Develop - Issue 92 - March 2009

Molyneux up close

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

MARCH 2009 | #92 | £4 / e7 / $13

plus develop conference • gdc preview • industry twits • tools news & more

WWW.DEVELOPMAG.COM

SHOW ISSUE

www.blackrockstudio.com

The Lionhead chief’s mostpersonal interview yet

ALSO INSIDEWill Wright inteviews

Nolan Bushnell

Is 3DTV just another fad?

Dave Jones on the futureof UK development

Strawdog Studios profiled

Disney’s UK team races aheadNext Month

DEVELOPMAG.COM

ALPHA05 – 11 > dev news from around the globeWe look at how developers are starting to use Twitter to communicate direct tofans; Realtime Worlds’ Dave Jones talks to us about his Develop Conferencekeynote; the skinny on Game Connection America; and all the latest global news

14 – 21 > opinion and analysisRick Gibson thinks network gaming has finally come of age; Owain Bennallack onthe contractor model; new design columnist Billy Thomson shares his goldenrules on control; and Dave Jefferies takes a look at deferred shading.

25 – 26 > gdc previewAn easy at-a-glance look at the conference line-up, plus our pick of the sessions

BETA30 – 34 > peter molyneuxCOVER STORY: How Lionhead’s honcho turned the company around

37 – 40 > will wright vs. nolan bushnellThe Sims supremo interviews the Atari founder and restauranteur

43 – 44 > a strawdog’s lifeWe profile the Derby boys behind multi-platform hit Geon

46 – 47 > the technology crossoverChildren’s TV producer Jocelyn Stevenson on her collaboration with Traveller’sTales, while ex-Pixar bod Jeremy Vickers tells us about the CG industry and games

49 – 52 > the third dimensionIs stereoscopic 3D really the next big thing? We visit Blitz to find out

55 – 56 > kuju’s tech future Technical director Adrian Hawkins on its plans for the next generation

BUILD62 – 66 > tools newsLooking at the latest tech releases plus part two of our engine round up

69 > heard about: you’re in the moviesJohn Broomhall talks to Zoë Mode about their latest party game

73 > tutorial: perforceThe seven features game developers need to know about

75 – 76 > case study: realtime worldsHow the Scottish developer is using Audiokinetic’s SoundSeed in APB

GOLD90 > codaYuji Naka tells us about his favourite game, plus other miscellany

ContentsDEVELOP ISSUE 92 MARCH 2009

79-88studios, tools, services and courses

30

06

37 46

43 75

MARCH 2009 | 03

Develop Magazine. Saxon House, 6a St. Andrew Street.Hertford, Hertfordshire. SG14 1JAISSN: 1365-7240 Copyright 2009Printed by Pensord Press, NP12 2YA

Tel: 01992 535646 Fax: 01992 535648www.developmag.com

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Editor-in-chiefMichael [email protected]

Deputy EditorEd [email protected]

Staff WriterWill [email protected]

Technology EditorJon [email protected]

DesignerDan [email protected]

Executive EditorOwain [email protected]

Advertising ManagerKatie [email protected]

Advertising ExecutiveJaspreet [email protected]

Production ManagerSuzanne [email protected]

Managing EditorLisa [email protected]

PublisherStuart [email protected]

Contributors John Broomhall, Rick Gibson,Adrian Hawkins, Dave Jefferies,Mark Rein, Dave Robertson, BillyThomson, Will Wright

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

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

the international monthly forgames programmers, artists,musicians and producers

DEVELOPMAG.COM MARCH 2009 | 05

Developers turn to TwitterInfinity Ward uses it for feedback, David Perry uses it for gossip – the latest web craze has caught developers’ eyes

Website of the momentTwitter.com is fastfinding a place in the

hearts of developers. And not just because it’s fun

to track the minutiae of howhigh profile users like StephenFry, Jonathon Ross or Lily Allenlive their lives.

While the site has beenaround since 2006 only now is itregistering on retinas. It’s notjust being embraced by retailersin every sector – fromcomputing to bicycles – butcreatives in the games industryare using it to air views orcontact fans. And those that doare reaping the first-moverrewards. These rewards are notyet in cash, but are grabbing anearly user base which, in Twitter-speak, is ‘followers’.

Twitter is a conversationalsocial site, demanding usersmake short postings of just 140characters via their computersor via mobile phones. Followerlists of friendly Twitter usersappear in your feed – and yoursin theirs.

Twitter was founded by JackDorsey, Biz Stone, and EvanWilliams of San Franciscopodcasting company Odeo.Angel funding investors includeJeff Bezos of Amazon. TheCalifornia-based site reportedlyturned down a $500m all-stockoffer from Facebook late lastyear. Tech industry insidersbelieve the company – yet toturn a cent – is holding out for abetter offers.

Stone told Develop: “Twitterhelps people find out what ishappening right now whetherit's among a group of friends orthe whole world.

“As a real-time network ofinformation, Twitter is becominga relevant tool to more andmore people every day.”

There are some famous casesof Twitter aiding businesses.From an independent coffeeshop in Houston, Texas whichdoubled clientele by invitingfollowers to meet-up at thecoffee shop, through to Dellrunning a site-specificpromotion that gave it over $1min Twitter-trackable sales.

While it has even aided thenon-game developmentcommunity – spawning legionsof third-party apps for power-users making money as iPhoneApps sold through iTunes – the

real draw is in reaching gamesplayers and engaging them inconversation.

Call of Duty creator anddeveloper Infinity Ward is onesuch company.

The studio’s Robert Bowlingruns its twitter.infinityward.comsite, which has been courtingusers for short-form ideas forModern Warfare 2.

“Twitter puts your players inthe studio with you and makesthem part of the brainstormingsession as it happens. It’s aconversation w/o PR,” he tellsDevelop, economically stickingto the 140 character limit.

Clearly for developers andbusinesses, as a way of testing amarket concept or pushing outan exclusive, time-sensitive offer,Twitter seems to be quicker thanRSS, broader than SMS andmore immediate than websites

or wikis for all the businessesusing it.

It’s also good for chat – oreven gossip. Veteran designerDavid Perry whipped the mediainto a frenzy by posting detailsabout a UMD-less PSP.

He told us: “Twitter is anamazing tool. Over the comingyears consumers will continue tosteer the future, we can ignorethat fact, or embrace it.”

And it’s fitting that a siteforcing users to be economicwith language is popular at atime when the games businessand global economy is facingfrugality.

One expert said told usTwitter is useful for anycompany conducting marketingin a recession: “Dwindlingbudgets suddenly make low-cost social media look like thepretty girl at the ball.”

ADVENTURES IN GAMES DEVELOPMENT: NEWS, VIEWS & MORE

“Far too often I see games ruinedby making a complete arse of the

control setup…” Billy Thompson, Ruffian Games, p18

Jones keynoteat Developconference

News, p06

Big build upfor Game

ConnectionEvent, p08

Event Preview:

GDC 2009Preview, p25

by Michael French

Twitterputs yourplayers in

the studiowith you.

Robert Bowling,

Infinity Ward

06 | MARCH 2009

ALPHA | NEWS

I’m a terrible games designer; I’ve learnt to stop ruiningpeople’s lives; I don’t run into the office with a hangover andcrazy ideas any more.

Not my words, but Peter Molyneux’s in this month’s coverfeature. I’ve been lucky enough to interview Peter many times –like lots of other journalists; he’s simply that prolific a speakerand always chatty. But never before has he given an interviewso frank and revealing, devoid of hype or PR.

You can skip straight to it on page 30. But if you haven’t yetand want a taster: it’s all about evolution and rolling with thepunches – and knowing when to punch back.

Molyneux has always been an archetype for boundary-pushing developers – indeed, he admits to us this month thatthis is still Lionhead’s ethos. But this month our interview alsoshows him as a more responsible developer. It couldn’t be morearchetypal a position for developers the world over.

Publishers are tightening belts,x cutting projects and internalresource – and, the biggest crimes many developers are guiltyof, arrogance and gluttony – has sparked motivation forprofessional change amongst the world’s studios.

Realtime Worlds’ Dave Jones in Dundee, Scotland is doing itby switching his team to a server-based game studio unrelianton publishers. So too is Infinity Ward’s Robert Bowling inCalifornia, USA, who is letting Twitter users shape the directionof Modern Warfare 2.

(So too has Develop, which this month you might notice hasa nice new font and some other minor design tweaks.)

EVOLUTIONARY GAINSThere is a phrase I as a journalist hate being given in interviewswith developers. ‘It’s evolution not revolution’ – which usuallymeans ‘I’m masking a lack of real progress with a rhyme’.

At the moment, however, that hackneyed phrase rings true:the games business is evolving, not about-turning, at a clip. Butnot because of any single motivating force, but becauseeveryone is looking to roll with the punches, be they financial,creative or both. It’s mass movement, with everyone nowlooking to new channels and avenues for games development and the games business, perhaps on Twitter or via self-funded large-scale online games, as Bowling and Jones suggest.

After years peddling the familiar, Wii, iPhone and browsergames have put wind in the sails of games developers onceagain looking to be frontiersmen of the world’s most engagingform of entertainment. Apt for a world where masses of userreviews – hundreds of single voices coalescing into one whole– can make or break an iPhone App within days.

Even the big boys are swept up in it. As I write this, EA Sportshas just announced that its next basketball game is a downloadexclusive. Rapidly switching to embrace these channels withopen arms might not be the only change at the EA businesseither – but more on that next month. A fat, easy targetElectronic Arts may be, but when a behemoth like that iscourse-correcting its strategy so quickly and cottoning on, you just know the rest of the industry is undoubtedly evolvingwith it, too.

Editorial

Michael [email protected]

Time for a change

Undoubtedly, Scottishdeveloper RealtimeWorlds is one of the

most closely-watched studiosin Europe.

After winning fans with 360title Crackdown, the studioscored millions in VC fundingand declared its intention tofocus solely on a new MMO,APB – all while rumours of anon-RTW-developedCrackdown sequel swirled.

The transition from consoleonly to online only developeris an interesting one, and nowDave Jones, the studio’sfounder – and also creator ofGTA franchise – is now set totalk through the challengesthis new business model offers at the DevelopConference. Jones will beproviding a keynote lecture atthe event, which takes placefrom July 14th to 16th inBrighton.

We caught up with him tofind out more about his talkand his views on UK gamesdevelopment…

What attracted you totalking as Develop in

Brighton’s keynote speakerthis year?Well, for a start we have had abusy year with APB, and thensecondly a lot of people havebeen asking me recently whatwe have been doingdifferently in recent years, andwhat we have been doingdifferently now that we haveexternal finance instead ofpublisher financing. We’vemade it publicly known that allthe games we are developingare server-based, as well. So alot of people have been askingme about the studio – and Ithought this would be a greatway to tell people what wehave learned over the pastcouple of years.

The overall theme of thetalk will be that we are one ofthe developers that hastransitioned – we took a majorchange in direction from whatthe industry normally does,and I’ll be talking through that.The trials and tribulations ofgoing to self-funding, makinga game completely server-based… there are someinteresting things to talkabout.

It’s been a big step for us.It’s been a big leap of faith for

both myself and the rest of thestaff. A lot of technicalchallenges needed to beovercome. It sounds fairlystraightforward on theoutside, but hopefully I cantalk about some of the issueswe’ve faced internally fromsuch a big change of direction.

There has been some turmoilin games development oflate with a lot of studioclosures. What are yourthoughts on the UK’s scene?It’s a shame – there is a lot ofcontradiction out there. 2008in terms of retail revenue wasthe best year ever. And yet yousit down, scratch your headand think – why is it that somestudios are facing problems?Part of it is a redistribution ofwealth within the gamesbusiness. There are a lot ofsecond hand sales of games,while all the hit players take allthe revenue – you have to lookat the industry and thinkwhere is the year-on-yeargrowth we all talk about. So alot of it is in retail, a lot of it isin second hand, and only thetop ten games make anymoney while the 900 othergames that were released

Jones to deliver Realtime Worlds founder and GTA creator to open July’s Develop

by Michael French


NEWS | ALPHA

suffer. And in online a lot ofthe subscription money outthere goes into Blizzard’spockets. There’s a lot of peopleinside the industry askingwhere exactly these revenuesare being spent – that’s howwe’ve looked at it and makingsure we are in the areas whereconsumer dollars can becaptured.

Was that why RealtimeWorlds has gone withoutpublisher funding – toprotect yourselves fromthose kind of problems?Yeah, the usual value chainreasons. Crackdown reviewedwell, and sold at reasonablenumbers, but we didn’t makeany money out of it. And yousit there after that and scratchyour heads and ask ‘what arewe doing wrong?’ That led to afair bit of soul searching. It isdifficult out there. You need tohave big, big sellers to recoupthe investment made in gamesthese days – you have to be inthe right position to benefitfrom all those revenues in thetraditional market. Or you can try something differentand capture more of the enduser dollars.

Do you think other studioswill switch to the online-focused model you areadvocating? I don’t know – I’d say it was asexpensive and risky in its ownright. It’s a tough choice foranybody right now. In somerespects also it is still a newthing today – we do have oneor two major big hits, but notmuch else in the online space.

So developers are facingtwo choices. You either aimbig and aim for the consolespace and make sure you aredefinitely, definitely making atwo to three million seller. Oryou go into the online space,but you have to know whatrevenue model you want for it,where the content is comingfrom, and where the money is– which is predominantly inMMORPGs.

Really, there is no easyanswer to all that –that’s oneof the things I will talk aboutas there are plenty of pitfalls inthe online space as well. But atleast, the way I look at it, isthat if you do make it inonline, it’s just you and theconsumer. So it’s in yourcontrol. There’s no chance of apublisher who has its own

problems and shuts downfunding, or just loses faith inthe project. At least it’s gettingcloser to the consumer – andthat’s what I’ve really beenpushing for. And also, if thingsdon’t work it’s down to you,and there is no one else toblame but the developer.

Lastly, how is APBprogressing?Really well, and I’m reallyreluctant to talk about it – theidea has been to keep it underwraps so that when we talkabout it properly people reallyunderstand it and know whatthe game is.

We’ve been lucky, like I say,to have funding which allowsus to iterate, try things out andpush out some new things ingaming. But it is going really,really well and enjoyable towork on something new – andthat’s what really turns me onabout making games. We’lldefinitely be talking about itlater on this year – and I planto show the risky areas ofworking on it, and how APB isinnovating when down inBrighton. I’ve got lots of great material to talk aboutand show.

Brighton keynote Conference with talk discussing the industry’s move to server-based games

Brighton’s HiltonMetropole Hotel,location of the DevelopConference, and DaveJones of RealtimeWorlds (inset)

Driving 3D TV’s Using Current Generation ConsolesAndrew Oliver, Blitz Games

Online Games, Virtual Worlds and MMOs:Raising Money and Making MoneyPaul Flanagan, Ariadne Capital

How to Staff and Manage a Flexible,Scalable Development FacilitySimon Gardner, Climax Studios

Usability Testing for VideogamesJason Avent, Disney and Graham McAllisterfrom Sussex University

How to Communicate with ArtistsArran Green, Sony ComputerEntertainment Europe

Painting With Sound: The Future ofProcedural AudioAndy Farnell

Gold Blend: Audio Code and DesignWorking Together for the Perfect FlavourSteve Emney & Ciaran Rooney, Disney BlackRock Studio

Taking Your Game to iPhone and Android,Without Killing Your Team Chris White, Glu

Legal Consequences of User Generated ContentTahir Basheer, Sheridans

20 Great Innovations in Casual, Social andMobile Games That You Should StealStuart Dredge, Pocket Gamer

10 Things Nobody Tells You About DigitalDistribution and Self-publishing That YouMust Understand to SucceedMartyn Brown, Team 17

How Today’s Social Networks Will ChangeHow You Make, Play and Sell GamesTomorrowKristian Segerstrale, Playfish

Panel: Meet the Social Networks Tom Armitage; Limvirak Chea, Google;Gareth Davis, Facebook; Chris Thorpe,MySpace

And the rest…Dave Jones isn’t the onlyconfirmed speaker forDevelop in Brighton this year.Here’s the rest of the sessionsand speakers confirmed so far…

The organisers of this month’s GameConnection America are promisingplenty of quality face time between

attendees and key business decision makers.The sixth annual version of the B2B event in

the US has attendees from around the world,with over 220 exhibitors set to attend.

The gathering takes place from March 24thto 26th, running along side the GameDevelopers Conference at the San FranciscoMoscone Center.

“With an average $1 million generated by theevent for our exhibitors, Game Connection istoday perceived by most as the best choice fordevelopers and services companies,” said PierreCarde of organiser Connection Events.

“Every year we are very pleased to welcomethe major, and the less major, publishers anddevelopers of the video game industry. 95 percent of the top 20 publishers will be there,some of them with five teams, each of themfocused on a specific segment or need. Butdevelopers and outsourcing companies do notonly want to meet with the major players. Theglobal growth of the industry has opened theway to the rise of more national and regional

players, very active on their playground andable to generate significant revenues forcompanies opened to regional or local deals.And the newcomers of the casual, online ormobile phone market are also eager to signgreat projects.

“Size is not the issue here; it's more aboutmeeting the right partner. And this is what ourspeed dating system provides.”

The event offers attendees access to anonline meeting system which promises to beexhaustive – and not just in terms of thenumber of exhibitors listed.

Said Carde: “What people should expect fromGame Connection is that they will be happy buttired at the end of the event, because 30meetings in a row can be exhausting. But theefficiency associated compensates for it.”

He added: “We have built a solid reputationin the industry and have a lot of participantswho come back year after year. The newcomersmainly hear about the Game Connection thanksto very good word of mouth. We have a reallyhigh satisfaction rate and we work hard yearafter year to meet the needs of the industry. Noother event is solely focused on business likeGame Connection, and it has become the ‘must-

attend’ event for business-focused professionalsof the international industry.”www.game-connection.comFor more on GDC, check out our preview onpages 25 to 26.

Make a million at Game ConnectionThis month’s key business networking event at GDC promises toconnect developers to publishers – and, even better, to good deals

Game Connection offersexhibitors the chance toorganise many privatemeetings with publishers,developers or service firms

GDC 09March 23rd to 27thSan Francisco, USwww.gdconf.com

The Game Developers Conferencereturns to San Francisco’s MosconeCentre, which will play host to theworld’s biggest gathering ofdevelopers, tool producers andservice providers.

This year will see keynotes fromNintendo president Satoru Iwata, andMetal Gear Solid creator HideoKojima. Other speakers includeLionhead’s studio head PeterMolyneux, DSi project leader MasatoKuwahara and Bioware’s studio co-director Gordon Walton.

GDC 09 also features numeroussummits, satellite events and tutorials,making it an essential date on thecalandar for anybody employed inthe video game industry.

DEVELOP DIARY YOUR COMPLETE GAMES DEVELOPMENTEVENT CALENDAR FOR THE MONTHS AHEAD…

08 | MARCH 2009

ALPHA | NEWS & EVENTS

by Micheal French

GAMES GRADS 09 – NORTHMarch 17thManchester, UKwww.gamesgrads.co.uk

GAMES GRADS 09 – SOUTHMarch 19thLondon, UKwww.gamesgrads.co.uk

IGAMES SUMMITMarch 19thSan Francisco, USwww.igsummit.com

ELAN AWARDSMarch 20thVancouver, Canadawww.theelans.com

GDC 09March 23rd to 27thSan Francisco, USwww.gdconf.com

GAME CONNECTION AMERICA 2009March 24th to 26thSan Francisco, USwww.game-connection.com

MCV INDUSTRY EXCELLENCE AWARDSApril 23rdLondon, UKwww.mcvuk.com/events

LOGIN 2009May 11th to 14thSeattle, USwww.2009.loginconference.com

GDC CANADAMay 12th to 13thVancouver, Canadawww.gdc-canada.com

NORDIC GAME 2009May 19th to 20thMalmo, Swedenwww.nordicgame.com

MCV/XBOX 360 PUB QUIZMay 21stLondon, UKwww.mcvuk.com/events

E3June 2nd to 4thLos Angeles, USAwww.e3expo.com

GAMEHORIZON CONFERENCEJune 23rd to 24thNewcastle, UKwww.gamehorizonconference.com

DEVELOP CONFERENCE 2009July 14th to 16thBrighton, UKwww.develop-conference.com

DEVELOP INDUSTRY EXCELLENCEAWARDSJuly 15thBrighton, UKwww.developmag.com/events

CASUAL CONNECT SEATLLEJuly 21st to 23rdSeattle, USwww.develop-conference.com

may 2009

april 2009 june 2009march 2009

july 2009

[email protected]

www.rebellion.co.uk

ALPHA | WORLDVIEW

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

10 | MARCH 2009

DEALS

SINGAPOREKOEI LOOKS TO DOUBLE SIZEOF ASIAN DEV TEAMWhile Japanese publisher Koei is seeingconsolidation soon – it plans to merge withDead or Alive developer/publisher Tecmo inApril – it is also expanding, with plans todouble the size of its Singapore studio.

The firm will add 60 more staff to thestudio in the Asian city state. These new staffwill be added over the next two years,joining 50 staff already at the studio.

“We will not be satisfied until we furtherstrengthen the development capabilities ofthe Singapore studio, both in quantity and inquality,” said Koei co-founder Keiko Erikawaat a press conference.

