Guest Blog: Five Top Tips for Planning Your Game Launch

Creating and releasing games has never been so interesting or so scary. It’s well documented now that Steam has around 200 new releases per week. Mobile has been equally busy for some time now and console is also seeing more developers release on Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft’s platforms. Because of increased competition, planning for the launch of your game is as essential as, well, making the game itself!

We’ve recently announced a new title, Mars Horizon (along with a podcast about it) and we’re moving from that announcement to the more detailed planning for the game’s launch. This links to what I’m going to be talking about at Develop this year - surviving the Steampocalypse!

So I thought this is a good opportunity to share some of the research we’ve been doing around planning our launches and some of what we’ve learned (sometimes the hard way!)

Announce Early (But Plan Ahead) - As an indie you’re always up-against it in terms of resources. You don’t want to announce the game until you are ready, but also you don’t want to launch without any lead-in. My feeling now is that lead-in is key. So having time between the announcement and the launch to gather interest in your title is vital: you can use that time to court influencers, get wishlisted on Steam, and build a fan community. However, if that gap is too long, then you can’t sustain interest in the fallow periods and you then have to put more energy to re-engage people.

An example of ours where we did this was Dark Future: Blood Red States, which we announced - with a release date of 2015! - over three years ago, and it’s still not in the hands of players. It will absolutely be worth the wait, but to avoid making this mistake yourself, make sure you’re rock solid in your release window, and do think about whether you can sustain interest in your title between announcement and release.

Better late than never - it’s Dark Future!

Pick a Good Date - This is an eternal question - when should you launch? Okay, so you’re never going to avoid clashing with multiple games, but to mitigate this to some extent, you can think about the following: avoid clashing with any major events or expos (use this list to check), and note the couple of days either side too. You don’t want to announce a game two days before a big event as all the journos will be busy traveling there and won’t have time to cover your game. Then check announced upcoming releases (try here, here, here and here),checking for any titles in the same genre and platform as your project, and avoid them..

Also avoid any AAA title release dates if you can. That’s not to say you’re necessarily competing with those AAA titles, but they can cast a long shadow and will take up journalist and influencer time and attention.

Get Visual - For the actual release, and in the run up, people want to see visuals of gameplay!

Animated Gifs, short videos, screenshots - that sort of thing. For example I remember this gif from Tabletop Simulator going viral a few years back and these visuals that get across the tone or core ideas of your work really are the things that do best online. If you’re lucky one of them will go viral and then you’re rising to the top of many people’s attention. This is doubly true on social media: Facebook and Twitter data shows time and time again that videos and images work best. So put the time in and make them look great!

Trailer, Trailer, Trailer - I’m far from the first person to point to this. I’ve heard lots of other developers note how key it is.

As well as videos and images, you need - need - to have a strong trailer.

Out of all the marketing assess you create, this is probably the key one. So do plan time and effort into it and if you can’t do it then budget for someone who can. For example look over our videos and you’ll see the dramatic difference in views, from the smaller bits of gameplay or behind-the-scenes videos getting comparatively few views, to the more important trailers which command many more views. Apply the same creativity into planning your trailer as you do your game and test it out with a small audience before you launch it worldwide to make sure it hits all the right notes.

Repeat, Repeat, Repeat - It’s very unlikely that you’ll have that one big announcement and people will bookmark it and come back on launch day and buy your game. One of the things with so many games being launched is that the space is busy and audience mindshare is limited. You’re either going to be able to be loud (if you’ve got enough clout, like a Rockstar announcement of Red Dead Redemption 2, for example) or you’re going to need to repeat your messaging. This means that players need to be reminded of the message of your game and its launch until you are sick of saying it. In that way you keep it in their mind and that will hopefully translate into a paying customer.

Best of luck with your launch (oh and please don't schedule it on any of or launch dates - k?)

Dr. Tomas Rawlings is Design Director at Auroch Digital, so he feels your pain about running your own thing. He is an award-winning games designer who has both created original titles and worked with well-loved IP such as Games Workshop’s Chainsaw Warrior, Star Wars:The Battle for Hoth and the multiple award winning Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land. He is a well known speaker on video games and also a consultant who has worked with major organisations. He can be found on Twitter here and is speaking at Develop on Tuesday 10th July 11am in Room 4.

Guest blog - First impressions of the great wall

It is my first visit to China and I have been both scared &  excited for the previous week about this trip. As a new indie, an exploratory trip to China is a speculative luxury. But when I was invited by an old friend to join a cross border investment roadshow I decided to take the plunge, just as I did when I left Sony 3 months earlier.

As I am travelling on airmiles I had to leave a day early, but at least this gave me a day to visit China's most amazing construction, the great wall. And what a sight. Just the basics are astounding. 5500 miles. 1 million workers. 4 trillion bricks. A seemingly impossible task, just like starting a studio. But they broke the wall down into sections & subsections, dividing it into more manageable sized tasks. Good advice for me as I see the enormity if my own ambitions ahead of me.

