The GTA V billion

We all read the news of the fastest selling entertainment product of all time: GTA V made a billion on the first weekend. This gets all sorts of media attention and jealousy - and most of them get it wrong.

First: the billion mentioned is retail revenue. That means Rockstar did NOT make a billion as they don't get the full sales price. So what do they get anyway?

First you need to deduct VAT from the price you paid, something around 15-19% depending on country. Your government gets that.

Then retail takes their share, somewhere 10-15% usually, sometimes more, sometimes less. That leaves (very rough calculation!):


$69
$58 -VAT
$49 -15% retail
$46 -5% distributor fees
$33 -$13 MS/Sony license & Production fee, includes BlueRay, Manual & Packaging

So, $33, minus Take2 share as they own Rockstar & paid the hundreds of millions of marketing, so less than half actually arrives at Rockstar.

Considering the game costs somewhere around $200 million they broke even first weekend with that billion - barely. Rest is profit now, but you see that without that record they would have had a harder time to break even. 5 years development time with hundreds of people does cost some serious money (120-200 million depending on country).

So there. Yes they deserve the record, the money, but they don't have a billion yet. For that they need to continue selling strong and maybe ship some add ons (or the PC version!)

So if Sam Houser reads this: great job man, the first GTA since Vice City I enjoy!

The story of "Citadel of the Black Sun"

There was a game - if it would have been finished I would be famous - and rich. Here is the story of 1988.

There was a team called Golden Goblins back in Gütersloh who worked for us. Gütersloh is a village roleplaying a city. It is only famous because two large companies are there: Bertelsmann and Miele, otherwise its like a village. Restaurants close after 2pm until the evening, so no food during that time. Awesome!

Rainbow Arts was founded there along with Magic Bytes, two of the first companies in Germany in the game business. Rainbow Arts moved to Düsseldorf but the team stayed in Gütersloh working on a title called Grand Monster Slam.

This title is important later on for M.U.D.S., but that's a different story. Important is the artist, designer, creative multi-talented Hartwig Niedergassel, who worked on it with his specific style.

Remember also that Rainbow Arts distributed a lot of US companies in Germany as we somehow "invented" localisation, no one was doing it at that time. One of the companies we did was SSI, known for their AD&D RPG's "Gold Box Series" like Pool of Radiance. We had a good relationship and at some point they asked us if we could develop a title for them.

So I started prototyping with Hartwig and Heiko Schröder, a technical programmer (with whom I later founded my own company Wings Simulations). The game was PC only, the first title ever Rainbow Arts did only on PC specifically for the US (as Europe was dominated by Amiga/Atari ST).

The RPG's SSI did were top down but with some nice features: party, not single character like Ultima and turn based group combat. We wanted that but move forward with graphics. Back in that time (remember, year 1988) we needed to support 16 color EGA and 16 color VGA. Yes, sixteen. That's 16 ugly colors with two being black and white. The screenshots you'll see will show this. Hartwig was really an artist to get out those great graphics from those colors.

The special things I put into the RPG we wanted to create were unique and not known at that time:

Barby Doll System: I wanted to change the appearance of the characters depending on their armor and weapons they equipped (yes at that time everyone used static pictures). We talk 1988/89 after all:

Isometric Graphics: Most RPG's were top down due to technical reasons (remember no 3d, that came in 1996) but I knew it was possible to trick this as I wanted the system what Knights Lore did on Spectrum: full isometric view:

True Line of Sight and window/door functions

Line of Sight: But I wanted more: I wanted that you can enter all houses and only look inside if you had line of sight. So the inside of houses should be dark unless you peeked though a window or opened a door. Tactical war-games did this already, but in top down 2D.

Heiko made all this possible, he was very good at this stuff. So our game looked like this on the tactical screens or when you entered villages or dungeons: compare this to other RPG's of 1988/1989!

Cow Tipping

Note the black areas where you didn't have line of sight. Also we supported multiple stories of buildings, so you can walk up and down, or even jump out of the window from the 2nd story. The cows also were important: I believe we were the first game to include cow tipping :)

The right side was the function bar, we reduced all functions to a nice menu usable with the mouse. Oh, did I tell you full optional mouse control? That was unique as at that time most PC's didn't have a mouse as windows shipped much later. Most games were keyboard control only.

We also had nice graphics when changing locations. At that time you usually walked on a world map and only showed above detail when you enter locations. Remember 16 colors!

Location Intro Graphics

World Travel of your party

When we showed this game to SSI they were blown away. They immediately wanted it and put it under the AD&D license. We, a small German team, allowed to use the AD&D license AND work for SSI, a great US publisher. Wow, that was unique, a first for Germany. We loved it!

And it even became better: our producer at SSI Nicholas Beliaeff told us that SSI planned to change all their future RPG's to our engine if we finish. All. All AD&D RPG's with our engine. We would be famous!

One of the first games developed in Germany for an US publisher

But the world had different ideas with us.

First one employee of our daughter companies we acquired called Time Warp moved into our offices as we closed down their offices. That guy wanted my job, always working to criticize mine. He said openly he wanted my job he can do it better, and he hated RPG's. He didn't believe in them.

Second I fell in love with the girl friend of my best friend Bernard. Remember? He was one of the three of us managing Rainbow Arts. She and I came together and she split from Bernard, not good when you think the three of us had to work together on a daily basis.

Story short: I left the company due to private reasons (due to my girl friend, later my wife, we married in 1992, but she died on cancer in 2010) and that one guy took over all my projects.

Within three months he split the development team, made sure SSI hated my and the teams guts and the project was cancelled. Remember, he hated RPG's! The game was 70% finished. I can play through the alpha even today which I still have on my machine (I took the screens above from it). All it took is someone to finish the last steps.
But he cancelled it. Made sure SSI's wrath was on me and not him. What an asshole (name changed).

There it goes, a chance in a life time to write computer games history. One of the greatest games I ever did wasted due to an asshole, but I gained a wife in exchange for this and losing a best friend.

But thats not the only time fate destroyed one of such potential projects. I'll write about the other one soon.

Side stories: our first producer at SSI Todd Porter was such a fan of our game that when he left SSI for Origin he put many ideas and concepts from us into their game Knights of Legends.

