Month: March 2009

• Social responsability.

As every year, Alice does an awesome job when it comes to panel translation. Lorne Lanning said interesting things:

“I think a lot of us are so full of shit. Most action gaming is really sociopathic. What we do we do, we love blowing shit away, that’s sociopathic.”

But in real life how developers live is kinda sociopathic too: playing action violent games, gathering in small dedicated crowd, stuffing themselves with junk food.. Sometimes it’s necessary I’m ok on this, but do we really have to make it as “the true” game developer lifestyle? How can we make games be more responsible when we aren’t? With lifes as healthy as they were when we were in college? No wonder that our field is lacking women or that game developers girlfriends don’t really exist. No wonder why we don’t try to adress society problems like aging fast population and elderly market (man, it’s gonna be so huge in a few years). Our medium is powerful we all recognize this. Time to fucking grow up. We can be responsible AND childish. The second has been done for years now.

“The other thing is how well do you sleep at night. [When making Oddworld] we were told several times ‘you know, I feel great, I’m publishing a game that I can go home and show my kids.”

This is only true with non-sociopathic gamedev peeps, like a very few are. People don’t give a shit about responsability in the industry, it’s not something we’re searching for sadly. I tend to, trying to respect myself, having a normal life. That’s suppose people to get better at what they do, there is room but guess what they don’t. They want to do games as we make movies. 3D modelers often can’t stop dreaming about the big black screen for example. They move triangles all day and night long while having breaks watching Pixar trailers and playing sociopathic games.

See?

the panel was apparently dodging a real good question:

“There was a last question about how the panel was dodging this idea that games can teach good, but at the same time can’t be held responsible for provoking realworld violence, which seems to be a paradox to many.”

It can be held responsible for provoking realworld violence, no question about that, we just don’t want to acknowledge this because we fear others medias would kill us all talking shit about how we badly influence young people with violent games, as they already do everytime they can.

Eskil’s Love game. Dude it’s code, we can do everything. Every. Things.

Madworld is all about destroying people but the visuals are meant to translate a dreamy world, like it doesn’t really exist. GTA IV plays the “it’s almost fucking real” card and no matter what people think, it’s not helping the medium.

But it makes large teams work for years on that kind of game production.

If we want less of that, less technical updates of games, less social responsability dodging BS we need people to get better at making games like suggests Eskil.

“Making games is a little like being a fashion designer. Fashion is not about making beautiful clothing, Its about making beautiful people. A successful designer is not the one who is in the center, but some one who makes the wearer the center. The story isn’t yours, its the players.”

This is why I totally focused myself on games, forgetting about movies. Forgetting about stories. Digging books on game design, stuffing my head with technical coding stuffs etc I don’t see a lot of designers doing so. They’re “artists” you know… Eskil wrote:

“Concept art stems from the idea that you need to quickly pre-visualize your game before you get to the expensive task of actually making it. Our goal should be to cut the cost of making the content so much that Concept art is no longer needed.”

I think that’s really true. Concept art is friggin’ slow! While I understand the “wow” effect for the old publisher-brick and mortar way to do business, designing ingame as soon as possible is way better to make it effectively in-game. This is why I just can’t stand the VIDEO before games, it makes people focus on the visual part of the medium instead of the game experience. Drives me crazy, it’s as stupid as saying bio vegetables.. Oh wait.

We live some stunning times don’t we? We need to put the obvious in front of things. This is not a mark that we are getting smarter if you ask me. Like the rest of the society, the industry has made a terrific job at making posers famous and all. But making games is hard and you can’t really fake it it’s almost automatically translated in a bad experience or something gamers are going to feel as wrong like a bad balance or heterogeneous assets.

This is where ease of developement is critical.

• On ease of development.

Iteration. This word I really learn about reading Raph Koster’s Theory of Fun, is the main thing: we have to iterate things, assets, stuffs, ideas, everything in the real game engine. As soon as possible, as often as needed.

For that coding and tools should be fast and efficient. And this is where open source is limited right now and still, because there is two cases from a game design point of view:

-You are not efficient on these technologies and you’re having hard times to tweak things that should work by themselves because they are just trivial from a gameplay perspective.

-You are super efficient on these technologies. For that you are digging so much tech that you are no longer working on a game, you are working around a game.

When technology is hard to work with, specialists are needed to do things. When technology is easy, generalists are better at achieving that. In small teams with rapid iteration process, the latter is much more useful.

With that in mind, it’s not difficult to understand why Capcom loves the 360, why Keita prototypes Noby Noby Boy on 360, why a polished game made by a dude alone is possible in one year and a half and a good framework, why the IGF winner is a game made by one man with MS tools (XNA once again), why a lot of GGJ games were done in Flash or DirectX, why Fmod rules the game audio world etc

Of course we tend to prefer open solutions, that’s a no-brainer. But being able to do stuffs extremely fast or with limited ressources (like on the game I work, toolchain made by one man in one month, full .Net C#) is the real key there.

