenames if at all possible.Know your base directory-structures forFIGS in advance.

Great FIGS dialogue isn’t hard to achieve,but everyone in the dev process needs todo their bit to get it right – and the industryhas to stop believing that English is the onlylanguage in the world, just because we allspeak it. Involve us earlier – we can help.

Imagine Obi WanKenobi giving his

famous speech to Vaderand him having to deliver ittwice as quick as he did onthe film – it wouldsound ludicrous

Hugh Edwards. High Score

Are youlocal?

With so much of the mood and point of any story laying within the wayits characters speak, dialogue localisation can be a difficult art to master.

High Score MD Hugh Edwards addresses the best way to get gamecharacters speaking a language everyone can understand…

SEPTEMBER 2010 | 27

AUDIO: VOICE RECORDING | BETA

Above: MauriceSuckling of Mustardhas joined forces withNimrod to form Mana

Why would two established,independent and well reputedservice companies form an alliance,

and in so doing, turn their two companiesnot into one, but, instead, into three? Doesn’tit normally work the other way?

The Mustard Corporation is a company ofwriters and designers with credits on over 30published games, writing the originalscreenplays for, or script editing titles such asBroken Sword: The Director’s Cut, Planet 51, JustCause, and the Driver series. They also haveexperience as voice directors, voiceproducers, casting producers and motioncapture directors, as well as working aswriters and producers in TV, radio and cross-media. To top this off they’ve picked upWriters Guild and BAFTA nominations for NeilRichards’ exemplary writing on the BrokenSword series.

Nimrod Productions are specialists inmusic supervision, recording, mixing,production and creating bespoke musiccompositions for developers. To date, theirextremely varied project list of over 90 titlesincludes the Driver series, Split/Second, Far Cry2, and Killzone 2 as well as picking up threeDevelop Award nominations.

SO, WHY MANA?Both companies had contributed to voicerecording projects in a variety of ways, butneither ever shouldered the full responsibilityto the client. With both companies working atthe service end of the industry, often for thesame developers, it became clear they shareda similar vision of the future and possessedthe ideal fit of complementary skills; forMustard no one knew their way aroundstudio equipment, sound integrity and postproduction better than Nimrod.

For Nimrod, no one knew their way around scripts, casting and working withactors than Mustard.

Maurice Suckling, of Mustard and Manaexplains: “Mustard and Nimrod fell naturallyinto a union – we had shared experiences, ashared trajectory and were looking in thesame direction with each of us missing a

specific jigsaw piece. On top of that I’veknown and enjoyed working with Marc andRich in some capacity for such a long time itall came very easily. The chances are, the kindof people any prospective alliance needsaren’t just out there, but both the partiesprobably know each other already. We beganas partners – working in our respective areas.But we noticed on Pokémon Battle Revolution,and then again on Wii Fit, that Nintendoneeded reassurance and explanation whenseeing emails predominantly from Mustardaddresses at the start of the project as wecast and handled pre-production, and thenpredominantly from Nimrod addresses as theproject phased into the delivery of the postproduced files.”

Marc Canham, of Nimrod and Mana picksup: “There was no question of us abandoningour respective specialisms and businesses,but we did start to wonder if a clear identityfor our joint voice-recording work wouldmake things clearer for clients; besides, bythat stage Mustard and Nimrod were socomfortable working together it felt like anatural evolution to formalise ourpartnership. If it works it works, and the levelof trust and cohesion that comes from aformal arrangement isn’t just a boost toeveryone, it helps define your identity andgoals – the whole enterprise gets anadditional kick out that.”

Both Nimrod and Mustard see realadvantages in being three, rather than one.

“Mustard and Nimrod still absolutely existindependently of each other”, says Sucking.“Nimrod still compose and licence music, andMustard still write and design. But nowthere’s Mana as well which we jointly own,and, with some shared key personnel, Manafocuses solely on producing high-qualityvoice recordings.

“The identity of each company is distinctand we’re very happy to provide a specialistservice in any one of these areas – separately.But should a client have a need for music,script and voice recording to all beoutsourced and they see benefits in bringing it all under one umbrella we canrespond accordingly.”

“Mustard, Nimrod and Mana all bring intrusted support staff as appropriate,” addsCanham. “But the key personnel do the heavylifting, and make the key creative andorganisational decisions – we don’t work likean agency subcontracting the work out. Ifyou hire us you get us.”

All of which means Mustard and Nimrodcan specialise across the considerablebreadth of their respective and over-lappingareas, while Mana’s clients benefit from aunique voice recording service wielding threecore strengths.

Firstly, Mana offers a its customers a deepunderstanding of the high audio standardsrequired within the discipline, thanks to theheritage of its founding organisation.

Secondly, it can leverage practicalknowledge of game story, character,dialogue, narrative and design.

Finally, Mana promises the deliver extremeflexibility when answering a to any givenclient’s particular needs.

Mana is the child of an intriguing anddistinct alliance. In a changeable anddemanding industry, games companies ofany stripe need to consistantly produce top-tier results, regardless of the project –fusing the knowledge and experience of twodistinct companies has allowed the creationof an impressive third, which has alreadyproven itself capable of doing just that. www.manasound.com

In an age of media convergence, a knowledge of thebest way to handle projects across multiple

businesses is an worthy asset. Nimrod Productionsdetails its union with a script writing team to form

Mana Sound…

Mustard andNimrod fell

naturally into a union – wehad shared experiences, ashared trajectory and were looking in thesame direction.

Maurice Suckling, Mustard

The trebleALLIANCE

28 | SEPTEMBER 2010

BETA | AUDIO: MANAGEMENT

Below: An open-minded attitude tofreelancers has been agreat help to theBodycount project

Above: Stephen Rootdeploys highlyspecialised audioteams across theCodemasters portfolio

As Codemasters’ director of audio,Stephen Root is faced with themammoth task of managing the

teams currently working on nine projectsacross three studios. To that end, he and hiscolleagues have developed a flexible audioresource allocation model that promises toprovide the ideal staff for each job. Developspoke with Root to learn more.

Develop: What kind of ecosystem doesCodemasters have in place to make sureeach project and team gets the right audiotalent and tech?We have a centralised audio department, andat the head of that, with my leads and audiodirectors, I assign resource to the givenprojects for certain periods of time. I have tobalance my resource pool with the need toramp up and ramp down on projects, anddecide carefully who is needed when.

The way we have set it up, and this is reallyimportant, is that we can find the rightspecialists among the audio designers. Wehave highly specialised people we can applyto a project that exactly needs what theyoffer. For example, on the racing side, I have aguy who just works on engine sounds. He is areal specialist in that field.

To get the most out of teams, and the bestaudio, having these specialists is reallyessential. So we’ll have people that areincredible at front end and flow, or cutscenes,dialogue or atmospherics. The wholeapproach reaps massive awards.

So you have a team of specialists you canassemble highly tailoured teams from, togive projects just what they need?Exactly. Pardon the analogy, but it’s a littlelike a Michelin-starred chef. They wouldn’tjust pop down to Tesco. They’d pick the bestbutcher, the best grocer, and pick the best ofwhat you need.

What I’ve tried to do is employ peoplespecifically for their specific skill sets, ratherthan use all-rounders. That way we get morefrom their different areas. Having a team youcan deploy in this way is key to gettingbigger successes out of each project.

What makes it all the more important isthat we have a range of styles of product. Ourmethod caters for that diversity.

Did you conceive this dynamic team modelon day one, or has it evolved over time?It’s been over time, with a lot of conversationswith my audio managers and key leads. We’vejust had to take a good look at what reallyworks, where the bottle necks and projectspikes appear, and ask how we best do it andhow do we overcome things. You alwaysneed more resource, but having a good poolmeans that I can always work out the bestway – with the calendar – to pool them atdifferent times.

This way of doing things also means thatyou can adapt to the process of a game’sdevelopment. Maybe the flow and front endwont come until three-quarters of the way

through a project’s cycle. Wel,l having small‘attack teams’ means I can anticipate exactlythat and get the best there are there whenthey’re needed.

A flexible approach also gives the bestresults because it keeps people fresh. It keepsthem on the move, and broadens theirexperience of their discipline.

Sometimes people are on projects fromstart to end of course, which can be a reallygood thing, but it’s great when people canmove around.

How does using tech fit into your strategy?Is your approach largely proprietary or doyou opt to use external tools?At Codemasters we have our own technology– EGO – which covers graphics, audio andmany other disciplines. It comes with animplementation toolset, and the engine itself.It’s always evolving. We have three dedicatedaudio programmers on EGO all of the time,who are updating tools and runtimes andmoving stuff forward into areas like speechand surround.

However, we’re not averse to middleware.We keep an eye on how some of it is comingon. For example Wwise is really gaining somesteam, and it’s very interesting to see. In thefuture we might look at other solutions, ifthey partnered well with what we weredoing. Again, it’s about flexibility.

Does that flexible approach go as far asbeing open-minded to using freelancersand outsourcing work?Well, I’m hiring heavily at the moment, andbringing people in, and we’re also workingwith freelancers on occaision.

For example, I have a brilliant freelancer oncontract for the Bodycount project down inGuildford. If there were more really goodfreelancers around, I’d be open-minded tobringing on more. It would be great to getthem in, and bringing on contractors cancertainly fit with our way of assemblingspecialised teams. If it fits, and makes for abetter product, of course.www.codemasters.co.uk

SoundManagementNever mind conducting an orchestra. Stephen Root

has to assign audio talent to numerous projectsacross three prolific studios. Will Freeman asks him

how he does it…

A flexible approachalso gives the best

results because it keepspeople fresh. It keeps themon the move, and broadenstheir experience oftheir discipline.

Stephen Root, Codemasters

SEPTEMBER 2010 | 31

AUDIO: RHYTHM ACTION DEVELOPMENT | BETA

Below: Members of theFreeStyleGames teamdeveloping DJ Hero

Above: Dan Neil, headof music atFreeSytleGames

The creation of DJ Hero has been ahistory of mixing together theseemingly unrelated worlds of DJing

and video game development. This processhas generally produced a harmonious blend,but sometimes the familiar thud of tworecords slipping out of sync. After manybroken record needles, scratched vinyl andlate nights fuelled by energy drinks, wereckon we’ve cracked it. Here’s a quick rewindthrough the history of how the music for DJHero came about.

SWITCHING ON THE TURNTABLEDJing and Hip-Hop has always been apassion for FreeStyleGames and so after the2006 release of our break-dancing game, B-Boy, a DJing title seemed like the logical nextstep. There had been pure button-tapping,rhythm-action games like Beatmania before,but we wanted to make a different game. Wewanted to capture the heart of what DJing isabout; cross-fading, scratching, remixing andDSP effects. A game where just like a DJ, theplayer gets to manipulate and play aroundwith classic records.

We’ve also always been crazy about mash-ups, and they seemed like a great basis for avideo game, with their balance of the familiarand fresh, and the fun in blending tworecords together – the music and vocalsplaying off each other to create new genres,melodies and lyrics.

However, simple mash-ups weren’t quiteright for a DJing game. A smooth blend oftwo songs doesn’t include the DJperformance element required to provide theexciting interaction of a game, so we neededto build a team who could create the action-filled music the title would need.

PUT THE NEEDLE ON THE RECORDWe pulled together the best talent from thevarious musical worlds that we wanted tocollide. We brought together mash-up DJs,DMC scratch champions and glitch-editremixers with the aim of blending scratching,live DJ techniques and mash-up musicalaesthetics. We put them in a studio in the

east end of London for a few months, andwatched what happened.

Exciting mixes with the musical selection andsensibilities of mash-ups started to emerge. Thiswas a sonic style and reproduction of DJing thatwe were able to build game mechanics around– an interface, and a controller.

Music was driving the shape of the game.

MIXES ARE GAMEPLAYOur next key breakthrough was anunderstanding of the extent to which we’dhave to learn to craft the mixes to meet the

needs of the game. When Metallica wroteEnter Sandman, the way that the guitar riffmight look if translated into dots sliding downa TV screen wouldn’t have been a majorconsideration. The game-play in Guitar Hero isdriven by the development team choosingsongs with great guitar lines, and then findinga compelling visual notation for them.

The game-play in DJ Hero is the scratching,the edits, the samples and the interaction ofthe two records. Every game-play action hadto be first crafted musically, and so the DJsweren’t just creating mash-ups full of cleveraudio manipulations, they were entering intothe world of video game level design. Now thetwo records slip a little out of time.

Making mixes that feel completelyconnected to the player, are at the correctdifficulty for the career mode progression,have fun and unique game-play withoutcompromising the flow of the music, and aremusically strong enough to be approved by

artists who have never approved a mash-upbefore, proved difficult. Very, very difficult.

The mixes were being created and notatedin two different worlds. DJs made the mixesand game developers notated them andintegrated them into the game.Communicating and balancing the complexrequirements of both the gameplay andmusic at times seemed impossible.

The breakthrough came when weunderstood and embraced the dual nature ofthe DJ’s role. With lots of help from the designteam, the DJs took on this role, and learned tonotate their own mixes for the game. Themusic informs the gameplay, but crucially itwas able to feed back into the music creationprocess in real-time, so that the music could beshaped to play as we wanted. We’d closed theloop between music and gameplay. The edits,scratches and musical choices were now beingheard in real-time, but also played in-real timeon the controller, and the music morphed andtwisted by the DJs to make the best game.

BUILDING A DJ ARMYWith the support of Activision, we were ableto build a dedicated facility in London purelyfor the creation of DJ Hero mixes.

Internally, and with our wider network ofexternal music producers, DJ Hero now pulls inmusic from over 50 contributors, fromunknown but hugely talented producers, rightthrough to massive names like Tiësto & DJShadow. All of the DJs working on DJ Hero hadto grasp the duality of their role, using theirown musical skills to explore new ways ofdriving the player interactions and game-play.

PLAYING OUTWe were amazed by the reaction to the musicof DJ Hero. Winning the Develop Award forAudio Accomplishment, the Spike award forBest Soundtrack, and being BAFTA nominatedfor Use Of Audio was a massive honour.

We’ve just completed our second albumwith DJ Hero 2, and can’t wait to see thereaction to the mixes that the DJ team havecooked up this time.www.freestylegames.com

Scratchingthe itch

Getting the world of turntables, bpm andscratching condensed into a fun and exciting

social gaming experience was no easy task, butFreeStyleGames managed it with aplomb in DJHero. The studio’s head of music Dan Neil talks

to Develop about managing the mix…

Simple mash-upsweren’t right for a

DJ game. A smooth blendof two songs doesn’t includethe DJ performance elementrequired to provide theexciting interactionof a game.

32 | SEPTEMBER 2010

BETA | AUDIO: TOOLS

Below: FMOD in action

At GameSoundCon last year we heardthe message that a lot of people areusing Unreal Engine 3 and a lot of

people are using FMOD Designer – but thatthey don’t work together. We listened tolong-time FMOD users who were strugglingwith Unreal’s built-in audio system andwishing that they could use FMOD Designeron their Unreal projects so they could do allthe cool things that FMOD enables.

So, we set about making an integrationbetween FMOD and Unreal. Essentially, thatmeans we’ve written a bunch of code thatyou can download that makes Unreal useFMOD as its sound engine. This providessome really cool features that then allow youto leverage the power of FMOD from withinyour Unreal game.

HORSE POWERThe power of FMOD stems largely from itslow-level FMOD Ex engine. This is the heart ofFMOD; the thing that’s hidden away behindthe scenes in so many games these days. Thefirst thing we did was replace Unreal’s built-inaudio engine with FMOD Ex. We didn’t makeFMOD run side-by-side with Unreal’s built-inaudio engine – we just completely replacedit. This means that you can still use Unreal’s‘sound cues’ etc. but, under the hood, it’llactually be using FMOD.

The other major part of FMOD is the EventSystem. This is what plays back the eventsthat you create with the FMOD Designer tool.It is built on top of FMOD Ex. We added the

code to Unreal so that you are able to workwith the FMOD Event System usingUnrealScript. We exposed all of the featuresof FMOD’s events, event parameters,categories and interactive music cues so thatthey can be used by UnrealScript and itsprogrammers can write UnrealScript to workwell with all these things. That leaves thecoders feeling happy, but what about thesound designers?

The next step was to hook FMOD into theUnreal editor so you could use andmanipulate FMOD objects without having towrite any code at all. We covered everythingfrom actors to visual scripting, allowingcomplete control of the playback of FMODgenerated content.

One limitation of Unreal’s built-in audioengine is that it can’t play streaming audiodirect from disk. Streaming audio is FMOD’sbread and butter so, of course, weimplemented it into Unreal. Rather than justtacking our streaming engine on the side ofUnreal, we decided to go for a trulyintegrated solution and route all of ourstreaming through Unreal’s streaming I/Osystem. This means that it plays nicely withthe rest of the game and that programmerscan manage audio streaming the same waythey manage any other streaming; only onesystem to think about.

FMOD Designer is a sound design tool forcreating game audio. It’s the user-friendly,‘sound guy’ front end of FMOD where sounddesigners can prototype, create and profile

game audio without the need forprogrammer interaction. If FMOD Ex is theengine under the hood, FMOD Designer isvery much the sexy, sleek body around it – itdrives the game audio, and it’s where all thecreativity and experience and mad chopscome into play. By making it possible to useFMOD Designer with Unreal, we wanted toenable sound designers to use all theirprofessional audio skills and experience toactually make game audio.

For example, designers can work in afamiliar multi-track environment withinFMOD Designer to create truly dynamicsound effects. They can use familiar toolssuch as effects and automation to makesound effects react to what’s happening inthe game.

EASY DOES ITMixing game audio is also made easy byFMOD Designer. Rather than tweakingindividual sounds in the UE3 editor, you canuse FMOD Designer’s bulk editor to surveyand tweak the volumes for all sounds in thegame using mixer-like fader controls.