And after a few days being here, meeting other CEOs, startups & investors from China and silicon Valley, I realise that the great wall itself is like a reflection of China today.

Firstly, the scale of China is staggering. There are 1.4 billion people & 560 million smart phones. Email has been leap frogged and everyone uses wechat to communicate, send files &  even pay for stuff. As a new market it is simply huge, and it is interesting to note that Western platforms like Facebook messenger lag behind the functions on offer from their eastern equivalents. They openly admit they are good at copying, but what seems obviates a couple of days is that they also improve on the original by using a very pragmatic approach to design & development. Another great takeaway for an aspiring startup.

Wealth. The great wall didn't come cheap. It was a huge investment of time, money & infrastructure on an incompressible scale. Everyone I meet tells me there is a ton of cash in China and they are keen to invest abroad. For tech that translates to silicon Valley so I am a bit of a novelty coming from the UK. Although it doesn't seem to put people off. They do however, have clear guidelines as to how to evaluate you as an investment. (see 5 steps at the end). 

I have asked a few people where the money comes from with a variety of answers. 

• it has always been here
• it's pent up capitalism 
• China makes everything the world uses (the most likely one imho) 

Power. With wealth comes power and there are clearly many power structures here. From the SOEs (state owned enterprises) which we are warned against due to their red tape and misguided targets (volume as opposed to performance of foreign investments) to the huge publishers &  investment houses, enough to make even Mr Zuckerberg blush.

Control. The control required to harness 1 million workers to build the wall is difficult to comprehend. Imagine being the lead producer on that project, with your life at stake for missing a milestone. But with control comes protection. The wall was built to keep the marauding mongels out. If food was scarce they would raid the Chinese villages. And now there is the great firewall of China, designed to protect the citizens from the evils of Google, Facebook & the like. It can be bypassed by vpn clients, but these are flaky & intermittent at best due to government attacks to bring them down.  A personal realisation is just how much I rely on these platforms and services. And more useful advice for me, always look after my team. 

Achievement. And finally, What an achievement the wall is. It would be impossible today, even in China. It is clear to me that people here pride themselves on personal and societal achievement. Before coming, many friends told me how crazy it would be, which is true. But actually, I am really impressed by the infrastructure. There are tough traffic jams, but let's be honest, London is no picnic in rush hour, neither is LA (#firstworldproblems?) the outlook by most people is optimistic although I pick up similar concerns from the younger people of the impossibly high housing costs in the affluent cities.

The difference here is that top down control is in force again. Drivers must forgo using their cars one day per week (eg everyone whose registration number ends in 2 or 4 cannot drive on a Wednesday) with heavy fines as penalties.  Interestingly, the structure is designed for overall efficiency much the same way we organise our development teams. There is a clear influence from californian startup culture and everywhere has incubators or wework equivalents. Allowing teams to focus on their key goals.

I will sign off with some great advice I was given by a Chinese American as to how he evaluates a company to invest in.

1. Geography. Is the economy stable?
2. Sector. Is the business in a growing sector? (games &  vr both pass this with flying colours)
3. Is the business model sound?
4. Is the team good, great or outstanding?
5. Is the product worthy of investment?

My final thought is this. I am near the end of my trip and I have learned much more than I ever expected. And just as I have fallen in love with the majesty accomplishment of the great wall, I am falling in love with the county & culture of China itself. This is my first trip and I very much hope it is not my last. One of the developers I met here gave me some advice...  Maybe use some Chinese architecture in my products to help them sell in China... I think I will, and actually, I think it will help them sell in the rest of the world too. 

Dave Ranyard is a virtual reality developer and will be speaking at this year's Develop:Brighton conference on Tuesday 13 July at 5pm. 

GUEST BLOG: Industry echoes: 19 years later, the first E3 still rings in my ears

I was lucky enough to attend the first E3 back in 1995. It was, I think, my second ever trip over the Atlantic.

For a reasonably young man, whose work travels had up until then taken him to Croydon, Derby and Woking, it was overwhelmingly exciting. I stayed in the hotel through which Arnie rode a horse True Lies, and the one friends tell me Pamela Anderson took her clothes off in “The Pamela Anderson Story” (sadly no longer available, apparently).

I thought of my teachers who said I'd amount to little and imagined them still tormented by little bastards like me, cursed to a life of endlessly scrubbing chalk phalluses off their suit jackets whilst I was on a business trip to where Americans came from.

They were actually filming Heat in the streets outside. Imagine that. No do: imagine that.

For an industry which had historically sold its wares on hunks of plastic or “floppy” “disks” (technically neither, though no-one seemed to mention this) that first E3 was a sign of intent. We were moving from business shows in stuffy hotels literally to Hollywood.

