UPDATED WITH 2/4 TALKS - SCROLL DOWN A COUPLE OF POSTS

This week is the Develop Conference in Brighton, which is basically a very, very scaled down version of E3 that is purely for industry people. It's focused more on the development and business side of gaming rather than the actual final products and features over 50 talks from a wide variety of high-profile people and companies, ranging from Bioware to successful indie devs, and even programmers and artists. It also includes some of the most prestigious awards handed out in the industry!

Here's a list of what's going on this year

As some of you know I was sent on a secret mission by Bart 2 years ago to infiltrate the industry and spy on the misdemeanours and scandals for GW. Currently I'm working for Black Rock Studio (which happens to be based in Brighton, 3 minutes from Develop!) and we've got a bunch of passes to share within the company. We got a choice of what events we'd like to go to and the passes were dished out on a first-come-first-serve basis, or by 'importance' if they were majorly overbooked (i.e. making sure the coders get to the coding sessions etc).

I managed to wrangle myself a pass for 3 4 talks:
.GOV.UK: What the Industry Needs if Production Tax Credits Can Not Be Delivered (Interesting if only for the first question being asked by the Canadian Government no less)
Panel: The Rise of the Micro Studio (Panel of indie devs talking about how to start your own studio - they disagreed on most points except one or two)
Jagex's Indie DNA: How Jagex Did Everything Right by Doing Everything its Own Way (A pretty useful talk about going from indie to a large company)
Fable III Story, Cast and Simulation (Peter Molyneux talking about what sucked in Fable II and how to address it, including live Fable 3 demos)

Clicking the link above and clicking on these talks will give you a little more info on what's going on in them, and who's giving the talks.

I thought I'd make a post on GW and ask if anyone would be interested in me sharing some notes from these talks on here. I'll be doing some pretty extensive note-taking and observations for Black Rock, but there's no reason I can't share the information on here as well. I guess the Fable III stuff will be widely available, but the indie/Gov stuff probably not.

This is going on tomorrow (only got confirmation of passes today!) so this is kinda last minute, but if anyone wants me to try and throw in some questions or get some specific information now would be the time to ask. I might not be able to ask questions etc, but it can't help to go in with some in mind. If NOBODY is interested than w/e gw is dying.

There's also a party in the evening for industry people which'll (possibly) involve some good networking, so I'd probably be able to grab some drunken people's contact details and maybe setup some interviews or features for GW in the future, if it ever comes back.

[UPDATE]
I've been! Got into an extra 4th talk (see above). I've got about 30 pages of notes here so I'll be typing these up this evening. I managed to get the Jagex one done at work as this was the most interesting to me so I wanted to do it first. This looks like it'll break the character limit so I'll put them into new posts. It's all in wiki markup format (for my work wiki) so it'll take forever to format. I'll post these in a few hours when I get home.

[UPDATE ][/UPDATE]
Two out of four posted (Fable 3/Jagex). I did those two at work before I left so I haven't typed the other two yet, they're about the length of Jagex.
As expected it broke the character limit so scroll down a couple of posts for these (I'll hyperlink once all four are up).
Another guy from Black Rock was at Fable 3 and he'd already posted notes so these are his with slight modifications. I have a few additional/different notes which I'll cross reference and add if it's worth it.

I already know the answer to that. It's definitely important to them to attract studios from outside (as this brings money INTO the country), however it's less about nurturing talent and more about KEEPING it. At the moment British game developers are some of the most skilled and respected in the world, especially for programming, design and storytelling. Unfortunately the pay in the UK is generally awful and many devhouses and publishers have been relocating their studios to cheaper places (read: Canada). This means that a vast majority of skilled UK professionals are moving to Canada instead of keeping their talent within the country and bringing in revenue. As the industry is generally very highly skilled the 'nurturing' part is of less import at the moment, although universities are very keen to help develop skills for the industry (cash in on it)

edit: Forgot to add that the cost of running business is causing devhouses to move, it's the people moving from low pay

Jagex's Indie DNA: How Jagex Did Everything Right by Doing Everything its Own Way

This talk was with Mark Gerhard, the CEO of Jagex Games Studios, about what has made his company successful.
The advice given was both for new people in the industry and new/existing companies, though this was more a history of the company than direct guidelines
He also hated the name of the talk because he didn't do everything right


History [/b]

