“It was called Japan Life”, says Kristen Rutherford, as if remembering a former lover. She’s slightly embarrassed and a little wistful, but she has decided to confess: “I loved this game.”
Kristen is a TV producer and a writer and so she is articulate. This is part of the reason we invited her to Casual Connect San Francisco. She is also a mom. But the main reason we asked her along is she that she plays games. She plays a lot of games.
Adam Levenson, COO of SomaTone Interactive, looks at the expansion of the game industry and talks to GTECH about their latest project in this latest Game Audio Artistry article.
As evidenced at the recent Global Gaming Expo (G2E) in Las Vegas, the fast-growing, highly lucrative global gaming industry continues to expand and evolve, with tremendous creativity on display at every turn.
As our VP of business development Ben Brown observed after his inspiring experience at this major industry expo, “The place was buzzing with so many creative developers! Gameplay, sound, and visuals are all being pushed to the limit and the casino experience is becoming more competitive and exciting with all these new games.” Ben enthusiastically reported that there were signs of “innovation everywhere”, reflecting trends such as binaural sound speakers, more sophisticated game mechanics and advances in game screens.
One of the great highlights was connected to one of our longtime partners, GTECH, who introduced a re-imagined version of the mega-hit franchise Bejeweled as a 3D casino experience. Our creative team had worked on the sound design and music for the original mobile game, so we were particularly excited about this latest invention.
GTECH Senior Game Producer Peter Post comments that “so far, the game has been presented to focus groups and the industry, and the reaction has been very positive. Everyone for whom I’ve demoed it consistently comes up with the same word: ‘Wow.’ There are so many fans of the (Bejeweled) brand that it’s hard not to be attracted to it when it’s in real-time 3D that doesn’t need clunky glasses.”
When asked what it was like re-imagining this highly popular game with 3D graphics and sound, Peter says, “Our favorite brands are always the ones that have a natural gaming mechanic built in because it makes it so much easier to translate to the casino world, and Bejeweled fits the bill perfectly. The license has so much to work with when it comes to assets, yet there’s so much that’s yet to be explored. No one had ever gone inside the famous Bejeweled castle, for instance. The resulting visuals and audio are completely new, yet fit well into the Bejeweled narrative. PopCap®, which owns the license to Bejeweled, was totally cool with us experimenting with things like that.”
As part of the game’s special features, the speaker set-up in the machine is noteworthy. Peter explains, “the box has two smaller speakers in front facing the player at head-level, then two more behind the player embedded in the chair. We also have a larger woofer in the base of the machine, as well as a rumble pack in the chair. We mix everything in 7.1 surround, so we have control over what goes where. It really helps us enhance the 3D nature of the visuals. Unlike most 3D gaming, which players usually experience with handhelds, we can really complete the audiovisual experience by having sound come from behind you or move past you. The rumble helps us emphasize features, too, but like any new effect, we have to be careful not to overuse it.”
The Bejeweled™ 3D machine is truly immersive from both a sound and a visual experience—serving as a shining example of how advances in technology and creativity can bring multi-sensory effects to deliver a more engrossing gameplay experience. And working with a beloved brand such as Bejeweled, it’s a BIG win.
Given the phenomenal growth of the overall gaming industry, and particularly the social casino games sector, we’re fascinated by the new opportunities to raise the bar on sound and music for the next generation of casino games. In a future column, we’ll look at the keys to making casino games sound great across multiple platforms, including mobile, online, and hardware-based slot machines.
Look forward to finding out more in the next Game Audio Artistry article!
Simon Mack, CTO of NaturalMotion, knew at an early age that he wanted a career in software development but, although he grew up playing games, he never considered the possibility of working in the games industry. While he was studying at his university, a friend introduced him to a company called MathEngine and the physics simulation middleware they were making. He says, “I was blown away—this was unlike anything I had seen before and more advanced than I had thought possible. I got an internship there and was hooked.”
During Mack’s work on physics engines, he met Torsten Reil, CEO of NaturalMotion, and was inspired by the breakthrough technology his team was creating. He has now worked for the company for almost 11 years.
Today, NaturalMotion focuses on advancing its middleware technology with state-of-the-art character animation that scales across consoles and PC, as well as for their own mobile games. They also focus on growing and sustaining their mobile games such as Clumsy Ninja and their CSR franchise, while developing new breakthrough mobile games in new content categories. Emphasizing product value and customer experience is what allows NaturalMotion to build experiences thought to be impossible on mobile. And, they are always interested in hiring the best people to help take the company to the next level.
