Invading an Industry II

A historical example of going from outsider to oldtimer

By 1994, my efforts to get to know the serious players in the industry was beginning to pay off. I spent several weeks in the Bay Area, visiting the Computer Gaming World offices as well as over a dozen of leading game developers including Maxxis and LucasArts, attempting to convince them that 3D graphics was the wave of the future, not Full-Motion Video.

As crazy as it sounds, all of the media and development attention was going toward 3D AUDIO rather than 3D graphics, as a perusal of the game magazines of the time will attest. And FMV as well as video-acceleration hardware were considered to be the next big step forward for games, even though a few designers like Chris Taylor and me had already recognized that video couldn’t help but be a dead end. As a result of a 1992 conversation with Chris, who was then with EA Canada, I had successfully convinced my father and his engineers to include a little-known feature called texture-mapping in their forthcoming CAD/Windows Accelerator chip, which would, in theory, make Artist Graphics the technological foundation for all 3D games produced for the computer.

That’s right. We were NVidia before NVidia. Just ask Jensen Huang. He knows. I even scored what I think was the first reference to me in Computer Gaming World, in the February 1994 issue

Consider the current state of the art: IndyCar Racing, Papyrus’ hot new game creates a very intense environment for simulated racing action. To do so, it pushes current technology to produce 12,000 flat shaded or 2,000 texture-mapped polygons per second. But imagine how much richer, how much more intense, a simulation could be if it could process 12 million flat-shaded, or 30,000 texture-mapped polygons per second at a higher screen resolution than standard VGA. While this might sound as far off as Gibsonian cyberspace, ARTIST Graphics and their 3GA video processing chips may well make such simulations a very real possibility in ‘94.

ARTIST Graphics has been a manufacturer of graphics hardware used primarily for Computer Aided Design since 1982. Their chips and video boards are used widely by CAD professionals for applications that need heavy graphics horsepower. Adapting ARTIST Graphics’ latest high-end graphics technology to the PC games market is largely the result of a conversation that took place in 1992 between Chris Taylor, senior software engineer at Electronic Arts, and Theodore Beale, “trans-dimensional evangelist” at ARTIST Graphics.

“Chris had called to find out about VESA support on some of our cards,” said Beale. “We got to talking games, and I swapped him a graphics board in return for a couple of EA games. After playing with it for a few weeks, he suggested that we add a few features to our next generation chip that would make it a really killer device for 3D simulators and action games. I went back to our engineers and asked them about adding the features, and lo and behold, the 3GA.”

However, one thing I’d learned from my attendance at the 1993 CGDC was that there was more than one way into the game industry. At the conference, I’d not only made the acquaintance of George Sanger, aka the Fat Man, who was the dominant force in providing MIDI music for computer games in the early 1990s, but I had also become proper pals with Bobbie Prince, who did the music for id Software. George, who did the music for Wing Commander and a whole host of other games whose names you would recognize, was genuinely alarmed when he’d heard that I had put together a group called Power of Seven, which included the four members of Psykosonik, the producer of Prince’s Diamonds and Pearls album, and Kurt from Information Society, to produce music for video games.

The game wasn’t great, but the MIDI adaptation of the music worked very well.

That soundtrack effort turned out to be a bit of a bust in the short term, although 1994 did see us put our music into a game Activision published for the Super Nintendo, X-Kaliber 2097, as well as an almost-entirely forgotten game that Raven did for SSI called CyClones. And while two of the members of both Psykosonik and Power of Seven did eventually go on to make major marks in Hollywood and the game industry, including two of the top 30 game soundtracks of all-time, that’s a story for another time.

CyClones was very disappointing, because we thought we were going to be doing the music for the other game Raven was working on: Heretic.

