GIVING THE POWER BACK TO THE ARTISTS

This is part one in a series of articles exploring experiments and enablers who are aiming to improve the creative climate in game development for current and new talents alike.

This month, we talked to Chris Bateman of Fantasy Labs (a subsidiary of International Hobo Ltd.), a company with an experimental business model that facilitates cheap development, gives new talent a way to break in, and allows the company to preserve the creative integrity of its core concept.

Their latest game, “Play With Fire,” was just released for PC through Manifesto games and will be released in December for PS2 through Midas Interactive Entertainment.

DAM: What inspired you to look to alternate business models for developing games?

BATEMAN: We looked at the audience, and we looked at the business models, and decided it was time for an experiment. We observed there to be a niche audience with an interest in original and inventive games with a fairly abstract focus; it was just 10% or even less of the total gaming audience but, in terms of individuals, it was large enough for us.

The idea was to cut the cost of development any way we could and then target a niche audience that we knew we could please. The basic way we cut development costs was through the game design. For example, “Play With Fire” was designed with only three verbs: move and jump, which are trivial to implement, and burn, which admittedly was a little trickier. The game world would be built entirely of cubes, because they'd be easy to render and easy to build with, so that the only tricky technical issues were in the implementation of the burning mechanics.

We had some programming and art contacts in India who we'd been working with but whose company sadly went under. We got in contact with them and one programmer, Sanjit Daniel, was interested in giving this new business model a shot. So we invested a small amount to get him started, got a tech demo together, and sold the game to a budget console publisher to get some cash on the table.

What really took the whole prospect to another level was hooking up with Greg Costikyan's Manifesto Games, as it was willing to offer a 60% share of revenue for the PC version of “Play With Fire.” That meant that our break point was only a few thousand copies instead of the hundreds of thousands that most mass market games require. It's hard to see how we won't make back the development costs and, if the gaming audience enjoys the game, we could make very significant returns.

Another really unusual aspect of the development process for this game was the use of talented industry newcomers as field designers. I put out an open call on my blog for contributors to the game, and we got two dozen respondents. Many of them either didn't have the hardware to run the game (it's particle system heavy and so needs a fairly robust PC), or didn't have the free time they thought they would. But we got a good half dozen solid contributors -- plus several more who kicked in a few fields here or there.

Everyone who built a field for the game will get a professional game credit and a reference letter from me if they need it, plus those who contributed most heavily are being compensated with a share or royalties. We set aside 10% of the game's royalties to be divided by the external pool (as we call them) in proportion to their contribution to the project. Of course, we don't know what those royalty shares are actually worth but, still, I think it's a more-than-fair remuneration for their involvement, especially considering that voluntary contributions to game development are usually not paid anything at all!

We got some real talent and enthusiasm out of the pool. I'd like to single out Patrick Dugan, Maurizio Pozzobon, and Ian Tyrrell, in particular. Without them, the game simply wouldn't have been as special as it is.

DAM: What are the pros and cons of working in this way?

BATEMAN: One of the real advantages has been the liberating experience of working without any external creative controls. Publishers can add significantly to a game project, but they can also interfere with its development. For instance, if we'd tried to put “Play With Fire” through conventional channels, we'd have been told to add all manner of things to it to make it viable, all of which would have cost money to develop and none of which, I believe, would have added to the commercial value of the project. That wouldn't have been the publisher's fault per se because the entire games industry is locked into a perpetual game of one-up-manship, trying to outdo the opposition, and that's an expensive business.

The con, however, is that game development took much longer than we'd expected. A project that was supposed to be completed in six months took over a year. It's hard to estimate what effect that has had on the commercial aspect of the project, because everyone involved in the project has been making money off more directly commercial work in the interim, but it's clear that it's cost more than we originally planned it would.

Also, a potential con is having the game come out and not be noticed. We have no marketing budget, so we are relying entirely on Manifesto as a rainmaker. Obviously people won't buy the game if they don't know it's out there!

DAM: Would you do it again and, if so, what would you keep and what would you change?

BATEMAN: I absolutely hope to try it again, but we have to see how much we make selling “Play With Fire” first. If we break even or make a profit, we'll do another project in this style most definitely.

As for what I would change going into it again, I'd say only my expectations for how long it will take. But I have to also bear in mind that we essentially set up a new developer (Fantasy Labs) for this project, so we have been constructing a new development pipeline as well as a game. That was bound to take extra time and resources.

DAM: What do you think needs to happen in the business for it to progress?

BATEMAN: Although I harp on and on about audience modelling, I think one thing that is absolutely essential is for people to become more aware of the differences in the way people play, and what different people want from their play. There are too many people working for publishers and developers whose plan for development is "let's make the games we want and that'll be enough." Well, occasionally, when you have just the right team, the right level of funding, and the moons are in alignment, that will work. But mostly it fails. And developers fail with it.

I'm not suggesting handing the development process over to the focus group; one cannot use the uninterpreted feedback of a random group of people to guide development in sane directions. But I am suggesting that there has to be more of a relationship between the development process and the players.

This extends to predevelopment through game design methods that include a focus on the needs of the player, and to the final stages of development through the use of blind trials and consumer input techniques that actually watch people playing the games and spot the problems that need to be addressed. In this context, it's rarely what they say in interviews that is important; direct observation of play, in the manner of Nicole Lazzaro's XeoDesign, for instance, is far more valuable than verbal feedback.