Develop - Issue 118 - July 2011

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

JULY 2011 | #118 | £4 / e7 / $13WWW.DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

Viva la French revolutionary: Michel Ancel is on the run from industry traditions





ALSO INSIDEBioShock Infinite | PlayStation Vita | How to succeed in mobile games

Au revoir! Au revoir! Au revoir! Au revoir!

DEVELOP

CONFERENCE 2011

SHOW ISSUE

[email protected] T : 0207 830 9310

Marketing Production

Creating Masterpieces

www.realtimeuk.com

Games TrailersTarget Movies

Marketing Imagery

SE

GA

2011

Concept ArtworkStoryboarding

Cut-scenes & In-Game Animation

Nominated Best Visual Outsourcer - Develop Awards 2011

DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

ALPHA05 – 09 > dev news from around the globeCelebrating Ian Livingstone’s career ahead of his Development Legend Award,Sony Worldwide Studio’s on the ease of PlayStation Vita development, and Irrational’s product development boss Timothy Gerritsen talks BioShock Infinite

12 – 14 > opinion and analysisRick Gibson reveals the hidden joys of gamification, David Braben assesses thedark legacy of Lulzsec and Annonymous for the games industry, and Tatiana Kruseexplains the ins and outs of first rights of refusal

18 – 19 > the develop diaryA look ahead to GDC Europe, as well as the month’s key dates for your diary

BETA22 > developing rayman originsUbisoft’s Michel Ancel on the creative process behind Rayman’s latest adventure

26 – 28 > region focus: guildfordUp close and personal with the best talent behind this UK development hub

33 – 38 > develop conference guideA run down of the very best sessions, tracks and panels at the Brighton-based Develop Conference 2011

41 – 48 > mobile gaming specialAdvice, opinion and analysis on the industry’s most rapidly evolving sector

52 – 53 > what’s next for the mmo? Jeremy Gaffney of Carbine Studios offers guidance on making a hit MMO

BUILD62 – 63 > the future of cryengine 3CryTek CEO Cevat Yerli explains how his firm’s famous engine is future-proofed

64 > tutorial: bitmap2materialA look at Allegorithmic’s latest texturing filter with Dr Sébastian DeGuy

68 > unity focus: keen gamesThe German studio reveals how Star Trek: Infinite Space was created on Unity

69 > heard about: develop conferenceJohn Broomhall looks at the pick of the audio bunch at this year’s conference

70 > excerpt: game engine gems 2Part two of our excerpt on the defferred shading code in Split/Second

CODA81 > faq: jo twistChannel 4 Education’s commissioning editor talks about her love of social games

ContentsDEVELOP ISSUE 118 JULY 2011

73-79studios, tools, services and courses

JULY 2011 | 03

22

62

33 68

5228

41

08

DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET JULY 2011 | 05

Livingstone named Development LegendRespected UK games industry figure will take key prize at July 20th Develop Awards ceremony

IAN LIVINGSTONE will receive thetop Development Legend honour atnext month's Develop Awards.

He joins a list of esteemed formerrecipients of the award, which hasbeen given to Peter Molyneux, DavidBraben, Charles Cecil, the Gowerbrothers and Phil Harrison.

The award acknowledges a raft ofwork done to support gamesdevelopers and the video gamesindustry across a career lasting over35 years so far, and will be presentedat a ceremony on the evening of July20th at the Hilton Metropole Hotel inthe coastal city of Brighton.

Livingstone is one of the mostrespected figures in the industry: heco-founded Games Workshop,nurtured major franchises includingTomb Raider, has invested innumerous successful newindependent studios, and is a keyadvisor to the Government ongames-relevant issues such asfinance and education.

Livingstone commented: “I'm veryfortunate to have been part of the UKgames industry for over 35 years. Toreceive this coveted Award is agenuine honour. Recognition by thedevelopment community isparticularly satisfying and I am verygrateful. Thank you to all in theDevelop team.”

The Development Legend award issponsored by Babel Media. OtherDevelop Awards sponsors includeCrytek, Amiqus, gamecity:hamburg,OPM, Nova Scotia BusinessInternational, Imagination Studios,Supermassive Games, Fmod andMPG Universal.

To book a place at the awards,contact [email protected] or call +44 (0)1992 535 646.

ADVENTURES IN GAMES DEVELOPMENT: NEWS, VIEWS & MORE

“Hacking has been around a long time, and is probably here

to stay…”David Braben, Frontier, p13

Why Vitamakes games

dev easyNews, p6

Irrational onBioShock

InfiniteNews, p8

L.A. Noireunder the

microscopeNews, p10

by Michael French BIO: IANLIVINGSTONELivingstone co-founded iconicgames company Games Workshop in1975, launching Dungeons & Dragonsin Europe, and subsequently its retailchain and White Dwarf magazine.

In 1982 Livingstone, together withGames Workshop co-founder SteveJackson, created the best-sellingrole-playing games book series,Fighting Fantasy, which has sold over16 million copies to date. He made the leap to computergames two years later, designingEureka, the first title released bypublisher Domark in 1984. Hereturned to the company in the early'90s as a major investor overseeing amerger that created EidosInteractive, where he was Chairmanfor seven years. At Eidos he helpedsecure and bring to market some ofits most famous properties includingLara Croft: Tomb Raider and Hitman.

Livingstone became Life Presidentof Eidos for Square Enix, whichbought the publisher in 2009, andhas creative input in all the Eidos-label games.

He is an active supporter of newand upcoming games talent, havinginvested in Indie studios includingPlaydemic, Appatyze andMediatonic. He is also sits on manyboards including trade body UKIE,industry charity GamesAid, Skillsetgames council, BAFTA gamescommittee, the Creative IndustriesCouncil and is an advisor to theBritish Council.

Earlier this year, he co-authoredthe NextGen report for thegovernment urging changes ineducation policy to assist the UKgames development industry.

06 | JULY 2011

ALPHA | NEWS

YOU CAN count on one hand the number of people thathave graced Develop’s cover more than once. Only rarelyare there those with the career or the vision to warrant asecond time in the spotlight.

Michel Ancel’s first Develop cover was titled ‘BonjourMainstream’, heralding his surprising switch to makingUbisoft’s King Kong movie tie-in.

This was a famed designer sipping from the poisonedchalice: the licensed game. Ancel went even further intothe casual space by creating the Rabbids, spin-offcharacters from Rayman that today adorn lunchboxes inhis home country of France thanks to success on Wii.

He’s back now with a revamp of Rayman. But at thesame time, he’s running away from industry convention,rejecting over-managed projects by building adevelopment culture that puts artists first, and offersnew, nimble technology. I’d love to have been a fly onthe wall when he told CEO Yves Guillemot that theinnovative UbiArt engine he was building to make allthat possible will also eventually be made open source.

Ancel’s democratic way of thinking may seem veryFrench, very Ubisoft, and very ‘not for everyone’. But in an age where big-name designers are more and more PRshowhorses to trot out at trade shows like GDC and E3, it is refreshing to find one who wants to make thecreation of his games as rewarding and refreshing as thegames themselves.

***AS WE go to press, news is breaking of Zynga’s plannedIPO. Supposedly, with an initial market offering of up to$2bn in stock, the firm will be worth $20bn. Staggering.

A lot of developers hate Zynga. It’s ‘evil’. Its games aren’toriginal. It sits on another dotcom bubble.

But whatever your view on Zynga, remember this – it isa games developer. It’s not a publisher, not in thetraditional sense and not in the new sense of helpingbring other people’s products to digital markets. Zyngamay have scaled up ridiculously quickly (14 studioacquisitions in 12 months), but all its games it either madeitself or brought in-house.

No, I can’t tell you if they’ll still be around in five years.But even if Zynga itself isn’t the future of our industry,what it represents is. You’d be foolish to dismiss it.

Editorial

Michael [email protected]

A NEW WAY OF THINKING

SONY SAYS the Vita is the easiest PlayStationplatform to develop games for yet.

According to several of the Sony top brassinvolved in conceiving and creating thehandheld formerly known as the NGP, themore welcoming development environmenttrumps that offered by any previous Sonygaming platform.

Speaking with Develop, SCE WorldwideStudios boss Shuhei Yoshida admitted thatpreviously Sony gaming platforms had beenwhat he described as ‘peaky’, testing even thebest of developers.

Speaking of the pre-Vita Sony platforms,Yoshida conceded: “It had very, very highpotential and peak performance, butprogramming for the PlayStation platformswas a huge challenge for game developers.

Yoshida, may joke that creating powerfulplatforms that were difficult to develop for isa “Sony tradition”, but that’s because ‘father ofPlaystation’ Ken Kutaragi liked to push theabilities of game studios, he revealed.

“In a sense Ken was enjoying challenginggame developers,” said Yoshida. “He wasespecially challenging the top programmersin the world to come up with somethingamazing to make use of the performance ofeach iteration of the PlayStation platforms.

“That was very good – it was great – for theteams with engineers who liked thechallenge, but the world has now changed,and today there is a much larger communityof developers,” added Yoshida. “The focus hasshifted to be less about getting the most out

of the hardware, to be about having a verysmooth production process. That’s becausenow it involves so many more people tomake one game.”

The Sony executive added that the shift offocus was particularly relevant for thosethird-party publishers which are chargedwith making sure developer’s games workacross multiple platforms.

“Development efficiency has become moreand more important,” said Yoshida.

The SCE WWS head was not the only Sonysenior to make clear to Develop that relativesimplicity of development has been a corefocus in creating the Vita.

“When it comes to ease of development,the Vita is a platform with which we’ve beenvery mindful of that,” stated Michael Denny,senior vice president of SCE WorldwideStudios. “In terms of smoothing thedevelopment process, certainly what the Vitaoffers is close to that of the PSP, and with

‘Our most devel Sony insists PS Vita will make the development of games easier

by Will Freeman

As an industry, wehave to support

those smaller teams, and letthem try out their ideas.Without doing so, the wholeindustry will stall, interms of innovation.Shuhei Yoshida, SCE Worldwide


NEWS | ALPHA

some of the help we’re giving to developers, Iwould say it is the easiest and most wellsupported platform yet.

“In terms of performance, and the graphicspower and programmable shaders and so on,what you can get out of it is far closer to PS3.It’s a great contrast of ease of development tothe output you get from the system.”

WWS CTO Richard Lee confirmed Denny’sassertion that ease of development wasfundamental to the Vita’s design.

“We made every effort to make it as easy aspossible,” said Lee. “I think we took theexperiences from PS3, and decided that wewanted to go out there with a great developerenvironment that is compatible with the thirdparty tools that developers normally use.

There’s never been anything like this on aPlayStation platform. It is a greatdevelopment environment, and the stuff thatis available before launch is really good interms of helping developers with performancetuning an so on.”

Denny said that Sony providing a numberof special APIs and libraries for the Vita’s newerfeatures, such as the rear touch pad, wasevidence of the company’s efforts to makethe platform as studio-friendly as possible.

Yoshida also told Develop that making theVita easier to create games for was areflection of changing development sector:“As an industry, we have to support thosesmaller teams, and let them try out theirideas. Without doing so, the whole industrywill stall, in terms of innovation.

“Having the capability to sell their gameson the network is key to giving those smallerteams an opportunity to come up with ideas,and sometimes invest their own money tocome up with something special and havetheir projects meet with millions of users.”

Yoshida insisted that those looking to makethe likes of boutique and indie games wouldfind the Vita accessible to them.

“From the beginning we wanted to makegame development for the Vita an easierexperience,” he claimed.

“Because Vita has capability to do whollytouched-based or AR-based games, lots ofthings can be done using just a small portionof the technology. We made it so thedevelopment kit wouldn’t be too expensive.It is small and light and easy for developers tohandle.”

oper friendly device yet’ than ever before, and usher in a new chapter for innovation at studios large and small

SONY ON THE Wii USCE Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida is closely watchingNintendo’s recently announced Wii U, and says the new consolewill likely inspire PS Vita developers to carry out experiments withthe newly named Sony handheld.

“It is very interesting the ways that Nintendo went with Wii U,and I was surprised it wasn’t exactly as it had been rumoured,”Yoshida told Develop at E3.

“Already people are starting to ask about linking Vita and PS3 todo something similar, in terms of using two screens, and havingcontrols on the screen.

“That’s very interesting, and we will have to experiment,” headded, before suggesting that such work was already, to a certainextent, underway.

“Lots of the things that developers of Vita games are doing, asyou may have seen, is experimenting with connectivities betweenVita and PS3.

“The Wipeout [2048] team came up with their CrossPlay ideas,and the other Vita teams have come up with ways of playing withtwo systems. It’s just a matter of time, as we provide the SDKs todevelopers so they can make use of both PS3 and Vita, and theymight come up with something interesting.”

SCE Worldwide Studios SVPMicahel Denny (left) is, alongwith his boss Shuhei Yoshida(below) confident that the PSVita and its developmentenvironment offers studios anunparralled ease of use

BioShock Infinite isn’t strictly a sequel orprequel. How did that come about?We are certainly really fortunate to be in aposition to work on this title. After BioShockwe felt like we had finished with Rapture. Wedidn’t want to do another Rapture, but weweren’t done with BioShock.

A typical response to that from mostpublishers would probably have been ‘lets doBioShock 3 quickly and ship it out’, but wehad all these crazy ideas for new things, butearly on they hadn’t quite gelled. Still, we hadthe vision of the Infinite world.

Our publisher said to us we could run withit, and that they totally trusted us, and gaveus the creative freedom we needed to dosomething unique.

That was great for us. Particularly because,as a studio Irrational is super-intense andideas focused. I’ve never worked at a studioso intense. Irrational is also hard on ideas,and that’s important.

What exactly do you mean by being ‘hardon ideas’?We have this crucible of ideas. If you bring anidea to the fore, you have to really do yourhomework. You have to think about it, youhave to know how the player is going torelate to the idea and, how they are going toplay with it.

We kill bad ideas regularly, and it honestlydoesn’t matter who comes up with the idea.We use the phrase ‘killing our babies’ here atIrrational. We don’t have ideas that we getmarried to, because if it doesn’t work, we killit and it’s gone.

If someone was to ask ‘who thought of thatfucking terrible idea’ and the answer was ‘it

was Ken’s [Levine, Irrational creative director]idea’, we don’t care. If it’s a bad idea, wefucking kill it. We are very hard on ideas, andthat’s because at the end of the day we’reabout making games that people can getbehind and enjoy

We also have to really fight hard to makesure everyone on the team understands thatyou have to look at it as a player. You can’tlook at it as a jaded developer. Just look at itas a game.

If Irrational is a studio where you are hardon everybody’s ideas, does that mean that– to an extent – you are a studio without ahierarchy?Oh, there’s a hierarchy alright.

But it sounds like quite a democraticcompany culture in that regard.It’s not at all like that. Well, maybe it is.Everybody in the company has the samesupport and the same right to bring in ideas,but Ken is the creative visionary and directsthe vision. Ultimately, though, we don’t carewho you are. If you have a good idea and

you’ve thought about it, you can get thatidea in the game. But that doesn’t meananything if you haven’t thought about it andyour idea is bullshit.

We’re tough on creativity, and there’s trulya maelstrom of ideas at Irrational. But yes,anybody has the chance.

So there’s that hierarchy you mentioned.How important is that?It’s the studio that Ken Levine built, so that’snot going to change. And he has such a clearvision. If he has this idea of this city andfloating islands we’ve got to make it happen.But he can have an idea and anyone here canargue that it’s wrong.

Ultimately, though, Ken is the creative lead.The guy has this amazing ability to distilconcepts down and understand what theplayer will feel. He knows how the audiencewill react, and it’s what we always thinkabout. Ken also always sees the game. Hesometimes likes to reminds us that an ideamight be great for the novelisation, but wehave to think about the player playing thegame.

I think so many young designers at othercompanies today look at game design in avery academic fashion, and they forget that ifthe audience can’t play, they’ve failed as adesigner. Those designers will talk about theorder of events, and the position of objectsand enemies, but they forget to consider howthe player will be made to feel. If you askthem ‘how does the player feel?’, and theydon’t have an answer, you might not be theright designer. We have a lot of guys here atIrrational with a lot of experience whounderstand that process, but, truly, a lot of

INFINITE WISDOM

Young designers atother companies

today look at game designin a very academic fashion.They forget to consider howthe player will bemade to feel.

Timothy Gerritsen, Irrational

Bioshock Infinite (top andfar right) is the result of acompany that is ‘hard onideas’, says TimothyGerritsen, director ofproduct development(above)

08 | JULY 2011

ALPHA | NEWS Q&A

the younger designers need reminding thatthey’re not making a novel.

It can’t just be about creative toughnessthough – that being hard on ideas canonly get you so far. What else about thestudio’s culture defines the games youmake?For a start, we’re really thorough when wehire people. It’s kind of amazing really. We’vehad a couple of slots for new hires for a reallylong time, but we are really picky. And then,at the same time, we’re trying to get thisgame done. But we won’t just hire anybody.We don’t have a ‘bums in seats attitude’. Wewant people who are as captivated by whatwe do, and the tiny details, as we are. We wantpeople who are prepared to do the research.

And that’s important too. We immerseourselves. If we’re making a game set in a1912, we immerse ourselves in that period.We learn the science, we read the literature,we listen to the music; everything about aperiod, we loose ourselves to. We don’t justcome up with the adverts in the BioShockgames; those ads are based on advertisingfrom the age. We learn about the fonts andart and architecture of the era, and all thatwill come across. BioShock infinite is all aboutthe early ideas of Heisenberg and Einsteinand their new understanding of the physicalworld. We even looked at the medicines ofthe time, and how they were made.

Is this a different interpretation of the‘historical accuracy’ approach to gamedesign then?It’s not historical accuracy, because it’s amade up world, but authenticity is really

important to us. Let’s talks about streets invideo games.

OK. Tell me about video game streets.I hate video game streets, where a street willhappen to have a reality where all this actionis going to take place. I hate that.

If you’re going to make a street it needs tofeel real, and have a real market and peopleliving in there living convincing lives. I wantto know how they’ll move about, and ifthere’s a way for them to get to theirapartment from the sidewalk, and a reasonfor an alley to be where it is.

You have to stop with that level of detailsomewhere though.I admit you can get lost in that detail, but weexpect that of everyone in our building.That’s our purpose at Irrational. Let’s picksomething random. Let’s say you’re making adockyard. You better know what a dockyardlooks like in exactly the time period you’re in,and know who occupied that dock yard andunderstand the myths and habits of the time.

So we can certainly end up debating quiteseriously about a floor tile at Irrational. Ifyou’re getting to that level, you’re doing theright thing. But we’re always also focused ongetting the job done, and getting the gameout there. It’s a struggle, but that’s whatyou’ve got to do to hit the quality bar.

I wanted to move onto your approach totechnology. You’re working with a heavilymodded version of the Unreal Engine 3.Can you tell me about that?Previously for BioShock we’d previously useda ‘2.5’ of the Unreal Engine, and it was a goodengine. You’ve played BioShock, so you knowit’s no slouch. For Infinite though, we wantedthis floating world, and something so muchmore open, so we needed very specific,different technology.

For that reason, for the lighting, to be ableto do the things we wanted to, we built ourown hyper-deferred lighting tech that allowsus to do really nice day-lit work.

What we get from Epic is a coretechnology, and we see it as a great place tobuild our own extension tools. UE3 is greaton it’s own, and it allows you to make greatgames like Gears of War.

We wanted to give our games their ownfeel though, so we built our own tools; toolsthat would allow us to have a giant floatingcity. I don’t know if you know, but giantfloating objects kill framerate, so we had tobuild own ‘Floating Worlds’ technology.

So you’re hard on technology as well asyour ideas?Absolutely. We have a strong art team, astrong design team and a strongprogramming team. They are all very strong,but they are also very realistic. They’re hardon ideas, but they’re also very creative, andsometimes they suggested things that havebeen developed in our tech. It’s the samecreative process. The programming teamwere the ones who came up with the idea ofthis floating city. Everybody at Irrational caninput good ideas into everything.

What is your response to the Wii U?It’s early days, and we’re still trying to get ourheads around it. We’re always experimentingwith new ideas and we’re always interested innew platforms. We’re really excited about theWii U, but it’s too early to say what we’ll dowith it. I think, like any new piece ofhardware, it creates new challenges andopportunities. We see it as an interestingidea, but where we’re at is that we don’tknow whether the different elements willwork or not. Certainly, we’re looking at it, butas to whether we’re going to do anythingwith it, I don’t know.www.irrationalgames.com

We immerseourselves. If we’re

making a game set in 1912,we immerse ourselves inthat period. We learn thescience, we read theliterature.

Timothy Gerritsen, Irrational

NEWS Q&A | ALPHA


With BioShock Infinite, Irrational Games might justexceed the quality bar set by the first game. WillFreeman asks director of product developmentTimothy Gerritsen how production is going

10 | JULY 2011

ALPHA | NEWS ANALYSIS

THE SENSATIONWhen Allied troops returned home at theend of the Second World War, they found thatcivilian life had changed entirely in theirabsence. Women had proven themselvesmore than capable of performing jobspreviously unavailable to them. The criminalunderworld had flourished under the coverof international conflict. The economies ofthe world’s major financial powers were inruins. For many, the real hardships came afterthe guns had been silenced.

It was to this new world that a new type offiction was born. One of stark cynicism, meanmen and cold women. Of fog and smoke, andthe glint of a pistol in the dark. Noirembodied the fears and confusion of post-war society, and it produced some of themost iconic and entertaining stories evertold. Multi-layered and wildly bleak, it was agenre that, in its purest form, had longremained absent from videogames. Then, in2003, Team Bondi set up shop in Australia.

THE GAMEBuilt around the gameplay model of theGrand Theft Auto series, L.A. Noire is asignificant shift in gear to its spiritualpredecessor. Taking on the role of L.A.P.D.Detective Cole Phelps, players walk and drivearound a meticulous recreation of LosAngeles circa 1947, taking care to go abouttheir crime-solving within the confines of thelaw. Mowing down pedestrians is out,chasing down criminals through back alleysis in. Stealing jetpacks is out, collatingevidence from crime scenes and buildingcases against a list of potential suspects is in.Layered on top is detailed facial animation,so suspects’ little expressions shine a light onthe line between lies and the truth.

L.A. Noire is a game inspired by a wealth ofsource material, and a time and place stuckfirmly in the collective consciousness. Youhardly even need the game’s tutorialmissions. You’ve known how to play it sinceyou saw L.A. Confidential.

THE STUDIOWhen new Australian studio Team Bondibegan work on its first game in 2003, the ideawas quickly picked up by SCEA, andPlayStation exclusivity was secured.

Five years later, the game changed handsto Rockstar Games, which confirmed it wasworking with Team Bondi on L.A. Noire, a PS3exclusive, period GTA clone set for release in2008. Expectation and excitement flourished.

A slip of the tongue on a conference calland a financial disclosure later, and theproject was a PS3 and Xbox 360 gamedelayed until 2009. It was also, however,starting to look like an interesting, cerebralthird-person title. In early 2010, it wasofficially revealed and a final launch date wasset. Team Bondi’s long development wascomplete, and years of anticipation wereabout to be met head on.

UNIQUE SELLING POINTMotionScan. The manner in which DepthAnalysis’ facial animation technique capturesthe entirety of an actor’s performance is ofhuge importance to the game.

In a dark interview room a man professeshis innocence after the gruesome murder ofhis wife. You think he’s lying. Size eight bootprints were found at the scene of the crimeand when you arrested him, he was burningsize eight boots. The man looks away andgulps. It’s his tell, you caught it earlier whenyou interviewed him at home. Charge him.

WHY IT WORKSCertain cultural tropes appeal across age,gender, class and national barriers. Everymajor international centre of film had its own

Noir period. The archetype of the fedora-wearing anti-hero struggling to save a girlwho doesn’t want saving speaks in a way thatgoes beyond explanation. It’s just really cool.

Getting to be that anti-hero and taking ona vast, complex and ubiquitous conspiracythat holds the entire city of Los Angeles in achoke-hold is really, really cool.

TRY IT YOURSELFL.A. Noire succeeds because of its willingnessto build on the expectations of Noir thatalready exist, while remaining entirely faithfulto its source material. Leaps of in-gameperspective and the power of historicalhindsight are exploited for memorabledramatic or comic effect: “Next you’ll betelling me Nixon’s a crook!”

In transplanting such a loaded canon ofmaterial into a game format, Team Bondiunderstood that they had to find the threadsthat ran from 1947 Los Angeles to the 2011international videogames community.

And it’s a method that will work again. Askyourself, how does Victorian adventurefiction relate to people today? What aboutthe Golden Age of comics? What does theRussian existentialist movement really meanto 2011?

ANATOMY OF A BLOCKBUSTEROur monthly dissection of a recent hit game...

L.A. NoirePUBLISHER: Rockstar GamesDEVELOPER: Team BondiFORMAT: PC/Mac, PS3, Xbox 360PRICE: £34.99 – £49.99www.rockstargames.com

12 | JULY 2011

ALPHA | OPINION

Foursquare proves justhow far gamification cango, turning movement intoa game

TO FIND an example of how deeply gamesare influencing our culture, look no furtherthan gamification, which is rapidly spreadinginto multiple, highly disparate industries.Gamification is being used to persuade us towatch more television, drink more coffee,brush our teeth more frequently, join thearmy, and even educate our kids moreeffectively. Is there a real market there or is itjust hype?

