GDC, day three

Posted on | March 12, 2010 | 3 Comments

GDC started earlier than previously today and Steve and I met Ian Livingstone (another childhood hero) for breakfast.

I forgot to mention that last night I went to eat with the Paradox guys at a grill where Dashiel Hammet wrote and which is actually mentioned in the Maltese Falcon. There was a little sort of shrine to him in the lobby. Good steak, too.

First thing I caught the end of Peter Molyneux’s talk about creativity, which was of course mostly about Fable III, which he had some impressive demos of. I missed most of the presentation, as Steve was attending it and I was covering another one, which I singularly failed to find. One interesting thing he mentioned was the use of a player’s Xbox gamer score to determine the random seed for what their game weapon would look like.

The questions posed him were also very interesting, most of them being very Fanboy indeed: “will XXX be in Fable III”. One question and answer stick in my mind: a young woman asking about the appearance of female character. Apparently, in Fable II (I go by hearsay only as I did not play it that long) everyone bought some ranks in strength, which made them muscular. This player did not like that, it seems. Peter told her that in Fable III by avoiding using a mêlée weapon you would not increase your strength, so to remain ‘lithe and feminine’ you should use a gun or magic. I am sure there are female academics (or just women) who might have something to say about that, far better than I ever could.

The best thing about watching Peter present though is his sheer enthusiasm, joy and skill. He has to be better at that sort of stuff than anyone I have ever seen, certainly in the games industry and probably anywhere – including very senior politicians. I would suggest that anyone who wishes to hone their presentation skills watches videos of Peter Molyneux – or makes sure they come to his lecture at Brunel(if you are at Brunel, though anyone who wanted to come we could probably accommodate) and pay a lot of attention to both the style and substance.

There are about ten different things going on at once, and it seems at any one time 1/3^rd of them are about social gaming. I may well be exaggerating – but it is clearly a big thing and people have noticed the huge amount of money it is making (they would have had to be blind not to).

I hit the expo floor after Peter’s talk, which is now open, and started to take it all in. There really is rather a lot going on there. A lot of it is tools for developers, so I have only a causal interest. Equally a lot of universities -US ones only that I have seen – have stands. In a later discussion with the charming Chris Stewart of Kerebos, he indicated that a lot of US students come to GDC to get into the industry, and I guess some are coming to look for universities too  – the Uni stands do not seem pitched at increasing Industry contact, but more at student recruitment. There is a whole careers expo too. I will investigate a bit more.

Striking is some of the controller free stuff: videos of people sitting on their sofas pressing a fist into their palm to buzz in quiz games, or playing skating games by, er, skating on the carpet and so forth – I am going to check this out a lot more tomorrow.

Jetlag then totally hit me and I spent the afternoon back in my room sleeping. I went to the Paradox hang out again after that, and they were as lovely to me as ever – especially given they had serious PR purpose in being there and I was of no practical use to them at all. They are very keen to work with academics, though, so perhaps anyone in Sweden might want to put some sort of proposal to them.

I was lured into playing the wild west 3ps Lead and Gold they were demoing, and was struck by the battlefield design -very clever, many nooks, different routes and interesting features that enhanced the gameplay. Such design is nothing we have ever directly taught, and probably should, if time can be found. What we really need are ten year MAs and 20 year BAs. That way I would have students for their WHOLE LIFE and they would NEVER ESCAPE ME. Bwa ha ha.

It is now early evening and they are off to make appearances at three hundred parties. Me, I am going to sleep and read my book (perhaps at the same time) once I have finished this.

The first night I was here I found a copy of 1633 -a book I have failed to find in England  -the sequel(shock) to 1632. Its about a blue collar American mining town that gets thrown back in time to the middle of Germany in the 30 years war. The first book, by Eric Flint, is awesome and the second  -by Weber  -is shaping up rather well. There are about ten more after that, most of which are either pretty average or sucky.

I have not found the Blizzard stall: I keep looking for an arrow on my minimap.

Comments