Monthly Archives: March 2009
OnLive investors out to lunch?
The revolutionary game streaming system OnLive was announced at GDC this week and has prompted a flurry of press about the future of the games industry. Their presentation was ultra slick and all the right buzz words were in place.
Cloud computing… tick
End to piracy… tick
Ground breaking video compression… tick
Streaming HD video… tick
Thin client… tick
Play top end games without having to buy a top end rig… tick
The last of those is obviously aimed at potential end-users. Those people who would love to play high end PC games without the cost of buying/upgrading a high end rig. Just imagin “owning” a top of the range rig for just a low subsciption payment. Sounds too good too be true doesn’t it?
Moving on I think the other items are aimed at a different target demographic. Not the cost concious/cheap/poor gamer but the rather more affluent potential investors. As mentioned above it had the slick launch/presentation and all the latest buzz words, so what are the odds they already have a bunch of investors lined up ready to sign up if OnLive successfully gets through this GDC launch?
I think the odds of investors biting are good but the odds of the service delivering are rather less so. Like the “Leet rig on the cheap” concept that is going to attract end users the technology claims just seem too good to be true. I am sure the system does work in the lab – under controlled conditions. Sadly however the real world doesn’t much care to be controlled and neither does the Internet.
Video compression/streaming – they are talking about being able to compress and stream video far better and faster than anything currently on the market. Not a little better…. way better. Download any streaming video on the internet and there will almost certainly be a delay before it starts as your system buffers the video. It does this because the Internet isn’t a stable delivery platform… not even close. The buffering allows the video download to get ahead of your viewing so that when there is a lag in the download you can keep viewing smoothly and then, hopefully, the video download will catch up again when the connection quality returns.
Of course you can’t buffer game play because the game has to react to what you are doing with the controller now, not 5 seconds ago. So, even if their video compression is as good as they say it is, the Internet isn’t. The ability to provide a stable, close to real-time video stream at the quality they are proposing simply isn’t something they have control over. This sort of problem might not be an issue with something like a turn based game or an adventure but anything with an element of twitch control, such as a racing game, platformer or shooter will suffer badly when the quality of the connection drops. Far worse than current games that only need to transmit small amounts of 3D data.
The other issue with OnLive is that they are using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Yes, cloud computing probably is the future for many games. Run your game on the server, prevent or reduce piracy, eliminate stock problems (you still sell at retail but the box just has a redmption code for a download) and remove the need for (obvious) patches. However all this can be done without the need for a giant (some may say Science Fiction) leap forward in video compression and a complete overhaul of the internet.
I am sure this service will make it to market in some form and I am sure that some games will appear but as for it being the future…. far from it. Personally I think it will be a phantom memory in a few years.
As usual the guys at Penny Arcade have things pretty well nailed.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/3/25/
Skype – tech 4 life
Filed under Tech4Life – the VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) video-calling software Skype is one of those bits of tech that has made a real positive impact on my life. I recently relocated to Hong Kong to live but am working with a company in the UK and attending Monday morning management meetings. A few years ago that would have entailed a really brutal 12 hour commute or the use of a time machine. Now they take a laptop into the meeting room and load up Skype and we are cooking with gas. In fact the team in question are, as I type, attending GDC 2009 in San Francisco and we have just had a quick video update on various topics before I turn in for bed and they head out for breakfast.
I have been working remotely with clients for a number of years and I have to say that video conferencing makes a huge difference. It is so much easier to communicate when you you can hear and see the people you are talking to. This is especially true for distributed development teams where you need to give feedback (constructive criticism) to a remote team mate. Email and text based IM just isn’t as good in situations like that for transmitting the nuances of what you are saying. It’s far easier to take offence when a message is in email form than it is when you can see and hear the person offering up the critique.
Résumé tips.
There are good ways to go about getting a job and then.....
Breaking in to the games industry can be really tough. Just like other creative industries, such as movies and TV, there is a lot of competition for relatively few entry level positions. No surprise then that one of the common requests on the IGDA’s Breaking In Forum is for a review/help with a résumé. While helping with these requests I have noticed that there are three common mistakes that crop up again and again. The first is failing to give useful/specific information, the second is padding and the third is waffling. In order to produce a great résumé you need to ensure you avoid these simple mistakes.
1. Failing to give useful/specific information.
Applicants often mention that they were responsible for XYZ on a previous project or are experienced at programming in C++ but how does the person reading your résumé knows what you mean when you say “responsible for”? You need to clearly but briefly explain what exactly you did – give numbers, time-frames etc so that readers can understand the value of what you did.
Saying “Eperienced in C++” is meaningless without detail so give an example such as “Developed a rigid body physics engine in C++ in X time for Y project”. Don’t write an essay about the features of your physics engine, leave it to the interviewer to pick up on that if it is something that interests them.
