The first day of the DEVELOP conference was called Evolve, and focused on developing games for emerging platforms like mobile, iPhone, Facebook, XBLA, etc.
Here a summary of the sessions I went to.
Keynote - Embracing the Future
The keynote was given by David Perry, creative director at Acclaim. David Perry started his talk with introducing how both physical media and computer processors have moved from very small units to being more and more unconstrained with time, to where we are now with virtual media and cloud computing.
He used this as an introduction to GaiKai, which is a system that runs hosted games server side. A video of the game is streamed back to a small client application, which also takes care of relaying all user interaction back to the server so that the system can react to input.
DP stated that the system run relatively smoothly with a bandwidth of approx 1,2 mbps (depending on the screen size needed).
What I also found interesting, and DP only briefly mentioned this, would be the ability to distribute content and GaiKai clients in a YouTube like manner and embed them on web pages. I do hope that is what he meant.
Also, the fact that as a long as you have a strong enough internet connection, you can really run any application, such as Photohop or the latest Crysis demo on even the tiniest netbook. I am really keen to see what this will do to:
- Hardware manufacturers. If such a server-based solution becomes mainstream, will the evergoing armsrace for ever bigger client pcs end?
- Will the consoles arms race end, and focus can now solely be on innovation in interaction and gameplay?
- Will the concept of IP be even more eroded?
What strikes me about David Perry is that he seems like a geniunely nice guy. I am one of those people, that truly believes good karma comes back to you.
Browser Based Games: The Past, The Present and The Future
This session was held by Jonathan Lindsay and Gustaf Stechmann of Splitscreen Studios. Gustaf, who I know from some of my trips to Gotland, started the talk with a historical overview of browser-based games. He split the games into 3 generations:
The first generation consists of games like OGame from GameForge, which are essentially a bunch of php scripts. Each day you decide what to do, and then a server side script is run at midnight which calculates the result for all the players for the day. Even though OGame might seem a bit dated, the number of players is counted in millions.
The second generation are typified by realtime flash games.
The third generation of games, and of course the type that Splitscreen makes, are full 3d realtime games. The game they talked about was Pirate Galaxy, which is a space scifi MMO where you fly around in a spaceship. Even though the basic pitch sounds a bit like Eve Online, their approach is very different and much more casual. This can also be seen from some of their design key points (most of them are well known design principles for casual games, but they are worth repeating):
- Accessibility
- The game was full 3D but all control happens in 2D, as just controlling a basic camera can be very advanced to some users
- Not skill based
- Players must be able to join and leave the game at anytime
- There must be a balanced time vs. money trade off. Ie. you must not be able to buy anything in the item shop, that you cannot just invest playing time for getting instead.
- Controls should be indirect
- The item shop should always be available
- Realtime gameplay in 3D
- One-button / one-hand to play
- Streaming technology should be implemented. This is needed as it should take a maximum of 15 seconds from the moment you decide to play to you actually are playing. You should not wait for several GBs to download.
In summary the keypoints of the session was:
- 3D
- Moving towards higher production value and higher quality
- Convergence of online space; downloadable games, browser based games, XBLA, PSN, Facebook, etc
- Subscription is almost dead; the entry barrier may simply be too high because of the behemoth that is there
- Much for room innovation in business models; e.g. the 'price' of activating a cool item you are carrying around in Dungeon Runners
The European Free to Play Market
This session was held by Thomas Bideaux from ICO Partners. His presentation was an incredible numbers and abbreviations game. I will just let Thomas' excellent presentation speak for itself:
Free to Play games in Europe - 2009
View more presentations from Thomas Bidaux.
How Today's Social Networks Will Change How You Make, Play and Sell Games Tomorrow
This presentation was given by Kristian Segerstråle, co-founder of Playfish, a social games company. First he wow'ed us with some numbers from the world of social networks and games. These games seem to attract so many players that it is completely unbelievable. Their games have had over 500 million plays(!!), have over 30 million active users and over 100 million installs! All of their games has over 1 million fans on Facebook.
Kristian made a number of predictions that made up the meat of his talk
Prediction 1 - The Role of Franchises will Change Forever
- Big name franchises do not appear to succeed on social networks
- No Franchises in Facebook top 25
Prediction 2 - We will all become services
- Physical Products >> Digital Services
- All revenue comes post initial download / acquisition
- 50% - 80% of dev costs post launch (ed - the perpetual beta?)
Prediction 3 - Marketing by Numbers:
- The majority of the current marketeer skills will be obselete in the world of tomorrow
- Game marketing => web marketing
- All about numbers; read up on statistics
- All about the consumbers
Prediction 4 - Game Design changes forever
- No longer player vs screens, but player vs player
- Design drives audience and monetization
- Designs can be tested and numbers driven
- Designing for a service will be multiplatform
Prediction 5 - Games Will Be Made Better By Listening to Players
- More feedback than you can handle!
- Balance qualititive feedback with quantitive feedback
Kristian also saw a number of challenges for those wishing to enter the social games market
- Creating a hit is very hard
- Social networks and APIs evolve all the time
- Monetizations still being developed
- Network traffic costs can be very high!
- Cost of customer support can be very high!
Panel: Opportunities and Hurdles for Mobile Gaming
I thought the subject for this panel was very interesting, however I ended up walking out of the session as the panelists seemed to just be talking amongst themselves.
Launch Your Game Across Multiple Mobile and Social Platforms Without Killing Your Team
This talk was given by Chris White, Studio Head of Glu Mobile. In a very honest session, Chris gave us 2 case studies; one a port from iPhone to Android and the other a port from iPhone to Facebook.
