Don Daglow's Blog

What I Learned from Adam Sessler at the Indie Game Challenge Awards

What I Learned from Adam Sessler at the Indie Game Challenge Awards 

 

Update::Highlights from the Indie Game Challenge Awards will be shown this Friday night on X-Play on G4 TV.  Check your cable listings for the schedule in your time zone.

After all the DICE conference sessions, the networking, the AIAS Awards (you'd never believe one of Jay Mohr's jokes even if I told it), we wrapped up the week with Friday night's Indie Game Challenge awards ceremony.   

The competition was sponsored by GameStop, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, and the Guildhall at SMU, and all three should feel intensely proud of this event.

In addition to being an evening spent celebrating the passion of game creators, it was also a great reminder about how strong managers can bring out the best in people.

First of all, thanks to GameStop the two winning teams -- one professional and one not-yet-professional, each won $100,000 for their games.  No, that's not a typo.  One hundred thousand bucks for each team.  

The mood in the room, however, would have been almost as great even without the cash prizes.  One by one the twelve finalists were celebrated with video trailers, and Adam Sessler of G4 interviewed a member of the development team on stage.  Each received a very heavy and very cool-looking crystal trophy.

We heard the same themes over and over again.  Someone loved a certain kind of game.  They got an idea.  Some friends pitched in.  They worked insane hours.  They released it to the world.  They got feedback and worked more insane hours to make it even better.  

And having people love to play your game is one of the sweetest feelings you can ever have during your time on this planet. 

I mentioned Adam's interview with the leader of each of the twelve finalists.  Up on a stage in front of a crowd in a hotel ballroom.  With TV lights and cameras and a microphone in the person's hand.  Sitting on a folding chair so tall you had to climb up on it to sit down.

There is no college class, even at the Guildhall, where they prepare you to sit on tall chairs under bright lights with TV cameras in your face and a microphone in your hands.

Most of the competitors probably had never done a full-scale TV interview in their lives.

Adam opened the event by giving out one piece of advice about coming up on stage.  "Remember to breathe," he told them.  "Breathing really helps."

But then he did something else.  As each person made their way to the too-tall chair and took the big silver microphone, Sessler waited for them to get settled.  Then he started them out with a compliment and a simple question. It might be something like, "What I really loved about your game was the animations and the art style that reminded me of classic coin-op games.  What gave you the idea to use that visual style in the game?"

OK, Adam had played all the games.  Good journalist doing his job.  But there was more to it than that.  

*  Sessler made the first question just long enough to let the person in the chair get settled in, collect their thoughts.  

*  By starting with his personal praise and showing he was knowledgeable about the game he signaled that the guests did not have to try to explain the details, a common trap where interviews veer off course.  They started out believing that Sessler understood and supported them.

*  He had prepared enough questions so that he always was ready to jump in.  But he was also prepared enough to ad lib a question based on an interesting answer.  When the person doing an interview takes charge it lets the other person relax.

*  If someone got a little off track, Adam jumped in and pushed the conversation ahead.

*  He made the end of the interview very clear and positive.  It went for a while and then he wrapped the discussion on a high note.

I know that many of the people on that stage were really nervous as they walked up to take their turn.  But most of them neither looked nor sounded uncomfortable.  Pretty cool, huh?

 

Whether you're a CEO trying to solve a problem or a hiring manager doing a job interview, sometimes you're going to be asking people questions in a setting where they're nervous and uncomfortable.

As Adam Sessler did...

*  Do you let someone get settled in and comfortable before you start the difficult parts of a conversation?  Friday night that process was given all of 20 to 30 seconds -- no need to discuss the playoffs for five minutes.

*  What positive comment could you open with to help the person relax?  In a job interview they may have worked on a game you really liked.  Even in a tough problem-solving setting there's usually some common ground to start from.  

(One exception: If you're sitting down to bawl someone out for a mistake, I believe you should just get to it, and don't take the time to do a long set-up.  If there's relationship building to do, it comes after the bawling out is done.)

*  If they're nervous, are you ready to help carry the conversation ahead in a positive way until they settle down?

*  Do you pleasantly signal when the discussion has come to an end?