Of course, as a young industry, we were hopelessly naive. Rich execs decided that the best way of showing how great their games were was to throw vast amounts of money at their stands; setting a dick-waving precedent which would escalate so quickly that apparently Peter Moore originally suggested he announce GTA4’s appearance on Xbox at the 2006 Microsoft press conference not with a fake tattoo, but by dangling the game’s logo from his still smarting Prince Albert.

Poetically, in 1995, no stand was more impressive than that of Acclaim. Standing proudly inside the main doors, where EA usually is these days, it was a nightclub of a booth, all flashing lights, massive screens and pulsating music from show open to show fucking close.

I was working on the stand next door, so I was the regular unintended victim of Acclaim’s “theme “ – a 30-second ditty which opened the 10 minute showreel. I heard it 162 times.

Now and again – close to 20 years later – it still bounces round my skull.
It went like this: “[Something, something] Acclaim, your entertainment source. Hits on every format – can you feel the force? Interactive entertainment, it’s so hot you just can’t contain it, something something something something Acclaim!”162 times.

What’s most astonishing about this song isn’t that presumably an actual human being was paid coins of money in order to write it and that other human beings didn’t think that the first human was joking, nor that it made such an indelible mark on my then young brain that even now – at an age when I genuinely occasionally forget the names of my family – I can still recall most of it.

No, what was most astonishing was, that from a marketing point of view, spending such a vast amount of money on a stand and theme song did the job – even now, when people stop me on the street to enquire as to where they can find the source of entertainment, I remind them of Acclaim before showing them some SNES and Mega Drive cartridges and pushing them over so they can feel the force.

Sadly, that’s where the story ends. These people can’t buy Turok: Evolution, WWF Wrestlemania, nor Dave Mira’s BMX XXX even if they wanted to. Which they didn’t: Acclaim went out of business in 2004 – leaving nothing more than a few gaming controversies, some brilliant PR ideas and one dreadful song.
E3 has always been about attracting attention, making the most noise, having the biggest queues. Yet, with the exception of a just couple of years when, quite rightly, publishers questioned the amount they were pouring into the building that Nicholas Cage tried to blow up in Face/Off, E3 has got bigger but not necessarily better.

The news rarely comes from the show floor any more, beamed instead globally onto monitors the day before, via grainy, buffering streams. American execs trying hard to be casual without realising they’re memes in waiting.
Fact is, if you’re a publisher in decline or a hardware manufacturer which lacks confidence to deliver your vision, chasing Twitter favourites rather than sticking to your design philosophy, attracting such vast attention is pointless unless you’re able to deliver the goods. Come see my talk at Develop this year and I’ll show you how to be Mike Bithell – current King of the Indies, deliverer of goods and, at the time of writing, someone who’s yet to resort to a theme tune.

Though it is only a matter of time.

This blog was written by Simon Byron, a director at Premier PR. Simon will be talking in the new Marketing track at Develop in Brighton on 9 July. www.developconference.com

GUEST BLOG: Go With the Flow - A Fresh Look at Old Concepts

I suspect that some of you reading this will think “Why talk about something as obvious as flow when everybody in the industry understands the concept and gets it right?”

Well, believe it or not, there’s way more to flow than people in the industry might imagine.

Only the other week, Keith Stuart talked in The Guardian about the concept of flow as one of the reasons people find games like Candy Crush so compelling (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/21/candy-crush-angry-birds-psychology-compulsive-casual-games-mobile-flappy-birds).

When players are so completely engaged with a game, to the extent that they don't even hear you when you call them or acknowledge you when you talk to them, there’s a very good chance that they’re experiencing flow in the game play. And when an individual is experiencing flow, they’re completely fixated on the task of playing the game, and you’ll find it pretty hard to break their concentration.

I remember late last year consulting at a large game developers studio and the fire alarm went off - it was lunchtime and a few employees were playing a game in the games room during their break. Despite the piecing sound of the alarm, they didn’t even look up from their games and the boss of the company had to literally go in and drag them out.

So you can see how flow, the state of utter engagement in gaming, can certainly account for how compelling video game playing can be.

A really great piece of work that I would recommend to developers is by Boyle et al (2012) – ‘Engagement in digital entertainment games: A systematic review’ - who initially uncovered a staggering 20,000 papers related to engagement, and then drilled this number down to 55 key papers to review.

The authors describe flow as the most influential construct used to explain the subjective emotional experience and optimal state of pleasure experienced in video game play. They highlight how flow is actually quite a complex construct involving eight different components. They maintain that central to the concept, is that the experience is intrinsically rewarding and enables immersion in the game, and they suggest that flow as a state evokes high levels of concentration and allows the player to have a sense of control, have clearly defined goals as well as providing direct feedback.

Further to this, is the motivation to escape the real world, because flow in gaming does offer opportunities to carry out behaviours not possible in the real world!

Last year I was delighted to be asked to contribute to the Charlie Brooker documentary ‘How Video Games Changed the World’. In the documentary I talked about the concept of flow and this really hit home with many gamers who watched the programme. In the weeks after, I had loads of emails from gamers who were quite relieved to understand what was happening to them when they were in this almost altered state of mind, completely fixated on a game.

