Developing Fun

Why are Wii Obese?

OK, so for the people out there that know me, I quit smoking, for good, a few months ago. Really, no sneaking behind the building, no cravings, no anything....and I put on a few pounds (10-15), as some people do after they quit.

The problem is, I was feeling pretty good until I stepped onto Stuart's Wii Fit and it said I had a BMI of 32+ and I was obese. Obese! I will need to lose 40+ pounds to be in the normal range. YIKES!

I guess the good thing about Wii Fit is that it just comes out and says "hey jackass, you are fat". Made me think about losing the weight, but I am not sure how I am going to cut out oreos and red bull at the same time.

Good luck to any and all that step onto the dreaded Wii Fit.

Death of the Indie mindset or death to taking risks?

   

So, one of the posters (Ari) was wondering why there is not an Indie game movement for video games, like there is in film. The example he used was Disney and Miramax. Technically this already exists for all of the major publishers, Activision would be Disney in this example and Infinity Ward or Neversoft would be Miramax, but what he was getting at is a real problem and that is the real independents, the production houses that are not owned by the big publishers, that are feeding a lot of the good content to companies like Miramax and Disney.

 

There is a whole ecosystem in the film industry that I could go on for days about, so I won’t. The bottom line is that it is easier for experienced Directors and Producers in film to get money to do their next project than it is for Directors and Producers in video games to do the same. We do not have a system like theirs and I have heard stories about even the top tier guys in the games industry having issues getting funded. Could you imagine Spielberg not getting a deal, me either, but I can imagine a host of other very talented individuals out there right now, working for other firms instead of striking out on their own, because there is no system for us to get money, to build the next big thing or even explore the idea of it.

   

This topic is probably going to get me in some trouble, but I think that we need to discuss it for the health of the Indies that are out there struggling right now, all of the guys on the sidelines not taking the leap of faith and trying to go at it alone because it is just too scary and especially the developers that are trying to create the next big thing. The innovators, the risk takers.

   

   

So why is it so hard? No money, really.

   

No money for starting up, no money for bridging between projects (unless you borrow from a bank), no money for development (prototyping), no money for anything.

   

This means that if you had a project with 100 members for your last big release, then you need to let a lot of them go, unless you already have your next project underway or you were able to sack some of the money from the last project away, or you need to self finance a prototype out of your garage and then shop it around for a year. Both of these cases drain a lot of savings, kills a lot of new and established businesses and generally scares the crap out of anyone that is thinking about venturing out on their own.

   

Some would argue that there are tons of Indie developers making casual games and free to play online games. They are right, there are a lot, but they all are not making any money. You don’t see any big publishers in this space. A lot of speculation, some good games and the wild west of the internet haven’t panned out yet. Some would also argue that there is now XBLA and the Playstation Network and WiiWare that allow Indies to take a stab at it themselves, but again they need to bootstrap themselves and many of them just don’t have the infrastructure, experience or skills to make it big, nor the marketing or manpower muscle of the big publishers.

   

   

So how do we fix the problem before all of the Indies get bought, fail or the Indie spirit dies?

   

-         Publishers all around the world need to take some risks. With the billions of dollars they are making, they should be putting some of that money to work on very speculative, risky ventures. This doesn’t make sense to the stockholders now, but in a few years when everything is the same it will make more sense.

   

-         Create an organization that helps fund video game startups to the prototype phase and beyond.

 

-         Producers and decision makers at the publishers need to get behind new ideas and new developers and go down with the ship if they are passionate about it (this has been successful for me recently)

 

-         The entire industry needs to help each other. The big guys out there with all of the money need to help the upstarts. Everyone wins.

 

-         While it has been cool that GDC and others have included Indie game development in their shows.

 

-         More of us just need to take the leap of faith, take some risk, venture out on our own and take over the world.

   

-         An all new model that hasn’t been discussed here…

   

   

What do you guys think? Lets discuss some more, because I think that collectively we can come up with ways to make this a better life for both established and would-be indie game developers.

