12

Getting Started

Graduating from a university, community college, or tech-oriented school and moving straight into a game development job can be a daunting task … so hopefully you are one of the fortunate (and probably hard-working) members of this community who has stormed from the chute and landed a job developing a game at an established company. Besides saving you lots of money and headaches associated with creating your own game, a thriving game studio will already have the resources in place to develop, publish, and sell a successful title. However, if you are not one of these folks, do not despair! Getting your own game studio up and running can be as simple (or as hard) as creating your first game.

With game tools like Microsoft’s XNA becoming widely available and affordable, it is not an unreasonable venture to get your first game out in the market without a huge investment of time or money. Chances are good that you probably started or maybe even finished a game while in school. Becoming an “independent” game developer (meaning that you do not have the backing of a publisher) means having complete control of your project. It also means accepting complete responsibility for any success or failure associated with the game! Being an indie studio also means something else; it suggests a philosophy of trying out new ideas and styles of game play that large developers would never attempt—mostly due to the lack of marketing numbers to support the type of concept you’ve created or that the game is simply not squarely centered in a current gaming trend.

Garnering success from an avant-garde game is great way to get noticed in the game industry and a quick way to get your game noticed. But how do you become an independent game developer?

12.1Setting Up Your Video Game Company

Though there are many logistics associated with creating a new company—such as whether to incorporate and getting your funding (both discussed later)—fundamentally, your new game company will be made or broken based upon one thing: your game. Making a wise decision about your first project will be the single biggest factor regarding the amount of success you will have as a developer (check out the interviews with Warren Spector, chapter 2, and Richard Rouse III in this chapter). Success as a studio, however, has several influential elements that must come together in order for you to survive in the game industry.

In addition to a great game concept, you need startup funds and the resources necessary to create your first game: hardware, software, and skilled talent. Depending on the scope of your game design, creating a new title can take anywhere from five to fifty people working full-time for many months to get the job finished. Each of these people needs a workstation and the tools to do their job. This means money. Lots of money. There are several ways to get the money and equipment you need—and chances are good that you will tackle all of these ways.

Before approaching a bank and trying to get any kind of small business loan, do your best to bring down the amount of money you need to borrow. With any luck, and with lots of resources on hand, you won’t have to get a loan at all. The first thing you can do is to try and hire people who have their own equipment and software. This will be reasonably easy for artists, as they tend to work a lot from home anyway, and the popular programs used when creating digital art are widely available and reasonably priced. Depending on the programming language and/or game engine you use, though, programmers will present the greatest challenge in acquisition. Although getting programmers fluent in the programming language you are using may be relatively easy, getting a programmer familiar with a particular game engine or middleware can be a challenge.

As a producer, if you are able to get an entire team together whose members have the ability to work from home, you will essentially be functioning as a studio with an entire contractor/ consultant-based workforce. Working this way saves you money, in that you don’t actually need a physical studio or workplace for all the employees to work at (so no rent and no bills there) and you won’t have to buy any computer equipment to populate it. It will also make your job easier when it comes to hiring talent. If you live in a nongame development center (like anywhere other than Austin, Texas or San Francisco, California), you would probably have a rather small pool of local talent to draw your employees from. By doing everything through contractors, you can literally hire anyone anywhere. Doing everything longdistance, though, has its own set of challenges.

First, have some sort of contract in place regarding employment. Even if everyone is working speculatively—meaning that they will all get paid when the game is either sold or distributed and has made money—there needs to be something in writing that says that the intellectual property you are creating belongs to the game company. The contract should also lay out the details regarding payment and any provisions regarding termination. The second challenge of working with contractors is related to workflow.

Again, as all the development team members are working in different locales, they will not have the benefit of actually being able to communicate with ease or have meetings to discuss the project. It is important early in the project to establish a means for conferencing, set up collaboration tools, and create a concise pipeline for all of the assets being created. Even though the team is scattered, you should still designate a lead for each department and set up established meeting times for you to conference with them and for them to conference with individual team members.

The easiest method for conducting meetings is to use online video conferencing. There are several companies out there that offer reasonable pricing for this—you may already be using Skype for PC phone calls—and getting the video conference calls up and running is as easy as making sure all concerned have a webcam and headset.

