In short: Diablo 3, as of today (5/25/2012) has now hit 6.3 million in sales. Quite impressive! Huge congratulations going out to all my friends at Blizzard! That’s an amazing milestone; and even better, it’s always nice to surpass expectations. Article here.

So this got me to thinking. IF this game had shipped on just (1) of the Consoles; how much revenue in royalties would they have normally had to cough up to: Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo? (For the ostensible privilege of being on that platform?) Well… if rumors are true.. and believe me, I’ve heard a ton of them…. Royalty rates are typically between $7-10/unit. So.. let’s go on the low side of the scale. 6.3 million units at $7 ea = $44,100,000 (US) dollars!!! That’s a ton of money no matter how it’s sliced/diced.

In short: I think the savings that can be had by shipping on the PC, and not paying that royalty are spot on. It’s hard to argue with their track record. Those kinds of savings, if managed properly and keeping the quality of the product high, and by being able to hit a much broader global market continue to provide them a very strong recipe for success. Again.. congratulations Blizzard!

Thx for following everyone! Hope you all have a great Memorial Day Weekend!
Matt
PS: If anyone does have more clarity on those royalty rates I'd love to hear them!

With today’s technology, you don’t need millions of dollars or professional equipment to get thousands of fans. Here’s how to get started on creating an exciting game trailer with a few inexpensive tools:

Tell Your Story
Whether it’s an action-packed 3D thriller or a 2D game like Angry Birds, there is always a story to tell. People connect with stories, and once they are invested in the story they will keep coming back for more.

Most video game trailers show the setup, the scene, and the situation with audio voiceover to generate extra excitement and suspense.

To start developing the story, you need to get organized:

• Create a storyboard or a draft of all the different cuts and shots you will use. When choosing your shots, think about the pace you want your video to run. If it’s a fast-paced game, use many short clips and different angles to keep the rapid pace and general feeling.
• Write a script and include voiceover, audio, and a brief description of the scene. Unlike the storyboard, more is not necessarily merrier with the script. Keep your sentences short and to the point. Your audience will have a hard time remembering long sentences while taking in all of your visuals. Try to stay away from conjunctions.
• Begin thinking about audio. Audio includes the type of voice, ambient sounds, and music included in the video. They should all match the feeling that you want to demonstrate to your audience.

What to Shoot

When deciding what to shoot, remember these three things:

• Establishing shots: When you want to set the scene, use an establishing shot. Establishing shots are distance shots that show the entire area of your scene. It establishes the location in which your story takes place.
• Medium shots are used to establish and show dialogs of characters.
• Close-ups are just that – close. Filming close on a character or object creates drama and feeds the emotion of the video. There should be at least 10 close-up shots for every one establishing shot.

Now that you know what the shots are, you need to know what kind of footage to capture. Answer these three questions to decide which footage to use:

• Which footage sets the scene?
• What footage visually shows the situation?
• What footage is the most engaging?

Take all of those shots, include their relative close-ups and there you have it.

Equipment

You picked your shots, organized a storyboard, wrote a script, and now it’s time to shoot. Unlike traditional video shoots, you’re filming a program, so the equipment is much different.

Here are several different options to shooting video from your computer.

• Fraps: Fraps is a PC-specific Windows application that can record up to 2560x1600 and 120 frames per second (perfect for slow-motion editing).
• Dazzle: Dazzle is a Pinnacle product that can capture video from camcorders, digital cameras, phones, DVDs, and gaming consoles. This is an inexpensive choice for recording video on game consoles.
• Hauppauge HD PVR Gaming Edition: More expensive than Dazzle, the Hauppauge HD PVR Gaming Edition recorder captures full 1080i resolution and is much more robust than Dazzle. The HD PVR has low latency and can record straight to your computer during game play.

Share

The whole point of making a game trailer is to share it with the world and generate interest. Hosting your video on the 2nd largest search engine, YouTube, is the best way to get eyes on your video. Along with your YouTube video, include a title, keywords, and a brief description that introduces the game--focusing on what makes your game special.

Linking your video to your other websites, forums, and social media channels will increase your searchability and keep your viewers connected to all channels.

