1. Set Your Goals

It’s important to decide exactly why you’re making the prototype, and what you hope to achieve. These goals show you where to focus your time while developing the prototype. For us it’s about testing gameplay mechanics and proving the core concept of the game. A secondary goal is having playable prototypes we can show potential publishers to quickly get across the feel of the game.

Without these goals, it’s difficult to know where your time is best spent. Is this about testing a mechanic on a particular platform or finding whether certain gameplay is fun? Could the game better be served by a pen and paper prototype first? It’s worth spending some time before you begin, deciding the best use of your resources.

2. Timeboxing

I always set a specific limit on how long I can afford to spend on the prototype. It’s easy to get carried away once I start and I can easily lose a lot more time than is necessary. Timeboxing forces me to focus on the most important elements of the prototype as I can’t do everything.

The actual length of time allocated depends entirely on your situation. I allocate 20 man hours per prototype which fits nicely into two work days for me. I find two days is the perfect length for completing the core elements while keeping time short so I am forced to focus.

3. Throw It Away

This is a tough one for some people, but I always recommend planning to throw the prototype away. This has a number of core benefits:

1. Pragmatic – This stops me from doing any big design up front and forces me to do just enough to get the task done. It puts me in a completely different mindset while developing as I just want to get it done as quickly as possible.
2. Lessons learned – When you begin work on the real game you will have previous experience in implementing the same features and solving the same problems. This will help improve the design of the game, both at a software and gameplay level. With some particularly complex problems (“wicked problems” according to McConnell) we must try solving the problem first, before we can fully understand it and find the optimal solution.
3. Less Constraints – If you’re throwing away the prototype there’s less constraints on how you build the prototype. You can use whatever technology is best for prototyping, rather than the best for creating complete games. If you don’t follow company (or personal) guidelines during the development it’s less of an issue, as it’s a completely separate act.

Rather than laying the foundations for your game your doing the opposite, investigating the best way to build it so that when the time comes to lay the foundations you’re in a better position.

4. Key Gameplay Only

I only focus on what’s different about the current game. If I’m making a clone, then really, what’s the point in prototyping? I pick out the gameplay elements that make the game stand out and test those to make sure they work and tweak them. One of our prototypes is a new twist on the platformer genre. I spent as little time on the platformer elements and focussed on “the twist”.

Another way of looking at this is to test the highest risk elements of the game. Gameplay that will make or break the game is important to test as early as possible. Often I find some ideas simply don’t work, and it’s much better to find this out in the first few days of development.

5. Allow Tweaking

I expose as much as possible to my designers and even play testers so they can tweak the gameplay. The game will be in a very rough form and allowing rapid changes to core gameplay can help steer the game in the correct direction.

Another of our prototypes is an asynchronous strategy game. I’ve exposed the start and win conditions and all unit stats. Small changes to these completely change the way the game plays. This is perfect for a prototype as it lets anyone play with the values and suggest changes to the originals. This pushes the burden of experimenting, balancing and tweaking off the prototype team and onto anyone else that plays the game.

6. Divide The Game Up

If I’m working on a large game I’ll divide the different elements up into separate prototypes. For example in the “Total War” series I would make the strategic and battle maps completely different prototypes. This has a number of core benefits:

1. Separate teams can work on each prototype if needed
2. Different technology and tools can be used if helpful
3. Each individual part of the game can be judged independently. Perhaps some areas are less fun than others? You can look at each part as its own game and easily see its strengths and weaknesses.
   

7. Run On Target Platform

I always find that to get the full user experience of a prototype it’s best to run on the target platform. This is core to the gameplay experience and for certain platforms will completely alter the reaction to the prototype.

The only time I don’t do this is when it will blow out the schedule to do so or if there are other constraints that make it impossible (e.g. platform owner restrictions). In this case I do my best to imitate the platform it will run on to get the user experience as close to the real platform as possible.

