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.

MIGS (Post 4 of N): Jon Blow closing keynote

Jon got a massive turnout for the closing keynote of the show. I took some notes, but didn't post till now as thurs/fri were pretty busy and then in transit. Anyhow, In rough form, here they are:

"A fundamental conflict in contemporary game design”

Inspiration to be found for those of us to think about problems

Goals: To touch people, to change there lives.

Other media have no problem doing this.

Today we limit ourselves to 'If it was profound  to you, it was from a game designer standpoint, not an emotional standpoint.'

Things that we do as a matter of course that prevent us from reaching those goals.

How do you make something important, profound, meaningful?

It musn't be.. Fake unimportant meaningless.

Two ways to be important to people. By expression. By introduction of activity.

Story games (fable, half life 2, GTA)

Activity games (Madden, Wii sports, Pacman, Go)

Developers are always trying to make better stories.

Academics are working on dynamic story techniques.

Fallout 3, far cry 2, attempting dynamic story.

Story games are inherently conflicted.

People can sense a conflicted work. It wont strike them deeply. Disharmouious. It won’t resonate. How can we remove the conflict?

Conflict 1: story meaning vs dynamical meaning.

Dynamical meaning.

Art games (very small)

Communicating via behavior and perceptual primitives.

The Marriage by rod humble.

“Here’s what Rod’s marriage feels like”

Gravitation by Jason Rohrer

Expressing “real life” themes through rules of interactivity.

Behavior/interpretation

Stares become ice blocks/ideas become concrete projects

Blocks preven you reaching child – projects interfere with family.

(bug) (weird interpretation)

Imagine I introduce a new element:

Ice block score decrease changes with a powerup. (stops counter)

What does this freeze mean in this game that is a metaphor for work/life balance.

More rules added, less pure interpretation, more of a mishmash

By adding/subtracting rules you travel a continuum. The resulting game will always have some meaning.

In the games industry we ignore this interpretation

Extend this to any game

Any time we stet up a system of behavior

“dynamical system”

…that system communicates something to the player, whether intentional or not.

This is the dynamical meaning.

(see Ian Bogosts “procedural rhetoric”, doesn’t need to be rhetorical or procedural)

Gravitaiton has thematic elements but does not tell a story.

Conflict 1:

Story meaning vs dynamical.

Mainstream designers not thinking about dynamical meaning. Rather implmenting story and basic gameplay mechanic that is “fun”. The story and fun mechanics have separate meanings that often clash.

Like having a scoring of film “happy carnival music" through a funeral scene.

We have happy carny music over every funeral…

How does this manifest in some popular games?

Altruism vs balance.

Bioshock: Rules showed very small token difference in ADAM whether or not you saved the girls.

GTA4: “I like Kate”. No, I don’t. The game rules expressed to me that I don’t care about her.

HL2: Alex relationship vs game progress.

We want to prevent these games from  seeming fake.

How to resolve these conflicts?

-          Don’t use story

-          Don’t use dynamical meaning

-          Make dynamical meaning match story.

A)     Don’t use story

Story gives you “interesting mental stuff

What happens next, people doing things, Themes, moods

Can we supply interesting mental stuff that doesn’t come from story?

Whereas Rohrer-style games are hard, anyone can write a story?

How could we scale Gravitiation up?

"Any dumbass can write a story from a game, and if you look at our games, a lot of dumbasses do"

The trend will always be toward the easiest things to throw money at (known quantity)

B) Don’t use dynamucal meaning

-          Technically impossible. It’s automatic

-          You could navigate to 0. So this devolves to case C.

C) “Tight coupling” (Bogost) or elemintate conflicts.

Like pressing bubbles out of wallpaper.

“change aspects of story that don’t fit story, vice versa (gameplay)

Designers not trained to consider dynamical meaning.

AAA production models do not support this. (late gameplay changes are very expenseive!)

2) Conflict 2: challenge vs progression.

We base most mainstream games on story, and also challenge.

Why challenge? It’s viscreral, fun, etc, but more fundamentally.

Challenge communicates to you that your interaction 'means something’ that it is important or necessary.

Story needs to occur, challenge is a friction preventing you from getting there.

Story is a reward

Challenge is about withholding that reqard until we deserve it.

Leads to dramatic presentation of non-difficulty ‘God of War, Fable 2 – seems like there’s a challenge – dramatic presentation of stuff that isn’t difficult.

Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment.

The Arrow can’t go to zero

“like “suspension of disbelief”

But for games and importance.

A reason to exist.

Without ANY challenge, that suspension is hard to maintain.

Faux challenge is unlikely to impact someone deeply, to change the player’s life.

Challenge is a precious thing: we can do it much more derictly that other media. We waste this. [Note: Braid makes a good case for this, doesn't it. The difficulty of some of the later puzzles really made the reward of progress that much sweeter; to me anyhow]

Challenge substitutes

Not difficult, but interesting.

“invitation-style” alternatives.

Open Problem: how to make game meaningfully response to player’s choices, without blocking progress.

Conflict 3: Intreactivity vs pre-baked delivery.

Trying to create Drama or Crafted Impact.

Required careful pacing and framing

Delivery.

Interactivity sabotages delivery.

You don’t know where the player came from, or what he just did.

Deus Ex spoof from “old man murray”

Interactivity sabotates structure!

Chehkov's Gun

“if you say in the first chapter that there’s a rifle hanging on the wall, then in chapter 2,3 it better go off”

Economy of audience attention.

Sideeffect of foresshadowing and justification

In a good story, it’s not random out of context gun.

Requires and intense preprocess.

Story is a filtered presentation of events that have already happened. ß games haven’t already happened.

Why is the gun there? What’s the history, etc.

Drama manager – “intelligent dramama manager? Yeah, show me… Can never match a human drama manager. A human drama manager can never match a human writing a pre-baked story.

Character animation analogy: Pre-baked CGI vs Live Physics {<-- ooh, good point!]

Recap: story telling techniques we suck at:

Foreshadowing

Justification

Pacing

Potetic adjustment

Tone adjustment

Vocal emphasis

Body language

“importance”

-- 

Dynamic stories are

Pretend stories

Poorly structured

Poorly delivered

Will always be awkward second fiddle to linear media. Not a good core value proposition for our medium.

Don’t use story. At least as not as a core value prop. We said this was hard

What does story provide people, can we provide it in a different way?

Why not pursue examples from other forms? Music, sculpture, painting, etc.

Art games are a good place to start. How afar can we go in this direction?

To try completely, we art game authors must abandon “the message model of meaning”

The message model of meaning is insufficient

"The moral of the story is”

High school: Taught to read works and say what they are about.

Gamers get mad at art games. Inherently pretentious. Being condescended to. This is often true! If the message model of meaning is applied, whe the works are created. Trivializes meaning. (high school 5 paragraph essay)

[Frank Lanz quote, I missed part of it, so my apologies for perhaps butchering it...]

"...meaning which is less specific, less concrete and deliberate, harder to define, harder to pin down, trancends the author reader conduit model of message styles. "

Message model author is at least a little deluded. The true meaning of a game is multidimensional and fuzzy. … more complex than what you set out to build.

"if I understand it, it can’t be that important."

Instead, what if I build something that readhes beyond the eduge of my understanding and we all explore it together. They will have a play experience that is very deep and very precious and meaningful.

So what does Freeze mean? I don't know, but I think I'll stop here.

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.