   

A tough and controversial topic - Combat in games and why it sucks

So here I am working away on several games that include combat in them. Just coming off of Spider-Man 3 and realizing that at least from the critics point of view, we missed the mark on combat and the typical comment you see in 90-95% of reviews "Repetitive, forgettable, mashy, just plain horrible combat experiences".

Why is the such a prevalent problem and why is it so hard to fix. Some games have gotten it right:

- Ninja Guidan

- God of War

- The Persia series, etc

At least that is what the critics and consumers think.

So why is it that the above mentioned games get high scores for their combat, when others (even those who copy their systems) are not rewarded? Well I put a lot of thought and effort into this problem. I played the three games above again and again to see why I wasn't seeing the magic. Why do I think these are button mashy as well? Because they are. They all are in varying degrees.

So what is the difference? I started to break these games, that people love, down into nice bite size chunks and I kept coming up with the same outcome. Weapons!

Guidan and Persia have swords and GOW has a chain weapon. It must be the weapons/gore/etc.

Then I had an epiphany. I was wrong and a lot of others were wrong along with me.

The difference between these games considered good combat games and all of the others is........

SPACING!

I know it seems very simple, but after an exhaustive review of a bunch of other games I found one consistent thread. If you need to stay away from the enemies or attack from a distance, your combat system was considered good.

So if you look at Spider-Man as an example, we did it all wrong. Spider-Man should not be fighting thugs hand to hand most of the time, running into battle guns-a-blazing, he should be keeping his distance and using his webs or swinging into battle with flying attacks and even more importantly the AI response in these "good" games is to knock you back into the "right" distance to continue to do damage to them the right way if you do get to close.

Even if you look at a game like Street Fighter. This is about running up to the guy and swing away. It is about strategy, position and pulling off moves that start at distance and hit the enemy at range or better yet, knock them down, so you can then come in and juggle them to death.

As you know if you played Spider-Man or any of the other games that "you thought combat sucked in" you will see that the enemies just knock you down, so you can get up to get punched again. At that point as designers we start putting in jumping attacks and clearing moves and block attacks, etc. We start trying to fix the problem by adding more complexity.

So here is the solution to everyone's problem who is working on combat. Please listen.

1) Make sure that your primary attacks are distance/dash/jumping/etc - Keep that distance

2) Make sure that the hero recoils back/flips back or generally moves out of hit range after said attack, back into the outer ring

3) If you don't get back out of the close combat zone and get hit, make sure that the enemy hits you back to where you need to be to attack them at distance.

4) Look at this in your own game and if management is complaining it is mashy or repetitive, then tell them you have a solution.

I know this all sounds very simple, but take a look at your own game and other games and let me know if you don't come to the same conclusion. I think it was so obvious for so long that we never noticed it, at least I and 95% of you didn't.

Thanks for the great topic guys and my current games are going to be a lot better in combat because of these findings. Lets open it up for discussion. What do you think? Am I nuts? Stupid for not noticing earlier?

The Next Topic - Why hand to hand combat sucks in most games

Thanks for all of the e-mails on topics. One topic that kept coming up and something that I have been working on recently is why close combat in games is for the most part pretty bad. I have disected it and I think you will be surprised (or not) by what I have found.

Look for the post in the next couple of days.

Stuart Made Me Do It

Ok, so I am a horrible blogger.....But honestly, I have not had much to say, since Spider-Man didn't quite turn out as well as I would have liked or thought it would. This is a crazy hit or miss world we live in as game designers and no one except for us quite realizes the work and effort put into the games we create.

So, A new year, a new blog, lots of crazy ideas, a ton of new projects that I am working on or getting off the ground (including a huge original IP that just kicked off), so life is good right now.

Since I last blogged here, we shipped SM3 to dismal reviews (thanks critics), I now have a second child (2 months old) and my big baby just turned 2.

So lets start the new year off right and open up the floor to suggestions on a topic. You name it, anything goes.

