Develop - Issue 121 - October

Fully-featured console and browserdevelopment solution

BlitzTech. By developers, for developers BlitzTech.com

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

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

OCTOBER 2011 | #121 | £4 / e7 / $13WWW.DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

“Be a

Cliff Bleszinski explains how games developers can find fame in the 21st Century

person,be a

inside the new fmod • london games conference • scotland focus • popcap dublin

brand”

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DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET OCTOBER 2011 | 03

ALPHA05 – 12 > dev news from around the globeAn in-depth interview with Cliffy B on life after Gears of War, a detailed guide tonext month’s London Games Conference, an analysis of Tiny Tower’s success, and acatch up with the concept designer of Borderlands 2

14 – 17 > opinion and analysisNick Gibson ponders the motivations of the industry doom-mongers, DavidBraben muses on the evolution of the controller, Tim Heaton considers the ‘AgileManifesto’, and Will Luton explores a ‘post-free theme park’

18 – 19 > the develop diaryA round-up of the key events on the industry calendar including MIGS and NEoN

BETA24 – 27 > new payment modelsAn overview of the new trends, technologies and challenges defining theevolution of in-game payment systems and other models of revenue generation

29 – 36 > region focus: scotlandAn in-depth look at Scotland’s thriving games industry, with input fromdevelopers, tech companies, service providers, trade bodies and government

38 – 39 > inside popcap dublinDevelop visits the giant of casual gaming’s European headquarters to find outabout the creative culture of the mystery-shrouded studio

BUILD44 – 45 > interview: fmod studioFMOD’s soon to be released technology could change the audio sector for good,say its creators

46 > key release: bigworld technologyAll the details on the coming versions of the MMO tech company’s tools

49 > epic diaries: mass effect 3Epic’s Mark Rein looks at UE3’s role in the forthcoming BioWare epic

51 > unity focus: air bandThanks to Relentless Software’s effort with Air Band, the first Unity-authored Kinectgame has seen a commercial release

53 > heard about: forza motorsport 4Develop’s audio man John Broomhall talks to the team that gave the engines inForza 4 their roaring realism

CODA66 > faq: hidetaka ‘swery’ suehiroThe Deadly Premonition creator talks movies, TV, music, drinking, food and women

ContentsDEVELOP ISSUE 121 OCTOBER 2011

57 – 63studios, tools, services and courses

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w w w . c r c p r e s s . c o m

3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game DevelopmentSecond EditionFletcher DunnValve Software

Ian ParberryUniversity of North Texas, Denton, USA

“With solid theory and references, along with practical advice borne from decadesof experience, all presented in an informal and demystifying style, Dunn and Par-berry provide an accessible and useful approach to the key mathematical operationsneeded in 3D computer graphics.”

—Eric Haines, co-author of Real-Time Rendering

Catalog no. K13210, September 2011, 846 pp.ISBN: 978-1-56881-723-1, $69.95 / £44.99

Also available as an eBook

Practical Rendering & Computation with Direct3D 11Jason Zink, Matt Pettineo, and Jack Hoxley

“... an optimal blend of concepts and philosophy, illustrative figures to clarify themore difficult points, and source code fragments to make the ideas concrete. …Books do not get any better than this!”

—David Eberly, Geometric Tools

*see page 60 for an excerpt from the book

Catalog no. K13207, September 2011, 648 pp.ISBN: 978-1-56881-720-0, $69.95 / £44.99


*Enter code 501HM when ordering at www.crcpress.com to receive a 25% discount.

Game Development ToolsEdited by

Marwan Y. AnsariWMS Gaming, Plainfield, Illinois, USA

Helping you to improve work flow and build games faster, this volume offers prac-tical, implementable tools for game development professionals. Topics range frommanaging complexity in build pipelines, to real-time constructive solid geometry,to GPU debugging with NVIDIA's Parallel Nsight.

Catalog no. K13066, May 2011, 344 pp.ISBN: 978-1-56881-432-2, $49.95 / £31.99


GPU Pro 2Edited by

Wolfgang EngelConfetti Special Effects

Packed with hands-on advice for resolving common graphics programming issues,this book focuses on advanced rendering techniques that run on the DirectXand/or OpenGL run-time with any shader language available. It also covers techniques for handheld programming to reflect the increased importance ofgraphics on mobile devices.

Catalog no. K00418, February 2011, 470 pp.ISBN: 978-1-56881-718-7, $69.95 / £49.99


501HM_K13210_SP_AD:501HM_K13210...SP_AD 8/22/11 1:31 PM Page 1

GAMES DEVELOPMENTvisionary David Cage has saidhe would be working in Canadaif France ever dropped itsgames tax break policy.

“To tell the truth, without taxbreaks, I’m pretty certain we’dbe in Canada right now,” Cagetold Develop.

The Quantic Dream bossconfirmed that France’sgenerous tax credits policy –which provides studios a 20 percent refund on production

costs – had significantly helpedthe development of theirHeavy Rain project.

But he rejected the notionthat video games studios areliving it easy with the extra helpin the form of tax breaks fromtheir governments.

“Tax breaks are not a‘benefit’,” he told Develop. “Theyare used to do a better job.Simple as that. If there were notax breaks… well, Heavy Rainwould probably still exist, but alot less money would havebeen spent on it.

“If you miss a milestone, it’sonly the money that keeps yourproject away from death.”

Quantic Dream launchedHeavy Rain in February last year,and since then, the Frenchstudio has seen worldwidecritical acclaim and awards.

But the studio itself is in aconstant race with other gamesdevelopers across the globe,Cage said, and Canada’s taxbreak haven is giving the MapleLeaf an edge.

“When a game arrives,people just compare the titles,

people just look at if it works ornot,” Cage said.

“They don’t look to see if ourstudio is fighting with the sameweapons as a Canadian studio.

“Life is easy in Canada. You’vegot all the money in the world.You can recruit like mad overthere. You’ll have tax breaksand more tax breaks and nearly40 per cent tax breaks on everyproject that you do. It’s crazy.

“The French games industrycouldn’t compete without taxbreaks. And I look at the UK andthink it’s all quite depressing.”


ADVENTURES IN GAMES DEVELOPMENT: NEWS, VIEWS & MORE

“Any successful team is already ‘agile’ in any real

definition of the philosophy.”Tim Heaton on studio management, p16

How to befamous,

Cliffy B-stylep6

London GamesConference

speaker rosterp9

The art anddesign of

Borderlands 2p10

by RRob Crossley

The French games industrycouldn’t compete without tax

breaks. And I look at the UK andthink it’s all quite depressing.

David Cage, Quantic Dream

Cage: No games tax breaksand I’ll quit for CanadaGovernment support gave Quantic Dream a commercial a edge it might not otherwise have been able to afford

Quantic Dream receivedcritical acclaim forHeavy Rain, whichDavid Cage says wouldhave had millions lessspent on it without taxbreaks

05 Dev 121 Alpha COVER_final 23/09/2011 16:52 Page 1

Cliff Bleszinski is the game developmentcelebrity incarnate. He has famouslydevoted Twitter following, and is mobbedby fans wherever he goes.

By his own confession he is a brandalmost as much as his recently completedGears of War series, and as a result he hasenjoyed a very successful career. So howcan you do the same?

Develop asks the man himself.

When you spoke at GDC this year youtalked about presenting yourself as abrand. Should all developers aspire to become one?I’ve found that the talk was well received. Iwas able to – I hate to reuse this termbecause it sounds so cheesy, and it’s from 30Rock’s Tracy Jordan I believe –’drop truthbombs on your ass’.

It was just a lot of things on my chest thatI believe not a lot a lot of developers reallyhave it in them to say, or the capacity or theability. The funny thing was that when I saidI’ve never met a Rockstar employee in thattalk, shortly after that I got an email fromSam Houser saying ‘anytime you’re in NewYork lets have dinner’. I said ‘sure man, butwho built your games? I’d love to meetthem too’.

This is why if a developer Tweets me and Ican check them out and really see thatthey’re legit, I will follow them and we’llhave back and forth interactions. Not onlybecause I’m an advocate of developers, butbecause its also a nice recruiting tactic.

I go from being that guy who does all theinterviews and talks to becoming a realperson and we can actually work togetherand be creative together. Developers bynature were the ones at the back of theclass drawing in their pad, and not the onesgoing to parties and things like that, so theyhave a hard time of putting themselvesout there. Its not always easy for themajority of them, but the best thingyou can do for your career is to be anactual name as opposed to just, and Ihate to say it, a gear in the machine.

In terms of becoming a brand, whatadvice would you give to the new schoolof indie developers?With Notch, a lot of the news from Minecraftcomes directly from his Twitter account. Heand I have a playful banter back and forthon there which is great because he’s a coolguy and helps gives me indie cred to talk tohim and know that the first PC game Ibought in years was Minecraft.

But look at him, he’s got over 300,000followers and he has the hat. Clearly the guy

gets a certain amount of the branding right,he’s got the cool nickname, he’s got the hathe wears everywhere. You spot him andknow what he looks like. He’s an examplelike John Blow.

I know who these guys are more so thanothers. I mean, I’ve had developers send metheir resumes who worked on triple-A titlesand I’m like: ‘I’ve worked in this industry for20 years and I’ve never met you?’ They say‘Oh, I never got to go to GDC or anythinglike that’ and I’m like: ‘Yeah. That’s probablyby design, or people aren’t getting paidwhat they’re worth’.

Now you only see agencies gettinginvolved to make sure that developers doget paid well because by and large, thosewho are creative will always have themoney surgically removed from them bythose who are business people.

And what about those indies that havethe potential to be in that position in acouple of years time, or a few months?Well, first you have to make great games. IfGears of War 3 was getting horrible reviewsthen suddenly next year, if we’re working onsomething, nobody would want to talk. It’sjust the truth of the matter. You go intowhat is the games equivalent of movie jail.

First and foremost, make a great gamebut also have a personality. Be the guy withthe hip glasses, with the one gauge earringand the gamer tattoo all the way to thesleeves with a skateboard. Stand out.

Don’t be a developer archetype: There’sthe big chubby guy with the beard. There’sthe super skinny guy with the glasses.

THERE’S A moment, 721 words into ourinterview with him that Cliffy B makes anexcellent, if contentious point.

I won’t spoil it, but it’s the one about notbeing an awkward looking social misfitdeveloper in order to make yourself famous, a‘power creative’ as he calls it, just like him.

I know what you’re thinking.‘Who the hell does this good-looking guy

think he is, with his 117,359 Twitter followers,personable nature, esteemed industryreputation, regular TV appearances, enviableCV of game credits, beautiful fiance and… oh.’

Exactly. No one says Cliffy B is perfect – first of all Cliff

himself, just check out his anecdote about atweet with the word ‘cum’ in it.

But when it comes to an answer to the ‘Howcan we have games superstars akin toHollywood superstars?’ people like him are theclosest thing to a perfect answer.

I was sat front row at GDC 2008 when hechainsawed his way through the scenery tounveil Gears of War 2.

It was a preposterous moment, for anymedium, let alone just games.

Would George Lucas wave a toy lightsaber tounveil his next bit of Star Wars merchandise? OrJK Rowling cast fake spells with a wand whentalking about a new Potter movie? YetBleszinski pulled it off.

He and his games may not have appeal toeveryone – one of his aliases is, after all, ‘DudeHuge’ – but Bleszinski has managed to not onlycourt the media and build a reputation, he’sgot form as a game designer and designdirector of note. As he says, he knows when tobe PR, and when to be a person.

Forget the jokes about appearance: that’s theunique skill that made him famous. And oneyou’ll want to learn yourself as developersbecome more connected to their audience.

ALPHA | NEWS

Editorial

Michael [email protected]

STAR POWER The gears With Gears of War concluded, Will Freeman asks Cliffy B whatother developers can do to become a games dev superstar

06 | OCTOBER 2011

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There’s the creepy guy who smells funnywho’s awkward and hovers around people.There’s the different types, right?

Be a person, be a brand. Just do somethingso that people know who you are. Have anonline presence more than ever. Understandsocial channels. Look at people like VeronicaBelmont who puts herself out there and nowhas over a million followers. I know actorswho have been in Oscar winning films whodon’t have that much. It is the digital age in

which we live.

You’re a normal person, butyou’re living a life in thepublic eye. What advice

would you give dealing with the pressureand experience of that?It’s fine, honestly. It’s fun. I haven’t hadanyone be overly negative with it yet. I dooccasionally get in trouble for some tweetsonce in a while. There is a comedian that Ifollow who tweeted at one point ‘Drinkingcum makes pineapple juice smell delicious’which I thought was quite hilarious, but PRpointed out the point that it’s not edgy; justpretty fucking gross.

I’m honestly having the time of my life andI feel this weird responsibility to share it withpeople. Being a games developer and gettingto work on all this creative stuff and travellingthe world, meeting celebs – all that stuff. This

is hopefully helping to redefine the image ofwhat it means to be a creative in 2011.

Gears of War 3 is the final game of theseries. So much of brand-Cliffy B andGears of War are interlinked. How doesthat leave you feeling?I’m relieved. There’s so many stories that canbe told in this world. The brand is strongerthan ever. Hopefully the game sells morethan Gears one or two, but we’ll see. The finalcut scene still gets me a little bit misty eyedwhen I watch it. I don’t know if it’s becauseI’ve been working on the franchise for solong or just because a lot of it is personal forall of us on the development team.

NEWS | ALPHA

of change

OCTOBER 2011 | 07DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

Don’t be a developerarchetype: the big

chubby guy with the beard,the super skinny guy withthe glasses, the creepy guywho smells funny who’sawkward and hoversaround. Do something sothat people knowwho you are.


ALPHA| NEWS

My main advice that I tell a lot ofdevelopers is just make sure you make yourgame personal.

Don’t make just what you think the marketwill want. Don’t make it like ‘I loved bunnieswhen I was growing up so I’m gonna make agame about bunnies’. Make something that’sdeeply personal.

You know, a metaphor for family or abuseor experience or loves lost. I guarantee youthe creator behind the cult PS3 gameCatherine has got some stuff going on. Somake games personal and ultimately they’llresonate, and you know if the game sells wellmaybe you’ll have a chance to keepexploring those themes.

Obviously Gears of War has done well. Doyou feel satisfied at this concluding point?No. We can do better. We can always dobetter. The number of gamers playing thegame online – I’m hoping Gears of War 3 hasmore than Gears 1 or 2 ever did, especiallyconsidering how competitive the market is.

You look at the numbers that Call of Dutyand Halo pulls and we’re not at that pointyet. I’m hoping Gears of War 3 brings uscloser to that point. People forgot alsothat we’re only the third gameof the series.

There’s been a couplemore Halo’s and a few moreCall of Duty’s so who knows,maybe we’ll be able tobuild upon that success.

I want with this game,more so than any othergame we’ve evermade, for people toavoid the perceptionof what the game is. Ifyou haven’t played aGears game, now pleasegive this one a try. Wereally do think you’ll like ita lot.

Concluding a creative opus like Gears ofWar must have been difficult. Calling it awrap in particular, must have been nearimpossible for you.Creatively, the second you ship a game allyou see is the holes. Earlier, me and somecolleagues were talking about George Lucasand how he can’t resist putting his grubbylittle mitts all over everything.

That’s because, if I could go back, as there’stons of things I would change about Gears,tons of things I’d change about Gears 2, andeven Gears 3. I’d tweak things in it. The key isknowing when to stop because we’re still abusiness and you have to ship a damn gameand sell it at some point.

So, from a creative culture perspective,how do you balance that need to respectbusiness and your vision for your games?I have an amazing producer. That’s the ebband flow. Whereas I’m asking for 40 weapons,and Rod and the other producers are certainwe can only do 25, I have to make a choice.

There’s a certain minimum that you canship with a game that will make your gamers

happy. As a creative you will always wantan infinite amount and it’s your job as acreative to push for that too much andwhen the pushback comes, be mature

about that decision and ultimatelyshift the product.

And that’s part of buildingthat role as a what you call a‘power creative’?That’s one of the things I saidin my talk. If I went off

tomorrow and someinvestors came along andgave me a billion dollarsto make my dream gameI’d be terrified because Ineed that system ofchecks and balances. I

think as a creative youneed to be edited.

There’s certain film directors who have acertain amount of success and then they goand make this one movie that they wantthat’s three and a half hours and you end upthinking: ‘really dude? I liked your old onethat was two hours long’.

There’s the same thing with authors whoreach a certain amount of success. Book oneis a normal thickness, book two is a normalthickness as well, and then book threebecomes 1,000 pages because they have this

sense that ‘this was the story I had alwayswanted to tell’.

Half of the time when you see thedirectors cut of a movie, you’re like ‘actually Ican see why they cut all that out’. You needthat system of checks and balances to keepcreators in check sometimes. We’re not justart, we’re still a business.

Having finished Gears of War, do you havea feeling of creative freedom, or is thatintimidating to you?I feel like we’ve wrapped it up and put a bowon it. It is what it is and we’ve put it under thetree for the proverbial Christmas morning.

But that said, there’s the long history ofthis war, tons of different stories to tell andthematically if you figure what makes a Gears game in the future, there’s a lot ofdifferent directions we could go in. I’m notburnt out on it anywhere as some mightassume or think.wwww.epicgames.com

Make somethingthat’s deeply

personal. You know, ametaphor for family orabuse or experienceor loves lost.

Cliff Bleszinski, Epic Games

Cliffy B knows how tomilk a photo opp asshown here (above right)skateboarding in theoffices of Microsoft’s UKPR agency when posingfor Develop

08 | OCTOBER 2011

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HOW TO B CLIFFY

Craft a unique image“Be a person, be a brand. Just do something so that people know who you are.”

Make your games personal“Make something that’s deeply personal. You know, a metaphor for family or abuse or experience or loves lost.”

Speak your mind on Twitter“I do occasionally get in trouble for some tweets once in a while.”

Listen to your producer“I have an amazing producer. That’s the ebb and flow.”

Get some social skills“There’s the creepy guy who smells funny who’s awkward and hovers around people.”


EVENTS | ALPHA

The London GamesConference will featurefocused discussions andkeynotes from a host oftop industry professionals


Online games experts to speakat London Games Conference Schedule and line-up locked in for November 10th conference – discounts for UKIE and Tiga members

LONDON GAMESCONFERENCE SCHEDULE AND THEMES

4pm Opening remarks4.05pm OPENING KEYNOTE: GameStop(Mike Mauler)4.35pm The Digital Transition: TheWinners and Losers (Nicholas Lovell)4.55pm Sega & Digital Distribution(John Clark)5.15pm Digital Developers Share TheirSecrets (Guillaume Rambourg, GoG.comand David Bishop, PopCap)5.35pm The Future of Video Games(Peter Molyneux & Ian Livingstone)6.15pm Coffee break6.40pm What Video Games Can LearnFrom Music (Feargal Sharkey)7.00pm The 5 Events That Will ChangeVideo Games (Nick Parker)7.10pm Video Games and DigitalSecurity (Professor Sommer)7.30pm OnLive & Cloud Gaming (TomPaquin)7.50pm CLOSING KEYNOTE: Valve (JasonHoltman)8.20pm Dinner & networking

LONDON GAMES CONFERENCE SPEAKER LINE-UP

Jason Holtman, head of biz dev, Valve, Mike Mauler, international EVP, GameStop, David Bishop, senior designer, PopCap, Tom Paquin, CTOOnLive, Peter Molyneux, founder, Lionhead, Ian Livingstone, life president, Eidos, John Clark, UK MD, Sega, Feargal Sharkey, CEO, UK Music,Nick Parker, Screen Digest, Nicholas Lovell, GamesBrief, Prof Peter Sommer, digital forensics expert, Guillaume Rambourg, MD, GoG.com

To book a place, contact [email protected] or call 01992 535 646. High-profile sponsorship slots are available - contact [email protected]

or call her on 01992 535 647 to find out more.

DIGITAL GAMES experts from around theworld will convene in London this November.

The final schedule for November 10th’sLondon Games Conference has been set, withspeakers from leading online games firmsPopCap, OnLive and Good Old Games plusanalyst Nick Parker joining the roster.

A full schedule can be found on the right.PopCap’s senior designer David Bishop and

GoG.com MD Guillaume Rambourg will takepart in a series of ‘micro-keynotes’ detailingthe lessons learned as leading developers ofonline games.

Casual gaming firm PopCap is best knownfor the likes of Bejewelled and Plants vsZombies, and was earlier this year acquired byElectronic Arts.

Good Old Games (GoG.com) meanwhile isone of the most successful digital distributorsof games, building its business on a range ofolder PC titles updated to run on newmachines – it is owned by Polish gamesstudio CD Project.

Meanwhile, OnLive’s CTO Tom Paquin willhost a session looking at cloud gaming.Paquin isn't just a games expert, but aleading name in Silicon Valley, having co-founded Netscape, the online firm that

invented key technology such as SSL andweb ‘cookies’, and then co-founded theFirefox browser firm Mozilla.

