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Game Developer - January 2007
>> GDC 2007 PREVIEW GUIDE INCLUDED
JANUARY 2007
THE LEADING GAME INDUSTRY MAGAZINE
>> 2006 FRONT LINE AWARDS
HONORING THE BEST TOOLS
FOR GAME DEVELOPMENT
>> SEVEN FOR `07
NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS
FOR PIXEL PUSHERS
>> PRIORITIZING BUGS
MORE DISCRIMINATION,
LESS EXTERMINATION
TONY HAWK’S
DOWNHILL
JAM
POSTMORTEM:
BUILT FORWii:
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[
CONTENTS
]
JANUARY 2007
VOLUME 14, NUMBER 1
FEATURES
13 GAME DEVELOPER’S 2006
FRONT LINE AWARDS
Game Developer ’s ninth annual Front Line
Awards feature pays homage to the
companies and products that make game
development possible. Seven winners are
named—and one tool that no developer could
live without is inducted into the Hall of Fame.
By Jill Duffy
23 SETTING THE BAR
“There wasn’t enough time to fix them all,”
said the game developers about the bugs
they just couldn’t get rid of. Sound familiar?
Two test engineers from the Microsoft Games
Test Organization have a theory about why
developers should just let go and accept that
some bugs are inevitable. But, they also have
a plan for finding the bugs that count and
exterminating them in a way that’s neither
costly nor overly time-consuming.
By Chris Hind and Dan Bell
13
23
30
POSTMORTEM
30 NOT YOUR TYPICAL GRIND: TONY HAWK’S
DOWNHILL JAM FOR WII
Skateboarding at home, in the living room, on the couch, never felt to
alive. In this postmortem of the newest T ONY H AWK game, Toys for Bob
lead designer Toby Schadt explains how playtesting was different for this
Wii game, and how the legal department can hinder even the most
generic design choices.
By Toby Schadt
DEPARTMENTS
COLUMNS
2 GAME PLAN By Simon Carless
Full Tilt
38 THE INNER PRODUCT By Mick West
[ PROGRAMMING ]
Managed Code in Games
4 HEADS UP DISPLAY
Developers’ biggest concerns for 2007, Microsoft XNA news, and more.
41 BUSINESS LEVEL By Jack Emmert
[ BUSINESS ]
Te s t o f De s ig n
7 SKUNK WORKS By Ronnie Ashlock and Tom Whittaker
Autodesk’s 3ds Max 9, Perforce Software’s Perforce 2006.1,
and product news.
42 GAME SHUI By Noah Falstein
[ DESIGN ]
Do, Don’t Show
43 PIXEL PUSHER By Steve Theodore
[ ART ]
53 A THOUSAND WORDS
LucasArts’ I NDIANA J ONES
Inner Tidings
45 AURAL FIXATION By Jesse Harlin
[ SOUND ]
iCan Too
COVER ART: TERRY FALLS
1
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GAME PLAN
]
CMP Media, 600 Harrison St., 6th Fl., San Francisco, CA 94107 t: 415.947.6000 f: 415.947.6090
FULL TILT
EDITORIAL
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Simon Carless scarless@gdmag.com
MANAGING EDITOR
Jill Duffy jduffy@gdmag.com
FEATURES EDITOR
Brandon Sheffield bsheffield@gdmag.com
ART DIRECTOR
Cliff Scorso cscorso@gdmag.com
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Jesse Harlin jharlin@gdmag.com
Noah Falstein nfalstein@gdmag.com
Steve Theodore stheodore@gdmag.com
Mick West mwest@gdmag.com
ADVISORY BOARD
Hal Barwood Designer-at-Large
Ellen Guon Beeman Microsoft
Andy Gavin Naughty Dog
Joby Otero Luxoflux
ADVERTISING SALES
DIRECTOR OF SALES
Steve McGill e: smcgill@cmp.com t: 415.947.6217
GLOBAL SALES MANAGER, RECRUITMENT & EDUCATION
Aaron Murawski e: amurawski@cmp.com t: 415.947.6227
SR. ACCOUNT MANAGER, SOUTHWEST, CONTRACTORS, & MARKETPLACE
