My writeup of Gordon Walton’s inspiring IMGDC talk is available on Gamasutra today. There were a couple of events/conversations that made the event totally worth the trip, and this is one of them. He really hit home with great ideas about hunting up new markets and sticking to passion. He particularly got to me when he talked about getting inside people’s heads; it was a way of talking about content creation I hadn’t really heard put quite that way before. I actually helped me to understand why I do what I do a little bit. I’m not sure that makes sense, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t articulate that sentiment well to him when I thanked him after the talk, but there you go.

Massively did a quick writeup of my talk writeup, which is good and awesome as well.

As you probably know, though, w/u’s like that are just a portion of the event - I have a ton more notes that didn’t get drawn on for the piece. I think they’re plenty valid, though, so read on below the cut for the extensive cut material from his talk. Also features probably my favorite quote from all weekend.

(Note: these are raw notes and as such may be misspelled/incomrehensible.)

If not for StarCraft, WoW would not be so successful. They weren’t making much money at all in China for some time, but at least in Korea they built on the brand for years before WoW made it big. The list of transfers between west and east are very small. It’s like a hidden group of customers.

The prevailing wisdom is that kid mmos will lead people to “real” mmos. Your first mmo is your first love, though. It’s really hard to top that first experience. Lighter games will never lead to hardcore MMOs. “The vast majority of humanity wants to sit on the couch and click on a remote every once in a while.” Having that experience does not lead to ‘crawling through mud to get to entertainment’. “Struggle is not entertainment for all but a small subset of nerdy people.” It’s all about screwing with people’s heads. Other people have different leverage points. The pokemon generation isn’t turned on by that.

I’m interested in entertaining the most people possible. Everyone has a reason for doing what they do, and mine is to get in and screw around with as many heads as possible. For other people it’s different, some are looking for fame, for money, some just need to prove they can do it. Hold on to whatever you can, because you’re going to need the passion.

Most WoW clones will fail. 95% plus will fail. The audience wants innovation not more of the same. If the expectation is huge, failure is even bigger. Star Wars Galaxies was extremely successful financially, at one point it was the second biggest western MMO. But it was all about expectations – it was supposed to be the biggest game. If you clone, you’re not going to advance. You need to innovate. The tragedy of our business - if you innovate too much people turn off. People want a ‘comfortable’ level of innovation. If it’s too edgy they’re turned off. The third time a feature is used is when it’s “new and good”. It’s not always best to be innovative on some field first. Pick and choose how edgy you can be. Be “acceptably innovative.” Listen to what people say but watch what they do online.

The nice thing about being indie is that you can/must take risks. Surprises are not coming out of big companies. the more money is spent the less they can afford to risk things. The really radical innovations are going to come from the folks that have the least to lose.

Polish it, make it, and get it out early. Get feedback. I’m shocked to this day that there is no Deer Hunter online. You could do it on a webpage! Maybe there is no audience out there. But you never know until you try. There are so many games that should be out there that aren’t. What gives people an excuse to congregate? Figure that out and capitalize it. Online audiences already exist, you just have to go out and find them. You give them a reason to come together, and it’s also an attractor to bring even more people out of that community who aren’t gamers.

Two books that you should be reading – Blue Ocean strategy. As an indie you have to be thinking about the blue ocean. Don’t go where all the sharks are feeding. WoW is a blood red ocean, and tier 2 is pretty darn pink too. You need to go where people aren’t. That may not be your dream. Maybe you think you can make a better WoW. I’ve seen this commonly. You play a game and you go “I know exactly how to fix this, I can make this even better.” The truth is that if you make a game 10% better, you aren’t going to win. You don’t get 10% more customers by making a game 10% better – you need to make it 100% better even to get the same number of customers as the first game. You need to find a place where that’s not you’re staring down. You need to be somewhere where you *are* the brand.

The other book is “The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing: How to Trigger Exponential Sales Through Runaway Word of Mouth”. Viral marketing is extremely important for an indie. He’s read dozens and dozens of books on viral marketing, and this is the best one. If you can only read one book, this is the one. It gives you an idea how customers actually operate. How do you get more people to get people to use your content. You need this more than anything else, you need a way to get new customers. People in MMOs are always about retention, it makes me crazy. Retention is easy, it’s second nature. The real challenge is acquisition. We try to keep them forever, and they end up hating us. It’s better to let them go when they’re ready to leave, and find new people to play our games. That’s hard.

The most common good ideas are old ones with the serial numbers filed off. Use that! The most important thing is just to be a game developer. Make games on paper, make games for yourself. Don’t wait until the right time because it will never come. Whatever you want to be, just be it. That ‘perfect time’ will never line up. Follow your passion, follow your drives. Just start doing it. How do you make games? Make games. Start by saying I am a game maker. Then make yourself right. When you put yourself out there, you make yourself right. Eventually, hopefully, you’ll get paid for doing what you’re passionate about. If you can you’re very very lucky. Very few people in the world get the opportunity to be paid for what they love. Most people work to live, rather than live to work.

At this point Mr. Walton opens it up to Q&A –

How do you know when the water is too blue? How do you know that’s not acid? There’s no food out there? Maybe there is a reason no one has done that before?

My favorite example of this is the gay nazi biker game. That intersection is an incredibly niche market. That ocean is too blue. Look for the online audiences, though. I’ve looked for the gay nazi bikers. I assume that’s an offline audience. If they’re not already a little bit online you’re probably not going to succeed. When Rich and I started bioware Austin there were two plans: work for one of two game companies OR do something totally different. The totally different plan broke down to “do about ten different games”, web clients small games. Aim for an audience that had never done games before. Or, totally innovative gameplay that no one had ever done before. When you start going for big funding they like to see portfolio strategies rather than single-games. We didn’t want to do a portfolio unless they were small. The idea was to do ten then double down on the two most successful.

Do you feel like there are that many untapped markets out there?

They are legion! There is no deer hunter online game! I think people get tied down by preconceptions. A lot of people look to FPS titles but that’s a pretty small market. There are many genres that don’t yet have an online version. If you think about that, though, realize that all the box companies are doing the same. So look at all the games that have been built on the web. “I have to say, I will never build another C++ client MMO in my life after the one I’m doing. I’m never going to do it. It’s retarded. I’m limiting my audience tremendously by doing that.” If you want to reach the broadest possible audience, the platform is the browser. What’s the thing that everyone with a computer does?

If you look at the browser MMOs realize that they’re not silly or lame – look at them through the customer’s eyes. Most people who get into gaming and are serious about it have very refined tastes. “You’re like a wine connoisseur. Ripple works, you know?” Only crazy people will spend dozens of hours on end playing these games. You can get thousands, even millions to do that, but you can’t get tens of millions to do that. Think differently about how you’re going to get customers. Now that they’re online you can ask them. They may not know what they really want but what they say will be instructive.