Game Matters

4-day old Xbox 360 for sale

I have just about had a heart attack, thanks to my new Microsoft Xbox 360 that I finally was about to find in a store last weekend.  The problem is Xbox Live.  I've spent all morning trying to sign up, and each time I'm near the end of the process, I get a time-out and I'm told to try again later.  Okay, I can live with connection troubles like this, but what puts a stake through my heart is that the Xbox doesn't remember ANY of the 20 minutes worth of information I already typed in before it timed out.  So, I'm forced, kicking and cursing, to re-type in my GamerTag name, password, address, credit card info, secret question, birth date, favorite ice cream flavor, and a long list of other mind-numbing information.

After doing this four times, I'm defeated.  The Xbox wins... I cannot bring myself to type in all of this information again, just to have Microsoft fling it freely into the ether winds, forever lost.

Oh well.  Bring on the PS3...

UPDATE:  Well, turns out my account went through, but never was I given any indication by my Xbox 360 -- the only indication I ever saw was that of failure, with an Xbox 360 screen that said there were connection problems, and to try again later.  But, when I checked my email later, I see that my credit card was charged and I had an account set up.  I called customer service and had them cancel my account.  They said all I had to do was select the option to recover my GamerTag, but I pointed out that I had been given no indication that there was a GamerTag account to recover, so why would I try that option.  The tech support guy admitted to seeing my point.  I also pointed out that I did, if fact, begin the process of recovering my GamerTag, but when I saw that I was being asked to enter in a ton of data again, I blew it off.  I figured it was a long shot anyway, so the hassle wasn't worth pursuing what I thought was a dead-end, anyway.

I will try one more time when I head home late tonight.  If things do not work out, well, I'm putting it up on eBay.  I'll have one last update here tomorrow, one way or the other.

UPDATE NEXT DAY:  Had a friend come over and finally got it working -- this time it didn't time out and I successfully set up an account:  XBSux0r.  Yeah, I was in a pissy mood.  Especially since the account name I tried to get in the morning (when it showed it was available) was no longer available, even though a call to tech support said it was available.  Clearly, there are still kinks in the system.

So, I'm all set up and decide to check out the market place.  Here are my first impressions:

o  Microsoft, bless their little hearts, hasn't heard of the concept of quantity discounts that been going around for, oh, I don't know.... a few 1000 years maybe.  They let you buy credits, that can then be used to buy little arcade games that can be downloaded to your 360's hard drive.  You can buy 1000 credits for $6.25, or 10,000 credits for $62.50.  Most downloadable games cost under 1000 credits, so why would I ever plop down $62.50?  But, had Microsoft been ever so slightly clever, they would have at least discounted 10,000 credits to $58 or so.  That would have encouraged more people to buy the larger quantities, and in the end, resulted in more revenues and profits for Xbox Live.  As I like to say, it's always the little things that big companies can't quite get right.

o  Another little thing:  I downloaded a few demos, are was shocked at how little demo time you're given to test most games.  Robotron, for example, gave me like 30 seconds.  That's it.  Marble Madness Ultra, which was a GIANT friggin' download, gave me one level, per difficultly level.  That's it.  And the hard level was ultra hard, so worthless as a way for me to test play the game.  The easy level was too easy.  So really, I got to play one short medium level as a way to determine whether I liked this game, and based on that test, I'm still not sure, so I'll just hang onto my credits, thank you.

o  Geometry Wars rocks, and the demo was sufficiently long for me to properly come to this conclusion.  Sold.

o  Finally, for Oblivion players on the 360, there's armor that can be bought for your horse.  I have no idea how this impacts gameplay, but I suspect we're on the verge of seeing this type of gameplay upgrade a LOT.  And I mean a LOT!!!  If this proves profitable, then tons of games will step in line.  Heck, when I first saw this last night I was even brainstorming ways to do this for our upcoming game, Prey.  Money is money, right?  But seriously, I don't know if I like this or not.  I think I do, as long as the purchased additions do not alter core gameplay, but merely add minor features or upgrades.  In any case, I think it's going to be commonplace soon.  It's hard to argue against incremental revenues.

Electronic Arts seize the IP

Saw this story on BusinessWeek Online reporting that EA, long time friend of the movie-based game, is going steer their floating behemoth into the bluer waters of original IP.  From the article: "EA's ambitious goal is to create more such innovative, internally developed games while lessening the company's dependence on professional sports and Hollywood movie franchises."