Spider-Man 3 - The Game

I'm back!

As you all know I have been cranking away at getting Spider-Man 3 finished on the next-generation consoles (Due out May of next year) and my wife and I had our first child. Vaughn is turning 1 year old in a couple of weeks! Where does the time go?

Because of these to very important things I have been buried in work and life and unable to post regularly.

Speaking of the game.....this is probably the largest game I have every worked on and that is saying a lot as I worked on X-Men Legends 1, True Crime: LA and Spider-Man 2. Simply huge.

All I can say is this:

It is going to be f*ing awesome

It is really starting to look amazing

It is already the best Spider-Man game ever

Stay tuned, as I plan to be more actively posting now. Got a lot of stuff to get off my chest, including the travesty which is Superman and some further thoughts on creativity in the industry and the death of the original IP.

TEAM MOTIVATION

We speak a lot about life/work balance, huge teams and crunch, but we never speak about how some teams overcome each of these. The truth of the matter is there is only one thing that can break down all of the aforementioned barriers to creating a great game and that is Team Motivation.

 

There are really 3 ingredients needed:

 

1)      Hard Work and Dedication

2)      Passion for your project

3)      Activities and team building events

 

Seems simple? No way. Just trying to get a 100+ person team to show up on time every day is difficult enough. Each of the above items is difficult in their own way and each company handles each of these items differently and gives each of the companies their personality.

 

I believe that number 1 and 2 many times end up being combined, because if you have a game demo or product that looks great, plays great or is otherwise accepted universally by the team then you automatically get 1 and 2.

 

So what happens when the game is not where you want it to be, or it is early on in the project cycle? Well here is where number 3 comes in. At every opportunity in the project you need to show what the team has built. Many times there are people on the team that just don’t get the day to day coverage of progress that some of us enjoy. Therefore, they just don’t continue to be excited about the project.

 

On my team we show the product, after each milestone, significant or not, to the entire team over some food and drink in our conference room. It is almost like a press event or party where the team can ooh and aah and ask questions. Others on the team are also commenting on what they see and that can be helpful to the artist, coders and designers working on the levels shown. I can’t think of a better way to not only catch people up on where the game is at, but also get them excited about the work ahead. Keep in mind that people need to see something. Just like the age old “the publisher won’t be excited until we show them something running” quote I have heard too many times to count, the team needs to see it as well.

 

What are some other things that can be added to Activities and team building events?

 

-         Bagel or Donut day or BOTH!

-         New Movie release outings

-         Sporting events, like soccer or basketball

-         Company wide get-togethers, parties and events

 

I still think the most important team motivator is showing off your work. When the team and others outside the team are praising what the team has done, the feeling can’t be matched.

   

So what happens when this process breaks down and what causes it?

 

The 3 killers of team motivation are:

 

-         Missed Milestone

-         Long hours

-         Team members not showing up

-         Donuts or Bagels not showing up on schedule (the only thing that can kill my motivation)

-         Bad publicity or negative publisher communication

 

So, bottom line:

 

-         Show your game early and often to get people excited about the game

-         Feed the team donuts

-         Don’t miss your milestones

-         Feed the team bagels

-         Show your game some more

-         Go on a fieldtrip

-         Show the game

-         Quickly deal with bad PR and negative publisher communication

 

Love to hear your thoughts on this. What do other folks do to motivate their teams?

E3 2006 – The great, the bad and the more bad

 

OK, so I have not posted in a while, but between SMM3, GDC, E3, etc, a lot has been going on. On top of all of that my son just turned 5 months old and it is a little crazy at the Archer household.

 

Overall, E3 this year was a disappointment. The same things I thought were standouts before the show, continued to be, with very few new entries to get me excited.

 

So let’s break it down.

 

Winner of the console wars: Nintendo

 

Bar none these guys brought it. I was a little pissed when they didn’t announce the price to bury Sony in their “600 dollars is a good deal for what you get” crap, but other than that delivered on every front. They had the games, a ton of them, running on the actual hardware and the booth was packed. Thankfully Stuart and I didn’t have to wait in the 4 hour line, as we had an inside guy to help us out there. Innovative, fresh and classic and a purist focus on gameplay, can’t ask for any more than that.

