Reality Panic

Just like 10,000 other industry folks, I am still in the process of recovering from the annual Game Developers Conference. What an intense week! I need to start “training” for this conference more seriously… With all the sessions, meetings, events, socializing, etc, etc, etc, it’s a wonder we all survive. The GDC is the the Boston Marathon of the game industry.

Unlike the somewhat reserved vibe of the past several years, this GDC seemed more upbeat. The hustle/bustle in the convention halls were one clear indication that this was indeed the largest GDC - ever.

Highlights for me were the Game Developers Choice Awards, the “love story” panel, the Indie Game Jam demos during the Experimental Gameplay Workshop, and the overall collegiate atmosphere of everyone at the show. Sadly, I just do not have the time or patience to describe everything, so I’ll point you to several sites with extensive GDC coverage:

• Gamasutra.com
• GameDev.Net
• Insert Credit
• GameSpy
• GameSpot
• IGN
• 1 Up

With that out of the way, here’s my GDC “in pictures”…

Eric Zimmerman (gameLab) lead the opening “hot seat” panel of the IGDA’s Business Summit.

Table 11: During the Business Summit, groups tackled various business issues…

The folks at the Serious Games Summit had similar discussion exercises. They were packed past capacity!

Mathilde Remy, David Roberton (ex-Criterion), Jon Jordon (Develop mag), Owain Bennallack (Develop mag) and GDC director Alan Yu, loiter during the summit/tutorials coffee break.

EA exec VP Bing Gordon gives the keynote during the Business Summit. Talks a lot about David Ogilvy and the power of smart marketing. Also, tells audience that he hates people who whine (ie, “If your game was that good, it would sell”)…

Brian Sharp (Ion Storm) and Frank Lantz (gameLab) hang out in the Fairmont lobby bar after the first day of GDC.

…and start debating with Marc LeBlanc (Mind Control) and Justin Hall (journo gadfly).

Warren Currell (Sherpa Games) enjoys a beer with old NYC buddy Boo Wong (Curious Pictures).

Dom Milano (CMP), Mark DeLoura (Sony), Chris Melissinos (Sun), John Byrd (CRI) and Susan Kirby (CMP) goofing off during the exhibitor’s cocktail reception.

Jay Allard unveils Microsoft’s XNA roadmap to the game development community.

Eric Zimmerman (gameLab), Robin Hunicke (Northwestern University) and Brian Sharp (Ion Storm) take “SuperCollider” (the new massively multiplayer social game developed by gameLab) for a test run.

Chris Bateman (International Hobo) leads the Writers Group Gathering session at the IGDA’s booth, pointing everyone to the Writing SIG’s great guide.

At the IGDA’s VIP Luncheon: Providing a nice meal and pleasant company is the least we can do to thank all the volunteers, Studio Affiliate heads and Partner reps who contribute to and support the IGDA. The luncheon was made possible by the gracious sponsorship of Kaydara.

Noah Falstein (The Inspiracy) and Hal Barwood enjoy the VIP meal…

…as do Dave Perry (Shiny) and Louis Castle (EA).

While the throngs of developers build up in the auditorium for the Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony…

The presenters and various other guests huddle over the small TV in the lovely “green room”: Louis Castle (EA), Jason Rubin (Naughty Dog), Jade (There Inc.), Phil Harrison (Sony Europe), Ed Fries, Chris Cross (EA).

Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk pick up the well deserved IGDA Award for Community Contribution.

Will Wright presents the Lifetime Achievement Award to Mark Cerny.

(Sorry, I was kinda busy during the ceremony and didn’t get a chance to snap many pics. Check out GameDev.Net’s complete run down of the Choice Awards along with pictures of the presenters and recipients.)

Mind Control’s Andrew Leker and Marc LeBlanc very proud of the IGF victory for Oasis.

CliffyB (EpicGames) and Gavin (G4 TV) hang during the Choice Awards after-party.

The Crystal Method perform during Sony’s party. Damn, they were freaking loud :)

People were pouring out in the hallway trying to hear of the love stories from Raph, Warren and Will.

Will pitches his concept for “Collateral Romance“. This “designer’s challenge” panel, organized by Eric Zimmerman, was easily one of the best of the entire conference!

Jason Weiner (Art Institute) leads an artists gathering at the IGDA booth. Looked like fun, too bad I can’t draw.

Chris Hecker demos the dozen-or-so games produced during the Indie Game Jam at the Experimental Gameplay Workshop session.

Bruno hosts the GAMEHOTEL, the GDC’s first cultural style event. It was an interesting talk-show style show, with such diverse guests as toy doll makers Furi Furi, music video producers H5 and Japanese game developer Masaya Matsuura.

Brian Robbins (Fuel Industries), me, John Welch (ShockWave.com) and Jason Rubinstein (Ubisoft) in group hug mode during John’s “online games” reception.

Yannis Mallat (Ubisoft Montreal) enjoys discussion with Kiyoshi Shin (IGDA Tokyo chapter coordinator) during the “Level 99″ speaker’s party.

When developers are invited to the party: Jon Blow gets his groove on. And, notice a blue Eric Zimmerman in the funky background.

More groove action during Level 99.

Midway’s Lee Jacobson and John Romero unwind at the Fairmont.

The boys from High Voltage Software - Ben Hoyt, Josh, and Jesse Helton - also at the Fairmont.

The Canadians: me, Jodi Vetterl (Discreet), Nick Carota and Rob Cunningham from Relic, and Dan Irish - guess where, at the Fairmont.