The "asshole" from above continued being one: he joined a company which invented advertising games, stole their co-ceo and the companies customers and copied that companies business. Weeks later even that co-ceo was fired. The asshole is still CEO of that company and publishes games. And no, even today after all those years I won't accept your Facebook friend request if you read this.

Hartwig Niedergassel continued his great work with MUDS, my largest project at that time. Story to follow.

Heiko Schröder founded Wings Simulations with me in 1996 and was lead programmer on Panzer Elite and Söldner. He now works for Volkswagen as a programmer near Hannover.

Nicholas Beliaeff meanwhile after a great career is Vice President Development of Trion, the publisher of Rift. We are still frends and see each other on international game conferences about once a year - since 25 years!

The Story of "The great Giana Sisters"

As loyal readers of my blog know I joined Rainbow Arts in 1987 because they wanted me to recruit new projects (at this time it was Sarcophaser and Katakis Amiga). I also took over as development director meaning that I was in control of all development, quite a challenge for someone who never did this.

Remember though that at that time there was no best practice or experience to base this job upon. So that time was basically my education: I was allowed to do everything wrong and learn from it, we all did. We were three people leading the company now: Marc Ullrich, founder and Ceo, Bernard Morell in control of production (physical goods) and distribution, and me in charge of game development. I will get back to that trio soon in another blog post.

The really bad but famous Giana Sisters title screen, maybe one of the first female heroines in games

At the time I joined Giana Sisters was already in full production with Thomas Hertzler as programmer and Manfred Trenz as graphic artist (yes the same Manfred who did Katakis & Turrican on C64 later on). The project had like 3 more months to go, at maximum. The only thing I did was QA & Mastering, which was trivial at that time.

(Note: as Hans Ippisch noted the C64 original was created by Armin Gessert as programmer and Manfred Trenz as artist, the Amiga graphic conversions were done by Lothar I think, see below)

However I screwed up someplace else. There were magazines excited about the game as at that time you did pre-advertising for titles months ahead of launch as otherwise you could not sell into retail or get customers into the shop. Based on those ads we got requests for interviews, previews etc, which basically means the writers visited our studio and did their thing. Remember, no internet, no Skype, no mobile phones, only landlines and travel manually to get screenshots (no digital ones at that time either, they made photos of the monitors).

So ASM, a popular German games magazine but a little on the "yellow press side" interviewed me, which went well. Off the record we spoke a bit about the project and I told them how big of a fan Manfred and Thomas are of Mario Brothers on Nintendo NES. The writer asked "So basically Giana Sisters is a clone of Mario then". "Yeah" I said, "but. ..." it was too late, the writer had his tag line without telling me.

The Issue went into print with a cover of Giana Sisters and their line "Teut Weidemann: Giana Sisters is a clone of Mario!".

Great. I learned for a lifetime not to trust ANY writer in the gaming industry. So we put legal in charge and forced the magazine to stop the printing presses, destroy the issue and reprint. Yes we did that.

It was the first issue of ASM not appearing on time.

Giana Sisters was released on C64, C128, Amstrad, Spectrum, Amiga and Atari ST and was a smashing hit, the fastest selling game Rainbow Arts ever saw. The British distributor (a British company called US Gold) booked ads with a huge screenshot and the tagline "Giana Sisters - moving over Brothers". It created a huge hype and .... caught the attention from Nintendo. Until then they ignored that little game on the little home computer because it didn't harm them, but now the ads attacked their holy grail: the Mario IP.

It took just a few days until an armada (really, like 6 or 7) of lawyers in black suits, suitcases and tie went into our offices and shut the sales down, permanently, worldwide. We never had a chance. Nintendo hired like the best of the best.

Yes we sold games on tapes! Now a rarity.

It had long term consequences as well which we didn't anticipated: Nintendo, being a Japanese company, has a brain of an elephant. They never forget. So when the console market exploded and riches were found on the SNES market Rainbow Arts always was denied to publish games on Nintendo platforms. Only years later they could do this. Once a thief, always a thief.

Giana Sisters was re-released on iOS and Steam just recently and a new version was done by Spellbound, the company of the deceased Armin Gessert, the guy who did the spiritual successor of Giana Sisters "Hard'n Heavy" later on. Please note that the company Reline on the cover an dcredits was owned by Rainbow Arts and they used the label in fear Nintendo would notice. For the same reason Armin never wanted to be in the credits of the game :(

Thomas Hertzler left Rainbow Arts after Giana Sisters and founded blue Byte, the company behind The Settlers, Battle Isle and more. The company was then bought by Ubisoft in 2001 which has released Settlers Online in 2010, the game I have been working on.

That's how small the world still is in the gaming industry.

The Story of Apprentice on Amiga

End of the 80's my ceo Marc Ullrich called me into his office and introduced me to an artist. Marc said this guy owed us money but has none, but he want to compensate us with graphics he did. So here I got a stack of 3.5" discs full of graphics and the order "Make a game out of it, but make it cheap".

I forgot the name of the artist but I assembled a small team of one programmer and one artist to edit them. As the graphics where modular in 16x16 tiles and some neat enemies I decided to go with a platformer as at that time we didn't have one.

The graphics also contained crates which I used as the main element: you should be able to push and pull them, stack them, basically redesign the whole level with them. This element I took from Spherical, another game I did in 1987.

So Axel Hellwig the programmer made it possible to change the levels via crates while Thorsten Rappe edited the graphics to make them usable in the level editor. The production went good, although I need to apologize to Axel now as I had like 15+ projects on my desk besides being designer and producer of Apprentice plus Axel had really bad teeth and bad breath at that time - making it difficult to talk to him for a long time. Now of course he has changed, is married and all, but hey, at that time none of us looked after himself.

As the production had to be cheap we looked for cover art and checked our standard artist Celal Kandemiroglu for it: he promptly did one for a low fee - but it was butt ugly. I think its the worst cover he ever did. Note that Celal made nearly all 8/16bit covers of Germany at that time and made quite some impression.

