Game on at university

Will it ever be game over for the meteoric rise of the computer games industry?

Since the early days of Pong, Space Invaders, and Pacman, growth in the gaming sector has exploded. Anyone operating under the idea that computer games are simply a pastime relegated to the rooms of teenage boys is living in denial. Unlike entertainment peers in Hollywood and the music business, the gaming industry hasn’t been hampered by the rise of computers and the internet. Rather, it has been born out of it and harnessed it. Spurred on by rapid advancements in technology and the millennial generation coming of age, the overall gaming market is set to break $100bn annually by 2017 – putting it on a par with the movie industry.

It’s also an industry in a symbiotic relationship with universities stretching back to the inception of gaming (see box out on gaming’s early history). From a talent perspective, developing coding and animation skills necessary for gaming development is a journey that begins with an undergraduate degree, with the allure of developing games at world renown studios the millennial equivalent of blasting out a guitar solo on festival stages a generation ago. Even that ambition may be considered outdated by some, with smartphones enabling students to kick in the door of opportunity and launch their own start-up.

Probably the most notable of these start-ups began in the Helsinki University of Technology (now the Aalto University School of Science) in 2003. Founded on the back of the success of the dubiously named game demo King of Cabbage World at a Finnish gaming event, three students would go on to form the company that would become Rovio Entertainment. Rovio would later enjoy skyrocketing success on the back of Angry Birds, its 52^nd game, which since 2009 has gone to be downloaded a staggering two billion times across a range of platforms, including iOS, Android, games consoles, and PCs. Rovio’s success, which amounted to €152m ($206m) in revenues during 2012 and has replaced Nokia as the go to story of Finnish commercial accomplishment.

Another household name in the gaming world, Bungee, also traces its roots back to university. Its two founders, Jason Jones and Alex Seropian, met at University of Chicago in 1991. Eight years later, Bungie would begin work on Halo. The size and scope of the project soon attracted the gaze of computer software giant Microsoft, which bought out Bungie in 2000. Halo would go on to be the flagship game of Microsoft’s Xbox games console, and by the time its Halo 3 arrived on Microsoft’s subsequent console Xbox 360, the series had such a commanding presence in the gaming world that the sequel gross $300m in its first week of being on sale, and would become the best-selling computer game of 2007 in the US.

And yet, while the success of both companies may act as a draw to Chicago and Aalto for those looking to follow in the footsteps of Bungee and Rovio, neither has returned much else to their alma maters – a mistake that the University of Oxford would not make when it spun out NaturalMotion in 2001 based on the work of Oxford zoology DPhil student Torsten Reil, currently the firm’s chief executive.

While NaturalMotion may not have the same brand presence in the minds of gamers as either Bungee or Rovio, it’s certainly well known to the games development community. Its intellectual property portfolio contains both animation engine Morphene and self-animating artificial intelligence engine Euphoria. Both packages have won acclaim from the gaming industry, with Euphoria being used by one of the most widely respected gaming companies in the world, Rockstar North. The Scotland-based games developer, itself tracing its roots back to a computer club at Dundee College, has used Euphoria in a number of its top-selling titles, including Grand Theft Auto IV, Red Dead Redemption, and Max Payne 3.

Eventually, NaturalMotion decided to follow in the footsteps of firms like Rovio, and began developing its own games. In July 2012, the firm released CSR Racing for iOS. Receiving largely positive reviews, the game reached number one in App Store game charts in over 70 countries, and at one point was generating more than $12m in revenue a month. Its 2013 title, Clumsy Ninja, was revealed during Apple’s iPhone 5 keynote speech, and would also go on to receive a positive response from the gaming community.

The company’s rise to the top as one of the UK’s most successful mobile companies led to it being acquired by gaming company Zynga last month for $527m. While Zynga’s games operate less like a traditional video game and more a massive social psychology experiment into sunk cost fallacy, the company has enjoyed worldwide success in the past with social network games such as Mafia Wars. In 2010, its flagship game Farmville had one in five users of Facebook hooked, around 84 million players, and created such an avalanche of messages for the other 80% that the social network had to change its messaging rules.

