Charlie Cleveland

After Stephen Colbert got beat out by Korean pop-star...

Wed, 14 May 2008 21:17:52 -0700

After Stephen Colbert got beat out by Korean pop-star “Rain” in Time’s 100 most influential people poll, he challenged him to a dance-off. This rolled after the credits.

New word: committr

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 20:56:00 -0700

committr (verb) - Twittering in anticipation of something fun/cool you’re about to do, but before you actually do it. Example: “I committred the all-night dance party but am suddenly tired and would rather fall asleep in my new chair”.

Greatness through cutting - Ira GlassBlizzard kills games when...

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:56:19 -0700

Greatness through cutting - Ira Glass

Blizzard kills games when they’re not good enough, Metallica cuts many of songs for every track that makes it on an album and in this interview, Ira Glass says most of his stuff is crap.

This is true in game development as well. Many interfaces, control schemes, resource models, abilities, etc. must be tried and (most likely) thrown out in order to put together a great game.

NIN - The Great Destroyer I’ve never seen a song...

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 09:43:00 -0700

NIN - The Great Destroyer

I’ve never seen a song performed like this. Halfway through, it spirals down and completely unravels.

Wow.

Check out ASD’s Lifeforce - probably the best...

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:56:00 -0700

Check out ASD’s Lifeforce - probably the best “demo” I’ve ever seen. You can also watch the YouTube of it here, but it’s really glorious full-screen at a high frame-rate.

I love the vast array of visual styles as well as the themes of life, death and rebirth. These guys are truly humbling.

For some reason this song’s lyrics really resonated with...

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:28:34 -0700

For some reason this song’s lyrics really resonated with me (probably due to my current 21-day mind reprogramming experiment). By local DJ’s Wayne G and Luke Johnstone.

Medium vs. the Message

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 10:15:00 -0700

Medium vs. the Message:

If we’ve talked at any length about careers, there’s a good chance I’ve mentioned this article. I found that spending a couple days thinking long and hard about this was incredibly illuminating.

My “message”? Creating experiences. Not games, but experiences. This is why I love to cook (creating the experience of dinner), have dinner parties (pick menu, music, guests), be a Dungeon Master, etc. Once I realized my message, I realized that my medium didn’t have to be programming, it could be event planning, writing (visualization), prototyping, drafting business plans - these are all means to the same end - creating a specific experience.

It just so happens that video games are the most powerful and scaleable way I know of to create an experience for the most people.

Thriller dance on the tube in London, organized to promote the...

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 10:22:00 -0700

Thriller dance on the tube in London, organized to promote the re-release of the album. Talk about incredible guerrilla marketing!

"There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, which demanded that one must grow or else pay more..."

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 17:07:00 -0700

“There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, which demanded that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.”

- Norman Mailer

Getting Real

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 20:35:48 -0800

Getting Real:

Here’s a great article on doing small, high-quality things quickly.

Favorite excerpts:

Trism My friend Steve has got this cool demo of his iPhone game...

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 20:29:00 -0800

Trism

My friend Steve has got this cool demo of his iPhone game up and running. He comes by our Postmortem if you ever want an in-person demo.

Unknown Worlds Developer Podcast #19 releasedThis week we...

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 15:53:00 -0800

Unknown Worlds Developer Podcast #19 released

This week we discuss your feedback from last week, the Decoda review in Game Developer Magazine, our admission into the Xbox 360 Middleware program, our upcoming office space and the new current Commander system in NS2.

Full version here.

GDC 2007 and Zen distribution update

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 19:23:00 -0800

Hey folks,

I know it’s been awhile. I hope this site doesn’t become redundant with our new developer blog on Unknown Worlds but it just may. Maybe I’ll make this more of a personal site instead of game development?

I’ve been hard at work trying to get wider distribution for Zen of Sudoku and that’s starting to pay off. It’s currently only for sale through http://www.zenofsudoku.com and VALVe’s Steam. It’s going to be launched through MSN/Oberon in two weeks, and then on Shockwave.com two weeks after that. It also looks like it’s going to land in retail in Best Buy, Target, Walmart USA and more. It also looks like it might launch on this interesting new streaming service that would put it in hotel rooms throughout Hong Kong and Japan - which sounds like a perfect market to me. I still have no idea how it’s going to sell on these wider venues though and am a little nervous about it. The conversion rate has been a stunning 10% for the past 6 months through my site, but I know it is likely to go down as the distribution increases.

