Game Developer - January_2012.pdf

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T H E
L E A D I N G
2 0 1 2
G A M E
I N S I D E :
I N D U S T R Y
1 4 T H
M A G A Z I N E
F R O N T
V O L 1 9
L I N E
N O 1
A W A R D S
J A N U A R Y
A N N U A L
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CONTENTS.0112
VOLUME 19 NUMBER 1
D E PA R T M E N T S
2
POSTMORTEM
20
GAME PLAN
By Brandon Sheffield
The Generous and The Stingy
[EDITORIAL]
DEUS EX
D
EUS
E
X
: H
UMAN
R
EVOLUTION
is a huge project undertaken by Eidos
Montreal, to revive the
D
EUS
E
X
franchise. The team managed to turn
a lengthy pre-production process into later successes through the
power of planning.
By Jean-François Dugas, Martin Dubeau, David
Anfossi, and Mary DeMarle
4
HEADS UP DISPLAY
[NEWS]
Front Line Award finalists in quotes, MindCandy 3 released,
and Indie Royale debuts
TOOL BOX
By Brandon Sheffield
An interview with Havok managing director
David Coghlan
THE INNER PRODUCT
By John McDonald
Practical Ptex for Games
PIXEL PUSHER
By Steve Theodore
Hope and Change
AURAL FIXATION
By Jesse Harlin
What’s Next for the Next NextGen?
DESIGN OF THE TIMES
By Jason Vandenberghe
Write For The Player
THE BUSINESS
By Kim Pallister
Business Books for a Turbulent Time
[TOOL INTER VIE W]
36
F E AT U R E S
7
39
48
51
52
55
56
[PROGRAMMING]
14TH ANNUAL FRONT LINE AWARDS
In our annual awards that honor the best tools in the business,
we show the best game development tools and software across
art, audio, engines, networking, middleware, and programming/
production tools, as voted by you, the readers. We also place
one special tool in our Hall of Fame.
By Steve Theodore, Damian
Kastbauer, Nathan Fouts, Eric Undersander, Zach Lehman, Noel
Llopis, Mark Cooke, and Brandon Sheffield
[ART]
[SOUND]
[DESIGN]
13
BUILDING A FREE-TO-PLAY BACK END
For independent companies that want to break into social or networked
games but don't know what to do about the back end work, the makers
of
C
REATURES
4
have an open source solution, which they outline here.
By Julien Hamaide
[BUSINESS]
31
GDC PREVIEW GUIDE
GDC 2012 approaches! This preview guide showcases some of the many
talks from the show.
By Staff
57
GDC NEWS
By Staff
[NEWS]
GDC China 2011 Closes With Record Attendance,
2011 Independent Games Festival China Winners Announced
GOOD JOB
By Brandon Sheffield
Jaime Griesemer moves to Sucker Punch, who went
where, and new studios
EDUCATED PLAY
By Tom Curtis
A C
LOSED
W
ORLD
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT
By Matthew Wasteland
HelpDev, the Friendly Publisher
[CAREER]
46
NEVER ENOUGH: AN INTERVIEW WITH DENA'S KENJI
KOBAYASHI
DeNA is one of the largest social game companies in the world, operating
its mobage platform across the world. We spoke with director Kenji
Kobayashi about profitsharing, and paying for items that enhance player
ability.
By Brandon Sheffield and Christian Nutt
58
64
[EDUC ATION]
[HUMOR]
1
GAME DEVELOPER | XXXXX XXXX
WWW.GDMAG.COM
1
GAME PLAN
//
BRANDON SHEFFIELD
GAME DEvELOPER
MAGAzINE
w w w. G D M A G . c O M
The generous and The sTingy
A growing trend in gAme direction
There was a Time when The backs
of game boxes had a slew of bullet
points printed on them, illustrating
numbers of enemies, features, and
hours of gameplay. We decried this,
at the time. “Games are more than a
series of features!” we said. “Games
are interactive experiences, and
can't be reduced to a simple list of
numbers of items and maps!”
Nevermind the fact there
aren't nearly as many game
boxes anymore—I'm starting to
actually miss those bullet points,
as well. Or at least I miss what
they represented—because game
designs are getting stingy.
a player. It keeps giving up little
nuggets of enjoyment when I pay
attention to this or that element of
the design, art, or sound.
a welcome departure: A sidequest
can be a breath of fresh air. But if
you try to integrate that content
into the core game, like the already
generous
d
ragoN
a
ge
: o
rigiNs
did
by making an entire character and
story arc downloadable, the overall
feeling of generosity is diminished.
Ultimately, while I do not think DLC or
freemium games are inherently bad,
I believe that these types of models
have changed the way games are
envisioned for the worse.
UBM LLC.
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www.gdmag.com/digital
ediTorial
publisher
scrooged
Microtransactions and downloadable
content are making their way into
everything. Until recently,
t
etris
was held up as one of those classic,
pure examples of straightforward,
fun-oriented game design. But now,
a new iOS
t
etris
has launched with
a paid subscription. The game is 99
cents, and you can pay $2.99 per
month to get access to exclusive
content, and most importantly, a
booster that lets you increase your
t
etris
rank faster. You get a core
game for one price, then you get
the “extra bits” for an additional fee.
