Evidently, my "inebriated discussions" last evening were more inebriated than I realized at the time, as I didn't rouse myself until noon-ish, unfortunately missing Rich Bartle's keynote, which I'm sure I would have enjoyed.

I expected that "User created content: bane or boon," would produce a clear divide between those who feel that most user-created content sucks (which it does) and Web 2.0 enthusiasts who believe that opening things up to the peepul and the democratization of media is the wave of the future--but it was actually more nuanced than that. Andy Tepper of A Tale in the Desert talked about the rating/filtering tools he's created to allow users to rate good content without making it obvious how players can "metagame" the system to get good ratings by sucking up to other players. Daniel James of Puzzle Pirates compared conventional MMOs to Vegas--a controlled, smooth, corporate happy-time experience, and "user-created content"-focused games to Burning Man--a spontaneous, user-created entertainment experience (and both, notably, in the Nevada desert). Walter Yarbrough of Mythic pointed out the obvious dangers of user-created content--some users will create inappropriate content--and basically came down on the side of "yes, we are Vegas, we are here to provide a safe playground for our players." While a fellow from Second Life (whose name I'm afraid I didn't catch) basically argued that while it's true that most user-created content sucks, if you have enough of it going on, a few will produce really cool content, that other users will find it, and that you can create a far larger and more interesting world this way than if you have to hire people to create it. (Second Life is very interesting in this regard; I used to regard it, like There and Habitat, as basically a pointless non-game virtual world--but at this point, there is enough cool user-generated content that being in the world may not be entirely pointless---they may have reached a kind of critical mass, enough "stuff to do" in a world that wasn't originally desinged with stuff to do, to make it sufficiently interesting to support an adequate user base.) And Dr Cat, whose Furcadia antedates almost every other MMO, has relied on user-created content almost since inception, made the kind of techno-libertarian plea for the democratization of media and the liberation of the user that you might expect.

I could hardly avoid a panel with the title of "MMO Rant," given my previous rants... And while it was entertaining and interesting, it was not as cynical, despairing, and vicious as the GDC rants. Jessica Mulligan pled with MMO designers not to make the same obvious mistakes that people have made so often in the past--things like not developing your community management tools until the last moment, not implementing the billing system until you go live, and nerfing particular powers or character classes without considering the implications for the player-base. Brian Green of Meridian 59 read a "fan's letter to Stephen King" that essentially recaptitulated, in this form, many of the idiotic claims of MMO players when talking with devs--e.g., "I have read a lot of these kinds of books, so I know how to write them better than you," or "I xeroxed your book and sold the original on e-Bay, which I think I'm entitled to do, because I spent so much time reading your book, so I feel I own it now." And Gordon Walton gave a lenghty presentation that, while it was specifically geared toward MMO designers, sounded like a talk I could easily have given--abjuring them to eschew imitiation of existing games, and strive for innovation. For which my basic response is "fat chance if your budget is $30m+, and the money providers will inevitably want to minimize any possible risk." Nice sentiment, but the reality of the market in which you operate makes what you want to achieve essentially impossible.

My final panel of the day was "Fun Meters for Games: Measuring the Player Experience," jointly presented by Nicole Lazzaro and Larry Mellon--two people I've met before and wouldn't, a priori, thought had much in common. Lazzaro comes out of a cognitive science background, and runs a consulting company dealing with "user experience" issues in which she does small-group tests, photographing and analyzing player responses on a moment-to-moment basis to gameplay; Mellon is a technologist, interested in mining data resulting from user play and producing reports showing how players responded to different aspects of a game. I'm of two minds about the whole venture; on the one hand, I have always though things like focus groups are a complete waste of time and money--the results are way too susceptible to the biases of the person conduting and intepreting the testing, and what you tend to get is "least common denominator" bullshit that simply interferes with fearless implementation of individual creative vision. On the other hand, concrete, quantifiable data about how users actually use a product, particularly a highly complicated product such as an MMO, can be invaluable in terms of tuning that game. Lazzaro and Mellon's pitch was also couched in terms that left me schizophrenic; they suggested that being able to test gameplay elements as early as feasible and adjust them early could enable more innovative gameplay, because this would allow you to take greater risks in the early stages of development--but realistically, I found that wholly unconvincing. The barriers to innovation are, in the final analysis, based in the purblind stupidity, aversion to risk, and contempt for the audience of the publishers; better tools for assessing "what works" might help us avoid bad games in existing styles, but I can't really see them as being all that helpful in implementing new styles, given the other barriers to such. So what they're suggesting is a good thing, but doesn't, I think, solve the central problem of the field.

