Darryl Still on The Way Its Meant To Be Played

[Geo]

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39402

Now, I know some of you hate to read Inq articles or give them clicks. Your choice, of course, but almost the entire article is actually a longish letter from Darryl Still, recently NVIDIA's top devrel guy, about what TWIMTBP is really about from his perspective. Interestingly, he claims only one instance of direct "money changing hands" as part of the program. "Interesting" because you'd think he'd be in a position to know, and the cynics in the community have always had a jaundiced view of such devrel promotional programs and have promoted conspiracy theories regarding their true means and aims.

 

[pelly]

Overall, a good read....This should address the majority of conspiracy theorists who believe the program is anything more than a QA/Marketing effort between NVIDIA and developers. Afterall, with Darryl Still not collecting a paycheck from NVIDIA anymore there is little reason for him to lie on the subject...(not that he would have otherwise)

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Even if there isn't cash changing hands, there's a lot of stuff there that Nvidia provides that would cost a lot if the developers had to do it themselves.

There may not be cash, but there's a lot of monetary value that gets exchanged from Nvidia to the developer in order for Nvidia to benefit from the developers efforts. Marketing, developing code for free, compatibility testing, magazines, etc. This is all stuff that the developer would have to spend a lot of money on if Nvidia didn't give it to them in return for preferential treatment.

It's the same as Intel Inside, only I don't know if Nvidia's deals deliberately exclude competitors in the same way, and it wasn't addressed in the article.

After all, if TWIMTBP is all about Nvidia being sweetness and light and helping out the developers make good games for the benefit of everyone, how come we never see games with both TWIMTBP and GITG? Obviously both Nvidia and AMD offer dev-rel and marketing assistance, so why are so many of the games we see TWIMTBP, and what are the prerequisites for being TWIMTBP and not GITG? Do Nvidia simply offer a larger amount of help and marketing that translates into a larger numbers of dollars spent on behalf of the developer/publisher? Is it that much more that it gains them exclusivity on the cover of so many games as seems to have been the case for a long time?

So while there's no doubt that Nvidia have done an impressive job with TWIMTBP, I think it's disingenuous to imply that there's no dollar value involved, even if there's no actual cash changing hands.

 

[BrynS]

Well, perhaps the cynical counter would be that as marketing director of a large games publisher, he likely still has a vested interest in promoting the TWIMTBP programme to maintain such a relationship if one already exists between NV and 1C and/or to improve links and receive future direct funding (if such practice actually occurs) and/or the ancillary marketing benefits and support that BZB mentions.

At the moment it seems to have been the word of one biased source (NV) versus another biased source (ATI - if that's where the bankrolling allegations originate) or the typically contrary and conspiracy-veiled musings of online rags like L'Inq and elements of the online 3D community that presume that any such relationship involves huge wads of cash and underhand dealings.

Really, has there been any partially independent coverage (such as it can be, via the blog or postings of an ex-developer or similar) of the process? I recall Dave B seemed fairly certain that Stalker had apparently undergone more than one round of TWIMTBP funding to paraphrase, but perhaps this was misconstrued funding/promotion in the sense BZB described? Anyway, that's my idle speculation quota for the week filled.

TWIMTBP has been noticeably more prominent than the unfortunately acronymic GITG.

 

[satein]

Even if there isn't cash changing hands, there's a lot of stuff there that Nvidia provides that would cost a lot if the developers had to do it themselves.

There may not be cash, but there's a lot of monetary value that gets exchanged from Nvidia to the developer in order for Nvidia to benefit from the developers efforts. Marketing, developing code for free, compatibility testing, magazines, etc. This is all stuff that the developer would have to spend a lot of money on if Nvidia didn't give it to them in return for preferential treatment.

It's the same as Intel Inside, only I don't know if Nvidia's deals deliberately exclude competitors in the same way, and it wasn't addressed in the article.

After all, if TWIMTBP is all about Nvidia being sweetness and light and helping out the developers make good games for the benefit of everyone, how come we never see games with both TWIMTBP and GITG? Obviously both Nvidia and AMD offer dev-rel and marketing assistance, so why are so many of the games we see TWIMTBP, and what are the prerequisites for being TWIMTBP and not GITG? Do Nvidia simply offer a larger amount of help and marketing that translates into a larger numbers of dollars spent on behalf of the developer/publisher? Is it that much more that it gains them exclusivity on the cover of so many games as seems to have been the case for a long time?

So while there's no doubt that Nvidia have done an impressive job with TWIMTBP, I think it's disingenuous to imply that there's no dollar value involved, even if there's no actual cash changing hands.

