Thoughts from DICE 2010 (Dice-10-post1)

I got back from DICE Friday, and my head is still swimming a bit with all the information I soaked up.

Overall, the sentiment seemed cautiously upbeat, certainly more so than GDC. Studio closures are still happening, but there was a feel that a good deal of the blood-letting happened when publishers canned many of their 'B' titles last year.

Like with GDC, there was a good deal of noise about console downloadable, iPhone, Facebook, etc. Unlike GDC though, this conference is heavily slanted toward 'big game' pubs and devs. Many in the audience are clearly biased when it comes to all other platforms and business models. They may be keeping an open mind, but messages like that given in John Schappert's talk ("don't give up on shiny discs just yet") are both a voice of reason, and an indication of the skepticism about these new models. There's validity on both sides. The world is changing, but maybe not as fast as some would have us believe.

G4 has vids up of all the sessions. Some thoughts on a few of those I managed to attend:

Disney keynote. I wrote on facebook while it was happening: "The Disney keynote is an amazing concatenation of stereotypes, platitudes, and stock photo pablum. Several of us in the back are playing 'predict the next slide'. I'll take "old folks playing wii sports in a retirement home" for a thousand, Alex. We have a winner!" ' nuff said.

Designing Outside the Box. Best session of the conference. Lengthier post here. Best quote from it [while poo-pooing convergence] "The iphone is hte Pocket Exception: It's the Swiss army knife. Like a swiss army knife, it does everything (not necesarily perfectly) but fits in your pocket. However, if someone gave you a 24-inch swiss army knife that had a butcher clever, a spatula, knife, fork, spoon, etc, and said here is the ideal device for your kitchen, you would say bullshit. And THIS is why everyone hates the iPad."

EEDAR's Forces at Play. Another one of my favorites. Lots of analysis here. A couple interesting observations though:

• The "focus on quality" the point to as resulting in higher meta-critic scores I read as just "publishers cancelled a bunch of their B titles" - it's a focus on quality, but in a different way.
• The shift away from Q4-for-focused release calendar toward more distributed looked like it was actually cyclical - meaning that early in console life-cycle publishers focus more on Q4 releases - makes sense as the consoles will be big Xmas pushes

The one down-side of the above talk (and one would infer EEDAR's data as a whole) is that while they made a small reference to the fact that they have no data on PC downloadable, iphone, MMO subs, etc, they then didn't note that these things could have been part of what was impacting those trends noted in the presentation.

Randy Pitchford's talk. The talk was OK, strayed from the point in the middle a bit, but came together a bit. I love his historical example to back the main point of the talk, and the way his talk came full circle. Bravo.

The hot topics sessions were pretty good. I posted some thoughts on one of them here.

Lots of others worth checking out, a few of them, not so much. Still, they are posted and free so make a point of viewing them over the next week or two.

It's worth noting that this is a great move on the part of the organizers, putting their money where their mouth is, and showing that the real value in attending the conference is in the networking, so the session vids are just a sales tool. [GDC folk take note!]

Bonus: Best comment from the show, IMHO: At one point when Richard Garriott was speaking, a woman sitting next to me turned and said "Is that the same Richard Garriott that went into space?!".

I replied "Yes it is. However I'll bet that 9 out of 10 people in this room are remarking 'wow! that's the same Richard Garriott that created Ultima' and really aren't impressed with the whole getting shot into space thing!"

The Developer's Duty

I attended both the IGDA Leadership Summit and the Montreal International Game Summit recently, and both conferences were punctuated by keynotes given by Chris Hecker. The keynotes were different, but related. Summaries are covered here and here.

One of the main points of both keynotes was that games are at a crossroads, and that whether they end up as a respected medium of entertainment and artistic expression, or get relegated to a 'cultural ghetto', or worse, get regarded as 'just toys'. Jason captured this slide on that point:

Chris also made the point that the industry was moving from questions of HOW (e.g. "How do I put 100 characters in a scene?") to questions of WHY ("Why do I want to put 100 characters in my scene? What am I trying to say by doing so?" etc)

His call to action was that developers should all ask themselves, during the course of their development, two questions:

- "What am I trying to say, and why?"

- "Am I saying it with interactivity?"

It/they were brilliant and provocative keynotes. Chris' big picture thinking always impresses me.

Yesterday, I watched Good Night and Good Luck, the story of Edward R Murrow's attempt to take a stand against Senator Joe McCarthy's communist witchhunt and circumventing of due process, etc.

The film begin and ends with Murrow's speech to the Radio and Television News Directors Association convention in 1958. The transcript of the speech is well worth reading (the film only provides the beginning and ending).

