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  <title><![CDATA[dwlt.thinksOutLoud]]></title>
  <link href="http://dwlt.github.io/atom.xml" rel="self"/>
  <link href="http://dwlt.github.io/"/>
  <updated>2015-03-12T14:37:36+00:00</updated>
  <id>http://dwlt.github.io/</id>
  <author>
    <name><![CDATA[David Thomson]]></name>
    
  </author>
  <generator uri="http://octopress.org/">Octopress</generator>

  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[Natural Approach]]></title>
    <link href="http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2015/03/12/natural-approach/"/>
    <updated>2015-03-12T14:25:57+00:00</updated>
    <id>http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2015/03/12/natural-approach</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>Blogging as external memory:</p>

<blockquote><p>It’s what I once called the “SimCity” model of growing. I used to often play the game years ago. I would take two approaches. One was to use the “FUNDS” cheat to get all the money I needed to build everything at once. But in doing this, I often found my cities built that way didn’t thrive. Instead, naturally growing my city slowly over time allowed it to stablize and do well.</p><footer><strong>Danny Sullivan</strong> <cite><a href='https://medium.com/@dannysullivan/after-gigaom-the-non-vc-simcity-approach-to-growing-a-media-business-b10297a4f2d5'>After GigaOm, the Non-VC “SimCity” Approach to Growing a Media Business</a></cite></footer></blockquote>




<blockquote><p>The most amazing thing about getting to go to TED was discovering that all the people I admire are farmers. The doctors and DNA-researchers and dancers and chocolate-makers and oceanographers and cosmologists and investors all have one thing in common: they are total nerds. They work on the thing they love literally all the time. You can&#8217;t talk to them without talking about their passion.</p><footer><strong>Wil Shipley</strong> <cite><a href='http://blog.wilshipley.com/2011/04/success-and-farming-vs-mining.html'>Success, and Farming vs. Mining</a></cite></footer></blockquote>



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  </entry>
  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[On Time]]></title>
    <link href="http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2014/12/16/on-time/"/>
    <updated>2014-12-16T13:39:00+00:00</updated>
    <id>http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2014/12/16/on-time</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<blockquote><p>If we are going to ask people, in the form of our products, in the form of the things we make, to spend their heartbeats—if we are going to ask them to spend their heartbeats on us, on our ideas, how can we be sure, far more sure than we are now, that they spend those heartbeats wisely?</p><footer><strong>Paul Ford</strong> <cite><a href='http://contentsmagazine.com/articles/10-timeframes/'>10 Timeframes</a></cite></footer></blockquote>




<blockquote><p>What would feel arrogant to me would be asking you to spend 10 or 12 hours of your time a year watching my shit, and delivering something where we didn&#8217;t hold that time precious.</p><footer><strong>David Simon</strong> <cite><a href='http://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/mar/28/david-simon-the-wire-interview'>Arrogant? Moi?</a></cite></footer></blockquote>

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  </entry>
  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[Genre Lineage]]></title>
    <link href="http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2014/12/11/genre-lineage/"/>
    <updated>2014-12-11T12:43:45+00:00</updated>
    <id>http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2014/12/11/genre-lineage</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<blockquote><p>“Don&#8217;t follow in the footsteps of the ancient masters; seek what they sought.”</p><footer><strong>Matsuo Bashō</strong></footer></blockquote>


<p>In my <a href="http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2014/12/03/nostalgia-is-underrated/">previous post</a>, I made reference to films &ldquo;quoting&rdquo; other films, which made me think of some advice I&rsquo;ve heard given to musicians several times: find out who your influences listened to; who influenced them? And then find out who influenced those influencers, tracing the lineage of your music.</p>

<p>The same should be true for game makers &ndash; what games influence you? Who made them? Who and what influenced those makers? What were they trying to achieve?</p>

<p>Doing so can be a vital way of understanding your genre, what you&rsquo;re building on, what&rsquo;s come before, and what you can make of it now: your own thing, with reference to what&rsquo;s gone before.</p>
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  </entry>
  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[Nostalgia Is Underrated]]></title>
    <link href="http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2014/12/03/nostalgia-is-underrated/"/>
    <updated>2014-12-03T09:12:38+00:00</updated>
    <id>http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2014/12/03/nostalgia-is-underrated</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>A comment I&rsquo;ve often seen or heard from &ldquo;gamers of a certain vintage&rdquo; is something along the lines of &ldquo;<em>when I go back to the games of my youth, I&rsquo;m always disappointed. Some things are best left with positive memories.</em>&rdquo;</p>

<p>I certainly understand and have experienced that sentiment, but I also think it&rsquo;s missing the point.</p>

<p>Watching the recent documentary on Jim Marshall and the invention of the iconic amp (<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04c3l7j/play-it-loud-the-story-of-the-marshall-amp"><em>Play It Loud</em></a>), Pete Townsend talks about John Lee Hooker putting a mic inside the guitar to achieve distortion on a track called <em>Devil&rsquo;s Jump</em> in ~1949. The recording of it isn&rsquo;t what you&rsquo;d call high fidelity, and I can&rsquo;t imagine how the audience of the time reacted. It&rsquo;s influence is undoubted, though, and I <em>can</em> understand that.</p>

<p>Similarly, the effects in movies will almost never have the same impact on today&rsquo;s viewers compared with the original audience. For example, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0000012/"><em>The Arrival of a Train</em></a>, a 1 minute film of a train coming straight at the camera and the legend holding that the audience ran screaming for cover, or 1953&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044121/"><em>The Thing from Another World</em></a> &ndash; terrifying for the time, by all accounts, yet laughably tame by modern-day standards.</p>