 

Check out these videos. They tell the story of who “Won the Show”.

 

The first one is especially hilarious. Check out the Sony Booth guy’s reaction.

 

A mad rush - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFQz98jAcg8

The line from hell - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2wjeMGGPik

 

Most Innovative Game: Spore

 

Mr. Wright will again turn the world upside down with this game. As usually, when games like this come out, others jump on the bandwagon. I wouldn’t be surprised if my next game was “Spore meets GTA” or “Singspore”, or “Endospore”. Mark my words this will happen and this game will change the way we think about the depth of games, much like GTA and Mario 64 did in the past. I can’t wait for this one.

 

Best MMO – Tabula Rasa

 

I have to say that I am not into MMO’s at all, but these games are looking better and better every day. This was a real standout to me and Garriot has really stepped up on this one to make an MMO, which even I would play. Great job to he and his team.

 

Best Action Game: Heavenly Sword

 

Sony pretty much sucked it up this year and got beaten up and spit out by both Nintendo and Microsoft, with one very nice exception. Heavenly Sword is probably the best directed game I have seen in years. Beautiful art, interesting characters, dramatic/cinematic camera, fast frenetic gameplay and familiar game mechanics. Well tuned and balanced for E3 and the only thing that gave me any confidence in Sony’s booth or future.

 

Best Booth Babes: Rainbow Six Vegas

 

Say What? Did they have booth babes at the show? Were they not supposed to fine people? The answer is yes, they did have booth babes and if anyone deserves to be fined, it would be the folks at Ubisoft. I applaud them for not only having booth babes, but effectively creating a pole dance area in front of their booth (Sans poles). This brazen, go against the flow mentality is why Ubisoft continues to impress me.

 

An excerpt from Gamespots Tor Thorsen: “While the booth babes on either side of the Ubisoft booth's Rainbow Six Vegas trailer display wear silver outfits that could very well meet the expo's requirements, the suggestive way they dance (or simply bend over) seems a throwback to E3s of yesteryear.”

   

Best Shooter – Quake Wars

 

I know this is an Activision game and no I am not lobbying for Activision here. Honestly, if any of you played it, you would feel the same way. Looks great, plays great, is loads of fun and takes me back to the fun I had with Arena and more recently the early Battlefield games. Another hit for ID and Activision.

 

Weirdest Game – Viva Piñata

 

Animal Crossing meets candy filled Paper Mache characters. If that doesn’t sound weird already, then you my friend, need some help. Great visuals on the 360 and cool art style. This is a Nintendo game on 360 and that humongous purchase price for Rare may pay off yet, maybe.

 

Game of Show – Stranglehold

 

I am sure I am going to get crap for this choice and commentary, but I need to talk about it anyway. This is everything I wanted for True Crime 2; of course we would have added the sandbox gameplay that was made famous from GTA and the previous TC game. Having not worked on True Crime 2, I can’t say why it didn’t end up more like Strangelhold, but it should have. Maybe next time.

 

That aside, this game “IS” Hong Kong cinema at its finest and while it seems a little shallow in regards to environments shown and enemy AI, there is no game like it and as long as it doesn’t get screwed up and continues to improve will be a great success.

 

Personal Note: Please Midway, don’t jack this one up like you have done on pretty much every game recently. Spend the time and the money against this, because if successful we will be able to see and play many more games like this in the future.

 

Next up….For Real this time….. Team Motivation!

GDC 06 - Thoughts and Musings

I know it is late, but I have been crazy busy. More to come soon on other subjects, but in the meantime here are some Tidbits from GDC 2006!

