Guest Blog - Going it alone without going it alone

As I sit with a thick pink milkshake whilst contemplating the choice of chips on the menu, there is something about the noise of the sports bar and grill just near Marylebone station that reminds me of the underlying chatter broken with occasional exclamations of joy or dismay that filled the huge open plan office I used to work in; an environment quite different to the calm and comfort of my home office. It’s not something I miss, but something I know I shouldn't forget.

 

Natalie* is the familiar face in the crowd and as she orders her milkshake, talk quickly turns to work. We share discreet updates on what we’re working on, we chat over industry news and events, then we pick over the similarities and differences of being in-house and freelance PR professionals whilst considering how we approach different situations and projects. Early on in our monthly mentoring meetings, it became clear that corroboration, and pooling our knowledge, our contacts, and our vision together made us more confident, and helped increase our ability to deliver great work.

This is more than two friends casually chatting about work; this is two industry practitioners mutually mentoring each other and sharing best practice so we can be better in our roles.

It was here in the grill that after months of deliberation and weighing up all the pros and cons, and of hearing what it was like from the other side, that I decided the time was right to go it alone. We all have people (and to some extent games and studios) who inspire us, but it was thanks to the power of mentoring that I finally reached a very personal point of knowing the exact nature of work I wanted to do in this industry, and more importantly felt empowered to go after it. I learnt in detail about the risks and challenges I would be taking on, knowing I had a support net of expertise, advice, and friendship beneath me.

This is going it alone without going it alone.

It’s evident in some of the more successful studios founded with people who are familiar with each other’s work, many of whom at one time or other have been part of AAA studios, and who have broken away to follow their own paths and hearts’ desires whilst committing themselves to helping each other through whatever lies ahead.

Knowing what you can do alone is just the beginning – actively finding the right people who can help you when and if you need it should become an important part of your work. Knowing those people WILL help you is the key to your success. This isn't just advice for start-ups. Bill Campbell, a sounding board to many of Silicon Valley’s chief execs sadly passed away this month yet his reputation and legacy as a mentor has, and will continue to have a resounding impact on the tech and games industry globally.

When I started my new company I knew I had mentors I could actively call on to help me get over any hurdles and I continue to call on them. Being elastic in what I can offer clients has already given my business a boost. Natalie is an expert at understanding and driving communications for community-led development, my skills lie more in delivering corporate and social communications for start-ups. Having the option of combining our skills has allowed us to offer a deeper level and range of expertise and support to meet our clients’ needs so we all benefit from this collaboration. I consider my mentors to be some of the most valuable assets to my business.

Let’s shed our thick skins here; the value of your reputation and skills is important, but combining your abilities with other talented people who are aligned with and can contribute to your business can have a dramatic impact – there’s a reason the Avengers assembled!

Mentoring and collaboration encourages future entrepreneurs and studios to create work within our industries and leads to an unrivalled matrix of expertise where everyone can enjoy success. Having a mentor should be one of the most important tools in your box. Plus, making your office a place where they serve milkshakes and chips is no bad thing…

Tracey McGarrigan is founder and CEO of Ansible PR & communications 

*Natalie Griffith, CEO Press Space Ltd

Guest Blog: Don’t Pitch Me Your Problems

The impending doom of your cash running out is something most indie developers have experienced at one time or another. Each game always takes more time and resources than anticipated. Always. What’s a developer to do when the cash is running out and the game simply needs more time to bake?

Ah, funding to the rescue! Those mythical people, companies, or organizations that give you money when you need it. Yeah funding! And said developers go on the hunt for funding.

As one of those mythical beasts that actually funds game studios, Execution Labs listens to countless pitches. Some we chase after, some came via referral of one of our existing portfolio studios, and many many more come to us “cold”.

Regardless of source, most developers frame the discussion in the context of their cashflow problem. They've got a great team, and a cool game, but dang, if only they had more cash… their monthly burn rate is x, and they only have y left in the bank, which is not enough to  cover the anticipated z many more months of development. What about marketing? Oh no, nothing budgeted for marketing. Nothing.

