Kulturprodukt

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When Game Developers Will Own Their Publishers

Publishers pwn developers. And their IP. In the entire known Universe. This has been near-universal truth up until now. I predict we’ll see a time where the game publisher/game developer balance shifts and the developers will be on top.

Our company recently moved into a cozy old building in central Copenhagen. As we are a small and young start-up, we can’t afford a whole building, a whole floor nor a whole room for ourselves, so we’re sharing. In fact we’re sharing three floors with 6 - 8 other game developers (depending on how you count).

You could argue that the other companies are our competitors. You could argue that they could steal our know-how, our IP and our honour.

The fact is that yes, in some cases they are, and yes, in some cases they may. But up until that happens we all have a lot to gain from living door to door with the others in terms of sharing problems, ideas, tips, experiences and beer.

The benefits of sharing can however expand far beyond beer.

Small production units don’t need and small start-ups can’t afford much full-time administration and sales staff. Why not share producer, accountant, marketeer and sales resources? Why not in-source publishing?

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Creating an Image System Equally Suitable for 3 Continents

Recently I’ve been given an interesting challenge that includes creating a complex user interface that should work well for people not familiar with computers [read: Windows] at all. Not only should it work with computer “illiterates” - It should work equally well on three very different continents.

Take India for instance. If you need to take a leak in India and you’re a guy, you apparently shouldn’t be looking for the classic western silhouette of a man indicating that there is a rest room on the other side of the door. You should be looking for something like the above.. (more)

- Who knows what other subtle differences we have here? Ok, I’m not doing a rest room user interface here, so maybe I’m ok…

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Two Things That Suck About XBOX 360

Ok, no, make that three things.

I don’t get it. How is it even possible to make a machine that emits so much heat and noise and deem it safe for indoor home use? You get a headache and take a lethal chance of burning down your house just after playing for half an hour.

I don’t get it. How is it possible to make a device so incredibly bad at loading and displaying a frickin simple list? Caching is invented as far as I know.

And finally I don’t get the idea of filling up Live Arcade with all that vintage crap. Doom, Marathon, WhateverFighter Something and a bad Galaga port isn’t vintage. It’s just plain waste of space…

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Smart Objects in Photoshop

I have recently rediscovered Smart Objects in Photoshop partially thanks to a kind reminder from Joen. This is why I think they’re smart, and what I think would be really smart to add.

Smart Objects (SO’s) allow you to define any object in a PhotoShop document as a separate file so to speak. The separate file is then embedded in the document that you are working on. The cool thing is, that you can “compress” really complex objects into one SO in order to keep the main file manageable, while maintaining full control of the “compressed” object. SO’s can be scaled, transformed and filtered without damaging the SO itself.

Before I used SO’s as a way to embed Illustrator objects and similar. And pretty much only this. Now I all of the sudden find myself converting virtually everything into SO’s.

I started out with e.g. a standard button, converted it into an SO and then instanced it wherever I need it. This allow me to work focused on one small commonly used element of e.g. a user interface design at a time, and then flip back to the main comp to see how my changes impact on the overall design.

Next I realized that converting larger isolated areas of a UI design, e.g. the main menu, to an SO with numerous nested SO’s within, really gave a lot of advantages when maintaining one PSD with numerous layer comps of sub-designs in it.

Now I’m just wondering why you aren’t allowed to define a remote location for your Smart Objects, instead of the auto embed? I think it would be absolutely wonderful if I could define an SO in my document, set a remote location for it, and then allow other people in my team to access the same object.

Yes, I know that I can export an SO to a remote location, but I want the remote object to be the master object. Then I could have someone else work on the icons for a UI while I work at the buttons. The icons would update in my document, and the buttons would update in my colleagues document.

… So, when will we see this, Adobe?

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User Interface Design: The Button’s Vocabulary

User interfaces for interactive applications basically consist of input from users and feedback from the interface. In order for the user to be able to use - give input to - the interface, the user need to understand what the interface is about. The UI needs to talk to its user in order to work at a truly satisfying level.