      

Ok, so against my better judgment and much urging from my team (I think they needed a break from me) I broke away from the day to day on Spider-Man Movie 3 and headed up to San Jose for a few days to enjoy the wonderful world of nerds and learning, my world. My inner nerd always shows up for these events, unfortunately I usually find that I get more contacts and see more people I know, then learn anything new. This was the case again this year, but there were a couple of bright spots and some not so bright.

   

The Arrival

   

Well, I could have showed up later in the afternoon on Wednesday, but I felt I needed to see the Sony keynote, so I came in the night before. Unfortunately I had to stay at what I now call the “Rat-ison”. I swear to god they were taping an episode of cops in the back of the hotel. I was already looking forward to moving hotels the next day. Checked in, went to dinner at a cool steakhouse in Downtown San Jose and hit the pillow for the night. I dreamt all night about bowling…..What the hell? Oh, I forgot to tell you that next to the hotel was a bowling alley. Should have slept there….I probably would have dreamt about the hotel and got a better nights rest…..

   

8AM Wednesday March 22^nd – Check into non-bowling alley adjacent, non-cops episode taping hotel. Ahhhh. This day is starting off better already.

   

Panel/Session Highlights

   

What’s Next Panel (Louis Castle, Mark Cerny, Cyrus Lum, Masaya Matsuura, Jamil Moledina and David Perry)

   

So off to my first panel and I thought it would be interesting with the cast of characters represented here. Well it wasn’t. Basically it boiled down to:

   

1)      We are making crappy games

2)      We need to focus on more niche ideas

3)      Outsourcing

   

I hope this isn’t “What’s Next” for the industries sake. You might be wondering if I walked away feeling disappointed? Well I was disappointed in what is next for games, especially with the group that was speaking about it (props to Louis Castle, though, he was the only one on his game here), but I did manage to get some interesting quotes, that put a smile on my face, read on and you will see why:

   

Castle – “Too many buttons”, “We try to be too complex”, “Try to be too many things”

Lum – “Don’t mash game mechanics”, “Decide on game mechanics based on the experience desired”

Perry – “The Hardware companies want Tekken 1”, “The publishers want Tekken 12”, and “Early hardware cycle is when developers should be creating new IP”

Perry – “The publisher isn’t investing in R&D”, “I liked it during the old days when you could create and iterate”

Lum – Response to Perry “You can but it will cost you 2 Million dollars”

Lum – “15-25 Million developments will not make money”,

Lum – “4X time to do any Art”

Lum – “Stop treating artists like they are psychics”, “Discipline in design will reduce redo” “Redo these days will kill projects”

Castle – “We are not good enough”, “You can’t expect the same guys on your team to do the new high level work”, “and they need to get better, as we are now competing with Movies and TV”

Perry – “Publishers are delivering a lot of awful games”, “ Most games only sell 150-300k units”

Perry – “With digital distribution, what will we do against AT&T if they decide to do a 20 Million dollar game that they give out for free?”

Perry – “I resigned from Shiny, so I cold look at other markets, like Korea”, “Free games is where it is at”, “Build the game and then figure out how you are going to make money with it”

Castle – In response to Perry “Sounds freightingly like the Dot-Com strategy”, “I would have to say that it is more likely that the Koreans distribute for free, but they “already” know how they are going to make money on it”

   

Playstation 3: Beyond the Box – Keynote (Phil Harrison)

   

So the line to this one was long, really long, as would be expected, it is Sony for god sake. It took place in the civic auditorium which is a pretty big venue for this type of event. The sad news is there was no new news. Here are the highlights:

   

1)      Reiterated everything we already knew from Japan the week prior

2)      Explained some more about the “Network Platform” or what I have dubbed “Playstation Live”

3)      Did not give us a price point

4)      Promised that they would make worldwide launch in November

5)      Reiterated some more information we already new from Japan, but got some developers to say it was really cool and that it was the best platform

6)      Sad to say, but my favorite part was when the crowd started heckling Phil Harrison because they couldn’t see the footage being shown. It turns out that they were running the big screen in the back of the stage in HD and the side screens were not. Result: At least 20% of the people in the auditorium could not see any footage. Isn’t Sony a huge electronics company? Hmmm.

