Categories
conferences

My first SXSWi: the “low-brow” conference?

This past few days, as people have asked me “how’s the conference going for you?”, my recurring response has been: I’m ambivalent.

This is my first SXSWi; I go to 3-5 tech and media conferences a year, speak at 1-3 of them. The “party” atmosphere was fun on the first day of events, and unusual, but the evening parties were horrible – massive droves of uninterested and uncaring people crowding-out the much smaller number of people who had a genuine interest in being here and talking about the things they love.

I saw this post from a veteran lamenting how the conference is much larger but much worse this year.

I thought it might be a product of size, but I’ve been to big conferences which still have a really positive atmosphere.

Having been to other Austin conferences, I think it’s an issue of image – how people coming to Austin for the conference already perceive Austin. SXSWi feels like “6th street carried into the convention center”.

Other, smaller, Austin conferences manage to co-exist with the presence of 6th street without inter-mingling with it. If you want to go down 6th while you’re there, you can – but the conference itself exists apart from it. It feels like SXSWi has embraced 6th and forced us all to be part of that, no choice allowed.

If that’s so … I’m not sure what the organizers can do to “fix” it, short of aggressively controlling the marketing for next year, changing the image and the market/audience that they target. With an (alleged) 40% growth in audience attendance … would they want to change it? A lot of people who used to like the “small” SXSWi, and dislike the “large” SXSWi maybe just don’t like large conferences anyway … maybe there *is* no problem.

(although I don’t think so … my impression is that a lot of people came this year because of the same reputation that SXSWi is rapidly throwing away: high quality people, cutting-edge breaking technology / startups)

Personally, in an ideal world? I’d like to see SXSWi 2011 take place in San Francisco. (bearing in mind that I have to fly from Europe, so this isn’t an issue of convenience). SF is big enough to accomodate the influx of people (hotel prices in SF don’t go up by a factor of 3! Unlike Austin right now :( ), and allows for a lot of partying, without the lowest-common-denominator mentality.

Just IMHO…

EDIT: When I said “ambivalent”, I meant it…

…but, being exhausted by that point, I only covered half what I was thinking. The other half was this: there was some great content, I sat in some very interesting talks with good speakers. The conference itself seemed very well organized, coping admirably with the vast number of registrants (they dealt with badge pickup, for instance, extremely well considering the numbers involved).

I know that some people experienced terrible content – for instance, the complaints about the Twitter interview – but I got lucky and skipped all of that. These days, I can usually make a good guess at the quality of a session by the title and the abstract. Sessions that had little real purpose can usually be filtered out this way, whereas sessions with a strong, genuine, theme can be cherry-picked.

So. A lot of the conference I found very enjoyable. But Jolie’s comments struck a chord with me – I was really surprised by the poor social elements of the conf. As noted above, my guess is that this is more to do with the people who attend than it is with the conference itself.

Categories
conferences

Generally speaking, when you mug someone…

…it’s not a good idea to mug someone who practices Kung Fu.

Fortunately, in this case, I’d only slept 3 hours in the previous 40, and it took me long enough to realise what was happening – and I was sufficiently in-attentive – that I didn’t hit back in any serious way.

But if you see me with a black eye and a swollen cheek at GDC, that’s why. Because I was still apologizing after the guy had hit me in the face the third time, and only when he tried to take my bags did I start hitting back. I’ve heard about it before – the “Gentleman martial artist” problem – where you’re too polite to respond when someone hits you in a manner that’s fairly weak compared to what you’re used to, and you find it hard to take the attacker seriously (although it hurts enough afterwards).

Guess I’d better start going to more sparring sessions. Because – frankly – letting yourself get so utterly surprised is a total fail in a martial sense. If the leader had known what he was doing (and I could tell him what he should have done), I’d still be unconscious right now. There’s been a few muggings recently in Brighton – Nik got a fractured cheek for refusing to give up his iPhone (good on you, Nik) – and I tried to catch them, but they ran faster than I with my suitcase and laptop heading off to San Francisco :(.

Categories
conferences games industry

GDC 2010 about to start…I’m there for 3 days

I’ll be in SF from Monday afternoon to Thursday evening (leaving SFO at midnight on thursday night).

My iPhone is unlocked, so I’m hoping to find a cheap SIM to shove in, but otherwise it’ll be email-only.

