Life In The Rain

In three weeks time a small horde of games developers in and around the Irish games community shall converge at the the Science Gallery in Trinity. This is a cool spot on Pearse street that runs interesting events tied into some aspect of research in the sciences. It’s often an electic gathering of visual and audio demo’s suitable for a family or couples on an idle afternoon. I took a walk around yesterday and they have the “Infectious” exhibit happening, a look into microbiology with some cool demo’s happening, plenty of it arty farty and others more direct like examining your DNA for malaria resistence. Anyway, we’ve got the studio room booked for 2 hours of speaker presentations and demo’s from some of the games community. I’ve been helping to run this with assistance from Dr Aphra Kerr and others. There are more details on an info page I setup here, www.theshindig.org

This is the first time that I’ve done anything like this and I hope to god I don’t mess it all up. I reckon it’s going to be 50% preparation and 50% “on the night”. We’ve already dealt with a date change and some trickiness in getting through to the correct people at our host location. That probably didn’t endear me to the speakers either. You need a thick skin too, there’s an element of cold calling involved. In general I’m noticing, like games publishers, no-one ever says no, they just stop replying (or take longer to do so). Right now the main concerns are tickets, they’ve already sold out in a day and I’m not sure many in our community got a chance to get them! Also, since the tickets were free and easily got online, I’m not sure how many will show up. We do have a guest list, but that will have to be managed carefully. A nice problem to have though, the bigger fear is that only 10 people would show up.

The high demand is most likely due to the suggested “recession proof” nature of the games industry (take away food, off-licenses and games, very popular as a cheap night out) and the large availability of idle talented people who haven’t gotten jobs since they graduated or have been laid off. Also games development has never had a lower barrier to entry. For example consider the I-Phone, 30 million sold, the vast majority of applications available for download are games, very popular games use and scaring the competition, 1 billion apps sold. For the developer you can pretty much add an application directly, no publisher, no huge console owner licence fees etc. Actually for my money I’d keep an eye out for google’s Android, there will be money to be made for early developers on the iPhone competing platform.

Now the down side here is that it’s a gold rush, with arguably a harsher market than the closed in home console markets where publisher, console and marketing fees provide a glass ceiling to protect the existing players. The choice here for iPhone developers is to cut prices or spend money on marketing – once you are outside the chart lists on the app store your sales plummet. It may not be long before we see a new tiered system on the itunes app store that puts publisher games in a special “high quality” section. Also calling the games industry recession proof is a little like saying the sea is waterproof. Most people in the games industry don’t stay in the one job more than a few years before layoffs or switching jobs with an average career reportedly lasting 5 years and companies go all the time… but then also those same employees either quickly go into new jobs or leave for other industries that pay better and the dead companies often spin out a new one or two. Recession like happenings are every day, but overall the industry is still growing.

There are also various other open platforms out there, Microsofts XNA and Silverlight platforms, Flash on browsers, some exiting 3d browser stuff from Unity, google’s o3d and good old native windows games downloaded online, and 10’s of others I’ve not remembered or noticed. There’s alot to be said for any game that you can make work only by visiting a web url; accessibility is everything in introducing new customers. I particularly think there’s going to be some interesting future stuff coming out from small independent developers which uses cloud computing (automatically purchasing more computing power from amazon / google as needed and sending the results back across the internet) to help with art and games graphics or a.i. Also anything to do with machine learning and statistics is a match made in heaven for computing. We’ve started to see games use it for playability testing, but I think we might see games use it more directly in the gameplay in synthesing a.i. and content.

In further non-games related news I’m tasked with doing a few tutorials for this years IET students working on the Cell (Playstation 3 like) architecture within the next few weeks. Honestly, I’m mid way through this learning myself, but that isn’t a terrible thing; I’m able to empathise with their needs and the best order in which they should try consume this info. Weirdly for me I’m not fretting about this set of talks, what needs to be said is very clear. We are also aiming to produce a journal paper at some stage on the work I’m doing right now day to day which would be nice.

Finally, my funding for the phd didn’t come through from Ircset. The competition was intense (2 out of 25 from Trinty Computer Science and Statistics). There are further options there for the taking, but the conditions are slightly different. In some way a part of me is relieved that I don’t have to decide yet, I can see advantages either way. If I were to put my main plus on pushing on towards the phd it would have to be the options and opportunities it might provide (colleges are a good cross roads of new people and startup opportunities), the main against, is the low pay and 3 years (almost 34 when finishing!) it would take to do and that I’m not actually too interested in persuing a career long term in either research or lecturing. Skipping the phd provides me with freedom to move jobs and location at a good time imo, October 2010, and get back into the games / software industry, hopefully in something with potential. The downsides are missing out on another good year or two of learning data mining techniques. A decision for later if I’m lucky.

