This was the last day of the conference, and you could definitely feel people were getting worn out. I didn’t manage to make it through the expo before it closed, which is unfortunate but not the end of the world, and frankly the panels I went to were more important. I managed to make it to all three panels I’d planned to attend, albeit I got into the first of the day about 20 minutes late due to the shuttle hitting some traffic. All three were about methods to create a new game company, and essentially different routes people took to do it.

The first session was about bootstrapping a company, and mostly worked on a “work for hire”/contracting system to raise cash for their internal projects. This was held from one of the guys at Demiurge, which is based in the Boston area, and it’s worked quite effectively for them. We swapped cards, and I’m hoping to make it down for one of their game nights in the not too distant future, for the socializing if nothing else (I definitely took the advice from my first panel this week to heart, about encouraging you to surround yourself with a brain trust of people smarter than you).

The second session was about taking a game from design to product as an independent developer. The speaker had started his own company, and put together a game for about $25,000, “and could have done it for $10,000 if I knew then what I know now.” This was definitely encouraging to hear, and while a lot of his advice was common sense to me, it was still reassuring to hear that it’s still possible to do what he did.

The third session took a different tack to starting a company, and went the venture capital route. It was held by the CEO of PlayFirst, which had just completed it’s second set of fundraising ($5million in the first round, and another $5million in the second). It was interesting to see the difference in presentation between the three meetings, with this third session being significantly more business-like and number crunching in nature. It is both more intimidating, and reassuring to know that the money is out there, though. I don’t think venture capital is the route I personally want to take, but I’m not averse to it, and managed to swap cards with a VC who was in the audience that focuses on startups in the tech and media sectors, for seed and series A funding (30k to 2million). This could potentially be immensely beneficial, should I choose to pursue this route (especially since one of the things they bring to the table is financial and business tutoring to help you get your business running solidly… that’s something you get out of the deal. They usually aim for the 5-15% range for a stake in the company, which is acceptable. I may actually put Kevin in touch with them for UberCon, especially since they’re based out of DC).

By the time the last session ended, the convention center was a ghost town compared to the crowds that had been there all week. It was strangely refreshing, though it did very little to bring closure to the event for me. I took the shuttle back to the hotel, and spent the rest of the evening playing Brain Age… my current brain age is 49 (lower is better, range is from 20 to 70)… lot of work to do on that. I completed about 12 sudoku puzzles, though.

This will be a shorter post, since I already talked a fair bit about the keynotes that were today. By today, I was pretty worn out (being an introvert by nature, the swarms of people I don’t know really puts a drain on me, even knowing that they’re all geeks like me), so other than the keynotes, I spent most of the day hanging out in the IGDA lounge, catching up online and just in general trying to relax. It was moderately successful, and even with that, I managed to collect still more business cards (I’ll hopefully be doing follow-ups with them when I get back home). Overall, I feel like I should have made more effective use of my day, but I really needed the down time, so I don’t feel too bad about it.

In the evening, my cousin Cortney called, and we grabbed some dinner at a tastey Indian place called the Tandoori Oven (for those in the San Jose area, it’s over on First, near the Repertory, and across the street from the Fairmont). That was fun as ever, and was nice to chat with her and in general relax a bit. After that, I did a circuit through “Suite Night”, and ultimately left after about half an hour (the place was PACKED, and I just wasn’t in the mood to deal with a bunch of drunks).

Will Wright is one hell of a nice guy. It’s pretty remarkable how self effacing he is. The actual title of the keynote is “Why I get too obsessed with my game research”. I think it says something that just a few minutes in, we’ve all laughed probably a dozen times. “Learn to embrace your inner Otaku”

He started with a bit of a postmortem of The Sims Online, which was this massive, massive, heavy project with an amazing amount of inertia to deal with, compared to Spore, his next game, which was fast and agile in terms of development. Which then migrated into a discussion of application of ownership; this in turn gets brought back to Spore.

Will then discussed the initial ideas and research he did to come up with Spore. The history of life, the universe, and everything [sic]. Different theories on how life possibly came to Earth, the idea of “cross talk” between planets, or even interstellar cross talk (matter from one planet going to another planet).

The basic premise of the keynote was to drive home just how important research is to game development, and how sometimes the most random thing can be the inspiration for some really fantastic games. Overall, it was a fantastic keynote; I think it would be amazingly fun to just sit down and chat with Will for a while.

This has proven to be a delightful keynote. Iwata has a very dry sense of humor that works very well with his thick japanese accent. The topic is about disrupting the market, much in the same way that Pepsi did when it diversified into snacks and alternative drinks (sports drinks, water, et cetera).

Some of the comparisons are interesting… the PS2 sold 6 million worldwide units in 21 months. The GBA sold 6 million in 20 months. The DS did it in 14 months. Nintendogs sold 6 million units in a year. Brain Training has already sold over 5 million units collectively, and hasn’t even reached a global release yet. (It’s worth noting that the Nintendo booth at the expo has DS lites running Brain Age, which has proven to be great fun.)

