Pleeeeeease Sponsor Me!

Well, it’s time for the LA AIDS Walk, once again.  As last year, I will be walking with Team Paramount to help raise money for this important cause.  I know that not everyone has the time and energy to participate, but hopefully you can spare a few bucks to sponsor me in the walk.  No donation is too small.  If you can do so, please consider donating via my personal fundraising page, here.  Thanks very much, in advance, for your generosity.

Support Judd Legum MD-HD-30

My good friend, college classmate, and debate teammate, Judd Legum, is running for State delegate in Maryland’s 30th district.  The election is next year (2010) but it’s very important for candidates to show strong fund-raising early, to demonstrate that they are serious contenders, and Judd is definitely that.

Of course, you might wonder why I would ask you to support a politician who is running for a race that is probably not even in your State, much less your district.  Well, there are a couple of reasons.  First of all, I think that Judd is exactly the kind of candidate that we should want to see in office, anywhere in America.  He is extremely smart, hard-working, progressive, articulate, and ethical.  Perhaps more importantly, I believe that this is just the firs step on what will be a long and successful career of public service for Judd, and I want to do everything I can to help him get started.

For these reasons, I have already donated to Judd’s campaign, and I encourage you to consider doing the same.  Donations don’t need to be large in order to be helpful, even $20 can make a difference in a race like this.   To donate, just follow this link:

Thanks very much for your time and consideration.  Here’s a little bit more about Judd, in his own words:

Who is Judd Legum?

• Annapolis native. Born and raised in the district.
• Pomona College alum, class of 2000.
• Lawyer. Cum laude graduate of Georgetown University. Currently in private practice in Annapolis.
• Policy wonk. Three years at a the nation’s premiere progressive think tank, the Center for American Progress, as research director.
• Political expert. National research director for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. Helped prepare Senator Clinton for 20+ debates.
• Blogger. Created one of the most highly trafficked progressive political blogs, ThinkProgress. Currently blogs on Maryland policy and politics.

What is Judd running for?

• State delegate in Maryland’s 30th district. The election is in 2010. Map here: http://tinyurl.com/d30map
• There are three delegates for District 30: Speaker Mike Busch (D), Virginia Claggett (D) and Ron George (R). George is in his first term and won in 2006 by just a few dozen votes. He is one of the most conservative delegates in the General Assembly.

What’s Judd’s agenda?

• Clean Bay. The 25-year, multi-billion dollar effort to restore the Bay has been a failure. If we don’t act quickly, the Bay will soon pass the point of no return. This means standing up to powerful special interests such as agribusiness, which remains the number one source of pollution in the Bay. This is more than an environmental issue, it’s an economic issue. Much of Maryland’s economy is dependent upon the health of the Bay.
• Clean Energy. Maryland faces an energy crisis. Absent policy changes the state will face rolling blackouts starting in 2011. Marylanders have also seen their energy bills skyrocket. We need to move aggressively on three fronts: 1) energy efficiency programs, which can reduce the need for new generation and reduce costs for consumers,  2) investment in transmission which will allow more power to flow into the state at reduced costs. 3) new sources of clean energy including wind, solar and biofuels.
• Clean Government. He’s not accepting money from lobbyists or PACs. Will crack down on lavish parties for legislators financed by special interests. In a recent 90 day session, lobbyists spent $1 million wining and dining members of the General Assembly.

Kiva

I’d like to take a minute to tell you all about a Kiva, a non-profit that allows you to lend as little as $25 to a specific low-income entrepreneur across the globe. You have probably heard about this process, which is called "micro-lending" and for which Mohammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

You choose who to lend to - whether a baker in Afghanistan, a goat herder in Uganda, a farmer in Peru, a restaurateur in Cambodia, or a tailor in Iraq - and as they repay their loan, you get your money back. It’s a powerful and sustainable way to empower someone right now to lift themselves out of poverty.