Gamification is patently not about turningsomething non-games related into an entiregame – that’s the domain of serious games(and, as I’ll argue, its fatal flaw). Gamificationcherry-picks discrete elements of games –gameplay mechanisms, community-buildingprinciples, marketing methods, analytics –and applies them outside of games.

A CASE IN POINTSThis vibrant new sub-sector of games wouldnot exist without the disciplined genius ofdesigners, who have defined the market todate and loudly debate extrinsic and intrinsicrewards, the evils and impending doom ofpointsification (snap), and theproper/improper use of games design.

This noisy debate sometimes looks equallyabout ownership as design principles,perhaps the consequence of gamificationslipping from the control of designers (whoare essential for gamification to becompelling) and into the hands of themarketers (who are arguably essential forgamification to spread far and wide). Themarketers are best characterised bygamification companies like Bunchball andBigdoor, around a score of whom have soldwhite label gamification layers to blue chip

giants like FMCG and food manufacturers, TVand mobile networks.

While the marketers can be accused ofrinsing and repeating off-the-shelf systemsbased on points, rewards and leaderboards,they have introduced disciplines essential for

the growth and commercial success ofgamification. They’ve taken tips from casualgames communities, which have evolvedhighly sophisticated marketing methodologyand incubated huge games communitiestargeting specific demographics. They havelearned from social network gaming, utilisingsocial graphs, iterative development andvirtual goods. The best embed the analyticsthat underpin many online games to ensurethey deliver stuff audiences actually use.

ONE FOR SORROW?This magpie-like approach is one reason whygamification is not simply the latestincarnation of the serious games industry,which typically builds whole games for non-

entertainment purposes. Serious games havefailed when bolted onto inappropriatesubject matter. One example is the UKDepartment of Transport’s ill-judged $4m beton a fully-loaded fantasy MMORPG designedto encourage crossing the road safely. Thatcar crash was predictable.

The other crucial difference is thatgamification can scale when, arguably, mostserious games cannot. Excluding braintraining, fitness games and some militaryapplications, most serious games have notprogressed from academic case studies witha few thousand users to large scale usage.The ‘whole game’ approach with its roots inboxed product development may well be thething to blame.

When pitching entire, substantial gameson single subjects to non-games clients likegovernments, serious games companies areeffectively asking deeply risk-averseorganisations to bet on potentially short-term hits as if they were risk-aware gamespublishers. With apparently few willing torepeatedly fund such punts, this has resultedin a consistently low-value market.

Gamification has reached much largernumbers of players and companies faster andwith more tangible results. Tell broadcastersthat gamification has increased viewingfigures by 40 per cent, or e-commercewebsites that it has reduced friction in theacquisition funnel by 90 per cent, and clientshave proven more likely to pay up.

THE GUESSING GAMIFICATIONBeware analysts telling you that gamificationis worth $XXXm. These are simply guessesbased on hyped-up sales projections of theaforementioned marketers. No-one will everscale this market accurately because it isimpossible to track so many differentindustries trying gamification.

Nevertheless, gamification hasdemonstrated that it can scale, and generatesubstantial value. As gamification appears onevery device, the mother lode of allgamification projects could finally arrive –education. To date governments have failedto use children’s favourite entertainmentmechanism for teaching, but thegamification of an entire school’s syllabus hastaken place in New York, funded by the state,with fascinating results. Games designers,who are fundamentally tutors as well asentertainers, could yet play an even morecentral role in our culture.

Gamification is notturning something

non-game related into agame. It cherry-picksdiscrete elements of gamesand applies themoutside of games.

//COMMENT: BUSINESS

Show gamification loveby Rick Gibson, Games Investor Consulting

Rick Gibson is a director at Games InvestorConsulting, which provides strategy andresearch consulting services for games, mediaand finance companies, plus commercial check-ups and online game optimisation for studios.www.gamesinvestor.com


ALPHA | OPINION

Brand savvy, de-centralised groups likeAnonymous (left) haveshaken the games industryto its core

THE HACKING of the PlayStation Network is avery bad thing for our industry as a whole;not just Sony.

I’m sure we will learn more over time, butat the time of writing (May 2011) the rumoursare that a major commercial provider ofonline resources was used by the hackers tohack into the PSN. Not only has this spreaddistrust and anger amongst games players,anxiously checking credit card statementsand changing passwords for other onlineservices, but it raises the spectre of potentialfuture exposure of all online ‘cloud’ resourceproviders in terms of liability caused byactions of their customers using them toattack other services.

Doubtless they are busy checking thosemany customers now and verifying they aregenuine commercial organisations, and Isuspect they are also looking at what thosecustomers are doing with the facilities theyrent to them in a lot more detail.

This future, understandable paranoia maymake doing such business ‘in the cloud’ muchharder, especially for start-ups without a trackrecord to carry the inevitably much morespecific – and larger – insurance policies thatwill follow.

The main advantage of these ‘cloud’services is that a hard-to-estimate businessventure like a new online game can rent therelatively huge resources of an onlineprovider at short notice based on actualdemand, and tune the servers andbandwidth rented thereafter to match theeventual take-up.

The trouble is this profile to the serviceprovider, at least in the first few days, is notunlike the sort of usage like that rumoured inthe hack attack on PSN; for example a small-scale test followed by a relatively huge ramp-up of resources.

HOTZ PROPERTYThere is a further issue too; the publicity thatthese attacks generate. I imagine there arefew in this industry that haven’t heard ofGeorge Hotz now or indeed of Anonymous.

I thought the identity – perhaps we should say ‘branding’ these days – ofAnonymous, taking imagery from theexcellent film V for Vendetta was a good one,and I’m sure there will be many in that looseorganisation who are very angry that others,probably outsiders simply misdirectingblame, have now irrevocably tainted theimage of the wider group.

I have hacked into systems in the past (Iwas asked to do so) and it was an interesting

challenge, but I succeeded far more quicklythan the owner of the system expected. Thisis often the way.

It amazes me there has been so much talkabout the fact that the British cracked theEnigma code in World War II, but no onethought to consider if the Germans hadcracked the simpler British codes. They had,but not unsurprisingly chose not to tell theBritish – and, of course, the victors write thehistory books.

Practically speaking, people are always theweakest link. With enough dedication, mostsecurity systems can be overcome eventually.

All we can really do is make our house ornetwork or whatever more secure than theone next door. Using memorable but easy-to-guess passwords, writing the passwords onpost-it notes that are easily noticed byvisitors, or simply someone working ‘on theinside’ are all problems. Much like withhouses we have to be able to get in and out.Extra security is something to be suffered byus all as a result of the danger of break-ins, sowe tolerate imperfect security in return forpracticality. Let’s face it, a house with nodoors or windows would be more secure, butnot very practical to live in.

THE DEVIL’S IN THE DATAIn the PSN case, as with other less publicisedones, the target has been the user data;Names, email addresses and so on. The keyshould be to reduce the value of having suchlists in large numbers. We all tolerate casualfraud every day; we have no practical choice.

By this I mean the numerous emails tryingto sell us something, or to scam us by sayingwe have inherited millions. But those scamsare a part of the problem. They rely on suchlists of in-use email addresses to do theseannoying scams in the first place, andcompanies – like ours – regularly get emailsoffering to sell bulk lists of addresses,perpetuating the annoyance.

If sale of such bulk email lists wereoutlawed, this might help. We will allcontinue to pay for it in the years to come,the online component of our industryespecially, as trust in online activities withaccess to credit cards is damaged.

Hacking has been around a long time andis probably here to stay, but hopefully thismass loss of personal data will be a rarething. We need it to be.

Practically speaking,people are always

the weakest link. Withenough dedication, mostsecurity systems canbe overcomeeventually.

//COMMENT: OPINION

The PSN hack lessonsby David Braben, Frontier Developments

David Braben is the founder of Cambridge-based Frontier Developments. Best known asthe co-creator of Elite, Braben has contributedto, designed or overseen a number of otherprojects including Frontier: Elite II, Dog’s Life,Thrillville and LostWinds. Frontier is currentlydeveloping his next title, The Outsider. He is alsoclosely involved with Skillset. www.frontier.co.uk

14 | JULY 2011

ALPHA | OPINION

When agreeing a deal witha publisher, studiosworking on commissionedgames should be aware oftheir rights with regardedto subsequent titles in thefranchise

THE ISSUE: FIRST RIGHTS OF REFUSALGames development contracts notuncommonly contain such rights. A publisherof the developer’s own IP may wish for such aright in relation to sequels or indeed thedeveloper’s next new game.

A developer making a commissionedgame for the publisher’s franchise mightsecure such a right for the next game underthe franchise.

THE EXAMPLE CASETo see how this applies, we can look to a casefrom outside the games sector.

The nature of such rights was consideredin AstraZeneca UK Ltd v (1) AlbemarleInternational Corporation (2) AlbemarleCorporation (2011). Albemarle suppliedAstraZeneca with 2,6 Di-isopropyl-phenol,which AstraZeneca distilled in itsmanufacture of propofol, the activeingredient of its anaesthetic, Diprivan. Thesupply contract provided that, shouldAstraZeneca cease distillation, it would giveAlbemarle ‘the first opportunity and right offirst refusal to supply propofol to[AstraZeneca] under mutually acceptableterms and conditions’. In the event,AstraZeneca entered into a contract to obtainpropofal from a third party.

AstraZeneca contended that the provision,at most, required it to give Albermarle anopportunity to negotiate with AstraZeneca a

contract on mutually acceptable terms. Thisis a weak obligation, as an ‘agreement toagree’ is not binding. The court, however,found that a first right of refusal, as an‘irreducible minimum’, confers on the party towhom it is granted, the right to match thethird party offer and be awarded thecontract. For example, to receive a

contractual offer containing the essentialterms which the party who had granted theright was prepared to accept.

This is even though the detailed terms ofthe contract might require furthernegotiation and a contract might notnecessarily ensue. The party who has grantedthe right must provide the party to whom itis granted, with details of the third partyoffer, at the latest, before the third party offeris accepted.

Moreover, it must act in good faith anddisclose full details of the third party offer tothe party entitled to the right of first refusal.

THE LESSON LEARNEDWhile the court did consider the commercialbackground, and in particular process whichAstraZeneca could be expected to followwhen tendering for the new contract, theprinciples are of general application.

A party which has granted such a rightshould bear in mind the limitation onaccepting third party offers before the rightof first refusal is exhausted, when negotiatingwith the third party, so as to avoid liability forbreach of contract.

If granting such a right, the developershould provide for time limits for its exercise,otherwise the delays entailed by any ‘to-ingand fro-ing’ between publishers couldincrease the trouble of negotiations andcause financial difficulties when the deal isneeded to continue funding operations.

More fundamentally, the contract shouldnot provide for a first right of refusal if all thatis intended is that there should be non-binding, good faith discussions.

A developer makinga commissioned

game for the publisher’sfranchise might secure sucha right for the nextgame under thefranchise.

//COMMENT: LAW

Putting Refusal Firstby Tatiana Kruse, Salans LLP

Tatiana Kruse, of international law firm SalansLLP, is specialised in IP and IT law and has aparticular interest computer games. She can becontacted on +44 (0)20 7509 6134. [email protected]

Email us at [email protected]

SERIOUS TECH AT PLAY WORLD CLASS SUPPORT | NOW AVAILABLE ON SMARTPHONES | PROGRAMS FOR ALL BUDGETS

At Amiqus we’ve got our heads well and truly in the game. Which is why we’ve been providing recruitment solutions for big name developers, studios,

publishers and talented candidates across 13 countries for 10 years.

Our specialist recruitment consultants are experts in gaming and they’re also experts at matching the right people with the right opportunities.

Discover how well We Know Your World and put your knowledge to the test…

WeKnowYour World.com

Which developer has created the most sports games to date?

Visual Concepts Electronic Arts Konami

ALPHA | EVENTS

THE MONTH AHEADA look at what July has in store for the industry and beyond…

JULY 1ST:Keti Koti, thewonderfullynamedEmancipationDay celebrationin the tiny South Americannation of Suriname.

JULY 1ST:Resident EvilMercenaries3D is releasedon the 3DS.That bit fromSpaced wherezombies start jumping out ofthe telly gets just a little bitcloser to reality.

JULY 4TH:U.S. Independence Day, or,the day the Colonials gotaway in 1776. The sprightlylittle devils.

JULY 7TH:Bungie Day.SeventhColumnistseverywherewill… well, playsome Halo, most likely. Justlike every other day.

JULY 14TH:Harry Potter and theDeathly Hallows – Part 2 isreleased, drawing to a closeone of the most popularfranchises in film history. Ingame form.

JULY 14TH:BastilleDay, theFrenchnationalholiday celebrating thestorming of the Bastillefortress in 1789, flashpoint ofthe French revolution.

JULY 15TH:CaptainAmerica:Super Soldieris released.Those peskyThird Reich boys get a taste ofrighteous justice. Also of ashield. To the face.

JULY 19TH:CasualConnect2011begins inSeattle, USA. The cream of theworldwide casual and mobilegaming scenes come togetherfor three days to shoot thebusiness breeze.

JULY 19TH:The 2011 DevelopConference begins in thebeautiful seaside city ofBrighton, UK. Pack yourbucket and spade.

JULY 20TH:Time againfor thebiggest showin theEuropeanvideogames developmentsector, the very excellentDevelop Industry ExcellenceAwards 2011!

JULY 22ND:Call ofJuarez: TheCartel isreleased.Gruffness,curtness andlone-wolf, loose-cannonynesslevels rise across the entiregaming world.

JULY 28TH:The ChinaDigitalEntertainmentExpo andConferencekicks off inShanghai, China, bringingtogether the multi-billiondollar national andinternational industries.

As is only appropriate in a manwith his position, GDC Europeevent director Frank Sliwka

has incredible enthusiasm for thegames industry in Europe.

“What Europe offers the gamesindustry is unique; we are able todevelop quality games for worldwideconsumers and domestic Europeanmarkets alike,” he says.

“There is exciting growth andindustry movement for Europe tocome, specifically in the realm ofsocial and mobile games. I believewe’ll also see a rise in independentgame development.”

And those growth markets andburgeoning companies are in Sliwka’ssights for the August GDC Europegathering in Cologne, Germany – thethird GDC event for the continent.

“GDC Europe aims to create anenvironment conductive for learningabout game development andproviding business networking

opportunities. All GDC events providea forum for professionals to learn,network and be inspired,” he explains.

“However, if I were to name justone trend in this year’s event asreflected by the current Europeangames industry, it would be socialand mobile games development. Thisis illustrated by many of the talksincluded in the conference.

“We have Innogames, Wooga,Zynga, Spil Games, Gameforge,Playdom, Playfish and Blue Fang, aswell as talks covering monetisationand financial models, and making themove from traditional consoles tosocial games. We also have talks onthe Vita and android development.”

The scope of GDC is always large,however, and while the latestindustry developments may have thethrill of the new on their side, they areup for some stiff competition for theattention of attendees from the largerindustry come August.

GDC EUROPE 2011Develop gets up close and personal with GDC Europe 2011 event director Frank Sliwka

18 | JULY 2011

DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

EVENTS | ALPHA

JULY 2011 | 19

GAMES MEDIA AWARDS 2011October 26thVinopolis, Londonwww.intentmedia.co.uk

Now in their fifth year, the GamesMedia Awards look set to be evenbigger and better in 2011.

The games press community’s bignight out is set for WednesdayOctober 26th at the super chicVinopolis venue near BoroughMarket. Greg Davies will be the hostfor the evening.

Winners from ten categories willbe voted for by members of themedia and industry PRs.

A limited number of trade ticketsand sponsorship opportunities areavailable. [email protected] to find outmore information.

DEVELOP DIARY

“Some of the other talks we areexcited about cover blockbusterconsole games, like Mass Effect 3 andBulletstorm,” Sliwka says.

“We’re also excited for our newconference structure, which includesthe introduction of our four new eventsummits. Similar to our other GDCevents, we’ve introduced thesesummits to add an additionaldimension of knowledge to the mainconference tracks, by dedicating afocused lineup of sessions on emergingtopics that are pertinent to theEuropean games scene.”

The keynote lineup is also somethingthat always draws in the crowds at theinternational GDC conferences, andGDC Europe 2011 is unlikely to be anexception to this.

“We’re also very excited to hear fromour keynote speakers Jens Begemann,the founder and CEO of Wooga, one ofthe top three social gaming companieson Facebook, as well as RichardGarriott, who helped to pioneer thewhole MMORPG genre with his Ultimaseries, and is now the VP and creativedirector for the social media gamesdeveloper Portalarium.”

The GDC events across the world notonly serve as a method for national andcontinental industries to present theirwares to the international community,but also as a way for that community tohead to and engage with thoseindustries on their own turf. That samecosmopolitan operation will be in effectat this year’s GDC Europe.

“The conference’s content coversgames and companies that are beingdeveloped and working not just inEurope, but across the whole world,”Sliwka says.

“As always, we can’t wait to showcasegame development and businessactivities in areas throughout Europe –France, Germany, the Netherlands, theUK and the Nordic countries – as well ashosting a variety of speakers from

international areas like Shanda fromChina and both Epic and Harmonixfrom the U.S.A.”

It is left to Sliwka and his team to liveup to the high example they havealready set in the past three years, butjudging by the confidence with whichthey discuss the upcoming event, theyhave it all in hand.

“Year after year, GDC Europeconsistently delivers a high level ofquality content to our attendees. Theconference covers current themes andtopics in the industry, such as thecommonalities and distinction betweenEuropean and American gamedevelopment techniques,” the eventboss says.

“Partnered with our content, thebusiness generated at GDC Europecontinues to increase, drawing moreattendees from throughout Europe andother regions with established oremerging game markets.

“If you’re interested in gamedevelopment and business, or arelooking to connect with gamedevelopers, GDC Europe is a must-attend event.”www.gdceurope.com

Your complete games development event calendar for the months ahead…

EPIC UNREAL UNIVERSITYJuly 13th to 14thLondon, UKwww.epicgames.com

GAMEFEST 2011July 14th to 15thChelsea FC, Londonwww.microsoftgamefest.com

DEVELOP CONFERENCEJuly 19th to 21stBrighton, UKwww.develop-conference.com

DEVELOP INDUSTRY EXCELLENCEAWARDS 2011July 20thBrighton, UKwww.develop-online.net

SIGGRAPH 2011August 7th to 11thVancouver, Canadawww.siggraph.org

EDINBURGH INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT FESTIVALAugust 11th to 12thEdinburgh, Scotlandwww.edinburghfestival.co.uk

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

GAMESCOM 2011August 17th to 21stCologne, Germanywww.gamescom-cologne.com

CLOUD GAMING USASeptember 7th to 8thSan Jose, USAwww.cgconfusa.com

THE DEVELOP QUIZSeptember 14thSway Bar, Londonwww.develop-online.net

EUROGAMER EXPO 2011September 22nd to 25thEarl’s Court, London, UKexpo.eurogamer.net

GAMES MEDIA AWARDS 2011October 26thVinopolis, Londonwww.intentmedia.co.uk

GAMECITYOctober 25th to 29thNottingham, UKwww.gamecity.org

LONDON MCM EXPOOct 28th to 30thExCeL, Londonwww.londonexpo.com

LONDON GAMES CONFERENCE2011November 10thLondon, UKwww.londongamesfestival.co.uk

FUTURE GAMING AND DIGITALCONFERENCENovember 16thBirmingham, UKfuturegaming.bsp-a.com

september 2011

july 2011

august 2011

october 2011

november 2011

Gamecity HamburgHarbour of the Gaming Industry

Come to Hamburg and joinGermany’s Top Gaming Business Network.

500vacancies in

Hamburg


Region Focus:

Guildfordp26

Your guide tothe DevelopConference

p33

How to succeedwith mobile

gamesp41

DEVELOPMENT FEATURES, INTERVIEWS, ESSAYS & MORE

“It is now considered ‘normal’ andacceptable to play MMOs.”Jeremy Gaffney, NCsoft, p52

Ray of LightCreativity comes first for Rayman developer Michel Ancel, and with the

upcoming Ubisoft reboot Rayman Origins he aims to prove it, p22

BETA | MICHEL ANCEL

Striking theright balance

Ubisoft’s most cherished designer Michel Ancel is back. But he’s not just here to sell a Raymanrevamp – he’s changed how he makes games, mixing innovative open source technology withbetter team management to maintain his team’s creativity. Michael French investigates

22 | JULY 2011

JULY 2011 | 23

MICHEL ANCEL | BETA

If there’s been one leading victor in the lastdecade’s rapid sophistication of gamesdevelopment it has been Ubisoft. As

games have reached new platforms, theFrench firm has spread to new continents. Ithas the largest development resource in theworld, with teams in markets bothestablished and emerging.

But while Ubisoft has defined everythinggreat about games development, it has alsohelped complicate the field. Its biggestoperation is the 2,000-strong UbisoftMontreal, a site which effectively wrote therules on contentious points like staff-hungrysuperstudios and proprietary in-house tech(supported by tax breaks, natch).

This seems to have weighed on the mindof Rayman creator Michel Ancel, one of thepublisher’s longest-serving developers.

After having kept a low-profile in games forfive years after following the release ofRayman spin-off Raving Rabbids, he’s backwith a 10th anniversary game, RaymanOrigins. And yet it is not just the origins of hisbest-selling franchise he’s reimagined – butthe very fundamentals of games design and production.

BACK TO BASICSWhen Origins’ development started, Ancelinsisted on going back to basics production-wise as much as the game did conceptually.

That meant a small team, just a handful ofpeople left to their own devices at his UbisoftMontpellier studio. He wasn’t interested inrunning a controlled and predictable super-sized team. “The thinking there is simple,” hetells Develop. “The smaller the team, the morefreedom you have. So the backgrounds in ourgame are designed by a very good femaleartist – I just wanted to let her imagine thingsfreely and build a connection with art. It’s notabout asking for something precise, butsomething creative. With a large team, youdon’t get that chance. You must order peoplearound, and tell them what to do.

“But a small team really exchanges ideas.And I knew that Rayman needs a… well, I callit ‘out of control’ creation. Where you don’tknow what’s coming next.”

Ancel is no stranger to that bigger teamstructure, which in many respects Ubisoft asrefined. Some of its games are such anundertaking that yearly episodes require fouror five studios in different time zones workingthrough art, design, multiplayer, and so on.

The feeling Develop gets from him is thatthis method has become anathema to him.

“Yes,” is the plain, honest reply. “The bigteams have to be very controlled and precise– they avoid surprises. So the more organicnature of a small team allows you to movequickly and explore more.

“Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate bothways of making a game.”

But the contrast to the production ofsomething like an Assassin’s Creed is apparent.“It was very refreshing – and there was lesspressure [in that machine], so you have thetime to be creative. The human mind movesvery quickly and fires off so many ideas, when you’re smaller you can keep up with allthose ideas.”

Right now, in the four months or so beforethe game is completed, the Origins team has

actually ballooned to 80 – but that’s to finishthe game off, says Ancel. This is the filmproduction model at work, not gamesindustry tradition.

“The team size has grown now because weknow where we want to go – it’s the ‘doingthe thing’.

“But the creation needed to be small. Andthen [when it comes to the next game] youshrink again, otherwise people get tired. Orartists end up spending ages drawing bladesof grass for years.”

A NEW FRAMEWORKAncel’s approach to making games seemsbest described as enthusiasm tempered withweariness. There’s no way a game asattractive as Rayman Origins could come fromanyone less positive about the industry. Talkto him about games generally and he’s anavid fan. Like many developers, he says hehasn’t time to make games and play all hewants, but he signals out recent hits likeAngry Birds and Mass Effect as titles he’s madesure to play, while keeping an eye on newplatforms like tables and smartphones.

But he’s clearly frustrated with the way theindustry makes those games. And once teammanagement approaches were challengedwhen Origins’ production began, Ancelmoved on to his other irritation; technology.

“When we were making games for olderplatforms, we were just using synthesisers formusic, we were experimenting with what wehad and it was fun,” he says of making theoriginal Rayman, which became a slow-burning commercial hit on PSone. Famously,the character himself doesn’t have a bodybecause the hardware couldn’t render that

and his movement. So his design was bornfrom technical constraints.

“But over time music in games just becamereal orchestras and more detailed. Somethingwas lost. The trend has always been to get‘better’, more detailed, more realistic. But wedon’t necessarily agree. You become focusedon new technology all the time.”

The answer, ironically, was to build analternative tech at Montpellier, and UbiArtFramework is the result. It’s a platformdesigned specifically to help artists contributemore directly to the design process, a personaldelight for Ancel who started out as a graphicdesigner on some of Ubisoft’s early internalproductions in the late ‘80s.

Origins’ gameplay is a 2D multiplayerplatformer – but the levels are essentiallypaintings simply scanned into UbiArt.

“It takes away the technical constraints thatare exhausting for artists: modelling,

Every creator says ‘I want to

focus on fun’; but that’s nottrue – they have to thinkabout technology,or a story, or teammanagement.