Jasmin Davé e : jdave@cmp.com t: 415.947.6226
ACCOUNT MANAGER, EAST COAST, U.K. & EASTERN CANADA
Cecily Herbst e: cherbst@cmp.com t: 415.947.6215
ACCOUNT MANAGER, NO. CALIF., NORTHWEST, ASIA & WESTERN CANADA
Nick Geist e: ngeist@cmp.com t: 415.947.6223
MEDIA ACCOUNT MANAGER
John Watson e : jmwatson@cmp.com t: 415.947.6090
ADVERTISING PRODUCTION
ADVERTISING PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Kevin Chanel
REPRINTS Cindy Zauss e: czauss@cmp.com t: 516-562-5000
Julie A. Douglas e: jadouglas@cmp.com t: 516.562.5092
CMP GAME GROUP
VP, GROUP PUBLISHER APPLIED TECHNOLOGIES Philip Chapnick
VP, STRATEGIC MARKETING Michele Maguire
DIRECTOR OF MARKETING Ta r a C . G i b b
CONFERENCE DIRECTOR, GDC Jamil Moledina
SENIOR CONFERENCE MANAGER, GDC Meggan Scavio
EXECUTIVE WEB PRODUCER Peter Leahy
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, GAMASUTRA.COM Simon Carless
FEATURES EDITOR, GAMASUTRA.COM Frank Cifaldi
CIRCULATION
CIRCULATION COORDINATOR Miguel Mendiolaza e: mmendiolaza@cmp.com
CIRCULATION ASSISTANT Michael Campbell e: mcampbell@cmp.com
CIRCULATION ASSISTANT Andrea Abidor e: aabidor@cmp.com
SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES
FOR INFORMATION, ORDER QUESTIONS, AND ADDRESS CHANGES
t: 800.250.2429 f: 847.763.9606 e: gamedeveloper@halldata.com
INTERNATIONAL LICENSING INFORMATION
Mario Salinas t: 650.513.4234 f: 650.513.4482 e: msalinas@cmp.com
CMP TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT
PRESIDENT AND CEO Steve Weitzner
EXECUTIVE VP AND CFO Adam Marder
SENIOR VP, AUDIENCE MARKETING & DEVELOPMENT Bill Amstutz
SENIOR VP, CMP INTEGRATED MARKETING SOLUTIONS Joseph Braue
SENIOR VP AND GENERAL COUNSEL Sandra Grayson
SENIOR VP, CORPORATE MARKETING Lisa Johnson
SENIOR VP, CORPORATE SALES Anne Marie Miller
SENIOR VP, MANUFACTURING Marie Myers
SENIOR VP, COMMUNICATIONS Alexandra Raine
VP, AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT Michael Zane
PRESIDENT, CHANNEL GROUP Robert Faletra
PRESIDENT, CMP ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA To ny Ke efe
PRESIDENT, BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY GROUP Jeff Patterson
SENIOR VP, GROUP DIRECTOR, ELECTRONICS & SOFTWARE GROUPS
Paul Miller
SENIOR VP, GROUP DIRECTOR, COMMUNICATIONS GROUP,
Stephen Saunders
TO THOSE OF YOU WHO DON’T NORMALLY RECEIVE
Game Developer , we bid you a hearty welcome. As
part of outreach for the Game Developers
Conference in San Francisco this March, we’ve
decided to give out tens of thousands of extra
copies of the magazine, alongside a preview guide
of the show. Just flip the magazine over to read
more about the GDC.
But if you keep paging forward through the main
magazine, you’ll find an extremely honest
postmortem of a Wii launch title, thanks to Toys
for Bob’s T ONY H AWK ’ S D OWNHILL J AM write-up, as
well as the winners of the 2006 Front Line
Awards, honoring the best tools, engines,
hardware, books, and much more. For more
information about Game Developer , including
subscription specifics, visit www.gdmag.com.
used the potential of the Wii Remote compared to,
say, W II S PORTS .
Have the extreme freedoms inherent in the Wii
controller doomed all games that don’t want
incredibly freeform controls into feeling a little
buttoned-down? I hope not.