No two days at NaturalMotion are the same; Mack claims it’s hard to imagine a “normal” day. Because they use agile, collaborative processes across all projects, usually they begin the day with scrums with various teams. The rest of the day includes such things as product reviews, tech planning, and helping teams resolve technical issues efficiently. Mack especially enjoys the sprint reviews where he sees the progress on each project. He points out, “With so many teams working across technology and games sections, there’s always something we’re working on together to raise the bar for incredible consumer experiences.”
When not hard at work, Mack does manage to fit in a bit of mobile gaming. These days, Mack’s mobile gaming includes Threes! and Boom Beach. He also admits to playing a lot of Zynga’s recent launch, Farmville 2 Country Escape; he enjoys the game’s visually rich design and depth of gameplay.
In the games industry, Mack finds “a fantastic blend of genuinely cutting edge technology and artistic creativity, something that is found in very few places.” He enjoys the constant change and the inspiring talent the industry attracts, as well as the fact that it generally allows people to succeed on their own merits.
Mack has had considerable involvement with recruiting talent and offers this advice to people starting out in the games industry: “Build a portfolio that showcases your art or what kind of code you can write. I always enjoy interviews where the candidate shows off a personal project.”
During the time Mack has been in the games industry, he has seen amazing technical progress in the console space as well as a change in the scale of games, development teams and budget growth. The results have been richer visuals and deeper AAA games with great content, causing a great deal of consolidation in the industry.
And, he notes that the past few years have seen amazing growth in mobile gaming. “Mobile games have enabled smaller teams to create high quality games more quickly, revitalizing the industry with massive opportunities for growth,” Mack says. “Millions of people who have never played traditional video games now play social games on mobile devices every day. Casual consumers benefit from far greater accessibility, social experiences, and lower costs, whilst hardcore consumers have better console-quality experiences than ever before and an increasing number of category options on mobile.”
But Mack sees possible mis-steps made by developers new to the industry, including determining the right level of innovation in technology. Some resist using middleware, preferring to develop their own solutions. So, as they re-invent the wheel, they have less efficient development time and miss the opportunity to use best-in-class technology.
He also sees the opposite scenario: it is becoming more common for development teams to pick an off-the-shelf engine solution and simply add content. He believes this lack of technical innovation can lead to games that lack the ‘wow’ factor they need to stand out. At NaturalMotion, they emphasize constant innovation in technology while remaining as efficient as possible by using best practices and reusing existing systems when it makes sense.
Mack is excited to see how mobile technology will evolve over the next few years. He says, “We’re nearing the possibility of real console-quality on mobile devices, and it will be interesting to see how that is best leveraged in making games that appeal to both the mainstream market and the more hardcore player.”
Simon Mack will be talking about Clumsy Ninja and the character animation system used to create their game during Casual Connect Asia 2014. Find out more about his session here.
Team Pesky is a British game studio based in York, founded by Andy Gibson in 2012. Their first game Little Acorns was picked up by Chillingo for iOS, then got featured by Apple and went on to hit Windows Phone, Xbox Indie, Sony Vita and Xperia, and Nintendo 3DS. A few years ago, Andy came up with an idea of Kraken Sleepeth - something he wanted to play as much as to make. He shares the story of creation of his second game, where the player submerges into the deep seas to discover the awful forgotten secret. As he goes deeper, the lights go down, and he has to fight evil creatures on the way to the final discovery…
This whole idea started because I wanted to create something with a core mechanic of torch-lit shooting, a feeling of exploration in a period setting, and Hammer House of Horror aesthetic. A tester described it as “Jules Verne meets Lunar Lander,” which feels about right.
The success of Little Acorns allowed me this chance to make a small, polished, original game – very much the mantra of Team Pesky. I wanted to experiment with a game that could be quite short in length but very replayable and extensible with updated versions. I also wanted to try building a community before release, engaging with players and exploiting the successful elements of the game. By showing Kraken Sleepeth at conferences like Casual Connect and IGF, at local game stores, and to friends and colleagues, I’m constantly testing the game for that elusive ‘just one more go’ factor.