At first I was a little tentative to use the site and started out with a small amount of money, but I have now been using it for about 2 years and have successfully executed several small loans. Of the 5 loans that I’ve done, 4 have been repaid, and one was a loss, due to fraud on the part of the company responsible for dispersing the money locally. As I understand it, this is an extremely uncommon phenomenon and it has really only served to further convince me that the organization itself is doing legitimate work. (After all, lending is never without risk). You don’t just have to take my word for it, either. Here are some articles about Kiva:

• CNN.com
• Wall Street Journal
• More

Every time I lend, I put a little bit more money into the pool. When it gets paid back, I send it back out, and then wait. So far, so good. You can hook your account up to Paypal, which makes adding funds very easy.

I’m particularly fond of this process because it is sustainable. Instead of creating a cycle of dependency where people in developing nations are given handouts, which will inevitably need to be replenished, they are given loans that have real, substantial value and with which they are investing in the growth of their local economies. When the money is repaid, it can be re-loaned, which is a much more appealing cycle, if you ask me.

So, I encourage you to give it a try and consider spreading the word. If you do decide to participate, please be sure to tell them that I sent you when you register. My email address is: bhoyt47@hotmail.com. Thanks very much for your time.

The Boy with the Incredible Brain

This video was forwarded to me by my friend, Peter Oliphant, about a week ago.  It is a rather lengthy, but totally worth watching.  It’s a little old, I guess, but I had never seen it before.  As described at Google Video, where I saw it:

This is the breathtaking story of Daniel Tammet. A twenty-something with extraordinary mental abilities, Daniel is one of the world’s few savants. He can do calculations to 100 decimal places in his head, and learn a language in a week. This documentary follows Daniel as he travels to America to meet the scientists who are convinced he may hold the key to unlocking similar abilities in everyone. He also meets the world’s most famous savant, the man who inspired Dustin Hoffman’s character in the Oscar winning film ‘Rain Man’. (2005)

Long Time, No Post

Hello dear readers.  It certainly has been a LONG time since I updated my blog.  Work was incredibly busy in April and May, with business trips to San Francisco, Paris, Berlin, London, and New York, as well as a vacation to St. Thomas for a friend’s wedding.

Nonetheless, the real reason that I haven’t written in a while is simply that I haven’t had a topic come up that has compelled me to write.  Today, however, I was asked a question by a friend about game design/development-related degrees and university programs.  By the time that I finished responding to him, I realized that I had pretty much drafted something worth posting to my blog.  So, if the subject interests you, please read on…

When it comes to game development academic programs, I believe that the most well-respected (or at least the one’s that I’ve heard the most good things about) are, in no particular order:

• · USC’s Department of Interactive Media
• · Digipen
• · The Entertainment Technology Institute at Carnegie Mellon
• · Full Sail University
• · The Guildhall at SMU
• · Savannah College of Art and Design

I also did a quick search and found this site, which lists several more. Also, the Game Career Guide would probably be a useful resource for someone considering a game degree.

Personally, I think that the bigger question is whether or not a person should pursue a professional degree at all. If the individual is thinking about a graduate degree, then I would say “skip it,” and go get a job making games, unless they have tried and failed or are really interested in games on an academic level.

If we’re talking undergrad, I think that there are pros and cons. On the positive side, these degrees generally DO help improve someone’s chances of landing a job in the industry. They show potential employers that the candidate is serious about a career in games, they help the candidates create a portfolio of work (which is increasingly important these days), and they probably do actually impart some useful skills/knowledge about game development (though, precisely how much, is debatable).

As someone whose father spent their career as a university professor, I have the utmost respect for academics. That being said, I also believe that these types of (often) for-profit programs can be places where the adage that “those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach,” most applies. Of course, there are exceptions to this, as I know at least one very successful, respected, experienced game designer who is currently teaching at Savannah College of Art and Design (Brenda Brathwaite). Still, a person will learn more about actual game development in a year at a game company than they would in 2-4 years at a game college (IMHO).

