Contents
Editorial: State of the Buffoonian
Chris Crawford
Getting on to GEnie (reprise)
Chris Crawford
The Self-Publishing Option Part One: Choosing a Manufacturer
Kathleen Crawford
It’s A Puzzle
Gregg Stanley
AB3280: A Shot Across the Bow
Chris Crawford
The Journal Reporter
Kellyn Beck
Faces
Chris Crawford
Editor Chris Crawford
Subscriptions The Journal of Computer Game Design is published six times a year. To subscribe to The Journal, send a check or money order for $30 to:
The Journal of Computer Game Design
5251 Sierra Road
San Jose, CA 95132
Submissions Material for this Journal is solicited from the readership. Articles should address artistic or technical aspects of computer game design at a level suitable for professionals in the industry. Reviews of games are not published by this Journal. All articles must be submitted electronically, either on Macintosh disk , through MCI Mail (my username is CCRAWFORD), through the JCGD BBS, or via direct modem. No payments are made for articles. Authors are hereby notified that their submissions may be reprinted in Computer Gaming World.
Back Issues Back issues of the Journal are available. Volume 1 may be purchased only in its entirety; the price is $30. Individual numbers from Volume 2 cost $5 apiece.
Copyright The contents of this Journal are copyright © Chris Crawford 1990.
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Editorial: State of the Buffoonian
Chris Crawford
This issue marks the conclusion of Volume 3 of the JCGD. It’s been three years now: 20 issues, some 260 pages of editorial content. I’ve probably written about 100 pages of that. Whew!
The Conference
This last year has been so successful, it’s almost boring. The fourth Computer Game Developers’ Conference was held in April, and everything went swimmingly. We had 479 registrations to the conference. Here’s the growth curve for attendees:
This is an impressive growth pattern, and although such rapid growth is unlikely to continue, there can be no question that the CGDC is now an industry institution. I mean, rully, dahling, everybody who’s anybody is there. If you’ve been missing the conference, perhaps you should reconsider. This is the annual event for computer game developers.
The fifth Computer Game Developers’ Conference will be held on March 9-12, Saturday through Tuesday, 1991, at the San Jose Hyatt Hotel. The conference committee solicits proposals for lectures, panels, or round tables to be delivered at the conference. The deadline for proposals is November 1, 1990. A proposal should be one page long and should outline the content of the proposed session in several paragraphs. Send proposals to:
Computer Game Developers’ Conference
5339 Prospect Road, Suite 289 - J
San Jose, CA 95129-5020
If you have questions about the proposals, you can call Nicky Robinson at (408) 735-0427 or Brenda Laurel at (408) 741-5865. Remember, all proposals must be in our hands by November 1st to receive consideration.
GEnie
The other big success of the year was our migration to GEnie. The JCGD RT opened up for business last fall. We’ve been running it for nearly a year now, and there is no question that the RT is a big success. We’ve got about 80 active users and another 80 occasional users. The discussions have rambled over the entire conceptual space of computer game design. We’ve commiserated about AB3280 (discussed in another article in this issue), argued about the role of graphics in games, parsers, endgame graphics, and the very definition of the word “game”. There’s been lots of good gossip, rumors, talk with designers about their plans, feedback from customers, stories about publishers, and other illuminating material. It’s all been great good fun.
For the most part, we’ve been a polite group. Yes, there’s been a little flaming (of course, when I do it, it’s hard-hitting, incisive analysis) but the Topic FireMen swoop down quickly when things get out of hand. The more common complaint is that some discussions drift from the issue at hand, which is itself a measure of the intellectual vigor of the participants.
If you aren’t partaking of the GEnie experience, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. I strongly urge every subscriber to get on-line NOW! In case you’ve forgotten, I have reproduced the basic instructions on pages 4 and 5.
As part of our first-year self-analysis, there are some changes coming. On October 1st, we will perform housecleaning on our free flag list. Anybody who is not a current subscriber of the Journal will have their free flag revoked. If your subscription lapses with this issue, you had better get your subscription renewal in to me now!
The Journal
Which brings me to the state of health of the Journal. We are currently running 290 paid subscriptions and 50 free subscriptions. That’s up slightly from last year (262 paid, 55 free). All in all, the Journal seems to be doing well. Article submissions are still low; every issue I end up cranking out extra pages of material to make up the shortfall. I must admit, I don’t spend much time beating the bushes for articles. My experience has been that it takes so long to cajole articles out of people that it’s faster just to write them myself. Still, the Journal could use some different faces, so if you’ve been thinking about writing something, please do so!
Many of you have your subscription renewals come due this issue. Please, if your mailing label indicates that it’s time to renew (the expiration date is 90/08), take the time to renew now. I only send out one reminder.
A New Service
I have a new service in mind for the Journal. It seems to me that we lack a central repository for documents. It would be nice if we had a single source for the various references, papers, and items that only game designers would be interested in. So I will offer this service, starting with the next issue. I will put together a catalogue of the various documents of interest to game designers, get some inventory, and start taking orders. Like the Journal, I do not intend to make this a profit center. Instead, I’ll just charge my cost plus a shipping and handling fee.
Here’s where you come in: I want you to provide me with suggestions or requests for items to put into the JCGD Library. Send your suggestions to me by snail mail, by MCI, or over GEnie. Just tell me what you would like to see in the Library and give me some idea of how I can acquire it.
