gamedeveloper200602-dl.pdf

PRODUCT REVIEW AUTODESK 3DS MAX 8 SOFTWARE

FEBRUARY 2006

THE LEADING GAME INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

STATE OF THE INDUSTRY

CASUAL GAMES AND

THE MASS MARKET

SIT! SPEAK! DEVELOP!

MAKING JAK X WITH

NAUGHTY DOG DISCIPLINE

DEMOLICIOUS DERBY

A CORNUCOPIA OF TRIAL

TOOLS FOR ARTISTS

POSTMORTEM:

THE BUZZ ON HARMONIX’S

GUITAR

HERO

Physics. Animation.

Behaviors. Tools.

Integrated.

physics

Why wrestle bringing

your next-generation

characters to life?

animation

behaviors

Stay Ahead of the Game! TM

[

CONTENTS

]

FEBRUARY 2006

VOLUME 13, NUMBER 2

FEATURES

9 STATE OF THE INDUSTRY:

CASUAL GAMES

The casual games market is expanding

rapidly, and so too are its associated

business practices. In this market

overview, Paul Hyman investigates some

of the current and future-leaning tactics

that casual game developers and

publishers are using to make their

businesses profitable, from PopCap to

Ya h o o ! G a m e s .

By Paul Hyman

POSTMORTEM

17 FROM SMART TO FINISH:

J AK X: C OMBAT R ACING

AND THE NAUGHTY DOG

PRODUCTION METHOD

J AK X: C OMBAT R ACING found Naughty Dog

working in a new arena. The developer

had never before made a combat racer,

beyond small elements in previous J AK

titles. So how did they go from concept

to finished product in a relatively short

time, in an area slightly outside their

comfort zone, with features they’d never

before attempted? The answers lie

within.

By Richard Lemarchand

24 THE BUZZ ON HARMONIX’S G UITAR H ERO

Peripheral-based games are often a risky gamble. But partnering with

the right publisher, utilizing a mature code base, and having the right

staff for the job allowed Harmonix to come out with the critically lauded,

consumer-embraced G UITAR H ERO in just nine months. Knowing how to

rock didn’t hurt either!

By Greg LoPiccolo and Daniel Sussman

DEPARTMENTS

COLUMNS

2 GAME PLAN By Simon Carless

Hero to Most

30 THE INNER PRODUCT By Mick West

[

PROGRAMMING

]

Multi-core Processors

4 HEADS UP DISPLAY

Independent Games Festival finalists announced, CES event wrap-up,

Nintendo’s DS sails in Japan, and more.

33 PIXEL PUSHER By Steve Theodore

[

ART

]

Demolicious Derby

36 AURAL FIXATION By guest columnist Jesse Harlin

[

SOUND

]

6 SKUNK WORKS By Ronnie Ashlock

Autodesk 3ds Max 8 software

Q/A for Audio

38 GAME SHUI By Noah Falstein

[ DESIGN ]

48 A THOUSAND WORDS

NinjaBee’s O UTPOST K ALOKI X

When the Hunter Becomes the Hunted

40 BUSINESS LEVEL By Clarinda Merripen

[ BUSINESS ]

Maximizing Operations

COVER ART: RYAN LESSER, HARMONIX

WWW.GDMAG.COM

GAME PLAN

]

www.gdmag.com

CMP Media, 600 Harrison St., 6th Fl., San Francisco, CA 94107 t: 415.947.6000 f: 415.947.6090

HERO TO MOST

EDITORIAL

EDITOR

Simon Carless scarless@gdmag.com

MANAGING EDITOR

Jill Duffy jduffy@gdmag.com

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Brandon Sheffield bsheffield@gdmag.com

ART DIRECTOR

Cliff Scorso cscorso@gdmag.com

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Alexander Brandon abrandon@gdmag.com

