Storm Bringer Studios is a world-renowned company that made a revolution in the game industry in early 2000s of the 21st century, the founder and CEO Irakli Kokhrashvili recalls, meaning their first IP, the hit game of Steameria:Tournament.
Successful Titles in the Past Don’t Make a Company Fail-Proof
It may have never happened if we didn’t participate in the GameFounders program in Estonia in 2013. When we came to Tallinn in December 2013, we had very little experience in pitching and presenting ourselves, and got pretty frustrated after the first few sessions with the mentors. At that time, we were pitching some mobile game prototypes that we made a few weeks earlier, like Flower Power, a direct clone of King’s Candy Crush Saga.
Styles the developers tested in their prototype.
I still remember how miserable we felt in the first few weeks. Our pitches were terrible, so we started thinking about what we’re doing wrong. We asked ourselves: why are we now making games this unsuccessful? We’ve got history! We got used to making big and complex titles for more than 3.5 years. We were creating console games like GeoPolice 1 and GeoPolice 2, first and third person shooters. We did outsource for Microsoft, Kixeye, and Larva Game Studios. The shooters got millions of downloads worldwide. I will never forget that feeling when in 2011, I first saw the DVD with the game our team was working hard on, GeoPolice 1. It was time to make The Decision about our next games, and eventually, we headed back to Georgia and had a long meeting with the rest of team.
A screen of “Limbo”, an Easter egg level of the company’s second title Police 2
Another Shooter, in a Steampunk World This Time
This was the turning point for us, an experienced team of 25 professionals. We finally decided to make another shooter using the Unreal engine. Now everything fit well, we ALL got organized and had a clear goal. The clock started ticking. We needed to make one fully polished level based on assets from Police 3, our game that was 90 percent finished but never released. Meanwhile, at GameFounders, we had to think out a concept of our own commercial title. Having researched the shooter market, we decided not to make just another realistic shooter but instead go for alternate reality, the steampunk world of Steameria. Steameria:Tournament was the first title in this universe. Later, we released several other games in the same world, but this is now all a part of history.
The first thing we learned during the GameFounders program was that game development is a hard and competitive business. To sell a game, you need a solid business model - the most popular model at that time was free-to-play plus in-app purchases.
Ok, we said, we can make a free-to-play online steampunk shooter, with 12 unique characters with their own backstory and motives. The game will feel like Quake III Arena meets Mortal Kombat. We’ve done an online shooter in past, so were able to create more, but we’re a startup company that needs to experiment and try new and innovative things. This time, we decided to support Oculus Rift VR and ordered the devkit. I personally was very skeptical at first. We had experience with VR devices in the past. They were big and not so impressive, and I had no idea of how this one could be different. Back then, most people were still using common flat PC screens (!). Having tried the new VR kit, we were shocked! Feeling everything physically and reacting to it naturally looked like the next big thing we surely needed to support and optimize our game for it.
Skilled Players Can Earn Real Money
We decided to allow skilled players to earn money. For example, when a gladiator reaches level 40 in Steameria:Tournament, he can challenge another gladiator of the same level, with an equal weapons and armor set, in the same Arena, bet real money, and have a series of duels. The winner gets money as the prize. Each player pays to enter a tournament ($1, $3, $5, $10), and the winner gets it all. This is now quite popular on mobiles with skill-based gameplay. We’ve partnered with Cashplay and are using its solution in three of our mobile games already.
Having a certain weapon lets a player enter a tournament to win real money.
This idea was later developed much more: we did an extension and free DLCs in a year after launching the game. The extension added a partner mobile application for all major platforms that allowed mobile players to login, see live statistics, and bet on Steamerian gladiators!
We’ve finally mastered pitching and which words to choose for that, all thanks to numerous mentors’ sessions we had almost every day at GameFounders. There were some mentors that we called “nicers”. They came, we talked, they said - “oh that’s nice, keep working guys” - and left, and we never heard about them anymore. On the other hand, there were a few mentors who almost insulted us at first meetings.
“Some mentors almost insulted us at first meetings.”
We didn’t understand their motives at first, but soon realized that those were real mentors, the ones who cared. We partnered with them later and understood that connections are everything in this industry!
We were ready and fully motivated to enter the cruel world of game development by that time. We attended Slush 2013, had Demo Days in San Francisco and Game Connection Paris 2013, visited Sony, Facebook, Microsoft, Zynga, Funorama, Google, and met iconic people of game industry. We’ll never forget how we met EPIC’s VP, Mark Rein in a game event at Helsinki, or how we talked to Robin Hunicke and absolutely loved her vision and company.
This helped us realize one very important thing: people who work for those companies are not demigods, they are talented workers who think and talk almost the same as you. Maybe this doesn’t mean much for other companies, but it was almost everything for us. Being the first game development company in Georgia was hard. We were pioneers. Not a single person understood why we were doing this at that time. Nevertheless, we have confidence about our goals.
As for now, Steameria: Tournament is still being made, but very slowly, since the developers have switched to mobile games for now and are still looking for an investor for the big game of Steameria. They’ve released 10 mobile games in 3.5 month on iOS, ported 8 titles on Android and 10 on Windows phone.
Founded in December 2000, Yamago has now been developing games for over a decade. The team is based in Paris, France, and has all the skills required to develop quality games! Historically, Yamago focuses on 2D games for the web, based on TV and film intellectual properties, and has worked with clients like Cartoon Network, Disney and Lego. The company created game adaptations for global IPs such as Star Wars – The Clone War, Batman, Naruto, Adventure Time, and Gumball. Though in the last few years, Yamago has been making the transition to mobile games to keep up with the ever-changing games industry, and relying more and more on their own IPs to generate revenue. Their first in-house mobile game Hilomi started as a project for the Imagine Cup contest. Pierrick Lete and Sandrine Olivier, Yamago’s CTO and director of production, share the story.
A Student’s Contest as the Impact to Make a Game
Hilomi started out as an entry for the 2011 Imagine Cup. This annual competition is for students from all over the world to create projects that address the idea of a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems.
Xavier Cliquennois and Norbert Tran Phat, both interns at Yamago at that time, wanted to participate in the Imagine Cup in the Mobile Game Design category. They came up with the game’s idea (a 2D platformer where the player can reshape the environment) based on the Imagine Cup’s theme. Mathieu Anthoine, our creative director, helped them refine the concept by finding the right genre (puzzle game), adequately balancing simplicity and depth, and deciding on the character design (Hilomi, the female protagonist, and the animals).
Finding the right genre, balancing simplicity and depth, deciding on character design
Eventually, Hilomi turned out to be a rather long adventure. From March to July 2011 the team managed to proceed to the second round of Imagine Cup, win the Jeuxvideo.fr Reader’s Choice award and the Silver Medal for Mobile Game Design at the Imagine Cup France Finals, and then enter the worldwide Imagine Cup finals and win the Silver Medal for Mobile Game Design.
Yamago won Imagine Cup’s silver medal for Mobile Game Design
Moving Away From the Contest Theme Towards an Original Game Vibe
Following this encouraging reception and feedback for Hilomi at the Imagine Cup, we decided to make it into a full-sized game that could be featured in Yamago’s portfolio.
First of all, we refined the controls to make the gameplay more understandable and easy for players. Hilomi is a puzzle game where users reshape the environment within “touch gameplay” to help Hilomi make her way through the levels. We found out that players manipulate the game in various ways. The controls had then to be adapted to all of those, and that on a large panel of screen sizes: it was huge work!
We found out that players manipulate the game in various ways
The need for cheap and quick updates was the reason behind simplified game design. To increase the lifetime of a puzzle game, we had to be able to produce a large number of levels and design them as efficiently as possible.