Then comes the question, like a shy boy asking a cute girl on a first date: “Are you interested?”

Am I interested? Interested in what, exactly? Your cashflow problem? Fuck no! I am not interested in your cash shortages and lack of budgeting skills.

It sounds ridiculous, and yet it happens all the time. Developers are heads down making awesome games, they look up, and crap, money is almost up, and this is a serious problem that needs fixing, so they go out and try to find someone to help them solve this problem. Generally speaking, developers are good at solving problems.

The challenge is, no one invests in problems. No one.

Is this just a matter of perspective? Or spin? Sure, in some ways it is. So spin it! If you are pitching investors, you need to pitch an opportunity. An opportunity to back a high potential studio, a ground breaking game, a shot at a massive hit, etc. Of course, that can’t be smoke and mirrors; it really does have to be an amazing opportunity. If it is not, then don’t bother chasing investors!

Investors are happy to pile their money into great opportunities.

What opportunity are you pitching today?

Jason Della Rocca – Co-Founder, Execution Labs

Jason will be one of the speakers at the brand new Pitching & Funding Workshop taking place at Develop:Brighton on Tuesday 12 July. 

Guest Blog - It’s Risky, That Game Development

No-one likes risk in business. Consumer surveys, consumer testing for products, pre-screening for films and other ways of delving into the customers mind are big business because no-one wants to invest flipping great wodges of cash into Batman V Superman and then find out it’s a turkey – whoops.

Risk as a greater concept however, is actually a rather wonderful thing. The experiences that really matter in life are the new ones – starting school, travelling abroad, falling in love – and they’re all full of potential danger and therefore risk. But, once completed, regardless of the result, you may feel vindicated, courageous, alive. You may have bruises (to both your body and your ego), but it was worth it for the stories you can tell afterwards. Risk is what makes life worth living, right?

I worked as a games designer for 15 years in total, on titles including LittleBigPlanet PSP, Need for Speed: Most Wanted plus lots more that never saw the light of day, because the title was seen as a risk. And that’s the bit that really sticks in my mind: ‘what if?’ What if the title had been saved/fixed/put into full production? What if it had been a hit? How can you know a game’s playability value when no-one outside the building has actually played it? I believe that there’s an ‘A’ class bug (not a feature) in the process used my large developers aiming to create epic triple A console games: risk aversion. This is understandable because of the stakes: large budgets and hard-won reputations. But surely, getting the game in front of consumers while still at the early stages of designed sheds light and clarity upon a player’s experience, right? If the only people who play the game are those who see it every day for several hours then there’s no fresh perspective. Is becoming more and more familiar with your own work really an advantage? Or does it mean your view becomes narrower and narrower?

The further any developer goes through the production process, the larger the collection of work becomes, so the more painful it is to let go of it, and the further they are along the road of committing to a particular style and set of resources. Consequently certain parts of it – and this is true for all sorts of projects from graphic design to West End productions – remain purely because so much time, money (and love) were invested in them, and NOT because they merit inclusion by contributing meaningfully to the final product. Then it comes out, gets a 7/10 on metacritic and the process starts all over again, with a determined ‘THIS time we’ll get it right’ muttered by those in charge. Repeat.

However, the lumbering giant of large developers can eaily be out-manoeuvred by the champion of Game Creation Agility*: indie devs.

Indie devs are nimble creatures. Being able to quickly test prototypes on consumers means useful feedback at a point when changes can be made easily – like at the pencil sketch stage before the painter commits to oils – because it’s only bare bones, and the work of a handful of people, not a team of 100. Plus, your test case player doesn’t expect a polished product at this early stage because, well, you’re an indie developer. No offence, but there isn’t a well-known reputation and anticipated budget associated with it.

*’GCA’ should be an industry term. It isn’t, but it should be.

The indie dev answers to no-one (until they receive investment, which is a different kettle of ball games) so is able to get vital feedback early on from potential players (the people who matter), instead of receiving feedback at the end of the production process, when tons of hours of work has been resigned to the bin, hearts broken and dreams shattered on the opinion of one or two people who probably won’t play – and certainly won’t pay for – the game as a consumer.

