Let’s Talk About Things We Can’t
Originally written for #AltDevBlogADay
The forbidden knowledge of the game industry is mostly acquired over a smoke or drink in the pub, parking lot and corridors of conferences. Though the personal scars slowly form our own tales over the years which are then shared in similar back alley fashion. I can safely say 80% of my knowledge about the industry, the stuff that matters, I should have never been told.
This is the absurd construct under which we work in the modern corporate creative world. The dark NDA, the culture of secrecy and the allergic reaction to inquiry or unionisation are complex a subject matter about which books could be written.
We are not an open industry by our nature, which I find absurd because most of the people I’ve met in the industry are open and friendly. When our skeletons are exposed they are outdated and mostly surrounded by such drama and media circus that little intelligent discussion and dissection occur. Often one or more parties say nothing by choice or court order, leading to wide speculation or mudslinging.
I’m convinced the reason we are seeing so much success among indies is because they make games free from our industries black cloud of secrets. Often the most valuable thing the veterans bring to the table is the knowledge of a secret war fought, and battles won which allow them to avoid old hidden pitfalls. Yet there are very few who would ever, or could ever share such knowledge in the open space for others to learn from.
Our crunch culture is not all top down for instance, many insane death marches are started by the team or some other factor. Though because we often don’t discuss or document these situations honestly our peers repeat the mistakes we have made.
I’ve heard several friends working on big titles bemoan the run-away visionary, or narrative designer who ship wrecked the projects in similar fashions. In my own short time in the industry I’ve seen one or two tropes repeat themselves on different projects.
I’m not advocating the spilling of company secrets on the newest hottest title, the kind of thing our consumers would lap up eagerly. I’m saying we need to push forward the tale from that project 4 years ago. The time where the entire company was moved continent for one coder, or a project was canned because of a personal war between two managers, or the tale of how enums were banned.
The last year has given me a lot to write about, and I have been recording it all. As the glitter and crunch clear I find myself looking at the year thinking about which of those stories I could share.
If you can do one thing in the coming new year, try find that one story or two that you can share. Not over a pint in the pub but in public for the greater discussion and improvement of our industry.
Feedback in Production
Originally written for #AltDevBlogADay
As game developers we know the importance of Feedback in our games for players, but so often we forget the importance of feedback for ourselves. Implementing good feedback loops in your production cycle can be just as important.
Two stories highlight this for me. The first is personal, a team for a game I was working on was having the critical bug count communicated to them daily in scrums, and key issues pinned to the wall. The engagement with the lists was low, until one programmer asked for a graph. Since the coloured stack graph went up enjoyment is much higher and conversations happen around the graph (and supporting lists).
Edit: Found Source for this article"You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry" by Nick Waanders
In an article I read a programmer spoke about a game they were working on and the artists not paying attention to the frame rate. The number just didn’t matter to them. So he replaced the fps counter with a series of photos of his face: Happy, content, angry. The improvement was immediate, because the information was visual and the granularity reduced for clearer communication.
General Rule: For every role in the production cycle question what information is critical or a good performance indicator and try to expose feedback in the most appropriate format and make the feedback loop as short as possible.
Claire 
Below are just some quick ideas and areas to try hit
Programmers
- Compile or Pack times: The length of this feedback loop directly impacts the productivity of your team.
- Code Reviews: Not only for quality of code but is the individual receiving adequate feedback on their work. A mentor system or pair programming system can help here, don’t try dump it all on your leads, they won’t have time. Resulting in a breakdown on the feedback loop.
- Feedback on Failure: Are your error messages consistent throughout the business? Can you implement a dump system, or display a call-stack. In the case of failure are you providing the coder with enough quality information to solve the issue? In larger companies, does the error communicate which area of responsibility the error is occurring in?
- Live Analytics: In the case of your programmers working on live systems do they have access to realtime easy to process visual data on player patterns, which functions are performance heavy or what areas of suffering above average load?
Artists
- Immediate Preview: As an artist can I, without support from others, quickly view my assets in-game.
- Assets Streaming: Can an artist update an asset without rebooting the game, removing the need to navigate menus and get to the point of the game where they can see the asset.
- Performance Data: Do I get understandable visual feedback on texel to pixel ratio, overdraw density or other technical data in a fashion that is accessible to me?
Designers
- Real-time Variables: Can a designer alter values in game on the fly to see how they feel?
- Stats Data: Can I receive feedback from any play-through of the game done by QA, Focus Testers, or coders in the form of visual reports or recorded numbers?
