All posts tagged video

  • GameSpot story: ‘Game Developers’ Quality of Life: Why Should Gamers Care?’, August 2011

    A feature story for GameSpot; my first for the site. Excerpt below.

    Game Developers’ Quality of Life: Why Should Gamers Care?

    In this feature, we ask if quality of life at development studios should affect how gamers think about the industry.


    Blowing the Whistle on Working Conditions

    A video game is composed of millions of tiny achievements made by hundreds of people. When combined, their work results in innovative, genre-defining artistic statements like World of Warcraft, Half-Life, Super Mario 64, or Tetris. The fruits of their collective labour are savoured around the world by gamers, a once-exclusive tag that is now, thanks to the burgeoning market of Web-based casual games, embraced by more people than ever before.

    Despite the impact that generations of video game developers have had on the medium of interactive entertainment, though, it’s easy to forget those millions of tiny achievements when you’re embedded deep within virtual worlds like Azeroth, the Black Mesa Research Facility, the Mushroom Kingdom, or a 10-block-wide screen of endlessly descending shapes. Logically, our brains know that none of these worlds can exist without the imagination, artistry, and programming skills of human beings. Yet for many gamers, those who work in the gaming industry are, essentially, faceless purveyors of joy. There are a handful of household names like Shigeru Miyamoto, John Romero, Hideo Kojima, and Will Wright; as for the rest of the names listed in the closing credits and the instruction manual…well, who?

    This apparent cognitive failure of gamers to acknowledge the contribution of game developers to our overall well-being is only brought to the fore on rare occasions, when the people behind our gaming pleasure see no option but to go public with their sentiment of systemic discontent. The enduring example of the entire discussion surrounding game developers’ quality of life arose in November 2004, when an anonymous blog post by the partner of an EA Games developer working on The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth detailed a studio-wide, 85-hour work week.

    “The stress is taking its toll,” the blogger wrote. “After a certain number of hours spent working, the eyes start to lose focus; after a certain number of weeks with only one day off, fatigue starts to accrue and accumulate exponentially. There is a reason why there are two days in a weekend–bad things happen to one’s physical, emotional, and mental health if these days are cut short. The team is rapidly beginning to introduce as many flaws as they are removing.”

    The blog post gained widespread media attention and, later, saw EA settle over US$30 million in overtime to staff at its California studio following three class-action lawsuits. The “EA Spouse” saga, led by blogger Erin Hoffman, shone a spotlight into the dark corners of game development. For the first time, it seemed, gamers were made aware that making video games for a living isn’t necessarily as fun as it sounds.

    A similar incident in early 2010, ahead of the release of Red Dead Redemption, saw the “Determined Devoted Wives of Rockstar San Diego employees” publish a scathing attack against that studio’s management on industry website Gamasutra and threaten legal action if their partners’ working conditions were not improved. It is unclear whether that situation was resolved, although it appears that no lawsuits were filed against Rockstar Games. More recently, Team Bondi, the Sydney-based developer of the Rockstar Games-published L.A. Noire, was revealed to have dictated what former employees referred to as an “ominous crunch” (the intensive period before a deadline) that lasted for years, and a revolving-door staff policy that saw over a hundred employees leaving throughout the game’s seven-year development.

    Those three games–Battle for Middle-earth, Red Dead Redemption, and L.A. Noire–achieved Metacritic ratings of 82, 95, and 89, respectively. Collectively, they were enjoyed by an audience of millions across the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 platforms. In the grand scheme of things, it’s all too easy to sweep a few months–or, in the case of L.A. Noire, years–of long working hours under the rug and bask in the shining glory of the final products. But to do so would be a mistake, argues Kenneth Yeast, who was the engineering development director at Electronic Arts during the Battle for Middle-earth project.

    For the full story, visit GameSpot.

    Further reading: Why Did L.A. Noire Take Seven Years To Make?

  • GamesIndustry.biz story: ‘Revealed: The emails behind the whistle blowing at Team Bondi’, July 2011

    A feature story for GamesIndustry.biz; excerpt below.

    This a follow-up to my feature on the development of the videogame L.A. Noire for IGN, published last month.

    Revealed: The emails behind the whistle blowing at Team Bondi


    Last month a story on IGN called “Why Did L.A. Noire Take Seven Years To Make?” detailed the lengthy process wherein Sydney-based developer Team Bondi worked on the biggest, most expensive video game ever made in Australia. Published by Rockstar Games, L.A. Noire – released worldwide in May – was expansive in scope and revolutionary in concept.

    At the story heart’s were eleven testimonials – delivered by former Team Bondi employees interviewed under the condition of anonymity – which detailed the oppressive work conditions that hundreds of staff endured throughout those seven years. Among their complaints were an “ominous crunch” period of development which continually shifted year to year; a studio-wide expectation that staff would work overtime and weekends; a praise-free working environment; and a boss named Brendan McNamara, who one of the sources called “the angriest person I’ve ever met”.

    In the last few weeks, the story has been read and reported around the globe. Both fans and the game development community have reacted with contempt for Team Bondi, and for Rockstar Games, who seemingly condoned the Sydney-based studio’s incessant whip-cracking. The International Game Developer’s Association (IGDA) has declared that they are seeking comments from former Bondi staff as they investigate what they deem to be “absolutely unacceptable” working conditions.

    As the original author of the report I’ve been contacted by developers who have worked under Brendan McNamara at other studios over the years. All have concurred with the assertions made by the Bondi Eleven. “When Brendan came on board, it became clear that he was a huge bully with no talent, vision or management skill. But he really knew how to intimidate,” wrote one. “Fits with my experience of McNamara,” tweeted another.