If you have some product that you think would be of interest to game developers, you can place it in the JCGD Library on a consignment basis. Remember that the purpose of the Library is not primarily commercial, but rather to provide developers with easy access to rare or hard-to-find materials. Contact me and we’ll arrange something.
Transitions
I note with sadness the departure of two of our own from the industry. Gordon Walton and John Reego. They had different reasons for leaving the industry (although they both ended up in Chicago working in different non-game companies.) We wish you guys well and hope you’ll come back someday!
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Getting on to GEnie (reprise)
Chris Crawford
The JCGD has its own RT (Round Table) on GEnie. As a subscriber to the Journal, your time in the Game Design RT is absolutely free!
Logging On to GEnie
GEnie can only be accessed during off-hours: weekday evenings after 6:00 PM, and all day weekends and holidays. Set up your tele-communications software to dial 800 - 638 - 8369. This is a national GEnie access number; you will want to find your local access number once you are logged on. You may need to prod it with a carriage return. At the prompt “U#=”, type “XTX99623,JCGD” and a carriage return. This is our secret ID number that identifies you as a JCGD subscriber and allows you to sign up for GEnie without paying the normal sign-up fee. You will still need to supply a credit card number, and you will still have to pay normal charges for the time that you spend in other areas of GEnie; however, you will probably find these other areas well worth the expense.
Once you have logged on, you will need to send an EMail message to get set up. So move to the mail section of GEnie by selecting menu item 3 (GE Mail). The menu system for GEnie is quite clear and you should have no problem navigating your way to the mail area. Once there, select menu item 6 (Enter a Text Letter Online) to send a mail message to a fellow named “GM”. This is Richard Mulligan, our immediate host. Carbon Copy your message to “CCRAWFOR”. (that’s me.) The subject of the letter should be “JCGD Free Flag”. The content should be a short sentence such as, “Hello, here I am.” When he recieves your letter, Richard will set the flag in the GEnie system that insures that your time in the Game Design RT is not billed. When I receive the copy of your letter, I will open up the gates that allow you into the Inner Sanctum of the Game Design RT.
Don’t be intimidated by all this; the GEnie system is completely menu-driven, so it is very difficult to screw up, even if you don’t have a manual. Moreover, if you need help at any point, just type “HELP” and hit the carriage return and it will explain your options.
The Game Design RT
At this point, you should type “JCGD” to go to the JCGD RT. It will ask you if you wish to enter the JCGD area; respond affirmatively and enter. The act of entering the JCGD RT tells the GEnie system that you are part of the JCGD database. This is important, because it’s the only way that I can get you into the private areas. Select menu item 1 (Bulletin Board) to enter the Bulletin Board area of the RT. Look at a message or two, then leave.
The time that you spend in this first session will be billed against your credit card, so try to make it short, although the hourly charge of GEnie is so low that you needn’t rush. You’ll have to wait 24 hours for Rick Mulligan to set your JCGD Free Flag.
When you return the next day, Richard Mulligan will have set your JCGD Free Flag and I will have set access to the hidden areas of the RT. Type “JCGD” to get to the RT and, at the next prompt, type “1” to enter the bulletin board section.
You will find yourself in Category 1. There are fourteen categories. However, only the first four are open to the public; categories 5 - 14 are hidden and secret. When you first enter the Bulletin Board area, GEnie won’t know that you are one of the Chosen Few and will not let you into these categories. As far as you will be able to tell, categories 5 - 14 don’t exist. Three conditions must be met in sequence before you can enter the Inner Sanctum: 1) you must copy me on the JCGD Free Flag EMail; 2) you must enter the Game Design RT; and 3) I must set the entry flag for you.
I’ve had a lot of problems with people failing to follow this sequence and then complaining to me that they can’t get into the hidden areas of the RT. As soon as I receive your “JCGD Free Flag” mail, I will attempt to grant you access to the hidden areas. If you have not entered the JCGD RT, then the software will not recognize your name in my request, and will deny access. So please, make certain you follow the above sequence.
The most basic command in your situation would be BROWSE. This command will search through all the categories to which you have access (in this case, only the first four,) and present them to you. It will also permit you, at intervals, to reply to posted messages. For this first encounter, I recommend that you refrain from doing so. For now, just read the existing messages and get acquainted with the style of the discussions.
It will take me a day or two to read my mail, discover your message, and set the flags to let you into the hidden areas of the RT. What’s more, I can’t do it until after you have entered the Game Design RT once. There is a way to know when you are “in”: try the command “SET 5”. This command will attempt to move you into category 5, one of the hidden categories. If you are in, then it will comply; otherwise, it will blithely lie to you that there is no such category. Once you are in, you can use either the SET command or the BROwse command to read through the hidden categories. Be warned, though, that the CATegories command will still not list the hidden categories.
Guidelines
Lastly, some suggestions for gentlepersonly (gag!) behavior. We are guests on GEnie and I would like to make our presence a positive contribution to GEnie, not a liability. The public are of the Game Design RT has been set up to provide regular (read: paying) customers of GEnie with useful information. Please, take the time to contribute to the ongoing discussions there.
While you are in the public areas, please don’t give away the fact that there are private hidden areas that are not accessible to the general public. It only upsets people to know that they are Unchosen. Moreover, I don’t want to show my gratitude for GEnie’s generosity by telling its customers that they can reduce their GEnie spending by subscribing to the Journal. So let’s just keep the existence of the hidden areas our own little secret, OK?
