gamedeveloper200604-dl.pdf

5TH ANNUAL GAME DEVELOPER SALARY SURVEY

APRIL 2006

THE LEADING GAME INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

K0NG

KING

WILL WRIGHT

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW:

POSTMORTEM:

UBISOFT’S

CONTENTS

]

APRIL 2006

VOLUME 13, NUMBER 4

FEATURES

11 GAME DEVELOPER’S 5TH ANNUAL

SALARY SURVEY

Our fifth iteration of the popular Salary Survey

is even more detailed and thorough than last

year’s, with additional job designations,

international averages, and a whole lot more.

There have been significant gains in salary

across a number of fields, but we at Game

Developer don’t advocate shaking this article

in your boss’s face and demanding a raise.

By Jill Duffy

19 URBAN DEVELOPMENT

Feeling restless? Did you just shake the Salary

Survey in your boss’s face and demand a

raise with unfortunate results? Luckily, in the

game industry it’s not too tough to pack your

bags, skip town, and set up shop elsewhere.

This article outlines several major game

development hubs and their various selling

points, from the prices of homes to the

proliferation of developers in the area.

By Paul Hyman

POSTMORTEM

28 UBISOFT’S PETER JACKSON’S KING KONG

K ING K ONG marks a potential turning point in licensed games—a big

name director, Peter Jackson, and a big name developer, Michel Ancel,

collaborated and shared design ideas and assets to create it. This kind of

combined vision is usually only possible at game divisions of existing

movie firms. In this postmortem, game producer Xavier Poix shares the

ups and downs of this unique relationship and how it affected the

biggest simultaneous launch in Ubisoft’s history.

By Xavier Poix

38 INTERVIEW: THE WRIGHT STUFF

We had to promise away our first-born to get

it, but we’ve landed an exclusive interview

with Will Wright, perhaps America’s most

admired game luminary. Here, he discusses

his influences and methods, and his passions

outside the realm of games. Academics,

robotics, games, and race cars are just part

of Will Wright’s ever-expanding universe.

By Brandon Sheffield

B1 BONUS: EXTENDED WRIGHT INTERVIEW

As is often the case with interviews, some of

the discussion had to hit the cutting room

floor. As a digital edition bonus, we present

you with an extended director’s cut of the

interview, now nine pages long.

DEPARTMENTS

COLUMNS

2 GAME PLAN By Simon Carless

Monkey Punch

46 PIXEL PUSHER By guest columnist Tom Carroll

[ ART ]

The Quickening vs. The Deadening

4 HEADS UP DISPLAY

Software slumps, an end to online goldfarming,

Softimage Face Robot, and more.

50 BUSINESS LEVEL By Jolene Spry

[ BUSINESS ]

Leveraging PR as an Independent Developer

53 AURAL FIXATION By guest columnist Jesse Harlin

[ SOUND ]

6 SKUNK WORKS By Bijan Forutanpour

Annosoft’s Lipsync SDK 3.3

Smart Combat Music

54 GAME SHUI By Noah Falstein

[ DESIGN ]

96 A THOUSAND WORDS

Team Ninja’s D EAD OR A LIVE 4

Emergent Complexity

56 THE INNER PRODUCT By Mick West

[ PROGRAMMING ]

Particle Tuning

COVER ART: UBISOFT MONTPELLIER

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[

GAME PLAN

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www.gdmag.com

CMP Media, 600 Harrison St., 6th Fl., San Francisco, CA 94107 t: 415.947.6000 f: 415.947.6090

MONKEY

PUNCH

EDITORIAL

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Simon Carless scarless@gdmag.com

MANAGING EDITOR

Jill Duffy jduffy@gdmag.com

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Brandon Sheffield bsheffield@gdmag.com

ART DIRECTOR

Cliff Scorso cscorso@gdmag.com

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Alexander Brandon abrandon@gdmag.com

