The High Ground's Blog

Getting Work

thehighgroundllc — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 01:02:16 +0000

Craig’s List is a great place to buy a lot of stuff(some real bargains) for cheap and even get stuff for free. It’s amazing what people will give away just to avoid having to haul it away themselves. Occasionally I troll Craig’s list looking for work as a freelance illustrator. It’s so easy these days: log on and look for work anywhere in the world. Every day!

Once upon a time there was the interview and the showing of the portfolio to the prospective client method of finding such work. This would involve preparing art samples, the best art samples, in some sort of portable presentation form, making an appointment with the art director(usually at some large advertising firm), driving to the location of the appointment and being on time.

This was no simple thing. If you were an illustrator just starting out the first thing that became apparent is that it was better to live in or near a large metropolitan area with enough businesses to support ad agencies. The second thing you learned was that being good at what you do, your art, was only a part of finding work. The artist had to present the right personality at that interview to present the portfolio of work. Did I mention that you had to dress for the occasion? You did.

The next thing you learn is that dressing for an interview can be complicated for someone just starting out in the job market.

I’m convinced that the interview was fifty percent of landing the job, and we’re not talking about getting on with the firm as a full time employee. This was for a possibly one time gig for hire.

Eventually the freelancer would either get the hang of meeting with the prospective client or not. In the case of the latter it was best to try to get that full time employee gig so as to avoid the continuing lack of success at those freelance interviews. It sounds counterintuitive, I know, but there it is, or was.

Now the freelance illustrator can go on line and get work anywhere in the world, right? Well, maybe. If you’ve looked at Craig’s list lately, pickings are slim. One of the positive things to happen recently on CL was the imposition of a fee for job listing. Craig’s was until then a pool of colossal time wasting as the job searcher trolled through hundreds of ads from possible employers, most looking for illustrators who would work cheap or for “ exposure”. In other words, for little or no pay.

The Craig’s searcher would soon learn the key words and phrases that meant the posting was a waste of time, such as: “opportunity for art major” or “ great way to build portfolio” and “great national exposure”.

The fee Craig’s List started to charge for job listings has had the effect of stopping the listings from people looking for free work, but it hasn’t quite ended the time wasters.

I recently responded to an ad by someone looking for an illustrator to work on a phone app for a game. Preferably the applicant would have experience in game development and shipped at least one game, et cetera. That wasn’t me, but I know what the job requires, so I responded on the chance that all the graphic artists with game design experience would miss this ad. The response floored me. This would-be-employer sent out a block mailing thanking those who responded to the ad and announcing that selection of the artist would be based on a contest between applicants to see who could best illustrate three elements of the phone app!

Never mind the portfolio, the interview, the experience. Never mind the experience in the industry in game production or work done on a game that shipped. Now the applicants were being asked to produce custom art that they wouldn’t be paid for to enter a contest to try to get work!

This is yet another problem with Craig’s list and the fee has apparently not ended the “job competition”. This once comprised a large part of the listings along with the non paying “jobs” mentioned earlier.

Some people think Craig’s List is still a place to get free labor.

30March09

IF YOUR READING THIS THEN I’M ALREADY DEAD!!!

thehighgroundllc — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 01:57:09 +0000

Few things change your life more than having a woman from North Africa drag you into a money-laundering scheme for Al-Qaeda, Or running into the nurse that strip-searched you at the mental hospital on the dance floor. But then I got this.

First of all, I SWEAR ON MY MOTHER’S GRAVE that this is a real letter that I received in the mail. I had no hand in its creation in any way.

“ Joel please forgive us, But we have just taken a closer look at your profile. It turns out you’re more special than any of us imagined! Did you know that you possess some very, hidden traits. It turns out that people who possess these same rare and often hidden traits are some of the most famous and successful people on the planet.
Joel this is a personal letter just to you In fact you will get something of immense value from us ABSOLUTLY FREE. Read every word carefully because you will never get another letter from us again.
Joel, Please keep what I tell you secret, because this information is confidential. There has existed for many year an exclusive association a secret society of some of the worlds most famous and powerful people. Many of these people you would instantly recognize.
This association has uncovered some shockingly powerful secrets and they share these secrets only amounts themselves. Joel I have some incredibly exciting news, Joel you possess several rare traits we are searching for. Because of these traits you are eligible to become a member of our exclusive club. We are going to reveal to you absolutely free the greatest kept secrets of all time, for money, power and romantic love. Your hidden talents must be phenomenal, for the members to have selected you!
Now here is how a TV celebrity used the association and its secrets to go from broke to a multi-millionaire in less than a year.