Tools like TestFlight and Dropbox and sites like Kongregate allow quick and easy focus testing. After the alpha, I’ll be using third party QA, and all these elements improve not just stability, but the overall experience for the player. I’d like to actually start a public forum to seed clues and hints for the game, building the myths around the games central premise with hooks into the game itself.
Development with the simplest prototype started around August last year. The procedural level creation came together quickly. I added the torch light slowly depleting, but as soon as I made enemies suck the battery power with their touch, I felt like the ‘heart’ of the game was beating. Kraken Sleepeth was a little more than core controls, a few key features and art direction, but showing it around publishers, other developers and studios brought positive initial reactions, and I felt encouraged to make the game. The most common reaction was “I love the atmosphere!” followed by “the controls feel really good”, and then the inevitable “…but it’s way too hard!”.
That initial excitement and drive needs to carry everyone involved through to release. But it’s a natural part of the creative process to trim, rationalize, iterate, test theories, and have random ideas in the middle of the night. Taking a reductive approach results in a leaner, more focused experience.
So if an idea doesn’t work out, it is removed. For instance, I had ideas about the Professor’s sanity being shown in some kind of meter, camera cuts and pans, and lots of left-field stuff. None of these were ‘bad’ ideas per se. In fact, I still have them noted in my version 2.0 list. The current result is very much in line with the original direction, but the feature set developed as the project went on. Rationalizing my initial ‘brain dump’ of ideas has never been a strength, but I’ve learned to separate that first flush of excitement from the second step of evaluating features in terms of risk and work. The aim is to balance wild creativity with getting a project finished whilst fulfilling its potential. This is where agile independent developers can run rings around larger studios. This is where I want Team Pesky to be, chasing that line, making original games quickly and efficiently. That’s our best chance of commercial success to support making more games. The intention is to continue that approach to develop future versions through a more open-ended process.
The best games are that perfect mix of interaction, mechanic, and theme – all working together in the moment. Audio is often undervalued and I always placeholder music and sound from day one. Beyond contextual information, they add so much to the ‘vibe’.
Having worked with Ben McCullough previously, I contacted him to ask if he’d be interested in coming on board with Kraken Sleepeth. His music brings such a ‘movie feel’ to the game that I can’t imagine Kraken Sleepeth without it. We used three levels of tension: an initial exploring theme which escalates to the main theme, and then a third section for level climaxes. The themes vary over the game and really add a lot of flavor as the player progresses.
While coding, I can get an idea about music, so I quickly note it down without following the distraction. Working on particle effects inspired a new enemy behavior, as it reminded me of pictures of plankton. The association made me think of a predator darting out of rocks.
Every idea gets noted, then later I go back and rationalize them, consider how much work is involved, where the risks are, then pick the quick wins and the things I’ll get the most return from. In this way, music can influence animation phrasing, platform budgets push new ways to visual fidelity, enemy designs inspire sound effects. Every aspect of the game supports another.
While working in another studio, I watched a focus group test where a designer screamed “You’re not supposed to play it like that!” as he watched the frustrated players.
Focus groups can provide useful insights: do players know where the fun is? What are they reacting to? When do they stop playing and, critically, why? But only metrics give you the thousand of bits of raw data to capture patterns and trends. We built in analytics pre-beta, and they provide critical data for planning subsequent versions. The amount of analytics we get pre-launch is not enough to make specific changes, but post-launch, they influence balancing, etc. in subsequent releases.
Also, showing and sharing regular builds keeps the momentum going. These sessions can be done remotely, but it’s best to do it in person. Recording each play-through should be done and all criticism is welcome. Suggestions are considered in the context of the game direction. If the player particularly enjoys one aspect, we need to fully exploit that. For example, the game is essentially a shooter, and players enjoy the narrow passages and route choices, so I built more of these sections. They give the game a change of pace and an additional challenge. One passing comment from a player led to an addition of a small ‘servant’ that appears later in the game. For relatively little work, the little chap adds a lot of appeal!
At its heart, Kraken Sleepeth is a twin-stick shooter, so, if the shooting is not fun, the game has failed. One of the biggest challenges of making the game has been fighting the urge to end the game on a climax. Instead, I wanted to encourage a sense of exploration, which may contradicts the central shooter theme. The game polls how the player is progressing and players picking ‘kill monster’ missions have a higher chance of seeing more of those.