Following the programme a blogger posted the stills of my contribution about flow on tumblr and so far nearly 60,000 people have reblogged or commented. (http://senjukannon.tumblr.com/post/68759294958/gloriousbacon-cyber-psychologist-berni-goode) As a psychologist, what this tells me is that gamers really want to understand what’s happening to them when they’re engaged in virtual worlds and that they very much want developers to make games that enhance this state for them, as they garner immense pleasure and contentment from the experience.

Alex Meredith, Cyberpsychologist from Nottingham Trent University says "Developers can really embrace the concept of flow and incorporate it into the development of their games, within ethical parameters of course, and of particular interest is how flow impacts on motivation to play and the sense of self during game play and cathartic release.”

And there’s a lot more to the concept of flow in video games that psychologists like myself are still uncovering, I’m especially interested in the group flow and recently saw a great presentation by Linda Kaye of Edge Hill University who examined the extent to which group flow experiences (versus solo flow experiences) impact on post-play positive effect. The results of her work indicate that post-play positive effect was heightened in group flow, something which is particularly interesting when designing for collaborative play.

At this year’s Evolve, on the first day of the Develop Conference, as part of the psychology track, a number of leading psychologists will join me to look at what it means to develop games that enhance this flow experience, and together we’ll be offering some ethical take-away tips about how to build in strategies that evoke the flow state in gamers and really heighten the gaming experience.

Berni Good is a psychologist who specialises in Cyberpsychology, particularly in video games and is the founder of Cyberpsychologist  Limited,  www.cyberpsychologist.co.uk. This year Berni will curate the psychology track at Evolve which will see some of the leading psychologists and experts in the field of psychology in video games talk and give amazing insights and tips into how to develop games incorporating psychology to really heighten the experience for the gamer. 

@GoodBerni

GUEST BLOG: The Ugly Side of Freemium

I'm a big supporter of the freemium business model. The removal of the initial financial barrier to entry, alongside the simplicity of many freemium titles has opened the door for masses of new consumers to get into playing games; something which is undoubtedly a fantastic thing for our industry.

If we look back to the 80s, there are parallels we can draw.

Lots of relatively small indie games were released which are comparable to the level of simplicity we see in many mobile titles today; as technology and gamers desire for more complex experiences grew, so did the games produced, ultimately leading to the more mature console gaming demographic we have today - something I very much hope will be repeated in the mobile arena. Which is precisely why, when I see implementations of freemium mechanics such as those presented in Dungeon Keeper, I get quite infuriated.

Back then we also had a comparable level of saturated content as we’re now seeing in the mobile space. Many publishers were pushing out poor quality titles and failing to respect their consumers, which ultimately led to the game industry crash of 1983.

And in 2014, my big worry is that we're at risk of repeating that very same mistake.

Take Dungeon Keeper for example - without wishing to pick on it - I find that it’s just one of an increasing number of titles whose implementation of freemium mechanics comes across as somewhat dismissive of those unwilling to pay.

While it's apparent that it’s still generating significant revenue (as is clear from the games featuring in the top grossing charts) I worry that it's an example of prioritising short-term gains over long-term benefit for the industry. When it can take up to 24 hours to remove a single 'square' of map, I’d argue that it makes the experience beyond simply an 'inconvenience' for non-paying customers; it makes it largely un-playable.

The undoubtedly high percentage of customers unwilling to pay are ultimately left with a sour taste in their mouth; and for many, it risks degrading their views of freemium titles as a whole. In turn, damaging potential future uptake of games utilising this model.

This becomes all the more apparent when reading some of the games reviews; users are not simply complaining about the game, They’re complaining about the industry, the model and are frequently stating (in no uncertain terms) that it’s putting them off freemium as a whole.

 

Freemium titles should intrinsically be accessible for all consumers – paying or non-paying.

There have been some great examples of freemium done right. Games like League of Legends, where consumers can play frustration-free for as long as they like; but are encouraged to purchase through offering compelling additional content. Users who don't pay are respected, even valued, on account of the competitive, viral and social benefits their involvement brings to the experience for everyone playing.

So, as an industry let’s not allow our desire to make more money in the short term take precedence over the potential alienation of our customers. Paying or otherwise, we must respect our users. If we fail to do so, we run the very real risk of losing them in the long term.

Put simply, we need to learn from our historical mistakes. It is our responsibility to do better.

Adam Green is MD of Assyria Games and chairs the judging panel for the Indie Dev Showcase at the Develop Conference. This year’s Showcase submissions open on 2 April 2014.

GUEST BLOG: The fear of risk is crushing innovation in the console market

I'm a 40 year-old father of three and have been working in video games for nearly twenty years, which means, while I love games, I don't have much time to play them and I certainly haven’t had much hands-on time with the Xbox One or PlayStation 4.