This is the beauty of experiencing games from the indie dev scene at events like Develop – you can play something in production that is still evolving, and created with utter love and devotion, not as the result of a several meetings about the company’s target player demographics and what the marketing strategy is for the company approaching Q3 2018.

I can’t wait to play the indie games at Develop, to talk to the people who are actually creating them, and to continue to be utterly inspired by not only their hard work, but their dedication to embracing that scariest creature of all: risk.

Jon Torrens is a communications coach and will be talking about pitching skills at the Pitching & Funding Workshop on Tuesday 12 July.

Guest Blog: Stop tempting me

I hate the whole “there’s never been a more exciting time” rhetoric. Hate it. Because generally it’s a tool used by spokespeople and media-trained executives to discuss things that, in the grand scheme of things, aren’t actually that exciting and/or have probably been more exciting in the past.

However, it is hard to think of a better time to be even vaguely associated with games development.

The one thing I find myself marvelling at everyday is this: Anyone can make a game. Anyone. No exceptions. A roofer with no experience can develop a title that attracts hundreds of thousands of gamers. Teams of three or four people can create experiences of triple-A quality (or close to it) from their bedroom or garage. An established developer who feels constrained by the studio they work for can branch out and single-handedly rake in millions with a game about rectangles.

 

The barriers to entry have been torn down, largely thanks to the leading engine creators who have released their high-end tech – source code and all – for free. Developers have taken to the internet to share their knowledge, to help new and aspiring games makers learn everything they need to bring their vision to life. So not only can anyone make a game, they’re actively encouraged to.

Which makes my job rather difficult. Not only do I have more ambitious studios and innovative projects than ever to cover, but it’s a massive distraction as the games I see all seem to be saying the same thing: you could do this too, y’know?

 

Every event I attend, every expo floor I browse is a veritable minefield of inspiration, triggering ideas to explode in my mind. Every new tool that makes crucial aspects of games development that little bit more accessible chips away at my internal Wall of Excuses. Every conference talk provides me with hints, tips and strategies that I almost feel obliged to try out for myself, simply because they sound so achievable.

And then there are the developers themselves – wonderful, friendly, approachable people all enjoying the same journey, taking that single, golden idea and trying to make it playable. I genuinely struggle to decide what I enjoy more: catching up with devs who I have met before and hearing the latest on their project, or meeting brand new games makers for the first time and discovering what fresh concepts they’re bringing to this ever-changing industry.

A decade ago, before I even worked in the industry, these people seemed almost out of reach, as if in another world. These were the teams that made the games taking up almost every hour of my spare time – they were gods of creation. And even now I’m learning how brilliantly ordinary these people are. Talented, of course, but ordinary. They’re just like me, I’m just like them. I could be like them. No, wait, feeling tempted again…

So you’ll forgive me if you see me with my fingers in my ears this July!

James Batchelor is Editor at Develop magazine. 

Spring into 2016!!

January has flown by, we’re nearly at the end of February and are heading into spring with the conference season now upon us. This is a great time of year to catch up with old friends, make new contacts and plan for the rest of the year. So, March is a great time to climb out of our developer warrens to see what everyone else is doing in 2016.

Having said all that, July will be here before we know it, and so it’s time for speaker submissions for Develop:Brighton 2016. This is an exciting time of year for me, waiting to see what interesting new topics people want to discuss. I get tingles just thinking about it. Of course with all those hundreds of amazing submissions, comes the commitment from speakers to provide real takeaway for our attendees. So, I implore all of you before you submit your talk this year, to take time to think about what you want to teach or share with those people attending your session. 

- What would YOU want to learn in your 45 minutes?

- Could YOU use the talk to help you work better?

- Would YOU pay to hear someone give this talk?

- Will they be playing Candy Crush instead of listening to YOU?

If you feel like your answers are still positive after doing this exercise then submit right away!