Similarly, a player finishing more ‘collect these’ missions gets more of those. There’s always a choice, but I’d hope the game reacting will ultimately increase players’ enjoyment. I guess I’m asking players to have a little faith and trust they’ll be rewarded down the line.
Making indie games should be experimental, while the aim should be releasing a polished, rewarding experience with the tease of something more. We’re taking risks developing and releasing Kraken Sleepeth, but an indie developer needs to take risks. Then it becomes a journey, shared between Professor Eldritch, the player, and the developer. And if players are enjoying the ride, Team Pesky will have succeeded.
If the game absolutely bombs, I will still have learned lessons and hopefully get to make another independent project. I’m already designing another Little Acorns game, but don’t expect a simple sequel with just a few more levels. Taking risks keeps it fun. And fun is king.
Kraken Sleepeth will be available for Windows 8 in August 2014, supported by Microsoft and Creative England.
Arges Systems is a micro-studio doing game consulting and application development in Unity – their specialty is on game logic and AI. Arges Systems has been partnering with companies specializing in 3D graphics and visual design, as well as doing contracting for companies building games with Unity. In this article, Ricardo J. Méndez (founder of Arges Systems) shares some insights on their just-released Hairy Tales.
I initially founded Arges Systems to take advantage of my experience running remote teams and projects. We had been doing contracting on various game projects for a couple of years before I decided to switch gears and start working on our own stuff. I had just decided to pull the plug on a turn-based strategy game for which I realized the scope was too ambitious and was chatting with Yuriy Mazurkin, our concept artist, about possible themes for a follow up game. The conversation drifted to Russian illustrators - somehow we ended up talking about Ivan Bilibin and it got me thinking about action/adventure games.
A sword-wielding octogenarian riding a warhorse charges forward from a hill. Nordic forests and evergreen trees spread before him. He’s also butt-naked.
It was a simple, straightforward picture by Russian illustrator Ivan Bilibin, from his Marya Morevna series, and my first encounter with Koschei the Deathless. He’s an archetypal antagonist of Slavic folklore, an even more evil version of their better-known Baba Yaga.
I took one look at it and with its combination of adventure and absurd, I thought “damn, this would make for an excellent slavic Zelda-like game”.
I experimented with gameplay styles while Yuriy drafted some concepts. We drafted several ideas for scenarios, including a story, but it quickly became apparent I had nothing new to say about the adventure genre. I wanted to do a game that was different, and this wasn’t it.
Partly as a way to cleanse our creative palate, I started experimenting with mixing puzzles in. You had to maneuver the main character through a corrupted land, frozen in time, but elements got un-frozen as you approach them. This had pros and cons, since you could activate machinery just by being near it, but enemies also came alive. The puzzle aspect was to figure out what to do when. I decided to discard this version as well. It seemed like a one-trick pony, with the sort of read-the-designer’s-mind approach that I hate, and lacked replayability - once you know the solution, that’s it. Also, the game was taking on a somewhat stoic tone that I felt dragged it down.
You will notice I haven’t mentioned anything about the modeling side of things. We had overenthusiastically already started modeling before I was done with the design, because I wanted to get the time-consuming assets out of the way - or at least properly estimated. Despite it being a bad strategic decision, it had a positive side effect: it made me realize early on that the 3D artist we were working with just wouldn’t cut it. The quality of his work had been in decline, he wasn’t paying attention to details, and both Yuriy and I kept having to bounce work back to him with notes. Eventually I had to let him go and start looking for a new hire. Fortunately we found Ash Barnard, from the UK, who meshed with the team perfectly. He has an eye for detail, very expressive animations and more importantly, just the right sense of humor to make the Hairy Tales animations memorable and peculiar. Ash also brought in a good eye for gameplay, and helped criticize mechanics as I was coming up with them.
Through several experiments and iterations, I ended up landing on something close to the current approach. The first few iterations were fixed stages, based around arrows that directed them and fences that made them turn two sides to the right. It also featured a first draft of the spreading corruption, with the twist that if it spread to a tile with a fence, then it got corrupted and the fence turned into a deadly wall of flame. I can hear the thought gears as you try to figure it out. Playtesters weren’t getting it, and even when they figured out stages the reaction often was “I know this is how it’s supposed to be, but don’t know why”.
That would not do.