Thanks to your social media strategy with YouTube and your professional-quality video, your game is in a better position to gain the interest it deserves.

Encore une fois, 4 speakers à l'affiche : SYLVAIN WEBER, MARTIN GORNER, MATHIAS DESLOGES, ANTOINE ROGLIANO.

Date: Mercredi 16 Mai 2012 a partir de 19h30

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In support of the recent announcement of the 3^rd Generation Intel® Core™ Processors, Intel has released the Intel® SDK for OpenCL* Applications 2012. For the first time, OpenCL* developers using Intel® architecture can utilize compute resources across both Intel® Processors and Intel® HD Graphics Driver 4000/2500

From a person who, for the last couple of years has closely followed the emergence of the OpenCL standard, this announcement was something worth waiting for.  Less than a year ago, on this blog, I posted the news that the Intel® OpenCL SDK 1.1 gold  was released,  This was the first production OpenCL implementation from Intel targeting Intel® processors on Windows* OS. This current announcement is special, the Intel SDK for OpenCL Applications 2012 now supports not only the CPU but also the Intel HD Graphics 4000/2500 for Windows* 7 users.  We’ve come a long way in a year.

OpenCL on the 3^rd Generation Intel® Core Processor Family extends Intel’s line of tools and APIs on Intel platforms and adds interoperability with other graphics APIs like DirectX*, OpenGL* and Intel® Media SDK, directly on the Intel HD Graphics device.

So what else is new in this release?

• A Single OpenCL* platform enables shared context for OpenCL applications running on both the CPU and Intel HD Graphics 4000/2500. The OpenCL platform with both CPU and HD Graphics devices is available seamlessly on the Intel® HD Graphics Drivers.
• Interoperability with the Intel Media SDK with no memory copy overhead
• Improved performance for OpenCL applications running on Intel® Xeon® Processors and Intel® Core™ Processors. This CPU support is also available for Linux* OS developers.
• Intel® SDK for OpenCL* applications development tools includes an offline compiler and a step-by-step OpenCL Kernel debugger (for CPU) integrated in Microsoft Visual Studio* 2010 integrated development environment.
• 10 OpenCL code samples, three of them new, are now available for independent download.

The list above is just a sample of what is available with this new SDK. I recommend you read the product brief or watch the introduction video to get started with this new SDK.

Download the SDK for free at www.intel.com/software/opencl and begin optimizing your applications for the 3^rdGeneration Intel® Core™ Processors today.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter at @IntelOpenCL

Earlier this week, I had the privilege to attend an uncommon event in the field of computer graphics and visualization. There were some 130 people in attendance including:

• People who have written or contributed to approximately 20 papers accepted for publication in the upcoming SIGGRAPH 2012 proceedings
• 8 people who have won SIGGRAPH achievement awards, including two lifetime achievement award winners and four of the past eight “Significant New Researcher” award winners
• The primary inventors or originators of ray tracing (Turner Whitted), radiosity (Don Greenburg), antialiasing (Frank Crow), and RenderMan (Pat Hanrahan)
• Three or four dozen of the best computer graphics PhD students in the world

Some of the comments I heard from people during the event were, "This is a collection of the finest graphics researchers in the world," "Yesterday I saw SIGGRAPH Fast-Forward for 2012", and "A good chunk of the people I like to see at SIGGRAPH all brought together in a nice, small group."

The Unpronounceable Acronym

What was the nature of this event and what was its purpose? It was the 2012 retreat for people involved in the Intel Science and Technology Center for Visual Computing (ISTC-VC). This Intel-funded research consortium, launched a little over a year ago, has a mission to solve the biggest, baddest problems that remain in computer graphics. The ISTC-VC (and other ISTCs) were created by Intel Labs to focus on technology areas that align with its research focus areas. The lead university is Stanford, and the other universities involved are Washington, UC/Berkeley, UC/Davis, UC/Irvine, Princeton, Cornell, and Harvard. Others notable attendees included people from The Guildhall at SMU, University of Texas/Austin, KAUST, University of Illinois, Disney, Microsoft, Canada's GRAND (Graphics, Animation and New Media) Network, and of course lots of people from Intel.