Noah Falstein nfalstein@gdmag.com

Steve Theodore stheodore@gdmag.com

Mick West mwest@gdmag.com

ADVISORY BOARD

Hal Barwood Designer-at-Large

Ellen Guon Beeman Monolith

Andy Gavin Naughty Dog

Joby Otero Luxoflux

ADVERTISING SALES

NATIONAL SALES MANAGER

Afton Thatcher e: athatcher@cmp.com t: 415.947.6217

SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER, EAST COAST, EUROPE & EASTERN CANADA

Ayrien Machiran e: amachiran@cmp.com t: 415.947.6224

ACCOUNT MANAGER, NO. CALIF., NORTHWEST, ASIA & WESTERN CANADA

Nick Geist e : ngeist@cmp.com t: 415.947.6223

GLOBAL SALES MANAGER, RECRUITMENT & EDUCATION

Aaron Murawski e: amurawski@cmp.com t: 415.947.6227

ACCOUNT MANAGER, SO. CALIF., SOUTH WEST, CONTRACTORS, &

MARKETPLACE

Jasmin Davé e: jdave@cmp.com t: 415.947.6226

ADVERTISING PRODUCTION

ADVERTISING PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Kevin Chanel

REPRINTS Julie Rapp e : jarapp@cmp.com t: 510.834.4752

CMP GAME GROUP

VP, GROUP PUBLISHER APPLIED TECHNOLOGIES Philip Chapnick

VP, STRATEGIC MARKETING Michele Maguire

GROUP DIRECTOR Valerie Pippin

DIRECTOR OF MARKETING Ta r a C . G i b b

CONFERENCE DIRECTOR, GDC Jamil Moledina

SENIOR CONFERENCE MANAGER, GDC Meggan Scavio

EXECUTIVE WEB PRODUCER Peter Leahy

EDITOR-IN-CHIE F, GAMASUTRA.COM Simon Carless

FEATURES EDITOR , GAMASUTRA.COM Quang Hong

CIRCULATION

CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Kevin Regan e : kregan@cmp.com

CIRCULATION ASSISTANT MANAGER Jessica Ward e : jward@cmp.com

CIRCULATION COORDINATOR Miguel Mendiolaza e : mmendiolaza@cmp.com

CIRCULATION ASSISTANT Michael Campbell e: mcampbell@cmp.com

CIRCULATION ASSISTANT Andrea Abidor e: aabidor@cmp.com

SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES

FOR INFORMATION, ORDER QUESTIONS, AND ADDRESS CHANGES

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INTERNATIONAL LICENSING INFORMATION

Mario Salinas

t: 650.513.4234 f: 650.513.4482 e: msalinas@cmp.com

CMP MEDIA MANAGEMENT

PRESIDENT & CEO Steve Weitzner

EXECUTIVE VP & CFO John Day

EXECUTIVE VP, CORPORATE SALES & MARKETING Jeff Patterson

SENIOR VP, AUDIENCE MARKETING AND DEVELOPMENT Bill Amstutz

SENIOR VP, INTERNET BUSINESS Mike Azzara

SENIOR VP, CMP INTEGRATED MARKETING SOLUTIONS Joseph Braue

SENIOR VP & GENERAL COUNSEL Sandra Grayson

SENIOR VP, CORPORATE SALES Anne Marie Miller

SENIOR VP, MANUFACTURING Marie Myers

SENIOR VP, COMMUNICATIONS Alexandra Raine

SENIOR VP, CORPORATE MARKETING Kate Spellman

VP, AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT Michael Zane

PRESIDENT, CHANNEL GROUP Robert Faletra

PRESIDENT, CMP ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA To ny Ke efe

PRESIDENT, CMP HEALTHCARE MEDIA Vicki Masseria

SENIOR VP, GROUP DIRECTOR ELECTRONICS &

SOFTWARE GROUPS Paul Miller

SENIOR VP, ENTERPRISE GROUP Fritz Nelson

SENIOR VP, GROUP DIRECTOR COMMUNICATIONS GROUP Stephen Saunders

THIS SPECIAL APRIL 2006 ISSUE OF GAME

Developer is, unfortunately, not particularly filled

with April Fool’s Day pranks, mainly because it

debuts at Game Developers Conference 2006 in

late March, and also because we’re completely

humorless automatons.