Please take advantage of the other Round Tables on GEnie. There are a lot of them, covering a great deal of material, and I am sure that you will find some of them interesting and useful. You will have to pay for the time you spend in these RTs, but you will undoubtedly find some that are well worth the money.
As always with any telecommunications system, you must be very careful to avoid the problem of misunderstood communications. Remember, the fine nuances of voice intonation and facial expression are lost in the pure ASCII world. Offhand witticisms offered in jest can read like viscious snarls; terse rebuttals can come across as cold anger. It’s very easy for well-intentioned people to end up at each other’s throats.
To prevent this, always word your messages in as conciliatory and professional a tone as possible. Be wary of sloppy language. If you crack a joke, terminate it with the three characters semicolon - hyphen - close paren. ;-) They represent a sideways smiling face and say, “That’s a joke, friend!” I guarantee, if you don’t clearly mark it as a joke, somebody will take offense. (e.g., “Oh, yeah? Well, for your information, buster, I happen to raise chickens for a living, and I can assure you that I never allow my chickens loose near roads, and so they don’t cross them!”)
The problem is trickiest when you find yourself in the thick of a hot debate. Most people have difficulty maintaining strict standards of professional expression on bulletin boards. When that bastard on the other side of the wire lets fly with a particularly pointed broadside, it’s hard to keep your cool. All too often you shoot back a furious reply laced with juicy insinuations and clever put-downs. This is called flaming. Don’t do it — flames, like forest fires, seldom just burn out. They grow on you. Pretty soon the whole board is one raging conflagration.
We don’t want to stifle honest intellectual debate. Our profession is still young and uncertain; there is much room for major differences of opinion between intelligent people. We want those differences of opinion to get a full airing. We need a demolition derby of ideas, a barroom brawl of opinions. Please, get in there and fight eloquently for your beliefs — but keep it on an intellectual plane, not a personal one.
I urge you to join the Game Design RT on GEnie and participate in the discussions there. Our experience with the JCGD BBS showed that the community of users benefited greatly from the discussions there. Our hope is that a much larger community will be able to crystallize on GEnie. I hope to see you there!
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The Self-Publishing Option Part One: Choosing a Manufacturer
Kathleen Crawford
Preface
Why am I writing an article for the Journal of Computer Game Design? Good question. I am no game designer. I am not even much of a game player. I’ve only found three computer games I really like to play (Editor’s note: none of them mine — harrumph!) But I know how to put a product together. When Chris took on the task of finishing and publishing Balance of the Planet in six months, he turned to me to set up manufacturing. With many years of experience in electronic instrument manufacturing, some good advice, and a lot of hard work the game shipped on schedule. So here is my advice to you.
Choosing a manufacturer
Choosing a manufacturer is akin to choosing a spouse. (Editor’s note: Oh, really?) You begin a partnership that must endure for better or for worse and through good times and bad. Unlike choosing a spouse, there are some specific criteria that you can use to evaluate the match. But before you can evaluate a manufacturer you have to decide what kind of manufacturer that you want.
In the manufacture of software, you have three choices: the do-it-yourself approach, the assembly house or the turn-key manufacturer. The do-it-yourself approach means that you buy all of the individual parts, store them somewhere, duplicate the disks, then assemble finished games.
This is a very tortuous way to manufacture your game, and may actually end up costing more than the other approaches, as you will see. If you choose to use an assembly house, then you buy the individual components, except the disks. The assembly house will act as your warehouse, within limits, and will, upon your order, duplicate disks, assemble finished games, and ship the product. Some of the benefits are clear: you don’t have to store pallets of material, buy a shrink wrap machine or duplicate disks. You pay for these services one way or another, but you benefit because the assemble house buys disks-your most expensive component- at volume discounts. I believe that the last approach is the best. The turn-key manufacturer buys all of the components for your game, some will even help you generate film and plates [film and plates?? What are those for?? ASK ME LATER], will duplicate the disks, assemble the game and ship the product. These services are not free, you can expect the manufacturer to add 10-25% to the cost of the product for his trouble. However, the manufacturer probably has established discounts, credit status and quick turn-around times with the component suppliers. You benefit from each of these relationships and depending on the terms that you negotiate, the manufacturer may actually carry your inventory at no charge to you for short periods of time. You pay more, maybe, but you pay later- possibly after you get paid by your distributor. The benefit to your cash flow is clear, but the biggest benefit is that you don’t have to plan for having the material available when it is needed. With my manufacturing experience, I felt that I could easily manage the material plan in my spare time. I chose not to plan the inventory myself because I would only have to forget or misplan one label or warranty card to have a whole shipment delayed. It is better to pay for someone to be dedicated to planning the inventory for my product.
Now that you know what type of manufacturer to look for, how do you evaluate a manufacturer. Recommendations from other small publishers is a good way. Jeff Braun, of Maxis, gave me several recommendations for good manufacturers, which helped me narrow the field of possibilities. You are looking for someone you feel comfortable working with, but remember this is business. To evalute a manufacturer, you should use three criteria: quality, delivery and price. Think of these as the legs of a three-legged stool. If any one of the legs is missing, it won’t stand up. If one is uneven to the others, you should prepare for a rough ride.
