The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer
I’m back home from GDC, so now I can catch up on things that have been lingering a bit. Such as finally watching the series premier of Knight Rider.
My presentation on game design documents went well, for what is a decidedly non-sexy topic. The conference associates told me that I had more than 500 people as an audience – not bad for a talk that was basically a revisit of last year’s talk. For those seeking slides, they are here:
Seriously, the 9 of hearts?
Sorry for the lack of communication. I’ve been on the road all week, first to Edmonton to talk about game design process. Currently I’m in Bloomington, IN, to give my Zen of Game Design talk for the virtual worlds department that houses such luminaries as Lee Sheldon and Ted Castronova. While there, I hope to give Lee some shit for the end of this.
As a happy accident, I got to tag along to the Mass Effect launch party while in Edmonton. They sure know how to drink up there. I suspect it’s because it’s too cold to actually do anything outside. Just finishing a lot of crunch to make a kick-ass game probably was a factor as well.
My talk went, in general, very well. At least, the people who liked it were willing to tell me so. You never know who doesn’t like it – people don’t exactly rush the stage to tell you off if they’re bored or disgusted by your talk. Various talk writeups:
My talk on writing game design documents was the highest rated talk at GDC. Not bad, considering this was originally going to be a roundtable.
Major takeaway: propose talks that teach useful skills that can be used on any project in any genre.
For those who are late to the party, the GDC presentation can be found in the presentations section.
On the third day of my roundtable, I took the talk in the most controversial of directions: the grind. More specifically, why do designers gravitate towards class-based, level-based experience-point based RPG systems for their advancement models? What’s wrong with them? Once again, the responses listed below are not necessarily my own, but are rather responses that came out of the group. However, many of the responses that appear are very similar to those that I mentioned in my AGC talk a year ago. Continue reading
Day two of my roundtable continued with a frank discussion why most of our MMOs seem to center on combat, and in particular, the classic turn-based, stats-more-than-skill, tank-mage-healer brand of combat which is the norm in massively multiplayer games today. Once again, these are the opinions of the group, and not necessarily my own. The group came up with: Continue reading
My Roundtable this year was “Moving Beyond Men In Tights”. There was a roundtable each day of the conference, and Wednesday’s question centered upon the simple question: “Why Fantasy?” The roundtable was moderated heavily by myself, with questions derived from my powerpoint presentation at AGC.
The first question I asked was “Why do we keep making fantasy games? We all want to see different things, and yet, the top 5 most talked about MMO launches in 2007 look to be more fantasy games. So what unique traits does fantasy have that make it well-suited to today’s MMO designs? ” I stressed that I wasn’t saying ‘keep making fantasy games’ – please don’t! I just wanted the participants to understand what reasons there might be beyond “we’re unimaginative bastards” and “it sells”. Continue reading
310 people. Not bad for the very last talk of the conference. Surprisingly few were friends of mine humoring me (and where were you guys anyway?) And shockingly few people got up and left halfway through it!
I proposed the talk in desperate hopes of finally getting a GDC speech. After four years of proposing MMO-specific talks, I wanted to do something else — but all I’ve ever designed is MMOs. What could I do a talk on that wasn’t that?
The talk went well, even though the guy handling my AV couldn’t seem to get the bottom half of my powerpoint presentation to show up. For those who wanted to see my slides in all their glory, I’ve put them up here.
Edit: I cleaned up some typos, and made the powerpoint presentation do a better job of speaking for itself (i.e. without me standing in front of it). Those who want to download it and use it may feel free to do so, so long as I remain attributed.
Spent my evening at the Second Life party. I felt vaguely guilty about it. I even went up and shook Wagner James Au’s hand, although I don’t think he fully remembered who I was. This might have been the drinks, though – they were, by all reports, mixed very strongly. I personally have made an oath to not give any speeches or roundtables while hungover. Nothing impedes a roundtable like the guy running it wishing everyone would shut up. Continue reading
© 2024 Zen Of Design
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
Recent Comments