The Challenge: Come up with an image--based on a major publisher's logo, or a box cover, or an ad, or something else--that makes fun of the game industry's lack of innovation, poor business practices, willingness to publish dreck, or whatever else you find amusing.

...how about safe and sane labor practices for the people on whose backs you walk for your millions?--EA_spouse

The Rules: Image must be no larger than 640x480, and provided as a GIF, JPEG, or PNG. You retain all rights to your work, except that you grant us the right to display the image on our site as part of the contest. We reserve the right to reject something that's particularly gross, libelous, or otherwise illegal, but otherwise, pretty much anything goes. Images will be uploaded here.

Take-Two... is facing another inquiry by the [SEC], this time over its stock-options grants. --TheStreet.com

Read the rest on the MFG site
posted by Greg at 11:10 AM 25 comments

Last month, Capcom announced that it was dissolving Clover Studios, the developers of Viewtiful Joe and Okami. The announcement came a bare month after the release of Okami, a game that has received rave reviews virtually across the board, and boasts an astounding Metacritic score of 93. Game Informer, IGN, and EGM all awarded Okami the title of "Game of the Month."

Why are they dissolving Clover Studios? Because of Okami's "disappointing sales."

Last year, Majesco, a smaller publisher best known for its GameBoy Advance titles, released Psychonauts, a game created by Tim Schafer--famous for his work on the old LucasArts Adventures. Psychonauts had originally been commissioned by Microsoft, but MS dropped it during development, and Majesco picked up the game. It received rave reviews virtally across the board, and boasts a noticeably high Metacritic score of 86. Psychonauts received awards from the British Academy, IGN, EGM, and PC Gamer, as well as a Game Developers Choice Award, arguably the most prestigious award in the field.

Industry scuttlebut says that Psychonauts has sold fewer than 50,000 [100,000, per comments] copies; I don't know the game's budget, but given the quality of its graphics, the size of the game, and release on multiple platforms, I'd be astonished if it were under $5m [$14m, per comments]. Majesco lost its shirt, in other words--and being a smaller publisher, it ran into big trouble as a result, and was forced to cut way back, and was for a time threatened with NASDAQ delisting.

The year before, UbiSoft released Beyond Good and Evil, which was created by Michael Ancel, one of the creators of the Rayman franchise. It was originally intended to be the first game in a series. Despite glowing reviews, and a Metacritic score of 87, Ubisoft viewed its sales as "disappointing," and there will be no sequels. Beyond Good and Evil received awards from IGN, Tech TV, and Play Magazine, as well as the "Best Gameplay" Award at the Leipzig Games Conference.

In other words, all three of these games were developed by creators with sterling reputations and a history of excellent past work; all three received glowing reviews and multiple awards; and in all three cases, they are viewed as "failures." Which I presume all three are, on a pure ROI basis.

Are there analogous products in other media?

Certainly. In film, for example, people often talk of "prestige films." Prestige films are not expected to do blockbuster numbers at the box office; prestige films are funded by studios for several reasons, but all of them center on the idea of adding luster to the studio's reputation, and ensuring that others in the industry view the studio as an attractive partner for future projects. Prestige films are typically made at somewhat lower budgets, and actors who wish to be involved in a prestige film are often asked to accept lower rates of pay than they would for most of the projects on which they work--and actors are typically willing to do so, as prestige films often redound to the benefit of their own reputation as actors. Prestige films often dominate the awards, and studios often trumpet their association with prestige films as a means of ensuring that reviewers, and industry talent, are more eager to engage with the studio in future.

In other words, prestige films get made, and get attention, even though they are often economically marginal or even "failures" (in a pure ROI sense), because studios understand that there are real (if intangible) benefits from being associated with prestige films.

The same is true in publishing; the sorts of books that win awards are not, typically, the sorts of books that sell best. Yet publishers are eager to be associated with award-winning books, and trumpet books and authors who do win awards. They understand that having a reputation as being a publisher of fine literary works will make authors and agents more eager to do business with them, and reviewers more willing to take a look at the next book they push. As an example, I know a science fiction writer who continues to command advances in the $100,000 range, despite the fact that nothing he has written in the last 20 years has earned out (that is, earned enough in royalties to recoup his advance)--because he is a multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novelist, with an excellent reputation in the field, and his name in the publisher's catalog is a draw for others, and adds luster to the publisher's reputation.

Book publishers, too, understand that a commercially marginal book, or even one that loses money, can still provide real, if intangible benefits that ultimately redound to the bottom line.

Why is this viewed as impossible in games?

Suppose Capcom, instead of closing Clover Studios and muttering about "disappointing sales" had trumpetted Okami's critical success, instructed its publicists to attempt to interest both game and tech media in presentations of art from this beautiful and visually stunning game, and announced their strong support for innovation and creativity in future? They might have produced greater interest in, and sales for, the game, but more importantly, could have worked to establish for Capcom what no company other than Nintendo has in the industry today--a reputation for actually caring about gameplay.

