GDC Day 5
The final day of GDC is always a quiet one. Instead of going out with a bang, GDC slowly empties over the course of the day, as hung-over game developers find they lack the patience and will to continue going to lectures and roundtables. By the end of the day, only a few attendees walk zombie-like from lecture to lecture, like some scene out of Dawn of the Dead.
Requirements for a Next Generation Massively Multiplayer Online Game: Gordon Walton
Description: Gordon Walton goes over what he thinks are the 9 things a next-generation MMOG needs to succeed.
What I Expected: Gordon Walton is famous for his no-holds-barred lectures that get right down to the core of the subject, no matter how dirty it gets. I went for the entertainment value of the lecture.
What I Got: Gordon has been getting nicer and nicer as time moves on, thus his entertainment value has dropped. However, I’m sure this has made getting along with him a lot easier. Of his 9 things, only one was thought provoking, which was having an audience mode for games. With this, people who weren’t playing the game could watch the activities of the people who were, and get enough voyeuristic thrills that they would become players, as well. At the time, that sounded pretty interesting. In retrospect, it reminds me of what happens after you die in Counter-Strike. If you die late in a game, and have a lot vested in the outcome, it’s pretty interesting to try to see how the game is progressing. If you get killed early in the game, then being stuck watching people go down halls is nothing short of boring. Without context, watching other people playing games is probably not the great selling tool Gordon made it out to be.
His other points boiled down, basically, to two things: players are expecting more quality from their games, and are expecting those games to suit their play styles. So, I guess it’s actually one thing: players want their expectations met, which is, basically, what they have always wanted. Otherwise, the talk was pretty good, and it woke me up enough to go to the next thing.
Triangulation: A Schizophrenic Approach to Game Design: Will Wright
Description: Will Wright talks about his design process.
What I Expected: Will Wright is pretty much the smartest guy designing games that can actually talk to an audience. There may be smarter people, but they aren’t nearly as entertaining. I’ve missed Will for the past two years, and have regretted it, so I decided to go this year.
What I Got: Will, once again, did a highly entertaining lecture that ranged from film clips of robots calling for help to a Russian Space Minute that showed how a solid interface can win over a more complex one. His design method looks a little like the way David Bowie writes songs using a random word generator. Lots of laughs, and really entertaining. On the other hand, duplicating this process requires the mind of Will Wright, which not many people can approach.
SciFi MMPs: Lessons from Star Wars Galaxies and Earth and Beyond: Chris Klug, Raph Koster, Jesse Schell
Description: Chris Klug of Earth and Beyond, and Raph Koster of Star Wars Galaxies constitute a panel led by Jesse Schell of Carnegie Mellon University talking about Sci Fi MMOGs.
What I Expected: I was unsure what I would get from this panel. However, a few friends were going, so I tagged along.
What I Got: Basically, this turned into a post-mortem of both Galaxies and EAB. It was interesting that Chris admitted that not having avatars in a real sense was a really bad decision. There was also some good talk on the fact that MMOGs no longer have the same growth pattern that the early MMOGs like UO and EQ had when they started out, meaning that the audience is more experienced, and has an easier time letting go than previously. It seems MMOGs are more like a virus than an addictive drug. Once you kick the habit, you are pretty much cured, and new games must now overcome your resistance to get you to play as much as you did previously.
Game Credits: Towards Industry Guidelines: John Feil, Dave Weinstein
Description: Our second roundtable on establishing credits guidelines.
What I Expected: More of what I got on Wednesday.
What I Got: Lots more problems with how companies credit games, such as: Small teams often don’t have leads (so who is the lead designer if you only have two designers?); how do you credit contractors; how do you credit cross-department contributions; what about international outsourcing for localization or software development; what about programmers who have built a C++ library that is used by the company in game after game, are they credited as a developer for each game; and, what about crediting people working on a live product, like a MMOG? All in all, this session was a bit more valuable than the first one. Now comes the fun part, where I get to collate the problems and also create a document with all the basic roles developers have in making a computer game. Whee!
