The Unsung Heroes...

Today I saw our developer support team install a giant television in our hallway. In a company where you literally have to go to the bathroom to escape a television monitor, this is hardly noteworthy. What is noteworthy is that this TV is connected to some magical folder somewhere in the building where people can drop video clips that will automatically be added to the "loop" that this television displays. The entire tech team is now focused on hacking into this folder to replace the current game clips with more appropriate "wang" clips...but I digress.

Ask yourself, when did IT at your company throw something like this together in their spare time for the pleasure of the company? My experience with IT at other companies has traditionally been a group of people who may or may not fix your outlook inbox after you "accidentally" get it filled with spam for various pills and mail-order partners. I mean this with all sincerity, our game would NOT ship at the quality we have without our awesome IT staff. In fact, we found calling them that to be so inadequate for their duties that we refer to them, justly so, as "developer support."

On top of the lightning fast response time (we are talking minutes) to any issue we may have, I'd like to present a list of the things these guys and girls do that makes a producer's life infinitely easier.

* Today we had a 10 minute meeting to discuss our options for storing priceless game data that we have never dealt with before. 10 minutes...and it is solved. I didn't have to call people, get quotes, follow up...nothing. It is solved. I've had multi-day meetings with people on my own team where we literally can't decide where to go to lunch, let alone build a server infrastructure for huge volumes of data.
* Prior to this game, bug tracking was done in excel and on a twiki. Think of that for a second. Is your mind as blown as mine? Within a week of asking, we literally had a fully working and configured issue system that was personalized for our workflow. Every time we want a new feature or upgrade, it just magically happens. Thanks to this team, we now have an automated way to ignore feature requests from artists...we no longer have to manually delete them from a document.
* We have dozens upon dozens of custom buildbots that check everything from build stability to performance and memory. We have custom scripts for perforce check-ins and reviews. We have websites with charts and graphs for all this stuff. The tech team adds fancy new tools every damn week...and somehow it magically appears the very same day on a server that never dies. God knows we try to make these things explode...can't do it.
* Configuring devkits and updating SDKs is hardly a task for standard IT. Our guys can do it blindfolded. Note: Tomorrow I'm going to make them try this.
* Want a 100% secure remote Perforce depot to China the same day you ask? Our guys have done it. How about running an automated installation and upgrade system for a local "art tool" via the web to some friends in Canada? Done. Are you SO concerned about security that you need a system that uses a one time use key to encrypt data? We've been.

Frankly, this is the "easy stuff." You can't imagine the strange and obscure needs a team full of tech-savvy game developers has. When it is "crunch time" and someone needs a local proxy to some other team's depot, every second can count. Frankly, even though they are on call 24 hours a day, we've never once had to abuse this, since the team always seems to be here when we are...and we work some pretty crazy hours.

Despite all of this, they still find time for our "fun" requests to keep morale high like the "Wang TV." The tech team wants to make a podcast. Not content with poor quality audio, and wanting to make us look good, Developer Support is using spare parts, dusty licenses, and duct tape to put together a pro-tools enabled Mac just for us.

In summation: Lupe, Ryan, Steve, Calvin, C-Bass, Jen...Thank you!

Also, Happy Birthday Mom!

The Post in Which I Defend MK DLC...

I'm going to break my traditional "Blog form" and actually talk about Mortal Kombat. Specifically, I'd like to talk about the sometimes downright angry response from a minority of forum dwellers ever since people saw that pesky "DLC" character slot at E3.

The inspiration for this article comes from the response to Ed’s Kotaku interview posted at Kotaku.

Let's start with a couple complaints from the forums, shall we?

"We aren't being offered "extra" characters, we are being offered content that was built into the original cost of development, that is covered by the box purchase, but is yanked from the game and then put into a little side bin, and then sold as "extra" content. "

"You are being charged money to access content on a game that you already bought.