Elsewhere, analyst Nick Parker will take tothe stage to deliver his views on the fiveevents set to reshape the games industry.

The four big names join an already-excellent roster of previously announcedspeakers focused on how the games industryis embracing the transition to digital content.

Keynotes this year come from GameStopand Valve, with Eidos life president IanLivingstone, Microsoft Game Studios Europecreative director Peter Molyneux and Sega'sJohn Clark also set to deliver talks.

Other sessions will look at whichcompanies will not survive the digitaltransition, what games can learn from themusic industry, and how deeply securitycompromises have impacted publishers arealso on the agenda.

London Games Conference takes place atOne Wimpole Street, central London, andstarts at 4pm. The four-hour conference isfollowed by dinner and networking. Theevent is sponsored by IGN UK.

Tickets are available for £269, withdiscounts for UKIE and Tiga members.

09 Dev121 news_final 23/09/2011 15:52 Page 1

10 | OCTOBER 2011

ALPHA | NEWS Q&A

First among sequelsGearbox Software recently blasted sequels that lazily rehash the assets of their predecessors.So Will Freeman asked concept designer Scott Kester – will Borderlands 2 be any different?

Gearbox insists that Borderlands 2 issomething much more significant than atypical sequel. Isn’t that something anydeveloper would claim?From the start we wanted to make a ‘truesequel’. We really didn’t want to just re-skinenvironments and rework textures. Ofcourse there is a little bit of reusing assets;stuff that will make the game familiar in theright way. Characters like the psycho banditsmake a return.

But what was really important to us whenmaking Borderlands 2 was to take what wedid with the first game and do more of it,give it more variety in every context.

There were so many new ideas for thisfrom our designers and across our office;almost more than we needed.

That meant it was very important foreveryone from the designers to us on theconceptual side of the design that – with somany ideas that we were all very passionateabout – the game should not become adesign clone.

But you must have to balance thatdevotion to new ideas with delivering avideo game that is in spirit the same asthe first Borderlands.We do really have to be focused. Sometimessomebody from another internal projectwould come onto Borderlands 2 and dosomething or conceive something and we’dhave to be honest if it missed the point ofwhat Borderlands is. We’d just have to say no.

That said, one thing that’s reallyinteresting from the conceptual side is thatall of the guys here have certain things thatthey are better at, and in trusting in thatthere is a degree of freedom to what goesinto Borderlands.

So, for example, I’ve concentrated on thecharacters and creatures and someenvironment stuff, and then there’s adesigner I work with who can do anythingbut is really creative with guns, so he’s goingto do guns for the game.

With that kind of focused talent, whenwe’re designing stuff, it’s not so much aboutdesigning something to fit into a box that isconsidered Borderlands, but about what wehave designed that can go in there. Thathelps make the sequel its own.

And part of how we define Borderlands 2 isby letting the project be really personal ifyou’re a game designer or level designer orconcept designer. We put in a lot ofourselves to the game.

So, for example I wear a lot ofskateboarding stuff, so maybe I’ll try andtake that personal style and make itinfluence the design of one of the charactersI’m working on.

There’s a little more of me coming in, andit gives the character a little more; somemore depth, and more the player canassociate with. So letting aspects of ourteam’s real world style in is part of theconsistency of Borderlands.

So that investment of personal style isactively encouraged? Is it part of thecreative approach at Gearbox Software?Yes, definitely. The first game had a verydifferent style, and after that what we wereseeing was people’s idealised vision of whatthey felt that style had to be. It wasbecoming watered down in its approach.

So when we really looked at the sequel,for example when we changed the art styleand I took on doing the characters, it was achance to do things from a completelydifferent viewpoint. In designing the sequel,we decided it was better to shoot furtherand pull yourself back then take a designside step.

In the first game if somebody suggestedan idea and it was seen as perhaps tooridiculous, it might have still been done andput in and it was realised to be awesome.

I’m not saying we’re these total rogues, aswe still filter things for quality very carefully,but I hope it showed in the first game andwill show in this one, that there’s a lot of littletouches and nuances all over, that, withinreason, show personal flair. We have to keepan eye on what is too far, but it’s there.

So what’s too far? How do you keep itunder control?It is hard to quantify, and there’s not exactlya rule set or anything like that. We try toencourage our team to always keep humourin there, but we don’t want it to just turn intolots of silly humour that just invalidates theseriousness of the gameworld, events and so on.

It’s kind of hard to say what works andwhat doesn’t, as sometimes somebody doesa concept or creates something that clearlybelongs somewhere else. A lot of the

You could say wetake these elements

that maybe shouldn’t gotogether, andthrough creativitymake them work.

Scott Kester, Gearbox Software

Through a ‘kit-mash’design approach inspiredby the customisation ofmodeling kits, theBorlderlands 2 team areconvinced they’ve made adistinct sequel

10,11 Dev 120 Alpha News_final 22/09/2011 09:08 Page 1

Borderlands aesthetic is that sort of ‘kit-mash’mentality of finding things and putting themtogether, so it’s hard to say what works untilyou do it.

We have a slogan, and kind of joke aboutour design approach, that is ‘kit-mash theway to victory’, kit-mashing being the modelmaking process of mixing-up and combiningdifferent model kits. You could say we takethese elements that maybe shouldn’t gotogether, and through creativity make themwork residing in the same space.

How many of the original Borderlandsteam is working on Borderlands 2? Is thateven important to balancing making thesequel feel original with capturing thespirit of the first?There’s people from the first game here, andnew people, and they all have their ownopinion. We’re not here to shoot down newideas. People can always prove to us theirideas are good.

And it’s interesting to see how the teammembers influence each other in thedevelopment. We take each other’s conceptsand add our own ideas, and maybe eventake something too far in our direction, butthen inspire each other through thatprocess. That’s how we can find that perfectbalance between something totally new andsomething that connects with the first game.

So a collaborative approach is importantto Gearbox’s goal of making what youcalled a ‘true sequel’?We’re very open with each other about ideasthat suck and ideas that don’t work. That’spart of it. One of the things you learn is notto get attached to your ideas until theybecome a reality.

How does Gearbox’s approach totechnology serve to help you distinguisha sequel from its predecessor?We use Unreal Engine, and we do somethings with Unreal that other people haven’tdone. That is something everybody whouses Unreal probably does, and our techguys spend a lot of time creating a distinctsystem. It’s a very intense set-up that allowsus to do something new in each game.

From a concept design perspective thepractice of differentiating Borderlands 2from the first game must have been ainteresting process.It’s really interesting in that we were tryingto take something that people know andshow them something new that they stillknow and understand. We want people tosee a totally new character and understandthat it’s Borderlands. We don’t want to justimitate ourselves, and I think sometimesdevelopers paint themselves into a cornerknowing people expect they will dosomething a certain way.

That’s why it’s really important to keepiterating on the subtle things in the buildingof a game that the general public might noteven notice. There need to be constantevolutions of how you use your constraintscreatively, and it’s an interesting dilemma. www.gearboxsoftware.com

Gearbox SoftWare’sconcept designer ScottKester has been given theoppotunity to inject hisown personal style andtastes into some ofBorderlands 2’s characters


NEWS Q&A | ALPHA

10,11 Dev 120 Alpha News_final 22/09/2011 09:09 Page 2

12 | OCTOBER 2011

ALPHA | CRITIQUE

THE SENSATIONA textbook iOS success story, from themoment it was released Tiny Towerenchanted the global iPhone user.

Its glorious debut reportedly saw a millioncopies downloaded in its first four days onrelease, and it quickly became a favouritewater cooler talking point for the iOStrendsetters: ‘Are you playing it?’, ‘How doesyour tower look?’ And that all importantquestion: ‘How many floors do you have?’.

During July 2011, if you weren’t the landlordof a diminutive virtual skyscraper, you simplyweren’t in with the games industry elite.

THE GAMEThe premise of Tiny Tower is a simple one.One floor at a time, the player must constructa soaring concrete building, filling its roomswith a variety of residential apartments,services, retailers and entertainment spaces,always carefully balancing the ecosystem tomaximise efficiency and growth.

Metaphorically and near-literally, TinyTower serves up a neat vertical slice of theSimCity game concept.

Heavily focused on a compulsion loop thathas proved furiously addictive the world over,it also plays itself in the background, evenwhen your iPhone is out of battery. It is builtaround a freemium model that tempts usersto part with their cash in return for fasteraccess to funds.

THE STUDIOBefore Tiny Tower’s foundations were laid,NimbleBit was already infamous in the industryas the team that created amphibian-breedingiOS game Pocket Frogs; a title synonymouswith compulsion loop game design. Thestudio has a healthy back catalogue of iOSreleases, and like so many app developers, issomewhat publicity shy.

UNIQUE SELLING POINTThere are numerous games inspired bySimCity, and the ballooning of the number oftitles built around tight compulsion loops iswell documented.

How Tiny Tower stands out from its densecrowd of rivals is through its character. Fromthe name of its residents to the colourschemes of each floor, much of the game israndomised, resulting in an experience thatfeels very personal to the end-user. They maybe near identical the world over, but eachTiny Tower constructed feels like a completelyunique creation.

It also does a fine job of crafting an illusionof depth, and most importantly boasts a wayplayer’s can share how they’re doing; thetower itself. At a glance Tiny Tower builderscan see – and show – how they areprogressing by viewing their blossomingskyscraper in its entirety, resplendent withtiny residents beavering away.

WHY IT WORKSNimblebit’s creation is the game that keepson giving. There’s always new stock arriving,residents moving in and percentage barsreaching completion. What’s more, TinyTower’s manically repeating core game loopof restock-sell-buy is so compact and tidythat it can run dozens of timessimultaneously without complicating thegameplay. The result is a title that constantlyrewards the player, and relentlessly asks formore. It is compelling to play long beyondthe point when it has stopped being explicitlyfun, and even after the consumer has realisedit’s apparent depth is all an illusion, it stillcharms them into diving into its shallow waters.

TRY IT YOURSELFDo what Tiny Tower did to the god game.Choose a well loved strategy genre, and boilit down to its most basic form. Don’t be afraidof giving your audience something so simplethey can learn it all in three minutes. That’sthe point.

Then create a short compulsion loop –keep it to three or four basic stages – andintegrate that into you game.

Don’t put a compulsion loop over the topof a theme; put it into your creation’s theme.Have it repeat over and over, slowing downits rotation gradually as the game progressesand the player gains experience.

Now comes the tricky part. You need tocraft a suggestion of strategy so that the userfeels they are playing in their own way. Itneeds to be easy to stumble upon, but notessential to play the game.

And, if you’re fashioning a compulsionloop to make yourself some money, you’llprobably want to add in a way the player canfill up those percentage bars a little bit fasterwith some in-game currency.

Tiny TowerPUBLISHER: NimbleBitDEVELOPER: NimbleBitFORMAT: iOSPRICE: Free (microtransactions)www.nimblebit.com

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

12 Dev121 anatomy Blockbuster_FINAL 22/09/2011 16:53 Page 1

Which is the best sellinghorror series?

Silent Hill Alone in the Dark Resident Evil

WeKnowYour World.com

3904_Amiqus_Ad_Develop_October.indd 1 13/09/2011 10:14

14 | OCTOBER 2011

ALPHA | OPINION

RECENTLY, an anonymous publishingexecutive declared publically that the 3DS is“definitely dead” unless Nintendo generatesgood sales this Christmas.

The surprising finality of this proclamation,even allowing for the ‘unless’ parachuteclause, is by no means singular. Industryhistory is littered with flawed prognoses ofdoom for games platforms, which seem tocome thicker and faster in times of changesuch as these. This month I’ll explore whatmakes senior industry execs – and journalists– so unafraid to risk their reputations withsuch bold predictions of outright failure.

Sony’s PlayStation 3 launch was widelydescribed as a ‘failure’ in the games press, asseemingly slow hardware sales after launchweek triggered overblown, doom-ladendeclarations from senior industry figures.“The PS3 is a total disaster,” said one of theindustry’s most vocal and successful CEOs in2007, advising Sony that “they should justcancel it and do a do over”.

While Sony would undoubtedly havewelcomed higher sales in its first 12 months,it was far from the disaster so many declared;and with over 53m unit sales since then, thedoomsayers now simply look naive.

IN THE RUNNINGMany went astray by erroneously extrapolatinga short-term trend into a long-term one.Despite this being Sony’s third (TV-based)console launch, the doomsayers ignoredSony’s track record and, more relevantly, thesame sluggish starts to all its previousconsoles’ lives. Sony pioneered the ten-yearconsole lifecycle with the first PlayStation,then extended it with the second and shouldaccomplish the same longevity with the PS3.

To achieve this, Sony sensibly viewsconsole sales as a marathon during which anexplosive early sprint – for example, throughaggressive pricing – is not only commerciallyinappropriate but would have proveddetrimental to performance later in the race(leaving less room for later sales stimulationby price cuts). These are lessons that all consolemanufacturers have begun to take on board.

Besides this commercial myopia, the otherexplanation for these outbursts derives frompublishing execs panicking about theirmassive investment in new platforms notbeing sustained by sales in a particularmonth or quarter and simply seekingsomeone else to blame for their company’sunderperformance (and their over-estimates).

This self-interest lies at the heart of manyworld-ending pronouncements for broadersections of the games industry. Retail gamingand the console business as a whole havebeen declared dead or facing an imminentfatal demise so many times they should beregulars in George Romero movies. These

terminal diagnoses are usually given by thosewith vested interests in their death; forexample, digital distributors or mobile gamesdevelopers. Console-oriented companies

give as good pessimistic hyperbole as theyget; take the still common (and franklyrisible) claim that social is just a fad.

THE PSN’D IS NIGH?Although there certainly are examples ofcomplete commercial failure for certainplatforms, most have proven extremelyresilient. A great example of this was the PSNoutage earlier this year, which generated thefull gamut of reactionary headlines and pollresearch which quantified the extent to whichSony would experience a customer exodus.

“55 per cent said the PSN breach wouldput them off buying future Sony consoles,”claimed one article. “Gamers will simply nolonger trust Sony,” stated another. The truthwas that the PSN outage of April and Mayplus the accompanying consumer and mediafurore has had absolutely no negative impact

on the ongoing sales of PS3 hardware andretail software sales.

Hardware sales between April and Junewere actually higher than the previous yearas were software sales which evenexperienced a noticeable upwards spike inMay and June. In the three months since itwas restored, PSN has seen three million newregistrations and digital sales that are alreadyabove pre-outage levels.

In this case, those carrying their ‘the end ofthe world is nigh’ placards forgot that mostPS3 owners have little choice when it comesto high-end gaming (owning no high-specPC or other consoles). That there is a sizeablecore of console owners whose loyaltysurvives such tests, and that most players areoblivious to, or simply not interested in, suchindustry travails.

So, is the anonymous publisher correct inhis comments about the 3DS’s prospects? Noformat enjoys weak holiday sales, so his‘parachute’ is banal. This ‘few months to live’prognosis seems remarkably misguided – asif Nintendo would abandon such a majornew format after just nine months on sale. 3Dhas its flaws and Nintendo its challenges, but3DS has several tactical tricks to play beforegiving up the ghost.

Whatever you believe, these panicky viewsare best taken with a pinch of salt and alonger view.

Industry history islittered with flawed

prognoses of doom forgames platforms, whichseem to comethicker and faster intimes of change.

//COMMENT: BUSINESS

Doom-mongers bewareby Nick Gibson, Games Investor Consulting

Nick Gibson is a director at Games InvestorConsulting, providing research, strategyconsulting and corporate finance services to thegames, media and finance industries.www.gamesinvestor.com

The 3DS has beencriticised for poor salesearly on in its lifespan

14 Dev121 Gibson_final 22/09/2011 09:04 Page 1


OPINION | ALPHA

WHAT IS happening to our beloved videogames controller?

NEW PLAYERS DON’T GET ITIn the last few years we have seen somedramatic changes to gaming, but specificallywe have seen big changes to the interface forgames. Our last such change was probablythe introduction of analogue controllers; amuch smaller change, and before that themove from keyboard to joystick and joypad.

This time there are at least three types ofinterface, perhaps four: Kinect, inertialmotion sensing (Wii, Move), and touch-screens – with the rise of voice input waitingin the wings.

All are quite intuitive, and we are startingto see hybrids of these like Wii U, too. The factthey are intuitive is bringing in new people,put off by controllers and keyboards, togaming. It is also creating a raft of excitingnew opportunities.

STUDENTS DON’T WANT ITI recently attended the excellent DareProtoplay event in Dundee. Teams ofstudents competed to produce games innine weeks, which are then judged by boththe public and a panel of judges. Thestudents have a free choice of what to make,and the platform and user interface system torun it upon. The amazing thing is of thegames I saw, none of them used a controller.Five were on Kinect running on a PC, one onMove, and the rest on iPad (using Unity) orWindows Phone 7 (using XNA). As a test ofmood at least, the perception amongst thosestudents was that they want to work onsomething new, and, amazingly to me, thecontroller didn’t feature.

WHAT ABOUT DEVELOPERS?Of the four games Frontier is shipping this year,the same applies (two on Kinect, two on touchscreens). Don’t get me wrong, the controlleris still an important part of our business – TheOutsider, currently on hold, uses a controller –but the real change is, like it or not, thecontroller is now just a part of what we do.

AND ME?For me personally, in the little time I get toplay other people’s games at this time of year,they are still mostly controller-based – havingrecently finished Valve’s excellent Portal 2,and getting back to Red Dead Redemption –but increasingly I have been playing on theiPad, too.

It hasn’t reduced the time I get to spend onconsole games, but I have found I play attimes when that option simply isn’t there, likeat airports and on the train.

SO WHAT IS THE CONTROLLER GOOD FOR?Thinking about it some more, the controller isbest suited to ‘twitch’ games, especiallyshooters, and even then a mouse can offermuch better precision for quickly changingaim direction.

For selecting a location on a map, whetherit’s in Red Dead or in a strategy game, atouchpad is ideal – indeed the controller isprobably the worst of our existing set ofinput devices for such things.

For a car racing game, a steering wheel is agreat deal better, for a flight sim, a joystick oryoke is better.

Perhaps we should happily embracehybrid systems? We wouldn’t think of using akeyboard or mouse separately these days. Ifor one have a chatpad on my 360 and awireless keyboard on my PS3 for thoseannoying 16 digit codes we are forced totype in, because without those, the controlleris painful for text entry.

Summing up, the point of this piece is notto criticise the controller – it is a great jack-of-all-trades input device, one of the best formany things – but to draw attention to thesometimes unthinking and often childishpartisanship that can happen in our industrycriticising new interfaces.

We should embrace the new audiences theyare bringing, and yes, not forget the existingone. I also feel I have to mention one of mysoapboxes about hybrid controls – let’s see Callof Duty with lean left and right on Kinect.

The fact they areintuitive is bringing

in new people, put off bycontrollers and keyboards,to gaming. It is also creatinga raft of excitingnew opportunities.

//COMMENT: DESIGN

The Changing Face of Gamingby David Braben, Frontier Developments

David Braben is the founder of FrontierDevelopments. Best known as the co-creatorof Elite, Braben has contributed to a numberof other projects including Frontier: Elite II,Thrillville, LostWinds and Kinectimals. www.frontier.co.uk

The classic controller maybe a jack-of-all-trades butthe new user interfacessuch as Kinect, inertialmotion sensing andtouch-screens seem to bethe future of gaming

15 Dev121 David Braben_final 22/09/2011 09:46 Page 1

16 | OCTOBER 2011 DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

ALPHA | OPINION

JUST over ten years ago a group of softwaredevelopers and managers got together andcreated the Agile Manifesto.

It was a reaction to the formal heavyweightapproaches to software development usedpreviously – highly defined, managed andstaged processes that were failing to deliver,causing massive slips and budget overruns.The Agile Manifesto and its underlyingprinciples are available at agilemanifesto.orgfor anyone who’s interested – and everyonewho makes games should be. The principlesand values listed are inarguably valuable, andto some degree common sense.

From these philosophies severalmethodologies were created, the best knownof which is probably Scrum. It’s possible tosee some of these methods as franchises, oreven cults. They consist of a fairly rigid set ofrules, rituals and symbols that offer up aguaranteed entrance to the promised land –that is, delivering great games.

LESS AND MORENow, for some software categories and someteam types I have no doubt that having aprescribed method of working, based uponsound principles, is valuable and successful.

Scrum has been popular in gamesdevelopment for a while now, andinterestingly, it also seems to have created abacklash from people who have tried it andfailed to achieve the nirvana it promises. Ithink successful games developmentrequires more open minds and less manifestos.

Different successful teams work in differentways. Their dynamics are different. Some

teams work to a clear leader – maybe anauteur figure who, by sheer force of will, cancommunicate and incentivise everyone.

Some self-organise and resent regulardirection. Most teams are really made up ofsmaller teams, and those may well differbetween themselves. Like any sophisticatedorganism, a team forms like this because ofenvironmental factors. Somebody’srecruiting a certain type of person, andthey’re being mentored in a certain way.