As I've stated in this blog many times (more often within the comments section), there are only a limited few linear media IPs that can reliably, consistently cross the chasm into the non-linear games market.  These are IPs, like Spider-Man, Star Wars, Harry Potter, LOTR, and James Bond that have strong characters, a mythology providing a strong story backbone, and built-in hooks that translate into compelling gameplay (web slinging, Bond's gadgets, light sabers, etc.)  I have contended for the past decade that there are less than a dozen linear IPs (out of 100's of 1000's of novels, movies, TV shows, etc.) worthy of being turned into games (not including sports licenses and kids licenses -- kids will always go with what they've seen before on TV and in movies).

Poor EA! Brokeback Mountain, Crash and Munich just aren't game material.  And so they'll have to actually think of their own game ideas!

Publishers need to home grow their original games for three overwhelming reasons:

[1] It's more profitable in the long-term, because original hits add tremendous ongoing stability to a company (sequels).

[2] Home grown hits elevate the company's stock price, because they get full credit for the value of the IP.  IPs can be worth 100's or millions of dollars.  The GTA IP alone is probably worth $800 million or more.  In 2002 the Max Payne IP sold for nearly $50 million.  Bottom-line: IPs add a LOT of value to the bottom-line.

[3] Ownership of an IP allows the publisher to fully benefit from transmedia exploitation (as opposed to being the one being exploited).  What this means is that the publisher benefits from movies, TV shows (Earth Worm Jim and Sonic, for example), novels, amusement park rides, novels, and anything that may stem from the IP.  Again, adding bucks to the bottom-line.

In 3D Realm's history, even recently, we've been approached dozens of times to make games based on movies, including The Matrix and Men in Black.  We've always turned down these offers in less than a heartbeat.  And the reason is simple: We come out much better off by making our own IP, rather than working on someone else's.  Publishers like EA, perhaps, are starting to learn this, too.

Something else interesting from the article, EA is adopting something of a When It's Done attitude: "Another change is that homegrown projects will be given more flexible deadlines. Since these projects won't have hard release dates like sports or movie titles, [EA's president of Worldwide Studios, Paul Lee] believes it makes more sense to develop them until the team feels its idea is fully realized. "In the past we have committed to ship dates with large development teams before we had a game design," says Lee. "That is changing....We're going to have the best games and release them when they are ready."

Next in the news, cheese discovered on the moon...

Forrest Gump'ed

Well, the news is out that Rockstar, a label of Take-Two Interactive, is coming out with a table tennis game.  Does anyone think this is a good match for the Rockstar brand?  Here's what I had to say, in a letter I wrote to executives of the company exactly four years ago...

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Miller
Sent: Monday, March 04, 2002
To: xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Rockstar

I saw the news story below [not included here - ed.], and this line here is the one I want to talk about a little:  "Their games are very unique," said Paul Kaump, an analyst with Dougherty & Co. "They focus on the mature market."

[...snipped section...]

The Rockstar brand has become a true brand, unlike most meaningless, jack-of-all-trades brands in the game industry.  The Rockstar brand, to consumers, is positioned as an adult, mature brand.  Gamers and the press are picking up on this, and further games like DNF and Mafia will help reinforce this.  And brand is only powerful, compelling and meaningful when it's focused on a single, easily-understood meaning.  The Rockstar brand has achieved this.

Most publishers do not know how to make a brand meaningful, which is why most publisher brands are nearly worthless on their own.

And once Rockstar begins shipping games that do not fit this adult image, it too will become diluted, less-valuable, less-meaningful, and less able to attract gamers based on its own merits.  The best way to kill this brand is to make it generic, like the Activision brand, or the THQ brand, or the Eidos brand, or the Acclaim brand, or the Sierra brand, or the Infogrames brand -- all nearly worthless brands that gamers don't care about because these brands do not stand for anything (because they stand for everything).  In these cases, gamers buy the game brands, and don't care about the publisher brands.  But in Rockstar's case, the brand brings value to the table because it stands for something--it is positioned very well.

So, I hope Take-Two understands what they have with the Rockstar brand and maintains the brand's purity and focus.  This will mean that if a good game comes along that doesn't fit the Rockstar image, it should be published under a different label.  For example, if Take-Two wants to publish a game based on N-Sync, then doing so under the Rockstar brand would be a giant blunder.