    Several more ex-Team Bondi employees have also contacted me to express their gratitude. “On the day the article was posted, I had been linked it by a dozen or so other Team Bondi ex-employees in the first few hours, and then it was re-linked on Facebook for the rest of the day,” one source told me. “Everyone I’ve spoken to is really grateful that it’s ‘out there’, and completely shocked that Brendan agreed to the interview.”

    Two former Bondi staffers, in particular, have supplied evidence which refutes comments made by Brendan McNamara in my original story, and strengthens the validity of claims made by the Bondi Eleven. Between them, this pair spent several years labouring under the Team Bondi banner. As with the original Bondi Eleven, the pair have supplied information under the condition of anonymity. Their rebuttals to their former boss follow; their evidence includes time-stamped internal emails and staff employment contracts.

    Deterioration of relationship with Rockstar

    Source: “It’s pretty well reported now that the working conditions were bad. What hasn’t been discussed yet (from what I’ve seen) is the relationship between Team Bondi and Rockstar. I’ve heard a lot about Rockstar’s disdain for Team Bondi, and it has been made quite clear that they will not publish Team Bondi’s next game. Team Bondi are trying to find another publisher for their next title, but the relationship with Rockstar has been badly damaged – Brendan treats L.A. Noire like a success due to his vision but I think Rockstar are the ones who saved the project. They continued to sink money into LA Noire, and their marketing was fantastic. Without their continued support, Team Bondi would have gone under several years ago.”

    “Rockstar also made a huge contribution to the development; their producers were increasingly influential over the last two years of the game’s development, and overruled many of the insane decisions made by Team Bondi management. At a lower level, Rockstar also pitched in with programmers, animators, artists, QA, etc. Part of the conflict between Team Bondi and Rockstar was due to Rockstar’s frustration with Team Bondi’s direction, and eventually Team Bondi’s management in turn resented Rockstar for taking lots of creative control. It’s also worth pointing out that Rockstar used to be very keen on making Team Bondi something like ‘Rockstar Sydney’ – the more they worked with Team Bondi management, the more they came to understand that this was a terrible idea. I have a few logs that show the relationship souring – see below.”

    Date: Tuesday, April 06, 2010.

    From: Brendan McNamara [Team Bondi founder]

    To: Everybody List [everyone who worked for Team Bondi]

    Hi Everyone

    I found out this morning that Rockstar have pulled out of the E3 show. I’m trying to find out more information as to why. I don’t agree with this decision as I think the case we were going to show is looking great and that we could do some real damage there. Jeronimo [Barrera, Rockstar VP] is talking to the Marketing Team to ascertain what the Marketing Plan is going forward. Once I know what is happening and why I will get back to you.

    Brendan

    Source: “The context on this second one is that our Production Designer (Simon Wood) posted an email with links to a new L.A. Noire logo designed by Rockstar (which Brendan hated). The announcement apparently had a Rockstar logo, but no Team Bondi logo alongside it. Brendan’s reply was only supposed to be to Simon, but he replied to everybody at Team Bondi by mistake. He claimed he was only talking about commenters on news articles, but it was pretty clear to everyone that this wasn’t true.”

    Date: Monday, October 11, 2010

    From: Brendan McNamara [Team Bondi founder]

    To: Everybody List [everyone who worked for Team Bondi]

    Every dog has its day and there’s going to be hell to pay for this one. I’ll never forget being treated like an absolute c**t by these people.

    To read the full story, visit GamesIndustry.biz. You’ll have to register a free account with them to do so.

    UPDATE July 7: This story has been syndicated to GI.biz’s sister site, Eurogamer, where you can read the full story without registering an account. Click here to read it on Eurogamer.

  • IGN Australia story: ‘Why Did L.A. Noire Take Seven Years To Make?’, June 2011

    A feature story for IGN Australia. Excerpt below.

    Why Did L.A. Noire Take Seven Years to Make?
    Examining the troubled development of Team Bondi’s opus.
    by Andrew McMillen


    Team Bondi’s film noir-inspired detective thriller L.A. Noire was released last month to critical and commercial success. Set in a lavish recreation of 1947 Los Angeles, the game eschewed a familiar open-world design for case-by-case detective gameplay that revolved around examining crime scenes and interrogating suspects. Featuring a vast city, cases that adjusted depending on the player’s actions and choices, and sophisticated motion capture technology that had never been used in a video game before, it was a mammoth project.

    So mammoth, in fact, that it took over seven years to complete, with a publisher switch – from Sony to Rockstar – midway through. That’s not the whole story, however. The development of L.A. Noire was anything but smooth.

    Much has been written about the long development cycles on games such as Duke Nukem Forever, Too Human, or Prey, but the story behind L.A. Noire’s rocky road to release stands out within Australia’s small, tightly-knit development community. Team Bondi’s crime drama is not just the biggest game development project ever undertaken in Australia, it also served as the first-ever project for many of the creative forces behind L.A. Noire. It’s perhaps the combination of all these factors that has resulted in surprisingly open testimonials from former Team Bondi members about their experience working on the game.

    Recently, a group of former Team Bondi employees launched a public website with an amended staff roll for L.A. Noire that includes 100 developers omitted from the official game credits. But the look behind the curtain started much earlier. On January 23 2010, an anonymous source on Twitter began leaking stories heard through the grapevine regarding the Sydney-based studio. The account wasn’t run by an ex-employee; it was anonymously dishing the dirt on Bondi as heard through unnamed sources, Wikileaks-style.