Priorities for the game cause differentelements to exert different influences. Thosewho don’t fit the team, or who have differentvalues, leave. Teams self-reinforce and createtheir own personalities.

Teams are also highly complex systems.They’re not necessarily complicated, in thathow they operate can be relatively easilyunderstood, but complex in that small inputscan have large, unpredictable results. Forexample, increase a tools capability to allowiteration from a one-minute cycle to

immediate – it’s possible that’s a tipping pointthat may change the whole way a team works.

A team’s priorities, methods and personalityalso change through a development cycle.Creativity and production control wax andwane throughout a game’s development.Certain disciplines and individual staff willhave greater or lesser input at certain times.

TOOLBOX CLEVERSo project management techniques need tomatch their teams, and need to be dynamic.The only way to do that is to have a toolboxof ways to approach problems, and to havethe ability to be sensitive to how a teamworks. It’s possible then to offer advice andexperience and maybe propose some veryspecific tools.

The truth is that any successful gamesteam is already agile to any real definitions ofthe philosophy. Those that aren’t are eithershut or failing. Our Total War team has beenmaking strategy games based on clearlydefined pillars for well over ten years now. It’sa big team and responsibilities and abilitiesare reasonably clear. In theory that teamcould make the Total War games withtraditional waterfall techniques, starting witha fairly formal game design from thebeginning. But it would likely fail, becausewe’d be missing opportunities.

We push responsibility down onto thefunctional groups (battle, campaign, UI andso on), we try and keep the game working,we’re happy to change features in and out asothers compete for time, or don’t deliver thegoods on early inspection. Certain designbriefs are created ‘just in time’, which frustratessome but means we’re making the bestdecisions with the latest knowledge. And allthe time the key opinion-formers discuss thevalidity of the work being done.

It feels pretty agile. However, because ofthe mix of skills, the mix of abilities and thefact that there are some hugely experiencedleaders who we need to exert their influenceacross the team, we don’t use an off-the-shelfmethodology that perhaps promises morethan it can deliver. We still schedule work in aGANTT type manner, and still allow key staff toexert influence directly onto teams at any stage.

Any methodology is interesting, and canbe another component in the toolset. But it’sjust that; something to trigger off a way ofthinking about a problem, not necessarily asolution. To quote from a time before Agile,there are no silver bullets.

The truth is that anysuccessful games

team is already agile to anyreal definitions of thephilosophy. Those thataren’t are either shutor failing.

//COMMENT: STUDIO MANAGEMENT

We’re all agileby Tim Heaton, The Creative Assembly

Tim Heaton is studio director at TheCreative Assembly, the UK-founded studiobehind the acclaimed Total War series of PCgames, as well as numerous other worksincluding original and licensed products.www.creative-assembly.co.uk

The Creative Assemblysays its games aresuccessful because theypush responsibility downonto the functional groups

16 Dev121 Creative Assembly_final 23/09/2011 17:56 Page 1

OPINION | ALPHA

WHEN I WAS asked to write this column Ipromised to myself that I would avoid writingabout free. I’d covered it a lot, as haseveryone else, at conferences and inspecialist press and it’s fast becoming old andrather tired.

Yet I still see lots of young start-ups – andrepositioning giants – chucking out numbersabout how well they’ve done with free overpaid. When we at Mobile Pie launched TopTrumps for iOS recently we pushed a freeversion with an up sell to premium brandeddecks and then those premium decks as paid,individual apps. Top Trumps Collection – thefree one – hit number three in the UK all appschart and the top-50 grossing, whilst the paidapps, well, didn’t.

FREE TO MOVE ONThese sort of stories garner a lot of attentionin the press, so I guess there’s still a lot ofpeople out there scratching their heads.What’s going on is simple. We are now in apost-free world.

The free model has been robustly proven.It does well where it can be applied – at themoment mostly web and mobile – and it willcontinue to do so. Unless of course thepredicted consumer free burnout happens.Which it won’t.

The reason why I’m certain it won’t happenis because what’s hot now is not free itselfbut the new ways of using free which arefinancially viable and creatively progressive.

I don’t have the keys to the ‘Future of FreeCastle’ and I won’t pretend to. What I do have,having designed, released and supportedseveral free games, is a knowledge of thebasics. Which I would like to share with you ina contrived, awkward metaphor.

It all starts in a far away kingdom wheregames are actually theme parks. Some parkshave fences surrounding them, that millionsjump over daily, and a ticket booth. That’s apaid game.

A free game is another type of park, a parkthat has no ticket booth and no fence. Peoplestroll in and out of these parks freely. Insidethe park they get access to the rides and thepicnic area, where their friends are, for free.They have to queue, but they are free.

So how does this park make money? It hasbig billboards (banner ads) a brandedtrampoline (product placement), and a shopselling t-shirts (virtual goods) and VIP queuejumps (boosts or energy).

At a paid park you make the most moneyby spending lots on telling everyone that youhave the best show on earth behind thefence and then charging lots of money for aticket. At the free park you make most moneyby having lots of visitors all looking at themany adverts and branded trampolines, butalso buying from the shop. It’s a big

balancing act between the cost of the park,how appealing the rides are, the number ofbillboards, the number of visitors, howexpensive the shop is and how you getpeople in there without pissing them off.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXTPaid parks have been doing and perfectingtheir thing for over 30 years, but free parkshave only been around for four years since

the land became cheap (Facebook andmobile app stores) and shops could open(microtransactions).

What happens next in my story is going tobe the best bit. The paid parks have beenwatching how the free parks have shops andencourage their visitors to bring along theirfriends and they like it. Infinity Blade Parkopened up with a shop. It means even thefence jumpers could spend money. MeanwhileRockstar Games opened parks with social clubs.

Elsewhere, the free parks have beenlooking at the paid parks’ rides and so parks

like the Quake Live Park opened. They wantthe big rides to sit next to the shop andqueue jumps and the billboards and thetrampoline. It’s all a bit awkward now, butthey’re working it out.

On top of this further land owners areallowing parks to be free – Sony just set upthe Free Realms Park – so there will be moreand more of them. Soon almost all of theland will be free parks interspersed with big-ticketed mega-parks, which the free parkswill forever struggle to compete with for glitzand glamour.

All of this is interesting not because of thefences or the ticket booths – or lack of them –but what’s going on inside.

Although we’re an industry obsessed withnumbers and stats, we should spend lesstime seeking proof of the already proven andstarting looking for and making exceptionsto the rules: Games that do free – or paid – innew ways. Our industry has been given arebirth nobody expected.

Let’s stop figuring out the inception dateand boasting the birth weight and startthinking about what they’ll grow up to be. Iwant them to be an astronaut.

And that’s why next month I’ll be askingthe important question: “Are games art?”

Just kidding.

//COMMENT: MOBILE

Stories from the post-free worldby Will Luton, Mobile Pie

Will Luton is creative director at the award-winning boutique studio Mobile Pie. They createdelicious own IP and work on licenses, with apartner list that includes the BBC, Orange andHewlett-Packard. Follow Will on Twitter at@will_luton, or visit www.mobilepie.com

The free model hasbeen robustly

proven. It does well where itcan be applied – at themoment mostly web andmobile – and it willcontinue to do so.

Online worlds in the samevein as Sony’s Free Realmswill likely become morecommonplace in the post-free world


17 Dev121 Will Luton_final 22/09/2011 09:32 Page 1

ALPHA | EVENTS

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

OCTOBER 7thRage. Quake studio id takesus to a post-apocalyptic futurein this first-person shooter.

OCTOBER 14thPro Evolution Soccer 2012.Time to get angered by unjustresults again.

OCTOBER 14thWorld Egg Day. Celebratingthe egg, whether it ispoached, fried, boiled,scrambled, or raw.

OCTOBER 15thWorld Handwashing Day. To“shine a spotlight on the stateof handwashing in everycountry.”

OCTOBER 16thWorld Food Day.Raisingawareness ofpoverty andrising food pricesaffectingdeveloping countries aroundthe world, highlightingsolutions and encouraging aidefforts to those in need.

OCTOBER 21stBatman: Arkham City.Batman Returns (see what wedid there), in this sequel to thepopular Arkham Asylum byRocksteady Studios.

OCTOBER 21stThe Sims 3: Pets is the 5thexpansion which may or maynot be adding domesticatedanimals.

OCTOBER 26thGames Media Awards. Gamesjournalists come together towin prizes… and drink.

OCTOBER 26thGameCity6.AnnualNottinghamfestivalfocusing onvideogameculture. Since2006 they have had pubquizzes, lego animation, worldpremieres and over 3,000zombies.

OCTOBER 28thLondon MCM Expo. The UK'sconsumer entertainmentshow offers a mix of movie, TV,video games, anime, mangaand comics.

OCTOBER 28thBattlefield 3. Big guns, biggerexplosions in this Call of Dutychallenger.

OCTOBER 31stHalloween. Giving treats tochildren but not gettingarrested for it.

1,500 people expected at Canada’s industry event; 80 experts due to offer talks

18 | OCTOBER 2011

On the 1st and 2nd November,the eighth MontrealInternational Game Summit

2011 will take place at The HiltonMontreal Bonaventure Hotel.

Dedicated to professionals of thevideo game industry in Canada and onthe East Coast, MIGS will have 80experts from all around world offeringtalks within the six main disciplines:arts and VFX, audio, business, design,production and technology. 1,500people are expected to attend.

According to the event organisers: “Itis aimed at developing and promotingskills and knowledge and encouragingcommunication between all actors ofthe industry.”

Speakers include Naughty Dog leadgame designer Richard Lemarchand,presenting his keynote ‘Finding theway of Uncharted: A creativecommentary’, on the same day as therelease of Drake’s Deception. UberEntertainment art director Chandana

MONTREAL INTERNATIONAL GAME SUMMIT

1,500 attendees areexpected at the summit

18,19 Dev121 Diary Dates_final 23/09/2011 12:00 Page 1

DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

EVENTS | ALPHA

OCTOBER 2011 | 19

NORTH EAST OF NORTH 2011November 5th to 13thDundee, Scotlandwww.northeastofnorth.com

The seven-day international digitalarts festival North East of North willfeature moving image,performance, music and technologydriven arts.

Taking place in Dundee betweenthe 5th and 13th November, NEoNexchanges knowledge in areas suchas new business models, digitaldevelopments and latestproduction techniques. It will delivera programme of talks, workshops,exhibitions, commissions,screenings, performance and moreat many of Dundee’s cultural,business and public spaces.

This year’s festival theme is‘collaboration and legacy’ with a‘distinct Nordic flavour’.

DEVELOP DIARYYour complete games development event calendar for the months ahead

SOUTHERN INTERACTIVEENTERTAINMENT & GAME EXPOOctober 7th to 9thAtlanta, GA, USAwww.siegecon.net/SIEGE2011/

INTEL DEVELOPER EVENINGOctober 12thSwar Bar, Londonwww.develop-online.net

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

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

GAMES FOR BRANDSOctober 27thLondon, UKgamesforbrands.com

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

MONTREAL INTERNATIONAL GAMESUMMITNovember 1st to 2ndThe Hilton Bonaventure Hotel, Montrealsijm.ca/2011/

NEON DIGITAL ARTS FESTIVALNovember 5th to 13thDundee, UKwww.northeastofnorth.com

G-STAR 2011November 10th to 13th Busan, Koreawww.gstar.or.kr

LONDON GAMES CONFERENCE 2011November 10thLondon, UKwww.londongamesfestival.co.uk

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

DEVELOP LIVERPOOLNovember 24thLiverpool, UKliverpool.develop-conference.com

EVOLVE LONDONDecember 1stLondon, UKwww.evolveconference.com

GAME CONNECTION EUROPE 2011December 6th to 8thParis, Francewww.game-connection.com

GAME DEVELOPERS CONFERENCEMarch 5th to 9thSan Francisco, USAwww.gdconf.com

E3 EXPOJune 5th to 7thConvention Centre, Los Angeleswww.e3expo.com

november 2011

december 2011

march 2012

Ekanayake will be giving a session onmarketing and PR for indie developers,and former EA Montreal generalmanager Alain Tascan will also bespeaking at the event in the wake ofopening a new transmedia studio inMontreal named Sava.

As well as conferences there will beopportunities for networking anddiscovering new trends, with theorganisers setting up a businesslounge, career fair, contests and parties.

“MIGS has two main qualities onwhich we focus year after year,” saysevent director Marie Claude Bernard

(right). “First and foremost, it is aninternational event on a human scale.With 1,500 expected attendees it is allthe more easy to network and connectwith friends and new contacts alike.

“The other distinctive aspect ofMIGS is how its program focuses onthe main disciplines of the industryrather than types of games or console.Along with its advisory board led byJason Della Rocca, the organisers payspecial attention to including talksrelated to indie game development asmuch as console, triple-A games;speakers from big studios as much as

academics; inspirational talks as muchas hands-on sessions.”

Registration for the event can befilled in on the website and pricesrange from $300 to $680 for AllianceNumerique members and anywherebetween $5 and $860 for non-members depending on which partsof the event you want to see and withhow many people. Business loungefees range from $1,100 to $2,365depending on membership and $800to $1,025 for additional delegates, upto three persons max.http://sijm.ca/2011

october 2011

MIGS is aimed at developing andpromoting skills and knowledge

june 2012

18,19 Dev121 Diary Dates_final 23/09/2011 12:00 Page 2

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INDIE PROFILE | ALPHA

Beatnik Games CEO SherifAziz (above) believes it’sone of the best times ingaming history to be anindie studio

ESTABLISHED in 2008, young propertydevelopment tycoon Damien Cerri set upBeatnik with a vision that game developmentwould be easy.

The studio then rose to fame in 2010 with therelease of its PC action game Plain Sight.

The central London studio quickly built theconfidence and reputation needed to instateitself in the indie hall of fame, having learnedCerri’s initial optimism may have been misplaced.

As a result, current CEO Sherif Aziz is optimisticabout today’s indie scene.

“We do think it’s probably one of the besttimes in gaming history to be an indie,” says Aziz.“However, the competition is fierce, which isgood and bad. Good because it drives the qualityof games up; bad because if you do needfunding to get a new project off the ground itcan be difficult.”

Despite those challenges, the democratisationof technology through tools provided by thelikes of as Unity, UDK and Havok has allowed Azizand his contemporaries to build sustainablebusinesses around IPs that scream indie spirit.

“I also think initiatives such as Indie City andother crowdfunding sites will play an interestingrole in the future of indie games,” says Aziz of thecurrent indie sector. “Fans and the communityget interesting projects off the ground – it’sdefinitely an exciting time to be an indie.”

And despite work underway including an iOStitle and a cross-platform Vita project, Beatnikremains besotted by the PC as a platform forexciting indie games.

“I think the PC will always be the best gamingmachine on the planet. Whatever consoles cando a PC can do better and almost everyhousehold has one,” offers Aziz. “Digitaldistribution makes getting content to users easyand cost effective. Also, you’re not at the mercyof the platform holder which can all but kill asmall indie studio.”

In the third of a series looking at some of the mostexciting real UK indies making PC titles, Will Freemanturns his attention to Plain Sight studio Beatnik Games

INDIE PROFILE‘The best era yetfor independents’

In association with:

Beatnik GamesFounded: 2008

Headcount: Six core staff, six contractorsBased: London

www.beatnikgames.com

21 Dev121 Indie Profile_final 23/09/2011 12:06 Page 1

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DEVELOPMENT FEATURES, INTERVIEWS, ESSAYS & MORE

“What happened at RealtimeWorlds is not a Scottish problem.”

Sean Taylor, Denki, p34

Easy money?With so many options for generating revenue without charging upfront for yourcreation, is there a one-size-fits-all solution to keep your studio in profit? p24

23 Dev121 Beta Cover_final 23/09/2011 16:06 Page 1

EVE Online’s subscriptionmodel has been hugelysuccessful and it is nowexpanding to mobile andconsole

Games Analytics CEOChris Wright (top) andSponsorPay director ofmarketing ProjjolBanerjea (above) talkabout money makingmodels for games

24 | OCTOBER 2011

BETA | IN-GAME PAYMENTS

Smart moneyGONE ARE the days when the free-to-play,pay-to-progress business model marked abold new frontier for game developers.

Today it is very much a norm in the mobileand online spaces, and revenue generationthrough in-game transactions is anestablished way to turn a newly releaedproduct into a breadwinner. Releases such asTiny Tower, meanwhile, have proved thatfree-to-play games can charm the techindustries’ trendsetting hegemony. Andaccording to market research firm Distimo,while only four per cent of titles in the iOSApp Store feature an in-app purchasingbusiness model, 72 per cent of revenuegenerated in that market comes fromconsumers paying for in-app items.

The waters of free-to-play have notcompletely settled, however. While differentpayment platforms and new monetisationmechanics jostle for developer’s attention,free has a long way to go in the consolespace, and in-game advertising models stilloffer viable alternatives.

Distribution platforms like Steam, OnLiveand Facebook all have their own proprietarysystems for making cash from digital content,while the average selling price of games onapp stores is tumbling.

SERVICE AND DELIVER“Free-to-play is a very innovative model butis really the first step in a line of findinginteresting ways of monetising games,” saysGames Analytics CEO Chris Wright. “Peoplelike to be given the choice on how to playand what to spend money on. As gamesbecome increasingly service based it will bethe service that is valuable, game developerswill need to entertain their customers andbuild games that they want.”

That considered, studios hoping to thrivewill also need to respect players, giving them

a range of options and incentivising them tokeep playing. Aggressive monetisation seenin compulsion loop games like Tiny Tower canbe off-putting to many players, and rigid in-game purchasing mechanics can limit thecredibility and creativity of even the mostwell-intended titles.

That need to remain flexible may see hybridmodels emerge combining elements fromsubscription, freemium and upfront paymentapproaches, meaning there is still plenty oflife in the traditional ‘premium model’.

“Free-to-play with in-app-purchasing ishere to stay, but success lies in the balancingand the implementation of details thatincrease player retention and morale at atime where many publishers ravage theirrespective communities by monetising tooaggressively,” suggests Michael Schade, CEOof Galaxy on Fire 2 HD studio Fishlabs.

“Personally, I feel that premium won’t goaway anytime soon,” he adds. “In my opinionit is more than a mere business model, but a

core feature that differentiates your productfrom the vast majority of free-to-play titles.”

Despite this, Schade concedes that it willbe necessary to look for ways to redefine thepremium proposition in the future.

“So far, the term premium has beenstrongly associated with the pay-per-download model,” says the Fishlabs boss. “Butfor the future it might also make sense tolook outside the box and combine thepremium model with certain aspects of thecurrent free-to-play market.”

BAD VIBRATIONSOther developments in the space seek toimprove the conventional free-to-play modelby reducing the friction of in-gamepurchases. BoxPAY is a company committedto the idea that enabling mobile phonepayments will define the future of free.

“One-touch billing, and in-app billing aresome of the most exciting developments onthe horizon, and you can already see ithappening on the Android platform,” insistsBoxPAY co-founder Iain McConnon , whobelieves that one-click billing must replace

SMS pinentry as a paymentoption for mobile.

“This makes theintegration into thegamer user-experiencealmost seamlessand will mostcertainlyincreasetransactions andgenerate morerevenue,” he claims.

Certainly, with the proliferation of mobilephone ownership in some of the gamesindustry’s most promising emerging markets,solutions like that provided by BoxPAYbecome increasingly interesting.

Another consideration is that of the long-predicted advent of platform convergence.As the power of mobile and tablet devicesknocks on the door of home consoles, andpublishers of boxed games scramble toreinvent their business models, revenuemodels that straddle devices may emerge asthe most dominant in the near future.

“A cross-platform approach tomonetisation is one that we believe is – andwill be – of increasing importance and havechosen to adopt ourselves,” says ProjjolBanerjea, director of marketing atSponsorPay, which offers an advertisingsolution for the monetisation of premium

Success lies inbalancing morale

when many publishersravage their communities by monetising tooaggressively.

Michael Schade, Fishlabs

Free-to-play has emerged as a dominant method for generating revenue from digital games, but it is onlythe beginning of new ways to make money. Will Freeman takes a look at the future of monetisation

24,25,26,27 Dev121 Monetisation_final 23/09/2011 15:44 Page 1


IN-GAME PAYMENTS | BETA

content orvirtual currency. “Our goal is to make ourservices both easily accessible andconvenient to use for our customers,regardless of domain, platform or device.”

Certainly, services like SponsorPay’s andBoxPAY’s, which offer something a bit differentfrom the typical free-to-play model, have hugepotential to adapt to a world where consolegames generate revenue without relyingexclusively on the point-of-purchase model.

That convergence could even trigger aglobal standardisation of payment methods,technologies and models, as developersworking on multiple platforms need a systemthat is workable regardless of the differentOS’s. As titles like CCP’s EVE Online expand tomobile and console, there is little doubtpayment solution providers need to act fastto prevent the foundation of massively

complexbusiness

models that havethe potential to

bewilder theconsumer and developer alike.