There's a passage toward the end that Murrow directed toward television, but I think applies equally to games and is in keeping with the ideas conveyed in Chris' speech. Given the sentiment of Murrow's speech, that the medium has a responsibility to *try* to do more - that those that develop and fund content have a duty to do so - I have to think he'd be OK with our applying his words to games in the same way:

We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.[1]

I do not advocate that we turn television into a 27-inch wailing wall, where longhairs constantly moan about the state of our culture and our defense. But I would just like to see it reflect occasionally the hard, unyielding realities of the world in which we live. I would like to see it done inside the existing framework, and I would like to see the doing of it redound to the credit of those who finance and program it. Measure the results by Nielsen, Trendex or Silex-it doesn't matter. The main thing is to try[2]. The responsibility can be easily placed, in spite of all the mouthings about giving the public what it wants. It rests on big business, and on big television, and it rests at the top. Responsibility is not something that can be assigned or delegated. And it promises its own reward: good business and good television.[3]

Perhaps no one will do anything about it. I have ventured to outline it against a background of criticism that may have been too harsh only because I could think of nothing better. Someone once said--I think it was Max Eastman--that "that publisher serves his advertiser best who best serves his readers." I cannot believe that radio and television, or the corporation that finance the programs, are serving well or truly their viewers or listeners, or themselves.[4]

I began by saying that our history will be what we make it. If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching up with us.[1]

We are to a large extent an imitative society. If one or two or three corporations would undertake to devote just a small traction of their advertising appropriation along the lines that I have suggested, the procedure would grow by contagion; the economic burden would be bearable, and there might ensue a most exciting adventure--exposure to ideas and the bringing of reality into the homes of the nation.

To those who say people wouldn't look; they wouldn't be interested; they're too complacent, indifferent and insulated, I can only reply: There is, in one reporter's opinion, considerable evidence against that contention. But even if they are right, what have they got to lose? Because if they are right, and this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse and insulate, then the tube is flickering now and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost.

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.[5]

Parallel's with Chris' talk:

1. Art vs Pop-culture ghetto
2. The important thing is that we all try
3. Indies can't do all the heavy lifting. Big Games needs to pitch in too.
4. "Cotton Candy for Dinner"
5. It's ours to fuck up, and we CAN fuck it up.

I thought the parallels quite electrifying. I don't know whether to find encouragement in it though. The struggle Murrow spoke of 50 years ago continues today, and a few minutes watching Fox news makes a case that we are losing ground if anything.

That a struggle does continue though, is good. Hopefully games can fare as well, or better. So long as developers (and publishers, and the rest of us on the periphery) consider it their duty to try, then maybe we will do better.

PAX'09 Pix

Just a few pix I snapped with the phone:

People for whom "mobile computing" means wagons and hand trucks. I love these people, and not just because they help pay the mortgage.

Lanfest room. Where they wheel the hand trucks to.

Opening day keynote. Just to give you an idea attendance size.

John Baez from The Behemoth, neck deep in merch and confusing attendees on whether they are game developer that sells t-shirts or a t-shirt developer that makes games. I went over to say hi and John said "Hi! Help me open these boxes!" yes, they were that busy. Awesome.

Sony was showing Eyepet, an augmented reality game/toy that was VERY cool. (It interacts with things you draw on paper on the table in front of you)

Geek Chic, selling very slick high end furniture for board/tabletop gaming. Some hides your game stuff under a classy dining room table, other furniture attempts to hide nothing, but rather augments your games to Bond-villain-lair style furnishings.

One booth had a mechanical bull dressed up as a demon warhorse from their MMO. Awesome. Would love to see this for a Chocobo or other game creatures. Or Blaster from Beyond Thunderdome. WHO RUNS BARTERTOWN!?!

Can a board game make you cry

Wow.

Awesome read on Brenda Braithwaite's talk at the Triangle Game Conference. 

There were audible gasps in the audience when Brathwaite revealed Train's shocking conclusion; one attendee was so moved by the experience that she left the conference room in tears

Short read, well worth it.

Thanks Raph!

MIGS (Post 4 of N): Randy Smith's talk

Randy's talk was entitled "Games are Art, and what to do about it."

As I get older, my attention is turning away from games and toward other media. Play less frequently these days [me too!]. Is this because I've changed? Games have? or are they not changing in the same way I am? Decided to spend some time thinking about this.

Some games I worked on (Thief , Thief II, dark messiah, Deus Ex, System shock)

Lots of talk about “games and art”. I spent some time thinking about this. 

Looked at some other media. 

Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics: pic of Superman vs Maus 

- ‘Closure is the space between the panels’

- Is Interactivity the games equivalent of Closure?

[McCloud is must-read for everyone in games. This one and reinventing comics as well]

Well, what is interactivity:

Interactivity: “How user input is translated into Activity on the screen”

Good enough definition for this lecture.

- Magnitude of interactivity is how much the game listends to and applies player input

- (indigo prophesy reference) Discrete vs (Tony hawk) analog

- Stepwise vs continuous

- Isolated vs connected

- Designer-authored vs player authored

"choose your own adventure" books are really “choose between several of someone else’s adventure” books

- Interactivity is technical …for now…

Language of cinema

- Media literacty (example of day-to-night fade. Used to be the film had to 'explain' this wasn't an eclipse, just elapsed time - by say showing a guy waking up in the morning)

- Dialog and such (no interactivity)

- Shooting, running (lots – because we know how to do it)

- Magnitude of interactivity

A functional definition of art

“Joseph campell – The hero with a thousand faces”

- Consistent trends

- Certainty of death

- Need for connection

- Fundamental isolation

- Stories as functional

Robert mckee [missed the quote/definition]

- Any screenplay worth a damn contains relevance, honest

- How should I live my life?

- What is life like for you?

- ‘getting through the thick wall’

Comparison between ‘art games’ and ‘product games’

Top 10 movies list, Titanic on top.

Why think about games as art

- You could reach more peopoe

- You could make more money

- Art works because it reaches people: Aesthetics

How it works, how it feels

Narrative: how it works

o Children of men: walks you thought how it works to as he transitions from self-interest to selfless.

o Cinematography gives you how it feels.