Note: You should also plan for any interview by giving some thought to what challenges you faced while developing your system and how you overcame them.
2. Padding
While the problem above was one of omission, padding is a problem of inclusion. It is most often seen in the résumés of entry level applicants who apply for jobs which require “3 years industry experience” (Note: It is important to understand the difference between Work Experience and Industry Experience). Entry level applicants who don’t understand the difference, or just want to try anyway, often pad their résumé with information which isn’t applicable. Examples of things that aren’t relevant experience for a games programmer would include…
A weekend job at CompUSA
Skilled in the use of Microsoft Word
Guild Master in WOW
CompUSA – When listing work experience it should be applicable work experience doing game development. Working retail, even at a computer or game store isn’t applicable work experience for a game developer. You could mention a university placement at a games company or at a company where you were actually doing some form of actual development (no, IT support wouldn’t count). You could also mention a completed game you made in your spare time or a mod project as these are game development, but don’t list them under work/industry experience. Put them under “other experience” rather than work/industry experience because there is a considerable difference between doing something in your spare time and working in a commercial environment under the sort of restrictions/deadlines that companies face.
Microsoft Word – Likewise don’t list basic skills such as word processing when applying for a technical position. It is assumed that a programmer will have adequate keyboard skills so it isn’t worth listing. Worse still it clearly indicates to someone reading your résumé that you either don’t understand what is important for the position in question or that you are desperate to pad your résumé so that it seems more impressive.
Note: Unless you send a hand written cover letter and résumé your keyboard skills are going to be pretty self evident.
Guild Master – This may come as a surprise to a lot of people but being addicted to playing games isn’t actually a qualification for a game development job. I have worked with some really great programmers and artists/animators who never played games. Their passion was programming/art – making games and not playing games. If you want to list gaming as one of your interests that is fine but it isn’t a a qualification for a development position and you shouldn’t treat it as such.
3. Waffling
Otherwise known as the age old art of managing to use twenty two words where five would have been more than sufficient. [see what I did there?] Again this often occurs when people are worried that their résumé isn’t strong enough. They try to make up for weaknesses by going to excessive lengths to explain about various elements in their résumé. The problem with waffling is that, rather than making things clearer, it usually makes a résumé less readable and thus hides what positive attributes you do have.
“I decided that a good quality game needed [system X] and so I spent my spare time designing it, then convinced my boss that it would be useful to the project. I then wrote and tested it myself in C++”
Not only is the above sentence overly wordy but the applicant was so busy trying to explain how good they are that they failed to provide the really significant details making them guilty of mistake number one above. You should clearly and briefly explain what you did, how long it took and what the benefits were. “I spent X months developed a level editing tool that allowed designers to assemble and test game levels 15% faster than the previous tool-set.” – You obviously need to be prepared to have an interviewer quiz you on the claims made.
Conclusion
If the above problems occur in your résumé it is a clear indication that you have trouble communicating or that you are desperate for a job or lack confidence in your abilities. Interviewers and HR staff will spot these mistakes immediately and mark you down accordingly. If an employer advertises a position requiring three years of industry experience they won’t be fooled by someone including their two years of part-time work at McDonalds and a year at CompUSA. Employers do hire entry level staff and it is understood that these individuals won’t have industry experience. If you fit into that category then providing an honest (and short) résumé will be more likely to get you a job than attempting to mislead an interviewer.
Update: I came across a post that links to another useful résumé related article at Darius Kazemi’s blog http://tinysubversions.blogspot.com/2009/04/writing-resume-for-game-company.html
Related articles/posts: Industry Experience (and where to get some)
Image used in this post http://www.flickr.com/photos/azrainman/1004637172/ used under the Creative Commons license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/
No port in a (financial) storm
It used to be the case that selling your studio to a multi-national publisher was a great way to secure the future of your company. Massive financial resources would be available to a develop to create those great games you had always wanted to make, which would in-turn get major marketing support as the publisher owned the studio and the brand and thus stood to benefit fully from its success.
Unfortunately it seems that publishers are no longer a safe harbour due to the economic tornado that is sweeping the world. Gone are the days when a cash strapped publisher would cancel a few 3rd party games to reduce outgoings and shore up their cash-flow. Today’s multi-national publishers are listed companies with major shareholders to keep sweet and the only way to do that is via sweeping cost reductions. A few project cancellations are no longer enough – now they are required to shed staff in their thousands and close/sell off their own studios in order to reassure their shareholders that strong action is being take to cut costs. THQ have just announced that several studios will be offloaded.
Quote from Develop online article Another studio shake-down at THQ.
“Big Huge Games is the studio that might potentially get the chop, unless a buyer is found, while Heavy Iron and Incinerator are to be turned into independents.”