Though I am gratified that others do =see= what I think is the central problem of the field.

From a business perspective, the main value of conferences such as this comes in the corridor discussions between panels, rather than in the panels themselves; and in this regard, the AGC is not the ideal event for me, since Manifesto is focussed on indie games, and AGC speciaolizes in online and mobile. Still, "niche MMO's" are one of the areas we want to go after, and in that regard it has had some utility: We have an LoI from Three Rings (Puzzle Pirates), have been promised one from Brian Green (Meridian 59), and have a follow-up to pursue with Andrew Tepper (A Tale in the Desert).

Other "corridor" conversations were with David Thomson of Slam, a Scottish developer (and ex-Games Kitchen, a mobile developer I thought highly of), and a fellow introduced by Damion Shubert of Wolfpack who (somewhat apologetically) posed the toughest questions about what we're trying to do of anyone I've yet encountered---which actually is highly useful, since as I have more investor contact, I'm going to have to answer a lot of very tough questions about why and whether what we're trying to do makes sense.

The evening was rounded out with a dinner, sponsored by the conference for speakers, with Lee Sheldon, Mike Steele, Gordon Walton, Jessica Mulligan, Raph Koster, Ted Castronova, and Eric Goldberg in attendance.
posted by Greg at 12:45 AM 4 comments

Got in late last night in Austin (too late to dine with Allen Varney and Eric Goldberg) and so slept late enough this AM to miss John Smedley's keynote at the Austin Game Conference. But by all accounts, I didn't miss much.

I like the AGC; not only have I been here every year, but I was at Gordon Walton's "IGDN" conference in Austin years ago, before the IGDN merged with the Computer Game Developers Association to form the IGDA. I mean, if you =have= to live in a godforsaken place like Texas, Austin is where you want to be--at least there's =some= kind of boho life here.

And it helps that I have friends here -- Allen, Warren & Caroline, Steve J and Gordon. I could almost see living here, for all that it's Car Culture America. (Never forgetting that some Americans -do- live in civlized places, where you can get around by subway and bike).

In the AM, I hit a panel on out-sourcing customer service for MMOs with John Erskine of NC Soft/North America and Sven Hindman of Webzen, America, which mostly served to drive home to me why the original business idea behind the Themis Group didn't work. That idea was that as MMOs become a real business, it willl inevitably spawn subordinate businesses that specialize in particular areas of operations--and Themis's idea was that it would provide community management services. What Themis hadn't anticipated was that many operations would view "community management" as a subset of "customer service," and that operations in places like India and the Philippines would show up bidding, at lower cost, for that business. MMOs are highly specialized operations, and Themis still has far more expertise in how to manage MMO communities than anyone else--but the panelists made a compelling case for outsourcing first-responder business to overseas partners, while retaining more difficult tickets for inhouse staff. Luckily for Themis, they've expanded (successfully) into areas like marketing and consulting--but it's clear to me that if there is any future for a US operation to be involved in community management, it's more along the lines of finding trustworthy partners abroad, managing the relationship with them, and handling issues they can't resolve--rather than providinng an all-in-one solution. And I doubt the Themis gusy want to spend a lot of time in India, so they're probably better off letting the original business idea go, and concentrating on the marketing side, where they've had a lot of success.

I then had lunch with Brian "Psychochild" Green, who ruus Meridian 59, a niche MMO, and the sort of game Manifesto wants to support. MMOs don't fit the sort of business model that works for most downloadable games--most niche MMOs offer the client as a free download, and monetize the consumer by requiring a subscription after some free trial period. Brian has been ranting about the problems of the industry for almost as long as I, we're clearly fellow travellers, and I'd been emailing back and forth about what kind of business model might work for operatios like his; and I think we've hit on one, which basically involves us offering the client as a free download, and a bounty payment if someone who downloads from us becomes a paid subscriber. Daniel James, creator of Puzzle Pirates, also seemed to think that works, so I think that will become our basic offer to niche MMOs. Not really sure Brian and I settled on anything we hadn't in previous emails, but facetime is always helpful in solidifying a relationship.

I missed the next session, as I had to wander back to my hotel--a good mile awayy, a cheapo Motel 8--welcome to the life of the penny-piching entrepreneuur--to get my laptop for my presentation, which was on, in essence, why current mobile games suck and what the "true mobile game" might look like--probably post the slides when I get back--likely my last apperance as a "mobile game guy" for some time, as Manifesto has nothing to do with mobile (I agreed to give the talk when I was still with Nokia).