The original story hasn’t been perfect for the game as well. It was based on the Imagine Cup’s theme, but did not speak to the players. We had to integrate a touch of ecological theme in the storyline to fit the competition rules, but this resulted in a story too complicated and hard to narrate in a puzzle game.
We also altered character design and artistic direction to make the game more appealing and HD-friendly. Since Yamago is recognized for high-quality graphics, a game published by the company should stick to these standards.
“Yamago is recognized for high-quality graphics, so a game published by the company should stick to these standards.”
iOS and Android tablets and smartphones were our main target. Imagine Cup is a competition sponsored by Microsoft, so the first version of the game has been made for Windows Phone using the Microsoft native SDK. We wanted to have a larger exposure for Hilomi, so decided to target the two main mobile OS’: iOS and Android.
The freemium model with monetization based on level packs was chosen on an early stage of development. Although this business model wouldn’t ensure that the game makes profit any more than a paid model does, it would make the project and our studio more visible. Creating commissioned games is Yamago’s main activity, and a high-quality, highly rated, and highly downloaded mobile game in the portfolio is a strong argument to convince clients that they can trust us to make great mobile games for them.
Sponsorship: a Solution If the Company Has Less Money than the Game Needs
Thanks to these starting points, we were able to estimate the budget required for Hilomi’s production. But since our revenue comes mostly from work-for-hire projects, investing in our own production is difficult… And the estimated budget for Hilomi was out of proportion with our financial assets at the time.
Hilomi became possible thanks to Adobe’s sponsoring. Being at a technological crossroads with AIR, Adobe chose to get involved with the game industry (Stage3D, SCOUT, Starling, etc.) after Thibault Imbert’s recommendation. They were looking for a game that would put Starling, their API hardware acceleration for 2D games, to test on mobile. Hilomi was picked because it matched the objectives, and partly thanks to Yamago’s being an active contributor to the Flash community from the studio’s very beginning. We’ve invested a lot of time in beta-testing Adobe (and formerly Macromedia) products.
Adobe chose Hilomi to test the Starling tool on mobile
Following Adobe’s sponsoring, Yamago secured a second aid from CNC’s fund for the creation of intellectual property. This combined help allowed us to conciliate our work-for-hire projects and Hilomi. We were able to assign team members to work on Hilomi for long periods, which contributed to making the project a reality. 14 different people worked on the game (fortunately not full-time and not at the same time).
Technology as a Convenient Constraint
Before the start of production, we were not quite sure about which technology to use. And again, Adobe helped us choose. They sponsored Yamago to test their technologies on an ambitious game that fitted the game industry standards and to suggest relevant features to improve these technologies. The solutions provided showed encouraging performances from the beginning, but we had to help fix a number of bugs, push for the improvement of certain features, and cope with optimization issues (due to memory allocation).
Free-to-Play Mechanics: Better Integrate in the Beginning
Knowing that a freemium game that gathers a large audience is not necessarily profitable, we wanted to integrate free-to-play mechanics to the gameplay loop. The main example is that we wanted to authorize players to increase the number of possible moves to solve a puzzle-level.
The retry-related fun factor in the game didn’t work as expected
Despite numerous iterations, this mechanic never felt right. It worked against the gameplay and was making it more complicated. The “fun-factor” in a puzzle game was highly related to the “retry” option, because when the player retried, he got hooked. So every distracting mechanic that gave the player the opportunity to avoid it cluttered the message and thereby jeopardized the core loop.
This experience taught us that that free-to-play mechanics need to be integrated into the game from the start. Adding them later is a long and costly process, and the results are not guaranteed.
Art and Story Makeover
Already at the Imagine Cup contest, where Hilomi was stuck to the topic of ecology, the jury did not find them particularly relevant. Later, we chose to adopt a more lighthearted tone, while preserving the theme of the natural world and its animals.
The mobile Hilomi: a lighthearted vibe, nature and animals
The animals are both the challenge and the “cute factor” of the game. In design terms, they are collectables. We didn’t want Hilomi to just pick them up like if they were “stars” or “coins” (a staple of puzzle games), since she is not a hunter. 🙂 We wanted the collection to be more related to the game’s storyline and universe. Having Hilomi photograph them in order to collect was the ideal solution, as it also allowed us to create the photo album. The photo album adds a collection mechanics that increases the replay value of the game.
The photo album adds a collection mechanics that increases the replay value of the game.
In the Imagine Cup version of Hilomi, all the art had been created in a matter of days, leaving very little time to think of a coherent artistic direction and character design. So we rethought all art in the game in the beginning of production. There were villains in the first storyline; they were “polluting” Hilomi’s world. The world, thus, looked sad. Hilomi then had to look angry against them. But thanks to the lighthearted tone of the game, we were able to create a more cheerful character. Originally, Hilomi also had red tentacles for hair; and we discarded this design (only because it was not readable on small/mobile screens).
Hilomi is always cheerful in the re-designed game
We kept the idea of odd mixes for the animals: a porcupine with logs for spikes, a mix of a ferret and a fennec fox, etc. As for the environment, we made square shapes a part of the artistic direction, with sharp angles and square structures often featured in the background. Hilomi has a tile-based gameplay, we wanted to create consistency with the graphic design.
We continuously receive positive feedbacks about the graphic design of Hilomi. And since we wanted to have a cute and cheerful character in a fantastic and colorful world - Mission Accomplished 😉
Hilomi is currently available on the App Store and Google Play, and we’re proud that in its first week after launch the game was featured by Apple in 128 different countries (including UK, France, Germany, Russia and China). We have passed the 200K download marks 15 days after the launch. It is also really great to see that the game is highly rated by players and critics (4/5 by 148apps and 7/10 by PocketGamer).
Living as an indie developer for more than five years and currently doing a weekly podcast with other indie developers, George Zarkua has created a summary of his experience in QA mode.
Working as an Indie
I believe the life of an independent developer is the choice for people who understand that in a company, they do not get what indie work could give them. He may be a loner who feels that he can grow stronger, can release a more independent product, make more money, or make better use of his time. After separating from a company, he gets all the freedoms and limitations that are inherent for indie.
The first thing you have to think about, unfortunately, is time and money. You must honestly ask yourself how much time you can share with your PC. Then multiply this figure by two. At this time, we need some minimum cash cushion, big enough to cover sickness (paid health insurance and gyms are not included in an indie life package), fun (very few people can be productive in a state of depression), and contingencies. This amount is the budget of your game. Of course, these issues are only for a full-time indie. If you are developing parallel to your main work, then it is simply impossible to calculate time.
You must honestly ask yourself how much time you can share with your PC.
When you becoming an indie, you become free. There is the freedom to choose a convenient schedule, programs, and partners. But almost immediately, it becomes apparent that indies can’t compete with the big companies. They must either create a studio with suitable rules or otherwise cheat. You are competing with studios that specialize in having spent a lot of time creating animation and content, and with a lot of people who are doing essentially the same job. In my opinion, indies should surprise the competition with ideas, unique style, and atmosphere. The ability to look to the future is the best quality for the companies; the ability to surprise is the best quality for an indie.
Making a Game
Experience helps avoid errors that you will understand only while making games.
Certainly, an indie’s first game could be a great game (Beginner’s Luck), but that does not guarantee that it will hit the top. However, the experience provides a broader view on the development of a variety of tools, working schedule, and a sense of the market. Experience helps avoid errors that you will understand only while making games. For example, you might forget to add a button of turning on sound and run into the crowd of disgruntled users who will write angry reviews and put a minus wherever possible. Or make an active area for a button on the screen, and not the button entirely. Even if your game has super cool music, particularly harmful players will not forgive you for these blunders. Welcome to the Internet! But through the experience of making ten buttons correctly, the eleventh will be done automatically. This will help you avoid a hit from a foolish fail and polishes your creation.
