Leave it to me to fumble my European power adapter, which means I'm typing like a five-fingered tornado to beat my laptop battery to the fizzle-line. But what a fantastic session, despite Peter Molyneux taking a rain check and subbing in the more than able George Backer, Lionhead's Online and Infrastructure Manager. Don Daglow (President, Stormfront Studios), Michael Capps (President Epic Games), Julian Eggebrecht (President, Factor 5) and Backer kicked off a rousing reminisce-and-tell session about how to score those magic mega-dollars whether your IP's a budget fluke like Deer Hunter or a third-person tactical shooting sales juggernaut like Gears of War.
Left to right, Justin Calvest (Gamespot Senior Editor, panel moderator), Don Daglow (Stormfront), Michael Capps (Epic), Julian Eggebrecht (Factor 5), George Backer (Lionhead)
So what makes a bestselling game? Some of the answers were pretty obvious, like Daglow's: "It's a combination of seeing something that ought to be done and having a really deep desire to do it." Michael Capps on the other hand joked he had "no idea," but that as a "better programmer than designer," he tends to break things down into "necessary" versus "sufficient" components. "I have no idea what's sufficient to make a bestselling, so we just try to focus on what's necessary," he said. Eggebrecht's reflected Daglow, saying it was "all about drive," but added "It's also really about team structure, picking the right people for your team. You absolutely need the right mix of people." Backer rounded things out by mirroring what Nintendo's up to: "It has a lot to do with how you approach other people who currently aren't playing games."
Taking a stab at bestseller design tips, Capps led off with a witty "We simply copy Grand Theft Auto -- oh, and Madden." Daglow followed by describing Stormfront's "bubble up" process in which team members freely submit ideas: "It can be any team member, they don't need a title on their business card," he said. "That team member starts talking to other team members, and the idea sort of bubbles up. You start having regular meetings, and if it's an idea that everyone's interested in, you start putting the time in. It's a very amorphous process."
Eggebrecht drew on his experience with the Star Wars universe, explaining that Factor 5's design decisions were driven by "what moments in the movies didn't end up right" and "which of those moments should be done again in an interactive way." While he was upbeat about licensed IP, he was decidedly less so about his experience fresh off an original IP like Lair. "The large original IP project is a terrible process...and right now I would just kill to have a general licensed IP, because it's so much easier than going with original."
When asked how seriously they took feedback from the press or on message boards, Capps joked "We absolutely love the press -- everything they say, we immediately put into our game." Then he got serious: "We've got very active forums that we read all the time, and we actually bring the press in for previews to see what they think." Tipping his hat to the media, he added: "The press know games, they know what's going to sell."
Eggebrecht was less enthusiastic about forums. "The hardcore community is extremely vocal," he said. "I think you need to take forums with a grain of salt." Referring to some of the intense criticism Factor 5's received by a few fans for including extensive motion control in Lair, he said a certain hardcore component of the player base resents the idea that motion control (use of the PS3's SIXAXIS feature in Lair) is evolutionary, thus that hardcore audience can be "both a blessing and a curse."
Daglow brought in PR (public relations) as an important factor in terms of getting feedback, arguing out that PR tends to get a bad rap, but that the best PR agents listen carefully to the press. "Sometimes members of the press will tell the PR people things they won't tell the developer directly," he noted.
When the discussion shifted to extending shelf life, Capps pointed out the obvious zinger: great mods, which Eggebrecht echoed by fingering downloadable content. Daglow said developers need to focus on developing a relationship with players "instead of throwing games over the wall," and Backer agreed, referencing Lionhead's The Movies, where the company at first thought its online moviemaking and sharing functionality was just an enhancement. After release, they realized it might actually be a serious professional launching pad for someone interested in entering the TV and film industry. (I spoke with Backer afterward, and he confirmed that at least one person was actually sought out by a TV studio on account of a popular The Movies piece he'd orchestrated and posted online.)
I'll close with the question I asked the panel, because it's relevant to what I do and what you ought to expect from folks like me: "Somebody a couple of years ran a survey suggesting that the correlation between how the press scores a game and how well that game sells isn't as strong as we assume. Does the press need to change or adapt as gamers really start to embrace alternative [I really meant the broadening casual Wii-and-beyond group] forms of gaming?" [Update: Hey cool, Gamasutra picked up on it!]
Eggebrecht: "Let's say the Wii takes over the world. Just naturally, the traditional magazines -- if they stick to their current position of slightly dissing it -- will simply go out of business. It's a very natural evolution. If on the other hand the market stays as diverse as it is right now, which is actually quite exciting I think, then there just might be room for a more hardcore press which will potentially drift further away from the casual side, and a casual press which appreciates what companies like Nintendo are doing. But you can't force casual onto the hardcore press. That absolutely won't work."
Daglow: "Games are being aimed at a wider range of audiences, and what I see many journalists now trying to do, is to judge on the basis of the audience for whom the game is intended, rather than judge solely based on what they themselves are playing tonight at 10:00. I think I would respectfully say that is the mark of the best journalist -- that they're capable of reflecting multiple points of view."
