GDC day four: Sid Meier and Capitalism

Posted on | March 13, 2010 | No Comments

A fair bit to write about.

First off, my Blizzard quest (to find Esther a plush Griffon) has failed hopelessly. Finding the Blizzard stand at the careers expo I was confronted with this:

No big yellow question mark there I am afraid. I also really do not know what was going on there ? People standing in line to give in their CVs? Weird. None of the other people hiring had such a set up, but then I guess Blizzard is a bit of a big draw.

And yes, the hotel internet has become magically faster, so expect gratuitous pictures.

Sadly, there has been a real shortage of freebies of any kind, apart from fifty pounds of advertising material in the bag they gave us all. Perhaps I have been to the wrong places. Oh, Steve got some guitar picks he was very excited about (he plays in a band. Steve Jackson. How cool is that).

So, it’s only just after lunch but I did masses today and have come back to the hotel to process it all and write a bit  -both this AND some actual full on PHD, which I have been inspired in regard to.

I am also a bit overwhelmed by capitalism right now – I have never had any objection to anyone making a pile of money, or indeed of making a pile of money myself, but the conference has a constant subliminal version of Abba’s Money, Money, Money running as its soundtrack (or perhaps Money makes the world go round, from Cabaret, but that might be a bit too ironic for GDC) which is making my head hurt. It makes me want to wear a red beret, or sing ‘keep the red flag flying here’ off key, or perhaps both of those things whilst holding  a pineapple in one hand, a lobster in sunglasses in the other and standing on a table whilst shouting ‘Art for Breakfast!” and wearing only my underpants. Underpants which, of course, should have pictures of Goebbels on them.

The final straw was when I was finding a table for some European Academics I had homed in on so we could drink coffee and eat lunch and the guy who had just vacated said table explained to me, in some detail, how he had been overcharged by British prostitutes whilst in London. He leaned in with that conspiratorial all-guys-together-away-from-home-on-a-business-bonding-trip sort of a way. I was rendered speechless, and that does not often happen. Not gaming. Not gamers. Piss off out of my life/hobby capitalism guy.

This morning, however, had a treat I was really looking forward to: Sid Meier’s keynote. I was not disappointed: he was excellent, a brilliant speaker with a lot to say who addressed all sorts of games design issues head on. As you can hopefully see from the perhaps a little blurry picture, it was just a quiet little get together, Sid and I chatting away over old times virtually one on one. It was odd at the end though: there was a mass exodus before he started taking questions, whilst in Peter Molyneux’s talk everyone stayed rooted to their seats until the last possible moment. I can honestly not say why: both are excellent speakers.

There was another interesting contrast between the two, which is a direct design issue. Sid (as I shall cheekily call him, as if we are old mates) talked about moral dilemma. His specific example went something like: when Genghis Khan has been thoroughly beaten in Civ, he still comes on to the player as if he is the great I Am, giving it attitude. Players had suggested they might want Genghis, on the verge of defeat to speak somewhat differently: rather than ‘I will crush you, weakling’ saying ‘please don’t hurt me, my last city is full of women and children *sob*’. Sid stated he still wanted Genghis to be confrontational, because in that way the player would not feel bad about beating him, but good about themselves.

Peter (as I shall also cheekily call him, but at least I have met Peter) when speaking yesterday of Fable III was celebrating moral choices, and pretty ambivalent ones at that. For instance, he suggested as King in Fable III(half the game is about becoming king, half of it about being King, apparently), you might choose to demolish a load of polluting factories that used child labour – but that if you did lots of people may starve as a result(apparently they are food factories – I am not sure how that works).

This is a pretty fundamental difference in design philosophy  -even if we take into account that they are talking about very different sorts of games. I have some thoughts on this, which is part of what I was writing up for the PHD this afternoon, but I thought it a point worth highlighting here without any real editorial comment from me.

Sid talked about many things – I have access to his talk and will make it required viewing for students, I think, as there was so much to think about – one of which was the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction. Players can destroy games at any time(if only by turning them off), designer’s likewise (by making them bad games) and it is a designer’s responsibility to engineer out as much capacity for player self destructiveness as possible. This is something I have written about a fair bit (again, forthcoming with PHD), though not in those terms – I am sure Sid will sleep easier at night knowing my theory supports him.

Anyway, there follows a wholly arbitrary picture of a tram. These are turned round  -by hand on a sort of big wheel – outside the front door of my hotel.

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