Why was I there? As one of the SSG representatives to the ISTC effort, I was there to learn from the collected brainpower and share information about powerful visual computing tools and technologies such as Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel® GPA) and Intel® Media SDK. I also manage SSG’s Visual Computing Academic Program which has become highly aligned with the ISTC-VC over the last 12 months. (I was a welcome participant to the meeting since I was able to bring T-shirts featuring the URL for the newly launched Visual Computing Source web site…it doesn’t hurt to come bearing gifts!)

A Packed Agenda

The event exceeded everyone’s expectations and the progress of the ISTC-VC over the past year astounded us all. The venue was the fantastic Oceano Hotel & Spa in Half Moon Bay, California. During the morning of the first day, we got updates on the research projects underway within the ISTC-VC’s four major research themes (Simulation, Perception, Content Creation, and Systems). There was so much progress that each of the theme leaders had to talk a mile a minute in order to get through the significant advances in the state of the art that have been made over the last twelve months. The afternoon session consisted of working meetings for each of the research themes. Over dinner, Turner Whitted of Microsoft Research painted a challenging vision for where the technology needs to go. He complemented the ISTC-VC, calling it a collection of world-class talent such as had never before been assembled. He urged students and researchers involved in the center to look upon it as both a challenge and an opportunity…great things are expected when so much great talent is working together to solve problems.

The after-dinner reception featured demos and posters of the various projects (46 altogether!). Some SSG colleagues and I were able to show demos of Diablo III and Skyrim running on our 3rd generation Core (Ivy Bridge) processors, some cool games running on second-generation core Ultrabooks, and give demos of the latest version of our Intel® GPA tool suite. Unfortunately, this meant that I didn’t have any time to check out the many interesting posters and demos being shown, but I intend to follow up and learn more about them and share my thoughts in future blog posts.

Lofty Goals

Details of many of the research projects will be made public at SIGGRAPH 2012. Indeed, it is the aim of the ISTC-VC to publish its results in a timely fashion and put in the public domain all software and results. The intention is to accelerate the visual computing industry in a significant fashion over the next 3-5 years. I can’t wait to tell you more about these research projects, but the research agenda is no less ambitious than:

• Develop a virtual human with appearance and behavior that is indistinguishable from reality
• Revolutionize photography
• Build tools that allow users of all skill levels to create compelling 3D objects and environments
• Build models the size and complexity of large, real world cities and render them at interactive rates
• Automatically extract semantic information from images and videos
• Develop methods for real-time sound generation
• Develop methods to bring cinematic quality natural phenomenon (water, smoke, fire) to interactive games
• Make virtual worlds an application platform as powerful as the world wide web

An explicit goal for all of the projects is help Intel learn what is needed for the graphics hardware and software of the future. Working together with so many bright minds in academia, Intel hopes to more quickly enable the entire computing industry to move to a place where astonishing interactive visual experiences are commonplace.

Stay Tuned

One thing about top-notch university researchers – they’re not afraid to take on daunting challenges. Whether they ultimately succeed or not, they are undoubtedly going to make key breakthroughs in advancing the state of the art in visual computing technology. I’m going to tag along for the ride and share some of the details of these projects with you…it might get bumpy at times, but it’s sure going to be a lot of fun!

A veritable who's who of computer graphics researchers gathered for the ISTC-VC 2012 Retreat

So what things does she like most about it? The below is in her words.

1) She loves the design, how sleek it is, and the brushed metal appearance.
2) Loves the small form factor – fits in most of her handbags.
3) Loves the Keyboard. Likes the spacing between the keys & the way they feel.
4) Setup was seamless, found all her ‘piles of different devices’. “Right out of the box everything worked”.
5) Liked the fact she didn’t have to download a bunch of updates. Was up and running quickly.
6) The Solid State drive. (I asked her how she knew about that) – ‘because she read up on it’.
7) Boots up super-fast.
8) Likes the attention to detail.
9) Out of box experience was great. Wasn’t like unpacking something from just a bunch of cardboard.
10) Likes the Case it came with, it’s like an envelope case.
11) Loves the battery life.

