Every year, hundreds of games industry professionals, from CEOs to students, pack Brighton's Hilton hotel for the three-day Develop conference. Organised by the trade publication of the same name, it's really a business-focused event, tracking the changes in the development environment, digging out the trends. There are sessions in which experienced industry veterans give lofty mission statements, but there are also technical talks on coding, on audio, on ? ugh ? monetisation models. It's not the creative love-in of GDC or the all-out consumer assault of E3. It's more reflective, more guarded.
Wrapping up at Develop yesterday, Alice Taylor CEO and Founder of Makie Labs, Andrew Oliver of Blitz Games, and Jonathan Smith of Traveller's Tales sat down to discuss the highlights of the conference with Develop Magazine's Editor, Will Freeman.
Jonathan Smith's first pick was Barry Meade of Fireproof Games' "desperately inspiring" talk on the 'craft of searching for joy'. The developer of the hit iOS game The Room gave a talk on the importance of following creative instincts and how his small team avoided industry obsessions with QA and marketing analysis to make the game they wanted to make. Smith thought there was something incredibly 'sexy', almost seductive in the idea that games development and design should 'be about searching for pleasure'. It was, he said, motivational and aspirational for anyone in the room.
Alice Taylor was also full of admiration for Meade. She said that he reminded her of the artist filmmaker who says 'fuck Hollywood, I'm going to do it my way'. However, she was concerned for those developers who might not have so much reputation and experience ? Meade has previously worked at legendary British studios Bullfrog and Criterion. 'He's a genius and he's got 20 years under his belt', she said, but others with less of those chops might run into trouble.
Andrew Oliver discussed Blitz's late relationship with the now defunct publisher, THQ, and said that it was a shame creativity often had to be curtailed. In context of the discussion about Fireproof Games' recent success, Will Freeman asked Andrew if he was ever, "not giving a shit and going for it?" Oliver replied with a lament on his early years as a bedroom coder, working with his brother, Philip on titles like Super Robin Hood and Dizzy: "It was just the two of us and we'd do what we liked. We went skiing and we decided to make a skiing simulator!" Jonathan Smith joked that skiing then becomes a tax write-off. "But it's scary days these days, having your publishers go down ... A funny time for the industry," Oliver said.
Alice Taylor said her highlight was Marvelous AQL's Harry Holmwood and his session entitled, 'East Meets West - Lessons from Japan, the Most Profitable F2P Market'. Holmwood talked about how the country is the highest monetising mobile games market in the world, with some games enjoying ARPPUs of up to $300 per month. "What's become really clear is that we're just behind Japan", Taylor said. "Everything they do we just do a couple years later." Taylor went on to say that the best thing about the Develop conference is that people talk about units and numbers and data, which is a particularly meaty topic for her. Smith agreed, observing that even indie developers such as Mike Bithell have talked in detail about sales figures at this year's conference.
The topic changed to new non-traditional consoles, the next exciting thing to happen to the games industry. Andrew Oliver spoke sentimentally of the Spectrum, the BBC, the Dragon, and the MSX and remembered the era that brought these left-field devices was an exciting time where you could build something and sell it off-the-shelf. Now ARM GNU/Linux box Raspberry Pi has appeared, selling at a very cheap price, and other non-traditional consoles such as Gamestick are appearing. Alice Taylor agreed. "Oculus Rift is amazing", she said, before pointing out the only downside: "you end up looking like those dudes out of Flash Gordon". A minor inconvenience though, beside the thrill of being able to design, fund and distribute offbeat gadgets. "I love that people can just make hardware," she said. "If Samsung just came out with a console, everyone would be like 'woah'", Andrew Oliver added, but it's something that is now possible.
The topic changed to Alice Taylor's talk with Dr Jo Twist on funding: 'Raising Equity From Within the UK: A Story From the Frontline, How, Where & When to Raise From VCs'. Taylor's impression was that the funding landscape is, "becoming way more positive" and that "there are now more seed investors that ever...angels... VCs. It's actually really good," proving that the traditional publisher model isn't the only way anymore. Andrew Oliver nodded, saying that he didn't see that 10 years ago. "It was nice and predictable in a way..." he said, but much more restricted.
How should game developers feel about the tax breaks for British developers that has just been approved? Jonathan Smith said with much candour that British developers should be grateful to Jo Twist [CEO of UKie]. He argued that this new system was, "creating an environment where British game developers can compete across the world" and said that it was a very positive move, and invested in cultural awareness. "Were this not to happen we'd be in real trouble," Alice Taylor added. "Britain is expensive."
The panel turned to discussing the details on the cultural test necessary for the tax relief: Anna Mansi, the Head of Certification from BFI administers it. The new UK Creative Sector Tax Reliefs were launched on 29 April with an event hosted by the British Film Commission. The event provided an overview of the new tax reliefs and their potential impact on the UK high-end television, animation and games industries. The panel agreed that at the event, it was exciting to see someone break down Terry Cavanagh's Super Hexagon in a nuanced and realistic way, to show how the tax breaks would help game developers. Jonathan Smith also observed that though you can get a maximum of four points for setting your game in Britain, you can make it set in an undisclosed place and still get three points, proving there are more subtle ways to gain your tax relief than you'd think.
Smith then brought up the talk on 'The Future of Game AI', a panel discussing how extra horsepower available in future generations of consoles, combined with an ever-better understanding of how to build engaging worlds is affecting the landscape of game development. Design by data was discussed by the panel: the idea that all of our devices are connected and can give feedback through analytics, influencing how features are put in. If you make sure your game is entirely driven on variables, then it can affect the design more. Andrew Oliver mentioned that Blitz's iOS title Paper Titans, "can tell there are hotspots of difficulty - there's a dropoff", he said, indicating, "those players are not coming back". The game can then enable a change of difficulty based on people's approach. Alice Taylor wondered aloud if this was over-implemented, whether it would start to feel wrong, remarking "This is the system gaming you". "It's sort of working," Oliver countered.