8. Have External Material

Some things are better completed outside of the prototype itself to save time. I often write tutorials and help screens as a series of screenshots of the game with instructions overlayed. This is far quicker to do in Photoshop than implementing within the prototype. While having screenshots as a tutorial isn’t as good a user experience it saves time that can be spent implementing other features of the prototype.

Another time saver is to walk people through the prototype personally, replacing the tutorial. I like to watch people playing the prototype as much as possible and explaining the game to them is the perfect way to open up a dialog about the prototype.

Conclusion

What are your tips for prototyping? How long do you like to spend and do you throw them away once finished?

Keep It Small

Whether you find it easy to stay motivated and focused on a project or not, there is one general rule that holds true for everyone:

The shorter the project, the easier it is to keep motivation.

Keeping this in mind, the first rule is the easiest; keep your projects as short as possible. Game development is hard and so I always like to overestimate how long a project will take. Anything more than a few months and motivation becomes an issue for me, so I like to keep projects less than 3 months where possible. This is also good as a business owner as it means I’m not spending too much time on any single project that may or may not succeed. Keeping projects down to multi-month rather than multi-year is a luxury we have now that iOS and web games are viable business options.

Small Tasks

One simple way to keep up motivation is to break the tasks for each day up into the smallest possible pieces. I keep all my tasks less than 1 hour in length. Any longer and I break them up into sub-tasks. This has a number of benefits:

1. You will constantly be ticking tasks off your list throughout the day
2. At the end of the day you can look back and see what you’ve achieved

There’s nothing more motivating than having visibility on what you are achieving. The only time this becomes a big issue is when tasks start taking a lot longer than you expect. I like to turn these challenges into a positive though. As soon as a task becomes problematic, I immediately break it up into smaller tasks. This lets me continue to tick of tasks, even if they are just sub-tasks of this larger problem. It also helps focus my train of thought on exactly what I’m trying to achieve, often times helping me find the solution I’m searching for.

Set Goals – Short and Long Term

After deciding on a project to work on, I set goals working from top to bottom. These goals can just be seen as large tasks; however they give you broad milestones to aim for. Just as having a dozen or so tasks each day to complete, having a handful of larger goals each week and month is a great way to keep motivation up. It’s another set of items you can tick off a list and it helps you to keep visibility on the overall direction and velocity of the project.

I find it’s a good idea to share my goals with friends and family to get their feedback. While tasks are often highly technical (implement Carmack’s Reverse for shadows volumes) goals are often a lot more general and can easily be shared. Most people can understand “Integrate twitter for posting about headshots” and you will be able to get feedback on whether spending the next week of your life completing the goal is worth your time.

Show Off

It’s easy to lose motivation when working in a vacuum. Showing people your work is a great way to get that much needed injection of motivation. As you plug away day-by-day it’s hard to see the big picture on how far you’ve come. If you show someone once a week or month, they’ll notice dramatic changes and give you positive reinforcement. When looking for a motivation boost, find people that will get excited about the game, rather than looking for critical feedback from play testers. Sometimes it’s good to just have someone go “wow” at your game rather than picking apart the fact you implemented Carmack’s Reverse incorrectly.

This also helps when you go to pitch the game to publishers or the press. If you’re used to showing off the best bits of the game, this job becomes a lot easier. What starts out as a motivational boost can help you “sell” your game further down the track.

Remove Distractions

This fits in with my first article on working from home but it’s the key to keeping motivated. It’s inevitable that you will go through times of low motivation. These times test your resolve with YouTube, Facebook and minesweeper all sitting there giving you an easy out. My biggest advice is to just say “no” to these during work time. It’s easy to fall into the trap of “just one video” and three hours later you’ve lost the afternoon.

There’s always going to be something more interesting than debugging that inconsistent crash bug, but it’s important to realise that spending a few minutes here and there with distractions all adds up at the end of the day. If you find yourself falling into a routine of getting distracted by something, do your best to completely remove it from your work hours.

