gamedeveloper200612-dl.pdf

>> PRODUCT REVIEWS DAZ’S HEXAGON 2 * BETA PRODUCT PREVIEWS

DECEMBER 2006

THE LEADING GAME INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

DEFCON

POSTMORTEM:

INTROVERSION’S

>> STATE OF THE INDUSTRY

GAME PRIVACY WALKS

THE REVENUE PLANK

>> CREATE ALL HUMANS

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

FOR OPEN WORLD GAMES

>> 2006’S BEST PRODUCTS

FRONTLINE AWARD

FINALISTS ANNOUNCED

CONTENTS

]

DECEMBER 2006

VOLUME 13, NUMBER 11

FEATURES

13 STATE OF THE INDUSTRY:

VIDEO GAME PIRACY

Piracy has been a concern since games

were first made available for sale. The PC is

a particularly embattled platform as far as

digital piracy, though console gamemakers

have their fair share of troubles as well.

Professionals from id, Macrovision, the ESA

and other organizations explain where the

industry’s biggest concerns lie and what we

might do in the future to disrupt pirate

activities. Leave your eyepatch at home.

By Paul Hyman

21 CREATING ALL HUMANS

Artificial intelligence is of paramount

importance in all games, but flaws therein

can be even more noticeable in open-world

games, in which the player is given a wide

range of control. Using a data-driven AI

architecture, Pandemic Studios created a

flexible system for D ESTROY ALL H UMANS II

that alleviated many of the typical

problems seen in open-world games.

By John Krajewski

POSTMORTEM

26 DETONATING INTROVERSION’S DEFCON

Steam-distributed PC strategy title D EFCON was a completely

independent project, continuing Introversion’s reputation as “the last of

the bedroom programmers.” In this postmortem, team members from all

aspects of the game’s production weigh in about the logistics of

releasing and popularizing a game with a sub $100,000 budget in this

era of bloated budgets and gargantuan team sizes.

By Chris Delay, Vicky Arundel, Thomas Arundel, Gary Chambers, and John Knottenbelt

DEPARTMENTS

COLUMNS

2 GAME PLAN By Simon Carless

Second-Hand Bonanza

31 THE INNER PRODUCT By Mick West

[ PROGRAMMING ]

Optimizing Asset Processing

4 HEADS UP DISPLAY

Front Line Award finalists, new console consolations, and serious games

existential questions

34 BUSINESS LEVEL By Greg Ballard

[ BUSINESS ]

Mobile Mindset

35 GAME SHUI By Noah Falstein

[ DESIGN ]

7 SKUNK WORKS By Tom Carroll, John Root, and Ronnie Ashlock

DAZ 3D’s Hexagon 2, Alastair Macleod’s PeelSolve beta,

and Nevercenter’s Silo 2 beta

Designer Genes

37 PIXEL PUSHER By Steve Theodore

[ ART ]

The History Channel

48 A THOUSAND WORDS

Capcom’s L OST P LANET :E XTREME C ONDITION

40 AURAL FIXATION By Jesse Harlin

[ SOUND ]

Laboring to Compete

COVER ART: MORTEN ELGAARD PEDERSEN

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

SECOND-HAND

BONANZA

EDITORIAL

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Simon Carles s scarless@gdmag.com

MANAGING EDITOR

Jill Duffy jduffy@gdmag.com

FEATURES EDITOR

Brandon Sheffield bsheffield@gdmag.com

ART DIRECTOR

Cliff Scors o cscorso@gdmag.com

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Jesse Harli n jharlin@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 Microsoft

Andy Gavin Naughty Dog

Joby Otero Luxoflux

ADVERTISING SALES

DIRECTOR OF SALES

Steve McGill e: smcgill@cmp.com t: 415.947.6217

GLOBAL SALES MANAGER, RECRUITMENT & EDUCATION

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

SR. ACCOUNT MANAGER, SOUTHWEST, CONTRACTORS, & MARKETPLACE

Jasmin Davé e: jdave@cmp.com t: 415.947.6226

ACCOUNT MANAGER, EAST COAST, U.K. & EASTERN CANADA

Cecily Herbst e: cherbst@cmp.com t: 415.947.6215

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

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

ADVERTISING PRODUCTION

ADVERTISING PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Kevin Chanel

REPRINTS Cindy Zauss e : czauss@cmp.com t: 516-562-5000

Julie A. Douglas e: jadouglas@cmp.com t: 516.562.5092

CMP GAME GROUP

VP, GROUP PUBLISHER APPLIED TECHNOLOGIES Philip Chapnick

VP, STRATEGIC MARKETING Michele Maguire

GROUP DIRECTOR Kathy Schoback

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

CONFERENCE DIRECTOR, GDC Jamil Moledina

SENIOR CONFERENCE MANAGER, GDC Meggan Scavio

EXECUTIVE WEB PRODUCER Peter Leahy

EDITOR-IN-CHIE F, GAMASUTRA.COM Simon Carless

ASSISTANT EDITO R, GAMASUTRA.COM Frank Cifaldi

CIRCULATION

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 TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT

PRESIDENT AND CEO Steve Weitzner

EXECUTIVE VP AND CFO Adam Marder

SENIOR VP, AUDIENCE MARKETING & DEVELOPMENT Bill Amstutz

SENIOR VP, CMP INTEGRATED MARKETING SOLUTIONS Joseph Braue

SENIOR VP AND GENERAL COUNSEL Sandra Grayson

SENIOR VP, CORPORATE MARKETING Lisa Johnson

SENIOR VP, CORPORATE SALES Anne Marie Miller

SENIOR VP, MANUFACTURING Marie Myers

SENIOR VP, COMMUNICATIONS Alexandra Raine

VP, AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT Michael Zane

PRESIDENT, CHANNEL GROUP Robert Faletra

PRESIDENT, CMP ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA To ny Ke efe

