Pag on Games

The Nintendo DS is dominating sales charts. For months it has been at the top of consoles sales world-wide, far ahead of any console of the new generation. Nintendo announced last October that it sold 50 million copies of the two-screen wonder. With a huge install-base and low development cost, it’s a great platform for publishers to focus on.

But they don’t. Publishers outside of Japan don’t seem to care whatsoever about the number 1 console on sales today. According to Game Rankings, there isn’t a single game in the top 20 best reviewed DS games that was released by a non-Japanese publisher. In fact Nintendo has published 16 out of the top 20 titles. There isn’t a single non-Japanese title that breaks the 85% average score.

Why is this? I can’t understand it. A great DS game with good production value and good marketing could be a huge hit — just look at the success of Phantom Hourglass. But North American publishers keep on making mediocre licensed games built with the lowest budget possible. A typical DS game has a budget around 1 million dollars, while the next-gen Spiderman 3 game cost more than 35 million to make. You could make a dozen AAA DS games (with a 3 million dollar budget) for the price of one multi-platform console title — and the DS has sold more than the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii combined.

This seems like an obvious missed opportunity. What am I missing here? Why aren’t North American publishers caring about the number 1 console on the market?

A couple of time each month, somebody sends me an email: “I’ve got a great game idea, what can I do with it?” I’m happy to answer questions, but I figure a lot of people wonder the same things without emailing me - or anybody else - about it. That’s why I’ve decided to write these answers to common questions.

I’ve got a great game idea! Can I send it to a publisher or a game studio so they’ll make a game out of it? I’m confident it’s going to be a big hit!

Sadly, no. Barring the occasional contest, I don’t know of any studio or publisher who accepts outside game ideas for development. Believe me when I say I wish it were different, but that’s the reality of things. Other people won’t make your game for you, no matter how good you think your idea is.

I’m serious about this and I’m willing to work hard to make this game a reality. Isn’t there a way to create this game?

While publishers and studios won’t just take an outside game idea, it’s still possible to make your idea - but it’s going to be tough. Obviously, the bigger the game the harder it will be to make. If your idea is for a variant of Tetris, it should be fairly easy to make, if your idea is for a MMORPG in the real world like Grand Theft Auto (only bigger) it’s going to be very hard. Somehow, most people seem to have ideas that fit into the latter category.

The two basic approaches to transforming your idea into something concrete are:

• Join an existing team and convince them to work on your project
• Make it yourself

How do I join an existing team?

You need to get a job working there. The higher up you are in the hierarchy and the closer you are to the production of new projects, the more likely you’ll be able to get them to accept your game concept. A studio’s creative director has more chance to see his ideas created than the human resources intern.

Obviously, if you have no experience in the gaming industry, you’re not likely to get a job at the top echelons. The exception might be if you have professional experience in management - many studios are willing to hire managers from other industries, especially from other entertainment fields (TV, movies, etc.) or from software development firms. If you don’t have that kind of experience, you’ll have to get a “regular” job and work your way up.

Getting a job in games development is beyond the scope of this FAQ, but there’s plenty of information on the subject. I recommend you go take a look at the IGDA FAQ.

Ok, I’ve joined a team. How do I convince them to take on my project?

That’s the tricky part, and there’s no silver bullet. Try to see first if the company is interested in creating original games. A lot of studios only make games as requested by publishers (e.g. games based on movies and such) so convincing them to take a chance with a different approach is going to be tougher.

Many studios have a process to submit ideas internally. You can try submitting your idea this way and follow up to make sure it’s not forgotten. You’ll probably have to work hard to convince people that your idea is good - it might be obvious for you, but it’s not obvious for others.

How do I convince people that my idea is great?

The best approach is to show rather than tell. Show them a prototype of your game and they’re likely to believe it’s good than if you just talk about it. Games must be played to be enjoyed, so a playable prototype will speak much louder than words. You can make a prototype in many ways, from actually coding it (Flash makes that fairly easy) to making a boardgame version of your concept. Use your imagination - the more concrete your concept becomes, the more convincing it will be.

I’d rather create the game myself rather than join an existing team. How do I do that?

The best approach depends on the scope of the project you’re making. If you’re making a simple, casual game then it’s not too hard. Just a few people can make a small game fairly quickly. An experienced programmer and an artist can make a professional quality puzzle game in just a few months. The scope of those projects is small enough that they can be done part time, so you can keep your day job while your work on your game.