   

I really like Phil Harrison and think he is a great speaker, but I really felt like his hands were tied on this one. No huge announcements, no big game reveals. A whole lot of nothing. I guess they are saving it for E3, or maybe they are still trying to figure out what can be shown?

   

Profitable Growth – The dollars and cents of growing a healthy studio (Guha and Karthik Bala)

   

For any people that are thinking about starting a new studio, I recommend that you go to any of Karthik and Guha’s lectures on studio subject matter. They are always insightful and have over the years built a great process, procedure and studio to rival any out there. Great talk, horrible slides, but you can’t win-em all.

   

Valve’s Design Process for creating Half Life 2 (Brian Jacobson, David Speyrer)

   

The process of making a game can be done in about a hundred different ways. The folks at Valve have figured out a process that works for them, but unfortunately does not work for the other 95% of developers out there. Iterate till you die, no traditional designers (team design), and take as long as you want and weekly focus testing for multiple years. Sound like a dream? For most of us it is. I love the Valve games, so they must be doing something right, unfortunately anyone working for a major publisher does not have the freedom that Valve has. I love the process, I envy these guys and I am now going to erase the idea that I can do this from my mind, so I am not depressed for the rest of my life.

   

BOOTH CRAWL!!!!

   

Saw way too many people (mainly production people) I know looking for work. It is sickening that the producer ends up taking the fall when their respective project does not succeed in the marketplace. But this is our world and we know what the ramifications are. Go down with the ship my friends!

Beer was flowing, got a bunch of cards and contact info, mostly from composers and students, but some good candidates overall.

   

IGF and GDC Awards

   

In speaking with Jamil Moledina recently, I told him that these were the best awards of all of the shows. Not pretentious, people actually excited about their awards, not the winner you expect, but the one that should have won, and so on. A really well put together awards show. Keep up the good work guys!

   

Disrupting Development (Satoru Iwata)

   

This event (and it was truly an event) was the one of the top highlights of the GDC 2006 for me. Iwata always finds a way to speak with Developers and not come across like a suit (which he is). Unlike Phil or even others in his own organization he is able to poke fun at the industry, the evil corporations and publishers and the mystery of making games for fun, then for profits. Say what? Fun games that will sell? These guys have always gotten GDC right and this year did not disappoint. Iwata’s anecdotal story of the inception and creation of Brain Age was hilarious and insightful. They rolled out the fact that they would be putting out all of the Hudson and Sega Genesis games via online….Awesome, and rolled out the new Zelda DS game. When you think about it, it is awesome that Iwata and team were able to speak so little about the Revolution and still everyone walked away with a smile on their face. This is testament to the fact that they are speaking to the developers and not “at us”. We know Revolution will be cool and we are cool with them waiting to tell us at E3. Can’t say the same for the “Big S”. Good luck to Nintendo this time around. Free Brain Age at the exit door was the icing on the cake. My wife is still pissed that my Brain Age is 20 in the game. We should hit this subject on the next blog as it has come to a point where we (my wife and I and several others I know around the office) are competing to see whose brain is youngest. Crazy times and a huge win for Nintendo, whudda thunk?

   

All for now.

The Publisher/Developer Producer Rift – Can’t we all just get along?

I know I was supposed to blog about Team Motivation, but this came up and can affect team motivation immensely.

 

Can't We All Just Get Along?

I am sure the game developing cave man has asked this question at one time or another. As I have been on both sides of this fence over the course of 13 years I have been both the “hated” publisher producer and the “shifty” developer producer.

Before anyone starts ranting about the great relationship with your respective publisher or developer producer, hold on one minute. There are in fact great relationships between these two very different personalities during many developments. I can say from my own experience and from my peeps in the industry that this is the exception and not the rule though and the fact that I keep getting asked this question “how do we get along”, is why I decided to write about it.