Ok… so I realize this is a sample of one; but I’m struck at how quickly she rattled off all the above features without even thinking about it. So… about ten minutes later I asked her – ‘So what do you like about the iPad 2’? (Note: It took her about three times the length of time to list the following things)

1) Touch screen.
2) Size of the Form Factor.
3) Convenience that it offers in being able to multi-task.
4) Can play games on it.
5) Good for reading stuff.
6) Quickly checking email.

That’s where it ended… and then about three minutes later she says … ‘well, now with my Ultrabook, the iPad has now pretty much been relegated to being a kitchen gadget’.
Interesting….
So then I flipped the bit and asked her – ‘Is there anything you don’t like about your Ultrabook?’ – Answer: “not yet”. IMO that's pretty cool.

Ok - so now onto some gratuitous pics of most of these devices. (Note: I didn’t include my Alienware M11x this time around). In the foreground – bottom to top: iPad 2, Asus Ultrabook, HP dv6, and then the Dell M1530

In this next pic.. I’m comparing the thickness of the Dell to the Asus Ultrabook.

In this following pic I’m comparing the thickness of the Ultrabook (on the bottom) as compared to the iPad 2

In this final pic I’m comparing the iPad 2 (I had to put the case back on it in order to prop it up), the Ultrabook, and then the HP dv6

For those concerned about the dimension of weight. The Dell XPS for example weighs 5.9lbs (2.6 kg), the Ultrabook comes in at 2.9lbs (1.3 kg). This weight factor alone is one of the biggest selling points for me. The best part is that I’m seeing little to no tradeoffs yet with regards to overall performance. These devices are packing a pretty serious punch.

So – in a nutshell I’m having some serious PC Laptop envy right now. I might wait a few more months though. For those that have been following the Ultrabook category – we should also start seeing the Ultrabooks that also integrate ‘touch’ – and convert into being either a Laptop and or a Tablet when you want it. At any rate, I’m very sold on the concept, and yes, I’m keeping a very close eye on ensuring that all the games we PC Gamers love to play – play well on these! Stay tuned!

R.I.P. D3DXCompileShaderFromFile().
What started me off thinking this would be a port, not just a recompile was that D3DX has gone, and I used it a lot. I compiled all my shaders at runtime using D3DXCompileShaderFromFile(), so that promised to be a headache. I use a fairly simple and flexible technique for making shaders. I have a main() for most shaders in one file, then some #defines which control what is included in that main. Features are bought in as fragments from other files as required so you can build just the shader(s) you need at runtime. My initial reaction was that with no D3DXCompileShaderFromFile(), you will need to compile every possible shader at compile time and include them in the app!
Luckily, that’s not to be. Although D3DXCompileShaderFromFile() has gone, you can still use D3DCompile() as long as you jump through a couple of hoops. To start with, You can replace existing calls to D3DXCompileShaderFromFile() with calls to D3DCompile() fairly trivially. The only change is you have to preload the source for the shader, which you then pass to D3DCompile(). Pretty easy, and there is lots of samples about how to load files on Metro, don’t get into a panic when you add CreateFile() and it comes up as unresolved extern!.

Loading Shader source and other data files.
An interesting problem is where do you load your shader source from? When you run an app you’ve compiled to run on Metro in Visual Studio 11, you quickly realize the app is actually installed on the Metro side in its sandbox before its run. This means your shader source has to be installed in the sandbox as well so that the app can find the files. The easy way I found to do this is to add the shader source file to the project, open the properties dialog for the file, change the “General / Content” field to “Yes” and the file is magically added to the sandbox so that you can open it at runtime.
Next problem is in order to use D3DCompile() you need to add d3dcompiler.lib to your app. This lib, of course, needs to find D3DCompiler_44.dll in the sandbox. It turns out you can do the same with the dll as you did with the source: add it to the project and mark it as content. In fact, you can do this with all your data files and it’s a quick and dirty way to get things up and running when you have data files you need to load at runtime.

