Game Developer - August_1999.pdf

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AUGUST 1999

G A M E

D E V E L O P E R

M A G A Z I N E

ON THE FRONT LINE OF GAME INNOVATION

G A M E

P LA N

DEVELOPER

600 Harrison Street, San Francisco, CA 94107

415.905.2200

415.905.2228

www.gdmag.com

Where’s Webster

When You Need Him?

Publisher

Cynthia A. Blair

cblair@mﬁ.com

EDITORIAL

Editorial Director

Alex Dunne

adunne@sirius.com

Managing Editor

Kimberley Van Hooser

kvanhoos@sirius.com

Departments Editor

Jennifer Olsen

jolsen@sirius.com

Art Director

Laura Pool

lpool@mﬁ.com

Editor-At-Large

Chris Hecker

checker@d6.com

Contributing Editors

Jeff Lander

jeffl@darwin3d.com

Mel Guymon

mel@surreal.com

Omid Rahmat

omid@compuserve.com

Advisory Board

Hal Barwood

LucasArts

Noah Falstein

The Inspiracy

Brian Hook

Verant Interactive

Susan Lee-Merrow

Lucas Learning

Mark Miller

Harmonix

Paul Steed

id Software

Dan Teven

Teven Consulting

Rob Wyatt

DreamWorks Interactive

ADVERTISING SALES

Western Regional Sales Manager

Jennifer Orvik

jorvik@mﬁ.com

415.905.2156

Eastern Regional Sales Manager/Recruitment

Ayrien Houchin

ahouchin@mﬁ.com

415.905.2788

International Sales Representative

Breakout Marketing

breakout_mktg@compuserve.com

+49 431 801703

f:+49

431 801797

ADVERTISING PRODUCTION

Senior Vice President/Production

Andrew A. Mickus

Advertising Production Coordinator

Dave Perrotti

Reprints

Stella Valdez

916.983.6971

MILLER FREEMAN GAME GROUP MARKETING

Group Marketing Manager

Gabe Zichermann

MarComm Manager

Susan McDonald

Marketing Coordinator

Izora Garcia de Lillard

CIRCULATION

Vice President/Circulation

Jerry M. Okabe

Assistant Circulation Director

Sara DeCarlo

Circulation Manager

Stephanie Blake

Assistant Circulation Manager

Craig Diamantine

Circulation Assistant

Kausha Jackson-Crain

Newsstand Analyst

Joyce Gorsuch

INTERNATIONAL LICENSING INFORMATION

here’s an old story (I chalk it

up as an urban legend) about

a young FBI employee who

was put in charge of the

bureau’s supply department. He fig-

ured that an efficient way to cut costs

would be to reduce the size of the

memo paper used throughout the

agency. When one of the memo

sheets found its way onto J. Edgar

Hoover’s desk, he got upset over the

change and wrote on the narrow mar-

gin, “Watch the borders.” For the next

six weeks, it was difficult to enter the

country by road from either Canada

or Mexico.

This tale is about as bogus as they

come, but it illustrates what can hap-

pen when communication gets garbled.

Efficient communication is tough.

That’s why so many Postmortem

authors in

Game Developer

have cited

“bad communication between team

members” as a major factor that hin-

dered their game projects. And perhaps

no aspect of game development is as

loosely deﬁned and poorly documented

as game design.

As game players, we often take for

granted what makes a game “rock” or

“suck,” without digging deeper and

analyzing what that means and what

exactly evoked such a response. That’s

the luxury of the player. As developers

though, we’re expected to be masters

of the art; to see many layers beneath

the surface. We have to be familiar

with the devices that make games chal-

lenging, fun, addictive, exciting,

funny, scary.

Having a formalized vocabulary for

game design elements and techniques

would help the industry greatly. Other

forms of media have their own lexi-

cons — novelists, script writers, movie

directors, and composers converse

using well understood and accepted

terminology. (A quick search on

Amazon.com reveals dozens of dictio-

naries for ﬁlmmakers, ﬁction writers,

poets, and other creative profession-

als.) With decades (if not centuries) of

D E V E L O P E R

AUGUST 1999

history behind these ﬁelds, perhaps

this comes as no surprise. Now that

we’re a multi-billion dollar industry

though, we should begin to designate

formal terms for our craft, too.