“Our objective is to groom a pool oftalented and passionate developers whowant to do Singapore proud and workrelentlessly towards creating best-sellingtitles ,” she added.www.koei.com

USA: TEXASENSEMBLE VETERANSDISASSEMBLE, REASSEMBLEAfter almost 15 years in business, Microsoft-owned Ensemble Studios has closed after itsshutdown was detailed last year.

However, the staff from the team havemostly found gainful employment elsewhere– with the workforce regrouping to foundnew studios Robot Entertainment andBonfire Studios.

Robot is headed by Ensemble founderTony Goodman. The team is currentlyworking on additional content for Halo Warsand support online gaming and communityfor Age of Empires – the two games it createdwhile Ensemble - while also developing itsown original IP.

Bonfire, meanwhile, is a 35-person team isbased in Dallas, and is currently working onan original IP to be announced within thenext few months.bonfire-studios.com; robotentertainment.com

SOUTH KOREA: SEOULALLEGORITHMIC SEEKSSEOUL’S HIGH CALIBRE Middleware provider Allegorithmic hasopened a new office in Seoul, South Korea.

The move marks the start of companysubsidiary Allegorithmic Korea, which isdesigned to establish a presence in thecountry. Allegorithmic is attempting toextend its business into the Asian marketsand enable support in the territory for itsProFX and Substance technology solutions.www.allegorithmic.com

UK: BRIGHTONLAU-KEE BACKS NEW STARTUP KERB GAMES Not content with lending his backing toUnity, David Lau-Kee is also working with anew studio based on the UK’s South Coast.

Kerb Games is to focus on developingnext-generation, persistent browser-based

releases that are designed to move playersfrom the traditional hardcore online gamingmodel to networked and community-oriented spaces. The studio is a spin-off ofdigital engagement agency Kerb, which JimMcNiven formed in 1996. McNiven isconsidered by many to be a leading force inthe viral games movement and now assumesthe CEO position at Kerb Games

"The games industry has for too long reliedon either accident and circumstance orimported IPs and outrageous marketingspends to generate its hits – userengagement is either random or paid-for,"added Lau-Kee. "At Kerb we’re applying yearsof experience of web analytics, viralmarketing and web community developmentto truly engage with our audience – ourgames are ground-up designed for the web-connected, Games 3.0 generation.”www.kerbgames.com

FRANCE: PARISCRITERION VET FORMS NEWFRENCH STUDIO Former Criterion Software staffer OskarGuilbert has formed a new studio, DontnodEntertainment.

The firm has been co-founded by Guilberttogether with art director Aleksi Briclot andaward-winning science fiction author AlainDamasio. Targeting ‘far-reaching cross mediaproducts’, the team has already won theFrench Innovative Companies Competitionprize for real-time 3D fluid simulation tech.

WHO YOU GONNA CALL?THANKS TO Atari’s rescuing the game from development hell,Terminal Reality’s Ghostbusters tie-in – pimped as the ‘third movie’in the comedy series – will see release in the summer as part of thefranchise’s anniversary celebrations.

Now the studio wants to use the game not just as a touchstonefor the brand, but also as a calling card for its technology, nowavailable for third party licensing.

The Infernal Engine ‘offers excellent cross platform support andis compatible with all of the leading gaming systems as well as thePC’ the studio says. Behind-closed-doors demonstrations haveshowcased the engine using a character from the studio's 1999property Nocturne.

And momentum behind the technology isn’t an apparition,either – six studios have already licensed the tech includingEscalation Studios, Threewave Software, Red Fly Studio, WideloadGames, Piranha Games, and SpiderMonk Entertainment.

Electronic Arts hassigned up AmericanMcGee’s SpicyHorse to make anew game in hisAlice seires.

Konami has signedup Climax toproduce two newtitles – one for theDS and one for theWii.

Also, Konami hasreportedly snappedup the rights totheZombie Studios-developed tie-inbased on the Sawmovies horror.

HeadstrongGames hasrevealed that it hasused Blitz Games’BlitzTech to make itsHouse of the Dead:Overkill Wii game.

And, still on a horrortheme, Capcom haschosen Canadianoutfit Blue CastleGames to make thenext game in itsDead Risingfranchise.

Reborn publisherAcclaim is usingVivox’s Voon for‘massivelymultiplayer group’chat in its latesttitles.

Valve‘s Steamcontinues to wowthe industry:Square Enix is thelatest to offer its PCtitles through theservice.

Warner Bros. isshowing now let upin its aggressivegames plans: theHollywood studiohas bought Seattle-based SnowblindStudios.

DEVELOPMAG.COM

WORLDVIEW | ALPHA

MARCH 2009 | 11

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

Top 10: Developers Chart: February 20091. Nintendo Japan Wii Fit2. Treyarch USA CoD: World at War3. Capcom Japan Street Fighter IV4. EA Black Box Canada NFS: Undercover5. EA Canada Canada FIFA 096. Level 5 Japan (Independent) Professor Layton7. Ubisoft Montreal Canada S. White Snowboarding

8. Traveller’s Tales UK LEGO Batman9. Sega Japan Mario & Sonic10. Monolith USA F.E.A.R. 2

Speaking to us in an exclusive Q&Apublished online at developmag.com,Guilbert told us that the studio’s first projectas a studio is an action-adventure game forHD consoles codenamed Adrift. The game isbeing demonstrated to prospectivepublishers at GDC.www.dont-nod.com

UKTIGA SURVEY REVEALSDEVELOPER FRUSTRATIONS A new survey conducted by UK gamesdevelopment trade association Tiga hassuggested that developers across the

country are still adamant a tax break forgames production would help their business.

85 per cent of respondents backed taxbreaks for production, and 77 per centrecommended more liberal R&D tax credits,51 per cent called for lower corporation tax.

In terms of recruitment, 63 per cent ofstudios said they faced skill shortages in thelast year. Finding programmers was the mostchallenging position to fill with 74 per centfinding it hard to fill programmer vacancies

More topline details have been publishedat developmag.com, while the full report canbe obtained for £95 direct from Tiga. www.tiga.org

ZEEMOTE LAUNCHESGLOBAL DEV CONTESTMOBILE GAME hardware firm Zeemote hasteamed up with Develop to launch a global gamedevelopment competition based around its JS-1analogue controller.

The controller, which has already launched inseven territories in the past year, brings analoguecontrol to Bluetooth-compatible mobile handsets– and its here that we want to see you shine.

Zeemote is on the look out for games that fullyutilise the analogue controller in innovative ways,and is ponying up a ‘substantial’ prize for the teamthat develops the most impressive title. Inaddition, the game will be branded ‘ZeemoteReady’ and given global recognition by the firm.

Develop will be playing an active part in theglobal search and judging process, and we’ll bekeeping you informed as the contest progresses,both in the magazine and at developmag.com.

Zeemote will be hosting a party at GDC to kickoff the competition and reveal more details, whichyou can register for atwww.zeemote.com/ZeemoteReady – or you cancheck out visit the Zeemote stand at GDC Mobileor at GDC on the Nokia stand in the N-Gage area.

HEAD TO WWW.DEVELOPMAG.COMOur online resource features news, features, analysis andcommentary posted daly, and is avaulable via the web, mobile,RSS and daily email and news alert blasts.

“We did get fat in toomany places. It

seemed like anyonewho could draw a guy

with a gun with acrayon could get

funded.”

John Riccitiello EA’s pre-recession bloat.Might go some way to explain how Army

of Two was given the green light…

“I hear Sony FINALLYhas the PSP 2. And

thank goodness,they’ve removed the

stupid battery-suckingUMD disc drive. I'm

excited!”

David Perry Twitters about ‘the new PSP’. If Sony were a person, it would have

defriended him on Facebook seconds later.

“Increased brainactivity in terms of

blood flow isn'tevidence the brain is

being trained oraltered at all.”

Evidence ‘proves’ Brain Training and the like do no such thing. But we

don’t care – hours spent on Gradius hasimproved our hand/eye coordiation. At

least that’s what we tell our mums. Chart Supplied By: ChartTrackcharttrack.co.uk

ELSPAelspa.com

“Critics were unkind tothe first Street Fightermovie as well, but that

film has beenridiculously profitable

for Capcom over thelast decade.”

Capcom says it doesn’t care if its new movie is badly reviewed. The literaryequivalent of putting fingers in your ears.

THEPLACETO BESEEN

The Develop 100 is an authoritative guide that lists the world’s 100 most successful games studios based on key criteria including data from

GfK-ChartTrack, NPD, Famitsu and Metacritic, plus industry soundings

Published with the May edition of DevelopBundled with relevant copies of MCV May 15th

Extended distribution at Develop in Brighton Conference and Develop Industry Excellence Awards in July

Total print run 10,000+, plus digital edition and microsite

Advertising and sponsorship opportunities: [email protected]

14 | MARCH 2009

ALPHA | OPINION

Digital distribution paints an enticingpicture for games studios. Thepromise of sidelining all those

middlemen – retailers, manufacturers,distributors and even publishers – is apowerful lure for companies swimmingagainst strong financial currents. Nowarehousing, no market development funds,no point of sale marketing, customers whoare always online, the long tail: the lure hasglistened attractively for years.

And 2008 proved to be a watershed yearfor mainstream games content beingdistributed over the network to console andPC. Western publishers have begun to wakeup to the potential – EA expects to makeover $500m from this category in its 2010financial year. While retail in fact has a longlife span, last year network gaming suddenlycame of age.

The 2008 global network games marketwas valued at $13bn, growing faster thanretail – that’s saying something given thatretail games boomed pretty mucheverywhere outside of Japan. The year was apredictably good one for most in the better-known categories of network gaming. You’llbe sick of hearing about casual online gamesproviders riding an upward trend, withgrowth healthy at 25 per cent year on year.

No surprise that MMOs and virtual worldsgrew strongly at over 30 per cent, althoughsmaller companies innovating at the edgesreally drove the market's expansion, notWorld of Warcraft. Even the red-headed step-child of the games family, mobile gaming,broke out of its doldrums, with iPhone andsmartphone gaming probablycounterbalancing the contraction in regularmobile gaming to result in net growth.

The real success story wasn’t at theperiphery of the industry, but at its heart,driven by the core gamer. The fastestgrowing area of network gaming was DLC onconsole and PC.

Surviving largely on hot air before 2005, itexperienced a sudden growth spurt, reaching$800m in 2008. What caused this suddenadolescent exuberance? The availability ofquality download services on console and PCwas the trigger, resulting in core gamersbuying and accessing games content solelyonline in rapidly increasing numbers. On PC,Steam is the leading platform, and PC gamers

used Steam and others to downloadincreasingly up-to-date full-scale games fromEA, Take Two, Activision Blizzard, Sega, Sonyand other leading publishers at or very nearretail release. This has resulted in healthygrowth – and margins – for publishers whoare no longer wary of online distribution.

But the real powerhouse of growth hasbeen DLC on consoles, which grossed around$500m in 2008. Since late 2006 publishershave come alive to the opportunities ofselling content direct to consumers viaconsoles. That charge has been led byMicrosoft, whose platform is easily the mostmature both in terms of technology andusers. Most publishers are following earlymovers Activision and Bethesda into PDLCwith significant releases. Sony has been no

slouch, either, and even the Wii’s lack of ahard drive hasn’t stopped its onwners frompurchasing games online.

Now, as some PC games (such as EA’s newBattlefield 1943) look set to bypass retailentirely, publishers are becomingincreasingly emboldened to push theboundaries further. But EA’s use of the term‘direct to consumer’ is a misnomer, because itsuggests that there are no middlemen in thenetworked world.

HIDDEN COSTSOnline does have a cost equation fordistribution, digital rights management,marketing and billing not dissimilar to thaton the high street. Most of EA’s ‘direct toconsumer’ products actually utilise a range ofintermediaries, like mobile operators, onlinedistribution partners such as Steam, onlinemarketing partners like Yahoo and AOL,billing partners like Paypal, or its (troubled)DRM partners. However, mobile aside, most

network distribution can be considerablymore efficient and cheaper for publishersthan retail, as well as bringing advantageslike usage and buyer tracking, or even directownership of the customer for publishersopening their own online store fronts.Marketing is of course still a key variable butit is far more accountable online.

So when will network gaming overtakeretail? The way is littered with red faces andbroken crystal balls, and the impact of thecoming industry down-cycle merging with aglobal recession and rampant globalisationof the industry will have highly unpredictableeffects on the market.

What is sure is that retail costs forpublishers are rising, recession is drivingdown RRPs of boxed product, and someretailers are even beginning to question thelogic of dedicating shelf space to gaming. Incontrast, network gaming is growing fast onPC and console in the West, and on PC in Asia(outside of Japan) and particularly in China,with its negligible retail market and multi-billion dollar online market growing atrelatively high double figures per annum.These factors will accelerate the globalmarket’s shift towards network distribution,thus eating into retail’s market share.

Today, networked games represent 30 percent of the global games software market,and we believe that, based on current trends,retail will take a minority share of the globalmarket by 2013 – although it will take severalmore years for the West to catch up.

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

Battlefield 1943 is EA'sfirst attempt at anetwork-exclusivehardcore game

Network gaming hits

the mainstream

Since 2006publishers havecome alive to the

opportunies of sellingcontent direct toconsumers viahome consoles.

COMMENT: BUSINESS

by Rick Gibson, Games Investor Consulting

COMMENT: INDUSTRY

DEVELOPMAG.COM

OPINION | ALPHA

Owain Bennallack is executive editor of Develop. He edited the magazinefrom its launch until its February 2006 issue. He has also worked at MCVand Edge, and has provided consultancy and evaluation services to severalleading developers and publishers. He is also chairman of the DevelopConference advisory board.

MARCH 2009 | 17

Flexible game development is here.More studios are hiring staff on short-term contracts. A wide range of

freelance creatives are performing clearlydefined roles on projects, from pre-visualisation to plot development. Theproduction of great chunks of art is routinelyoutsourced to companies in Eastern Europeand China.

These trends aren’t going to go away. Thereason, as ever, is cost – although the movecan also be explained in terms of makingbetter games.

Most projects start with small teamsexploring an idea. The risk is very high so itmakes sense for the team to be small. As theproject develops, the risk reduces as thegame takes shape and the focus moves frominnovation to implementation, with stafflevels massively ramped up in the middle,before dropping back as it’s finished(whatever ‘finished’ means these days).

It never made sense for lots of staff to sitaround idly during this process. The resultwas either expense, because you had to paythem to do nothing, or it led to bad businessdecisions, because the need to pay themmeant taking on unsuitable work to occupythem. Studios still go bust because theyhaven’t reconciled production cycle andstaffing realities.

Hence the attractiveness of flexiblecontracts and outsourcing. The trouble is,what’s good for a studio can be rotten forstaff. Many studios have found it hard torecruit on short-term or flexible contracts,and no wonder – the ecosystem is hardly set-up to inspire confidence in would-befreelance developers.

Even the smartest bosses don’t always seethis perspective: I’ve been looked at blankly

when I’ve asked what’s in for the workers. Youfeel like Citizen Smith.

The trouble is shipping work overseasmight be a short-term imperative, but it willbe a pyrrhic long-term solution if it hollowsout the UK talent pool. We instead need toenable UK creatives to target their skills atthe higher ‘value adding’ parts of game-making, so they can play a pro-active role inthe shift to flexibility, rather than it being aslow erosion of security.

Here are five things required to make this alternative to workforce operation aviable option:

1. More local clustersSome aspects of making a game will alwaysneed bodies in a room. For that to becompatible with contractor-style staffing,people need to gravitate towards localclusters so they can move betweencompanies without moving house.

2. Cooperation between studiosIf studios could let each other know whenthey were scaling up and scaling down, theycould better share the local talent. I’m nottotally naive – any studio will put its ownprojects first. Nevertheless, a studio with toomany staff and a big wage bill might be a 20minute drive from one with a skills shortage.An alternative to coordination is moreexternal companies who provide developerson fixed terms and know where their nextjobs will be.

3. A more transparent talent poolA flexible workforce is incompatible withtoday’s expensive-to-hire and loathe-to-loserecruitment culture. Ideally all the country’stalent would be on a big database, andproject leads could cherry pick the mostsuitable. This is – with fewer screens andmore lunches – how movies are made.Something like Dave Perry’s Game IndustryMap might plug this hole.

4. Even better production processesIt’s hard to believe that a decade ago aprofessional approach to game developmentwas considered an optional extra. But tobring more staff in and out on demand,projects will need to be further modularised.Any film editor can work with the output

from any film shoot. Can we get there withgames?

5. Better pay for short-term staffThis is key. In truly flexible creative industries,from Hollywood to TV to comic bookcreation, talented staff are compensated foruncertainty with better pay, which gets themthrough the lean periods and pays forpensions. It is unrealistic to expect to pay thesame pro rata wage to a contractor as apermanent staff member. For studios toenjoy the wider benefits of a flexibleworkforce, they must give up some portionof the gains.

With the recession now touching gamesdevelopment, more developers will findthemselves forced to confront flexibleworking. It’d be nice if it sounded like less ofeuphemism, and more like a second comingfor the British games industry.

Can the gamesindustry ever be likeThe Movies?

There are studioswhich have gonebust because some

people still haven’treconciled productioncycle and staffingrealities.

Towards a more equitable,

flexible workforce

by Owain Bennallack

Ground Controlby Billy Thomson, Ruffian Games

COMMENT: DESIGN

ALPHA | OPINION

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

18 | MARCH 2009

Iknow, it’s a cheap pun for the title to myfirst column, but allow me to redeemmyself. Because it ties in perfectly – work

with me here – with one of my strongestviews on game design: that control iseverything. As far as I'm concerned, as adesigner the control system is the launch padfor every gameplay feature you'll ever add toa game. Even the strongest, tightest designcan fail to take off if you don’t get thecontrols right.

I see it far too often in games where it’sobvious that the team has spent a largeamount of time and effort designing andimplementing an impressive range of coolfeatures, only to ruin them at the last minuteby making a complete arse of the controlsetup. It's so infuriating because it’s not thatdifficult to avoid.

In this column I’ll try to list and explain allof the mechanics and methods that Igenerally employ to ensure that the gamehas a solid, intuitive control system thatcompliments the feature set.

Obviously, different genres of game havecompletely different features and gamemechanics which lend themselves todifferent types of control methods, so for thisarticle I’ll focus purely on the type of controlyou would need in an action oriented gameof the first and/or third person nature.

REACTION TIMEWhether the player presses a button toinitiate an action or attempt to interrupt oneto perform a new action, I believe theyshould get an instant reaction on screen. Mypreference is to instantly perform the actionexpected rather than delay; so when theplayer says jump the player character hadbetter jump. I don’t want to see a laboriousanimation leading into a jump, I just want tosee them jump. The same thing goes forinterrupting animations. It should be instantcontrol over aesthetics every time.

FAMILIARITYThe best controls barely need to be taught tothe player, they just instinctively know whatto do. Usually this is due to the fact that thecontrols are in some way familiar to them,due to their previous experience withanother game that had similar features withthe same button mappings. It’s not lazy

design to use an existing control method: ifit’s been done before and it works well, don’tfeel the need to re-design it. It may make youfeel better as a designer, but the player won’tthank you for it.

MAPPINGGood control systems allow players toperform multiple actions at the same time soas to perform more complicated andgenerally more effective actions; like jumpinginto the air, throwing an explosive barrel,taking aim, then shooting the barrel causingit to blow up as it lands at the target’s feet.Fantastic! If you’ve got your controls mappedproperly this series of events will be possiblewith relative ease, if you’ve got them wrong itwill likely be a difficult and frustrating taskthat will very rarely be used. The key here isto ensure that linked actions can beperformed at the same time with differentfingers and thumbs. Tangled fingers at anytime means you’ve failed.

CONSISTENCYThe best games make sure that there isalways consistency to the controls, ensuringthat any new equipment or abilities that arepresented to the player later in the game usesimilar methods of control to the equipmentand abilities that preceded them. This ties inclosely with Familiarity, but this time it’s thecontrols that they were taught earlier in yourgame rather than a previous game that makethe difference. If you get this right you shouldbe able to introduce new features to thegame without the need for constant tutorials.

SKILLSFinally, I’m a great believer in making controlseasy to pick up and play for beginners so that

everyone can enjoy your game, but I also tryto make sure that there is enough depth tothe features and controls to allow players ofhigher skill to master the controls andbecome a far superior player. If you have anysort of online element to your game then thislevel of depth and mastery of the controls isvital to create a vibrant and competitiveonline community.

These may well seem like obvious areas tofocus on, but in my experience too fewgames appear to have taken all of them intoconsideration. As far as I'm concerned, if youmanage to nail all of these areas you’re goingto have the best control system possible foryour game. Fail in more than a couple and it’slikely your game will fail to take off in theway you had always intended it to.

Even the strongest,tightest design can failto take off if you don’tget the controls right

Far too often I seegames with animpressive range

of features, only to beruined by making acomplete arse ofthe control setup.

DEVELOPMAG.COM

OPINION | ALPHA

David Jefferies started in the industry at Psygnosis in Liverpool in 1995,eventually working on Global Domination and WipEout 3. He later movedto Rare where he worked on the Perfect Dark and Donkey Kong franchises.Next came a move down to Brighton to join Black Rock Studio (which wasthen known as Climax Racing) in 2003. On this generation of consoles he’sbeen the technical director of MotoGP’06 and MotoGP’07 before startingwork on new racer Split/Second.www.blackrockstudio.com

MARCH 2009 | 21

Our deferred shading system got itsfirst real work-out for our VerticalSlice recently, so I thought it’d be

interesting to look back and see if thetechnique justifies the hype.

