Som(a)niloquy

Rubber Meeting Road

So it falls to me to break the bad news to you all – after much ballyhoo we will NOT be at Creation 2010…at least not in any ‘official’ capacity. And while that might be news worth posting to Twitter and Facebook, why does it rate a blog post? Well it’s like this:

We first had this Creation idea thrown at us back in February or something like that and it seemed like a great idea. A little bit later the details firmed up a but and by mid June we were making plans in earnest. Signs, stickers, etc. etc. Like basically everything Soma’s been doing in the last 12 months, it just felt like a door God had opened and we were walking through. But then last week we got the news that the door we were a few days from stepping through was suddenly closed. It wasn’t anybody’s fault or anything, it just didn’t work out at the last minute and we started scrambling trying to figure out what we were going to do.

By virtue of experience, we’ve learned to approach this path with a particular eye on spiritual warfare. After all, we’re trying to step into a cultural space that is currently all but devoid of a Christian voice so we’ve come to expect a certain amount of opposition on the road. Nothing to get all worked up about, but we take the idea seriously. With that in mind, our first impulse was to see this recent event as a barrier to what the bigger plan was – something to push through. I mean let’s be plain: Creation will bring several thousand of our very particular sweet-spot demographic into a place where they are a 3-day captive audience. It’s a place where people are in the mood to spend money on funnel cake, fried Twinkies, and probably a video game or two. From  a business standpoint, the festival is a pretty darn good place for Soma to show its face and meet some new fans. So OF COURSE the closed door was a bad thing – what else could it be?

Well it’s a funny thing. In the days following the news we certainly worked on several alternate plans, ways we might salvage the situation and still get rid of these tee-shirts, but we also prayed. And when the immediate “Oh no” wore off we found ourselves feeling like this closed door might not be warfare at all. It might be God. More to point, in the end we came to a peaceful consensus that we actually didn’t need to overcome this obstacle – so instead we just announced that we weren’t going.

So I guess the blog entry is really about this: it’s one thing to listen to God’s voice and follow it toward an opportunity. It’s another to follow Him away from one. In some small way I feel a little like Galadriel when Frodo offer s her The Ring. I don’t know if this was actually some kind of test, but nevertheless I see a kind of test in the way this happened. We had probably 8-10k good reasons to put our shoulders to it and push on to CreationFest in whatever capacity we could muster. It’s a great group of people, I really wan to see Red and we have the potential to make a few bones. But I really want God much more, his presence, his still small voice. And we have a lot of peace about simply saying no thank you. I so want to see this business run with true heart and not in such a way where the shop operates in a way different in character than our personal lives. Anyway, that’s what’s on my mind as I’m up way too late in a Leavenworth hotel and I just wanted to share.

CGDC 2010 – A Pleasure As Always

It’s midnight on Saturday and we’ve spent the last three days at the 2010 Christian Game Developer’s Conference in Portland, OR. Once again I come home with a lot of things in my head that really span the gamut of available emotions.

In many ways, Soma Games was born at the 2005 CGDC. And I’ve grown to have a tremendous amount of loyalty to that group, people I’ve come to know over the years simply because we keep going to this conference each year. And once again I’m struck by the disconnect between the actual size of the conference (about 30 or so people this year) to the disproportionately large shadow it casts out in the world. It’s purely anecdotal but I have this strong impression that folks outside the conference wishing they were there or waiting to hear what comes out of it is far bigger than a few dozen folks in PDX would suggest. I guess that shouldn’t surprise me though. There is such an obvious (and well documented) gap in the video game market for faith-friendly games, perhaps it only makes sense that this underserved market niche is somehow always watching to see what will come of each year’s conference. I also know that there is a large but mostly hidden block of Christians working in the secular game industry. We’ve had several contact  us at Soma and several more attend CGDC over the years – I know many of them are anxious to see one or more companies bust out with genuine commercial success so they might work on a project that doesn’t rub against their values in uncomfortable ways.