Work with others

Working in a team is a great way to keep motivation levels high. When one person on the team loses motivation, the others are there to show their enthusiasm and give extra motivation. All team members should be conscious of when anyone is unmotivated and work hard to help them out of the slump. Another benefit of working together is when someone else completes a big task and you can see the work they’ve put in. This spurs the others in the team on to work even harder.

If you’re working alone, I’d think seriously about getting someone else on, even if only for a small section of work. Particularly if there’s something you really don’t enjoy doing. Chances are there is someone you know that absolutely loves that particular task. This has a number of key benefits:

1. Removes the problem tasks from your life
2. Lets someone who loves those tasks work on them, ending in better results
3. Speeds up development time

Be Honest

My final point is a little existential but it’s important. Keeping motivation for long periods requires you to be honest with yourself. We all go through ups and downs; it is a part of life. You need to look at your goals for your work and decide how important they are. If you need to cut out all internet for 8 hours per day to stay motivated then do it, no matter how painful it may seem.

Take time to analyse your productivity throughout your project and spot problem areas. Look to resolving these issues so they don’t become a major drain on your productivity and in turn, motivation. Being honest and realising that you can’t do everything may be hard for some people, but it’s important to achieving your goals.

I personally hate QA. Once I’ve finished a project I don’t even want to look at it. It’s something that must be done, but I really don’t enjoy it and I find I get distracted really easily. I used to plod through with low productivity and motivation and often completely miss bugs that had been staring me in the face for weeks. I found the solution was to get help from others in the team and friends. To many of them, it was a joy to be able to play our unreleased games and give feedback. I often get requests from people to add them to our pre-release list to get a sneak peek at what we are currently working on. By critically analysing myself I found this weakness and turn it around as best I could.

Conclusion

How do you stay motivated when working from home? Do you have any recommendations?

The biggest complaint I hear (and face) from working full-time at home is the fact your “always on”. Unlike trudging off to work for 8-12 hours per day where there is a definite line between work and home, the line is blurred. This list is mainly ways I go about emulating that distinct line between working and relaxing.

Kill Switch

The best way I can shift my mind from work to relaxation is what I call a “kill switch”. Some activity that completely resets your brain, clears out everything you’ve been thinking about and lets you get into the relaxation zone (rather than the work “zone”). For me this kill switch is Company of Heroes (CoH). As soon as I finish for the day, I have a game of CoH and everything I was thinking about is blocked out. I put 100% of my concentration into playing the game and come out the other end with a clear head ready to relax for the evening. For other people this kill switch comes in the form of WoW. After a hard day they sit and relax, focussing their mind on Azeroth to help forget the stresses of the day.

Whatever the game or activity the important purpose is to put a barrier between work and “not work”. Many people already have this activity they perform, but don’t consciously do it at the end of the day to form a barrier. It becomes a routine and lets your brain form the habit of switching off after the activity is complete.

As game developers, the bonus of this kill switch being a game is that it forces me to actually play a game (even if it’s just one). One of the most noticeable differences in my life since becoming a game developer is that I play a lot less games. I believe it’s vital for game developers to play games to keep a view on the gaming landscape as it changes from year to year. It’s also important to see our craft from the other side, as a gamer.

Working Area

The second important way of differentiating my time is having a separate area that is used only for work. In the current age, this can be quite difficult as often the computer is the centre of both work and entertainment. By keeping my working area separate from everything else at home there is a definitive area that is my work station. I pretend like I’m “heading to the office” when I walk over to my desk and when I’m here, it’s all business.

I find my iPad is a great way for me to be connected while not “working”. Rather than sitting at my computer surfing the web or sending personal emails, I’ll sit on the couch with my iPad on my lap.

Laptops are also perfect ways of physically relocating to be outside of my work area. If I need a computer for something personal, I’ll take my laptop and sit on the couch. It may seem silly, but this small difference is enough for me to not feel like I’m working.

