Adam Creighton, Computer and Video Gaming

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Sunday, December 20, 2009

My new gaming gig

It's been a crazy, productive initial couple of years in the game industry, piggybacking off of a decade of previous tech and biz dev work, and now I'm taking it to the next (for me) logical step in my newly launched career.

I've moved from product management for a middleware (game engine and tools) company to a production role for a studio on an upcoming game. More specifically, I'm now an associate producer for a studio, working on a cool game for the Wii.

For those that don't know me, this might feel like a bit of a 90-degree turn, but it's actually a sensible next step that presented itself, and I jumped at it.

Remember, I previously left a very productive (but brutally demanding) senior gig in the financial services world to go to middleware. I did that because I wanted to be less fractured between my toy job and my passions -- the latter of which encompasses the creative me, and my passion for video games. Middleware seemed like a good (sorry) middle ground between the game industry and my enterprise background, where I could use my mad biz dev skills and help a large number of game developers.

As is often the case, the reality was slightly different. The job was necessarily more about the company first, and the developers second (it is a business, after all), more marketing than biz dev (the latter of which I had to fight ridiculously unnecessarily to do, not that I didn't still make massive hay on that front), and actually took me too far away from the project and personnel management skills I was leveraging at my prior gig at BigHugeCorp.

So, after much conflict, I took this associate producer gig. While I'll probably talk about the squishier aspects of that life decision conflict in my other blog, some of the conflict, frankly, revolved around the possibility -- on the professional path front -- this gig could make it look like I fell off a ski lift over the last few years; International Technical Director to Product Manager to Associate Producer.

But the reality is, at it's heart, my interest in video games is about me being able to help great teams make games. So, my title aside, it's about that. This is a great first studio and first title for that.

Interestingly, it turns out this gig gets me closer to the project, dev, and personnel management skills I found myself missing in my last job. I'll be managing sprint teams, doing resource juggling, and negotiating requirements and various trade-offs as I work to help get the project out.

Not that this isn't going to be hard. For all intents, I've moved from an executive career path to kind of starting over mid-career. This takes me away from explicit biz dev (though I'm wired that way, so I'm sure I'll find a way) . Not easy things, but concessions we were willing to make to be a part of something important (yes, I think this game is important).

But on the career front, this opp is also about me figuring stuff out about the game industry.

See, the game industry thinks it's so damn special. I have never seen a vertical industry so adamant that if you're not from within their industry, you can't contribute to their industry. Ludicrous. I've been pursued by and successfully navigated everything from financial services to health care to the film industry, and never experienced this kind of bigoted attitude before.

So, I wanted to get into the game industry, and see if it really is that special, or whether software development is software development, and professional impedance in games is just the result of a cottage industry that just hasn't completely grown up yet. (The reality is it's likely somewhere within the continuum, but I'm guessing it's closer to the latter than the former.)

Now, my studio is a great place for me to start to try to figure this kind of thing out. Unlike other studios, they've been up front about wanting to work with good people, regardless of background. This creates a good space for me to learn the ropes, ramp up on the obvious learning curve, and not worry about also fighting against folks who expect me to fail (and may want me too, so they can stay special).

Starting to ramble. Let's just see if I sink or swim.

Labels: companies, development process, Wii

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SOURCES: Gamespot.com, joystiq.com, kotaku.com, Xbox.com, IGN, GameInformer, Official XBox Magazine, CNN, gamesindustry.biz, and others.

Saturday, June 07, 2008

Video game criticism that matters

Here's a decent article (and part of a series) on more mature video game criticism: "Zarathustran Analytics in Video Games, Part 9: Flaws in Criticism Today".

You should read the article (and the series), but -- in essence -- it's a call for the importance of meaningful critical review of games as genuine feedback to the teams that make them, as opposed to the "this is fun" / "this sucks" or review scores model that is endemic to the review world today.