At least the studios in question haven’t been locked and the staff given their marching orders. But it does take serious planning, considerable finance and a hat full of luck to succeed when an entire studio finds themselves suddenly independent.
Other recent example include Microsoft’s closure of Ensemble Studios (Gamasutra: – Ensemble Studios To Close) and Aces Game Studio (GI.biz: – Microsoft closes Aces Game Studio). However, despite the difficulties caused to staff by sudden redundancies there is a small hint of a silver lining that goes along with the storm, which is the birth of new studios springing up after the storm has passed. Three new studios have been born from the remnants of Ensemble Studios – Robot Entertainment, Windstorm Studios and Bonfire Studios. Hopefully they will all be successful enough to grow and flourish until they become a suitable acquisitions target for a big publisher.
Steve “Snowy” White and the Seven Directors
Deep in the Enchanted Forest stands a lovely little cottage; home to Steve White and the Seven Directors. Steve, known as “Snowy” to his pals, is the sole employee of a game development company Enchantia Software. He’s the sole employee because all seven of the other people working there are Company Directors.
The Seven Directors previously worked for the evil Baron of Manchester but two years ago they ran off into the Enchanted Forest and set up their own game development studio, Enchantia Software, where they could make games without being told what to do by the big boss. Steve is pals with one of the Directors and recently joined the company as a game tester. Unfortunately he isn’t getting to do much testing as the game seems to be spending rather a long time in development (far longer than their Publisher was led to believe) and hasn’t even reached Alpha test yet.
Obviously Steve is only a tester so he is not really qualified to judge but it seems that the Directors spend an endless amount of time arguing over various game features and seldom actually come to a decision. Currently the management team is made up of three programmers who are Joint Technical Directors and four artists – one Art Director, one Animation Director, one Creative Director and a Modelling Director. Unfortunately the one Director they don’t seem to have is a Managing Director (because they are all equal and couldn’t actually agree on who should be the MD – or if they even needed one). In addition they don’t have a properly defined decision pipeline – a process to ensure that decisions actually get made in a reasonable time frame. This is because they all want to be able to make decisions, but none of them want anyone else to be able to make a decision they don’t agree with. As a result all the Directors need to be involved in every decision, even if it doesn’t relate to their job. So, even when a decision does get made, it takes many more person hours than it should and stops people from doing their actual jobs.
Poor management structure means slow or non-existent decision making which will damage your company and your game. There are several possible causes:
1. Trust – put simply partners don’t trust each other enough to let someone (other than themselves) be “in charge”. Instead of focusing on the importance of making decisions they focus on keeping control. You don’t get the best out of an artist or programmer by standing over them and telling them how you would do their job. The same applies to management. You need to let someone do their job, trust them that they will make the best decision they can then have regular but focused meetings to update each other on status and, if necessary, discuss how and why a decision was made.
2. Your management team is missing the necessary skills – there is no one with an obvious management ability and the whole management team know this. In a case like this it is perfectly acceptable to hire someone to be a manager so that everyone else can focus on what they are good at.
3. The founders don’t understand the difference between management and ownership. Management is a job just like artist or programmer. A good manager’s job is to enable the team to get their work done – to decide what is really needed to achieve the companies aims and what they can do without. Ownership is just that. You own a share of the company in return for the investment you put in, when the company started, and the risk you took. For that you (hopefully) get a financial reward in the future if the company is successful and is sold to a publisher. Just because you own the company that doesn’t mean you need to be a Manager/Director. In fact your shares may be worth a lot more in the future if you let someone else do the managing while you get on with what you are good at/enjoy.
Image used in this post courtesy of Kelly Hamilton at junglestudio.com
Strawdog Studios » Turbo Duck
Strawdog Studios have just announced their first iPhone /iPod Touch title “Turbo Duck” Strawdog Studios » Turbo Duck. The game is a fun arcade game in which you must guide a rubber duck around a pool to collect floating flags, while avoiding the obstacle’s which fill the pool over time. Hazards include toy boats, submarines, mines etc.
The game has twenty levels and will be availble by the end of March. Price details and more screenshots over at the Strawdog Studios site (http://www.strawdogstudios.com/games/turboduck).
Sixth Sense – tech 4 life
This video from Ted.com is a very interesting presentation given by Pattie Maes from MIT about a project being spearheaded by one of her students Pranav Mistry. The system is a wearable device that recognises what is in front of you (a person, a product, a newspaper) and can project meta data related to that person/item onto any nearby surface (including your hand). The downside with the current WIP technology is that everyone else around you needs to wear a plain white T-Shirt and everything needs a blank white space on it to project onto. Joking aside though there are some really cool applications shown in the video including the simple wrist watch projection and the photography/image sorting.