iDevGames

Your company was incorporated in California as a “Limited Liability Company.” What is your advice for lone wolf and smaller developers based in the US who wish to expand their shareware business?

Simply read books on starting your own business, I suggest an LLC or a sole proprietorship if you want to keep it really simple, but with a SP you have liability etc. However, online you can start a company in 15 minutes, try Business Filings for example. Then you incorporate (LLC is the best for small companies and a single taxation entity), get a bank account, and you are ready to go!

You hold degrees in Mathematics, Computer Science, and Electrical Engineering. For your work in the game development industry, which part of your background has been most instrumental in your success?

Patience. But, all in all, having such a breadth in my background has allowed me to look at problems differently. For example, in Electric Engineering we use techniques to solve circuits with block diagrams that are something like flow diagrams; I have applied this to programming many times. The point being, it’s always good to know how other areas of study look at problems. We see much more of this now in areas of computation and biology, for example.

Young developers with natural talents sometimes question the university/college path into the game business. What would you recommend?

The business is not that good in the first place. You don’t make a lot of money, you work 2-3 times normal hours, and get paid 50-70% of what a network engineer would earn. My advice is go to college, get many degrees, and then in your spare time or with a partner or two make a go of it. This way you always have something to fall back on. The game biz is now a commodity, your hard work, long hours will usually go unnoticed by management. So this is a labor of love, but many times it won’t be enough to pay the rent. An average AA degreed network admin here in Silicon Valley makes 80-100K and works normal hours. The average 3D game programmer makes 60-80K and works 60-80 hours easily.

As an employer, what are the main criteria you use in hiring a prospective programmer?

Willingness to learn, and the understanding that this is an “all or none” deal. You can’t do this part time, or even full time. It’s a way of life, a choice, and a philosophy.

In many ways, Xtreme Games LLC seems to be the PC version of the esteemed Mac shareware publisher Ambrosia Software, Inc. Similarly, your “Blade” picture pose brings to mind their CEO, Andrew Welch. Are you familiar with the company and its games?

No, I have never heard of them. I am glad that there is someone that is supporting the Mac platform for Indie developers, as I am the PC Indie developer.

If I were an independent developer with a possible strong Mac title, would you encourage me to contact your company or would you advise me to negotiate with a Mac publisher?

I always send people to other companies, I strongly want people to succeed; if I was after money, I wouldn’t give 50% royalties and put on a free developer conference each year that I take a negative $20K hit on for the sake of the community. So yes, when I get a developer that has a really good game, I always send them to Activision, EA, etc., so they can make more money.

Xtreme Games LLC has an extensive title library, however I didn’t notice any Mac titles. Do you have plans to target the platform in the future?

The Mac market, from a financial point of view, is similar to the Linux market—you can’t make a profit. There are 100 times more PC customers, and even with a market that large, it’s hard to make a profit. So why spend similar engineering time for 1/100th the product income?

I’m sure some Macintosh companies would argue that the support costs for Mac game players have been traditionally lower than their PC counterparts. In addition, some developers also point out that the extra costs in developing a Mac version of a game is much lower than many expect.

The facts prevail here; just look at the market share and income levels of Mac products and Linux products, etc. I think that developing for Macs is slightly more expensive than PCs, but this point today is becoming moot.

Moving along, I noticed that all your games are at the $10 price point. What are the main factors behind your pricing strategy?

It’s simple business economics. You optimize the net income, which has two variables, price point and number of units; and we found that at this price point we get the highest overall expected net income value.

Every year the bar for shareware games is raised, and sometimes it seems the quality between commercial and shareware is blurred. How do you see the different distributions routes?

That’s true. There is very little difference from the low end AAA titles and the high-end value/shareware titles. The only difference is in the “perceived” buying chain based on the relationships of the publishers, distributors, and wholesalers. This is a “good ole boys network,” don’t be fooled, and there are a handful of companies that control it.

The Xtreme Games Developer’s Conference (XGDC), which you founded, will not take place this year. You stated that there was a lack of support on the part of the community.

I don’t feel there is a lack of interest. I think it’s more a lack of planning; people wait too long each year and really have no idea how much money I personally spend on this conference. It’s $150 for God sake and you get the same information at the $1500 Game Developer’s Conference (GDC)! The lunch cost that much!!! But, each year people simply don’t plan well enough, and I can’t afford losing $20K each year waiting for this to build momentum. We advertise everywhere, all the gamers know about it, I think the bottom line is that the GDC has got the gaming community locked and they don’t have time for two conferences. And the hobbyists just don’t have the time or money to come, so that leaves us not very financially feasible. I remember Chris Hecker and Jeff Lander even tried doing little game dev conferences and it lasted only a couple times also—it’s just hard to make happen.

Did Apple ever express any interest to attend or support the show?

I tried to get them interested many times, but they were too busy being cool.

The other reason stated in your press release cited the lawsuit by Hasbro. If I recall, Hasbro Interactive and subsidiary Atari Interactive filed suit in a federal court to enforce the companies’ copyrights. The complaint alleged that several companies copied games for which Hasbro Interactive owned the exclusive copyrights.

