So this pretty much depicts me in the upcoming 2 months. Exams are done (woooo!) and the 2 months time period that is reserved for the research and actual writing process of my bachelor thesis has begun (boooo!). The topic is “Opportunities and risks of digital distribution and social media for game publishers and independent developers”.  That means Steam, Indie Games, Long Tail, Social Media Marketing, transformation of the developer – publisher relationship etc. Let’s go!

I’ve read a decent amount of literature about how to market a product from a business perspective by now. I have read far less about the creation process of the product itself from a creative perspective. “Ignore Everybody – And 39 other keys to creativity” by Hugh MacLeod had been mentioned in this blog post on gameproducer.net about target audiences for games. I decided to dig a little deeper and ordered the book, now that I’ve read it, here are my thoughts:

The book is a summary of articles from the author’s blog, which I hadn’t known of or read before. The gist is that Hugh MacLeod has worked in advertising as a creative for many years, got sacked and eventually started to make a living from the most mundane of all things: drawing cartoons on business cards. The experiences and conclusions he made during this journey are compiled in this book, 40 different advises to be exact. The book is quite short, you can finish it one afternoon/sitting, the writing style is very straight to the point, pithy, almost ruthless at times. The finest examples of his work as a “business card cartoonist” can be seen in the book, some of them which made me chuckle, or come off to me as remarkably true.

To get an idea some of the advises that are given are “don’t try to stand out from the crowd, avoid crowds altogether”, “the idea doesn’t have to be big, it just has to be yours” and “ignore everybody” after which the book is named after, which means basically that the more original your idea is, the less good avice other people can give you (which rings very true to me).

There is also some good advise on how to make a living as an artist, things to do or better not to do, the realization that selling out is actually harder than it looks and to better not turn your hobby into your job. Looking at my own history of turning my hobby to develop games into a fulltime job and quitting after 3 years that’s an especially juicy bit of advise to hear today.I’ve never regretted having spent 3 years as a professional designer, considering all that I’ve learnt, which is is still relevant to me today and will be in the future, in addition to all the amazing experiences that I’ve made during that time. In the book it’s a reoccuring theme though and these words of caution are definitely valid. One thing that is described as the “sex and cash theory” is extremely striking to me. Let me give you a personal example. I know a professional photographer who really loves his work and puts lots of passion into it, yet he spends a lot of time shooting catalogues for kitchen item manufacturers and other companies. That is “the cash” in our example, because it brings in the money to make a living and it finances the crazy projects he shoots for his portfolio and personal interest (the “sex”). These two things depend on each other, one doesn’t work without the other, but they are still seperate and while my photographer friend might have to put up with a lot of bullshit when shooting kitchen items, nobody has a word in his personal projects other than himself. When you turn your hobby into your job completely, you will soon realize that it is not the same as before, with the only difference that you do it all day, every day and you get paid to do it on top of that. That is something that many creative people, also in the games industry do not realize, before they find themselves in a tough spot (burnout included). “Do not quit your day job” is another given advise in the book.

You don’t have to agree with everything that Hugh MacLeod writes (I don’t), but it’s a refreshing, more practical and useful toolset to survive in the harsh enviroment that young artists find themselves in, than a “follow your heart” slogan and a leap of faith. Some of the chapters include rather obvious and less eye opening advise, but to make this clear, the book is not a guidebook on how to become succesful when following these 40 steps. It’s the experiences documented by somebody who has been through the ups and downs of being an artist and what others could learn from this. I could go on like this and type down the entire book, but that would defeat the purpose wouldn’t it?  To summarize: it’s a short but sweet read, definitely worth it.

P.S. In student time “tomorrow” means “Sunday”, so technically I’m not late!

Yes “books”. These rectangular objects made of paper that your parents read. Some of the newer ones even talk about games, so maybe there is reason for you to give it a try one day? I have talked about “A theory of fun” before, here is another game-design related book that I’d like to recommend:

“The Art of Game Design – A book of lenses” by Jesse Schell. He designs games and theme park rides for Disney, teaches game design and used to be chairman of the IGDA. The biggest difference between this book and Raph Koster’s theory of fun is that the later is (as the name suggests) a lot more theoretical. For people who want to know the ins and outs of game development, from concept phase, across production to selling your game, a book of lenses is for you. Needless to say that weighing in at 464 pages it is also a lot longer, but nobody asks you to read all chapters consecutively. If you’re wondering what the “lenses” mean in the title, they are tools, perspectives if you will, under which you can examine your game (this works for board games just as well as for videogames actually). It’s like a checklist for game design, if you can check off all points with a clear conscience, chances increase significantly that you’ve designed a good game. On second thought a “checklist” isn’t the most flattering description for a book, it sounds incredibly boring and unjustified in this case, since following the explanations in this book is quite entertaining and easy to follow actually. The book might not cover each and every single aspect of game design/game development, but it gets pretty close. Good read for complete novice to professional designer and a salute to my buddy Sten from Crytek who recommended it to me.

