By Abigail Waraker of Multimedia Futures, a sister publication
BCE Holdings Plc of Bristol, England, is in the final stages of transition from the business of operating billiards halls and amusement arcades to the world of computer games development. Last month it raised #2m in a private placing and reshuffled its board in the final stage of its transition. BCE acquired computer games developers Software Creations Ltd and Rage Software Ltd in the last quarter of 1994 and now the respective managing directors of those two companies, Richard Kay and Paul Finnegan, have been appointed joint managing directors of the group. The reason for the shift? Games development is where the big money is. Former BCE directors Robin Jones and Barry Adams intended to get into games in the first place – and BCE was a vehicle for doing that – and have now left the company in the hands of Kay and Finnegan. Cottage industry So how has BCE gone about its transition? In one way Software Creations and Rage had to adapt to an evolving market. The industry has changed overnight. Today we are using the same hardware for games development as the high end machines used in Jurassic Park, said Kay. That’s scary. To keep pace, developers need high-end equipment and this is one reason why the company floated. Kay believes the days of the small developer are over. There is too much money on this stuff to have it as a cottage industry. These things almost have film budgets now. So change was necessary to keep up with the industry. Liverpool- based Rage Software Ltd went public in October 1994 by reversing into BCE which was quoted on the London Unlisted Securities Market. Manchester-based Software Creations followed the next month, for a total consideration of around #14m for the two. Although BCE is prepared to make changes to keep up with the industry, Kay and Finnegan don’t intend to make huge internal changes. The individual company names will remain because they are recognized by the industry. The individual corporate cultures will stay too. The cultures differ and both work, so why change them? The two companies have a slightly different focus. Software Creations is a member of Nintendo of America Inc’s so- called Dream Team of developers writing for its Ultra 64 system. Traditionally it has done a lot of licensing work as well, although this is changing. Rage has historically been more focused on original development work. Software Creations signed up as a member of the Dream Team in February last year. Under the agreement, Software Creations created Sound Tools – the audio capabilities of the console. It has created a three-dimensional game for the system too, although details are secret until the machine is launched later this year. It has had a working relationship with Nintendo since 1987 so becoming a Dream Team developer was a formalisation of that relationship.
Notably, it developed the Ken Griffey Jr Presents: Major League Baseball game for the 16-bit Super NES. Kay is excited about working on the Ultra 64 because it gives his team a lead in development: The Ultra 64 is a complicated machine. It took us six to seven months to get up to speed on it. But even so, BCE wouldn’t rely on a single console for its income. We are also doing some work for the Sony PlayStation, so there’s a fair split. In addition it is developing games to run under Windows95. One such game is Separation and Anxiety, a Spiderman game. Windows95 is a completely different environment to what we are used to. It took us 12 months to get up to speed on it compared to only a few months for other systems. And the company’s experience with Windows95: It’s a very different environment to work under. His development team has found that bugs in the code take a long time to discover, so development is slowed down. Changes instigated since joining BCE are more to maximize profits than as a result of the shift. One example is the importance of original content. The days when it took on licensed work for the sake of generating an income are gone. K
ay estimates that with original copyright, developers can get $5 to $6 per game, but with licensed work it’s only around a dollar. And if the developer owns the rights, there’s scope for further revenue from merchandising. In terms of the everyday running of the business, BCE likes to keep each development team located in one place. Everything is done in-house. Freelance staff are too risky. They can do the job cheaper, but it’s difficult to co- ordinate a team of 10 to 15 people working on a single project over different sites. This helps create team spirit which Kay sees as integral to keeping the staff happy and the company successful. Most of my team have been with me for 12 years. The atmosphere is great and we have lost very few people. As the industry has changed, keeping teams together has become more important. We now have 10 to 15 people working for 18 months on a game. Only recently it was six people over 12 months. In some ways the market has changed to BCE’s advantage. Games can more easily be implemented for different systems to maximize sales. Internet game Kay refutes the claim that this means games cater for the lowest common denominator. Games are written in C rather than in each console’s specific assembly language, and then converted for each system to take advantage of individual features. New consoles have faster processing capability too, so the code doesn’t need to be as fine-tuned to each console to get good game play. Adapting it for a different console may take as long as six months, but if a game has been in development for 18 months, then an extra six isn’t much of a problem, he said. This approach enables the company to maximize the code it’s writing and staff can transfer between projects more readily. BCE’s next project is an Internet game. Whoever gets a game out that works across the Internet will make a fortune. Kay has designs for the game sitting on his desk, but isn’t giving much away: it’s a tactical action strategy game for multiple players. And the company’s next step is to look at strategies for making such a game profitable.