It is possible to gain experience without making games, but for me, this attempt turned into a failure. A long time ago, I found a great resource with a stupendous number of articles for indies. There was an incredible collection of articles on game design, development, sales as a whole, free graphics and music, and more. Almost everything was very interesting, and I read through it, trying to apply all in one game. But the negative of such articles is that they are designed for people who have some experience, and therefore were not dismantling the problematic issues that may arise for beginners. That’s because the layers are important in the experience. Layer by layer, we create an understanding of development. Reading articles about behaviorism in MMO without experience is like having a second-grader read Kafka.
In my opinion, the first game should be small and test-like. Even if you have a super idea for a super game, you still have no budget, nor the sense of the market and the audience. Postpone that idea for a while, and take up a small test project instead. When working on a small game, it is now incredibly easy to make a prototype of the game. In a worst case scenario, it could take three days.
Often, there is a sense to do it all from scratch as we learn a new technique of painting or read a book about the architecture of the code. Small games are good so that we have time to finish the game before we come to destroyable thoughts. And even if you decide to remake the game or after the remarks on the unprecedented lag of it even on the most powerful computers, you don’t rewrite as much. However, a small game does not have time to change ideologically. In any game, even the great games, it is important to keep the idea, the rod of the game. We can add features, change the appearance, but the idea of it should remain unchanged.
If you want new ideas to the game, or a second head, which will criticize you, look for a partner.
Increasing the quality of the game and leaving the level of “small games”, you will be competing with the big companies and studios. If you start to feel that you can not make a competitive game - look for an assistant. The type of the assistant should depend on your confidence in the game. If you feel the game itself is lame or you poorly see the idea, it is better to find a partner. If you want new ideas to the game, or a second head, which will criticize you, look for a partner. The only difference between an assistant and a partner is that the partner is involved in the development of the game, not just doing the job, but that difference is huge. Choosing a partner for a long project is like choosing a partner for a flight into space. If something goes wrong after six months of work, replacing will be very expensive.
Surviving as an Indie
I think an indie’s significance is hard to overestimate. Now is the era of indie developers. Indie games are no longer for hipsters. Steam introduced an indie games section where you can buy them on a par with the games from bigger campaigns. Apple Store gives indie games the same privileges as games of big companies. Sony and Microsoft are also looking for indie cooperation. The market does not reject that talent. There are sites for people looking for a direct link with the customer, such as Kickstarter, as well as conferences and meetings.
Now is the era of indie developers.
The issue of earnings is always painful. Each platform has their own rules and profits. There is practically no limit. For example, Minecraft earned about 100 million for 2012. But not all situations are so smooth. According to the well-known statistics of mobile applications, the top 25 developers received half of all profits in 2012. 80 percent of developers get three percent profit. 19 percent of apps earn $24k, and for the 80 percent, $300. Even if your mobile game will earn 100k on iOS, 30 percent of it you give Apple, 30 percent to your publishers, and then you have to divide the rest with your partner and tax.(source: The Game Bakers)
To start receiving more than you would have received in office and still do it all the time, you have to be strategic. I’ve learned to think about games in terms of categories. The first category are the games with new ideas, mechanics, and games with the new features of the devices. These are usually hits. Next on the list are quality sequels of old hits, complete with a bunch of fans and games that can be headed by a certain niche of the market. Finally, there are the games that cover some deficiencies of hits with new features. After that are the clones and trash.
To succeed, you must either make a game out of the first category (like Minecraft and Journey), or make one or two games from the second category (like Shank 2, the successful continuation of the epic Shank, and Limbo), or make lots of games from the third category. Surprisingly, some studios are ready to cope with it. For example, Berzerk Studio, a group of six people, provides great games month after month, almost always on the old mechanics. They have over 20 games. Berzerk Ball 2 went for 100k , and their new one went for 50k, so we can assume that the guys with such strategies have success.
I’ve learned to think about games in terms of categories.
However, I think everything in a game shouldn’t be unique. What should be exclusive is the idea and style. Freedom of game elements is a vise, and there is the possibility of being misunderstood. The human brain is based on past experience, so to enhance the audience’s understanding of the game, you should use images with recognizable patterns. Choose a technique for illustrations, so that it strengthens the idea inherent in the game and matches the audience. If you want to reach the maximum audience, then you need to learn from movies/cartoons with a maximum audience (Shrek, Pirates of the Caribbean, Cut the Rope). Use recognizable patterns and be moderately predictable. In the case of niche games, rules are dictated by the specific audience. Use references for the drawing and screenshots of successful games for the understanding of the principles of drawing, but do not copy.
Games are remembered for their distinctive features: Ideas, graphics, music, and easter eggs. In Alien Anarchy, I did a lot of content, but almost all the comments were about the Easter eggs from the movies that I left. When the player is done with the game, he remembers what can be shared with others: a tough situation, a high score, and funny stories.
Use recognizable patterns and be moderately predictable.
Food for Thought
Indies should remember that an end product is expected. Without a good product, no one cares how much effort and energy was put into the game. The game is above the developer; this is important. If you want everyone to know your story, then place it in the game. Independent developers are asking questions and answers themselves, rather than just doing tasks. This gives them the opportunity to show off their own look. But be prepared for the fact that your opinion is not shared by all, and your game will not be the second Minecraft .
Before you finish the game, it is best to show it to a test group - your friends, family, and colleagues. Do not ask them what needs to be changed in the game. This is the number one mistake. Never ask them. You need to watch how they play. Just watch.
Creating a successful game is consistently making the right decisions, from the selection of the engine and the platform to the last pixel. The secret to being a successful indie is to do what you like. Otherwise, what is the sense of been indie? Make your strong brands stronger and new games cooler.
Currently, George is working on a mobile version of his strong brand, Alien Anarchy, Jim’s Dream, and the new version of Dream Symphony, which will be available to play at Casual Connect Kyiv 2013‘s Indie Prize Showcase.
Starting out AAA games, Jodon Karlik decided he wanted to go indie. With his skills in C++ and Unreal Engine, he created Coding Jar Studios and set out to create unique games. Fling Theory was the first product of this mission, and he describes the road he took to get there.
While working on console games at Propaganda Games (Disney Interactive), the studio decided to spark creativity by holding a game jam. The speed at which decisions were made and functionality came together during the game jam had sparked an interest in me. I made up my mind to leave the console games industry to try my hand at small mobile games. I enlisted the help of my friend, Doug Insley, who jumped at the opportunity to quit his sales job and join me in our adventure to create our first game, Fling Theory.
Jodon and Doug, ready to start!
Enough With the Violence!
After working on many violent games, I knew that I wanted to do something different. I always had a fascination with physics, so writing a simple physics simulator with educational aspects would be something that I’d find fun, and I could feel good about putting it on the market. After a few hours of brainstorming and prototyping, I came up with the idea that you could manipulate atoms to solve puzzles. The initial idea was that you could use electrons, protons, and neutrons to craft specific atoms to solve puzzles. With that, the development of Fling Theory had begun.
Simple Physics
We found that the knowledge range of the users was too wide to tune as a one-size-fits-all game.
The initial version of the game was extremely difficult. The fact that we were trying to teach the concepts of atomic physics while crafting difficult puzzles overwhelmed and frustrated many users. We spent weeks trying to tune difficulty curves and context-specific tutorials which would detect if you were having troubles and give you hints. Ultimately, we found that the knowledge range of the users was too wide to tune as a one-size-fits-all game. We ended up cutting many of the educational aspects in favor of casual game play.
The final version of the game simplifies the concepts to two rules: Opposites attract and like-charges repel. This allows users as young as five years old to enjoy the game and will hopefully encourage users to explore the science on their own rather than trying to hammer it into their head.
Would They Want it?
We were always worried about how the mobile market would receive the game. When we released an early version of the game on the web and received a 3.5 star rating, I decided that a failure in the mobile markets would mean very little to us. Was it the quality of the game, our marketing, or a lack of interest in the subject matter? With a low-rated game, these questions would be hard to answer. For this reason, we decided to redesign a significant portion of the game to achieve a higher quality bar.