The 2010 list of GDC parties is looking pretty full (and there’s a bunch after I leave) – if you should be on the calendar, email me ASAP.

ALSO … Sulka and I made a neat little iPhone app that tracks all the parties for you, and tells you where/when they are. We’re just waiting for Apple to approve it, hopefully it’ll be live on Monday. It’s San-Francisco specific right now, but if it works, we’ll expand it to other cities in future.

Categories
iphone

iPhone bugs to make you weep: OS 3.1.3

If you are an iPhone developer – or if you know any iPhone developers – don’t upgrade your device to 3.1.3, and more importantly: don’t upgrade to the latest Xcode.

(this came out last week)

Among the regression bugs (i.e. stuff that they fixed in the previous version, but because theire process sucks, they’ve broken again), is this really annoying one:

When choosing a signing certificate, you can no longer see which profile coresponds to which app.

(if you only have a single iPhone app, that’s almost OK – although as soon as you get expired cert problems, it will cause you hell, since you’ll have no way of seeing which you’re using)

For most developers … with dozens of provisioning profiles … this makes life extremely difficult at app deployment time. Early versions of Xcode were infamous for how buggy and difficult this was. In the last version of Xcode, Apple finally did something sensible, and displayed the full info. You could read the text, and know which was which. Now … you have to manually type out 8-character random strings, and open up the profiles, and find the ones that correspond to that same random string. Ugh.

Here’s hoping that 3.2.1 isn’t long in coming, and fixing this stupidity…

Categories
conferences games industry iphone

Google and the Games industry

Google is giving away free Nexus One handsets to mobile developers attending the GDC this year

Google is not a games company; Google has never shown any interest in the $75 billion (roughly) games industry. Suprising? Not really … $75 billion *for the entire industry* is smaller than some individual companies in other sectors (e.g. off the top of my head, IBM makes more revenue than that *every year*, e.g. VISA has a market cap of $70 billion, etc).

But … maybe iPhone has changed all that.

Games on iPhone weren’t initially the big fuss, but as the first year of the App Store came to a completion, it was clear that the million-selling apps were set to all be games. This was an excellent handheld gaming console.

Perceptions shifted; giants like EA who’d resolved to ignore iPhone (typically after making expensive failed investments in the Wii) did an about-turn and came onto the platform in force. Mainstream and tech-industry press came to see games as really the be-all-and-end-all of 3rd party apps on the phone – often ceasing to talk much about other apps, except as novelties.

2010 and the annual Game Developers Conference

GDC is almost upon us. This is the main event in the games-industry calendar (forget E3; this is the less glitzy, less marketing, more developers, higher value, more real one). And lo and behold in my inbox today:

# Register by the Early Bird Deadline of February 4th, 2010.
# Register to attend the GDC Mobile/Handheld Summit, the iPhone Summit, or the Independent Games Summit

# receive a device from Google and GDC during the registration process.

… the “device” is explicitly either a Google Nexus-One, or a Motorola Droid (randomly chosen).

[EDIT: from Simon Carless’s comments below, I’m completely wrong on the GDC changes last year. This post isn’t meant to be about GDC, it’s meant to be about Google, so I’ll follow-up in the comments – but don’t take the next two paragraphs as correct, they’re probably wrong.]

The marketing materials for the GDC this year have been unusually big on the discounts, with not just one but two public extensions of the discount deadlines (this is unprecedented as far as I can remember). Clearly, the recession (and the mass redundancies at games companies) has hit the GDC organizers quite hard.

(last year’s GDC had perhaps 40% fewer attendees than the year before; it felt like the quiet conference it used to be, rather than the massive conference it had become. I’m guessing the organizers are working hard to reverse that, even in the face of the economic situation)

…and yet we see a $550 phone being “given away free, guaranteed” to every developer that buys a $550 conference ticket. Wow. That’s a pretty thick, long, solid line in the sand being drawn by Google…

PS

Bizarrely – and IMHO a very very stupid move – speakers are “not allowed” to take advantage of this.

So, let me get this straight:

  1. You decide to target the international games industry, at it’s biggest annual conference
  2. You give away free, expensive, top of the range Android phones to *every* developer, but only the ones specialising in Mobile
  3. …but you ban the 500-odd people who are the pre-eminent experts and the thought leaders in this industry from participating?