NEW MONEYThe transition to these new methods ofmaking money is already testing traditionaldevelopers and publishers, who have tocompete with the runaway success of moreyouthful, agile studios such as Zynga andMojang Specifications. The latter of which hasmade a fortune from charging an upfront feefor an unfinished product.

There are challenges too, however, for thenew school of digital content developers,who are all faced with walking the hair-thinline of balanced in-game monetisation.

“The technology that allows such stepsforward can also have potential difficulties,”warns Jonathan Mabey of ecommerceplatform holder Gate2Shop. “In a way,innovations take care of themselves, becausethat’s creative and human nature.

“However, the paymenttechnology has to work in the

end, and that needs constant attention,especially risk management and fraudprevention. We need to find the balancebetween the best flexibility for a player, whilemaintaining the prudence and securityexpected from us by the vendor.”

In the wake of widely reported events likethe PSN hacking scandal that shookconsumer confidence, the issues Mabeytouches on are increasingly important, notleast because the developers themselves canbecome as much a victim as the consumers.

“We advise our customers to make surethey don’t internalise sensitive processes likestoring payment data,” offers Martin Ott, chiefexecutive of payment system and digitalwallet specialist Skrill. “The recent attackshave highlighted that a lot of hackers targetgaming companies in particular, due to theiractive large databases. While developers andpublishers can’t really stop themselves frombeing targeted they can make sure thathackers come out empty handed.”

And, if that weren’t enough to worryabout, there is also the significant matter of

FINANCIAL ADVISER

Unsure how to optimise your game’s non-traditional revenues?Fishlab’s Michael Schade has some adviceThe onus of revenue generationstill falls on games developers,despite the current range ofpayment service providers andmonetisation models on offerthese days.

That means a delicatebalancing of creativity andbusiness nous, and theconfidence to contradict themost popular business models.

“Think of ways to reach out toas many players as possible andhow to convert non-payingmembers of your community

into paying members over time,”offers Fishlabs CEO MichaelSchade. “But also think different.

“Free-to-play with in-app-purchase might not be anequally successful solution forall developers alike. Before youblindly copy your competitor’sbusiness model, your teamshould take the time to analyseyour IPs and evaluate theirchances on the market.”

Schade suggests that incertain cases it might even makesense to do the opposite of

what your competition does.“Take Fishlabs, for example.

Despite the fact that most othertitles are either released in the99 cent category right away orleave the premium price rangerather quickly, we have beenable to offer Galaxy on Fire 2 onthe App Store for $9.99 over aperiod of almost one year. Andthe game is still very popularand gaining good profits.”

Free, it would seem, is farfrom the be all and end all ofnew game monetisation models.

There are now a plethoraof options for developersto establish their own in-game currency


26 | OCTOBER 2011

BETA | IN-GAME PAYMENTS

consumer fraud, and before that, the veryreal problem of making any money at all.

ATTENTION SEEKERS“One of the biggest challenges of the free-to-play model in games is the lack of initialinvestment from the user resulting in highattrition,” asserts Banerjea.

“When paired with the vast number ofoptions available in the market, it presents aformidable challenge to developers andpublishers who are consistently battling toeither secure user attention or to retain it.The big hurdle is to secure sufficientlyhigh investment from the user – eithermonetary or temporal or emotional, or acombination of these – to prevent him orher from moving on to another game.”

Yet despite the challenges, thepotential is huge. As new platforms andmodels emerge, the market today maybe unrecognisable in the next decade.

As the kinds of games played evolves,so does the way those games make money.If there is a general consensus betweenthose at the heart of the payments sectorand the developers looking at new waysof generating profits, it is that diversity andflexibility is key. The more ways to pay andplay means a far greater opportunity forsuccess, both critically and commercially.

Tiny Tower has successfullyimplemented the free-to-play model addingpayment incentives forquicker construction

What do Facebook Credits meanfor new game payment models?

When Facebook made its ‘Credits’ virtualcurrency mandatory for developers in July, itproved a controversial decision.

Ultimately, it guaranteed Facebook 30 percent of all the revenues of the games thatoffered the likes of microtransactions on theall-powerful social network.

What’s more, it muscled out proprietary orexternal payment systems.

Still, the revenue split is more generous thanthat offered by OnLive which takes a 40 percent cut, and provides studios with a paymentbackend maintained by one of the world’slargest and most established online outfits. Italso arguably encourages players who have theuniversal Facebook Credits in their wallet tolook to games beyond the chart-toppersproduced by Zynga and its closest rivals.

Facebook insists that its Credits have beenconceived to help developers generaterevenue and allow them to focus their energyon creating games.

“With over 1,000 games and apps and over500 developers globally using Facebook

Credits, they provide the easiest way forpeople to buy virtual goods and services onFacebook,” a spokesperson for the socialnetworking giant told Develop. “Credits providepeople with a familiar and consistent payment

experience and a trusted place to storepayment information.”

The social network is today investing in newways to pay for and earn Credits, givingdevelopers additional methods to increasetheir revenue and become successful in theonline space.

“This means developers can focus on whatthey do best – building great games andapplications,” insisted the spokesperson.

Facebook Credits certainly have their fans inthe developer community. French studioKobojo has seen a 20 per cent revenue increaseafter implementing Facebook Credits across itsgames Pyramidville, Goobox and RobotZamong others. The developer now courts theattention of more than four million monthlyactive users and has made around $7.75million to date. That success, according toFacebook, is a reflection of the potential of itsCredits system.

CREDITS WHERE THEY’RE DUE

Kobojo now courts theattention of more than

four million monthly activeusers and has raised

around $7.75 million.

“It's often suggested that running a profitable virtual currency gameis about employing clandestine physiological tricks to extract

money from players – that they're nothing more than aSkinner Box with credit card details.

“Coming from product game developers this ishypocrisy. Games have always been judged on theirability to encourage return play, from the arcades to the100-plus hour RPG. We as an industry have,intentionally or otherwise, evolved to build complexsystems of effort and reward which, like a film, a book orany other artwork, invoke emotions that keep usengaged with them. When they don't do that, they have failed.

“What virtual currency and freemium models changeis who pays and how much they pay. No longer iseveryone splashing £40 for games that they don't finish.Instead the deal is that the game is free forever, but youcan progress a lot quicker or get a nice hat if you pay afew quid. The game is the marketing for the virtualcurrency product.

“The big fans who play and love the game, pay bigbucks and bring more players to the party. Those thatthink your games suck, leave with a full wallet. If those

paying players are fully aware of their spend and aren'tchildren, that seems a better deal for all.”

IS FREE EVIL?

Mobile Pie creative director and Develop columnistWill Luton on free’s moral compass


DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

IN-GAME PAYMENTS | BETA

OCTOBER 2011 | 27

BoxPAY is a global company whoseplatform offers video gamedevelopers a self-service mobilepayments solution, which promises todeliver a user friendly experience tothose that adopt it.

“We offer game developers theability to charge customers for digitalgoods, currency, and content throughtheir mobile phone bill, instead of acredit card,” explains BoxPAY co-founder Iain McConnon.

“To begin billing using BoxPAY, adeveloper simply has to copy thecode we provide into their webpage.This creates a payment widget whichcustomers can use to purchase itemsusing only a mobile phone.”

Game developers can sign-up to

BoxPAY and begin billing their globalcustomer base on the same day.Consumers, meanwhile, only requireten seconds to complete atransaction, and the only informationa user has to provide is a mobilephone number.

“BoxPAY has taken mobile billing a step further and opened up thistechnology to the masses,” insistsMcConnon of its potential.

Presented as a democratic solutionavailable to almost any developeractive in today’s games industry, theBoxPAY platform also offers in-depthreporting and analytics, where adeveloper can track its transactions inreal-time.www.boxpay.com

BOXPAY

SponsorPay provides developers withan alternative solution to monetisingthrough ‘traditional’ micropayments.In essence, its technology delivers anadvertising solution for revenuegeneration via premium content orvirtual currency.

“We enable users of socialnetworks, virtual worlds, mobile appsas well as online games and servicesto earn virtual currency or access topremium content throughparticipation in targeted advertisingoffers,” says Sponsorpay’s Director ofMarketing Projjol Banerjea.

The most significant differencebetween SponsorPay’s approach andthat of its contemporaries is that thecompany’s products are targeted at

non-paying users, such as thosecustomers who are reluctant to partwith real money for virtual goods orpremium services.

“We make it possible for publishersto monetise these users who form thedominant percentage of theircustomer base – usually between 90and 98 per cent for the averagefreemium approach – and convertthem to paying users,” revealsBanerjea about its advantages.

SponsorPay’s latest productBrandEngage allows the presentationof targeted video and interactivecontent within the game environmentand has been designed to improveuser engagement.www.sponsorpay.com

SPONSORPAY

As one of Europe's largest onlinepayment systems providers, Skrill isalso among the world's largestindependent digital wallet providers,and has more than twenty millionaccount holders.

“The digital wallet enables anycustomer to make online paymentsconveniently and securely withoutrevealing personal financial data, aswell as send and receive money onlinecost-effectively simply by using anemail address,” says chief executiveMartin Ott.

Skrill’s worldwide payment networkoffers businesses access to directpayment processing via over 100payment options in more than 200countries and territories through just

one integration. That, says its creators,brings a clear time and cost-savingadvantage to all merchants wishing toexpand their operations throughoutthe world.

“Our global payment options andthe simple one-contract-one-shopintegration have been cited as the mainreason why a lot of our biggest gamingcustomers switch from their existingpayment providers,” suggests Ott.

Skrill, which recently secured a dealwith MineCraft outfit MojangSpecifications, also believes itsplatform is as applicable to smallerstudios looking to widen their globalreach as it is for large-scale operationswith a wealth of experience.www.moneybookers.com

SKRILL

While not a payment platformprovider, Games Analytics still offers aservice that could prove extremelyuseful to those exploring new ways of generating revenues for themgames without adopting thetraditional model of payment at initialpoint of purchase.

In effect it is a complete analyticsplatform that allows web, social,mobile and online PC developers andpublishers to understand playerbehaviour through data driveninsight. Games Analytics purports toimprove player satisfaction, revenue,retention and virality.

“We collect and analyse millions ofdata events within each game to allowgames publishers to make informed

decisions that will optimise thesuccess of their online games,”explains Games Analytics CEO ChrisWright. “We also use a number oftechniques including behaviouralsegmentation and predictivemodelling to get a much betterunderstanding of how players areusing the game on an individualplayer basis. The key is to treat playersas unique individuals and not look atthe mass as an amorphous lump.”

The company believes its sweetspot is the free-to-play model, which itsays has the best opportunity tomonetise the player and manyinteresting ways of interacting withthe playing community.www.gamesanalytics.com

GAMES ANALYTICS



It’s impossible to think of the recenthistory of the Scottish games industrywithout pondering what happened at

Realtime Worlds.But to judge the nation’s game

development sector based purely on thelarge scale collapse of a single studio isgrossly unfair. If those at the top of some ofScotland’s most proactive studios are to bebelieved, there’s rarely been a better time tomake games in the country.

And, say the studio heads most ingrainedin the Scottish dev scene, it is the region’sdiversity that is its strength.

“I don’t believe one studio model ordevelopment method typifies Scotland,” saysSean Taylor, producer at Denki, which hasmade games in the area for 11 years.

“I think it’s very easy to conclude that‘Scotland equals Rockstar North plus loadsof wee studios in Dundee cranking outmobile games’.”

But that not only ignores the sustainedsuccess of handheld developers likeFirebrand Games in Glasgow, and also theinteresting directions people like HuntedCow with their web games, and Veemee,who work on Playstation Home.”

In fact, Denki’s home town of Dundeealone is host to a wealth of diverse andvaried game developers. 4J Studios iscurrently at work there porting Minecraft toXbox 360, not far from the offices of the likesof eeGeo, Ruffian and Tag Games; all of themvery different studios working on utterlydistinct projects.

THE SPICE OF LIFE“Scotland has studios serving every possibleplatform or outlet for interactiveentertainment from lone developers onsmall-scale Flash games to large companiesworking on high-end console titles,” offersOutplay Entertainment co-founder RichardHare, who with his brother Douglas isbuilding what could become one ofScotland’s largest studios.

“There’s no doubt that the gaminglandscape has changed dramatically inrecent years with the emergence of socialnetworks, extremely capable mobiledevices, tablets, and their associated appmarketplaces.

“Scotland is encountering the same issuesand opportunities faced by developers fromall around the world in that we all needmake sure we’re selling what people,whether they are consumers of publishers,are buying.”

In that turbulent marketplace, Scottisheducators including those at the globallyrecognised University of Abertay arenoticing an encouraging trend. Scotland hasbecome a hotbed of new start-upsestablished by ambitious developmentyoung guns.

“The Scottish games industry is thriving,”offers Abertay professor Dr Louis Natanson.“That’s particularly as new opportunitiesopen up with direct digital distribution foriOS and Android, as well as gaming onFacebook and other social networks. Theshift we’ve particularly noticed is our mostexceptional students now talk about howthey’re going to start their own business,and why they want to stay in Dundee to dojust that.”

Until recently the country’s reputationwas as a console development stronghold –after all, Scotland is the original home ofGTA. Times are changing, though, and todayit is becoming home to an increasingnumber of mobile studios.

“Now Dundee has a huge variety ofstudios working on console, mobile, social,TV and many other platforms, from singleperson start-ups to established mediumsized studios we have it all,” says Paul Farley,CEO of mobile specialist and Dundeestalwart Tag Games.

“In the last year there has been anexplosion in the amount of microstudios,”adds Colin Riley, games technology directorof tools outfit and compiler specialistCodeplay. “That being said, you still have the

DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

SCOTLAND FOCUS | BETA

OCTOBER 2011 | 29


Despite the high-profile problems suffered atRealtime Worlds, Scotland remains one of theglobe’s most resilient game developmenthubs, as Will Freeman discovers

Douglas (left) and RichardHare (right) of OutplayEntertainment meet withScotland’s First MinisterAlex Salmond

Scotland isencountering the

same issues andopportunities faced bydevelopers from allaround the world.

Richard Hare, Outplay

Great Scots

29,30,32,33,34 DEV121 Scotland_final 23/09/2011 16:36 Page 1

30 | OCTOBER 2011

BETA | SCOTLAND FOCUS

UK Government ministerfor universities and scienceDavid Willets meets ProperGames CEO Paddy Sinclair(below) at Abertay


likes of Rockstar North, Ruffian, Proper andFirebrand developing big-name games.There is currently quite a nice mix, and socialis becoming a larger part of it with newplayers Outplay and eeGeo appearing.”

If nothing else, the Scottish industry hasproven its ability to quickly adapt tochanges in the games market.

COMMUNITY MATTERSAsk anyone employed in the Scottish gamesindustry, however, and they will tell youScotland’s developers are collectivelycapable than much more than diversity ofspecialty and studio model.

Of late the new IGDA chapter in Scotlandhas been welcoming upwards of 100 visitorsto its events, and the University of Abertay’sfamous Dare to be Digital talent contest hasbecome a recognised launch pad for successin the games industry. The sense ofcommunity there is intense, and in the eyesof the Scottish Government the industry isrecognised as hugely important.

“We are a proper community and we tendnot to close ourselves off from each other,”states former Cohort man and current headof Gamify Consultancy Lol Scragg.

“We can lend each other staff and wealways support each other. We do get greatsupport here in Dundee specifically fromScottish Enterprise which provides access togrant funding and advice.”

“The IGDA Scottish chapter has recentlyhad a resurgence due to Hazel McKendrickand Kraig Walker, two students well knownto game developers, and has had fantasticturnouts,” adds Codeplay’s Riley on thematter. “I was invited to speak at their eventsalong with other Scottish industry figures.The social aspect in Edinburgh has got aboost after Alex Waterston of HaikuInteractive and myself decided to have ameet up which has transformed into@GameDevEd, and it gets quite a largeamount of people meeting up for chats andgame-related banter bi-weekly.”

The emergence of the IGDA in Scotlandhas made it far easier for aspiring developersto connect with Scottish studios, meaningmore than in other hubs, getting noticed inthe country is – relatively speaking – anachievable task.

Community is something everyone inScotland seems keen to highlight, but thereis equal passion to talk about another localtrait; resilience.

There seems to befewer people

departing the Scottishindustry to the other gamehotspots aroundthe world whichis great.

Richard Scott, Axis Animation

The University of Abertay’s links with theScottish games industry don’t stop withgames development courses and contestslike Dare to be Digital.

The institution also offers grants todevelopers in the country looking for a leg-up as they establish their reputation andbuild a business. Just last month Abertay’sPrototype Fund provided Proper Gameswith a £25,000 cash injection; a significantenough act to see it announced by UKGovernment minister for universities andscience, David Willets.

“I feel very proud of how our companyhas grown over the last few years and Irelish such opportunities to tell our story

and showcase the quality of work that ourtalented team are producing,” said PaddySinclair, CEO of Proper Games. “Receivingconfirmation of the Prototype Fundinvestment from Abertay University isreally great news and we look forward togetting this project underway.”

Providing a launch pad for studioslooking to flesh out new concepts,Abertay’s Prototype Fund was conceived tosupport youthful creative companiesdemonstrating high-growth potential. Theultimate goal of the fund is to better positionthe likes of developers to attract additionalinvestment and establish projects underway.prototypefund.abertay.ac.uk

PROPER GENEROUS

Artwork commisioned fortrade body InteractiveScotland, which assistsdigital media businessacross the country



32 | OCTOBER 2011


A speaker on stage at theincreasingly influencialNEoN digital arts festival,which includes numerousgames elements

“The Scots are resilient, and throughoutthe recent tough times we have seen thedemise of studios in Scotland, some highprofile and some not so,” confirms RichardScott, managing director, executiveproducer and founder of Axis Animation, the company behind the infamous DeadIsland trailer.

“The one thing that always seems tohappen though is that from those studiosclosing other studios spring up quickly withnew business models and new levels ofdetermination. There seems to be fewerpeople departing the Scottish industry tothe other game hotspots around the worldwhich is great to see, people want to besuccessful in Scotland.”

And with resilience comes the courage toexperiment; something the wider ScottishGovernment is famed for, which apparentlyfilters down to the games industry.

“Certainly the Scottish scene encouragesexperimentation in the interactive arena,”says Outplay’s Douglas Hare. “The close-knitcommunity also provides good support fornew ventures, as well the governmentassistance and relationships with theuniversities. All of this provides a greatcanvas for developers located in Scotland.”

WELL SCHOOLEDIf there is one area where Scotland’sdevelopment industry shines most, it mustbe its games education. Abertay stakes aclaim to crafting the world’s first gamedevelopment university course, and remainsone of the world’s most acclaimed sourcesfor specifically trained talent.

“One very fortunate thing about Scotlandis that we have universities like Abertay,Glasgow Caledonian and the University ofthe West of Scotland, and they’re producingsome fantastic talent,” says Andy Cambell,founder and CEO of SpecialMove, a recruiterbased in Scotland with a global reach.

“Local companies have been able to buildlong-term relationships with the universities

to ensure that the students leave very workready. The students are recognised as beinghighly skilled and highly desirable. We canonly hope here in Scotland that thosestudents choose to stay.”

Almost every games company based inScotland can count Abertay graduatesamongst its staff, and praise for the institute– along with some of its contemporaries – isabsolutely unanimous.

“The University of Abertay Dundee isleading the way with its industry-focusedcourses, and Duncan of Jordanstone is oneof the UKs top art schools,” asserts Alan

Dobson, business development officer atDundee City Council. “Abertay have createdDare to be Digital and Dare Protoplay, whilstDundee College has state of the art digitalmedia facilities. The Prototype fund is herealso supporting new developments fromThe University of Abertay Dundee.”

As a result, says Outplay’s Douglas Hare,Scotland is a fantastic location for aspiringdevelopers to establish themselves.

“In addition to world-class game-relatedcourses, many companies offer summerinternships – we pay as well – and on-goingwork experience placements,” he says. “Thereare various competitions, most notably Dareto be Digital, which can help propel talentedteams and individuals into the limelight andthere are numerous companies hiring at any

given time looking to give graduates theirfirst break into the industry.”

The recruitment fair Game In Scotland,which is held in Dundee each year, is afurther boon for both raw talent andheadcount hungry studios, and is wellattended by both.

“It's a great place for aspiring developersand has a good mix of studio needingtalent,” states Codeplay’s Riley. “This year'sevent even had a mod team on the floorasking for volunteers, which is a fantasticway of building up portfolios and was myown entry into the industry.”

“In terms of attracting existing talent fromfurther afield, Scotland always has studioson the rise and they’re always looking tosecure some great talent,” addsSpecialMove’s Campbell. “That means it’salways liquid here. There’s a continual flowto recruitment here. It’s a very good forfinding work and finding talent.”

