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Thursday at the Austin Game Conference

Posted by Zonk on Fri Sep 08, 2006 11:25 AM
from the more-on-mmogs dept.
Entertainment Games
Much talk yesterday in Austin centered around Rob Pardo's keynote, but there were several other events you might be interested in. Dell Chairman Michael Dell talked about that company's gaming plans in a 'fireside' chat. Movie producer Jon Landau spoke on the role of gaming in the entertainment industry. Gamasutra has several pieces from smaller talks, with titles like The Death of Cinematics, New Models for Game Stories, and Writing for Digital Actors. Finally, Raph Koster offers an ultimatum to the games business: evolve or die. From that article: "The end result, according to Koster, is the current hit-driven state of the game industry, which focus on the top 20 percent of games. 'The particular adaptation that we've made to this is to not bother making or stocking or selling the other 80 percent,' Koster said. 'So when you walk into your friendly neighborhood GameStop, you won't find the game that is 21 on the charts. Because of limited shelf space, they just don't want it around. It's just not worth having it compared to game number 20 twice, or better yet, The Sims and all of its expansions.'"
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[+] How They Made World of Warcraft 140 comments
SiliconJesus writes "Rob Pardo, VP of Design at Blizzard, gave an interesting keynote at the Austin Game Conference outlining the Blizzard philosophy on designing game content, core and casual players, and why story should always drive the game." From Raph's writeup: "If you extend the leveling curve too far, it becomes a barrier. You hit a leveling wall. Our walls are shorter and there are less of them. The short leveling curve also encourages people to reroll and start over. We had some hardcore testers who would level to 60 in a week. There was much concern within the company. But I would tell them that we cannot design to that guy. You have to let him go. He probably won't unsubscribe, he's going to hit your endgame content or he'll have multiple level 60s. In games with tough leveling curves, it discourages you from starting over." More is available from the conference, with Gamasutra having a rundown on Mark Terrano's writer's keynote, and Gamespot's piece on the MMOG Rant session. Paneled by the likes of Matt Firor, Lum, Rich Vogel, and Jessica Mulligan, that must have been entertaining to see live. One more thing - WoW has 7 Million subscribers now.
[+] Friday at the Austin Game Conference 9 comments
This year's AGC is now at an end, and several sites have coverage of the last day's events. The hit event for the day seemed to be Damion Schubert's Moving Beyond Men in Tights talk. MMORPG.com has a slew of interesting articles, covering Emerging PR Strategies for MMOGs, Running Your Own MMOG, and Rich Vogel on MMOG Betas. Raph has a liveblog on a session about Virtual Economies, and finally the 3pointD site has a look at a panel on Virtual Worlds. Interesting stuff. From the 'Men in Tights' writeup: "The queston to answer, why do we keep making grindtastic classbased combat oriented men in tights gamey games? I'm not going to answer 'because it sells' because it's a circular argument and a copout. We won't get anywhere if we only do what was done before. Instead, I'll ask why do we need a grind, why do games appear to be winning, why are classes good, and so on. The reason to tackle this is because whenever people decide to make a new game, these are often the first five things people choose to innovate on. But there's a lot of bad innovation from people trying to solve these five problems."
[+] Austin Game Conference 2006 in Depth 21 comments
New games site OGX has up an overview of last week's Austin Game Conference. The piece touches on the big talks (Rob Pardo, Jon Landau, Vernor Vinge), and gives some informational tidbits about the always-interesting panel discussions. From the article: "Community was also a topic that was frequently the primary driver behind a panel, or as a secondary topic that rose up in relation to the topic at hand. Gordon Walton, Studio Director for Bioware Austin held a particularly radical presentation entitled 'Rethinking Service Offerings.' Walton noted that the player perspective about customer service amounted to 'No matter how we do service, we suck.' and questioned why companies spend energy on a perception based challenge that they have not been able to overcome. Walton's premise was that since the customer service infrastructure for a MMORPG eats the most revenue and generates less than favorable results, it may be entirely possible to cut customer service offerings down entirely to a set of automated tools and save the money spent designing for satisfied customers."
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Thursday at the Austin Game Conference 25 Comments More /

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  • Game stories! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by andrewman327 (635952) on Friday September 08 2006, @11:32AM (#16066570) Homepage Journal
    I read the article about new game stories. I believe that there is a definite need for better storylines in games. It seems that the industry is hellbent on finding that "next big thing" that works and beating it into the ground. A good example is GTA genre of urban games [slashdot.org].


