BLUE MOON PRODUCTION COMPANY

GAMESCOM! First call for meetings in August. Blue Moon Production Company will be in beautiful Koln taking meetings with developers and publishers looking for independent input, advice, guidance or feedback.

The Pitch Deck As I look back over the past six months of Blue Moon, I look happily at a number of accomplishments, the  joy of playing in a creative space again, and a lot of time dedicated to helping developers find homes for their talent and their games.  Which largely comes down to - The Pitch Deck. Over 35 years I’ve signed a LOT of games.  Some of them from demos, first playables, vertical slices, but an awful lot of them were signed off pitch decks.  Now there’s a caveat to this, if a Publisher is signing a game from a pitch deck it usually means you’ve got a solid track record as a developer.  One thing I’ll always impress upon new teams, or teams who have previously worked in other areas of the business (co-dev/outsource) is the likelihood of being signed without a demo is slim.  People will want to see your capabilities as a group.  So what makes a good pitch deck?  I always look for THREE things up front in a deck.  Simple pages that get the message across that give me an understanding of whether I’m interested in it or not.  Publishers are polite, as a rule, but they usually want to know very quickly whether what you’re pitching is suitable or interesting to them.  1. What is it?  Tell me what genre, audience, platform, a high level overview. 2. Why is it different?  Your pillar.  Northstar.  What is going to sell this game? 3. Why do I care?  The World, the story, the long term dream. These three things set up a deeper dive into what the game is really about, where you can highlight mechanics specifically, unique features, background story, IP planning, development scope, time, budget and TEAM. Team is a kicker.  Most pitch decks I see have this up front.  They reference all the games the team has worked on over the years, in any and all positions and locations.  Here’s the thing.  Unless one of them is demonstrably responsible for creating an IP or a multi-million unit seller (ie you were the core, you were part of the marketing and PR around the game) then it’s not relevant.  Experience is important, highlight that, in the appendix or toward the end.  Unless I’m marketing around you, leave it until later. As a publisher I want to sign a game.  I want to sign an idea.  But beyond this I want to sign a team that sees more than just a one off opportunity.  Where does this lead?  Investing in a one-off concept works at a certain level, but what happens in success?  Show me an IP that supports years of development, years of expansion, years of promise.  As a publisher I want to nurture not just a game but a business venture that lasts.  A pitch deck should be the start of a long and beautiful relationship.

Ah the memories. Of the years gone by, our ascendancy from bit players at CES (to be honest I sort of liked the Vegas > Chicago double step we did) to the insane growth, then shrink, then growth, then defeat of E3. The JW Marriott was my home for the last few years of the show, the convention floor had become largely irrelevant, business was done here. Thanks to Summer GameFest and Geoff Keighley there’s still reasons to come back and have fun. If you’ve not done so, read Christopher Dring’s piece on E3 … really hits the mark. https://lnkd.in/eqXH2Jzp

The Lonely Gamer Ever since I was a kid games were where I went to disappear.  To live out adventures, to create my own reality.  When I booted up Elite I WAS Commander Jameson.  The Thargoids were my terrorizing enemy.  The Police were people I wanted to stay on the right side of.  My trading skills from Lave onwards were those of a rogue, traveling the galaxy in a very real way. Then one day LAN arrived.  Suddenly we could link machines in the office or haul our PC to a friend's house for a good old party and evening of fun.  Playing with friends was fun, Quake, Descent and Warcraft 2 with the office phone intercom system on was an absolute blast.  Not to mention good old BZ on the SGI’s at Psygnosis! XBox Live was a game changer.  Suddenly a console had online multiplayer and for better or worse - voice communication.  I vividly remember playing Project Gotham Racing 2 on Live and having an absolute blast . . . until the toxicity started.  It didn’t take long, audio was muted very quickly and we went back to local closed games, away from the taunts about my mother. There’s a reason the vast majority of gamers do so alone.  They may have their jam game with  a community they know and trust.  They may be in guilds with friends and into voice chat in that game.  But by and large communicating with strangers is something people tend to shy away from, and it's why it's vital to design any online game to be perfectly playable without voice communication. Implementing various visual tells for players to communicate without voiceover is a much more preferable feature than just text chat, the latter on consoles becomes a nightmare.  Helldivers 2 did a great job of this with its communication wheel, it’s what makes it the perfect single player co-op game.  As a bonus it really helps aurally challenged people. Support The Lonely Gamer!

