How many games do cost $20 million to develop, and how many sell 5 million copies?
Only the tiniest percentage of games will achieve sales figures like that (eg. GTA, Warcraft, The Sims). A "successful" game will sell more than a few hundred thousand copies. You've got to be damned sure you're going to get the sales to support an investment of $3m. Fortunately - or unfortunately, depending on your point of view - a strong licence such as The Matrix almost guarantees good sales figures, even if the game itself is no better than average.
I slipped the authorities £20 to intercept my manager and lead designer, who got to go to the show. I think my descriptions must have been a little vague.
In fact, I have yet to meet a game designer who is a software engineer. Designers tend to spring up from the art or testing departments, rather than programming.
Going back six or seven years, the role of "designer" was carried out by a programmer or artist working on the project. The now common dedicated designer role is a sign of the increasing complexity of games. It requires a lot of time to think through an entire game structure, maintaining consistency and a sense of playability.
Pretty much anybody can come up with a decent game idea. Most people I know in the industry have a wish list of games they'd love to make one day. Anyone can submit a game idea for consideration. Ultimately, though, it does come down to marketing and higher management about which projects get the go-ahead. It is the designer's responsibility to take that game idea and expand on it. There are two crucial elements to this:
- They must explore and think through every possible scenario, action and reaction within the game and be able to rationalise this into a consistent set of rules.
- They must be able to explain the design effectively to other designers, artists, programmers and managers.
Life is an unnecessary pain when either of these are done poorly. If the game isn't thought through properly, you can end up having to redo large sections. For example, if object X is used in room A, and needed again in room C, then make sure that if the player leaves it behind, they can at least go back and reclaim it. Make sure documentation is up-to-date, comprehensive and concise. I've waded through 500+ page design docs, of which less than 50 pages were of any relevance to the development staff.
If you've got a good writing background, strong communication skills and a broad experience and love of games, then it's very likely you could find a entry level game designer position. It's extremely unlikely you'll be designing your own game for several years. It's more probable that you'll be working on level or puzzle designs for other games, so be prepared for this. When approaching games companies for such a position, and with no prior experience in the industry, make sure you have some example game designs. Don't be overly concerned about coming up with a completely unique game - the company will more interested in the attention to detail and how clearly you present your ideas. Alternatively, develop ideas on how an existing game could have been made differently and how this would improve it.
The faculty and trustees of the school hope to get students ready to enter the field of video game making. A field where Elaine Reeder, an associate professor of computer graphics, estimates salaries can start as high as $60,000 per year at the right employer.
Please tell me who this employer is, and where they are based! I've nearly reached that figure, but only after nine years in the games industry. It seems to me that this is a highly unrealistic claim purely designed to fill classrooms.
Cholo was great! I played the BBC Micro version, many, many years ago. Cholo, Elite and Exile are the three games from the 8-bit era that have stuck in my mind. Thinking about it, the common theme between these three is the ability to explore at your own pace. After an initial background story, it's up to you to explore the world/universe, find what you need to do and where you have to go to do it. Few games seem to take that approach these days.
Yep, I've been waiting for multiplayer Elite. How well does this game handle PvP combat? Is it real-time flying and shooting like Elite, or is it a case of pressing buttons to select the next attack move, like MMORPG Dark Age of Camelot?
I've briefly looked into developing an Elite-style MMOG, and one crucial area that had me stumped was how to handle dogfights in a scalable way. It's all fine until a hundred people gather at the same location and start trying to shoot each other. I've a feeling there's a solution involving clients talking directly to each other rather than through one of the servers, giving an attacker a more rapid update of their victim and vice versa. However, direct comms between clients, unchecked and unfiltered by the server, is potentially open to all kinds of abuse.. hmm.. time to dig out my notes again, I think!
For the past week, I've been swamped with junk mail. I can't say for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's coming from machines infected by a spam relaying trojan. Many other Demon Internet users are receiving similar junk. The even more annoying part is that the mail is being sent to random user names @myhostname.demon.co.uk, so I'm getting dozens of copies of each message. As I'm on dial-up at the moment, this is a major problem.
