Development Blog Update - 12th Podcast
Flayra
Game Director, Unknown Worlds EntertainmentSan Francisco Join Date: 2002-01-22 Member: 3Super Administrators, NS2 Developer, Subnautica Developer
Game Director, Unknown Worlds EntertainmentSan Francisco Join Date: 2002-01-22 Member: 3Super Administrators, NS2 Developer, Subnautica Developer
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<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=103343&view=findpost&p=1663008" target="_blank">Transcription - English</a>
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<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=103343&view=findpost&p=1663008" target="_blank">Transcription - English</a>
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=103343&view=findpost&p=1662508" target="_blank">Transcript/Summary - German</a>
Comments
I would have loved to have been on that server when you guys were showing the investors around, what server was it? Did you tell anyone on the game who you were/what you were doing?
Also, I was wondering, roughly, how long until we get to see some early maps/models?
Love it, keep up the good work!
Speaking of music, I was wondering what style of trailer/ambient music you guys were aiming for for NS2? Similar to NS1 or do you want something different? I was thinking of playing around with my instruments and tools here during Christmas holidays, so any information about that would be welcomed! I'd to it for fun since I'm no professional, but if it turns out to be any good, I'd sure share it <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
0:00
*badass intro music*
C: Welcome to the 12th Unknown Worlds podcast today is Friday, November 30th. This is Charlie...
M: ...and Max.
C: ...and let's get right into it.
0:30
M: Yes, let's
C: *laughter* No time for jibber jabber.
M: Except now we're jibber jabbering.
C: OK well good point.
M: Uh well this week, as you may have noticed, we have made some new intro music, courtesy of
C: Jeff, from Chasing the Sun productions.
1:00
C: Super cool guy, we have been talking to him about doing some NS2 music. And, uh, instead of being able to commit to him right now we just said 'why don't you do a little podcast intro' and he just banged that out and we love it, so, uh, hopefully you will hear more from him soon.
M: So last week you probably noticed we didn't have a podcast that was because of thanksgiving...
C: Yeah...Turkey, all around. Yes...
M: Um, but on the podcast before that we talked about our upcoming meeting with investors where we were gonna demo some of the stuff we had and talk about, uh, about a possible deal.
1:30
C: Yes. We've been talking to these folks for a while now, um, and this is actually the first demo. Somehow, I don't know how we never got around to demoing before, but, we finally realized to you know, show 'em what we got. You know, show'em NS, show'em what we have on NS2, show'em some of the cool technology Max has been working on, and um, so yeah it's kinda funny inviting these upper crust folks over to my little hubble,
2:00
C: like, in the middle of hate, ashbury which is like hippie land and people smoking pot on the corners and stuff - all sorts of stuff that I would NEVER participate in but...
//missing some here//
C: ...Yeah but they had to journey past mohawks and tattoos and clasp to walls to get here - hopefully it was endearing to them and not off-putting. Hopefully a sign that we would not spend thier money, well, on anything
2:30
M: - we're very lean.
C: Yeah we're extremely lean.
What would be *really* cool would be if you released a mod kit very early with everything necessary to create lua mods (server and client side) before its released.
Good podcast overall. Oh and excellent music Jeff!
Frankly this podcast didn't really interest me that much, but it certainly adds to the excitement <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
Or a sign that you will waste their money because you're broke, but more importantly that you're hard up for cash and are willing to take sucky deals.
- Garo
Nice podcast, very informative.
But speaking of investment and donation, UWE should seriously be considering promoting themselves as a company (read: Charlie and Max should.) The old website had something of the sort of an investment information page. That is now apparently gone.. In fact, I can't even find the Constellation page without a considerable amount of navigation through the NS mod page.
So, what is going on exactly? You want to get people interested in investing and donating to UWE. However, the people who would think of donating something cannot easily locate a means to do so. There should be a page linked from the main site with a pronounced button/logo that gives people a summary about the company's future plans, financial needs, accomplishments, etc. There's Decoda, there's NS, there's ZoS, there's upcoming NS2, and various other bits of information that could go here. Look at <a href="http://investor.ea.com" target="_blank">EA's investment relations page</a> for example. Sure, UWE has a long way to go before being anything like EA in financial terms, but there has to be a start somewhere that can draw people's interest.