What happened to D3DX Math then?
It turns out that for a good while, Microsoft have been advocating using xnamath and leaving D3DX math behind. This is pretty good advice, in fact, xnamath uses a lot of SSE and is way more efficient than using floats. Thats what we all want, right?
The first thing I noticed when I started the port was that xnamath.h is no longer available – millions of compile errors. On the MSDN site on porting to Metro I saw that Microsoft now advocate using something called DirectXMath, “Oh great,” I thought, “let’s go port the math again…”.
Well, it turns out the whole problem is a non issue. You can port from xnamath.h to DirectXMath just by using the DirectX namespace. All the XMxxxx functions & types etc are there in the DirectX namespace. I personally added “using namespace DirectX;” to a strategically placed include file and all the compiler errors vanished. If you want to play by the book, you should really use the namespace just in the files where you need it, of course. I went global with it in the end because I have a lot of math in header files (lazy me ).

GUIDs, and other animals.
So DXGUID.lib has gone. The rather obvious symptom during porting is that you get unresolved externs for all the DX interfaces that use GUIDs, like the shader reflection interfaces for example. I use reflections to extract which constant buffers are used by a given shader. I was getting quite frustrated over the fact that you can use IID_ID3D11ShaderReflection and all its related GUIDs in your code, and you can right click and “Go to Definition”, but the linker insists that it’s still unresolved.
Shame on me: the solution was pretty obvious in the end. Does anyone remember the days before DXGUID.lib? All you need to do is #define INITGUID somewhere in the code (preferably before you include all the directx includes) and all the GUIDs magically appear.
What do I do about the “Windows loop”?
Well, I don’t know what your solution will need to look like; this depends very much on how you’ve written your engine. My engine has learned, over the last few ports it’s been through, that the smaller the interface to OS specific stuff is, the better. I have basically three entry points: Init(), Render(), and Destroy(). Render() will draw one frame from the scene contained in the engine.
When you call Init() to start up the engine, you pass in an interface to a set of functions which the engine can call for machine specific actions. Things like reading files, getting Input, Getting timer data, things like that. The upshot is that when you port to the new OS, you implement these functions and pass the pointers to the engine.
This interface means that you can just build the basic DX sample from Visual Studio 11, add calls to Init() Render() and Destroy() in appropriate places, build the machine specific functions you need and that’s it. Job done.

Final thoughts.
All in all the port to Metro doesn’t look that bad. There may still be some gotcha’s waiting for me, but the process looks fairly painless at the moment. A nice bonus is that changes you make to the DirectX pipeline in your game, if you’re careful, will still work on a Win32 desktop app! Win – win!

Engine Geneology.
As I said at the start, mine is really only half an engine, and hasn’t been used in anger. I use mine to keep my coding hand up to scratch and to investigate new OS’s and such. It started out on Win32, It’s been ported to Linux, Meego, Android, and now back via Win32 to Metro and lots of little bits have been dropped along the way. It’s gone from DirectX 9, to OGL, to GLES, and finally now to DX11.1 via DX10.

The PC Gaming Alliance has just released our latest Press Release results covering PC Gaming’s latest revenue milestone now exceeding $18.6B. The in-depth details are available to PC Gaming Alliance members provided in our Horizon’s Research Reports. The best part about all this is that this is just the tip of the iceberg! PC Gaming Revenues are on a trajectory to once and for all pass up all 3, yes, all 3 Consoles Revenues combined - this year!

So for those of you that follow the news about Gaming – results haven’t really been all that rosy over the past quarter or more right? So I’m sure some of you are going what? How can PC Gaming be doing this well? There's no way! Right? So this gets better… as I’m sure the Console Giants, Strategists, Biz-Dev, Marketing-PR, Academics, several Analysts, and Investor types, et al are convinced that Consoles are crushing PC Gaming blah blah blah. Right? Well....

WRONG
WRONG
And
WRONG

Here’s what’s really going on. The reports coming out from Retailers that Gaming sales are way down leave out the most critical detail. It’s not so much the PC Games being impacted…it’s mostly Console Games. I’m not trying to gloat here or anything but let’s face it; Console Games are going to go through the same pains that PC Games did in the last decade. Put another way…. PC Games can’t really fall any further at Retail since that’s pretty much already happened. However; Console Games have a much much much further distance to fall before they hit ground. It’s most likely not an if, but when, that happens. So… welcome to our PC Gaming Party!

