25 Years!

In September 1995 I started my first ever job in the games industry. I began my career 18 days before the original PlayStation was released in Europe, which was itself 25 years ago today. It's been an eventful two and half decades, and much has changed in the industry, nearly all of it for the better. 

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, good at futurology. I honestly couldn't understand the point of the Nintendo DS before it came out, which wasn't uncommon, but I'd played games with a stylus on PDA, and they were pretty cool, so I should have had better insight than I did. I also really didn't like the GTA series switching from top down to full 3D, until I played it of course, then I realised my mistake. 

However, I am on record from 2001 saying that one day there will be a game on a phone that will dwarf Pokemon, and I was right, until Pokemon came to mobile phones. Also, it should be noted that it was a written interview and one of my bosses was erroneously credited as the interviewee - he did apologise though. I also knew instantly, without touching it or even seeing a picture, that the iPad was going to have a massive impact, when all around me seemed to be saying, "it's just like a big inconvenient phone that I can't make calls on".

Anyway, here goes, my thoughts on what the next 25 year of gaming will involve, I'll try my best to be controversial.

1. Self proclaimed hardcore gamers will continue to complain that not enough games are being made for them while still having plenty enough games to fully occupy every minute of every day.

2. Smell-o-vision will be massive. It bloody well will be, because nothing jumps into memory banks faster than smells. It's going to be intense.

3. Cloud gaming will be the norm. You know it will be, just get used to it, there's already a ton of games that only work when they're online, so why not have all the grunt work happening at the other end of the intertubes too. Also, I'm glad this isn't an infrastructure problem I will ever have to have a hand in solving.

4. News agencies will continue to report that, "the video games industry is bigger than Hollywood", like it's new news. 

5. E-sports will grow and grow as a spectator sport, but they will also move into augmented spaces that will increasingly require athletic prowess from their participants. 

6. Gambling mechanics in games will threaten to ruin everything right up to the point where government legislation catches up.

7. VR will be massive, but only if Covid lockdowns continue off and on for the next 25 years.

8. AR will become ubiquitous through light weight glasses, and so will AR games. Hopefully no one will be playing games that require arm flailing on the bus - spoiler: they will.

9. A genuine real world grass roots revolution will start in a video game. It might not be a good revolution, but somewhere this will happen.

10. People in games will be co-opted to solve real world problems. This is already happening, but when AIs start designing games they're bound to find some really significant and clever ways to use all the spare humans that are lying around for something remotely useful.

Whatever happens, I just hope I get to continue working with awesome people on great games.

PlayPhoto

After several years in producer and project manager roles, 2015 saw me move back into game design. The first of the games I've worked on to hit the market is a cracking little game called PlayPhoto. This game's been in soft launch for longer than I've been working on it, but last month it finally achieved a global launch. Check it out!

Colonel Sanders In All His Digital Glory!

Games Made From Everyday Things

For years I've been making games with things that are either rubbish (trash) or are common around the house. I call these Games Made From Everyday Things. 

I've now got so many of these games that I've compile them into a book and am running a Kickstarter campaign to fund the publishing of the book. 

Check out the campaign and tell all your friends about it!

Super Spin Tanks - Get It On Your iPad!

Happy New Year!

I know, I’m pretty late with that one, what with it being nearly February n’all. 

But if you think I’ve been remiss with my new year greetings, that’s nothing compared to my tardiness when it comes to saying GO TO THE APP STORE AND GET SUPER SPIN TANKS NOW!

It’s a two player game of total tank dueling awesomeness. Yes, you’ll need a friend play it with, but that’s not a problem, because introducing a total stranger to this game will instantly make them your friend. You each control a tank around your own half of the screen, tapping where you want it to go. And you have a stack of shells to fire at your opponent, which you unleash by tapping on your magazine. 

That makes it all sound so easy, but your turret is constantly spinnning, so you have to tap fire when it’s pointing in the right direction. There’s a bunch of arena layouts, weapons and play options to keep you playing for… well, ever really.

And it’s free!

You mean freemium Jon, with some devilish upsell somewhere in the mix. No, I mean actually properly free. No sting, neither visible nor hidden beneath the surface, this is REAL FREE! 

I like it so much I’ve even added it to the sidebar --- look -à

This is normally where I put stuff I worked on but Super Spin Tanks really has nothing to do with me – I contributed nothing to its creation other than encouragement, and some confusion. 

I did get to play test it a lot over the course of 2013 though, which pretty much amounted to the most enjoyable lunch times it’s possible to have.

It’s rare that anyone can truly say “my game” without making someone else feel forgotten and under-appreciated. But Super Spin Tanks is the creation of just one man, Peter Freer, who did everything, including the music.