The second book I’d like to recommend is “Ignore Everybody” by Hugh MacLeod. It is a lot shorter and not specifically about games yet very relevant. My blogging time for the day is up though, so you’ll have to wait until tomorrow! :’(

Now that the times of me being tied to a chair to study for exams or to prepare other sorts of assignments are over (for now), I spend my freetime being tied to a chair playing the open beta of “Battlefield: Bad Company 2″. “Open” in the sense of: they send out some free keys to lucky people and to everybody who pre-ordered the game including myself. I have little reason to belive that I am going to regret my purchase, even if the beta only contains one playable gamemode/multiplayer. It is tons of fun. I haven’t had this much fun in a multiplayer shooter since…uuuh…COD:MW2. It’s different though. Aside from dedicated server support (oh snap), the key difference to me is that it REALLY is a teamplay game and I realize now how much I’ve missed it (hadn’t played the first “bad company”). In MW2, no matter which gamemode, it boils down to team deathmatch. There is nothing like a medic or engineer and that’s cool, I love MW2 multiplayer but it has grown a tad old on me. So I’m happy to move on to BC2 and I assume many others will do the same. So good news for EA, they’ve got good timing for a change and I can’t wait till March!

Speaking of good news. I’m more than a month late on this but I noticed today by complete coincidence that David Jaffe has re-opened his blog to the public and is back to actively updating. Sweet!

Also if you are interested in taking a look at that presentation about digital distribution which I held with a fellow student, we’ve designed it in prezi and you can check it out here. It’s only half the fun if you don’t have us sitting next to you, explaining the slides, but you can still look at the funny pictures from the internets which we added!! AWESOEM!!1!1

Busy times, so here comes a short update on what I’ve been up to lately: work for university mostly. Being the nerd that I am I try to give all assignments that I need to do a ‘games’ angle. That means the business plan I have to finish by the end of this month is about an ‘independent games’ studio. The cool part is that a game associated to the studio is actually in development and if things go well,  we’re going to pull this through and put the plan into action. So I’ve been doing a lot of research about the indie games market and digital distribution. Speaking of which there is a ‘Business English’ presentation in 2 weeks as well, I’m going to talk about digital distribution in games but also in different media (music, movies). Last but not least two exams scheduled for this month, one of them being ‘media management’. Cool thing is that we don’t need to be experts in each type of media to get the points in this exam, if we can apply the knowledge to one industry we should be fine. I’m probaby going to pick Activision-Blizzard as an example for strategic management. So maybe all this research and studying will benefit this blog and you in some way very soon? Let’s keep our fingers crossed!

By the way, the best part in the chapter about videogames in my book for media- and internet-management is that its first paragraph says “Despite this market’s high sales volume it has been underestimated for the longest time, since it has been commonly considered to be a  niche market targeted at kids, teenagers and freaks.”

Thank you Prof. Dr. Smartypants! Back to work…

Let me first put this into bigger context: EA’s top management recently announced the company’s new direction: less titles, focus on succesful/proven brands (that means more sequels), disinvestments in risky titles/cancellation of risky games still in development (that means less new stuff) and expansion of the online business (social games etc.). That ties in with their decisions to acquire Playfish, close down Pandemic Studios and overall let go an assload of people.

Their decision to expand aggressively in the online area, I think that’s a good move. After two tough years for EA during which Actiblizz and 2K Games left the former #1 in the dust more than once I believe such a move forward is necessary. When you don’t move enough units, you need to cut your costs and realign your business, that means having to let employess go, it is sad but all this makes sense. Cutting a deal with Elevation Partners to buy VG Holding (that owned Bioware and Pandemic) for $ 810 Million and closing down half of it 2 years later does not. I won’t go into detail but Riccitiello’s role (EA CEO and one of the founders of Elevation Partners)  is very controversial in this and in retrospective was most probably not a good deal for EA…also if simply moving your brands to the online space is enough remains to be seen and this is what brings us to the new “Medal of Honor”.