Probably my next post will be after the event and discussing how it went. Until next time.

About four weeks ago we were tasked with developing a game. The key idea was to create a fairly realistic project environment and get us the students to experience real-world issues: such as a customer, process management, team management, technical interest and of course the end game. Our customer was CRANN, an institute focusing on Nano-technology research at Trinity and it was around this area of the small-scale that we needed to base the game. In return we would get a small budget to spend on art. Split up into teams of about four we were told to make use of the ever more popular SCRUM methodology and start speaking to our customer. At the end of the project last week I would have to say I’m proud of what the team achieved and I have to thank those who helped us out, Dermy, Pete, Stephen, Alan B, David M and Keelin and a few other people who offered some very useful advice. The project went about as smooth as they can, a real mixture of conflicting, ever changing realities, needs and issues solved and continually fixed by some very proactive team members in a very short amount of time. I feel very lucky in the group of people I worked with, and each new project is always unique and a special education of its own. The only regret I have is that the art help we got in sound and art wasn’t utilised to its fullest (sorry guys) and there is little chance that we will get any time to revisit it again. Anyway the game, demonstrated above in very low res, may go live for PC at some stage in the near future so you might get a go and the IP now rests with Trinity.

I have got to agree with this post by Mr Albrecht and I have said in the past I’d keep an eye out for games studios with people over 30 and with children. Watching those around me as I’ve gone through my twenties it seems to me that the last great mental change for a guy isn’t when they leave college and go to work, it’s having a child. The change seems almost immediate and when it goes right, priorities are to put family first.

I like those people because they become examples of how best to act. They now have to balance their old passion for games development and their new more important passion to raise and look after a family. This means there isn’t enough time in the day and they won’t be able to afford wasting it with stupid arguments, practices or policies at work. Time management and doing the effective and important tasks first becomes key. If they are at the wrong studio then they will immediately look for a more suitable studio that can accommodate them and provide stability and that can be of great benefit to studios who can accommodate these more experienced people. They can then give guidance for younger eager beavers who want to work hard to make up for their inexperience. Theory is no-one will fire you if you show up longer and work harder than everyone else, even if you are making a mess of things. This is obviously wrong and wasteful. It seems no surprise to me that more mature and important services like law, banking, doctors keep hours as steady as they can, 9 – 5 is the aim and no more; although I’m sure some friends could tell a few horror stories too.

The games industry is growing still, there is more money being made, this industry is recession-proof and those working in it are starting to ask for their worth and for studios to mature as they do. It seems to me to be something everyone can afford to do. Those that think they can’t afford to mature are actually those that won’t be around in five years time.

Graphics project done, I’m surprised it turned out o.k. in the end, was on pretty shaky ground somewhere around 3 am on Sunday:

With that out of the way it’s time to study for the exams next week. That mostly means trying to prepare some maths and planning the “cram of attack” for the rest. Where was I this time last year? Christchurch New Zealand I think, high and content after doing a skydive, nice evening with an even nicer trip ahead of me down the west cost of the south island ending up in glenorchy for a while. That was probably one of the highlights of the year and I often wonder if maybe a games studio wouldn’t open up there soon. Peter Jackson was rumored to be up to something with Wingnuts interactive, but there’s not been a peep since.

All the projects are due at once and that means I’m a zombie working weird hours, eating weird food and going through weird emotions (especially the must eat other peoples’ brains emotion). Through the haze a little team of three, Belinda, David and myself just about managed to kick this Augmented Reality project over the line yesterday and get a youtube link up. Here you go:

One of the more silly assignments I’ve done over the last while.

I’ve just got to point out this game since I was playing it several weeks ago. This game can be compared alot with Civilisation in space. The main reason it works well seems to be a load of hard work in bring the well balanced and designed previous version of the game up to date with adequate graphics, a great gui and an exceptional ship designer. This is highly recommended for the geeky.

So the summer is now coming to a close. At least this year I will feel I made something of it, mostly due making an effort to sail and exercise. All this has been aided by a sane working environment, doing what we do in work is a marathon not a sprint.