    From TFA:

    Sutherland suggests game writers concentrate on allowing players to make more choices and more important choices. He says writing has always been about choice, whether we take our inspiration from Dostoyevsky or the Surreal Life. We need to be open to inspiration where it comes from, and choice of any kind has conflict inherent in it. This will help connect the game with people. He also suggested avoiding formulas when approaching game writing. This includes avoiding laundry lists of dramatic requirements. He says formulas from other media especially don't translate directly, and the art form of games is so new experimentation is critical just to find the boundaries of possibilities. It's the only way we'll know what works and what doesn't.
    This is what gamers have always wanted. D&D had the ultimate in user selection and gamers loved it. The industry needs to learn that pretty graphics are not the only way to sell games and are, in fact, usually not the most important element.
    • I think the problem is that it's easy to improve the graphical aspects in a game, whereas it's difficult to make a good story, and with multiple paths it becomes even more difficult. Now that graphics is starting to pay out decreasing dividends in sales, I hope developers will start to put more effort into AI and procedural content generation, that should make it a lot easier to make dynamic stories.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by UbuntuDupe (970646)
      That kind of reminds me of an idea I've been wanting to explore in simpler games I write. (This has to do with storylines.) I want a game where, as much as possible, it prevents you from being able to "send information back in time" so to speak. (I prefer the term "causal game".) In most games, you can exploit your advance knowledge of where stuff is and who will betray you when. In a causal game, the internal logic wouldn't even determine that stuff until it either happens, or you observe evidence tha
      • Umm, random generate stuff when you start the game?
        Civilization could do that, and you had to re-discover the world with each new game. I think this is the easiest way to generate the replay value you look for.
        • If I understand you correctly, my idea is slightly different. As you've described it, you can start a new game, save, explore the world, and then reload and re-do your game with knowledge of the world's geography in advance. In my idea, it wouldn't definitely determine any of that stuff until you actually saw it. Think "Shrodinger's cat".
          • Yes, by going back to an earlier save you can get around the random world generation in CIV (which is optional anyway, you can play on the fixed "real" map of Earth if you like).
            But that never bothered me because I consider the above cheating anyway. If a campaing goes sour, I'd rather abort it and start a completely new one.
  • Natural selection in the gaming industry is it really new???
  • What a load of recycled crap this Raph Koster guy has spouted.

    He's rehashing that dusty old argument about only 'AAA' titles finding shelf space. About how the industry must wake up from some kind of self-imposed creative coma. Woe, woe unto us.

    Y'know I'm really tired of that line of thought. Its completely useless criticism. And its been around since the 'dark years' of the late 80s, when video games were really in a funk. He even uses a - get this - dinosaur extinction metaphor. Yawn. Nothing new to se

    • Speaking of silly cliches that don't really work, why bring up the video game - cinema comparison?

      And why bring up the specter of out-of-touch studio bosses, when really that has nothing to do with what the article, or this discussion, or your point, is all about?

      Anyway, video games gave been going strong for 25 or 30 years now, and are still a whole lot more like pinball than cinema.

      • Speaking of silly cliches that don't really work, why bring up the video game - cinema comparison?

        It should be self-evident, but I think it does work. Tell me why you think it doesn't.

        And why bring up the specter of out-of-touch studio bosses, when really that has nothing to do with what the article, or this discussion, or your point, is all about?

        From TFA's write-up: "Finally, Raph Koster offers an ultimatum to the games business: evolve or die. From that article..."

        Miss that part?

        Anyway, video game

      • Anyway, video games gave been going strong for 25 or 30 years now, and are still a whole lot more like pinball than cinema.
        Ever play Final Fantasy X? Can you really say that FFX is more like pinball than like a movie?

    • I can accept that "this type of talk" is a cliche to you. Yes, we've heard the very loud complaints about innovation before. We'll probably hear it again. And I'm with you on this. I'm honestly sick of hearing it, and the WalMart shoppers just aren't interested.