<p>In Mark Cousins&#8217; amazing documentary series <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Story-Film-Odyssey-DVD/dp/B007ZZKXG4/tag=dwlt-21"><em>The Story of Film</em></a>, he regularly refers to newer films &ldquo;quoting&rdquo; scenes and imagery from older films. Compare the design of C3PO with Maria, the robot from <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017136/"><em>Metropolis</em></a>, or the entire end-scene of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105236/"><em>Reservoir Dogs</em></a> taken almost shot-for-shot and action-for-action from an 80s Hong Kong movie.</p>

<p>Going back to games made 30 years ago and being &ldquo;disappointed&rdquo; shouldn&rsquo;t be surprising, because you&rsquo;re measuring them by the standards of today. Revisiting older games should be about inspiration, reminding yourself of those positive memories, and for figuring out how you can make games that make you feel that way again (or why the games you play now don&rsquo;t make you feel that way).</p>
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  </entry>
  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[Kindness]]></title>
    <link href="http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2014/12/02/kindness/"/>
    <updated>2014-12-02T12:14:39+00:00</updated>
    <id>http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2014/12/02/kindness</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>Paul Graham&rsquo;s <a href="http://paulgraham.com/mean.html">Mean People Fail</a>:</p>

<blockquote><p>It struck me recently how few of the most successful people I know are mean. There are exceptions, but remarkably few.</p></blockquote>

<p>The essay reminded me of George Saunders&#8217; convocation speech I&rsquo;ve been meaning to post for ages (expanded on in <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1408859343/tag=dwlt-21"><em>Congratulations, by the way</em></a>, I believe). Since it&rsquo;s also his birthday today, I figured now was as good a time as any to do so:</p>

<blockquote><p>So here’s something I know to be true, although it’s a little corny, and I don’t quite know what to do with it:</p>

<p>What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.</p>

<p>Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded &hellip; sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.</p></blockquote>
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  </entry>
  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[Take It Out]]></title>
    <link href="http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2014/10/20/take-it-out/"/>
    <updated>2014-10-20T12:07:21+01:00</updated>
    <id>http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2014/10/20/take-it-out</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<blockquote><p>My rule for designing a game is that anything I can take out of the game, I take out, as long as it doesn&#8217;t undermine the base part</p><footer><strong>Alan R. Moon</strong> <cite><a href='http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-10-19-alan-r-moon-railroad-tycoon'>Alan R Moon, Railroad Tycoon</a></cite></footer></blockquote>

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  </entry>
  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[Recent Reading]]></title>
    <link href="http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2014/10/14/recent-reading/"/>
    <updated>2014-10-14T09:50:03+01:00</updated>
    <id>http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2014/10/14/recent-reading</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/01/troll-slayer">Troll Slayer</a>, Rebecca Mead&rsquo;s profile of Mary Beard in The New Yorker earlier this year:</p>

<blockquote><p>“It doesn’t much matter what line of argument you take as a woman. If you venture into traditional male territory, the abuse comes anyway. It’s not what you say that prompts it—it’s the fact that you are saying it.”</p><footer><strong>Mary Beard</strong></footer></blockquote>


<p><a href="http://www.empireonline.com/westwing/">The Definitive History of The West Wing</a>:</p>

<blockquote><p>When we were doing the show our goal was nothing grander than to entertain you for however long we&#8217;d asked for your attention.</p><footer><strong>Aaron Sorkin</strong></footer></blockquote>


<p>Steven Johnson (one of my favourite writers) interviewed Bill Gates about his foundation:</p>

<blockquote><p>And so I think the idea that people are worried about problems, like climate change or terrorism or these challenges of the future, that’s okay. But boy, they really lose perspective of what’s happened over the last few hundred years. And how science and innovation have been a central factor of that.</p><footer><strong>Bill Gates</strong> <cite><a href='http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/10/how-bill-gates-thinks/381287/'>How Bill Gates Thinks</a></cite></footer></blockquote>


<p>This article is the best insight I&rsquo;ve found into how VC for software companies works:</p>

<blockquote><p>Unfortunately software startups have the opposite characteristics of what Tom Perkins taught the VC industry to look for. Software companies have relatively low technical risk and high market risk. You know the company could deliver its product. The question was would anyone want to buy it. As I said before, market risk is generally not worth taking, so the intelligent VCs had to change their business model.</p><footer><strong>Andy Rachleff</strong> <cite><a href='https://blog.wealthfront.com/venture-capital-economics-part-2/'>Demystifying Venture Capital Economics, Part 2</a></cite></footer></blockquote>

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  </entry>
  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[Hepworth's Law of Improvement]]></title>
    <link href="http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2014/10/07/hepworths-law-of-improvement/"/>
    <updated>2014-10-07T15:19:25+01:00</updated>
    <id>http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2014/10/07/hepworths-law-of-improvement</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>Saving this for future use, from <a href="http://whatsheonaboutnow.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/how-to-get-over-distortion-of-sound.html" title="Stop whinging about the distortion of sound and make records we like.">David Hepworth</a> (emphasis his):</p>