New companies like OutplayEntertainment, which has ambitious plansunderway to build a studio that over acourse of a two or three-year period hopesto employ about 120 people, typifies thekind of opportunities blossoming in today’sScottish games development sector.

DUNDEE CALLINGWhat’s more, game development flourishesacross Scotland, with studios in Glasgow,Edinburgh and Aberdeen blooming.However, it is Dundee that remains thenation’s most productive industry hub.

“Given the amazing gaming culture andhub that exists here there is nowhere else inScotland that makes as much sense for agames studio than Dundee,” claims TagGames’ Farley. “Not only do we have thehistorical legacy of the first generation ofgames companies such as DMA, Vis andVisual Science; you have a wide range ofpresent day benefits.”

There’s no doubt Dundee has a richheritage in video games, and a distinct

Along with Edinburgh Interactive, theNEoN Digital Arts Festival has become oneof Scotland’s most noteworthy gamesindustry-relevant events.

Taking place in Dundee – a cityconsidered by many as the Scottishgaming capital – this November, it bringstogether professionals who work withmoving image, performance, music andtechnology-driven arts.

“NEoN is an important date in the UKcalendar as its location involves all thecompanies at the heart of Scotland’sgaming community, attending andshowcasing what Scotland has to offer,”says Dundee City Council businessdevelopment officer Alan Dobson.

“It offers attendees the chance toconnect with international trendsettersand listen to talks from the worlds leadingindustry movers and shakers. Attendingprovides workshops and talks relevant to

the sector, as well as great networkingopportunities and connections to peers.

NEoN attempts to provide a forum forthe exchange of knowledge in areas suchas new business models, digitaldevelopments and the latest productiontechniques. It celebrates on the notion thatart, digital media and gaming can cometogether to explore new collaborations andopen up new and exciting projects, and,insists Dobson, it’s not a typical conference.

“The festival element ensures thatparticipants have a really memorableexperience whilst in Dundee, as well aslearning, business opportunities andnetworking,” says Dobson. “And notforgetting, there’s the games air pokernight event.”

NEoN 2011 takes place from November5th to 13th at venues and public spacesacross Dundee.www.northeastofnorth.com

BRIGHT MINDS

Companies havebeen able to build

long-term relationshipswith the universities toensure the studentsleave work ready.

Paul Farley, Tag Games



DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

SCOTLAND FOCUS | BETA

OCTOBER 2011 | 33

The University of Abertay(top) and its Hive 3Dcomputing suite (above)

blend of development companies perhapswithout parallel in Europe.

“We are now in position where there is aneclectic community of companies workingwithin different markets. We also haveinnovative companies here enteringmarkets ahead of the curve that are alwaysgrowing, and producing great games on anumber of platforms,” offers Dundee CityCouncil’s Dobson.

POWERS THAT BEScottish game developers are also thebenefactors of a progressive governmentattitude, and the support of a number ofhigh profile trade bodies.

Outplay Entertainment was even party toa visit by Scotland’s First Minister AlexSalmond, who tops a system oforganisations that are open-minded to thebenefits of playing host to a games industrythat brings in more than £30 million everyyear to the country’s economy.

“To make the most of this opportunity, it'simportant that Scottish Enterprise helpsexisting home grown games companiesrealise their ambitious growth plans andencourages more companies to invest inScotland,” says Joyce Matthew, accountmanager at Scottish Enterprise, which servesas the main economic development agencyin the UK’s most northerly nation.

“It's our job to highlight Scotland's globalreputation as a key player within the gamesindustry – a key player that boasts the talent,infrastructure and skills to deliver success –and to create the right environment for thesector to continue thriving.”

Scottish Enterprise has identified thecreative industries – including digital mediaand games – as a source of huge potential

for the Scottish economy. The organisationoffers a range of services, including supportfor those looking to attend trade shows, andfinancial and non-financial help for localgame companies of every kind.

Certainly, Scotland’s game companiesseem that their potential is well recognisedby at a government level.

“I think there is high awareness of theindustry and what it contributes to the

economy and how it sends a messageworldwide,” offers Axis Animations’ Scott.“We have had some very positiveconversations with national governmentrecently and a lot of that is fuelled by thelevel of non UK work we are doing, thegovernment are keen to see exports and thegames industry can really deliver there.”

Organisations like Codeplay also talk of apositive experience with government andtrade bodies, having secured grants fromScottish Enterprise, Scottish DevelopmentInternational and the European Commission.Tiga’s presence in Scotland has also been agreat help, and the country’s stand at GDCorganised by SDI has proved a great cost-effective way of having a base at GDC.

“The Scottish games industry has longbeen good at supporting itself,” claimsSpecialMove’s Campbell. “Bodies likeScottish Development International,Scottish Enterprise and Tayside Interactivehave all been great at supporting the localgames companies, and they really do carepassionately that there as an industry sectoremploying staff here.”

Scotland’s games industry is full ofpositivity, and there’s a strong sense thatthe country has emerged from a challengingtime stronger and more confident.

The last word, then, goes to one ofScoptland’s longest serving gamescompanies, Denki.

“The entire landscape of the industry haschanged beyond all recognition over thepast few years and I think the next couple ofyears will see a continuation of this,” saysDenki producer Taylor.

“The challenge facing each Scottishdeveloper is to find their place in thisevolving industry, then to continually provetheir relevance. I’m very excited to see whatexactly these shifts are and how Denki andother Scottish developers react to them.”

We have innovativecompanies entering

markets ahead of the curvethat are always growing,and producinggreat games.

Alan Dobson, Dundee Council



34 | OCTOBER 2011



“What happened atRealtime Worlds is not aScottish problem but anindustry-wide one. The listof studios with the

continued capability to fund, developand deliver truly triple-A titles isshrinking all the time.”

Sean Taylor, Producer, Denki

“I think the circumstancesand the outcome of thatstory are very muchexceptional relative to theindustry at large, let alone

the Scottish industry.”Douglas Hare,

Co-Founder, Outplay Entertainment

“What happened was verymuch an exception –Realtime Worlds was asymptom of the changinglandscape, from big

games on console and PC through tomuch lighter development forhandheld, mobile and social gaming platforms. “

Dr Louis Natanson, University of Abertay

“Realtime Worlds is anexceptional case. Ofcourse, Scotland has seenits various low points withstudios going under.

However, Realtime Worlds had ahigh-risk project and it didn't workout. What's really exciting is theamount of companies appearingfrom the ashes of these studios.”

Colin Riley, Games Technology Director,

Codeplay

“Realtime Worlds wasindeed an exceptionalcase, built inside a $100mbubble of unreality.Whilst its demise serves as

a humbling lesson to us all, it hadvery little in common with thestructure, products, business modelsand process you see at most of theScottish studios.”

Paul Farley, CEO, Tag Games

“The decline of RealtimeWorlds was a sad story forthe UK industry and ofcourse Dundee as theywhere based here, but thesector has gone through a

number of cycles before. We believewith the talent pull, skills andinfrastructure this sector will surviveand evidence of this has been shownby the number of new spin outs andstart-ups created from the ashes ofRealtime Worlds”

Alan Dobson, Business Development Officer,

Dundee City Council

“As far as I am aware, noother independentScottish developers havetaken that level ofinvestment so I think I am

safe in saying it was an exceptionalcase. Unfortunately the ramificationsof their decline does seem to be useda fair bit when games and Scotlandare mentioned, especially by the localand national press who don’t seemthat interested in the successful andgrowing independent studios wehave up here.”

Lol Scragg, Founder, Gamify Consultancy

CONTACT BOOKLooking for contacts in theScottish games industry? Develop has it covered

DENKISpecialty: Game developmentKey products: Quarrel, Denki BlocksTel: +44 (0)1382 308 645Email: [email protected]: www.denki.co.uk

UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAYSpecialty: Games development educationTel: +44 (0)1382 308000Email: [email protected]: www.abertay.ac.uk

CODEPLAYSpecialty: ToolsKey Products: Offload CompilerTel: +44 (0)131 466 0503Email: [email protected]: www.codeplay.com

AXIS ANIMATIONSpecialty: AnimationKey Projects: The Dead Island trailerTel: +44(0)141 572 2802Email: [email protected]: www.axisanimation.com

GAMIFY CONSULTANCYSpecialty: ConsultingTel: +44(0)7738 960492Email: [email protected]: www.gamifyconsultancy.com

OUTPLAY ENTERTAINMENTSpecialty: Game developmentKey Product: Word TrickURL: www.outplayentertainment.com

SPECIALMOVESpecialty: RecruitmentTel: +44 (0)141 530 4555Email: [email protected]: www.specialmove.com

TAG GAMESSpecialty: Mobile games developmentKey Products: Car Jack Streets, DoctorWho: The Mazes of TimeTel: +44 (0)1382 220925Email: [email protected]: www.tag-games.com

OTHER USEFUL CONTACTS:

Dundee City Council:www.dundeecity.gov.uk

Interactive Tayside:www.interactivetayside.com

NEoN Digital Arts Festival:www.northeastofnorth.com

Scottish Development International:www.sdi.co.uk

Scottish Enterprise:www.scottish-enterprise.com

Scottish Gaming Blogwww.scottishgames.net

Was Realtime Worlds’demise a moment thattypifies the Scottishgames sector, on anexceptional case?Scotland’s industryinsiders have their say

THE REALITY OFREALTIME



WHEN THE chairman of Google warns thatthe UK is ‘throwing away your greatcomputer heritage’ it’s time to sit up and take notice.

Eric Schmidt is right. Education fromschool level through to university needs toembrace both art and computer science, andcreate graduates with a thoroughunderstanding of how different subject areasoverlap and interact.

Scotland has a great example of how to dothis, benefiting both the game developmentindustry and aspiring students. At AbertayUniversity, the home of Dare to be Digital, wedo things differently. Artists andprogrammers work together to create games;not dry coursework assignments.

Our industry, and the economy, needgraduates who are productive from day onein a business. That might be someone else’scompany – or their own.

SKILLS FOR THE FUTUREThe excellent Livingstone-Hope ‘Next Gen’review set out what the UK needs for itsvideo games and visual effects industries tolead the world. A key recommendation is toroll out Abertay’s Dare to be Digital model ofworkplace simulation nationwide.

Why this works so well is that it blurs theboundaries of traditional education and on-the-job training. Our approach to educationis a living, breathing thing that is constantlyevolving as we work with industry to meetchanging skills needs.

It all started with DMA Design legendsDavid Jones and Russell Kay approachingAbertay University in the ‘90s, arguing thatDundee’s emergence as a major force incomputer games needed a bigger talent poolto thrive. After Lemmings and Grand TheftAuto, it was clear Dundee had talent. It justneeded more.

As the world’s first computer gamesdegrees, Abertay’s courses were always

intended to be different: a mix of toughacademic standards, a focus on hard mathsand physics, and an introduction to thechallenges of working life, where artists,audio engineers and programmers need tocollaborate harmoniously.

It may sound obvious, but this industry-focused education remains rare.

DARE TO BE DIFFERENTWhy is the Dare to be Digital model ofeducation so different? Why are Darecontestants and Abertay graduates such akeen target for recruitment?

First and foremost, their real-worldexperience sets them apart. Too mucheducation is focused just on a single subject.Implicit throughout our educational system isthe idea that subjects are distinct, and that artis therefore separate from maths and physics.

What the game development industry andthe economy need is the complete oppositeof this, as Google’s boss says.

Dare to be Digital distils a production cycledown to just nine weeks, pushing studentteams to deliver fully playable gameprototypes to a fixed deadline.

Their prototypes then go on display to thepublic, engaging students with user testingand the simple commercial truth that great

ideas aren’t always great business. Theaudience must be thrilled, excited andengaged to buy your product.

Our Professional Masters degree takes thisidea one step further – scaling up the Dareexperience to a full year. Tutors act as mentorand business client, setting commercialbriefs. The teams manage themselves, just asif they were running a small studio.

What we’ve seen from years of studentsgoing straight into the industry is thisapproach works brilliantly. Everyone benefits.

THE NEXT STEPSResearch firm Gartner predicts that globalspending on games software and hardwarewill jump from $67 billion in 2010 to $112billion in 2015. How can the UK take morethan its fair share of that massive increase?

Skills are central to this, alongsidecultivating a more entrepreneurial culture,improving the tax environment, andincreasing access to angel investors andventure capital right across Britain – not justin the south of England.

Engaging education right across the agerange is critical. Schools in the UK have losttouch with our computer heritage –proficiency in Word and Excel will not makeus world leaders again. But David Braben’sadmirable Raspberry Pi project to bring USB-sized computers into schools could.

Access at home and at school to ZXSpectrums from Dundee’s Timex factory, alongwith an after-school club, launched two of thebiggest game franchises the world has seen –Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto. Just imaginewhat bringing programmable, portablecomputer to every schoolchild could do.

36 | OCTOBER 2011


Abertay University, thehome of Dare to be Digitaland the world’s firstcomputer games degrees

Education, education, educationBlurring the boundaries between education and employment is the key to a world beating UK games industry, arguesDr Louis Natanson of University of Abertay, and Scotland is leading the way

What we’ve seenfrom years of

students going straight intothe industry is thisapproach worksbrilliantly. Everyonebenefits.


Dr Louis Natanson leadscomputer games education atAbertay University.www.abertay.ac.uk

36 Dev121 Scotland Abertay_final 23/09/2011 12:05 Page 1


DESPITE WORKING for six years on what mightbe the most famous casual gaming IPs in theworld, the inner workings of PopCap’s Dublinstill studio remain something of a mystery.

In the heart of a city that also plays hometo Google and Facebook offices, theEuropean headquarters of the companybehind giant brands like Peggle, Bejeweledand Plants Vs Zombies houses an ever-growing workforce. But little is known of thecreative culture, people and practices at theoutfit recently acquired as part of an EA dealworth a reported $1 billion.

In Dublin some 80 PopCap employees –half of whom are from outside of Ireland – arebusily adapting existing properties andcrafting original titles. Three months ago theywere 50 in number, and by 2012 their rankswill have swelled to over 100.

AUTONOMY FOR THE PEOPLEIn fact, so successful isPopCap Dublin as astudio, that it has nowearned itself a significantdegree of independencefrom the Seattle base that isthe company’s global HQ. Aswell as developing games,the office on Ireland’s eastcoast has its own localisationdepartment, PR team, and allthe other elements that allowit to operate as a self-sufficient studio.

“The studio here is younger than theSeattle studio, so we do look to it for a fewthings, such as to source any technicalknowledge we may not have here,” saysDublin studio general manager Paul Breslin.“But then we are very much autonomous inthat we have our own teams and specificgame projects, and these teams work fairlyautonomously, occasionally reaching out toSeattle for any knowledge sharing.”

Part of the reason for that independence isPopCap Dublin’s track record with

regard to its specialty:smartphone development.While the studio isn’t restrictedto portable devices, its efforts

on mobile are what affordsthe outfit its self-

determination, sayssenior game designer

Dave Bishop.

“We’ve earned our freedom from Seattleover the last couple of years,” he asserts. “Ifyou looked back two years ago, here we wereadapting PopCap games for mobile. That wasreally the focus of this studio, and then theymade the decision that they effectivelywanted to create ‘PopCap in a box’ here inDublin, so that we could have some creativeand developmental autonomy.”

For that reason the studio opted to installsomeone creatively who could be anopposite number to the key creative team inSeattle, picking Bishop for the role.

And it seems that they have succeeded inbuilding that studio in a box. On a recent visitto Ireland, EA’s infamous CEO John Riccitiellodeclared PopCap Dublin ‘a company in it’sown right’. With the new boss suitablyimpressed, the Dublin team are clearly doingsomething striking.

While the PopCap Shanghai operation ismore autonomous, the Dublin base has stillbegun to blossom into being one of the mostsignificant and influential casual studios onthe planet.

Part of the reason, argues Breslin, is anincreased focus on game design.

IT’S IN THE GAMES“We’ve got a number of designers here, andthat’s evolved over the past few years,” heexplains. “We now have three very strongdesigners on board, and that has changedour ability to create new IP and new IPadaptations. Around those individuals we’rebuilding teams to create games.”

38 | OCTOBER 2011

BETA | POPCAP DUBLIN

PopCap Dublin’s studiogeneral manager PaulBreslin (top) and seniorgame designer DaveBishop are confident theEA acquisition is a goodthing for the company

Pop stars Will Freeman takes a look behind the doors of PopCap’s EuropeanHQ in Dublin, and meets the staff earning their right to autonomyin the wake of the recent EA acquisition

We are very muchautonomous – we

have our own teams andspecific game projects,occasionally reaching out toSeattle for anyknowledge sharing

Paul Breslin, PopCap

PopCap’s hip Dublin officehouses a constantlygrowing workforce,current over 80 in number

38,39 Dev121 Popcap_final 22/09/2011 09:11 Page 1

But what of PopCap’s sometimescontroversial new owners? It would bereasonable to assume that with ElectronicArts now at the helm, the waters ofautonomy at PopCap Dublin could be upsetjust as they are settling.

The studio’s staff, however, are confidentEA’s role can only be beneficial.

“The company culture won’t be changed,and that PopCap magic is part of our culture,”offers Breslin. “None of that will be touched.But what does change is that EA gives us theability to accelerate our plans to get ourgames into more people’s hands. There’s8,000 people at EA, and EAi, which we’re adivision of, has a very good distributioncapability. We can now tap into thatdistribution network and get more of ourgames out there.”

Physically, the EA acquisition will have verylittle effect on PopCap Dublin. The team willremain in their current building, and for theforeseeable future are unlikely to findthemselves sharing space with EA’s IrishBioware operation. EA’s capacity to localiseinto huge numbers of languages will be asignificant boon to the team,and the giant publisher’sexperience withplatforms that PopCaphas only really touched onsuch as Android issomething that has Breslinand his colleagues feelingclearly optimistic.

But there was some scepticismfrom PopCap staff about EA’sinfluence. The Dublin team,however, insist Riccitiello and hiscolleagues have done much toreassure them that they willkeep a hold on creativefreedom and the cherishedcompany culture.

Bishop, for example, isn’t afraid toadmit he wasn’t sure how EA’sinfluence would manifest itself.

“I’d known lots of people at Bullfrog andlots of people at Westwood,” he says. “But Ithink this is a different EA to that era.Riccitiello and everybody else like BarryCottle went to great lengths, sometimes inperson, to emphasise that PopCap was beingbought because of what it is and how it doesthings; they’re not just buying the rights tosome brands.

“I take Riccitiello at his word, and I knowpeople at Playfish, and it seems that in recenttimes, for the most part, EA’s acquisitionshave been left to be who they are. I don’thave that many concerns.”

In fact, there’s even personal excitementwithin the EA walls about the opportunitiesthe deal might bring about.

“Who knows; one day we might want totake an EA property that no one else has

touched,” says Bishop with a smile,before making clear he’s allowing

himself to stray from the companyline. “I would love to do DungeonKeeper on iPad. That would beawesome. Maybe one day I’ll sendan email to Mr Riccitiello andsuggest it. Never say never.”

Just nine months ago PopCap’sbiggest challenge waswhere to go next. Ideas and

ambitions were plentiful, butto take on everything at

once was close to impossible. Today, on theshoulders of EA, that is no longer an issue,insist the senior staff.

Globally the company – which once spentthree months working on the speed thegems fall in Bejeweled – is preparing forsignificant and rapid growth.

MORE IS MOREInspired by a belief that the more theydeliver, the more autonomy they’ll enjoy, theDublin staff are creating higher numbers ofgames for a wider range ofdevices than ever before, andare focusing intently on‘social connectedness’ asthey build their reputationas PopCap’s centre forexcellence in smartphone.

“We want to do morehere in Dublin,”concludes Breslin.“We want to createmore games andwe’re now nicely set up to dothat. We have a number ofteams working on both new titlesand adaptations of our existing IPs rightnow. We’ve just got a new floor herewe’re going to open up, and we’ll behiring people to fill that space and createmore games. We’re very ambitiousand the road ahead is there for us tomake full use of.”www.popcap.com


POPCAP DUBLIN | BETA

Riccitiello went togreat lengths,

sometimes in person, toemphasise that PopCap wasbeing bought because ofwhat it is and how itdoes things.

Dave Bishop, PopCap

SETTING UP POPCAMPPopCap’s creative approach is a boldone. It will not be hurried when itcomes to making games, and it isfamously not afraid to try new ideasand can them if they don’t work.

That approach is very much part ofthe studio’s success, but it doesmean staff can see themselvesworking on a project for many years.That considered, PopCamp has beencreated to serve as a ‘creative release’.

The quarterly PopCamp events seestaff step away from their usual roles and work in small teams tocreate games internally in a week-long game design challenge.

The project is partly for fun, partly to inspire creativity, andpotentially to see future fully fledged PopCap releases conceived.