Well, that’s how we’ve tackled the problemof using FMOD Designer with Unreal.Hopefully we’ve gone some way towardsmaking FMOD Designer a tool that can beused regardless of the game engine you’reworking with. Ideally, we’d like to providesimilar integrations with all the popular gameengines – we already support CryENGINE,Unity, Vision, Torque and BigWorld inaddition to Unreal – because, frankly, sounddesigners shouldn’t be forced to use aparticular audio tool just because thegraphics guys chose the wrong game engine.www.fmod.org

Never tearus part

After hearing that their customers werestruggling to use their audio tech with UE3,

FMOD made some dramatic changes to its kit.FMOD Sales and Business Manager MartinWilkes talks to Develop about the complex

path to customer satisfaction…

The power of FMODstems largely from

its low-level FMOD Exengine. This is the heart ofFMOD; the thing that’shidden behind thescenes.

Martin Wilkes, FMOD

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Game Audio Professional Bliss

SEPTEMBER 2010 | 35

AUDIO: COMPOSITION | BETA

Above: Ian Livingstoneat his workstation

Ian Livingstone is a name synonymouswith the games industry. That it perhapsbrings to most people’s minds someone

other than the man behind music scores fortitles like Codemasters’ upcoming F1-2010and Relic’s Company of Heroes: OpposingFronts is a fact not lost that Ian Livingstone.

It is also unlikely to be something thatkeeps him awake at night. With a long list oftop quality work to his name, that IanLivingstone is an established and respectedentity in game music.

When Develop sat down with him, we werekeen to find out about the path that got himto where he is today.

How did you get started in composingfor games?After taking a degree in music in the early‘90s at Salford University I became involved invarious areas of music production, rangingfrom in-house sound engineer to touringEurope as session musician with a couple ofsigned bands. Then purely by chance – anequipment sale to a guy via local free-adspaper Loot – I became introduced to a localdeveloper Warthog and ended upcomposing for about five of their earlyprojects including Microsoft’s Starlancer. I’vesince scored over 100 titles.

What titles are you working on at themoment?I’ve just finished F1 2010 for Codemasters –this was actually my second F1 title as Iworked on another in the late 90s. But timearound we took a more cinematic approach –it’s a mixture of traditional electronic techmixed with big thematic rousing strings –which I recorded live at Abbey Road. It’s fairlyheroic but not in an ‘epic horns’ gladiatorialkind of way, but more classy lush rich andexpensive approach.

I’m also just finishing off on Create forElectronic Arts which is a complete contrast –it’s aimed at a much younger audience andthe music is completely adaptive. The audioteam are working in wWise and we’ve reallygone to town on the number of layers with

the way the intensity builds depending onhow complex the world you’re buildingbecomes. For that one the number of genresis huge – ranging from spooky gothic, ‘50s sci-fi, hip-hop, ‘80s synth pop, swashbucklingaction, fairground, Chinese and Japaneseethnic flavours, etc. I’ve been lucky enoughto work with some world-class session

musicians and the whole project has justbeen a total blast going to town within all ofthose styles.

How does recording an orchestra at AbbeyRoad compare to it in Eastern Europe?Cost-wise the difference isn’t as big as it usedto be, with current exchange rates. I’verecorded in Moscow, Bratislava, most recentlyon additional music for Napoleon: Total War;in Prague for Company Of Heroes: OpposingFronts, and in London recently with F1 andalso Battlefield 1943 at Abbey Road. There aresome fantastic musicians in Eastern Europebut the quality of the instruments cansometimes let them down, and although thesessions in UK are shorter, the players overhere are red-hot and can sight incrediblycomplex music in just one take. I’ve hadproblems sometimes in the past with brass inEastern Europe too and the tuning at 442instead of 440 can cause nightmares.

How do you realise your scores from initialdemos to final production?I’m always pushing games developers to take

the plunge and work with as many liveplayers as possible. Even if it’s just a soloist orsmall string section, it can make such adifference to the emotion of a score.

However not every project has the time orbudget to record full orchestra. I’m totallypassionate about making my midi mock-upssound as real as possible – to the point that Irecorded my own custom sampling librarytogether with a small bunch of other mediacomposers in Utah.

We were frustrated by the sterility ofperfectly in-tune and noise reducedcommercial libraries available at the time soshared the cost and editing time - and I’m stillconstantly re-programming it to this day.Elaborate midi mock-ups are a vital part ofthe process for both games and film – I washired last year to produce the midi mock-upsfor the Harry Potter and the Half Blood Princemovie prior to recording at Abbey Road, sothe director and producers could hear a verygood approximation of how it would soundbefore they recorded a single note.

So in that instance the mock-ups were partof the pre-production process rather thanend-result, although often if the budget justisn’t available to record everything live it’sobviously always good to have as close aspossible to the real thing. www.ianlivingstone.net

Ian Livingstone,I presume?

Multimedia composer Ian Livingstone has beencreating audio for the games industry since 1994.

Stuart Richardson caught up with him to talk aboutworking on such standout scores as Napoleon: Total

War and Battlefield: 1943…

I’m always pushinggames developers to

take the plunge and workwith as many live players aspossible. Even if it’s just asoloist or small stringsection, it can makesuch a difference.

BETA | AUDIO: PAPA SANGRE

Above: Somethin’ Else’shead of developmentBen Cave listens tosomething interesting

Playing Papa Sangre is a quite incredibleexperience. The Somethin' Elsedeveloped iPhone game whisks

players away to a playfully sinister worldbased largely on the Festival of the dead.

What makes the game stand out is itsgraphical style.

To be fair, that's a slightly misleadingstatement. Papa Sangre features almost novisuals at all.

It is a game made entirely of sound. Thatmight not be a first – there's beencommercial releases like GBA curio SoundVoyager that toy with the notion of scrappinggraphics before. However, Papa Sangre doessomething truly special, in that it builds arich, sometimes scary 3D world entirely insound, which the player can move throughand explore.

The development is being led by Londonproduction company Somethin’ Else,

with input from a clique ofluminaries including

designer andconsultant

MargaretRobinson, coderAdam Hoyle,audiocomputer artistDan Jones,sound designerand binauralaudio specialistNick Ryan, andTassos Stevens,Coney’s gamingtheatervisionary.

SONIC BOOMThe game consists

of levels in whichthe player must

evade capture andsolve puzzels to save the

sole of somebody lost in theland of the dead.

The problems for those creating

Papa Sangre has been tackling an entirelynew development technique. Just how doyou build a playable game made from sound,when designers instinctively think visually?

Somethin’ Else’s head of development BenCave starts to explain the problem he and hiscolleagues faced with a perfect, – if rathergruesome – example: "We had ideas likebabies hanging from trees, but how do yousoniphy a baby hanging from a tree? Weinevitably started creating quite a lot of levelsthat had to have loads of NPC chat at thefront to set up the kinds of sounds the playerwas going to hear, instead of having soundsthat actually speak for themselves."

But, says Cave, his team wanted to createsounds that stimulated the imaginationwithout the need of too much narration.Having set itself the challenge of soniphyinga world that requires no explanation, theteam granted level names that gave theplayer enough of a starting point. ‘Ring ofFire’ makes for a perfect example.

Of course, that doesn’t mean shaking freethe conventions of traditional game designwasn’t still a problem.

“We started with lots of corridors andcaverns,” explains Cave, “but through playtesting we realised that people can'tunderstand the shapes of rooms sonically atall, and got very annoyed walking into walls.We found that it was better to have very bigsquare spaces where the player starts in themiddle, with very few barriers."

There were other challenges too. A senseof scale was achieved by ‘cartoonising’ theaudio physics, doing things like playing withthe length of a players gate as a pursuingmonster draws closer.

SOUNDS LIKE FUNFrom a technological viewpoint, Papa Sangreis built largely from a binaural sound designperspective, as Cave explains.

"We have three types of sound in ourgame. There's stereo sound, which you hearlike any other game. Then there's what we'recalling baked binaural sound, which iseffectively recorded using a microphone inthe shape of a human head, called aNeumann KE 100. It has two microphonesinside the ears, and literally looks like ahuman head.

The highly specialised KE 100 models theway that the brain responds to the directionof sounds around the player’s head, and theresults are quite remarkable.

"Finally we have the computationallyrendered binaural sound as well,” confirmsCave. “That’s effectively saying we have10,000 audio files in the game, and we haveto decide where they are positioned. The waythat this is achieved is by using somethingcalled HRTF, which stands for Head RelatedTransfer Function.

“They are generated externally by othercompanies, in an anacote chamber, whereyou put a dummy head in the middle of theroom, and have thousands of speakers atevery different possible elevation and angle,and you fire sounds at the dummy head. Thatregisters the attenuations in volume and EQfrom every possible direction, and turns thatinto data that is what they call HRTF. That HRTFforms the basis of our later processing in-game.”

At that point, Somethin’ Else take the HRTF,and port it to the iPhone using their owncode, by way of using a selection of opensource technologies.

The result is very impressive and scary. It’shard to believe Somethin’ Else isn’t adedicated games developer.www.somethinelse.com

We had ideas likebabies hanging

from trees, but how do yousoniphy a baby hangingfrom a tree? We inevitablycreated levels withloads of NPC chat.

Ben Cave, Somethin’ Else

Your eyes do not decieve you, and itisn’t switched off. That’s an iPhone

running audio-only title Papa Sangre.Will Freeman took a trip to Somethin'

Else to hear how it works…

36 | SEPTEMBER 2010

Hearingaid

© 2010 The Codemasters Software Company Limited (“Codemasters”). “Codemasters” ® is a registered trademark owned by Codemasters. The Codemasters logo is a trademark of Codemasters. All Rights Reserved.

Southam [HQ] | Guildford | Birmingham

Be part of the big picture Recruiting in the UK

www.codemasters.com/jobstwitter.com/codemastersjobswww.facebook.com/codemastersjobs

Vacancies include:LEAD AUDIO DESIGNER: Birmingham EXPERIENCED AUDIO DESIGNER: Birmingham AUDIO PROGRAMMERS: Southam & BirminghamSENIOR AUDIO DESIGNER: Southam & Birmingham

38 | SEPTEMBER 2010

BETA | SYSTEM 3

Below: System 3’s PuttySquad on the iPad

Developers have taught themselves tobe wary of publishers. Subsequently,the men in suits that turn a studio’s

creative projects into capital are oftengreeted with some very cynical glances, andthat’s if they are lucky.

It doesn’t matter if it is the system so manydevelopers bemoan that affords them theluxury of biting the hand that feeds;publishers are frequently posed as theindustry’s bad guys.

And then you meet System 3’s Mark Cale;the CEO at the helm of a UK publisher withalmost 28 years in the business behind it.Cale is a man with a furious energy for thegames industry; a publisher who clearly caresvery deeply about games, and who isn’tafraid to talk some tough truths about theindustry’s shortcomings.

Cale might well be a suited publisher, buthe is also the kind of executive who canenthuse for twenty minutes on the majesty ofa particular boss fight in a classic arcade title,or talk with passion about a developer’selegant emulation of his favourite pinballtable’s ROM chipset, even if thoseconversations mean missing his lunch.

System 3, which is currently defying allknown conventions with an initiative thatsees a wealth of current and forthcomingreleases recieve near simultaneous launches

on both digital and physical platforms, is acompany that has never shied away fromreleasing more hardcore, ‘gamer’s games’.

KARATE KIDSWhile the firm can lay claim to the PS2’s firsttrue budget range, and has long ties with thehistory of the casual movement, it is also thecompany that chose to bring the likes ofSilent Bomber and Guilty Gear to market in theUK. System 3 has experience in developingtoo, having created the iconic InternationalKarate series back in 1985.

Undeniably then, System 3 has a heritagewith all the right credentials, but then so dosome of the publishers that arch the backs ofeven the most affable studios. The differenceis, says Cale, that System 3 understandsdevelopers, and isn’t afraid to get involved atthe creative source. That’s something elsewe’ve all heard before, but when it comesfrom a man like Cale, who rarely sugar-coatshis words with PR-spin, it seems a great dealmore sincere.

“We offer something unique that a lot ofother publishers seem to have forgotten, andthat is that we offer the ability to help peoplethat have great technology, and need totranslate that technology into playablegames,” says Cale.

System 3’s working methodology is onethat sees it getting involved with adevelopment studio at the very inception of anew idea, meaning it can call on all of itsdevelopment experience to help the studio

at a level atypical of that which most externalpublishers offer.

“We’re always involved intimately with thecreative process, and we will not acceptanything that does not join with our belief,”confirms Cale. “Of course, there are alwaysareas in any product where things could bedone better, and time prevails as an issue.

“We realise that. There are limitations tothe hardware and technology and tools athand to the developer you work with. Thereare restrictions that stop you from pushingsomething all the way, but we always believethat we have to be involved right from thestart through to the end to get the bestpossible experience out of the tools and thetechnology and the teams. I think that’s avery important difference in what we do.”

A case in point would be System 3’s workwith driving game specialist Eutechnyx,which has developed the publisher’s flagshipracing series that has just reached its thirdinstalment with Ferrari: The Race Experience.

“If you look at Eutechnyx prior to when westarted working with them on FerrariChallenge on the PS3, they started of life asZeppelin Games and have had a number ofhits in their time, and I don’t want to bedisrespectful to their talent or the historythey have had in the industry,” says Cale.

“Prior to starting on Ferrari Challenge, andfundamentally at that particular point in time,they had some of the best racing enginetechnology going, but they had failed toexploit that well and make great products.Their products were things like Pimp My Rideand The Fast and the Furious. “

At that point, System 3 will work with thecreative team and technology to betterrealise its vision of a company’s game,building a framework around existingtechnology. It’s a relatively distinct approach,and one Cale and his colleagues are proud of.

“I believe we are one of the few companiesthat give that input and feedback to thedeveloper at that level, and most of thedevelopers we have worked with have alwayssaid that is one of the big assets System 3offers,” states the CEO. “We care about the

I believe we are oneof the few

companies that give thatinput and feedback to thedeveloper at thatlevel. Most of ourpartners agree.

Mark Cale, System 3

All systemsGO

Can a publisher really empathise with what adeveloper needs? System 3 thinks so. Will Freemancaught up with CEO Mark Cale to find out more…

SYSTEM 3 | BETA

Above: the upcomingWilliams PinballClassics

product, we care about the teams, wesupport them, and we try to make their goodproducts into great products.”

OUTSIDE THE TICK-BOXCale isn’t afraid to criticise the conventionalpublishing model either. While System 3 hasspecialised in helping developers realise thepotential of their tech, according to Cale, thetraditional publishing model is still strugglingto rid itself of an unhealthy obsession with astudio’s technological arsenal over the meritsof any title in question.

“There does seem to be a hang up with alot of publishers that there needs to becertain things; a tick-box approach if you like.They think studios have to be using certaintechnology and software; they feel peoplehave to have a certain number of people andbe doing certain things, or they can’t do aproject,” says Cale.

“We don’t think that. We look at how gooda team is, and firstly look at if they have theability to listen to ideas to be more creative.Secondly, we ask ‘do they have the availabletechnology?’. That’s not in terms of hardware;it’s about their routines being good enoughfor them to produce what they want to do.We don’t look at the actual machinery ontheir desks and the size of their team; it’sabout the technology along with the driveand the passion.”

Cale certainly has the experience to offerthat service. He can remember receivingorders for games via telex, and talks fondly ofthe time when the arrival of the fax machinefelt like it had the potential to revolutionisethe pace of the industry.

He’s also a man whose ambition hasn’tsuffered as a result of years weathering thestorm of tougher periods. In fact, Cale has sethimself something of an opus.

“My heart is honestly focused on makingthe perfect game,” reveals the CEO. “There’sno such thing of course, because by the timeyou’ve got something done, something newis emerging that can beat where you’re at,and there’s someone else trying to do better,but that’s what you have to do. It’s a race

against time, and things are always changingand technology is always evolving, and Ireally enjoy that side of the industry. And Ialso really enjoy playing the games. Playingthe games and trying to help developersmake the best play experience is reallyimportant to what a publisher should do. It’sa passion of mine. I want to play everythingthat comes out.”

Give Cale five minutes of your time, andwithin 60 seconds, you’ll be in little doubtthat he’s being absolutely sincere. He isn’tafraid to serve as one of gaming’s harshestcritics, but that, it seems, is his duty as a manbesotted by the medium and its industry.

With Ferrari: The Race Experience, PuttySquad, Super Fruitfall Deluxe, Williams PinballClassics and a wealth of other titles set toleave the System 3 stable on a diverserange of platforms both digital and physicalthis month, it’s been a busy time for thepublisher, and based on the past 28 years,that trend is set to continue.www.system3.com

There does seem tobe a hang up with a

lot of publishers that thereneeds to be certain things;a tick-box approachif you like. We don’tthink like that.

Mark Cale, System 3

SEPTEMBER 2010 | 39

System 3’s racingtitles are set tocontinue with FerrariThe Race Experience

40 | SEPTEMBER 2010

BETA | DARE TO BE DIGITAL

Below: The ProtoPlayaudience engrossed ina game prototype

Above: Sculpty, one ofthe winning Protoplaytitles

Walking the show floor at lastmonth’s Dare to be DigitalProtoPlay event in Edinburgh, it

was hard not to warm to the atmosphere ofwhat has become an increasingly importantshowcase for grass roots video gamesdevelopment and the potential of raw talent.

The ProtoPlay event is focused around thefinal stage of the main Dare to be Digitaldevelopment competition, which gives 15hand-picked student teams the chance tomake a working game prototype in 10 shortweeks, from scratch, with help from a selectnumber of industry veterans. Hosted in themidst of the creative chaos that is theEdinburgh Festival, ProtoPlay sees theinternationally sourced teams, who areyouthful, enthusiastic and – in the bestpossible sense of the word – somewhatunrefined, unleash their finished projects onthe world.