      The only trouble is, I honestly don't think we were hearing it here. I don't think that it was the emotional rant about "AAA" that you're ascribing to it. It seems to me that it was more a product of an inductive observation about where the indust

    • This is something I really wonder about, but when The Legend of Zelda: Wind waker came, everyone was (and many still are) saying that it was too bad the game was cel-shaded. Now comes a new game with cel-shading, and I haven't heard anyone saying anything about it.
      Strange....

      • I think that many people were offended because Nintendo exposed the Zelda series for what it was, an excersize in innocents, along the lines of Mihazaki, classic Disney, or Pixar. Not that there's anything wrong with that, in fact, I rate some Mihazaki and Pixar films as being some of the best films ever made. But for young boys between the ages of 13 and 19, it's a threat to their masculinity and supposed maturity. Later on, you really grow up and realize that there's nothing immature about these things, i

  • Maybe he should look at SW:G for a moment. That would be a fine example of "evolve and die". Evolution for the no other reason than to do something different != good.
    • well, in the case of SW:G they didn't evovle into sometihng new and different. They changed from something rather unique, into the sameol' sameol'.

      However, I do agree with you, Being different for the sake of being different is NOT good. However, being different becasue it is FUN (and not just gimmiky) is VERY important. As people have pointed out there are alot of interesting games out there, some make it, some don't.

      For examples look at:
      Okami(SP?)
      Savage (fun game, not the first FPS/RTS hybrid, but fun,
  • In response to what Koster had to say, I think that over the next few generations of consoles, things will radically change.

    First of all, the Nintendo Wii and DS have tried some out of the box approaches to gaming that have opened up new and different ways for games to be played. I'm not saying that the current ways are terrible and obsolete or that they should be done away with, but it is nice to have something new to try every once and a while. If the Nintendo Wii is a huge success, I think that we can
      • I think downloadable games (like Steam) is a interesting new direction for PC games to go in, but I don't like it for consoles. I guess downloading Zuma or something (I don't have a 360) is kinda cool when you're bored (though can't you get all those games for free on a PC?), but I'll take my full-length RPGs in a box with a manual, thank you, and skip the download wait and futzing around getting wifi (or long obnoxious cables) to my consoles. I also don't want, when I switch my consle because it broke/th
  • "Because of limited shelf space, they just don't want it (number 21) around. It's just not worth having it compared to game number 20 twice, or better yet, The Sims and all of its expansions"

    I used to love going to Babbages/Gamestop/Best Buy and seeing some 80-120 games available to choose from. Part of the experience was the selection, seeing all the innovative things out there, and choosing from them. Now that you're down to just the top dog hits, it's not as fun.

    So anymore, I just browse the game revie
  • IMHO the biggest problem affecting gaming now isnt storyline its spiraling costs, unecessary costs at that. I realize that the bigwigs at EA and others desperately want to rub elbows with the Tommy Meola's and Steven Speilbergs of the world but they have created an alternate reality for themselves where they are big time entertainment producers. Most of the free world couldnt really care less if the character of bobo the chimp in urban slaughter 6 is voiced by Ben Affleck. The gaming industry keeps promi

    • Oh, THAT's a great idea! Scrap all your seasoned actors, and give the voice-acting rolls over to a bunch of geeks, sounds like a perfect concept to me! Seriously though, that's basically where our music industry is right now. Have some big producers write some hit tunes, and then just hire some wannabe's off the street (*caugh* Brittany Spears *caugh*), and it'll sound "more authentic". Bullshit. People off the street, or people who have no artistic vision or talent are just puppets... and if you want authe

      • Actually skies of arcadia is a perfect example of what I would like to see more of, yes its incredibly cinematic...but that is done through actual game play. My problem is the 30 minutes of video to 5 minutes of gaming ratio that seems to be becoming more and more commonplace on newer games.

        I agree that voice talent actually has to be listenable, my problem with that is overpaid "endorsement" type voices, who cares if batman the video game really is voiced by Tim Daly or Heath Ledger? I exagerated a bit w

    • or better yet (gasp!) your own staff to do the voices if they are really needed

      Actually, that would be a pretty bad idea. This was common practice a couple of years ago and voices in games REALLY REALLY sucked. That said, there is no need to hire Ben Affleck if you can get an entire crew of professional voice actors for the same amount of cash.

      And personally, I would prefer a game with the tagline "NOT voiced by Ben Affleck" over the opposite any day.

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