Tiny Subversions

Kent Quirk gave a talk this weekend at the Boston Redevelopment Authority's Powering Up conference. His presentation was about the history of the Boston game industry. It was a really great overview, but the coolest part was the graphical history he put together. Click on the thumb below to see Kent's recap and the graph itself.

Labels: boston, industry, visualization

Worms is heading to the DS (and PSP) with full Internet play. Oh yes.

Labels: games

A lot of people that I meet when I'm giving networking talks at conferences just kind of assume that I am so good at networking that I never look like an awkward fool.

The thing is, I look like an awkward fool often. Way more often than I'd like. However, it's an occupational hazard that networkers have to live with.

I make mistakes all the time. Horribly socially awkward mistakes. I say things to people and then kick myself for it. I insult people without meaning to. Sometimes I forget people's names (although thanks to my note taking, it's pretty rare).

Here's an example. When I was at GDC last month, I made the same mistake on two separate occassions. I walked up to some people I knew and said hello. They gave me an uncharacteristically brief hello and then ignored me. So I stuck around for about 5 seconds. Then they uncomfortably stared at me. Oh crap, I thought, they're in the middle of a business meeting and I'm interrupting. Just thoroughly embarrassing. I apologized profusely and let them be.

However, there are three things to note about that instance of failure. First, they were in a public space where people were just hanging around, so it's not like I barged into a private meeting room. Second, I caught on after 5 seconds, so it wasn't that bad. Third, I apologized as soon as I figured it out.

Make a mistake. Know enough to know you made a mistake. Then salvage what you can and move on.

Last but not least: DON'T SWEAT IT. It's not worth losing sleep over an honest mistake, especially if you caught yourself and just apologized on the spot. If anything, the person you accidentally slighted will be impressed at your willingness to own up to your own idiocy.

Anyway, it's important to make mistakes, as long as you learn from them and don't repeat them too often. In fact, if you're not making mistakes, you're not trying hard enough. The networker who never looks stupid is the networker who walks up to people and says, "Hey, how about that weather? Okay, great to see you again, bye." It's completely socially acceptable, and completely forgettable.

It also gets easier over time. The first time you go to an industry event and screw up royally, you'll probably lose sleep over it. Oh no, you'll think, that game developer probably thinks I'm an idiot now. Then each successive time you mess up you'll care about it less and less. This is partly because your networking success rate is increasing, but also because you just get used to being a doofus every now and then. It builds character, and makes you a better, more patient, and more understanding person.

Labels: networking

The folks at the Phoenix IGDA chapter put together a game jam very recently. The theme was backburner: basically, the idea was to implement any game ideas you've had in the back of your mind for a while. They made 3 games, and you can read about the games and download them here. (I like Gravity Guy, although it's a bit frustrating!)

Labels: gamejam

So I've been pretty busy for the last month. I left my job at Turbine at the end of February, and I took a break for the month of March to attend GDC and... well, to set up my new company.

Wait, a New Company?

I've started a company called Orbus Gameworks, right here in Boston. We're focusing on middleware development and consulting. In particular, we're focused on gameplay metrics, which is what I specialized in at my previous job.

We're a company of three people, and I am incredibly lucky that my two employees are Craig Perko and Jeff Ward. I've known them both for about five years, and they are both incredibly awesome developers who are waaay better at programming than I am. So, Jeff and Craig are handling the programming. I'm handling everything else (accounting, sales, marketing, operations, general buffoonery).

Gameplay Metrics?

So you might be wondering: what the hell is gameplay metrics? The answer is pretty simple. In the broadest sense I'm talking about measuring what players do in your game. Let's say you're a developer working on a first person shooter and you're in beta. Collecting stats on what your beta players are doing is of utmost importance. You want to ask questions like:

• How often is the shark gun equipped?
• What is the average length of time to complete the casino level?
• How often is each optional objective achieved?
• Where and when do players die, and what kills them?
• Do players use a variety of weapons, or do they tend to stick with one or two?
• Is there any content in our game that is simply never used?
  

And those are just the tip of the iceberg. And of course, that's just for a generic FPS. This kind of data collection has a lot of utility for any kind of game (for example, MMORPGs like the ones I used to work on, or casual titles which can benefit immensely from this sort of feedback).

We're here to help developers collect and analyze these metrics. We are working on what I think is going to be a pretty awesome set of tools that can be easily integrated into any game so you can end up with a database populated with all sorts of useful data on what your players are up to.

Labels: metrics, orbus