Here is the ugly Cover:

So ready we were, no QA time as we did that ourselves, remember we had to make it cheap ... and shipped. It was a good success, no hit, but solid. But ... it is one of those games where I still get fan mail today.
I have someone on FB who called himself "Mark Apprentice Schneider" (name changed). Fanpages do exist as well: http://www.amiga-apprentice.de/index.html

Here is a video with the great music of Chris Hülsbeck himself:

And its mentioned in many podcasts of the 80's as well and is on Mobygames of course. This is one of the games which still gets a lot of attention, I will write about the other ones soon.

I forgot the small print: 
I have no idea what Axel or Thorsten do these days, but Celal is back in Türkey still doing great graphics an dchris Hülsbeckenjoys the retro fame and still lives in Marin County, California.

Retro Trend

My last blog entry gave me more feedback than any other before. People enjoyed it and are asking for more, so I will write up some stories about Giana Sisters, MUDS, Apprentice, Citadel of the Black Sun, Jinks and my time in Advertainment.

See you soon.

Katakis, Turrican & Co

The recent retro trend dug out many stories of the 80's and 90's computer game development and some people mix up my role and involvement into it. Even official magazines writing about the history of those classic titles like Turrican & Katakis got it wrong on some points.

So let me make a short time travel into 1987, where I started as Development Director of a company called Rainbow Arts. I was hired because I brought cool games to the company. The first was a game from a friend of mine called Sarcophaser, where I also did the graphics & level design.

In order to understand the sequence of events I need to tell the story of that year and the one before. While I did the graphics & levels for Sarcophaser I also had a side project I programmed AND did the graphics: a R-Type clone. R-Type being my favorite arcade I wanted to replicate it on the Amiga. I showed my demo on a cracker meeting (we all id do this in the 80's) and another group was amazed and showed me their demo: while theirs looked worse it ran in 50 frames per second, while mine looked nicer but only worked in 25 fps (this is important for later on, read on).

So when I started my job I contacted that group immediately and wanted to buy their game to publish. That group agreed (I think the price was 25.000 DM, about 13.000 Euros). The name of the group was Lightcircle but they didn't want to use their cracker/demo scene name for a published product, so they called themselves Factor 5 - as there were 5 original members.

Remember the game was on Amiga only. Meanwhile a wonderboy single person game writing machine called Manfred Trenz did a shooter on Commodore C64 called Katakis which was totally overkill for that 8bit machine. Looking for marketing synergies we called Lightcircles Amiga game also Katakis although they didn't have anything in common but being a sidescrolling shooter.

That is how Katakis was born on C64 and Amiga. Then ....

The official R-Type license was bought by Activision (the old UK one, not the new one of today) and they saw our Katakis and got annoyed as their conversion really sucked (as most arcade conversions used slave pens who ported games under 3 months but with bad quality) - so they sued us. A deal was made: we port R-Type to C64 and Amiga in exchange that we can rerelase Katakis, which they pulled off the shelves. We agreed and under 3 months time we worked on our dream arcade license and ported it to C64 and Amiga. The Amiga version was done by Factor 5 and myself as producer. The one important call I made was to leave the game in 25fps but have the players ship in 50fps. This made sure we didn't waste time on technology for 50fps but did finish in time. We did it in 2.5 months.

Again, until that time Factor 5 still consisted of the original members. One of them even now works alongside me at Ubisoft Blue Byte, so we go waaaaay back together :)

Anyway, after the Activision / R-Type adventure and having 2 hit games under the belt we asked what to do next. It was obvious we wanted to go further and so we looked again back at the one man single development superman Manfred Trenz: he meanwhile developed another shooter, this time inspired by Metroid: a 8 way scroller shooting game on C64 called Turrican.

Factor5 should make the conversion to Amiga. The challenge was to develop a technology in 50fps which can support 8 way scrolling. The final idea to make this possible was between Holger Schmidt and me in a Pizza Hut in Köln, we drew the principle on the back of a Pizza Hut paper. Note that 8 way scrolling and many objects was close to impossible on the C64, but Manfred pulled it off.

About half into the project a problem surfaced: Rainbow Arts was so successful that we had too many projects going. I couldn't manage 17+ projects all by myself (I was the only manager in development) so I turned to our business partners in the USA and asked around how they do it. They had someone called "producer", an unknown concept in Germany until then. Yes this sounds funny, but remember these were different times, a development team consisted of less than 5 people compared to todays 50-500. So we started to look for producers and came to the conclusion that game magazine writers would be ideal as they knew many games, right?
So we went down to the most popular magazine Powerplay and hired all their three important writers: Boris Schneider, Heinrich Lenhardt and Martin Gaksch. All but one started working for me - Heinrich being the one who chickened out. Boris was assigned to all Lucas Film Games products and Martin did a game called Rock'n Roll, which still has great memories today (he was a big Rock'n Roll music fan).
So to find a replacement for Heinrich we got lucky as our Partner EA Lucasfilm Games (yes we distributed EA Lucasfilm Games at that time) was calling us to look at a young guy who annoyed them that he wants to work for them but they don't have room for him. So we looked at this guy and he was called Julian Eggebrecht - and we hired him.

As Julian was very in love with action games so we gave him the teams of Turrican, which was more than half finished at that time - that was less risky as he couldn't mess it up right? He did a great job (!) and started Turrican II right afterwards - and finally left us at some point together with the Team Factor 5 to found the company Factor 5 to develop console titles - and later on when success came moved their company to California. He basically stole my team! ;)

So, here it is. I was involved in Katakis, the R-Type conversions and Turrican Amiga, although some people claim I wasn't. You can verify this story with anyone working on these projects, even Manfred Trenz himself. And no, I didn't do much on the C64 versions as Manfred had zero social skills at that time and was a wonder machine with no need of interference.
And yes I was responsible shipping over 75 games in just 3 years time - different times they were.