Not content made later as an addition. "

I'm going to try clarifying the DLC issue as it applies to our game. Mortal Kombat has no evil strategy wherein we're going to cut content from the game to ship it as DLC later. None. It has never been discussed. Period. We're going to be polishing all of the content that will be included on the game disk right up until the game is ready to go to store shelves to make sure that the final product is perfect.

What we are trying some strategies on, and this is what Ed alluded to in his article, is a method that once we start working on DLC, we can get it in the hands of all players, whether they purchased the DLC or not. We are still working out if this is possible, but in an ideal world, you'd be able to fight against a DLC character even if you have not purchased it...and that somehow requires us to get the content onto your machine. We're going through a lot of negotiations to see if we can make this happen...it may not be possible, but we are certainly trying to do something we think would be a very cool way to make DLC "seamless" in terms of both those who chose to purchase any new content and those who would prefer not to.

"...I refuse to pay full price for a game not to be able to access all the characters. And then to be teased by characters that I can't access after I payed FULL PRICE for the game?"

"You know how to solve the problem of DLC fracturing the community?

Bung all the characters on the disc - remember, the way things were before - and stop nickel-and-diming us to death"

This opinion, and there are quite a few people out there, just plain confuses me as a video game player and developer. There is no reason for us to make a game if we work on it indefinitely and it never ships. Every single developer would love to literally spend decades working on a game...constantly adding new features, maps, characters, etc. If we did that, though, there would be a great deal of Duke Nukem Forevers still being toiled away on that you would never get to play. At some point, development has to stop and the game has to ship. At that point, the game is 100% complete, and you need to make the decision as to whether what is on the disk is worth your hard earned cash. With the shear volume of content we plan on including in MK, we definitely think it will be an easy choice.

This is why DLC, when done in a non-malicious nature, is so awesome. It lets those of us who really enjoyed a game get even MORE of the game without having to wait years for a sequel. In the case of MK, if we add new characters, for instance, it will literally let players extend their enjoyment of the game by mastering all-new strategies long after the game has been on store shelves. How is this bad, again?

If you don't want the DLC experience, then by all means don't purchase it. You can keep playing the same game you purchased in the store for years. All it means is that the other people who _do_ want some new experiences have the option to do so.

One last point on the idea of DLC characters in MK specifically. If we choose to do these, they are certainly not trivial in terms of the time and manpower required to complete them. Since just a small portion of the press has seen the game, it is tough to judge just how awesome our characters are from screen shots.

Characters in the new Mortal Kombat not only have the exterior model you see, but don't forget we are also modeling the character's skeletons, muscle systems and internal organs. We have to make it so their skin and cloth can be ripped, damaged and bloodied. All of this is character-specific to ensure each character looks and feels unique. For this game they all have unique animations, fighting styles, special moves, particle effects, sound effects and in some cases, unique bits of technology specific to each character. They have X-rays and fatalities. And even after all that is in there is the ridiculously comprehensive period of balancing and tweaking. It is no joke that, even with some of the most talented and efficient artists in the industry, each of the characters in Mortal Kombat takes a VERY, VERY long time to complete.

Why do I mention this? It sort of hearkens back to my original point at the beginning of this overly long post. Specifically, that NetherRealm isn't some evil studio planning to rip people off with DLC, as some of the forum reactions seem to imply. We LOVE the game we are working on, and we think that after you get an opportunity to play it, you will too. All we are saying with the infamous "DLC button" is that we (and hopefully you) will love the game so much that you'll want to continue seeing new, optional content for a long time to come.

The true story behind the Midway Logo in the Trash

The following, as with all posts here, represent the barely legible ramblings of a single person, and in no way reflect any sort of official position by or for any larger organization.