- Jagex is the company that made Runescape, the world's largest free MMO
- - 140 million unique users since launch
- Company was formed as a hobby project in a kitchen
- Now based in Cambridge with two main studios and over 400 employees
- Believes his games will do the talking (reiterated constantly through the talk)
- - If it's great, people will buy it
- - The 'Acid Test' is the game itself
- Free games with premium, members only expansions
- Founded in 1999 and had initial hurdles as had to write own tech and tools
- - No longer thinks this is an issue for new companies

- Gamelab
- - Lets company innovate and make anything they like
- - Does not care if it makes money, as long as it's fun
- - Games for people without much time; dip-in, dip-out
- - 1.8 million active unique users
- - 'Proving Ground' for new ideas and concepts, with a very low budget
- - Also good PR and helps establish loyal community

- Self-publishing
- - Became a publisher out of necessity
- - - 'Big Three' 1st parties told them their ideas would not work
- - - After achieving a million uniques in a year, returned to 1st parties - none believed it
- - Initial belief that they couldn't do it themselves (particularly marketing)
- - - Realised it did not matter - great content ALWAYS speaks for itself
- - - Creative, unique IP that is fun ALWAYS does well
- - Wanted to help other 'indie' companies get online via publishing
- - - War of Legends, the first published title, exceeded expectations by 125%
- - 3 new bits of IP in the works
- - Willing to publish new companies content if they approach them
- - - As long as it's fun!

- Competition
- - How do you stand out on iphone?
- - - 200,000 games on the appstore
- - QA tester asked to take time out to develop an idea, was given permission to innovate
- - - 2 man weeks later: game is released
- - - 4.6 million downloads in 3 weeks
- - - Caused Apple to take an interest in the company, which they had not heard of before
- - Drive mass - community is self perpetuating and buys games due to brand/company loyalty

The Jagex 'DNA'[/b]

- Every professional in gaming is special and has the DNA of success, it's how you use it that counts
- There are no definitive steps to success - just stick to your principles
- Bad financial years are OKAY - look at the future not the next quarter
- Go with what you know is right
- Don't prematurely launch games - it'll ruin your success

- Content is King
- - Don't ask how to make money, ask how to make a great game
- - Set out to make games WE want to play
- - Free for everyone - charge people who want to gain competitive edge on rivals
- - Thought MAYBE 1% of consumers will pay for content - that would break even
- - - 24% ended up paying for content
- - Don't ask how to prostitute a game - ask how to preserve
- - Everyone says micro transactions are the only way forward, not so - look at WoW/Runescape
- - - No financial model is perfect - just pick the one that fits your game

- For Gamers By Gamers
- - Cancelled a big MMO that the company had been working on for a long time
- - - Jagex didn't like it
- - - Needed something to set the game aside from the rest of MMOs, which it didn't have
- - - - Releasing a bad game to recoup losses is worse than releasing no game
- - - Gamers applaused the move and supported the company
- - Making great content is all that matters
- - Don't care about employee experience or qualifications
- - Only care about talent and passion - the rest can be taught
- - Think LONG TERM employees
- - - Nobody has left Core Tech Group at Jagex in 10 years

- No crunch - EVER
- - No crunch means that people have more passion, work harder and more innovative - there's no 'burn out' or post-project downtime
- - Strict Monday - Friday, 9-6 policy.
- - - Don't want people doing overtime. Has to be signed by Mark and rarely ever is
- - 'It's ready when it's ready'
- - This means a 6 month project can sometimes take 9, 12 or even 18 months.
- - Buying tools to save time isn't a competitive advantage - everyone does this
- - - Good content is all that matters

- R&D Lab
- - 24/7 access to work for people who want to come in and prototype or play with tools in their free time
- - Learn the tech you will need in the future now, and be prepared for changes in hardware trends
- - - As an example, putting 100% of your time into iPad now may be great but what happens when it's gone?
- - - - And nobody knows when that will be - competition plus Apple products have very short life cycles
- - Be prepared for what you WANT to be doing, not what you're currently doing

- Innovation, innovation
- - Without innovation you become legacy - FAST
- - Can't just turn it on at will and say 'Friday is innovation day!'
- - You need to evolve to be relevant
- - - Runescape updated every week with new quests and 4+ times a year with full expansions
- - - Don't set out to make 'x' content in 'y' time. Release good content when it's ready
- - If you want to be maverick, go out and do it
- - Set aside a portion of the budget for R&D - long term focus will reap more rewards than short term
- - Don't care about the next financial quarter. In a creative industry there will always be bad quarters when products are in development - this shouldn't worry you