Many - but not all - of the messages are originating from AT&T broadband users. A few days ago, I received a message from another AT&T machine, with a 200kb executable attached, pretending to be a security patch sent directly from Microsoft.
Could this be the trojan sending out copies of itself, to create new relays? Maybe not, but I wouldn't be overly surprised.
Agreed. A year ago, I was involved in a new start-up company. We found, through a business advice service, that the local university was offering office space for free, including a low to mid spec PC, phone line, broadband internet connection, and software licences at educational institute rates. You had to meet their prerequisites - the business being hi-tech related, and the business plan and a presentation passing the scrutiny of a board of industry sponsors. Once through, the office was yours for a maximum of 12 months - the idea being that your start-up will be established by then and able to move into other premises. They have since introduced a nominal monthly fee, I believe, but still far cheaper than standard office rental. They also have plenty of good contacts and business advisors on hand...
I'd advise checking to see if there's any similar schemes running in your local area.
Similar to what Douglas Adams suggested as a random number generator, 25 years or so ago, I guess. This implementation is a little more convenient - although slightly less tasty - than a fresh really hot cup of tea.
Re:How do the authors get compensated?
on
Games on Demand
·
· Score: 1
I would imagine it's not much different to your premium movie channels on satellite or cable. The broadcaster/provider pays a fee to the owners of the film/game to broadcast/host it for a given period. Meanwhile, you pay your £10, $, or whatever for the month regardless of how many of the films/games you may or may not watch/play.
The tricky bit for the games service will be making sure that the amount the publishers receive is at least equal to the amount lost in box sales, and that the total amount given to publishers is significantly less than income from the subscriptions.
One thing that differs between bricks & mortar shops and online outlets is automation. I was looking for a laptop computer last year and found one online for about £600, tax included. This was by far and away the best system in relation to price, so I placed an order. I first received back an email confirming the order, then later I received an email confirming the sale. It was a few days later when I received a phone call explaining that there'd been an error on the website, and the laptop should actually have cost more than double what it was listed for. They were discussing the matter with their lawyers and if I didn't want to cancel the order, I'd have to wait and see. Eventually I did get the laptop for the reduced price, and from what I understand, the automated confirmation of sale that was sent was effectively a binding contract for them to supply me that laptop at that price.
Most of us have one or more lasers lying around the house, only they're today's replacement for the gramophone needle, and not for atomizing our enemies at a press of a trigger.
Extrapolating from this, I predict that in another hundred years, warp drive engines will enable us to build new, faster and more efficient washing machines.
Yep, I have this book somewhere, written by Harry Harrison and Marvin Minsky. The story follows a guy who, if I recall correctly, was shot in the head. The bullet wound effectively severed the links between his memory and the rest of his brain, and the implant basically sat in the hole and re-routed signals from one side to the other. It did this in a self teaching/brute force kind of way, gradually testing all combinations, somehow measuring the response.
A cool idea explored in the book was how the brain would react to the implant. In the story, as the implant learned the responses to the brain, the brain learned the responses to the implant. The guy eventually gained the ability to use the fast mathematical operations available on the processor within the implant. Which would be nice.
It's not the best book ever written, but it's got some interesting ideas and will keep you reading for a while.
The first cassette recorder I had for use with a computer did not have the ability to mute the sound while loading. Some tapes needed the volume up particularly high to load properly. I recall being sat there, ears bleeding, in dismay at the "Data? Rewind tape" error messages appearing on the screen.
I think I remember a Sinclair Spectrum magazine running a type-in listing of a program to play music on a nearby radio. Could be mistaken, though. I remember a friend painstakingly typing in a program to record short sound samples through the cassette interface - possibly an Amstrad computer? If you used your imagination, and had prior knowledge of what was being recorded, the resulting crackle wasn't far off!
Presumably you're refering to this event at the Homebrew Computer Club back in 1975... (snipped from this article)
The Altair may have been frustrating, but it drove the nerds to experiment, finding real uses for the useless box, turning it from a curiosity to a computer.
