Comments on: A private journey to a small revelation

By: Postings on Prototyping « ProtoScribe

Postings on Prototyping « ProtoScribe — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 22:37:58 +0000

[...] them refers to a conversation with Will Wright as reported on Darius Kazemi’s site. In that posting Darius describes how he was at an IGDA event attended by Will Wright and sought an answer to a [...]

By: Darius Kazemi

Darius Kazemi — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 12:52:40 +0000

After I worked on the SeqSynth I abandoned the Meggy for other projects. Just my wandering attention, you know? I also started to bump into the limits of the Meggy’s available memory. I could’ve upgraded the core chip to double the RAM but never got around to it.

By: Trevbot

Trevbot — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 03:02:12 +0000

Hey Darius, why haven’t you been doing anything on the Meggy Jr. lately? Also re member those 8×8 Sprites from January? Well at Evil mad science they have plans for a Meggy link cable and I thought that you could make an Multiplayer rpg using the same basic combat system as the meggy rogue like and give It some of those sprites and make it like an arena game where you battle lots of different creatures and you can make an option on what to be and to play Multiplayer or single player.

By: The importance of asking earnestly | Glass Bottom Games

The importance of asking earnestly | Glass Bottom Games — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 18:25:08 +0000

[...] of course I then brought that point back to the original discussion, and it was explained that sure he agreed and that my understanding of what constitutes a startup wit… (and he also clarified prototype vs vertical slice for me), but that’s the whole point here [...]

By: Darius Kazemi

Darius Kazemi — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 22:58:58 +0000

I agree — again it comes down to the “if you’ve already proven you can ship a game.” Jamie Fristom has shipped a bunch of AAA titles plus Schizoid for XBLA, so when he pitches an XBLA title he probably doesn’t need to prove he has the chops.

Similarly, Irrational Games pitched BioShock with nothing but a single room that you move through, no game systems.:

“Early on, the team built a very small, 45-second, one-room demo that was super polished and conveyed the atmosphere of the game moreso than the gameplay. Ken stressed multiple times during his talk that building a shippable-looking demo of extremely small scope focusing on one or two things really sharply is way better than attempting to do an entire vertical slice too early.”
http://tinysubversions.com/2007/08/bioshock-post-mortem/

But again, these are experienced developers. We’re talking decades of experience. I would NEVER argue that a first-time studio not make a vert. (But I also wouldn’t call a vert a prototype!)

By: Megan Fox

Megan Fox — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 22:22:23 +0000

So, just to put it out there, I ran this by a contact I have at a very large publisher. According to him, this approach is mostly bubkis, and that prototype is absolutely key. For instance, they’ve stopped presenters mid-pitch just because their concept art and descriptions failed to communicate that they could actually implement what they said, or that their idea even had actual gameplay to it. According to him, the people they have in the pitch meetings for most developers are the sort that will see through a trailer’s flash, and would rather see a somewhat unpolished but clearly functional prototype that really shows the soul of the game. It’s only the better-known developers that are likely to draw the higher-ups into the meetings that would rather be sold on high-level / content-light videos.

So, it sounds like it depends heavily on the publisher in question and on how well known you are in the industry. Personally, I’ll continue to hedge my bets with a vertical slice prototype.

By: Megan Fox

Megan Fox — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 19:41:44 +0000

Huh, that’s certainly interesting. Not sure how useful it is in my case = I’m a programmer, not an artist, and the artist/producer on the team’s not a terribly good animator – but, still, interesting. I suppose it at least bears considering what the cost of just farming out a stellar look-and-feel movie would be.

By: Darius Kazemi

Darius Kazemi — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 13:17:08 +0000

Also, you might want to read the blog post that I link in my article, where Jamie Fristom realizes that if you’ve already proven you can ship a game, you don’t need a vert or even an early build to pitch to a publisher. In fact, it might hurt you!

By: Darius Kazemi

Darius Kazemi — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 13:16:13 +0000

It comes down to your definition of prototype. Will's definition is (I'm guessing from seeing him talk about prototypes a bunch): "a thing you create whose purpose is to prove or disprove a hypothesis about the thing you're building." This is totally different from a vertical slice -- and a vert is what people traditionally use to pitch to a publisher. The definition of a vert ("a build of your game that has an example of every major feature") is very different from the definition of a prototype. Incidentally there's a nice description of a vertical slice in section 1.8 of this article by Casey O'Donnell.

By: Megan Fox

Megan Fox — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 17:10:18 +0000

I’m curious about the below line, though it does skew a bit off-point:

“He seemed to think I meant the amount of art you need to show a prototype to an executive to get a green light, and his answer was (correctly, given the question he thought he was answering), “Don’t use a prototype to sell to an executive. There are better uses of your time.”

I’ve generally understood a prototype to be quite important/desired when pitching to a publisher. Is that not the case? Or did I misunderstand your explanation of the misunderstood question? ;)