“Typically when we’re working on a proper PopCap gameeverything is really polished, but when it comes to PopCampeverything is really immediate,” explains artist Riana McKeith(above). “You don’t have time to polish to such an extent,because everyone is concentrating on making really fun, workinggames that give an idea of where it could go. Art-wise that reallygives me an opportunity to take a chance and do things a bit mad.”

“PopCamp means that new IP can now come from anywhere,”adds Dublin studio general manager Paul Breslin. “We’re open toworking on the ideas that start there and see them bubble up allthe way if they have the potential.”

“Everyone is concentrating on makingreally fun, working on games that give

an idea of where it could go.”

38,39 Dev121 Popcap_final 22/09/2011 09:11 Page 2

AS AN EMERGING expert in the world ofracing rodents, I spoke recently at Developand GDC Europe 2011 about Playniac'sapproach to preparing squirrels forinternational competition, and found thatthere was plenty of interest in thetechniques we were developing.

We introduced what I call ‘interactivewireframes’ for International Racing Squirrels,a game commissioned by Channel 4 whichlaunches in autumn 2011. Other gamedesigners are already talking about applyingthem, and students want to employ them intheir coursework.

The interactive wireframe really helpedthe commissioning team at Channel 4visualise and understand the game, themechanic and the user journeys thatPlayniac was building. Even at a very earlystage, the broadcaster’s staff could takeaway a sence of how things would workonce the game had been completed.

So what are interactive wireframes, howdo they differ from previous ways ofspecifying games, and how can developersuse them in ‘storytelling mode’ to do veryearly user testing?

THE DISTANT PAST: USE CASESWe started off using use-cases and appliedthem in various productions including LostArmy of FuShi, an action puzzle game for BBCBitesize; and Alien Farm, a multi-user,collaborative, alien herding game for CBBC.For each element in the game, the use-caseexplains in writing a user’s intentions, theaction they will take and the results.

Use-cases look like a handy tool fordetailing game features, but we found that inpractice they quickly became largedocuments that were difficult to maintain.They are painstaking to write and, worst ofall, no one really wants to read them. Thoughexcellent at specifying functionality veryprecisely, they leave little room to manoeuvrein game implementation.

The main issue was that they didn’t give asense of what the game was like to play orhow the game’s graphical user interface (GUI)might be laid out, so we decided we neededto find a more visual technique.

THE RECENT PAST: STATIC WIREFRAMESMany readers will be familiar with wireframes,and we have used them for projects such asJourney to Fossil Island, an ecologicaladventure quiz game we created workingwith British Gas.

This was an episodic game, with missionsfor release over several weeks, and thewireframe diagrams above show the mapview screen. The game features six islandlocations that the player visits in turn, andthis wireframe could be created before any ofthe locations had been designed or evennamed. The wireframe makes thefunctionality clear and also hints at thepossible layout of the information on thescreen, without pinning it down.

In the images immediately above you cansee a static wireframe from Journey to FossilIsland, and how the finished map screenappeared in the game.

Static wireframes give an immediate visualsense of the layout of game screens and theirfunctionality. They also allow some GUIdesign to be done early in the project and inan abstract manner, and are very easy tounderstand for both technical and non-technical readers.

They are useful for communicating thegame to everyone involved and the designand development teams will use them totake the game forward.

They are not intended, however, to conveyany design for the finished screens, even ifoccasionally they do include some graphicalelements for conciseness. Being diagrammatic,neither do they convey look and feel orcolour schemes.

Overall we found that, althoughsupporting user flow diagrams can help, theapproach did not give a good sense of screenflow and user interaction.

For our next game we decided to takewireframes one step further.

THE FUTURE: WIREFRAME NARRATIVESInternational Racing Squirrels is a race teammanagement simulation that has the playerrunning a team of jet-setting squirrels. Theytrain their squirrels to boost their stats andupgrade them with accessories from a shop,before sending them to race up mountains,across deserts or through futuristiccityscapes. Behind the gameplay, we’veturned the finances found in games from SimCity to Game Dev Story up a notch, andincorporated a realistic model that simulatesreal-world consumer finances.

We decided to create an interactivewireframe where all the buttons on screenwould be active, although none of the gamefunctionality had been implemented.

We used Adobe Flash CS4, and switched toAS2 mode to enable us to work entirely onthe tool’s linear timeline using basicinstructions, rather than having to write anyseparate code.

Interactive wireframe screen layouts lookquite similar to their static counterparts, butusers can mouse over to reveal tooltipsshowing further information and they canclick to advance to different sections of thegame. The interactive wireframe was createdusing Adobe Flash, and delivered to our team and client via a password-protectedweb page.

One of the main screens in InternationalRacing Squirrels is the home screen, wherethe player gets an overview of their gameand can manage their team. They can buyand upgrade homes and training activities,view their stats, pay bills, go to races andmore. There was a lot to fit on this screen andthe interactive wireframe also showsonscreen items in various states.

Though not usually a feature at thewireframe stage, the diagram on theopposite page does give a sense of theintended setting: the background image wasadded for this purpose.

40 | OCTOBER 2011

BETA | GAME PLANNING

Rob Davis of Playniac, thestudio behind the Channel 4 commisionedInternational RacingSquirrels

So many queries canbe resolved by

referring to the interactivewireframe that in somesenses it can seem as if thegame is producingitself.

Inside stories Taking a break from finishing off InternationalRacing Squirrels, Rob Davis introduces theconcept of ‘wireframe narratives’

40,41 Dev121 Wireframe_final 23/09/2011 16:51 Page 1

The completed screen immediately abovebrings those features very much into theworld of the game, featuring an up-treeurban training facility.

For the main race screen we decided earlyon that we would not create a first-personracing game but, as in management simssuch as Championship Manager, we wouldallow players to set up their team and thenwatch them perform. We provide someinteraction during races in the form of aperformance boosting mini-game andvarious power ups.

The wireframe shows the race positionindicator, a loose tribute to Mario Kart, theoverhead track overview, the ‘squirrel cam’showing the team member front-on and themini-game. Taking us slightly closer to aworking prototype, we were able to mock upseveral versions of the mini-game beforedeciding on the final form (below, left).

The finished game screen shows all ofthose features in place. On the right aboveyou can see the Jungle Tree Run race.

Interactive wireframes have all the benefitsof their static predecessors and give a clearsense of screen flow. They also give somesense of the game dynamics. They areextremely easy to understand and incrediblyuseful for the design and development teamsas well as the client. So many queries aboutthe game can be resolved by referring to theinteractive wireframe that in some senses itcan seem as if the game is producing itself.

With some basic Flash knowledge,interactive wireframes are surprisingly easy tomaintain once set up. They can also be easily

delivered over the web. Although FlashProfessional is our preference, a variety oftools could be used including Flash Builder,OmniGraffle, PowerPoint or Keynote; evenHTML or interactive PDFs. There are alsoonline offerings such as MockingBird.However in our view they are not as flexibleor powerful as Flash for interactivity.

WIREFRAME STORYTELLINGAn additional benefit of interactivewireframes is that they can be used for livetesting. We found this invaluable to get somesense of the game in action early on. For thefirst time, we took the interactive wireframeinto a very early user test in a London school,where players ran through the entire gameand using all of its features. Don't forget thatthis is a game that doesn’t exist yet.

The interactive wireframes were also veryhelpful for Channel 4 and Playniac’s schoolplay-testing because, as we all know, showingpeople static wireframes just doesn’t cut it.

The game is being played in what I'd call‘storytelling’ mode. Off camera a ‘games

master’ is playing the part of the software,describing everything that is happening butnot immediately viewable on the screen.

The session is videoed and we observehow screens and functionality areunderstood; and how well intended gamemechanics work.

I was asked by a GDC delegate how thisapproach was useful if it can't convey theexcitement or visual experience of playingthe actual game, and so runs the risk ofalienating the tester. We are not, however,trying to create an entertainment experienceat this stage. By asking the participant tosuspend their disbelief, allow us to tell them astory and join us in imagining the result, weare simply trying to understand more aboutour game.www.playracingsquirrels.com


GAME PLANNING | BETA

Rob Davis is founder and creative director ofPlayniac, the team behind International RacingSquirrels, as well as numerous other projects forbroadcasters, agencies and brands.www.playniac.com

Left: The interactivewireframe version ofInternational RacingSquirrel’s home screen,and the final version of thesame screen in-game(above)

40,41 Dev121 Wireframe_final 23/09/2011 16:51 Page 2



Key Release:Bigworld

Technologyp44

Unity Focus:Developing

for Kinectp51

Heard About:Forza 4

p53

THE LATEST TOOLS NEWS, TECH UPDATES & TUTORIALS

TUTORIAL:PARTICLE RENDERING, p52

EPIC DIARIES: BIOWARE’S MASS EFFECT 3, p49

Remixing games audioFirelight Technologies plans to shake up games development with the new FMOD Studio, p44

43 Dev121 Build Cover_final 23/09/2011 15:41 Page 1

44 | OCTOBER 2011

Firelight Technologies leaddesigner Raymond Biggsbelieves that for theconsumer, FMOD Studiowill mean more immersivegaming experiences

The audio mixer elementof FMOD Studio brings theproduction quality ofmovies and albums togame audio design, claimits creators

BUILD | TOOLS NEWS

What differentiates FMOD Studio fromFMOD’s previous offerings?The main difference with FMOD Studio ishow we approached the design. We startedby looking at the tools currently available formusic, film and television – digital audioworkstations (DAWs) such as Pro Tools, Logicand Live – and we based our design on thecore ideas these tools share. We wantedFMOD Studio to have a similar look and feelbut to be tailored specifically for games.

So what about the games audio sectortoday means that a tool of this kind isneeded and wanted?I believe there’s real frustration among sounddesigners and composers about the toolscurrently available for game audio. For thosecoming from music, film and television togames, there’s a high barrier to entry becausecurrent tools are just too different from theones they use every day.

Meanwhile, those currently working in thegames industry are hamstrung by the lack offeatures that are standard for DAWs. WithFMOD Studio we’re trying to bridge the gapbetween these two worlds.

Presumably that means that FMOD Studiocould change the way games audio isimplemented in the future?If you look at how game audio tools are usedtoday, you’ll see that mostly they’re just usedto import and organise assets. Most soundeffects in games are simple random playlists,even though our tools provide the ability tomake much more dynamic sounds.

I believe a major reason for this is that theinterfaces of game audio tools today justaren’t designed for audio creation. They havemore in common with file managers anddatabases than audio sequencers andsoftware mixers.

By designing FMOD Studio to be more likea DAW, we believe sound designers andcomposers will spend more time creatingwithin the tool and experimenting withdynamic sounds and music.

And how will it change the games thatconsumers play?Ultimately, we hope FMOD Studio will helpcreate more immersive and engaging games.One unique aspect of game audio that sounddesigners and composers have to take intoaccount and try to avoid is listener fatiguecaused by repetition. If sounds and music aredynamic and ever changing, the player willfeel more engaged with the game.

FMOD Studio is designed specifically forcreating sound effects and music that havevariation and respond dynamically to in-game action. Potentially, every sound effectand music track created with FMOD Studio isits own mini synthesiser.

Why is the virtual mixer elementparticularly important to FMOD Studio?The mixer is actually a very importantcreative tool in any audio production.Creative mixing is really an art in itself andmany highly regarded audio engineers getpaid big bucks to mix the likes of albums andfilm soundtracks.

There have been some experiments in thepast to bring mixers to games – starting within-house tools and more recently inmiddleware. But we haven’t seen anything atthe level you’d expect from an audioworkstation or hardware mixer.

The mixer in FMOD Studio is specialbecause it’s the most capable mixer ever

created for games. We think it sets the bar forhow games will be mixed in the future.

What other significant features andabilities does FMOD Studio introducebeyond the mixer itself?The other major feature in FMOD Studio is itsmulti-track editor. It’s a unified editor forboth sound effects and music that supportsflexible track routing, effect chains,automation of effects by the timeline as wellas game parameters, and tempo automationfor music.

We’re also including some long requestedfeatures, such as shared workspaces forteams, Perforce integration, mixer snapshotsand support for hardware control surfaces.

And it’s fair to say FMOD Studio willprovide games audio professionals with aparallel to that of film and TV audio?Our aim is to reduce the learning curve, notjust for newcomers but for those alreadyworking in the industry with current tools.

If you look at audio tools available outsideof games, they are very mature pieces ofsoftware that share fundamental designfeatures, conventions and terminology.

But if you look at current audio tools forgames, they’ve got more in common withdata entry applications like spreadsheetsthan with DAWs.

For someone coming from film ortelevision it’s a very steep learning curve –and for those currently in games, a lot of timeis spent figuring out how to do things in the

We believe sounddesigners and

composers will spend moretime creating within thetool, experimentingwith dynamicsounds and music.

Raymond Biggs, Firelight

Opening the DAWFMOD Studio is here to bring the digital audio workstation concept closer to gamesdevelopment. Will Freeman talks to Firelight Technologies’ lead designer RaymondBiggs about a tool poised for what promises to be an industry-changing release

44,45 Dev121 Build News_FINAL 22/09/2011 17:01 Page 1

game audio tool they already know how todo in a DAW.

We’ve based the design of FMOD Studio onthose things common to all DAWs andexpanded them to achieve things that areunique to games. If you’re alreadycomfortable with DAWs, using FMOD Studioshould feel very natural.

Audio teams, of course, work in tandemwith game developers specialising in otherdisciplines. How will FMOD studio improvethe interplay between sound teams andthe likes of coders, designers and so on?I think we’re seeing a trend, in both internaltools and middleware, of reducing iterationtimes. The best way to see if something worksis to quickly try it – and if it doesn’t work, trysomething else. Accelerating the iterationprocess for the audio team gives them moretime to experiment and collaborate with theart, design, and writing teams.

With FMOD Studio we’ve actually tried toeliminate iteration time altogether byskipping the build step. Our live updatesystem allows sound designers andcomposers to make changes on the fly andhear them while the game is being played.

Is FMOD Studio exclusively for triple-Adevelopment, or will it offer pricings and afeature set suitable for smaller studios,and even indies and microstudios?From a design standpoint, we’ve worked hardto layer the complexity in FMOD Studio.Although there are some advanced features

that triple-A titles will exploit, there is a coreset of basic features that will be used byprojects large and small. We’ve focused onmaking these everyday things easy and upfront.

We’ll be announcing pricing closer to therelease date. However, it will follow ourcurrent pricing philosophy of offering the fullproduct to everyone – free for educationaland non-profit use, and variably priced forother projects, depending on their size.

What challenges still face those working ingame audio today?I think a common fight for all of us in gameaudio is for bigger budgets. Not just money –although that would help – but for systemresources. High quality effects and synthesisused in the film, TV, and music industries arecomputationally expensive – the algorithmsare very complex. For example, a reverb effectof the quality of Waves’ IR1 convolution

reverb would blow the entire audio CPUbudget for most games – and that’s just forone effect.

However, we are beginning to see greatervalue placed on game audio as attentionincreases from the press and from gamers.

We’re also on the verge of the next consolecycle with the muscled up Wii U launchingnext year. It’s a very exciting time to be ingame audio and I think we’re going to beblown away by advances – both technicaland artistic – in the next few years.

How important is integration with othertools and technology to FMOD Studio?It’s easy to forget when you’ve got your headstuck in developing a tool that you’re onlyone stop in a much larger pipeline. FMODStudio sits between the DAW and the gameengine, so anything we can do to improve theflow of content will help speed up the process.

FMOD is already integrated with all themajor game engines, and we’ll be looking tocontinue those integrations with FMODStudio. Additionally, features like the liveupdate system will allow sound designersand composers to get content into the gamealmost instantly.

In terms of technology we’ve been lucky tohave attracted some really great partners;companies like Dolby, iZotope and AudioGaming have incredible technology farbeyond anything we could do in-house. Weknow our own limits – and we can risebeyond them by working with great partners.www.fmod.org


TOOLS NEWS | BUILD

In designing FMOD Studio to be more like aDAW, FirelightTechnologies hopes sounddesigners and composerswill feel able to spendmore time experimentingwith dynamic sounds and music.

Features like the liveupdate system will

allow game sounddesigners and composers toget content into thegame almostinstantly.

Raymond Biggs, Firelight

44,45 Dev121 Build News_FINAL 22/09/2011 17:01 Page 2

46 | OCTOBER 2011

BUILD | MMO TECHNOLOGY

FOR THOSE considering the creation of a newMMO, BigWorld Technology presents atempting offer.

The result of ten years’ work, the techoutfit’s middleware platform is designedspecifically for developing massivelymultiplayer and other online games. Itprovides users with an infamously highlyscalable server capable of supportingmillions of players, a 3D client that promisesto deliver an increasingly robust experience,integrated content creation tools, servertools, mobile and browser integration, athird-party plugin library and a completesupport service.

And with a number of new featuresincorporated in 3.0, BigWorld is set toincrease its standing as a prominent player inthe competitive middleware space.

“The main areas we’re currently focused onare improving shadow and lightingperformance in the core DirectX client,extending iOS and web browser integration,a big client facelift, social networkingfunctionality, extended web services forBigWorld Server, and Collada support,” saysthe firm’s social media director Matt Daly ofthe company’s plans for the platform.

“In order to open up the field of play toindie developers, we’re now also offeringoffering a BigWorld Indie licence, in additionto the commercial licence,” he adds.

SMALL CHANGE?Perhaps surprisingly, Daly claims that theunderlying needs of massively mutliplayerdevelopers have not changed all thatdrastically over the past decade; albeit withthe caveat that the likes of browser, social,mobile and free-to-play have markedimportant milestones in the evolution ofcrafting MMOs.

“We've had the BigWorld client in abrowser since March of last year, and haveseen the browser-integrated game spacegrowing rapidly,” confirms Daly. “Onlinepublishers like Bigpoint, Aeria and PerfectWorld are creating a richer and longer-termsocial context for gaming experiences withbrowser-based games.

“Aeria publishes Realm of the Titans andKingdom Heroes Online, two games that havebenefited from some level of out-of-gamesocial networking connectivity. World ofWarplanes, another BigWorld-powered title,

is integrating Overwolf to bring socialnetworking, chat, one-click machinimapublishing, and other such functionalitydirectly into the game UI.”

The impact of social networks on MMOscertainly can’t be ignored – especially as theygive developers a direct route to extendinguser engagement to include time notspecifically spent in-game.

It’s that trend that inspired BigWorld’s WebPlayer, which helps bring MMOs to webbrowsers, allowing licensees to take theirgames and players deeper into the realm ofsocial networks.

APPLE IN ITS EYEBigWorld is also increasing its focus on iOS.While the company has supported mobile forseveral years, the ongoing rise of iOS hasprompted the tech outfit to increase itssupport for Apple’s portables.

As a result, BigWorld currently has aworking demo of an iOS client connected tothe same server that's running its PC ‘FantasyDemo’, meaning that two users can share thesame game space and all data exchangetherein while one is on a computer and theother is on an iPhone or iPad.

While the introduction of support for iOSApps to connect to a BigWorld Server is oneof the most substantial updates to 3.0, it isthe many more subtle changes that mayhave more impact on the daily workload ofMMO development.

“Besides browser, mobile and Colladaintegration, we have quite a bit of additionalshininess coming to our client in versionthree,” confirms Daly. “We're implementingbrand new lighting and shadowingcapabilities, including deferred lightingrendering, PSSM, HDR render, SSAO, dynamicshadow maps, and lightmaps. FXAA anti-aliasing is being worked on, as well as softparticles and other similar goodness.”

Over on the server side, noteworthyimprovements include new components tobetter support external services likeTwistedWeb, as well as asynchronous two-way calls within the server.

Certainly, Bigworld Technology is set to bekept very busy over the next six months as itextends version 2.X and readies 3.0.Fortunately, the efforts of the team at theAustralian based company mean that ifyou’re an MMO developer, your workloadshould be a little more manageable once 3.0is in the wild.

BigWorld’s Matt Daly(above) says World ofWarplanes (top) is beingintegrated with Overwolfto bring social networking,chat and one-clickmachinima publishing intothe game UI

BigWorld’s Fantasy Demo (above) is provided to licensees ofthe company’s middleware platform, and shows examplecode for trading systems, AI, combat and other systems

To open up the fieldof play to indie

developers, we’re now alsooffering offering aBigWorld Indielicence.

Matt Daly, BigWorld

KEY RELEASEWHAT IS IT?: A broad middleware offeringspecifically for making MMOs and online gamesCOMPANY: BigWorld TechnologyPRICE: See websitewww.bigworldtech.comThis Month: Will Freeman looks at v3.0 of BigWorld Technology’s MMO suite

46 Dev121 Key release_final 22/09/2011 09:14 Page 1




GAME ENGINES | BUILD

THE MASS EFFECT franchise is a behemoth invideo game entertainment; a series that hasreshaped the way players think aboutgaming and its immersive possibilities.

The upcoming third installment, alongwith its predecessors, is built on UnrealEngine 3.

Mass Effect 3 will feature not only improvedenvironments and enhanced cinematics, butalso Kinect integration.

