Where to Developers get their info?

You can take official courses in universities, and from organizations like Full Sail and Digipen (and LA Film School, and Art Institute, and check your local university).  Or you can get a traditional degree in computer science, graphic design, and make sure to pick up classes on game development and interactive design.This is a great way to go if you are nearing, or just finished high school.

What if you already way beyond that?

What if you have heard how easy tools like Flash, Unity3D and Torque are to use, and you want to know more.

What if you are just curious?

What if you just need to do some research, but don’t really need a working knowledge?

Well, guess what, you have arrived at a time just when a golden era of community supported development is on the rise. or if you like sound bytes

Let google be your guide, teacher and mentor

In other words “If you want to do something with a technology, someone somewhere has likely done it already and  have bogged about it, and likely shot a video tutorial posted on youtube and vimo”.

Instructing you : opposite directions

Over the past 2 years there have been two completely divergent trends: 1 away from centralized sites with specific topics, and 2, seemly contrary, the emergence of generalized sites with tons of information on how to do everything.

For developers, or the developer curious, or the would-be developer, improvements in google allow anyone to  find whatever they are looking for, no mater wherever it is. Why is this earth shattering? well, in the stone age, before google (like 1998), if you wanted to know how to do something, you likely had to physcially travel to a centralized repository of information, and manually search through physical materials(it was called a LIBRARY). Interesting thing, there is a branch of science, and at least 2 industries and business models that exist to support that method of finding out how to do something.

But now it is the 21st century, and thank the internet we don’t have to do THAT anymore. As liberating as libraries where, free internet search engines are a tru quantum leap.  Now most info comes from individual sites, found through specific google searches. If we want to know something, we google it. If an individual wants to know ANYTHING, all they have to do is google it. (Sidebar, there are some interesting behavior shifts going on. Now you do not need to understand, or know how to do something before embarking on that thing, you can just google as you go. Think of it as Just-in-time-Know-How).

Back in the library days, information had to be researched, gathered, co-lated, and organized in a manner that made it easy to search by humans. Developers of technology spent large portions of their budget on documentation and training. Now with internet search technology, as soon as someone learns how to do something they can post it on their blog, or create a youtube video. Anyone anywhere on the internet can find that tasty tidbit of information. (assuming the author uses good keywords, and the searcher does to)

It takes a community to raise a game developer

How does this notion applyto game development? Most organizations that make technology for game development now-a-days rely on “their community” for a large poart of information, education and training materials. For a given technology there will be a main wiki, a primary forum, but then also dozens to thousands of individual blogs and websites. Excellent examples are the communities that support the Unity 3D , and Flash (action script) technologies. The best way to find out anything about these technologies is to start with google. Of course there are some basic tutorials provided by the purveyors of each respective technology, but the tutorials found on the web are specific to each individual goal.

Is it all coming back together?

The flip side of this is the emergence of websites like ehow, howstuffworks.com, soyouwanna.com, etc.. A few years ago people started to notice that the ad revenue for youtube videos that provided tutorials was very different than the rest of the whole site. Ad sellers, and buyers, learned that you where much more likely to sell something to someone asking the question “how do I”. This has coincided with a re-emergence of the  good old yankee inclination to tinker, referred to in it’s current incarnation as “the Maker Movement”.

Both of these methods of learneing are supported by a growing internet culture of “learn & teach”. When people learn something, figure out how to do something, they blog it, tweet it, shoot videos of it.. These blogs, tweets and videos feed both the individuals, and the big web sites like ehow.

Another emerging trend: professional Micro “how to videos”:

There is a small community of videographers and writers, mostly in and around Hollywood, that shoot short video tutorials. “Microproductions” I think they are called. The deal is, when a website like ehow encounters a prospectively profitable set of “how to” queries, they will contract a videographer to go film a bunch of very short how to videos. A videographer that specialises in this, is often a TV or Cinema camera opertor between jobs. They will get hired to shoot several dozen how to videos each day. Each individual video might only net 20 bucks or so from the site (like ehow). The production quality does not have to be high, and they can be done in masse. So a single day’s shooting can net a few hundred bucks, if the videographer is efficient and can direct the subject well.