Sinead o’connor ‘nothing compares to you’

o Narrative is in the lyrics - how it works

o Music and voicing – how it feels

Message comes from – topics of the artistic piece.

- How the piece represents the work represents how it feels

Passage [art game]

o Left to right, ages to old – metaphor for life

o Picking up spouse

o Metaphor for memory and anticipation

GTA4

o How it works to escape the cops [mechanics, balance speed with out-of-controlness]

o How it feels to escape the cops [releif, pacing, less heightened sound effects]

- Artist --> mechanics --> dynamics -->aesthetics --> player

- When leader is knocked out, the rest of pack scatters (mechanical)

- Players often attempt to knock out leaders quickly (dynamics)

- Aesthetics – “I feel like  calculating hunter identifying and taking out the leader"

- Leader is identical to others – player can’t identify – “I feel like I flail in desperation”

- Possibility space

- An understood designer authored range

- Discovery through play

- “which is the right aesthetic for your message? (flail vs calculating) – depends what you want to get across…

FUN! Fairness, goals, clarity, balance

The Dogma of fun

- Topics -> aesthetics, messages --> mechanics

- Topic: licensed IP, your own idea, team project

- Aesthetic: what are you trying to say? What excites you? Why? Keep asking yourself

- What mechanics and tuning will produce that result

Post apocalyptic MMO example

- Expression of human struggle

- Tenuous alliances

- starvation economy

- individual more vulnerable than a group

- Why? Starvation economy? why do I like that as a designer? then ask why again to that answer.

Example: RTS meets FPS

- Tiberium

- Jump jets - LOD renderer - lonliness of leadership

- Audio and visual touches - fog, fade noise out

- Giving RTS orders from 1st person

- Soldier react to being sent into battles

Summary

- Maturing art form

- Interactivity is our distinct thing

- Mechanics carry the aesthetic

- Overall interactive work is a possibility space

- Are we going to be the ones to mature thie art form

- Limited range of topics

- Attached to dogmas

- Interactivity is technical, but the barrier to entry will drop some day

MIGS (Post 3 of N): Jason Mitchell's talk

Jason Mitchell (former ATI, now at Valve a couple years) gave a talk on "Connecting Visuals to Gameplay)

Rough notes below. Lots of screens and some video from Team Fortress 2 and the recently released "left for dead". Worth googling both before you read the notes below.

We'll look at two games today

TF2

- Distinctive silhouettes

- Stylized rendering

Left for dead

- Dark, gritty horror

- “filmic effects"

- Lessons from TF2

TF - Orignally as a quake mod 10 years ago, then half life mod

Class is selected by players. 

Initial TF2 1999 screenshot.

- Screen showing more “realistic” FPS, nothing distinctive

- Evolved to be stylized

Why?

- Gameplay (different classes)

- Readability

- Branding

Read hierarchy: What does player attempt to ascertain?

- Friend or foe (color)

- Class – run or attack (distinctive silhouettes, Body proportions,  Weapons, shadows, hats and clothing folds)

- Selected weapon – what’s he packin?

- Highest contrast at chest level

- Greadient from dark feet to light chest

- Lots to draw your eye up to chest level.

Early 20th centry conmmercial illustration influences.

Cornell, Leyendecker, Norman Rockwell

JC Leyendecker was biggest influence

- Clothing folds

- Rim highlights (light source orthogonally) – helps silouetttes pop.

- “red terminator” – where normal crosses orthogonal – increases saturation at that point, makes it red – actually makes sense inf you think about subsurface scattering

Screenshot from early short videos (“meet the heavy”)

- Before and after 2D paintover to make the image pop – rim highlighting was awesome.

Character creation

- Character silhouette (showed silouette of elephant, everyone gets it, despite it being orange)

- Bulding block, Identifiable at first read

- Interior shapes, Keep it iconic

- Work out design in ¾ pose

- Model sheet

- 3D model

- Front rear views

- Base ambient occlusion map, that's then used as a guide for painting skin

- Final character

- Iterate on the above

Environment design

- Create a compelling immersive worlds

- Team districntion through material hue/saturation/etc desaturate relative to players.

- Uncluttered painterly look.

- Bases – blue featured concrete, steel; red featured wood, sand.

Miyazaki was an influence – brushwidth foreshortened example. 

--

Left for Dead

Co-op first person horror, Dynamic shared narrative – "experience an action movie with friends"

AI director

Photo  - The valve “Shipping machine” (When games go live, they have a BIG RED BUTTON on a control panel of sci-fi proportions that Gabe hits at midnight. This then sends an 'enter' keystroke to a person's PC. Awesome. Took a pic, will post soon).

Gameplay movie (awesome).

Lessons learned from TF2

Filmic effects

Shaders enhance dark setting.

Filmic

-Color correction

-Grain

-Vignette

-Local contrast enahancement

-Dynamically communicate game state

Showed step by step

Color correction made it a bit greyer, desaturated

Grain – detail in greyed out darker areas

Vignette – mainly along top, to focus attention down at center.

Local contrast – highlights area around the player

We’re not film, we’re an interactive medium, so we might have info and cues we are looing to give to player

“sideband communications channel” like music score to film director

Gave example of normal stress level vs high stress

(local contrast driven higher, more stark

"Third strike", totally washed out, stark contrast - almost black and white.