The real downside to this sort of degree, however, has little to do with game design/development programs in specific and everything to do with undergraduate professional degrees in general. Again, this is just my opinion, but I believe that people are best-served as undergrads by a broad, liberal arts, type of education. Very few people at that age (18-21) really know what they want to do with their lives and what one ends up majoring in as an undergrad really has very little bearing on what their options are or what they will become. (This game producer has a BA in Economics).

Meanwhile, that same age range is a crucial one for “training the brain,” and learning about the world. In my opinion, college is not just about setting oneself up to get a job, but about learning how to be a productive and healthy member of an increasingly complicated and diverse global society. For this reason, I strongly believe that most people would benefit both personally and professionally (game designers in particular) from a broad cultural education that includes everything from math and science to history, politics, language, culture, and the arts.

So, I guess what I’m saying is this. If the person in question is just getting out of high school, I suggest that they go to the best traditional college that they can get into. By all means, they should still take relevant classes (computer science, digital art, etc.) and focus on learning about game development in their free time, as a hobby, but they should also try to get the best education that they can. This will be far more valuable in the long-run. If the person is older (particularly if they already have a BA) and has been trying to figure out what to do with their life for a while, then a professional degree might make much more sense. Finally, if the person is considering a graduate degree in games, I’d say that it should be because they want to pursue games as an academic subject or have already tried to get a job in games for some time without success.

Hope that this is more helpful than it is pedantic…

Great Minds Think Alike

My good friend, Jason Fredrickson, forwarded this article to me earlier today.  It was with great bemusement that I learned that legendary game designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, seems to have filed a patent on behalf of Nintendo that basically describes the “Movie Mode” game feature that I proposed all the way back in July, and again via GameDaily, in September.  Inexplicably, sites like Gamasutra and Kotaku seem to think that the idea is more noteworthy when it comes from him than from me. 

To be fair, according to the article, Miyamoto-san filed his patent 2 days before I published my blog post.  And, unsurprisingly, there are some differences in terms of the specific implementation of the feature.  Nonetheless, I will take this as a validation of the basic elements of the idea. (I’m rather proud of myself, in case you couldn’t tell…)

Networking at GDC

Last week, a friend and colleague posted the following question on LinkedIn, seeking advice:

I’ve been to two GDC’s in the past. The first was while I was employed full time at a studio, the second was as a curious onlooker.

In 2009, I’ll be attending my first GDC as full time freelance Game Designer/Writer-guy and although I think I’m pretty decent at networking, I’d love some good advice on how to make the most of my time there outside of reconnecting with current clients and touching base with ex-coworkers.

Thanks,
Ed

I ended up writing a somewhat lengthier response than I had intended.  By the time I was done I thought to myself, I ought to go ahead and put this up on my blog, in case it could be of use to anyone else.  My response references comments from two other people.  First, from David McGraw:

I’m sure this may ring a bell, but if not, Darius Kazemi has written a lot on networking in the game industry. He has a two part guide specifically oriented around the GDC ( http://tinysubversions.blogspot.com/2006/02/effective-networking-gdc-guide.html ).

From my perspective, the parties and events will be far and beyond the premium time to conduct networking. The IGDA party was probably my best night this year for networking. I had a chance to meet a lot of great people and I still keep in touch with some of them.

You SHOULD do networking while waiting for sessions to start, during breakfast/lunch, and during session breaks (people sitting next to you, round tables are really nice) and after (meeting with the presenters). As far as I’m concerned, this is just a warm up for the late night events. Your best time to shine will be through the events, by far. The people you run into in these sessions, will likely be at an event later. Good time to fill gaps if you didn’t get to talk to them enough/ask questions earlier.

My number one advice is to not spend too much time networking with people you know. Meet up with friends, hang out and enjoy yourselves, but once the GDC doors open, split. Focus on meeting random people having lunch or waiting for the session to start. Focus on talking with some presenters. Just be assertive.

And just have fun with it. Understand that people are naturally curious to an extent and they are interested in you and what you’ve done/doing.

Good luck!