Set Standard Hours

This is an easy one. I’ve found a lot of Indie friends begin working sporadic hours when they start working from home. While its great fun to stay up until 3am getting that last task finished I’ve found it has a detrimental effect in the long run. I like to get 10 hours of work into a day and so I set myself a start and end time. I begin work around 6am and finish at 4pm. I’ll set my status to “do not disturb” and I’ll work through as solidly as I can. One important key is that if something comes up that interrupts me, I don’t count that time towards my day. So if something takes my attention for an hour, then I at it to the end of the day and finish at 5pm. After a few days of working 6am-7pm I quickly realised the importance of cutting out interruptions.

Whether you want to be as strict as that or not, the key is keeping consistent working hours that are sustainable for a long period. Software development is a marathon, not a sprint and it’s important to schedule your day to fit this. If you find you’re burning out after a few days or weeks then look at adjusting your work hours to better fit the long-haul.

Write Everything Down

“Getting Things Done” is a great book that I’ve spoken about countless times in the past. I recommend it for everyone, particularly those working from home. It helps you to become more productive and sort your life out. The main key I get from this is that I make lists for everything. As soon as I think of something, particularly if it’s outside of “work hours” I write it down, set a reminder in outlook for the next day and don’t think about it again. If I am laying in bed and something pops into my head I’ll add it to my to-do list and then forget about it.

Email Separation

This is another easy one. I like to make sure I can’t get work emails during non-work time. This is easy when working in an office as when you’re away from your desk you usually can’t access your email. It’s important to set up a similar barrier when working from home, much like the physical workspace. I set up different rules on my iPhone so I don’t get push notifications for work emails. If I’m at my desk working it’ll arrive in my inbox but if I’m out for the evening I won’t be distracted by it. There’s nothing worse than getting an email you need to act upon, or that has bad news in it when you’ve finished working for the day. This is particularly important when working with overseas publishers or customers with emails coming in at all hours.

Conclusion

Do you have any other tips for working from home on indie games? Whether working full-time or part-time at home, how do you go about keeping a good work-life balance?

Facts

• On the 31st March 2011, CoHO will shut down the beta servers – source
• After 31st March CoHO will no longer exist, there will be no release after beta.  Relic is no longer working on the product – source
• Commander data will be lost – source
• Company of Heroes has generally had equal or more players online – source
• It has nothing to do with the death of Brian Wood – source
• Development will continue on CoH and Relic are still continuing the franchise, without CoHO – source
• If you registered before February 1 2011 you can get CoH Gold for $4.99 – source
• The Chinese and Korean versions of CoHO will also be closing – source

Verdict

This has come as a surprise to myself and a lot of other people. However, I had just been thinking the other day though that the incentive for me to invest money isn’t really high enough. I would have happily paid $15/month of in-game items however there was no need as I was able to buy everything I wanted entirely with in-game currency.  The more I played, the more in-game currency I earned. This seems the wrong way around to me as it’s the people that play a lot of CoHO that would be willing to fork out the cash.

It seems that having both CoH and CoHO side-by-side was a watering down of their market. It makes sense that if one has to go then the free to play is the best option. It was obviously not generating enough revenue for them.

Solution

The best solution I can see to the problem is for Company of Heroes 2 to be released. While I have inside information that another of their great titles is getting an expansion, I’ve been unable to source info on CoH2. This seems like the logical next step for them to take. We’ve seen it with their Dawn of War franchise with great success. My only hope is they don’t go too far down the path of simplifying the game as the did with DoWII with bad consequences.

I’d also like to see an expansion of CoH set in the modern era. I think this could work really well with the tactical style and upgrade system. I can just imagine driving my ASLAV’s around and upgrading them with slat armor (anti-RPG protection). It would work well for the current “war on terror” with the terrorists having a completely different feel to them and using guerrilla tactics. This would give Relic a 3rd series in using the same core engine and open them up to a lot of new customers. There have been countless numbers of WWII RTS games in the past, however the number of modern day realistic RTS games is a lot lower.