After that, I attended a panel moderated by Gordon Walton on new business models for MMOs, panelists including Jessica Mulligan, Eugene Evans (currently of Mythic) and John Donham of SOE. Basically, nobody (much) in North America is moving away from the subcrsciptionn model, although SOE willl be annoucning a game on a different model "sony--soon only not yet", and Jess was strongly advising newer entants to adopt a "free play, but upsell with item purchse" model to compete with more well capitalized competitors.... which is fine, expect that it makes my dicuussion with Brian look moot. If that's the future model for fringe MMOs, the bounty idea does't work, and how the hell do I support them?

Sigh.

Then a short meeting with Art Min, who's decided to leave Warren's new company for an uncertain life as an indie game developer and may do somethig for us--maybe even an original tite for the site launch, which could be intersting... and then to the conference party, where I had somewhat inebriated conversations with Dave Rickey, Elina Koivisto, Mark Friedler, and Len Quam (who may soon have exciting news I am not at liberty to discuss).

More tomorrow, to be sure.
posted by Greg at 2:21 AM 3 comments

Hey, publicity never hurts:

Manifesto Games in Business Week.
posted by Greg at 4:57 PM 4 comments

Okay, so I said I'd narrow it down to a final six, and here they are.

I'm going alpha by file name, so order does not indicate priority.

Snetman's Man!festo logo. Clean, good design, works at various sizes and (with rejiggering) format.

Chibar's is very rough--and perhaps a tad rude (the bird appears to be, um shitting a grenade), but the very roughness is appealing, given our basic 'tude.

Vince Twelve's logo is also rough, and appealing for that very reason.

Matt Smith's is polished and gets across that "we have a message.

Nollind Whachell's megaphone logo (on the right) is clean and useable, and the megaphone implies "street demonstration," providing the revolutionary sensibility we offer without saying "I Heart Stalin."

Rich Wilson's "M-in-a-gear" is workable, clean, and a nice compromise between polish and roughness.

Comment now or forever hold your peace :).
posted by Greg at 4:52 PM 5 comments

"Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream."
-- Chris Anderson, Wired, Oct. 2004
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html

"The connectedness of the Web is transforming what's inside and outside your business — your market and your employees.... There's a new conversation between and among your market and your workers. They're telling one another the truth, in very human voices.... It's making them smarter and it's enabling them to discover their human voices. You have two choices. You can continue to lock yourself behind facile corporate words and happytalk brochures—or you can join the conversation."
-- The Clutetrain Manifesto, Levine et al.
http://www.cluetrain.com/book/index.html

"Network effects from user contributions are the key to market dominance in the Web 2.0 era."
-- Tim O'Reilly, "What Is Web 2.0?"
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html?page=1
posted by Greg at 4:44 PM 3 comments

Funding

I talked earlier about site development, and said I would blog later about funding and business development. Today's post: funding.

As part of my personal due diligence, back in April I flew up to Boston to talk with Polaris Ventures. I'd sent a copy of my first draft executive summary to Eric Goldberg, one of my oldest friends; he works with Polaris, and set up a meeting with them. It was carefully couched not as a "pitch session," but more as "here is an interesting idea; what do you think?" From Eric's perspective, it was both a favor to me, and a good thing for Polaris; they're interested in the game space, and have invested in Turbine, among others, and connecting them to smart people in gaming makes Eric look good. From Polaris's standpoint, it was maybe a bit of a waste of time, as I was way too early for them to invest in, but it was potentially interesting, and who knows, it might be something worth looking at more closely in future.

From my perspective, this was ideal: A way, in essence, to market-test the idea before the kind of people I'd need to sell on Manifesto eventually. And a way to validate whether or not this was a remotely fundable opportunity.

In addition to Eric, three guys from Polaris participated: Steve Arnold, Shaival Shah, and Mike Hirshland. I gave my pitch, and--they liked it. They'd looked closely at the casual downloadable space, and this was close enough that they understood that Manifesto might work--but the fact that it was different was also a positive. There's been a lot of investment in the casual space, and it wasn't clear that another investment there makes sense. They also liked the "openness to the community" aspect I was pushing; "this is a new way of marketing to fan communities" (their line, not mine.)

They did not, of course, write me a check on the spot; I hadn't expected that, and the meeting wasn't couched that way. But what they said did validate some things for me: Manifesto is potentially investible; the idea makes sense, from the perspective of smart VCs with knowledge of the space; and I can certainly go back to them later.

When I went to Melbourne, I met with Ben Palmer of IR Gurus, the creators of Heroes of the Pacific; he rather brought me up short, pointing out that taking venture money is a deal with the devil. Five years out, they will want a liquidity event, which means either an IPO, which is unlikely (particularly post-Sarbanes Oxley), or a buy-out. And you can't assume that a buyer will sustain the corporate ethos of openness and friendliness to developers that we want to foster. Ben's idea was to find funding from something like IBM--which is a strong supporter of open-source development, and (he thought) might find promotional value from supporting an operation like Manifesto.