Michel Ancel, Ubisoft

DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

rendering… all that technology just creates ahuge gap between what you intended andwhat you get. It allows us to iterateconstantly, and we prototype rapidly,” saysAncel. “We tried to limit the constraints onartists so they have a direct connection withthe game.”

And it shows on screen – Rayman Originswas one of the most eye-catching games at E3last month, a creative star amidst a parade ofhigh-end, blood-thirsty core gamer titles. Thepaintings effectively come to life thanks toUbiArt and the power of current-gen consoles.“Of course [despite what I said abouttechnology] we’re embracing HD graphics – itenables this to work. But the point is to use theright tool for the right job,” he adds.

Other industries are attracted to whatUbiArt offers too, he says: “We’ve been reallyfrustrated with a lot of 3D content in games –it’s never as we want it. But we’ve beentalking to some big names from the comicbook industry, and showing them UbiArt. Wecan take their images and scan them in, and itis true and consistent, but interactive – theywere stunned. I can’t talk much about whatwe are working on with them, but that’s thebeauty of it.

“We can bring highly creative art to life. Thestyle we are going for is a mix between classicarcade gameplay, but with a very vibrant artelement. In future we can use it to createsome highly original artistic games.”

SHARING THE VISIONWhat he wants to do next with UbiArt isanother convention-challenging idea. Hewants to give it away. For free.

“When we started this project we werevery focused on letting this developorganically and share what we learned. SoUbiArt has been built to be shared. It won’t

be like other games technologies, which areoften just locked away.”

The inevitable process of full licensing anddistribution for the technology is still to bedetermined – Ancel and his team say thatthey’ll leave that to the Ubisoft powers thatbe. But they are insistent UbiArt will beopened up so that a new wave of developersthat don’t work for Ubisoft will have access toit: “We will get it out there, for sure.”

Won’t that be expensive for his employer?“Making Rayman here I have two goals.

Firstly, to prove that this engine can be done,and that it is creative.

“And secondly, to make an actual gamewith it and prove it works.”

So his thinking that Ubisoft will profit fromthe game and the artistic works created withUbiArt, not the tools themselves.

“If the guys who invented the paintbrushonly kept it for themselves then fine art[would be in a sorry state], it would beephemeral,” he says. “So yes, I want it to beopen source, I want it to go out and beshared and evolved.”

Ancel wants to take a page from otherartistic mediums to further prove his idea

holds water. “If you look at the best artists atDisney for example, they create incrediblebooks and artwork and share their processes– it’s interesting because those same peopleare happy to look at how other artists aredeveloping their style. That whole mediumhas evolved on the basis of sharing ideas. Butin games we lock it all in a black box andkeep it to ourselves,” he says.

“A lot of independent developers fail orstruggle because of that trend. We need to bemore open. I don’t believe that keeping thetechnology to yourself is interesting. I wantsomeone to look at our game and be inspiredto use the tools to be artistic themselves. It ismore interesting to have a community andshare our content.”

FINDING THE FUNFor Ancel and his team, this free approach toteams, artistry and technology takes themback to what they first loved about makinggames. “When we created Rayman we werevery naive, just doing what we thought wasfunny and letting the development rule ourdirection,” he recalls.

Plus, holding on to the original Raymanconcept from 15 years ago has only helpedencourage this new way of working.

“Our challenge was asking ‘Why can’t wedo a very good game in 2D?’ We’re evolvingthe technology to concentrate on gameplay.

“As a creator if I knew 15 years ago what Iknow now… well, Rayman Origins is thegame I’d intended to make. I’m not thinkingabout technology. I’m thinking about fun andconcentrating on that. Every creator says ‘Iwant to focus on fun; but that’s not true –they have to think about technology, or astory, or team management. The pure fun islost. I think we’ve managed to hold onto thatas we made this game.”

BETA | MICHEL ANCEL

24 | JULY 2011

Artists are hurt bythese exhausting

constraints: modelling,rendering… all they do iscreate a gap between whatyou want and whatyou get.

Michel Ancel, Ubisoft

Rayman Origins boastshigh-end artworktransferred from easel toscreen using the UbiArtFramework

26 | JULY 2011

How important is a sense ofcommunity to the Guildford gamedevelopment hub?

Harvey Wheaton, studio director,Supermassive Games: I think the Guildforddevelopment hub is highly sociable in aninformal context. If you go out you’ll see lotsof developers, everyone knows everyone andits absolutely fantastic. At a more formal level,it doesn’t really happen. Stuart Whyte, chief publishing officer,Lionhead Studios: But there is a lot ofmovement between the studios, and peoplechanging careers within the hub, and there’sconnections through that.Gavin Shields, COO, Turbulenz: We did haveour first Tiga meet-up last week, and that wasa really good opportunity for businessdiscussions, because typically here, as hasbeen said, it’s great if you can go to a pub, buton a business level there’s not so much here. Ithink it is important that we try and do moreof that.Wheaton: It is quite hard to find the rightvehicle for that though, isn’t it? We’ve beentalking about it with Tiga and it is tricky tofind the right vehicle for that kind of thing.We need to find a common purpose toprovoke more than just going to a pub on aFriday or having a laugh at trade shows.Something needs to change there.

Is that because of the variety of studios inGuildford? You’ve got indies rubbingshoulders with giants like EA.Barry Meade, director, Fireproof Studios:That mix of large and small has actually beengreat for us. As a smaller studio, and one witha lot of freelancers, Guildford’s given us theopportunity to work with the likes of Codiesand Media Molecule, and we’ve also workedwith Sony and Activision. Shields: In that regard, for us it’s certainly ahelpful thing to be here because locally wecan be in touch with EA, Codemasters andmany others, and that’s a result of us beinghere in Guildford and some of our guysworking elsewhere here in the past.

We’re actually more focused at themoment on the small and medium sizeddevelopers right now, and certainly the timeis right to be in Guildford. It’s been a massiveplus for us, because of the community ofdevelopers here.

So there’s a degree of closeness betweenstudios. How much does that help in termsof business development?Whyte: Lots of the teams in Guildford havebubbled off other studios in the areas. Forexample, Lionhead bubbled off Bullfrog, andMedia Molecule bubbled of Lionhead. Loadsof people have bubbled off EA and Criterion,

and it’s still going on today. I think that’s quitehealthy, and it’s a really cool thing to happen,especially when – and I don’t know whetherthis is a bubble or not – the industry issupporting the idea of small teams doingiPhone-type experiences or Facebook gameswhich require no much near as big aninvestment. It’s a good time for these bubble-off studios to come into being.

So Guildford’s game developmentecosystem is well structured so as to adaptto a changing industry?Patrick O’Luanaigh, CEO, nDreams: That’scertainly the case in terms of being able toform links with other companies. Even for us,being based just outside Guildford, we’vebeen able to work with all kinds of bigcompanies like Codemasters. Othercompanies are not so far away like Double Sixand Testology in Aldershot. So even thoughwe might not see people socially all the timethere’s such a good variety of different partsof the industry it’s really useful, which reallyhelps with adapting. If you want to go andvisit people and talk stuff over, being so closephysically to so much variety is really handy.Whyte: One thing that’s really interesting interms of the industry going forward is – and Iknow Lionhead really use this and I know EAuse this – the use of contract staff. In

BETA | GUILDFORD FOCUS


Some of Guildford’s manysenior development staffdebate the pros and consof the area

THECREATIVE

GUILDSome 30 miles from London, Guildford remains one of Europe’s leading games industry hubs. As ahome to the likes of EA, Codemasters and Lionhead, it today rivals it metropolis neighbour. WillFreeman sat down with some of the town’s greatest development talent to find out why

Guildford there is the option of ramping upand ramping down and using contractorsbecause it is the kind of environment andarea with enough critical mass of those staffthat can support contract model. It’s greatbecause it allows people to really specialiseand move around. We’re certainly starting tosee more of that here, but it would be great ifthere were more companies around the tablewith regard to contract staff.Wheaton: Even in the past few weeks I’venoticed more dialogue and people talkingabout contractors. That’s really the first I’veseen of anybody actively pushing that.Whyte: Yes. Hopefully we can all start to dothat more and share. We’re all going to begrowing and shrinking at different points aswe make games, so the ability to foster anecosystem where we can support people tomove around between Guildford studios, andactually see them learn from differentcompanies and spread that knowledge aboutmaking games between us; that could reallyhelp us all.Meade: You could say that the history of theGuildford hub is of a place that has sown theseeds of, well, a lot of things in the industry. Ithink the studios that exist here are just alittle a cut above those in other areas. I’m sureeverybody says that about their region, but I

think the reason it’s true about Guildford isbecause there’s a lot of history here, andthat’s an important factor.

A lot of the studios like Lionhead, likeMedia Molecule and like Codemastersemploy people that have been part of theGuildford hub for 15 or 20 years, and that’s ahuge factor.

It ties in what we’re talking about herebecause, for example, when we set upFireproof we saw that the games industrywas going to move to a movie industrymodel, where instead of hiring outsourcesyou’d be hiring really fucking goodoutsourcers who really know their stuff.

The backdrop that Guildford has and thehistory it has as a hub means the studios thatare here are of a pretty high quality. They’rethriving, and they’re exactly the kind ofstudios that will allow that business model tothrive. It hasn’t happened completely yet, butwith all the start-ups that are appearing here,give it a year or two and I think it will.Shields: One of the challenges we have comeacross at Turbulenz is that as we’re trying tocombine the best bits of game platforms andthe web, from a games developer point ofview we’ve had no problem finding some ofthe best talent in the UK, but we also have tofind talented web developers, and most ofthose seem to be migrating to East London.We haven’t so many around here. Things likeDavid Cameron’s focus on East London makeit tough.

On the subject of staffing, doesn’t thenumber and quality of developers heremake it fairly difficult in terms ofcompetition for talent?Wheaton: We haven’t really had thatproblem, because Guildford is an attractiveplace to people all over the country. We’vehad staff join us from all over the place. And ithelps that there’s a lot of companies here, sothere’s always going to be work.

The backdrop thatGuildford has and

the history it has as a hubmeans the studios that arehere are of a prettyhigh quality. They’rethriving.

Barry Meade, Fireproof

GUILDFORD FOCUS | BETA

28 | JULY 2011

BETA | GUILDFORD FOCUS

Whyte: That’s been helpful for us too, as wecan let people come down to Guildford,check it out, and see there’s loads of otherplaces in Guildford for work in this industry.Wheaton: It’s also the case that bothGuildford’s game industry, and Guildford ingeneral, is seen as a stable place to be. Withall the turbulence in the industry recently,stability is a real strength of Guildford.Ian Johnson, studio manager,Codemasters: It does really help thatGuildford’s a great place to move if you’rebringing your family. If you’re in that positionthis is a place with lots of opportunities.Meade: The fact that there are lots of smallercompanies here also helps, I think. There’s somany different studio models here, in theseturbulent times, if I were worried about loosingmy job, its far better. Also, those smallerstudios potentially offer staff more of a role,and maybe a bigger pay off in the long term.Shields: The success stories here like that ofMedia Molecule are important too, as successbreeds success, and that’s good for attractingtalent to the area.

Everyone seems fairly open tocollaboration. How far could that beextended?Johnson: There’s possible ways we can helpeach other with efficiency. Some studios

down here, for example, have their ownmocap set-up, so there are ways we can sharefacilities and hardware or something like that.There’s definitely ways we can help eachother, and I think people are open to that.

It almost seems Guildford boasts a degreeof self-sufficiency as a development hub. Isthat fair to say?Johnson: That seems to be becoming true,and I think that’s partly a response by thestudios here to the competition we’re facingfrom overseas. There’s obviously enticing taxincentives in places like Canada, so the waythat we can compete with those is to beefficient. We can obviously do that internallyas individual studios, but I think if as a group

we had the confidence to share resourcesbetween ourselves instead of grabbing ontothings like they are some valuable goldeneggs, that would be ideal. That’s nationallyrelevant too, but obviously getting there willmean many hurdles.

Perhaps Guildford is best positioned to setthe example?Johnson: Absolutely. I think if anywhere inthe UK is going to set the benchmark for this,it will be a place like Guildford.Meade: That’s very true. I think people hereare very comfortable with change, becausethere’s so many studios around here ithappens all the time.

It all sounds very positive, but there mustbe challenges in Guildford.Johnson: Certainly Guildford could benefitfrom some kind of angel or venture capitalbase. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that it doesn’texist, but there’s enough companies here thatwould find it very useful. Especially seedfunding or funding of less than two or threemillion pounds.Meade: It would have been great if one ofthose guys had rocked up here a couple ofyears ago. But other than that, there’s fewnegatives about Guildford. There could bebetter places to go out, that’s for sure.

Above, clockwise from topleft: Ian Johnson, studiomanager, Codemasters;Barry Meade, director,Fireproof Studios; GavinShields, COO, Turbulenz;Stuart Whyte, chiefpublishing officer,Lionhead Studios; HarveyWheaton, studio director,Supermassive Games;Patrick O’Luanaigh, CEO,nDreams

There’s obviouslyenticing tax

incentives in places likeCanada, so the way that wecan compete withthose is to beefficient.

Ian Johnson, Codemasters

The Bright Lights ofGuildfordGUILDFORD’S POSITION as aleading development hubstarted at the dawn of themodern games studio, whensmall teams like Bullfrog setthe template of contemporarygame development.

When EA acquired Bullfrog in the late 90’s the giant of publishingand development assumed the role of the Guildford dev scene’s mostfamous member.

That history, says VP and GM of EA’s Bright Light Studios HarveyElliot (above), remains part of EA’s global significance today.

“It puts us at the heart of the games industry in the UK, and sits usamongst our peers in a really passionate and engaged developmentcommunity,” says Elliot. “We have two great studios here, Bright Lightand Criterion, plus the headquarters of our European EA Partnersdivision – and it just feels right that we have these great powerhousedevelopment teams sitting in the centre of the town where so much ofit began.”

But it’s not just nostalgia that’s keeping EA in the town. Elliot is quickto point to another reason that Electronic Arts sees Guildford as soimportant.

“I think community sums it up,” suggests Elliot. “We have informalrelationships with most of the studios in Guildford and so muchmutual respect. We all know how hard it is to make games, and it’sgreat to be able to share perspectives with others from across theindustry. When we meet we talk about making games in the UK, howwe hire talent into the area, and how we approach our projects.”

There is another factor to consider when pondering EA’s role in theGuildford hub, and that is what the company offers the area.

“EA being in Guildford adds weight to the region,” insists Harvey.“We are a magnet for great talent to the area, and our investment hereis pretty significant, not just for the two studios and EA Partners, butbecause we also house a significant part of our European publishingteam here.”

BROADEN YOUR SKILLS, YOUR NETWORK, YOUR HORIZONS

International Media Sponsor Media Sponsor Media Sponsor Media Sponsor Media SponsorMedia Sponsor

19 - 21 July 2011

in Brighton

The Main Event for European Developers

Join 1,300 international game developers and choose from over

80 top-notch sessions across 3 inspiring days.

Tuesday 19 July The forward-looking Evolve conference focuses on all that is new in game development - new platforms, new technologies and new markets.

The Evolve programme will help developers tackle the issues arising from emerging platforms and digital marketplaces, connected gaming, user-generated content, and the crossover between games and Internet services.

Wednesday 20 JulyA forum where games dev academics discuss how to create and maintain the best possible learning environments for their students.

Thursday 21 JulyA day of sessions dedicated to game audio and music, with world-class speakers and practical programme.

Keynote Sean Murray,

Co-founder,

Hello Games

Panel: Starting a Studio:

Grad vs Veteran

Free: Is It Evil?

Will Luton, Mobile Pie

Five Tips a Developer

Needs to Succeed

Osborne Clarke, Olswang LLPThursday 21 JulyThe new Indie Dev Day

offers tons of sessions, a chance to meet publishers and mix with other indies. Plus, Indie Showcase: a dedicated area within the Develop Expo (20-21 July) featuring some of the exciting and new indie projects currently under development.

Wednesday 20 & Thursday 21 JulyMain conference tackling the issues, tools, tricks and techniques of game development and offering practical advice and solutions.

NEW!INDIE

INDIE INDIE

Audio Keynote 2011

Phil Kovats

Sony Playstation

Media Sponsor Partner Member Discount Member DiscountMember DiscountMember Discount Organised by

Register Now!

www.developconference.com

The team that brought you LittleBigPlanet, share their past, present and future. They’ll talk stories from the trenches, inspiring ideas and their thoughts on the future of user generated content.

Plus keynotes from EA SPORTS, Mind Candy, WB Games, Sony Computer Entertainment, Jagex, Frontier

and much, much more!

The Develop Conference Opening Keynote

Living Inside A MoleculeAlex Evans, Kareem Ettouney, Mark Healey and Siobhan Reddy from Media Molecule, in conversation with Phil Harrison, Co-founder and General Partner, London Venture Partners

The Evolve and Develop conferences are not just about learning, they’re about mixing with your peers, making new contacts and yes - having a bit of fun along the way! Monday 18 July

Tuesday 19 July

Wednesday 20 July

For tickets contact Kathryn Humphrey: [email protected]

Thursday 21 July

After Hours

All these companies will be there make sure you are too!

Own an iPhone, Android or Blackberry phone? Download the Develop Conference App!

The app will help keep you up-to-date with session

locations, parties to attend and the twitter postings to be kept informed of all the action! Just follow the link from our website.

EA Sports Mind Candy BBC Worldwide ngmoco Hand Circus Exient Chillingo Crytek UK Sony Computer Entertainment Disney Black Rock Intent Media Creative Assembly Dimensional Imaging Jagex Warner Bros Microsoft Games Studios The Guardian Gameforge Productions GmbH

Relentless Software Supercell Hasbro UK De Lane Lea (Post Production) Intel Perforce Codemasters Escape Studios Hansoft Desert Monkey Rad Game Tools Ikinema Headstrong Games Broken Clock Productions Dolby Innovation in Gaming Spilt Milk Studios

Honeyslug Eurogamer Frogster Online Gaming GmbH Majesco Europe ICO Partners Codeplay GlobalStep Europe Remode Jester Wiggin LLP GSM Productions Bouncy Kitty Games Uni of Southampton Binary Sunset GamerTrak Sidekick Mak Studios State of Play Games Splash Damage Ragtag Developments nDreams Canonical Stainless Games Olswang BBC Testing Stuff Playmetrix Rock You Atomhawk Design One World shtik Xiotex Studios Miko Music Vertical Slice University of Abertay Revolution Software Wave Studios TCA Singing Horse Studio Feeding Edge University of Greenwich Testimony Films Snappy Touch VMC The Voice Over Voice Lancaster University Albino

Pixel Four Door Lemon Tin Man Games The Tiniest Shark University of Bradford AI Factory Playdead Autodesk YAGER Development GmbH Beefy Media Wellcome Trust WMS Gaming Amju Games Skillset Scoreloop Maverick Media Serious Games Sumo Digital EA Partners Unity Technologies Microsoft Xbox The Walt Disney Company Ubisoft Sega Europe Bigpoint Media Molecule Lionhead Frontier And many more…


KEYNOTES

OPENING KEYNOTE:Phil Harrison will interview the seniorMedia Molecule team, who will share theirpast, present and future. The ‘Molecules’will discuss everything from their humblebeginnings to their acquisition by Sony.

THURSDAY KEYNOTE:The Stereoscopic 3D Experience - The firstyear of 3D on PlayStation 3(Mick Hocking, senior director, SonyComputer Entertainment Worldwide Studios)

TRACK KEYNOTES:

AUDIO:The 2011 Audio Keynote (Phil Kovats, audiodirector and sound designer, SCEE)

PRODUCTION KEYNOTE:Changing the Way We Develop GamesWithout Sacrificing Our Indie Identity (KrisJones, executive producer of TransformersUniverse, Jagex)

CODING KEYNOTE: De Re PlayStation Vita (Kish Hirani, head ofdeveloper services, SCEE, and Neil Brown,senior engineer, R&D Department, SCEE)

EVOLVE KEYNOTE:Lessons Learned Building Moshi Monstersto 50m Users (Michael Acton Smith, CEOand founder, Mind Candy)

BUSINESS KEYNOTE:Managing the Mystery (Laura Fryer, VP andgeneral manager, WB Games Seattle)

EVOLVE KEYNOTE:Moving the Goalposts - Bringing SocialExperiences to all Game Platforms (AndrewWilson, SVP of worldwide development, EA Sports)

ART KEYNOTE:Showtime! (Iain McCaig, artist andconceptual designer)

DESIGN KEYNOTE:Making Disneyland (David Braben, founderFrontier Developments)

PIER REVIEWAnother year has flown by, and it’s time once again for the Develop Conference in

Brighton. Our essential guide brings you all you need to know about the show

DEVELOP CONFERENCE GUIDE | BETA

Tuesday, July 19th sees the return of the Develop conference inBrighton. It’s set to be bigger and better than ever before, andthis year includes fresh elements and a new track.

1,300 developers, business executives and service and tech industryrepresentatives are set to attend the event, which offers over 80sessions, panels and workshops.

Now in its sixth year, the conference lets the industry’s best cometogether to share ideas and experiences, learn from one another andnetwork in a relaxed and upbeat seaside environment.

The Evolve track opens the show on Tuesday, July 19th, providingattendees with a unique conference focusing on the cutting edge ofgame development.

Wednesday, July 20th sees the opening day of the main DevelopConference, tackling the issues, tools, tricks and techniques of gamedevelopment, and offering practical advice and solutions to take backto the studio. The same day also sees the Develop Industry ExcellenceAwards take place in Brighton.

On Thursday, July 21st Develop concludes, with the mainconference, as well as the Audio track – a day of sessions dedicated togame audio and music – and the new Indie Dev Day, targetedspecifically at independent developers.

Head to www.developconference.com for more details, and we’llsee you there.

34 | JULY 2011

Tuesday July 19th: EvolveRoom 5 Room 6 Room 7

9.30 - 10.15

KEYNOTE: Moving the Goalposts

- Bringing Social Experiences to All Game Platforms (Room 5)

10.20 - 11.05

Rolling from iPhone to Console:

Lessons Learned from an

Independent Developer

The Future of Games Bringing Console Quality to a

Casual Audience

11.05 - 11.20 Coffee break

11.20 - 12.05

Are Smartphones the New Consoles?

The Future of Games is SocialNew Stories for New Platforms

12.10 - 12.55

45 Games in 45 Minutes: A Brisk

Guide to Mobile Gaming Innovation

Browser - The Place Where

Console, Web and Social Games

Come Together

Stop Guessing, Start Knowing!

How to Make Money from Online

Games

12.55 - 2.00 Lunch

2.00 - 2.45

Bringing Innovation to Multiplatform

Development and Deployment

The Evolving Games Business

Model and How it Will Be Funded

Gamification - Extending the

Game Play into Business

2.50 - 3.35

One Price Does NOT Fit AllSocial, Games, Music and Fashion:

New FrontiersMarketing in the Age of

Microtransactions

3.35 - 3.50 Coffee Break

3.50 - 4.35

Monetising Android: Full Price v.

Freemium

The Times They Are a-Changin' - A

Disruptive View of the Gaming

Industry

What's Next? (panel)

4.40 - 5.25

KEYNOTE: Lessons Learned Building Moshi Monsters to 50m Registered Users (Room 5)

BETA | DEVELOP CONFERENCE GUIDE

36 | JULY 2011

Wednesday July 20th: ConferenceRoom 1 Room 2 Room 3 Room 4 Room 5 Room 6 Room 7 Room 8

09.30 - 10.30

OPENING KEYNOTE Room 2


11.00 - 12.00

From TV

to Games

& Back

Again

KEYNOTE:

De Re

Playstion

Vita

Being Agile

in a

Waterfall

World

From Phones

to High End

PCs: How to

Scale Your

Technology

No

Console

Required?

Bulldozing

the

Barriers to

Entry

From TV

to Games

- How an

Animation

Company

Made the

Switch

Money for

Good

Games

Iteration

to

insight:

A view

on how

metrics

changes

the

game

FREE

EXPO

12.00 - 1.30 Lunch

1.30 - 2.30

Content

isn't King:

Why

Developers

Have to

Do More

Than

Develop

Games..

KEYNOTE:

Making

Disneyland

Crysis 2

Multiplayer -

A (Mostly

Technical)

Postmortem

Fable The

Journey -The

Evolution and

Preservation

of a

Distinctive

Visual Style

6 months

on: the

Livingstone

Hope

Review

You Want

What

When?

(or How

Tools

Saved My

Life)

Applying

Indie

Philosophy

to

Mainstream

Brands &

IP

5 Keys

to

Building

Value in

a

Games

Business

FREE

EXPO

2.30 - 3.00 Break

3.00 - 4.00

So You

Think

Virtual

Worlds

Aren't

Important?

KEYNOTE:

Showtime!

Kickstart

Your Kinect

Development

Engineering

the Total War

AI: from

Soldier to

Battalion

Harnessing

The

Compute

Continuum

To Grow

Your

Business

Innovation

- A State

of Mind

Throw

Away Your

Office

(Panel)

All

Things

Must

Pass

FREE

EXPO


4.30 -5.30

Social

Games:

From

Weeds to

Trees

KEYNOTE:

Managing

the Mystery

Digital

Painting

Masterclass

Kinect and

the Future of

Gaming and

Entertainment

3 Screens

and a

Cloud:

Turning

Ink Into

Brink

Discussion

of Future

Directions

in Games

Technology

Who's

Afraid of

Games

Tax

Relief?

