Guest Blog: What To Do When The One Big Deal, Doesn't Turn Into The Next Big Deal

It probably seems a bit strange me writing a blog like this in May; titled nearly identically to the talk that I’m doing in July at the wonderful Develop Conference… The reality is that not even a 3 hour time slot would enable me to convey all of my thoughts and feelings on this subject – which can be seen in the recent interview that I gave with our Operations Director, Gemma, for GamesIndustry.biz. 

In the article on GI.biz we talk a lot about what happened before, during and just after the cancellation. In the talk in July I’m going to talk in more detail about what we did to survive, the trials and tribulations of numerous unsuccessful pitches and the removal of the rose-tinted glasses and ego consequent of having a big deal.

“So, what’s the point of this blog?” I hear all one of you asking (thanks for reading Ma). In this blog I wanted to talk briefly about the emotional and mental impact the situation had on me personally. I have never been shy about being brash, outspoken and, at times, inappropriately open about my feelings on pretty much everything. But, over the last couple of years it seems the industry has become more open in general about mental impact.

Firstly, I want to say that I am in an incredibly privileged position and that I am fully aware of this. I was able to start a studio due to the support of my family and loved ones, and we’ve had a truly incredible journey. Hitting 6 years in June is an amazing feeling and I know how lucky we have been in an industry that has seen wide-spread layoffs and studio closures in the half a decade we’ve been going. I’m also very aware that I am the most cliché typical game developer in the world - I have not had to deal with any real discrimination. In fact, the only discrimination I have ever had to deal with comes about when I occasionally decide to treat myself to a first-class train ticket; apparently sweatpants, trainers, long hair and a beard aren’t the appropriate attire according to the fine ladies and gentlemen in first class, who like to call upon the ticket inspector to check that I’m not bunking the fair…

However, for all my bravado and the joy this company has brought me over the past (nearly) 6 years, and without a single day’s regret, it is fair to say that it has definitely taken its toll on me… At the ripe old age of 33, I’m nearly completely grey. Which is quite depressing when I compare that to pictures of me when I started the company in 2012, without a single grey hair in sight.

My sleep patterns are broken and erratic at best and, unsurprisingly, this is worst around important deadlines. I’ll often very suddenly become completely wide-awake in the middle of night, spend a couple of hours checking/answering e-mails and messaging our US-based partners/staff/publishers/clients.

On the topic of sleep, I’m tired a lot, on average at the moment I’m usually actually in bed by 9pm because I feel completely shattered, which doesn’t help the broken/erratic sleep pattern.

For the better part of the last 18 months all I have been able to think about is when the money is going to run out. When the Disney deal finished, we had a great amount of money to keep us going and, whilst we’ve done some amazing work for hire projects and been smart with some operational cuts, it turns out studios burn money, and it can burn quickly! We’re not 5 guys in a garage on minimum wage anymore; we are 10 people, with two office buildings and a yearly running cost well into the mid-hundreds of thousands.

Whilst I’ve been lucky that I’ve never really felt like I’ve had “imposter syndrome”, I am anxious all the time. This also led me to realise something a while back - I never really “celebrate” the highs and achievements; I am always looking behind them for the next low that could occur. Luckily this isn’t something that has rubbed off on any of my awesome team members or my loved ones who are all an awesome positive presence in my life. However, I do feel at times I’m missing out on being able to feel really happy about the big work milestones, like signing deals and big development milestones.

To be clear, I don’t want this to sound like I don’t enjoy my work-life - I absolutely love what I do and genuinely feel I have the best job in the world. In fact, I’ve had some arguments with one of my best friends in games over which one of us has the best job, and that is an awesome way to feel. My school friends all hate me because when they hit Sunday are dreading already dreading what’s to come on Monday, I can’t wait to get back to the office. But the industry has still broken me down over the years. I’m definitely programmed now to always prepare for everything to go wrong. Although, this does have its advantages; it makes me more cautious about everything and I never trust a deal is done - not until the first payment is cleared – and even then, I am far more aware of potential risks that still may follow.

I say this A LOT, so much so that anyone that has seen me talk or read anything I’ve written is sick of me saying it but: I was a programmer who wanted to be a designer who became a company director. I never had any intention of starting my own company. It just wasn’t something that even registered as an option. Whilst I don’t regret it at all, I was never really prepared for what it meant to be where the buck stops. To be the one with the responsibility of people’s mortgages and kids on your shoulders. Does it feel like it’s a massive burden to bear on a daily basis? 100%. And do I feel like I can’t handle it? Very often. BUT that feeling passes quickly. I know I can do this because I need to do this for my team and for myself.