To recap, a deferred shading system is onein which the lighting is deferred until thepost processing phase. When the geometryis initially rendered into the frame buffersimple shaders without lighting are used,while at the same time the GPU is writinginformation about the material of each pixelinto a G-Buffer. Then, during the post-processing phase, the lights are rendered inscreen space using the information from theG-Buffer.

For the programmers the deferred shaderhas opened up new post-processingavenues that hadn’t been available to usbefore. Per-pixel motion blur was the standout example and something that fits ourgame perfectly. Because we’re alreadymaintaining multiple render targets, theadditional cost of motion blur is only writingthe motion vectors into the G-Buffer andperforming the final blur pass.

Having all the information in the G-Bufferavailable to us at the post-processing phaseenables us to do more advanced post-processing than previously possible.

For example, one of the entries in the G-Buffer is the pixel normal (required for thelighting calculation), which means we can dohigher quality varieties of screen spaceambient occlusion or screen spacedirectional occlusion.

As expected, our post-processing phase isnow far more important (and expensive)than before. In the past our post-processingwould consist of tone mapping, some colourfilters and maybe a touch of depth of field,with everything else going through thevertex units. Now we add diffuse and

specular lighting, light-scattering, screen-space ambient occlusion, screen-space shadow maps and a colour cube tothe phase.

By moving these effects into the post-processing phase we make the initialgeometry rendering phase faster and get thedesirable property that lighting and shadowreceiving become independent of thecomplexity of the underlying model mesh.

Also, because the lighting is applied inscreen space, the lighting shaders are onlyused on pixels which are visible. We expect

that by the end of the project we will bespending 50 per cent of our render time inthe post-processing phase.

We have 96-bits available in our G-Bufferspread over three 32-bit render targets andwith this we’re able to represent almost allthe materials we need. Any materials thatcan’t be represented in this way get handledseparately by reserving 8-bits of the G-bufferfor a material ID.

For the artists deferred shading is allabout the extra lights. With our old systemwe had a light for the sun and a kicker andthat was about it. Any other light effects had

to be baked into the geometry as an off-lineprocess which meant the lighting didn’treact well when the environment changed.

With the deferred shader the artists canplace down literally hundreds of lights forilluminating the geometry in real time.

There are restrictions however; firstly,because the lights are rendered in screenspace their expense is proportional to theirsize on screen. Lots of localised lights arefine but if you start putting in big lights thatcan get close to the camera then you’llquickly eat up your fill rate.

Secondly, remember that strong lightslook strange unless they cast shadows and, while deferred shading can help withthe cost of receiving shadows, your enginewill still pay the cost of casting them in thefirst place.

It’s clear that disentangling the lightingfrom the vertex processing is conceptuallythe right thing to do, and Microsoft and ATIhave both predicted that we’ll all be doing itin the future. But the nagging question hasbeen whether the performance costsoutweigh the gains on the currentgeneration of hardware, and the answer tothat question really depends on the type ofgame you’re making.

If you do decide to go deferred then,speaking from experience, it won’t be longbefore your artists start requesting the gamebe set at midnight so they can make themost of the mood lighting. So don’t put themoonlight tech on hold just yet.

If you decide to godeferred then itwon’t be long

before your artists requestthe game be set atmidnight for goodmood lighting.

Deferred Shading

Revisited

by David Jeffries, Black Rock Studio

COMMENT: CODING


EVENT PREVIEW: GDC | ALPHA

California DreamingIf you’re heading to San Francisco then make sure you take Develop’s comprehensive

guide to GDC09, which includes all the highlights and essentials…

GAME DEVELOPERSCONFERENCE 2009When: March 23th to 27thWhere: Moscone Centre, SanFrancisco, California, USAWeb: www.gdconf.com

AT A GLANCE SCHEDULEGDC ExpoMarch 25th to 27th

Career PavilionMarch 25th to 27th

Game ConnectionMarch 24th to 27th

AI SummitMarch 23rd to 24th

Casual Games SummitMarch 23rd to 24th

GDC MobileMarch 23rd to 24th

Game Outsourcing SummitMarch 24th

IGDA Education summitMarch 23rd to 24th

Independent Games SummitMarch 23rd to 24th

Localization SummitMarch 23rd

Serious Games SummitMarch 23rd to 24th

Worlds in Motion SummitMarch 23rd to 24th

THE KEYNOTESMAIN KEYNOTE #1Discovering NewDevelopmentOpportunities

Speaker: Satoru Iwata,president of Nintendo

Wednesday, March 25th,9:00AM – 10:00AM

MAIN KEYNOTE #2Solid Game Design: Makingthe ‘Impossible’ Possible

Speaker: Hideo Kojima

Thursday, March 26th,10:30AM-12:00PM

GDC MOBILEKEYNOTEWhy the iPhone JustChanged EverythingSpeaker: Neil Young(founder, ng:moco:)

Monday, March 23rd,9:30AM – 10:20AM

26 | MARCH 2009

ALPHA | EVENT PREVIEW: GDC

GDC09 SUMMITS RUNDOWNAI Summit – The two day event promises toprovide an inside look at key architectures andissues within successful commercial games.Targeted at intermediate and advancedprogrammers, the summit offers a deeper insightinto the world of game AI

Casual Games Summit – Catering for thecontinually expanding casual market, this summitwill tackle issues including publishers’ fundingcriteria, optimising portals, monetisation,common design pitfalls, connecting peoplethrough casual games, and emerging platformsand business models.

GDC Mobile – Made for the creators, publishersand distributors of mobile games, this year GDCMobile will give special attention to newplatforms like iPhone and Google Android.

Game Outsourcing Summit – Covering anintegral part of the game development process,the summit promises to provide solid, usefuladvice from industry professionals looking tolearn more about outsourcing

IGDA Education summit – Offering a uniqueopportunity for professional game educators, theIGDA event creates an opportunity to seeexperimental and inventive educationalapproaches first hand.

Independent Games Summit – With services likeWiiWare and PSN continuing to expand theopportunities for smaller developers, there’s neverbeen a better time to visit the IndependentGames Summit, which features discussionsranging from game design philosophy tomarketing.

Localisation Summit – As the games industrycontinues to spread its wings and markets expandacross the globe, the Localisation Summit offersan opportunity to learn more about takinginternationalisation beyond traditionaltranslation.

Serious Games Summit – Providing a forum forthose wishing to harness the potential of theserious gaming industry, the summit exploresdeveloping for education, government, health,military, science, corporate training, firstresponders, and social change.

Worlds in Motion Summit – For those looking tocreate interactive online spaces for eitherentertainment or commercial reasons, Worlds inMotion will cover key issues including playercreated activity and building socialisation directlyinto games.

STAFF PICKSEVOLVING GAME DESIGN: TODAY ANDTOMORROW, EASTERN AND WESTERN GAMEDESIGNSpeakers: Mark MacDonald (executive director, 8-4),Goichi Suda a.k.a. SUDA51 (CEO/game designer,Grasshopper Manufacture) Fumito Ueda (seniorgame designer, International Production Dept, SonyComputer Entertainment, Japan Studio), EmilPagliarulo (lead designer – Fallout 3, Bethesda GameStudio)Date/time: Wednesday, March 25th, 2:30PM – 3:30PMLocation (room): Room 132, North HallTrack: Game designFormat: 60-minute panelExperience level: All

THE INSPIRATION BEHIND NINTENDO DSIDEVELOPMENTSpeaker: Masato Kuwahara (project leader,Nintendo DSi Hardware Group)Date/time: Wednesday, March 25th, 12:00PM – 1:00PMLocation (room): Room 132, North HallTrack: Game DesignFormat: 60-minute lectureExperience level: All

LIONHEAD EXPERIMENTS REVEALEDSpeaker: Peter Molyneux (head of studio, LionheadStudios)Date/time: Friday, March 27th, 2:30PM – 3:30PMLocation (room): Room 135, North HallTrack: Game DesignFormat: 60-minute lectureExperience Level: All

10 THINGS GREAT DESIGNERS EXHIBITSpeaker: Gordon Walton (co-studio director,BioWare)Date/time: Thursday, March 26th, 1:30PM - 2:30PMLocation (room): Room 2020, West HallTrack: ProductionSecondary Track: Game DesignFormat: 60-minute lectureExperience Level: All

AARF! ARF ARF ARF: TALKING TO THE PLAYERWITH BARKSSpeaker: Patrick Redding (Game/narrative designer,Ubisoft Montreal)Date/time: Friday, March 27th, 11:10AM - 11:30AMLocation (room): Room 2002, West HallTrack: Game DesignFormat: 20-minute lectureExperience Level: Intermediate

BEHIND THE SCENES: THE GEARS OF WAR 2CINEMATICS PIPELINESpeaker: Tanya Jessen (senior associate producer,Epic Games), Greg Mitchell (digital cinematographer,Epic Games)Date/time: Thursday, March 26th, 9:00AM - 10:00AMLocation (room): Room 131, North HallTrack: Visual ArtsFormat: 60-minute lectureExperience Level: Intermediate

BUILDING YOUR AIRPLANE WHILE FLYING:PRODUCTION AT BUNGIESpeaker: Allen Murray (producer, Bungie)Date/time: Wednesday, March 25th, 12:00PM -1:00PM

Location (room): Room 3007, West HallTrack: ProductionFormat: 60-minute lectureExperience level: All

MEDIA MOLECULE: 'WINGING IT' - UPS, DOWNS,MISTAKES, SUCCESSES IN THE MAKING OFLITTLEBIGPLANETSpeaker: Alex Evans (technical director, MediaMolecule), Mark Healey (creative director, MediaMolecule)Date/time: Wednesday, March 25th, 12:00PM - 1:00PMLocation (room): Room 135, North HallTrack: Game DesignFormat: 60-minute lectureExperience level: All

STAR OCEAN 4: FLEXIBLE SHADER MANAGEMENTAND POST-PROCESSINGSpeaker: Yoshiharu Gotanda (CEO and CTO, tri-Ace)Date/time: Friday, March 27th, 4:00PM – 5:00PMLocation (room): Room 132, North HallTrack: ProgrammingFormat: 60-minute LectureExperience level: All

EXPERIENCES AND RARE INSIGHTS INTO THEVIDEO GAME MUSIC INDUSTRYSpeaker: Hitoshi Sakimoto (Basiscape International)Date/time: Thursday, March 26th, 9:00AM – 10:00AMLocation (room): Room 132, North HallTrack: AudioFormat: 60-minute LectureExperience level: All

TUTORIALSOne day tutorialsMonday, March 23rd■ Advanced Visual Effects with Direct3D■ Learn Better Game Writing in a Day■ Creativity Boot Camp '09■ XNA Game Studio Developer Day

Tuesday, March 24th■ Insomniac Games' Secrets of Console and

Playstation 3 Programming■ Intense Screenwriting Techniques and Mind-

Boggling Conversation Systems■ Fundamentals of Game Design Workshop■ The Big Picture 2009: Managing Your Game Dev Deal

and Operating Your Game Dev Studio■ Intel Game Threading Tutorial■ Khronos Tutorial■ Microsoft Game Developer Day

Two day tutorialsMonday to Tuesday, March 23rd to 24th■ Math for Programmers/Physics for Programmers■ Game Design Workshop■ Audio Boot Camp

Overwhelmed by the schedule? Then look no further than our list of the must-see sessions


Will Wrightinterviews

Nolan Bushnellp37

Is 3D really aviable optionfor studios?

p49

TT Games onmaking kids’

TV showsp47

DEVELOPMENT FEATURES, INTERVIEWS, ESSAYS & MORE

“Agile development has little to dowith writing code. It’s understanding

what publishers want…”Dan Marchant, Strawdog Studios, p43

Holy MolyThe head of Lionhead gives a frank account of how and why his studio

has changed into a more responsible and controlled operation, p30

30 | MARCH 2009

BETA | LIONHEAD

Lion’sHead

He’s one of the most famous game designers in theworld, but that doesn’t mean he’s always right. PeterMolyneux talks to Ed Fear about the mistakes thathave put Lionhead back at the top of its game…


LIONHEAD | BETA

Right: In-game artworkfrom Fable 2 adornsmany of Lionhead’sstaircases

Peter Molyneux has done a lot ofinterviews during his career. Before thePR blackout, it wouldn’t be rare to find

an interview with him in a different magazineeach month. But times are different now; heis much more measured – some might saycontrolled – and certainly humble.

Which makes it all the rarer for Developto be invited down to Guildford when there’s no new game to talk about. Withdevelopers shedding staff by the day, is therebad news?

Neither sullen nor rared up at the prospectof demoing a product and giving his PR spiel,he’s easily the most relaxed we’ve ever seenhim. It’s clear that he’s relishing theopportunity not to talk about his latestproduct, but the company – and the people –that he holds closest.

Of course, it hasn’t always been quite sorosy. Rewind to the second half of 2005 and aseries of mistakes lead to a difficult period forthe company both critically andcommercially; his style of talking about hisgames was severely criticised and thecompany’s whole process of making gameshad to be completely re-evaluated. Keen tofind out more, we quizzed Molyneux himselfto find out exactly how the company turneditself around.

Let’s start with the ‘Justice’ conceptartwork that leaked on the internet lastmonth – how does that tie in with yourGDC talk about experiments?This talk I’m giving is all about how we accesscreativity through doing experiments. Thesearen’t just wild crazy ideas I have in the bath;they’re the result of real due diligienceexperiments that we’ve done, and we’vegone through a lot of those.

You know, I think… you don’t always workon the first thing you think of, and it’d beinappropriate to do so. The better thing to do

is to lay these things down and say things like‘how would this look’, ‘how would this feel’,‘what would I experience if I was playing this’,so that before you end up spending hugevast amounts of money – which is the way weused to do it – you try and get at least gethalf-way to knowing if you’re making a goodexperience. We do some art concepts, we dogameplay concepts, and we sort of mix thosetogether to see if something’s going to work.

It’s funny that it got out there – Iunderstand how it did, but it’s a shame,because there are confidentiality issues.

Is it something you’ve always practiced, oris it a new initiative?The truth is, I think I’m famously awful atdeveloping games. Before, I’d walk into theoffice, wave my arms and say ‘I’ve just had acool thought’ – usually after severe alcoholabuse – and that lead us to spending a lot ofmoney very foolishly on things that weren’tgoing to get anywhere.

Quite a while ago now, we sat down andthought, well, this is ridiculous – we can’tkeep this notion that game development is apurely creative process, and that you have tobuild it to be able to see it. There’s got to beanother way.

The first thing that we did is say, right, weneed to do more work upfront it design andconcepting, and that means less iterationfurther on. Because when you’ve got a teamlike Fable, which was around 100 people, youcan’t experiment with that many; you’d bespending mad amounts of money. You justcan’t do it. So now, a lot of our designdecisions are made when the team is small sothat we can change our minds, because thething about design is that you need tochange your mind. You can’t come up withone idea and then just expect that idea to beperfect – it’s never going to work.

I’m a great believer of getting the ‘wrapper’ right up front – how you describethe game to people, how people describe thegame to each other, and getting themechanics and look and feel of it right – andthat’s a lot to do with experimentation. We dothat a lot. In fact, we do it so much thatpeople get a bit panicky and ask when we’reactually going to go into production becausewe’ll keep on going around in that loop untilwe’re happy with it.

Was this process applied to Fable 2?Yeah: the big things – the breadcrumb trails,the dog, the one-button combat – are all theresult of real iteration, experimentation andconcepting that we did. If it wasn’t for that, itjust wouldn’t exist. So, we had a one-buttoncombat demo three months after we startedthinking about the game.

I’m not saying it’s the perfect way to work,but you know, one of the things thatLionhead really wants to do is innovate, andchallenge the fundamental foundationstones that we think of as a given in theindustry – things like death mechanics andpause screens and minimaps – and if we’regoing to do that, we can’t do it in a purelycreative way.

If you asked me what I was most proud ofin Fable 2, it’s not actually any of those: I’mmost proud of the process. If I’m honest, onFable we just burnt people’s lives; wedestroyed the team. Week after week, monthafter month, they worked 50, 60, 70, 80 hourweeks. It destroyed their lives and destroyedtheir marriages. You just can’t do thatanymore. You can’t do it.

How much of that is down to pressure thatyou put on the team?What I used to say is, ‘look, I’m working 120hours a week – I’m only asking you to do halfof what I do!’ But you can’t do that anymore,because you’re asking people to make achoice not between whether they go to thepub tonight or not but whether they gohome and see their children. And so becauseof me, and the way I used to sort of lead fromthe front and work harder than anybody else,it used to semi-destroy people’s lives.

So I’ve tried to structure Lionhead so thatcreativity is really important, but it isn’tobsessively important any more. That the

I think I’mfamously awful atdeveloping games.

I’d walk into the officewith an idea and that’dlead us to spendinga lot of money very foolishly.

32 | MARCH 2009

BETA | LIONHEAD

voice of production and the reason of financecan be heard at an equal level as an idiot likeme shouting from the rooftops, which is verymuch what I used to do.

So looking back at Fable 2, yeah, wecrunched at the end, but it was only at thevery, very end that we used up people’swhole weekends. There’s a few exceptions,but a lot of Sundays this studio was empty,which I thought was great.

How much of the change was down tofinancial issues?Everything’s important when you’re makingsomething big like this – the team, themorale, the quality of their life, how muchmoney you’re spending, the game featuresyou’re working on – all of that comestogether to make a successful product. It’sthis holistic thing. I used to think that, if it’snot good enough and you’re working 60hours a week, you should be working 70 tomake it good. But that’s just such a wrongway of working, because you’re going to endup making huge mistakes.

At around about the same time, thereseemed to be a consolidation insideLionhead as you went to focus solely onone product. Why did that come about?Well, we had this absolute nightmare of atime around the latter half of 2005 because ofmistakes that we had made – and when I say‘we’ I mean ‘me’ more than anyone else –which meant we had to slip Black and White 2.We’d made a mistake with the game, and

essentially we were building a game that wasfar too big. We also had to slip The Moviesbecause of other design problems that werethere, and Fable: The Lost Chapters for PC andXbox were scheduled to be coming out too. Itmeant that within three weeks we had fourSKUs to get out of the door.

Now, in order to achieve that – which wehad to do because of lots of financial andlegal reasons – we had to swell Lionhead toabout 240 people, and that meant that we

were in about seven different offices aroundthis research park. The amazing thing is thatwe actually managed to get those threegames out on time, but if I’m critical I wouldsay that the quality did suffer, and we neverwant that. When we got through it, we satdown and asked ourselves if it was importantto make three or more games, or to make oneor two games to the best that we could. Theanswer was pretty easy.

I really, really hate letting anyone go at anytime, but we did for logical reasons have to

say ‘this is not why we established Lionhead;this is not what we stand for’. And so we hadto shed some people. That was this awful,terrible time, and going through meetingafter meeting having to talk to people aboutwhy they weren’t staying was really, reallytough. I wouldn’t want anyone to go throughthat. But when you come out of that, yourealise that, yeah, the reason we did this wasbecause we want to make great products inthe future. But it was tough. It’s good now, inthat it sort of modifies the way I think aboutthings on a day-to-day basis, because I neverever want to go back there again.

In recent years it seems that moredevelopers are being honest about failure,and reassessing the way that they dothings. Do you think there’s any particularcause for this?We’re growing up. When I first started in thisindustry we were like six year-olds. We usedto go out and do ridiculous things, we neverused to plan anything, we had no idea ofanything financial. I can remember that backin the early nineties the word ‘producer’ wasspat upon. We used to laugh at developersthat had a producer – you know, ‘What wouldyou want one of those idiots for?’ – and wethought that anyone with a producer endedup making games that were rubbish anyway.Now we’re becoming adults, we’ve come torealise that mistakes are a good thing; they’regood to go through, and you learn fromthem. Just because you’re doing somethingdoesn’t make it right.

Above: the Lionheadteam in all their finery

If I’m honest, onFable 1 we justburnt people’s

lives; we destroyed theteam. Month after monththey worked 50 to80 hour weeks.


LIONHEAD | BETA

My feeling is that if you’re making mistakeswhen you’ve got 100 people, that’s a reallybig mistake. So you’d better make sure thatyou’re making the mistakes when you’re a tenor 20 person team; where it’s absolutely fineto turn around and say ‘You know that lastmonth’s work – it wasn’t right, let’s startagain’. If you’re doing that with 100 people,you are throwing millions of pounds downthe toilet. I just don’t think that’s acceptableany more.

There’s some very logical production-orientated things that really enable thecreativity and the quality of the final productyou’re making. But yeah, mistakes areessential, and it’s essential to realise thatyou’re going to make mistakes – and I call ititeration – but there’s a time to make them,and there’s a time not to. We’re being honest;we’re being more grown up.

It’s a scary thing for this industry to realisethat we’re not the new kids on the blockanymore. We had so many excuses when wewere only ten years old – purely as anindustry, we were very, very arrogant. We saidthings like, ‘no-one else knows how to makecreative stuff’. Now a lot of the people I know,both inside Lionhead and at othercompanies, are realising that this creativeprocess that we do isn’t that different to othercreative media, and rather than reinventingthe wheel every time we should lookelsewhere to how other people do things.

