CONTROL MAGAZINE #35 • CONTROL-ONLINE.NL

A NEW BREED OF

PUBLISHERSINDIES OF THE WORLD

UNITE!MICROSOFT’S

KILLER APP

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WHY WE FIGHTOVER FREE-TO-PLAY

MAGAZINE

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Control MagazineNeude 5, 3512 AD Utrecht, The NetherlandsT: +31 (0)30 - 231 99 14M: redactie@control-online.nlwww.Control-Online.nl (Dutch)www.ControlMagazine.net (English)

Magazine team

Publisher / Matthijs Dierckxmatthijs@controlmagazine.net

Editor-in-chief / Eric Bartelsoneric@controlmagazine.net

Editor / Alessandra van Otterloalessandra@controlmagazine.net

Additional layout / René BartelsonManager Operations / Arno LandsbergenWebsite & network management / Martijn Frazer

Editorial contributorsElke KuijperErnst-Jan van MelleDennis Scimeca

AdvertisingPrint and Online / www.control-online.nl/salesT: +31 (0)30 - 231 99 14E: sales@control-online.nl

About Control MagazineControl is the leading Dutch publication on game development. With a readership exceeding 3,000 professionals and relevant students, the magazine is a pivotal platform for news, information, opinion and job opportunities within the game industry.

Control Magazine was founded in 2007 by Matthijs Dierckx and Eric Bartelson

PartnersControl Magazine is proud media partner of:• GDC San Francisco• GDC Europe• Dutch Games Association• Dutch Game Garden• Indigo – the indie showcase

DisclaimerNothing in this magazine may be reproduced in whole or part without the written permission of the publisher. This magazine is fully independent and not affiliated in any way with the companies mentioned herein.

Copyright © 2014 Control MagazineAll Rights Reserved

ContentsOpening .................................................................... 2

Interview: Concept Art Sessions ................... 6

Column: Microsoft’s Killer App ...................... 8

Coverstory: Real Clash of Clans ...................10

Feature: A New Breed of Publishers .........14

Interview: Indies Unite ....................................16

Column: In a world... .........................................18

ControlMAGAZINE

Control 2

IMAGINE a theater. A theater that boasts 2,000 seats, divided over 67 rows. On one par-ticular evening a popular comedian sold the place out. Well, ‘sold’... Out of 67 rows, 66 are occupied by members of the audience who did not buy a ticket, they got in for free.

Only the people sitting in the first row bought a ticket. And of those attendees, only three bought a VIP ticket. Just those three tickets make up half of the total revenue for that night. Three out of 2,000 visitors bring in half the money.

Sounds ridiculous? Maybe, but apparently this is the current situation in the theater of free-to-play games. Three out of 2,000 players generate half the revenue. It was the most re-vealing and perhaps even shocking revelation of the January snapshot provided by Swrve, the Irish company providing tools for mobile developers.

You know what sounds less ridiculous? The same theater with 2,000 people in the audi-ence who actually bought a ticket. Still, in the gamesindustry, especially in the world of mo-bile games, letting people in for free seems to be the only way to actually get some revenue.Of course, the comparison isn’t completely fair. The non-paying members of the audience wouldn’t get the same experience as the VIPs. Still, sometimes it helps to take a step back

and take a good look at the numbers to fully understand what is driving our industry.Free-to-play has its fair share of opponents as well as a large number of evangelists. And for some reason they don’t get along very well. Discussions on this subject tend to turn hos-tile all too quickly. In our coverstory we take a look at some of the possible reasons for this animosity.

Turn to page 10 to read our analysis.

Eric Bartelson & Matthijs DierckxFounders Control Magazine

Well, that’s a first. A hospital and an in-surance company buying half a game studio. It recently happened to Grendel Games, de-veloper of health games.

We did some searching, but couldn’t find another example, so we guess this is in-deed a first.

The reason behind the investment? Gren-del Games develops low-cost, high-impact games that either train medical staff or help patients.Their biggest project to date is called Un-derground, a not-so-serious game for sur-geons using Wii-controllers to simulate laparoscopy.Last year, Grendel’s founders were invited by Google to demonstrate the game at the Googleplex.

RIDICULOUS THEATER

HOSPITAL INVESTS IN GAME STUDIO

JOIN THE RANKS

I S N O W R E C R U I T I N G F O R I T S U P C O M I N G P R O J E C T S

www.guerrilla-games.com/jobs

www.facebook.com/GuerrillaGames

twitter.com/guerrilla_jobs

www.linkedin.com/company/guerrilla-games

FIND US ON:

Control 4

MOVIES GAMIFIEDGravity, The Hobbit, Men of Steel, Sherlock Holmes, Pacific Rim

and most recently 300: Rise of an Empire. There’s one studio that turned all these blockbusters into one or more games and we bet you’ve never even heard the name: Sticky Studios.

True, these are all promotional games – so no big budget con-sole releases. However, these web- and mobile-games aren’t half bad, especially considering some of them were developed in less than two months. The audience seems to agree, some of the mobile releases reached over four million downloads.

Have a look at some of the movies that Sticky ‘gamified’.

Gravity

The Hobbit

Sherlock Holmes

Pacific Rim

Man of Steel300: Rise of an Empire

Control 4

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MONETIZE YOUR GAME GET PLAYED BY MILLIONS WORLDWIDE

Are development budgets skyrocketing for next-generation consoles? Not according to Guerrilla Games’ boss Hermen Hulst. Note: that is Sony-owned Guerrilla Games, so there might be some politics involved.

But still, this is what the Killzone-chief had to say when we asked him about Shadow Fall’s budget:“Compared to Killzone 3, Shadow Fall’s budget increased by 10 to 15 percent. The team grew from 130 to 140 members. How-ever, we did outsource a lot more, about three times as much.”Hulst did not disclose the actual budget it-self, saying: “I would have to calculate that.”