The Perils of Platforms and Subscriptions In 2012 I got a lot of stick for writing an article for GI.BIZ on the “real cost of Used Games”.  My point was while beneficial for the consumer (and Gamestop) in the short term, the long term ramifications of trading-in games would directly impact the variety of games on sale and indeed how we went about building games.  We entered a decade where a core design pillar became “keep the disc”.  Not fun, not creativity, “how do we make the player NOT take it back.” Multiplayer was added to everything.  RPG elements were brought in to extend gameplay time.  Fifteen hour single player experience was death at retail, it would churn it endlessly.  Gamestop going from seller to reseller demonstrably changed HOW we design games. Fast forward a decade and new business models are affecting how we do things.  Free to play, games as a service, live service have all become a norm.  “Platforms” have emerged in the shape of Roblox and Fortnite, places you can scamper off to and spend your time flitting from one experience to the next.  Subscriptions came onto the market in the shape of access to a catalog of a particular publisher, or in game collections, Apple Arcade and Game Pass. There are two perils with this.  Firstly they’re attempts to build walled gardens which people don’t leave.  Metrics on these services are all about engagement, how much can I tie a player down to being within my walls.  The result of which is less time to explore other games from developers who are barred from that garden.  Secondly is the devaluation of games.  Games become tissues, things to try for a short amount of time and discard.  In a download world this problem is reduced a bit, it takes time to download a game, install it, there’s some attachment.  But in a streaming world that we’re seeing emerge, where you can jump from game to game from minute to minute, each experience is something that can be sampled very quickly and moved on from.  It also devalues the game across other systems.  If a game is “free” on one platform, why would you spend money for it on another?  Perception is an odd thing. There’s a lot of panic about the cost of developing games today, calling the market unsustainable.  But if you look around the landscape that isn’t the case.  There’s fantastic fun and entertaining games being developed at every budget and released at every price.  Each one of them has value.  There’s a place for Spiderman 2.  If I’m spending $500 on a console I want and expect premium quality exclusive games on it.  The economics for Sony make sense.  At the same time I can buy an incredible game like Manor Lords made by “one man, and a handful of developers”.  Both these games can sell millions of copies and be profitable.  The audience is there for both and hungry to spend money on both.  Why?  Because our art is valuable.  (The Real Cost of Used Games, April 2012- https://lnkd.in/gGMQu9E5)

The fantastic GamesBeat Summit in Los Angeles is coming up and Blue Moon will be there . . .celebrating . . . if you need input from 36 years of video game experience wrapped up in a 53 year old man do not hesitate to reach out.

Stay True to the Core - Smarter Development I’ve always felt agility is one of the most overlooked traits development teams can overlook.  It’s almost impossible to design a complex game out of the gate, the days of several hundred page game design docs, generally thrown together to satisfy a publisher milestone, are long gone.  Development is never, ever a straight line.  Circumstances change, the market changes, the game will always encounter unforeseen hurdles.  It's not a question of IF it will happen, it’s a question of when.  When it does happen, being nimble, agile and able to change course quickly is absolutely essential.  Every delay costs money.  The more people, the more money. Two of my favorite games of the last few years were Returnal and Helldivers 2.  I speak lovingly of both all the time, two incredible teams in Housemarque and Arrowhead who developed two wonderful, joyful award winning games.  Yes I know Helldivers 2 hasn’t been through the awards circuit yet, it WILL win awards!  Both games were developed in studios with less than a hundred people.  Now you look at the credits list for both games and there are an AWFUL lot more people who were involved in developing both games.  Because they were smart they used outsource and co-dev. It’s long been a belief of mine that keeping a core team small and focused on the truth of the game is the most important path to success.  If PC is your lead platform, focus on that, let someone else deal with the console or mobile versions.  Do it in parallel when the main game direction is settled, bring everything into mainline before you ship, have the internal team take ownership of it when you do. If there is feature development that doesn’t fit into your timeline, find a co-dev team that you can bring on and scale and roll off as needed.  A smaller team is always going to be more nimble, bring numbers to bear when it's needed, not before.  When shipping a game last year we brought in Skymap Games, they were invaluable to getting it shipped on time and integrated into the core team seamlessly.  They just became another resource, another arm to have available as long as was needed. Now internal management and buy in with the team is an absolute requirement in making this work.  Outsource and co-dev will only ever deliver to the effort you’re willing to commit to it.  It is NEVER an “out of sight, out of mind” scenario, a black box you pop something into and get exactly what you want out of with no oversight.  But that oversight is never going to be as great as the required equivalency of doing the work internally, and the ability to stay more nimble as a result is always going to be beneficial both in terms of cost and effectiveness. It’s always been a challenge to keep teams busy in early and late development phases, eradicating or lessening the bell curve from the middle of production by using outside services is simply a smarter way to develop. 