Jagex Business Philosophy[/b]

- We Believe in Free Gaming
- Free Should Mean Free
- Profit - A Secondary Concern
- Games Must Market Themselves

- Gamers don't need to finish games to want more, just want value for money
- - There is 17000 hours of free content in Runescape (based on hours played of top free player)
- - - People still buy the premium content - Make it worth playing
- Always be financially diligent
- - ALWAYS act like we have no money
- - Is it fun? That's it. Everything else takes care of itself
- - - Being fun reaps more rewards than anything else

Our staff[/b]

- 90% of staff are homegrown
- Graduate program taking on roughly 80 graduates a year for experience
- Tools lab - purely there for people to play with and experiment
- - Has everything people want to play with: XNA, Flash, Java, PS3s, iPads etc
- - 10% of graduates have a play around with the tools lab/tech
- - - This is when Jagex decide to invest further into these employees - passion and innovation is more important than skills

- Team
- - Vibrant and Frighteningly Bright - Especially anyone who is Self Taught (displaying discipline and passion)
- - - As a company, grab these people immediately
- - - It doesn't matter if self-taught people are rubbish, they can be taught to be better
- - Talent and IQ over experience
- - Excellent opportunies for growth and development
- - - 12 months of training. 3 months to UNLEARN education, 3 months learning tools, 6 months training and nurture
- - - Develop staff this way - you can't see passion on a CV
- - - BIG RISK: If you do this, you NEED 100% employeee retention
- - Valued and supported
- - - Get people to share rewards - Give bonuses and rewards for work, not a flat-rate salary per year/project
- - We are always recruiting
- - - Never stop recruiting, even if you don't need people
- - - Either be an employer looking for talent always, or be an employer without talent
- - - You can't just post a vacancy as and when you need it and expect it to be filled

WE DON'T DO EVERYTHING RIGHT[/b]

- Allowed other companies to catch up
- Missed opportunities
- Taken success for granted
- - Mistake Jagex learned 3-4 years ago
- - With the success of Runescape, Jagex developed a cancer of complacency
- - Maximise success but look in the future with paranoia - always think 'when will it end?'
- - Push for better - if you stop when you hit #1 you'll drop fast
- - Continue to challenge yourself day after day irrespective of success

- Market research was carried out into how many other browser based MMOs were coming out last year
- - About 160 were released - only 2 still exist
- - EVERY good online provider offers free content first
- - You need scale as prices are incredibly low

Our future[/b]

- More 3rd party publishing
- More MMOs
- Platform Agnostic
- Some surprises

Questions[/b]

How do you remain relevant outside of the UK?
- The internet takes care of this. With retail its hard - different SKUs in different territories
- Internet is global - though this also makes it incredibly risky
- - Most players offer a frictionless experience
- - However most choose to play within seconds of seeing a game
- - If they are bored they'll just click to elsewhere
- - - Buying a game for £40 will make you play it
- - - Having lots of games for when they are bored is important
- Steam ISN'T the 'be-all end-all'.

Most online games are generally for older women than the typical 18-30 male demographic. Your studio is young employees - do you have a policy of hiring older people?
- No hiring policy
- Average age has gone up by roughly a year every year - people stay with the company
- Started as average 21, now 28
- Hire for good passion and talent - not age
- - If you don't have the former, then you aren't going to be hired
- - Positive discrimination - don't care for Oxbridge or years of experience
- Currently 73% male 27% female. Don't care for 50-50, just hire who is good
- - We set out to make a game engaging, not for any specific demographic

- Sony was a big competition with Free Realms in 2005
- - Free Realms is a 'perfect committee game' - it does everything for everyone and is great at it
- - - Yet nobody cared about it at all - there was no character


Policy of large free portion in games - does this limit game design or genre?
- No set amount of free content - just large amount of value for free with small premium option
- Unrestricted fun content is more important than anything else.
- As long as it's fun that's all that matters, however you make it work

Fable III Story, Cast and Simulation[/b]

Hosted by Peter Molyneux. This talk was a bit off the cuff as Peter showed up a bit late and had to fuss setting up his equipment. A lot of the talk was a demo of Fable III.
Overall reaction: Molyneux is brilliant as a public speaker. Very entertaining, keeps the crowd going, shows us stuff 'that he's not meant to that will get him in trouble'.
If you get a chance to see him talk, even if you don't care for the subject matter, do it.