Factor 5 in the 90's

Sidenotes: 
Boris Schneider meanwhile is married with kids and works since years for his favorite company Microsoft.
Martin Gaksch released a console magazine named Maniac and has enough money now to own the largest classic Nintendo collection of Germany
Heinrich Lenhardt lives in the US and still writes for some German magazines and web pages.
Factor 5 went broke despite having huge success with some of their console games and was split: the German part still exists as a service company for game programming and is led by Achim Moller, the original programmer of R-Type Amiga and Katakis Amiga - and works also for Ubisoft Blue Byte on mobile games.
The US side of Factor 5 is gone and the refounded company with the original founders and Julian Eggebrecht now works on players of TV streaming for your console, so yes, if you watch TV on your console chances are high that the old Factor 5 programmers wrote that piece of software.
The founder of Rainbow Arts Marc Alexander Ullrich later founded Strato, the largest German domain seller and internet provider, which he sold for millions later on. He enjoys his riches now and enjoys his hobby as a photographer.

What you can expect next

I am preparing a new talk "Dissecting the World of Tanks Monetization" for Games Connection.

I also talk on GDC Next in Los Angeles about the mobile games market and what it means for "us games industry".

As free to play also moves to consoles now I might have some thoughts to share there as well. Stay tuned.

Gamasutra Interview

For your reading pleasure my interview about my upcoming talk at GDC Next:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/200393/Whats_Next_Move_to_mobile_or_fall_behind.php

The f2p audience and you

If you design a f2p game the formula MAU*Conversion *ARPPU will define your designers live. Whats important is that MAU is also a function of your setting & genre.

In other words if you pick a niche setting your reach will suffer, so will your revenue. If your setting is niche then marketing will have a harder time finding users - which raises acquisition costs which lessens your revenue.

So it is important to know how large your audience can be depending on those two factors. Hardly any marketing research has been done, most picks for those are gut feelings of the developers. Is science fiction niche compared to general topics? Or Fantasy?

If you look back into history you will notice that Fantasy on a world wide level was niche until Lord of the Rings hit the Hollywood blockbuster list. Yes, it was apart from one territory, the USA.

Oh no, you will claim, I read Fantasy all my life! It can't be! Well it was as you aren't the large reach audience, you are the niche. If you are large enough then f2p will work easier for you.

That is the difference between Clash of Clans and its "predecessors" Edgeworld (SciFi). Or why Candy Crush has such a large audience. Or why Call of Duty works better than SciFi shooters.

That is also why IP's seems to make it easier as there is already a defined audience. Note I say "seem" as that IP can also be a bane to your growth if said IP isn't popular enough.

So in order to lessen the risk, increasing revenue and lowering costs of user acquisition you should make sure your setting is cool - worldwide.

And I haven't even touched genre yet ...

The gaming industry and you

I am kinda famous in Germany, but not because I shipped top 10 hits, simply because I do this job since a long time and shipped 100+ games, some of them I won't even tell - those are my skeletons in the closet .

So therefore I got a lot of "friends" on Facebook who either read or ignore whatever troll post I publish. I know who my close friends in the industry are, and I also know that many don't like me simply because I polarize a lot. This is basically part of my self promotion: instead objectively publishing analyses about theories I do talks which are a little bit more - lets say - demagogue.

Why? Simply because it gets people to think than to get bored about numbers and careful statements. That's all I want.

Recently I went into fights with 2 industry colleges on Facebook on 2 different occasions. On one case he simply attacked the f2p business model aggressively in a way which I don't even know from him.

The other case I simply posted that the writers of magazines & blogs should at some point return the favor when they find newsworthy things on my wall (which happens more than I thought it was). One of them attacked that post in a way which I never have seen him - emotionally, aggressively - even damaging to both of us.

On Gamescom I met them both. The journalist surprised me as we simply talked about other hobbies and we both realized that we are pretty much nerds alike. He was building tank models like I did - something which I never thought of him doing. This somehow gave us common ground and a better understanding of each other.

The other one was totally changed and we talked about one of his upcoming titles which gets excellent previews so far and he simply said "email me, I send you one". Maybe a peace gift, but I see it simply as "maybe we both went too far - lets get over with it".

All I want to say is "I am sorry" - next time we should simply clarify things one on one instead publicly fighting about the small things. There are more important things than to fight each other.

Thanks to you two, you know who you are.

My GDC Europe 2013 talk is online

GDC 2013 vault opened today and my talk "Getting past pay to win" is among the free content. Check it out here:

http://www.gdcvault.com/free/gdc-europe-13 for a list of all talks

and

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1019236/Getting-Past-Pay-to

for mine. Enjoy!

Gamescom is behind us

Gamescom is exciting for me as I meet all industry friends easily within one location. I rarely go to that show to check out new games as websites do a much better job giving me all information I need (check out HD Titanfall trailers, or Watchdogs, even better, awesome!)

But some players need to wait for hours to peek at a new game for 5 minutes. Wtf. People. Why does Gamescom use that system to filter people (I know age rating). There were 340.000 visitors this year. Awesome record!

But less than 5000 can be jiggled through your lanes waiting for the games presentation, assuming you can get 50 people per 30 minute presentation all day long.

That is a huge price you pay for your booth to get only a fraction of the audience. 1.7%. One point seven! It is time to rethink the game show concept I believe.

Source: http://www.gamezone.de

The Tigers of Asia

When I started in online games 1997 I realized this is going to be big. I had no idea how big, but I felt it as I was already hooked to online gaming.

When I experienced free to play the first time and learned it came from Asia I knew they were ahead of us. Luckily the Asian developers and publishers didn't know how to tackle our gamers at that time. There seemed to be a vast difference in play style and game style. I even made a talk about it on KGC, the Korean Game Developer Conference.

Some years later the Asian Tigers became giants, so large in fact that they own major shares in western gaming giants. The revenue they pull in just from their local market is so high that they can play money games in the west - exactly when we are shaken up by the console transition year.

I said years ago we should be prepared for the time when Asia understands our gaming market. Are we prepared? I doubt it. Maybe we should prepare for a time where most large and creative companies are owned by Asian online companies.

Largest player battle ever in Eve Online - I was there

So in case your games site hasn't told you yet: Yesterday on July 28th the largest player battle happened in Eve Online with over 4000 players participating.

Coverage of the Verge: http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/28/4565558/eve-online-biggest-space-battle-in-history

And the Mittani report: http://themittani.com/news/live-reports-battle-6vdt-cfc-victorious and an aftermath report of it of the same site: http://themittani.com/features/6vdt-cfc-battle-report.