<blockquote><p>There&rsquo;s improvement, then there&rsquo;s the kind of improvement which is recognised by the user and finally there&rsquo;s the kind of improvement which is both recognised and <strong>valued</strong> by the user.</p></blockquote>
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  </entry>
  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[Blizzard's Design Rules]]></title>
    <link href="http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2014/07/07/blizzards-design-rules/"/>
    <updated>2014-07-07T09:25:10+01:00</updated>
    <id>http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2014/07/07/blizzards-design-rules</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>With the news that <a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-07-04-rob-pardos-legacy-of-steel">Rob Pardo is leaving Blizzard</a>, it reminded me I collected his &ldquo;top ten&rdquo; design rules from Blizzard
at a talk he gave at GDC 2010 and never posted them. There are probably more detailed write-ups elsewhere, but here
they are in bullet form:</p>

<ol>
<li>Gameplay First

<ul>
<li>Concentrate on the fun</li>
<li>Art, design, programming all in the service of fun</li>
<li>Design isn’t more important than others</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master

<ul>
<li>SImple mechanics to begin with</li>
<li>Easly play</li>
<li>Actually: easy to learn, almost impossible to master</li>
<li>Provide lots of depth</li>
<li>Trying to build depth first &ndash; harder and takes longers

<ul>
<li>Do multiplayer first, then singleplayer</li>
<li>Accessibility second</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>What is the Fantasy?

<ul>
<li>What is the expectation?</li>
<li>Where is the fun in that?</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Make Everything Overpowered

<ul>
<li>Take everything to 11</li>
<li>Every unit, class should feel unstoppable</li>
<li>Doesn’t cost anything to make something epic</li>
<li>Applies to story and world too</li>
<li>Avoid balancing to mediocrity</li>
<li>Celebrate big differences in the game</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Concentrated Coolness

<ul>
<li>Make each feature the coolest, most concentrated expression of gameplay</li>
<li>Limited amount of complexity a player can process

<ul>
<li>eg vehicles ruined class system since you could use clas</li>
<li>StarCraft 2 has 16 units per race

<ul>
<li>Killed old units to introduce new units</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Play Don’t Tell

<ul>
<li>Play as much of the story as possible</li>
<li>Use text/voiceover/movies to enhance the story

<ul>
<li>eg 512 character limit on WoW quest descriptions</li>
<li>bad eg 2+ minute monologues in Diablo 2</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Make It A Bonus

<ul>
<li>Players respond better to incentives</li>
<li>Path of least resistance should be most fun</li>
<li>Don’t fight player psychology

<ul>
<li>eg “Inspect player message”</li>
<li>Randomness &amp; progressive percentages build up (designed randomness)</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Control is King

<ul>
<li>Controls should be as responsive as possible</li>
<li>Sacrifice “cool” for better control</li>
<li>Players unlikely to complain about slightly bad controls</li>
<li>Done well becomes a key skill differentiator for players</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Tune It Up

<ul>
<li>Easy to do, hard to do well</li>
<li>Plan for tuning hooks</li>
<li>Know who you are tuning for and why</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Avoid the Grand Reveal

<ul>
<li>Check in often and get lots of feedback</li>
<li>Difficult to tell if an idea will work</li>
<li>Must be set up to fail</li>
<li>Iteration is critical to Blizzard dev process</li>
<li>“If you can’t build that culture, it won’t work”</li>
<li>“Want people to say ‘can you help me make this better’”</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Culture of Polish

<ul>
<li>Polish doesn’t happen at the end</li>
<li>Team gets to make their favourite game better

<ul>
<li>Make sure team loves the game</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Cross section from other teams and preview players to feed back into the game</li>
<li>Every voice matters &ndash; Don’t ship until it’s ready</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>


<p>On a related note, Pardo also mentioned something called &ldquo;Strike Teams&rdquo;, which were also mentioned by Dustin Browder
in <a href="http://www.polygon.com/2014/5/21/5723572/heroes-of-the-storm-making-of-blizzard">this interview about <em>Heroes of the Storm</em></a>:</p>

<blockquote><p>&ldquo;We have a process here at Blizzard called a strike team where we get a bunch of people who are not on the game teams, well they&rsquo;re not on the game team making the game,&rdquo; Browder explained. Different people come into projects they&rsquo;re not a direct part of, play through the content that has been created, and give their feedback.</p>

<p>&ldquo;And it&rsquo;s the most brutally honest experience you could possibly have in your life. They&rsquo;ll just look at you point blank and say, &lsquo;Well, you&rsquo;re not gonna release this cause it sucks, right?&rsquo; I mean they&rsquo;ll just tell you whatever.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>

<p>To me, that all sounds a bit like Pixar&rsquo;s <a href="http://pixartimes.com/2014/03/12/go-inside-a-pixar-braintrust-meeting-for-upcoming-film-inside-out/">Brain Trust</a> system. (Read Ed Catmull&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00GUOEMA4/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=B00GUOEMA4&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=dwlt-21"><em>Creativity, Inc.</em></a> if you haven&rsquo;t already.)</p>
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  </entry>
  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[In Production]]></title>
    <link href="http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2014/05/01/in-production/"/>
    <updated>2014-05-01T09:38:46+01:00</updated>
    <id>http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2014/05/01/in-production</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>Last night, I attended a UKIE/Scottish Games Network session on the new tax credit system for those games things. The fact I ran away at the end is no reflection on  the session itself, which was very informative, but more of the fact I wanted to go home.</p>

