Reality Panic

Last year’s inaugural Develop in Brighton event was so enjoyable (and, of course, productive/valuable) that I was eager to head back for the second edition. And, despite the less-than-stellar weather (like we had last year), the overall event was well worth it again. Kudos to Susan Marshall and the Tandem team!

Again, Pixel-Lab held an education day co-located with the main event. This provided valuable insight into the educational and student/talent challenges that the UK is dealing with. It was during one of the session that EA UK head of HR Matthew Jeffrey was quoting stating that “graduates are not slave labour“…

In addition to the main conference - which was loaded with many great sessions - there was the annual Develop Excellence Awards ceremony. While I’m not usually a fan of non-game-industry-comedian-style hosts, the comic’s opening “I see you’re wearing your finest t-shirt” joke easily won over the crowd. In fact, I was busting out in laughter pretty much the entire show!

Also, in good British tradition, the socials and pub nights were all enjoyable - especially the ongoing GamesIndustry.biz party.

Thankfully, Develop has done up summaries of all the good sessions and relevant activities.

Anyway, on to some quick photos:

Ellie Gibson (GI.Biz) leads the industry panel at the Games:Edu day: Matthew Jeffrey (EA), Chris Wells (Epic Games), Chris Satchell (Microsoft Game Studios), Jason Avent (Black Rock Studio), Matt Southern (Evolution Studios).

Rob Catto (Full Sail) closes out the edu day with an overview of how things are done state-side…

A photo-shy Meggan Scavio (CMP Game Group) at dinner with Paul Gouge (Rockpool Games), Martin de Ronde (One Big Game) and Francois Masciopinto (Interactive Studio Management).

A somewhat knackered Nick Burton (Rare) waiting for the opening keynote to get under way.

Richard Garriott (NCSoft) delivers an insightful opening keynote.

The session description sounded promising, but EA UK’s head of HR Matthew Jeffrey’s dismissal of crunch as inevitable for deadline driven perfectionists was a big disappoint - though the rest of his session was quite agreeable.

Jonas Eneroth (Games BizDev) and The Alpenwolf (design columnist for Develop).

Dan Marchant (Obscure) and Charles Cecil (Revolution Studios) at the Develop Awards.

At the Rare table, Ryan Stevenson and Richard Geary have high hopes for Viva Pinata’s many nominations.

Similarly, the boys from Realtime Worlds - Phil Wilson, Billy and Dave Jones - are hoping for some love for Crackdown.

Evolution Studios’ Matt Southern and Scott Kirkland jazzed over Motorstorm’s win for best new console IP.

Kenny Young (Media Molecule), John Broomhall and Tommy Tallarico celebrate after the success of the day’s audio track sessions.

Sean Kauppinen (Kohnke) and Julien Merceron (Eidos) review some shameful videos of a very drunk industry exec…

On the walk back from the closing party, passed by the Royal Pavilion (which was known as party central back in the day).

Largely based on the strength of his previous book, I picked up Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map a few months back. Not realizing until after I got home that the book was about the spread of cholera (via water contaminated with infected fecal matter), I put it aside to read more relevant books… Heading to the UK last week for Develop in Brighton, I stuffed it in my bag to read on the flight…

Despite my original hesitation, The Ghost Map is a great read, covering a wide array of fascinating topics: from the more obvious medical and epidemiological aspects to economics, sociological and network theory, among others. Ultimately, the story comes across as a murder mystery on an epidemic scale, with Dr. John Snow as the primary investigator.

Two particularly interesting aspects of the story are how Snow struggles to (barely) overcome the ingrained medical theories of the time (eg, disease spreads via stinky air), and how Snow pioneered a sort of early data visualization to help solve the mystery.

(Tangential aside: In an odd way, on a meta level this plays into my previous post on “celebrity”. Not knowing anything about the book, I bought it solely on the strength of the author and positive past experiences with his work. In the end, I enjoyed the book immensely. Would the same have happened if books simply had the name of publishers plastered on the front?)

Mike Gallagher, the new ESA president, has mentioned the need for the game industry to produce more celebrities. This is largely driven by the assumption that more celebrities equals higher social status that then equates to more influence within political circles.

Mike mentioned this is his initial NY Times interview, and brings it up again when interviewed by GameDaily BIZ during E3:

Bono walks in and there’s this bow wave and this entourage and orchestra that follow him and he can get a meeting in anyone’s office just like that. (snaps fingers) Our industry has a challenge to meet that we need to create those types of star power capabilities on the Hill and we’ll reap the benefits of it.

Obviously, he’s motivated by the political angle given that’s one of the primary roles of the ESA. This does bring up other questions, such as:

• Who would our celebrities be (star designers, publisher CEOs, game characters)?
• What other benefits (or harms) would a more celebrity-oriented industry have beyond political sway?
• Are celebrities totally antithetical to the team based nature of game development?

While the IGDA, with our focus on advancing careers of game professionals, has made a point of providing credit where credit is due (eg, via mandatory attributions for the Game Developers Choice Awards, and our ongoing efforts to set crediting standards), we are not chasing celebrity status per se.

What’s somewhat surprising is to hear the head of the PUBLISHERS association calling for celebrity. Certainly things have improved in recent years, but publishers are still very much about controlling and pushing the corporate brand. And, having individual celebrities running amok commoditizes the publishers’ role (much like record labels and musicians).

Hmm, unless of course, Mike is expecting his member companies‘ CEOs to be the celebrities…

(A more mundane example is a little boasting in front of retail clerks - via Greg.)