This month we present an article on

page 44 by Looking Glass’s Doug

Church which addresses the need for a

game design vocabulary. The article

takes the first steps towards the cre-

ation of a lexicon for game designers

— a collection of “formal abstract

design tools,” as Church calls it —

which can be applied to game designs

across various genres and platforms.

There will be some who say, “Bah —

what a bunch of pointy-headed non-

sense. Don’t turn game design into an

academic exercise and start jargoniz-

ing things.” That’s definitely not the

aim here — jargon for jargon’s sake

does no good. But try imagining what

filmmaking would be like if every time

the director wanted a zoom-in dolly-

back shot, he had to say, “Roll the

camera away from the actor while you

simultaneously increase the lens mag-

nification on him, just like Hitchcock

did in that neat scene in

Vertigo!”

Without an effective vocabulary to

discuss a concept, it can get pretty dif-

ficult to communicate your intentions

and ideas.

Here’s Where You Come In

f you read Church’s article and

want to submit some terminology

of your own, our sister web site

Gamasutra.com is launching an

online lexicon to extend the concepts

that Church presents. We invite you

to submit terms and view what others

have proposed. With a little inspira-

tion from Noah Webster, we may all

be able to take the art of game design

to the next level.

Robert J. Abramson and Associates Inc.

914.723.4700

914.723.4722

abramson@prodigy.com

CEO/Miller Freeman Worldwide

Tony Tillin

Chairman/Miller Freeman Inc.

Marshall W. Freeman

President & CEO

Donald A. Pazour

Executive Vice Presidents

Darrell Denny, Galen A.

Poss, Regina Starr Ridley

Sr. Vice Presidents

Annie Feldman, Howard I. Hauben,

Wini D. Ragus, John Pearson, Andrew A. Mickus

Sr. Vice President/Development Solutions Group

KoAnn

Vikören

Group President/Division SF1

Regina Ridley

G A M E

www.gdmag.com

S AY S

YO U

More Than Just a Steady

Paycheck to Some

hris Hecker’s Soapbox column

(“So You Want to Make Movies?

Good Riddance!” June 1999) echoed

my long held belief about the status of

the game development industry.

Easily half of the artists I have worked

with in the industry would have pre-

ferred to be doing something else.

Whether it be film or traditional art,

game development is just a steady

paycheck to them while they “get

their demo reel ready.”

More than once I have had to

explain to other artists in the ﬁeld why

I don’t want to work in ﬁlm. Many of

them don’t understand that my goal is

to bring games to the level of ﬁlm and

television and ﬁnally to eclipse those

media with interactivity.

This attitude is less prevalent

among programmers. Still, you

find more than a small share of

programmers who are enam-

ored of the technological

aspects of game development:

how many polygons can they

push, or how much physics can

they code. Technology can’t help

but push the games further, but

programmers shouldn’t sacrifice the

game itself in the name of technology.

Even the game designers might

rather be writers working on main-

stream ﬁction instead of writing up

design documents and honing the

game balance.

The real key to achieving the game

industry’s equivalent of a

Casablanca

will be creating a game world that is as

accessible as a ﬁlm or novel, and is just

as engaging. Such a game needs the

industry’s digital equivalent of Bogart

and Bergman, the writing nuances of

the Epsteins, and the directorial talents

of a Michael Curtiz.

I am eagerly awaiting Dramaera’s T

NSIDER

(http://www.dramaera.com) to

see if they can pull off real emotion in a

computer game.

Carl L. Pinder

New World Computing,

a division of The 3DO Company

via e-mail

found Chris Hecker’s recent

Soapbox on developers with ulteri-

or aspirations interesting. I agree com-

You almost can’t find a comic today

pletely that complaining is annoying.

without some ridiculously propor-

I also would never openly talk of

tioned woman drawn in it.

working for another company while

Technology will bring us to a meld-

under the employment of another (it’s

ing of cinema and interactivity soon.

just bad manners).

