Five Minute Slices: The Pizza Wars

I had often wondered if anyone would ever displace Papa John's.

Not that I was asking for the sturdiest contender in modern life's most unsuspected covert corporate war to wink and take a fall, but - well, maybe I've just been feeling nostalgic lately.

Let's back up.

Earlier In My Life, ca. 1996


Your Author with Father

My God, what was I wearing? Anyway.

At this point - an obvious high-water mark in my life - I had a considered favorite in competing delivery pizza chains. Of the two actors in a then-smoldering pizza vendetta that was only about as post-adolescent as I was, there was really only one that got my business: Dominos.

I wasn't drawn by corporate sponsorship, gimmicky ads, "technology" such as the now-rigeur and oft-copied "HeatWave" box, or even promises of punctuality - sure, I'd bitch if it didn't get there soon, but come on, man, you think I'm really going to waste my time watching the clock? I was playing Pilotwings!


The Dizzying Heights of Modern Technology

Like all good business classes will tell you about corporeal profiteering, the answer lies in location. How big is your world when you're fifteen? About as big as a five-block radius around:

• the highschool
• the library (nerds only)
• Patrick's house (because he had the Super Nintendo)

I remember there was a Nickelodeon show back when that tried to explain that very concept (starring Scarlett Johansson's now-beau Ryan Reynolds, of all people), a modern equivalent is generously provided by Family Guy's version of One Tree Hill.

As I was saying. Dominos had the virtue of being there. Sure, I could have called anyone, but do you remember phone books? (Seriously, do you?) Thanks to an earlier, terrible experience trying to call "N. Atkins" for a date in junior high, I no longer tolerated those giant, raw dripping slabs of area code listings and plumber ads. It was local or bust: to this young, impressionable, sofa-bound soul, they were not merely a choice in a sea of readily-available competitors - they were The Italian Connection.

Anyway, feed enough pizza to a guy and he'll start to like it. Years of this and upon each move to a new locale, not only did I gravitate to nearby Dominos in a sort of eerie balloon-to-sweater relationship, but I do believe I was physically repelled from neighboring Pizza Huts.

But the politics of mobility were undeniable - and I wasn't the only one being influenced.

A quick chronology:

2001

Papa John's introduces online ordering. Dan S. is the first in my circle to try it. I announce my skepticism to Jennifer, and then to the world via LiveJournal. I then call Dominos on my cell phone to order a familiar pizza, and go back to listening to Steely Dan.

2002

Jennifer moves out. My feelings on pizza don't change, but I'm eating a lot more of it, suddenly.

2003

In a dark room, isolated, in secret, I try Papa John's online ordering. Nobody questions my topping choices. Nobody overhears my credit card number. The pizza arrives, perfectly prepared.

I dismiss this as beginner's luck.

2004

I try Papa John's online ordering again, this time for a party. Everyone is satisfied and happy, and no phone calls were needed to accomplish this. Numbers, prices, and toppings could be confirmed visually (drunkenly).

Papa John's is crowned new champion, and Dominos is solemnly, reverently, laid to rest and completely forgotten.

2005

Is my hair falling out back here? Anyway.

Everquest II integrates the /pizza function.

Encouraged at this news, I still refuse to try Everquest. In an attempted compromise, I enter a Pizza Hut. A sneak breadstick attack repels me out of the front doors and into traffic.

2006

Nothing happened.
I'm serious.

2007

Papa John's unveils SMS ordering for pizzas.

Pizza Hut offers a free mobile phone with pizza purchase.

Finally, Dominos allows online ordering - six years after Papa John's.

2008

Papa John's and Pizza Hut both announce one-click desktop "widgets" for ordering pizza.

And Dominos announces this: the Pizza Tracker.



The last of which I discovered only today, by complete accident.

I watched, entranced, as the bar filled up, refreshing every few seconds - as "Thomas" prepared, baked, and boxed my pizza, then handed it to "Todd", who later arrived at my door.

A prompt later asked me to rank both of my server's performances from one to four stars. I ranked four stars all the way across, not only because I got my pizza on time and hot, but because the Pizza Tracker predicted it.