- Live Analytics: Do they have access to real-time easy to process visual data on player patterns, purchases of items, drop of rates and general user flow?
- UI Heatmap: Can the game generate a heat-map of cursor flow?
QA
- Build Dates: Can I quickly visual identify the build number and date?
- Bug Feedback: When a bug is returned to QA am I provided with enough information to reassess the bug and is the communication clear?
Production Staff
- Work Done: Does a report quickly identify work done and work remaining at present?
- Visible Build: Can I access a recent working version of the game?
- Time Spent: Can I identify areas of the work which have a higher than expected cost, or large investment in them.
- Graphs: It sounds cliché, but a picture is worth a 1000 words. Live graphs prefably on a web system internally will make you life so much easier.
- Team Time: Is there a frequent structured process for me to receive feedback from the team and provide them with feedback?
Board, CEO, VP, and other Stake Holders
- Visible Progress: Am I able to see visible progress in an easy visual format?
- Team Issues: Are HR items (such as sickness), morale, rework to content, areas of uncertainty communicated with progress reports?
- Target visibility: Am I aware of the big goals for the next development target(s) and able to assign a confidence level to delivery?
Battle Plan: Shipping Someone’s Problem Child
Getting it out There
In my relatively short time in the industry I seem to have attracted a few fixer-uppers, reboots, ports and all round oh do you mind just finishing it off jobs. Some of the biggest of these I have been Lead Programmer or Lead Designer on. Through mistakes, and successes I now have a rough battle plan for getting these jobs done that I thought I would share as my first post.
To clarify we are not referring to projects with a stable team and direction that you take over, or are promoted in charge of. We are talking about those deals where a wet deposit of mud is dropped on your desk, and you are told to find the diamond inside.
1. Run Away if you can
First off, run away! No seriously escape is your best option. These jobs are scary, messy and with ten hidden problems for every problem you can see. Unless there is a really really good reason to do this then just leave it, its not worth your time.
Okay you think it may be worth your time? First question has someone signed some paper-work and committed you before a full in-depth review, if so slap or knock out the foolish suit with no brains. Try avoid commitments, and deadlines at first, you need some time to inspect this project with your full team.
2. Investigate & Negotiate
Find the stake holders, and if possible the developers originally involved and follow the path that lead to the current state. Treat all previous work on the project as if it was done by a genius savant who forgets his trousers. The people before you are likely to be intelligent and experienced but assume they make silly mistakes.
Find out the stake-holders goals, and what they want from the project. Whittle it down as much as possible and kill any sacred cows you can. The more you have the option to change and throw out the more options you have.
Ask to get back to them, keep the lines of communication open. The most common cause of a project failure of this kind is a lack of communication or vision. Understand what they want, keep them in the loop because I guarantee you that you only understand half of what they want, and they only understand a tenth.
3. Rip & Roar
Is there a playable build? Get some pizza, drinks and your team together. Play it play it and play it some more. Understand the product, read the documentation, pour through the assests and then rip into them.
Give the team a chance to say what is terrible about the game, what should be burned with fire, and stuff that just doesn’t make sense. Be sure to keep them on track with the stakeholder vision, but don’t stop them from tomatoes at the goals, let them question it.
Write all this down in a public space, such as a whiteboard. It keeps everyone aware of the challenges that need addressing.
4. Analyse
Pick through the design, art and code. Often the design of a derailed project will have conflicts, and missing pieces of data. Get your design team to dig deep into the numbers, and systems.
The code review strategy depends on the size of the team. I suggest strike teams of 3-5 programmers with specialist areas, or general on a small team, to attack all the core systems. Compare it to the documentation, if there is any, but more importantly map it out yourselves. Don’t let them do any commits yet, just map out the maze.
I cannot speak for the art process but generally its been a case of compiling a style bible, and clarifying the style. Hopefully someone else can give more advice here ;)
Highlight areas of risk, and I can guarantee for every one you find you missed three. You should now have replaced your rip apart boards, with risk boards.
5. Rebuild
Talk with the team about time-scales and build a plan to rebuild. Leave yourself time to iterate, and for the un-missed risks. This is pretty much like a normal game process just with a very unstable base.
This is normal project management, and I don’t want to tell everyone how to suck eggs. The only real challenge, which is hopefully address by the previous two steps, that the team buy in is much harder to get on a rework than a fresh concept.
6. Set Expectations
Now is the time to go back to the stakeholders and set expectations. The worst mistake you can make, and one I’ve made, is to try gloss over some risks.