I’m also working on my first talk at the GDC this year. It’s been a source of a lot of excitement and anxiety for me, but I’m hoping that if prepare and rehearse enough it will go well. I’ve found an AMAZING book on public speaking that I would highly recommend to anyone. I’ve read other books and this one really takes the cake. I’d love to talk about it more in another update some time. It’s called Be Heard Now and you can read the first chapter for free online.

The talk is called “Your own game studio in 6 months - Bootstrapping Core through Casual”. It all sounds good in theory but…since you have to apply for you talk about 8 months before you ACTUALLY talk, I didn’t realize that the title is a bit inflated. Perhaps 12 months is more like it? I also don’t know just how much casual is going to pay, since it’s taking forever to actually get the sales data and paychecks. My goal is to provide lots of great info regardless of my own sales data and let the attendees decide what’s right for them.

So I’ll make sure to put the slides up here when they’re ready for those of you that can’t make it and still want to start your own company. I also updated my resume finally if you feel like stealing the template. :)

Indie Game Development Tools

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 19:21:00 -0700

Recently I was at the Casuality games conference in Seattle, which is a smallish but very fast-growing casual games conference run by the wonderful Jessica Tams. They have a fair number of social events here in the Bay Area as well and is a great place to talk to developers and do business.

I was lucky enough to talk on a panel about Indie Game Development technology and tools. The idea was to have independent game developers give an unbiased view about the tools they have used. While it wasn’t quite as unbiased as hoped (Jay Moore talked about the Torque engine and he works at Garage Games), there was a lot of useful information presented.

We covered two of the most popular tool frameworks (the Torque engine and the Popcap engine) along with an amazing tool called Virtools. The Virtools talk was given by the spunky and hilarious Matthew Wegner. The Virtools engine is amazing. It allows non-programmers to create full games without any programming (ala Unreal Kismet and MindRover). My take was that it was not a great tool to actually ship games on and not great for independent development (with per-seat licenses costing about $10,000 US) but if you’re an established studio that wants the best prototyping tools out there to harness creativity from all your non-programmers, this is powerful stuff. I would kill to get a license for this. DirectX 9.0 level games running in a browser with no programming.

As a follow-up to my post about making a game with the Popcap framework, and for the attendees who told not to take notes, I wanted to include our Powerpoint notes from our panel, just in case they might help some indies out there. Special thanks to Eric Tams for hosting the panel and providing me with these slides after the talk. I hope they make your tool choices easier.

Download slides (Powerpoint)

Zen of Sudoku!

Tue, 20 Jun 2006 19:19:00 -0700

In case you’ve been wondering where I’ve been for the past couple months, I have an explanation. I’ve had my head down, working on a casual game that is now ready for sale! It’s called the Zen of Sudoku (yes, that’s Cory’s artwork there!).

Until recently, I never understood why developers would ever leave the “regular” games for casual games. I never saw the appeal of these simple games that generally had cutesy graphics and didn’t push design or technology. When faced with the proposition of trying to become solvent though, I could think of no better way to get some income than to make a small game with mass-appeal. The royalties involve with making casual games is so high that each copy of a casual game sold will tend to make the developer far more money than each game of a “AAA” hard-core game! With ActiveMark, developers can even make good money without relying on a publisher or distributor.

Of course, coming up with something interesting to work on when all you’ve got is 2D graphics (you can’t bank on any 3D acceleration for this market) and about 2 minutes worth of attention span. That’s when I came across the glory of Sudoku.

Sudoku has been quite a phenomenon in the United Kingdom, and is really taking off here in the States as well. So why aren’t there any decent “gamey” versions of Sudoku? I have no idea, which is where the Zen of Sudoku comes in.

I feel like there is latent demand that can be tapped by really lowering the barrier to entry (in true Blue Ocean style). Playing in a newspaper doesn’t require a computer of course, but going from that to actually enjoying the game is a different matter. All you get is the cryptic “Ensure the numbers 1-9 go in every row, column and box” and from there you have to get to the fun. Even the other computer versions of Sudoku out there have cruddy or no tutorials, which is something an electronic version is uniquely suited to do. Add in a peaceful, yet “gamey” interface (no more “spreadsheet” feel) and I think a lot of people will be interested.