Fortunately, what we do have (*clink*, *whirr*,

*björk*) is another deliriously expanded issue of

the magazine, complete with some rather kickass

features. In particular, you may have spotted the

ugly mug of the great ape himself glowering at

you from the cover, and our special postmortem

(pg. 28) of Ubisoft’s critically acclaimed P ETER

J ACKSON ’ S K ING K ONG , which launched for multiple

platforms late in 2005.

The feature covers Michel Ancel’s $15 million

Ubisoft Montpellier-led project in wonderful detail,

including images from the game’s alternate

ending and movie pre-production images from

Weta Digital rarely, if ever seen before. By the end,

you’ll believe that a monkey can fly—or at least,

that Jack Black needs to be pinioned down while

in the recording studio.

Dave Pottinger Ensemble Studios

George Sanger Big Fat Inc.

Harvey Smith Midway

Paul Steed Microsoft

WRIGHT IT DOWN

Also making a splash on the front cover is

legendary game designer, S IM C ITY and T HE S IMS

creator Will Wright, who kindly took some time

out of his intense production schedule on Maxis

and EA’s S PORE to chat to Game Developer ’s

associate editor Brandon Sheffield (pg. 38)

about robots, casual gamers, and what we teach

those who play games.

In a surprisingly wide-ranging chat, we learn

some of Wright’s more abstract influences from

the world of urban planning, why his colleagues

are more perturbed about what he’s planning on

S PORE than the EA executives are, and how

Wright’s Stupid Fun Club, which puts automatons

in odd places to see how the public interacts with

them, is faring. This is the first in a new series of

interviews with creators that count speaking on

subjects you may not see discussed elsewhere.

Watch for more.

WANTING TO CHANGE

Finally, while I may be spoiling part of a perfectly

good interview by excerpting it, I want to point out

Will Wright’s suggestion regarding his aims as a

game designer: “I want players to have a deeper

appreciation for both how complex and how

elegant the universe is.”

Why is this important? For me, this is a

carefully considered goal that wholly

encapsulates what makes Wright special, and

what we may need more of in the industry—

game creators with an agenda. If you’re out to

entertain on a pure level, then that can produce

amazing entertainment, from B URNOUT 3to

G EOMETRY W ARS E VOLVED .

But when we move beyond the visceral and

find that itch to educate, or create emotion, or

change emotion, that’s when we transcend

games as a twitchfest to create ones that are...

more. And that can only be good for the industry

and the artform.

SALARY CRUNCHING

The monkey doesn’t care about the money, but

we do, so that’s why this issue also presents the

Fifth Annual Game Developer Salary Survey (pg.

11) , the only canonical record of game

development salaries in North America. In fact,

this year, we’ve added information on Canada

and Europe to our traditional American data,

thanks to over 6,000 unique responses

worldwide, and have redoubled our efforts to

track regional and gender variations, as well as

bonuses and perks.

Overall, it all adds up to the only information

you’d ever need to show your boss (or conceal

from your employees) on the game industry’s

salary recompense in 2005, from programming

and art through audio, business, and game

testing roles.

Plus, frequent contributor Paul Hyman looks

at some of the most important regions for game

development in the U.S. and Canada in a

companion feature, “Urban Development” (pg.

19) . Speaking to a few key developers in places

known for their dense population of game

studios, Hyman looks at the flavor, camaraderie,

and community of those areas, from the San

Francisco Bay Area to Austin and beyond.

Simon Carless, editor-in-chief

Game Developer

is BPA approved

APRIL 2006 | G AME DEVELOPER

WWW.CMPGAME.COM

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