I feel myself falling in love with Dominos again. I feel the ghosts of old, creeping up behind me, full of reminders of glory days and spring showers, of the halcyon days of youth and...

What the hell? Aw, Jesus, I forget they cut their thin crust into those little squares. Why do they insist on doing that?

Man, I hate Dominos.

XNA Community Games and the Skinner Box - Rewards in Games

By now you've heard the news - the XNA Creators Club Online web site is back with the all-new Community Games Beta on Xbox LIVE. I'm proud to have contributed and prouder still to see that games are already coming in from dedicated creators.

I wanted to offer a perspective on why I think community games are important. It's not for the reason you think.

Let's get the obvious out of the way. There's been plenty of discussion about the Democratization of Video Games, and while I like the term and its implications, let's be honest: it's been difficult for the industry to justify so many "pipe owners" on the publishing side with Steam and other digital distribution networks barging in on the space...it was only a matter of time. Distribution isn't the part of the equation that's got me excited.

And, if you put your ear to the ground, you'll hear that everyone's talking Retro. The old new thing, the platformers, the puzzle games, the "casual" space - of course, we're conflating generations; mixing the old with the new. Retro is Casual, Casual is Retro, it's all cool and there'll be a lot more Atari 2600-themed bands playing at the Triangle in short order, I'm sure. That's great, but that's still not it.

I'm scratching these off my worksheet. We've all talked 'em to death. Digital distribution is the future, and Retro is a generational hiccup. As we grow and as we change as a culture, we're hungry for the same things, and community games is the key to getting them faster.

I'm talking about rewards.

Pipe Dreams and Plumbers
If you remember the old days of gaming, you'll find your own examples of games that are timeless. Play them today and they'll appeal. They'll challenge you, they'll enchant you, and considering that they were probably made before you were two feet tall, it's not on account of the graphics.

It's not the quality of the visual or audio elements that defines a game's lasting value to a gamer. Remember - games differentiate themselves from movies and music not just by rolling them together, but by being responsive to user input choices.

In the simplest (some would say Skinnerian) analysis, that it beeps when you press the button is more important than what the beep sounds like.

The beep, the explosion, the squashing the bad guy when you stomp on his head is reward, it is interaction. These moments are what we dream about when we dream about making games that appeal. We are in the business of creating reward experiences, from the simplest user interface rollover graphics to the most elaborate explosion effects.

It is less an academic science in the fields of both the what (a sound? a graphic? a controller jiggle?) of the rewards and the when of the rewards (when the player jumps? when they get a hundred coins? when they build a skyscraper?), than it is an experiential exercise - a trial-and-error usability study of the messiest, most disorganized order.

Why? Because games are fantasy. Any one element that ultimately contributes to a game being a rewarding experience runs the risk of sounding silly on its own.

Let's listen in on an early, one-sided conversation about a popular video game.

...Jerry, Jerry, just hang on and listen. No, don't put it on speakerphone, that makes me feel like you're laughing at me.

...So I got a game idea.

...So there's this guy, alright, he's a plumber...what? No, what does it matter who he works for? The Italians, okay?

...I know you don't know how to speak Italian, Jerry. It doesn't matter. Anyway. Anyway. He hits bricks.

...What? No, they're not on the ground, they're in the air.

...Floating.

...Yes, they float.

...I don't know, about twelve, fifteen feet up, they're pretty up there.

...No, he hits them with his fist.

...No, I don't know if that would hurt. Probably, Jerry.

...Yes, he can jump fifteen feet!

...No, no rocket boots or anything.

...No, the bricks, they - kind of bounce. Like they were made of rubber.

...No, they're real bricks.

...No, they just act like rubber, Jerry.

...Who cares how much that'd cost in real life, Jerry, they're not real, it's a video game, don't you remember?

...No, no, no, see, if he's big, then they don't act like rubber, they break apart.

...Well, he - uh - has to eat a mushroom.

...A mushroom.

...A MUSHROOM, JERRY!

...No, I don't know what kind of mushroom. A magic one, alright?

...Yes, magic out the ying-yang.