Also some technical writers are turning to this business model. LearnMeSilly.com is a successful example of how technical instruction may be done from now on. One of that web site’s principals created some,  tutorials for Unity 3D. Now the author is publishing  a book.

The book will get published and find its way into Libraries.

I coined this phrase a year or so ago “Welcome to Early 21st century pop culture, now with video tutorials!”. (reference to www.knowyourmeme.com).

An interesting new title is starting to show up in game companies. Chief Economist.

Virtual economies are becoming a foundational component of game design. Like when Storytelling and Music where added to games, virtual economies are expanding the appeal of games to broader audiences.

Games make strange cubefellows

Ok, that was a terrible play on Charls Dudly Warner’s quote “Politics makes strange bedfellows”, The point I’d like to make is that modern games draw from a very wide verity of skills and backgrounds. In a game company boardroom, if you don’t see a fohawk in tattered denim next to a receding hairline in a finely pressed business suit something is wrong. The diversity allows for the creation of experiences that appeal to a broad audience. Sometimes through depth, sometimes through simplicity.

It’s not like we haven’t done this before

Every time the industry adds a discipline to the standard game development team, the market for games expands. The experiences provided by games become more engaging, and meaningful.
The first computer games where created mostly by programmers and games appealed to a base audience.

Then came Writers, authors, storytellers. Text stories where adaped easily to the primitive computer systems used to develop and play computer games. Games started telling compelling stories and their appeal expanded (Zork). People who enjoyed an engaging story found a new medium, and the market for games

Visual artists entered games, and we got graphics. Games became visually appealing, then as graphics got better, visually compelling. Musicians entered games and we got sound and music. Recently community, social networks, and sociologists, in the form of community managers, have entered the industry. Games are creating tight feedback systems between players and developers (many times erasing the lines between the two). Games are appealing to a very broad market base (farmville? zynga’s games)

Each time the games industry adds a new discipline, the appeal of games broadens.

Hot Game executive title: Chief Economist

Companies like imvu and linden labs live and die on their virtual economy, it just makes sense that they have economists on staff. Only these folks don’t (or shouldn’t) work for the CFO (although the CFO may be the only one on staff who can comprehend much of their jargon). A chief economist has a lot to contribute to game design (also an economist can talk to a VC in ways that will nearly guarantee extra funding

Wait, something is not right here

Games have constantly challenged every new entrant discipline: Challenged their fundamentals. [editors note: English just does not have a comfortable, or elegant, way of dealing with the relations between compound, nested, or unbounded sets. I site as examples of my frustration the invention of "all y'all" and the use of "dudes"  in the US west or "y'all" in the US south]

Each time a discipline is added to games, a fundamental assumption about that discipline is discovered, sometimes painfully, to be invalid.  Games are non-linear, temporal, real time, collaborative, experiences, often involving not just an individual but groups of people large and small.

Writers entering the game industry encountered interactivity. Players play games. They are players are not a reader, listener, or viewer. And, unfortunately for the screenwriter, players are not actors.  Players (gleefully) refuse to respond to direction or do what they are told.  Interaction, choices, break the linearity many storytelling mediums are based on.Writers have learned to break stories up into little bytes that can be broken up into “missions”, “quests” or “levels”. Writers have learned to let stories unfold out of order, from multiple viewpoints, and write several alternate sequences that go beyond simple branching. Story telling games have become rich, and can appeal to both broad and narrow audiences.

Some may argue that good story tellers jump back and forth in time, but the reader will still turn to page 56 when they finish page 55.  The live theater goer will still see act 3 right after act 2. One of my favorite debates still rage: are games a story telling form or a sport (with no real story context). There are those that will argue that sports are a form of story telling. (personally: those folks need some mind expanding experiences)

Music encountered similar challenges when added to games. The time it takes a player to do something is unknown. “How many measures does that combat sequence take” is not a question a composer can ask in a game setting.  For a composer this represents a huge challenge, how long do you know how long your score is supposed to be? When is it exciting? when is it contemplative? How much time to I have to transition? If I make loops, short loops become irritating, long loops never get heard and get cut off in awkward and jarring manners.  Musicians have  very little information up front, they don’t even known when the mood in a game is going to change. An exciting combat situation is often defined by the mood changing from dire to victorious in an instant.