Now let me tell you about what devs seem to be interested in at the moment. Back in December I spent the month catching up with developers to find out what they were concerned about for the next twelve months while having a holiday drink or too. During our sampling of Christmas cheer, I realised that several topics came up in our chats. These topics are ones you should think about when submitting to this year’s conference.

First off was funding - we’ve actually added a Funding Workshop for Indie developers that will offer help improving their pitch and working on their presentation skills. This daylong workshop will help give indies the confidence and expertise they’ll need when putting together their next pitch presentation. We’ve also added our Games Funding Forum conference onto the Tuesday - running alongside Evolve, it will address more mainstream financing issues like alternatives to crowd funding, regional funding and new or different funding models. 

Let’s not forget VR, THE hot topic for everyone this year and something we’ll look to discuss – covering all aspects of VR development in our new VR track within the main conference. We’re also launching a VR gallery within the Expo for the VR providers to showcase their tech and let you get more hands on with what’s happening. 

Another big challenge issue for developers is how they work. Many devs are looking for quicker and easier ways to work with their teams spread around the world as well as optimising their work environment. People are using places like We Work for cool office space or Playhubs that offers workspace for game specific companies without all the hassle. They are also using tools like Slack to help them work more efficiently from anywhere in the world. Along with working models changing, business models are changing as more and more studios are interested in working in the Hollywood model. We’ll definitely be addressing these issues at this year’s conference. Do you have examples of your studios experience in how you work that you’d like to share? Submit now: http://www.developconference.com/conference/call-for-speaker-submissions

We are always looking for new faces to speak – so if you’ve never spoken at a conference before, then like last year we have a special submission page for you. Don’t be shy, be the next Rami Ismal or Mike Bitthel and share your work with others.  Build your confidence and give a talk this year at Develop:Brighton. Check out the submission page here: http://www.developconference.com/new-speaker-opportunities

We want you to speak if you’re a veteran developer or a fresh off the boat indie doing some original stuff. Whether it’s a cool VR game you are working on, a successful Kickstarter campaign you ran, how your team works all over the world or something we haven’t even thought of yet, now is the time to share your knowledge with the rest of industry, don’t hide your light under a bushel it doesn’t do any good there. We’d love you to hear from you!!

We are very excited about the new sessions and features we’ll be offering at this year’s conference.  Make sure to sign up for our newsletter here: http://www.developconference.com/news-letter-sign-up  or follow us on social media to stay informed on all the new things happening down by the sea.

Susan Marshall is content director for Develop:Brighton

Submit to speak at this year’s Develop Brighton 2016 here: http://www.developconference.com/conference/call-for-speaker-submissions

Seeing what's really there

I remember as a choreographer at dance school showing my choreography teacher my first dance piece. I'd spent a term making this dance, working with three dancers who were studying with me. This was extra-curricular activity but I wanted to make this dance and I felt good about it. So in search of praise I asked my choreography teacher, Ingegerd Lonnroth, to look at it.

We gathered in a dance studio. I started the music and the dancers danced. I watched the dance and I watched my choreography teacher, my gaze flicking between the two. Then, unexpectedly, my chest tightened and my stomach flipped. This dance was not good. Specifically, the section I was watching was not good. And I was acutely embarrassed. How had I not seen this before? I looked across at Ingegerd but she was impassive. Had she noticed?

When the dancers finished Ingegerd said something supportive and encouraging, to them and to me. Then she said "Show me again the section about a third of the way through, starting from the upstage right corner." Yes, she'd noticed.

I learnt two things that day.

1. That Ingegerd is a very perceptive critic, a skill I made full use of during my time at dance school.

2. That it is very difficult to see what you have made the way the audience will see it.

When I look at a dance I've choreographed or a game I've designed the tendency is to see what I want to see, to see the work as I intend it to be not as it is. Faults are ignored as my imagination smooths them over and delivers to me the experience that I expect, because I expect it.

My tool for overcoming this hazard is in that early experience with Ingegerd. Show it to someone whose opinion matters to you. Watch it with them. Imagine what it looks like for them. Imagine what they are thinking. Don't wait for them to tell you, don't rely on their feedback. Empathise and feel it for yourself.