In summary: make a visible link on the main site to the <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/constellation/" target="_blank">Constellation</a> which isn't limited to just NS. Make it more appealing to donate to the company and convince people that it is a just cause. If you want to seriously consider making public investment possible, perhaps it would be a good idea to collect some info about what kind of terms people would be looking for in terms of the returns on their investments. As usual, you have to start somewhere - information collection doesn't require a lawyer, so why not start there?
Where's your PR?
I've liked this idea ever since I first saw it mentioned, although I don't know much about the feasibility. I think there are a lot of NS1 players who would like to make small capital investments that would ultimately (in pooled form) be as useful as those that angel investor(s) could provide. Donations really serve the same purpose, but a fund like this really gives you the feeling of being more involved and knowing your money is going straight in to NS2. Clearly, mini-investors like this will not be afforded the same neat things the larger investors will be. I would think this would attribute a greater degree of freedom for the development team.
I also believe you'd end up with more money than donations to work with, as I'm going to be more apt to put more money into an "investment" (no matter how risky it may be) over an actual no-returns donation. Both are going to hopefully get me closer to playing NS2 and fueling what I think is an original concept that can still be properly advanced by the founders.
Also, I believe that the small investment entry for the fund would simply give incentive to the many mini-investors to promote the game and operate their own marketing. Now, I really don't know where to begin with small investments, but I'm going to say a matter of a few hundred dollars, possibly even donation-esque contributions of less than $200. Either way, you're recruiting more people who will want to do more than just play NS, they'll want to see it succeed.
I also understand there is the risk of the community working together to put in a sizable investment, only to have NS2 not perform as well as expected, resulting in some sort of backlash from the community. Personally, I'd understand the risk I'm undergoing, and not hold the dev team especially accountable (of course, that is an entirely new box of fun stuff -- "they didn't do enough of <X here>!", etc.).
If you only go after professional investors then you often have to hand over too much control/oversight. I've personally seen this over and over. Even if you can convince an investor to not want too much in exchange for his $ (not necessarily shares, but sometimes they'll want preferred shares, or voting shares or any number of things), they're still going to be pestering the hell out of you with updates on your progress (not just on the game, but on the business side), demos, descriptions of your milestones and when you intend to reach them, along with a ton of other junk.
One good thing about professional investors though is that because they've invested money into your company they want to see it suceed, which in turn means they're willing to offer lots of free business related advice, contacts, and setup meetings on your behalf that you'd have no way in hell of getting otherwise. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink-fix.gif" />
BTW you can also be pestered by small investors too, often they can't afford the risk they undertook and are way paranoid about it.
i wouldnt donate that much, cause i wouldnt want to part with that much cash, but knowing that there is a potential for profit then i dont see why not.
of course i guess so little money doesn't go very far in the game dev world.
is it just me, or did that intro music sound extremely similar to the menu music from tremulous? did jeff do stuff for them too?
personally i'd prefer new ambient music in the same style of NS1, something more eerie and a little scary. not to techno-ish, something that will set the dark mood and atmosphere of the game.
jeff sure sounds like a tallented artist that could produce may different styles of music, and i cant wait to hear more. maybe leave the more techno-ish tracks for secret ready-room rave rooms?
Publicly offering unsecured securities (not underwrote and registered with the SEC) is illegal. Most angel investment is done with convertible bonds that transfer into stock, don't know how UW is dealing with these investors but they normally want equity and high returns for the risk. Although Sam Raimi funded Evil Dead from groups of dentists, he said they are a good source (one dentist gave them his yearly Las Vegas money).
But it is possible for start-ups to sell private bonds (don't have to register with the SEC) to limited amount of people (maybe around 100). You can't advertise it to investors so doing it over the Internet will attract regulator attention. But I feel making the rate of return purposely off from the level of risk, should show that it is only for patrons and closer to charity.
I'm doing more research on it because I feel 21-century patronage is going to make a come-back. People aren't saving enough and could make higher returns then a bank's savings account and put in less then a T-Bill, and start-ups would get hugely discounted debt. And having a say in a product will attract a lot of patrons. In a world where even Angel Investors want a minimum of 20% returns and equity, patronage needs to be looked at.
Don't sell yourself short, get yourself a good deal.
P.S - music I thought was pretty badass.
speaking of waiting for a year, i think the timing of NS2 will need to be good so that it doesn't get overshadowed by some crappy 1/2 assed massive overmarked EA title.
If NS2 came out this holiday season, only the old school ns fans would know of its existance between games like Halo 3, and assassins creed which are only every mountain dew bottle. (there are 60+ titles being released between oct and dec across all of the platforms)
chances are this will happen again next xmas season, so the release timing would better during a quiet season i'd imagine.