Congrats to the finalists and winners of the 2010 Indie Game Challenge.  All 12 finalists -- out of 250 entrants -- deserved the honors they received.

Congrats to GameStop, the AIAS and the Guildhall for sponsoring this great event.

And congrats to Adam Sessler for reminding us how good managers can handle high-pressure situations with people and make everyone come out looking good.

Copyright (c) 2010, Don Daglow.  All Rights Reserved.

Baseball Game Designer Goes Geeky

Baseball Game Designer Goes Geeky

I recently had the chance to visit the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, and take a tour of their collections.

They have over 30,000 electronic game related items from every generation of PC games and every console ever made.  It was the first time since the CES trade show of 1982 that  I'd seen an Intellivision, a Vectrex and an Atari 2600 sitting side-by-side... let alone in playable condition with big libraries of games for each machine.  (And remember, the Intellivision is clearly superior!)

They also have an unbelievable collection of toys and games that reach back to the origins of many kinds of play that we take for granted.  

There are lots of stories to share about what I saw, but one item still sticks in my mind several weeks later.

This "Game of Base-Ball" from 1887 was one of the earliest baseball board games ever made.  Although I didn't realize its historical significance at the time, I wrote a baseball simulation game in 1971 on a mainframe computer that was the first-ever computer baseball game.  I'd also redesigned the board game All-Star Baseball in 1967 for myself and a friend when I was 15 years old, to increase its statistical accuracy.

So looking at a baseball game from almost 125 years ago was very moving to me.

Then I noticed it had spinners!  This was back in the days when baseball pitchers threw underhand (like softball), and the dimensions of the field and pitching mound were all different from today.  But the spinners in the box recreated the basic math of baseball, or at least the basic math of that dead-ball era.

Now they did not have individual player cards with different stats -- those innovations did not come for another fifty years.  But I was looking at the work of someone who was addressing the same game design challenge I had faced, only doing so with far less technology and far fewer tools.  The innovation it represented -- and its ties to modern games -- floored me.  And I have to say I felt close to that long-ago game designer who had sought to create the same simulation that has been such a big part of my life.

So there it is, my geek-out moment.  Seeing any game from the 19th century is interesting.  Seeing a design from 1887 that foreshadows computer baseball sims is fascinating.

Copyright (c) 2009, Don Daglow.  All Rights Reserved.

Losing Ourselves... er, Myself in Social Media, Part 2

Losing Ourselves... er, Myself in Social Media, Part 2

As I mentioned in my last post, one of the projects I've been working on is a social media game.  The title and platform are unannounced so I'm being vague about the project, but I wanted to write about how I've already learned some important lessons about designing for new audiences.

By the time I finished this two-part post I realized I had also learned a lot about myself.

Recently I've been working on developing Facebook, Web and Twitter relationships with potential players for our game.  Off and on over the course of about three months (with time away for other projects) I've had the chance to get to know our audience base online.  We have hundreds of friends on Facebook, hundreds of followers on Twitter.

These kinds of research and relationship-building are important any time you're reaching out to an audience that may be different from you.  And since you're unique, that means it's important on every project.

Of course, I'm doing this "in character" as part of a game that hasn't been announced.  My own Facebook friends?  Well, uh...

Keeping in touch with my favorite people on Twitter?  Um...

Sending an on-time birthday email to my considerate cousin in Germany?  Oh-oh...

This isn't about how we can withdraw from the world playing games for a weekend, or about how crunch times at work can affect our family lives.  It's not about time at all.
 

It's hard to be two different people online at the same time.

If I've spent an hour interacting with our player base on Facebook I have a hard time switching accounts and going back into Facebook as myself.

Play a different game?  No problem!  Go to lunch with someone and problem-solve on a different project?  Easy. 

But use the same tools I'm using in our fictional world to interact in the real world?  I find myself thinking, "But I just finished everything I had to do today on Facebook!"  And so I'm right on schedule in my fictional world and I've fallen behind in the real online world I live in.
 

I realized I have to consciously work at having separate days for staying in touch with friends on Facebook and "working the game in character" on Facebook.  I have a hard time switching roles in the same system back-to-back.

Is there any place in your work life where you're so tired of doing something that it's slipping out of your real life?

