Hi Ron,
i'm a long time reader of your blog, and of course a fan of your games, but this is the first time i post.
I'm curious about your opinion on the XNA Platform, Framework or whatever Microsoft wants to call it. Do you think it's good for the games industry? I mean, with this XNA (in theory) it's easier for game designers show their work. Maybe there are some geniuses who can't reach the distribution channels, and now they have an opportunity. (If it is a good thing, that the channel they are contacting is Microsoft, anyways) But, on the other way, its also easier for baseball players or rap stars to do so :)
So, what is your opinion?

PD: i'm not an english speaker, so forget my grammer/ortografik mistaeks :P

You hit the nail on the head, Ron. That is PRECISELY how I feel.

I remember feeling the same way about Rocket Science back in the mid-90's. Buncha high-power Hollywood types were going to come in and show us all how it is supposed to be done. I heard that towards the end, they actually came out with a halfway decent game. That was nothing like their initial "earth-shattering" crop.

Do we need fresh blood and fresh perspective in the games biz? Absolutely. There's a place for Curt Schilling, Todd McFarlane, and R.A. Salvatore. But they are entering an industry that has learned a LOT of lessons about game development the hard way --- and the road is lined with the burned-out wreckages of all brilliant dream teams and even experienced development groups that have gone before us.

You wanna learn the business from scratch? Go through the hard mistakes yourself with a few Game Developer Magazine post-mortems to guide you on your way? Hey, have fun. But expect your initial efforts to be lessons, not successes. Better not make a big media event of it.

Or ... you bring in people who have been around the track a few times to develop and manage development. And yes, that includes people to manage YOU.

This may be another Ion Storm type situation where there is enormous hype followed by enormous let down.  That would be funny to see "Curt Schilling's about to make you his bitch" ad campaigns.  The difference would be, of course, that there was game designer hype instead of baseball, comic book/figurine, book author hype.  The kind of people let down might be different too.

I only skimmed the Escapist article but I didn't see where it said what kind of game he would be making.  If it's an mmorpg that is $50+ to buy and a $15+ a month fee then I would say he is in it for the money.  I think a lot of none game industry types are enchanted by the idea of those kind of profits.

On the one hand, it's possible that Curt Schilling has a unique position to be innovative and free with his game, because of who he is.  If only his "dream team" consisted of the kind of game developers who could pull it off...

The ironic thing about Ion Storm, though, is the other department produced the brilliant Deus Ex.

There's a fantastic article from Eurogamer about the hard lessons game developers have learned from failed companies (yes, Ron Gilbert IS talked about in there). Click here to see for yourself.

well, yeah, but the "other department" (the Austin branch) was basically just most of the existing Looking Glass moved wholesale to Texas. And Looking Glass had already released a bunch of fantastic games, so it's not much of surprise that they released another...

Jules Renard had a great quote I often think about: "Writing is an occupation in which you must constantly prove your talent to those who have none." Substitute virtually any creative endeavor for writing, and the quote continues to apply. Everyone thinks they can write. Everyone thinks they understand concepts of design and can make a great website. Everyone thinks they know what makes the games they like fun, so making a game should be easy-peasey. They, as have so many before them, will learn.

I can't help but remember back when game editors started coming out for games like Doom, the Build Engine, then later, Quake and Unreal. As these editors became more powerful and "easy to use", we were supposed to see this enormous swell of great maps and mods from the community that, up until then, just had no voice. Of course, it turned out to be a pretty unimpressive swell for the same reason that there are so few writers in the world who can sustain themselves on sales of their fiction: because it's hard. The simplest, most easy-to-use and yet most powerful "book creation tool" has been around for quite a long time...it's called a pencil and paper.

I wouldn't get too worked up over this, Ron. Just think back to the early CD-ROM days of Hollywood getting into the business of making Interactive Movies out of crappy FMV clips. They failed then, these guys will fail now, but people still play Monkey Island. You just concern yourself with whatever you're working on now, because I already want to play it.

I have to say in regard to the Renard quote I disagree in a way - it applies more to writing than any other discipline. The simple reason is that most people have the "tools" to start writing - if you can actually write words, have a piece of paper and a pen, you could write that wonderful filmscript/play/novel/etc. It's a fundamental difference with most other disciplines, I think.

Not to say that there aren't people who think like that about other disciplines, sadly.

I think it's the general pitfall of liking something and having the money and/or clout to get your project going. For example: Paris Hilton makes an album.