The trick here for me is to position the game not for “casual” gamers, but for people who have probably never played a videogame in their life. They have a PC, they go online for e-mail and searching, but they really haven’t seen nice graphics or sound on their machines before. I think that for someone like this (which is a huge huge market), a game that has essentially no system requirements, is a quick download, has a guided tutorial and is non-violent might be just the thing to get them interested in videogames. If they already know the paper version, all the better. This improves upon that by removing the tedium and reworking and focusing on the fun part: perception and logic.

Nearly every game on the big portals sells for $19.95. But because of this positioning for the “real” mass market (so I hope), I’m selling the game for $12.95. This makes the game more competitive with other casual games and Sudoku programs, but more importantly, makes it more comparable to buying a book of Sudoku puzzles or a movie ticket.

So this journey into casual games has been a great learning experience. It’s been wonderful to immerse myself in blue oceans thinking and making games for every day people, as well as having the technology be so simple as to be completely tertiary. What’s been even more exciting to me though is being able to tell people that I meet about what I’m working on and getting a positive reaction. They love the fact that it’s non-violent and I love the fact that I can just give them the website and there’s a good chance they’ll be enjoying it within five minutes. The qualities of the game I’ve worked to acheive are readily apparent shortly after playing. For people that don’t play games, that means they are just a little bit closer to viewing games as positive experiences and as art.

So to Natural Selection players reading this, please realize that I don’t expect to give up developing first-person shooters or real-time strategy games any time soon! I fully expect the next project will be a very kick-ass version of Natural Selection for Source. However, I do expect to create games for bigger audiences when appropriate, and to hopefully innovate in the casual arena. I’d love to make games that aren’t called “casual” but instead “accessible”. Games that are every bit as compelling, rich and artistic as our current generation of games, but with a very low barrier to entry.

In the meantime, if you wanted to directly support my work, please give Zen of Sudoku a try and help spread the word. Thanks,

GDC 2006 wrap-up

Thu, 30 Mar 2006 19:19:00 -0800

Another year has gone by and that means another Game Developer’s Conference! This is the biggest game development conference in the world, and this year set a new record with a purported 12,000 attendees. The conference isn’t cheap, but if you’re smart and/or well-connected you can go there on the cheap. Here’s my summary of the biggest highlights of the year.

This year had two big themes that I noticed: Guitar Hero and digital distribution. Nearly every party had a copy of Guitar Hero running, usually manned by tipsy game developers. Instead of the usual schmoozing and talking, we found ourselves ignoring our comrades and facing off on Texas Flood on Expert. Also, if there was ever a shred of doubt that digital distribution for games wouldn’t be successful, I think it was obliterated this year. Between the success of Steam, Sony’s EDI (more below) and Xbox Marketplace (with a reported 20x conversion rate, 10x that of most casual games), it is now abundantly clear that digital distribution is here and totally viable (unlike “E-book” sales, which seem like they’re going to take many years before becoming significant). Sony also announced their own initiative (below).

Probably the biggest glitz was around Phil Harrison’s Playstation III keynote. In it, he announced Sony’s new digital distribution initiative, called EDI. Right now it is only a one-way mailing list for “indie” developers, but I have high hopes. With the announcment of a standard hard drive in every PS3, this could be huge. Sony also announced that while they will include standard match-making and other network services for multiplayer developers, they will also allow 3rd-party servers to link into their network, something Microsoft dropped the ball on (resulting in the inability for most developers to create an MMO or support “master” servers for Xbox Live). I think the PS3 is learning from all of Microsoft’s mistakes and will be a superior system, if it is affordable. Sony also announced the support of an “archive server”, which looks like it will allow their back-catalog of games to be played on the PS3 (though details were scant).

Darwinia won tons of awards in the Independent Game Festival. I had the distinct pleasure of meeting them in the IGF pavillion and was even more impressed with them then I was previously. These guys are true artists and I’m sure they’re going nowhere but up. I also got a sneak preview of Defcon, which oozes style and character and which I can’t wait to play.