So how did the exercise regime actually go? Good for a lazy git like myself. I did get that “warm feeling in the belly”, in fact today I was pretty much euphoric running down the hill. The sun was shinning, underworld was rising on my earphones, the view somehow still surprised me when I came over the crest, I could see a few sailing boats in the sea, a plane was flying low overhead and I felt I could run forever.

Three weeks ago I went to a festival called electric picnic for the second time. It was a 3 day camping affair, a sort of chilled event and everyone was over the age of 18. AND IT DIDN’T RAIN AGAIN! I had an excellent time and I must have been the only person who really really enjoyed Fatboy Slim; he was fucking great (but everyone else seems to think he got boring after a while). Having said that, I thought everyone I saw on the Saturday night was great – Arcade Fire, Royksopp, Flaming Lips & FBS. This may have been due to me getting very nicely drunk and getting into a dancing mood. I probably would have danced to Bob Dylan if he’d played. By 2am when the music finished up I probably sweated 2 litres of water and I was starting to sober up. The best thing was the music wasn’t finished in the camp site. There was a “silent disco” (a tent where two dj’s played to people with wireless headphones) until 4/5am, live easy going music in “the body and soul” area, a real hippy, large, grassy grove with trees and decorations (I dozed in one of the tents for an hour after all the music – hmmm chillax) and finally several of the campsite stalls sort of converted into nirvana’s of cool music, like miniature nightclubs. Nice. So really those in the campsite got a second night out every night. Thank god it didn’t rain.

The sailing for me just finished last Sunday, as the boat I was sailing on took it’s last sail. It will now be sold on. We had a very good run since I’ve joined it (entirely down to those already on the boat of course) and I think we won most of the races even after being cut in handicap (physically we would come in 4th or 5th). I’ve definitely enjoyed sailing and I’ll be looking to doing it when I can from now on. My role has pretty much consisted of working the front deck, basically hitching and pulling ropes, and rigging sails. Physically it’s all pretty easy now, but I’ve only started to get the merest glimmer of what it takes to actually race tactically. The guy who runs the boat I’ve been on (and his brother when he is around) are both very competitive sailors and participate in regional Irish championships when they can. Again the only way for me to really improve is to get out into a small two man boat and take it from there. I reckon I’ll try get someone from work to try it out.

The new Nintendo controller looks great if it can really pull off all that has been attributed to it (at this stage some people are predicting world peace). I do reckon it will be a success and for me, this is the sort of innovation in technology I’d like to see; as opposed to gimmicky karaoke machines or mostly over hyped graphical chips. Hopefully it will become assimilated into the game world as a standard sort of controller that any platform can use.

Finally, I got a PSP and have been playing lumines and Tony Hawks. I really like the puzzle game; it takes some time to get over the fact that it isn’t Tetris and that the shapes (which are all squares) are not important. Instead it is what is inside the shapes that matters. I can already see that there is a long way to go before I can really “grok” this game; I’m getting little glimpses of possible things I could learn that would improve my game, but I know I need to learn the basics .. and that for me is a great (puzzle) game design. Tony Hawks, is really difficult, but I think I’m starting to get the hang of it. Surprisingly I haven’t gotten that gluttonous guilt I would usually get for buying such a dear console. Either I’m totally turned on by it’s looks, possibilities and games or I’m getting so bad with finances I no longer care.

Civilisation
September 11th, 2005 by John

I’m a real fanboi for civ, but there is one thing that really annoys me and it’s more my fault than civ’s. If you win (and the way I play that isn’t a certainty) you always win well before you can totally annihilate the opposition. Perhaps this is the product of years of war games and games for the boys etc, but it really pisses me off. I know that in theory, yeah, my civilisation is just superior and has more culture points than anyone else but I don’t really get that winning feeling until I’ve hunted down every last one of those gits occupying the same map space as myself.

There’s a very good reason why they don’t proffer the “destroy all other nations to win” option so readily; it’s because doing so is very very very tedious. I tried to “play on” an option allowed after winning in civ3, and tried to just clean up the map. 2 days (8 hours) later and I’ve still only just got my war machine properly in action. I think they realised that when you’ve got 100+ units on the go and each turn takes 10 minutes the game really grinds to a halt. In fact I think the designers realised that civilisation was really supposed to be about a handful of cities at a time; cities where you care about the irrigation and roads; game sessions where your diplomat and spy really could turn the tide. The way the game is played today is all about macro scale things – 10’s if not 100’s of cities. This doesn’t play into civ’s hand and makes the game creak at the seams.

So advice from me is to play civ on small maps; it might not seem superior, but it definitely makes for a better game.