Features that might be generous in
the design are sold at a premium.
This is decidedly stingy, and almost
every corner of the industry is
trending this way.
Simon Carless
l
scarless@gdmag.com
ediTor-in-chieF
Brandon Sheffield
l
bsheffield@gdmag.com
producTion ediTor
arT direcTor
designer
Jade Kraus
l
jkraus@gdmag.com
Joseph Mitch
l
jmitch@gdmag.com
Cliff Scorso
conTribuTing wriTers
holisTic design
In most parts of the industry, I’m
seeing less and less interest in
creating a full game that’s finished
in one go. This is a money issue,
of course. Everyone needs money.
But what about the love of the
craft? What about the care put into
making a game with an authorial
vision, or an overall “feeling?” The
feeling from games nowadays
often comes from the community
as much as (or more than) the
structure and design. That’s all well
and good for some, but that way
of doing things won’t yield you a
s
hadow oF the
C
olossus
or a
F
ar
C
ry
2.
If you chop off part of the
game’s “feel” into DLC, doesn’t this
inherently change how you treat it
as a creator?
I do believe there are genuine
ways to go about freemium
models or DLC which are not so
stingy. Consider the model of
d
ead
P
ixels
on XBLIG, which is quite a
generously designed game for a
dollar, with hours of randomized
gameplay (and a co-op mode). This
game uses a neat model where the
developer will begin work on free
downloadable content if the game
reaches a certain sales target. This
in turn can incentivize more people
to play the game, thus more sales,
and thus more free DLC. But a large
company would never take this
risk—there’s little guarantee this
will work. But it’s done for the love
of the game, and as a player, that’s
what matters.
—Brandon
Sheffield
twitter: @necrosofty
generosiTy
In the past, many of the best games
were (and a few of the current
best games still are) generously
designed. By this I mean in some
games a lot of the content will not
be appreciated or experienced
by most players, but it's in there
beneath the layers, because the
developers felt it should be, and
because they wanted to make a
vibrant, living world. This allows
players to keep discovering new
ways to interact with and enjoy the
game, even after playing it for hours.
I'll use a recent example:
B
ejeweled
3. B
ejeweled
is a
proven property that's remarkably
popular. You could probably spruce
up the graphics, add some nice
filters, and be done with it. But
B
ejeweled
3
has a whole lot of
interesting, weird ideas. It's got
explosions, particle effects, and
lush sound that would please any
FPS fan, on top of eerie fantasy
novel backgrounds that are clearly
are meant to appeal to the more
casual. The music is a fantastic
take on classic '90s PC games,
with a bizarrely compelling
M
ortal
K
oMBat
-style deep voice over. There
are 8 modes to play which all use
the same mechanics in clever
ways, to form a very curious and
very compelling amalgam that,
ultimately, Popcap didn't need to
go out of its way to create. The
game is very generous to me as
2
Tom Curtis
Jesse Harlin
John McDonald
Jason Vandenberghe
Steve Theodore
Kim Pallister
Matthew Wasteland
Hal Barwood
designer-at-Large
Mick West
independent
Brad Bulkley
microsoft
Clinton Keith
independent
Brenda Brathwaite
Loot drop
Bijan Forutanpour
Sony online entertainment
Mark DeLoura
tHQ
Carey Chico
independent
Mike Acton
insomniac
adVerTising sales
global sales direcTor
adVisory board
chop and crop
Let's be honest about what
we're doing here in the freemium
space. We're taking what would
traditionally have been a whole
game, and we're chopping parts of
it up to sell off individually. In
Z
elda
,
you never paid for a sword that was
slightly more powerful, you found
it in the game after a long and
arduous journey.
Most folks will tell you their free-
to-play game is fully-featured, and
all the microtransaction-purchasable
items are unnecessary for full
enjoyment of the game. But that sort
of design is inherently stingy. Even
if you design to compartmentalize,
you're separating something from
the whole, and the capacity for
generosity to players is diminished.
A lot of downloadable content
for triple-A games is similarly
compartmentalized through DLC.
I do understand it—these models
can extend the life of games well
past their “shelf” life. In fact, in a
game that’s inherently generous in
its depth of content, like
F
allout
:
N
ew
V
egas
or
s
KyriM
, DLC is almost
Aaron Murawski
e:
amurawski@ubm.com
t:
415.947.6227
media accounT manager
John Malik Watson
e:
jmwatson@ubm.com
t:
415.947.6224
global accounT manager, recruiTmenT
Gina Gross
e:
ggross@ubm.com
t:
415.947.6241
global accounT manager, educaTion
Rafael Vallin
e:
rvallin@ubm.com
t:
415.947.6223
adVerTising producTion
producTion manager
Pete C. Scibilia
e:
peter.scibilia@ubm.com
t:
516-562-5134
reprinTs
WRIGHT'S MEDIA
Jason Pampell
e:
jpampell@wrightsmedia.com
t:
877-652-5295
audience deVelopmenT
Tyson associaTes
Elaine Tyson
lisT renTal
Merit Direct LLC
e:
Elaine@Tysonassociates.com
t:
914.368.1000
GAME DEvELOPER | jANuARy 2012
www.ubm.com

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