    The tweets alleged that studio founder Brendan McNamara had mismanaged Team Bondi and development of L.A. Noire, and had spent “tens of millions” on proprietary technology in just a year. Despite then-publisher Sony Computer Entertainment America’s faith in McNamara based on his PS2 hit The Getaway, Sony dropped the project in 2005, when the studio “had far exceeded SCEA’s expected price tag for the game.”

    According to the tweets, this situation “threw the studio into disarray. Strangely, McNamara quickly found hospice in his former rivals–the Houser brothers–and L.A. Noire was picked up by Rockstar [Games] in spring 2006… Since then, the game has been revamped, ported, and delayed four times. Rockstar spent more [than] Sony in their efforts to make it not suck.”

    Locally, when the tweets were reported by the Australian gaming industry hub Tsumea, several anonymous commenters stepped in to back up the reports: “I can certainly attest to the appalling working conditions, the angry and abusive boss and the ineffective leads who were completely unwilling to do anything to protect their team members,” wrote one. “It’s abhorrent that these young kids are being thrown into a 24/7 corpse grinder with perpetual crunch and weekend overtime,” wrote another.

    The comments on Tsumea recall events that took place in 2004, when an anonymous LiveJournal post by a user named ‘EA_spouse‘ expressed frustration at the fact that she rarely saw her fiancé, an employee of Electronic Arts, due to the long hours he was forced to work while attempting to meet deadlines for the title The Lord of the Rings: The Battle For Middle-Earth. The blog received wide press attention and eventually led to three class action lawsuits against EA for unpaid overtime.

    After the initial tweets and short-lived online discussions that followed, the situation returned to all-quiet-on-the-Bondi-front. In the meantime, there was finally light at the end of the tunnel: L.A. Noire’s worldwide release date had been set for mid-May 2011. The game would finally see the light of day, but many questions remained. Are the allegations true? Why did it take seven years to bring L.A. Noire to market?

    IGN Australia reached out to dozens of former Team Bondi employees to help get a deeper look and tell the story. Eleven agreed to speak on the record, under the condition of anonymity; many feared reprisal from current and future employers if they were to be tagged as whistleblowers. The combined experience of these former staff is extensive: between them, they represent 24 years of service. Their individual tenures range from a few months, to four years, and they include artists, programmers, animators, and software engineers. We also spoke extensively with Team Bondi studio head Brendan McNamara for his perspective.

    For the full story, visit IGN Australia.

    This story runs to 4,500 words. It’s the biggest story of my career thus far, in terms of length, readership, and impact. As is hopefully apparent, a lot of work went into this story.

    I first pitched it to my editor at IGN on February 14, 2011. My initial email, entitled ‘Story pitch: What was it like to work on L.A. Noire?‘, is below.

    Hi mate,

    Just catching up on some industry news via Tsumea and elsewhere. Am loving the allegations by (seemingly) dozens of anonymous ex-Team Bondi employees about the horrible working conditions behind L.A. Noire.

    Favourite comment? “It’s abhorrent that these young kids are being thrown into a 24/7 corpse grinder with their perpetual crunch and weekend overtime.”

    I’d like to investigate these allegations and find out how much truth there is to it. Like my Krome story, could be the case of ex-employees agreeing to speak anonymously. As long as we can verify that they were employed by the company and they know what they’re talking about, we should be good to go. Right?

    Interested?

    Andrew

    It wasn’t until I got the nod from my editor and began reaching out to former Team Bondi employees that I realised the Tsumea story was published in 2010, not this year. Those allegations had existed for over a year, and no-one had checked them out. Curious.

    As mentioned in the story, I contacted dozens of former Bondi employees. Some were silent; some told me to leave the story alone, as they didn’t want their former colleagues to suffer in the event of the allegations being found to be true. Over the months, I rounded up eleven ex-Bondi workers who were happy to speak to me, anonymously, about their experiences working for the studio.

    Rockstar Games found out quite early on that I was investigating this story – via an overzealous source contacting an existing Rockstar employee, I think. They weren’t particularly happy. In an attempt to ensure balanced coverage, they eventually offered me access to Team Bondi CEO Brendan McNamara – though speaking with him was necessary if the story was ever going to be published, as it would be rather slanderous to publish the ex-employees’ comments without juxtaposing them against the responses of their former boss. Yet, as picked up by many of those who commented on IGN and the article’s resultant media coverage, McNamara did little to deny what I’d been told by his former staff.

    With a gestation time of over four months, this is by far the longest amount of time I’ve spent pursuing a single story. It was worth it, though, because I feel that it’s a story that needed to be told. I hope you agree.

    A final note: I’m interested in pursuing this story – and stories like it – on an ongoing basis. If you’d like to share your experience of working for Team Bondi and/or Rockstar Games, you can email me here.

  • IGN Australia story: ‘Blockbuster or Bust: The New Face of Development?’, April 2011

    A feature story for IGN Australia. Excerpt below.

    Blockbuster or Bust: The New Face of Development?

    Triple A or the highway?

    In February, IGN Australia took a magnifying glass to the state of the Australian game development industry. We found that locally, trends pointed toward bigger development studios – whose bread and butter was console game development, often for overseas publishers – closing down. In their absence, smaller businesses – who focus on developing games for mobile and social platforms – are where the real growth is happening. However, one of our interviewees suggested that it’s a “distraction” to talk in terms of geographically-specific industries. “It isn’t helpful to talk in local terms,” he said. “It’s a global industry.”