Conclusion

What are your thoughts on Company of Heroes Online closing? Did you play it and are you disappointed as I am?

Flick Buddies:
http://itunes.apple.com/app/flick-buddies/id405424038?mt=8

Flick Buddies HD:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flick-buddies-hd/id405425109?mt=8

Also, check out our launch trailer:

Lets get straight into it, the L4D2 boycott means the following:

1. The games industry has reached mature adult status
2. Depending what Valve does from here, it may not see itself in the “Big 5″ for much longer
3. It’s not just about the money

The games industry has reached mature adult status

This isn’t the first time gamers have complained about a game.  Truth be told, gamers don’t stop complaining about games.  However, this is the first time a large group of gamers, with an intelligent manifesto have come forward with a mature complaint.  Gone is the tantrum styled foot stamping the games industry is used to.  We’ve moved beyond our simple bitching and into the realm of mature adults, where genuine concerns are raised and a solution put on the table.  The ball is now in Valve’s court…

Depending what Valve does from here, it may not see itself in the “Big 5″ for much longer

Firstly, you may be asking what the “Big 5″ is.  This is the group of major game studios that are highly respected and form the backbone of the games industry as it stands.  I’ve formed this list after many late night discussions with game developers discussing who’s doing it right, and who everyone really wants to work for.  These include:

• Valve (L4D, Half-Life)
• Relic (Homeworld, Dawn of War, Company of Heroes, The Outfit)
• Bioware (Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Mass Effect)
• Blizzard (Starcraft, Warcraft, WOW)
• Bethesda (Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3)

A mature, valid complaint has been handed to Valve.  How they react to this is going to shape both their business into the future, as well as the games industry as a whole.  If Valve treat this as the prepubescent tantrum they are used to, they could see themselves in deep water.

The easiest solution for Valve is to simply ignore the boycott and move on, business as usual.  This is the most likely outcome, however they have a great opportunity to set an example for other big studios.  Surprisingly, it’s been gamers who have stepped up to the mark with this mature response.  It’s important that Valve think long and hard about how they respond to this.

It’s not just about the money

This brings me to the core issue here.  Since games were first made, there has been a gradual movement from making great games, to making games that sell well.  While this was inevitable as game studios moved from backyard, small teams to large corporations with share holders to keep happy.  This has gone on in the background and gamers have more or less accepted it.  The symptoms have been a reduction in game quality, a focus on sequels/safe games and what some call a “watering down” of what games are really about. The boycott has brought this quest for money into the open and is asking one of the worlds greatest game studios a question.  What’s more important, great games, or lots of money?

Limited choices

Sid Meier once said “A game is a series of interesting choices”.  This is the root cause of underwhelming games.  It’s as simple as that.  Games lacking enough interesting choices are doomed to fail.  I’ll dive straight into a couple of concrete examples then we can move out to a more abstract look at the situation and general ways to keep your game moving in the right direction.

Case Study 1: Dawn of War II

Dawn of War (one) is a great game.  It spawned the Company of Heroes series and solidified Relic’s position as one of the best RTS developers in the world.  It was elegant, with plenty of choice and plenty of emergent behaviour.  Company of Heroes took that to the next level adding more depth in many areas, while simplifying other parts of the game to make a cleaner experience.  DOWII tried to take the simplification too far with the following core problems:

• Linear tech tree cake
• Not enough unit types

Side Note: Notice I didn’t mention base building as a core problem.  Having no base building is a sure way to piss off a small, fanatical, part of the RTS market; however it isn’t enough to ruin your game.  It can be replaced with a tech tree that serves almost an identical purpose.  The problem arises when this abstraction is then hacked back so there is no choice in the progression through the tree.

