I have argued with many of my peers that in order for an MMO to succeed, it has to be marketed and built in such a way that it not only reaches individuals but whole social networks. The social aspect is, in my opinion, the number one appeal of MMOs and people want to keep playing with their friends. Migrating entire groups of connected people to a game at the same time is a big challenge. Warhammer Online is trying their hand at it, taking advantage of the Beta cycle. I will be interested to see if this yields a dividend for them.
A couple years ago, Midway’s former CEO David Zucker unveiled an ambitious plan to overhaul Midway and build new intellectual properties. The plan failed and has placed Midway in an incredibly tough position. When asked about the failure, Midway’s Steve Allison responded by stating that new IPs aren’t really all that likely to succeed anyhow.
One has to wonder how Midway hopes to launch a new successful IP with that level of shoulder shrugging. You can’t throw money at a project and hope the dice come up in your favor. As an investor, I would be furious with Midway for explaining their failure with an acknowledgment that selling new IPs is, in fact, hard.
Let us look at what the new push produced out of Midway last year:
Lord of the Rings Online - Book license, strong reviews, strong developer.
All of these games went up against Mass Effect, BioShock, Halo 3, and Assassin’s Creed. I rarely saw any marketing for any of these games outside of the couple primary hardcore gamer media outlets. None of them were actually new IPs. The most well reviewed games were made by third parties, not Midway’s internal development teams.
Finally, we get to the point I am trying to make. Today rumors are swirling around about the next Mortal Kombat being a mash-up or MK and DC Comics. This move, if true, turns on all the red lights and sends a designery tingle down my spine.
Midway surely paid a hefty price for the DC brand. In exchange they received only two characters that are worth marketing, Batman and Superman. Is that enough?
Licensors historically go crazy when you do anything grotesque to their main characters. Will MK, a game known for it’s fatalities and gore, be able to include fatalities and gore at all? What does MK have past that for marketing purposes?
This game will be going up against Street Fighter 4, Super Smash Brothers Melee and Soul Caliber 4. Will DC Comics really be the thing that puts MK ahead of its competition?
Most mainstream consumers couldn’t tell you what DC Comics is or which heroes that brand owns.
Video games with Batman or Superman on the cover have been mostly bad lately. Will consumers feel too jaded about those games to have another try at it?
I don’t expect a MK any better than the last one and the DC Comic’s impact on the quality of the brand is limited. While the license will help to sustain the brand amongst its current fans, I don’t see it going beyond that. The decision to bring DC aboard seems uninspired and out of the same bag of tricks that every mediocre marketing department uses.
Looking back on Midway’s recent history they seem to have major troubles with marketing and branding. Let’s hope they can turn things around. Here are some ideas:
When you release a new IP, make sure that it is actually a new IP.
Spend as much marketing the game as you do making it, maybe more.
Allow a talented, proven, visionary to build a brand without too much watering down so you avoid future Blacksite-type brands.
Setting obtainable, short-term goals helps to give you lots of small wins during the course of developing a game even if your project is a “loser”. Write your three big goals down and let your coworkers know about them. Pick two goals that can be achieved within a week and one goal that can be achieved within a month. When you reach one of your goals, replace it with another. Keep a list of all the goals you have reached with a summary of the end result. This makes great material for your periodic performance reviews and helps keep you motivated. At some point you have to work for yourself and setting explicit goals for yourself helps.
We all want to be on a winning team making a winning title. Why not help yourself to start racking up the wins?
Once you have an idea of where you sit in your chosen profession and you have found a new place of employment or decided to stick around for a while, it’s time to help improve the place you work. Take your list of things that you need to have in order to be happy at your job and pick one of those items to improve. Just one for now.
Decide who in the company is the person who would be able to make the changes you want to see. Ask to talk to them through either a formal meeting, lunch, or coffee, whichever seems most appropriate. Before meeting with them prepare your case with points about what you will do to help resolve the problem. It also helps to offer your advocate for change a reward for helping you to change the problem. For instance, “If we can minimize crunch then I see myself staying here for another round of projects.” Try laying out the advantages for the person you are speaking with if they help change the company for the better.
If the person you speak with is responsive and acts on your feedback make sure you follow up with them, thank them, and let them know you intend to hold up your end of the bargain by supporting the next policies or rules they put into place. In the event that the person you speak with listens but doesn’t act, periodically check in and ask if they have done anything to improve the situation. Be polite and don’t hassle them too often. Let them know that they help your career and their career by helping you out. As a superior, you need them to be your advocate, your voice.