It could be down to the potential for abuse – speakers can choose to declare themselves “mobile” developers while still attending all the other summits due to a quirk of how the GDC is organized.

But my guess is that there’s something annoying here about state laws and income tax or competitions and lotteries (governments can be over-protective of their monopoly on gambling income), but it strikes me as a major fail. Microsoft managed to give away $1000 HDTV’s at a previous conference independently of paid/unpaid status (IIRC), so I’m sure Google could have found a way.

(just to be clear: for the first time in about 4 years, I’m actually *not* speaking at GDC, so I’m not affected by this one way or the other. I’m just really suprised at the exclusion)

Categories
bitching web 2.0

Once again, I’m forced to pirate digital content…

(…or else forgo it)

(EDIT: To be clear: Piracy isn’t theft, but it certainly is illegal. Please do not misconstrue: I do not condone piracy; this post is a lament at the extent to which the retail industries encourage or coerce consumers to pirate content. I am still looking for a legal way to buy the digital data I want, and in the meantime, I have Spotify…)

I want a single that came out 5 years ago. It’s available to purchase on iTunes …. in the USA.

I’m “not allowed” to give Apple money to buy that track, because my account was originally created when I was sitting in the UK. IIRC, even when I’m physically in the USA next month, I will still “not be allowed” to give them money for this (but … who knows? Apple doesn’t bother explaining this stuff to the normal consumer)

Switch to UK iTunes “mode”, and … Apple does not sell that track in the UK.

So, once again, the music industry would prefer that I go and rip the MP3 than that I *give them money*.

Do they care? Do they even know?

Of course not.

They will *never know* that I did this. They have no mechanism to allow me to *tell* them that I attempted a purchase – and was rebuffed. This would cost them nothing, but … they can’t be bothered.

Equally, when I rip the MP3, they’ll never know that I did. It has literally zero effect on their business. Because piracy is not theft: digital data is not physical property, and copying does not affect the original in any way.

Sigh. One day, the digital industries will grow up. I hope I’m still alive to see it.

Categories
advocacy computer games conferences games industry

PANEL: “Taking Video Games Seriously”

Last night, I went to the Houses of Parliament for the first time, for a panel session on Video Games, organized by one of our MP’s, Tom Watson. Walking through the enormous medieval Westminster Hall (stone floor, stone walls, massive oak timbered ceiling) en route was a bit surreal, and thankfully the event was small and cosy by comparison.

I didn’t intend to live-blog this. But then I realised I probably ought to, especially since I was too exhausted (work, recovering from illness, etc) to ask sensible questions at the time.

Here’s a semi-live-semi-transcript. As per usual, everything is re-interpreted by my hearing; errors and omissions are my own fault; etc. It’s hard keeping up with freeform speakers and capturing the meaning at the same time :).

Panellists

  1. Tom Watson – MP for West Bromwich East (moderator)
  2. Tom Chatfield – author of Fun Inc. (published last week)
  3. Philip Oliver – CEO of Blitz Games
  4. Sam Leith – Journalist (Daily Telegraph, Guardian, etc)
Categories
computer games design games design web 2.0

2010 and the Browser MMO

What’s a browser MMO? Today, not 5 years ago?

In the previous post I poked Earth Eternal for claiming to be the “*REAL* MMO for your browser”, and disappointing on that front (although it could be awesome on all other fronts). I finished with:

So … EE may be a great game … and it may be launchable from within a browser … but it’s a long way from a poster-child for browser-based MMOs. It’s still fighting the browser as much as it’s complementing it.

It’s 2010. I know a lot of people in the industry still haven’t accepted even the concept of a “browser-based” MMO, let alone realise where they’ve got to now.

I’m not in the loop on this stuff any more, but it set me to wondering what I’d be chasing if I weren’t doing iPhone exclusively right now.

What about you? Are you fighting the browser?

The Executive’s impression

Game developers aren’t stupid. Executives aren’t clueless. But some are.