I completedly agree with you :yep:

The way I see it, TWIMTBP, is that NV themself become a PR Publication and doing all these things to the developers as you mentioned. It would be a bad decision to involve cash changing hands with each developer since this will result in several million to be spent. But what if NV did all these things by themself so they didn't need to spend any cash directly to the developers and, yes, this should help reducing the total cost of the project. At the end of the play, they still could not refuse there was no cash spending on these developers joining TWIMTBP, in anyways.

For the article, I don't think even he, Darryl, doesn't work for NV at all... He still doesn't need to tell you the turth. It's The Way It Ment To Do Business...

Sorry for my not so good english.

Regards,

 

[pelly]

I recall Dave B seemed fairly certain that Stalker had apparently undergone more than one round of TWIMTBP funding to paraphrase, but perhaps this was misconstrued funding/promotion in the sense BZB described?

Although I respect Dave's technical knowledge, I have to point out that Dave works for ATI's technical marketing department. As an ATI employee, I really would be surprised to hear any positive things about NVIDIA.

I'm sure there's some developer interviews out there that touch on TWIMTBP....If I can find some time at work here, I'll grab a few and see what they have to say.

 

[BrynS]

Yeah, I'm aware of his current employer, but this was said before he took up the position.

 

[Voltron]

another major point here is of course it costs nvidia money to implement the twimtbp. considering they opened a testing center in russia and started a magazine this is pretty much obvious to anybody with a mouse iq.

and of course nvidia and the publishers/developers are doing it for business reasons. they are businesses. just as ati is.

nvidia, by all accounts, puts a lot more into developer relations. that is a choice, and probably a good one.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Although I respect Dave's technical knowledge, I have to point out that Dave works for ATI's technical marketing department. As an ATI employee, I really would be surprised to hear any positive things about NVIDIA.

I should imagine that he'll be referencing comments prior to this. I wouldn't have made comments post...

 

[Voltron]

I should imagine that he'll be referencing comments prior to this. I wouldn't have made comments post...

clearly not. does this mean such comments were made prior?

 

[pelly]

It seems as though we've lost sight of the issue at hand here...

NVIDIA needs to spend money on QA, R&D, marketing, etc....The "issue" here is whether or not NVIDIA is essentially bribing developers to promote their hardware. Given what has been said thus far and what I've found online, it doesn't appear as though any underhanded actions are taking place. Rather, NVIDIA is wisely spending money to ensure games will function properly and take advantage of their hardware.

Consider this analogy....

Say Boeing is coming out with some new supersized airplane. US Airways gets excited and orders 1,000 airplanes and expects to put them into use within the next 2yrs. The plane is much larger than a traditional airliner and flying the new plane takes a great deal of training and new skills. With this in mind, wouldn't it make sense (and be ethical) for Boeing to spend money training US Airways pilots on how to fly the plane? Here, they would provide technical documentation and support, flight classes, etc. Assuming everything went well, you can image US Airways and Boeing would both be very vocal about their cooperation...marketing accordingly. Can you imagine the PR nightmare which would result from a crash due to a lack of training? An event like that could put a huge dent in both Boeing and US Airways...perhaps put them out of business.....

Shifting back to our topic......NVIDIA appears to be providing QA, support, and resources to developers to ensure their upcoming titles will function properly and reach a given level of performance. Once this is accomplished, the TWIMTBP branding is put on the game to provide assurance to consumers that the game will be trouble-free using particular hardware. That is not to say that it won't run equally as well on another vendor's hardware. Rather, it merely states that NVIDIA's hardware has been extensively tested and proven to work whereas other vendor's is more up to chance (ie: quality of the relationship between the developer and the other vendors).

I can't say the above is absolutely certain as I am not exposed to every facet of the issue. However, as an Editor in this industry for almost a decade I'm exposed to a great deal. From what I have seen and the conversations I've had, NVIDIA's program seems legit. Perhaps this is an excellent opportunity for a website to do an article, interview some developers, and truly shed some light on the subject?

 

[digitalwanderer]

Sure, we ran advertising for a dozen titles in the first 2 quarters of the campaign, as we aligned it to a campaign at retail to teach consumers to recognise what GPU, aswell as what CPU, they had, so they could then be surer of compatibility issues. But those ads were short lived and low cost.

Now correct me if I'm wrong as I'm not real good with financial stuff, but doesn't advertising tend to cost a bit of money? :|

That's where I always thought they "made the trade" so to speak, with exposure and advertising dollars.

 

[CMAN]

Imagine if Nvidia didn't provide the TWIMTBP program. I'd guess that games wouldn't look nearly as nice for Nvidia customers or even ATI customers. We assume that all the extra help ONLY helps Nvidia cards. Somehow I doubt that is the way things work (maybe during FX days though )

 

[Razor1]

Now correct me if I'm wrong as I'm not real good with financial stuff, but doesn't advertising tend to cost a bit of money? :|

That's where I always thought they "made the trade" so to speak, with exposure and advertising dollars.