Lee Felsenstein Steve Dumpier set up an Altair, ehm laboriously keyed a program into it. Somebody knocked a plug out of the wall and he had to do that all over again but nobody knew what this was about. After all, was it just going to sit and flash its lights? No.
Roger Melen You put a little eh transistor radio next to the Altair and he would by manipulating the length of loops in the sofware - could play tunes.
Lee Felsenstein The radio began playing 'Fool on the Hill'....Da da da, da da da....and the tinny little tunes that you could tell were coming from the noise that the computer was generated being picked up by the radio. Everybody rose and applauded. I proposed that he receive the stripped Philips Screw Award for finding a use for something previously thought useless. But I think everybody was too busy applauding to even hear me.
Roger Melen It was a very exciting thing, it was probably the first thing the Altair actually did.
On a related note, my old BBC micro used to pick up interference on it's internal speaker, which could actually be used for some basic debugging. You could tell if it had crashed, or whether it was still running round a particularly heavy maths loop, etc...
Who in their right fscking mind would pay $18 to burn 10 tracks? If i want to take it in the ass, i'll go and buy a cd for $18 in the store! Hell, it may have 12 tracks on it?
Might save you a few $ if the ten tracks you want are spread across seven different albums in the store.
I once installed Windows 95 on the 33Mhz 486 card that lived in my ARM6 RISC OS system. It was only allocated 7 of the 8Mb RAM in the machine, as I had to leave some for RISC OS to play with. It wasn't *too* awful, as I recall, but an extra 32Mb did help.
Slashdot Mirror
How many games do cost $20 million to develop, and how many sell 5 million copies?
Only the tiniest percentage of games will achieve sales figures like that (eg. GTA, Warcraft, The Sims). A "successful" game will sell more than a few hundred thousand copies. You've got to be damned sure you're going to get the sales to support an investment of $3m. Fortunately - or unfortunately, depending on your point of view - a strong licence such as The Matrix almost guarantees good sales figures, even if the game itself is no better than average.
I slipped the authorities £20 to intercept my manager and lead designer, who got to go to the show. I think my descriptions must have been a little vague.
My left arm and right arm are already taken. I don't have any more arms, you insensitive clod!
In fact, I have yet to meet a game designer who is a software engineer. Designers tend to spring up from the art or testing departments, rather than programming.
Going back six or seven years, the role of "designer" was carried out by a programmer or artist working on the project. The now common dedicated designer role is a sign of the increasing complexity of games. It requires a lot of time to think through an entire game structure, maintaining consistency and a sense of playability.
Pretty much anybody can come up with a decent game idea. Most people I know in the industry have a wish list of games they'd love to make one day. Anyone can submit a game idea for consideration. Ultimately, though, it does come down to marketing and higher management about which projects get the go-ahead. It is the designer's responsibility to take that game idea and expand on it. There are two crucial elements to this:
- They must explore and think through every possible scenario, action and reaction within the game and be able to rationalise this into a consistent set of rules.
- They must be able to explain the design effectively to other designers, artists, programmers and managers.
Life is an unnecessary pain when either of these are done poorly. If the game isn't thought through properly, you can end up having to redo large sections. For example, if object X is used in room A, and needed again in room C, then make sure that if the player leaves it behind, they can at least go back and reclaim it. Make sure documentation is up-to-date, comprehensive and concise. I've waded through 500+ page design docs, of which less than 50 pages were of any relevance to the development staff.
If you've got a good writing background, strong communication skills and a broad experience and love of games, then it's very likely you could find a entry level game designer position. It's extremely unlikely you'll be designing your own game for several years. It's more probable that you'll be working on level or puzzle designs for other games, so be prepared for this. When approaching games companies for such a position, and with no prior experience in the industry, make sure you have some example game designs. Don't be overly concerned about coming up with a completely unique game - the company will more interested in the attention to detail and how clearly you present your ideas. Alternatively, develop ideas on how an existing game could have been made differently and how this would improve it.
The faculty and trustees of the school hope to get students ready to enter the field of video game making. A field where Elaine Reeder, an associate professor of computer graphics, estimates salaries can start as high as $60,000 per year at the right employer.
