Game idea != Product

Scott McMillian, formerly head of MacGuffin Games, gave another great presentation at Boston Post Mortem Wednesday night.  It was a second showing of "Death of an Indie Studio", a post mortem discussion the rise and fall of his own small business.  There should be audio and perhaps video of the entire presentation coming along soon.  Which will be really valuable to get the nuance of some of his statements (the art and business continuum, for example).  For now you can find my notes and links to the slides.  The official post from Boston Post Mortem is now up, with more visual goodness!

How to set up a website to manage game design.

Previously in 'Cheap Game Design' it was mentioned that you can use google to provide a place to practice good project management.  Today we're going to walk through setting up a website like the one built for the ZoRTS project.  The first site constructed was an internal website that the team could use to keep up with the project, store resources, and discuss the project without anyone outside the project being able to see it.  After setting up the internal site, the external site is much easier to start as you already have practice.

1. Create a gmail account.  Make sure that all members also have gmail accounts.
2. Go to sites.google.com and start a new website.  Access the site permissions by pressing shift + S.  The first permission you see is for the entire world.  Click the blue change button and set the site to private.  Add your team members and allow them to view or edit as you see fit.
3. Set up the pages you will need, some suggestions below.  They will follow the same permissions as the main page you already created.  Here is google's step by step instructions for sites.google.com if you aren't familiar with it.
4. Open up google docs and start creating your Game Design Document, or upload the document if you created it some where else.
5. Create a new page on the Google site.  Edit the page and select Insert in the upper left hand corner of the screen.  From the drop down list in the "Google" Section select "Document".  This will bring up a list of all the Google Docs you have created.  You should see the Game Design Document on the list.

What kinds of pages will I need to manage my project?

• Issue Tracker (Feel free to post an issue in the example to test it out!).  There is a great youtube video explaining how to set up an issue tracker.  That video convinced me that for a bootstrap project sites.google.com was the way to go.
• Tracker for social media (login information for forum boards, facebook page, twitter accounts, youtube account, etc.) that your game uses to find players.
• Game Design Document (or documents) - Google docs are great for this...  You can make a page that links directly to them.
• Timeline, Gantt chart, etc.

Now that you have the internal website up and running figure out what information can go public.  Making the external website is very similar to making the internal one.  You might need a few more pages, such as News, Events, Pictures, etc.

If you think of any pages that a project like this could really benefit from, post a comment!  If you were creating a computer game what kinds of things would your team need to know about?

Is Empire Avenue a Meta game?

So how is this for meta.  An entire game where you earn value on a fictitious stock market by using social media.  This is kind of a description of Empire Avenue.  Tonight I did my IPO in a category for Game Development, and I found Scott Macmillan over there.  So I seem to be in good company.  My impression of the game in the first five minutes:  Interesting...  Where does A=L+SE+R-E fit in (look for a new post on that)?  Kind of a lot of new stuff to learn.  People are investing in me awfully fast, am I a stock market bubble?

Can someone recommend my blog on EA?  K, thx.  I'll buy 50 shares of you if you do.

It seems like if one were to play this game in a determined fashion it could improve your ability to navigate in social media.  Considering that I enjoy blogging about games on social media, to me this is very Meta.  It looks a bit like another tool to "spread the word", and drive some traffic here.

So am I writing this post to get more hits on my blog from EA?  Or am I writing this post to drive more players to EA (If you want to play, as me for an invite)?  Whoa...  The ultimate answer is Yes.  Yes I am.

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Edit:

Found some interesting articles on EA around the web.  They seems to indicate that there is social media buzz about the game, but I've never heard of it.  Good intro article on http://advertising.scoop.co.nz.  An opinion about this being 'gamification' or not.

"Until you launch something, the time you spend is meaningless"

I wanted to share this post because I feel this everyday.

One of the challenges of game design is knowing that until you launch something, the time you spend is meaningless to the outside observer.  It may be very meaningful to you.  But you will get no traction with others till you can actually produce something.

Whenever I hang around the Boston Indies crowd I feel pressure to produce something. Feeling this pressure is a good thing, because like the author of the blog it gets me motivated to keep working.  Without producing something you cannot be judged as a peer in Indie Scene.  You have to stand above the crowd of gamers with 'good ideas' and 'passion' and actually produce something.  That feeling motivates me to do something and I love it!

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'.