Is there a way you could separate things onto separate days so that both your work and your private life get the time and focus?

If you're already balancing all these pieces really well on social media you're doing it better than I am, and I tip my cap to you.

Copyright (c) 2009, Don Daglow.  All Rights Reserved.

Losing Ourselves... er, Myself in Social Media, Part I

Losing Ourselves... er, Myself in Social Media, Part 1

One of the projects I've been working on is a social media game.  The title and platform have to be left out for the moment because so much of the content is unannounced, but I definitely have things to talk about.

I started to write this post because I was thinking I had learned (and re-learned) a lot about developing online games during the project.

By the time I finished this two-part post I realized I had also learned a lot about myself working on the project.

As part of preparing the new project I've been building the Facebook, Web and Twitter presence for the title and starting to build a relationship with the potential audience.  This is a routine step for online games, but it reminded me of a lesson I learned long ago.

In the late 1980's we were building the first round of online games for a set of Commodore 64 and Apple online services called QuantumLink and AppleLink respectively.  PC-Link came along about a year later, and in 1991 the company grew exponentially and was given a more familiar name: AOL.

Many nights I'd hang around in the chat rooms, getting to know the people online.  This is before the Internet was invented, and a few hundred core users on each platform were the primary audience who paid $6 an hour just to access the service.  (No, that's not a typo... and $6 an hour then is $10.75 adjusted for inflation now!)

After two years of doing this and designing a succession of online games I knew the system and the audience well enough that I was able to do the design for the original version of Neverwinter Nights for AOL.

A lot has been written about NWN on AOL being the first MMORPG that used graphics instead of text for game play.   

But as the game designer I know that understanding the player was as important to the game's success as understanding the technology. 
 

The bigger our industry gets, the more diverse our audience becomes.

As an audience becomes more diverse, they become less like each other.  And the "average" player becomes less similar to any individual game designer.

Whether you're working on an online game, a downloadable title or a packaged console game, what have you done in the last month to interact with your potential audience?

A focus group where you can watch people play an early version of your game?  (And realize to your horror that the UI has issues you have to address.)

A chance to spend time talking with people who play our games, don't work in the industry and aren't the 1% leaving snarky one-line comments on industry websites?  

A chance to watch everyday people playing competitors' games without them realizing you're in the industry and interested in them?

Some of these things can be accomplished by accident when you go into a Best Buy and the competitor's title is on the end-cap demo station.  Most often you'll need to make your own opportunities to interact with the full spectrum of your potential players, not just that core of opinion leaders.

Inside big publishers more and more of these opportunities are being offered to creative teams.  indie developers need to find ways to do the same kinds of research, even though it's time consuming and the thing you have the least of is time.

I wonder what's playing on the Best Buy demo stations today?

Copyright (c) 2009, Don Daglow.  All Rights Reserved.

So What Matters Most to You?

So What Matters Most to You?

I've been hobbling on a sprained ankle this week, which forced me to sit still and think for the first couple of days until the pain subsided.  I started out thinking about an online casual game we're working on.  Three stream-of-consciousness links later I remembered a lunch I had with a friend of mine a few years ago.

 

A Case Study

Here's the problem he wanted to discuss, altered in a number of places so my friends won't recognize who was at that lunch!

My friend is a producer for a major publisher.  The project was a high-profile RTS for the PC.  The game had innovative game play, a decent budget, and as an internal project it was on track for a good marketing push when it shipped.  In short, the title would get a fair chance at being discovered and bought by gamers.  It could be a hit.

Not all projects are that lucky.  A lot of games compete just to get noticed, to rise above the noise level and even get considered by consumers.

The lead environment artist on the project was talented and understood games.  He worked well with the lead animator and the other artists, and was the de facto art director for the project since the other art leads looked up to him and there was no project AD. 

The levels had variety and the terrain looked natural.  But on one level there was a problem.  The colors of several primary units blended into the background and they were hard to see.  The manager had noticed it, but said nothing and let it go for a week to see what comments they got from the first in-house playtests.  "Units are hard to see on Level X" came up on the playtest feedback.