Please tell me who this employer is, and where they are based! I've nearly reached that figure, but only after nine years in the games industry. It seems to me that this is a highly unrealistic claim purely designed to fill classrooms.
I'm pulling down the average!
- 1995 : 14.4kbit
- 1997 : 33.6kbit
- 1999 : ~45kbit (=56kbit, supposedly)
- 2001 : 512kbit
- 2002 : ~45kbit again
Maybe in 2008 I'll be down to a 1200 baud acoustic coupler. God bless British Telecom.
Cholo was great! I played the BBC Micro version, many, many years ago. Cholo, Elite and Exile are the three games from the 8-bit era that have stuck in my mind. Thinking about it, the common theme between these three is the ability to explore at your own pace. After an initial background story, it's up to you to explore the world/universe, find what you need to do and where you have to go to do it. Few games seem to take that approach these days.
Not all games companies appear to have limits.
Safe, unless the monitor features in a movie, whereupon the display will be so bright, the image will be projected clearly onto the user's face.
Yep, I've been waiting for multiplayer Elite. How well does this game handle PvP combat? Is it real-time flying and shooting like Elite, or is it a case of pressing buttons to select the next attack move, like MMORPG Dark Age of Camelot?
I've briefly looked into developing an Elite-style MMOG, and one crucial area that had me stumped was how to handle dogfights in a scalable way. It's all fine until a hundred people gather at the same location and start trying to shoot each other. I've a feeling there's a solution involving clients talking directly to each other rather than through one of the servers, giving an attacker a more rapid update of their victim and vice versa. However, direct comms between clients, unchecked and unfiltered by the server, is potentially open to all kinds of abuse.. hmm.. time to dig out my notes again, I think!
For the past week, I've been swamped with junk mail. I can't say for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's coming from machines infected by a spam relaying trojan. Many other Demon Internet users are receiving similar junk. The even more annoying part is that the mail is being sent to random user names @myhostname.demon.co.uk, so I'm getting dozens of copies of each message. As I'm on dial-up at the moment, this is a major problem.
Many - but not all - of the messages are originating from AT&T broadband users. A few days ago, I received a message from another AT&T machine, with a 200kb executable attached, pretending to be a security patch sent directly from Microsoft.
Could this be the trojan sending out copies of itself, to create new relays? Maybe not, but I wouldn't be overly surprised.
Find an office, even a cheap one
Agreed. A year ago, I was involved in a new start-up company. We found, through a business advice service, that the local university was offering office space for free, including a low to mid spec PC, phone line, broadband internet connection, and software licences at educational institute rates. You had to meet their prerequisites - the business being hi-tech related, and the business plan and a presentation passing the scrutiny of a board of industry sponsors. Once through, the office was yours for a maximum of 12 months - the idea being that your start-up will be established by then and able to move into other premises. They have since introduced a nominal monthly fee, I believe, but still far cheaper than standard office rental. They also have plenty of good contacts and business advisors on hand...
I'd advise checking to see if there's any similar schemes running in your local area.
That one is indeed working fine!
I don't suppose anyone mirrored the mirror, did they? Sheesh... I'll look tomorrow, when the excitement has died down.
Similar to what Douglas Adams suggested as a random number generator, 25 years or so ago, I guess. This implementation is a little more convenient - although slightly less tasty - than a fresh really hot cup of tea.
I would imagine it's not much different to your premium movie channels on satellite or cable. The broadcaster/provider pays a fee to the owners of the film/game to broadcast/host it for a given period. Meanwhile, you pay your £10, $, or whatever for the month regardless of how many of the films/games you may or may not watch/play.
The tricky bit for the games service will be making sure that the amount the publishers receive is at least equal to the amount lost in box sales, and that the total amount given to publishers is significantly less than income from the subscriptions.