Ben's right, in that taking venture money has repurcussions down the road--but we do need some capital to make this work, and while it may be a deal with the devil, it's a deal we'll have to make. I've looked into the IBM route a little, and I can't see that happening--and I don't see any other potential patron on the horizon. So hi ho, hi ho, it's off to Kleiner Perkins I go...or whomever.

At the beginning of this month, I decided to take the plunge; I believe this can work, and while it would be ostensibly possible to start looking for money even while working for Nokia, I felt greasy about trying to do that. I didn't think it was right to start doing serious work for my own venture while still drawing a salary. So I decided: Screw it, let's go.

This meant, of course, that Johnny and I went out naked: we had no funding, no business deals in hand, and no technology in place when we announced. But what the hell. Someone should do this. If not us, who?

At this point, we need to be working toward a seed round of ~$1m, while also working toward a venture round of ~$5m. It's reasonable to ask what we need the money for; the seed round would allow us to bring some engineers on staff to build out the back end, pay for some initial promotion and marketing, cover legal expenses, and so on---I'm not even sure that Johnny and I would go on salary (or full salary, anyway) on the close of such a round. $5m would allow us to build out the site, and do marketing at the scale I think is necessary to get us where we want to be.

But we are early even for a seed round, and as for a venture round--we need to show a lot of progress. Lightning could strike, of course, but I don't expect that to happen for 18 months, at a bare minimum.

Here's what we need to do to "show progress:"

1. Get the site launched, or at least work toward the site launch, as expeditiously as feasible. We have a pretty aggressive slate of features we want for that launch, mostly involving ways to involve the community---not just a forum, but things like player reviews, player ratings, and an Amazon-style recommendations system.
   
2. Get Letters of Intent (and later, actual contracts) with a whole lot of developers and publishers, partly to establish business relationships with them, and partly to have a sheaf of paper to wave under potential investors' noses to demonstrate that yes, we can find the high-quality independent games we say we can find to make the business work.
   
3. Attach people to the company to fill the gaps that Johnny and I don't fill. For one thing, we say "we are a marketing-driven company," but neither Johnny nor my resume exactly says "This guy can sell." I hope to have something to announce in that regard soon, but there clearly needs to be a third partner. Similarly, it would be great to have someone with serious e-commerce experience attached, whether as a partner or advisor, and someone with serious ESD experience. A CTO would be nice, too.
   

Of course, all of these things can take a while.... and in the interim, you want to show progress on a month-to-month basis, so you can ping potential investors frequently, saying, "Hey! We're making progress."

E.g., in the few short weeks since we announced the company, Manifesto Games has:

• Enlisted a dozen engineers, who are currently working to deploy the back-end technology we need, working for equity and air;
  
• Obtained two LoI's from potentially important marketing partners, and ten from developers/publishers expressing an interest in working with us;
  
• And obtained coverage of the company in all the main game industry news sites, including Gamespot, Joystiq, 1Up, and Gamesindustry.biz, along with high-profile blogs such as Slashdot and Boingboing---with an article in Business Week Online in progress.
  

Pretty impressive, IMO, given the small amount of time involved--and I hope to be able to announce similar levels of progress every few weeks.

The reality is that we will probably not be able to close on a seed round until after we have a site launch, which I'm guesstimating at next March, unless lightning strikes and we get a bellwether investor who is willing to put up $100k, and bring in others. But we have to start making those contacts now. Yesterday, I put in to present at an iBreakfast event in November; that's one local NYC grouping of angel (and early stage VC) investors. No guarantees they'll go for it, and I'm not completely happy with the level of polish to the exec sum. But I didn't want to miss their deadline.

Similarly, there is a Tri-State Angels pitch session I plan to hit in early November; and the New York Angels has monthly meetings. Plus, I expect to go back to the individual and early-stage investors in my previous venture. I lost them money, but I think I have a good pitch: We weren't wrong. Unplugged Games was one of the first mobile game companies in North America, and our business plan was pretty similar to that of Jamdat's. We didn't manage to close on a serious venture round, so went out of business; Jamdat did. Jamdat is now public, with a market cap of $600m.

It may seem perverse to go back to people whose money I have already lost--but basically, I didn't lose them money by being wrong--I lost it by the failure of NY VCs to be as smart as California VCs, and support us--not because the business idea was a bad one. This time, let's get it right.

