As much as I love Civ games, I miss two of them sorely: Master of Orion and Master of Magic. Both of these old Microprose games were the dog’s bollocks. After years of games, nothing’s come close to being a good game and I believe it’s for the same reason. In the old days, you had restrictions on programming that caused the developer to cut out ALL extraneous bullshit.

In Master of Orion, you control a civilization race and attempt to take over the galaxy. The limitation was that the more powerful you got, the more likely an evil race of alien creatures would come and annihilate your colonies, eventually leading to a big confrontation.

Every game since then that has tried to inherit the title has been mired in the depth of reality, not realizing this is a game. Galactic Civilizations over at Stardock is the closest inheritor to Master of Orion, but even so it’s got a 1 ticket to win strategy that many civ games have.

[Hint: throw all the race configuration points into Morale and tax the fuck out of your peeps until money’s coming out your ears. While growing your culture, tech-invest in Planetary Defense and troops. If you break the tech curve, it’s over for the AI races.]

Master of Magic is Civ with mages. Very powerful mages. Sorta like the CCG game only less expensive to win at. Might and Magic is the worse, palest imitator.

Now, with the RTS imitator, there’s no game that will follow behind it. So many players are about the agressive win vs. the long term sandbox, lost in meandering thought games. The market has died.

Sad, sad, sad….

Is it’s name. I pronounce it Tiggers, not Tigers, not Tigris. Tigger.

The Independent Game Rating System is an inevitable thing. With all the republicrats running around screaming “What about the children? What about the baaaabies?”, and with all the concepts of classifying the damage to kids’ poor tormented psyches that video games do, someone had to step up and try to appease both sides.

You know, sometimes confrontation is a good thing and sometimes capitulation… excuse me, compromise is bad. TIGRS is an effort to appease the jerks, and it’s a good faith effort. I don’t know Daniel Kinney, but this seems to be a genuine good attempt. At least the designs LOOK cool.

With a rating system, as a business owner, I reduce the level of risk to my business by posting. So without further adieu, here’s the TIGRS for That Cult Game.

Mild Language Intense Cartoon Violence Animated Bloodshed Suggestive Themes Crass Humor Drug Use

Not Bad, huh? Personally, I think it’s sad that parents can’t get it through their heads: If you BREED, YOU’RE the one responsible. Not society, not the neighbors, and not the police. Do your best, but don’t blame others for your or your kids’ failures. Do your very best, because the kid deserves no less, and if the kid turns out to be a brainless monster, deal with the monster. Sometimes, through no fault of our own, people are broken.

But don’t blame a GAME DEVELOPER for it. That’s just weak thinking.

Gah. Lawyers. Accountants. All I want to do is play a game that will allow me to subvert weak minds to my will and conquer the rest of them. Is that such a difficult request?

So, here’s what I’ve learned recently:

1) Do not sign away Intellectual Property. Nope. No can do. No 3rd party will investigate a partnership (like a publisher) if your IP is in contention. If you are paying for IP and if you have the right contract, keep ahold of the IP, otherwise you’ll never be able to create derivative works from it.

2) Don’t listen to lawyers too much, otherwise you’re a dick. A lot of the contractors I’m working for NEED the recognition. Lawyers don’t want to offer up any liability - they are doing their job, but the bottom line is, if a contractor is doing an excellent job, you need to be able to recognize them for their efforts.

So, there’s no way for me to actually enforce the recognition of my contractors unless I (I the business, not I the individual) make it part of any agreement that I sign. Thus enters into the language “reasonable good faith effort”, a term which is technically unenforcible.

Contractors Stand Up!
If you’re a contractor, what’s your rights? Officially, all you have to do is send an email informing the game developer like so:

Hello {company}
For my {writing, artwork, development} work done on your game, SuperFigureActionFightersFoo, please credit me as {Bob Kelly, or appropriate name}.
Sincerely,
{Your name}


CC the email to yourself and save, save, save it away.