Thus ends GDC 2004. I liked this one better than 2003. The lectures were better, and the networking was amazing this year. I collected as many business cards as I had in the four previous years combined. Pretty amazing. Looking forward already to GDC 2005.
Requirements for a Next Generation Massively Multiplayer Online Game: Gordon Walton
Description: Gordon Walton goes over what he thinks are the 9 things a next-generation MMOG needs to succeed.
What I Expected: Gordon Walton is famous for his no-holds-barred lectures that get right down to the core of the subject, no matter how dirty it gets. I went for the entertainment value of the lecture.
What I Got: Gordon has been getting nicer and nicer as time moves on, thus his entertainment value has dropped. However, I’m sure this has made getting along with him a lot easier. Of his 9 things, only one was thought provoking, which was having an audience mode for games. With this, people who weren’t playing the game could watch the activities of the people who were, and get enough voyeuristic thrills that they would become players, as well. At the time, that sounded pretty interesting. In retrospect, it reminds me of what happens after you die in Counter-Strike. If you die late in a game, and have a lot vested in the outcome, it’s pretty interesting to try to see how the game is progressing. If you get killed early in the game, then being stuck watching people go down halls is nothing short of boring. Without context, watching other people playing games is probably not the great selling tool Gordon made it out to be.
His other points boiled down, basically, to two things: players are expecting more quality from their games, and are expecting those games to suit their play styles. So, I guess it’s actually one thing: players want their expectations met, which is, basically, what they have always wanted. Otherwise, the talk was pretty good, and it woke me up enough to go to the next thing.
Triangulation: A Schizophrenic Approach to Game Design: Will Wright
Description: Will Wright talks about his design process.
What I Expected: Will Wright is pretty much the smartest guy designing games that can actually talk to an audience. There may be smarter people, but they aren’t nearly as entertaining. I’ve missed Will for the past two years, and have regretted it, so I decided to go this year.
What I Got: Will, once again, did a highly entertaining lecture that ranged from film clips of robots calling for help to a Russian Space Minute that showed how a solid interface can win over a more complex one. His design method looks a little like the way David Bowie writes songs using a random word generator. Lots of laughs, and really entertaining. On the other hand, duplicating this process requires the mind of Will Wright, which not many people can approach.
SciFi MMPs: Lessons from Star Wars Galaxies and Earth and Beyond: Chris Klug, Raph Koster, Jesse Schell
Description: Chris Klug of Earth and Beyond, and Raph Koster of Star Wars Galaxies constitute a panel led by Jesse Schell of Carnegie Mellon University talking about Sci Fi MMOGs.
What I Expected: I was unsure what I would get from this panel. However, a few friends were going, so I tagged along.
What I Got: Basically, this turned into a post-mortem of both Galaxies and EAB. It was interesting that Chris admitted that not having avatars in a real sense was a really bad decision. There was also some good talk on the fact that MMOGs no longer have the same growth pattern that the early MMOGs like UO and EQ had when they started out, meaning that the audience is more experienced, and has an easier time letting go than previously. It seems MMOGs are more like a virus than an addictive drug. Once you kick the habit, you are pretty much cured, and new games must now overcome your resistance to get you to play as much as you did previously.
Game Credits: Towards Industry Guidelines: John Feil, Dave Weinstein
Description: Our second roundtable on establishing credits guidelines.
What I Expected: More of what I got on Wednesday.
What I Got: Lots more problems with how companies credit games, such as: Small teams often don’t have leads (so who is the lead designer if you only have two designers?); how do you credit contractors; how do you credit cross-department contributions; what about international outsourcing for localization or software development; what about programmers who have built a C++ library that is used by the company in game after game, are they credited as a developer for each game; and, what about crediting people working on a live product, like a MMOG? All in all, this session was a bit more valuable than the first one. Now comes the fun part, where I get to collate the problems and also create a document with all the basic roles developers have in making a computer game. Whee!
Thus ends GDC 2004. I liked this one better than 2003. The lectures were better, and the networking was amazing this year. I collected as many business cards as I had in the four previous years combined. Pretty amazing. Looking forward already to GDC 2005.
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