    With that in mind, we substituted our magnifying glass for a telescope, and peered across the Pacific Ocean toward the United States of America, where many of the world’s largest video game publishers reside. With the inferences from Activision’s most recent earnings call – that, increasingly, console game development is becoming “blockbuster or bust” – rattling around our brains, we asked a couple of triple-A-scale publishers for their take on this topic, as well as questions like: is basing your business exclusively around triple-A level development a sustainable approach? Is it riskier than ever to be debuting new IPs [intellectual property; ie, new games] in a crowded marketplace, where a handful of household names earn the lion’s share of revenue? And finally, does it take a huge set of balls to launch new shooters that directly compete with Call of Duty’s current market dominance?

    Bethesda Knows Best

    We’ll deal with that last question first, since it’s the most provocative. The company best-positioned to answer it is named Bethesda Softworks, whose headquarters – and its in-house game studios – are located in Rockville, Maryland. Bethesda also has offices in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Benelux and Tokyo. We can’t be sure, since they’re a privately held company – “we don’t ever release sales figures, annual reports, or employee numbers,” says Pete Hines, VP PR & Marketing – but we believe they’re among the biggest privately-held publishers in the world. Hines responds cautiously when asked about the size of Bethesda’s balls in relation to its propensity for launching new IPs.

    “The size of the balls it takes probably varies from [game to game],” he says “You could do a new IP that isn’t a big $30-50 million project. Look at Tiny Wings on the iPhone; that’s new IP. But if you’re going to try and put out a brand new shooter on the [Xbox] 360 and go head to head with Brink, Rage, CoD, Battlefield and the others, then certainly, it’s a bigger risk, and it takes some guts to say, ‘Yeah, we know what we’re up against, but we believe in this project and feel strongly enough about it that we’re going to do it.'”

    As avid IGN readers would know, the first two titles Hines mentioned are Bethesda releases. Brink is being developed by British studio Splash Damage, and will be released in May 2011; while Rage is the new shooter from the legendary id Software, the team behind Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein. It’s due in September. Bethesda is publishing both games, and they also have another IP – a third-person action game for PS3, 360 and PC – called Hunted: The Demon’s Forge due in June. While Hines won’t discuss development budgets – “I wouldn’t want to give you ballpark [figures]; big games and big ideas cost a lot of money to make,” he responds – it’s clear that there’s a lot riding on these three titles.

    To read the full story, visit IGN Australia.

  • Interviewed: ‘5 Minutes With’ for ITJourno.com.au, 2011

    After being named as a finalist for ‘Best New Journalist’ in the 2010 Microsoft IT Journalism Awards last week, I was interviewed about my (limited) experience as a tech journalist for ITjourno.com.au.

    The interview isn’t public – ITjourno is for IT journalists only, as you might have guessed – so I’ve republished the Q+A below, with permission.

    5 minutes with Andrew McMillen
    by Allie Coyne, Tuesday 29th March 2011

    Where do you work and what do you do?

    I am a Brisbane-based freelance journalist. The majority of my writing is for the arts and entertainment space, for publications like Rolling Stone, The Weekend Australian, The Courier-Mail, TheVine.com.au and Mess+Noise. Tech journalism is a relatively new field for me; since October 2010, I’ve written about the video game industry for IGN Australia.

    Why did you decide to become a tech journalist?

    In mid-October 2010, there were rumours floating around that a video game development company named Krome Studios had fired all of its staff at both the Brisbane and Melbourne offices. At the time, they employed around 200 staff and were the largest game development company in Australia, so it was kind of a big deal. Yet it appeared that in the aftermath, no media outlets were investigating whether these rumours were true; and if so, why did the company collapse? So since I couldn’t find the answers elsewhere, I pitched the story idea to the editors at IGN Australia. It was the first time we’d been in contact, and they were immediately supportive of the story. I reached out to several former employees of the company, who anonymously provided their thoughts on why Krome collapsed. After speaking with those contacts, I got in touch with Krome Studios’ CEO, Robert Walsh, who agreed to provide his first media interview on the subject.

    I worked all of the above into a 2,800 word feature story which gave a comprehensive overview of the situation surrounding Krome Studios’ demise. This was the first time I’d written anything related to the games industry. As mentioned earlier, it only came about because I was curious to know the facts, and because no-one else was reporting on it. It wasn’t so much a decision – “that’s it, time to become a tech journalist!” – as it was a natural instinct to investigate an interesting and mysterious business development. It just so happened that the business was a video game developer. This led to further stories with IGN.

    What are you most proud of?

    In tech journalism terms, I’m most proud of securing the Krome story within a couple of weeks. It was an international exclusive, and judging by the response and coverage my article received afterwards, a lot of people wanted to know what went wrong with Krome Studios. That story immediately set the bar quite high for my ensuing feature stories for IGN. Since then, I’ve looked at Australian video games education and Australian big-budget game development. While neither were Krome-scale scoops, I’m proud of all three. But the Krome story was my favourite, because I was going where no-one else had gone before.

    Outside of tech journalism, I’m proud of making the most of the five minutes I had to interview hip-hop artist Big Boi – best known as half of the American duo Outkast – backstage in Sydney last November, for TheVine.com.au. It was tough to get something new out of Boi, since he’d been doing interviews – while playing video games – all day, but I eventually broke through with a few well-chosen questions.

    What are some top tips you can give PR pros for working with you most effectively?

    Get to the point. Don’t waste my time, and I won’t waste yours. If you’re emailing or calling me, you should be reasonably sure that I’ll be interested in hearing what you have to say because you’re representing a client who works within an industry that I write about. If this is not the case, don’t email or call. Find someone else who specialises in that particular area. There’s a lot to be said for tailoring your pitches to the right audience, rather than carpet-bombing as many journalists as you can find.

