Why the word "winning" has changed in games

Recently, wired had an article about “Why Aren’t Games About Winning Any More?”

Making a schedule

Scheduling game production is like herding cats, snakes and artists.  I’ll leave it up to you to determine who is more insulted in that last sentence.

Scheduling comes down to putting the doers with the planners.  There are levels of decision makers that must be consulted when you have large teams.  I know of few products that shipped exactly according to their initial schedule.  While most of my products have shipped on time, I can’t say they fit exactly to the first schedule.

Often the higher ups decide that a product must ship at a specific date and that requires you to constrict the features in order to ship.  Remembering time for QA, it always takes longer than expected, can be the key to shipping your title with high quality even if you have to trim features.

The best advice I can give you, small or large tam, is to conduct experiments.  If you make a schedule that has 15 levels, and each level is scheduled to take 4 weeks, that’s 60 weeks just for levels.  While your tam is making this first level, monitor their progress closely.  If they take 8 weeks to make level 1, level 2 isn’t going to take 4 weeks as planned.  Even if the entire team tells you that the next levels will go faster now that they’ve finished one.

Always identify those features that can be removed for time constraints.  Better to know a the start that you can remove features that have to kill something you love farther on in development.

Dive head down into the first chucks of development and watch closely the team interactions.  If the team is staying weekends or working 14 hour days, you need to remember this when you review the schedule.

Even with SCRUM, reviewing what you are developing as a whole is paramount to shipping with feature complete at the quality the market demands.  Remember that with waterfall or SCRUM, you should never bite off more than you can chew.

Making your schedule is as much a team effort as is the game development.  Building the schedule with your team gives them a sense of ownership that doesn’t happen when you make the schedule and present it to them.  While it’s fine to put required milestones up, and then work backwards, the teams respond better if they build it with your requirements in mind.

In the future I’ll post about part two, maintaining the schedule.

Mac

Optimist? Pessimist? Which are you?

I have been on a LOT of job interviews. I can almost regurgitate both the questions and the answers to pin point accuracy. rarely am I asked a question that is unexpected. I am asked about AAA titles I have produced, what games I currently play and where I see myself in 5 years.

I am also asked about dealing with other departments, internal or external development groups and which I prefer, how will I handle a situation where I’m not responsible for XXX where most producers are. My favorite question: “What do you do in your off time?”  My answer: “I’m a Producer, my off time is when I’m dead”.

But one question threw me and I wish I had revised my answer.

The question was: Are you an optimist, a pessimist or somewhere in between?  

The answer I gave at the time was: “Mostly Optimist”.  But in hindsight, I should have said simply: “Yes”.  Because as a Producer I have to be all of those.

Optimist: “Yes the project will be great, yes we’re working hard for a good reason, yes the public will love it”

Pessimist: “No you’re not giving enough time for that feature, no we need more QA time,  no that’s just not good enough compared to the rest of the team, no I’m not satisfied because I know we/you/I can do better”

Somewhere in between: “I think if I sleep on this, I’ll have a better solution. Let’s not wait instead let’s be proactive”

And I am sure there are flavors that I am missing here since none of these three has a clear dividing line.  The point here is that when you are on a team, no matter the role, make sure that you look at what you are doing from all three of the above angles. 

So here is my question… which of these are you?

Mac

Value of a license

Tiger Woods or Mac Senour golf from EA?

Recently as a iPhone game development networking talk, that’s where a few hundred people get together under the excuse of a “talk” when really they’re there to network with people and steal them from their current employers,  the newish head of a large social network proposed that a lincense on a game means nothing.

The room burst into laughter and answered him with a collective: “You’re kidding right?” But sadly, he wasn’t.  I could grab the microphone faster enough for my question to be relevant, but I really wanted to say: “Hi I’m Mac Senour, I p;lay a little golf. With Tiger Woods recent problems, do you think EA could put me on the cover and sales would be exactly the same?”.  The answer is, no of course not.  But this persons answer, I’m presuming, would be yes.

Clearly he and I think very differently.

The value of a license is that split second that the consumer takes to give your game a second look. Once they have purchased a game, I agree that the license means nothing.  It then all depends on the game itself.  After th consumer has bought the game there is no difference between Mac Senour Golf and Tiger Woods Golf.

The reason a publisher buys a license is to buy that split second look from the consumer.  It would make no sense to spend $50,000 to get the rights to use my likeness in a golf game if you didn’t know for a fact that it would increase sales to offset that expense. And for the record, I’m a little cheaper than that.

What licenses have you seen for a game that DIDN’T make you take the second look?

While you’re pondering that, keep in mind this story… a board game designer who is considered legendary noted that he made more money off the contract for the American Idol card game, than he did in 7 years of running his game company.

Mac

How to make games from movies

We’ve all played them… hated most of them, games based on movies. I recently wrote a post about The Lovely BOnes and how you CAN make a game from any TV or movie.  But the real question is, should you?

Lets take a look at this interview: Ubisoft CEO Guillemot

Having been though this many times, I’m sure the CEO of Ubisoft made a great deal for the rights to Avatar.  Het sent a meno to his head of production informing him of the great rights he has secured, and that the game must come out the same day as the movie.  His next act was to order lunch.

I have seen these deals done correctly, and I have seem them down stupidly.  I worked on “Sahara” at TKO Software. The CEO signed a contract to publish the game in 9 months, with no engine written. The script had almost weekly changes and that made it impossible to put a serious schedule together.  We took the wrong route with the game.