(As an aside, does anyone else find it ironic that versions of numerical scores are used to grade non-numerical, creative experiences)?

I do think a model that creates -- in essence -- post mortem input to creative teams is far more useful for driving the games industry forward in a meaningful way than the aggregate Metacritic scores currently used by publishers, and (unfortunately) sometimes used to penalize creativity.

I think there's probably some middle(ish) ground between the prevailing system, and ivory tower(ish) critiques like "Repressed Homoeroticism in R-Type" (no disrespect meant, but I'm looking for a subset of enabling criticism that helps development teams, as opposed to "just" cultural implication assessments).

I do have a pet peeve, though: historical pop culture memory gaps.

While I appreciate references to Lester Bangs and Alan Moore, why reference Enders Game, as opposed to Kobayashi Maru? Or perhaps more appropriately (given this particular article), why use Mirrors Edge, rather than precursor (and dead-on candidate for the particular point being made) Breakdown? (Admittedly, I'm perhaps overly a fan of Breakdown, and think that team did something gutsy and innovative and didn't get its due props.)

But those are nits compared to my overall appreciation of this article and its sentiment.

Check it out for yourself.

Labels: development process, game design, innovation, ramblings

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SOURCES: Gamespot.com, joystiq.com, kotaku.com, Xbox.com, IGN, GameInformer, Official XBox Magazine, CNN, gamesindustry.biz, and others.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

The post I didn't write

I had folks ask me about one of my recent posts, where I said,

"And stay tuned -- there's another reason I'm coming clean about me and Emergent."

No, I didn't forget to write that particular post -- it just didn't need to be written.

The short of it was Mark Rein over at Epic Games was calling out my company Emergent Game Technologies, and trying to downplay our game engine (odd, I know -- since they have a game engine).

I was going to write a post about being flattered to be noticed by Mark, and call out what he's doing for what it is -- "Competitive Positioning 101" (like what Visa does with their competition: "... but they don't take American Express.")

But then my President and CEO were interviewed on Gamasutra about the whole thing, and anything I write would be beating a dead horse.

So, read the Gamasutra article. And stop beating dead horses.

"Emergent's Selzer, Johnson Rebut Epic Claims"

Labels: companies, development process, Emergent Game Technologies, Epic Games, Gamebryo, Unreal Engine 3

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SOURCES: Gamespot.com, joystiq.com, kotaku.com, Xbox.com, IGN, GameInformer, Official XBox Magazine, CNN, gamesindustry.biz, and others.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Microsoft Gamefest happenings

(Wrote this earlier today and thought more was coming. Not so much.)

Microsoft's Gamefest is in full swing (I just realized I had an invitation; blast), and there's quite a bit happening of interest to gamers -- consumers and creators.

XNA Game Studio Express is becoming XNA Game Studio 2.0 -- This has some cool additions in the infrastructure (including Xbox Live network development) and Xbox 360 areas. My concern is I'm currently using the XNA Game Studio Express 1.0 Refresh, and while 2.0 is touted as working in "all versions of Visual Studio 2005. This includes Standard and Professional", I hope this still includes the Express versions. Also, I hope my projects survive the 1.0 to 2.0 upgrade. More info at the XNA development blog.

Third-party additions to XNA Studio -- It was cool enough that Torque X was available for Creators Club members. Now SOFTIMAGEXSI 6 Mod Tool (3-D modeling and animation software) will be free to use in XNA Game studio (for non-commercial projects).

Dream-Build-Play Challenge Contest Winners -- This is pretty cool. Microsoft has announced a bunch of winners for their indie dev contestm giving 10 grand and Xbox Live Arcade publishing contracts to John Flook (Blazing Birds) and James Silva (The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai). And Microsoft gave an unexpected $5K and extended contracts to two other, second-place winners, Steve Olofsson (Gravitron Ultra) and Daniel McGuire (Yo Ho Kablammo!). There were like 4,500 entries to the contest.