Quality should be evaluated by contacting references, some of the manufacturer’s customers, and by observation. The references youshould ask to contact should be current customers who are about the same size as you, and in start-up mode , if you are in start-up mode. You should plan to inspect the factory. Spent some time looking at the warehouse and manufacturing area. Are the pallets of components well marked, protected from dust and dirt and well organized? Remember, in the end, this is your material-your money. Look at product coming right out of the shrinkwrap machine- is the box dented or marred? The shrink wrap tight? Is the flow of the product organized so that you, yourself, can see how the whole thing is built. If you can’t, chances are the process will get fouled up and you will get missing components in your games. What about quality inspection? Does someone look at the parts as they are going together to make sure the printing is straight and the box colors are sharp and clear? How do they tell that all of the components are in the box before shrink wrap? Our manufacturer weighs each box to insure that it is all there. Last, but maybe most important, how do they maintain their disk duplication equipment? The “bad disk” complaint is the biggest one that we have found so far. It can be the disk, or a poorly aligned customer disk drive. Your manufacturer needs to keep his duplication equipment in peak condition, at the nominal alignment, to assure you of as few problems as possible.
Delivery should again be checked with the references. Let the manufacturer describe some of their best turnarounds and how they did it. Ask about their normal leadtime-that is, the time from when you call with an order to the time it ships. If you don’t give them that much time, don’t be upset when the shipment is late.
I have left price for last because it can be very emotional. If you are just getting started money can be very tight. Remember, most of the time you get what you pay for. Get several quotes. Get quotes from assembly houses, turn-key houses and component vendors for some of your major components, like the box and manual. Look at the terms each company will give you and at the whole picture of cash flow. Don’t forget to ask about surprise charges like storage charges or shipping pallet charges. Be sure you know what setup charges are being amortised and that you have decided whether you want to pay these up front or want them in the cost of your product.
Lastly remember, if a one cent label prevents your Christmas shipment from getting into distribution on time, the cost of that label is not one cent anymore. So choose your manufacturer carefully and he won’t let that happen to you.
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Tales from the Crypt
Here’s a dark tale of evil doings. It seems that Arthur Author produced a game for Perry Publisher, with remuneration coming in the form of royalties. Perry Publisher duly published the game when it was finished, and sold it for several years. However, towards the end of the product life of the game, Perry Publisher came up with a great idea. He created a great sales promotion using Arthur’s game. Any customer who purchased any of Perry Publisher’s regular games would receive a copy of Arthur Author’s game for just 1 cent more!
As a result of this sales promotion, Perry Publisher sold more copies of his other games. Arthur Author, however, received royalties on only the 1 cent payment — essentially nothing. This way, Perry Publisher was able to continue to make a profit on Arthur Author’s work (by selling more of his own games) without paying Arthur any royalties! Isn’t Perry Publisher clever for thinking up this scheme? Isn’t Arthur Author stupid for signing a contract that allows Perry to get away with this? Are you stupid enough to let Perry do this to you?
If you have any tales from the crypt, send them to me and I will publish them. Just be sure that you word the tale in such a way that nobody can figure out the true identities of Arthur Author and Perry Publisher. We wouldn’t want to smear the reputations of some of the finest publishers in the industry, would we?
But hey, I’m an Equal Opportunity Rumor-Monger. If any of you publishers have some good developer horror stories, send them in, too. I’ll be happy to print stories of the poor vampire just trying to get a meal and good day’s sleep, relentlessly pursued by murderous hoodlums with silver stakes...
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It’s A Puzzle
Gregg Stanley
Game designers in a never ending quest for good designs can sometimes profit by going back to some basic definitions. In business going back to basics means defining what business you are in. In computer game design it could mean what kind of software are you developing: professional software, simulation, puzzle, game, roleplaying, etc. In the February 1990 issue of JCGD, Chris Crawford explained a few of those classifications. In the JCGD RT on GEnie ( Catagory 1 Topic 39 ) more defininitions have been presented. To state my definitions, without any claim to originality:
Toy: A stand-alone system, solitare. Exploratory in style, free-form, with an open-ended conclusion.
Puzzle: A toy with goals added. Solitare. Purposeful. Set solution. Binary or multiple binary conclusions. (Such as getting some of a crossword puzzle ).
Game: A puzzle with opponent(s). Two or more players, purposeful, symmetrical or asymmetrical. Perceived conflict with a zero-sum conclusion. (You may or may not have the same stuff as your opponent, and there is only one winner, or there is a draw.)
It was also suggested ( again Crawford) that entirely new words could be used for the rapidly emerging computer game industry. The words game, toy and puzzle, though, are all-encompassing, although a new word could apply to a new genre. For example: a role-playing type game, or a blixim type puzzle.
Note that Game is defined as having two or more players ( Crawford said opponents), while puzzles are solitare. There are some people who disagree with the requirement or having two or more players/opponents, but this article will assume that the definition is correct.
With computer games the second player is usually considered to be the computer-AI. But doesn’t the A in AI stand for Artificial? Does that mean that we are producing artificial games or worse still... puzzles?
A debate along that line would certainly have a lot of designers and a lot of pride on the game definition side, but is it the right side? Such a debate could quickly turn into an “is the computer sentient” debate, or even an “is THIS computer sentient” debate. That is a debate that won’t be solved for some time, a more practical question might be: does the user feel that the computer is an sentient opponent? If he perceives an opponent then for him it is a game. If he does not perceive an opponent then the program is a puzzle for all intents and purposes.