I was reading through the Kotaku comments (http://kotaku.com/5612465/so-long-midway-and-thanks-for-smash-tv) surrounding the “Midway Logo in the trash” picture Hans took, and I was struck at how evocative that single image is in regards to the story of the new NetherRealm studios under WB. I was also surprised how much internal context exists around this image that we take for granted. As such, I thought I’d pull out a few of the comments from the article and give some background for the record. Someday, somehow, someone will write a tell-all book about Midway’s history that will make the more provocative scenes from “Zap! The Rise and Fall of Atari” seem like Saturday morning cartoons in comparison. At this point though, I, along with most of the staff at NetherRealm, have only heard these stories 2^nd and 3^rd hand. The comments here are simply some observations about the last days in the old Midway building before starting in our fancy new WB office building.

“i think after the pic it was taken back out of the trash and home somewhere.”

Just so the record is complete, and some poor sap doesn’t go trying to find out where it ended up in 20 years or so, this sign did not in fact find a good home. This poor-quality item was definitely taken out of the trash, but only to be torn and beaten into a pulp.

“Gasp”, you say, “but this is a collector’s item! You folks at NetherRealm have no sense of your own history.” Sadly, we do have a sense of our own history, which is the reason that this sign was one of the items that became the target of years of pent-up frustration. But more on that in a moment, as first I want to calm the fear of collectors and those with a sense of Midway nostalgia.

“ Seriously? You're going to throw away the logo? I've got a friend of mine that kept the sign to a place he used to work at when it closed down…”

“Aw, why trash it? It's a perfectly good memorabilia item!”

Trust me, anything of any real collector’s value from Midway’s history is either long-gone in the homes of the “old time” former employees, auctioned off in bulk as part of the bankruptcy proceedings, packed up and coming with us to our new building, or locked safely away in some Warner vault in Burbank.

While very few employees at NetherRealm were around for Midway’s “glory days” in the arcade, we all share the same sense of Nostalgia that most video game fans have for arcade gaming. On a daily basis over the past several weeks emails would go out about random posters, props, t-shirts, and other miscellaneous “collectors stuff” that people could take before it was thrown in the trash as part of the clean-up process. Frankly, if your office wasn’t in close proximity to the cafeteria where they laid this stuff out, there was virtually no chance of grabbing anything remotely “collectable” before someone snatched it for safe-keeping. Nothing, and I mean nothing, was more disheartening than watching one of your colleagues walk off with some awesome piece of arcade art as you arrive to pick through the tattered “Hour of Victory” posters that had been hanging on the walls throughout the building.

So, before we get back to that logo in the trash, I want to assure the video game community that all the cool Midway stuff that may have been left in the building, and there honestly was very little at this point, is safe.

Now back to the now-deceased logo.

“What a sad day for all of us. RIP Midway.”

There is one key point of context to keep in mind about Midway. The “Midway” name as you know it has been officially dead for over a year, and the Midway of the arcade era had been dead far longer than that.

The NetherRealm team working on the new Mortal Kombat game, while largely consisting of former Midway employees, has been very happily part of WB Games for most of our current project, and we haven’t looked back for a second since the buyout.

The sign in the trash is just us shedding our last tie to Midway…the horrific building we’ve been stuck in for decades. From the annual “sewage flood” that required evacuation of the sports building, to the buckets permanently affixed to the ceiling to catch the leaks, to the non-functioning heating and air conditioning that would leave us sweltering in the summer and freezing in the winter, to the ad-hoc nature of building construction that led to a maze that made it literally impossible to find someone if they weren’t in their office, there is no love for the environment the team has somehow managed to overcome to create games.

There had been meetings and talks of getting a new building for years under Midway. It was a topic of conversation at nearly every “all hands” conference call. It had been promised and taken away so many times that it became a popular running joke. Within a year of our purchase by Warner Brothers, we are finally moving into a brand new, cutting-edge facility custom created based upon our present and future needs.

That sign that had been hanging on some interior wall represented a building that had nearly killed one of our engineers when a 10 gallon bucket filled with water came crashing through the ceiling right behind his desk.

