Ooohhh the internet....

What started off as simply checking my email and some internet research (those game engines) ended up in sore fingers and wrists... yup, my beta tester code for Battlefield Heroes was in my inbox this morning... After a couple of hours of good ol shoot em up fun I was ready for a break... so I went to check out the websites of my potential employers... oh oh... more games to be tested... one hour later and after a coffee break, back to the Battlefield.... stop for a quick lunch and... unfortunately the server for Magic Online was down... No biggie... more Battlefield!!! Weee! No matter how hard I searched, I only found one bug! Never mind, I finally got back into the game engine search when... wow, pixel games, gotta play those too!

A fine day indeed, with lots of game research done and... oh well, about the engines, yeah, so other than the simple and elegant Battlefield Heroes proprietary software (from DICE for EA, creators of Mirror's Edge as well), most of the other stuff was... Flash.... Hmmm? I'd totally forgotten about that! So web stuff: Flash, Java, Javascript or Shockwave (Director?). Your players need only have the necessary plugins, etc....

Here are some of the fun places I visited today, don't miss Pixeljam, it's got the good ol arcade style stuff, addictive simplicity! Gamma Bros brought distorted memories of galaga/space invaders back... oh those 8 bit sounds.... And somehow along the way I also stumbled on a very nice synth/mixer/rythm machine thing, free, Flash based (requires version 10 and signing up).

Pixeljam Games Small and sweet!
Dragball Very strange might-be- tetris-spawn-but-maybe-not kind of game, not my kind of music, but interesting.
Pixeljoint art challenge (Game Boy screens) Ends Sunday
Pixel Tutorials (With links to phone games site)
Zombie Massacre! Simple band game... with pixel zombies in shades of Black, Red and White... He also has another game on his site.
HobnoxAudiotool
BH....Of course...

Game Engines and Publishing

So I've been playing with the Unreal 2 engine (Awakening), not doing much else than setting up a room, some boxes and lights, a player and getting the thing to run from the game menu. It was a thrilling few seconds anyways, running around this box, shooting the other (floating) boxes in the hastily wallpapered room... If you can make your stuff out of boxes, its rather easy to get started, with a simple environment. Later on I will try importing my own models and animated things and see how that goes. But I started thinking, what if I want other people to play the stuff I make (later on!)?

Hmmm.. Well, for one thing, they'd have to install the Unreal 2 engine, and not just from any game (like say Brothers in Arms), but they'd have to install Awakening. Each Unreal Editor version is tailored to the game it ships with, and these small differences are enough to make stuff made on one incompatible on another. So that's the thing about making mods. Naturally there's also the OS to think about... And the OS would also be an issue with some of the affordable engines out there, which are for the most part PC tailored (the exception being Unity 3D, which can run on PC but makes games for MAC, IPhone and Ipod). I haven't yet looked into the free engines, so I'll skip them for now. The good thing about having your own engine thing is that you create a self contained installer, so the players don't need other software to run your game.

Some interesting bits I learned at the game convention is that making games for the Iphone and the Nintendo DS is not necessarily expensive nor hard, although becoming an OFFICIAL Nintendo developer might be... But... I found a little program online called DS Game Maker, which though not visually too intuitive, probably works out well for the more hardcore nerdish type (or maybe I didn't play long enough with it). Becoming a developer for the Iphone also requires passing some approval of sorts for putting the App on the store, but other than nudity or something easily termed offensive, is not a huge deal. The great thing about these two platforms is the distribution, particularly for those looking to use the IPhone shop as an additional income (and from what I gathered, can bring in a bit more than "spare change"). The great hurdle there is for newcomers without any kind of fan base or followers, as otherwise it is hard to compete with the 8000+ Iphone games already posted. And the Ds? Well, the wonderful world of emulators and R4 cards can be a big help in getting your game out, but it means more work for the player, and I am not sure what the future for HB apps will be with the newer DS model.

Another alternative would be publishing with the "live services" of consoles like the Xbox, but the last time I checked, you gotta like code to use the XNA developing system... about the other consoles.. I didn't check, but I do know that if you really make games for a living, game publishers are always on the lookout for PS(x) and Xbox stuff, although mainly they want the "AAA" blockbusters. Specially developers for the PSP are favored by the comparatively minimalistic competition, and some smaller publishers can do more experiemtnal things with it. And what about Nintendo? Well, despite how many machines they've sold, it sesm like the barrier is high in terms of getting approved and the pricey license. Nintendo does premium marketing for their own games, not for those of other publishers. Games which make good use fo the special controllers do have a better chance.