Everyone should know the risks, the costs and what they are likely to get at the end of the project. I guarantee the costs are higher, and the risks are higher. The only reason to do this from a business perspective is to recover investment. Don't be afraid to say it's not worth it and kill it now.
Sometimes though the reason is because someone believes there is a diamond in that piece of mud they dropped on your desk. It’s a great feeling to find that diamond, and worth the work.
Also now would be the correct time to sign the piece of paper. 
Claire
Postscript:
Here are some general tips for you all, hope they help.
- Lines of Communication are so important in problem projects, be sure of them.
- Don’t pollute the project with blame, hence the rip it sessions. It gets all that negative air out there then rub it out and replace it with plans.
- It’s tempting to throw out massive blocks of code, but a lot of time can be wasted. Instead I encourage decoupling efforts first so you can isolate problem areas.
- Some core design may need to be reworked, but encourage your designers to isolate risk areas first.
- Don’t be afraid to prototype! Yes I know the project has already started but prototypes give a stable clear vision of a problem and a possible solution.
The Value of the Middlemen
Cut out the middle man!
How many times have you heard that said as a positive call to action? Well there is a darker side to this glorious plan. It stems simply from this question, "What does the Middle Man do?". If your answer is take our money and invent work then shame on you.
I haz all your moneyz
What they most often provide is some perspective, and a range of people and business skills.
Publishers provide market research, business analysis and a range skills that are often overlooked. Agents do networking and chasing up so you don't have to. Billing Service handles a whole range of messy interconnected laws between countries, insurance and other items.
Mostly they provide perspective a third party to look in and stop the madness of creative train. I've been on board more than one of those and sometime they have been slowed down and saved. Yet I think more than one creative train has gained too much speed and derailed though it's own madness.
So I say to you the third party, the partners, the community, the network, all these people they are Sanity!
Nano, Leads and Projects
Level Up - Scott Pilgrim style
On reflection of this month my NanoWriMo project which I was really keen on is just not going to fit into my spare time at the moment.
In better news I'm now Lead Designer at GameLabs Jagex. Wooooot! All quite amazing to be honest. Some amazing and exciting stuff is on the go there now. Wish I could say more, and a bunch just happened.
So it means my time is getting sucked up. Hence no NanoWriMo and my October project falling by the wayside. I do want to carry on tinker but they will be things I can finish in a day or maybe a night or two.
So until I have some tinker bits to show
P.S. Those blog posts I was sitting on are not going to be published. Not comfortable with them at this stage. Needless to say there is a lot I want to say and some of it may anger people.
Quality of Life
Quality of Life is so crucial, but so are your dreams. My entire adult life I have been broke, overworked and dealing with a whole side plate of stuff. So what's the biggest perk of me new job?
No overtime! Oh it happens on the rare occasion but it is rare, I know one or two people are doing some overtime this weekend. However in the main 95% of the workforce leaves on time 90% of the time. So yes I'm happy, extremely so. Thank you Jagex!
It's sad that it is so rare in the games industry that people can have a healthy balance. Some people's dreams aren't their careers, or even the games. That's more than okay and those people should be allowed to live their dreams and still contribute to our wonderful industry. Not driven out by the super geeks and obsessed zombies worshipping the cult of games.
That being said I have dreams and I am happy to sweat and slog for them. Dreams are hard but always achievable. My dream has always been cultural expression and relevance in my chosen artform. So pardon if I take a breather for a few months to enjoy a happy work/life balance for the first time.
Dreams are hard, but life should be fun.
Badda Booom!
Mere-Mortals games division is now shut.
We were working late a few weeks back when the news was delivered and well the final final final letter came through today. It's all quite a process, which started with a large round of redundancies as we tried to pull through but couldn't. The company is still running but sans Games. Many good people are now out of work, some have already found new work but it's done.
There were a lot of good people doing their best. The question WHY has been thrown around and to be frank there is no way of answering it without sounding like an ass. Throwing mud gives leaves you dirty.
I will say that there were clear failings in certain keys areas, and I would love to do a post-mortem on it. Sadly our industry is small, secretive and in some cases petty. So it's very hard to dissect such a thing academically without shooting your career in the foot.
I will say that a key bad point has been removed, and is hopefully bleeding in some dark alley, and that the remaining managers are well aware of past mistakes. I wish them all the best and hope they pull through. I encourage anyone to take a second look at the company because in many ways it is now a healthier place.
Hunting for a job
Well the hunt has been on for some time now and I will say there are two opportunities I'm waiting on like a kid before Christmas. I honestly don't know which one I want more but there are both jackpot prizes.
