Interactive Entertainment

Keeping Our Passion as Game Creators (Part 2 of 2)

Yesterday I talked about how watching the bike riders in Sausalito reminded me that we have to work at keeping our passion burning for our creative craft.

With the benefit of hindsight, here are some questions I've asked myself at times during my career... and that I wish I'd asked myself more often!

 

 

 

--  If I could personally add something great to our project and I knew it would be approved, what would it be?  

We can't always declare that we're adding our personal touch to a big game, but asking yourself the question lets your heart speak directly to your head about what you love to do.

--  If I could pitch a new idea to the company and know that they'd greenlight the project, what would it be?  

Why stop with adding features to the current project?  Great ideas have to come from somewhere -- maybe the next great game from your company will start with you.

And here's the most important question:

--  What do I keep saying to myself that stops me from sharing my ideas and participating in the creative process?  

We're good at talking ourselves out of stuff.

"I don't have time to do a real proposal -- I'll just work for a while, bog down and never finish."

"The VP's and Exec Producers decide what projects we'll do.  They won't listen to someone like me."

"I'm not Sid Meier or Will Wright.  People aren't out there dying to see my next idea, even if I work just as hard and care just as much as those guys!"

All too often, what we're really saying to ourselves is "I'm afraid I'll share my work with the world and no one will like it and I'll be humiliated."

That's why we talk ourselves out of lots of things.  It isn't a fear of failure.  It's a fear of reliving those feelings of being a total nerd we lived through back in middle school.

I don't know about you, but I was one of those nerds and remember the feeling vividly. It wasn't fun.

But the only way to engage your passion in your creative craft is to practice your creative craft.  That means overcoming our natural fear of having people criticize and denigrate our work and its creator. 

I was just another programmer at Intellivision when I pitched Utopia.

When I first pitched Neverwinter Nights I was the leader of a small company that had only released two online multiplayer text games.

And when I pitched our current project I had no team, no budget and had never shipped a Facebook game.

The one thing I did have in all those situations was a passion for what I was doing, a deep fear of being rejected and humiliated, and (from somewhere) the ability to overcome that fear in pursuit of my passion to build a game.

And that, as the headline says, is my take on Keeping Our Passion as Game Creators.

 

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

Copyright (c) 2011, Don Daglow.  All Rights Reserved.

Keeping Our Passion as Game Creators (Part 1 of 2)

I've been working very long hours for the last six weeks as we launch our new company.  And I've been having a wonderful time, working with people I admire on a project I love.

I was driving to the office this morning and the bike-riders on the road gave me a new perspective on how we have to work constantly to keep our passion as game developers

Here's what I was thinking:

 

Our offices in Sausalito are next to Marinship Park and Shoreline Park, so streams of bike riders and dog walkers parade past our windows each day.  On the weekends the town is filled with bikes.

Some ride in straight lines for speed and time, the way they do on TV in the Tour de France.  Unlike the people in the photo above (taken a few minutes south of where we work) they don't stop to appreciate the views.

Many are tourists who rent bikes in San Francisco to ride across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito.  Once they get here they walk around, admire the vistas, get a bite to eat, then take their bikes onto the Ferry and sail back to San Francisco.

It's the last group, the tourists, that got me thinking about keeping our passion in game development, a topic I covered in a series of talks at GDC from the 1990's all the way up to this year (mixed in with the ones about Teamwork and Console Wars).

Why do they ride bikes to Sausalito?  The tour companies have open-top buses, double-decker buses, a converted fire engine, and shuttles of every shape and size.

The visitors ride worn, upright-handlebar bikes unlike anything in the Tour de France. They veer and wobble in search of the balance they had when they were kids.

Why struggle when you can take the bus?

I think they ride their bikes -- unsteady as they are -- because it lets them feel the Golden Gate Bridge and Sausalito instead of merely traveling through them.

After years in the games business it's easy to feel you're driven from one title through another, sometimes taking a project you don't care about because you need the job.

It can feel like riding a bus through a creative craft you love, carried along by the momentum of the people around you to a destination driven by someone else "up front."

Even the best projects sometimes feel like the Tour de France, where the need to rush towards a deadline robs us of the real experience of building a game we're proud to say we created.

Tomorrow:  Questions I've asked myself in pursuit of that continued passion for my craft... and that I wish I'd asked myself more often!

 

Copyright (c) 2011, Don Daglow.  All Rights Reserved.

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 Jay Mohr's joke about me 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."

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.  And breathe.

*  Adam started with his personal praise, showing he was knowledgeable about the game.  The game developers saw that Sessler understood and supported them.  You could see them relax a little in that uncomfortable chair.

*  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, and it's something that pro's like Sessler know how to do in a subtle way that feels natural to viewers.

*  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.   Compare this to interrupting someone to say they're out of time and doing an awkward transition.

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, a journalist or a hiring manager, sometimes you're going to ask people questions in a setting where they're nervous and uncomfortable.

As Adam Sessler did...

*  How can you let someone get settled in and comfortable before you start the difficult parts of a conversation?  Sessler did it in 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?  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, just get to it.  If there's relationship building to do, that comes after the bawling out is done.)

*  If they're nervous, how can you carry the conversation for a couple of minutes 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.

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.