Trainwreck Interactive

I keep hearing about the death of AAA retail videogames thanks to the surge in popularity of “casual” titles found on Facebook, mobile devices, and flash websites. Folks wonder how I can be deaf and dumb to the “shift” towards social/casual experiences. Why would I, an industry engineer with the kind of online dev skills well suited to social online gaming ever consider a move to hardcore AAA development?

I think there’s some confusion over this, since the player base buying $60 retail titles has actually continued to increase, but hasn’t seen the same rapid growth as the social/mobile gaming fad. Sure there’s been a hiccup due to global economic factors, but the group of people buying blockbuster games hasn’t taken as big a hit as say, the group people going out to dinner.

Here’s the thing, the people playing Facebook games now were the same folks that only a few years ago were only playing solitaire and minesweeper. They’ve gone from simple card games to management simulations, action puzzle games, and intricate social interaction models. At the same time, you have a generation of people gaining manual dexterity and spatial reasoning skills playing with tiny handheld devices that have the ergonomic profile of a potato peeler without a handle. They’re going to find it tough to complain when they get their hands on an Xbox 360 or PS3 controller. Sure, people like the freedom of their iPads and their Nintendo DSes, but they still own TVs, if HDTV sales in the last few years are any indicator.

There is no death of the hardcore as far as I can see. Instead we have a whole generation of gamers that are being seduced from their card and board games with flashy online trinkets and social rankings. The causal gamer is a myth, instead you have gamers that are being introduced through the new social/mobile games surface area. This makes me excited, because it’s a whole new way to introduce people to an exciting and cost-effective form of entertainment, and I didn’t have to invest anything. I’ll let the folks building Facebook apps and iPhone games duke this one out.

Inevitably, some of these new people are going to want to trade up to the pure, un-cut Columbian shit. There you will find me, waiting with the hard stuff, $60 a fix.

Rick Article Personal

I’ve taken a new job in a new country with a radically different set of responsibilities. My current day job is that of a developer support / consutant engineer on a game platform and I’m switching over to a senior position in title development.

The limitations on someone doing title dev work are technically and ethically different than that of someone on a platform team. On a platform, new IP, even independant, tends to aid the platform and offers me pathos for the title development partners I work with.

As a title developer, I feel that any sort of entertainment that is competing for a person’s disposable income is a potential competitor with the videogame. Therefore, I cannot in good concience create any IP that is truly independant.

Trainwreck is my ever present side-project. It’s just a name I attach to my IP creation projects that is more memorable than “Rick.” So today, Trainwreck will cease to exist as an independant development company and instead be a collecting place for my IP experimentation and other creative work. However, any game I work on here are not intended for redistribution through the Trainwreck entity until I move on. I am very interested in seeing these IP projects evolve into retail offerings, but while I’m with my new employer, they will be the sole production house for any creative work that I do.

That includes my novel work. If my new company isn’t interested in publishing my novel or picking up one of my independantly built titles, then it won’t ship as a retail project for the duration.

On the flip side, I still intend to release free content whenever appropriate. These may include simple, free games, short stories, graphics demos, and other free-form projects. Notably, these will not carry the polish or weight of a retail release, but they will give me a creative outlet in those times when my real-life work becomes unsatisfying.

Admittedly, that seems less likely given the new position. I’m within leaping distance of my dream role in the games industry. This is a good thing, and I may yet end up doing exactly what I want to do in my career. Some very good things are ahead.

Matt and I will continue to work on these not-intended-for-retail-release projects. It’s hard to imagine working on projects like Arc without him, and so I won’t.

Rick News Personal, Project Status