<p>Anyway, one thing that struck me was the terminology in use. Generally speaking, the industry talks about &ldquo;games development&rdquo; or about games being &ldquo;in development&rdquo;. That sounds fine, but the word used last night over and over was &ldquo;<strong>production</strong>&rdquo;, a word I&rsquo;ve used in the past when trying to differentiate between prototyping/noodling and actually making a thing. I think more people should use the word &ldquo;<strong>production</strong>&rdquo; in this way, because the scheme interprets &ldquo;development&rdquo; as an exploratory phase, for example attempting to identify the viability of a mechanic &ndash; which explicitly isn&rsquo;t allowed as part of your claim.</p>

<p>It sounds like a tiny technical pedantic detail, but it is on such tiny technical pedantic details things can fall through. It also puts things on a par with other industries (a film &ldquo;in development&rdquo; is not the same and equal to a film &ldquo;in production&rdquo;). So if you&rsquo;re planning on using the scheme, be careful on how you word things in your supporting documentation. And it should make things clearer to people inside and outside the industry, which can only be good.</p>
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  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[How Early Is Too Early?]]></title>
    <link href="http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2014/04/24/how-early-is-too-early/"/>
    <updated>2014-04-24T12:59:37+01:00</updated>
    <id>http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2014/04/24/how-early-is-too-early</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>Reading <a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-04-24-can-godus-be-fixed">&ldquo;Can Godus be fixed?&rdquo;</a> by Christian Donlan this morning on Eurogamer, a section of the last paragraph stood out:</p>

<blockquote><p>In truth, it&#8217;s still hard to pin down what, if anything, 22Cans actually wants Godus to be. It&#8217;s probably often this way in development. Maybe a team really needs to &#8220;experiment, fail, and experiment again,&#8221; to quote Molyneux, even if that&#8217;s under the harsh, critical glare provided by hundreds of customers who have already paid up for the ride.</p></blockquote>


<p>I haven&rsquo;t followed Godus particularly closely (read: at all), but the above strikes me as a failure to manage expectations (on all sides). Reading the comments on the article further reinforces this, with some defending the current state of the game and others feeling like they&rsquo;ve been cheated because they already paid up for it.</p>

<p>Finding the fun, particularly on an experimental or &ldquo;reinvention&rdquo; project, can be tricky, and can take a while. Even when you have strong reference points and a fairly clear idea of what your design pillars are, it can be tricky. The problem Godus seems to be having is that they&rsquo;re building out infrastructure for the game before they&rsquo;ve figured out what core play is.</p>

<p>At <a href="http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020034/Performative-Game-Development-The-Design">Vlambeer&rsquo;s GDC session</a> on their experience with <a href="http://nuclearthrone.com">Nuclear Throne</a> last month, Rami mentioned that at one point on the stream they&rsquo;d had to explain to viewers that they had to program what happened to bullets when they hit walls. To anyone involved in development, that seems like a silly thing to have to explain, but many people clearly have no idea how games are made.</p>

<p>Nuclear Throne looks to be a successfully managed Early Access project &ndash; it helps that Vlambeer had a game jam produced prototype (and arguably a stronger fanbase), but I also think the fact it&rsquo;s fairly clear what Nuclear Throne is trying to be helps with audience expectation (subconsciously, at least). People know what they&rsquo;re getting into and Vlambeer aren&rsquo;t building foundational game engine bits because they&rsquo;re using Game Maker. They had something that was fun from the very start of Early Access, so players can immediately see the potential and understand what the game is.</p>

<p>Godus on the other hand, has different expectations everywhere you look &ndash; some of the audience just want Populous 4, but that&rsquo;s perhaps not what 22Cans are trying to achieve. Either way, it&rsquo;s clear they&rsquo;ve let people into the process far too early &ndash; it&rsquo;s not obvious what they&rsquo;re trying to achieve with the game when you play it, and as a result journalists and players are reacting poorly to it.</p>

<p>So it seems to me that Early Access (and equivalents) can be the right thing, but only at the right time. That right time varies from project to project. It will be interesting to see how Godus fares from here on in &ndash; is the reputational damage done at this stage irreparable, or can the project be salvaged?</p>
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  </entry>
  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[This Week in Reading]]></title>
    <link href="http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2013/08/09/this-week-in-reading/"/>
    <updated>2013-08-09T10:28:00+01:00</updated>
    <id>http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2013/08/09/this-week-in-reading</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.capybaragames.com/">CAPY</a> practise <a href="http://www.dwlt.net/blog/2012/08/03/casual-connect-2012-and-selfish-creativity/">Selfish Creativity</a>:</p>

<blockquote><p>At CAPY, our goal has always been simple: Create unique, beautiful video games that we love… and bring them wherever there is an audience (and ideally, a great controller) to play them. This is our goal with Below. This is our goal with Super TIME Force. This will be our goal with whatever crazy idea we do next.</p><footer><strong>CAPY</strong> <cite><a href='http://www.capybaragames.com/2013/08/pause/'>PAUSE</a></cite></footer></blockquote>


<p>Lovely retrospective at Eurogamer on the creation of Clash of Heroes (which you should totally play if you haven&rsquo;t, it&rsquo;s awesome) amd how it changed CAPY:</p>

<blockquote><p>That sensation, a well-made thing that acquires an aura of magic, is something every developer would love to capture - yet how few do.</p><footer><strong>Rich Stanton</strong> <cite><a href='http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-08-06-how-capybara-games-made-an-all-time-classic-and-changed-forever'>Clash! The Story Behind an All-time Classic</a></cite></footer></blockquote>