When I was at SEGA I was the producer on Taz for the Game Gear. I was lucky to be under the guidance of the producer of the Genesis version, Scott Berfield. Scott realized that to make a good Taz game, he had to use the art and themes of the show, but not the exact scenes.  This may have come about due to the fact that Taz was a weekly show, at the time, and there were just too many scenes and they weren’t all connected anyway.  For whatever reason, this worked out well. 

Games from movies fall into two categories: 

   1 – Follow the movies exactly (Sahara)
   2 – Use the characters and theme’s from the movie (Taz)

Given the usual shortness of the time between contract signing and movie release, option 2 is usually the best route. The obstacles are the upper management who think games have to follow the movie exactly, and the original licensor who doesn’t want you messing with their characters.  You have to get past them. If you don’t, you’ll end up with games like Avatar, or The Hulk, or Iron Man… or… I could go on and on.

Here’s the secret:

Design a game using the characters and themes that has a development time significantly less than the time alloted.  With additional features listed as “Time Allowed”.   I have been in these meetings, showing the product plan to upper management.  When theysee what they can get IF they give you time, they’ll give you the time.  If they’re happy with the original design, you’re making a game thats fun and will hit the dates. Either way its a win-win.

Can you name a game based on a movie that you liked?

Mac

The Chart of Game Elements

I’m sure you’ve seen it, the chart of the elements. Some studied them in school, others swore to never grow up to be called Boron. If you studied chemistry at all, you’ve seen this chart. But for games, its new.

I started it because I wanted to be able to clarify the games I was reviewing and judging as submissions.  I wanted to spot trends and use the chart to see what areas of game deisgn were being neglected.

As I said above, “I started it”, and its not close to complete.  But Rome wasn’t built in a day and this chart will take some time.  So please, add to the, or argue with where I put the various elements.

Please visit the site, and offer new elements.

Go for it…  Chart of Game Elements

The Lovely Bones… as a game

What makes a game?  If you list the qualities you like or dislike about a game, I’ll bet there is a lot of crossover with movies and music.  Since there is so UCH crossover its highly likely that a movie can be made into a game.  We’ve seen it go the other way with games becoming movies, but that’s rare compared to the other way around.

We’ve all seen them, all played them… movies that have action scenes are almost automatically licensed for video game,,, I was going to say production but maybe trashing is a better word.

This brings me to “The Lovely Bones”. Is this an action movie?  Nope.  Is it a love story with a tragic ending?  Nope.  Is there anything in it that would make a good game… yes!  Of course lets keep in mind that I’m under the impression that I can make a game out of anything, even beansprouts.   But there’s more to it than that.

The Lovely Bones is a murder mystery where we all know who did it, its a matter of capturing him with the right evidence.  And that’s where the game is.  Movies, TV and games revolve around conflict. Where there is conflict there is drama, suspense and the essence of a good game.

Some of the best games on the market hit a large demographic footprint.  A game based on this movie does exactly that.  If you have ever played, and loved like the rest of us, games like Myst or Monkey Island then you know exactly what I am talking about.

Which character do you play?  Most likely the father, but certainly the detective comes to mind as well.  Or maybe you play the dead daughter, trying to invluence the actions of your family to find the killer?  That last one hits the mark with me.

With today’s advances in AI and the love that the gaming audience has of watching “what happens when I do this”…  leads me to believe that a game where I am a ghost, but able to communicate with the living, to find my killer, hits all of the marks we like to see in a hit and innovative game.

The setup is simple, your object is to make sure that the killer is captured, and you lose the game if he gets away. There can be degrees of success, does he get the maximum penalty or a slap on the wrist.

A big thing to keep in mind is, I have not yet seen the movie.  I am creating this concept on the fly and that’s exactly how it should be.  If my assumptions are wrong about the basic story of the movie, then that misconception will carry on to the general public. The game buyng public will have the same wrong idea… assuming I am wrong.

Lets make a deal.  After reading this post, go see the movie.  See it twice if you need to. Then lets meet back here and see what e think o my basic game idea.  Does it work?  Is it nonsense?  We’ll judge together.

As I write this, its January 6th.  Lets see the movie, at least once, and meet back here Monday the 18th. Feel free to make comments or email any time.  For you facebook people, please make your comments in the blog.

Thanks and save me some popcorn,
Mac

The game pitch Part 1

Topics I will cover in this line of posts are:

Part 1:
Light bulb of the idea
Pitch materials

Getting a pitch
Who to pitch to

Common submission mistakes

I’m not sure what it is about me, but several times in my career I have been given the task of reviewing and responding to game submissions.

It all started with Sludge Master at Broderbund.

What movie or TV show can’t you make a game out of?

Image via Wikipedia

None

No such thing

Through the history of time there hasn’t been a movie, book, TV show that wouldn’t lend itself to a video game. Now lets keep in mind that these might not be GOOD games, but its easy really… but lets define our terms.

The game needs to fit into a genre other than just “based on a movie”. You know they give Oscars to movies that are based on stories in other media. Lets adapt something from a TV show and see what we get… (being older myself, I’ll go for some really old shows)

“Car 54 where are you?” So easy… GTA IV style game that you wander around a huge town trying to find a specific car.

“The Prisoner” You nee to escape the island without giving up any information.

“The Brady Bunch” The do, Tiger, is missing and the player must help the family find him. Since this is based on an existing episode, (yeah odd that I remember that huh?), there’s plenty of VO material we can use.