Game Matters

Radar Q & A

(I wrote this post a week after Radar's announcement, but it never made it on the site because we were trying to set up comments and other features.  And finally we decided to drop all of that and just bring the blog back to my original home.)

After our well covered announcement, there were numerous good questions posted in both gamer and developer-oriented discussion forums. I’ve borrowed several of these questions to post and answer here:

o How is Radar related to 3D Realms?

Quite simply, it’s not related. Both 3DR and Radar are entirely separate companies, with separate management. Well, except me. I’m a co-owner and manager at 3DR, but for all intents and purposes, Radar is my full-time job now.

o Where is Radar located?

We’re headquartered in Phoenix, AZ, but that's just where the CEO resides and two of his executive henchmen. The reality is that Radar is a distributed company. This means that we are located wherever we want to live—there’s no requirement to relocate. Currently we have several people in Canada, several people in California, several people in Arizona, and two people in Texas--11 people total, and growing.

There are two key advantages for us as a distributed company: The first is that we can hire better people, because often the best candidate loves where they live and doesn’t want to move. And second, since we remotely coordinate as a company, that transitions well into remotely coordinating with our development partners. We can reuse the tools and lessons learned from working internally and use those tested approaches with our distributed partners. In effect, Radar’s Creative Directors become an extension of the development team, and are always available to spend time on-site, so that they are fully involved with the process and can support the developer in any way required by the studio.

o Are we a think-tank that creates concepts, and then hires studios to make the game?

Not at all. In many cases talented development studios have a strong concept, but they cannot get publisher buy-in because the concept is too innovative, and therefore seen as too risky. We’re also interested in working with studios who may have strong development skills but are lacking their own strong IP to develop, because we have a catalog of Radar- and Depth-conceived IP ‘cores’ that can be chosen from. But even in these cases, we’re not handing down a completed design—we just have a core, which needs to be fleshed out with the team as part of a co-design process.

The bottom-line is that we want to work with studios to co-create and co-design concepts, so that everyone has buy-in and creative ownership.

o How are you different from agents?

Agents add no creative or production value to a project, nor do they provide funding or management resources to help monetize an IP in a cross-media fashion. In short, we are nothing like an agent.

Now that I’ve answered a few of the questions I’ve seen, here’s what a few game developers are saying about Radar after our announcement:

First, a well-known industry designer wrote: “My favorite thing about the concept of RADAR is that it splits out two major aspects of the business that the publishers currently hold, project incubation and retail distribution. In trying to do both, most publishers end up with a never-ending series of…assistant producers and execs (with sales/business backgrounds) trying to shape games. Further, the pubs have to be so large in order to do both that it just invites all the worst aspects of large organizations (in terms of speed, communications, efficiency, etc). I’m hopeful this will create specialization (splitting game/IP shaping and moving mass quantities of “product”) that ends up being healthy for games.”

And a successful studio owner based in the UK wrote: “It’s the perfect time for something like this, particularly with the people involved. Many publishers are seriously struggling to break new IP, and many devs are spending too much of a percentage of their time on, err, developing, rather than bringing their passion to the brand with input into the marketing and PR plan, which is hampering the possibilities of breaking through.”

Finally, two closing comments from two developers, reflecting the general attitude we’ve seen:

“I’m definitely excited to see where this goes. Breaking apart the monolithic funding + IP incubation + distribution lock that the publishers have seems like it would be a long term win-win for everyone.”

“The whole thing sounds brilliant to me but only because of the credibility you guys bring. In this case you already have an extremely strong IP track record.”

Does the game industry need a Radar?

(Well, posting blog entries on the Radar site was somewhat hassle-filled, so we've decided to bounce the blog back to my original home.  For completeness, here's my original entry from about six weeks ago, duplicated below.)

One way to answer this question is to look at what’s currently wrong with the game industry:

o Too many licensed games. Not enough original IP.
o Independent game studios are mostly work-for-hire operations with no ownership in their work.
o Too many financial execs and attorneys leading inherently creative businesses.
o Too many games being created without building in cross-media elements.
o Studios eventually lose their identity, name, culture and eventually their passion when purchased.

This is just a partial list, but a strong one nonetheless.

And while Radar can’t fix all of these issues, we bat the first four out of the park:

[1] Radar creates only original properties—no licenses. This is something of a revelation for the game industry, which has leaned heavily on the broken crutch of film and TV licenses. It doesn’t take a lot of research to show that other than sports licenses—which make total sense—most of the game industry’s mega-successful properties are born from within: The Sims, Mario, World of Warcraft, Bioshock, Halo, Max Payne, GTA, Tetris, CoD, Final Fantasy, Gears of War, Half-Life, Diablo, Elderscrolls, Duke Nukem, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, Doom, Tomb Raider, and so on. The bottom-line is that Radar will only create original properties, much like Pixar has done. Original properties have the advantage if they’re purposely designed with the game industry in mind, with unique, memorable gameplay hooks, strong characters, and the potential to create what I call a compelling Storyverse^TM.