Don’t forget to take into consideration any differences in time zones when scheduling meetings. Also, prepare the topics to discuss in advance so that the call times can be kept low—and stay on that agenda! Keeping the project on track is dependent upon these meetings and the ability for the development team to access collaboration tools. As discussed earlier in the book, the setup and maintenance of a wiki page is the best way for assets to be tracked and for individual team members to be aware of where the project stands. This portal will be the glue that keeps your team together and the shared workspace (not to mention shared drive) for everyone. It’s hard to make contractors feel like they are part of a team, so keeping them on point with the overall schedule, concept, and progress helps immensely in that regard.

Of course, the biggest challenge may be just finding people to work within your budget. Where do you find unemployed game developers? There are several places you can begin your search: schools, conferences, and Web sites. Schools are pretty obvious search locations; most students want experience, so you can usually get a certain level of work and commitment out of them with relative ease. This is especially true if they are out of school and unemployed. Most schools have career counselors who can provide you with candidates for employment and even assist you with placement. Just realize that most everyone you acquire from a school is going to be inexperienced (a “noob” or “newbie”, if you will). Finding skilled talent will probably require hitting conferences and networking or exploring Web sites that are dedicated to a specific discipline.

Artists, for instance, can be found on Web sites like GFXArtist.com or DigitalArt.org. There are also forums and career sites for programmers, digital producers, and writers that are all a Google search away. Many of them even offer threads that allow you to post jobs and search for available talent. Just be honest when dealing with postings; don’t earn a reputation for “bait and switch” tactics regarding employment. Let folks know up front what the situation is and you will be surprised how many people will still want to be involved with your project—especially if you have a strong concept. Just make sure you use nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) when discussing possible employment (more on that in Chapter 14). Don’t forget that you can also use recruiters to help with hiring if you are paying your employees.

If you have chosen to scale your first game much smaller or you are located in an area that can support an actual game studio, you may have decided to host a physical location for your company. Once you have found a place within your budget (this includes rent, bills, and the like) and have populated it with the workstations and software tools, it will be up to you to keep enough money flowing into the project to keep the studio functioning. You will also want to take a few additional steps to insure your studio’s success.

12.2Maintaining Your Studio

Getting a development team on board to work with you is only half the challenge. You must also keep the development team working for you. Discuss the woes of development with any established studio and the discussion inevitably comes around to turnover and the constant need to hire. So, besides the obvious necessities of maintaining basic operations of the workplace, you must also focus on the things that would be handled by a human resources department at a large studio. Specifically, this means creating a great quality of life.

Maintaining a quality workplace is not as simple as keeping the hours down—especially when deadlines and milestones become an issue and crunch hours begin creeping up. It also means providing perks and programs that keep the employees happy. As you will probably be working on a limited budget, this requires a lot of planning and ingenuity. Keeping hours down during sprints to a milestone can be as simple as planning and allowing for enough time to get the work done. Meet with the leads (or the most experienced and knowledgeable members of the team) and get as accurate a time estimate as is possible and allow for that amount of time. There’s a very small threshold of frustration that employees allow when they are already working for little or no pay.

One of the best ways by which you can keep your development team out of the realm of the frustrated and exasperated is to create and maintain good project management systems. Take a tutorial on Microsoft Project and make sure to use good daily delta reports to keep communication high—especially if you are working only with contractors. The more organized a project is, and the smoother it operates, the better the attitudes will be within the team.

Providing incentives at the workplace can also go a long way towards improving morale at work. Perks can include end-of- week parties at the studio (try and get sponsorship from a local culinary school or brewpub to provide inexpensive treats), a gaming area for breaks (also important for play testing other games on the market), and leniency regarding time off and work schedules. The happier you keep your employees, the longer you will keep your employees—but don’t let them run over you! I once worked at very large game developer and publisher that would buy lunch/dinner every day for their employees during crunch time; soon the employees figured out they could ask for more expensive food from better restaurants and the budget for these meals spiraled out of control.

Finally, at the end of the production cycle, when the game is making money, make sure to pay your team what they were promised and offer them the opportunity to work on the next (hopefully funded) project. Don’t be another industry horror story; the tales of programmers and artists done wrong by developers are rampant. When you show loyalty to your employees, they show loyalty to you and your company’s products.

Once your studio is up and running, it is important to take steps towards creating a grass-roots type of public relations campaign. Because you will not be spending money on a big PR firm to represent your company, you will have to become a little creative in getting your studio’s name out there and known.