Could Ubisoft not have done the same with Beyond Good and Evil? And since Ubisoft is in direct competition in most of the cities where it has studios with EA, which has a reputation for mistreating its staff and a lack of innovation, would this not also have benefitted their recruiting efforts?

Psychonauts is perhaps a more difficult story--Majesco didn't have the financial resources to deal with its failure. But in general, when you have lemons, why not make lemonade? Why not emphasize the critical success, and gain what you can from it, rather than retreating in shame?

Wouldn't we all--the industry and gamers alike--be better served by businesses which understand that, sure, the bottom line is the end game--but that there are multiple routes to the goal, and that sales alone are not the sole measure of a game's value?

Let us have "prestige games"--and let us have publishers who take pride in them.
posted by Greg at 3:50 PM 65 comments

It sounds bizarre to me, but here's the press release, and unless April Fools now comes in November, I have to assume it's true. For the MMO-challenged, CCP runs EVE Online; for the vidiots, White Wolf publishes the Vampire (and other World of Darkness) line of tabletop RPGs.

I can see it now... Here I am mining away, an hostile ship cruises in, begins firing and--We play a quick game of rock-paper-scissors! Or wait, maybe the Brujah Corporation will shortly be establishing a new trade entrepot in deep space. Um.

Can I take this seriously? I'm not sure I can. Let's see here:

CCP: Modestly successful MMO provider in Reykjavik with some exceptionally cool tech whose main business constraint is the lack of people in Iceland, and therefore difficulty expanding their tech team enough to bite off another high-profile MMO. Key competence: large transactional network systems, procedural content. Business model: online subscription.

White Wolf: Modestly succssful tabletop RPG publisher in the Atlanta area with a somewhat aging line but an enthusiastic fanbase. Their main business constraint: that the retail market for hobby games has sucked for some years, and the overall market for RPGs seems to be on path for long-term, if slow, decline; attempts to expand into card and boardgames haven't been real successful. Key competence: A feel for gothic romance. Business model: Selling books.

The synergies are obvious!

To someone much smarter than I, I guess.

Per the release, White Wolf will do an Eve tabletop RPG, card games, strat guides, etc., while CCP will bring White Wolf's properties online.

Vampire: The MMO? EVE: The Grinding?

Not obvious choices for licenses, it seems to me, but okay. Maybe what's really going on here is a disguised takeover of White Wolf by CCP as a cheap way to acquire the World of Darkness IP for MMO use.

What next? Webzen to acquire Steve Jackson Games? SOE to take over Mongoose? Maybe Andy Tepper and James Ernest to get together...
posted by Greg at 10:13 AM 33 comments

The most cost effective way to Montreal is Amtrak. $60--but a 10 hour trip for what would otherwise be a 7 hour drive. Essentially, the northern part of the route is on tracks that are mainly used for freight, not passengers, so top speed in sections is on the order of 15 mph. Not to mention customs.

Customs takes an hour; the people seated in front of me, UK residents who are apparently both teaching in Alberta but are travelling before they take up their jobs, are led off the train to check their work papers. The last time I did this trip, my then g/f and I brought quite a lot of cheese and pate. This was shortly after 9/11, and we were attending the World Fantasy Convention, which was in Montreal that year.

Approaching the Canadian border, back then, we were told to put all our bags in the aisle. Heightened security, I imagine. RCMP with dogs in train came down the aisle. At our bag, the dog went nuts.

"Is this your bag, sir?" says the Mountie.

"Yes," I say.

"Can I ask what you have in your bag?" he says.

"Chesse," I say.

"Sir, this is a bomb-sniffing dog," he says.

"And also a cheese-sniffing dog, apparently," I say.

"Sir, may I open your bag?" he says.

"Sure."

He looks through the bag. "Sir, you have cheese in your bag."

"That's right."

"You know," he says, "we have very nice cheese in Canada."

Yeh... well, I'm not sure poutine qualifies. But I smile, and explain that while excellent cheese may very well be obtainable in Canada, you can't obtain it before you enter Canada, and it is after all a ten hour train ride, and one might want a nibble or two beforehand.

Anyway, there's another hour delay at customs, a 10-hour train ride becomes 11, I stagger from the Gare Central to my cheapo hotel; my room has two single beds, and two more bolted to the walls, with a ladder, I guess in case you're visting en famille and want room for the kids. I'm near the Quartier Chinoise, grab some dinner there, and crash.
posted by Greg at 12:55 AM 25 comments

Home means sleeping for a bit, catching up on email, and moving an inordinate amount of furniture. I've set up with the landlord to have my apartment repainted, which it hasn't been since I've moved in (e.g., 12 years), but virtually every square inch of wall is covered either by bookshelves or art. I do most of the heavy lifting myself, but Vicky and Karen assist. Monday morning at 4, I'm wide awake, and get up, figuring it's better to actually do some work that lie abed fretting, and try to catch up on the compahy. Which includes updating the site, building some installers, catching up on email, and a pretty positive first conversation with a VC. Ellie calls me around noon, Vicky has finished with her therapist and Nathan Solomon (ex-EB, an informal advisor to the company) is meeting her at a restaurant in the Village. Well, I've already put in basically a full day's work by noon, zip up on the subway to meet them, Nathan is helpful (as always) with some suggestions for portals we should be talking to. I have a 2 o'clock with Hugh Hancock, one of the key figures in the machinima movement, but we get out with some time to spare, so Vicky and I walk down to lower Manhattan to my meeting with him. A new episode of Bloodspell is out, he will coerce Charley Stross into getting me a copy of the draft of his next novel (which deals with MMOs), and he suggests we should do a machinima contest, asking people to produce videos that promote games Manifesto carries--not a bad idea, but I think we need the right game for that.

