ShadyLogic Blog

In February I  was honored to be part of a Panel on Virtual World development at Engage 2010 at the NY Toy Fair.

In “The Tactical Perspective:  A Best Practices Checklist” we discussed the process of migrating brands online, including a typical product development roadmap and timeline.  At a high level we covered the different phases of production as well as engaging an audience, building a brand, operations,  moderation and driving ROI.

Engage Expo was great to work with and has generously shared the recordings of the session:

At last years LOGIN conference Peter asked me to do a debate.  Knowing that I was bit outspoken in my views on technology and game design he pitted me against Isaac Barry of Gamehouse.  Our topic… “Should game designers be allowed to write code in a  scripting language”.

Watch the video if you want to get into the debate.  It is a bit slow initially.  I was a bit evil and switched the tables on Isaac in the opening statements by framing the debate around MMO’s and then conceding his main points around casual games.  Issac recovered about halfway for some fun points.

With modern Game Engines like Unity3D and Pushbutton for Flash it is possible to create a small game with a talented programmer/designer and artist.  In fact for a small game this might be the perfect combination… if you can find someone who is that talented.

The problem with this approach is that it does not scale.  Not only is it hard to find programmers that are good at design (or designers that are good at programing), you also create a tug of war if everyone is convinced they are designing the game.   Too many cooks really do spoil the broth.

In a modern MMO the engineers must be extremely disciplined and focused on creating great content delivery systems.  An iterative process that focuses on testing and quality is critical.  Handing a scripting language to designers that do not share that focus will only frustrate everyone.

The choice of which technology and language a project is built on can be divisive. We wed ourselves to the tools we know best and identify with the solutions we employ.   While there are zelots in the PC vs Mac debates, the hotter arguments in tech circles frequently revolve around what technology will mean success.

One debate that comes up in game development is the use of any language other than C/C++.  The C/C++ languages have been almost the exclusive language for game engines since its beginning.   While developers my also adopt scripting languages (many times to offload work to less technical game designers) the core that makes the engine do its magic is in C/C++.

With the advent of new technologies does this still make sense?

Microsoft has for some time been promoting an hier to the thrown in C# which is built on top of its .Net platform.  Why not C#?  I honestly like C# and believe that it is in many ways a step up that can help with productivity. C# has many of the advantages of Java without being as bloated.  It is more secure by nature and protects programmers from common mistakes.

That said, in some cases C# does not make business sense.  If you invest 10-20 million into a game, you expect the best return on that investment. The ability to release that game on multiple platforms (PS3, Wii as well as XBOX) can double your returns for small additional development time… if you program it in C or C++.

That may change.  One of our favorite small game engines Unity3D is scheduled to be release on other consoles.  When it does it will bring it’s version of the .Net runtime along with it.  Since the main engine is already in C++ it preforms significantly better than C# for most of the heavy lifting, leaving game logic to C# which is significantly faster than most scripting languages.

If your target is XNA or Unity3D then C# is the obvious choice.  To go beyond those use cases Microsoft will have to work to make the CLR a lot more open. Releasing the core of .Net under a BSD or MIT license (rather than the more restrictive GPL/LGPL for Mono) would allow developers to integrate C# on any platform and modify it to perform efficiently for their games.  Till that happens  (or Unity3D becomes a real competitor on all platforms)  console development will belong to C and C++.

I had the good fortune to present on the Future of Web3D as part of a panel at the Web3D symposium at SIGGRAPH 2008.  This is the segment on Youtube.

It was a great panel put together by Rita Turkowski of Intel and featured Remi Arnaud, Johannes Berh, Mimi Harris, Doug Twilleager, Christian Renaud, Vladimir Vukicevic and Mark Young.

I still like X3D for the sheer boldness of trying to define a standard that can completely describe 3D in XML for the web.  It is a bit heavyweight for many applications and the tools are still rudimentary for general consumption, but is still the only standards compliant 3D implementation for the web.

I think we are a bit too early for Web3D standardization.  At this point “competition is good” as evidenced by Unity3D and others coming up under the radar.  It is great to see it mature and evolve.

Kudos for a fun panel to Rita and the gang!

A while back (March 2008) I wrote an article for Game Developer Magazine on what was coming up in gaming.

Most of these predictions came true, but that is not remarkable considering that we were only looking a couple years ahead.  What I find more interesting is that things have not moved faster.  After all the vacuum isn’t going anywhere.

Catching the Next Wave.

If we take a look at the Petri-dish we call the Internet we notice something, it evolves pretty quickly.  What was the killer application last month is old news the day the next start-up launches. The companies that grow either have something intrinsically valuable, or can evolve faster than their peers. We are learning that the only true constant is ever accelerating change.

(more…)

On June 25th Dr. Robert Lai (Mr. Lai Chi Tau) Chief Scientist of China’s Cyber Recreational District (CRD) passed away in his sleep at the age of 50. I met Robert at the Virtual Worlds Conference and Expo (VWCE) and in November I had the privilege to be invited by Robert to speak at the Virtual World Summit a part of the ICCIE Summit. As his guest I got to know Robert and came to regard him as a friend.

We all have aspirations great and small. Though he had lived his life as a scientist and teacher and was at that time the public face of the CRD, Robert’s dream was a modest retirement on a hillside in China. The CRD was to be his last task before relaxing and living the simple life. It saddens me to think Robert won’t get that chance. I hope he was dreaming that dream the night he left us in his sleep.

Robert was a man who you could not help but like. A man who you felt you could trust and who regardless of what happened around him would treat you with respect. He had an infectious love of life that was only tempered by the his role and place in the world. I will miss my friend Robert and how he represented to me the many sides of China as it enters this brave new world.

Farewell to our friend Robert, you will always be China to me.

Share This

A recent discussion about what critical mass is for a social network site started me thinking about the difference between tipping points and critical mass. Technically both are defined in similar words (sometimes considered synonymous), but they do have different connotations.

A tipping point can be defined as “the culmination of a build-up of small changes that effects a big change”. It is many times tied to an event that adds a missing catalyst or critical amount of energy to achieve a self sustaining reaction. In Gladwell’s book (The Tipping Point) he refers to the mechanics of this being related to “three agents of change” which he calls “the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context”.
(more…)

Share This

It comes to no surprise to many that I am an ardent follower of the economic trends and business models that are evolving online. Among other things this affords is a perspective on what happens when you take traditional media and services and move them online where the cost of production and friction for consumption starts to approach zero.

When we amortize most work over millions of consumers it becomes practical, and sometimes more profitable to make the product “free” and support it through advertising or ancillary sales. Because of this trend there is a growing expectation among some people that all content should be “free”.
(more…)

Share This

OK, so I am terribly fond of sarcasm, you are only surprised if you don’t know me. That said I think Ben Croshaw (Yahtzee) is absolutely brilliant in this video review of Psychonauts. Depending on your tolerance of Sarcasm your mileage may vary.

Share This