You also changed your PR style at aroundabout the same time, becoming a lot less

public about ongoing projects... After Fable, there was pretty dark time wherepeople looked at the game and compared itwith what I said in the press, and they feltcheated. I realised that we just couldn’t keepon doing that. But that was very much areflection of how we worked, because what Iwas talking about in the press was what wewere experimenting with at that moment,and a lot of those experiments would sort ofcome out as you were making the game. SoI’d be talking about trees growing, and thenwe’d cut trees growing, and people would, ofcourse, feel cheated.

So I made a rule: I will not talk about anyconcrete mechanics unless I can actuallyshow you them in game. I’ll talk about ourambitions to make the best role-playing

game of all time, but if you see Fable 2 pressyou’ll see that I talked about stuff as Idemoed it.

People understandably get enormouslyupset about it – it’s like seeing a trailer for afilm and seeing Batman die, but then hedoesn’t die in the film; it would just be wrong.So I think a lot of what we do is realise whatwe’ve done wrong and work to try and makethat right. It’s far better than thinking that weget things right all the time.

How have you found it? I think peoplerealised that it wasn’t out of malice thatyou said these things, but just pureenthusiasm. It’s very, very difficult. There are lots of thingsI would like to show you know. Within tenfeet of you right now is possibly the mostexciting thing I’ve ever seen. I would love,with every atom of my body, to show youthat. I’m like a kid that wants to show his toysoff at Christmas, but it’s just the wrong thingto do. You just have to restrain yourself, andthere’s a lot of willpower that goes into that.And that’s caused a second rule: I must never,ever talk to the press when there is anyalcohol around me, because then all mydefences go down and I just blabber on andon about what we’re doing and end up interrible trouble.

I like talking to people about the gameswe’re developing because I think thatdeveloping games is an amazingly incrediblyexciting thing, and obviously it’s good forpublicity. But the real reason is that I’ve beenshowing off since I was two years old. This isall part of that process, and being thespokesman for the amazingly smart cleverpeople here who make me look smart is justan incredible experience, it really is. You sit infront of a room full of journalists, especially atshows where half of them are practicallydead due to lack of sleep or alcohol abuse,

and just seeing a little spark of wonder intheir eyes is just amazing. Sometimes it’s soamazing that I just get incredibly emotionalabout it. It’s an incredible feeling.

Now that it’s been out a few months, howdo you think Fable 2 has performed?Well, I’m a greedy kid. I always want more. Ithink you can look at the number of copiesthat we’ve sold and the feedback and awardswe’ve got, and you can say, ‘Wow, that’s anamazing achievement’. I’m incredibly proudof what we did – a lot of it seemed impossiblewhen we were doing it. So there’s anincredible feeling of pride.

I do think that, however, that there aremore people out there that would enjoyFable 2. Thinking about that is a realfrustration. You can read that as, in my mind,Fable 2 should sell more, because I think it’s agreat experience and a great game. Sure, Ithink there are things desperately wrong withit. Do I want to go in there and fix all of thosethings? Yeah, of course I do, but I really thinkit’s one of the best games that Lionhead’sdone. It certainly had more innovation in it,even thought it was a sequel, than a lot ofother experiences.

Are you worried about becoming just theFable company?Lionhead stands for much more than justwhat Fable is, and we’re working on thingsbeyond that. We’re working on Fable things –we’ve just done the DLC and we are workingon other stuff. But we’re also working onother innovational titles – and I’m not goingto say title or titles, whether it’s a prototypeor experiment, whether it’s near or far away –but I can say that what we’re always trying todo is create something that is meaningful.When we think why we want to do this, it’sbecause we want to make a landmark title.

It’s a very interesting time in the industryto be trying that, because the industry isturning around and asking itself everythingfrom the experiences we make for our currentaudiences, what they are, the balance andmechanics of what they are, even to who ouraudience is. Lionhead tries to stand forinnovation and to give people things thatthey perhaps might not have expected orimagined. That’s very important to us.

So you’re working on multiple games atthe same time again? I really don’t think anymore of them as gamesanymore – I think much more of franchises.Fable and Fable 2 are just events in the wholelifecycle of the franchise. If you start thinkingmore like that, and less like ‘we’re going tomake Fable 1, then see what happens, thendo Fable 2, then see what happens’ – in other

There’s a time tomake mistakes,and there’s a time

not to. If you’re doing sowith a team of 100, you’rethrowing millionsof pounds away.

34 | MARCH 2009

BETA | LIONHEAD

words, if I’m trying to make something that’sgoing to be big, that’s going to sell this much,that’s going to make this much money – thenyou need to think about much more than justthe game. Think of making a whole body ofthings – from books to films to action figuresto websites and box art.

You’re also recruiting at what’s a prettytough time for development. What’sbrought that about?It’s a very challenging time for the industry,we’re not used to this stuff. For a long timewe’ve been reading things about teamsdoubling in size, and I think we’re reachingthe ceiling of that now. It’s like whenHollywood did movies like Cleopatra, whichin today’s terms would cost $300 milliondollars. Suddenly Hollywood said, ‘Hang on asecond, we can’t do every film for thisamount, we just won’t make enough money’.We’re getting near that thought now as well;we just can’t keep on making these massivehuge bets, and nor should we be.

Part of the excuse is that it’s the newgeneration, but that’s here now, and so now’sthe time to bring the costs down. Lionhead’sin the lovely position that we can grow just alittle bit. Only because of what we’re doing –it’s so insanely hard and difficult that we needwonderful people to do it.

You’re obviously happy with the supportyou’re getting from Microsoft – how doyou feel about the relationship now thatthe dust has settled?Of course I’m going to say it’s great, but I’mgoing to speak with complete honesty: Ithink they’re a fantastic company to work for.It’s very, very frustrating working for acompany that’s 5,000 miles away; I don’t

pretend that there aren’t frustrations there.But they have a will and a passion to dothings that we want to do, and I think ourshared belief of the future and the gamesthat we’re making has been fantastic for me.

I’d say, even more than that, I’ve learnt anenormous amount from them, and I neverexpected that. And that’s from Microsoft asmuch as it is from MGS – I’ve learnt that beingpart of a corporation can be hugely creativelyenabling, and I just need to learn anddevelop a few new skills, some of whichinvolve the fact that working inside a massivemachine doesn’t mean you can’t be thefastest spinning cog. It just means that youneed to learn where to work. It’s been a very,very interesting time.

I love the job I do. I love it so much.Lionhead is just a wonderful place to work.You’ve got to realise that nothing, nothing,compares to the enormous struggle ofdealing with venture capitalists. That wastough. There was a band of people that hadinvested in Lionhead because they very

clearly wanted to make some money, andthere was me bursting into the board roomand saying, ‘I’ve got a great idea!’ and they’resaying, ‘Oh God, Peter, will you just shut upwith your great ideas and get on with makingmoney’. And they were completely right. Butthat was a real, real learning process, andcoming from that – and VCs are in one wayeasy to work with, because they’re very clearon their motivation is – but when you’ve gota child like me coming into that mix… I hadto learn a lot in there.

So going from that world to the Microsoftworld is like getting out of jail, being able tobreathe again. I’m in a fantastic place, I’menjoying it, I love the challenges and thepressure. I love the idea that Microsoft hasthis vision and we’re getting towards thatvision. And it’s a great time to be who I am,my position in the industry – sometimes I’mthis passionately creative person, sometimesI’m this sales person and sometimes I’m thisfinancially-led studio manager. It’s fantastic tobe able to be all three.

IT’S ALL WELL AND good hearingfrom Peter that the company haschanged – but what have the groundtroops noticed? Louise Copley ishead of the Fable franchise,overseeing all of the studio’sactivities within that world. Tellingly,she’s from a production background.

“The interesting thing is that, priorto coming to Lionhead, I’d only beenat one game company,” she says. “Icame in with managementexperience, but I didn’t really knowwho Peter Molyneux was.

“When I came here, he was justthis incredibly creative, fireypersonality that needed a bit oftaming, and that’s where I came in.He and I get on really well togetherand work together brilliantly, but weare the ying and yang – he’ll be blue-skying something and I’ll besaying, ‘Okay, we’ve got this manypeople and this much time, so youcan actually only have this.’ Weactually have a great workingrelationship, it’s really respectful, but there’s definitely a lot offireworks at times.”

Copley has been at the studio forsix years, and has witnessed thechange first-hand. “The place hasradically changed since I joined,” shesays. “It had this reputation for takingforever, but they’ve brought inpeople like me and we’ve made ahuge difference in taming thatcreativity into getting things out ofthe door. You have to get a productout in the end, we’re a business – butwe still need all those burningcreative ideas.

“Fable 1 took a very long time,Fable 2 has taken less time, and we’vehad successes and failures withinthat. But we look at those andchange accordingly. One of thereasons that I’ve stayed at Lionheadthis long is that it’s a company that’snot afraid to learn – certainly when Iwas outside of the industrycompanies would often stay in theirold ways. But that doesn’t happenhere: as soon as we finish somethingit’s postmortems, getting ideas ofwhat we could do better, and we’re improving. It’s a veryprogressive company.”

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WILL WRIGHT INTERVIEWS NOLAN BUSHNELL | BETA

WRIGHT vs BUSHNELLNolan Bushnell (right)is this year’s BAFTAFellow, the secondluminary to be giventhe honour. Will Wright(left) was granted thefirst Fellowship in 2007.

Nolan Bushnell is an industry legend, arguably founding the entire games industry. But when

the opportunity arose to speak with newBAFTA Fellow, we didn’t just want to settle on a dull Q&A.

Instead, we thought it would be good toget another industry legend Will Wright,creator of The Sims and the first BAFTA Fellow,to interview his friend Nolan instead.

Here, the two talk about the early days ofthe games industry, inspirations, the effectgames have on children, and even robots…

Will Wright: Nolan, to start with I read that,as a kid, you built a liquid-powered rocketroller skate – and I can only imagine whatother trouble you got into. So my firstquestion is: were you a pain in the ass as akid? Were your parents concerned about you?Or were they encouraging you?

Nolan Bushnell: It was half and half. My dadwas constantly encouraging me and mymother thought that I was crazy. But later on,after my dad died, my mom became verysupportive. So I think they might have been‘good cop, bad cop’-ing me the whole time.

WW: That was their masterplan. OK, second question: You and I both grew up in the age of the pinball machine and there is a lot of nostalgia about that, and I have alot of friends who are really into collectingclassic pinball machines and stuff like that.But I realise that, probably more than any one else on the planet, you are responsible

for the death of pinball as an industry bypushing forward with video games. So… doyou feel guilty about that?

NB: Absolutely! I loved pinball growing up –the fact that the art form, if you can callpinball play or designing that, no longer hasresonance is… yeah, I am sad about that.

WW: Do you miss it?

NB: Yes I do. And I must confess I’ve alwayshad a couple of pinball machines in my homeand really have enjoyed some of the oldclassics, like Fireball.

WW: What was your favourite machine?

NB: There was one called Tempest that was anold Williams game which probably had thefastest playfield around. In fact it was so fastthat they had trouble keeping the machinesgoing as they just beat themselves to death.

WW: I remember as a kid in the early ‘70s, atsome point I was in New Orleans airport and Icame across this thing called Computer Space,your first arcade game. It looked like an alienobject which someone had dropped into themiddle of the airport. A sleek fibreglassmachine and all-electronic display. It waspretty much the first electronic game I hadever encountered in my entire life. And it pre-dated Pong, which I know was your morecritical success. My question is: when youwere making these things, did you have anyinkling that this was a historic shift in massentertainment? Or from your point of view

were these weird experiment sorta ‘let’s trythese out and see how they do’? Did yourealise how significant these things were?

NB: The simple answer is that I didn’t realise the magnitude. I thought that this was going to be an important event and I felt it was going to be pretty big because itwas really… I had so much fun and everyone I knew had so much fun playingcomputers on big mainframes – y’know, inthe middle of the night when you could getcomputer time – that I just knew it had aresonant component to it.

So I always looked at myself as the guywho was going to make it cost-effective. It’sfunny, I really felt that instead of a milliondollar mainframe I was dropping the cost soanyone could do it. It was obvious to me thatif the cost was right everybody would do it.

WW: And that’s a pretty significant drop inprice – going from the mainframes down…

NB: Well, I actually started out thinking it was

I always looked atmyself as the guywho was making

games cost effective. I was dropping the price so anyone couldmake them.

One ‘invented’ video games. The other turned them into a mass medium. But what happens when weget Will Wright to interview Nolan Bushnell for us? Michael French listens in…

38 | MARCH 2009

BETA | WILL WRIGHT INTERVIEWS NOLAN BUSHNELL

going to be a microcomputer connected to multiple terminals. And that was thedesign direction I had started going down. It wasn't until later that I realised that I couldmake a standalone unit. The early computergames – Computer Space and Pong – theyweren’t built with an architecture at all. They were just really great signal generators, just because you couldn’t… well,first of all the microprocessor hadn’t beeninvented yet! And the chips just didn't wantto go fast enough to refresh at video ratesand so we had to do all kinds of tricks to getthe thing to work.

WW: In many respects it’s amazing theyappeared when they did – it seems like they came out ten years earlier than theyshould have.

NB: Yeah, the first microprocessor game wasAsteroids and that was in ’77. And so I felt thatmy contribution was really to make the videogame happen maybe six or seven yearsearlier.

WW: So you founded Atari, and later onanother company Sente – both names arephrases from the board game Go, which youfamously love. When did you first play Go?How long did it take you to realise how cool itwas – in a game design sense?

NB: I was killing time in the stacks at theuniversity and I came across this book calledGo. And I started reading about the gameand it became very fascinating to me. Ofcourse, there was no internet play and I wasat university at the time. It was just beforeChristmas and I was talking to my wife andsaid: ‘This sounds like a really interestinggame, I’d like to get it’. She actually found onesomewhere in Salt Lake City, believe it or not,and I started playing it with my friends. Andnot having a clue about what the game was,but falling in love with it.

WW: Were you teaching your friends how toplay it?

NB: Yes. And then when I moved to CaliforniaI found out there was a Go club in San

Francisco, and that was the first time Iactually played with people who knew whatthey were doing and really fell in love it. I fellin love with it as a game the minute I startedreally playing it.

WW: Yeah, I think it is the ultimate game interms of simplicity of design versus strategy.NB: Exactly. Minimum rules, maximumcomplexity.

WW: So, the Atari 2600 is considered the pre-eminent home game machine, and I don’teven know how many titles were originallypublished on it – but of all the games on the2600 did any stand out to you as yourfavourite? Or did any stand out as what thismachine was built for?

NB: You know, even thought Atari didn’tbuild it, I thought the game of Pitfall was avery, very good adaptation. The other one Iremember was that we had a chess game onit that had very good AI in it for the time, andwhen I consider how really clunky thecomputer was, and we had 128 bytes of

memory on the thing – not Kbytes, but bytes:128 – it seems like that wasn’t enough todisplay the pieces.

WW: Wow. That is a challenge.

NB: Yeah. And we had already made so manycompromises on the 2600 to get the costdown that I felt that the machine would onlylast a maximum of three years and that we’dsoon have to upgrade it a bit. Because thememory and user memory was so key to it allbut the cost was falling by half every year – sothe decisions you made for one year werecompletely wrong for the following year.

WW: There’s a funny analogy with the firstplanetary probes that NASA sent out, whichhad minimal hardware – and the times theyhad to reprogram they had to try all thesetricks to keep the things running. It’s whatyou can do in terms of software on limitedhardware is what is amazing.

NB: Yeah, and when we were designing the2600 we were thinking they could make…well, it would be good enough for just 20games. And what you say is completely trueabout hardware – it was the brilliance of thesoftware. I think there were ultimatelythousands of the cartridges developed forthe 2600 over its life.

WW: In addition to game systems, you havealso been involved in a lot of very interestingrobotic toys. Of those, which do you thinkwas your favourite?

NB: Robodog. It never made it to market butit was a robotic tin-looking dog. It wasactually plastic, but it looked like it was madeout of tin. And it would play a series of gameswith you that were really fun and it had aspeech synthesiser chip and a pretty goodlittle processor. We put in a game that wasactually a lot of fun, called ‘Hunt theWumpuss’. The dog would spin around andsay ‘I smell a wumpuss’, and ‘The wumpuss iseight feet in front of you’. The objective of thegame was then to go and jump on thewumpuss eight feet in front of the dog – itwas totally imaginary, but if you didn’t do itthe dog would turn and say ‘The wumpussran away and is now two feet behind me’. Itwas so much damn fun – you’d play it forfifteen minutes and would be exhausted, buta good person could step on about 20wumpusses in a game session.

WW:That’s brilliant. It sounds like one ofthose games that’s fun because it’s fun towatch people play it.

NB: Absolutely. Get a bunch of kids, and itsgreat fun to watch. Get some adults and –especially after a couple of glasses of wine –it’s just hilarious.

WW: Rather dangerous I imagine! So as wellas toys and games, you also startedrestaurant chains Chuck-E-Cheese and morerecently your new venture Uwink. A lot ofpeople, they tend to take their success anduse that to fund world domination or otherproductive enterprises. For you it seems likeit’s restaurants. What’s the deal? Why are youfascinated with restaurants?

NB: It’s actually my fascination with people atplay. It turns out restaurants are a goodenvironment for having public play. I used tosay at Chuck-E-Cheese that the pizza was thelife support system for the game arcade.Uwink is really about creating a party or afestival or a banquet. Throughout history, ,when they play – whether it is sports or a gettogether for a festival celebrating eitherEaster the Harvest or whatever – there is afood element. So I thought it would beimportant to have some places where youcan choose to go, and there is a party goingon all the time. That is what Uwink is allabout. And that’s what Chuck-E-Cheese wasall about.

WW: I visited Uwink down near the KodakTheatre recently – I really enjoyed it.

Andy was the firstmass-merchandisedlow cost computer-programmable robot,launched by Bushnellin 1985. He calls it hisbiggest failure, but isadamant that robotictoys and games have along future ahead

We made so manycompromises onthe 2600 to get the

cost down that I thought it would only last a maximum ofthree years.

40 | MARCH 2009

NB: Well it, like so many other things, it has somany extra things we can do, and we’ll kindof grow into our own skin a little bit. But I’mhappy with the early results.

WW: In your career so far, in all the thingsyou’ve launched, what are the things you aremost proud of personally?

NB: My kids. I’m really proud of them, nowthat they are coming adults; the maturepeople they are turning out to be. I mustadmit that’s mostly my wife’s responsibility,but I am very proud.

WW: You have quite a few kids, right?

NB: Yeah, I have eight. From a technicalstandpoint I am proud that I made the videogame happen faster, and Chuck-E-Cheese… Idunno, I always tell people I am most excitedor proud of what I’m currently working on.And right now I’m working on a whole bunchof things.

WW: On a related note, there is an old sayingin autoracing that if you don’t crash everytenth race then you aren’t going fast enough.And I think the same is true of technologyand entrepreneurship – unless you have anumber of failures or risks you aren’t pushingthe envelope. You’ve had numeroussuccesses, and like anyone a few failures. Sowhich of the failures were the most noble?Where did you take a risk that was a goodproposition but didn’t really work out?

NB: I’m not sure I would class it as a nobleexperiment, but I think my ‘Andy bot’programmable robot – it was frustratingmore than anything. I was 100 per centconvinced the market was ready for it, but Imisjudged the technological difficulty. It wasthe only company I have ever had in whichthe technology just wouldn’t yield to me.

WW: You couldn’t get it to work?

NB: Yeah, and the money… inthe mid-‘80s the technology ofrobots just didn’t want to work.We didn’t have the necessarymultitasking software, didn'thave a lot of sensors at theprice we wanted it to be. It wastoo big a prospect. It wasprobably my biggest failureand the most painful – andyet at the same time I thinkthat… well, I just can’tenvision a future in which wedon’t have little guysrunning around doing stufffor us.

WW: But 25 years later, it’sstill hard to do. It’s amazingyou were attempting itback then with the simplertechnology we had then.

NB: Yeah… no, it wasfoolish!

WW: In terms of the future what are yourthoughts? I ask because especially nowadayswe face more and uncertainty, and at themoment there are people who are fallingclearly into one camp or the other – evenover the short term, the next 20 years or so,people speculate about issues financially,environmentally or socially. Would you sayyou are an optimist or a pessimist about thefuture?

NB: Definitely an optimist. I think we willconstantly solve problems in an interestingway. I tend to be very sceptical aboutgovernment’s ability to help us – but I thinkman will try and figure out its ways in spite ofgovernment.WW: So you are very much a libertarian. Well,that’s the end of my prepared questions.

NB: Hmm. I don't know what else we shouldtalk about.

WW: It’s weird, I’ve done so many interviews,but never had the chance to be the oneasking the questions.

NB: Well, much in the way you’ve been askingme about my career – I’ve been a great fan ofyours. I’ve been an aficionado of The Simssince… well, forever. I always rate you as oneof the best game guys.

WW: Well, I don't think any of us would havehad a chance without your work.

NB: I think that we all, in working on thevideo game as an entity – all developersreally enjoy the fact that they haven’t had toget a real job!

WW: Yes, that’s very true. I’ve only justrecently convinced my mother that I’m doingsomething worthwhile. It took her a while toget it. It’s a generational thing. I guess yousee that in your kids – because you and Igrew up with these things as we were youngadults, but you see kids grow up with thesethings, they have a resonance with games.But I work with these things every day, butdon’t have the resonance that I see mydaughter or young kids have with games.

