A couple good game interviews
Here is a pretty good short interview with MMORPG icon Jessica Mulligan. We have had the opportunity lately to speak with Jessica. She even attened one of Jonathan's recent executive advisory councils. She has been making MMORPG's before that's what they were called, and she has a great perspective on the industry. You will have to register (free) with the site to view. However, it is a great site for game development information, so it is worth it.
If you want to get a feel for where the business powers live in the games industry today check out this interview. A successful game developer is shutting down his game studios and taking his art to Hollywood. It is pretty scary to think that retailers and publishers are deciding what games we get to play. I said it before, digital distribution of games will be huge – mainly because of these dynamics.
Finally, just to get one more Star Wars reference in this week, here is a preview of all the Star Wars mobile games that THQ Wireless has on tap. Maybe I need a new phone.
Posted at 03:44PM Apr 22, 2005 by dtwilleager in General | Comments[0]
Real Game Gear
Okay, so I am completely geeking out over Star Wars right now. I have my Star Wars ringtone and wallpaper for my cell phone. I just picked up one of these, which is awesome. I have read the novel and "making of" book for episode III. I may not be the biggest Star Wars geek around, but it is certainly enough for my wife.
And then today, I found this. Just the pictures are here. I have to have one. Or, better yet, how about both - one for home and one for work. Maybe I can convince Fowler to skin some w2100z's like this.
Posted at 12:54PM Apr 21, 2005 by dtwilleager in General | Comments[0]
Mobile Multiplayer Games and 3G
Yesterday a customer asked me “What advantage does the bandwidth of new 3G networks bring to mobile games?” My answer: None. Huh?
It's not quite true. The extra bandwidth does provide for larger games. Consumers are willing to wait for only so long before their game arrives, and the extra bandwidth will allow for larger downloads in the same amount of time. The new 3G phones also have larger memory capabilities for the games.
The reality is that multiplayer games is all about latency, not bandwidth. Games are optimized to send the minimal amount of information to communicate game state. For real time multiplayer games, the key is in how many messages per second can be processed by the game. Even with broadband connections, the variability of how a packet travels through the internet ether means that consistent latency is always a problem. And, the latency on a 3G network still has a long ways to go.
We will still see mobile multiplayer games using lots of clever networking tricks. Community based games will be the thing that drives the mass market explosion that is waiting to happen. Here is an example of someone that gets it.
Posted at 09:01PM Apr 20, 2005 by dtwilleager in General | Comments[0]
Digital Content Creation on SunGrid
When I was in college, I knew I wanted to work for Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). They were doing amazing things with computer graphics. They had just done the famous stained glass knight in Young Sherlock Holmes. All of us CG geeks would ooh and aah at the wonder. I did my ray tracer and knew I was going to work in film effects. Well, I actually came to work for Sun. But I never lost my passion for the film industry.
So, why do I write about this? There are a couple of reasons. Obviously the hype machine for Star Wars Episode III has got me. I have read the novel and just finished the “making of” book. Episode III has about 85 minutes of completely computer generated images. And last week I was down in southern California visiting an animation studio looking for rendering services. Jonathan has repeatedly used movie rendering as an obvious candidate for SunGrid. There are many studios that could the SunGrid for this purpose, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. While there will always be big name movies and movie studios using render farms, the real value of SunGrid for these types of applications are all of the other users.
There are many other people creating digital content which require batch processing. There are many independent film makers (check out iFilm). There are people creating batch rendered scientific visualizations. There are all the hobbyists. All of these folks don't have the resources to create a state of the art render farm – but that doesn't mean they don't need access to one. Hello SunGrid.
To bring this back to the games world, there are many many examples of batch processing where SunGrid can help today. There is batch rendering of cut scenes. Normal map generation for high quality bump mapping. Radiosity calculations for diffuse inter reflections. And even pre-calculated visibility calculations for use in real time rendering. All of these uses could use a world class compute farm, and SunGrid can do it.
The rise of independent digital content started when the tools to create the content became affordable and available to the mass market. Look at the explosion of personal video editing tools that are now available. There are many good 3D content creation tools that are now close to if not completely free. The thing that is missing is the ability to create sophisticated content – which requires large compute farms. For the mast 20 years, there has been one constant in 3D batch rendering. A single frame in a scene on average takes an hour to render, with the most complicated being 24 hours. The time is the same, but the frame complexity has exploded. Check out the opening sequence of Episode III.
SunGrid brings a world class render farm to the masses, for between $1 and $24 a frame, depending upon the complexity of the frame. Maybe it's time to start Renderman hacking again.
Posted at 09:26PM Apr 19, 2005 by dtwilleager in General | Comments[0]