This anime show is great. Cowboy bebop was the last time I enjoyed such stylish and cool heroes. The music is great and the are stories interesting. One thing I’m noticing that works really well for anime is a slight formulaic/episodic approach to things. Each show generally has repeated elements (yakuzza thugs, big end fight, tea-houses, mystery-revelation-closure) and they aren’t ashamed of doing this. There are story arcs, but they are introduced very slowly and in small pieces over the 26 shows. Typically this involves revealing a bit more about a character’s background or introducing a foe who doesn’t get killed off (very unusual in samurai champloo).

Its sort of like taking a procedural approach to the show to start with – figure out the key building blocks, look for interesting parameters and variations, then repeat episodically (confident in the strength of the building blocks) and finally augment/sprinkle with extras and oddities to break things up. As an example of the extras, it might be the a mid-season character building episode where the hero shows past wounds in his love life. Or an episode set in a dreamworld. Or whatever.

Sometimes I really worry about games that get so caught up in things like story arc that they remove the stuff that computer games can really thrive on, to the detriment of the game and it’s production. At the end of the day, games are interactive. This makes games very weak when using traditional story telling techniques from books, movies, art, music, comics. By being interactive, the structure that these mediums rely upon is taken away. The more interactive, the less structure. Hence people these days talking about being bored with “on the rails gameplay”. This is where players are given a tightly structured game experience, so that the developers can focus all their efforts on making those scenarios the most interesting they can be. I’ve nothing against this in principle whatsoever – but I do believe its an expensive way to generate moment to moment gameplay because its all tailor-made.

So hence the talk of procedural as the way of the future. Procedural “what” though? Thats the question I would pose to anyone getting caught up in Will Wright’s Spore” talk. He demonstrated procedural runtime content generation that ties into the sandbox gameplay. But theres pretty much no reason to apply runtime procedural content generation to a linear game like “call of duty”. Netherless, I’m a fan, especially when procedural techniques are applied to gameplay. We shouldn’t dismiss repeatable/episodic cycles in our games. With enough variation and special one off’s the game will remain interesting and getting a good piece of repeatable gameplay is an art in itself. Repeatable gameplay is a huge win for production too. If a developer can spend all their time getting that 20mins of repeatable gameplay very enjoyable, then this is better than having to tweak 10+ hours of tailor made linear gameplay.

Using procedural approaches is just another tool in the developers toolbox. The key thing is, procedural stuff doesn’t work unless its properly designed. But when well designed it can more than stand up to tailor made gameplay and content – precisely because repeating gameplay with slight variations suits games very well. I tend to agree with Raph Koster when he says players can feel good by applying their skills after they learn them.

Just a quick update. The GDC was very informative. Not so much because of the seminars (which were good, though I’m counting on the audio proceedings to be a great way to really digest what was said), but because of the awareness of the industry that an event like this gives you. I’ve been to Lyon Game Connection twice – thats a bloody good eye opener for anyone and I would recommend everyone just gets out there and speaks to publishers if only to LEARN what it is they want instead of guessing (they have personalities you know). It also shows you the business side of the industry first hand. But GDC was different. At GDC you learn what all your counter-parts are up to, you see their products, you meet their people, you share business cards and most importantly you drink together. You talk. Great.

Oh and you occasionally find weird things like Ken Perlin giving a poster talk. This is the guy who is famous in graphics circles for Perlin noise. And he’s doing a Poster talk in that quirky amusing fashion of his. Last time I saw him he was doing a talk in GDCE 3 years ago to a full room. He hasn’t come down in the world or anything (alot of his stuff was involved in the characters for hl2), its just what GDC is still capable of.

After GDC I hit Lake Tahoe for 2 days snowboarding. I’m starting to get my turns sorted out now. Then I went to Santa Cruz for 2 days lazing in the sun. A work mate and myself hired a car on the last day and I drove around on the wrong side of the road for most of the evening before heading up to San Francisco to bed and catch my flight home Wednesday morning. Arriving in Ireland on Thursday morning, I stayed up as late as possible before sleeping for 16 hours straight. Yesterday was a write off, but today I got back into the usual swing of things and the weather from Santa Cruz seems to have followed me home. Clearly I don’t care about events as much as opportunities, since I spent my Birthday travelling to America, and St Paddies day travelling back. Somehow those flights weren’t as tedious or crap as I remembered it the last time I went to San Fran.

Favourite moment? That would have to be Richard Bartle’s acceptance speech for the “First Penguin” award. I wish I had the transcript.