PRESIDENT, BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY GROUP Jeff Patterson

SENIOR VP, GROUP DIRECTOR, ELECTRONICS & SOFTWARE GROUPS

Paul Miller

SENIOR VP, GROUP DIRECTOR, COMMUNICATIONS GROUP,

Stephen Saunders

I’M LOOKING AT AN INVESTOR NOTE FROM COLIN

Sebastian of Lazard Capital Markets, who, as well

as commenting on the latest NPD reports, has

been discussing the emerging reseller market for

the PlayStation 3 and Wii, claiming that eBay might

become “the #1 new console retailer this holiday.”

Sebastian explains, “With limited supplies

expected this holiday for both Sony’s PlayStation 3

and Nintendo’s Wii consoles, we expect that many

gamers will turn to eBay (and other online

marketplaces) to locate new hardware.

“Already, our survey of completed auctions on

eBay.com indicates that nearly 2,000 pre-ordered

PlayStation 3 and Wii consoles have been resold on

the marketplace to date. In addition, the consoles are

selling on eBay for approximately two and one half

times the suggested retail price of console hardware,

on average $1,500 for Sony’s PlayStation 3 versus

$599 and $550 versus $249 for Nintendo’s Wii.”

developers, do you buy used video games or go out

of your way to buy new ones? If you do buy used,

are you concerned about the financial implications

of the used game market, or does the free market

trump revenue concerns for the game business?”

The results were somewhat surprising. According

to the column’s editor, the responses were mixed,

though developers in particular often “prided

themselves on being dedicated to buying new.

“[M]ost saw the effects of the games

aftermarket as no different from any other

consumer product market, be it music, movies, or

cars. Most replies noted, though, that not only are

direct downloads a solution and response to the

problem, but that if developers and publishers

wanted to curb used sales of newly released

games, more incentives were needed—be it lower

price or collectible insert—to make that new sale

essential.” (The published responses are available

on Gamasutra’s Question of the Week archives.)

Dave Pottinger Ensemble Studios

George Sanger Big Fat Inc.

Harvey Smith Midway

Paul Steed Microsoft

A BIRD IN THE HAND

Okay, so that’s hardware. And a lot of people who

buy these consoles at launch are simply planning

to resell them, however insidious that is. But this

statistic brings up an even larger point: the

reselling of video games themselves.

At GDC London in September, I attended a

lecture from Mike Vorhaus of research group Frank

N. Magid Associates, who discussed the reselling

of games in North America. As part of the

company’s 2006 research, Magid looked at the

split between new and used game sales and

found that 57 percent of U.S. console users have

bought a used game in the last year, an extremely

significant portion of the market.

“Clearly,” Vorhaus said at the time, “used games

in the United States have become a major piece of

the overall pie,” especially considering retail’s

propensity to “hassle you to buy the used game,”

as retail outlets get a larger percentage from

selling used. In fact, Magid found that no less than

35 percent of its polled consumers who bought a

used game originally intended to buy it new,

meaning that over the course of a year, billions of

dollars that would have been spent on new games

are allegedly being spent on secondhand ones.

FREE BIRD, FREE MARKET

Even though a substantial amount of money—

billions—is being taken away from publishers and,

if you believe in trickle-down theory, the developers

who create the games, people are very happy to

buy used.

One respondent, for example, commented, “The

fact that I work in the industry doesn’t affect how I

purchase my games. If I can find a used copy that

looks new for a cheaper price, I have no second

thoughts about the purchase.”

But that’s the point, I guess. Free world, free

market. And until entertainment sales go

completely digital, retailers like GameStop can

take advantage of that fact.

One respondent on Gamasutra probably

summarized the scenario best, commenting, “I will

purchase a new video game over a used video game

if one exists at the time of purchase. Until there is a

new business model to combat used games sales, I

choose to support the current one. ... Ultimately, the

free market will trump revenue concerns and force

video game companies to be creative in attracting

buyers to purchase new titles over used. Digital

distribution is one way to combat the issue because

there isn’t a market for used digital games.”

Sweet, simple, and sensible, isn’t it?

TWO IN THE BUSH

So we did a little informal investigation of our own.

We posed the following question to the readership of

Gamasutra.com ( Game Developer ’s sister web site):

“As part of a community of game publishers and

Simon Carless

Editor-in-Chief

Game Developer

is BPA approved

DECEMBER 2006 | GAME DEVELOPER

WWW.CMPGAME.COM

[

WWW.CMPGAME.COM

Idea:

Assemble the ultimate team to create a John Woo sequel that you can play.

Realized:

The line between video game and ﬁ lm is ofﬁ cially blurred. When faced

with the challenge of creating a video game sequel worthy of John Woo’s

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artists are able to create graphically stunning characters, backgrounds

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this next-generation masterpiece at autodesk.com/stranglehold

Stranglehold © 2006 Midway Amusement Games, LLC. All rights reserved. Stranglehold, MIDWAY, and the Midway logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Midway Amusement Games, LLC. Autodesk, 3ds Max,

Maya and MotionBuilder are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Autodesk re-

serves the right to alter product offerings and speciﬁ cations at any time without notice, and is not responsible for typographical or graphical errors that may appear in this document. © 2006 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.

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