AAA Games versus Smart TV
DISCLAIMER: This is a speculative opinion piece based on public information. These opinions are my own and do not represent my employer.
The game industry is about to get flipped. The console in the living room has long been the king platform for games, but these days the living room is different. Only blockbusters like Call of Duty or breakout indies profit in the arms race of the AAA. The traditional games business as a whole is shrinking.
The old console cycle of simply iterating on graphics hardware is dead, and it’s never coming back. Nobody is sure what the next game box will look like. What’s more, Apple TV and GoogleTV are trying to bring some of the magic of Android, iOS, and the Web into the living room and are threatening to upend the PS3 and Xbox 360 in the process.
Game consoles are primed to be disrupted, and the next generation of Smart TV might just be the new champion.
Where We Stand
There is massive growth happening in the games industry on smartphones, Facebook, the Web, and Steam. That style of game product – digitally distributed, service oriented, focused on ongoing revenue – is bound for the living room.
When they get there, an app store will meet the realities of couches and big screen TVs and a very peculiar new box will be born. This new box will have a fancy controller, sort of like a game controller, and it will happen to play games, but it won’t be an Xbox or a Playstation.
It’s not just games that are in for a shakeup, there is a full on war brewing in the living room around access to video content. There are Smart TVs like those from Samsung, there’s Roku and Boxee, and the old giants like Comcast and Verizon are getting smarter about the services they offer. The Web and services like Hulu and Netflix are changing TV behavior forever.
Google and Apple that are the most interesting contenders because they are big and don’t keep content out like the game console manufacturers. In this respect they are open. What also makes them interesting is that games will be important part of their arsenal in this battle and that will pit them against Microsoft and Sony’s AAA firepower.
It certainly doesn’t look good for games in the short term – the traditional business is in decline. But, once the dust settles and the new living room app store reigns supreme, this new box could be incredible for the game industry. Read on for the full analysis:
Designing The Warhammer Online UI
After spending two years as the Lead Concept Artist on Warhammer Online, I was asked to take over the UI design. It was about 6 months before we planned to release the game, we had completed the bulk of the concept art for the game, and Michael Phillippi was ready to step up as the new Lead Concept Artist.
We needed to do a ground up redesign of the UI in 6 months (it turned out to be more than 8). The UI for an MMO like WAR is a huge piece of the game, almost like an OS for the game. Beyond the HUD (which is very complex in itself) it has maps, chat, mail, a social network, maybe 50 windows total. . . basically everything you would find on Xbox Live and more.
The reason I enjoyed this gig was because I had the opportunity to come up with original features. One that made it into the game was the Open Party system. Players in WAR can see a list of groups sorted by distance, and just join up with them in one click. This makes playing WAR’s open RvR gameplay much simpler because you can find people nearby who are playing the way you want to play, be it fighting other players or fighting monsters.
I think there is a lot more we could have done with this system, and there are arguments to be made that it actually reduces community stickyness in the long term, but I think it’s a huge improvement over the old LFG standard, and a step in the right direction. This kind of functionality is a big interest of mine going forward – how do we take players playing cooperatively and help them form longer-term connections? Are open guilds the next logical step?
Game Design Nuggets
I posted these on a forum recently. I can’t claim them as original thought, but I have found them to be my most useful heuristics in filtering game design ideas:
Everything Rests on the Core Loop
Sometimes called the “game mechanic” or the “30 seconds of fun,” the core loop is the series of actions the player will perform over and over again in the heart of gameplay. The core loop of Gears of War might be: 1) Encounter bad guys and take cover 2) Move to a good attack position 3) Kill the bad guys using a selection of your weapons 4) Re-arm and move on.
The smeXbox
I found this sketch on my hard drive. It’s about a year old, but I still believe we will see a lot of the ideas come to fruition in the *next* generation of game consoles.
The basic idea is that the momentum from successes like the Wii and the social games market will focus the device down to a casual, cheap box. It will be like a Wii that runs Xbox Live and has all the great content available on the web (like what XBL has done with netflix). Then, the hardcore crowd can go and buy a plug-in bit that will kick it up a notch and let it run Gears of War 5 in 1080p. The hardcore market has proven in this generation that they don’t mind a fragmented, multiple SKU console with the 360 and PS3.
Pressure from quasi-open devices like the iPhone, open platforms like Facebook, and digital distribution of games in places like Steam will push things in this direction. Somebody is going to realize that if they open up their console and go against the traditional Nintendo model (tight grip on the content, complex certification), they can win. The manufacturer of this box should profit from hardware sales, but also from owning the marketplace. They can take it away from Wal Mart and Gamestop, and I believe they will try.
Books
I always enjoy a chance to look over a list of recommended books and add a few to my amazon wishlist. So, I thought it would be a good idea to look over at my favorites on the bookshelf and write a list for the site here.
These are the top three (or 6, depending on how you look at it) books that I’ve returned to after I’ve finished them, and the books with the most to offer to a game artist:
Stylization in Game Art
I recently gave a short talk on Photoshop Custom Brushes here at EA Mythic (I might post about that another time). I started off talking about stylization and ended up rambling for quite a while. I think the subject is big enough to deserve a post.
What I’m going to say here has been said before by many others and probably said much better. But, this version is focused squarely on how stylization relates to games. What I’m interested in is how to make a game more attractive and make it cheaper to produce with a single style.
Environment Artists vs. Character Artists
EDIT (2011): Re-reading this four years later, I don’t hold the same opinion anymore. Somewhere along the line during this generation of consoles, artists began placing equal weight on the value of environment art, and it shows. Game worlds in this generation have been beautiful, believable and immersive.
It’s the most common division of labor amongst game artists today. In my experience, there is a distinct skill imbalance in favor of character artists. They’re what students and hobbyists almost always are, and so the best artists get to choose to keep working on characters. The best of the rest get to do something else, most often environment art.
I Have Big Hopes for Steam
I still have big hopes for Steam, but I think we will have to wait a few years to see all of the great changes it can bring to the industry.
When Steam debuted, I saw a future where developers get more creative control about what kinds of games to make and when to ship them. I envisioned a time where developers sold directly to their customers, reaping big rewards. I saw the opportunity for big time developers to make games that aren’t forced to be sized up for retail, especially if they have some great gameplay that doesn’t hold up past 5 hours of play. I even considered that piracy could be eliminated if you require a customer to login to your distribution channel to play.
An Introduction
So, I’m starting this site up primarily as a new place to put my portfolio, but I also hope that I’ll find the words to say a few things about the game industry. To get things started, I’m going to post a few images here. More can be found in the gallery link above.
This is Roland, a character from Stephen King’s Dark Tower books. I made him in my spare time over about 6 months, although I probably only worked about 2 hours a week on average (~50 hours total). I did a high poly model in Max and Zbrush, and textured in Photoshop. All of the shots are real-time using J.I. Styles’ Max Viewport Soft Skin shader. The shader notably lacks any kind of shadowing.
Edgeloops were cut into the lowpoly model in order to have visible creasing in the facial expressions
All shots of this character are screengrabs of the Max viewport using a realtime shader.
The shots would look a lot better if the shader included self-shadowing
Roland from Stephen King’s Dark Tower books.
High poly model. Max and Zbrush – 80% complete.
High poly model. Max and Zbrush – 80% complete.
Head texture flats.