He discussed the process of developing Brain Training, which was a small team personally produced by Iwata, working with developers new to game development. I think this is awesome, and encouraging both for working with Nintendo in some role.

Iwata then brought on one of the developers of the localized version (Brain Age), who is demonstrating the game. It’s fucking fantastic — I’m REALLY looking forward to it now. I also think Mom would love this game, though it would mean she would need to get a Nintendo DS (not a bad option). They brought up some people who hadn’t played it before (including Will Wright), and had a brain age competition, which was fantastic fun. The neat trick is that it actually does help you train your brain into functioning better.

Really, the main point of his keynote is that it’s not enough to just do what others are doing… take a chance and do something new, and you might be surprised. He’s also giving everyone who attended the keynote a free copy of the game!!!

From there, he’s begun talking about other parts of Nintendo’s plans. Notably, their networking service. Keeping it as seamless and simple as possible, to encourage the social dynamic of being able to focus on playing and chatting.

Then they showcased Metroid Prime Hunters… I’m impressed. The gameplay is slick. D-pad is movement, L button is shooting, and stylus is aiming (double tap to jump, use stylus to select weapon). I’m pretty impressed. The gameplay is arguably the best console adaptation of a keyboard and mouse control.

After that, he showcased a NEW ZELDA GAME FOR THE DS. It’s cell shaded like Wind Waker, looked damn fun. That’s coming out sometime later this year. While he was at it, he announced the inclusion of support for virtual consoles of the Sega Genesis and the TurboGrafx 16, operating like an “iTunes Music Store for Games”. All in all, it was a really excellent keynote, and I’m glad I went (and for more reasons than just the free game).

Day three of GDC started with me missing my first panel, which is unfortunate, but not unsurprising… despite my efforts at staying on eastern time in order to get up for morning panels, I’m slowly getting more and more on pacific time, and having more and more trouble getting up in the morning (probably helps that I’m not staying anywhere near hydrated enough). Still, I managed to make it in for the Playstation 3 keynote, which was interesting and fun. I’d have to say that there are some things that he discussed that make a lot more sense when heard than read; in-game advertising, for instance. In the actual keynote, the discussion made sense given the audience, and the nuances of speech made it clear that he wasn’t talking about tossing in advertising where it didn’t make sense, which simply hasn’t translated to the written accounts on the news sites and forums. I’m not saying I’m necessarily FOR it, but I’m also aware that games cost a fuckton of money at this point, and additional sources of revenue are necessary, plain and simple.

After the keynote, I wandered through the expo (which had just opened), and unfortunately missed some of my mid-day panels in the process. That said, I put my card in a lot of hands and introduced myself to a number of companies. I chatted briefly with Epic, and got a chance to see some actual gameplay of Gears of War and Unreal Tournament 2007, both of which are looking excellent. I also got a chance to check out their tools pipeline, which really has come a long way since the days of futzing with UnrealEd for Unreal Tournament. Needless to say, if I get enough funding to make it feasible, I’ll be chatting with them about licensing their engine (and in the meantime, a mod proof of concept sounds appealing).

I swung by the Bloggers Gathering and chatted with a number of bloggers that I read, as well as being introduced to a few that I plan to start reading. It was useful discussing the benefits and drawbacks of blogging (the inherent “cult of personality” that occurs, for instance). Also, the concerns with discussing specific games or situations, since that can (unfortunately) potentially impede you from getting hired, and possibly even getting fired (which is stupid, in my humble opinion… what I say or do on my own time, in particular before I worked for a company, is my own business).

After the Bloggers Gathering, I went and wandered through the expo some more, as part of the Booth Crawl (various booths around the expo floor had beer, and even some soda for people like me, as well as cookies and snacks and even some lo mein). In the process, I collected some more information concerning possible employment if this whole “start my own development studio” thing doesn’t pan out, plus some potential contract/commission/intern work for Erica for the summer. I made brief inquiries with a number of companies about working out a publishing deal or partnership… not many bites, unsurprisingly. In these days of ginormous budgets, people are loathe to invest in unknowns. That said, Namco Bandai expressed some interest, so I’ll be contacting them to explore this in the near future.

After the Booth Crawl, I headed across the street and attended the Independent Games Festival Awards and Game Developer’s Choice Awards, which was a lot of fun. Shadow of the Colossus swept the awards, winning 4 or 5 of the awards (out of 8? 9?). Psychonauts also did well. Interestingly, despite being nominated for nearly every award, I don’t think God of War won a single one.

I got back to the hotel around 9-9:30 local, and chatted with Erica for a while on the phone, wishing her a happy birthday since it was technically tomorrow by then. I was completely wiped, though, too many people and too much having to be “up” and social and functioning. Very very glad that my first session isn’t until 10:30am tomorrow.