So… should we do to the Console PR machine what they did to PC Gaming and spin this as… “Consoles are dying”? Nah… I don’t believe we should. I think the smarter way of pitching this is that Consoles are both obsolete and irrelevant. Those paying attention already see that. However; given that, I don’t they’ll die out per se, but rather evolve & be re-spun as some sort of new, evolved, or transformed product. (Have fun with that several hundred million dollar PR re-invention story). Besides… for all the propaganda about PC Gaming dying… the reality is that the only platforms that actually did die in the last decade actually turned out to be 2 Consoles. (Xbox 1, & GameCube – if I must spell them out). A shame that people can’t keep their facts straight, or conveniently overlook these things.

Unfortunately; the real victims are likely going to be more of the Retail stores. I don’t relish seeing that. I think we’ve all seen too much of that happen already with Music stores, Book stores, Video/Movie stores, and even with Games stores.

So.. in a nutshell for those wondering how PC Gaming can be this healthy, strong, and vibrant.
1) PC Gaming is far more global
2) Gaming capable PC’s sell more units in one year typically than any individual Console can in 3 to 5 years
3) PC Gaming, for quite some time now, has had far less reliance on Retail than Consoles
4) PC Gaming shifted & embraced newer more lucrative business models & formats more quickly than Consoles have. (e.g. Subscriptions, Free to Play/Freemium/Micro-transactions, Advertising, etc). They’re also able to do this because the form-factor itself is far more flexible & iterative.
5) PC Gaming, believe it or not, is far more profitable. Consoles are swimming in veritable ‘Red-Oceans’. ARPU’s are way up on PC Gaming. Especially so when taking advantage of the latest and greatest formats and business models. I have far more details here for PCGA members-only.
6) PC Gaming practically invented the 'Free to Play' model which nearly eliminates Piracy. This has proven to be a very effective approach and adopted quite heavily in some Geo's. Piracy can be further reduced by other simple things such as offering more value, or services, back to Gamers. This includes localizing your game content for as many Geo’s as possible on day 1 launch.
7) PC Gaming doesn’t suffer nearly as much from the ‘Secondary Sales’, ‘Pre-Owned’, ‘Loaned-out’ games scenarios as the Consoles do.
8) PC Gaming's value-proposition smokes the Console. Savvy Gamers across the world realize PC Gaming has never been more affordable. Have you checked out all the great laptop and desktop bargains lately? Absolutely incredible deals out there for extremely respectable PC’s ranging from $350-800 (US) that blow Consoles of today completely out of the water.
9) PC Gaming can be done in your Living Room, using an HDMI cable, and wireless game-pads. I do this all the time. Now.. if your game isn’t available for the PC, or the PC version isn’t working like the Console version does. Email and contact the Games ISV in question! Vote with your wallet!

I’m going to hit the ‘pause’ button now as I could keep going with tons of more reasons as to why PC Gaming is doing so well. That said, I’ll try to share more of the research report over time. It’s a great time to be a PC Gamer, and honestly, I believe this is just only the beginning.

Thanks for reading everyone.
Hopefully I’ll bump into a few of you at GDC this week!

Sincerely,
Matt

How does this involve the computer? Google among others continues to push this. Here’s a news article describing one such addition.[Is Cloud TV on the horizon for Google]

What features and usages make sense as a user with nearly instant ability to watch about anything you want? I believe that to make the experience useful requires a front end ability to balance sources with cost and desire, along with maintaining a viewing database and suggestion engine that is able to work across platforms and media services. I’ll explain this.

I want to be able to watch “Rubicon” a TV show and not have to worry about which service has it, or which might charge and which might be free. Software on my computer system should be able to pick the lowest price to view this content and present it to me. Perhaps with my confirmation if I need to buy it vs it’s available on a pre-paid service.