Today, I had a meeting with Interactive Corp, which owns match.com, evite, and slew of other net businesses; the takeaway was "You're too early, but keep in touch, keep us apprised of your progress,", which is all I can realistically ask for at the moment. And I have an expression of interest from Intel--a highly attractive potential strategic investor, but they never lead--I'd have to have a serious VC attached first.

And this weekend, I meet with Eric to plan fund-raising strategy.

Also.... I've been approached by a half dozen people who are willing to consider investment in the $5k-$10k range. I'm not all that eager; I'd rather be working toward a seed round in the $1m range, with a minimum investment of $25k. But if necessary, I'll consider a range of "pre-seed" investment at this level, to pay for random expenses, legal, and such. When I've nailed the business plan, I'll be sending it to them. But frankly, if I can avoid that, I will; an investor, at whatever level, deserves a certain degree of attention and engagement from management, and I'd rather be spending the time engaging with 10 inventors in a $1m round than an arbitrary number of pre-seed investors.

(And yes, if you are interested in investing, at whatever level, I am interested in hearing from you, with some warnings:

1. Investing at this early stage is HIGHLY risky. We could fail to achieve the next stage of investment. We could utterly screw up. We could have misread the market entirely. If you can't afford to lose whatever you're investing, I don't want to take your money. You are buying a lottery ticket.

2. Even if the company works out, investing at this stage carries an additional risk; later stage investors tend to cram down early stage ones. The likelihood is that your investment will be greatly diluted by further investment. Management (e.g., me) has a way of protecting themselves against that dilution; investors are generally willing to offer options to management that allow them to recoup their dilution, or some portion of it, if they meet defined objectives. Early stage investors don't generally have that option.

3. T-bills are nice, and provide a good, predictable return.

4. For the love of god, Montrachet... Be clear on what you're doing.)

If you're still feeling foolhardy, feel free to contact me. greg +at+ manifestogames +dot+ com.
posted by Greg at 2:14 AM 4 comments

The final batch is up on the site.

Over the next few days, we'll winnow these down to six finalists... And a few days after that, select the winner.

However, this point I'd like to point out the ones I'm leaning toward...

I still like Nathan Benner image, though per comments, I seem to be alone here. The image of an angry working-class guy with a CD (or maybe it's Eminem) works for me.

The Fused Network logs are all clean, scalable, and professionals; commenters like the bottom one, but none of them really jump out at me.

Matt Smith's "radiating folder" logo says "we have a message!" without getting too revolution-chic about the whole thing.

Rich Wilson's M-in-a-gear was the popular favorite among the first batch.

Chris Norman's logo is also clean, scalable, professional, and would work fine.

Dan1xn's logotypes are all nice designs--I like the use of the exclamation point in the final, though I'm not sure I like the font choice there.

Jason Grlicky's entry is among the most useable of the more "revolutionary" entries, but maybe still too "Commie."

Jeff McArthur's are also a popular favorite; I'm concerned, though that "tank" may say "wargame" too too many people, and that scalability is a problem.

Kuma's third entry is a good clean design; the star says "revolution" without being too Red.

Adam Snetman's logo-type-with-exclamation point works quite well, I think. Of the "fist" images,I also think this one is among the best.

Ben Sones's "break chains" is a very cool image--not it works with the logotype, but that's fixable.

Chibar's is just bizarre--but that's a big point in it's favor. It sure don't look like EA or Konami...

These entries from the Hypermedia Lab at the University of Tampere are all well executed; of them, my favorite is the "breaking chains" one where the chains are not symmetrical.

Jarem's speedy-CD logo is nice design, and the degree of italicization is "in your face"--but perhaps it's too cool (as opposed to "heated") for us.

Mark Gleim's "open hand-cuffs" image is striking and different, and he shows how it can be used in different configurations, depending on where it's needed.

The flame logo from Tess is a nice design, and "keeping the flame alive" is an interesting alternative motif...

I like the roughness of Vince Twelve's designs; the roughness of them does say "indie" and "anti-corporate" (or, as I prefer to think, differently corporate :).

Tcain's logo is another treatment of the exclamation point theme.

Mettux's "star logo" gets across "revolutionary", I think, while not being excessively Commie.

Monk's logo looks clean and well designed, and the (M) image again gets across "we have a message" without being over-the-top.

Nolind Whachell's contributions also work; nice design, clearly there's a message, but it isn't "fist in your face."

Karen Sideman's "broken CD-case forming an M" is a striking design.

Matt Friedman's logo design (and also this one are nicely professional designs--they'd certainly work, but maybe a little too smooth for us.