My idea is for a bigger game than that - it’s for a top of the line, triple-A console title. How can I make that?

Modern day games have budgets in the tens of millions of dollars and require large teams working full-time for years. Unless you’re rich, you can’t make that by yourself. The typical approach is to get a publisher to finance development. To convince a publisher, you’ll need an impressive prototype of the game.

The prototype for a project of intermediate scope (say a Nintendo DS title) can probably be done in a similar way to making a casual game: by assembling a small team and working on it in your spare time. The prototype for a large project can be a fairly big project in itself, bigger than what you could possibly do in your spare time (some prototypes have a million dollar budget).

Once you have your prototype, you can show it to publishers and hopefully one will pick it up. This is far from certain, however, especially if this is your studio’s first project. Publishers are wary of giving millions of dollars to a studio who hasn’t proven they’ll do anything good with those millions.

This doesn’t seem easy. Isn’t there another way to get to the point where I can create my own game ideas?

Most studios don’t start by making big original titles. What they do is start small and save profits until they’ve got enough money to finance the creation of a prototype to shop around publishers. This means you don’t get to work on your own creation for a while, but it’s safer.

How do I start a small studio?

What you can do is make small games with just a few people and expand as your income grows. Good types of games to create this way include:

• Downloadable casual games: This market is booming right now and you can create your own game ideas rather than work on a license. Competition is increasing, and so are budgets, so it might be harder to create a competitive game.
• Mobile games: The field hasn’t grown as quickly as analyst thought it would and there’s stiff competition, but the games are very small so there’s still space for a start-up team. In fact, I know of a small team of students who were recently able to find a publisher for the mobile game they’d been developing in their spare time. Most games are created from specific requests by publishers, though.
• Advergames: They’re games created to advertise products. They’re mostly web-based games that companies put on their website. The field seems to be doing really well right now, with demand from companies outstripping offer from studios, based from what I hear from a friend in the field. Working on a game based on Cheetohs may not seem exciting, but the companies usually leave you lots of creative space about what to do from a gameplay standpoint.
• Indie games: Downloadable games from independent developers are gaining in popularity. If you can find a good niche, you can get a devoted fanbase. The games are small, but you have full creative control. Becoming profitable might be more difficult than with other approaches though.

Overall, the safest approach is to do the games that somebody with money is willing to pay you to do (mobile games or advergames). You save some of the profit from those projects to invest in slightly bigger projects that give you a larger part of the profits (casual and indie games) and keep growing until you have the money, manpower and contacts to make a prototype of the big game you’ve always wanted to make and pitch it to a publisher.

Is that approach really safe?

It’s about as safe as starting any new company, which is to say “not at all”. Most start-ups fail, so you should be aware of the risk. That’s why starting by working in your spare time is a good idea: if it fails, you still have your regular job to fall back to. That said, it’s certainly possible to succeed and to do very well.

Can I get funding from other sources?

Of course. Just like any company, you can get funding from just about anyone willing to give you money: the 3 F (Family, Friends and Fools), governmental programs, venture capitalists, etc. There are plenty of books on entrepreneurship that can help you with this better than I ever could.

How can I protect my idea?

Copyright is your best protection, since it prevents other people from copying the expression of your idea. It doesn’t protect the idea itself, however, so somebody could clone your game concept by changing some aspects of it and there’s nothing you could do about it.

Patents may be usable in theory - I think the rules for Monopoly have been patented for example - but nobody does that. It’s a very complicated and expensive process and it’s not certain it actually works legally. Most people in the industry see very negatively the idea of patenting gameplay, so trying to patent your game might hinder you more than it might help.

Trademarks only cover brands, so they could only be used to cover the name of your game. Since the publisher is likely to change the name of your game before it goes on sale, it’s not worth registering the trademark for an unreleased game.

I personally believe that most people with game ideas worry too much about protecting them. It’s hard enough to convince somebody that a game is good enough to invest money in it, without putting legal hurdles in your way. You’re better to tell about your idea to everyone you meet than to try hide it under a veil of secrecy. People willing to invest in your game have very little to win and a lot to lose if they decide to steal your concept, so they’re unlikely to do it.

I’ve got more questions, what can I do?

Ask them in the comments below, so everyone can see the answer.

