Big Fish’s Sean Clark on Point-and-Click Adventure Games’ Rebirth and Showing Passion for Your Work

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Big Fish’s Sean Clark on Point-and-Click Adventure Games’ Rebirth and Showing Passion for Your Work

May 9, 2013 — by Catherine Quinton

Sean Clark has worn many hats during his time in the games industry. From designer to studio director and everything in between, Sean’s passion never seems to run out. He worked at Playdom, Electronic Arts, and LucasArts before settling as Director of Content Production at Big Fish Games. He enjoys everything he does in games, but what is most important to him is the fun of building entertainment experiences. “I get a rush from being a part of something coming together through a creative and collaborative effort, and I still get that rush working on great games at Big Fish,” he says. We were able to catch up with him to discuss his view on creating and producing games.

For the Love of Games

Growing up playing Pong and Atari games on the old family TV, Sean learned to love games early in life. When Atari released a Basic Programming cartridge, he immediately began learning the language and realized that programming consisted of a series of logical instructions. He discovered that building games could be an actual job.

Still, he did not plan for a career in the games industry. He graduated from Sonoma State University with a degree in Computer Science knowing he liked building things in software, especially games. LucasFilm Games (later LucasArts) happened to be hiring junior level programmers at that time. Up to this point, Sean had only created games as a hobby, but this sounded like the perfect opportunity for him. He was right: it turned out to be a great time to join the company.

All of a sudden, he was working with a group of people just as passionate about games as he was; real artists, musicians, programmers- talented professionals who could bring unique creative elements to the product. “It was a blast!” Sean says. “It was also an experience that has helped me through my whole career, right up to today as 3^rd-party Director at Big Fish, working to bring fun game content to the company.” In all the roles he’s done, he’s always shown his love of games. He looks for the same passion and excitement for a game from developers, both internally and externally.

Point and Click Adventure Games Anyone?

Having been involved in multiple projects in a variety of roles, Sean has a soft spot for point-and-click adventure games. While at LucasArts, Sean helped develop The Secret of Monkey Island in 1990, a popular point-and-click adventure. It was a great experience, but problems always arise, and the solutions were often unique. Sean learned a lot about problem solving and creatively mitigating issues during this project.

“I blame it on 3D. At the time, real-time 3D was such an amazing new capability that the faster computers and video cards enabled, it became the sexy new thing.”

However, point-and click adventure games started to slip into the background. In an interview with adventuregamers.com, Sean stated that the popularity of point-and-click adventure games would return. When we asked why he thought they had fallen to the background in the first place, his answer was emphatic. “I blame it on 3D. At the time, real-time 3D was such an amazing new capability that the faster computers and video cards enabled, it became the sexy new thing.” While 3D opened new areas of design, it also started a graphics arms race. Everyone focused on 3D graphics, with a game like The Dig being compared to Dark Force or TIE Fighter. But eventually, people realized that adventure games were a different genre to other games, like first person shooters.

He points out that in 2002, Big Fish took advantage of the 3D distraction and built a successful business recognizing and catering to the adventure gamer audience. Even Escape from Monkey Island still managed to do well in the “Adventure Games are Dead” era. Although there are not many classic 3^rd person point-and-click adventure games coming to market, there is the very successful line of Hidden Puzzle Adventure Games that Big Fish is so well known for. These, Sean asserts, are a modern version of adventure game storytelling, similar to those he started his career with.

Another reason adventure games seemed to go dormant was the fact that retail space is both limited and competitive. Because attention was so focused on 3D games, it was challenging to interest retail chain buyers in adventure games. The big factor in changing the situation was the internet. Brick and mortar stores were no longer the only way to purchase games. Sean attributes Big Fish’s success largely to its creation of an online place to find and purchase great casual content, including adventure games.

Adventure Game Evolution

This new cycle of adventure games has evolved, bringing lower-priced games, which are also shorter in length, and tend to tell stories in chapters or episodes. According to Sean, these new games are still high-quality, well-polished games with great artwork, and compelling stories, although the format is different.

big-fishoakland-mobile-team — Big Fish created a new format for adventure games, brought them to new audiences, and gave consumers a way to try the game before committing to a purchase.

Sean believes Big Fish has been instrumental in bringing more attention to adventure games in a number of ways. They created a new format for adventure games, brought them to new audiences, and gave consumers a way to try the game before committing to a purchase. They figured out how to make adventure games easier to find and consume, at a time when retailers had all but abandoned support for the genre.

Sean is just as excited about the future as he is about the present. “We expect 2013 to be a year of innovation in game, content, and delivery, with games on almost every device and in nearly all casual genres,” Sean says. “In March alone, Big Fish launched 2 highly acclaimed mobile games: Fetch for the iPad, an adventure about a boy on the search for his dog; and Match Up! By Big Fish, the first iOS game to have real-time, 16-bracketed tournament play. Add to that the world’s largest interactive streaming casual game service and continuing franchises like Mystery Case Files, which has been downloaded more than 100 million times, and you can see how there is something to excite all types of gamers.”

Sean reminds us that Big Fish is an incredibly talented and creative company, with exclusive partnerships with more than 140 developers all over the world. He expects Big Fish to continue bringing fun and innovation to the games industry.

Contributions Postmortem

The Global Game Jam and beyond: Catch-22 (2012)

January 25, 2013 — by Mariia Lototska

The Global Game Jam and beyond series sheds light on the few brave Global Game Jam (GGJ) teams that have decided to take their GGJ projects to the next level and continue development after those challenging 48 hours. We ask each team to tell about their experiences, share learned lessons and offer advise on their attempt to turn their Global Game Jam project into a full fledged commercial product.