This reminds me of Peter Jackson and his big announcement last year of the "new kind of games" he's going to make with his partnership with Microsoft.   Another movie industry hotshot coming to show the games industry "how it's done"... or not.

While I agree with you on most points, Schilling's experience goes somewhat beyond "I'm a gamer"--he is also an owner of Multi-Man Publishing, a pretty hardcore paper wargaming company.

http://www.multimanpublishing.com/about.php

I think that actually makes it a little more interesting.  World War II mmorpg maybe?  Doesn't sound like anything I would probably be interested in though.

Ahhhh....who cares? Schilling's a moron anyway.

This smacks of some half-assed game designers taking some silly rich man's money, churning out a crappy game, and laughing all the way to the bank.

While normally I wouldn't support this scenario (it's bad for the industry), not enough bad things can happen to Curt Schilling to satisfy me.

Yankee fan?

Saw right through that, huh?

I'm sure it would work for pirates though!

He does mention that all the best talent in the industry is already employed, so it's possible he's aware of this and feels forced to go outside the industry to find them. (And he can't find talented game designers outside the industry. Or something.)

Or, more likely, what you said is true. Sigh.

Ron, I've seen this in my line of work (software engineering) as well:

Business people sometimes think that all it takes to turn their brilliant idea into an actual product is some nerd/monkey hammering away at a keyboard for a few days.

And, yes, it's true these situations can make one feel under-appreciated.

But look at it this way: it's a competitive world out there. So, strictly speaking, everyone who really doesn't "get it", is simply increasing the chances of everyone who does.

That's not so bad, is it?

"Business people sometimes think that all it takes to turn their brilliant idea into an actual product is some nerd/monkey hammering away at a keyboard for a few days. "

That IS what it takes.

Doesn't it?

WHO'S WITH ME?!

Ron, you're missing the point.  This is your opportunity to go into major league baseball.  You just have to flip this around in your favor.

And I have to tell everyone, this isn't the first time Ron has missed such a golden opportunity.  Back in 1989 he was on the phone with Steven Spielberg.  Steve told him, "I have this idea for a game, do you think you guys (LucasArts) would be interested?"  Ron said "Sure", but the correct response would have been, "Well, you know, I have this idea for a movie I've been kicking around, how about a trade?"  True story!  Well, mostly true.

The Vin Diesel studio, Tigon Studios, did a good job with Chronicles of Riddick:  Escape from Butcher's Bay.  That's also had the stigma of being a movie game.  Sometimes things like that can surprise you.

Yeah, Tigon studios is a kind of exception.
But Riddick game was made by Starbreeze from Sweden, Tigon did of course produce it and try to help as much as possible but the actual game development was Starbreeze's work.

Great to see that Ron is back writing new posts to his blog. :)

Does anyone here know the story about Todd McFarlane's baseball? It's hilarious...

During a party at his house, McFarlane was showing off a baseball he paid an insane amount of money for. Because the baseball was unsigned, Todd could only tell it was the expensive one because of where he kept it. One of the guests, another comic book dude, asked to see the baseball for a moment. He then picked up another unsigned baseball of much less value, juggled with the two balls, and returned them to McFarlane. Since that night, McFarlane has no idea which ball is the expensive one and has to keep them both in the same place.

But you know, Ron, that Warren Spector "earned his BS at Northwestern University and MA in Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas in Austin" (Wikipedia) before entering the industry? He worked later on role-playing games for Steve Jackson games before moving on to make games like Ultima Underworld and eventually Deus Ex.

And hey, if the man screws himself up, he did it to himself.

I'm betting on an MMO. Because Curt Shilling is a hard-core Everquest player, and he does have game designers and artists and so forth on staff.  Most of them snagged from Sony Online Entertainment.  Are they the industry best?  Probably not, but they ARE experienced in MMOs.

We shall have to wait and see on this, of course, but Curt Schilling deserves the benefit of some doubt.

He put his own good money down to launch Multi-Man, which has - among other things - rescued Advanced Squad Leader from the ashes of Avalon-Hill. Nobody does that because they're looking for an easy payday.

I mean, come on. Opportunists and mercenaries would chase something like a collectible card game or "-Clix" figures, not a hyper-complex, narrow-market grognard monstrosity like ASL.

This is not a catalog by or for dilettantes:

http://www.multimanpublishing.com/downloads/MMP-summer2005.pdf

Now if only they'd pick up PanzerBlitz.