By the time the 1994 CGDC rolled around in April, I was no longer attending by myself or staying off-site in a sketchy hotel over a mile away. This time, my partner in the game development project attended both CGDC and CES in Chicago with me. And having been there the year before, if I wasn’t exactly an oldtimer or an industry vet, I was at least a familiar face and someone with an actual industry credit on which to hang my hat now. I think we even had business cards at this point, as we’d hired our first artist from the Minneapolis School of Art and Design, and the first thing he drew for us became the logo for the game development studio we’d decided to call Fenris Wolf.

Below is a summary of the 1994 CGDC by one of the 1400 attendees, Ross Erickson. Again, it was a magical time for both my partner and I, although while he attended sessions, I spent most of it camped at the bar, talking to developers about music soundtracks and preaching the gospel of 3D graphics, and giving my contact information to publishers in order to get on their review lists. My status as a game journalist had skyrocketed in the year between the events, as Chronicle Features had picked up my game review column in the St. Paul Pioneer Press for national syndication, so it was appearing in the nearby San Jose Mercury News.

The 1994 Computer Games Developer Conference (CGDC), now in its 8th year, offers a tremendous opportunity for developers, both small and corporate, to meet each other and discuss these issues and to have an opportunity to share ideas and generally do a LOT of schmoozing. The conference took place in Santa Clara, April 23 - 26, beginning Saturday night with an opening reception hosted by Logitech with a wild variety of events, giveaways, and general (you guessed it...) schmoozing. Some of the highlights of the evening including human bowlingTM (get inside a semi- large sphere made of pipe and knock down large pins 30 feet away..), a human velcro trampoline jump (need I say more?), an interesting virtual reality simulation, and perhaps the best demo, the get-in-the-giant-sumo- wrestling-suits and bounce on your opponent. Some very compromising positions, I can assure you. Logitech put on a classy event that was a lot of fun. A nice warmup to the real action that began the next day.

In 'Trends in Game Software Sales', we were presented data from a research firm called PC Data who purported to have a good handle on the trends, statistics, and retail performances (sales 'out') of the PC entertainment category. It became clear, however, that even these so called 'expert analysts' are still far removed from the game developers and the game players. They clearly didn't understand some of the dynamics of the industry. This was evident by their lumping games like SimCity 2000 into the flight simulation category and Civilization into the fantasy RPG genre! Fantastic. How many SimCity builders out there realize you're also now a bonafide sim-pilot? Puh-leazze!! I was not impressed. Doom was marked as the best seller in February (at $7.00 a unit) and published by Formgen. This was of particular amusement to Dave Taylor of id Software who was present. Well, you win some, you lose some. As it turned out, I bet on the wrong horse. I should have attended Bob Bates' session on 'Puzzle Game Design' or Will Wright's 'Process Simulation (how things change)'.

Hoping for something better, I tried to attend the second session of day at the 'Violence in Interactive Entertainment' roundtable hosted by Computer Gaming World's own Johnny Wilson. This is apparently a hot topic as it was standing-room only from the get-go and by the time I got there, it was doors shut. As it turns out, this was a fortunate move. I was able to sit in on Ernest Adam's speech entitled 'Celluloid to Silicon: A Sermon'. This was a very enjoyable and humorous speech about the merger of Hollywood and Silicon Valley with some rather pointed directions to those from LaLaland who believe that they can just march into the world of IE and apply the same rules of T.V. and Motion Picture production and produce compelling games. Ernest maintains that the influence of Madison Avenue advertising is the equivalent to the anti-Christ and should be avoided at all cost. Another controversial point presented was that of nudity in IE products. Should we be ashamed or prevented from showing the human form in gaming products? Ernest demonstrated the ridiculous double-standard present in our world today by presenting the story of the Rape of the Sabine Women. The famous artwork of this classic story shows male and female nudity and our double standard of today's world will allow children to see this depiction in an art gallery, but not on a T.V. Go figure. Hollywood will certainly have to wrestle with this issue further as they join the IE world.

