Interactive Entertainment

What Game Companies Can Learn from US News & World Report

Before the coming of the Internet, US News and World Report was "the conservative news magazine," competing with Time and Newsweek. 

With the rise of the Web and the decline of magazines, they've been known for their annual Guide to US Colleges, which evolved from an annual "theme" issue.

In June, 2008 the magazine went from weekly to twice-a-month.  In December, 2008 they became a monthly.  The drop from 52 to 12 issues per year took just 6 months.

Three months ago, the Washington Post sold rival magazine Newsweek.  The price? One U.S. Dollar, the assumption of Newsweek's debt, and a pledge to make the magazine work without huge staff cuts.

This month US News announced they were ending magazine subscriptions altogether. They'll have a newsstand edition (cheaper to distribute) and special issues, but most resources will go to their 7-million-user online news site.

So what does this have to do with games?

Throughout history there are tales of Generals who burned the bridges behind their own advancing troops.

Why?  So the soldiers saw that retreat was impossible and that their only path to survival was to go forward.

U.S. News is burning bridges.  A magazine with no subscribers has to focus on its website.

Despite this year's slow sales, there is a large, solid underlying U.S. console business.  Kinect and Move are both doing well.  XBLA and PSN are growing, but their ascendency over DVD sales is not imminent.

But what if you're not EA or Activision Blizzard or Sony or Microsoft?  What if you're a company with less than $500 million a year in sales?

Time to start reading the case studies for US News.  The console packaged goods business is a big company game, and everything else is going digital.

If you work for a smaller company, are there money-losing categories or initiatives that steal mindshare, money and time from the new business models?

Has it gotten almost impossible to fund certain kinds of traditional titles?

What would happen if you stopped trying to do titles the old way, and placed all your bets on doing XBLA or PSN or DLC or online or casual or iPhone or Facebook games?

If your company just keeps doing things the same old way, how long until it will be sold for one US dollar?

And that, as the headline says, is What Game Companies Can Learn from U.S. News and World Report.

 

Do you disagree?  Use the comments box below to share your opinion.

 

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

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.  I'd wanted to write about how I've already learned some important lessons about designing for new audiences.

As I mentioned, I've been developing Facebook, Web and Twitter relationships with potential players for our game.  The in-game personae have over 1,000 friends on Facebook, 700+ followers on Twitter... and the game hasn't even been announced.  Total spend on Marketing and PR: Zero.

These kinds of 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.  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, or about how crunch times 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 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 back-to-back.

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

Do you ever show great patience and listening skills at work, then come home and tune out what the kids and your partner tell you about their days?

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 balancing all these pieces really well I' love to hear your input on how you do it.

Copyright (c) 2009-2010, Don Daglow.  All Rights Reserved.

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

One of the projects I've been working on is an unannounced social media game.  I started to write this post about things I had learned on the project.

By the time I finished I realized I had also learned a lot about myself.

I've been building the Facebook, Web and Twitter presence for the new title, building a relationship with the potential audience.  This is routine 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.  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 several online games I knew the system and the audience well enough that I was able to design 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.  And that makes it more likely that your typical player is not "just like the game designer."

Which drives the question: 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.)

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?  

Watching everyday people playing competitors' games without them realizing you're in the industry and interested in them?

Some of these things can be accomplished at a Best Buy watching people on the end-cap demo station.  More often you'll need to proactively reach out to your potential players, and not just to that familiar core of opinion leaders.

Inside big publishers 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- 2010, Don Daglow.  All Rights Reserved.

So What Matters Most to You?

I've been hobbling on a sprained ankle this week, which forced me to sit still and think.  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.

Fair warning:  This post will not make every reader happy.  Sometimes managers have no good choices and have to take the best lousy choice from an array of lousy choices.  That's what this post is about.

 

A Case Study

Here's the problem, altered so my friends won't recognize who was at that lunch!

My companion was 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.  It could be a hit.

The game's levels had variety and the terrain looked natural, with its own unique style.  But on one level there was a problem.  The colors of several primary units blended into parts of the background and they were hard to see.  The producer had noticed it in the early builds, but let it go to see what comments they got in-house.  "Units are hard to see on Level X" came up multiple times on the player feedback.

The lead environment artist on the project was talented and understood games, even if he wasn't a devoted gamer.  He worked well with 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 official project AD.  

The producer asked the artist to change the colors of the level so the units would be displayed clearly against the background.  

The artist refused.  

The producer was stunned.  This was their first project together, but they'd worked well together for months.  The team had gotten feedback from multiple sources that images weren't visible to players.  Playing with the colors on an object or environment to resolve this kind of issue was routine stuff. 

They went back and forth, but the artist refused to change anything.  He thought it looked fine, and since he was the most senior environments artist on the project he was not prepared to take art direction from a non-artist.

(Side note: I've seen this approach taken by a programmer, a designer, a whatever.  This article is not about artists, it's about human nature.)

The artist reported to the producer, so this was their issue to resolve.  To let emotions cool off, the producer asked the environments lead to think about his request.  He did not give a direct order to make the changes.

The next day they talked again, for a very long time.  The producer kept his tone of voice calm, thoughtful and respectful.  He probed to see if there were other issues bothering the artist that were the real cause of the refusal.  The artist likewise was professional and discussed the issues thoughtfully.  But he still refused to change a pixel.

 

The Producer's Dilemma

So we're sitting at lunch and the frustrated producer 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. 

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 to do by his manager, although the producer will discuss difficult issues and explain controversial decisions
• The artist will be happy and motivated and spread a positive mood in the office.
• The producer 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 see all the units clearly on the terrain in each level.
• The game will earn a 90+ on GameRankings or Metacritic or whatever the suits use to justify decisions.
• The other artists won't get upset because there's a conflict between the environments lead and the producer.
• 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, 2010, Don Daglow.  All Rights Reserved.

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) 2009-2010, Don Daglow.  All Rights Reserved.