Like a lot of people, the success of Nintendo’s Wii surprised me. I thought it was an interesting new technology, to be sure, but that the hype was overblown: the wiimote didn’t really enable fundamentally new gameplay, and so the Wii would fail to become a Revolution. I don’t think I was wrong with this assessment — beyond gimmicky mini-games, the wiimote hasn’t been used for anything that couldn’t be done with a regular controller — but I was wrong about the system’s success.

The Wii’s success isn’t due so much because of its controller, but because it’s the first console for casual gamers. Casual games are booming right now on PC, on mobile and on the DS — and now on the Wii.

I think a few lessons from casual games could apply to all games, even the most hardcore ones:

• People have no tolerance for tutorials and reading instructions. Learning the rules of a game is boring, people just want to play. As a rule of thumb, I’d say if people have to read more than 4 sentences (with accompanying pictures) before they can start playing and have fun, the tutorial is too long. Many, many games fail miserably at this (including some of mine).
• Story doesn’t really matter. After years of designers trying to make games more cinematic and with deeper stories, the hot new console sells on the back of a modernized version of Pong. There’s obviously a place for story-based games, but the need for a story isn’t nearly as universal as some would have you believe.
• Realism doesn’t really matter. Likewise, games have become better and better at simulating reality over the years — yet Wii Tennis features schematic characters without arms, the position of whom you don’t even control. There’s a place for immersive simulations, but abstract games are fine for a lot of people.
• Most games’ themes don’t resonate with adult audiences. Most casual games have very down to earth themes: sports, serving in a restaurant, etc. Aliens invading the earth and fantastic tales of wizards and dragons are great for geeks and teenagers, but don’t have much impact with mainstream audiences. Fantasy and sci-fi movies, TV shows and novels aren’t nearly as popular as ones based in reality — why would it be different for games?
• Price matters more than graphics. While I’m sure casual gamers would prefer games with good graphics than poor ones (why wouldn’t they?), price seems to have more sway. The Wii is the cheapest new console and casual PC games are much cheaper than regular ones. People who don’t put gaming as one of their priorities don’t want to spend a lot on it — makes sense.
• Don’t underestimate bowling. One of the most popular games for cellphone is a bowling title, same for the Wii. Who knew people loved bowling so much?

The thing casual games have for them is approachability, but they often sacrifice depth for it. I think the key for the future will be to create games that marry the approachability of casual games with the depth of hardcore games. I think it’s possible, but it’s difficult — it’s much easier to focus on one or the other.

One thing I’ve always found a bit strange about the games industry is how games are sold immediately after they’re finished. A game is finished in August, you’ll see it on store shelves in September.

This method of working makes it harder to hit release dates, because being just a few days late pushes back the release date. It also makes it harder to promote your title, since you have to show an unfinished game to the press before the release. An obvious solution is to release games a few months after development has finished. That way being a few days late doesn’t have to impact the release date and you can show the finished game to the press months before the release.

Denis Dyack was burned with this problem last year at E3, when he showed the unfinished version of his game Too Human. Since then he’s been arguing for separating development schedule from release schedule — to finish development when it makes the most sense for development and to sell at the best time to maximize profits.

Next Generation had an interesting interview with him recently about this subject. He says:

“Showing previews and talking early about games is going the way of the dodo. How often do you see someone critiquing a movie before it’s finished? Never. Because the film people will never let you see it until it’s done. The previews that we have are endangering the credibility of the press and the credibility of the developers.”

About the advantages of this method:

“Once your game’s in the can it’s a guaranteed. You know that game’s going to ship. There’s no guessing, there’s no promising. You announce the date and then that’s the date. What about the CFO? Will they be happy? Reliable quarters? I think so. The retailers are happy. The consumers are happy.”

An article I wrote for Gamasutra is now published. Here’s what it’s about:

Everybody in the gaming industry has a great idea for a game. The desire to see that idea become a reality is what brought many of us to this industry. Sadly, the quality of this idea – or even of the game itself – isn’t enough to guarantee a commercial success: critically acclaimed games like Psychonauts and Beyond Good and Evil have sold far fewer sales than they deserved.

How can you tell if a game has the potential to become a huge hit based only on its design? Marketing executives at major publishers have sophisticated tools to evaluate that kind of things, but you don’t need all that complexity to find the potential of your idea. With just a few questions, you can evaluate the marketability of your game. I compiled these questions in a simple test that you can use in 10 minutes.

I’d love to hear what you think about the article!