    What did you want to be growing up/ what would you be if not a tech journalist?

    One of my first career aspirations was to write about video games for Hyper Magazine, which I loved dearly throughout my childhood and adolescence. As it turned out, my senior editor at IGN Australia is Cam Shea, who edited Hyper between 2005 and 2007. So in a way I’ve ticked that box, though I tend to write about the business side of games rather than the beautiful graphics and totally sweet gameplay. Which is fine by me.

    Secret hobbies/ talents?

    I’m a passable bassist and competent guitarist. (There’s some evidence on YouTube, but it’s all pretty old footage.) I’m also decent at both IRL soccer and FIFA 11.

    What inspires you?

    Curiosity is my biggest inspiration. I can’t think of anything worse than sitting around, passively reading and accepting information. I want to be out there asking questions and challenging assumptions. That is the role of a journalist.

    Top 5 albums of all time.

    Led Zeppelin – Houses of the Holy
    At The Drive-In – Relationship Of Command
    Minus The Bear – Highly Refined Pirates
    The Drones – Wait Long By The River And The Bodies Of Your Enemies Will Float By
    The Knife – Deep Cuts

    Top-anything lists are ridiculously tough to answer, especially for a music critic. So these are five albums that I love dearly, whose place in the top five feels justified at the time of writing. (Whether I’d still feel that way tomorrow is another question.)

    What magazines/ publications do you subscribe to?

    Rolling Stone is the only magazine I subscribe to. I read The Weekend Australian and The Courier-Mail‘s Saturday magazine, Qweekend, religiously. Pretty much everything else is consumed online.

    What is the most important lesson you’ve learned about journalism?

    You can’t substitute curiosity, nor fake it. Remove curiosity from any journalistic equation, and it all comes crumbling down. If you’re not genuinely curious and enthused about a particular interview subject, industry, or topic, it’s going to reflect in your writing – in the worst possible way.

    What would your epitaph say?

    “I’ll leave it there.” I tend to say this at the end of every interview. It seems apt.

  • Finalist for Microsoft IT Journalism Awards of 2010

    I’m a finalist at the ninth annual Microsoft IT Journalism Awards of 2010 – also known as the ‘Lizzies’ – under the category of ‘Best New Journalist’. Details below:

    2010 Lizzies finalists announced

    MediaConnect is proud to present the finalists in the individual categories for the Microsoft IT Journalism Awards for 2010. The winners will be anno unced on Friday April 8th at the Awards ceremony held at Doltone House, Sydney.

    More than two hundred entries were received for the 9th Annual Awards, which will recognise excellence in technology media and journalism for the year of 2010.

    Best New Journalist

    Andrew McMillen
    Ben Grubb
    James Hutchinson
    Josh Taylor
    Lisa Banks
    Luke Hopewell
    Spandas Lui

    For the full list of nominees, visit the Lizzies website.

    This nomination is a result of my coverage of the Australian games industry for IGN Australia. Key stories include:

    Krome Studios: Things Fall Apart, November 2010

    It’s the question that’s been reverberating around the corridors of the Australian game industry for three weeks: what causes Australia’s largest video game development studio to close its doors? Andrew McMillen investigates, and discovers that Krome’s current situation isn’t as clear-cut as first reported.

    Australian Games Education: A 2010 Report Card, December 2010

    Do you want to work in the games industry? The good news is that over two dozen education institutions across Australia offer games-related degrees. But how valuable is having a degree? Are they keeping up with the changing face of development in Australia? And with so many studio closures how many jobs are there anyway? IGN AU finds out…

    A Matter Of Size: The State of Triple-A Game Development in Australia, February 2011

    IGN AU looks at whether the Aussie scene can still support big studios… and whether it should even want to.

  • IGN Australia story: ‘A Matter Of Size: The State of Triple-A Game Development in Australia’, February 2011

    A feature story for IGN Australia. Excerpt below.

    A Matter Of Size: The State of Triple-A Game Development in Australia

    IGN AU looks at whether the Aussie scene can still support big studios… and whether it should even want to.

    Judging by the tropical imagery splashed across QueenslandGames.com – in which a solitary human sits, gazing out across the placid ocean toward distant sand dunes – a naïve game developer intending to work for a Queensland-based company might expect to write code while breathing in salty air and wriggling their toes between the sand. The reality, of course, bears no resemblance to this image, which makes its ongoing usage questionable. Especially considering the rather dismal state of the wider Australian game development industry in 2011.

    It used to be that mutually profitable relationships with international publishers saw Australian developers working on console titles that would be marketed across the world. In the past, Australian talent had a hand in working on mega-selling licenses like Star Wars, Transformers and Jurassic Park. This trend continues, in a limited capacity: Canberra-based studio 2K Marin played a significant role in the development of both Bioshock and its sequel, and is the lead studio working on the new XCOM game; Team Bondi is currently putting the finishing touches on the May-due PS3 and Xbox 360 title L.A. Noire, on behalf of Rockstar Games. It will be the first time since 2002’s State Of Emergency that the company is outsourcing development of a Rockstar product to a non-Rockstar studio.

    But locally, these contracts are, by and large, drying up. And with the decrease in work comes the decrease in employment, as seen in the recent collapses of Auran, Pandemic, and, late last year, Krome Studios. All three were Brisbane-based. All three are no more.