I started paring down the elements. At this point we’ve been in a production iteration limbo for months, and all the associated hair pulling is starting to take its toll on me. Everything is self-funded, so Arges is hemorrhaging cash while we experiment, and my focus is split between the game and the client work that is funding the process. I started trying different games to relax - mostly playing demos, so I didn’t get too involved and lost track of the project. One day I was playing a demo of Atlus’ Catherine, moving Vincent around, pulling and pushing blocks into place, and then a light bulb went on. After simplifying the elements, the stages had felt too straightforward, and the new levels depended mostly on size for their complexity. What if players could drag tiles from one place to another?
I didn’t tell the team, just sent them a build where some later stages required them to move tiles. They were rather surprised at first, but immediately saw the possibilities, like tiles that drag Hairys from one place to another, weapons you can re-use or teleporters. So finally, after months of iterations, we had a design we were happy with.
It took a lot to get from a game’s design to the final product, of course. We still had to design the look for the various tile elements as we were going, which kept Yuriy involved while Ash created the models and I both coded the behavior and came up with the stages. Yuriy was also helping with the texturing. His true love is painterly work, however, so he came to me when we were about to enter the final stretch and brought up that he wanted to move on.
As sad as this made me, since I enjoyed working with him, I helped coach him for interviews and gave him a sterling recommendation. He ended up getting employed by Yager in Berlin, who recently published Spec Ops: The Line, and I expect is right now working on their next project.
At about this time I brought on board composer Levan Iordanishvili as a contractor to work on the game’s music. He liked the game and offered to take care of the sound effects as well. To ensure both were cut from the same cloth - he did a smashing job of re-creating the sound that Ash’s animations made in your head when you looked at them, and his scoring of the three worlds and bosses was top notch.
I had initially planned to release with five worlds and five bosses worth of content, for a total of 75 levels (15 per world). Playtesting had demonstrated that players needed a gentler level progression than the breakneck pace we initially had, so each world had increased to 24 stages. If we kept the same number of stages per world, we were looking at 120 stages total, plus the extra time it would take for the two other bosses and possibly new enemies to keep things lively. The scope was getting out of hand.
I made a judgment call. We would be launching with 72 levels and three bosses, using some minor characters as mini-bosses. Once we saw the initial reactions to these levels from our players, we could release a couple more worlds as add-ons and expand on those qualities that players enjoyed the most. The team agreed, and we geared up for polishing the worlds we had fully designed.
The initial stage sequence introduced one concept after another, presenting a more concentrated experience which gave the player little respite, with no stages that they could use to experiment with the mechanics they had just learned before throwing a new set of concepts at them. After various rounds of playtesting, I introduced some intermediate levels that presented the concepts they’d just learned in different contexts, so that they could play around a bit more, which made the initial learning process smoother. However, it also led to the initial stage sequence feeling a bit drawn out, so I then had to adjust the sequence once again. This process went on over several iterations, even after we had released.
We wrapped what we considered to be version 1.0, went back to talk to some publishers we’d been in contact with, and settled on Forest Moon Games and BAM! The game was out the gate.
It was exceedingly well received by reviewers - sites like TouchArcade, EuroGamer and Gamezbo gave it glowing reviews, praising its flexibility, difficulty and character. The game is currently sitting at a Metascore of 81, the highest Forest Moon Games has gotten (and one of the highest of its less-experimental sister brand Crescent Moon Games). Apple picked the Mac version of the game as an Editor’s Choice on the Mac App Store, and gave it a humbler New and Noteworthy feature on iOS.
However, commercial reception was merely lukewarm. We were aware that the characters, not being your traditional cute-and-cuddly puzzle game stars, would be an issue. But we were not sure what was the main problem. The initial game difficulty was rather high - a throwback to the old school puzzle style - which might be turning off casual game players who get it expecting an easier time and hurting word of mouth. At the same time, the visuals are cartoonish, which leads players who would appreciate the challenge to dismiss it as a merely a casual game. Once we get it in front of players they usually love it, but doing so takes a fair amount of effort.
We’ve also had an overwhelming amount of piracy - 95% piracy rates on iOS and Mac, with Windows being well over 99% (Windows sales are comparatively a rounding error). It’s great that players are enjoying the game but having gone with a design oriented towards making it a premium app instead of a freemium game means we get no benefit from those playing it for free - not even a ranking increase.