And last but not least, it looks like the future of... everything, is the internet... so browser based games are the thing, whether for mobile phones or computers. I did a quick search on what is out there and found too much stuff that I didn't know of, so that'll have it's own post coming up. My eyes are melting.

The magical connection: Games

So it's been over a month since my last post and I can say it's for good reasons. It seems like the moment I turned my attention to the area of creating video games, some "magical connection" turned on and suddenly lots of interesting things started happening in my life. I've suddenly found myself with the possibility of various job offers, I've learned overwhelming amounts of stuff about games, game design and the game industry and I've had some amazing conversations to boot. In the following days I'll be posting some of the nuggets of information I picked up in this seemingly very long span of time. I'll start off with one of the new strange thoughts that popped out of my head after two days of "state of the games" info picked up at the "German Gamedays" conference two days ago...

The thought:
That the nature of life is for things to grow to their fullest capacity and development, but as this approach tends to create dinosaurs who are doomed to extinction, mutation appears with the random innovation to save the day. Many mutations fail to produce anything new, but every now and then one succeeds in changing the direction of evolution and opening up new possibilities for growth. So it seems to me that the role of the individual artist, the rebel, the one-man army, is that of the mutant gene, the creative gene which creates a new branch of things that no one else can or dares to foresee, but without which the life of ideas would come to a swift end.

The things that led to the thought:
"Top Jobs of the Future: Working in the Games Field"
It was a rather informal presentation, with two top guys from one of the world's largest browser based games company, Klaas Kerstin (CEO) and Ralf Adam from Gameforge. As a footnote, Germany is the world leader in browser-based games. Basically they told their stories of passion, love and success as a game designers and finished off with sugary descriptions of what it is like today to work for a game studio. Think of informal clothes, loose schedules, healthy meals in a top class cafeteria, a basement loaded with arcade machines and consoles, loose hierarchies, good pay and plenty of creative space for all. It bears a striking resemblance to the Hollywood style special effects and animation studios (plus or minus the ping-pong tables, gyms, mini-cinemas, etc). The feeling in the audience seemed to be a mix of skepticism vs internal drooling...

Rewind to the previous day, Ubisoft's Benedict Grindel and Christopher Schmitz talked about "Why big games need to be made by big teams - or do they?(...)". They spoke about the 2 to 4 year production cycle and the team size needed to churn out AAA titles, think 80 to 400 people (Assasin's Creed). Mr. Adam, previously mentioned, seemed to be in favor of smaller teams (under 100 people), argumenting that larger teams and longer cycles burned out the people and made things very impersonal.

Enter the Americans:
A little bit later that day, veteran game designer, writer and presently on the board of directors for the IGDA, Mr. Bob Bates ("Game Design:The Art and Business of Creating Games) was joined by Robert Wallace, (retired manager consultant in the business) and guess who..? Ralf Adams again... This discussion panel got interesting, with Bates arguing for the individuality and creative authorship of the individual game designer; Adam going for the middle size yet still personal co-creation team and Wallace stating that the upcoming business model would resemble the Hollywood production cycle more and more (this is the AAA/Ubisoft approach).

In the midst of all the flurry of conversations (particularly the ones happening right after each talk, in the halls), I suddenly realized a basic fact of "Big Things". I am referring to anything from a biological organism to any human endeavor which grows and develops into a massive living system. Sometime ago I had read the phrase "Much gathers more and loss leads to greater loss", and it suddenly came back to me in a flash, along with a feeling for the history and development of the videogame industry. In Germany, the demand for artists needed for the continued growth of these hungry "company creatures" is exceeding the available pool. Just think that Gamesforge, the browser based game company, has grown 4500% since it's founding days (2003!). Mr. Schmidt from Ubisoft, made it very clear that their only way forward is bigger and better. They are expanding their markets on all platforms and all kinds of games, not just the AAA ones. They are the second largest game publisher in the world and it would seem like they intend to keep it that way or become number one...

So it was in this context which I came to think about the role of the individual artist/inventor/enterpreneur... The world produces both massive creature/systems and independent creators running in parallel. These apparently antagonistic elements are impartially put out in the merciless game of life, death and rebirth, playing itself out, over and over again across time.

Coming up next: Back to the game engines!