Sadly BLUE MOON PRODUCTION COMPANY will not be attending Reboot Develop in Dubrovnik next week. Family issues sometimes take precedence so we'll be cheering our favorite gathering from afar, tinged with jealously and knowing everyone will be having an amazing time. Damir Durovic will knock it out of the park again, it will sparkle with enthusiasm and joy and an energy unlike any other Game Conference on the planet. To all those attending giving me massive FOMO on various social media . . have a wonderful time. We shall struggle through. With a trusty trash can by our side.

Thirty years ago Amiga Format gave this incredibly generous review of the CD32 version of Microcosm. The future of entertainment was here! This was about a year after the original FM-Towns launch and the Psygnosis London team had done an amazing job making it a far better game than the original. The limitations of design within FMV were intense, with a pre-rendered background streaming off a CD drive there was very little freedom for the player (left / right branching was about all we could muster) but the team still found a way to make a Space Harrier style game . . kinda fun. I always cite restrictions in game design as a GOOD thing. When we built 8-bit games in 16/32/64k everything that went into a game really HAD to be in that game. There was no room for fluff. These days its very easy to get indulged in the fact there is very little you can't do. There's no restriction on movement, disc space, little on memory really. But just because you CAN do anything doesn't mean you SHOULD. Every aspect of a game should have meaning. Objects, characters, locations should be there for a reason. They should serve a purpose. It's always worth looking around a build of your game and asking "why is that there" and "does it enhance the game, does it provide something to the player?". Someone asked on social media the other day "when was the last time you finished a game and wanted more?". My answer was I couldn't remember. But I sure could remember a hatful of games I was done with before they were over. Editing. Restrictions. Question your choices, avoid indulgence.

Time is the most precious commodity  . . . respect my authoritah! I’ve written of jam jars and cookie jars, now let’s talk about the real crux of why this is important.  It’s all about TIME.  Over the past decade or four the number of different devices, services and pastimes that require us to invest time has grown exponentially.  When I was a kid I got home and my BBC or C64 fought against a TV with four channels on it, reading a book and some local mates to play soccer with.  Oh and homework.  The computer won rather easily. Today games don’t compete with just each other, games compete with Netflix (and all its competitors), YouTube, Facetime, online shopping, internet browsing, email, texting, Tiktok, Instagram, “X”, the gym and even sometimes even eating, drinking and having social interaction with actual human beings.  People spend over 8 hours interacting with digital media a day, we’re just part of that digital soup. Time is precious, time is valuable. So the question is,  does your game respect that? As an industry we spent a great deal of time over the last decade trying to make players “keep the disc”.  We elongated previously short entertaining games into drawn out adventures.  The last big game I worked on we realized late on that the entry into the experience was nowhere near fast enough.  It labored through a tutorial that explained far too much.  Players don’t need everything to be explained if the mechanics are designed clearly enough.  Immediacy is everything, it’s something mobile games learned and nuanced over the last decade to a tee.  You’ve a very limited window to sell your game to the player, it had better start good. Now if someone has spent $30-70, your concept and your marketing has already bought a bit more goodwill than a free game.  But don’t abuse that.  Bring the fun, bring the entertainment and bring it upfront.  Let the player discover your treasure, don’t drag it out by holding their hand for hours.  Give them the basics, show them the fun, let them be entertained.  Oh and let them choose whether it's for 30 minutes, an hour or eight hours a session.  Give them something to take away from that.  It’s their time, respect it and let them set the  boundaries.