A panel of industry judges from the likes ofUbisoft, Rockstar, Codemasters, the BBC andthe good people at Develop then spend timewith the games and their creators, as dohordes of the public in attendance, beforethree winning teams are selected to becomethe sole nominees for the 2011 BAFTA OnesTo Watch Award at the forthcoming BritishAcademy Video Game Awards in London.

Beyond the ongoing process of thecompetition itself, Dare’s organisers are clearin their goals.

“Dare is about talent spotting,” confirmsPaul Durrant, director of businessdevelopment of Abertay University, whichorganises the event. “Abertay Universityworks with the industry and our sponsors tocreate a platform to look for talentedstudents, offering them a once-in-a-life-timeopportunity to get real-life workingexperience before they enter the workforce.We aim to help supply industry-ready talentto the development industry and toencourage entrepreneurism.”

It’s an admirable proposition, but what ismost immediately encouraging about theevent is its lack of pretention. Glancing at thebustling show floor, it could easily be a hall atGamescom, but peer more intently, and it’s

apparent that teams of eager public are notgathered at a rolling demo of the latestgeneric triple-A release, or queuing for hoursto play two-minutes of a licensed sequel.

It’s noticeably loud too, and not from thewhite noise of speakers splutteringmarketing spiel. It’s laughter that fills the air.The public in attendance at ProtoPlay isyoung, raucous and delighted.

They are hungrily digesting fresh cuts ofcreativity, without a thought for the gamesthat usually vie for their attention from theshelves of high street stores. It may not berock ‘n’ roll, but it’s a lot more like seeing anarm-flailing crowd enthralled at a energeticgig in a garage than a middle-aged audiencecomfortably seated for The Rolling Stones’umpteenth comeback tour.

In fact, a publically playable Kinect kit is onthe show floor, but it’s doing little to deterplayers from their fervent consumption of theoutput of Dare’s indie role call.

WHAT THEY DID LAST SUMMERJust this summer, the 15 students from thetrio of winning teams were among thousandswho were taking a break from their universitystudies. Post-ProtoPlay, they are a BAFTAaward nominees. And more than that, theyare now experienced in the reality of gamesdevelopment under the pressure of ameaningful deadline.

“They have a game prototype on theirportfolio, which has been tested andapproved by influential games companies,”says Durrant. “The 10 weeks transformedtheir life and for sure it will make a greatimpact in their career when they leaveuniversity in a year or so’s time.”

It’s not just the organisers who speakhighly of Dare’s merits either. Jocce Marklundis a programmer and designer at That GameStudio, which created Twang, securing it aplace as one of ProtoPlay’s trio of victors.

“During the whole competition we’ve gotmentors visiting us and giving us feedbackon our game and our team,” states Marklund.“They have provided fresh eyes on the gameand pointed out things that led toimprovements in the game that we wouldotherwise have not even thought of. Otherthan that, the people working with Daremade it easier for us to focus on thedevelopment instead of spending time withhardware/software and travel arrangementsand such.”

Side-scrolling platform racer Twang stoodout at the event as one of the most polishedgames, and in many ways captured the spiritof what this kind of gathering is about. It wasa neat, simple idea that gripped the attentionof the crowds and judges alike, and offered aglimpse of something far bigger that wasn’thard to imagine as a hit on Xbox Live.

That Game Studio has every right to feelproud, as do the other main winners, AngryMango, which impressed with its Zune

Abertay Universityworks with the

industry to create aplatform to look fortalented students, offeringthem a once-in-a-lifetime oppprtunity.

Paul Durrant, ProtoPlay

Who DaresWins

Last month Develop attended Dare to beDigital’s ProtoPlay event as a judge. Having

returned from Edinburgh Will Freemanlooks at what the inititive has achieved…

DARE TO BE DIGITAL | BETA

Below: Focus teastinghas perhaps neverbeen practiced betterthan that at ProtoPlay

Above: That GameStudio members taketo the stage to accepttheir award

platformer Mush, which demonstrated astaggering level of artistic flair, and TeamTickle, which encouraged some of the mosttactile interaction yet realised on the Appletable with its iPad romp Scultpy.

“Winning this competition means a lot forthe team in terms of recognition for our hardwork,” reveals Marklund. “It shows people thatwe can in fact make fun games that gamersand non-gamers can enjoy. The sacrifice ofleaving all our friends and families behind inSweden has paid off because we got theexperience of not only making a game, butalso visiting Scotland and having a lot ofpeople playing our game.”

GLOBAL GATHERINGThe creators of Sculpty weren’t the onlyvisitors from overseas either. ProtoPlay didplay host to several teams from the UK, butothers from Ireland, India, China and America brought a cultural variety apparentnot only in the games on display, but in themarketing materials and identities each teamhad created.

“It’s exciting to see so many talented UKstudents who have the creative minds andthe technical capability to execute gameswhich have a strong appeal to the public,”says Durrant. “It’s equally valuable to seetalent from other countries, and they learnfrom each other. Can games cross culturalboundaries? You seem to see this is possibleat Dare ProtoPlay.”

Established 11 years ago, ProtoPlay alsoinvites established developers to attend,meaning that along with the main boothspace reserved for the indie teams, the likesof Rare, Blitz and Sony have a presence of theshow. It of course provides an opportunity toshow off new product to an open-mindedconsumer, but where Dare reallydistinguishes itself is in inviting studios tointegrate themselves with the competition’sentire process.

“We invite established game developers tojoin our Developer Accord, which offersmentoring support to the teams during the10 weeks,” explains Durrant. “This is beneficial

to the teams but also helps the companiesspot talent.”

Talent is certainly on display in abundance,and it’s clear from the flurry of business cardsthat pass hands that for many in attendance,the opportunity to meet feldgling developersfirst hand is an opportunity relished.

“The competition benefits all partnersinvolved: universities, students, gamescompanies, technology partners and oursponsors,” insists Durrant.

Of course, an initiative like Dare is notwithout its challenges, and in these morefrugal times, those hurdles can becomesignificant obstacles.

“The biggest challenge we have isfunding,” admits Durrant. “In order to ensurethe students focus on the competition anddo not have the need to look for a summerjob, we pay every student £1,700 plusaccommodation and transportation inDundee, as well as in Edinburgh during theFringe Festival high season.

“Running Dare ProtoPlay professionally togive the public an enjoyable time also costs.We continually look for sponsorship andrevenue streams to fund the project. Withoutcontinued funding support, there’s a risk thatthe project may need to be discontinued.”

To dwell on the negative is unjust though.While the size of the challenge may define itssuccess, Dare to be Digital is a hugely positiveasset that has the potential to benefit theentire industry. It has been recognised as a

model of best practice by many who takepart, and continues to benefit AbertayUniversity in numerous ways.

As well as informing the course design ofthe institute’s renowned games educationoffering, the workplace simulation modelthat underpins Dare is being embedded in allother disciplines in the University.

“There is a huge opportunity for this typeof project to be used as a way of stimulatingsignificant industry/university collaboration.In comparison to placements and internships,workplace simulation brings a consistentexperience across whole cohorts of studentsfrom multiple disciplines,” says Durrant.

The final word must go to Marklund, whohas some advice for those considering acareer in games: “If there are any gamedevelopment students reading this, apply toDare to be Digital if you haven’t done soalready. It is a great way to get valuabledevelopment experience that is recognisedthroughout the industry.”

Having left the event a winner, the ThatGame Studio designer is likely especiallyenthused about the potential of Dare, but hisstory is one that proves his point. Dare can dovery good things for those who enter.

And who knows? In a few months,Marklund could be on stage in front of theindustry’s finest with the cool metal BAFTAgong in his hands.www.daretobedigital.com

If there are anygame development

students reading this, applyto Dare to be Digital if youhaven’t done so already. Itis a great way to getvaluable experience.Jocce Marklund, Dare contestant

SEPTEMBER 2010 | 41

BETA | ANALYSIS: FREE-TO-PLAY

The movement towards free seemsunstoppable. iPhone games prices aretrending towards zero, mainstream

MMOs are going free in droves and Facebookoffers a platform for games to play foreverwithout, in many cases, spending a cent.

Yet, many developers look at free and say“That’s not a business model.” And you knowwhat? They are 100 per cent right.

Free is not a business model. It is a way ofreducing barriers to entry and getting moreusers into your game. It is, in short, amarketing tool.

Free is a marketing technique.The games industry has had some

elements of free as part of the marketing mixfor a very long time. We are used to playabledemos for boxed products, distributed oncover mounts or via the web. The casualindustry operated a model of offering a one-hour trial for the games. MMOs used to offera one-month free-trial before the paywallcame crashing down. None of these are free.

Free is about offering your players theopportunity to play your game foreverwithout paying a cent. It is about changingexpectations. It involves changing yourmarketing strategy, your gameplay, yourrevenue generation and your attitude. Itrequires dramatic rethinking.

The massive advantage that free offers todevelopers and publishers is that it reducesthe barrier to entry for consumers. Instead ofa gamer having to decide to spend £40 on aboxed product, they can check out the gameon a whim. In the case of a browser-basedgame, they can be in and playing in seconds,experiencing your superb content andhopefully enjoying it so much that they keepcoming back for more. Each time they comeback, you have another opportunity to sell to

them. And the good news is that you didn’tneed a huge marketing budget to get them.

Bear with me. Marketing costs for freegames are rising rapidly, but it is afundamentally different type of marketing. Ihope by the end of this article, I’ll haveconvinced you of the merits of free-stylemarketing spend.

REAPING THE BENEFITSWhat is the biggest benefit of free?

For a developer or publisher, the biggestadvantage of free is that it reduces upfrontmarketing costs. To explain this, let’s look attwo different examples.

A traditional boxed game costs, say, £40and generates £20 to the publisher after theretailer and taxman has taken his cut. We allknow about the short shelf-lives and need forbig marketing push for the opening weekendof a game, so most publishers spend thesame amount on marketing as they spent ondevelopment.

For Modern Warfare 2, the most successfulgame of 2009, Activision spent $50 million ondevelopment and $200 million on marketing,manufacturing and distribution.

That’s a huge upfront investment. Incontrast, let’s look at a free game. You spend,maybe, $1 million on launch development.Then you need to spend money onmarketing. And this is where the hugeadvantage of free over the marketingtechniques of traditional publishing becomesapparent. You know which bits of marketingare working for you.

American merchant John Wanamaker isreputed to have said: “Half the money I spendon advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don'tknow which half.” This lack of knowledgeleads companies to spend vast sums onblanket coverage in the hope that some of itpersuades consumers to part with cash.

The internet has destroyed this paradigm.With better tracking and click-basedadvertising, we know which advertisingworks and which doesn’t. And that meansthat we can turn on the marketing taps onlywhen we need it.

So we launch with a small advertisingbudget. A few hundred pounds or less. Weput them on Facebook ads and GoogleAdsense and some banners that we can track.We see which ads convert well. We tweak andtest and iterate. And when we determine aformula which lets us make a higher lifetimevalue from a customer than it costs us to

acquire them, we throw as much money aswe possibly can at advertising.

Because at this point, we know that we’llbe making money hand over fist. This isexactly what Zynga does, which is why theyare the fastest growing games company onthe planet right now.

The key is that the initial upfront capital isless. Much, much less. Not only is the gamedesign iterative, so is the marketing.

Should Activision go free? I don’t think itmakes sense for everyone to go free. In thecase of Activision, they have deeper pocketsthan almost everyone else. Their ability tooutspend everyone else on marketing is acompetitive advantage. I’m sure this fact hasnot escaped Bobby Kotick’s notice.

Similarly, if you are making games forPSN/XBLA, you may feel that you have anaudience of gamers who are accustomed tospending lots of money on games, and shouldcharge them as much as they can bear. And foras long as PSN and XBLA are closed platforms,this might work. But it will drive upfrontmarketing budgets up as the market becomesmore crowded, making life tougher for smallerdevelopers to break into the market.

FREE’S SPIRITIf the increased capital efficiency is notenough of a reason for you to prefer free,here’s five more:• Free is a gift from you to the consumer,which engenders a feeling of reciprocity: theneed for the gamer to pay you back• Free is hard to pirate• Free isn’t time limited, so you get multiplechances at conversion, and advertising, andlead generation, and virality• If you’re not free, you’re competing with lotsof games that are• Free makes you more money• And if you don’t believe me, just check outthe financial results of Jagex, the publisher ofRuneScape (left, see graph). And those figuresinclude the ‘tens of millions’ of wasted dollarson the failed MechScape.

Free works. It’s a better use of capital andit’s much less risky. Sometimes I wonder whyanyone still charges for a game upfront.www.gamesbrief.com

Nicholas Lovell is the author of How toPublish a Game (www.gamesbrief.com/store/buy). A former investment banker andweb entrepreneur, he has been involved inthe games industry since 1996.

FREEis not abusiness modelIt is something very different, and that’s no bad thing, suggests Nicholas Lovell...

42 | SEPTEMBER 2010

BETA | 20 YEARS OF BLITZ

The Olivers’ TwistExactly 20 years after the Oliver twins founded Blitz Games, the pair are heading up one of the globe’s

most distinct studios. Will Freeman paid a visit to wish the team happy birthday, and learn its secrets…

44 | SEPTEMBER 2010

1984 Winning the Saturday Showgame development competition:“It turned a hobby into somethingmore serious.”

1984 The launch of the AmstradCPC: “It was a quite powerful, verygood machine, that helped us getthe skills to make games thatwould sell.”

1984-1986Selling gamesto publisherswhile atcollege: “Thepetrol to getto thepublisheralmost costmore than we got paid, but wewere chuffed to be selling gameswhile still at school.”

1985 Meeting Codemasters for thefirst time: “After we learned howmuch they might pay, we just wenthome and did absolutely nothingbut code day and night, and we hadSuper Robin Hood within a month.Then we noticed the small printabout the payment being based onpredictedroyalties, butwe still didokay.”

HISTORY INTHE MAKING

CTO Andrew Oliver’sguide to Blitz GamesStudios’ early history,

and the milestones thatdefined its first ten

years as a company


20 YEARS OF BLITZ | BETA

Above: Dizzy remainsone of the mostwarmly remembered ofthe Olivers’ creations

There’s a furious energy at Blitz GameStudios’ Leamington Spa base thatyou’d think would have waned in the

20 years since its famed founders the Olivertwins set up shop in 1990.

Conversations unfurl with ferocious paceas staffers tear through the gangways thatsubdivide the desks, and all the time there’san atmosphere more typical of a new outfit’sopening week. People duck into meetingrooms with urgent messages, stay a while towax lyrical, and suddenly depart with startinggun urgency.

And yet Blitz Games has two decadesbehind it, and many years at its location inLeamington Spa. Where that heritage showsis in the organised chaos that covers Blitz’sdesks, shelves and walls. To draw comparisonwith a long occupied bedroom would be alittle unfair, but the Olivers’ kingdom feels agreat deal more homely than that offered bythe designer lines so familiar in theheadquarters of development’s nouveau richestudios. Media Molecule’s new Guildfordoffice is dominated upstairs by a cold metalbreakfast bar; Blitz has a free tuck shop.

CHARM OFFENSIVEPin down Philip and Andrew Oliver for amoment between their constant livelyengaging with their employees over projectsongoing, and it’s clear who fosters theenergy, character and charisma that is soabundant at Blitz. The pair’s passion isinfectious, and clearly they have passed ontheir spirit to those around them.

All very charming, but modest eccentricityisn’t the making of Blitz; with six divisionscovering core games, downloadables, seriousgaming, education, indie publishing andmiddleware, the company is thriving on someother fuel than personality alone.

“The mix here between realism andcreativity is interesting” says Philip. “It’sbecause we come from the route of beingextremely creative, but, over time, we’vereally grown up, and have a bigger respect fordoing business. That’s been really importantto get us where we are today, because therehave been too many other studios who haveonly worried about the creative. You can’t dothat when running a bigger business,” addsthe man who carries the title CEO, when inreality his role, like his brother’s, encompasses a great deal more than theassigned acronym suggests.

From the off there is talk of evolution andgrowth, but delving a little deeper into thesecrets behind Blitz’s 20 years of success, it isclear that from day one the Oliversapproached development with a pragmatismthat still defines their success.

In fact, the sense of realism predates Blitz’sfoundation as a limited company in 1990, andgoes back to Philip and Andrew’s famedpassion for making numerous games fromtheir home as ambitious young teenagers inthe early 1980s.

“When we got into writing our very earlygames one of the things that differentiatedus from the other people making games, wasthat they were making games for themselves.They would play a shooter in the arcades, andthen try and make it for the Commodore,”explains Andrew, who carries the title of CTO.

“We just thought about the fact that wewanted to publish a game, and get it outthere to an audience that would want it. Wewere thinking about an audience, and beingrealistic. We saw that systems like theSpectrum were best suited to cartoon games,so we thought about the kind of audiencesthat liked cartoons.”

When the Olivers won a developmentcompetition on the popular kids TVprogramme Saturday Show, which saw theirfirst game published in 1984, their hobbyquickly became something more serious, andspurred on by a visit to the stand of thefledgling Codemasters at a trade show in1985, they quickly began to make games tosell to the publisher.

A period of intense creativity began thatsaw seven per cent of all games sold in theUK in 1986 carry the Oliver name, makingthem every part The Beatles of British gamedevelopment. That pace and fervour exists infar more than residue form today, and everyimpassioned conversation about workingwith Kinect or the virtues of serious gamingevokes a strong feeling of what must havebeen going on in that golden era of theOlivers’ early careers.

That same period also saw theestablishment of a prototype that would notonly play prelude to the BlitzTech middlewaresolution, but also establish a template formodern game development. Andrew andPhilip created their own cross platform

development environment that would allowthem to build games for the era’s number ofcompeting home computing formats.

“We built that, not because we wanted tomake lots of money, but because we wantedthe widest audience. We wanted to make lotsof games to reach lots of people. That wasalways our goal; just get it out there.”