That sign represented a building where every morning we had to walk by walls that had strange brown stains on them that were so deeply baked-in that they couldn’t be cleaned.

That sign was hung in a building where people literally had to evacuate their work areas because sewage water was shooting out of toilets and drinking fountains.

For this, and so many more reasons, that sign had to die so that we could start anew.

“They really shouldn't have gotten rid of the Midway name. Just because Warner Bros. owns them now, they could still exist as Midway.”

A lot of us at NetherRealm debated this point even before Midway went bankrupt, but frankly, outside of Mortal Kombat and a few other titles, Midway had really never managed to successfully transition to home consoles. The company did go bankrupt, after all, and luckily Warner Brothers identified a very talented group of people who somehow managed to create quality products under less-than ideal conditions. Like I mentioned earlier, I can’t think of a single person in the building who wanted to still exist as Midway, even if it was an option. Most of us desperately wanted a fresh start. But even more pragmatic than that, the Midway name had been driven so far into the ground in the past decade or so that we’d be insane to want to keep it. There were a lot of horrible console titles released by Midway, and the NetherRealm staff that was picked-up by Warner Brothers has very little connection to those projects or Midway corporate policy as a whole. Why start out on our new life with all the baggage of other projects we didn’t really work on created in a company that made poor decisions we weren’t part of?

I don’t want to beleaguer the point here, but let’s just say that much of working at Midway during the modern era would hardly be considered pleasant. Before the ink was dry on the acquisition by Warner Brothers, we all started referring to ourselves as “WB Chicago” until we picked the NetherRealm name. Despite some distinctly great memories, a lot of people “suffered” greatly under Midway, from horrific hours to underfunded games to questionable mandates we were powerless to stop. We were excited to get the opportunity to make the great games we had been trying to make with a publisher who would empower us to do so. I’m confident you’ll see the passion of the team finally freed from the shackles of the “Modern-era Midway” translated to the games the new NetherRealm studio will release. Unfortunately for the Midway sign, there had to be some casualties to get us there.

Let's get srz bzness for a moment...

Warning: Unfunny post upcoming.

I'm always looking for words of advice to give budding producers and managers out there, mostly because I'm the sort of guy who wants to be a guy who gives advice. As such, I'm going to throw up a trial balloon with one very rarely mentioned gem that has little to do with neither production nor management....

LEARN TO USE PHOTOSHOP

Why, you ask, do I need to learn a graphic's package usually reserved for the more sensitive and talented? First of all, the ability to quickly mock-up silly pictures to include in emails is a skill everyone should have. Secondly, and more seriously, I can't tell you how fast your ideas/notes/improvements will be shot down if you send an email or describe it in words. You could literally be the modern embodiment of a love-child between F.Scott and Jane, but no one will be able to visualize what you are saying. No one. That is even assuming they read your two lines of text in an email, which I guarantee they won't.

On the other hand, let us say there is some pesky UI problem that you just know is going to fail you in certification. Snag a screenshot, Photoshop in your change as a starting point for discussion and, boom, people will suddenly start brainstorming. With Photoshop and a bookmark to Google Images, you can create mock-up UI screens and screen flows, make clear suggestions for content issues, throw together a first-draft marketing idea, create a convincing looking web page, do side-by-side comparisons of bugs...you name it, you can do it, and it WILL come in handy.

Sure, your stuff will look like crap compared to a real artist, but the point here is not to actually create content, but to create a mock-up that can communicate your ideas to those with the true talent.

Other "non-textbook" Software Producers Should Know How To Use:

* Perforce or whatever source control your team uses. Seriously, if you need to ask a programmer for help every time you want to see a build, you'll lose -50DKP respect points.

* Visual C++. This is for bonus credit, but it is invaluable to be able to see/use the actual code that your game is running. (Note: Araxis Merge for true pros.) At the very least, you should be able to follow instructions to compile your game and run it on at least one console.