...No, look, see, if he eats the mushroom, then he gets bigger!

...Bigger.

...Yep, ten feet tall.

...I don't know, about four-hundred pounds?

...Look, Jerry, I don't know how much lasagna he'd have to eat. That's so racist I don't even want to talk about that. Look. You just have your art guys draft the little Italian man and the bricks and the mushroom.

...Yes, you can call him Mario.

...And remember, he needs to jump in the air and hit the rubber bricks until he grows ten feet tall when he eats the mushroom and then he can break the bricks, okay? You got all that?

...Yeah? Good. Oh. Wait. Unless he eats the flower. Then he can throw fireballs.

...

...Hello? Jerry? Hello?

So, barring that, I have no doubt that some very capable designers can visualize these interactions abstractly, no matter how externally silly. They can weave the web before they lay in one line of code.

But I have even less doubt that we all have the capacity to create these interactions through experience. Through playing around, through quick code and easy prototyping, we can all tap into the feelings we have when playing the games we like. We can identify them, mimic them, and help them evolve into great gameplay that keeps us coming back. We don't have to dream them - we can create them.

New School, Old School
Some of the best designers of the "old days" (and I'm looking at you, Sid Meier), were programmers. They visualized and moved into prototype as quickly as possible, to pour the foundations of their games and each reward system into an experimental mold to play with - to bring it out of the mind and into the world where it could be poked, prodded, and revised.

Big teams with lofty designers have, I think, lost much of that connection, and experimentation costs valuable dev time. First or second-round gameplay tweaks are lumped into horrendously-short "fit n' finish" milestones. The result is little to no experiential reward tuning, no prototyping, no tactile assurance that the game is going to be "sticky" to that spot in the brain that all the great games continue to ping unfailingly.

Community games, by placing prototyping power into the hands of smaller teams, even single, independent individuals, brings the inventor/craftsman mentality of game development back from oversized teams, and the experimentation and reward designs that will be forged by these new, agile developers will, I believe, stand the scrutiny of not only the seasoned early gamers, but the brand-new generation of gamers. The mobile gamers, the Xbox 360 gamers, the cinematic gamers.

Sure, they'll look weird. Yes, they'll be simple at times. But the gamers of yesterday, today, and even tomorrow won't have to call them "Retro". They won't have to call them "Casual". They won't have to call them anything.

They'll pick them up. They'll play them. And because the games reward the players, because the creators could be close to their game, to tweak it, to get it just right, those same gamers won't be able to put them down.

They'll be hooked, and those games that get it right, no matter how small, will live forever.

It's a great time to be a creator.

Games in order: Cannon Fodder, Armor Alley, Airborne Ranger, Inner Space
Graphics courtesy: fabricoffolly.com, abandonia.com, sdispace.com, lemonamiga.com

Fewer Words, More Feeling

Lemme tell ya a story.

Late in my young development - probably later than most - I began to realize that systems of deep-seated belief remained so only by tenuous virtue of masses of people remaining heavily and personally invested in their continuation.

This did not excuse me from explaining physical systems; planes do not fly because people believe they do, but it brought into question social machinery; organized patterns of behavior, starting fairly early, with reading.

I read as a child. I read now. I don't know why I do it, other than to learn that which would be painfully slow or unbearably laborious to learn in practice. History is a fantastic example of a lesson better learned by written analysis than by structured re-enactments.

And, I read for enjoyment; every Sherlock Holmes story, the Sprawl books by Gibson, a few by Stephenson, a few by Clavell. Catch-22. A bunch of others. They melt like wax now and combine and get on my fingers and it feels weird.

But something then - and now - ate at my brain as I ate at the books.

What if this isn't the best way to learn? To enjoy myself? To gain insight?

Part I: Don't Know Much About Science Book

As a young man in school, I knew that sitting on this fear would be the best thing to do. To attain any hope of scholastic success, not to mention respect from adults (whom I already knew were my only chance of gaining any influence over the course of my young life) I knew that demonstrating a lifelong fealty to reading was paramount.