Dave Pottinger Ensemble Studios
George Sanger Big Fat Inc.
Harvey Smith Midway
Paul Steed Microsoft
JUGGLING DIFFICULTY
As for the PlayStation 3, the difficulty for
developers has been in wrestling with the
complex hardware after final development kit
delivery. Because of this, a lot of the game design
behind the launch titles has ended up feeling
reasonably staid. If a game’s technical execution
is going to have risk factors, the developers
probably don’t want to experiment heavily with
design either.
The PlayStation 3 also suffers a little in comparison
with the Xbox 360, which is a year ahead in terms of
technical understanding and hardcore engine
programming. But even on Sony’s platform,
there’s cause for cheer driving recklessly over the
horizon, thanks to games like Evolution Studios’
M OTOR S TORM , which was about to debut as of press
time—and judging by the frenetic downloadable
demo currently available for PlayStation 3, shows
off impressive physics and visuals.
LAUNCH EXPECTATIONS
I want to talk about launch lineups for next-
generation consoles and how they do (or don’t)
predict the success of any given machine. As
people are wont to remind us, the PlayStation 2
launched with F ANTAVISION as a first-party title on
day one, and Lord knows fireworks action-puzzle
games were not what the system continued to
trend toward. However, I think game professionals
are already able to derive a number of lessons
from the PlayStation 3 and Wii launches.
The amount of time given to optimize and
enhance launch titles to fit the unique capabilities of
the target platform is often very limited, since final
hardware and controller delivery often happens
only a few short months before titles are due out.
Since most competitive games take at least 12,
and often closer to 18 months to complete, this
means either a short development time after final
kit delivery, or more likely, a certain amount of
pre-planning that can limit the spectacular nature
of any debut games. For the Wii, for example,
there are several mini-games that are perfectly
charming, but don’t yet show depth of gameplay.
Conversely, there are a number of licensed
launch titles for Wii that are straightforward
conversions from other platforms. Their gameplay
is functional, but doesn’t feel especially designed
to take advantage of Nintendo’s new control
scheme. Such titles have therefore fared in a
lackluster way with critics.
Yet even the Wii-exclusive T ONY H AWK ’ S D OWNHILL
J AM , definitely one of the Wii launch titles I have
enjoyed the most, feels a little like it has under-
CARRIAGE AND HORSE
It says a lot that standout titles for just-launched
next-gen consoles—including upcoming games
like Ninja Theory’s H EAVENLY S WORD —have been in
development for relatively long periods of time
before the hardware was even available. These
titles are often backed by first-party companies
that can risk a certain amount of churn and
uncertainty in order to get compelling content.
The results are often key hardware sales drivers
for the console in question.
Will the game industry see hardware
manufacturers or even major publishers starting
key teams on titles for their next generation of
consoles as much as two years before final
hardware arrives? If they want classic titles for
early adopters, it sounds like they should
definitely consider it.
*
Simon Carless
Editor-in-chief
Game Developer
is BPA approved
2
JANUARY 2007 | GAME DEVELOPER
[
WWW.CMPGAME.COM
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Idea:
Assemble the ultimate team to create a John Woo sequel that you can play.
Realized:
The line between video game and fi lm is offi cially blurred. When faced
with the challenge of creating a video game sequel worthy of John Woo’s
movie “Hard Boiled,” the team at Midway chose to use Autodesk ® 3ds Max ® ,
Autodesk Maya ® and Autodesk MotionBuilder™. Using this 3D arsenal,
artists are able to create graphically stunning characters, backgrounds
and animations with amazing production effi ciency. Get the full story on
this next-generation masterpiece at autodesk.com/stranglehold
Stranglehold © 2006 Midway Amusement Games, LLC. All rights reserved. Stranglehold, MIDWAY, and the Midway logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Midway Amusement Games, LLC. Autodesk, 3ds Max,
Maya and MotionBuilder are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Autodesk re-
serves the right to alter product offerings and specifi cations at any time without notice, and is not responsible for typographical or graphical errors that may appear in this document. © 2006 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.
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