OneBigGame - Philanthropic Publishing Feature

The release of Zoe Mode's Chime last Wednesday effectively marked lift-off for OneBigGame. After roughly three years of preparation, the publisher marked its ascent into the gaming stratosphere with an XBLA music game reminiscent of Tetris and Lumines. But there's a difference between OneBigGame and every other game publisher out there; a unique selling point for its portfolio of titles. The good ship OneBigGame goes by the call sign 'charity'. It is, to all intents and purposes, a not-for-profit organisation that donates the vast majority of its revenues to the Starlight and Save the Children foundations, while its entire staff currently works on a purely voluntary basis.

When the outfit started out, OneBigGame was precisely that: one big game. The organisation's Director, Martin De Ronde had come up with the idea of creating a single game built from the submissions of many well-renowned game designers. "The original idea was to have one big game with contributions from individual game designers. Then, because the feedback was so good, we decided to involve more people and make a more practical approach by going for smaller games," De Ronde told us in a recent interview. Now, further to Chime, OneBigGame has three more announced projects in the pipeline: an iPhone game from Masaya Matsuura's NanaOn-Sha studio, a project at Amsterdam's Little Chicken studio that's being overseen by David Perry, and a title from Charles Cecil's Revolution Software.

The attachment of high-profile designers to these projects is crucial for De Ronde: "We always boast that we are a $40-50 billion industry; we're bigger than movies, music, and TV. But if you look at all those other industries and the amount of charitable work their celebrities do, then it dwarves what the game industry is doing. That's one of the reasons we said, 'Let's try and see if we can change something like that'. And we have celebrities - they're called videogame designers - and we even have celebrities in the form of videogame characters. That was our starting point and when we pitched OneBigGame to various developers and designers, everybody immediately grasped it."

De Ronde, who made his name in the game industry at Guerrilla with the original Killzone, decided to leave the studio in 2004 when work began to ramp up on Killzone 2. "It was time to move on and, shortly after, we sold the studio to Sony. I was given a non-compete, which I totally understand because they don't want you to setup another Guerrilla the next day and hire away all the people," he said. This non-compete, which is essentially a contract that stops departing employees from working in competing companies, gave De Ronde what he describes as "three sabbatical years". This allowed him to pursue independent projects and notions that he'd been mulling over during his career, of which OneBigGame was the foremost in his mind.

"I'd always been playing around with the notion of doing it and the timing was absolutely perfect," De Ronde said. "I had a new challenge; a new project to work on and I wasn't doing anything competitive. I approached Sony and said, 'Look, I'm going to do this, is that under the rules of the non-compete?' and they said, 'absolutely fine'. Sony was very supportive and even keen to support OneBigGame at this moment." As the concept began to take shape, De Ronde started to form a workable economic model for the project. In its current form, this model donates 80% of the revenue from a OneBigGame release to the publisher's chosen charities. The remaining 20% is then used to cover out-of-pocket costs, or to re-invest in future releases. As the company currently operates, none of this revenue goes into the pocket of people who work for OneBigGame.

Full-time employees are a possibility at some stage as the publisher expands, but it's all entirely voluntary at the moment. In fact, De Ronde even invested money in the project to start it up but insists that, "I've never gotten anything out of it and I will not get anything out of it. I will very likely remain the same as all the other people: being a volunteer on OneBigGame." This pledge extends down to the developers as well. Despite the considerable time and expenses involved in making any videogame (regardless of how small or independent), none of OneBigGame's developers will receive a single royalty payment for their creations. However, these developers are allowed to retain the intellectual property of their games, meaning that they could theoretically release a profit making sequel should their initial OneBigGame release become a rip-roaring success.

Zoe Mode's Chime released under these premises over Xbox Live Arcade last Wednesday. For a game that arguably offers as much replay value as many other XBLA titles priced at 800 Microsoft Points, it's perhaps surprising that OneBigGame opted for the 400 MP price point. Having played it, we can say with certainty that Chime represents very good value for money (regardless of whether it's a charitable project or not) and De Ronde has been quick to distinguish the difference between its charitable status and the games it creates, stating in this month's Edge, "'charity' has a strange connotation to it - it almost sounds below-par. Chime is a fantastic game, and I want all our games to be developed as entertainment games - gifts, almost, from us to the industry and consumers."

WINtA

The most far-developed of OneBigGame's other gifts is Masaya Matsuura's WINtA (War Is Not The Answer). Having been demoed live at last year's GameCity, WINtA has received more public exposure so far than the other remaining projects in OneBigGame's pipeline. Matsuura-san (a rhythm game pioneer who created PaRappa the Rapper) is working with his NanaOn-Sha studio to design the project for iPhone, which De Ronde described as, "Dance Dance Revolution for your fingers instead of your legs". A second studio (Triangle Studios based in The Netherlands) has also been brought on board to do the bulk of WINtA's development work.

"It's very much a departure from the direction that most music games have gone in at this moment, which is the note highway etc.," De Ronde told us. "Matsuura-san very much wanted to move away from that and he wanted to see how he could integrate all the touch-specific elements from the iPhone into the game design of music/rhythm-action games, of which he is basically the inventor."

However, De Ronde is unsure whether WINtA will be the next of OneBigGame's titles to launch, despite the fact that it is further along in development than any of its other projects. "I'm not sure if we're going to release this game straight after Chime. Otherwise people might get the impression that OneBigGame is a music game publisher, so it's likely going to be our third game," De Ronde explained. "Hopefully, like with Chime, we can link over some great names from the music industry to it as well . . . all will be revealed on that aspect at a later stage."

