This summer I attended EIF (Edinburgh Interactive Festival). First of I would like to thank the city and people of Edinburgh for there hospitality, what a truly wonderful city it is. I could talk about how much I loved it all day but on with business side of things(Guns before butter as my dad would say). Edinburgh Interactive is a games conference where people gather to discuss the art and business of making games. Unlike E3 it is a series of lectures from industries leading protagonists.

Following is the schedule and my conclusions and findings from the conference. I also met one of my personal hero's but I'll tell you that story as a separate post. A quick hint, that halo 2 tattoo. ^_^

Edinburgh Interactive 2009 - Conference Schedule

Thursday 13th August:

10.00 - 10.15 Introduction; Chris Deering, chairman of Edinburgh Interactive.

10.15 - 11.00 Keynote; The challenge of Reinventing the Iconic Sports Brand Games, Peter Moore president of EA sports. This was a truly fascinating talk. Covering everything that it took to turn around what had become, in all honesty, a stale brand. From how to humanise a brand that was regarded as some what of a endorsement behemoth, to the importance of metacritic (A website that compiles average scores from all existing reviews). This was a genuine insightful look into how EA sports (Vancouver) turned its fortunes around. One of the most obvious examples was the Tiger Woods viral video video, where EA made fun of itself. This was a key moment in people changing there perspective. EA was mocking itself and its short fallings? A true classic piece of viral advertising if you haven't seen it click here. Also for the full breakdown on the talk click here.

11.00 - 11.45 The more things change, Sean Dromgoole of GameVision and Crawford Christie managing director of Arkenford. In this talk Dromgoole and Crawford, two industry analysts talked of the growing trends in the games industry. However the more important subject they covered was where the industry is headed. They do this by looking at trends within the industry and plotting them out into a series of gradually ever more perplexing diagram and graphs. Complicated but none the less fascinating. Casual games are the way forward apparently.

11.45 - 12.30 Sound only games, Marton Owen, CEO of Smalti Technology. A talk about essentially turning text based adventures in to audio adventure games using GPS and basic interaction to create the game world. Sounded like a fascinating idea, it was however in the very early stages of development. One example was using GPS on a school field to teach children how lions hunt. One group of children being the lionesses and the other being the gazelles.

13.30 - 14.15 Lessons from social games, Kristian Segerstrale CEO of playfish. Kristian talked about the advantages of developing games for social networks. The main argument being that if the game is not well received by the community you can tweak it accordingly or even abandon it all together. The investment is 10% to original launch 90% post launch, where as traditional games are vice-versa. It sounded a solid theory however he was very cloudy on his profit to expenditure figures , a little cloudy meaning he said " we have money in the bank when asked how much the company earned.

Also at EIF was a games room where there was a selection of games on offer to play, Mini Ninjas and Arkum Asylum where personal favourites while Nintendo had there usual understated affair to promote Wii sports resort. They just had an indoor beach, full steel drum band and more combined inches of television than an average small country. You have to love them. We salute you Nintendo.

"Producers don't do anything?"

This summer I attended an inspiring and highly informative lecture at BCU's TIC (Birmingham City University Technology Innovation Centre). The lecture was given by Steve Stopps, a project manger at Blitz Games, and was entitled "producers dont do anything, so why are they so important"? The lecture covered everything from development costs to time management.

Steve opened the lecture by addressing the growing role of the project manager within the games industry.

Starting with over all production costs Steve explained the rapidly increasing costs of computer game production. Average Wii development takes 18 months has a team size of 20 - 30 people and a cost of $25 million. This may seem high however, when compared to that of

Xbox 360 and PS3 $80 million it is clear to see why the Wii is the fastest expanding games catalogue.

He then addressed the roles contained within the studio. That of the Project Manager (or producer) Design (Designers) , Art (Artist) and Tech (Programmers).

The emphasise was placed on the role of the Project Manager. It is a Project Managers role to "free the creatives to do what they do do best". It is paramount that the Project Manager should not be the creative vision holder. The reason for this being that it is best for a Project Manager to be able to view the project from an external point of view. They must also be able to offer constructive criticism and concise feedback.

He then went on to talk about the Time,Scope,Cost Equilateral Triangle. This is a way of explaining that if you change one of the sides all of the other sides must change too as a result. In other words if you wish to increase Scope then you must increase Cost and Time also. It must stay equilateral.

Steve also talked of X and Y managers. These are two different management styles, (for a full explanation click here). Essentially the theory entails that X managers work by being the enforcer, where as Y managers work by being the supporter. This is illustrated in the following Diagram.

Two things that Steve said that truly stuck out in my mind was that, firstly, a manager "should take responsibility for everything, credit for nothing". The reason for this being that it leads to trust. Secondly " A creative project is never finished; it's abandoned". I think anybody creative or indeed has worked with creative people can empathise with that.

Also he made it apparent that using SCRUM management (A well established management theory) we can understand the difference between the involved and the committed or the pigs and chickens. I feel this comic strip illustrates the theory perfectly.

He also believed that end users expectations where changing as they gain a better understanding of the system being built. Marketing will also require change, as to them the market is feature driven , where as it is now content driven.

"The longer the project the more it will change."

In this section he touched on development scheduling and time scale.

Months: 1-5 Pre production

6-12 Production

13-18 Post production

The average 8 hour working day: Email 1 hours

Meetings 1 hour

Training 1 hour

Which leads to a 5 hours actual working day. Meaning you should always allow contingency

low risk: + 20%

medium risk: + 40%

High risk: + 60%

Pro's of contingency: better retention of key personnel, increased organisational agility, an improved ability to invest in the future

Cons: Adds alot of additional cost

Ultimately a manager should ask three questions, what did you do yesterday? What are you doing today? Is there anything stopping you?

Since attending the lecture I've been in touch with Steve Stopps on a few occasions now, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank him for his help and advice.

Hello all, me again.

After a long summer away from university I am now back for my final year. My summer has been been a considerably full one from Edinburgh to Beesands and from Manchester to Faro: But now it's back to business. Over the coming days I shall be posting my experiences of the summer, as I trawl through my notebooks and diary to summarise all I've learned.

I shall also from now on be attempting to post as often as possible as i use my blog veritable reflective journal. Ideas, thoughts and findings will all be laid bare for your scrutiny and hopefully pleasure.

Regards,

Kyle ^_^