And Maw! This

GDC 2007 – Indie Game Summit Day 1: Review, Summary, Wrap-up blah blah

March 6th, 2007

Gamasutra has a pretty good summay of what went on (the other talks are linked off this page), but come on, they won’t have the flair of a Roho-Post.

And then we had the panel on innovation in video games:

First up first was Jeff Minter:*

*(please note the photos of Jeff have been not been modified in anyway, nor is my camera taking blurry shots because of low-light conditions, Jeff’s mere prescence is able to turn reality into a new kind of audio-visual experiance, much like his software)

Jeff had quite a bit to say, but first he wanted to show us a lot of old games he’d written. Going from his commadore64 roms to his Atari roms, Jaguar version of tempest and ending with his 360 version of Tempest…I mean Space Giraffe. To say that Jeff liked pretty colors and sparkly things is an understatement. Oh did I mention he likes “beasties?” His earlier games were things like Llamatron (robotron with llamas and screaming madelbrot sets) to this game that looked just like the Atari “Empire Strikes Back” but with giant camels instead of Empiral walkers. Jeff also showed us Gridrunner and his pre-visualization tool….it was something that worked really well in a dark room, with some floyd going in the background and having “smoked” some “recreational” stuff…

All this really built up nicely to what Jeff felt games could do well, they could put players into “the zone”. His preference for abstract games stemmed from this goal, it doesn’t matter what things in the game represent, because you can have goals and achieve things (like getting points) without needing to be in a representive virtual-reality. The blocks you shoot could be just blocks, the triangles don’t need to represent doggies or anything. In this light, he also dislikes Boss-battles, feeling they’re “like hitting a wall.” Essentially a boss battle interrupts the flow of the game, and since its hard…probably forces them to die. Unlike a boss-battle, if the player dies during a level, the timer is still going, so they don’t lose progress, and actaully they gain a bit of leway from death itself, pretty groovy.

And speaking of groovy, Jeff’s games abounded with his wonderful sense of humor, from madelbrot sets which chase you and scream when you shoot them to levels ending with “a winner is you. The llama is in another castle” and just too many other random sound-bites to mention.

After Jeff was done elavating our minds, we had a panel of publishers, going from left-to-right we have:

Sony dude – Gametap dude – Manifesto dude – and Microsoft dude…perhaps you want real names:
John Hight, Sony
Sandy Resnick, GameTap
Greg Costikyan, Manifesto
Kim Pallister, Microsoft

If you have a keen eye, you’ll notice that the Microsoft and Sony representatives are not sitting next to each other. I saw them fighting each other in the hallway before the talk. The moderator had to turn a hose on them to stop the fight…hence the separation*

The panel did a pretty good job of telling the audience how to get a game onto their various retail channels. Some themes emerged during the discussion:

If they pay you upfront, they’ll want a lot of say in how your game turns out.
For the most part, your game needs to fit with the direction they see their service going. For example, Microsoft and Sony would be looking for games which look really pretty, cause people still need to be convinced their expensive new system can produce great looking graphics.

The Sony dude was a bit funny, as he mentioned that Flow uses the six-axis controller, therefore it can’t go to another system and provides a unique experiance (doesn’t the Wii do this much much much better folks?) and overall he seemed to be more…conservative in his responses than the other panel people. Sony being the least accepting, then Microsoft, Gametap and finally Manifesto games, which as the panelist put it “we’ll put up games we don’t even find fun.”

But the Sony / Microsoft different also highlighted something very important, of the panel members, only Microsoft has given the game developers the ability to create a game for their platforms for a small cost. Since Gametap and Manifesto accept PC games, they don’t need to give developers such tools, as they already exist. I can’t help but think that Sony is only being luke-warm in their approach to the indie community.

Which also brings up and interesting point…where the fuck is Nintendo?

Oh yea, the panel got mobbed by people after they finished. I didn’t get it, but people actaully bound-and-gagged the Sony and Microsoft guys and carried them out of the room.*

um, and then…

is that a pirate?! its too blurry!

aRRRRRRRRRRRR…avast me matey! Dat be a real Pirate yaarrrr.