There’s an interesting article on Greg Costikyan’s blog comparing the business model of game retailers to retailers in other fields and the consequences on the industry. From the article:

“In book publishing, say, a small publisher like Four Walls Eight Windows might well be able to persuade the buyer from Barnes & Noble that a new book they’re publishing is a potential best-seller, and get them to give it a little promotional push–B&N will benefit if it does indeed sell, because they make money by selling books, not by selling shelf space.

In game publishing, by contrast, the retail buyers have no incentive to make similar decisions; since their product is shelf space, the main thing they care about is selling that, and EA has bigger pockets than, say, Strategy First. Might a new game from Strategy First be a potential best-seller? It might–but unless they can scrounge up enough money to pay substantial [product placement], it’s pretty likely to get lost in the store.”

I tried my luck at the Great Canadian Video Game Competition but my project wasn’t selected for funding. I suspect that my lack of a team was the main reason — chicken and egg problem, that: you need money to pay a team, and you need a team to get money.

So there I am, with the most kick-ass game design I’ve ever come up with, but nothing to do with it. Too bad there’s no way to sell game designs to developers and publishers (why that is, I’ll never understand).

Oh well, I guess I’ll put my “Will Design For Food” sign back up.

I’ve been looking for work for a little while now (if you need a good designer, freelance or otherwise, please contact me) and I’ve started seriously looking at creating a start-up in games development. I love to come up with new game ideas for the fun of it — like I do on my other site — but I’d really like to take one and make it a reality. So I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes a game a commercial success.

That’s why I started thinking about game demos. A lot of demos these days seem slapped together quickly; an afterthought released months after the game hit store shelves, if at all. It’s a shame, because I feel demos can be a powerful marketing tool if done well. So I decided to write a few guidelines to making an efficient demo.

1. Make One

Would you release a movie without making a trailer? Yet plenty of games are released without demos. Most games have trailers released before the game, but trailers can’t make players feel the actual gameplay. They’re like movie screenshots: they show what the movie looks like, but they don’t convey the emotions created by the movie.

Showing what the game looks like works for visceral experiences like Gears of War, but it doesn’t work for more reflective gameplay. Casual games are popular because of their demos, but nobody would purchase Bejeweled after seeing a trailer. You need to play a game to evaluate its gameplay, and that’s what demos allow.

2. Release the Demo On or Before the Game’s Release Date

Demos are a marketing tool, their role is to make people excited about the game. Releasing a demo months after the game wastes all the buzz the demo can generate. On the other hand, releasing it in advance can create a lot lot word of mouth around the game.

The partial OEM version of the original Half-Life is what first caught everybody’s attention. Everybody was amazed and couldn’t stop talking about that hot new game and how impatient they were to get the full version. A more recent example is Lost Planet on Xbox 360. The buzz around that game was minimal until the demo they released at E3 — then suddenly everybody got excited about it.

A demo is one the most powerful marketing tools to promote a good game. Releasing it after the game is wasting that powerful effect.

3. Give Enough Content to Hook Players

When Doom was released, it offered a full third of the game for free. It went on to become the best-selling PC game of all time. In fact, this model made iD Software, 3D Realms and Epic Games successful.

These days, you’re lucky if you get 2 levels in a demo. I’ve seen some that only contain the tutorial, the most boring part of the game. Demos should be long enough to hook the player and make him feel like he needs to see more. How long that is varies from game to game, but it should be long enough that the player is enjoying himself, not still trying to learn the controls.

I can’t think of a single game that I decided not to purchase because the demo gave me too much to play, but I can think of a few where the demo was so short I couldn’t get a good feel for the game. When trying to find the balance, err on the side of giving too much rather than too little.

4. Make Players Want to Return to It

Casual games lock you out of the demo after 60 minutes. That’s a mistake. If you’re not ready to purchase the game after those 60 minutes (you don’t have your credit card on you, you were about to stop playing, or whatever), then you don’t have any reason to return and play the demo some more. If you never restart it, what will make you want to purchase the full version?

Geometry Wars has a much better model. Each individual game is limited to 3 minutes, but you can play those 3 minutes over and over. It’s brilliant: you keep playing because the game is fun and you can improve your score in that time limit, but each time you’re reminded that for a small price you could enjoy the full thing.

You should make sure players are able and have a good reason to return to your demo, even if they don’t buy the full version. The more they play the demo, the more likely they are to buy the full version. If they run it once and never return to it, it doesn’t remind them that they should buy it.