[one note is that all the filmic effects were weilded subtly, but in sum were dramatic. good lesson here]

Lighting for darkness

Support fiction

- Fires

- Headlights of abandoned vehicles “clearly something has gone wrong”

- aid naviation - players tend to follow light.

"Smoking the set"

- Separate foreground from background

- - fog, light colord fog in dark areas to contrast with silhouettes, of infected in mid-ground

- Particles – adds atmostphere and helps accentuate silhouettes.

- Subway example of grey fog.

- Particles coming up from manhole

Reload shove and muzzle flash

- Player is the light source

- - increase drama and immersion (when Flashlight is attached to the weapon, and you are using it to light up a dark hall, reloading has consequence).

Self shadowened normal mapping

- Normal mapping locally alters surface orientation, causing detailed lighting effects

- HL2 “radiosity normal mapping”

- Turned out to be free by refactoring shader code

[note effect here was noticable but not huge, felt like he delved a little to deep into this one vs others. Hmm...]

Wet environments

- Film technique

o Wash down the set to geth that moview dark look

o Film noir

- Adds details to dark settings while still feeling dark

Then showed gameplay elements to show the above.

MIGS (post 2 of N): Warren Spector keynote

Notes from Warren's awesome keynote. [my comments in braces]

--

Preamble from introductory speakers [BTW, government-influenced/run conferences always have too many guys introducing one another to introduce the next guy who introduces the next guy, etc. Ugh]

- Fifth year of conference - from 500 attendees to expected 1400

- In same 5 years, from 2k games industry folk in Montreal to now 6600, of which 4500 are in "actual development/production" [why do they feel the need to break this number out?]

- 88 speakers at this years conf.

--

Warren Spector keynote

Look back at 2005 talk – best of times, worst of times; had a pessimistic view; cautionary note; didn’t think next gen HW was going to solve everything.

So how’d we do?

“I was wrong about almost everything”

Positives still positive; negatives not so bad.

So why am I feeling good?

Gaming’s renaissance … but... Economic turn, Projects killed, Studios shut down, Layoffs, Plummeying stock, etc [posted some numbers - same ones I posted last week plus a few more]

So I was thinking, should I not do a positive talk? Should I come up with new topic? 

No.

We are still in a renaissance. Optimistic like I haven’t bene in a while. 

Doing “ok” compared to other industries

We can be THE medium of 21^st century

From book “A Whole new mind” by daniel pink.

6 secrets to successs

• Design
  
• Story
  
• Symphony
  
• Empathy
  
• Play
  
• Meaning
  

Holy crap – games do all this already.

Still optimistic... because

• -          We are doing a lot of the right things.
  
• -          What’s bad for OLD biz is good for NEW biz
  
• -          We’re here to stay
  

Online: Best entertainment bargain on earth, WoW reportedly $1B+/yr; Facebook games, tons of fun and I'm not paying a dime. "$60 game is a bargain compared to a $60 date night” [<-- ok, that's a money quote right there]

Creativity

“players have unprecedented control over their experiences. Whether competing in in facebook; building levels in LBP…” [missed rest of quote] - note from a playboy october 2008 article. Mainstream press talking about player control and UGC. Holy Cow!!! "When mainstream starts saying things like this, we are in a whole new world"

So no new topic, but new slant on things:

Instead of celebrating;  Talk about what got us here, What do we have to do to stay here; What to do to continue to progress

The Big Risk

• When the going gets tough; really, most people don't 'get going', they get conservative
  
• We need innovation and a renewed pioneer spirit
  
• Styles of Innovation
  

I'm going to use a 'discovery of the new world' metaphor

• Invention (scientists)
  
• Discover (Exploreres)
  
• Refinement (Settlers)
  
• Re-invention (pioneers)
  

Scientists – turn darkness into light – ask fundamental questions – build boats, sextants, notice curvature of horizon and wonder Hmm.... 

Steve Russel, Ralph Baer, Nolan Bushnell, etc

Explorers – use the scientists tools and inventions to go find new worlds – go find new things with them, make the maps - take that boat and go west.

Will Wright – Richard Garriot, Miyamoto, etc

Settlers – pilgrims, john smith at Jamestown – follow in footsteps of explorers, settle the new world in rough conditions and settle it and thrive

Chris Roberts; blizzard, Warren Spector falls in this camp, etc. 

Don’t invent, synthesize, refine. Richard garriot established the rules that I wanted to break; Chris Roberts merged flight sims and star wars and role play to come up with wing commander

Pioneers.

Moving into re-invention: Pioneers; Kitt Carson, Lewis and Clark; Self-conscious, sometimes university trained, interpreters; internet frontier is one of them; reinventing existing genres;

Flow, Braid, Rag doll kung fu, Crayon Physics, Facade, Portal, Everyday Shooter, Jello car, The night journey, Passage [ note to self, I have played all these games but the last two. Added to 'to play' list]

Refreshing to those that have played existing genre 100 times. Explosion of innovation in existing gernes, sometimes completely turned on their ear. Elevating them to the level of art

Not just little guys, but established guys ALSO being pioneers!!!

Spore, rock band, fallout 2, wii fit, fable II, little BigPlanet; Guitar Hero; - established companies; EA doing 5 original IP’s this year. Go EA!!!

Why innovate?