New ways to use Microsoft video and screenshots -- Microsoft has lifted the legal banhammer (mostly), allowing more use of screenshots and video from their games (for parody, machinima, etc.). It's for the stuff for which they own (or own trademarks), and it's for non-commercial use. The full rules are over at Xbox.com, and it's actually pretty generous (and a combination of retroactivity and proactivity on Microsoft's part). Good for them.

Schizoid debuts -- Schizoid is the first XBLA title built exclusively using XNA Game Studio Express (at least, first indie-built title). It showed up at Gamerfest, and there's video, too.

Xbox Live. Population: 7 million -- So, there are now more than 7 million Xbox Live subscribers, and combined they've downloaded 45 million ... things. I need more deets on the numbers before they mean anything (or before I snarkily dissect them).

Labels: announcements, development process, tools

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SOURCES: Gamespot.com, joystiq.com, kotaku.com, Xbox.com, IGN, GameInformer, Official XBox Magazine, CNN, gamesindustry.biz, and others.

Monday, July 16, 2007

Game testing brutality ...

There's a great article over on seattleweekly.com about an mini-expose on video game testing.

It's long, but a good read, and gives some insight into this important chunk of the game and console development process.

A QA process like this isn't totally unique to video games, but for those who like to think the video game industry is nothing like other IT industries, this article may help you feel like you're right.

Labels: development process, QA, testing, Xbox 360

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SOURCES: Gamespot.com, joystiq.com, kotaku.com, Xbox.com, IGN, GameInformer, Official XBox Magazine, CNN, gamesindustry.biz, and others.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Happy Father's Day!

Gamasutra is running a timely feature, "What Father's Day Means To Game Developers". OK, it's not so much a feature as industry folks with family responding to how having kids influences their work, and what they're currently playing as a family.

There's some good stuff from game folks who are making use of their built-in age and gender demographics. From a less utilitarian perspective, it's obvious to see families inform game creator's motivation and passion for their craft, making it more than "just" a job.

And if you're looking for a Texas connection, there are interviews with Michael Sellers (CEO and Chief Alchemist) over at Online Alchemy; Dan Magaha, a producer over at NCSoft Austin; Rob Fermier, who's a programmer, Ensemble Studios; and Erik Doescher, lead designer and artist at Gearbox Software.

See? Topical and regional. That's a free twofer.

Happy Father's Day.

Don't miss Gamasutra's other Father's Day offering, "How Killing People With My Dad Improved Our Relationship".

Oh, and for those completists amongst you:

"Tom Henderson -- Game Designer, Between gigs" is, I think, a Senior Game Designer over at Heavy Iron Studios/THQ.
The "free, side-scrolling shooter on Xbox Arcade" mentioned by Wolfgang Engel from Rockstar San Diego is the Microsoft intern project Aegis Wing.

Labels: companies, development process

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SOURCES: Gamespot.com, joystiq.com, kotaku.com, Xbox.com, IGN, GameInformer, Official XBox Magazine, CNN, gamesindustry.biz, and others.

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

The reality of outsourcing ...

Outsourcing.

Take a moment and evaluate your response to that word.

What does it mean? In practicality, how does it play out in your vertical market, and how does it impact you?

No disrespect meant, but the video game industry thinks it's very special. And I think it's relatively late to the party and behind parallel efforts from Hollywood and Corporate IT.

But it thinks it's doing things for the first time. (To be fair, any vertical market thinks they're special.)

Like with outsourcing. There are a lot of video game companies just now beginning to explore outsourcing, what that means, and how it benefits the company, the team, or the game.

There's some misunderstanding about what outsourcing is and isn't, its benefits, and what the video game industry is doing recently with it.

First, to level set, realize outsourcing does not mean, "Losing jobs to India."

Outsourcing, at its core, is "sourcing outside". That can mean outside of the local group, but still within the local office; or outside of the geographic office, but still in the company; or outside the company, from another company that may or may not be local, regional, or even domestic.