The change forced Zynga into mobile gaming, and it has since failed to replicate the success of Farmville. However, the acquisition will add CSR Racing and Clumsy Ninja to Zynga’s portfolio, bolstering its outlook in the mobile games sector. More crucially, however, is the intellectual property it has now inherited. The same technology which brought Grand Theft Auto IV to life will now be added to Zynga’s games, bringing with it a new dimension of graphical immersion.

The deal will also be to Oxford’s benefit. As a shareholder in NaturalMotion, Oxford will receive over £30m in cash and shares.

Andrew Hamilton, vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, said: “Torsten Reil has built up a remarkable business, based on his research at Oxford into computer simulations of nervous systems. NaturalMotion is now an outstanding example of how our academic excellence translates into high-quality jobs and commercial success.  The scale of the acquisition, and the benefit to the University, is a terrific endorsement of our strategy of commercialising University Intellectual Property and continued investment in our spin-outs.”

Universities can also make their presence felt on the gaming world in another way: hardware. While traditionally, most developers of gaming platforms will develop hardware in-house, that doesn’t exclude the possibility on academic-industry partnerships on elements of a console or its peripherals, such as the recent partnership between Microsoft and the University of Melbourne.

When Microsoft launched its Kinect motion controller in 2010, it opened the door to a new potential gaming customer. Handheld controllers, while still the peripheral of choice for the majority of more hardcore gamers on the console market, tended to alienate the more casual gamer. However, Kinect allowed gamers to play using their body, and thus opened the door to more relaxed games that were less about shooting aliens, and more about dance moves. As of 2013, Microsoft had shipped over 24 million Kinects, and left its competitors in the lurch when it came to cornering the motion controller market.

But the gaming sector rarely stands still, and Microsoft is already looking for the Kinect’s replacement. Its efforts in the space have led to the creation of the Microsoft Centre for Social Natural User Interfaces (NUIs), an $8m research facility collaboration between the tech giant, Melbourne, and the Victoria Government. As well as further refining the motion and voice controls of the Kinect, the centre will also explore touch and brain recognition technologies which could potentially be incorporated.

It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement for every entity involved. Microsoft gets to keep its competitive
edge on NUIs by investing and reaping the rewards from university-led research. Melbourne has another feather in its academic cap, can present a stronger case for more funding in the sector, and has a clear route to market for any intellectual property generated by the university, and Victoria has another magnet to attract investments and businesses to the area.

It is doubtful that the momentum behind gaming will slow down at any point in the near future. As the mobile gaming market grows alongside the prevalence of smartphones, so does the opportunities for students and university alumni looking to break into the sector. It also allows universities who are gamer-friendly to cast a wider net in terms of recruiting students, as modern games don’t just require coders, but also business managers, animators, writers, marketers, designers, and whole host of other disciplines taught on campus.

Another emerging avenue of collaboration between campus and games studio is how gaming principals can be incorporated into other applications. ‘Gamification’, the practice of using game-related reward systems such as high scores, achievements, and progress monitoring has become a focus of attention of many campuses around the world, with each establishing how the techniques can be imported into software supporting education, productivity, and management. Game techniques are also being incorporated into education platforms with increasing frequency, demonstrated by spin-outs such as Edinburgh’s Tigerface Games. The UK-based game developer is commercialising research from the university in the form of a series of gaming apps which aim to improve the social skills of autistic children.

The industry will also continue to depend heavily upon the technology, both software and hardware, which supports it. Universities out front in this endeavour, such as Oxford, will find themselves in a commanding position as gaming continues to grow. And while it may be hard to pick a winner out of the numerous gaming studios cropping up thanks to mobile gaming, there are many ways that a university can position itself early to support the development of such companies, through mentorship, providing equipment, business incubators, and proof-of-concept grants specifically for gaming. This will open potential doors to university venturing support for those which demonstrate promise – or “insert coin to continue” funding, as gamers may wish to call it.