NB: Yeah, and it turns out that that is one ofthe things I actually have a bit of a concernabout. Video games in some ways are toopowerful, they have too much resonancewith kids. And it’s very easy to overdose onvideo games and to let the outside world goby. I am constantly trying to limit my kids’video game play. Which kind of seems funnycoming from me! [laughs]

WW: Completely. You have two roles – one asa parent, and one in the games industry. Andyou see how captivating games are – yourealise that we have discovered this circuit intheir brain and we are kind of exploring andexploiting more and more effectively…

NB: …taps into an endorphin pouch orsomething.

WW: Right, yeah – and it’s a combination ofpixels moving on the screen, they cancapture your vision, and we have all thesevirtual worlds we are trying to deconstruct.It’s amazing how complicated these gamesare, and even a seven year old can get intothese systems and engage with them andreverse engineer what is under the hood soquickly. That part I think is going to servethem well going forward in a technologicalfuture, where they need to deal with difficultsystems and need to figure out the gestalt ofa system very rapidly.

NB: Yeah, I remember my four year old sononce saying ‘I could understand this game alot better if I could read!’ [laughing] He wasonly four or five at the time.

WW: It proves that games can be a greatmotivator – I know people that have learnedJapanese just because they liked playingimport Japanese games; they learnedkatakana from reading the interfaces.

NB: Exactly. I can remember bringing home aNintendo one time and the kids had most funtrying to intuit what everything meant.

WW: Right. You try doubly hard whensomething is in another language – it’sanother system on top of it.

NB: It just goes to show what a great mediumwe have built and which others are evolving.

I’m backingrobotics. I just can’tenvision a future in

which we don’t have littlerobotic guys runningaround and doingstuff for us.

Bushnell is mostfamous for foundingAtari. And, according toWill Wright, thus killingthe pinball market

BETA | WILL WRIGHT INTERVIEWS NOLAN BUSHNELL

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G A M E S

One of the curiousities of the pre-recession games industry in the UKwas the large number of small – really

small – developers busying themselves withoutsource work in the Midlands. While muchtalk was on sending assets and code to Indiaand China, many of these little studios werequietly, invisibly, taking care of a largeamount of work that wanted to be keptinside these Isles.

Strawdog was one of them. It was formedin May 2004, with staff members comingfrom studios such as Free Radical, Blitz,Eurocom and even from outside the industry.

But prior to the official founding, many ofthe team had been working together in theirspare time on a concept called Bugs of War. Itwas the excitement around this project, athird-person action game for the PlayStation2, that inspired the team to leave secure jobsand start anew.

NEW BEGINNINGS“I think the industry was in a certain placeback then – I think we all shared a commonfrustration, certainly my colleagues anyway,which was that we wanted to make new freshgames,” says technical director Simon Morris.

“At the time there was a lot of very ‘cloned’games out there – it was the time of theVietnam war sim – and they were all sort of

brown and grey shooters. Actually, I guesswe’ve not really come that far, but it was areal leap of faith to do this. I was in-betweenjobs, but these guys… they had a good idea,we felt we had all the bases covered, and sowe thought: ‘Let’s do something with this;let’s make this work.’”

But unlike most startups, Strawdog had nodeal signed, no funding beyond personalsavings and a loan, and no contacts.

In order to keep the creditors at bay whileit shopped Bugs of War around, the group –still just three people at this point – turned tooutsourcing.

“We’ve kept quiet for the past few years aswe focused on outsource work and buildingour core team,” says managing director PaulSmith. “The bad thing about that is that

you’re usually under NDA. We were unsungheroes for a long time, but there was a richseam of work there, and it helped us movearound different developers and talk to them.In the background we were alwaysdeveloping our own product.”

Together with funding from East Midlandsscreen media agency EM Media, the teamworked on a prototype for Bugs of War, whichenabled them to shop it around all of thenew publishers they were coming intocontact with.

While the demo is impressive (Develop istreated to a viewing), the timing – at thebeginning of the console transition period –wasn’t particularly right.

“Unfortunately we were pitching anoriginal game on PS2 right at the time thatPS2 was going down and PS3 and Xbox LiveArcade were coming up,” says Dan Marchant,

MARCH 2009 | 43

STRAWDOG STUDIOS | BETA

StrawdogMillionaires

It might be relatively low-profile, but Strawdog has been slowly building a name for itself. With the studio nowventuring into the brave new world of self-publishing, Ed Fear visited the team to talk over lessons learnt fromits past titles and what lies in store for the future…

Agile developmenthas little to do withwriting code – it’s

understandingwhat thepublishers want.Dan Marchant, Biz Dev Director

Above, from left toright: Derek Pettigrew,development director;Paul Smith, managingdirector; DanMarchant, businessdevelopment director;and Simon Morris,technical director

business development director for the studio.“It really wasn’t a brilliant time to be pitchingnew IP. But it helped us build lots of contactswith publishers, and we quickly identifiedthat the game wasn’t going to fly in that formon that platform at that time.”

And so they set their sights a little smaller,but still within the Sony camp: on the PSP,which was gathering a lot of buzz at the time.The game would become Xbox Live Arcadetitle Geon – but not until it had become anumber of different things. At its core amultiplayer spin on Pac-Man, the visualpresentation changed numerous timesduring its development before settling on anabstract style. Eidos signed the game, butsoon asked the team to make the title for thethen fledgling Xbox Live Arcade.

“I think we’ve learnt that agiledevelopment has little to do with writingcode – it’s understanding what publisherswant,” says Marchant. “You can’t go in and say‘it has to be this platform’ because publisherswill say ‘that’s not what I want’. You have to bewilling to move to what your customer wants,which in this case was Live Arcade.”

GOOD RELATIONSThe rapid change of plans demonstrated theneed to flexibility in relationships, as well asin planning business decisions.

“Publishers make those decisions forbusiness reasons – if they don’t think they

can sell it then they won’t spend the moneyon it. But of course, that has an impact onyour business – suddenly there’s a hole inyour cashflow. So it’s important that youmaintain a good relationship so you cansmooth those things over – we dropped the PSP version, but signed the PSN versionat the same time.”

Favourable reaction to Geon’s focus ongameplay meant that soon more ports of thegame were in demand – it’s just launched onPSN, with PC and retail Wii and DS versionsset for release soon. The staggered portingschedule has helped the team develop arobust technology suite that encompassesnext-gen and handheld platforms, somethingthat such a small group would never havebeen able to do simultaneously. It’s alsohelped them refine the gameplay over time,based on feedback from critics and users.

“It’s funny how we’ve managed to do thewhole cross-platform thing,” laughs Smith.

“But over the two years we’ve iterated the game. We’ve changed it quiteconsiderably for the PSN version based onfeedback on the XBLA version. We didn’treally want to learn on a live platform likethat, but we’ve taken on criticism andintegrated it into the newer versions.”

Although the visual style struck a chord forEidos, it’s clear that the studio has learnt thatthe abstract aesthetic, name and gameplaymechanics made it a harder sell to customers.Similarly, digital distribution’s uncertainty interms of marketing and visibility has alsoproven challenging. So, for its next gameSpace Ark – which they say is targeting “everyplatform” – the sell is being made somewhateasier by harnessing the universal appeal ofcute animals.

GOING SOLOIt’s clear that the company has come aroundto the concept of having to sell its games notonly to publishers, but to people too. Butperhaps the biggest step is that Space Ark istheir first publisher-less game – they’vesourced the funding themselves, once againretaining the IP.

“It’s perfect for us,” Marchant says. “We were careful to build up a relationship

with Microsoft while we were doing Geon,which really helped. That was the easy bit –the hard part was financing it, gettinginvestors in place, negotiating contracts–that’s really extended the time from gettingthe approved slot on Live Arcade to actuallystarting production.”

“It’s quite a good time to be a smalldeveloper, because of the Xbox Live Arcade,PSN, WiiWare – the scale is much smaller, andas a small developer that’s a project you cando yourself, and publishers know you can doit. And that’s key; when you’re pitching, if thepublisher doesn’t think you’ve got the abilityto deliver the game they won’t sign it, nomatter how good the design is. Publishers areactively looking to PSN and XBLA not to makemoney, but also test new IP at a smallerbudget. We’re perfectly placed to do that.”www.strawdogstudios.com

The bad thingabout outsourcingwork is that you

are under NDA.We’ve been unsungheroes for a while.

Paul Smith, Managing Director

Strawdog’s Geon(above) was originallya PSP title but turnedinto an XBLA one atEidos’ request

44 | MARCH 2009

BETA | STRAWDOG STUDIOS

46 | MARCH 2009

BETA | GEOMERICS

VisionaryHaving worked on Pixar classics such as Wall-E, Jeremy Vickers hashad his finger on the bleeding edge of computer graphics foryears. In the first of two Q&As in this issue looking at mediumconvergence, Develop spoke to him about his collaboration withGeomerics and his thoughts on graphics and games…

You worked for Pixar but have gonesolo. Why leave the most respectedanimation studio in the world?

My story starts way back as a child beingscolded by teachers for doodling all over myschool work. Luckily I wasn’t discouraged andkept drawing all the time. After finishing highschool I knew I wanted a career in the arts. In1997 I graduated from Full Sail Universitywith a degree in Digital Media and landed myfirst job as a digital modeller/texture artist atBig Idea Productions in Chicago, working onan animated kid’s series called Veggie Tales. Iworked there for three years and that’s reallywhere I learned computer graphics.

I was offered a job at Pixar in 2003 andimmediately moved with my family to SanFrancisco. As a lighting technical director –essentially a lighting artist – I worked on TheIncredibles, Cars, Ratatouille and Wall-E, all thetime growing in my responsibilities.

In 2007 I decided that it was time to focus abit more on my family and moved back toFlorida. I now run my own little freelancestudio with a friend, working on everythingfrom feature films, to game art, conceptdesign, illustration, theme park design,consulting and teaching. And as for myfuture… as long as I can be close to my familyand enjoy what I do each day, it’s all good. Ido have some film ideas brewing in my brainthat will have to be released before too long.

What’s your view on how CG is evolving?From an artistic standpoint, I’m excited thatthe CG industry is flourishing and producingsome amazing work. On the other hand, I feelthat at some point in the near future thefrenzy for computer graphics will die down,as the general public sees that goodstorytelling is what really moves peopleemotionally, and the technology will becomejust another tool. So for those of us as artists,the goal will be to embrace the technology asa means to create – and not an end in itself.

Is there a technology or thought gapbetween CGI and video games, in terms ofproduction techniques and tools?I still think that there are many differencesbetween film and video games, but the gap israpidly closing. For one thing, film has theadvantage of established cameras when itcomes to using cinematography to tell astory. Models and lights can be adjusted foreach shot to convey the composition in order

to get the most from every image. Light andcolor can be cheated in every shot.

In most video games, however, it’s harderto tell where the viewer will be at any giventime, and everything must render in real time,so having a product like Geomerics’ Enlightento simplify the technical aspects ofproduction and enhance the look of the endproduct will definitely be worthwhile.

Technology is often promoted as asimplifier of our lives, but often becomessomething that actually makes life morecomplex. What was formerly impossible isnow possible, but not necessarily to ourbenefit. When games switched from 2D to 3Dit was a wonderful thing, but it alsosignificantly increased the amount of timeand energy needed to create a title. So whentools are released that can actually simplifyworkflow and not just give us more to do, itfrees us to focus on what is truly worthwhile:the art and story.

What does Enlighten say to you as anartist, in terms of technology, andempowering artists? How does it compareto other solutions?I actually have a love-hate relationship withtechnology. As an artist, all that matters tome is the core emotional impact I can createfrom my art. I really don’t care how to getthere as long as my creativity is flowing and Iget the result I’m striving for. Whencomputers stand in my way of accomplishingmy goal – or at least slow me down with theburden of technology – I tend to switch moreinto ‘hate’ side of my relationship with them.

So as an artist who has used Enlighten, it’samazingly freeing to be able to spend mytime experimenting with the light, a processof iteration and discovery, instead of waitingfor baking passes to finish computing or forrenders to process. The other current

methods that exist seem to need artists toalso be computer science gurus. If you havean eye for art as well as computer science,this is great. But there are many fantasticartists that will be bogged down bytechnology and need solutions to let themundane things fade into the background.Many of us cannot fathom what it would belike if the only way to communicate withfriends was to use morse code on a telegraphmachine. Luckily, someone made sometechnology to simplify our communicationmethods so that anyone could do it. Thecomputer animation and video game world isstill in its infancy in terms of being accessableto every artist – but tools like Enlighten arenarrowing the gap.

Do you think this game technology cancross-over to the movie world?That’s a very good question. As the gapnarrows between film and games, the twosimilar industries will have more and moreopportunities to learn from each other and togrow. As a filmmaker, I look with jealously onthe video game world for the ability to renderin real time. Some day soon feature filmsmight be made using real-time renderingtechniques. Again, the core principles ofstorytelling are all that really matter. So if wecan create a film that is emotionally engaging using real-time software, then itwill happen. If I can have a tool that, as anartist, will allow me to flow in creativity, I willmost definitely use it.www.geomerics.com

How different orquicker to producewould the likes ofRatatouille (above) orWall-E (below) havebeen if made withgame technology?

For us artists, thegoal will be toembrace

technology as ameans to create –not an end to itself.

Jeremy Vickers, former Pixar artist

MARCH 2009 | 47

TRAVELLER’S TALES | BETA

The cross-overconundrumIt’s long been said that modern game technologycan cross-over to other mediums – but how?Develop caught up with Traveller’s Tales’ AlanMurta and BAFTA-award winning children’s TVproducer Jocelyn Stevenson in the second of ourQ&As looking at artistic convergence…

You’ve both brought very differentskill-sets to this project; can you giveus a little background on your

careers so far? Jocelyn Stevenson: I started as an assistantat the Children’s Television Workshop, theproducers of Sesame Street, about 35 yearsago, and have been in children’s televisionever since. I love it. I’ve been writer, creator,head writer, producer, and executiveproducer on over 40 properties, includingFraggle Rock, Jim Henson’s Ghost of FaffnerHall, Bob The Builder, Barney and Friends,Thomas and Friends, Mopatop’s Shop, TheMagic School Bus and What’s Your News?Alan Murta: I began my career as a lecturerat the University of Manchester doingresearch into computer graphics and virtualreality. In 2000 I made a move into games,starting out at Elixir in London and latermoving to Traveller’s Tales in Knutsford whereI now work as a senior tools and rendertechnology programmer.

How did this collaboration come about?JS: I co-created the series with Chris Dicker,the designer. I was responsible for the wordsand he oversaw the look. Because of mybackground in puppets, I suggested that weuse ‘performed animation’ – a combination ofmotion capture and digital puppetry – tobring characters to life. Because of hisbackground in games, Chris suggested wetake this idea to Jon Burton at TT Games fortechnical expertise and possible funding. Wereceived both. What’s Your News? was born.AM: Chris Dicker came to us – the rendertechnology team – with various conceptsketches and our task was to come up with away of turning these into CGI, preferablyusing a (near) real-time renderer. We wantedto avoid the significant time and system costsassociated with traditional software imagecreation. Instead our approach involvedadapting existing a GPU-based game engineto provide a cost-effective solution using asmall number of render PCs. It was a greatcollaborative experience with Chris, the artteam and the render technology teamworking together to finalise the visuals.

What has the collaboration taught you?JS: Producing What’s Your News? presentedme with a vertical learning curve. No one hadever used this particular production pipelinefor a TV series; we were making it up as we

went along. It became clear early on that thetwo cultures – television and games – werecompletely different, with different businessmodels, terminology, pace and priorities. Butonce we figured this out, we could work withit – discovering how and where to combinestrengths. And we all plan on repeating theexperience. We all want to apply what we’velearned so that next time it will be easier.AM: It was a liberating experience to be freedfrom the usual game constraints in which allimages must be drawn in no more than a fewmilliseconds. The luxury of having a fewseconds to spend on each animation frameallowed us to focus a lot more on imagequality. One significant difference betweengame and TV production is that the formerdiscipline allows us to continually tweak thegraphics technology, almost until the finishedtitle goes out the door. In contrast, makingthe TV show forced us to deliver key techearly on, then lock down as much as possiblefor the series render phase. But it is alwaysgood to be presented with new challengesand we are keen to explore further these.

BAFTA Videogames showcased What’s YourNews? as part of their Crossover Event and,of course, BAFTA’s heritage wasestablished within film and TV. How doyou see their role progressing in terms ofthese collaborations?JS: BAFTA made video games one of its three‘pillars’ about four years ago, and has played aprogressively more influential role in bringingthe TV, film and video games art formstogether, mostly as mutual ‘appreciators’. Asthe professionals in the different industriescome to understand each others’ expertise,the collaborations will naturally follow.AM: With video games now being a majorplayer in the entertainment sector, it isnatural that its contributions are recognisedby the BAFTA organisation. BAFTA has been

quick to identify the potential alliancesbetween games and traditional media.

Alan, advances in animation and CGI haveoften been led by film and TV, given theirbigger budgets. As the games industryevolves and converges with theseindustries, do you see that changing?AM: I would say the real advances in CGI stilltend to come from the academic sector,which effects companies and gamesdevelopers then adapt for their own uses.Film studios often have the resources toapply the techniques to the point where theirsynthetic results are indistinguishable fromthe real world, or which will conformprecisely to any desired art style. Gamedevelopers will adapt these innovations forreal-time use. However, there is certainly aconvergence in what is achievable in relateddisciplines, and both are using shared toolsand approaches to tackling effectively thesame problems. The only difference is one ofscale, and this distinction is continuallydiminishing.

Jocelyn, similarly, the forefront ofscripting and development still belongs tofilm and TV. Do you see a day when you’llbe storyboarding the latest video gamerather than a children’s TV programme?JS: Possibly, though not being a gamer, I’mnot sure I’d be very good at it. I do think itwould be really interesting to work with agames developer on the same property – aproperty for young kids – developing it forboth TV and a game simultaneously, sharingthe discoveries we make in our relevant areasas a way of informing and building theproperty creatively. It would end up beingsomething neither group could have done onits own. Something new!www.ttgames.comwww.bafta.org

What’s Your News?(pictured above andbelow) is a joint effortfrom Traveller’s Talesand kids’ TV guruJocelyn Stevenson

The real advancesin CGI still tend tocome from the

academic sector –we just adapt thatfor our own uses.

Alan Murta, Traveller’s Tales


3D | BETA

Sight–geistAs Hollywood begins to invest itself heavily in 3D, everyone is talking about its potential indeveloping games. Is this a genuine vision for our industry? Or is it a mirage? Over the nextthree pages, Ed Fear offers a guide to what 3D could really mean for games development…

50 | MARCH 2009

BETA | 3D

Stereoscopic 3D is a hugelymisunderstood thing. One the onehand, the TV manufacturers’ PR and

marketing juggernauts are getting louderand bigger. We’re told that ‘3D’ is the future ofentertainment; that it will revolutionise theway we’ll view content and open our eyes towide new worlds. One nameless daily freeLondon paper even went as far as to say thatsoon we’ll have ‘characters and effects literally leaping out of the screen’ at us.Impressive stuff.

Take a look at any of the internet’s variousforums, however, and people are slightlymore cynical – perhaps fairly, due to theunderstandable security concerns that couldresult from Nico Bellic bursting out of your TV.And in a more realistic sense, at the doubt ofhaving to wear glasses while playing games or watching films. Plus, with manyconsumers having just spent hundreds ofpounds on a new HDTV after being told that was the only true way to experiencegames, now the boundaries are being shiftedonce more?

Speak to anyone involved with the 3Dworld and they’ll admit that there areobstacles to be overcome before thetechnology can be as ubiquitous as they’repredicting – but the message is clear; thatthey will be overcome is inevitable.

BLITZ SPIRITOne of the few companies already makingheadway into the stereoscopic 3D space isBlitz, who’ve gone as far as to include supportin their BlitzTech middleware.

Andrew Oliver, Blitz’s chief technologyofficer and the spearhead behind the moveinto that extra dimension, admits that thesituation right now isn’t brilliant.

“It’s not a question of if it’ll catch on, butwhen. The current situation is that hardlyanyone’s buying 3D TVs, so they’re veryexpensive because they’re essentiallyprototypes,” he tells us. “As soon as it goesinto mass-production – and Sony hasannounced that it’s bringing the polarisingtechnology to the Bravia range, and it won’tbe that much more money – then 3D willstart to take off.”

The other problem is one of content – evenif you do have a 3D set, and many people dowithout even knowing it, there’s nothing

with which to show it off, keeping it a featurethat many manufacturers are reticent toshout about.

“It’s a chicken and egg situation at themoment,” says Oliver. “If a shopkeeper says‘this TV can do 3D’ then the consumer willwant that proved, but there’s no content toshow it off. But those TVs do have 3D –Samsung and Mitsubishi are selling them butkeeping quiet about it. So in a sense, whatwe’re doing is kind of a call to arms. We cansay that we’re accelerating the process,because it’s in our technology and we’relicensing that out, and it’s already working onconsoles.”

EPIC CHALLENGESo, that’s the ‘when’ – or, perhaps morerealistically, the ‘if’ – covered. What about the‘why’? Why would a company that has madeits fortune on licensed games for USpublishers spend all that time and effortmaking its proprietary technology capable ofdisplaying 3D images?

The genesis of the decision was Oliver’svisit to SIGGRAPH last year, which focused onhow the movie industry was going 3D.