Case Study 1:
The game was Stranded 2: Mysteries of Time, and had been developed with a team of 2 coders, 2 designers, 2.5 artists + QA.
The game had first been developed for J2ME, then ported to iPhone, then to Android. Chris said it took about 2 week porting a prototype of the J2ME version to Android. As he told us the story here, the major lesson learned here, was actually not in porting from J2ME to Android, but in porting from J2ME to iPhone. The lesson was to try to develop the Java and C code at the same time, as this can save time as well making for less of a mechanical task for the porting coder. Other lessons (some wellknown by seasoned developers):
- Reuse Artwork.
- Make the highest resolution art first
- Develop common tools (GLU has both a shared scripting engine, an animation tool, level editor, etc)
- Keep controls as simple as possible
- All touch screen are not created equal (both in sensitivity and single vs. multi touch)
- Reuse level designs and scripts where-ever possible
Case Study 2:
For me this case study was far more interesting, as the platforms were so different. Some pointers about Facebook:
- Playing with friends is the point
- Suits turnbased and asynchronous game play
- Challenges
- Comparisons
- More friends translates into more success
- Provide a reason to return every day
- Specific game mechanics are good for this; think daily bonuses, retention mechanics, bragging, etc
- The whole idea is sharing the game; do not try to prevent this
As you probably gather, a port is between two such different platforms are by no means trivial if it has to be done right.
Practical Applications of Online Convergence
This talk was given by Paul Croft, Co-founder of Mediatonic. Paul jumped right into the deep end with rundown of the different opportunities offered by todays online market:
- Commissioned Games
- Indie Games
- Cultivating new IP
- Social Games
- Web
Commissioned Games are not designed to return a commission and usually comes in one of two forms; advergames (for example, Mirrors Edge) or original content designed to bring people to a website (hi Bo).
The three usually scales of commissioned games productions are:
- 1 developer and 1 artist/designer working for 1 to 3 months
- 5 people working for 3 months
- 10 people working for 5 to 7 months
An example of the last is Meowcenaries commissioned by Adult Swim. Meowcenaries took approximately 6 months to make, by 5 to 6 people. During the peak periode, 12 people were working on the game. So far meowcenaries has had over 2 million plays!
Indie games are games that are meant to generate a return of their own. Monetization options:
- Ads, usually payoff is approximately $0.007 pr click-through.
- Licensing (typical flash game business model)
- Microtransactions
- Monetizing IP (ie porting Bejeweled to flash, and relicensing that)
- Monetizing with own developed portals (very significant investment, and the big guys are moving in)
Three different development models for indie games are:
- 1 talented developer for 1 month
- 1 developer and 1 artitst for 3 months
- 4 people for three months
Cultivating new IP makes great new breeding grounds and offers opportunity for huge exposure. It has relatively low dev costs, offers immediate feedback and the option of incredibly detailed tracking. An example of this is Amateur Surgeon on Adult Swim, which has had over 20 million plays so far and is now getting released on the iPhone as well.
For the social games Paul mentioned an expected average revenue pr. user (ARPU) of $0.20.
One of the games he presented was Fast and Furious. Examples of different development models for social games include:
- 1 experienced developer for 2 months
- 1 web, 1 flash, 4 extra for 3 months
- 12 people for 5 months
Keynote - The Long Tail and Games: How Digital Distribution Changes Everything. Maybe.
After a day getting filled with information about all those opportunities out there, David Edery from Fuzbi promptly brought everything back down to earth again with this talk.
Among many facts, David Edery had the interesting points, that indies were actually loosing market share on the new completely unrestricted digital markets. The reason is that the long tail also works for the big hits; for example many of the old Worms games still sell. He did show some numbers to back this up.
David dropped some more interesting pointers to read up on, including Should You Invest in The Long Tail by Anita Elberse from the Harvard Business School.
Secondly he talked about how quality is completely random. He told the story of some university professors who had taken a selection of music and given it to 4 different online communities to rate. The music was rated wildly different on all the communities. What was interesting, is that it is the first few ratings that decides the fate of a song.
For the whole lowdown, I just found out that he put up his slides on slideshare. Kudos to you David.
Develop Evolve Keynote
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Conclusion
Despite David Edery's ending keynote, which kind of brought everyone down to earth again, the big conclusion for me seemed to be the enormous possibilities offered by many of the new platforms. The fact that the top 15 games (out of 16K+ games) on Kongregate has had over 80 million plays, and that a relatively simple flash game like Warlords: Call to Arms has over 10 million plays is simply amazing. Over 120 million users log on to Facebok each day! Playfish has had over 100 million installs in less than 18 months! These are numbers that simply dwarf mostly anything that has been on the console side so far.
I also think systems like GaiKai and OnLive has much potential to once again even the playing field for indie guys like myself. The problem for many indies, is that they are caught in a space somewhere between the online flash games and bigger pc games. It is hard to see, where there is room (and good profitability) for the creative 5 to 7 man team, with some advanced graphics and programming ability on board. With the ability of GaiKai and OnLive to bring anything online maybe the playing field can be changed.
Finally I am hoping that we can use a system like GaiKai for the Global Game Jam. The games are so different and it is quite bothersome to download and install them, in order to try them. Even though I know that the participants do their best to make it easy to try their games, sometimes an xna runtime installation is missing, you have a Vista incompatibility, etc. This year we had over 300 games, and we are expecting much more next year, so a solution like GaiKai could really give us a unified easy access interface for trying out the games.
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