Last year’s edition of the Global Game Jam saw its biggest entry of games yet. Combined with the rather obscure theme of Ouroboros, the ancient symbol of a serpent or dragon eating its own tail.

Based on the Oroborus theme for the GGJ2012 the team behind the quirky one-button arcade game Catch-22 wanted to make a game in which your actions bite yourself in the ass. This resulted in them not only winning the local competition at their jam site, but later also won a prize for being the best Dutch Global Game Jam game. Catch-22 also later became one of the PAX 10 selected indie projects to be showcased at the PAX Prime event in Seattle back in August 2012.

Catch-22 has been in development for iOS ever since.

After we finished the game we realized we made a game in which there is no AI entity or anything attacking you in the game, but yourself. Contrary to normal arcade games, Catch-22 doesn’t pump you full of adrenaline with upbeat music and flashy stuff, or send in hordes of enemies towards you to defeat. You do that by yourself, because this game is all about the endless battle you have with yourself. That idea was truly unique and something that we hadn’t seen before ourselves, so we decided to continue developing Catch-22.

What triggered your initial consideration that your game was worth to continue development?
We didn’t have the idea that our game was worth continuing until after the GGJ ended. We only came to insight on what our concept was worth after the Jam, when we won first place in the national Dutch Global Game Jam. During the Jam itself, we were really just focusing on making the game, were exhausted afterwards and just glad we finished it.

Since our game is a one-button game it’s really easy to port it to any platform since you don’t need a controller. We also made it in Unity 3D, which gave us the power to port it to handheld devices (iOS and Android) instantly. So we figured; why not?!

Catch-22’s AppStore logo

What do you believe was the main element of your game that allowed it to be commercially viable?
After the jam we had a working proof of concept and it only need a lot of polishing. Next to that the game doesn’t require a specific input device such as a controller so it’s easy to port it virtually to any system. And again, Unity 3D gets you a long way.

What really got things in motion was that we got the Dutch “Gamefonds”, a local subsidy for creative projects, to financially support the development of the game just one month after the GGJ. I’ve seen enough projects die young because of the lack of funds, and our project almost suffered the same fate. The funding enabled us to finish the game, fly our butts over to A MAZE IndieConnect, PAX Prime and IndieCade, and hire the necessary artists to work on the game. We simply couldn’t have done it without this initial starting money.

How did you manage the step to go commercial in your team?
We have a really simple way of working which translates to this line; Drink beer, smoke cigarettes and make video games. Rinse and repeat this until the fat lady sings. Really, just flip the switch and go for it, because there is only two ways of doing things; Do them really well, or leave it for someone to do it really well. Because making games is hard, tedious work and you, my friend, are not a robot.

What were the three most important experiences/learned lessons and/or challenges that you had while further developing your game?

Make some solid agreements beforehand

First of all, make some solid agreements beforehand. If you do get in a situation where there is a conflict within the team, you can still have a level of conversation where you can clear the air. If you don’t do this, then be prepared for some hard loving from your close friends. For example in our team, team member Roel had spend a lot more time into the project in the beginning stage and wanted to be compensated for it. I agreed, but team member Marlon didn’t and had his own reasons for it. In the end we arranged to have a team leader (aka a neutral party) who overlooked the project and could talk to us as a supervisor. This made all the difference for the balance within the team. So unless you have really, really good agreements, you can’t simply overcome the possible conflicts that arise within your team. There are one too many teams who think they can do without a good agreement, and it just doesn’t work like that in any kind of game development setting.

Make sure you get your long-term focus right

Second, make a plan to where you want your game and/or company to be in a few months. Make your goals achievable, because just talking about it with your team will not just make it happen by itself. Things change over time and personal situations can get the upper hand if you don’t. I got de-motivated by the fact that things took too long or just simply weren’t done during a certain period of development. Motivation is the only thing that keeps you going when making games, whether it’s money or just finishing your game. So get your mind straight and make sure to get your long-term focus right. Nearing completion, we would regularly go out for drinks and enjoy ourselves from time to time. Having the release of the game within reach, things got a lot less stressful. Most conflicts took place at the beginning of the project. In retrospect, we also stayed motivated by the achievements we got in the meantime; from winning the GGJ to getting 25k honored, to being selected for PAX10 and IndieCade, and finally the release ahead. Having stuff to look forward to is great, especially finishing your game.

In your case, what did you learn from getting the game out to the public?
Start doing this as soon as possible. You will be surprised where it can take you and your game! We can’t stress people enough to do this. If you feel uncomfortable doing this, talk to some people, practice and work on your pitch. Because the public doesn’t see your game like you do and their opinion is the most valuable one you can get. It’s also a really good way to test if your game is commercially viable. If you get some reactions from people who ask you if it’s already for sale or available, Ka-ching! You got game!

What kind of tips would you give to other GGJ participants who might decide to continue developing their project?

It takes time for your game to pick up momentum

Stop crying and making excuses to not release your game or get it out in the open right now. It’s the first sign of failure and I witnessed this in person at the company where I did my traineeship.

It takes time for your game to pick up momentum if you haven’t released any games before or are a well known game developer. Don’t think people will be jumping and begging for your game, because there is a lot of competition out there.

Last but not least, get accustomed to the Nike mentality; just do it! And that goes for everything in your project, from making your game to marketing and PR. Best practices come from experience, and it’s ok to “fail” on your first go.

Cath-22 for iOS can be downloaded in the AppStore.