“Epic was there, and Mark Rein gave ademonstration of Unreal Tournament 3 in 3Don a really high-spec PC. After the display,someone asked him when we’d see Gears ofWar in 3D, and his response – that neither theXbox 360 or PS3 were powerful enough torun a 3D display – stuck with me slightly.

“I thought: ‘Why can’t they do it?’ After all,these systems are engineered for graphics,and they’ve really got some power – howhard can it be?” He smiles: “It turns out thatit’s a lot bloody harder than we thought.”

The motivation was that Oliver wanted toshow that the technology could be put into a

real game, not just a technology demo. Butthere are some issues to overcome; issuesthat make Rein’s statement somewhat true.Firstly, the 3D ‘standard’ that exists – moreabout that later – specifies that the image hasto be 1080p. Secondly, unless you want theimage to look stuttery, you need to be hitting60 frames per second. Given that games likeGears of War are getting 30fps at 720p, that’smore than a tall order. And it gets worse: the TV needs to display two images per frame – one for each eye – essentiallydoubling that again.

“Now I understand why Mark Rein said itwas impossible to do – because it’s hard. Howmany games are there that run in 1080p andat 60 frames per second, and then arecomfortable with essentially doubling that?Still, on the other hand, it’s really pushed ourtech. It’s about getting the engine runningreally fast –we’ve had to push it to get fasterand faster and faster to get the bloody thingjust working.”

But while Blitz can make the tech worknow – we’re treated to a proof-of-conceptbased on one of the upcoming titles from itsArcade division, and the effect is certainlyimpressive – is there anyone else that’s goingto want to put the effort in?

Beyond the current scarcity of 3D TVs, theone thing that’s scaring a lot of developers –including ones that told us they wereexperimenting in this area themselves – is thelack of a unified standard. Currently, the waya Samsung 3D set operates is different to aSony TV. Blitz’s way around this is to writedifferent drivers depending on the TV type,but admits that this isn’t optimal and would require testing on a huge number ofdifferent TVs.

So, while companies like Sony may beshowing their intention with displays atevents like CES, the actual reality is that 3Dgaming is still a while off – even to the earlyadopters – and most likely won’t seesignificant support on this consolegeneration.

But with a ratified standard, a biggerinstall-base and next-gen systems designedwith it in mind – which, with Hollywoodproclaiming 3D as the ‘future’, isn’t unlikely –we’ll all be enjoying that extra dimension. Solong as you’re okay with dangerous objects‘flying out’ of your TV, that is.

The 3D REVOLUTION?Everyone’s talking about it, but is 3D really something you should be keeping in mind for futuregames? Ed Fear visits Blitz Games Studios to take a look at their technology for 3D gaming…

The reality is that3D gaming is still awhile off, even to

early adopters, and likelywon’t see major supportin this consolegeneration.


3D | BETA

1 RED & CYAN (ANAGLYPH) GLASSESThese are the type of glasses that havebeen around for over 50 years. The two

images are given filters to make one red andone cyan, with the coloured lenses effectivelyblocking out its own colour to deliverdifferent images to the eyes. Traditional setsmade from paper often suffer from focusissues, and the colorisation of the imagesnaturally effects the palette of the image,with greyscale images being most effective.However, this technique has been used asrecently as last year, with Disney’s HannahMontana 3D concert being screened usingthis technique.

2 IMAX 3D / LINEAR POLARISATIONThese seperate the two images bypolarising some of the light horizontally

and some of it vertically, with each lens onlyaccepting one type. This works, but you have

to keep your head still, because otherwise thelenses are at an angle and the effect doesn’twork. For that reason, most IMAX or themepark 3D attractions are kept short, becauseotherwise people start to relax and movetheir heads – at which point it goes out offocus. They work well for what they are, butwould never work for a whole film or game.

3 REAL-D / CIRCULAR POLARISATION If you go and see Bolt or any of theother upcoming 3D films, you pay a

pound extra for a pair of these glasses, butget to keep them for the future. Devised by agroup which broke away from IMAX, realisingthat a digital format was necessary, theycreaed glasses that polarise light circularly. Itprojects the image with the light spirallingclockwise and anti-clockwise, again with eachlens only accepting one type, thus deliveringthe two images to the respective eyes. The

circular nature means that the angle of theviewer’s head is not an issue, making itsuitable for feature films and games. The lowcost of the glasses means that they don’thave to be reused and cleaned by cinemas.

4 LCD SHUTTER One of the other systems to finditself with an increasingly prevalent

usage on current sets, LCD shutter glasseshave lenses filled with liquid crystal that arenormally transparent but can be madeopaque when a voltage is passed through.As such, the set alternately darkens eachlens in synchronisation with the TV’s refreshrate, meaning each eye sees a differentpicture. However in order to make thiswork, the TV has to be running at 120hz –twice the standard refresh rate –otherwise visible frame-rate issues canbe observed.

Blitz’s Andrew Olivermodels one of thevarious types of 3Dglasses. In a quietmonth this would’vemade the cover…

3D GLASSES: A COMPLETE GUIDE

12

3

4

52 | MARCH 2009

BETA | 3D

Overview of current 3DTV Technology

STEREOSCOPIC - 2 VIEWS MULTI-VIEW

Passive Auto-StereoscopicActive

Input Formats Input FormatsInput Formats

LGSamsung

PanasonicMitsubishi

Texas Instruments

ADVANTAGESADVANTAGESADVANTAGES

DISADVANTAGESDISADVANTAGESDISADVANTAGES

• DLP Projectors• DLP Back screen TVs• Plasma

LinearPolorised

LCD

CircularPolarised

LCD

ParallaxBarrier

LCDLenticular

iZ3DZalman

Hyundai

Alternatingframes

Chequerboard

Horizontainterlace

Verticalinterlace

Top andbottom

Side byside

8 views per frame 2D + Pin Art Depth

Parallax Barrier is 2D/3D switchableNo glasses!Single person/position = good

Multiple person/position = badLimited viewing anglesMultiple input format problemsFixed resolutionTechnology not quite there

Very clear 3D imagesNice LCD displaySwitchable 2D / 3DCheap glasses

Currently expensiveFixed 3D resolutionFilter reduces brightnessTwo standards (Linear/Circular)

Over 1m TVs like this soldAffordable TVs3D Ready standard

Large TV onlyExpensive, flickery shutter glassesMust be 60 frames per second

NewSightSharp

Philips

Courtesy of Blitz Games

The gaming industry doesn’t have to be a puzzle

30 years experience in business development solutions for:

Developers Publishers Service Providers Brand Owners

ww

w.fo

gstu

dios

.com

As readers of Develop will have noticedin our supplement last year, at Kujuwe have a diverse set of studios

developing a broad set of games. Weembrace this diversity, as it’s what has made us successful in what can be a difficult market.

Historically speaking, we’ve built a lot oftechnology ourselves, and used it widely onmany products. Our current “Heracles” 3Drenderer has achieved excellent return-on-investment, to date shipping nine uniquetitles (such as M.A.C.H. and EA Rail Simulator),and more in the pipeline, with previousgenerations of our technology achievingsimilar coverage.

As we’ve grown, we have freed our studiosto make the right technology choices foreach game, rather than imposing a ‘one sizefits all’ solution – and we are very committedto continuing this philosophy.

Take, for example, our use of BlitzTech onthe recent highly acclaimed House of theDead: Overkill for the Wii. Blitz Games Studioshad successfully used its technology on anumber of its own titles, and at around thetime we were beginning this game with Sega,Blitz was looking to build on its technology’ssuccess by licensing it out to otherdevelopers. We rapidly identified a goodthree-way fit between the capabilities of their

technology, the requirements of this game,and the Wii expertise of our Kuju Londonstudio (now Headstrong Games).

We worked closely with Blitz to customisetheir flexible technology to the game’s needs,

and applied a number of our own pieces ofWii code to enhance it. For example, weintegrated our established particle effectsolution, added our own water renderingtechnology, and other custom effects such asgore decals. This has resulted in somestunning visuals in House of the Dead: Overkill, now amongst the best Wii titles onthe market.

Elsewhere in the group, our Chemistryteam have become experts in Unreal Engine3. They have pushed the engine to do somesurprising things – not always the expected

traditional shooter elements. Our contentcreators love the freedom and power Unrealhas given them, and are extremelyproductive. I genuinely look forward to thedeliveries made by our Unreal based teams –the art they’ve achieved with this tech willblow you away.

We also enjoy working with othermiddleware providers – we can’t expect tobuild everything ourselves, and there aresome great third party components. We’vebegun a relationship with Scaleform,providing us with its market leading GFx userinterface technology. Our decision to adoptwas driven by a number of factors – a highprofile, big budget title deserved acorrespondingly top-notch user interface.Secondly, we wanted to hit the ground

MARCH 2009 | 55

KUJU’S TECH VIEWS | BETA

House of the TechWe’ve looked at some emerging technologies, but what about the future for your bread-and-butter engine? Kuju’stechnical director Adrian Hawkins discusses its recent tech decisions and how it’s preparing for the next generation...

Doublesix’s BurnZombie Burn

We’ve freed ourstudios to make theright technology

choices for each game,rather than imposing a‘one size fits all’solution.

running, without spending monthsengineering the UI (and we had typicalmilestone pressures). Thirdly, we wereimpressed by the high performance ofScaleform – we’ve attempted to implementFlash renderers in the past with mixedsuccess, performance being a key challenge.

Then, of course, is our recently announced‘Fabric’ technology. This is about being trulymany-core; many have failed to fully use themassive processing power that’s alreadythere (and I’m not exempting us from this inthe past – we wanted to do more). Juststicking physics processing on one of theXbox 360’s CPU cores and AI on another, ortreating the PS3’s SPUs as a set of slavecoprocessors for animation is not true multi-core programming. It won’t scale to many-core devices – by which we mean systemswith tens or hundreds of processing cores.

Reading the coverage since ourannouncement, I’ve been gratified thatpeople feel more needs to be achieved withthe current generation of hardware – and

moreover that they think it is actuallyachievable. To make this technical leap youhave to take a fundamental look at how youbuild your code, right up to the high levelgame components. It entails training much ofyour programming staff, and getting theminto a streamed, job-based mindset.

You might ask why we’re making thisinvestment, rather than totally rely onmiddleware. There are lessons from historyhere. A number of people went down the

Renderware route, and I remember people atthe time saying “Why don’t we just useRenderware for everything?”

It seemed to be turning into the de-factostandard for game development. Then, forthose that followed this path, the rug waspulled from under them by its removal fromthe market, leaving them reeling. And, to behonest, even back then when Kuju wassmaller, we just didn’t believe a ‘one size fitsall’ solution was sustainable or thatRenderware was the panacea that somemade it out to be.

It’s deeper than that though: we are utterlydriven to squeeze the best performance outof the current multi-core platforms, andwhat’s coming on many-core in the next twoyears. I’m not pretending we’re alone in thisdrive; others will be treading this path. Rightnow, there just isn’t something on the marketthat does what we want.

To be absolutely clear, this is very much aninternal project – we’re doing it to make ourgames better, not seeking to license it out asmiddleware; that just isn’t where our business focus is at. I’m looking forward totalking to people about our experiences,though.

We remain true to our diversity and policyon no central imposition – and I wouldn’tdare claim that all of our games would beusing Fabric in two or three years from now.I’m sure the many far reaches of Kuju will domore specialised things that this tech isn’t thebest choice for: I can easily see us continuingto use Unreal for games where it makessense, for example.

Fabric has been co-developed byHeadstrong Games, Zoë Mode and doublesix,who all see a core of common technical aims,despite their varied product line-up.Ultimately they are going to be targeting thesame platforms, will hit the sameperformance constraints, and need to becompetitive. Just wait and see what we’regoing to achieve.www.kuju.com

One of Zoë Mode’sDisney Sing It! titles.We’re pretty sure it’snot the High SchoolMusical 3 one, though,because we don’tremember this song

56 | MARCH 2009

BETA | KUJU’S TECH VIEWS

I’ve been gratifiedthat people feelmore needs to be

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TOOLS:The latest

tech releases p62

TUTORIAL:Perforce

best practicep73

KEY RELEASE:Image Metrics’

newest offerp66

THE LATEST TOOLS NEWS, TECH UPDATES & TUTORIALS

CASE STUDY: Why RealtimeWorlds integrated

Audiokinetic’s SoundSeed, p75

Engines for change

EPIC DIARIES: HOW UE3 IS DRIVING THE WHEELMAN > P71

A guide to the small engine firmspunching above their weight, p64

62 | MARCH 2009

BUILD | TOOLS

WHETHER YOU HAPPEN TO argue the causalityin terms of cow farts, algae blooms,Schwarzenegger’s promotion of the Hummer orstatistically irrelevant noise, the actual effects ofclimate change clearly require changes in humanendeavour. And without stretching the metaphorthrough breaking point, there’s surely a similarrequirement when it comes to the widerimplications of the world economic climate onthe games industry, or precisely, the tools andmiddleware sector.

Just as the property bubble has finally popped,so it is with the game studio bubble, especially interms of the top-of-the-foodchain publisher-backed developers. Although it may proveunpopular to say so, frankly for too long therewere too many studios making too many, toosimilar games. Even the best of them were onlymarginally profitable.

Combine the widespread layoffs of the pastcouple of months, with publisher retrenchmentand the lack of opportunities for VC funding ofcontent, and it’s tricky to see 2009 as anythingother than a difficult place to do business fortools and middleware companies. Although theymay claim that their solutions will save studiosmoney in the long term, that initial investmentwill prove difficult to obtain at such a timid time.

Of course, getting anyone to deviate from the‘everything’s going great for us’ line is almostimpossible. Maybe in six months time whenthings have filtered through the value chain, thefallout will be better discussed. But whateversmart money is left on the table would seem tobe well placed backing increased mergers andacquisitions. Hopefully then, by the timeeverything’s played out, whoever’s left standingwill be able to focus on the profitable bits of themarket that really will drive future growth.

From bitterto better

Jon [email protected]

< coding >

Ideaworks3D opens up its Airplay Partners Program for mobile toolsand middleware, as Jon Jordan discovers…EVERYONE LIKES TO HAVE friends, but when itcomes to technology making your product playwell with the others has an additional financialadvantage. Programmes such as Epic’s UnrealTechnology Partners have ensured companiescan plug into larger technology frameworks,providing a relatively seamless option forcustomers and another sales channel for thesmaller tools and middleware companies too.

London-based studio Ideaworks3D is nowbringing that approach to the mobile sector viaits Airplay development and deploymentsolution with its Airplay Partners Program.

“There’s a perfect storm brewing in nativesmartphone development,” reckons CTO TimCloss. “Performance at the upper end of thedevice spectrum, increased publisherdevelopment budgets on those platforms, andhigh user expectations of quality levels – drivenprimarily by iPhone – means thatmobilemiddlewarecan now playa key role inserving theecosystem.”

Airplayenables studiosto create nativegames andapplications forplatforms suchSymbian, BREW,Windows Mobile, Linux, and iPhone using asingle binary. It does this by implementingplatform-specific execution environments, aswell as a scalable graphics pipeline.

“We have publishers using Airplay to deploya single game to iPhone, multiple smartphoneplatforms such as Series 60, Windows Mobile, N-Gage, and netbooks. The single binaryapproach has great value across thesmartphone platforms, as it means the qualityassurance cost and duration is vastly reduced,”Closs says.

The partners program, which launches withNaturalMotion’s morpheme 2.0, will extend thechoice for mobile developers by providing awider range of technology that also fulfil thecross-platform approach.

“The idea was kicked off at the end of 2008when an independent Japanese developer,which is building a game for N-Gage usingAirplay, needed to use some console/DSmiddleware within the title,” Closs reveals. “Themiddleware provider ported its offering toAirplay without any input from us. It made usrealise there was the appetite for this.”

As for the NaturalMotion deal, Closs says thetechnical work was relatively straightforward.

“In the case of morpheme, Ideaworks3Dundertook the integration work, which took

about two weeks. However, in another case, themiddleware provider did all the work and ittook them less than a week. One of the greatthings about Airplay is that it provides greatsupport for all C/C++ standards and commonopen source libraries, which means portingmiddleware, applications or game engines from

PC is usually very easy.”Of course, one of the

key restrictions in thismarket is the power ofthe target devicesthemselves. Newsmartphones suchas Toshiba’s recentlyunveiled TG01 maynow be offering1GHz processors,but the bulk of the market isn’t so

well endowed. “Airplay’s base specification has always

been ARM9 chips rated above 150MHz, so weare looking at solutions which can augment thenative gaming experience on these and higher-powered platforms,” Closs explains.

“The partnerships make most sense whenthe middleware offering contains a high degreeof value in the offline tools, and any associatedruntime is sufficiently light and optimised formobile. It will vary between solutions; forexample, some might require hardware floatingpoint, some might require hardware graphicsacceleration. We will make it clear to developerswhich platforms are appropriately supportedfor each partner offering.”

Another contrast from the console space isproduct budgets and the consequential impacton licensing fees. Ideaworks3D will work withproviders to understand the market.

“Budgets are much smaller than consoledevelopment but they can be not far offhandheld development,” he points out.“Ultimately we leave the business model up tothe provider; they have to find a model whichworks for mobile developers but also sitshappily with their existing models.”

The firm hopes to have around half a dozen companies officially signed up to theprogram by the summer of 2009 and reckons itwould make sense for a further four to offertheir technology.

Airplay PartnersProgramPrice: Available on requestCompany: Ideaworks3DContact: +44 8456 434 969,[email protected]

MOBILE TECHNOLOGYON THE MOVE


TOOLS | BUILD

< art >

MAYBE IT’S A MARK of getting olderthat anticipation becomes aspleasurable – if not more – than themain event. If that’s the case, thentechnology companies are becomingincreasingly mature. At the same timeAndroid phone users have been ontenderhooks thanks to the ‘partialrollout’ of its Marketplace, so Luxologyhas been slowly showing the ankles ofthe latest version of modo.

Currently being teased out as a‘partial reveal’ on the company’swebsite, so far new capabilities includevolumetric lighting, fur, replicators, andmore light and shadows options.

“Modo 401 has been one of the mostchallenging new releases for ourdevelopment team,” says chief architectStuart Ferguson. “As modo hasmatured, it has required our engineers

to expand the feature set with new andpowerful capabilities withoutsacrificing the ease of use and smoothwork style that has been a hallmark ofmodo’s user interface design. Hopefullyas people explore this new version,they’ll see the potential inherent in thefeatures we’ve added, while feeling thereassurance of a system that has grownto fit the industry’s needs.”

More realistic lighting is always onearea of development for art tools. Inmodo 401, the volumeric lightingsolution enables you to simulate theeffects of scattering due to smallparticles in the air. You set up the effectusing the preview renderer, while youcan texture them via the shader tree.

More generally though, modo’srendering system will receivenumerous enhancements in 401. Onesuch is Light Linking, which enablesyou to link lights to specific meshes soonly they are illuminated.

The quality of the interactionbetween light and transparent objectsis also improved by features such as

the dispersion options, so you cancolour refraction rays, and controls forsetting up the properties of reflectivesurface layers used on cars and the like.

Underlying these are updates tomodo’s rendering core, notably thepreview renderer. This will now updateimmediately as performance is nolonger dependent on scenecomplexity. You can also use anycamera you want to, and the globalillumination-style options from theoffline renderer are made available.

As for the fur system, it works ascollection of sculpting and renderingtools that enable you to grow andarrange fibres to model materials suchas fur, hair, grass or tinsel. It isintegrated within modo so you can useit in conjunction with texture maps,while the direction of growth can becontrolled using directional texturemaps. These can be sculpted like vectordisplacement maps, or you can usecurves as guides. Attributes such aslength, flex and root bend can be usedto animate the fur.

Replicators are a way of adding vastamounts of detail to your scene atrender time, but because they work onan instanced system, there is littleadditional processing overhead. Thesystem means any mesh item can beplaced in scene, with its density,rotation and size controlled usingmodo’s texture layers.

Although no release date for modo 401 has so far been beenannounced, purchasers of the currentversion, modo 301, will receive anupgrade to modo 401 at no additionalcost when it’s released, probablysometime in March.

THIS YEAR’S MODEL’S STRIPTEASE

Geomerics’ Enlighten technology is now go for Unreal Engine 3 users…

IT’S SIMPLE TO KNOCK out a pressrelease telling the world what you’replanning to do. Doing the actual worktakes a lot longer. It’s particularly thecase with technology, where there’s adefinite flow between the relativelyeasy bits such as press releases andbusiness loose ends, and the harderaspects of the process, such hackingthrough alpha and beta versions toearly adopter testing, before ending upwith the shiny final product.

Still, at least you get to send outanother press release when the processis complete, which is exactly what UKlighting specialist Geomerics has donenow that the integration of itsEnlighten technology within Epic’sUnreal Engine 3 IPP.

The end results are certainly worthtalking about. As a standalone solution,Enlighten is a real-time radiositylighting engine that enables you toquickly iterate and experiment with in-game lighting, as opposed to dealingwith the current time-consumingbaking processes that only create static lightmaps.

Significantly, though, one of theobstacles to Enlighten’s wider adoptionis that it has to be integrated withinthe game engine. In this way, the timespent getting it working in UnrealEngine 3 and the Unreal EditorEnvironment has been multipliedacross the large number of studios whoare using Unreal. They now gain accessto Enlighten for free; at least in terms ofintegration time, if not financially.Indeed, toggling one flag will turn allyour Unreal Engine 3 lights intoEnlighten lights.