I ended up waking up a bit later than I’d hoped today, and barely made it over to the convention center in time to get some coffee and a muffin before my tutorial started (Player-Centric Game Design Workshop, which is being presented by Ernest Adams). It was a really excellent all day tutorial where the first hour or two was a lecture on good design practices, and then we broke into groups of 5 and designed games for the rest of the day, before presenting them at the end of the workshop to the rest of the group. My group made “Sim Elves in Space”, which was based around the idea of wanting to build and manage a space station. Each part of the 5 person group had a role in the design: lead designer (manager), game designer, art director, ui designer, and level designer. I was the game designer, so my job was figuring out the game mechanics and internal economy of the game — I think I did alright, considering it was my first time working with a group in this fashion (this is the curse of going to a school like Vermont College… you get used to doing things on your own, with little to no collaboration). I had a pleasant chat with Ernest Adams during one of the breaks, and he seemed receptive to my theories on focusing on more theatric tools and elements over cinematic elements in games, to creatie a more compelling story. He’s got a lecture on Friday that I’d love to attend on the subject, but it’s opposite a lecture on bootstrapping a small development studio, and unfortunately that needs to take precedence.

After the workshop, I went back to the hotel and had a platter of vegetarian sushi, some edamame, and some miso soup… and then promptly got invited to dinner with my friend Robert, and some of his friends that were in town for the conference (they all went to Digipen together… half the table was from Valve). That was good fun, and ended up with everyone going back to one of the hotel rooms for some Karaoke Revolution (I managed to get out before they were subjected to my singing).

Overall, another tiring but good day.

I’ve been in the San Jose area since Friday at this point, and spent the weekend visiting my cousins and getting a general feel for the area. It’s really hammered home how out of shape I am; after two days of hoofing it all over downtown San Jose, I’m hobbling around a little from a sore tendon in one foot and a raw spot on the other from where my sandal was rubbing against it. (It’s time for new sandals.)

I’ve been handing out business cards to everyone I chat with, so it’s possible that I will shortly have some new visitors (hello to any that come by). I’ve handed out probably about a dozen so far — not bad for being in a tutorial session all day (and it’s only the first day). People have been responding well to my ideas on putting together a development company focusing on narrative based games, so that bodes very well for getting Critical Games to actually get off the ground. (One of the individuals I was chatting with also gave me some suggestions on where to look for grants that would go quite far in getting started… potentially up to $100,000 for 6 months to develop a proof of concept, with a phase 2 portion that could potentially be somewhere between $250,000 and $500,000. This would be fantastic.)

I had just one session today, a full day tutorial about creativity. It was well presented and I had fun with it, though I must say it was pretty tiring and by the end of it, I was grateful to get up and stretch my legs. A lot of the information was fairly basic (stuff like “watch what you eat”, “get plenty of rest”, “drink lots of water” etc), but there were also some really useful exercises and suggestions on ways to help train your creativity and creative output. For the second half of the session, we broke into small groups and did a variety of design exercises to demonstrate the role of creativity in design. These ranged from some smaller scale design problems from case study games, to prototyping and presenting a boardgame given random provided puzzle pieces in about 30 minutes. Our group was comprised mostly of professors from Full Sail (good people, they were goofy and friendly, but also clearly knowledgeable in their respective fields), and ended up making a game called “Space Pig” (opting not to go the “Pigs in Space” route lest Henson sue us), since one of the game pieces we were given was a small plastic pig and the game board was a star field of sorts. The basic premise was that there was the Space Pig in the center of the board, and he’s hungry, so you needed to trek out in your ship to the edge of the map and collect a “water” token and a “food” token, and bring them back to the pig in the center. Of course, if you ran across another player’s ship, your path would be obstructed, and you’d have to battle (each rolls a die, the player with the lower number loses a health token and is sent back to his home point… if they have a food or water token, that is sent back into the resource pools at the rim of the board). To win, either kill all your opponents (that’d be an awful lot of lucky rolls, though, since each of the four players starts with four health points), or be the first to get both the food and the water to the space pig, and then return to your home base. (I’m writing it down so I don’t forget, and for posterity.) Overall, it was a worthwhile tutorial despite it occupying the entirety of my day.

Also on Monday, during one of the breaks, I went down to the GDC store they have set up and checked out their array of books and such. They were a fair bit overpriced, but that’s partially because a number of them were books that had not yet been officially released. I picked up The Game Design Reader, which is a companion book to Rule of Play. With that lovely sort of zen synchronicity that I’m so fond of, as I was paying for it, someone behind me commented “Good book”… turned out to be Eric Zimmerman, the editor of the book (The Reader is a collection of essays from various authors). So, now I have an autographed copy of the book sitting in a bag on my hotel table. Pretty neat.

I’ve put together a tentative schedule for the week, in case anyone is interested: Continue reading →