Earlier Epic’s frontman Tim Sweeny pre-dicted the development costs for next-gen consoles would double. He based that statement on Epic’s experience with the Samaritan-demo.

150 MILLION DOWNLOADS…FROM THE NOKIA STORE?

From a gamesindustry point of view the most surprising bit of info revealed during Nokia’s recent keynote presenta-tion wasn’t the fact that the Microsoft-owned manufacturer is launching an Android/Windows-hybrid. It was the announcement by a game company it had reached 150 million downloads from the NOKIA store.

Publisher/developer Lunagames releas-es its game on a host of platforms: iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone and of course Nokia. But somehow the latter proves to be more successful than all others combined with the aforemen-tioned 150 million downloads out of a total of 250 million.

‘NO HUGE INCREASE IN NEXT-GEN DEVELOPMENT COST’, SAYS GUERRILLA

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Practice makes perfect Concept Artists

6

In November last year junior artist Isabella Koelman and programmer Joris Van Leeu-wen started a website to help fellow artists.

Here’s how.

Most (concept) artists in the industry work with deadlines. You get a limited amount of time to turn a brief into concept art. Now, creating art and time constraint may feel con-flicting but Koelman accepts them as part of the job: “Spending more time on your work can definitely improve a piece, but there is a point when that’s no longer the case. So working with deadlines is a given. That’s why we created CAS. The limited time gives an extra boost and forces you to finish the work instead of infinitely tweaking it.”

Tag combinationsArtists make art based on tags. They get to choose the amount of time (max. three hours) and the number of tags (one, two or three words). The tags themselves are auto-generated by the website. In the private beta the combination of tags was not always logical. Weird briefs like ‘Sunrise’ combined with ‘Evening’ popped up. The system now uses user-input to prevent illogical tag combinations. Van Leeuwen: “Artists can

choose to play a sort of mini-game in which they pick three out of nine suggested tags. The website remembers these combinations to improve the random tag generation.” At this point there are 2,400 tag words and this number is growing rapidly, since users can also add tags.

Most users start with thirty minute sessions. When not completely confident about your skill level, the short timeframe serves as an handy excuse. But recently the three hour limit has become more popular. Koelman and Van Leeu-wen explain: “After giving it a couple of goes, people feel more comfortable in getting feed-back and no longer need the time excuse.”

Friendly paint-oversThe community plays a big role in CAS. They submit work and also give feedback on the pieces of others. Getting feedback from your peers can be intimidating. Therefore, CAS al-lows you to choose the level of feedback you want. Ranging from very limited to complete paint-overs in which others paint their sug-gestions over the original work. Viewers can use the switch button to go from the original to the paint-over version to see the differenc-es. CAS has also developed a Facebook-like

friend structure. This allows the more ‘shy’ users to share their work only with friends.

Constant flowThe flow of incoming artwork is constant. About ten new artworks are submitted ev-ery day. “A couple of weeks ago, we had a lit-tle spike of thirty pieces in one day, but that was because a teacher from one of the game education programs used it for his classes,” says Koelman. This is something she likes to encourage. “At this point we still need to get our name out there, but we definitely like for schools to use CAS this way.”

New ideasKoelman and Van Leeuwen want to add gam-ification to make CAS even more fun. People providing useful feedback can earn points and level up. Artists who submit a certain amount of artwork can earn badges. They also would like top artists from, for example, large com-panies like Disney to become (guest) mentors. Lots of great ideas that will take shape in the (not too far away) future.CAS is off to a successful start. So far users have already put in 800 hours of work. By the time you read this, that number is without doubt much higher. •

On the coverThe cover of this magazine was made by Koelman using CAS: ”Control gave me the tags Seduction, Missed Opportunity and Games. I put those tags in CAS and made it a two hour project. The first hour, I used to test ideas and in the second hour I finalized it. What you see is a woman who seduces ghosts to enter the darkness. She leads them away from opportunity. Main inspiration were Journey and Transistor, two of my favorite games. People who know these games will probably recognize some elements.”

Text: Alessandra van Otterlo

Concept Art Sessions challenges you to create an artwork under time constraint. The goal: helping artists grow through practice.

45 min

1 hour

2 hours

4 hours

20 hours

40 hours

“

“Getting feedback from your peers can be intimidating”

7 Control

“I effectively paid $600 to play Titanfall. That was the total cost of my Xbox One console and my

copy of the game. It doesn’t even feel strange to write that. I ef-fectively paid $500 to play Gears of War on the Xbox 360. Paying $600 to play Titanfall feels down-right normal. That’s just how killer apps for new consoles work.

As I write this in February, the PlayStation 4 has sold 5.6 million units worldwide, versus the Xbox One’s 3 million units. Those num-bers could be completely differ-ent in a month or two on account of the release of a single game. That’s also just how killer apps

work, and it’s crazy compared to every other consumer hardware business I can think of.

I never wanted a VHS, CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray player on account of one movie or album. I don’t know anybody who did. I bought those machines for their long-term utility and to access huge media libraries. A new video game con-sole eventually offers the same sort of utility as releases of pre-vious-gen games slack off and eventually end, but it’s always a specific game that makes me run out to the store and upgrade to a new console.

I never plan to hook my cable television into the Xbox One, and I’ve only plugged in the Kinect camera long enough to decide I had no patience for the motion controls or yelling at the thing just to pause and play video on Netflix. The only use I currently have for the Xbox One is to play video games, and what deter-mined the purchase right now, versus a year from now when the price might have dropped,

is Titanfall. Microsoft needs to hope for a few million people just like me.