In the minds of those who make games but “don’t do” browser games on principle, I’ve found “a browser MMO” often means some or all of:

  1. A text-only game running off a single Perl webpage, where each action causes the whole page to be refreshed.
  2. Non-real-time interaction (because, you know … web-servers aren’t powerful enough to run anything in real-time)
  3. High-latency, jerky, shallow movement of characters and objects
  4. Weak 3D graphics – 5 years or more behind the curve of Console graphics
  5. Fat client downloads that “no-one” can be bothered to wait for, and would be better-off distributed on a DVD

What’s reality? Well, here’s a few observations…

Drop-dead gorgeous graphics … are the norm

For a look at today, go browse some of the Unity demos. Unity is *not* the “best” 3D engine, the fastest, the best language – but it’s nicely balanced towards ease of adoption. It’s very easy for new developers to get into. And so it’s setting a very achievable base standard that’s higher than many people would believe. With anyone able to produce 3D to this level, and embed it in the browser almost as an afterthought, the use of plugins becomes a new landscape.

Right now, crappy Flash MMO’s are still re-treading the ground of Dragon Fable (which is coming up to it’s 4th birthday) et al – albeit that’s now the “standard” and there is better and better appearing. But just as it only took a few games to adopt this approach and show how good it could look, widespread adoption of Unity, and a few high-profile innovative products, will drag forwards the rest of us.

(by “us” I don’t mean professional developers, I mean primarily the amateur and semi-pro teams who don’t yet work for a living – the students etc)

2 years ago I wouldn’t have thought it would be necessary to say this (I assumed that FB would have kicked everyone’s butts) but maybe it’s still relevant: going forwards, I suspect “browser MMOs” still need to be a lot more “browser” and a lot less “traditional MMO” if they wish to stand out.

The facebook question

Browser MMO, huh? So … Why is there no option to use Facebook Connect to login? In 2010, I think that’s what browser-MMO probably means to most people: “it works from Facebook”.

The massive, fundamental changes to Facebook that are coming in this year may push a lot of content-providers off FB, and back to the web – but users will continue to demand single-sign-on access, and shared access to friends lists. This already works, off-site, thanks to Facebook Connect (both for websites and for other hardware platforms, e.g. iPhone).

I may be completely wrong, but my suspicion is that many developers still want to “use Facebook”, by which they mean:

“use (the large number of accounts on) Facebook (to get lots of users in our game without having to do so much advertising)”.

…while (again, merely a suspicion) users want their games to “use Facebook”, by which they mean:

“use (the apps, data, and list of friends I already have on) Facebook (to reduce the effort I go through to play the game)”

The problem here is the developer is chasing more signups, and the user is chasing ease-of-access. IMHO, the FB changes are going to cut off most of the former, leaving the question: who will do best at fulfilling the latter?

The Glottal-Stops and Square Pegs of User Experience

When people surf to your MMO direct from the Web, do they get a feeling akin to the glottal-stop? Do they feel like they mentally “stumbled”, as the paradigms and user-interface go through a sudden change?

Embedded within an ordinary web-browser, does your MMO look like a square peg forced into a round hole?

The effects are subtle, but they decrease virality, decrease engagement. The effects are tiny, but with millions of web-users out there, they can be cumulative. Each time a user experiences this, you marginally shrink your maximum user-base, and you push your conversion rate down.

Why was I so shocked that Earth Eternal is (silently) Windows-only? (as is/was Free Realms, for that matter)

Well, largely because it reminded me of years ago, when you’d occasionally go to a website only to see:

“This site is only valid in Internet Explorer; you are not running that browser, so you are seeing this special page instead of the site. Please download IE now and then come back.” (or Netscape, or “desktop, but you are using a mobile phone”, etc)

History suggests that this is not a viable strategy when you’re fighting it out on the web…

I’ll know it when I see it

I’m waiting for one feature in a major MMO. I’ve seen it in a few “amateur” MMOs, and you get it on Facebook apps etc. It’s a fundamental expectation from the Web, and it is incredibly powerful:

Each piece of interesting content is *named* … it has a unique URL … so that I can directly tweet places, events, people, and things. I can bookmark conversations I’ve had. I can archive, I can cite, save, and return.

Bonus points for incorporating a bit.ly service in the client, so I can literally copy/paste direct into twitter

I’m hoping it’s out there already, and I just haven’t spotted it yet. When it comes, someone let me know; until then, I’ll be spending more time in flash games, and less in mainstream MMO’s. I prefer my gaming to be Web-compatible, thanks…

Categories
Uncategorized

Earth Eternal: Short Review

It’s a REALLY short review (but bear with me on this): they wouldn’t allow me to play.

