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!"

Design Outside the Box: Jesse Schell (DICE-10-Post2)

My favorite talk from Dice 2010. Getting lots of press around the blogosphere. It was really bold, and the Mitch-Headberg-esque delivery didn't hurt either.

Some of it was a bit out there, but the overall message was to have an open mind to how far we have to go, just how broad gaming is going to get, and to think outside the (console) box.

Here are some terse notes in case you prefer that to the video version or would like to read my commentary [in braces]

--

I want to look at Facebook and how that's only the start of how things are going to go broader than we can imagine, but first some basic facebook math [he really means some humorous facts but they get the point across]

"FV>T" - there are more Farmville players than total Twitter accounts - Facebook is BIG

"LG>DP" - Lead gen (credit card offers, netflix sub signups, etc) are bigger than direct payment. [Note there was no mention of the controversy around these] -Facebook is STRANGE

"EA - 1500 FTE + PF - 300M = WTF!?" - EA minus 1500 full time employees plus playfish acquisition for $300M all in the same day = WHAT THE HELL!? - Facebook is TERRIFYING

Facebook is Big, Strange, Terrifying. But Terrifying really means unexpected.

Lets step back and look what else was unexpected.

Mafia wars - Imagine hearing the proposal "I'm going to do a text-based Mafia game and make $100M"?!

Club Penguin - Kids subscription MMO?!

Wii - Majority of the room did not predict their MSS leadership

Wii Fit - A billion dollars alone!!!

Guitar hero - $70 ASP and a plastic guitar - Entire new genre

Webkinz - Stuffed animal subbed Virtual World

Xbox acheivements - metagame & social network (outside the game, bigger than any one game)

Lots of psychological tricks in the above:

Club Penguin: free to play - eventually kid asks parent for $6. Virtual currency accumulates but can be used so they 'stretch' the amount the kid nags parent for the $6 until in. I call this the 'elastic velvet rope'

WebKinz: Every stuffed animal has always -to a child- contained an imaginary "magical" version of that animal that talks and moves and does stuff. WK lets kids actually SEE that animal. [There's some validity to this assertion, but I think it's far simpler than that: Kids like VW's, and the stuffed animal moved the subscription into a physical format the parent understands (buy a stuffed animal at retail)]

Mafia wars: Text based mafia game - phsycology is that it uses your real friends. I am better than U and I'll spend money to prove it.

We all do game design, but how many people are Brainstorming and researching new psychological locks and keys like the ones above.

What else do all these have in common: THEY ARE ALL IN SOME WAY BUSTING THROUGH TO REALITY!!!! [This is a really good observation]

Taps into a bigger trend [references "Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want" - I'll have to read it]

TV has gone to 'reality TV', people value 'authentic' products (made with 'real' juice. organic food, etc). [While I think the organic food parallel was a stretch, he's onto something here. One could view the indie game trend through this lense and say "people like Braid partly because it came from Jon Blow's heart, not from Vivendi's management committee and focus group data]

We live in a bubble of fake bullshit. We are rebelling against that.

People are not looking at tech as the enemy here, but as a to how we can use to cut back into reality.

What about tech convergence?

Tech convergence is total bullshit. Every device everywhere will have games of all different kinds. Tech DIVERGENCE!

[I love this part]

BUT! I have an iphone. That breaks your divergence point! Bah! I claim it is the Pocket Exception Law

Pocket Exception: Swiss army knife.

Like a swiss army knife, it does everything (not necesarily perfectly) but fits in your pocket.

If someone gave you a 24" 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.

[Fuck ya! Awesome]

Lots of examples of games pervading the real world:

fantasy football

geo caching

simpsons scavenger hunt on TV [clues embeded across different shows. TV Network metagame!]

darpa red balloon hunt

weight watchers

[HOLY BALLS! -->] Ford Hybrid dashboard display has a green leafy plant on it. The better you drive to conserve gas, teh more the plant grows. There's a f***ing tamagochi built into my Ford Hybrid!!!

Professor Lee Sheldon has built an RPG for his students where instead of giving out grades, he gives out XP and they level up through homework assignments, good test scores, etc.

Sensors are happening - DSi, Natal

We are on road toward disposable technology

[lengthy example of a fictional future where divergence leads to all devices connected to metagame...]

teeth brushing - +10

cornflakes +10

+45 take the bus to work

REM implant

+200 got to work on time

implant tattoo - tattoville adsense

lunch dr pepper - +500 for five in a week

shopping +100 for buying organic

did you practice your piano +50 points

kindle 3.0 - eye tracking

achievement unlocked for finishing 500 novels

However, when I realize my 500th novel was some piece of drivel... and that my grand-kids and their grand-kids will be able to look up what my 500th novel was... well, maybe I should change my behavior and read something more ambitious, something more worthy...

So while the examples I've run through thus far seem like escape into a game, may be possible that it will inspire us to be better people.

[Amen!]

Kim Defines "Independent" (Dice-10 Post3)

There was an interesting 'hot topics' session at DICE in which Chris Taylor (Gas Powered Games) and Michael Capps (Epic Games - standing in for Tim Schaeffer) debated "Independent" development and "Indie" development.

Chris at one point made the assertion that there are different tiers. For example, there might be "2 guys in a garage" independent", Gas Powered Games-esque "$5M title bankrolled ourselves" independent, and there's Epic/Valve "We're sitting on a fair pile o'cash" independent.

There were some bar conversations (the best kind at DICE, of course) about this and about the difference between "independent" and "indie". There was some degree of concensus that the former has to do with influence and decision making. Dependence on someone for putting food on the table, etc. The latter seemed to mean different things to different people. The type of game design to some, the aesthetic to others, the 'spirit' in which the game is created.

Anyhow, here are my definitions of the two based on the epiphany I had in Chris's/Michael's talk and on the subsequent conversations (and libations):

Independent Developer: One having funds at their disposal to cover payroll through the next one to two cycles of development. (This definition works if you are sleeping on your friends couch while working on your Flash game, or whether you are covering 150 heads through a 2 year dev cycle).

Indie Game: One who's development and/or design tells a story that goes against the convention of the time. (This definition works for a game design or aesthetic that is different or goes against the grain - it also works for someone that does a run-of-the-mill schmup but does it on their own terms and funds it through kickstartr)

Please iterate and refine (or refute) in the comments .