Why would you condemn those peo-

However, as a game artist and a lover

ple who would leave the strict game

of independent ﬁlm, I must disagree

format for broader fields?

with many of his points. First and fore-

Perhaps the game industry can

most, I don’t ever think

make a classic game that

that a game will

everyone knows and

ever be

Don’t keep it bottled up inside. E-mail

loves like, say, the

revered as a

saysyou@gdmag.com, or write to

board game classic

work as

Monopoly. And to a

great and

Game Developer,

600 Harrison Street,

point that has hap-

as artistical-

San Francisco, CA 94107.

pened a few times

ly poignant

already, namely with A

GE OF

as say, ﬁlms

such as

Saving

MPIRES

and Q

UAKE

. But to think

Private Ryan,

that a PC game will ever be held in the

Apocalypse Now,

same light as a great movie is little

Forrest Gump,

more than a delusion of grandeur.

Schindler’s List,

the

Tony Castelluci

Godfather

movies,

via e-mail

Citizen Kane,

and

The Maltese

AUTHOR CHRIS HECKER RESPONDS.

Falcon.

My short response to you is this: I’m taking

Conversely,

bets. Cash money. Ten thousand dollars

we already

due in 50 years — you pay me if games

have many

have made it into the big leagues as an art

games that are a

form. If they haven’t, I pay you. What do

far superior experi-

you say?

ence to ﬁlms such as

My longer and less flippant response is

Starship Troopers

and

that for every potentially new art form,

Independence Day,

both of which

there are proponents and detractors. Time

suffered from over-emphasis on special

will tell who’s right, of course, but I think

effects, while leaving the acting and

games are qualitatively different from comic

script as a secondary consideration. A

books in that they are not the hybrid of two

good example of this would be an

existing art forms. While comic books are a

intensive game like U

NREAL

. That

blend between written language and pictor-

ial art, games are not “in between” any two

game’s story line and rich background

existing art forms — they expand the enve-

do more for your sense of wonder and

lope of art via interactivity.

imagination than these poetically

As for Siggraph-style “interactive fine

devoid big-screen bombs achieved.

art,” I think that’s a totally valid use of

Second, if Hecker only refers to games

interactivity, and you have a good point. I

as a medium of interactivity, then he

do think these works will relate to games in

needs to open his eyes sometime at

the same way experimental art films relate

Siggraph. Games are not the end-all

to more mainstream films. That is, these

ﬁnal destination for interactivity.

interactive fine art pieces will have a smaller

Interactive ﬁne art that senses the

audience and get less attention than main-

viewer and plays on body location is

stream games and experiences.

happening right now. He obviously

As a friend pointed out to me, the term

needs to get out more often.

“games” might be a limiting factor in and

The bottom line is, I think his take

of itself. Maybe we should all work towards

on games as a higher art form is comi-

cal at best. How serious can we take an

figuring out a better name that gives our

industry a little more room in which to

industry whose best seller stars a hero-

grow. Regardless of the name, however, I’ll

ine with anti-gravity boobs, and little

bet the medium will ultimately find its

fan boys keep pictures of her that they

rightful place alongside movies, painting,

got from a few “galleries”? Comic

music, and the like. Are there any takers

books have also had their war cry to

out there?

be recognized as a higher art form.

AUGUST 1999

http://www.gdmag.com

G A M E

D E V E L O P E R

New Products:

Metacreations debuts

Poser 4, Right Hemisphere goes Deep,

and Jalda arrives to make your online

fantasies come true.

p. 9

Industry Watch:

Worries brew over

PSX2 development costs, Monolith

farms out distribution rights, and Brian

Hook leaves id for greener pastures.

p. 10

Product Review:

Seasoned sound

designer Andrew Boyd comes to grips

with Reality and shares his newfound

wisdom.

pp. 12–16

News from the World of Game Development

New Products

by Jennifer Olsen

Gaming All the Way to the Bank

ERICSSON HEWLETT-PACKARD TELECOM-

MUNICATIONS

(EHPT) has developed

Jalda, a non-proprietary system for han-

dling Internet payment transactions,

which EHPT hopes will enable game

developers to find innovative ways to

bring in (read: milk) revenue from their

online games. In case you haven’t

heard, online gaming has quickly

secured its place as one of the fastest

growing slices of that big, juicy e-

commerce pie, with total revenues pro-

jected to rise tenfold to almost $700

million in 2003.

Jalda is EHPT’s response to demand

from both consumers and content

providers for simple and secure Internet

payment systems, enabling transactions

spanning from collecting micro-

payments to awarding tournament prize

money into the right player’s account.

