Fat Cat Lim (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} fatcatlim) wrote,@ 2005-10-15 17:50:00 |
|
Asian Game Developers Summit (Day 2)
Pictures to hopefully follow by tonight. I've been really busy the last couple days and was unable to post a summary of the 2nd day of the summit until today. I still haven't scanned the photos and I'm back on 56K back home. Plus playing Ico is eating up my time. ;) A word of caution though: it's super-long so I apologise for anyone who finds reading a chunk of text a chore. Again, yet another weakness in my style of writing that I've yet to improve on.
While the majority of the presentations for the 1st day of the Asian Game Developer Summit were about the aspect of game designing, the 2nd day presentations were more focused on the production and business aspect of game development. The last presentation of Day 1, "Funding Game Companies" were indicative of the theme of business and finance for Day 2 as they play an important role in the game industry.
Things kicked off with Chris Avellone from Obsidian Entertainment giving a general guideline for local game developers on how to recognise the aspects of good game designers. They include the willingness to play their games a lot and do research, cross-pollinate between game genres to draw good ideas from them, and not being married to their ideas when they know that an idea is not working. He also talked on what to ask game designer applicants during the hiring process and what to look for in a prospective employee.
Chris Avellone. The slide's text: Game designers play games that are NOT fun.
"Micro Transaction based Business Models and its Impact on Game Development" by Mike Ooi from Phoenix Games Studio was a brief talk about the micro-transaction based business model that has been embraced by several MMOGs in which players only pay for a specific item or service. One of its strengths is that it provides users to customise characters for a small cost, and this is most evident in an MMORPG game such as Maple Story. This business model can be very profitable as players tend to be more willing to make several smaller virtual purchases, not realising that it all adds up to a larger amount than the standard subscription business model (much like a sushi train bar).
Mike Ooi
One of the challenges that the micro-transaction business model faces is the need to carefully manage the balance and economy of the game with the introduction of an external influences such as that of the micro-transaction transaction. Legality issues also rises such as the gray area of virtual item ownership. There is also a need to ensure that new virtual clothes, items and weapons are constantly provided to satisfy consumers' wants and ensuring that they do not have too much or long of a lasting impact upon the gameplay an community. The designer has to be included during the process of setting up this type of business model so he knows how to design the game items around it. That said, micro-transactions can be a form of direct revenue streaming between the developers and players as it reduces the middlemen.
I initially thought that all of the AGDS talks would be of the same relaxed pace after a day of sitting in at the talks but I was rudely shocked when I attended Chris Natsuume's talk on "Embracing Innovation in Production". His talk was presented at break neck speed as he rapidly switched slides every minute to get his detailed and lengthy talk on game production. To date, I find his talk the most informative and thought-provoking among the presentations scheduled at this year's AGDS.
Chris Natsuume
Relating his experience on producing Far Cry, Chris quickly ran through a list of Do's and Don'ts for producing a game, including:
- Work on the hard stuff first. It'll save time in the long run.
- Improve upon the game's winning features first, i.e. the game's main selling points
- Ugly & Fast trumps Pretty & Slow.
- Iteration, iteration, iteration. Use a same game scenario and reuse it over and over by adding different elements to the scenario (harder enemies, different background, different attack patterns).
- If it's not on screen, it's just bullshit (his words)
- Tools need to be prototyped too.
- You're not done prototyping until it's fun.
He also outlined 3 Japanese work practices: Kaizen (constant improvement), Pokayoke (idiot proofing), and Heijunka (Production smoothing), all of which were essential for efficient game production by reducing time and costs. He also recommended enforcing a common language/system for players so that players don't have to figure out too much or get too frustrated.
There was a lot valuable and useful stuff to soak in during the whole presentation and I highly recommend that anyone who is interested in game development read his slides when they become available on the AGDS site.
Danien Chee was the next speaker to give his presentation on "Fine tuning the Development pipeline". Similar to Chris's previous talk, he emphasised on the need for proper documentation, automation and fast iteration. He also played a demo of tweaking data in a level editor in real time, which allows faster and easier comprehension for art designers. People need to be taught on how to use the pipeline; to identify and solve problems as well as remove bottlenecks in the user's workflow.