The concept of the killer app originated in the early 1980s, when the spreadsheet program VisiCalc gave businesses a rea-son to invest in computers. The coining of the term is sometimes attributed to the book “Unleash-ing the Killer App: Digital Strate-gies for Market Dominance” by Larry Downes and Chunka Mui, published in 1998. The term may have worked its way into the public lexicon, in reference to In-ternet Explorer, during the ques-tioning of Bill Gates in the United States v. Microsoft antitrust suit. But the killer app is most strongly associated with our industry be-cause only we provide such fre-quent and powerful demonstra-tions of the concept in action.

Other than price, the differenc-es between the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are blurry at best. What mostly separates the two consoles is public perception of the companies behind them.

Sony serves the video game audience. Microsoft serves con-sumers who love watching live cable television, want to hold Skype conference meetings, en-joy hands-free motion controls,

and who also want to play some video games. Titanfall is Microsoft’s first opportunity to counter Sony’s rhetoric and provide the gam-ing bona fides for the Xbox One, and you can tell just how sharply Microsoft realizes this by all the patches hitting the console in time for Titanfall’s release. They are patching in Twitch TV broadcast capability. 20% of all

Text: Dennis Scimeca

“Titanfall could move millions of systems and push Microsoft back into the first lap of the eighth generation console race.”

Microsoft

Control 8

We already broughtHotline Miami, Awesomenauts Assemble, Gunslugs and other great titles to console…How about your game?

LICENSED DEVELOPER FOR “We treat your IP as if it were our own…”

E-mail: ralph.egas@abstractiongames.com (CEO)Web: abstractiongames.comFacebook: abstractiongames

Twitter: @AbstractionGamePhone: +31 40 78 79 990

Twitch streams were originat-ing from PS4 units in January. Microsoft needs to cut into that number. After months worth of user complaints they are patch-ing Party chat and friends lists on the Xbox One to make them function the way they always should have, i.e. the way they work on the Xbox 360. Microsoft realizes they can’t afford to let anything get in the way of a posi-tive Titanfall experience.

Titanfall could move millions of systems and push Microsoft back into the first lap of the eighth generation console race, or only appeal to early adopters of the Xbox One. And unlike Microsoft’s last system sellers, Gears of War or Halo 3, Titanfall is also being

released on the Xbox 360 and PC. It’s possible that a sizeable chunk of Titanfall players could choose to stick with existing hardware, considering the dearth of what else is available on the Xbox One.

I remember when Sony released an overpriced brick at the begin-ning of the last round of the con-sole wars. I remember the disbe-lief among investors and players that the clear winner of the Xbox/PlayStation 2 fight could make such vexing decisions with their follow-up console. The PlaySta-tion 3 lost out to the Xbox 360. Microsoft began this console generation with less of an ad-vantage than Sony did in the last round, and Microsoft has inspired similar disbelief.

I wish I had a crystal ball. When I get home from GDC, I’ll either have people to play Titanfall with on my Xbox One, or I might have to play it on a different platform if that’s where my friends are. That’s just how it works if killer apps fail to deliver. •

needs their Killer AppDENNIS SCIMECA is a freelance writer from Boston, Massachusetts. He is usually on the video game beat, and has been published on media like Salon, Polygon, Ars Technica, VentureBeat and Kotaku.

The realClash of Clans

The fight over in-app purchases in free-to-play

Brenda Romero(Loot Drop):“I want to make a game, not a compulsion.”Part of Romero’s speech at GDC 2013:

I hate and I love free to play at the same time. It is a good way to make money, but also a great way to mess up a game. It is important that the game keeps its integrity. For exam-ple, League of Legends. The core of the game is free, everything else is paid, but the integrity of the game remains the same. This is different for friction-based free-to-play. By slowing down the player you change the core of the game. Players hate that, but they pay anyhow, because they want to play on. Bottomline: I want people to pay for games be-cause the games make them happy. I don’t want people to pay for games out of frustration. I want to make a game, not a compulsion.

Control 10

The debate on free-to-play games is the fiercest ever in the gamesindustry. Is that a problem? And why is it so hard to find common ground?

Heated debates are noth-ing new for the games-industry. For starters,

there’s the ongoing discussion on whether or not games lead to real life violence, closely followed by the debate on game addiction. Participants are typically divided along the lines of industry versus non-industry. Put simpler: the gamesindustry versus the rest of the world.

Lately, a number of discussions arose within the gamesindustry. These range from a friendly pro-fessional conversation on games as a storytelling mechanism, to a much more fierce debate on in-clusion and gender.

However, it took the subject of free-to-play to turn an industry wide discussion surprisingly hos-tile. The gloves are off and both parties are hell-bent on making the other adopt the ‘right’ point of view. As many industry people will have discovered, the tone of the discus-sions in the press and on social media has turned sour. It’s starting to resemble the heavily polarized American political climate. Less ex-changes of arguments, more ques-tioning the other’s intellect for not accepting the obvious truths.More problematic: this debate is starting to hurt the industry as a whole. No matter your personal

take on free-to-play, a divided in-dustry is a paper tiger. Right now, the European Union is drawing up legislation making monetizing free-to-play games more difficult. Conversion rates are already re-ported to be as low as 1.5 percent (according to a recent snapshot by Swrve). Imagine what adding addi-tional barriers could do to free-to-play depended companies.But since the gamesindustry it-self is nowhere near a consensus, launching an effective lobby for a more industry friendly form of reg-ulation seems an impossible task.There are more recent examples showing how a deeply divided gamesindustry could damage it-self. GameOn is a combined gov-ernmental/private game invest-ment fund in The Netherlands. Its recent launch was met by hefty criticism from within the industry itself. Mainly due to the fund’s fo-cus on free-to-play investments.And again, no matter whose side you’re on in this discussion: an in-dustry that apparently does not welcome governmental support with open arms, may soon find itself without.