We’re not done figuring this medium out

• -          Culturally,
  
• -          Aesthetically
  
• -          Commercially
  
• -          Personally
  

 Cultural:  More than nerd culture,  More than time wasting pastimes, More than adrenaline fueled fantasy

Aesthetically: How do games make meaning? What sorts of experiences can we provide? Maybe with nothing than story? What sorts of images?

Commercially: “I knew I needed to play portal minutes after seeing it because I’d never been able to do that in a game before – JPS programmer

-        Personally:

Players experincdes hundreds of games. Developers get to make far fewer. Make each one MEAN something? [note, this doesn't pop off the page, but the intonation was along the lines of 'no one lies on their death bed and says 'I wish I'd made more sequels to madden'. Will you lie on your death bed and say, 'I made a game that MEANT something to people']

Where DO we innovate?

Plenty of problem areas:

  Interactive stories

-          Developer created?

• Player driven
  
• Collaborative storytelling
  
• Better actors
  
• Character graphics
  
• Physicality
  
•  Expressiveness
  
• Character interaction
  
• Communication

"in a standard video game, it’s easy to kill someone, but impossible to talk to them"

Jonathan Rauch

Non-compbat AI

• Stuck with adolescent power fantiastis
  
• Limited verbs, limited player expression tools.
  

[thought: they are animals that articulate well?]

More compelling Worlds

• Worlds (or sandboxes)
  
•  Allow deep player interaction options
  
• Not movie sets
  
•  Limited player interaction - kind of goes against what we stand for, no?

Virtual Dungeonmasters

• -          Good stories are made, not found
  
• -          Systems should respond to players
  
• -         dynamically modify local conditions
  
• -          Accommodate unexpected choices
  

Not by Online Alone

• MMO should be 'More Mainstream Online'
  

Other

• -         A coherent language of design
  
• -          Online biz model that actually works
  
• -          Consistent sources of tenanted devs
  
• -          Reasonable approach to the preservation of our history
  

How do we innovate

“invention has it’s own algorithm"

 - Malcomlm gladwell ( “into the air” NY Times column?)

How do we innovate:

 

• 1.       Go indie
  
•     Find a patron or self fund
  
• 2.       Be famous and eccentric
  
• G Go undercover
  
•   Be part of a team, but introduce SOMETHING
  
• Join a cult
  
• -          i.e. you join Valve, you know what you are getting
  

-          start your own movement if you can’t find one.

Go small or self-organize

-          you can’t dictate innovation

-          - spherical core =  general direction

-          Self organizing teams =  execution

 Be open to change

a.       Flexibility in execution is key

b.      Blindtest early and often

c.       Fail quickly & often

                                                               i.      Regroup

                                                             ii.      Revover

                                                            iii.      Redirect (also quickly)_

Have a purpose

“bigness of purpose is what seperates the 20^th century and 21^st century organizations. You must strive to change the world"

Umair Haque - “Obamas seven lessons for radical innovators”

Harvey Smith – started at origin as a tester – was there 2-3 AM every night. Talking about what mattered about games he wanted to make. That’s what led him to where he could make his own games…

We are not immune to economic downturn. But as a medium, we are doing well. I see exhilarating joyous innovation and progress, in academia, in garages, in major pubs. Haven’t seen innovation like this

Publishers, don’t get conservative

Indie developers, dare to be great

Team members, fine ONE new thing.

Too many indies who’s work looks like a portfolio piece.

BE AN AGENT FOR CHANGE wherever you are

Geroge Bernard shaw quote:

“Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.” 

MIGS 08 (1 of N posts)

I'm at Montreal Game Summit this week. Have some meetings to attend but am managing some sessions for a change, so will try to blog notes from a number of them. Watch for them in coming posts.

Overall notes on the show:

- good attendance so far (looks 1000-1200-ish?), but they've opened the closing session tommorrow to the public, which is conference speak for "oh my god, how are we going to make the numbers we promised on our hockey-stick graph?". 

- Some great hallway conversations.

- Small show but the caliber of talks and attendees is awesome. 

TGS '08 tidbits

Just flew back from TGS yesterday morning and it was straight off to the twins b-day party, so I was a little messed up and still have a ton to catch up on. Will post pix of Tom's awesome R2 cake later.

Overall the show is down attendance-wise (at least the industry piece of it, public day numbers look like they were even bigger).

PC Gaming presence was worse than ever, with most PC games being found in the anemic PC-online section of the show, which showed a number of fat-client MMOs and VW's, and many more flash-based versions of the same. 

However, if you dug below the surface, you realized that many of the big titles/franchises have PC SKU's, and there's still some PC action going on. Which jived much better with what I saw in Akihabara on Saturday, with many high-end gaming rigs, graphics cards, and point-of-sale displays featuring games like Monster Hunter, which is huge in Japan.

Thursday after the show I went to a big developer get-together for Tokyo-based expat gamedev community which normally swells when TGS is going on. Got to hang and talk shop with many friends including Simon, Jane, Casey and others. Lots of interesting conversation which I might have some future posts about if given the time.

Friday was dinner with Alice, Cory, Aleks, and Ben (oh! Just realized it was an all-blogger dinner!). Food was yummy and conversation also good, though after the 2nd day of the show and a few bottles of saki, bedtime came early.

Best looking game of the show, IMHO was still Little Big Planet (like last year), it's definitely a platform game-changer. 