<p><a href="http://halfbrick.com/">Halfbrick</a> and the importance of planning:</p>

<blockquote><p>This is also more proof that having a great game is only one part of becoming a profitable developer. You have to have a plan, and be ready to move on your ideas.</p><footer><strong>Ben Kuchera</strong> <cite><a href='http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/the-indie-handbook-how-halfbrick-planned-for-and-executed-on-fruit-ninjas-o'>The Indie Handbook: How Halfbrick Planned for, and Executed on, Fruit Ninja’s “overnight” Success</a></cite></footer></blockquote>


<p>Andrew Haydon captures what playwright Mark Ravenhill actually said at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (warning, non-direct-games-content):</p>

<blockquote><p>Don’t look for mentors, I would suggest, who are decades older than you. People like me – ignore us. Don’t look for business models from last year. Make it up as you go along. Do everything as if for the first time. As one of the most beautiful men who Scotland ever produced once sang: ‘Rip it up and start again’.</p><footer><strong>Mark Ravenhill</strong> <cite><a href='http://postcardsgods.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/inaugural-opening-address-of-edinburgh.html'>Inaugural Opening Address of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival</a></cite></footer></blockquote>


<p>And a science non-games thing for good measure:</p>

<blockquote><p>Scientism, in this good sense, is not the belief that members of the occupational guild called “science” are particularly wise or noble. On the contrary, the defining practices of science, including open debate, peer review, and double-blind methods, are explicitly designed to circumvent the errors and sins to which scientists, being human, are vulnerable. Scientism does not mean that all current scientific hypotheses are true; most new ones are not, since the cycle of conjecture and refutation is the lifeblood of science.</p><footer><strong>Steven Pinker</strong> <cite><a href='http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114127/science-not-enemy-humanities'>Science Is Not Your Enemy</a></cite></footer></blockquote>

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  </entry>
  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[When Is a Clone Not a Clone?]]></title>
    <link href="http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2013/07/31/when-is-a-clone-not-a-clone/"/>
    <updated>2013-07-31T11:00:00+01:00</updated>
    <id>http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2013/07/31/when-is-a-clone-not-a-clone</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>When it&rsquo;s a counterfeit.</p>

<p>Over the years, there&rsquo;s been a lot of talk about clones in the games industry, but after reading this <a href="http://indiestatik.com/2013/07/30/someone-stole-original-artwork-from-slap-and-then-made-a-clone/">article on Indie Statik</a> about an Android game called <em>Slap!</em>, I think we (the industry) need to be clearer in our word choice.</p>

<p>It&rsquo;s easy to throw the word &ldquo;clone&rdquo; around, but this incident &ndash; where the copycat game is &ldquo;actually using the original sprites from our game&rdquo; &ndash; I&rsquo;d like to suggest a different term:</p>

<p><strong>counterfeit</strong>: <em>adj.</em> made in exact imitation of something valuable with the intention to deceive and defraud. (<a href="http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/counterfeit">OED</a>)</p>

<p>I think that&rsquo;s a much clearer description of what&rsquo;s happened in this case, and should be targeted by a DMCA.</p>

<p>(As an aside, I do find it amusing that <em>Slap!</em> is &ldquo;based on&rdquo; the traditional game &ldquo;Red Hands&rdquo;, but the creator appears to claim that a Windows game called <em>Hand Smash</em> has &ldquo;ripped off the [<em>Slap!</em>] mechanic&rdquo;.)</p>
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  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[Special Guest Post by Nick Hornby]]></title>
    <link href="http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2012/10/22/special-guest-post-by-nick-hornby/"/>
    <updated>2012-10-22T14:15:00+01:00</updated>
    <id>http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2012/10/22/special-guest-post-by-nick-hornby</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>This short essay by Nick Hornby is actually taken from the sleeve notes on The Gaslight Anthem&rsquo;s latest album, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B007YLELM6?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=3194&amp;creative=21330&amp;creativeASIN=B007YLELM6&amp;linkCode=shr&amp;tag=dwlt-21&amp;qid=1350911867&amp;sr=8-1">Handwritten</a></em>. I&rsquo;m sharing it with you in full because I liked what it had to say: it also feels particularly relevant to my current project:</p>

<blockquote><p>It would be stupid to try and tell you that the music you&rsquo;re listening to is like nothing you&rsquo;ve ever heard before. The songs on the Gaslight Anthem&rsquo;s latest album are three or four minutes long, most of them, and they&rsquo;re played on loud electric guitars, and there are drums, and to be honest, if you haven&rsquo;t heard anything like this before, then you&rsquo;re probably listening to the wrong band anyway. What&rsquo;s great about the Gaslight Anthem is that there&rsquo;s an assumption you&rsquo;ll have heard something like this before &ndash; on the first Clash album, or on <em>Born to Run</em>, or the first Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers album, or maybe on a Little Richard record. That&rsquo;s what hooked me in. I&rsquo;ve been listening to rock&#8217;n&#8217;roll for forty years, and so maybe I&rsquo;m too old to be writing this stuff, but on the other hand, maybe I know what I&rsquo;m talking about, too: believe me, I know a lot of stuff sounds tired and derivative, and makes you feel as though rock music is exhausted. It&rsquo;s hard to find new ways to tell stories and write songs; even clothes made out of meat won&rsquo;t do you much good if your music is 1980&rsquo;s dance-pop.</p>