We won. Our enemy, the TEST alliance, retreated to Delve, another area of the universe. Their retreat basically give us the region "Fountain" under control.

If you ask how it feels to be there let me explain: if you haven't done this kind of mass battle yet you will get frustrated, annoyed even. The reason is that the only way CCP can run such a battle is to slow down time. They call it TiDi which makes all actions slower than real time. In our case TiDi was so bad that all actions took 10x longer than normal. That doesn't sound much but imagine targeting a ship takes 3 minutes ... and shooting it up to 10 minutes. The whole game runs in slow motion in this one sector.

The advantage of such a TiDi is that the game doesn't lag or crash, it only slows down. If you are used to it and learn to cope with it its actually fun. I finished GoT season three while fighting in it. Yes that's how much time you have.

You might argue that this isn't fun but you need to know that Eve is not an action game, everything in Eve is slow so slowing it down even further to fight crash lags is no problem at all. Many players complain about it who never fought in these battles, but they work and you must work them because otherwise you can never defend against .... 3000 players invading your system you worked years for.

There will be a time when server architects know how to run 4000 players in one "arena". But so far there are still physical limits to overcome and Eve sets a record here.

Now that the news is spreading even the BBC covers it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23489293

Codes: Things some developers never learn

I am wondering why obvious best practices get ignored so often.

I am talking for example about serial numbers & codes. Whether it be windows serial numbers, Steam codes, Nintendo Club pins or codes from iTunes some of those are ignoring obvious solutions to common problems.

Lets take a look at a sample code:

             ABlO-XY12-ZU80-I1lO-4354

Note that a lot of characters can't simply be identified. Is it a one, "L" or "i"? No one knows. The obvious solution? Do not use "L", "I" or 1's in your codes. Its as simple as that. Do not use "O" like in "Order" and zeros. (Feedback from readers: do not use S, Z, 5, and Q either). Even if your printer promises they can be distinguished at some print run its being ignored and your users can't.

And: ignore upper and lower case entries, treat input as identical. PLEASE.

Besides those obvious errors the entry of the codes in your input field can be optimized as well. Why in hell can't I copy/paste some serials with multiple code sections like above into an input field with 5 separate fields? Because it all pastes into the first field, ignoring the other 4. They don't carry over. Its not really hard to do.

Also: the last digits is a check sum. This check sum does NOT check the code server side for validation, it is to check client side if the USER did an error. Server side validation is always against a database so your codes can't be cloned.

It is not hard to do codes correct. So whenever you are involved in a project where codes are either for licensing, installation, or bonus codes please follow the simple rules above. It makes your live easier, less support tickets and less frustrated customers.

p.s.: A co worker pointed out rightly that the statements above might say that the serial number check sum client side is all you need. This is of course wrong, the check has to be made server side all the time. The check sum I meant is the user input check so at least the basic serial is correct and not gibberish. That can be client side. However exposing your check sum method in the client isn't wise either. Maybe we need two.

No words needed

In Russia, Game Play YOU!

Remember even due to those limits here Russia presents the largest online game audience in Europe:

In Russia, Game Play YOU!

The App Store Problem

Developers complain that their game doesn't sell in the app store or doesn't have enough downloads and thus doesn't make enough revenue through their in app purchases.

There are problems getting visibility on the app store, its key to success. However the main problem I see isn't visibility - its boredom of the users looking at your app.

Let me give you one example: I am looking for good strategy games in my iPad and iPhone since months and can't find a lot. Most so called strategy games are Tower Defense games or variations of games already in the app store since years. There are exceptions like Autumn Dynasty or Ravenmark. But most other strategy titles can be put into 3 or 4 drawers or "me too" or clones of existing concepts. Boring.

The same is happening on many other genres. It seems that developers look whats selling and copy that concept - and then complain their game isn't selling. How lame is that. I can understand that licensed IP's for movies like Despicable Me simply copy a game concept (runners) and be good with it - but long term revenue is not happening on game types which exist in the app store since years.

Developer friends told me they are tired of the App Store. Its not as exiting as it used to be. But that's exactly whats happening. 90% of all games being published already exist.

That's exactly why indies have better success than commercial developers: they despise copying concepts.

So the first step for success on the iOS store is to make a big step away to all mass concepts like runners, tower defenses and match three games.

Game burnout

Its strange often. When you work in the games industry you play a lot of games. I mean a LOT. I think I played like 15.000 games in my life. Yes I mean different ones. The effect on this is that most games I play have similar mechanics or features than a game I played before.

This removes an important element of games: surprise & excitement. "This is cool" is missing often which makes me bored about most games. This isn't bad as I can spot the special things inside a game which are great very fast and easy. Generally it takes like 20 minutes and I can tell you how a game is constructed and how it will progress along. That's usually when I stop playing it.

Rarely a game* will bind me for hours, the most recent one was Dishonored. (*I mean single player games, MMO's are different). I started playing Tomb Raider and while it is an excellent game I was bored within minutes. I knew too many things they were doing including their quick time moments (did I tell you I hate the qt moment thingy which seem to be popular?. Don't get me wrong, Tomb Raider is an excellent game, but not for someone who played as much as I did.

So I am on a mission to find that one game which keeps me occupied for hours. Have suggestions? Let me know.

The whole thing is made worse with the fact that I love online games. As soon as I play a single player game I am missing people. Humans - which I can talk to, play with or against. This is so powerful that most single player games have a hard time to compete. I went as far as saying "Single player games will be niche in 5-10 years" in a talk back 2006 I think. Was I right? We'll see.

Btw people suggested Animal Crossing 3DS which I can really recommend to ANY age, in fact most people who I know love that game are beyond 30. So don't get fooled. Play that little gem! My 3DS was stolen by my daughter so I can't play right now :(

The Inner World

So my students (no, rather ex students) of the Film Academy Ludwigsburg achieve a #1 spot on Amazon Germany with their first adventure game "The Inner World".

The project started in a creative camp where the students had to design a universe. One team came up with an unusual setting where creatures lived inside our own existing world, kind of upside down world inside earth depending entirely on light.