I salute you Pete Freer and your wonderful game.

Once again GO TO THE APP STORE AND GET SUPER SPIN TANKS NOW!

Hiroshi Yamauchi

Last week the video games business lost a legend. But Hiroshi Yamauchi shouldn’t only be highly regarded within electronic entertainment circles; he should be applauded for what he enabled others to do.

When I watch Dragons' Den (the original UK version) I’m nearly always astounded by what a complete lack of vision some of the so-called dragons have. Anecdotally, based on my own sporadic viewings, it seems that Duncan Bannatyne is the key offender.

Hiroshi Yamauchi - I bet he's not really playing anything at all...

He is from the insidious “if it aint broke, don’t fix it” school of thinking, it would appear, a form of thinking that caused British manufacturing to crumble under old practices while the Japanese decided that even unbroken things can be better.

I propose we introduce a new verb to the English language – Bannatyning. To Bannatyne is to put down an idea simply because something else that sort of does the job already exists. 

For example, if the elevator didn’t exist and you went on Dragons' Den to pitch the idea to them you would be Bannatyned in the following way: 

You’ve pitched your idea and mentioned all its virtues and Duncan starts, “Hello, I’m Duncan.”

To which you reply, “Hello Duncan,” for this is Dragons' Den etiquette, rather than saying, “No shit, I have watched the show!”

Duncan would then proceed, “In my offices I already have something that does this job. They’re called stairs, and they don’t need any electricity to make them work, I just move my legs up and down and I change floors. I don’t have to wait for them to come to me either, and for that reason, I’m out!” 

You’ve been Bannatyned!

As a kid that grew up playing games on computers, rather than consoles, and I looked down on Nintendo. After reading David Sheff’s excellent “Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered the World” 20 years ago my general point of view wasn’t altered much. I was left thinking it was a damn good read, and that Yamauchi was a dick whose company dictated what games should be, even demanding significant design changes of games that companies wanted to release on their console. To me they diminished the artistry of video games. 

I was only just an adult at that point in time and although I still agree with that original takeaway I’ve come to appreciate the virtues of the man and the company. Yamauchi created an environment where he believed in the power of invention. Not only that but he trusted other people with his money, his family legacy in fact, despite the fact that it didn’t always pay off. 

Okay, so his initial inspiration was the fact that the bottom was falling out of Nintendo’s core business of hanafuda playing cards and he didn’t regard himself as a creative person, but many have simply watched their company die in the same position. 

He believed in innovation, or did after fate coerced him, the real kind of innovation where you create something new and offer it to the world; not the more prevalent runt of innovation, where you just make things cheaper, which normally involves exploiting people. (Sadly these two forms of innovation aren’t mutually exclusive).

If Yamauchi was on Dragons' Den the other dragons would laugh at him and all his investments. But by my reckoning he was worth more than all the dragons put together, despite his Nintendo shares being far less valuable than they once had.

Even more impressively, with Nintendo starting life as a maker of playing cards, Yamauchi explored many angles on where to go and grow in the years after he took the reins. The company even owned a few Love Hotels at one point. But it generally chose “play” of a different kind to pursue its fortunes, and dance with bankruptcy. Imagine if Yamauchi had been cut from the same cloth as Duncan – “I already have a thing I can play games on, it’s called a card table! Because of that… Sayonara!”

Actually, he probably said that to lots of ideas, but he accepted plenty of crazy stuff too. The success of Pokémon is only obvious after the success of Pokémon, there’s nothing about it that fundamentally screams, “infinitely rich vein of cold hard cash!” We only think that in hindsight.

So, if you want to be great, get yourself some innovators, and then trust them, or at least pit them against each other in a dog fight for supremacy, as Yamauchi did. 

No one will remember the dragons ten years after the show ends, unless I do manage to get bannatype into the popular conscience, but Yamauchi will forever be a legend. 

If you want that kind of mighty reward, you have to take the same mighty risks.

One Page Game Design Document Pt 2

Last week, when I was posting on the subject of gamification and beer I noticed that one of my first ever posts on this blog had been viewed a few times that week. The post in question was on the subject of the joys of creating a one page game design document. Without actually checking the post I wondered whether I'd actually attached the one page game design in question, or whether I was still keeping it under wraps at that point.

Then on Monday, Kah Chan from Victoria University of Wellington shed some light on these curious viewing stats by asking if he could have a copy of the GDD in question. It turned out that I didn't publish the one page game design document. 

So here it is...

This is an overview design for Warp Gun, which turned into Alien Avian Attack, which you can get for your handsome Android device...