5. End with a Cliff-Hanger

Imagine: you’ve reached the lair of the monster. He lays sleeping, but suddenly wakes up and notices you — this is going to be the most awesome boss battle ever! …And the demo ends: “Get it in December 2007!”. Are you annoyed? Kinda, but now you just have to get the full game to play that boss battle.

You don’t want to give a complete and comfortable experience in a demo. When it ends, the player shouldn’t say “Well, that was nice”. He should say “It can’t end like this! I’ve got to know what happens next!” Think of how good TV shows always end on an unresolved issue to make you want to come back next episode — it’s the same principle, applied to games.

6. Give Players Something to Talk About

The TV show Heroes is filled with mystery. People all over the country are gathering around water coolers, talking about it. Is Claire’s dad a bad guy? What happened to Hiro and that waitress? Will Mohinder return to New York?

A good game demo can create that kind of buzz, but it needs to give something worth talking about. Make sure you show something intriguing that people can’t stop talking about, whether it’s kick-ass graphics, a mysterious story or original gameplay. Upon finishing the demo, player’s first reaction should be to jump to their blog and tell the world just how awesome that demo was.

If everything in the demo is as expected, there’s nothing to talk about. Surprise players.

Show, Don’t Tell

In the end, a demo is the old principle of “Show, don’t tell”. With a demo, you show players why they should want the game — it’s a lot better than trying to explain it to them, even with nice videos.

Would you go see a movie without a trailer? Buy a car without a test drive? Then why would you expect millions of players to purchase your game without trying it? A great demo can transform a great game into a phenomenon. It worked for Half-Life, Doom and Geometry Wars, why not your game?

Nintendo is trying, with the Wii, to create a disruptive technology that unseats current industry leaders. I believe they may already have created that disruptive platform, but it’s not their new console.

The concept of “disruptive technology” was popularized with the book “The Innovator’s Dilemma”. The gist of it is that, in many markets, technological capabilities increase faster than most consumers’ needs. At the same time, some companies create new products that are less capable in the traditional aspects, but feature new characteristics that weren’t considered important in the past.

For example, in the past hard drives were big boxes that had large capacity (for the time). Capacity increased faster than consumer’s needs, and eventually having physically smaller hard drives that held less data became more interesting than large drives that held more data. The companies making the big old drives slowly were overtaken by the companies making the new drives.

Contrary to popular belief, disruptive technologies don’t necessarily revolutionize a market instantly; the new technology often existed in a niche market for a long time before its capacities became good enough for the mainstream market. Look at portable MP3 players: even though the iPod set the market on fire, there were many other similar products beforehand that were promising but not good enough to replace the popular portable CD players.

We can apply this logic to consoles. Graphics quality — the traditional metric for evaluating a console — is improving faster than many consumers care about. For all the talk about the HD era, very few people have TVs that support 1080p. Many people also note that we’ve reached a point of diminishing returns in graphics; adding a few thousand polygons more on the screen just doesn’t have the impact it used to. Yet, both Sony and Microsoft concentrate on graphics power to promote their new system.

The console market seems ready for a disruptive technology to shake its core assumptions. Is the Wii the platform to do so? Nintendo hopes so. They see their new console as the “Revolution” that will change gaming into caring more about ease of use than raw power. I don’t believe that will happen: the Wii games are just too similar to their competitors’, even with the new controller. The Wii may be a success, but I don’t think it will disrupt the status quo.

The good news for Nintendo is that they’re already the leaders in what may be the real disruptive technology: handheld consoles. Handheld games used to be too limited to reach the masses, but now the PSP and DS are reaching graphical quality that’s “good enough” for the mainstream. They also have unique qualities that traditional consoles don’t have: portability, easy connectivity with nearby players and approachable games.

Handhelds are good enough in the traditional characteristics of consoles, but also bring something new to the table. Sounds like a potential disruptive technology to me — as I said, disruptive technologies don’t overtake a market instantly, but rather do so when they become good enough for the mainstream market.

I believe the Nintendo DS’ success is the tipping point of what may be the real new era of gaming — forget the HD era, here comes the Portable Era. The next hot system may very well be defined by its battery life and ease of transportation rather than by the quality of its graphics.

I wrote an article on David Perry’s wiki about where the money goes in the games industry. It explains in details and in simple terms all of the many source of income and costs involved in  selling a top-quality next-generation videogame, from the cost of developing the game itself to the money gained from selling strategy guides.

If you’re interested on the business aspect of games, I think you’ll find the article very informative. You can read it here.