We decided to redesign a significant portion of the game to achieve a higher quality bar.
Facing a redesign instead of crossing the finish line is always an enthusiasm killer, and our love for the product was soon diminishing. Furthermore, since we were self-funded, our bank accounts soon ran low and we ended up taking contract work to fund further development. After taking a long hiatus, we returned with a strong desire to polish the product to a higher quality bar.
Since this was our first independent game, we had a lot of questions surrounding our release strategy that went unanswered for a long time. We heard of people making money on all sorts of platforms, and since we were using the cross-platform Unity engine, we tried to port to all of them. This turned out to be a big mistake. The effort required to get the game running at a high-quality bar on many platforms did not make sense financially. For instance, we braved the Unity-Flash alpha and ported the game to Flash in the hopes of getting a sponsorship from a portal site. The effort required to do this far outweighed the highest bid we received, so we decided to hold off releasing on any platforms until we explored the best release strategy. It is best to focus on a single platform first, then expand to further platforms when you’re ready. This gives you time to do the important things like marketing and platform-specific features that make the difference in quality.
Time to Publish
We had many offers from publishers during our downtime, all with dubious terms, including one publisher that made an offer to keep 90 percent of the revenue. Eventually, we resolved to self-publish and were days away from releasing on the Apple iTunes Store, when we finally heard back from a publishing fund we had applied for called App Campus.
App Campus is a joint venture funded by Microsoft, Nokia, and Aalto University in Finland. The program terms for them were quite simple: create a high-quality mobile app and receive funding in exchange for a three month exclusivity period on the Windows Phone platform. We pulled the plug on the iOS release in order to comply with App Campus rules. It turned out to be one of the best decisions we made.
Successful Launch on Win8 & Win Phone 8 Platforms
We met Microsoft and Nokia evangelists at the Vancouver Global Game Jam, who turned out to be amazingly great contacts to have. App Campus flew us to Finland, trained us in how to market our game, and gave us even more contacts. Eventually, we were in contact with the director of product marketing for Windows Phones, who helped create buzz for our launch by showing it off at the Microsoft Booth at GDC. The amount of support Microsoft and Nokia provided is unparalleled to anything I’ve seen. Their evangelist programs are very friendly to indie developers looking to make a big splash on their platforms.
The extra work paid off and our ratings increased.
We launched the game, and the extra time we took to polish the game appears to have paid off. We are averaging a 4.5 star rating on the Windows Phone 8 platforms and saw over 100,000 downloads in the first month alone. It feels really great to finally release a product and be generally praised by the public.
Fling Theory will launch on iOS and Android in mid-September. They would love to hear from you! Contact them on Twitter, Facebook or their website, where they’ve been posting some of their other educational projects, such as game development tutorials.
Like most game companies, Cryptic Studios began as an idea. Ever imagined an MMORPG built around a world of superheroes? Rick Dakan imagined just such a thing. He played and admired Everquest, but dreamed of something different, something outside the realm of fantasy. In short, Rick had what might be called a vision. But he didn’t have the means to bring it to life. So he approached Michael Lewis, an old high school buddy, with the idea, and Michael ponied up the initial start-up cash. We call that kind of capital angel-money and like the biblical archangel from the Book of Daniel, Michael delivered. He not only provided the early cash, he recruited Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Cameron Petty, Matt Harvey and Bruce Rogers - three Atari veterans with some serious production chops - to come on board. Boom. Just like that, Cryptic Studios was born.
Rick Dakan’s inspiration for a super-hero themed MMORPG became City of Heroes.
Of course, it wasn’t that simple or that easy. We all know that the road that begins with “What if?” often ends in “WTF?”. But Rick Dakan’s inspiration for a super-hero themed MMORPG became City of Heroes, a brilliant idea that did lead to a watershed game. However, between his early musings and the final product was a lot of pain, a lot of uncertainty and a lot of hard work. The founders pitched the game everywhere, but it was not an easy sell. Eventually they signed with NCSoft, home of the legendary Garriot brothers, who had the background to help shepherd such an ambitious project through to completion. But even under the care and guidance of NCSoft, the road was still rocky. Several months into development, City of Heroes was entirely scrapped and rewritten from the ground up. Two of the original founders left and things were looking grim.
Building a great game and keeping a studio going through the hard times is a Herculean effort.
Building a great game and keeping a studio going through the hard times is a Herculean effort beset with pitfalls, nasty surprises and tough choices. But greatness is born of adversity and Cryptic rallied. Michael Lewis, the angel investor who was so instrumental in Cryptic’s formation, stepped in as CEO. The company scaled from a dozen employees to several dozen, and City of Heroes launched to overwhelming critical and financial success. So much so that a year later, they quickly followed it up with City of Villains, a bookend product launched with much fanfare and also to great success. If you think that all would be lollipops and unicorns for Cryptic at this point, then you haven’t spent much time in the trenches of the game business.
On the heels of the wildly popular superhero-based MMOs, Cryptic partnered with Microsoft to create Marvel Universe Online. This was a dream project for Cryptic. On paper, it was a match made in Heaven, the perfect marriage of a world class IP with a proven technology and production pipeline. But after more than a year working on MUO, Microsoft inexplicably killed the game. Cryptic was emotionally crushed. But like true heroes themselves, they rallied once again. They took Microsoft’s lemons and eventually turned them into a fine sorbet with Champions Online for PC. But hold on, not so fast.
Cryptic needed capital to fund the publishing of Champions and to develop Star Trek Online, a license they acquired from a then ailing Perpetual Entertainment. Next, they hired industry vet John Needham as CEO to help raise funds. But it was hard going. They wound up having to sell City of Heroes back to NCSoft, yet that wasn’t nearly enough to fund both Star Trek and Champions. That’s when the poop really hit the fan. There was that minor inconvenience of the financial meltdown in 2008, when Silicon Valley became Death Valley overnight in terms of investment dollars. There was nothing cryptic about it, Cryptic had to sell their shirts in order to survive.
They wound up having to sell City of Heroes back to NCSoft, yet that wasn’t nearly enough to fund both Star Trek and Champions.
After being courted by many potential suitors, Cryptic agreed to be acquired by Atari, who was looking to pivot into an all-digital future. Champions Online launched in October 2009, under this venerable old-school gaming brand. But the game didn’t perform as hoped. At this time, the industry was making a subtle, but steady shift from subscriptions to micro-transactions. The things that worked for City of Heroes and City of Villains simply didn’t work anymore. They launched Star Trek Online six months later and had a great deal more success. Then they flipped the switch and turned Champions into a F2P game. Then they got bought. Again. Perfect World, a publicly traded Chinese publisher of F2P MMORPG’s, acquired Cryptic from Atari in 2011.
Under the guidance of Perfect World, Cryptic turned Star Trek Online into a F2P game and expanded the universe, making it bigger than City of Heroes. Their latest MMORPG, Neverwinter, is a Dungeons and Dragons-inspired universe that just entered open beta. It’s already bigger than all of Cryptic’s previous games combined, and word is it’s their best, most advanced game to date. Cryptic credits Perfect World with giving them the freedom and the guidance to make what they see is their best game ever. In fact, they have been generous in their praise of NCSoft and Atari too, giving each credit for helping Cryptic to grow and evolve during crucial periods of their history.
Neverwinter is already bigger than all of Cryptic’s previous games combined, and word is it’s their best, most advanced game to date.