<p>So you have two choices. The first is this: you do something nobody&rsquo;s ever done before. You play the nose-flute underwater, put it through a computer backwards, and get a black Japanese guy to rap over the top. Or you write a novel using only consonants. Or you make a movie which nobody can see. And that&rsquo;s all cool, but nobody will want to read your second novel written using only consonants, so then you&rsquo;ll have to write one using only vowels. And the second is this: you think, write, play and sing as though you have a right to stand at the head of a long line of cool people &ndash; you recognise that the Clash and Little Richard got here first, but they&rsquo;re not around any more, so you&rsquo;re going to carry on the tradition, and you&rsquo;re going to do it in your own voice, and with as much conviction and authenticity and truth as you can muster. And if you can pull that off, you&rsquo;ll be amazed at how fresh you can sound.</p>

<p>And the Gaslight Anthem sound fresh. Anyone who has ever been frustrated by anything &ndash; a girl, a boy, a job, a self (especially that) &ndash; can listen to this music and feel understood and energised. (And if I feel energised, Lord knows what they&rsquo;re going to do to you.) And I&rsquo;m beginning to suspect that they, like, read books, too. &lsquo;Great Expectations&rsquo; &ndash; now there&rsquo;s a great title for a song. And here, &lsquo;Howl&rsquo; &ndash; there&rsquo;s another one. Rockers who read. Songwriters who are not scared to go head-to-head with everyone else in rock&rsquo;s great tradition. The Gaslight Anthem are my kind of people.</p>

<p><strong>&mdash; Nick Hornby, April 2012</strong></p></blockquote>
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  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[Common Sense Prevails at BAFTA]]></title>
    <link href="http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2012/09/26/common-sense-prevails-at-bafta/"/>
    <updated>2012-09-26T10:03:00+01:00</updated>
    <id>http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2012/09/26/common-sense-prevails-at-bafta</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>Way back in March 2011, I wrote a post over at <a href="http://scottishgames.net/">Scottish Games</a> regarding a <a href="http://scottishgames.net/2011/03/16/bafta-video-games-awards-the-missing-category/">missing category in the BAFTA Video Games Awards</a>:</p>

<blockquote><p>However, I can’t help but think there’s a rather giant omission from the category list, given BAFTA’s stated aim of “developing and promoting the art forms of the moving image in the UK”: there should be a category for “Outstanding British Game“.</p></blockquote>

<p>This week, BAFTA announced that <a href="http://www.bafta.org/games/awards/categories,2469,BA.html">entries were now open for the 2013 awards</a>, along with a new category:</p>

<blockquote><p>BRITISH GAME &ndash; For the best game of the year across all genres and platforms. Creative control and development must be led by a British development studio.</p></blockquote>

<p>Hurrah! Well done BAFTA. Of course, I&rsquo;d like to claim credit for this, but I&rsquo;m just happy this particular hole has been plugged. I would still love to see an independent British game of the year prize though, <a href="http://www.dwlt.net/blog/2011/09/15/bad-gamecity-no-biscuit/">an equivalent of the Turner or Mercury prize</a>.</p>
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  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[What I Talk About When I Talk About Ludometrics]]></title>
    <link href="http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2012/08/29/what-i-talk-about-when-i-talk-about-ludometrics/"/>
    <updated>2012-08-29T09:21:00+01:00</updated>
    <id>http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2012/08/29/what-i-talk-about-when-i-talk-about-ludometrics</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>Occasionally, I&rsquo;m asked where the name &ldquo;<a href="http://ludometrics.com/">Ludometrics</a>&rdquo; came from. No, really. I first coined it in 2005 (December if the domain record is to be believed), after I found out about something called &ldquo;econometrics&rdquo;. Wikipedia provides this definition of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Econometrics">econometrics</a>:</p>

<blockquote><p>the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on the concurrent development of theory and observation, related by appropriate methods of inference</p></blockquote>

<p>Thankfully, it also provides this one:</p>

<blockquote><p>the application of mathematics and statistical methods to economic data</p></blockquote>

<p>As an example, what I was thinking about was measuring things like how long Mario stayed in the air for when he jumped, and then comparing that with other games that didn&rsquo;t &ldquo;feel&rdquo; as good. Turned out that <a href="http://www.bencousins.com/">Ben Cousins</a> had already done some work along those lines. I subsequently used it for measuring difficulty curves and level progression, and saw some surprisingly consistent results. Perhaps I should fund some more research.</p>

<p>Anyway, when I was looking for a new company name, I kept trying to come up with something new, only to find I didn&rsquo;t like it. I then went trawling through the domains I already owned and decided to go with Ludometrics. This is now confusing as when people hear the word &lsquo;metrics&rsquo; these days, they instantly assume you&rsquo;re providing some sort of analytics service.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2012/05/10"><img src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4637bs9dz1qz6fpl.gif" alt="" /></a></p>

<p><em>[Semi-interesting aside: I registered the company on May 20, 2010. Turns out that May 20 is, in fact, <a href="http://www.worldmetrologyday.org/">World Metrology Day</a> &ndash; a day specifically celebrating the measuring of things. Who knew?]</em></p>

<p>After I decided to go with it, I also remembered that &ldquo;metre&rdquo; is an important aspect of poetics. According to Dictionary.com:</p>

<blockquote><p>the rhythmic arrangement of syllables in verse, usually according to the number and kind of feet in a line</p></blockquote>