That came as a major shock. I didn’t set out to write about EE, I just wanted to have a look for myself, but this changed my mind. I’m probably not the target audience anyway, so take this with salt, but IMHO it raises some interesting points.

Alpha is the new closed-beta; closed beta is the new beta; beta is the new launch

The game is officially in Beta, I believe. Is that an excuse for what follows?

IMHO and IME: No. Within the context of “MMO’s”, and especially in the context of the web (look at the various Google products that are technically still in beta), you can no longer hide behind that as you once could.

I did experience a few small parts of the EE experience along the way, so here they are:

  1. You are not allowed to play the game straight-off; you are required to provide personal info etc before even being shown a screenshot of the game, let alone running the game itself
  2. Copy/Paste is disabled in the registration form. It works for the “name” field, but not for the email and password fields.
  3. My main email address is on a domain name that “Email provider is not supported, try another email address.”

(in desperation, I tried bugmenot.com, but unfortunately Sparkplay has already deleted the only account on there)

For any mainstream PC MMO you’d call this a bizarre over-reaction on my part (most of them would already have taken my credit-card number, so few people will stop to quibble about email address issues). But this isn’t one of those games…

“Finally, a real MMO for your browser”

(that’s the Earth Eternal tagline)

O, RLY?

Let’s get this straight. 15 years after the web became popular, you’re telling me that “the browser-experience” is:

  1. It’s Windows-only (!!!) [BTW: despite *already knowing* that I’m running a Mac, they take your personal info *before* telling you this]
  2. I’m not allowed to try the product before I use it
  3. I’m not allowed to use an email address of my choice, I have to use one that the website-ownser “approves” of
  4. The website-owner specifically writes code to disable basic features of my web browser

In a world of Kongregate – where I can play several MMO’s *right now*, on any computer, some of them with no signup – you’ve got to be kidding me.

I’ve known Matt for years, and I’ve watched with interest the trajectory of Achaea / IRE / Sparkplay. It’s been an interesting journey, from the years of declaring that 3D graphics were great but unnecessary for commercial viability (with his own Achaea the poster-child), to today’s VC-funded 3D MMO.

There’s an irony there, especially if you dig out Matt’s frequent public statements on 3D games in the past – but in context it all makes sense. I mention it pre-emptively, so I can knock it down :). Yes, Matt said such things – but at the time he also actively proved that you could make a living off non-3D games. He showed that with controlled budgets, intelligent business models, and controlled scope … it worked. It was small revenues, small profits, but it was profitable. Many of the lessons that he shared have been picked up over the years and re-used by 3D games in the race to drive down their own costs, and adopt more competitive business models.

So … I don’t care about the change in stance (hey, the world has changed a lot in that time), but … I do care that someone who taught so many people how to avoid the high-barrier-to-entry business models manages to shut me out of playing his first graphical MMO.

Compare and contrast…

I’ve already mentioned Kongregate. The vast majority of games there require no login, including some small (but grind-tastic) MMOs. The most recent substantial MMO to appear on there *does* require that you already have a Kong account, sadly. (Although, incidentally, if you install the Kong Facebook app, it silently creates an invisible account + logs you in, so it’s possible you’d play that MMO without ever knowingly creating an account)

I suspect that Sherwood still doesn’t require reg – when I used to play, it certainly didn’t, and IIRC from conversations with Gene, this was something he actively chose to retain. Ironically, I couldn’t double-check this: Adobe’s current installer for Shockwave has a chunk of badly written code that attempts to shutdown “all web browsers” before it will run – even if I’m only installing in one of the browsers.

So … EE may be a great game … and it may be launchable from within a browser … but it’s still fighting the browser as much as complementing it.

Categories
games design

Judging Game Ideas: Net Quest

(if you haven’t read the main post explaining this, read this first)

Submission

  • Author: Chris Locher (calocher at gmail.com)
  • Title: “Net Quest: The Search for the win”
  • Word count: 500 words
Categories
computer games conferences games design games industry

Got an idea for a new game? Want some feedback and publicity?

In general, it seems that most entrants to game-design-competitions could get huge benefit from just a small amount of fairly simple advice and feedback.