Academic/author James Paul Gee talks about games as learning machines (read his awesome book to learn more). Not pictured, Warren Spector giggling at the back of the room every time Gee used a Deus Ex example…

John Gaeta, of Matrix fame, puts on a circus show of a visual arts keynote. I listened but I just couldn’t get at the core of his speech, titled “From Visual Anti-Establishmentarianism To Ubiquity and Back”.

NVidia’s “draw for cool prizes” booth is always popular with the artsy folk.

Can any single game/device make us look goofier???

The Puzzle Pirates pod at the IGF pavilion.

Well, that’s all the pics I managed to snap. Sorry for the rather uninsightful “report” - my brain is just too fried. I’ll likely be making separate/smaller posts dealing with specific issues/themes from the conference in the near future. Until next year…

Tomorrow, I depart for the annual Game Developers Conference. I believe this will be my eighth or ninth pilgrimage to the mecca of game development. It has been a crazy final week of prep and now I’m just looking forward to getting there, and getting it all over with ;)

Monday and Tuesday should be REALLY exciting at the IGDA’s Business Summit. Build up for the event has been strong, and private industry insider mailing lists have been on fire with discussions catalyzed by Jason Rubin’s recent DICE rant. It is going to be fun!

As always, the Choice Awards are a big highlight. I’m a bit nervous, as I’m doing the opening/welcome speech. Ack, I hate reading off teleprompters… Anyway, this is always a great event, that everyone enjoys. Last year was truly special, with the audience practically in tears when the family of the late Gunpei Yokoi accepted his posthumous Lifetime Achievement honor.

Other sessions I am looking forward to are:

• Game Design Challenge: The Love Story
• Game Narrative: What Would Aristotle Do?
• GameHotel
• Experimental Gameplay Workshop
• ArtModJam

OK, enough yammering, I need to iron some cloths and buy a new pair of Nike Air MAX runners!

On my way back from SIGGRAPH last year, I got stuck in transit (I think it was during the Chicago airport transfer). Anyway, that state of limbo provided ample time for me to read “Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix“. Great book.

One of the more interesting chapters was an essay by Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom, in which he contemplates whether or not we are already living in a matrix-like simulation. In short, his argument went that if it is conceivable that humans will have infinite computing power at some point in the future, then it is plausible that at that future point, humans will create simulations to study life, behavior, etc (much like we see with crude computer simulations today). And then, it is further plausible that the simulations would “evolve” and in turn develop their own life simulations to study, etc. The recursion could continue infinitely. So, who is to say that we are not “living” in one of these simulations?

We are already starting to see the basics of this nesting/recursion with games like The Sims or Civilization. Sims can now play a simplified version of SimCity (ie, a game within the game, or sim within the sim)…

Hmm.

On a somewhat less surreal level, I found Jason Rubin’s recent speech on overcoming developer “oppression” to be a layered onion itself. Looking past his comments on Hollywood parties, Rubin makes some very valid points about the lack of respect for studios and developers as the talent that creates all these games that the suits sell. However, a similar level of “oppression” occurs within a studio itself, in terms of controlling talent/staff, maintaining strict hierarchies, etc. Rubin himself had noted the double standard, pointing to the conspicuous lack of personal attributions for their Choice Award nomination… Jamie Fristrom takes an interesting look at flattening things out in his Gamasutra management column. Further onion layers occurs between big pulishers and small ones. It is like a freaking ecology of predators/prey, parasites, etc.

It will be interesting to see how much “air time” these issues will get at the IGDA’s Business Summit next week…

[Update: Those looking for the play’s script can grab a copy via Wikipedia.]

I was at the local Blockbuster this past weekend picking out a movie and, completely by chance, came across a movie called “Bang Bang You’re Dead“. It was a made-for-TV movie on Showtime that was inspired by a play called “Bang Bang You’re Dead”, which was inspired by the various school shootings from a few years back (eg, Columbine, Paducah, etc).

The movie was great and really gave viewers a sense of the hopelessness many teenagers face growing up. Also, it serves as a good lesson in trying to get at the heart of problem rather than just jumping to false conclusions… Anyway, I won’t go into it too much - you’ll have to watch the movie :)

But, in part, it demonstrates that the hysteria/scapegoating of violence in games is time wasted. It is nice to see that some parents are starting to agree…

Finally, in related news, GameSpot has a huge feature on controversy in games titled “When Two Tribes Go to War: A History of Video Game Controversy“.

Believe it or not, I’ve only just now finished Grand Theft Auto 3! I had started playing it way back when, but then loaned out my PS2+games to my brother, while I got busy with the Xbox (when it first came out)… So, I never got far. This Christmas, my wife got me the GTA double-pack for Xbox and so I started playing again…

Having limited time to play games these days (prepping for GDC is crazy), I pretty much stuck to the main storyline. For example, I finished the game’s story, but only “completed” 37% of the game… Anyway.

What occurred to me is just how much I worked to avoid the police. I would slow down when driving, I’d be less reckless, stop a red lights, I’d put away the gun I was carrying, etc, etc. In general, I would stay the hell away from the cops as they would just mess with my underworld activities… As should be the case.

So, is it just me, or does the game force me to “respect” law enforcement within the game and teach me that it is not a good thing to mess with the police (to the extent that they can catch you ;) This is probably obvious to everyone who has ever actually played the game.

Sadly, most critics of GTA3 have not (perhaps only seeing a random stand-alone clips of the the character beating a cop with a bat)… And, I’ve only ever heard this angle brought up once in the media, when CNN was interviewing writer David Kushner about violence in games.

Anyway, I could go on, but I do find it ironic that Washington is trying to regulate the game based on the argument that it engenders disrespect for law enforcement officials.

Oh well. Time to pop in GTA: VC and see how tough the cops are in Vice City!