Gaming will inevitably eclipse movie and music’s dominance on the entertainment sector. Just how big a role universities will take in gaming’s future comes down to how well campuses play it.

BOX-OUT: Oxford’s gaming strategy

Following the close of the NaturalMotion deal, Tom Hockaday, managing director at Isis Innovation, spoke to Global University Venturing about the role gaming plays in Oxford’s strategy.

How does gaming fit into Oxford’s/Isis’ commercialisation strategy?

We have a very broad range of technologies in our portfolio. We look for the right commercial avenue for each of these technologies. Gaming is certainly one of these avenues. The advent of new mobile platforms have meant a tremendous growth in the games industry and we can see great opportunities arising from this growth.

For example, we have augmented reality software that was developed in the Engineering department for to help robots explore their environment that can be used to make incorporate the gamer’s surroundings into the game in real time. http://www.isis-innovation.com/news/IsisLicensesARSoftware.html

There is also a very serious side to gaming. Healthcare researchers have developed gamified training tools for teaching health workers in the field. These tools are proving very effective in teaching lifesaving skills across the globe.

I imagine that gaming will be an increasingly important part of our business.

Are you seeing games play an expanding role in the research, start-ups, and spin-outs coming from Oxford?

Software of all types (including software for gaming) is playing an increasingly important role at Isis Innovation. Slightly over three years ago we identified this trend and set up the Isis Software Incubator (ISI). The ISI supports software ventures in the development of products or services and assists them to trade without external investment. We offer a wide spectrum of support services including commercial mentoring, intellectual property advice, assistance in identifying potential customers, introductions to investors’ advice on formation of a limited company. This support extends to include an on-site incubation facility within our offices in Oxford.

Nearly half the companies coming out of Isis Innovation last year are from the software incubator. With the growth of the games industry, I expect more spinouts in that space in the future.

BOX-OUT: The storm that came out UCLA

When University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) graduates Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham, and Frank Pearce decided back in 1991 to put their computer science knowledge into gaming, they probably weren’t aware on just how big an impact that decision would be on the future of gaming.

Three years, two name changes and one acquisition later, Blizzard Entertainment released Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. The real-time strategy game, based in a fantasy world not too dissimilar to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth in Lord of the Rings, became the first hit in a long-running series which would culminate in 2004 with the release of World of Warcraft (WoW).

For the benefit of readers who have neither lost a loved one to or personally experienced the addictive game world of WoW, the massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) upended the gaming world. At its peak, WoW had 11 million subscribers, and is still the world’s most popular MMORPG today with seven million still paying $15 a month to play ten years after launch.

Blizzard also enjoyed runaway success with its Diablo and Starcraft series of games, with the 2012 game Diablo III becoming the fastest selling PC game of all time.

While UCLA managed to miss the opportunity in 1991 to take an equity position in the company, the university has felt the effects of being the alma mater of one of the most successful gaming companies in history in other ways. Blizzard offers UCLA students internships, frequently hosts events at the UCLA campus, and remains an industrial affiliate to UCLA’s computer science department.

BOX OUT: Gaming’s early days on campus

1947 – British computer scientist Alan Turing writes the theory for a chess programme, later developed by his colleague Dietrich Prinz for Manchester University’s Ferranti Mark I computer.

1951 – British computer scientist Alexander Douglas creates OXO, a version of tic-tac-toe, the first computer game to use a graphical display at Cambridge University.

1958 – Carnegie Mellon University develops the first chess programme capable of beating a human opponent.

1961 – Massachusetts Institute of Technology students Martin Graetz, Steve Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen create Spacewar!, the world’s first shooter game.

1971 – Stanford University develops Galaxy Game, the first coin operated video game.

1971 – Star Trek, a game based on the popular sci-fi television series, is written for Sigma 7 minicomputers by a University of California student. Its popularity leads to it becoming the first game to be ported across different formats.

1975 – Claremont Graduate University student Don Daglow writes Dungeon, the first computer role-playing game, based on the paper and book based role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons.