[This article was originally published in the October 2002 issue of ASPects.]

Money. Time. Quality.

All three of these items are good things, in general, and regardless of our individual situations, we could always benefit from more of each. Extra money provides opportunities, and there is never enough time. Likewise, any operation can benefit from improved quality.

Though I cannot help directly with the time and money, I want to provide you with a way of thinking about quality that can allow you to make more money and better utilize your time. This topic begins with a question.

[continued in Quality – What is it?]

Quality takes time.

One of our three basic tenets at Digital Gamecraft is Quality. The applicable dictionary definition of quality is “superiority of kind”. As the term is intended and understood around here, it is an attitude that only excellent work is acceptable. This approach is represented by our corporate motto:

“Nothing Short of a Masterpiece.“

Note that we take this attitude to heart and always attempt to perform at the best of our abilities. It does not mean that we always necessarily succeed, nor (as per the earlier Voltaire quote) that we have to create perfection or the ultimate product. What it does mean is that we strive for the best and do not make decisions obviously contrary to that goal. When faced with a decision, we will sometimes recite this motto to remind ourselves of the objective.

For the next few weeks, I intend to republish a series of four of my articles, written for ASPects, the monthly newsletter of the Association of Shareware Professionals, on the topic of quality (game) software development. In keeping with the style and length of blog postings here, each article will be broken into sections. These were originally published about 3.5 years ago, but the content should be just as relevant today.

Please enjoy.

Freedom is indivisible; we have it all, or we are not free.
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

A new documentary about video games is available online.

Beyond Pong: The Evolution of Video Games is a student documentary produced by Andy Nwoye of Michigan State University. The film is described as “a story about how video games have ‘come of age’ and how some have taken their passion for gaming to the next level.” It is driven by many interviews of people who have grown up with video games over the past 30 years and have a connection to them.

I was fortunate enough to be interviewed for Beyond Pong last June, and I do appear in the documentary (as does my younger son, William). Other interviewees included Jay Semerad of Red Leader Audio, Brian Winn of MSU’s GEL (Games for Entertainment & Learning) Lab, and Dr. Henry Jenkins of MIT, to name just a few.

The documentary can be viewed at the Beyond Pong web site. Note that the full running time is 40 minutes and it requires QuickTime 7 to play. (That latter requirement delayed this posting somewhat.)

My interview took place in my office, so the curious can see some of my working environment. It must be said, however, that my Williams Fun-Fest pinball machine steals the show. If one looks very closely, one can see a part of my large game book collection, too. (The book close-ups are just what I have directly behind me as I type this.) The shot of me getting beaten in Midtown Madness 3 by my son is in the living quarters, outside the office door.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to go to the gym to lose the 20+ pounds that camera added…

This is not exactly a postmortem, but rather a memorial.

In early 2000, SophSoft began development of MVP Backgammon Professional for MVP Software. The beta testing began later that year and continued into 2001. Today is the fifth anniversary of our last beta build of the product, which is yet to be released, unfortunately.

It is certainly not unusual to have game projects cancelled and/or never released, but this was one of the best we developed to not see the light of day. To my knowledge, the game was never actually cancelled, just stalled for some reason. Several months later, communications with MVP Software failed and we parted ways. The breakdown did not appear to be limited to our product, however, as their web site has not changed since then, with one exception. Earlier this year, the technical support forum, which was the only real sign of life, was removed in favor of only providing email support.

Recently, I fired up MVP Backgammon Pro for the first time in quite a while, and the experience was strange. On one hand, playing the game again was inspiring. Everything about the game holds up really well, given the virtual dust that has had the chance to accumulate. All of the graphics and sounds are good, and the custom trained neural network plays a world class game of Backgammon, as well as Acey Deucey, a variant. There is also support for multiplayer games via network, modem, or serial cable. I had even forgotten how nice the checker animations looked.

On the other hand, it was slightly depressing to realize that this essentially complete game was never made available for purchase. Knowing approximate sales figures for its predecessor (through 2001, of course), I am confident that the game could have had total sales in the mid six figures (US dollars) by now. Five years ago, I was really only waiting to bump the version number to 1.0 and have it released; even the limited demo version was done. Over all these years, I have only found one minor bug, so it was basically ready to go.

The obvious question is why the game was not released, to which I was not given (and do not have) a clear answer. I know that there was the intention to connect MVP Backgammon Pro to their (still unfinished) game service, Classic Entertainment Online. I disagreed with that decision, arguing that the first version should be released without that feature, anticipating an upgrade (free) when CEO went online. In retrospect, I have to say that I was correct, since we could have had almost 5 years of sales at this point.

