Reality Panic

A little behind on my reading list, I only just finished “Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture” while flying back from San Francisco. It was publishes spring 2003 and was authored by David Kushner, a pop culture critic and frequent contributor to Wired magazine.

I very much enjoyed the book and its in-depth/behind-the-scenes look at the guys behind Doom and Quake. It is quite an unbelievable story of hard work, dumb luck, perseverance, arrogance and ingenuity - a modern day digital soap opera. I highly recommend it to those “outside” the industry (ie, students, academics, vendors, media, etc) as a means to understanding the sweat, blood and tears that are often shed in the pursuit of creating great games.

On a personal level, it was fun to read since I was “there” for portions of the story (although too insignificant to actually mention in the book). Like when he discusses Carmack’s various visits to GDC and E3 (eg, I had the honor of bestowing on him a Community Contribution award one year), or the work to optimize Quake for various graphics cards (I remember being on a conference call with Carmack discussing next-gen graphics chip technology and being blown away by what he was envisioning (FYI, I used to work at Matrox Graphics)).

Like when I read the “Opening the Xbox” book, most of the “characters” in play are actually friends and acquaintances. And, despite all the Ion Storm craziness, I can persnonally say that Romero and Case are nice people :)

I was down in San Francisco all of last week for some internal IGDA meetings, etc… While in town, I took the opportunity to visit the “Bang the Machine: Computer Gaming Art and Artifacts” exhibit at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (right nearby the IGDA offices). It was my first time at a game related exhibit and it was quite interesting. Unlike some museum exhibits that have been more chronological/archival in nature, Bang the Machine was more about taking game culture and refactoring it, making a statement, etc. I would say the the stuff was pretty cool and made you think, but they were kinda out there and, well, really made you think…

One of the more interesting installations was SimGallery. It was two computers running Sims Online where the play space was designed as an art exhibit. You could control your Sim to check out the various works of art, etc. One of the pieces of art was a recreation of the area you were playing the game in (ie, at Yerba Buena), and then you could sit down and have your Sim play games… Wired had a recent story on the sometimes “nested” nature of games.

Also, while in town, there was a meeting of the IGDA’s San Francisco chapter. The speaker was Paul Topolos from Pixar, who did a very entertaining and inspirational talk on games, art and film (he’s doing a similar talk at GDC). This was the chapter’s first meeting at the Metreon. It was an excellent venue for the joint session with SIGGRAPH, and we packed the room way past capacity (upwards of 250 people). Afterward, people went over to one of the bar/restaurants to socialize.

Here are some pictures I snapped at Bang the Machine and the SF chapter meeting (note, that the “guards” at Yerba Buena were asking me not to take photos, so I had a bit of a tough time…).

Introductory message on what was to be found inside Bang the Machine, Qwan (Gamasutra) reads the fine print…

Polygonal John Carmack. He’s kinda short…

Art fusing Sim-style imagery with historic events. Very interesting.

Liz Wakefield (IGDA), with her “Karesh” mask yelling “you infidels” to the Waco TX recreation game…

Carpet Invaders. This was projected onto the floor. It was like playing/interacting with a Persian rug.

Some notable developers, part of the “Facing Reality” series by RGB Project.

The auditorium at the Metreon starting to fill up…

Paul Topolos recounting his work on various Star Wars projects.

Greg LaBrec and Brian Harvey from nVidia enjoying the post-lecture networking. nVidia were the gracious sponsors for the evening.

Paul Topolos with some of his old animation buddies…

Stefan Schulze, Gaurav Mathur and their collegues from Factor 5 enjoying some post session munchies.

Nice to see the media pick up on the growth of game studies, or rather “ludology“. In parallel to the momentum behind game development curricula (ie, the training of game makers), this more studious approach to studying games has been picking up steam over the years - especially in Scandinavia (home of the game researchers association).

And, nice to see my buddy Jesper Juul getting some recognition as the first “game doctor”… Jesper is a freaking smart guy and it is just plain fun to talk to him about games (and yes, he’s an avid game player).