Just to mock us, Relic gives us a huge printout of the tech tree.  But it’s not even a fraking tree; it’s just got tiers, like a cake!  The issue with this cake is that it’s the same every single game.  There’s no point even having this cake if the player isn’t given the choice.  The FPS world has a name for it, rail shooter.  I guess the best way to sum it up is “Rail-Time Strategy”.

The second core problem is the lack of unit types.  Once again, there simply isn’t enough choice.  The major problem here is the lack of emergence.  When there are such a limited number of unit types there’s no room for deep strategy, let alone emergent gameplay.

Limited choice in tech tree reduces strategic (high level) choice while limited unit choice reduces tactical (low level) choice.  Limiting one or the other is problematic, but limiting both is a sure way to under whelm.

Case Study 2: Battlefield Heroes

The core problem with Battlefield Heroes (BH) is the lack of emergence.  One of biggest drawcards for the Battlefield series has been the sandbox nature of the game.  Playing an FPS where a designer has scripted a hand crafted experience can be great.  Even better is playing a sandbox game where something new and exciting happens most times you play based on the small building blocks set out by the designers.  By limiting the choices too far, BH lacks this emergence without replacing it with a heavily structured gameplay experience.

There are too few class types and their differences feel superficial.  The core idea of classes has been watered down so the choice really doesn’t matter any more.  The strengths and weaknesses of the classes are also too watered down.  Is this to make the game easier to balance?  When there are so few classes, having an overpowered class can be disastrous, so the safest option is to make them all very similar to each other.

So complexity is the answer?

Obviously, adding a bunch of complexity to these games isn’t going to solve the problem.  The key is finding the right balance between too much complexity, and not enough choice.  Also, note that complexity and choice are not necessarily opposites.  You can add large amounts of choice without adding overwhelming complexity simply by making smart choices in gameplay and UI.

Automating no-brainer choices is a great way of reducing the burden on the player and leaving them to make only interesting, meaningful choices.

Bejewelled is a great example of a simple game that works really well.  Love it or hate it, it’s enjoyed by millions of people the world over.  It’s a great example of a game that’s extremely simple to understand, but gains in complexity and depth as you continue to play.  The player is simply swapping one gem with another, that’s it.  Yet layered on top of this is such great depth that players keep playing it for hours.  This is the perfect example of deep gameplay that is abstracted into the most perfectly simple interface.

Is it a cop out?

Is having less choice/depth easier to develop, balance and test?  Is this cut-back going to solve the problem of games costing millions of dollars to develop? No.  There are two ways to reduce the cost of developing games.  Make them simpler, or get smarter with how they are made.  With the right people, and the right processes in place to develop games, we can achieve deep, emergent games without blowing millions of dollars.  Agile development is a great way to reduce the cost of games while still producing extremely high quality.  Focus on making the game fun first and then decide how much money needs to be spent to polish the game up before it is released.

By having the core game created as soon as possible play testing and balancing can begin very early in the project.  This reduces the risk of many choices being difficult to balance as you have longer to make it work.

Making a game simpler to reduce cost is like changing the gameplay to make it easier for the programmers to implement something difficult.  This is the wrong way around.  Choice and fun need to drive the development of your game.

Check your game, right now

Here is a simple exercise for you to try on your current game:

1. Find someone that hasn’t played your game before, ever.
2. Sit them down in front of the game and get them to play
3. Ask them to say “choice” every time they make a choice in the game.
4. Keep a record of how many choices they make, either for each different part of the game, or grouped per minute of gameplay
5. Help the player if they get stuck, this isn’t a focus test

Once finished, have a look at your results.  What you want to see is a good distribution of choices throughout the entire time they were playing.  If there are large gaps, why wasn’t the player making a choice?  How could this be resolved?

Try this exercise yourself on other successful and unsuccessful games and compare with the results of your own game.

Conclusion

Have you played a game recently that’s been underwhelming or that you’ve loved?  Add a comment about it and we can continue the discussion.