Every time I’m the last one in the office, I look around and I realise that we built this (not the building literally, however we did paint building 1). That we were just a few guys, with no real plan, who wanted to make games together, and now we’re 10 awesome people (soon to be growing). In these moments of reflection, I suddenly feel completely overwhelmed and lost for breath and then I do something that I don’t necessarily do that often. I smile.

As with everything I do, there wasn’t much of a point to this – it was really just stream of consciousness typing. But, if I had to drill it down to a point and some sort of “Jerry’s Final Thought”, that point would be that it is ok to feel overwhelmed; it’s ok to question yourself, it’s ok to feel anxious and it’s 100% ok to feel however the damn-well you feel. Just make sure that at the end of the day the thing triggering all these feelings is worth it.

Aj Grand-Scrutton is Chief Executive Office at Dlala Studios and will be speaking at Develop:Brighton. Find out more about his session here and to see more talks featured on the Indie track, click here.

Guest Blog: Why speak at Develop:Brighton?

My first speaking opportunity at Develop:Brighton was after applying to a call for new/first time speakers. The format was each new speaker would have a few minutes on stage to argue a case/put forward an idea that they would like to win a talk spot for, for a full talk at the following years conference. Initially there was about 12 speakers lined up, that soon dropped to 6 and I was the only remaining female speaker, and as such I was asked if I would still like to take part.

It’s not new for me to be the only women in a situation, games were my hobby long before becoming my career and I’ve lost count of the number of times I have been expected to defend my validity, but still I was disappointed. I had been looking forward to seeing so many new voices on stage, voices our industry so desperately needs to hear, voices that let the other women in the audience know they belong, voices that encourage other women to join in. Luckily I’m quite a competitive person and being the only female speaker left in the competition only strengthen my resolve to slay my fellow new speakers (spoiler - I won).

Here I am, standing at lecterns talking about games!

My soapbox rant, sorry ‘mini talk’ was about why we should hire more parents into the industry. There are many reasons, not least of all because at that point I had a 1 year old daughter, but most importantly I did the talk because we see so few female speakers at events, and even fewer mothers. My journey into independent game development started when I was 5 months pregnant, between jobs and totally unemployable. My first indie game was released 2 weeks before my first baby was born and when she was around a week old I was multitasking breastfeeding and storefront asset generation for the Android release of Glyph Quest. As much as I knew what I was doing was impressive (game dev with a tiny baby is not easy) I didn’t realise how important my story was for others to hear until I started talking about it at events.

Since I started sharing my experience, I’ve had women at each talk come up to me afterwards and thank me. They were at a point in their career, relationship and life where they were thinking about having children but were unsure how such a move in this male led industry would affect them. Now, I can’t speak for how bigger studios handle maternity/paternity and the struggles of returning to work but what I can tell you is it is possible to work up to the due date (I have, twice) and having a child doesn't mean you suddenly forget how to do everything you did before you got pregnant, you just have to learn how to do some of those things with one hand whilst the other is clamped around a wriggle monster.
    

#Multitasking

You may not feel your experience or you presenting what you do is that big a deal, but it is to someone. Even if it’s only one person you encourage to get into games dev, stay in games dev or change the sex of their games protagonist, it matters. Representation is getting better, it’s changed a lot in the time that I’ve been a developer, but we still have a way to go and we’ll only get there if we represent. So tell your story, sign up as a speaker at this years Develop:Brighton conference and I look forward to meeting you there.

Leanne Bayley from We Heart Dragons is a member of the Develop:Brighton Advisory Board

Guest Blog: VR Goes to Work

After hovering on the fringes of mainstream culture for years, VR was suddenly thrust into the spotlight a few years ago by developers like Oculus, HTC, Sony, and Samsung. As their rapid hardware developments piqued the interest of the entertainment world, the biggest impact was unsurprisingly felt in gaming, with console manufacturers scrambling to be the first to incorporate the tech into their products. As an unfortunate consequence, VR was mistakenly viewed by many merely as a gadget for gamers, a gimmick.

We’ve never seen it that way, and we’ve always strived to combat this misconception by demonstrating the real-world impact this incredible technology can really have. Right from our first VR projects with Pagani and Audi two years ago, we’ve had the pleasure of working within an international community of likeminded developers to apply the cutting-edge of R&D VR innovations to commercial projects with car companies around the world, and with the rate of recent hardware developments, we couldn’t be more excited about our future Virtual Reality projects!

It’s not just in our sector that VR is maturing: recently, its potential business applications have become increasingly clear. The unveiling of Oculus for Business at OC4 is testament to this, with several big-name brands partnering with the hardware firm to give a taster of what VR can really do.

From the initial staff training at companies like KFC, Walmart, and General Motors, to designing state-of-the-art passenger planes with Boeing and Airbus, VR is impacting every level of working life. Staff can now create and test new features and models, practice diffusing potentially dangerous situations, and hold complex conferences all within a virtual sphere, and they can do this from almost anywhere.