It does cost money but no money shifting hands, but you should ask GITG how they got to use the Cry Engine for the demo with sm 2.0b for the x850. That was a very interesting transaction from what I hear.

 

[Geo]

Someone mentioned exclusivity upstream, and that would be an interesting point.

 

[digitalwanderer]

It does cost money but no money shifting hands, but you should ask GITG how they got to use the Cry Engine for the demo with sm 2.0b for the x850. That was a very interesting transaction from what I hear.

I'm not familiar with that story, could you tell me it?

"No money shifting hands" is sort of slippery for me if they're giving them something that costs money for free...seems a bit semanticky for me.

 

[Razor1]

Also regarding Stalker, it was quite different version of events, what happened was yes nV did do alot of help with the STALKER (x-ray) engine but it wasn't anything about money, until Stalker was signed up with THQ, then it went to the highest bidder (it wasn't the developer that wanted the money either), and no one was really that interested.

ATi was looking for a marque engine, just like nV has the two best engine makers in thier program, so this is what I'm pretty sure about is ATi purchased a Cry Engine license.

Edit: And the dev guys that helped with the Stalker team weren't really happy about what happened, they were quite frankly pissed because they also helped with getting the publishing deal.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Someone mentioned exclusivity upstream, and that would be an interesting point.

I was thinking of the way Intel and MS ran similar marketing promotions. If you signed up to only ship Intel CPUs, they paid half your marketing costs. If you signed up to only ship MS operating systems, you got your Windows licences dirt cheap.

So while there's not a simple "here's a pile of money if you give us exclusivity", it's more like "we'll do you a load of big favours and buy you lots of nice expensive presents, but only if you're faithful to us alone".

So it's not quite locking out your competitors, but it's working as close to that as you can. Nvidia can't quite do that as the developer still needs to support other cards on the market (particularly AMD), but we have seen special Nvidia paths/effects/use of NV only extensions, etc, from smaller developers that have to rely on Nvidia resources for some of their work (like shader code) or the big corporations who want to take the big marketing deals at a corporate level.

It seems to me that Nvidia is willing to pony up on stuff above and beyond the simple dev-rel, and really romance their targets with sparkly things, and that's why TWIMTBP has been so sucessful for marketing.

However... we've seen a lot of TWIMTBP games that have run as well or better on ATI hardware over the years. Does this mean that Nvidia is spending more for the marketing exclusives and getting the headlines, but ATI is spending less and focussing it tightly on the dev-rel efforts, and therefore developers are making better games for ATI?

The alternative is that ATI hardware has been better and been able to close the gap that Nvidia opened with intensive efforts on the development side. Maybe TWIMTBP was really needed by Nvidia to make up for the shortfalls they had in their hardware from NV30 to G80? I certainly got the impression that TWIMTBP really came of age during the NV30 debacle when Nvidia started "educating" developers on how to use PP, CG and all the other hand-holding that Nvidia needed to give to the developer for NV30, and TWIMTBP grew from there.

 

[Razor1]

BZB the actual exclusivity contract is usually not signed till the launch of a product, or when the developer chooses to go exclusive. (or more likely a publisher)

We recieved 10 graphics cards the moment we contacted ATi's dev program, we recieved full computer systems from Intel as well with out exclusivisity. nV was a bit less generous, although we did recieve 1 or 2 cards every new generation. AMD told us to go buy our own systems lol, I do know they supply select developers with free systems though but this is usually with something in the middle, like with Crytek, it was the 64 bit patch.

In the long run though, nV helped us out alot more with getting contacts with publishers, taking us to GDC, E3 2005 and was also given the opportunity to go in 06 as well. I even got to speak on stage at GDC about the our game and how we modified it for upcoming hardware, I admit I was nervous as hell, and spoke probably faster then the fastest speaker in the world lol. But it was quite fun and very helpful.

Intel just got more into the publisher side of things, with better connection just last year.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

BZB the actual exclusivity contract is usually not signed till the launch of a product, or when the developer chooses to go exclusive. (or more likely a publisher)

Very interesting. So it is more like a romance than a business deal, and then in the end it's still the suitor who is willing to buy the biggest diamond ring and give the "bride's family" the biggest payoff who finally gets the prize.

There was a title I read about (can't remember the name now) where Nvidia supposedly wrote shaders for the developers, but kept copyright on them, insisting that their work was only to be used for the Nvidia path, so there was some kind of deal done beforehand for some of the dev-rel stuff.