“Several years ago I was struggling in every area in my life I was living a miserable existence. 40 pounds over weight and over $36,000 in debt. One day my whole life changed, I went to Las Vegas and began playing poker. At my table was a likable guy who was winning at everything.
As soon as I lost everything I has, I asked him how he got so lucky. He took me aside and said. “ Its not luck. Money power love are all drawn to me. this happens to me every day.” Then he sat me down and said “ every successful person throughout history knew what I know that why they were successful, rich and happy. When the time is right I will reveal my secrets to you.” He smiled and walked away.
Seven mouths later I awoke totally depressed I decided to go to Las Vegas to see if I could find that mystery man again. During my drive I stopped to get some lunch in what seemed to be a small deserted ghost town. Out of habit I went to the library across the street. When I got there the librarian told me “ A couple of weeks ago a gentleman came in here and descried you. He told me that you’d be stopping here soon. “The librarian continued “ He asked me to give you a special book. “She went into the back and came out with a dusty old book printed in 1872. It was a copy of a manuscript written almost 2300 year ago. Translated in English
It told the story of a secret society in ancient Greece who possessed astonishing power. It told exactly how their wealth was attained!”

We know people around you may not see it, but we know that you Joel, have experienced moments which, you feel special and gifted. In those euphoric, spiritual moments you know you are special. You feel you are here to do great thing with your life well we know it too Joel.

Here’s a fraction of what you’ll learn:
–Learn where the profits are in all games of chance. Not even the casino will be able to beat you!
–Learn how to win any lover in any situation or how to regain your ex-lover.
–Learn how to lose all the weight you want and eliminate any addictions overnight!

I urge you, You owe it to yourself, you owe it to your family don’t wait another minute. Send today for your free secret system package, that will reveal the greatest kept secrets of all time, for money, power and romantic love before your time limit is up and I must give your copy to some one else.”

O.K. so the first thing I thought after reading this was how the hell do they always find me. But then the implications of what I read slowly sunk in. The illuminati must be real. Before me lay the chance to have my name spoken with the likes of Ramses, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. Should I take the power. Or should I cast it away and pull aside the curtain of secrecy on a 2000 year old conspiracy. Well now the truth is out and in your hands.
I’m sure that my life is forfeit for what I have done. And if I should have some “mysterious accident,” You know that I was killed by A cabal of Rosicrucian pick-up artists. It is up to you to fight on. AVENGE MY DEATH!!!

Full Circle

thehighgroundllc — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:19:22 +0000

The artist’s work, fine or commercial, if you want to make the distinction, always began with a blank canvas or paper and with the use of the chosen medium of oil paint or watercolor or pastel a work of “art” was created by direct application. It was and always has been a technically simple process, like chipping pieces off a chunk of stone until it becomes something recognizable as other than the stone.

Like everything else in our lives computers have entered in.

The computer artist has to have electricity to turn on the blank canvas and the work tools to create digital art. There can be a variation of this: art created by traditional means, then scanned onto the computer and digitized or enhanced with a wide selection of software.

Even sculpture has been digitized, thanks to software tools such as 3Ds Max, Mudbox, Blender, et cetera. For more on digital 3D software, check Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_art
There’s more and better information to be found there if you follow the links and use the search engine.

What this rumination is about is what’s coming. In a short time computer manufacturers will be introducing touch screens on laptops along the lines of the popular smart phones(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone). It’s fairly easy to realize what’s coming next: the slight learning curve traditional artists now encounter will disappear. Art will flow directly from the artist to the medium, at least for the 2D artist. The artist will once again draw directly on the canvas, this time of the computer touch screen.

Better still, this advance dovetails with flexible computer screens(http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/22232/?a=f). Digital art tools will be as portable as traditional tools and plein air digital artists will proliferate. This is by no means a full circle, given the requirement of electrical power for creating computer art, but it gets close.