Geomeric’s CTOJulian Davies reckonsthe technology willprovide plenty ofupside. “We havepeople falling overthemselves to useEnlighten to createstatic lightmaps,” hesays. “Up to this point,in Unreal the standardway of creating in-game radiosity is toadd a large number of

backlights, which is a time-consumingprocess in terms of placement. Then,when it’s done, you have to bake theminto the lightmap so you hit ‘bake’ andgo away, make a cup of tea. WithEnlighten, we provide people with the ability to edit their lighting in real-time and then bake it out in a shortperiod of time.”

And it’s this interactivity that shouldbe the main selling point, as thelightmaps are immediately updated asyou change your lights’ positions or thesurface properties of the environment.

More subtly, using Enlighten shouldalso boost the consistency and qualityof in-game lighting. Sphericalharmonics obtained directly from theradiosity are used to improve characterand prop lighting, betterparameterisation removes distortion,while geometry that isn’t visible isremoved from the lightmap to furtherincrease performance. Geomerics alsoclaims using it will enable a threefoldincrease in detail for the same memoryfootprint. In terms of platform usage,Enlighten runs on one of thePlayStation 3’s SPUs and on the secondcore of the Xbox 360.

However, as with the technologydevelopment process itself, making themost of these new capabilities isanother issue that can take longer toaccomplish than expected. Gaining theability to light a game in a similar wayto how a cinematographer deals with afilm set isn’t a skill that comes out of abox, and it’s this which remains thelong term potential of Enlighten.

< coding >

Luxology is slowly revealing the new features of modo 401…

modo 401Price: $895Company: LuxologyContact: +1 650 378 8506www.luxology.com

LIGHTING UP UNREAL EnlightenPrice: Available on requestCompany: GeomericsContact: +44 1223 450170www.geomerics.com

64 | MARCH 2009

BUILD | GUIDE

Beyond the likes of Unreal and Gamebryo, there’s plenty more choice when it comes to game engines – especially forcheaper productions. But that doesn’t mean they’re any less featured, discovers Jon Jordan…

It’s a mark of how middleware hasbeen accepted by the gamesindustry that so many different game

engines are now available for licensing.This is the second engine roundupDevelop has run in recent months, andto be honest, it wouldn’t be too difficultto do another one next month either.

For example, US developer TerminalReality has just announced its owncontribution to the world of gameengines with the release of previouslyinternal technology, Infernal Engine, forlicensing by third parties. Indeed, partof the unveiling was the news that acouple of studios were using it.

Of course, in the long term, there’smore to being a successful middlewarecompany than having a usable piece oftechnology, even one that’s used byother companies. Continual sales andmarketing, not to mention an iron-handed commercial director andfriendly backers, are also required. The

latter point has been underlined byEmergent’s trousering up of $12.5million in yet another round of funding.The company says it will use the cashinjection to back its new Gamebryo-based product, to be revealed at GDC.Better start working on ‘Develop engineguide #3’ now…

GUIDE: 3DENGINES

Thanks to its range of engines, fromthe console-class Torque GameEngine Advanced through to specificplatform versions and the simpler 2DTorque Game Builder, GarageGameshas opened up the casual web andconsole download market for both

students, prosumers and industrystartups. It offers a cheap and flexiblepricing system, while communityoptions, as well as art packs andtools, complete the ecosystem. Andwatch out for its new product Torque3D, which already looks incredible.

www.garagegames.com

TECHNOLOGYVarious, including Torque Game EngineAdvancedCLIENTSMany, including Black Jacket, EA, Hothead,NCsoft, Ubisoft, Wideload PLATFORMSBrowser, iPhone, Linux, Mac, PC, Wii, Xbox 360PRICERanges from $100 to $1,495CONTACTvia website

GARAGEGAMES

The big news from Danish enginecompany Unity is its next release,version 2.5, will finally provide themuch anticipated support fordevelopment on Windows. Previously, creators were restricted to using the editor on Mac platforms.

Of course, there will be plenty of newfeatures too, including a completelycustomisable, tabbed editor with over 130 new API entry points, anddrag-and-drop support for 3ds Maxalso added to the mix. With Criterion’sLau-Kee on board, they could go far.

www.unity3d.com

TECHNOLOGYUnity 2.5CLIENTSMany including Cartoon Network,Freeverse, Serious Games Interactive,Yogware PLATFORMSBrowser, iPhone, Mac, PC, WiiINTEGRATION WITHMaya, 3ds Max, Blender, PhotoshopPRICEFrom $199 to $1,499CONTACT+45 6014 3418

UNITYTECHNOLOGIES

It’s a mark of the usefulness of gameengines that German outfit Trinigyfinds its Vision engine being used ineverything from standard FPSs toMMOs, serious games and industrialsimulations. The complete enginecomes with the vForge creation

editor, vLux lighting editor, and a Lua-based scripting language.

Also available is a new three-month prototyping deal, labelled the‘entertainment stimulus package’,aimed at helping young startupssecure publisher funding.

www.trinigy.net

TECHNOLOGYVision 7.5CLIENTS4Head, 16Tons, Firefly Studios, Neowiz,Ubisoft, Zed Group PLATFORMSPC, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360PRICEAvailable on requestCONTACT+49 7121 986 993

TRINIGY

Trinigy’s Vision engine is available in aentertainment stimulus package

The new version of Unity support Vista development

The release of Vicious Cycle’s secondengine has seen the US middlewarefirm focusing on high-end PCs, PS3and Xbox 360, particularly in terms ofthe new graphics and lightingfeatures. It builds on the visual editorapproach of its first engine however,

which is still available for platformssuch as PSP and Wii. VE2’s dynamiclighting includes ambient occlusionand a node-based material editor. Italso contains an extensible scriptingsystem with full integrated debuggerand profiling tools.

www.viciousengine.com

TECHNOLOGYVicious Engine 2CLIENTSCollision Studios, Escape Hatch, PerpetualFX, Smack Down PLATFORMSPC, PS3, Xbox 360PRICEAvailable on requestCONTACT+1 919 370 3000

VICIOUS CYCLE

Vicious Engine 2 uses a node-based material system

As well as 2D games, the main versions of Torquecan handle console 3D graphics

66 | MARCH 2009

BUILD | SOFTWARE

Time to lose the helmet

How to get agreat facialImage Metrics’ technology works byanalysing video footage of a facialperformance on a per-pixel basis togenerate animation curves. These arematched to your production facial rigs andso can then be used to drive in-gamecutscenes. And because the animation ismatched to your rig and created inwhatever art tool you’re using, it can beseamlessly integrated back into theproduction pipeline.

Clearly the most important element toensure the highest quality of the output isthe quality of the original facialperformance. Image Metrics says thequality of the video capture, whether thecamera resolution or lighting conditions,usually aren’t a major factor. Indeed, it’sworking on the possibilities of usingwebcam footage.

The other important element, however, isthe quality of the facial rig the animation isapplied to. “We’ve had to become experts atcreating rigs in order to be in control of ourown destiny,” says CTO Kevin Walker.

“Even though it’s not a good way tomake money, we joke that we should domore of it because, at the end of the day, itprovides a better product.”

Categorising Image Metrics’facial animation technologyinto a traditional game tools

and middleware slot has always beensomething of a semantic task.Officially it’s a service, akin to motioncapture but for faces. The truth is abit more complex, however. Whiledevelopers can buy and run theirown in-house mocap studios, ImageMetrics’ smarts are a black boxprocess that the company controls.

This shouldn’t be an issue in termsof production though, as all acustomer needs to do is provideaccess to their video footage of thefacial performance they want to usein-game – no markers required.Image Metrics’ client-server systemanalyses the frames and sends therequired deltas to the server, whichspits back rig-ready animation curvesin Maya, 3ds max or whatever othersoftware package you’re using.

“It’s a good model because itmeans we can roll out any technicalchanges immediately on the serverand give the clients the option ofusing it,” explains Kevin Walker, ImageMetrics’ CTO and co-founder. It waspartly on the basis of his work intocomputer vision that Image Metricsspun out of research being carriedout by a number of academics fromManchester University.

Another important aspect of thisonline approach is that the companycan process a lot of footage at thesame time with few bottlenecks interms of bandwidth or manpower.

“Scalability really isn’t a problemfor us,” says Michael Starkenburg,

who recently became CEO followinga stint as COO. He was alsoinstrumental in the company raising$6.5 million in second round fundingduring December 2008 to bankroll itscurrent sales and marketing push.

“We did 400 minutes of cutscenesfor GTA IV at the same time as 55minutes for another huge game that

we can’t take about yet,” Starkenburgexplains. “Our biggest problem ispeople’s perception of what we do.We have to get into a game’sproduction at the right moment,either right at the start or lateenough that everyone’s freaking outabout how much work they have todo and have started worrying aboutwhich characters they are going tohave to put masks on.”

It’s these circumstantial limitationsthat the company is looking toovercome thanks to an infusion ofnew staff with experience previouslygained with game middlewarecompanies such as Emergent, Havokand NXN.

“The games business is a verystructured sales process. You have topound the pavement, know thestatus of every game in developmentand talk to every producer,” saysStarkenburg.

The option for studios to get testfootage processed for free is one ofthe ways he hopes to get ImageMetrics further accepted within theindustry. It’s already been used insome high profile games includingThe Getaway, most of Rockstar’srecent releases, and the Killzoneseries. Breaking into more common-or-garden titles is a new goal for2009, however.

Helping in that regard is theannouncement of four tiers ofservice. The cheapest option is Value,which the company describes ascosting around half that of standardfacial animation; useful forgenerating large volumes of facialanimation for secondary in-gamecharacters or for pre-visualisationpurposes. The next level is Pro, whichis for in-game cutscenes andprovides for the capture of subtlefacial movements. Premium provides for the ‘pore-level analysis offacial movement,’ while the finaloption, designed for triple-A movies,is Elite.

“The reason we’re not in with moreof the small guys is because we haveto go out and sell to the small guys,”Starkenburg says. “Our biggestimpediment has been getting peopleknowing about what we do, but now we have a sales force who areable to that.”

Top left:Kevin Walker, CTO,Image Metrics

Top Right:MichaelStarkenburg, CEO,Image Metrics

Above:Image Metricstechnology worksby deriving CGanimation fromvideo footage

KEYRELEASE

PRODUCT: Facial animation servicesCOMPANY: Image MetricsPRICE: Various, available on requestCONTACT: +44 161 242 1800www.image-metrics.com

The gamesbusiness is avery

structured salesprocess. You have topound the pavement;talk to everyproducer.

Image Metrics’ facial animation now comes in four tiers, Jon Jordan discovers…

Jamie Sefton, Sector Manager, Game Republic. [email protected]

+44 (0)113 236 8239. www.gamerepublic.org

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for DS from Rockstar Leeds

Cletus Clay: nominated for the IGF Excellence in Visual Art award 2009

Major new PSN/PSP title for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

Flip Zoo and Anytime Pool for Mobile/iPhone

OutRun Online Arcade and Virtua Tennis 2009 for SEGA

Worms Armageddon Decade: sequel to the number one best-selling XBLA game

Also featuring…Revolution Software (Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars: Director’s Cut, Wii/DS), Sports Director (Football Director, DS), Gamerholix (Clever Kids range, Wii/DS/PC), Idigicon (Platypus, iPhone) and more...

Game Republic is an organisation that supports, funds and promotes games companies in the Yorkshire and Humber region, UK. If you’d like more information about games development in the North of England and how we can help you keep ahead of the game, contact Game Republic and meet us at GDC and Game Connection San Francisco

YORKSHIRE UK AHEAD OFTHE GAME


AUDIO | BUILD

HEARDABOUT

There’s no business like show business –especially when you’re creating avideogame that makes stars of all

who play it. You’re in the Movies is a multi-player party

experience where up to four people competein a series of short mini-games featuringcamera-based gameplay. The game’s videotech cleverly separates them from thebackground so it can place them in allmanner of movie scenario backdrops.

An off-screen director coaches playersthrough creating short action close-upswhich after gameplay, are composited on thefly into set-piece movies. In the game, youmight have been punching a target. In theend movie, you might be punching amonster. A quick YouTube tour of people’shilarious uploads of themselves saving theplanet, vying with vampires and such, amplydemonstrates how entertaining andtechnically accomplished this game is.

For audio director Ciaran Walsh, such aprize did not come without some significantchallenges. “Each movie is a collection ofshort video clips – over 600 shots in all –which we spotted like a continuous linearpiece of video for each movie, rendering outindividual pieces of associated audio,” he says.

“Making sure they would all glue togetherwas a headache. We used a database systemand gave every clip a lead-in and tail toenable cross-fading and more creativefreedom in the run-time editing. Continuitywas a key issue – for instance, an alarmsounding continuously across several shotseach with a different camera position.

“Dialogue-wise, things were morestraightforward and, luckily, the main directorcharacter for the mini-games was cast veryearly – actually an excellent placeholder voicewhich stuck – meaning the writers got to

know his voice and wrote specifically for hischaracter. For the movies, it was all abouttrailer-guy voices – both the obvious deepmodern-day cliché as well as the retro B-movie monotone bellowing.”

The main problem that the team hit wassomething that it managed to turn into a

positive: “The movie pastiches requiresvocalisations – screams, grunts, crying – butwe didn’t know the sex of the player. Sodecided to try gender-ambiguousvocalisations – pitching them somewhere inthe middle – but our discomfort with thisconcept was instantly dispelled followingimplementation. It was just one of thefunniest things we’d ever heard.”

There was another humdinger to face,however: finding the right composer andmusic producer to create 204 music cues(about 90 minutes running time), andattaining top quality production valueswithout breaking the bank, and in less thanfour months. Oh, and the music content hadto cover big-band Hollywood glitz for themain game, plus a plethora of genre piecesencompassing a hundred years of cinema,from rag-time piano through to modernelectronic and orchestral action scores.

“With such diverse music requirements,the composer shortlist was very short,” says

Walsh. “I’d worked with Richard Jacquesbefore and knew if he said he could deliver,he would – essential with a tight timescale.We worked closely together to sell therecording budget to the purse-string holders.I believed very strongly from the outset thatwe needed real musicians and live recordingand would get a badly compromised result ifwe didn’t – that’s not always the case butclearly was in this instance. It was a challengefor Richard to create a score which would beused in multiple ways – the music you hear inthe scripted movies following play is kind ofedited off-line from a toolkit of musicalelements devised for each genre, but is alsoused elsewhere.

“In director mode, where players can maketheir own movies, they have a choice of‘music suites’ which the game combinesinteractively with their shot sequence. Shotsare tagged with intensity values with thesystem looking ahead to work out transitionsand trigger stings.

“The music really captures the essence ofeach genre with the authenticity I’d alwayshoped for. Contributing to that is also the factthat we used vintage mics and micplacements alongside the more modern set-ups. The main recording session at MetropolisStudios, both big band and orchestral, was anamazing experience. The players wereoutstandingly good – rattling through thiscomplex stuff at an incredible pace, note-perfect. There’s a lot of humour, character andlove in the music. I think Richard reallybuzzed off the brief, and you can tell.”

You’re in the MoviesCrazy madcap pastiches of the last hundred years of cinema? John Broomhall goes in search of his 15 minutes of famein Zoë Mode’s latest party game…

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

Zoë Mode’s audiodirector Ciaran Walsh

THIS MONTH’SFEATURED SOUNDTRACK:You’re In The Movies

DEVELOPER:Zoë Mode

PUBLISHER:Microsoft

AUDIO TEAM:Audio director: Ciaran WalshSound design: Nathan McCree, Dan Millidge,Joe Hogan, Justin ScharvonaOriginal music: Richard JacquesDialogue direction: Nathan McCree

There’s a lot ofhumour in themusic. Richard

Jacques reallybuzzed off thebrief, you can tell.

Ciaran Walsh, Zoë Mode

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

The following is an excerpt of a story written byJohn Gaudiosi for www.unrealtechnology.com

V in Diesel’s next adventure won’t beseen on the big screen. The action staris appearing as Milo Burick, an

undercover cop out to infiltrate the gangs ofBarcelona in The Wheelman, Midway’scollaboration with Diesel’s Tigon Studios –and it’s being fueled by Unreal Engine 3technology.

Shaun Himmerick, executive producer ofThe Wheelman at Midway Newcastle, said thatit’s been great utilising UE3 for the actiondriving genre. The game is part of a cross-company shared technology endeavor thatMidway employs in each of its global studios.

“With an open world game, there is bothdriving and on-foot action, so we borroweddesigners from the Stranglehold team to helpus,” added Himmerick. “While it’s a challengeto put every studio on a common engine, itmakes it easier to share the technology.”

The Wheelman’s virtual Barcelona is amassive city with over 4,000 miles of roads,including back alleys that can only benavigated by motorcycle. One of the hurdlesthe team tackled was streaming the virtualcity on console. Himmerick said that UE3 wasbuilt to stream on-foot action, which mightcover ten feet per second, but his teamneeded the engine to accelerate up to 150miles per hour for speeding vehicles.

“To build an engine that can stream theequivalent of a first-person shooter map

every eight seconds was a massivechallenge,” he said. “We used a lot of coreUnreal technology, and we also added a lot toit, like Kynapse and the Havok engine.”

In addition, the team modified toolsetswithin UE3 like Matinee, which was revisedand referred to as the cinema tool by theteam. That technology was originallydesigned for Stranglehold, another UE3 game,but was customised for Wheelman. At itsbase, Midway used the stock Matinee engineand then added bolts onto it. The end resultprovided specific functionality that enabledthe team’s cinema group to preciselymanipulate the cameras within the gameworld for the desired cinematic feel.

“We have something called super mesh,which allows for more variation of character than the Unreal Engine normallylets you do,” continued Himmerick. “For us, itenables us to do more damage to cars. Supermesh doesn’t work out of the box withMatinee, so we had to hijack the in-game carand pull it into our cinema engine to ensure aclean transition.”

One innovative idea that came fromconversations with Vin Deisel was to createcar combat in the vein of a fighting game.Instead of bumping into another car over andover again, the game employs melee combatlike punches that can knock out enemiesimmediately and dramatically. The Wheelmanalso has a super move that allows the driverto spin 180 degrees, blast his enemies withguns, and then spin back around. Himmerick

said all of the action is captured with verycinematic camera perspectives.

The game also lets players exit vehicles andengage in gunfights and exploration. Cars willcome in handy as shields from bullets, butwell-timed shots can also blow up vehiclesand take out multiple enemies.

“Unreal has given us a great starting point,”explained Himmerick. “The file structure, theway it’s organised, and the fact that it was alldone with the infrastructure that we werefamiliar with has allowed us to easily modifywhat we need, like the cinema tool, and thenshare it among all of the studios.”

With fast and furious action, The Wheelmanwill allow anyone to step into the starring role and take down the bad guys by anymeans necessary.

UNREAL ENGINE 3 DRIVES

THE WHEELMAN

upcoming epicattended events:Game Developers ConferenceSan Francisco, CAMarch 23rd - 27th, 2009

Triangle Game Conference Raleigh, NCApril 2th - 30th, 2009

Electronic Entertainment Expo Los Angeles, CAJune 2-4, 2009

Please email: [email protected] for appointments.


EPIC DIARIES | BUILD

The Wheelman forXbox 360, PlayStation 3and PC

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

1. Revision GraphThe revision graph tool means you can easilyview changes over a period of time, which isuseful for fixing bugs. To diff, right click on thefile you want to diff and select the ‘revisiongraph’ function (Ctrl + Shift + R).

2. Thumbnail viewBoth P4V (the multi-platform GUI) and P4Web(the browser-based client) can showthumbnails of images stored in the server,and new thumbnails are automaticallygenerated for new assets if required. Thisfunctionality can also be easily extended tosupport any file type you need to visualise inthis way. To view the thumbnail, click on thefile in the depot and then select the 'preview'tab in the menu on the right.

3. Time-lapse ViewTime-lapse View shows an interactive visualrepresentation of a file's history, showingwhen lines were added, changed, anddeleted, who made the changes, and whenthe changes were made. Right click on the fileyou want to diff and select the ‘Time-lapseView’ function (Ctrl + Shift + T). The slider atthe top allows you to browse rapidly throughfile revisions with the revison, date,description, user and changelist numberdisplayed at the bottom of the page.

4. BranchingBad experiences with other tools have,unfortunately, taught many developers to bewary of any sort of branching. We frequentlyhear of companies who avoid branchingaltogether because of the pain they had withmerging in these other tools. Perforce'sbranching, however, is easy. You can usebranches for milestones and never wonderwhat went to the publisher again.

A good branching model also removes theneed for lost developer time with codefreezes. Perforce's inter-file branching andbuilt-in conflict detection lets you easilybranch and merge between codelines.Branching is a simple process: select thefolder you wish to branch, then right clickselect the ‘integrate’ function. In the newwindow change the target path to where youwant the folder to be copied to. You can alsoname the branch using the branch tab. Then you can either preview the branch first by clicking preview, or branch byselecting integrate.

5. P4 MergeDuring game development you may oftenneed to work concurrently on a file. Whensubmitting the file P4V will indicate if there isany conflicts, and if there are you can use theMerge tool to resolve them.

The Perforce Merge Tool, P4Merge,provides graphical three-way merging andside-by-side file comparisons. Perforce client applications can also be configured towork with third-party merge tools. To use themerge tool, select the merge tool option; you will then be shown the original file, theedits you have made and the edits of theother user.