    “The big oak trees have fallen; it’s time for the little seedlings to get stuck in there,” IGDA Brisbane coordinator Jane ‘Truna’ Turner told IGN last year in the wake of Krome’s demise. Indeed; much noise has been made about the success of smaller, independent Australian game devs, with Halfbrick Studios, based in Kelvin Grove, universally showered with praise for the remarkable sales of Fruit Ninja, as has Firemint, with its Flight Control and Real Racing games. But let’s not forget that smaller companies, by nature, employ fewer people. While those 40-odd staff who’re housed comfortably under Halfbrick’s umbrella are likely thanking their lucky stars nightly, what of the hundreds of skilled staff shaken loose from the big oak trees in the past few years?

    With few real opportunities to work on big, ‘triple-A’ titles – the kind that sound great on your resume – here in Australia, such talent is left to either shift overseas, or consider alternative careers. Either way, the Australian industry loses out. The dominant mindset – that this country is unable to support triple-A-level development – continues, and everyone involved continues to downgrade their expectations of what Australia is capable of in terms of games.

    What, if anything, can be done to stimulate this process? Are we really headed toward a local industry consisting of a mere handful of bigger, publisher-owned studios – like SEGA’s Creative Assembly and THQ’s Studio Oz, both based in Brisbane – and a galaxy of smaller, agile developers concentrating on mobile platforms? Is Australia no longer a viable market for foreign publishers to invest in game development?

    For the full story, visit IGN Australia.

  • IGN Australia story: ‘Advice: Careers in the Games Industry’, December 2010

    A story for IGN Australia, which I compiled as a result of asking members of the Australian game development community for their games careers advice while writing my previous story for the site, about the games education sector. Excerpt below.

    IGN Advice: Careers in the Games Industry

    How should you go about entering the games industry? IGN talks to the pros.

    As a supplement to our feature story about the Australian games education sector, IGN asked 10 members of the game development community for the best advice they could give to those looking to gain employment within the local market. Our thanks to everyone who participated in creating this feature.

    Jane ‘Truna’ Turner – coordinator, IGDA Brisbane / co-founder, 48 Hour Game Making Challenge

    Play games. Read books. Watch movies. Understand your world, so that when you’ve learned some hands-on, practical skills, you have ideas to make new, exciting forms of games. Generate your own enthusiasm, and your own, new industry. Don’t go and be a little worker; go and make your own world. I think games are just beautiful. Design is powerful. Game design is utterly powerful. You’re playing with culture and philosophy and fun and image and audio; the whole kit and caboodle. Don’t just think about making new forms; think about pushing the boundaries with it.

    If you go to uni, you’re in the ideal position, because Duncan Curtis – one of the guys who started 3 Blokes Studios – I think it was him that coined the phrase ‘the uni advantage’, which is: there you are. You’ve got your mates, you’re used to not sleeping, you’re used to living off noodles, you haven’t got a mortgage yet. You can actually afford to set up a little company and see what happens, and explore. You need to do it for a portfolio anyway; why not start making experimental pieces, put them up on Congregate, do some iPhone dev, do some Android dev? Little, fast, experimental work.

    John Passfield – Chief Creative Bloke, 3 Blokes Studios / co-founder and former Design Director, Krome Studios

    One of the big things we look for when we’re interviewing people is their portfolio. Whether it be as an artist showing your work, or a programmer and having a playable game; that just puts you so far ahead of other people when you’re applying for a job. And even a designer, if you have a little walkthrough video. One of the guys we hired at Krome for Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 2 – Rob Davis, a graduate, who’s now working at Microsoft Games Studios in Seattle – he had a walkthrough of a Ty The Tasmanian Tiger level that just blew everyone else away. He’d thought about it, and made a level up. He couldn’t program, or really do art, but he did a simple little walkthrough video, and explained his thought processes. That was amazing. It gave him such competitive advantage.

    So many people come for an interview, but they don’t really have anything to show. And clearly, if they’re going for a particular job, it’s really important to have something [to show] that applies to that job. If you’re applying for an iPhone developer, even if you can’t program, if you just mocked up an iPhone game on screen in Flash or something, or as an animatic using whatever tools you’ve got, that would definitely put you way ahead of other people – as long as it’s an interesting [game] concept. That simple process of coming prepared with an example of your work, targeted to who you’re applying for. That’s how you put yourself ahead of people. The staff we’ve hired at 3 Blokes are those who’ve had workable demos up on a place like Newgrounds or Kongregate.

    When I’m looking to hire, I look for enthusiasm in the medium, the platform that we’re making games for. That’s really important. And also – team fit. Games is a collaborative process. And obviously, if you’ve started a degree program, it’s important to see that you’ve finished a degree. It’s really good to show that you’ve finished something. Degrees are good, because it shows that someone has the wherewithal to stick it out. Holding a degree answers a lot of questions about somebody when they come in.

    For the full article, visit IGN Australia.

  • IGN Australia story: ‘Australian Games Education: A 2010 Report Card’, December 2010

    My second feature story for IGN Australia. Excerpt below.

    Australian Games Education: A 2010 Report Card

    Do you want to work in the games industry? The good news is that over two dozen education institutions across Australia offer games-related degrees. But how valuable is having a degree? Are they keeping up with the changing face of development in Australia? And with so many studio closures how many jobs are there anyway? IGN AU finds out…

    In the wake of Krome Studios’ significant downsizing in mid-October, one fact became very clear: finding employment in the local game development industry was going to be harder than ever before. Though Australia’s largest gaming company surpassed over 400 employees across three studios at one point, their gradual decline eventually returned the vast majority of that talent back into the national job pool.