Eskil-like people are way too rare, as he said on his blog.. But they are the real game designers. I do my best to be like that.

It’s like OnLive makes people angry. Of course it’s kinda revolutionary. Let’s look at arguments. Like this one:

“Let’s say tens of thousands of people sign up for the launch of Run, Shoot, Kill, Repeat 10. That’s the sole reason they’ve signed up for the service, and it’s their first impression. They, like a ton of other people, want to play the game the first second it’s available. Good luck managing that demand spike without having crap performance and pissing everyone off.”

You guys remember the launch of Steam? Ask Valve people how many players were puking on the service when it launched. It was in 2003 after being revealed at the GDC 02 and digital distribution was exactly at the same point that cloud computing is today: something nobody is arguing against that it is the future and yet nobody is doing it.

Now Steam has 20M+ user accounts and they’re the big fucking beast, the leader of the games digital distribution that everyone is trying to compete. I think OnLive is ready to take the risk to piss off users on day one. No problem.

Second argument I read a lot:

“The problem is in the nature of the task.  Games are inherently compute intensive.  There’s a reason that you need a behemoth of a machine to run Crysis.
For a service of this kind to make any money, you need to be able to support tens of thousands of users at the same time.  Halo 3, for example, has 80k users online as I write this.  Granted, this is across the entire world, but the hardware to support the  simulation, rendering and video compression for each of those games would be staggering.”

Who said it would only be Crysis and über heavy demanding games that people are going to play? What about a game like GRID running on a little 8.9” netbook screen? It sure demands a lot less power than on a 24”. Who said people are going to play games which need extreme reactivity? World of Goo can be played with a big latency I guess. If I look at my software synthesizers, “real time latency” –below 5ms- is not needed for a lot of things (even if for some like drums it’s mandatory). SF IV is running smoothly online and frankly I’m impressed. A few years ago it was still a dream plagged with issues.

I think people are a bit jealous :) Of course publishers have already signed up otherwise they’re really going to die: developers could push their game on the service without worrying about publishers, exclusivity shit deals. Noby Noby Boy and Flower would totally benefit from a service like this (remember the spectator value). Instead of that, they’re stuck on a platform and nobody cares about them despite the fact that they’re really cool games. Go OnLive, go. And make room for game developers, they’re going to make you successful.

I’ll do a third post on GDC about ease of development and social responsability.

Last week was my first time with Madworld on Wii. Disturbing, assumed and viciously joyful.

 
COME HEEERE

Man, I could say I knew it! for a lot of things from this GDC year.

First, the OnLive thing. It’s everywhere on my game feeds. As Gamasutra says:

“The ambitious venture, which hopes to revolutionize the gaming world by removing the need to continually upgrade PC hardware or buy new gaming consoles every generation, makes use of cloud computing — doing all of the game’s video and audio processing on remote servers, then streaming the resultant images and sound back to the user quickly enough to play games in real time.”

You can watch the conference here. It demoed a Crysis play session on a Dell studio 15, the one I use to type this post. When I play some Valve stuff, the laptop is getting like a hoover and I just can’t stand it.

Some days ago I was talking about Asus and cheap PCs. For those platforms I was thinking about casual and not heavy raw power demanding games of course. But with a service like OnLive, it could be every games.

Imagine playing games from the eee keyboard, co-op mode with eee sticks, unplugging and plugging  from screens to screens without worrying about technical shit.. The NAS could be a great memory cache for the service etc At last, an open/closed easy and limitless platform to play and develop for. From the double consumer/developer view, it’s heaven.

There’s still a lot to solve from a technical perspective for the heavier games but it’s very promising and sure is the future.

The main attract for me is the spectator value. I love to watch people play, I have countless hours of HLTV with SoGamed –when the site was red and black-, or on the couch analyzing my buddies playing consoles. For the spread of the medium, of the gameplay experience of the game culture it can’t be done more easily than with channels to switch like on the familiar TV set.

It’s really exciting.