I knew that to survive, I had to tow the party line and insist in lockstep with my peers that "books equal knowledge", that the publishing mechanisms that brought us bound and set type were the wellsprings of human evolution and greater good, and that the defense of every piece of printed material sanctified by a publishing mark was my overriding and irrefutable life directive.

Certainly the only option for a young man struggling through the public school system and trying to attract the attention of an erudite crowd was to be literate. After all, if you're not literate...you had might as well be illiterate.

It was stressed as well that readers had better capacities for abstract thought. The goal, of course, was to attain powers of imagination and visualization. I think. Nobody ever said outright that the goal was to try to get to the point that you could levitate stuff with your mind and get psychic powers, but you kind of got the idea that's what everyone else was hoping would happen if they read more than the kid across from them.

Even in my perusal of children's TV, the particular self-righteous tone of Baby Piggy from Muppet Babies is still vivid now as I recall her speaking proudly of her i-mag-i-na-ci-on before diving through the closet into another matted clip of French Dadaist pie fights.

And if I thought I was going to be safe discarding the standard talisman of scholastic achievement and stubbornly go my own way - learning minus the University system (shocking!) - I was wrong. Apparently, there is no autodidact in anyone's memory that has ever survived more than two seconds in open air without a book. They shrivel up or get a rash or something, I don't know.

I couldn't escape. One way or the other, I had to merit any successes I had to books. Reading them, writing them, lauding their authors, collecting them, comparing them, analyzing them, spending my life worshipping them. Words. On pages. Printed out, stuck together with glue, jammed between cardboard. Like it or not, this was to be my religion. I liked books. But this was a cult. And I wasn't a believer.

I went for years agonizing over which track would cause me less pain. College, or surviving on my own. I was in grave danger of spooling out the rest of my teenage probationary years without clinging to either liferaft: books, or severely overpriced books. Textbooks, I think they call those.

An Aside

I mention this because it's now over a decade later and I remain very skeptical that there is any God-planted flag in the ground that declares every victory in the war of human progress as belonging to the Nation of Books. I scrapped and climbed up to the current ladder rung I inhabit now watching system after system declare itself self-evident, much in the same way books do.

Every system had the same thing in common. A group of people, several million truckloads of resources, and a mountain of money, all sworn to protect a continuously paying investment.

But what kid ever figures that out? Back then, there was no fighting. There were no great epiphanies that tore open the shroud hiding the grand machine. There was only acquiescence if you wanted your freedom, A's if you wanted your allowance (or your Nintendo).

There was no reward, no personal profit in declaring a tautology a tautology, nothing behind the door of great discovery of the whirling cogs and escapements of the world's massive, silver-age clanking mechanica than another dismissal for being "young and passionate".

So.

Having not declared my allegiance to either the staunch collegiate or independently didactic track, there was despair in everyone's hearts as I took to my first few years of highschool unsure of myself or my future as a someone-who-has-to-start-thinking-about-paying-for-his-own-Nachos-Bell-Grande (hey, the concept was a lot more frightening back then).

But something was changing. Something about the way I was going to receive, send, and process what books were all about: information. A change in information was playing out that would lead to a new path for me and for people like me, stuck in the middle.

It began the first day I heard the crackle and shriek of a healthy modem reaching out to touch an open circuit, thousands of miles away.

Jesus. If only my mother knew the long distance phone bills she was about to receive.

To Be Continued...

The XNA Game Studio AI Challenge (or, The Art of Doing a Thing)

Think arrangement. Coordination. A Thing. You're with me, right?

Qu'est-ce que c'est? You're right – I'll explain.

Seats. Computers. Network cable. TVs. Signs. Hundreds of spectators. It wasn't that long ago that I looked at these elements in a disparate way – took the glue of the thing out, factored it right out – and saw instead a discrete point where I fit. Where the specific set of skills met a specific criterion for applying, it glowed, it said plug in. Beyond that, it was silent. No pushing beyond, no coordination to bigger, better things.

That worked for about two years, maybe three.

It started simple. I planned parties at my place. Made notes on the whiteboard about who was bringing the "lite" beer, the bratwursts, made question marks by the people that were tentative – I ended up with best-case worst-case counts and food arrangements for my own birthday party, because I wanted that kind of organization. No cracks, no places where people would run into a problem they couldn't solve and look around with that lost expression that just screams out that they're just not feelin' it.

