Why Do Games Publishers Exist? They won't forever.

I like this post by Colin Campbell at GamaSutra, because I don't think we need the publishers.  Not to say that Colin is wrong about anything, he is absolutely correct, and his analysis of what a publisher is and what a publisher does is spot on.  And I bow to his great knowledge of game creation.  The use of Minecraft to make the point is exactly where I would have gone myself.

However, when it comes to 'disrupting technology' and new companies, I don't think his ideas hold true over the long haul.  The nature of disruptive technology is such that a few small successes with something new stack up till the early adopters become early majority, then the late majority, and finally the laggards.  Internet based publishing is such a disruptive technology which will conform to the Technology Adoption Curve.  Minecraft, Jonathon Coulton,  even Penny Arcade are self publishers.  The number is only going to grow.  Internet publishing is still in the "Innovation" Stage.

Design Management Review Fall 2007

Which doesn't mean that I think Publishers will inevitably fail.  Good companies with smart people will continue to be good companies with smart people.  Bad companies will, and should fail.  Will self publishing be the future for the AAA 50 million dollar titles?  Not any time soon.  But what will happen is something more like Minecraft and Mojang.  Self publishing game companies will become more numerous and eventually overtake the big guys.  But its a long way off from where we are now.

Game design document? How about 'game bible'?

When you're working with 4 coders,  an artist, a couple musicians, a writer, and a project manager how do you keep everyone on the same page about what the game is and what the game is not?  The Creative Lead or the Project Manager must be the arbiter of the contents of the game.  They must have a method for making sure that everyone on the project has a way of understanding that vision.  What is 'canon' and what is 'not canon', to borrow the terminology use by Star Wars (one of the most curated intellectual properties in existence).

Whatgamesare.com had a post recently about Game Design Documents.  Tadhg was commenting on a problem that all project managers have whether they are in game design or not.  It a bit like 'scope creep'.  As a project moves forward stakeholders start to ask for new features.  Changes and additions start to creep in and your scope and project can veer wildly off course without careful curation.  A good Project Management Professor will warn about scope creep.  It sounds like in the Game Industry the GDD suffers from the same problem.

A game design document should not contain information about the overall project.  The game design document should be subordinate to the project document.  The project document should consider aspects of the project outside of the game itself.  There shall be no marketing information in a good GDD.

Game Design documents are not bad, and you should work with one.  Especially when you are new to this  field you can learn a lot from a good GDD template.  They are immensely useful for filling in the gaps of what you have and have not yet thought about.  They force you to consider aspects of the game which haven't immediately jumped to mind.

The ZoRTS Project uses a great game design document.  It was made a number of years ago by Chris Tayor.  The document is linked to by wikipedia and hosted by Runaway Studios.  You can download a copy here.  If you are experience or running a game design company it may be a good idea to create your own format.  But if your an amateur use someone else's document as a place to start.

If you have any doubts or internal conflict about what a game design document should be take a look at the Battlestar Galatica Series Bible.  The game design document should define the setting of the game, and how the game is played.  The UI and the HUD.  Get the flavor of the game into the document.  Record your ideas about the game and what it should be.  Make the GDD a repository for your games canon.  Make it a bible that explains the universe you want to play in!

Zynga needs more friends in its social network.

Some interesting news today about Zynga, just after yesterdays post about Friendster becoming a social games platform.  Apparently they are completely dependent on Facebook.  Not only has Zynga won Facebook, but they have been captured by FB.  This is exactly the kind of thing that I would worry about as an investor.  Single platform dependence is a big problem.  Anything from a temporary interruption to a permanent change in policy on the part of FB could effect Zynga's ability to provide it's games.  That dependence should worry investors even if they feel that FB is 100% reliable.

If I were looking to invest in Zynga I would want to see a comprehensive plan that explains how they are going to get themselves off a Facebook dependency ASAP.  Just because Facebook has become my main personal social network does not mean that making it the sole foundation of a companies future is a good idea.  (Only because I don't have a Google+ invite yet)  Diversification is important to investors.

This does shed light onto yesterdays post.  Zynga has huge incentive to 'play nice' with Friendster.  And Viximo for that matter.  This can act as a test of Friendster...  Managing a relationship with Zynga could really provide a lot of information about how smart the folks at Friendster are.  Knowing that Zynga has no other social networks under it's belt shifts the balance of power to the networks.

Zynga has an incentive to love and support (and maybe even provide money to) anyone that can help them break dependence on Facebook...  Er...  "Grow the user base" (That sounds much more friendly).  Does Zynga work with Viximo?  Hmm.  Maybe they should get in contact.  Zynga needs to add Friendster, Google+, and Viximo to it's 'social network'.

Friendster = Social gaming platform? Wha?