The problem with using a users feelings to define wheather a program is a game or a puzzle, is that his feelings change. The player starts a program with the feeling that there is a thinking opponent reacting to his every move. A few games latter he realizes that certain actions are always met by X action. Then B action is met by either X or Y response. With enough play any AI can be exposed as the rule system that it is, and any pretentious puzzle can be exposed as the puzzle that it is. Even if large sections of the rules are still hidden the user can still deduce that the program is a puzzle, industry statements notwithstanding.
The computer AI should not be considered as satisfying the requirements of a player when defining the word “game.”
Today most users percieve that the computer can be an opponent, but in the near future claiming a puzzle as a game will be regarded as a mild fraud, much like claims of an anti-perspirent elimiminating perspiration.
Puzzleness perception ( PP) is determined by the ratio of the ability of the viewer against the strength of the AI.
PP = AI / Viewer perceptiveness
Refutatio
Here are a few questions that I have anticipated.
1) What is a program that has AI and two or more player capability?
A game. When the user is playing by himself then he is engaged in problem solving — not playing a puzzle. This is a term from Chess, when a person is given a position and told to find the solution. In Chess he has to assume the best move for the opponent. Again, to be engaged in problem solving it is necessary for there to be the capability for 2 or more players. In a computer game the user may be trying to discover one or more rules that the AI is using.
2) When a person plays a computer he can start play at the beginning of a game. To be engaged in problem solving isn’t it necessary to come in, in the middle of a game?
Usually. In Chess there are no problems that I am aware of after the fourth move. This is because they have been explored by others so well. When the informed user plays the computer he generally solves one problem (identify rule, defeat rule ) at a time, sometimes it is necessary to go over old terrain to get to the point of contention. Or in this case to get to the middle of the game. Always having to start at the beginning is an inefficiency of play, not an efficiency.
I hope that this definition of puzzles and games is helpful. There is a great need for the public to have a better understanding on the abilities and the limitations of computers. At the risk of drifting from the subject I’ll give an example.
A local kindergarden instituted a lottery with computer generated random numbers for the purpose of allocating a limited number of student slots in the school. The second set of computer generated random numbers was the same as the first! This caused a great deal of frustration and a few complaints of a rigged system! I found it odd that the district expects a deterministic outcome for the students (environment shaping thier lives) but that it expected a free-will outcome from the computer ( random numbers )!
Defining single player computer programs as puzzles is a step toward a better understanding. a
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Media Letter
We have a new newsletter on the scene, Media Letter, edited by Denise Caruso. Some of you may know Denise from her computer news column in the San Francisco Examiner. Media Letter covers interactive media for business, education, and entertainment. This newsletter is so classy that its premier issue included an edited version of my recent heretical article on CD-ROM. The rest of the material is even better, too!
Media Letter can be reached at PO Box 5199, Belmont, CA 94002-9998, or by phone at (415) 592-8900. The basic price is $395 for 12 issues. How can she get away with charging that kind of money when the Journal costs only $30 per year? Simple: Denise ain’t no dilettante.
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AB3280: A Shot Across the Bow
Chris Crawford
AB3280 is a bill proposed by Assemblywoman Sally Tanner of the California State Legislature. This bill was proposed in March and, in its original form, would have made it a misdemeanor to sell any computer game that included references to tobacco or alcohol products or packaging. There was much discussion of the bill among computer game developers but nobody took any action against it. As a result, it sailed through the Assembly with no opposition, passing with only minor amendments in early June.
At this point, Mark Welch swung into action. He telephoned a number of people and posted messages on various national networks alerting people to the very real dangers imposed by this bill. I was one of the people Mark contacted. At his urging, I wrote a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee. About a dozen other people wrote similar letters. More important, Mark suggested that I call Margaret Pena of the American Civil Liberties Union in Sacramento. Margaret, in turn, explained to me the intricacies of the process of fighting the bill and convinced me of the importance of going to Sacramento to testify.
On Tuesday, June 26th, I drove to Sacramento to testify against the bill. It was an all-day affair. Margaret and I met to discuss last-minute strategy issues, then went over to the Capitol, where we spent about ten minutes chatting with Bill Lockyer, the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It turns out that Bill is an avid game player. He liked Balance of Power and his current favorite is Star Saga II. He is also a fervent believer in the sanctity of the First Amendment.
At 1:30 the Judiciary Committee convened. It had 39 bills to consider in this session, so Chairman Lockyer moved things along at a brisk pace. There were bills on everything: raising the age requirement for jet skis from 12 to 16, increasing the penalties for use of false ID, minor wording changes in some laws. After three hours, they came to AB3280. Assemblywoman Tanner presented the law. Three witnesses spent 15 minutes decrying the evils of alcohol and tobacco, but saying very little about computer games. Then Chairman Lockyer asked if there were any opposition to the bill.
I and three others went up to the witness tables. I presented my testimony first, arguing that 1) the bill is unnecessary because there have never been any cases of alcohol or tobacco companies advertising their products in computer games; 2) the bill would prohibit many innocent games, including my own Balance of the Planet; and 3) computer games are an entertainment medium just like any other, and as such should be treated in the same way. There were a few questions. One Senator asked if my voice was used in any of the computer games. When I answered "No", he suggested that I had a good voice and ought to explore the possibility. Everybody laughed. Senator Lockyer also publicly noted that I was the author of Balance of Power, a game that he had enjoyed.