One thing that differs between bricks & mortar shops and online outlets is automation. I was looking for a laptop computer last year and found one online for about £600, tax included. This was by far and away the best system in relation to price, so I placed an order. I first received back an email confirming the order, then later I received an email confirming the sale. It was a few days later when I received a phone call explaining that there'd been an error on the website, and the laptop should actually have cost more than double what it was listed for. They were discussing the matter with their lawyers and if I didn't want to cancel the order, I'd have to wait and see. Eventually I did get the laptop for the reduced price, and from what I understand, the automated confirmation of sale that was sent was effectively a binding contract for them to supply me that laptop at that price.
Most of us have one or more lasers lying around the house, only they're today's replacement for the gramophone needle, and not for atomizing our enemies at a press of a trigger.
Extrapolating from this, I predict that in another hundred years, warp drive engines will enable us to build new, faster and more efficient washing machines.
Is that a two mile wide ex-planetary core diamond in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?
Yep, I have this book somewhere, written by Harry Harrison and Marvin Minsky. The story follows a guy who, if I recall correctly, was shot in the head. The bullet wound effectively severed the links between his memory and the rest of his brain, and the implant basically sat in the hole and re-routed signals from one side to the other. It did this in a self teaching/brute force kind of way, gradually testing all combinations, somehow measuring the response.
A cool idea explored in the book was how the brain would react to the implant. In the story, as the implant learned the responses to the brain, the brain learned the responses to the implant. The guy eventually gained the ability to use the fast mathematical operations available on the processor within the implant. Which would be nice.
It's not the best book ever written, but it's got some interesting ideas and will keep you reading for a while.
The first cassette recorder I had for use with a computer did not have the ability to mute the sound while loading. Some tapes needed the volume up particularly high to load properly. I recall being sat there, ears bleeding, in dismay at the "Data? Rewind tape" error messages appearing on the screen.
I think I remember a Sinclair Spectrum magazine running a type-in listing of a program to play music on a nearby radio. Could be mistaken, though. I remember a friend painstakingly typing in a program to record short sound samples through the cassette interface - possibly an Amstrad computer? If you used your imagination, and had prior knowledge of what was being recorded, the resulting crackle wasn't far off!
Presumably you're refering to this event at the Homebrew Computer Club back in 1975... (snipped from this article)
The Altair may have been frustrating, but it drove the nerds to experiment, finding real uses for the useless box, turning it from a curiosity to a computer.
Lee Felsenstein
Steve Dumpier set up an Altair, ehm laboriously keyed a program into it. Somebody knocked a plug out of the wall and he had to do that all over again but nobody knew what this was about. After all, was it just going to sit and flash its lights? No.
Roger Melen
You put a little eh transistor radio next to the Altair and he would by manipulating the length of loops in the sofware - could play tunes.
Lee Felsenstein
The radio began playing 'Fool on the Hill'....Da da da, da da da....and the tinny little tunes that you could tell were coming from the noise that the computer was generated being picked up by the radio. Everybody rose and applauded. I proposed that he receive the stripped Philips Screw Award for finding a use for something previously thought useless. But I think everybody was too busy applauding to even hear me.
Roger Melen
It was a very exciting thing, it was probably the first thing the Altair actually did.
On a related note, my old BBC micro used to pick up interference on it's internal speaker, which could actually be used for some basic debugging. You could tell if it had crashed, or whether it was still running round a particularly heavy maths loop, etc...
"The volume of CD albums shipped in 2002 reached another all time high: 221.6m units"
Source: British Phonographic Industry
So sales haven't declined at all. I guess they just haven't risen as much as they hoped. At least in the UK, that is...
Who in their right fscking mind would pay $18 to burn 10 tracks? If i want to take it in the ass, i'll go and buy a cd for $18 in the store! Hell, it may have 12 tracks on it?
/me dons flame-proof pants
Might save you a few $ if the ten tracks you want are spread across seven different albums in the store.
386? 4Mb? Bleah. You win.
I once installed Windows 95 on the 33Mhz 486 card that lived in my ARM6 RISC OS system. It was only allocated 7 of the 8Mb RAM in the machine, as I had to leave some for RISC OS to play with. It wasn't *too* awful, as I recall, but an extra 32Mb did help.