Cryptic Studios is a well-seasoned survivor in a landscape dotted with the corpses of many also-rans. Through various phases of their growth, they’ve somehow managed to bend and adjust as market conditions changed, and what’s truly amazing is that they’ve always put out quality product. They are the poster-child for adaptation and resourcefulness, and a true inspiration to anybody who has a wild idea about making a great game. I’ve heard it said that ideas themselves are a dime a dozen. The real value is in a team. It’s the will and know-how to get an idea made that matters most. Nothing cryptic about that. But the rubber does not often meet the road, and many small studios skid off into trees. Not Cryptic. They’re still driving above the speed limit.
Paul Loynd is currently a senior producer at Meteor Entertainment. With years of experience in the gaming industry, Loynd has worked for VMC and Microsoft before moving to Meteor. He is proficient in multiple languages, several testing and development tools, and enjoys riding his motorcycle in his free time.
GS: Your LinkedIn profile has you starting out in the gaming industry as a Senior Tester for VMC in 2006. What were you doing before then?
Paul Loynd: I was actually testing video games before that point as well, but it was on a sort of on-call basis. This was also for VMC, and I did it for about three years on and off, but I don’t include it on my LinkedIn, since it wasn’t what I would consider a full-time job. Before that, I was attending college and doing volunteer work.
I always knew that I wanted to work in the games industry, even though I didn’t realize it right away. After a couple years of attending college, I dropped out to pursue my own path into the games industry. I had quickly realized that the CS degree I was pursuing didn’t guarantee me a job within the industry, and neither did my college have strong ties with any game companies, so placement aid was unlikely.
I always knew that I wanted to work in the games industry, even though I didn’t realize it right away.
Back then, universities didn’t have really clear pathways for getting you into the games industry. Either you were an artist with connections to people already working in the industry, or you were a CS graduate hoping that some game company would take a chance on you fresh out of college. Considering how specialized video game programming is, the chances of that happening were not high. Most reputable companies usually wanted proven experience and shipped titles on your resume before they would take a chance on you. That being the case, the next easiest way to get into the industry was the QA route, which is what I did. I remember working side by side with guys that had their Master’s Degrees in CS making $9/hour because they couldn’t get a job as a developer without game programming experience on their resume. It was crazy. The placement programs that exist today are far more effective at grooming and placing talent within the games industry. Schools like DigiPen and USC are really making huge strides in providing young minds with a clear path into the games industry.
You left Microsoft for Meteor Entertainment in 2012. What was it about working for Meteor that appealed to you? Was it just a job opportunity that came up or was there something about the culture of Meteor that resonated with you?
It was a combination of the opportunity and the culture of Meteor, and really the culture of a start-up that resonated with me. The first time I saw Hawken, I was actually working at Microsoft. I remember thinking to myself “Holy sh*t, I have to work on this game. This is going to be amazing.”
“Holy sh*t, I have to work on this game. This is going to be amazing.”
Working at a small company has some obvious benefits. Everything happens very quickly and you get to see your actions make a change on a daily basis. It’s very exciting to see the fruits of your labor so quickly. That’s not always the case at a big company. Everything usually happens at a much slower pace, and big crazy ideas are usually looked over in favor of safer business choices with a clear ROI. These days, if you want to do something amazing, you have to take risks; that is easier to do as a small company.
Hawken has been in development since 2010. What was the initial inspiration for the game?
The initial inspiration comes from Khang Le and his original team that worked on Project Offset for Intel. They were a group of five guys that all loved mech games and sci-fi. After Project Offset was cancelled by Intel, Khang and the other original founders of Adhesive looked around at the current FPS games and decided that a mech based FPS would be a lot of fun to make and play to the strengths of the original team. Also, it would bring a totally new experience to the FPS market that didn’t currently exist. Thus Hawken was born in a small garage in LA County.
On this note, what was it about Hawken that Meteor wanted to publish it? Was it just the high quality of the game, or did its transmedia potential help it stand out?
Khang Le and his team have created an amazing IP with Hawken. It is visually stunning and so different from anything else that is out there right now. Every minute detail of Hawken is carefully crafted to give the player the real experience of being in a mech. Everything about Hawken is just so “big.” From the mechs themselves, to the maps, to the delicate detail that has been put into every texture and every model in the game, Hawken screams production value.
From the mechs themselves, to the maps, to the delicate detail that has been put into every texture and every model in the game, Hawken screams production value.
The transmedia aspect of Hawken actually came after we started work on the game. The idea was to create additional content that told the story of Hawken in a way that couldn’t be told in the game, get people interested in the lore and the world of Hawken, and ultimately pull them to the game itself.
As a game centered around mechs, Hawken is part of the mech genre. With so many mech stories out there, how is Hawken going to be different?
Hawken is a totally unique experience from a number of different perspectives.
Hawken is a totally unique experience from a number of different perspectives. First, the art style of Hawken is so different from anything else out there. Our mechs have a crazy unique style that stands apart from both Japanese style mechs, from anime like Macross and Gundam as well as more “western” style mechs like Mech Warrior and Battletech.
Second, Hawken is an FPS in every sense of the title. Most mech games to-date have been 3rd person experiences and usually a much slower pace of game than Hawken. Hawken is fast paced, frenetic, brutal. It feels totally different from all the other mech games out there right now.
A key concern for players in Hawken is that their mech may overheat. What was one of the reasons for this feature? What are some other aspects of Hawken’s game play that you believe will allow the game to stand out?
Heat is a very key element to the game play of Hawken. We designed everything to be very deliberate in Hawken; from the movement to the way the economy of battle flows. We didn’t feel like it made sense for giant combat mechs to be reloading fifty shot clips. These mechs aren’t anthropomorphic robots holding guns; Hawken mechs are combat platforms with integrated weapons. These mechs have huge ammo stores to allow them prolonged combat in the field. Heat performs a number of functions in Hawken. First off, weapon heat forces players to think twice about just holding down the trigger and spraying shots everywhere. The fact that your mech can overheat while you are in battle adds an interesting dynamic that players have to learn to balance through smart weapon usage and heat reducing internals. You are piloting a mech and every part of our design is crafted with the intent of reinforcing that experience for the player.
We designed everything to be very deliberate in Hawken; from the movement to the way the economy of battle flows.
The other side of heat is that it rewards players for doing well in the game. Consider conventional FPS games that use ammo – once you use up all of your ammo, it typically means you are running around the map with your knife out hoping to scavenge a fallen player’s gun or find a new gun before someone fills you with holes. This usually means that a player is taken out of battle while they go off to find more ammo or a new weapon. In Hawken, this can be detrimental to team play. Every mech counts in a team fight and when you are down one mech, you feel it.
Every mech counts in a team fight and when you are down one mech, you feel it.
Another aspect of Hawken’s game play that I feel really allows the game to stand out is the movement. Again, just as with weapon heat, the way that mechs move in the game is very deliberate. When your 50-ton war machine starts trundling forward, that requires a significant amount of force, and changing directions requires a large amount of force in the opposite direction. For example, when you strafe left in your mech and then attempt to strafe right, that direct change in movement is a big shift, and you will experience a big slowdown in movement since the 50 tons that was once moving left now has to move right. Physics says that momentum is going to make that work hard for you. Short version: Isaac Newton was a dick. Now the easy way to override the slowdown is by using your mech’s dodge function to get the extra force needed to change direction quickly, but that means you have burned up your dodge for a second or so. That single second could be the difference between a beautifully evaded shot, and a TOW missile ruining your day.
Momentum is very important in Hawken, and understanding how to use it to your advantage is a key element of the game that separates the expert players from the beginners.
Momentum is very important in Hawken, and understanding how to use it to your advantage is a key element of the game that separates the expert players from the beginners. Players need to learn how to use forward momentum as much as possible to supplement their movements instead of fighting against their mech. For instance, when boosting forward, if you want to change directions to get around a left or right corner, you can move your mouse to the left or right to start aiming the mech in the direction you want to go and then come out of your boost with all of your forward momentum in the new right or left direction. You just have to remember that the sharper the direction change, the more demanding it will be on your mech and the higher the likelihood of your mech slowing down and becoming an easy target.
