A day in the life of fledgling game company

I thought it might be nice to describe what my average day might look like. Today wasn’t a particularly glamorous or interesting day, but this is what happened (just in case you thought we sat around doing nothing).

8:30 am – Woke up, took a shower, had breakfast. I work from home, so my commute is fairly short.

9:30 am – Answered a bunch of e-mails from players. One video card tech support issue, a couple “When is NS:Source coming out” e-mails, and a few “When is the site coming back up” mails. I sever a work relationship I’ve been working on for a couple years because it isn’t working out and set up a lunch meeting with a publisher and a conference call with potential new business partners for later this week.

10:00 am – Read up on a potential new contracting client, which we use to pay the bills. This lead was sent to a game company in Boston who referred it to a friend’s game company, who referred it to us. This client does educational web games and while it’s not really our thing, the money could be good. Called them to follow up on their needs but they have gone on vacation since inquiring. Maybe next week.

11 am – Wrote e-mail and called a couple people that owe us money for previous work. Fleshed out the ‘last’ issue with our Shareholder’s Agreement with an investor an our lawyer. The Shareholder’s Agreement is the contract which dictates the terms which company stock can be sold. We’ve actually been hammering out this contract for about two months now, and it has involved a fair amount of research with small business owners, folks that have raised capital and new-found friends that just want to help. I’m not too knowledgeable about shares, buyouts and stock, but we don’t have enough money to just let the lawyer do it all, so I try to do as much work on it as I can. This is how we have to do all our legal work and reflects one of the biggest things I’ve learned: you never have the money to do everything “properly”, so get used to it and figure out where to skimp.

Noon – I have a bit of a panic as I realize my rent check is about to bounce! I quickly flip through my credit cards looking for one that isn’t full…found one! I get a cash advance and with a little maneuvering and two trips to the bank we’re back in business. I really wish those previous contracting checks had come in by now! I pledge (again) to figure out a way to get some more serious money coming in so this doesn’t happen again next month. Too bad the site is down, that means no Constellation income! I curse that blasted hacker, but I know I could’ve prevented it if I knew more.

2 pm – I cook lunch. Linguini with cannelini beans and herbs from the garden. I make extra so I can have it for dinner.

3 pm – We’re looking for some art interns from a local art institute to help us out with NS:Source and NS2. I go through some demo reels I’ve received, browse CGtalk for a local that might be able to help us out and set up a coffee meeting with one promising candidate named Ali. I take a look at some recent concept art that was submitted by a concept artist for NS2 dropships…very cool stuff! I wish I could work more on that right now. Soon, soon.

4 pm – Karl has been doing most of the work on the new Unknown Worlds and NS web site, but there’s some work I can do too. I get up to speed with the new workflow (totally different and much more robust and secure) and now feel a little comfortable making small changes. I talk with Karl a bit and start filling in some of the missing pages. It’s been months since I’ve done any real programming and I’m stoked to get into this, even if it’s just web programming! I crank up the Deep House, do a quick jig and get to work.

6:30 pm – I send out a bunch of e-mails to friends and strangers who work at game companies, showing them our portfolio and reminding them we would love to help them out if they have any need for contractors on their current project.

7:00 pm – The machine that’s hosting our site is reporting some disk errors. We reboot it to run check disk but it doesn’t come back up immediately. I fill out a trouble ticket. I’m disturbed by the fact that our server provider doesn’t ask any personal or identifying information when I call and fill out other tickets to make sure they ask us next time. I create escalation procedures with phone numbers and people they can call if our server ever goes down.

7:30 pm – Quick dinner: fettucini, round 2. I make a personal call: the person I’m dating seems to be coming down with a cold and I think I am too, though we haven’t seen each other for a week! I go over to my neighbors for a quick visit and have a little snack and Karl calls me to tell me the site still isn’t up and he’s starting to get worried. We don’t even have e-mail when the site is down. I run downstairs to meet a buyer for some junk I’m selling on Craig’s list. Wow, I made $75 today!

8:15 pm – I call tech support and fill out another trouble ticket. They’re having problems and being a bit slow to respond.

9:30 pm – I start filling out this blog entry while checking for updates to the ticket.