<p>That fits pretty well with the level progression aspect, particularly in terms of introducing elements and pacing play. I might describe <em>Plants vs Zombies</em> as having excellent metre, for example, were it not for the fact that statement is essentially useless until there&rsquo;s language around describing pacing. Perhaps, borrowing from musical tempo, I would use <em>Andante</em> (walking pace)? Perhaps not.</p>

<p>But here&rsquo;s the thing: metrics in any form are no substitute for product vision. Metre can inform structure, data can provide clues on where to go next, but neither should be the starting point. They&rsquo;re tools we can use to inform what it is we&rsquo;re meant to be doing.</p>

<blockquote><p>But what we’re meant to be doing is bringing fun to the world.</p><footer><strong>Shigeru Miyamoto</strong> <cite><a href='http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=479071'>Miyamoto Talks Competition</a></cite></footer></blockquote>

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  </entry>
  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[We're Not Famous Any More]]></title>
    <link href="http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2012/08/06/were-not-famous-any-more/"/>
    <updated>2012-08-06T10:00:00+01:00</updated>
    <id>http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2012/08/06/were-not-famous-any-more</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>Something disturbing happened at Casual Connect in Seattle. I had a conversation that went along the lines of:</p>

<blockquote><p>Me: I&rsquo;m from Ludometrics, we&rsquo;re based in Scotland.</p>

<p>Other: Scotland, cool, Is there much of a games industry there, then?</p></blockquote>

<p>If it had been a one-off, I might have brushed it off. But it wasn&rsquo;t &ndash; it happened at least twice a day for the three days of the conference. When I mentioned <em>GTA</em>, there was some vague recognition from some people that they&rsquo;d heard it was made in Scotland, once, somewhere, a while ago. And really, aside from <em>GTA</em>, what else is there you can mention?</p>

<blockquote><p>Me (looking into camera): Uh-oh.</p></blockquote>

<p>You may say that Casual Connect was the wrong conference to talk about that, given the legacy of <em>Lemmings</em>, <em>Crackdown</em> and <em>GTA</em>. <em>APB</em> hasn&rsquo;t been doing too badly either. The problem with that, though, is that virtually every company in Scotland is now working on mobile or social games &ndash; pretty much what the whole conference was centred around.</p>

<p>You may say it doesn&rsquo;t matter, nobody really cares where the games are made. That may be true on some level, but on another level &ndash; attracting (or even just retaining) talent to the country to help make those games is a fairly critical part of having an &ldquo;industry&rdquo;.</p>

<p>I&rsquo;ve written about this before (in <a href="http://dwlt.net/blog/2010/09/21/the-scale-of-the-problem/">The Scale of the Problem</a>), where I lament the lack of famous games in attracting outsiders. But if other people in the industry don&rsquo;t realise we have a games industry here, we&rsquo;re in trouble my friends. I don&rsquo;t want to work in the Scottish games cottage industry.</p>

<p>So what to do? Making games that make money (as opposed to making money by making games) would be a good start. Talking about them, getting other people talking about them and telling people where they&rsquo;re made would also be good ideas.</p>

<p>Telling people where they&rsquo;re made sounds simple enough. Inspired by &ldquo;<a href="http://nytm.org/made/">Made in New York</a>&rdquo;, I&rsquo;ve created a new site which is called (amazingly), &ldquo;<a href="http://madeinscotland.co">Made in Scotland</a>&rdquo;. If you&rsquo;re making games (or any sort of tech) in Scotland, please go there and add your company to the list (it&rsquo;s a <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en_US&amp;formkey=dDlHNW8zSnlPYXNGX0k4Rk5XNkdGcVE6MQ">simple form</a>). Include the simple phrase &ldquo;Made in Scotland&rdquo; on your credits or options screen. People who want to or do work in games look at these screens. They&rsquo;ll see it. It seems like a small thing, but small things matter. And it&rsquo;s helped well enough for the tech scene in New York, so why not for Scotland?</p>
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  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[Casual Connect 2012 and Selfish Creativity]]></title>
    <link href="http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2012/08/03/casual-connect-2012-and-selfish-creativity/"/>
    <updated>2012-08-03T10:28:00+01:00</updated>
    <id>http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2012/08/03/casual-connect-2012-and-selfish-creativity</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>Last week I attended <a href="http://seattle.casualconnect.org/">Casual Connect 2012</a> in Seattle, where I was also speaking (slides at the end) about what I call Selfish Creativity. There was an IGDA summit on as well, although unfortunately I wasn&rsquo;t able to attend that. Thomas Bidaux of ICO has a <a href="http://www.icopartners.com/blog/archives/2982">great write up</a> on it, though, and he sums up my thoughts on the Casual Connect conference itself:</p>

<blockquote><p>It was massively biased towards user acquisition solutions and monetisation services. It makes a lot of sense as it makes the most sense for B2B companies to be exhibiting at this kind of events, but it definetely fed into the impression it is all about numbers and gaming the poor discoverability of the different ecosystems.</p></blockquote>

<p>This ties in with the one word I keep using to describe my overall feeling of the event: &lsquo;frothy&rsquo;. In other words, lots of activity on the surface, but no real structural integrity or substance. There are only so many &lsquo;payment solutions&rsquo; you can use, surely?</p>

<p>I was asked what I&rsquo;d learned from the conference. Moreso than ever, it was &ldquo;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures_in_the_Screen_Trade">Nobody Knows Anything</a>&rdquo;. Everyone contradicts everyone else with advice on what to do, what works on what platforms, and so on. There were a handful of good talks (there always are), notably the two from SpryFox and one from Wooga.</p>