Developers and users can structure dif-

ferent pay-for-play modes, such as per-

click, per-minute, per-game, on up to

huge multiplayer tournaments. (Just

imagine each of those pay-per-clicks as

change jingling in your pocket.)

Jalda’s developers tout its security,

which uses RSA Public Key Infrastruc-

ture, a cryptographic technology that

claims to eliminate fraud using digital-

ly signed transactions whereby each

party in the transaction has his own

electronic ID. Better still, when some-

one pirates your game, Jalda’s soft cer-

tificate goes with it, and recipients of

pirated games start paying when they

start playing.

Jalda’s API is available for download

from the Jalda web site.

Ericsson Hewlett-Packard

Telecommunications AB

Stockholm, Sweden

+46 (8) 685-2000

http://www.jalda.com/eips

lating body and facial surfaces. Poser 4

also supports multiple deformers for

customizing faces by allowing photos to

be applied as texture maps. Users can

generate new figures within Poser 4 by

importing 3D geometry, breaking it into

body parts, and then generating the

new figures using inverse kinematics.

Poser 4 has a suggested retail price

of $249 and upgrade discounts are

available.

Metacreations Corp.

Carpinteria, Calif.

(805) 566-6200

http://www.metacreations.com

New Toy Box for Digital Artists

RIGHT HEMISPHERE

has released Deep

Paint 3D, which, despite the potential

for confusion over sequential number-

ing, is the successor to 4D Paint, its

Windows-based 3D paint program.

Deep Paint’s tool set has been

redesigned to include features resem-

bling airbrush, oil, watercolor, colored

and charcoal pencils, felt pens, chalks,

pastels, gouache, acrylics, impasto, and

texture and image spray paints, among

others. The addition of Phong render-

ing allows for improved 3D rendering

quality and speed by enabling users to

see in real time the variations in paint

texture shininess.

With support for .3DS and .LWO file

formats, Deep Paint integrates easily

with other modeling systems, includ-

ing 3D Studio Max, Softimage, Light-

wave, and Maya. It also supports

Photoshop plug-ins and a two-way

interface with Photoshop.

Deep Paint 3D runs on Windows

95/98/NT and Intel or Alpha processors.

The Intel version of Deep Paint 3D has

a suggested price of $795, the Alpha

processor version is $995.

Right Hemisphere Ltd.

Auckland, New Zealand

+64 (9) 309-3204

http://www.righthemisphere.com

AUGUST 1999

Strike a Pose

METACREATIONS

has introduced Poser

4, its next-generation figure posing

and animation tool, hoping to pro-

vide an affordable package for new-

comers to 3D animation and a special-

ized pre-visualization tool for

high-end developers.

The upgrade introduces fea-

tures such as a redesigned

user interface, new animal

figures, a swappable 3D

clothes wardrobe, and new

morph targets for generating

characters. Advanced texture

controls allow users to incor-

porate transparency and

reflectivity into a scene, apply

a texture style to an entire

figure or body part, and cre-

ate effects such as wispy hair

using transparency maps.

Poser also comes with an

improved library of 3D fig-

ures, while new magnetic and

Manipulating faces is simple with Poser 4’s

wave deformers allow users to

magnetic deformers, but it sure looks painful.

sculpt 3D figures by manipu-

h t t p : / / w w w. g d m a g . c o m

G A M E

D E V E L O P E R

BIT BLASTS - INDUSTRY WATCH

Industry Watch

by Alex Dunne

3DFX SUES CREATIVE.

In the aftermath

of the divorce between 3dfx and its

former board-making customers, some

legal stuff has hit the fan. 3dfx filed

suit against Creative Labs and its par-

ent company, Creative Technology,

claiming that Creative breached a

licensing agreement and infringed on

3dfx copyrights by incorporating 3dfx

Glide source code into Unified, Cre-

ative’s new technology for running

Glide-only games on Creative’s TNT

and TNT2-based cards. (Unified con-

sists of a software layer that translates

Glide calls into the corresponding

commands in Direct3D, plus exten-

sions that support Creative’s Graphics

Blaster RIVA TNT.) If Creative did use

3dfx code for this purpose, that would

be a no-no — the Glide license agree-

ment stipulates that licensees can’t use

or modify 3dfx source code so that it

operates with non-3dfx hardware. 3dfx

also asserted a claim against Creative

Technology for unpaid amounts owed

for 3dfx products.

audio effects, thereby increasing sales

of Creative audio hardware.