10 pm – I’m still hoping to do a little NS2 design work tonight, but our server is STILL down.

11 pm – The server still isn’t up. Karl and I are starting to think we have a bad sector in our OS somehow. This day has gone from slightly panicked to decidedly cruddy real quick. Our latest off-site backups are perhaps a week old, which means in the worst case we lose a lot of data our bug-tracking team has been working on and also our recent changes to the web site.

11:30 pm – Finally, we fix this problem and the placeholder site is back up again! Karl will check to make sure eveything is AOK but at least we’re getting e-mail again. I’m going to read a little and hit the hay.

Most of my days have more to do with NS, and often include at least a couple hours of design or programming, but it’s amazing to me to see how much other junk has to be done alongside it. It’s not just about making good games, it’s about building a company that will get you to the point where it can build good games first! If we can do this without losing the community along the way and without going bankrupt, I think we’re going to be in great shape when we finally release our next game…

I hope this entry wasn’t too mundane. Let me know if you guys want more like this (I could fill tomes)…

Game investment

This week I was lucky enough to attend a video game investor conference, here in San Francisco. It was a two day event that where developers could pitch their businesses to investors, and where developers could learn about what investors look for, what they are investing in, and why. It was the first conference of its kind that I know of.

First some background information. There are two basic kinds of investors: angels and VCs. Angels are generally middle-aged men that have been successful in their careers (often they are or were entrepreneurs themselves) and want to give back in some way. Often they love the excitement of working with motivated young people and want to help them bring their vision to life. Angels are often passionate about the businesses they are involved in and as a result tend to be less focussed on recouping their investment, though it is still important to them. Angels invest anywhere up to about 1 million dollars, with larger investments often being financed by a group of angels. Because they don’t make their living off of their investments, individual angels can be hard to find.

VCs are Venture Capitalists, and these are the heavy-hitters. VCs tend to be less interested in the specific businesses they invest in and want to see something like a 10x return on their investment, often within 5 years of company operation. These firms have lots of money, and tend to invest 1-20 million dollars. They typically go for larger industries like pharmacuticals and telecommunications.

Generally, angels have been the only ones interested in games. VCs have tended to not be interested because games don’t generally have the return on investment they’d like. Also, game creators are often loathe to give up a big chunk of their company (creativity), which is something that VCs generally require to help ensure their money doesn’t get flushed down the toilet because of poor management.

So this conference was made up of mostly developers who are seeking money, and some representives from VC firms (like Apax, Trinity Ventures and Granite Mobile Ventures). While I wasn’t able to attend most of the conference, but I did come away with some tidbits that other developers might find useful:

1. While VCs haven’t traditionally been interested in games, they are increasingly investing in them.

2. Most game company startups will want to avoid angels and VCs altogether. Get contract work or begin with a mod or smaller game to get some revenue and bootstrap yourself that way. Turn to angels if you need more funding (or have rich friends/connections) and only then consider VC.

3. The #1 factor most VCs seem to look for is a strong management team. That can save a mediocre product or offering, but even a great offering generally won’t save a company with bad management. If you can get VC interested, many will help find management for you. Angels will often join your board of directors or fill a spot within your company when they invest.

4. Like in many other areas, China is exploding when it comes to VC investment. One VC guy mentioned that every time he flies on a plane to Shanghai (the “sister” city to San Francisco), he sees people he knows from other VC firms! It is starting to get so competitive there that new companies are fetching 2-5x valuations now they similar companies did even a couple years ago. As far as Chinese offerings go, they must be cheap. Even a $300 set-top box or console system apparently won’t fly in China. Apparently even though there are 250 million people in the Chinese middle-class, PCs are relatively rare and cyber-cafes are often used. The big thing right now is taking PC services and offering them through cell phones. Note to self; learn Mandarin.

5. Investors are much more interested in something that you’ve already created, tested or have proven success in. It’s very hard for them to fund an idea, no matter how good.

6. When pitching your company to investors, keep it short, concise and focussed on your “unfair competitive advantages”. These are the hooks, advantages or barriers to entry that you have that others won’t be able to duplicate easily, even if they have your exact same idea.