The world then was used in my board game design workshop to create a very nice game which was rated pretty good. The students then used the world & board game foundation to create an adventure game concept, which they also used for their diploma.

So that one student came to his diploma review with the papers of his newly founded company Fizzbin, took his diploma and went off creating the adventure "The Inner World" mentioned above.

The game will be released shortly and it seems they get great coverage. Even the most famous youtuber Gronkh will feature it today.

I wish them all the best and many follow up titles!

German quote of the team after this blogpost went online: "WIr wurden ge-gronkhed und geteutet. GOIL."

Randomness in games part II

Guess what: random numbers on computers aren't random. They are generated by algorithms and math tells us that formulas are not random. Proper random number generators also take CPU time - which is negligible unless you need thousands of random numbers per second - as it is in most online games (with combat drawing most random numbers).

The problem with programming is that lazy ones simply use the supplied rand() function supplied by their compiler. But compiler writers rarely spend a lot of time creating great random number generators.

What does random mean anyway. From our viewpoint it means that I get various results for a given action. I read feedback by the game and see some randomness to create variances in the game.

Imagine I would lose due to random numbers 3 times in a row. "That sucks" is the first reaction. But can it be? Sure it can, a random number generator theoretically could create numbers which lets you lose 10 times in a row. Not great, and bad for the game - so we try to prevent it.

Yes, I will now explain how we can make sure this doesn't happen, basically making random less random.
We need to make sure that there is no win or loss streak in the numbers, so we need to distribute them evenly. We also need to make sure that its random, not sorted.

We simply take a table (let's say 10.000 entries) and we fill the table with numbers from 0-99, sequentially until the table is full. Now we start to randomly exchange numbers until the table is totally jumbled and "random". Still streaks can appear so we analyze the table for those and remove them, we make sure there is a rough even distribution of random numbers for every sample we take.

Sounds confusing? Check these links out for some table references:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Million_Random_Digits_with_100,000_Normal_Deviates
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1418.html

So these tables guarantee that I get true random numbers but no winning streaks or losing streaks - AND they are much faster for the game as I simply take one number after the other.
AND they can be persistent as I simply save the index (the current random number I took) for each player - so the player doesn't see a repetitive behavior in the game.
So now you know how World of Warcraft generates their randomness. As I knew how they work I could even play with their randomness and increase the likelihood of epic drops. See my 7 year old blog entry which explains this:
http://teut.blogspot.de/2006/11/my-t1-item-xyz-doesnt-drop.html

Important: Never use these tables for gambling sites like Poker, otherwise some bright MIT students will forecast your 'random' numbers and loot your savings! (it really happened to Poker sites years ago).

So now you know how to generate the numbers - but how do we use randomness? If a game is truly random its actually very boring as random feedback doesn't create a good game.

But this is part of on of my next blog entries - coming soon.

n00b iPhone app mistakes

#1: ignore the sound switch the user set. Blare loud in the office when I start your app although I switched it mute (talking to you Skype!)

#2: save games. That's so last century. Auto save. Also cloud save so I can reuse it with re-installs or across devices. Thank you.

#3 super long intros. You know that most players don't even remember your company name and really don't care about the licenses you used. Stop doing this shit.

#4: make intros not cancellable. Yes. Let the user look through a 1 minute intro before he can play. Most users uninstalled your game faster than your intro finishes.

#5: full animated cinematic and voiced over sequences. Make your game a 1.8 GB download. Thank you. Enough said? Its a mobile device.

#6: make a mandatory registration. Yes, let me register before I can play and your registration either doesn't work or doesn't like m password or even needs a confirmation email click. Sorry. Uninstall is so much quicker and even user friendly!

#7: before I even finish your tutorial you ask me to rate your game. You know. I don't. Let me take a look at your game first. Thank you.

#8: Don't use incremental updates. Let me patch a 1.2 GB update. Thanks. Took an hour.

#9: Don't give me those updates "bug fixes". Give me a list of bug fixes. I know you just want to reset your ratings, ad placement or trackers.

#10 (Feedback from Tino): When I turn off Notifications I mean OFF. Not "maybe I can notify you again - without asking?"

Having more oddities and don#t likes of games on iOS? Let me know!

Mini Games in Games

I often get design pitches from my students which include mini games. I even got pitches in the past from professional developers with mini games playing a major role.

First I ask you: when is the last time you played a blockbuster hit which included mini games? There aren't many. You need to search for them.

Mini games in a design pitch is generally proof that the main game design sucks. The mini games were included to cover the entertainment holes of the original design. That is why mini games should never be included in a game design - mini games essentially admit fail in your main game design mechanics.

Of course IF you are a professional and know what you are doing mini games can be entertaining. In fact there are games just evolving around mini games (Mario Party, Puzzle Pirates etc.) or are just a tremendously successful mini game. But if you are a beginner designer please - please (!) forget all mini game ideas you have.

Mini Games

Randomness in games

Random numbers play a large role in any computer game. They are key to many game mechanics to introduce variety in feedback.

Some games however take it too far and randomize too much. If you play many rogue likes then you are used to this randomness of loot and dungeon layouts: these games randomize the dungeon floors and all loot.

The dungeon layout works in this case as its part of the global feedback: you enter a dungeon which leads to hell and if you die you have to start from scratch. Would the dungeon be identical every time you start over then you would be bored real quick. To prevent this the dungeon layout is random.

This doesn't work for all games however. People love to talk about exploration and their findings. So in World of Warcraft there are hundreds if not thousands of sites listing the maps and loot tables of the dungeons.

Lesson: if multiple of these sites exist then there is a demand. If there is a demand then the overall mechanic works nicely.

Note: you won't find any of these sites about Diablo with the exception of items.

But regarding items in Diablo here is the thing: if you look for epic items it doesn't matter which boss monsters you kill. The drip chance is random, the item in question is random. So you simply farm any monsters you find and sell your stuff in the auction house - the rewarding gold you spend on items - guess where - in the auction house. Basically the auction house becomes an item shop supplied by random drops of players.