FREE

EXPO

5.00 - 6.00 Expo Booth Crawl

DEVELOP INDUSTRYEXCELLENCEAWARDS: JULY 20THReturning for their ninth year, the DevelopIndustry Excellence Awards remain one ofthe most significant, relevantdevelopment sector award shows globally.

They also serve as the only peer-votedawards for the UK and European videogames industry.

Once more, the awards will shine aspotlight on the games, studios,technologies, services and individuals thathave shaped the industry, and will beattended by key executives, analysts,programmers, artists and musicians.

The nominees have battled it out in arange of categories covering everythingfrom Creativity to Technology, Servicesand Studios.

Details on the finalists can be foundonline at develop-online.net.

The Develop Industry ExcellenceAwards return to the Hilton MetropoleHotel on July 20th.


38 | JULY 2011

Thursday July 21st: Conference Room 2 Room 3 Room 4 Room 5 Room 7 Room 8

10.00 - 11.00

KEYNOTE: The Stereoscopic 3D Experience - The first year of 3D on PlayStation 3

Odeon Cinema Brighton


11.30 - 12.30

Being Different: 5

Innovation

Techniques

Question

Time: You

Ask, They

Answer

(Panel)

KEYNOTE:

Changing the

Way We

Develop

Games Without

Sacrificing Our

Indie ID

Building

Through the

Board -

Evolutionary

Design for

Serious

Games

Stereography

- the Art of 3D

Create. Play. A

Modern

Workflow for

Character

Animation in

Games

12.30 - 1.30 Lunch and Indie Showcase Winner Announcement

1.30 - 2.30

Building

Community with

PlayStation

Network

Why Great

Games Don't

Always Sell

The Evolving

Producer /

Associate

Producers

Duet and its

Impact on

Game

Productions

Happily Ever

After - The

Story of One

Girl's Refusal

to Delegate

The

Relationship

Between

Developers,

Publishers,

Retailers and

E-tailers in

2012 (Panel)

From Botticelli's

Venus to Mario's

Moustache:

Enhancing

Videogame Art

with Traditional

Art Principles

2.30 - 2.45 Break

2.45 - 3.45

A ‘RAOZ’ By Any

Other Name –

Capturing Player-

generated Names

Using Kinect

Speech

Recognition

Level Design

in Crysis 2

Multiplayer:

How We Did

it, and What

We Learnt…

Building in 3D

– LEGO

Adventures on

Nintendo 3DS

Another Year

down the

GameToilet

Producing

Digital

Download

Content

Achieving the

"Version

Everything"

Utopia


4.00 - 5.00

Dynamic

Resolution

Rendering

Contemporary

UI – When

Art and

Design

Collide!

BAFTA

Session

Designing for

Emotions:

Understanding

the Player

Experience

Ten Do's and

Dont's of

Developing

Motion

Controlled

Games

Share in the

Community:

LittleBigPlanet +

X million players

5.00 - 5.30 Indie Showcase People's Choice Award Room 5

EXPO: JULY 20TH & 21ST

Running alongside the main Develop inBrighton conference on the Wednesdayand Thursday is the Develop Expo.

Entry to the show floor is free for allvisitors , and brings together some ofEurope’s most innovative companies fromevery sector of games development.

At the heart of the Expo is the DevelopBar and Networking Lounge, meaningthat you don’t have to go far to buycolleagues a drink and network.

Autodesk B24Bungie B48Crisp Thinking B40Crunch B27Dimensional Imaging B46Epic Games Networking LoungeGaikai SponsorIkinema B28Indie Showcase B30Kingston University A14NTI (New Technology Institute in Birmingham) B39Perforce Software B44Rad Game Tools B50Special Effects A10Tata Communications (UK) B20Testing Stuff B26The Creative Assembly B22Train2Game B12Wave Studios B38

OTHER TRACKSAs well as the main conference, theDevelop Industry Excellence Awards,Evolve and the Expo, there are a numberof extra tracks and elements at Develop in Brighton.

The Indie Dev Day on the Thursday offersa day-long conference track withnetworking events aimed specifically atindependent developers.

The Indie Showcase is also part of IndieDev Day, and will feature 10 unpublishedindependently developed gamesshortlisted by a panel of experts. One ofthe games – which will be on display aspart of the Expo – will go on to be overallIndie Showcase winner.

Also taking place on the Thursday is thededicated Audio Track, which offers afocused schedule from professionalsinvolved in every aspect of game sound.


Advertising’s most awarded sound studionow does games

SPECIAL 20% DISCOUNT OFFERFROM CRC PRESS

250 IndieGames YouMust Play Mike Rose

Price: $29.95 / £17.99Cat. #: K13514ISBN: 9781439875742Publication Date: April 21,2011

Binding: Paperback

With a surge in popularity recently and an increase ingreat downloadable games, there has never been abetter time to learn about independent "indie" games.250 Indie Games You Must Play is a guide to theexciting and expanding world of indie gaming. Whetheryou are a veteran of the indie game scene or havenever played an indie game before, this book helps youexperience the best in indie gaming and further yourunderstanding of why indie games are so important inthe entertainment industry.

The wide range of games highlighted in the textencompasses concepts and ideas that will change yourperspective of what video games can be. The bookcovers puzzlers, platformers, beat ‘em ups, shoot ‘emups, role-playing, and strategy.

Apart from being fun, indie games can beexperimental, emotional, nostalgic, and occasionallyjust plain bizarre. Some make you sit back in awe,while others have you thinking, "Why have I neverplayed a game like this before?" Better still, themajority of these games are completely free to playand even the commercial releases are incrediblycheap. Once you start playing indie games, you maynot be able to look at your big-budget blockbustersthe same way ever again.

The Golden Ageof Video Games:The Birth of aMultibillion DollarIndustry Roberto Dillon,Digipen Institute, Singapore

Price: $39.95 / £25.99Cat. #: K13396 ISBN: 9781439873236 Publication Date: March 23, 2011

Binding: Paperback

This book focuses on the history of video games,consoles, and home computers from the verybeginning until the mid-nineties, which started a newera in digital entertainment. The text features themost innovative games and introduces the pioneerswho developed them. It offers brief analyses of themost relevant games from each time period. Anepilogue covers the events and systems that followedthis golden age while the appendices include a historyof handheld games and an overview of the retro-gaming scene.

Game EngineGems 2Eric Lengyel,Terathon Software

Price: $69.95 / £44.99Cat. #: K13208 ISBN: 9781568814377 Publication Date: February 14, 2011 Binding: Hardback

This book, the second volume in the popular GameEngine Gems series, contains short articles that focuson a particular technique, describe a clever trick, oroffer practical advice within the subject of gameengine development. The 31 chapters cover threebroad categories—graphics and rendering, game enginedesign, and systems programming. Professional gamedevelopers, students of game development andcomputer science, and anyone interested in learninghow the pros tackle specific problems that ariseduring game engine development will find useful gemsin this collection.

GPU Pro 2Wolfgang Engel,Confetti Special Effects

Price: $69.95 / £49.99Cat. #: K00418 ISBN: 9781568817187 Publication Date: February 14, 2011

Binding: Hardback

This book focuses on advanced rendering techniquesthat run on the DirectX and/or OpenGL run-time withany shader language available. It includes articles onthe latest and greatest techniques in real-timerendering, including MLAA, adaptive volumetricshadow maps, light propagation volumes, wrinkleanimations, and much more. The book emphasizestechniques for handheld programming to reflect theincreased importance of graphics on mobile devices. Itcovers geometry manipulation, effects in image space,shadows, 3D engine design, GPGPU, and graphics-related tools.

Game Design:From Blue Skyto Green LightDeborah Todd

Price: $49.00 / £31.99Cat. #: K00629 ISBN: 9781568813189 Publication Date: February 23, 2007

Binding: Paperback

This book takes a real-world, in-depth journey throughthe game-design process, from the initial blue skysessions to pitching for a green light. The authordiscusses the decision and brainstorming phase,character development and story wrap, creation ofcontent and context outlines, flowcharting game play,and creating design documents. Special featuresinclude examples of both classic and contemporarygames, and interviews with many of the gameindustry’s brightest professionals who share theirinsights on key elements in game design, and theiranalysis on what makes a game a blockbuster hit. Thisbook is a perfect guide for the novice, student, andgame enthusiast interested in learning the nuts andbolts of the computer-game industry.

Creating Games:Mechanics,Content, andTechnologyMorgan McGuire,Odest ChadwickeJenkins

Price: $69.00 / £43.99Cat. #: K00377 ISBN: 9781568813059

Publication Date: December 23, 2008

Creating Games offers a comprehensive overview ofthe technology, content, and mechanics of gamedesign. It emphasizes the broad view of a games teamand teaches you enough about your teammates' areasso that you can work effectively with them. Theauthors have included many worksheets and exercisesto help get your small indie team off the ground.

CRC PRESS - TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP AN INFORMA BUSINESS 6000 BROKEN SOUND PARKWAY, SUITE 300 BOCA RATON, FL 33487

ORDER ONLINE ATWWW.CRCPRESS.COMUSE DISCOUNT CODE 193CMAT CHECKOUT TO APPLYEXP DATE: DECEMBER 31, 2011

ORDER ONLINE ATWWW.CRCPRESS.COMUSE DISCOUNT CODE 193CMAT CHECKOUT TO APPLYEXP DATE: DECEMBER 31, 2011

SEE EXCERPT

ON PAGE 70


MOBILE FOCUS | BETA

Hitting the

PhonesIn just a few years mobile gaming has

changed enormously. What’s more, it hasdone so with a ferocity and pace that far

exceeds that seen in any parallel sector of theindustry today.

Once an embarrassing cousin of consoleand handheld, the mobile space was not solong ago dominated by J2ME andergonomically challenging handsets.

For years there was much talk of arevolution in gaming on cellular phones, butuntil 2008 when the App Store debuted, Snake2 on the Nokia 3310 remained a high point inthe history of mobile.

Then the iPhone changed everything, andAndroid changed everything again. HTCfinally became a household name, and mobileSDKs increased in power and capability.

Traditional console and PC enginecompanies like Epic turned their attention toconsumers’ pockets, and introduced the worldto triple-A on mobile, while Unity managed tochampion a trend in development that wouldcarry it from plucky underdog tointernationally respected video gametechnology business.

In the meantime powerful, highly specificmiddleware for mobile had started to becomea reality, and outfits renowned for high end PCtech like Havok proved you can implementmuscular physics solutions on phones.

The power of the devices’ GPUs and CPUsramped up enormously, bringing the distantdream of real console quality HD on mobileseveral steps closer. The PDA was reborn asthe tablet, and devices like the Xperia Playarrived, determined to succeed where the N-Gage had failed so dramatically.

Smartphone sales are starting to threatenthe future of the home PC, and services like3G and social networks have evolved to thepoint where meaningful connected gamingexperiences are now becoming a standard.

The future looks even more enthralling, astechnologies that have barely settled onconsole such as 3D display look poised toleap to mobile

It’s all very exciting, but there is adownside to such rapid progress. Thelearning curve is remarkably steep, not justfor developers, but for everyone involved inthe industry. Never before have thosemaking games and related technologies hadto be so agile, adaptable and adventurous.Arguably mobile is now the host of a newgolden era of gaming; meaning gamedevelopers are the alchemists.

Over the next few pages, Develop bringsyou a select collection of perspectives on themobile games sector from the industry’sbest; middleware providers, hardwarecompanies and, of course, developers.

Rapid technological advances have made mobile development a temptingoffer for studios of all sizes, but the pitfalls are many. Fortunately, Develop ishere to help with a wealth of expert advice and analysis Contents

42 – Democratising MobileSomethin’ Else CCO Paul Bennun considershow level the playing field is for mobiledevelopers large and small.

43 – Attention SeekingMobile Pie’s Will Luton on the fine art ofgetting you’re killer app noticed in the highlycompetitive world of mobile marketplaces

44 – Mobilising MiddlewareIdeaworks CTO Tim Closs explores the ideathat mobile middleware is about platforms,and not engines

46 – Getting GraphicQualcomm’s Raj Talluri looks at the future ofconsole-quality visuals on mobiles bolsteredby cutting edge GPUs

48 – All Ecosystems GoFishlabs CEO Michael Schade ponders thepros and cons some of the dominant mobileplatforms; namely iOS, Android and Nokia

42 | JULY 2011

Mobile. What a strange, slippery word.If we park the obviously mobile PSPand DS – let’s call them ‘handheld’ –

then you’re not actually left with ‘mobilephones.’ From a commercial perspective rightnow, you’re left with the iPhone. That’s thebad news. The good news is the platformgenuinely rewards innovation and stayingtrue to your passions.

The fact that the Android app retail marketis fragmented is normally cited as the biggestreason when someone posits that Androiddevelopment is no way to pay the mortgage.Clearly that’s true – any impediment topurchase is pretty much fatal for digitalcontent. But beyond this unfortunate fact,the Android in-app purchase scheme isborked, and people would far rather pirate anAndroid app than buy it. This isn’t Applefanboyism, but economics.

PAPA’S PERSPECTIVEFrom our perspective, though, there’s a moreimportant reason why we’ve not portedgames like Papa Sangre or The Nightjar toAndroid; it’s pretty much impossible (orspecifically, the effort required is noteconomically viable). One forgets that iOS isthe best part of 25 years old, tracing itslineage to 1988 and the NeXT OS.

Even Xcode is a direct descendant ofApplication Builder, the NeXT softwaredevelopment environment.

The media handling APIs are mature; themaths libraries are fast; the foundations areall ridiculously easy to use.

We just can’t get complicated applicationsfunctioning with any kind of speed (if at all),

and it’s not because we’re stupid or don’tknow the platform well enough.

Moore’s Law will take care of the problem,but by then we’ll be pushing the A6 in iPhone5S to its limits.

So, together with Epic Games and idSoftware, we’re decided we can’t develop forAndroid in the foreseeable future. Godknows, we’d love to.

So that’s the bad news – a platform thatoutsells iOS but which you can’t make anymoney out of. On the bright side, you canmake money out of iOS. Even small studios,because of a certain levelling of terrain. Butwhat terrain? And is it actually a fact? There’sa truism that goes something like: ‘smallstudios are on a level playing field withmegacorps because all apps are equallyvisible in the App Store’.

That’s important. And it’s also true thatwhile you could pile bazillions into ahandheld game, you’re going to be able tomake more out of investing bazillions intoconsole gaming. So the bazillionaires investmuch less in handheld gaming – far closer towhat a small independent team would invest.This means it’s a much more ‘fair’ fight.

ENVIRONMENT FRIENDLYWhat’s actually interesting is that moreaccessible environments – that is, whereanyone can download an SDK for less than£90 – attract a wider gene pool. I’d argue agame will succeed or fail dependent on thematch between the developer’s passion andskills, and the game they make, and that thisis what’s important in smaller studios havinga crack at a bit of giant-killing.

Larger studios making smaller budget iOSgames are less likely to produce genre-fracturing games, or tonally different gamesin the way that advance the state-of-the-art.

Put it another way, assuming both teamsare run well and good at writing code, aproduct at a given budget can beat a productwith twice that budget – if the skills andambitions of the development team matchthe product.

The difference is that, now, those skills andambitions can belong to a far, far wider set ofambitions. This means you get PopCap, MrFung Fung, Hand Circus and, of course,Somethin’ Else. We’ve wanted to create anaudio-only game like Papa Sangre for years,and had the skill in-house to do it because ofour other audio-based work. We know thebig studios have thought about it every otheryear – but thinking isn’t the same as doing.

The lower barrier to entry doesn’t totallylevel the playing field, of course; it doesn’tmean you immediately get a million-poundmarketing budget, but it does mean that ifyour game is worth a million quid you couldturn it into cash money eventually.

Accessible hand-held gaming platforms –which one-day should include Android wefirmly hope – aren’t a platform for instantmillionaires, but are still platforms for talentedentrepreneurs. Long may that be the case.www.somethinelse.com

Papa Sangre on anAndroid device (top) won’tbe coming to an app storenear you any time soon,because it’s nearimpossible for now, saysSomethin’ Else CCO Paul Bennun

Paul Bennun is a CCO of Somethin' Else.He holds internationally recognised awards ingames, radio, mobile technology and interactive broadcasting such as BAFTA awards,Sony Radio Academy Awards and the GSMAssociation Awards.

Does the lower barrier to entry for mobilegame development mean platforms like

Android offer a level playing field forstudios large and small? Somethin’ Else

CCO Paul Bennun has an idea

The lower barrier toentry doesn’t totally

level the playing field; itdoesn’t mean youget a million-poundmarketing budget.

Democratising Mobile?BETA | MOBILE FOCUS

Attention SeekingSo you’ve made your perfect mobile game, but how do you get it noticed? Mobile Pie’s Will Lutonoffers some sterling advice on the delicate art of app visibility


MOBILE FOCUS | BETA

Will Luton is creativedirector at Mobile Pie, thestudio behind MyStar (left)

Here at Mobile Pie we devote ourselvesto building and selling gloriouslooking games that create a lot of joy.

Yet we aren’t the only ones – manyvisionaries, geniuses, chancers and foolspump out content in to the mobile gamesmarkets, leaving them flooded. Launching agame in this competitive, open and price-squeezed space, without goodunderstanding and marketing, will causeyour game to sink along with your cash.

If you’re coming from a traditional ‘shelvesand stock’ gaming background, you’ll need toforget a lot of the conventional wisdomyou’ve learned. If you’re a first time indie, asmuch as it is painful to say, you’re going haveto accept the importance of good marketingto make sure you survive.

There are two really important things toremember when selling a mobile game;production and distribution costs don’t apply,and they aren’t played in the same way asconsole or PC titles. Therefore, successfulgames are quickly accessible and instantlysticky and, when not free, very cheap.

There are many potential outlets for adeveloper, but only two are sizeable andfrictionless enough to be of interest to anewcomer: Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS.

MOBILE ICONSApple App Store is the only outlet for iOSapps, but Android has numerous, includingGoogle’s own Marketplace, as well as GetJar,Amazon and a smorgasbord of gatedoperator stores that come preinstalled onmobile devices.

All these outlets, however, have one thingin common; the apps are listed as a name and

an icon. The browsing gamer, the majority ofany app store’s customer base, arebombarded with lots of these high-levelpropositions, so getting a good combinationof a few thousand pixels and forty charactersto tell a convincing story is crucial.

It can be a pretty tough and counter-intuitive journey finding this story and manysink weeks and months in to it. A great way tonarrow down is to A/B test on a network likeAdMob. You can set up a series of campaignswith different name and icon combos, buy aset amount of impressions and monitorwhich get the best click-through. You canthen tune and fiddle until you’ve hit gold.This requires very little cash up front – youcan get good results from as little as $50 percampaign – but makes any future visibilityinstantly more effective.

And it is visibility that is so much the key.Traditional games PR would at this pointbook some magazine spreads, E3 boothbabes and maybe a TV spot. In mobile,however, most awareness raising off portal isentirely futile.

Unlike at a high street specialist retailer,gamers come to stores from all kinds ofdifferent backgrounds, without always havingexposure to specialist press and, unlessdirectly linked to an app page, without theintention of acquiring a specific product. Theaverage mobile gamer is looking forsomething fun, now.

This makes featured placements the mostimportant thing in the early life of an app. Allhuge App Store hits have the same anatomy;Strong initial featured spots and killer high-level propositions – icon, name and userrating – leading to chart traction, whichbrings further visibility and, if the app isgood, word of mouth buzz. This sets up amagical positive feedback loop sustaininghundreds of thousands of downloads a day.

STRIKING GOLDThis golden scenario happens to only ahandful of games, and whilst the majority ofapps fail, lots live on to be profitable withonly moderate featured exposure. Yet gettingfeatured placement should be the numberone goal of any developer. This is achievedeither out of pure luck – being picked out ofthe crowd – or by networking, findingcontacts and lobbying them for position.

When featured placement fails, an appeasily slips in to obscurity. Visibility andinstalls can be bought with direct-linkpromotions such as in-game bannerimpressions, free promotions sites – FreeGame of the Day and Free App a Day areexcellent – and, where available, PPI.

PPI (Pay Per Install) is a controversialsystem of rewarding a player with virtualcurrency for installing another, often free,game. It was known by many as the dirtysecret of top ranking freemium iOS titles,driving huge numbers of installs andeffectively buying chart position. Applerecently closed the practice down overnight,but it is burgeoning on Android.

This article is not an exhaustive list. Themarkets move quickly and each outlet andplatform has its individual quirks, each gametype its own demographics and businessmodels. Meanwhile marketing methods, suchas player sponsorship and PPA (Pay PerAction) are fast emerging. So it’s essential tokeep stay on top of progress, get out,network and keep an eye on industry pressand chart movement.www.mobile-pie.com

If you’re a first timeindie, as much as it

is painful to say, you’regoing to have to accept theimportance of goodmarketing to makesure you survive.

Will Luton is creative director at the award-winning boutique games and entertainmentstudio Mobile Pie. Based in the heart of Bristol, thePie create ‘delicious’ own IP and work their magicon tasty licenses, with a client list that includes theBBC, Orange and Hewlett-Packard, and experienceon every mobile platform from J2ME to iOS.

44 | JULY 2011

Happy Birthday games middleware –you’re ten years old. It’s a decadesince the launch of Renderware

Graphics 3, the first middleware product thatreally struck a chord with game developers.

The reasons for its success? Conditionswere right; sufficient HW/SW diversity in theviable platforms and sufficient complexity ofcontent demanded by consumers.

Games middleware has never looked back;we’ve moved from a world wheremiddleware was a curiosity to one wherealmost all games contain some third partycomponent; and for triple-A titles,middleware budgets of over $1 million arenow commonplace.

These days, mobile is the new massivegrowth space for games. So what aboutmobile middleware? Are the conditions rightfor it to thrive, and if so what are therequirements for success? In this article, we’llanalyse the drivers for mobile middlewareand compare the conditions and successcriteria with the console world.

TARGET HARDWAREIn console, there are huge differencesbetween system architectures such asgraphics, storage and processor parallelism.Game engines that abstract these – withtolerable performance loss – create value. Inmobile, system architectures are more similar.Most devices are based on half a dozenchipsets, and any proprietary chipsets stilluse the same core CPU (ARM) and GPUdesigns. Game engines don’t have much toabstract here.

As is increasingly the case for consoles,mobile device form factors also vary onlyslightly; touchscreen smartphone, tablet, andpossibly slide-out keyboard. Performance-wise, the typical mobile target is significantlymore powerful than the PSP, but increasingscreen resolutions leave most devices heavily

GPU-bound, so engines focusing on high-endrendering features will not currently createmuch value.

TARGET OPERATING SYSTEMIn console, the OS is a relatively simple andpredictable target. OS’s are single-tasking (inthe sense of running a single userspace app),interrupts of the app (by the OS or associatedservices) and are mainly focused aroundinteractions with networked game services.

In mobile, the OS is more complex andunpredictable as the device is not adedicated games machine. Your app can beinterrupted by physical screenrotation/sliding, incoming calls/SMS, volumekey presses and battery level warnings –potentially all at the same time. An enginethat can truly abstract and tame thiscomplexity creates value.

TARGET FIRMWAREIn console, there is really only one firmwareper OS as there is only one device per OS. Inmobile, things couldn’t be more different.There are multiple manufacturers per OS, andmultiple devices per manufacturer. Eachmanufacturer is trying to differentiate bytweaking stuff – either modifying the OSitself (as in encouraged by the Open Sourcenature of many) or by stuffing newperipherals onto the device, inevitably

impacting the software stack. Moreover, theOS providers are in a continual battle overfeatures and user interfaces, so OS versionsare regularly ramped. The result is a hugedegree of cross-device fragmentation; anotherchallenge for smart middleware to solve.

DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTIn console, development environments arelargely standardised, with the majority ofprogramming done in C++ using IDEs such asVisual Studio. To a large extent, game andhigher-level engine code can be migratedbetween target platforms quite easily. Inmobile, there are huge differences betweendevelopment environments; the iPhone SDKmandates Objective C, Xcode and a Mac;Android mandates Java and recommendsEclipse; the list goes on.

There is simply no easy route from iPhoneto Android if the original game is writtenwholly in Objective C using the iPhone SDK. Ifmobile middleware could provide gamedevelopers with a single integratedenvironment based around C++ and VisualStudio, it would deliver real value.

SERVICESIn console, connected services are limitedand mandated by the platform/channelowners. In mobile, there is a rich andexploding diversity of these services, andexploiting these can be key to monetisation;for example advertising, currency, analytics,recommendations and push notifications.

Successful mobile middleware mustsupport not just a fixed set of services, butthe ability for developers to choose andintegrate any service.