Constie testing - <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
<b>On community contributions</b>
Accept donations via the Constie programme and implement a disclaimer stating that it is a voluntary donation. Obviously don't <i>rely</i> on community investment, but this money could be used to fund non-core development, e.g. to commission extra maps, extra prop/texture bundles, online advertising on game websites, Steam advertising. Etc.
<b>On maps</b>
<u>Don't</u> remake any of the poorly-balanced maps in NS without solving their design issues: Ayumi, Nancy, Agora, Shiva, Bast, Nothing (<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=88297&view=findpost&p=1659695" target="_blank">why they're bad</a>)
<u>Do</u> check out my <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=88297" target="_blank">comprehensive level design doc</a> I produced specifically for NS level designers <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink-fix.gif" />
What I'm wondering, is how similar NS2 maps are supposed to be compared to NS.
Topics include the meeting with investors, plans for playtesting, podcast for i-tunes, map viewer, micro-investments, plus the "badass" music provided by Jeff over at Chasing the Sun Productions.
This is my first transcript, hopefully there are only few mistakes.
*Badass music*
Charlie: Welcome to the 12th Unknown Worlds podcast. Today is Friday, November 30th. This is Charlie.
Max: and Max.
Charlie: and let's get right into it.
Max: Yes, let's.
Charlie: No time for jibber jabber.
Max: Except now we're jibber jabbering.
Charlie: OK well good point.
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->MUSIC<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
Max: Well this week, as you may have noticed, we have made some new intro music, courtesy of
Charlie: Jeff, from Chasing the Sun productions.
Charlie: Super cool guy. We have been talking to him about doing some NS2 music, and instead of being able to commit to him right now, we just said 'why don't you do a little podcast intro' and he just banged that out and we love it. So, hopefully you will hear more from him soon.
Max: So, last week you probably noticed we didn't have a podcast. That was because of thanksgiving.
Charlie: Yeah. Turkey, all around. Yes.
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->INVESTORS MEETING<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
Max: Um, but on the podcast before that we talked about our upcoming meeting with investors, where we were gonna demo some of the stuff we had and talk about a possible deal.
Charlie: Yes. We've been talking to these folks for a while now, and this is actually the first demo. Somehow, I don't know how we never got around to demoing before, but we finally realized to show 'em what we got. You know, show 'em NS, show ‘em what we have on NS2, show'em some of the cool technology Max has been working on. So, yeah, it's kinda funny inviting these upper crust folks over to my little hubble in the middle of hate, ashbury which is like hippie land and people smoking pot on the corners and stuff - all sorts of stuff that I would never participate in but...
Max: I don’t think this is technically hate Asbury though
Charlie: No? Middle hate? Yeah but they had to journey past mohawks and tattoos and glass glued onto walls to get here - hopefully it was endearing to them and not off-putting. Hopefully a sign that we would not spend their money, well, on anything
Max: we're very lean.
Charlie: Yeah we're extremely lean. So like just had them here all huddled around my computer and Made cookies
M Home made cookies
Charlie: Home made cookies, which was fun. Actually they were courtesy of my neighbor, but we made pretended that they were ours. We didn’t correct them when they implied that we made them. They were delicious.
Max: they were still home made
Charlie: They were. And I would have made them if he hadn’t
Max: And close to your home.
Charlie: Yes, they were about 10 feet away so. Hopefully the appreciated and saw that we do things a little differently. You know, they probably didn’t go to a video game investment meeting where they were served home-made cookies.
Max: Probably not
Charlie: Hopefully they will go to one again. They wouldn’t avoid it in the future
Max: But anyway, the meeting, it went pretty well.
Charlie: Yeah, it actually went really well
Max: We actually didn’t end up showing off as much stuff as we planned on.
Charlie: Yeah, we had bunch more stuff we could have shown.
Max: Well I guess we talked about all the stuff we were planning on showing and really we only showed just a fraction of it.
Charlie: there was like no time I don’t know how, but they were here for almost 2 hours: it was like no time to talk to. I don’t know: what didn’t we show? Do you remember? Like your map viewer?
Max: We went through actually the maps that we have for NS…
Charlie: a couple yeah
Max: … for NS 2 pretty quickly. Yeah, we didn’t show all the tools we have.
Charlie: Didn’t show any of the art work.
Max: We didn’t show the gameplay. We actually showed very little NS2 stuff we mostly showed ns 1.