Next, a law professor argued that the bill as written had serious conflicts with the First Amendment and would probably be thrown out by the courts. Then a lawyer from Sega made his arguments.
At this point, one of the Senators offered a compromise: an amendment that would prohibit only paid advertisements for alcohol or tobacco products. Assemblywoman Tanner found it acceptable. The law professor admitted that this would probably not face major First Amendment problems. Then Chairman Lockyer asked if the industry could live with it. The Sega lawyer said that yes, he could live with it. I hummed and hawed, pointing out that it was still censorship without demonstrated need, but admitted that I could live with it, too. The question was called and the amended bill passed with only one dissenting vote: Bill Lockyer’s. He stuck by his First Amendment convictions.
AB3280 will almost certainly be approved by the Senate and be signed into law. The amendment makes it almost toothless, and so, all in all, we have won a victory here. We all owe thanks to Margaret Pena, Mark Welch, and the people who wrote letters opposing the bill (including Ken Williams of Sierra Online). Finally, we were all lucky that Bill Lockyer was the Chairman; he impressed me deeply with his combination of principle and pragmatism.
However, there are many troubling afterthoughts. First, there is the fact that we as an industry did a terrible job of resisting this bill. Margaret Pena was appalled that so few people came to Sacramento to oppose the bill. We did absolutely nothing when it was first proposed and allowed it to breeze through the Assembly unopposed. No letters were written, no faxes sent, no telephone calls made. Partly it was the cocky self-assurance that nobody would vote for so obviously silly a bill. Boy, were we wrong! Partly it was the feeling that somebody else would do something. Well, nobody did anything, and if hadn’t been for Mark Welch, the only opposition would have come from the ACLU.
But I am more concerned with broader, more strategic issues. My argument that computer games are an entertainment medium just like movies or books seemed to have no sway with the Senators. One Senator commented during the discussion that these games are "just for kids anyway." We have a serious image problem, folks. Our products are seen as cheap thrills for kids, sleazy or faddish, unworthy of serious consideration. And that makes them vulnerable to further restrictions. Consider, for example, the fact that the latest Tom Cruise movie, Days of Thunder, contains precisely the same tobacco and alcohol images that, in an arcade game, inspired and justified this bill. Yet you can be certain that the California Legislature will never pass a bill that would outlaw Days of Thunder. If you’re cynical, you’ll say that this is only because Hollywood has political clout. While this is true, it is equally true that Hollywood also has moral clout. They make movies that have artistic merit, movies that tackle political and social issues. They can wrap themselves in the First Amendment because they use it! We can make no such claim.
It is imperative that we computer game designers push harder on the upper end of the artistic range of the medium. We must work to establish in the minds of the public the notion that computer games are an art form, capable of addressing the same issues that other media address. This is the most positive action that we can take.
On the negative side, we must increase our sensitivity to our vulnerability. Sega has done a great disservice to the industry by creating the games that inspired AB3280. Their mistake was a failure in judgement attributable to an inability to perceive the special position that computer games occupy in the public psyche. We as an industry must remind ourselves that, in the eyes of the public, we are not an art form. To many, we are cheap junk entertainment, slightly unsavory. For now, they just shake their heads and mutter, "Somebody ought to do something about that." Tomorrow, maybe they will. If further legislative assaults on our industry arise, we’ll be hard put convincing legislators that we are deserving of the same protections that other art forms enjoy. We’re on thin ice; we had better keep our noses clean!
On a distantly related note, it seems that the Federal Government has also been active recently. I refer to Operation Sun Devil, in which the Secret Service raided a bunch of computer hackers, confiscating computers, hard disks, floppies, anything computerish. When I first heard of this operation, I cheered, but the more I have learned, the more frightened I am. The Secret Service, it would seem, was not very discriminating in choosing its victims.
They raided Steve Jackson Games, for example, and confiscated all their equipment, solely because one of Steve Jackson’s employees was a suspect, and Steve Jackson was preparing to publish a game about cyberpunks. The raid crippled the company and may kill it completely. Four months have passed since the raid, no charges have been filed, and the equipment has yet to be returned.
It appears that the Secret Service raided anybody whose name popped up in any hacker’s computer. If this is true, the implications for law-abiding people are frightening. Can you be sure that you have never sent E-mail to any hacker? Have you ever received E-mail from a hacker? What would happen to you if the Secret Service busted down your doors in the middle of the night, shoved a gun in your face, and confiscated everything electronic in your home? Could you recover?
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The Journal Reporter
Kellyn Beck
Beyond Software Vs Cinemaware
Cinemaware is the defendant in a $20 million lawsuit filed by Beyond Software, a San Rafael, California, game developer. In the lawsuit, Beyond charges Cinemaware with trade libel, unfair competition and violation of a federal racketeering statute. Beyond’s Don Daglow says the charges stem from a letter sent by Cinemaware to industry leaders that he believes may destroy his company’s ability to work with anyone else in the industry.
When JCGD asked him about the lawsuit, Cinemaware’s Robert Jacob would only say, “I believe the suit is without merit.” Jacob declined further comment.
The dispute began after the Westlake Village, California, publisher contracted with Beyond Software to develop TV Sports Baseball, third in a series of sports games that have been released by the company, best known for its cinematic action-strategy games (and it should be noted here that I designed two products for Cinemaware, Defender of the Crown and Rocket Ranger). Cinemaware’s other sports titles are TV Sports Football and TV Sports Basketball.