Also, to the extent that Schilling is a "fan made good" who wants to try his hand at making the sorts of games he loves to play... is that really so bad? Ron's points are well-taken, but is someone like Schilling really so much worse than the kinds of people currently in charge of EA, Ubisoft and the like?

That reminds me of the idiots at Frogwares who, a couple years ago, put their foot into the adventure genre without absolutely no knowledge of the job (and being proud of it). Their first feat was to release the flop known as "Mystery of the Mummy". Four games later, they're still wondering why their games get bad reviews all over the place. Even worse, their CEO enjoys bashing customers who dare producing constructive criticisms. I remember him calling me a "pathetic retrograde" when I compared his "80 Days" with "Shenmue" and tried to explain to him why his game was not a good one. I'm still laughing about it.

Hmm, in the interests of fair reporting, I notice that Schilling's company HAS hired some experienced game people to build the games.  http://www.greenmonstergames.net/press/12_06_06.html

It still smacks a bit of what happened with Rocket Science Games, where the company leadership was composed of non-game people with an interest in games but credentials in other areas, directing their game-knowlegeable staff, and that didn't end well.  But I have to give him credit for seeming to be sincere about this effort.

I have been involved in three such ventures: Rocket Science (shudder), a project with directors John Landis and Joe Dante that (luckily) went nowhere, and Epicenter Games, which was founded by a couple of clueless Internet millionaires (nameless here) and boasted no less a game designer than Dani Bunten on the payroll.

So Schilling will probably be okay, as long as he doesn't hire me. :)

ok

Hello Brian! Good to see you alive and kicking. I still think Loom would have made a great interactive fiction, especially if it had been published by Legend. Oh, if I had some money to loose, I know I wouldn't waste my time hiring a baseball player.

Last dream team I heard about was the Chrono Trigger makers, but all of those from that team had worked with games before...

They just posted a job listing on gamasutra for a "Senior Gameplay Designer".  Whoever gets the job will make at least $50,000 / year.  Up to a maximum of 100K.

I don't know what designer salaries are like, but that doesn't sound like 'dream team' money to me.  To me that's what I'd expect to pay for, maybe, a programmer with 5 years experience.  Not one of my key creative people.

See it yourself at:
http://jobs.gamasutra.com/jobseekerx/viewjobrss.asp?cjid=8745&accountno=210





Job Description:  



Green Monster Games is seeking an experienced MMORPG gameplay mechanics designer for immediate, full-time hire. Responsibilities include envisioning and designing the underlying mechanics for a large-scale, world-wide, multiplayer fantasy game, currently in pre-production. This is an excellent opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a truly revolutionary project, and to help create the next-generation of MMO gaming alongside GMG’s creative visionaries R.A. Salvatore and Todd McFarlane. “Mechanics” specifically refers to game balance, character advancement, items and equipment ramping, combat dynamics, and oversight of all other aspects of the “nuts and bolts” of what it takes to make a game fun and compelling for players around the world for many years.


Requirements

Hands-on game design experience on a major published MMORPG in a Senior or Lead role
In-depth knowledge of multiplayer gameplay systems, mechanics, and game balance
Desire to be an integral team member in the creation of a property unlike anything the world has ever played
Willingness to relocate to beautiful Maynard, Massachusetts


Preferred Skills

Knowledge of and passion for MMO games, specifically in the fantasy genre
Ability to effectively communicate and document design concepts within a large, in-house dev team environment
Excellent creativity and demonstrated ability to generate innovative concepts, mechanics, and ideas
Understanding of the interrelation of major elements of online game design including: story, quest allocation, dialog, interface, character interaction, solo and group gameplay dynamics, AI, combat, strategic game-flow, balance, and difficulty ramping over a gamplay period of many years
Related technical skills, including background in the use of game editors, scripting/programming and/or 3D tools


Job Details:  



Categories: Game / Level Designer / Creative Director
Studio Name: 2007-01-17 14:09:01
Pay: $50,000.00 - $100,000.00/Yearly
Experience Required: 2 yrs
Platforms: Playstation 3,Xbox 360,Interactive TV,Online Multiplayer,Mac OS X,Windows,Mobile phone,PSP,Game Boy DS
Minimum Education Level Required: Bachelor's Degree
Work Site: On site

Anyone hiring Todd McFarlane for any team proves to be blind about art and ilustrators, Todd doesnt know what side of a pencil draws.
Sorry but as artist myself i cant be objective about him, im not sure if a game can be good or not with his art concepts, but it will be ugly for sure.