Best game of the show was We Ski and Snowboard for the Wii. This'll finally get me to buy a Wii and a Wii fit to boot. I didn't try skiing, but they *nailed* snowboarding. If you think about it, it maps very well to a balance board, as all you are doing is leaning heel-to-toe when snowboarding at a good clip. Here I am giving it a go and refusing to get off and give Aleks a turn. (The person before me refused to get off too. a good sign!)

More notes when I get some time, but in the meantime, what I hope to make a recurring feature: 

The 5 worst (and therefore best) named games of TGS!

5. Anything Gundam. Because there are too many and they all bleed together after a while.

4. Bloom blocks. Because it sounds a little too similar to a certain popular Wii title from a certain Hollywood director. Too be fair, it was a student project, did involve blocks that bloomed, and was one of the better games of TGS, at least in terms of a really snappy satisfying core game mechanic. The casual industry will surely rip it off in short order :-)

3. Worthless Story. At least they are honest about it.

2. Aero Afro. A beat-match ghetto fighting game where disco dudes fly over an urban landscape, duking it out with bad-ass beats!

1. A lot of Broccoli. Because it's not just broccoli. It's a LOT of broccoli! And that's something my mom told me was good for me. And because their graphic is awesome.

Death by GDC

I. Am. Finished.

I love the GDC. This was my 15th. The first I attended was in 94. Ugh. I'm old.

Anyhow, as fun as it is, the show is incredibly draining. I was in meetings until 6:30 Friday, and then my 10pm flight was delayed until 12:30. I landed about 2:30, and finally made it home and to bed about 4:00AM.

Today is Alisa's birthday so I wanted to let her sleep in, which meant getting up at 7. Like I didn't get enough 3-4hr sleep nights this week.

I'll post some more thoughts and take-aways from GDC after I feel a bit more human.

Casual Connect Day 2 Keynote: Steve Youngwood, MTVn/Nickelodeon

Terse notes I took during the Day 2 keynote. [My thoughts/impressions in braces]

Aiming to be premiere provider of branded entertainment communities, and gaming is key part of that strategy

It's not just kids & boys playing games, we have gamers in every demo; kids, moms, boomers... [note the lingo, this guy definitely steeped in the TV biz]

Our goal is to be the preeminent kids and family brand of the 21st century

Check out this demo reel.

(Lots of footage of celebs, TV properties, etc, *very* little games stuff thrown in there. Seems to be falling flat with audience. Only online property in initial vid clip is Nick.com, only a minute into it, and features all the TV properties, lasted about 5 seconds. No shockwave game footage)

"Demo-targeted brands, engaging the whole family"

[more talk along these lines. Clear the games piece is just that... a piece. Part of a well-rounded marketing campaign. Not "games first"]

"this is what our audience is doing online"

casual games are to digital as video is to TV [wtf?]

biz is about:

• Advertising
• Revenue stream
• Brand building

[so far, what he's said has seemed like brand-building is first, not 3rd)

on their kids sight, 4.5M kids registed in 6m - more than anyone in the space.

acquisitions - addicting games, shockwave, neopets...

• Addicting games --> teen boy targeted. 9M uu's. 100 games intro'd /mo, 4000 games in the library [not sure what their search is like, but maybe it's time to prune that library?]
• Neopets: 4.8 UU's - 172/min month per user average. launched item-based biz with nexon
• 1 billion games played per month across shockwave/neopets/addictingames

"future of a fragmented web - people not going to portals" [I agree with him on this one]

Will distribute content too, on other people's portals. 

over next 2 years:

100M investment in casual gaming sites, titles and platforms (big font, this is the big announce of the keynote I guess]

Will be invested in:

• myNoggin - preschoolers playing educational titles around brands like Dora, ... (Cox, Charter, Insight...) uses affiliate models ands ubscription model (ad free) [their answer to Club Penguin]
• Multiplayer and coop games will be focus on Nick.com
• Nicktropolis - Nick gaming club subscription offering - early 2008.
• For teen girls "TheN + addicting games" - early 2008 - N-Games.com - first casual games site targeting only teen girls. activities like "avatar prom", "Avatar mall". (Demo - tv trailer for "the hookup". 'a game of charm treachery and deceipt'. "get your flirt on")
• Addicting games - 'have just scratched the surface'. Increased emphasis on user-submitted game. intro'ing game making engine to make it easier. Expanded game offerings to intro casual mmos. "AddictingWorlds" Partnership with Habbo, Neopets, are indicative of direction. Will work with creators of all casual Mmo's.
• Shockwave - 35+ women. [WTF? Really?] Focus on innovation [hmph], Jigsaw video demo [not that impressive - youtube-quality flash movie played on jigsaw pieces.] Also will be increasing publishing and distribution of downloadable games across other sites (example - carrie the caregiver [this downloadable casual title did pretty well on the portals, IIRC])
• Neopets: Company now called Neostudios: continue momentum of neopets, build new mmo type experiences - a new virtual world ever other year. "Casual MMO's fasted growing segment in the industry"

Demo video 2. [There are games in this one. montage of existing game footage from the sites above, nothing new that lept out at me]

Thanks. $100M. etc etc.

 

Thoughts:

Overall, indicative of a growing interest in online/interactive from the major media companies. They certainly are serious when you look at the acquisitions & interest. However, some were viewing that $100M number is a kind of "right hand turn" on their part. One interesting take on this is to ask "what percentage of their total 'R&D' (probably the wrong term in this case) does this represent?". How does it compare to the total amount the spend sourcing and developing new IP for shows, etc? My guess is 3-5%. If that. 