This is interesting news.  Friendster is relaunching as a social gaming platform.  They have quite the challenge ahead of them.  Ultimately any 'social media game' has to compete with users of Zynga's products (Cityville, Farmville, etc).  Tadhg over at whatgamesare.com made the point that Zynga won Facebook, and they did this by being a really smart company.  To compete Friendster would need to bring something to the table that Zynga can't provide.

Or maybe Freindster isn't trying to compete with Zynga.  Maybe they are trying to provide a new platform to Zynga and get some cash by putting new faces in front of Z's games.  This puts them into the old position as trying to provide something new that Facebook can't.  Viximo already plays in that space and is capitalizing on putting games everywhere that Facebook ins't.  We Americans tend to forget that there are some really big social networks out there which are not run by Zuckerberg. And Viximo has a big head start on taping that market over Friendster.

All this just as Google+ is happening?  We have no idea what the impact of Google+ will be on social gaming.

In any event, it seems Friendster has a real challenge ahead of them.  They are trying to solve their own problems by playing in a highly competitive space and just may be positioning themselves between a good number of rocks and a couple hard places.  The mantra of any company that wants to make money is "Find out where customer pain is, and remove it".  I'm not sure there is pain that Freindster can remove, or at least I don't see it yet.  Maybe you smarter folks can point out to me what I'm missing in the comments.

Learning Java

To be less of a bad game project manager, I'm learning a coding language.  I've chosen Java.  It may not be the best language to learn for game programming (we can go over the reasons that have been explained to me once I know how to code better), but as an object oriented programming language it's a good place to start.  Also Minecraft was written in Java, and it would be excellent to code mods for the game.

What resources were used to learn Java?
thenewboston.com  (Progress: Tutorial 25 of 87)
"Head First Java", full review on the way.

Minecraft Specific Resources?
Bukkit Tutorials.

Cheap game design

Hypothetically lets assume you're a gamer with an idea for a game.  This should be easy to imagine.  You want to make a game but have no money.  Once you have chosen your team, and gotten some idea of what you are building (with a game design document), and picked your distribution/coding platform, you realize that you need to keep track of a lot of different kinds of information.  Specifically bug and issue tracking.

There are many great services out there with the ability to track issues, but there is another method which is often overlooked.  You can build your own bug tracker using sites.google.com.  As we were starting the ZoRTS project the Lead Coder asked me to find bug tracker to use.  As a manager on a project with no money something with low cost is ideal.  The following video on youtube provided the answer.



Pros:

• Works with other Google services
• Cheap! As in free.
• Hand built to do exactly what you need it to do.

Cons:

• There are other methods which may be better
• Basecamp (Which the ZoRTS project would like to use)
• Assembla (Which the ZoRTS project is using)
• 50 others.

There are a couple factors left out of the pros and cons.  For example using sites.google.com as your issue tracker takes effort to build and maintain.  You have to have and idea of what kinds of things you need to track ahead of time, and how the page is going to be used.  The ZoRTS website includes an example page so that you can get an idea of the kinds of columns that you might need.  However this is a moot point as you still need to spend time and effort updating and recording in any bug tracker.  It might just take a minute or two more to use google sites.

So what do you use to provide an infrastructure for communication of issues, bugs, design changes?  Why do you like to work with it?  If you have experience in the area please leave a comment below, let us know your opinion.

thenewboston.com

As you know I'm a business guy.  Having been out of IT for 10 years, there is some rust on those old coding skills.  It has been suggested to me recently that learning Java would be a good idea.  Although  Java is not the best language for game design, it seemed like a good idea because Mojang is going to release the code for Minecraft at some point and allow people to mod the game.  Which is super exciting.  Also the more coding that I know the more help I can be to The ZoRTS Project as the project manager.  Even if we use QT or C++ to code the game with having a good understanding of the specifics of coding means better communication with my team.

We have a new coder interested in working on the Project, and he recommended thenewboston.com.  The website is so great that this special post was made to point you in Bucky's direction.  I cannot recommend the site more.  They have some amazing tutorials on every major programming language.  The Java section starts with downloading the necessary programs and coding environments.  This is head and shoulders above other tutorials on youtube, where they assume you know that already or don't think to provide assistance.  There are 87 basic Java videos, 27 intermediate Java videos, and then 30 Java game development videos!  That is just Java.  The site also offers C, C++, Visual Basic, Python, iPhone development.  Even better the website doesn't seem overwhelming.  Really important for a newbie to coding.

To supplement Bucky's wonderful website I have a couple books are on their way.  They shall get reviews once they have arrived and been read.  It's tempting to post them as Amazon Affiliates now...  But it's in better taste to plug them on a review instead of taking the lime light away from thenewboston.com.  So watch my blog for those reviews!

I would love to find a website that specifically targets people learning Java for Minecraft.  If you have any suggestions on ways to learn Java please, I would love for your to post them in comments section!  Thanks!