Scott Miller
www.3DRealms.com

I did hear back from them the next day, and they fully agreed.

In a very recent update on Origin of Brands, Laura Ries writes:  "Preserve your focus: Maintaining your focus is the best way to keep a brand strong. By chasing the latest trend, you unfocus the brand and lose the meaning, credibility and authenticity of the brand."  It's really very simple to make a strong brand.  But it's also incredibly tempting to muddy your own brand, by branching out and satisfying that burning desire to be all things to all people.  When brands become strong, the executives in charge too often forget how they got that way to begin with.  It's all about focus.  Lose that, and you lose the brand's power.

N-tombed

I missed this non-story when it made news, but it appears that several sources have reported that production of N-Gage has ended.  Anyone who's read this blog for a while will not be surprised that I didn't think the N-Gage had a chance in hell.

The final story is that Nokia lost a TON of money on this product, and probably partly due to the distraction of the N-Gage, they lost a lot of ground to other cell phone makers, like Motorola.  Will Motorola one day get the itch to dabble in the gaming market?  If they do, I bet the now-wiser execs at Nokia will cheer loudly in their boardroom.

Here's another interesting link regarding a report by Screen Digest Limited I missed when it was fresh a few months ago.  The report claims that within the coming console cycle, developers are having to once again learn a lot of new technology, which pushes attention away from gameplay considerations.  And because the rising cost increases the risk of financing games for publishers, we're probably going to see more licenses, versus less originals.  Oh, joy.

Marc de Gentile-Williams, the author, commented, "At 30 years of age, the games industry still suffers from an endemic lack of professional management compared to less mature industries such as the mobile telephony and the Internet industries."  I have witnessed this sad reality first-hand.  It's very clear to me that publishers, especially, are generally poorly managed at the highest levels.  I think it comes down to this:  We need leaders/CEOs at the top who know something about making games.  Is there a publisher that has type of leadership?  Not that I know of.

And so we meet again...

With some sadness I've neglected the care and feeding of this blog, but sometimes you need a break from these things (anyone who's written a blog for 2+ years will surely nod their head in agreement), plus, I've just been busy.

Many people have asked me to comment about the next-gen consoles, and frankly I have nothing enlightened to say.  I've yet to touch the controller of any of them.  I can't find a X360 to buy in stores, and we have yet to get a development machine sent from Microsoft even though Prey is being developed for their system.

My prediction for this new round of consoles is that the X360 and PS3 will wind up about equal in terms of sales, with Nintendo's Revolution coming in a distant third--perhaps this will be the last console from this company.  The X360 gains ground on the PS3 this cycle by virtue of two points:  [1] Xbox Live! rocks (from what I've heard -- again, no first-hand experience).  [2] The X360 has a big head start over the PS3.  Finally, I cannot comment on the Revolution's controller until I try one.

More:

o  E3 decides to focus on games!   It's about time.  If we're going to be taken seriously as a maturing industry, it only makes sense to drop the soft porn geek fantasies and make games the thing.  Two thoughts:  One, getting around E3 has been a nightmare if you ever needed to pass a booth with scantily clad booth dancing dolls drawing a feverish crowd of camera flashing boys.  Two, and I love this one the most... Games with no game will finally have no crowd.

o  On our site, every week until release, we'll have a developer diary on our coming game, Prey.  And just for fun, too, we started a weekly series that we're calling the Apogee Legacy Interviews, in which we are posting interviews with many of the key developers who were instrumental in our early success, going back to 1990.  We hope to have at least 30 interviews this year

o  I stopped playing WoW seven months ago, after hitting level 60.  I am a solo player, and I do not like the hassles of grouping and re-raiding the same areas over and over.  The game was only interesting to me when there was the promise of new areas to explore, new sights to behold.  I'll probably jump back in when the expansion pack comes out (Burning Crusade) that introduces new areas and pushes the level cap up to 70.

UPDATE:  Meant to post this yesterday:  I now have in my grubby hands a signed agreement that will result in us getting Xbox 360 dev boxes.  All is good.  And I had no idea that this little blog post would get so much news coverage, even in Europe (based on incoming links from news sites).  And while I'm here, a fun link for everyone, showing a recent consumer video/PC game market breakdown in the United Kingdom.