I did have a lot of trouble with the whole Games Designer & Programmer thing. While most industry vets see the strength of that, and even the inevitable crossover well it confuses interviewers. You are a funny shaped peg they have a hard time hiring. So in the end I made two CVs and chose the most appropriate.
Podcast Problems
Noticed some trouble with the iTunes feed which is now fixed, sorry for the delays. Obviously I can no longer use the awesome sound setup at work so I'm looking into making other plans. Please let me know what you most want to see out of the cast.
All the best,
Claire
Aquattack! for PSP minis
Aquattack! for PSP minis.
Free the captured fish before the fishermen haul in their nets! Try to beat your high score in arcade mode, or play against the clock in one of the 50 individual challenges.
On sale 7th July 2010 in the PlayStation®Store
It's out next week folks. Also I'm hoping to record a podcast with the two key developers on the project.
Games Horizon Thoughts Day 2
Monetising Innovation
Peter Molyneux - Creative Director
Really enjoyed this talk, a real breath of fresh air. The press coverage of this has mostly been terrible focusing on sound bytes and out of context bits of information, ah well.
I really liked Peter drawing the similarities to the 80s, remember 1983 crash is a big reason we have gated submission.
I really enjoyed him talking about silly mistakes he made in his development career. Like doing Populous 2 in assembler to impress some other industry people. I've made similar mistakes and glad to see there is hope for me yet.
He talked about the sense of wonder that great experiences can provide, he also focused on the quality and innovation aspect. It's worth mentioning every successful title he has done has had friction from the publisher.
I was highly amused at how his sexual commentary and "cupping" technique made the audience nervous and uncomfortable. I really really like that Lionhead is willing to take on these topics, if we can have mini-guns we should have sex. Cause you may never fire a mini-gun but your almost certainly going to have sex.
He also talked about the more diverse audience and needing to serve that. When I asked him about that he responded that you need to make your studio more diverse, listing an impressive number of women in important positions in Lionhead. It really impressed me, no hedging or dodging, he plainly stated you needed a more diverse team to produce diverse products.
It great to see quality and innovation to be held up in their proper place.
Changing Games
Joseph Olin - President, Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences
Another REALLY great talk. Again focusing on quality and the fight for eyeballs.
He spoke about the positive state of games, the shift to digital and the lack of proper tracking.
A comment I think he made, may have been another speaker, was once you see the gold rush it's over. Which is so true. I'm really getting sick of all these business people trying to jump on bandwagons after they have left.
Marketing campaigns that punch above their weight and why
Tom Rothenberg – Managing Partner, McCann Erickson
An amazing talk, with a broad application. Talking about the 4th age of advertising being Dialogue. My favourite quote came from this talk, Digital Marketing is like sex everyone is talking about it, some people are doing it. Most do it badly*. That may be slightly misquoted but the strokes are there
The insight into the Halo 3 campaign and Pepsi sports programs were amazing. Turning your brand or product into an "IDEA". Really interesting approach.
Edit: A detailed write-up is now on Games Brief
Interactive Drumming
Mark Schulman
A fun talk from a famous drummer. Great for the spirits, nothing new. Ended in a fun way and there were tic tacs.
Six New Tricks to Teach Old Dogs
Darren Jobling - COO, Eutechnyx
Hmmm.... not a great talk.
The one good quote which I think is so true,
"You can't change a negative person but by hell they can change you."
I've always believed in giving your all to your craft. Don't be half there, if your unhappy then change damn it.
The Future: We're All (Still) Monkies
Scott Foe – Consultant
Really enjoyable talk which can be boiled down to it's title.
Sex is a big thing, why are we ignoring it? He pointed to dating games, where are they? I have to say that I think that Kinetics is a big option here, starting with avatars with the option of moving to camera. Bearing in mind that you can't lie about height and weight to the camera (for avatar data). Still the game space can be hostile to women, there is a reason my voice chat is off except with friends. Tele-dildonics or remote stimulation is an interesting field. Which is better a high score or an orgasm?
Also talking about the value of experience and focused practice, feeling like I'm misquoting there. Basically experience comes from hard focused training. Think how athletes train, he used some basketball examples. Many starting earlier. Experience matters!!!
He touched the importance of good education, some discussion about the great innovative from skill-set in the QA session. Also some back and forth about whether a degree is needed. Everyone who I respected was saying no, Mark Reign for instance said their head graphics programmer had no degree. Though it was acknowledge that good guidance can accelerate experience.