I also appreciated this feedback from Noah Falstein:

Sadly, the “one central” bar advice is no longer true - since it came to San Francisco the GDC has not really had heart like the Fairmont Bar in SJ or the wonderful Santa Clara bar in the really good old days, when we complained that 1000 people was way too big… The Marriot bar on the 2nd floor was pretty good, but then last year it was being renovated or had already been phased out, I’ve forgotten. The W bar is too small. With 18,000+ people you just can’t have one central spot anyway, but there are LOTS of parties as well as the normal networking in the halls. Ed, I know you already have a lot of industry friends/connections, so certainly hitting the parties and bars and getting introduced by mutual friends can always work. Beyond that, one trick I would recommend is going to round tables where people who might hire you are likely to show up, and in the process of discussion mention who you are and what you do - then don’t be in a rush to leave, as you may well get someone who was lurking in the room come up to you and ask you for a business card. It can also work to ask a smart question in a larger lecture that serves to introduce yourself, but that is obviously harder to count on and can easily come across badly if you are not subtle about it.

Here’s what I had to say:

Ed,
There’s a lot of great advice here. I particularly think that Noah is right with a lot of what he says. I have to disagree a little bit with Mr. McGraw, however. When I was first getting into the industry, I found that the kind of “random, introduce yourself” networking that he describes is pretty-much your only option for beginning to build a network. And, to be fair, I still have great relationships with several people that I met that way.

Now, however, I have to recognize that such an approach is incredibly low-yield, for several reasons:

1. By its very nature, it’s “random.” This means that there it’s very unpredictable as to whether or not the people that you meet that way will really be of any use to you, or vice versa.
2. The more influential and experienced someone is, generally speaking, the less likely they are to be sitting alone at a table and/or randomly wandering the conference. They will likely be with friends, presenting, or in meetings.  So you are biasing your efforts toward people who have less experience and influence, and fewer connections.
3. These kinds of introductions bring no “context” with them. The person really doesn’t know “who you are,” aside from who you say you are or what your business card says, and the same is true in the other direction. You are not being introduced to them by someone that they know and respect and you come with no real “credibility.”
4. These kinds of conversations are usually very superficial, covering a standard set of questions (name, title, employer, titles shipped, current project, etc.). This “generic” factor tends to make them fairly forgettable. I can’t count the number of business cards that go straight into my trash can when I get back from GDC simply because I have no recollection of the person who gave them to me. (To avoid this, I recommend writing notes on people’s business cards if they say anything you think would be worth following-up on).

For all of these reasons, I think that you would be well-advised to focus on tapping your existing network as a way to get some valuable new connections. You’re not a college kid trying to break into the industry who doesn’t know anybody. You should be setting up time to reconnect with people like myself, Noah, Dave Grossman, Eric Nofsinger, Brenda Brathwaite, and anyone else that you’ve worked with since HVS. These are connected, respected, influential people (with the exception of myself, of course). Keeping these relationships strong is probably far more important than creating new ones.

I’m talking about more than just “reconnecting,” however.  These people will be able to provide introductions that will be much more likely to yield the kind of results that you’re looking for, because they don’t suffer from the shortcomings of the random intros that I listed above. Consider doing a little homework here on LinkedIn to see if any of the people that you know are connected to folks that you’d like an introduction to. If so, ask for it, and use GDC as an opportunity to meet THOSE people face-to-face. I spend hours setting up my GDC schedule in advance, and I try to leave as little blank time on my calendar as possible. That’s networking.

None of this is meant to imply that the random encounters, parties, group gatherings, and sessions aren’t worthwhile. I have never come away from GDC without some new and valuable connection that just kinda came out of nowhere. But I think that your most productive time, in the long-run, will be spent by tapping the network that you have already developed. Of course, that’s just my 2 cents, and you get what you pay for.

Hope to see you at the show!

Ben

Where in the world has Ben been?

