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Mike Capps answers 10 Questions from the Academy
And now, 10 Questions from the Academy: A weekly feature from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences wherein significant figures in the video game industry provide their input on past trends, current events, and future challenges and goals for the entertainment software community. Mike Capps is a member of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences where he serves as one of its board directors. He is the President of North Carolina-based Epic Games, the developers behind the Unreal and Gears of War series, and the seemingly ubiquitous Unreal Engine. AIAS: What's the biggest challenge you see facing the industry? Mike Capps: Game development has grown so fast as a business, but not nearly so fast as a profession, and you see the growing pains regularly. What's your favorite part of game development? I love the people; so many fascinatingly cool people are in game development. I really enjoy playing a game, and then meeting the people behind the game, and understanding how they think. Shipping a game, developing a game engine, and running a company... they're all insanely complex maximization problems. What do you with your time and your money, every day, to make the best game, the most profitable company, the best technology? It's a blast.
Industry pipes up on lack of overtime pay from crunch time
Just over a month ago, Joystiq talked to Epic Games' Mike Capps about crunch times in game development cycles and how many hours his employees are expected to work throughout the development of a game. Interestingly, Develop put the question of crunch time (among other things) to "over 350 industry professionals" via a poll and found that nearly 98 percent of respondents received no overtime pay for crunch work.When we spoke with Capps, he pointed out that, for his company, crunch isn't a matter of force but that employees understand its necessity. "Our guys vote on how they want to crunch and last time they chose having weekends off ... I had one or two that were, wow that went too long, we had a rough time, we made some mistakes in planning but that's not to say that crunching is the wrong thing to do," Capps told us. He also noted that while crunch can hurt, employees (at least at Epic) are able to take a few weeks off between projects after a crunch so as to recharge, saying, "If you scoop someone off the front lines of Afghanistan and fly them to Iraq and you put them back out and you keep doing it, performance is going to suffer." It seems to us that, like most things in life, generalizing -- for instance, about the gaming industry as a whole -- doesn't make a whole lot of sense. 98 percent of those polled may not receive overtime for crunching on a project, but they may very well receive large bonuses after the product ships, or a long vacation, or a variety of other incentives. One thing's for sure: 100 percent of Joystiq writers make no overtime pay. [Image credit]
Greg Costikyan slams Epic for 'exploitative' work hours
Game designer Greg Costikyan has come out swinging against Epic president Michael Capps for supporting what the author and Manifesto Games co-founder describes "exploitation of talent." Capps, who lately has made a habit out of putting his foot in his mouth, reportedly told those attending a leadership meeting by the International Game Developers Association that just putting in a 40-hour work week was utterly senseless. Instead, the exec claimed that devs should accept that toiling for 60 or more hours each week was just part of the "corporate culture."Costikyan points out that such a stance would be plausible coming from an industry exec, were Capps not also a board member of the IGDA, "an organization," Costikyan writes, "the ostensible purpose of which is to support game developers. Not, you know, to support management dickheads."There is more to the story as well, including nebulous comments by IGDA chair Jen MacLean that only add fuel to the fire. Costikyan notes the kerfluffle has cost the IGDA some members, though he urges current and future members to join in and "vote to replace anyone on the current board who will not take a clear stand in favor of reasonable working conditions." Fight. The. Power.
Secondhand sales solution? Sell the endings!
If the headline of this post were the title of a book, the subhead would be: "And Other Awful Things Epic Chief Mike Capps Has Said Out Loud." Just so we don't bias you further, here's his quote to Game Informer, straight from Videogaming247: "I've talked to some developers who are saying 'If you want to fight the final boss you go online and pay USD 20, but if you bought the retail version you got it for free'."So, he gets a points for creativity, but the points he loses for releasing awful ideas into the wild could form into a sphere of wickedness big enough to give Atlas a slipped disc. We know hope that Capps was just regurgitating things he's heard instead of espousing his beliefs. But we promise that the first game that ships without an ending on the disc will be ludus non grata with us.
Epic Games looks to comics for building new IP
When in doubt, create comics. According to Epic Games president Mike Capps creating comics is a potential solution to future IP success. Apparently not content simply pushing out Unreal Engine 3 tech and becoming a shooter factory, Capps discussed the power to generate new IPs through the low cost medium and revealed Epic Games is keeping an eye on the industry. Keynoting the Casual Connect conference in Seattle early last week Capps, one of the quieter figures at Epic Games, discussed how Epic Games may have "lost some of our nimbleness" as a studio focused on the hardcore side of the games industry that is locked in an "arms race" searching for graphically overpowering software while smaller independent studios have more freedom to create innovative and creative entertainment while still turning a profit. Capps related this feeling as one of the core reasons the studio purchased Chair Entertainment, the studio behind the XBLA title Undertow, an acquisition they feel can help them create more casual gaming experiences. While Capps did not say Epic would be looking to comics specifically to create IPs that would later be generated into games, one could only assume that would be the final hurdle going forward.
Epic pres on making Wii games: 'we go forward, not back'
Normally, it's Epic Games' Mark Rein that's throwing down the console-related taunts but, during an IGN interview at the New York Comic Con over the weekend, Epic Games' President Mike Capps dropped a chainsaw into the Wii. Now, one could argue the IGN interviewer provoked Capps' response with lines like, "Come on, why are you buying this system?!" but Capps held his own, comparing sales of the Wii to a virus: "So you stop playing it after two months, but they buy it and they stop playing it after two months but they've showed it to someone else who then go out and buy it and so on."Before you get all upset, Capps' followup remarks put things into better perspective. When asked if Epic will ever make games for the Wii, he matter-of-factly replies, "No, we go forward, not back. It makes more sense for us to invest in the next-generation tech." Considering the incredible success Epic has had developing for the Xbox 360 and, to a lesser degree, the PS3 consoles – not to mention its incredibly lucrative engine-licensing business – is it any surprise that the independent company is quite content where it is?[Via Megatonik]