As a convert from console to mobile development when our new studio – Boss Alien – opened two years ago, it’s hard to be any more involved in the console world than watching from the side lines. As much as I want to cheer the latest console transition, I have to admit it has left me a little cold.  

I’ll be honest:  I haven’t been excited about buying a video game for years. I've played many and completed a few great games. But I haven’t had that feeling of anticipation and the frisson of excitement of taking a shrink wrapped game home for a long time.

It may be I'm getting too old. Losing that childlike glee was something I never anticipated and it's disappointing to experience. As a teenager and through my twenties I looked forward to releases for months and was really getting excited about buying, unwrapping and loading a new game.  

The last time I enjoyed this level of anticipation and fulfilment was when Halo came out at the same time as Devil May Cry and I played them on my Xbox and PlayStation 2 simultaneously. They were both really great games and the generational leap to Halo was enormous. The graphics were richer and sharper; the AI was great; the control system made the FPS finally work well on console. some of the encounters were epic and you could drive vehicles while shooting! The ambition seemed huge at the time and its impact on the gaming experience was massive and measurable in many ways.

It is from this perspective that I review our latest console transition. So far, the general consensus seems to be disappointment. Again, this may be cynicism powered by age, but, to my eye, this new round of launch titles merely look a little better. There is no real innovation despite the massive budgets and lead times the biggest developers enjoyed.  Compared with PlayStation 2, these consoles are relatively familiar and easy to develop for and we – the gamers – ought to be playing better games than we are. I bought four headline launch games with my new console and I'm already bored with them. An expensive investment that has left me feeling robbed and seen me return to the PS3 and Xbox 360.

Why has this happened? Risk aversion. Publishers and developers want to make games that have known markets, that don’t risk failure, massive financial loss and potential studio closure. What has this left us with? Conservative designs and a chart of triple-A games that are mostly sequels or derivative products. A warning from me: being conservative about design is one thing. Being conservative about business is self-destructive and dangerous. 

Occasionally the big players move away from traditional business models but often by taking disastrous and crippling half-steps. The result is increased nervousness and a reluctance to take bolder steps in the future. I can give you two examples: the price of downloadable games and premium titles with dubious DLC offerings. 

First point – the price of downloadable games. Why do titles like Killzone cost over £50 to download from the PSN Store when they're available on Amazon for £35? Surely it should be cheaper to buy a digital version because it's virtually free to manufacture and distribute online?  Why? Because platform holders don't want to undercut retailers. As a gamer, I don't care about retailers, do you?  I just feel conned. The High Street can stock console hardware to make profit. The app stores prove you don't need a huge High Street retail presence to sell software.  

Second point - dubious DLC. EA was brave to try a sort of paid/freemium mix; brave enough to leap from the edge only to turn in mid-air and scrabble for it again at the last moment. Dead Space 3 was a game you had to pay for but if you wanted it to be as functional as Dead Space 2, you had to pay again. This is wrong.  And I say this as a freemium mobile game developer.  It's not fair to make people pay twice for something that they only paid once for before - especially in a very well established market with an incumbent business model and distribution network.

Personally, I believe downloadable games should be free. It costs nothing to deliver the game. If the customer likes it, they can pay for it and games should be good enough that customers do want to pay. Games can and should be designed to encourage customers to pay because a) they enjoy them, but b) because they are also seduced cleverly into paying for them.  

I know these tactics are not appreciated by everyone and I understand and accept those reservations. However, I really believe with good design, a moral balance and a respect for customers, developers will find a way to make it work in a palatable way for everyone.  It's just a matter of time. The products and models you see now are sometimes a little crass and cynical. Those rough edges will erode with time.

If gamers DO have to pay to download console games, can we at least agree that should not be expected to pay more than at retail? This isn’t fair. What is fair is exploiting the fact you have a customer's attention for several hours, so why not use that to try and sell them something different?  I don't mean a weapon upgrade, a level, a game-mode or special ability. I mean a new but related experience: a different story for a new character, perhaps, or a new perspective or completely different way to play. Perhaps this could lead to increased innovation. Perhaps games could further exploit niches within themselves?  

My eldest son is addicted to Skylanders: Swap Force. He's five and this is the first time he's become totally immersed in a video game universe. It's inspiring and gratifying to see the same hunger and appreciation in him that I have for games. He's chewing through the content at an incredible pace and constantly nags me for Skylanders figures. Why can't you buy them by mail order from the game? Why can't I download last year's Skylanders Giants game from within the Swap Force game? It looks to me that the world of games has moved on but the consoles are still trailing behind.  

They could consider unbundling, too. What’s stopping them from selling the single player campaign for £10, co-op for £10 and multi-player for £10? This isn't discounting so there’s no perception of price erosion or poor quality. And it might just result in a lift in sales as more players pick up individual parts of the game at an affordable price. It's not beyond the realm of possibility to anticipate an overall net-positive effect on revenues because the number of buyers lifts hugely.