The manager asked the artist to change the colors of the level so the units would be displayed clearly against the background.  The artist refused -- to him the level looked perfectly fine.  They went back and forth, and the manager was unsure what to do.  This was their first project together and after several months it was the first time they'd ever hit an impasse.  He asked the environments lead to think about it but, given the defensive tone, did not give a direct order to make the changes.

 

The Manager's Dilemma

So we're sitting at lunch and the frustrated manager is running through his choices.  As usual, I had no magical answers, so I spent most of the time asking him questions. 

In the end, I suggested he sit down alone in a room and rank "the list of things you want to be true at the end of the project."  I think it works best when written on Yellow Stickies, so you can move them around easily.  Once you look at the final, ranked list it usually tells you what you need to do next. 

Postscript: A reader made a good comment that this implies the manager may choose to tell the artist to shut up and do what he's told.  How the final decision is crafted and shared is a topic for another day.  In this case the artist had a history of being reasonable and this felt like a strange exception.  IMHO a longer, thoughtful private discussion between the two should precede any final decision.  By the time this manager took me to lunch those long talks had already happened.

Here are some things that might have been on his list, in no particular order:

• The game will ship on schedule.
• The artist will do what he's asked whenever the manager asks him to do it.
• The artist will be happy and motivated and spread a positive mood in the office.
• The manager will be happy and motivated and not yell at the kids when he gets home.
• The game will be a hit and sell millions of copies.
• Players will be able to enjoy each level of the game and see all the units clearly on the terrain.
• The game will earn a 90+ on GameRankings.
• Team Members on this project may argue a point, but in the end will do the things the manager instructs them to do.
• The other artists won't get upset because a non-artist told the environments lead what to do.
• The lead environments artist will still be working for the company when the project ships.
• The lead environments artist will still be working for the company a year after the project ships.
• The team will display good morale, stay focused on the work at hand and not be distracted by personal issues.

 

 

How would you have ranked the list above if you were the Producer?

Are you struggling with a tough issue on your project?  What happens if you list all the things you want to be true at the end of the project and rank them based on their importance?

Often that ranked list suggests changes in how you're running a project.  What would you do differently next Monday morning if you were actually going to implement those priorities in all your actions and decisions?

If you're not willing to make those changes next Monday morning, why not?

 

Copyright (c) 2009, Don Daglow.

What I Learned Sitting in the Airport

 

So I'm sitting here waiting for my flight, minding my own business.  Another of those "days where I could have caught an earlier flight if only..."  You know the sad story so well I don't even need to tell it.

I'm on my computer, working on a different blog post you'll see here soon.

A woman walks in, sits near me, takes out her cell phone and proceeds to talk with someone for about half an hour.  She does about 90% of the talking.  The other person occasionally says something.

A while later a man comes in and sits two tables away from me.  He takes out his cell phone and proceeds to talk.  Over the next twenty minutes I learn that someone named Frank just got fired, that no one has ever liked Al, that Ed just hired someone who lives in Kauai to serve accounts in Honolulu and when will Anna Luisa realize Ed is stupid, and on and on and on...

So what the heck do these two people have to do with game development?

 

 

Question 1: 

If your manager were sitting in an airport and talking on the phone about things at work, what kinds of things would they say?  What names would be brought up?  What tone would he/she use?

Would he or she do 90% of the talking?  70%?  50%?  Would there be derisive comments about other people?

If you imitated your manager on that call, just joking around, how confident are you that you'd get at least the tone of your manager's conversation right?  After they've worked together for a while many people can imitate their managers well enough to crack up their co-workers.  Can you?

Question 2:

What if the people who report to you (or a key peer, or that animator without whom you'd be sunk, or...) were asked what you'd sound like when you're talking about work on the phone with a friend?  What if they imitated what you'd be like on that phone call, without any worries about it impacting their jobs?

What percentage of the time would they predict that you talked?  50%?  More?  Would there be demeaning comments about people? 

The person they imitate, does that feel like you?

If the person they imitate talking in the airport doesn't sound like you, what would you have to change about your work style in order to inspire the person imitating you to change their act? 

What would you have to do differently in order for the imitation of you to become something you'd like to hear?

If you know what changes you'd have to make, what keeps you from making them?