* Maya/3DS Max/"The Content Creation Editor". Much like the compiler, it is invaluable to know and be able to "use" the toolchain that artists use. If you have even a rudimentary understanding of the tools involved, you'll better be able to understand the work that goes into content creation. You should never be in a situation where you ask people to perform work that you think is "magic."

* Wiki creation software. Chances are your team uses it...so should you. In fact, you should probably have a decent grasp of HTML in general.

Like I said, you should never be expected to create content of anywhere near the caliber of truly gifted artists and programmers, otherwise you should probably still be one of those things, and will inevitably end up not doing your real job and at some point be sucked into creating content. It is sometimes difficult, especially if you once were an artist or programmer, but remember that your position exists for a reason, and that getting "sucked back in" always ends up hurting the team more than helping.

The post in which I recycle content...

So...since I've been a little "dry" on content recently, I decided to dig through my archives (Yahoo spam filter) to find content to steal from myself. As such, I discovered this piece from my on and off stint writing for game and tech magazines. It is worth noting that my specialty consisted of shoddily "researched" articles with little or no actual literary value. As such, please enjoy:

The Problems with Online Gaming
An Opinion Piece by Adam (Some Last Name)
Originally Published in PC Game World, Circa 2003

The future is online, or at least that’s what the guy at (Ed: Unfunny Joke Deleted). The problem is, and I’m trying to be kind about this, I deeply and truly despise online gaming from the very darkest, charred corners of my black, black soul. Today, lucky reader, I present you with my three arguments as to why multiplayer gaming should be abolished and why we should all return to the world of single player fun. Next week, if you are lucky, I’ll make the same case for my social life…

Online Problem 1 or “When I was a kid we had to walk uphill in the snow to get to school, all the while fending off attacks from slimy, now-extinct predators looking to snatch our women-folk.”

When I was a kid, multiplayer meant waiting until your friend either passed away or was shipped off with the army so he’d finally take his hands off the darned joystick. We would sit and longingly dream of the days when we could play games simultaneously with two, gasp, even three people. Imagine a world, we thought, where we could pit our skills against people not just in the same room, but perhaps as far away as the house next door! I have been told that the world has progressed to the point, using some sort of an ‘internet’, that these far fetched dreams are now possible. I have learned something from my experience with this ‘internet’, something many of us have come to realize, I suck at video games. It’s not through lack of effort, of course. I spent hundreds of hours training at arcades in my youth. I can think of at least one potentially meaningful relationship destroyed by that dashingly handsome Mario. I can’t tell you the names of a single person in my college fraternity, but I can remember each ones distinctly dirty Goldeneye screen name and their preferred weapon-location combination. I can now officially say that this time was wasted. No matter how hard I try I cannot, I repeat cannot, take two steps in a level of Counterstrike without dying, I will need a very good therapist just to help me deal with all my repressed memories of failure dealing with Unreal Tournament and I may be the only person whose online Sim went ahead and committed suicide while I was away. I am so utterly incompetent at online games that I now look for “ONLY FOR ONE PLAYER” as an important feature on the back of boxes. I’m too scared to even download patches and updates, because I just know some ten year old kid is going to pop up around the corner and make fun of my connection speed.
If you managed to slog through the above paragraph I’m going to reward you with the meaning of it all. If I, your heroic writer, as a lifelong game player still in the lucrative target demographic can’t enjoy online games, how are the casual players and new recruits ever going to derive enjoyment from the experience when twenty-hour-a-day snipers are waiting on every sever just to make the uninitiated cry?


Online Problem 2 or “Why having to choose between Sprint and MCI forced me to choose never to talk to another human being as long as I live.”