Some younger members of the audience squirmed a bit, but having worked with giants like Bruce there are no doubts in my mind. Also remember age does not equal experience, its the amount of focused training.
All in all a great conference which I was glad to attend. Loads bubbling away in my head and I look forward to exploring some of it at a later date.
Games Horizon Thoughts Day 1
So I just got back from Games Horizon at Sage in Gateshead. Really awesome small conference which lets you really network and connect with people and some great speakers. Most of the real buzz from the conference has already hit the web by more talented writers than me. Here is my personal run down.
Roadmap to the Gamepocalypse
Jesse Schell – CEO, Schell Games
Jesse is an amazing speaker with really intelligent and engaging things to say. I strongly encourage you to look at his DICE talk, viewable here.
He built on those ideas and asked how we were going to get to the Gamepocalypse. He also tried to see the positive side of it. A very optimistic and awesome talk, games will be everywhere.
The question the talk really stirred in me is should developers try become the nexus of these massive swarms of interactivity or just be a service provider.
Edge did a nice piece on his talk here.
Without a doubt the best talk of the conference and my head is still buzzing from it. Great way to open the conference.
Edit: Slides from Talk
Bigpoint Games
Nils Holger Henning - CCO Bigpoint Games
Not much to say other than the obvious, Bigpoint is raking in the money bigtime.
One interesting thing covered was why Germany?? The truth is not so long back web games were mostly numbers and static pages. As the euro boardgames movement proves, Europe and especially the Germans love number games. So they just had the knowledge and fan base to take advantage of web games improving and becoming more accessible.
Free versus paid – the best way to make money from your game
Nicholas Lovell – Gamesbrief, (Chairman of Panel)
Mark Rein - Vice President, Epic Games
Ian Baverstock - Consultant, Tenshi Ventures
James Brooksby – Studio Head, doublesix
Dylan Collins - CEO, Jolt Games
This panel wandered all about the place like a drunk monkey. Mark as always was an interesting point of action and spoke good common sense. The one real question on my mind was a long term one.
By fragmenting, slicing, and spreading our games are we not devaluing the cultural artefacts we create. I want to return to this thought a revisit it once I've had more time to think on it.
Lessons leaned building Moshi Monsters to 20 million users
Michael Acton Smith – CEO, Mind Candy.
The Moshi talk was fun and highlighted some interesting points. Nothing ground breaking, but good to see some numbers and methods.
Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust: Reincarnation of the console games model
Yohei Ishii - Senior Director Business Development, CCP Games.
I've known about the Eve and Dust 514 for a while, but World of Darkness was news to me. The massive thing was the ambition of this company. The courage to press forward truly important gaming and the bravery not to be a nanny.
I've spoken and thought about Eve quite a bit. It's one of the most interesting things out there. If not for my tendency to get addicted to MMO I would be applying Eve right now. I have played briefly in the past.
I really hope the Dust 514 initiative gets past console gates. It would be a complete game changer no doubt. I wish all the best to them and cross my fingers.
Modern Technology will Kill Us All?
Todd Eckert – Director of North America, Eutechnyx (Chairman of Panel)
Steve Mayall – MD, MusicAlly
Duncan Smith - Music Supervisor, SCEE
Can't say I enjoyed this talk. It felt poorly targeted and did not flow. It left little time for questions.
The Games Industry v William Hogarth
Charles Cecil – CEO, Revolution.
A real education, I was hooked for the entire talk. Charles spoke about William Hogarth's creative endeavours in comparison to the modern environment. A real eye opener and educational talk, drawing some strong relations. Hogarth was keen on being direct to the consumer.
One thing which was really interesting is he spoke about subscription model that Hogarth used for his pressings. 50% upfront, and a further 50% on delivery. The initial money coming directly from customers on a basis of creative trust.
I immediatly thought of Frozen Synapse from Mode7. They offer you the chance to buy into the game now and take part in the beta and the development process. Getting the final game when it is released. It's a model I like and hope we see more.
A short write up is here
The rise and impact of social network games
Rick Gibson - Director, Games Investor Consulting. (Chairman of Panel)
Michael Acton Smith – CEO, Mind Candy
Seb Hayes - COO and Co-founder, Playfire
Not a great panel, a lot of people with gold rush in their eyes.
The real disappointment is I wanted to find out what they thought about OpenID and OAuth. Considering how much of a big quiet push its getting. How it can dissolve walls between networks. Well either I really badly phrased my question or the panel was not familiar with the topic. Too many people just see Facebook connect I think. Ah well.
I ended the day with a big social foobar and decided to skip the party.