-Pug
23March2009

Bat Man vs. The Watchmen

thehighgroundllc — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:20:37 +0000

With the improvement in computer graphics and the interactive capability that are possible I think that Story and plot will become more and more important in the future of video games. As well at some point the growing weight of competition will make more inventive plots inevitable.
But there is one other element that few people look to in video games, and that is the hero. Artist will put enormous effort into what the hero will look like. but little effert is put into there motivations and background. Now I know that the heroes’ personality will never be more important than the game play but just a little character development can have huge results.
One example is the watchmen movie. First this is a spoilers so don’t read if you haven’t seen the movie. The movie was quite an extravaganza but I was left a little empty afterward. There was nothing about the movie that I could complain about, Its just that There was nothing about the main characters that made me care about them.
Night owl was a weak, rather emasculated character. He refuses to do anything as Rorshak tortures a guy in a bar. Even thou he found it reprehensible. He just stood there as the comedian shot unarmed rioters. At the end he really doesn’t seem to agree with the bombings but went along anyway, Even after Dr. Manhattan kills his friend.
Silk Specter character was flat. I really found nothing to like about her except for her outfit. She really didn’t seem to have any real reason to be there except that her mother pushed her into it long ago. As a mater of fact the movie would have come out just the same if the main characters had stayed home.
The only character in the movie that seemed to have any heroic qualities was rorshak. Not mind you, that he acted in a heroic manner but because the held convictions and had a clear motivation that people could understand even if they didn’t agree with it.
Now if you compare The watchmen to the dark knight I think you will see the difference. Both moves were nearly three hours long and had an epic feel. The watchman had much better special effects and I think you could say that the plots of both movies were vary well developed. The difference was characters that intrigued the audience.
If you look back at any memorable video game character it wont be what they looked like that made you remember them it wont be there huge sword or rifle. It’s the character themselves that some how sparked your imagination and that is what really makes a game fun.
Fun game play will always be the most important element in a video game. But In the future, Just as much time will be spent making the hero interesting as they will spend making him or her look cool. It would also help if your video game doesn’t promote mass murder. But that’s just my thinking.

Synergy

thehighgroundllc — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:22:19 +0000

Synergy is one of those words you hear that may be hard to understand for people who haven’t had or recognized the experience.

For quite a few years I’ve worked as a freelance artist on a wide variety of commercial jobs. Most of those jobs consisted of meeting with a client(the old days before worldwide web connection) to discuss the job, then proceeding through the stages of bringing the assignment to fruition.

I looked forward to new assignments from some regular clients. These were people who had an idea for what they wanted, but as we talked about it the back-and-forth pulled in aspects and possibilities that had not been considered before. Synergy at work. Most clients had a rough idea of what they wanted and no real talent for conversation exploring the possibilities any farther. Generally, the jobs went two ways: and endless slog of rough sketches/copy and revisions until the work was, by some miracle, mercifully over; the client approved everything turned in at every step of the way and was satisfied with the final work, even if I was not totally happy with it.

The former type of client would be noted and quoted a higher rate at our next meeting. The latter type of client made me appreciate the adage: “ The customer is always right.” Neither of these types of client made it a synergistic experience.

As a comic book creator(writer and artist) I’ve attended a number of comic conventions around the country. The best for the synergy experience were usually the small affairs and I had a table to hawk various works and, more important, to sit behind. If I was lucky I sat adjacent to a friend or made a new acquaintance with whom I could talk comics for the whole convention, invariably giving light to aspects of writing or drawing comics, or even to particular comic book characters that I had never considered. It’s a lot more fun than walking around a convention lugging stuff with you for hours on end.

When I got into this game bunch I saw it as an opportunity to land a gig doing work that paid well. Skunk was the honcho and had an idea for a game and the rest of us were going to work on it, from my understanding. As we continued to meet the synergy gradually seeped in. We each had assignments to work on between meetings, but presentations of those assignments and the ensuing discussion often had unexpected results. Some were dead ends, like the exploration of doing our own promotion for the game. Others revealed aspects of our work that none of us had thought of until our round table meeting.