Rich Bartle's contribution (yes, that Rich Bartle) is actually quite good, despite his protestations that he is not an artist and did this on a goof. The roughness is a big part of its appeal, and the "flag"-ish nature gets across "revolutionary movement" without being Commie-cliche. I could see this image on, say, a poster advertising a band playing at the Fillmore in San Francisco circa 1968--not a bad association to bring to mind.

And finally, ToT's logo is a clean, corporate design--but the plunging red triangle in the M gets across a certain confrontational vigor.
posted by Greg at 5:29 PM 3 comments

The Arts & Leisure section of the New York Times today does something I had never expected to see; the top story on the first page (with another full page farther in) is about a game. In this case, it's about Rockstar's forthcoming The Warriors, and is written by Seth Schiesel, who has been writing regularly about games for the Times (supplementing the brief reviews by Charles Herrold for what remains of the Times's Circuit section).

I am, of course, pleased to see this further validation of the movement of games into public consciousness--and to be sure, games should always have been part of Arts & Leisure rather than Circuits, since they are a popular art, and Arts & Leisure has always been devoted to coverage of both the popular and fine arts.

The actual article itself, however, leaves me with unhappy questions. The piece does three things: it talks about how Rockstar has been controversial; it riffs off an interview with Don Houser, Rockstar's creative VP; and it discusses the gameplay.

Clearly, the motivation for giving the piece this much prominence, and Schiesel so much space in the section, is not the game itself; it is the fact that Rockstar is controversial. While Schiesel provides a broad-brush outline of the controversy over GTA, he does not delve into it particularly deeply--nor does he discuss Bully, which is likely to engender far more controversy than The Warriors, and would have been a more appropriate topic if the purpose of the piece is to explore the controversy. Of course, The Warriors is releasing this week, while Bully is scheduled for early 2006. In other words, Schiesel is also being used in a Rockstar promotional effort; my guess is that a publicist from Rockstar contacted him in an effort to engender coverage of The Warrior around its release, dangling the offer of an interview with Don Houser as bait--good bait, as the Housers (and both Rockstar and Take Two management generally) have taken to avoiding the press, for obvious reasons. This is, of course, the nature of journalism; journalists often know they are being used, but agree to allow this in order to get a good story.

From my perspective, of course, this is disappointing; I would not mind a story analyzing the GTA controversy, and I would not mind a critical analysis of The Warriors; but as written, the piece does neither adequately.

In his inteview, Houser gives us the usual game industry line about how games will be the predominant popular art of the new century, which is of course unexceptional but not terribly interesting, at least to those of us who know what a D-pad is for. And there are quotes from Houser talking about the game--not terribly interestingly, one can virtually see the publicist at his elbow, ensuring that he stays on message--and away from any direct discussion of controversy.

When Scheisel discusses the game directly, it feels as if he hasn't played it himself, but is, in essence, paraphrasing marketing materials. He talks about the game environments, the fact that many game objects can be picked up and used as improvised weapons, and the overall arc of the story--a 70s New York gang must fight its way from the Bronx to its home in Coney Island. All very well, but the most important questions are left unexamined--e.g., how does this game differ from other brawlers? Is the world as open-ended as GTA, or are the players on rails? And so on.

Schiesel is also perhaps too soft on Rockstar. For example:

"Yet even as Rockstar games have been lionized for their expansive designs and rich style...."

Well, no. GTA has been lionized for its expansive designs and rich style. Most other Rockstar titles disappear quickly under the waves. Rockstar pushes for the controversial, but other than that, there's no clear style, approach, or shared modality across its line. Indeed, you could instead say that Rockstar is basically a one-hit wonder. In addition, while Schiesel covers the cultural controversy, he leaves untouched analyst's questions about the reliability of Take Two's accounts (Take Two owns Rockstar) and the nature of some of its past practices--a story that perhaps belongs in the business section rather than Arts & Leisure, but someone should pursue.

Finally, Schiesel seems to ascribe to Houser a creative role, both in The Warriors and in Rockstar's other titles; actually, as creative VP, Houser's role is probably mainly at the greenlight stage. The Warriors is actually developed by Rockstar's Toronto studio, and its creation should properly be ascribed to the top-line talents involved in its production--the lead designer, tech lead, art director, and lead producer, whomever they may be. It is as if a studio exec were interviewed about a new movie--any film journalist worth his salt would prefer to interview the director or producer, surely. In other words, it's nice that the Times is giving games more coverage--but the nature of this coverage implies that the people providing it have nothing like the understanding and experience of the industry as the people covering other media. Perhaps it's just a matter of time before they develop such, and perhaps Rockstar would not be happy at permitting an interview with the actual creators--but I think we can only consider this kind of coverage adequate and mature when they do.
posted by Greg at 10:07 AM 13 comments

At the University of Art and Design Helsinki, I recently gave this presentation on games and storytelling; followers of my previous thoughts on the topic will find that there's much here I've talked about previously, but with at least one new thought added; that perhaps we can find new ways of integrating stories and gameplay by constraining gameplay in a way that produces emergent stories.