That kind of movement doesn’t really exist in other FPS games. Players can’t just aim at a target and fire, they need to learn to anticipate quick movement in a new direction from an enemy mech and fire where the target is going to be, much like what is required in flight combat games. This really sets us apart from other FPS games out there.
Outside of the game play, how would you summarize the over arching narrative of the Hawken universe?
Hawken takes place on the planet Illal. Illal was once a resource-rich paradise, but with the arrival of several mega-corporations (Crion, Sentium, and Prosk), the planet was slowly over-industrialized to the point of collapse. Where once there were lush forests filled with life, now there are tired, sprawling ghettos and massive industrial complexes bleeding the planet dry of the few resources that are left.
The planet was slowly over-industrialized to the point of collapse.
Illal’s fate then takes a turn for the worse when Dr. James Hawken, a scientist in the employ of the Prosk Corporation, creates the Ohmu Nano-Virus. The Nano-Virus is made up of nano-machines that have been reprogrammed to spread and replicate like a virus. The nano-virus consumes all matter in its path, reconfiguring its molecular structure into an all metal material that becomes known as “Giga-Structure.”
Initially, the planet is considered lost after this cataclysmic event, until the corporations figure out that the vermin of the planet have been consuming the converted giga-structure and leaving behind an energy source known as Vitrolium. Vitrolium fertilizes new life on Illal but also serves as an immensely powerful energy source. The corporations decide not to abandon the planet, and instead begin a war of dominance over the new energy source. The battles that take place in game are a representation of the battles that take place between the major corporations.
Hawken is a AAA, free-to-play game. The idea of a free-to-play game also being a AAA title is still a fairly rare idea. What do you think the rise of AAA free-to-play games says about the gaming industry?
We live in an interesting time in the game industry. As more and more games are released and players have easier and easier access to a wider and wider range of content, the audience becomes more sophisticated. As an audience becomes more and more sophisticated, they become harder and harder to please, i.e. the expected quality bar continues to rise, as does the expectation for something new that hasn’t been experienced before.
The movie industry has been suffering from this problem for years. When movies first started to become available to the public, they were low budget, easy to make, and not terribly complicated in terms of writing, or visual effects. The whole idea was so novel that people would line up to watch almost anything. I do say that with a grain of salt, because I am sure there were movies that failed even during the golden age of film, but my point is that the chance of success was much higher because the bar was lower. On top of that, the people who made them were not doing it for the money, at least not initially. It was a passion, and they made great movies because it was what they were driven to do; the money came later.
I would rather spend $200 on a game I love playing that continues to provide entertainment than $60 on a game that left a bad taste in my mouth.
The game industry is experiencing this same shift right now, and I feel that Free-to-Play is at the forefront of that shift. People are tired of throwing down $60 for a game that they have no guarantee will even be worth the $60 they spent. Have you ever dropped $60 on a game, taken it home, and immediately regretted that purchase after playing the game for even just an hour? Compound that with only getting $20 trade-in value for the game you JUST bought? That feeling sucks. I would rather spend $200 on a game I love playing that continues to provide entertainment than $60 on a game that left a bad taste in my mouth.
Free-to-play is taking the whole system of how we purchase and experience game content and turning it on its head. With a free-to-play game, you get to experience the game up front and decide for yourself if it is worth spending money on. If the game is good and it appeals to you, it isn’t a hard decision to spend money on it. If the game is bad or you don’t like the game, you can just leave and find a new game; nothing lost. The really great thing about free-to-play is that they don’t have the typical revenue tail that conventional retail PC and console games do. A free-to-play game is as much a game as it is a service, and the continual revenue generated by the game is used to build new features and content into the game. Instead of a couple pieces of DLC here and there after the game launches, the title benefits from constant updates and improvements which only results in a better game. Retail games just can’t do that.
That doesn’t mean that free-to-play is inherently bad, it just means that some companies choose to use the Force for evil instead of good.
All that being said, do I think free-to-play is the end all be all for games in the future? No. I think there are a number of different business models being employed and tested out in the wild right now, and all of them have benefits and drawbacks. There are a ton of critics that have come out against free-to-play since it has hit the mainstream of gaming, and some of their arguments are valid. That doesn’t mean that free-to-play is inherently bad, it just means that some companies choose to use the Force for evil instead of good. Free-to-play has a dark side, but that is just a product of a company putting business priorities and revenue first, and treating the game and its players as a vehicle for getting revenue. That is nothing specific to the games industry; it happens in almost every industry out there. When free-to-play games are done right and crafting a great game experience is put at the center of priorities, free-to-play can be an amazing thing that promotes intelligent game design and non-predatory monetization practices.
That is our view with Hawken. We want to provide our players with an amazing AAA experience for free and monetize in the places that we feel are fair and make the most sense for the game and the player. We want people to spend money on our game because they love it, not because they feel they have to in order to keep playing.
We want people to spend money on our game because they love it, not because they feel they have to in order to keep playing.
I had the chance to read the graphic novel based on Hawken. What was the motivation behind creating it? Are there any other similar projects to be created based on Hawken?
Honestly, the motivation was the visual world that Khang Le and crew had created. Just looking at the visuals and concept art for Hawken, it was obvious there was a huge story there to tell. We decided that the graphic novel was the best way to tell it.
Right now, we are focused on the game itself, but there are definitely other ideas floating around about how we can build on the Hawken world.
Players can look forward to all the typical FPS game modes, but we also have plans for new game modes that will be unique to Hawken.
Players can look forward to all the typical FPS game modes, but we also have plans for new game modes that will be unique to Hawken. We aren’t announcing any new modes officially at this point, but we are definitely excited for what is coming down the pipe.
What are some long term goals Meteor has outside of Hawken?
Just like any publisher, our long term goals are to publish more games and grow as a company, but for right now, our primary focus is Hawken. Hawken is still growing and needs a lot of focus from all of us at Adhesive and Meteor in order to be successful. Once Hawken’s needs are met, I am sure we will start shifting our focus to new ventures.
Released in November 2009 for the Xbox360 and PS3, Fairytale Fights is an action hack-and-slash platform game supporting up to four players. The game combines cute looking fairytale characters with over-the-top slapstick violence. The game was developed by Playlogic Gamefactory, the in-house development studio of Playlogic. The studio previously had worked on titles like Xyanide (Xbox), Cyclone Circus (PS2) and Xyanide Resurrection (PSP, PS2). The studio also worked as first party developer for SCE London Studio on titles like Eye Pet, Mesmerize, Aqua Vita (Aquatopia in North America), Tori-Emaki and Pom Pom Party. In this post-mortem, Martin Janse tells the story of Playlogic’s game Fairytale Fights.
Instead of a making a game for children, we wanted to create a game that would appeal to an adult audience by using over the top slapstick violence and comical gore
The game started as concept for the PlayStation 2 Buzz controller party game. Gradually, the concept started to evolve into something bigger that could only be developed on the Xbox360 and PlayStation3 platforms. In Fairytale Fights, you play the part of a used-to-be-famous fairytale character on a personal mission to regain his/her lost fame by going on quests throughout the kingdom. A quest could be rescuing princesses (and princes), fighting wicked fairytale characters or finding magical treasures. The fairytale world consists of cute characters and vivid animations as seen in many 3D animation movies, but instead of a making a game for children, we wanted to create a game that would appeal to an adult audience by using over-the-top slapstick violence and comical gore that also can be seen in cartoons like Happy Tree Friends or Itsy and Scratchy from The Simpsons.
Since the game was targeted for Next Gen-consoles, we felt the game should include some unique features. One of the programmers had been working on a real-time fluid system and we wanted to incorporate this technology in the game, not just for creating all kinds of liquid effects, but also for the blood that would cover the whole scenery and drip from objects. Another idea we had was that the player should be able to slice enemies and objects dynamically so in theory, the player could slice everything he wanted in any direction he would choose.