THE SPICE OF LIFEYears later, after a number of firsts includingdebuting the release of games on CD andbeating the original Xbox to launch withFusion Frenzy, which hit consumers a weekbefore the Microsoft console that was itshost, Blitz has an interesting challenge.

Without a defining triple-A title, consumerswould be forgiven for wondering what hasbeen keeping Blitz so busy. While the firm’score gaming division Volatile has craftedDead to Rights, the Olivers don’t yet have theirGrand Theft Auto or LittleBigPlanet.

Mention that, though, and everyone atBlitz is keen to highlight the boom or bustnature of investing everything in the nextModern Warfare. Variety, it seems, is morethan the spice of life at Blitz; it’s the bedrockon which 20 years of expansion is built.

“We have a deliberate diversificationstrategy,” explains CFO and finance director

We have seen somany companies

and so many technologiescome and go over time, andwe do genuinely know what the right thingto do is.

Philip Oliver, Blitz

1986 Seven per cent of gamessold in the UK are made by theOlivers: “We were working 20hour days at that point. We werepretty efficientas well. I don’tthink we threwa line of codeor a graphicaway, andthey were allbest sellers.”

1989 Started hiring freelancers:“We decided to tackle the NESand went to America. We thoughtwe were doing well selling100,000 or 200,000 copies, andthen we saw Super Mario Bros onits way to 20 million. So we wentonto NES, andthat took somuch time, wejust had to hirepeople.”

1989-1990 Setting up a limitedcompany and moving away fromWiltshire: “Werealised it waseasier to hirepeople than tokeep negotiating.We still made alot of mistakes.”

1991-1992 Moved to otherpublishers: “That was a hugelyimportant step for us.”

1993 Signed with Develop Awardwinning agent Jacqui Lyons: “Weowe Jacqui a great deal. That waswhen we started to get titles likethe MGM Wargames project.”

46 | SEPTEMBER 2010

BETA | 20 YEARS OF BLITZ

Richard Smithies, a long serving friend of theOlivers who joined the team in 1994, seeingits head count climb from 110 then to almost230 today.

“If you think about it, the industry issubject to massive uncertainties andchanges. That’s exciting, and we really likethat, but you must be careful not to put allyour eggs in one basket. We’ve seen anumber of fantastic studios go bust in recentyears because they’ve done just that.

“You’ve got to have diversity in clients, andgenre, and platform. You can’t be a jack of alltrades, master of none. In everything we do,we try to be master of that trade, and with alot of hard work we are. There’s a lot ofstrategic thinking behind the way that weare, and we’re continually willing to moveand evolve; our work with our Kinect titlesshows that.”

Amidst the myriad of projects glimpsedthrough closed doors pushed ajar for atantalising second during Develop’s tour, awealth of on-the-record Kinect titles areunderway, including ‘movie karaoke’ releaseYoostar 2 and the much-publicised family titleThe Biggest Loser: Ultimate Workout.

Those are the work of the Blitz Gamesdivision. Meanwhile Volatile busies itself with

traditional games, and the Blitz Arcadeconcerns itself with download titles andshort-session experiences. Elsewhere thethriving TruSim serious games divisionfocuses on the development of advancedrealistic avatars, which often see adoption bythe medical sector for training purposes.

Meanwhile Blitz Academy provides both alink with and service for educationalestablishments, as well as trainingopportunities for internal staff to better theirskills. BlitzTech provides an increasinglypopular engine for licensees looking tomatch Blitz’s quality of development, andmarks the final of Blitz’s current six divisions

There’s also the popular Blitz 1-Up elementof the company, which gives indies andbedroom coders a hand with anything fromtech and creativity to marketing anddistribution – all for a proportional share ofthe profits.

The company boasts two R&Ddepartments – one for art and one for tech –an impressive audio facility, and relativelysizeable internal teams dedicated to pitching,PR, biz dev, and asset creation.

Not bad for an independent developer,and a sign that Blitz’s mantra of diversity andagility is one taken very seriously. Thechallenge there is management, and Blitz’ssolution is the Studio Development Group; ahand-picked band of discipline specialiststhat weave together the separate projects.

CONNECTING PEOPLEBlitz does implement a traditional, relativelyflat managerial structure of the verticalnature, where below the execs and managerssit project leads, each supported by groups ofartists, coders and other creatives. To stopthose collectives becoming cliques, the STG,based in its own space in the heart of Blitz’sbuilding, provides a horizontal managementstructure. The STG head of art, for example,provides connection between each project’sartists, meaning progress and initiative isshared and fostered.

Philip demonstrates this managementstructure with conjurer’s arm movementsthat somehow make perfect sense, and he’skeen to point out that the STG are anessential element to the secret of Blitz’songoing success.

Another ingredient in Blitz’s recipe forlongevity is its partly altruistic contact withthe grass roots of game development, largelythrough Blitz Academy and Blitz 1-Up.

“Blitz 1-UP is, in a way, a natural extensionof things like Blitz Academy. It allows us to bein touch with up and coming developers, andsee where ideas are coming from, and lets usbe involved in cool indie projects that areoften slightly left of the mainstream,”confirms Blitz 1-UP producer Neil Holmes.“Also, a lot of these guys could end upcoming to work with us at Blitz.”

Spend a day at Blitz, and there’s so muchenthusiasm for what the company offers itcan almost overwhelm. The dedication to theworkforce is striking, and the creative energytruly exciting – it’s little wonder that Blitz iscurrently enjoying an outbreak of staffcelebrating ten or in some cases 15 yearsserving the company.

“There really is method behind what mustseem like madness, and there are constantsof passion and enthusiasm. Everything hasjust got more professional over time, andultimately, we want to be the Pixar of thegames industry” concludes Smithies.

No sooner has the CFO finished, andAndrew rushes to offer advice to otherstudios looking to go the distance: “You haveto take good paying projects that you notonly believe in, but that also take your studioforwards. Always doing sequels doesn’t moveyou forwards, unless you can really bringsomething new to the table.”

“We do what is right; not what everybodyelse does,” adds Philip with a confidence ashumble as it is assured. “We have beenaround a long time – just look how old we are– so we have seen so many companies and somany technologies come and go over time,and we do genuinely know what the rightthing to do is.

“For that reason we don’t wait for otherpeople to approve of how we do things; wehonestly are masters of our own destiny.”

With a keen eye on the future, asustainable business model and a dedicatedworkforce, things look good for the studio.The Olivers joke that in another 20 years theywill look like their iconic platformingoffspring Dizzy the Egg, but they’re certaintheir team will still be creating games withthe same buoyant attitude.

“Look at his face,” says Philip, prodding hisDizzy mug. “He’s bald, but he’s optimistic.”

Take good payingprojects that you

not only believe in, but thatalso take your studioforwards. Always doingsequels doesn’tmove you forwards.

Andrew Oliver, Blitz

1994EmployedRichardSmithie asCFO andfinancedirector:“From thatmoment onwe began togrowenormously.”

1995 Backed PlayStation beforelaunch: “That was enormously brave,as at the time you went withNintendo or Sega. That’s whatpublishers expected.”

199X BlitzTech middleware licensedout: “BlitzTech marked another hugemoment for us.”

2001 Fusion Frenzy released as anXbox launch title: “Bill Gates said atthe time it was his favourite Xboxgame.”

Right: Dead to Rightsmarks Blitz’s mostexplicit move into theterritory ofcontemporary triple-Agame design

1st Trophy+ £2000 ad credit in Develop, Champagne* and Glory

2nd Lunch & interview with the Develop team + Champagne*

Third placeChampagne*

* bottle of champagne for each member of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd placed teams

Prizes

Date: Wednesday September 29th

Venue: Sway Bar, Holborn, LondonTo book your place please contact:[email protected] call +44 (0)1992 535647

For sponsorshipopportunities contact:

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March 4th 2010 winners:SPLASH DAMAGE

September 29th 2010 winners:STILL ALL TO PLAY FOR

If you are really clever you

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48 | SEPTEMBER 2010

BETA | SELF-PUBLISHING

Digital distribution channels, far frombeing mature themselves, havealready opened the doors to a flood

of development talent who have taken theplunge into the world of self-publishing.

This new world order brings with itattractive promises – creative freedom, IPownership, worldwide distribution, studiorecognition, revenues and even directrelationships with the end user.

Self-publishing has therefore becomemore than an experiment; for some it is nowa viable and flourishing business model.Developers of all sizes can demonstrate theirflair by bringing their own ideas to marketand exposing their well conceived gamecreations to a global gaming audience. This initself is an empowering shift in the longestablished games industry retail model andstandard developer/publisher relationship.

With this fundamental change we areseeing the renaissance of the independentdeveloper and more recently the advent ofthe micro studio. This independent route tomarket commonly unveils many morepublishing responsibilities for developerteams; a path that is still full of market riskand project challenges en route to theprospect of commercial success.

THE DARK ARTSOne of the least familiar self-publishingconundrums to unlock is marketing and PR.

So how do you make a start in promotingyour game? What do you need to do to getyour message out into the world? Who doyou speak to? Which strategy is best?

Of course you can use services likePlayReplay’s digital content PR and marketingoffering, or – shameless plug out of the way –you can take a look at the following basic, butoften overlooked, areas of advice.Importantly, all studios are different, no oneproduct is the same and all the digitalplatforms have their own challenges andopportunities. But the advice below can begenerally applied across the board.

■ Allocate plenty of time Because developing a game is such a hugecommitment, sometimes the marketing isn’tconsidered until the development is finished.This is potentially commercially dangerous ashaving time to plan, secure, implement andmaximise the impact of the marketing and PRstrategy will pay dividends in the long run.

Ideally the marketing thought processshould start at the first design and conceptstage. Using this time to identify what makesyour game unique and stand out will allowyou to build a strategy and plan that willengage, entertain and inform gamers well inadvance of the game’s release.

There is plenty of legwork to do whenmarketing a game and internal resource anddedicated time should be factored into thedevelopment timeline. Be prepared to writepress releases, complete first-party copyapprovals and create stunning assets topromote the game. Every title is competingwith the budgets of the triple-A guys formedia space so this is an important time toraise the bar.

It is also worth noting that some first-partymarketing teams won’t discuss platformmarketing plans until code has passed itssubmission process, so this must be factoredinto overall timetables and release slotselections.

Here’s a tip: Build in time to negotiatemedia exclusives. Exclusive editorial will notonly help build your media relationships, butthese stories tend to create more buzzaround the product in the short term.

■ Know the platform marketing supportopportunitiesEquivalent to the in-store presence of retailgames, marketing support on the digital shelfis a key part of the marketing mix, required toinfluence customers whilst they are engaged

on the platform and at the potential point ofpurchase.

Securing product presence and visibility onany of the individual gaming platforms is atask that can only be helped by a solid mediaengagement plan. Featured placements,exclusive game assets, price promotions,competitions and editorial content-ledpromotional channels such as Inside Xboxand FirstPlay are just some of the obviousoptions available.

Negotiation will be required to achieve anyplatform support and this will be heavilyinfluenced by the development team’sknowledge of the available marketinginventory and their relationship with theplatform’s first party marketing teams. Theadvice here is to reach out to the rightcontacts, get cosy early, ask lots of questionsand whenever possible push for marketingcommitment in advance.

Here’s a tip: PlayStation Home is a fast-growing platform community of gamers thatshould be included when building apromotional strategy for PSN titles.

■ Own the customer relationshipIn today’s connected online world,community forums, user generatedcommentary and social networking websiteshave empowered consumers to have apublished opinion and accessible platform bywhich to influence others.

Throughout a promotional campaign therewill be opportunities to harness these modesof communication and engage with theconsumer directly. Here it is possible to createa valuable fan base through the dialogue ofideas, questions and feedback, benefiting theproduct whilst developing the relationshipwith the end user. This is a powerful exchangeand can help formulate product opinion anddrive important word of mouth, chatter andbuzz around a product to a wider audience.

Another tip: Share the developmentprocess. Gamers today are fascinated withgames development and want to know howyou came up with all the ideas for the gameand be party to early concept art and videos.Publishing a blog or keeping a diary of theseevents to publish later will provide you with aunique story behind the game.

Obviously these insights only scratch thesurface of any detailed marketing plan andthere is no substitute for experience. Butthese three principles can shape the mindsetbehind marketing a self-published game if itdoesn’t exist at the outset. Simply put,marketing should be a part of any product’sdevelopment, and self promotion is the newskill that developers must learn to survive inthe brave new world of self-publishing. www.PlayReplay.net

If you can’t beat ‘em…Developers can consider themselves lucky to have sidestepped the world of PR and marketing for so long.Times are changing though, and the renaissance of self-publishing has come at a cost. Fortunately, Play Replaydirector Oliver Birch is here to shed some light on your path through the dark side…

Marketing should bea part of any

product’s development andself promotion is the newskill that developers mustlearn to survive in the bravenew world ofself-publishing.

50 | SEPTEMBER 2010

BETA | GAME CHANGERS: ALLEGORITHMIC

Above: Unity’s NicholasFrancis and his team arepreparing a number of‘saucy’ new features

There is no doubt that Unity deserves itsplace on the Game Changers list.Headquartered in San Francisco, the

engine firm has been in a driving force in thedemocratisation of game development sinceits conception in 2001.

Almost a decade later, and five years afterits official founding, the outfit can boast animpressive 200,000 registered users coveringa huge range of games making experience.From first time coders using the free versionto the likes EA, Bigpoint, Ubisoft and NASAharnessing the power of the engine’s fullyfledged edition, Unity has caught theattention of studios large and small.

This year alone Unity’s web-player saw its30 millionth instillation, and the company leftthe Develop Awards with the coveted GrandPrix Award and the Technical Innovationgong. The firm is also headed up by anapproachable, enthusiastic team who havedeveloped a deserved reputation as some ofthe most amicable members of the industry.They care about games, and their delight attheir success is consistently endearing.

“We’ve got Unity 3 coming up real soonnow,” confirms Nicholas Francis, company co-founder and chief creative officer. “This is ourlargest release ever with a bunch of saucyhigh-end features; our users get the full Beastlightmapping solution, Umbra PVS and lots ofupdates to audio, physics, and more. I can’twait to get it out; Unity 3 will be our biggestfeature set ever, best performance – andwe’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time onhunting down bugs and spit-polishing a lotof tools. I think people will just go ‘wow’ whenthey see it – at least that’s what we’re hearingfrom our 3,500 beta testers.”

Unity is a company with boundlessambition; a fact that has played a significantpart in its establishment as a prolific tool in achanging industry. The firm is poised to addAndroid and PS3 to its rostrum of supportedplatforms, which already includes the Appleportables, web, Mac PC, Wii and 360.

IN THE BEGINNING“Back in the day, we wanted to make thegame engine’s equivalent of Photoshop,” saysFrancis. “Basically we wanted to provide aneasy-to-use tool to author high-quality games.That focus meant that we always had a razor-sharp focus on making the tools be accessible.

“Most other engines are authored for in-house use and then someone turned aroundand said ‘Maybe we can sell this’. We’ve neverhad that mindset – because of that we’ve justspent so much more effort on making thingsquick and easy to get into, and having a tool

that works. We don’t just do a monthlyrelease of whatever our internal team isworking on – we actually make sure thatthings work.”

In pursuit of staying acutely relevant, Unityhas developed a two-pronged approach.

Firstly, the team makes sure it speaks withit users and find out what they need most.

“There’s a fine line between figuring outwhat they’d like to have and what wouldreally make a difference, and it’s one wherewe’re looking very closely at what we can do,”admits Francis.

Secondly, the Unity heads insist onimplementing a ‘Fridays Are For Fun’ rule. Asthe weekend nears, developers can just workon something they want to work on; a factthat has allowed Unity to introduce featuresthat make it one of the most topical pieces oftech on the market. The Friday rule hasinstigated a wealth of new features, from

small fixes to significant new introductions.The Unity team also has an eye on

opportunities outside of the sphere of theestablished industry; a quality that has meantit has developed a reputation for pushing theenvelope, making a bit more room inside forits technology, clients, and increasingly, theindustry as a whole.

TIME WILL TELLSpend time with the Unity staff, and you’llhear about ‘gamification’. It may be a slightlyungainly term, but the process it refers to –gameplay as a mechanism outside of gamingto make mundane interactions moreengaging – is one Unity is keenly monitoring.

Unity doesn’t draw the line at gamificationeither, as Francis reveals in highlightinganother fashion that has piqued the firm’sinterest: “The other trend is a more pervasivegaming; where you can take your game withyou. Tiger Woods Online was a nice example.You can play a round at work. When your bosscomes in you just close the browser. Whenyou get home, you can fire up your homemachine and pick up where you left off.”

Unity isn’t just ready for the future; it is partthe process shaping it. The technologycompany continues to develop features thatcater for what player will want tomorrow, andwhat developers can do about that today,and it is that fact more than any other thatmakes it stand out as a worthy representativeof the Game Changers.www.unity3d.com

We’ve just spent somuch more effort on

making things quick andeasy to get into, and havinga tool that works. Wedon’t just do amonthly release.

Nicholas Francis, Unity

United they standAs our Game Changers series continues, Unity is next to take to the stage. Will Freeman takes a look at the popularengine and its plans for the future in a constantly evolving industry...

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.


GAME CHANGERS: GAIKAI | BETA

Above: from left toright - Gaikai’s DavidPerry, Andrew Gaultand Rui Pereira

If the companies selected as part of ourGame Changers series are supposed to beorganisations that attempt to shape a

mould for the future of game development,and don’t shy away from taking risks, thenGaikai fits the bill absolutely.

Gaikai’s vision of accessible high-end cloudgaming is a simple, bold concept born fromfounder David Perry’s belief that distributionhas a lot to learn from other industries.Consumers test drive cars, argues Perry, andflick through magazines in the newsagentbefore they take them to the counter, so whynot games?

“A big problem with gaming is the latestgames always come with friction, meaningfor consumers it’s going to the store, waitingfor mail, having to register or to downloadsome monster file,” Perry suggests.