Charlie: Well these guys I don’t think ever actually seen Natural selection 1. They kind of know of it they’ve seen the website but they’ve never seen it live. So we got to join a random server. Actually, funny, the server we joined was in a middle of a base recycle. It was probably not the best game to join. But it was a good game and the guy was yumping fast with ending the game you know emptying his base and structures people were like swearing and stuff. But they got the idea.
Max: Yeah they seemed to like what they saw And it went well.
Charlie: Definitely. So we are now talking terms with them. We’re trying to get the allusive term sheet, which is the basically the document, which describes the exact terms that they will invest in: how much money; what the evaluation of your company is; do they get to sit on your board; Liquidity options; all that stuff, which we’re kind of new to but learning about rapidly.
Max: Yes
Charlie: So we’re hoping to get a term sheet pretty soon with them, they seem eager we’re excited, they’re excited.
Max: Yep
Charlie: I hope that works
Max: I do too.
Charlie: Me knocking on wood, silently. Yes. So, that’s the wrap up for the investors. What else?
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->PLAY TESTING<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
Max: Well what we noticed people, a couple question pop up regularly in the responses to the pod casts on the forums, so I figure we would just address some of these at this time. One of them is the issue of a beta test, public beta test, demo, that kind of stuff.
Charlie: Right, I think the thing there is, everyone wants to know basically when they can play NS2 and how they get involved as beta tester or play tester. I think well we don’t really know exactly what we’re gonna do, but I’m pretty sure the constellation members would have first dibs there. I think that makes sense for everyone. It’s only right that people who contributed get to play the new game before anyone else.
Max: Yep.
Charlie: So hopefully the first time we will have a private beta, semi-private beta or semi public beta, whatever, that will get the constellation members involved.
Max: Personally, I would like to do a pretty open beta
Charlie: Yeah yeah.
Max: It’s a gereat way to shake out the problems.
Charlie: Totally.
Max: Maybe not necessarily gameplay problems, but certainly technical problems.
Charlie: I think definitely gameplay problems too.
Max: Maybe.
Charlie: there is a lot of stuff that we didn’t catch in 2.0 even with the vets you know the
Max: You mean like screw strategies.
Charlie: yeah, and to an extent like what do you call, it not smurfing…
Max: griefing
Charlie: thank you griefing type stuff and psychopathic stuff. Smurfing is when you play under someone else’s name or a fake name.
Max: like everyone is Flayra
Charlie: I guess yeah So people don’t know who you are, not that there is really any … names out there already. But yeah, I’d love it to be public or semi public, or if you preorder the game, you get to play it before its public something like that.
Max: I think that open beta is a great way of advertising your game, too. It’s kinda like having a demo, except people accept that there might be problems with it.
Charlie: You won’t be crucified if there are huge bugs.
Max: It basically has all the advantages of a demo with none of the disadvantages.
Charlie: That’s true, hence google. It’s an open beta all the time to test their products. Well g-mail, I think, is still in beta for like 3 years. Giant companies are using it now.
Max: I don’t think we will have a 3 year open beta. But it’s definitely something we want to do and, actually, on the topic of the demo: I don’t think we actually would do like a traditional demo.
Charlie: Really?
Max: Well usually when you think of a demo you think of a pared down version of the game, right?
Charlie: Right.
Max: And if we do that.
Charlie: I think it will probably be the full version of the game, but with one map or something like that.
Max: Yeah I guess that.
Charlie: …No, I don’t know…
Max: I think what’s more likely we’ll do a free weekend kind of thing like …
Charlie: Yeah
Max: … you see a lot of games on steam doing that.
Charlie: It’s a good way to go.
Max: So, I think that’s definitely something we would try to take advantage of. So also, something people were asking about in response to last blog on the Viewer tool. People were asking or suggesting, I don’t know what the right word is, they were saying we should sell it to valve or…
Charlie: Good idea.
Max: Yeah we’re not planning on selling to valve. What we did do actually.
Charlie: This is the Map Viewer right?
Max: Map Viewer, the blog went up on Wednesday, I think.
Charlie: Yep.
Max: We sent an email to everyone at source on the mailing list, which are the people who are licensees, who have full access to everything, and offered it to anyone who wanted it.
Charlie: Very cool move by the way, its nice.
Max: I think we should do whatever we can to give back and contribute back to the source developing community
Charlie: Smart, or at least nice I don’t know if its smart but. It might be smarted to like eek a dollar out of it.