If EA’s new strategy is to copy everything by the competition that has proven to be succesful in order to minimize risks, then I don’t think that this is healthy business. There is not a whole lot known about the game, so I try to hold myself back with further judgement, but the timing of this announcement during the whole “Call of Duty – Modern Warfare 2″ success story is so awful, that it makes the jump of the MOH franchise to modern days look like a lame copycat. Like an idea that comes out of a marketing department, not a game designer’s mind. If the next announcement by EA is going to be a social network game app about “farming”, you’ll know I was right…

Let me look in my magic crystal ball one more time and make another prediction. Tomorrow (Dec 12th) the first footage of the new MOH is going to be presented during Spike TV’s “Video Game Awards 2009″ (that is not part of the prediction, that is already public you silly bear). My crystal ball tells me that it is going to be a grotesque industry circle jerk highlighted by commercials. Don’t believe me? Just look at their website they have even got a “BEST INDEPENDENT GAME FUELED BY DEW” (they mean the sponsor “Mountain Dew”). It’s the same soda company who used to sponsor the “MOST ADDICTIVE GAME FUELED BY DEW” a while back and SURPRISE! Halo 3 won. I appreciate that they stopped making up random categories for product placements but the fact that they now added their tag to the “indie games” section DOES NOT MAKE IT ANY BETTER!

The traditional PC gamer is a very conservative being. He has spent countless hours in front of his computer, playing FPS games passionately and competitively for years. He could never imagine playing games with a controller, because consoles are for n00bs. He spends his money wisely and invests in products by developers that he knows won’t disappoint. The PC gamer doesn’t like surprises, he doesn’t like undemanded change.

When an Infinity Ward employee broke the news last month that the PC version of “Call of Duty 4 – Modern Warfare 2″ won’t support dedicated servers a firestorm of negative feedback by enraged PC players unleashed upon them. IW has decided to replace dedicated server support with a matchmaking system called “IWnet” to allow an easier, safer, more accessible approach to the game’s multiplayer part. In retrospective this decision was probably as smart as sticking your dick in a bee hive. A petition to bring back dedicated servers is currently at 178248 signatures.

Before anyone jumps to conclusions, I am myself a passionate PC gamer and I have played the first Modern Warfare for a long time in a competitive clan. In fact the way I found these players was by regularly playing on the same server, so I can understand why some players are upset, but maybe we should first try IWnet before bashing it? It doesn’t sound that bad! Remember when Steam was introduced along with Half-Life 2? I don’t hear anyone complain about this anymore!

Next thing you know footage is leaked from a level that puts the player in the shoes of a terrorist and tells him to cause a massacre among civilians in an airport. The footage got pulled from the web by Activision, obviously to avoid a “violence in videogames” discussion in the mass media before the release of the game. I’ve watched the footage and although the mission’s content is quite disturbing, even to me as a seasoned FPS player, you can’t judge the whole game by just one level. Just like you can’t judge a movie by watching one scene. It is taken out of context and I’m sure that IW thought more to this than what is known thus far.

The list goes on, a viral video for MW2 is pulled back after people started to complain and now that a pirated copy of the XBOX 360 version is already circulating bittorrent tracker sites weeks before the game’s official release, more and more (not so welcome) surprises leak to the public (let’s see how the console crowd will react to this).

So things aren’t looking so good on the PR front, what about sales? Analyst Michael Pachter estimates that MW2 will easily sell more than 10 Million copies in Q4. Considering that MW sold 7 million in Q4 2008 this doesn’t sound too far fetched.

To be honest I am more interested in how “Assassin Creed 2″ is going to perform when it’s going head to head with MW2. Let’s face it, MW2 is going to sell shitloads, with or without dedicated servers. EA pussied out by pushing the release of “Army Of Two 2″ (how stupid does that title read…) to next year, so is Ubisoft being brave or just plain dumb? I heard they think the target group of MW2 is a different one than for AC2. Bonne chance!

Gearbox Software CEO and founder Randy Pitchford has caused a bit of a stirr by proclaiming that Valve Software is cutting too much from the revenues generated by sales via their digital distribution platform Steam, hitting especially small development studios and since Steam is not an independent company (but part of Valve Software), everyone is helping to fill the pockets of a competitor (or games don’t get as much exposure as Valve’s titles -> conflict of interest).

Tripwire Interactive’s CEO John Gibson sees this a bit differently and shares his experiences with Steam from the perspective of a start-up games company. Basically he is saying that Randy Pitchford has no idea what he’s talking about and that Steam has helped them a great deal to get their company off the ground, as opposed to traditional brick and mortar publishers. A small piece of opinion by Garry Newman (creator of G-MOD), who also made mostly good experiences with selling his game via Steam, can be found here.