In theory you can do this without the other person there but it is hard. I find that their presence, watching the dance or playing the game, and my anxiety over their reaction helps me to empathise, to see the work as it really is.

With my current game I have shown it to numerous people. Family, friends, other developers. In many cases I watch the screen over their shoulder, imagining what they are thinking and feeling, and I smile as my chest tightens, my stomach flips, and I add another issue to my to-do list. It's not traditional user testing and for you it may not work, but it helps me a lot.

Richard Lord's session 'Lessons I learnt as a Choreographer and Apply as a Game Designer' takes place on Thursday 16 July at 4pm. 

Simple Complexity - how foreign games can help us better serve our players

The number of people playing games has never been higher.  Three main things have happened to facilitate this:

• Mobile has put a high-end gaming device into the hands of over a billion users, many in countries such as China that haven’t had access to gaming before
• Free-to-play has encouraged those who wouldn't normally pay to download a game to give them a go
• Digital distribution has allowed developers to access consumers all around the world, rather than relying on those retail channels they may have been connected to before 

While, twenty years ago, we would be delighted to make a game that reached half a million players, and ecstatic to hit a million, nowadays we can realistically reach ten or even one hundred times as many – and often need to, if we’re to make a profit. So what do we need to do differently to appeal to this broader, wider market?

It’s easy for us to make assumptions about what our players will understand and enjoy – after all, if we love it, so should they, right?

What I've found from working with Japanese and Asian developers and publishers over the years is that, although we may be converging into a global market, players may have taken a completely different gaming journey from us.  Take China – now a huge mobile games market, but a country that had no gaming systems for decades. All the expectations and knowledge we, and many of our players, have built up over those years are not there. I recently heard from someone who’d watched Chinese players on a well-known mobile platform game.  He was amazed to see them studiously avoid the gold coins in the environment, in the belief they’d be killed if they touched them. It’s easy for us to assume that players will understand what they’re supposed to do, but that’s a dangerous assumption.

This isn't a one-way street. A lot of my time is spent playing Japanese games – it’s fascinated me why the Japanese mobile market is so lucrative, but why the biggest titles there often fail to make an impact in the west. Beyond the obvious issues of western and Japanese graphic styles being different, there are many things that Japanese games assume their audience will understand that western gamers generally don’t.  Whether it’s turn-based combat, buddy systems, live events or gacha mechanics, Japanese games throw players into these systems with no explanation – they don’t need one, everyone already knows how to play.  When those games are localised and launched in the west, many players are lost forever in the first few minutes of play, dropping out due to sheer confusion and frustration.  Those that persevere often go on to love the games, matching the high retention and spending levels of their Japanese counterparts, but so much opportunity is lost because players are not introduced gently into the mechanics.

Even if you’re not targeting those markets yourselves, I’d advise readers to play the English versions of the biggest Japanese and Asian titles. To do so will you give some insight as to how confused you might be making some of your own players, not just those abroad, but also those newer gamers closer to.  It will also expose you to game systems that maybe don’t make sense to us at first glance – ‘auto battle’ being a great example.  To many western gamers and developers, the idea of a game that plays itself seems ludicrous. Auto battle only makes sense when you play a game for a long time. What drew you into a game in the first place – probably a fun, tactile, interactive experience, is really only the window dressing on the game that really engages people. What sits underneath that seemingly simple action title or puzzler is likely a deep and engaging game about collection, team building, social interaction and strategic planning. In that context, where the real fun is to be had once you've mastered the game underneath, auto-play makes more sense – removing the need to grind and allowing you to focus on what really matters.

The most successful mobile games tend to be those that are easy for people to understand, enjoyable in the first minute of play but which offer an ever-deeper and more compelling experience for those players who keep going. The challenge for developers is marrying the accessibility needed to attract global or inexperienced players with the depth needed to keep everyone engaged long term. It’s not easy but, as the top grossing charts prove, when you get it right, you can get it very, very right.

Harry Holmwood  - European CEO of Marvelous, a Japanese mobile and console publisher, and also a Director of The Secret Police, a London-based mobile gaming startup.