Why?

The real issue is ‘why?’ – why is it so hard to accept someone else’s point of view. Why is it so hard to find common ground? After all, we are talking about a mere busi-

ness model, of which there are many. (In this analysis we focus squarly on free-to-play games based on in-app purchases.)

Four reasons spring to mind.

1: Core interests no longer align

Traditionally there has always been some kind of tension be-tween publishers and marketeers on one hand, and developers and designers on the other. There are stories aplenty about publishers pushing developers in a direction they didn’t like - for the sake of increased sales potential. (We’re not taking a stand here, we’re making an observation.) But the general rule of thumb was this: a better game simply sells more, hence: the ultimate goal was ei-ther the same or at least very compatible for all parties.With free-to-play this is no longer the case. Everybody still wants to, no, has to make money in order to keep making games. And one could argue that currently, the free-to-play model is the best way of doing that. However, adopting such a model only really works if a game is completely build around in-game monetization.This leads to a paradigm shift: from a business point of view the ultimate goal no longer is creating

“

“Why is it so hard to accept someone else’s point of view. Why is it so hard

to find common ground?”

Rik Haandrikman(f2p-portal GamePoint):“What the market wants at the moment is free-to-play”Director of Business Development (statements made in a personal capacity)

There is a market for premium games. That market is small and get-ting smaller. You can’t build a scalable company based on (just) premium games in app stores now. If your ambi-tion is to build fun games and make a couple of bucks while doing it, premi-um might just cut it. If your ambition is to build a sizeable company with reve-nues that scale with investment, pre-mium is definitely not the way.Look at Ridiculous Fishing, for exam-ple. A great game by all accounts. Being named Game of the Year by Apple and plastered all over the App Store’s featured section, barely had them scratch the bottom of the Top 100 grossing games, though. Vlam-beer has been very vocal about their opinion on free to play games, but if being Apple’s Game of the Year doesn’t get you revenue, what will? The economic opportunity simply isn’t there. We’ve spent the last years teaching an entire generation of consumers that games should be free to download and hard as they may try, it’s unlikely indies will change this mentality anytime soon.

If you want to create games for app stores or the web and plan to grow be-yond having a handful of developers in subsidized office space, your chances in the premium space are limited at best. For every Vlambeer out there, there are thousands of studios that aren’t able to pay their bills. If you want to build a business and aren’t looking for a subsidized hobby, look at what the market wants. What the market wants at the moment is free-to-play.

ILLUSTRATION: JOERI LEFEVRE.COM

Text: Matthijs Dierckx

11 Control

the best game possible, but the best ‘monetizable’ game possible.To be fair: for game-startups launching with an exit strategy in mind, this is a solution, rather than a problem. The initial invest-ments – i.e. risks – are a great deal smaller compared to tra-ditional AAA or mid-core game development. This means it’s easier for game start-ups to get funding and if successful, to scale their company. Success almost certainly leads to a prolonged and steady cash flow, making the studio an attractive target for ac-quisition or in some cases, even an IPO.

However, not all designers start a company much less a career in the gamesindustry with an exit in mind. Which brings us to:

2: Compromising game design

For a free-to-play game to be successful, the core gameplay loop has to be designed around monetization. Not all designers oppose this idea, however the ones that do argue that currently gameplay is being severely com-promised. Player progression is deliberately stalled, earning in-game currency a drag and spam-ming social media rewarded. For a lot of designers this is not the way

they want to design games.And that’s exactly why many de-signers are so rigid in their com-plaints: free-to-play touches the very core of their job, the very reason they became game de-signer in the first place.Until somebody comes up with a successful free-to-play mechanic that does not compromise game-play in any way, a large portion of professional game designers will remain firmly in the anti free-to-play camp.

3: Missed opportunities

Investors never fail to see oppor-tunities. They see the increasing but still moderate financial suc-cess of dozens of indie develop-ers. But most importantly, what they see is a tremendous poten-tial – if only these studios would change their business model, ditch premium in favor of freemi-um and take investment to spend on marketing and user acquisi-tion. So, no, investors and pub-lishers will not be silent about the benefits of free-to-play, it’s their core business.Furthermore, they simply do not get why developers would turn down a chance to increase their profits. This became abundantly clear at the recent Casual Connect Europe. The traditionally free-to-

play oriented conference boasted a large indie expo. A place with certainly a lot of mix, but not so much match. It was easy to over-hear conversations between de-velopers and potential investors that went absolutely nowhere. They genuinely did not seem to understand each other. Imagine the surprise of a developer whose game is currently for sale on Play-Station Network, having an inves-tor say: “So you don’t have a valid monetization model?” Certainly a Casual Disconnect.For developers who don’t feel like making free-to-play games, this poses a problem. They simply can’t match the attractiveness of free-to-play studios, so get-ting funded is becoming harder. They’re left with increasingly sparse options: doing work-for-hire and hoping there’s enough time left for the development of their own IP; or launching a crowdfunding campaign – which is a huge risk in itself.

4: Ethics: where it becomes personal

Another catalyst of the debate is the question whether or not free-to-play games are ethical. This is a subject that is extremely difficult to discuss. It’s impossible to consider certain free-to-play games unethical, without ques-

Luc Bloom (Blue Giraffe): Some thoughts on 1 vs 1 multiplayer in a ‘casual’ F2P gameFree-to-play developer

For our upcoming game Duory, we’re still trying to determine the best monetization method. Free-to-play is certainly an option, even though it will be a multiplayer game (synchronous turn-based). The ob-vious problem with paying for things like power-ups in multiplayer games is that the gained advantages will drive the opposing player away. The money spent will feel as a ‘cheat’. What you want is that the oppos-ing player will see the purchases as something they would like for themselves. This works well in coop-erative games; Draw Something’s color palette is a good example of this.