To really make this all useful I need a suggestion and search engine that knows not only what I viewed on Netflix, but also Amazon, Vudu and Hulu. That way I can get reasonable suggestions for things I might enjoy that actually make sense. By placing this ability under my control I could also control the privacy of my viewing data by limiting access to the providers I choose due to their ability to offer me services I desire.

Now we can really take this another step. Presume I’m sitting in front of my TV with all of these viewing abilities and a tablet in my hand. How can that tablet add value? Perhaps by analyzing my viewing and presenting me with options to learn more about the topic, location or other aspects of the currently watched content such as the director, actors etc. All of this is possible with our current technology, we just need it to be implemented and then it can be used to improve our experience as we use the technology. That is really the bottom line, improving our experiences as we go about life; thus changing the world for the better.

In the early days of Radio, shows were broadcast at a certain time, and the family would gather around the radio in the evenings to listen to their favorite show. Radio was augmented by TV but essentially had the same consuming method. I have wonderful memories as a family watching the Sunday night movies together. As kids we would anxiously await the yearly viewing of favorite films such as the Wizard of OZ. The “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” line was forever etched as a powerful unveiling of the mysteries of what we believe vs what is real.

We have been moving for several years from a mode of “what is on now?” to “What do I feel like watching?” A lazy evening pushing buttons on the remote to see “what’s on” is still possible as you move through hundreds of digital cable or satellite channels, but that isn’t how viewing works now. Instead we have several on demand venues where you can build a list of movies, shows, concerts etc you would like to watch and place them in your Queue. Then when you have time for viewing, instead of watching what happens to be on, you can decide to watch what you previously determined you would like to watch.

Netflix was an early leader in on-demand viewing, with many others out there with various specialties. Vudu for current movies, Hulu for TV shows, Amazon for a mix of about everything. This shift in viewing methods has caused me to rethink how I spend my time in front of a TV and additionally just how the TV and Computer are evolving in my home.

A recent Netready Vizio TV adds more to this equation. The remote includes buttons for one press access to Amazon, Netflix and Vudu. All of which I have access to now in a very simple UI. I’ll include a picture of the remote below so you can see the buttons too. On the back of the remote is a micro keyboard used to enter user names, passwords and URL’s as necessary to configure the players.
This evolution while powerful and changing to the viewing habits, leads me to consider new ways to apply this technology. I’ll cover ideas for augmenting and improving these new abilities in my next blog.

It’s great technology which gives us the ability to “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” and yet consume the media as we freely desire.

Vizio Netready TV remote control front side w/Amazon Netflix and Vudu buttons

Vizio Netready TV remote control back side, with micro keyboard

I hope to see some of you in a few weeks at GDC. This year I’ll be doing an Introductory Session on Security Best Practices. This is going to be a fast paced debrief and introduction of the spectrum of: Piracy, Secondary Sales, and Account Theft solutions available to Game Developers. I’ll also be providing a quick snapshot of some common Piracy ‘misconceptions’; and touching on some other related topics such as domestic legislation that impacts our industry as a result of Piracy.

GDC Conference Link: http://schedule.gdconf.com/session/13473324/Security_Best_Practices_%26%238211%3B_Piracy%2C_Secondary_Sales%2C_%26_Account_Theft_Solutions

We will also be posting these materials up on: www.intel.com/software/gdc

Hope to see you there!
Matt

The Level Up Game Demo judges all have to get out of bed in the morning, but each has a different motivation for doing so. So we put them to the question for you and come back with their thoughts.

Blair Herter, G4TV

“While there’s not any one specific thing that gets me out of bed in the morning, I can say that in almost a decade of covering the video game industry I’ve never woken up and thought ‘Man, I have to go to WORK today’. That is a very good thing.”

John Romero, Loot Drop, Inc.

“Working with a great team that's inspired to do their best every day, and have fun in the process.”

Chris Taylor, Gas Powered Games

“For me it’s a chance to do something new, something the world has never seen before.”

Jeff Vogel, Spiderweb Software

“The persistent need to buy more food for my children. Alas, after 17 years, a lot of the thrill of creation is done. Now it's just a job, albeit one that is excellent and rewarding in many ways.”