Multiplayer online gaming is all about freedom. In theory, I think the freedom available in modern games is amazing and altogether awesome. In practice, however, it turns out that the more choices you give me in a game the more likely I’m going to choose to get in my car and do something else. The real world gives me an infinite variety of choices, so many in fact that I usually end up cowering in a corner crying like a child. I can barely decide what sort of undergarments, if any, to put on in the morning, so how am I supposed to choose whether I want to kill the fairy princess, befriend her and ask her to conjure me a potion or simply start making out with her? I have enough problems finding the point in what I do for work without having to find the point in a game I’m supposed to be enjoying. Video games, even linear ones, ask a lot out of us in terms of our time commitment. The recent crop of MMORPGs, for example, simply provide too much content and not enough direction for anyone, such as yours truly, who needs to balance his precious game-time with his more precious sweet-sweet-lady-luvin’ time.

Online Problem 3 or “Why I miss the day patches were for sailors and guys on shirt packages.”

How many of you remember the world of computer games before Windows 95? A world where we all spent more time trying to cram our device drivers, video drivers and game executable into 640k than we did actually playing any sort of game. Luckily for single player gamers, that world is long gone. Multiplayer gamers, however, are just now entering a whole new world of hurt. As I write this I’m downloading my seventh required update for Battlefield 1942 yet I still refuse to believe the game consists of anything more than a title screen. The title screen is nice, I admit, but is it worth the $39.99 I paid for it? I, of course, say it is, but I have a feeling the rest of the world might disagree. I spent a summer working for Cisco systems, the good people who pretty much invented all forms of communication ever used on this planet, yet I still can’t tell you why my Cable modem is blocked by a firewall, why my router simply won’t talk to any of my devices (insert innuendo here) or what in God’s name a “ping” is and why this “ping” allows other players to kill me six times then enjoy a pleasant dinner in the same time it takes me to press the forward key! I’ll give you a second to catch your breath, since I’m sure you are enjoying this article so much that you’ve decided to invite your neighbors over and read it aloud to them. The point, you ask? Configuring network games is still a pain. Longhorn promises, and Xbox Live has shown, the potential to remove these problems, so there is hope yet. I just pray that Microsoft will be kind enough to send someone to my house to explain what this “ping” is and hopefully how I can get rid of it, if that is indeed something someone would wish to do with a “ping.”

Farewell to a fallen comrade

As happens from time to time, one of our comrades has made the decision to move on to browner pastures. We wish Ramon well at his new venture, and I include an image of his goodbye lunch for your perusal.

While I admit to giving him a little good-humored teasing upon discovery of his departure, when I learned that he is going to get to work on an MMO based around one of my favorite childhood cartoons, I certainly couldn't begrudge him the opportunity.

That said, he is dead to me now.

A race car bed for Yuppy Children

If you are reading this blog, and you are, I can discern two immediate facts about you. First of all, you have discerning literary taste, and second, you wanted a race car bed as a child. I can discern the second fact because, let's be honest, we all wanted that damn race car bed. For those of you unaware, it is, as you can imagine, a bed shaped like a race car.

I'll even do the work for you and Google a picture:

As you can see by the picture, it clearly turns ordinary bedtime into a pulse-pounding, seat-of-your-pants adrenaline rush.

So, you can imagine my post-Yuppy glee when I discovered the following at the mall the other day:
I dub this bed the "S.S. Sleepytime" or perhaps "S.S. Funship Dreamtime." It is a bed, but it is also a FREAKIN' BOAT. Not only is it a boat, but the craft looks sturdy enough for an actual round-the-world sea voyage racing a similar bed-boat sailed by a stout crew of children from New Zealand or Australia. You'll note that the race car bed is made of plastic, which very few actual race cars are made of. The "S.S. Awesome", however, is made of actual wood...wood which I can only assume came from a tree that is now extinct and only lived on the surface of our planet for six weeks.

I don't yet have children, but when I do, young Reginald Pennipench will be heading off to dreamland each night on the "H.M.S. Nappington" in full Captain's Pajamas. He will also wake up at 6am when his mother takes him to Polo practice as I sleep in until noon, but that is an entirely different story.