GDC: Day 1
Saturday, September 20 2008
(Note GDC is over but I am posting my entries that I have typed up previously, cause I hadn't had a chance to post them yet).
GDC '08 has officially kicked off here in San Francisco! My morning was pretty normal for a conference. I spent some time with other Microsoft folks and got a sneak peak at some of the stuff we're doing for the keynote, as well as setting up. An empty room that hold's 5000 people is pretty incredible to see empty. All I know it takes a special person to be able to talk to an audience that large, the room I'll be in holds 250 people and I'm overwhelmed by that!
As I mentioned in yesterdays post, most of my time was spent at GDC Mobile talks. If you've read the blog before, you'll know I am a huge fan of portable gaming. Most of Monday/Tuesday is focused on GDC Mobile so besides the XNA Game Studio developer days (Which hopefully if you your at GDC you attended!) there weren't many other sessions that I noticed.
The first session I attended talked about the future of mobile gaming and what that might look like, it was a sponsored session from Zeemote. The Zeemote is a little remote that works with your Bluetooth phone for games, it was an interesting look at game development and what the future might look like. One of the presenters had a slide that just said "A mobile phone that will connect to your TV will replace your PS3 in two years time". I must say I don't see the same future, but it was meant to invoke a discussion. The biggest question that rung in my mind was if you have HD graphics on a phone, will you have teams of 60+ to develop games for them? They also talked about how why users play mobile games, and why more people will start playing mobile games for other reasons than "They are bored". Overall the session gave me some good insight into the mobile development process and where they think the mobile industry is going.
By the way, they had a booth outside where you could try out the Zeemote and I have to say it was pretty neat to play! I could totally see my self owning one.
I also attended a session titled "Tetris: The Best/Worst Mobile Game Ever". Based on the title alone I had to see what they said. It was presented by Rick Marazzani who founded iQ212. I thought this talk was great and had a great point, Rick said that Tetris is the best mobile game ever (Heck, it launched the Game Boy!) but given the way it's designed it probably wouldn't have gotten published today. This mainly centered around that it's gameplay tends to have long sessions, and that the gameplay cant be broken up into multiple sessions. The controversy was that he also suggested that Tetris would be less well received today were it new in the fact that it's not winnable, meaning that the main game always ends the same way with blocks stacked to the top of a screen. This was something I hadn't thought about and am caught in the middle, I don't think you need to win for a game to be fun, but as Rico said "Nobody likes to be a loser".
Anyway the sessions were cool and it was a good day. More as the fun continues the rest of the week!
6 comment(s) so far
I had exactly the same comment to make as Brandon! :-)
I’m just communicating what the presenter said. To play devil’s advocate, Geometry Wars is a console game (then ported to phones and the DS). I doubt they did as good as the one on XBLA. There are other examples like Bejeweled but they have levels and such to add some indication of progress. :-)
Cool post Michael. Just to clarify: if it is not winnable, it is not a game. A win condition is one criteria for a game to be a game. Plenty of activities are fun. Games, especially casual ones, are more fun when you win at the end.
I cannot wait to get iQ212's games up in XNA. Keep up the good work.
gAFT8W Were a U from?
RgeLTe Were a U from?
"Tetris would be less well received today were it new in the fact that it's not winnable, meaning that the main game always ends the same way with blocks stacked to the top of a screen"
And every game of Geometry Wars always ends with a spectacular shower of particles as your final ship is destroyed. However, as I understand it, it still sold quite well :-)