The Business of Interactive Media

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The Business of Interactive Media

• Bing Gordon
• Chris Swain
• August 2005

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Today we will

• Find out?
• should you be in this class?
• teacher qualifications and interests?
• Schedule and workload planning.
• Interrogate!
• Mark Skaggs, Exec Producer
• Nox, Red Alert, Battle for Middle Earth, etc
• Geoff Keighley, Editor
• Entertainment Weekly, Gamespot, G4TV

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The Big Idea

• Actively learn
• To protect
• To enable
• Your best work
• In the interactive entertainment business.

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In other words, Help Chris Swain rewrite 100
pages of his book!
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Grading metrics

• A your plan is fundable right now
• A excellent student work
• some professional level insights
• B good graduate student work
• you will understand your producers work
• C good undergraduate student work
• solid grasp of class discussions
• your work lacks maturity and context
• D you have wasted your time and our time

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Dealing with distance learning

• Bing lecture 1/3 weeks
• Guest lectures 2/3 weeks
• 6 assignments comments from Chris,Bing
• Summary reviews in class
• 3 short quizzes
• Four 4 hr class sessions
• bgordon_at_ea.com
• cswain_at_cinema.usc.edu

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Chris intros his bad self
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Bing

• 1982
• Marketing, Studio, CCO
• Bards Tale, Starflight, Madden, Tiger, NHL, Nox,
  Alpha Centauri, Sim Golf, Populous The
  Beginning, Generals, Sim City 3000, Sims and Sims
  2, Urbz, Battle for Middle Earth, Lottso, etc

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My bookshelf

• Confessions of an Advertising Man, Ogilvy
• How Hits Happen, Farrell
• Positioning, Ries and Trout
• The Big Picture, Epstein
• The Fifth Discipline, Senge
• The Medici Effect, Johannson
• Net Gain, Hagel Armstrong
• Emergence, Johnson
• On Intelligence, Hawkins
• The Beak of the Finch, Weiner

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My all-time favorite games

• Dark Age of Camelot
• Diablo series
• Civilization Series
• Final Fantasy 7
• Wing Commander 3
• Heroes of Might and Magic 3

• Starflight
• 7 Cities of Gold
• Planetfall
• Columns
• Club Pogo
• Sneakers

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My sponsorAbout Electronic Arts

• 1982
• 25
• 6000
• 400
• 21

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(No Transcript)
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Listen a bit, do a lot.

• Learn the big picture
• Overview of interactive businesses
• The job of executive producer
• Live role models
• Develop your skills
• Basics of the executive producer
• finance, marketing, contracts, entrepreneuring
• Setting, communicating vision
• Skills practice
• Write your own business or project plan

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Group exercise Design this class

• What question do you want this class to answer?
• OR What is your biggest personal challenge in
  interactive media business?
  
• Process
• Groups of 3
• Discuss
• Report back on another persons issue

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ClassesPart 1 Follow the money

• Week 1 Overview and Introduction to the Course
• Bing Gordon, Mark Skaggs
• Week 2 What your finance advisor knows
• Bryan Neider, VP Finance, EA Studios
• Week 4 The business of online games
• Chip Lange, VP Marketing, ea.com
• Assignments Personal area of focus statement,
  Financial analysis
  

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ClassesPart 2 Know your customers

• Week 5 The Role of Marketing, Bing Gordon
• Week 6 Customer Research, Carolyn Feinstein, VP
  Advtsg/Promo, EA
  
• 4 HOUR SESSION
• Week 7 How Game Marketing Works Today,
• Frank Gibeau, Sr VP Marketing, EA
• Week 8 Selling to the Retail Channel
• Tom Cipolla, Sr VP North American Sales, EA
• Assignments Focus Group Testing, Market
  Analysis
  

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ClassesPart 3 Making it happen

• Week 9 Pitching the Project, Rich Hilleman, EA
  University
  
• Workshop FOUR HOUR SESSION
• Week 10 Serious Games and Academia,
• Speaker tbd
• Week 11 Independent Publishing,
• Tom Frisina, Sr VP EA Partners
• Week 12 Deal Negotiation, Speaker tbd Workshop
  FOUR HOUR SESSION
  
• Assignments Project proposal concept pitch

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ClassesPart 4 Start you up

• Week 13 Preproduction, Glenn Entis
• Workshop prepro your work, FOUR HOUR SESSION
• Week 14Founding Electronic Arts, Bing Gordon
• Week 15 How to Read a Contract, Patrick OBrien,
  EA Legal
  
• Week 16 Final Presentations, Chris and Bing
• Assignments Business Plan  
• This could be for your USC 3rd Year project or
  another project

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20 (sic) questions

• Live
• How close was our (draft) syllabus to your
  goals?
  