To make this work in multiplayer games however, you’ll need to make the player feel that the added features will give him or her an advantage because of their personal preference. In Duory one example would be unlocking a larger playing field. Players that have collected enough points (or spent a little money) can start a match with a larger playing field, which prob-ably feels like an advantage because they are more experienced players. Another example would be card sets. Imagine playing Duory with a “Game Heroes/Game Villains” card set. I bet you’re better equipped to remember them than some of your friends.

A third example would be purchasing actual power-ups. The match would start with both players having the same power-ups. The player that selected the power-up expects to have an advantage, because he expects to be better at using the power-up. Besides that, it’ll be more fun. Duory is a 1 vs 1 multiplayer game that will be playable on mobile devices. Its core mechanic is a twist on Concentra-tion (Memory). The cards have two sides and both players see a different side. This way, besides memorizing the loca-tion of previous cards, they’ll have to think about which card is going to be revealed to their opponent.

Rami Ismail (Vlambeer):“Willfully exploiting your players”Indie developer (Ridiculous Fishing)

The model of free-to-play isn’t the problem. The problem is the im-plementation, which currently comes in one of three distinct flavors: “Pay to Win”, “Pay to Play” and “Play to not Play”. In all cases, the game is inten-tionally crippled to enable the player to pay. That means that a lot of peo-ple are playing subpar games, and only a tiny segment of them pays to access the proper game.Conversion is always a problem: only a tiny segment of players will pay at all. That means that F2P is as risky as premium: unless you have millions of players and your monetization is perfectly tweaked, you won’t make a dime. As F2P developer you have two options: either you make a game that rivals the quality of the premium apps, or you willfully exploit a small part of your players.I use exploit in the literal sense here. If only a tiny part of the users pays, companies have to allow people to infinitely pour money into a game. That leads to the ‘whale’ phenom-enon, something that a lot of the less moral developers build their companies around. “Whales” tend to have bad self-control with regards to spending, and can end up in terrible financial situations. The ability of game developers to manipulate peo-ple into spending more money than they’re aware of, or using misleading terminology, is of such a level that the European Union is investigating the model. A continent is now re-viewing the boundaries of a business model in video games.No matter your perspective, that’s a clear enough signal that something is terribly wrong.

““It’s impossible to consider certain f2p games unethical, without questioning the morality of their creators”

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tioning the morality of their creators. And by doing so, the conversation is basically over be-fore it even started – nobody likes to be called immoral.This further explains why for some it’s so hard to just let the others be. He who considers free-to-play immoral, probably wants the model to vanish completely. And therefore others need con-vincing. (Which in turn is close to impossible, because it would take a lot of free-to-play developers and publishers admitting to un-ethical behaviour.)–Free-to-play has such a strong pull on developers, that even outspoken opponents like Peter Molyneux, are starting to experi-ment with the model. It will be interesting to see if it is at all pos-sible to create a successful free-to-play game without compro-mising gameplay at all. •

Reinout te Brake (game investment

fund GameOn): “The industry has been pushed in the trend of F2P”Founder

Investors have shown in the past that they are pushing studios to ex-plore new trends. I haven’t always liked that, because to get money you needed, for example, to completely focus on mobile games. It is chal-lenging to make sure that you are one of the first and don’t end up in the league of „we are also mobile” and „we are the next Supercell”.If I look at GameOn, we are very will-ing to explore new models where payments, organic growth, retention and in game-purchasing are being used optimally.The industry has been pushed in the trend of F2P, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t innovate on that and create an ultimate successful model!

Isn’t the focus on free-to-play dange-rous because in its current form, the model is too young? It has not proven itself for the long term.

I cannot say I agree with this. If you look at some recent success stories, I think more people get experienced with free-to-play. Of course, it’s still challenging, but if you see how the industry is sharing knowledge, the good and the bad experiences, then I am extremely confident. Still, having said that, I am looking at a model of a small payment to install or buy the game, with premium features that can be bought in the game. For example: Give the first ten lev-els for free, like the game, then pay an x amount, otherwise you cannot continue.So needless to say, we need to keep exploring to keep increasing rev-enues within the gamesindustry.

Eric Diepeveen (Stolen Couch Games):“Our game annoys users on purpose”Free-to-play developer

During the concept phase of Castaway Paradise, we created a mod-ular structure. All aspects, from graph-ics to control, are designed to increase retention and monetization. Every-thing you do in the game is part of a loop that either earns us money or gets us more users.

Our game annoys users on purpose so they will make an in-app purchase.

We manipulate the players so we can continue to make games. If there is a group of players who still enjoy our game, we’ve done well.That the quality of a game is influenced by business decisions is no news. Al-most all AAA-games are much more polished in the beginning, much less at the end. Simply because just a small percentage will play the end.

W e ’ r eback!c o n t r o lconference IIDeveloper focusedNovember 2014The Netherlandscontrolmagazine.net

2013 ROSTER INCLUDED: BUNGIE, CD PROJEKT RED, 343 INDUSTRIES, BLENDO GAMES, VLAMBEER, GUERRILLA GAMES, LARIAN STUDIOS, VANGUARD GAMES AND MANY MORE!

Sure, they’re still around. The old massive publishing houses that used to rule the games industry. They are still big and still

a force to be reckoned with, but more and more they become a relic of days gone by. Because in an industry that is constantly changing, big isn’t necessarily a good thing. It means that it’s harder to cater to the little guy. And there are more little guys every day.