<p>As promised, here are the slides from my presentation, &ldquo;Selfish Creativity; Or, Can Making The Game You Want To Play Lead To Success&rdquo;. It seemed to be well received by the creators in the audience, which is largely who it was aimed at. (Everything was filmed, so the video should be online by the end of August I think.)</p>

<p>It&rsquo;s a games oriented extension of a talk I originally gave at ScotSoft 2010 (run by <a href="http://www.scotlandis.com/">ScotlandIS</a>). I&rsquo;ve found examples of it all over the place (not just in art, but also in clothing, restaurants, domestic appliances, and so on). Independently, the same idea was included as point 3 in Austin Kleon&rsquo;s &ldquo;<a href="http://www.austinkleon.com/steal/">Steal Like An Artist</a>&rdquo; list, and was also the topic of a 5-minute talk Brandon Sheffield (editor of Game Developer magazine) gave at <a href="http://gdconf.com/">GDC</a> earlier this year called &ldquo;<a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/171273/Opinion_Make_games_for_yourself__and_nobody_else.php">Make Games For Yourself</a>&rdquo; (again, unknown to me). It just proves the point really, which is that we&rsquo;re not so unique that other people won&rsquo;t want what we want.</p>

<p>TL;DR: The biggest, bestest, break-outiest things are often made by people who want the things they&rsquo;re making.</p>

<script async class="speakerdeck-embed" data-id="50056752d2e765000204eb70" data-ratio="0.9481481481481482" src="//speakerdeck.com/assets/embed.js"></script>



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  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[This Week I've Been Reading]]></title>
    <link href="http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2012/07/19/this-week-ive-been-reading/"/>
    <updated>2012-07-19T14:23:00+01:00</updated>
    <id>http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2012/07/19/this-week-ive-been-reading</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>Just a selection of choice quotes from things I&rsquo;ve been reading this week:</p>

<blockquote><p>Given the choice, I would prefer not to compete head-on with these people. If you know about the new platform opportunity, so does everyone else. If you think you can make a splash in a new marketplace, so does everyone else. Why would you want to risk entering that free-for-all when a calmer, quieter, already proven opportunity sits begging for fresh talent?</p><footer><strong>Alan Cooper</strong> <cite><a href='http://www.cooper.com/journal/2012/07/competing-in-forgotten-markets.html/'>Competing in Forgotten Markets</a></cite></footer></blockquote>




<blockquote><p>For the first time in the history of mass media, we can entertain huge audiences without first bombarding them with advertisements for sugar water and corn flakes and without making them pirates.</p><footer><strong>David Edery</strong> <cite><a href='http://www.edery.org/2012/07/the-magic-of-f2p/'>The Magic of F2P</a></cite></footer></blockquote>




<blockquote><p>Quality doesn’t just magically rise to the surface, and Apple can only recommend so many titles.</p><footer><strong>Keith Stuart</strong> <cite><a href='http://www.hookshotinc.com/eight-things-all-indie-developers-should-do-when-they-talk-to-the-press/'>Eight Things All Indie Developers Should Do When They Talk to the Press</a></cite></footer></blockquote>




<blockquote><p>Why not forget the labels and concentrate on making games? Focus on making something genuinely enjoyable.</p><footer><strong>Colin Anderson</strong> <cite><a href='http://www.develop-online.net/blog/351/Gaming-For-The-Post-Hardcore-Generation'>Gaming for the Post-Hardcore Generation</a></cite></footer></blockquote>



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  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[Switching Costs in Games]]></title>
    <link href="http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2012/02/16/switching-costs-in-games/"/>
    <updated>2012-02-16T09:49:00+00:00</updated>
    <id>http://dwlt.github.io/blog/2012/02/16/switching-costs-in-games</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>In this world of &ldquo;multiplayer games as a service&rdquo;, I see lots of chat about the power of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect">network effects</a> but little about switching costs. Investopedia <a href="http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/switchingcosts.asp">defines switching costs</a> as so:</p>

<blockquote><p>The negative costs that a consumer incurs as a result of changing suppliers, brands or products. Although most prevalent switching costs are monetary in nature, there are also psychological, effort- and time-based switching costs.</p></blockquote>

<p>In other words, there&rsquo;s a cost (usually non-monetary) involved in switching from one game with friends to another game of the same type with friends. In fact, this cost rockets when your new game is of the same type &ndash; I don&rsquo;t mean just in the same genre, but of games where the differences are not immediately apparent. The problem with the adage &ldquo;never judge a book by its cover&rdquo; is that people inevitably do judge things from a quick glance. So if your game looks quite a lot like <em>Scrabble</em> or Hangman, for example, then people will assume that it is quite a lot like <em>Scrabble</em> or Hangman, and stick with the game they already have that looks quite a lot like (or possibly is) <em>Scrabble</em> or Hangman.</p>

<p>Even if you can get a few people to check your game out, you&rsquo;re then likely to suffer from the downside of network effects. Normally, network effects, where a service becomes more valuable the more people use it, are viewed as a positive. The downside of attempting to build something that relies on this, however, is that if there&rsquo;s no one there to play against, no one will hang around waiting for others to show up. That clearly poses problems in building momentum for your game.</p>

<p>None of which is to say your game can&rsquo;t make that breakthrough against a well-established competitor, but it&rsquo;s going to have to work incredibly hard (and might take a long time) to do so.</p>
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