The third session of the day was given by Chris "if it's not an interactive story or character, it's not a real game" Crawford on the topic of Interactivity: Revolution and Pain. I squirmed in this one as Chris began his speech by trying to present the IE industry in a major crisis and a reaching a decreasing audience. Chris maintains that in 1983 a 'hot' game would sell 100,000 units into a market of 1,000,000 home PCs. 10% market penetration, right? Today, a 'hot' game would sell 250,000 units, but to a market of 25,000,000 units, resulting in a market penetration of only 1%. "Horror of horrors!", cries Chris, "We're shrinking and we're reaching fewer potential customers!" Hogwash, I say. How many more products are on the shelves now than in 1983 and what are the aggregate sales totals today vs. 1983. I maintain this industry is in great shape producing innovative titles across all genres. The fact that there are 25 times as many home PCs as 10 years ago only bears out the fact that people are interested in these products. Besides running Quicken and connecting to Compuserve and America On-Line, what do they do with these home PCs? I say they entertain themselves. And the fact that there are many, many more developers, publishers, and producers of games supports this stance. A single product penetration statistic does NOT demonstrate the health of an industry one iota. Chris maintains that the reason more people aren't drawn to IE is the lack of truly engaging "interactive stories and characters". You'll hear a recurring theme here. It seems to be his philosophy that unless a product has the audience-capture appeal that mindless after-dinner T.V. has, we're all in real trouble. Therefore all these flight-sims, strategy games (which Crawford has written a TON of!), RPGs and sports games are just niche products and won't deliver this industry of IE into the promised land of the electronic superhighway interactivity. Horse hooey, I say. As the products of this industry continue to get better (or worsen, as the case may be) more people will be drawn to them because they truly will simulate reality and offer true human-to-human exchanges through the backdrop of a game. The revolution *WILL* come, but to survive and succeed, it won't require everybody to write a piece of interactive fiction the equivalent of L.A. Law.

Following a rousing lunch, the afternoon brought sessions about 'Pixel Envy' (developing great graphics), 'Computer Players', 'Board Games', and a real surprise, 'WinG: A DLL for Graphics'. Wow! This one caught me off-guard. Apparently Microsoft isn't turning a blind-eye to the needs of game developers looking to do something exciting in Windows. Running a fast-action, fast-animation arcade game in Windows is about the last thing one would normally expect to see. However, there is was - WinDoom! Yes, folks it true. Doom running absolutely full-blast, full-screen IN WINDOWS with a Windows interface. Microsoft has really done their homework by developing a new DLL (Dynamic Link Library) that radically speeds up the blitting of graphics to the screen. It makes possible a whole new reality of games in Windows with some distinctive advantages - device independent sound and graphics, a flat memory model, and blazingly fast graphics. I never thought I would be saying 'blazingly fast graphics' and 'Windows' in the same sentence, but hey friends, it's there! WinG is for real.

The final main event of the conference was the evening banquet. Over 1400 game developers in one big ballroom can consume a lot of food and drink, generate a lot of news and information, and the schmooze till the cows come home. After either "dead cow, dead bird, or dead vegetables", recognition was given to the products that earned a "Spotlight" nomination from all the attendees at large. Among the winners: Doom (was there any doubt!) which brought a rousing ovation to the mild surprise of Dave Taylor in attendance, Day of the Tentacle, 7th Guest, Rebel Assault, Aladdin (Sega), Master of Orion, Myst, X-Wing, and one other whose name escapes me for the moment.

At this point, we had already made the strategic decision to abandon both of our 2D game projects for a 2.5D shooter ala Wolf 3D and Doom. We figured that we’d have a huge advantage and be able to attract significant attention with the game’s superior graphics since we were already planning to take advantage of the forthcoming 3GA chip from my father’s company, for which we were both still working full-time in our day jobs.

The future, at that time, looked blindingly bright indeed. We hadn’t made it, not yet, but we were already part of the proper industry only two years after going through that issue of Computer Gaming World with a fine-toothed comb.