    All industries move in cycles, and though the Australian game development sector is at a low ebb right now, it’s myopic to believe that things will stay this way forever. Though Krome’s wave broke upon the shore and left a great many stranded – as the saying goes, the bigger they are, the harder they fall – other sectors of the local industry are experiencing periods of unprecedented growth. Krome’s downfall served as a two-prong reminder: that large-scale game development is a high-risk business, and that relying upon overseas publishers’ work-for-hire cheques in a volatile world economy is among the riskiest business in the games industry.

    Disheartening though the events of October 2010 were, as I sifted through the detritus of vindictive former Krome employees and their shattered CEO Robert Walsh, one question kept flitting through my mind: what did this all mean for students graduating with games degrees in 2010? Here they were, about to enter the job market – many of them bleary-eyed, owing to marathon all-nighter sessions spent completing their final projects – only to be shuttled to the very end of the queue. They’d stand behind former staff from Krome, and the handful of other development companies who’ve shuttered in recent years; behind anyone who ever took on a temp QA (quality assurance; game testing) role; behind existing games graduates, many of whose only industry experience is submitting their portfolio to every studio with an email address, and – if they were lucky – participating in a brief internship, arranged on behalf of their educational institution in their final trimester.

    What else but passion could drive these people? To give up several years of their (often young) lives, to willingly put themselves tens of thousands of dollars in debt, just for the slight chance that they’ll be able to make a living making video games in Australia? The answer must be passion, if not madness. Yet here they are: hundreds of them, each year, graduating with degrees in games design, art, animation and programming. On the other side of mortarboards, robes and well-deserved handshakes awaits uncertainty, self-doubt, and a high likelihood of unemployment – within the game development industry, at least.

    Put simply, making games for a living sounds like fun. Given that gaming is the world’s fastest-growing entertainment medium – last year, for instance, Australian consumers spent over $2 billion on video games – it’s unsurprising that tertiary education providers were keen to institutionalise game development, just as they’ve done for practically every other form of creativity. As I discovered, though, investing in a games-specific education in the hopes of obtaining employment within the local industry is a decision of similarly high risk as building your company’s business model around ever-shifting economies and the mood swings of international publishers.

    For the full story, visit IGN Australia. At 6,000 words, it’s the longest article I’ve written. A huge thanks to everyone I spoke with for this story.

  • A Conversation With George Sotiropoulos, Australian UFC fighter

    In August 2010, I interviewed Australian UFC fighter George Sotiropoulos for a story in Australian Penthouse [‘Caged Fury’, pictured right]. You can read an edited version of that interview here.

    Below is the full transcript of our conversation, including a couple of touch-ups by George via email afterwards.

    Andrew: My research tells me that you had a history in amateur boxing in Australia before you decided to start travelling the world to learn other styles of fighting. I’m interesting to know what you found attractive about mixed martial arts (MMA) in the first place.

    George: Boxing was the last type of amateur competition I did before fighting mixed martial arts. I already had an extensive background in Jiu-Jitsu, Submission Grappling, and Freestyle Wrestling before I started Boxing. Boxing was the last stop that I made to round off my skills in preparation for Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). I started with Jiu-Jitsu to develop skills in ground fighting. Then I added wresting to learn takedowns. Finally, I implemented boxing to add striking to my skill set which got me ready for MMA.

    Why did you decide to stick with MMA?

    I decided to do MMA before I decided on anything else. I saw UFC back in ’97 at a friend’s place one night before heading out, and I basically decided then that’s what I wanted to do. So I set off on an expedition to get myself trained as a mixed martial artist. I had no formal training or skill in mixed martial arts. I was attracted to MMA by the display of Jiu-Jitsu by the Gracie family, and that’s basically what I wanted to learn. I started with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. MMA was evolving, and other styles were becoming effective, so I added wrestling.

    It was the grapplers/Jiu-Jitsu artists that were the most effective in the beginning, then the wrestlers followed by the strikers. Therefore, I added the boxing last as the sport and I evolved.

    I trained and competed in all the styles I practiced. My total experience in Jiu-Jitsu is about 130 grappling / Jiu-Jitsu bouts, 15-20 bouts in freestyle wrestling, 10 amateur boxing matches and one professional. My MMA record is now 13-2, plus the three exhibitions bouts I had when I was on The Ultimate Fighter. That totals 18 MMA fights.

    I developed the skills and experience by training and competing in the individual sports. It would be very hard to go out there and become a mixed martial arts fighter without the specific experience. So I trained specifically to acquire those skills.

    Congratulations on your 9-0 record so far in the UFC, by the way. I watched your last couple of fights in preparation for this. I’m interested to know where you think you’re strongest as a fighter.

    I train Jiu-Jitsu, wrestling, boxing and Muay Thai. But I’m mostly known for my Jiu-Jitsu skills because that’s where I have given the greatest display. However, I address and work on everything equally.

    What does your average week of training look like?

    It’s a very gruelling and intense training schedule. I train three times a day from Monday to Friday, and I usually train once or twice on the weekends.

    Does that amount of training increase in the lead up to a fight or do you keep it steady, even up to the day before the fight?

    Training is usually six to eight hours a day, which remains constant right up to fight week.

    That seems to be working for you. You’ve been with guys like Eddie Bravo and Leonard Gabriel since November 2008. How important do you feel your team is to your success so far?

    Very important. They believe in me and I have faith in them. They’re guiding the ship. They’re as much a part of it as I am.

    I’ve seen you say that by the time you’re fighting, when you’re in the ring, you’re calm and there’s nothing frightening or surreal about it. Is there any difference between training in a gym with your team and fighting in front of 20,000 people? Is there a different kind of mindset required or do you feel it’s the same?