6. Diff toolPerforce's diff tool makes it easy to comparetwo versions of a file. This can be particularlyhelpful when working on multiplatform gamedevelopment. To diff, right click on the fileyou want to diff and select Diff Against (Ctrl +Shift + D). You can then either select anotherrevision of the file to compare against or adifferent file to compare against.

P4V will then launch P4Diff, which visuallydisplays the differences between the twofiles. Artists can use the Image Diff Tool tocompare two graphics, which supports most common image files, including TIFF, JPG and GIF, and can be extended to support other image formats through the Qt API.

7. Link bug reports with changesIn an ideal world there would be no bugs, butthis is far from an ideal world. When time iseverything in those critical months before arelease, comprehensive defect tracking is essential. Producers need to stay up-to-date with instant reports on open/closedbugs by project.

Perforce Jobs provides a customisable,built-in defect tracking system with issue-tracking, filtering/searching, and linking ofjobs with changes made by team members.Jobs can also be extended throughintegrations with third party defect trackingsystems for complex workflow requirements.www.perforce.com

Perforce


TUTORIAL | BUILD

Above: The Image Diff Tool shows differences between image files

Above: The revision graph shows a file’s change over time

Above: Perforce’s Time-lapse View shows a file’s history

With 14 years experience and a large number of game studios using its tools, Perforce has gained huge experience inhow successful developers like to work and how Software Configuration Management tools need to support them.Here, Dave Robertson shares seven of the top features of Perforce which help for game development...

Unleashed

Dave Robertson is vicepresident, international atPerforce Software

SoundSeed is a family of interactivesound generators for Audiokinetic’sWwise that use DSP technology to

greatly reduce memory usage and enablerich dynamic audio content. By creating anunlimited number of variations from a single‘footprint’ sound, Soundseed Impact, the firstfamily member to emerge, enables audiodevelopers to get miles more variation forresonant sound effects without munchingmemory or blowing budget.

Realtime Worlds believes there is no longerany excuse for a lack of audio variation.

“To paraphrase George Sanger – ‘repetitionis bad, repetition is bad, repetition is bad,’”explains audio lead Roland Peddie. “Webelieve repetition reduces the believability ofthe game world you’re in. The ear is sosophisticated – it can pick up on any lack ofvariation and induce listener fatigue.”

All of which is out of the question for RTW’sexciting new title, All Points Bulletin(APB), a ‘control the city’-stylecommunity game whereplayers can eithertake the role of thecriminals or ofthose bringingthem to justice.Founded bydevelopmentlegend DavidJones, RealtimeWorlds’ talented team createdthe five-times BAFTA-nominated Crackdown,which went on to win two of the covetedmasks – including one for audio. APBpromises to be the first massively multiplayeronline title where player skill determinescharacter progression, and is arguably one ofthe largest and most ambitious independentgame projects on the planet right now.

PLANTING SEEDWith player-versus-player combat at its heart,the audio team are applying SoundSeedto a plethora of interactive ‘props’ –dumpsters, newspaper racks,telegraph poles, dustbins. In theirwords, ‘stuff you can knock over’.

“We initially tested it on propimpacts; metallic resonant stuff justlike they suggested, and then tried tostretch it a bit further,” says Cowie. “It’s agreat thing they’re innovating – a cool pieceof technology and another tool in the kit.”

Given that audio production was wellunderway when the team started evaluatingSoundSeed Impact, a good deal of the proprecording work had already been done.

So why use SoundSeed? Cowie explainsthat it was a pre-emptive move for thedreaded optimisation sweep: “The approachwe’ve taken so far has been – let’s just getassets into the game. The amount of memorywe’ve been using hasn’t been the mainpriority, but it will become so. SoundSeed willenable us to retain a lot of variation thatmight otherwise have been lost in theoptimisation phase.”

“But there’s more to it than that – usingWwise has changed the approach that we’dhave previously used anyhow. Now we have‘blends’ containing soft, medium and hardimpacts, controlled by a collision intensityreal-time parameter control (RTPC).SoundSeed will really max out the variationmaking the audio even better. It could alsoreduce the amount of pre-baked variationsneeded in each of those collision intensities.”

With Realtime Worlds already building insound variation the traditional way, Cowieagrees that by adding SoundSeed to Wwise’sexisting methods of randomisation a farhigher degree of variation can be achieved.

Clearly, not every game audio developerfinds themselves in this rarefied atmosphere,and for those who don’t, Peddle still believesthat the tech can deliver a reduced memoryfootprint and significant time savings. “Anaudio developer relying more on librarymaterial without the budget to record asmany variations as they like could save aload of time and money and memory – andstill maintain good quality. It could have asignificant impact.”

When contemplating a future projectwhere SoundSeed is built into the equationfrom the outset, Peddie and Cowie reckon it

underground


AUDIO CASE STUDY | BUILD

Sound of the

Crackdown creator Realtime Worlds has adopted Audiokinetic’s SoundSeed Impact for its hotly-tippedforthcoming title APB, claiming it will help them achieve the convincing variation required for ahigh-end audio experience. John Broomhall gets ready to play cops and robbers…

Using Wwise haschanged theapproach that we’d

have previously used.SoundSeed will reallymake the audiomuch better.

APB doesn’t just feature edgypunks like this – it featurescutting-edge technology for audio

Realtime Worlds’ audio team say Soundseed’s workflow and effectsfunctions make it a worthwhile addition for the production of APB

BUILD | AUDIO CASE STUDY

would have a distinct influence on theirmethodology.

“Take a metal pole – you can hit it maybefour or five times and it all sounds similar, butyou end up using six variations anyway,”explains Cowie. “That’s a case where you’d saylet’s just use SoundSeed which can actuallyget more variation. Then there’s items thatwhen you hit them, they break – you onlyhave one shot at recording that, soSoundSeed would be really useful.”

Peddie agrees: “I think you might approacha few things a little differently – like if youknow you’re recording something with a lotof resonance, you might notbother about trying to getvariations – SoundSeed woulddo it for you.”

“Actually knowing it’sthere would always have aneffect on anythingyou know it mightdeal with,” says Cowie. “As afirst port of call we’d maybetry using SoundSeed for asound type. Does itwork? Does it come upto the standard we’dexpect? If yes, thengo with it. If not,then maybe recordmore variations.“

Given thepressing needof audiovariety in

today’s triple-Agames, whetheryou’re on a limitedaudio budget or blessedwith an open chequebook, Audiokineticbelieves that SoundSeedcan yield tangible benefitsto all developers includingthat all-important memoryreduction.

Meanwhile, theSoundSeed Impact Modellerapplication enables sounddesigners to experiment withthe creative potential of mixingand matching differentparametric models and residualfiles, a prospect that theRealtime Worlds team findsinteresting.

“It’s something I’d like to try,”enthuses Peddie. “Maybemixing the residual sound ofa gunshot with a swordimpact – you could create

some interesting stuff. People are alwayslooking for new ways to create originalsounds so any new tools that can possibly dothat are always welcome.”

SOUNDSEED SPROUTSCowie and Peddie are enthusiastic aboutRealtime Worlds’ overall choice of Wwisemiddleware for APB and the level of supportthey receive from the Audiokinetic team.

“For me the choice was mainly about theamount of control and scope for creativity itgives sound designers, minimising thesupport required from in-house softwareengineers. It’s well designed and

implemented. Interface-wise,everything’s laid out really clearly

and technically integrating it wasquick and easy. I think it’s great,”says Peddie.

Cowie concurs and citesimproved workflow:

“You end up with acloser result to your overall

aim – the creative side of thingsflows a bit more. Being able to

control the RTPCs is great –we can go do our thing andspend however much time

we need tweaking andtesting in real-time. It

makes a huge amountof difference and itsaves a huge amountof time. The profiler

was a completely newthing to me – it’s

something I use pretty muchon a daily basis to cut theamount of time spent

tracking down what’s actuallyhappening. With so manysounds coming back fromthe game, it’s very useful tocapture all the information,stop and scroll backthrough all the data. Andit’s robust.”

Just talking to theRealtime Worlds guysbriefly gives the clearimpression that theybelieve syntheticallygenerating and extendingsounds to be a part of gameaudio’s future – andsomething they’re nowequipped to embrace.www.audiokinetic.comwww.realtimeworlds.com

Cowie (left) and Peddie (right) agree thatimplementing Audiokinetic’s Soundseed hasimproved the audio in APB

76 | MARCH 2009


PEOPLE: Two new faces

at Ruffian Gamesp80

TOOLS: Trinigy to

support fledglingstudios

p82

SERVICES: Side’s Killzone 2

performancep85

The world’s premier listing of games development studios, tools, outsourcing specialists, services and courses…

KEY CONTACTS

RATES1/4 page: £450 (or £200/month if booked for aminimum of six months)

To get your company featured here contact:[email protected] T: 01992 535 647

STUDIOSBlitz Games Studios +44 (0) 1926 880 000

Broadsword Interactive +44 (0) 1970 626299

Denki www.denki.co.uk

nDreams +44(0) 1252 375754

Realtime Worlds +44 (0) 1382 202 821Rebellion +44 (0) 1865 792 201

Stainless Games [email protected]

Strawdog Studio +44 (0) 1332 258 862

TOOLSbluegfx +44 (0) 1483 467 200

Epic Games +1 919 870 1516

Fork Particle 00 (1) 925 417 1785

Natural Motion +44 (0)1865 250575

SERVICESAir Edel +44 (0) 207 486 6466

Air Studios +44 (0) 207 794 0660

3D Creation Studio +44 (0) 151 236 9992

GAMEINDUSTRYJOBS.eu +31 3110 7504580

High Score +44 (0) 1295 738 337

Ian Livingstone +44 (0) 1483 421 491

Partnertrans +44 (0) 1753 247 731

Philips amBX www.ambx.com

Razorback www.razorback.co.ukSpecialmove +44 (0) 141 585 6491

Testronic Labs +44 (0)1753 653 722

Tsunami Music +44 (0) 207 350 2828

Universally Speaking +44 (0) 1480 210 621

COURSESGoldsmiths +44 (0)20 70785052

University of Hull +44 (0) 1482 465 951

MOBILE.DEVELOPMAG.COM80 | MARCH 2009

brought to you by…

www.dayonesearch.com 01273 666 380.

Studio NewsThis month: Relentless, Zoë Mode and Ruffian

Brighton-based Relentless Games has hired three new employees.Paul Abbott (pictured - right) has joined the team as a dedicated environment artist.

Abbott brings experience as both a freelance illustrator and as an artist for CreativeAssembly. The new staffer previously worked as lead environment artist on Viking,having graduated from his fine art painting degree course at Brighton University.

Alex Crowhurst (pictured - left) fills an animator role at Relentless, having worked withFree Radical Design animating in-game assets and cut-scenes on titles such as theTimesplitters series and Second Sight. Alex graduated from the Arts Institute atBournemouth in 2001 with a degree in film and animation. Crowhurst also contributedto Heavenly Sword before joining his new employer.

Finally, James Burford (pictured - centre) joins as a QA tester from Testology, where hewas a contract games tester on an online only FPS. Burford graduated from PortsmouthUniversity in 2007 with a BSc in computer games technology.www.relentless.co.uk

Zoë Mode has opened a recording studio and postproduction facility at its new Brighton premises.

The studio is fully equipped for surround mixing andmusic mastering and hosts multiple interconnectedrecording and production spaces.

“Moving into our new permanent home last Octobergave us a perfect opportunity to design and build audiostudios tailored to our unique needs as a music game developer, and to provideprofessional audio services to other Kuju studios. We’re delighted with the result,” saidaudio director Ciaran Walsh.

General manager Ed Daly added: “Investment in our facilities enables us to provide acomprehensive service to our publishing partners and increase the quality of audio inour games.”

Zoe Mode has recently created several music themed games, including Disney SingIt! and the soon-to-be-released Rock Revolution.www.zoemode.com

Ruffian Games has hired two industry veterans to bolster itsdesign department.

Steve Iannetta (pictured - left ) and Ed Campbell (pictured -right) have joined the Dundee developer as lead designer andsenior designer respectively.

Initially establishing himself as a graphic designer, Iannettaentered the games industry when he joined VIS in 1996 andhas since worked with Realtime Worlds and Midway. Iannetta has previously held anumber of key roles including senior mission design on Microsoft’s Crackdown.

Meanwhile Campbell brings over 20 years of experience to Ruffian, having begun hiscareer working on cult 16-bit titles like Zool 2. More recently Campbell has contributedto high-profile games like NARC and Crackdown.

“We’re delighted to have these guys on board,” said Ruffian studio head Gaz Liddon. “We only want to make the very best games and you can only achieve that throughgreat design. Steve and Ed joining is another step towards that goal.”www.ruffiangames.com

studiosBlitz Games Studios 01926 880000 www.BlitzGames.com

Broadsword Interactive 01970 626299 www.broadsword.co.uk

WWW.DEVELOPMAG.COM MARCH 2009 | 81

studiosnDreams +44 (0) 1252 375754 www.ndreams.comDenki www.denki.co.uk

Real Time Worlds 01382 202821 www.realtimeworlds.com Rebellion 01865 792 201 www.rebellion.co.uk

Strawdog Studios 01332 258862 www.strawdogstudios.co.uk


studiosStainless Games [email protected] www.stainlessgames.com

Epic Games China has adopted Hansoft’sproject management and QA solution.

“Hansoft is ideal for game industrydevelopment because it provides flexibility for shifting priorities and goals throughhighly intuitive and usable interface design,” said Mike Hines, project director at EpicGames China.

“The ability to easily manage resources for projects, customise the production styleand views per project and user, and quickly see resource conflicts, workloads and costscontinues to impress me daily.”

Epic Games China licenses the parent company’s Unreal Engine 2 and Unreal Engine3 in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South East Asia. Meanwhile, Hansoft provides a fullyintegrated production management solution that is now used in over 20 countries forbug tracking, project and workload coordination.www.hansoft.se

Trinigy to support new start-upsMiddleware firm Trinigy has announced a newprogramme to support fledgling developers.

According to the company, the tough economicclimate is causing developers to regroup and startnew companies in the wake of extensive lay-offs atestablished firms. As such, Trinigy will beextending the trial period for its Vision Engine from30 days to three months, in order to help teamsmake a prototype and secure publisher funding.

“With all the economic issues going on right now, we felt that it is time to close ranksand proactively back game developers,” said Daniel J. Conradie, president & CEO atTrinigy US.

“Thus, we took the initiative and initiated ESP. We’ve received overwhelmingresponses from veteran teams and we are glad to make ESP publicly available now.”www.trinigy.net

Epic Games China adopts Hansoft

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

Tools News


toolsbluegfx 01483 467200 www.bluegfx.com

Fork Particle 00 (1) 925 417 1785 [email protected] Natural Motion www.naturalmotion.com


tools

SpotlightTool

SIMUL WEATHERArea of Expertise: Weather simulation

Developers can now produce dynamic,convincing skies, thanks to Simul’s newSimul Weather technology. Vibrantweather systems can be implementedinto games on all current console andPC platforms.

Simul Weather is a C++ library thatgenerates climate data that it updatesin real-time. The SDK can be used tolaunch in-game weather into atroposphere, creating volumetric clouddata via a lightweight API. The sampleapplications that come with the SDKshow how real-time clouds can berendered using generated data throughvarious graphic APIs.

Simul Weather can also be used togenerate live, moving panoramas

thanks to a system that also allowsusers to render the sky at the start ofeach level. Additionally, the SimulWeather SDK is compatible with Simul’sCloudWright skyscape creationtechnology, meaning developers cantest settings to see how they’ll look intheir own renderer.

A demo is available now on the Simulwebsite, which can show how theclouds move and animate as timepasses. The taster allows thoseinterested in the technology tomanipulate wind speed and direction,cloud density and a number of otherfactors representative of the API.

CONTACT:Simul Software LtdDaresbury Innovation CentreKeckwick LaneDaresbury, CheshireWA4 4FS. United Kingdom

Phone: 0208 133 6920Fax: [email protected]: www.simul.co.uk/weather

3D Creation Studio +44(0)151 236 9992 www.3dcreationstudio.com

Air Edel +4 (0) 207 486 6466 www.air-edel.co.uk

Air Studios 0207 7940660 www.airstudios.com


servicesGAMEINDUSTRYJOBS.eu +31 3110 7504580 www.GAMEINDUSTRYJOBS.eu High Score +44 (0) 1295 738 337 www.high-score.co.uk

Ian Livingstone 01483 421 491 www.ianlivingstone.net Partnertrans +44 (0) 1753 247 731 www.partnertrans.com


servicesRazorback Developments [email protected] www.razorback.co.ukPHILIPS amBX www.ambx.com

Special Move +44 (0) 141 585 6491 www.specialmove.com

WWW.DEVELOPMAG.COM

services

MARCH 2009 | 87

Specialist Games ServicesLocalisation

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

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

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

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

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Testronic Labs +44 (0) 1753 653 722 www.testronic labs.com Tsunami Music +44 (0) 207 350 2828 www.tsunami.co.uk

Services News

To ensure thatKillzone 2featured realisticand convincingin-gamecharacters,developerGuerilla enlistedthe services ofproductioncompany Side.

Using itslocation audiorig in a twothousand squarefoot sound stage, Side cast actors with distinctive voices and the physical agility requiredfor full performance capture. The enormous audio space and Side’s technology enabledthe synchronised recording of both the dialogue of multiple actors and the motioncapture data.

For the recording process, Brian Cox visited Side’s facility to reprise his well-received roleas Killzone 2’s Scolar Visari.

“The technique of full performance capture really helped to achieve the frenetic,dynamic dialogue of this action-packed title,” said Side’s creative director Andy Emery.

Side is an award winning company providing creative services to the game, film andbroadcast industries. Side offers casting, directors, composers and a range of audioservices including dubbing, mixing, sound design and location recording.

Recent Side projects include Fable II, LittleBigPlanet, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed andTomb Raider: Underworld.www.side.com

Side provides full performancecapture for Killzone 2


coursesGoldsmiths +44 (0)20 70785052 www.gamesgoldsmiths.com

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

A £3 million investment from the Scottish Government will help the University ofAbertay Dundee build what it has described as ‘the first UK Centre for Computer GamesExcellence’.

Abertay University is already widely regarded as one of the best universities in theUK for studying games development given that it is runs two of the now five Skillset-accredited courses for gaming studios. The university is also responsible for the Dare tobe Digital competition, and last year won a Develop Industry Excellence Award for itscontribution to education in the UK.

With the new investment Abertay will develop two new industry designedpostgraduate MSc courses dedicated to games – plus a teaching and learning space toaccommodate them, pictured above.

The masters programme will be based on Dare to be Digital, with 40 graduateshoused in a purpose-designed professional environment for a 12-month course.

It is hoped the course will help create actual ideas for both games and seriousgames-style software with real world application.

Abertay’s principal and vice-chancellor Professor Bernard King said: “This significantcapacity-building investment by the Scottish Government establishes Abertay asScotland’s University Centre of Excellence in Computer Games Education. It recognisesthat Scotland can be a global leader in this sector, and that Abertay can drive thatambition by providing graduates with the necessary world-class skills to succeed.”www.abertay.ac.uk

Hull’s games course getsSkillset accreditationThe University of Hull hasbecome the first Englisheducational institution toreceive Skillset accreditationfor its Masters course inComputer GamesProgramming.

The course, which isbacked by developers suchas Black Rock and BlitzGame Studios, wasestablished 1996 and is thelongest-running course ofits kind in the UK.

The accreditation meansthat the course’s contentshave been validated by the Skillset board, which includes representatives from variousdevelopers including Frontier’s David Braben.

“We are delighted to have been the first English institution to have been recognisedfor our prestigious Computer Games Programming course,” said the Masters program’sleader Dr. Jon Purdy.

“The success of our graduates speaks volumes about the high calibre of students weattract and the level of teaching we provide. The major computer games companiescome to Hull each year to identify potential employees; they know that the standardhere is particularly high and every year a number of our students are given job offerson the spot.”www.hull.ac.uk

University of Abertay to becomeCentre for Excellence

skillsetThe Sector Skils Council for Creative Media

TRAINING NEWS

CODA

90 | MARCH 2009 DEVELOPMAG.COM

Legal special, GDC reviewCopy Deadline: March 19th

DEVELOP 100 Event: GDC CanadaCopy Deadline: April 22nd

Game EnginesEvent: GameHorizon conferenceCopy Deadline: May 21st

Develop Conference –Show IssueEvent: Develop ConferenceCopy Deadline: June 18th

Develop Awards round-upEvent: Edinburgh InteractiveFestival, GDC EuropeRegional Focus: ScotlandCopy Deadline: July 23rd

Outsourcing SpecialRegional Focus: AsiaCopy Deadline: August 14th

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I LOVE… LEMMINGSby Sonic The Hedgehog creator Yuji Naka

There are a lot of Western games that I’ve takeninfluence from – in particular, I like Lemmings. It mightjust be a personal thing, but having hundreds ofdifferent characters moving around, all doing different

things, really fascinated me back then.I think Lemmings is a big reference point in terms of character

development too – the way the lemmings work is kind of based onthe real animal, like the idea of the mass suicide – although that’sjust a myth – but it defines the character.

I did a similar thing with Sonic – I thought that hedgehogs can’tswim, so I made it so that water was dangerous to him.But then I saw a photograph of a hedgehog swimming,and that really surprised me. It turns out that they canswim, but they can’t crawl out of the water.

my favourite game

Documents

Develop - Issue 92 - March 2009