Sometimes the person you speak with will not be responsive or even upset at your suggestions. At this point you can either elevate the issue to a higher up person, find a way to find happiness in your current situation (coming soon), or start over at stage one (See my previous post HERE).
At this stage, hopefully you are at a place you can be happy with and you are helping to change things for the better one problem at a time. My next posts about developer contentment will be about finding happiness amidst less than ideal circumstances after you have looked around and tried to change where you work.
My preference would be to never make this post. I don’t particularly like to mix blogging with politics. However, I feel driven to make this post because there is a presidential candidate that has so moved me that I have to speak up. I hope you read this post and watch this video with the same open heart, understanding, and respect that I hope I would give you. My greatest hope is that a candidate is elected to office that will lead our nation into peace, prosperity, and develop a policy of treating every single person on this planet as God would have us to, with love, respect, and compassion.
I grew up in a heavily Republican household and family. If asked about the Republican party and what they stand for, I could nail any question. In the past I have voted 95% Republican and while I considered myself to be a moderate and independent voter, I simply didn’t get the liberal parties. Not only was my family Republican, people from my faith background thought Republican to be synonymous with being Christian.
Then something happened. Our president, whom I put into office, started a war under false information. I saw my wife get legally sexually assaulted at the airport because of freedoms we gave up in the name of quieting our fears. Key concerns that affect us all continued to be ignored in the realm of environmental, health, and foreign policy. I felt betrayed, lied to, and cheated by the people I help put into office.
So when this election rolled around I wanted a candidate who had a track record of great judgment, a track record of bringing together Republicans and Democrats, a track record of doing what is right regardless of political implications, and a track record of resurrecting the American dream in the hearts of all people of this nation. Last year, on a whim I went to go see a candidate speak and I found the candidate I was looking for. Over the course of the last year, this candidate has become an influential leader and is becoming the important political figure of my time.
Please please please take some time to watch this video and read about what Mr. Barack Obama stands for.
This year I have had the big goal of living up to my last post about developer contentment. I received several questions about the post on how to be happy making games when things aren’t all that cheeky. Can you really “decide” to be satisfied?
So this year I have buckled down and I am actively pursuing job satisfaction to its fullest. Today I am posting part I in a series called “If Things Were Different”. This is as much an exercise and encouragement for me as a take away I hope to offer you.
If you find yourself unhappy with the game you are working on, the people you work with, the hours you are working, or the money you are making then it may in fact be time to look for a new job. The grass is always greener on the other side when you haven’t peeked through the fence. Shopping your resume around can have three results.
No one is interested in you. If all you hear is crickets when your resume is sent out, you obtain a new appreciation for your current place of employment. Gainful employment is a blessed thing.
The joy of making games at your current job may not make up for the hatred you harbor in your heart towards the job. If no one is interested in you and you can’t find contentment in your current job, then you need to change careers paths, go back to school, or grow up and accept that sometimes things are just going to be hard. Tough? Yes, it is.
My current company is actually better than the companies I interviewed at. Getting a look inside of another company may help you gain a new appreciation for your current job.
For example, “I am working on yet another licensed sequel to a game based on the movie based on the book but at least I get to see my family every night.”
Another example, “That MMO looks amazing and the company is great but I want to wait around until after the MMO bubble bursts to see if those folks keep their job.”
Those companies provide a better opportunity for me to find job satisfaction. If the opportunities you find in your job search confirm you feelings towards your current job, then it is time to change. Remember that leaving your current job elegantly is important to your future of consistently finding jobs that provide satisfaction.
Before you change jobs, you need to prioritize what is important for you to be satisfied at your job. Make two lists, one for items you must have to be satisfied and one for items you do not need to be satisfied but would like. The list of items you must have should be one third the size or less of the items that you do not need.
Here is my list to help you out:
Things I must have to be satisfied
Ability to provide for my family in the short term including salary and benefits
Ability to spend time with my family on a regular daily basis
Interesting, challenging, and innovative projects
Things I do not need to be satisfied but would like
People who are easy to work with
Realistic development timelines
Job stability
Fun but professional company culture
Great workstation equipment
Generous amounts of vacation time
Ability to provide for my family in the long term including 401K matching, life insurance, disability insurance, etc.