Does this enforce that they give you credit? No. Does this give you the ability to put it on your resume and CLAIM credit? Does this protect you if they say “No, you didn’t do that credit” - yes, it does because if they don’t respond to you, the email is a document that can be used in legal battle if absolutely necessary. Yes. Does this give you more rights to renegotiate extra payments? No.

Why does this matter to me right now?
I’ve been done good by two of my contractors - over delivered both of them. I have no desire to screw them over, but the IP issue something that means a lot. So, how do you be extra nice to your partners? I can’t sell them part of the game, but I can give them TOP BILLING. That’s right, I’ll be loudly announcing my Artwork and Sound design people and give them some excellent real estate to make sure

Also, if you’re in need of an artist, I’ve got dibs, but I’ll share. She’s looking for work.

Hopefully next week I’ll be able to post and announce the That Cult Game’s Official Title!

So, wow, where did I go for 3 days?

Most recent memories first - The flight home I met some awesomely cool developers, primarily because the Security at Oakland didn’t recognize what a Nintendo DS is. “I’m going to open your backpack, ok?” She already opened it without my consent. “What is this?!?” “It’s my DS.” “What’s a DEEE-ESSSS?!?!” Me and a whole bunch of people looked at each other and smiled.

What I wanted to say: “Listen you low rent, white trash, toothless bitch, get your meaty hands off my tech, and please return to smoking meth in your mobile home because that’s obviously where you came from.”

What I really said, “You play games on it. Like a Gameboy.” I lifted both hands and waggled my thumbs in mock combat.

“Oh!” She threw it back in, and turned to another highly competent, security enforcing meth addict, “Yeah, he should’ve put that through alone.”

I’ve got real confidence in these people keeping our airways safe. I really do. Look at it: it’s got screens, buttons and an on/off switch. You don’t go through this for every MP3 player, and you didn’t need to do this for a DS.

But this event opened up to one of the best conversations that made the entire plane trip quick and fun. I met 4-6 other developers, some from Rainbow Studios, who were the very friggin’ cool. A big thanks & shout out for Heather and Nathan. Some of us are doing lunch on Monday.

Me and My Big Mouth
q. “So what does Heresy Research Labs do, Bob?”
a. “Independent developer. I’m bootstrapping an independent design studio so I can create casual games with a bite.” Oooh, look, I’ve got a bullet that describes the business.

q. “So what have you done?”
a. “Nothing. I’ve spent 2000 bucks plus on development tools, artwork, and accountants.”
At that time, the “jaded” guys in the industry walk away. I get it. Yes, in YOUR industry, I’ve got no track record. Don’t be so snooty, guys. In my industry, I pulled down 6 figures this year. Blow me.

q. “So what are you working on?”
a. {Internal monologue - *sigh*, here we go again. Do I tell them about That Cult Game? Right now, it’s fucking vaporware if I don’t deliver at all. Oh, well, fuck it.} (Please note that the internal monologue has occurs so fast it now microsecond) “I’m working on a cult simulator. You create your cult, your cult leader and do what you do every night: try to take over the world.”

To say that the reaction to this game has been INCREDIBLY overwhelmingly is an understatement. Everyone has ideas. It’s wonderfully rich to mine right now. Bottomline, the game I’ve got right now, sorta sucks gameplay wise, *I* don’t like it enough to be proud of it.

The CCP White Wolf After Hours party
I don’t know HOW I got this invite. I met a man at lunch. He gave me an invite. I got an invite. Very. Fucking. Cool. He seemed to be wanting to keep under the radar, so I’m not dropping his name here. But a big thank you to John for the invite. Also, the White Wolf’s marketing woman - damn sexy woman.

Academic Research is the Bomb
I’ve got two rules of thumb about GDC. Go to the Developers/Publishers Rant. See every Ian Bogost talk. If you hit those two sessions, everything else is icing.

The rant - yes, I was there for the Wii Is “Two Gamecubes Stuck Together With Duct Tape” by Chris Hecker. Personally, this is a classic example of the meme overshadowing the message.

Rant 1: Wild Tangent CEO Alex St. John. Windows Vista Upgrade was poorly done. I met Alex in another session - he’s the real deal and a good guy. I wish he had the guts to mention DRM, tho.