Danien Chee
After the coffee break, I returned to the same room to listen to Josh Galloway and his presentation on "Approaching Game Publishers". In this talk, Josh gave general details about the publishing and development process, such as the amount of royalties paid to new and veteran developer teams and knowing the publisher's needs, which are:
- fun games, but marketable to specific target audience
- products with consistent level of production quality
- on time and under budget
- development that can consistently provide all of the above.
Josh Galloway
He also explained the process of what a game developer should do when approaching a publisher, including knowing the company and custom tailoring one's pitch to the company's practices and content. When contacting a publisher, there are usually more than one person responsible for development sumission. One should personally contact the publisher by phone and enquire who handle content submissions, as well as call and ask by name the next day. Give a brief intro and ask about the content submission policies.
It's vital that a phone contact is obtained as emails usually tend to be not answered. "Bluebirds" or unsolicited content submission mailed to the publisher are rarely taken seriously. The most important element of a product pitch is the demo, and most game publishers will not sign on a game if the demo is of poor quality.
After the presentation, he let the attendees take a look at the original 'pitch' proposals that the game developers had sent to game publishers, such as Ground Control II, Zoo Tycoon, and City of Heroes. It was pretty cool to get a first hand look at the proposals but unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures of the proposals content. Basically it included a brief description about the game, its main features, graphics engine, screenshots, and the developer team background. Such pitch proposals are usually not less than 5 pages long or more than 15-20 pages long.
Photocopies of the original pitch proposals to game publishers
The last talk of the day that I attended was on "Video Game Art" by Kevin Larken. Like the talk on auteur theory in interactive storytelling, the talk featured a subject matter that was close to my heart. Kevin began with brief examination on the evolution of popular art, starting with material from Marc Duchamp's Fountain and L.H.O.O.Q. and Andy Warhol's iconic pictures of Brillo and the Campbell Soup can. He then went on to say that Art itself was a vessel to convey a message and that it had to have a purpose.
Kevin Larken
Is there no such thing as Game Art? He pointed out that today's art has become more diluted and market driven. For most games today, it is the concept artist that 'breathes life' into the game whereas the 3D artist, texture artist, character artist, environment artist, etc that gives the art meaning. Art can only be as good as the technology allow, as there is a vast of a difference between the game graphics that of the early NES-era to those of the Halo-generation. However even though our generation is capable of creating 'artistic' style of graphics in today's game, it must be identifiable and clear or else it would only puzzle players that are not accustomed to cubism-like graphics in games.
Mario Bros is awesome in any era
Good art in games is generally never noticed because the players are always too immersed in the world whereas bad art is very noticeable, making it insulting to both the player and the game itself. Good 'game art' is a flawless representation of an overall creative vision, giving the game a cohesive essence that is more believable, identifiable, and playable.
He later gave the interesting example of two casual online Yahoo! games: Bejeweled and Jewel Quest. Both had similar gameplay, yet Bejeweled is more popular than Jewel Quest because of its more striking, pattern matching graphics. It also fitted into the game maker's target market where female players prefered its bright distinguishable graphics, which lead to his explanation that players don't care too much about art but more about presentation and graphics. The difference between art and graphics is that players care more about realism and attention to detail. For many games today, its graphics is the main selling point though game developers should take precautions in going overboard; it has to complement the game.
Kevin also explained that most players play the games they like because they know what to expect, so he cautioned against mixing genres unless it's on purpose. While a game may stray from reality, it should never stray from sanity. He finally advised game designers in looking at what's been done right before and borrowing it, not only from other games but also from other genres such as camera angles in popular/classic movies.
My only beef with this talk was that throughout the presentation, he implied that unless the game makes money on the market, it is not 'art' for it did not serve its purpose as a commoditable product. During the Q&A, Sarah Kay objected with his definition and argued that even though a game may not do well or is not in the market, that doesn't necessarily mean that it is any lesser a work of 'art' compared to bestselling titles. Pretty interesting Q&A as the definition of art was thrown up in the air for discussion.
A lucky draw was held soon after the last presentation, where the grand prize was a white PSP value pack. Unfortunately, it was only for attendees and being a member of the media I was disallowed from participating. Still, I managed to get out from paying USD60 from the summit (though I was initially prepared to pay as an attendee) and got free meals. Overall, it was a very insightful summit and I'm glad to have attended it. Hopefully when it is held again next year (probably in Singapore), I'd have the opportunity to participate in it again. Here's to the next Asian Game Developers Summit. :3
Other pictures
Gabby Dizon answering Q&A. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend his talk
Lucky Draw winners
Organisers and volunteers. Great job guys!