That’s why we see a new breed of publish-ers emerging from the drop shadows of the giants. Small companies that know their cli-ents by name, that actively help with virtu-ally every aspect of development and that can switch tatics if the rapidly changing market so demands. A publisher that doesn’t act as a loan shark, but as a partner. But why now? Especially in a time when self-publishing and crowdfunding could have easily meant the end of publishers. “Well, it didn’t so much end our role as publisher, but is has certainly changed it dramatically”, says Erik Schreuder, CEO of Dutch publisher Iceberg Interactive. “You see, self-publishing doesn’t equal self-promoting per se. There are plenty of developers out there that real-ize their strenghts lie in design and program-ming. They simply lack the skill, the desire or the money to promote their games to the ex-ponential degree that a publisher can.”

“We also offer other services such as advanc-ing development budget, quality assurance, producing-aid, localizations and age-rating to name a few. Of course a publisher will take a cut of the revenue, so each developer has to make that leap of faith that co-operation will

lead to far more sales than going solo. Luckily we have plenty developers that took that leap and are happy with the results.”Josh Presseien, CEO of publisher Crescent Moon, started out as game developer and rolled into publishing by chance. Now his company is doing both, a combination he feels is really beneficial to his clients: “Help-ing developers to improve their games so that they can get featured, is one of my special-ties.” That doesn’t mean he can just promise that all important feature in the US iTunes App Store, Steam, Google Play or Amazon, but he sure has got enough experience to predict what title will get picked up.

Never boredPresseien now spends most of his time on publishing duties. But his love for creating games remains strong. So strong in fact, that he has found a way to get more involved in the creative side of things this year. “Fewer games from third party developers and more time coming up with my own ideas. It’s a fun mix that keeps me busy and never bored.”

No time to get bored at Austin based publish-er Devolver Digital either. Nigel Lowrie sums up an impressive list of games to come this year. “The first years we were actively looking for new games and new studios to work with, but now we are overwhelmed by the amount of developers that are coming to us.” Devolver debuted as publisher in 2009 with Croteam’s Serious Sam HD. “That established us as not assholes to work with.” Since then, there has been a string of edgy indiegames like Hotline Miami. “We are publisher for developers that

In a time of self-publishing and crowd funding, a few young publishers discovered how to be relevant.

A new breed of publishers

Erik Schreuder • Iceberg InteractiveGames: Endless Space - Amplitude, Armada 2526 - Ntronium Games

“We would rather be a bigger player in niche than tiny in ‘me-too’. “

Josh Presseien • Crescent MoonGames: Shadowsword: The Fallen King, Paper Monsters - Robots vs Wizards

“Helping developers to improve their games so that they can get featured, is one of my specialties.”

Nigel Lowrie • Devolver DigitalGames: Hotline Miami - Dennaton Games, Luftrausers - Vlambeer

“If you have a game that’s worthy of the attentention, gamers will come.”

Text: Eric Bartelson

Control 14

don’t need one”, says Lowrie. “We make in-vestments in all our games but it’s never a full on development budget advance. That would make it business. And we like to think of it as a partnership.”

All three publishers were founded in 2009. That’s no coincidence. It was the year that dig-ital distribution really took hold of the industry. The original Angry Birds launched, paving the way for the boom of mobile gaming. “The biggest change no doubt is the transi-tion to a market of digital download”, says Schreuder. “The once powerful boxed market is completely overtaken. But no matter how little there is left, it’s still here and we don’t ig-nore it. Our games continue to be released in traditional boxed retail. It has become sort of a marketingtool.”

Worthy of attentionAccording to Lowrie the rise of digital has taken away a layer between gamers and developers. “Retail was always right there in the middle. Now we communicate directly with consum-ers and that has changed marketing and PR in a big way. You see communities form around certain games and even though you can’t ma-nipulate it, if you have a game that’s worthy of the attention, gamers will come.”

Presseien takes maintaining the Crescent Moon community seriously. “Social media, fo-rum communities, stuff like that. Keeping them updated on the progress of games, updates, things that need fixing, or new things coming out. It takes up a lot of my time nowadays.”Iceberg Interactive also recognizes the impor-

tance of a strong community. “It’s vital for our business. Reason why we created a fulltime position of Community Manager over a year ago. This person is dedicated to forum moni-toring, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest even. Press coverage is shifting to the What The Fuck Is... and Let’s Play vids so we have to get on board asap, as we believe Twitch is the next big thing.”

Deep experienceThese three worldwide publishers have a lot in common. They are mean and lean (none of them employs more than ten people) and have found a competitive edge in a specific niche. Presseien: “We started out with role play-ing games for touch screen and built a loyal fanbase around that. We are releasing lots of other types of games as well. Platformers, ac-tion games, even racing games. I believe our core audience wants a more deep experience on mobile devices, mostly, than what is usu-ally available. That’s sort of the niche that we like to fill.”Lowrie: “At Devolver we look for small indie developers with interesting ideas. We want something new and exciting in terms of de-sign, visuals or narrative. I think we have the games to back up our philosophy.”

Iceberg Interactive has found its niche in space. “Space – strategy and sim – is one the genres that we focus on indeed. We’re not going to come up with the next FIFA or Call of Duty so we have to be smart and operate in other ar-eas. It’s part of our company strategy that we would rather be a bigger player in niche than tiny in me-too.” •

BROFORCE, Devolver Digital

GAMEJOBSW E B S I T E

JOBS.CONTROLMAGAZINE.NET

15

S uppose you have a development budget worth of six months rent and a cupboard full of Cup Noodles. Once the game is

done you might find it difficult, if not impossi-ble, to actively market and promote it. All your money is invested in the game and you need cold hard cash for everything these days, right? Well… no. That’s not necessarily true.