Rant 2: If you’re gonna be an Indie Developer, be a leader… not a schlep (Richard Hillman from EA)

Rant 3: Nicole Bradford - What the gaming industry can do for kids: Math and Science. By far, Ms. Bradford’s call to action was the best of the best. She gets her own post later today.

Rant 4: Jason Della Roca - Sorry, guy, I didn’t understand your rant. In fact, I’m reading other sites and I don’t think they understood your rant.

Rant 5: Chris Hecker - Nintendo needs to care about ART (not that Wii sucks).

Rant 6: Lee Jacobson - If you’re gonna be an Indie Developer, be a business man

Rant 7: Greg Costikyan - The Indie Publisher is in a lot of trouble, and that causes the Indie Developer more problems.

An entire day thinking about “Intellectual Property” - all my game ideas are important, but the mechanism in which are delivering my games are just as important. Also, the session raised my expectations and helped me think about what I want out of Heresy.com. The CEO of Chrome, and some of the lawyers were incredibly helpful.

Awesome IGDA party last night Roe (651 Howard), where they basically gave up and opened the doors so everyone could walk in, and I ended up with Seok Min Oh’s nametag. I figured I was Irish Korean for a night. And I even met myself. Also, the coolest domain name encountered so far: UltraBlueBunny.com.

Game Developers’ Conference 2007 - a bunch of nerds stuck in a large glass building trying to network. It’s funny, actually, because there’s some of us that have good strong social skills. Once you shove those guys out of the way, damn we’re sad.

That’s not true actually - compared to last year, the attendees are extremely social and the freak factor is pretty low. I attended the “Creativity Boot Camp”, which I ducked out of to the Independent Developers Summit. Last year the conference didn’t lock you into a “track” - this year, they seem to be a nazis about it.

More importantly, I refreshed some acquaintances from last year, talked for a while about game philosophy - saw a very good presentation about Puzzle Pirates, which allowed me to feel hope about my development path.

And, like it or not, while my first 1 or 2 games will not be a economically “friendly” as I could make them, I know which way I need to take my company. Best quote of the day, “There’s people out there spraying the street with a fire hose full of money. Go get a garbage bag and get all you can.”

Sounds ruthless, a bit, but for these companies, it’s the difference between game and no game, and if making a pet and charging a couple bucks for it is the difference between making payroll, then that’s the deal.

Also, Jonathan Mak of Everyday Shooter is my new hero. In a room full of developers who have been convinced that if you’re independent, you have to be more innovative - he basically said, “Innovation is a waste of time: focus on the game.”

If you ever get the opportunity to see Kyle Gabler presentation - do it. His presentations never suck, and he’s always got a new view at a problem.

Rule number one of traveling: Never show up in the middle of a Chinese New Years Day Parade. The taxibus couldn’t get me to the front door of the hotel, so, I went down Market street to Broadway, then up through Chinatown to the voila! the Hotel Triton…. which is an nouveau Art Deco meets post 1990’s Apple Macintosh design.

Once I got here, the color patterns alone frightened me back to life. In short, the rooms are good looking, and big if you’re a Lilliputian. I don’t mind so much because there’s so many mirrors I can see myself from any angle… A visage that always puts a smile on my face… but enough about how the room makes me look good.

Unlike last year, I came in two days earlier to work get a lay of the land, figure out how I’m going to get to the convention, where the best food is, and where the best Starbucks is. That’s a joke for those of you who haven’t been here. From my window, I’ve got 1 in view, and 2 more within a block of me. And there’s a Peats, and a few others.

Traveling rules #2: I’m lucky I don’t have cable - even though I’ve run all over the place, today, the History Channel frigging rocks. Last night it was wonderful History of Sex (Love the Greek urns… and both the Samurai and Greeks were a bunch of perverts). Right now, I’m watching Barbarian Battletech and the “Dark Ages. Gotta love those Goths. If I had a working TV at home, I’d never get anything done.