Despite these incredible innovations, though, it’s the customer who has benefited most from VR’s dramatic foray into the business world. They can use this technology to design, customise, and test an increasing number of products prior to purchase. No longer reliant on their imagination, consumers are able to see a product in a range of different surroundings, giving them unprecedented insights into potential purchases, and with the recent addition of volumetric video environments, customers can find themselves completely immersed within these life-like experiences.

The only way is up for VR in these exciting times!

If you’d like to join our team and work with us on our upcoming projects, talk to our team at the Develop:VR conference or view our current vacancies.

Chris O'Connor is Technical Director at ZeroLight and will be speaking at Develop:VR with his session entitled Building World-Class Commercial VR Experiences  

Guest Blog: Virtual Reality is Having Real Impact on the Health Industry

We talk a lot about the potential benefits of VR across a number of areas, talk is all well and good, but actually seeing how it can be applied is when the potential hits home and becomes real. 

Last year at SXSW in Austin, I was lucky enough to meet Sook-Lei Liew, a neuroscientist from USC who had created an incredible VR prototype for treating stroke victims. Combining a swim cap, a standard laptop and an off the shelf HMD she created REINVENT (which stands for Rehabilitation Environment using the Integration of Neuromuscular-based Virtual Enhancements for Neural Training). Yes they worked hard on that acronym! 

This Social VR application uses EEG sensors to provide neuro-feedback when an individual’s neuromuscular signals indicate a movement attempt, even in the absence of actual movement. Stroke patients could retrain their brain to move muscles that have been affected by the stroke - relearning the right brain signals by which to move a virtual arm, which can ultimately lead to them being able to use that rediscovered ability in reality.

I came across a great comment from Mel Slater, a professor of virtual environments, where he talked about the ability to trick the brain: “There is some level of the brain that doesn’t distinguish between reality and virtual reality. A typical example is, you see a precipice and you jump back and your heart starts racing. You react very fast because it’s the safe thing for the brain to do. All your autonomic system starts functioning, you get a very strong level of arousal, then you go, ‘I know it’s not real’. But it doesn’t matter, because you still can’t step forward near that precipice.”

It is the natural reaction that Sook-Lei Liew is utilising with REINVENT, less of a trick, but more like an immersive rewiring of the brain.

As we gain a better understanding of the uses of immersive technology to address key health issues, the number of solutions will grow exponentially. From training surgeons, treatment for depression, to pain relief, the impact immersive technology will have on our collective health will fundamentally change the whole health industry. We’re entering an exciting period of innovation.

James Watson is head of immersive technology at Imagination and will be speaking at Develop:VR with his session entitled Getting Up Close and Virtual with the Automotive Industry: Using VR for the Right Reasons 
 

Guest Blog: The Possibilities of VR

It is 1911 and the Paris art world is alive with excitement about a revolution in art. The Salle 41 artists have just taken part in the first organised exhibition of Cubist works; images that broke down conventional depictions of space, mass, volume and time. Their work, based on ideas developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, went on to drastically change world art, as developments and reactions to it led to the creation of modernism and beyond. The power of the movement broke through to other genres such as music and architecture and has revolutionised culture and society through the 20th Century and into our time.

Early works in the Autumn Cubist Exhibition, Paris 1912

It is 2017 and the revolution of AR/VR/MR is about to begin. In as significant a way as the Cubist’s broke conventions of perspective, so AR/VR/MR is transforming our relationship with that thing we hold most highly in our culture - the flat screen. We can now enter amazing unseen worlds, we can bring digital creations through into our world, and interact with them in our visual spaces, we can be immersed in stories and experiences in a way beyond anything that has come before.

Immersive gameplay and narrative in Pixel Toy’s Drop Dead on Gear VR and Oculus Rift

I have to admit I was cynical at first of the possibilities of it all - another 3D TV, another gimmick - yet as we developed Drop Dead at Pixel Toys, the possibilities of VR became so apparent - how a Samsung phone in a relatively simple headset could deliver a hugely accessible, immersive VR experience to a mass market, how we could tell stories in such a fresh way. Still the barriers of technology are falling continuing to fall at a dramatic rate: Apple’s significant entry into the AR field with AR Kit will surely speed the adoption and integration of augmented content into mainstream life - particularly as marketers (for they are the primary drivers of mass acceptance surely) begin to invade our lives with interactive enhanced messages.

