Next Gen is Terrifying?
I don’t think Naugty Dog has anything to worry about. Next gen will be less about a graphical leap than ever before. Sure, the hardware will be much better, but the initial graphical leap in game tech and art will be imperceptible next to current PC games like Battlefield 3.
So what’s the selling point? Certainly Sony can’t put out a $900 PS4 and expect anybody to buy it on the back of “MOAR GRAPHICS.”
Next Gen will be defined by the declining retail market more than anything else. MS/Apple/Sony understand that they are making a platform for digital content delivery, not just big AAA games, but also small XBLA games, free to play games, social games, but potentially more importantly: TV and Movies. A new way of interacting with your tv and games, that’s the selling point.
Apple is doing this which means MS and Sony need to strike preemptively or be disrupted. Believe it or not, there are lots of people that would happily never own another “game box” if their TV played Wii Sports and Just Dance. The PS2/Wii era market penetration is the realm of iTV.
I work on AAA games so please don’t remind me that AAA blockbusters aren’t going away. I know, I know. I like those games too. Yes, we will always have them and they will get more uber in the future. It’s great.
But that’s not the highest end of the market. The highest end is $100/month TV & Movie subscriptions that people currently pay to the likes of Comcast and Verizon. The highest end of the games market is not even Mondern Warfare 3′s Billion Dollars, it’s WoW’s Several Billion Dollars.
The next gen is about making and owning the living room software & services platform. Look at how well Apple and Google have done on the backs of iOS and Android. Everybody wants to do that in the living room. The competition is not between Xbox 720 and PS4, the competition is between:
- iTV
- Xbox Live
- PSN
- Google TV
- Steam (which is remarkably well positioned to be relevant in the living room)
Platforms. That is what matters and is what will define the next gen. The level of uncertainty around the future of those platforms is far more terrifying to me than “how much RAM will the box have?”
Smart TV at GDC 2011
There have been three bits of news from GDC so far that paint a better picture of how Smart TV will disrupt the AAA game industry in the living room. Once again, Valve is ahead of everybody else in their thinking:
- Iwata’s Keynote was about a crisis for Game Developers. My Translation: Nintendo is the one in crisis. Everybody on Facebook and iOS is doing just fine. Yet, Nintendo can’t follow up the blue ocean strategy of the Wii with another Wii – it’s a red ocean now with Kinect, Move on the motion control side and lots of new competitors (Smart TV, cloud gaming, iOS) coming on the cheap disruptive side. Still, they clearly recognize the problem and that’s the first step towards finding a way to make a Nintendo machine part of the future living room.
- Google recognizes the fact that control and therefore UX is a big problem in the living room. Well Done! Then, they point to tablet and smartphone touchscreens as the solution. Oops! As I mentioned in the bigger article, touchscreens lack tactile feedback, and so they can’t be eyes-off controllers. I don’t think people want to give up on-the-big-screen UI’s and spend all of their time looking down instead of actually watching a show while they surf for something else. Plus, the larger market of apps (as a device selling point) is only enabled by a controller that can navigate on the big screen. Despite being first to market with the most fully featured Smart TV platform, Google is leaving the door open for somebody else to build the great controller experience. This puts Microsoft in a great position. A “Kinect TV” product (cheap, focused on great TV UX and an open app market) could be huge. That is, if Microsoft can bring themselves to put up an open app store.
- With my favorite bit of news, Valve announced “Big Screen Mode” for Steam, which makes my longshot scenario of a Steam-enabled Boxee 2 much less of a longshot. Big Screen Mode also features a controller-enabled UI. Very soon you’ll be able to hook a cheap PC up to your TV, buy Modern Warfare 2 for less than it costs on any console and play nearly the exact same experience. Steam has more disruptive potential than anybody is giving them credit for. Already, Super Meat Boy, a game designed for controllers, sold more on Steam than Xbox Live Arcade. I tweeted Boxee telling them to hook up with Steam, so we’ll see if they can recognize their leverage to crush Google, Apple and Microsoft, and dominate the living room.
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:
New Site Design
If you’ve got the RSS burned try re-burning it from the link in the footer – I’ve switched to feedburner and I’d love to know how many of you out there are reading from a reader. I should have a pretty big post this week with some art and a whole lot of industry prediction, so you’ll want that feed updated. I should also have some new Warhammer art that I dug up posted shortly.
I’ve got a twitter account which will probably be rarely used, so you’ve got that alternative to the RSS. I’ll tweet out any new content that shows up here.
For posterity, here’s the previous site design. I liked the header and background, but I wanted something cleaner here, and I wanted a wide format so I can ditch the lightboxes.
New Model – Hazardous Environment Suit
A bit of hard surface practice in 3dsmax, plus a chance to use Zbrush for something not bumpy and lumpy (the head).
Game Logos
The first one is for a would-be game of mine called Starfunk. It’s a space opera with a strong infusion of modern music and a visual style of psychedelic color mixed with retro sci-fi illustration. I hope to do some concept work for this universe someday. (click the logo to enlarge)
Orc Bust – Finished
I wrapped this baby up with 2 days left on my 30 day Zbrush free trial. Polypainted and rendered in Zbrush. I’m not decided yet on whether or not to get a 3D print of it.
Star Wars Uncut – My Clips
Watch the trailer first to understand what this is:
Star Wars: Uncut Trailer from Casey Pugh on Vimeo.
Then watch the original of the clip I remade:
http://www.starwarsuncut.com/#/scene/428
And here is my version:
Star Wars Uncut – Scene 428 from Lucas Hardi on Vimeo.
This was so much fun to make. I did it in a few lunch hours, I didn’t stop to change something if it was crappy looking, and I worked as furiously fast as I could. It was probably 3-4 hours start to finish. I know it looks like crap, but that’s kind of the idea with Star Wars: Uncut – having fun and rediscovering your love of Star Wars.
Nick LaMartina here at Mythic did the audio, which I think makes the whole thing work.
UPDATE:
A second clip. This one was not as much fun as the first to make (and not as successful), but still good practice for embracing the spirit of prototypes. I’m hoping this “quick and dirty” spirit will spill over into my game dev. We often learn a lot more about what works and what doesn’t by doing. Once again, Nick went above and beyond with the audio.
Star Wars Uncut – Scene 206 from Lucas Hardi on Vimeo.
Another Orc Bust, WIP
My first sculpt in about 3 years, the same subject as my last sculpt, but this time Paul Bonner style (still WIP):
And an update:
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?
Warhammer Online Concept Art
I found some more pieces that I thought would go well on the site here. These were done between 2005 and 2007.
Max Payne
I’m not a fan of the new look that was recently revealed. Without going back and looking at any of the old games, I did this sketch (less than an hour).
War General
This was a painting for Dominance War 4, an art competition for game artists. I’ve been so busy with UI, that this is the first painting I’ve done in a few months.
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:
Underneath It All
This is my entry to Conceptart.org’s Last Man Standing 3 competition, round one. The topic is “Underneath it all.”
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.
More WAR and an old High Poly
A few more of my concepts have made it onto Warhammer Online’s official site, so I picked a couple to post here.
I also came across this character Imperator, modeled about two years ago. I figured it was worth posting just to prove that I did some high poly mechanical modeling once upon a time :)
This character looks a little strange because he was meant to be loaded out with massive weapons on each arm, his shoulders, and back. The players would socket different weapon loadouts on as they wished. Sadly the game was shelved before we got to that bit :)