12.3Getting Noticed

The first step in creating a successful public relations campaign is to get your Web site up and running. This can usually be done for little or no money at first: purchase your domain name (easily done through hundreds of hosts like Yahoo!), then create a blog for your company (via Blogger, for example) and have the domain forwarded to it. Wham—you have a site up and running for as little as ten bucks a year! If you feel like spending a little money on the site, you can hire a Web designer (or spend the time designing a site yourself with a program such as Adobe GoLive or Dreamweaver) and purchase an online hosting plan. A bigger, structured site allows for a lot more functionality and information on your Web page—including job postings, press releases, and the ability to download a demo for your game once it becomes available.

The second step in your plan for world domination should involve getting a playable demo available as quickly as possible—then taking this demo to every gaming conference you can afford and showing it off. Make copies of it and put it in the hands of publishers, gamers, and online distributors. Pay for a stand at trade shows and have the game demo playing behind you (or better yet, available for people to try). Free swag can also go a long way towards driving traffic to you.

Trade advertisement placement in your game (or on your site) to T-shirt companies and printers in exchange for free shirts, stickers, or whatever. This activity puts your company name in the hands of attendees. Every T-shirt, bumper sticker, or hat is a moving billboard for you. Actually attending the conferences also presents a multitude of opportunities to network and spread word of your game and company at parties and mixers (especially the Independent Games Festival and Summit). Another avenue to consider is the use of ads in the trades. Design a nice advertisement and place it in the most popular magazines.

You can purchase advertisements in magazines that focus on video games, Web sites that do the same, and even newspaper ads in cities that feature prominent video game communities. There are lots of different strategies for creating a successful guerilla marketing campaign (check out some of them on GMarketing.com), just be sure you’re not crossing the line. Past attempts at guerilla marketing on the streets have created bad situations like bomb scares, hefty fines for pollution (flyers gone awry), and a bad presence in the community due to tasteless ads and billboards. You can see some examples of successful independent games on the Web site IndieGames.com.

While you are making your ad, you should also write a press release that can be sent out to local press. Getting on local television or being featured in a write-up in a local paper is still press. Save all of your press clippings and use them in your media kit when you are pitching perspective publishers.

My final suggestions for getting noticed in the game industry centers around creating mods for existing games. Lots of game designers have gotten their start by taking this avenue of approach and it can work for your company as well. By creating new levels, characters, and so on. for a popular game, you can quickly get noticed by a lot of gamers as well as the game industry.

12.4Protecting Your Idea

Though this can be a legal issue and we will discuss these in Chapter 3, it’s important to touch on this for just a moment. As I mentioned earlier, one of the keys for a successful independent game is to have a great game concept. Once this game concept is honed to fit your budget and schedule, it is important that you protect it. This means only discussing it with your development team (at least initially—later on, you will of course want to discuss it as much as possible for press purposes), using non-disclosure agreements, and licensing your idea as much as is possible. Did you write a script for the game? Register it with the Writer’s Guild of America. Are there trademark characters, logos, and so on? Register them.

You may have also made a deal or partnered up with someone to make a game from an existing book, movie, or television program. If you have decided to go this route, you must license (or option) the work for use in your game. This is usually expensive and is not for everyone, but using an already successful piece of intellectual property is a great way to take advantage of existing buzz. As I mentioned before, the final chapter of this book discusses the legal aspects of game creation more, but just know from the onset that you should (at the minimum) protect your idea legally and fundamentally from being copied or stolen. Now let’s talk about the game you will be protecting.

12.5Your Concept

The ideal independent game would (of course) be innovative, fun, illustrate a fair amount of potential for future development—and most of all, cinematic! Putting together a great concept is the first task you have in front of you—and the most important—but nobody can really help you with that if you want to be the game’s designer. Here are some suggestions you can follow, though, that will keep you on a trim budget and schedule, as well as keep your chances for completion/success high:

Design for PC. Don’t worry about consoles at this stage. Getting dev kits for some consoles is an extremely difficult task (developer kits/consoles are very expensive). If you are going to go console, aim small. This means going the XNA route and designing an arcade-style game for Xbox Live Arcade or designing a Wii game (check out WiiWare).

Come up with a unique feature. Have a game character with never-before-seen skills or abilities and integrate that into the games controls—or offer some level of usability that is unique. Doing all the things we have discussed in this book to make a game cinematic will go a long way towards the immersion and appeal of the game, but coming up with a great feature gamers have never seen will go a long way towards making the game unique and fun.