This undermines the exploration, the reward to have killed a specific monster and finally your favorite epic drops. Worse: if the player realizes that all drops are random then the content you supply doesn't matter anymore - as items can be found anywhere. You could theoretically limit your game to one zone and boss - of course I over simplify.

Generally randomness should not give only random rewards. Randomness should introduce variety to feedback, not generate random feedback.

Next up: how to use random generators effectively in games.

Target audience(s) in online games

In the old economy we tended to focus a lot on the target audience. We specifically did things in the game design & marketing to target the player we had in mind. After years of retail experience this is done pretty accurate by the publishers.

However in online games this is different, very different.

First difference: retail games are usually fire and forget products. After they are on the shelf they get their DLC or add on and then its off to new products. Sequels reset the cycle.

So the target audience in retail games are a static entity. They don't change as the time is simply too short. They might change for the sequel due to new data, but that's it.

In online games the audience shifts a lot. We talk about games which lasts for a decade or longer. The audience of such an online game is not static. Players come and leave on a daily basis. You might have a constant number of active users but this still doesn't mean the users are identical to last months users.

This means that your target audience is a moving target. They change over time. As within a decade a lot of things happen:

- a console cycle or two passes by
- your computer is 5x as powerful
- things gets invented like the internet or smartphones
- social networks gets created and have a billion users.

So no wonder that online games need a different approach to user targeting.

Why am I writing this? As I always have to fight the notion of the "old economy" that they speak about "THE" target audience. Also what happens if we have all users targeted, is there something like saturation within an online games user acquisition? No.

Well get this: if your online games live 10 years then all former 10 year olds are 20 and represent a wonderful new audience. You have an endless supply of new users simply because we always produce new ones and even more year by year!

Image source: Wikipedia.org

The styles of free to play monetization

Yes, free to play monetization comes in various styles, even trends, they might be even fashionable so to say.

As I have the luxury to experience different companies "styles" of monetization I noticed something unusual.

Companies tend to stick to their style and also think it is the only one which works for them. So they create games and always adapt their monetization style to them - which usually worked unless the games genre or mechanics are not fitting that style. As a consequence those games usually do worse than the original.

So that said company tries a different style it saw at games of another company - and fails. It doesn't work very well as that other company worked years to optimize their "style" and that one might not fit your game at all.

So you're stuck. Either you continue making games which fit your monetization style or you learn how to create perfectly fitting monetization styles to your game. But that means you understand the fundamentals behind it - that you created a formula or schematics which can be made fit to various game styles.

Note that this is true for the inventors of the "European style" of monetization in free to play. Some of them stuck to their style and didn't grow, some of them opened up and are growing beyond their original hit games.

The reason for this "one style" style is of course that their performing games are analyzed and they know exactly what works and what doesn't.So they copy/paste those mechanics to other games and they work as well - but not as good as the original. The title isn't suited perfectly to that mechanic after all. So you create more and more "copies" of the original which deteriorate in quality or revenue over time.

Time to adapt your monetization style. Key learning: monetization works really well if it is fitted perfectly to your game design.

Just like in fashion - they only fit it to bodies (nsfw).

Bad opinion II

So it continues. It comes around every couple of years that industry professionals claim it is a good idea for Nintendo to get rid of their hardware business and write their games for all platforms. Mario on PS4, iPad etc. They think it is a good idea.

Some things they forget:

Nintendo is a Japanese company. They are patient as an elephant. They don't care if they lost one generation of consoles, hey, its just 5 years.

Nintendo is a rich company. Valued billions, having billions in cash reserve. In fact it is one of the richest companies of Japan.

Mario, Zelda, Pokemon etc are the high value IP's which cause people to buy Nintendo hardware.

Nintendo always innovated the consoles, controllers and systems with Sony & MS following their lead.

Compared to Sony and Microsoft Entertainment Nintendo had profitable console generations. MS did not. Sony did not.

Why should they bother about other platforms? Nintendo often enough stated that they do not see MS or Sony as competitors. They merely see bicycles, girls and TV as competition as they steal entertainment time from their consumers.

German article on Krawall.de mirroring my opinion:
http://www.krawall.de/web/Wii_U/special/id,65290/

And a video / Statement with the same position:
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/uujebd/the-final-bosman-what-about-nintendo-

In transition years there is no limit on bad opinions

The industry is in chaos, no one knows where it goes, everyone speculates and meanwhile the smartphone and tablet market opens up an entirely new segment.

Lets take 2 examples:

http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/31/forget-the-xbox-one-and-ps-4-the-most-powerful-gaming-device-is-your-pc/

Yes, your PC is faster than the next gen. Is it? Its not, simply as the number nerds forgot that on the next gen you can access the hardware directly, on the PC you can't. The layers of software between the games and the hardware is so thick to be compatible with 30 years old history that it slows down your games.

On next gen that is not the case. Ask yourself why most XBox 360 titles still look better than the most recent PC titles. That's why.

My favourite of the week is however this one: http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2013/05/30/take-two-ceo-talks-mmos-next-gen-gta-v-and-zombies.aspx

Oh boy. MMO's don't work in USA. Thats what he said. Thats why he partners with TenCent for Asia, that's it. No MMO works in USA. I had to read that twice.

He also focusses in Asia on MMO's where 10-20 are successful. What a wrong numbers game. Does he know that in Asia they release like a new MMO per week?

But it gets better!

He believes the rental problem on console games only exists in the first 8 weeks of new games. Really. Did he ever visit a games rental store?

If I owned Take2 shares I would sell now. Or wait, no, I would sell after GTA V release.

June 10th 2013 will be remembered

June 10th will be remembered as the day which changed our (games) industry. June 10th is the day where the key press conference are on E3. Big announcements will be made by Sony and Microsoft for their new consoles.

But.

Apple makes another keynote on June 10th as well. Deliberately placed to compete with the important gaming conference. Readers take note. I warned you.

June 10th 2013. Not a nice date to remember. 06.10.2013 (US) or 10.06.2013. 100613. 061013. Doesn't look nice.