Thanks to the Strategic Research Institute and Game Developer Magazine for a great conference! I’m looking forward to seeing what some game companies can do with millions of dollars in the bank…

Prototyping games through narrative

When creating something complex and new, it’s extremely helpful to be able to visualize it in some way before committing to creating it. Film-makers use storyboards, authors use treatments, and programmers use prototypes. The picture you see here on the right are ideas Cory Strader (the lead artist on NS) had for what the NS aliens would look like and brings back memories for me.

This begs the question: what can game designers use, that’s even cheaper than a prototype? The best thing I’ve found is writing a story. Because this narrative is linear and gameplay will tend to be non-linear means it’s not a perfect fit, but it can be be a very quick way of describing a player’s specific experience with your game.

Before creating Natural Selection, I tried to visualize the world through a story. What is the technology like? What does the player see when entering the game? What’s the overall feel? What are the themes?

While the game didn’t end up turning out exactly like the story, I feel like it definitely exists in the same universe as the game, and because it only took a couple hours, was definitely worth the effort. It also had the benefit of getting others excited about the game, which is especially important when you’re trying to motivate a team to work for free, or need to enlist the help of investors or publishers.

The writing quality isn’t what matters (thank goodness), but the ideas are crucial. Note that I also tried to be true to the medium, and only portrayed characters saying things that players might actually be likely to type in-game. Of particular interest may be how some of the core game dynamics are portrayed, including joining servers, respawning, commander resource allocation, etc. There are also some user-interface ideas in there as well.

I hope you enjoy it find it useful.

As the marines spawn in the game, they appear inside individual bunks in their drop vessel. These bunks each have an exit that leads to a main hallway, which in turn leads to the deployment area. The deployment area has weapons lockers, a chapel and a prominent exit door. Each marine must touch the weapons locker to get their standard issue rifle and grenades. As players are joining and the teams are being balanced, players don’t see magically-appearing marines, they see them running out of their bunks.

The speaker is telling everyone the estimated time of impact. After ten or fifteen seconds of spawning in and suiting up, the lights go out and red lights come on. This preps the marines for the low-light environment they are about to enter. The floor then lights up showing the a modified version of command hierarchy. The commander is in the center, the squad leaders circle him, and the grunts surround their squad leaders. Each player’s name shows up on the ground at each spot and the commander’s voice (controlled by mod in this case) yells “Get in your positions, people!”. While a player is in his designated position, his adrenaline rises. Suddenly the screen shakes and there is a loud crunch. The ship’s engines cut and a drilling, grinding noise is heard as the deployment claw prepares the receiving ship for entry. “Let’s play this by the book, and we’ll all get through this.” . The doors slowly open. “Now move out!” The marines file in ones or twos into the infested spacecraft.

We all came out of the breach and fanned out while everyone left the landing pod. As I left the landing pod, my machine gun armed automatically. There is a safety-only rule inside the pod. I scanned the doorways quickly as my eyes adjusted. I heard gunfire behind me and I turned to see a little smoke rising from a far doorway. From within it, emerged a long, low gurgling sound.

My squad leader motioned for us to move up towards it. Our group of three move in a semi-circle to cover the door. I heard my fellow teammates start moving, presumably to guard the other doors. My gun-mounted light flicked on to illuminate the doorway. Supposedly, the aliens couldn’t see this kind of light, though could they hear it come on? Let’s hope they haven’t learned to interpret our hand signals or voice commands either. The doorway was empty.

Just then, gunfire broke out behind us. I turned just in time to see a man-sized repto-insect gliding down from the ceiling. They didn’t see it until it was too close. It landed next to one guy and promptly cut his throat open. The other marines in his squad were firing like crazy. It started cutting into the guy standing next to him…why were they so close? What was the first thing they told us?! Perhaps he deserved to…just then I was suddenly being pulled backwards. It was very dreamlike, because I couldn’t yell or move and I was being pulled into something soft and squishy. I watched my squad’s backs as they continued firing on the glider, oblivious to my departure. Everything became gray and I was being transported somewhere…

We killed the glider but not before he took out two marines. I turned to face the doorway…where had Gurney gone? I didn’t see his body and he wasn’t showing up on my team locator. My squad advanced quickly through the doorway to find ourselves staring at two St. Bernard-sized reptiles with faceted eyes. One of them yawned white milky acid on my ‘mate Higgins and I started firing at it. The other one sprang forward and bit me.