In early 2006, a team was assembled. They started working on the high-level game design and creating a short animated movie showing some of the core gameplay mechanism and general visual style of the game. After a couple of months, the team of animators, visual designers, modelers and a game designer produced a stunning short animation that convinced everyone that this had the potential to become a fresh and fun game.
Pre-production
The preproduction period was challenging
Before pre-production started, our technical department evaluated different middleware solutions. They came to the conclusion that Unreal 3 Engine was the most suitable tool for creating Fairytale Fights and other possible future titles. It had a very strong editor and was by then the only middleware solution that proved it could deliver quality results on both PS3 and Xbox360. We knew that it would take some time to set up the work flow and to learn Unreal 3. As a result, a small team was assembled to start learning Unreal while also working on the liquid and dynamic slicing technology and creating content in order to develop a vertical slice of the game.
“Our ambition to make the game look like an interactive cartoon was finally met.”
The preproduction period was challenging. The team encountered several technical obstacles such as recreating the experience of the prototype movie to a vertical slice of the game. Fortunately, a couple of weeks before the Leipzig Games Convention in August 2008, something magical happened. After making some harsh cuts and redesigns, everything fell in place. The vertical slice became a game with a soul, fun to play and a delight to watch. The vertical slice looked gorgeous and the dynamic slicing and liquid system worked. You could even jump into the puddles of blood and red drops would color your surroundings. Also you were able to slide through the blood puddles, painting the world red.
Sometimes we could see the journalists thinking “Oh no, not a kiddy platformer! Another 20 minutes wasted of my precious time!”
The decision was made to present the vertical slice only to a select group of press behind closed doors during Leipzig Games Convention. We all knew we had something special, something different. But the question was if the critical games press would like it as well? We all knew we took a chance with Fairytale Fights. Everyone was using the power of the recently released Xbox360 and PS3 to show realistic looking masculine battle scenes in space or industrial locations. Alternatively, we were creating a game that from the first glimpse looked like a game made for children, but contained cutting edge technology to recreate cartoon violence (salami violence as we called it internally) like dynamic slicing and dynamic liquids.
When we started our presentations during the Games Convention, sometimes we could see a journalists thinking “Oh no, not a kiddy platformer! Another 20 minutes wasted of my precious time!” But once we started the dynamic slicing on the first innocent bunny into small pieces and slide through the puddle of blood from the bunny, you saw a big grin on the faces of most of the journalists and they were keen to learn more about the game.
Starting Production
After the Leipzig Games Convention, it was clear that Fairytale Fights might become something big. Some journalists even wrote Fairytale Fights was the biggest surprise at Leipzig GC that year! Now we had to develop the full game. It took almost 1.5 years to create the vertical slice, a tiny fragment of the whole game. Some key features of the game were working, but still a lot of work had to be done, especially creating content (models, animations, levels) and making sure it would run on all supporting platforms.
One of the biggest issues we already faced during pre-production was finding skilled people. A studio in Rotterdam (not far from the development studio) called Coded Illusions went bankrupt. They were working with the Unreal Engine for several years and we were able to make several formal employees interested in working at the studio, but this was far from the amount people we needed to develop all the content needed (creating models, animations and levels). So we got in touch with a studio that was specialized in building props and animations for feature films and animated TV-series. They were in-between projects and were eager to enter the game content business. Only there was a small problem, our team was not finished with the design and they were working day and night to make sure all the deliverables were available to them on time.
Fairytale Fights was scheduled for a late 2009 release. Sometimes it felt like a mission impossible, especially when things didn’t work out as expected. We had to some cut features and content that was originally scheduled for the game. Everyone at Playlogic was extremely dedicated and spent many hours to finish the game on time.
A group shot of the entire team.
Looking back
Not being able to attract as many experienced candidates to the studio as we would like also caused delays
As mentioned before, the pre-production took longer than expected. Most of the lead members of the pre-production team were recently promoted and had no or limited experience with starting projects from scratch. Also several key members of the team had to support other running studio projects every now and then, also delaying the pre-production. Not being able to attract as many experienced candidates to the studio as we would like also caused delays. We were recruiting, but it was difficult finding skilled people that were also willing to relocate to Breda (the location of Playlogic Gamefactory, in the south of Holland). After the positive feedback during Leipzig GC in 2008, it became much easier to attract skilled personal. Also the decision to outsource work to other companies meant that people who otherwise could help in production, were now managing outsourcing.
Another thing that caused the delay was that sometimes development was dictated too much by the visual design of the game. For example: at the start of the game, the players and enemies are moving on forest paths with varied terrain. It looked great, but it caused a lot of problems regarding Artificial Intelligence, collision and physics. Looking back, too much time was spent on trying to solve technical issues that were caused by these visual decisions instead of finding alternative visual solutions so these technical issues would not arise.
When the game was released, it received mixed reviews. Many journalists liked the colorful visual style and over the top cartoon violence of the game, but found it a bit too repetitive or didn’t like the usage of the right stick for performing combat moves. Combat is indeed sometimes a bit too repetitive. There were many more puzzles and platform challenges in the original design of the game, but not all of them made it to the final version of the game, making the game too dependent on combat alone. After speaking with a lot of players (especially female players), there was also many who liked the usage of the right stick for combat. It made the game accessible and suitable for co-op play with less experienced gamers, because using the right stick for combat felt intuitive. Several male players told me that Fairytale Fights was one of the few games their girlfriends or wives enjoying playing and they both enjoy playing in co-op mode.
Several male players told me that Fairytale Fights was one of the few games their girlfriends or wives enjoying playing and they both enjoy playing in co-op mode
Not such a happy ending
After the release of the game, a small team continued to work on DLC, which was released shortly after. The rest of the team started pre-production for Fairytale Fights 2. The first Fairytale Fights 2 prototypes were very promising and showed the team had many new fresh ideas. Unfortunately Playlogic encountered financial troubles and the studio had to close its doors halfway 2010 just before winning 2 Dutch Games Award 2010 for Fairytale Fights a few months later.
Some footage of early prototypes of Fairytale Fights 2 has leaked unto the internet. If you are interested, you might be able to find it. Playlogic is currently only publishing games, primarily focusing on publishing digitally on consoles, handhelds and mobile devices.
After almost a decade of being in executive and managerial positions at companies like Microsoft, WildTangent, Screenlife and most recently Gazillion Entertainment, industry veteran Stuart Moulder is now traveling the world in search of a new challenge. “If I was a corporate, political kind of person, then that was right,” Moulder says about his previous positions. “But I’m a product person. I came into the industry because I liked games.” We sat down with Moulder during Casual Connect Kyiv to talk about his interest in casual games, how big franchises can wear you out and the value of Western game professionals in Eastern Europe.
Stuart <3 Casual
Did you know? Korea once threatened to arrest the GM of Microsoft Korea. The reason being that the “history” used in Age of Empires for the Yamato (Japanese) campaign was derived from Japanese sources. It did not portray the historical events accurately, at least not from the Korean perspective.
In 2003, Moulder realized that he had very little opportunity at Microsoft to have any real impact on the games he worked with, Moulder quickly considered finding a new challenge. After a year of ‘detoxing’ as a consultant, Moulder joined WildTangent full time. “They were a casual game company and that was pretty interesting to me.”
Probably because as I had gotten older and had a family, my own playstyle incorporated more casual game types. I think that hardcore gamers in their 30s and 40s are all pretty similar that, most of them want to be good parents and have a balanced lifestyle, and they don’t want to give up too much time for gaming.