Third Traveling Rule - Holy shit you people watch a lot of commercials about erectile dysfunction and herpes. Both include side effects of sudden loss of blood pressure if you stand up too fast. Funny as hell if you think about it.

Off the Irish Bank in a couple minutes. Cya2morrow

Thank You Nintendo Wii, for bringing in the ideas. No one expects someone to take a Wiimote and make it control your roomba. They don’t expect you to play WOW with it. And they definitely don’t expect you to become a Wii-J DJ.

But we do it anyways because the barrier of entry is a lot lower than it’s ever been before, and because swinging your arms around is cool in a crowd of techno music. Now, soon, I expect people to have excellent fun with it.

What I foresee:
- Being able to execute gesture commands that interface with games will open up standard user interfaces with operating systems
- Faster processing of scripting with higher language functionality will allow end users to efficiently program any interface
- Standardized wireless interfaces with every things will allow us to interface at a consumer level
- Artists, like our DJ WiiJ, will lead the way, by creating functionality and terminology (flickstart and beatmatching)

Man he’s got some intense stares in that video! There’s entire hair product markets afraid of that doo!

Add into the mix, all it takes is one sexy woman dancing and DJ’ing and interfacing with household appliance with some sexy dance moves (did I mention a sexy woman?) in a YouTube and/or commercial.

Just as our parents saw the advent of color TV, the rise of personal computing, our children will never know that wireless interfaces with nearly everything never didn’t exist.

I think this adds to my theory that as the singularity becomes actionable, witnesses to the singularity will not be able to know it’s occurring due to the rapid rate of change around them.

Announced on Gamasutra today, the EA is jumping in with White Council.

I want to NOT be a nay sayer! I yearn to not be negative on the EA going into MMO, and the fact that the game is new technology…

I want this to be better than WoW, more popular than WoW, and not suck. I want the developers and designers to feel very good about themselves when this project launches to great success, redefining what it means to play a game in the LOTR genre.

It’s just hard to come up with the real enthusiasm for this. It’s EA - which doesn’t have the best track record and this seems to be competing with Mythic’s W.A.R. It’s LOTR, which unlike Blizzard and Warhammer, the story is told. It’s like coming to the last supper and asking what’s on the menu - we ALREADY know what’s on the menu.

I wish all the people the absolute best of luck!

OK, I get that games need to “build ambience” and games should let you get the feel of the character. But I don’t like playing dumb characters or walking through stupid scenes written by bad writers. I suspect others don’t either

In Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth you play a stupid protagonist. I ask you: if you were in an spooky town, with unfriendly, evil looking people, with only one hotel, who’s owner is a serial killer, and has told someone else that he intends to kill you… would you a) sleep in an alleyway, b) run from this town anyway possible, or c) go to sleep in the hotel’s bed and NOT prepare a quick getaway?

In fact, before this scene, your character is so stupid actually walk INTO a building, unarmed, during a firefight. While bullets are being shot. And everyone is dead and you don’t scream “Cease Fire!”

Given no choice from the developer and designer, my character went to sleep and woke up in the middle of an attack that he knew was coming. He staggered into the next room and died. And he did it two more times before he stopped playing, allowed the cthulhuoids to conquer the Earth to go rant on a blog.

Now, I don’t know about other gamers, but I don’t identify with stupid protagonists. Not in movies, when the women don’t lock the doors of house. Not on TV before the second to last commercial I’d actually pull out the macguffin (first seen in act 1). And not in games, where my stupid actions are dictated by a lack of choices. So… what would I do different were I the designer?

I would pull a James Bond, I’d fluff the bed, pull out some cards and play solitaire until I needed to kill or run. I’d also pull the boards from the window BEFORE I went to bed or something else.

Now, I know these actions are Ian Fleming and not H.P. Lovecraft, but even if the plan failed, it would’ve been nice to know I’m not playing a moron in the game. More importantly, H.P.’s stories are full of witnesses, not daring-doers, who passively react to their friends getting killed or investigate a little too far into the tenebrious and rugose. Thus, not even the game is true to it’s original genre.

Working on: The Dinosaur to Oil game. Need to playtest and iterate now.