[2] Radar strongly believes in shared ownership of properties with game studios. With ownership comes passion and a dedication to do the best work possible. Shared ownership also allows studios to better share in the IPs success and to become financially stable and gain true independence. For Radar, sharing the pie is a no-brainer. It’s a win for everyone involved.

[3] Radar is founded and led by a team with extraordinary industry experience, especially on the creative side. Would you trust a film studio lead by Steven Spielberg or Alan Greenspan? ‘Nough said.

[4] Finally, Radar co-creates (with our studio partners) concepts that support both the game industry AND linear entertainment. In effect, Radar does more than develop a game concept, we also develop a deep Storyverse^TM (what I consider to be the "story universe"). This storyverse is rich and broad, full of characters and story possibilities—in effect, a storyverse is the possibility space for stories. Three of the best known examples of what I consider storyverses are Star Wars, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. And while it’s nearly impossible to create storyverses this rich time and time again, at least we attempt to think in terms of the big picture, so that our properties have a history, and more importantly, a long future in the game industry and hopefully other entertainment branches.

Radar is specifically set-up to take advantage of our storyverse design focus by running all of our properties through Depth Entertainment. Depth is Radar’s cross-media partner, based in Hollywood, and run by a capable, experienced, well-connected team. Max Payne is Depth’s first co-production project, a movie due out later this year.

Depth has another role, too. It will provide Radar with a deep talent pool for our projects, as well as be a good potential source for new concepts that can then be further developed into both game concepts and linear concepts. The Radar/Depth connection is likely the best yet conceived between the game industry and Hollywood, with both sides being equal partners and on equal footing. Everyone knows Hollywood and the game industry have been oil and water in the past. Depth will prove—and is already proving—that the proper collaboration can be highly beneficial. We promise that Uwe Boll will never direct one of our movies!

Does the industry need a Radar? Let’s examine the key players and what I think their answers will be…

o Developers—Yes! And why not, we offer them the opportunity to create original projects and co-own them, the Holy Grail in this industry.

o Publishers—Yes! As public companies publishers are always under the gun for the next quarter. There is a lot of pressure put on them to make safe bets on licensed IPs because developing new ideas is a messy creative business, and they must justify the large fixed costs of internal teams. Radar is thus a powerful connection for publishers looking to increase their hit percentage by acting as an incubator of ideas. Ideas that we will presenting to them only when the titles have made it through our selection filter/process.

o Gamers—Yes! While many won’t care, those who do likely realize that the long-term pay-off is an industry more populated by independent developers who can call their own creative shots, like Epic, Id, Remedy, Valve and Gearbox. That can only be a good thing.

So, that’s the short of it. There will be plenty of future blogs to fill in the many details.

Radar announced and new blog

Since my last post, things took a whole new direction and I co-started a new company along with Jim Perkins, Raphael van Lierop and others.  This new company is Radar Group, and I've started a new blog.

A few links:

[Update] Wired.

Announcement coverage of Radar.

My IGN Interview on RadRaph's.

Raph's Gamasutra Interview.

Short summary of Radar:  Radar's primary goal is to facilitate the creation of original IP (intellectual property) for the game industry, because original IP has proven itself to be the driving revenue force for the game industry, which I've discussed many times in this blog's past.  We facilitate the creation of original IP by teaming up with established independent development studios and funding the pre-production of original IP.  We co-design and help shape original IP along with our development partners so that it has all the hooks in place to make the IP viable for cross-media monetization.  This is part of our secret-sauce that makes Radar so unique in the industry, because the vast majority of IP being created in our industry doesn't have the big entertainment picture in mind, creating IP that easily crosses over to other media.

And, because Radar's original IP is built from the ground up with cross-media hooks, we have established a partnership with Depth Entertainment, a new Hollywood-based production studio, to handle the Hollywood end of the business for us.  Depth's first film production, Max Payne, is already deep into filming, and is due out late this year.

Unlike most publishers, Radar will share ownership with development studios on original IP.  Creators should be owners.  This is our firm belief, because owners have the greatest creative passion for their work, and also reap the greatest rewards from a successful product.  Fact: There are not many creatively independent Epic's, Valve's, Remedy's and Id's in our industry.  Radar will change this in the next few years.  I personally had a hand in both Remedy's and Id's rise to creative independence, as well that of 3D Realms.  So, it's not much of a stretch to believe that Radar will take this to a whole new level by working with 10-12 new studios over the next few years.

So, wish us luck and keep an eye on us.  If we succeed, I believe there will be numerous other attempts at our model, and for the industry and gamers as a whole, this will be a big win.