Pictures to hopefully follow by tonight. I've been really busy the last couple days and was unable to post a summary of the 2nd day of the summit until today. I still haven't scanned the photos and I'm back on 56K back home. Plus playing Ico is eating up my time. ;) A word of caution though: it's super-long so I apologise for anyone who finds reading a chunk of text a chore. Again, yet another weakness in my style of writing that I've yet to improve on.
While the majority of the presentations for the 1st day of the Asian Game Developer Summit were about the aspect of game designing, the 2nd day presentations were more focused on the production and business aspect of game development. The last presentation of Day 1, "Funding Game Companies" were indicative of the theme of business and finance for Day 2 as they play an important role in the game industry.
Things kicked off with Chris Avellone from Obsidian Entertainment giving a general guideline for local game developers on how to recognise the aspects of good game designers. They include the willingness to play their games a lot and do research, cross-pollinate between game genres to draw good ideas from them, and not being married to their ideas when they know that an idea is not working. He also talked on what to ask game designer applicants during the hiring process and what to look for in a prospective employee.
Chris Avellone. The slide's text: Game designers play games that are NOT fun.
"Micro Transaction based Business Models and its Impact on Game Development" by Mike Ooi from Phoenix Games Studio was a brief talk about the micro-transaction based business model that has been embraced by several MMOGs in which players only pay for a specific item or service. One of its strengths is that it provides users to customise characters for a small cost, and this is most evident in an MMORPG game such as Maple Story. This business model can be very profitable as players tend to be more willing to make several smaller virtual purchases, not realising that it all adds up to a larger amount than the standard subscription business model (much like a sushi train bar).
Mike Ooi
One of the challenges that the micro-transaction business model faces is the need to carefully manage the balance and economy of the game with the introduction of an external influences such as that of the micro-transaction transaction. Legality issues also rises such as the gray area of virtual item ownership. There is also a need to ensure that new virtual clothes, items and weapons are constantly provided to satisfy consumers' wants and ensuring that they do not have too much or long of a lasting impact upon the gameplay an community. The designer has to be included during the process of setting up this type of business model so he knows how to design the game items around it. That said, micro-transactions can be a form of direct revenue streaming between the developers and players as it reduces the middlemen.
I initially thought that all of the AGDS talks would be of the same relaxed pace after a day of sitting in at the talks but I was rudely shocked when I attended Chris Natsuume's talk on "Embracing Innovation in Production". His talk was presented at break neck speed as he rapidly switched slides every minute to get his detailed and lengthy talk on game production. To date, I find his talk the most informative and thought-provoking among the presentations scheduled at this year's AGDS.
Chris Natsuume
Relating his experience on producing Far Cry, Chris quickly ran through a list of Do's and Don'ts for producing a game, including:
- Work on the hard stuff first. It'll save time in the long run.
- Improve upon the game's winning features first, i.e. the game's main selling points
- Ugly & Fast trumps Pretty & Slow.
- Iteration, iteration, iteration. Use a same game scenario and reuse it over and over by adding different elements to the scenario (harder enemies, different background, different attack patterns).
- If it's not on screen, it's just bullshit (his words)
- Tools need to be prototyped too.
- You're not done prototyping until it's fun.
He also outlined 3 Japanese work practices: Kaizen (constant improvement), Pokayoke (idiot proofing), and Heijunka (Production smoothing), all of which were essential for efficient game production by reducing time and costs. He also recommended enforcing a common language/system for players so that players don't have to figure out too much or get too frustrated.
There was a lot valuable and useful stuff to soak in during the whole presentation and I highly recommend that anyone who is interested in game development read his slides when they become available on the AGDS site.
Danien Chee was the next speaker to give his presentation on "Fine tuning the Development pipeline". Similar to Chris's previous talk, he emphasised on the need for proper documentation, automation and fast iteration. He also played a demo of tweaking data in a level editor in real time, which allows faster and easier comprehension for art designers. People need to be taught on how to use the pipeline; to identify and solve problems as well as remove bottlenecks in the user's workflow.
Danien Chee
After the coffee break, I returned to the same room to listen to Josh Galloway and his presentation on "Approaching Game Publishers". In this talk, Josh gave general details about the publishing and development process, such as the amount of royalties paid to new and veteran developer teams and knowing the publisher's needs, which are:
- fun games, but marketable to specific target audience
- products with consistent level of production quality
- on time and under budget
- development that can consistently provide all of the above.
