2/9/2000 | |
![]() Interviews Scott Miller
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Our interview today is with Scott Miller, co-owner and partner of
Apogee Software and 3D Realms Entertainment. Scott has
graciously agreed to share his extensive knowledge of the game
development industry with makegames.com.
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Makegames:
Mr. Miller, please introduce yourself and tell us something
about your company.
SM:
Got started in the industry by writing games in Turbo Pascal in
the mid-80's, and selling these small games to various monthly disk
publications, like Softdisk and I.B.Magazette. Got around $200 per
game back in those good ol' days! Eventually, the shareware scene
was starting to take-off and that's where I focused my efforts, and
that's how Apogee got started back in 1987.
Since that time Apogee has released 35 PC games, six console games,
launched our well known 3D Realms division, and we remain one of a
handful of long-time, successful, fully independent developers in the
PC industry.
Makegames: How did you get started in game development? SM: I began writing computer games on a Wang 2000 business computer in 1975, using the BASIC language. My first games used ASCII letters for graphics, to represent little tanks and people moving around the screen -- a far cry from today's 3D accelerated games. I wrote literally hundreds of small games on various computers I owned, such as the Commodore PET, the C-64, and the Amiga 1000. In 1984 I bought an IBM PC (256k RAM, no hard drive, CGA 4-color graphics) and slowly but surely began to do most of game programming on it, even though the Amiga had by far better graphics. It was also around this time I discovered bulletin boards, the web sites of their day, and realized that there was a big world out there and now I was connected to it, though only at 300 baud! Makegames: What made you decide to move from the development side into the publishing side of the business?
SM:
We've never been a true publisher, even though we release and
market games developed by other authors and companies. What we used
to do is partner with other authors and teams, fund their projects,
market them as shareware, and handle all order processing. But that's
not part of our business model anymore because making several games
at once is too difficult and costly, so instead we focus on one game
at a time internally.
But since the success of Duke Nukem 3D, we've been able to take
advantage of another business avenue, licensing our characters to
third-party developers, who then create all-new games with us
assisting with the design.
And we do have a strong partnership with Remedy Entertainment in
Finland, the developer behind Max Payne. Apogee's role with Remedy
is to provide funding and design assistance, plus we'll handle the
shareware marketing or this game. We also played a key role with the
very high level design of this game and character, ensuring that Max
Payne becomes a strong franchise character and brand, much like Duke
Nukem. Most developers fail to design games with the proper hooks in
place for this to happen.
Makegames: What do you consider your first mega hit?
SM:
Well, this is all relative to how well Apogee was doing at the
time. For example, my original Kroz series--the game that pioneered
the multi-episode marketing method--raked in an average of $1000 a
week for nearly two years! That's the game and the money that allowed
me to quit my day job and give Apogee my full-time attention. Then
the bar was raised again with Commander Keen, allowing me to hire
Apogee's first employees. It was raised again with the first Duke
Nukem in 1991, bringing in $50,000 gross per month--a lot for a small
company at that time!
The bar was pushed sky high with the release of Wolfenstein 3-D,
grossing $250,000 a month for over a year. Now, even mainstream
publishers began taking notice. And of course Duke Nukem 3D is one of
the top selling games ever (over 2 million copies on the PC alone),
and one of gaming's most valuable and successful franchises.
Makegames: How many development teams do you have working for you now?
SM:
We have an 18 person team internally, working on Duke Nukem
Forever, and that's it. Remedy Entertainment is developing Max
Payne, which we have an ownership stake in, but they are not "working
for us."
The bottom line is that nowadays there are so many developers and
games that to make any impact you must specialize and focus your
company like a finely tuned laser beam. You cannot be diverse--more
often than not the best, most innovative companies are specialists,
not generalist. You must pick your battle on a single front and wage
war with all you've got in order to punch through all the competition.
Those that wage war on several battle fronts are spreading themselves
to thinly to punch through.
Makegames: What new games can we expect to see in 2000?
SM:
For the PC, Duke Nukem Forever, which most people have heard of
(I hope Makegames: Do you think your company will have an IPO any time soon? SM: Not a chance. We never want to have the arbitrary pressures and hassles of being a public company, having to answer to dumbass shareholders who know as much about making games as I know about making Windows work a full day without crashing. ;-) Makegames: How has the game development industry changed over the years? SM: In many significant ways! [1] When Apogee was starting in the late 80's thru early 90's, there were maybe 30 to 100 games released in a year. This meant that there was still a great demand for good games, and people would find our shareware games through friends, online, in stores, etc. But then the game industry took-off and suddenly hundreds, then 1000's of games came out each year, which drowned out the shareware market and also gave game buyers so many more choices for their money--and less money went to the shareware market. It was around this time in 1994 that Apogee began working with retail publishers because we understand that the real money was in the commercial market. [2] Another effect of the exploding retail market, with a 1000+ game releases per year, is that few games end up making their money back, and even fewer are big hits. This is because the supply of games has greatly exceeded the supply of consumer dollars, and it's just not financiall possible for most people to buy more than 10-20 games per year. What happens is that the big hits end up eating 30-50% of the public's game budget, leaving the rest of the budget to spread between about 1000 more games. Obviously, it just doesn't add up, and most games lose out. Other factors worthy of lengthy overview include the Internet, the consolidation of publishers, the overall inexperience of young developers in our industry, and the obligation every publisher seems to have to clone the current hot games. Makegames: What is the biggest mistake you've seen game developers make?
SM:
There are far too many game design and gameplay mistakes being
repeated from previous games. In other words, too many project
leaders and game designers in the development industry are not
learning well from the industry's past. I attribute this to the large
number of games being made, and therefore the necessity to hire and
promote relatively inexperienced developers to a key role in the game
design process. After all, there's only a limited pool of designers
with five to seven plus years of real game development experience, and
that's generally a minimum of what's needed to play a leadership role
on a project. Too many projects that I'm aware of lack experienced
leadership.
One of the terms we invented at Apogee about 10 years ago is "shit
filter." For example, a good designer must have a good shit filter,
which i the experience and talent to know which ideas are bad and
just plain stupid, and have no business making it into the game.
There are a lot of designers "out there" that do not have adequate
shit filters, and a good shit filter can only come from years of
experience, both playing and making games. Makegames: Do you have any advice for game developers just getting started?
SM:
Play other games, and learn, learn, learn! Read sites like this
one and
www.gamasutra.com. Also, whether you want to be an artist,
level designer, modeler, or coder, you must take it upon yourself to
practise endlessly. Build a demo or a portfolio of your work--it's
your best ticket into the industry.
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Scott Miller
Apogee Software, Ltd. and 3D Realms Entertainment http://www.3drealms.com |
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