We have continued supporting the game, releasing so far three minor and one major updates, including an adjusted difficulty curve and 12 new tutorial levels (bringing the total up to 84), but as of this writing that update has only been out for a couple of weeks - it still remains to be seen what effect it will have.
Where do we begin?
Target it, goddammit - We focused too much on the gameplay and on crafting characters with a personality we enjoyed, without considering if we were sending out mixed messages that could confuse players, alienating precisely those we wanted to rope in.
Cut the dead weight early - the initial modeler and animator just wasn’t working out, and keeping him on board for longer than I should have was not only an expense I could have saved, but risked losing us an invaluable team member. Deal with these problems sooner rather than later.
Be ready to trim - we have a plethora of characters and elements we just didn’t get to use because we simply had no time to properly develop them. As much as you love your designs, chances are a lot of them will end up having to be left out.
If you’re indie and working on a premium app, reconsider - there doesn’t seem to be a middle market on iOS apps anymore - it’s almost all either huge AAA-quality projects, or simpler one-mechanic freemium games (and some freemium games have been getting shinier and more elaborate). Do you really want to bet the house on a business model with a piracy rate higher than 90%, when the market is flooded with competing titles that players can get for free?
Stubborn as we are, we find ourselves already working on our next title, after going through multiple prototypes and even more concepts - this time applying the lessons we learned from Hairy Tales. I expect we’ll manage to retain the spirit of experimentation and sense of humor that we imbued the game with, while setting it into a game design more fitting for today’s game climate. Wish us luck!
Hairy Tales is available for the iPhone/iPad in the AppStore. It can also be purchased on Desura for Windows. Check it out on Steam Greenlight.
It’s one thing to own a successful brand. It’s a different thing entirely to be able to successfully leverage that brand across multiple different products and media. I spoke with Christian Meyer, Senior Vice President and General Manager of GSN.com, about how he was able to pull it off and where he was planning to go from here.
How were you able to successfully leverage your television brands across the digital sector?
Well, a lot of time is spent in activating a brand strategy where we license a third party brand, like Wheel of Fortune or Deal or No Deal or Family Feud for example, and ideally, they have both an acquisition value and a retention value. We’ve been pretty lucky in that regard. Sometimes you’ll get a branded IP that has a great acquisition value, but the conversion value as a casual game or any kind of game experience for that matter is a bit of a long shot. You end up with an under-leveraged investment because you spend a lot in licensing.
And you don’t make anything off of it?
You potentially don’t make anything off of it, yeah. But we as a company have an understanding that if we can acquire based on the brand IP and then migrate those consumers to a higher retention experience, then that works pretty well too. But certainly the home run is when you establish a great relationship with a brand and you can unlock the acquisition value of that brand as well as the retention value. Then you have the makings of something huge.
Which of your IPs demonstrated this investment strategy most successfully?
Wheel of Fortune is definitely the stand-out. It’s been the number one syndicated brand for probably thirty-five years. It amazes me still that it has such longevity, and that can be traced back to its accessibility. The brand does a lot of work. It acquires well, consumers love the game, and they can also envision themselves competing in it. You get this trifecta of properties that make it a very powerful asset.
You guys have been doing some interesting things with leaderboards in your games. Any plans to integrate them into the television show itself?
We’ve done a lot of research and development around cross platform play between the television and the web specifically. And we’re starting to do a bit more on mobile. Absolutely to your point. Consumers want to participate. Technology has been a little behind consumer desire in terms of allowing us to create something simple and compelling, but we’ll get there.
In the last decade Brazil’s economy has been flourishing, spawning all kinds of new commercial and creative initiatives. Brazil has a fond love for gaming and a growing industry to match it. We had a talk with the cheerful Martin Fabichak, Technical Director of Insolita Studios in São Paulo, to find out more about him, his company and what makes the Brazilian game industry unique.
After Fabichak graduated in Applied Math with a specialization in Programming, he quickly realized that his true passion was game development, leading him to create flash games. In 2008 he joined Insolita where he recently became Technical Director and a partner of the company six months ago.
One of the characteristics of being a young company in an upcoming industry is that you get to create all sorts of games. Insolita Studios has a diverse repertoire, from serious games to teach management skills, to comedic platformers featuring cavemen and devils.
