Category Archives: Design / Production

I had to get up at 5:30am this morning in order to have time to write something for Game Tycoon. This is really testing my newfound infatuation with blogging.  😉

Slipped into the Casual Games Summit for a bit yesterday. Thankfully, there was little of the (formerly common) griping about “we don’t get no respect” — a definite sign that the market is maturing. Other signs that the market is maturing (as noted by Dave Rohrl, GM of Popcap’s San Francisco studio):

• Team size is now 3-5 (as opposed to 1-3 in the very recent past).
• Development schedules are now 6-12 months (as opposed to 3).
• Development costs are $100K-$250K or more (as opposed to $25K-$100K).
• The market has become extremely crowded, and consumers are learning to expect more from casual games. Dave hypothesized that the games which defined this genre several years ago would no longer make the cut in today’s environment.

In a subsequent panel, James Gwertzman (Director of Biz Dev for Popcap) made the following pronouncements:

• Casual games need to be modified on a partner-by-partner basis to help the major game portals differentiate their offerings. Not core modifications, but things like better integration with a partner’s DRM solution, leaderboards, etc. James said it was affordable to do this for five or six companies: an unsurprising assessment, and bad news for portals below tier 1 (tier 2 and below represent just 10% of Popcap’s audience).
• New customers are always flowing into the market, so you can’t ever stop making really simple, accessible games that suck people in.
• No matter how powerful portals gets, Popcap can make must-have games that preserve its power in the chain. (My opinion: this is probably true, if Popcap succeeds at brand-building.)

A few other things mentioned by the panelists in general: there needs to be more editorial coverage of casual games, developers need to do a better job of supporting their brands (financially and otherwise) in order to combat clones, and there are too many single-player casual games. The argument was also made that casual game clones are no more “exact copies” than Quake was an “exact copy” of Doom.

Oh, and as a total aside: I heard from a friend that Warren Spector told a group of academics that he’d rather students get a liberal arts degree than a “game design” degree. I appreciate the sentiment. Hopefully universities will always make an effort to channel students towards creative writing, film studies, engineering, psychology, and business courses (etc), not just the game-specific stuff. There’s time for both.

The last time I wrote about the subject of relatively low entry-level wages for producers, some very knowledgeable readers made the following arguments in support of the status quo:

1. Production is a role that demands experience. Entry-level producers are not capable of making a “significant enough” contribution to a game’s development to justify higher wages.
2. There are tons of people willing to do anything to become producers; why pay when you don’t have to?
3. Academic degrees (even game and/or engineering-centric degrees) are nice, but ultimately irrelevant without multi-year project experience. “You can’t teach production skills.”

There’s something to be said for every one of these arguments. Nevertheless, I’m going to do my best to express a logical alternative point of view. Does this mean I think wages for entry-level producers should skyrocket? Not necessarily, no. But it does mean I think there’s room for nuance — that the industry’s current blanket approach to entry-level production isn’t appropriate for every case and candidate.

Read the full editorial here!…

I’ve been chatting with a few undergraduate MIT students who already have full-time offers from video game companies. Most had summer internships with one of the large publishers, and all appear to have worked on video game-related projects, in and/or out of class. I thought some of you might be curious to know what those offers look like.

Students who applied for engineering jobs seem to be getting offers in the 70s — in some cases, the high 70s. The same students got offers approximately 10K higher from companies in other industries; i.e. Oracle, Microsoft, etc. So the gap between game company offers and non-game company offers appears to be narrowing for engineers. In general, I was amazed at how high the offers were!

On the other hand, students who applied for production jobs (even students with a double major in computer science) seem to be getting offers in the 30s. I find this to be completely bizarre. I mean, yes, I understand the laws of supply and demand (there are more wanna-be producers and designers than well-trained engineers). And yes, production skills are harder to learn outside of the work environment. But are talented entry-level producers really worth only half the equivalent engineer? Even when they have the same academic training? (After all, a solid grasp of programming is useful to both producers and designers, not just engineers!)

I think this exposes one of the industry’s most fundamental flaws. Producers are expected to keep game development on schedule and under budget. They are expected to act as the bridge between the various development groups, the mouthpiece to the outside world, and the interface to marketing and sales. They facilitate (and in many cases participate in) the creative design process. In other words, producers are the oil that keeps the machine running smoothly — indeed, keeps it running period. If entry-level salaries are any indication of how much (or how little) the industry values its producers, it’s no wonder so many games run over schedule and over budget!

Update: many people have asked where the job offers came from, since location obviously affects salary. I haven’t had a chance to reconnect with every student I initially spoke with, but it appears the majority of the offers were from studios in California and Seattle.

2nd Update: As promised in the comment thread, I’ve posted a followup editorial (which has been reprinted with permission by Next Generation.

Gamesblog has posted an editorial questioning the value of a video game design degree. Part of me really wants to take this seriously (since at least some of the many design programs springing up worldwide must undoubtedly be half-baked). Unfortunately, this editorial doesn’t do the question justice at all.

Let’s start with the first argument (paraphrased): innovative designers come from different disciplines, and therefore have a fresh perspective. That’s certainly true in many cases. But wait: last I checked, a college degree was useful for expanding one’s horizons. Does a game design degree prevent students from concurrently taking courses in philosophy, art, psychology, or computer science? More to the point, couldn’t a good design course encourage interdisciplinary study? Ours certainly does. Many MIT CMS undergrads double major in computer science, and/or sprinkle film and TV studies, creative writing, and marketing courses into their schedules. Our design courses often require students to explore a range of design considerations, including business, engineering, social, and cultural issues. The idea that a game design degree precludes a broad perspective is simply laughable.

The author also notes that none of his long-term game designer pals have game-related degrees. Really? Maybe that’s because game design degrees didn’t exist until just a few years ago. Maybe we should eliminate all biochemistry degrees, since early biochemists enjoyed more “fundamental” educations.

Lastly, the author claims that “in most creative industries, people from the outside have the brightest ideas…” I don’t know what to make of this. Are creative writing majors automatically less likely to write a good book than other people? Are film studies majors less likely to produce an innovative movie? The author commends the value of these programs with one hand, but effectively denigrates them (and all programs like them) with the other. You’d be hard pressed to find many people who think that film studies programs have somehow sucked the creativity out of Hollywood, so I’m not sure why game design programs should be any different.

A better editorial might have questioned design programs that fail to incorporate computer science, film studies, creative writing, etc. It might have explored the importance of practical design experience (I feel that any program worth its salt strongly encourages students to take summer internships with game companies, and builds practical, long-term game development projects into the design curriculum.) It might have raised questions about game design theory, which is still a rather nascent thing, and therefore somewhat difficult to teach. These would have been interesting things to discuss.