I was also happily surprised to be recognized by a few of the IGF finalists in the pavillion (link #1, link #2), which were apparently Natural Selection fans and now doing their own wild and interesting games! I guess that means we’ve been working on it too long…

Finally, this year marks the last time the conference will be in San Jose. We’ll miss you, Fairmont Lobby and La Victoria. GG orange sauce, always be thinking of you.

Want to make a game? Here's how.

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 19:00:00 -0800

I get a lot of e-mail from people who want to get started in games but don’t know where to start. My usual response has been to make a mod. The problem with making mods these days though is that engine technology has gotten so good that it takes a lot more work and a lot more expertise to make something on a current engine. Making a mod for Doom took a lot less technical and artistic work than it does for Half-life II, and the next-gen will start to force mod authors to make programming-only mods. So what’s a great way to get started on your first game, so that it doesn’t take years and a team of 10+ to accomplish anything?

I think one great answer right now is the Popcap Games model. They’ve made some very fun “casual” games with a very tiny amount of technology. I’ve never gotten excited about casual games but the games Popcap are reaching a very wide audience and are genuinely fun. What gets me even more excited is that they’ve released their technology. For free. Just go to http://developer.popcap.com and you can download their framework and along with Visual Studio Express, you’ll be up in running in minutes with no money down. I’ve done a lot of game development over the past 10 years or so but I haven’t gotten this excited in a long time. You can open up Photoshop, scrawl an image, and 10 seconds later have it drawing on screen. Playing music and sound effects are a snap. Loading bars, options screens, animated sprites, it’s all as easy as possible and it will work on every damned computer out there with no extra downloads. This is game development at its simplest and purest and you will be spending almost all your time on actual creative work, that is, your gameplay, your aesthetic, your art, etc. Suddenly, making a complete game could take you days or weeks, not months or years. It’s a great way and fun way to learn, just make sure not to download Zuma or you’ll get nothing done…

Another great option is the Torque engine. The Torque engine is big step up from the Popcap development framework technology-wise (most notably adding cross-platform support and full-featured 3D and networking technology), but that means more work as a developer before you can get your first product done. It also costs $100 to download. One great aspect of the Torque engine is that much of your game can be written in their scripting language, which reduces the barrier to entry and makes it easier to debug and port your game for release.

One vital feature that both of these engines are missing is some sort of digital rights management (DRM) and/or e-commerce system. If you are making your game for the Windows platform only, the best DRM right now seems to be ActiveMark, though getting them to give you their tools can be quite a feat. There is also RegSoft and Paypal, though integration with your game is a little more difficult.

If you want to make your first game, I would recommend making some sort of puzzle or 2D action game using the Popcap technology. If you’ve done some game development before and want to make a more sophisticated 2D or 3D game, the Torque engine will not do you wrong.

So if you’ve been wanting to make a game, you have no more excuses. Get started today, you won’t regret it!

The Innovator's Dilemma

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 19:02:00 -0800

In my ongoing quest to figure out how to make interesting new games that the market will still accept, I stumbled across a book called The Innovator’s Dilemma, by Clayton Christiansen. Using a case study from the computer disk drive industry, Christiansen shows how noteworthy and successful companies can suddenly be eclipsed by disruptive technologies. These disruptive technologies are generally smaller, cheaper, faster versions of existing technologies and often serve a much smaller market initially. That makes the book’s message alarming: successful companies still fail when listening to your customers, doing traditional market studies and everything else you’re “supposed” to do.

There are three main elements to his theory, which I will summarize here:

Sustaining vs. Disruptive technologies
Christiansen argues that most new technologies are higher improving versions of their ancestors, which he calls sustaining technologies. They can be discontinuous, radical or incremental in character, but they all imporove the performance of existing products along dimensions that mainstream customers in large markets value. Disruptive technologies, on the other hand, often have worse performance and serve smaller markets, but often have a few new features that new customers value. Products based on these technologies tend to be “cheaper, simpler, smaller and, frequently, more convenient to use.”.

Market Need vs. Technology Improvement
The main assumption here is that technologies improve faster than market demand. In an effort to give customers more of what they want, technology innovators “overshoot” their market, giving customers more than they need or are ultimately willing to pay for.