• What should we try to change?

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Your Big questions

• Should I be in the industry? Does the bottom
  suck?
  
• Could I drop out in January and start a company
  and succeed?
  
• What do execs look for in new projects creative
  or money?
  
• How can we differentiate our projects?
• What kind of platforms should we address mobile,
  online, etc?

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That you want answered

• How do we turn a new kind of game into a killer
  app?
  
• How can exec producer be made into a creative
  position?
  
• How can story be a killer feature in interactive
  entertainment?
  
• Why is interactive design buried in the Film
  School?
  

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Over course of this semester

• How do you get a team motivated to support and
  build my idea? Even non-gamer team members.
  
• What skills and experience and organization
  necessary for good chance of success?
  
• Best way to produce games independently? x2
• What if game companies dont think my skill is
  important?

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Well try to help you find answers

• How do I find my personal niche?
• How to articulate my crazy ideas? Get funding?
• How build an effective dev pipeline?
• What can I learn from games biz to improve odds
  of success in other forms of interactive media?
  
• How convince major publisher/rich angels to take
  a risk on new type of game?
  

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Big ?

• Why dont all well-made games sell well, or at
  least meet expectations?
  
• What can I learn from feature games biz to change
  the world of serious games?

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Small questions-deal with these right now!

• Do I need industry background for this class?
• What fields will this prepare me for?
• Will we be entertained?
• Will I have time to watch tv and still do this
  class?

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Group exercise 2

• What do you think is the hardest decision exec
  producers face?
  
• OR What do todays exec producers wish they had
  learned in university?
  
• Process
• Groups of 3
• Discuss
• Report back on another students idea

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At Electronic ArtsThe Role of the Exec Producer

• Performance measure profits (vs plan)
• Three roles
• Midas turn money into money
• Capital, contracts, forecasts, expenses
• The Oracle set a marketable vision
• Customers, sales channel, promo, PR, spokesman
• General Contractor maximize people, schedule
• Recruiting, workflow, group structures, project
  plans, details!

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No background fully prepares

• Engineers
• Management, Customer insight , Business?
• Marketers
• Customer insight, Management, Business
• Designers
• Customer insight, Management?, Business?

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Today is too complex

• Engineers write 15x lines of code than industry
  average!
  
• Artists, designers 1x output, but worse tools,
  and realtime.
  
• Producers manage ¼ production budget but changing
  pipelines and organization models
  
• Alpha-beta 1month!!

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Future rationalizes

• Fewer lines of code/day
• Runtime modules
• Digital film level art and animation tools
• Proven pipelines
• Alpha-beta 2-3 months

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Bings Top Exec Producer Achievements of 2004

• Club pogo
• World of Warcraft
• GTA San Andreas
• Madden 2005
• ESPN NFL 2005

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What Exec Producers (should) fear

• Report back

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But lets ask our visiting experts

• 5 Exec Producers/Titles they admire?
• What keeps exec producers up at night?
• Best article ever written about exec producering?

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Introducing Mark Skaggs

• Navy brat
• Texas Instruments, MBA
• StartupsFreeHand, Russia, Tetragon
• Games Thrill Kill (dns), Nox, Dune, Red Alert 2,
  CC Generals, LOTR Battle for Middle Earth
  

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How Mark Skaggs works

• Unit design on paper
• Painterly visual prototyping
• Map/strategy game paper prototype
• Level design teams
• Multiplay for balance and AI creation

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Command and Conquer Generals

• Unit and weapon physics
• Interactive environments
• Generals and AI
• Upgrades and scoring

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Thanks Mark!
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Assignment 1 Your Personal Focus Statement

• What problem or project do you want to address?
• What do you want to learn?
• Why will it be worth 3 months of your time?
• One page. Due via email, by Friday.

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Discussion