    No, you train day in and day out for that moment. All scenarios, possibilities, techniques and strategies are covered in training that will be executed in the fight. On fight day the work has already been done – the training is harder than the fight because so much was done in preparation for the fight.

    What happens after a UFC match, George? As the winner, do you now meet with the officials and they decide your next match, and who you’re fighting next?

    I’ll be informed of who and when I will fight next. My team and I will study the opponent, run strategies, scenarios and address his strengths and weaknesses.

    There’s some chatter about trying to get your next UFC fight to happen in Melbourne, but MMA events are currently banned in Victoria. Do you know why?

    Not sure why they’re banned, but I have been present at several sanctioned MMA events in Melbourne which were held in a boxing ring, not a cage. So it might be a technicality.

    There’s too many reasons why MMA and the UFC will be held in Melbourne. First, it is a legitimate, credible and regulated sport. Secondly, the boost which it will give the local economy is too substantial to be ignored; our economy needs everything it can get, along with the international exposure that comes from the events.

    Why do you think that some people have a problem with mixed martial arts fighting?

    There’s a misconception from some journalists, writers, politicians and other public groups. The sport has comes a long way since it started back in 1993. The sport now has weight classes, time limits and is strictly regulated, supervised and judged by professionals.

    Rules have been introduced, there’s structured ways of competition, fighter safety is paramount, and it’s a professional sport. MMA combines all the elements of the Olympic stadium events; amateur boxing, taekwondo, freestyle wrestling, Greco roman wrestling and judo. These styles are the make up and blueprint of MMA.

    MMA should be accepted and regulated because it is a bi-product of Olympic sports. Furthermore, MMA was in the ancient Olympics, originally named Pankration. There is a long history; we are witnessing the rebirth of true combat sports.

    To me, it’s one of the purest forms of professional athletic endurance. It’s just two guys in a ring using their training to take the other one down. There’s not much more to it.

    That is part of it. In a street fight, anything goes. People can utilise any object as a weapon; they can literally take a person’s life. MMA is a sport with technique. The only way you’re going to win is utilising real skills and technique, from boxing, taekwondo, muay thai, wrestling, judo, jiu jitsu and any other martial art style out there. Skill is effective, not brutality. There is no such martial art or style called ‘street fighting’, only the wild imaginations of thugs and misinformed politicians and writers.

    That’s the big misconception; people don’t understand. It’s a new sport which only been around for 20 years. People are not fully informed about the facts, so that’s why people jump the gun. But that’s going to change. UFC is the fourth most viewed sport in the U.S.A. It’s huge. Pay-per-view’s in the millions, and up to 20,000 in attendance at events. It’s mainstream now. Australia follows the same trends as the western world whether it be sports or any other professional field.

    Your Sydney fight in February at the Acer Arena (UFC 110) was huge. It set the merch record for the venue, beating out Iron Maiden. The fact that obviously it sold out quickly indicates that there’s obviously an audience for it, and it’s turned mainstream. Do you see yourself as an ambassador for MMA in Australia?

    Definitely, I’m one of Australia’s leading competitors representing my country. It’s also my responsibility to educate the Australian community and provide insight about the sport. It’s a safe and regulated sport. Safer than the boxing, muay thai, or kick boxing which have been around for decades. MMA is safer because of the wrestling and grappling components. Consequently, resulting in less striking during bouts and training which means less head trauma.

    Why do you think people are attracted to watching UFC, and MMA in general?

    To quote Dana White, the president of the UFC: fighting is in our genes. People are naturally attracted to fighting. This is the ultimate form of fighting, so naturally people are going to be attracted to it. Fighting has been a part of human evolution; we evolved fighting, dating back to caveman. That’s why it’s in our instincts. Finally, it’s definitely the most exciting sport and it sells itself. The presence of striking, grappling, and wrestling makes for exciting action.

    Can you describe the feeling once a fight begins?

    You must prepare for all scenarios; standing, ground, the clinch, submissions, striking with your hands, elbows, knees and feet. You’ve got to be prepared for everything. All bases must be covered.

    It’s exciting. The offense can come from just about anywhere. The only way I can describe mixed martial arts is navigating through an asteroid field, asteroids coming from any direction. You’ve got to be ready for everything.

    Outside of fighting, George, do you have any vices? Do you drink, smoke, play video games?

    I do not drink. But I will have a glass of wine after my fight. Mostly, I just like training and fighting, and not much else. It’s a full-time commitment. When I’m not training I’m preparing to train or getting ready for a week of training, which it leaves little time for anything else.

    One last thing. There’s a bit of a misconception that anyone who pursues professional fighting generally isn’t an educated person, but when researching you I was interested to find that you had a business degree. You’re clearly very articulate and well spoken.

    A lot of the fighters who are in this sport have college degrees. So you can’t stereotype people because of the misconception of fighting being done by the poorer or underprivileged classes in society.

    In my case, I went to school, graduated, have a degree and associate diploma. I worked in finance, shipping and various other professions growing up. I chose MMA because it’s what I enjoy and love doing. It’s also my obligation and duty to represent it professionally since I am representing my country.

    Congratulations on your success so far, George. I wish you more of it.

    Thank you.

    ++

    For more on George Sotiropoulos, visit his website.

    The above transcript appeared in edited form for a story in the September 2010 issue of Australian Penthouse – read it here.

    I’ve embedded a video of George’s UFC highlights below, but since UFC generally aren’t too keen on allowing their footage to appear on YouTube, I can’t guarantee it’ll stay up for long.