Music systems have been created that can help dynamically compose and change the mood of music during game play. With the application of these technologies games became more fun, and music games became an audience expanding genre unto themselves. Games gained a richness and depth that added mood and tone.

Enter the Economists

So enter the dire breach my dear, the unsuspecting economists.

Lionel Robbins in his  1932 essay he defines economics as:

“the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.”^[3] Scarcity means that available resources are insufficient to satisfy all wants and needs.  The subject thus defined involves the study of choices as they are affected by incentives and resources.

In virtual economies there is no scarcity. Alternative uses are often a null concept. Lionel Robbins concludes that

Absent scarcity and alternative uses of available resources, there is no economic problem.

There is no relevant cost of goods within virtual economies. Virtual items do not “wear out” so there is no loss of value of an item over time due to diminished capacity. There is an excellent article in venture beat about this.

I find I must take issue with one point repeatedly brought up(this was also mentioned in the VGS09 summit). A point keeps being made that “real” economies do not have sinks and sources. I postulate that real economies DO have sinks and sources. In a real economy a source would be the controlled addition of new resources, or the ability to exchange currency. That is, if I go out and dig up some gold, I have a choice of exchanging that gold for US dollars, Euros, rupees or what have you. I am adding a new resource to that economy. If I play the part of a government, as such I have the ability to print money, and have the ability to take money out of circulation.

I learned at a very tender age that money is not real, it not even a measure, it is merely a means of standardizing units of work to allow for and easy and uniform exchange of goods and services. (there is a certain type of genius when a mother can make a concept like this obvious to a 5 year old. If your curious, ask and I’ll tell you the anecdote she used)

Most governments have fairly broad simple mechanisms to source and synch money into and out of the economy, and these mechanisms are balanced by some very subtle and complex mechanisms to measure and control the value of that money when compared to goods and services.

This exactly the role a game 0perator takes on when running their own virtual economy.

Real economists are green, with envy

A huge benefit economists have in virtual economies, as pointed out by Bill Grosso, is that virtual economists can see EVERYTHING. Every transaction in a virtual economy is known, and all the meta data about that transaction is also known. Bill calls it “perfect knowledge”. Virtual economists are the envy of “real” economists. In reality we can not know fundamental facts about what is being spent on what by whom, we can only really guess.

New shiny thing: same old shiny result

Now we have games that have virtual economies as a fundamental part of game play. What has the industry gained from it?

A whole lot.

Some of the fastest growing games of 2009, and some of the more profitable new game companies <zynga> use virtual economies.

Virtual economies are used to lower the barrier to entry into games, and to allow players, community members, to spend as much as they want.

So when games added Music, Physics, Graphics their appeal broadened to new audiences, economics in games is expanding the appeal and relevance of games to more and broader audiences.

Some References:

Ever ask yourself

“What kind of MMO is that?” “How is that MMO put together and how is it different from others?” “What kind of MMO am I (building)”?

I thought not.

MMOs come in all shapes and sizes. From a players perspective the experiences range from flash based games that allow players to talk to eachother, to fully immersive interactive 3d real time simulations.

From the inside, looking out there are some similarities all of these games have in common. It turns out online games share a set of technical challenges with systems like financial trading desk systems, and high scale web systems like ebay and amazon. Only different.

Because all online games have to solve some basic common challenges of providing an internet connected shared space, there have emerged some common patterns to developing the games, and solving the technical challenges.

In the work I have done on MMOs and online systems I, and the people I work with, have discovered 3 patterns. The slides that follow describe those patterns, and provide a high level compare/contras of the features and benifits of each pattern.

Step through these slides slowly,  give PPT a second to get the animation right or the slides will jump around and not make much sense.

Anatomy of the MMO 1.7.3 Patterns

Once you know what types of  MMOs there are you can then move on to the next posting that describes all the pice parts of MMOs