One famous analyst said that it would be the last console generation. Sorry dude, I said the same a year ago (can’t show you my archives are still broken). Now I guess Nintendo would move to the cloud as soon as they can –in Nintendo terms, when it’s making money for them from day one- with a new Wii, competing OnLive. MS/Sony would follow. Look at how the giant of the electronic is doing well thanks to the N1 number crushing beast aka DQ:

here are the February NPD’s:
Wii–753,000
360–391,000
PS3–276,000
PS2–131,000
There are plenty of ways to look at that data, and if you’re Sony, they’re all bad. PS2 and PS3 sales combined, which have been a hallmark of post-announcement PR spin, were down 35% compared to 2008. PS3 sales were roughly flat (276k vs. 281k in 2008), but in February of 2008, PS3 unit sales accounted for 29% of next-gen (360, PS3, Wii) console sales. This year? 19.4%. So Sony’s PS3 sales stayed flat in a month with much higher next-gen unit sales overall.
Oh, and PSP sales? Down over 18% in February compared to last year.
Combined, and there’s only one word to describe that: freefall.

I mean the two monsters consoles are struggling to make money. For real. At a big, big expense. Software is moving so fast, it’s quite sure they can’t keep up with PCs and cloud computing. So.. Yeah. Good news for everyone that counts in the equation: this generation is going to last very long, and developers should be free to go for the digital distribution on computers called personal computers.

In an older post I was writing:

“This year once again north guys are at it (meanwhile they were around for years): Erik Svedäng from Blueberry Garden fame which has never really had a fame BUT the game always seduced me (audio atmosphere, physics, simplicity I’m sold!), here’s the trailer.”

Blueberry Garden won the IGF! Awesome. I knew this game had something especially charming. Good luck for the full production Erik! And really, these guys from the north ROCK.

More on GDC after grokking more.

Exceptionnellement ce post sera écrit en french.

Le gamedev français. Je ne comprends pas ce qu’il s’y passe. Il y a des bons jeux et des jolis succès en France (Soul Bubbles, Dofus, Globz Trackmania Dark Messiah Fuel qui sort bientôt, Edge sur iphone etc), paradoxalement il n’y a pas d’union inter-développeurs autour de ces succès. La seule communication se passe autour de bruits de couloir –en général bien flippants- sur telle ou telle boite.

Cette réflexion vient après la révélation d’un lecteur ;) impressionné par le fait que je lâche tout ce contenu sans retour. Comme mon blog est quasi séparé en deux mylife/gamesgamesgames, j’ai quand même de longs et intéressants articles sur le sujet.

Ce n’est pas tant le manque de retour qui me chagrine, c’est plutôt l’absence de développeurs qui parlent qui me frappe. Ca ne pipe pas mot !

On fait des jeux en France depuis l’aube du médium, j’ai passé une bonne partie de mon adolescence à jouer à des jeux français (Titus..) et anglais si je regarde bien. Resident Evil doit énormément à Alone in the Dark. Another World Flashback sont des références pour de nombreux game designers à travers le monde… J’ai voulu faire ce métier parce que ça semblait non seulement possible ici mais parce qu’en plus il y a avait un sacré niveau et une envie d’aller plus loin chez nous. Très excitant aux premiers abords.

J’ai vite déchanté. Aucune émulsion. Les créateurs originaux de ces titres ont disparu. Ils sont là tels des fantômes à roder d’interviews “c’était mieux avant” à “le futur ça sera ça” mais l’activité et le mouvement n’existent pas ou peu.

On a une soif de hiérarchie c’est dingue. Les “anciens” des 80s et 90s qui ignorent complètement ceux du début 2000 –dont je fais parti- et les ptis djeuns qui sortent de l’école à faire des jeux et pour qui ma génération et celle des vieux complètement autodidactes ont une relation ambivalente à leur sujet (on vomit dessus tout en en faisant pour nombre de professionnels, une grosse source de revenus). L’entraide devrait aller de soi, le passage de savoir-faire évident.

Aucune connexion, aucun effet de réseau. Nada queud, tous les sites du genre ont pourri sur place comme Jiraf par exemple (que je viens d’aller visiter, c’est consternant cf le “programmateur iphone”).

Pareil mon pote, pareil. 

Ultra scolaire aussi. On m’a proposé de donner des cours sur le game audio alors que ça faisait même pas trois ans que j’étais dans le milieu. De mon point de vue je donnerais des cours quand j’en aurais fini de faire des jeux et que je pourrais donner de précieux conseils. C’est à dire sans doute jamais.

Entre 2001 et 2003 il y a eu un énorme boom sur le forum de l’IGDA Paris, des réflexions et des débats très intéressants autour du jeu. Il y a six ans, les développeurs de jeux français étaient pleins, on discutait dur il y avait tous les métiers regroupés sur une page web à parler de l’avenir. C’était chouette. Ca a duré trois mois.

Très vite trolls, peines-à-jouir et gros aigris de la mort ont fait couler l’intérêt de discuter. Pareil sur Jiraf, en pire. Nous sommes vraiment des gros cons là dessus on est trop mauvais.

A croire qu’en France on ne parle et on ne partage que pour donner des leçons ou pour dénigrer les autres alors c’est sur c’est pas franchement constructif. A croire qu’on ne comprend pas l’intérêt de l’esprit d’équipe.