Wolfgang Engel, Confetti Special Effects, Inc.

“That I can render a scene so well that it creates excitement and a smile on the face of the people who play the game :-)”

Andy Schatz, Pocketwatch Games

“When I was 7, I used to make games in the living room with my friends. We made games about the things we were passionate about.

When I was 25 I commuted to work, sat in a cubicle, and made games that were supposed to make money. They didn't.

Now that I'm 33 I'm making games in the living room again. They are games that I'm passionate about. They are games that can support my family. The thing I love about the game industry is that passion can drive productivity. I can make the games I want to make, and someone out there will share an interest in them.”

What about you?
What gets you motivated? Leave a comment and let us know!

Links to both articles here:
Gamasutra: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/39461/Report_Crysis_2_named_mostpirated_game_of_2011.php
TorrentFreak: http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-games-of-2011-111230/

Here’s a screen capture from the latter site that I’ll be discussing: (Attributes/Thanks to TorrentFreak & Ernesto)

So let’s dissect this & put things in more context. Besides the obvious exclusion of PS3 data – what stands out to you all? …………………………. Give up? Here are the things that stand out the most to me.

1) Does anyone see any Games here that lean on Free to Play/Freemium? (w/Micro-transactions)
2) Does anyone see any MMO, or Subscriptions based Games here?
3) Does it strike anyone else that these games all appear to originate in the Western Hemisphere?
4) Aren’t most of these games still leaning heavily on the Retail fire & forget release model?
5) Most of the games listed also stand out as those that are candidates for Secondary Sales.

Ok… yes…. Before I get flamed I do realize that a few of these are dabbling in things like Online Pass, & some platform specific exclusives, Co-Op modes that lean on a great multi-player experience etc., and so forth. However; I really believe that what we’re seeing occur in Piracy is largely (but not always) a function of these ‘Pirated’ games perhaps not taking, or leveraging more fully, the full tool-set of Business Model Options, Game Design Choices, & or Current Technology that can help reduce, or even in some cases eliminate Piracy outright. I honestly don’t get it. That said, not every game might be a good candidate for say the Freemium/Free-to-Play model, or warrants a subscription; however, it seems like the Western Hemisphere’s Game ISVs – could at least consider some form of a hybrid approach to implement at least (1) of these new trends or technologies to tackle Piracy issues. The alternative is to continue to blame the PC for being a bad platform to publish your game on. However; I don’t hear this kind of story coming out of Eastern Hemisphere Games Companies such as: Nexon, TenCent, Shanda, Netease, etc. So again… I’m at a loss as to why. Also; is the PC really that bad to publish on after all? I believe the PC as a platform to bring your games to is far superior as long as one's willing to tap into some of those relatively newer game design choices, business, and distribution models; but it's going to require some changes in our thinking and playing some catch up to other parts of the world. (Note: Worth adding that localizing your content on day 1 release as globally as possible is also extremely important - especially if you want to reduce Piracy)

Last but not least we have to ask ourselves the following question. When looking at the links or the posted pic we see that PC is leading piracy rates, then it’s the Wii, then it’s the Xbox 360. Interestingly enough though, how much of this is due to the active install base of players on those respective platforms? It’s interesting to note that the higher the Install base, the higher the Piracy rates. Mere coincidence? I doubt it. Bear in mind, the volume of GPU capable PC Gamers over say the Xbox 360 platform is at least 4:1. (~250mu to ~60mu). The Wii has to be somewhere in the neighborhood of at least ~85-90mu or ~3:1 PC to Wii Gamers. Which is an extremely conservative estimate by the way for PC Gaming but I digress. So I’ll leave you with this thought. What would the Piracy rates be on the 360, Wii, or even the PS3 *if* the Active User Install base were at least comparable to that of the PC global install base? Sadly… I think what you’d see is comparable rates of Piracy; regardless of what platform a Publisher chooses. The net is this – and in my opinion it appears that: One: Consoles have failed to truly curb Piracy, and Two: As a result we’ve ended up with an experiment in Consoles that have unfortunately held back gaming and left us with sub-par gaming experiences.

Perhaps it’s time to break those shackles?!