"That was a waste of one perfectly good hour," Bud drawls at us, sotto voce. "If I had known that you'd be bringing me to meet a bunch of ass-monkeys, I might have scheduled something useful."
Bud is the VP of marketing at a nonexistent game publishing company. At trade shows, Bud has final authority over the color scheme of the T-shirts worn by the booth workers. Bud also has final authority over the color scheme of his own suits. At CGDC he'll be less formal with an off-the-rack Armani, but at E3 he prefers his custom-built Ermenegildo Zegna. Bud will only go to armor class one if he's trying to project an aura of importance. Today he's open-collar shirt and khakis.
We're following him quickly back to his corner office as he scowls impatiently at us. "I thought you said this developer had something special. Street cred, or something. All I saw was a couple unwashed T-shirts and some harebrained ideas for games. Thank you very much, but I've already got enough crappy products on the schedule as it is."
But these guys have a track record. They've been responsible for some of the greatest titles in history --
"They sold two hundred thousand copies of an Amiga game? Does anyone know what an Amiga is? Do these guys know anything about modern game development? Have they had any hits within the past two years? Maybe, no, probably not, and definitely not."
Their ideas may not be completely harebrained. They've done some very original concepts in the past --
We've arrived at Bud's immaculate corner office. A walnut desk partially hides a high-backed Aeron chair. Behind that, a blue marlin is mounted on a cherry plaque. Bud caught it a few years ago on a guaranteed-catch charter off Cape Cod.
"Oh, I get it now. You're after original concepts. Let me help you." Bud rifles through a file cabinet and pulls out a green folder overstuffed with papers and diskettes. He tosses it on the desk. After some more rummaging, he pulls out another folder, equally stuffed with two-color brochures and CD-ROMs, and it lands on top of the first folder with a satisfying thud.
"Here you go. All the original game proposals that have been presented to me in the past three years. Have at it. Or would you like me to save you some time? They all suck. Every last one of them. The technical designs have tons of irrelevant detail, the demos are guaranteed to crash within two minutes, and the game designs are all completely bizarre and unproven. And every single one of them costs three million dollars to make."
"You would think that these game developers would eventually get a clue. I'm not going to entrust our licenses to a couple freaky-ass programmers in Norway. I'm not going to give a massive-multiplayer development project to an 'innovative start-up' in Idaho ... Idaho or Colorado, some damn place. And if I'm not going to entrust them with a license, I sure as hell am not going to give them the opportunity to do an original project."
Bud, you have to admit that some of the concepts in the meeting were fun. Like the fast-food game idea. Or the idea of two cavemen battling --
Bud sighs and pulls up a Web browser on his LCD monitor. "Let's go to the TRSTS data, shall we? Okay, here's the PC sales data for the week of December 22. Here's the top ten games for the week before Christmas. Now let's see ... how many of these games are original concepts? How many of them are not a remake of an older title and not part of a franchise? Wait a minute, let me think! That ... would ... be ... ZERO!" Bud practically sings at us. "Zero point zero percent of titles in the top ten are originals! Oh yes, please, let's run out and publish a goddamn caveman game! That's exactly what the market needs right now!"
"Man, I can just see it. I'm sitting with Wal-Mart, and they say, Give me your A titles, and I say, we've got this caveman fighting game. And Wal-Mart says, would that go in the reference section or the action-sports section? That meeting'd be over in three minutes flat."
Bud has calmed down enough for us to get a glance at the LCD screen. We point out one title in particular...
"Zoo Tycoon? Part of the tycoon genre. Been done to death. Zoo Tycoon, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Railroad Tycoon, Trailer Park Tycoon, whatever. Even if it was an original title -- which it isn't -- it'd just be a round-off error compared to the rest of the titles in the top ten."
Bud, you're being unfair. Those Tycoon games you mentioned have nothing in common except for the name. And Zoo Tycoon is an original concept --
Bud's searching on Google. After a moment he cackles at us. "There! DinoPark Tycoon, published in 1993 by MECC. Build your own zoo, design the layout, take care of the animals. So much for your original concept."
Bud smiles at us and says, "Here, I'll show you a good product proposal from a good development house." He reaches into a top file drawer and pulls out a glossy white brochure. "Check out the quality of the paper. The cover's eighty-pound stock at least, four-color logo. There's nothing more bush-league than a product proposal that's been photocopied at Kinko's." There's no question about it; this brochure has been printed on very high-quality paper.
Bud opens the proposal and pulls out a sheet. "Now pay attention to this design. Lifelike 3-D rendering, CD-quality audio, detailed bilinear filtered textures, pulse-pounding action, hours of non-repetitive game play. Excellent."
Bud, this is a bullet-point list from a sell sheet, this isn't a product proposal --
"Sell sheet, product proposal, call it what you want. This works for me perfectly as a blueprint for a game. The details can be negotiated, most likely in our favor, during development. We'll have greater control over how the license appears in the title than if we signed off on a bunch of detailed development documents. Anyway, approving something less detailed allows my group to have more input during the development process."
"I like this proposal. It tells me exactly how we're going to sell this title. If I don't know exactly how we're going to sell a concept to retailers, why should we publish it in the first place?"
"There's this book by Roger Corman, the Hollywood director. It's called 'How I Made A Hundred Movies In Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime.' You know how he approved movie concepts? He focus-tested a bunch of movie poster designs. Not stories, not directors, not authors, not screenplays, just concept movie posters. And the movie posters that rated the highest, were the ones he had scripts written for, and he made those into movies." Bud pauses thoughtfully. "First, figure out how to sell the game. Second, figure out what the game is. Two rules that ought to be tattooed on the butts of everyone in product development."
Bud, there's the issue of due diligence. You have no idea what this product is going to look like --
"Sure I do," says Bud, waving the glossy white folder at us. "This development house has a recent track record of getting products out the door. We've worked with them in the past, and I know they have a lot of interest from other publishers. Personally, I like them because they're very open to changing their designs around marketing requirements. They're not prima donnas; they're very professional."
Bud, doesn't your brother-in-law work there? "Yes he does, and no, I don't like your implication. They're the most qualified developer for the job, end of story."