One can see our Current Projects preview page featuring MVP Backgammon, which contains screenshots and program artwork, as it existed in 2001. It is also still the top product on the MVP Software Coming Attractions page, listed as “Coming soon.“

Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien. — Voltaire

Finally, business is starting to return to normal (busy) around here.

In the last couple of weeks, lots of things have been happening at SophSoft. The fruits of all of our efforts in the recent past will be revealed in time. Unfortunately, there is precious little that I can write about publicly yet, so here is a quick summary of recent events of interest.

Last Sunday, there was a chapter meeting of the Southern Michigan IGDA. This was a fairly busy meeting, including a presentation by Eric Arnold of Volition on the development of the multi-platform retail game, The Punisher, and a discussion and demonstration by Scott Brodie and Brandon Furtwangler of their IGF winner, Ballistic, which can be downloaded from the game website.

The meeting was at (nearby) Michigan State University this time, and one MSU student who probably should have been there was Lindsey Poisson. She wrote an insightful opinion piece about video games in The State News, the article having appeared in the previous Friday [April 7] edition of the paper.

This editorial follows on the (real) news that a federal judge has ruled that the new Michigan law restricting sales of video games to minors is unconstitutional and handed down a permanent injunction. You can read about the story on CNet and Gamasutra. Of course, our Governor is making noises about wasting more taxpayer money by challenging this ruling.

In response to the onslaught of attacks from state and federal legislators, the Video Game Voters Network was launched in March. Even though every piece of similar legislation so far has been ruled unconstitutional, it is unlikely that politicians will quit pandering (like prostitutes) to noisy fringe groups, stop the attacks on our industry, and start to focus on important issues, until we make ourselves heard. Speak up.

Of course, in addition to the political battles, there is also the legal front, and the Entertainment Software Association, among others, has done much to defend video games in court. Now, the ESA is suing the State of Illinois to recover legal costs in fighting the anti-game legislation that has since, unsurprisingly, been ruled unconstitutional as well. As I understand it, the basis for the lawsuit is, essentially, that Governor Blagojevich and others knew and accepted the ultimate outcome, but proceeded with the political exercise anyway. The Michigan Senate hearings that I attended included discussion of “skirting” the First Amendment here, so another suit would not surprise me.

Alas, it is difficult to keep track of the news about states jumping on the anti-game bandwagon (Maryland, Virginia, Missouri, Florida, Tennessee, Utah, Iowa, Indiana, to my recollection), so it is important to note that Georgia is offering tax incentives for video game development, following the lead of Louisiana, which created a successful program to attract game developers to that state.

Tomorrow, we will recognize an unusual game anniversary.

Dateline: Washington, DC

In an emergency late night session, the United States Senate passed a bill significantly restricting the manufacturing and sales of most video games in this country. The bill, introduced by Senators Joseph Lieberman (D-Connecticut), Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-New York), and Evan Bayh (D-Indiana) was presented as an attempt to obviate the onslaught of similar legislation in various states.

The bill, known as the Bayh, Clinton and Lieberman Act, passed by a surprising vote of 58-42, split along party lines, with the three Democratic sponsors voting with the Republicans. Passage was not achieved without significant negotiation, however. Bill Frist (R-Tennessee) led a group of Republicans to insert language, dubbed the “Abramoff Amendment”, which clarified that ‘gaming‘ would not be covered by this ‘game‘ bill. He also insisted on extending restrictions to cover game advertisements (the “Frist Amendment”).

Supporters of the bill heralded its passage, while supporters of the First Amendment were strangely silent. In a press conference shortly after the vote, Clinton, Lieberman, Frist, and Senate President Pro Tem Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) addressed the weary press corps, each in turn describing the bill as “a victory of bipartisanship”.

When asked about her political plans for 2008 and whether she felt that Sen. Lieberman’s stand against video games cost Al Gore the Presidency in 2000, Clinton replied, “Video game players don’t vote, and how much difference could 74 million Americans make, anyway?”

Lieberman quickly added, “That was all Tipper’s fault,” in an apparent reference to Tipper Gore’s very public (and similar) attacks on rock and roll music in the 1980s.

Frist was questioned about the fact that games such as America’s Army, used by the US Army for recruitment and training, would be outlawed, to which he responded that “We have already appropriated 250 billion dollars [$250,000,000,000] for the war in Iraq, and soldiers should be getting plenty of target practice there.”

Stevens added, “If the Senate President [Vice President Dick Cheney] can find people to shoot domestically, then so can other Americans.”

The Whitehouse confirmed that President Bush intends to sign the legislation when it reaches his desk, primarily because he lost his veto stamp shortly after his first inauguration. Whitehouse Press Secretary Scott McClellan indicated that Bush plans to attach a signing statement declaring that the act will not be interpreted to restrict any version of Whack-A-Mole, “’cause that’s his favorite.”

