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August 20, 2003
August 2003 Meeting Report
As the summer winds down, 27 of us got together once again at Soar Technologies in the city of Ann Arbor
to (sadly) talk about a winding down of another sort. After many years and many successful games, Outrage Games
(based in Ann Arbor) was closing its doors. And so on that note, Matt Toschlog ([former] Director of the
[former] company) agreed to come and give us a talk on the state of the game industry and the events that
led up to the closing of Outrage.
After a half hour or so of socializing, Matt began his presentation with a little background on Outrage Games.
Outrage started life as Parallax Software. Matt reminisced about the days gone by, and how game companies were
so much simpler in the early days. Parallax's defining title, Descent was produced on a budget of approximately
$500K with a team of 5-9 people. Teams back then consisted of entirely of developers, cranking out code and
programmer art without excessive business management or pressure to conform.
Those days are long gone. Outrage's latest game, Alter Echo was produced on a budget of $6M with a team of 20-35
people. These days, teams consist of everything from managers to designers, programmers to dedicated artists,
professional testers, etc. The increased budgets and team sizes have many implications. Projects are more strictly
managed. Pressure is on to create something successful rather than something new. For this reason, less stress
is placed on creating innovative games. Instead focus is directed at making sequels to already successful games
or games based on licensed products. Projects have a much high standard for technical and graphical excellence,
making it difficult for new teams without large budgets or developed technologies to break into the field.
Unlike the old days, when publishers were willing to fund teams to develop simple ideas into real games, today
publisher tend to only fund completed or almost completed projects. Outsourcing development to less expensive
countries is also another developing trend. On top of all that, even once a deal is struck, problems can arise
if a publisher is late on payments to the studio (causing a lack of funds, and causing developers to go home
without paychecks). It was for this reason that Matt pointed out the importance of a studio having more than
one publisher (you know...don't put all your eggs in one basket).
Several other factors have come together to make things even more difficult for new developers to get into
the field. Matt pointed out that the consolidation of major publishers has left far fewer options for new studios to get signed.
Unlike the old days when developers could get games into small computer and game shops, these days shelf
space is hard to come by and is costly, requiring developers or publishers to pay hefty prices to secure
those positions. Even major games from major companies (such as Outrage's own Alter Echo) won't be making
it into many of the retails stores.
For individuals looking for jobs at game studios, the pressure is on them too. Besides the already
mentioned threat of outsourcing, the pressure is on studios to hire the right people. For this reason, and because
of the excess number of people wanting into the industry, there is increased competition for the jobs
that do exist. As a result, studios are resorting to more tough and thorough recruitment and testing
procedures. In some cases, developers are given multi-day project assignments so that the studios can
get a better idea of their abilities.
Matt also talked a bit about their location here in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He said it was great having a lower
cost of living compared to other big game hotbeds like California and Seattle. That's both positive for the
company and for the employees they hire. He also mentioned they were fortunate to get several good developers
right out of U of M. However, the downside to being located outside of a hotbed was their inability to hire
and release developers as needed. Moving in developers from out of state isn't as easy, and if there is a break
of several months where a developer isn't needed, they couldn't just let someone go and expect to be able to
easily hire someone back once they are needed again.
And so, considering all of the above, as well as other circumstances beyond their control, it is finally time for Matt
to reluctantly close up shop at Outrage games. Matt said he plans to take a leave from the industry and
get other things in order. He declined to make any decisions on whether or not to return to the industry.
However, you can't keep a game developer down, so I wouldn't be surprised to see Matt back before long.
If so, hopefully for the rest of us he'll choose to stay put here in Michigan.
After Matt's presentation and some follow up Q&A, we took a break to eat pizza and chat. After that, we
moved on to this month's Made In Michigan game demo. This time, Paul Kerchen from Whirling Chair Games
once again took center stage to show off a new game in development titled Vault Vex. Evolving out of one
of their other in-development games, Vault Vex is a puzzle game that challenges you to orient multi-colored
game pieces so that corresponding sides of adjacent tiles have matching colors. Placing the game pieces onto
the board in particular arrangements unlocks gems on the board, with different arrangements resulting in gems
of different values. Thus, half the challenge of a board is to find the solution, and the other half is to
find the solutions with the highest gem values.
After Paul's demo, we drew names from a can to give away 3 free prizes. The prizes were books from the New Riders
Games series, courtesy of New Riders Publishing. The books we had to give away were:
"Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design"
"Game Creation & Careers: Insider Secrets from Industry Experts" by Marc Saltzman
"Designing Virtual Worlds" by Richard Bartle
Our three lucky winners were Matt Zinn, Alex Kerfoot, and Ben York. Congratulations to the winners.
After the drawing, we finished off the meeting with some more socializing. Eventually just a few of us were left, so
we decided to call it a night. Another good meeting gone by, another yet to come in October. Hope to see you then.
The chapter coordinators:
Rich Elswick
Ron Frazier
Brian Winn
Posted by BrianWinn at August 20, 2003 05:11 PM