A new aspect of the game bunch came when we were recently meeting to talk about what to do about financing our game now that the economy has tanked. Talk at the round table has turned to the hot, new world of phone apps and casual games that can be produced on a budget well out of the league of the typical computer game.

As the discussion progressed someone mentioned that Fuzzy liked doing crossword puzzles. A light went on and I proposed a crossword game that would have new aspects thanks to the world of computer graphics. Now to hammer out the details, something that’ll be made easier by working with a team with a common goal and the synergy it produces.

-Pug

An unrelated rant

thehighgroundllc — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 03:24:36 +0000

I have noticed that in many reality TV shows, especially the ones on the music channels, the participants take on either mispronounced or badly spelled monikers. This leaves me to wonder when it became cool to be uneducated.
I remember when I was in the army, my roommate and I would make a game of using words that the sergeants didn’t understand. I don’t know if you could get away with that now. Back then many of the non-commissioned officers were high school dropouts. For the last fifteen years the army has been pretty picky about who they take.
Any way, my room mate and I would say things like “ Sergeant wouldn’t you say that was precocious?” Than we would watch them squirm trying to figure out how to answer. Soon that became boring so we would start to use large words improperly. “ My APC is acting vary falacious today.” The final stage of our game was to just make up words that never existed. “ I think we should preseen the formation today.” Then we would laugh under our breath when they would agree with us.
There was another time when I was hanging out with one of my best friends and her son. He was getting into trouble at school for cussing. I don’t know if this was good advice, but I told the kid that if he was educated he could insult people without getting into trouble. For example if someone is acting really stupid, call them an idiom. Or you could tell them that their mother should be a thespian. My personal favorite is to tell some one that they’re a Homo erectus.
Just think of the mayhem you as an educated person could cause if you were to go on one of those reality TV shows. You could take on an alias like Thesaurus or metacarpal. If you really wanted to piss every one off name yourself Antidisestablishmentarianism. That defines my personal philosophy perfectly.
The important thing is that we as educated men and women have a duty to ridicule and belittle those that choose to be uneducated, in a manner that they don’t recognize as insulting. And just think of the fun when the blond bimbo on the reality TV show asks you what a Thesaurus is and you tell her it’s a dinosaur.

Women, video games and sex

thehighgroundllc — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 04:34:50 +0000

Regarding the topic of women and video games. Or what do women want? When I think of the characters that my female friends have really liked, especially in the sci-fi or fantasy genera, several examples come to mind. Ripply from the alien’s movies. Sara Conner is another great example of a female character that is vary popular with women. I remember watching the movie Ultraviolet with a lady friend of mine and she really got into that movie as well.
So if we were to look at these characters there are several similarities. The first unquestionably is that these women are tough, real tough with out losing any femininity. Each of them forms a relationship with a child that motivates them to become bad asses. But that’s only one example.
In the lord of the Rings movies they emphasized the relationship between Arwin Elvenstar and Strider. Clearly that was an effort to appeal to female viewers. Another personal example that comes to mind is in the movie Enemy at the Gate.
It is a movie about snipers in the battle for Stalingrad. Smack dab in the middle of the movie they throw in a love triangle. Like most men I hate to see a good war movie ruined with a stupid love affaire. I doubt any one in Stalingrad had time to fall in love. But one of my best friends loves the movie, because of the love triangle. Of course Jude Law being in the movie didn’t hurt ether.
The point I think is that were Men seem in my view to be drawn toward action, women seem to be drown more to relationships. Not just the standard almost stereotypical relationships. The maternal instincts of Ripply or Sara Conner or the love affairs of elven princesses and Russian snipers. Any thing that defines the characters and how they interact with each other. That is what I think is important to women.
An example is my mom. She is the sweetest and most gentle person you could meet. But she loves to watch Cage fighting on TV. She doesn’t know anything about fighting and could care less. But at the end of the match the two guys that were beating each other’s brains in, shake hands and hug each other. The camaraderie is what attracts my mom to cage fighting. The relationship the two fighters have developed.
So what dos that mean for video games? Men’s brains are geared toward action. So that is all you need to rope us in. But if you are making a game geared for women I think that you have to make a deeper connection. Time must be spent defining how the characters relationships effect their motivations. If the woman playing the game can empathize with the reasons the main character is involved in the plot. Than I think that you can reach that deeper level that women want. In short video games are just like sex. Both are just better if they come with an emotional connection.