“So much has changed since we beganworking on this series,” say Casey Hudson,executive producer at BioWare Edmonton.“When we began, the Xbox 360 hadn’t evencome out yet, and yet we had to design agame for it. Now, looking back, we’ve beenworking with Unreal Engine 3 for quite a fewyears. Even with Mass Effect 3, we’ve beenable to find huge new improvements to theengine’s performance.”

PERFORMANCE CAPTUREAnd performance is key, according toHudson. “That’s allowed us to do everythingfrom getting much better acting with thecharacters to introducing better storytellingmethods,” he explains. “In addition, theengine allowed us to create a richer worldand produce more entertaining cinematics.We’ve also utilised the improvedperformance of the engine to bring moreenemies on screen at once, so players willcontend with a lot more stuff happening inthis game.”

Gameplay has also changed dramatically,says Jesse Houston, producer of Mass Effect 3:“If you look at Mass Effect 1 to Mass Effect 3,they’re almost completely different games atthis point.

“You’ve seen major changes in combat.You’ve seen major changes in role-playingelements. You’ve seen massive lightingchanges; now we have real graphic fidelitythat is just so much better than it has beenhistorically. You’re going to see performanceimprovements. We’re 30 frames per secondyet again, locked across the board. You canreally feel the difference in the controls.

“We’re ultimately an Unreal Engine 3 game,and Unreal Kismet and Unreal Matinee are amajor part of any kind of cinematic experience,”

continues Houston, adding: “Our team hasbeen able to utilise Kismet and Matinee tocreate Hollywood-style cinematics that bringthe story to life and enhance the gameplayexperience.” Mass Effect 3 will be released forXbox 360, PlayStation3 and PC in early 2012.

MINORITY’S REPORTWhile Unreal Engine 3 is the choice amongmany established developers, indie studioslike Montreal’s Minority also rely on thetechnology’s power.

Minority’s upcoming PlayStation Networkexclusive, 3D puzzle-platforming adventure

Papo & Yo, has already snagged impressivecritical accolades. These include six awardsand 20 award nominations at this year’s E3,such as both IGN and GameSpot’s Best PuzzleGame of E3. GameSpot stated: “Its deeplypersonal subject matter, clever implantationof puzzles, and surreal art design combined tomake something unique and engaging.”

Minority’s choice to go with Unreal Engine 3 had to do with not only the team’sgreat track record with the engine but also aneed for agility throughout development.

Julien Barnoin, lead engineer at Minority,explains: “We knew Unreal Engine 3 wouldget us creating gameplay mechanics andlevels very quickly. We wanted to quickly startbuilding gameplay elements and puzzles anditerating on them. UE3’s material editorallowed us to achieve beautiful charactersand environments without a lot of work.

“When artists or designers come to measking for a new feature, I can often just pointthem to how to do it right in the editor, andcan get back to coding the features that arereally unique to our game.”

Papo & Yo is scheduled for release onPlayStation Network in 2012.

Mass Effect 3 (above) andPapo & Yo (inset) are twoutterly distinct gamesmade with the same gamedevelopment technology

EPIC DIARIESMark Rein looks at two very different Unreal Engine 3 titles

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, NC. Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 has won Game Developermagazine’s Best Engine Front Line Award five times along with entry into theHall of Fame. UE3 has won four consecutive Develop Industry ExcellenceAwards. Epic is the creator of the mega-hit Unreal series of games and theblockbuster Gears of War franchise. Follow @MarkRein on Twitter.

GDC OnlineAustin, TXOctober 10th to13th

Montreal International Game SummitMontreal, QuebecNovember 1st to 2nd

We’ve been workingwith UE3 for quite a

few years. Even with MassEffect 3, we’ve beenable to find hugenew improvements.

Casey Hudson, Bioware

49 Dev121 Epic Diaries_final 22/09/2011 09:36 Page 1

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ME Awards 2011 - Advert 20/09/2011 16:41 Page 1

WHEN Microsoft threw open the doors of theKinect Fun Labs to developers, the RelentlessSoftware team knew it had to move fast.

Earning a space in the area would give theBrighton studio a chance to engage withconsumers through some of its mostexperimental concepts; an alluringopportunity that would prove equallypopular with developers across the globe.

Fortunately, as a company already au faitwith using Unity as a rapid prototyping tool,Relentless was primed to pounce on theKinect Fun Labs prospect.

“When we were bidding for the Kinect FunLabs project we wanted to show we couldturn something around quickly, so we usedUnity to make a demo – of a similar KinectFun Labs-style game – in two weeks with ahandful of us,” says Tim Aidley, leadprogrammer of Relentless’ Fun Labs game AirBand. “This must have made an impression -we started on Air Band almost immediatelyafter that.”

In short, Unity was an obvious choice for atight schedule, even though it had not beenused to author a released Xbox 360 or Kinecttitle previously.

“We worked closely with Unity to makesure all the functionality we needed for AirBand would be ready in time,” states Aidleyon the matter of project speed

“This, combined with our own plug-inprovided, meant we could achieve thequality we wanted.”

BAND TOGETHERAir Band itself is a music game free from theshackles of scoring, winning or losing, and itdemands no musical skill. It’s also one of thefirst games on Xbox 360 to augment theplayer’s image with virtual objects; a factorthat is a testament to Unity’s potential.

“What impressed all of us most is the levelof productivity we can achieve with Unity,”says Aidley of the technology’s attributes.“The intuitive layout and interface are

straight-forward and the online referencemanual is also a great feature – it’scomprehensive and very accessible.

“Many ready-to-use features cut down theneed for what normally takes programmingtime, like the integrated audio filters. Our

audio designer was impressed with theability to embed audio trigger events intoanimations, as it was a great way to get audioquickly synced to some of the art elements inthe game.“

Air Band’s game designer, meanwhile, wasalso particularly impressed by the ability toquickly tweak values and see the results inreal time.

“From a production perspective it wasincredible to have a team who could be reallyversatile and adaptable, thanks to what Unityhad to offer,” confirms Aidley.

But it wasn’t just that Unity allowed AirBand’s artist, audio designer and gamedesigner to add or tweak elements in the

game without assistance from a programmer.For the game’s all-important audio the enginewas particularly useful to set up animationcurves that mixed the balance of individualmusic tracks according to the dynamics of aplayer’s movement, all of which could bequickly modified in the Unity editor.

WELL KINECTEDLooking forward, it’s likely we’ll see manymore Kinect games authored using Unity.The engine now supports most of the KinectAPIs, leaving Relentless most eager to accessthe ability to connect the motion detectinghardware’s input into the Unity editor.

There were, of course, challenges incrafting Air Band – Microsoft certification andtiming being the most prominent – butdespite working on a new platform with anengine yet to be used for Kinect, and havingto overcome the problems inherent in tryingto blend multiple music stems, Relentlessand Unity prevailed.

“Thanks to Unity’s strength, the team wasable to spend more time focusing on thegame and less time wrangling with theengine. Also, the 360 Unity code was verystable,” concludes Aidley.

The team was ableto spend more time

focusing on the game andless time wranglingwith the engine.

Tim Aidley, Relentless Software


GAME ENGINES | BUILD

Relentless Software's AirBand team (top, clockwisefrom top-left) PaulGrimstone, Tim Aidley, WillTarratt, JonathanWingrove, MonaQuintanilla, Dave Millerand Tim Ansell, and theKinect Labs Game theycreated (above)

UNITY FOCUSA look at how Relentless crafted the first Unity-authored Kinect game

AIR BANDDeveloper: Relentless SoftwarePlatform: Xbox 360 (Kinect Fun Labs)What is it? A new music game specifically forMicrosoft’s Kinect Fun Labs

51 Dev121 Unity Tech_final 22/09/2011 09:23 Page 1

BUILD | TUTORIAL: PARTICLES

THIS IS THE second and final part of an extractfrom Practical Rendering & Computation withDirect 3D 11. Check back with issue 120 forpart one.

The particle system we will build in thissection represents a particle emitter andconsumer, where the emitter createsparticles and the consumer destroys themwhen they get too close to it. The system willbe governed by a simple gravity systembased around the consumer. This could bethought of as a simplified black hole, whichexhibits a large gravitational pull on eachparticle and will swallow them up once theypass the event horizon. Before moving to theimplementation of the particle system, wewill examine the basic laws of gravitation inorder to implement our particle updatemethod in a physically plausible manner.

Newton’s law of universal gravitation statesthat there is an attractive gravitational forcebetween two point masses, which isproportional to the product of the twomasses, and inversely proportional to thesquare of the distance between them. Thisrelationship is depicted in the diagram

above, and is defined in the equation below,where F is the gravitational force, G is thegravitational constant, m1 and m2 are themasses of the two objects, and r is thedistance between their centre of mass:

According to this relationship, we can seethat the closer two objects are to each other,the greater the attractive gravitational force

betweenthem becomes. In

addition, the more massive the objects arethe greater this force is as well. This makessense when considering a black hole, whichrepresents a singularity of infinitely largemass (this is a simplification, but it will serveas an adequate explanation for ourpurposes). If an object approaches a blackhole, at some point it will be too close to theblack hole and will be dragged into it. Theacceleration of the particle caused by thegravitational force is calculated withNewton’s second law, which is shown in theequation below. The acceleration can befound by dividing the gravitational force bythe mass of the object that it is acting on:

In the context of our simulation, the blackhole will represent a very large mass insteadof an infinite mass, due to the obviouscalculation issues with using infinitenumbers. Each particle will have a fixed massand will be subjected to the gravitational pullof the black hole. In addition to thegravitational effects on the particles, they willbe created with a randomised initial velocityas they are emitted from the particle emitter.This will let the user see where the particle

emissions arecoming from, in addition to

where they are being attracted to. Tocalculate the particle velocity after eachsimulation step, we will use the equationbelow where v0 is the initial velocity at thebeginning of the time step, a is theacceleration caused by the gravitationalforce, and t is the amount of time that haspassed in this time step:

After the new velocity of the particle hasbeen determined, we can determine themodified position of the particle over thecurrent time step. This is performed as shownin the equation below. With these basicphysical interactions clarified, we cancontinue to the implementation design thatwill use the GPU to efficiently simulate howthese bodies will interact:

52 | OCTOBER 2011

In our ongoing series of book excerpts, here we present the second part of an extract from PracticalRendering & Computation with Direct 3D 11 by Jason Zink, Matt Pettineo and Jack Hoxley

A K Peters, an imprint of CRC Press, is apredominant publisher of books on gamedevelopment and game design. Its books,written by leading industry experts, are on ‘thecutting edge’ of today's technology.www.crcpress.com

If an objectapproaches a black

hole, at some point it will betoo close to theblack hole and willbe dragged into it.

Authors of the book asshown top to bottom:Jason Zink, Matt Pettineoand Jack Hoxley

Particle Systems – Part 2

Practical Rendering &Computation with Direct3D 11 provides a deepunderstanding of boththe high and low levelconcepts related to usingDirect 3D 11

52 Dev121 Book Excerpt_final 22/09/2011 16:55 Page 1


BUILD | AUDIO

PUT TOGETHER Forza Motorsport 4 and racingcar audio specialist Nick Wiswell, andarguably you have a marriage made in gameaudio heaven. UK game audio’s loss was USstudio Turn 10’s gain as Wiswell and his familyupped sticks, moving from Cheshire toRedmond just over one year ago.

With a wealth of experience garneredwhilst working on global hits like ProjectGotham Racing, he nevertheless faced somefresh career challenges. Previously headingan in-house team of sound designers andaudio programmers, he was confronted witha fundamentally different modus operandi – asmall core staff team ‘focused on the biggerpicture’ scaling up with outsourcers andfreelancers based on specific project needsand using audio middleware.

“The manifesto for audio was clear: tomake the racing sound more exciting,improving the car audio to be more visceral,”explains Wiswell. “My predecessors had beenlooking at the potential for additionaldynamic mixing and DSP which fell right intomy wheel house; so I took that and ran withit. We didn’t want to over-amp things toomuch and break realism, but we weredefinitely looking for enhanced excitement.”

TRASH TALKINGWiswell identified two key areas where adifferent approach could supply big wins: “Ideveloped already ongoing discussions withiZotope about getting their Trash distortionrunning on FMOD. They gave it a go andmade it work. The result is we have Trashrunning real-time on our car audio.

“Sure, it’s a little cut down from the pro-audio plug-in but it’s still allowed us to shapethe sound significantly and really capturesome of that visceral feeling. In real life, thesecars are seriously loud, and trying to simulatethe awesome volume that kicks you in theguts as they pass by – on tiny half-inch LCDTV speakers – is just never going to happen.

However, using something like Trash, we canget an ‘on the limit’ vibe – the way the soundkind of distorts in your head. It helps give thecars an extra sense of power and speed.”

This TV speaker awareness also informs themixing methodology, with Wiswell alwaysmindful that some 50-to-60 per cent ofplayers will hear the game on limitedplayback systems - which is why a pair ofAvantone ‘Mix Cubes’ are standard issue foraudio staff. Not that those with high-end hi-fi are forgotten.

“We’ve created bespoke LFE content tocreate something consistent across all cars –

just as for the car engine, we have a bedthat’s sitting there tracking the game physics,trying to respond and communicate the feelof the car,” says Wiswell.

“The other area of audio we’ve really focusedon is the tyres – such a crucial game-playfeedback mechanism. Quite often, thoughyou can’t feel it, you can hear the limit. Onjoining Turn 10, I found out they were gettingnew tyre physics data direct from Pirelli foruse with a new tyre physics model.

“This presented a great opportunity totake the tyre audio up a notch, addingparameters for much more fine grain control.This means you can hear a clearer differencebetween various types of forces beingapplied – say, skidding due to locked brakesas opposed to drifting sideways or wheel

spin. It’s a whole new layer of feedback that’snot been in the game before.”

ELECTRONIC ARTOne of the many benefits of being part of theMicrosoft Game Studio’s family is a centralaudio resource storing extensive libraries.Wiswell discovered a tyre recording sessionon file that had been conducted using a Teslaelectric sports car – no petrol engine butpower enough to light up the tyres.

“The bespoke library had absolutelyeverything we needed and we didn’t have tospend hours trying to extract the engineaudio,” he confirms. “So in the new tyre model,we have hundreds of different sounds andskids for each surface type. In fact, it’s morecomplex than the engine model overallbecause we’re tracking lateral and longitudinalforces as well as the amount of load on eachtyre – there are different sample sets forloaded/unloaded. As you go into a cornerand turn, one tyre’s being forced into theground, while another’s being slightly liftedoff the surface and the sonic characteristics ineach case are completely different.”

Apparently, hardcore Forza drivers withinthe studio expressed some hesitancy aboutchanging the tyre sounds until they foundthey could actually improve their lap timesbased on the added feedback.

With a smart dynamic mixing system,Kinect support and a collaborativepartnership with BBC’s Top Gear – featuringentertaining VO from Jeremy Clarkson – plusmore than 500 vehicles’ worth of expertlyrecorded and implemented car audio thatchanges as you upgrade and customize yourmotor, Forza 4’s audio is all set to impress.

Nick Wiswell is the audiospecialist for Turn 10’sForza Motorsport 4

The manifesto foraudio was clear - to

make the racing soundmore exciting - improvingthe car audio to bemore visceral.

Nick Wiswell, Turn 10

HEARD ABOUTJohn Broomhall catches up with Forza 4’s car audio specialist

Forza Motorsport 4Developer: Turn 10 Platform: Xbox 360www.forzamotorsport.net

John Broomhall is anindependent audio director,consultant and content provider.E: [email protected]

53 Dev121 Heard About_final 23/09/2011 17:56 Page 1

THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT

CREATIVE AND PROMOTIONAL SERVICES

Adotomi AgencyTel: +972 (0)37 915 300www.adotomi.com

AGI World LtdTel: 0207 602 9119www.agi-world.com

AN.XTel: 020 7785 7156www.anxagency.com

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

Bezier & HicksvilleTel: 0207 534 8800www.bezier.com, www.wearehicksville.com

BuzzTel: +61 3 8412 9000www.buzzproducts.com

Gem CreativeTel: 01279 822 800www.gem.co.uk/gemcreative

Fink CreativeTel: 01480 302350www.finkcreative.com

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

freeform.LondonTel: +44 (0)20 7183 6664www.freeformworldwide.com

FrontroomTel: +44 (0)20 7729 3033www.frontroom.com

Indigo PearlTel: +44 (0)20 8964 4545www.indigopearl.com

keefcreative ltdTel: +44 (0)20 3239 7563www.keefcreative.com

MiTel: +44 (0) 161 214 4780www.wearemi.com

OMTel: 0207 713 9000www.omuk.com

Peppermint PTel: 0207 240 2645www.peppermintp.com

PMA DigitalTel: 020 7060 4500www.pmadigital.com

Premier Public RelationsTel: +44 (0)207 292 8330games.premierpr.com

RealtimeUKTel: 01772 682363www.realtimeuk.com

Side and SidelinesTel: +44 (0)207 631 4800www.side.com, www.sidelinesagency.com

ÜberTel: 0114 278 7100www.uberagency.com

SJS LONDONTel: +44 20 7421 9400www.sjslondon.com

studio CO2Tel: +44 (0)1483 414 415www.studioco2.com

Studio DivaTel: 0117 214 0404www.studiodiva.co.uk

The Audio GuysTel: +44 (0)1788 565230www.theaudioguys.co.uk

UK DISTRIBUTION AND LOGISTICS

Gem DistributionTel: 01279 822 822www.gem.co.uk

LEGAL SERVICES

Harbottle & Lewis LLPTel: +44 (0)207 667 5000www.harbottle.com

CUSTOMER SERVICE

SitelTel: 01923 689600www.sitel.com

INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTION

Cinram Logistics (UK)Tel: (44) (0)1296 426 151www.cinram.com

Click Entertainment LimitedTel: +44 (0)203 137 3781www.click-entertainment.com

Curveball LeisureTel: +44 (0)1792 652521Email: [email protected]

GameWorldTel: +3110-298 38 38www.gameworld.nl

Game Outlet EuropeTel: +46 54 854750www.gameoutlet.se

KMS ComponentsTel: 02920 713713www.kmscomponents.com

InComm EuropeTel: 01489 556700www.incomm-europe.com

Ster-Kinekor EntertainmentTel: +27 11 445 7700www.primedia.co.za

Techland Sp. z o.o.Tel: +48 71 354 46 10www.techland.pl/en

White Room Gameswww.whiteroomgames.com

To list your company here and online every

Sourcebook dps_final 22/09/2011 09:52 Page 1

AGENCIES AND SERVICE COMPANIES

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

ChaYoWo Games Inc.Tel: US: +1 917 650 0010www.chayowogames.com

ISM - Interactive StudioManagementwww.ism-agency.com

xaitmentTel: +49 (0)6897 600 800www.xaitment.com

MANUFACTURING SERVICES

OK MediaTel: +44 (0)20 7688 6789www.okmedia.biz

Sony DADC Austria AGTel: +43 (0)6246 880-0www.sonydadc.com

Total Console RepairTel: 0871 9181721www.totalconsolerepair.co.uk

GAMING ACCESSORIES

AntiGrav Media LtdTel: 01932 454929www.antigrav-media.co.uk

Calibur11Tel: +3110-298 38 48www.calibur11.eu

I-Globe AccessoriesTel: 0203 0066760www.i-ga.co.uk

IGS CorporationTel: +845 600 1676www.gameonstuff.com

Logic3Tel: 01923 471000www.logic3.com

Lygo InternationalTel: 0191 230 6650www.lygoworld.com

ThrustmasterTel: +44 (0)1932 577 546www.thrustmaster.com

AmiqusTel: 01925 252588www.amiqus.com

Avatar Games RecruitmentTel: +44 (0) 1695 682 118www.avatar-games.co.uk

Gravity Recruitment LtdTel: 01302 235 000www.gravityrecruitment.com

OPM ResponseTel: +44 (0)1206 214421www.opmjobs.com

Specialmove ConsultancyTel: +44 (0)141 530 4555www.specialmove.com

Wayforward RecruitmentTel: London: 020 7734 4664Bristol: 0117 953 0050www.way-forward.com

LOCALISATION QA AND TESTING

BabelTel: 01273 764100www.babelmedia.com

Enzyme LabsTel: (+1) 450-995-2000www.enzyme.org

GlobalStep LLCTel: +44 (0)7808 731017www.globalstepgames.com

Native Primewww.nativeprime.com

Testronic LaboratoriesTel: +44 (0) 1753 653 722www.testroniclabs.com

Triple A TestingTel: +34 952 028 080www.tripleAtesting.com

Universally SpeakingTel: UK: 44 1 480 210621www.usspeaking.com

week please contact [email protected]

ONLINE

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ntmedia.co.uk/so

urcebook/

Sourcebook dps_final 22/09/2011 09:52 Page 2

GDC CHINA 2011 FEATURES

Online Track Global Track Social Games Track Mobile Summit Indie Games Summit Tutorials Sponsored Track

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Social Games Track Xiaojuan He (Ubisoft Chengdu)

Global Games Track Hitoshi Sakimoto (Basiscape International)Maxwell Peng (IGS)

Game Developers Conference™ ChinaNovember 12–14, 2011 | Shanghai Exhibition Center | Shanghai, ChinaVisit www.gdcchina.com for more information.