Pie in the Sky

At the most extreme level, the perfect education program would be one attached to a large development studio.  Imagine if Valve had “Valve Education” where you could do a 1 year course and learn everything they know about game development.  Developers from live teams could take time off to teach for a while, to mix up their lives and to pass on their knowledge to others.  While it would make quite a bit of money, the key thing here is that the top x% of students could be hired straight into Valve.  Think of it as a 1 year probation period, where the employee PAYS to be there.  If there are things you don’t like about game programmers in the world at the moment you have the ability to teach them what you want.  Have a subject devoted solely to software practices, and fail any of the kids that aren’t up to it.

Down to earth

So if you’re not Gabe, then the above paragraph may be a little out of reach for you.  Don’t lose hope though, because there’s room in my dream for a less restrictive model.  The main ingredient for me is to find passionate developer’s who can also teach other programmers.  Seniors and leads out there should be doing it all the time, and we just have to get them together to start teaching students.  With the average length of service in the games industry being 5 years, there’s a great opportunity here.  Firstly, it means that it IS worth training up kids as there are a lot of positions that need to be filled by people that don’t have any real world experience in games.  Secondly, it means that there are a lot of developers burning out and wanting to leave.  Rather than going off and becoming business programmers, why not give them the opportunity to use their precious game dev skills.

What’s needed here is a bunch of truly experienced developers getting together and teaching kids exactly what they need to know to make games.  In 1-3 years, the kids should be able to pump out a handful of little games, and one big collaborative game at the end.  Heck, you could even sell the large game at the end and give the students a discount on their fees based on how well it sells.

Bureaucracy and Money

The biggest issue I see with current game dev courses is the amount of bureaucracy that’s involved in setting up the course.  It’s obviously going to be better to have the course meet requirements for a Bachelor’s degree or equivalent, but try not to let this ruin the course itself.  From what I’ve seen in courses there is a lot of irrelevant material taught.  If this HAS to be taught then do it quickly, and get it out of the road.  The key here is teaching kids how to make games, and make them well.  If the course is set up to make money then there’s a good chance it’s not going to work.  The main focus here needs to be making good game programmers.  Once you start pumping out awesome programmer’s I guarantee you their tuition fees will be the smallest part of your income.  You’ll have people wanting to pay top dollar for your students, people will want to start advertising to your students to use their tech and you could even secure a deal with a certain large video card manufacturer to focus your education on their cards.

Conclusion

There is a massive market for game development education at the moment, a vacuum I see filling very quickly.  I just hope that at least some of the new courses are better than the ones I’ve already heard about.  So there is my dream.  I’m a little too poor and busy right now to set this up, so I’m leaving it for anyone else to try.  Let me know how you do and we can work out the commission I get later.

It started with Westwood

Anyone who has known me for more than a few years will know that Westwood Studios used to be my favourite games company. In fact, I joined the games industry mainly because of the games they produced, and an article I read by Erik Yeo who worked for Westwood. So what does that have to do with EA buying Bioware? Well the more astute in the audience will know that EA also brought Westwood. From that point on, Westwood slowly but surely died. Whether it happened instantly or over the course of a few years (C&C Generals wasn’t too bad) it’s fair to say that it eventually did die. I would hate to see the same thing happen to Bioware. Unfortunately though, most signs point to the fact that it will.

Is it really over?

Mass Effect is going to be one of the biggest games of the year. Bioware have brought out a bunch of awesome games in the past, including Neverwinter Nights which even got my wife back into gaming. So the real question is, can they withstand the onslaught of all that is EA and survive? My naïve optimistic persona says yes, of course they will. However, my realist persona knows that its only a matter of time before Bioware employee’s start getting stepped on, or even just the knowledge of what’s happened in the past (ala Westwood) encourages them to move on.

There’s not a lot of point speculating too much about what will happen. As always, time will tell, but I implore EA to change their ways and let Bioware do its own thing, something which obviously works.