P.S. did I mention sex in the title just to tease you in to reading this article? Well, maybe.
Joel

What I Learned About the Game World

thehighgroundllc — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:33:35 +0000

I got seriously interested in the game industry when a friend mentioned to me that he was meeting with some guys who were trying to break into game production and trying to get a team together. As we expect him to blog here and he hasn’t chosen a name yet, we’ll just call him Happy. This was early to mid 2007. Phone apps were for the cutting edge cognizant and the sky didn’t even seem to be the limit for the video game.

The core group was of six people who had no experience in game production gathered around an idea for an on line game from Skunk. What we had were experienced 2D artists versed in traditional and digital art( but no experience with 3D art programs), a fiction writer, experienced programmers and guys working support for a large local game company.

Our work together turned out to consist of loads of research educating ourselves on the computer game and its history in the process in order to write a business plan. The idea was that a good business plan, some slick visual aids and a good pitch of the idea for the game with an assembled and ready to go to work team present to wave the flag would show whomever the pitch was made to that we were serious.

The final draft of the business plan was a tight twenty-five page document complete with color charts and graphs. It looks at the industry and shows how the game idea fits and what it will take in the way of financial backing to produce it. It’s a pretty nifty piece of work and it gave me a lot of satisfaction to have contributed to it. Still, the adage “ It is the journey, not the destination.” applies here.

While I was happy to have Wednesday night back( We met once a week for about six months.) it had been an extremely enlightening process, researching the industry. I poured over the Gamasutra site and linked to other game sites from there. In due course I found myself on Wikipedia which was very helpful with the history of the industry. Still, skepticism about the factual accuracy of Wikipedia content led to linking to source references from there and on and on for confirmation.

It was actually fun, but research has always been fun for me.

We wound up researching game engines, narrowing consideration to two before settling on a torque engine. The business plan details expenditure estimates for payroll, work stations, software, office expenses including office space rent, the pitch strategy and game development milestones for the first two years. Projections for production of game expansion units and even the demographic breakdown of the potential market is included. Twenty five pages. I said it was tight.

For a while we forayed into promotion for the game, but soon found ourselves over our heads in the arcana of advertising. We decided to leave it in the hands of the traditional game promoter, the publisher and try ourselves to do something on You Tube

The highlight of this journey for me was the introduction to the world of 3D CGI, and the software that makes it possible: 3ds Max, Blender, Maya, LightWave 3D, ZBrush and Softimage XSI. I worked my way through a thirty day trial of Zbrush and am still working on the open source program, Blender.

This lead, in turn to my first realization of the depth of the You Tube experience. You want tutorials? Shake You Tube and see what falls out. I’m convinced that someday everyone will be on You Tube for whatever reason. Like Wikipedia, it’s a great starting point for tracking down the web sites you want to peruse.

Research bringing to light yet more sources for research. More resources for making the journey more interesting than the destination.

Pug-

What’s Killing the Video-Game Business?

thehighgroundllc — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:09:36 +0000

I got this from a friend recently;
————————————————————————————————————

http://www.slate.com/id/2210732/pagenum/all/#p2

What’s Killing the Video-Game Business?
Hint: It’s not the economy.
By N. Evan Van Zelfden
Posted Monday, Feb. 16, 2009, at 3:27 PM ET

Like pretty much every industry these days, video-game publishing is in some financial trouble. Electronic Arts, the world’s largest game publisher, best known for Madden and the Sims, lost $641 million in 2008′s fourth quarter. Activision-Blizzard, owners of the cash cows World of Warcraft and Call of Duty, reported losses of $72 million in the fourth quarter of 2008. (They lost $194 million the quarter before that.) THQ, the third-largest publisher in the United States, and known for lucrative licenses ranging from the Ultimate Fighting Championship to Pixar, had $192 million in losses over the holidays and is laying off 24 percent of its work force.

News of development-studio closings and layoffs are being reported around the world. And while publishers focus on internal cuts, many independent developers have closed outright. Such gloom, in a normally raucous industry, has set the talking heads, bloggers, and trade press to a quick conclusion: Losses and layoffs are the direct result of an economic crisis (on the premise that “things are tough all over”).