'From Start-Up to Stability: Making a Studio Sustainable Outside the Work-for-Hire Model' was a talk given by Dan Pinchbeck of the Chinese Room on making studios and indies sustainable. Alice Taylor remarked that there was lots of discussion on how to start a business now, and that this is amazing. "But is the number of start-ups reaching critical mass?" Will Freeman wondered.
"There is so much money going into the mobile area," Andrew Oliver said. "It is a market you cannot saturate. If you release a game now... it can probably keep selling and selling and selling". But Alice Taylor wasn't so sure. "How will it get noticed?" she asked. "If you don't get featured by Apple you are kinda screwed. ...To get to the top ten you have to spend a million pounds, apparently. Again it's like, who's got that?"
Taylor also mentioned cases of games like Sweatshop HD, the politically charged game about garment workers that Taylor helped commission while at Channel 4. Apple pulled the title from its App Store, and Taylor suggested this was part of the reason its developer, Littleloud, closed a few weeks ago. The mobile market can still be a hazardous place.
Finally, questions were taken from the audience. One attendee wondered whether Android markets were now going to take over from Apple. "No one stays at the top forever", Taylor remarked. She said that she thought that the "speed of play" had increased markedly in the last few years, when people were initially talking about the "Future of Social" where "whales are the only way to make money". Now, it seems, 'dolphins' are the new demographic being marketed to. Jonathan Smith ended things on a philosophical note, one that pretty much encompassed the feel of Develop this year: "everything changes all the time..."
The Guardian's two attendees, Cara Ellison and Keith Stuart, give their thoughts on the event
Cara Ellison: Develop conference as a whole was saturated with optimism: from the successful independent developers such as Mike Bithell and Barry Meade, to the likes of Sony's Mark Cerny telling conference attendees how Sony prototyped the PS4 controllers so that eight-year-olds will find them more accessible, more and more of our key industry people are concerned with how we can extend our hands out to those people we have never reached before. The mobile market has enabled people to game on their commute, and the charity SpecialEffect is working to have technology reach people who are otherwise alienated by the complex, button-reliant games that our AAA industry produces. Develop underlined inclusivity, experimentation and growth. Under the glow of the Brighton sun, along with the new proliferation of non-traditional consoles that the panel mentioned such as Gamestick and the Oculus Rift, the new support from the British government with the games industry tax relief, and the new space that independent developers like Lady Shotgun and Fireproof Games have found for themselves, Develop seemed to indicate that the UK games industry is poised to flourish.
Keith Stuart: I definitely got some of that optimism, but there were also elements of Develop that I found alienating this year. The obsession with free-to-play mechanics on the first 'Evolve' day was galling; I'm not one of those 'F2P is evil' zealots, but flooding the conference streams with what is effectively a complex and controversial monetisation model seems a little unbalanced. F2P needs to be wrapped around really well-designed games; Evolve was more about ensuring the right buzzword was catered for rather than actually helping anyone to use it wisely. After this, there were some really interesting talks: Berni Good on psychopathy in game characters, Tim Sweeney of Epic on the rise of photorealism in games ? the latter caused a Twitter storm, but that is exactly what an event like this should be aiming for.
I just feel it lacked a little ... soul. A one day pass costs up to ?365 or ?225 for students, cutting out a lot of interested youngsters and smaller studios. Sure, the modest 'expo' area was free to attend, but this is little more than a recruitment jamboree. GDC is much larger of course, but it also seeks to be more inclusive, with free talks and seminars in and around the main venue.
Cara Ellison: A nice counterpoint to the soullessness of Evolve was the Mock The Geek panel game hosted by Simon Byron at the end of the conference - there was a lot of humour in reflecting on the 'monetising', dollar-grabbing tendencies of the industry. Along with the handing out of free beer and acerbic wit, there was space for us to feel a little better about being collectively alienated by the emphasis on gouging cash from consumers. There was a sense about how there are parts of the industry that we don't all identify with or like but at least there was room to be passionate about the creativity still taking place.
Keith Stuart: That's great, but I think they should have had more of it. Develop sessions can't all be about, 'oh god, how are we making money THIS year' ? but the problem is, because the entry price is so high, those are the ones everyone feels they have to go to. The panel Edge did, which was all about the culture of games as a media, had about 15 people in the audience. I know it's a serious business event, but games ? like movies ? exist in a space between art and industry and you need to reflect both elements. I don't mean to put the whole thing down; it was very interesting and revealing at times, but I wish it was a bit braver.
Cara Ellison: I did see a real absence in the schedule of talks about games having more of a wider cultural relevance or context, but Alice Taylor's point about the fact that Develop focusses on facts and figures perhaps indicates that Develop actually has more of a dry business pedigree than the remit that GDC has. GDC is definitely much larger in scope and as a result it really manages to bring the cultural stuff to the fore. Having said that - Develop's programming did resemble the business track of GDC much more than it covered other aspects of the industry. One point though: Dan Grill (Develop's photographer) mentioned that the audio track this year was the most interesting and audacious one out of all the others, and I didn't even attend them. I feel a tad ashamed of that.
Keith Stuart: I missed them too! Rebecca Parnell's talk ? Hearing the Unseen: An Exploration of Off-Screen and Acousmatic Sound ? was fascinating apparently. She's a freelance sound designer and she was talking about how describing 'unseen' and offscreen events through audio is a really powerful way of adding emotion and atmosphere to virtual worlds. Next year, I'll give the F2P talks a miss (although by then, there will be another faddish monetisation method to obsess over), and do sound instead!
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2013/jul/12/develop-conference-2013-highlights
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