Noah Falstein nfalstein@gdmag.com

Steve Theodore stheodore@gdmag.com

Mick West mwest@gdmag.com

ADVISORY BOARD

Hal Barwood Designer-at-Large

Ellen Guon Beeman Monolith

Andy Gavin Naughty Dog

Joby Otero Luxoflux

ADVERTISING SALES

NATIONAL SALES MANAGER

Afton Thatcher e: athatcher@cmp.com t: 415.947.6217

SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER, EAST COAST, EUROPE & EASTERN CANADA

Ayrien Machiran e: amachiran@cmp.com t: 415.947.6224

ACCOUNT MANAGER, NO. CALIF., NORTHWEST, ASIA & WESTERN CANADA

Nick Geist e: ngeist@cmp.com t: 415.947.6223

ACCOUNT MANAGER, GLOBAL RECRUITMENT/EDUCATION & TEXAS

Aaron Murawski e : amurawski@cmp.com t: 415.947.6227

ADVERTISING PRODUCTION

ADVERTISING PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Kevin Chanel

REPRINTS Julie Rapp e : jarapp@cmp.com t: 510 . 834.4752

GAME GROUP MARKETING

DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS STRATEGY Michele Maguire

DIRECTOR OF MARKETING Ta r a C . G i b b

CMP GAME GROUP

VP, GROUP PUBLISHER APPLIED TECHNOLOGIES Philip Chapnick

CONFERENCE DIRECTOR, GDC Jamil Moledina

SENIOR CONFERENCE MANAGER, GDC Meggan Scavio

EXECUTIVE WEB PRODUCER Peter Leahy

EDITOR, GAMASUTRA.COM Simon Carless

FEATURES EDITOR , GAMASUTRA.COM Quang Hong

CIRCULATION

CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Kevin Regan e: kregan@cmp.com

CIRCULATION ASSISTANT MANAGER Jessica Ward e : jward@cmp.com

CIRCULATION COORDINATOR Miguel Mendiolaza e: mmendiolaza@cmp.com

CIRCULATION ASSISTANT Michael Campbell e: mcampbell@cmp.com

CIRCULATION ASSISTANT Andrea Abidor e : aabidor@cmp.com

SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES

FOR INFORMATION, ORDER QUESTIONS, AND ADDRESS CHANGES

t: 800.250.2429 f: 847.763.9606 e : gamedeveloper@halldata.com

INTERNATIONAL LICENSING INFORMATION

Mario Salinas

t: 650.513.4234 f: 650.513.4482 e: msalinas@cmp.com

CMP MEDIA MANAGEMENT

PRESIDENT & CEO Steve Weitzner

EXECUTIVE VP & CFO John Day

EXECUTIVE VP, CORPORATE SALES & MARKETING Jeff Patterson

SENIOR VP, AUDIENCE MARKETING AND DEVELOPMENT Bill Amstutz

SENIOR VP, INTERNET BUSINESS Mike Azzara

SENIOR VP, CMP INTEGRATED MARKETING SOLUTIONS Joseph Braue

SENIOR VP & GENERAL COUNSEL Sandra Grayson

SENIOR VP, CORPORATE SALES Anne Marie Miller

SENIOR VP, MANUFACTURING Marie Myers

SENIOR VP, COMMUNICATIONS Alexandra Raine

SENIOR VP, CORPORATE MARKETING Kate Spellman

VP, AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT Michael Zane

PRESIDENT, CHANNEL GROUP Robert Faletra

PRESIDENT, CMP ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA To ny Ke efe

PRESIDENT, CMP HEALTHCARE MEDIA Vicki Masseria

SENIOR VP, GROUP DIRECTOR ELECTRONICS &

SOFTWARE GROUPS Paul Miller

SENIOR VP, ENTERPRISE GROUP Fritz Nelson

SENIOR VP, GROUP DIRECTOR COMMUNICATIONS GROUP

Stephen Saunders

THIS MONTH’S GAME DEVELOPER IS, WELL, NOT

afraid to rock out a little, as you can see by the

jaunty cover, which features a postmortem of

Harmonix’s PlayStation 2 mainstream rock

phenomenon, G UITAR H ERO . G UITAR H ERO has been

consistently eulogized since its release late last

year, and received a significant number of votes in

sister site Gamasutra’s best games of 2005 survey.