In conclusion, the problem set for mobilemiddleware looks very different from console,as follows:

Tame the interoperability between appand OSSmooth the huge fragmentation at thedevice firmware levelProvide a single C++ developmentenvironment (HW and SW) that can coverall targetsEnable integration with any 3rd party serviceLittle need to address system architecture variancesLess need for high-end rendering featuresLess need for features focused aroundconsole-style genres

In summary, the winning mobilemiddleware formula will be more aboutsmarter platforms than sophisticatedengines. Here’s to the next ten years.www.ideaworks3d.com

Mobilising Middleware

The variety in mobiledevelopmentenvironments can makelife very trying for studiosembracing platforms likeiOS and Android, arguesTim Closs (below)

The winning mobilemiddleware formula

will be more about smarterplatforms thansophisticatedengines.

BETA | MOBILE FOCUS

Tim Closs has over 20 years’ experience ofcommercial software development, and joinedIdeaworks in 2004. As CTO, Tim has lead thecreation and productisation of the MarmaladeSDK, and continues to drive the company’stechnology and product strategies.

As mobile devices become more complicated, their ability to harness the power of middleware is increasingdramatically. Ideaworks CTO Tim Closs considers how both tools and hardware must adapt to this change

46 | JULY 2011

Mobile innovation is at an all-timehigh. Earlier this year, chipmanufacturers announced product

roadmaps for the availability of multi-corechips for next-generation smartphones andtablets, making significant steps forward inallowing the mobile industry to deliver evenmore robust, efficient and seamless videogaming experiences.

While intense competition might raise ourcollective blood pressure, there’s no doubtthat it has led to increased power, speed andsophistication for mobile devices. Inparticular, we’re seeing incredibleperformance gains in the graphics arena,with powerful new forms of GPU technologyenabling HD-like visuals on mobile phones. Ina field once dominated by voicecommunication, graphics and multimediahave truly become the prime conduit fortransforming consumers’ mobile experiencesand expectations.

SMART PHONESPerhaps no mobile feature has benefittedmore from the historic advances in graphicalinnovation than gaming. Consumers todayare voting with their wallets – and thenumbers speak for themselves. According toJuniper Research, the mobile gamingindustry will be worth £29.5 billion ($48billion) by 2015. The smartphone industry’sshare of the US portable gaming marketjumped from 19 to 34 per cent from 2009 to2010, and smartphones now account foreight per cent of overall gaming revenue, upthree per cent from last year. Among socialgamers, mobile has emerged as thedominant platform. Mobile users now utilisetheir devices for games at a 61 per cent clip,more than any other feature, including searchand music.

And we’re not talking about Tetris and Pac-Man. 1080p video – once a pipe dream inmobile – will soon be a reality forsmartphone users.

As gaming becomes more globallyrelevant, it’s becoming clear that the GPU hasemerged as the heart of the mobile experience.

GPU OPPOTUNITIESThe rapid transition from voice to data in themobile space represents a goldenopportunity for the graphics industry, butthere are a number of hurdles to clear inorder to capitalise. While mobile gamesrapidly increase in popularity, we still have along way to go before mobile begins toseriously challenge the console gamingsector in terms of overall revenue.

The solution? We need to bring consolegraphics straight to mobile devices, providingon-the-go consumers with the sameimmersive gaming experience they get athome. That means enabling incumbentconsole systems like Xbox and PlayStationonto smartphones and developing graphicsadvanced enough to leave consumers asking:‘Why relegate myself to gaming on my couchwhen I can get the same optimal quality onmy phone or tablet?’

The leading 3D tools that Qualcommprovides to developers, such as theSnapdragon SDK and Adreno GPU real-timeprofiler, makes it possible for developers tobring these on-the-go gaming experiencesdirectly to the consumer.

As GPU technology becomes powerfulenough to support native-like gaming andvideo, software development must beoptimised to ensure that all-day battery life isprevalent in all smartphones.

Executing this delicate balance is perhapsthe most daunting challenge as we continueto enhance GPU technology. Consumers

shouldn’t have to choose between late-nightgaming with a friend and firing off a fewtweets – our batteries should afford us to doboth, and soon they will.

Overcoming these optimisation challengeswill actually exacerbate one of the more over-arching issues our industry faces.

It’s well known that as GPUs become moreenhanced, data-heavy apps become enticingoptions for consumers. Unfortunately, theserich apps are beginning to cripple the verycarriers that make them possible in the firstplace. GPU technology will need to meet thisproblem head on and show that it is indeedpossible to retain superior graphics whilestreamlining the process in order to alleviatenetwork stress.

THE SNAPDRAGON SOLUTIONRecognising the need to integratemultimedia and 2D and 3D graphics intomobile chipsets, Qualcomm made the tacticaldecision to acquire AMD’s handheld graphicsdivision in 2009. We incorporated thedivision into our Snapdragon chipset team tobring increased levels of GPU performanceembedded into our chipsets, naming theGPU product Adreno.

Since the launch of the first Snapdragonpowered devices each iteration has seen ourAdreno GPU increase to offer more advancedcapabilities. The first Snapdragon to launchincorporated the Adreno 200 GPU, whichincluded support for 3D graphics with thefirst 1GHz CPU to launch in mobile devices.

Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon chipsetsfeature our Adreno 220 GPU, capable ofdelivering an HD gaming experience thatexceeds PS2 and original Xbox. Next year,Qualcomm’s integrated Adreno GPUs forSnapdragon will take mobile gaming a newlevel of console quality graphics for mobiledevices, matching the gaming experience ofthe PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles,while at the same time consuming less powerthan current chipsets in the market.

With Snapdragon powering the majority ofAndroid devices, all Windows Phone 7devices, all HP webOS devices and

Getting GraphicAs consumers expect more and more from mobile games, the pressure is on developers to get the most they can fromGPUs. Qualcomm’s Raj Talluri looks at the future of console-quality visuals on mobile

Raj Talluri believes thatmodern mobile games likeDesert Winds (right) mayhave the most to gainfrom advances in phoneGPU technology

Qualcomm’s MSM8660(below and far right); oneof two variants of theprocessor found inside theSnapdragon developmentplatform

Graphics andmultimedia have

truly become the primeconduit for transformingconsumers’ mobileexperiences andexpectations.

BETA | MOBILE FOCUS

supporting BlackBerry, the platform isarguably now one of the largest worldwidefor gaming. As proof of this, there arecurrently more than 125 announced devicesincluding the Sony Ericcson Xperia Play, HTCSensation, HTC Evo 3D and HP TouchPad, withanother 250 in development. When it comesto the emerging tablet sector, eight havebeen announced with another 40 in design.

STOP, COLLABORATE AND LISTENClose and productive partnerships havemade the mobile industry more than a sumof its parts. With games and video streamingemerging as major selling points toconsumers considering making the jump tosmartphones, there is serious money to bemade via lasting collaboration betweenOEMs and chipmakers.

IE Market Research Corp recently predictedthat the market for mobile gaming, musicand TV will hit £32 billion ($52 billion) by2015 – up a substantial amount from the£20.3 billion ($32.9 billion) value in 2009. Andthe key to making that prediction a reality lieson advancements in GPU capabilities.

The market potential for mobiledevelopers is significant, and unlike consolegaming, developers don’t need to wait sixyears for the next console edition to comeout – Android is coming out with new cyclesevery six months. Collaboration is key. It’s theconnective tissue that has driven innovationin mobile for three decades, and fostering iton the GPU side will enhance the mobile

community’s global impact as smartphonesevolve from luxuries to virtual lifelines.www.qualcomm.com/snapdragon


MOBILE FOCUS | BETA

Raj Talluri serves as vice president of productmanagement for Qualcomm CDMATechnologies. He is responsible for managingQualcomm's applications processortechnologies and wired connectivity solutionsfor the company's chipset platforms.

48 | JULY 2011

With billions of game downloads and200 million iOS devices out there,Apple has created the most

popular gaming platform ever. However, ifAngry Birds is the biggest success story so far,there must be remaining untapped potential.

While the iPad 2 hardware is almost at alevel that will be familiar to teams developingtitles for consoles, one-man-show games likeTiny Wings can still knock even Angry Birds offthe charts in an instant. It’s a case of a trulydemocratic platform, but without a categoryfor premium product on the devices, bigpublishers are hesitating to invest intoApple’s platform.

Consequently, if multi-million pounddevelopment and marketing budgets are atstake, publishers want to have a betterpredictability of success before they committo diving in completely. Ironically, selling highproduction premium games on premiumdevices to a premium audience seems like anatural fit, if only there was just a premiumcategory on the App Store.

Maybe Apple just lacks the right gamingDNA to really go up against Microsoft,Nintendo and Sony.

And yet, even without a premium categorythe Apple App Store will remain the mostattractive place for small and bigger mobilegame developers for the next two years, as itis the most mature platform in terms ofconsistent installed hardware, a robust OS,and a tight store front. Last but not least,given its unparalleled track record, whoknows what innovation Apple might comeup with next?

AN OPEN ALTERNATIVEBut there isn’t only Apple. Android now offersa tempting alternative. Now setting the pacewith its devices-sold-per-day rate, and

second in terms of installed base with 100million products already in the public’shands, Android is also heavily supported byoperators, and is substituting their J2MEcontent business. It sounds like a great spaceto be in.

However, openness brings with it softwarepiracy, malware, and fragmentation.Furthermore, technical issues with in-appmarket billing, poor search results, and theabsence of content quality management byGoogle hold it back from being a winner forpaid content, yet.

It seems to be quite a stretch for acompany that has built tremendous successon the mantra ‘all services are free for theconsumer’ – monetising solely on ads andmaking copyrights not always the top priority– to become a really sustainable mobileecosystem provider.

Google has to improve its ecosystemheavily to convince developers andpublishers to justify their investments in theAndroid platform. But even free content ishard to monetise through ads, unlessdownloads are in the tens of millions. Somevirtual goods-based games seem to besuccessful too, but this model won’t work for

cutting edge, high production games thatutilise the latest hardware, as these makeonly a small number of devices today.

The silver lining on the horizon is thatgaming hardware powerhouse Nvidia isbetting heavily on Android, which couldprompt Google to drastically improve itsplatform. Otherwise, if the content offering ispoor compared to its competitors,consumers will stop buying multiple-core-powered Android devices. The pre-loadedTegra Zone app featuring highly optimisedgames for Tegra-powered Android devices isa first step into the right direction.

THE ECOSYSTEM BATTLEAnd then there’s Nokia. It seems the oncedominant company gets bashed from allsides for struggling in the boomingsmartphone market. Granted, as Steven Elopexplained himself, to make Symbian^3 fit tocompete against iOS and Android would taketoo long. Meanwhile MeeGo has arrived lateand won’t be available for mid and low-endsmartphones, and does not appeal to otherOEMs for obvious competition reasons.

However, from a developer’s perspective,compared to the 100 million-strong heavilyfragmented and a technically weak Androidecosystem, a consistent 50 million symbian^3devices install base and a tightly managedOEM-centric store is the better choice today.

Backed up by two extremely wealthy newfriends in Microsoft and Qualcomm, whoprobably will do anything to make sure Nokiasells tens of millions of Windows Phones,Nokia is a pretty good candidate forbecoming at least number two in the race forthe most successful mobile gaming platform.

Furthermore, Microsoft is a company witha vast amount of talent for selling software,and it brings with it a very strong gamingproposition. It would have not been the firsttime that Microsoft comes in to the arenalate, especially into gaming, having teethingissues in the first attempt but scoring well onthe second.

If you put it all together there’s a potentialleader; the number one mobile hardwaremanufacturer with more than a billioncustomers, a solid and fresh-looking OS witha strong cross platform gaming propositionbuilt-in, as well as a seamless MS Officeintegration, a premium content positioning,and the ability to keep carriers as animportant part of the content value chain.The Microsoft-Nokia alliance is extremelyappealing to consumers, operators anddevelopers. Looks like now it is the time tobuy Microsoft and Nokia stocks.

All Ecosystems Go

Michael Schade of Galaxyon Fire 2 (top) studioFishlabs believes themobile ecosystem battle isyet to be decided.

Google has toimprove its

ecosystem heavily toconvince developers andpublishers to justify theirinvestments in theAndroid platform.

BETA | MOBILE FOCUS

Michael Schade, CEO and co-founder ofFishlabs, makers of the highly successful sci-figame series Galaxy on Fire, has been deeplyinvolved with 3D computer graphics andsoftware development for more than 18 years,many of which he has dedicated to developingand marketing 3D mobile games.

Despite Apple’s success, the struggle to emerge as the dominant mobile ecosystemis far from over. Here Michael Schade, CEO of Galaxy on Fire creator Fishlabs, castsan eye over the front lines in the battle for developers’ attention

50 | JULY 2011

How has art outsourcing changed inthe ten years Rabcat has been inbusiness?

Thomas Schleischitz, CEO: Outsourcing hasfaced a major shift since we founded Rabcatin 2001. Back at the beginning, we weremostly involved in various productions forXbox and PS2.

In those early days, it was possible to coverthe complete art demand of a title with ahandful of artists. Today, with a productionheadcount of 35-plus we are barely able toprovide 10 per cent of the complete artpackage for a typical current-generationtriple-A production.

For example, creating a vehicle for GTA ViceCity suitable for Xbox was a pretty short task.Just spend a few days; done. Compared withthis, it’s a very different beast to produce aracing car for Test Drive Unlimited or evenForza Motorsport 3. I am not allowed to gettoo specific regarding this topic, but you cantake it from me, it’s far more time consuming.It’s not about man-days any more; today it’sabout man-months.

Besides the constantly increasing time andeffort that has to be put into state-of-the-artcontent production, the whole game marketitself has experienced an epic change.Unfortunately, both publishers anddevelopers of boxed titles learned it the hardway that gamers are no longer exclusive toconsoles. Browser-based games flooded themarket extremely fast and claimed a hugemarket share.

It’s certainly a crisis for many traditionalpublishers and developers, yes, but it couldbe a great opportunity as well.

What of Rabcat’s work and achievementsover the past decade are you and the teammost proud of?Schleischitz: First of all, we are really proudof the fact that we have been in business for10 years in a very successful way. I’d call it aseal of quality if a company survives in thisultra-fast moving industry for a decade.

But, no doubt, the biggest achievement isof course the team that we formed during thelast few years. At the end of the day, it’s dueto very loyal, professional and passionatepeople who enable Rabcat to stay competitive.They are the reason for top developmentstudios to book us. For me, both our trackrecord as well as our client list is a testamentto the quality of the work we do.

How is Rabcat expecting to have to adaptand change to satisfy developers’ needs?Schleischitz: As mentioned before, we are inthe middle of a fundamental change. As any

industry, our industry is driven by money aswell and video games investment haschanged fundamentally, shifting to onlineand mobile products. Many major consoleplayers are having serious trouble adaptingto online and/or mobile, and are not able orwilling to make proper investments.

At the moment, most of those productionsare equipped with comparatively smallbudgets. With regard to our business modelas a dedicated premium art vendor, I assumeit will be simply impossible to competeagainst vendors from low-wage countrieswhen it comes to low or mid-budgetproductions for the growing online and free-to-play section.

So, what shall we do or how do we have toadapt to stay competitive? A frequently-usedargument is if you want to compete againstChina you have to go to China and establish ateam there. To tell the truth, this is – forseveral good reasons – not the solution Ibelieve in.

Fortunately, I definitely notice asignificantly rising demand for visual qualityfor browser-based games. As soon as themarket requests higher quality, budgets willraise as well.

That’s why I am confident that we will addsome quality-orientated browser-gamecompanies to our client pool in the course of 2011.

Could you give us an overview of howRabcat’s outsourcing model works? Wolfram Neuer, head of production –game art: We have numerous internal QAsteps on the artistic and technical side.

I definitely notice asignificantly rising

demand for visual qualityfor browser games. Whenthe market requestshigher quality,budgets will raise.

Thomas Schleischitz, Rabcat

PERFECT 10PERFECT 10

BETA | ART OUTSOURCING

Rabcat has been providing art outsourcing to high profile development studios for a decade. As thefirm celebrates its tenth anniversary, Will Freeman catches up with its senior staff…

PERFECT 10

Special art created tocelebrate Rabcat’s tenthanniversary (main image),and the company’s headof production WolframNeuer (above)


Multiple specialists are responsible forguiding our team in their field.

Both our art director and dedicated leadartists take a look at each asset and projectevery single day, and are also responsible forthe final approval before the client receivesour model.

In addition, the art department receivessupport from project managers who take careof all projects from a financial andorganisational perspective.

We do take our internal QA very seriouslyat Rabcat. It’s our highest priority to makesure that each asset looks as good as possibleunder the project’s given constraints.

And it’s equally important to us to deliver aconstantly good quality and a consistent art style.

In theory Rabcat’s outsourcing model isprobably not that different from theapproach used by our competitors in thehigh quality art segment.

But it’s our extreme attention to detail thatdistinguishes us from the all of the otheroutsourcing studios.

Our team is highly motivated and showsinitiative to deliver an asset that worksperfectly for the intended purpose. That’swhy our clients trust in our services and keepcoming back.

Providing art assets must mean you haveto stay constantly at the head of the curve.How does Rabcat stay on top of the rapidand complex tech developments in game development?Neuer: It’s really not that hard for us. We’relucky to have a team that is very interested in

learning new techniques and workflows toimprove their artistic and technical skills. Butwe do have a platform in place that lets ourartists share their knowledge evenly acrossthe team.

We do arrange internal workshops andinitiate discussions on a regular basis.Attendances at tradeshows and conferences

keep us connected with numerous otherindustry professionals.Furthermore, we’realso having beta testers for tools in our team,which helps to know where the trend isheading to. This in combination with 10 yearsof experience helps us to cover a wide rangeof tasks no matter what the art style.

In recent years outsourcing’s reputationseems to have changed for the better. Whydo you think the industry is now far morepositive about outsourcing?Neuer: Due to the growing complexity ofcreating games and the increased

expectations in regard to their visual quality,game developers previously had only a fewoptions to meet these demands, withoutchoosing to begin working with anoutsourcing partner.

That’s why most game studios already hadexperience with outsourcing, or at leastfamiliarised themselves with this topic. In theearly stages of this trend a lot of mistakes hadbeen made.

But by now it is common knowledge that itis important to choose an outsourcingpartner very carefully, and that the developeritself needs to be prepared for a cooperationas well, in order to outsource art assets most efficiently.

The industry also realised that a reliableoutsourcing partner could benefit theirdeveloper in more ways than just providingcheap assets.

Outsourcing – when it is done right –enables full cost control over a package of art tasks. Ideally you don’t have to care toomuch about the production ready assets thatget delivered.

And game development studios cancompensate their need for ramping with anexternal team that has proven to worktogether efficiently.

The facts detailed above have resulted in achanging perception in regard to video game outsourcing.

Game developers realise the value they aregetting out of outsourcing services and aretreating them to some extent as part of theteam, which in the end benefits both theparties involved. www.rabcat.com

We do take ourinternal QA very

seriously at Rabcat. It’s ourhighest priority to makesure that each assetlooks as good aspossible.

Wolfram Neuer, Rabcat

ART OUTSOURCING | BATA

Rabcat’s CEO ThomasSchleischitz

52 | JULY 2011

BETA | THE FUTURE OF THE MMO

MASSIVELYMULTIPLAYER

OPPORTUNITY

While the fortunes of the most popular MMOs have never been better,it’s now harder than ever create one that succeeds. Jeremy Gaffney,

executive producer at NCsoft’s Carbine Studios, takes a look at thefuture of the genre, and offers some advice on developing a hit








THE FUTURE OF THE MMO | BETA

Jeremy Gaffney of Carbine(above) believes MMOdevelopers must becomeincreasingly agileTop, facing page andbelow: Concept art fromCarbine, which is at workon an unannouced project

MMOs have come a long way sincethe early days. The technology,reach, credibility, subscriber

numbers and – let’s be completely honest –revenue from successful MMOs haveexceeded all of our expectations.

When I was at Turbine working onAsheron’s Call back in 1994, our target was toreach 50,000 to 80,000 players using modemsand paying by the hour. Now we havemultiple MMOs with millions of subscribersworldwide; success that was nothing morethan a pipedream 20 years ago.

MMO gaming is now mainstream; a shiftthat has in part happened virally andorganically, and to some extent because theindustry has matured and the experiences weare creating for gamers have improved.Thanks to both of these things, it’s nowconsidered ‘normal’ and acceptable for aconsumer to play MMOs.

From a development viewpoint, thesuccess of this industry brings concern. Iworry, for example, that mass market equalsmass budget equals risk aversion equalsconservative design. The great thing aboutthe early MMOs – games like Asheron’s Call,Ultima Online, EverQuest and Lineage – wasthe fact they experimented; they weren’tafraid to take different directions. At NCsoftwe recognise the importance of risk taking,not only with design, but with businessmodels, genres and gameplay. The customermust always come first. And that meanscreating – and continually developing –quality experiences that they want to live in.

What’s really interesting as we approachthe next wave in MMOs is how thoseexperiences will change. Should we bedeveloping for mass or niche markets? Is ittime to add console and mobiledevelopment to the mix? Are social gamersthe new MMO subscribers and, if they are,how do we attract them? What businessmodel is the best one?

MASS VS NICHE?It’s possible to make fun games in both areas.With a mass market model, the aim is toachieve a huge number of day one box salesand then worry about retention. For nicheMMOs, this is turned on its head; don’t worryabout launch, just make sure each expansionincreases your subscriber base. But the goalin the MMO space generally is to achieve asubscriber base that continually increasesover time. This can only be achieved bykeeping players happy in the long haulthrough quality content and gameplay,making it a very different businessproposition to traditional box shifters.

DEVELOPING FOR CONSOLE AND MOBILEWhen hitting a new market, it’s essential youlet your originality be dictated by theuniqueness of the platform. For instance,mobile demands short stints of gameplay,and this constrains the design. You’ve got toask what you can do that’s interesting in afantasy MMO on mobile. Can it takeadvantage of the fact that you’ve got a positionin the real world? Is there really any fungameplay to be found in that? The developersthat answer those questions well will enjoysuccesses; ports and unoriginal titles will not.

LURING THE SOCIAL GAMERSocial gaming is interesting, partly becausethere isn’t an explicitly natural path forgetting people from Facebook mass gamesinto true MMOs.

The struggle for many is getting over the3D hurdles – moving around with the WASDkeys is a lot different than simply clicking onyour crops.

There are a few games that have been ableto surmount those hurdles, but it will beinteresting overall to see how much thatmarket moves into ‘deeper’ MMOs and howmuch the social games themselves becomedeeper to retain their existing fans.

Instead, it makes sense to target playerswho have left other MMOs, or who remainbut are barely playing. This market is trulyhuge. What’s more, that demographic ispredisposed to be interested in newgames. But, as the market matures, the besttactic is to attract your core fans who live withyou for a long while – but also to be a good

enough game to get in the ‘cycle’ of gamesthat players return to when bored with othergames, or when they put out a coolexpansion or new bit of content.

When players do cycle out, don’t betempted to make dumb moves on livedevelopment. Listen to them and work hardto keep them coming back.

At NCsoft we have dedicated communityfolks who spend a lot of time listening andhave direct lines of communication to ourdevelopment teams. Essentially, we havegamer geeks listening to our players andgamer geeks developing for them. This hasbeen essential to our success. The desire tokeep our players happy is high.

F2P OR SUBSCRIPTION?I don’t believe that one model rules all. Aswith all elements of games development, youneed to consider what the customer can andis willing to pay.

Some people are really cost or modelsensitive – kids who don’t have credit cardsyet, for instance. Others really don’t careabout cost. MMOs are cheap compared toboxed games, so paying a small fixed feeeach month for hundreds of hours of gametime compares very favourably.

So what does the future hold for MMOs?Well, in my opinion, it holds massiveopportunity. Over the next 20 years, as in thelast 20 years, changes in technology andinnovation mean we will be able to evolvethe way MMOs are designed, developed,distributed, paid for and played.

But the common denominator will alwaysbe the gamer.

And with gamers comes diversity,especially now.

This means that despite the opportunitiesthat technology throws our way, it’s unlikelythere will ever be a one-model-fits-allapproach to any of the above. That’s why it’simpossible to definitely say what the futureholds for MMOs and also what makesdeveloping them such an amazing job..

It makes sense totarget players who

have left other MMOs, orwho remain but arebarely playing. Thismarket is truly huge.

Jeremy Gaffney, Carbine

Jeremy Gaffney is executive producer at MMOspecialist and NCsoft division Carbine Studios.Previously Gaffney has served as founder ofTurbine Entertainment, vice president ofdevelopment for NCsoft North America, anddesigner of City of Heroes. Carbine is currentlyat work on an unannounced project.www.carbinestudios.com

SpeakersEdward WilliamsManaging Director, BMO Capital Markets

Graham Brown-Martin Founder, Learning without Frontiers

Ian Livingstone Life President of Eidos, Square Enix

Jason DaPonte Managing Director & Executive Producer, The Swarm

Jo Twist Commissioning Editor for Education, Channel 4

Sean Dromgoole CEO, Some Research & Game Vision

Kam Star

Playgen

Rajat PahariaFounder & Chief

Bunchball

James SampsonHead of Product, Enteraction

Paul BennunExecutive Director, Somethin’ Else

Philipp MohrCEO, Comufy

Kevin BeimersArt Director, Straandlooper Animation

Celebrating the creative culture of interactive entertainment. Two days of conferencing and networking events.