There’s a network of connected indie devs around the world ready to lend a hand -or a couch- if so needed. There is a growing num-ber of trade conferences, consumer confer-ences and other cons happy to show of your new game. And if you play it smart, you can maximize the visibility and buzz of your game without spending crazy amounts of money. Indies just have to stick together. Unite. Make themselves heard.

VitalRami Ismail, business guy at Vlambeer, world traveler and -according to Gamasutra- ‘an omnipresence’ within the indie community,

calls it ‘absolutely vital’ for indie developers to work together. “Indie can’t exist without uniting. We’re too small as individual studios to have any impact on our own, but together we can make a difference.” It’s one of the rea-sons why Ismail travels around the world and spends so much time on helping out with sev-eral initiatives and meeting different people. “I feel it’s important to support things like the Indie Megabooth and local Dutch conferences like Indievelopment and Control Conference. Free flow of information, support and having people to talk to is such an intrinsic part of the culture of indie games.”

Ismail is convinced that there is an increasing amount of possibilities to reach an audience. “But there is also an increasing amount of competition to deal with. I feel democratised platforms like YouTube Let’s Play and distri-bution methods like itch.io seem increasingly popular. Also you can team up with a publisher to let them do the marketing.” Ismail is also associated with Indie Megabooth, one of the largest organized initiatives to improve visibil-

ity of small indie developers at game confer-ences like PAX, Gamescom and GDC. “PAX and other consumer events are such a great way of reaching out to gamers, to get feedback on your game and to figure out what you’re up to. Indie Megabooth represents a lot of my val-ues, which is the reason I invested so much time and effort in the whole thing.”

Mega Driving force behind the Indie Megabooth is Kelly Wallick. She started the first one at PAX East 2012 when she got 16 companies to-gether in one booth to compete for attention against the triple A studios. Since its debut the Megabooth has seen incredible growth. Start-ing with those 16 indie studios, the current count is over 80. Wallick didn’t know much of the games industry when she first organized Megabooth. As an outsider looking in, it just felt wrong to her to see small studios struggle to get the gamers’ attention. “What struck me was how passionate and thoughtful the de-velopers were”, Wallick says. “It’s really inspir-

All over the world indie developers join forces to

raise a fist against triple A studios and their big budget

marketing campaigns.

Indies of the world

UNITE!Text: Eric Bartelson

Control 16

ing and I think an important part of the crea-tive side of games. When we first started this, the need to unite was mostly because it was so unheard of and indie games were not part of the normal gaming community. Working together allows everyone to benefit and helps developers create a network and community that will help them be successful outside of traditional corporate structures.”

Indie Megabooth is so succesful that Wallick had to start up a selection procedure that all new games have to go through. Wallick: we want to make sure that when people come to check out the Megabooth they are able to find what they are looking for and are not over-whelmed by the amount of options.” Accord-ing to Wallick selection is not just a question of ‘good enough’, but also on market trends and the number of games within a specific genre. “For the games we don’t offer space to, we try to give them some alternative options, hook them up with space outside the Mega-booth and invite them to parties and such if they plan to attend anyways. We want to be

as helpful as possible. In 99 percent of the cases it’s not that the game is bad, it’s just that it might not be far enough along, or not a good fit, or just part of a tough decision. We don’t want to discourage anyone!”

PrizeIndie Prize Showcase is also an event for indie developers. Set up to give smaller developers a chance to attend Casual Connect conferences and come into contact with potential publish-ers, distributors, platform partners and of course press. Indie Prize Director Yulia Vakhru-sheva emphasizes the importance for indies to unite. “Being part of the community means free educational resources, getting various dis-counts for attending game industry events and it’s always cheaper to travel together. Making friends in the industry means more people to support you with advice or to help you spread the word as you release new games.”

But as with Indie Megabooth success brings its own set of problems. Here too a selec-tion is being made of all the games that ap-ply. Vakhrusheva: “When we first started the Indie Showcase, our goal was to be in-clusive, not exclusive. But since the space in the showcase is limited, we have to make a selection. Luckily we have a panel of jurors that help us select the games, and, eventu-ally, the future winners of Indie Prize Awards. The juror’s names are no secret, you can find them on our landing page. That way we keep everything transparant.”

So next time your game is done and you’re looking for a way to promote the damn thing, make sure you explore the countless options at your disposal. There are friendly indies all over the world to share a Cup Noodles with. •

IGF Awards

One of the first events to bring together the indies of the world in order to cel-ebrate, promote and award their work is the Independent Games Festival. (IGF). Set up in 1998 to ‘create a similar event to Sundance for independent game de-velopers’. Now it’s an annual event during GDC in three parts: Pavillion, Awards and Independent Games Summit.

Photos right: Indie Prize Director Yulia Vakhrusheva (top) and Megabooth’s

initiator Kelly Wallick

“The need to unite was mostly

because indie games were not part

of the normal gaming community”

Text: Eric Bartelson

17 Control

MMany of us spend our free time inhabiting other worlds. We es-cape to outer space or fantasy realms and marvel at these con-structed realities and their com-bat-capable natives suspiciously willing to sleep with our digital selves. We immerse ourselves in these seductive landscapes and compelling vistas and only rarely stop and appreciate the fact that these worlds were purposely built for our enjoyment by people with pencils and machines.

On the face of it, ‘Worldbuilding’ sounds like it should take some effort. Most of us are acquainted with the world we currently in-habit, which has taken the coop-erative efforts of several billion in-dividuals over several thousands of years of post-cave develop-ment. A feat that can apparently

be matched by a handful of self-styled ‘narrative designers’, who manage to simulate complex par-adigm shifts, biological evolution and cultural development in about a year. Or less. Invariably resulting in cool-looking corridors inexpli-cably fit to shoot firearms in.