Maybe you think you'll like hearing your direct reports imitate you talking about work.  In the management training exercises I've been through, very few managers sound to others the way they think they sound to themselves.  When I was on the receiving end of "this is what we think you sound like" it was not a happy day in my management training life, even though I saw my peers having similar experiences with their own styles.

So let me put the question out there one more time, to mull over in your private heart of hearts:  What would you have to do differently in order for that team member's imitation of you to become something you'd like to hear?

 

Copyright (c) 2009, Don Daglow

In Appreciation of Dave Arneson

In Appreciation of Dave Arneson

I just learned of the death of Dave Arneson.

Many gamers may not realize it, but Dave affected the lives and careers of almost everyone in our industry.  He represents one of a small group of people who turned games into Games in the late 1960's and early 1970's.  Partnered with Gary Gygax and others, much of what we now take for granted in RPG's was developed from his imagination and logic.

Gamasutra and other sites have covered the news of his death, but I wanted to add a personal note. 

I've worked on computer RPG's for 34 years, from mainframes and Intellivision all the way up to MMORPG's and modern consoles.  I could not have designed a single level of those games without knowing and playing the work of Dave Arneson. 

Unlike the lucky students who studied with him at Full Sail in recent years, I only had the privilege of a few conversations with Dave.  He was a modest and considerate guy. 

In 1975 one of my college friends introduced me to D&D, which at that time was contained in a handful of 5x8-inch home-brewed booklets authored by Arneson and Gygax.  In later years the flow of TSR's growth led to Gygax's name growing in prominence and Arneson's name dropping away, but that's how it goes once hobbies turn into businesses.  The true foundation work that evolved wargaming into role-playing involved him.

In 1975 Pong and its variants were the only video games.

In 1975 Chess and Checkers and Monopoly and Chutes & Ladders were what most people thought of as games.

The computers we wrote games on at the time filled an entire room and were connected to painfully slow terminals that only printed letters and numbers, no graphics.  People didn't own computers, universities did.  This is pre-Apple, pre-Commodore, pre-PC.  It was even pre-computer typesetting, which is why the original D&D books look so primitive when you see them today.

Dungeons and Dragons was like nothing we had ever seen before.  The game swept up our circle of friends and became an obsession.  Within a few months it had spread from college campuses to excite young people across the country.  And, like today's games, it inspired the wrath of politicians and the worry of non-gamers about exactly what we were all doing in those marathon coven-like meetings where we referred to strange creatures, magic, gods and guilds. 

And screamed occasionally when an undeserving Wandering Monster scored a critical hit and the DM chose not to re-roll.

One or two generations later, role-playing is accepted as just another form of gaming.  But before Dave Arneson and his friends started experimenting with new kinds of game designs, role-playing as we know it did not exist.

Thanks, Dave, from all of us.  We'll always be grateful for the Beginning you gave us and the inspiration to continue a story that will never end.

Copyright (c) 2009, Don Daglow

The Four Stages of Wii

The Four Stages of Wii

Let's face it, the tremendous success of the Wii took place despite the skepticism of many in the game development community.

In doing research for this post, I was surprised to see how many old articles about the Wii being under-powered, over-hyped and totally-doomed no longer pop up in Google.  If you click on CNET's 2006 E3 coverage you are sent to a page about the 2009 CES!

They must have been moved to the same folder with the "Obama has no chance to be President" articles. 

Lest we forget, the early reactions to the Wii were skeptical.  I personally opted for a PS3 and a 360 before I bought a Wii.  There are some lessons for all of us in how this all unfolded.

 

2004 - 2006: Denial

When the Wii first was announced in May, 2004 under the code name "Nintendo Revolution," the development community assumed that Nintendo was going to field the third similar horse in a three-horse race. 

This was, of course, all wrong.  In the fall of 2005 the motion-sensing remote was unveiled, along with Nintendo's strategy of making completely different kinds of games.  They were not competing head-to-head with Sony and Microsoft.

Many people had a first reaction of "Huh?"  

When the name "Wii" was first announced in April, 2006 it was easy to anticipate gamers' comments in the online forums.  Reading the same joke 72 times got old very fast.

2007: Anger

In May of 2007 Microsoft's Robbie Bach ripped the 6-month-old Wii as "underpowered" and un-interesting. 