Once again the best part was the people. Seeing folks again that I’ve really come to respect and admire, also meeting new ones like this one first-timer who winds up speaking on a topic on her first trip to CGDC. Certainly a very interesting topic, but I was really struck by how much wind was on her! For someone relatively new to walking in the Spirit, she had Jesus Culture coming off her like heat off a Death Valley roadbed – can’t wait to see what happens in her story next.

Still, for all the great experience I have at CGDC I can’t help but feel like there could be so much more. I feel like there is some huge kingdom-opportunity that is being missed here when the thing remains so small and unknown. Of course the reason that happens may be simple enough – time and manpower (or money which solves the other two). I know CGDC is put on by a bunch of volunteers, none of whom make the conference or the parent org a day-job priority. I’m not at all faulting those folks, the situation is what it is, but still I long to see the thing gel into something more than it is even if only to draw more people. I was very excited to work a little with Seth this year to organize a CGDC whitepaper project along the lines of Project Horseshoe. If nothing else, CGDC can provide some vocabulary and start to define terms in a space that really needs them. In fact, the first topic we scrummed out was “What is a Xian Game?” – you’d be surprised how difficult it is to define something like that. I won’t get ahead of myself here but I wound up pretty happy with the results of that discussion as well as the ‘Violence in Xian video games” topic.

Well, it’s bedtime but I did want to say thanks to everyone who came, supported or tweeted. Ws had a great group again and Soma was particularly happy to be able to come back again with the biggest presence we’ve ever had and win the Swing award.

——-

PS : Now with a little sleep I remembered there were a few things I wanted to mention.

There were two games at this year’s CGDC that were not newcomers but games I’d never had the chance to really see in action but finally did. The first was Vastar from Exodus Studios. I’ve been acquainted with Rebecca or years now and I think Vastar was released at least two years ago but I’d just never had the chance to see it – but it really well done. I’ll let her own site describe it to you but we were impressed. The other was Guitar Praise from Digital Praise. Some people have dogged this game because it is, in fact, a shameless copy of Guitar Hero. But it never claims to be anything so I can’t see the problem. But this is the first time I’ve actually played the game and I found it very cool and very fun. I like the songs, I like the already proven game mechanic, so I’m good. $90 feels pretty high these days when I can get Guitar Hero for ~$60 these days and the fact that it’s not on XBLA seems like an obviously oversight but the software and graphics are solid and I wish I’d purchased the game last year.

Computex: The Buzz, The Bombs, and the Booth Babes

“I just flew in from Taipei and boy are my arms tired…”

I wrote that line a month ago when it was hoped to be at least slightly true…So the “just” has now become a distant memory and I’m only now getting to this blog, but better late than never right?

The whole point of this article is to give a report on what I saw at Computex which was in Taipei (as always) June 1-5. Now in the spirit of full disclosure I should say right off the bat that I was only in Taipei because I was invited to go by a large semi-conductor outfit you’ve no doubt heard of. And since I really never read those NDAs I sign I really don’t even know if I can mention then by name here…but you’ll read between the lines no doubt (where Google will not). Anyway, it’s worth saying that these folks were very generous to lil’ol’ Soma Games, took great care of me and didn’t EVER stop feeding me! I swear I ate 13 times a day over there…which was a good thing.  I stood atop the 2nd highest building in the world, the Taipei 101 and was shocked to see that a Starbucks in Proto-China looks exactly like a Starbucks in Seattle – I just couldn’t really read the menu. But who cares right? ’cause I just know where “Americano Maximus Quad Shot” is on the menu anyway and everybody understands a pointing finger. Continue Reading…

The Lament of a Flex Developer

or “Why Apple broke my heart and Adobe is holding the pieces”

by our very own Ryan Green

April 8, 2010 was the day the first salvo was fired, all out war declared, and the following day an Adobe employee named Lee Brimelow had his emotions get the better of him. His blog post told Apple collectively to… well… ahem. Apply screws to themselves.