Sixteen months into the development of the product, Cinemaware cancelled the contract with Beyond Software. The cancellation came on May 15th. Three days later Cinemaware sent a letter to a number of software publishers stating that it, not Beyond, owned the rights to the game.
The body of the letter is provided here in its entirety:
“Cinemaware has had occasion to contract with a third party for the development of a game to be marketed under the name of TV Sports Baseball which in the initial phases would run on IBM, C64 and Amiga environments. That third party, Beyond Software of San Rafael, California, and Cinemaware are presently in a dispute over whether Beyond Software is in compliance with its contractual obligations to Cinemaware over the development of TV Sports Baseball.”
“Paragraph 2 of the agreement between Cinemaware and Beyond Software provides in pertinent part that ‘The software which is designed and developed by you, Beyond Software, for the program from the inception of development of the software, device and all copyrights therein and thereto and all renewals and extensions thereof shall be entirely our, Cinemaware’s property, free of any claims whatsoever by you or any other person, firm or corporation.’
“Neither Beyond Software nor Don Daglow has Cinemaware’s permission to sell, license or otherwise dispose of the software developed by Beyond Software for Cinemaware’s TV Sports Baseball game.”
Daglow objects to the letter because his contract with Cinemaware contains a clause stating that if the contract is cancelled, the rights to his company’s software are returned. In a news release, Daglow cited the clause:
“If this agreement is...cancelled by CC [Cinemaware] under the provisions of Paragraph 3(d) above, all rights to the Program shall return to you [Beyond].”
Jacob would not confirm or deny if the contract contained this clause. Under the terms of the contract, the May 15th cancellation did not take effect for 30 days, so when the letter was written, Cinemaware still held the rights to the product.
Beyond Software intends to place the game with another publisher, but Daglow says the Cinemaware letter has prevented them from finding a company willing to publish it.
“This feels to us like the old days of Hollywood blacklisting,” Daglow said. “Cinemaware may have destroyed our ability to work with anyone in the industry.
“The purpose of the letter was to dissuade people from purchasing the game and it carries an implied threat. One publisher told us that it was death...the letter. He had never seen such a letter before and he thought publishing the game was buying a lawsuit.”
Daglow says all of the game elements linked to Cinemaware’s TV Sports product line have been removed from Beyond’s baseball game. “We have a contractual obligation to remove anything that resembles the TV Sports line. All the TV Sports visuals have been removed from the game.”
Daglow believes his contract is explicit in defining cancellation terms that return the rights to the game to Beyond Software, without repayment of any advances paid on the product.
Accolade Copyright Dispute
While the Cinemaware case involves product rights, Accolade Software has gone to court to protect its rights to source code. Accolade has sued a Canadian development house for alleged violations of a development agreement and Accolade copyrights. The suit is aimed at Distinctive Software of Vancouver, B.C., and involves the rights to The Duel: Test Drive II.
Accolade says parts of The Duel were incorporated into a game developed by Distinctive called Outrun. Accolade President Allan Epstein says, “Outrun contains a substantial amount of code which, by DSI’s own admission, is contained within The Duel. This is in violation of the copyright granted to us.”
Accolade also claims that DSI failed to segregate its work force so that employees working on Accolade games didn’t work on games for other companies.
DSI says the dispute involves a development system DSI created to construct any computer software products. In a court document, DSI claims the “contract with Accolade did not forfeit our right to future use of our library routines and it is not the custom or practice in the industry that software developers lose the use of their own tools when they license their works to publishers.”
Epstein denies this, saying “Accolade’s development agreement with DSI granted Accolade the exclusive copyright without limits to the products developed pursuant to the agreement.” The Accolade lawsuit also claims that DSI may be creating programs for other companies in addition to Sega that infringe on Accolade’s copyright.
EA Signs with Sega
Electronic Arts continues to strengthen its position in the videogame console market. EA concluded a licensing relationship with Sega in June and released two titles for the Sega Genesis, Populous and Budokan. EA plans to have at least two other Genesis titles ready by Christmas, and has also licensed two games to Sega for development, Abrams Battle Tank and 688 Attack Sub.
EA has already been successful in the 8-bit videogame market, with 15 titles that have been licensed for Nintendo development. Skate or Die has sold 1.2 million copies since shipping in February 1989, and Jordan vs. Bird has sold 400,000 copies since October.
Industry experts predict the Genesis software market will top $120 million this year, surpassing the MS DOS computer game market. The Genesis is also attractive because there will be fewer titles dividing the market -- only 30 Genesis games are expected out by the end of the year.
Cinemaware Bets on CD Market
Cinemaware is aiming at another market to consolidate its future. The company has announced that it has nine CD games under development. Three of the titles are for the NEC Turbographix videogame console (NEC purchased a minor interest in Cinemaware earlier this year). Under development for the NEC CD player are It Came From the Desert, Lords of the Rising Sun and a third title.
Cinemaware is also preparing two products for Commodore’s CDTV player, an intriguing new Amiga-based CD-ROM machine announced at CES. The CDTV player will look like a standard audio CD player, so consumers will feel comfortable connecting it to their home entertainment systems. TV Sports Football and Defender of the Crown are being developed as CDTV titles.
Two of the nine CD projects in the works at Cinemaware are being developed for CD-I. The CD-I games will include Wings, a WWI air combat simulator, and a second product described as “a game designed for teenage girls”. Cinemaware is also producing a pair of MSDOS CD-ROM titles, Defender of the Crown and Three Stooges.