Why is then Mr Pitchford trying to jump to the rescue when there is no need for help? It looks to me like someone’s getting nervous about being increasingly dependant on the distribution service of a big competitor. Like Garry says: “Steam IS the PC gaming platform”. Then again there are conflicts of interest with 1st party titles of big publishers and the console giants like Microsoft and SONY too, so why panic?

Either way, it’s an interesting discussion and I wish the individually negotiated royalty sharing schemes between Valve and each developer weren’t under non-disclosure agreements, so one could make an objective opinion of whether someone’s actually beeing greedy or not.

I have caught the MMO virus once again and been playing “Age of Conan” for 2 weeks or so. I was first going to try “Aion”, it just launched in Europe, but I hadn’t tried the beta and spending 50-60 € on something that I haven’t read or seen anything too convincing of was a little too risky. I had been following up on the development of AoC years back before it was released, but then lost interest because most of the feedback I heard was so negative. Now that it runs under the “Green Pepper” label (budget title series) and cost me 7 € including 30 days of free playing I tried it and I can’t understand why so many people dislike it.

Maybe it’s just badmouthing, WoW fanboys that jump on the hatewagon or players put off by too many bugs, to be honest I cannot draw any comparisons, I am just saying that it runs fine for me as of now and that it’s tons of fun. Maybe the endgame content and PvP isn’t as good as in WoW, I can’t tell yet as I’ve “only” reached level 32 today but I’m still enjoying it.

I like the Conan universe, finally an MMO without cutesy nightelves and dwarves. You can tell that they hired fantasy writers to write the quests, there is a lot of work put into the dialogues and even when you come across a “collect x amounts of this” quest, it still doesn’t feel as dull as in WoW.

The combat system plays a significant role in this too obviously. Instead of just selecting an enemy and repeatedly clicking on your left mouse button, you can type in combos to increase the damage and hit multiple targets depending on your stance. Visuals are “good” considering this is an MMO.

Interesting move by Funcom to cut 20% of its worldwide staff and to relocate the remaining employees in Norway to Canada by the way. Looks like Montréal just won over another studio thanks to their tax breaks, but that’s something along the lines…to summarize: when you are into MMOs or like games such as the “Gothic” series or “The Witcher”, give “Age of Conan” a try. Now Funcom, where is my cheque?

“You have received a farmville gift request” – sound familiar? If you use facebook, chances are that you have come in touch with apps like “Mafia Wars” or “FarmVille” one way or another. These “social games” by Zynga enjoy unprecedented levels of popularity among social network users and show how game developers can leverage platforms such as facebook or myspace. How popular you ask? FarmVille for instance attracts more than 33 Million active users each month. Something that has cluttered my facebook homepage and inbox with messages about newly gained levels and virtual gifts, was more a general annoyance to me more than anything else, is now in my eyes a very clever way to develop and market your game. Let me explain why.

Instead of developing their own internet portal to publish their game and spend a lot of money on advertisements to spread the word about it, they built the game “on top of” facebook and let the users do the talking themselves, for free. Speaking of free, playing the game itself is free. The money comes from mico transactions, purchases of virtual items and buildings that you can place on your virtual farm. You can get these items for free as well, it just takes a lot longer and some people don’t seem to have that patience, so they more than happily pull out their credit card to catch up with their friends. You can add your facebook friends as neighbours, send them gifts and proudly share all events during the game with the people in your network. The game actively promotes this, a viral marketing technique that both the players as well as the developer profits from.

There are many games like Mafia Wars or FarmVille already out there, but the way facebook is used as a common platform and your network of friends is embedded in the game, makes it so much more interesting. Now don’t get me wrong, these games are definitely not for me, but that is the idea, they are not meant to be. I’m a hardcore player, FarmVille for example is targeted at a female audience and the game picks them up right where they spend lots of their internet/computer time: social networks. The men behind the game are former EA folks by the way: Mark Skaggs, Lead Designer at Zynga, talks about FarmVille in a recent interview which can be found here. Browsing through the “about” section over at Zynga.com you might find more familiar faces, such as Bing Gordon, former EA creative officer, among the investors of the company.

These kinds of games really get me thinking, if I wanted to develop an online game, would it really have to be a fully fleshed out 3D MMO that comes in a box and requires a subscription model (+ micro transactions) to pay the bills? How long and how many people would it take to build it? Will enough people buy it to cover the costs? Is my target audience even big enough? I don’t think this a truly disruptive innovation we are looking at, I don’t think the impact on the existing games market will be big, but I believe it’s worthwhile (especially for start-ups) to consider social networks as a platform for your game (if you are not too busy designing an iPhone game already)