REGISTER NOWBook your ticket now for just £175 + VAT

“It was my second visit to Edinburgh Interactive this year, and I am well and truly converted into a regular. The intimacy with such an amazing

group of people is unlike any other game industry conference I’ve been to. A highly enjoyable two days!”

“Edinburgh Interactive 2010 was a wonderfully compact conference, with high level speakers from across the spectrum of research, publishing, rock star developers and hardware manufacturers with the odd TV guy thrown in for good measure. I was impressed by the quality of presentation and

came away an enlightened industry participant”Michiel Bakker, Ginx TV

Book your tickets at:www.edinburghinteractive.co.uk

Discount rates are available for Scottish developers and students.Visit the website for further details.

Event Partners

Register forupdates

Media Partners

11th -12th AugustRadisson Blu Hotel, Edinburgh

DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

SERIOUS GAMING | BETA

Serious Gaming is a sector of gamesdevelopment often overlooked bystudios and individuals that have

typically worked more in the triple-A space.These developers are perhaps all too

familiar with industry and public sectorsfrowning upon their work; even the fitnessgaming specialty took a hit at first as fitnessgurus claimed that it would stop people fromdoing ‘real’ exercise.

In some sectors, however, these worries arestarting to fade. In fact, in the healthcaresector, many researchers are now consideringgaming as a very real opportunity.

The problems facing the world’s healthsectors are well documented. There areplenty of statistics to quantify this. Forexample, 50 per cent of total healthcarespending comes from five per cent of thepopulation in the US, while in the UK, strokepatients occupy approximately 20 per cent ofall acute hospital beds and 25 per cent oflong term beds.

Some pretty worrying statistics, and aspeople live longer and as we live unhealthierlifestyles, those figures will only get worse. It’sdue to the realisation of these facts that theNHS, and others worldwide, have recentlybegun looking at alternative ways to bringthose costs down.

LIMBS ALIVELimbs Alive is a company that was formed in2010 and which has been working exclusivelywith ourselves, Pitbull Studio, in therehabilitative health sector. What we’re tryingto do together is to create serious – but fun –games which can help hemiplegia sufferersto recover and regain independence.Hemiplegia is total paralysis of the arm, legand trunk on the same side of the body.Properly treating hemiplegia sufferers is a

costly thing for the health sector worldwide,especially for upper body movement. Lowerbody movement is typically easier to treat –the patient will help themselves here by theirneed to move around – but upper bodymovement can be more of an issue. Sufferersoften learn to cope using just one arm.

In front of a pitch committee in late 2009,Pitbull presented their design and ideas for agame presently called Big Top to help in thissector. The brief from the soon-to-be-formedLimbs Alive was clear cut: create a gameincorporating several defined movements ina fun game environment suitable for childrenand the elderly alike.

The idea was simple; we would bring therequired movements into a PC-based circusgame using Sixense motion controllers –featuring events such as juggling, knifethrowing, high dive and trapeze. Thecontrollers were a much better fit for therequirements posed by the committee asthey afforded full six degrees of freedom –similar to what can now be achieved withKinect, and much better than what can bepulled from a Wii-mote.

PUBLIC SECTOR PROS AND CONSAll major public sector spending needs to be‘put out to tender’ – that is, a committeeneeds to be created and a tender needs to besent out to the private sector for companiesor individuals to pitch on. The committee candecide which pitch to accept – based mostlyon quality of the bid and the cost involved.

A result of this is that it’s then very difficultto get additional funding – so that initial bidneeds to be one which will definitely covercosts. If a less experienced team goes in witha lower bid than your own then they may endup winning the tender – even though,realistically, they can’t complete the work.

One definite pro is that with the rightresearch, there’s a really good chance ofwinning a tender in this sector. If you findyourself presenting in front of the committeethen, chances are, there won’t be too manycompanies pitching against you. Decisions onwho a tender is awarded to will also often bemade in a very timely manner – the timetable

for decisions is often laid out in advance.Another pro is that you won’t find yourselfworrying that the fund source is going to gobankrupt before you complete.

The only real con that Pitbull has had withworking with the NHS has been that, at times,their lack of experience in the gaming sectorhas shown through with concerns aboutmilestone deliverables – one milestonedeliverable was delayed by a week becausewe hadn’t chosen music tracks for one of thelevels, for example. That said, given thechance to work on such a fulfilling projectagain, we would absolutely jump at it – andwe’d wholeheartedly recommend others to dothe same. For us, it makes a nice change from‘Test Drive 12’ and ‘Brighton Rush’.www.pitbullstudio.co.uk

GETTING SERIOUSFew studios recognise the increasing potential of undertaking work in the serious gaming space. Pitbull’s MD RobertTroughton offers an example of why it can work, and why your studio should consider the option

What we’re trying todo together is to

create serious – but fun –games which can helphemiplegia sufferers torecover and regainindependence.

Robert Troughton, Pitbull

Pitbull’s Robert Troughtonwholeheartedlyrecommends consideringwork on serious gamingprojects

JULY 2011 | 55

Robert Troughton is MD of Pitbull StudioLimited, a games development company basedin the north east of England, specialising in UE3and Unity development, with active contractsfor full and support work in both.

Pitbull’s game Big Top isdesigned to helphemiplegia suffers

56 | JULY 2011

BETA | EDINBURGH INTERACTIVE

The Edinburgh Interactiveevent is in a somewhatunique position inbridging the gap betweenindustry and consumer,says event director AlexaTurner (above)

Edinburgh Interactive, now in its ninthyear, has gone through many achanges in its lifetime.

Originally conceived in 2003 and called theEdinburgh International Games Festival, in2006 the event changed its name toEdinburgh Interactive. The festival pridesitself in covering emerging areas ofinteractivity and content, and visitors candefinitely expect something different fromthis year’s event.

What was once a full operation with fulltime staff has evolved greatly. The eventtoday is spearheaded by one event directorand a group of people, working togethermore or less for free, to put something on forthe love of it. Edinburgh Interactive in bornfrom a love for the industry and what itrepresents, and it is that culture that hasmade the event one of the longest runningon the UK games calendar.

SHARP THINKINGApart from being stimulated and informed bysome of the sharpest minds in the industry,attendees will have an opportunity tounderstand the significant impact videogames and interactive entertainment have onour culture, creativity and economy.

“It has been the perfect backdrop for thediscussion and exploration of new ideas andpartnerships in games, and a uniquelandscape which positions games as much apart of the arts as film, television, theatre,comedy and the irreverence of the Fringe,”says Nintendo UK managing director andEdinburgh Interactive Chairman, DavidYarnton of the event.

“I have always been a strong supporter ofEdinburgh Interactive as it is a truly bi-partisan event that celebrates all the diversitythat is good with our industry and leavesegos at the door.”

Certainly, Edinburgh Interactive brings tothe fore a mix of business, education and funthrough a focused industry conference thatbridges the gap between industry andconsumer. For those outside the business ofmaking games, it offers a selection of freepublic screenings of new titles and

technology, and sessions deliveringinformation on how to get involved in to thegames industry.

For those in the industry, the EdinburghInteractive Conference is targeted at high-level business professionals, and provides afocal point for the crème de la crème of theinteractive entertainment industry wherethey can discuss current trends, and look intothe future of one of the fastest growingsectors of the creative economy.

Looking back at last year’s show, KieranO’Neill, co-founder and MD of Playfireremembers his time in the Scottish host cityfondly. “It was my second visit to EdinburghInteractive, and I am well and truly convertedinto a regular,” he reveals. “The intimacy withsuch an amazing group of people is unlikeany other games industry conference I’vebeen to. A highly enjoyable two days.”

And he’s not the only fan. Gamesbrief’sown Nicholas Lovell describes the show as “amelting pot of culture and technology, of art

and business. The sessions weren’t thenormal corporate shill; they made you thinkabout this wonderful endeavour we callmaking games.”

This year’s speakers include SeanDromgoole, CEO of Some Research, andEdward Williams of BMO Capital Markets, whowill discuss their different points of view onrecent developments in the games industryand particularly the extent and the value ofgamers developing interest in social gaming.

Edinburgh Interactive will also deliver twogamification sessions. The first; Gamification:Building Games – the Mechanics, Rewards andInfluences, will include a presentation fromKam Star, chief play officer at Playgen, whowill be joined by James Allsopp, Playgen’sgames designer and in-house psychologyexpert. They will discuss what makes a gamea game and how the medium has the potential,if carefully handled, not just to entertain, butalso influence behaviour and educate users.

TRADE TRICKSThe second gamification session,Gamification: Trick of the Trade, will be a paneldiscussion and debate that will look atplatforms for game developers, TV producersand retailers that provide all that’s needed toacquire, retain and manage gamers.

The panel will include specialist expertsRajat Paharia, CEO of Bunchball; Philipp Mohr,CEO of Comufy; James Sampson, head ofproduct at Enteraction, and Chris Wright fromGames Analytics.

Taking place at the city’s Radisson BluHotel across August 11th and 12th,Edinburgh Interactive also sits at the heart ofthe internationally celebrated Fringe Festival.While many of the public sessions are free,full conferences tickets cost £175 plus VAT.www.edinburghtinteractive.com

Why Edinburgh?Edinburgh Interactive is back, and as ever it’s bridging the gap between industry and consumer.Event director Alexa Turness explains why you should head to Scotland this year

The intimacy withsuch an amazing

group of people is unlikeany other games industryconference I’ve been to. Ahighly enjoyabletwo days.

Kieran O’Neill, Playfire

Alexa Turness is event director for EdinburghInteractive and has 10 years event managementexperience under her belt. Pre-Edinburgh days,Alexa worked for Ultima Media for almost fiveyears where she managed over 40 specialistconferences, dinners and award ceremonies in11 countries and 19 cities.


DARE TO BE DIGITAL | BETA

What makes the games industry soexciting? Is it the creative rush, theindie underdog spirit, the thrill of a

team working flat-out to launch their greatideas to the world? All of the above. Andthey’ll all be on show to you in the heart ofDundee this August.

Dare to be Digital has grown from a smallgame development contest set up by theUniversity of Abertay Dundee over a decadeago to a major international event, drawingexceptional young developers to Dundeeeach year for an intense nine weeks ofdevelopment, industry mentoring, and publictesting at the free ProtoPlay event.

ProtoPlay was always held in Edinburgh,alongside the Fringe and the mainInternational Festival, but Dare and ProtoPlayhave both grown and grown. More teams,more events, much more to see. This year wedecided – it’s time to come home.

Dare ProtoPlay will take over Dundee citycentre from Friday, August 12th to Sunday,August 14th, with all 15 games available toplay, a professional gamer tournament run onhigh-end Intel machines, game jams for prosand kids, and you, the developmentcommunity, getting the first chance to spotthe up-and-coming young talent and theirnew game ideas.

At the end of the weekend one team takesthe Intel Visual Adrenaline award for bestgraphics, while three teams are picked asnominees for the unique BAFTA ‘Ones toWatch’ award, receiving instant industryattention. There’s a lot to play for.

WHO DARES WINSBlitz Games Studios is one of manycompanies that have supported Dare foryears, and given the young developersinvaluable advice. One year it even hired anentire team straight from Dare. Kim Blakefrom Blitz sees ProtoPlay as “a fantasticshowcase of up-and-coming talent”.

“The ProtoPlay event itself is immenselyexciting,” says Blake. “We get to see all thegames that we’ve helped mentor, and evenmore importantly we get to see the publicplaying those games and giving immediate,first-hand feedback to the teams. It’s a reallygreat atmosphere.”

Blitz is also among the many companiesputting their wares on show at ProtoPlay –including a showcase of the fantastic Blitz1UPprogramme which offers help and support toindependent developers, as well asintroducing their new indie-only portalIndieCity.com.

Dundee outfits Cobra Mobile, OutplayEntertainment and Tag Games are also taking

part in the industry showcase alongsidelegendary developers Crytek and Sony,bringing their new ideas direct to thedevelopment community and the public.

RAW TALENTFor new Dundee studio OutplayEntertainment, a mobile and social gamingcompany with big ambitions, the talentcoming out of Abertay University and Dare tobe Digital was a major reason brothers Dougand Richard Hare came back to Dundee fromthe US.

“ProtoPlay is a celebration of creativity anda showcase for new talent. It puts the teamscompeting in the whole Dare process face-to-face with the public and lets them see thereactions – good and bad – to their gamesand the design choices they agonised over,”Richard says.

“It’s a unique and incredibly valuableexperience for new developers. It also createsa public platform for the new generation ofgaming talent which can only be beneficial todevelopers and players alike.”

Also on show are the best entrants to theWacom Dare with Bamboo graphicscompetition, and the storyboard art contestwe’re running with Beano and Dandypublisher DC Thomson. There’ll also begames industry talks, aimed both atprofessionals and the public.

JOIN INDundee has an incredible games community,which we all know has weathered somechallenging times. From the early days ofDMA Design through to an incredible rush ofnew recent openings, we know there’ssomething special happening here.

And ProtoPlay is always a greatopportunity to meet up with old friends, hearwhat they’re currently working on, pushthem to reveal a secret or two (we’vecertainly heard a few good ones over theyears) and just enjoy seeing what the nextgeneration of young developers can alreadyteach us.

Come along in August and see it all foryourself. We can’t wait.

DundeeCalling

The Dare to be Digital event is heading to Dundee this year. Dr Louis Natanson, academic directorof the Institute of Arts, Media and Computer Games at the University of Abertay explains why

It’s a unique andincredibly valuable

experience for newdevelopers. It also creates apublic platform newgaming talent.

Richard Hare, Outplay

Dr Louis Natanson leads computer gameseducation at Abertay University, Dare to beDigital organiser and the first university to teacha degree in computer games technology.www.daretobedigital.com

Above: Dr Louis Natansonand the rest of the Dareteam (below) see theirevent as chance for studiosto check out raw talent

XX | XXX 2011

Flexible ways of engaging a workforceare necessary for the modern studio,which means that working as a

contractor is an appealing prospect.So, what do we mean by a contractor? We

are using the term to describe someoneworking on a temporary basis for an endclient, usually placed in that role by arecruitment agency. Contractors can also beknown as consultants or freelancers.

A contractor in this definition is notemployed by or on the payroll of the endclient; they are paid for time worked,calculated on an hourly or daily rate basis.Contractors are valued for their immediateimpact, and ability to complete a deliverablewith little management overhead.

The benefits of working in this way aremany. As a contractor you are effectivelyselling your skills and your time. You have thefreedom to choose your next move. You buildyour experience quickly on project afterproject, developing an impressive CV overtime. Financially rates can be lucrative andyou can maximise your earnings withefficient tax management. Finally, let’s face it,permanent isn’t always permanent.

But there are challenges too. Some skillsmay not be in demand on a project basis.There is often no guarantee of anothercontract when one ends, so this may not bethe right lifestyle for you. You are responsiblefor your own payroll management andpotentially running your own business –more on that later.

A successful contractor will have the abilityto go to new organisations, adapting to thedifferent ways of working. You need to get onwith people easily and give advice only whenit’s required and wanted.

SUPPLY AND DEMANDAnd what about the benefits to the endclient? Using contractors provides a flexible

workforce based on project demand, leavingno staff surplus when workload reduces. Thisis critical in such a project drivenenvironment as a games studio asredundancies significantly impact morale andstudio brand.

Many of the costs of a permanentemployee are avoided, making contractorengagement cost effective. The specific skillsa contractor brings may not be available inthe current team, and they can be reliedupon to deliver on their assignments gettingup to speed quickly.

So how does contracting work in reality?Clients engage with their agency to provide acontractor, defining the need, initial contractlength and budget. We attract, select andqualify the best talent for the role, managethe interview process, contracts and onboarding until the contractor starts.

Quite simply, we make it easy for you byworking behind the scenes to ensure that thecontract is right for both parties and thatlegislation has been complied with. There ismore legislation than we have space here totell you about, but we’re happy to explain allto you if you want to know. It’s also vital thatthe contractor understands how they operateand how they get paid.

Let’s look at that in more detail. Once youhave a contract, there are two main methodsof trading that contractors in the gamesindustry choose from.

SPOILT FOR CHOICEThe first is working via an umbrella companywho employ you and handle all thecontractual administration, such as invoicing,tax and VAT. They charge a small fee for thisbut most contractors claim for legitimateemployee expenses, offsetting them againsttax which maximises take home pay.

The umbrella model is a good choice totest the water as a contractor, if you expect tobe contracting only for a short time, or youcan’t face the paperwork of running yourown business.

The second is to set up your own LimitedCompany. This means finding an accountant,taking out insurances, checking your statusagainst current legislation for tax and payingthe right amount. There are lots of companieswho help manage this for you but there arestill responsibilities that remain yours. This isa good choice if you’re committed tocontracting longer term, you’re happy withthe responsibilities and you can manage yourown finances with an accountant.

So what’s next? If contracting is attractiveto you, the next step is to do some research.Talk to the agencies with a contractspecialism in video games to see what kind ofcontracts might be available, whether you aresuitable, and how much you could earn. Ifyou want to know more, please get in touchwith us via [email protected]

Contract work is of greatbenefit to both thefreelancer and end client,says Amiqus’ Liz Prince

ContractingWorlds

As studio models are evolving so arethe options available to individualsemployed in game development. Here Liz Prince of recruiter Amiqusoffers advice on working as a freelancer

As a contractor youare effectively

selling your skills and yourtime. You have the freedomto choose your next move.You build yourexperience quickly.

Liz Prince, Amiqus

Liz Prince is the business manager responsiblefor all aspects of Amiqus' operations includingthe strategic direction, business developmentand people of the company. A graduate incomputer science, she moved into thetechnology recruitment sector 15 years ago.

BETA | EMPLOYMENT


UNITY FOCUS:Star Trek:

Infinite Space p68

HEARD ABOUT:Develop

Conferencep69

TUTORIAL:DeferredShading

p70

THE LATEST TOOLS NEWS, TECH UPDATES & TUTORIALS

TUTORIAL: Allegorithmic’sBitmap2Material filter, p64

EPIC DIARIES: ADHESIVE GAMES’ MECH TITLE HAWKEN, p64

CryEngine 3: Future ProofIn an era of significant industry shifts,

CryTek is making sure its powerful engine doesn’t get left behind, p62

62 | JULY 2011

There’s now more platforms availableto developers than ever. Where doesCryEngine go with so many

platforms to potentially support beyondPC gaming?We are pretty much going everywhere with it.CryEngine is expanding its footprint. We willsupport every platform that’s a major playerin the industry of gaming. We are expandingin many ways, and some of that is moreannounced than others. Our support for Wii Uis definitely going to happen. In fact, wearen’t showing it but we are pretty muchrunning it already. Due to our relationshipwith Nintendo, we hope to get more accessto it earlier.

Kinect is major driver for future platformsas well, so Kinect support is important.Having basic Kinect support in the CryEngineis one thing, but I’m talking about reallysupporting it deeply. CryEngine is going tohave deep support.

Then there are other efforts towardssupporting mobile and tablets, which we canonly say we are working on. How far we havegone and what we mean is something I can’ttalk more about now. We are also showingbehind closed doors some online and web-orientated technology.

Why are platforms like mobile and webnow getting Crytek’s attention? Thosedevices are quite different fromCryEngine’s traditional market.Well, some people say that gaming isretracting or declining on PC. What’shappening, in my opinion, is that there’s a bigshift in user behavior and the relatedbusiness models. We’ve seen the move fromgames as a physical package to adownloadable item, and now to paymentmodels like free-to-play microtransactions.

Those games are now being played on arange of devices that are not consoles.Consoles are still not fully supporting that

kind of game, so mobile platforms and PCdownload clients and browser based-gamingare dominating the market and pushing thePC gaming to new heights, and they are notrecognised by the people who say that the PCindustry is declining. It is not a decline; it is ashift that is happening, and that shift is notonly to free-to-play and PC download clients,but also to mobile and tablet. I say thosedevices because mobile and tablet platformsare replacing the PC, and replacing it forgaming as well. Mobile and tablets are takingthe sales from laptops, they are also replacingthe acquisition of gaming content.

Of course devices like these are lettingpeople have a great time playing games veryeasily, by just going into something like theApp Store. That offers one of the bestconsumer models in the industry.

Indie games are prolific in that space.Crytek previously expressed interest in aCryEngine indie SDK. How will that work,especially as a business model?There are going to be much more PC gamesin development. If when developers askabout what the next console generation willbring they get no answers, and it is this late inthe console cycle, usually what happens is asurge towards PC games, and free-to-play

and microtransactions. It is the same in themobile and tablets space as well. People arelooking for opportunities and asking: ‘wherecan I go if I don’t know what is happening inthe console business?’.

From an independent game developer’sperspective, that is the best possible wayforward now; looking at those kind ofopportunities and exploring what you can dothat minimises risks, and allows them tolaunch a company or IP. For those studios weare launching an IP that will empower them,not just from a game developmentperspective, but in terms of what is beyondgame development. That is something wewill talk about in more detail in the future.

So for now you can’t tell us how thebusiness model will work, either for Crytekor the indies? Crytek has to make money.For now it is a much more long-termapproach. We are not just thinking in theshort term or about just this year, but actuallyabout empowering these people with ourengine, and then there will be ways ofrevenue generation for Crytek. But for nowthose ways are not the priority for Crytek. Wewant people to take the engine, and, with norevenue to Crytek at first, be able to make fullcasual and indie games.

There will be many ways of generatingrevenue and making this work. I don’t want toannounce them yet, but I will say that we willbe very aggressive about getting as manydevelopers as possible in a very short amountof time. Let’s just say that implies a minimumbarrier to entry for developers.

And how about the Vita? What is yourreaction to that system?The Vita is an absolutely fantastic platformbut it will have a hard time, and it might betoo late. I love Sony as a company, and wehave great relations with them, but the Vita isgoing to have a hard time against the next

Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli(above) is confident thatCryEngine 3 is ready forthe paradigm shift inconsumers’ platformpreference

I love Sony as acompany, and we

have great relations withthem, but the Vita is goingto have a hard timeagainst the nextgeneration mobiles.

Cevat Yerli, Crytek

Crytek is taking its engine to new developers and platforms, and wants its statement of intent to be heardloud and clear. Will Freeman caught up with the company’s CEO Cevat Yerli at E3 2011 to find out more

BATTLECRY

BUILD | TOOLS NEWS


generation mobiles and all the tablets. There’salso the 3DS investing in this market. It’sgoing to be a battle, and it will be aboutcontent and the platform’s ability to receivethe content. Streamlined social connectivitywill also be very important.

Despite CryEngine 3’s popularity withAsian online game developers, in the Westuptake appears to have been slow. CityInteractive recently emerged as one of thefirst external triple-A companies to use thetech for boxed product. How important isthat ‘traditional’ market to Crytek?If you’re a current generation developer, youhave a strong opportunity to captialise on thecurrent generation if you are making a sequelor something based on an existing brand. Ifyou are working on new IP, then you shouldprobably concentrate on next generationdevelopment.

A couple of years ago in one of mypresentations, I predicted that the nextgeneration would arrive in 2012 or 2013, andI’m still holding to that. If you want to make avideo game for the next generation, andmaybe you want it to be a launch title, themessage we are spreading is that you can dothat with CryEngine 3 today.

CryEngine 3 will cover, by around 2013, allthe dominant platforms that are applicablefor developers looking to release triple-Apackaged goods.

And you’re still supporting high-end PCgaming. What does the new DirectX 11support bring to Crysis 2 andsubsequently CryEngine 3? Why is itespecially important?The DX11 upgrade is enhancing quality andthe gameplay experience by adding higherquality graphics.

The latest enthusiast-class PC hardware hasamazing performance and allows developersto expand their creativity and highlight their

new technology and rendering algorithms,independent of any particular API. While theadded features do require high-end PChardware because they are very graphicsintensive, the visual quality improvementsare quite substantial.

Several state-of-the art computer graphicsalgorithms are implemented, like screenspace directional occlusion and screen spacereflections, which approximate raytraced HDRreflections in screen space – on any surface –not limited to planar like reflections.

To manage both high tessellation factorsand high overall visuals, Crytek attained properbalance by using parallax occlusion mappingin certain cases. Many quality settings areexposed in the game control panel for the user,allowing quality and performance tweaking.

Even so, with so many multiplatformengines out there, why should developerstoday choose CryEngine 3?I think CryEngine is the engine you considerwhen you think of next generation

development and when you think of openworlds, highly interactive content and realtime development.

We are actually the only engine on theentire planet – and by far I would say– including Unity and Epic, that is 100 percent real time. People underestimate what itmeans to be 100 per cent real time.

100 per cent real time means that not onlydo you get faster iteration cycles, but it ismore fun to work with the technology, andyou can explore ideas much more quickly.You can test and try and test and try and failover and over, and that means studios reallycan learn very fast.

Also, it makes the team, eventually, a farbetter team, because people learn faster anddevelop themselves. That’s how people grow;they grow by failing and learning.

In fact, that is the number one learningcycle of any human. CryEngine empowerspeople to develop their abilities faster byletting them fail and learn faster. That in turnbonds the team stronger, and eventually youget a better studio culture. There are so manyindirect advantages to choosing to work withCryEngine 3.