EIDOS HAS A GOOD YEAR.

Eidos

announced results for the year ending

March 31, 1999, and it had some nice

news for investors. The company saw

revenues increase by 65 percent to over

$364.3 million for the full year, result-

ing in a pre-tax profit of $50.3 million

(compared to $0.16 million in 1998).

Ian Livingstone, Eidos’s chairman,

cited the continued successful develop-

ment of existing franchise properties

such as T

OMB

AIDER

, G

, C

HAMPIONSHIP

ANAGER

, and T

HIEF

: T

ARK

ROJECT

for the company’s successful year.

Nineteen new titles were launched by

Eidos during the year, and eight games

(including catalogue titles) achieved

sales in excess of 350,000 units.

across-the-board rating system for

videogames, television and music. The

warning labels would have to reflect

the nature, context, intensity of vio-

lent content, and age appropriateness

of the media product, Sen. Lieberman’s

office said. It’s not clear to what

extent the RSAC or ESRB ratings cur-

rently used by game publishers will

influence such a system. In related

news, Rep. Henry Hyde (R–Ill.) pro-

posed legislation that would restrict

youth access to videogames, movies

and other media containing violent

and sexually explicit material.

BRIAN HOOK

left id Software for Verant

Interactive, developer of the successful

online game E

VER

UEST

CD-WRONG?

Looking to divest itself

entirely from traditional CD-ROM

games and devote itself towards its

“high-growth Internet entertainment

community” business, Interactive

Magic sold its entire CD-ROM product

line to Ubi Soft. Interactive Magic will

retain the online rights to these CD-

ROM products, and operate the

Internet versions of the products exclu-

sively on the company’s games sites,

including iMagic Entertainment

Network, GameHub, and MPG-Net.

SAVING UP FOR PSX2.

While con-

sumers “ooh” and “ahh” over the stun-

ning graphics and processing power of

Sony’s recently-announced PlayStation

2, game developers may secretly be

wincing at what looks to be an expen-

sive platform for which to develop.

Some companies are starting the

bankroll-building process. Case in

point: 3DO just announced plans to

sell $34.5 million in new shares, which

will be used in part to fund its PSX2

games. 3DO plans to release at least six

titles for the new PlayStation around

the time the new console ships.

MS EMBRACES EAX.

Microsoft

announced a licensing agreement with

Creative Technology for a number of

Creative’s EAX audio effects. The

licensed effects, including flange, cho-

rus, EQ and environmental reverbera-

tion, will be incorporated by Microsoft

into the next version of DirectX. While

Creative officials admitted that the

licensing agreement with Microsoft

“has no direct financial impact on

Creative,” it looks to be a strategic win

for Creative, which has been trying to

make EAX an industry standard for 3D

MONOLITH FARMS OUT DISTRIBUTION.

Apparently looking to focus more of its

resources on game development rather

than distribution, Monolith entered an

exclusive agreement with Interplay

which gives the latter North American

distribution rights to three of Mono-

lith’s upcoming RPGs, R

AGE OF

AGES

II: N

ECROMANCER

, S

EPTERRA

ORE

and

DIUM

. All three titles are scheduled to

ship for the PC this fall.

CALENDAR

Siggraph ‘99

LOS ANGELES CONVENTION CENTER

Los Angeles, Calif.

August 8–13, 1999

Cost: $25–$760

http://www.siggraph.org/s99

UPCOMING EVENTS

GAME RATINGS REDUX.

In the wake of

recent tragedies like the Columbine

shooting and the subsequent debate

that has ensued over the media’s role

in adolescent violence, Senators

Joseph Lieberman (D–Conn.) and

John McCain (R–Ariz.) introduced leg-

islation to create a uniform media rat-

ing system. Under the proposed legis-

lation, entertainment media industries

would have six months to develop an

ECTS ‘99

OLYMPIA CONFERENCE CENTRE

London, England

September 5–7, 1999

Cost: variable

http://www.ects.com

Interplay will get North American dis-

tribution rights to Monolith’s O

DIUM

G A M E

D E V E L O P E R

AUGUST 1999

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