Disruptive Technologies vs. Rational Investments
This is the conclusion that companies arrive at that says that disruptive technologies are not a rational financial target. This is because disruptive technologies are cheaper and promise lower margins, not greater profits. Also, the markets for these technologies are often smaller or unproven, in relation to the markets that sustaining technologies already target. Finally, existing customers served by sustaining technologies often don’t want products based on disruptive technologies, so any customer interviews and research points towards sustainable instead.

So what does this mean for games? Personally, I think his theory has some similarities and shared conclusions with Blue Ocean Strategy. To me, it seems like our current “next-gen” technology, like the XBox 360 and AAA PC titles are in danger of giving players more than they are willing to pay for. That is, their budgets are too high for what players get. With the latest $10 million budgets, are players really getting twice as much value as they were a few years ago? If so, are player willing to pay $80-$100 for a game instead of $40-50? I think not.

I think that game companies need to start looking more seriously at “casual” games (though I hate that term and the games it currently represents) and start thinking about serving a much larger market with a much smaller level of technology and amount of content. I think that companies like EA and even Blizzard could be in danger blinding giving existing players more of what they want at escalating budgets, only to be blind-sided by smaller (but hopefully no less artistic or compelling) games that serve an untapped audience.

This is all very paraphrased and without examples, so I would recommend that you read the book if you want more detail on companies that have failed in the past or “proof”.

Orson Scott Card and Dani Bunten Berry

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 19:03:00 -0800

I just saw this article linked from Slashdot. It is a column written by the great science-fiction writer, Orson Scott Card. It was written for the venerable Compute! magazine, 23 years ago. What’s interesting is that back then, EA was known as an innovative game company. This was largely due to one reason: Dani Bunten Berry.

Dani Bunten Berry has always been my game design idol. Her rare GDC writings, lectures and assorted pieces of wisdom I’ve been able to find on the net have astounded me with their vision and relevance. If games today successfully accomplished some or any of her desired game attributes, gaming would be a much more vibrant and social space, and one that appealed to a much wider variety of people. For instance, she talks about multiplayer games with the “Norm effect”, which describes what happens when Normy walked into the Cheers bar. The regular yell “Norm!” when they see him, welcoming him back to their small bar community. A game that facilitates this would long keep its players coming back for more, as the social aspects of the game outlive the game mechanics (which can ultimately be mastered).

Dani invented the real-time strategy genre with Command HQ. She wowed us with her games and was the first famous transgender game designer. This was over 15 years ago, in a time where gays and transgenders had even more stigma than they do today. Between her amazing work at Ozark software and her tumultuous and ultimately satisfying personal life, she was a fearless master of life in every respect.

I’ll leave you with her famous GDC quote, on why she designs multiplayer online games:

“Art, animation, sound, music and people playing together! Who could ask for more in a medium! No one on their death bed ever said “I wish I had spent more time alone with my computer!” (Duh… it’s people!)”

I couldn’t agree more. We’re still trying to catch up with you, Dani. R.I.P.

Video game sell sheet

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 19:04:00 -0800

How do you summarize a game concept? How do you pitch it? How can you get an idea if your game concept is compelling, understandable and marketable? One useful answer to these questions is the sell sheet.

The sell sheet is a one-page high-level description of your game. It includes features, screenshots, system requirements, target audience and ship date. It’s basically what the back of the box looks like. I’ve found that if you can distill your game idea down to a unique, clear, enticing sell sheet, then you have a good chance your game is will be accepted by the market, as well as money sources like publishers and investors.

Here is an example sell sheet (MS Word format) that describes Natural Selection. This sell sheet was made after the game was, back when we were thinking of pitching NS as retail product.

Notes:

The screenshots section can be concept art, reference art from similar sources or photos. I generally take shots from films or similar subject matter that gives an idea of what the art style will look like.
The features section should be short, concise and word-smithed to death. My example here is probably too wordy. My guess is that most consumers will spend 5-10 seconds glancing at the back of a box and my guess is that publishers do the same. Put your best stuff first and choose your words carefully.
I’ve found that the sell sheet is often the best first step to take when conceiving of a new game idea. It’s quick to make and conveys your game idea quickly to stakeholders.

Please feel free to us this template as a starting point for your own project planning and pitching and post any thoughts or improvements here in the comment section.

Good luck!

Download sell sheet (MS Word format)