IP on licensed games

The June/July issue of Game Developer has an article, Playing Smart with IP, by Dan Lee Rogers, that hits on several strong points in favor of original IP versus licensed IP.  One of Rogers' key stats:  If you look at the top 40 console games (lifetime sales) since 1995, 31 of them, or 77 percent, are original brands (including sequels within these brands).  That leaves just nine out of 40 as licensed game brands.  That's near total dominance in favor of original IP.  Some of these top selling brands include: GTA, Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Halo, Crash Bandicoot, Tekken, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid and Driver.

And about two years ago I read a similar article with original IP winning by 80%.  This earlier article included PC brands, including Diablo, Doom, Half-Life, The Sims, Warcraft, Tomb Raider, Duke Nukem and EverQuest.

So, if original brands control nearly 80% percent of the chart every year, why aren't we seeing a LOT more original games in development?  It's clear that the real gold mine in our industry is with original IP (and their sequels and spin-offs).  Publishers would be so much better off in the long-run by creating original IP versus licensed games.  Owning an arm's length list of home grown IP should be the goal of every publisher, because it gives them ultimate control of their own destiny and revenues.

Yet we have a large publisher like THQ being out-IP'ed by a little game studio like Id Software, who've created three blockbuster IPs, Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake.

Given the success of original brands over licensed ones, why don't publishers invest more in original IP?  There can be only one answer:  They're not good at it.  They're afraid.

But we need more original IP to put us on the same self-sustaining plateau as TV, movies and novels -- all three of these entertainment industry branches absolutely crush us in total revenues, and by no coincidence, in original IP output.

It's okay to cherry pick a few licenses now and then, but if I ran a publisher (fat chance!) I'd be focused on creating original brands that I fully controlled, and could exploit across other media.  When it comes to licensed IP, other than kids licenses and sports licenses, there are fewer than a dozen licenses from the entire library of novels, TV and movies that are worth exploiting in the game world.  That's right, less than a dozen.  Which is why so, so few licensed games can compete with original games for the top revenue slots year after year.

And yet every year publishers trip over themselves to license Hollywood summer movies, adding value to Hollywood's bottom-line, while spanking ours.  What we need are fewer chicken-shit publishers run by non-gamer financial or legal suits, and instead run by someone with a creative spark in their cranium, who have the guts to ignore financial quarters or slotted release dates.  I won't hold my breath, though.

Learning to be fun

Last week I finished reading A Theory of Fun, by Raph Koster, Chief Creative Officer for Sony Online Entertainment.  This book convincingly answers the question, What makes a game fun?  And more than that, it dives into topics such as the ethics of games and how games can take their rightful place alongside other respected forms of entertainment.  It's all good stuff, and it's easy to agree with everything Koster writes.  It all rings true.

Although the book is deep with detail, the main question boils down to three words:  Fun equals learning.  As Koster puts it, "Fun...arises from mastery.  It arises out out of comprehension.  It is the act of solving puzzles that makes a game fun.  In other words, with games, learning is the drug."  And likewise, he writes, "Boredom is the opposite.  When a game stops teaching us, we feel bored...Games grow boring when they fail to unfold new niceties in the puzzles they present."

I think Koster is 100% right.  Developers must strive to make games whose difficulty zig-zags within that narrow band of "fun," between boredom (too easy, already learned) and frustration (too hard to learn).  Koster says that "the definition of a good games is therefore 'one that teaches everything it has to offer before the player stops playing'."

Another interesting comment in the book gives a hint as to why we love certain genres, like the FPS, RTS, RPG, & MMOG:  "Given that we're basically hierarchical and strongly tribal primates, it's not surprising that most of the basic lessons we were taught by our early childhood play are about power and status."

Koster also talks about a concept related to fun, called "delight," which deals with aesthetic appreication.  We experience delight when we recognize patterns, yet we're also surprised by them.  Delight has nothing to do with challenges.  And Koster says delight will "wear thin quickly," and therefore games cannot live by delight alone.  It's easy to name games that have sure looked pretty (delight), but have not given us an fresh challenge to overcome (fun).

Koster has written one of the best books for our industry.  I hope everyone adds it to their bookshelf.

The Ico syndrome

Quite often I see discussions among developers who use Ico as the poster child for critically stellar games with underwhelming sales.  But while Ico is often lauded as a great game, it never surprised me with its lack of success.