The House of Representatives is expected to bring the matter to the floor for a vote later today.

I return to this blog in the manner of our local weather.

The calendar says that it has been Spring for more than a week, but this is Michigan. Last Saturday morning, there was measurable snow on the ground from overnight flurries. Yesterday, we breached the 60 degree barrier for the second time this year, reaching 66 degrees (Fahrenheit) on a beautiful sunny day. This morning it was grey, but warm, with a few sprinkles. As I started this post, there was a rain shower in bright sunshine. Now, it is particularly dark, from a thunderstorm, and raining heavily.

Just to get everybody up to speed, development on the next major project for Goodsol Development has come along well, although there is yet more to do. We have reached the stage of having a technology preview of the product. For those unfamiliar with Microsoft euphemisms, a “technology preview” is a substantial implementation of a program design which is still buggy as hell. In this case, there was a lot of development between the prototype and the point where we could actually see glimpses of the intended functionality. However, this version does work, and with a few essential fixes, it is usable. Now the real testing begins.

Speaking of bugs, whatever happened to the old “stack overflow” error? One of the problems (the worst bug, and the easiest to fix) was not exactly a typographical problem, but in a similar vein. In a certain case, within a derived virtual function, the program was supposed to call the same virtual function of the parent. I accidentally typed the wrong class name and created a theoretically infinite recursion. Instead of the trusty “stack overflow” message of yore, which would give a clue, this program just locked up or crashed. The debugger information was no help at that point either, as the recovery process apparently lost any worthwhile stack data.

Anyway, the bright spot, aside from the sporadic blue sky outside, is that it appears our company, Digital Gamecraftâ„¢ (SophSoft, Incorporated), will be moving closer to full speed operation in the next couple of weeks, as my business partner returns. Not coincidentally, this also means that I will be getting back my wife after more than 3 months of separation as she was taking care of (extended) family matters. I can hardly wait to get back to what passes for “normal” around here.

I am preparing the promised series on quality game development, and I intend to post the introduction on Monday, so please check back after the weekend.

Thanks.

My eyes are still adjusting to the light outside my cave.

I am currently engaged in an epic mission to complete a large project for Goodsol Development. We are now in the part of the implementation phase where all of the design and challenging coding has been completed, but lots of fairly mundane code needs to be written and tested. Unsurprisingly, this turns out to be a bigger job than originally anticipated, but it is my highest business priority (above blogging). The ironic thing is that once this done, it may only be immediately apparent to readers of Gamecraft or perhaps Thomas Warfield‘ s A Shareware Life.

On the personal side, I took the day off last Sunday in order for my children (and me) to try curling for the first time. Despite our proximity to Canada, where there are more than a million curlers, and the fact that our own city has more ice rinks than the entire country of Turkey, the closest curling sheet is more than an hour drive from here, at the Detroit Curling Club. The Detroit Curling Club is one of the oldest curling clubs in the United States, founded in 1885, but this was the first time they had an open house. They were overwhelmed with the response, having to turn people away at the door, and those of us who stayed had more than an hour wait before hitting the ice. Still, it was a neat experience and worth the drive (at least once).

I plan to begin publishing the series about quality game development in the near future. First, I must do before I can afford the time to teach.

Other responsibilities force me to go offline for a while.

It is a long story that I do not have time to write, so here is the brief version. My primary operations and logistical support person for our company, Digital Gamecraftâ„¢ (SophSoft, Incorporated), had to take an indefinite leave of absence to deal with a second family crisis within a month. Many of the daily tasks that she normally handles to allow me to concentrate on development are suddenly my duties again.

Since 2006 was already off to a slow start, albeit with many projects in the pipeline, I have to reclaim some extra time somewhere to allow for my highest business priority, product development, without cutting into my personal priorities. As a group, online activities account for a significant portion of my time, and for the most part, our company will not suffer for my lack of participation for a while.

So, as of February 1, 2006, this blog will “go dark” for a month or until the other situation resolves itself, whichever comes first, to allow for more game development. I will also be taking a hiatus from public and private newsgroups and most other online fora during this time. It will still be possible to reach me via email (seelhoff@sophsoft.com) or telephone, and except for the reduced communications, we will still continue to conduct business, perhaps more efficiently, in the meantime.

Be sure to check back in here on March 1st, when I will begin a series on quality game development. Until then, we will be working on two major (unannounced) products for Goodsol Development, as well as updates to the Pretty Good MahJongg (plus an interesting new edition), Action Solitaire, and Most Popular Solitaire titles. We also have an upcoming entertainment title, a productivity application, and a traditional board game product in the queue, not to mention the final build of a Japanese localization project. Busy.

“That’s my story, and it’s sticking to me.”