It’s been a while since my last blog post.  That fact is due, in no small part, to the significant amount of time that I spent in the frozen tundra of northern Alberta in the last few months (3 trips and a total of about 3 weeks in the last 3 months).  In specific, I was in a town called Grande Prairie: population approximately 50,000. 

In case your Canadian geography is a little rusty, this is where Grande Prairie is located:

View Larger Map

(The states just off the bottom of the map would be Washington, the Northern tip of Idaho,  and Montana).  Here are a few interesting factoids about Grande Prairie:

• Upon my first arrival to Grande Prairie, my host described the city as “the Northernmost edge of civilization.”
• With a little luck, you can see the Northern Lights when standing outdoors at night. (I was not lucky).
• Grande Prairie can be quite pretty:



The building in this photo is the most prominent landmark in the area.  At 14 stories it towers above everything else in the city and is, as I’m told, the tallest building in Alberta north of Edmonton.

• Grande Prairie also has some extremely nice, albeit somewhat quirky, people:

(In defense of Grande Prairie, the chap on the right is from Newfoundland, I believe).

• Due to Grande Prairie’s latitude, the days are very short at this time of year.  This image was taken at about 10:30am, on my way into the office:

• At this point you’re probably asking, “so, why does one go to Grande Prairie?”

Well, the most common answer to that question is: “for money.”  Apparently, Northern Alberta is swimming in crude oil and Grande Prairie represents the staging-point for a tremendous amount of oil drilling activity in the area.  The province is booming, with a multi-billion dollar budget surplus and a staggering manpower shortage. Eighteen year-old high school graduates moving to the area regularly earn more than $100,000 a year working in the oil fields.  Workers are so hard to come by that service industry companies also pay astronomical wages (as much as $17/hour for a job at Starbucks, I’m told).  The unfortunate byproduct of this wealth in an otherwise inhospitable land is are depressingly high rates of methamphetamine addiction, prostitution, and gambling.

I, however, did not venture to Grande Prairie to seek my fortune as a leatherneck and while-away the cold nights with drugs and loose women.  I was drawn to this desolate land by the potent combination of classic 70’s disco music and modern technology, in the form of an iPhone game called:

Saturday Night Fever: Dance was developed by a small team based in Grande Prairie by the name of Evolv3r Inc. and published under my direction by Paramount Digital Entertainment.  I am very excited to announce that, as of today, this game is now available for download from the iTunes App store (for the bargain price of $4.99).  I’m very proud of this project.  While the core gameplay mechanic is pretty heavily “inspired” by Elite Beat Agents for the Nintendo DS, I think that we made some subtle but significant improvements and produced an extremely polished and full-featured iPhone application in a very short amount of time. 

The music lineup is fantastic, including Master recordings of YMCA (Village People), Shake Your Groove Thing (Peaches & Herb), Carwash (Rose Royce), and Love Machine (The Miracles).  I really didn’t have much of an appreciation for disco music before working on this project, but after seeing the film (which I highly recommend…it’s really not what you expect) and working on this game, I think I’m something of a fan.

So, if you’ve got an iPhone or an iPod Touch, or you know anyone who does, I definitely encourage you to give the game a try.  I have very high hopes for it.  If you enjoy it, please help spread the word. 

Fallout 3 - Why You Can’t Kill Children

I was tremendously amused by Simon Parkin’s Gamasutra article “Fallout 3 – I Kill Children” and the ensuing discussion. In the article, Parkin asserted that the decision by the team at Bethesda to restrict the killing of children “admitted video games’ ineffectiveness in providing meaningful disincentives and negative repercussions for in-game atrocities.” Several others chimed-in with comments complaining that “allowing people to kill adults but not children implies that there is something more wrong about killing children.”

It is worth noting, for those unfamiliar with the game, that Fallout 3 is a Mature-rated game intended for adults that is graphically violent.  Recently released, it has been met with strong early sales and generally excellent reviews.  When characters are killed they are often shown up-close in high detail as limbs are severed and blood flies in slow motion.

Presumably, Mr. Parkin is advocating that players should have been allowed to kill children in the same way.