The "losing jobs to India" is a perception, and only a facet of outsourcing. To be fair, some people have suffered that actual pain of that outsourcing. And then you have things like Bank of America laying off staff and making their severance dependent on training their overseas replacements. That PR doesn't help.

But I've managed outsourcing. At its core, outsourcing is figuring out how to reduce cost and still get acceptable quality.

So, for example, when I inherited a project that realized "cost savings" by off shoring day-to-day support, but that support wasn't quality? I had the vendor replace the support. Twice. Then, since they failed that, I moved to an on shore model, requiring the the same off shore rate to the vendor, because they were the ones who were not able to provide adequately trained or managed off shore resources.

Or when I worked for IBM somewhere when IBM was moving away from charging internal "Blue Dollars" for internal work, I would beat the bushes for resources who had extra cycles and relevant expertise, and have my management negotiate with their management about providing stuff we needed, and vice versa.

I've also manage the "RF[n]" process, ad nauseum -- Request for Proposal / Information / Quote -- to find adequate vendors for plug-in, one-time, or special use pieces that don't make sense for me to redirect my folks ("don't make sense", for me as a development manager, includes the effort wouldn't give my folks skills they can use in their careers, regardless of whether it's for me or the company).

So, what makes for good outsourcing candidates?

It's not simple, but good candidates include projects that can be broken into discreet modules or chunks that are not real-time dependent. So, libraries often make good candidates. Assets (art, 3D, animation, and others that have hook able templates) make good candidates. The candidacy pool for outsourcing efforts grows as you move from international to domestic, national to local, and local to in-house, different group. Inflexibility of a development methodology (RUP, Agile / Scrum, etc.) can severely reduce the pool of candidate items.

What makes for bad outsourcing candidates?

Again, not simple, but items that require real-time resolution need to be evaluated in terms of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) for acceptability nationally, and especially internationally. (Support a business application that requires next-day resolution for any issues? That's a high-risk candidate for overseas outsourcing.)

And some video companies get this, and are already practicing it.

In 2004, I attended an excellent session at that year's Austin Game Developers Conference, where rockstars The Animation Farm (still, animation, 3D, storyboard, mocap assets) and Critical Mass Interactive (turnkey development and management solutions) talked about what they were doing -- and what worked -- in the outsourcing arena (frankly, much of which involved overseas outsourcing and management).

And now, big companies are making concerted recent outsource management efforts.

Blizzard has announced the formation of an Austin customer support office, roughly 500 strong. This is fairly intelligent outsourcing, because it takes advantage of Austin's rich IT support infrastructure (and job pool), and may well react to California legislation reclassifying several IT roles as hourly, which can get very expensive for a corporation. And it creates some subset of 500 jobs in Austin (I have to think a portion of them are going to be willing or encouraged relocations from Irvine, CA, and I'm angling for a management job, so you have to remove that from the mix).

And then, a bit under the radar, in February "Midway Announces Creation of the Central Outsourcing Group (COG) to Streamline Outsourcing Efforts" (is Epic ticked?), which is geared toward ""consolidating all product development outsourcing initiatives into a centralized group" -- and managed (coincidentally?) out of Austin.

And off shoring of work is happening in the video game industry. You have a company like French-headquartered Ubisoft create Ubisoft Shanghai, responsible not just for pieces, but entire Ubisoft titles. And LucasFilms is rumored to have a massive LucasFilm Shanghai group working on a secret 3D Star Wars entertainment project. (When I worked with Peoples Bank of China, they were adamant their country's greatest natural resource "is our people", and were far more aggressive than any group with whom I've worked on parallelizing development efforts.)

All this is to say (in a rather rambling manner) that outsourcing is complex, has benefits, and the gaming industry could probably learn some lessons from their non-gaming IT counterparts who have been struggling with it for years (and should give themselves some grace because their counterparts are still struggling with it).

Labels: development process, rants

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