The average friendly button needs to be able to say the following to its user:

• Hi, I’m a button and you can click me!
• If you click me this will happen: [action]
• This is my importance compared to my fellow buttons: [importance]
• I’m related to these guys over here
• I’m not related to what’s over there
• You are pointing to me, and I’m ready to receive your click!
• You are clicking me, and I’m ready to carry out my action!
• It’s perfectly fine if you don’t want me to do anything after all
• Look! Now I’m performing my action in all my glory!
• You did great!
• Umm… Sorry, but I’m disabled at this point, and clicking me is of no use

It’s a lot of language when you look at it like this. I’ve found it quite supportive on many occasions to look at user interface design problems in terms of language.

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Visiting the LEGO Factory

Over the last four or five years I’ve been to several different LEGO office buildings, jam packed with cool NDA-covered work-related stuff. But until yesterday, I had never seen where the actual plastic magic takes places. I have finally had the pleasure of visiting the LEGO factory in Billund.

Fun facts from the tour:

• LEGO in Billund produce 2.400.000 LEGO elements per hour
• Production lines run 24 hours a day, 360 days per year
• Chain elements used for e.g. Bionicle are molded in ONE piece
• It takes one employee to manage around 50 molding machines
• The robots that pick up the filled boxes of LEGO elements are quite patient with visitors
• Said robots wear signs saying “This machine doesn’t have a brain - Use your own!”
• 99% of the plastic that goes into the factory ends up as LEGO
• The remaining 1% is sold to a concrete factory that uses the scrap plastic as furnace fuel
• LEGO is the world’s largest manufacturer of tires (if you look at the # of tires)

The most cool thing about it all though, was the warehouse. Think Raiders of the Lost Ark (the closing scene where the Ark is archived in the gigantic warehouse filled with wooden crates) meets The Matrix - then you have an idea of the proportions of cool that we’re talking. A 100% automated 22 meters high warehouse that was operated by conveyor belts and 22 meter tall robots operating at dizzying speed and precision.

Just imagine sitting in that warehouse with endless LEGO bricks to choose from, and six to ten 22 meter tall robots to help you find what you need…

(No photo opportunities however)

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High-Gloss Design Countermovement Anyone?

Since I don’t know when the *thing* for especially web design has been glossy plastic rendering and reflections, Apple style. Every new site that launches these days, every old site that gets a 2.0 re-hash seems to be draped with plastigloss.

Why has this thing grown into the only thing? Why insist on this sterile plastic metaphor when there are so many other directions to choose from?

Ok well, that’s all fine. The virtual plastic has grown really tiresome by now imho, so I’ve begun waiting for the countermovement. A design movement to oppose and challenge the come il faut glossy shiny reflection plastic, that we have all grown so used to.

- So what’s the next big thing after plastiglosshinyness à la Apple? Please don’t let it be doodles.

Note, that I’m waiting for this movement to happen - I’m not trying to start or drive anything here.

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Games Are Critical

Reuters runs an article today about MTVN’s plans to invest a large chunk in games:

MTV Networks plans to invest well over $500 million in video games, seeing the red-hot entertainment category as a major pillar of growth in its goal to reach consumers wherever they spend time.

…a major phallic pillar of growth…

“Media companies are crazy trying to bring video-game development in house,” Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter said about developing complicated console games. “They act like anyone can do this. The fact is not everyone can.”

… which in turn may become very good news for all us independent game developers.

Full article

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Clear Slate

Once in a while you need a fresh start in life. In many ways I think I need one now. This is why I have decided to abandon the content that was “lost” in the crash of PeterGrafik.dk and make a new beginning of Kulturprodukt.net.

It seems quite appropriate when I look at other aspects of my life. Jakob is facing a new beginning on his first day of school next Tuesday. We’re about to move into our new apartment and at work we’re busy thinking up and implementing new strategies and goals. So that’s it. Clear slate.

The downside is, that almost all the stuff that I have put online for nearly a decade, is no longer available. Complete and utter linkrot (with a few exceptions). Some of the work was actually pretty okay - some even good, if I’m to judge it. At some point I may decide to bring some of the more durable pieces back online.

But for now I’ll leave this site with a lot of blank pages (?) and just let it slowly evolve into the provider of kulturprodukt that I want it to be.

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Migrating from Petergrafik.dk

What has been my site since 1998 has been down for almost a month now. In a way it’s ok. That old domain and me have been growing increasingly apart over the last year or so. Now it’s time to move on and make some changes to my “Internet presence”.

I haven’t really decided yet if I should migrate all the content from the old domain, or if I should start of with a clear slate. Anyway, I’ll slowly shape this spot into something that suits, and then decide along the way.