To play devil’s advocate for a moment, why does

G UITAR H ERO particularly matter? It’s just another

of those darned rhythm games—isn’t it?—except

with that guitar controller and a few more bands

that we’ve heard of.

No, no, and no. One thing that games forget to

be is culturally appropriate, and, at least for the

Western market, G UITAR H ERO has caught the

zeitgeist dead on.

If you add classic rock poster artwork, actually

skillful cover versions to riff against, plus careful,

not overly intricate note-picking—which really

makes you feel like you’re Jimi (or Eric, or Lemmy)—

then you’re in the money. It’s not about how clinically

games are created so much as the way they make

you feel, and the folks at Harmonix explain how

they make us feel real good (see pg. 24) .

written an eloquent piece on how his team made

J AK X: C OMBAT R ACING in just 10 months, from full

production start to gold master. Given the genre

switch from action platform to combat racing and

the short timescale, Lemarchand lays out for

fellow developers the production methods that

allowed them to complete the title so quickly to

significant success without using time travel—or

so he claims.

Dave Pottinger Ensemble Studios

George Sanger Big Fat Inc.

Harvey Smith Midway

Paul Steed Microsoft

FEE, FI, FO, FUM

Of course, that’s not all. Among the other highlights

is another casual/indie game, NinjaBee’s O UTPOST

K ALOKI X for Xbox 360 Live Arcade, showing off in

the A Thousand Words art showcase, and a host of

regular columnists making themselves known on

some intriguing topics.

Programmer columnist Mick West writes this

month on multi-core processors. Artist Steve

Theodore covers how to delve smartly into art tool

evaluation versions. Plus, Noah Falstein’s design

page looks at “the hunter and the hunted,” and

guest columnist Jesse Harlin of LucasArts

provides a special discourse on Q/A practices for

audio—a great subject that’s often underplayed in

even large studios.

CASUAL WHISTLING

A general theme for this issue is the widening of

the game market, something that’s readily

apparent in G UITAR H ERO . Feature writer Paul

Hyman, however, takes a look at one of the areas

that’s widening the fastest in his “State of the

Industry” report on casual games (pg. 9) . From

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Live Arcade, all the way to

major PC portals such as Yahoo! Games and

notable casual game creators and publishers,

such as PopCap and PlayFirst, Hyman looks at

where the casual game is positioned and where

it’s headed, as the market is predicted to

skyrocket over the next few years.

The casual games market isn’t the only one

challenging how we define “player,” “gamer,” or

even “game.” The Independent Games Festival,

awarded each March at GDC, recognizes

independent developers and their creations, which

continue to experiment and innovate in delightful

ways. Game Developer applauds the finalists in a

mini showcase in our news section (pg . 5) .

DS: DOMINATION SITUATION?

For one reason or another, a number of my recent

editorials have mentioned Nintendo in some

fashion, and this one is no exception. The

Nintendo DS’s Christmas handheld domination of

the Japanese hardware and software charts

(Heads Up Display, pg. 4) is cause for both remark

and fascination. For those who haven’t been

gazing glassy-eyed at Media Create’s Japanese

charts recently, Nintendo’s conquering of the

sales market has been practically unprecedented.

But here’s the big question: Could the more

extreme market widening that the Nintendo DS

has prompted in Japan ever happen in the West,

where currently, the DS and PSP are much closer

to being evenly matched? To a certain extent, a

greater market was reached for N INTENDOGS , but as

the B RAIN T RAINING games start launching in the

U.S. and Europe over the next few months, we’ll

find out whether Nintendo’s world domination

plans really span the entire globe.

RECALCITRANT CANINE

We’re also very proud to feature an article by

Richard Lemarchand, game director at Naughty

Dog (C RASH B ANDICOOT and J AK & D AXTER ) who has

Simon Carless, editor

Game Developer

is BPA approved

FEBRUARY 2006 | GAME DEVELOPER

WWW.CMPGAME.COM

[

WWW.CMPGAME.COM

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