But that idea, which makes intuitive sense, is completely at odds with recent sales numbers. In reality, video games are selling better than ever. The retailer GameStop announced sales of nearly $3 billion worth of games, hardware, and accessories during the nine weeks around the 2008 holidays-22 percent more than during Christmas 2007.

According to the research firm Media Control GfK, game software accounted for more than half of global packaged entertainment sales in 2008, beating DVD sales for the first time. The firm pegs game sales at $32 billion worldwide. (The U.S. market accounts for around 45 percent of the world total.) The NPD Group, which tracks sales for the industry, also reports that game software sales were up 26 percent in 2008.

So how can publishers lose money amid such incredible sales and record growth? The answer is simple: They’re spending more than they’re bringing in. Game development budgets have ballooned, and publishers are reeling because they can’t keep the costs under control.

Games weren’t always expensive to make: In the early days, a boy with an Apple II could rule the world. While there are still scads of cheaply made games on the market, all of today’s big publishers employ hundreds of professional developers per game. These projects take years to complete, as each new generation of hardware allows for unprecedented advances in graphics, sound, and everything else. The greater the complexity of the game, the larger the development team. The larger the development team, the bigger the budget.

While industry leaders anticipated that budgets would creep higher, the shift to high-definition gaming with Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3 has proved to be more expensive than estimated. At a conference in the spring of 2006, then-Midway developer Cyrus Lum sounded the warning, telling his audience that game development budgets could rise as high as $15 million to $25 million for a single title-previously unheard-of averages. “We need to rethink how we’re financing games,” Lum concluded.

When a newspaper quoted this frightening view, Lum found himself in hot water with his employer for making such sensationalist comments. It turned out that Lum’s prediction was too low: Midway would go on to spend between $40 million and $50 million developing This Is Vegas, an action title set for release in late 2009.

That figure is not unusual. Budgets for next-generation development have continued to rise steadily across the board. And while executives and technologists knew that there would be heavy initial investment costs to retool-Electronic Arts spent a record $372 million on research and development during 2008′s third quarter-they expected returns on that investment, something that’s so far failed to materialize.

Production difficulties and product delays continue a full 26 months after Sony’s PlayStation 3 reached store shelves. When companies regularly spend $40 million to develop a title and contribute more to the marketing, they need to sell at least 2 million units to break even. While Halo 3 racked up pre-orders of 1.7 million copies, and Gears of War 2 has sold more than 3 million units, only a handful of titles each year do that well. Consider that Will Wright’s Spore, which sold 1 million copies in its first 17 days, was supposed to be a big hit for Electronic Arts; but the development cost was so high that that internal estimates now say it will take five years-and a bunch of sequels and expansions-for the company to recoup its initial costs.

Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto IV, released last May, is the prime example of a blockbuster game. GTA IV sold 6 million copies during its first week, bringing in $500 million. True to form, it cost Rockstar $100 million to produce, 1,000 people worked on the project, and it took three-and-a-half years to complete. Six months later, sales began to founder-a major setback to a publisher that bet the farm on the title and predicted sales throughout 2009.

Despite GTA’s declining returns, the initial sales numbers were so compelling that other companies are desperate to follow suit. During Electronic Arts’ last quarterly call, CEO John Riccitiello explained that the company would be pursuing blockbuster hits as a primary revenue source. Perennially successful sports franchises like Madden-titles that always come out on time and on budget because the company’s bottom line depends on it-have given EA a bit more wiggle room than its competitors. Riccitiello has decided to use that wiggle room to craft expensive games of exceptional quality, products that don’t ship until they’re deemed perfect.

The industry has long discussed going with this “Hollywood model,” in which a few games/movies turn a profit, those hits more than covering the other losses. The analogy between the Hollywood blockbuster model and the games business falls apart, however, because of the huge difference in overhead costs. Electronic Arts steadily employs 7,400 developers. The industry standard is a $10,000 man-month, meaning the company burns through more than $74 million for development each month. The big Hollywood studios, by contrast, make movies by giving money to temporary production companies, which then hire temporary crews with one-project contracts. The temporary entity will make the film from start to finish. And once production is complete, the studio receives a finished product that it can distribute to theaters-without the continued overhead expenses that game publishers often face.