Career support from my superiors
Job growth opportunities
Schedule flexibility
By defining what you need to be satisfied by your job and by seeing what opportunities are available to you, you build a great basis on which to build job satisfaction in your job. Satisfaction and contentment are decisions that you make but it takes a well thought out process to make that decision and stick with it. Put yourself in a position to succeed at “deciding” to be happy where you are.
I went to lunch today with a friend from another developer in town and we were discussing job contentment inside the game industry. Both of our jobs are going fine, no big fires to put out, just normal developer challenges and day-to-day “get the game done” type of stuff. When each of us asked the other how their job was going we both had the same answer. The answer was something like “Fine, I guess. You know…making games and stuff.” This answer got a nod of understanding from the other with a sarcastic “Yeah. Best job in the world.”
What!? We make video games for a living! How could we not be thrilled about going into work every day? Well, the truth is that we both very much like our jobs and love making games. There are plenty moments when we get to ride the excitement and coolness of what we do for a living. I feel privileged every time I come into work and see the other building’s tenants working the eight to five in their suits. But the truth is that the time in between the really cool moments is frequent and very similar to any other job.
The air in the office becomes stale, memos get read, productivity is measured on graphs, meetings drag on, hurdles send blood pressure through the roof, team members get on your nerves, and you never get paid enough for all that you do. You lose track of the big picture and forget that you are working on a really cool project that hundreds of thousands of people will play, logging in millions of hours of play time. All the magic of what we do fades very quickly if we allow it to.
I think it is in our nature to become complacent when there is a lack of drama of some sort in our careers. The soul starts to get restless and you begin to get dissatisfied with your current position in life. This is why it has been a goal of mine to become content over the past year with everything in my life. This doesn’t mean that I don’t stop working hard or looking for opportunities to grow. What it means is that I choose to be fine with where I am.
On a day-to-day basis, my job suffers the same drawbacks as any career in entertainment plus the setbacks found in software development, but I want to be focused on the big picture. When my project wraps up I’ve created a little piece of my team and I expressed through interactive software that hundreds of thousands, hopefully millions, of people will play, enjoy, and love. Every day I get to move a game a little closer to getting into the hands of people who would love to have my job and appreciate the work I do, as long as I do it well.
September 25th was the biggest day in entertainment history and all thanks to a little video game we like to call Halo 3. Here is more information on Joystiq:
Microsoft has just sent word that its flagship soldier Master Chief has come back from the battlefield with $170 million dollars in the first 24 hours of Halo 3 deployment in the United States. As noted, this would mark the biggest day in US entertainment history, beating out Spider-Man 3 and all Harry Potters (of course, the price of entry for those events were a lot less, but that’s a technicality when it comes to record books). - Link
I am so stoked about BioShock, Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed, Ratchet and Clank, Smash Brothers Brawl, Super Paper Mario, Super Mario Galaxy, and I would like to check out Halo 3. However, I won’t be playing these games until next year. You see I can’t justify the $40 - $60 these games cost no matter how good they are. For too long our industry has priced out the average consumer and we make our bread and butter by ripping off our hardcore niche. Granted, the niche is large.
Both books and music successfully hit the sweet spot upon release, $15 - $25. If books and music discount their releases the first week in the stores, why don’t we do the same in video games? Why buy one game when you can buy three or four books or albums for the same price?
The cost of game development is the driving factor behind the price difference. With budgets now hitting $20 million to $30 million, its hard to start thinking about price cutting strategies. Yes, charging $60 for a game when it cost $20 million to develop doesn’t sound like a bad deal. On the other hand, when I walk into Best Buy and I see all the other stuff I can get for $60, I am tempted to put down that copy of Final Fantasy XXIII I just picked up and buy two new albums and a book.
So how do we cut prices? Is it even necessary? Is episodic content the answer? Shorter games? Longer console cycles? Stop complaining or stop buying games?
I am not sure of the right answer since there lies uncertainly with cutting prices. Will the economies of scale really lean in our favor in the event of a price cut? How do you measure the long term financial benefit of lower the cost of entry into video game fandom?
I have many friends and family whose biggest hesitation with investing in video games is the cost of becoming a gamer. It is too difficult to be a casual consumer of the latest blockbusters our industry has to offer. Other entertainment mediums make it easy and inexpensive to keep up with the latest mainstream hits. In the game industry, we haven’t been able to offer this to our audiences.