He wasn't just launching another "my box is better than your box" salvo.  He was appealing to emerging Developer and hard-core player anger because the Wii did not play by the rules.

Over and over again at conferences that year, game creators told me, "I'm not interested in the Wii.  It's a novelty item.  It doesn't have the power to do anything fun."

These comments were often delivered with anger and resentment, because the success of the Wii was slowing the acceptance curve for the Xbox360 and PS3.  They were messing up the script we had to follow in order to get to next-generation fun.

The question that this raises, of course, is "next-generation fun for whom?"

I still remember how that Spring I kept hearing people say, "The Wii is like chewing gum.  It's fun for a little while and then you lose interest.  It's not gonna last."

 

2008:  Grief

By the end of 2007 it was becoming clear that the success of the Wii was gaining momentum, not losing it, despite the shortage of Wii consoles.  Ubisoft, EA and other top publishers revamped their product mixes to pursue the big, unplanned Wii audience.  The industry is growing! 

So why did grief set in for game developers? 

Because the perception of the PS3-360-Wii years as a repeat of the boom years of last gen "with better graphics, more creativity and greater personal fulfillment" never came true. 

The hard-core audience has not regained its former buying power, and the publishers have not retained their old-style ivory towers.

Instead new customers have come forward, making the overall game industry pie bigger.  The casual online players.  The Wii Fit users.  The huddled masses of WOW, yearning to be leveled up.  Together with our traditional gamer audience, their combined buying power has helped the games business prosper during the deepest recession in any of our lifetimes.

 

2009:  Acceptance

Although skeptics remained both inside and outside the industry, 2009 has marked the year when more developers have decided to move on with their lives. 

Where once I heard complaints about the Wii, I now hear pitches for new titles that people are trying to place.

Sony's studios are having a fabulous creative year, Microsoft has made XBLA a successful new business model, and Steam has been helping re-invent PC gaming for the better.  The success of the Wii has not precluded any of this Good News.

So what can we learn from all this?

You probably recognized that this article discusses the four stages of mourning: Denial, Anger, Grief and Acceptance.

When my father died, i had to go through that cycle.  You can't call up God and say, "Hey, I read all the articles.  I'll just skip ahead to the Acceptance part and leave out all the pain.  Thanks!"

But do we need to do this in our creative lives?  Do we have to take a long time to react to surprises in the marketplace?  Is there a reason we can't immediately target a new audience?

In hindsight, I wish I had focused resources on the Wii at least a full year before we did so.

What new opportunities to entertain people with great games are out there right now? 

What other audiences that weren't available two years ago are now ready to play your games?

Is there any reason you can't work on a game for this new audience?

Can I please have a copy when you ship it?

Copyright (c) 2009, Don Daglow

What I Learned About Used Games by Buying Birthday Presents

In my first post in this two-part article, I discussed What I Learned About Used Games from A Misguided Pizza Guy who is fighting the changes brought on by online tools like Yelp.  As comments noted, maybe the Pizza Guy wasn't so misguided because his pizza place got a lot of PR out of the stunt. 

But there's a difference between stunts that work once and strategies that work all the time.

So What About the Losses from Used Games?

In recent weeks the used-game business grew from its base on ebay and GameStop and spread to most of the major retailers.  Whatever illusions anyone may have harbored about creating an ASCAP-like world where game creators got a return on the $2 billion-plus used games market have been dispelled.

No publishers, public opinion or principles are going to change the strategic plans of an unapologetic GameStop or its competitors.  I hear a lot of people at conferences talk about somehow organizing our industry to strike back at the practice.  Print T-shirts like the Pizza Guy and wear them everywhere we go. 

I disagree.

 

 

 

It is seldom useful to fanatically defend the status quo against changes in technology or culture.  Both the fun and the money lie in doing something new to take advantage of those changes.

Gabe Newell role-modeled this attitude in his DICE keynote (see Chris Remo's excellent Gamasutra article here).  He said the best response to piracy was for game developers to stop building big canned experiences that people go to the store and buy for $60.  We should instead start providing the "service" of entertainment.  We sell a downloadable game at a fair price, listen to user feedback and then steadily enhance the title over time to provide continuing value and earn an ongoing revenue stream. 