See, the following Monday, was a day that I, as a Flex / Flash developer, loyal Apple fan-boy and AppStore developer had eagerly anticipated with bated breath. Monday, the 12th, was the day when the world would open up. When those, like me, whose livelihood depends largely on the Adobe Flash Platform would finally be allowed into the mobile space; unencumbered; invigorated; and empowered.

Continue Reading…

App Development and The Fuzzy-Wuzzy Fallacy

In wargaming there is a principle known as “The Fuzzy-Wuzzy Fallacy” and without going into excruciating mathematical detail it’s premise is that quantity relates to quality at a better ratio than you might think…specifically a unit with 2X firepower is not worth 2 opposing 1X units but rather the square root of two because the guy with the BFG9000 can still be pwnd by a single low-tech arrow. [see: Pippin's comment on Boromir].

How this applies to app development is simple:
App customers are absurdly cheap.

Ergo: multiple, inexpensive, interlocking projects stand a better  chance of making a profit than a single expensive project. Continue Reading…

Can they share?

So you have built a community or tribe around your games. You’ve uploaded some great trailers and teasers as well as some funny clips from your trip to PAX last year. You even have a blog with readers. With that alone you are way ahead of some in this industry in that you are creating content beyond your game. But do those who love what you make have a way to say it?

I hear this a lot, “I have a web site and a blog but no one reads them”. Yes, those assets are important, but if you don’t have a way for people to yelp, tweet, like, buzz, rate, review or the many other ways people are sharing, then you are missing out on the greatest value your community offers. Allow them to spread your brand’s greatness via word of mouth. Every day these tools get better at sharing your message.
Add these sharing tools to everything you have on the web.
We reviewed a game a while back and in the process tried to contact the creator. We tried everything, but there was no way to reach them let alone share their information. As a result we were left writing a review that had to make certain unflattering assumptions about the game and the team behind it. If we’d had a chance to engage with the development team I suspect we would have written a rather different review.

Our friends at Intel have done a great job with this. Each of their units has their own community. What we have noticed is that they don’t stop at giving their fans ways to share Intel content. They go beyond that, and actively engage with them as well as reciprocate and share what their community is doing. When we live in a world that is getting more and more cluttered with web content, people start to tune out the mass media blitz. They are more and more turning to their friends for recommendations. In the game world I personally look for what my friends are playing and usually only buy a game based on what someone else said about it. I trust what my community says over a stranger’s review. What we need to realize is each of our fans have a small tribe of their own. They are waiting for us to offer them content to shout about. When they do shout, you can be guaranteed their friends will want to find out what all the fuss is about.

Here are a just a few guides that can help you add the sharing tools to your web assets.

• Facebook like button
• Tweetmeme button
• Share Anything
• Yelp

Where the Intel App Store Fits In

Soma Games was in Las Vegas this last week to attend CES whereIntel announced the beta launch of their new app store aimed at netbooks. (Check it out here)

For Soma Games, this was a singular opportunity but I’m seeing a lot of ink out there this week by folks who don’t get it. The refrain I’ve heard from the party poopers is the laconic ‘another app store?’ whine as if the paradigm shift represented by app stores is somehow old news. These folks totally miss what the app store model represents and they will be eating their words as their myopia is exposed in the coming months, particularly in what the Intel store represents.

In the broad sense, the app store model is a huge opportunity for everybody in the software chain. Developers like Soma Games can get our product out to our tribe for minimal cost, fans benefit from the long tail and…blah, blah, blah. You’ve already heard all that about Apple’s raging success. But don’t think of the iTunes store as a product where it’s critical to be first and unique. Instead it’s a new way of doing business, and that’s a much bigger thing. In fact, the Apple store is getting pretty fat and bloated these days, some genuine competition will be good for it. Another app store is a good thing in the same way a competitive shoe store is  a good thing.