My ‘mate was screaming from the acid but my squad leader started firing between us and we managed to take it down before it got me. The other one disappeared around the corner where it came. I heard the commander’s orders to regroup and we pulled back into into the main area. I heard a couple soldiers trigger their overwatch indicators, informing us that they were currently guarding the doorways. If they moved or turned from their position, another sound would trigger, so we instantly knew that our flank wasn’t covered anymore.

With the room secured and the doors covered, I told my teammates: “gurney disappeared”. The commander said “the bugs cocooned him. we have to move fast”. My acid-laden ‘mate was so hurt he could barely move. He talked to Sarge and replaced his armor and got a range upgrade for his machine gun. He had to hang back for the rest of the mission if he was going to get through it. Sarge OKed my use of a high-impact shotgun and a couple of gas grenades. I was taking point. One of the other guys was setting up a turret in the center of the room. His HUD automatically showed him the turret’s range, projected into the room. He placed it off to the side so that any enemy being coming through either of those doors wouldn’t know about the turret until it was too late. A couple seconds after he placed it, its red sentry light started blinking and it’s reassuring overwatch sound chimed. Let’s see them try that shit again.

Our landing must have been rougher than I thought, as two marines that had been knocked at on impact just emerged from the pod, ready to fight. They were a little dazed though, so I doubt they will immediately be trusted with the best of our equipment. “let’s find Gurney and that ‘bass”. With the turret covering our back, the remaining seven of us advanced through the doorway Gurney disappeared from.

We advanced in leapfrog fashion, with point men covering the others as they moved up. In combat training we learned how accurate and less tiring it is to fire from a standstill then while moving. We
moved warily into an old space dock. There was a huge loading door, two other entrances and ventilation shafts all over the place. A hard place to defend and one that we could easily be flanked from.

One of the soldiers from the squad that took out the glider got permission to take the welder. His squad went up one of the ladders to a catwalk that led gave access to a ventilation shaft. One of his buddies had a flamethrower and stood next to the welder as he started closing off the first ventilation shaft. The rest of us took up positions around the room, overwatch indicators coming on. Too bad that welder makes so much noise and smoke, it’s practically an alien beacon…at that moment I heard a ‘mate say “alien spotted”.

He was peering over the edge of the space dock, down where all the machinery was. His overwatch kicked in sporadically as it found targets that he may or may not have seen. “Welding complete”. They moved to the second ventilation shaft and started again “Welding initiated”. I heard the sound of overwatch indicators flicking off as two more marines moved up to help the guy shooting down at some lizard. I heard the sound of equipment transferring hands as someone bought a proximity sensor. He deployed it in the center of the room and it turned on, pulsing every second or two.

Looking up to check on the welding progress, I heard the proximity sensor blink, and saw the hunched forms of a couple fly-bats hanging from the ceiling. After the motion sensor blinked, they faded again from sight…they were cloaked somehow. “Behind you!” I yelled at the welder. He didn’t move, he just continued welding. His buddy with the flamethrower turned and looked towards the bats as they launched towards him, fading away after the proximity pulse. He fired at the nothingness and caught one of them on fire. The sensor pulsed again and the other bat was on him, devouring him quickly. “Welding complete” was heard and he turned around, running for the ladder. The sensor pulsed and suddenly everyone was firing at the bat, dropping it to the ground near us. “Move out team!” the commander shouted.

We had to rescue Gurney soon so the aliens didn’t use his lifeforce and mind against us. No one was sure how it worked, but it was widely believed that the aliens could learn about us by…using…the hosts brain somehow. Suddenly, I knew where Gurney was. I can’t explain it, but it was like he was calling me from across the ship. My leader seemed to sense it too. We told our team we thought we knew where he was and that we had to save him.