Moulder believes casual games have been a great answer for gamers who’s lives have changed, but still have a passion for gaming. It later became one of the reasons Moulder got involved with Screenlife, who would later bring their Scene It? franchise to the Xbox 360 and several mobile phone platforms. Moulder moved over to Gazillion in 2009, but left the studio last summer because his job ended up being a lot like his previous position at Microsoft. “You have that amount of management responsibility, that the amount that you can affect game development is pretty modest,” he recalls. “The other thing that I was struggling with was that Gazillion was founded on the old online model of having a high concept or a great license and then building a rich Warcraft-like MMO.”
“Even when you do three-year games that are successful, it actually wears on you.”
Moulder soon found himself uncomfortable with that model and the estimated development times of two to three years per product. “But it’s usually four to five years or more,” Moulder says. “It didn’t feel like they were able to throw aside the work that they’ve done and shift gears to try and reinvent themselves.”
Now that the business aspect of monetizing online, social and casual games has become more developed, Moulder is on the hunt for potential partners. For a product-oriented person like himself, the idea of rapidly working out the core gameplay and marketing it quickly is golden.
Moulder: "When Microsoft decided to stop publishing the Close Combat series of games, we gave the rights to the series name to Atomic Games for free. Additional titles in the series were created and published subsequently without any obligation to Microsoft – an all too rare example of publisher magnanimity."
“You’re not stuck with the same for two, three or four years only to have it not be a success in the marketplace,” Stuart argues. Recounting his own motivation to orient himself to another direction, Moulder remembers recognizing the same kind of fatigue one can get from those kind of projects in the eyes of many developers he previously worked with at Microsoft.
“Even when you do three-year games that are successful, it actually wears on you,” Stuart says. “Part of why Bungie left Microsoft was that all Microsoft cared about was more Halo. The people who started on Halo in 1997 have been doing that same basic game for over ten years-in some cases, more than half of their lives. It’s hard to feel like you’re job is creative and innovative when you’re working on something for so long.”
XP points
Did you know? The hardware choices for the original Xbox to have a Nvidia GPU and Intel CPU were only finalized a week prior to the deadline that was set to reach the holiday period of 2001. The Intel choice was a last minute reversal of plans, which was imposed from above based on larger Microsoft/Intel relationship considerations.
Moulder’s search for the right partners has also led him to Eastern Europe on multiple occasions where many developers are very much interested in western developers for their expertise and experience. “Their games are a very solid top 10% kind of quality, but it’s definitely not that top 1%,” Moulder argues. “It’s like wine tasting, where there are people that taste wine and can really tell. […] I think the talent is there. What they need is people who can transfer that knowledge and can partner with them.”
According to Moulder, the expertise he and many other western industry professionals have acquired could play a key role for talented Eastern European developers to significantly improve their business. “It’s the polish, the tuning and the feel,” he says. “You can talk about it, but it does take a certain articulation beyond ‘it wasn’t fun’. That’s what twenty to thirty years of playing and developing games gets you.”
“Nintendo has done this in the past, where they’ve worked with a non-Japanese developer.”
Moulder admits to be surprised that Western publishers seem to rarely send experienced professionals and producers to provide assistance to their Eastern European partners. Having consulted several companies in the region himself, Moulder suggests more publishers should build on such a model. “Nintendo has done this in the past, where they’ve worked with a non-Japanese developer,” Moulder recalls. “The best-known one was Rare. They would bring them into Kyoto and Myamoto-san would have them in their shop as kind of apprentices if you will. They would take the game through its next stage of development in their environment. […] Rare could go back and could deliver that level of quality of their own.”
Carrying with him a wealth of experience in managing development teams behind big-budget titles, Stuart Moulder is but one of many industry veterans who have happily embraced the shift to more rapidly developed, iterative and smaller size projects in the casual and social game sphere. That shift has struck more and more developers all around the industry, who are now roaming the world in search of new projects to challenge them.
As for Moulder himself, he is currently doing full-time consulting at Gazillion’s Netdevil studio in Colorado, where he is working with the teams of both Lego Universe and Jumpgate Evolution.
As a Content Strategist, Kate Edwards has had the opportunity to work with game titles including Halo 1, Halo 2, Fable, and Forza. “Some personal favorites from a process standpoint were all of the Age of Empires titles, as well as Jade Empire,” she shares. Most recently, she just finished work on Dance Central and Dragon Age 2. Kate Edwards discusses the origins of Geopolitical Strategy at Microsoft, taking the leap to consultation, localization beyond language, and culturalizing.
From Geopolitical Strategizing to Consulting
Edwards: “The biggest challenge working on Dance Central was my lack of dancing skills. The geocultural review had to be done playing through the game using the Kinect, so my clumsiness was really put on display. Thank goodness it was usually only me in the room at the time!”
With the access to work with so many top titles, we have to wonder: What is a Content Strategist? Edwards was working at Microsoft as its Geopolitical Strategist (a position Edwards created within a team she called Geopolitical Strategy) to help the company prevent making geopolitical and cultural mistakes across all Microsoft products and locales. Edwards explains, “We wanted to avoid the kind of things that make governments and consumers upset, that then result in products getting banned and/or receiving very negative PR.”
” We wanted to avoid the kind of things that make governments and consumers upset, that then result in products getting banned and/or receiving very negative PR.”
When Microsoft Game Studios got started, Edwards got more and more heavily involved in helping them with unique issues that applied to games. “I worked on everything from UI design, to stories, to artwork, to character design, scenarios, and so on.” She provided proactive advice to help them avoid yielding major backlash in various locales.
Between 1995 and 2005, she performed a review of nearly every 1st party Microsoft game on PC and Xbox, and some 2nd/3rd party titles. She also instituted a “geopolitical quality review” process at Microsoft for every product, including game titles. For Edwards, it was the dream job. “As an avid gamer myself, this was an ideal job for me—melding my geography and geopolitical background with my passion for games.”
Now, she’s supported by a career as a consultant. “Once I left MS in 2005, I continued my focus on game content ‘culturalization’, started the Game Localization SIG in the International Game Developers Association, and have been entrenched in the game industry from the localization side,” Edwards says. She also co-organizes the Game Localization Summit at the Game Developers Conference, reminding us that localization goes beyond language.
From Challenges to Resolve
Edwards: “Working on Star Wars: The Old Republic has been really gratifying from the standpoint that I once aspired to be a storyboard artist for Lucasfilm and really wanted to work on something Star Wars related. Years later, I’m finally getting the opportunity. Just in a radically different capacity.”
However, not everyone is warm to the idea of consultation. “As a content strategist who deals with touchy issues like religion, politics, and culture represented in games, I often get viewed with suspicion by game artists, writers, and designers.” Her biggest challenge is integration in a team. “They view me as a hindrance rather than a help. They often think I’m there to be the ‘PC’ police or somehow curtail their creative vision. With this kind of roadblock, it makes my job very difficult to do and it potentially endangers their work.”
Although it took time, Edwards was eventually able to overcome this by proving herself to game companies in two ways: “First, I’m a gamer and have been longer than many in this young industry have been alive. So I love games. I’ve played a lot of games, and I understand the important issue of context from a gamer’s perspective. Second, as they worked with me, I showed the creative folks that I share their vision and my ‘intervention’ is usually very minimal.”
All in all, Edwards’ feedback rarely changes major aspects of a game. “I strive to make surgical changes—maybe remove one symbol, word, or change one small thing here and there. Once they saw how I worked and the understanding I bring to their creativity, they accepted me as a value-add to their process.”
”I strive to make surgical changes —maybe remove one symbol, word, or change one small thing here and there.”
As a consultant, she still faces the challenges of overcoming perceptions and hesitancy from clients. She has overcome many of these issues, though. After all, she’s working on Star Wars: The Old Republic right now.
Kate Edwards is a Geographer and Principal Consultant at Englobe Inc. She happens to also work with Google on Google Maps and Google Earth.