As for the specific punch of Intel’s store, you need to remember the three rules of retail?

1. Location
2. Location
3. Location

The App Up store is likely to get off to a fairly slow start because it isn’t really a new idea, people have seen these things before, and so the gee whiz factor is gone. But Intel is working with OEMs like Dell and Acer to get this thing pre-installed on netbooks that ship out all over the world. Pretty soon there will be a gigantic installed base that grows more of less by osmosis. The netbook users who are all about minimal fuss will be drown to its ease of use and one-stop-shop featueres and before you know it the app store will be the first (and often only) place they will look any time they think they need a new utility of time sink.

In other words, before long, being in that store will be like placing your business at the corner of 1st and Main where everybody goes to browse…because it’s right on their way to everywhere else.

Every Game Has A Worldview – Whether You Like It Or Not

No matter how much you may want video games to be plainly fun and devoid of any ethical or moral message (If I had a dollar for every person who said that to me…) it will never happen. The statement is nonsensical on the order of whether or not God can make a rock bigger than He can lift. There’s a season in our lives where that statement might seem profound and ‘paradoxical’ but at some point we grow to understand it’s nothing more than semantic nonsense masquerading as deep insight.

• Every single video game includes a set of rules.
• Every rule implies an underlying assumption or statement about the game’s vision of its self-contained reality.
• Any collection of assumptions about reality is, by definition, a worldview.
• Ergo: every game explicitly or implicitly preaches its worldview to you.

Take The Sims for instance. Any male or female character can more or less pursue a romantic relationship with any other character – those are rules. The implication is that the characters have no built in sexual identity but rather it’s all a matter of choice or environmental influences. That’s a part of a larger worldview of the Sims that all come to describe a world that rewards certain things while punishing others, it allows certain things while diasllowing others – it, like every game, is constantly enforcing a very specific worldview through every interaction the player makes in that context. (You know what’s ironic here? I strongly suspect the makers would tell me that homosexuals are born that way and can’t change. That for them it’s not a matter of ‘choice’ though their game mechanic clearly implies that it is…but I digress.)

Now admittedly, different games do this to a greater or lesser degree…mostly lesser. But even pong is built on assumptions about what constitutes fair play and whether or not it’s ethical to compete and keep score…assumptions a lot of people are coming to disagree with these days.

This is no trivial or academic point, especially for us at Soma Games. As gaming grows and matures into the primary cultural medium of our generation its important to know the power of what we’re working with. It’s a well known axiom that games are some of the best learning tools ever created. So let’s get rid of the puerile notion that “it’s just a silly game” and wrestle with larger implications. At first that’s simply to be more cognizant of what we’re being taught but for content creators it’s also to embrace the deeper power of this medium and be willing to build our worlds with full awareness of the message we’re sending.

What Happened to the Wild Things?

When my son was born a little over three years ago my good friend Mark brought over a selection of books he thought to be essential “must read” tomes for any little boy. Where The Wild Things Are was in there and I’ve read those 200 or so words to Odin  probably a thousand times. We love that book and we love the pictures and my toddler sees no psychological complexity to a boy in a wolf suit. Why then did Spike Jonze feel it necessary to turn it into something all Jungian and dark and disturbing.

Look, every once in a great while I can appreciate a movie like this…once in a great while. My real problem is the way a piece of joy and sweetness and innocence from my life has been hijacked to sell some kind of overburdened hyper-symbolic look into the pathos of a troubled tween. Continue Reading…

Manifold Publishing

There is no way that any video game or series of video games can possibly tell the stories we want to tell at Soma Games.
Neither could a graphic novel,
…or a book,
…or a movie.

If ‘the medium is the message’ then we will only have told our stories properly when they are told across multiple media, each used in its proper place to express the proper part of a manifold expression of creativity that ought to transcend any single medium. Continue Reading…