Here is what else happened June 10th in our history: http://www.historyorb.com/day/june/10

Mobile is eating the world

What I said on Quo Vadis but in better slides:

2013 05 BEA - ’Mobile is eating the World’ from bge20

Sony share value during XBox One presentation

Without words:

XBox One Big Brother is watching you

Many things have been said about the epic fail of Microsoft's presentation of their XBox One (and the bad name), but this here basically cuts my interest to buy one in half:

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/139706-microsofts-new-kinect-patent-goes-big-brother-will-spy-on-you-for-the-mpaa

Yes, this is really a plan. Do you really want Microsoft watching your living room. Really?

What bothers me in most computer games

Yesterday I answered an interview of the magazine Spiegel about Eve Online and one of the questions was "What do find so fascinating about Eve?"

When I answered I realized what the single thing is what bothers me on most games to date: they tell me what to do and how to do it. The freedom is so limited that you feel like a game on rails. Worst invention of the industry in this regard: QTE. Yes I mean you Call of Duty.

The one single player game I played recently for longer was Dishonored. I could pick up my mission when I wanted, still could roam around my base afterwards and went to the boat which dropped me in the mission area. Even there I could approach my goal as I wanted, there was no timer, path or QTE telling me how to do it. I love that game.

In MMO's its similar: World of Warcraft has a path of success. You level up, then you do your attunement quests (old times), then you did 5 man heroics until you get bored and finally you raid and progress until you beat the end boss of the current expansion and have the ultimate gear ... until the next expansion made it worthless. What a waste of time? What a way to be masochistic?

In Eve Online you are a pilot of a space ship. So there. Thats it. What do you do? Well what do you WANT to do? Simply do it. Pirate? Diplomat? Spy? Trader? Logistics? Flying missions? Troll? Scammer? Being part of large scale war? Explore the universe for alien artifacts?

And here is the problem why those "sandbox" games aren't as big as World of Warcraft: in order to enjoy the scope for the game you have to know what you want, you need to motivate yourself. And exactly here most players fail: they want to be entertained but not work for it. They are lazy.

And game developers are lazy too. Because producing a game on rails is easier than creating a sandbox. Otherwise we would see more of them as they are very successful even as single player games.

Nintendo - again and again

With each transition year the same discussions appear generation after generation - and I can't really hear it anymore: Nintendo is in deep shit and should stop making consoles - instead they should release their core IP's like Mario & Zelda on all other platforms.

WTF.

This is the worst decision they could make. The sole existence of that argument proves that Nintendo should not do it: if you want to play their great games then buy their hardware.

And Nintendo still builds the best console hardware. Microsofts XBox is louder than a vacuum cleaner and red circles all the time. The PS3 is huge, can't be stacked and its only advantage is the Blue Ray.

Nintendo has one weakness they need to learn fast: online. That's where Sony and their PS4 learned very fast - the XBox paved the way but Microsoft screwed it up.

Let's see what may 21st will bring when Microsoft spills their beans.

Only one ting is clear: Nintendo, being 125+ years old, having a market cap others are envious about - has patience like an elephant. If this generation isn't theirs then it might be the next.

NEVER underestimate Nintendo!

A/B testing for lazies

Every time there is a question hanging in the air people call for A/B tests to find out the right solution. Isn't that a bit lazy? You don't have the time to test out everything with A/B tests, considering they aren't as easy to do as you think.

My answer is always do what best practice is from successful online games. So you simply take a bunch of them and look how they do it. Most of the long running ones have tested the hell out of their systems, so why don't you take their lesson and simply steal their key findings? They have it right there for you, online, in their game.

So there was a question recently if its better to sort your premium currency packages low to high or high to low. The answer is now really obvious if you follow my advice. You don't need to run an A/B test to find out.

You can learn so much by looking at good f2p games and what they do. Some of them even have fan made statistic sites which you can use how successful they are in various countries, popular items or vehicles. Simply look for them.

So open your eyes. All knowledge is right there in front of you, a simple search away.

Mobile is not worth it (NOT!)

I will remind Bobby about this in 5 years when he regets this:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-05-09-activisions-kotick-brushes-aside-the-mobile-market

Cheers

WoW dies (NOT!)

Here, 8.3 million subscribers only. Wtf, its dead Jim!

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2418730,00.asp

No its not. Even with 5m, heck even with 2m subscribers its an awesome business case. And even in 5 years, no 10 years we still can play WoW. Wanna bet?


Simply because until today no successful MMO has been shut down. You still can play Ultima Online or even Tibia if you want, both like 15 years old?

Additional signs of change

EA posted its financial earnings and it disappoints. Without their cash of 1.6b in the bank they would be gone by now. "Don't expect growth on the giants EA and Activision" they say. Ok, so why do others grow like hell. And some new mobile companies have a market cap of 9 billion. Wtf.

Those are all signs of disruption. Its happening and quick. The old games market will change dramatically in the next 2-3 years, so don't moan if your favorite FPS is no longer the #1 topic on the web sites.

Then EA announced they bought the Star Wars license. Oh my. Thanks no, I see what you did to Harry Potter. And fail, major fail: the license excludes online, social and mobile platforms. That deal is like an ancient relic. Fire the guy who did it.

But then its all about small 90 men companies doing more money than the old economy.

So when are you joining?

LoL is not a good role model for f2p

League of Legends, or LoL for short, is often mentioned as a successful f2p game you should learn from. Fact is that LoL is one of the largest MMO's to date. Of course it makes tons of money for Riot and their owner Tencent.

So why am I hesitent to use LoL as a role model for good f2p models? The reaon is simple: their monetization system is very very specific and only works due to their reach.

Simple explanation: Revenue = Active users * conversion * ARPPU

Their active users is phenomenal high (42 million MAU as of this writing) and this multiplies the revenue formula to the skies.

But their conversion is low, i.e. how many players actively pay. That is my biggest critic. If you use LoL as a role model you might end up with a low conversion and if you fail to get the reach your game fails badly. That's a huge risk. A game can survive with an average reach and a good conversion easily, but rarely the other way around.

Note that the ARPPU is somewhat dependent on the conversion. If your conversion is low your ARPPU can be unusually high and vice versa.

Again: LoL works wonderfully for Riot and Tencent as their reach is so high. Sidenote: their reach is so high due to Tencents reach.