“Time is precious, and people arebecoming more impatient than ever; just seehow many people abort when their YouTubevideo starts to stutter. Gaming losescountless players the same way, so the firstsign of friction and people bail.”

Sighting FarmVille’s barnstormingmomentum as a case in point for thepotential of convenience as a keystone of agame’s success, Perry is clearly an ambitiousman. If Gaikai can make accessing major newtitles normally confined to a disk or swollendownload file as successful as Zynga’s best, itcould be that cloud gaming will join the likesof the Wii and 360 as a ‘proper’ format in thepublic and wider industry’s conscious.

It’s certainly an endearing proposition, andone that could give the entire ecosystem ofgame development, publication anddistribution an invigorating shake up.

GAME PLAN“Gaikai is designed for the web,” says Perry. “Ituses the idea that you shouldn’t bring thegamer to the game, you should bring thegame to the gamer. It sounds simple but it isa paradigm change in the cost of acquiringplayers and it’s a million times moreconvenient for gamers.”

Attracting more players for less moneysounds like a very good deal for developers.With Gaikai subscriptions being free for theplayer, and players able to Tweet a friendwithout any game download a URL that willhave them playing in seconds, it certainlysounds like the platform could be a greatboon for the industry.

What Gaiaki must do is forge relationshipswith developers. It’s going to be a tough gig,but Perry has something on his side.

“When you are old like me, you hold on tothe one benefit, that’s having lots of industryfriends,” states Perry. “After all these years, I’vemet thousands of people, and that helps a lotwhen I need to get meetings with decisionmakers. So far every publisher I’ve spoken toreally likes what we are doing.

“The first major publisher deal was withElectronic Arts; they signed up lots of theirkey franchises and paid for the service inadvance. They really understand the value ofgetting all of the friction out of the systemand want to let their gamers play instantlyand share.”

A DECENT PROPOSALWinning round giants like EA is a huge stepfor Gaikai, and testament to its ability, butwhat about the proletariat developersworking the front line of games making?According to Perry, they will warm to the idea

there’s a technical solution about to becomeavailable that can massively increase thereach of their games. That sounds areasonable selling point. Add the fact thatGaikai don’t charge anything for clicks or forfinding, and it could be that many moreteams are won round to Perry’s intrepid newvision for gaming.

But, really, is Gaikai evoking all that muchexcitement in people?

“The cloud is a hot space right now,” insistsPerry, adding: “It’s like crazy nuclear hot. Ihave investors calling constantly as theyunderstand the value proposition. I’ve beenso damn lucky in my career to be at the rightplace at the right time. I got the rights to theTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and it totallychanged the course of my career, thenAladdin, then the Matrix when it was thehottest movie franchise.”

Perry’s conviction that cloud gamingrepresents the future is what makes Gaikaistand out as a company. He and hiscolleagues’ unflinching dedication to theconcept has brought them a long way, andwith the momentum and support they arealready courting, it looks like they will go agreat deal further.

“Convenience and price are huge toconsumers,” concludes Perry. “I bet if we canget the price of gaming down, and make it100 times more convenient. Then cloudgaming will become how most of us checkout digital games and even tools andsoftware applications.”www.gaikai.com

Convenience StoredIf it fulfils its potential, Gaikai’s vision of accessible cloud gaming could reshape every facet of theindustry. Will Freeman asked founder David Perry what makes his plan so game changing…

The cloud is a hotspace right now. It’slike crazy nuclear

hot. I have investors callingconstantly as theyunderstand thevalue proposition.

David Perry, Gaikai

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.


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Softkinect discuss the iisu gesturerecognition platform p54-55

54 | SEPTEMBER 2010

The industry’s recent history has beenkind to Softkinetic Studios. As thepublic and platform holders continue

to obsess over the virtues of motion control,the Belgium-based company’s longestablished gesture recognition expertiseproves remarkably topical today.

Softkinetic’s Iisu real-time 3D gesturerecognition software platform has alreadybeen embraced by those involved intraditional and serious gaming, and evenfound favour with the worlds of marketing,advertising and healthcare.

Pitched as compatible with all major 3Ddepth-sensing devices, its name may be onethat will become far more familiar in thecoming months.

All of which makes CEO Michel Tombroffand studio head Mike Nichols the perfectpeople to cast their eyes over the likes ofKinect and Move, offer some insight on howto best handle developing for workablegesture control, and explain where Iisu fitsinto the increasingly complex equation.

You’re in multiple markets – which hasproven most responsive and interested ingestural interfaces?Tombroff: Generally speaking, the homeentertainment and video gaming market ison the leading edge, because this audiencehas always been the early adopter of newtechnology.

That said, however, advertising andhealthcare markets have also been quick toget their hands on this technology. Its ease ofuse and depth of experience make itperfectly suited for interactive displays andvarious gesture-based fitness andrehabilitation solutions.

And talk us through Iisu; what is it? What’syour target audience?Tombroff: Our target audience is gesture-based application developers. Iisu supports

all types of 3D motion capture devices andcompletely insulates the developer from thelow level technicalities. It provides real-timeinformation about the user’s position, bodyparts and gestures, and can be used toanimate 3D avatars.Nichols: From a developer’s viewpoint, Iisu isan incredibly robust piece of middleware thatenables development teams to createcompelling experiences using naturalgesture input. Without Iisu we’d have no wayto create these experiences.

Softkinetic has collaborated with EA – arethose experiments something we’ll see infinished products by either of you?Tombroff: Our collaboration with EA focusedon sports-related content. Since then,Softkinetic has released several finishedsports-related products, including footballand soccer applications, and announced apartnership with NaturalMotion regardingthe adaptation of BackBreaker Football.

What are your thoughts on the threecurrent gaming gesture interfaces WiiRemote, Move and Kinect? What are theydoing right? What are they doing wrong?Tombroff: Wii, Move and Kinect are allexcellent input devices. Although in functionthey are quite different from one another,

they all share a common goal to makegaming more broadly accessible,entertaining and involved. Wii obviously tookthe biggest leap of faith in this field. For whatseems now like a foregone conclusion,Nintendo in fact took one of the biggestgambles in console gaming, and thankfullyfor us – as consumers – it paid off for them.

By combining a light wand and 2D camera,the PS3’s Move 3D positioning and precisecontrol will certainly bring some welcomenew experiences to the platform. Kinectobviously deviates from its consolecounterparts by doing away with thephysical controller altogether.

Because Kinect uses a 3D camera tocapture the physical motions of the playersas input, Kinect experiences will feelsignificantly different from Sony’s Move andNintendo’s Wii gaming systems.

It’s easy to say Nintendo has the edgeright now, because they’ve been out thelongest and have sold the most consoles ofthis generation so far. And let’s be honest, ifNintendo hadn’t sold the pants off itscompetition we wouldn’t be talking aboutthese other input devices. All consolecompanies are competitive with one another,and want the edge that will enable them tooutsell their competitors. Will these newinput devices from Sony and Microsoft givethem the edge they need to claim victorywhen the dust on this generation settles?Who knows? Just looking at the differentlaunch strategies between Microsoft Kinectand Sony Move may give some insight intotheir confidence. Microsoft seems to beputting significantly more effort into thelaunch of Kinect, versus what’s happening forSony’s Move. That hardly means Move isdoomed, but Sony should figure out how tomove into the attack rather than react.

For all of us in the developmentcommunity, and certainly for the gamingpublic at large, this is all welcome news. We

Above: Familiarity withthe tech is mostimportant, says Studiohead Mike Nichols

Iisu supports alltypes of 3D motion

capture devices andcompletely insulates thedeveloper from thelow leveltechnicalities.

Michel Tombroff, Softkinetic

Softkinetic has dedicated seven years to the field of gesture recognition.Will Freeman spoke with the firm’s CEO and studio head to learn more…

KINETICENERGY

BUILD | INTERVIEW: SOFTKINETIC


get more cool toys to play with, and bettergames to boot.

What’s been the best implementation ofmotion-recognition you’ve seen outside ofgames that game developers should payattention to?Nichols: The best implementations in naturalgesture recognition have to be in the movies,in particular in the area of user interfaces.Hollywood has put some incredible visualsbehind the idea of natural gesture interfacesin movies like Iron Man. Who wouldn’t wantto spend some time in Tony Stark’s lab?Personally, I can’t wait to see what thedesigners do in Tron 2.Tombroff: Game developers should alwayspay attention and react to user input. Filmslike Iron Man show this very well. In the film,every action is met by a bold reaction. Theinterface is constantly reacting and givingfeedback to all the inputs made by the user,or actor. Obviously, this is done to create avisually stunning film, but in reality we needto provide this for users to understand moreclearly how their actions control the game. Ihear a lot of developers worry about playerfatigue with gesture-based gaming.

But in reality, frustration drives fatigueabove all else. Not providing accuratefeedback to a player’s input is a sure way tofrustrate any user.

Some recent work using Iisu by thephysical rehabilitation company Silverfit isalso quite remarkable. They have developedexercise programs for seniors using our 3Dgesture recognition technology, bycombining very robust gesture tracking withsimple and efficient gameplay.

What’s been the best in games that youhave seen? And what about the worst?Tombroff: The best implementations for anynew technology, like natural gesture input,exploit the strengths of that tech, with game

mechanics designed to play to thosestrengths. Most poor implementations withthis new technology have tried to convertexisting control schemes, which simply doesnot work well. In creating a natural gestureinput game, developers need to spend timegetting to know the tech and discoveringwhat works well and what doesn’t. More thanany other previous control input, 3D naturalinput changes the way we design games.

When talking about Move, Sony mentionsthe need to have buttons on controllers.It’s a different technology, but broadlydoesn’t that mean, even when faced withsomething more ‘natural’ than gesturetech, designers and consumers will alwaysrely on physical, tangible interfaces?Nichols: I don’t think the broad consumereven knows how to use the TV remote. That’snot a dig at the broad consumer; it’s reallymeant as a dig at manufacturers of thosedevices. For years we’ve been adding buttonsto cope with the expanding list of featuresonly to concoct a device to control a dizzyingarray of menus. The same is true for gaming.Natural gesture input requires us to designcontrol schemes that are more immersiveand therefore make games that are more funto play.

Softkinetic Studios was founded last year– almost 12 months on, what’s theprogress of that team? What are theyworking on?Nichols: I was really excited to join such anexperienced and motivated team inSoftkinetic Studios four months ago. Theyhave more experience designing for naturalgesture than any other studio in the world.We all share the same passion that we aretruly creating on the cutting edge and thechallenges and rewards it brings.

The team has been developing for a widearray of projects for arcades, set-top boxes,and consoles. Recently, the team justreleased an interactive billboard for theDisney film The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

The great thing about an interactivebillboard is that it gives the public a chanceto use this technology without having to buyanything. Anyone can simply walk up andplay. The team is currently busy creatingsome terrific new experiences that we’ll beable to announce sometime in the New Year.

There’s a lot of talk about latency and lagfor all the motion control/ gestureinterfaces. What’s the secret to dealingwith this? Is it something we can eradicateover time or a problem that is alwaysgoing to remain as software and hardwarehave to react to user behaviour?Nichols: Latency is not an inherent issue withall natural gesture input platforms. Latency isplatform specific.

Again, using the example of the interactivebillboard that we created for The Sorcerer’sApprentice, that experience had no lag.

For the next generation of arcade systemsalready using this technology, again there isno lag. Even on lower-end systems, lag fromthe user perspective is almost imperceptible.In my experience, the talk about latency isjust that – all talk.www.softkinetic.net

From a developer’sviewpoint, Iisu is an

incredibly robust piece ofmiddleware that enablesteams to createcompellingexperiences

Mike Nichols, Softkinetic

Left: Softkinetic’s offering proves incredibly timelyconsidering the arrival of the Wii, Move and Kinect

Below: The Iisu real-time 3D gesture recognitionsoftware platform is designed to be absolutely robust

INTERVIEW: SOFTKINETIC | BUILD

Above: CEO MichelTombroff has beenimpressed by the filmindustry’s work withgesture recognition

56 | SEPTEMBER 2010

BUILD | SOFTWARE

WebVision

Felix Roeken understands thedevelopment process acutely.This is something that comes

across when considering not just theassurance in his words, but the historybehind both the man and the companyof which he is general manager, Trinigy.

The German 3D tech firm, which alsohas offices in Texas, is best known forfor its popular and ever-improvingVision Engine. Recently however, itreleased a new browser game engineframework called WebVision, to bemade available to everyone who haslicensed the Vision Engine. But itdoesn’t end there.

“It has been a busy year for us bothin terms of technology and business,”Roeken explains.

“In March, we launched VisionEngine 8 with a number of newfeatures, tools, workflowimprovements, partner integrationswith Havok and Perforce, andoptimised performance for allplatforms. We just announced supportfor Autodesk FBX and WebVision.”

Roeken is proud of the pace andvolume of work his company isundertaking, and is keen to clarify theeffects of this ethos.

“2010 has also been a huge year ofexpansion for us as well as an all-timerecord year in revenue. We’ve seentremendous global interest for our newtechnology. We’ve opened an office inNorthern Germany. We’ve been hiringin all regions. What’s gratifying is thatall of this growth has come organically,with no VC in the background.”

And on the subject of the WebVision,its genesis and what Trinigy hopes toachieve with it as a new platform,Roeken is just as keen to open up.

“Games delivered through andplayed in browsers have really grown inpopularity over the last few years. Butwhat we’ve also seen is that there isnow larger demand for browser-basedgames that both look and play likeconsole games,” he explains.

“WebVision is a developmentframework integrated with the VisionEngine that lets developers of browser-based games capitalise on the VisionEngine’s extensive feature set andcross-platform performance in order tobring games with stunning visualquality and immersive gameplay tobrowsers. WebVision is included free-of-charge in the Vision Engine SDKto Vision licensees, and supports allcommon PC browsers, includingExplorer, Firefox, Chrome and Opera.”

ALL PART OF THE PLANOver the years a certain level of qualityhas become expected from thetechnology that Trinigy produces, andthe support it gives to the users of it. Inorder to ensure that these hallmarks ofthe company’s success are maintrained,Roeken has plans.

“We’re focusing a lot of energy onexpansion, which includes hiring forvarious positions and opening newoffices. Our development staff isalready busy on the next version of theVision Engine, which unfortunately wecan’t talk about yet. And of course, we

are already planning our next stepswith WebVision,” he says.

“On a more personal note, we’rereally looking forward to witnessingthe release of some key Vision-basedtitles, like Arcania – Gothic 4, as well asthe unveiling of some great titles thatare yet to be made public.”

And Roeken knows why he believespeople should pick up WebVision at thefirst possible opportunity.

“WebVision serves the growingsegmentation in browser games byoffering developers a developmentenvironment for creating graphicallyrich environments and complex,immersive gameplay. It has all thepower of a fully-fledged game engine,as well as Vision’s renowned modularityand flexible workflow. It includesTrinigy’s premier support. And, if you’rea Vision Engine licensee, it’s free-of-charge,” he laughs.

“The beauty of WebVision is thatdevelopers can use it in a variety of

ways. It can act as an additional gameplatform, a tool to create marketingand sales demos, a new method ofgenerating revenue. The possibilitiesare endless, and I look forward toseeing all the different ideas ourcustomers come up with.”

BACK TO THE FUTUREThe future is not something thatweighs heavily on Roeken, and it feelssafe to assume that his optimism issomething that is shared across Trinigy.

“It is no longer a retail world, nor is ita triple-A vs. casual world. More andmore gaming platforms anddistribution channels are segmentingthe market. On the one hand, that’sgood, as it will generate more channelsof revenue in the games market.

“On the other hand, games will haveto either cover a much broader rangeof platforms or strongly focus on nichesor specific platform experiences.Consequently, business models andrevenues for publishers will furtherevolve and diversify to meet thesechanges,” he forecasts.

“Middleware providers will have totackle and serve this new world. It willtake agility and foresight.

“For Trinigy, changing our licensinglong ago, focusing time on making theVision Engine as flexible and modularas possible, and launching WebVisionare just some examples of how we’reevolving to meet market needs. As themarket transforms we’ll continue toevolve. Stay tuned.”www.experiencewebvision.com

KEYRELEASE

There is nowlarger demandfor browser-

based games that bothlook and playlike consolegames.

Felix Roeken, Trinigy

Felix Roeken has overseen the life of an exciting product in the VisionEngine during his tenure asTrinigy general manager. Now a new browser game engine framework called WebVision is set lightup the browser-based games market. Stuart Richardson caught up with Roeken to find out more…

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

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58 | SEPTEMBER 2010

Gone are the days of the arcade andlining up to play against the besthardcore gamers in the

neighbourhood. Technology has brought us into an age

where the in-home networked game consoleand computer have taken over. With onlinegames, players can collect achievements ortrophies, view and compare their stats, createclans for team play, and participate in onlinetournaments. Now the average gamer can trytheir luck against their neighbourhood ordistant friends, as well as play against thebest hardcore gamers in the world. Gamerscan even be dynamically matched againstother players in skill, all from the comfort oftheir own home, 24/7.

Increasingly, more multiplayer games arerunning over the internet and the ever-expanding in-game player counts bringabout the challenge of bandwidthoptimisation. Additionally, sending increasedamounts of latency-critical data across theinternet can be hard to manage. Developersimplementing online games in the real-worldwill encounter many technical challenges,such as choosing an effective networktopology, determining the normal send ratefor the specific type of game, or estimatingthe bandwidth rate for a targeted territory.

This article highlights the challenges adeveloper will face and provides them withthe information they require for creating andoptimising a game title for real-time onlineplay. Whether a title offers competitive or co-operative online gameplay, having a robustonline implementation that can operateunder a multitude of consumer internetconnections can increase the longevity of agame title, and can serve as an effectivetactic to fight against used games sales.

PICKING THE RIGHT NETWORK TOPOLOGYGame clients communicate with one anotherin-game through a selected network

topology, which directly affects theirbandwidth usage.