One marine placed a turret down near the proximity sensor to secure this area for our retreat. We lined up in front of the loading bay doors and the commander smacked the grimy controls on the wall. It slowly opened as six overwatch indicators chimed on. Woe, is the bug that was standing on the other side of that door. We didn’t even see what it was before we started friing or before it’s remains were on the wall in front of us. Half of us advanced while the other half guarded and layed suppressing fire. Higgins tried to stay in the middle of everyone and I tried to take point when I could. I led the team in the direction I thought Gurney was.

When we got close, there was a soft clicking sound from the wide room ahead of us. This hallway was only wide enough for two marines to fire. Two people clicked onto overwatch and the rest of us got suited for battle ahead. I got my personal favorite; heavy armor with defense lasers, along with sensor upgrades for my helmet. We knew we were up against cloaked aliens and this is the only way to go. My leader got extensions for his machine gun; armor piercing ammo and the increased rate of fire barrel. He stuck with his light armor so he could move fast and provide versatile firepower. I saw one exceptionally-performing marine get permission for the tactical rocket launcher. Someone else got a grenade launcher and some kind of gas grenades, perfect for clusters…

Hollywood game development model

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about and researching a lot recently. It’s a description of an emerging game development model that uses a small development team to create a big game, and is the model we’re going to be using at Unknown Worlds. I recently wrote this up for our business plan, so please forgive me if it sounds a bit impersonal or corporate.

The “Hollywood” model

A new development model is needed to allow a company to retain experimentation and innovation, easier startup, and lower risks, while still allowing large production scale and high production values. This model is a hybrid between the current, generally accepted game studio model and the movie industry. It has been independently conceived of by Unknown Worlds and other experienced studios.

The Hollywood game development model dictates a small, permanent team that creates the game design, art style and concept, script, architectural constraints, tools pipeline, and everything else that constitutes the core of the game. Instead of creating the whole game, the team instead creates a ‘blueprint’ that ensures the game can be created quickly and unambiguously. Contractors and temporary employees are then hired to create everything from this blueprint.

Pre-production

The game world is created, complete with characters, places, technology and artistic visualizations. The design is then prototyped, evaluated and iterated until confidence in gameplay quality is achieved and production risks are thought to be minimized. Any needed technology is then completed, tested and deployed. This phase will take about a year (50% of the project time) and serves to minimize overall project risk and cost.

Production

Contractors who already know the technology work remotely on specific, bounded tasks from the schematics they are given. All the game’s assets are created, including models, textures, animations and levels. The core team will create the most important assets during this time and will guide the work of the external developers to ensure integrity. This phase is projected to last about six months (25% of the project), with the majority of the work being accomplished in the first three months.

Post-production

The team then performs game balancing, performance optimization, compatibility testing, tweaking and ‘polish’. Extensive beta testing is done, feedback is taken from players, and changes are made as necessary. Sound effects are recorded and the score written and recorded. This phase is projected to last about six months but won’t end until the company is completely satisfied with the game.

Development notes

1. Core technology choices must be popular and proven to ensure good contractors can be hired when needed.

2. If the company has consistency or efficiency problems during production, those tasks can be brought in-house (extending the schedule but at an equal cost). This may be needed to achieve total integrity.

3. The company won’t be able to reduce all risk in pre-production but it should reduce risks and rework, resulting in an estimated cost reduction of 50% of the industry average.

4. Foreign outsourcing of art and programming can probably be done at high quality and low expense. The team is experienced in working in a distributed fashion in different time zones, but if this doesn’t achieve the desired quality, local art or programming shops can be used.

5. It is the company’s belief that the sales potential of a game is determined largely by quality of the initial concept and the time spent in post-production tuning and refining the game. The company believes it can make hit games instead of average games by spending as much time as needed during these two phases. The Hollywood game development model minimizes team size to allow this extra time.

Appendix

1. Companies that have talked about or employed a similar model with various degress of success: Wideload Games, Revolution Software, Stormfront Studios, Mary Margaret Walker, Surreal Software.

2. Article on Hollywood Reporter
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As game requirements continue to grow, and as middleware gets better, I think that a model similar to this is a certainty, though I’m sure it will need tweaks and changes.

What are your thoughts on this? See any holes or potential problems?