And from a gamer’s perspective, there aregames that are developed with CryEnginethat I would argue you just cannot developwith the Epic and Unity engines. But at thesame time, those games that have been donewith those platforms; all of them can bereplicated with the CryEngine.

I would bet my hand on this. I know it andwhen people want to object to hearing that,they will find out that the CryEngine is thebest engine.mycryengine.com

Cry Engine 3, it’s creatorspromise, is capable of truenext gen results (above)

We are actually theonly engine on the

entire planet – and by far Iwould say – including Unityand Epic, that is100 per cent realtime.

Cevat Yerli, Crytek

TOOLS NEWS | BUILD

64 | JULY 2011

BUILD | TEXTURES

THOSE CHARGED with making video gameenvironment art will likely be familiar withthe process of creating a full material withouthaving to go through the modelling of a highpolygon mesh.

It’s not a particularly quick procedure, andcan demand many hours sunk into Photoshopbuilding normal and specular maps.

Recognising this time drain Allegorithmic,the outfit behind texture workflow suiteSubstance, has created Bitmap2Material,which handles that process in a few seconds,applying custom filters and effects on thediffuse to output the corresponding normal,specular, and other maps.

Bitmap2Material is in essence a powerfulSubstance filter that can help users generateseamlessly tiling materials from any bitmapimage directly in all compatible solutions. It isalready in use at studios including Insomniac,Criterion and Rockstar, and offers developersan additional way to reduce the memory bulkof the texture packages that can so drasticallyaffect the final file size that the consumersees when choosing to download a game.

“Bitmap2Material stores only the diffusebitmap while all the other channels like thespecular or normal maps are generated onthe fly by the engine,” explainsAllegorithmic’s president and founder Dr.Sébastien Deguy. “This allows reducing thesize of the texture package significantly, aslong as the Substance runtime is embeddedin the 3D engine. Without the runtime, it stillremains a great productivity tool.”

THE GENERATION GAMEThe fact that Bitmap2Material enables usersto generate tiles in comparable solutions issomething Deguy argues is a particularlyimportant feature.

“Generating the textures directly in allcompatible solutions allows you to preview

the exact look of your material in real timewhile you are tweaking it, without having toexport and re-import bitmaps from one pieceof software to another or changing thetexture format,” explains the Allegorithmic boss. “It bypasses all these littletedious steps.”

And that is at the very core of what thetexture solutions company strives to do.Through technology, it lets developers savetime, save on file size, and especially in thecase of digitally distributed content, makethe game’s download file a great deal morelightweight and thus attractive to consumers.

And with Bitmap2Material, there’s also avariety of built in features to make a dayspent at a workstation just a little lessdemanding for those in a given studioresponsible for textures.

“There are a few parameters that willimprove very quickly the look of thematerial,” says Deguy. “The Normal Shaperecognition allows for the creation of verydeep and smooth details on the normal map,even from a noisy diffuse map. The LightEqualizer will remove any lighting artefactsthat could compromise the automatic tilingof the material, like darker areas in thecorners or strong highlights; it really makes a

huge difference when applying the materialon a large surface.”

SMART MOVESBilled as ‘smart filter’, Bitmap2Material hasbeen conceived so as to adapt to suit anytype of texture. This, its creators say, allowsusers to create eye-catching materials fromtypically difficult diffuse maps includingraw photographs.

The filter has also been designed to beeasily extended with new features andoptions, and Allegorithmic already has plans underway that should see the techupdated regularly.

In fact, at this early stage in the life of theproduct the company has issued a call forfeedback and update requests, giving earlyadopters of Bitmap2Material a chance toshape future iterations.

Bitmap2Material, it appears, delivers asignificant boon to the arsenal of any ofthose who use Substance to improve theirtexturing workflows.

According to Allegorithmicpresident and founderSébastion Deguy (right)the Bitmap2Materialsmart filter will save timefor those involved intexturing workflow

Generating thetextures directly in

all compatible solutionsallows you to preview theexact look of yourmaterial in real time.Sébastien Deguy, Allegorithmic

KEY RELEASEThis Month: Will Freeman looks through Allegorithmic’s new smart filter

WHAT IS IT?: A Substance filter that can help generateseamlessly tiling materials from any bitmap imageCOMPANY: AllegorithmicPRICE: $149.99www.allegorithmic.com

Your next move should be easy.We’ll make sure it is

Avatar Games Recruitment is a specialist recruitment consultancy that provides staffi ng solutions for businesses within the Games Industry.

Here is a current selection of some of our hottest opportunities:

With 1000’s of Job Vacancies around the world it makes perfect sense to choose Avatar for your next career move.

For more information about other positions we have please feel free to contact us:

W: www.avatar-games.co.uk E: [email protected]

Creative DirectorUK Based £££Excellent + Bonus + Benefi ts

ProgrammersUK & Europe - £25,000 - £70,000 + Benefi ts

Senior ProducerUp to $120,000 + Benefi ts + Bonus

Art DirectorEurope – up to ¤65,000 + Benefi ts

Senior / Lead DesignersWorldwide – Up to £65,000

ArtistsWorldwide – Up to £60,000

Experienced/Senior AnimatorsEurope & UK - £55,000

Senior Concept ArtistsWorldwide - £60,000 + Benefi ts

Technical ArtistsUK & Europe – up to £60,000 + Benefi ts + Bonus

AVA00013 - ADVERT PACMAN.indd 1 17/5/11 18:42:03Process CyanProcess MagentaProcess YellowProcess Black


GAME ENGINES | BUILD

HAWKEN, ADHESIVE Games’ upcomingmultiplayer mech combat game built with EpicGames’ Unreal Development Kit, is gathering animpressive amount of early buzz.

In development for about a year, the indiesensation has made fans all across the board,with The Escapist calling the preview trailer“quite simply amazing,” PC Gamer praising it as“insanely beautiful,” and IGN stating that thegame has “visuals to challenge the very bestgames on the market.”

But when the Adhesive Games team set outto create Hawken, they had almost noexperience using Unreal Engine 3. For KhangLe, art director at Adhesive Games, the focuswas on finding a robust solution that coulddeliver the graphically intense vision he had for the game on a tight schedule and withtriple-A quality.

Le and his team decided to use UDK for thegame because, when it came to Unreal Engine3, he says: “We were familiar with its reputationas possibly the most licensed game engine inthe industry. Being able to begin productionusing a cutting-edge game engine with nostart-up cost offers an important opportunity toindie developers like us.”

AHEAD OF THE GAMEAdhesive Games considered other optionsbefore choosing UDK, but Le explains that itquickly emerged as the frontrunner.

“Once we decided to create a graphics-intense multiplayer game, then Unreal Enginelooked like the clear choice. With Unreal you geta console-ready engine that has been provenwith bestselling released games.” Additionally,UDK provided prototyping capabilities: “Within

a month of starting Hawken,” says Le, “we wereable to test out a prototype.”

As for the actual functionality of the UnrealEngine 3 toolset, the art director found manyuseful applications.

“We noticed many of the features availablewith UDK would only be there because theengine was used many, many times in gameproduction,” said Le. “This includes ease-of-usestuff like archetypes and searchable propertylists, nuts and bolts components like thepackaging system, as well as major features.There is a lot of depth to the engine. Prefabs aregreat; our kitbash method used to create ourlevels requires a very robust prefab system andUDK delivered.”

When it comes to working with UDK insteadof the full source code version of Unreal Engine3, Le and his team were impressed with UDK’sflexibility in spite of early concern.

“We had some initial worries that using onlywhat was available in UDK might limit usartistically, but overall the artists have been veryhappy with the ease and power of UDK. Itenables our small team to create triple-Aquality visuals.”

UNIVERSAL APPEALHawken’s visuals have been praised universallyand compared to big budget studios. Andwhile the team was somewhat skeptical aboutusing only UDK and UnrealScript, that changedthrough the course of development.

Working at an impressive pace, the Adhesiveteam leaned on the extensive documentationthrough Epic’s Unreal Developer Network andreached out to other developers who had usedUDK for their projects.

“We’ve searched the UDN docs as well asonline tutorials. Using a publicly availableengine means it’s not only possible, but likelythat there will be information online aboutwhatever we’re trying to accomplish. Also, theUDK community has been very supportive. Weoften browse through the forum and readwhat’s possible or not before we make designdecisions,” confirms Le.

The robust community and frequent updatesbehind UDK were also very useful for Le and histeam. “The monthly UDK update is veryvaluable for us. Many times we have found thata feature we needed that wasn’t there when westarted Hawken is now integrated in the latestUDK build.”

The Adhesive team is currently finalisingplans for Hawken’s distribution and plans torelease the game next year.

Hawken (above) ablydemonstrates the triple-Aquality a team with littleprevious experience withthe Unreal tech canachieve

EPIC DIARIESMark Rein turns his attention to Adhesive’s mech combat game Hawken

HawkenDeveloper: Adhesive GamesReleased: TBCwww.adhesivegames.com

upcoming epicattended events:

Please email: [email protected] for appointments.

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

Canadian-born Mark Rein is vice president and co-founder of Epic Gamesbased in Cary, North Carolina. Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 has won GameDeveloper magazine’s Best Engine Front Line Award four times along withentry into the Hall of Fame. UE3 has won three consecutive Develop IndustryExcellence Awards. Epic is the creator of mega-hit Unreal series of games andthe blockbuster Gears of War franchise. Follow @MarkRein on Twitter.

Epic Developer Day & Unreal University London, UKJuly 13th to 14th

Develop Brighton, UKJuly 19th to 21st

Comic-Con International San Diego, CAJuly 21st to 24th

GDC Europe Cologne, GermanyAugust 15th to 17th

68 | JULY 2011

BUILD | GAME ENGINES

TO FIT the vast world of Star Trek and theambitious make-up of an MMO into a webbrowser might sound like a daunting task,but it’s one the staff at Keen Games aretackling undeterred.

Using the Unity Engine, a team led bycreative director Antony Christoulakis, leadprogrammer Daniel Groh and producer SarahSteffen has spun a vast online world from thefamiliar fabric of Gene Roddenberry’screation. It’s one that runs without the needfor a cumbersome client download, anddelivers a game focused on tactical spacecombat and exploration.

THE NEXT GENERATION“It was clear from the start that we wanted todo a ‘next generation’ browser game thatoffers high production values,” explainsChristoulakis. “We’ve looked at a couple ofother options and Unity was clearly the bestchoice in terms of flexibility to extend itsrendering technology.”

And so began work on the MMO, with theKeen team quickly familiarising themselveswith the elements that have made Unity afavourite for those making online games.

“First of all, Unity comes with a great easeof use for our players,” says Christoulakis ofthe benefits of working with the engine. “Allyou have to do is install the Unity browserplug-in, which is a very simple procedure.”

Certainly the famously popular Unity WebPlayer remains an alluring proposition fordevelopers, and it was a fundamental reasonfor Keen Games’ adoption of the tech. Amajor draw for the Infinite Space team wasthat it also blends well into a webpage,without sacrificing the ability to leap to fullscreen, letting developers further blur thedisappearing line between web-basedgames and boxed products.

“From a development perspective, theUnity engine provides you with a rich set offeatures, like the powerful rendering engine,particle system, physics, content streamingand many others, so you are able to focus ondeveloping the actual game,” addsChristoulakis, staunch in his position as anadvocate for the platform.

SET FREEBut what Unity offers studios like KeenGames isn’t just a feature set that, in recentmemory alone, was the exclusive territory oftriple-A console and PC development. It alsoprovides games makers with what is arguablya far greater weapon to their arsenals;namely complete creative freedom on theirindividual projects.

When asked in what way Unity defined theatmosphere and aesthetic character of StarTrek: Infinite Space, Christoulakis is quick toreply: “You could say Unity shaped our gameby not shaping it.

“Its great flexibility and extensibility allowsdevelopers to decide how the game shouldbe and avoids limiting visions by technicalconstraints. Also, the Unity Editor allowsrapid prototyping, which is very helpful to

find the features that are most fun to play.From a graphical perspective, the freedom toachieve stunning visual effects and shaderscomes in handy.”

Last month Child of Eden creator TetsuyaMizuguchi told Develop that the imaginationis the final frontier. If that’s the analogy of themoment, then Unity has equipped Keen witheverything it needs to boldly go to thatcreative boundary.

Keen Games creativedirector AntonyChristoulakis

UNITY FOCUSWill Freeman meets a developer at the browser frontier

STAR TREK: INFINITE SPACEDeveloper: Keen GamesPlatforms: PCWhat is it: MMOstartrek-is.com

MAKING IT SO

Building a browser MMO based on the StarTrek universe brings with it a huge level ofresponsibility. Taking the creative reigns ofone of the planet’s most well lovedfictional worlds is a huge task, but thatburden hasn’t worried Infinite Spacedeveloper Keen Games.

“Working on a Star Trek game is reallyamazing. The endless amount of detailfound in its universe is overwhelming -there is so much in terms of stories,characters or technology to draw from,”confirms creative director AntonyChristoulakis, who can’t resist concludingwith a playful reference that surely markshim out as a enthusiast of GeneRoddenberry’s work.

“Our challenge is to bring it all togetherinto a game that all the fans out there willbe really happy with, but we are confidentto make it so.”

Unity comes with agreat ease of use for

our players. All you have todo is install the Unitybrowser plug-in,which is very simple.

Anthony Cristoulakis


AUDIO | BUILD

ONCE AGAIN, Europe’s top gamedevelopment talent will gather on Brighton’sseafront this month to discuss the art,technology and business of making today’s –and tomorrow’s – video games. This year’saudio track offers a wide-ranging set ofsessions featuring some of today’s gameaudio luminaries – a varied programmeaimed at in-housers and freelancers alike.

Keynote speaker Phil Kovats is one of SonyPlayStation’s leading audio talents. He’s madehis award-winning mark on epic, cutting edgevideo game productions like the popular GodOf War series and the highly acclaimedUncharted 2 among others – not to mention adistinguished track record in TV post-production beforehand. Very fitting then thathe should headline the show, sharing from hisrich experience at the forefront of PS3 audioproduction. I can’t wait.

THE CAKE IS A METAPHORNot that he’ll overshadow this year’s speakerroster – rather, he’ll be the finishing layer andicing on a rather luscious audio cake. JoiningKovats at the audio track will be renownedBAFTA-winning composer Jason Graves, apersonable and passionate advocate formusic in games who’ll discuss his approachto interactivity for remarkable scores such asDead Space and its sequel.

The game Alan Wake is an audio tour-de-force that won Mark Yeend and his team twoBAFTA nominations. Ably creating unsettlingmenace through to super-disturbing horror,it features a rich mix of both literal and non-literal sound design and a sure-footed musicscore which delivers reflective tendernessand nerve-grinding terror with equalaplomb. In a fascinating behind-the-scenesexposition, Yeend, the title’s publishing audiodirector, will explore key factors that led to

Wake’s award-winning sound, music anddialogue success.

Yeend will also join MGS senior audiodirector Kristofor Mellroth for a two-hander‘News From The Front’ session in which thesetwo Microsoft audio experts will highlight adiverse mixture of key development issues,arising from their recent experiences whilstworking on such signature titles as Fable 3,Crackdown 2, Kinect Adventures, Toy Soldiersand of course, Alan Wake.

POCKET CHANGEWant to get the SP on Vita? Sony’s portablevideo game console promises not just a stepchange but a revolution in handheld gameaudio, and senior Sony PlayStation audioguru Jason Page wants to tell you everythinghe can (without having to kill you) as well aspoint to how he thinks audio for the platformis likely to develop in future.

We’re also delighted to welcome MarkEstdale, casting and voice director forOutsource Media who’ll be joined by USactor/director Laurence Bouvard to give a no-holds-barred, hands-on practical workshopon getting the best from actors.

Meanwhile, Rockstar North’s audio techguru, Alastair MacGregor will grace the stage

to talk about the audio tools, pipeline andrun-time engine for such stellar titles as RedDead Redemption and GTA IV – and how histechnical team’s investment in technologyempowers Rockstar’s creative audio teams tocraft immersive and interactive worlds.

And did I mention Alex Joseph? He is asound design genius whose credits includethose little known movies Casino Royale,Mamma Mia, and all four of the Harry Pottermotion pictures.

Alex has a ongoing interest in therelationship between the physicality ofsound and how we as humans perceive it,which stems from the research he did for hisdegree in psychology. In a thought-provoking session he will explore whatgames can learn from film’s psychologicaltricks, examining how subliminal sound canbe used to prime the subconscious mind toenhance the gaming experience.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you theDevelop Conference audio track 2011.

If game audio’s your thing, there’s reallyonly one place to be on July 21st – inBrighton checking out these speakers’ latestideas, thinking and innovation, networkingwith them, and partying beside the seaside.We very much look forward to to seeing you– and also hearing what you have to say inthe customary final ‘Open Mic’ session.

Come and be inspired.Audio Track: Thursday, July 21st, 2011For full session information and booking

details visit www.developconference.com

Speakers at the DevelopConference’s audio trackinclude (left-to-right)movie sound man AlexJoseph, composer JasonGraves, PlayStation audioguru Jason Page, MGS’Kristofor Mellroth, MarkEstdale of OutsourceMedia, Alan Wake audioman Mark Yeend, andkeynote speaker PhilKovats, the Sony audiospecialist behindUncharted 2’s(background) distinctsound

If game audio’s yourthing, there’s really

only one place to be on July21st – in Brighton checkingout these speakers’ latestideas, thinking andinnovation.

HEARD ABOUTJohn Broomhall on this year’s Develop Conference audio offering

DEVELOP CONFERENCE BRIGHTON AUDIO TRACKDate: Thursday, July 21st, 2011Venue: Hilton Metropole, Brightonwww.developconference.com/content/develop

John Broomhall is anindependent audio director,consultant and content provider.E: [email protected]

BUILD | TUTORIAL: DEFERRED SHADING

Game Engine Games 2’seditor Eric Lengyel (top),and the excerpt’s co-authors and Black RockStudio team members (topto bottom) George Parrish,Matthew Ritchie and BalorKnight

FOR part one of this tutorial check issue 117 ofDevelop, or look online at www.develop-online.net/features

Tile classification in Split/Second is brokeninto two parts. We classify four of the sevenlight properties during our screen-spaceshadow mask generation, and we classify theother three in a per-pixel pass. The reason forthis is that the screen-space shadow code isalready generating a one-quarter resolution(320 x 1880) texture, which perfectly matchesour tile resolution of 4x4 pixels, and it is alsoreading depths, meaning that we canminimise texture reads and shadercomplexity in the per-pixel pass by extendingthe screen-space shadow mask code toperform all depth-related classification.

Moore and Jefferies [2009] explain how wegenerate a one-quarter resolution screen-space shadow mask texture that containsthree shadow types per pixel: pixels inshadow, pixels not in shadow, and pixels nearthe shadow edge.

This work results in a texture containingzeroes for pixels in shadow, ones for pixelsnot in shadow, and all other values for pixelsnear a shadow edge. By looking at thistexture for each screen-space position, weecan avoid expensive PCF for all areas exceptthose near the edges of shadows that wewant to be soft.

For tile classification, we extend this codeto also classify light scattering and shadowfade since they’re both calculated from depthalone, and we’re already reading depth inthese shaders to reconstruct world positionfor the shadow projections.

DEPTH RELATED CLASSIFICATIONBelow is an example of classifying lightscattering and shadow fade in the first-passshadow mask shader.

float shadowType =CalcShadowType(worldPos, depth);

float lightScattering = (depth >scatteringStartDist) ? 1.0 : 0.0;float shadowFade = (depth >shadowFadeStartDist) ? 1.0 : 0.0;

output.color = float4(shadowType,lightScattering, shadowFade,0.0);

Recall that the shadow mask is generated intwo passes. The first pass calculates theshadow type per pixel at one-half resolution(640x360) and the second passconservatively expands the pixels marked asnear shadow edge by down-sampling toone-quarter resolution. The example abovealso shows how we add a simple lightscattering and shadow fade classification testto the first-pass shader.

The below shows how we extend thesecond expand pass to pack the classificationresults together into four bits so they caneasily be combined with the per-pixelclassification results later on.

// Read 4 texels from 1st passwith sample offsets of 1 texel.

#define OFFSET_X (1.0 / 640.0)#define OFFSET_Y (1.0 / 360.0)

float3 rgb = tex2D(tex, uv +float2(-OFFSET_X, -OFFSET_Y)).rgb;rgb += tex2D(tex, uv +float2(OFFSET_X, -OFFSET_Y)).rgb;rgb += tex2D(tex, uv + float2(-OFFSET_X, OFFSET_Y)).rgb;rgb += tex2D(tex, uv +float2(OFFSET_X, OFFSET_Y)).rgb;

// Pack classification bitstogether.

#define RAW_SHADOW_SOLID (1 << 0)#define RAW_SHADOW_SOFT (1 << 1)#define RAW_SHADOW_FADE (1 << 2)#define RAW_LIGHT_SCATTERING (1<< 3)

float bits = 0.0;

if (rgb.r == 0.0)bits += RAW_SHADOW_SOLID / 255.0;

else if (rgb.r < 4.0)bits += RAW_SHADOW_SOFT / 255.0;

if (rgb.b != 0.0)bits += RAW_SHADOW_FADE / 255.0;

if (rgb.g != 0.0)

bits += RAW_LIGHT_SCATTERING / 255.0;

// Write results to red channel.

output.color = float4(bits, 0.0,0.0, 0.0);

The above shows packing classificationresults together in the second-pass shadowmask shader. Note that this code could besimplified under shader model four or higherbecause they natively support integers andbitwise operators.

PIXEL CLASSIFICATIONIt helps to explain how this pass works bydescribing the Split/Second G-buffer format(see the first example). Moore and Jefferies[2009] explain how we calculate a per-pixelMSAA edge bit by comparing the results ofcentroid sampling against linear sampling.We pack this into the high bit of our motionID byte in the G-buffer. For classifying MSAAedges, we extract this MSAA edge bit fromboth MSAA fragments and also compare thenormals of each of the fragments to catchsituations in which there are no polygonedges (e.g. polygon intersections).

The motion ID is used for per-pixel motionblur in a later pass, and each object type hasits own ID. For the sky, this ID is always zero,and we use this value to classify sky pixels.

Buffer Red Green Blue AlphaBuffer 0 Albedo red Albedo green Albedo blue Specular amountBuffer 1 Normal x Normal y Normal z Motion ID + MSAA edgeBuffer 2 Prelit red Prelit green Prelit blue Specular power

Deferred ShadingPart two of our excerpt from Game Engine Gems 2 offers more advice on deferredshading from Balor Knight, Matthew Ritchie and George Parrish of Black Rock Studio

70 | JULY 2011

CRC Press publishes a wealth of books on gamedevelopment covering a broad range of topicsfrom AI to physics. Its library of titles offerssomething for those at every experience level.www.crcpress.com

The Split/Second G-bufferformat. Note that eachcomponent has an entry forboth 2X MSAA fragments.

Wednesday, July 20th, 2011 Hilton Brighton Metropole Hotel

Tickets: [email protected]

Sponsorship: [email protected]

Platinum Partner Gold Partner Gold Partner

Exclusive Drinks Reception Partner After Party Host Development Legend Partner

Event Partner Table Gift Partner After Party Host

Gold Partner

Table Gift Partner

Event Partner


PEOPLE: Former Scaleform

president joinsGaikai

p74

TOOLS:Trinigy goes

public with VitaVision

p76

SERVICES:Media Mill details

Little Deviantsaudio role

p77

The world’s premier listing of games development studios, tools, outsourcing specialists, services and courses…

KEY CONTACTS

STUDIOSAmiqus 01925 252 588

Creative Assembly www.creative-assembly.com

Epic Games +1 919 870 1516

IndieCity 01926 880 081

TOOLSBigWorld +15122890145

Jury Rig Software +44 (0) 203 286 4432

SERVICESAlice Labs www.AliceLabs.com

Atomhawk +44 (0) 191 490 9160

Fork Particle 1(925) 417 1785

Codeplay 0131 466 0503

inComm +44 (0) 1489 556 700

Natural Point 1-888-865-5535

COURSESUniversity of Hull +44 (0) 1482 465 951

RATES1/4 page: £450 (or £200/month ifbooked for a minimum of six months)

Contact:[email protected]

T: 01992 535 647

GREAT ADVERTISINGOPPORTUNITIES

studios

74| JULY 2011

Unreal Engine firm Epic Games has madestrides into Europe by appointing a newterritory boss.

Experienced industry exec MikeGamble started working with Epic inFebruary, taking on the role of Europeanterritory manager.

He previously was working at Crytek,as engine business licensing director,before joining Epic Games.

“We strongly believe in the UKdevelopment community,” said EpicGames vice president Mark Rein.

“Our new European territory manageris a trusted industry vet dedicated tohelping developers achieve success withour technology and we have more eventsplanned for the UK later this year.”www.epicgames.com

Brendan Iribe, the founder and formerpresident of UI specialists Scaleform, hasjoined cloud gaming service Gaikai.

The industry exec left Scaleform afterAutodesk bought the group in a dealthought to be worth $36 million, andjoins Gaikai as user-experience guru.

“Gaikai’s streaming game technologyruns on many different devices, giving usa very complex user interface challenge,”said Gaikai CEO David Perry.