I knew it then, I was talking about putting together a Thing. Let's step back and define this.

thing (ˈthiŋ): noun. a matter of concern what takes a certain size (t) of what-have-you, a length of time beyond x whenever, a given critical whatszit (y), and z wrangling of human beings to Make It Go.

Examples of a Thing: Shuttle launch, ladder badminton tournament, three-family Christmas, rock concert.

Examples of Not a Thing: Calling your masseuse, planting a flower (single), sending a Thanksgiving card, drawing a dragon (poorly).

So, sailing: that's a Thing. The instant I stepped into the O'Day 27 with the kitchenette you just didn't want to touch, backwards and missing instruments, smoky outboard engine, I knew something was going to happen with me. I imagined bigger boats, week-long treks, meals, and unforgettable evenings under the spell of sunsets. I spent money, I spent time, I passed tests, and before a year was out, I was hip-deep in self-made Visio charts, planning Bahamian cruises, San Juan adventures, and every single one of my one-hundred cruises since that day was officially a Thing.

And there was last year's GDC, and Europe, and all the workshops in between with their kickoffs and their checkpoints and their post-mortems, these, they were Things.

Today, it's a brand-new challenge, two months in the making, for this year's Game Developers Conference here in San Francisco. And I'm pleased to report that, once again, we're talking on the order of a Thing. The XNA Game Studio AI Challenge.

In Closure in Copenhagen, I alluded that it was the power of consensus that drove it home for me; XNA had earned its stripes by the gauntlet of the Community – through fire and flame, XNA had been stretched, torn apart, beat into every shape, rolled flat, and ultimately came out a winner – a genuine What People Want.

The XNA Game Studio AI Challenge was a push forward on that concept – what can we bring that leverages XNA that's got appeal – developer appeal, crowd appeal, something for everyone?

Without taking too much of your time, I'll tell you that they called me up on this one. Told me to go be a PM (Program Manager) on this for a while. Today was our first competition day at GDC, and it's been an amazing ride so far. Our first day we had hundreds of visitors, thirty-two competitors, and eight finalists with amazing AI bots that drove the crowd wild. And, we now have a full slate of competitors signed up for tomorrow – all remaining thirty-two spots are completely booked.

I figure I'm posting this as not only a plug for the continued success of XNA as a platform, but also as a personal touchstone as I realize that a PM's mantra – for me, anyway – really comes down to being the person that coordinates, administers, and seeks constant improvement, and their unit of currency – that atomic count of what they live and die by – is a Thing.

Can I put together a Thing? Can I Make it Go? While the jury's not in on the endgame – there's still all day tomorrow and the Finals tomorrow night – this Thing does indeed Go. And that makes me happy, it makes me confident, it makes me want to continue to reach higher, broader, bigger.

To all that made this first day spectacular – including our competitors and spectators – thank you! See you tomorrow!

2008 Game Developers Conference

All those in San Francisco this coming week for the Game Developers Conference, listen up:

Stop by Booth #738 in the career expo area on Wednesday, Feb 20th, or Thursday, Feb 21st during the day to participate in the XNA Game Studio AI Challenge!

This real-time coding competition is your chance to show off your coding skill and win some great prizes. I'll be there running the contest on both days, so stop in, sign up, and say hi!

You can also say hi at the ISM Poker Invitational on Tuesday. See you there!

My Life with Games: Introduction

Note: In light of the New Year, I was giving consideration toward a kind of retrospective, maybe a word or two about where I've been yielding to more recent exploits - something like the traditional Christmas letter.

I realized that there's more here.

Something about where I have been has recently been nagging at me; I am at a crossroads, and taking my life's work further means an exegesis of my past pivoted around a central point, in this case, games.

There are many stories to tell, all for different reasons, all contributing to the person I am now and what I can be in time.

I hope you enjoy these memories - this is the first in a set I hope to expand as the year plays out.

 

January 1990

I am nine years old.