Josh Galloway
He also explained the process of what a game developer should do when approaching a publisher, including knowing the company and custom tailoring one's pitch to the company's practices and content. When contacting a publisher, there are usually more than one person responsible for development sumission. One should personally contact the publisher by phone and enquire who handle content submissions, as well as call and ask by name the next day. Give a brief intro and ask about the content submission policies.
It's vital that a phone contact is obtained as emails usually tend to be not answered. "Bluebirds" or unsolicited content submission mailed to the publisher are rarely taken seriously. The most important element of a product pitch is the demo, and most game publishers will not sign on a game if the demo is of poor quality.
After the presentation, he let the attendees take a look at the original 'pitch' proposals that the game developers had sent to game publishers, such as Ground Control II, Zoo Tycoon, and City of Heroes. It was pretty cool to get a first hand look at the proposals but unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures of the proposals content. Basically it included a brief description about the game, its main features, graphics engine, screenshots, and the developer team background. Such pitch proposals are usually not less than 5 pages long or more than 15-20 pages long.
Photocopies of the original pitch proposals to game publishers
The last talk of the day that I attended was on "Video Game Art" by Kevin Larken. Like the talk on auteur theory in interactive storytelling, the talk featured a subject matter that was close to my heart. Kevin began with brief examination on the evolution of popular art, starting with material from Marc Duchamp's Fountain and L.H.O.O.Q. and Andy Warhol's iconic pictures of Brillo and the Campbell Soup can. He then went on to say that Art itself was a vessel to convey a message and that it had to have a purpose.
Kevin Larken
Is there no such thing as Game Art? He pointed out that today's art has become more diluted and market driven. For most games today, it is the concept artist that 'breathes life' into the game whereas the 3D artist, texture artist, character artist, environment artist, etc that gives the art meaning. Art can only be as good as the technology allow, as there is a vast of a difference between the game graphics that of the early NES-era to those of the Halo-generation. However even though our generation is capable of creating 'artistic' style of graphics in today's game, it must be identifiable and clear or else it would only puzzle players that are not accustomed to cubism-like graphics in games.
Mario Bros is awesome in any era
Good art in games is generally never noticed because the players are always too immersed in the world whereas bad art is very noticeable, making it insulting to both the player and the game itself. Good 'game art' is a flawless representation of an overall creative vision, giving the game a cohesive essence that is more believable, identifiable, and playable.
He later gave the interesting example of two casual online Yahoo! games: Bejeweled and Jewel Quest. Both had similar gameplay, yet Bejeweled is more popular than Jewel Quest because of its more striking, pattern matching graphics. It also fitted into the game maker's target market where female players prefered its bright distinguishable graphics, which lead to his explanation that players don't care too much about art but more about presentation and graphics. The difference between art and graphics is that players care more about realism and attention to detail. For many games today, its graphics is the main selling point though game developers should take precautions in going overboard; it has to complement the game.
Kevin also explained that most players play the games they like because they know what to expect, so he cautioned against mixing genres unless it's on purpose. While a game may stray from reality, it should never stray from sanity. He finally advised game designers in looking at what's been done right before and borrowing it, not only from other games but also from other genres such as camera angles in popular/classic movies.
My only beef with this talk was that throughout the presentation, he implied that unless the game makes money on the market, it is not 'art' for it did not serve its purpose as a commoditable product. During the Q&A, Sarah Kay objected with his definition and argued that even though a game may not do well or is not in the market, that doesn't necessarily mean that it is any lesser a work of 'art' compared to bestselling titles. Pretty interesting Q&A as the definition of art was thrown up in the air for discussion.
A lucky draw was held soon after the last presentation, where the grand prize was a white PSP value pack. Unfortunately, it was only for attendees and being a member of the media I was disallowed from participating. Still, I managed to get out from paying USD60 from the summit (though I was initially prepared to pay as an attendee) and got free meals. Overall, it was a very insightful summit and I'm glad to have attended it. Hopefully when it is held again next year (probably in Singapore), I'd have the opportunity to participate in it again. Here's to the next Asian Game Developers Summit. :3
Other pictures
Gabby Dizon answering Q&A. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend his talk
Lucky Draw winners
Organisers and volunteers. Great job guys!