While many network topologies exist, thethree most widely used on the PlayStationNetwork are: peer-to-peer, dedicated serverand integrated server.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) offers a direct flow ofnetwork traffic from all game clients to allother game clients without the need for acentral game server. In this topology, each

client is connected to every other gameclient, forming a fully connected grid.

A dedicated server utilises a centralisedgame server hosted in the internet cloud.

All clients in-game are connected to thisserver. Client communication travels to theserver before being routed to all other clientsin the game.

An integrated server is similar to adedicated server, except one of the clients in-game is responsible for routing the gamedata instead of a separate dedicatedmachine. All clients are connected to thisserver where game traffic travels to beforebeing relayed to all other clients in-game.

Selection of a network topology is a criticalfirst step in implementing the onlinecomponent of a multiplayer game, and ispredominately based on player count. Gameswith large player counts (more than 50

players), require more bandwidth andhorsepower, and will choose to use adedicated server configuration. Mediumsized games (under 50 players) will generallyuse the integrated server solution. Gameswith smaller player counts (under 10 players)can benefit from the use of the P2P topology,which typically boasts lower latency than theintegrated server model.

Online console games now feature higherplayer counts than were previously availableto consumers. To manage the resources of a256-player game, game titles such as MAGutilise the dedicated server topology andtake advantage of cutting edge workstationhardware. A dedicated server can easily hostmore players in game than their integratedserver counterparts, which are limited by theresources available on today’s generation ofconsoles. However, dedicated servers costmoney to purchase and host, which is thekey contributing factor to lowering playercount requirements and choosing a cheapernetwork topology.

The integrated server network topology isutilised by games like Warhawk to reducehosting costs. In this topology, one player in-game is chosen to be the server in which allin-game clients connect to. Before selecting aclient to be the server, the game title will tryto choose the most appropriate client (theone with the best network connection) to bethe integrated server. Hosting costs arereduced since the game is being hosted onone of the player’s internet connection.

Although a dedicated server can be costlyto host, it generally allows a certain level ofconnection quality that can be assured for allplayers in-game. Dedicated servers rarelydisconnect in the middle of a game.Integrated servers, on the other hand, arecontrolled by a player in-game. Players canquit out of game or shut down the server atany time. With the integrated server model,developers must devise solutions to handle if

More multiplayergames are running

over the internet and theever-expanding in-gameplayer counts bring aboutthe challenge ofbandwidthoptimisation.

BUILD | TUTORIAL: BANDWIDTH OPTIMISATION

BANDWIDTH AIDIt doesn’t matter how slick your game is. Without bandwidth optimisation it might notmake the grade. Thankfully Sony’s Vinod Tandon is here with some invaluable advice...


the server prematurely disconnects from thegame. This amounts to migrating the serverresponsibilities and state to another client,which is referred to as host migration.

Host migration and the need for NATtraversal are two of the biggestdisadvantages for integrated server and P2Pnetwork topologies. NAT traversal issues,however, can be mitigated by using an in-game networking middleware withcompetent NAT traversal mechanisms. Thesuccess of the NAT traversal algorithm in thenetwork middleware depends on acombination of factors: the consumers NATType, Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) support,and its port predictability.

MESSAGE AGGREGATIONMessage aggregation is a technique thatreduces the transmission frequency bymerging information from multiple messagesinto the same packet. The process ofaggregating more data into fewer packetsreduces the overall network bandwidthusage since less network packet headerinformation is being sent.

Packet aggregation is an essentialcomponent to optimising the server’s sendrate as well as the client’s receive rate. Serversin either an integrated server or a dedicatedserver topology generally have larger packets– more data – being sent to clients.

The server has the privilege of receiving allthe messages from the clients in-game,bundling them up into one packet, andsending them to all clients. The server canalso intelligently remove messages deemedinappropriate for other clients; team-basedmessages are only sent to members of thesame team.

A useful metric in determining how wellthe data is being aggregated is to calculatethe sent payload efficiency percentage (PE%)or the ratio of in-game data versus the entiresize of the packet, including network packet

headers. This calculation provides thepercentage of game data that exists in thepackets and can signify the amount ofbandwidth being used by the networkpacket headers:

< Sent PE% = (sent gamepayload data/total sent packetsize) * 100 >

Integrated server and dedicated servernetwork topologies generally have clientswith low payload efficiency if they areoptimised to send small amounts of datafrequently. Nevertheless, the developershould attempt to aggregate as much data aspossible and reduce the client’s packet sendrate to decrease the overall bandwidthusage. Clients in heavily optimised consolemultiplayer games tend to offer a packetsend rate near 10 packets per second.

The downside of aggregating more datainto less packets is that it will add latency tothe game since the data is not being sent assoon as it ready to go out.

The trade off between latency andbandwidth usage is a constant balancing actthat any network developer must face, butthere are a few techniques that can be usedto lessen this problem.

UUSING LATENCY/JITTER HIDINGClient-side prediction techniques such asdead reckoning can be employed to hidelatency. Employing dead reckoning usingbest-effort communication (UDP/IP), insteadof a more expensive reliable communication(TCP/IP), will smooth over gaps when packetsare lost. Thoroughly testing the game withvarying latencies, packet loss, and jitter alsohelps to confirm the latency hidingtechniques will work under poor networkconditions.

Motions of jerk or sudden changes ofacceleration and direction can be a game'sworst enemy when making predictionsbased on latency.

This can happen when a player is stopped,moves full burst in one direction, stops andmoves full burst in another direction. Slowinggame play is an effective technique that canbe used to hide jerk. This can be done byadding moments of inertia to a player’smovement during game play, such asbetween full speed start and stops.

SENDING LESS RELIABLE TRAFFICData in-game can be sent via unreliable(UDP) or reliable (Reliable UDP, or TCP)network protocols. Unreliable data is trafficthat is sent best effort. If the unreliable datais lost on the network it will not reach itsdestination. When traffic is sent reliably, anadditional sequence number must be sentwith the data. Once the reliable data hasbeen received, an acknowledgement mustbe sent to the sender to signify that the datawas obtained.

If a host does not receive anacknowledgement, it must retransmit thedata over the network and wait again for areturned acknowledgement. Data flagged tobe sent reliably requires additional memorysince the data must be kept until it has beenacknowledged, in case it needs to be resentover the network.

Messageaggregation is a

technique that reduces thetransmission frequency by merging informationfrom multiplemessages into thesame packet.

TUTORIAL: BANDWIDTH OPTIMISATION | BUILD

Sony has prefected itsbandwidth optimisationmethod with titles as variedas Fat Princess and GrandTurismo 5 Prologue

Above: The robustnature of Warhawk’sonline element becamea showcase of the PS3’sonline ability

The added bandwidth expense of sendingreliable traffic when packet loss exists, andthe increased buffer space required to keepunacknowledged data, are the primary costsof sending reliable traffic on a game console.Generally, it is best practice to send as littlereliable traffic as possible, but this candirectly affect how a game synchronises itssimulation across the network.

A new developer may consider varioustechniques to synchronise gameplay over thenetwork. One possible solution is to send theraw (controller) input data from a client to allthe other remote clients in the game. Thisinput data would be used to drive thatplayer’s actions on each remote client.Another (probably better) approach is tosynchronise the state of all the local gameobjects across the network. For example, aplayer’s avatar can be considered a gameobject, and when the player moves his localplayer character, the remote player characteris updated with the current state (or position)of the character.

Sending input data is simple to implement;however, it is an expensive way tosynchronise a game across a network sincecontroller data cannot be missed or retrievedout-of-order. The input data must be sentreliably and in order for a remote game toaccurately simulate another player’s activity.Network traffic that represents the statefulinformation of network objects may includeattributes such as position, orientation, orevents, such as firing a weapon or completingan objective. Most real-time games choose tosend stateful data instead of input data

because it is a flexible solution. For example,stateful data, such as position and orientationupdates, do not need to be sent reliably sinceonly the latest update is the most pertinent.

A network game where all data needs tobe guaranteed (it is 100 per cent reliable) isconsidered a bandwidth expensive game.Such a game will not support high playercounts. Player position and orientation datais almost always sent via unreliable networktransport, which means that each client musthandle the possibility of this data not arrivingin time, out of order, or not at all.

PICKING YOUR TARGET BANDWITH RATEPicking a target bandwidth rate can be atricky, yet important part of launching asuccessful online game. For example, in anIntegrated Server topology the server isrunning on one of the participants in-game.One client in the game will need to supportthe high send and receive rates of theIntegrated Server. Picking the targetbandwidth rate of a game title’s IntegratedServer can be difficult to do without knowinghow consumer bandwidth penetrations varywithin each country.

At PlayStation, any game that employs anintegrated server topology will attempt tobenchmark each client’s bandwidth profilebefore determining which client will bechosen as the server. The PlayStation onlineenvironment has recorded the bandwidthprofiles of clients in each territory (NorthAmerica, Europe, Japan and Korea), whichare detailed in the graphs featured at the topof this page.

The graphs feature the percentage of usersand their respective maximum upstreambandwidth profiles in each country. Thestatistics were collected from January 8th, 2010to July 27th, 2010, using the followingPlayStation 3 titles: Warhawk, Fat Princess,Grand Turismo 5 Prologue, and Pain. The graphsfor North America and Europe are the mostuseful compared to Japan or Korea wheremost consumers have 50Mbps or higherInternet connections available.

CONCLUSIONMany aspects must be considered whendesigning a multiplayer game toaccommodate the varying gameplayrequirements, game synchronisationtechniques, and connection qualities of theconsumer. Bandwidth optimisation is the keycomponent in that process.

The type of game and its sensitivity tolatency and jitter directly affects the optionsavailable for lower bandwidth consumption. Ihope the network optimisation techniquesmentioned in this article help to illustrate andprovide solutions for some of the major issuesand tradeoffs that exist when implementing areal-time online game.

60 | SEPTEMBER 2010

Above: Bandwidthprofiles of clients ofSony’s PlayStationonline environment(see main article)

BUILD | TUTORIAL: BANDWIDTH OPTIMISATION

Vinod Tandon is a staffapplications development engineerat Sony Computer EntertainmentAmerica’s Online TechnologyGroup. He has worked with first-party developers and producers ona wide array of networkingproblems and issues regardingonline gaming.

BANDWIDTH UPSTREAM PROFILE:NORTH AMERICA

BANDWIDTH UPSTREAM PROFILE:EUROPE

BANDWIDTH UPSTREAM PROFILEJAPAN

BANDWIDTH UPSTREAM PROFILE:KOREA

62 | SEPTEMBER 2010

BUILD | GAME ART

DEAD END THRILLS


Duncan Harris presents the first in an ongoing series looking at speciallycaptured screenshots that showcase game art at its best…

Studio: Digital IllusionsPublisher: EAYear: 2008/9Capture format: PC

GAME ART | BUILD

Mirror’s EdgeGood girl gone bad Celeste enjoys the high lifein Mirror’s Edge – or maybe she’s just admiringthe paintwork. Think what you like of the storyand gameplay, but DICE achieved its goal ofmaking an unmistakable visual experience. Thebleached city, ultra-realistic shaders andgroundbreaking use of colour – not to mentionIlluminate Labs’ Beast global lighting system –make this a world that begs to be reached outand touched. Perfect, in other words, for such adaring attempt at first-person platforming.

Tools and tricks for this screenshot includean edited config file unlocking the game’s freeflight debug camera, Unreal Engine’s high-res

tiledshot function, an FOV/aspect ratio hackby Racer_S of the Widescreen Gaming Forums,and a memory-resident trainer with slowmotion cheat.

Dead End Thrills is a website and resourcededicated to the art of video games. It believesthis art is too easily overlooked thanks tofactors including technology, design and the‘fast food culture’ of modern play. Its galleriesfeature over 5,500 lovingly taken, watermark-free screenshots which are free to downloadand use. Elsewhere, it features interviews withtoday’s leading artists and designers.www.deadendthrills.com

BUILD | COMPLIANCE SERVICES

Above: The Testologyteam strike a pose withmanaging directorAndy Robson, centre

When Testology established itscompliance facility it wassomething of an inevitability for

the long-experienced testing and QA firm. Asa company focused intently on customersatisfaction, the development of thecompliance offering was essential in realisingTestology’s vision of delivering an all-encompassing and unrivalled service.

“We want to be able to offer a complete QAservice,” explains Testology MD Andy Robson.“We have excelled in the functionality andconsultancy sectors in recent years and felt ittime to translate the same excellence intocompliance. Expanding, while maintainingthe same level of quality, was a naturalprogression because of our ability to recruitthe very best compliance technicians.”

Developers and publishers have in factalways approached Testology withcompliance enquiries, but the team at theHampshire outfit wanted, with certainty, tobe able to offer the highest possible level ofservice in that capacity before opening thedoors on a dedicated facility.

Now that time has come, and Testology isthe creator of a new, specialised andexperienced department.

FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHINGBorn of a meticulous recruitment process, thehighly-qualified compliance department atTestology has embraced the dedication to‘first time passes’ that has long made thefirm’s other QA and testing servicesperennially popular with a host of high-profile developers.

“With such a successful QA andconsultancy department, we have ensuredthat our new departments provide the samelevel of excellence,” states Robson. “Theappeal lies in Testology’s dedication toquality, our employees’ passionate approachto every task and project, and the compliancedepartment’s level of developmental

experience. We have all the required tools,software, hardware, and peripherals that areneeded to run through specific compliancechecks. Moreover we have the skill andknowledge to use them correctly against thecompliance check.”

To that end Testology has appointed anextremely experienced veteran in QAmanager Justin Amore. He will oversee theoutfit, calling on his wealth of knowledge ofthe compliance process to ensure that theexpectation of quality Testology delivers onwill be translated into the new department.

“We have assembled a compliance teamthat has a proven track record of getting titlesthrough submission first time, on allplatforms,” confirms Amore. “Our complianceteam has a full and comprehensiveunderstanding of all Sony, Nintendo andMicrosoft compliance standards, are well-versed in all the required testing tools andboast the skills to replicate the platformholders testing environment.

“We have the experience and capabilitiesto make a title as compliant as possible,making us supremely confident that ourclient’s titles will have a strong chance ofpassing first time.”

Certain that its experience in testing isunparalleled, Testology boasts an impressive

portfolio of past clients, including LionheadStudios; something that has given it the kindof experience it can leverage in itscompliance role.

“Our staffs’ careers have been defined byaward-winning titles, allowing expectationsfor our ‘testing departments’ to be translatedinto quality compliance,” states Robson, whois fiercely proud of what his company andworkforce have achieved. “Testing andcompliance share the same goal to assurequality. Our functionality teams andcompliance teams all work towards that samelevel of excellence.”

ONTO A WINNERThis year Testology’s effort in raising the barin the QA sector was recognised with aDevelop Award. The Best Services accoladewas accepted on stage to a level of applausetypical of that reserved for big namedevelopers, demonstrating how popularTestology has become with its client base.That fact hasn’t bred complacency though,and Testology is acutely aware of theindustry’s fickle nature.

“Reputations are fragile,” confirms Robson.“They can sway depending on the quality ofservice. We are 100 per cent committed tomaintaining our excellent reputation andrecord with customers in the future, includingwithin our compliance department. Ourreputation and record support our decisionto expand and offer the industry even morequality services within our areas of expertise.”

To demonstrate its confidence in itscompliance service, Testology is now offeringits first five clients a 25 per cent discount,marking a generous reduction on what thefirm insists is an immensely competitive rate.Those people interested in Testology’scompliance services, or in any of the QAservices it can offer, can contact Robsondirectly at [email protected]

When Testology opened the doors of its new compliance facility,it made sure it got things right. Will Freeman finds out how…

With such asuccessful QA and

consultancy department,we have ensured that ournew departments providethe same level ofexcellence.

Andy Robson, Testology

64 | SEPTEMBER 2010

The test of the Best

This piece replaces anerroneous article aboutTestology publishedlast month by Develop.Apologies for anyconfusion caused.

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

In Homefront from THQ, North Korea hasoccupied the United States in 2027 after aseries of ripped-from-the-headlines

political happenings. It’s within thisnightmare scenario that a band of freedomfighters takes the war to the enemystronghold in San Francisco.

THQ-owned Kaos Studios recentlyelaborated on using the Unreal Engine to bringthis near-future America in ruins to life forgamers on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. LikeKaos Studios’ last game, Frontlines: Fuel of War,the Manhattan-based studio built this newshooter using Unreal Engine 3 technology.

“We chose Unreal Engine 3 for Frontlinesbecause we were starting our studio andwanted to get the product out within two-and-a-half years,” explained Dave Votypka,design director, Kaos Studios.

“Using Epic’s tech, so we could focus onbuilding our content, fitted into THQ’s strategy.Unreal allowed us to hit the ground running.”

Votypka said that it was nice to have theUnreal Editor and tools on day one. His teamhas extended its Unreal Engine 3technological foundation by adding featureslike light map streaming and different typesof tone mapping.

One of the things Kaos Studios hasbenefited from since Epic released UnrealTournament 3 on PlayStation 3 is the ability tocreate Homefront from the ground up as across-console title.

Votypka said that Epic has providedexcellent support for the Unreal Engine on

PS3, allowing his team to develop the Xbox360 and PS3 versions of the game.

The programmers on his team have beenkeeping up with the latest updates throughthe Unreal Developer Network, which allowsthem to converse with not only Epic, butother Unreal licensees.

During development of this massive newgame, which features an epic single-playercampaign and an intense multiplayerexperience, the team was able to use UnrealEngine tools to bring the war-ravagedAmerican landscape to life.

“As a player runs through this ravagedworld, things happen, and we create thosedramatic moments using Kismet triggers,”explained Votypka.

“We were able to use Matinee, for example,when you’re running through a fire scene in astrip mall parking lot and North Koreans arefiring at you. When the car blows over you,nearly decapitating you, that’s a Matineepiece. We also used Matinee with our mo-capscenes and authored a lot of our in-gamecinematic and storytelling moments usingthat toolset.”