If that's the case, then it's not a right-hand-turn, but more of a toe in the water.

Of course, to those in the casual games space, it appears to be a big, serious, gnarly King Kong toe in the water!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not dissing the 100M. That's real money and they appear to have a battle plan. Should be interesting to watch.

E3 predictions

It's been a while since I've talked about the E3 Supernova and the resultant "Dwarf Star E3".

Since E3's kicking off this week while I rock the great white north, I guess now's the time to get predictions in. I think it's going to flop. Someone will claim victory by some standard of measure, but I think it's going to flop, and next years will either not exist, or be even smaller.

Perhaps rather than 'dwarf star', 'old yeller E3' would be a better name?

Technology is to politics as chocolate is to peanut butter

And if you don't think so, I think you'd change your mind after attending this conference:

Personal Democracy Forum – Technology Is Changing Politics.

Check out a partial speaker list:

Tom Friedman, Arianna Huffington, Jay Rosen, Kim Malone, Robert Scoble, Jeff Jarvis, Cheryl Contee, Eli Pariser, Sara Horowitz, Josh Marshall, Ruby Sinreich, Craig Newmark, Joe Trippi, Becki Donatelli, Andrew Keen, Ellen Miller, Chris Rabb, David All, Todd Ziegler, Allison Fine, Clay Shirky, Liza Sabater, Brian Dear, Ben Rattray, Seth Godin, Steve Urquhart, Mindy Finn, Mike Turk, Zack Exley, Walter Fields and Robert Greenwald.

Thanks to Seth for the link.

TEDriffic

Wow. TED revamped it's site and along with it, posted 30 new videos (from past conferences, but new to the site).

I've blogged about the TED talks before. They are almost all well-polished, moving, inspiring and/or educational. Great site to bookmark, and great talks to download watch when you have time (I always have 5-10 of them on my Zune for watching on flights). Hans Rosling gapminder talk, Malcolm Gladwell's talk on spaghetti sauce, and Majora Carter's talks are ones I could watch multiple times.

Bookmark it here.

GDC 2007: Event highlights and thoughts on the future

OK, final post on GDC (I think. No promises). Some miscellanous notes on the conference this year, and some thoughts on directions for GDC.

• I was looking at a friend's GDC blog post and realized that - Holy Cow! - I never even set foot on the show floor this year. Was it in the west hall? north hall? I don't even know! I did walk through one of hte smaller booth areas on the way to/from the MS suite, but that's it. First time in the 13 years I've attended (of course, my first year the show floor was about a dozen 8' draped tables and that's it).
• Something weird happened over the past year to where about one third of the time people introduced me to someone they knew by saying "This is Kim, he blogs at...", and the other two thirds of the time was "This is Kim, he works at Microsoft doing...". That totally threw me for a loop. I thought there were only a couple dozen people that read this thing. Anyhow, neat.
• Greg Costikyan's Maverick Award acceptance speech is a thing of beauty.
• Justin's 'Passively Multiplayer Online Game' poster session. Lots of unsolved problems (he griped about how many times he was asked "how can it be monetized?"), but the guy is onto something.
• I attended the Second Life party. OK, the second lifers are as nuts in person as in the metaverse. The piped-in-dj-from-second-life was kinda cool. Being lewdly accosted by a second lifer at the bar was strangely uncool (uh, "I love you" is no way to greet a nice canadian boy like me!). I have a theory that some of the attendees were from of SL's more questionable online 'businesses'. Makes for interesting parties anyway.
• The minna mingle (casual games assoc party) was cool, but the hidden secret was the rockin DJ/guitarist combo (Chris Clouse and DJ Solomon) and ensuing party playing at Slide next door. Way better than any show party :-).
• Espetus is most awesome restaurant every for low-carb folk. "You sit at a table. A river of unending charbroiled meats approaches. You have a green and red wheel, a cocktail, and a fried plantain." Sounds like it should be a snippet from Kingdom of Loathing.

Thoughts on GDC

Overall, Raph sums it up nicely, and I agree with his points.

• The "infusion of E3" that happened came in three forms. (1) E3-esque booths and product exhibits (I have to wonder whether some people really think through WHY they are exhibiting at a show and considering who their audience is). (2) Press looking for hints as to next Xmas' stuff have always been interested in GDC, but perhaps now are thinking this is last chance for a while, and (3) all the E3 business meetings just packed up and moved to GDC. It's this last one that is killing GDC for me. I really want to attend GDC for the sessions and networking. Not to spend more than half the time in a meeting room. Now, granted, that's my job, but a balance needs to be struck, or I need to find somewhere else to get the mind-expanding bit of GDC.
• The size of the conference is making the networking/social bits difficult. Spreading things out to a couple halls doesn't help. GDC Prime doesn't help.
• GDC Prime rubbed me the wrong way for a couple reasons. I heard mixed reviews from the couple attendees I spoke to, but am curious what others thought.

One more thing: I hinted at it in a softball way in the news.com article, still think that GDC is at real risk of super-nova'ing like E3, Comdex, and other shows have. It's getting very expensive to attend, exhibit at, or cover. Segment- or market-specific conferences may be a better spend for many here. The issue isn't whether it's a valuable show. The question is whether it's the BEST use of money given teh choice.

