LIVERPOOL - England, 5 November, the skies were grey over Liverpool last Thursday, the Mersey churned up by a gusty wind that kept smokers huddled under a canopy.  The wind seems to be a theme of this year’s Develop Conferences.  It half-destroyed everyone who attended the Brighton leg, too.

But inside the ultra-modern Arena and Convention Centre, things were brighter.  It’s the first time Develop has hit the north of England, and there was a palpable nervous excitement in the air.  Where Brighton’s conference has a tendency to become networking frenzy, Liverpool’s attendees strolled in, ambled around, sussed out the best wireless hotspots.  It’s a more subdued event, it seems, but one at which everyone is eager to learn.

Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Europe’s Michael Denny delivered the keynote.  Speaking of what the company looks for in pitches from independent developers, Denny was keen to root for the underdog.  “We must support new IP creation,” he told a busy room, blinds drawn to divert attention away from the choppy waters below.  “Consumers crave new things.”

Sony voiced its support for new IP, such
as the highly ambitious Heavy Rain.

It seems Sony is rather open to these ideas, as Denny told the conference: “We try not to be too prescriptive.  Issuing guidelines is a good thing, but we always want to leave room for disruptive titles.”

“There’s one key ingredient,” he concluded, “and that’s passion.”

Breeding New Titles

It’s a refreshing attitude to hear, in a world where the notion of business-first, product-second publishers has been exemplified by Activision’s ruthlessly pragmatic Robert Kotic.  Sony also took the time to show off Heavy Rain, their next big third-party release, and a highly ambitious interactive movie.  Perhaps this eagerness to test new ideas is what’s kept Sony relevant across three console generations; they’re still arguably the most popular mainstream publishing company today.

Of course, not everyone at Develop was there to talk original IP.  Team 17’s John Dennis discussed the process of updating the Alien Breed franchise, a series that’s sat dormant since the mid 90s.

“People have accused us of being unoriginal and lazy,” laughed Dennis. “That may be true of me, but it really isn’t of Team 17.”  It’s simply the case that, for some time, publishers were only interested in new additions to their Worms franchise, he revealed.

Eventually, though, an opportunity arrived for the team to develop independently.  “We thought, if we can actually get the money together to make this game, we can publish it ourselves,” said Dennis – without the “pressure” that comes with working directly for a publisher.

Why the decision to relaunch Alien Breed, as opposed to creating an entirely new concept?  Because there’s been a collection of “Almost Breeds” sitting on the Team 17 workbench for many years, Dennis said.  1999’s Alien Breed Conflict, 2001’s Alien Breed Arcade and a PSP version of the game, originally planned for 2005, never saw release.  It’s a game the team have wanted to revise for a while, but never had the opportunity until now.

Creating A Buzz

John Dennis spoke of Team 17's work
on Alien Breed Evolution.

Elsewhere at the conference, animation studio RealtimeUK’s Tony Prosser outlined the process of creating concept and marketing videos.  ‘X-movies’, for public release as well as developer use, are all about “making it look like the game already exists,” and “capturing some key aspects visually of what the game will look like,” Prosser told his audience, showing footage created for Buzz and Split/Second.

And a panel – consisting of Introversion’s Mark Morris, PlayReplay’s Oliver Birch, Tero Virtala of RedLynx and Torstein Reil of Natural Motion – discussed the process of working with digital distribution.  Developers need to “sell directly to consumers from their own website,” said Morris, while also acknowledging the importance of a good head for marketing.

“I would encourage everyone to experiment on price,” added Torsten Reil.  “Our game is just 99c; a lot of reviews were saying they felt it would be robbing NaturalMotion… We increased the price to experiment, but found that market is very price sensitive.”

But perhaps the most interesting talk of the day came from International Hobo’s Chris Bateman.  The topic of discussion was why play is fun, and the psychological processes that can be assigned to different genres of games.  There’s too much science to detail here, but take a look at Bateman’s BrainHex test to find out which game types you should enjoy.  While the reams of industry folk at a very successful first Develop Liverpool learnt a multitude of complex game creation techniques, I learnt that I’m a Seeker-Mastermind gamer.

Well, I did find the venue all on my own, after all...