Quand je vois la somme de connexions positives que j’ai pu créer en dehors de l’hexagone, sans bouger mon cul de Vincennes, ça me fait halluciner, d’autant plus que mes connections parisiennes tiennent sur une demi main en quasi dix ans. Quand je vois à quel point les américains non-français partagent l’info, que ce soit les blogs des développeurs indépendants qui détaillent leur process de prod ou bien le pdg d’une boite qui donne sa vision de ce qu’il va se passer dans le futur, je suis sans voix. C’est devenu habituel sauf que ce sont des gens loin et qui ne parlent pas ma langue natale. Ne me dites que c’est parce qu’on ne parle français qu’en France. Même entre nous chez nous on ne partage rien à part les vannes sur le gameplay d’un confrère.

Un peu ce style le gamedev français: nasty, mystérieux, trop sur de lui et fumeur de clopes. 

Regardez la Suède, ces dernières années la dynamique qui s’est mise en place avec des petits jeunes de 20 ans ravagés par l’acné qui font des jeux, s’entraident en parlant des jeux des autres, montent des blogs et parlent en anglais pour se faire comprendre par tout le monde etc

C’est pas difficile l’anglais, c’est obligatoire dans le domaine donc je vois pas comment les gens arrivent ou ne serait-ce qu’essayent de ne surtout PAS le lire ni l’écrire et d’attendre les trads en français. Cette touffe de poils au creux de la main c’est insane (ça rejoint ce que je disais sur le cd-iii).

Pourquoi est ce que les gens sont des putains de pierres ici ? Moi aussi j’en suis une mais je me soigne même si je fais pas la pub partout de mon blog j’écris suffisamment depuis longtemps pour tomber parfois ici quand je fais des recherches alors… Je tombe sur personne d’autre en dehors des médias web (gamekult et cie).

Je repense aux nombreux mails à des “collègues” du milieu restés sans réponses, même ceux à des compositeurs ou sound designers (une des rares boite à m’avoir toujours répondu illico sans y connaitre aucun contact est Arkane à qui je tire mon chapeau) quand à peu près 100% des mails envoyés ailleurs ont tous reçus une réponse, que ce soit Media Molecule pour bosser sur LBP ou bien chez le mec du FBI, toujours une réponse voir un encouragement dans la foulée.

Jeff Tunnell m’a fait pareil en écoutant mon travail et en en disant du bien. En le connaissant absolument de nulle part.

Je recherche ça, j’essaye encore ici mais les dernières fois où j’ai tendu des trucs de game design à des game designers –Raph Koster, project Horseshoe, Stéphane Bura hey un français qui partage !- les mecs m’ont plus parlé. A croire que quand j’essaie de trouver un terrain d’entente c’est pris pour de la compétition… Je ne sais plus comment réagir moi.

La semaine prochaine, c’est la GDC l’évènement de l’année à San Francisco. Le chapitre européen se déroulera en Allemagne à Cologne.

Il faut qu’on se soigne, vraiment.

I don’t believe in closed architectures. Not because it’s not a good business plan -it can be worth it- but because it’s a consumer lock-in. Software lock-in is preferable over hardware one. You can always change it.

This is why Asus is in a good path. Hardware innovation, software freedom. Just think about games around these hardware near to be shipped.

Like this keyboard filled with a complete computer and a multitouch screen. It seems crazy at first but it’s not that crazy: it’s the home laptop. No need of a screen.

Of course there’s those eee sticks, ready to be used in a gazillion games. I think this product needs really good apps, not that kind.

Ok that’s just a NAS. But it’s a really well done one with a 1To and 1Gb full wireless connection and of course, a decent price. I have some reticences at the all idea of cloud computing BUT digital home cloud system is really interesting; big assets on the NAS, running games on devices (laptops keyboards etc) with sticks. Full auto updating game and experience.

And all of that with the software technology’s heaven that game developers are trying to reach whenever they can: using the tools of their choice, with a preference for open source solutions.

This is a big deal I think.

And the best of all of this hardware pr0n in which I have a lot of expectations:

Below the 400$ mark, multitouch screen you can use with a stylet (now that I have an iphone to dev for I know why the stylet on my DS is really interesting and in a lot of case, better than my finger), the portable tablet I’m dreaming about for some time now. It’s real, it’s gonna be available soon and I want to see multiplayer crazy stuffs on it!

Consoles are fine blabla but it’s a consumer and a gamedev hard lock-in. Consumers and creators are simply fucked (waiting for console makers approvals for months is just an example) and nothing is going to change that except when creators can switch to sexy open hardware. Now they can.

Asus is playing a good game.