Maximize the cultural impact of the game. This doesn’t mean you should make the game political or anything. It just means that the more people in the world that enjoy the game, the more places you can sell it. Design around themes and styles that are universally accepted and enjoyed.

Minimize the interface. If you need an instruction book for the game, it’s probably too complicated. Design so that a gamer can jump right in and start playing.

Design the game to be expanded. Leaving the possibility open for expansion—even if it is just for customization, additional maps, or new characters—means the chance to add on more sales down the line. Great characters, story, and game play also opens the doors for sequels down the line. Also, if the game is successful when released, showing a publisher that the game can get and be much bigger will be a great selling point.

These are just a few basic guidelines to keep in mind when coming up with your concept. Again, if you are using the cinematic techniques discussed in this book, you will also be creating a much richer game experience, even if the game’s theme is not massive in scope.

Once you know what your game will be and what the major features are, you will want to parcel out a small piece to be developed first into a demo/prototype. If this is done well enough, you can use this demo to pitch the full game to publishers; worse case scenario, you will have a great demo to use for marketing purposes through your site. Make sure you include information regarding your company if you are using the prototype to pitch potential distributors.

In addition to the game design document and the demo, you will want a company mission statement, risk analysis (including an analysis of competition), and estimates regarding scheduling and budget. These are the things you will need when approaching major publishing companies to secure a distribution deal. Once you have put your concept together, gotten your demo finished, and your Web site/studio is up and running, you will want to start attracting the publishers.

12.6Attracting the Game Industry

We have already discussed a few of the major ways to attract publishers to you: Your Web site, your demo, and creating a high profile at gaming conventions to name a few. Joining the IGDA will help you as well, as they sponsor events during the year, but in the end, you will have to get your company/game name out there. It is rare for a publisher to actively approach and seek out independent game companies and find them. You will have to find them.

Finding the publishers can be accomplished by finding and talking to them at conventions, contacting them through their Web site (sometimes they even have their office numbers on the site), and visiting their actual company locations. Whichever way you get to them, set up a pitch meeting with the studio heads (sometimes a publisher has a head of acquisitions). If they choose to grant you a meeting, you will be given the opportunity to “pitch” to them—or sell them—on the idea of distributing your game. This literally means you stand in front of them and tell them about your game and why they should publish it.

12.7Using Your Soft Skills

Getting to the pitch meeting though means becoming a pro at the “soft” skills that make a great game producer. In a nutshell, this is the fine art of schmoozing. Networking. Talking people up. Knowing how to communicate with people without being overly pushy is as important as knowing who you should be schmoozing with. I’ve been to parties at SXSW Interactive conferences and watched young designers talking for hours about their project to a programmer who can basically do nothing for them and their career. I’ve also seen creative directors (who have had a couple drinks) blathering on about details of their new project that I’m quite sure shouldn’t be discussed. This is not a good strategy.

Successful schmoozing means knowing your goals, who can get you to them, and how to speak to them. Your agenda should be obvious. Need name talent on your team? Online distribution? Or just career advice? Okay, good. Now, who can give you what you need? If you’re at a conference, there may be a registration book or online resource that tells you who is attending the conference or who they represent. Narrow down the field, get online, see what they look like and what they are currently working on, and find them! If you go to every party at a conference, chances are they will be at one of these. If not, they are probably speaking at the conference; go to their panel and then approach them afterwards.

When you approach someone who can help you, it’s always best to talk about them first. Much like the film industry, creative types in the game industry always like talking about their own projects. A quick compliment and innocent query usually gets them talking in no time. Once you have rapport, broach the idea of maybe talking to them after the conference for career advice. This suggestion usually spawns a moment where everyone in the vicinity exchanges business cards. Now you have a quality contact. Thank them for their time and leave them alone. Nobody likes being stalked at conferences and harassed. Once the conference has been over a reasonable amount of time (four or five days), send a quick email to remind your contacts who you are and thank them again for helping you (even though they have not done anything yet).

Getting from “hello” to getting your foot in their door is the soft skill that marks most successful producers in the game industry. Once you are comfortable at mixers and talking to complete strangers, consider doing some speaking engagements yourself (if you have something to speak about and your listeners have a reason to listen). The more you are exposed to the general game population, the easier it will be to open doors. Just remember that the golden rule is to always talk to them about them and not yourself. at least, not until you are asked. And then, when you are asked about what you are working on, be enthusiastic and brief. Practice coming up with a little two- to three-line teaser about your game (sometimes called an “elevator pitch” in the movie business). Sometimes, this quick spiel alone will get you to the bigger meeting and allow you to do a full pitch to a publisher.