It is cold, but very little of me – save the tops of my ears – seems to care. I am on a mission at the back of the playing field. I am in fourth grade, and in my hastily-assembled kit bag are the gadgets of high-tech spydom. A stocky, blocky semi-automatic pistol. A grenade. A basically-round thing that’s supposed to be a tracking device. Even a little listening device that goes in my ear.

The devices are all made out of construction paper. The gun is purple. The grenade is yellow. The bag is constructed from two sheets of paper stapled hastily together on the edges. This departure from reality matters little to me.

I have discovered Covert Action, a game developed by Sid Meier and released earlier in the year on those big floppy five-and-a-quarter discs. I am acting out the game. It is spying, surveillance, and sabotage, all for the good of the free world.

I am at that critical age that homogenization gives way to the diversity that will define subgroups in later years. We are giving way from being "just kids" to being kids in one group or another. This type of child, or that type of child. Readers, athletes, debaters, scholars, troublemakers.

I don't know what I'm becoming. I am aloof, almost deaf in a way. A year ago, I was running around the playground with my arms outstretched, channeling my innate desire to fly. The slipstream wind over my hands was almost enough for a breath of barely-discernible lift, and with that buoyancy, I fancied being sustained, weightless, forever.

At nine years old, I have a vague sense that, as a child of my age, that sort of behavior is unpopular, even touching the tangent of the symptomatic. My mother and father fight about money, about work, about time. I feel a desire to stay disconnected from their worldly problems, but I am losing the earliest comforts I had - I can no longer fly.

I turn toward video games, by no means a new pursuit, but one recently having gained some social prominence through the development of new VGA graphics, and so, for being there when the need arose, I settled into the simulations of the surreptitious, the underhanded, the camouflaged.

I would become a spy.

One student - Matthew - stays with my evolution. He watches me cut my functionless gadgets from multicolored paper. He listens as I outline plots against world targets, fed by descriptions of nefarious shadow organizations.

And, at his most devoted, Matthew faithfully tags along. Along to the playground, along to the playing fields. We imagine stalking targets in the sewers as we walk in the shadow of the bleachers. We climb fences and pretend to jump building rooftops in pursuit of shadowy masterminds.

Not one tracking device beeps. No grenades explode. I do not shoot any bullets from my gun, because it isn't real. We don’t know how to make guns that shoot. We are children.

But something sticks, something at the core of what we imagined we were. Maybe someone saw us. Maybe Matthew talked - certainly a punishable offense in the clandestine service - but word got around.

I know this, because it is January, 1990, and there sits atop my desk a rolled-up tube of red construction paper. I did not put it there. Matthew did not put it there, yet there it sits. It is adorned with the letters TNT - a child-sized stick of trinitrotoluene. Dynamite. Somebody had made pretend dynamite, for our pretend game.

Someone else wanted to play, too.

XNA European Tour 2007: Videos from Belgium and Finland Available

To those that didn't get a chance to attend the XNA Game Studio European Tour, never fear. Our partners around Europe are finalizing and uploading the recorded sessions so you can view them and learn all about XNA as if you were right there.

I'm proud to announce two such sessions are now available for you to view; the first comes from our partners in Belgium, the second from our partners in Finland.

Belgium

The Belgium sessions are available in Silverlight format only, and require a few clicks to subscribe to MSDN Chopsticks.

Democratization of Game Development - Dave Mitchell
Build a Game in 60 Minutes - Charles Cox
XNA 2.0 Deep Dive - Charles Cox
Future View and Call to Action - Luc Van de Velde
Benelux Game Initiative - Tommy Goffin

Finland

The Finland sessions are all available in non-Silverlight format, however: the coding sessions are available in a Silverlight-enhanced format that seperates out the code and the speaker (that's me). I highly recommend the Silverlight version.

Democratization of Game Development - Dave Mitchell
Making Games for a Living - Jyri 'Jay' Ranki
Build a Game in 60 Minutes - Charles Cox - Watch in Silverlight!
XNA 2.0 Deep Dive - Charles Cox - Watch in Silverlight!


Enjoy, and I'll be bringing you more as they arrive!