3D Deathchase

This next project is being spearheaded by David Perry, the legendary designer behind Mega-Drive classics such as Aladdin, Earthworm Jim, and Cool Spot (notable because they were licensed games that were actually good), as well as more recent PC hits Messiah and MDK. Today Perry's time is taken up working on his own Gaikai cloud gaming project, although he has pledged his name and insights to OneBigGame for a remake of the ZX Spectrum's 3D Deathchase. While the game's development is coming along slowly at the moment, there's one thing that De Ronde is sure about...

"The game is obviously not going to be called 3D Deathchase," he told us. "It was inspired by that game, but calling any game in our portfolio something with the word "Death" doesn't sit well with the charity angle, so it's going to be slightly different in terms of the name." By De Ronde's own admittance though, Gaikai is taking up a lot of Perry's time at the moment, which has left him a bit "swamped". De Ronde is keen to ensure that these projects aren't rushed to market though and, instead, wants to "release these games when they're absolutely good to go. The last thing we want to have is to churn out average games and hope that people are going to buy it because it's for charity."

With this in mind, another small developer from The Netherlands called Little Chicken has been drafted in to handle the bulk of the game's development (as Triangle Studios has been for NanaOn-Sha). "That's common for OneBigGame: we try and hook-up people with each other and try to turn these projects into collaborative projects because, obviously, our main enemy is not a lack of enthusiasm; it's time," explained De Ronde, who likened Perry's relationship with Little Chicken to Shigeru Miyamoto and the Nintendo studios. "It's not hands on; he's the one that has the final say in everything, and that's how we structure the collaborations between our indie developers and the creative geniuses that we have working on OneBigGame projects at the moment."

Nonetheless, De Ronde assured us that Little Chicken is making "interesting progress" with the title, and promised an "interesting art direction" with it. "Obviously you have to translate Spectrum inspired graphics into something that's appealing for 2010, so I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised when you see the first screenshots come out of that studio." The game, which originally featured pursue-and-destroy style racing against two rival motorbikes through a virtual forest, is currently being coded by the Little Chicken team in Flash as a browser-based PC release.

Revolution Software's Minesweeper Remake With A Twist

Charles Cecil's Revolution Software, a studio that found fame with cult 90s point-and-click adventure games such as Beneath a Steel Sky and the Broken Sword series, has recently emerged in the limelight once again with Wii, DS, and iPhone ports of its original Broken Sword game from 1996. When De Ronde approached Cecil to work on a OneBigGame title, this must've been the last thing he expected the designer to say in return:

"He said, 'Why don't I do an adventure game version of one of the most abstract and one of the most played games in the world?' which is obviously Minesweeper, which came with Windows 95. He came up with a back-story and a reason why you can have a character in a game like Minesweeper and a completely new action adventure game mechanic based on the principles of Minesweeper," recalled De Ronde, who has played early prototypes of the game and was quick to note that the game mechanics are sound. Now, the bulk of the game's development lies in adding content and building levels.

"If you say it's Minesweeper meets Advance Wars," said De Ronde, "then I think you're very close to being able to imagine what the game is like. There are multiple levels, a huge map that you have to conquer, and every single level doesn't play out as an RTS (as was the case in Advance Wars), but it is firmly rooted in the original Minesweeper mechanic with some added features."

"The cool thing about it is that it's turned into an action adventure more than even an adventure game, and the whole story is told by the same kind of storytelling mechanics as you experience in Advance Wars," De Ronde added, who is promising the first batch of screenshots for the game soon and was able to tell us that its development is currently at the early Alpha stage. As with the 3D Deathchase remake, Cecil's take on Minesweeper is also being developed in Flash with the browser-based PC market in mind. However, with the success of Chime on XBLA, De Ronde is earmarking both Cecil and Perry's projects for premium download channels as well. He even hinted that Chime may be heading to other digital distribution platforms in the future as well.

Unannounced Projects

Beyond these three semi-announced games, OneBigGame has yet more projects in the pipeline as well. Although De Ronde wasn't prepared to reveal any specific names or details to us, his hints were both promising and curious. "We're working with the designer of one of the most famous games in the world. He's currently crafting a prototype together with us based on his original epic game in the field of videogames," De Ronde said, with an intriguing stress on the word "epic". This led us to think that he might have been alluding to Warren Spector (Epic Mickey), although there's a whole load of speculation in that so take it with a hefty pinch of salt.

"That's going forward very well," De Ronde said of the project. "It's probably just as advanced as some of the other titles we've been discussing, but it's not officially done and dusted yet in terms of context and everybody agreeing to him being able to contribute because obviously there are a lot of parties involved and the franchise obviously needs to be checked. So we can't announce it yet, but that's getting a key focus from us right now."

Further unannounced projects come in the form of indie games that were already in development before their designers approached De Ronde and asked whether they could fit under the OneBigGame banner. "We got approached by a couple of developers with two projects: there's one really innovative World of Goo style game that's been pitched to us, which we're now helping to develop; we're very closely involved with that. And then there's another game that's nearly done and that's very much an industry game. It's completely in Flash and will be revealed shortly."

Confused as to what the term "industry game" actually means, we asked De Ronde for clarification: "I would almost say it's an in-crowd game," De Ronde answered. "It's a game which touches upon many aspects that you and I know in the industry, so it's a funny game. Once we reveal it you will understand what I mean by 'industry' or 'insider game'."

TVG would like to thank Martin De Ronde, the Director of OneBigGame, for taking the time to speak with us. Stay tuned for more news on OneBigGame titles via TVG or the OneBigGame website...