While they were making three serious games to encourage entrepreneurship in collaboration with professional experts, they decided to make something less serious, yet important on the side: CaveDays. “This cool platforming game allowed the company get noticed in the Brazilian industry, especially after winning the Jogos BR contest for Best Game, a contest organized by the Brazilian government to stimulate Brazilian game design.” Fabichak explains.
The award was the first step to start more, and bigger, projects. Fabichak likes to describe them in superlatives: “Afterwards we made a huge serious game, LudoPark. Pretty much one of the biggest serious games ever made because it’s a real-time multiplayer management game where 40 players compete to manage their business.” Besides this “huge” game, Insolita Studios joined up with the independent Brazilian game developer Abdução to make something “mini” that turned out quite big.
The two companies joined forces as Kidguru Studios to work on the first Sony-licensed game in Brazil for the PSP Minis platform, Freekscape. “We’re the only licensees for Sony.” Fabichak explains. “There is no one with a PS3 license here. It’s really hard to get that in Latin America. Being able to get Freekscape on the PSP Mini platform was a unique opportunity for us.”
Developing Freekscape took Insolita’s international relationships to another level in many different ways. “We developed a prototype with 3 levels and took it to GDC in 2009. There we got in touch with the publisher Creat from the US that gave us the opportunity to work with Sony that was looking for games for its new PSP Minis platform that had yet to be announced.” Fabichak recounts.
Compared to other PSP Minis games, Freekscape was a big mini. “Out of 40 levels we had in this project, only 15 remained in the game,” Fabichak admits. “We did not know that Minis would mostly be smaller-sized casual games. Most games come down to 1 or 2 hours of playtime, with a lot of replay value, of course,” Fabichak explains. “But Freekscape was disproportionately bigger with about 8 hours of gameplay. We believed and hoped PSP Minis was going to be a platform for small studios with big ideas.” Was Freekscape too big to be a Mini? “Sony was happy with the way Freekscape fit into their original idea of the type of games they wanted to offer on PSP Minis.”
Fabichak is happy with having an odd-one-out on a platform that has tough competition with delivering bite-sized portable games. He is proud of the game it turned out to be, but especially the lessons and relationships they gained through it. “We learned a lot from Freekscape. Especially in maintaining a relationship with an international publisher and a big player like Sony.” Fabichak says. “One of the things we struggled with was developing for Minis at such an early stage. Developing Freekscape before PSP Minis had even been announced, brought some difficulties, specifically nearing the end of our development cycle because the requirements and features for PSP Minis changed from one week to the other.”
Fabichak does not take his hardships for granted, however. “During this time, we had a great relationship with Vicious Cycle Software, who made the Vicious Engine we worked with. They helped us with a lot of issues. They even made some tweaks to the engine to help us out with some of the issues,” Fabichak recounts. “But when it came to one of the specific requirements from Sony, I spent about a month in the engine’s source code trying to solve it. That was really hard, especially since it came out of the blue, nearing the end of development.”
“Despite these problems, we had great help from Sony.” Fabichak admits. It also gave them more confidence to step things up. “Through this project we now talk to others on a whole other level. Now we can approach publishers and companies like Sony with more ease. You can’t reach this level as a company without earning your stripes with a previous project. Now we have the credentials to talk to them and prove we can deliver on what we propose, and our partners know that. We feel like we’re on another level now.” Fabichak says proudly.
The second part of Fabichak’s interview will be published next week, including his views on the Brazilian game industry, Insolita’s current projects, and his effort to inform upcoming talents about the real world of game development in Brazil through his podcast, Doublejump.
Working at ITC publishing for 11 years, Alexander Ptitsa is not only a well-known journalist in Ukraine, but he also witnessed and covered the growth of the Ukranian game industry before it even existed. We sat down with him to talk about how he first got started as a new media and game journalist, his contribution to the Ukranian game industry and the state of the Ukranian game market.
Both of Ptitsa’s parents used to be well known journalists in their time. His father was the chief editor of a sports magazine and his mother was an editor at a magazine for Ukranian women. After graduating from Kiev State University with a Physics degree, Ptitsa used to teach information technologies at a pedagogical college and some other schools through-out the 80’s and early 90’s. While teaching young children about working with computers, Ptitsa paid a growing amount of attention to videogames. “I’m very curious about everything,” he says. “Since my childhood, I liked to acquire new information about everything in the world.” No wonder computer games quickly became one of his hobbies, besides of his passion of teaching. He started playing old adventures on the PC such as Leisure Suit Larry and Monkey Island.