Much less notes for this than the previous as a lot was Molyneux joking or going off-topic (or being late). I wasn't note taking the jokes unfortunately.

Talk[/b]

- Talking about Fable III design challenges
- In the 90s sequels were bad, showed you were a lazy designer
- Now, sequels are wonderful and everyone does them

- Dream for Fable III
- - Worlds that can work for both core and casual players
- - More like an adventure game than a techie RPG
- - Basically we want to sell more units

- Fable 2
- - Role Playing Game where the player was the h ero
- - Had a European Mythos
- - Messy, didn't really work well and rushed towards the end
- - At one point had 67,000 bugs in the queue
- - Rated Super Black by Microsoft's QA team. No game has even been rated 'Black' before
- - There were huge design flaws (many game mechanics not used)
- - More than 50% of people who played Fable 2 used less than 60% of the game mechanics
- - - More than 50% of people who read the above comment understand less than 60% of it's meaning (hint: he didn't say that)

- What do we want to do in Fable 3
- - Revolution, you will be rebel
- - A very clear story
- - Don't implement game mechanics that won't get used

- Big Features
- - Drama
- - - There's a huge cast of many famous actors
- - - - John Cleese
- - - - Zoe Wannamaker
- - - - Stephen Fry
- - - - Bernard Hill
- - - - Many more talented (oscar winning) individuals
- - - We don't take drama seriously enough in games
- - - Try to mix in the drama with player's actions
- - A lot of the role playing in Fable 1 & 2 was done in a 2D GUI, almost like a DOS adventure game (want to change that)
- - Great Shared Co-op experiences
- - - Marry/befriend/have kids with your co-op player
- - - Do things besides just fighting together
- - Great Story Thread
- - - Want a story that you will remember for the rest of your lives
- - - Start as a rebel, find out the king is evil, gather the townspeople and dethrone the king. Then become the king yourself

- How do we get people to care?
- - Show how evil the King is
- - - Not through voice overs, but via visuals in the game
- - - Try to remind the player ever 10 minutes
- - Measure alignment
- - Constantly reflect the players actions on the environment
- - Make sure the story is:
- - - Deep
- - - Involving
- - - Emotional
- - - Reflective
- - - Humourous

- GUI
- - Make everything more accessible
- - - They measured the time it takes to do things in Fable 2 and made sure it's quicker in Fable 3
- - Remove all the clutter (don't want to be working in 2D) put things in world
- - Change the map and how you level up

- Demo
- - This is today's build
- - Lots of bugs, so please be gentle
- - Shows a bit of your character running down a hall in the keep with two companions
- - Shows how to level up
- - - Instead of a screen with numbers we follow a path with gates
- - - Each gate represents a level, you spend points to open gates
- - - Everything you do in game can give you XP (marriage, co-op etc)
- - - You follow the road through the gates to the castle
- - - When you get to the castle you can be king
- - - Between gates are boxes you can open, each box gives you different abilities you can choose
- - Weapons can be leveled up and then gifted to friends
- - There is no on screen HUD at all (except when messages/button prompts appear)
- - The pause menu/inventory is replaced with a 3D place called 'The Sanctuary'
- - - 3D space replacing a 2D menu - Armoury with weapon racks, manakins as clothes holders, dyes for clothes
- - - Less button inputs to do things than a traditional 2D menu
- - - Accessible upon pressing start. Appears IMMEDIATELY (no loading)

Questions[/b]

Can you play as a woman?
- Yes, your character can be male or female

How do you focus your player on something?
- Voice telling them where to go
- Bar at the top telling the players things
- Breadcrumb trail
- - Fades away if you're already going somewhere (running, walking, etc)
- - Brightens when you're stopped and seem confused as to where to go
- - Drags player along without the player feeling dragged

Will you companions beat you up?
- John Cleese is not really a physical type of person
- No, they don't physically beat you up
- They will chastise you for doing bad things.

How do you make sure people's actions matter? In other Fable you can get people to like you again after 30 seconds.
- In Fable III you make promises to people (sort of like campaign promises)
- You can keep the promises or ignore them when you become king
- The world will change based on what promises you keep or don't keep.