12.8Learning How to Pitch

There are several different ways to approach a pitch. Some people will tell you to just approach the entire meeting as a casual conversation and simply tell your audience what your game is about, then answer questions about it. Others say that putting on a full-blown show with slides, a poster, demo, and so on is the way to go. Either way, there will be some definite things that a publisher will want to talk about with you—and whether you are telling them or showing them the answers—these have to be discussed.

The highest priority of the conversation will center around the subjects of target audience and marketing. Be prepared to go into great detail about exactly what kind of gamer is going to want to buy your game and how your game differs from the other titles competing for the same dollars. This isn’t about explaining the game’s story or cool characters; at a pitch meeting, you are quizzed about demographics, numbers, and territories that will sell a lot of units. Be prepared for this! Does this mean you should forego the creative aspects of the game? Absolutely not. Just keep it short, succinct, and direct. Bring the demo if you have it and make a poster if you want to, but definitely prepare and practice your presentation.

Stand in front of your friends (and strangers, if you’re able) and give them the pitch. Let them ask questions and practice answering them. Pitching is a stressful situation and the more comfortable you are with speaking in front of people and answering unusual questions about your project, the better you will be. You should also practice several different types of pitches; though having a longer presentation for formal meetings is a must, you should also get down a one-line “high-concept” pitch—the old Hollywood-style pitch where you say something like, “It’s Terminator, but with chipmunks instead of robots.” The opportunities to give this type of pitch far outweigh the amount of meetings you’ll be able to set up.

When you are crafting your various pitches and putting your ducks in a row, keep these tips in mind:

1. Be on time. You may not have the busy schedule that you envision for a big game producer yet, but the people you are pitching to are quite busy, so don’t waste their time!

2. Be professional. Dress appropriately and have plenty of materials. When you are given the “thumbs-up” for the meeting, ask how many people will be there and what the culture of the company is regarding attire.

3. Know the pitch’s audience. Do they publish casual games or arcade games? How many games do they handle in a year? Are they the appropriate distribution channel for your game? Again, don’t waste their time.

4. Think visually. Video games, much like movies, are a visual medium. If you go in with only words, you will bore them. Whether it’s a slide show, posters and pictures, or a demo playing, you need something to excite your audience visually.

5. Be your own cheerleader. If you’re not excited about the project, who will be? Be enthusiastic and positive about your project and you will spread that excitement.

6. Know the logistics. As I said previously, know how much your budget is, how long it will take to develop, and what anticipated sales are—and be prepared to back those up with details.

7. Make sure you fit in. This is similar to tip #3, but is more about making sure that you are doing something that is familiar to the publisher you’re pitching to. If they have done very well at marketing FPS games, then explaining how your shooter fits into their catalog will work heavily in your favor.

8. Show flexibility. When the publishers offer criticism or suggestions, be enthusiastic about them. Being able to work with them and building your game around set parameters is something all developers have to learn to do.

9. Be original. This doesn’t mean going to a pitch meeting with a barbershop quartet and singing the pitch. It means bringing in a poster or demo unlike any they’ve seen before. It can also mean talking about the features of your game that have not been done elsewhere. Stand out and be different.

10. Show value. This is less about the product and more about you. Inevitably, if all is going well, the pitch will shift from being about the game to what you have done in the past and what kind of work ethic you possess. It’s one thing for a publisher to distribute your game, but it’s quite another to build a relationship with a developer and create a partnership for future projects.

Follow these suggestions and you will do well at any pitch meeting.

Interview: Richard Rouse III, Game Designer

Richard Rouse III is a game designer and writer who has worked in computer and video game development for more than a decade. Most recently, he has served as Director of Game Design at Midway Games, consulting on a wide range of next-generation titles. Prior to that he was Creative Director and Writer on the hit action/horror title The Suffering and its sequel, The Suffering: Ties That Bind. Rouse has led the design on a number of other games, including Centipede 3D, Damage Incorporated, and Odyssey: The Legend of Nemesis, as well as contributing to the design on Drakan: The Ancients’ Gates. He has written about game design for publications including Game Developer, SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics, Develop, Gamasutra, and Inside Mac Games, and has lectured on game design at the Game Developer’s Conference and the Electronic Entertainment Expo. Rouse’s popular and sizable book about game design and development titled Game Design: Theory & Practice was released in an expanded second edition in 2004 (Wordware Publishing). More information can be found at his Web site, http://www.paranoidproductions.com.