ToiletsSo what makes a game world, or any sort of world believable? Well, worlds are quite large. We have just the one in what passes for real life, and this one alone is extremely difficult to grasp as a whole for anyone. Perhaps a more constructive approach is not to dream up an entire world, but to work in reverse. Start small. Start with a single location. Explore. Ask yourself questions. Consider the toilets. Where are the toilets? Why did the architect see fit to

install them there? Who cleans the toilets? How? Is there a dedi-cated toilet-cleaner? Where does he live? Complex settings can be pulled from very trivial details.

Many of these questions might seem utterly useless. Unnec-essarily detailed. Superfluous. They are. Consider our own real-ity. We’ve got spray-on cheese, Batmobiles, fireplace DVDs, and singing animatronic Christmas trees. All of these things are largely useless and don’t mean much in and of themselves. Yet they are all the direct result of thousands of years of cultural development, ecological influ-ence and natural decay. Reason-able nonsense. A world is many small things pointing to a vague large thing, not a large thing with boxes in it, to provide cover from the people with the guns inexpli-cably coming at you. A world is amorphous, always developing, never standing still. As creators, we should not attempt to distill what little we think we under-stand of the whole, but rather, learn from the little things that make our world tangible, and use these to pencil in other worlds to

In a WorldTolkien’s perfect world

Middle-Earth is almost unparalleled in detail and sophistication, with intricate histories and fleshed-out linguistics, but it is still very much the product of one biased mind. A strict Catholic belief prevented J.R.R. Tolkien from dream-ing up an organised religion, as he was expected to have no other Gods before someone else, resulting in a world with existing, tangible deities, which curi-ously failed to affect the inhabitants of the world. His religious inflections also negated any mention or occurrence of sexual activity, later explained by the au-thor as ‘none of the cultures having any interest in such things beyond procrea-tion’. This resulted in a world of men with no discernible ambition apart from being platonic friends with other men and not being killed by Orcs. For all of its linguis-tic depth, Middle-Earth shows little indi-cation of being inhabited by people.

Like our own world, believable virtual worlds consist of millions of seemingly insignificant details. Get it right and players will call it home.

““Start small. Start with a single location. Explore.”

Text: Ernst-Jan van Melle / Image: DONTNOD Entertainment

Control 18

In a Worldescape to. A world does not have to be understood from the out-set. To understand it means there is nothing left to learn.

Narrative layersSome games manage this quite well. Portal 2’s story mainly con-cerned diabolical and/or clumsy robots trying to prevent you from escaping a large laboratory, but manages to interject several nar-rative layers that both comple-ment and stand apart from your own progress. Audio logs give an insight in Aperture Science’s ec-centric CEO, but a larger and more complete story about the com-pany is told completely through level design. History can be read in the buildings and machines like geological layers, leaving every keen-eyed player with a detailed history of the world by the end of the game. Historical markers are used to denote time, allow-ing you to easily deduce that the room with the huge computers is probably older than the one with the small computers. After a few hours of play, these three narrative strands - direct inter-action, audio logs, design - start to converge, connections can be

made, and suddenly the setting and context are revealed to be far richer than they initially appeared.

Human threatPerhaps more interesting is the question of how little worldbuild-ing a developer should engage in. There is a special niche of games inhabited by EVE Online, DayZ, and, more recently Rust, where world and setting have been absorbed by the players them-selves. In EVE, developer-written factions have made way for play-er-controlled corporations ex-ercising pressure on the game’s economy, the slightest imbalance of which can result in player-in-stigated wars costing many of thousands of real-world money in damage. In DayZ, players were originally meant to survive by hoarding supplies and evading zombies, but active player inter-est has made humans the most dangerous predator of the game. Players have taken on the roles of kidnappers, slavers and worse, without the game or setting hav-ing been meant to. Lastly, Rust, a game similar to DayZ in many respects, has done away with zombies very quickly after open-

ing Early Access - it was already clear that the players posed a far more interesting threat to each other than any NPC.

Discovery Because film is the most promi-nent entertainment industry preceding video games, it’s easy to think of them in similar terms. Both have directors, artists, and, interestingly, writers. But it is im-portant to remember that films tell stories. All information and all interaction is carefully presented to the viewer in the most stimu-lating and interesting way possi-ble. Games, on the other hand, are at their core still interactive. Which means that discovery should ulti-mately be because a player wants to discover and acts to discover. And, once given the slightest bit of control, the player will want to change things. For a writer, in the traditional sense, this is terrifying. Every detail they so lovingly put into place will be waltzed over by clumsy, inattentive players. Yet this is what makes a game inter-esting, and should be allowed for by a designer. Ultimately, a player should be allowed to play, not played at.

“

“For a writer, in the traditional sense, this

is terrifying”

In a Galaxy far away

A single author might make a world or setting overly specific and one-sided, a group of authors can pose problems of its own. ‘Many bakers spoil the crust’, as the saying goes, which is especially true of large franchises that have known the hands of hundreds of writers. The Star Wars-universe started as a well-executed but fairly run-of-the-mill epic saga. Thousands of novels, comic books, videogames and other tie-ins later, the entirety of that universe has become so large and unwieldy that its roots, that of the farm-boy destined for greater things, are more or less buried.

19 Control

g d c e u r o p e . c o m

game developers conference europeC o n g r e s s - C e n t r u m o s t K o e l n m e s s e · C o l o g n e , g e r m a n y

august 11–13, 2014 · expo: august 11–12, 2014

™

gdc europe returns august 11–13, 2014

call for session submissions open March 24–april 21, 2014

GDC14_GDCE14_Control_v3.indd 1 2/21/14 1:25 PM