Wouldn't it be great to see one of the big publishers make a proper, ambitious, brave leap of faith this year?  There are some brilliant new games on the horizon.  Some of the brand new, original, next-gen games previewed at E3 will be landing soon and we may well finally get the truly next level entertainment that our investment in the new hardware deserves. What's more, the big evergreen titles are starting to appear on Wii-U, which is what Nintendo does best. We all want to see great, innovative games.  More than that though, I'd really like to feel new ways to be inspired to pay for them. Come on consoles!  You can be great again! Give me something to cheer about from here on the side lines.

This blog was written by Jason Avent, managing director at Boss Alien and long time supporter of Develop in Brighton - www.developconference.com 

GUEST BLOG: My best meeting at the Develop Conference

After returning from the Develop Conference in Brighton this week, Mike Bithell - Develop Award-winning developer of Thomas was Alone - wrote this magical blog for Develop Online about his chance meeting with an ageing coder.   

The conference, well, it kinda rocked for me this year. The volunteer stewards kept recognising me. I got to hang out with a ton of awesome journos, devs and the charming as hell Pewdie. I won a hefty award. I ate donuts on a beach. It was a good three days. But one meeting stands out.

On the Wednesday morning, I wandered into the restaurant at the conference's venue bleary eyed. It was later than I'd like, and I knew I'd missed the Cerny keynote. I was gutted. I'm a bit of a Sony fan. I queued, surrounded by holidayers and pensioners, looking around for anyone I knew to chat with over buffet scrambled eggs and single serving jam sachets. Nobody. I was, alone.

Except I wasn't. In front of me in the queue stood a short, elderly lady, politely waiting her turn to be seated. We bonded, mocking the complexity of the breakfast buffet's seating arrangements, and the manager's insistence on precision. I think the manager may have overheard my giggling, as she came over and suggested that as we were 'getting along so well, maybe we'd like to sit together to take up less room'.

And so we did. I saw a couple of chuckling industry folks as we sat down for our breakfast date (and a fair few more nodding approval at me for keeping the lady company) but we got on well.

I went through the predictable small talk list when confronted by a woman of extended years. "Do you holiday in Brighton often?", "What do your children do?", "Have you met any interesting people on the coach trip?". We had a laugh, and I grew less and less concerned about missing the keynote.

And then she asked it, the question I fear from anyone over 50, the question that instantly turns me from 'charming young man' to 'peddler of filth and innocence corruption'.

"What do you do?"

I explained that I made games, not the ones with guns, but more artsy pretentious fare. She talked about her grandchildren's love of iPad games, but how she never could work them out, despite really enjoying animation growing up (she equated games to animation, which I liked). We chatted a bit about that, but then, conversation dried up. Searching, I tried a question that I was surprised hadn't occurred to me earlier..

"What did you do before retirement? Before having a family I mean?"

"I programmed architectural simulations"

I was astonished. Turns out the woman I'd pigeonholed as an 'old lady' was creating programs to balance bridges and ensure scaffolding held up in the early 70s. She was a physics programmer. At this point, I may have freaked her out a little with my enthusiasm. We chatted more about the systems she created before marriage and children whisked her off to the gender expectations of her day. She confided the many times she'd snuck out of the office to watch Popeye cartoons in the cinema. She was a fan of two things in her early 20s, programming and animation.

I leaned in, and in a staggered whisper I murmured, "If you'd been born 50 years later, you'd be an indie game developer like me".

She chuckled at this and nodded, we then had a 10 minute conversation about how character move speeds in games are calculated. She promised to pay a bit more attention next time she watched her grandchildren playing games.

Best meeting ever. And a story to tell the next idiot who tells me women 'don't get' games programming.

GUEST BLOG: Vive la punk!

As much as I don’t like to admit it, I’m an old bastard, having been in the industry in various forms for 20 plus years and working with the team at Sports Interactive for 19 years.

Miles Jacobson

In that time, I’ve seen a lot of changes. 20 years ago, hardly anyone was using email for a start, let alone high speed interweb that many people take as a human right nowadays. We’ve gone from bedroom coding, to being told that the only way to survive was to be a huge multi-project, multi-studio indie, from indie being the only way, to publisher owned being the only way, no studio IP ownership to Angry Birds toothpaste, from console being the only way to go, to mobile being the only way, and pretty much everyone up until a couple of years ago claiming that the PC was dead (for the record, we’ve done pretty well on PC constantly through this period).

It’s all been pretty exciting. We’re very lucky to be part of a constantly changing industry – the only stable thing being the entertainment we provide to people who play our games. But right now, for me, it is the most exciting the industry has ever been.

Effectively, we’re going through punk.

Barriers to entry have, by and large, been removed.  You can now make a game using one of the many platform tools available for next to nothing, and publish it yourself for Windows, Linux, Mac or Android with no barriers at all. Getting onto some of the digital retail platforms is harder, but in Steam Greenlight’s case, democratic. There are a few hurdles to cross on some of the others, but none of them unsurpassable. Unless you want to be on Xbox, but I expect that’ll change.