And at the Future Play conference (which ended yesterday), I talked about the need to create new game styles, which a historical look at how people have done so in the past, and some thoughts for how to do so in future.
posted by Greg at 1:22 AM 3 comments

The second batch of logos is up now.... comments and suggestions welcome.

Also, the site redesign is done. I chose Jeff McArthur's (of Blue Gill Studios) design; he included one of the logos he submitted to the logo contest. I decided to leave it in for now, but you shouldn't take that as an indication that I'll select it ultimately--it can always be changed (albeit the palette of the site might have to be changed to match).
posted by Greg at 3:56 PM 3 comments

It’s 5 AM here, but I’ve been up for a couple of hours, and need to get up fairly soon anyway, so despite the fact that I’m exhausted, I might as well blog a bit. (I’m taking an 8 AM train to Tampere, where I have a six hour meeting to discuss "pervasive games" with researchers from Nokia and the University of Tampere's Hypermedia Lab--not particularly relevant to Manifesto, but interesting nonetheless.)

At present, we need to do three things, simultaneously: site development, business development, and the pursuit of funding. For today's lecture, we will discuss site development; over the next week or so, I will subsequently post on the other two.

If we wished to do so, we could get a bare-bones site up in probably a month, using something like Zen Cart. However, this would not, in fact, be particularly useful; it would be a static e-commerce site, and would not have anything like the functionality we need to succeed.

Why do I say that? Without going off into a lot of theoretical discussion along the lines are "markets are conversations" or "Web 2.0 depends on harnessing user-created value" (both of which are true and inform our efforts), the fact is that the value we can potentially offer to developers and publishers is the creation of a community of people who might not otherwise be exposed to their games. In other words, we need to be able to say to people who provide us with games, "We will not cannibalize your sales, instead we will offer incremental sales you would not otherwise get"--and that justifies the fact that we ask for a piece of the retail sale.

To create an effective community of people, we need more than a bare-bones forum. One thing we need is a way for community members to help "bubble up" games that we might otherwise overlook to the top. That is, we plan on offering a lot of games, and while we'll select some to feature that we think are cool, our tastes are not infallible, and we may not have the time to really look at all of the games we offer in detail. So instead, we need user reviews, user rankings, best-seller lists, and this kind of thing.

We also need ways for the community to contribute, not just in terms of user reviews and forum contents, but making it easy to recommend games to friends, to offer Amazon like "people who bought ATTACK OF THE SPACE FNORDS also bought NINJAS FROM GALAXY X", etc., etc. (You may ask "how does a recommendation system like that mean I'm contributing to the community"--but you are, if not directly. Your purchase behavior helps inform the purchase decisions of others. Which points back to the "Web 2.0 depends on user-created value" concept.)

And ideally, we want to be able to host user blogs and profiles, run regular chats with our staff and developers, allow users to contact each other without knowing their email addresses, etc., etc. We need a whole boatload of community features, in other words. Plus e-commerce features, plus content publishing, plus good security.

That means we need to start from a good, flexible code base that's open source, so we can modify and extend it easily, and is well architected. And in fact, we know what we'll start from: Drupal (which is LAMP based--an acronym meaning "Linux/Apache/mySQL/PHP", the technologies on which Drupal is based. Although we might actually use FreeBSD instead of Linux, but that's another discussion).

So far so good--but where do we get the developers? If I had the necessary funding at this point, it's straight forward: I'd go looking for a good database guy, a couple of good PHP programmers comfortable with Linux, and so on. But I don't have funding, and I still need to make progress toward launching the site--both because I want to get it up quickly, and because any progress we can show will help potential investors feel more comfortable about investing, since it ameliorates the risk.

Which is why, of course, when we first announced Manifesto here, I asked people with relevant development chops to contact me. And the response was excellent; we now have an email list with 20+ people on it who have offered to contribute, one of them has set up a (private) forum for discussions, and we have a barebones install of Drupal (and relevant packages that extend it) for people to play with.