In the Ukraine, the first console that were massively available were cheap clones of the 8 Bit Nintendo Entertainment System. Ptitsa bought it for his daughter, but ended up playing it together with her. The Sega Megadrive followed soon. In those times, the only games that were available in the Ukraine for both consoles and PC were all pirated. Step by step, legal versions started to appear in stores.
“When the Internet started to become available my country, I was hooked,” Ptitsa admits. “It was my dream to have access to all that information. In 1996, he got his first Internet connection.” In the spring of 1997, Ptitsa made his first website, which was called ‘webbird’. It also became his first online nickname, reflecting his own last name which means ‘bird’ in Russian. He used his website to review news and interesting topics from the Internet on a weekly basis and visitors kept coming back for more. “At that time in the Russian language segment of the Internet, there was a trend to post reviews of the web,” Ptitsa explains. “Some reviewers even created kind of trade union, called Ezhe.ru.”
Most of the websites that became popular alongside’s Ptitsa’s own were also run by hobbyists. In autumn of 1997, Ptitsa realized a lot of people were interested in videogames as well and started devoting himself completely to the topic. “There wasn’t enough reliable information about games, so I started a game site called Gammer,” Ptitsa explains. “It was one of the first Russian language game sites, along with quake.spb.ru and some others. I updated the site regularly and got in touch with some of the Russian and Ukranian developers.” Alexander’s writing did not go unnoticed at Ukraine’s biggest IT-magazine publisher ITC publishing.
ITC publishing already knew Ptitsa from his online activities and made him a good offer to join their editorial staff. He was invited write some game reviews for a magazine called ‘Computer Review’, where also he ended up working the pilot version of Domashny PK (PC for Home). Ptitsa has been working for the latter magazine ever since. ITC also started to send Ptitsa to various international events around the world, allowing him to expand his international network and getting some of the first interviews with key figures in the game industry that were published in Russian. Among them were BioWare’s Ray Muzyka, Quantic Dreams’ David Cage and others.
Seeing the industry grow
In 1998, Ptitsa would also end up helping GSC Game World receive their first taste of international fame. The Kyiv based game studio would later become known for their Cossacks and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchises. “When the GSC Game World CEO Sergiy Grygorovych decided to visit Milia 1998, a big multimedia and game show in Cannes, he invited me as his interpreter and for PR,” Ptitsa recalls. “He didn’t know English and he wasn’t able to explain the features of the game to the people who were going to see the game at his small stand.”
Ptitsa gladly joined the young CEO to get the first version of Cossacks the attention it needed. One of the first things Ptitsa did, was bring the people from Gamespot to Sergey’s booth to see the game. Ptitsa was also able to have Microsoft’s Ed Fries, people from Infogrames and other publishers bring a visit to GSC Game World’s small stand. The rest is history.
Though the game market in Ukraine has been plagued by piracy for over a decade, Ptitsa has seen an increase of interest in the purchase of legal copies. “Legal games give consumers more possibilities for DLC, online gaming and so on,” he explains. “In the console sector, the situation is rather strange,” he admits. Ptitsa would later show me some game shops, where both the legal and pirated versions are displayed side by side. The latter, of course, being rather cheaper. While there is no official market for the Xbox 360 and Wii in the Ukraine, both consoles can be bought with mod-chips already installed inside of them.
The Playstation 3, thanks to its disc-protection not having been cracked yet, is the only console of which only the original games are sold of. Interestingly enough, this has resulted prices being higher for Playstation 3 games than in the west. As far as Ptitsa has seen and heard himself, the majority of consumers still prefer pirated copies. “The PSP is more popular than the DS here,” Ptitsa adds. “ I think that traditionally our gamers like good graphics and some of them prefer good graphics over good gameplay. That’s why a lot of them don’t even know about the great games on the DS.” Because of the higher prices of original games and his dislike of pirated versions, Ptitsa himself prefers to buy his games during his visits abroad and from online stores.
Ptitsa’s magazine has quite the challenge ahead of them. Recently Ptitsa is no longer a regular member of the Domashny PK (PC For Home) staff, but has been assigned to a freelance position instead. ITC Publishing took that measure in order to become more profitable.