Newman: Using the term “cinematic” when designing a game is not always greeted with enthusiasm. For some, it means more cut-scenes and long-winded speeches from the game characters. What does “cinematic” mean to you?

Rouse: I certainly like to differentiate between adding more cut- scenes and making a game more cinematic. If you look at a well- made film, one of its main qualities is that it feels cohesive. All of its parts fit together. They’re of the same tone and basic storytelling style. As a result the viewing experience flows well.

Cinematics can be a useful tool in games, but the reality is that when a cinematic is playing there is no meaningful interaction and the real gameplay has stopped. To me, they make the whole experience of playing the game feel disjointed, with snippets of un-interactivity jammed between the game itself in order to tell a story the player typically has no control over whatsoever. This is why players tend to not like cinematics and complain about the long ones: watching videos is not why they decided to buy a particular game, regardless of how good they may be.

I tend to try to avoid using phrases like “let’s make this part of the game more cinematic” because if one is to take that term literally, it would mean to make the game more like a movie and thus less interactive. And surely no one wants that. I’ve also found that different people use the term to mean wildly different things. Sometimes it does mean more cut-scenes, sometimes it means more immersion, sometimes it means more action set pieces.

But if we must use the term, I prefer to think of ways games can steal specific filmic techniques and make them part of gameplay. The slow-motion effect in Max Payne (and recently in Stranglehold) is a great example of this: it was based on a technique that players were used to seeing in films and made it interactive. The developers didn’t just put slow-motion sections in the cut-scenes, they actually added it to the game itself and made it meaningful and a lot of fun. Simple things like tilting the camera or adding depth of field or using a split screen are all examples that can be applied to gameplay and open up cool new gameplay dynamics. This makes a game more “cinematic” while still definitely a game.

Newman: How can a designer avoid falling into the trap of what you call “Hollywood Envy”?

Rouse: I think I first heard Chris Crawford use this expression, and I’ve happily appropriated it for my own purposes. Hollywood Envy refers to the sad fact that a lot of people working in games don’t see them as “cool” enough and secretly wish they working on films in far sexier and glitzier Hollywood. To make themselves feel closer to the “magic” of Hollywood (or perhaps to act as a portfolio for when they try to switch careers) they tend to copy blindly from films. The most egregious example of this I can think of is scrolling credits at the end of video games, which lack even the interactivity of DVD playback. Can I rewind them? Almost never. Can I even pause them? Hardly ever. Computers are made for presenting data like credits in ways that players could flip through at whatever speed they wanted, if they wanted. Computers are practically made for interactive display of text. But when Hollywood Envy takes hold of someone, you end up with scrolling credits because it’s “more like the movies”. Now, do credits display systems actually matter that much to games? Of course not. But whenever I see super-long cut-scenes that have my main character doing all manner of cool action moves that would have been better in gameplay (inherently better, as the player would have been in control of them) I fear the team has fallen into the thrall of Hollywood Envy. Designers should always ask themselves, “Am I making this decision because it makes my title a better game? Or just because I secretly wish I were making a movie?”

Newman: It seems that the areas that have benefited the most from cinematic game design have been in the realm of game cinematography and game writing. What are some less-obvious benefits of drawing experience from the film industry?

Rouse: I agree with you about cinematography: there’s a lot we can learn about camera techniques from films, from shot framing to how a real camera moves through the world. Borrowing from films seems perfect, as long as people are smart about how to take a specific camera style from a film and make it dynamic and procedural so players are still in control of the experience.

Film writing I actually find to be less directly applicable to game writing. Other than the cut-scenes, game writing is often finding clever ways to convey gameplay-useful and also character/back-story-interesting information during gameplay without breaking the flow. It often means writing as succinctly as possible, even beyond the succinctness you find in films. Games also affect the type of stories one can write: in game development, one typically starts with a set of gameplay constraints and figures out the best way to tell a story in a very limited space. The best game writers can embrace those constraints and write very compelling stories around them, but it’s a wholly different way than how movie scripts are created.

