Truly next-generation development

It seems like game developers are always saying it, but it really IS an exciting time to be a game developer right now. Every new generation of technology seems like it will transform the industry and the types of games that can be made and the XBox 360 and PS3 seem no different.

If you haven’t seen this stunning footage (4.5 megs) of a demo of Unreal Engine III running on a Playstation III, prepare to be floored. However, what’s stunning about this isn’t only the visuals.

What seem to be different with this generation is the focus on tools and smarter development. In the past, small development teams could work extra hard to get a game out the door. The artistic and aesthetic detail required is so high that now, even if you have a massive team, developers need better tools or they won’t be able to experiment, iterate and adapt during their game’s development.

Enter: next-generation tools. Tools like Unreal Engine III’s “Kismet” take a high-level graphical approach. Instead of providing only a scripting language that is cumbersome or difficult for game designers and artists to use, they provide a graphical interface that specifies game behavior.

I’ve actually worked extensively with this concept on a programming-strategy game called Mindrover many years ago. Both Kismet and Mindrover generate script code, which then executes your desired behavior.

Why is this exciting, different, and not just another new piece of technology? Tools like this completely transform how games are made, because for the first time, it means that designers, not programmers, specify game behavior. Previously, one could make an analogy in film like this: imagine if directors had to be camera operators, actors, or lighting experts? Instead of concentrating on the overall picture, they would have to have master their technical expertise, and their involvement in those technical aspects would always influence their artistic decisions for the film as a whole.

So while shaders, hardware physics simulators, facial animation technology, etc. all play an important role in the future of game development and games, they don’t transform the process of making games.

Giving game designers control of the reins changes everything.

TBS ready to take over games

The big cable companies are interested in games. It was bound to happen some time. I’m sure they’re sick of not reaching the 14-25 male demographic with their ads, and there’s no reason they can’t compete.

I find this to be a pretty scary propostion. Besides the fact that these guys have massive amounts of capital, they know networks better then anyone. If there’s anyone that could just gobble up the game industry, it’s these cable networks.

I also worry about these game services. While they ease access to PC games, I didn’t ready anything about developers getting paid royalties when their games were played. With a service like Gametap, games aren’t purchased, they are rented. Like Gamefly, this is extremely tough on developers.

We’ll see how it looks on October 3rd when it’s released. I’m not sure if I’m hoping it’s better or worse then Steam…

Blue Oceans

I warned all of you that this blog would be not only about game design and development, but about business too. Which is why I’d like to talk a little about the concept of ‘blue oceans’ today! You can hardly wait!

I recently read this amazing business book called “Blue Ocean Strategy – How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant”. It talks about “blue oceans”, which are all-new markets that you can strive for (in opposition to “red oceans”, which are where all the competitors are, and are ‘bloody’ from all the fighting).

The book outlines not just theory, but tools for reliably finding new blue oceans for your business. This includes making “strategy canvas” graphs of your competitors offerings and your own, and making sure your chart looks different, not too jagged, and that you have some new axes that none of your competitors are even ranked on. This is just one of quite a few tools it describes for finding new markets and making sure you are differentiated enough.

Some of the best takeaway points include:

1. Create exceptional buyer utility. This sounds completely obvious, but the book talks about many examples where companies THOUGHT they were creating real utility, but were actually creating capabilities instead. For instance, a high-powered new game console system without any killer launch titles could fall into this trap.

2. Assign price to be easily accessible by majority of buyers. Many industries (like video games) seem to fall into this trap, choosing pricing according to a model everyone assumes.

3. Figure out how to attain your cost target to profit at this strategic cost. If your business model won’t let you profit at the price in #2, it’s important not to lessen buyer utility, but to change your business model to allow this price.

4. Remove all adoption hurdles in actualizing your business idea. Technical constraints, resistance to the idea by retailers or partners, customers not owning credit cards, download size, ease of installation, etc.

If you have all of these things, you may have successfully formulated a commercially viable blue ocean idea. It all sounds rather simplistic in my quick summary here, but I ensure the book is totally fascinating, and filled with some amazing examples of companies and people creating huge value with very little (something that’s quite encouraging for a video game startup right now!).

So how does this pertain to video games? I’ve been thinking a lot about this. Everyone talks about the escalating costs of game creation, the lack of innovation, the death of independent developers, etc, but by targetting new blue oceans of consumers, I think we can grow this industry and solve many of these problems.

Specifically, to me this means the following: a) create games that the majority of the population can afford and b) make games that can easily be bought, installed and played and c) make games that appeal to a whole new demographic not currently targetted or served by existing games (the specifics here will have to be a secret for now). We are already planning on doing this for our future games (@ Unknown Worlds), but this book makes me even more confident in the approach. I think that by making ‘hard-core’ games that are cheaper and appeal to a much bigger audience, we can get out of the bloody red oceans we are fighting with EA in and have a more prosperous future without Madden sequels and skyrocketing budgets.

You guys have any thoughts? Or is this entirely too boring and not what you were hoping to get out of Flayra’s blog? 🙂