People making games in their spare time, and having hits. People able to make games around themes that they want to work on, rather than what the market tells you will sell. I’m very lucky in that, at SI, we’ve always made the games that we want to make with little interference, but I’m well aware that most in the last 20 years haven’t had that luxury.

Of course, this new punk isn’t utopia. There are still huge problems with discoverability no matter what platform you are on. I can name a lot of games that I thought would be a lot more successful than they have been, and others that have simply not been picked up on at all. When you have tens of thousands of games coming out a month, not all can be successful. But at least people are trying.

I see in the press a lot of the woes the industry has been through and still faces. But I don’t see enough celebration of the success stories, such as the dozens of teams that have gone from being made redundant to releasing their own creativity, the tools that give the power to the devs, the new IP so desperately needed to push the industry forward (hey – sports games are immune to criticism there, OK!)

What’s been really great for me to see has been the camaraderie amongst the new breed, particularly in the UK. I’m lucky to have met many of the devs and teams, both socially and via my work at UKIE, and it’s brilliant to see people helping each other out with discoverability which is the key to success – let’s not go the way of punk and let jealousy get in the way of getting creative work recognised. Or spit on each other. That would be bad.

Some old school publishers are learning, too. Those who aren’t fixated on next gen consoles and hundred million dollar budgets have either worked on their future business models already, or, well, just like so many record labels in the punk era, they won’t survive. They can certainly help with marketing, PR and finances for those projects that need it and, in many cases, will get extra sales on titles – but the best have learnt that they are not the talent who makes the games.

You, the developers reading this, are the talent. Make great games. The rest will follow. Vive la punk.

This blog was written by Miles Jacobson, managing director of Sports Interactive and Develop Conference advisory board member. Contact him on Twitter @milessi

GUEST BLOG: TALK ABOUT LUCKY

“Have you seen this game, Hunters?”, he said.

“Umm, yes, in fact my company created it.” I replied in mild shock.

“Cool.” he stated. His very words mirroring his disposition.

“Thanks... Why are you heading out to LA?” I asked, still recovering from having met an actual player of our game.

“Oh, I’m the Head of Licensing at Games Workshop.” he replied

“......”, speechless.

That’s how we met the Games Workshop head of licensing. Sat beside one another on a random plane trip to Los Angeles. Back then Laurent (co-founder and business director at Rodeo) and I didn't even fathom it would be the first steps down the path to us releasing an iOS version of their much loved Warhammer Quest. We were just enjoying meeting one of our childhood heroes! Time passes, and since then we've spoken to dozens of people about the inception of the project. The response is universally always the same....

"Wow! Talk about lucky!!"

I guess on the face of it, yes, it sounds more like a lottery winner story than Branson self-made-man style tale. However, as is often true of these anecdotes in our industry, meeting that particular man on that particular plane was inevitable because of how we’d positioned ourselves previously. Let me explain why...

Focus, know exactly who you are and what you do.

“We make the best turn-based strategy games on iOS”. That’s our company M.O. We have three games with a metacritic above 80 in our stable so far, and a hardcore group of fans who follow us for because they “get” what we’re trying to attain. We know who we are, and we know who we aren't  Dual stick shooters, gesture based sports titles, even flower growing sims are all experiences we've played and enjoyed. However, as a developer, our passion lies within the turn based arena. It’s something we've created a foundation for, and continue to build upon. It’s where we excel, what we love, and ultimately the fuel that runs our strange developmental machine. That single statement clearly explains to any outside force (whether fan, publisher, license holder, potential hire, etc), what our company is.

We know what we do. Come join us if you share our passion.

Have a solid history of games displaying the field you specialise in.

As I mentioned. At time of writing, we have three 80 and above metacritic titles. When we had the Games Workshop plane encounter we only had a lonesome release, Hunters: Episode One. However, Hunters 2 was in showable development, and was essentially a bigger and better version of the first title. Weekend philosophers say a picture is worth a thousand words... an entire game must be worth a billion. When a prospective partner can see and play your work, you’re no longer theorizing and explaining. THEY are experiencing. From that experience it’s much easier to envision how an existing license could work within your gameplay. I doubt many companies would entrust their hard-crafted licenses to a developer with no prior record.

Be visible.

This may sounds like a ridiculously obvious point. It’s funny though to see how many developers and people in general overlook it. Say, for example, you’re looking for a girlfriend / boyfriend. Would you sit at home, waiting for that perfect partner to chance a knock on your front door declaring their love. Ok, fine, if George Clooney is reading this, then feel free to ignore that last statement. However, the point still remains that no-one knows you. We knew that in our first year we’d really struggle to get our name out there. So, we attended conferences, shows, drinks nights, quizzes, all sorts, just to meet people. Ok, let’s face it, these functions are generally a lot of fun as well so I’d be hard pressed to say it was all work. Facebook, twitter, blogs and websites all count towards the goal in their way. As the world of dating will tell you though, nothing is as good as a face to face!