Votypka said Homefront will feature onlinecombat on par with the 50-player battlefieldchaos from Frontlines, replete with flying andground-based vehicles.

“We’re continuing in the large-scalewarfare footsteps of Frontlines,” said Votypka.“We built the foundation for large-scalewarfare in multiplayer using the UnrealEngine, so for Homefront we hit the ground

running. We’ve focused on polishing anditeration, as opposed to just gettinghelicopters and tanks working in the engine.”

“The places you lived and grew up in havebeen twisted by this North Korean occupationthat occurred after an energy crisis and afinancial collapse,” explained Votypka.

“We wanted to make that familiarlandscape alien. We wanted to explore whatwould happen if the world’s most powerfulcountry was under occupation and what itwould be like to fight within that world.”

Players will be able to defend America inthe first chapter of a transmedia experiencethat also includes a web-based documentaryand a Sci-Fi Channel TV movie.

Thanks to Kaos Studios for speaking withfreelance reporter John Gaudiosi for this story.

UNREAL ENGINE 3 POWERS HOMEFRONT,THQ’S AND KAOS STUDIOS’ NEW SHOOTER

upcoming epicattended events:PAXSeattle, WASeptember 3rd to 5th, 2010

Tokyo Game Show Tokyo, JapanSeptember 16th to 19th, 2010

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

Please email: [email protected] for appointments.

66 | SEPTEMBER 2010

BUILD | EPIC DIARIES

Above: The newshooter, Homefront,from THQ and KaosStudios uses UnrealEngine 3

Mark Rein is vice president and co-founder of Epic Gamesbased in Cary, North Carolina. Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 won GameDeveloper’s Best Engine Front Line Award four times, won threeDevelop Industry Excellence Awards and is also a Hall of Fameinductee. Epic’s own titles include the Gears of War, UnrealTournament 3 and Gears of War 3. www.epicgames.com

HILTONBONAVENTUREHOTEL

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STAY TUNED

68 | SEPTEMBER 2010

BUILD | AUDIO

For my money, this year’s Developconference audio track provided yetanother candid, informative and

thought provoking set of talks.Thanks to all the speakers, not just for their

time and effort, but also for their attitude; agenerous willingness to share from deepseams of experience wrought at theproduction coal-face – not just the successes,but the failures too. ‘Let me tell you how wegot it wrong so you can avoid the same pitfalls’.

And not just what’s been done to dateeither, but also revelations of futuredirections, fresh ideas and new thinking.Brilliant. This liberal dissemination of bestpractice and future practice can only be goodfor the overall advancement of excellence ingame audio.

So why do people come and speak in thismunificent way? Cynics might suggest self-promotion. Or perhaps these people have toomuch time on their hands?

Absolutely not. The fact is they’repassionate about game audio – whethersound designer, sound coder, composer,dialogue producer or audio manager. Theyactually care very much about what they do,get a buzz from working in the video gamesbusiness, and love to share their passion andknowledge with people of a like mind.

All that actually characterises our entiregame audio community. If you subscribe tothe VGM email forum, which to a great extentenvelops this community, you’ll know exactlywhat I mean.

HELPING HANDSDay-after-day, game audio people around theworld, from junior to executive, reach out tohelp each other, freely offering focused, time-saving and even disaster-avertingadvice – not to mention some mildlydisturbing humour.

This same spirit was much in evidence inthe audio track’s final ‘town hall’ style session,with numerous people around the roommaking valuable contributions to thediscussion. Again, the sharing thing.

Unsurprisingly, a lack of understandingfrom other game development disciplineswas cited several times as a root of workingwoes and unwelcome pressures in audioland. Talk of producers and technical andcreative leads that apparently don’t ‘get’sound had a few people reaching for theirvoodoo dolls. Then there was the oldchestnut that discussions like these raise andaddress the right issues – but that the peoplewho really need to hear them aren’t present.

My own experience has always been that,in reality, we have to proactively take ourmessage to those we want to influence. Thereare fundamental non-project-specificstructure and process issues that needtackling to ensure audio and its practitionersare given due consideration. There are alsorolling project-specific areas where pro-activeengagement is vital. Arguably, we are like thevulnerable motorcyclist having to drive notonly for ourselves, but also for all the othercar drivers, continually anticipating that theywon’t have seen us. All of which brings me tothe Taylor factor.

PRESENT AND CORRECTI interviewed SCEE’s Garry Taylor for anotherpublication shortly before Develop. Inpassing, he mentioned that the CreativeServices Group at Sony run ‘producerworkshops’ on audio in games; a term that tomy ears, has a pleasing ring about it. It maybe a simple enough premise but I bet they doit very well. I also bet any one of us couldcome up with a structured presentation for

producers which underlines the importanceof music, sound and dialogue to the gamingexperience and in particular highlights thenegative effects of dodgy scheduling andunrealistic expectations of the audiodepartment. Clearly there is zero point inlurking in our studios feeling isolated andunloved. Even though spending hourscommiserating with audio colleagues aboutproblem issues may be therapeutic – and fun– in reality, it gets nothing changed.

Rightly or wrongly, isn’t it us who need toinitiate the engagement and commencedialogue, carefully defining problem issues in afocused way and proposing practicalsolutions? We need to understand and takeaccount of the headaches other disciplinesface and make sure that, in turn, theyunderstand our workflow, key dependenciesand production timelines – and of course, thehuge bang for the buck that great audio bringsto the party. As all readers of this column willknow, it even makes the pictures look better.

Winning support from senior managementfor your bespoke equivalent of ‘producerworkshops’ would obviously be ideal – withmandatory attendance. And why not suggestthat every new recruit to your company hassome sort of induction class on audio?However, if ‘corporatising’ such an activity isunrealistic in your situation, perhaps aguerrilla-style approach could do the trickjust as well. You might just improve your ownworking life and the quality of audio that getspublished in your game. And if all of us did it,we might just improve the whole industry.

Care In The CommunityShould the audio sector take responsibility for the ignorance it often faces from other sectors of the game developmentcommunity? John Broomhall dares to wonder…

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

Above: The audio trackat Develop conferenceearlier this yearprovided somethought- provokingsessions

HEARDABOUT

Any of us couldcome up with a

structured presentationwhich underlines theimportance of music, soundand dialogue to the gamingexperience and highlightthe negative effectsof dodgy scheduling.

SEPTEMBER 2010 | 69DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

UNITY FOCUS | BUILD

UNITYFOCUS

Quickhit Football is among anumber of high profilelaunches this month that are

using Unity to deliver a premium 3Dweb experience.

The title launched last year with afree-to-play Flash version and levelledup for this year’s season by introducinga premium version authored in Unity –and scored the coveted NFL licence forgood measure. Notably, players of boththe free-to-play Flash version and thepay-to-play Unity version will be able tocompete against each other.

Trevor Stricker, director of gamedevelopment for Quickhit, explainsmore about the relationship betweenthe versions, and the role Unity played.

What are your goals for QuickhitFootball? Quickhit Football makes it fun to seehow different passing plays work, orhow to mould your team into a potentrunning threat. When the NFL seasonstarts, you have the people whocasually follow a team, and then youhave fans with boundless attention foreverything happening in the league.

That’s the great thing about football –it has broad appeal. Our goal is to be agame that all American football fansenjoy playing with each other thatdoesn’t require you to have anexpensive console or the thumbdexterity of a 12-year-old.

Equally important is what it’s not; it’sare not a button mashing game, and it’s

not a game for people looking to showoff their new HDTVs. There’s a longhistory of football games in this space,from NFL 2K to Madden to Backbreaker,that fans have to choose from.

Why did you decide to create apremium version in Unity? Flash is great for getting your game outto a huge base of players withoutrequiring an install. We have had lots ofsuccess with our flash version. But, atQuickhit we are creating an amazinggame and we didn’t want to be limitedby one platform. We had to make ourgraphics fairly blocky in order to haveenough room for all 22 players we drawon the field.

We had to ditch things like givingeach player a unique number. We wouldlove to display more information aboutwhat’s happening as the play unfolds,

but we can’t draw any more in Flash ifwe want to run on older systems. Wehave a large number of players wholove the game we’ve built, but we wantto make the experience as immersive asa game of this calibre can be.

With Unity we don’t need to makethose compromises. You can see thelinebacker wrap his arms around areceiver trying to get away from him.Every player can have his own number.You can watch gameplay from variouscamera angles. And yet, we’re stillrunning in the browser. The quality ofthe experience is going to wow people.

What’s unique about your businessmodel? We will always have a free version of thegame and the ability for user to earnrewards through gameplay. With Unity,we are taking it to the next level by

giving users the option of a betterexperience. A good analogy is TV.Broadcast television is free and a lot ofpeople like it and watch it, but peopleupgrade because they want HBO.

To my knowledge, a premium tier to afree game has not been attempted inthis way before. We want to give ourusers a compelling reason to upgrade.We are trying to do something moresubstantial than just adding fuzzy hatsor tinted glasses to your avatar.

Do you see what you’re doing assetting a trend for the industry? Social games are evolving into morecompelling experiences, which is atrend Quickhit certainly falls into.Millions of people are spending lots oftime playing social games. While somein the industry are still sticking theirnose up at the idea of Facebook or free-to-play games, a lot of us see it as a newfrontier. There is a lot of learning takingplace – players are discovering there aremore compelling things than a grind,and developers are learning how toengage a player a whole lot sooner.

Our team has substantial credibilityfrom games like Madden, NFL 2K, andNBA 2K. Considering there’s a certainlead designer from the Civilizationfranchise, of all things, now makingsocial games, we’re clearly not alone. Ithink the future holds a lot more socialgames from huge publishers andindependent developers.www.quickhit.com

Using Unity to create premium social gamesThomas Grové looks at how Quickhit Football’s pay-to-play upgrade harneses the power of Unity, and speaks to thestudio working directly with the National Football League…

TO BE INCLUDED IN THIS GUIDE PLEASE CONTACT:

sourcebooTHE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT AGEN

AGI MediaTel: 0207 602 9119www.agimedia.com

an.xTel: 0207 785 7156www.anxagency.com

Ark VFXTel: 0114 268 4999www.arkvfx.net

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

BH MediaTel: +44 (0)1462 456780www.bhpress.co.uk

Biff New MediaTel: 0203 178 3312www.biffnewmedia.com

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

FINKTel: 01480 302350www.finkcreative.com

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

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

FrontroomTel: +44 (0)20 7729 3033www.frontroom.com

Game FrontierTel: 0870 420 2424www.gamefrontier.com

GFK Chart-TrackTel: +44 (0)20 8741 7585www.chart-track.com

Heaven MediaTel: +44 (0) 1480 420820www.heavenmedia.com

Indigo PearlTel: +44 (0)20 8964 4545www.indigopearl.com

Jelly MediaTel: 08707 506070www.jellymedia.com

KeefTel: +44 (0)20 3239 7563www.keefcreative.com

MaverickTel: +44 (0)20 7291 3450www.mavericklovesgames.com

Outsource MediaTel: +44 (0)207 713 9000www.omuk.com

Peppermint PTel: 0207 240 2645www.peppermintp.com

PMA Digital Tel: 020 7060 4500www.pmadigital.com

Premier PRTel: +44 (0)207 292 8330www.premierpr.com

Rainbow ProductionsTel: +44 (0)20 8254 5300www.rainbowproductions.co.uk

RealtimeUKTel: 01772 682363 www.realtimeuk.com

Side UKTel: +44 (0)20 7631 4800www.side.com

Studio CO2Tel: +44 (0)1483 414415 www.studioco2.com

The Audio GuysTel: +44 (0) 1788 565230www.theaudioguys.co.uk

Über Tel: 0114 278 7100www.uberagency.com

DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION

Arvato Games Task ForceTel: +49 (0)521 80 3074www.gamestaskforce.de

Direct 2 DriveTel: +44 (0)203 077 4000www.direct2drive.co.uk

GAMING ACCESSORIES

AntiGrav MediaTel: 01932 454929www.antigrav-media.co.uk

Hubb AccessoriesTel: 01642 204343www.hubbaccessories.com

I GlobeTel: 0203 0066760www.i-ga.co.uk

IGSTel: +845 600 1676www.igs-group.com

Logic 3Tel: 01923 471000www.logic3.com

Powerplay GlobalTel: 01706 242060www.powerplaygroup.co.uk

CREATIVE AND PROMOTIONAL SERVICES

[email protected] OR 01992 535647

k2010CIES AND SERVICE COMPANIES

Realtime DistributionTel: 01480 435 881www.realtimeonline.co.uk

INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTION

Curveball LeisureTel: 01792 652521www.thegamecollection.net

Game Outlet EuropeTel: +46 54 854750www.gameoutlet.se

InComm EuropeTel: 01489 556700www.incomm-europe.com

NJOYit EntertainmentTel: +44 (0)1992 631700www.njoyitentertainment.com

TechlandTel: +48 71 354 46 10www.techland.pl/en

LEGAL SERVICES

Harbottle & LewisTel: +44 (0)20 7667 5000www.harbottle.com

Exobia Legal ServicesTel: +31(0)85 111 0099 www.exobialegal.com

LOCALISATION, QA AND TESTING

BabelTel: 01273 764 100www.babelmedia.com

Enzyme LabsTel: (+1) 450-995-2000www.enzyme.org

Global StepTel: +31 (0)20 312 0508www.globalstepgames.com

Key FactorTel: +49 (0) 6173 999 781www.keyfactor-entertainment.com

Orange StudioTel: +39 051 588 04 50www.orangestudio.it

PartnertransTel: +44 1273 229030www.partnertrans.com

Testronic LaboratoriesTel: +44 (0)1753 653722www.testroniclabs.com

Universally SpeakingTel: +44 1 480 210621www.usspeaking.com

MANUFACTURING SERVICES

OK MediaTel: +44 (0)20 7688 6789www.okmedia.com

Sony DADC AustriaTel: +43 (0)6246 880-0www.sonydadc.com

TechnicolorTel: 020 8987 7829www.technicolor.com

RECRUITMENT

Aardvark SwiftTel: 01709 876877www.aswift.com

AmiqusTel: 01925 252588www.amiqus.com

Avatar Games RecruitmentTel: +44 (0) 1942 527 966www.avatar-games.co.uk

Game OptionsTel: +44 (0)1382 731909www.gameops.co.uk

Specialmove Consultancy Tel: +44 (0) 141 530 4555www.specialmove.com

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

CrytekTel: +49 (69) 219 77 66 0www.crytek.com

GameSpy TechnologyTel: 001-714-460-6732www.poweredbygamespy.com

xaitmentTel: +49 (0)6897 600 800www.xaitment.com

UK DISTRIBUTION AND LOGISTICS

EntaTechTel: 0333 101 1000www.entatech.com

GemTel: 01279 822822www.gem.co.uk

Hive EntertainmentTel: 01706 242070www.hive-entertainment.net

White Room Gameswww.whiteroomgames.com


PEOPLE: Former LucasArts

boss moves toRepublic of Fun

p74

TOOLS: New releases

from Dassault,Bigpoint, Bluegfx

p76

SERVICES: Specialmove’snew website

p79

The world’s premier listing of games development studios, tools, outsourcing specialists, services and courses…

KEY CONTACTS

STUDIOSBig Head Studio

www.facebook.com/pages/Big-Head-Games/111113905597058

Epic Games +1 919 870 1516

Stainless Games [email protected]

TOOLSAudio Kinetic www.audiokinetic.com

Blitz Games Studios +44 (0) 1926 880 000

bluegfx +44 (0) 1483 467 200

Dolby +44 (0) 1793 842 922

Fork Particle 1(925) 417 1785

Havok +1 415 543 4620

Xaitment +49 6897 600 800

SERVICESElitest 0121 706 0463

Ian Livingstone +44 (0)1483 421 491

Matinee 01189 584 934

Partnertrans +44 (0) 1273 229030

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Testronic Labs +44 (0) 1753 653 722

Universally Speaking +44 (0) 1480 210 621

COURSESUniversity of Hull +44 (0) 1482 465 951

RATES1/4 page: £450 (or £200/month if bookedfor a minimum of six months)

[email protected]

T: 01992 535 647

studios

74 | September 2010

Big Head Games www.facebook.com/pages/Big-Head-Games/111113905597058Studio NewsThis month: Lightning Fish, Republic of Fun and Chunk…

Four new staff have joined LightningFish’s expanded business in India.

Assuming the role of studiomanager from Gameloft, VarunGupta has a masters in businessadministration and over four years’industry experience in the roles ofproducer and project manager.

Simon Prytherch, CEO,commented: “The role of studiomanager at the Pune studio is key tothe success of the studio and the Lightning Fish Games organisation overall. I ampleased to welcome Varun to Lightning Fish Games, it is good to have his skills andexperience within the company.”

Farman Ul Haque, a graduate in multimedia from New Delhi, joins Lightning FishGames from Zoom, one of India’s best entertainment channels. Farman will lead theteam of motion editors at the Pune Studio.

Ul Haque said: “I am very pleased to be working with such a technically astutecompany as Lightning Fish Games, and look forward to bringing my skills andexperience to the products developed by the company.”

Ranbeer Singh Hora joins Lightning Fish Games from Gameshastra Solutions, withover five years’ games industry QA experience, and will lead the QA function in PuneStudio. Singh Hora commented: “I have a real passion for games in general, and reallylike what Lightning Fish Games are bringing to the industry.”

Gaurav Kumar will be leading the art team at the Pune Studio, and brings over fouryears’ experience to the role. Prytherch said: “We have established a great core team inPune, and they will be the foundation stone from which we will develop the studio.”www.lightningfish.com

The short-serving president of LucasArts has joined socialgames publisher Republic of Fun.

In May Darrell Rodriguez resigned from his position atthe studio, reportedly along with several members of hisexecutive team, having served just under two years at therespected company.