There are two problems that now need to be solved. The first is to define more closely what we're going to try to accomplish. I have a site overview document, which the developers have received, and it's good as far as it gets, but the next step is essentially information architecture (a term I find annoying, but it's now pervasive). In essence, I need to give them a sense of what's on the main page, what's on a typical games page, what the flow toward purchase is, and so on--both so they can see what features are relevant, and also to start to build a database model. At present, I'm really the only person who can do this, since I'm the one who knows what I want built--but of course, I'm also pursuing bus dev and funding at the same time, and priorities there often make it hard for me to spend time on site development. (E.g., a local angels group is having a pitch meeting in early November, I really need to get them a revised exec sum and bus plan ASAP…) And all the travel I'm doing this month doesn't help.

The second big problem is figuring out how to organize the group, figure out who's going to do what, and get them started. Not only are these all volunteers, meaning I can cajole and jolly but not much more, and that they all have other (paying) work to accomplish, but they're all over the planet. And, of course, without sitting down with them in an office, it's hard to get a sense of who is really good and who isn't. And while many of them seem to have truly l33t skillz, I -am- worried that I may not have a top-notch SQL guy, which is essential.

So developing a project plan--and reworking and reshaping it with the developers--is another top priority, and something I'll be addressing when I get back. And also working out a schedule of regular meetings, via VoIP and IM… Managing programmers is notoriously like herding cats, but this is like herding cats on Mars via radio control…

Definitely feeling the lack of a good project manager here, but we do what we can.

Currently, the plan is to launch in four to six months--which is aggressive, but doable, I think. Certainly not all the features I want will be in place when we launch, but that's okay; functionality can be added over time.
posted by Greg at 11:08 PM 3 comments

Well, I'm checked into my hotel in Helsinki--and given that my last trip was to Australia, I have to say, going to Europe seems a lot less grueling than I previously thought--practically a gay little jog around the park.

Although my flight out of JFK was delayed in New York, I missed my connection at Charles de Gaulle, and as a result missed meeting up with an indie developer here--but I'm sure we'll hook up at some point.

Im not actually delighted to be here; because of this trip, I'll be missing both the State of Play conference in New York and the Indie Games Con, which given what we're trying to do is obviously where I should be. But I do have a prior commitment; months ago, I agreed to lecture in the Games and Storytelling series of lectures sponsored by the University of Art and Design/Helsinki (I'll post the slides here later). And, while I was working for Nokia, I used to get to Finland 3-4 times a year, to consult with colleagues here--most of the game design group is in Tampere. The assumption was that I'd do the same, and in fact, I'll be having some final meetings while here. I'll also be attending a meeting of the Finnish chapter of the IGDA.

I'm delighted to see that I do have broadband connectivity here, so I won't be absolutely out of touch--no surprise, really, as Finland is if anything more wired than the States. And of course, this means my WoW character won't get lonely. My old-school N-Gage isn't finding a signal, though, even though it's supposed to be broadband--I guess Cingular doesn't have a roaming agreement with anyone locally, and I don't have a local SIM card. Typical--of Cingular, I mean. I really have to look into Skype for these kind of situations. (Update: Oh, hey... I have bars now... through RadioLinja)

At present, I'm mostly catching up and trying to stay awake long enough to go to bed at a reasonable time locally. I did what I always do when I get into Finland--went out and get some soda so I don't have to hit the overpriced minibar, plus some crackers, cheese, pickled herring, and potato chips in some bizarre Finnish flavor--in this case, "feta and spring onion." (The Finns believe that Greek cuisine is high-class--I guess a lot of them vacation in Greece, and they spend rather high prices to eat at white-tablecloth Greek restaurants here. Me, I go to Uncle George's in Queens, and gorge on amazing taramosalata and pretty good lamb for <$10 a person--with wine, if you can believe that.)

Travel seems to come in spurts; my last one was in March, but October is full too. Two days after I get back, I speak at an IBM-sponsored conference on networked games (luckily just a day trip upstate). October 13-15, I'll be at the Future Play conference at Michigan State inn East Lansing; and of course Oct 27-28, I'll be at the Austin Game Conference. In early November, I have a one day consulting gig in Portland--but hopefully, things then slack off for a few months.

I mean, I always enjoy going someplace and talking to smart people about games--but the actual act of air travel is now, if anything, quite ugly, and of course, time you're in the air without a net connection is time you are not Building Shareholder Value, which is of course what we live for. Not that I have shareholders yet.
posted by Greg at 1:44 PM 4 comments

...Can be viewed here. I've constrained all to a height of 200 pixels, so some are less viewable on that page than others; you can click through to view any in full size.

Comments are welcome, although as I've said, we'll be sole judge ultimately.

Oh, btw... they're in alpha order by file name, so don't make any assumptions about what I like by the order of appearance.
posted by Greg at 7:05 PM 5 comments