It won’t happen overnight. We still have a long way to go before Rodeo Games becomes even a vaguely recognisable industry name, but we’d have even further to go without all the founding effort.

Know what things you love.

...and by that, I don’t mean love EVERYTHING. Just some things. Be passionate about them. In no particular order a few of my object loves are: Dinosaurs, Games Workshop, Sharks, Forests, Computer Games, Cats, Movies (Can’t believe Universal gave Jurassic Park to another developer. Grrrr). Anyway, why does this matter I hear you ask? Let’s take the plane encounter with GW as an example. We didn't talk about how we could make them millions. Or how we could take their next digital business to the next level. Our conversation consisted of which BloodBowl teams we fielded. Why Fantasy Chaos Armies were so ridiculously overpowered about fifteen years ago, and why Space Wolves will always be cooler than Ultramarines (I feel I should point out the views of Rodeo Games do not reflect those of Games Workshop!). The love of subject matter shone through and in some way affected the final outcome. I'm pretty sure that if the seat next to me was occupied by a representative from Hasbro, we wouldn't be making a Transformers game right now.

Be prepared.

Ending on a point that seems so spectacularly simple, yet so many overlook... Know your business.

Don’t be the guy we've all seen on Dragons Den who doesn't know his numbers. It’s embarrassing and creates a terrible impression. If you've made the rather large steps of first creating a company and then putting yourself out there, take five minutes to know the ropes. Learn the difference between gross and net profits (Branson claimed to not know....I think he may be fibbing). Know how many units you sold in week one. Understand how advertising in games works, even if you don’t currently use it. Let knowledge be the armour that shields you from the lances of questioning and pressure. Did you ever not study for an exam? Actually I did once...and turned up drunk...though that’s probably a story for another time.

Know yourself, your business and your loves. Then get out there! You never know who you might meet.

Ben Murch will be talking at the Develop Conference on Wednesday 10 July http://ow.ly/mt1Mj 

GUEST BLOG: Next Gen Audio - The Power of Ideas

I’ve interviewed a few famous composers in my time. They’re an interesting bunch – some perfectly relaxed, some slightly frazzled, some completely hyper, but they all have something fascinating to say.

John Broomhall

A particularly memorable moment occurred in conversation with an iconic movie maestro in front of a live audience. Having discussed some of his key works, his history and how he goes about the job, we strayed into his working relationship with orchestrators. This is sometimes a touchy subject, but no problem here. He was delightfully candid and complimentary about the contribution of the team around him. Figuring the audience of two hundred or so aspiring composers waiting on his every word might be interested in his choice of software and sample libraries, I then posed the question: “So, tell us about your studio – what technology do you use?” The terse, and somewhat unexpected, response: “Technology? F*ck the technology! What I do is all about the power of ideas!”

There are certainly many celebrated instances of sound design for moving pictures that have everything to do with ideas and little to do with technology. In fact, many were created using equipment we would now consider laughably rudimentary. The creative approach is, however, extremely sophisticated. I first experienced something of this early in my career sitting in a wildlife dubbing session watching a now famed sequence of whales beaching themselves in some exotic locale. It didn’t occur to me that the accompanying sound was complete artifice until the well-known wildlife dubbing mixer pointed out the tiger, tank and aircraft sounds that had been manipulated and combined to sell the drama of that extraordinary moment when a gigantic mammal hurls itself out of the sea.

The actual location sound recorded by some poor bod with a microphone in situ was truly pathetic. The cleverly ‘designed’ sound was awesome. The fact it wasn’t real didn’t matter one bit. It conveyed the immensity of the spectacle. This was the power of an artist’s ideas in play: story-telling through the choice and mix of sounds.

Such creativity is, of course, just as relevant to games. We may be inextricably linked to technology, but the power of our creative ideas is a real differentiator. However, it may require us to stray from some obvious paths that both technology tools and videogame culture and heritage tend to point us towards. For instance, a literal approach to sound choices and mix is not necessarily entertaining, informative or compelling for games either.  It’s a useful starting point but overriding it and embellishing it for dramatic effect to engage the power of ideas in storytelling and narrative support through audio is a rich seam, ripe for plundering. 

Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are almost upon us. Their technical power for audio is clearly obviously important. Equally important is the creative ‘ideas power’ we bring to the table to go beyond the obvious and break new ground, bringing engaging, dramatic and impactful audio to the console games of tomorrow.

This blog was written by John Broomhall who is a game audio specialist and organises and chairs the Develop Conference Audio Track. He is currently finishing work on original music composition and production for a major AAA console title TBA soon.

Find out more at www.johnbroomhall.co.uk or get in touch on Twitter - @BPLGameAudio and @broomerslive