“Social gaming is one of the biggest drivers of theexplosive growth in social media and Republic of Fun isgetting it right by empowering the people that arepassionate about games to have a say in which games that they get to play,” said Rodriguez.

“I feel privileged to join this exciting and dynamic team and look forward to workingwith Mike and the board during the next phase of the company’s growth.”www.repfun.com

Glasgow-based digital creative agency Chunk is to launch adedicated games company, with former Denki developerStewart Hogarth spearheading the new division.

Chunk has made games in the past, as part of its remit as adigital creative agency, and has scored game deals with thelikes of Channel 4, the BBC and car manufacturers.

“The guys here have been really receptive to my slightlyoff-the-wall method of game development, and I reallyappreciate that,” Hogarth said.

“At the moment we’re in the process of defining the typesof games we’d like to make. Although we’ll still make brandedgames, we’ll also make our own independent games too.We’re happy to turn our hand to any style, but there arecertain key ingredients and a level of overall quality that we’llinject into all our games, which we hope we will becomerecognised for.”

Hogarth will also soon be contributing his own Develop blog posts, discussing theups and downs of indie development.www.chunk.co.uk

brought to you by…

Develop Magazine 01992 535647 www.develop-online.net

GREAT ADVERTISINGOPPORTUNITIES

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Tel: 01992 535647

WWW.DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET SEPTEMBER 2010 | 75

studios

Stainless Games [email protected] www.stainlessgames.com

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

SpotlightStudio

Founded in 2004 from the ashes ofArgonaut, Rocksteady Studios is basedin a converted factory in Highgate,North London. Headed up by co-founders Sefton Hill, game director,and Jamie Walker, studio director, aswell as former-Eidos owner AnthonyPrice, non-executive, it received asturdy cash infusion from SCi in 2005that saw the later take a sizable stake inRocksteady, which has released twotitles to date.

The first, Urban Chaos: Riot Response,was released in May 2006 for PS2 andXbox. The game was the conclusion ofa previous FPS begun at Argonautcalled Roll Call. It was published byEidos Interactive and received apositive overall critical response,establishing Rocksteady as a studio towatch in the future.

For the following three yearsRocksteady worked quietly on whatwould become Batman: ArkhamAsylum. This project emerged as adefining game for Rocksteady and theBatman licence in video games ingeneral. It took an impressive £15.26mat retail sales in the UK alone.

A third-person action-adventure seton the island of Arkham Asylum, thesecond Rocksteady title distilled thebest elements of moderngaming and added severalimpressive new ideas of itsown. It went on to win astring of noted awardsincluding GDC Awards forBest Writing, Best GameDesign and Game of theYear, and the DevelopAwards gong for Best Useof a Licence or IP. It alsobecame a Guiness World

Record holder as the most criticallyacclaimed superhero game ever.

The resounding success of ArkhamAsylum lead to Rocksteady beingbought by the owners of the Batman IP,Warner Bros., with Square Enix Europeretaining a 25.1 per cent companystake. After the purchase, Rocksteadyimmedietly began work on Batman:Arkham City, a sequel to its greatestsuccess to-date. The follow-up title iscurrently set for a Q3 2011 release.

Now employing over 70 people,Rocksteady’s stated mission is: ‘to be ahighly professional, efficient companywhose purpose is to make great games,and have happy and healthy teammembers’.That philosophy is apparently at theheart of the studio.

CONTACT:Rocksteady Studios1 Ballards LaneFinchley. LondonN3 1LQ. UK

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

ROCKSTEADY STUDIOS

76 | September 2010

tools

French firm Dassault Systèmes hasreleased a new 3DVIA Player applicationdesigned to let users launch 3D gamesand other applications on FacebookPlatform in a single click.

The 3D development tools outfit hasbuilt the new tech with independentdevelopers in mind, and promises that,coupled with Facebook’s huge audience,the new solution will provide substantialhelp in overcoming the significantdistribution challenge typical of social platforms.

“We have taken the guesswork out of launching 3D applications on FacebookPlatform,” insisted David Laubner, VP of online product marketing at 3DVIA DassaultSystèmes. “Indie game developers invest so much time and effort developing theirtitles only to realise the bigger challenge is distribution. Our new, simplified processfor launching 3D apps demonstrates our commitment to removing the hurdlescontent creators face when trying to publish their work.”

The newly unveiled 3DVIA Player application for Facebook harnesses thefunctionality of the 3D hosting service available to users of the 3DVIA Studio devengine and the consumer-friendly 3D creation tool 3DVIA Scene online. The pair oftechnologies claim to publish easily to an online viewer page on 3DVIA’s website, thatin turn allows single click publishing through a ‘Play on Facebook’ button whichlaunches the application on the hugely popular social network.

The application can also be embedded directly into any studio’s suite of onlinedeveloper profiles.www.3ds.com

Bigpoint has revealed aredesigned DevLoungedeveloper interface foruploading games to itseponymous online gameshosting platform.

The improved interfacewent live in mid-August, inorder to coincide with thebeginning of the 2010 GDCEurope. Bigpoint has said thatit has made uploading self-developed games possible in ‘three simple steps’.

The firm has also boasted a revenue increase to the benefit of developers from 30 to70 per cent. A complete redesign of the service, encompassing revamped user-friendliness, an in-house developer wiki and a new analysis tool has been cited byBigpoint as the reason for this upturn in profits.

“The redesign of DevLounge reflects our wish to give even more talented gamedevelopers the chance to get their games out to a huge gaming community of morethan 135 million users,” said Bigpoint CMO Lothar Eckstein.devlounge.bigpoint.com

Sega Europe has licensed LocalizeDirect’slocalisation management tool LocDirectfor use in an unnamed upcoming title.

“We’re delighted that Sega Europe havesigned up to use LocDirect and we are very excited about working together with theirexperienced team” said LocalizeDirect business development director Michael Souto.

“With the Beta trials shortly coming to an end we believe that our system willdramatically change the way the localisation process is managed. As an industry we’ve been making games for years and the processes involved have evolved andbeen streamlined.”

Souto went on to suggest that the same mistakes were consistently being madewith localisation.

“We experienced these problems time and time again when making games so wedecided to make a tool to change all that,” he said.

“We’re convinced that once you see what we can do it’s a tough decision not tojump right in.”

SVP of production for Sega Europe and Sega America Gary Dunn confirmed he wasoptimistic about the two companies crossing paths.

“We are looking forward to working with LocalizeDirect and their new localisationmanagement tool,” he said.

“Localisation is an important part of the video game development process and wewant to ensure that we have the best possible tools to do this. LocalizeDirect havethese tools and we are confident they will do a great job”.www.localizedirect.com

Blitz Games Studios 01926 880000 www.BlitzGamesStudios.com

This month: Dassault Systemes, Bigpointand LocalizeDirect...

Audio Kinetic www.audiokinetic.comTools News

WWW.DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

tools

SEPTEMBER 2010 | 77

bluegfx 01483 467200 www.bluegfx.com

Dolby 01793 842922 [email protected] Fork Particle 1(925) 417 1785 www.forkparticle.com

78 | September 2010

tools

SpotlightTool

AUDIOKINETIC WWISE

Audiokinetic was founded in 2000 byMartin H. Klein, a veteran of the music,film, and gaming industries. Based inQuebec, Canada, it is the firm behindWwise – WaveWorks Interactive SoundEngine – a complete audio pipelinesolution package.

Wwise comprises two maindownloadable packages: an optimisedsound engine in the form of an SDK formanaging audio processing, and thenon-linear Wwise audio authoring tool.The latter allows for the creation ofaudio asset structures, the integrationof interactive music elements, definingof audio propagation, managing of allthe sound integration, and the creationof SoundBanks.

The Wwise application uses ahierarchical structure to function, withtwo top levels of Actor-Mixer andMaster-Mixer. Within these levels arecontainers, sounds and additionalActor-Mixers. Containers are similar tofolders that have properties andbehaviours associated with them.Switch containers then alternatebetween sounds in containers relatedto in-game events.

The integration of the audioauthoring application and the soundengine allows the user to audit, profile,and modify sounds in real-time withina game. A downloadable user’s guideand several video tutorials arepackaged as well.

Wwise is also designed for authoringaudio on-the-fly and in the context of agame. Its workflow supports everyphase of audio development andallows the user to create, audition, andtweak the sound effects or subtlesound behaviors without anyprogramming assistance.

Wwise also allows the fine-tuning ofproperty sets for individual audioassets, modification or application ofglobal properties to an entire colony ofgame characters at once, and theoverseeing and managing of audioassets at all levels.

The optimised software-basedarchitecture provides seamless cross-platform support and is designed to beeasily integrated into any gamedevelopment pipeline. By reducingrepetitive programming, the soundengine frees up programmingresources to allow for greatercustomisation of the game engine to fitthe specific audio needs of any game.

The sound engine has beenoptimised to Windows 32-bit and 64-bit (XP/Vista/7), Xbox 360, PlayStation 3,Wii and Mac.

CONTACT:Audiokinetic Inc.09 rue Saint-Nicolas, bureau 300Montréal, QuébecH2Y 2P4, Canada

P: 514-499-9109W: www.audiokinetic.com

TECHNOLOGY: AUDIO

Havok +1 415 543 4620 www.havok.com

We engineer AI game tools that go far beyond pathfinding.

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Xaitment +49 6897 - 600 80-0 www.xaitment.com

WWW.DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET SEPTEMBER 2010 | 79

services

Services NewsRecruitment specialist Specialmove haslaunched a new feature rich website, and indoing so introduced its latest brandingupdate, mascot AKA-Maru.

The redesigned website boasts whatpromises to be a powerful search andmatching engine, to enable jobseekers toquickly identify and apply for jobs acrossthe entire games industry.

As registered users, candidates cancreate a profile, upload documentationincluding CVs and resumes, and link theirportfolios. Prospective employees can alsocustomise job hunting preferences, searchfor vacancies based on their profile, andapply for jobs direct thorough the site.Social networking integration has alsobeen implemented to harness the power ofthe likes of Twitter and RSS.

“After five years we felt that we needed to give our website a complete overhaul,”explained Andy Campbell, Specialmove’s chief executive officer. “We also wanted tointegrate a new recruitment and talent management software solution. After assessingscores of products we finally selected Firefish.

“Designed by recruiters for recruiters, it was head and shoulders above thecompetition. It also features all the latest social media integration tools. As Twitter,Linkedin and Facebook play a bigger part in recruitment, it was important that theright solution for Specialmove had these features. Firefish is the complete solution andwill handle all of Specialmove’s recruitment, advertising, sales, marketing andreporting requirements.”

Specialmove has also taken the step of unveiling its AKA-Maru character as the newface of the site. Apparently the result of a great deal of research, AKA-Maru wascreated with input from Hawaiian artist and designer Leo Blanchette

“We are very excited to unveil AKA-Maru as the new face of the company,” addedCampbell. “He is a fantastic character with so much personality. We have big plans forhim and he will feature on our new site, advertising and corporate branding. This is areally exciting time for the company and the games industry and we are especiallywell positioned to deliver even greater levels of service to our clients and candidates.”www.specialmove.com

Cubic Motion has announced the inclusion of audio-driven animation to its canon of services.

Generally considered an alternative to moreexpensive methods of character animation, the firmhas said that its new service aims to be comparable toanimation generated by other methods.

“We’ve looked around at various audio-basedsolutions and couldn’t find what we were looking for,so we decided to develop ideas of our own. Theimportant thing is to ensure that we produceanimation data which includes plausible expressionswhich have accurate interactions with speech,” said Dr.Steve Caulkin, chief scientific officer at Cubic Motion.

“We also need to ensure that the facial dynamics generated by an audio pipeline areabsolutely consistent with real facial movement. Finally, we have to support a verywide range of rigs, including cartoons and nonhuman faces”.

Cubic Motion CEO Dr. Gareth Edwards was keen to explain the company’s approachto offering this new service.

“I’m a huge advocate of video-based animation, but I also recognise the need formore cost-effective solutions when animation is required in an extremely largevolume,” he confirmed.

“We’ve brought the cost of video-based animation down to levels that anydeveloper can use, but we also need to bear in mind that there’s a production anddirection overhead in filming actors. Sometimes audio-driven animation is animportant part of production.”

The Cubic boss went on to describe the general methodology of his company indelivering its products.

“At Cubic, we only have one quality level, ‘final’, and so we want all the data wedeliver to be consistent. In particular, we don’t like to see huge quality variation acrossdifferent animation in the same game, so it’s important that animation derived fromaudio doesn’t look out of place alongside other types of animation,” he said.

“We make no apologies for the significant amount of human involvement in all ourprocesses, and this includes audio-driven animation. Only by detailed expertinspection and oversight at all of the stages of production can we ensure the highestpossible standards.”www.cubicmotion.com

This month: Specialmove, Cubic Motion

Elitest 0121 706 0463 www.elitest.co.uk

Ian Livingstone +44 (0)1483 421 491 www.ianlivingstone.net

services

80 | September 2010

Partnertrans +44 (0) 1273 229030 www.partnertrans.comMatinee 01189 584 934 www.matinee.co.uk

Richard Jacques 020 7096 0800 www.richardjacques.com Testronic Labs +44 (0) 1753 653 722 www.testronic labs.com

WWW.DEVELOPMAG.COM SEPTEMBER 2010 | 81

courses

Training News

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

This month: Next Level DundeeSpecialist Games Services

Localisation» 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




Tel: 01992 535647

An ‘intensive one-week creative event’ fordigital artists and other new mediaprofessionals is being held at theUniversity of Abertay Dundee betweenSeptember 6th and 10th.

The event is open to anyone notalready established in the creativeindustries, with successful applicants setto spend the week receiving mentoringfrom experts from the likes of AbertayUniversity, Dundee Contemporary Arts,Tay Screen and Realtime Worlds.

Teams will be organised and based forthe duration of the event in theUniversity’s Centre for Excellence inComputer Games Education.

Event organiser Iain Smith was keen toexpand on the particulars of the eventand its history.

“Last year’s Next Level Dundee was ahuge success, giving hugely talentedpeople looking for their break into thecreative industries a chance to workalongside professionals, and have theirwork showcased to the public at theNEoN Digital Arts Festival,” he said.

“This year we’ve recruited more variedindustry mentors, and are looking for a

wider range of skills including art, filmand animation. I’m expecting veryexciting, very interesting work to beproduced by all the successful teams.”

He added: “I set up Next Level Dundeeto help give skilled and hard-workingindividuals the opportunity to create agreat portfolio piece to attract theattention of employers and to givepeople the chance to work in achallenging team environment.

“The idea of working in mixed teams isexactly what creative companies look for,and they’re the skills I’m currentlydeveloping on the Professional Masters inComputer Games Development atAbertay. Judging by last year’s work, Iexpect great things from all the teams.”

Next Level Dundee will also grantvisitors access to a number of guestmentor lectures, the first of which hasbeen announced as coming fromanimator Fraser MacLean, who hasworked with high profile studios likeWarner Brothers and Disney.

More guest mentor lectures are set tobe announced soon.www.nextleveldundee.com

studios

74 | September 2010

Big Head Games www.facebook.com/pages/Big-Head-Games/111113905597058Studio NewsThis month: Lightning Fish, Republic of Fun and Chunk…

Four new staff have joined LightningFish’s expanded business in India.

Assuming the role of studiomanager from Gameloft, VarunGupta has a masters in businessadministration and over four years’industry experience in the roles ofproducer and project manager.

Simon Prytherch, CEO,commented: “The role of studiomanager at the Pune studio is key tothe success of the studio and the Lightning Fish Games organisation overall. I ampleased to welcome Varun to Lightning Fish Games, it is good to have his skills andexperience within the company.”

Farman Ul Haque, a graduate in multimedia from New Delhi, joins Lightning FishGames from Zoom, one of India’s best entertainment channels. Farman will lead theteam of motion editors at the Pune Studio.

Ul Haque said: “I am very pleased to be working with such a technically astutecompany as Lightning Fish Games, and look forward to bringing my skills andexperience to the products developed by the company.”

Ranbeer Singh Hora joins Lightning Fish Games from Gameshastra Solutions, withover five years’ games industry QA experience, and will lead the QA function in PuneStudio. Singh Hora commented: “I have a real passion for games in general, and reallylike what Lightning Fish Games are bringing to the industry.”

Gaurav Kumar will be leading the art team at the Pune Studio, and brings over fouryears’ experience to the role. Prytherch said: “We have established a great core team inPune, and they will be the foundation stone from which we will develop the studio.”www.lightningfish.com

The short-serving president of LucasArts has joined socialgames publisher Republic of Fun.

In May Darrell Rodriguez resigned from his position atthe studio, reportedly along with several members of hisexecutive team, having served just under two years at therespected company.

“Social gaming is one of the biggest drivers of theexplosive growth in social media and Republic of Fun isgetting it right by empowering the people that arepassionate about games to have a say in which games that they get to play,” said Rodriguez.

“I feel privileged to join this exciting and dynamic team and look forward to workingwith Mike and the board during the next phase of the company’s growth.”www.repfun.com

Glasgow-based digital creative agency Chunk is to launch adedicated games company, with former Denki developerStewart Hogarth spearheading the new division.

Chunk has made games in the past, as part of its remit as adigital creative agency, and has scored game deals with thelikes of Channel 4, the BBC and car manufacturers.

“The guys here have been really receptive to my slightlyoff-the-wall method of game development, and I reallyappreciate that,” Hogarth said.

“At the moment we’re in the process of defining the typesof games we’d like to make. Although we’ll still make brandedgames, we’ll also make our own independent games too.We’re happy to turn our hand to any style, but there arecertain key ingredients and a level of overall quality that we’llinject into all our games, which we hope we will becomerecognised for.”

Hogarth will also soon be contributing his own Develop blog posts, discussing theups and downs of indie development.www.chunk.co.uk

brought to you by…




Tel: 01992 535647

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82 | SEPTEMBER 2010

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

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Develop - Issue 109 - September 2010