Mark Danks

Moving back to development with my studio means that I have seen a lot about what publishers are looking for these days. Wii is, of course, very popular, but there is generally a desire to be “casual.” The interesting thing is that most publishers are unsure what that means. They want the popularity of the Wii, but still want to make games like they did for the PS2 and before.

A few publishers have figured out that the Wii market is different than the hardcore market from before, but that requires an understanding of a very different demographic than has bought Doom, Gears of War, and Call of Duty in the past.

Now that Microsoft’s Natal and Sony’s motion controller have been announced, the day for the joystick might seem to be limited.  However, not every player nor every gamer wants to jump around the room, regardless of the genre.

I am getting ready to head down to E3 in LA tomorrow.  From all of the noise, it seems that the E3 of old is back, with the lights, noise, and spectacle.  From the industry’s point of view, E3 is a way to get the main stream media’s attention.  I have seen interviews and announcements all over the place from newspapers to radio.  Add in the parties and it should be as crazy as ever.

This year is different for me, since I have meetings about my studio.  Normally, I am there representing EA or Sony, so I am approaching things from the publisher or platform side, instead of as a developer.  As it is, I have meetings every day, all day, which will make for a great E3!

I am incredibly excited to launch my studio today.  I am the co-studio head for Zoë Mode San Francisco!  We are hard at work on a number of games and I am extremely honored to be working with such a great group of people.

Press release

Interview at GamesIndustry.biz

In most modern games, asynchronous file loading is a standard requirement.  This is especially true for open world games or games which never want to show a loading screen.  On the surface, it seems like an easy thing to do: spawn a new thread and load files on request.  However, there are a few complications which get in the way.

One of the most obvious issues is knowing when the file has actually been loaded.  In an asynch environment, you issue a request, and some time later, the request is fulfilled.  Most systems return a handle which the game can check periodically to see if the data has been read.  This is fairly easy to implement, works well in a multithreaded environment, and is pretty easy to debug.  Other alternatives are to use a callback mechanism or put the calling thread to sleep until the data is loaded.  The sleep option is usually done in custom scripting languages, instead of trying to do it in C++.

A standard approach is to compress the data at build time and decompress at run time.  If you are reading from DVD Continue Reading »

A recent CNET article has much of the blog-o-sphere commenting away like crazy.  The article contains a quote from Kaz Hirai from SCE that the PS3 is hard to develop for.  In reading the article, the author does not appear to have thought much about why Kaz might have said that.

As a note, these are only my views and do not represent my current employer, SCE, EA, or any past employers.  These views are also not based on any “inside” information, but instead are based on many years in the video games industry.

It is absolutely true that of the current consoles (PS3, XBox360, and Wii), the PS3 is the most complicated.  However, there are two aspects to developing on a console.  1) The hardware and 2) the development environment.  The thing that the author of the CNET article seemed to forget is that (excluding Nintendo), selling software is what makes the money, not selling the hardware.

Continue Reading »

Lately I have been reading  a lot of books about cooking.  Not cook books, but books about the process, restaurants, or a particular ingredient. On the Line by Eric Ripert describes how Le Bernardin in New York City operates.  What Einstein Told His Cook by Robert Wolke is much like Harold McGee’s books on the science of food and cooking.  Recently, I picked up A Day at El Bulli by Ferran Adria.  It describes how the famous restaurant works and some of the methods that they use to create new dishes.  The similarities between creating a menu and creating a game are striking.

Continue Reading »

Due to the holidays, I actually have some time to get back to programming.  Up until now, my code has been focused on the machine and engine layers…rendering, memory management, job control, debug scaffolding, etc.  All of the items which are needed to get things on screen, but do not have any of the behavior nor game play parts.

Most game engines have gone away from trying to describe game objects with explicit C++ class hierarchies.  Very quickly, there is a base object called CObject which has everything but the kitchen sink in it.  This also creates an interconnected mess between the tick cycles for the object and all of the game systems.  It is very hard to parallelize the tick loop and impossible to move the objects off to extra processors such as the SPUs.

Continue Reading »

I spent the last week with my co-studio head in the UK.  We had lots of meeting and were very busy the entire time.  We made a lot of progress on the game we pitching, justified our existence and funding to the board, coordinated IT hardware, and did everything else which a new games studio does as it starts up.

However, one of the coolest moments of the trip had nothing to do with the new studio.

Continue Reading »

Week one is done for my new studio.  Spent the week working a game pitch, running phone and ethernet wires, and generally getting everything set up at the office.  It is extremely exciting and scary to not have “the man” telling you what to do every day.  The success of the studio will be a direct result of the work of my co-studio head and I.

And I love taking BART every day.  My commute time is about the same as when I was at EA and Sony, but now I get to read and relax with my iPod.

I made the leap.  Today was my last day at Sony.  It has been an amazing time there and I am truly honored to have worked with such talented people.

…but something came up…

I am starting a new game studio in San Francisco.