Companies like EA and Activision are two kinds of businesses at once, making games themselves while publishing the work of other developers. It was a natural evolution: Publishers built distribution and marketing networks for themselves, grew successful, and found that they could use that same pipeline to sell somebody else’s games. Though publishers rake in more profits when they own the titles they’re releasing, working with outside firms enables them to put out more games.

Of the 48 titles EA released last quarter, eight were from other developers-mostly in the Rock Band series-while 40 were developed internally. If a publisher is looking to do blockbusters, that figure needs to be reversed. Using an external production company means you don’t have to bear the burden of overhead, and when the game inevitably slips and needs more time, it isn’t a problem for the publicly traded publisher needing to meet a quarterly window. But, perversely, EA’s Riccitiello has said the company plans to cut the number of titles it’s developing, hoping that releasing fewer games with even more effort will generate more blockbusters. That means costs will rise above the $40 million mark, an extraordinary gamble.

It’s unrealistic for a company that employs many thousands of developers to abandon internal production immediately. In the short term, Electronic Arts should consider copying the old Hollywood “studio system.” During the Great Depression, a movie could be made in two weeks-and people would go to see a new movie each week. EA could make games that cost less. How? Change the scale and scope of the world. Make the story shorter. Use lower-quality graphics. Recycle proven tools and technology.

Consider the case of Portal. The first-person puzzle game began as a student project before it was scooped up by Valve Software. Valve polished the game up and took it to EA, which distributed the game at retail as part of its “Orange Box” collection.

As of two months ago, they’d sold 3 million copies. Electronic Arts, though, doesn’t seem to have absorbed the lesson of this success story. EA doesn’t need to find its own Grand Theft Auto-it needs to let 1,000 Portals bloom.

N. Evan Van Zelfden has covered the international business of games for the Economist, Reuters, and Condé Nast Portfolio. You can reach him at evan.embedded@gmail.com.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2210732/
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

So like everything else in this world, throwing money at a problem does not correct it? Huh? Who’d of thought that?

Skunk,

Getting in the Game

thehighgroundllc — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 03:54:13 +0000

I’ve worked in advertising, as a comic book cartoonist and writer and, as a political and editorial illustrator for the Austin Chronicle, but never in the video game field.
The adage,” It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” is true. It applies to the video game industry as well. Austin is home to a considerable number of game companies, small and large. When the industry was undergoing growing pains, some fifteen-twenty years ago(someone help me out here) or so companies like Origin Systems were scrambling to hire artists willing to to step into a new medium: drawing on a computer with a stylus. I believe that the going pay rate was $7.50 an hour.
Quite a few of Austin’s legendary cartoonists were intrigued with the challenge of the new medium. All had made a name or at least a living working in comics and creating posters for the local music scene. The video game industry introduced them to the new medium of drawing with pixels using electronic impulses sent from a pressure sensitive drawing tablet using a stylus wired to the tablet. These were guys who needed only a pencil and paper to create their work, now hooking into an amazing new electronic medium.
Now game companies can get the artists they need from colleges, trained in such computer arts as 3-D sculpting, environment creation and animation. Employers advertise for personnel who not only have such training, but have also had game industry experience and worked on x number of games that have “shipped”.
For those who don’t have that combination to speak of and don’t know anyone in the business who may help them get work on that first game there are alternatives. The best is not to wait until getting that degree in the electronic arts before getting to work on a game of your own with fellow students. It has become a common enough story, to judge from articles in such on line publications as Gamasutra. Ship your first game before you graduate and go look for that job with a large game company. For those who don’t care for the large corporate model building the first games while still in school may reveal that a small group of creators is the way to go.
For the rest of us getting into the industry can be a long slog. At the Screenburn seminar on “The State of the Industry” at the US Art Authority in Austin, Texas, recently the advice was “ volunteer”. That’s right, offer to work for free to give your potential employer an idea of what you can do.
I have mixed feelings about this, but the strongest is that it’s a ripoff. If a potential employer can’t judge from a demo disc and an interview whether to hire then the company needs someone who can. A prospective employee of such a company may be better off getting together with others bent on a game creation career and making some independent noise that will be heard in the gaming field.

-Pug