The gist of his argument is that because the game is set in a harsh, morally-ambiguous future, where such actions might actually happen, the decision to prevent the killing of children in this way represents self-censorship and compromises the game’s artistic integrity because it implies that the developers were unable to design appropriate consequences that would have disincentivized and “punished” this kind of behavior.  Ironically, there would likely have been little, if any, actual consequences for this type of behavior in the bleak future that the game envisions.

The reality is that society absolutely thinks that there is something more wrong about killing children than adults. This is so obvious that it I am surprised that people were even asking the question. Generally speaking, the younger the victim, the more horrific the crime seems; the more outraged the public reaction. The most surprising thing to me is that there are people who were surprised that killing children was restricted in the game, considering the countless other video games in which you can kill adults but not kill children. Even film, a medium that is allowed a much wider degree of artistic freedom than games, rarely tackles the subject of child murder and, when it does, it is universally done in a way that is less “in your face” than some of the people on this comment thread seem to be advocating.  Can anyone point to a commercially successful film that showed graphic, realistic, murder, including gushing blood and dismemberment, of a child? The fact that Mr. Parkin’s article, as well as some of the comments, actually seem to be advocating this for a video game in our current political climate borders on the comical to me.

We can argue all we want about the artistic compromise that this decision may have been for the game, but that conversation is ultimately irrelevant. I was not privy to the actual conversation on this topic, but I’d bet just about anything that Bethesda made this decision for very legitimate business/financial reasons. Had they allowed players to graphically execute innocent children, resulting in their dismemberment and enormous spouts of blood, the game would almost certainly have gotten them an Adults-Only (AO) rating, effectively killing the game’s retail potential. Even if it had not, it would probably have quickly become the biggest games industry PR nightmare since Hot Coffee, with unknown but very likely negative impacts on sales as conservative retailers such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart rushed to pull the game from store shelves in the face of a public outcry.

Video game development, at least the kind that Bethesda is engaged in, is a business. People should be neither surprised nor upset when companies such as Bethesda make decisions that are in the best interest of their business. Sure, they could have allowed the graphic killing of children, but in so doing they would have created a massive risk of seriously hurting their product’s sales. Games of the scope and ambition of Fallout 3 cost a lot of money ($20 million and more) to make. If games can’t recoup their costs (and then some) they don’t get made. Is that what Mr. Parkin and those who agree with him really want, just so that they can applaud the game’s “internal consistency” of allowing players to murder children in horrific and gory ways?

It is the failure to acknowledge the out-of-game consequences of what he suggests that I think most undermines Mr. Parkin’s argument. As he AND his “eloquent” detractors have pointed out, there were certainly ways Bethesda could have made the consequences for this atrocity severe enough to disincentivize most players. I seriously doubt, however, that being able to say “afterwards, you are haunted by the child’s ghost and your character has a hard time sleeping,” would have done much to quell the outcry of millions of disgusted and offended parents. Ultimately, the decision to omit child killing in the game is far less of a concession to Bethesda’s abilities as game designers than it is to society’s sensitiblities.  So, in other words, we have only ourselves to blame (or thank).

Beatles headed to Rock Band….almost

When I logged into check email this morning I was very excited to see this article on Game Daily. As a huge fan of both the Beatles and Rock Band, I was titillated by the prospect of being able to play original Beatles songs in one of my favorite games of all time.

So, I was really very disappointed when I realized that the agreement that this article refers to seems to be in reference to a completely new game developed by Harmonix and will not make any Beatles songs playable in Rock Band.  This decision seems to me that it was probably dictacted by some business/financial factors, as Harmonix has done an excellent job of promoting the concept of Rock Band as a “platform,” and the Beatles seem like a perfect fit for that platform.

Obviously, I don’t know what the two companies have in mind that would make a stand-along Beatles game make more sense, but I’m willing to wait and find out before passing judgment.  I just hope that it doesn’t turn out to be some sort of shameless cash-in opportunity that would have been better if it were just part of Rock Band.