I do think there are lot of other areas in which film techniques can be studied and used to enrich games. For instance, in terms of audio mixing, there’s a lot of layering going on in films soundtracks that games can continue to learn from. If you look at a Robert Altman film like M*A*S*H or McCabe and Mrs. Miller, he layers so much information into the soundtrack via characters talking on top of each other that you almost can’t get it all in one viewing, which is perfect for games where we want players to be able to explore the story space. Some of the best games have done this successfully, and BioShock is a recent example. BioShock was also a great example of musical underscoring mixed with inworld licensed audio. The score for that game is quite understated most of the time, to the point where people don’t notice it, but it provides exactly the right amount of emotional nuancing to make the player feel specific emotions at different key points of the game progression. The licensed tracks from the 1950s, instead of playing “on the camera” as part of the soundtrack are instead inserted into the environment, helping to set the tone while emerging organically from the world.

I also think there’s a lot that games can learn from movies in terms of pacing; manipulating players to anticipate one thing happening, but then springing something entirely different on them. Also, I think films can help make game developers into better editors of content and experience—selecting only the parts that audiences are going to react to the strongest. Hitchcock said films were life with all the dull bits cut out. Some games, like MMOs, tend to be 98 percent dull bits (endless grinding, traveling across great distances, trying to organize a raid). But even singleplayer action/adventure titles often have dull bits that could be cut out.

Newman: One of the great axioms of screenwriting has always been “Show, don’t tell”. This seems to be a particularly good rule to use within the game industry. What are some of the ways that a designer can still get the story across to the gamer without the use of heavy dialogue?

Rouse: I don’t think I’m the first person to say this, but I subscribe to the principle that you should “Do, don’t show”. Whenever possible, let the player do things instead of watching them be played out in a cut-scene or in events he can’t interact with. Games need to focus on what they do best (letting players interact) and not what they do badly (long complex plots that full apart when you change any part of them). That said, I’m a big fan of using dialog in games, but figuring out ways to integrating it into the play experience. This is something the System Shock games did really well; through the audio logs, you could play back at any time while you explored, solved puzzles, had some combat, and so on. The talk radio dialog in the GTA games are another great example of this. It helps set the scene, establish the world, let the player know what kind of world he’s in, all without taking him out of the play experience. Of course, super-critical dialog may need to be reinforced via mission objectives or forcing players to pay more attention to certain pieces of dialog that are intended to give them direction. But if you’re just telling some back story, it’s probably okay if players don’t hear 100 percent of it. Designers should figure out a way to layer it in the background instead of forcing characters to listen to someone drone on endlessly.

Newman: It seems that great writing is starting to matter more in the game industry. How does a writer balance the need for great plot and conflict without making what you call “an interactive movie”? And does a game need an actual “writer”?

Rouse: Games absolutely do need writers, but writers that understand games and writers that realize they’re making a game first and a story second. A game that has great story but lacks compelling gameplay is a failure, while a game with good gameplay and a weak story can still succeed. Games can also limit a lot of what you can do as a writer and what plots will come across well, but limitations can be creatively stimulating instead of stifling, if writers approach them with the right mindset.

Assuming that a project has the right writer, I think they need to be on the project full-time, not just around for a short chunk at the beginning or middle or end. Someone on the team needs to be the eternal champion of the story, even if they don’t necessarily write the dialog or even come up with the plot. But this story champion needs to be present at all stages (just like a lead designer or a lead artist are on the project the whole time) to make sure that the game’s story is at least considered in all decisions. This person may also be the lead designer or the lead level designer or have other responsibilities on the project, but they’re the guy everyone turns to with story questions.

Decisions about the story and requests for revisions happen throughout the project, and someone with a good story sense needs to be present to make sure those are done correctly. Sure, a given game-play encounter might be more fun if it were flooded with lava, but does that make any sense with the plot? Is the damage to the story less than the increase in the fun gained by adding the lava? And if the lava really is a lot of fun, how can the story be altered to support that? This is a ridiculous example of course, but there are a million smaller decisions that are made over the lifetime of a project. Having a story champion present is absolutely essential to make sure that a sensible, well-written story survives amidst all the changes.

Newman: In your opinion, does the game industry spend enough time working in preproduction? It seems there are a number of current games hitting the shelves that would have benefited from spending more time dealing with choices such as locations, lighting, plot, and so on during the concept phase.