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PEOPLE:Former EA exec

VP Gerhard Florinjoins Innogames

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TOOLS:Unity opens up

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TRAINING:48-hour

Train2Game andEpic Game Jam

p63

The world’s premier listing of games development studios, tools, outsourcing specialists, services and courses…

KEY CONTACTS

STUDIOSAmiqus 01925 252 588

BigWorld +15122890145

Epic Games +1 919 870 1516

IndieCity 01926 880 081

TOOLSFork Particle 1(925) 417 1785

Jury Rig Software +44 (0) 203 286 4432

SERVICESCodeplay 0131 466 0503

inComm +44 (0) 1489 556 700

MPG Universal www.mpg-universal.com

COURSESUniversity of Hull +44 (0) 1482 465 951

University of Abertay 01382 308080

RATES1/4 page: £450 (or £200/month ifbooked for a minimum of six months)

Contact:[email protected]

T: 01992 535 647

GREAT ADVERTISINGOPPORTUNITIES

57 Dev121 directory cover_final 23/09/2011 13:37 Page 1

studios

58 | OCTOBER 2011

Former EA Europe boss Gerhard Florin,has emerged as chairman of browsergames developer Innogames.

Florin had previously worked asexecutive vice president at ElectronicArts and was responsible for sales,marketing and distribution acrossWestern Europe.

Innogames plans to explore businessopportunities across Europe, UK and USwith the help of Florin.

He says he is looking forward toworking with the studio and feels thedeveloper has a “strong market position,especially due to its unique browserbased games targeted towards highmonetisable core gamers.”

The studio has worked on onlinegames such as Tribal Wars and The West.

The former director of the US NationalCyber Security Center Philip Reitingerhas joined Sony to help fortify itsPlayStation Network, months after theonline service was hacked.

Reitinger joins as chief informationsecurity officer, with the appointmentcoming after the sensitive personal dataof more than 100 million PlayStationaccounts was compromised in April.

Sony was forced to close down itsnetwork for nearly a month, and offeredfree games to customers in acomprehensive compensation initiative.

“Certainly the network issue was acatalyst for Reitinger’s appointment,” aSony spokesman told Reuters.

“We are looking to bolster ournetwork security even further.”

The founder of Exozet Games, BartolRuzic, has resigned from his position atthe developer to join German studioSpellbound Entertainment.

Ruzic will be leading the developer’sactivities within the range of browser,mobile and serious games.

At Exozet, the German studio which heco-founded in 1996, he held the role ofChief Operational Officer and haspreviously worked as a producer andproject manager for other Europeanbased studios.

“With Bartol Ruzic we welcome anexperienced online and mobile gamesmanager at Spellbound EntertainmentAG. We look forward to expanding ourbusiness with him,” said Spellbound CEOAndreas Speer.

Decorated venture capitalist Jay Hoaghas joined Electronic Arts’ board ofdirectors, the company has announced.

Hoag, a technology investor who sitson the boards of eHarmony, TechTarget,Zillow and Netflix, has become theeleventh member of EA’s board.

“Jay Hoag is an extraordinarilyvaluable addition to EA,” said thepublishing giant’s CEO John Riccitiello.

“His early investments in Expedia,Netflix and other technology leadersdemonstrate his unique insight intomass-market consumer technologies. Welook forward to his leadership and vision.”

Hoag said he has followed EA closelyand is looking forward to working withthe firm “to expand its global leadershipin this market”.

PERSONNEL This month: This month: Innogames, Sony, Spellbound and Electronic Arts

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 BigWorld +15122890145 www.bigworldtech.com

58-63 Dev121 Directory_final 23/09/2011 12:02 Page 1

WWW.DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET OCTOBER 2011 | 59

studios

Epic +1-919-870-1516 www.epicgames.com IndieCity 01926 880081 www.IndieCity.com

Escapist Games was founded just twoyears ago after ex-EA veterans, formersenior producer San Shepherd andCriterion previs lead artist Chris Walley,left the publishing giant followingcompletion of Burnout Paradise.

Looking to break into the digital scenewith their own studio, Shepherd saysthey set out to focus on developinginnovative software and arcade actiongames, taking cues from their previousEA titles.

The two founders also wanted tocontrol their own content and have adirect relationship with their consumersas they began their move into digitaldistribution.

“We quickly found out that the appstore was where a developer of talentcould make a mark, whereas XBLI,however much we wanted it to, justcouldn’t support professionaldevelopment,” said Shepherd.

The studio’s first release wasn’t a game,but an augmented reality app called StarChart, which has now been installed onover one million devices around theworld. Shepherd is keen to highlight thatit is now considered one of the top ARapps in the world and has been featuredon both Apple and Google whilstappearing with an exclusive version on

Samsung’s app store. The studio has alsopublished indie games AtomHex andPlatypus on Xbox Live.

Looking to the future Escapist is in theprocess of developing its own games andis also creating a new version of its most

popular app, called Star Chart Solar, withthe plan to bring it to more devices andexpand the content.

The studio now employs six members,including Walley and Shepherd, and isactively looking for more talent.

STUDIO SPOTLIGHTThis month: This month: Escapist Games

P: +44 (0) 1483 454099E: [email protected]:www.escapistgames.com

ContactEscapist Games Ltd1st Floor, 16 Haydon PlaceGuildford, SurreyGU1 4LL, UK


The free-to-use CryEngine 3 SDK hasbeen downloaded more than 300,000times in just three weeks since its releasein August, according to company data.

Crytek’s powerful engine had alreadypassed 100,000 installs in less than aweek since it came out.

“It’s great news for us, and it seemslike global coverage, not just Europe-heavy,” Crytek co-founder Avni Yerli toldDevelop. “It’s being picked up equallyacross the US, Europe and Asia.”

Before it was released for free, studiosneeded to pay for a licence agreement touse Crytek's flagship engine. TheCryEngine 3 SDK relaxes those restraintsby allowing anyone with a PC todownload it for free. A licence deal isonly arranged if the user decides to builda commercial PC project.

Yerli also told Develop the studio ispreparing to evolve its business beyondtraditional games development details ofwhich he said he can’t yet disclose.

The free edition of Unreal Engine 3 hashad more than 900,000 unique installssince its release in November 2009,according to vendor Epic Games.

The studio added that the figure hasbeen drawn from unique installs and if itcounted the gross number of downloadsthe figure would be higher.

The UDK is Epic’s own alternative toUnreal Engine 3 that is completely free todownload and operate, and has provenpopular among indies and enthusiasts.

If a user wants to produce acommercial game a one-off $99 fee ischarged and Epic has said it will take a 25per cent share of subsequent revenuesafter a UDK game’s first $50,000 in sales,which it will not take any royalties from.

However, Epic only calculates its 25per cent after separate charges areincurred from a game's digitaldistributor – such as Apple and Googlewhich each take 30 per cent from gameshosted on their mobile platforms.

60 | OCTOBER 2011

tools

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: Intel, Unity, Crytek, Epic

The Intel graphics performance analysistool, used to help optimise games, mediaand other graphic-intensive applications,is now available at no charge exclusivelyto members of the free to join Intelsoftware partner program.

The developer tool suite allows usersto analyse CPU and GPU workloadsenabled by web browsers such asChrome, Explorer and Firefox. It alsoprovides media analysis tools to visualisecode efficiency with Intel Media andOpenCL SDK’s whilst adding a hardwarethread-view in the graphics performanceanalysis platform analyser.

The new GPA media performanceanalyser also allows the ability to createmedia performance trace capture files forvisualisation and detailed analysis andcan provide capture trace files for asystem-wide picture of how your codeworks with Intel media SDK andMicrosoft DXVA2 and how media-relatedworkloads execute on the GPU.

Unity Technologies has opened a newsubsidiary in Tokyo, Japan, the companyhas announced.

The engine vendor said it would useits new Tokyo office to serve as a sales,localisation and support centre.

“The establishment of the UnityTechnologies Japan office and theaddition to our company of such aknowledgeable, passionate team furthercement Unity Technologies’ commitmentto democratise games developmentglobally,” said Unity Technologies CEODavid Helgason.

“We are looking forward to offeringthe Japanese development communitylocal support.”

The management team of UnityTechnologies Japan will be led byrepresentative director/chairmanShinobu Toyoda, formerly VP of Sega,director/president John Goodale, whopreviously worked at Activision andregional director Hiroki Omae.

Fork Particle 1(925) 417 1785 www.forkparticle.com


U-TRAX is a company that deliverslocalisation, testing and advertisingservices to the video game industry.

Based in Utrecht, it was founded in1992 as a record label, but since 1997 ithas been providing services to theindustry and they have worked on over2,000 titles, including Plants vs. Zombiesand Assassins Creed II.

U-TRAX provides its translations in‘most major European languages’ as wellas others such as Japanese, whilst alsooffering voice recordings and linguistictests on localised games for its clients.

Its advertising services, which in 2005became an independent company, hasdesigned and produced TV and cinemaads, company logos, brochures and tradeshow booths to various industry studios.

In September the company appointedformer Take Two/2K Games localisationdirector Scott Morrow to its ownlocalisation project management team.Following this and other appointmentsfounder Richard Van Der Giessen said theservice is keen on having a team of“service minded, client-focused linguiststhat understand the predicaments ourclients are in and work closely togetherwith them.”

For the future U-TRAX says it isfocusing on “broadening its global

footprint” by expanding to new offices,new languages and “innovating” itsservices such as MESS (Music, Effects,Sounds and Services) in an industry that“changes ever day.”

As for how they are adapting to industrychanges, Van Der Giessen said “U-TRAXkeeps making its organisation leaner andmeaner and is constantly improving andstrengthening its processes, so we can at

one hand deliver exactly the serviceclients want and at the other hand canquickly react to new businessopportunities. And we keep seeing thesepop up constantly and all over the world.”

WWW.DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

services

OCTOBER 2011 | 61

SERVICES SPOTLIGHTThis month: U-Trax

Codeplay 0131 466 0503 www.codeplay.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 >


62 | OCTOBER 2011

Image Metrics is a facial animationcompany that has provided solutions forclients such as Activision-Blizzard,Rockstar, Microsoft, Bethesda andElecetronic Arts.

Founded in the United Kingdom in2000 by Ph.D’s in computer vision, thefirm decided to focus on facial animationafter determining that it “offered themost challenging test for its technology.”

Image Metrics then began to apply itstechnology to the games market onSony’s The Getaway in 2002 beforeproviding Rockstar with the sameservices as early as Manhunt in 2003. In2006 the service provider had expandedits successful business by opening a newheadquarters in Santa Monica, California.

The company has recently partneredwith Motion Technologies to expand itstechnology and products to the AsiaPacific market. Motion will be the firstcompany to resell and distribute theFaceware facial animation software andheadcam hardware.

General manager of professionalproducts at Image Metrics, Peter Busch,says the firm’s services are adaptable tochanges in the industry, such as the riseof indie start-ups.

“Because we can now certify serviceproviders in cost-friendly environments

like the Phillippines, China and India,Image Metrics technology is available toany entity looking to produce high-endanimation results without the worries ofstaggering costs or losing creativecontrol of their respective projects.”

As for the future, Busch believes thecompany is “well established” and“respected” for providing facial animationsolutions to the entertainment industryeither through its Faceware software orits certified partner program.

He also says the company has taken“major steps” into the consumeranimation space having recentlylaunched ‘PortableYou’ which allows end-users to create their own personalised 3Davatars using facial photos.

inComm +44 (0) 1489 556700 www. incomm-europe.com MPG Universal www.mpg-universal.com

services

SERVICES SPOTLIGHTThis month: Image Metrics


WWW.DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET OCTOBER 2011 | 63

courses

TRAINING NEWSThis month: Unreal dev kit to power 48-hour game jam

A 48-hour video game creationmarathon, using Epic Games’ UnrealDevelopment Kit, will take place from the4th to the 6th of November at theUniversity of Bedfordshire.

The Game Jam, in association withtraining provider Train2Game, will haveregistered competitors put into teams ofsix to ten going head-to-head to createvideo games around a ‘secret theme’,which will be announced on the firstevening of the event.

It is open to existing Train2Gamestudents and amateur developers agedover 17, but industry professionals areexcluded from entering.

The prizes, which will be announcedcloser to the event, will be available forthe three teams that make the mostinnovative new games developed overthe weekend.

“The Train2Game and Epic Game Jamis a great opportunity for students andamateur games developers to createcontent for their portfolio and rubshoulders with well known developerswithin the industry,” said Train2Gamemarketing director Mike Head.

“Working with Epic Games also meansthat we have a unique opportunity tointroduce participants to the cutting-edge UDK framework, which will allow

them to really bring their games to lifeand showcase their talents.”

Mike Gamble, European territorymanager of Epic Games added:

“Participants will have access toexcellent tools, members of the UnrealEngine development community and

industry veterans, plus there’s potentialfor the best games to gain additionalexposure beyond the event itself.”

No pre-arranged teams ordevelopment groups will be allowed sothose attending will have to work withnew people.

Computers will be provided by theUniversity which has offered lab space tomake room for everyone attending.

The hosts have also said that thesystems available are ‘more than capableof running all the latest softare requiredfor modern games development’.

Personal computers can be brought,and space will be made available forthose that do, but they will need to bePAT tested (safety checked) before theyare allowed and notification must begiven when registering.

As the event is over 48 hours, room hasbeen made for sleeping but sleepingbags and quilts must be brought in asthese are not provided.

Existing Train2Game students are ableto register for the competition free ofcharge, with a £35 fee applicable to nonTrain2Game students.

All profits from the contest will bedonated to the Prince’s Trust Charity thathelps the development andimprovement of young people, andprovides opportunities for them todevelop to their full capacity.

At the end of the event, the gamescreated are made available for freedownload on the internet.

To register go to: http://train2game-jam2.com/

The University of Hull +44(0) 1482 465951 www.mscgames.comThe University of Abertay 01382 308080 www.abertay.ac.uk


64 | OCTOBER 2011

A sideways look at the games industry

CODA

1. WINNERS: Peppermint P 62 points2. Curve Studios 61 points3. Marmalade 57 points4. Total War Team (The Creative Assembly) 56 points5. Bossa Studios 56 points6. Spilt Milk Studios 54 points7. The Chestbursters (The Creative Assembly 54 points8. Media Molecule 51 points9. Datascope 51 points10. Jagex 1 51 points11. Splash Damage 49 points12. Jagex 2 48 points13. Wave Studios 45 points14. Future Games of London 45 points15. Universally Speaking 41 points16. Rocksteady 39 points17. Big Head Games 35 points

2. CURVE STUDIOS

6. SPILT MILK STUDIOS

10. JAGEX 1

15. UNIVERSALLY SPEAKING

1. PEPPERMINT P

5. BOSSA STUDIOS

9. DATASCOPE

14. FUTURE GAMES OF LONDON13. WAVE STUDIOS

THE DEVELOP QUIZLAST MONTH teams from acrossthe UK flocked to the latestDevelop Quiz, all equally keento prove the intellectual clout oftheir staff.

At the end of the nightPeppermint P emergedvictorious, taking home thecoveted first prize.

Hot on the PR outfit's heelswere second placed Londonindie Curve, just one pointbehind. In third place camecross-platform mobile techcompany Marmalade.

Peppermint P took home thetreasured Develop Quiz trophy,£2,000 worth of studio timewith Wave, a £2,000 Develop adcredit and lots of champagne.

Meanwhile Curve securedthemselves a cherished lunchand interview with the Developteam, a big box of luxurycupcakes courtesy of WaveStudios, and their own stash ofchampagne. Marmalade,meanwhile, made away withchampagne and luxurycupcakes, again on behalf ofWave Studios.

Our generous joint sponsorsWave Studios and Avatar GamesRecruitment ensured the nightwas a huge success, and a finetime was had by all.

In order of score, startingwith the highest, the followingteams did battle at the second2011 Develop Quiz:

Sponsored by

64,65 Dev121 Coda_v4 23/09/2011 17:55 Page 1

OCTOBER 2011 | 65 DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET

NOVEMBER 2011Regional Focus: CanadaOur yearly focus on the games development firms operatingin BC, Quebec and everywhere in between

Events: Montreal International Games Summit – November 1st toNovember 2ndLondon Games Conference 2011 – November 10th

DEC 2011/JAN 201230 Under 30 Develop shines its talent spotlight on the young achieversshaping the industry’s future

Mocap FocusA 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 analysis of the jobs market includes: Advice forCVs, portfolios and interviews; per-discipline guidance ongetting a promotion; 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 An overview of current developments and new stories fromthe historic University town

MARCH 2012Game EnginesA look at the evolution of the game engine, with analysis ofthe key trends and technologies from the sector

Regional Focus: Germany A focus on making games in Europe’s largest economy

Events:GDC – March 5th to March 9th

APRIL 2012QA and Localisation We take an in-depth look at this essential element of thegames development process

Regional Focus: Nordic countries An examination of this powerful sector, and the influence it ishaving on the industry

MAY 2012With Develop 100 insertion

Audio SpecialA detailed summary of music and audio for the games sector,from in-house teams through to outsourcers

Events: Develop Quiz – Date TBC

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

4. TOTAL WAR TEAM

8. MEDIA MOLECULE

12. JAGEX 2

17. BIG HEAD GAMES

3. MARMALADE

7. THE CHESTBURSTERS

11. SPLASH DAMAGE

16. ROCKSTEADY

(THE CREATIVE ASSEMBLY)

(THE CREATIVE ASSEMBLY TEAM #2)

(THE CREATIVE ASSEMBLY TEAM #1)

64,65 Dev121 Coda_v4 23/09/2011 17:55 Page 2

66 | OCTOBER 2011

Deadly Premonitioncreator Swery, who joinedthe games industry as atester at arcade outfit SNK

Who are you and what do you do?My name is Swery, and what I do is I makevideo games that other people can't.

What are you working on right now?There is a game that will be announced soon in Japan that I'm currnetly working on,and I am also working on a new video gameproject concept.

That will be a completely new, verydifferent game.

And then I am also working on a fewdifferent Deadly Premonition-related projects.I think people do see Deadly Premonition as acult game.

When I was making the game I was tryingto make something really fun and really cool,but at the same time I wasn't sure that itwould be for everybody.

In that way, maybe I was right and it wasn'tfor everybody.

What was the first video game or productthat you ever worked on in the industry?My first job was at SNK where I was workingas a tester on a game called Ryuuko no KenJapan, which is known in other parts of theworld as Art of Fighting.

What was the first video game that youever played?For me it was a long time ago, and it wasSpace Invaders.

What was the most recent video game thatyou played, and did you enjoy it?The last game I played was From Dust, and itwas awesome.

What is your favourite game ever, and forwhat reason?It was the Super Famicom Zelda. Lookingback at that now, it is kind of like a textbookfor making a really good video game.

How many hours a week do you get tospend playing games?It's two hours every night before I sleep.

What area of the industry needs moreinvestment?Cult games, of course.

What disappoints you about the videogames industry today?I'm not sure of the worldwide market, butspeaking solely with regard to the Japanesemarket, the video games that become hitsseem to be limited to just a handful of genres.

Of all the games you have worked on,which has been your favourite?It is Deadly Premonition, because I havepoured the most heart into the characters.

What do you enjoy most about working inthe games industry?For me it is the user feedback from thepeople that play my games.

What hobbies, collections or interests doyou have that are completely unrelated tovideo games?I like to dine, and I like to eat a lot. I reallyenjoy movies and watching TV dramas, and Ilike listening to music. I also like going fishingand drinking liquor. Of course, I like girls, andI like driving and traveling.

What is your favourite book, movie, TVshow and album of all time?The movie one is going to take a long time toanswer. I'm not sure of the English title, butfor the book I'd say a Japanese book byHugashino Kago called Yōgisha X no Kenshin.

For the movies I have to choose several. Iwould say Brazil, Pulp Fiction and Inception.The TV drama would be Full House, V, TwinPeaks, and Ghost.

And the album? I think I would chooseMother's Milk by Red Hot Chilli Peppers.

What game that you were not involved withwould you most liked to have worked on?The first Silent Hill.

What other video games developer do youmost admire?It would be foreign developers like Valve andEpic games. Those are the developers I reallydo respect.

I'm not sure of theworldwide market,

but speaking with regard tothe Japanese market, thevideo games that becomehits seem to belimited to just ahandful of genres.

THE FAQ PAGE: HIDETAKA ‘SWERY’ SUEHIRODevelop grills respected figures from the global development sector

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Swery’s cult creation Deadly Premonition

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Develop - Issue 121 - October