Bottom line is that Hasbro has basically crushed us financially. The suit’s purpose was to target small developers and, as expected, everyone settled in the end. It’s not hard to see why, because just to respond to the paperwork would cost thousands, and to go to court would cost significantly more. Their tactic was, of course, to kill small developers with high court fees. Sadly, I was the only one that held out since the community said it would help, I only needed 50,000 more dollars to take them to trial and prove it was an antitrust case to win. None of the games infringed under law, and none of the games even were copyrighted under the law! The original copyrights filed by Atari were incorrect, and had expired, and moreover were useless since there was not only prior art, but thousands of clones that Atari had never challenged in existence. Furthermore, you can use the idea of a game, the only thing you can’t use is the exact game. In the end, no one in this industry came to help us while we protected the entire value market single-handed. I had something like 3,000 signatures and about 10 people from that list gave $20 for the defense fund, so that’s all there is about that.

I think developers from the lone wolf and shareware authors on up to the large AAA title developers have released clones, or tributes at some point. Some industry observers even claim that 95% of developers are just re-packaging game designs from the past. What are your thoughts on this topic?

Feel free to use the idea, there is nothing illegal about it. However, if you start making money, then someone might not like it and sue you for the sake of it—the legal system doesn’t know who is right or wrong, it only knows who has the most money for lawyers and paperwork. So, if you don’t want to chance it, don’t do anything like any other game. Related to this issue, your readers who love classic gaming might be interested to know that Premier Press Game Development series will soon have a book entitled “Retro Game Programming.”

You serve as the editor of the Game Developer series at Premier Press. Can you tell me about your role?

Well, it is like full time work for a normal human being, but I work around 120 hours a week so I can do it and my other jobs at the same time. As for my position, I draw up the ideas for the books, find authors for books (very difficult to find the right people), and define the overall look and feel of the book. This entitles: the style of teaching, content, and so forth. I also tech edit some of the more technical books. Basically a standard “series editor” position, but I have to say that I am amazed at all the acquisition and copy editors, they are getting smarter and smarter all the time—when you see comments from a copy editor to the author like “Shouldn’t the photon energy be a function of frequency?”, it’s a little scary! But, the point is that everyone at Premier Press is really motivated to creating the world’s finest game development series bar none. And as far as I am concerned we have done that. For example, our new book on AI is the best in the world on the practical application of AI to games and more. That’s a big statement, but I make it without hesitation, just like I would say that Foley and VanDam is the bible of computer graphics. When we do a book, I personally make it very clear to the author that this isn’t a book, but a work of art, and I want the very best he can do, nothing but perfection is acceptable. Sometimes we get it, sometimes we don’t, but at least we make an effort for perfection.

‘Mac Game Programming’ by Mark Szymczyk was published by Premier Press in light of the fact that there hadn’t been a text book to address this market in many years. Can we expect more Mac-specific titles or at least equal coverage in future releases in the Game Development series?

The market for Macintosh development books has been generally smaller when compared to other platforms. From a business viewpoint, we need to be careful and go slowly. Writing a book for Macintosh game programming was actually my idea. I support the platform because I want to try and help it, and Steve Wozniak (Woz) is actually a good friend of mine, and I’d like to keep the development community going for his legacy (even though it was Jobs that did the Mac). I will determine when we are ready for another book based on the sales of Mark’s ‘Mac Game Programming’. So if you really want to help promote the platform, tell everyone on your site to buy a copy of it, and to buy every other Mac development book as well. (Editor’s note: We do!) This way, the authors have a reason to write these books, and the publishers have a motivation to print them. I do hope the sales of the book will go well. You might also remember another book I had to do with when I was with Waite Group, we did a book at my behest on Mac game programming too—my book sold tens of thousands of copies for the PC, and the Mac one sold hundreds, maybe a couple thousand in its lifetime. (Editor’s note: I bought my copy.) Overall, our product mix will always have Mac, Linux, Palm, PocketPC, and consoles represented.

In the “Letter from the Editor” in Mark’s book, you wrote that “The Mac has always suffered from a lack of development tools…” In what area were you referring to, programming tools or graphic tools, such as 3DS Max, or SDKs?

Everything. Compilers, tools, programs, there are 10-100 times more of everything for the PC platform. Apple has never been very programmer friendly or hardware engineer friendly. However, I think that Apple and Jobs both realize that this is anti-productive in the long run and especially for the game development community and have started to make headway.

Have you had a chance to try Cocoa and Apple’s Developer Tools?

I have played with all of the development environments, and found all of them to have their pros and cons. At this point, all of them are similar to working with DirectX, so no complaints.

Speaking of DirectX, there have been many discussions centering around DirectX vs. OpenGL. How do you view the situation and do you care to make any predictions?

I think that Direct3D now is much better than OpenGL for working with the latest technology. On the other hand, I think that getting OpenGL to work is a little easier. That’s the pros and cons of each platform. If I am going to make a game, I will use Direct3D.

Since the majority of our readers are Macintosh developers, and may not be familiar with your name, they might be wondering why we chose to interview a PC developer. However, my sources tell me that you own a Macintosh.

Yes, a Power Mac G3, iMac, and an old “Classic Mac”—all on loan to friends and family now. And also a PowerBook that Woz personally gave to me.

So how do you feel about today’s Apple and their offerings?

About the computer industry: it isn’t always about how good a computer is or how fast it is—it’s about how many you get out there and how many get entrenched. In the end, I think the reality is Apple isn’t going to die. However, it’s carved out such a niche market that increasing market share in their core business would be very difficult. As for Macs, they have been noted in the past for not being programmer friendly, and getting info from Apple is like asking for secured documents.

Bio

As CEO and founder of Xtreme Games LLC, Andre’s mission is to help small developers publish and distribute their games. He is also the founder of the Xtreme Games Developer Conference, Nurve Networks LLC, and eGamezone Networks LLC. A long time author, he has written more game programming books than anyone, and now is the series editor of Game Development Series by Premier Publishing.

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