“Even more importantly, we need tocreate a compelling eco-system fordevelopers to target. To tackle this,there’s no better choice than hiring thenumber one user interface andmiddleware guru in the video gameindustry, that’s Brendan,” he added.www.gaikai.com

UK-based studio Jagex has hired a newvice president for its in-developmentstrategy title 8Realms.

Phil White, who boasts over twodecades of industry experience, hastaken on the senior position at theupcoming game, currently operating inclosed beta.

“I have been following the rise of Jagexand am delighted to get the opportunityto join the team,” White said.

“Jagex’s history, experience and thecompany’s vision for the future meantthat joining was a real no-brainer for me.

“The cross platform, play anywhereexperience of 8Realms took my breathaway and I knew instantly this wassomething that I had to be a part of.”www.jagex.com

Ben Cousins, the former studio head atBritish outfit EA Easy, has joined mobilegames group Ngmoco.

Cousins is now tasked with runningand raising Ngmoco’s new Stockholm-based studio. Much of the studio’s workwill be focused on building content forthe social gaming platform Mobage.

Mobage is a mobile social gamesplatform owned by Japan-based firmDena, which acquired Ngmoco inOctober 2010.

Cousins is behind EA’s successful forayinto the free-to-play games market, andonline shooter Battlefield Heroes.

“Ben Cousins has spent his wholecareer innovating,” said Ngmoco bossNeil Young.www.ngmoco.com

Creative Assembly www.creative-assembly.com

PERSONNEL This month: Epic Games, Gaikai, Jagex and Ngmoco

We Know Your World

Amiqus is a leading provider of specialist talent to the video games industry.

We recruit for some of the world’s premier studios and publishers across all industry disciplines.

Since we started in 2002 we now work with clients in 13 countries across the globe.

Let us show you how we know your world. Call:

or visit:

01925 252588

amiqus.com

Amiqus 01925 252588 www.amiqus.com

WWW.DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET JULY 2011 | 75

studios

Epic +1-919-870-1516 www.epicgames.com IndieCity 01926 880081 www.IndieCity.com

Founded in 2003 by David Amor andAndrew Eades, Brighton-based RelentlessSoftware is today, famously, a majorstudio without crunch times, overtime orweekend working. In an industry that hasbecome at certain level synonymous withfrenzied periods of sleeping bags underdesks, this ethos is certainly interesting.

That Relentless has such an impressivebody of work to its name proves thatthere is method to being so sensible.

Both company founders had, beforeRelentless, worked together at ComputerArtworks, another Brighton-based studiothat had gone into receivership. Beforeshutting its doors that company hadbeen working on a DJ sim game for SCEE.Armor and Eades convinced Sony thatthey could see the game finished with anew studio of their ow, and in September2004 DJ: Decks & FX

was released. Following some furtherinternational conversion work for SonyComputer Entertainment Europe onEyeToy: Groove and SingStar Popworld,Relentless was quickly becoming anestablished name in a rapidly burgeoningindustry sector.

Recognising the potential of the stillnew studio, in 2004 SCEE approachedRelentless with a host of licensed musicthat it wanted to turn into a game.Dropping the notion of a musical boardgame that had been given to them,Relentless took on the project andcreated Buzz!: The Music Quiz in time forthe Christmas break in 2005. A massivelysuccessful franchise was born, and overthe next seven years countless offshootsdeveloped by Relentless and otherstudios were released, producing overeight million sales worldwide.

Having developed a significantindustry presence and noted catalogue ofwork as it was heading into 2009,Relentless released its first self-publishedgame. An episodic PSN and PC whodunitset in the leafy English village of LittleRiddle, Blue Toad Murder Files marked anew creative high for the studio. Itfollowed the game up with theannouncement that it was becoming amulti-platform, digital release only studio.

In February of this year Relentlessannounced iOS title Quiz Climber, and inMay a deal with PlayJam to create titlesbased on their TV IP was revealed. For astudio that has has defined itself as beingat the forefront of the casual and digitalstill emerging distribution movements,these irons are unlikely to be the onlyones in the fire. For Relentless, the futureis already upon us.www.relentless.co.uk

STUDIO SPOTLIGHTThis month: Relentless Software

P: +44 [0] 1273 727200F: +44 [0] 1273 727447

ContactRelentless SoftwareOne Air StreetBrightonBN1 3FB

Engine vendor GameSalad is launching anew tool suite that is says requires noknowledge of programming languagesto use.

The suite allows games to be builtprimarily through a drag-and-drop userinterface, with games exported into theHTML5 code

GameSalad says its new tool removesthe barrier to entry for developing gamesfor iPhone, Android devices, and buildingin the HTML5 standard ensures gameswill display on most browsers.

The company has not explained why itis not supporting Flash.

GameSalad CEO Steve Felter claimedHTML5 is “the next language of the web”.

“We’re giving people the ability to playand share GameSalad games within aweb browser – dramatically expandingboth the reach of our developers’ gamesand their ability to create conversationsand community around them,” he added.gamesalad.com

Serious gaming and simulation specialistBohemia Interactive has secured alicensing agreement that will see itintegrate xaitment’s AI tools into its VBS2platform for military tactical training andmission rehearsal.

“This partnership with xaitmentconfirms our intent to support the latestcutting-edge middleware to deliver morecapability to our users. xaitment is asmart choice because it offers both AIeditors and runtime libraries, which is abig differentiator in the market. Ourcompany is now able to supply ourclients around the world with state-of-the-art artificial intelligence technologydirectly integrated with our VBS2platform.” said Dr. Mark Dzulko, CTO ofBohemia Interactive.

“xaitment’s powerful AI tools will helpto further enhance and expand theexperience our clients will have whenusing our simulation.”www.bistudio.com

76 | JULY 2011

tools

BigWorld +15122890145 www.bigworldtech.com Jury Rig Software +44 (0)20 3286 4432 www.juryrigsoftware.com

telephone +44 (0)20 3286 4432email [email protected]

web www.juryrigsoftware.com

Never lose your memory again with Elephant Memory Manager

Elephant Memory Manager is a league apart from your average memory manager. Designed specifi cally for games, with superior performance and advanced debugging features, Elephant serves as a complete replacement for your memory allocator. Visit us at www.juryrigsoftware.com to fi nd out

what Elephant has to offer and download a free trial.

TOOLS NEWSThis month: Trinigy, Kojima Productions, GameSalad and Bohemia Interactive

Trinigy has made the Vita version of itsVision Game Engine available withimmediate effect.

The tech offers a modular architecture,and lets users work with the same toolsand workflow they use to develop titlesfor all other Vision supported platformsand services, such as PS3, Xbox 360, Wiiand Windows. It also includes a wealth ofnew tailored features for the Vita thatharness its GPU cores.

“With the Vision Game Engine,developing a graphically rich, highlyimmersive game for the Vita is nodifferent than building a game for thePlayStation 3, Xbox 360, or for the PC,”said Dag Frommhold, managing directorat Trinigy.

“Because of the Vision Game Engine’sflexibility, developers can use the sametools environment, the same asset types,the same game code, and many of thesame graphical effects.”www.trinigy.net

Adobe Systems has released a newapplication tool which allows developersto build applications in Flash and to portthat content onto iOS devices.

The newly-updated Flash Builder andFlex framework now each supportApple’s popular mobile devices, as well asrival mobile operating systems Androidand Blackberry.

“As a result, developers can quicklybuild and distribute apps through theAndroid Market, through BlackBerry AppWorld and through Apple App Storeusing only one tool chain, programminglanguage and code base – a first fordevelopers,” an Adobe notice read.

The move is Adobe’s latest coup in theongoing and highly competitive race forubiquity within the ever-expandingmobile games space.

Previously, Flash developers were onlyable to port their apps over to theAndroid Market.www.adobe.com

WWW.DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

services

JULY 2011 | 77

Fork Particle 1(925) 417 1785 www.forkparticle.com

SERVICES NEWSThis month: Media Mill, Kombo

Alice Labs www.AliceLabs.com

Atomhawk +44 (0) 191 490 9160 www.atomhawk.com/develop

York, UK-based audio outsourcer MediaMill has revealed its contribution toupcoming Bigbig Studio’s PS Vita titleLittle Deviants.

The audio outsourcing firm, whoseprevious work includes such titles asMotorStorm Apocalypse and Total War:Shogun 2, has already completed asignificant amount of the sound effectsfor Leamington Spa-based Bigbig.

“Little Deviants is one of those gamesthat puts a smile on your face,” said MediaMill’s Jerry Ibbotson.

“We’ve tried to reflect that in theaudio. The deviants themselves havedifferent characters so we’ve made surethey all sound unique.

“It’s great to be working with theBigbig team again. We’ve produced audiofor all of their releases so far but I thinkLittle Deviants has the biggest profile.Seeing it on the global stage of E3 hasbeen a real buzz.”www.mediamill.co.uk

Rovio has announced the acquisition ofHelsinki-based animation studio Kombofor future multimedia projects.

Financial terms of the buyout were notincluded in the announcement, but it isunderstood that Kombo will be used forvarious animation duties as Rovioattempts to expand its existing IPsbeyond gaming.

The Espoo, Finland, mobile gamesgiant previously signed a deal with 20thCentury Fox to associate the Angry Birdsbrand with the recent animated familymovie Rio.

“We have had a long and fruitfulrelationship with Kombo in the past,” saidRovio CEO Mikael Hed.

“This acquisition is an important stepin the execution of our media strategy.The attitude, creativity and quality ofKombo’s work is simply fantastic, and welook forward to delighting our fans withmore Kombo animations.”www.kombo.fi

78 | JULY 2011

services

SERVICES SPOTLIGHTThis month: WildTangent

Founded in Washington in 1998,WildTangent’s games service letscustomers access downloadable socialgames through its Game App. The serviceuses WildCoins digital currency and aproprietary ad platform calledBrandBoost, which offers the ability torent, purchase or play games for free,through advertisers.

The firm’s WildClub subscriptionprogramme offers a triple-tieredmembership system – two month, sixmonth and 12 month.

The company is also involved inadvertising work for third-party gamesdevelopers and publishers through itsBrandBoost platform, which has a user

network of around 100 million monthlyplayers to take advantage of.

WildTangent says its business modelallows those using it to effectivelymonetise any gameplay element with ad-supported free play, micro-currencygame rental and digital purchases.

WildTangent Media serves the in-gameadvertising processes of the Game App,working on an invitational basis thattargets brands at particular players withthe intention of maximising effect.

WildTangent’s top staff boast a widevariety of games industry experience atfirms as varied as Microsoft, Sony Online,Hasbro, Nintendo, Adobe and News Corp.www.wildtangent.com

Natural Point 1-888-865-5535 www.optitrack.cominComm +44 (0) 1489 556700 www. incomm-europe.com

Codeplay 0131 466 0503 www.codeplay.com

WWW.DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET JULY 2011 | 79

courses

The University of Hull +44(0) 1482 465951 www.mscgames.comDevelop Magazine 01992 535647 www.develop-online.net

Up-to-the minute newsdirect to your iPhone

Free App available now from iTunes

Search for Develop on the AppStore or use your QR scanner >

TRAINING NEWSThis month: Lionhead Studios and Games Eden

Development powerhouse Lionhead haslaunched a work experience programmefor local students.

The Guildford group said it wants tohelp the British development sectorinspire young people to build games fora living.

Students from local schools canundertake work experience on-site andtry out “all of the six main disciplines ofmaking a game”.

Each student will have a personalmentor to work with, Lionhead said.

“The video games industry offers ahuge variety of career opportunities, butit is very intense and hectic,” saidLionhead producer Jemma Harris.

“Staff here have been working closelywith teachers at Woking Sixth FormCollege to come up with a programwhich will showcase the diversity,creativity and excitement of gamesdevelopment,” she added.

Lionhead’s partnership with localacademic institutions is a key guidingprinciple of the Livingstone-HopeReview, a government-backed report onhow games education can improve.

Of the twenty recommendations in theSkills Review, one asks studios to “usevideo games at school to draw greaternumbers of young people into STEM andcomputer science”.www.lionhead.com

Industry professionals from studios likeJagex, Sony Computer Entertainmentand Frontier Developments will beheading to the east of England early thismonth to give talks at a three-day gameseducation event in the internationallyfamous university city of Cambridge.

The annual Brains Eden conference,set to run July 9th to 11th, will gatheraspiring young game developers alongwith weathered industry pros to AngliaRuskin University.

The first two-days of the show will becentred on a student game jam – wheregame prototypes are conceived and builtunder a punishing 48 hour period – whilethe final day will be a more laid back

affair with speaker sessions androundtable gatherings.

Key developers from Ninja Theory,Jagex, Frontier Developments and SonyComputer Entertainment CambridgeStudio will each share their insight andexperience, along with representatives ofthe UK indie development scene.

Representitives of the UKdevelopment industry will also bedebating the threats to andopportunities facing the national sector.

Games development students are alsoinvited to submit their games art work toappear in an exhibition with professionalstudios’ work.www.gameseden.co.uk

80 | JULY 2011

CODAA sideways look at the games industry

A look back at a timewhen things were agreat deal simpler forthose of us makingvideo games

Maxisreleases WillWright’siconic godgame SimCity

RewindA year in video games: 1989

IT FIGURES: E3 2011

The recent E3 2011 saw 46,800 people walk through its doors; a figure up 2 per centon 2010’s 45,600, but significantly less than the 60,000 visitors at the 2006 show.Over 200 exhibitors set up shop in the two main expo halls, meaning a third lessthan the 300 with their wares on display in 2010. Attendees came to the 2011 expofrom over 106 countries, in comparison to 90 in 2010. This year’s E3 also contributed$25m to the city of Los Angeles. E3 2012 will take place at the Los AngelesConvention Center from June 5th to 7th.

THE INDUSTRYIN 140 CHARACTERSA month in tweets by the industry elite

AN OPEN MINDBobby KotickBased on his E3 month

Telling CNBC what he thinks of ModernWarfare 3’s closest rival: “So far I’ve onlyseen Battlefield 3 shown on a PC, so I haven’tseen it on a console which is where the bulkof our business is. If it’s just a PC title, as itlooks like today, that’s a small audience toparticipate. We’re always interested to seewhat our competitors are doing. I thinkwe’ve had a lot of success with Call of Duty asa franchise.”

Acting opposite Brad Pitt in theforthcoming sports movie Moneyball:“We’re not in New York. Find players with themoney that we do have.”

Back with CNBC, this time on the merits ofCall of Duty Elite: “Audiences will have tomake the determination of whether that’svaluable or not.”

50% Battlefield 3

40% Brad Pitt10% CoD Elite

@therealcliffybSpill it, Nintendo. You all knowyou’re going to buy whateverthey show. It’s fucking Nintendo,guys. #miyamotoFTW

(Cliff Bleszinski Epic Games)Tuesday, June 7th

@fourzerotwoShowing Modern Warfare 3 toSteven Spielberg at #E3 wasdefinitely an awesome moment.A true fan of his work

(Robert Bowling, Infinity Ward)Tuesday, June 7th

@wiggoIf Twitter and Facebook havetaught me one thing, it’s howmuch I dislike self promotorsand bullshit. Value every friendand every follow.

(Matthew Wiggins, Zynga UK)Thursday, June 9th

@KappischePlayboy Mansion was ok, but Ireally miss Sweden now.

(Daniel Kaplan, MojangSpecifications)

Friday, June 10th

@martinhollis$1,204,480,000,000 spent onwars isn’t cool. You know what’scool? $2,000,000,000,000 spenton wars.

(Martin Hollis, Zoonami)Friday, June 10th

@TimOfLegendSorry, but nobody else can have aTRENCHED code until I get really,really good at it. This could take awhile.

(Tim Schafer, Double Fine)Tuesday, June 14th

@MarkReinI’d rather hear about Angry Bird’srevenue than download numbers.I’m sure they’re making tons ofmoney, but I’d love to know howmuch.

(Mark Rein, Epic)Wednesday, June 15th

@oliversnoddyHas anyone hacked a Kinect torecognise cats? This would improvemy life immeasurably, and probablydouble traffic to YouTube. #in

(Oliver Snoddy, Doremus)Saturday, June 18th

@repi@theCoDdaily dude, 99.9% of PS3and Xbox 360 games are 720p. and alot of them, including MW2 is waylower than that

(Johan Andersson, DICE)Sunday, June 19th

@LulzSecClearly the UK police are so desperateto catch us that they’ve gone andarrested someone who is, at best,mildly associated with us. Lame.

(LulzSec’s official feed)Tuesday, June 21st

JULY 2011 | 81

Stats can be misleading. Forward-project the trends from June 2011and the results show a misguided vision of the future August 2011

Visual Arts/CG/Game Graphics New techniques and tech for cutting edge in-game visuals,from 2D on handheld to stereoscopic 3D on console

Events:GDC Europe – August 15th to August 17thGamescom – August 17th to August 21st

Regional Focus: SpainA closer look at the Spanish games development community

September 2011Artificial Intelligence The new tricks and tools developers are using to makecharacters think

MMOs/Online TechnologyA round-up of all the new trends and technologiesin connected games

Regional Focus: Northern England East & WestWhat’s new in key hubs including Liverpool, Leeds,Sheffield and Newcastle

October 2011Monetisation Services & Game Payments An overview of an increasingly complicated sector

Events:GDC Online – October 10th to October 13th London Games Festival - Dates TBC

Regional Focus: Scotland After a year of change for Scotland, we take a look at the stateof play in this valued region

November 2011Events: Montreal International Games Summit - Dates TBC

Regional Focus: CanadaOur yearly look at the games dev firms operating in BC,Quebec and everywhere in between

Dec 2011/Jan 201230 Under 30 Develop shines its talent spotlight on the young achieversshaping the industry’s future

MocapA detailed look at motion capture, and new trends andtechnology in the sector

Regional Focus: FranceMovers and shakers in this diverse games development region

FEBRUARY 2012Recruitment Special Our annual look at the jobs market includes: Advice for CVs,portfolios and interviews; per-discipline guidance on getting apromotion; the education sector; our salary survey; and much,much more

Salary Survey Dissecting the data to see how industry salaries are changing

Regional Focus: Cambridge A look at current developments and new stories fromthe historic University town

Wrong NumbersThis month: Game Engines vs Car Engines

DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

* Disclaimer: Develop realises that none of these statistics are based on reasonable maths

EDITORIAL enquiries should go through [email protected], or call him on 01992 535646

To discuss ADVERTISING contact [email protected],or call him on 01992 535647

F O R W A R D P L A N N E R

Mingleplayerming.ul play.er – adjective

DEVIPEDIA

…the sameyear as theGameboy Robert Donner

writes MinesweeperAtari’s doomed

Lynx hits retail…

THQ founded as TrinityAcquisition Corporation

4,000,000

3,000,000

2,000,000

1,000,000

02007 2011 2015

Dissecting the hyperbole of games development

What ‘they’ think it means:An innovative new concept,mingleplayer ‘blurs the lines betweenoffline and online modes’, and is muchmore than just multiplayer with bots.Really, it is. It allows the player an‘integration of experiences’ acrosssingleplayer, co-op, and multiplayer, andredefines our understanding of how wemake and play games.

What it really means:Possibly nothing. It seems it’s an awkwardattempt at defining a none-too-clearnew way of repackaging existing singleand multiplayer content.

Epic recently announced that 800,000 usershad installed the company’s UDK since it’slaunch in 2009. An optimistic projection ofthose installs means that, by 2015, more of uswill be using the UDK engine than cars’engines. OK, that’s a lie, but looking at sales ofthe Mercedes A Class, maybe more of us willbe using Epic’s engines than those in one carmodel. It’s maths, so it must be a fact*

Mercedes A-Classengines: 1.6million

Unreal DevelopmentKit: 0

Mercedes A-Classengines: 2.2 million

Unreal DevelopmentKit: 800,000

Unreal DevelopmentKit: 3.2 million

Mercedes A-Classengines: 2.8 million

82 | JULY 2011

Jo Twist has a forwardthinking optician to thankfor her love of video games

Who are you and what do you do?I am Jo Twist, commissioning editor foreducation at Channel 4. We commission softlearning and life skills for 14-to-19-year-olds.We try to do things that will help themsurvive the next five years. We reach them intheir fun time outside school so a lot of whatwe do happens to be games, but not all of it.

It’s just that games are massive magnetsfor them and learning through play issomething we all do. We work 100 per centwith independent developers andproduction companies who do anything fromgames that help teens think and talk aboutdeath, to games that let you run a sweatshop,and even games that make you money savvythrough racing squirrels.

What are you working on right now?Of our 16 projects for 2011, seven of them aregames and a couple more are game-like orhave mini games as part of them. I’m reallylooking forward to our games taking onattitudes to fast fashion andentrepreneurship. Sweatshop by Littleloud isa tower defence style game which puts you incommand of a sweatshop, making moraldecisions about how much you use labour tofulfil fast fashion demands. Another issomething Preloaded has just startedworking on, which is a shoe crafting game tohelp young people to understand socialsuccess is just as valid as financial success in

business. It’s underpinned by a socialenterprise triple bottom line model. Another Ilove playing at the moment is Yes Chef –working title – from Player Three. It’s asubversive 2D platform puzzler to help boysunderstand what effects food they eat have. Iam also trying to get a cat in every game. It’sjust a thing.

What was the first video game or productthat you ever worked on in the industry?When I worked for Newsround online I co-devised a couple of games. One, PoacherPatrol, is still live and kicking. We had a lot offun playing with crocodile spit. But really, as atechnology journalist, I wrote about gamesmore. I did a few women in games featureswhich is how I met Aleks Krotoski and AliceTaylor. Where I could, I wrote pieces whichplayed on what I explored in my PhD: onlinecommunities as social contexts for identityplay. I also wrote about games like Myst beingused in the classroom for learning. I lovedbeing a journalist and interviewed so manyheroes such as Will Wright. That was anawesome day.

What was the first video game you everplayed, and did you enjoy it?It was Pong. Yes, I am that old. I had a badsquint aged five and on so my very forwardthinking optician recommended to myparents that instead of wearing a ‘bully-magnet’ eye patch, they should buy me anOptim Sport – which is still in my cabinet –and play Pong with my good eye covered up.

It worked. Kind of. I migrated onto a series ofGame & Watches. I was fascinated by allthings gadgetry because I grew up in HongKong.

What is your favourite game ever, and forwhat reason?A close competition between SSX Tricky andLEGO Indiana Jones/Star Wars because I don’treally die. I have very little patience and ashort attention span, but I love what LEGOdoes to some of my favourite childhood films.Generally, I love social games and what theydo to people’s faces in a room when they aresharing that play experience.

What do you enjoy about the video gamesindustry today?I am immensely enjoying what apps aredoing to games and I binge games onFacebook purely for research purposes(currently it’s Ravenwood Fair). But I also lovethe aesthetic and the emotion which isdriving games like Limbo and Heavy Rain:beautiful stories and works of art.

What disappoints you about the videogames industry today?That game design expertise has notinfluenced what telly does. Designing forplayful experiences, especially when we arethinking about designing systems that helppeople gain insight or skill, is such a fine art.

It’s a skill that needs to spread beyond one industry. Somethin’ Else and Preloadeddid it really excellently with one of ourprojects, Superme.

What hobbies, collections or interests doyou have that are completely unrelated tovideo games?Cats. I have the best playlist of cat videos onthe internet. I have never owned one, but Imake up for that in getting a cat into everycommission. I am obsessed with all kinds ofmedia distractions and need to be playing orlistening to something at all times. Podcasts,Drop 7, or Naughty Bear usually. I also have afantastic Smurf collection.

I am immenselyenjoying what apps

are doing to games and Ibinge games on Facebookpurely for researchpurposes.

Jo Twist, Channel 4

THE FAQ PAGE: JO TWISTDevelop grills respected figures from the global development sector

CODA

WeKnowYourWorld

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

UK: £35 Europe: £50 Rest of World: £70Subscription

Intent Media is a member of thePeriodical Publishers Associations

Editor-in-ChiefMichael [email protected]

Online EditorRob [email protected]

DesignerDan [email protected]

Deputy EditorWill [email protected]

Sales ManagerAlex [email protected]

PublisherStuart [email protected]

Staff WriterStuart [email protected]

Production ManagerSuzanne [email protected]

Managing EditorLisa [email protected]

the international monthly forgames programmers, artists,musicians and producers

Develop Magazine. Saxon House, 6a St. Andrew Street. Hertford, Hertfordshire. SG14 1JAISSN: 1365-7240 Copyright 2011 Printed by The Manson Group, AL3 6PZ

CIRCULATIONIS OVER 8,000

Enquiries, please email: [email protected] Tel: 01580 883 848

Charges cover 11 issues and 1st classpostage or airmail dispatch foroverseas subscribers

Develop is published 11 times ayear, reaching 8,000 readersthroughout the UK andinternational market

We Know Your World amiqus.com

ContributorsDavid Braben, John Broomhall, Tim Closs, Jeremy Gaffney, Rick Gibson, Balor Knight, Tatiana Kruse, Will Luton, Louis Natanson, George Parrish, LizPrince, Mark Rein, Matthew Ritchie, Michael Schade, Raj Talluri, Robert Troughton, Alexa Turness

Documents

Develop - Issue 118 - July 2011