I’ve been a judge on several game-design competitions. I’ve seen a lot of recurring mistakes and successes, and I’d like to see less of the former, more of the latter.

I’m hereby offering to provide *public* feedback to anyone who wants to send me their idea. I’ll publish your idea on my blog, along with my thoughts and reactions.

Here are my rules:

  1. MINIMUM of 300 words
  2. MAXIMUM of 500 words
  3. State whether it’s intended to be a Casual game, or a AAA game
  4. State whether it’s anonymous, or if you want me to include an email address and/or website URL (for people to contact you if they liked your idea)
  5. I will pick the most interesting ones, and publish the main text of your email, and my reactions, on this blog
  6. Email it to me directly, at adam.m.s.martin at gmail.com
  7. You must include the text: “I have read everything on the blog post, and understand and accept all the terms and conditions”
  8. If I can think of someone better-placed to comment on your idea, I *might* forward your idea to another industry-expert blogger, on the condition that they publish it on their blog with their own feedback, just as I would have done myself (unless you SPECIFICALLY state that you don’t want me to do this)

Some notes…

SXSW entrants

If you’re already entered for SXSW 2010, don’t bother sending me your idea until after the conference. I’m not going to allow this to interfere with that event.

Public vs. NDA

If you ask for an NDA, you’ve already lost. Forget it.

In general, the only people who would bother to “steal” your game idea are so incompetent / uncreative that the “best” game they could create – even using your idea! – would be so appallingly bad that no-one would ever play it or talk about it.

Spelling and grammar

I will judge you on your spelling and grammar. Get used to it. If you are so lazy you can’t be bothered to spellcheck your entry, you’ve just screamed:

“I AM TOO LAZY TO DESIGN OR MAKE A GAME, I WILL GIVE UP AS SOON AS IT GETS MILDLY CHALLENGING!!!”

Cheat, cheat, and cheat again

Anything you can do to make your pitch more convincing is acceptable. Within the 500 words limit, of course.

If you’ve got concept art, a downloadable MOD, or even better a faked gameplay video … include links!

Categories
computer games conferences dev-process games design games industry

Panel at SXSW – AAA Game Design competition

In a few months time, I’ll be in Austin, TX, sitting on a panel at SXSW … judging people’s ideas for new computer games. I’m going to make an offer here, now, to help people entering future competitions (FYI: it’s too late for SXSW 2010).

This is the fourth time I’ve been a reviewer or judge for a game-design competition/panel/etc, and I’m noticing some recurring themes. This is interesting, since everything I’ve judged has been completely different (different countries, different audiences, different rules).

Recurring themes of game-design competitions

One theme in particular is that a large percentage (circa 30%) of entries are depressingly bad; it seems that many of the wannabe-game-designers in the world are just plain lazy.

Another theme is that when someone has a good idea, they often don’t realise how good it is. They end up spending one sentence (or, if you’re lucky, two sentences) talking about the interesting part, and the next 500 words spewing out meaningless drivel that applies to every game ever made.

e.g. “you will have different choices to make in this game, there will be puzzles, and when you finish a puzzle you will get a reward, rewards will be used to unlock more levels, and to finish the game you have to get to the last level, which will be harder than the earlier levels, and … ”

… and: STFU. You’re boring. Do you think that I’ve never played a computer game before? Or do you just think I’m so stupid that I can’t remember what they’re like?

Some tragic outcomes

NB: this is just one example of what goes wrong with competition entries; I could give you countless more…

Some of the judging I’ve done was at the start of a competition, where the teams then spent the next 3+ months full-time actually building their games. On those occasions where a team was let through because we saw something special in their core idea, despite them waffling about a million other things, the team tended to make the EXACT SAME MISTAKE during production. They would spend 10% of their time on the cool idea, and 1% on each of 90 irrelevant distractions. They never won (surprise!).

For the times when we just judge ideas, not actual games, my distinct impression is that a lot of “good” ideas get thrown out because they’re submerged in so much rubbish that the judges either don’t see them … or assume the above is going to happen, and so they want to give the attention to other, more focussed teams.

So…

So, I’m offering anyone (anyone!) the chance to get some free feedback on their game idea, in the mindset of a competition judge. Maybe you’ll discover holes in your pitch, maybe you’ll discover ways to improve your core game … maybe it won’t help you at all :).

Details here: Got an idea for a new Game?