Max: Uh I don’t know.
Charlie: I don’t know who knows.
Max: It’s not worth it. So a few people took us up on it and we sent it to valve so.
Charlie: Cool hopefully we get some feedback.
Max: People who are making mods think it is useful, drop us an email
Charlie: Oh yeah maybe we can …
Max: sell it to you.
Charlie: Yep.
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->PODCAST IN I-TUNES<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
Max: So, another thing that we’ve seen asked quite a bit is some sort of RSS feed for the podcast. That is something that we’re going to do some day. Actually what we’ll probably do is RSS that works in i-tunes compatible RSS feed. It just, haven’t gotten around to it yet with only two people it’s tough.
Charlie: to do anything
Max: to do all that stuff but we will. Soon.
Charlie: Maybe over the holidays or something
Max: Maybe, Are you gonna be doing it.
Charlie: If you want me to, I have no idea how to do it.
Max: Actually I don’t think its really difficult. It’s just something that needs to be done. Actually just what I think we need to do is spend a day or two a couple website things that we need to fix up.
Charlie: Or if any of you know how to do it, I don’t know, make the changes and show us what they are.
Max: It’s actually pretty simple when you’re done you generate RSS feed is just an XML file that has certain data in it and we already generate those.
Charlie: Just need to wrap it with new tags.
Max: The main problem is actually just integrating it into our content managing system that runs the website.
Charlie: Gotcha the Max MS
Max: Yeah the Max MS the way the feeds work is a bit special case, and I want to make it more generalized, so we could support even more stuff like that in the future.
Charlie: Nice, we might get more of an audience too, to the podcast.
Max: I like seeing the podcast on i-tunes downloads new pod casts when they are available and its good.
Charlie: It’s slick.
Max: So we’ll definitely do that we just haven’t gotten to that yet.
Charlie: Cool
Max: I think that’s all the questions we wanted to address.
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->COMMUNITY INVESTORS<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
Charlie: The only other thing is community investors.
Max: Oh that’s right: some people asked about investment stuff.
Charlie: It’s something that we have thought about if we could actually rely on you guys to fund ourselves. And we had a bunch of people who have said that they wanted to help, but I’m not really sure how that works legally, cause it’s such as small level. Presumably people would be investing like.
Max: Micro investments.
Charlie: Yeah like 100-2000 dollars or something like that somewhere in that range. And how you handle all those different shareholders, I mean, if we knew a lawyer who could help us for free, it would be fun to talk to them. Like: click through this agreement, PayPal here, you’re automatically part of it.
Max: Unfortunately the lawyers we know are very not free.
Charlie: They are extremely not free, yeah.
Max: Yeah it’s something we though about, but it’s not really on the table at the moment.
Charlie: But thanks anyway, thanks for asking. Maybe we’ll do that later, if we’ll get even more hard up. But hopefully that won’t happen.
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->2nd POST MORTEM<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
Charlie: And this month we also had our second post mortem, which is our local developer social downtown, San Francisco. That was super fun. Got to meet a bunch of people. Some NS players actually.
Max: Oh really, I didn’t talk to the NS players.
Charlie: Dyllan I met him at the world cyber games a couple years ago. He’s making a career out of games now. Pretty cool.
Max: Playing games?
Charlie: No making them.
Max: Oh. You said it like it was a radical idea of making a career of games.
Charlie: Well no no, but it’s cool that he was in the community and now he is a game developer or at least on the path to that. He said how great that he had NS there and it inspired him to make it his career.
Max: Yeah.
Charlie: That’s really pretty amazing
Max: But that was good. We had about 30 people maybe.
Charlie: Yeah maybe
Max: It was pretty different crowd than the first one which we had a month before. So maybe next time we will have all those people.
Charlie: Yeah that would be cool. Definitely no shortage on game developers here. So anything else?
Max: No I think that’s it for us.
Charlie: Hopefuly we answered all your questions and gave something interesting to spend 13:30 minutes on. And we’ll see you next week.
Max: Thanks guys.
*Badass music*
Thanks, microcosm, for providing first few minutes of transcript
Late EDIT: added topic headings
P.S - music I thought was pretty badass.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree completely. I'd have no qualms pre-ordering for beta. As a constie I really appreciate the loyalty you've shown to your player base. Also as I constie I'd be willing to pay more to help the game come out. I think it would be a really smart move to allow both to beta test since, as you were discussing, most consties will pre-order anyway.
Oh, my bad. Will fix.