A few factors that contributed to Ico's under-performance:

o  Meaningless name.  Just seeing/hearing the name tells you nothing about the game.  So, the name itself did nothing to help position the game.

o  Oddball hero.  Doesn't the boy have horns?  If so, this game has the same problem that the Oddworld games have, a quirky hero that's hard to relate to.

o  Short game.  Probably a victim of rental, and gamers just wanting more for their money.

o  Non-compelling subject.  This may be the heaviest anchor.  Ico seems to be a generic fantasy, save the girl story without anything buzz-worthy to sell it.  Yes, the hook is that you grab the girl's hand and guide her, but on the surface that doesn't sound like an excitingly new hook.  And even playing the game I didn't find this all that compelling.  Really, the only thing eye-opening about the game was its visuals, but again it's still overall generic, just nicely done.

o  Kid's game.  This ties into the previous point, but it also stands on it's own.  To Joe Gamer holding the Ico box in his hand, it looks like a game for kids.  There is no obvious coolness to the concept.  This game is a tough sell to the teenage/adult gamer.

Ico has many game developers shaking their heads in dismay, because it's a game with stellar production values, gameplay uniqueness and overall terrific execution, and yet it didn't become an unqualified hit.  The game was poorly positioned, both from a branding perspective and from a game concept perspective.  Ico's main character, generic setting and kid level story did not lay a compelling foundation for a game.

Practically all games that are critically acclaimed yet fail to realize expected potential have similar problems.  And generally it's a problem that's easy to avoid.

Can you predict a hit?

No.

Well, yes.  But you have to assume that execution is adequate, and this is a huge assumption.  Many, maybe most games fail based on poor execution alone.  Execution encompasses areas such as interface, controls, bugginess, gameplay balance, and all other areas of production quality.  Execution is the one true wild card.  We engage in folly when we predict if an unreleased game will be a hit, because we cannot predict execution quality.

Well, unless the studio has a tract record of top notch execution, like Blizzard, Valve, and Bioware.  Then it's a well placed bet.

Otherwise, we're back to no, it's not possible to predict a hit.

Execution happens to be the area most disrupted by the publisher's money squeeze, or when they try to rush a game out to beef up revenues in one of their fiscal quarters, to ensure their stock doesn't take a slight tumble and rile investors a wee little bit.  It's really hard to execute on execution when you've got limited time to get things right.  This shortsighted behavior by publishers has sunk more games than perhaps any other development factor in the industry.  Too many games are simply released before they're done.  Eighty percent done does not a hit make.  We all know this, right?

Well, I wish.

So, while it's deadly tough to predict if a game will be a hit, it's actually not nearly so tough to make a hit game.  In fact, I think it's kinda easy.  Except you need to have the time to execute the game to its full potential.  That's quite an "except," and only a handful of studios can do so.  Well, like Blizzard, Valve, and Bioware.  Funny that.

The story with ludology

Greg's recent post, "No Justice, No Peace": No Truce in the Narratology/Ludology War, covers well the ongoing battle between these two camps, a battle I care so little about that I thought I'd never blog about this topic.  But, never say never...

My two cents won't be too enlightening, as I've not given this topic a lot of thought.  Quite simply, I see games as formal, rules-based systems.  So, I guess I'm a ludologist.  But then, I fully recognize the grand importance of context and story in modern games, so I guess I'm a narratologist, too.

To my simplistic way of thinking, it boils down to this:

o  Abstract games do not need a story, like chess, checkers, Sorry, Trivial Pursuit, poker, Go, etc.

o  Games that involve characters are better off with a story to give meaning to the action.

That's it!

The more abstract the game, the less the need for a story to tie it all together.  But once you add actual characters to the game -- especially human characters -- there's something hardwired in us that makes us want a story to give context to the action.  It's not required by the game.  But it's desired by the player.  Stories, when characters are involved, satisfy us in a primal way that Joseph Campbell can explain much better that I (and I'm not referring to The Hero with a Thousand Faces specifically, Campbell wrote other books that covered this topic that are lesser known, like Myths, Dreams, Religions).

Bottom-line, I see this debate as a pointless distraction that has pulled a lot of smart minds into its depths.  In effect, there is no conflict between the two camps.  The ludology camp is perfectly correct, and how this can be argued is beyond comprehension.  However, modern, realistic games with characters absolutely work better as narratives.  We all love good stories, and games may eventually be a great medium for stories.

Am I wrong?  I don't see how I can be.