Santa Monica seems like a really nice place. Though, it is hard to tell for sure when you spend so much of your time in taxis and shuttles running between the awfully dispersed venues of the new E3. Yes, the smaller and more exclusive attendance made for an intimate and higher quality experience, but the poor physical logistics added unwelcome friction to the process. Oh well, gotta take the new bad with the new good, I suppose.

Admittedly, I’m not a typical E3 attendee (ie, “developer association director” is not part of the intended audience marketing blurb)… So, I was quite fortunate that I was able to make it into a handful of the press conferences and a few of the parties and receptions. But, mainly I was there for a few behind the scenes meetings…

It was interesting to witness the continued difference between the approaches taken by the more hardcore platforms (ie, Xbox, PlayStation) and Nintendo. For example, Microsoft’s big headliner was that the trio of Madden 08, GTA5 and Halo 3 were going to cause a perfect storm of sales and growth for the Xbox this holiday season. Meanwhile, Nintendo introduces WiiFit and boasts about its impressively diverse consumer demographics. It’s no coincidence that several of the big publishers were touting their parallel hardcore games and games for everyone strategies…

One of the particular “new goods”, was the expo floor. Much smaller, less noisy, and focused on the games (instead of booth babes and skateboard ramps). The booths were totally normalized down to a cluster of pods with a system+screen for everyone. Also, relative to the rest of the expo, the showcases for indie games and serious games were given a massive amount of space and good floor placement (big kudos to the ESA for including these elements).

Anyway, a few photos for flavor:

Before the real action, Kyle Orland (Joystiq) approves the annual non-tradition of the E3 non-party for journalists.

New ESA president Mike Gallagher welcomes attendees to the new E3 at the opening reception.

One of the few developers on hand, Andre Blechschmidt (at right) from Radon Labs in Germany.

The opening reception was hosted on the circular driveway of the Fairmont Miramar, a surprisingly nice place to have it.

Into the Pixel art was showcased during the reception. Nice to see an indie piece (from Introversion’s Darwinia) make the final cut…

“Celebrity” journalists were out in full force. Here, Dean Takahashi is spotted wearing a stylish red polo.

The ever-jovial Graeme Devine (Ensemble Studios) under the Xbox aura.

A stunned Greg Zeschuk (BioWare) at the Microsoft press conference.

Fan culture (surprisingly) figured prominently at E3. Here, Corporeal plays their rendition of the Halo theme song.

Continuing the music theme… Peter Moore did very poorly at Harmonix’ Rock Band.

Reggie boasts impressive numbers.

Wow, WiiFit! I don’t think anyone saw that coming…

This is EA’s booth. All of it.

Wii Zapper. Very smart and simple. Though, folks like Jack are going to have a blast ripping the industry for this one…

The masterminds behind the Indie Games Showcase at E3: Stephanie Barish (IndieCade), Sam Roberts (IndieCade/Slamdance) and Celia Pearce (IndieCade/GeorgiaTech).

Gail Markels (ESA) and Bo Anderson (EMA) check out Barker Hangar.

Somewhat coincidentally, the IGDA’s LA chapter was having a social meet-up during the week. So, I stopped in to say hi to Jeff Lander (EA) and friends.

Alas, the babes and cheap thrills were not completely abandoned. Though, this was quite fitting for Eidos’ Conan party.

I slipped into the Nintendo party (which was being held at my hotel), and sadly, I could not spot a single person I knew :(

“Mr. Stage Presence” Tony Key unveils Jam Sessions, Ubisoft’s first foray into music games and part of their “games for everyone” strategy. Of course, this was quickly followed by demos of military shooters and Assassin’s Creed.

After attending the past ten or so E3 expos, I am certainly feeling unfamiliar with the new venue and “summit” format. Many are speculating as to the continued relevance and value of the new E3. And, we won’t really have answers until after next week…

Initially, I thought I’d be able to sit this one out - not being a publisher or a media person, or really any other type of person E3 is intended for. However, I had enough curiosity to rationalize against a bunch of important “behind the scenes” meetings (eg, chat with ESA folks to discuss anti-censorship strategies, etc) to justify the trip down to Santa Monica.

Looking over my relatively light schedule, I almost get the sense that E3 is going to be a leisurely getaway. Have a few meetings, see a few press conferences, drop into a few parties, take a stroll along the beach. (Ahem, those few meetings are really important ones, honest :)

Though, I do have some official “booth duty” at the Indie Games Showcase, which the IGDA helped out on with the IndieCade folks… Also, I am very much looking forward to the Into the Pixel unveiling.

Anyway, despite the uncertainty of it all, for the first time in ten years, I’m not dreading the yearly marathon that was the old E3.

Admittedly, I got one of my worst university grades in an advanced economics course. Regardless, playing with numbers and filtering with an economics or stats lens is fun. Of course, you need good numbers to play with!

I’m extremely grateful that NPD was willing to share some of their numbers for my “Playing the Spread: Internal vs. External IP” article at The Escapist. I don’t necessarily uncover any big surprises (ie, non-licensed games are on the whole more successful, but are more unpredictable than those games based on IP external to the game industry). Though, by analyzing the numbers and crunching standard deviations, we start to better understand why that is…

The numbers provided by NPD also had a column for ESRB rating. The sales break down as follows:

Table: Top 100 games sales data across all platforms since 2000.

Quickly, what do we notice? E rated games represent the majority of games sales. M sales are healthy, but not quite as dominant and the mainstream media would lead us to believe. In fact, the various GTA titles account for over $800 million of the M sales (or, about 13% of total games sales)! Also interesting to compare these numbers with the MPAA sorting of film revenue.

If I actually knew how to do regression analysis, it would be fascinating to control for things like ESRB rating, platform, month of release, publisher, genre, etc, to see which variables most closely correlate with a game’s sales/success.