Image from the Royal Academy’s Virtually Real exhibition in January 2017

A wonderful thing is that our Picassos and Braques are out there right now: artists, developers and creatives taking these nascent tools and pushing them every day to new extremes. Like Cubism and Modernism before, this won’t be limited to a single genre but will be suffused through contemporary culture. VR is already embedding itself into training programmes for doctors, firemen, even fast food outlets. It is entering the world of manufacturing, business, entertainment, games, art. The Royal Academy of Arts, once the bastion of traditionalism, recently hosted an exhibition of VR artworks created by some of their students, and plans further exhibitions in the near future. Jaguar Land Rover use hi-definition VR content to shape their cars as part of their pre-production design and as part of their customer facing sales strategy.

Ultimately the reason for this now inevitable revolution is that VR/AR/MR changes our relationship with the world around us, in much the same way as modernist principles did last century. We need to simply embrace the enormity of that and as developers prepare for the opportunities that this technology affords for creatives, businesses and consumers.

James Horn is lead artist at Pixel Toys and will be speaking at Develop:VR with his session entitled - Drop Deadline - A Visually-Excellent, 60fps, Narrative Mobile Shooter to a Fixed Deadline With a Small Team

Develop:Five - Chris Parsons, Revelation Games

Every week, we ask some of the best game development minds five questions in a feature we are calling Develop:Five. This week, Chris Parsons of Revelation Games answers our five question blog feature.

1. What’s your earliest memory of playing video games?

My earlier memory is starting up my TRS-80 before breakfast, inserting the Donkey Kong cassette tape, having breakfast, getting dressed for school, and coming back to the computer when it had just finished loading. At that point I usually had 5 minutes to play before I had to leave for school! It was about 1983 I think.

2. What are you most excited or annoyed about in the games industry today?

The barrier to entry has never been lower, which is both a good and a bad thing. Whilst I’m delighted that the rise of the “free" engine has made it easy for people to make good games, it’s just as hard as ever to make a great game, and great games get missed amongst the sea of good ones, which is a shame.

3. Tell us about a life-changing or special moment you've had at Develop:Brighton in the past?

I’ve only been once, but really valued the camaraderie and humility of the UK indie dev scene - some great conversations and mutual support.

4.  What are you most looking forward to at Develop:Brighton 2017?

Meeting more developers like myself and sharing tips and stories!

5. Which game developer would you most like to meet and why?

Shigeru Miyamoto - a legend of design. I’d love to pick his brains about the essence of great game design and thank him for writing the first game I remember playing!

Chris Parsons makes deep, characterful and procedural games with friends. After beginning his career in AAA games 20 years ago, he built a software development company from scratch, before coming back to games in 2011. He released Sol Trader in 2016 and is the early stages of his next game: Ealdorlight.

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Find out more about Develop:Brighton and Mark's talk here

Develop:Five - Mark Sorrell, Rovio

Every week, we ask some of the best game development minds five questions in a feature we are calling Develop:Five. This week, Mark Sorrell from Rovio answers our five question blog feature.

1. What’s your earliest memory of playing video games?

Playing Superman on the Atari VCS when I was about four in 1980ish. It was the first game I played where you could walk off the side of the screen and it didn't loop or block you, there was actually another part of the world to explore. Which at the time was basically witchcraft.

2. What are you most excited or annoyed about in the games industry today?

I'm mostly excited about the incredible breadth of experiences and possibilities in the panoply of things that we call videogames and mostly annoyed about the lack of words to describe them. Having spent considerable time in Finland, Finnish has different words for playing a musical instrument, playing without explicit purpose, like a child does, or playing a competitive game, along with others. In English we have none of that subtlety, which leads to a lot of needless arguments and slows down the progress of the medium(s).

3. Tell us about a life-changing or special moment you've had at Develop:Brighton in the past? 

In truth, there is no one stand out moment. Develop has been more like a clock, parcelling out my time in the industry, allowing me to see how things have changed, how I've changed, how the industry has changed, and how it hasn't, catch up with old acquaintances and meet new ones. For me it's less an instrument of change and more a device to measure it.

4.  What are you most looking forward to at Develop:Brighton 2017?

I know you want me to say Tetsuya Mizuguchi but the real answer is the ten minutes directly after I've finished my talk. The buzz when you come off stage is _the_100_emoji_

5. Which game developer would you most like to meet and why?

I have no idea what his English is like because my Japanese is non-existent, but presuming we could actually communicate, Yasumi Matsuno, the game director of Final Fantasy 12, which for me is the most forward thinking and visionary game ever made. I want to know how he managed to believe in his vision so completely.

Mark Sorrell is Head of Studio at Rovio's London Studio, a new venture set-up to build mobile F2P MMO games. Over the last two years, Mark has helped Rovio complete the transition to a true F2P company, as Vice President, Product. This comes after a career spent making games for unusual platforms, customers and business models. 

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Find out more about Develop:Brighton and Mark's talk here