So why do these seemingly similar folks have issues communicating and getting along. Well the truth is there are 2 big reasons. They are:

1)      Publisher Producer – Wants to be a part of the development process

2)      Developer Producer – Doesn’t want the publisher to be part of the development process.

There are many other minor reasons like:

1)      Developers think they can market the game better than the publisher

2)      Developers think that the publisher producer does not know what they go through every day or if they know what they are doing

3)      Developers think that the publisher producer sits around and asks for things of the developer to keep them busy

4)      Developers think that they can make a great game with our without the publishers involvement

5)      Publisher producer thinks that he could make the game more fun

6)      Publisher producer thinks  that he can effect change by inserting himself into development situations and process

7)      Publisher producer cuts the checks and approves the milestone, so he is king

8)      Publisher producer thinks that the only way they can get information and a better product is to talk down to or “be the boss” of the developer

As you can see by the list above, both of these producers are very different animals with different goals and aspirations. But are they so different????

Let’s explore the master goal of each of these folks: 

   

- The developer producer needs to get a game of good quality out on time and has a whole team that they need to rely on to get the job done.

- The publisher producer needs to get a game of good quality out on time and has a whole team at the developer that they need to rely on to get the job done.

See the difference? You shouldn't, because there is no difference. One just happens to work in a different location yet both of their goals are exactly the same. So what is the issue?

There really only a handful of reasons that this relationship breaks down. I will boil it down to the 6 top things that cause the breakdown and I am sure I will get a lot of shit for saying this, but here we go:

1)      Publisher producer wants to be a designer

2)      Developer producer does not want to be a designer

3)      Management at the Publisher puts pressure on the publisher producer to get more involved/make sure the game is good

4)      Developer producer thinks that the publisher should not be involved and the publisher producer doesn’t support them anyway

5)      Publisher producer does not trust the developer producer

6)      Developer producer has a whole lot of mouths to feed and protect and this is why they are more passionate and defensive about their team and product

It is really a shame that these breakdowns occur, because there are many talented people on both sides of the fence. There are also the jackasses that we have all dealt with that need not be working on video games (no names please), but we will save this topic for another post.

Spending so much time on both sides has made me realize that unless both parties are willing to give up some power in the process, then you will end up with a one sided process and probably a game that does not reach its full quality or sales potential.

So how do we get along?

Before reading below I recommend that the opposing side not read the list for their counterparts. Spoiler…… If you are developer producer I don’t trust you anyway, so you will read it and not listen to the message…..and if you are a publisher producer you will probably read it and use it against me in a heated debate….

Enough with the jokes....What do I do?

For developer producers:

-          Trust that the publisher producer does not want to design your game

-          You “can’t” in fact market the game better

-          The fact that you are not at the publisher, means that you don’t have to catch “all” of the flack from management when your team slips, spills, sends a bad build, has a bad green light, etc.

-          Rather than hiding that problem with your game, make it known and that you are on a solution or have one already. Be proactive.

-          If you are going to miss a milestone, then let them know before the day is due…..well before

-          Don’t send a build that doesn’t work to the publisher, especially Friday at 6pm

For publisher producers:

-          Don’t try to design or re-design the game. Developers want your constructive thoughts, comments and criticism though

-          Fight the fight for the developer when it comes to marketing ideas and thoughts

-          Be the developer’s advocate and voice

-          Always be positive when communicating development issues or problems with the game

-          Repeat after me “This game is god’s gift to video-gaming” repeat a hundred times, then tell others around you

-          Fight for the things the developer needs to make the best game. I.e. Dev kits, outsourcing, testing, etc

-          Don’t use things like user/focus tests to prove your point; you should be discussing any issues openly

-          Don’t ever ask for an updated schedule or build on Friday at 6pm

   

For both sides:

-          Have open and honest converations about where you are at on the projects and where you want to get and figure out ways to help each other get there.

   

Well, the cat is out of the bag. I hope this helps some of you out there learn what it took me many years to figure out. We are all the same and we are all one team, but we have very different jobs, while having the same goal “make great games on time and budget”