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Faces
Chris Crawford
The primary output device for computer games is the monitor screen, with a few hundred thousand pixels of resolution and a handful of colors. We also have some capacity to deliver sounds, but this communication channel has many technical constraints and is therefore limited to a support role rather than a primary role.
Because our primary output device is visual, most computer games rely heavily on spatial reasoning as their primary challenge. The vast majority of computer games include a verb for moving from place to place, and in many games this is the primary verb. There are some games in which motion is the only verb available to the player. Spatial reasoning has become established as the overwhelming component of computer games.
There is an alternative to spatial reasoning: verbal reasoning, the manipulation of symbols to extract meaning. This is most often done with text, but here we run afoul of the gamer’s insistence on sensational graphics in games. Pure text games are rejected by most game players as inferior to graphically intensive games. Such games have been abandoned by the industry.
There are other alternatives to spatial reasoning in games, and in this article I would like to present one such alternative: use of the human face to communicate information.
Faces are important
I suggest the face because human faces occupy an exalted place in the human visual universe. A portion of the human brain appears to be hard-wired with algorithms for recognizing facial expressions, and many of the basic human facial expressions are universally recognized across all cultures. Faces are important to people.
A measure of their importance to us comes from their use in other visual media such as the cinema. The human face is the most important element of the cinema. More movie frames are expended on human faces than on any other visual element.
You don’t believe me? OK, let’s take an example: the all-time graphics and special-effects, action-packed shoot-em-up extravaganza, Star Wars. And let’s really handicap it: we’ll use the heart-pounding final space battle in which our hero Luke Skywalker destroys the Death Star. Surely one of the great special-effects graphics spectaculars of movie history, right? So here’s the experiment: get a videotape of the movie and start two stopwatches when the battle starts. Leave one running until the Death Star blows up. Use the other to time the shots that focus on human faces. Start the face-stopwatch whenever the camera focuses primarily on a person’s face; stop it whenever the camera returns to an exterior shot. It’s fairly simple, because most shots are either cockpit facial shots or exterior dogfight shots. The only difficulty you will have will come from the rapid cuts; it’s hard to keep up with some of them.
If you do this experiment, you will find that the overall battle sequence consumes just about 13 minutes. The facial shots consume about 6.5 minutes of this sequence. In other words, in this, the most graphics- and action-packed sequence in the most action-packed movie of modern memory, the human face still hogged half the air time. In the quieter sections of the movie, the ratio is even higher!
The comparison with computer games is embarrassing. Most of the games on the market do not have a single human face in them. Some have a few incidental faces showing up at rare intervals. A few have faces showing up often, but even these are fixed faces, one-time bitmaps that do not change or show expression. I can think of only a handful of games that show faces that change and show expression.
Requirements
What do we need to do to show faces? First, we need to allocate screen space to do the job. I have worked with faces for some years now, and I have developed some rules of thumb for how much screen space you need for various tasks (this assumes black and white displays; with color, fewer pixels are necessary, but the advantage of color is not as great as would be indicated by the data consumption, because most facial recognition relies heavily on the shapes of facial features rather than their coloration.)
The absolute lower limit for face display is 32x32 pixels, or a thousand pixels total. This can be used to indicate a single face. Discrimination between different faces is almost impossible, as is recognition of different facial expressions.
64x64 pixels (4K pixels) allows us to display vague likenesses. The user could readily distinguish a handful of faces and recognize the basic emotional expressions, but no more.
128x128 pixels (16K pixels) makes it possible to recognize a wider array of faces, recognize famous faces, and show a small range of emotional expressions. Emotional nuance would still be lost. This is the smallest size I consider useful for game design.
256x256 pixels (64K pixels) is about the largest size we can afford, and fortunately it gives us a lot of flexibility. A wide variety of faces can be recognized at this resolution, and much of the working range of facial expressions can be expressed.
These rules of thumb assume average quality artwork. It is true that a brilliant artist could squeeze more expression into a smaller space, perhaps making it possible to build a game around a 64-pixel face display. But as designers we cannot simply assume brilliant artistry as part of our designs.
Wider Requirements
The use of faces also requires fundamental changes in the goals of our games. Most now focus on the analysis of spatial relationships to win conflicts. The information that a face offers, however, does not support such gameplay. A face tells us about the emotional state of a character. This type of information is vital to any game that focuses on characters. If we want to use faces in our games, we will need to shift our game focus towards character interaction.
How to do it
How do we put faces onto the screen? We cerainly can’t use simple bitmaps. Suppose that we are designing a game with a dozen characters. Each character could easily use 40 different facial expressions. This implies over 500 distinct images. If each image is 128 pixels square, we’re talking about 8 megabytes of bitmapped data. Even if we had the data storage for such a display, the artwork costs for such displays could well cost us $25K. This is simply too expensive, both in dollars and in disk space.
Fortunately, the human face follows a number of regular patterns in its expression of emotion. This makes it possible for us to rely on more algorithmic methods to display faces. Such algorithmic approaches dramatically reduce the costs of face display, both in terms of the artist time required to generate a face and the storage space to use it. I have developed a set of techniques for drawing faces; the explication of these techniques must await a later article. Until then, readers might consult my latest game Guns & Butter (misnamed The Global Dilemma by the marketing idiots at Mindscape) for an example of the first generation of my face generation technology.
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