And so home, a little more work, and to bed, as I have to be up for an 8:15 train to Montreal.
posted by Greg at 12:39 AM 35 comments

An exhausting couple of weeks...

At the Independent Games Seminar in Copenhagen:

Nick Fortugno and I share a cab out to the ITU, where I've lectured before; the cabbie seems to know that the University is in Islands Brigge, but has no idea what the ITU is. Luckily, I've printed out the address, and he pulls it up on his mobile GPU/map monitor. At times, you do realize that the US is not the center of hi tech we pretend it is.

First up is Gonzalo Frasca, who is taking this opportunity to talk about his company Powerful Robot Games, rather than his research. Based in Uruguay and now 30 people strong, Powerful Robot mostly does advergames for the like of Cartoon Network, but instead of making the pitch that "we are third world, we are cheap," they instead make the pitch that "we are third world but excellent, and so will deliver more for the same money than US/Europe based companies." The company is profitable, but tries to ensure that 9 months a year they work on commercial product, and the other 3, work on stuff they want to do--including things like September 12th (which I was rude about previously), the Howard Dean for Iowa game, Cambiemos (another election game for an election in Uruguay), and so on. I find this quite interesting--from the most degrading, unfortunate game form (advergaming) to "serious" political games with marginal, if any, commercial potential--an interesting divide to straddle, in any event.

After I speak, Henrik Riis of WatAGame is up next. I ran into these guys when I was still doing mobile; their Era of Eidolon games were billed as among the first mobile "MMOs" (actually solo-play RPGs with a shared community-and-trading space), and my previous venture was interested in bringing them to the US. They're now apparently haveing some success with a web/mobile hybrid title aimed at tween girls with strong fashion elements called GoSupermodel. Ooh. Tres Web 2.0.

Next up is Lars Kroll, whom I met last year at Fastaval, the premier Danish tabletop RPG convention. He ran the development of Seed, an MMO I thought had great potential. The backstory of the game is that the players were crew of a generation ship that has crash-landed on an alien planet, and they have to try to repair the ship and terraform the planet to make a new home for humanity. The focus of the game was appealing to people who actually want to =roleplay= in an MMO environment (something that 'achievers' in most MMOs make fun of)--combat prohibited, most gameplay based on varieties of crafting. I played it in beta, and wanted to feature it on Manifesto--but the fact that it crashed every 30 minutes or so was certainly a deterrent. A sad story; they ran out of money, they were under pressure from the investors to launch even though they knew they weren't ready, Lars acquiesced (which he knows in retrospect was the wrong decision), they went live with buggy code and indequate content, and they're now out of business. Luckily, the Danish development community is sufficiently vigorous that most of the staff has found other jobs (albeit in the Copenhagen rather than Aarhus area.) I asked Lars how much money he thinks he'd need to get the game to a commercially viable level--and it's on the order of $2m. A pity; I still think it's a good idea, but we certainly can't do that.

Nick Fortugno of GameLab is up next; I know him as the designer of Diner Dash, but didn't know he'd also run a vampire LARP in NYC for several years. He also presents Ayiti: The Cost of Life, a game for Unicef in which you are the paterfamilias of an impoverished family in Haiti and worry about allocating your scare financial resources to the education of your children and other improvements in your life. Cool, but what I also take away is that Nick is an excellent public speaker, which is good, because GameLab needs to be about more than Eric the Z... Which it is, but Peter Lee, who is in some ways the heart and soul of the company, also isn't a great public speaker, which is a shame as he deserves more kudos for their success than he's likely to get... but anyway.

Afterward, there was a dinner sponsored by the conference, from which Nick and I toddled somewhat drunkenly back to our hotel in Gonzalo Frasca's company. The next day I spent catching up on email and some sightseeing, and the following, taking the flight back to the US.

The Danes are =serious= about airport security. My guess is that this is the Scandinavian impulse; they've been sent a bunch of stupid, inane, intrusive rules by the US, and being the rules-bound society that they are, they take rules seriously, and apply them with rigor. I went through a metal detector and X-ray not once, but twice, my bags were searched, I was asked the usual moronic questions three times (Yes, I packed me own fucking bags), ut sequelae.

The usual sleepless flight, the usual Scottish ride on the #62 bus, the PATH train, and home.
posted by Greg at 11:29 PM 27 comments