Rouse: Not spending enough time in preproduction is a huge problem. As soon as there’s the smallest hint of a cool game, publishers often want it out as soon as possible, creating an unproductive race for the finish line that typically involves throwing too many people on a project way too soon. Perhaps because they’ve been working at it so much longer, Hollywood is much smarter about this. Once a movie starts shooting, delays and over-runs are a much rarer thing than they are in the game industry. But at the same time I wouldn’t say that the average movie is better than the average game because of that.

But yes, definitely, most games could benefit in more time in preproduction. That’s the time when you should prove out all the major gameplay risks, implementing anything that’s remotely unknown on the project, getting your pipeline working, and, yes, getting a plot and parts of a script in place that everyone’s happy with. Of course, it will continue to change over the course of development, but you need to have your best attempt at the story pretty early on.

Newman: Midway Games brought in director John Woo for the game Stranglehold last year. In your experience, do film directors grasp the concepts of interactivity immediately? Describe the process of working with a film director on a game.

Rouse: I’m not going to reference any one person it particular, but in my experience people who have worked only in film typically do not immediately grasp how games work. Often they’re the first to admit that, and they come to these relationships ready to learn a lot and work collaboratively. What directors are good at is thinking outside the box a bit more: because they don’t know much about games, a lot of their ideas are all over the place and hard to use, but some of them are brilliant and fit perfectly with games. The trick is getting a film director to work with a game team that’s experienced and can help filter those ideas—cherry-picking the best ones, if you will. There’s a lot of back and forth, but in the end it’s still the game teams doing the vast majority of the work. But getting in other creative forces can definitely be a very positive thing for the game, as long as you harness that creativity properly.

Newman: More and more, we are seeing a lot of simultaneous game and film releases (especially with animated films like Ant Bully and Bee Movie). Do you think the possibility of crossover appeal helps or hurts the game industry?

Rouse: In most of the cases where films and games that ship simultaneously, the game is done in a huge hurry under huge constraints. Sometimes this can lead to really cool little games, but more often it leads to something that feels very derivative and rushed. The motivations for doing these games are almost never creative—they’re financial. If you’re doing one of those games you’re riding on the coat-tails of cross-media “event” that surrounds the launch of the film and trying to sell some games starring a CG movie character in the same way McDonald’s is trying to sell some extra hamburgers branded with that same CG movie character. As I say, there are lots of people who manage to make nifty games in these situations, and there’s nothing wrong with trying But I’m not sure it’s something that makes the industry stronger creatively.

That said, there are also some movie games that are done right, where the development teams don’t have to stick to the moving target of a film script and where they have enough time to really get the game right. But these are still the exception, not the rule.

Newman: What elements would you look for in a game, if you were going to option one for a movie?

Rouse: There are two types of licenses in Hollywood: ones where the license is already a Big Property and has a built in fan base that will go see the film version (such as Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, and The DaVinci Code). However, the vast majority of properties Hollywood licenses are not very big before Hollywood gets hold of them. A lot of movies are adaptations from books that have been read by 100,000 people at most. If a Hollywood movie gets only 100,000 people to buy tickets, it’s a big flop. So for this second category of licenses, some Hollywood producer really likes the story or characters involved in that property and think they can turn it into a much more financially successful film; in essence, making the IP [intellectual property] much more popular by making it a movie. Games, on the other hand, tend to license properties (like the examples you cited) in the hopes that some subset of the people who went to see the movie will go buy the game. If they get one-tenth of the film goers to buy the game, they’re making a tidy profit. It’s more rare (though not unheard of) for games to take a small book or an obscure board game and try to make it into a huge game. It’s still true that Hollywood is far more the entertainment taste-maker for the country than games are, and the realities of these different licensing efforts show that.

The trick with optioning a game to make into a movie is that the game has to have an identity that is unique to it. A lot of games, despite being fantastic game experiences, once you remove the game play have fairly standard/derivative settings and characters. How many games have “space marines” in them? Hollywood already has a space marines property (the Alien movies), and it doesn’t need to license something from games to get another one. I think that games could benefit from coming up with more original characters, worlds, and stories. It’s great to draw some inspiration from movies or books or whatever, but too many games just copy the setting/theme/tone from a popular work in another medium and call it done. The best films or novels or games are the ones that make a setting that really stands on its own. Beyond just making sure that the game property could work as a two-hour feature, if I were optioning a game for a movie, I’d look for something that had its own distinct identity and that would still stand up once you removed the game play.