As an example, GDC next year is moving to Feb. Which means there's a very real risk of it overlapping with Casual Connect (FKA Casuality) in Amsterdam. If that's the case, I very likely will NOT attend GDC for the first time in 14 years. Casuality is a better bang-for-the-buck show for me. (Of course MS as a corporation would likely do both, but I'm speaking from my personal POV).

Now, to Jamil, Kathy, and the others at GDC, this will seem like lunacy coming off the heels of the biggest-gdc-ever. Of course, that's the same kind of hubris that the owners of E3 had up until a year ago...

GDC 2007: Post-mortem on my sessions

I sat on two panels, and also gave a sponsored session. Here's my thoughts on each and the results thereof.

Console/PC Distribution Gatekeepers

I sat on this panel moderated by Simon Carless. Other panelists included people from Sony,
Manifesto games, and Gametap. There was supposed to be someone from Nintendo but he backed out. The panel got covered here, here, and here, and if interested, you can buy an audio transcript here.

I think I did OK, though I gave pretty middle-of-the-road answers. Panels are more entertaining when provocative, and several people afterward picked up on the fact that I failed to bite on some obvious opportunities to stir things up a bit (e.g. I've griped about GameTap before). This was a case where I felt I was more "the Microsoft guy" on the panel, rather than just "kim pallister", and so had to take the high (less-risky-but-less-entertaining) road. Oh well.

I do think I acheived the goal of letting the indie games track attendees better understand how to get their titles on Xbox Live Arcade and MSN Games, which was the main reason I was there. We had a few hundred people in the room and I was swamped by about 20 people afterward with questions about just that.

I give myself a B+.

Casual Games and Windows Vista: The Real Story on What It Means For Casual Games

This was a sponsored session braindump on Vista, Games explorer, GDF files, etc, etc, from the perspective of casual games. Very much along the lines of what my Q&A with the IGDA Casual Games SIG Quarterly covered.

The session got covered at Josh Bancroft's blog (Intel bloggers? WTF? when did that happen. bully for them).

This type of session is a brain dump and while you can try to convey the information in an engaging manner, it's never quite as fun to give as a more creative presentation (see my post about my MIGS06 presentation for more on this).

While I think I helped some attendees, and had some positive feedback after the talk, I still give myself a B- on this one.

Sharing Control

This panel was moderated by David Edery, a co-worker of mine. However, he wasn't a coworker at the time he set up the panel and invited me. I certainly had less business being on the panel than the others up there (Raph Koster, Ray Muzyka, Matt Brown...), but pinged David about it when he was putting together the panel because at the time we were working on the details around hosting Cranium's Pop5 game - a web-based casual game featuring user-created content.

So, I was about to contribute and I think I got some positive reaction out of the audience and brought a different perspective to the table. I was happy with it overall. I give myself an A-.

The highlight for me was that I used my MIGS05 UGC anecdote, and the guy that gave the Mona Lisa comment at the MIGS session was in the audience for this panel and came up afterward to point out that he was the guy. Cool!

The session got covered here.

GDC2007: The Pedantic Stats Post

I was inspired by a post by Mark Deloura about his trip to to DICE in which he tracked stats about how he was spending his time. I decided to do the same at GDC. I carried a little notepad with me and made a few tickmarks about how I spent my time over the course of the week. Here are the details:

Over 5 days, I met & had conversations (I counted anything beyond a 2 minute discussion as a 'conversation') with 232 people.

108 of those were people I already knew, and 124 of those were people I met for the first time (or didn't recall meeting previously). I had 22 meetings with developers/publishers (more on this in a later post)

The 5 days were pretty much 8am to midnight (or much later) every day, so roughly 80 hours. Of that, I spent 22 hours in meetings, 3 hours presenting and/or panels, 8 hours preparing for sessions, and 7 hours attending sessions. I slept 21 hours over 5 nights, which pretty much explains how I felt Saturday morning, and also why I caught a cold that followed me home.

I spent 4 hours at parties. Pretty conservative compared to past years. I logged another 4 at the CMP suite, which given the caliber of conversation was arguably a productive use of time, at least I think it was, but I'm a little foggy. :-/

OK, so what did I learn from my scribbles? First off, I hope that I do the same next year and can use it as a benchmark of sorts. Second, I either need to attend more sessions, or share my pass with someone. I had a speaker pass, so it didn't cost me anything, but still, I didn't get much use out of it. Finally, time spent prepping for sessions was ineffective, and should have been done ahead of time. Part of this was thrust upon me fairly late in the days leading up to GDC. Still though, that 8 hours could have been spent doing business or doing general elbow-rubbing.

Next year, I have to carry a pedometer with me so I can measure my TFF.

Begin the GDC posts!

OK, a day late and a dollar short (well, a week late and only my 2c worth), I have a series of GDC-related posts. Other than the previous "In defense of Hecker" post, I was a little to burnt out post-gdc to do any of these. I took the week off and spent most of it running kids around to school, optometrist, ballet class, gym, etc, etc.

Anyhow, I have a bunch of stuff to say about GDC but figured I'd break it up.

First off, my post in defense of Chris Hecker's GDC rant got Joystiq'd, and if the amount of fanboi wrath I incurred is any indicatin of the heat he's taking, then wow, I feel for the guy.

Hope it all blows over and we can put it behind us.

Anyhow, onto the gdc posts...