I'd take that concept one step farther.  How would you pick an ideal birthday present for a friend of a friend of a friend? 

You can't, because you don't have a real relationship.

We've lived in a world in which retailers had relationships with consumers, publishers had relationships with retailers and developers had relationships with publishers.  This served the retailers and publishers well, since they needed each other.  But it has never served developers, since we have been walled away from building relationships with the very people whom we want to serve.

The ultimate goal of the downloadable world Gabe describes – and which Valve’s Steam service pioneered – is a more direct relationship between creators and audience.  The best developers must also be relationship builders.  Alex and Mark of Media Molecule come to mind, people who are out to involve players rather than merely serve them.

Creating downloadable games does not automatically create a relationship with our players.

In fact, the walls between developers and players are being re-erected as we speak.  We’ve already seen a long list of these problems in the mobile and casual games spaces.  But we’re going to get a lot farther pursuing these player relationships than we are by printing T—shirts and complaining. 

I think we’ll actually produce better games.

 

What kind of game would you build if you had these requirements:

  a)  Version 1.0 has to be out in six months

  b)  It’s a game you’d love to build and play

  c)  Version 1.1 ships 30 days after 1.0 and has to be worth a small additional charge – it’s not just a patch.

  d)  Version 1.2 ships 30 days after that and has to be worth…  [REPEAT}

Copyright © 2009, Don Daglow

What I Learned About Used Games from the Misguided Pizza Guy

(If you're seeing this post mirrored on Facebook, the line breaks and spaces between words are present, the links all work properly, and graphics look better on the original site at www.interactive-entertainment.net.)

 

This is Part 1 of my comment on the major retail chains all adopting used game sales.  How do I get from a Misguided Pizza Guy to used game sales and business models?  Read on, dear gamer, read on...

I heard on the radio the other day about a local pizza place owner who has gotten very upset about the ways that the restaurant business is changing.  Just as it drives us nuts when our games are reviewed unfairly, he is furious about anonymous Yelp members who display both the eloquence and the sharpness of their tongues in sarcastic 1-star reviews.   

Despite the fact that he has a Metacritic score over 80 -- I mean a Yelp score of 4 stars -- he wants to strike back against the system.

His response to the changes in the business of running a restaurant: take the most hurtful and derisive Yelp quotes, print them on T-Shirts and have his servers wear them.  One server, by way of example, is walking around the restaurant wearing a shirt that reads, "The Pizza was so greasy that...."

He's gotten the radio piece I heard on KCBS and an article about his wife (co-owner of the shop) and the shirts in the New York Times.  He sounded defensive and his wife's interview sounded proud and confident, so maybe he should leave the PR to her.

And, I have to admit, as a PR stunt this appears to be working.

But I think there's another way to look at it, leaving out gimmicks that only work once.  What can you do over and over again to prosper in a world of harsh criticism and ruthless competition?

Question 1:  If you're running a 4-star pizzeria, what's a better use of your time:

     a)  Draw attention to Yelp's anonymous, sarcastic, seemingly-random negative reviews and the unfairness of the system.

     b)  Try experiments in service, menu, (and yes, T-shirts) to see what will make your 4-star place a 4.1-star pizzeria.  Then going for 4.2, and so on.

 

Question 2:  If you chose "b" above, then what is the best source of ideas on how to go for those 4.1 stars?

     a)  Thinking really hard until it feels like you're in a Troma movie and your brain is gonna burst and mess up the carpet.

     b)  Gathering the best ideas from all of your team members in an open environment that encourages honest and frank discussion.

     c)  Reading all the less-than-four-star reviews on Yelp and thinking about how to correct anything that somehow contributed to the negative comments, however random and unfair they may seem to be.

     d)  All of the above.

 

Question 3:  You don't run a pizzeria, you make games.  You don't face a world of random 1-star reviews in Yelp, you face a world in which traditional packaged goods have lost a significant slice of their revenue potential.

How could you prepare your games and your team for this new model?

How could you make the disadvantage we now face into an advantage?

 

Next Post:  How can we respond to used game sales?

 

Copyright (c) 2009, Don Daglow