It is very encouraging to witness the emergence of a breed of academics that appreciate games, play games and can help us all to better understand them. A recent IGDA column points to some of the possibilities…

The cover story of February’s Wired was about the ongoing trend of tech outsourcing (ie, sourcing programming/IT work from places like India, China, etc). It is quite an extensive article and among other things, covers the anger that “local” workers have when so many jobs are outsourced. Understandable.

To some extent, this has been a small (but growing) issue for game developers. Many American, European and Japanese teams are either trimming their staff and sourcing out basic code/art tasks, or the teams are being disbanded altogether because whole projects are being sourced to cheaper countries. Some industry folks are concerned…

I say this is great! The best part of the story was a side-bar by Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson. He implored that we all should just go with the flow, that complaining/etc would not be able to do much against strong market/economic factors. And, most importantly, he said, this frees us up to do the fun stuff, the innovative stuff, the big idea work - then ship it out to get it produced/maintained… I agree. In many ways, this is what smart studios are already doing…

Of course, I’d contend with his somewhat biased point of view that it is only the Americans that can come up with the innovative ideas. But, that is a whole other debate ;)

Nick Dyer-Witheford was kind enough to send me a copy of his recently published book, “Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture and Marketing“. And, I didn’t even ask him for it :) But, included with the book was a short note saying something to the effect of “…not sure if you’ll like it, it is critical of the games industry.”

With a relatively open mind I took to reading the book. And, despite Nick’s warnings, I enjoyed it very much. Sure, they make a few mistakes, like calling Wipeout XL a flight simulator or stating that Half-Life is just another shooter. But, these are minor and excusable. I particularly like the model they put forth to help explore the game industry, its history and current issues.

As the sub-title of the book hints, they propose a “three circuits” model, with the circuits representing the interaction of technology, culture and marketing. It is a nice filter by which to investigate games, where the circuits compliment each other, and where friction occurs.

Some of the friction points they look at are things like piracy, violence, gender, labor issues, risk aversion, etc. In particular, I thought that the description of the industry’s drive toward narrowly genred, reproducible hit titles based on on franchises and licenses was insightful (ie, how the three circuits interact (or interacted in the past) to bring about the current situation).

So yes, the book is a critical look at games and the digital play industry. But, it was an honest and (mostly) unbiased exploration (as opposed to the usual “games are evil, let’s write a book that proves it” approach). And, in the end, they make it quite clear that they reason why they are exposing the issues is because they see great hope/potential for the medium of games. Nice.

So, I was at Judo practice last night (yes, I like a little civilized real-world simulated aggression on occasion ;) Anyway, I started chatting with one of the new guys - the usual small talk stuff. When I mentioned I’m part of the game industry, he got all excited and started talking about his favorite games (ie, Command & Conquer, GTA, etc). One of the other guys overheard our conversation and commented something to the effect of “oh, loser computer nerds!”. We’re all grown ups here…

Now, this is only my fourth week of Judo and that guy has no clue who I am (or if in fact I am a computer nerd (which is debatable)). Ditto for the enthusiastic game player. All of us were wearing the same “clothes” (ie, a Judo gi), so visual cues were somewhat equalized. We are all obviously athletic/etc (in fact, during previous sparring I had “beat up” on the guy who called us nerds - hmm)…

After the nerd comment, I tried a return volley of “hey, games are part of mainstream pop culture. It is not just for pimpled geeks anymore”. I don’t think he was convinced. What is it about games/gamers that still have such a geek stereotype?

Buzzcut has a short piece on gamer stereotypes and suggests that many of these “games are for geeks” people are really just closet gamers afraid to “come out”. Interesting theory. Looks like the guys in Nintendo music cover band, Minibosses, are starting to break that mould - to some extent.

On a related note, it always saddens me when there are no game industry folks on the TED speaking roster. I’ve never been to a TED conference (it’s invite only), but have been following it over the years (I find it is an interesting format). TED = technology entertainment design. Hello, does the medium of games not qualify. They’ve got web folks, movie people, music execs, etc, etc. But, no one from games. I am sure this stigma has something to do with it…