I hope to one day wear a pirate hat and give a speech to a bunch of people. Curse you Daniel James for stealing my dream!

Oh, and he had some stuff to say about making an indie MMO.

And then it was time for the much anticipated and most poorly executed panel of the day…on innovation!

From left-to-right we have:

Moderator – Steve Swink, Flashbang Studios – lied about the time-limit for people’s talks…
Jon Blow, Number-None; wanted to farm the existing game space or something odd like that

Kyle Gabler, Experimental Gameplay Project; – wants an animated tattoo

Jon Mak, Queasy Games; – thinks innovation is for pussies and real men make games to express their feelings
Jenova Chen, ThatGameCompany; – was really hooked on a feeling during the talk

Overall, this was a pretty good panel discussion. The quick talks each person pointed out some very interesting things:

Chen – Cames fullfill and emotional need to accomplish something

Mak – Innovation is shit, fuck it man, make a game to express yourself

Gabler – With great processing power comes the need to make art…so artistic expression is innovation

Blow – Innovation is exploration of the gamespace, it doesn’t make things more fun. Oh, also games don’t quite express the human condition…and innovation for no good reason is like a gimmick and gimmicks suuuuuck.

The difference in personalities was pretty striking. Chen argued for more focused exprimentation and reasoned that a game needs to appeal to a broad audience (he mentioned that Flow for him personally is too easy, but he wanted others to enjoy the game, so he made it easier) compared to Mak who argued that a person needs to express *themselves* with a game, that a game is a personal experiance.

Some interesting ideas game out of the panel, specifially Innovation does not matter! Its a great way to explore ideas, but at the end of the game, people should be making games which they enjoy, which express their own desires and
feelings.

Up next we had a post-mortem for Small-arms…which I didn’t find helpful so I didn’t take pictures and I’m not gonna talk about it. It was neat seeing that six people could make a 360 live game…but meh, sorry guys, didn’t care.

Then we had:
Dave Grossman & Kevin Bruner, Telltale Games

who wanted to tell us that episodic gaming is the wave of the future!!!

Yay! Its John Baez from “The Behemoth”!! He’s here to talk to us about MBA stuff?

John’s talk focused on setting up a company and navigating the terrible maze involved with publishing it. He gave some great advice, which I’m going to keep to myself so you losers can’t compete with me..

Okay, I’m lying, here’s a recap of what he had to say:

***Cut out the middleman, if you want buttons, find the guy who makes them and pay him. If you want a walk-around costume, find the person who makes it and pay him. If you want toys, find the dude who makes them and…etc

Really great advice, as an indie you’re already doing a lot of tangential stuff to save money, and honestly you can easily do more.

***Trade shows (like comic-con / PAX) are great ways to get noticed

***Build a fan-base

***Hire an experianced attorney and do research on contracts yourself (www.onecle.com + spark vs activision lawsuit)

***Read IDGA whitepapers for publisher submissions

***Meet with developers the publisher worked with

***DO YOUR HOMEWORK, get to know a publisher before you sign with them!

and then he went on to tell us just how big the fish he caught was*:

Actaully, he’s explaining just how much his talk kicked ass. Serioulsy, he was the *BEST* speaker for the day.

So…I took lots of pictures of him….oooh look he’s got a trophy!!

soooo shiny

And then some girl talked to us about um…shoes or something*

Oh right, it was someone from the Portal team! Kim Swift had a bunch to say about how students should approach writing a game. Things like, be realistic, design by democracy…etc. Sadly, while it was reasonable stuff, her talk just didn’t resonate with me, but looking back at my student projects, it was all *very very* fitting. She did mention two great things to remember: make training fun -> make sure you train your player + watch their reaction to your game -> pickup on their bodly language to see if they are enjoying things.
*did not actaully happen!

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If you’re looking for something funny but you’re also interested in gaming you can find more than one funny game on the web for free amongst other funny stuff. Not only can you find games for kids but plenty of funny games for adults or if you don’t really feel like playing a game then there are funny quotes collections on many websites.

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